The Pits
My parents paid for my smartphone since I argued it would help me find work. I could access online employment sites while taking the bus around the city, looking for a job the old fashioned way: face time, contacts.
Apparently no one wanted to hire a college drop-out with only half a business major. My parents had demanded I get a business degree—“we want some return on our investment”—but the classes taught me business was a rat race that functioned more through troglodytic glad-handing and backslapping than anything approaching managerial acumen.
After a couple weeks filling out crummy applications, I ended up heading out to Pershing Square, or Venice Beach, or some park in Orange County each day instead. I just hung around for a bit, watching skater kids, weightlifters, passersby. The ride out and back usually took most of my time.
Today, I decided to visit the La Brea Tar Pits. I wandered past a skeleton of a giant ground sloth, a diorama of saber-tooth cats, and a clutter of fossils on exhibit. These behemoths wouldn’t have survived anyway: the ice age was already thawing when they’d stumbled in the asphalt lake and drowned. Later, Los Angeles would become a bigger asphalt lake.
The black pits bubbled and steamed. Dead leaves, soda cans, burger wrappers, and other crap scumbled the surface, slowly sinking into the prehistoric debris.
My phone rang.
“Hi. —John?”
“Yeah.”
“We’d like to interview you for a position.”
“Awesome. Who’s this?”
“It’s Charlie. From Chuck E. Cheese’s on Wilmot.”
“Oh. You guys are looking for an assistant manager, right?”
“Well, that position’s been filled. But a cast member spot opened up.”
“Wait. You want me to wear a giant… fucking… RAT suit?”
I hurled my phone. The stupid thing stuck in the sludge, an artifact for latter-day paleontologists.
On the bus ride home, I could almost feel my bones twinkle under museum glass.
Alma Mater
Jim’s late so I’m stuck around these middle-age biddies. One of mom’s co-workers shanghaies me in the kitchen, where I’ve tried to escape their party. “I hear you’re going to Dartmouth next year, is that right?”
I nod, eyes below my hat-brim, and fiddle my phone. “Uh-huh.”
“Do you know anyone there?”
“Yeah. My friend Jim and I are both going.”
She hovers near the punchbowl; the other ladies have left for the living room. She hands me a little Dixie cup, saying, “I went there myself.”
I look up at her, uncertain for a second. I grasp it and sip. “Was it fun?” Maybe she’s what, thirty, thirty-two? Her bra-strap’s showing.
“Best years of my life,” and so on she says. My hand holds another cup before I realize I’m done. “One month, and you’re on your own—how does that feel?” she asks, stroking my arm.
I reach in my pocket, second nature, my fingers circling each button. I text Jim, this Milf is like hitting on me.
“Good—it’ll be good to, y’know…” I lift my cup, tilt my head, mimicking a confident gesture.
“Yeah,” she says, then “I think I need another,” bending around to pour a drink. I take the opportunity to glance at my phone. Jim’s said bullshit, he wants a picture of us making out. I hear murmurs from the other room. She’s still turned away, pouring me a drink.
I lean in, kiss her on the neck, bite down slightly. She lifts her skirt. I don’t react at first. Then I offer a scant graze. She arches her back. I snap a picture. A shrill laugh issues from the living room. I jerk away, standing stiff and distant that instant.
“I’ll be visiting soon,” she says.
“Really?”
“Homecoming. And don’t worry, your friend can watch if he wants.”
Empty Calories
Todd poured his generic bag of Choco-Oh’s into his bowl. Drowsily, he sloshed them with skim milk, which was little more than bleached water.
Saturday. So he’d lumbered out of bed early for no real reason, then. He didn’t feel like watching TV, not even cartoons. Or reading the newspaper. He felt a little puffy, woozy, unmoored. Not exactly hung-over. Not really. Maybe it was the hotdogs, the hashbrowns he ate late last night after the pub crawl. Garbage, but at least it kept the swill down. A listless vacancy, a sea-sickening absence at the heart of things, overtook every object. His body felt the heavy sink of matter. But looking around, the too-bright film of his surroundings only burned away. Light and shadow, what were they? Nothing, nothing—a fleeting emphasis of color or a lack thereof. Without them, however, the space around him would have no depth, no dimension whatsoever. The material world that he knew was just a tingling of neurons, a configuration of impulses. Flashbacks without a past. Or more likely: blackouts, confabulations. Flicker and gone. What was to gain? Yet, he knew he’d do it all again.
Only the boundary of things was real, only the surface gave off a sign of its presence. Insides might as well be evacuated, for all the good they did. He needed to take some more supplements.
He spooned up a mouthful of soggy Choco-Oh’s, nauseated as they dissolved into processed sugar and synthetic crunch. The remaining ones floated in a muddied glimmer, muddled clusters of voids. Dark strings or rings of zeroes.
Todd’s eyes went slack. He blinked and tried to focus on the photo in front of him, squinting. When he concentrated, he discerned a blown-up dot-matrix, a Lichtenstein pop art effect that made the image blur and squiggle. The gestalt no longer cohered. Its substance had dissipated into its less meaningful parts. He pulled back, adjusted, then let himself unfocus, gazing vaguely into the middle distance the way one did for a magic-eye poster. It was his face, his own face, on the milk carton; a missing person.
