The room was cold, matching Chris’ lifeless state of nonchalance, ignoring the pillow that fell off the mattress and the reddish brown stain that graced it. His tongue danced between his bottom lip and row of teeth. He tasted something and massaged his cheek a bit.
Chris found his answer in the bathroom mirror. Inspecting the problem, he was forced to make a face like a pirate with downed syndrome - fish hooking the side of his mouth, peeling back his bottom lip, and squinting with bother. A minor laceration, but a random wound nonetheless, undoubtedly brought on by the thrashing and unknown conversation of last night’s sleep.
He had been known for all kinds of retorts, questions, torrential cries and shouting spills while dreaming. Eyes clenched and legs shaking amidst the unexplained spurts of dialogue, always originating in reaction to fear and the great and thunderous thoughts that never left Chris’ mind. In the dead of night, his sleep talking was of justified fury. In the life of day, his speech was near speechless. Whatever darkness was made known to Chris, it was not necessarily in pursuit. It would simply be lingering, as darkness often does.
And in this moment, Chris could not even remember a single thing about last night’s dream, but that it lead to biting his lip and cheek. We’ll assume it was a nightmare, as Chris’ dreams often were.
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What do you do with a Y, a V, an M, an H, and three R’s? Though Jerry always waited patiently - hands folded gently, eyes on his placard of letters, and a tight, friendly smirk – Chris felt awful that it had taken him this long to score a whopping six with RYE off of Jerry’s MEDIATE. It was a mere ten but, with a double word score, Chris was now behind in double digits. The disappointment of his mid-game slump paled in comparison to the amount of customers at eleven thirty AM on a Tuesday.
“What are people eating instead of sandwiches,” Chris wondered aloud. “You order pizza and Chinese at night, not for lunch. Maybe people are doing Subway or Jimmy Johns.”
Chris failed to notice the traffic-jammed parking lot at Applebees across the street. Was the sign too small or uninviting? Maybe Chris could update the menu from 2008.
“Maybe you could draw some more letters,” quipped Jerry, his smirk growing.
“I’d like to buy a vowel…” Chris joked back, picking out a C and a U.
“Hmmph. You know, my wife and her friends all seem to pack a lunch. People don’t have the money to be grabbing a ten-dollar lunch everyday. That adds up.”
Jerry’s honesty stung with each word placed in Chris’ quick glances around the walls of his deli. Or was it a café? It was both, and maybe that was the problem. Chris should’ve picked one and thus, alleviating the choosing of a name and whom to hire. A deli would have a couple strong guys working in an assembly line of meat and cheese slicing, sandwich crafting, and register typing like boxing jabs for a short and sweet visit for an affordable American meal. If only a café, he’d hire teens to twentysomethings, straight laced to alternative and all engaging in their new understanding of politics and their old love for acoustic ballads as they pour, stir, and drip.
Was the atmosphere lacking? The chalkboard menu felt demeaning rather than endearing. The corkboard of local festivities painted “ho hum” over “hip.” The track lighting served as spotlight for cheap art and framed comic strips. The place was Caucasian to a fault, and not the good kind.
As for the title, Shorty’s just sounded like something fun, fast, and easy. Grab a bite at Shorty’s. How ‘bout a quick stop for some coffee at Shorty’s? Mmm, that is good. Where’d you get it? Why, I got it at-
The name had no bearing of significance, which, for Chris, was inwardly embarrassing. He would have used his last name, but he was certain that McDonald’s had been taken.
These dreams for a steady business were admirably red, white, and blue; Chris hoping it was at least black and white. But the near-empty establishment was grey as the sunless day, and for a second, Chris questioned extinction before death.
“Whatcha got for me?” asked Jerry. Chris’ eyes tilt down slowly, staring at a stupid mesh of consonants and that solitary C.
“Is curm a word?” Chris inquired, causing Jerry to defiantly posture and shake his head with pursed lips and dead eyes. Evidently, Jerry was certain that curm was not a word, and rightly so.
“Curmudgeon is a word. Does that work?”
“Maybe if I had forty more letters,” sighed Chris, waving his white flag in the form of MUCH.
“11… well that’s not much” goofed Jerry, losing posture and gaining his inner comic voice. Jerry fantasized about being that new-suited comic, practicing a set list from a napkin in Johnny Carson’s green room. But there was already one famous stand up comedian named Jerry, and Chris, as usual, was not laughing.
|||||
The next morning, both of Chris’ employees arrived on scene uncharacteristically late. Samantha’s strawberry blonde hair was not shiny and flowing. It was droopy and dim, as was her face. Randy strolled in later than Samantha, and though normally appearing droopy and dim, today Randy had an extra nothing in his step. Was Chris McDonald one for confrontation? Not especially – but he had to ask.
“Need me to buy you some batteries?” asked Chris, pretending to read the paper when Samantha passed him. Samantha barely noticed, wiping down a counter that was already clean.
“I’m… what?” Samantha’s thoughts were a dog chasing its tail, if the tail suddenly disappeared and came out of its mouth. Her expression reflected this, almost in pain.
“For your alarm clock.” Chris moved to recess rather than strike. “You were late today. Like 15 minutes.”
Samantha tossed the rag and walked away. Like the rag, she flippantly tossed out, “Didn’t get much sleep last night. Found out I’m 1 month pregnant.”
Randy crossed Samantha, immediately passing Chris and helping himself to a glass bottle of orange soda. His white ear buds blocked out Chris’ question, but not Chris’ dead glare into Randy’s bloodshot eyes.
“And what’s your excuse?”
Without looking, Randy lowered his soda bottle, believing it to have reached the counter’s surface. It didn’t. A crash landing pooled together the sticky beverage and the dancing micro shards.
Randy mustered an, “I was gonna call you” followed by a “Shit” when taking his first step directly into the pool of glassy soft drink.
And so Chris needed a breather.
|||||
Outside and 20 feet to his left, Chris saw Samantha attempting her own breather, but having trouble between crying and talking on her cell phone. The broken conversation and whimpering led Chris to understand her excuse as an act of acceptance to gravity, rather than a stroke of fashionable sarcasm.
“Chris McDonald. Why aren’t you at work?”
An unfamiliar voice drew Chris to its unfamiliar source – a man of 60s but vibrant, from his crow’s feet to his pearly whites. He had an extra something in his step, his cadence, and his wardrobe. He was dressed up but dressed down; Jeans instead of slacks type of guy.
“I am at work,” replied Chris. It sounded less blasé in his head.
“Well you’re at work, but not really working; taking a breather, but holding your breath. And I see you’re the boss, but you don’t actually feel like one.” The mysterious man’s words were forward, but the relevance and outspoken revelatory statements were almost admirable.
Chris indeed exhaled and fought for a normal breathing pattern.
“Are you here to buy something, because if you’re not-?” The man leapt into Chris’ words for an interruption, but with pleasure where annoyance or anger might ordinarily reside.
“There it is. He was right. You see what you did? No nonsense. You’re ready to call the authorities right now and yet here you stand… with the authority. This is your place, is it not?”
Chris unknowingly calmed and replied, “I own and operate Shorty’s. Yes.” The man moved in, for his mild banter and pointed promulgations were about to take the form of a curveball sales pitch.
“What is that really? You, as an authority, are calling on another authority. In a way, though it may feel like you’re passing the responsibility onto someone else, you effectively take an action to solve the problem. Kinda like Tom Sawyer. You paint the fence, but you don’t really paint the fence.”
The man, now more mysterious than ever, clopped his heels backward to their original stance. It left room for Chris to think, to breathe, and to speak.
“Who are you?” Chris asked. The tone and wonderment were that of an inquiry into a magician’s tricks. This was not simply a girl scout selling her thin mints. This was thicker.
“I’ll buy a decaf iced coffee, one of those buffalo chicken wraps with the kettle chips, and leave you with something far greater than any tip you’ll receive today. I’m the guy who would like to come visit you at closing time.”
Mr. Suit and Jeans smiled wide and quick, taking stride to an arriving black vehicle with a black male driver in his 60s.
“I don’t get it!” Chris shouted with haste. “What do you want?”
The man turned back, the smile now gone. “I want to teach you how to paint fences.”
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Next time on The Hindsight Bridge: Brooke Pieschke, from Michigan, recounts her formative years in “Cheap Shots,” the first of a David Sedaris-like series called The Things We Got Into. Often humorous, quirky, and uncensored, Brooke’s stories will relive bad decisions made with good friends in an effort to document the things she almost forgot…see what we did there? Visit again on May 16, 2011 to read “Cheap Shots.”
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