Day 11
Andrew Bird wound the red fabric around itself, threaded it through the loop, and pulled. He synched the tie, brought the crisp knot tight against his collar. Andrew folded down the flaps, creased the shirt with his hands before tucking them into his pants. He slid the belt clasp into place, felt the metal fastener dig into his navel. He’d gained a few pounds.
Dressed, Andrew walked to the dining room to eat with his family. His wife emerged from the kitchen carrying a pan full of scrambled eggs. Andrew’s son sat at the table, his face inches away from a tablet. The blue glow of entertainment reflected in his eyes and gave them a feverish quality.
“Morning Jared,” said Andrew.
The boy gave no sign of recognition. He held the device like a lover in a slow dance, hands placed confidently at the sides, warmth touching warmth.
“Jordan,” Melinda Bird said as she carefully scooped eggs onto a plate between the toast and grapefruit. “You said Jared.”
“I did?”
“We knew who you meant.”
“Huh.” Andrew wondered if he were turning into his parents. Growing up, Andrew’s mother and father regularly confused him for one of his siblings. They’d spit out names in rapid-fire succession until they found the right one. “Well, whatever your name is, it’s time for breakfast, so power down.”
“I just need to do one more thing.”
“You know the rules. No technology at the table.”
“But you look at your phone all the time,” said Jordan.
“And I’m not proud of that. Now, wrap it up.”
Defeated, Jared begrudgingly turned off the tablet. Andrew watched his son angrily stab his eggs with a fork. The little boy in Andrew’s mind, the brown-haired one with the cowlick who wore the same Oakland A’s t-shirt and red basketball shorts every day, that child had been kidnapped, taken captive by a brooding pre-teen.
Andrew downed his food with a cup of coffee heavy on the cream and sugar. He resisted the itch to pull out his phone and check the headlines. Andrew hadn’t looked at it since he woke up, a daily ritual that started with online newspapers followed by social media and ended with a mindless scroll through whatever caught his attention. The urge to check was matched only by his sense of responsibility, or at least a desire not to concede the high ground to his son. Parenting, indeed most of life, came down to not being seen as a hypocrite. You could be one, people could call you one, but you could never admit to being one.
Day 244
Andrew Bird chose the red tie. He didn’t know why, but lately, he’d been favoring this one above all others. The blues and greens were missing something. Andrew draped the fabric over his neck, lapped one end over the other, and pulled. He smoothed the shirt with his hand then tucked in the ends. Andrew struggled to clasp his pants together. The thin piece of metal held, but just barely. Andrew paused in front of the mirror. His look appeared to him to be too crisp, more dickish than professional. He loosened his tie.
Andrew sat down for breakfast. Melinda had prepared the standard: eggs, toast, and grapefruit. The food was fine but Andrew found himself with a longing for meat, something fatty and coated in grease. He pictured himself biting into the hind end of a live cow. The flesh felt good in his mouth. Andrew didn’t know what sound a terrified cow made but he imagined it to be a high-pitched and broken scream.
Melinda emerged from the kitchen with a carafe of orange juice. For the briefest of moments, Andrew considered putting his teeth in her. His wife looked consumable, a good made for his enjoyment. Andrew studied her figure, remembered the long-haired brunette in the red dress, the girl with the manicured fingernails and tight figure of youth. Melinda wore jeans and blouses these days, had laugh lines at the corner of her eyes and strands of gray in hair she kept short out of convenience.
“Gross,” said Jordan.
“Something wrong with your breakfast?” said Melinda.
“No, it’s dad. He was ogling you.”
Andrew’s vision–the strange urge to gnaw on Melinda’s body–withered under the heat of exposure. Jordan sat across the table simultaneously smirking and texting. The boy somehow kept a foot in each world, a skill Andrew found both remarkable and irritating.
“I wasn’t — “
“You were, I saw you.”
“You don’t know what you saw Jared.”
“Jordan.”
“What?”
“You said Jared again.”
“For like the millionth time.”
“You misheard me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How would you know? You’ve been staring at your phone the entire time.” Jordan had taken to wearing a prematurely faded grey shirt with the words RESIST written in pink across the front.
“Okay, let’s all just take a break,” said Melinda.
Andrew was no longer hungry. He settled for a cup of coffee with extra cream and sugar. He drank the liquid gold quickly then kissed Melinda gently on the cheek. Andrew always kissed his wife before leaving, but today felt different, premediated. Some part of him knew he had to perform, to show, maybe to himself, that he wasn’t a beast who fantasized about biting live animals.
“I love you, honey,” said Andrew. “And I love you too, even when you’re “resisting.”
“Whatever,” said Jordan.
At more than six feet tall, Andrew struggled to fit inside the Prius. The hybrid seemed designed for people without knees. Still, he wanted to do right by the planet and believed his temporary discomfort a reasonable sacrifice. Andrew turned on the Bluetooth. The satisfying ding told him the connection between car and phone had been made.
Andrew liked to listen to podcasts during his drive to work. He preferred interviews but recently added history and political analysis to his playlist. The soft chatter of trained voices made the drive to work bearable. The twenty-mile drive regularly took more than an hour to complete. Cars moved in spasms, the speed determined by some unseen force miles ahead. Andrew stopped speculating as to the cause, he’d given up. In the three years he’d been making this commute there was never an accident, never a jackknifed semi laid across all lanes or a fiery wreck billowing black smoke and making passage impossible. No, there was only congestion and the eventual breaking up, the freeing of an invisible blockage.
Today was different. Traffic moved along at a steady clip. Andrew accelerated, joined the volume as it moved north. He faded into the blur of road-noise, of tires churning the asphalt underneath his seat. He thumbed the play button. Andrew had recently started listening to a podcast about Watergate. He wasn’t born until the late 1970s and therefore missed the controversy by a few years. The abuse of power didn’t intrigue him — that was an old story. Andrew appreciated the scope, the sheer time between break-in, and Nixon’s resignation. The affair soaked everyday life, saturated the days with a sense of both intrigue and anxiety.
“Shit!” Andrew pounded the brakes with his foot. A car in the far left lane darted across traffic and nearly clipped the Prius. Andrew’s bag, his lunch, and notebook slid off the seat and careened into the dashboard. The driver exited the freeway. Andrew made to pull even and flip him off but the car went around a curve. Andrew often wondered why people drove the way they did, it was as if they didn’t know what to do when traffic wasn’t bumper-to-bumper and wanted to get things back to normal by causing a wreck.
Day 577
Andrew Bird chose one of the red ties. They were all red, wide, and a few inches longer than necessary. The fabric stretched past the navel to the clasp of his pants. Andrew looked himself over in the mirror. He’d given up on the crisp white shirt and come to accept wrinkles as a form of honesty. They said much about the true nature of life, that it was ugly and messy. Andrew flattened his hair then casually whisked it with his fingers. The black tips twisted, folded, and curled into a frenetic bird nest. Andrew coated the misshapen mass in a layer of hairspray.
Andrew yearned for ketchup, the desire strong enough to pull him toward the fridge and the bottle of pressed and sugared tomato paste. He kissed his wife hard on the mouth, his lips watery and unpracticed. “Hey babe,” he said.
Andrew collapsed into the chair, the extra weight creating a shelf of skin hanging over his belt. He took out his phone, opened Twitter. “@jbird No technology at the table!” Andrew pushed send and immediately heard the familiar bing from Jordan’s device.
“@abird FAKE NEWS!” came the response from Jordan.
Melinda entered with a plate of eggs, toast, and grapefruit for Jordan and a steak, charred and flaking at the ends for Andrew. “Jordan, please put your tablet away,” she said.
“Jared,” said Andrew.
He had to get a new car, something loud and authoritative. Andrew felt like a pussy in the gutless penny racer he drove around town. He appreciated the gas savings but no amount of money could be worth sacrificing his self-respect. Besides, he was tired of sucking on exhaust from the F-150s of the world. He always managed to get stuck behind some lifted 4x4 or mass polluter when traffic was at its worst. Andrew wanted to flip the script, throw some fumes in someone else’s face for once.
“Look at this asshole,” said Andrew. The white Camry next to him wanted over in the three feet of space between the Prius and the car ahead. The driver had preemptively began nudging over into Andrew’s lane, which he responded to by laying on the horn and extending his middle finger. Andrew held the gesture as he went past.
Andrew pulled into the parking garage, the drab concrete structure with the murder lighting and discarded cigarette butts. He thought the lot to be the anus of an otherwise beautiful building, a depressing sight for creative marketing types like himself. Here, amidst exhaust and suicide grey, the refuse let out a sigh in a desperate attempt to expel the cumulative rage of another day in purgatory before they stepped out of their cars and into the elevator that would deliver them to their protracted fates.
The cubicles were organized like a bicycle tire with a center and spokes fanning in all directions. Each space had a desk, computer, phone, and a hodgepodge of personal effects, typically photos of family or of vacations to places people still wished they were. Andrew was no different in this regard. A framed picture of Melinda and Jordan sitting on a white sandy beach, their backs to the setting sun, lived just at the corner of Andrew’s vision. He was always fond of that moment on a distant shore far from connectivity but lately, he’d come to believe the image had a cardboard, stock photography element to it like it showed something that wasn’t there anymore or maybe never was.
Andrew inched the frame out of sight. He looked around at the bevy of promotional items given to him by vendors — the digital barbecue toolset from the barbecue sauce company, the automatic corkscrew from the vintner, and the t-shirt cannon, inexplicably, from the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate.
Day 977
Andrew coiffed his hair, spun it into the shape of orange soft serve. The new-look had personality, said my cock is bigger than yours and you know it. He’d emptied out his closet, tossed the old stuff, the forced modesty that never quite fit him. This was the real Andrew, the world-beater with the bronzed skin and bullfighter red tie signaling he was ready for a fight.
Grease juiced from the meat as Andrew buried his knife deep into the blackened steak. A thick layer of ketchup coated the beef. The masticated cow parts slid down Andrew’s throat to his ravenous and ever-expanding stomach. He mindlessly took out his phone, scrolled through the clickbait, memes, and pointed insults that comprised the bulk of the internet.
“Wonderful steak babe, absolutely terrific,” said Andrew. He stood, picked up his bag and keys before walking to his wife, kissing her forcibly on the mouth and grabbing her crotch. Andrew pushed Melinda up against a wall and leaned his weight into her. She tried to wriggle free but couldn’t.
“@abird STOP! YOU’RE HURTING HER.”
A familiar ping sounded in Andrew’s pocket. He relaxed his grip on Melinda. Andrew unlocked the phone to find the Twitter app open and a little blue number one on the notification icon. “@jbird. Grow a pair, Jared.”
Andrew traded in the Prius for a Hummer, ditched podcasts in favor of a combination talk radio and 1970s rock. He loved to sit high above the other cars and peek into their sad little worlds. Sometimes, for fun, he’d lay on the horn and watch as some helpless bitch in a Nissan Leaf dumped almond milk cappuccino on his plaid button-up shirt. The glut of freedom made Andrew wonder why he’d ever lived differently, why he’d ever cared about rules or societal norms.
“Move asshole,” said Andrew. He pushed his way between two cars on his way from the far left lane to the exit. “Fucker.” Andrew and the driver in the car behind him exchanged spirited gestures. The conflict ended when Andrew tapped his breaks and nearly caused a collision. The driver acquiesced and faded into the wallpaper of cars crawling toward their everyday oblivion.
The Hummer didn’t fit in the stall assigned to Andrew so he took two. Andrew stepped out, depressed the lock button multiple times thus ensuring the space would be filled with the truncated echo of the vehicle’s alarm setting itself. Andrew got in the elevator, snapped a dick pic between floors 30 and 33.
He brushed past the corral, the workspaces of those with multiple tabs open who shifted their screens from their fantasy football lineup to something resembling work whenever he approached. Andrew pitied them and their chronic fear of getting fired. He strode to his secretary’s desk, handed her his bag and suit coat.
“I have a great photo I want to show you later,” he said as he closed the door.
Andrew’s new attitude, his revitalized spirit extended to his approach to the job. Before, he’d been more communal, even encouraging of someone’s crap idea. Now, he told it like it is, without remorse or concern for relationships. He was here to win and his aggressive push on a smartphone campaign paid off. The firm landed a multi-million dollar contract based on his pitch, one featuring a woman as a stand-in for the device.
Andrew sat at his mahogany desk, the gleam fresh and unsoiled. He swiveled in his chair and looked out over the city. Here he was in his rightful place among the skyscrapers, the looming shadows.
Day 1
Andrew shifted the Hummer to neutral and coasted to the side of the road. The dessert, desiccated and lonely stretched for miles in all directions. The vehicle shuttered as the last drops of gasoline burned through the engine.
Andrew opened the door, stepped onto the simmering asphalt. He left the keys in the ignition and walked to the burning sand. Hot grit sifted into his shoes. Sweat beaded on his forehead and fell in orange streaks down his face.
Andrew stripped, removed his clothes: socks, shoes, pants, underwear, shirt. He saved the tie for last. Andrew pulled at the knot until the fabric relinquished its grip on him. Andrew looked at his phone. The device ran out of battery hours earlier but that didn’t stop him from checking. The habit had become as essential and unconscious to him as breathing. Andrew dropped the tie and the phone in the pile.
The midday sun seared his exposed flesh. Andrew poked at the flab hanging off his stomach and wondered what happened. He didn’t know where he was going and doubted he could return the way he came. Andrew walked alone in isolation past scattered piles of discarded clothes. There were others out here, an untold number of faceless zealots whose religion lay in ashes, its remains swirling in the breeze, a ruin destined to be forgotten.
A glare, a silver flower of light, bloomed in the distance. The anomaly played across Andrew’s vision. He turned from the endless dunes back to the road. Andrew waved his hands, called in hoarse words as the car approached. For a moment he wondered if Melinda has come to rescue him.
Andrew knocked. Something was wrong with the damned door. He couldn’t get his key to work in the lock. Andrew waited. Nothing. He used his fist this time, a series of hard blows and audible threats. Nothing. Andrew stepped back, he was going to get in his house even if that meant kicking down the door.
The lock clicked.
Melinda stood in the doorway. Andrew made to push past her but she didn’t move. Andrew smirked, his wife’s attempt at physical supremacy was amusing. Melinda weighed what, 98 pounds? He reached for Melinda’s vagina with the intention of pulling her from the house by her genitalia.
Something hard smashed into his skull. Andrew collapsed on the porch. He woke later to double vision and a pulsing ache in his temples. Andrew rolled to his feet, saw the frying pan, the same one Melinda used to make breakfast for all those years, lying at his feet.
The driver slowed to a stop. Andrew stumbled to the side of the car, heard the heavy clunk of multiple doors locking at once. The driver cracked the window slightly but said nothing. Andrew peered inside at the unknown woman sitting behind the wheel.
“Please,” he said. “Help.”
