He maintains the same tone as his talking, just louder.
The suddenness makes your heart beat faster a few times, and you narrowly avoid shitting your pants.
“N’And then but that’s how she pulled all the baby teeth out, oh man!” he says. “N’Yeah. One of the times she was only wearing a freakin t-shirt, hm. N’And she smelled like the shower. M’And she was on my pee pee and but so until it got hard.” He yells, “Got big.”
The door to the breakroom opens.
One of the higher-up managers puts her head inside the breakroom doorway.
She has a store phone with the mouthpiece against her chest.
“Theo, be quiet hun,” she says. “And when you’re done with lunch hun, do the garbage in the women’s bathroom.”
“M’uh oh,” he says.
“It’s not bad, the garbage is just full,” she says, smiling and raising her eyebrows. “No poop. I’m going to help though, k?”
Theodore makes the “ch” sound.
Then he says, “N’Yeah alright.”
The manager puts the phone back to her mouth, continuing a conversation as she goes back out the doorway.
Theodore continues talking to you because you’re still looking at him.
“N’My pee pee got hard sometimes when my mom was n’on top of me,” he says. “I think she’s really pretty to be cuppletely honest, hm.”
“Cool,” you say.
He breaks the frozen food into more of a consistent form, scratching his head behind the Styrofoam dolphin visor.
You look at the bald growth on the back of his head.
Just one bite.
Theodore says, “N’Yeah but I got some quarters and a piece of candy for every tooth. The next day, hm. N’I always got those presents.”
He fixes his Styrofoam dolphin visor, and eats a bite of the frozen dinner.
“That’s pretty good for one tooth,” you say.
He nods his head, looking at his food. “N’Yeah.”
“So the dolphin show was good. Should I see the dolphin show then. You liked it.”
“N’Yeah the dolphin show was real great and the dolphins jumped high,” he says, scraping the frozen food. “It was m’my favorite of all! Wow!”
You both laugh.
For the remainder of break, you watch a gameshow where they give you an answer, and you have to provide the question that leads to it.
Like if the answer given is: “The guy sitting next to you wearing a Styrofoam dolphin visor”—you’d say, “Who is Theodore.”
Same thing as the other way around.
Each new question, Theodore rises a little out of his chair and says, “Hm hm”— like he’s about to answer — but then never does.
You keep answering, “Airplane” for every question.
Theodore laughs at first.
Then he just stares at the gameshow eating his slush.
You look at the bald growth on his head and stand up to go back to work.
It’s very hard to balance.
The breakroom is so bright.
*
An hour before your shift is over, you’re breaking down boxes by the compactor.
By the compactor, there’s the garbage lift.
The lift is a sheetmetal platform that rises up to the garbage compactor in the wall.
Theodore is beneath the garbage lift, sweeping up Styrofoam.
It’s his job to raise the lift and sweep beneath it every night.
He’s slightly bent over beneath the platform talking to you, his mouth hidden by one of the risers.
It’s just eyes and hair as he’s talking.
He says, “N’uh wow, this is like uh, Jacques Cousteau’s untold adventure’m.”
You say, “Yeah. Nice.”
He says, “N’I bought a dvd of some of my favorite classic cartoons yesterday because I got my paycheck n’and the dvd was on freakin clearance, hm. Wow.”
“Nice,” you say.
“N’yeah it has all the good ones on it and I got it for, hm, four dollars m’so I can still buy my mom some slippers for Easter. Hm.”
“Awesome.”
“N’yeah the dvd has Garfield on it, hm. It was”—he stops, and sneezes a violent sneeze. A loop of clear snot hangs off his nose. “N’I like Garfield except for the ones with that pesky little runt Nermal. N’I really hate Nermal, hm.”
“I hate Nermal too,” you say, staring at the loop of snot on his nose. “He’s really pesky.”
“N’I hate Nermal so much,” he says. He wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. “M’He’s always messing around, hm.”
You notice he’s actually upset, and might cry.
“Fuck Nermal,” you say. “He’s nothing. He’s nobody.”
“N’yeah, I hate Nermal, hm.”
“Me too,” you say. “He’s shit.”
Theodore smiles, sweeping beneath the sheetmetal platform.
You consider crushing him.
Yeah.
Just grab the control and lower the lift.
Then when he tries to get out, kick him in the stomach or chest as hard as you can with your steel-toed boot — all the while still deftly handling the lift control.
You could do it.
Of course you could.
You wouldn’t actually crush him though.
You’d make the sheet metal lift go as close to killing him as possible — just to trap him.
You’d be able to do that if you wanted.
Of course you would.
Because you’re a competent, successful, and ambitious man, with a rich future.
Deserving of everything that happens, exactly as it happens.
May 2011
This morning, you go to Union Station with your ex girlfriend and drop her off at a train to her dad’s house.
Inside Union Station there’s a large vestibule area where homeless people sleep on rows of wooden benches, beneath a high dome-ceiling.
Where footsteps and voices echo at a sustained low pitch.
You sit on a ledge in the arrivals hallway, right past the vestibule area.
You watch passengers arrive, looking for repeats of people arriving, to see if your life is fake.
But there are no repeats.
Just more and more people arriving, walking through benches of the sleeping homeless.
Across the vestibule area there’s a small arcade area.
You walk over and buy a drink from one of the vending machines.
The only other person in the arcade is an Amish man.
He walks around with his arms behind his back, looking at the videogames.
He stands by one of the machines watching the screen, where there are people murdering each other, and bombs going off.
He walks over to a game where the player has to sit in a plastic car.
You watch him sit in the car and press the brakes, press some buttons.
He stares at the desert scene on the screen as he turns the steeringwheel side to side really hard, many times.
It sounds like “gunk-gunk-gunk.”
His face looks steady, or unsure, or something else.
Gunk-gunk-gunk.
Another man walks into the arcade area and starts playing a game with a plastic gun you aim at the screen and shoot at mutated people who have blood on their faces.
The Amish man gets out of the plastic car and watches, keeping his hands behind his back.
You feel upset.
But you can’t tell if it’s about the Amish man or yourself.
Then you realize you’re upset about always feeling upset for other people, and for making-up reasons to be upset.
Mostly, it doesn’t make sense.
The Amish man and you stand by the man playing the videogame and watch him shoot people on the screen.