And you try not to laugh, thinking about sitting in the videogame car with the Amish man, driving away together into the videogame desert.
*
When you get to work, the punch-in machine won’t let you punch-in.
You try a few times then check the schedule.
It says, “Unavailable” over that day’s box.
Today is the day you requested off a long time ago.
After a hot dog from the food area, you go for a walk north into Uptown.
It’s warm out.
Twenty feet from a crosswalk, a little girl with beaded hair holds her hand up and says, “Reh light.”
You stop mid-step and balance.
She seems excited.
She keeps it at red light for what seems to you like an unnecessary amount of time.
Then she puts her hand down and says, “Green light.”
“Oh man, thanks,” you say, and resume walking.
And it occurs to you that you’d probably experience a large amount of excitement and satisfaction from buying a flower of some kind and raising it from a seed — like if you really put in effort to take care of it as best you could.
It also occurs to you, you’re worried that once dead you’ll have to watch your life on an endless loop until memorized completely.
And part of the endless loop will be the part where you begin watching the loop.
Which then forms more loops, each one taking you with, never finishing.
An incomplete repetition that is never the same and always unfolds inside-out unendingly.
You’re worried it’s enough to consider that happening, to make it happen.
Goddamnit.
Behind a high school, you piss on the side of a dumpster.
The piss comes out itchy.
This is the part of the loop where you piss on a dumpster, and realize you’re the only person you care about.
Staring at a mural made of broken tile, on the side of the high school.
The mural is four open-mouthed heads, floating, and above them these two cupped hands pour water down.
You shake your dick and tuck it back in.
You look at the mural again.
The mural looks different.
But it’s not.
No.
It’s still a pair of cupped hands dropping water down onto a bunch of floating heads, on the side of a high school.
What is different.
No.
Nothing is different.
You don’t care.
Exiting the alley, you find a dead bird smashed into the ground, right by where the alley meets with the street.
You kick the dead bird and feathers come off.
A car drives by the alley, and the person in the passenger side seat yells, “Faggot.”
What’s most upsetting to you about people yelling shit as they drive by is not what they say, but the way it startles you and how you just have to stand there dazed until fully-recovered.
Admit it.
Admit it doesn’t matter how many more days there are left, it matters how many seconds.
You stop at a franchise sandwich place and order food, sitting in a booth waiting for your order.
You stare at your folded hands, trying to remember something.
Unsure what.
Two guys in the next booth talk about whether or not it would be possible to kill a cat with a single punch.
“No man, telling you — I could do it,” one says.
The other says, “You’d have to hit it just right to do it — sss — man, I don’t know.”
You hope to be invited into the conversation but you are resolved not to invite yourself.
*
Back at the apartment, you eat in your room.
Then you throw the balled-up wrapper against the wall as hard you can from a seated position.
You do push-ups.
June 2011
On your last fifteen-minute break today you go out front of the store and sit on a concrete ledge by the bus stop.
The stockroom is at least fifteen degrees warmer than the rest of the store, and you’ve been sweating all day.
It’s been really hot for a while but tonight it’s supposed to cool down again.
A man in some kind of plastic wheelchair device rolls himself up to the bus stop.
He brakes near the ledge and starts talking to you.
You can’t understand what he’s saying.
It’s like he can’t think of words, or how to say them.
He’s just sitting in an unstable wheelchair, mumbling.
You stand from the ledge to get closer.
There are bad dandruff things in his hair.
He keeps talking but you can’t understand what he’s saying.
Eventually, it’s agreed that what he’s asking is for you to go into the store and buy him one gallon of milk and three bananas.
You just guessed.
You know that’s not what he’s saying, but every time you say, “So, a gallon of milk and three bananas”—he nods his head yes.
His body odor smells like burnt motor-oil, and he holds out some money to you with a shaking hand, fingernails cracked.
You spend the rest of break buying him a gallon of milk and three bananas.
You bring him the gallon of milk and the three bananas and put it all in his lap.
He mumbles something you can’t understand.
“My break is over,” you say. “I have to go back.”
You return to work.
*
An hour later when you check for carts out front, the same man is still there.
He’s on the ground now, gripping the plastic wheelchair device and trying to get back up into the seat.
The bananas and milk are on the sidewalk.
Two women at the bus stop make concerned looks and gestures, pointing.
They stand there watching.
You look at the man and say, “Hey man, do you need help.”
He just keeps mumbling.
Keeps trying to stand but his legs look all numb and useless and his arms shake when he grips the armrests, trying to climb back in.
Keeps falling.
You grab him by the armpits and lift him.
It’s difficult.
He’s very heavy and the plastic wheelchair is unstable.
He’s saying something to you the whole time you’re lifting him, but you can’t understand him.
His body odor is strong and you keep your face away from the bad dandruff things in his hair, afraid they’ll get on your lips.
You lower the man back into his plastic wheelchair then wheel him over by the garbage cans where he’s pointing and grunting.
You leave him there and walk back towards work feeling strangely bothered.
But this is freedom — you think.
The milk and the bananas are still on the ground.
You leave them there.
It’s cooling down fast outside and there seems to be another sheen of light over the already existing light of the city.
When you try to focus on it you fail.
A planes flies past, nearing to land.
Fuck you — you think.
There are no carts out front.
You go back into the store and continue working.
*
When your shift is done, you exit through the front of the store.
The man in the plastic wheelchair is gone.
The milk and bananas are gone.
It’s around one a.m.
You walk home.
The sidewalks are quiet.
Besides you, the only thing moving is wind.
Fuck you, wind — you think.
Then you think about how even if you walked all night, the edge of the city would still just be an unaccomplished distance.
Only the dark would eventually escape.