345

The florist said she’d be back in five minutes. Everyday Yeah just wanted to pick up a dandelion. It was a present, but he wouldn’t say for whom. “What kind of present is a dandelion?” I asked. “In the 1800’s,” said Everyday Yeah, “The gifting of a dandelion meant pure devotion. This was back when the dandelion wasn’t viewed as a weed, but as a rare floral specimen. You probably didn’t know, but before the white man came to the Americas the only existence of dandelions were supposedly in the highest reaches of the Appalachians. The Indians made up tales of a great flora the gods would bring to cure all the world’s ugliness. There are many misconceptions about the dandelion. The early dandelions were much different than the ones we find in the present. They looked more like a little globe of sunlight rather than a yellow stained cotton ball. In fact, the first dandelions were yellow and purple, not yellow and green. An early American impressionist from Wisconsin changed that though. He didn’t like the color purple and began painting the stems and leaves of any dandelion he found green. It’s a shame to see the dandelion in such a weak state, but the person I am giving the dandelion to will recognize the meaning of such a gift.” The florist returned with a mustard seed and wheat grass drink. She didn’t even acknowledge Everyday Yeah’s request for a dandelion and told us to leave the store.

344

Only one pair of socks remained. Everyday Yeah wore the right sock on his left foot and I wore the left one on the correct foot. It wasn’t as bad as one would think. We went to the laundry mat. On the way many people stopped and pointed at us. “Those men are only wearing one sock,” said a small child in a stroller. The mother shushed him, but we told her that it was okay. The child was being honest. I was hungry, but none of the restaurants would serve customers with only one sock. Everyday Yeah climbed a tree and threw down his sock for me to wear. He waited in the tree while I went in the restaurant to eat. When I was done eating I went outside and climbed the tree and gave Everyday Yeah the socks and he put them on and climbed down from the tree and went to eat. When he was finished eating we went to the laundry mat. At the laundry mat we realized we didn’t have any detergent. We weren’t too concerned. Instead, we found a load of laundry that was finishing up and we took that home. The clothes fit decent and it was a nice change and most important we now had plenty of socks.

343

Everyday Yeah was tired. I was tired. He began to cry. I followed suit. The day was over. It was such a sad moment when it dawned on us that we would have to go to sleep soon. Everyday Yeah began to scream. He didn’t make a sound. Words were stuck in his head. Sleep had already grabbed a hold of his neck or his mind or his eyelids and everything was shut off and pulled shut. I took out a piece of paper with all my plans for the day and realized that I had only completed three tasks. My goal had been to at least knock out half of the one hundred duties listed. The three tasks I had completed were technically only half completed. My body began scurrying to complete a handful more tasks before sleep made preparations inside me. Words were already blurry. Dreams had already seeped into my eyes and I had to tear at my face not to lose it to this other world. Everyday Yeah made one last effort when he saw my piece of paper. His mouth made gurgling motions. Words fell out on top of each other. “Quick, write this down before it is lost,” he said, “Let’s chop it up and kill it off. We’ll put the pieces in a bucket and take off into the world in a stolen car and drop a piece of the mutilated sleep at every mile marker and when the bucket is empty we’ll be free and no longer have to worry about playing victim to the sleep world again. The freedom will let us go places we never thought…” It was at this point that my pen scribbled off the page and I began to drift into a higher state. Old grade school teachers caught in the memory bank told me there was nothing wrong with sleep. They said, “The treadmills never shut off. Time is endless. A list of tasks will eat time’s infinite nature and still keep growing longer. Even if you had the extra hours you would still need more. This is human nature’s greatest flaw. They think they’re such great beings that they should be allowed to live forever.” It was at this point that I felt myself crying because I still couldn’t give up the fact that my day was over and so little was accomplished. Everyday Yeah was shaking me and crying too. I could faintly feel his hands and tears upon my arms, but it was hopeless and in a few more moments sleep had strangled him and left him dead next to me.

342

I’m not sure where this idea of the two Filipinos came from, but Everyday Yeah was sure that they’d be standing out in the desert only wearing sandals. They would cover themselves with coconut-shaped glasses. I figured orange juice would fill these glasses. “Filipinos don’t drink orange juice in the midday sun,” he said. He never told me what they drank and as a result the image of them began to fade. He only said there was a small table with chrome marbles on it. In the sand around the table lay stray marbles. I tried to get more information out of Everyday Yeah about these two Filipinos. There is nothing more to tell you, he said. I asked him what he planned to do with this idea. “At first I thought I was going to expand on it further,” he said, “I liked the idea of these two Filipinos having a telephone and a list of numbers matched with times. They would call the numbers at the specified time and when the person on the other end of the line picked up they would apologize and tell the person they had dialed the wrong number. Someone would always pick up on the other end and the list would be never ending. A giant grandfather clock would stand behind them to give them the time. The base of it half covered in sand. As it stands though, the Filipinos won’t expand into anything more than what was described earlier. It’s just the two of them, in sandals, with coconut-shaped glasses, standing next to a table of chrome marbles, in the middle of the desert. The reason I don’t want to put much more into the idea is because I plan to sell it to the highest bidder and don’t want to waste a good idea if I’m not going to be the primary owner.” Everyday Yeah ended up selling the idea for a pretty good chunk of money. If he wanted he could have lived off of baloney sandwiches for three and a half years before he would need money again. He did not like baloney and figured he’d get by for at least one year on the money if he lived reasonably.

341

It usually goes unsaid, but the average person I suspect hopes they never wake up to find a dead skeleton on their couch especially if it the body has been rotting there since the spring. And I would guess if this somehow did occur in your life you’d hope it wasn’t a close friend or relative. Now the only reason I bring this up is because this morning I woke up to find a note from my friend Everyday Yeah where he said, “Hey friend, I’m so glad to see you were breathing when I woke up this morning. It would have been a traumatizing moment to wake up and find your rotting bones. For one you’d be dead and two if all that was left was your bones then I guess that would have meant you hadn’t recently died, but had died months ago and I didn’t even notice. Anyway, I just wanted to say that. I was thinking about it all morning. I’ve run to the market. I think we forgot to get cream cheese yesterday.”

340

I think it was our third day in a row at the supermarket. We had gotten lost. Everyday Yeah could be playing in the tomatoes for all I know right now. I wasn’t surprised when he came to the front of the store with ten cans of marinara sauce in his arms and said, “Hey, look what I found.” I wasn’t angry when he suggested we it all for dinner even though there was no reason to eat pasta and sauce because I had already cooked lobsters. “The lobster’s eyes don’t agree with my stomach,” said Everyday Yeah, “I would much rather eat a sightless food product. When I eat lobsters I can feel the bottom feeders’ tears on my tongue and they weigh heavy in my stomach. There will be a day when one of these beasts will find a way to ignore the fires of the pot and find revenge in the form of a claw locked on your throat.” I did not argue. I cooked Everyday Yeah some pasta and ate his lobster.

339

I called a random number and told them to wish me luck. They wanted to know why. I didn’t have a good reason so I made one up. I said, “There are some spaceships in the sky right now.” I don’t think the person on the other end believed me. I did not tell them I was in a spaceship in the sky. I could have told them this, but it wouldn’t have been true. Instead I told them about how there used to be a tall oak tree in the back yard. The top of the branches existed somewhere between Earth and the moon. I did not know the exact location. They cut it down when I was still very young. There is now a paved driveway in its place. We sometimes wear our roller skates and pretend we’re frogs and can run on the water. My roller skates are too small. The person on the other end stopped listening. They hung up. I still talked into the receiver. The games where we pretend to be frogs never last too long. Usually, we get bored and it doesn’t seem realistic that frogs would be wearing roller skates. My friend Everyday Yeah usually says we should pretend to be astronauts. He says all astronauts have to train using roller skates. “How else do they know what it feels like to live in a world without gravity?” He made his space helmet out of cardboard and tinfoil. The games usually end when we spot aliens on the roof or when someone suggests we play pickup hockey in the street.

338

Everyday Yeah said he never expected to do another pull up the rest of his life. He had been the fifth grade pull-up champion. “There is no reason to struggle to maintain the crown when eventually I will lose it and my heart will be broken as a result. I plan to enjoy this victory and settle into middle age.” This is what he said at the podium—standing there as a young, lanky prepubescent boy with little definition in his calves—when he received his championship medal and five dollar gift certificate to the Hoagie Barn. He spent the five dollars on a milkshake and French fries and drifted off like he had promised, but middle age wasn’t all that he had hoped for and somewhere, as the years passed, he began to look back on those glory years more and more and forgot the pressures of competing instead remembered the feeling of triumph in each completed pull up. And though he never would admit it there was a tinge of regret that he had gotten out of the game when he did and not seen what kind of greatness he might have achieved. I think it was thoughts such as these, while riding a public bus on an uncharacteristic fall day, just as we crossed the bridge over the interstate, that led to me witnessing the greatness that was my friend Everyday Yeah doing pull-ups. He stood up right in the middle of the bus route and did 100 pull ups on one of the bars passengers hold onto for balance. The bus driver stopped after 55 pull-ups, not to watch, but to tell him to sit down. Everyday Yeah didn’t. Instead, the bus stood still while he did the last 45 and everyone counted out loud together.

337

I’m surrounded by tired people. Across from me there is a single girl. She eyes a little baby playing in aisle. Everyday Yeah would later tell me—he was sitting across from me at the DMV—that he thought about giving the woman a baby. She had motherly aspirations sweating out of her glands. “If the scent wasn’t so pungent,” he said, “I would have let her take me to a closet and steal babies right out of my body.” The two on either side of me are asleep. Their heads have found my shoulders. They consider the shoulders to be useful pillows. They sleep until another number is called. They rise trying to figure out where they are. A voice of someone they will never meet because it is automated has brought them back to this world, but for only a moment as they realize it wasn’t their number being called. They are soon asleep on my shoulder again. None of the people I know here—Everyday Yeah, the two sleeping neighbors, or the yearning mother—get their number called. The two men and the wanting mother wait. Everyday Yeah and I wait too, but we were got a number. We don’t own cars. It was Friday. No new movies were out. The DMV is next to the movie theatre.

336

I watched a person read a book in the mirror. They read the book backwards. A scarecrow on the corner by the stoplight told me that dyslexia was the result of seeing the color red too early in one’s development. “My parents,” he said, “kept me blindfolded for the first three years after I was born. For my fourth birthday they gave me 100 red balloons. I had a seizure for eleven days and was never the same. Some good came of it though, in eighth grade I was the spelling bee champion of my school and I ended up winning the first set of the regional by defeating a number of children from various palindrome schools in the area. For those who don’t know, palindrome schools are for students struggling with dyslexia. I lost in the state finals to a deaf kid who had breezed through the competition. I was a little upset and felt he had an unfair advantage. My mother caught me writing an editorial to the paper questioning my opponent’s disability which allowed him to read the words on slips of paper. Because he couldn’t hear, the only way for him to know what words to spell was by getting his words on little slips of paper that he would be able to look at for five seconds. My mother wouldn’t hear my arguments against him and his lack of auditory ability and forbid me to ever compete in a spelling competition again.” Everyday Yeah said he was once in a similar type situation, but had been triumphant over a deaf by slipping him a note with the wrong word written on it. This deaf boy lost by spelling, ‘Octogon’ as Q-U-E-E-R-F-A-C-E. I looked over at the person reading in the mirror. They seemed be finishing or at the first page of the book. She read the page and closed the covers. She let out a sigh and seemed confused.

335

There was a forgotten sandwich at the bottom of the backpack. I figured I would eat it later, but when lunch time came the sandwich was missing and Everyday Yeah had crumbs on his face.

334

Everyday Yeah found some flakes in his back pocket. They were from his preschool days. He gathered them on the table in the hallway near the back door. The pocket didn’t seem more than ¾ full. I still couldn’t believe he was wearing the same jeans he wore when he was five. He cut them off at the thighs, but the waist fits snug. Everyday Yeah claims he was a fat child. I tend to believe he’s gotten his preschool knickers confused with his father’s jeans. The flakes of cereal are curious. He ended up running out of room on the table in the hallway near the back door. He began filling bowls. Two bowls were filled in no time. Some of the flakes were doing weird Petri dish experiments on their faces. A couple of others never survived the year Tide introduced detergent with bleach for colors. It’s a miracle any survived the washing machine days. Some didn’t survive the drought of 389 weeks. Illiterate flakes followed the chants of those reading scriptures who followed the lead of the one passing around the silver collection plate made from a piece of chewing gum wrapper. This one with the robes and the gum wrapper full of some form of value was fearful of a cruel and punishing god who turnsedout to be Everyday Yeah. Some cursed the man. Others knew their history and understood the average flake doesn’t survive more than fifteen days. These educated ones wore shirts with smiles on them.

333

Wheat grew on the man’s head. He wore plastic trash bags on his feet and didn’t worry about the harvest. He didn’t care if his head and feet rotted. He was proud of this year’s crop, but didn’t care for it much otherwise. Tears shit on his face. Birds wept on his trash bags. He did not take them off and use them as an umbrella. He let the dust enjoy the rain. His state championship jacket hung in a closet somewhere. He remembered when the white leather arms weren’t brown. The same repetitive dreams are gone. He had a new dream last night. It hadn’t been about a pot of soup or about the man who said his name was Everyday Yeah. There are vague memories about this man being good friends with the chef who prepared the soup in high school. In his revitalized mind there were dreams of a girl named Lump-Lump. He was giddy over the new acquaintance. “Lump-Lump,” said the girl. The man did not understand, “Lump-Lump?” The girl looked at him and said, “I woke up in the morning and the baby wouldn’t move. It went whoomp.” The man laughed. He laughed himself awake. “Lump-Lump,” he said and then he touched the top of his head. His wheat stalks were gone. A doe had snuck in while he was sleeping and had a feast. The man didn’t cry. It was no use. “I woke up in the morning,” he said, “And the baby wouldn’t move. It went whoomp.” He didn’t laugh.

332

We killed rats and hung them by their tails. Our neighbors looked at us with crooked eyes. We grew our hair long. Then cut it so tails of hair ran down our backs. We laughed. We spit out of the corners of our mouths, but we did the latter two in concealed movements in an attempt to show our neighbors a bit of respect. The chuckles were hidden under dead leaves and coke bottles and anything else we could find on the ground and hold over our faces. It was a miracle they didn’t see our smiles. Half the time I couldn’t keep my mouth from making strange noises. The neighbors crooked their eyes halfway around my head when they heard these and asked if I was coming down with something. I forced a cough and pulled out some used tissues to wipe a fake sneeze from nose. Even the rats seemed to get into it when the wind picked up and they blew on the clothesline we rigged out the back door. Mostly Everyday Yeah did the killing. I drew pictures of dead rats and added them to the clothesline for effect. Everyday Yeah wasn’t impressed with my drawing skills though. He said the pictures I drew looked like elephants with hats.

331

There was a girl on the bus reading a book. Everyday Yeah told me to write her a note. I did. “Dear girl with the book, I had a dream that my leg fell off. There was no future for me. It would be a hopeless life. A freak. No, not a freak, but a peg, a number two pencil, a red crayon if I had a sunburn, etc. And I was left hopping home. I left my leg under a log for the time being. I hopped. The skinny rabbit. An ill mind clouded over me, a depressed state. An abundance of left footed shoes I could never use again mounted in the corner. If I found the perfect match they would have no right leg and wear a size eleven shoe. I have to go. The End. P.S.If you know of any one legged girls let me know. This does not make sense. Still, if you do, let me know.” I wrote my number at the end of the note. The girl with the book looked at me funny when I gave her the note. I watched her. She did not look at me after reading the note. She got off the bus at the next stop.

330

“What are we doing here?” I asked. Everyday Yeah told me to pay attention to that chair in the corner of the room. We seemed to be the only ones looking at it. Not a single person noticed it. Everyday Yeah and I were the only ones with eyes. The others looked at each other and talked and didn’t listen. A pretty girl wearing black and white stripes had eyes for the chair too. She stole my eyes when she sat down in it. She broke my heart. Our chair became a roadside attraction. I wept, because my eyes were gone. Everyday Yeah was a veteran though. He’d lost his eyes in a war, a losing effort. He ran off to a shack in the jungle, beyond his backyard and lived in blindness just so he wouldn’t have to hear the words, “You’ll never see again.” But he was blessed with a miracle as his eyes grew back in that shed, behind his neighbor’s house. The black and white striped girl drank coffee. Soon she finished and was gone. She left my eyes on the chair. Unfortunately, another girl was waiting to sit in that chair. This other girl picked up my eyes. She was wearing a cheetah suit and her coffee cup was just for show. It seemed time to leave the party. I walked over to the cheetah suit and asked for my eyes back. She didn’t understand. I punched her in stomach. I was a giraffe. She fell to the floor. The cheetah suit seemed surprised I could do this. My eyes grew back. Everyday Yeah picked up the chair and we left. Someone called the police. The cheetah suit bit my ankle.

329

A new man moved in upstairs. We did not know the person who lived there before him. Maybe it’s the same person, but with new furniture. Everyday Yeah and I decided we would go visit this new man. He wasn’t home. I began to wonder if anyone lived upstairs. Sixty parrots were squawking on his television. His door had been left open ajar. We peeked in. He had sixteen doorknobs in a fish tank and there was a sign above it that read, “These are my pets.” I imagined the man kept mutilated manikins in the backroom. Everyday Yeah pushed open the front door and went to check. I jerked off on the doorknobs and called it “fish food.” Everyday Yeah returned. I had already finished. It was some kind of personal record, maybe less than two minutes. “There were only a few chairs and a bureau in the backroom,” he said. A week later I ran into a man at the mailbox. I figured it was the man who lived upstairs. He invited me come up to his apartment. The fish tank was gone. He made nachos. I couldn’t eat any of it. The cheese reminded me of the fish food. He told me he was an artist and that he had recently sold a piece of art. “What was it?” I asked. “I called it ‘swimming with the locksmith,’” he said.

328

I saw someone I knew. I didn’t really know them. I said, “We know each other?” They said, “Yeah, I think so.” We both made comments about what a small world it was. I think they said, “It’s a small world.” I said, “Sure.” If I had been a hundred feet away from them I would not have said anything. The world would have felt bigger, but I was standing right next to them and we looked at each other and our eyes betrayed us and said things like, “Hey, we went to high school together or something.” Before I left where I was I tapped this person on the shoulder. They said, “Hey, I’ll see you later.” I didn’t say anything. I kind of moved my eyebrows. They raised a little. Then the person left. Everyday Yeah was sitting to my right. I turned to him. He asked why I had tapped this person on the shoulder before they left. I kind of moved my eyebrows, but didn’t do a very good job so I raised my shoulders instead.

327

My shoes fell off. They turned into flower pots. My right one was for a flower that looked like lawn furniture. The other shoe was for flowers that look like purple cooking utensils. The shoelace grommets rotted away. I thought about ordering more on the internet, but the landscaping company hired to care for the flowers called a cobbler and they said the cobbler wouldn’t be able to be much help. My friend Everyday Yeah said, “Worms today are very capable.” I think he thought worms ate the grommet. One of the landscapers was playing music very loud from the company truck. I did not mind. Everyday Yeah reminded me that we had an afternoon nap scheduled. I wasn’t aware of a schedule. I walked over to the flower pots barefoot. They landscaping crew unloaded a lawnmower. They put a shovel on the truck and then loaded the lawnmower back on. I walked around barefoot for a month. My right toe got a blister. The electricity bill went unpaid. There were twelve empty pizza boxes next to flower pots. The landscaping crew showed up for two weeks straight. My right shoe got sick. The grommets started growing back. The landscaping crew began sprouting grommets. They called in sick. I haven’t seen them in two weeks. The flowers transplanted themselves into the pizza boxes. I left my shoes outside overnight. In the morning I heard the landscaping crew pull up. When I went outside my shoes were gone. Everyday Yeah was sitting on the porch, “Worms are much more capable than when our parents were kids.”

326

There was a rack of suits by the dumpster. They looked outdated and ragged. Everyday Yeah and I looked at them. There was an old television by the dumpster too. It was one of those kinds where you had to turn a knob to change the channel. It looked like my Grammy’s television. There must have been two dozen suits on the rack. I thought about taking the rack home and wearing a suit every day. I told Everyday Yeah. He was not listening. There was silence for a few seconds. Then he said, “Huh?” “I was thinking about wearing a suit every day,” I said. He looked at me, “Yeah?” I looked at him. I looked at the television. I looked at the suits again. They probably smelled. “Actually,” I said, “I’ve decided against it.” He looked at me. He looked at the dumpster, but not at the television or the rack of suits. He looked at the other side of the dumpster, to the right, where there wasn’t anything recognizable aside from a handful of garbage bags. Everyday Yeah turned back to me and said, “I’d be satisfied with a dozen well-groomed coats.” I did not understand what he meant by ‘well-groomed.’ I thought about this for a while. I looked at him. I did not look at the television. I looked at the suits. I walked over and put a top on. I looked at Everyday Yeah. He looked at me. His face didn’t say words. It was a blank stare. The coat felt small. A man across the street came out of his apartment wearing a track suit. He went down the steps and turned to my left, his right, and took off running. I decided to run after him. He didn’t notice at first. I followed him for a block like this. At the corner he stopped and asked what I was doing. I told him I was wearing a suit coat I found on a rack next to a dumpster. “No,” said the man, “Why are you chasing me?” “I saw you running,” I said. He didn’t understand this answer. He asked why. I repeated my answer. He told me to stop and began running again. I ran with him. The man turned around, “I thought I asked you to stop.” I looked at him. The coat didn’t feel comfortable. “You did,” I said, “But I thought you meant stop answering your question of ‘Why are you chasing me?’ with the reply, ‘I saw you running.’ The man looked at his watch and told me to just leave him alone. My neck itched. I walked back to the dumpster. I took off the suit coat. Everyday Yeah was carrying the television into the street. He set it down in the middle of the street. I asked what he was doing. He said, “I thought someone might want it.” I put the suit coat on top of the television.

325

There was a boy with two red suitcases. He carried the red one in his right hand and the other red one in his left hand. Or did he carry the red one in his left hand and the other red one in his right hand? There were two red suitcases. When the boy was leaving his house he tripped and fell down the stairs. Things got confusing for the boy. He dropped the two red suitcases. After he fell he was unsure which suitcase was which. He opened each of them and remembered. The red one he would carry in one hand and the other red one he would carry in the other hand. When the boy got on the train he was still carrying the two red suitcases. He made sure not to trip. Everyday Yeah saw the boy. Everyday Yeah wished he was carrying two red suitcases. He wanted to know where the suitcases were from, but did not ask the boy. Everyday Yeah did not believe the boy was honest. I was curious myself. I wanted to know what was in the two red suitcases. I did not ask the boy either. I believed the boy was shy and would not have told me. There was a tall man next to the boy. Everyday Yeah said this tall man was not important to the story. A few nights later Everyday Yeah said he figured out what was in the bags. I said, “I figured it out too.” I do not know why I said this. I did not know what was in the two red suitcases. I didn’t want to come off stupid. Everyday Yeah shrugged and walked away. He never told me what was in the red two red suitcases. I thought maybe there might have been two blue bags, but it was a stupid thought.

324

Two girls were eating two hotdogs on a bench underground. They would become widely famous in a few years. Everyday Yeah and I were sweating. I was sweating more than him. We were not sweating because of the two girls on the bench eating two hotdogs who would become widely famous. No, I was sweating because I was wearing a parka. He was sweating because it was September. I do not know why he was sweating because of the month we were presently in. I do not know why September would make him sweat. I asked him. He did not explain. I looked very closely at his skin. It did not seem to be sweating. He noticed me looking at him and his skin at a very close range. He ignored the topic I was thinking of at that moment as if it wasn’t as blatant as my closeness should have made it. The two girls who were eating two hot dogs could have also been described as one girl watching one girl eat two hot dogs or as one girl eating two hot dogs while another girl ate two hot dogs. I tried not to notice the apparent difference between these two scenarios. I equated that everything in those two worlds was equal even though the deeper we sunk into this month the more obvious such changes looked to everyone involved. It could all be in my head though. I may not even be wearing a parka. Older men in mustaches warned me of sinking into days like this. They said, “Somedays you will wear a coat and other days you won’t. Then there will be days when you don’t know what to wear. Those are the days when you won’t trust your decision and almost doubt whether you are actually wearing a coat or not.” The two girls have finished their two hotdogs or one girl watched the other girl eat two hot dogs. I was no longer wearing my coat. Everyday Yeah wasn’t sweating, but I still was. It seemed like we had stopped sinking into September, but that’s because I closed my eyes and fell asleep and didn’t even wake up when I sneezed.

323

The parking lot had four cars in it. Three of them were facing the street. The other was facing the back of the parking lot. One of them was parked haphazardly. It did not follow the directions set forth by the person who painted yellow lines all over the lot. I have never seen the person who does this, but I would like to at least once. There were a dozen shopping carts. The majority of them were gathered in an orderly fashion. Three were strayed across the lot. I do not remember what store this parking lot was associated with. I don’t remember if I even saw a store at all. I’m sure there was a point why the two of us were there. We had come to this parking lot with a purpose, but once we got here I couldn’t remember and neither could Everyday Yeah. He did not stick around to figure out if we remembered. He went to the basement, but not our basement. I followed him across the street. There were a few buildings across from the parking lot. Everyday Yeah went to the basement and began doing his laundry. He took off his clothes and started up the machine. He had some space left so I threw in my clothes. We were both naked and pretended to be tigers so it wouldn’t be awkward. We were artic tigers. A polar bear threatened us. It threatened the whole basement. We had no choice but to trick the bear and behead it. We stuffed the head in the dryer. Later we both sneezed and the snot froze to our noses. The sneezes came one after the other. Nobody remembers who came first, but it was sometime after we ate that polar bear.

322

Everyday Yeah called. He said, “I think I am stuck.” I did not understand. He said he was in a room and there was only one door and the door was locked and he felt like this was a problem because if the door didn’t get opened he might not make it home to go to sleep and wake up the next morning for breakfast. I told him breakfast wasn’t that important. He disagreed. I tried to calm him down. He said breakfast was his favorite meal. I could hear his eyes welling up. I told him not to cry. He said he wasn’t and then said, “I don’t know what I would do if no one came and I couldn’t go home to bed and the next morning I wasn’t able to extend my legs and stretch them in my own bed as I thought about what I was going to eat for breakfast.” I told him these weren’t important. He said they felt important. I told him that he could always eat breakfast some other time, but he didn’t understand and seemed to be fading. I tried to ask him where he was. He said, “I think I’m stuck.” And for a long time he continued to say he was stuck and not tell me where he was. I got bored and kind of stopped listening and put him on speakerphone and went to the kitchen and cooked tofu and kind of started humming to myself and forgot about my friend on the phone and didn’t really notice when he hung up until I heard the hallway closet open and a few seconds later Everyday Yeah walked into the kitchen.

321

The line was not moving. The line moved a little. It crept. I looked at my watch. I tried to read a magazine. The line did not seem like it was moving. We did not seem like we were going anywhere. I felt seasick. The line must have been moving a little. Unperceived motion must be one of my weaknesses. I asked my friend Everyday Yeah if he had any Dramamine. He thought I was joking. He laughed. There was nothing for us to do. I could not read my magazine. It would make me sicker. Prayer was not an option. It would not save us. My thoughts said things, but I could not understand them. They were washed out by the sound of young journalists in front of us in line, waxing infinitely about their bright futures. They enjoyed where they were. They were in front of us. I did not enjoy where I was. I pretended I was the carpet. This felt better. Carpet doesn’t have ears. The noise of the young journalists was turned off. They did not notice that I had sunk into the ground. I was content. I could not read my magazine, but I didn’t feel sick anymore. The young journalists’ bright futures vanished from my thoughts. Their happiness made everyone miserable. Everyone was jealous of me. I was carpet. They wished they were inanimate objects too. They wished they could be pencils and tables and block out the young journalists. I kind of forgot what we were waiting for. The line did not move. I did not understand basic things as the carpet. I did not care that the line didn’t move. I went to ask Everyday Yeah what we were doing in line, but he spoke first. “I have to take off,” he said. He handed me an armful of stuff that was an important reason why we were in line. I could not take it. I tried to explain to him that I was the carpet and had no arms to hold his important stuff, but he left, sneaking under the rope hoarding us into a line. I was human again, alone with the young journalists, hearing them ramble and make up good things about their futures. The carpet under me seemed unstable because I left. It wobbled. I felt sick again.

320

stylish hats

I’ve begun thinking, “I should cover my ears.” Winter is coming. Storms are coming. Faces are going to fall off. Some hats are very good at covering your ears. I think of these hats and then my mind says, “These hats seem very dependable.” My head begins to wander though and I begin to think of all the people who wear hats that don’t protect their ears. My head is confused by this. It seems pointless. “No wonder there are so many people going bald,” said Everyday Yeah, he was in the kitchen marinating lamb, “Stylish hats make your hair feel insulted and it stops growing.” I got nervous. I touched the top of my head. My hair had not gotten insulted. It thought, “I do not mind stylish hats, but sometimes I am scared when I see little men with vending carts selling them. I know these little tops aren’t permanent. At best they’ll last a few weeks, but it still worries me.” Everyday Yeah said something about little dogs wearing stylish hats. He said, “Things like that make me want to throw a dog into a pond.” I asked him how the lamb was coming along. “Not good,” he said, “I’ve never made lamb before.”

319

married people probably buy oriental rugs even if they don't float

Everyday Yeah went to an Oriental rug store. One of the salesmen stood up from his desk and walked across the floor to ask if he needed help. He said he didn’t. He was waiting for them to float. I tried to tell him they didn’t float. He didn’t believe me. I walked over to the salesman’s desk. He had been playing solitaire. I looked out the store window. There was a post standing tall outside on the sidewalk. It was waiting to be driven into the ground. They were doing construction. A man with skinny legs and jeans that were too big was eying the post. It was either his job to put it in the ground or he wanted to steal it. I didn’t think he was capable of either. I stopped watching at some point. Everyday Yeah was looking at some more rugs. They stayed flat on the ground and didn’t look very appetizing. I asked him if he wanted to go get some Oriental food. He did not. I tried to move a seven of hearts onto a five of clubs. The computer would not let me. I thought, “Invalid code,” and then thought, “Idiot boredom,” and then thought, “Soup bouquet,” and then thought, “Argyle soup,” and then thought, “Oriental birds,” and then thought, “Microwave pizza,” and then thought, “People from my high school are getting married. I am not married. I hang out with my best friend in Oriental rug stores. People think we are gay. People think, ‘Isn’t it strange how he isn’t married and doesn’t know how to play solitaire,’” and then I thought, “Fuck you people,” and tried to move a jack of diamonds on a five of clubs which made me think, “Invalid code.”

318

green peppers, meat, bread crumbs, and red pants or (spotted asian)

Someone stole the intercom at the grocery store. There was a call for a price check on canned beets and then it was gone. It was ripped out of the wall. The store was unsure of how to deal with the situation. If I didn’t have my own problems—the basement flooded again, it’s full of human sin and one-hundred years of invisible fish suffering, and I have no clean clothes left—I would offer my hand. The manager of the store was very worried he would be held responsible. Everyday Yeah said, “Fuck it. I’ll say I did it. They’d probably put my picture in the paper.” We bought green peppers, bread crumbs, and meat. Everyday Yeah didn’t confess. We waited in line to check out. A woman in blue jeans was in front of us.
“I bought a red pair,” she said, “I think I’ll wear them tomorrow.” Everyday Yeah and I looked at each other. The woman paid the cashier. Everyday Yeah said, “I would like to see your red pants.” I don’t remember what she said. On the way home Everyday Yeah said, “I don’t really like red pants.”
A few hours passed. I did not take care of the basement flooding. I decided I would let the sin drown and the invisible fish could starve for all I cared. What’s one more day of suffering. The dirty laundry was piled in the middle of the kitchen. We took it over to the laundry mat in the late afternoon. There was a spotted Asian sitting behind the counter at the laundry mat. He was meek. He was silent, but when we came back to check on our clothes the office was dark and he whistled. The clothes were still wet. He nodded and whistled. When we left the laundry mat the spotted man was climbing into bed. There was one in the corner. I waved goodbye. He shrugged. He did not stop whistling. The only reason I called him spotted was because he had freckles, but I guess trees have freckles too. I don’t know.
Sometime later Everyday Yeah and I fell asleep. I forgot about our clothes. I figured the spotted Asian was still whistling. I don’t know. Things got blurry after that. I dreamt of the spotted Asian singing Russian lullabies.
In the morning I went pour a bowl of cereal. There were no boxes of cereal in the cupboards. All we had were green peppers, bread crumbs, and meat. I asked Everyday Yeah if he knew what had happened to the cereal. He was wearing a collared shirt. A few minutes passed. He did not answer me. I went over to the laundry mat. The spotted Asian was holding a box of cereal. He was not whistling. He was watching a telenovela. I grabbed the clothes and left. When I got back the basement was still flooded and there was a four page email note on the table that basically said, “I left. I went to see about those red pants.”

317

Everyday Yeah bought a cookie. He bought it from a starched lean man near the harbor. The man was selling them out of a sack. This man may not have been a trustworthy source, but Everyday Yeah ate it anyway. We began walking home. I said, “I can’t believe you ate that cookie.” He said, “What cookie?” I said, “There was a man.” Everyday Yeah was silent. We did not talk anymore about the cookie. There were crumbs on Everyday Yeah’s face. I ignored them. When we got home there was a present waiting for us on our doorstep. Everyday Yeah said, “Are these the cookies you were talking about?” I said, “I did not know what they were.” Everyday Yeah said he thought they were cookies, “I have a feeling they’re cookies or wrenches. I can’t decide which I would rather have.” I opened the box. I was afraid it would be full of used tissues or something. It wasn’t a box full of used tissues. It was a small orange ball. Everyday Yeah picked it up and squeezed it. He began crying. I couldn’t tell if he was happy or sad that it was not wrenches or cookies.