(v) you too, honey
by E.P. Chiew
Timmy has been reading Saul Bellow night and day. He comes to the breakfast table unshaven, bristles like a whiskered mangy cat, and says, "What if every person's essence is but a verb?"
I pour him some orange juice, to avoid him drinking straight out of the carton. Two weeks of being laid off, and Timmy is beginning to smell. Like a putrefying garbage bag. I adjust the collars of my suit. When is a good time to cut the "I'm so sorry, honey" crap?"I'm sorry, honey?"
"Have you ever thought about that?" He impales me with a glare, as if I alone am responsible for so many insipid evocations in the world. Insipid evocations, I snigger. See, I've read my Bellow too.
"Depends on what you mean."
"Take you, for example," Timmy throws out three fingers at me. The gesture is at once belligerent and judgmental. "When you exit Bowling Green, walk towards Broad Street, do you take the time to look at the man sweeping the pavement, the ethnic guy manning the coffee stand, the woman pulling her child by the hand to day care and screaming because she's already late? Do you think, my god, "in every face the refinement of motive and essence—I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, I scorn, I die, I hide, I want"? I look at Timmy's raccoon eyes. He has me twiddling the mother-of-pearl buttons on my blouse. "Do you?"
"I mean," Timmy downs his orange juice, scraping his chair back. "What are we doing here?" His fingers curl, paw the air—he is mimicking a rat at the proverbial wheel.
He slouches off. Back to Bellow. Mid-morning, when I call him from work, he will answer with the usual sour-puss monosyllables. Mid-afternoon, he will be sleeping. By the evening, when I get home, he will have dug a hole in front of the TV, watching Law and Order reruns. It will not be a good time to ask if he's contacted any headhunters. It will not be a good time to offer to help brush up his resume. It will not even be a good time to ask if he'd like pizza (Spicy Mexican) or lasagna for dinner.
Riding the No. 6 downtown, the clanging of the carriages on metal rails is like grating a chunk of parmesan with the fingers too close. A man standing next to me refolds the squares of his paper. I stare at his headlines. Another financial house has just sacked hundreds. A new hedge fund has just blown up. I cast my eyes around. A lot more men than women, all sitting with the same guzzled, hang-dog look. One of them lifts his head, and our gazes clash. The look he gives me reminds me of Timmy. I hate, he seems to say.
Exiting at my station, I take the nubs off my ears, severing my Ipod. Around me, the verbs begin to shuffle, rearrange, transform themselves into narratives. The ethnic coffee guy—I despair; the bagel deli owner—I believe. . . the newspaper guy I collect the copper I bust the young men we buy the young women we stride the older men we manage the older women we solder the bum I hustle the guy handing out leaflets I tote the commuter with felt hat I clock the guy loading the vending machine I eat the girl in flounced skirt carrying a cat in a cage I thrill the security guard at the turnstile I perforate!
I zap my card. It comes to me. I accrue. I hoard.
On the 26th floor, I call Timmy. He doesn't answer the call. Into the machine, there's a two second pause, dare I say it? "Timmy," my voice is wobbly, then it strengthens, "you stink."
I live in London, England with 1 husband, 2 children and 0 dogs(alas!).
My fiction has appeared in, among others, In Posse Review, The Summerset Review, Juked, Storyglossia, Edifice Wrecked and is forthcoming in Alimentum and Per Contra.
One of my stories will appear in the Dzanc Books' Best of the Web Anthology, 2008. I blog at www.elainepchiew.blogspot.com.