Faded Linoleum

Continuation

I recall phoning from a landline to a number I knew only in my fingers. The dawnlit lamps locked in stereo across my horizon. I couldn’t remember what street it was. Your sigh was a punch through water. The lady behind me told me to hurry it up; her daughter is having a baby soon, see? I understood. I waited between two passive lectures. I understood, I understood. I had a problem, though:

My understanding is not a product of any key combination of words or phrases. There is no “click.” It is, or it isn’t. All else falls below the wire into the depths of my subconscious mismaking. Mismaking, mismade, undone, forgotten, left alone. Even my proficiency for polite acknowledgment betrays my inability to reconcile this binary. For me, something either is or is not.

What was, was the weighted silence on one line and the hollow worry on the other. I dug the receiver into my ear to better make out your muffled tongue " this is merely customary, since I’ve never once known this to actually work. You said something about coming home, the dogs, classes. The anxious mother muttered about going home, her daughter, her classes. Same coin. I allowed both sides to fall into my vault of mismade understandings. Sure, I said. I’m sorry, I said. Of course, I said. One more minute, I’m sorry, I said. I’m sorry, I said. I felt a conclusion drawing - I fought the urge to outwardly acknowledge it.

You sighed again. The mother huffed. Same coin. My patience wore to a faint sheen. The rubbed and scraped labels of the payphone begged for attention. I picked at them.

I may have misremembered events. The situation has fallen into the cracks. Mismade, falsely understood. My underdeveloped consciousness pocketed this experience as fact with no moral, and therein lies the moral. My memory either is, or it isn’t. Understood or not understood. Same coin.

I don’t quite recall how I escaped the situation. Perhaps my conversation closed graciously with little conflict; perhaps not. I distinctly recall glancing back at the payphone after replacing the receiver to its cradle - the mother was using a cell phone to find the right phone number to call. Seemed rather conspicuous; perhaps not.

The door to my apartment opened. It protested with every inch. I felt as though the entire building and its tenants would collapse in on this very room: my meager furnishings would splinter and meld to my flesh; the young couple above me would surge through my ceiling and join me at the hip; the brick cocoon shrouding the premises would crumble to subatomic bits of rock - a reversion back to stardust from whence we came - and sand the linings of my esophagus; all this would coalesce and shrink down to a single molecule until the raw density would force us all into a state of unbeing - a quantum coexistence with all that never was.

It is a very stupid thing to think.

I’d had one final cigarette rationed for the past two days - I’d light, drag a few, and pinch it, pocket it.  Repeat until the filter burns through. My Last Cigarette probably had at least one more pinch left before giving in, but f**k it. I deserve to let loose after that whole debacle earlier, right? I pulled My Last Cigarette from my shirt pocket, let ‘er light, and let ‘er rip.

Inhale twice, exhale once. Inhale twice, exhale once. Ash.

Now what? I almost asked it aloud, but I’m always afraid of speaking out when alone. I hardly recognize my own voice, and I won’t be prepared for when I do. I welcome a stranger’s words into my life; I cannot stomach anything else.

Now what? I thought to myself. I asked myself, I guess I should say. I suppose I slept, because I remember waking. I’d forgone the mattress in favor of the hardwood. The face’s heat welcomes the cool vinyl. Thankfully in my stupor I’d fashioned an old Pynchon volume into a pillow. Vineland; I hadn’t read it yet. The sun still slept. Whichever side of the meridian we occupied was a mystery to me. I didn’t care to lock the door when I left.

Misplaced recollections mar any firm understanding of our world. A mismade trance is as effective as inebriation, in that time forgets any linear function. Superimposed on a duskwelled street I saw the Caldswell Carnival. My block of rundown corner shops and strung-out lovers concurrently gave rise to a sprawling cacophony of merriment and mystique. Vendors vended, tossing their slew of foods and consumables into the willing crowd; a chorus of animals trotted, slumped, galloped, crawled, danced, scurried their way through, weaving around unrelenting hordes of admirers; garbage, s**t, a lost shoe littered the floor. I longed for this place. I wanted to step into the noise and drown in the sound " to soak up every last drop of joy permeating from the Carnival’s glory.

But I couldn’t trust it. A family of my old lovers glanced towards me, and quickly away. The charade shattered, and I saw this place for what it really was: a graveyard of mismaking. My old lovers saw this, too. They could not forgive me for the imprisonment, and I could not blame them. I passed through the visage and pressed on to the corner store. I needed some more cigarettes.

I tried to make small talk with the guy behind the counter. D’you hear about the attack last week? Awful stuff. Well, I guess I figure you’d know about that, of course. You sell news here, right? Papers? No, newspapers. No, I asked for the blues. Camels. Yeah. I don’t have exact change today, sorry. Thanks, have a good one. You too. You too. Thanks.

Thanks, God I f*****g hate it. My skin, my own f*****g skin. I locked eyes with the guy, holding his glance for ransom. He watched as I first removed my clothing. I took no time to place my clothes anywhere I’d remember; I merely threw them about. I cried in the man’s direction, out of fear and exhaustion. He said, You won’t. You can’t do it. I couldn’t let him pretend to know who I was. I removed my identifiers: my hair, my eyes, my teeth, my skin. I shred every remaining remnant of humanity from my body and revealed a husk. My blood pooled at my fully bare feet, tendons cracking as they gave way to the lifeless coagulation of forgotten events. I held my eyes between my fingers, and I used them to see the man. I asked him, Where do I go now? My bones fissured, bowing to impossible angles. I fell apart in front of him, and he saw nothing. 

He could not see me. He’d closed up shop right as I completed my purchase. 

I collected myself and walked home.