Dinner Party

Dinner Party

“I think a good citrusy Chardonnay would pair nicely; something that won’t overpower the spicing,” states a woman looking through petite half-moon reading glasses.

Her fingers run over dust covered labels, pausing every so often to further investigate a bottle. The wine cellar is dimly lit as to not prematurely age the wines, and there’s a certain chill to the room. She clutches her knit cardigan tight against her chest. Her gold bracelets clink against each other and against the antique bottles; the hollow clink reverberates against the brick walls of the cellar. A streak of artificial light breaks the dark and dust swirls in the wake of an opened door.

“Are you still choosing a damn wine? The meal is almost on,” a man shouts down the stairs

.

She runs her hands over the bottles in the row before her and finally settles on a bottle with a clear label; a citrusy Chardonnay from Domaine Corsin Saint Veran. Her feet shuffle and her joints creak up the stairs. The dim lights are flicked off and the door is closed. A wide mahogany spiral staircase runs up the rest of the floors like the spine of the house. She grasps the handrail with one wrinkled hand and cradles the bottle of wine with the other. Her steps are slow and measured. The sound of voices echo down the long staircase and the smell of roasting meat and vegetables follow.

The woman takes the last step off of the spiral staircase and enters the dining room. A long heartwood-cut dining table is dwarfed by the size of the room. Each seat at the table is ornately carved out of matching heartwood and accented with inlaid gold. No unnatural lighting was needed, but there is an equally majestic crystal chandelier above the table. The hall seemed more fit to gather a few dozen people rather than the five bunched at the head of the table.

“About damn time,” the man from the cellar says.

“Oh shush there Mr. Condor,” says a middle-aged woman in a conservatively cut dark blue dress.

“What is it you chose? Oh, the Domaine, what a great choice,” she continues with a matronly comfort to the much older woman.

“Don’t patronize the woman Ms. Puma; she’s been here longer than us all,” adds Mr. Bear from across the table.

The lone tone of a sterling silver dinner knife striking a Swarovski Crystal wine glass interrupts all banter. All eyes turn towards the silent man sitting at the head of the table. He did not say anything more, just simply picked up his pure white napkin and placed it on his well-pressed right pant leg. Everyone sits up straight and slides their heartwood chair legs over the Persian rug as silently as possible.

Sullen men carrying covered large silver platters swoop in like a fleet of birds gathering on a carcass. They present the course and leave as silently as they arrived. Salads are the first course, some light greens with a light dressing. The guests drink a mineral water with lemon, and pick through the greenery that none of them really care for. They’re here for the main course. The men flock back in and present the next dish, and everyone gathers themselves for what they’ve been waiting for. Mr. Condor is visibly fidgeting and watching the head of the table’s every move. Waiting for him to take the lid off of his meal. The man begins, and everyone else follows suit.

Steam rises from the dishes like the warm last breath of a dying deer in the middle of winter. The meat is flanked by roasted red potatoes with a golden buttery glaze and flaked with herbs and spices. The green beans are still sizzling from the pan they had left, thinly sliced almonds top the beans, and the same butter sauce has been drizzled over them as well. The meat is choice cut. A deep brown crust covers the flesh from where the pan seared it. A light reduction covers the cut; made from the pan’s drippings with crushed garlic and wine. The meat is lightly seasoned and barely cooked to let the meat be the main flavor. A deep red pool forms with the first cut.

Eyes roll and mouths smack and churn without thoughts of manner or circumstance. Mr. Condor gulps his Chardonnay Domaine Corsin Saint Veran without the care that selecting it took. The older lady eats in contemplation; she closes her eyes and savors each bite, chewing completely before selecting the next morsel. Ms. Puma has already finished her serving and is tidying her make-up in a pocket mirror. The man at the head of the table is finished as well. Mr. Condor is picking at his teeth, and looking at the man across the table who is just now realizing there were sides to accompany his meat.

“I’d like to see the biography please,” says Mr. Condor, picking his teeth with a toothpick.

Ms. Puma looks disgusted at Mr. Condor as she smooths down the front of her dress. The man at the head of the table picks up a simple white card printed on heavy stock stationery paper and passes it to Mr. Condor.

“Brian Desmond grew up on a farm in Idaho. He spent most of his youth doing hard manual labor, and you can tell by the firmness in the muscle. Brian also played baseball and football throughout his middle and high school years, and lettered in both sports. His social standing there allowed him to enjoy the young party scene as well, and that shows in the divine ribboning in the flank steaks. His college life was typical mostly, and he underwent a rather harsh break up with his High School sweetheart which caused him to become sedentary for a year or two. This allowed the meat to properly marble and lace some of his hard working muscle with the fat needed to make it juicy. He graduated with a degree in Telecommunications and went to work in sales for a company specializing in selling window shutters; a desk job mostly, and there was a certain loss of fitness. He never married, and died of a heart attack in his kitchen while he prepared his dinner,” Mr. Condor reads.

Everyone relaxes and drift into thoughts of their own life. What they had done to where they were. They didn’t share this with their dinner party; they were just Mr. and Ms. Generic Predator here, and that’s the way they all wanted it to be.

“I always love the ones that died alone,” says Mr. Condor now chewing his toothpick.

“I just care if they were active at all,” says Mr. Bear patting his protruding gut.

He and Mr. Condor laugh.

“Don’t be so callous,” says the man at the head of the table.

Everyone sits upright again, except for the older lady who is finishing her last bits of Brian Desmond.

“We mustn’t forget our humanity,” he continues. He stands, and politely excuses himself.

As soon as he’s comfortably out of earshot, Mr. Condor stands and paces at the head of the table.

“Why’s he always the big guy around here. This is my house, for christ's sake. He brought in his own staff, used his own china and cutlery, and then dictates everything to us like we’re nothing,” he says, looking at all of his companions for something to build upon.

“He started the club,” says Ms. Puma.

Mr. Bear looks away, because he knows that without him there would be no dinner parties. Mr. Condor sees that there is no head of steam building, no desire for a revolt brewing, and sits down. The older lady finishes the last of her meal and looks over the biography that Mr. Condor left on the table. She doesn’t get far into it before the man returns and brings his fleet of servers. Dessert was served. The older woman and the man at the head of the table were the only ones to finish.

“I’ll be in touch,” says the man, and leaves once again.

Mr. Condor looks at Mr. Bear and rolls his eyes. Mr. Bear doesn’t respond. They all get up and leave without a word. Ms. Puma and the older lady neatly fold their napkins and place them on the table next to their dessert plates. Mr. Bear leaves his crumpled on his chair and pulls at the back of his slacks. They each have an individual private car that will take them to the airport, from which they will depart to different cities and live separate lives until they receive that crimson red envelope once again.

Mr. Bear is red in the face with a construction helmet squeezed so tightly on his bulbous head that it looks like it’ll be popped off like a champagne cork at any moment. He’s yelling at the contractors about the paving to be installed around his latest Honey Hickory Barbeque and Biscuits restaurant. It must be accessible by motorized scooter. It’d be discriminatory if it wasn’t. The contractor is remaining calm and outlining the changes he will have to make to accompany the wider handicap-accessible ramp. Mr. Bear regains his composure and apologizes. Maybe his blood sugar is low, he claims, and excuses himself to his truck.

His truck’s suspension groans when he enters and he’s breathing deeply by the time he’s settled in the driver’s seat. He fishes out a greasy brown paper bag. It sports the name of some local fast food joint, and he rips at it without thought. He eats, but he’s miles away. The flesh of cow and pig is just a tease, a hint of what he could be eating. This cow was raised and processed in a yard with a hundred other cows just like it. He finishes it with glazed eyes, and turns the key in the ignition.

His truck rolls into his driveway at his suburban home. It takes equal effort to remove himself from the undersized cab. He unconsciously kicks balls and toys off the pathway as he makes his way to the door. He announces his arrival and hears the pitter patter of human and dog feet alike. He walks to the kitchen with a child on each leg and a dog following in tow. He greets his wife, and cuts off mid-sentence when he sees the red envelope on the counter.

Ms. Puma rises from a bed that’s not her own, and is glad to see that the other occupant is long gone. Her corporate attire is still neatly folded on the dresser from the night before. She quickly dresses, checks her appearance in the mirror and heads out the door. It’s light out and people don’t give a second glance to the well-dressed middle-aged woman walking out of one of the city’s nicer apartment complexes. She turns on her heel and heads in a direction. She doesn’t know where she’s going. She looks straight ahead. She knows the telltale markers of a tourist, and she refuses to fall into those pitfalls. She is a stranger here, but that doesn’t mean she must look it. She lets her designer handbag casually swing from the crook of her arm. She calls the nearest taxi and hops into it. She states her destination in a calm voice without unnecessary courtesy.

The airport is rather dead today, and she sits and watches as planes land. She sits as close as she can to the terminals watching people being reunited with their families and loved ones. She shuffles through her wallet to find her frequent flyer card. Upon finding it she makes her way to the desk to schedule a flight, rolls down the departures board, finds the one closest to take-off and picks it. Her phone rings. Someone has sent her a red envelope. She cancels her flight.

Mr. Condor sits back in his leather office chair while one of the interns bobs her head between his naked thighs. Looking bored, he shuffles through his Blackberry and reads the latest stock exchange news in between rounds of Brickbreaker. Seeing that it’s going nowhere, he pats her on the head and tells her to leave. He stands, pulling up his custom tailored trousers and walks back to his desk. He shuffles through whatever papers one of his secretaries or underlings had left for him to review or sign or whatever. Nothing catches his eye, just white sheets of paper.

He yells out a name and a rather flustered looking woman in a tight skirt hurries in. He asks about a red envelope. He had monitored the other dinner guests’ mail and they had each received one. She explains that she had not yet checked his personal mail. There had been massive company-wide downsizing, and she has survived wave after wave of pink slips. Mr. Condor turns to her and looks completely through her. He fires her. She cries. He tells her to get out of his office. He calls his house and yells at his butler to check the mail. He has a red envelope.

The older lady was never given an animal name, because she had never wanted one. She would have gladly given her real name if anyone had asked. She led her dogs to the front porch and instructed them to sit while she worked off her dirty gardening shoes. She patted each one on the head and smiled. They wagged their tails and waited for the door to be opened. She kept them sitting while she took a handkerchief out of her back pocket and wiped down each paw. The door opened slowly and the dogs waited patiently for her to go through before bounding in.

She doesn’t mind the pile of mail that had gathered on her welcome mat. She steps over it while humming a nameless tune. She goes to the kitchen and boils a pot of tea. She looks on her counter and ponders what to eat. A light salad with a light dressing. She eats no meat in this world, and calls herself “vegetarian” to others. The sound of the wind through the high canopy of the forest that surrounds her house is her background music. She starts a fire in her fireplace, changes out of her dirty gardening clothes, lays down to sleep, and dies.

The head of the table also never took an animal name. Some had called him Mr. Lion, or those with deeper senses of humor Mr. Human, but he had never adhered to them. His keys jangle in the small bowl he’s designated for them, and the single coat hook on his wall now sports his black trench coat. He walks into the section of his one room apartment which he has decided to be the kitchen and fills a glass with water. There is no refrigerator, and there is no seating. He sits on the floor and stares off into the distance. His figure is thin but not malnourished. His eyes still have the youthful optimism of a child. He has the eyes of someone who has seen no true evil in this world. He has never killed anyone in his life. The gray walls are bare, and there is no furnishing. He is surrounded by red envelopes, dozens upon dozens of red envelopes. They explode out from him like a supernova, and pool in the corners of his apartment like blood.

“I’d like to see the biography card,” says Mr. Condor, finishing up his last bite

.

“I’d like to read it this time,” says the man at the head of the table.

“Julia Linsby grew up in upstate New York, and her parents were professors: one of Physics and one of the Fine Arts. She was an introverted child, spending much of it indoors behind a book or at the piano. The lack of physical activity in the formative years has allowed her flesh to become almost veal-like in tenderness. In grade school she quietly skipped several grades and moved onto college at the age of sixteen. She studied Environmental Science and Ecology and graduated in three years. The lack of any party scene beyond the local wine-tasting club can be seen in the lean cuts and pure flavor in the meat. She went to graduate school in Maine and spent most of her time there with her soon-to-be husband. They amassed riches in their creation of an indoor hanging garden and donated their vast fortune to charity. Her late years in the mountains allowed her to trek up and down giving the flesh some of the gamey lean flavor profiles of bison or buffalo. She was a vegetarian by most accounts, and you can seem to taste the lack of mixing. Her husband died last year, leaving her alone in their Maine house with her dogs. She died of a stroke in her sleep.”

Mr. Bear, Ms. Puma, and Mr. Condor all look at the empty seat and put down their forks. The guests don’t even feign caring about dessert. The man at the head of the table eats it in its entirety. They sit in stunned silence, fiddling with their napkins and sterling silverware before the man finally excuses himself and they get are allowed to get up and leave.

Three years pass before a new red envelope comes to each of their residences. Mr. Bear nearly broke down in tears. Ms. Puma was touring Europe alone and booked a flight back to the States the day she got the word. Mr. Condor had fired twelve assistants in the three years, and had an ulcer the size of a nickel that constantly harassed him, and got the letter the day he stood on the edge of his high rise office balcony.

“I’m glad to see you’ve lost weight,” says Mr. Condor patting Mr. Bear on the back.

“Har har,” Mr. Bear responds, the fake laugh resounding in his still very prominent gut.

“Boys, I can’t say you’ve all worn your years well,” says Ms. Puma.

A knock on the door shocks them into silence. The man at the head of the table moves to open it. A middle-aged man stands at the door with a bottle of wine held nervously in his hands. He moves to awkwardly shake the man’s hand almost losing the bottle in the process.

“Here, I uh, didn’t know what paired well with uhh...” the newcomer pauses and counts the seams on his shoes.

“Human flesh,” the man finishes.

“Yeah, human flesh,” the newcomer echos.

Transience and Permanence

I watch as he inspects the daily delivery of baked goods from down the street, much as I’ll watch as he tosses whatever remains at the end of the night. His hands move through the loaves and rolls and pies and cakes with a seasoned ease. He tosses some back into a large gray bin, wiping his hands on his khaki pants. His breath hangs in the cool morning air as he thanks the man with a polite smile and handshake; the same polite smile and handshake he has given for years.

I snuff out my cigarette under the black, non-slip sole of my shoe. I watch as the main lights of the dining room hesitate before turning all the way on. Music kicks on, but not the top 40s hits that would play during operating hours. The passionate voices of Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole sound as though they’re singing underwater. The sounds of brass and bass eek through the cracks in doors and windows of the old building. I hear the neon hum it’s own tune as the various liquor and beer signs are powered on, and the big hanging sign that reads “The Market” shudders, unlit, in the autumn gusts.

An old white station wagon pulls up to the back of the building and I watch as a bent old man opens the rusted driver’s side door and hobbles towards the back entrance to the building. He shuffles past the stacked milk crates and coffee can ashtrays that serve as the employees’ break area. He strains to open the big red door. The big red door separates the restaurant from the rest of the world. For a second that big steel door hangs open and the soothing jazz fills the morning with sorrow-filled thoughts of times passed. It closes, and the world is gray and lifeless once again.

I figure it’s about time for me to head in. The door closes behind me, pushing the smell of stale cigarettes, booze and trash inside in one last futile wave. Onions and garlic raise their heads to turn back the alley smells and are given their due respect before they once again fade into the background. I pass by the kitchy decorations that most bars seem to have these days: various old signs for old alcohols, old sports memorabilia, an old deer mount that has been defiled with sunglasses and other human accessories. I remember him telling me stories of times when the deer’s antlers were covered by nothing but a thin layer of dust. Most of the things that litter the walls are older than the establishment, but attempt to lend their credibility to the business.

I throw my backpack in my locker in the basement. My sweatshirt stitched with my college’s name -- the one that everyone has -- goes on top of it. No one else was here because it didn’t make any sense to pay workers that have no work to do. We have to have at least one cook there for the breakfast shift, and usually that cook is stuck doing prep for the real meals to come.

I move back to the kitchen and take up my familiar spot at the flat-top grill. There are no tickets on the line, so I have time to prep things for the day ahead of me. I cut tomatoes and bell peppers. The swinging kitchen door hits the pink tiled wall behind it with a hollow crash. I hear his voice, and for the first time notice that the radio has been switched. Some pop music scratches its hot pink nails over the blackboard that displays our daily specials.

“Where the fuck is Brian? That bisque has to be prepped five hours before service. I swear to God if we have to change our feature again tonight I’m going to shove his hand in the fryer,”

“Brian quit last week,”

“Then what the fuck are you doing cutting tomatoes. Prep that bisque.”

I had never made a soup in my life. The old cook is bent over a pot working with carrots and a knife that flashes so fast it looks like he’s cutting with the side of his pointer. The recipe card is covered in parts and pieces of seafood bisques long past. I can make out some words and some numbers, but the whole is lost to me. I pick up a bin filled with an opaque liquid. Someone had hastily scrawled “c-food stock” on a piece of tape and stuck it to the lid, probably Brian, he was never the brightest. The old cook takes it from my hands before I had the chance to do wrong. I turn around to gauge my boss’s reaction, but he had left already.

I hear the dish machine kick on. The stereo in the dishroom is switched on and hums in anticipation. The dishwasher finally connects his music to the system. It’s too loud. I know that the boss will not appreciate it. The dishwasher -- Tod or Rod or something -- has nothing to do, so he’ll be told to turn down his music and to go scrub down the walk-in meat cooler. It is exactly as bad as it sounds. He won’t last another month here. I still move to the loud room and give him the nod that shows that I’m here as well. He nods his head and his neon purple hair dangles over his eyes. He brushes it back with a non-soiled wrist and turns back around to the rack of dishes made dirty by the morning’s prep. If he’s not up for conversation neither am I.

I turn and leave the dishroom. I don’t hear my boss’s voice, but I hear the music get turned down and the swinging metal door to the dining room bang against the tiled wall. I hear the bucket with the bleach water and paint scraper get taken from the closet. I hear the moans and groans of the purple-haired dishwasher rise and then fall as he descends to the walk ins. The old man is done the bisque. His work for the day is done, he’ll most likely stop by some of the other restaurants in town before he heads home.

I make a few omelets with egg whites and organic spinach, roast a few tomatoes and peppers, and bake a few dozen trays of bacon. I take a smoke break. I tried to stop smoking at work, but it doesn’t work like that. The big red door closes and the world is quiet again. Servers with their uniforms half assembled; maroon shirts untucked and unbuttoned, jeans, hats and undone hair. I’m proud that I’m wearing an unwashed shirt from high school and a pair of jeans that are so dirty they probably don’t need me to stand up straight. Working in the back has its advantages.

“Hey bud, how was the morning shift?” asks Ben the server.

“Shitty, don’t hard sell the bisque,” I reply.

“Ha, wasn’t planning on it,”

My boss pushes open the door, and the employees that had began to gather to socialize before the busy lunch shift scattered into the building. Ben gives me an overacted shrug and a salute and follows. Boss man is staring me down, and I turn to leave, but he stops me.

“Don’t you have a class?”

“Yeah, but I was gonna work the triple today,”

“No you’re not, come back for dinner,”

He unconsciously rubbed his vacant left ring finger. I had heard all the rumors about his marriage. He had beat his wife; he had been caught with a server at the restaurant; he blew his wife’s savings on coke and booze. I knew how rumors worked in this place, and I had been at far too many “After-Market” parties to know how many of them were ridiculous for the sake of curing boredom at work. I don’t care about how he got to this point, but at this point he’s a jackass.

Class is class, and I fight the strongest urges to fall asleep. My eyes and attention are paid to the tiny screen of my phone, and I can’t seem to pull myself away from it. Time feels as though it is moving through a tub of butter. I catch bits and pieces about fluid dynamics and then zone back out. Time is moving through a super viscous silicone solution. Soon enough the sound of zippers and the scrape of desk chairs on linoleum floors signals the end of class. It’s time to go back to work.

The dinner shift starts much differently then the lunch and breakfast before it. The faces of the workers I had seen as I left looked strained and exasperated. They had seen too many trays falls and orders botched. They had lost too many tips and endured too much of our boss’s berating. I see Ben, he’s dropping off an appetizer of spinach dip -- one 6 ounce serving in a white ramekin served with baked pita chips and garnished with some grated Parmesan cheese and a blow torch for color. The man Ben is serving is eating a Texan Burger -- one 8 ounce patty cooked to the customer’s preference topped with fried onion straws, thick-cut bacon, house barbecue sauce, and a set up (a tomato and lettuce) served with potato chips or up-charged to fries. I can’t see what the woman is eating, but I bet it’s a salad; they always get salads.

I’ve missed out on so much. I feel cheap for coming in after what looked to be a hellish lunch shift. My fellow workers ask me where I was for lunch. I’ve returned too late to help, and they were short-staffed. “We got killed,” they say, and I notice that there’s a maroon shirt in the dishroom. Missing is the purple-haired Rod Tod dish washer.

“Fired,” my boss says behind me.

“Too bad,”

“He was shit,”        

People move in and out, the deep maroon of the staff’s uniform weaving in and out of the mobs of patrons with trays overloaded with food perched high on their exhausted shoulders, rolls tumble and fall from their plates. Drinks flow and laughter cascades from the happy mouths of satisfied customers. The voice of our boss can be heard over all the colliding conversations, commanding his fleet of high school and college students. Names are forgotten in the fray, and are replaced by points and hair-color nicknames.

A plate falls with an incredible with a resounding crack and the sound of the plate’s body being scattered all over the floor. The sound only momentarily stuns the dining room into silence., I see a whoosh of khaki past me, and my name cracks the silence left in the wake. With no dish washer here I was the low man on the totem pole, or the only one that he remembered the name of. I grab a broom and a butler, and stumble through the crowd. I still stop and say excuse me. He dashes off a quick thank you before he departs to the alley behind our building. His hand reaches for the the handle of the big, red, steel door, the gateway. I follow him as I empty the butler into the appropriate bin, the big steel door closes behind me, and silence clears the air. He inhales his Marlboro Red to the filter in three long drags. He turns from the door and flicks the cigarette into a coffee can. He flashes the same quick smile he shown the baker and hefted the big door open.

I go back into the kitchen and there are orders all the way down the line. I grab the one closest to me and start preparing it. Calamari app -- pre-portioned serving, bread, fry, serve with a dipping sauce and garnished with green onion; done. Steak with fried potatoes -- steak goes on, potatoes are wedged already, they’re the flat top with salt and pepper; done. I complete several other orders, and notice our salad cook is struggling to keep up. I help her as my last order finishes.

The door slams against the wall again, but I don’t look up.

“Put down that fucking lettuce,”

I know he’s talking to me.

“Put it down and take this.”

He hands me a potato wedge.

“Is that cooked?”

“I don’t know,”

“Take a bite,”

It tastes okay, but as my teeth get deeper I hit the apple-like texture of an undercooked potato.

“No, it’s not,”

“Get the fuck out,”

“What?”

“Get the fuck out of my restaurant.”

I don’t know what to say. Everyone else is in stunned silence. Servers open the door and see the oddest scene; a quiet kitchen. They immediately turn back and leave before the door even has a chance to swing shut again. I take off my apron and walk out the kitchen door. I hear some apologies from my co-workers, and spot my former boss out of the corner of my eye at one of the corner tables. I keep my head down and push down the angry red ball that is welling in my gut. I walk through the swinging doors out onto the dining room floor without destination or cause. I’m free in some ways, but entirely lost in others.

“Is this how you want customers to feel?”
“No sir, I’m sorry,” my boss replies.
“You have an easy fucking job, you know that? Your job is to bring me food; the food that I ordered, and make sure that it’s not complete dog shit. That’s your job, and that’s what you failed to do,”
“I’m sorry sir, your meal will be on the house,”
“You’re goddamn right it will be. Can’t even cook fucking potatoes,”
Everyone at the table knows that this guy is way out of line, but no one is saying a word. He must be their boss, and they know that standing up for some manager of some restaurant isn’t worth losing their jobs. They all shift and squirm in their chairs trying to avoid the critical looks of the rest of the patrons. My former boss unconsciously fiddles with his ring finger again. The servers do their best to keep the customer’s attention on the food in front of them, or on the menu, or on anything that isn’t the scene.

“Would you like to see our wine menu?” they ask.

“Can I interest you guys in some dessert?” they ask.

“How is everything tonight?” they ask.

Someone has wrote my name in big letters with the number 86 in dark red ink on the kitchen whiteboard. We are out of the salmon, lamb chop, stuffed peppers, artichoke hearts, and me. My former boss catches me lingering at the board and asks me to come to his office.

His office is in the basement next to the employee lockers. It’s not a place that anyone spends much time, including the cleaning staff. Old promotional ads for drinks and specialty alcohols are propped up against his beige hospital office walls. They loom over his desk like an ever-present panel of judges. His desk is covered in sticky notes and official-looking documents. I see the paperwork for Rod Tod on his desk, and the appropriate filings for termination next to it.

He itches his ring finger and sits down to do something he’s done hundreds of times. He asks me to take a seat, I oblige. I think about the dish washer boy that had sat here less than six hours ago. I bet he was furious. I bet he swore and cursed and said things that he’d later tell his friends about. They’ll be in awe of how brave and courageous he was to stick it to an asshole boss. He did something that they had always wanted to do. I couldn’t be mad at him.

There was only one time that I didn’t see him in the morning going through the bakery’s delivery. The delivery man just dropped off the big gray bins and left; we probably got some dented loaves and some burnt pies. I asked the old cook that morning where the boss was, and he said “with his kids,”

I imagined him sitting awkwardly on the corner waiting for his ex-wife to drop them off. I could see him fidgeting because he hadn’t smoked that day, because he didn’t want to smell like cigarettes around them. I can imagine them holding tight to their mother’s pant leg not wanting to get into this stranger’s car. He stays silent; his heart breaking with every plea to just go home. Their mother reasons that they’ll go out for ice cream later.

“You guys like ice cream? I like ice cream too,”

They bury their faces deeper into their mother’s leg. He looks at her, his eyes search for something that says that this is okay, that this is normal.

He showed up to the lunch shift and fired three people that day. I heard him swearing at his desk when I was in the locker room. Everyone avoided him that day; people made jokes that his dealer cut him off, or that the prostitutes were all tired of getting paid in The Market free appetizer coupons. I laughed. I knew what it was about, yet I still laughed.

So I’m in this chair. This chair that I was hired in. My jeans are stiff and aren’t supposed to bend. I stare at my hands and realize the scars I’ve accumulated here. Knives, jammed disposals, hot flat tops, hot dishes, sharp corners. They’re all there. I see his hands as he gestures at me, and he sports the same scars. His forearms are crisscrossed with thin white lines and oblong burns that weren’t cared for enough to heal properly.

I don’t know what he’s saying. I’m not there right now. This is the same thing with my class this afternoon. I know that I should be listening to him. I know that my tangent thoughts can wait until I’m off into the cold night. He stands up and offers to shake my hand. I look at it, the cuts and scrapes and burns, and I reach out my own hand with its cuts and scrapes and burns.

I clean out my locker and say my last good byes to everyone. My name on the 86 board was already erased and replaced by “seafood bisque”. Ben stops me and says that I can still come to the After-Market party tonight, but I decline. He promises that we’ll keep in touch even though I won’t see him everyday. I know we won’t. We’ll run into each other on campus and exchange polite courtesies the first time; then it will be a hello and a how are you doing; then a nod; then pretending that we don’t see each other.

I leave the restaurant with the last of the customers. They giggle and laugh; their breath hangs in the air for a second before being lost in the cold. I watch the employees leave and some of them had started drinking behind the bar already. They move in a mass of maroon like a school of fish. They all were ready to leave that building. The poor server that was stuck in the dishroom is the last employee to leave. He’s angry that he drew the short end of the stick and hurries to catch up to the mob.

I crush my cigarette under the black non-slip sole of my shoe, and turn to leave. I hear the big red door open again and my former boss come out with bags of trash from the night. His nice khaki pants are stained with grease and streaks of steak tips and marinara sauce. I swear I can smell the congealed ranch from here. He had loosened his tie and unbuttoned the first few buttons of his dress shirt. The first dumpster behind the building is full, and so he has to walk to the corner to dump the trash in the neighboring establishment’s dumpster. He hoists it up and it teeters on the edge of the big brown container before it decides to fall on the sidewalk.

It splits open like an overripe melon and the man curses. People out for the night look at him with disgust as he attempts to guide the soupy mess of bisque, calamari, steak tips, burgers, bloody band aids and spoiled ranch dressing back into the black plastic sheet that was once a bag. He apologizes profusely to those that are forced to walk in the street to avoid the putrid excrement of The Market restaurant and bar.

I pick up the last bit of trash and hand it to him. We carry the last bags out in silence. He thanks me and turns around and opens the big red door and walks in. I hear the moody sounds of deep saxophones and the sad tones of an old piano. The door closes, and I hear the laughter of someone here for a weekend vacation.

The Value of Liberal Arts

The universe we currently live in is full of stuff. There are people that wish to define and explain this stuff, and these people are called scientists. Science's goal is to explain the unexplained, decrease the gray in between areas of human understanding. That sounds very lofty and pretentious, but it is ultimately true. But there is a literal universe of undefined and unexplained gray, and the scope of collective human focus cannot possibly dedicate its attention to anything more than an infinitesimally small fraction of that gray. So I am not here to insert any questions about the validity of their findings, but rather the motivation and choice of gray area to explore.

So what does this have to do with the liberal arts and their title-implied value? Great written, filmed, spoke, and otherwise broadcast to the general public works have played crucial roles in influencing what people know and what people want to know. This sounds very idealistic, and yes, I know that, but if you unwind the thread behind any business move within this capitalistic world you'll find consumers.  These consumers are not the experts on the field in which they are putting their hard-earned dollars towards, nor are they always the most thoughtful or conscious consumers. They buy what we sell -- we, as in the collective writers, advertisers and content-deliverers.

Pharmaceutics, computers, industrial tech, everything is reliant on advancements in science and engineering in order to progress. These are not cheap ventures, they require considerable amounts of capital in order to fund. Science may still be driven the that insatiable explorer's spirit on the lab-level, but when you increase the scale it is a business. The money still comes from big names like Monsanto, Exxon-Mobil, Pfizer, Intel, etc. The labs these scientists work in may still have these incredible minds working for them, but they are made to specialize and direct their brilliance in a direction of the money's choosing.

The Liberal Arts have that distinct ability to influence people. The books you read, the TV you watch, the newspaper you peruse, all have some impact on how you see the world. You might veer towards the organic section of a grocery store, because you heard that organic was better. You might purchase a new car that has less emissions, because you heard about emissions being linked to something called climate change. These things were made possible for you to purchase because of engineers and scientists, but you buy because you were informed or influenced. They produce because you buy, and thereby these engineers create.

Sustainability, green, organic, etc. are all buzzwords, and that's the way writers do their work. They focus on these buzzwords and then attempt to explain why they are important. The science is there, and those scientists will continue to do science, but interest and passion is incited not by their findings, but rather by the people that make it their goal to make you passionate. Science will progress where human-interest demands it to, and that will always, and inseparably be influenced by the media you consume -- the media that was produced by the Liberal Arts.

This was a nice rant, and I understand that my audience is insignificantly small, but if this made you think, or even see things in a slightly different shade of apathy, you see exactly what I'm talking about.

Being a Freelance Writer

I'm not that good at it. There are two things that freelancers need in order to survive in this new internet world: motivation and hubris. I have one of those two, and it ain't a business thing. I can talk about myself, and I can make myself sound like the perfect candidate for whatever writing project you might have in mind, but I get involved in one project and then devote myself completely to it. This is bad when you stare down a $40.00 payout after a weekend of work. Apparently the way to make money in this industry is to either split yourself between multiple projects, or to market yourself so well that clients are more than willing to throw 500 bucks at you for a single piece.

I can't do either of these things, at least not yet.

But there is a zany thing about this working from my own computer chair thing. I know, that in my heart-of-hearts, if I wanted to make some money today, I could. I could just log on to some freelance site and just market the living hello kitty out of myself and hopefully get some bites. Chances are, I'd find someone willing to pay me 5 cents a word for some article about "Health and Fitness in Your Basement!" or something equally mundane like eateries in the Midwest or something.

What I've found is that I cannot self-motivate worth a good golly darn. If I find something that I care about writing, or if I get that bug and I just want to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), then I can write, and the money is just a happy bonus that pays for my food and weekend habits. What I need is work ethic, and I have finally acknowledged this after every school teacher I have ever had has told me so. This is where I find myself, and how I am going to improve.

The biggest revelation I've had while freelance writing is that I can talk about utterly anything and sound remotely intelligent. I think a key point in writing for money in any field is that you give yourself this aloof sense of intellect, so that even if you have absolutely no clue exactly what you're talking about you can present it in a way that says "sure, it wasn't totally a bad idea to pay me to read stuff online and then write about it, nope, great idea,"

And I just nod and hope they don't see the sweat.

Out of the Darkness and into the Light

Out of the Darkness and into the Light

By Andy Hayes

The mirror in front of me shakes with my neighbor’s screams. For an instant my worn expression wobbles and vibrates, and I think that I look better out of complete focus. Someone must have fallen asleep when the Dread was so close to our parameter. My room is brightly lit. The high florescent lights shine straight down on me, and create a small pool of a shadow just under my feet. Even this little leak of darkness makes my hair stand on end like needles in a pincushion. I take my company-issued safety razor and run it over my stubbly scalp. It leaves clean lines of freshly shaven flesh in its wake. My hands move through the motions without thought, rehearsed and practiced. My bald head catches the rays of the ever present lights overhead. I put on my company-issued sunglasses to make the world a little more bearable, and step into my company-issued jumpsuit that lays crumpled before me. My uniform is still white, and all of its zippers are unjammed and pull the white fabric tight against my bare skin.

I look outside my 1x1 foot window to see the sun fight its way through the darkness, through the Dread. It used to be able to hold back the Dread, but these days it seems to find it impossible to do alone. I can see other rays of lights streaking out and fading into the darkness prematurely from other windows like mine. The other side of the workers’ barracks faces the yard, and whatever beams their little windows emit are lost in an ocean of light.

I check my appearance in my now very stable mirror. My jumpsuit is white and still very well-kept, and my sunglasses still have the heavy mirroring that usually fade within the first year of usage. I open the door and walk out into the well-lit hallway. Several other workers on this side of the barracks are in the hallway as well, and we exchange knowing nods. We walk together through the yard-facing side of the barracks listening for whimpers and moans from the rookies. We could at least get a sense of light and dark on our side, these poor guys are constantly in the light. We knock our callused knuckles against their doors; not to wake them, because they’re awake, but to get them to move from whatever corner of their room they’ve inevitably buried their face in. We wait and they eventually emerge.

Their uniforms are a brighter white than even mine, and their sunglasses still boast a standard issue sticker explaining the Standard Operation Procedures for usage of their 100% UV Protection, Mirrored, ShineBrite MirrorForce sunglasses. One reflexively probes the area next to his door for a light switch, and then remembering where he is, stops. We wait for the last rookie, probably the one screaming earlier, to come out. He doesn’t, we make him.

The mess hall is silent, the buzz of the lights and the sound of dulled forks scraping against metal bowls are the only sounds that fill the large cafeteria. Murmurs about the outside world are few and far between, and the poor soul we dragged out this morning is rocking in his seat talking to himself. His jumpsuit is still creased from the shipping box it came in, and his sunglasses are in its breast pocket. Those that are sitting next to him have already scavenged his morning food ration and continue to eat in silence. The bell rings, we all file out.

I’m handed ShineBrite Lightbringer #6642 and I grab an extra bulb and battery pack. The glorified flashlight is light in my hands, and I press the trigger to lock the bulb on, and again to shut it off. Everything shines, everything is in order. Everyone around me tries their torch in a similar fashion, and when satisfied move out of the armory.

The yard’s lights seem to be even brighter than the barrack’s, and we all raise our gloved hands to shield our sunglasses protected eyes. We make our way to the long walls that surround our little camp, and file into units. I’m in the patrol unit, and the rookies are on the wall. I steal an apple out of a rookie’s lunch ration and meet up with my patrol.

“We have signals from the beacons in the southwest and west proper, the Dread is inching closer when the bulbs flicker, and we can’t push it back. Shift 1 patrol is trying to find a more continuous circuit to run the lights on. They’re pulling a double, so be sure to fuck with them as little as possible,” my commander says.

His uniform is off-white, almost gray, and his sunglasses are worn to the point where I can’t see myself in them. His Lightbringer is decorated with markings and stickers that surround its issue number - #31. We jump into our ShineBrite Photon all-terrain vehicles and move out to the beacons in the southwest. I see a familiar face in Shift 1; we shared our flight into camp. He told a story of the stolen car that he’d accidentally driven into a off-duty cop picnic, and his brilliant attempt to pretend he was a male stripper acting as a criminal. He was a funny fellow, quick with wit and sharp with his tongue. He’s hauling a wire as thick as his torso, and his white jumpsuit is made nearly transparent with sweat. He falters and falls, stands again only to fall again.

My right hand grabs the back of his suit and my left grabs a loop on the wire. I sit him up and hand him the apple I stole from the rookie earlier. I urge him to take a bite, eating will keep him awake. He’s passing out sitting there, and I take his Lightbringer and pop out its stand to set it up right in front of him. The flashlight beams directly onto his face. It tries in vain to keep him awake, keep him in the light.

His head nods forward and he looks peaceful if only for a second. I almost envy him, the serenity in his face. His sunglasses droop on his gaunt face and his eyes are closed, the pupils rapidly moving beneath his eyelids. His body slumps under the weight of it all. I slap him, I hit the emergency taser built into the jumpsuit, he’s unresponsive. It’s coming.

His scream pierces the darkness, and I swear the echo can be heard on the distant hills. His eyes open wide and the Dread shoots through the light like a dagger in the hands of an assassin. It grabs his body by his chest before I can get a beam on it, and drags him deep into the abyssal shadows. Shouts and orders are barked around me while I bend over to pick up the fallen apple. Lightbringers spring to life, shooting thin beams into the looming darkness. He won’t be found, no one is ever found after they enter the Dread’s forest, and I just hope I won’t be moved to Shift 1.

The beacons in the southwest and west proper are repaired, their circuitry improved and bulbs increased in power. The dirt surrounding the beacons is brighter than ever; brighter than I care to see it. The beacons are circled by dead earth, too much light for plant growth. We head back to the mess hall. The food is surprisingly good here. I guess they want us to have something to look forward to so that we don’t all run into the Dread’s forest without looking back.

A large map flickers on the wall of the cafeteria. We see the two beacons we repaired shining brightly keeping the black at bay. A large rolling banner declaring “Today we saved over a million lives by keeping the Dread at bay! The war is being won by soldiers like you!”

I’m no soldier, I leave for my room. My mail slot opens and I hear my paystub being slid through it. I check the deposit, it reads Sam Marshall, a name that’s not my own, everything is right. I ball it up and toss it into my trashcan next to my desk. My eyes start to lose focus, I bang my shin against my desk leg and the shooting pain keeps me awake. Blood pools beneath my foot from a reopened wound. The red stands in stark contrast to the whiteness of my room. It’s like a pen that accidentally bursts in a white dress shirt. I soak all of the red up in a white towel and throw it in the bin with the paystub. I watch as the piece of paper soaks up my blood and creates a harrowing peak of red.

I reach into the bottle on my desk and pop a few of the innocent, company-issued, purple pills it contains. I unzip my jumpsuit and sit on the lone chair in my room in just my white underwear and my sunglasses. Colors swirl and converge, I smell the iron in the blood that is seeped into the towel, the light vibrates and flickers. I feel the tendrils of the narcotics easing themselves into the cracks of my brain. I look down at my hands and watch as they dip slowly in and out of the light. My hands are covered in blood, and at my feet is the body of a man. His ID reads Timothy Marshall, a name I was not assigned to know, and my body goes numb as I feel the red and blue lights scream towards me; reaching out to grab me and pull me into the light. He was no one, he was innocent.

A knock on my door snaps me alert, and I look at the timer on my wall. We don’t get clocks because of the association of time with sleep. The timer just ticks down the minutes until we get thrust out into the light. The timer reads 00:05:36, and I pull up my jumpsuit. No time to shave my head and no time for breakfast. My jumpsuit’s leg is soaked in blood, and I’ll undoubtedly get pulled aside by my commander. I get to the wall and meet up with my unit; my commander corners me and makes sure that I understand just how important keeping a neat uniform is in the war against the Dread. I’m just happy it wasn’t about being moved to Shift 1.

I nod, and then flick him the bird as he walks away. Today’s patrol is the usual. We attempt to push back the Dread with our Lightbringers in order to install a new beacon, one farther out. We succeed, and there are thoughts of getting an hour of sleep in before we awake in a horror. This is all so that those behind us can enjoy their little slice of whatever paradise they’ve constructed. The Dread gets us so they can sleep at night with the lights off.

The shift ends and I eat with my patrol. Some talk about the outside world filters in and out of consciousness. I just need to finally get some sleep. As Shift 2 returns to the barracks we find that we’ve been reissued our beds, and the light was made a fraction less intense. I collapse and find sleep like the embrace of a long gone lover. Screams are heard; created by phantom Dread. The light outside is too intense, our parameter too thick to penetrate, but the Dread within cripples. The yard-facing wall is a chorus of moans and screams of bodies who so want to find sanctuary in the unconscious, but are only greeted with terror and dread.  

I get up out of bed exactly thirty minutes before my shift starts. I eat breakfast. I go to the armory. I meet up at the wall. I’m assigned Shift 1.

Extra work, extra patrol time, all the extra got shuffled onto Shift 1. People crack under Shift 1 in a matter of days. If a beacon goes down they call in Shift 1 and watch as we try ineffectively to hold off the darkness with only our Lightbringers while one of us repairs the downed beacon. If a light burns out on the wall we must repair it before the darkness finds the hole; an impossible task. We must preserve the boundary between light and dark, equally impossible.

I hear uncharacteristic shouts and directions that break the incessant buzz of the lamps overhead. The guy that had been melting down for the past few days had finally hit critical mass. He’s also been assigned Shift 1 to replace a suicide. He’s waving his flashlight around like a club and screaming at people to just let him go back to prison. If he goes too nuts he could knock someone out or knock down a light. People are scared to approach him, scared to be forcefully pulled into unconsciousness so close to the Dread, but he must be stopped, contained. We can’t have everything we’ve worked for, all we’ve sacrificed, be brought down by some kid who can’t go a few days without sleep.

A deep, warm breath fills my lungs. Dust hangs and dances in long swirls, almost animate in the way it moves. It’s too small to make shadows, too small to make any difference. I wish I was dust. I drop my Lightbringer and roll up my sleeves to my graying uniform and begin to walk toward the wild eyed man. His sunglasses had fallen off of his skinny face in the turmoil revealing two bloodshot eyes. His pupils are pinpricks it seems his eyes were mostly bright blue iris adding to his horrifying visage. As I approach he brings his Lightbringer around to hold out in front of him attempting to keep some distance between the two of us. He waves it at me as I stand out of his reach.

“This isn’t standard operating procedure for your issued ShineBrite Lightbringer,” I tell him.  

He screams and lunges at me. I catch a lucky break as he slips on the barren dirt beneath his squeaky new boots. He comes crashing down and his improvised weapon skitters out of his reach. The flashlight hardly had time to roll to a stop before the rogue worker was grabbed by a dozen different hands. His hands are bound at his back, and a few of the guys press his jumpsuit’s emergency taser to fuck with him. The commander of Shift 1 yells at them, but makes no real effort to further punish them. After all this guy kept him from his duties as well.
His face is pressed up against the hard, cold metal of the newly installed beacon and he’s being told what is going to happen to him. His rations of purple pills would be halved and his stay on Shift 1 would remain unchanged. He turns to me and smile through bloodied teeth. The corners of his mouth reaching farther than they should, creasing his face into a wicked mask of perverse confidence. His sky blue eyes grow wide and he swings his head full force into the base of the beacon.
It comes. A tentacle of darkness swings from beyond the light’s reach and grabs the unconscious man by the leg. I reach for the flashlight loop on my suit to find that it’s still on the ground where I left it. The other Shift 1 guy that was holding the man swings his Lightbringer around fast; its beam carves fleeting paths into the void beyond the light. I see the bright light in my eyes and then stars, I see stars for the first time since I got out here.
I come to and open my eyes. Are my eyes open? I see nothing, darkness. It’s colder here, but not by much. My eyelids droop and close, so yeah, my eyes were definitely open. It smells like rain, like the mountain trails in places away from the wall and the Dread. I reach again for my absent Lightbringer, and shuffle around to gain my ups and downs. I hear panting, and breathing from my right? I think? I use my hands to probe the ground, cold dew forms around blades that are not of the safety or shaving type. I find something rough, something like...bark? I think it’s bark, from a tree? Trees cause shadows and shadows lead to Dread I think in my trained procedural mind.
The breathing stops, it’s funny that how the absence of a sound can alert you to the sound’s existence. No buzz of the lights, no hum of constant bulbs shining constant beams down on our constant lives. I go too far with my nose leading before my hands. I bang my head against the trunk of a tree and hear scurrying. My body is on alert, I have nothing to defend myself and no ability to judge what I have to defend myself from. My hands ball into pathetic little fists. I plan to punch the darkness into submission.
It’s gone. I relax and work to consciously unclench every muscle in my body. Probably just a squirrel. A squirrel, something I haven’t thought of in years. I push my face against the bark again, but this time in a much more gentle manner. I breath deep the wood, I breath deep the grass and the dew and the squirrels. Without the lights blinding all of my other senses I find that everything is deeper in sensation. I take off my company-issued boots and my company-issued jumpsuit and roll in the grass in nothing but my white underwear and sunglasses. The grass tickles my bare skin and I hear the rustling of fallen leafs beneath me. I drift to sleep again. I hear no screams in the darkness, and I dream of nothing but black.
Familiar beams shoot into my dark sanctuary and I wake up. There’s no timer to remind me when I have to run into the light again. I hear the unwelcome sounds of human voices probing through my serenity, prying their stupid white fingers into my inner peace. The darkness runs and hides from the destructive light, I’m blinded and frozen in my shock. An arm grabs me, enveloping my entire forearm in one massive hand. I’m blind again, but not by black now, but by white. My commander continues to drag me with his entirely normal looking hands. The buzz of the lights consumes me and I struggle to block them out. I smell nothing but dirt and human sweat.
I’m put in a room, not my room, a room that faces the yard. I’m not a rookie. I’m handed a new bright white uniform and a pair of ShineBrite MirrorForce sunglasses with the tags still on. The buzzing of the lights around me is rising to a roar. I run my hands over my scalp to comfort myself. The hair is course and thick. It itches like a thousand mites crawling over my skin trying to find a pore they can burrow in. The light is raining furiously blows down on me and I can’t lift my head up. I’m stuck staring at the ground, staring at nothing but my pathetic little puddle of a shadow. My shadow is my sanity and it’s far too small. I want to tuck myself into ball and fall into the hole that my shadow has created in the middle of my white room.
The lights from the yard seem to be even brighter than those in my room and seem to be shining directly on me no matter where I am in my room. The buzzing is louder and louder and I want it to stop. The smells of this human-created hell overwhelm me. Everything smells sanitized and white. The timer peers down on me, dictating what I do, controlling my life. The mirror in this room is on the opposite wall as the window. I look into it, all I see is the outline of my head surrounded by a bright white light. My fingers sink deep into my eye sockets. They give way with relative ease. Pain is nothing compared to the constant suffering I endure in the light. I’m holding two small gelatinous orbs in my hand, and they drop to the floor. They make a satisfying squishing sound as my bare feet grind them into the white floors. I can still feel the light, I can still feel the binds of this place, I still smell nothing but blank.

My pathetic balled fist strikes the mirror hard, and I feel as it shatters to the floor. I find a suitable piece, one that fits my hand. I run it over my scalp, trying to get rid of the horrible itching. Blood runs down my face chasing the trails of bloody tears. I can hear screams in a different room. Someone must have tried to sleep with the Dread so near. There’s a knock on my door.