Perfetc.

“It was a perfect day.” For a nanosecond, I think it’s an auditory hallucination.

Part of the blood on his face, his arms, the Jimi Hendrix tee, is his. Only people with tubes and pipettes and machines will be able to distinguish that that isn’t.

The blood on my fingers, my “Keep The Immigrants/Deport the Racists” tee, is of the same composition, though as the minutes pass, the blend richens with fresh arterial. My skin is unbroken, but whatever perfection he found in this day is now draining onto the sidewalk and soaking through my shirt.

**

Not a breakfast guy. Cheerios, leftover pizza if I got it, maybe a McMuffin and one of those shitty hashbrown cakes if I’m just freaking starving. They oughtta just give you fries – they got such a great thing going with those fries, but all they got at breakfast is this greasy shredded potato cake thing.

Like I said, I’m not a breakfast guy. But I wake up this morning, and I’m a breakfast guy. Eggs and bacon and, dude, some fried potatoes. 

There’s this place right down the block, Arabs or Greeks or something own it, and everybody says you gotta try this Greek omelet they got. So, I guess come to think of it they gotta be Greeks, right? So I get this famous Greek omelet, and it’s got onions and a ton of this feta cheese and gyro meat like in those big greasy sandwiches. The eggs are fluffy, and it’s like just the right amount of meat and cheese and not too many onions to ruin things. The toast, they got it just right, where it’s crispy on the outside but soft inside. And the potatoes, Jesus. American fries, that’s what they call them. And God bless America, this morning anyway.

Mom used to make us fried potatoes on a Saturday morning. Not that hashbrown shit –sliced up, some thin and some a little thicker and some a little thinner. Crispy, soft, almost crunchy, almost melt-in-your-mouth with every bite. There used to be a dogfood commercial, they called it “crun-chewy.” Remember that commercial? Oh, yeah, man, the bacon grease. Grandma kept big jars in the kitchen, just for the potatoes. Mom used vegetable oil – she said all that bacon grease would clog up our insides and kill us, even though Grandma died at like 95 and then only ‘cause she fell down the porch steps.

The point is, it’s perfect. How’s that even happen? I mean, you can get a GOOD breakfast – the eggs are soft and buttery and nice, but the inside’s not cooked through, or the cheese is all melty, but the eggs all dry and rubbery. Maybe they didn’t get the toast anywhere near the heat, or it’s like a charcoal what do they call it? Yeah, briquette. And this place, I mean, you could kinda feel the sticky on the table – there’s like straw papers in the corner of the booth they missed the night before. But somehow, they’re doing magic back there. The perfect breakfast.

**

I can hear sirens, but then again, the church is about two blocks from the city complex and the jail, which correspondingly are within five blocks of every downtown bar and club. They doppler off presumably down Center, where there’s always a high potential for mayhem even on a Wednesday night. My meeting notes are by now drifting somewhere through the downtown or the plasma-for-money lot to the west.

Jim’s back from the hellish sidewalk collage of plastic and wood and wires and blood, with a single neutral twitch of the head. He settles a couple feet from me and the damaged man in the Hendrix shirt, on the short brick wall encircling a granite slab engraved with cross and a chalice and the legend Millington First Christian Church Est. 1867. The Rev’s fingers are clasped between his knees, in an attitude somewhere between patience and prayer. It’s where he lives. Mine are clawed and scarlet and glistening in the parking lot glow. 

**

And the day – THE DAY -- is perfect. You know what they say about Illinois weather. I step outside the Greek’s place, and it’s like the three bears, well, the little bear, the baby one. Or was it the mom? Not too cool, not too hot, just right. The sky’s like a movie or something, almost TOO blue, like special effects, CGI.

So there’s gotta be a catch. Well, you KNOW there’s a catch. It’s just a matter what comes up. Like Wheel of Fortune, except there’s no car or cruise or bonus turn or even 600 bucks to keep you in the game, just lose a turn or bankrupt or the transmission goes out or diabetes or fucking cancer or a bus outta nowhere takes you outta existence. 

At least I know today’s catch. 

**

But there isn’t one. 

They call while I’m on the Blue Line to the Mall. Well, what was left of it. The Bergner’s where I used to stock shoes, the Ward’s where Mom could get crappy cheap pants my size, the Penney’s where Grandma got her hair done with that nasty chemical shit, the Sears where Dad hauled me on a Saturday to look at tools he’d never let me use even if the planet fell off its axis. All gone now – every September, they fill the ritzy-shitzy Macy’s with masks and monster fangs and fake swords and Harry Potter wands and phony blood, but only Penney’s got a permanent makeover. Fitness City: “No Blame, No Shame – The Gym Where We Know Your Name.” Sure, whatever.

Oh, yeah, my lucky spin. My breakfast streak’s still going – the Blue was empty except me. No side eyes, nobody scooting away like I got the COVID, no psychos mumbling to themselves or me or the college kids who aren’t fucking smart enough to just keep their heads down and just make it all worse. So, anyway, it’s the same guy I talked to last week, guy who must have taken the company orientation class eight times or 100, so I’m thinking the wheel’s going to come up Lose a Turn. 

But today, I spin the wheel, and somehow, Pat slipped a new slice between Bankrupt and Go Fuck Yourself. The people thing isn’t as big a deal as it was last Thursday, which tells me those “people people” they were so hot on hiring aren’t crawling out of the woodwork. Or at least not for that kind of money. And why was that such a deal-breaker, anyway, as long as I knew the machines? After Dad ran us off the Center Street overpass, I took a crash course. Crash course LOL. And he says I’m their kind of people. I had to choke back a hearty snort at that one.

So I get off the bus at the Kohl’s stop with a new gig, thanks Pat, which is great because it was the last place in the ghost mall where I could get an alarm clock. One of those ones that sets itself, because otherwise you gotta have an engineering degree to set the thing for a six o’clock wakeup. And a stop at the clearance racks. New job, new look. I mean, a new shirt comes with the new gig, even if health insurance doesn’t, but while the wheel’s turning my way, grab onto the karma, right?

It’s on the second rack in, it’s in my size, and it’s perfect. I mean, Jimi Hendrix was like a hundred years before my time, but Uncle Chet used to play his shit whenever we were over on a Friday night, and it made Dad just lose his shit. Dad said Hendrix was a druggie and something else I’m not going to repeat, and he loved telling me about Grandpa slapping the shit out of Chet for putting the guy’s poster on his bedroom wall. It made Dad smile, and although it hit me as a pretty horrifying story, catching Dad in a happy mood was like getting a perfect plate of American fries or getting the bus to yourself.

It was PERFECT. I think about what Dad would say, or Grandpa. Nothing I’d want to repeat here, I’m sure.

Perfect. I find the men’s room, back in the halls past the manager’s offices like they don’t want you to take a dump in their mall, stuff Yoda in the trash. Jimi fits PERFECT. And while I’m on a roll, I hit the food court over by where the Sears used to be (“I catch your fat ass TOUCHING my wrenches, I’ll kick it into the next township. Hear me, Fatass?”). The steak sandwich place is gone, and the A&W, and the stuffed pretzel place, but the big pizza-by-the-slice chain and the Chinese joint are still holding the fort. Whenever Grandma had me nights Mom was on shift and Dad was playing cards at the Legion or maybe Uncle Chet’s, she’d order us a Domino’s or send me down the street for some eggrolls or chicken wings at the Jade Palace, and we’d watch Wheel before shoving the incriminating evidence in the garbage can outside the back kitchen door.

I have both. The girl at the pizza counter is pissed she has to put down her phone and nuke me a sausage and pepperoni, but at least I don’t get that “Extra parm, Fatass?” look I used to get when the court was packed with something besides Old Navy and Spencer’s and Claire’s and Hallmark and Kohl’s folks with a half-hour to kill and no place else close enough to kill it. The pizza and eggrolls and orange chicken are perfect, better than you’d expect at a ghost mall where most people had even forgot there WAS a food court. I hunch over the table, because Jimi.

The bus pulls up with a hiss right as the Kohl’s door whoosh shut. Don’t let the door hit you, Fatass. Dad never finished his witty warning — told me one time in a sunny mood he wasn’t sure a dozen guys with shovels could find where the Good Lord had split me. Mom never said anything when he was feeling “good” — beyond better me than her, she didn’t like to “enable” me.

If the bus driver notices my wardrobe upgrade, he doesn’t say.

**

A perfect end to a perfect day. One of Sarah’s signature dystopic catchphrases — some Christmas or Valentine’s, I’d get it sewn on a pillow or a life jacket or maybe a Kevlar vest. The bar slides a tick seemingly every day, and somebody’s always poised to sweep the leg again. I’d managed through another day without the Virus stitching into my DNA (knock on wood), the shirt writing any checks my fat ass couldn’t cover, or the Second Amendment shoving its barrel in my face. Now, the shirt is a write-off, the new alternator has wiped out yesterday’s freelance check, another couple defectives have joined the electoral war on democracy, and two different flavors of blood were congealing on me. But all my own O-positive is still IN me, so in the cosmic scheme…

The guy on the sidewalk, not nearly so much. The remnants of his perfect evening are scattered amid his fluids — and now I notice the last dregs of melted strawberry custard seeping from a spattered waxed paper cup, marbling into the arterial flow. One of the last fall days before Carl’s Custard West dropped the shutters and dragged the anthropomorphic vanilla cone into warm storage for the Illinois winter. A coin toss of sorts these days, with Mother Climate in such a chaotically mischievous mood. The neighborhood kids, the battered and disaffected West Side teens, the seniors from the Griffin and Millington Towers downtown, the embedded gentrified normally armored against all of the above, had found their mutual perfect.

He’s at the window ahead of me, juggling his guitar case as he digs for currency. On me, I tell the dead-eyed teen whose shift, or maybe her year, began with her patience already waning. He turns abruptly – in the low 6:45 sun, I catch a glint of metal stapled across his brow and a snake tattoo emerging from his incongruously crisp black tee. The antagonism of space invaded evaporates, and he grins. Not quite the “kid” I’d thought he was -- his smile betrays a few years or so out of the world, but the clarity of expression suggests he’s been back at least as many years.

The girl takes my order and my VISA with something resembling suspicion or maybe resentment, and “Trevor” and “Mike” shrug as she goes about my large double peanut butter. Trevor echoes Sarah’s words without an atom of irony. He and his guitar are headed uptown to plug a coffeehouse slot that unexpectedly came open with the overnight dissolution of the scheduled band. An act of impromptu kindness in the ice cream line is that perfect end to a day of perfect promise.

Now THERE’S a badass, he says suddenly. I track where he’s looking, looking away when the jock in the purple shirt looks back. Yeah, I admitted, he could probably take the both of us. 

No, bro, Trevor laughs -- Hendrix. May I love you away from the evils of today to the dreams of tomorrow, you know heaven has no sorrow. That’s what Jimi said. Got that taped on the back of my Yamaha in case I wanna eff it all up.

He draws a sip of his strawberry, looks to the sky like he’s going to kiss it, and pronounces it perfect. I accept my double peanut butter with an unrequited smile, turn back for the church lot, and tell him to kill it.

Two hours later, I’m truly hoping he did. 

**

“You waited for him,” I suggest as a pair of cop cars finally pull to the curb a few lengths behind Trevor and the shards of tomorrow’s dreams. The guy who’s been bleeding on me the last 10 minutes continues to study the tableau he’d helped create. “I saw you at Carl’s. You waited for him.”

“A perfect day,” he repeats, the second sentence he’s uttered since staggering over to collapse by the Tucson. Trevor got him in the knee with the Yahama case before he took it away and started clubbing the musician. When he spots me, key in hand, my notes dropping from my fingers, I think I’m dead. “I’m thinking, how do you end a perfect day? When I got good grades, Grandma would take me for a vanilla/chocolate twist at Carl’s. Never told my folks – Mom woulda given me a lecture or Grandma shit, and Dad woulda just…well.

“A perfect day. Then I see him, see him see me. I hear him, I hear him laughing. How’d he SEE me?”

Like an auditory hallucination. His or mine, I dunno. I lean in.

“Help me,” I beg. “How in the hell’d he ruin your perfect day?”

The man in the purple shirt turns, regards me in turn with surprise, amusement, contempt.

“He didn’t. YOU did.”