2:15 PM

It wasn’t a fantasy. He had nine minutes to be there. 2:06 PM, EST; it wasn’t real either, no way.

He screwed up his eyes, converting his awakening heaviness to a sudden dread. Anxiety through his veins like refrigerant passing through darkening coils. It couldn’t be, he refused it. This was immediately followed by another array of instinctual thoughts; he couldn’t be that hungover, he couldn’t be. He sat up in bed. He was. The weighted nervousness oozed down from his head like wet sand through an hourglass. He was immediately sweating and sick. He looked at his phone once again as if to deny his circumstances a third instance, the Simon Peter of linear time.

Thoughts, thoughts: “Baby, I think you’re too drunk for this.” He remembered cheap Bed Bath light illuminating a scene in his basically empty studio apartment: a shape, vaguely registered as female, getting off the bed, off of him (both still clothed), a sudden feeling of being freed up from comfortable weight and left with the profoundly empty feeling of non-suffocating aloneness. He pleaded inarticulately for her to return as, powerless, he saw her opening his wallet that he’d thrown on the floor with the piles of clothes and video game cases, in an attempt to remove cash and burn it with the lighter his mother had given him one birthday, the gold one with his initials engraved—for what? What a stupid gesture, burning money in front of a prostitute, Diane, Dina, Demi, Divine, whatever her name was. She’d stopped him and pushed him onto his bed which was merely a stripped, stained mattress—he still hadn’t gotten his laundry from the dryer downstairs! while climbing onto him, attempting to make a hopeless drunk respond to ostensibly steamy behavior. No luck. He felt bad for her, even, as he dragged himself to the bathroom to void the cheapness of last night, in a vain and delusional hope that it would clear his headache and stomach problems and conflagrating heartburn. Somebody’s daughter, sister, some impossibly unfortunate kid’s mother, maybe. She was just doing her job! though that was all the money he had to last him to Friday when his mother got paid and immediately diverted some of her paycheck…which was why he needed this job, which was why he could not be late. 

Quick backstory. His name was, perhaps unfortunately, Elmo Wayne Capricorn. He of course went by Wayne. He was twenty-four years old—born (fittingly) on December 26, and yes his mother got him one gift for both Christmas and his birthday—and there was almost nothing notable about him. He had an ugly, workingman’s face filtered through relative lower-middle-class softness, had earned horrible grades in school, did nothing worthwhile in his spare time—no sports, no clubs, no activities, not even smoking weed and stuffing his face while laughing emptily with the school burnouts—and hadn’t been gainfully employed since his brief stint as a grocery-store bagger which he lost because he “forgot” he was supposed to go in. He had never had a girlfriend, though perhaps as a testament to the infinite…somethingness of women, he’d had several girls interested in him throughout his life, which he had been of course totally oblivious to. In our day and age we’re all possessed by a kind of utopian utilitarian nihilism about people like this, presuming them to have hidden depths, undiscovered talent, something substantial lurking beneath the surface, like a brightly-colored fish swimming under a three-foot layer of ice, and that with metaphorically effective boring equipment we can bring this substance out of them. In this, we both set ourselves up for disappointment and deny these poor and un-few their humanity. In a society where we are only what we do, and how much the body politic likes such actions (hence the utilitarianism I mentioned above) Wayne Capricorn was just one of these people: unremarkable, un-unremarkable (as calling him “unremarkable” would imply there was something present to be judged as worthy or unworthy of remark), unhappy, un-depressed, unemployed (but not even looking for a job so he would never even fall into the corresponding Bureau of Labor category), unmarried, uneducated, unskilled, unlikable and incredibly, incredibly empty-headed. There are such people, and we can usually realize who they are while scarcely looking at them (for we look away quickly, instinctively when this hidden creature appears), and we do our best to avoid thinking about them, ever, and especially not talking about them with anyone else. These are the true untouchables, in a society that’s not supposed to have them.

Almost nothing notable about him. Except one thing. And that was why he had to get to this meeting, today, which speaking of—he had seven minutes until it was officially supposed to start. He began dressing madly, though his head was so heavy it felt like he’d fall over at an unwise move—business casual, was his usual move when accepting a job. “Yes,” he muttered to himself. Words hurt. A simple enunciation sent a lobotomy-blade up his frontal lobe. “I’m accepting a job today.” In fact no such thing was happening, exactly: this was more of a meet-and-greet, a feeling-out, a consult if you will. But he’d read somewhere while scrolling endlessly on his phone (his only other pastime besides getting drunk and hiring prostitutes that he didn’t touch) that you should say what you want to happen out loud. That would cause something to happen with the universal energy or whatever and you would get the outcome you wanted. It actually worked, he knew it did, he had an example: last week in line at the gritty, Formica-table donut shop staffed solely by an old man with no arms, who did everything sitting in a folding chair while using his feet and grunting expressively while doing so—including grabbing customers’ donuts with plastic disposable gloves that he’d somehow managed to fit on them—which understandably coincided with this donut shop’s lack of popularity,  he’d seen that there was only one strawberry jelly left. Strawberry jelly had always been his favorite. He wanted it, wanted it way more than he wanted any other donut; he’d been up all night trying to complete a task for a client, waiting up all night in his car outside the target’s apartment building and only being able to do it while blinking sleep he didn’t get out of his eyes when they came out just past six to head to work. He deserved it. But an old lady, who seemed to be buying enough donuts for her entire nursing home, was in front of him in line, ordering with excruciating slowness and indecision. Wayne gritted his teeth and prayed she wouldn’t choose the strawberry jelly. He watched the old man intently, as with a blank expression, he reached for donuts with one foot, achieving an impossible balancing act with the large box balanced on top of the other foot, reaching beneath the fingerprint-stained glass—plains, chocolates, glazeds, chocolate glazeds, twists, maples, coconuts, but not the strawberry jelly, not yet. Wayne never let his eyes waver from the reaching foot, which, beneath the green glove haphazardly thrown on, seemed to show the beginnings of a toenail infection. The old lady ran on, and Wayne thought of his .22 with the silencer that he’d used last night which like an idiot he’d left in his car. He could still run out—he was parked illegally not far from here—he could still unlock his car, reach in the glovebox, grab his pistol and run back in, whack this unbelievable woman and the shop owner, though he’d regret that because he liked the armless old man, admired his defiant and workmanlike attitude, and there would be no more donuts after this, then grab the strawberry jelly donut and only the strawberry jelly donut and indulge as he ran out, defeat the ever-present misery that he was aware of but not that aware of for a few moments.

Instead, Wayne said out loud, “I’m going to get that strawberry jelly donut.” A little too loud. The old lady, with complete obliviousness, continued talking about her church or bingo group or whatever, but the armless man endured both this witless senior citizen and mentally declining young man without acknowledgement or comment. Wayne had forced a smile, believing this would help his chances. And his heart had nearly leapt for joy when the donut man had said, “Will that be all, ma’am?” and she’d answered in the affirmative. Wayne hadn’t been that happy in weeks, maybe years actually. Of course, once the donut was finished, devoured, he’d been stewing again. But it had worked, the method.

Six minutes, he was half-dressed, and his phone was ringing. His mother. Could he get out of it? It was Wednesday…Wednesday, Friday was in two days, payday was on Friday. He answered the phone while pulling a relatively unstained and unwrinkled polo shirt on.

“Hello?”

“Wayne, where the hell are you?” She coughed, and he could hear the dryness in this cough. It made him angry.

“Mom, are you smoking again? I told you I don’t like when you do that, you’ll get the cancer, can’t you switch over to a vape?” He was tying his shoes—size fourteen though he was a nine; he’d grabbed them from the bargain bin at Ross Dress for Less—and crooked the phone between his aching head and his shoulder.

“I’m not sucking on one of those cherry-flavored flash drives!” she snapped. “When are you getting over here?”

“Where, mom?”

“The house, idiot. It’s already past two.”

“What, mom? I told you, I have a meeting today. I can’t today. Why don’t we do tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? Wayne, are you high? Did your neighbor finally sell you some freebase? Because we’ve talked about this for weeks and now you’re hitting me with”---employing here an exaggerated, throat-deep dumb voice— “‘I have a meeting today.’ ‘I can’t, mom’. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Mom, I really can’t.” Now he was running down the stairs of his tenement, nearly tripping over his own gangly and uncoordinated legs. The meeting was only a few blocks away, at a cafe that he personally considered too expensive—$3 for a cup of coffee?—but whatever to that, because he always, through the limited unspoken social tools he had, made the person considering hiring him (no! Hiring him!) pay for the coffee or tacos or donuts they sometimes discussed business over. Two minutes. Damn! His mother was wasting his time again; did it ever end?

It was early January, going on two-thirty out in this city—a small New England one I won’t name—the sun was almost down already. There were few cars in this neighborhood, fewer people. Wayne ran. He had forgotten his coat and clutched himself as he held the phone. His mother reminded him of the immense disappointment he was causing everyone (i.e., her), while audibly lighting yet another cigarette. 

“This type of thing killed your father, you know.”

“Mom, dad got hit by a drunk driver. Are you lighting another cigarette?” he said, slowing down as he approached the block where this coffee shop sat on the corner. He saw only one person on the thin, rickety outdoor tables which looked more appropriate for a July garden party and which they had for some reason left out even as temperatures barely cracked the twenties the last couple of weeks. An older man sat in front of a to-go coffee cup and a pastry. He remembered the PM, from the Reddit: “I’ll be sitting outside, wearing a blue scarf.” Bingo—an ugly, mental-ward blue scarf, over a long brown trench coat. He clutched himself with black gloved hands.

“Oh come off it, it’s time you knew the truth, he veered straight into oncoming traffic because his mistress was sucking his—”

Oh no, oh no. ONE MINUTE PAST. “Mom, I’ve got to go.” He shut the phone over her yelling and coughing. He crossed the empty street, nodded to the man with the blue scarf and sat down, saying nothing. They locked eyes; this man’s were blue, a darker shade than his scarf though. He looked well-bred, vaguely financial in occupation. Wayne was, for the 9,000,000th time, self-conscious of his double-chin, sunken eyes and unkempt bangs. “Uhhh, are you the guy?” the man with the blue scarf said. “From Reddit?”

Wayne nodded. In the moment, he’d almost forgotten about the night before, now his headache loomed back into prominence like a gas cloud from an advanced nation’s bioweapons program approaching the helpless capital city of a rising dictatorship. He looked down. Why this life, of pulling hits for love rivals and scumbags he met on internet forums, of drinking and wasting hookers’ time, of being beholden to his mother? For the first time in his life, Elmo Wayne Capricorn had achieved something completely new and (by his admittedly subpar standards) quite extraordinary: he had questioned himself. He grinned, not even realizing why he felt happy, just that he did and the man in the scarf grimaced at this for some reason.

The old man gestured to the pastry sitting on a napkin, cold and alone. “I got this for you…if you want it,” he offered in a friendly voice.

Wayne looked down. It was a jelly donut. Strawberry.