Cocayne

Cocayne was on his mind. Last year, he never would have vowed to stop; it was his thing, it was what defined him. Now it was a new year, though, and he had resolved, “Never again.” His wife, his life depended on it. He braced against the cold wind and stinging flurries as he shuffled to his car. He couldn’t stop thinking of Cocayne.

Jana Stoner loves Jill Cocayne.

Jokes swirled in his head from the vast combination of names he came across while filtering spreadsheets at his go-nowhere job. Some jokes didn’t land with certain people. His wife was deadpan when he referred to famous Nazis. It wasn’t his fault that she hadn’t taken to watching the History Channel late into the night most of last year. If she had, she would know that his name jokes were funny: Kurt Rommell is no Desert Fox, and Larry Goering is the new Heinrich Himmler. But there were others that she should have liked. Ronald Lies about his size. Jerry Fuchs like a machine all night long. Bill Suckow is into bestiality. Sherry Below, Shane on top. But his wife didn’t like those jests, either. Fine, then. An attempt at dad jokes should have done the trick: Matt Bouillion is worth his weight in gold. Yet we’re unsure if Brennan Bartlett is pear-shaped or if Erik Vlasek likes pickles. What must be certain is that Stewart Boss always tells people what to do. You could never take Richard Tesar seriously. He thought she smiled at that last one. But then he took it too far by saying, “If only Richard’s last name were Tayser, then he could be seen as anything but a joker; men would cover their crotches upon learning his shocking name.”

He finished scraping frost from the windshield, chuckled to himself not a little insanely and not a little nervously as he sat and waited for the car to warm up for his 40-minute commute; it was the first time he was expected back in the office after nine months of remote work, and six inches of snow had fallen over night. His supervisor wouldn’t have cared if he decided to work from home one more day. But something pulled him along. He blared a metal band known for its lyrics that could be summed up, “Do one thing a day that scares you.” That one thing was making it down the slippery hill without sliding into the busy cross street and dying a charred piece of meat sprinkled with ashen snow. The rest of the journey would be easy, right?

He was an idiot, and he knew it. And so did his wife. She had yelled at him, “Making jokes out of people’s names is juvenile.” But didn’t she understand that this childish activity was how he made it through his tedious days? The monotony of life was bad enough before the lockdown. So when he tried out his material on her after dinner every night (two-drink minimum), he expected at least placating groans. Her job, after all, was exceedingly stressful during those trying months of global crisis. So he thought his funnies were doing her a favor. But she really did hate his habit of making jokes; and finally they had a big fight about it on New Year’s Eve (five-drink minimum). It was Cocayne that did it. Hence, the new resolution.

Easing back out of the driveway, his wheels spun. When they caught, he quickly threw it in drive. Music blasting, he gripped the steering wheel and gritted his teeth against rising anxiety. “Jana Stoner loves Jill Cocayne,” he said out loud. His wife would never know, so he said it again and again in a controlled careen down the slope. Near the bottom of the hill, the wheels locked up. He pumped the brakes and the car skated sideways; had the nose poked into the cross street, a giant snowplow would have pushed his car into a retaining wall. Having escaped certain death, he pumped his fist and shouted once more, “Jana Stoner loves Jill Cocayne” in time with the song’s refrain. Then he composed himself, told himself that was the last of the Cocayne, and merged onto the busy road.

He was certainly an idiot; no argument there. A moron, really. But he was observant enough to know that unfortunate family names were worse than bad reputations. Names stuck to you like Barry White on Donna Rice, while reputations could be controlled. He had, after all, gotten to middle age with a good name only because he had moved 37 times in his adult life; he had intuited over the years that a good name is easier to defend if you keep your distance from your family and friends, only post pictures of your dog on social media, and make the occasional well-timed phone call. In that sense, it was easy to keep his good name intact throughout the socially-distanced lockdown. But none of that mattered because, after all the time stuck at home with him, his wife was sick of his jokes, of him. His benign humor from last spring had metastasized to Stage 3 idiocy. It was clear that the best treatment was to keep to himself, stare for eight hours into infinite spreadsheet cells, and endlessly watch of The Office while making all the meals, folding laundry, and cleaning the dinner dishes.

In the few days since he stopped telling the jokes (to other people, at least), the pit in his stomach felt ulcerous. Media influencers, his wife, and people with helping-profession jobs suggested the best coping mechanism was mindfulness practice; “Be present,” they said. “Sit with your emotions and let them pass rather than running from them.” He had no idea what that meant and now he was expected to go cold turkey. Telling stupid, immature, offensive, name-based jokes to a captive cohabitating audience had gotten him through those long tough days. But he had to stop. Otherwise, his marriage might disintegrate; the one person who barely put up with him even under the most normal circumstances would be gone. Surviving civil unrest, disease, and a malfunctioning government would be the least of his worries if she left him.

So he turned off the music, made note of the engine humming through its cycles, and discovered how cold his ass was because he had forgotten to turn on the seat heater. The tight, ever-present knot in his stomach became warm as it loosened. “This must be what it is to be present,” he thought to himself. “I’ve gotta chase this feeling.” He smiled and felt his clenched jaw loosen.

As he drove over the bridge, a large bird caught his eye as it swooped low over the frozen river. Then he saw dozens more bald eagles jump from their perches high above the bank and scream toward him. A car blared its horn at him; he had come to a stop in the middle of the span. He jammed his foot on the gas pedal, spinning his wheels. Lurching forward and into the downtown streets, he saw thousands of people dressed in tattered clothes surging down the sidewalks. Never had he seen so many homeless folks; he only had seen one or two when he went to the grocery just yesterday. They gathered around his car asking for money. The light turned green, and again he spun his wheels into a staggering acceleration.

Traffic was sluggish in the fresh snow, and he inched closer to the freeway entrance. A siren wailed, and his eyes darted to his mirrors to see where it was coming from. Behind him, an ambulance was attempting to turn from a side street into the throngs of jammed cars. Now he put on his blinker and attempted to creep into the next lane over, but there was nowhere for him to go. Looking in his rearview mirror, horror struck him as the ambulance had multiplied into dozens of ambulances, firetrucks, and police cars blasting their horns over their howling sirens. The light turned green again and he struggled forward and off to the side to make way.

Finally, he made it to the on-ramp. There were sirens again, but there were no emergency vehicles in sight. And just as he was about to enter the freeway, he glanced to the hospital parking lot; hundreds of bodies were stacked up five deep, a dusting of snow slowly burying them. He screamed in his head, “What the hell is happening? If this is being present, I don’t want it anymore!” He thought he was going to vomit, yet somehow he willed it not to happen; his jaw was locked again and he didn’t want to puke through his nose.

On the freeway, the carnage was absolute. Cars were spun out, crashed into cement dividers, and several were on fire. He imagined he heard the snow sizzling as it landed on the hot metal. All the exits were blocked with wrecked vehicles, so he had to drive on. As he made his way around the debris and slowly out of town, buildings and houses gave way to farmland. The going was slow; as he searched for a clear off-ramp, he still had to maneuver around the broken cars and trucks.

Then he could go no further. The road was completely blocked. And out in the snowy field, a horde of tattered shapes stumbled behind a small group of running women. The women stopped, turned, shot a few rounds from their rifles, and ran away again. They came to a river’s edge, crusty with snow. All of them bolted at the same time onto the ice. And all of them broke through into the frigid water beneath. None of them resurfaced.

He stared through his windshield at the back of his wife’s car, terror on his face, the metal band squalling. His wife banged on his window and asked if he was alright, if he was going to work, if he could move his car so she herself could get to work.

He opened his door and said, “Maybe the joke is too risqué. Maybe it would be better if I said, ‘Jana Stoner loves Jack Cocayne.’”