part II of my fiction writing. sorry it is not my turn. someone tell me if i should continue this piece.

J was at a loss. He had been searching the 2002 world almanac for hours to no avail. There have to be answers here, I know it J thought but his outward expression of this thought was the word fuck. His phone should have been ringing all morning long but it was not. J had not paid his bills, and this was the least of his concerns. J plucked hairs from his beard one by one noting with each strand the singular impulse of pain and numbness that seemed so intertwined that he might never separate it into two parts. He was memorizing numbers now: population of Missouri 5,595,211, most deaths in a Scottish train wreck 227, total refugees in the world 14,544,000. Beads of sweat glistened on J’s wrinkled forehead and every so often one fell carelessly to the page below threatening to erase a mass of people from the books of history altogether. Jonathan sat on the mini fridge looking at J with his usual face. This would have been consoling to J if he were reading a dictionary and could identify console or consolation as words that meant something tangible. J was reading an almanac though. Light blurred into the peeling paint of the bare apartment walls and lulled J into a feverish sleep.

Bertha was angry, very angry. “Carl” where is your dumbass friend J” she asked in more of a growl than a human utterance. Karl knowing that she had in fact pronounced his name with a c and not the k as it should have been said nothing. She could at least know my name Karl thought as he scraped the burnt cheese off of a pan that had been brought to him by another employee whose name also had several variations. Karl was a reasonable man. He reasoned that J was not going to come back to work anytime soon and also that he himself should probably consider a similar course of action. For all his death metal exterior gruffness though Karl was really a scared malleable man. He scraped his knuckle on a rough edge of the counter and kept scrubbing the pan as his blood mixed with sudsy water in the sink below.

What the streets don’t tell you is that the steam that rises off the blacktop after a summer shower is really the souls of all the downtrodden men who have walked on that surface at one time or another. What they do tell you is to keep moving, to keep your eyes directly ahead lest you see an alley in your periphery that leads to a different outcome. J was walking the streets and he was looking, his head was spinning. J saw a man in a fine suit, a real nice suit. “What kind of job they got you doing where you wear such a fancy suit” J asked the man. “I am a stockbroker” replied the man somewhat annoyed at J’s directness. “Oh you are like Will Smith then,” J said “in that movie where he sleeps in the subway bathroom and cries”. With a look of contempt and a quick adjustment of his tie the suit walked away at a pace such that any person passing by at that time would know innately that this man was important by his gait alone. J felt nothing about this interaction except that time was definitely different after the encounter was done than it could have been before. J asked a street vendor who was nearby for the time just to verify his suspicion. “Eh man, I saw you mess up that guy’s day man and I got to say thank you” the street vendor said. “He comes by here every day smirking up his face and acting like he is better than me just cause he wears a suit that costs more money than it’s worth”. I am a hero J thought and felt unchanged by this realization. “How much is that hat” J asked pointing to a red hat with earflaps covered in faux-fur. “For you, twenty dollars” the street vendor said. J looked at the laminated paper with prices that was hanging on a post nearby and saw that the price read: HATS $20. J gave the man his last twenty dollars and put the hat on. “Pleasure doing business with you sir” the street vendor said. “Your price sheet is peeling in the corner” J said pointing to the sheet which did in fact have a corner where the laminate was separating. The man looked at his sheet and then back at J. J walked on, the street was still for too long and so he was compelled to move. The city was small enough that you could walk on its streets without getting lost too easily but this was no consolation for the already lost. As J was walking he ran into Karl. “Hey Karl” J said and kept walking. “J, are you ok Bertha has been flipping out at work all week. She said if you don’t come in tomorrow you are gone for good and even if you do you are on probation” Karl said very earnestly. J stopped and turned around to face Karl. “Karl, what exactly happens on probation? I mean do they lower my pay from 5.50 and hour to 5.15 or do I have to wear a special colored uniform like they make the mentally handicapped wear or what?” Karl didn’t know how to answer that and so J turned around again and kept walking. After awhile J began to feel like someone was following him and he looked back. There Karl was matching him stride for stride and so J stopped again to see what more he must do to appease this man. Karl walked up to J with tears in his eyes and he hugged him. J was confused. His head was still swimming with numbers and he was lost. He began to walk again and this time Karl walked beside him. They were a regular modern day Don Quixote and Sancho Panza those two minus the donkey and the ambition--minus the donkey and the ambition.

Jonathan was meowing as loud as he could. It was a rainy day and the sun had not come up. On days like this Jonathan would dig in the trash and find what he could to tide him over until J woke up. He had already licked all the aluminum crisp pockets clean and picked the little Debbie wrappers apart. J opened one eye and saw an orange and white blur. PANICK! “Oh shit I’m in space, I’m in space and I can see fucking Jupiter” J said rapidly. Then he smelled shit and snapped out of it. Shit cannot exist in space because space is too awesome to be contaminated with such trivial pieces of matter J reasoned as his vision cleared and he recognized his cat’s ass in his face. J had forgotten about Earth. “Well Jonathan, lets get some breakfast” J said. “Meow-wow” Jonathan replied. J looked through his plastic cupboard and found that all was left was the cat food. The two ate and lay themselves down on the cool tile floor near the door. In this way they passed the whole day.