A bucket, devoid of any contents, sits before him. It has a sticker on it; a big, interrogative question mark written in ruby-red ink.
The man is emaciated. Veins run like rivers across the tendons of his hands; pulsating, blue blood under the dim, fluorescent light. The length of those two lean forearms are textured with taught muscles, biceps flexed like bursting kegs. A firm grasp is set upon the seat. Teeth chattering. Short cut hair, about ear length, is left unkempt, the front of which is matted against a perspired forehead in v-shaped ends. The eyelids are shut. His body is clothed in a plain and tacky grey sweatshirt and tracksuit pants whose cuffs are crawling up his calves.
A phone begins ringing from the wall behind him.
He ignores it.
There is a metronome on the shelf on the wall, swinging its arm left and right.
He brings his right hand up, curls it into a ball and begins thumping it upon his thigh like a working hammer.
The four melancholy blue walls around are suffocating, especially with the absence of a door. His hammering hastens, and so does the metronome.
Jesus, it’s cold!
The phone on the wall persists, the sound of ringing echoes through the man’s head. He shuts his eyes as he begins recollecting a memory:
The man pressed the side of his face against the cool of the passenger side window as mellow red and yellow lights flew past his vision. His face vibrated against the glass as the wheels beneath the car sped down the highway, which generated a warm hum that filled his ears. He was fighting against languorous eyelids. The radio emitted a downbeat tune which relaxed the man’s muscles and the beat of his heart. Beside him, Jack could relate: driving after midnight and intoxication were a powerful combination. Eventually the driver began driving the roads of the back of his eyelids, hearing the colors and seeing the sounds of alto saxophones, double basses and trumpets. The hood of the car is smashed violently —
He gasps, eyes wide open as he is shaken awake from the trance. His fist had stopped on his lap. Heartbeat triphammering. It was as if something had managed to crawl out from the depths of his subconscious, something forgotten. A part of his mind adamantly dissents, confusing him. He starts again the hammering, eyelids closing, breath stabilizing to a meditative tempo.
The pencil had a rough top. The page of gridded paper is met with the friction of an eraser; a blow that disperses the rubber shavings. There have been many attempts at this: the rubbing, the scribbling and the puzzling mathematics question. The man, a young man in this scene, sees, without looking, a girl, Julia, with velvet black hair, tied up in a bunch that sat just above her nape; a white blouse hanging on a slender frame; eyeliner, drawn brows and the slightest indication of salmon lipstick decorating a face in contemplation and a pencil deposited in the chink of the top and bottom teeth. He whispers the answer loud enough for the girl to hear; soft enough so that the wizened professor in the chair in front could continue reading, unperturbed. A smile of what seems like embarrassment lifts her, the girl’s, cheekbones, an eyeroll of disbelief at her ignorance and she jots something down. She shoots the man a brief glance, the residual smile expressing gratitude. With eyes on the sheet, he rises and begins walking to hand up in his exam sheet.
Thump!
The man jumps and realizes the drool on the floor beside him: he has ended up laid on his side on the concrete ground. He lifts himself off the ground and sits back on the chair.
Eyes, hammer, breath.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Archer’s ears prickled from the chill of a late autumn’s zephyr. Rosy cheeks that highlighted a smile stretching from ear to ear. Fists are buried in the pockets of a large, slightly oversized, yellow-orange puffer jacket with a fur-rimmed hood. Light grey moccasins gently depressed the bed of fiery red leaves. His breath escaped him in a stream of condensation which usually indicated a temperature of ten degrees, give or take. He hears the grumble of a car engines as a traffic light turns green, a son recounting his day at school to his affable mother as they crossed the road: Archer has come out of the park and back into the afternoon of a quiet suburb. A buzz comes from the square bulge in his left jean pocket. Bringing the phone out in one casual swoop — an action so frequently repeated it has become second nature — he notices a text message from his uncle Lawrence:
your mother passed last night. an overdose from sleeping pills, the investigators are guessing. really sorry bud
Everything seems to come back to him again as the man shivers from the chill of the room. His mind rifles through memories: walking to school for the first time, terrified, trying to pick out the correct vegetables from a grocery store, being pushed on a swing in the new playground. He remembers hating whenever he was moving home and had to lug the massive boxes of meticulously patterned china and luxurious German cuckoo clocks. But sometimes, like the time he aced the algebra test, he would find in his grasp a cone-full of chocolate ice cream.
The man recollects of when he was bathed in forty-degree heat, skin ready to peel off his back, when eventually his body would be submerged in the cool water of the pool. Then came three subsequent splashes. He could sink down onto the tiled floor, feel its smooth texture on his wrinkled fingertips. Sinking, sinking. Like the sun at the horizon of a beach off in the middle of nowhere, with nothing around but the cawing of gulls and surge, crash and spitting of salty waves at the waterline. Feet nestled in the warm sand, head resting as the voice of someone familiar, albeit forgotten, chatters away about this very beautiful moment, how when they have kids they would recount all their experiences in this unexpected, crazy world.
The man opens his eyes. He wipes his cheeks with the back of his hand and blinks hard, twice.
There is a door ahead of him.
He rises and eyes the bucket in front of him, the calling of the phone on the wall is as loud as ever, beckoning him to answer it.
Archie steps over the bucket, missing it by a millimeter, and heads out the door in front of him.
The room is left alone.
But, as we all know, that’s okay: everybody gets lonely once in a while.
