She looked at me with tears mixed with anger and pity in her eyes, and then she grabbed off my desk and thrust under my nose the pad of paper and pen.
She growled, “for you friend!”
Reluctantly I began to write:
Jolly Polligog was my friend...
“God!” I cried, “What a load of crap! Sorry. Let me try again... Here we go.”
Jolly Polligog was someone I knew....
“Ugh! Why is this so hard? It always comes out false.” I stalled.
“Sounds like your guilt,” she cut. I could see it in her eyes, I was not convincing her.
“Okay,” I said, as I tried to bring pen to paper again.
Jolly and I worked together at Flatline Medical Supply, third party billing. Jolly seemed to be the type who climbed out of bed and right into a ray of sun shine, even on rainy days. I never talked to Jolly, asked how the day was going. I never asked about a favorite color, or the folks. I never reached across the aisle to make form out of mist.
“There.” I said, meekly. “Is that enough?” I asked her, as I placed the pen on the pad and slid them both across my desk toward her hand.
----
I was running late, no caffeine, no breakfast. Just one of those days, I guess. Before I could even sit down, wake up for the day, a face appeared just outside my cubicle. In my eye contact, the face floated directly into my face. Actually, all I remember seeing was two piercing eyes nested under one continuous caterpillar of an eyebrow and the white picket fence of a forced smile. In my ears I remembered hearing a tap of pen upon pad of paper, which together, made a rapping sound on my desktop.
"Can I help you, Jolly?"
"Please, the darkness comes,” said a quiet, but earnest voice. “It's coming to collect me. Please, before it is too late."
"Wow, Jolly. Did the sun go dark in your world?"
"Yes. Umm, at least, I think it did. Please."
I felt trapped, the stupid rabbit falling for the cartoon box trap. I tried to deflect the situation away from me. "I don't know what you are asking, Jolly."
“Please!” said the urgent voice.
I said nothing; for I really did not know what to say. I saw Jolly melted a little in the pause. In his melting, I eyed an escape route.
"Look, I sense that you're not quite yourself. Let's grab some coffee, and everything will be okay."
“Please.”
I slid past Jolly as he pushed closer with the pad and pen. I made a beeline straight into the break room where the hot mud called coffee waited. Of course, in that office where we worked, the coffee was more like hot tar. Jolly remained at my desk, frozen like a deer in the headlights. He did not come into the break room with me. I poured a cup of Le Brea Tarpits, inhaled a couple of sinus fulls of acrid steam. And then I counted to three, after which, I went back to my work box. Jolly had taken his pad and pen and left; so, I collapsed in my chair to disappear into my daily routine. I dug under a pile of paperwork to find an ocean of daydreams.
It was the end of the day before I saw Jolly again. Jolly and all of my co-workers were leaving for home, fleeing the scene of an awful crime. Jolly passed my space. As he did, I could have sworn that he blinked like a fluorescent light with a bad ballast. Out of the corner of my eye, a human being vanished and reappeared in the tick of the second hand of an analog watch. I thought for a second. This could not have been, for I had basically been asleep for the day. One of my daydreams playing a trick on me. It was not possible that Jolly Polligog could “blink” in and out of existence. So, I went home, locked the door, popped something into the microwave, and messed with Facebook, all before crashing on the couch. This was pretty much the routine for one week: go home, lock apartment door, nuke something, Facebook, crash. And then get up, throw yourself into work, Jolly.
That week mushed into the next with the routine pretty well set. However, I kept crashing on the couch, and by week two, my neck started to whine. It’s funny how the droning of late night television can cause a person’s body to stay in an upright position while their head tries to nest in the space on the cushion next to their lap. A couple of times, I lost my eyeglasses in a tangle of blankets that would end up between the couch cushion. I had to see my optician a couple of times, as the glasses seemed more pretzel than eyepiece. I suppose it was the fact that he knew me too well that he never ask what happened.
Of course, with such a week, the trustworthy car decided to repay my marked apathy to its well being with its own apathy to start and get me where I needed to go. So, I chose to enjoy the city’s finest of public transportation. That was where an old man of loose fitting clothes used my shoulder as a pillow and snored into my ear. It was a great beat box to the person yelling into their cell phone about what an asshole their parents were. I hope that one can see how I became a shaken soda pop can ready to spray upon everyone in the office at a moments notice on this one particular day. It just so happened that Jolly “opened” me with his unibrow and stilted smile. Jolly stuck to the side of my cubicle like Spider-Man on this morning.
"Just a sentence...a word. Please. The darkness—"
"For the love of God! What is wrong with you! This is weird, even for you! Go away! I am very busy, right now. Things to do!" I shouted at the beleaguered little guy.
The entire office stopped working and was out of their cubicle chairs, staring.
“Don’t you folks have crap to do!” I snarled at them all.
Jolly grabbed the writing utensils, face aimed low, looking slightly erased, and disappeared. Everyone else slowly sank back into their chairs. You could tell everyone was talking, but it eventually the office went back to working. I placed earbuds into my ears, turned on my MP3 player, and disappeared into the background music of my zombie state.
Five o'clock came like a snail, but once it came, everyone bolted, catapulted out the front door. Jolly was unlucky enough to trickle past my office enclosure. Like I would swear had happened before, Jolly blinked like that bad fluorescent light. It jolted me back into the present. I shut off my MP3 player. I felt compelled to catch up with Jolly, so I gathered my things with great haste.
By the time I caught up with Jolly, Jolly was in the lobby of the building. I reached out to touch Jolly on the shoulder and got a jolt and pop of static. As I blinked, I realized that I was sitting on the floor. Jolly stopped as the last of the great stampede escaped, leaving just Jolly and I alone in the building. Jolly simply sighed as he faced the front door, never turning back to look at me sitting on the tile.
"I'm not sure if I will be in tomorrow. The darkness knocks on my door. All I wanted: just one word."
"Look, I’m sorry,” I tried to apologize. “I was—“
“Being a prick?” finished Jolly.
“Um...okay. You got me. A prick, but I didn’t mean—“ I tried to explain away the growing guilt.
"One whole week. I tried," Jolly intoned.
"I know. You know how life is--"
"Too late. I tried to get anyone, but..."
With renewed vigor, I cajoled, “Hey, it’s not too late. Where's your pad? I got a pen."
As I sat on the floor of the lobby, padding my suit jacket pockets for a pen, there was a zap and a pop. When I looked up, Jolly was gone. Only a pulling, stretching, disappearing wisp of smoke faded where Jolly once stood. Nothing more. I sat in that position on the floor, staring into the space where Jolly stood, until an evening janitor entered the scene, banging and sloshing his mop bucket and jangling his keys. He stopped whistling when he noticed me on the floor.
“Just admiring the door over there. Don’t mind me.”
The janitor looked as if he was going to call the police about the crazy guy on the floor. Fortunately, he let me leave the building in peace, if that is what it was. I did not take public transportation; I walked the entire restless distance by myself, not minding the menacing shadows along the way. I absently locked the door to my apartment, and left everything that I carried from work next to the front door. I buried myself deep under a blanket layer that occupied the couch. There was no food, no Facebook on that night. I simply fed myself dark dreams of angry electrical storms, of pen and pad. And then I kept reliving that very moment when I touched Jolly and got zapped on to my ass on the floor. Over and over, nanosecond after nanosecond in painful slow-motion: a living, sentient, roiling, black, and ominous cumulonimbus, then Jolly facing away from me. And with a touch of his shoulder - Bang! Bolt of Lightning! - Jolly was gone, up in a fading wisp of smoke.
The next morning was hard to face; the sunlight hurt the eyes. There had been no sleep, not really. There would also be no caffeine as the cardboard was bare. I moved slowly, body stiff and sore from tossing and turning, though I did find my bed somewhere in that horrible night. My shoulders were tight, eyes gummed up. And when I got to work, there was no pen or paper on my desk, no eyebrows, no toothy, forced smile. There was no Jolly. I exhaled a sigh which would have offered some small bit of relief, but —
"Please! The darkness comes. It's coming to collect me. Please, before it is too late. Just a sentence...a word."
kept repeating in my head. It was as if Jolly’s voice reached out and squeezed my chest as it grew hard to breathe. I sat hard in my chair, and there I stayed, trying to concentrate on work, no caffeine, no daydreams with relief, just words buzzing, clouds roiling.
A slam of paper, pen, and fist onto my desk brought me back to my cubicle. I blinked for a second before I noticed her standing at the opening of my work box. She had dark hair and deep hazel eyes that cut right through you. She stood there, contemptuous. I noticed the pen and paper sitting on my desk.
“My brother called and told me everything. Now, you have no choice. Write,” she scowled.
I jumped as she picked up the paper and pen and slapped it down in front of me again, as if to jar a word directly out of my head onto the page like an apple from a tree.
“Don’t worry. You will not be the only one,” she added with contempt.
She looked at me with tears mixed with anger and pity in her eyes, and then she grabbed off my desk and thrust under my nose the pad of paper and pen a third time.
She growled, “for you friend!”
Reluctantly I began to write:
Jolly Polligog was my friend...
“God!” I cried, “What a load of crap! Sorry. Let me try again... Here we go.”
Jolly Polligog was someone I knew....
“Ugh! Why is this so hard? It always comes out false.” I stalled.
“Sounds like your guilt,” she cut. I could see it in her eyes, I was not convincing her.
“Okay,” I said, as I tried to bring pen to paper again.
Jolly and I worked together at Flatline Medical Supply, third party billing. Jolly seemed to be the type who climbed out of bed and right into a ray of sun shine, even on rainy days. I never talked to Jolly, asked how the day was going. I never asked about a favorite color, or the folks. I never reached across the aisle to make form out of mist.
“There.” I said, meekly. “Is that enough?” I asked her, as I placed the pen on the pad and slid them both across my desk toward her hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment