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of Down in the Dirt magazine.
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I wasn’t sleeping so well, then but a few restful hours a night. When three days passed with nary a wink I’d all but exhausted my methods of nodding off: counting pugs, spinning ambient records, or thumbing a David Sedaris paperback, the latter a form of torture in autocratic countries.
The television proved an obvious respite. I mistakenly held that peeping insipid infomercials shilling glorified food processors, shark cartilage turned weight loss miracle drug, or real estate secrets divulged in Holiday Inn conference rooms would help me rope in a few hours of solid sack time.
The nascent insomniac knows when a few restless nights morphs into true Insomnia. Once coherent disdain for late night shamming becomes a well-reasoned interior monologue: what if I do want to have guacamole in under a minute; those pills would save me the hassle of wrestling a shark; no one’s Continental breakfast touches Holiday Inn’s, those muffins!
Work was becoming nothing to speak of. Sean, a dopey coworker with a mess of untamed curls was the first to note my despondence. He spoke with a warbling monotone alike the humming whirr of an electric toothbrush.
“Rough night?”
“Not at all, why?”
“Looks like you hit it pretty hard. Get yourself some coffee, something.”
“Check,” I said pointing at a Styrofoam cup.
“Ha, takes some onions to show up like that.”
I ducked into the break room for another cup of Hills Bros, an unpleasant blend akin to spooning dirt into well water. The clock on the wall indicated I’d been at work a mere eight minutes, but that couldn’t be right. Voices from the hall seeped in with weekend accounts of Miller Lite binges and NFL roundups, staple office banter.
On the table was an assortment of donuts, some tasting like Coco Puffs, others like a mixed bag of Otis Spunkmeyers. Employees tore into them like bears at the dump. Free food of any variety whipped workers into a frenzy, mimicking a pack of parched Little Leaguers descending on a cooler of Capri Sun.
Such was the case with Rebie stacking three donuts on a napkin before spying me. She looked like a hefty John Cleese plucked from a Monty Python sketch, only somehow less feminine. Her voice held a booming resonance more suitable for deafening construction sites than Corporate America.
“What’s up kiddo?” she barked.
“Nothing really.”
“You have any donuts, they’re going fast!” she said inhaling a honey glazed for emphasis.
“I already ate, but thanks.”
“Alright kiddo, you’re missing out.”
“Ha, yeah.”
“Well kiddo, glad I could make you laugh!”
In came Carol, the cloying toxins of Dunkin’ Donuts stirring Mama Bear from her cave. She had a sense of smell like a timber wolf and began devouring a pair of chocolate donuts the way a whale attacks plankton. Her closet paid homage to the racks of Dots and Pay/half.
“No one said there were donuts,” she said padding her thighs with a high-calorie offering.
“Guess they figured you were still on a diet.”
“I am, Dr. Phil says I can have a little bit of chocolate. ”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
By the third day, work was torture. My manager approached my cheerless cubicle as I was eyeing the print-off of appointed days off, my sole contribution to the cube’s décor. Her name was Holly, hard as a jawbreaker with Camel Light stains the color of my scuffed Oxfords. She appeared the sort you’d expect to find polluting her gills on a break outside Great Clips or smudging up a skank pole for crumpled singles.
“What do you have going this week?”
“The wheels are in motion, you know, full pipeline.”
“Are you keeping up on your accounts?”
“Ship shape,” I said regrettably.
“John, you seem a little out of it.”
“No, no, just get a little nervous on Wednesdays.”
“Is your computer working ok?” she asked eyeballing a blank screen.
“I have to reboot it, gets a little bogged down,” I said realizing I was still wearing my coat.
At lunch I went for a walk dropping business cards in restaurants’ fishbowls and hoping the cold air off Lake Michigan would breathe life into my exhausted body. Officially my business cards bore the absurdly inflated title Directional Media Consultant, similar to referring to my boyhood paper route as self-contracting. Lunch passed and somehow the day followed suit.
Walking into my apartment I went straight for the refrigerator and fished out a container of leftover salad. It was time to settle into the hay early lest a random drug test greet me come morning. I’d heard grumblings from a clique of female coworkers that I was “on something” but ultimately their issues of US Weekly proved more entertaining. Celebrity gossip invariably drifted through the air like the ubiquitous smell of legal paper.
It was futile. I’d exhausted my means of trying to steal a few hours of rest from the hands of out-and-out wakefulness. I closed my eyes and started counting the amount of times someone had asked me if I was dabbling in narcotics.
Nothing.
I turned up the Brian Eno record and folded my pillow.
Likewise.
I reached for a bedside copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day but opted to line the trashcan with its pages.
Sleep wasn’t happening. The television beckoned.
In the small hours I probed about the dial falling on campy Hispanic channels and indiscernible music videos emanating from Eastern Europe; Don Henley had seemingly revamped his career in Bosnia. Eastern Europeans are ostensibly a solid fifteen years behind the times, still donning hip-sacks like my grandmother at the Grand Old Opry. But it was another infomercial that held my tired interest.
Standing before an underground pool in matching double-breasted suits were two dwarfs, their pudgy hands gesticulating as they unveiled tips on scooping desolate properties for little coin, their plump fingers like Little Smokies handling stacks of sucker’s loot. Fantastic! I wanted to tuck one of them under each of my arms and chuck them in the pool. But there were testimonials abound. People were listening! People were buying!
In saner times when Mr. Sandman recurrently sprinkled the stuff of beddy-by time, I’d read Gabriel Garcia Marquez alleged he simply woke up one morning and knew how to write a novel. I hadn’t slept in almost four days but an epiphany the scale of One Hundred Years of Solitude had taken hold: I was going into business for myself.
I dressed for work early rehearsing the indubitable news I would be resigning my post in the spirit of entrepreneurship. My plans were kept under wraps lest an industrious coworker snipe my ideas and come between me and the imminent stacks of high society I schemed to wrest from the boney talons of wealthy dog owners. I was thinking specifically of Anna, a Hispanic woman in the cube across from me who already turned a decent profit snaking printer ink and unloading it online. I doubted she would care about anything unrelated to Ecko hoodies or Baby Phat jeans, but I couldn’t be too sure.
I scanned my employee card and was greeted by Lana, the company receptionist. Lana took to me the way a mosquito takes to a citronella candle. Dental benefits had allowed her to yank and twist her mangled Chiclets into a presentable smile but she still appeared as though she should be hassling you outside the train station with a cup in her hand. I was no longer a man in possession of his faculties.
“Morning John,” she said halfheartedly.
“Good morning. Say Lana, I think I saw you last night.”
“You did?” She perked up.
“Were you in my neighborhood last night, forging through the dumpsters behind Jimmy John’s?”
“Say what?”
“I wouldn’t blame you, hear they throw away plenty of fresh bread.”
I kept walking out of earshot with bigger objectives in mind but whatever she replied definitely contained the phrase “boy you on drugs!”
Before I arrived at my threadbare cubicle the division manager walked past me for once referring to me by my first name. Here was a man with close-cropped hair and the sort of smile that would indicate there was a knife indelibly lodged up his rectum.
“Hey there good morning John. I like your smile.”
“Good morning Mr. Walker.”
“Steve. Call me Steve. Listen, you’re going to want to talk to your manager. She’s looking for you.”
“Since when does she roll into work on time? I’ve been looking for her too, like to ask her who she’s related to that she’s not watering the plants ‘round here.”
It was like a grenade detonated in the aisle. Heads rose from their cubicles, Rebie’s insufferable voice decried my insolence, and Lana reeled around the corner shouting, “that boy’s done on something!”
The pesky task of drawing a steady paycheck was behind me, though I wasn’t able to track down my manager before my employee pass was brusquely torn from my mitts. Bigger waters lay ahead akin to those treaded by shifty Brits dragging cut-rate vacuums over a mess of tacks, or that mustachioed slob stuffed in a chef’s coat driven to hysteria over cutlery purportedly capable of halving cutting boards.
The plan to offer boutique terriers to well-heeled dog lovers seemed absurdly obvious. I’d taken pains to search the web on the company’s peso and assembled an impressive handout to pinup on pet store bulletin boards and stack in establishments frequented by stuffy old widowers. Going on five days sans sleep, I hadn’t bothered to posit how I would breed these smaller terriers, let alone produce a passable pooch. Nonetheless the flier promised: “RED BOSTON TERRIERS! ALL WHITE ROUND HEADS! BLUE FRENCH BULLDOGS!” The latter proclamation was a sure testament to my sleep-deprived madness.
When I noted a bridge club next to a convenience store on my way home from work I put the plan in action.
“Excuse me, how may I help you?” asked a woman handsome in an Eleanor Roosevelt sort of way.
“Oh, don’t mind me. If you’d just hand me some Scotch tape I’ll be on my way.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Some tape, unless you’d prefer I leave a stack on the tables and you can tape one in the window when you have a moment.”
She just stared at me. I raised my voice; poor old broad must be rather deaf.
“I’m going leave a bunch of these papers behind. Feel free to hand them out yourself.”
“Whatever are you saying?”
I pressed the stack of papers in her boney claw, pawed out a few chessman cookies from a glass bowl, and was on my way. Mostly she just stared at me and shook like a French soldier in dismay; apparently well along in a battle with MS.
The sun seemed impossibly bright and every noise around me amplified tenfold. In a delirious haze I stumbled about holding out fliers to every passerby.
“No, no, I’m good man,” said a degenerate waiting for the bus.
“You wouldn’t know a blue French bulldog from a pug!” I countered.
Sleep. Must rest my eyes. The world was closing in fast save the soothing high-pitched voices of infomercial infamy.
“Over there is as good of spot as any,” said the dwarf in a blue double-breasted suit.
“I agree,” echoed the other dwarf.
“Fellas you look much chunkier in person.”
“Rest, you need to rest,” they said in unison.
“Agreed. Maybe I could crash at that palatial pad of yours I saw on the television. Looked comfy as hell.”
“Here, lay your head down.”
“I couldn’t possibly sully your lovely suit.”
“Rest now, relax. We’re here to help.”
“Don’t I know it. And listen, there’s a sinkhole down the street you may want to peep. Real potential there fellas.”
“Shh” they said placing a plump finger to their lips.
One removed his suit coat to use as a pillow as I curled up in the entranceway of a garage in the alley. Before I could apologize for wanting to hurl them in the pool they had vanished.
There I slept like a drunkard until an ungodly thumping jolted me to my feet; some kids were playing basketball a few garages over. Awake and partially coherent I noticed an obscure figure offering me a hand.
“Odd place to catch a wink,” said the Columbian man with a bushy mustache.
“Where are the dwarfs?”
“No dwarfs here I’m afraid.”
“Well sir, when infomercial celebs tell you to lay down, you curl up real fast.”
“You can call me Gabrielle, or Gabo if you will.”
“Oh, I will, Gabo. And I must confess to be finding your novels a bit much. If I kept One Hundred Years of Solitude on my nightstand I wouldn’t be sacked out in alleys.”
“Ha, well then tell that to Oprah and her book club!”
“I will, don’t you worry. May even sell her a boutique roundhead or two, if she can afford them.”
He laughed heartily moistening his soup strainer with his phlegmy hoot.
And I arose awkwardly to my feet secure in the arcane knowledge of how to write a novel, a real plus since I had no idea what to feed a discolored push-face.
Besides, no one would ever take me for a salesman, I thought.
