Sam Pink - Person

Just walk out.

Just say you wished they made grape-flavored coffee again then walk out and be free.

You want him to know that you’d like it if they made grape-flavored coffee.

So, tell him.

Tell him and leave.

No, I can’t.

“I wish they made grape-flavored coffee,” I say.

The room remains exactly as-is for a moment.

And the moment is large enough to slay.

I get slain by the moment.

My roommate says, “What. I didn’t hear you over the vacuum.”

When I don’t respond, he says, “What’s up, why are you staring.”

I open the door quickly and run out, kind-of tripping on the doorstop into the hallway.

In the hallway my roommate becomes only vaguely memorable.

Part of a greater disliking, little different than the couch and all the other things, real or imagined.

Part of the void to be carried around.

I almost fall and hit my head on a light in the hallway but I am able to stand and the apartment door shuts hard.

My landlord is vacuuming in the hallway.

She shuts off the vacuum.

Through its detune, she says, “Hey mister. I thought you’d want to make sure to have—”

She attempts to lean on the vacuum and it starts back up and she finishes saying something that I can’t hear over the vacuum.

She smiles and stares up past my area of eye contact, raising her eyebrows to emphasize something I can’t hear.

It’s insane.

I entertain the idea that if my present life is the punishment for a former life, then I would never want to meet myself as the self of this former life.

Goddamn.

She continues leaning on the vacuum, staring at me.

I find myself looking at the words “San Francisco” on her sweatshirt and the odd looking breasts that are probably behind.

I walk away from her and go somewhere that is an extension of where I’ve just been.

A bigger “right-there.”

In the tiny courtyard area outside, there’s a small plastic tricycle, almost entirely buried in snow.

I think a thought that is something like, “Keep track of who owes you nothing.”

And I get on the train but don’t go to the interview.

Instead I have conversations with other people in the train, only I don’t do it out loud.

Chicago Blue Line train.

My roommate and I are on the small concrete deck outside our apartment, two floors up, looking out across the parking lot.

It’s cold.

I only have a t-shirt on.

He’s smoking a cigarette and I’m scratching my elbows.

We just saw a woman smacking her kid in the face as they crossed the parking lot.

It was beautiful.

It felt like practice.

I look at my roommate.

“Hey can I borrow your car,” I say.

“Why.”

There is a very long interval between sounds.

I contribute by realizing I’m pinned to it.

“I need to get some hangers from the store,” I say.

“You need to get hangers,” he says.

“Yes. For my shirts.”

“For your shirts,” he says.

He puts his cigarette in his mouth and leans back, one eye shut, trying to get keys off his beltloop.

He hands me the keys.

I go to get back in the apartment through the sliding door, but I only open the sliding door a little and when I try to go sideways through it I have trouble fitting.

I’m sideways and I can’t move.

My roommate watches.

“Almost man,” he says. “You’re almost there.”

Then, I’m through.

It hurts, but I’m through.

And I drive my roommate’s car around and go nowhere.

His car smells bad.

I get on the highway for a while.

Everyone is staring at me when they pass.

I hate everyone.

Don’t go back home.

Ok I won’t.

All existing humans hate you.

Yes, I know.

Well then ok, keep driving so they can’t find you.

Yes sir.

I exit somewhere I don’t recognize.

I drive different streets in the same direction and at one point I am convinced I am the person speaking on the radio and eventually it’s dark out and I park the car in an empty parking lot by an office building.

After I park I punch the steering wheel hard, three or four times and my hand hurts and I feel better.

The word “yeah” moves through my head in neon letters.

One of the windows on the first floor of the office building is lit.

A cleaning lady wears a back-mounting vacuum and cleans a cubicle.

I realize that the amount of distance between where you are standing in relation to someone else determines a lot about your behavior and feelings.

And eventually I wake up from a nap I don’t remember taking.

I’m in my roommate’s car in a parking lot in front of a dark office building.

I drive home.

At the apartment, my roommate is sitting on the carpet trying to get batteries into the tv remote control.

When I sit on the couch I notice how bad the couch smells.

It is a smell that in my mind looks big and formless like a cartoon cloud of two cats fighting and it laughs like a monster and it oinks too for some reason.

My roommate struggles to put the batteries in.

“I’m tired,” he says.

“I took a big nap in your car so I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight,” I say. “Usually I can’t sleep after a big nap.” I make a motion with my forefingers meant to express circular motion, and I say, “One big nap after another like that.”

Then I yell, “Big naps!”

“Good job,” he says. “Did you get the hangers.”

“Yeah they’re great. Thanks again.”

My roommate continues trying to put the batteries into the television remote controller.

He looks determined.

In the hallway outside, someone screams, then laughs.

Other people laugh too, walking down the hall.

“Big naps!” I yell.

My roommate drops the batteries and one goes underneath the couch.

He gets the battery and returns to work.

I slap both hands down on my legs and I yell, “Big naps!” again.

My roommate says, “You’re awesome.”

Then he snaps a piece back into place on the tv remote controller.

“Do you want to split an orange again,” he says. “I need something to do.”

“No, I’m good,” I say.

He nods and turns the television on and the lights off and we lie down on different couches.

The room is dark except for the tv.

There’s a show on about bridges.

A narrator talks about bridges and I wait to fall asleep, feeling poisoned by the hand of some bad magician, like, all the time yeah.

This is the third time this week I’ve sat in my room and thought about what I’d buy if I won the lottery — ultimately admitting that I’d use it all to pay NASA to rocket my entire apartment (with me in it) deep into outerspace where the sun’s pull had no effect, or to where there’s this other sun with the exact opposite effect on growth.

Something else I do more and more is I sit on the Blue Line train and I ride around for a few hours not-looking for jobs.

It feels comfortable.

I make sure to direct my sight towards my feet so I don’t accidentally see a job.

It’s nice to just listen to the sound the train makes against the track.

It’s just nice.

The best part is at this certain point downtown. The train takes a long curve and the sun and this billboard with a funny looking frog on it both come out.

I love it!

Right now, I’m the only person in my section of the train.

There’s an advertisement for a junior college along the inside of the train.

The ad features a smiling man holding books.

He looks nice.