Mat Johnson - Drop

We broke at eight o’clock. Things were going so smooth that I suggested we head up to Strawberry Mansion to get a jump on the park shots. Yam-man nodded OK. A day like this should be prolonged. I could work with what we’d accomplished through a week of rainstorms. We just had to pack, get something to eat, and then we’d drive up to North Philly and continue. Even the stylist seemed cool with it.

After locking up the van, I finally retrieved the food that had been crying for me, my mouth overflowing with desire. Yam-man sat on the nearest bench, so I joined him. My hands trembling with hunger, I ripped the bags open. On the other side of my feast, Yam-man sat with his suit on. He was staring down 15th Street, watching the cars stop at the red light. From his face, it looked as if the craziness was catching up to him. Seated, the fact that he didn’t have socks on was evident.

‘Nice, shiny day, right?’ I remarked, ripping tinfoil desperately away from the still warm sandwich. Even in August you could see the steam rising. The salt dried my nostrils as I sniffed it into me.

‘Yup,’ Yam-man said back, swiveling his head around and immediately noticing the food I had acquired. I gave him the money right after we’d finished shooting: I could still see the twenties hanging out like a handkerchief from his breast pocket.

‘I got it over there,’ I said, pointing. ‘From that guy.’ Yam-man kept his eyes linked to my bounty. Maybe it had been so long he didn’t know how to use bills any more, particularly of this denomination. I pulled open my chocolate milk and I took the paper off the straw.

‘Drinking,’ Yam-man said, staring at it.

‘Over there. Look’ — he didn’t — ‘over there.’ I kept pointing until he glanced away from my beverage and towards my finger. As soon my hand dropped, so did his eyes, watching me get the lid off.

‘Starving’ Yam-man said as saliva stretched from his bottom lip to his lap, making a charcoal pool in the gray herringbone.

‘I gave you money,’ I reminded him, poking at it in his breast pocket. His body rocked with my push, then came back again.

‘Need some eats,’ he added, his eyes watering.

‘Yam-man, go buy some of your own.’

‘Name’s sir.’

‘All right, sir,’ I smiled.

‘Sir Love.’

‘Shit,’ I said, and gave in to him. Pushing my food his way till he reached out for it. Nudging my drink over so he could wash it down.

You never saw somebody enjoy food like that. Taking that sandwich in bites the size of his hand. Gulping half the chocolate milk at once and then sloshing it through his teeth like mouthwash before swallowing it. When the brother was done, I handed him a napkin to wipe the ketchup and grease off his mouth. He used it and handed it back to me. We were just sitting there, two Philly boys, content to lean back where we were and feel the sun lay down upon us. Comfortable with our destinies, our place in the world. No other life to run to, no lot to run desperately from. Funny how much nicer this town was when you couldn’t feel it sitting on you.

I had a gig and a check to prove it. After I left Saul’s office I kept peeking at it, peeling back its envelope in the crowded elevator: I see you. It was a little, thin piece of paper, but it was real; this I kept trying to believe in. Insubstantial in weight, yes, but if I rolled it into a ball and threw it in the eye of that security guard at the front door, it would hurt him: it existed. If I opened my envelope and took out my check and folded it into a paper airplane, it would fly: it had properties. If I planted it in my checking account, within days it would sprout cash that I, in turn, would have access to. I would have access, too. That was the reality I had the most difficulty accepting.

For days after it was deposited, to procrastinate from my real duty of preparing for the campaign to come, I dialed the bank’s number to see if my promise had bloomed. Limiting myself to one perusal each hour, never boring of the same automated denial because I knew eventually I would call and my dream would be true. The absurd yet standard-rate price I was being paid to oversee the creative of this marketing drive would in one moment appear. Boom. Cash. That was magic. In anticipation, some of that imaginary money had already been spent. These ghost dollars whose power had no relation to their physical substance. Because of them, the travel agency already had my tickets on reserve, the checks for overdue bills had been mailed (to P.O. box addresses in boring states, it would be weeks before they would be deposited). Because of them I wasn’t going crazy from the absence of one stubborn buck-toothed female. Because of them I could at least spend time investing in a plan to make that reality an outdated one. Maybe that was the purpose of the Alex Reconciliation Agenda: to keep me sane with the illusion that I had some control over the matter. To let me focus my anxiety on to a physical thing, a series of tasks that I could handle.

Of course, the Agenda was not a particularly elaborate plan — I was just going to get my Philly ad for Sir Love the Yam-man blown up to poster size and present it to her — but the goals of the mission were modest as well. True, the ultimate success determinant would have been total conflict resolution, complete forgiveness, but that was neither realistic nor dwelled upon. The stated victory parameters were much simpler: I just wanted her to know that I was trying, that maybe I was even changing also. Even if she decided not to let me back in her life, I wanted her to base that decision on the man I was and not some outdated reality.

It was this necessity that motivated me as I called to order the poster from the lithographic shop over on Arch. They were talking size, dimensions; I was talking passion, sincere emotional angst! Do not speak to me of this 1′ by 4′, this 3′ by 6′ nonsense! What do I care of abstract measurements? Give me size! Make this poster so big that there is no way Alex can ignore either one of us. If an extra inch improves my chances, so be it.

My former job seemed to be a problem. Apparently, Mrs Hutton’s comment that ‘If you miss another day, don’t bother coming in’ was not as literal a statement as I had originally interpreted it. Regardless of the fact that I called the night before my absence to offer my sincere apology for leaving the electric company on such awkward terms, there was still a misunderstanding. It was explained to me (by my former parasite/temp agency) that Mrs Hutton was not entirely pleased with my behavior, and this displeasure had manifested itself in her refusal to sign my time-slip until ‘you go in there and quit proper.’ While I barely had the time and no longer needed the money, in respect to the week I spent working for that cash, I decided to take up the challenge and right there, right then, walked out the door.

My trolley was, as all trolleys are, a slow thing. Bicycles whose riders used no hands glided casually past us even as we attempted full speed. By the time I actually arrived at 23rd Street, my bravado had evaporated like the mist it was. There was, I realized now that I was close to making contact, a chance that Mrs Hutton might yell at me. What if she yelled at me and then didn’t sign my check at all? What if she got Cindy to hold me down as she slapped me around a bit? For a brief, unexplained moment that seemed entirely rational. I decided that a more prudent action would be to delay this confrontation as long as possible, and it was this that led to the first of the miracles that would happen that day. I walked over to an ATM to check my ghost balance, to try to get out more cash than I thought was yet there, and I actually heard it , that near forgotten song, the — thank God — flutter of real cash coming back out at me.