Mat Johnson - Drop

I damn near expected Fionna to emerge from hiding behind a parking meter to rejoin me. Motivated by this newly realized fortune, I decided to further delay my appointment with the electric company by picking up my poster.

It was at least a three-mile walk, but I was prepared. Of late, I’d been walking everywhere, taking in paths I’d been content for years to see blur pass. To ensure a random mugging wouldn’t make the act impossible, I even swung past the travel agent’s on Samson to take care of my reservations. So simple, I trade my paper for theirs, and then I have tickets in my hand, a promise that on a certain date, at a certain time, I could fly out of here. Not even earth-moving news any more since I could already feel that gravity lessening beneath me as I took Aldrin hops down the road, seeing things around this town I hadn’t noticed since childhood. I was almost disappointed when I arrived at my destination so soon.

I stepped up proudly to the counter and declared I was there to pick up my order. Soon I was whipping out a book of checks that floated instead of bounced. Yes, the price quoted seemed quite obscene. I would not be ordering from here again anytime soon!

‘So, where’s your car? If it’s in front you’ll want to pull around back. We can load it on there.’

‘Naw, that’s cool, I’m walking.’

‘Walking?’

‘Yes. Well, eventually I’ll probably hop the El, but walking there and back, yes.’ What was wrong with that? It was a nice day. My shoes were comfortable and showed good sense. People don’t walk enough any more. A door opened from the side of the room and another attendant (they all had the same blue tennis shirt, wasn’t that nice?) came in pulling a dolly holding a dozen absurdly large cardboard graham crackers. When he said my name I hopped with glee to meet him. Mine? I asked of the sheet on top, and he nodded, so I grabbed my poster, thanked them both for doing good business, and headed for the door. My booty was a large thing, as tall as I was, and I was taking care to balance it as I tried to open the door, nearly succeeding before I heard, ‘Yo cuz, when you gonna pick up the rest? We close at seven.’

‘What are you talking about? This is my order.’

‘You sure?’ the attendant asked me, and apparently I wasn’t, because when he took my package from me, laid it on the counter, and lifted half of its cardboard packaging off and away, what was revealed to me was not the yam-man in all his glory, but merely a huge tile of the elephantized foot of him, a blow-up of that spot of ankle between his shoe and cuff that I had PhotoShopped to make it look like he had socks on.

‘So, money, how you gonna get the rest of them?’

I am stupid. I looked at him like he might tell me.

I walked back to Center City, trying to negotiate the inconceivable but true: the Alex Agenda was threatened. This could not be tolerated, my pace increased just thinking about it. I needed to commission a photographer soon, and if it wasn’t her, I would need to book in advance. It had to be her. I tried to remain calm as I ducked in the electric company building. Instead of being met and escorted in by armed guards, the front desk trolls barely noticed my arrival. With swipe-key in hand, I slipped through the entrance as if I still worked there, petrified that maybe that was true, that the past weeks had been nothing but a glucose reaction spiked by one too many lunchtime visits to 30th Street Station for a super-size drink and fries. But the delusion didn’t take hold. I couldn’t feel it: that pull, that dull tugging of my ass to that gray seat in there, that mute demand of the monotonous life from which five P.M. only provided a momentary reprieve. I was a free man — I knew this as I pushed open my door to the familiar office and saw the room of those still in captivity.

They were all there, sucked to their seats. The phones were barely ringing; it was July, even back-due heating bills had been taken care of. Relieved to be able to pause from trying to look busy, they looked up at me. It was after lunch, but all Reggie had on his desk was a bag of pork rinds: for shame, they still hadn’t been paid. Reggie pushed up his glasses to get a better look and yelled, ‘Chris boogie!’ before Mrs Hutton came out of her office to greet me.

I was to be berated publicly — fine. As Mrs Hutton had perceived it, I had undermined her leadership, so I appreciated her need to reestablish authority. ‘You don’t just disappear, one day you’re there, the next you ain’t. There are responsibilities …’ This too was warranted. I knew I was an awful former teleservice agent, although I would have accentuated the ‘former’ if she gave me the chance to open my mouth. Vent your months of frustrations. Yes, I was truly incompetent at this job, so wasn’t it fantastic that I would never have to do it again? Wasn’t that just the best outcome for all? This is why I was smiling, not because Cindy was giving me a wink of support behind Mrs Hutton’s back, and certainly not out of any desire to belittle my former manager, and yet my pleasure seemed to make her yell louder. Her angry face, with its heat, its engorged eyes, red nose and cheeks, was a scary thing. But when you know you’ll never have to deal with it again, it can be such a joyous sight. That’s when I felt myself kind of bouncing, rocking back in forth to my life’s song. I had thought it an ever so slight movement until I saw the way Mrs Hutton was looking at me: What broke in him ? Chains, darling! When Clive — he was looking so good today, must be four weeks rock-free — started snapping his bony fingers along with my rhythm, I just fell into it. This joy. I was dancing. Very odd but true, I was moving with glee, with freedom, and I must have been doing something right, because Mrs Hutton stopped talking, instead taking out my timesheet in slow, cautious movements; without missing one of Clive’s digitally produced beats, I watched her sign it.

Who knew, if I took this to the temp agency, if it would one day clear? Who knew if I would see any of these people again? Who knew anything? At the exit, hand on the knob of a door already opened, I turned back to them. Natalie was smiling at me, those oft hidden incisors punctuating her grin.

‘You all should come with me!’ I insisted. Mrs Hutton shook with my words, spun around and stomped to the back room, presumably to call security.

‘Nigger, you better make a break for it,’ Cindy offered.

‘I’ve got work for the day, for you. I’ll pay you. I’ll pay you as much as you make in a week.’ They all just kept looking at me, not knowing what I was. But I saw them: people I wanted to give something to, people who could help me solve my Alex needs.

‘Come on, you’re not even getting paid! You might as well get some money to hold you over while you look for a new job. I’ll give you what you make in a week to just get up and come with me right now!’ I would give twice this just to see it happen. I reached into my pocket and held the emerald beacons up to them.

At the site of the cash, Reggie stood up so fast he nearly knocked his monitor over, but I knew Reggie and understood that this was a purely physical reaction. But then Natalie got up, too, grabbing her fake leather pocketbook and keys off the table, and I realized something was happening here. Forget Lynol, who sat in my old seat laughing at me; I could see how his stare was caught on my hand. When Cindy and Clive stood up in unison, pushing their chairs in behind them, I raised the mast of my arm higher, proudly waving my herald.

Reggie and Cindy got the billboard. Natalie was sent to get packing tape and hoagies. Clive and I were off to 43rd Street to get the wood that would allow us to hoist it up. We were to meet back up at the abandoned supermarket behind Alex’s block. Everybody knew the one.