Noah Cicero - The Collected Works of Noah Cicero Vol. II

Isabella says, “I’m sorry about the other day.”

“I didn’t expect you to show up,” I say.

“I woke up late and didn’t have time to call you.”

“I’m drunk.”

“Where’d you get drunk?”

“At a bar in Warren.”

“Want anything to eat?”

“Yeah, a sausage egg and cheese on a burger bun.”

“Okay.”

I can’t hate Isabella.

I can’t hate her, but the Waffle House isn’t helping my state of mind.

I’m sitting here in silence.

Everyone knows that Isabella stood me up.

She has told everyone and they made fun of me before I came in.

This is life. You do something stupid and the world gives you the gift of humiliation.

After I’m done eating, Isabella invites me to go outside to smoke with her.

I’m so drunk and needy I accept.

We stand with a nice breeze hitting us.

Isabella says, “I think I’ve really figured myself out.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think I’ve got a new aura about me. I read my horoscope today and it said that good things were going to happen.”

“Is that true?”

“Yeah, I said to my boyfriend, ‘You get a job or get the hell out of my life.’ And he didn’t get a job, so I told him, ‘Good riddance.’ And I feel a lot happier.”

“That’s really good.”

“So what’s going on with you?”

“I got drunk.”

“Yeah, anything else?”

“No,” I say, “but I’m pretty happy about being drunk for the moment.”

“That’s good.”

We finish our cigarettes and go inside.

I think I’ve really figured myself out.

I think I’ve got a new aura about me.

Her words pierce my drunken brain.

I feel so bad for humanity I could scream.

I do not scream. I just feel horrible.

I think I’ve really figured myself out.

I think I’ve got a new aura about me.

What does that even mean?

How does figuring yourself out lead to a new aura?

People are really fucked up.

This is the world I live in.

I’m in hell.

I’m drunk and I’m in hell.

This is how it always ends when I get drunk. I’m happy and dancing and eventually someone says something like, “I think I’ve really figured myself out. I think I’ve got a new aura about me,” and it all goes to hell.

I get up to leave and Isabella says to me, “So where you going?”

I think about saying that I’m going home to kill myself because she is so tragically fucked that it saddens me to the point of suicide, but instead I say, “Home.”

I’m at my parents’ house to pick up letters.

Some letters from bill companies still come to their house.

Usually if I go there my mother tries to make me feel guilty for being born, then gives me a twenty dollar bill.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, staring around the kitchen.

My mother sits on the other side of the table and says to me in Russian, “Your father is brooding.”

“Yeah?”

“He won’t tell me why. He just broods.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he won’t talk to me. He goes to work and then comes home, makes himself a sandwich and immediately goes outside and does yard work.”

“The yard looks nice.”

“Do you think your father is brooding?”

“What?”

“Do you think your father is brooding?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in weeks.”

“He won’t tell me.”

“You’ve been married for thirty years, your lives are like an assembly line producing boredom and shit.”

“Our lives are great. We are middle-class. Look at this house. We live in Vienna, not Youngstown. We are good solid Americans. We even have citizenship.”

“This place takes everything human about a human and turns it into a Subway Special.”

“We worked hard to get you to this country. You need to respect me and be thankful for all that I’ve done for you.”

“I remember being little and picking mushrooms in the forest. I liked that. We would all go out and dad showed me how to pick mushrooms, and we laughed.”

“We don’t pick mushrooms in America. Picking mushrooms is evil. In America we go to the store and buy mushrooms. That is why we left Russia, to buy mushrooms.”

“Yes, I remember, you bitched the whole time about picking the mushrooms.”

“You’re an ungrateful little bastard, you know. You, Sasha, and even Lizaveta!”

I look at her with rage and say, “Listen right now. Don’t you ever speak Lizaveta’s name again.”

She looks at me in silence, knowing I mean it.

I say, “I know how you treated Lizaveta, I saw it. I know you like to tell people that Lizaveta was schizophrenic and all kinds of other shit, but I know. I’ll die knowing.”

She sits in silence.

I go outside and put the letters in my car and walk over to my father. He’s feeding his rabbits. My father always has rabbits.

“Hello.”

He looks at me with no emotion and says, “Hello.”

“How are the bunnies today?”

“Fine.”

I realize talking to him is fruitless. He will always remain a person who lets his misery eat him. He knows, like many working men, that keeping one’s misery does not kill a man; starvation and heart attacks do.

I leave. I don’t even say goodbye.

It doesn’t matter.

He doesn’t care.

He has never expressed a hate for anything, not the Soviet Union or for America, but he hasn’t expressed love for anything either. All he has ever really done is work and brood.

I look at him from the car and see a sad automaton taking care of his rabbits. His only real happiness in life, two little rabbits that he pets and feeds every day. He has never shared memories of his childhood with his children, never spoken of any political beliefs, never cried, never really shown emotion at all except for a generalized brooding over something which he will not speak about. But there he is, a man feeding and petting rabbits.

I’m sitting here at Sweet Jenny’s.

Chang is beside me drinking rum and Coke.

Life has really become pointless.

We are drinking on a Monday.

How sad is that?

I look at Chang and say, “Chang, I believe these are my last days.”

Chang doesn’t even respond.

“Chang, everything is getting on my nerves. Even this chair I’m sitting on, it’s hurting my ass.”

Chang doesn’t look at me when he speaks. “You’re right. We should die.”

“I know.”

“Are we immature? Is this what thirteen-year-old emo kids talk about?”

“Emo kids are asses.”

“When is something good going to happen? Something good happens all the time to other people. Not to us. We are like in some no-man’s land where everything is dead and stupid and not remotely satisfying.”

“I gotta shit.”

I get up and walk to the bathroom.

I feel demoralized walking to the bathroom.

I feel like I should lie on the floor and die.

I get into the bathroom and sit down to shit.

I put my head in my hands.

There is no hope.

There isn’t even a newspaper to read in here.

And it stinks.

I let out a huge fart and plop a turd in the toilet.

The water splashes and hits my ass.

I hate when that happens.

I remove my hands from my face and look around the shitter.

There’s something in the corner of the shitter.

I pick it up and look at it.

It’s a pill bottle.

I open the bottle and look inside.

Holy fucking shit, it’s a bottle of Oxies.

Somebody must have dropped it.

I quickly wipe my ass because if I know anything about drug addicts, they are going to come looking for their shit, and I have no urge to give up this bottle of Oxies.