Matt Cowper - The Clerk

As he stood on the beach watching the sunset, Thomas thought about the midlife crisis he wasn’t having. It was his fortieth birthday, and this was supposed to be a terrifying number. He should be grieving over missed opportunities, pining for thin, shining-eyed girls who existed in the lost past, bemoaning the fact that he wasn’t a “success,” and wishing for more “fun” in his life. He should throw off the shackles of his old life and start on a bold new path.

But he didn’t feel like doing that. It seemed immature, and anyway, the day was too gorgeous. Golden late-afternoon light shone on the dunes and beach houses. Willets scurried about, pecking at the wet sand. To the west, the beach houses, the pier, and the tall Scotch Bonnet Hotel were smoky silhouettes. There were only three other people in sight: one far to the west, nothing more than a black smudge, and two people a few hundred yards east, an older couple strolling hand-in-hand down the beach. It was tragic that only four people were out on this section of beach to watch this beautiful sunset, but such was life on the North Carolina coast during winter.

Thomas had taken a day off work to celebrate his birthday. He’d slept in, eventually rolling out of bed at the almost shameful hour of ten AM. A bit of reading. Lunch. A long walk on the beach, during which he saw a grand total of ten people, including the three now in sight. And now this sunset.

Yes, it had been a good day… except for his conversation with his sister. Emily had called him in the morning to wish him happy birthday, and, to her surprise, he’d actually picked up.

“I thought you’d be at work,” she said, confused. For the past fifteen years, she had called Thomas at exactly eleven AM on his birthday. For the past fifteen years, the call had gone to her brother’s answering machine, then his voicemail once he’d finally gotten a cell phone. Reason: Thomas was at work. Therefore, she had left a quick message, usually including a punning phrase about aging which was then balanced by an uplifting quote she’d found on goodquotes.com. Thomas usually called her back in the evening, and they would chat for ten minutes or so. But this year, the big Four-Oh, Thomas had answered. Why?

“No work today,” he replied. “Took a one-day holiday.”

His sister processed this. Finally, she replied with “Oh.” Thomas had never before taken a day off work for his birthday, or even a half-day. Emily didn’t like it.

Thomas anticipated a lengthier comment from his sister, but nothing else came. It appeared she was discombobulated, for some reason or another. This wasn’t anything new, of course.

“Yeah, so,” he said, chuckling, “guess what I’m doing today? Hint: it’s really dangerous and exciting.”

“What?” The one-word question was thick and hard, like a cement block.

“Skydiving!”

Pause. Airtime seconds blinked by, unused.

“You are not,” Emily finally said.

“Yes, I am. Don’t you wish you could go with me, sister? You could still come, I guess — but that would mean you’d have to be spontaneous.”

“I’m more spontaneous than you know,” Emily said emphatically. “And you are not going skydiving. You wouldn’t do that.” Finally she was rallying. Her brother had caught her off-guard by daring to answer his phone at eleven AM on the morning of December 3, and now he was teasing her, just like he did when they were growing up. If she were honest with herself, she would admit that Thomas, despite being three years older, hadn’t been a malicious big brother, and his teasing had been harmless. But in her quickly-developing black mood, she only remembered endless persecution. Images of thumb screws, cracking whips, and body-consuming bonfires crawled through her mind as methods of torture equal to what she’d been through.

She’d tried to be happy, or at least not venomous, since it was her big brother’s birthday, but he’d gone and fucked everything up by answering his phone when he should’ve been at work and by throwing out his little quips. (She was also dealing with Issues — or more specifically, an Issue, even more specifically a man who wasn’t her husband — but she had that under control.)

“No, you wouldn’t do that,” she repeated, “because, as you said, it would be dangerous and exciting, and you never do anything dangerous or exciting! Every birthday since, oh, age nineteen, you’ve done nothing but drink a few beers.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“Because it’s your birthday . You’re supposed to do something special. ”

“To me, that is special.”

“No, it’s not. It’s what you do every day.”

“Doesn’t make it less special.”

“By definition, ‘special’ doesn’t mean something you do every day.”

“Actually, you’re right. I do need to do something special. Maybe not sky-diving, though.” He pretended to ponder for a moment. “I know! I’ll go to a strip club. Pass around a few dollar bills, get a lapdance. What do you think?”

Emily had been a “hard-core feminist” (her term, and the hyphen between “hard” and “core” was very important for some reason) since age eleven. She’d snarled at sexualized TV commercials, argued with cheerleaders about their outfits, and stole and then shredded their father’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue from its well-known hiding spot beneath their parents’ mattress. Despite this contrarian behavior, Emily always had plenty of suitors galloping after her. She was long and lean, with an ass that announced its succulent presence to the world no matter how baggy her jeans, and her angular face usually had an expression of magnificent disdain mixed with (in Emily’s case, unintentional) coquettishness, an expression like women wore in perfume ads. During her teenage years, when everyone else was dating, Emily had treated her suitors with the scorn she thought they deserved — that is, until a stud named Brett Hickman came along.

Emily had fallen head over heels for him, despite her claim that she was a “strong, independent woman,” and despite Brett’s sarcastic remarks about her “childish bra-burning.” When he eventually dumped her (“You just can’t keep up with me, girl”), she’d seemed to wither away until she no longer had the energy to write her ungrammatical polemics for the high school newspaper. Thomas had sat on her bed and tried to comfort her, telling her that all men were scoundrels, and he knew because he was one (hey, it might make her feel better, even if it was a lie) but she’d simply stared up at the ceiling unblinking, like a corpse, still shockingly attractive, laid out in a funeral parlor.

She’d eventually recovered (quite well, Thomas thought, since it seemed his sister had a new boy toy every month, though she couldn’t have gone to bed with all of them — could she?) and resumed her fight against the “objectification of women.” At NC State, where she majored in philosophy (though she usually rejected any philosophy written by white males, which was most of it), she’d met a law student named Dan Dowling, and they’d dated and then married. They were now living in Raleigh, and while Dan worked 80-hour weeks at a semi-prestigious firm, Emily volunteered at a rape crisis center, wrote condemnatory letters to newspapers and advertisers regarding saucy billboards, railed against the patriarchy with five or six women (and two doe-eyed men) at her feminist book group, and ferried Dennis, their now fourteen-year-old son, to and from school.