Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

Key-sounds.

The door opens and someone walks into your apartment.

You hear, “Hallo? Hallo?” as someone stomps in.

There’s a knock at your bedroom door.

“Hallo? Hallo?”

The door opens.

It’s the “Building Manager.”

He puts his head into the room from behind the door.

The Building Manager is an old Serbian man the landlord exploits for manual labor.

He’s old and has bad knees and barely ever has the tools he needs.

You’re lying in bed.

Eyes half-closed.

Dick hard.

Looking at an old Serbian man sticking his head sideways into the room.

“Hallo? Hallo?” he says. “Hallo? You awake? Hallo hallo. I come to fix roof. There is problem with roof. I go up now, ok? Hallo? You awake buddy, hallo. Wass wrong? You alive buddy, hallo.”

You say, “There’s a new leak in the hallway. I think it’s because someone just painted over the leak last time.”

“Yes ok. I go see. Ok? Tank you buddy.”

You lie in bed letting your dick get soft while the old Serbian man looks at the same leaking spot in the hallway ceiling he’s seen many times now.

Then he leaves the apartment.

Thirty seconds later, he’s walking around on the roof.

It’s very loud.

You continue to fall in and out of sleep, halfway worried about the old Serbian man falling through the roof, crushing you — snapping your hard dick at a horrible angle.

How you’d lie there half-asleep looking at your angled dick, broken like a dandelion stem.

You get out of bed.

You see a bright yellow light in your eyes and put your hand against the wall so you don’t fall.

Die. Die. Die.

In the bathroom, you put your head beneath the showerhead, standing outside the shower.

The water is very hot and you have your finger in your left ear to keep water out.

You mouth, “In Chi-town, you in my town — it’s kill or die motherfucker, kill or die.”

You turn off the shower and take your finger out of your ear.

Liquid comes out.

You soak it out with a twisted piece of toilet paper.

The toilet paper is brown and red when you take it out.

This is painful — you think. But I deserve this.

And your self-esteem today is shaky.

Shaky but stabilizing into something even lower and unshakable.

*

After punching in at work, you walk through the store to the stockroom.

Passing the pharmacy area, there’s a group of gradeschool aged kids standing there, kicking each other.

One of the kids holds out his hand to you and says, “Ey, let me get it right here, my nigga.”

You high-five, shake, and snap with his hand.

The group of gradeschool kids yells and laughs.

Without turning around, you flex both arms, walking towards the stockroom.

*

Theodore is on break the same time as you.

He’s sitting next to you, wearing a Styrofoam visor with a dolphin on it, from the John G. Shedd Aquarium.

He’s using a fork to cut a still mostly frozen microwaveable dinner.

The food breaks with a brittle cracking sound.

“Theodore, how are you,” you say.

He says, “N’Hey. What’s up man, hm.”

He tells you about how a few weeks ago they had to have a plumber come out to fix all the clogs in the toilets and when they fixed the clogs they found a bunch of hypodermic needles people had flushed in the customer bathrooms.

“I like your dolphin visor, man,” you say.

“M’Yeah,” he says. “N’I saw the freakin dolphin show already, hm. Wow. N’Yeah I saw the dolphin show with my mom and the dolphins were absolutely wonderful, hm.”

His right leg is rapidly going up and down, on toe-point.

He scrapes icy pieces of food with the fork.

You say, “You liked the dolphin show.”

“N’Yeah,” he says. “To be cuppletely honest though, N’I went with my mom to the dolphin show and I think, hm, my mom is pretty, hm.”

Someone turns up the volume on the breakroom television.

The television is so loud the sound distorts.

An audience is laughing.

It hurts your infected ear.

Theodore says, “N’Yeah when I was little hm, and I’d get a loose tooth, n’my mom would help me take it out. N’I’d be in bed and she’d get on top of me and hold me down and m’have some freakin tissue paper in her fingers, hm, to be able to hold the tooth good and pull hard enough, hm. N’That’s how she helped me get my baby teeth out, hm. N’Yeah sometimes when she was pulling, m’there was — there was,” he pauses, then says, “pain” loudly.

He maintains the same tone as his talking, just louder.

The suddenness makes your heart beat faster a few times, and you narrowly avoid shitting your pants.

“N’And then but that’s how she pulled all the baby teeth out, oh man!” he says. “N’Yeah. One of the times she was only wearing a freakin t-shirt, hm. N’And she smelled like the shower. M’And she was on my pee pee and but so until it got hard.” He yells, “Got big.”

The door to the breakroom opens.

One of the higher-up managers puts her head inside the breakroom doorway.

She has a store phone with the mouthpiece against her chest.

“Theo, be quiet hun,” she says. “And when you’re done with lunch hun, do the garbage in the women’s bathroom.”

“M’uh oh,” he says.

“It’s not bad, the garbage is just full,” she says, smiling and raising her eyebrows. “No poop. I’m going to help though, k?”

Theodore makes the “ch” sound.

Then he says, “N’Yeah alright.”

The manager puts the phone back to her mouth, continuing a conversation as she goes back out the doorway.

Theodore continues talking to you because you’re still looking at him.

“N’My pee pee got hard sometimes when my mom was n’on top of me,” he says. “I think she’s really pretty to be cuppletely honest, hm.”

“Cool,” you say.

He breaks the frozen food into more of a consistent form, scratching his head behind the Styrofoam dolphin visor.

You look at the bald growth on the back of his head.

Just one bite.

Theodore says, “N’Yeah but I got some quarters and a piece of candy for every tooth. The next day, hm. N’I always got those presents.”

He fixes his Styrofoam dolphin visor, and eats a bite of the frozen dinner.

“That’s pretty good for one tooth,” you say.

He nods his head, looking at his food. “N’Yeah.”

“So the dolphin show was good. Should I see the dolphin show then. You liked it.”

“N’Yeah the dolphin show was real great and the dolphins jumped high,” he says, scraping the frozen food. “It was m’my favorite of all! Wow!”

You both laugh.

For the remainder of break, you watch a gameshow where they give you an answer, and you have to provide the question that leads to it.

Like if the answer given is: “The guy sitting next to you wearing a Styrofoam dolphin visor”—you’d say, “Who is Theodore.”

Same thing as the other way around.

Each new question, Theodore rises a little out of his chair and says, “Hm hm”— like he’s about to answer — but then never does.

You keep answering, “Airplane” for every question.

Theodore laughs at first.

Then he just stares at the gameshow eating his slush.

You look at the bald growth on his head and stand up to go back to work.

It’s very hard to balance.

The breakroom is so bright.

*

An hour before your shift is over, you’re breaking down boxes by the compactor.

By the compactor, there’s the garbage lift.

The lift is a sheetmetal platform that rises up to the garbage compactor in the wall.

Theodore is beneath the garbage lift, sweeping up Styrofoam.