Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

It’s his job to raise the lift and sweep beneath it every night.

He’s slightly bent over beneath the platform talking to you, his mouth hidden by one of the risers.

It’s just eyes and hair as he’s talking.

He says, “N’uh wow, this is like uh, Jacques Cousteau’s untold adventure’m.”

You say, “Yeah. Nice.”

He says, “N’I bought a dvd of some of my favorite classic cartoons yesterday because I got my paycheck n’and the dvd was on freakin clearance, hm. Wow.”

“Nice,” you say.

“N’yeah it has all the good ones on it and I got it for, hm, four dollars m’so I can still buy my mom some slippers for Easter. Hm.”

“Awesome.”

“N’yeah the dvd has Garfield on it, hm. It was”—he stops, and sneezes a violent sneeze. A loop of clear snot hangs off his nose. “N’I like Garfield except for the ones with that pesky little runt Nermal. N’I really hate Nermal, hm.”

“I hate Nermal too,” you say, staring at the loop of snot on his nose. “He’s really pesky.”

“N’I hate Nermal so much,” he says. He wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. “M’He’s always messing around, hm.”

You notice he’s actually upset, and might cry.

“Fuck Nermal,” you say. “He’s nothing. He’s nobody.”

“N’yeah, I hate Nermal, hm.”

“Me too,” you say. “He’s shit.”

Theodore smiles, sweeping beneath the sheetmetal platform.

You consider crushing him.

Yeah.

Just grab the control and lower the lift.

Then when he tries to get out, kick him in the stomach or chest as hard as you can with your steel-toed boot — all the while still deftly handling the lift control.

You could do it.

Of course you could.

You wouldn’t actually crush him though.

You’d make the sheet metal lift go as close to killing him as possible — just to trap him.

You’d be able to do that if you wanted.

Of course you would.

Because you’re a competent, successful, and ambitious man, with a rich future.

Deserving of everything that happens, exactly as it happens.

This morning, you go to Union Station with your ex girlfriend and drop her off at a train to her dad’s house.

Inside Union Station there’s a large vestibule area where homeless people sleep on rows of wooden benches, beneath a high dome-ceiling.

Where footsteps and voices echo at a sustained low pitch.

You sit on a ledge in the arrivals hallway, right past the vestibule area.

You watch passengers arrive, looking for repeats of people arriving, to see if your life is fake.

But there are no repeats.

Just more and more people arriving, walking through benches of the sleeping homeless.

Across the vestibule area there’s a small arcade area.

You walk over and buy a drink from one of the vending machines.

The only other person in the arcade is an Amish man.

He walks around with his arms behind his back, looking at the videogames.

He stands by one of the machines watching the screen, where there are people murdering each other, and bombs going off.

He walks over to a game where the player has to sit in a plastic car.

You watch him sit in the car and press the brakes, press some buttons.

He stares at the desert scene on the screen as he turns the steeringwheel side to side really hard, many times.

It sounds like “gunk-gunk-gunk.”

His face looks steady, or unsure, or something else.

Gunk-gunk-gunk.

Another man walks into the arcade area and starts playing a game with a plastic gun you aim at the screen and shoot at mutated people who have blood on their faces.

The Amish man gets out of the plastic car and watches, keeping his hands behind his back.

You feel upset.

But you can’t tell if it’s about the Amish man or yourself.

Then you realize you’re upset about always feeling upset for other people, and for making-up reasons to be upset.

Mostly, it doesn’t make sense.

The Amish man and you stand by the man playing the videogame and watch him shoot people on the screen.

And you try not to laugh, thinking about sitting in the videogame car with the Amish man, driving away together into the videogame desert.

*

When you get to work, the punch-in machine won’t let you punch-in.

You try a few times then check the schedule.

It says, “Unavailable” over that day’s box.

Today is the day you requested off a long time ago.

After a hot dog from the food area, you go for a walk north into Uptown.

It’s warm out.

Twenty feet from a crosswalk, a little girl with beaded hair holds her hand up and says, “Reh light.”

You stop mid-step and balance.

She seems excited.

She keeps it at red light for what seems to you like an unnecessary amount of time.

Then she puts her hand down and says, “Green light.”

“Oh man, thanks,” you say, and resume walking.

And it occurs to you that you’d probably experience a large amount of excitement and satisfaction from buying a flower of some kind and raising it from a seed — like if you really put in effort to take care of it as best you could.

It also occurs to you, you’re worried that once dead you’ll have to watch your life on an endless loop until memorized completely.

And part of the endless loop will be the part where you begin watching the loop.

Which then forms more loops, each one taking you with, never finishing.

An incomplete repetition that is never the same and always unfolds inside-out unendingly.

You’re worried it’s enough to consider that happening, to make it happen.

Goddamnit.

Behind a high school, you piss on the side of a dumpster.

The piss comes out itchy.

This is the part of the loop where you piss on a dumpster, and realize you’re the only person you care about.

Staring at a mural made of broken tile, on the side of the high school.

The mural is four open-mouthed heads, floating, and above them these two cupped hands pour water down.

You shake your dick and tuck it back in.

You look at the mural again.

The mural looks different.

But it’s not.

No.

It’s still a pair of cupped hands dropping water down onto a bunch of floating heads, on the side of a high school.

What is different.

No.

Nothing is different.

You don’t care.

Exiting the alley, you find a dead bird smashed into the ground, right by where the alley meets with the street.

You kick the dead bird and feathers come off.

A car drives by the alley, and the person in the passenger side seat yells, “Faggot.”

What’s most upsetting to you about people yelling shit as they drive by is not what they say, but the way it startles you and how you just have to stand there dazed until fully-recovered.

Admit it.

Admit it doesn’t matter how many more days there are left, it matters how many seconds.

You stop at a franchise sandwich place and order food, sitting in a booth waiting for your order.

You stare at your folded hands, trying to remember something.

Unsure what.

Two guys in the next booth talk about whether or not it would be possible to kill a cat with a single punch.

“No man, telling you — I could do it,” one says.

The other says, “You’d have to hit it just right to do it — sss — man, I don’t know.”

You hope to be invited into the conversation but you are resolved not to invite yourself.

*

Back at the apartment, you eat in your room.