Sam Pink - The No Hellos Diet

Her voice scares you.

Then she’s just saying, “uhh uhh” like a person doing an impression of a monkey.

She adjusts her backpack, walking backwards away from the window.

The currency exchange employee ignores her, waving you to come forward.

It’s your turn.

You cash the check.

Feeling that something is wrong the whole time.

Like something has already gone wrong.

But that’s how everything feels — you think, smiling.

Considering that maybe you’re making the same shrieking sounds, even though it feels like you’re talking.

Goddamnit.

That could be happening.

The currency exchange employee cashes your paycheck.

400 dollars.

You envision yourself getting robbed outside.

You envision a complex series of attacks perpetrated on you by a robber, where you gracefully defend each attempt.

Lately, you always seem to be thinking of ways to defend yourself if something happens, no matter what happens.

You think of things that could happen and then how you’d defend yourself.

But then you can’t even think of what you’d want to be defending.

Outside on the corner of Montrose and Sheridan, it’s cold.

Some wind blows into your infected ear and it hurts.

People are out, walking and doing whatever.

Living.

400 motherfucking dollars.

A younger woman passes you, holding the elbow of a much older woman, who keeps saying, “Muh muh muh.”

You want to approach her and say, “Muh muh?” with a confused look on your face, then point at her like yes, it is indeed the person you thought it was. “Muh muh!”

On the corner of Montrose and Sheridan, things are happening.

This is happening.

This is you.

And it feels like freedom.

But it’s shitty.

And you can’t describe how.

400 motherfucking dollars worth of indescribable shittiness.

*

You use some of the paycheck to buy a bed.

There’s a small bedding store under the Red Line tracks on Broadway Avenue.

The bedding store is next door to a chicken place that has chickens painted on the windows and the man chicken is looking at the woman chicken’s legs and the caption underneath says, “Only a rooster can get a better piece.”

You go into the bedding store.

Inside, you’re unable to tell if it’s a store or someone’s apartment.

It smells like some kind of deodorant you used when younger, which saddens you, and you feel you might fall over.

A salesperson walks out from the back area and says, “Hi boddy, how are you. Hi hi.”

His hands are in his pockets the whole time.

It bothers you and you don’t know why.

On top of his head there are maybe twenty to thirty hairs and just as many moles and you want to name them all, then introduce them to each other.

“I’m fine,” you say. “Can I see whatever bed costs the least, please.”

“You want something easy on pockets, boddy,” he says, scratching his chin on his shoulder.

“I want the one that costs the least.”

The salesperson nods and walks you to the back area.

The bed is leaned up against the wall to the backroom.

It’s very small and thin.

It’s purple, with the word, “Kiddddzzzzzz” printed on it, in different areas with different colored lettering, as if exploding.

The salesperson says, “Forty dollars for this option here.”

“Which option,” you say.

“This option,” he says. “Right here. Kids bed.”

He sniffs.

Takes his hand out of his pocket, puts it on the “Kiidddzzz” bed.

At this point, you realize how awesome it’d be if he’s been keeping his hands in his pockets because they were claws/insect pincers — maybe just skeletal.

“Forty dollars for this option,” he says, tapping the bed.

“Is this a good option.”

“Pretty good option here,” he says, putting his hand back into his pocket. “Springs good. No stains. Everything good. Kids bed basically.”

“And this option is easy on the pockets, you said.”

“Forty dollars,” he says. “Sooo good, boddy.”

“A good option,” you say, nodding.

“Yes yes,” he says, hands in pockets.

Hiding his hands again — you think. He’s reaching for something. Have to kill him. Have to finish him first.

“Forty dollars,” he says. “Also, can’t help you carry it, boddy. Sorry man. Back is fock-up. No debit card, k?”

“Yeah, ok.”

For some reason you don’t want it to be over though.

So you pretend to examine the bed.

The pretend-examination involves moving the bed a few inches off the wall and checking behind it, then pinching the fabric a little in a way that suggests examination.

This is a pretty good examination — you think.

And you realize your forehead muscles are painfully flexed.

It’s hard to relax them but then it feels good.

The salesman sniffs loudly. “Really, for forty bucks, is good option, boddy,” he says.

“I think I’m going to go with this forty dollar option then.”

The salesperson looks comatose, staring at the bed and nodding. “Ok, you carry though, sorry guy, k?” he says again, shrugging with his hands still in his pockets.

“Ok, I understand.”

You give him two twenty dollar bills then leave the store.

Snowfall has started.

It’s mild.

The flakes hit the ground and reverse into nothing.

You carry the bed home, six or seven blocks under an increasing snowfall.

The bed helps to block the snow a little bit from your head and face, carrying it on your back, holding the loops on the side.

A soft shell.

Snowflakes hit your fingers and hands, but nothing else, carrying home the Kiiiddddzzz bed during a snowstorm.

This will be a good memory — you think. Can’t wait to remember it.

You put the bed directly on the floor in your room.

No frame, no boxspring.

The second or third night after buying it, you wake up to the sound of two people fighting in the alley across the street.

The sound of feet scratching against ice and alley rocks.

The sound of some yelling.

Then hitting sounds.

Then someone saying, “Stop stop stop, ahh — ahh.”

Then quiet.

You lie there on the “Kiiiiiiddddzzzzz” bed, listening.

People.

Places.

Things.

Kiiiiiddddzzzz.

Happy New Year.

There’s this other guy who works in the stockroom and everyone calls him “Sour Cream.”

Because one time he got stopped by a customer in the store and when asked for the location of sour cream, he just panicked and said, “Sour cream sour cream sour cream” repeatedly into the walkie talkie.

You became friends when you were both in the breakroom one time and the news showed an old woman throwing the first pitch at a baseball training camp.

She tried to throw the ball and it looked funny and you both looked at each other while laughing.

Sour Cream wears fake diamond earrings.

His real name is Jesús.

He has three lines shaved into the hair on the side of his head, and a longer area of hair on the back of his head, like a rat tail.

Today you’re unpacking boxes of underwear and t-shirts in an upstairs stockroom, and he tells you about a hat he bought off the internet, a hat that has a built-in ponytail.

“I’ma fucking rock that shit, jo,” he says. “Ponytail hat. I wanted to get it expedited shipping or whatever but that shit was fit-teen dollars.”

“Fuck that,” you say.

“Fuck that, jo.”

“It’d be funny if they sent you a blond one,” you say.

“Nah son, I got the black-colored one. It’ll look fucking bad-ass.”