On the way back home, Charlie heard the first rumblings of another rainstorm ahead, ‘Maybe I should walk slower, get a shower without having to ‘do’ anything.’ He told himself, it was as close to a joke and laughter as he’d come to in weeks.
Up ahead, Charlie saw what he hoped. The robin was going up and down from the pile of twigs that Charlie had made earlier and the nest was rapidly taking shape. ‘Previous estimate, two days beyond common maximum, present based on presence of large quantities of materials and preexisting progress, completion by end of day. They might just beat the storm if it holds off a few more hours.’
It was enough for Charlie to stop at a red brick wall a few feet from the tree and simply watch while the bird worked. ‘It has no idea I’ve probably killed it too. It’s just going about its business, living its life, building a nest and ready to mate and have eggs and has no idea what’s happening. I can’t tell people the truth. If I could tell that bird, what would I do but deprive it of its happiness. Look at what knowing the truth has done to me.’
‘Bad enough I had to ruin everything, I have to ruin the last days too?’ Charlie asked himself, his eyes drifting up and down from the ground to the growing nest, watching it like it was a timelapse photography show.
The rumbling of the sky drew closer, and Charlie took his eyes off the birds to look up at the sky, the clouds were coming faster, or so it seemed. But he knew that was just an optical illusion. ‘The wind hasn’t sped up, that means the pace is the same, just perspective making it seem faster as it draws closer.’
He swallowed the lump that was forming in his throat when the bird nest was nearly complete and the chirping began in earnest.
‘My tree. My tree. My tree.’ He knew that was more or less what the bird was indicating, hardly a song of love and devotion as the poets once insisted, but it was beautiful to the ear anyway.
Too much so.
So much so it hurt to listen to, knowing it would end.
And as if it was a scourge on his back, it forced Charlie to walk on, carrying a basket that seemed heavier with every step until he trudged up the two flights of stairs again. His footfalls rang off the hollow walkway in a steady, constant slapping sound, his hand on the rail pulling Charlie farther and farther along until he reached the floor on which he lived.
He shoved the key into the lock by reflex and found it wouldn’t turn. He frowned, he tried again. It wouldn’t turn.
He tried the knob.
It turned.
“Oh. Right. I didn’t lock it.” Charlie muttered and swung the door open.
He entered the room and trudged toward his bed, the door slowly swung shut behind him, the basket slapped the floor hard when it slipped from his fingers, and at the same moment he allowed himself to fall into his bed. ‘I should put the groceries away.’
Charlie told himself, but didn’t.
His stomach told him he should eat.
If the basket hadn’t been within reach, he would have ignored that too.
His fumbling fingers found a can of chili with a pop-top, he peeled away the tin lid and threw it ‘somewhere’ into the carpet of garbage and then tilted the can toward his mouth.
The substance wasn’t a liquid, and so didn’t pour, and it was also tightly packed to the point where it sealed itself into place, almost ‘congealed’. The red and white can held promise of a hearty meal, but the brown mush with brown beans was more like a paste than a meal.
Charlie stuck his tongue out, poking, licking at the contents to try to dislodge them.
His free hand was working the remote without looking, and a few seconds later he was listening to a terrible movie about a boy who bent air. ‘What a stupid movie. He could end any fight instantly just by removing air from the lungs, there’s just no fight to be had there.’ Still, he dropped the remote and poked a dirty finger into the mush within the can.
He caught sight of dark lines just beneath his fingernails, and those were now very long, uncut, and uncleaned since the day of his disaster.
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But the nails were useful, he scraped some of the room temperature mush out onto a finger and stuck it into his mouth.
After Charlie did this a few times, the chili began to dislodge and slide out of the can when he tilted it toward his mouth again, bits of bean and chunks of preserved meat fell over his tongue and was quickly swallowed.
The single serving can dropped bits and pieces into his beard, some of which bounced away onto his blanket and bare mattress. Outside, the storm began to pour again, and when he was done, Charlie tossed the can aside.
His thoughts turned back to Josef, to the coming end, to the birds, and to their end, to those who looked at him with disgust… for all the wrong reasons, and their ends.
Charlie could no longer rise or move, he simply lay staring at nothing, his whole body weighed down, the sound of rain began to strike the walls and window outside.
He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing, for a long time after the rains began.
It was the feel of a hand shaking his shoulder that finally caused him to stir.
“Hey! Charlie! Charlie, man are you alright?!” The voice shouted.
‘I know that voice.’ Charlie thought and his eyes began to flit open.
“Oh… sorry… ah, yes, I’m alright.” Charlie said when he saw the sharp featured tan face of Josef. “I’m sorry, I fell asleep, I forgot you were coming by tonight to get your money… here, let me get my wallet out and I’ll pay you.”
“Charlie… my man, buddy… guy… it’s not evening anymore, it’s not even the same day.” Josef said and crouched down beside the bed where Charlie lay with his hand wiggling through his pocket for the brown leather wallet.
“Oh, sorry, I must have slept through the night… I hope I didn’t take you from your shop during work hours…” Charlie muttered.
“Charlie,” Josef said and shook his head, his hand hadn’t left Charlie’s shoulder, and it squeezed enough to get the shell of a human’s attention more clearly.
“I’ve come by every day for the last week. It’s Sunday now. Get-n-Go isn’t going to be open until this afternoon.” Josef replied, and Charlie stared dumbly at him.
“Then how come…” Charlie started to deny it, but then the way the soft brown eyes looked at him at the same level, struck something in his soul. He looked down, the basket was where he left it, but it was all but empty.
The soda bottles were scattered in the path he had previously made to the kitchen, and adding to that, so were most of the cheap slop canned materials Charlie vaguely recalled buying.
“I- no, I didn’t sleep… I must have eaten…” Charlie muttered and lay back down, putting his hand on his forehead, “It’s really been a week, Josef?”
“Yeah, Charlie. A whole damn week… I kept coming by, I’d knock, but you didn’t answer. I didn’t notice at first but then I saw your key was in the lock, I figured you just went out for a bit, but today I-” Josef stopped and pulled the key out of his back pocket and set it on the corner square of the bed frame.
‘Josef is lying. Or, not exactly, lying by omission. He says he came by every day, I’ll bet he came by a few times per day.’ Charlie thought and asked, “Truth time. How many visits?”
“Three or four… per day. If you include the times I had Nate stop by when he didn’t have anything to do.” Josef replied.
“Nate… oh, the stock boy.” Charlie muttered under his breath.
“Stock ‘man’ now, he turned eighteen this year.” Josef’s warm smile was like a punch in the gut. As was the memory of Nate.
‘Poor kid, jumped by some never-do-wells, left with the mind of a child…’ Charlie recalled the story, one of the many people in the neighborhood Josef always watched out for, the never-do-wells were long gone, dead for years, Nate’s condition was their only legacy.
‘What does that make me?’ Charlie asked himself.
“Listen, Josef… I’m sorry I didn’t pay you when I said… take some extra on the card and call it even, okay? Let me pay you for your trouble.” Charlie asked when he got his wallet out of his pocket.
“Screw the money, Charlie.” Josef said and cast his eyes about the ruin of the apartment. “It’s only money that can be replaced, let me help you. Tell me what’s going on with you. The last thing I heard was that you were gone off on some kind of project in the Canary Islands, you disappeared, and now I see you’re back for… how long, when did you return?”
Charlie shrugged, “I- I don’t know.”
“So you’re back for some amount of time and the next time I see you, you look like an extra from a movie about homeless vampire serial killers or some other god awful Netflix or Hulu original that’ll get cancelled just when it starts to get good.” Josef’s tortured analogy was just enough to make Charlie smile, if not laugh.
Their contradictory opinions on original shows from streaming services was once a popular argument between the two men.
“I look that bad, do I?” Charlie asked.
“Oh god no. You look worse. When was the last time you bathed? What happened to your apartment? You used to be fastidious, I swear, I remember when I tried to set a beer down and you tossed a coaster under it with such perfect timing that my beer glass stopped it on the table. I’ve never given anybody as many cool points as that… especially after that nerdy cleanliness obsession!”
“Just a matter of calculating the rate of descent versus the necessary force for the toss and the- well, you know.” Charlie said with a shrug.
“Yeah but I’ve never done it on the fly that way, that was pretty cool, Charlie… pretty damn cool. So… now explain this?” Josef stood up and held his arms wide out in front of himself as if to encompass the entire apartment.
“This isn’t the Charlie Manning I grew up with, went to University with, drank with, went on double dates with. This isn’t… any of the man I know…” Josef added, “This just… man this stinks. You’re funky, your place is funky… where am I supposed to bring girls when I’m not ready for them to meet my old man?”
Charlie could feel the teasing smile beneath the bitter truths. “Hotel, like a normal person… like you’ve had a date in the last year.”
“That’s cold, Charlie, that’s really cold… true. But… really.” Josef’s whimsical tone vanished and the bear of a man turned around and knelt down beside the bed again. “Come on, tell me what’s happening, let me help you.”
Charlie took a deep breath through his nose, and the stench of his home and himself hit him like a metric ton of bricks. ‘Noses go dead to self smell and environments very quickly, if I’m smelling me now, and this… how can Josef even stand to be here… god, is that why my neighbors left?!’
It was the first time that question occurred to Charlie, he held his shimmering brown eyes toward the deep set eyes of his oldest friend, a man Charlie knew he’d already killed, even if Josef didn’t know it yet.
And out of nowhere, before he even realized it was about to happen, Charlie broke down.
He let out a heartbroken wail, pounding his fist against the stained, ruined mattress that squeaked against every blow, his mourning, grief stricken cries alarmed a bird beyond the window and caused it to take to the air to escape.
In some ways, Charlie thought, it would have been easier if Josef had simply left him to cry, but the bear of a man did not move from where he knelt, as for what felt like hour upon endless hour, Charlie cried.