Entering the stairwell I could smell a faint hint of weed that grew stronger and stronger the further up I went. Floor by floor I left the ground, stalked through submarine windows by a clementine sun. There was something going on in our apartment, and as I approached the door I took a deep breath. I heard rivaling steps ca-dak ca-dak ca-daking from up above. Like a snare out of sync with the muffled noise proposedly originating from the same place as the weed. Rounding the last rail, we met. A woman, neat and tidy in a slim skirt below the knees, casual silk shirt, heels. The kind who’d call the cops on her neighbors out of spite or charity, or host orgies in some mansion off grid. I said hi. She replied. Asked me to turn down the volume when I stopped outside our door as she and her mildly intoxicating fragrance passed me by. Nodding, I complimented her choice of route.
“People are so loafish these days, aren’t they? So utterly useless,” I added. She turned around, weighed, concealed a smile or annoyance. It was impossible to tell from our angle.
“Just keep it down, okay?”
I fumbled with my keys, re-assured her that I would make it my top priority, only to stall the entry to what must be a portal to Pusher Street. The odor pricked my nostrils, nauseating, like cheap grass soaked in petrol. The Smiths were playing some tune that I never caught on to, greeting me full blast as I entered a puddle of jumbled shoes. I counted two foreign pairs when Eve danced passed the doorway to the adjacent living room, smiling and nodding with her eyes closed, holding hands with vocal Morrisey bitching about inflation in the joys of living. She jumpscared when I hey’d on my way to the balcony for a smoke.
“Oh man! What a freaking rush! Feel my heart.”
She grabbed my hand and placed it between the knitted tank-top cleavage, hand grazing the unholy, and after confirming that she was indeed living I pocketed the hand to hide the molestation from Nan and the world. Mostly Nan though.
“What’re you two up to?” the coy voice of my lover shouted over the lyrics.
“Checking for a pulse,” I replied, certain that she must’ve seen it. “I’m a doctor you know.”
“I forget. I think I need an exam. I’m feinting,” she said and came towards me, collapsing in my arms, sneaking a cheeky butt-squeeze right in front of Eve. I felt pissed on.
“Have you two been tokin’ up in here? It’s reeking onto the streets, man.”
Walking over to the stereo, I drowned Morry’s wailings to a whisper.
“Ahh finally,” someone said behind me. “Can’t stand that shit. So soulless.”
He was some off-breed of a scrawny hipster. Clearly ironic clothing, peppered with moth holes. Hair cut short with a wild, untrimmed beard and kind eyes.
“We had to smoke inside,” Nan chirped. “The neighbors are out on the balcony barbecuing. You're the paranoid one.”
"They did what?"
Squirming past the beardman I confirmed it. Smoke billowing up the side of the adjacent balcony, coarse voices in convivial conversation.
"That's just… I can't even find the words," I said as I slumped onto a stool, lit a smoke. "And who're you supposed to be?"
"Who? Me?” beardman asked like I'd offended him. I took a drag, nodded. "Sam. Samuel."
The girls were laughing loudly, hunched over the laptop on the far side of the living room. This was the last thing I wanted, being stuck in my own abode with an absolute fart. No means of escape if I wanted to keep a good footing with Nan, no way out but headfirst pounding through it. Reluctantly, I asked the first thing I could think of.
"And whadya'do Samuel-Sam?"
“I’m a writer, if you’re wondering what moves me. A poet. And I work with those two.”
"Aha, a fellow samatarian spreading the gospel. Do you enjoy it?"
"It's Samaritan. No, I don't. But you meet a lot of weird people. Good material."
“Speaking of work!” Nan proclaimed, probably sensing where my mood was heading. “You cannot believe what happened today Max. You absolutely cannot, in your wildest dreams, guess what happened.”
Eve sat in full lotus on the couch, looking directly at me with a mischievous smile, streaks of sunlight painted across her face through the blinds. I didn’t want this. I wanted quiet time, to prepare for the blessings of tomorrow. A neat little package wrapped in a bow-tie to lighten up the world and quell the monotone that was becoming my life of the living. A Teddy to prop up the drudgery, paint a funny face on it. A month went by too fast. Something had to start happening. Sam stood up for no apparent reason, looking resentful, like he knew he was a pawn in someone else’s game.
“You’ve already set me up for a loss. Spill the beans.”
“Ok. We got fired…” Nan and Eve looked proud, like the medals were on their way and we’d just have to sit tight until the ceremony kicked off. “And before you say anything about money—we got fired with full pay for three months.”
“What in the actual fuck? Is this true?” I for some reason asked Sam.
“It is. Or so they claim.”
“Well la-di-da. Why you have to go and do that for Sam?”
“What?”
“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Nan said, this time with a somewhat scornful gaze like ‘be nice’ or something. “So we got all this Amnesty gear, and Eve saw that the jackets said Made in China, right? This was last week. And we brought it up with the regional manager, simply asking if they had checked the sourcing, and if the workers were under, you know, fair conditions. Like… Unions, fair wages. Anyway. Miguel and Ava, the other teamleaders, were all like ‘of course it’s fairtrade, you know who you’re working for right?’
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Like sheep,” Sam filled in. “Dumb fucking sheep.”
“We have a heated discussion over it, about what the implications would be if the jackets weren’t fairtrade, and what we’re actually contributing to. And this is so fucked up…”
“So fucked up,” Eve echoed.
“Both of them called in sick the next day, and get this... They haven’t been back to work since. Which is weird right? Anyway. Today we both got called up to the manager. She starts by outlining the Amnesty workplace policy, reading paragraphs and shit. Bottomline was that Miguel and Ava ‘are afraid to go to work due to the hostile environment created by Nan and Eve’.”
“They’re both in their forties! Total weasels ‘trembling in fear’ because two girls said mean things to them. Which we didn’t.”
“So they put us both on paid leave, effective immediately.”
“How fucked up is that?”
“Well what did she say about the jackets?” I asked. I couldn’t make my mind up, if I should be roused or not. If this was really the best way to spend my monthly two euro donation. And then it struck me that Nan hadn’t said a word about it prior.
“Not a single word. We pressed her for it but she totally dodged. Like a politician,” Eve said. “I think we should go to the press.”
“And you Sammy? Don’t you share the ladies’ conviction?”
"Me?" he said, eloping from his cool and casual lean to a seat on the couch next to Eve. "The world is corrupt. Everywhere you look it's corrupt and lopsided. Even the so called 'good ones' can't abstain from shortcuts, nepotism, corruption. Vileness wherever one looks."
"It's hopeless," Eve responded, smiling with what could accurately be described as awe. Couldn’t it?
Silence manifested. A haze or introspect journey the culprit. Morrissey hummed along on a new tune, barely audible, and my cigarette neared its conclusion. Before it did, I lit another. The thought of going in, sitting down in a circle for some snug assurance ritual with the poet gave me some proper shit vibes. And that's when he jolted to life, closed eyes. Oh god, I thought and stared down at a seagull hopping along the lawn.
"Beset on all sides; greed of kin; halberds and spears; a knave in sin; barbarous beast; devoid of plight; immune to their rust; untamed is life; the sutra his gun; in the dead of night, where nothing is won.”
His hand bobbed up and down, palm stretched upward, like a rapper on sedatives, and all the while Nan and Eve were entranced by the apostle delivering his sermon.
“Wow!” Nan proclaimed, and it sounded genuine. No joke. “Where’s that from?”
“Nowhere. I just made it up.”
“You should totally write that down!” Eve added. “It felt so real and powerful. Like… forgiving and furious at the same time.”
“True art is ephemeral. It lives and dies in the moment, ashes of its funeral pyre a smudge on the listener’s soul. This one won’t go into the books.”
As if they’d orchestrated and rehearsed this little performance, their eyes all turned to me. I couldn’t believe it. They actually wanted me to say something. I wasn’t up for it. Theatrically, I took a long drag and exhaled into the dawning night.
“I’ve never heard poetry recited aloud before,” I said.
“Max doesn’t read poetry,” Nan quickly noted in an indecipherable tone, something between apologetic and teasing. She was either on a rescue op or tossing me under the steam roller.
“Poetry is like wine. With age and indulgence, you uncover its hidden flavors, its mysticism. A poem holds a million truths. The same line can make you weap, clench your fists with rage, cry out in joy, or spark an arousal the likes of which you’ve never seen—the words reflecting on the inner workings of your now – its experiences, lusts, passions – like pictures on a mirror, shaping them, charging them with the contents of the here and now. That is why poetry is the undying artform. Humans will always absorb from poetry, so long as we yearn to live.”
He leaned back, got comfortable. I wanted to ask him old he was but the games were losing their initial little charm. I’d pin him around 30. The glow of my ciggie hovered over the filter. I had to decide on an outcome. Their chats went on, mingling with laughter a few stories below, scent of meat searing. The night promised a moonless void, which is the only thing I asked for. Not the social acrobatics unfolding seven arms-lengths away. Tomorrow, Teddy would enter the lobby of the Yukahama Phone Factory, beginning his life in bondage side-by-side with me and nobody else that mattered. I wanted to turn and tell them, a natural inclination to celebrate, but I didn’t. Instead I lit another fag, flicking any given fucks of mannerisms with the butt sailing to meet its new life as a has-been on the streets of MCity. Lighting the third one was the effective renunciation of feigned sociability for the evening. I could feel Nan’s icy contempt for my failure to play the part of jovial whatever but it was all too much. A marriage of two thoughts became too much of a burden. Nan being free from her toils, free to do whatever the fuck she wanted, and me being uplifted to the hidden tier of Todo International, granted through the secret handshake by the CEO himself during a meeting taken place just two hours ago. I wanted to tell everybody. The entire world. That they were onto us. Management knew that Benny and I were balancing on smooth rhetorics to catapult ourselves ahead of the competition. And they just nodded. Winked. Keep up the good work buddy, I’ve been listening to your calls, and he wasn’t talking about my fine verbal motor skills. Not in any morally permissible sense. We both sat there in his office, me and Benny, and he gave us the stamp of approval. You can lie as much as you want, as long as you don’t lie, and we both knew exactly what it meant. It wasn’t our fault that people were morons, right? If Henry the Sovereign of Constantinople asks me if he’ll have wireless reception in his basement, through two layers of concrete walls, from a Soviet era router, and I say that it’s technically possible. That’s not a lie. Is it? Because Henry, with his divine wisdom and billion subjugates, was still on the line. In the call. Talking about IPTV over ADSL when he’s got a broadband that barely snails across the legal divider between a Telecom Provider doing its godgiven purpose, to provide, and the other end; fraudulent activity. He’s the one talking to me like he’s in charge, so I have to believe him. Right? I have to believe that he’s willingly buying something that will never give him joy, signing on for two years of joyless, lagging TV, a comatose internet connection, and countless hours waiting in line to hear that he just gotta restart his modem and all his troubles be gone. Cus’ he’s a fucking masochist and each to his own kink. I mean, Todo themselves hired people like me to sell that shit because there was a feasible chance that it would work. Right?
I used the opportunity provided by the meeting to smuggle Teddy past Cortez, and one phone call, two angry eyeballs, a not-too-content Teddy, and it was done. We were golden. Everything was too easy. We’d reached god level. Out of all the people in all the shitty replicas of our office over all the country, nobody was moving paper like me and Benny. And I’d reached the junction like, what’s the fucking point? Teddy would be the point. I knew that Teddy could provide a valid reason to stay on. A knife’s edge to scratch the itch tearing at me from inside.
“You want in on this, Max?”
Eve was waving a joint like it was a fresh polaroid. The other two laughing somewhere in another realm. Probably the kitchen. I considered asking her about Teddy, but it felt like trespassing.
“Nah. I’m going to bed.”