One Breath Left

Friction, they had said.

Edward replayed the scene in his mind as he walked furiously homeward. He turned down a main road, conscious he was leaning forward in his gait, rushing, almost talking to himself. He straightened his posture and slowed his pace forcing his mouth to remain still as his thoughts rushed. The steady stream of cars would hardly notice him, but if they did, he did not need crazy added as another imputation against his name.

They had said he had been creating friction in an otherwise frictionless workplace.

He knew that was a lie, a cause cited for a causeless effect. He had never been suspended before. Anger welled inside him, turning his stomach. He’d never had an appetite for anger. Yet, here it was, rising suddenly within him, like a boiling tidal wave with nothing to break its path. He wanted to vomit it out like a poison, but it remained within, steaming.

Eddie, they want you in the office. It’s about your breaks. Johnny, his inferior, had run up to him, just before the day was over. They were work friends, but Edward placed little value upon their relationship and, in fact, resented the casual nickname given him.

What now, Edward wondered. His work history had not been consistent, not linear, nor did it demonstrate his loyalty. He was not a traitor by nature, but Edward refused to go down with a sinking ship – he had never been its captain. So, many ships were abandoned, even as they did not sink. He was not usually viewed a helpful crewmate though he believed himself to never hold an unjust opinion. Frustration surged within him.

He passed a Starbucks as he walked, quickening his pace again, leading with his temple. As he rushed, he had to dodge the cars blocking the sidewalk as the drive-thru lineup tapered onto the road. It was almost five o’clock, and homeward bound fanatics had stopped to collect their caffeinated milkshakes, diabetes disguised by a green-lit siren. The cars were filled with mostly women of all colours and sizes. Some had kids. Some had their learner’s permit. Some had just reloaded their Starbucks account with borrowed dollars. Some were paying off student loans… three years, five, ten, twenty years old. Edward felt a fresh bolt of anger although he did not stop to acknowledge why.

Ed, it’s like this. He knew his boss was going to say something idiotic before the man’s mouth twitched open. Edward spontaneously moved to interrupt, but he quickly caught himself and refrained. He couldn’t possibly know in advance how to argue with unpronounced stupidity. He let the fool’s words fall like ice rain on naked skin.

His boss was a reddish lump of a man, balding, with a gaping fish-mouth partially hidden under a bushy brown mustache which refused to yield to grey. It was surprisingly free of crumbs considering there was always some sort of half-finished donut, Danish, or stuffed croissant on his otherwise tidy desk. He pounded his fist on the old wood for dramatic emphasis as he spoke Edward’s halved name, causing the pastry to lift slightly and land incrementally closer to Edward’s person.  A seeming threat. Friction, Edward could not help but think.

You can’t just do what you want anymore, Ed! You have to have some goddamn respect for authority. My authority! The company! Do you understand?

Edward did not understand. This man had done nothing to earn his respect. Giving one a job does not entitle respect, he thought. Especially when they do not appreciate a job well-done.

Edward did everything in his power to not remember that this man was family. It was just another miserable truth, a callback to a childhood he had not done everything in his power to forget. And thus, it tracked him, like a skillful hunter who tortures his prey before killing it. The abuse, neglect.

They say you cause a lot of issues in the plant, the man softened and continued. I am beginning to see, you are the friction in an otherwise frictionless workplace.

Edward did not understand compassion. He could not read it in his boss’s face, in the twitch of the man’s mustache. Had he clairvoyance, Edward would have understood the man’s misguided wishes for Edward to be free from his suffering. But Edward could not relate. All he could think about was how one of these frictionless colleagues, Dan, showed up to the jobsite raging on cocaine last week. Or how the smooth-tongued Antoine had fucked just about every female liaison their company dealt with. Or how Johnny had forgotten to put in the work request for the new truck, and it would still be out another week before it ran again. Friction.

Edward thought of these men now as he walked furiously toward the corner of the busy road and his quiet street. His external world shifted suddenly as the traffic quieted and fruit trees were now blossoming along his path instead of the greasy fast food joints and oily dealerships. These men (his mind recoiled at the imputation) somehow got respect for their crude and crass behaviour while he was considered a problem. It would have confounded him except that he resolved himself by recalling, people are generally very stupid.

Edward did not care to notice the buzz of pollinators around the pale pink petals of the looming cherries or the soft fragrances of late spring, early evening. Instead he caught the stink of gasoline and oil, stuck to a breeze flung from the nearby Petro, and he allowed it to yank him back to the machine shop office of his stumpy superior.

Are you firing me? Edward challenged as acknowledgement of the fool’s claims. The brick-brown walls drew closer. The thick air denser. His boss’s face melted into the warmth of the walls. Flashes of red, black darted across his vision.

The man chuckled sadly. No, son. I am suspending you. Come back on Monday with a fresh mind.

Edward turned quickly to go, already planning out his email to his direct supervisor, the man’s actual son. Your father has lost his mind, senile already. I do not accept my suspension, and I will be at work tomorrow…

Edward had continued to write email after email in his head on the walk home, citing policies and employment law, carefully researched in his mind’s eye, irrefutable. He noticed nothing else and acknowledged nothing else except some darkly personal betrayal and bleak malice, and thus he felt nothing but intense anger and a deep melancholy which denied any responsibility on his part, in his experience. These idiots, he thought. Their friction…

Unbeckoned, a cartoon flashed across the eyelids of his memories. The Magic School Bus…the children…miniature…skating across the pages of a book, colliding with one another… frictionless, Miss Frizzle laughing… We need friction, she was saying… the children falling, laughing…

When was the last time I laughed? Another thought, a question, also unbeckoned, unwelcomed. Edward did not answer, and he did his best to forget what he had asked himself. But it came again as an echo.

When was the last time I laughed?

Edward was approaching his house now. A modest bungalow, set at the edge of a suburb, his road perpendicular to the main street, his bed close enough for convenience, and far enough away for a facsimile of peace – no such thing existing now. What was solitude in a small city of 137,000 people? Still, he felt a loneliness bloom in his chest as he crossed his threshold now. As he had felt a hundred times before.

He remembered earlier today, in the half of the day before he had been called to the principal’s office. Several colleagues stood around the water cooler in the breakroom as Jimmy told a story of his first affair. Now in his late twenties, he was describing sneaking around with two girls, just before his eighteenth birthday. He was miming. It looked as if he were pulling back the reins of a horse with one hand and slapping its rear with his other, his eyes rolling back in his head. The men around him were howling. Even the secretary, Trish, gave in to laughter. Edward had left the room as quickly as he entered it.

The frequency of which Edward left rooms was unparalleled. An observer may easily believe he entered spaces only for the purpose of leaving them. One may naturally conclude he received some kind of thrill or perverse pleasure through parting (though surely he must leave at the same rate as everyone else). This feeling for departure went always unnamed except that, today, his boss had named it friction.

That must be it, Edward thought, taking a brief hiatus from mental letter-writing. For a word is just a collection of letters until it is given meaning. And although Edward knew, unequivocally, the scientific meaning of friction, he must also understand that his boss was not using it in this way – as he is nothing more than a blundering idiot! He probably meant that, while his colleagues were always coming, Edward was always going. This type of friction is unacceptable in this field. The only field for which he had ever become equipped. A field he was not planning on quitting despite his aptitude for terminating secular employment.

When was the last time I laughed? The question replayed once more in Edward’s mind. Shut up! He responded.

He tossed his keys on the bureau placed practically in the entry way to hold such items as mail, magazines, keys, gloves, hats, while reusable bags to go back in the car were hung on the small antique globe affixed to a drawer that hid nothing but scribbled post-it notes, a couple screwdrivers, a hammer, and some old bills.

Except for this untidiness at the front door, Edward kept his home immaculately clean. He was unbidden by a particular calling but prepared for any potential visit from a suitor of the other sex, his future wife, a woman desperate for his special company. (Although no normal woman would find comfort in his sparse rooms, absent of décor, designed only for the practicality of male movement through space.)

His mind held no such fantasies tonight. He wished he had stopped for pizza on the way home. It was against personal policy to pay for delivery, so he resigned himself to a frozen dinner. He preheated the oven, picking at a scab on his arm as he waited for the temperature to peak.

When was the last time I laughed?

Should he seek an answer to the question that rolled around his mind like a curse? Made worse by the fact that his reputation had been officially stained with suspension. Here he was, suddenly curious about his nature. I’m unchangeable, he thought. Still, for good or bad, the question refused to be forgotten and so became, like a beating heart under the floor boards, something impossible to ignore, a chanting in his inner ear. So rhythmic, increasing in tempo, becoming a hum, a whine of elemental insanity, so intensely maddening and high-pitched, he found himself punching the drywall beside the kitchen doorjamb and speaking aloud:

CAN’T I BE HAPPY?

And just as suddenly repeating, more quietly:

Can I be happy?

His first utterance a plea to a god for whom he had no faith.  The second, a desperate platitude unto himself.

Taking an estimate of his material surroundings, Edward refused to admit that none of it had brought an iota of happiness that could be maintained for more than a second moment. His enjoyment of each object always wavered, especially in dependence upon his mood that day or the burden of debt carried with it. The vast mortgage attached to this small living space – which he could not afford if he lost this job – the credit card statement revealing he was still paying for the luxurious memory foam mattress, rated 10/10 sleep comfort for couples, although only 6/10 for sex. Practically unbroken in.

His mind flashed to the last woman who had laid with him. The mattress still smelled chemically fresh. It seemed like just a split second she was there. Then she was gone. A polaroid developed and discarded. A hazy memory of slick skin, affordably perfumed sweat, a half-hearted blowjob, the high-thread-count cotton coming untucked, a hyperbolic moan escaping puffy filled-lips, a quick cum. His lazy body missed the effortless pleasure of skin on skin, but he did not miss the woman behind the fuck for a minute. He did not know her, although they had pretended to know one another for a while. He did not enjoy expending his imaginative energy faking such intimacy. He cut the cord. Since, he has enjoyed only imagination, although sparingly. The lotion beside his bed was not often replaced.

Can I be happy? When was the last time I laughed?

Could he answer such questions himself? He travelled into the future to find the answer. He strained to picture himself smiling, laughing with friends, embracing a big-breasted partner, holding his new offspring, having a catch with his child in the yard. Going to work each day. Feeling respect and envy of his peers. Paying bills without stress, planning vacations. Winning quarrels with his spicy, chesty wife. Refusing to abandon his role as protector… he felt a fresh wave of painful feelings which he transformed to bitterness and swallowed into the molten pit of his stomach.  How he longed for another to see him as protector. How he craved such reputation and love, love earned and deserved.

He racked the recent past of his memories looking for anything that hinted happiness was real and true. He came up empty-headed again and again. No matter what he searched for and what he attained, everything turned sour and rotted away his hopes for a happy future, finding no contentment for the present in his mind, despite being able to lay a foundation for a solid outcome. Why was there no meaning in this most serious task?

Why so serious? Another question unasked for arose in his faultless mind.

He chuckled to himself. The sound was like the scraping of rusted nails on pavement, and he laughed again, in horror, to hear such sound escape him.

Can I be happy? The question again. And it would come again and again. Edward found himself not being able to say, yes! Not being able to know.

Tears began to come. Why had he walked home? It had obviously exhausted him. He had no wish to feel these frustrations, these feelings. Not now. He had no wish to engage in the philosophical debate within himself that demanded him to answer whether it was worth it to go on. Whether it was worth it to acquire the material success that makes a life worth living. Whether it was worth it to continue to tell oneself the lie we all tell ourselves – that happiness should depend upon something other than one’s own mind!

He refused to engage in the debate, and so the question repeated itself in the background of his mind, while he cooked, while he ate, while he scrolled, while he read news of imminent nuclear war, while he brushed his teeth, while he, in routine familiarity, gazed at his car through the window before bed (just fourteen more payments), while he shut his eyes and tried to sleep:

Can I be happy?

~~~

What did Edward dream?  (answer your version in the comments below)

~~~

While Edward slept, he encountered a startling vision.

He was on his walk home from work, upset over the events of the day. He walked quickly and made it to his street in record time. Only, when he turned onto his road, he was no longer in the city, but in the heart of the country. His house was not set near the side-walked suburban road, but had became a hundred-year-old cabin set deep into a wooded lot. The trees were mostly pine and cedar, and the sunlight scarcely lit the dappled dirt path, winding to his front door. He took it, unquestioning.

He entered into a warm room, a fire burning in the hearth. There was activity in the kitchen. Someone wearing an apron was making dinner. It was obvious. The aromas of roasting meat, carrots, potatoes and onion wafted through a comforting, warmly lit den. At first, he mistook the dancing figure, blocking the light in the kitchen doorway, for a man. She had short hair and a stocky build. Then he heard her laugh. As she moved back into the light of the stove, he saw her hair was blond, and she showed a pretty, smiling face. Small breasts and an average waist. How was your day, sweetie? he heard her voice call to him. Good and yours, he found himself replying. It’s almost ready, he heard her sing in response.

A moment later, she walked into the room carrying a large roasting pan with two oven mitted hands, struggling under its weight. Open it! she laughed nodding toward the steaming black lid. He felt sudden concern. Will it burn me? he asked cautiously. She laughed again. Of course it will! But it will be worth it! Be a man! she jeered.

Enough to test his resolve, her laughter prompted Edward to rip off the lid and throw it quickly to the side. It smashed against a nearby wall, knocking down a picture frame which shattered on the floor. She laughed again, more of a cackle, and the sound mixed unpleasantly with the smashing glass.  It didn’t hurt at all! he cried, annoyed the cool lid had startled him.

Oh no? was all she said and nodded toward the pot’s contents. A small baby – somewhere deep within himself, Edward recognized it as his own – was curled up, like an evenly browned pig, smelling heavenly in the roasting pan. He let out a strangled cry. What madness is this?

Take it! Take your baby! she laughed, holding out the pot. He turned to face this nightmare, the baby rolled over in the pan, cooing, da-da, moving its mouth like a fish out of water and lifting its small hands upward. Edward picked it up, horrified that it lived, yet feeling some kind of relief. He cradled the baby to his chest, warm gravied juices staining his clean work shirt, running to the nook of his elbow.  He looked at the woman, still beautiful, awful. He pulled the baby away from his body, holding it out to study it.

To Edward’s chagrin, it spoke this poem:

You don’t see beauty,
you won’t see death,
you refuse to acknowledge
the law of cause and effect

You wish to be happy
but you cause only pain
you wish for status, respect
while criticizing others, in vain

You wish for the answer
but won’t open your eyes
you wish to hear clearly
but you don’t wish to be wise

You punish yourself
with mistaken awareness
you run to your suffering
and call it unfairness

You could invest in your joy
by performing virtue
but instead choose to plant seeds
to feel ever lonely and blue

Now you dream the dream
with instructions to wake up
don’t push them aside
because they don’t fit in your cup

Drink the wisdom nectar
give up selfishness today
you have all the conditions
do not throw them away

Choose to be happy.

~~~

Edward woke up.