Day 26

First time I've had fun doing this, truth be told.  You want to immerse yourself in the dude you're writing about's world, because that gives you more to write about.  Not that it isn't all exposition today, but once you explain things it's easier for real things to happen.  I'm going to follow through on this story even though I don't like my main character much anymore because he's weak and useless.  I'm going to have to give him a gun tomorrow and see what he does with it.  Also, characters can't be too wimpy to talk to other people.

Reading "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time", it's a much better story before he tries to hammer home the maudlin point of the main character being retarded/autistic/whatever.  We like/believe the character enough before you say he's retarded, even though it's done sort of unsympathetically.  Do enjoy the fact that one of the things retarded people do is "hates the French", though.  He couldn't have done that on accident.


          Calvin recognized the noise as he sat there munching on potato chips and tuna fish straight out of the can.  It was someone trying to come through.  He could go into the room next door and investigate, but he didn’t know the guy in the next room.  He heard loud thumps coming from Gloria’s room.  He was jealous at first, but gave up on that feeling.  Following those feelings only gets you further from yourself, he remembered from one of his audiotapes.  While he knew it was only white noise, when he chose to believe the vast tomes of reconditioning he would pour into his subconscious night and day it would produce good results.

            He stood upright on the bed and put his ear closer to the wall.  The curviture of the ceiling prevented a comfortable position.  A squeal came from the room next door, and the strange vibrating thump on the outside wall stopped.  The room stopped trembling, he could hear and feel his mind working again.  He laced up his shoes, put the can of tuna away unclosed in the shitty hotel refridgerator and opened the door like peeling a bandaid off. 

            How long had this sound been going on for?  He couldn’t remember.  He went next door and knocked.  It must have been since he moved up there, but the first night he hadn’t remembered hearing it.

            A slender male with a short tightly rendered moustache opened the door.  He had John Lennon glasses on and was holding a volume of Readers Digest from the mid 90s.  It looked like he wasn’t aware any disaster had happened, any white suited gentlemen were reaking havoc on the building, any newer books had come out.  Still, he answered the door shortly after the first knock.  Calvin’s eye was drawn behind him to the window, where a long hook climbed over the surface in a screeching warble and disappeared to the floors above.  The blinds had been taken down. 

            Calvin pointed behind the man in the threshhold, standing in between the flower designed hallway carpet and the soft shaglike carpeting of the interior.  “What?”  The man asked indignantly, not turning around. 

            “Who are you?”  He inquired. 

            “I’m Calvin I have been living next door. “  They stood in silence for a moment, the man actively trying to put together what relevance these facts had for him. 

            “So…” The man said, pushing the door slowly toward Calvin.

Calvin put a hand on the numberplate and attempted to make eye contact, to be more direct in his detective work.  “Did you see anything?”  Calvin said.  “There was a loud banging coming from the outside wall of my room.  I have no window and only recently when it seems it might come through have I been concerned about it.”

            “Why did you pick a room without a window?”  The guy scoffed rolling his eyes, spitting out breath as he talked.  “Nope didn’t see anything, now if you don’t mind…”  He tapped the front of his Readers Digest and pushed the door closed.  Calvin let it shut.  He had finally met someone he was more active than.  He felt like maybe he wasn’t the laziest guy in the post apocalyptic world.

            He remembered reading the stories about dystopian worlds.  There was always an informal despotism, well it wasn’t always informal.  In his case, however, he couldn’t piece together who was on top of the illuminati triangle.  It was probably the guy in the tallest building, he thought.  One with security and a large outer membrane shell which would prevent his entry. There was always a group of underground resistance.  He thought that might be the white coat guys, but they could also be anarchists given the opportunity to rise.  The authority, if there was one, was not concerned with the actions of this group.  The only other things he knew for sure was, firstly, there was a large black ashen pile that he was sure was only the tip of the iceberg protruding like a witches nose poking from the back alleys of the city. 

He let his sentimentality leave him for a moment, and considered Gloria without the pangs of self doubt.  She might have been a real independent women, simply dating and making the most of what was left of the world.  He thought she must have been one of those people who is nice to everyone, even unsympathetic slobs like himself, which he knew was a way of keeping control in those situations.  She cultivated love wherever she found it, like the old retired widow in the backyard who waters the weeds and plants indifferently.  Her garden will be overgrown and irrepressible, but some of this plants were allowed to grow in vain.  None of the absurd monstrosities have earned any real favor,  they only have been allowed to proliferate under the careless callousness of their caretaker.

Now the musclebound jock with the black sunglasses, red tank top and shark pointed haircut was with her to draw her attention to the negative aspects of her behaviors.  He would eat these other plants alive, deliberately usurping Calvin’s unclaimed space.

Calvin found himself in the park at the phonebooth dialing those numbers again.  He looked around more eagerly this time, he was afraid his outlandish style would draw attention to him as a character, and perhaps the random folks he passed on his way around town would start to recognize him.  He was running the risk of becoming familiar.  He thought the façade of running errands may vindicate his person, but this was only a thinly veiled lie.  He wasn’t going anywhere, working on any project, performing any job.  He could only lie to himself.  He was still foundationless, unable to find a steady foothold to begin his climb. 

The phone rang three times before being passed through a security service.  “Thanks for calling Johnson International please hold,” A nasally woman secretary who may have been a recording or not said.  Calvin was poised to say something but the muzak flowed through the line.  He was thrown off guard by how much this tinny, reproduced version of Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” stood up, before long he was humming it to himself.

“Yeah?”  Suddenly Seal had been pulled out like the carpet from under him and his call was inconveniencing an implied authority figure.  He felt like he was part of something just for calling.  Although, in the back of his mind a dubious thought arose, hadn’t I been expecting a woman’s voice to answer?  Wasn’t this supposed to be an ex wife, an ex girlfriend, an aunt atleast?

The voice breathed impatiently, the heavy breath of nostrils.

 Splenetic is a good word for angry