Oedipussy (15 page)

This one thing was a gift.

The television continued its endless stream of programming. The show changed to an educational reality show. Historians competed for speed and accuracy in solving historical mysteries in New York City. The prize was a fifty thousand dollar research fellowship and any expenses that the researcher deemed necessary to complete their work. Several dramatic helicopter shots panned over New York.

"What's weird about that?" I asked Susan

She shrugged.

"It looks weird."

"I don't know."

I couldn't place it. The familiar image of the New York skyline was washed over with twenty five years of development and investment in the center of the universe. Of course it would be different.

After we finished the paperwork and shut the television off, we careened through Twin Falls. I drank in the environment, wide eyed through the large window of the van's sliding door. Twin Falls was strip malls, fast food restaurants, and convenience stores bordering the street as we approached downtown. It was still quaint, and seemed more so with new sleek municipal signage. There were people walking. It was nice.

"I haven't seen any of this for so long," I said to Susan.

"You've been away?"

"In a sense. I was paralyzed, in a coma - that's why you're coming to my house now."

"I see," she responded. Clearly they didn't share any back stories with the social workers.

"Do you live around here?"

"Only since I started working for the state about five years ago. I am from Aberdeen."

"Washington?"

"Yes."

"Like Kurt Cobain?"

"Like Kurt Cobain,” she said plainly.

I spotted the plaza where Kinkos was.

"Oh! Stop! Pull in, here!"

We pulled in. Everything in the store looked the same, but the signage was different.

Susan operated the van's elevator and helped me down to the parking lot.

"I'll be right back."

I wheeled into the store. The purple aprons, the Oxford shirts, the retail pegboard, everything was exactly as it was when I worked there. Customers used the self-serve copiers to do their work out of eyeshot of the sales team doing the production behind the counter.

"Welcome to FedExpress. How can I help you?" A thirtyish man stared me down from his perch behind the counter.

"Does Chuck still work here?"

"Who's Chuck?"

"The manager."

"I'm Scott. I'm the manager. Is there something I can help you with?"

"Oh. Oh, no, I was just looking for Chuck."

"I have been here ten years or so. No Chuck." So much for easily getting my job back.

I wasn't sure that I could even work, or when I could go back to work, or what work consisted of. I needed to do something that would keep me occupied even if I didn't need the cash. Making copies in a retail shop wasn't something I'd do for fun.

"Thanks anyway."

I turned around and wheeled away.

I had a hunger to make connections with people. I didn't want to feel so utterly alone. I've traveled through time to this future existence; alone, bored, and devoid of relationships and people I cared about. So what did I do? I called Jenny's parents' phone number in the strange off chance they had the same phone number. I got someone who would drive me anywhere, and I got that person to drive me through town, hoping I would run into someone that I would recognize and get my part time job back at the copy store I worked at as a teenager twenty five years ago.

What was the point?

I passed a couple teenagers fooling with a self-serve copier as left.

It was ludicrous. If my manager was forty-five or so when I worked here as a kid, he would be seventy now. Seventy. Why would Jenny still be around here? Why would I even expect my parents to be alive, and why did I even think it might be fair to blame my loneliness on them?

A paper alighted onto my lap.

I stopped and handed it back to the teens.

"Thanks, man." Two boys. One had black hair over half of his face, a Nirvana Unplugged shirt, and metal paraphernalia hung from baggy pants. The other had spiked brown hair, and wore a striped shirt a couple sizes too big.

"No problem." I glanced at it before handing it back, and it looked like one of our old Dawn Ego posters. "You guys in a band?"

"Yeah, just a small thing. You should come out for it. Here," and they handed the poster back. It was a poorly designed image that was a manipulation of the Mona Lisa with a penis coming out of her mouth. On closer look, it was a clever. A Mona Lisa entirely made of penises. They were called "Moana Liza," and had a free concert Tuesday night at Twin Falls State College's "Eagle Cafe."

"Can anyone go to this? I mean..."

"Oh, yeah."

"I might check it out," I responded sincerely.

I wheeled back out to Susan standing next to the van with the ramp down, and we continued our excursion.

There were two other stops I wanted to make.

The first was the high school. The building had new signage and a somewhat refurbished look. It was now Twin Falls Middle School, and it stood dark. Banners with a variety of maxims were drilled into the concrete on the building, including "listed on the World News 2015 List of 'Best Middle Schools in the USA* (*2451 of 5000 schools)," and "One Hundred Percent College Acceptance Rate* (*of students who applied to college in Twin Falls High School class of 2016, 2017, 2018)."

"What's going on with this place?"

"I think they moved the high school over to the junior high and they refurbished it before moving the students in - swapped them."

"What's with the banners?"

"They're fighting with the charter schools to get students in. It's basically an expensive PR war more than anything."

I studied the posters a little more closely. "These posters don't actually say anything, do they? I mean, I'm sure the junior high is great, but it's misleading."

"Yeah. It doesn't matter. People are stupid. That's the nature of education now, I guess. How the public sees everything and what impact it has on their support of the school rather than the quality of the education or how well the students do. Most people don't notice that."

"When did it change?"

"Bush."

"Incredible."

"Do you want to go see where the high school is now?"

"No, but could you drive me around the building over there? Then I want to go to The Caffeine Machine. Then we can go home."

"What's The Caffeine Machine?" She drove to the back of the building.

"It's near - actually, do you know where Blockbuster is? It is across from that."

"Blockbuster?" It wasn't her fault. She wasn't from around here.

The back of the high school was as it had always been. Parking lot, lined with tall pines. No service roads or drainage ditches.

"Just a dream," I whispered to myself.

"What?"

"Nothing... This is pretty. We can head downtown, now."

I gave her turn by turn directions. The windblown streets were empty residentials devoid of people. Today's Twin Falls was cars and 'for sale' signs.

What happened?

We pulled up to the intersection where the Caffeine Machine was. The facade of the building was gone. Instead, the entire face of the store was painted bright yellow, advertising Kenny's Chinese and Mandarin Food. The place was dead through the plate glass windows. Fluorescent radiation glowed off industrial fast-food type seating that was more utilitarian than comfortable. A few bodies moved around in the kitchen. Smoke rose from some cauldrons. Delivery men popped in and out of the restaurant. Neon signs blinked with the restaurant's name and phone number. Entire windows were bordered with shocking neon light.

No Caffeine Machine. No art.

No Blockbuster across the street.

"We can head back," I said, "it's not here."

"Did you still want to go to the library?" I forgot about the library.

"No, I don’t have any ID or anything to get a card. Although, I'd like to check my AOL, but I can just do it another time."

"AOL?"

She drove me back home.

For the rest of the evening, she helped me with some strategies to work around my disability. Her goal was to help me exist a little easier. I needed to make food, use the bathroom and shower alone. I needed simple, practical skills, and I needed to take advantage of them when I could. I would've been able to figure out how to do some of these things on my own, but her help made me more efficient.

She left, and I had some more bourbon. It was inviting, and I felt a sense of accomplishment as I slipped into fuzzy world. Everything was soothed with its bite followed by its numbing anesthetic. It was a warm bath. The world pulled her velvet curtains down, and I felt good.

I awoke halfway through the night sweating in my bed.

My heart pounded in my ears as I stared at the ceiling. I wanted to throw up, but I wouldn't be able to get in my chair and make it downstairs to the bathroom. I swallowed and rode it.

My chest pounded a sledgehammer on my ribs, and fear welled up. Light from headlights shone through the window and reflected a bar that chased across on the ceiling and disappeared.

The clock read fourteen minutes past four.

I turned my attention in my head. I refocused to the rock show and the teens. I'd find the bus schedule. Or, I'd just take a cab for ten dollars - I could afford it. I'd figure something out.

My heart beat. Slammed. I was scared of the pound of the booze.

I was scared of the future.

I was scared of death.

I was a skull.

"This song is called PissPocket."

The noise droned, powering through the song to an audience of one in the The Eagle Cafe. I was the only person sitting in the basement cafeteria for their performance. I eked out enthusiastic applause after each painful, nearsighted, and lyrically incomprehensible song. The three piece band was a mishmash of screaming punk and moany grunge. They were an identity problem, but an identity problem that could definitely play music. I was amazed by their talent as much as disheartened to watch them waste it with the garbage they played.

They all had nice equipment and obvious talent. They cared about what they were playing. But they were commuting to school in Ferraris.

They finished with a jump, performing their final song with an infectious zeal before one solitary audience member. The only problem was that they played as if they had never met one another before tonight.

They immediately packed their instruments and gear away in their road cases. They didn’t talk.

I scanned the little commuter cafeteria. A young college student bought a juice and a bagel at the counter and left. The room was an impersonal, temporary, bodiless space, just as the boys treated it. I took a nip from my Coke bottle filled with bourbon. I felt high and in control.

They were packed within five minutes and walked toward four sets of industrial doors. An impatient woman stood in the doorway with her coat and keys in her hand.

As they walked past me I offered a "great set, guys." I didn't really believe what I said, but their effort was appreciated. With polishing, they could be something.

"Thanks," the three of them said. Two of them continued on toward the doors, but the lead singer stopped. He looked at me with a hint of recognition, "I know - you are the guy that was at the copy store." He was the one in the striped shirt at the store. He was a little more bedraggled and punky in tonight's costume.

"Yes."

"I thought you weren't going to show up, and here you're the only person that came tonight.

"I needed to get out and do something. I really liked you guys. With a little more work and some help you could be great."

"Thanks."

"You know, I am a music producer." As it came out of my mouth, I was recognizing that my forwardness made me a boozy nut job. I was completely out of my mind. "I've headlined a lot of big bands, and then went into producing as a businessman after I was done with my band. You ever hear of The Dawn Ego?"

"Yeah, that sounds familiar, actually." How in the hell could you have heard of us, kid? We were nothing.

"We toured the country, had a record deal with Arista Records, and played with Radio Head." I left out 'in my coma.' "My name is Todd Keefe. Here," I handed him a piece of paper with my name and phone number written on it, "give me a call and we can set something up with you guys. I’m not trying to steal your thunder or charge you any money or anything - this is all above water. Really."

He took the paper, and his eyes grew.

"Thanks." The other members of the band returned after unloading their gear. "I didn't even introduce us. I’m Chuck, and this is Mark and Adam." Mark was the longhaired bassist in the Nirvana shirt at the copy store. Adam was the drummer.

"Nice to meet you. Give me a call and we'll set something up." In that impulsive moment, I found a reason and a direction to do something.

I sat in the silent haphazard cafeteria feeling like a con artist. The soda machine's compressor kicked on, and I was left with its halogen glow. It hummed with my thoughts. The wheelchair man was ignorant to the fact that no one belonged here.

This might be a way to do something and make an impact. I could be a coach. I could help these boys promote their work and make them successful. I might make something off it or I might live vicariously through them, but it was something. Something for this old cripple to do.

I pulled on the coke-bottle bourbon.

This would work just fine.

One of the doors opened behind me.

"Todd? My mom wants to know if you need a ride home."

The ride back to my house was silent and awkward. The woman driving was my peer. The three teenaged boys sat in the back.

It was the perfect opportunity to fall in love with the woman, if my life was a post-coma romantic comedy. Our love would flourish. There would be laughing and dates, and we’d triumph in our son's enthusiasm and talents with the band - our dates would be as much about us as they were about her talented son. Humorous montages sped by. She helped me through my disability, and we would ironically make light of my grave life.

When we got to my house, I thanked Mrs. Pfeiffer, slid back into my chair, and wheeled into bed. I was alone.

I drank more bourbon, and drifted off to sleep.