We mean you
by Christopher Willard
[ fiction - june 11 ]
When I unwrapped the cake I ordered for my seven-year-old’s birthday, I saw that delicately written in frosting scroll work was, “Listen up, Fucker, you’ve been avoiding us for too long.” At that moment I was standing in the play area of the McDonald's at 23rd Street and 9th Avenue, sort of below Hell’s Kitchen and at the upper edge of Chelsea. I knew the address. Did they know the address?
A few days later I’d gone to get my forehead smudged at St Paul the Apostle. I picked up a bulletin and took a seat about a third of the way toward the front. I expected a healthy does of Ash Wednesday eyewash. The board listed Hymn 75, All People That on Earth Do Dwell. Underneath the liturgy was typed, “See, Fucker, we’re all around you and we’ve got binoculars.” I knew my child was in Mrs Margolit’s class adding numbers using colored base ten manipulatives. Around me people bowed their heads. One woman tightened a green scarf wrapped over a bald spot. I stared for a long, long time.
A telemarketer put my phone in motion. He was obviously very pleasant because he used words like Sir. I discovered he was calling me from Mumbai and he knew that I’d won a free, three-day cruise out of Ft Lauderdale. He said it was very nice and that I'd also been one of the few lucky cruisers to have the rare opportunity to tour the magnificent Del Rosa Condominiums. He was thinking next weekend. I was thinking the mid-March when my son would be at his mother’s. Later that night I read on Wikipedia that Mumbai is below sea level which caused me to reflect on the fact that Mihir, that was his name, was endorsing a cruise rather than commenting on global warming that would perhaps threaten his very living arrangement.
A perky clerk directed me to a dressing room in his attempt to set me up with a pair of Hilfiger straight legs. As always, I considered the security bubble, two-way mirrors, and small whittled holes. I’d clearly stated 33-33 but the twerp had provided me with a size obviously too tight. I checked the label. It said, “Smarten up you little Shit. We’ll be watching, as always.” And then it said, “Inspected by #3.” I remembered I’d once worked with a painting foreman whose left hand had only three fingers. I wondered what it meant that my waist and length were the same.
From my office window, while on hold with the MasterCard rewards program, I absently looked down on a back alley where a group of teenagers pull cans of spray paint from their backpacks and undertook a defacement of public property. I remembered the Mayor of Las Vegas suggesting convicted graffiti artists have their thumbs chopped off. The a woman from the rewards program said that Beaumont was not on the list of normal stops, although my miles would cover the trip to Houston and from there it was only 79 miles straight toward the boot state. I said, Mary, how would you like to go out for dinner sometime? She said, That would be great. Then I said, I was just kidding. And she said, I was just kidding too. In the alley the teenagers had left but scrawled on the wall was, “You can never run far enough. We mean you, Fucker.”
