Fuck Gravity

Ever since my wife moved in with my boss, I had been planning on revenge—gun, knife, poison. None of them are attainable for a guy like me. I’m desperate, and desperation made me hungry. Last night, I sat on the deck and stared at the sky. All I wanted was a juicy cheeseburger and a bottle of cold beer. Just then I noticed a tiny freckle floating around the lower east side of the Moon. It didn’t look like a star or a plane. I kept staring, not letting my eyes cross. The freckle transformed from a sesame seed to a pea, soon from a pea to a potato. It grew larger and larger until a circular hut materialized out of the black sky. I looked down, only to see my feet dangling in the air—I had levitated into outer space.

I kept rising until I was right in front of the hut. It had a roof shaped like a giant burger, and a neon sign blinking Piggie’s. There was only one bar table and behind the table stood a 500 lb boar. He had an enormous head, black spiky hair, a long snout, and white husks curved up like some kind of mustache. He glanced at me and said, “Burger and beer?”

I sat down on one of the stools, “A slow night?”

“You missed the crowd.” He pushed a can toward me.

As I enjoyed the best drink I ever had, I saw a big black chamber attached to the bottom of the hut by a tube.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Septic tank,” Piggie said.

“Do you pump it?”

“Are you kidding?” He nodded at the magnificent blue planet down there. “Just dump it.”

“You mean, you just give us a poop meteor?”

“Relax. Everybody does it, Space Station, shuttles. You won’t even sneeze.”

I admitted I lost my appetite, meanwhile I’d come up with a good idea.

“Can you fly this hut, Piggie?” My hands were trembling in excitement.

“Sure, but I don’t see why.”

“I will give you one reason.”

A moment later, the hut silently descended and hovered above a swimming pool. Twenty feet below, my wife and my boss lay on the floating loungers drinking champagne. Piggie eyed the remote on the table. I pushed the bottom. There was a big splash, people jumping and jostling and yelling like fish struggling to get rid of a hook. Piggie narrowed his eyes, snout twitching like crazy.

“Are you laughing?” I asked.

“Boars never laugh,” he said. “Our skin is too thick.”

Later, he dropped me off at my place. Before he left, I asked him one more question, “How did you know I wanted a burger and beer?”

“That’s the only thing I sell,” he said.

I swore I saw a grin escaping the corner of his mouth. Soon the hut soared up and receded to a freckle. The sky was so beautiful and so far away. I missed the lucidity I found up there. It occurred to me that a guy needed to go to a place at an altitude of 200,000 miles to free up his mind. On Earth, I was numb, dumb, and forever hungry.

Fuck gravity.

 

In Character

He was the new turkey at FreshCart this Thanksgiving season.  “You need to mimic the bird,” the manager told him in the interview .“Of course,” he laughed. “shake, shake, wobble. How hard.”

In the costume he strutted, elbows flapping and hips wiggling. He did all the moves but he couldn’t gobble gobble.

The manager passed by with a box of special price flyers. “Just do the damn song,” the manager whispered in his ear. “I thought you were an actor.”

He was an actor. A good one, indeed. Every night he called his son and read stories to him in his Tim Allen voice. The five-year-old believed it was Buzz himself and begged his father to bring him to the set of Toy Story 5.  His ex didn’t correct this innocent mistake, partly because Tim Allen should be able to send a check to her each month. Late again, she texted him last week, I’d reconsider the settlement. BTW, Johnny wants a new iPad for Christmas.

All the big stars do this shit before they have a chance to shine, his agent told him. He didn’t have any choice anyway. “I have nothing,” the agent said. “Unless you want to try a Santa in the mall.”

He didn’t know why it was so hard to take on this role.  It must be the costume. The cheap fleece was puffy and hot. The styrofoam footwear slapped on the concrete like a duck’s feet. The feather was too red and the tail was too short. A little girl pointed to him, “Angry bird!” Her mother quickly strolled her away.

Through the glass he saw the manager pick up the phone and frown. He almost could hear the complaints —the golden brown turkey on the poster would’ve attracted more customers than he did.

Sweat trickled down his chest. His face was oily and sticky. He closed his eyes and inhaled. We do the gobble gobble, we do the turkey wobble, the rhythm played in his head. In character, he spread his wings, only to knock down a wall of canned cranberries that were stacked outside the entrance. He stumbled and hit the ground, headpiece falling off.

People gasped—a giant headless turkey lay in the middle of the walkway, limbs spasming and a man’s face poking out from the cleaved neck.

He struggled to get to his feet, but the stuffed belly made him roll back and forth. Across the parking lot, he saw his son follow his mother walking toward a salon.

He seized the headpiece and re-attached it back onto his neck. Before the manager ran out to haul him off, before his ex turned to the noise, and before little Johnny shrieked, he gobbled like a real turkey.

 

Fifty Feet Under Time Square

I stand on the platform, scroll my phone, and mind my own business. A blunt force hits my back and I fall down onto the track. I lie sprawled on the rail, ribs cracked, head booming from the impact, yet I already start thinking who shoved me onto a subway track.

I think of the red-shirt guy who loitered around the entrance holding a board I’M HUNGRY. I gave him my cream puffs. He sneered, Bitch, you don’t have any money?

I think of my boss, a bodybuilder who owns two dozen different socks to match different weathers. He followed me into the ladies’ room and asked me if I’d like to come over to his house in East Hampton. His wife and kids would be out of town over the weekend. For the sake of your health, he said, you don’t have to work that hard.

I also think of my nice neighbor. Every time we met in the elevator, he’d ask me where my restaurant was, and how to DIY Kung Pao Chicken in his thirty-grand renovated kitchen, totally ignoring the fact that I wore business suits, Jimmy Choo heels, carried a laptop bag, and all that. You’d think people should see “Corporate Lawyer” tagged on your forehead, think again.

I  think of the woman yelling You! You!, when I refused to let her cut in line at the bagel place; I think of the girls at Jackson Junior High, who covered their mouths and peered at me while I sat alone at a lunch table, mentally unraveling the red sweater my mother knitted for me until it returned into a ball of yarn; inevitably I think of my mother, who whipped me with the cello bow and then buried her face in her palms and wept. I’ll do better in the next competition, I promised, tasting the salty tears in my mouth.

I think of all the suspects, all the reasons. I would never think of a rat. Hell, the rodent is right in front of me, crawling across grimy beams and nipping a piece of burger wrapper. We glance at each other and neither would budge.

I could do this forever if not for the yelling up from there. A man kneels on the platform and reaches out his arm to me, and a woman insanely jabs her finger at the tunnel and screams. The rail thrums under my body—F train screeches into the station, headlight cutting the darkness like a sharp knife. I have three seconds to boost up, grab that guy’s arm, and hoist myself back to safety. But I freeze solid, not because of the blinding light, not because of my fractured bones and concussion, not even because of the possibility that I’m hypnotized by the rat or the other way around, mainly because, I have to think.