Closed Circuit No. 4<\/p>\n
The men slump behind steering wheels in a neat row by the prefab sheds at the home improvement center. They eat alone in cars and pickup trucks: chili dogs, triple-deckers, cheeseburgers, taquitos, chicken wings. There\u2019s a correlation between the make of vehicle and make of lunch. Tin foil wrappers and plastic cups jostle for space in pothole archipelagos; this stretch of parking lot isn\u2019t well-maintained. Squirrels and chipmunks quarrel over grease by day, raccoons and possums by night. I\u2019m paid to watch the men in eight-hour shifts through a security camera. I envy their hunger, their brotherhood, their peace.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Hello, Goodbye<\/p>\n
The arm snakes through the upside-down window, cuts a ninety-degree turn at the elbow, palm open in salutation. I only see the forearm: freckled, hardworking, like it belongs to an all-around good chap. Salt of the earth.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been waving a while, greeting people gathered at the side of the road, passing bicyclists, fellow drivers. Now, it\u2019s waving at me.<\/p>\n
Hello, how are you? it says.<\/p>\n
He oughta pull that arm back in, gonna catch a mean sunburn like that. But I don\u2019t tell him this. I was taught never to talk to strange men, no matter how friendly or how dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The arm snakes through the upside-down window, cuts a ninety-degree turn at the elbow, palm open in salutation. I only see the forearm: freckled, hardworking, like it belongs to an all-around good chap. It\u2019s been waving a while. Now, it\u2019s waving at me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":24068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-nancy-s-koven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23180"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24069,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23180\/revisions\/24069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}