Last Year’s Man

            On a sidewalk, during the first days of winter, people huddle into their coats and try to pass each other without touching. Morris shields his eyes from the sun. Ernie stands in his usual spot. People scuttle past them. Ernie speaks.

“All the people are cardboard cutouts. They look real, if you breathe at them just right, or at least real enough so you don't notice they aren't. The birds are tracing paper. The streets are still crowded, just like here. The sidewalks display the same sea of business wear, civilian sensible and modern bum chic. A stiff breeze and it all waves like a flag. The people are pretty sturdy. They don't topple easy.

            “Some come equipped with movable elbow joints and little motors. They never stop waving. They have speakers hidden behind their smiles. They crackle out catch phrases and genuine folk wisdom. I don't know who changes the batteries and puts in the words. Someone has to, right?”

            Ernie scratches the scruff of his neck with long, brutal fingers. Morris glances around at the faces pushing past. Their eyes never quite catch Ernie’s face full on. They always drag their gaze away, crying and kicking.

            “That’s interesting, Ernie,” Morris says. He digs around in his wallet. “You might not want to write the whole thing on your sign though. Most people won’t stop to read all that. Write that you’re an injured veteran or something.”

            “I’m not a veteran”

            “That  might get you more money, though.”

Morris pulls out a five and hands it to Ernie.

            “Just because you lie to make your money doesn’t mean I have to.”

***

            Morris leaves Ernie on the sidewalk. The lobby of his office building is a frozen, earthy marble, shiny and stolid, with ghost reflections of men and women scrubbed over its surfaces. The light fixtures are faux-vintage streetlamps. Every step echoes through the space, pounding back the noise of the street outside, the honking horns and muffled shouts. Morris belongs in this lobby, the Ellis Island marking his journey from the foreign shores of the dirty streets. The Ernies of the world will just have to swim.

            All of Ernie, all the Ernies, slops off on the elevator floor. It’s the hefty ooze of city life, too unsightly to pass under the florescent halo of waiting office lights.

            The elevator doors split open. Morris sweeps in the glory of morning sunlight smashed behind thick panes of glass. People jostle along with quickened step. He rides the current in grace, doling out quick nods to every face that passes. He bakes the sweet bread of power and pinched off pieces for the hungry horde; they gobble and gobble.

            “Hi there, Amy,” he says.

An orange-haired girl looks up from her desk without a word.

Morris turns a corner and sees the polished oak door of his office. Cammy sits before it in her little desk. She talks into the phone in the cry of high humor and blood lust. She speaks in flying shots of speech, scrambling her phrases to shove them down the telephone line.

            “Any calls?” Morris asks.

            “They want you upstairs,” a voice calls from behind him.

It’s Tommy, phone in hand, with folders shoved under his arm. He keeps walking.

            “This might take awhile,” Morris said. “Cammy, if my wife calls, tell her I might be late to lunch.”

            She places her hand over the phone.

            “She won’t call. She never calls. I don’t think I’ve ever heard the woman’s voice,” she says.

            “Sure you have, and she might call today.”

            “The last two never called either.”

***

            Morris stalks the hall. Around the corner, a man and woman speak in low tones.

            “We’ll just ease Morris out, tell him he can take a step back, have it easy for a while,” the man says. “No need to create yet another scare.”

            “Your office or the conference room?” the female voice asks.

            “Better make it the conference room.”

            He speaks in a louder voice, to someone else.

            “Susan, when Morris arrives, ask him to meet us in the conference room.”

            “Sure thing, Mr. Reid.”

            “Thank you.”

            Morris hangs close to the wall as the pair make their way down the corridor, toward the conference room. He straightens up and rounds the corner.

            “Morning, Susan,” he says.

            “Good morning, Mr. Marr. Mr. Reid and Ms. King will see you in the conference room.”

            Morris approaches the room. The bright orange paint of its walls reflects tinted sunlight out into the hall. They’d had the room painted that color to encourage positive thinking. He steps into the light.

***

            The restaurant is an Italian place. His wife, Emily, has always liked it. It reminds her of the place where they’d met in Italy, both on vacation. She’d gone to Italy the way she went everywhere, naked in her clothes. Morris had gone to Italy in someone else’s khakis and come back in his business suit.

            “Sorry I’m late,” Morris says.

            He pushes his way through a curtain of warm air, draped from an overhead heating duct. Emily sits alone at a little table, a brunette right out of some black and white adventure. She turns her brown eyes up at him, bites off the tip of a breadstick and licks crumbs from her lips.

            “That’s fine. I showed up an hour late so I wouldn’t have to wait,” she says.

            “Oh, good. I got caught up at work.”

            “I didn’t ask.”

            “There was an emergency meeting.”

            Emily stares at the gray table top. It might be glazed pavement, complete with grease stains.

            “Yeah, the meeting was heated,” Morris said. “There are some tensions over the financials.”

            “Are you about to go down blazing?”

            “You don’t have to worry about that.”           

            He reaches out his hand to pat her arm. She smiles.

            “Who’s worried?” she asks.

            “You want me to go down blazing?” 

            “I’d prefer a quiet exit, but I’ll take blazing,” she says.

            “And what would we do then? How would we live?”

            “We’d live.”

            Morris leans back in his chair.

            “I want to give you a comfortable life,” he says. “That’s what you’ve always wanted.”

            “No, you must be thinking about Sarah, or Jillian. Maybe that’s what they wanted. I’m the one who just wanted you. I’m the one who wanted excitement. I’m the one who wanted a family. Don’t you remember, or do you always get us wives confused?”

            “Of course, I remember. I remember,” he pleads.

            “You should quit that job.”

            “I can’t leave, not now. I’d be abandoning them.”

            “You’ve given years. You helped build that place.”

            “It’s not the time. They just asked me to take an increased role. It’s not the time for us, either. We have to meet with those adoption people. We can’t go in saying we’re both unemployed.”

            “You won’t have any trouble finding a less demanding job. I’ll get a job again. I already set up the meeting with the adoption agency, by the way.”

            Morris leans toward her.

            “What? We were supposed to talk about that.”

            “We’ve been talking for months, Morris.”

            “I have a pretty full schedule.”

            “I didn’t even tell you the date.”

            “That’s not the point. I should have been consulted. You know I’m busy.”

            “You’ll just tell them you can’t be in to work that day.”

            “Well, which day?”

            “Any day it might be. It doesn’t matter. You’ll tell them you can’t be in that day.”

            Morris smacks the table with his palm.

            “It does matter. I can’t just take off any old day.”

            “Forget it,” Emily says. She stands to leave. “I’ll just tell them I’m a wealthy widow.”

            Morris watches her go.

***

            “I had to leave the city. I couldn’t stand it anymore, all those frozen faces driving into me with their eyes. They were jealous of my flesh and blood. They were. I know it. I felt it. It didn’t feel good. No, it didn’t. So I had to get away. I told you about the cars, right? I did. I did. The cars were clay, so they didn’t drive. They had no go to them, and they had a tendency to shatter. They were brittle is what I mean, you know.

            “I walked out of the city. It was rough. Had to be done. Had to be, or I’d have lost it. It was so quiet there, not like here. Here the noise is like a big blanket wrapped all around you. Sometimes it’s smothering. Oh, is it smothering. But it’s also a comfort. It can be a comfort. I didn’t know that before. But there all I heard was the wind. These buildings, they rip that wind to shreds and send it wailing over our heads. You don’t realize it now, with all the other noise, but there’s violence up above. Just look how we build them, with these sharp corners. Big boxy things. Most of them anyway. It’s not natural. So, I left the city.

            “Don’t know how long I walked. My feet were killing me. I was blind. I was deaf. I don’t know what happened on the way. I lost all that time. I lost all the time until I looked down at my shoes. There was blood in the laces. It was flowing out through the holes, the eyelets they call them. I look back and see bloody tracks ran down the street behind me. Right down the middle of the street. I look at my shoes and take a few steps. I wanted to feel the pain, but I was numb. I couldn’t feel. I stepped into a shadow. It swallowed up my feet, and the blood looked black. That’s when I look up and see the house, big as day, and—”

            “I remember, Ernie, from before,” Morris says.

            “Don’t interrupt me, Morris.”

            “You worked here when I started. We used to ride the elevator. The 26^th floor.”

            “No, no, don’t think so,” Ernie says.

            He starts to back away.

            “You seemed so familiar, but it’s been so long. I never knew your name.”

            “I’m not him, Morris.”

            “Ernie.”

            “Let me be.”

            “Alright. Alright. I have to go,” Morris says. “You can finish your story later for me, okay?”

            He slips out a few bills. Ernie stuffs them into his pocket.

            “What makes you think I work on your schedule?”

***

            Morris steps into the lobby. He watches his feet contact the marble and listens for the echo of his shoes in the cacophony of foreign steps. He watches the feet around him and imagines eyes that inspect the bald spot quickly conquering his skull.

            In the elevator, he sees himself reflected in gold. The doors tear open to business not slackened by his lunch break. The large room feels dark with action, the sunlit windows squelched and tamed. Morris creeps toward his office. He passes faces folded into various files and eyes pumped full with the blue glow of computer screens.

            Distracted, he doesn’t see Amy until she’s an orange blur, smashing into his chin. Something hot and wet soaks his chest. The smell of coffee burns his nose as its mess spreads down his belly and onto his pants.

            “Oh,” Amy squeals. “I’m sorry, Mr. Marr. I’ll get napkins.”

            Morris stands there as the scalding liquid rubs pain into his nerves.

***

            With the sun going down, most of Ernie’s body is shadow. Only his head catches the light. His eyes looked right into Morris.

“There was only a stone in the crib. It was about the size of a mouse. I touched it with my fingers and it trembled. Or I trembled. I felt dirt on my fingers when I pulled them away. They looked clean in the light, though. I looked and they looked clean. I felt it though. I felt the dirt. There are lots of things I haven’t seen, but I know how to feel. No one can tell me I don’t.

            “I stuck that rock in my pocket. It didn’t belong in the crib. I know that. A baby could hurt itself. It’s a good thing there wasn’t a baby in the crib with it. I went to look for the child, or its mother. It wasn’t right, the rock in the crib. It didn’t belong. I felt wind blowing through the house. All the doors were open, not just the one I came through. The windows were open too. There wasn’t anything in any of the other rooms. I looked through the whole house, and it was all bare except the baby’s room. I went out and all the furniture was piled by the curb. All the clothes were in the street, blowing away.

            “I figured they were moving, but there was no truck. There were no cars at all and no other houses on the whole block. It was all plotted out, and there were driveways, but no other houses. The wind blew right through and shattered me where I stood. That stone in my pocket was heavy and cold against my leg. I let all the clothes just blow away.”

            Ernie holds a cardboard sign in front of his chest, bending it in the direction of every passing face that pauses to notice. It’s a fresh piece of cardboard, not the scribbled, careening sentences of this morning. It reads “Veteran Needs Food,” in black block letters.

            A big guy in a blue sweatshirt and Yankee cap bumps into Ernie and sends the sign flying in a gust of wind. Yankee Fan lets out a thick chortle of laughter as Ernie pops his lanky arms into the air after the sign. It makes a high curve into the street and slaps the windshield of a passing car. Morris thinks Ernie might leap out after it, but he just drops his arms to his sides. He shrinks into his jacket against another cold gust, and he’s never looked so small.

            “It’s getting dark, Ernie,” Morris says, “Do you go to a shelter nearby at night?”

            “Shelter? No.”

            “We’re supposed to get a freeze tonight. You can’t stay out here.”

            Ernie shakes his head. “I don’t need a place to stay, I’m fine out here. I know how to live off the land. I’m one with nature.”

            “Come on, man.”

            Morris reaches out to touch Ernie’s shoulder. He shoves Morris’ hand away and tries to leave. Morris grabs Ernie by the wrist, but he swings out with his other arm, and Morris feels a sharp pain in his head followed by a quick dizziness that takes his legs and melts them. He gets to his feet and searches for Ernie, who is off down the sidewalk, using the surging crowd as a line of defense.

            “There’s no nature to live off of, this is New York City,” Morris says.

            Ernie spits back an answer.
            “And whose fault is that?”

Ernie disappears as Morris holds his hand against an injured ear.

***

            The car dies. The engine shuts off, and forward momentum expires in the empty street. Morris’ first thought is all rage and stomp, a few punches to the steering wheel in impotent frustration, but he doesn’t storm. He just opens the door and gets out.

            The fall of night crimped the evening shut hours ago, so he walks in the still of suburban midnight. Even under dew drop street lights, some flickering and some strong in their yellow glow, ancient darkness slithers at the limits of his vision. A rotund moon bobs above thin clouds, but no stars can be seen.

            His breath freezes in the air, and his nose begins to numb. With fingers buried in his pocket, as deep as the fabric allows, Morris treks home. Toes aching in insubstantial shoes, he looks to houses with light stumbling out of windows and darkness announcing sleep. He reaches his block and sees his own house, dark and anonymous between the gray-black sky and the streetlight on the curb. He stops.

            His toes are numb now. His fingers feel like matches that refuse to light, despite strike after strike after strike. With chattering teeth, he stands and watches his house.

***

            Morris wakes to sour in his mouth and a knot coiled around the base of his spine. He claws sleep from his eyes and swings an arm down from the couch, groping for the remote control. His knuckles ring a bottle cradled in the carpet.

            The TV clicks on in the tones of cable news. A downtrodden farmer in Omaha has celebrated the eleventh hour of a hostage standoff by setting fire to a small insurance office. One hostage dies overpowering the gunman. Another dies in the fire. Human tragedy is breakfast cereal.     Morris stretches his legs out over the arm rest and closes his eyes to listen.

            Sleep refuses to clamber back into his mind. He has to get up. He opens his eyes and surveys the room. Morning sunlight flows deep yellow from behind the blinds. Yesterday’s clothes are scattered on the floor. Dinner is crusty in a plastic dish. He stands, and blood rushes from his brain and punched stars behind his irises.

            His socks slip on the kitchen linoleum, playing tricks on his fragile balance. He gropes through cabinets and against various knobs, dials and buttons. Eventually, he stands over half burnt waffles and pungent, acidic coffee.

            From above, creaks of movement trip through the ceiling. From Emily’s floor, their floor, under her feet. Under legs goose-bumped with morning cold. Morris thinks of an empty house, with no sound but his own. With no one. With guilt and waste filling the walls, ceilings and floors. With cold and wind that don’t die with the day and its warming sun.

            He grabs his discarded clothes from beside the couch. They smell of yesterday and tomorrow. He leaves a note for Emily. He borrows her car.

            On the road earlier than usual, he drives past his broken down Lexus. The suburbs lay stinging under a brutal and irrepressible morning sun. The city is shadows and stripes of sharp light. He wants the whole thing muted and gray. He wants clouds to climb down heavy and full, rotund bellies bulged out against the skyscrapers. 

In front of his office, where sunlight passes between the buildings and swings a flaming blade at the sidewalk, he waits for Ernie and shivers in the lingering cold, eyes dark with fatigue. The sidewalks are spare so early, and the faces more defeated, but in their wary tired they are less mechanical. They shambled by with imperfect movement.

Soon they’re gone, and the regular crowd pushes onto much trodden paths, filling the gaps of early morning quiet with low conversation and breath hot with coffee. The streets run over with traffic noise and the stench of exhaust. Ernie doesn’t show. Morris makes himself small, waiting while people bustled about him, barely taking notice. He starts to see people he knows headed into the office, but they say nothing. Their eyes discount his face, his form, his presence, only giving the slightest flicker as they sweep over him, like his flesh is translucent and insubstantial. He begins to move in the crowd, but not toward his office. He takes to the sidewalk and a method of moving that crushes space and time.