FALL, 2009

1.

Marty woke up at 3 p.m., went to the bathroom and pissed, then realized how lovely his bed still seemed; so he lay back down and turned off his alarm completely. He’d be awake in time to get to work; there was a good two hours before he absolutely had to be awake, and the act of turning off the alarm gave him immense pleasure, thinking that he wouldn’t have to drag his body into the waking world even a minute before he was completely ready.

He did in fact wake an hour later, then went to his kitchen to brew coffee. He always looked into the water container part of his coffee maker to be sure no cockroaches had crawled into it to die. He found a dead cockroach in the coffee maker years and years ago--back when he was rooming with Alex; at the time the cockroach was hardly even solid. It was a slimy bit of shell and brown flesh, obviously having been there through many pots of coffee. Ever since then he checked before pouring in the water, looking down into that white plastic pocket where the water went; but he’d never seen it happen again that a cockroach had crawled in there.

As the coffee percolated with its steamy clicking sounds, Marty went to the kitchen table and sat down. Yes, he’d gotten a good nine hours sleep; but it seemed it was when you got the best, longest sleep that you were sleepy the rest of the day. He looked to his watch. He had a full two hours before he had to show up at work.

Now he looked into his kitchen, watched the black coffee slowly accumulate--steam on the inside of the pot, steam rising up off the coffee maker in plumes. There was a cockroach sitting lazily on the counter a foot or two away from the coffee maker. It was an indolent fucker, thought Marty; he watched it flick its antennae about, not moving its legs. Just sitting there, not even afraid of Marty, arrogantly daring him to give a shit enough to smash it. Its little brown legs now began to push it up and down as if it were doing pushups, with those cockroach joints that seemed to bend the wrong way. Survival of the fittest, thought Marty. He’s not scared of me, so I’d be doing a favor to the cockroach nest to crush him. Thinning out the herd, all that. Fuck it. His coffee was ready. He went to the pot and filled his cup, flicked the red light of the brewer off. He didn’t kill the cockroach, which had just scampered perhaps six inches along the counter when he’d come close.

These days Marty was working as a custodian for US Bank. He was responsible for the fourth, fifth and sixth floors--he had to empty trash and wastebaskets, vacuum, dust, straighten up. He did it every night, arriving at six when the place was closing down, and usually finish up by midnight. Sometimes he would check out some porn on one of the computers, jack off in one of the offices. His favorite office to do it in was some fucker named Hal Killigan. He didn’t know anything else about that man but his name, aside from the fact that Marty could see from the Internet Explorer history on Killigan’s computer that Killigan also checked out a lot of porn at work.

He knew he may end up getting fired for it. He’d decided long ago that if he ever did, he’d fill a trash bag full of live roaches that he would gather from his apartment, and release them into the US Bank offices. A bunch of roaches on every floor, he thought; that ought to give them a little something to worry about. But now he’d been working as a custodian for a good five years, jacking off in Killigan’s office now and then for four of those years, and no one had ever caught on about it. At least no one mentioned it to him, and he was beginning to think that this may be a permanent gig after all.

He looked at his watch again. He’d have to get going soon. Breakfast.

He went to his refrigerator. He thought about cooking some bacon, but now that he looked at it, the three or four strips left were brown with age. He tossed it into the trash, which was overflowing a little at the top. He really just set the bacon there on top of the pile, balancing it, rather than tossing it in. Got to clean this fucking kitchen, he thought. Why should he clean the US Bank offices so thoroughly every night and live himself in such a filthy shithole? Now he looked and saw there were two eggs left; or he could bake some french fries, but neither of these seemed appealing. He closed the refrigerator door and wiped his eyes. He looked to his watch. To hell with it, he thought, I’ll grab a burger once I’m downtown.