n the beginning Todd created the heaven and the earth. This was the routine from which he never deviated for any reason whatsoever, even though it wasn’t particularly pleasant. In fact it was kind of scary, but crucial to the existence of the world as he knew it. Or maybe he was just stuck in his ways.

Every morning he woke up drifting in the vast blankness that hung between here and nowhere. He didn’t breathe; it wasn’t necessary—at least until he yawned, at which point it proved unavoidable. He cautiously opened his right eye to regard his circumstances. Same as usual. The world was without form, and void. He closed his right eye and opened his left one. At least they regarded the same thing. He dreaded the day he would open them to two different views—say, breaking waves against a pink sunset with one eye and a carnival scene with the other, or a roomful of poppies and a fish—which would just make things even more difficult. But so far so good.

“Let there be light,” said a familiar voice, very close. He was startled, even though he should have been expecting it by now; he’d been through this before. It was a pleasant voice, resonant and even-timbred, yet still wielding a certain authority, like a voice on the radio. He vaguely recalled this voice making other advisory, informative, and encouraging announcements, like “Remember to lock the door, Todd,” and “Ubiquitous: U-B-I-Q-U-I-T-O-U-S: omnipresent, everywhere”, and “You’re not crazy, Todd. You’re just different.”

Of course. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was his.

And there was light. Morning had broken. He was lying on his back, face up, arms outstretched and ankles crossed. A cat was licking his chin. He wiggled his fingers and toes. He blinked twice and began to distinguish shadows and vague ripples in the blankness. And corners—there were always corners. Things were coming into focus. The world was a square…with a ceiling fan. This was the hardest part. Admitting that there was a ceiling fan was half the battle.

His yawn turned into a sigh as he felt the descending burden of himself: the unbearable heaviness of being. Before he could become immobilized beneath it, he sat up and lit the purple candle on the table beside his bed to make Monday—purple for grace on the cruelest day. He regularly contemplated disregarding Monday, but it was strictly taboo. Once, he’d carelessly lit Tuesday instead and never made it through the rest of the week. Everything fell apart. Finally, he’d had to just go to bed and start all over. On the upside, upon re-commencement several nagging problems had inexplicably resolved themselves: the daily educational loan collection calls from Mrs. Edwards had ceased, the toilet had somehow resumed flushing, and it was suddenly Spring. On the downside his employment at We-R-U had been terminated.

Tuesday’s candle was blue for peace after the day of affliction. Wednesday was yellow like the woe he was full of. Thursday was red for power, and blood; he worried that he might be anemic. On Friday he could finally relax and think about more than mere survival, so it was green. Saturday was white to cleanse him of distress that inevitably crept in while he wasn’t looking. And on Sunday orange overwhelmed him with a sense of euphoria intended to endure through the impending week. It didn’t.

This was his prayer for Monday:

Let this be Monday (even though I’d rather it weren’t).
Let me not have my days confused again because that means trouble, and Monday is bad enough.
Let it not kill me.
Let it not kill my cat.
Let this day begin and end.
And let me drink beer when it’s over.

He blew out the candle and proceeded gingerly into the day.

 

eed the cat,” he was advised by his mellifluous voice before he could forget. This was how he kept up with things. He also used scribbled memos on crumpled pieces of paper (a subtler approach), but situating them to be pulled out of his pocket at just the right moment took some planning ahead, and they usually just ended up in bits in the wash, so mostly he talked to himself. Recently he’d debated using a megaphone since he’d developed a worrisome tendency towards heedlessness, but he was afraid that it might seem a bit eccentric, especially in public. In the end he’d verbally agreed to be more attentive.

“Brush your teeth, Todd. Clean the litter box. Put out the trash.” He was already considering reneging on his end of the bargain.

“Get a job,” he said, looking through his assortment of ties for the lucky one. It had a skunk on it and the words, I Stink Therefore I Am, and he wanted to wear it to his interview this morning.

Since the outbreak of The Hotel Wars over a year ago, employment opportunities were rather scarce. Who knew that the city’s economy was so contingent upon peaceable overnight accommodations? He hadn’t had a job since We-R-U. Fortunately, he was frugal by nature and was able to muddle through just about as well selling his plasma and playing his songs for tips and free beer on weekends at The Dutch Boy, the lesbian bar down the street. It wasn’t that this provided any substantial amount of money so much as that his job at We-R-U had been commission only, and as a Conformative Well-Being Counselor he wasn’t very good.

His popularity as a musician, on the other hand, was experiencing a sudden surge due to the daily play of his jazzy Caribbean love tune, “African Girl”, on a local eclectic radio station. The Dutch Boy had benefited as well. Women were flocking in on Friday nights to dance and sing along while drinking mango wine (the house special). The catchy melody and international flavor of the song evidently appealed to the world-village agenda of his core audience. Although he hadn’t been in a particularly political frame of mind when he composed the words:

I’m in love with an African girl
She got my heart and my head in a whirl.

Or,

When we dance I feel no trouble
When we dance I feel fine
When we dance under the moonlight
Drinking mango wine… (hence the house special.)

And while the part about her father being dead in Timbuktu might be considered topical by some, in Todd’s opinion the whole thing was a little silly—with the starry kisses and the musical heartbeats. It had come to him in a dream after all.

Still, a roomful of happy dykes spoke for itself, even if they did pretend not to recognize him when they passed him on the street days later. He always had to find a shop window to check his reflection, to confirm that he was actually there.

 

e shut his right eye for a quick assessment of his appearance in the bathroom mirror before leaving for his appointment. Binocular vision sometimes supplied him with too much information. He strove to avoid sensory overload whenever possible. He unclipped the We-R-U photo ID badge from his good white shirt and slipped it into the back pocket of his pants.

“Not bad, Todd,” he said, looking away before opening his right eye. He didn’t shut his left one for the usual other perspective. He preferred not to notice the minute ink spot on the shirt pocket; there was nothing he could do about it now. He wasn’t going to get the job anyway. Later, he’d shut his left eye to observe an interesting cloud formation or something, and it would all even out.

“Cosmic equilibrium,” he said. It was good to have a cat. Even when he wasn’t really talking to her he could always pretend that he was, at least while he was at home…where there was no one around to think he was crazy anyway. Still, it was good to have a cat. She looked up as if he might finally be saying something important.

“For every cat there is an equal and opposite re-cat,” he told her. She was sitting in the window, licking her paw and wiping her face, content in the knowledge that she was not a re-cat. He picked up his folder of résumés and references, and his note with directions, and headed nonchalantly toward certain rejection. It was a nice day, so he decided to walk.

 

nce, when he got home from a job interview, there was a rejection letter waiting in the mailbox from the very company he had just interviewed with. It had been mailed days before. Once, after assuring him that he would not be hired, an interviewer had asked him to come back for a second interview as a joke on her boss. He went; that was part of the ritual. He explored every available option, no matter how futile.

 

o his dismay, he had proven not to be as highly desirable in the job market as he had anticipated while he was in college, nor was he indispensable once employment had actually commenced, a point We-R-U had made abundantly clear. Despite his innumerable talents and immeasurable capabilities, there just seemed to be something missing—a certain necessary self-confidence, which was surprising considering his enormous self-esteem. The only reason he’d gotten the job at We-R-U was that the Human Resources manager had confused him with someone else. And Todd never mustered the nerve to correct the situation. The whole time he worked there he’d answered to the name of Canton Blaine.

He could always go to work for one of the hotels. They were hiring. But that would be taking his life into his own hands, or rather, putting his life into theirs. They had what was known as a “rapid employee turnover”.

 

e hurried past the bombed-out lobby of The Placid on his way to The Mall of Stores, where he was interviewing for the position of Display Designer at These Books Don’t Read Themselves, a franchise he was unfamiliar with. It was a ground floor position. The bookstore wasn’t yet open for business. Out of the blue, they had called him last week for an interview. He couldn’t even remember sending them his résumé. They weren’t specific about just what had sparked their interest, and he was always curious. Maybe it was finally the college degree.

Of course, his lack of any formal stacking experience would nullify that. He should probably mention that he had liked to build things as a child. Piling Planks was still his favorite toy. He had wanted to be a carpenter like his father. But his parents had encouraged him to go to college; they wanted something better for him. In addition to this chance with the bookstore, his degree in English had proved tremendously useful in making all the inconsequential jobs he had ever had seem relevant on his resumé. And that was no mean task.

Life was hard. As if the prospect of spending every day for the rest of his life laboring at a miserable job that would finally wear down his already tenuous will to live wasn’t bad enough, he had to actively seek out and try to convince people to give him that. It seemed absurd. Survival had become his prime objective. Not just making enough money to scrape by, but making it out of bed in the morning, and making it through the day. Somewhere along the line he’d been misled. He expected something more.

One day…. That was what kept him going. One day it would get easier. One day it would all make sense. One day he’d live by the ocean with his cat, and it would all be over. He was hoping for the end, and that was a terrifying thing to realize about himself. So he promptly forgot it.

 

e closed his left eye to view the street scene ahead. It was like something out of an old musical, except for the automatic weapons. Bellboys ambled up and down the sidewalks singly and in small groupings, scouting for potential patrons. He expected them to break into song and dance at any moment. He was on Sansevierian turf. He could tell by the uniforms. The Sansevierian had been the most elegant hotel in the city, and its bellboys were still the best dressed and most polite, their rifles the shiniest. They tipped their caps and exchanged pleasantries with him as he passed, unlike The Placid’s bellboys who looked thuggish and glowered at passersby who didn’t appear to be in need of lodging.

The Hotel Wars were a direct result of the building of The Mall of Stores. Anticipated to be the biggest and most beautiful shopping center ever, the mall attracted hoards of people to the city before the first brick was laid. Design teams, construction teams, various contractors, planners, and financiers, not to mention prospective shopkeepers and department store executives, all needed a place to stay. Competition for company contracts led to open hostilities and eventually to the now infamous Valentine’s Day Smoke Bomb Incident in the lounge of The Sansevierian. That was considered the first strike. The Homage claimed responsibility, although Amenity Suites was implicated. Retaliation was swift, indiscriminate, and astoundingly disproportionate.

Random destruction ensued. Alliances were formed and broken. Demolished edifices were abandoned, and the hotels moved underground. Aside from minimal administrative staffs quartered at undisclosed and constantly changing auxiliary hideouts, bellboys were the hotels. On the front line, they solicited patronage from visiting businessmen and tourists, registered them via handheld coded-communication devices, transported them in unmarked cars to secret guest suites located inconspicuously around town, and generally made accommodations as comfortable and covert as humanly possible. But spies were abundant. Information leaked out. More bombs exploded.

Todd suspected that one of the apartments on the third floor of his building was now a guest suite, for which hotel he wasn’t sure. It had recently been renovated, and there was a constant flow of businessmen in and out. Several times he’d seen the same two young men loitering outside the building, behaving suspiciously bellboyish, although without the telltale caps and firearms, as if they were undercover. This was disturbing. He watched them from his window and avoided them at all costs. Hospitality was dangerous business.

The city was rife with danger. After seizing the smaller inns, motels, and bed and breakfasts, the five surviving hotels began to venture into other business arenas. Hostelry itself was understandably experiencing a financial slump. Revenue had to come from somewhere; this war was privately funded. The Placid acquired all the laundromats and coffee shops in the city, as well as the local airline. The Homage took fuel production and haberdasheries. Amenity Suites ran the phone company. The Sansevierian had public transportation, pet shops, and cheese vendors. Aethiopica controlled banking and beer. Commerce was a combat zone. Who knew what faction These Books Don’t Read Themselves fronted? He was walking blindly into the line of fire.

But he couldn’t turn back now; he’d made an appointment. And he was a man of his word. If he agreed to be somewhere, he made every effort to be there…except for that time he missed work for an entire week without so much as a phone call. But then, there were extenuating circumstances. That week never actually existed. He’d only made Monday. In fact, now that he thought about it, there was an extra Monday in the world. He should have skipped today and started this week tomorrow. Cosmic equilibrium. This could mean trouble.

 

he funny thing about The Mall of Stores was that there were hardly any actual stores there. Through Entrance B, Todd passed a police station and the office of vehicular decals of some sort. There was an eye doctor, an insurance agency, and a company that did telephone surveys. Further in, there was a dollar cinema and the food court. But primarily there was space for lease. Most of the expected tenant stores had withdrawn before the mall ever opened.

Todd followed directions down corridor after long, dim, empty corridor lit by filtered sun and occasional flickering fluorescent light panels. This deep in the mall, observing established custom, nature had begun to reclaim her territory. Installed tropical mallscaping foliage, unchecked by pruning yet still watered by the mall’s automatic system, tangled primevally with native vines and weeds creeping in through unseen breaches in the outer walls. Nests in available nooks and crannies, excrement on surfaces, and tiny nearby scratching and fluttering noises evidenced the habitation of birds and small beasts. A flock of starlings, disturbed from their roost, flew out abruptly through a broken skylight. It seemed underground.

“Post-apocalyptic,” Todd said aloud. He liked the sound of the word, although he wasn’t sure it applied. This place looked more like the beginning of something. Closing one eye, Todd found it all eerily beautiful, like some fantastic subterranean Garden of Eden.

He found the door marked “BOOKSTORE JOBS”, hinged on a recently constructed plywood partition at the end of an exitless wing. Sawdust, nails, and other construction debris still littered the floor. It seemed an odd location for the opening of a new store, so far from any other business. He hoped that it was only a temporary pre-employment site.

“Or somebody has one hell of a marketing scheme,” he responded.

He was early, but (expecting feral cats, and dogs grown huge and dangerous, to be waiting around every corner) he opened the door to wait inside, not at all expecting (though somehow not surprised) to find the two bellboys from his apartment building engaged in a rather intimate diversion. He recognized them immediately. He had memorized their appearances from his apartment window for purposes of self-protection. The one with his back against the wall wore his hair in a mohawk, and the one on his knees had a tattoo of a rose on his shaved scalp. Todd suspected them to be of the Placid variety. This time they had their rifles, propped in the corner by their clothes.

“Oh shit,” said Mohawk, fumbling for cover, or maybe just his gun.

“Pardon me. I must be in the wrong place,” said Todd, turning to leave. He rechecked the sign on the door, to verify that the word before “JOBS” read “BOOKSTORE”, and not, in fact, “BLOW”.

“That must be Todd.” He heard from behind. “Are you Todd?”

Yes, he told himself, is probably not the correct answer. He continued on his way, casually, as if to merely resume his search for the right door.

“Todd! Halt!”

His mind spun to quickly process new information. They’d been waiting for him, he realized. They knew his name. There was no one else around. The job interview was a setup. Something was going on here, and he didn’t want to stick around to find out what it was.

Run! he screamed to himself. But before he could get his legs to work, he was tackled from behind and found himself on the floor, held under the weight of a naked bellboy.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Todd,” Rose Tattoo breathed into his ear. “Mrs. Edwards just wants her money.”

“We’re here to collect,” said Mohawk. “Student loans are not to be taken lightly.” He reached into the back pocket of Todd’s pants for his wallet. “Shit,” he said to Rose Tattoo after a moment. “Get off him. We got the wrong guy again.”

The two bellboys helped him to his feet hastily and began dusting him off.

“Dude,” said Rose Tattoo. “You caught us by surprise. We’ve been trying to get this Todd guy for months.”

“That’s the fourth time this has happened,” said Mohawk. “We’re supposed to verify who you are first. Mrs. Edwards is not going to like this.”

“Mrs. Edwards never has to know,” said Todd, sliding the We-R-U ID back into his pocket, trying to keep his hand from shaking. It was a rather official looking ID, he noted with thanks. And he’d forgotten all other identification at home.

“Just tryin’ to bring in some extra money, you know? Can’t fault us for that. Times are hard.”

“You surprised us walking in like that, dude. We were waiting for somebody else.”

At least they had found something pleasant to do with their time, Todd thought. “I feel sorry for Todd,” he said.

The bellboys apologized again, then left to return to their clothes. They stopped in the doorway of the plywood partition and waved. Todd waved back, watching with one eye closed, letting the pieces fall into place.

 

ack at his building, he discovered that the busy apartment on the third floor was just the home of a prostitute. He helped her get her bags of groceries up the stairs. She seemed nice. “Times are hard,” she told him

“Typical Monday,” he told his cat later, opening a can of cat food. He took a beer from the refrigerator and picked up the phone to call the utility company.

He burned his resumés, marked “no longer at this address” on his mail, and called the owner of The Dutch Boy to change the name on the marquee announcing his performances. From now on there was no Todd. Before long, no one would remember that there had ever been one. It was easier than he thought.

 

hat night he dreamed this song:

I don’t know how much more of this shit I can take before I bleed.
My hands are raw from squeezin’ out this fuckin’ bumper sticker creed.
I got zest and pith and pulp indeed.
And I got trees comin’ up from seed.
But tell me, just how much lemonade does one man need?

It was to be the first of many hits for Canton Blaine, darling of The Dutch Boy lesbians and a couple of fierce, queer bellboys who considered themselves his protectors and biggest fans.

[END]

© 2005 Denmark de la Croix - Contributor’s Bio

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