When I was a kid, I still lived in this city. My mother died giving
birth to me, but I never knew that until I was old enough to know my dad's
stories were all bullshit. He wasn't even really that good at them. I
guess when you're a kid, knowing the truth means less. Or maybe you're
smart enough to realize what kinds of truth are good for you. Whatever.
I used to wander around by the river during the late afternoon. And when it got dark enough, I'd sneak over the wall that ran along the river and climbed down to the rocks and junk strewn along the shore like a line of faded memories at the bank of a river that's as much oil and decay as it is water. I liked to scavenge through the garbage and bring back souveniers. Thinking back, I'm surprised I didn't stumble on a dead body.or a live one, for that matter. But each day I'd sneak home and put my new treasure in a secret box inside my dresser. One day, the smell got so bad my dad found it and threw it out. After that, I stopped going to the river. It didn't seem worth it to start all over again.
The water of the shower slips over me like cool little tongues, my own cool treasures kept secret from the heat of the city's summer. Washing away the wings, the symbol, the baseline, the whole damn world for the space of the time it takes me to shower. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to change the amount of time I spend in the shower. It's always at the exact same time that the cool feeling loses is novelty and I begin to shiver. Even if I turn on the heat, then I feel too hot. It's like my body has evolved into my morning routine. I wonder.if I died would my body continue to go through the routine on its own?
Five days a week, the post office is my home. Because, I mean, where you sleep isn't necessarily you home. It's where you exist most of the time. When I go home from work, I don't exist anymore. I don't drive a car, I don't even have the comfort of having an ability to cause an accident. All I am is another passenger on the subway. Another fare for the taxi driver. But when I go to work, I have a name. And an ID card. And a mail van and a few thousand of the same letters waiting impatiently to be delivered.
The office was crowded that day. Everyone seemed to have come to work. It was a Friday, after all. Everyone wanted to act like they've been here all week. The supervisor was in for one of those rare times he checks to see no one is slacking off more than he is. He walks around, the gleam of his bald head like a siren going off, making everyone look more focused, more content and sickeningly polite. I punch in and he wades through an ocean of happy faces that revert back to normal as he passes, as if he's some wave of misery dissolving the masks his workers put on. He made his way towards me, but I tried not to make eye contact. That's death. Everyone who works here knows that.
"Maseo!" His voice is about as low as his head. His short, squat body is heavy with muscle and fat, but the fat he's somehow managed to train to move in just the right way so that it looks like his arms are powerful when he folds them. He loves doing that. His wide brow is furrowed in some expression that involves narrowing his wet, dark eyes. "Just getting in?"
"Yes, sir."
He raises one bushy black eyebrow. "You always get in this time?"
"This is the time I'm scheduled for, sir."
I've had this conversation at least once every time he's in the office. It's always the same. He nods slowly, eyeing me pointedly. Then he says "Good, then, keep it up." And walks away with a strut that says 'I showed him.' I watched him go, a short, gleaming wave, light before him, dark behind.
I became a postal worker because I was excited to see what my city really had in it. So, I guess it was travel. If you could call it that. Horizons are deceptively far. The walls of the city seemed like a whole different world from where I'd been all my life. The novelty wore off after a month. After a while, I started to recognize the same roads. I stopped getting lost in totally different worlds. Even the people started looking the same. I should never had attempted to reach the horizons. It made them too close. It made them so close sometimes I feel them around my neck, choking me. And sometimes, I feel like letting them.
A million little white rectangles rain down on the office daily, a hail of words all typed in the same black font. All the same letter from where I stand. Most of the time, people don't bother writing return addresses. They put stickers on the corners of the envelope, stickers that must have all been made by the exact same company because they all look exactly the same. Not even the stamps have anything original about them. No one licks the backs of their stamps anymore. Everyone simply buys the sticky kind. And I wonder what's inside some of the envelopes. Not because it's a mystery or anything, but just to see if all the letters are exactly the same, just mailed so the post office will have something to do. So people like the supervisor have enough subordinates to feel important on a daily basis.
"Hey Tama!" It's the kind of jittery, bouncing voice that can't be mistaken for any of the other drones around the office.
"Hi, Karen." This woman, Karen, matches her voice precisely. A very businesswoman short blonde hairstyle, with glasses with wide lenses and a smile full of teeth bright enough to blind those who didn't know enough to not look directly into the face of useless glee. Her body was too barren and slim to ever be any more than a sack of flesh filling a blue uniform.and it didn't even do that well.
"Didja hear, didja hear?" She says it twice, as if anyone couldn't pick up her high-pitched siren voice the first time.
"What?" I pretended to be examining the box of deliveries for the day to avoid looking at her. Even so, the smile made me squint one eye.
"Remember how the Medical Mechanica building was spewing that weird yellow fog yesterday?" It wasn't a question as much as a command.
"Yeah, sure." I remembered it. I had been driving to one neighborhood or another and all of a sudden this hissing sound muffles the normal sounds of the city, the yelling, the honking, the endless rumble of car engines. I looked up and saw the Medical Mechanica building seem to explode in a burst of sickly yellow fog. The fog fluttered outward, flowing like water over the sky, underlining the pollution that already tainted it. It covered the city like a blanket, like a swirling yellowish cloud. For the rest of the day the city seemed to glow with an aura of pollution.
"You do?" The smile widened and I pretend to be looking through the desk in front of me so I can turn my head further away. "Well, the EPA's having a fit!" She giggled one of those giggles that goes up at the end, like a question. "Saying Medical Mechanica has no right to pollute the city's air." A few more chuckles followed the statement. "Isn't that funny? Polluting the city, ha!"
"Yeah, it's kinda ridiculous." I remember going to the mountains once. The air was so clean I almost choked. It was terrifying. It was the kind of air that no one had already taken into their body and blown back at you. It was raw.
"Wanna know what the city's doing about it?" She literally shivered with anticipation.
"If I say no, you're going to tell me anyway, so go ahead."
The answer didn't phase Karen. Not like I thought it would. She spread her thin, arms suddenly. "NOTHING!" She giggled for a little while, as if she had just made a horribly funny joke. When she calmed down somewhat, she spoke again. "Isn't that great?"
I shrugged. "I guess, if you can call it that." I picked up the box of deliveries and began the process of lugging it towards the garage, the bulky thing heavy with monotony.
Karen's smile went away like the sun disappearing behind a cloud and she followed after me, her whole face and body focused on being genuinely concerned. "Something wrong, Tama?" When I didn't respond, the guessing began. "It's not something I said, is it?" I still wasn't responding. "Something happen last night?" No response. "Or this morning?"
I let out a low grunt as I shifted the weight of the box, trying to hurry towards the garage before I dropped it. "Yeah, I woke up."
A frown seemed frighteningly out of place on Karen's face. "Is it about Aya?"
I froze. No, I told myself, don't think about it, don't think about her, don't let yourself. But it was already too late. Aya Furihame. My ex-wife.
I used to wander around by the river during the late afternoon. And when it got dark enough, I'd sneak over the wall that ran along the river and climbed down to the rocks and junk strewn along the shore like a line of faded memories at the bank of a river that's as much oil and decay as it is water. I liked to scavenge through the garbage and bring back souveniers. Thinking back, I'm surprised I didn't stumble on a dead body.or a live one, for that matter. But each day I'd sneak home and put my new treasure in a secret box inside my dresser. One day, the smell got so bad my dad found it and threw it out. After that, I stopped going to the river. It didn't seem worth it to start all over again.
The water of the shower slips over me like cool little tongues, my own cool treasures kept secret from the heat of the city's summer. Washing away the wings, the symbol, the baseline, the whole damn world for the space of the time it takes me to shower. No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to change the amount of time I spend in the shower. It's always at the exact same time that the cool feeling loses is novelty and I begin to shiver. Even if I turn on the heat, then I feel too hot. It's like my body has evolved into my morning routine. I wonder.if I died would my body continue to go through the routine on its own?
Five days a week, the post office is my home. Because, I mean, where you sleep isn't necessarily you home. It's where you exist most of the time. When I go home from work, I don't exist anymore. I don't drive a car, I don't even have the comfort of having an ability to cause an accident. All I am is another passenger on the subway. Another fare for the taxi driver. But when I go to work, I have a name. And an ID card. And a mail van and a few thousand of the same letters waiting impatiently to be delivered.
The office was crowded that day. Everyone seemed to have come to work. It was a Friday, after all. Everyone wanted to act like they've been here all week. The supervisor was in for one of those rare times he checks to see no one is slacking off more than he is. He walks around, the gleam of his bald head like a siren going off, making everyone look more focused, more content and sickeningly polite. I punch in and he wades through an ocean of happy faces that revert back to normal as he passes, as if he's some wave of misery dissolving the masks his workers put on. He made his way towards me, but I tried not to make eye contact. That's death. Everyone who works here knows that.
"Maseo!" His voice is about as low as his head. His short, squat body is heavy with muscle and fat, but the fat he's somehow managed to train to move in just the right way so that it looks like his arms are powerful when he folds them. He loves doing that. His wide brow is furrowed in some expression that involves narrowing his wet, dark eyes. "Just getting in?"
"Yes, sir."
He raises one bushy black eyebrow. "You always get in this time?"
"This is the time I'm scheduled for, sir."
I've had this conversation at least once every time he's in the office. It's always the same. He nods slowly, eyeing me pointedly. Then he says "Good, then, keep it up." And walks away with a strut that says 'I showed him.' I watched him go, a short, gleaming wave, light before him, dark behind.
I became a postal worker because I was excited to see what my city really had in it. So, I guess it was travel. If you could call it that. Horizons are deceptively far. The walls of the city seemed like a whole different world from where I'd been all my life. The novelty wore off after a month. After a while, I started to recognize the same roads. I stopped getting lost in totally different worlds. Even the people started looking the same. I should never had attempted to reach the horizons. It made them too close. It made them so close sometimes I feel them around my neck, choking me. And sometimes, I feel like letting them.
A million little white rectangles rain down on the office daily, a hail of words all typed in the same black font. All the same letter from where I stand. Most of the time, people don't bother writing return addresses. They put stickers on the corners of the envelope, stickers that must have all been made by the exact same company because they all look exactly the same. Not even the stamps have anything original about them. No one licks the backs of their stamps anymore. Everyone simply buys the sticky kind. And I wonder what's inside some of the envelopes. Not because it's a mystery or anything, but just to see if all the letters are exactly the same, just mailed so the post office will have something to do. So people like the supervisor have enough subordinates to feel important on a daily basis.
"Hey Tama!" It's the kind of jittery, bouncing voice that can't be mistaken for any of the other drones around the office.
"Hi, Karen." This woman, Karen, matches her voice precisely. A very businesswoman short blonde hairstyle, with glasses with wide lenses and a smile full of teeth bright enough to blind those who didn't know enough to not look directly into the face of useless glee. Her body was too barren and slim to ever be any more than a sack of flesh filling a blue uniform.and it didn't even do that well.
"Didja hear, didja hear?" She says it twice, as if anyone couldn't pick up her high-pitched siren voice the first time.
"What?" I pretended to be examining the box of deliveries for the day to avoid looking at her. Even so, the smile made me squint one eye.
"Remember how the Medical Mechanica building was spewing that weird yellow fog yesterday?" It wasn't a question as much as a command.
"Yeah, sure." I remembered it. I had been driving to one neighborhood or another and all of a sudden this hissing sound muffles the normal sounds of the city, the yelling, the honking, the endless rumble of car engines. I looked up and saw the Medical Mechanica building seem to explode in a burst of sickly yellow fog. The fog fluttered outward, flowing like water over the sky, underlining the pollution that already tainted it. It covered the city like a blanket, like a swirling yellowish cloud. For the rest of the day the city seemed to glow with an aura of pollution.
"You do?" The smile widened and I pretend to be looking through the desk in front of me so I can turn my head further away. "Well, the EPA's having a fit!" She giggled one of those giggles that goes up at the end, like a question. "Saying Medical Mechanica has no right to pollute the city's air." A few more chuckles followed the statement. "Isn't that funny? Polluting the city, ha!"
"Yeah, it's kinda ridiculous." I remember going to the mountains once. The air was so clean I almost choked. It was terrifying. It was the kind of air that no one had already taken into their body and blown back at you. It was raw.
"Wanna know what the city's doing about it?" She literally shivered with anticipation.
"If I say no, you're going to tell me anyway, so go ahead."
The answer didn't phase Karen. Not like I thought it would. She spread her thin, arms suddenly. "NOTHING!" She giggled for a little while, as if she had just made a horribly funny joke. When she calmed down somewhat, she spoke again. "Isn't that great?"
I shrugged. "I guess, if you can call it that." I picked up the box of deliveries and began the process of lugging it towards the garage, the bulky thing heavy with monotony.
Karen's smile went away like the sun disappearing behind a cloud and she followed after me, her whole face and body focused on being genuinely concerned. "Something wrong, Tama?" When I didn't respond, the guessing began. "It's not something I said, is it?" I still wasn't responding. "Something happen last night?" No response. "Or this morning?"
I let out a low grunt as I shifted the weight of the box, trying to hurry towards the garage before I dropped it. "Yeah, I woke up."
A frown seemed frighteningly out of place on Karen's face. "Is it about Aya?"
I froze. No, I told myself, don't think about it, don't think about her, don't let yourself. But it was already too late. Aya Furihame. My ex-wife.
