UPDATED 3/8/23

Tires scrape the wet pavement and splashes the plastic newsstand by the warehouse of the pickup. The sky is still a pale gray with the street lamps illuminating the puddles formed by uneven asphalt orange. Percy looks at his clock on the dashboard and sees that he made it just in time at five-thirty in the morning.

As if on cue, the warehouse doors open to reveal several towers of stacked wooden boxes, some of those destined for Percy to deliver all throughout midtown from now until the last stop. He leaves the key in the ignition and gets out to greet the same two guys who always see him at this time during the weekdays. They nod him implying a greeting, then shuffle away to put the wooden boxes into his delivery van. Percy along helps the and rearranges them by order of delivery as needed.

"One of them is for Silas," one of the men mention, "Put it in the back for ya."

"Thanks," Percy tightens the last strap and brushes the dirt away form his hands.

"Did the delivery go okay yesterday?" the other one of them, Joe, handed Percy a clipboard with a form to fill about yesterday's delivery.

"Yep," Percy checked off the boxes that needed to be looked over and signed his name on the bottom of the form like he always does. "Everything was fine."

"Alright."

"I'll see you again tomorrow."

They don't wave or bid him good bye as they shuffle off with cigarettes dangling from their lips. This was routine; Percy was unaffected by their indifference. It only mattered that he got these deliveries on time and done.

As the sun rose higher the amount of wooden crates in the van shrank until he got to Silas' bodega on West 4th. The very last few crates were unloaded by Silas Correa himself. Silas is an old friend of Percy's that owns the bodega through inheritance. Once Percy is done with his morning and afternoon deliveries, Silas lets him work his own shift in exchange for lunch and dinner. This is fine for Percy as he can watch random videos when there's no one around and he doesn't have to waste money on food. Sometimes Silas will even slip him a little envelope every now and then, mostly on holidays, which is an added bonus for Percy.

"Hey would you mind taking the last shift until ten?" Silas asks as he puts the crates in the back to unload. "I have this group project I can't get out of."

Percy munches on an egg and cheese sandwich that he made himself in the deli. "Yeah sure."

"Help yourself to another sandwich for dinner before you clean up for the night. And a drink from the fridge if you want."

This happens sometimes. Percy doesn't complain. If Silas hadn't given him an extra shift he wouldn't be doing anything more important anyways. It's either at Silas', or the university library by Washington Square Park.

Nothing really happens but he had to deal with the drunk college kids at around ten when he was about to leave. He feels bad for Silas as the bodega is right by the university so he probably has to deal with this every day, but since Silas is a student there too he probably got more merit out of it from friendly faces. He doubted these people were friendly, however. After three sandwiches, two refrigerated pastas, and a handful of waters, they left. Percy finally started to clean up and made a sandwich for himself and left for home when Silas came back.

The ride home on the van seems longer and the buildings seem taller as he shuffles over to his worn-down, barely-standing apartment building. He places his bag onto the floor by the window, tosses his clothes on the floor for future laundry, then hops into a shower. The hot water stops running after seven minutes so he scurries out while knocking over a few shampoo bottles, and dries out his hair in his small living room. After putting on clean clothes, he takes his pack of cigarettes lying by the window and slips out to sit on the fire escape with his bag.

The view from his apartment was not atrocious for the rent he paid. He can see the empire state building in the distance, but he can also see his neighbors really clearly. He tries not to think much about them as the lights in the apartment complex across from him slowly turn off. He sits with his elbow propped on the second step of the stairs and drags a cigarette out with the book from the NYU library in his hand.

Although Percy will financially never be able to afford to go to this university, he can afford the library card fee that the university library opened up to the public a few years ago. Before that he used to go to public libraries around Manhattan but they never quite had a surplus of textbooks. He tries to be careful to not let cigarette ashes fall unto the book he retrieves from his bag and uses a pencil and pad to copy down problems on another to solve. He has a full brightness video about a critique of a sci-fi movie in the background while his pencil scribbles on the pad.

His phone flashes and he can see a text from his mom, but he ignores it like every other time. His mom has gotten used to the fact that Percy will never respond at most and maybe only text back every once in a while at the least. But this time, however, the phone flashes again to reveal his mother's number and an option to pick up. He contemplates ignoring it and getting back to solving the problem on the textbook, but resorts to putting on his cigarette on the second step of the staircase and picking up.

Sally Jackson does not waste time to speak. "Your father left, Percy. Please come back home."

Percy sighed. So much for a greeting. She did this maybe once a year and it was beginning to seem like a pattern that only she couldn't see. "I can't. You know he'll be back within a month or so."

"No, honey, you don't understand." He hears his mother sigh on the other end. In addition to sounding morose, she sounded a little nervous. "I… I told him to leave this time. You don't have to worry about him coming back."

While surprised that she was the one to instigate, Percy was exasperated at his mother's naivety. "Do you honestly think that that's going to stop him from coming back? Don't you think that—"

"Baby," she begged, and he could hear her voice quivering on the other end of the line. "Please, please come back. I haven't seen you in years."

"Mom," he plays with the burnt out cigarette butt. "You and I both know that you'll accept him back the moment he wanders into the house when he thinks you're over whatever you two are going through this time. He's just going manipulate you again. I'm sorry, but I'm not going back there to see that."

"Percy, please," Sally did not hold back on her tears. "I just want us to be together again. Would that be too hard for us to do?"

"Yes, it would." Percy simply answers. "This is final. I'm never going to change my mind, Mom, unless you tell me he's dead. I just don't want to be there when he's around. Just let Poseidon feed whatever lie he wants you to believe about me and leave me alone about coming back."

"Percy—"

"I hope you're taking care of yourself." He means it. But he doubts she is or will as he says it. "Goodbye." The last thing he hears is his mother breaking down before he killed the line.

Percy stares out to the lights that were changing against the night sky of the Empire State Building. He sits there, stress and anxiety catching up to his body as he zones out and tries to gather his senses. Calls from his mother always left him feeling guilty and resentful, and they always had a huge impact on him. He doesn't know why he bothered to pick up this time. His thoughts race a hundred miles a minute and he feels a migraine making its way in.

He needs another cigarette before his thoughts start to spiral out of control that will keep him up about Poseidon and his mother. He lights one up and takes a deep breath of toxic smoke. Another day sacrificed to the ordeal of survival, and another day wasted on emotional trauma and pain. The nicotine enters his bloodstream and he feels slightly better, but it doesn't help to fight the thoughts yelling in his head. He takes the pack and lays all the cigarettes out on the stairs next to him, deciding that this would be a long night.