Orange Soda

After six long years sweating it out with Lisa in the country, Bob was glad to finally be living in a bustling city neighborhood, even if it meant he now had a divorce under his belt. He enjoyed running errands on foot during the weekend, saying hello to all the shopkeepers and random folks making their way up and down Green Leaf Avenue, though not all of them appreciated Bob's attention. There were restaurants and bars and banks and so many little stores that Bob often forgot that he had, say, a music store or a shoe repair place right around the corner. It was the perfect change of scenery, revitalizing a still reasonably young man after an unhappy span of time.

The only problem, if you could call it that, was that Bob loved orange soda. He loved it so much that he didn't dare keep a drop of it in his apartment. Lisa had taught him to fear his love of orange soda through health articles and straight up science to the point where Bob quit drinking it for their last four years together, but that changed when he moved to Green Leaf Avenue. There was a store a block away that had a vending machine out front, offering sugary orange goodness day or night. Bob still didn't buy more than one at a time, but he often found himself making the walk to the machine two or three times a day, sometimes as late as midnight.

It was during one such late night trek that Bob saw a homeless man with wild silver hair sitting near Bob's destination, perched on the back of a bus stop bench. Bob had seen the man around before; dirty face, missing teeth, a penchant for muttering under his breath and intimidating passersby. This was usually during the daytime, a time when pedestrians flooded the sidewalk and Bob could angle himself behind other people to avoid the silver-headed man's intense gaze. However there wasn't anyone to hide behind out at this time of night.

Bob thought about doubling back, but quickly felt ashamed by the impulse. It was ridiculous to be afraid of someone that had never shown him any harm. Plus, Bob knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he couldn't press that ice cold can to his lips for at least one citricy sip.

Before getting much farther, Mr. Silver Hair jumped down from the bench to the sidewalk, blocking Bob's path. In that moment Bob deeply regretted not keeping orange sodas in his fridge. He could hear the man say something, but it was faint. It was then that Bob realized that, at some point between his apartment and this point he had already taken a few dollar bills out of his pocket, and that the homeless man was staring at the wad of money in Bob's hand as he muttered.

"I'm sorry," Bob said, trying to keep his pace and direction firm. "Sorry, man."

The homeless man overcompensated his volume and shouted at Bob. "Wanna tell you some shit we got going on here, Mikey!"

Bob didn't know why the man had decided that his name was Mikey, but it freaked him out.

"Just out for a stroll, dude," Bob said as he sidestepped past the silver-headed man. He thought for a moment that the man had tried to grab his arm, but he continued unabated. However, now the homeless man was following him. Bob would still have to cross a street and a parking lot until he reached the soda machine, and he didn't feel like being harassed the entire time. He made a decision and turned to face Mr. Silver Hair.

"You know what? Here," Bob said as he peeled a dollar from the wad in his hand a thrust it in the homeless man's direction. Silver Hair took the money quickly. The reaching/grabbing motion was pure muscle memory though; his face was still intent on Bob.

"Some real shit, Mikey!" the man told Bob. The money had apparently failed to elicit gratitude. "We got some work to do. Gotta clear 'em out, you hear me?"

"Jesus, dude." Bob shook his head and couldn't believe the next thing he heard himself say. "Just give me the dollar back, okay?"

"Not about the cash," the homeless guy said as he leaned in closer. Bob backed away and almost fell off the curb into the street. "I'm talking about the mirrors, Mikey."

Bob stared at the silver-headed man. In return, the man tilted his face downward and raised his eyebrows, his eyes wide on Bob as though he had just revealed an unmistakable truth that Bob should have realized all along.

Bob did not share the man's conspiratorial vibe. "Now you're talking about mirrors?" Bob said, dismissively. He shook his head and started walking toward the soda machine. As he crossed the side street, the homeless man followed.

"All up and down this street, Mikey." The man clapped his hands and continued. "My man, how many mirrors you think they got versus how many they got on you. On me. I've counted them out. It's over a hundred. More mirrors than we got people. Just look around, Mikey!"

The store was closed, but the soda machine was always open for business. Bob was thankful that the parking lot was still well-lit. He'd hoped his silence would send Mr. Silver Hair a message to leave him alone, but the vagrant waited patiently as Bill fed two dollars into the machine and pressed the picture of the orange logo. A can noisily flipped through the machine and landed in the tray below. Bob fished it out, immediately opening it and taking a long swig. He didn't care about the homeless man in that moment. He had never been thirstier.

Two quarters fell into the change receiver. "Keep those if you want 'em," Bob said as he zipped away from the machine and toward his apartment. He knew he'd have to lose the homeless guy before he got back, and hoped that fiddling with the quarters would buy himself a head start. He got all the way back to the side street and glanced back to see Mr. Silver Hair just sitting by the store's front entrance. He didn't seem to be interested in Bob anymore in the least. Bob continued on around the corner and stopped long enough for another deep sip of orange soda, then slowed his pace for the walk back.

As he neared the next side street, the one that led back to his apartment, Bob noticed a store that he hadn't really paid attention to before. It was a mirror store, with a dozen or so mirrors displayed in the front window. Bob stopped walking and thought about it. He recalled seeing his reflection in these before, but the store had somehow never registered as one of the many on his block.

It's funny how the mind works, he thought. What's more, the store certainly explained Mr. Silver Hair's concern. He paused again.

Well, it explains it in a theoretical way, but not a practical one. Bob had assumed the man was using code when he was raving about the mirrors, that perhaps he was actually talking about secret video cameras planted by the government or some other such invasive conspiracy. A fear of literal mirrors seemed a bit silly in this day and age, something out of medieval times. But the man was obviously crazy and Bob did his best to not dwell on the poor man's odd obsession.

Bob took two steps and then stopped again. A tall display mirror stood beside the store's entrance. The shopkeeper had obviously put it out as a means of advertising the location, but surely they hadn't meant it to be left out overnight, where it could so easily be stolen. It was a floor length dressing mirror, the kind with a rotating stand used to tilt the mirror toward the floor. It was angled a bit toward Bob's feet now. He saw in the reflection that his soda had fallen out of his hand, the can's remaining liquid pooling in an orange froth around his shoes.

But that wasn't right. He could feel the cool aluminum can still in his hand. He reached forward and pushed the top of the mirror back a bit, angling it so as to see his face. The face that stared back at Bob belonged to a stranger, and maybe not a person at all.

"Are you Bobby?" it asked him. Bob had never gone by Bobby before, though sometimes a friend would call him that and he'd let it go.

Then it occurred to him. "Are you Mikey?" Bob asked the thing back.

Without thinking, Bob took a step closer to the mirror, not realizing that he was already standing right in front of it. There was no room to move closer, only through. That's how he walked through the mirror passage before he could stop himself.

On the other side, the first thing Bob noticed was that he still felt like himself, despite what the mirror had shown him. The second thing he noticed were all the shadows that surrounded him, hanging limp in the place where the world had once stood. The third thing was that he no longer had his orange soda.

Getting Out

I don't know if it was addiction or what, but Freddy definitely had some kind of weird obsession with those escape rooms. You know the kind of places I mean; a dozen or so people pay about $30 apiece to be "locked" in a confined space and told that they have a set amount of time to solve several puzzles hidden around the room in order to successfully "escape". Depending on the group you play with, an escape room could make for a fun night of silliness or an intense opportunity to show off how brilliant you think you are.

Most escape rooms had specific settings, like a corrupt politician's office or a haunted operating room, but Freddy didn't seem to care about the set dressing. He just loved uncovering secret compartments and solving puzzles, all for the ultimate thrill of escaping the room before time was up. If the team didn't get through enough of the room by the end of the hour (or however much time was allotted), then they'd lose the game and have to try again another time. Sometimes the company that owned the room gave discounts for repeaters, but not always. This upped the stakes for guys like Freddy to succeed the first time through.

There was a catch, of course. You see, a big reason that these rooms were so hard to beat was that ten or twelve people trying to solve a puzzle at once was just about impossible, much harder than half that number. Communication gets muddled the more people that are involved, every participant shouting out ideas over each other. Escape room companies looking for repeat business made sure to set the minimum numbers of players at as many people as their space could hold. That meant that Freddy would have to either convince just about every friend he had to spend $30 to play a new room with him, or he'd have to be paired up with strangers that needed an extra person. Well, he quickly ran out of friends willing to spend money on the same type of entertainment every weekend, so Freddy soon found himself on several waiting lists around town as an "additional player".

One Friday night, Freddy called me in an anxious fit and begged me to join him in a game downtown, at some place called OMNi Room (a quick search online told me that the acronym stood for Our Misbegotten Nights; kind of dorky, but most of these companies were). Freddy seemed really excited about getting into one specific room there called "Fourth of July", and had been notified that a group who had reserved it needed two more players to complete their party. I was feeling exhausted after a long work week and really had just wanted to veg out, but I told him that I'd rally if he'd cover half of my entrance fee. He agreed and I left my apartment soon after, navigating downtown for OMNi Room.

Freddy met me outside of the old, squat, freestanding building on Price Boulevard. He told me the rest of the group was already waiting for us on the third floor. The elevator somehow seemed older than the building. Its dim and boxy buttons were covered with pieces of masking tape, upon them the floor numbers were written in Sharpie. On the elevator ride up, I asked Freddy about the room.

"It has something to do with the Fourth of July?" he said with a shrug. "That's all I know, and I don't even know that for sure."

It wasn't a surprising response. Escape room companies were notoriously secretive about their rooms' settings and storylines, routinely handing out lifetime bans to repeaters that tried to post specifics through social media. This made it next to impossible to learn tricks to get out early. It made escape rooms special, and it was one of the few things that I truly appreciated about them. It was a welcomed alternative to all the guides and manuals available for every other form of entertainment. However, I was confused about the Fourth of July theme for this room, as it was early September. The elevator doors opened before I could float any theories by Freddy.

The third floor looked more or less like any office space; linoleum floors, florescent lights. I followed Freddy, practically darting in front of me, down a narrow hallway to a waiting room. That's where I met the rest of our group: nine very drunk, very loud kids in their early-to-mid 20's - and Earl.

Earl, who I'd say was safely in his forties, made a beeline for me and Freddy as soon as he saw us standing in the doorway of the waiting room. He wore a suit with no tie and had obviously already had a long night leading up to this portion of the evening. Dark lines hung under his eyes and it appeared that his graying hair had been liberally mussed.

"Hi, guys. I'm Earl," he said, quickly shaking our hands with a too-firm grip. He spoke in a clipped manner that suggested years of being the only sober guy in the room. "The OMNi people probably already went over this, but ours is kind of a special group. You seem like smart fellows, so I'm going to trust that anything you see or hear is nothing but a few young people letting off steam. Sound good?"

"Sounds good," I found myself assuring him, though I had no idea what he was talking about. Earl nodded in a way that told me he'd never been told "sounds bad" before. He left us and returned to his post. I grabbed Freddy by his arm and dragged him back into the hallway.

"Okay, what the hell was that?" I asked, my voice in low, but concentrated whisper.

Freddy just pursed his lips and lifted his eyebrows as though I hadn't finished my thought. I gave him a small, but concentrated shove to the chest and he ended the act. "Okay, so you see that one kid in the Lakers hat?"

I took a step towards the waiting room and saw the Lakers cap. "Yeah, I see him." The kid looked vaguely familiar and I felt a strange sensation that I knew him from my personal life.

"His name is Derek Crestline. Apparently, he's on a TV show called Scrape. I've never heard of it, but I guess he's like the next big thing or something."

I couldn't help but roll my eyes. "Shit." I'd had my run-ins with celebrities before and the experience always left a bad taste in my mouth. Rising stars usually were the worst, their inflated egos getting more and more rampant with each talk show appearance or paparazzo footage airing on TMZ.
 
I watched as Earl tried to say something to Derek, whose attention was glued to his phone. He had one leg draped across a girl's lap, a girl that I almost could place as well. She was wearing a red, white, and blue jacket, which seemed like a sign that she had at least some interest in the room we'd be trying to escape. Most of the others were also on their phones, but two girls and two guys were playing with some handheld puzzles that OMNi had put out to get players into a problem solving mood. They seemed to be mocking the puzzles, but I gathered that their derision was more out of frustration than a sense of superiority.

Freddy's eyebrows were back up, defensive. "Maybe it's for the best! Maybe Fourth of July has challenges that actors and, you know, entourage types would excel at." Off my unsatisfied expression, he continued with, "Look. I know it's not the best group to play with. They're probably going to annoy the hell out of us. But we can still have fun, right?"

I hated Freddy for it, but he was probably right. If I weren't at OMNi Room, I'd just be flipping through channels while lying on my couch, probably stopping to laugh a bit at Scrape (whatever that was) before finding an old monster movie on cable. At least there was the possibility for adventure here.

Just then a young woman walked into the room and asked the Crestline group if they were ready to start. They barely registered that someone was talking to them. Earl clapped his hands twice and repeated what the OMNi woman had said. I shot Freddy a look, but he was too mesmerized by the game's initiation to notice. The woman introduced herself as Julie and asked the rowdy drunk kids (and Earl) to follow her. She walked by us and, in a way that noted our discord with the others, asked if we were with the group. Freddy nodded excitedly; I could only muster a weak smile. We followed Julie and the rest of the group down another hallway and through a doorway adorned with a small placard that read "Ye Fourth of July Room".

Inside, we found ourselves in a small waiting room. A giant door painted to look like the American flag stood before us. Julie asked us to stand against a wall as she went through the rules of the room, which were also written out on a large document that looked like the Declaration of Independence. Derek was quiet, but several of his friends asked stupid questions and offered up ridiculous scenarios.

"What if one of us accidentally breaks one of the clues?"

Julie looked concerned for a moment, before breaking into a fabulously fake smile. "Don't break anything. How about that?"

"Yeah, but what if one of the clues is already broken?"

"None of the clues are broken," Julie said, now a little tense. "I can guarantee you that they aren't. I actually don't know if any of the clues are even breakable, but please just don't break anything."
 
As she wrapped up her spiel, Julie urged us to work together and keep in mind that many puzzles wouldn't make sense until we had all of the pieces, which may be hidden anywhere in the room. She then told us that phone usage wouldn't be allowed inside, which was met with gasps. She nodded solemnly and asked everybody to turn off their phones. The resulting act looked like dismemberment, but eventually everyone complied. With that, Julie opened up the door and we finally saw what the Fourth of July Room consisted of.

It was a party room, decorated for an Independence Day celebration. The room looked like somebody's game room or maybe a pool house. There were a couple of sofas angled toward a big screen TV where a movie was playing. A snack table covered in patriotic colors and themed food trays sat off to the side, next to a bar where the liquor bottles were filled with jelly beans instead of alcohol. There were pictures of the founding fathers in ridiculous party poses on one wall, and another wall had a large window with a view of fireworks, which exploded into brilliant displays on a loop. It was clearly playing on a monitor behind a false window front. However, that clever bit of technology confused at least one of the Crestline party.

"Wait, are they shooting off firecrackers outside?" the girl in the red, white, and blue jacket said.

"No, sweetie," Earl told her. "That's just a TV behind the wall." Derek Crestline just stared at it, either mesmerized by the pretty colors or glad that he hadn't embarrassed himself by asking the same question.

Julie then told us to have fun and closed the door. We had one hour to solve the puzzles. I didn't see anything that looked like an obvious clue, though I did notice a few locked drawers and safes scattered throughout the room. There was a young guy lounging on one of the couches. He was dressed in shorts and a tank top, oblivious to us as he played on his cellphone. This was our moderator, somebody from OMNi who made sure we didn't mess anything up or stray way off the path with any of the puzzles. However, with the listless character he had been assigned, he could have easily been from Derek's crew.

Freddy got to work right away. He grabbed a clipboard and soon figured out that Jefferson, Adams, and Washington were absent from the founding fathers that were partying in the pictures on the wall. That linked up to the fact that Jaws was the movie playing on the TV. So he had "J", "A", and "W", but needed an "S" (which is also the 19th letter in the alphabet). Yeah, I told you these things could get dorky.

I was trying to figure out the significance of the fireworks display loop, looking for patterns and anything out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, the Crestline group was still pretty much in their own world. A few of the more buzzed ones had opted to sit on the couch with our moderator and watch the movie; others seemed to have lost the will to live now that they weren't able to use their cellphones. Derek was standing next to me, still mesmerized by the phony fireworks. I asked him if he saw a pattern. He looked at me for a moment and then called Earl over to give him some gum. I could tell that Crestline was going to be a big help.

The moderator jumped up, dropping character a bit, and warned a few people that were trying to get into the jellybeans that his "dad" would be upset if they ate any of the food in the room.

"All of the food in this room is for after the fireworks, guys," he said as he put the bottles back into specific places on the shelf. "My dad is real strict about that stuff."

That probably meant that all of the food was fake, but I could imagine a few of Derek's friends eating several plastic pieces of fruit without noticing the distinction. Several of them had flasks and were keeping the party going as Freddy valiantly tried to rally them to solve puzzles that he uncovered from underneath chip bowls and inside a coffee table. I guess that "S" had paid off somehow, but the Crestline group offered no assistance for the logic grids or missing word algorithms that Freddy brought to them.

I had since moved on from the fireworks display after nothing seemed to jump out as a clue. I decided it was either just a decoration meant to distract us, or I would need more information to solve it. Instead, I tried to unravel the mystery of the snack table.

Thirty minutes had passed and no end was in sight.

The food did turn out to be a clue, as did a game that our moderator was playing on his cellphone. Earl did his best to organize the puzzles that we uncovered, even decoding part of a pun-based rebus, this intricate picture puzzle that Freddy had found under a rug.

"Hey, this is kinda fun!" Earl exclaimed to everyone that was listening to him, which was just me and Freddy. "Would you look at that?"

The clue that Earl's puzzle revealed, a simple math key with a four digit solution, opened up a medium-sized safe which contained several tiny American flags. They looked like factory rejects, misprints. All of them were attached to keys.

"I bet one of these is not like the others!" Earl cried out, his voice a little giddy. I could tell that escape room madness had overpowered his sense of duty to Derek Crestline. However, he was the only member of his party that was helping us, so Freddy and I elected to let him work on the tiny flag puzzle.

Freddy found a scale in a secret compartment, figured out that the jellybean bottles had different weights, and went to work deciphering the resulting figures. He was in the zone, as it were, a special place where reality melted away to its most basic elements. I could see what Freddy liked about these rooms. Everything had a purpose, would lead to something that made sense. Thinking about a problem too much was an obsessive liability in the outside world, embarrassing at best and dangerous at worst. But overthinking an issue was essential in an escape room, a commodity to be wielded with absolute pride. Freddy was home here among the problems in want of solutions.

Earl was not home. The tiny flag puzzle had apparently broken his brain.

"They're all the same," he said. "I mean, they're all a little crazy. See how the stripes zigzag here and there and some of the stars are missing? But not one of them is less crazy than the others."

"Maybe it's not about the keys," I told him. He looked up to me with confused hope. "Sometimes they put out things that appear obvious, but aren't. Have you tried laying them all next to each other?"

Earl started to set them out on the coffee table, mumbling something about the nature of order versus chaos to himself.

The moderator held up his hand and made an announcement. "Okay, I've had several requests from people that want to leave the room early. I can allow it, but you basically forfeit the game. And I can only open the door once. If I have to do it again, the game is completely over and you have to leave. So, if you want to get out of the room now, raise your hand."

Many hands shot up, including the girl in the red, white, and blue jacket. Freddy looked at me with a panic in his eyes that worried me more than the prospect of losing the game. However, it was Derek Crestline that spoke up then.

"C'mon, you guys. Let's stick with it. Freddy seems to know what he's doing and it's only like ten minutes till time runs out. Let's hang."

Everybody nodded immediately and threw a few words of encouragement towards Freddy. Derek went back to staring at the phony fireworks. Once everybody was back in their normal state of blaséness, I cornered Freddy near the bar.

"Crestline knows your name, huh? You might have mentioned that."

Freddy shrugged. "Okay, yeah. We shared a studio apartment when I first got to L.A." He smiled crookedly. "Tons of runoff girls, man."

"Gross, dude," I said, and went back to check on Earl.

"There is something here," Earl muttered, staring at the collage of the tiny flags. He looked like Richard Dreyfuss, not from Jaws but another Spielberg movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. "See how the lines are off by just a bit, this way and that. Don't know why I couldn't see it before."

I looked at them for a bit and noticed it immediately. Earl needed a win though; he'd earned it.

"I don't know, Earl. Maybe they all fit together, somehow. Why don't you sit down here and think about it?" I gestured to the edge of one of the couches. He nodded and sank down into the cushion. He rubbed his eyes for a moment and then glanced up at the flag display. Earl's expression shifted - I knew he had it.

"Wait a minute, just a minute..." He leaned forward and changed the position of a few of the flags. His hands were shaking. "Hold up just a second here." Freddy was standing beside me now. We looked at each other and smiled. Earl jumped up. "Got it!"

The stars and stripes on the flags revealed a pattern, but only when arranged correctly and only from a certain angle. Earl jumped up. I tried to calm him a bit as Freddy drew out the pattern on the clipboard. Once he had copied it, he set the diagram down on the coffee table. It didn't mean anything. We just stared at it.

"Three minutes left," the moderator announced.

"Shit," Freddy said. "We're so close. I don't have it. Do you see it?"

I didn't. Not really. There was something there though, something that almost made sense. But my brain told me that I hadn't spent enough time with it.

Then it clicked. I went over and grabbed Derek Crestline by the shoulders and led him to the drawing.

"Hey, man," I said, showing him the pattern from the flag puzzle. Earl was sitting with his legs crossed next to the coffee table, his fingers in his mouth. I said to Derek, "You see anything here?"

Derek looked at the drawing and nodded. "Oh, rad." He snagged the pencil from Freddy's hand and began circling all of the firework patterns that were no doubt burned into his retinas after staring at them all night. The results were clear instructions. We went to the large door that led out and saw that there were four, nearly invisible, palm-sized circles on it.

"Thirty seconds," our moderator warned us.

Derek, Earl, Freddy, and myself all placed our hands on the circles and twisted them back-and-forth in a rocking motion, just as the instructions had told us to do. The door clicked and we backed away as it opened up. Blaring march music, something by John Phillips Sousa, filled the room and the sound of the fireworks became deafening.

"Yes!" Freddy said, throwing an arm up into the air.

"Congratulations, guys!" It was Julie. She walked into the room and joined our moderator, who now seemed a lot more officious, even in flipflops. Freddy and Earl high-fived. Most of Derek's friends nodded and switch on their phones. Derek Crestline smiled for the first time all night. Julie continued. "You did it. You escaped the Fourth of July!"

Freddy and I went out for a drink after the Crestline party took off for the next thing. It amused me that only Earl had introduced himself to me; I had caught a couple of names, but didn't actually meet most of them. Even Derek Crestline had only offered a fist bump as we celebrated our victory. The OMNi crew allowed us to take just one group picture in the escape room, from an angle that didn't give away any secrets, but I probably wouldn't ever see it. Derek told Freddy that the two of them should hang out again sometime. Freddy told me later at the bar that hanging with Crestline wasn't likely to happen.

"Oh, yeah? Why not?" I asked. We were midway through our second round of beers.

"Nah, he's in a different place these days." I could tell the idea made Freddy uncomfortable. Or maybe it was the unlikelihood of it happening at all. "I wouldn't know how to be in that world. That's just not where I'm at, you know?"

"I guess not." I looked at my friend for a moment. He was getting older, but so was I. So was everybody, even boring celebrities on the rise like Derek Crestline, our escape room savior. "And where are you at, Freddy? Where are you these days?"

He smiled and shook his head. "I don't know, not really. I guess I got out." Freddy turned and raised his beer to the nearly empty barroom behind us. "Happy Fourth of July, everybody!"

One guy started to repeat it, but lost his momentum when he realized nobody else was joining in. I lifted my bottle to take a drink and Freddy did the same.

Precarious Configuration

Bailey was never thrilled to come home from work and find me playing video games in my underwear, but this last time was the worst I'd seen. With a hint of despair in her voice, she asked me how my search for a new job was going, and I had to admit to her that I'd forgotten that was what I was supposed to be doing during the day. In my defense, it really hadn't felt like two years since I'd been laid off. Bailey helpfully reminded me of the full extent of my forced sabbatical later that night when she took us out to dinner for our anniversary.

"Surely it hasn't been that long," I said, my voice muffled from the last bite of the chocolate volcano cake.

"Don't you remember?" she said as she signed the bill. "It was on the morning of our third anniversary."

"And this is...?"

"Our fifth. And it's our last if you don't start looking again."

I knew she was just kidding about that last anniversary remark, but Bailey's point was loud and clear. My days as a stay-at-home dad were over (not much a shock, considering we didn't have any kids). I held the door for Bailey and made sure to not get sex wrong later that night.

My first stop the next morning was the mattress factory where I used to work. Maureen, now one of those managers that has an office overlooking the assembly floor, informed me that the factory still didn't need my services.

"That's weird," I said to her as I looked down at the horde of employees. "It looks like more people work here now than before I left."

Maureen changed the subject to the Cardinals' chances of getting into the playoffs and I decided to not think too much about the extra workers manning my old post at the memory foam station. As I left, Maureen promised to let me know if anything opened up.

"Thanks, that's awesome," I said. "I'll just wait to hear back from you before I look elsewhere."

"No, you should still look elsewhere," she said, a bit too intensely.

The trip to my old job left me a bit deflated; Maureen's advice to keep looking had stung a bit. I shook it off, knowing that she only had my best interest at heart. The months that we had worked at the factory together had forged a lifelong friendship. And she likely had Bailey's best interest at heart as well, their being sisters and all.

I drove around town for a while after that, doing my best to concentrate on the type of job I might want. My thoughts kept zeroing in on the idea of ice cream, though I wasn't sure if I wanted to break into the ice cream business or if I just wanted a double-scoop of mint chocolate chip. After some careful consideration, I pulled off to the side of the road to ask Waze to find me an ice cream shoppe. As the application loaded, I looked up and saw the thing that I had been searching for, right there on the corner of Cornish and Doublet.

It was a construction site, one of those bustling assemblies of man and machine hinged in service to some magnificent new structure. I sat there in my car and thought, I could do that. There were dozens of strapping roughneck types swinging hammers, digging ditches, and wheeling wheelbarrows around. They were wearing casual clothes and most of them appeared to be in good spirits, if not exactly cheerful.

The longer that I watched, the more I recognized a crude semblance of a hierarchy. The foundation diggers seemed to be competing with the wheelbarrow operators for lowest rung on the ladder. Above them, hammer and saw tradesmen crafted elegant pieces to the whole. Though their thumbs were under constant threat of an accidental smashing or severing, these tool wielders were obviously more skilled than the others, and likely better paid.

But then I noticed someone off to the side of the manual labor flow and saw my future. He was a gentleman that was just kind of watching over all of the other workers. He'd offer passive requests to the laborers here and there, but nothing too urgent. He certainly did not physically exert himself in the least. This was something I could definitely do.

Waze instructed me to turn left in 1000 feet to begin a quest to a nearby ice cream shoppe. Instead, I discontinued the app and began to devise a plan.

I really wanted that supervisor job, but I knew better than to go up and ask the supervisor for it. He'd surely be as protective of the position as I'd be once it was mine. I began scanning the signs that were posted around the site for a phone number or company name, anything that might aid me in finding the supervisor's boss.

I had my answer after about another hour of watching. A heavyset man wearing a bright green tie and carrying a clipboard approached the supervisor and said a few words to him. My new rival nodded to Green Tie, before relaying some instructions to one of the hammer guys. Green Tie was obviously the boss; I recognized the chutzpah. He checked off a few items on his clipboard and then went into a trailer sitting on the far side of the site. The side of the trailer had "El Dorado Building Company" in large, bold type with a phone number plainly visible underneath. I somehow hadn't noticed it earlier.

I got out of my car and walked through the construction site, past the men that I would soon be supervising. I did my best to walk and behave as though I belonged there, though I overheard several of them commenting to each other that they had seen me "creepily staring at them" from my car. Also, I was likely betrayed somewhat by my cargo shorts and Backstreet Boys t-shirt, which I sometimes wore because I liked their music.

I let myself into the El Dorado trailer, which was kind of a makeshift office, and introduced myself to Green Tie, whose actual name I eventually wrestled from him.

"Fine, it's Barry," he said, a bit irate. "Now will you tell me what you want?"

Offering a fist bump, I told Barry my name and that I was interested in the supervisor position. I estimated that I was more than qualified to watch over the guys that were digging and wheel-barrowing things.

"Maybe not the hammer and saw people," I explained. "Not just yet. But with time I could learn."

Barry was clearly a man that didn't like to rush into important decisions. He looked me over for a moment and then rubbed his chin.

"You're a real go-getter, huh?" he asked me.

"I sure am," I said, deciding Barry needn't know about my habit of playing video games in my underwear.

"That's good," he said. "It's quite a commodity on these jobs. Why don't you come back here tomorrow morning, say 7 o'clock? I think we can find you something to do."

I reminded Barry that I was really only interested in the supervisor position and that I'd be perfect for any of El Dorado's other sites if this one was already plenty supervised. He assured me that the workers at all of their sites appreciated a foreman that spent a little time getting his own hands dirty before throwing dirt onto theirs. There wasn't a mattress factory equivalent to this idiom, so I nodded and told him that I'd be happy to try out a few of the other jobs for a short while.

"That's good to hear. Of course, you'll need work boots," he said, pointing to my sandals. "For insurance reasons, you see."

"Could I borrow a pair from one of the other guys?" I asked, hoping I wasn't also inadvertently asking for some strain of foot fungus.

"Sorry," Barry said. "It's our one rule. You gotta wear boots and you gotta bring your own."

Before I could remark that this sounded like two rules or some sort of compound rule, Barry suprised me by finally returning my fist bump. He then politely asked me to get the hell out of his office trailer. Walking back to my car, I proudly strode past the other construction workers. I didn't need to act like I belonged anymore, because now I did. I got into my car and drove to the nearest mall, where I ate ice cream and spent several hours shopping for a sturdy pair of boots.

Bailey came home from work that night and saw my new work boots sitting by the front door. I had accidentally left the sales receipt on the table where we put our keys and cellphones, and she gasped when she saw the total cost. During my years of between-employment, Bailey and I had agreed to some basic rules about major purchases, most of which I had broken when I bought my new work boots.

"You spent two hundred and thirty six dollars on boots?" she asked. I quickly paused my game and began to put my pants back on.

"Well, I have this new job," I told her. "I'm going to be a foreman. A foreman is kind of like a supervisor for-"

"Yeah, I know what a foreman is," she said, cutting me off. "Why did you need to spend two hundred and thirty six dollars? I could have gotten you work boots for sixty bucks. Maybe less."

I knew which ones she was talking about. Those so-called work boots didn't have steel loops or circumflex technology in the soles, though I doubted Bailey cared about such features. I explained to her that among people that did manual labor all day, boots were a status symbol. They were a way of setting myself apart from the non-foremen, as I wouldn't be the wearing the ties or carrying the clipboards that management did to set themselves apart. I also told her that impressive boots would serve as a good talking point during lulls in conversation, which was almost as important as the other reasons I had given her.

"Well, at least you found a job," she said. "I'm proud of you."

"You're not upset that I didn't think to look for a construction job sooner?" I asked her. Bailey smiled and changed the conversation to a TV show that we had been binge-watching, and I forgot to circle back for a follow-up on the job question. It was a line of questions better left untouched anyway, as I had forgotten to ask Barry what the job paid before I accepted it.

The next day, I promptly arrived back at the corner of Cornish and Doublet at 8 a.m. sharp, forgetting that Barry had asked me to be there at 7. The workers' glances at my footwear informed me that I had made a smart purchase. I let myself into the El Dorado trailer and was several lines into my tardiness apology when I realized that Barry had been replaced.

"I'm not a replacement," Barry's replacement said, after I had referred to him as such a fourth time. "Managers are called to different sites for a number of reasons. However, Barry told me all about you and what you hope to offer the EDBC. My name is Danny."

Off my look, Danny explained that EDBC meant the El Dorado Building Company. I had encountered my first bit of industry jargon in the world of construction. He then escorted me out the trailer office to meet my new supervisor.

"Well, he's technically my supervisor now, but I'll be taking over soon enough," I told Danny as we walked past some of the other EDBC guys.

"Yep, that's what Barry told me you'd say," Danny replied.

The foreman was introduced to me as Monty, but I couldn't think of him as anything except my professional rival, one that I hoped to replace in a way that Danny had apparently not replaced Barry.

"Take good care of him, Monty," Danny said as he left us and went back to the EDBC trailer.

Monty smiled at me for a long time. He appeared to be even friendlier than Barry or Danny. I was secretly thankful to end up in such a courtesy line of work, even though I hoped to ruin Monty professionally by the end of my first week. I decided that I would try to do it in such a way as to not prevent Monty from ever working in construction again, which was somewhat my original plan.

"Well, let's see," Monty said, sizing me up a bit. I stood tall and jutted out my chest. "Hmm, I can't decide if you'd be better at digging or choosing the songs that the other guys listen to while they work. Which would you prefer?"

I hadn't realized that song chooser was an available position. I had assumed that the music that played at the site was coming from a radio set to a rock station. Music selector seemed like even a sweeter job than being foreman. I'll call myself the Atmosphere Coordinator, I thought. Excited by the prospect, I told Monty that I had excellent taste in music and would very much enjoy giving the song chooser job a try.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Monty said, and then he smiled a bit. "I guess what I'm describing is a disc jockey, and we don't have disc jockeys around here."

"I'm sorry?" I leaned in a bit, which was a mistake.

"I said, we don't have deejays here, you idiot!" Monty picked up a nearby shovel and flung it at my feet. "Pick that up!" He was yelling at me. "Pick that up, moron!"

I quickly snatched up the shovel and held it like an umbrella, my shoulders raised to my ears. A few of the other workers were now gathered around us and smiling at these proceedings. I felt a little foolish when Monty revealed the punchline of his joke - and the yelling was unnerving to say the least - but I knew that hazing the new guy on the job was a time-tested tradition. Back at the mattress factory, Maureen would routinely spit at new employees and smear dog poo on the back of their heads. In hindsight, that seemed a little harsh too.

"Hey, anybody want a new pair of boots?" Monty said. Like the song chooser job, this also seemed too generous an offer to be true. However, once I noticed where everybody else was looking, I realized Monty was talking about my new pair of work boots. I tried to protest as two men dropped their tools, pulled me to the ground, and held me down as Monty tried to pull off my recently-purchased footwear. The boots held fast to my feet though, so Monty had to spend a full two minutes undoing the knots and unlacing the top five loop sets.

He tossed the boots into the crowd and flung another shovel at my feet. There didn't seem to be any shortage of shovels at the construction site.

"Now march your ass to the dig zone and start digging, maggot!" he screamed. A few other guys repeated some of the names that Monty had called me, adding "scum sack" and "no boots" to the list. My socks became filthy as I trudged toward the group of men that were digging the foundation. They looked at me with contempt and I realized that the lowest place in the hierarchy of construction work was the new guy with no shoes on his feet. Soon after, I also realized how difficult it was to push a shovel into the earth while wearing just socks.

Later that night, I told Bailey everything that had happened to me. We were sitting on the couch and finishing a spaghetti dinner. She told me that I should quit, but also to really try and get the work boots back. I told her that it had taken me two years to get the construction job and I wasn't about to quit it on my second day.

"It didn't take you two years," she said. "It took you less than a day. It's not like you were looking before then. You don't even know what else is out there."

"It doesn't matter what else is out there," I said. "I'm not good at anything."

Bailey sat back and thought for a moment. "Well, you're a pretty good husband. Usually. And I don't know if you're any good at video games, but you seem to like playing them." I nodded and she continued. "And you look halfway decent in your underwear. There. Maybe look for something in that field." She laughed and flung a throw pillow at my head, causing a meatball to roll from my plate onto the floor. This caused her to laugh even more and then, for a third time that night, Bailey made me tell her about how I had tried to call the cops on Monty during my lunch break earlier that day.

Then we watched TV, and then it was bedtime.

Summer Blue

The weather has finally warmed up enough for Cal to go outside and really give some attention to his home's backyard patio. He dusts off the slightly-wilted wicker furniture, remembering so recently when it was adorned with icicles. He checks inside the grill to make sure he hasn't left old and rotting charcoal from last season in it. He smiles as he works. If the temperature can keep above 65, Cal hopes to invite some close friends over for a cookout on Sunday. He hasn't seen many of them in several weeks, the cold being their main excuse for not visiting.

Cal grabs his broom from its spot next to the outdoor kiln and begins to sweep the patio. As he pushes the first gathering toward the edge of the granite flooring, he notices a small pile of bright blue powder on the grass, just beyond the patio's brick steps leading down to the lawn. The mysterious mound is only a few inches tall, not much bigger than a pyramid-shaped softball. To Cal, it looks like discarded, sugary contents of perhaps a couple dozen blue-flavored Pixie Stix. He quietly curses whatever neighborhood child decided to pull this strange prank on him.

Out of fear of the sugary substance attracting ants, Cal decides he shouldn't spray the pile with water or knock it asunder with the broom. He retrieves a dust pan from the spot by the kiln and begins to gather the blue powder onto it. However, Cal notices that the blue dust has a delicious smell, much more appetizing than merely sugar. He stops gathering the dust onto the pan.

Squatting before the mound, Cal touches a finger to his tongue and then drags it through the blue substance. He brings it to his nose and sniffs. The powder smells almost like a mix of roasted garlic and a robust cheese, like from a fine pasta dish. He inspects it, marveling at its perfect deep ocean color. It doesn't even have a hint of a dirt speck in it. Cal knows that he shouldn't, but he cannot help himself as he touches his blue-powdered finger to his tongue. The taste is unbelievably good, filling a void Cal didn't know existed in the world before.

After several more finger-to-powder-to-tongue transfers, Cal has to force himself to stop. He feels like he has eaten a giant helping of some savory, pan-seared Italian dish - Cal's favorite kind of food, but he is still not full. Shaking off a submerged feeling, he springs to his kitchen and fetches a small Tupperware. At first he is careful to not get dirt mixed in with the Blue as he scoops it into the plastic container, but then Cal notices that the Blue somehow repels the dirt. It remains pure as he gets every last speck into the container. He places a lid over it and carries the plastic tub to his kitchen's counter top. As he sets it down and walks away, he resists the urge to grab a spoon. The smell seems to seep through its plastic enclosure.

Cal sleeps deep that night and dreams of the things that he will serve his friends at the cookout on Sunday. The Blue will make every bite delicious, but he knows that he'll have to wait until after sundown to serve them, outside and by candlelight, so as to hide the strange color that might discourage their appetites. But once they have sampled the Blue, they will all be swimming in the same waters as one. Cal knows that his friends will stay with him after that because the Blue inside of him tells him that they will.

Cal dreams of this eternal togetherness as another pile of Blue crawls into place on his backyard lawn, beginning its not-very-long wait. This mound is slightly larger than the first one, and a darker shade of blue. It will soon be joined by many more Blues, each of them necessary for all the new friends that Cal will serve over the long summer to come.

Mix-Up at the Quartz

Every team needs a mascot, even the teams that always lose. We weren't a sports team, but Mix-Up was kind of like the Quartz's mascot. He gave me and the other movie theater employees a strange sense of pride, quiet as he mostly was. He even saved a life once. It was raining on the day that he did it and it rained again the day he left for good. It's weird how every day feels like a rainy day when you're at the movies.

It wasn't the name on his name tag, but the whole staff at the Quartz 16 knew him as Mix-Up. It didn't seem to bother him, but nothing much did. Mix-Up was a tall guy in his late twenties with super-short blonde hair, freckles splayed across his pointy nose and high cheekbones, and he always looked as though he had just woke up from a fitful sleep. I guess you might accuse someone that looked just like him of being a druggie or a night owl at the very least, but Mix-Up wasn't spaced out or anything; he just seemed kind of over all the nonsense that comes from working at a place like this.

He had torn tickets and shoveled popcorn at the Quartz for over ten years, making him the longest running employee to push Old Betsy, our oft-malfunctioning vacuum, across the lobby's old domino-patterned carpet. The math didn't quite add up, but Mix-Up's tenure practically went all the way to the 1990's, back when the theater first popped up by the Riverway Mall. I guess that's why I say he was like a mascot: Mix-Up was a permanent fixture in the Quartz's history.

I was not the permanent type, however. I found it hard to believe anybody could have worked at the movies for longer than six or seven months. The days and nights were all the same and most of the movies we showed weren't that much different from one another. Once you'd seen a giant alien snatch a car from midair and devour it, you could bet a big robot or pissed-off dinosaur would do it pretty much the same way. I had started with an exit strategy from the beginning, and a big part of me felt sorry for the long-timers like Mix-Up or our slimy manager Doug (who seemed to live at the Quartz, which would explain his constant want of a shower).

I used to work a lot of weekend nights next to Mix-Up at the concession stand. He was lousy at up-selling soda sizes and all the other extras, but he was fast with scooping popcorn and making change. Every now and then a customer would try to make small talk with him and he'd try to steer the conversation to the latest thrash metal album that he'd bought. It seemed to shut the customer up pretty quick, but I wasn't so sure that shutting them up was necessarily Mix-Up's intention. I think he really wanted somebody to talk about thrash metal with.

I once asked Jordan Delmonico if she knew why Mix-Up was called Mix-Up, and she just looked at me as though I had asked her why the sun was hot. We were prepping the big room, Theater 1, for the 8:30-to-10:15 transition (an every-Friday-night headache courtesy of Doug the Slug). Jordan didn't answer my question at first, she just kept on picking up trash and spraying away sticky floor gunk with a squirt gun filled up with Windex. But I could tell she was thinking about it.

"I don't know, Trace," she said after a minute. "Maybe he used to mix up orders. Like if somebody asked for a Sprite, he'd give them a Dr. Pepper by mistake." Jordan had worked there longer than I had, but I could tell she was just as ignorant on the matter as I was.

"I guess that could have been the case once." I was using my dustpan to scoop up a trio of chewed-up Jolly Ranchers someone had spit onto one of the aisle floors, desperately hoping I wouldn't have to touch them with my hands. "But, you know I've never seen him mix up anything. Especially not at the concession stand. He never gets an order wrong or lands in the weeds."

"Well, he's been doing it since the dawn of time. I don't know, Trace." She sighed. "Maybe it's just like a, you know, ironic nickname then." Jordan stopped rolling the trash bin to consider that a second before adding, "Though, I don't know why anybody would hold onto an ironic name for all those years. Not one that puts him down, anyway."

"I wouldn't put up with it," I said. "You wouldn't either, probably. But I don't know about Mix-Up. He's too...it's like nothing gets to him. I'd hate to see what bad news would have to come along to break that ice."

She contemplated this as I accidentally smacked one of the Jolly Ranchers with the dustpan, launching it somewhere to the back of the screening room (as good as gone in my book). Jordan was standing next to the lobby door with the roll-bottom trashcan while I finished checking my section. Finally, she said to me, "I think Mix-Up is just mixed up in general. How else do you explain somebody his age working here without ever complaining about it?"

I had to agree with Jordan's logic. I had only worked at the Quartz for two months by that point, but even my grand exit strategy (which was no more complicated than quitting right before school started back) didn't keep me from telling the whole world how much working at the movies sucked. It wasn't what I anticipated, working at the Quartz. Sure, the movies were a disappointment, but it was more crushing than that. Usually it was so boring that I'd make any kind of dumb small talk to avoid having to think about how much my feet hurt. Other times, it was embarrassing, selling Junior Mints to Terry Hampton as he took some girl to the latest Sandra Bullock movie or explaining to my friends that I couldn't sneak them into shows or even give them free popcorn.

Finally, curiosity got the best of me and I finally just asked Mix-Up to his face how he got the name. We were working a Tuesday afternoon concessions shift together and the whole lobby was deserted, the pah-pah-pah of the popcorn popping serving as the soundtrack.

"What?" he asked, maybe not paying attention or maybe deflecting the question.

"I asked why everybody calls you Mix-Up," I said. "You don't seem to get stuff wrong, or...you know, mix things up." He looked at me like I was explaining a calculus problem. "So, I thought maybe you used to get into fights or something. Like, mix it up with people?"

"You thought I went around hitting people?"

"Well, no. I mean...I don't know."

"Yeah, that's not it," he said. Mix-Up stared out the lobby window after that and I thought we'd reached the end of the conversation, if you could call it that. I was about to ask him if he'd heard any new thrash metal bands over the weekend, but then he started talking again. He continued to stare out the window while he told me about the mix-up that had given him his name. It was ten times more than all the other times he'd ever spoke to me before combined.

"Before Riverway Mall took over the Quartz, this old guy named Mr. Laytner owned the place. He was a cool guy. Well, he was way behind as far as technology went, kept saying that projectors were projectors and didn't want to shell out for digital. And he thought Ms. Pac-Man was the last great arcade game. You know, a really old dude. But he was cool."

"Laytern," I said. "Never heard of him."

"Laytner," Mix-Up corrected. "This was like a decade ago. Anyway, I was young when I started working here, younger than you. My mom had to sign something to say it was okay. But we really needed the money and Mr. Laytner wanted to help us out." Mix-Up shot me a quick glance, just for a second. "She's fine now, by the way, my mom. Inheritance stuff from her parents when they passed."

I didn't know how to respond, so I let out a relieved "Oh, good."

"Anyway, things were rough for a long time and I started stealing." If Mix-Up saw my eyes get wide, he didn't pause to address it. "Just candy and junk at first, but then I started pocketing cash. I knew there weren't any cameras around, so it seemed like something that I could get away with. Doug and I used to work concessions together, but he spilled a super-large Coke into the popcorn more than once and Mr. Laytner told him he'd be better off selling tickets."

It was hard for me to picture Doug the Slug as a clumsy kid being pushed around, but I liked the idea quite a bit.

"Anyway, it was around that time that the girl got hit by a car right out front."

I knew this story, or the broad strokes at least. I didn't know what part Mix-Up had played in it, but the Quartz had three speed bumps right out front because of the girl we only knew as Judy. Customers were always complaining that the speed bumps were unnecessary, so Doug made sure that we knew about Judy so that we could defend their being there if the conversation ever got too heated.

"It was raining just like so super hard, like a typhoon. I never talked to the girl after the ambulance took her away, so I don't know for sure, but she could have looked both ways before darting toward the parking lot and still might have missed a car that didn't have its headlights on. Anyway, we didn't hear the car hydroplane and slam into her, but we heard the screams and honking after. I was working Popcorn Town when it happened. I was standing right here, actually."

He shot me another glance, maybe just to see if I was still listening. I don't think my face could have possibly hid my rapt attention. I was so glad we were talking about this - real stuff - rather than the latest Marvel movie or how Halloween was less fun for kids these days. And the next time that Mix-Up wanted to talk about thrash metal, I'd be sure to repay him for this story with my attention then.

"So, I jumped over the counter and ran out into the rain. She was just like this twisted mess in the middle of the road, but she was still alive, still breathing. But her breath was short and labored; you could just tell she was in so much pain. She wasn't the one screaming though, that was coming from people that had gathered over by the ticket booth. None of them were helping her though, I'm not sure why. Even the driver that had hit her was sitting in his car. He was on his cellphone, but I think it was to call 911. I hope that's what it was. Because that's too much if he was talking to someone when he hit her.

"Anyway, the downpour was so heavy, water was just pouring into her mouth, and her neck was just about snapped so there was no way she could turn her head. I called for Doug to grab a jacket or even a garbage sack, just something to shelter her face until the ambulance came. He just shouted back that he couldn't leave his post. He sounded normal, but I know he must have seen the whole thing happen. It probably threw him into shock.

"So, I took off my shirt and did my best to hold it taut above her, like an umbrella. And this whole time she was just looking at me, her eyes so wide. She couldn't do anything but look at me and take those short breaths. I told her to stay calm and soon...well, I don't know how much time passed till the ambulance got there. Could have been a minute, could have been fifteen. They put her on a gurney and then she was off to the hospital. I put on my shirt, but my clothes were all soaked through. Doug told me that I needed to make sure that nobody had taken anything from the concession stand when I 'abandoned my post'. I might have given him the finger as a reply. Mr. Laytner wasn't here, but he heard about the accident somehow and called to give me the rest of the day off, along with the whole week if I wanted it. He told me he'd pay me for every shift I missed. Like I said, he was really cool."

Mix-Up paused for a moment and laughed a little under his breath. He said, "Doug told me later that Laytner had told Doug that he was proud of him for not leaving his post at the ticket booth, but I'm pretty sure that's bullshit. But Doug's Doug, you know?"

"Yeah," was all I could say.

"So, yeah. I had done the right thing once, there with the girl in the rain. But I'd done the wrong thing about two dozen other times and finally I was caught red-handed by guess who?"

"Doug the Slug," I said, my voice so low it cracked a bit.

Without smiling, Mix-Up laughed a bit and nodded. "You know, I called him every name in the book when he threatened to turn me in, but I didn't think of that one."

"What did you call him?"

"Eh, just the normal stuff. It was pretty pathetic, but I was just ashamed, felt like a real piece of shit. I promised to repay every dollar if he wouldn't go to Laytner. I really respected the old guy, like, for real. So I knew that was a big part of it. But I also needed the job still. Bad. I promised Doug that I'd clean bathrooms when he was picked to do it and all the other extra work that he was asked to do. No good though. He marched right into Laytner's office and told the old guy that he'd seen me pocket money from the register."

"Wait," I said, interrupting. "So, I know you didn't get fired. I mean, c'mon." Mix-Up just looked at me. "Okay, so what did he do to you?"

Mix-Up smiled, but not at me. Just to the world in his head. I don't think I'd ever seen him smile for real until that moment.

"He let Doug say his piece, a pretty clear and damning case, really. And then Mr. Laytner turned to me. I really thought he was about to ask me for my side of the story. I knew I wouldn't be able to lie to him, so I was basically screwed. I might have had tears in my eyes. Yeah, I probably did. But the old guy didn't say a word to me. He just turned back toward Doug and said that he didn't think I'd done anything wrong, that Doug was mistaken somehow. Doug was furious, saying that he knew what he saw. Mr. Laytner told him that he totally believed that he'd seen something, but that it wasn't what he thought it was. Laytner told him that there must have been some kind of mix-up."

A chill hit me and continued up the back of my neck.

"That was pretty much the end of it. I stopped stealing, of course. It was hard to look Laytner in the eye at first, but he made sure that I did soon enough. I guess he saw something in me." Mix-Up shook his head. "Doug didn't see anything except a charming thief though, so he took to calling me 'Mix-Up' every chance he got. Never around Mr. Laytner though, that wouldn't have been good. But by the time the old guy had packed up for Florida, everybody here knew me by the name."

"Whoa," I said. "So, Doug gave you the name?"

"Well, in a way they both did."

"Yeah, but Doug's the one that used it against you." I was upset. "That's so not okay. I feel like me and everyone else has been a part of this cruel joke that we didn't even know was, was...hurtful."

"No, no," Mix-Up -- Trevor -- said.

"I feel like so awful and I think Doug's a piece of shit for doing that to you. I think we ought to get him back."

"No, you don't understand, Tracy. I like the name Mix-Up."

"What? Why?" I was already starting to see 'Trevor' spelled out in big letters over his head.

"It means that even though I'm capable of doing bad things, it doesn't make me a bad person. And it means that if somebody can still look me in the eyes when faced with something shameful about me, then I can do the same for anybody else. Even slugs like Doug."

Mix-Up smiled again and so did I. "Okay," I said and that was it. Trevor was gone and Mix-Up was back. We leaned against the counter and stared out the window across the lobby, enjoying the buttery smell and the soft pah-pah-pah sound coming from the popcorn machine.

Later that night, I tried to look up that girl Judy on my computer. I searched for almost an hour, but I couldn't find anything about her or the accident out in front of the Quartz. I guess it could have been something small enough that nobody reported on it - it's not like every accident gets in the newspaper, especially if nobody dies. But it seemed like such a big thing to me. And I hated that it was just a story people told each other now, that there was nothing to prove it was real.

A few days passed and a gentle storm settled over the city for much of the following week. I showed up for an evening shift at the theater; Jordan rushed to meet me at the lobby door. As I shook the rain off of my umbrella, she told me that Mix-Up had quit not an hour earlier. The speed of gossip caused her voice to flutter from talking so fast that she could hardly breathe. She told me that Mix-Up had apparently just walked into Doug's office and told him that he couldn't work at the Quartz anymore, didn't really give any specific reason. Doug wasn't taking it well, she said.

I felt as though I'd been sucker-punched. I hadn't had a concessions shift with Mix-Up since the time we had the talk about his name. I wanted answers, wished more than anything that I could have asked him about it, even just to get one more piece of the puzzle. I didn't know where Mix-Up lived (not that I would have felt right going to his place to pry more information out of him anyway). I would just have to live with the mystery. If there was a beauty to that realization, I didn't feel it then. I just felt defeated and a little angry at the man who loved thrash metal.

In the end, the story of his name was just one of many. My remaining shifts at the Quartz overflowed with all sorts of Mix-Up stories and quotes we all remembered, making the days seem to go by lightning fast. It was a generous parting gift that I hadn't anticipated. And then August arrived, making it my turn. I put in my notice with Doug the Slug, which didn't seem to surprise him much. I was really just a summer hire, after all. School would be starting back in two weeks; my friends and I would all have so many other things to talk about soon enough.

Crucial Post

As I was leaving work yesterday, I found several crumpled sheets of paper wedged underneath a waste bin in the B3 stairwell of my company's parking garage. I untwisted the mass of stationary and tried to make sense of the document. The six grimy pages contained what looked like a manifesto, or perhaps notes for a speech. The handwriting was terrible, a puzzling maze of smudged scrawls and scribbled asides. It looked as though some frantic mental patient had written it on a dare, and the apparent subject matter didn't discourage my assumption.

I spread the pages on top of the trunk of my car, fetching a notepad and pen from my briefcase. With care, I began to decipher each word and piece together every sentence. As I worked, a few people from my office entered the parking level. They were on the way to their own cars, ready to leave for the day, and noticed that I was up to something. I slid my briefcase over the pages of the speech as they approached me. I told them everything was fine, to go off and enjoy their night. They eventually left me alone, and I continued my work.

It took quite a long time to legibly transcribe the entirety of the speech. I was careful to maintain the proper order, as the treatise seemed to veer off into wild digressions as it slowly snaked its way toward resolution. Once every bit of text was there in my notepad, I was able to read the document in full. However, its purpose still eluded me, still begged for comprehension that the document itself did not provide.

If this were indeed a speech, it surely would have been meant for a department much different than the one I managed. Its conclusion was unfathomable to me. I couldn't imagine anyone from the company suggesting that my team should open the trench, that we should peer into the hypnotic eyes of our shadow selves on the other side of the invisible fold. After all, it was my department's job to keep the dark portrait of humanity from that other world as far away as possible.

I packed up and drove home, tried my best later to hide my unease from my wife and kids.

I couldn't get to sleep that night; nothing seemed to quiet my mind. It occurred to me that the speech was likely an early draft, carelessly abandoned in favor of an updated version. Or versions. That was the natural order beyond the trench, after all: many versions of the same world, bound together by the one that was determined to absorb all the rest. We enjoyed ignorance for far too long, but we learned from the absorption of others what horrors can fill a void. If this speech was a call for us to abandon our crucial post, then I would have to be ready to demonstrate the depth of the trench.

Today, I am ready for the next phase. Perhaps it will be an unscheduled meeting, perhaps it will circulate as an office memo from an unknown source. That's all it will take for me to alert my superiors on the 38th floor. If they will not listen to me, or if they are already party to this madness - which I fear that they are - then I will alert the other inhabitants of my world. I will start with my coworkers and our clients, then every contact I've encountered in this business over the years. I will hide out for a while on B3, bide my time until those that would silence me have stopped looking, and then I'll escape the building to warn anyone within earshot of my voice until I can reach the largest stage that I can find. I have prepared a speech of my own.

Not That Dude

"I'm not that dude," was a troubling form of punctuation that Diane had heard Connor use on several occasions. Usually the conversation would be about some vague scheme with unclear motives, such as "I could be on the news any day of the week, but I'm not that dude." Diane never asked him to go on, would usually mutter something non-committal like "Uh-huh," or "Yeah," as a new red flag silently joined the others already residing in her brain.

Of course, this didn't stop Diane from answering his late-night texts, and it certainly didn't stop her from "dropping by" Connor's house on Brierwood Lane Friday evenings after work. She'd usually arrive at dusk, armed with a six-pack of Rolling Rock or a fifth of whatever was cheapest that week at Turnstile Liquor. Conner would open the door without saying hello, and she'd kick her shoes off just inside his front door, already anticipating the inevitable escape she'd pull off before the sun would rise on Saturday.

It was on one such Friday night that Diane pulled her blue Civic up to Connor's curb. She never parked in the driveway. She did at first, but Connor was picky about how people parked, so she started parking at the curb to avoid the topic altogether. She grabbed a plastic Turnstile sack from the passenger seat and walked across his lawn, perfectly manicured as ever despite the trademark shittiness in every other aspect of Connor's world.

That includes you, you know, she thought.

"Oh, right. I hadn't thought of that," Diane said to no one as she pressed the doorbell. Reflex caused her legs to feel as though they would carry her inside almost immediately, like the ghost of a Panama City undercurrent tugging on her ankles after a long day in the ocean.

The door stood closed. Diane pressed on the doorbell again just as she heard shouts erupt from behind her. She scanned the neighborhood and saw Connor across the street, struggling to stand in the front lawn of the house that faced his own. His shirt was ripped at the collar and there was a bloody spot near one of his eyebrows. Connor was yelling at a man that Diane had seen before, a neighbor, though not one that lived in the house across the street.

The man stood tall and shirtless from the front porch. Connor attempted to walk up the porch stairs, maybe to go back inside the house, and the neighbor effortlessly shoved him back. This caused Connor to careen backward off the porch and land on his shoulder with a thud on the grass. Diane gasped, though it was obvious that the push wasn't the first of it. Through the house's open front door, she saw pieces of broken glass glint up from the carpeted floor inside.

It took a few attempts, but Connor eventually picked himself up and staggered away from the house across the street, back toward his own place. He shot his middle finger upward as he walked, which almost caused him to trip on the curb. The man watched him get as far as the street then went back inside. Before the door closed, Diane saw a woman hand the tall man a beer and smack him on the ass. It sounded like they were listening to disco music over there.

Connor continued across the street and noticed Diane's car before he noticed Diane. He leaned against it and pulled a flattened pack of cigarettes from his jeans. Diane walked to him. Connor put one in his mouth and fished around for a lighter somewhere on his body, but couldn't seem to find one. His eyes, glassy and bloodshot, crawled up Diane's body and found her face.

"Got a light?" he muttered. Diane wasn't sure if he was drunk or on something, but it was definitely one of the two. Probably both.

"What the hell is going on?" she asked him.

He sighed and put the bent cigarette behind his ear.

"Who was that guy?" she continued. "Are you in trouble?"

"Don't worry about it, 'kay? Just some stuff." He grabbed Diane's hand and began to pull her with him as he started toward his front door. "C'mon," he said. "You know I'm not that dude."

Diane jerked her hand away from his and stood her ground on his lawn, waiting for a real explanation. Connor slowly turned to look at her. The blood was now rolling from his brow down to his cheek and he looked tired, but nothing in his eyes seemed to register that something was wrong. He shrugged and stumbled into his house. After a moment, Diane plucked the plastic Turnstile bag from Connor's perfect lawn and joined him inside.

Several hours later, she was back in her blue Civic, pulling it away from the curb and down Brierwood Lane. It was time for Diane to be home, not for any reason other than that's where she wanted to be.

Diane didn't live far from Connor, only a five minute drive from his house to her apartment on Ash Street. It was exclusively within the span of that distance on these dark, early Saturday morning drives that Diane would wonder what Connor considered their relationship to be, or if he considered what they had to be a relationship at all. For her part, she tried to not think of it in those terms, though she recognized that wondering was usually the first step.

If she really had to admit it, either to herself or to anybody else on the planet that wanted to know, she hoped Connor wasn't that dude.