Troped

“So, there you go,” Jason says as he picks the little robot up off the floor; a dome with “eyes” painted on it and three small rubber wheels. The automaton is not much larger than his hand. When he hands it to Elsa he notices again how amazingly long and slender and pale her fingers are, like the branches of a birch. She’s giddy as she turns the mechanical wonder over and over, this way and that.

The room they are in is just a concrete room—cinder block walls with large, industrial, frosted windows on one side. The other walls are covered in blank canvases, painted canvases, rolls of canvas, tarps, paint. Opposite the windows is a long beat-up counter with brushes, buckets, machine parts and tools, and pieces of electronics in various states of disrepair.

From the Thread: The Library, Untouchable Carp

The digital red clock reads three o’clock, but the blinds are drawn and the room is dark and gray and quiet. The walls of the room are white and undecorated. Elsa is lying in bed with her back to the window and there are tear tracks running down her face. She is thinking about far away places and far away people—so far away that she will never get to them again. Ever. She is tired. She is too exhausted to be sad. There is effort in everything that she thinks, and she does not even have the effort to think about thinking about them. Nearby, a machine on the nightstand clicks and after a moment she hears Jason’s voice.

Then silence and she closes her eyes as giant tears cascade down her face.

From the Thread: Untouchable Carp

They greet each other and Gene launches into the whole sordid story; sick, by now, of the details that he shares with Jason.

They say goodbye and hang up as another gust from the sea kicks up and blows into the minivan, bringing along up from the shore a small white and gray gull that lands near the van and looks at Gene from the side of his head—maybe expectantly, but gulls are hard to decipher. Gene responds by digging through his lunch refuse again for a fry and tosses it to the bird who deftly jumps into the breeze and catches the morsel in mid-salty-air with maybe a thankful cry—maybe triumphant. It’s easier to be happy when you don’t want much, Gene thinks. Then he thinks, I hope I don’t get killed by ten million pounds of sludge from New Jersey, though. “You wouldn’t know what the hell hit you, buddy!” The gull looks on—maybe suspiciously—maybe like he would know what ten million pounds of sludge looked like. Then Gene wonders how long it will be before he’s ever happy again.

From the Thread: Ing Speare Typ Chimpan Shakes Zees

It takes a long time before the lone red balloon is gone from sight. In the end the mystery of its demise is left to the inaccuracy of the resolution of human vision. And, in time with the rise of trapped inert gas, the rusted roller coaster tracks have fallen over by another 1/1,000,000 of an inch. The ocean waves pound on the gritty Long Island shore in a white hiss, penetrating the low-register of his eardrums, and Gene feels any urge to action like a blob of spilled jelly on a slightly inclined table. He sits in his caravan, a space with seven seats, that contains the same kinetic energy as the fast food packages and leftovers on the passenger seat across from him. He scrounges around through the trash there to find his phone and dials up Jason Gunn. As hoped, Jason answers

From the Thread: Ing Speare Typ Chimpan Shakes Zees

I keep wincing just before I think I’ll knock it over, but then I don’t even move a muscle. I can see the whole affair in my head—whatever it was to go flying: glass, wrist, anything delicate— I just know I will knock it over; it doesn’t matter what it was. Maybe like a long time ago, I will look at my lap and start crying. Only I’m sure that this time there will be no parents to tell me not to cry about entropy. I will be six again, in a large green colonial four bedroom house, but all alone. I won’t have paid the electric bill in months and so the place will be still and dark for dinner.

Often when I believe this is about to happen, the colors of the strange awesome things I used to dream knock loudly on the front door of my apartment. They fill the peephole like out a submarine I’m peering and when I least expect it. That is, they always show up when I am about to knock something over, but I never know when that feeling will come over me. The colors are such a nuisance; I try to keep them from coming. But sometimes I can’t help but think about a small child alone in a large, dark house and then I think that the child will surely spill something and not know how to clean it up, or even know that it doesn’t matter.

From the Thread: A Field Guide to the Socially Inept