A Honk on I-75
I.
Through the windshield of his car He saw a billboard advertising a man in a suit. The man’s hair was gray and the sun reflecting off of the pale paper skin was blinding. The face was wrinkled by an obtuse grin. It was the type of image that can make any person envious. Who could empathize with the emphatic emotion of a moment, captured and made timeless? Especially from behind the wheel of a solitary car among a sea of so many others.
In front, a white van spanned a gap made new by traffic and suddenly halted with a leaded stop. It tipped foreword with frustrated momentum before settling back on the shocks of its posterior axel, emulating the shrug of a disagreeable harrumph!
And behind, a teal Ford Taurus of older make was riding his tail. He was far more indifferent to it than He had excuse to be and professionally kept his speed steady with a car’s length between the hyperactive van and himself. He apprehended a collision from behind, thus his speed was four miles an hour. The man on the billboard would be peering at him for quite some time. On either side of him traffic kept changing the faces of vehicles, whether they slowed down or sped up, the lateral lanes shifted at odds with the one He drove.
The billboard advertised the company in the building just behind. It was a veritable skyscraper and would have made more sense as part of a city skyline than the side of a suburban freeway. The site should have borne a weigh-station but the building was majestic none-the-less. Between walls of opaque widows rose thin columns of shining steel. It was laid out so the building looked pinstriped; not unlike the suit the man on the billboard wore. From its torso rose a glistening atrium, with iron beams stretching from a hub in the long thin limbs of a pentagonal star, giving structure to the glass visage.
He didn’t read what was on the billboard, He was never really bored enough to succumb to the harassment of these advertisements at every turn. Even in the traffic He now faced. However, out of the corner of his eye He noticed it was formatted like a business card, with a slogan encouraging a vague mission statement scrolled calligraphically across the bottom. Beside the man’s face was written Chief Executive Officer, Robert Kape. From his cab view, the monolithic building stood behind the monolith of an executive man, as if to advertise the very extent of the executive’s ownership.
It was goading, He thought this must be some sort of joke. It be the greatest prank a powerful man has ever played. Making his body as large as a skyscraper. Making his obnoxious smile just as timeless.
Cruising at the pace of four, his mind raced onwards. So much faster than this creeping mollusk of a freeway and the trivial tics upon it. He traveled home much faster than reality. It took no time at all for his current home, sitting upon his land, to greet him. It was a little ranch house with two rooms, and his roommate was found sitting on a couch drinking beer and watching television. Nearly as fixed in place as the furniture he lounged upon.
Before, they used to seek some sort of activity to enjoy as friends. It was a night out or a party at their place. At the very least their night could have been full of stupid jokes and pranks at a neighbor’s expense. It used to remove the boredom, to find delight in the insignificant things, like getting drunk. They used to find an output for their discontent in the time they enjoyed wasting.
II.
As He arrived just then, a realization influenced him heavily enough to make him still his hand as it dove towards the refrigerator door.
“Kyle,” He shouted to the other room, from which a television emitted a cacophony of exclamations and lilting melodies, “You want to go out tonight? It’s Wednesday, man, we gotta’ do something.”
“No can do,” came a distant voice, “working the night shift.”
The crack of a can echoed between the rooms, louder than their voices during their scraps of conversation. He assumed it was a beer. God knows they didn’t buy anything else.
The noise of the television was agitating, as was the sight of the peeling yellow walls and the smell of his friend, which He imagined He should have been used to by now. He endeavored to get out by grabbing the mail. He found his bank statement in the box and opened it immediately. It read, fifteen hundred in month spending… five hundred minimum due… five thousand five hundred credit… thirty thousand in savings.
He would pay it all off. It’s not like He didn’t have the money and wasn’t making more than enough for these expenses, and this place. He might, He thought, open another account for security.
He looked at the house again. The grass was overgrown where it was not brown. The sidewalk leading up to the front door bore craters, and the slabs were tilted unevenly as though the earth was in the process of a great heave. He realized He didn’t want this place. He didn’t even own it, He rented and rent was practically nothing. He had more than enough for that. He entertained and put to test the idea of getting a greater home.
Two days later He told Kyle his intentions and welcomed the lovable potato to join him. He verbalized the question with clenched teeth and guilty anxiety. Luckily Kyle refused. As good friends do, Kyle did not indulge in the comforts that lay on a friend’s coattails. Still, He would be alone, and had to assume the effort of finding a bachelor’s place.
He did not need to look for very long. There were many like him. Young men and women floundering across the city, and less than settling, they stumbled until they fell, not knowing necessarily what they needed or what they wanted. What rooms were small enough to fill, what deals pushed their budgets enough to spoil, and what terrible deals the city had to offer. He did not want to stumble. He imagined a substantial apartment complex. He pictured himself in a clean, modern home. With his imagination came the ease of knowing a direction to progress.
He found it quickly, a red-brick Bostonian, in a nice part He had not known the city to hold. It had a timelessness that caused the onlooker to feel like a witness of history. Across the street, the orange clay of several baseball diamonds stood in contrast with the striped grass of the public park. It was mowed every other day and spanned several acres, providing a sagittal view of the city skyline, which was rare. Not rare for the acreage or even the view. It was rare for the cut grass that striped the park, as well kept as a gardener’s lawn.
He knew it was out of his price range from the moment He saw this but his conceit drove him to pursue. As He spoke of price with the landlord, standing within the pale walls, his words were those of someone far more confident and far more resourceful than himself. It sounded as though He had already been through the process, He nearly lived there; it would have been inconvenient to hinder his moving in.
He knew the one thing He needed the landlord to realize: nobody knew about this place, if He didn’t buy it at his price no one would come in to buy it at any. By his sheer energy, to continue speaking, meanwhile maneuvering the conversation to confer his point of view, the listener grew very tired and felt the need to sell. And so, the landlord accepted a low price.
In three hours, He held a copy of the signed lease. In five his bed had been moved and the sheets were made. By eight-thirty at night, He had parked in his new spot and cooked his own dinner. Kyle came over and their conversation hummed with an excitement they had left for dead long ago.
The next morning, He felt fine even though they had celebrated enough for their brains to scold them in hankering thuds. Kyle was still on the couch in a state of bleary sleep. He didn’t know what time his friend was supposed to work. All He knew was that it was Friday, and his bedside clock showed 6:00 am. It was earlier than He had woken for his nine to five job in several years. Perhaps it was the first time since He had failed to sleep very long since the night of the interview for it. He was much more anticipant then. Back when his future seemed uncertain and more immense than the happenings of the present.
Back then, He thought it was a hard to sit still. He couldn’t remember having slept more than five hours in a night. Even when the weekends came, it was all He could do to distract himself from his thoughts any way He dared. Then, his sleep was broken, strange, and He would wake with uncertainty of the past night. He only shaved when there was an occasion. The day after that interview He thought He could look at the past three months and identify a period of his continuous life. He decided He was done with it. He stopped worrying. His action became inaction, false contentedness. By way of his mind and body, this next segment He endeavored to sit and recline, so to speak.
Now 6:15, He found clarity in a cold shower and endeavored to leave his building at seven. He could conceive a few benefits He might attain with the extra hour, a few easy things that took hardly any effort at all. More importantly, and easier still, his certainty foretold what this hour really meant. When walking in at the standard nine-o’clock a.m., he found the same barriers they all faced day-to-day.
It’s not the literal barriers, not the walls that separate the manager offices that rimmed their division floor or even the cubicle walls that separated him from every other. Those were simple statements and facts, as though to remind people that their building had challenges, that a managerial spot was so close, or that the company valued drive enough to provide even their humblest employees with the semblance of concentration and focus. Most knew that a real promotion was a different floor, a different division, perhaps another building or company. Knowing the walls meant nothing did not mean they were nothing however. Though they symbolize so little, being there, being able to touch them imposes a stagnancy to creep into the back of all their minds. He found that it was so easy to stay where He was, without seeing a hint of progress beyond those large promotional values, stickered at every corner, profiteering the colloquial notions of “Excellence!” and “Value!” Change simply wasn’t evident from within those grey carpeted, cardboard walls; except when considering how they developed fragility seeming to exude a sense of powerlessness; that these men and women, like him, were strong yet could not so much as free themselves from a paper cage.
Freedom was where his manager stood and failed to achieve the paternal semblance of a captain. Despite the paternal semblance of a nagging father or mother with probing evaluations, probing reminders, and probing encouragement. The last always managed to sound like desperate, uncomfortable pleas for everyone to, just, work a little harder. And worse than seeing their manager try and fail, was the sense of permanence. Knowing that the manager would never get promoted, and never get fired, unless the entire branch was ostracized. So, as they all sat smirking at whatever walls stood between them, believing that they were revolting by having their voices carry over, around and through the barriers. He knew they were accomplishing no such thing, and though the company was not wrong for trying to achieve focus, He found it mistaken for believing those plastic coves were the answer.
He nearly exclaimed aloud, “Stupid!”
When He walked in at 7:00 am, the floor was bare of those voices and bare of the grim attitude of returning in departmental fashion. He felt different than the typical Friday-men and –women, escape from the same slow start and gradually compounding anxiety of counting the hours until Friday’s end. Quicker to count the hours until Monday’s return. He felt, on that vacant floor, freedom from the collective drudgery. It was freedom from the drumming of fingertips on keyboards that marked each second of the minutes they held so dear, like Stockholm’s. This separation was autonomy, strength. He knew that if this was how He started each day, He could step away from the grinding.
During the weekend, He still relaxed. With Kyle beside him, He didn’t feel so guilty for it. They had a party at his place, a moving-in celebration; inviting a few of their co-workers they had no interest in knowing before. They invited vague guests and anyone’s friends. They welcomed everyone and were proud enough to wear button-down shirts and neat, dark pants. It was a change from the cutoffs they flaunted since college. Both He and Kyle felt odd, invigorated, as they held in their hearts the very concepts of progress and change.
He was concerned with the goings on of the party. The sociality of the inhabitants was not the usual boredom of red and blue LED fixation of prior get-togethers, and the occasional outbursts of whoever was the drunkest or the most bored. They stood around and spoke to each other in groups. Some who grew tired of standing sat on the couch or near the bar, showing off what drinks they learned or who they saw at their last night in the city. It was always something to regard with spectacle. There were so few opportunities around that every single one should be made and occasion. They meant everything to the people He knew. By the time they meant nothing, He would be in complete ecstasy, for only then would He have celebrated more than the work that consumed the residents who, just like him, failed to find solace in the drinks and all the people as much as they did with themselves. This would be with the work they did when alone and the accomplishments they could imagine right before completing them. That was the fantastic luxury of solitude –the imagination and all its daring possibilities.
Kyle found it in the bottom of his glass. The wherewithal to ignore the individuals around him. At the bottom held the recklessness to contradict the situations that detailed his home and his being. Kyle looked in a mirror –for it seemed He walked into a bathroom at some point. He would have felt out of place, with his shaved chin and his soft white and blue striped button-down and the navy blue dress pants, if He were not so intoxicated. He would have felt out of his body. His current exhilarating image was a distinct rash push for a visage, different from the one He so often imagined his own to be. So instead of playing host to the doubts of image and place, Kyle thought of the possibility of creating this image every day. What beauty Kyle could achieve if everything around him forever matched the picture of luxury! And Kyle refused to consider the hindrance of this goal any longer.