literary fiction

Talladega it ain’t, but still

STEVE BIERSDORF

Because I’m less of a social animal these days, interaction with the itinerant masses is confined to my morning commute. I don’t count social media. The last guy I got into an argument with on Twitter, I’m pretty sure was Russian, or a Russian bot if there’s a difference. Unable to refute me intellectually, he (it?) called me a traitor for positing that China was winning the trade war.  

Most of my commute is nineteen miles east on 98. If you look at it from a satellite shot, 98 looks like a cool throughway near water. In patches between trees and subdivisions, it is. You can see across the Sound, to hilly dunes with green vegetation, white sand like scoops of vanilla ice cream, the vegetation like candied syrup ladled atop. Or depending on the zoom, a long, thin, grainy line of blow.

Once I pass the causeway to the beach I know to be in the right lane, during heavy traffic season, which is the school year less holidays and summer vacay. Kids here get way more time off than I ever got. Christmas vacation is a month. They get the entire week off for Thanksgiving.

In the faster moving right lane I feel better about being mired in traffic. The left lane is intended to be faster, and yet it moves slower, reliably. If pressed to explain this phenomenon, I’d say we’re creatures of habit, slaves to our routines. Clinging to the way things were when we formed our habits, always struggling to adapt to change. The left lane is for faster moving traffic. When there isn’t congestion, it normally is. What this tells me is that many of the drivers battling rush hour traffic are my peers. Millennial or Gen Z drivers have no such preconceptions about the left lane. 

I’ll settle on a vehicle in the left lane and watch it in my side-view mirror, to validate that the left lane is the slower, reveling in this knowledge. Today I choose a Honda Element ahead of me. A tannish color, but not tan or khaki. Verve-less, primer beige. I pass it, I’m ahead of it now, watching it recede in the driver’s side mirror, disappearing behind a growing line of vehicles.

I’m east of the Tom Thumb light, where traffic thins out. From here the left lane can be, and often is, the faster of the two. We’re east of the Hurlburt Field overpass, old, overgrown trees with Spanish moss hanging over the road. On the north side of 98 are houses almost anyone can afford. On the right, behind the old trees or interwoven with them are houses on the Sound, big houses with an old Southern feel that almost no one can afford.

In the right lane, I consider changing lanes then don’t, figuring a truck ahead of me in the left lane will clot the lane. I move ahead of the truck. The truck moves ahead of me. I move ahead of the truck. The truck moves ahead of me. It’s a big truck, with a four-poster bed, a Pod truck. They’ve dropped off a Pod, and free of this burden are anxious to rejoin the traffic flow. Pass other vehicles. A shackle removed, a burden unshouldered, free and easy down the road they go. It speeds up close to the vehicle in front of it, tailgating, so if I wanted to change lanes there would be no room for me. Not in front of the Pod truck. 

We’re coming up on the Doolittle light. To get to work, I can turn left at this light or proceed through the light and take the next left on San Cristobal. The Pod truck gets in the left turn lane, to turn onto Doolittle, I get in the left lane it just vacated, where the Pod truck would have been. Through the light, take the next left on San Cristobal, no impediment. I glance back, the Pod truck stuck in line, waiting for the green arrow granting permission to turn left. I win.  

***

In traffic. Trucks pulling enclosed trailers for Quality Plumbing, Clean Dog LLC (portable dog grooming). Plumbers keep their wares under wraps, unlike landscapers or home improvement contractors. A tacit understanding exists, that all things plumbing are best kept unseen and not contemplated. Like what happens to all the excrement. When Tropical Storm Nathan passed through the local wastewater treatment facility dumped one hundred thousand gallons of ‘partially treated’ sewage into the Sound, where there are now relatively high levels of enterococci, bacteria that inhabits the intestinal tracts of humans and animals. Which sparks an idea for a sci-fi novel: The waste management division of NASA blasts so much shit into space that a more technologically- and morally-advanced species is deeply offended, collecting our septic rockets, prying them open, and raining all the shit back down on us. Shit Storm is the working title.

***

Commuting, early on, still west of the Navarre Beach causeway. A white truck passes me on the right. A white Dodge Ram, and on the sides right behind the cab and on the tailgate it says Power Wagon. In front of me is a silver pickup, Super Duty across the tailgate. 

I find the hyperbole to be patronizing. Wagon I associate with station wagon, a fake-wood paneled family transport from back in the day, littered with wrappers and discarded toys, children screaming at each other, parents slumped dejectedly in the front seats. Or a little red wagon for pulling your toddlers and their toys around. Power and wagon are dissociative. And Super Duty, your seventy-thousand-dollar employee capable of pulling something twice its weight.  

There’s no way I’m letting Power Wagon get where it’s going sooner than I get where I’m going. I move to the right lane, and sure enough, as dependable as the sun rising in the east, the right lane moves faster. As I’m closer to the Tom Thumb light, about two-thirds of the way, I get left. Power Wagon is lost behind me. I sleep on my advantage, remaining in the left lane as the right lane moves faster again, and there it is. Power Wagon is a tenth of a mile ahead, two-tenths. I stay left, and sure enough, the right lane bogs down. But then Power Wagon gets in the left lane, four or five vehicles ahead of me. We climb the Hurlburt Field overpass, and I get in the right lane, the ‘slower moving’ lane. Soon the left lane will bog down, as we get closer to the Doolittle turnoff. It always does. Sure enough, I pass Power Wagon. It’s a tenth of a mile back, two-tenths.

I turn left, off of 98, and it’s over.

King of the road, yo.

Usherette

STEVE BIERSDORF

Pulling up to a double wide, parked in a clearing inside a mangrove thicket. An old maroon pickup truck on tires nearly flat, you might make it to the nearest service station to put air in those tires, might, depending on how close the service station is. Walking to the door, knocking. Knocking again. Greeted with the sound of vehement hacking from behind the door, “just a minute,” managed between hacks. Entering the trailer, a deteriorated woman accessorizing with a portable oxygen tank and clear tube to her nostrils. 

“Hi dearie. Come in.” Hack, hack, hack. Full-body wracking. Tears in her rheumy eyes. Kasha thinks about asking “how are you,” but she can’t be doing well, Mrs. Ackerman.

Inside is dark, red drapes over the windows like oversized doilies defraying sunlight. Cigarette smoke has infiltrated everything. When she leaves, wherever she goes the rest of this day, her patients will think she’s been smoking. Chain smoking. Mrs. Ackerman sits in a tartan plaid recliner. Kasha assumes it reclines because there’s a wood lever on the lower left side of it. She sits on the matching sofa that smells like eight thousand smoked cigarettes.  

“How’ve you been?” Mrs. Ackerman asks Kasha with her incinerated voice. On the phone, people mistake her for a man.

“I’m good. What can I do for you today, Mrs. Ackerman? How about a shower?” Mrs. Ackerman smells worse than normal, her hair grease-flattened, split-endy. She’s the only person willing to help Mrs. Ackerman with that shower. Alicia the nurse won’t, her kids, son and daughter, no chance.

“Well, I don’t know.”

Mrs. Ackerman glances longingly at a pack of Virginia Slims on the battered-antique round end table next to her. The ashtray’s been emptied in anticipation of Kasha’s arrival. A glass of something clear, stagnate, probably room-temperature water with a dash of dust particles.

There’s really nothing Kasha can do for her other than to try to make her more comfortable.

“It’d make you feel better. Let’s get you all nice and clean.”

“Can I have a cigarette first?”

Kasha mock frowns at her.

“Will you at least smoke outside?”

She stands, holding out her arms.

“Come on, I’ll help you. It’s a beautiful day. Come outside and enjoy it some.”

***

The Kellers are new. Kasha’s given the address, and instructions from Clemenza, her supervisor and de facto dispatcher for in-home hospice care CNAs and nurses, to “see the Kellers.” She pulls into a middle class neighborhood of ranch homes on slabs, fenced-in patios and enriched-soil backyards, some with screened-in pools. She parks at the curb, goes to the door and rings the bell.

The Kellers answer the door together. Neither looks deathly ill, or anything other than lamé in their golden years. 

“Hi, I’m Kasha.” She takes a step forward but they don’t part and let her through, or invite her in.

“Nice to meet you,” says Mrs. Keller. Mrs. Keller locks on to her eyes and studies her. 

“Let me ask, you…Kasha did you say?”

“Yes, Kasha.”

“Have you been saved?”

“I hope so.”

Mrs. and Mr. Keller exchange a look.

“This is for you.” Mrs. Keller hands her a brochure. “I don’t think we’ll be needing you today. I thank you for stopping by, though, and God bless you. Find Jesus before it’s too late. He’s waiting, but frankly he’s losing patience.”

***

Into the brightly tiled Florida room, Mrs. Calpysa smiling at her as she enters. Mrs. Calpysa sees herself as a younger woman when she sees Kasha, or similarities. Kasha is older than she may realize.

“Kasha! Come here.” She’s lying on the indoor-outdoor sofa, propped up with pillows. She holds out her arm. Kasha hastens. She bends when she gets to her, Mrs. Calpysa taking her some of her hair between thumb and forefinger.

“My. Such beautiful curly blonde hair,” she says, as if seeing it for the first time.   

***

Dani’s out back by the screened-in pool. Kasha lets herself in. Dani’s Lhasa apso, Tammy, hopping up on her hind legs, yapping excitedly, clawing Kasha’s shins. Dani’s in her wheelchair, in the shade of eaves. A glass pitcher with a pale green concoction, almost empty, on a round, mottled-glass table beside her.

“I thought you’d never get here.” She says this like a single, long word. She holds up the glass pitcher.

“Replenish, my Lady.”

Kasha takes the pitcher, heads off to the kitchen.

“And when you’re done with that, please run to Mariachi’s, I’m completely famished. Shrimp quesadilla with black beans and Spanish rice, please. Here.”

Kasha, halfway to the kitchen, pitcher in hand, stops. Dani is holding up her Amex, waving it in the air over her head.

Over the clinking of the ice as she stirs in lime juice, she hears, “Oh, and Tammy needs a bath. She stinks. I’d have thrown her in the pool if I knew she could swim.”

***

Mrs. Young isn’t responsive when she gets there. She knocks on the door, no answer, rings the bell, nothing, so she tries it, it’s open. She lets herself in as she’s done before. The TV is blaring from the bedroom. The View. The women are worked up and shouting over one another.

Mrs. Young is lying in her king-sized bed, propped by several pillows, eyes open, with an open-mouthed amused look.

“Good morning,” Kasha says brightly. Mrs. Young doesn’t respond. Kasha looks for the remote, to turn the sound down. She’s forever turning the sound down. She hates loud TV, commercials especially.

“Mrs. Young?”

Nothing.

“Mrs. Young,” she says loudly, although loud is relative with the ladies on The View in background. “Shit.”

No pulse. She pinches Mrs. Young’s nostrils shut, no reaction.

Mrs. Young’s late husband founded a resort town to the east where they filmed The Truman Show. They’re wealthy. People will be keenly interested to know Mrs. Young has passed. Significant assets will transfer. 

***

His house smells of him, old man, unwashed clothes, accentually of urine. She opens the windows and turns on the ceiling fan. He lives in Florida and he has the windows shut and no A/C. She’s there long enough to get the clothes washed and into the dryer or hung. He has a skin allergy he attributes to electromagnetic hypersensitivity. She washes his clothes with an organic detergent that fails to leave his clothes smelling clean and fresh. 

She knows what Pastor Adams should look like, or did, from his pictures. Him in the Marines, crew cut, big ears and proboscis, toothy grin, calm blue eyes. A black and white of his wedding, in a white jacket tuxedo, feeding his new bride wedding cake. She imagines When I Fall In Love as background music (the Nat King Cole, Natalie Cole sound-mixed duet). It’s the distance from then to now, how optimistic they were about the life ahead of them, coming to this at last.     

First order of business is toiletry. He’ll have soiled his adult diapers. Get those off, get him in the shower if she can, restore a little dignity, make him tolerable to be around. She can see gratitude in his eyes, in his expression, when he’s attended to and settled in, resting on the old sofa near the front window. She can tell he resents the lack of autonomy, and sometimes he resents her because she does these things for him, as if he could do them for himself if it wasn’t for her. His pride is less of a glimmer by now, still flickering. 

With each visit she becomes like a bartender for his thirsty conscience, a repository for his regret. His voice is a hard whisper. Sometimes he’ll exhale as he talks and his words burst forth in what must have been his normal voice.

“When they’re little you just don’t know what they’ll become.” When she next comes, “he never read my books. Not one of them.” His hand rifles through his hair, an old habit, a faint echo of youthful vanity. 

“We haven’t spoken in five years, other than when he calls me on my birthday. Once he called and it wasn’t my birthday. Why are you calling? I asked him. Is it my birthday?” 

“What did you talk about?”

The Pastor turns his head to the side, toward the window, not answering. Something gnawing at him and he’s near the end. Kasha ushering him to eternity’s doorstep. She might be someone to relay these last few messages, as if from the beyond, to whoever they’re intended for. 

The next time he has more to say.

“I wanted them to find their own way. To be their own people. Learning from example. My father never explained things to me, I figured it out for myself. I found my calling. I would say none of them did. They found vocations.” A pause. “They work a lot. One thing I’ll say about them, all three of them, they’re hard workers.” 

When next she arrives, an ambulance is there. Parked in the driveway, lights off, back doors open. Everyone is inside the house. The EMTs have Pastor Adams on a bariatric gurney, ready to wheel him away. Wearing an oxygen mask, he sees Kasha and pulls the mask away from his face so she can hear him. She leans in to hear, turns her head and throws her hair to a side, holding it away from her ear, her other hand lightly on his forearm. Looking imploringly at her, wide-eyed, “tell them to read my books. Do that for me, please. Please.”

An Incapacity for Savoir-Faire

STEVE BIERSDORF

There was much more they were hoping to accomplish. In the back of their thoughts – tumbleweeds blowing by, squinting into the sun and windblown sand, A Gun For Ringo playing in the background – they knew they were wasting their time. No one likes Pho that much. They discover he’s lefthanded, likes his steak medium well (would have thought he liked his food raw or undercooked), dislikes kimchi (a surprise), and eats with Western utensils instead of chopsticks when given the option. Desperate for progress, diagnosing as false positive his use of forks, knives and spoons. 

By his command, Old Uncle strapped to a wall, by wrists and thighs, dismembered with one of those Chinese antiaircraft guns (88 mm, German made) with foot trigger, from World War II, so loud you wear headphones or your hearing is permanently damaged. Sawed off at the shoulders, at the tops of his femurs, the torso and head dropping to the floor with a sticky thud, arms and legs pinned to the wall. 

It would shock you to know he thinks he’s better than you, smarter than you. You assume he assumes you’re superior to him because you’re Caucasian and he’s Asian. He thinks it’s odd that you like him. He sees this as exploitable. If he can’t win, he’ll quit. Never was there the remotest possibility of win-win. 

If Satan were to walk into a crowded café somewhere under guise, strapped with C4, and detonate himself, this would be the anti-Christian equivalent of his dying to propagate sin (as opposed to absolving it), each bit of his flesh an incubus for evil and hate. You and he are two chunks of scattered incubus meat.    

Tagger

STEVE BIERSDORF

On my drives to and from work, I go on hiatus from the morning palaver I normally half-listen to, or have on for noise. I drive with only the hum of the tires or cars going the other way, passing me with a gasp, or the occasional off-key brass section of an approaching train. Sometimes if I have to wait on a train I count the cars. Sometimes the trains are over two hundred cars long, and during drive time. I could write my congressman, suggesting there be restrictions on how long trains can be during drive times. Fifty cars or fewer seems like a reasonable expectation. My congressman is notoriously pro-commerce and with a well-funded hammerlock on his congressional district, so any response is unlikely. Accountability doesn’t apply. 

During a momentary lapse from my hiatus I make a fortuitous discovery. I’m pretty sure it was Marge and Murray and not any of the other him and her morning drive-time concoctions, Bruce and Darla, Lefty and Carole, Johnson and Box. Marge says that would be a cool job, watching TV for a living. Murray says you can go to our page and check it out. On Marge and Murray’s page is a help-wanted advertisement for TV-watching positions in the UK or Ireland, for a well-known subscription service for movies and TV shows. If I’m willing to relocate I’m invited to apply. I think about moving to the UK or Ireland and watching TV for a living. Getting paid to watch TV might be worth the dearth of sunshine or living among people with jacked-up grills and pretentious vocabularies.

My cell phone number is like a porterhouse dropped into a river teeming with piranha. It’s on marketing lists cold-callers ply, the standard lists, not the high net worth lists. Occasionally I take these calls, usually not. Sometimes there’s an automated message telling me I’ve reached my credit limit but that if I call now they can extend it for me, or sometimes the automated message tells me it’s imperative that I call an 888 number immediately. I don’t have any credit cards (if I don’t have the money for it I don’t buy it, which as an American is counterintuitive of me). I’m not sure what’s different this time, but I take the call. 

A woman wants to know if I’m still interested in the TV-watching position I applied for. I’m not sure why we don’t conduct the phone interview right then, but we prearrange a time and date. A recruiter calls me at the scheduled time and gets my basics, then questions me extensively about what I watch on TV. I watch a lot of TV. Even if I’m doing something else I leave the TV on. I go to sleep with the TV on, my remote has a timer and the TV shuts off while I’m asleep. She’s careful not to react to my answers, but I sense she likes the smell of what I’m cooking. Sometimes she interrupts my answers with the next question when my answers are long-winded. I’m told my responses will be carefully considered and if they’re interested in moving forward they’ll contact me. On my drive home, I wonder if they have road construction in the UK or Ireland. I’d be willing to trade our road construction for their dentists, but not if I’m moving there.

A few weeks later and I recognize the same area code when the next call comes. The caller introduces himself as Jim Goodlatte. I ask if an affinity for lattes is genetic predisposition, and he chuckles as if he’s heard this a thousand times. Only good ones, he says, his stock rejoinder. He has only one question, why I want to be a Tagger, which is what a professional TV watcher is called. Who wouldn’t?  I ask. He’s coming to town, and wants to meet face to face. He schedules me for an interview at a local hotel. He’ll be interviewing people for two days, interviews on the hour. He instructs me to go online and take a personality test in the interim. 

The personality test consists of side-by-side responses to a single question, in rectangular boxes, with rounded corners, in big font and simple sentences, nothing so mind-bending as a double negative. At the outset I’m warned that it takes approximately forty-five minutes to complete the test and that I should set this time aside. I’m to go with the response that most closely matches how I am, or how I self-actualize. I’m encouraged to answer instinctively and not overthink my responses. The questions have nothing to do with watching TV. An example: When confronted with a difficult situation do I 1) trust myself to come up with the appropriate solution or 2) do I prefer to first gather input from others? Offended by these inane questions, I decide to be contradictory. I choose the same or similar response to sets of oppositely intended questions. I tear through the test in little more than ten minutes. 

And then I’m back at work, trying not to think about this opportunity, but that I might get out has me in a good mood. Watching TV in the UK or Ireland is an exciting proposition that I’m totally up for, I decide. A customer is telling me about the vehicles he’s modified. He’s a parts manager at an Audi dealership. He’s a nice guy, but he’s the tenth or eleventh customer of the day. I’m thinking about how I can get him to sign two more forms and break out my disinfectant wipes while he’s telling me about how he tripled the torque output of his Ram truck. I smile suddenly and he smiles back like I’m smiling at something he said, like discussing torque ratios really tickles my balls.

    

Singha

STEVE BIERSDORF

He usually parked at the edge of a weedy vacant lot for sale that would soon belong to someone, adjacent to a new home under construction. It was early, and he desired to get the day started right with a brisk walk. Atop a ladder was a man in a white t-shirt, injecting nails with a nail gun as if he was stapling the house together. As he was walking by the man looked down at him and said something, what, quite, he didn’t catch, only the word “local” and a number, and it was a question judging from the tone.

He noticed they were dressed similarly, he also in a white t-shirt and jeans, though his white t-shirt was an advertisement for Singha beer, a souvenir from his one visit to Bangkok, there for a week and a half, where he had unprotected sex with a deaf Thai hooker who started menstruating mid-copulation. And so he came back with the Singha t-shirt and six-months’ wait to see if he was HIV positive, an interminable wait for the results in those early, terrifying days of HIV. Since he wasn’t conversant in sign language, the deaf hooker had communicated with him by pointing and gesturing and making nonsensical noises. When she wanted to get paid, she pointed to his wallet and grunted. She observed as he counted off the bills, and when he didn’t give her enough Baht, she grunted with more emphasis. He’d felt entitled to a discount.

“Sure,” was all he could come up with, and the man on the ladder pointed toward the front of the skeletal house and he heard the man say, “start cutting those boards. And make sure you wear the safety goggles.” Appreciative that the man on the ladder was concerned for his well-being, he came into the front yard and there was a single board lying across two sawhorses, other boards piled nearby, one by sixes if he had to guess, the safety goggles hanging from a protruding shoulder of one of the sawhorses. After affixing the goggles he found the hand-held circular saw and began cutting, one board after the other, slicing easily through them and a pile of sawdust growing steadily like an ambitious anthill beneath where he cut.

A while later and the man had descended from the ladder, and he was trying unsuccessfully to shout over the zinging metallic whine of the circular saw. From the man’s expression, he appeared upset. He took his finger off the saw trigger to hear what the man might have to say.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’d think that would be fairly obvious. By the way, I’m getting paid for this, right? It’s not that I mind lending a hand, but I did have other plans.”

“I mean, what the fuck are you doing to this wood? This is all the wood we have. We’re on a schedule.”

“I’m cutting the boards in a herringbone pattern. For never having used one of these things,” looking slightly maniacal or overzealous with the safety goggles still on, he hefted the circular saw aloft and shook it for emphasis, the man staring at the Singha advertisement on his t-shirt, coming to a realization. “For never having been trained and thrown to the wolves, this is precise work if I say so myself.”

Ass Ventriloquism

STEVE BIERSDORF

On a walking/bike path through suburbia, eavesdropping on a couple twenty feet in front of him. They seemed unaware of him behind them, and he measured their walking cadence, matching it perfectly so as not to gain any ground and not to lose any, stay with earshot but not encroach, hanging back in their fuzzy periphery.

“It was Cinco de Mayo, so they were the Cerveceros instead of the Brewers, on their uniforms, in honor of the day, I suppose,” the woman was saying, alternately watching her feet take one step after the other, a mechanical process that might seem to her like she was detached from. Right foot and left foot trading places in the lead, and glancing at her male companion to check his reaction to anything she might say. They were confidantes and between the two of them there were suppositions aplenty.

“They have to appeal to their Hispanic fan base I suppose,” said he, as if she needed a mansplanation, or was angling for his usual pithy summation.

He would do that, eavesdrop, unrepentantly. If people were speaking loudly enough in his presence they were inviting him to listen, and they were intentionally loud to attract an audience so he was only obliging them. And anyway, they had nothing to worry about if they were being unintentionally loud and invidious. Most of what he overheard didn’t hold his attention for long. 

“Harley-Davidson was doing some kind of promotion, so just before the start of the game the Racing Sausages raced Harleys along the outfield warning track, and when I say race, I don’t think they broke thirty. Naturally the Chorizo won that race, and then they held the regular sausage race during the game, surprise, the Chorizo wins again. Seriously, would anyone have cared if the Hot Dog or the Italian won a race, or the Bratwurst? Would the Hispanics, Hispanic people, would they really have been offended…”

“…given a mierda…”

“…if the Chorizo didn’t win both races? Isn’t Cerveceros enough of a tribute?”

“How many Hispanics go to their games, realistically?”

“Exactly.”

He watched their feet as they spoke, feet taking them confidently and with determination to wherever they were going. She was wearing white running shoes with pink trim, upturned at the nose of them, the pink sole extended up over the front like a tongue trying to taste something on the upper lip of her shoes. His running shoes were glittery cloth, splayed to near bursting at the sides, as if he had wide feet, ever widening, as if the inevitable weight gain was causing his feet of clay to splay out to toed flapjacks, the breadth of his feet threatening to defeat his shoes. The outsoles were more worn as though he walked on the outer edges of his feet, as if he customarily walked on hot coals.

He watched their asses when they would speak, as if when they said anything they were really talking out of their asses within their shorts and lip-synching. His ass appeared flat and muscle-less beneath the long, baggy shorts, an ass pounded flat from sitting, her ass like two pumpkins beneath gym teacher shorts, shorts from years ago she could confound by still fitting into them, if gruntingly, shimmying, holding her breath, sucking in her gut and lamenting the inevitable spread of her hips. 

Drive Time

STEVE BIERSDORF

Orange construction barrels bordering either side of the freeway in tidy rows, equidistantly spaced, an orderly battalion waiting patiently for construction to break out. A woman I know, her husband works for the highway department and he moves them around. He never goes back for more, wherever more are. He moves them from one place to another. With the same spirit of decorum as calling shit ‘plant nutrition,’ orange construction barrels are known as ‘traffic safety drums.’ Sometimes they block off a lane with traffic safety drums when there’s no construction.

Last summer I changed my route to work three times to circumvent roads I normally take in varying states of disassembly. Sunbaked dudes in white hard hats and reflective vests of a florescent color somewhere between green and yellow, with their walkie-talkies holding a pole with STOP on one side and SLOW on the other. When they turn the sign to SLOW sometimes they think I’m going too fast and make frantic downward arm gestures for me to slow down. Everyone knows fines are double in a work zone, so the way I see it, it’s my risk to take. If there was anyone in these work zones I’d appreciate their concern.

On my commute the radio is on, sports talk when my other options are drive-time personalities or conservative talk radio. Apparently someone making $10 million or $15 million a year can be underpaid. They talk about how unfair it is that collegiate athletes aren’t paid, collegiate athletes on scholarship as a disadvantaged social class. I think little about these things the right-wing pundits rail on because I have my life to tend to and these things seem far removed from my reality. Distractions more than injustices. Things to get good and angry about that have little to do with me or that I have no control over.            

Man Tits En Bronze

STEVE BIERSDORF

This is the statue coronation speech I wanted to use, wrote and considered giving, but decided against in the end. There’s a good chance they’d have taken it the wrong way. It’s lovely that they do these things for me, and if I’d given this speech, well, they might not have appreciated the humor and I might’ve come across as ungrateful.

That’s why they love me. I wasn’t a great player and that’s my shtick, lovable loser, the self-deprecating quips, and I’ve been doing the radio play-by-play for thirty-plus years. That’s why they’ve made this hideous bronze statue that looks nothing like me. The other statues in front of the stadium are of great players, home run hitters, ace pitchers, heroes for what they did on the field, and so I’m different that way. I made my bones off the field, that’s why my statue will be the only one in front of the stadium not wearing a baseball uniform but a crewneck sweater and knit slacks depicted in bronze.

My name appears on the base of the statue and that’s the only way you’d know it was me because it’s a shitty likeness, a big, shitty-likeness statue of the team’s self-deprecating radio announcer who played briefly in this city, and not even for this team but for another franchise that used to play here until it relocated to a larger metropolitan area. And because I was on the Tonight Show and had a recurring role on a short-lived prime-time sitcom with a laugh track:

“Thank you, thanks (here I turn to my right and ponder the statue for a few seconds). First and foremost, I’d like to say that if you think I posed for this statue, you’d be mistaken. Does anyone know who did? Whoever he is, he needs to lay off the estrogen pills. Kidding, seriously, if I’m not mistaken this likeness was created from a surprise picture taken of me fresh from the men’s room. I’d just taken care of my business and my hands were still wet so I had ‘em in my pockets in case someone insisted on shaking hands with me, which happens often. People see me, they want to meet me and shake my hand, so this explains the pocket billiards.

“Yeah, so I’m just out of the men’s room and someone insists on taking my picture. I have to say it’s always a little intrusive, but especially fresh from the men’s room. This also explains the shit-eating, please-get-away-from-me grin, which in bronze makes me look like I don’t take very good care of my teeth. In fact, looking at this statue, I look like I might have lived in medieval times and some think I’m old enough. I’d suggest for future bronze statues with closed mouths only, otherwise shit-eating grin lends itself to a literal interpretation.

(Again I turn to the statue and ponder it)

“I’m glad I didn’t forget to zip up.

(More pondering)

“What struck me when I first saw this statue are the man tits.

(Here I’d expect mostly a silent, taken-aback reaction where a few people would laugh insanely, possibly some current players they’ve ‘invited’ to the ceremony. There’s a chance their laughter would be infectious, though I couldn’t be sure, and it’s largely because of this uncertainty that I scrapped this speech.)

“I can see it now. People approaching the stadium from the outer edge of the parking lot and they see me from afar, there by the stadium they’ll see my statue and they’ll know it’s me because of the man tits, which are prominent enough to see from that far away, and possibly from space. On a statue that size, those are some ample man tits. I’m really stacked. Fortunately for me, I’m a happily married man. Maybe some little boy a generation or two removed from now will look up at this father and ask, ‘daddy, who’s the guy with no hands and man tits?’

“‘Son, I do believe that was the first handicapped hermaphrodite to play in the major leagues.’

“At my age, man tits are inevitable. How many men over seventy have tight pecs? In fairness to the artist, the man tits are at least pushed up like I’m wearing a sports bra. So I appreciate that, firm man tits are preferable to unrestrained, droopy ones. I can’t help but think, generations from now, as being referred to as the man tits guy, ‘daddy, who’s the man tits guy again? What did he do?’

“And honestly, folks, I didn’t do very much. I have the best job in the world, the best seats in the house. Thank you for the tribute.”

Trixie

STEVE BIERSDORF

Trixie’s Mani Pedis is a reality show with local sway, Trixie being the star, her nail salon here in the ‘burb with the rest of us plain folk. Everyone around here loves the show, proud as we all are of the local affiliation. I keep expecting to recognize one of her clients, women exclusively, they sit in a chair and Trixie does the manicure or the pedicure while they kvetch. About traffic, weather, bills, their health, their significant others, kids, jobs, the price of things, celebrities, politics, religion, fabric, food, air travel, fashion, hygiene. Sometimes the cameras follow her clients back to their cushy lives and they have beautiful homes, drive nice cars, have good jobs or they don’t work because they can not to, but there’s still plenty to repine about. Like perfection is still a reasonable expectation.

Trixie is an artist. Her nails are exotic, playful, colorful blends, sometimes with little logos or glittery or with French tips or tips of distinct colors sprinkled with diamond dust, a Trixie invention. When Trixie’s cuticles are dry, she brushes them with polish she keeps in the center console of her jeep.

Trixie tries to get her clients to hold their hands still so she can work her magic. The women need to lay their hands flat on a portable table so she can apply the gel polish. Keeping their hands still is problematic for her clients, they’re fidgety and distracted, which upsets and frustrates Trixie. To the point where it’s really fucking with her humanity. 

Cell phones are another problem. Trixie’s on a tight schedule, but the women take calls or stop to respond to texts and Trixie gets behind and has to rush. Sometimes the women are short with her. I wonder if the show’s producers tell the clients to be intentionally difficult, create a little tension, makes for more interesting viewing. Her clients must watch the show, especially if they’re on. They must see the mockumentary-style kvetching Trixie does with the camera. And yet they persist. 

Sometimes after they leave Trixie holds her osteoarthritic left hand. Sometimes her hand hurts so much she goes into a janitor’s closet and cries. She turns away from the camera. I can see the heaving of her shoulders and when she’s done, when it’s time to compose herself, she dabs beneath her eyes with a tissue to wipe away eyeliner trickles or smears. On one episode she goes to a hand specialist. The hand specialist prescribes a hand cream and unrestrictive bandage. Trixie doesn’t try the hand cream because it’s a free sample and otherwise expensive, and she’s concerned that if she uses it she’ll become dependent on it and her insurance doesn’t cover the scrip. She has private insurance. Her annual deductible is $16,000, so she pays out of pocket for everything, visits, prescriptions, consultations, treatment. If the manufacturers of this cream were on top of their game, they’d give her a free supply to promote their product, unless they’re concerned it might be ineffective in front of several million viewers.

Abruptly, Trixie decides to move on, though maybe not abrupt to anyone paying attention. The show’s a hit, and with her name recognition Trixie wants to franchise her nails business. Because of her painfully arthritic left hand she can’t do it anymore. There are legal repercussions. They play out on her show, interesting in a conflict-of-interest kind of way. The Trixie’s Mani Pedis executive producer calls Trixie into her office and tells her she can’t do this. She won’t be able to use the name of the show or the logo. Trixie listens, crossing her legs, nodding pensively, cucumber cool. The Trixie’s Mani Pedis executive producer smiles tensely before laying out her case, expecting defiance. When the meeting ends and there’s been no outward resistance, the executive producer is pleased, walking around her desk and extends her hand and arm straight out and they shake hands.

Later in the same episode Trixie meets with an attorney, a referral from one of her well-connected clients. The attorney is an older paisano, mid-sixties with slammed-back hair, hyperactively thin. He seems shell-shocked to be meeting her, at being on a reality show. He has a manila folder on his desk. He asks questions as he flips through a document. He sits back in his creaky leather chair and turns devil’s advocate, grinning confrontationally. Is she sure she’s got the stomach for this? It could get ugly. She’s famous now, she’s a reality TV star. Why mess with success? He has big glasses that catch the backlighting and the glare obscures his eyes, giving him a zany look, zany or devilish. He ignores her answers and meanders off topic. He tells Trixie he’d have retired if it weren’t for his fucking kids and their fucking student loans. He pushes a button on the phone on his desk and asks for two bottled waters. A pear-shaped woman shows up a moment later and hurriedly sets the bottled waters down on his desk and leaves, careful to keep her back to the camera, terrified of it.

Okay, so here’s what I think, he says. The TV show, production company, studio, whatever, they’re full of shit. It’s your name, your business. It was an established business before they came along. Did the TV show enhance your business? Sure. So what? They can go after some of what you make selling the franchises, licensing your methods and any proprietary products and whatever. If they do we’ll go viral, make them out to be a greedy entertainment conglomerate bullying a small business entrepreneur and woman to boot. You’re a sympathetic figure. You’re a person people feel like they know. People like you, not the production company. They’ll be sensitive to public opinion, mostly because their advertisers are.

Trixie smiles gratefully. The attorney holds up his hands with a cocky grin and his big gleaming glasses.

The Trixie’s Mani Pedis producers meet with their attorneys. Their attorneys look young to be established attorneys. They look like actors playing attorneys. The TV show’s attorneys banter back and forth like the producers aren’t there and conclude that the TV show might get a percentage of Trixie’s franchise profits, but it isn’t likely the TV show can prevent her from moving ahead with her plans. There’s no relevant language in her contract. The possibility of Trixie franchising her business was never anticipated, much less safeguarded against. Filing injunctions or bringing an action could be interpreted as restraint of trade. Trixie could counter-sue and have a compelling argument.

The executive producer glares at them. Isn’t that their job? Isn’t that what they’re paid for? To anticipate every contingency? Having iron-clad contracts to prevent this sort of thing from happening? Shouldn’t they have had broader language that would have precluded Trixie from doing this? Isn’t that what attorneys are for? To anticipate bad things happening? 

The show’s attorneys arrange a meet with Trixie’s attorney. The show’s three kid attorneys on one side of a conference table with a big window with a cityscape view behind them, Trixie’s attorney on the other, choosing a seat near the entrance. The two flanking attorneys have opened laptops in front of them, Trixie’s attorney has nothing, no briefcase or satchel or attaché, not even a notepad. He crosses his legs, liver-spotted hands resting calmly in his lap. After exchanging pleasantries they get right to it.

Your client will have to share her profits from franchising her business, that’s a given, says the kid attorney in the middle. The TV show will be her silent partner, siphoning off re-investable profits while she’s trying to get the expansion off the ground. Without the show, her brand will depreciate. There won’t be any syndication of the reruns. The show would rather keep going. Ratings are strong. The show has a following. They’re willing to revisit Trixie’s compensation. The smart move is for her to renegotiate rather than move ahead with her expansion plans. No one can argue Trixie’s Mani Pedis hasn’t enhanced her brand. That’s an easy case to make. Franchising wouldn’t be possible without the show.

Trixie’s attorney listens with his confrontational grin and big glasses that catch the backlighting and corresponding glare where his eyes would be, zany-looking as all get out. Fuck off, he says, grinning expansively. Trixie’s quitting. Three more episodes and her contract is up and she’s under no obligation to continue. He stands, smoothing his trousers, buttoning the top button of his suit coat and departing. The kid attorneys sit in silence for a half-minute before they go to commercial.

On the last show Trixie’s having lunch with her boyfriend, then drinks with a friend/client, there’s a bon voyage celebration at her store, balloons and champagne and cake. At the end, out in the parking lot with a sunset beyond trees and shadowy bungalows in the working-class neighborhood where her store is, Trixie takes off the thumb bandage, carefully, and throws it in a dumpster, turning to beam at the camera a last time.

Rackheads

STEVE BIERSDORF

Hunting licenses are down again, despite the DNR’s insistence that the whitetail population is as robust as ever. They release data to the local newspapers and media outlets, and there are articles to spur the harvest. Whitetail deer have been migrating to the suburbs to avoid the harvest and traffic accidents are on the upswing.

Mr. Dixon is back for two more snowmobiles. He writes a check, the idea that he would need to finance the purchase is comedic, never mention financing options to him unless zero percent is available. When Mr. Dixon arrives for his new Ski-Doos, the owner is there for the occasion and the GM, they make sure he feels sufficiently fawned over, Mr. Dixon magnanimous enough to spare them a few moments. It’s a sign of respect if Mr. Dixon takes the time to jaw with you on the showroom floor, in full view of everyone. The GM gives Mr. Dixon our very best price and checks on the prep of his machines. We make very little money when Mr. Dixon buys something. When he grinds us on price, we appreciate this firsthand opportunity to negotiate with a fabulously wealthy, highly successful businessman and cheap fuck that he is, he’ll take his business elsewhere if we don’t meet his price. Where he spends his money and who he does business with is an exclusive club. We always comment on how “down to earth” or “cool” he is when he blows through and graces us with his unprofitable business. Mr. Dixon isn’t a person who likes to “fiddle-fuck around,” like the GM says, and he appreciates that we respect how valuable his time is, because he is the sun and we are blades of grass.       

Deer farms stocked with genetically enhanced male deer, bucks with freakish racks of antlers, if you hunt deer this is the ultimate prestige that you stuff and mount for posterity. Used to be if you shot an 8-point buck people were impressed. If you buy a genetically-enhanced deer you can set it loose somewhere, shoot it and have yourself a 16- or 20-pointer, mount that shit over your fireplace and invite your homies over to ooh and ah. The better the deer farm’s product the more points per rack, farms with the pricier deer buying semen, ova and embryos from Mr. Dixon who sits atop this food chain, the unrivaled king of deer eugenics. Mr. Dixon uses only the best bloodlines of whitetail doe or buck, including superstars in whitetail breeder lore like Rumpelstiltskin (23-pointer), Superseed (28-pointer), Goldeneye, 747, Deerstar, legends all, residents of Mr. Dixon’s own deer farm. The big money is in their semen.

The success of his eugenics business spawned a subsidiary manufacturing mechanical deer, robot decoys. His sole customer is the DNR and he is their sole supplier. The DNR places these robot decoys in the woods along country trunk highways to northern woods hunting destinations, to coax hunters driving by into taking a shot, which is a big fine. As the company slogan asks, who can resist a trophy buck? The deer are available in different poses and are lifelike (although only their ears and tails move), encased in actual deer hides with a dry preservative, tanning to make the hide last longer is an extra $200.

Knowing Mr. Dixon, having him as a customer gives us a glimpse from the penthouse. It’s as close as we’ll get, unless we win the lottery, which we don’t expect to but don’t entirely rule out. Even if we don’t make any money on him, and I mean any, not a red cent or copper one. He’s royalty here in whitetail country, where it’s all about the rack.