You ever get the feeling someone is talking about you?
I’m right at the end of
the movie when the speaker starts popping and I hear these
words. Once a week, right when I’m finally starting to relax
around this spiderweb of power cords and surge protectors,
I’m reminded I can never trust the wiring around here. Never
move somewhere just because you like seeing a river out your
window.
I remember when a nearby lightning
strike fried something inside the picture tube and put a freaky
green line through the middle of the screen. That green line
was there for about six months, mercifully getting smaller
and smaller and almost fading away until it was just a glowing
yellow smear in the corner of the TV, like I’d smashed a lightning
bug on the glass and never cleaned it up. I don’t know if this
room is some sort of electric Bermuda Triangle, but I can’t
risk any more equipment and that’s why I move fast whenever
I hear a speaker snap, crackle or pop.
I’m ready to pull the plug when
suddenly I’m hearing two voices from the speaker that aren’t
part of the movie. I know this because the movie was at the
end, right at the part where everyone gets what they deserve,
and all I should be hearing is gunfire, one-liners and big,
dumb music. However, this whispered conversation is something
you’d hear in the middle of a flick, maybe the beginning, when
you’re not sure what the characters are really up to and you’re
supposed to be all suspicious of everyone.
The sad thing is he has no
idea I hate his guts.
I sit down by the speaker, actually
thinking about getting a glass to put between the television
and my ear to hear the voices better.
Remember his last story? Even
the goddamn dog was rolling his eyes.
I adjust my legs to get comfortable,
hoping the reception lasts a while. I know “hearing voices” is
supposed to make you nervous, but it happens in this building
sometimes. A couple times, a year back, when my surround-sound
speakers were still working, I picked up some random banter
between truckers. It’s the bad wiring that does it. Sometimes,
you’ll suddenly get three more people in the middle of your
phone call, and you’ll find yourself answering a question about
the first time you stuck a finger up someone’s ass instead
of answering your grandpa’s question about car insurance.
But those fractured conversations
lasted a minute at the most, and they were nowhere near as
clear as this. This is like I’m holding the tomato cans between
two people, but their string’s coming out both my ears.
If that bastard had any idea
what people say…
Right then, the speaker crackles
and the voices are buried under static. I lean in closer and
bang my head on the glass. There’s a final POP! and
I yank the cord from the wall. I sit with my back to the TV,
feeling the electricity tickle my neck as both me and the equipment
power down. I reel in the cord, wrapping it around my knuckles,
working to bend the prongs straight.
I hold my breath when I plug
it back in. Thank Christ it still works. I stare at the green
stain in the corner of the picture. It’s back, but it doesn’t
bother me. I’d watch TV if the whole screen was green. Nothing
happens in the corners of a movie anyway. A green sunset in
this western? The gunfighters won’t even notice.
00:00:03:57 - love without
a life jacket
When I say there’s a long list
of things about her that used to drive me nuts, I’m not talking
about a sheet of paper, or even a stack of paper with both
sides filled plus illustrations in the margin and a flip-cartoon
in the corner to re-enact the top ten, I’m talking about the
kind of list where you could stand at the top of the stairs
and you let the pages drop and they bounce down the steps and
unroll out the door and down the hill and across the street
and over the cars and stray dogs are crashing through it like
a finish line. That’s how long my list is. And at the top of
that list? That would have to be the way she used to walk into
the bathroom to use the phone. It drove me crazy. Well, crazy
enough to ruin my day. Luckily, that’s one thing I don’t have
to worry about anymore. This new girl I got? She stares right
at me when she’s on the phone. She let’s me listen to the even
her most embarrassing conversations. She’s never turning the
volume down on the receiver in case the caller says something
I shouldn’t hear. She’s never pressing the phone hard against
her head, so afraid a secret would sneak out while she was
talking. So hard her ear looks like a ripe tomato slice when
she finally snaps the phone shut.
This new girl? She’s got nothing
to hide. She’s in the bathroom right now, and I trust her so
much I’m not even turning down the volume to listen to her
piss.
Then the toilet flushes once,
twice, and chokes on a third attempt. She walks back into the
room, then slides down to her hip in a quick motion that would
make any gunfighter shake in his boots. My smile slips when
I see her phone drop into her pocket.
“I thought you drowned,” I tell
her.
00:00:28:09 - bugs can’t use
tools
It’s too cold to have a fly on
the window, on either side of the glass. There’s no leaves
on trees. The birds are long gone. The morning before, I had
to dig my car out from under the wake of a snowplow with red
fingers. There’s nothing alive outside without fur, nothing
alive out there smaller than a rat. But there it is.
One of those big, blue-eyed garbage
flies, crawling around the edges of the glass like it was summer
out there, like there isn’t a kid kicking the head off a snowman
two houses down. In a daze, I pull the black tape off the window,
taking some of the paint with it, knowing it’s going to take
another hour to seal that window back up. I yank it up with
a grunt, cold air freezing the snot in my nose. It’s the first
time I’ve ever seen a fly trying to get in instead of out.
What the hell do you feed it?
Usually, you’re trying to stop a fly from drinking off the
edge of your pop can instead of keeping it alive. So I just
stand back and let it ricochet off the walls like a drunk hoping
it’ll find a stray cornflake or damp toenail to munch on. I
watch it circle the room about six more times, increasingly
confused by its behavior, cruising frantic figure-eights about
a foot from the ceiling. Finally, I grab a stuffed animal still
upside down in a corner from three ex-girlfriend’s ago and
chase it toward the bathroom. If I’m going to have a pet fly
it should be near the bowl, right? I mean, I’m a pretty clean
dude, but I figure if there’s anything around this place a
fly can eat, it’s going to be in there. Hell, cats and dogs
get water bowls, don’t they? I should write the name “Spike” on
the side of my toilet.
00:00:42:31 - am I gonna
eat what exactly?
The next day, this new girl comes
over to watch a movie. Halfway through, the speakers start
popping again, and while I’m screwing with the wires in the
back of the box, she sighs and runs to the bathroom. And suddenly,
I’m listening to her piss even though she’s 100 feet and a
closed door away. It’s splashing so loud I flinch and think
she squatted down over my head.
That’s when I remember the fly.
Same old shit, you know?
Why do I come over here?
The voice is fading, so I crawl
over to my bookbag and pull out my headphones. I quickly try
plugging the headphones directly into the TV and I get zapped
with static instead. Like a fool I sit there, with the headphones
unplugged and dangling, still listening for the voices. The
headphones are new. They’re the kind that go into your ears
instead of over them, sometimes too deep, the kind that you
might lose in your head if you scratch too hard. Like I do.
And just like they always told me would happen when people
are talking shit, my ears start burning.
I have to go watch the
rest of this horrible movie, if he ever gets it to work…
I’m so excited about hearing
someone’s voice through unplugged headphones that, at first,
I don’t care what she’s saying. It’s not like the truckers
I heard before. This time I can only hear one side of the conversation.
Her voice is a non-stop sigh, like the endless hiss of a tire
valve.
Maybe I’ll pretend I’m
sick.
Then the toilet flushes, and
it’s as loud as a hurricane. I grab the sides of the TV in
case I start spinning around a drain and get sucked down. I’m
so wired about this discovery that I’m smiling like a maniac
when she comes out, struggling to keep my new eavesdropping
skills to myself. By the time we finish the western, I realize
it’s not just the headphones. The fly was in there with her.
…the first time I’ve
ever seen a fly trying to get in instead of out…
This new power is coming from
the fly.
00:01:34:07 - spiders are
not our friends
After she’s gone home, I’m thinking
I should call NASA or whatever government office deals with
the physical manifestation of metaphors. Or, at the very least,
spy on about ten more people I suspect are talking shit about
me. I’m already making a mental list when I go back into the
bathroom.
The fly is dying. At least, it’s
moving slower. My eyes follow its sluggish path until it vanishes
into a crack in the porcelain box behind the toilet. I panic
and shove the clock radio and empty box of tissues onto the
floor and take off the lid, shaking my head in disbelief as
I look inside. Impossible.
The fly is caught in a spiderweb,
flailing like a drunk trying to navigate a beaded curtains
at a party. Spiders in the toilets? Flies in the snow? What’s
next?
Suddenly, I know what to do.
I tie it outside the bathroom window, and, just as I hoped,
the cold air seems to revive it. It’s moving fast again, but
it never gets back to full speed. It’s not going to last much
longer. I check the clock radio on the bathroom floor to try
and estimate how much time the fly has left. The display is
flashing a green “12:00 a.m.” since I never figured out how
to set it. Now, I’ve got two problems. A time limit, I’m not
good with math, and I can’t get everyone into my bathroom to
spy on them.
Staring at the word “Spike” on
the bowl, I decide I should take my fly for a walk.
Once, my grandpa told me he used
to stick flies to his fingers with honey when he was a boy.
“We were bored as hell back then,” he
said, “Now, don’t think I’m reminiscing so I can tell you how
it built character or any noble shit like that ‘cause the only
thing playing with flies does is make you wish you had toys
instead.”
He told me his flies didn’t fly
too long because he always smacked them just a little bit too
hard to slow them down, sort of like my grandma.
Well, mine won’t last
long either. I have to move faster than I am.
I look around the bathroom, find
some dental floss the last girl left behind.
I have no trouble grabbing it
out of the air, and it’s still sluggish enough to tie a leash
around its body without risking a swat to stun it, but the
floss is too thick for a knot. I look around and around and
around, and finally my eyes stop on the answer stuck to the
side of my toilet, underlining my pet fly’s name. I crouch
down to get closer.
All this time I thought it was
a crack in the porcelain but it’s a long black hair stuck to
the moisture on the side of the bowl. I peel it loose and hold
it up to the window. Black. One of hers. I half-expect it to
twitch like a severed spider’s leg. And even though it’s just
a hair, even though I haven’t cleaned the bathroom since she
left, I’m still amazed to find a piece of her still here. I’d
be less surprised to find a five-foot-five layer of skin she’d
shed, rustling and drying in a corner.
I tie the leash quick. Too easily.
I decide it’s because I had one of my hands buried in her hair
for so many years that, when they’re not connected to her head
anymore, they still know my fingers and sometimes I can still
get them to do what I want.
The fly grabs her hair and starts
stroking it with two front legs. Does that damn thing have
thumbs? Impossible. If bugs had tiny thumbs, they would have
already invented the tiny wheel.
I tie it to my finger where the
skin is still white from the ring she gave me. Then I put on
headphones plugged into nothing, a power cord dangling down
and tucked into a belt-loop. I start my day.
00:01:09:13 - bringing
a fly to a fist fight
I’m out the door looking at my
watch, and I see it’s time for free doughnuts. The gas station
makes new ones and throws out the old ones at exactly 8:00
every day. They’re always real cool about giving me those old
ones, but you got to time it just right. The fly tugs on its
leash, circling my ring finger, then resigning to wrap itself
around the steering wheel. I worry about a sudden turn breaking
the leash, so I pull over and carefully unwind the hair without
breaking it, thinking about the old westerns my grandpa used
to make us watch, and the way the cowboys made their horse
stay put by dropping a leather strap across a bush or twig
without even tying it up or anything.
Inside the gas station, the girl
behind the counter smiles, and I grab one of each kind of doughnut
before the kid can slide them into the trash. He sighs and
waits for me to drop them into my bag, then he quickly clears
the case. I take longer than usual because I’m trying to keep
one hand behind my back. I don’t know what would be worse,
someone thinking that flies follow me around, or someone seeing
that I keep one a tiny little leash.
When she’s counting the cigarettes
behind her, I tie the fly to a bag of peanuts near the cash
register, not really tying a knot, just winding the hair around
the peanuts one time, then I run out to pump my gas.
Inside, I see the girl at the
counter talking to the next guy in line and he throws a thumb
my way. I quickly pull the headphones from inside my shirt
and pop them in to see if this guy is talking shit. Amazingly,
he isn’t. But she is.
He just tries to act
like he had no idea they were free even though he was in
here last night…
My head down, I run in and grab
my fly. For the first time since I started going there, she
talks to me.
“You paying for those peanuts,
asshole?”
The girl behind the counter smiles
and waves as I leave.
He doesn’t have three
cents?
What the hell? I scratch my ears
hard to see if the voice goes away. If I could scratch my ears
with my foot, I would. I don’t understand. The headphones are
around my wrist. The fly isn’t anywhere near her. And neither
am I.
I go to the diner. Are there
girls behind every counter? Do they grow them back there, just
out of sight? Are there ten more girls behind the counters
you can’t see yet only because they haven’t grown high enough
for their heads to clear the register?
A girl with the pencil shaped
like a tiny pool cue. I stare at it, hypnotized, every time
she takes my order. I asked her about it once, but she ignored
me. Tonight is no different.
“Waitress, there is a fly in
my soup…”
She looks down at the fly tugging
against its leash on my finger.
“…and I think the little bastard
just lassoed me.”
She wanders away, a miraculous
combination of expressions on her face that I didn’t think
were possible.
I stop in the restroom on the
way out. In the urinal, just above the line-of-fire, there’s
a sticker that declares: “You hold in your hand the power to
stop a rape!”
For a second I think the sign
refers to the fly crawling across my knuckles, and I’m suddenly
ashamed. Is it so wrong to be “the fly whisperer?”
When I’m zipping up, one headphone
falls from my left ear and plops into the urinal. I sigh, pull
the rest of the wires out of my shirt and toss them all in.
I stop at the garage to get air
for my tires. It’s the only place in town where you don’t have
to pay fifty cents to do this. The guy who owns the garage
gives me a knowing smile and a wave. I wave back and accidentally
bounce my fly off my forehead. He’s cool. Last time I was there
he agreed with me that paying for air is “freaking ridiculous.”
I get out, tie the fly to the
compressor, snake the hose, hit the button.
How fucking low do you
have to be to steal air…c’mon.
Was that a girl’s voice? I thought
it was all guys in that garage. A girl from one of my earlier
stops? What kind of reception does this fly get, anyway?
I heard of someone stealing
dirt once, only that was from a construction site and that
shit ain’t cheap. But air? Nope. Never heard of anyone stealing
air.
The compressor stops rumbling.
My fly strains on its leash, then curls back to land on a coil
of hose.
I’ve heard of people
stealing water once, but that was during the war.
I throw the hose. 29 pounds will
have to do.
Honestly, who the hell
steals air…
I can’t contain my rage any longer.
I yell at the shadows in the garage.
“Who the hell sells air?!”
Two mechanics slides out from
under a cars and into the sunlight. They stand up and walk
toward me, wiping grease from their fists, blowing sweat off
their noses, staring at me like I’m nuts.
00:01:45:22 - fly factory
revealed
Do you ever get the
feeling someone is talking shit about you?
I stop at the video store to
steal some DVD inserts. I do this because they really are good
reading. Sure, sometimes you get a paragraph of summary or
some decent production notes or an interview, but that’s not
what I’m looking for. I steal the inserts because I like to
read the chapter titles. It’s like a whole movie in ten seconds.
The chapter titles tell you all you need to know.
I grab a random one to prove
my point. Okay, not so random:
Sharks With Guns
1. Love on a lifeboat
2. Sharks can’t use tools
3. Are you gonna eat that?
4. Dolphins are not our friends!
5. Bringing a shark to a gun fight
6. Shark factory revealed!
7. Duel to the deaf
8. Quitting
the Coast Guard
See? What are you missing from
the story after you read that? It’s all there. The crisis,
the love interest, the surprise ending. Didn’t someone once
say there are really only three stories you can tell? A stranger
comes to town, and a man goes on a journey? Man sort of talks
to fly?
I study the box to the movie
and snicker, as there’s no way that shark could hold that chainsaw,
much less a gun. They don’t have any thumbs.
Now, that would be a
scary movie. If they had thumbs, they could make a phone
call. It wouldn’t have to bite anyone. Just show one shark
whip out a phone and every asshole in the audience would
start screaming their head off.
Could happen. I’ve seen more
far-fetched things than that in a movie. One time, in the bathtub,
my ex-girlfriend checked her phone underwater so I couldn’t
see who called her. I figured she’d ruined it, but it turned
out the phone worked fine when I blew the bubbles off of it
later that night to check that number she was hiding.
I slip some DVD booklets into
my sleeves then go up to the counter and grab one of those
free internet CDs. She is up there, and I see a strange
light flickering in her eyes, and I realize the girl is watching
something under the register with the volume turned down. When
did she sneak a TV in here?
Suddenly I have to know what
movie she’s watching. Is she watching something she’s not supposed
to? Why else would she have the volume down like that?
On the way out, I finally see
what it is. A security monitor. She was watching me steal those
inserts the entire time. I can see myself in the corner of
her screen, standing by the door, hunched and alone, looking
over her shoulder, guilty as hell, green as the sunset.
Sitting in the car with my hands
on the steering wheel my heart jumps. The fly is dangling on
the hair like a suicide. I turn on the air-conditioning, open
all the vents, and hold it in front of the cold air. It starts
to climb back up its leash like a spider. It’s moving slow,
but it’s still alive. I realize that every time I hide the
fly, it starts to die.
Sounds like a children’s
rhyme, doesn’t it?
I have to get home. Or get it
to the bathroom. Or a restroom. You ever notice how cold the
water in a toilet is? Even on the hottest day? Even if you
know what’s been in there, it’s got to be tempting to swim
in it. For a bug, I mean.
I drive fast, checking the size
of the gas stations, trying to gauge whether they’re big enough
for a public toilet. I glance down at the fly and see it slump
on the string and swing from the hair like a pendulum. I slam
on the brakes and make a hard right into the smallest gas station
I’ve ever seen.
I ask the third-grader behind
the counter if they have a restroom. He says no and turns back
to counting the candy bars. In desperation, I hold up my hand
with the limp fly swinging from my finger.
“Dude, my fly needs to drink
from a toilet fast or it’s going to die.”
The kid smiles over a huge piece
of gum and stares at me for 13…14…15 seconds. Then he points
to the door behind the beer. “Hurry up.”
Unfuckingbelievable. Guess he’s
seen stranger things than this.
Inside the bathroom, I’m assaulted
by a stench worse than any outhouse. I walk over to the toilet
and cautiously lift the lid. The water is clear as a mountain
spring. I carefully lower my hand until the fly’s head just
breaks the surface. I think about the part of the buddy-cop
movie right around the second act where the drunk partner has
to get revived by the wise-cracking partner, who shoves his
face in the toilet. I’m much more gentle than that.
And it works. The fly starts
to activate, cranking its legs over its head to clean itself
off. I smile. It looks like it’s playing a tiny air guitar.
No, it would need thumbs to do that.
Back in the car, I wonder how
many people would believe I’m actually worried about this fly.
I try to imagine myself in the waiting room at the veterinarian.
I’d be the only person that a kid with a sick hermit crab could
feel good laughing at. I watch it perched on the radio knob,
cleaning its wings.
I’ve spent more time worrying
about this fly than I worried about my ex-girlfriend. Even
when she had to get her appendix out. I mess with my stereo.
Equalizer. That’s a
good word.
Suddenly I understand something.
It just seems like I care about the fly more than her,
but if you were to line them up against the wall and put a
little pencil mark over their heads, you’d find that actually
my feelings about the fly and her are exactly the same. And
it’s not that I think more of a fly. It’s just that, the more
I find out about human beings, and the more I listen to their
voices when they don’t think anyone can hear, the less I think
of them.
00:01:58:19 - ears are
burning
One time I told her I was going
to invent a phone that, instead of ringing, released a swarm
of bees instead. I said it would guarantee she would answer
the thing every time I needed her to. She didn’t understand
what the hell I was talking about. I think she thought I was
talking about some special ringtone. I said, “okay, listen,
how about just three small bees, just enough of a scare to
buzz around your ears and make you swat the air in a panic
every single time I called you?” She had no answer to that.
I walk out of the bathroom, and
I see she was reading that same magazine again, the one with
the prescription label with my ex-girlfriend’s name on it.
I even told her how she used to snort painkillers off those
very same pages. You’d think that alone would make her not
want to read it. I used to try to get a letter published in
one of her magazines so she’d stumble across my name.
Wait, did I say “prescription” earlier?
Because that is exactly what I meant.
The speaker suddenly starts popping
again.
Shit fuck shit. I pull the cords
on everything. I hate the wiring in this house. It eventually
destroys everything. I hear water running in the sink, and
I figure she’s going to be in there awhile. She does that sometimes.
Runs the sink so I can’t hear. Like I’m really listening to
hear her pissing. Suddenly I remember something, and I quickly
crawl to my box of old cassette tapes rotting in the corner.
It’s my worst, last pair of headphones. Huge ratty ones from
the ‘80s that cover your entire friggin’ head. I hesitate to
put them on. My headphones are getting bigger and bigger as
I seem to be sliding further back down the headphone-evolutionary
ladder. Once I’m holding them in my hands and blowing the dust
and insect shells off the foam, I realize they’re older than
I thought.
They’re from the ‘70s, not the ‘80s,
and they’re the only thing left of my mom. One time, she came
up to me and put these over my ears, and I was pouting about
something, so I didn’t say anything, didn’t even look up, but
I didn’t take them off my ears either. And I still can’t remember
the song she wanted me to hear or why she wanted me to hear
it. Maybe there was something funny in the song? Maybe the
lyrics meant something to her? Maybe she thought it was my
favorite band? I can’t remember. I was too busy ignoring her.
And now, I’ll never know what it was because I just sat there,
arms crossed, mad about something stupid I can’t remember,
frowning until the song was over and she finally walked away.
The wind blows the dead fly around
on its string. My ring finger is white from lack of circulation.
I unwrap the leash from my skin, waiting for the blood flow
to return and paint the white knuckle red again. I’m amazed
at how strong her hair was.
The strange thing is, when I
think back to it, I could have sworn I was outside, sitting
with crossed legs and crossed arms under a tree when she walked
up and put these over my ears. The cord couldn’t have reached
that far, could it?
It’s true that the bathroom is
the last place where the remains of a relationship will linger.
Is it all those half-empty bottles and soaps. Or is it just
hairs around the toilet?
00:02:00:07 - end credits
and ironic theme music
The next day I finally take out
the trash. Not a second too late, either. I can see a box of
sweet-and-sour chicken moving down there, and suddenly that
fly ain’t such a miracle anymore because I can see at least
three more green-eyed flies bouncing around in the bag with
their snouts dipping in and out of a month of our scraps. My
grandpa used to say that tiny fish would appear in a mud puddle
if it sits undisturbed long enough. Not true. Those were mosquitoes.
You know how they say the bathroom is the last place your girlfriend
exists? I meant the garbage.
I take out the trash. Then I
keep walking past the dumpster to throw my headphones into
the river before I change my mind.
It’s one of those rivers that
looks good from a distance. Then you’re standing next to it
and you catch a smell of what’s been dumped in there for years.
Wasn’t this the river that caught on fire because of the pollution?
You’d think my toilet would have ignited from all the cigarettes
she flicked in it. Is this the river where that little boy
swore he saw the shark?
The headphones bob along, riding
the brown waves, then something under the water takes a couple
bites and finally pulls them down. There’s a girl standing
next to me when I turn around.
“You know what you looked like
to me just then?” she asks. “You looked like the last scene
of a movie. The part where the sheriff throws away his badge.”
“Hold out your hand,” I tell
her, not expecting her to. When she uncurls her fingers for
me, I expect something to fly away.
“What’s your name?”
“Michelle. But I go by ‘Chelle, ‘shell.’”
“Of course you do. I’ve seen
you before, haven’t I?”
“I live in your building.”
“Have you ever had problems with
your wiring?”
“No,” she laughs. “Have you?”
“All the time.”
“You should get a surge protector.
Seriously. I have three of them.”
I stare for seven…eight…nine
seconds. Then I write my phone number in her hand. Just for
laughs I draw a fly underneath it.
“Sorry, I like drawing flies.”
“I know. They’re easy to make.
Like a smiley face. You know why everyone draws smiley faces?
Because there are less than five lines you need before you
can recognize it.”
“I believe it.”
I hear the buzzing sound again,
and I know what it is before she even pulls it out. She smiles
an apology and presses the phone deep into her face, quickly
walking away before she starts talking.
I walk off in the opposite direction
to give her some privacy. I think of my phone number and the
fly I drew on her skin, and I cup my hand around my ear like
a seashell. Even when she’s miles away, even when her head
and her hand are the only things visible above the waves smacking
my head and filling my nostrils, I still keep my hand over
my ear, and I can still hear every word of her conversation
like she’s swimming right next to me. Until I pull her under.
