Mr. Crankypants Takes a Stroll
I DON'T KNOW why it is, but for the past couple of weeks, when I leave the office to head home, I start getting really cranky. Crankier than usual. Normally I'm a happy-go-lucky sort of a fellow. Live and let live, I always say. But lately, random encounters with strangers, perfectly innocent random encounters, are setting me off. Not that I ever really do anything awful, but I sure do think some terrible things.
I saw the shoes and thought it was an employee at first, until she said: "Excuse me-could you help me? I don't see very well, and I need a 75-watt bulb. Could you get one for me?"
I'd been down there a while at this point, having a hard enough time myself trying to find my own damn bulbs, but I tried to be pleasant.
"I'll see what I can do, ma'am, but it might take a bit. I'm afraid I don't see too well either."
"Oh," she said, "but my eyes are very, very bad."
That was all it took to make something in my head crack a little.
"Okay, lady, fine," I thought, as my hand slid into my bag. "You want to turn this into a contest? I'll give you a fucking contest!"
But I stopped myself, quietly sliding my hand out of the bag again. I found her bulbs, handed them to her, and sent her on her way. She was very grateful. Then I returned to my own fruitless search.
I got home 20 minutes later and started drinking.
The next afternoon on the train home, a three-year-old boy was in the aisle next to me, screaming, jumping up and down, kicking at the pole and kicking at his father, who was seated next to me.
The boy was just playing, but again, I was in no mood for the free-range enthusiasm his father seemed to be ignoring
"Whoops!" the boy said after kicking wildly at something I couldn't see. "I broke it."
The father said nothing.
"Plastic breaks," the boy announced. "Plastic can break." Then he thought a moment. "Wood can break, too."
"Yeah," I thought, "So can bones. Bones can break." Again I kept my mouth shut.
Then his father said, "Little feet can break too-and bones can break."
"Oh," I thought, "Well, that takes care of that." I paid him no further mind. It was apparent he had troubles enough of his own. But ignoring him didn't help my mood at all.
I got off the train a few minutes later and stopped into one of the greengrocers along the way home to pick up more beer.
The early autumn light that afternoon was particularly piercing, and the bags were heavy. I squinted against the sun and ached for a cigarette. My mood was slipping further with each step.
Up ahead of me, the kindergarten or preschool or whatever the fuck it was had just let out. I usually try to time my trips home to avoid just this situation, but I'd blown it today, and dozens of kids, mothers and nannies were parading in a loud, shouting mass up the hill toward me.
I had no choice as they drew closer. With two armloads of groceries, I had to step off the curb and let them pass, glowering at them as they did. No one seemed to notice.
Once only the stragglers were left, I resumed my trip home.
As one of the monstrous little slowpokes passed me, he pointed and shouted, "Look!-it's a scarecrow!"
"SHUT UP!" I barked. And he did.
I got home, and kept drinking.
Apart from those brief moments during the trip home, I wasn't noticing that anything else was happening. Not until the following day, anyway. I had an interview to conduct-it was the first time I'd interviewed anyone in a long, long time.
Interviews always make me mildly nervous, but this one, I was pretty sure, was going to be okay. I was prepared, I'd done my research, and the guy I was talking to was a pro. And, as expected, the interview went off without a hitch. We talked for 45 minutes; it was simple as pie.
Then I listened to the tape.
It took about three stunned, disbelieving minutes of stopping, starting, fast forwarding and rewinding before I came to accept the fact that the tape was unusable.
I'd replaced the batteries the day before. I'd tested the tape. I'd tested the device that hooked the tape recorder into my phone. Everything was in perfect working order. But still, somehow, the tape was a garbled mess.
Instead of weeping (which was my first inclination) I scrambled to type up what I could remember as quickly as possible, what scraps of dialogue I could at least approximate. I was doomed. At least so far as the story went. Absolutely doomed.
And that was it. The Walking Home Rage from the past few days mellowed and spread into a simple, tired, unromantic despair.
That night Morgan mentioned that she'd been hearing it creep into my voice over the past couple weeks. It was something I hadn't noticed myself. Thing was, it was a stupid, banal despair. There was nothing to honestly justify it-but there it was, like a cousin who shows up on the doorstep unexpectedly one day.
That night I watched Patton, for some reason thinking that might help lift me out of it.
When I was in junior high, I entered a forensics competition. I think that was it. All I know was that I had to make a speech-as did a bunch of other students-in front of a roomful of teachers. We could do anything we wanted, so I chose that opening speech from Patton. I already had the damn thing memorized, so why not?
So there I stood behind the podium, a gawky big-headed kid in thick glasses, reciting, "When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face?" to a bunch of teachers.
Whatever the hell it was for, I didn't win. (But I am pleased to report that I was the only kid who'd used Patton for source material.) Twenty-five years later, Patton didn't make me feel any better. It had been a long time since I slipped into something like this-a depression that was, by my account, fairly baseless. Still, by the next day it was simply ridiculous.
There's something about being down that seems to attract bad news. And not just small clumsinesses to further aggravate you, either-though they certainly show up. The next day I was running into tables, hitting my head on sinks and dropping bowls.
More than that, it started attracting things it shouldn't have: the attention of insane people on the street. Phone calls from people I didn't care to hear from. I sat in my office and moped about nothing. I wrote little stories, only to look at them a few hours later and realize that they made no sense. I received angry letters from Germany-but since they were in German, I couldn't tell what they were angry about.
And worst of all, on the way home-always, always, that trip home-I stopped, bought more beer, and was pretty certain it was going to be an incident-free trip, when I saw two figures standing in front of my building.
As I drew within a few feet, I saw that it was my landlord and the handyman.
"We were just up in your apartment," the landlord said. I'd called a couple of times regarding a bad leak in the tub. I knew they were having plumbing problems, and wanted them to know about it before it got worse.
"We checked everything out," the handyman said, "and there's no problem."
"But I was just wiping up the floor again this morning."
That's when they explained, in excruciating detail, over and over again, how it was all my fault.
"Oh." I said.
"And another thing," the landlord said. "I had a chance to look around your apartment while I was up there, and it's looking really shabby."
"Oh," I offered. "Sorry."
I brought the beer upstairs and opened one. Then I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at my shabby walls for a while. It was going to be a hard one to shake, I thought, if shit keeps happening.
Two days later the toilet broke.