This is how the Inspire Elementary admin described the injury to me on the phone: Evie was brought to Children’s Hospital when a bone frag got lodged in her neck.
They weren’t supposed to call it bone, everyone knew, especially protectors of children, and they certainly weren’t supposed to use the colloquial frag.
Oh my God, is she OK?
Fine, fine. Some bleeding. Some tears.
Why were the children out during a storm?
It came on quickly.
You couldn’t have checked the weather?
What good would it have done? The bursts are so unpredictable. . . .
Evie was fine. She’s seven years old and smart and good-natured, a firstborn through and through. She received six stitches and a popsicle, the latter of which she enjoyed a great deal. We set her up in our bed like we do when the kids are sick, let her watch TV the entire afternoon. Being the selfless—or, at least, accommodating—father that I am, I slept in her room last night. She’s still scared of the dark, so there are night-lights aplenty. I tossed and turned as I shielded my eyes from an elephant’s radiant trunk and a chipped quartz cylinder plugged into the socket by the door. I don’t know why I didn’t simply remove the night-lights. I really don’t.
I ’m forty. I have two children, Evie and Jack, seven and four. I work in commercial real estate. I have put on thirty pounds since the pandemic three years ago. Last year, on a whim, I purchased a pack of MonsterBaby cards, which I had collected as a kid. In my car at Target I pulled out a Teething Tyrannosaur, which, according to the internet, is worth fifty dollars. Now, every time I go to Target I buy a few packs. I keep the valuable cards in my glove compartment and throw away the commons. There are worse vices.
My wife, Rebecca, for instance, is glued to her phone. She complains she can have only five hundred tabs open on her web browser at any given time. It’s odd, since she rarely responds to texts and for sure doesn’t answer calls. But there she is, hour after hour, scrolling and watching and clicking. We all have our things.
Everyone knows brick-and-mortar retail is dying. Some days it feels like a slow bloodletting; others it’s as sudden as a suicide vest. Six months ago Jenkins, my boss, assigned me to the Exit-111 Project. The twenty-two-outlet-store conglomerate was an albatross around the necks of my coworkers Vicky and Randal, who were treading water by stalling foreclosure on the once-profitable shopping center. There is no town or city or suburb near it. It’s simply an exit along I-25 in the Front Range of Colorado. Vicky and Randal leaned into the blue-collar-ness of the surrounding demographic, making it a sort of one-stop shop for all things farmer/rancher/white/median-income-less-than-60k: OshKosh B’gosh, Carhartt, and so on. They failed because Walmart does this better, and, of course, the internet does it better than that.
I figured I’d change tack and go upscale: rebrand as Colorado Superior. I had Greg in design provide a rendering of what this horseshoe strip mall could be, with green spaces and altered topography and even a splash pad for summertime fun: a destination where the sweet-spotters (middle-class suburbanites with little discretionary income but plenty of credit) of Fort Collins, Boulder, and Denver would flock. An experience, something closer to entertainment than commerce.
I need a 51 percent occupancy agreement before renovations can commence. I’ve sent out three rounds of proposals, totaling sixty-four. So far, Polo is the only company to sign. Just today I received devastating passes from Nordstrom Rack and Talbots. A lot hinges on H&M, which I’ve promised a corner location. We’ve been back and forth ten times. I’ve gone to Jenkins twice for approval of rent decreases, both of which he granted. H&M—a bridge between affordability and luxury, a visa into the land of appearing hip—is my white whale. Once they’re under contract, I’ll revisit the previous passes. It’s common industry knowledge that 60 percent of those will become where-do-I-signs.
We try not to watch the news around the kids. There’s no need for them to hear about the intensifying storms or the conjecture from talking heads about causes, meaning, or, worse, what comes next. Everyone calls them “pebbles,” which isn’t accurate, neither in size nor in composition, but it gets the job done. You wouldn’t want to be outside when it’s raining pebbles.
That doesn’t mean Rebecca and I don’t do our due diligence when the children aren’t around. We do, hours of it: our scholarly selves read Atlantic articles; our tired selves endlessly watch CNN; our base selves internalize falsehoods from stories shared on social media. The pebbles are comprised of calcium and phosphorus, which create the insoluble salt hydroxyapatite, which lies within an organic-protein matrix, 90 percent of which is collagen: the exact makeup of human bone.
There are countless theories about the origins of the pebble storms. The one that makes the most sense to me is something about melting ice caps and ocean acidification and dying coral reefs. From what I’m able to discern, there’s actual science behind it. Another theory is that NASA failed in seeding the mesosphere with chemicals to alleviate global warming. To me this sounds more like a conspiracy theory. On Facebook millions subscribe to some Christian end-of-times reasoning. I guess there’s a biblical passage about dry bones and torrents of rain.
The once-or-twice-a-week storms have been occurring for six months. They aren’t horrible so long as you’re aware and vigilant. And people are adaptive. Just the other day I saw an advertisement for a Kevlar-coated umbrella. My kids are especially resilient. The only thing they dislike about the storms is having to take recess indoors.
A few months ago there was a series of break-ins in our suburban neighborhood, several of which were recorded by security systems: three robbers in gorilla masks (good ones: tight fitting, with what looks like real hair) steal the things that are normally stolen. In one video a mother walks down the stairs, sees the gorilla robbers, then screams and faints.
My wife was terrified. I reassured her by saying at least they appeared nonviolent. She said that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard.
I installed a security system and can now watch seven rooms of my house through an app on my phone. Sometimes I check it while I’m at work. Often my wife is lying in bed, scrolling through her phone. I try not to judge, I really do. I don’t like that this image makes me think of Rapunzel, trapped in her tower, but it does. I’m not sure who has imprisoned her, or why she’s unable to leave.
Jack, my four-year-old, keeps telling Evie the stitched laceration on her neck looks like a vampire bite. It doesn’t, as there are not two fang puncture marks, but the location of the scar does kind of conjure a neck bite. This morning Evie told him to shut up. We don’t allow that type of talk. Jack cried, and then Evie cried, and when I looked at my wife, she was crying, too. I told everyone to calm down, please, everyone just calm down.
This afternoon I went to a coffee shop called Bean There, Done That. I’ve been at Mount Estes Commercial Real Estate for eleven years and am afforded certain graces. Jenkins knows I’ll work when I say I’m working; he doesn’t need to babysit me.
Bean There, Done That is in a gentrifying section of Denver I wouldn’t visit without the protection of sunlight. The patrons are in their twenties and look tired or like they’re on drugs—or maybe it’s depression I see written across their faces. They type on laptops. I don’t know what they’re working on. School? Screenplays? Video games? I enjoy the atmosphere. The beans have exotic names, and sometimes I like how the coffee tastes.
I sat at the corner bench and opened a few spreadsheets, but really I was just refreshing my email to see if H&M had responded. As I debated emailing to ask for their confirmation on Colorado Superior, I saw a woman sitting on the other side of the room staring at me. I smile-frowned and gazed back at my laptop. Under the guise of a sip from my disgusting citrusy pour-over, I snuck a glance at her. She was probably in her late twenties, artsy or perhaps witchy, with clay-colored hair, nose rings, and an off-the-shoulder sweater. My attention wasn’t drawn so much by her appearance as by her stare. Then I noticed that, underneath the table, her hippie skirt was raised around her knees, which were ajar, exposing her hairy vagina.
I nearly spit out my coffee.
I am only human. Curiosity, natural desires, that kind of thing. It was like she was waiting, because the moment my gaze drifted from my screen, she crossed and recrossed her legs.
I worked from Bean There, Done That for two hours. The woman exposed herself to me nine times.
I ’m a pretty good father. I don’t yell. I tell my children I love them multiple times a day. I cuddle. I play with them.
Evie makes up her own science experiments. This weekend she walked me through a concoction of flour, lotion, baking soda, soap, and glue. It was unclear what we were making. She wanted to bake it, which I told her probably wasn’t such a great idea. She pleaded until I heated the oven to 350. We agreed on ten minutes. When the timer went off, Evie peered through the oven window and said it wasn’t even close to ready. After an hour she deemed her experiment complete. I placed the tray on the stove to cool, and Evie sifted through the white shards with a fork. When I asked her what she’d created, she uncovered a jagged piece the size of a quarter. Look, she said, it’s just like the pebble that almost killed me!
Then on Sunday we decided to take a family trip to Costco. Although we needed toilet paper and dryer sheets and lasagna, I think the real reason we went is that home felt suffocating. On the way there I told Evie several times to stop counting the number of homeless people we passed.
I parked. Rebecca asked if I could’ve chosen a space any farther away. I held Jack’s hand; my wife, Evie’s. The sky to the west was stacked thick with gray thunderheads. We know the pebbles don’t come from cumulonimbus clouds, but the sight of them still brought apprehension.
It took all of five seconds to realize Costco was not the cure for what ailed our family. The store was packed, the shelves ravaged, the energy a sort of seething desperation. I should’ve suggested the zoo or an indoor, and therefore safer, option like the trampoline park. Jack whined about wanting an eight-pack of Avengers figurines. Evie kept ascribing homelessness to the disheveled shoppers. My wife said she was going to home decor and would catch up with us in prepared foods. I fantasized about giving the woman at Bean There, Done That the sort of casual smile that could have been interpreted any which way.
I wonder if her show-and-tell was directed at me—as in me-me, as in a forty-year-old man who stirred some irresistible longing within her. Doubtful. More likely the thrill was in the act, and the audience was of little consequence.
A woman T-boned my cart with hers. I apologized, faultless as I was. Jack repeated that he wanted he wanted he wanted.
I kept thinking about the woman at the coffee shop and how, theoretically, it wasn’t out of the question that she’d singled me out. It could have been some chemical reaction to my pheromones—or my vibe, as Abbey, the twentysomething IT worker at the office, says. Perhaps the woman had wanted me to make a move, which is not my strong suit. I’m passive and polite and scared. I’ve never been unfaithful, nor do I think I ever will be. Yet I could have smiled. Undoubtedly this would have pleased the woman, and I would’ve experienced the pleasurable twinge of harmless subterfuge. In other words: I would have thought about that moment for the remaining forty-or-so years of my life.
This is where my head was when my wife appeared by the cart, her hands full of scented candles. Where’s Evie? she asked.
I want the toys, Jack said.
She was right here, I said.
What do you . . . Where is she?
There is little more terrifying to a parent than the loss of a child. Of course, the loss, in this sense, alludes to the loss, in the bigger sense. Yet it also conjures images of them chained to a bed in a mildewy basement, or running in front of an oncoming semi. The speed at which these thoughts surface makes you wonder just how much brainpower we expend keeping the unspeakable at bay.
We rose on tiptoes. We craned. We took a few hurried steps in one direction before heading in the opposite. Rebecca said, Jesus fucking Christ.
I told her everything was fine.
Find her, she said.
Jack intuited something was amiss because he finally quit asking for the toys. My wife called out Evie’s name. Close to a jog, I repeated, Excuse me, a hundred times as I bulldozed my way to the eastern side of the warehouse-size store. I wondered if I should alert security. I imagined a man enticing Evie into his van with a promise of unlimited science experiments. I mentally reprimanded my wife for disappearing to the candle aisle; it was impossible to keep track of two kids in this orgy of affordable consumerism. By now Evie was probably being sex-trafficked or hung from meat hooks. I could no longer avoid a scene, yet I tried, calling to my daughter at an acceptable volume. People stared anyway.
As I rounded a corner at a sprint, all at once my life was OK again. Evie stood unmolested, looking at a bin of umbrellas. She turned and smiled and opened one with a winking emoji on it.
It’s one of those umbrellas that protects you from the pebbles, she said.
We bought the umbrella and the eight-pack of Avengers. My wife wouldn’t speak to me in the checkout line.
We exited the store to a crack of thunder. Jack screamed. Evie opened her umbrella. I told them it was nothing to worry about, but then the familiar tinkling of bone frags sounded. A few people scurried to their cars. The sound became louder. We were underneath the awning, but still I felt a surge of panic, which intensified when something splatted a few feet in front of us. I blinked several times. Sticking halfway out of a pothole was what appeared to be a hunk of beef that had fallen from the sky. The crater of water reddened. And then there were more splats. And more. And more.
This morning was Monday. Jenkins called me into his office first thing. He wanted an update on H&M. I told him things were looking promising.
I don’t want promising, Jenkins said.
Good. They’re looking really good.
Is really good better than promising?
It’s all but a done deal, I said.
I let Randal go this morning, Jenkins said.
What? Why?
Because he couldn’t get the job done.
The Exit-111 Project or in a general sense?
Yes and yes, Jenkins responded.
It’s a tough market.
Retail’s dead.
Aren’t we in that line of—
I’m in talks with Hobby Lobby. They’re willing to take the property if we perform the demo of the existing stores.
You told them to pound sand, right? You’d be getting killed on that deal.
At this point a tax write-off is better than the bloodbath I’m neck-deep in.
So, what, exactly, are you saying?
You have until the end of the week.
To get H&M on board?
No. To green-light the entire Exit-111 Project.
Are you kidding me?
Fifty-one percent under contract, yes.
Or you give it to someone else?
Or you’re out of a job. Kaput.
On the way home I stopped at Target and purchased fifty packs of MonsterBaby cards, which came to more than $200. In my car I tuned the radio to NPR. Experts said early analysis confirmed what everyone already knew: the “cutlets,” as people had been referring to them, are human flesh.
When I was a kid, I had to bust my ass to save up for a pack of MonsterBaby cards. A week’s allowance didn’t get me there. One time my mother said she’d give me seventy-five cents to clean her bathroom. (It never struck me as odd that the master bathroom was hers, my father relegated to the basement bathroom to defecate, shave, and shower.) I set out with determination and a can of Comet. The toilet was intellectually gross to clean but in reality not that bad. It’s the seafoam-green whirlpool tub that sticks in my memory. I remember squinting at it, unsure what the thousands of miniature black specks cemented to its surface were. I scrubbed and scrubbed. My mom came in and laughed. She said, Yup, Mama Bear figured it was time to come out of hibernation. I wasn’t sure what this meant, but I soon realized the specks were hairs. This repulsed me, but I kept cleaning, stopping only when one of these leg or armpit or pubic hairs burrowed into my finger. I cried. My mom removed it with tweezers. She peered at the tub and said it was good but not perfect, worth fifty cents.
My point is the cards had more value. I memorized their powers and special abilities. I organized them in binders. Every day at recess my friends and I would compare cards and lust after superior collections. I was always hesitant to trade. Even at the age of ten I knew I had the propensity to get bullied into submission.
Now I look only for the uncommon and the rare. Even then, I toss those in the garbage 95 percent of the time. Out of my fifty packs today I had six hits: two Gargantuans, a golden Suckling Centipede, a rainbow Immobile Mobile Artifact, a holographic Radiant Nuclear Nelly, and an alternative-art Gregory Gassapuses. I put them in protective sleeves and locked them in my glove compartment, disappointed I hadn’t pulled my chase card: the rare, alternative-art Teething Tyrannosaur, worth upwards of $600. I thought about going back into Target, but my rational side won out; I threw the pack wrappers and all but those six cards into a trash can outside the store. When I returned to my car, NPR journalists were talking about a functioning kidney having fallen during a storm in São Paulo.
Increasingly often I feel like Rebecca is hiding from me what she’s looking at on her phone. After all, the tap-and-flick is a distinct motion. Tonight I came into the bedroom, and there it was: the tap to get to the home screen, followed by the flick upward to close the app or web page. I tilted my head.
What’s up? she said.
What are you looking at?
Furniture.
I nodded and stared, trying to imagine what she could possibly be perusing. Pornography? Reddit forums discussing what to do if you’ve fallen out of love with your husband? Was she swiping left and right on GrumbleSmush as she planned extramaritals?
My wife looked at me. What?
It just seemed like you . . .
What?
Closed whatever you were looking at when I came in the room.
Are you serious?
I mean, the click and swipe . . .
What is it you think I’m looking at?
I don’t know. Never mind.
Seriously.
Nothing. It’s just that you’re always on that thing.
Then why don’t you sign the kids up for activities. You take over setting up playdates. Do you want to be added to the neighborhood group chat about the Gorilla Gang? Because I’m more than happy to—
I’m sorry. It’s nothing. Never mind.
Today, Wednesday, I received a morsel of good news: Sunglass Hut was on board. I entered the information into my spreadsheets, added their name to the mock-up Greg had created. Sure, Sunglass Hut had agreed to rent the smallest location, a fifteen-by-thirty sliver, but at least there was something besides Polo.
I emailed my contact at H&M. I told her I was excited to put pen to paper. I added something about embarking on a decades-long partnership. I hit send.
I ’ve stopped by Bean There, Done That every day since the encounter. Twice it was a grab-and-go situation, as I’d already lied to my wife about my reason for leaving the house. The other three times I did some work there, going hard with my fourth and fifth waves of proposals.
I haven’t told Rebecca about the very real possibility I will be fired. If I am, we could live as-is for exactly two months. After that? I don’t know. Cashing out my 401(k) would give us an additional half year. I’ve thought about dusting off the old résumé. It’s been eleven years since I’ve applied for a job. Like then, I have no discernable talents now aside from rudimentary skills in Excel. My area of expertise is in a field that no longer exists. I saw Costco was hiring floor supervisors, which, according to the advertisement, starts at 49K. It’s not nothing.
Part of me is relieved the woman hasn’t been back. I have envisioned our next interaction so many times I do not necessarily trust myself not to give her a sly grin, which, in my fantasy, is all it takes to get the ball rolling. A few flirty smiles, maybe a wink. A stretch, followed by my eyes darting in the direction of the restroom, followed by me entering said restroom, the door left unlocked, my pants unzipped. Then passion fulfilled. And remorse like I never knew possible.
I do not do well with guilt or shame. This five-minute dalliance would ruin me.
The latest theory on social media is extraterrestrials. Science has failed. The religious angle makes no sense if heaven is the resting place of souls, not bodies. The ozone conspiracy makes no sense because what government would blast gallbladders into the mesosphere? So, aliens. After all, we know so little about black holes and space’s infinite tendrils of nothingness. Some people think the storms are the aftermath of abductions, missing-person posters all the proof you need. What to do after you’ve probed a body until your alien heart—or maybe hearts, what do we know?—is content? Grind it up and sprinkle it back down to earth.
I have my doubts. If aliens are smart enough to travel here, couldn’t they devise a better system for disposing of human remains?
Last night I watched the security feed of my son’s room. I was in the basement bathroom, a courtesy I have taken to giving my wife, just as my father did. (It’s also because there are only so many times I can be reprimanded for performing a bodily function.) Jack played with his Avenger figurines. This made me smile. He calls them his “guys,” which also makes me smile. He thrashed them about, punching and kicking and flying, his lips pursed as he made action sounds.
Jack stopped playing and crawled underneath his bed. He scooted backward, his little hands around a metal MonsterBaby tin I had given him. He removed the lid and dipped in his hand. He held onto Hulk and sprinkled something over the green figurine. I reverse-pinched my screen. I zoomed and zoomed until I was practically inside of that tin. I could see the unmistakable shape of bone frags.
Today I finally got through to H&M. It turns out my contact has been canned. A woman told me the entire Mountain West brick-and-mortar division has been dissolved.
Why? I asked.
Who the hell’s going to drive twenty miles through raining flesh when you can buy the same thing from your home?
A lot of people, I said, especially when it’s a destination. That’s the genius behind Colorado Superior. It’s more of an entertainment experience than a shopping trip.
I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.
I stretched the truth and told her my contact had agreed on everything; she must’ve been terminated the same day she’d signed the contract. Wasn’t there somebody I could talk to? Maybe the head of another outlet-retail team? I told her I was doing this for their company, a once-in-a-decade chance.
Finally she gave me the contact information for the person in charge of Southern California’s outlets. She made me promise to deny she’d given out his info. I thanked her profusely.
I crafted the perfect email and hit send, followed with a voicemail in which I used terms like untapped potential and gold mine and time being of the essence. I told him I could hold the rate for another twenty-four hours. I gave him my cell, inviting him to call at any hour.
Now I can’t sleep. I’ve turned my phone ringer to its highest volume. There is no solace in eating peanut butter straight from the jar. I watch CNN on mute with closed-captioning. One of the guests says he is fed up with the euphemisms. He says they aren’t “pebbles” and they aren’t “organic matter.” They are fragmented bones and human flesh and vital organs. He says people need to wake up to what is really going on. The host asks what, specifically, that is. The guest says, I have no idea, but it’s literally the worst thing to ever happen to our world.
I shaved, showered, and dressed while it was still dark. I kissed the three members of my family on their foreheads as they slept. I snuck out like a thief in the night.
Parked in front of Bean There, Done That, I waited until the lights flickered on. When I reached for the handle of my car, a shadow rounded the corner. My esophagus spasmed. It was her. A similar skirt, an oversize cardigan, that unmistakable air of whimsy or mental illness.
I took my briefcase into the coffee shop and told myself to be cool. The last thing this woman wanted was some salivating creep behind her in line. While I reached for my mug, my pinkie trembled. The exhibitionist took her coffee and went to the same seat she’d occupied the other day. I took what had become my customary seat and opened my computer. I wouldn’t glance at the woman, at least not for a good while. I doubted she recognized me. I would work. I would save the Exit-111 Project. I would save my job.
My resolve lasted until I connected to the Wi-Fi. It is, after all, natural to look away from your screen while you sip your coffee. There she was; there it was. She must’ve felt emboldened by the empty shop. Gone were the pretenses of accidental slips. I stared at what looked like a foliage-dense, topographical map of Mars. Shock. Excitement. Horror. My eyes inched upward. The woman stared back. I wasn’t sure if it was a dare or the gaze of a Chinese mantis readying herself for postcopulation cannibalization.
You know what I did?
I smiled. I did. I smiled as if I saw this kind of thing on the regular, no biggie, appreciated and understood and was down to move forward with the proposition.
I rose from my seat. My body thrummed. What the hell was I doing? I didn’t look back, because that would have been gauche. I walked to the rear of the shop and slipped inside the unisex bathroom. According to my fantasy I needed to leave the door unlocked. I needed to lean against the sink with my arms crossed. I needed to grin slightly when she slipped inside, conveying an invitation I knew she couldn’t resist.
I thought all the vulgar thoughts that accompany the reallocation of blood throughout the body. And then I thought about my children. And then I thought about my wife and our one attempt at public sex: We’d been in our early twenties, dating close to a year, excited about decorating apartments and starting careers and adult get-togethers where we didn’t drink to blackout. We were flying to Louisiana for a wedding. She whispered that she wanted to join the Mile High Club and, without so much as a sideways glance to gauge my reaction, walked to the back of the plane. I’d never been more excited. As I slipped into the cramped lavatory, she greeted me with hungry kisses. I lifted her to the sink. Fumbled hands and pulled garments and feet kicking the wall and wetness—so much wetness, like what-the-hell-is-going-on levels of wetness. We turned to see her butt had been pressing the faucet for the past minute, causing a flood. We were both soaked, swearing and laughing hysterically. Neither of us desired to continue, only to make it back to our seats undetected.
I pushed in the button lock at Bean There, Done That. I didn’t really want to cheat, or at least my true self didn’t. I urinated—which was difficult in my semiaroused state—and thought about people becoming more like themselves as they age, or people simply getting older, beaten down by a million ingested carcinogens and sleepless hours and disappointments.
To my surprise there never was a knock on the door, not even a jiggle of the handle.
When I walked back to my seat, the woman was gone. My laptop, too, had vanished, as well as my briefcase.
I decided to drive to Exit 111. Years ago there was a lot of talk about manifesting your reality, which sounded like BS to me then, but that morning? It was worth a shot. It took every bit of forty-five minutes to get there. Nobody from Denver was making that drive, “destination” or not.
Stop.
I needed to quit with the negativity. If I was going to will Colorado Superior into existence, I needed to exude positive vibes. Which is exactly what I’d do: sit in that parking lot meditating and willing and dreaming and visioning it into being. My new contact at H&M would call. Jenkins would back off once my white whale was under contract. The commission would fill our savings with enough for eighteen months of unemployment, which, due to my skills and stick-to-itiveness, would no longer be a concern.
On the way there I stopped at Target to get supplies for my manifesting: a case of Beach Plum LaCroix, a premade strawberry salad, and a bag of Dot’s pretzels. I couldn’t help swinging by the hobby-card aisle. This store must’ve received an overnight restock, because the aisle was jammed full of MonsterBaby single packs, booster boxes, and premium collections. I reached to the back of one row of packs and pulled forward, scraping them all into my red basket. I did this again to the next row. One more for good measure. My bill was more than $1,000, which I paid for on credit.
Exit 111 was truly in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a gas station at the off-ramp. The strip mall had phlegmy beige wooden siding (unclear if it was a dirty white or a sun-bleached oak). The windows of what could—would!—be Polo had been smashed and boarded up. The parking lot had volcanic, trench-like potholes. The curbs crumbled like exhausted seaside cliffs. Where I planned for the splash pad to be was a demolished hot tub, left over from Randal’s last-ditch effort to host a Jacuzzi pop-up sale.
I set my phone in its holder, closed my eyes, and projected Greg’s illustration: so many happy couples, so many families, so many teens. Laughter and glistening water. Bubble tea. Selfies. Green grass. The parking lot filled with SUVs. Every hand carrying multiple recycled-paper shopping bags, for this would be an upscale, environmentally conscious location. Polo. Sunglass Hut. H&M. From there? The world would be my oyster. What do we have here? A Kenneth Cole? Nice. Lookee yonder. Madewell, North Face, and Anthropologie. Wow. And what’s that across the way? Coach? Are you kidding me? Does this destination’s bounty know no end?
Next to what had most recently been Vape Depot, a homeless person took his morning leak. I was glad Evie wasn’t there to add him to her tally.
At eleven I phoned my new contact at H&M. He sent me straight to voicemail. I told him I was sitting at the location of what will be Colorado Superior, and I could FaceTime him at this very moment to give him a first-person walkabout. I told him I couldn’t wait to do business. I reminded him we were up against it, time-wise.
At 12:30 I ate the strawberry salad. It wasn’t great. I was pretty sure the feta had turned. I felt only a little bad throwing the plastic container out the car window. Trash blew around the parking lot like so many tumbleweeds, and nobody would notice a grain of sand tossed onto a beach.
I grew tired of listening to eighties and nineties soft hits, so I switched to the AM-radio news. The broadcaster said the oil refinery in Commerce City was being converted into a burn pit. Until sanitation specialists could manage to safely collect all the organic matter, people should shovel it into plastic bags—The CDC recommends we double-bag everything, folks—before driving it to the incinerator.
I ignored three calls from Jenkins. I sent two more emails to my guy at H&M. I opened fifty MonsterBaby packs. I didn’t even place the hits in protective sleeves, but rather tossed them to the floor of the passenger side. I was after my chase card: the secret, rare, alternative-art Teething Tyrannosaur.
The fact that you can see the mountains to the west is the selling point to the entire Colorado Superior dream. They are literally right there. The baby molars of the Front Range, with the adult wisdom teeth of the snow-covered fourteeners behind. I often ignore their majesty, but not that mindful and manifesting afternoon. By 1:30, however, it was impossible to ignore the black mushroom clouds spilling over their peaks.
I opened the security-camera feed on my app. In our bedroom my wife lay scrolling on her phone. I felt a pang of fear at her possible infidelity before remembering my shameful bathroom trip, then assuring myself I was a good husband because I’d locked the door. It was an invasion of privacy, a bit of evil-witch-entrapping-Rapunzel, but I exercised the zoom function and closed in on my wife’s phone. I had to know what consumed her. I expected gang bangs or GrumbleSmush matches or instructions on how to get away with murdering your loser husband. It wasn’t. It was a web page of area rugs. She scrolled and scrolled. A second later a text appeared. Here it was, her betrayal, her lover asking if he (or she—what the hell did I know about her anymore?) could come over. I recognized the contact photo: her friend Sarah. My wife wrote, Sure, Evie would love to play with Bella this afternoon!!! Then she closed the text app, did the same with the area-rug page. She opened a new page and typed, latest organic material news into the search. She scrolled and read and cried.
Fifty more packs: no secret, rare, alternative-art Teething Tyrannosaur. One more call to the H&M guy. A text from Jenkins asking where the hell I was, time was about up, he wanted to get the ball rolling with Costco.
The pebbles started falling at three, their soft tinkling sounding on the roof of my car as I wiped pretzel residue on my pants.
I received an alert from Inspire Elementary. My first thought was another bone-frag incident with one of my children. My hand shook as the message loaded. It was from the principal. Due to the forecast of heavy organic-matter showers, they would be under lockdown for the remainder of the day. She wrote, Don’t worry! Our kiddos are well-versed in this protocol from both our active-shooter drills and live scenarios!!!
The first cutlet fell at 3:45. I used my windshield wiper to scrape off what looked like a chicken breast.
My phone rang at 4:00. I didn’t have the number as a contact. The area code was Laguna Beach. It had to be the H&M guy. I struggled through a painfully carbonated swallow of LaCroix and answered with all the confidence and pep in the world. He asked if I was the solicitor from Colorado. I assured him I was.
Stop calling me, he said. It’s harassment.
Only if you consider making you beaucoup bucks harassment.
Silence.
Hello?
Who gave you my number?
I lied and said we were friends on LinkedIn.
His tone softened. He even apologized. He asked, What firm did you say you were with again?
Mount Estes Commercial Real Estate.
Where’s that? North? Bay Area?
Denver.
Gross.
We’re actually experiencing a real renaissance. Some people are calling Denver “Silicon Valley Lite.”
Are you guys hiring?
What?
I mean, fuck it, right? I could do Wyoming.
Colorado.
Right.
No, I think you’re misunderstanding the nature of my call—
Shoot me a message on LinkedIn. I’ll forward my résumé. I could be on a Teams interview in ten minutes.
Wait, aren’t you with H&M outlet retail?
Broseph, retail on the coast is dead. Ain’t nobody getting on the I-5 to buy a four-dollar sweatshirt when they can do that shit from home.
But Colorado Superior?
Right, right, I’d love to work for Colorado Superior. Sounds great. Let’s rock.
My phone chimed with an email from electronic-condolences.com. I opened it and saw an e-card with a GIF of a cat falling from a tree. You’ll no doubt land on your feet, it said. Signed, Jenkins.
I looked out of my blood-soaked windshield. I was jobless. I’d nearly cheated. My children were going to die sooner rather than later. I had three MonsterBaby packs left to open.
A thud hammered the roof of my car. I screamed. I was about to inspect the damage when I saw what looked like a meteorite streak through the sky. It struck the pavement, bouncing before rolling at a leisurely pace. A head. It was a human head. An eye was detached and trailed along by the optic nerve.
Another splat. A shoulder joint, I guessed.
A foot, a hindquarter, a waving arm.
I closed my eyes and covered my ears. I thought about ocean acidification. I thought about heaven being too full, no vacancy, back to earth you go. I thought about aliens discarding molested bodies. I thought of my wife hiding underneath the covers, the glow of her phone her only sense of protection. I thought about being homeless. I thought of my children being bludgeoned to death as they rode their bikes. I thought about being so pathetic that the flashing of a hairy vagina was all it took for me to nearly throw my life away. I thought about pebbles and cutlets. What the hell would they call this? Debris? Fertilizer? A Small Inconvenience That Is of No Danger and Should Be Ignored?
Then I saw my first complete. A middle-aged white guy. Boom and plop. The tongue protruding from his caved-in skull looked comical, like he was a fun dad being silly with his children as he tucked them into bed.
I don’t remember why I quit collecting MonsterBaby cards. I have memories of them being the most important thing in my life, then memories where they ceased to exist. Maybe it was my parents’ divorce, or puberty. I guess that’s normal enough. Things matter until they don’t. Life always gives us more shit to occupy our minds.
I ripped the foil on the last three packs. Nothing. No chase card.
I must have seen images of it a thousand times online: My Holy Grail. The zenith of my obsession, a one-in-five-thousand chance. The secret, rare, alternative-art Teething Tyrannosaur. Its oil-on-canvas hyperrealist artwork differed from the usual cutesy anime. It was done in a dark and foreboding style, giving real Caravaggio’s Judith Beheading Holofernes vibes. The infant tyrannosaur, in an askew diaper, stood inside a destroyed nursery. His muscled back heaved. There were scratch marks along the painted walls, and the bottom half of a bookshelf was devoid of books, which were torn and strewn around the room. His face suggested he’d internalized the gravity of his actions, and his tears had changed from rage to remorse.
It was close to midnight when I arrived home. The interstate was closed; traffic stretched bumper-to-bumper. My wife had assured me everyone was safe. I parked in front of my house because I didn’t want to contaminate the garage with the blood and intestines coating my car.
I stared at my darkened home, which I forced myself to think of as a house, because soon it would be the bank’s. The siding was beat to hell. The bay window was shattered. Carcasses littered the yard.
Beams of light darted in the family room. My first thought was extraterrestrials inspecting the damage of their latest assault, but that dissipated when I realized the Gorilla Gang was robbing the place.
Here it was. The moment for me to finally take action. Storm my castle. Protect my family. Yell and scream, scare them away. I would be a hero.
No, no, I wouldn’t be loud upon my entrance, but rather the stealthiest ninja, not a single creaked floorboard, a goddamn shadow with home-field advantage, snapping the neck of one, strangling another—you shall not inflict terror!—rising from behind the couch (still paying it off on our CB2 credit card) like some creature breaching the surface of a swamp and taking a shard of glass to the windpipe of the ringleader.
No, I thought, I should call the police. I should phone my wife and tell her to lie still, don’t move. I should reason with the Gorilla Gang: I know times are tough, believe you me. Just today somebody stole my laptop, I spent my last credit on MonsterBaby packs, and my boss fired me via email. But, shit, guys, are we not dealing with enough?
I was crying in my car when the Gorilla Gang walked out my front door, two of them carrying my TV, the third a duffel bag brimming with things we’d wanted at some particular moment. The gang was careful to step over the bloody legs and heads and lungs. The two gorillas carrying the TV passed by without acknowledging my presence. The final ape, the one carrying the bag, glanced down at me sitting there in my car strewn with pack wrappers, hand still clutching a phone showing the security stream from the house. An intelligent eye flashed amid the lifelike plastic and fur. The gorilla nodded. I nodded in return. And that was that.
The real genius of the secret, rare, alternative-art Teething Tyrannosaur card is the nursery door cracked open in the upper-left corner of the illustration. There’s a hint of a hand on the handle, a suggestion of a presence entering. I have no idea who is on the other side of that door. It could be any number of threats, real or perceived. Or maybe it’s his dad returning home from a job he no longer has, having vowed not to take his fears and frustrations and failures out on his family, but rather to lean into family, into love, for has he not already manifested all he would ever want and need?
In an interview, when asked who was on the other side of the door, Katsuhiro Ito, the artist behind this masterpiece, responded, What does it matter? Whatever you think is there is there.
