The Egg Said Nothing Read online

  I set the glass on the counter and pulled the wrapping off one of the wine bottles. A cork. I thought for sure there would be a screw top on such cheap shit. I went to the junk drawer and took out a hammer. Tilting the neck of the bottle against the counter’s edge, I gave it a tap, sending glass flying across the countertop.

  After pouring a drink, I swirled the liquid around to let the aroma escape. Then I threw back the wine like a shot and smashed the glass on the floor, celebrating my first drink like a Jewish wedding. I wiped the back of my hand on my pants and picked up the bottle. The living room seemed inviting, so I sat down on the couch and stared at the empty television, looking at the reflection of my apartment behind me in the blank screen.

  I took a pull of the wine, not caring to avoid the jagged glass. My eyelids drooped. My body was warm, and, for a moment, I didn’t feel alone.

  ~Chapter 5~

  In which the narrator has a real conversation with the waitress.

  Prior to the egg’s appearance, I did almost nothing. I would sneak out at night to loot fountains to pay for bills and sustenance. Other than that, I mostly slept a lot and stayed home. Late night television was a good friend of mine. I didn’t talk to anyone. My phone was almost exclusively ornamental, and my computer was only ever turned on to play a few halfhearted games of Minesweeper.

  As odd as it all seemed, my life was going somewhere. I felt a desire for human contact for the first time in as long as I could remember. And I couldn’t help but think that the sudden responsibility I felt for the egg, combined with all the violence I had been experiencing, meant something. It was not only that my life was going somewhere; it was that something seemed to dictate its direction.

  Deciding to go along for the ride, I left my apartment. I walked down the street and caught a movie. It was an old one, some cheesy sci-fi flick about radioactive weasels. I had no real desire to see it, but it would kill the requisite amount of time. As I left the theatre, I felt tightness in my chest. I was nervous. The heaviness in my feet only made the problem worse. I wanted more than anything to see the waitress again. But I was scared.

  If I acted improperly, everything would be lost. All the happiness I fantasized about would be history, or rather, the opposite of history. If I did things right, I had a real shot at it.

  Of course, that wasn’t going to be easy. I had no evidence at all that the waitress dug me in any sense of the term. I didn’t even know if she was interested in being a casual acquaintance, let alone a life partner. All I really knew was that she was beautiful, and I wanted her to spend her time with me. It didn’t seem so much to ask.

  By the time I made it to Pete’s, my breath was difficult to manage. I was sweating profusely. Looking down to ascertain the condition of my clothes, I realized I was wearing the same ones from yesterday. It wasn’t too bad, I decided. I pushed my way through the door and sat down in the booth next to the one I ordinarily occupied. I looked around the place, keeping my head up for once, and saw a heavyset, middle-aged waitress coming toward me. Suddenly, I became very confused.

  She fished a notepad out of her apron. “What’ll it be?” she asked with a slight Texas accent.

  “Uh…” I stammered, looking beyond the waitress for a sign of the girl.

  “What’s the matter?” She crossed her arms dramatically. Her pen waved like a fan between her fingers as she gave me an exasperated look.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I croaked.

  “Looking for who?” She turned around and ran her eyes over the entirety of the establishment. “Ain’t more than a handful of people here.”

  “Well, waiting for someone, actually,” I replied. Then I exhaled, realizing that the universe was not going to change just because I wanted it to. “The other waitress. The one who usually works at night.”

  “She quit. Can I get you something while you wait?” she asked, a little more patiently. “Could be a long time.”

  “Coffee, I guess.”

  “Coming right up,” she said, disappearing into the kitchen. I suddenly felt tired. This whole thing was going to be a waste. The effort, it seemed, was just too much.

  I laid my head down on the table and closed my eyes. The tabletop was cool against my cheek, and it felt good to just stop moving. It seemed all I had been doing was moving from place to place, from emotion to emotion. I had experienced ranges of feeling I didn’t even know I had.

  A thin plastic box with some weight to it fell onto the tabletop. I looked up to see the waitress—my waitress—standing there, covered insulated paper cup in her hand. She set the cup down in front of me. “It’s just a little cold, I think.”

  I looked into her eyes, not believing what I was seeing. “That lady I just talked to said you quit.”

  She swung down into the seat across from me. “I did,” she said nonchalantly.

  I was starting to feel as though I was losing touch with everything real. “So, what are you doing here?”

  “I thought you’d be back tonight. Seemed a pretty sure thing.” She tugged at a strand of hair in front of her face and twirled it in her fingers, eyeing it carefully. She let it fall and blew it away from her mouth.

  “I…” I didn’t know what to say. To admit is to go out on a limb, and limbs get sort of thin the farther away you get from the trunk.

  “Right. You come for the pie. And the coffee,” she said sarcastically. “But you never touch any of it.”

  I felt my face get warm. “Ah, yeah. That’s about it.”

  “Can I be honest with you?” she asked, sounding serious.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I think you like me. I think I can tell. I brought you this pie and coffee because you don’t like what’s here.” She paused, gesturing with her hands toward her offerings. “And you look really familiar. Like I used to know you or something. What’s your name?”

  It seemed like such a basic question, one we should be past by now. But I was also dying to know hers. To have a word in my vocabulary to indicate what she was.

  “Manny,” I said.

  “I’m Ashley.” She extended her hand across the table. “Want some pie?”

  “Yes,” I said, meaning it more than I’ve ever meant anything in my life. “What kind?”

  “You’ve never cared before. I don’t see why it should matter now.” She unrolled a napkin, sending the utensils inside scattering across the table. She picked up a fork and stabbed at the pie. Pulling up a forkful of pinkish purple goo, she brought it to her mouth.

  “Point taken.” I reached across the table and picked up the spoon lying in front of her. I jabbed into the hole she had made and pulled a glob into my own mouth. The sweetness and the tartness attacked my tongue like breath must hit the lungs of someone saved from drowning. I lifted the paper cup and took a sip. “This is hot chocolate.”

  “Yeah, I hate coffee,” Ashley said.

  “Me, too,” I admitted.

  “You do? Why do you always order it?”

  “You never gave me a menu. I had to guess,” I said. I searched her face for her thoughts.

  “You could have asked.”

  “I don’t think you’ve seen yourself,” I said quietly.

  “What?” she asked, suddenly interested.

  “You’re ridiculously pretty. You know that. I had a hard enough time simply not staring,” I confessed. “Attempting to speak to you was completely out of the question.”

  “You’re talking to me now,” she said. “What’s the difference?”

  “There’s no difference. I’m terrified right now.”

  She smiled. “I quit my job yesterday. But I showed up tonight, with pie. I get bored easily, that’s true. But this is your audition. Wow me.”

  “See, that’s the sort of thing I’ll always fail.”

  “You’re not competing with anyone, and I already like you.”

  “Why?” I asked. “I don’t get it.”

  “You’ve got something going on. I have no i
dea what it is, but it leaves you all angsty looking. It’s kind of exciting. You look troubled, but I don’t get that it’s for the normal reasons,” she said. “And you’re hopelessly cute.”

  My face warmed. “I’m glad you came back.”

  “I’m glad you said that. What are you going to do with me?” she asked, a loaded question if I had ever heard one.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Uh uh. Make your move,” she said.

  “Let’s think about it. We could go get something to eat. We could wander around the streets. We could go to my apartment and watch late night TV with the sound off,” I said. “Or we could go down to the Laundromat and eat garbage out of the vending machines while freaks and weirdoes wash their clothes.”

  “Let’s go,” she said, folding the cover back over the pie. We slid out of the booth. She handed me the pie, and I picked the hot chocolate up off the table. I followed her out the diner, falling in love with her hand as she waved goodnight to the waitress I met earlier.

  “So what do you do?” she asked, looking up. She was tall, but shorter than me by a few inches.

  “I don’t work in the traditional sense,” I said wearily.

  “What, are you a writer?”

  “No, nothing so noble,” I said. “You ready?”

  She nodded.

  “I sneak around at night, well, usually at night, and gather coins out of fountains,” I said slowly, watching her face for judgment.

  “Like rare coins?” she asked earnestly.

  “No, like quarters. Mostly quarters.”

  She burst into laughter. “Like spare change? You collect people’s wishes? And you spend them on yourself?”

  “They’re not wishes,” I said. “They lose their symbolism once they hit corporate water. At that point they either become extra income for people who don’t need it, or they can help me get along in the world.”

  “I see,” she said. The idea didn’t seem to bother her, and for that I was thankful.

  “What are you going to do, now that you quit Pete’s?” I asked.

  “Pretty intimate with the diner, eh? Pete’s. I don’t know. I don’t really care. Maybe I’ll rob fountains.”

  “That’s certainly a way to go,” I said.

  We approached the Laundromat and paused to look at one another before we went in. It was as if this was a step of some significance, rather than just a way to pass the time.

  “After you,” Ashley said, holding the door open.

  “Thanks,” I said. I walked through the door and waited for her. Together, we walked over to the vending machines. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fistful of change. She laughed and couldn’t stop. I started, too. Leaning into the machine, she slid down to the floor. I dropped down next to her.

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said.

  We sat there for a while, our knees touching. I stood up and pushed some quarters into the machine and received two bags of chips. Sitting back down, I handed one of the bags to her. I popped mine open.

  “You’re kind of cool,” she said.

  I was rather surprised, as that was the last impression I would have gotten from any time spent with myself. “I don’t think so,” I said, laughing at the idea.

  “Not in a traditional sense,” she said. “But, you know.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “But that’s okay.” I chomped down on a chip. The door opened, and a middle-aged woman walked in with a bag full of clothes. I looked over at Ashley, but she was staring into her chip bag, fishing around with a single finger.

  The woman hefted her clothes—already color-sorted—into the machine. She poured her detergent in, closed the lid and sat down. She reached into her bag and pulled out a magazine. I couldn’t see the cover.

  “I hate the whole chips,” Ashley said. I turned back to her.

  “You like the crumbs?” I stood and walked over to the second machine and deposited some coins, retrieving my Coke after it fell. I plopped down next to Ashley and cracked open the soda. The cold carbonization of the first sip felt good in my mouth.

  I leaned back and looked over at the middle-aged woman again. She was beginning to stand up. Her dark hair was limp and her face looked tired. She stepped up to the drink machine, put a few coins in and pressed a button. Nothing happened. She pressed it again. Still nothing.

  “Damn,” she said, and put her hands in her pockets, searching. I reached back into my pocket and pulled out a quarter.

  “Here,” I said. I held out the quarter. She smiled and took it. Ashley looked up.

  “Thanks,” the woman said. “You guys look nice together,” she said once she sat back down. “I can see that you really love one another.”

  Ashley smiled at her. She reached over and took my hand in hers. She raised it confidently and kissed it. My heart pounded in my chest as her moist lips pressed against my skin.

  “I sure hope so,” Ashley said.

  ~Chapter 6~

  In which the narrator gets lucky.

  “What are we doing?” Ashley asked, tossing her hair off her shoulder. The moistness of her hand felt good against my skin. My hand squeezed hers, doing its best to prevent her from pulling away. We walked down the empty sidewalk, junk food on our breath, stars above our heads. Going back the way we had come, there was no sense of finality. Wherever it was that we were going, we were still going, coasting along on energy already spent. Drifting came easily. I already felt as if I was in a dream.

  “Let’s go do nothing,” I suggested. “My place is only a few blocks away and I have a couch there. It isn’t very comfortable. There isn’t any food. But I have a TV and basic cable. It’s included in the rent.”

  “That’s what you want to do with me? Watch TV?” she asked, mock offense playing across her delicate features.

  “It’s not just watching TV,” I explained. “This, my friend, is the middle of the night. The shows we can find are not the same as those offered in the daylight.

  “We don’t have to waste time with the steroid-budgeted feature films shortened for time and content. We get to see Teen Wolf and The Breakfast Club and Weekend at Bernie’s Two in their entirety, with swear words expertly replaced with overdubbing.

  “We get to watch the entertainment equivalent of a transitional object, and can fall asleep with our teddy bears clasped tightly in our arms and Molly Ringwald’s words dying on our lips.

  “And all of this while the rest of the world sleeps. They dream their little dreams, toss and turn in sweaty sheets, and we’ll be awake. Do you realize the effect that will have on us? Instead of air, we’ll be breathing dreams.”

  Ashley shook her head. “You and your dream theft. First it’s wishes, then it’s dreams. Don’t you find it strange you steal those things that are most personal to others?”

  “I don’t steal,” I pointed out. “I never steal.” We walked along in silence for a brief time until we came upon my building, looming like a giant with scoliosis.

  “Here we are.”

  “Here?” she asked.

  “Yup.” I pulled the front door and held it open. “My little slice of paradise.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. I followed her into the building, breathing in her scent. I felt lightheaded. “Going up?” she asked, pointing to the elevator.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. We rode the elevator up.

  Once it stopped, we walked the short distance down the hallway. I dug in my pocket for my keys. Then I paused.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “That’s 312.”

  “Is that not where you live?” Ashley asked.

  “No, it isn’t. I live in 412.”

  She seemed confused. “Do you know who lives here?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “Let’s go upstairs.” I turned toward the elevator, Ashley following close behind. Why did I go to 312? On tonight of all nights?

  “Now, this is where you live, right?” Ashley asked, standing beside 412. “Beca
use if you don’t actually live anywhere, I’m okay with that.”

  “No, I really live somewhere,” I said. “There’s a door and a few windows and a few rooms. It’s a shithole, mind you, but I do live there.” I set about unlocking the locks.

  Ashley watched me work my way through the system. “Paranoid?” she asked.

  “You have no idea.”

  The door swung open. I reached around it and flipped on the light. “After you,” I said.