Source and Scale & Please Nobody
by Sean Ennis
SOURCE AND SCALE
In my study of love, I once attended a graduation. All of the students, they implied, had been blessed with a job. The guest speaker said, “In effort there is joy.” Kabul fell during the ceremony.
I like to watch Grace try on new clothes, even the junk from Old Navy. Sometimes she says the word “panties” or inadvertently touches her breast. I say, “Yowza.” She’ll return half of it—she’s no fool. Grace narrates a bit while I wince on the bed. She moves the black t-shirt, the black tank top, and the black pants to the pile to be kept. “Cute,” she says.
Oh Lord, don’t send me back.
Doubling down on it, I close the horny door, but the show is over, and Grace is back at war with her computer. The semester starts in a week. We both have desecrated our adult lives to the intellectual well-being of young people, mostly between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five. We know a ton of other people who have done this too. This is just one of the reasons why I don’t now hold a powerful position in city politics. There are others. I’m not a liar anymore. Etc.
Our sheriff has passed, and there’s a line of cop cars, even the hastily-painted undercover, delivering his body to the funeral home. We can see the blue lights from the bedroom window, and we get saddish for a second, though, as they say, we voted for the other guy. That bad criminal, pneumonia, has won.
I already get embarrassed when the trash truck comes though we innovate by recycling. The neighbors have gotten new gravel for their driveway—I pity them—which is not interesting or gossip-worthy, but they keep pulling in and out to smooth it. Do they enjoy their work? He is a graduate student and she is a graduate student and at night they play the worst music with their little girl. Have they never heard of, like, The Beatles or Rimsky-Korsikov?
But at that very moment, not a single other person on Earth was thinking about me. Not even this woman asking me questions. Where do you see yourself in five years ago? Right, it was an odd question. I have always been victim to the thought, if two is good, four must be better. Some have given it up because it is too violent; others because it is not enough.
This was not a date or a job interview, but we were practicing. It was just Grace making conversation. There’s a trust one must have when completing jigsaw puzzles, and this is what we had. I stopped watching the news right after they reported that plants can see and feel pain.
PLEASE NOBODY
Even medical tests bring some joy. There are many types of sadness, not the least of which is the type that brings pleasure, you sad sacks. Look here. The cat is healing. After just one dose of this white, antibiotic powder, the wound is closing like a mouth.
I was thinking negatively about fireworks again, about how we were all watching the drone film them instead of, like, being in the moment.
Can you believe someone who thinks this way can have a happy brother? I can. I worked on it.
“Have you noticed I’ve been less critical about things in general?” I asked Grace, who was shuffling her gender-neutral tarot cards. I was happy to just listen.
“You have been cooking more mediocre meals,” she said. “More grilled chicken.”
And there you have it: you can practice being less of something.
But what was in the cards for me?
An ex-lover called to say they had their wisdom teeth out, could I provide succor? Hell no, but I went and watched a movie there until the pain drugs put them to sleep. I snuck out with the cat staring at me. I was nice, but not too much.
A friend once prepared a fake valentine for me because I was bemoaning. Again, exactly what was necessary. No one was in love with me that way.
But once, the fire alarm went off in a hotel in Memphis, and Grace and I were on the street in our pajamas when another man suggested Grace go back to his room instead. She slapped him, while I was asking the desk clerk about my computer.
Everything is going perfect in my life right now. Please nobody move a muscle.
Sean Ennis is the author of CHASE US: Stories (Little A) and his fiction has appeared in Bending Genres, Diagram, New World Writing, X-R-A-Y, and HAD. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net.