Slivers of the Mundane
“BREAKFAST”
When I was 20, I worked grave shifts as an office security guard in downtown Albuquerque, and every morning after enduring the nightly insanity, I’d stop at the Frontier Cafe for breakfast. It was located directly across the street from the University of New Mexico, occupying the vacant corner of a shopping center before gradually expanding and taking over the other vacancies in the strip mall, totalling up into five dining rooms adorned with wood paneled walls and oak booths amid paintings of local sceneries and celebrities, with the occasional Native American blanket on the wall for decoration .
I funneled my way to the front of the line one morning to order the usual combination of eggs, hash browns and sausage to be greeted by a young woman in her early 20s with a slim build and blonde hair with flaming pink tips and a scattering of freckles that punctuated her bubbly personality.
“Hi there! Just getting off?”
It took me a second to realize she was talking to me as I looked down and saw I was still in uniform. “Yeah, just finished for the night. I’d ask you the same, but, uhh, seeing as how you guys just opened an hour ago…”
She giggled and I placed my order, retrieved my numbered ticket and found a booth in a dark corner of the third room where no one could see me.
A few minutes later, her voice crackled from an intercom in the ceiling calling out the number on my ticket. I sauntered to the pickup counter in the main room far across from the register and the young woman was now stationed there handing out orders. She smiled as I approached.
“Hi! I’m over here now.”
I smiled. “Jesus, you’re fast! They got you pulling double duty today?”
She nodded. “Yup. Normally I’m just food prep and dishes.”
“Ah. Understaffed?”
“Very.”
“Jesus. Well, there’s a reason they call it ‘work,’ huh?”
She gave a knowing smile and told me to have a good one as I grabbed my tray and went back to my booth. It was at this point that I noticed the engraved initials and hearts on the wood paneled wall that university students had carved over the years.
“JH + DC”
“JACEY + MIKE”
“NC + DW”
Some of them appeared to have chipped off the wall, either worn away with time or done hastily with a pocket knife. What particularly caught my eye was “HR + FM FOREVER,” which had been carved into the wall but later scribbled over with a marker in an attempt to undo any trace of the relationship. I wondered if “forever” meant “until the end of time” or “until one of us graduates.”
I finished my meal, went home, went to bed, got up, went to work and came back a little less than 24 hours later to see the young woman was standing at the sink opposite the registers with the first of many trays and dishes peeking out of the sink like some curious beast wondering where its next meal would come from. She turned around, saw me, smiled, and waved. I smiled and nodded coyly before she went back to scrubbing and I turned back to the menu.
*****
I had a particularly rough night at work when, in the middle of an office party, someone set off a fire alarm on the top floor and blocked the door to their office with a table and I had to explain the situation to the firefighters while just on the other side of the door, I could hear the party-goers cackling and spraying each other with fire extinguishers. My face must’ve been burning with contempt for the world when I walked into the Frontier the following morning, because when the young woman standing at the sink scrubbing dishes turned and saw me, she gave a knowing smile and put a finger gun to her head, dropping the hammer and blowing her brains out as it dropped to the side onto her shoulder. I smiled back and yanked an imaginary noose over my head, my neck twisting with it. We smiled at each other before she went back to scrubbing dishes and I went back to waiting in line.
Then, in a flash, the pandemic struck and the Frontier was subsequently closed until it was safe to operate again and I was long gone in Los Angeles.
I wonder how she’s doing.
___
“CAT”
I was 22 and living in a ratty apartment complex off Rt. 66 that I affectionately nicknamed “the motel” given its design and location. I was a few beers deep watching Seinfeld reruns when someone knocked on the door to my apartment. The local Missionaries usually came by with pamphlets to spread the gospel once a month, but they seemed to have taken a special interest in me after I made the mistake of answering the door in a Slayer t-shirt.
I heard the rapping upon my door and, wanting to be left alone, I turned the TV off and stayed dead silent.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
...
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
Shit, usually they get bored and leave by now…
I went to answer the door and instead of Missionaries, it was my neighbor Elijah sporting basketball shorts and a hoodie.
“Hey, man! Sorry to bother you. You busy?”
“Nah, nah. Sorry, I thought you were the Christians.”
“It’s cool. Hey, can I ask you a HUGE favor?”
“Define ‘huge.’”
“Would you mind watching my cat for the next few weeks? I’m gonna be with my family in California and just need you to make sure he has food and clean his litter box every other day. I can give you like a hundred bucks.”
“Oh, that’s it?”
“Is a hundred too little?”
“No no, I meant ‘that’s all I need to do?’ Yeah, I can watch the little guy!”
*****
A few days later, a spare key taped to a note with Humphrey’s feeding schedule and his phone number slipped under my door, and for the next three weeks, Humprhey is now my responsibility.
I slid the key into the lock and opened the door slowly to prevent the cat from escaping and flicked the light on as I closed the door behind me. Elijah’s apartment was significantly nicer than mine, with a gray futon upon a white fluffy rug and a modest bookstand holding up a 4K television with an XBOX One. His walls were free from the stains that came with mine and it looked like he’d even painted his white instead of the monkey-shit-brown that came with mine. I thought “shit, now this is LIVING” as Humprhey, an overweight orange American Shorthair, peeked out from the bedroom. He looked me up and down, mewed, and walked right over to me and flopped down upon my feet.
The tender moment was cut short by the smell of his litterbox emanating from the bedroom. I took a few sniffs, winced, said “me too, little dude” and quickly taught myself how to scoop a litter box.
*****
A few days later, the landlord sent out a text reading “ATTENTION ALL RESIDENTS! TOMORROW WE’LL HAVE MAINTENANCE VISITING UNITS TO DO MANDATORY HVAC CHECKS. PLEASE LEAVE THE VENTS FREE OF OBSTRUCTIONS AND PUT ANY PETS IN THE BATHROOM.”
I examined Elijah’s apartment and realized that since his HVAC unit was in his bedroom, poor Humprhey would have to stay in the bathroom. I texted Elijah and asked “Hey, man. You get the text?”
“ya. u can put humphrey in the bathroom for a few hours”
The next day, I entered the apartment to see Humphrey lazing in a sunbeam from the window sill. He quickly realized something was up when he saw me carrying his litter box to the bathroom and placing it within the bathtub. He sat up and watched me curiously as I carried a spare food and water dish with a few toys into the bathroom.
I approached Humprhey in the sunbeam and knelt beside him.
“Hey, buddy.”
“mow”
“You wanna come hang out in the bathroom?”
“mow”
“C’mon, it’s real fun in there. There’s toys, food, and your shitbox.”
“mow”
Humphrey walked into the bedroom and slinked under the bed.
“C’mon, Humphrey. Uncle Jake has to go to work.”
A muffled “mow” emanated from beneath the bed before a pair of glowing eyes glanced out at me. With some quick thinking, I was able to lure Humprhey out using a laser pointer and he urgently followed the red dot into the bathroom, over the lip of the tub and right into the litter box. As soon as I had the clearance, I pulled the door shut behind him, leaving him in the bathroom.
Immediately, he began calling out to ask where I went. “Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow–-”
I sighed, saddened by the necessary evil I’d just committed, and started to head back to my apartment when I went to lock Elijah’s door and realized I didn’t have his key on me. I pat myself down urgently and found it wasn’t in any of my pockets. I pat myself down a few more times and checked every corner of Elijah’s apartment and realized there’s only one place I could have left it.
“--Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow--”
I opened the bathroom door only an inch to see if I’d left his key on the counter, and that was plenty of space for the rotund Humprhey to zip past me right back under the bed where the glowing eyes once again gazed upon me curiously.
The laser pointer didn’t work, asking politely didn’t work, so I had one more trick up my sleeve. I went into Elijah’s meticulously organized kitchen and pulled a can of tuna out of the pantry, placing my finger upon the tab to open it.
CSSSH!
“mow?”
I looked down to see Humprhey at my feet as I reached for a plastic container to dump the tuna in. “Oh, you don’t want this.”
“mow?”
“No, it’s disgusting. It smells like--” I took a big whiff of it “--tuna.”
“mow”
I dumped the contents of the tin into the container as I chucked the emptied tin into the spotless stainless steel trash can. “Oh, I’m certain. You don’t want this.”
I paced around the apartment with the container of tuna in my hands as Humprhey followed close behind me, focusing more on the tuna than where I was heading. I paced into the bathroom and placed the treat down beside the food and water dishes and Humprhey ran right up and began snacking on it. With the proper clearance, I shut the door.
“Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow--”
In the pursuit of getting the cat back in the bathroom, I realized I still hadn’t found the key to Elijah’s apartment. I instinctively reached into my pocket and found the key had wedged itself into the folds of my wallet, where it’d been waiting this whole time. I locked Elijah’s apartment and rushed back into my own where I quickly washed my face and brushed my teeth. Me and Elijah’s bathrooms were directly adjacent to one-another and on the other side of the wall, I could hear Humprhey asking where I went.
“--Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow. Mow--”
*****
Aside from hiding under the bed every time I got too close to the bathroom, Humphrey went back to being best buddies with me whenever I’d come by to feed him, clean his litter box, and sit with him on the couch to play with him and his various toys.
On the last day before Elijah came home, I played with Humprhey longer than usual and gave him an extra treat before I left. I was a few beers deep watching “Seinfeld” reruns in my apartment when I heard Elijah come home late around midnight.
As I was leaving to go to the laundromat the next day, I found a hundred dollar bill slid under my door. I picked it up, examined it, and went to slide it back under Elijah’s door as Humprhey watched me through the window blinds.
___
“LAUNDRY”
A few months into living at the motel, I got home, tore off my uniform, threw it in the trash bag I kept my dirty laundry in, and carried it over my shoulder into the rundown laundry room of my apartment complex.
It was only after I put my laundry in the washing machine, poured the detergent on it, and fed the machine three dollars that I realized the water pipe to the laundry room had burst just outside. I listened to the machine spin a few times, said to myself “say, aren’t I supposed to be hearing splashing right about now,” and found that splashing was not to be had on this particular day.
I begrudgingly put my clothing back in the trash bag and as I was exiting the small room, another neighbor in a shabby John Deere cap and work shirt began to walk past me carrying a mesh bag of clothing slung over his shoulder.
I stopped him and said “Hey, man. Laundromat’s down.”
He chuckled. “Bout time. ‘at’s the longest it ever lasted.”
“It shit the bed often?”
He nodded. “Second longest it lasted was two weeks.”
*****
I’d never used a public laundromat before and didn’t know how to pick ‘em, so I just rode along Rt. 66 and pulled into the first one I saw, which seemingly hadn’t seen any major renovations since the 80s. The walls were stacked high with white concrete blocks and no insulation to keep out the cold and various water spots in the ceiling tiles had formed orange circles dripping melted snow onto the seat next to me. Most of the machines were from the 70s with solid state knobs that had the current prices written over them in black marker. The tiles upon the floor were either ivory white with skid marks or a dirty fleshlike color. The row of seats to wait on looked like they’d been pulled straight from a bus station, and in the window right next to my head was a hole from a .22 bullet that’d been patched with Mighty Putty. An old Coke machine hummed softly next to the change machine beside a ratty Pac-Man machine that I’d already blown 50 cents on.
I sat in the corner hunched over a copy of Buk’s “Post Office,” occasionally glancing up at the few other souls in the room with me: A polite older couple that owned the establishment, a middle-aged man sporting a thick flannel and round glasses, and a pair of female college students wearing pajama pants and sweatshirts.
As my clothing tumbled endlessly in the industrial dryer, a boy about 12 or 13 in a baggy hoodie and a mop of blonde hair entered through the glass double doors, approached the Pac-Man machine, rummaged through his empty pockets, and began to look in the change slots of any machine not currently in use.
It reminded me of when I was his age. I had to take the public bus home from school and since the Coronado mall was on the way home, I’d occasionally get off at the stop just outside what’s now a Five Guys and rummage through the coin slots of any arcade machines in the hopes I might find a few quarters to kill a few hours before I had to go home, an endeavor that was very rarely fruitful. One time I was rummaging through the arcade machines in a shop that was then We Know Video Games (may it rest in peace) and a man noticed I had been foraging for coins, so he left a dollar’s worth of quarters stacked on the control panel for the Street Fighter II machine and walked away before I could thank him.
The old dryer buzzed a few times to snap me back into the present and I went to dump my clothes into the trash bag I’d brought everything in. I reached into my coat pocket and saw I had about a dollar left in quarters, so I placed them in a stack atop a counter nearby, looked at the boy, whistled once to get his attention, and then started walking away. I could hear him shuffle up to the machine, pocket the change, and say “thank you, mister!”
Hell, I already got beer at home. I don’t need the change.
___
“SLEEP”
It was the first of many sleepless nights for me in Los Angeles and my sweat had glued my back to the mattress on the floor without a bedframe. I had no ceiling fan and we kept the AC off to keep the utility costs down. My bedroom was on the second floor of the house facing West and the moonlight bled through the window upon my face as I stared at the bumps on the stipple ceiling, wondering if I really belonged in Los Angeles and if it was too late to go back to the life in Albuquerque I’d left just a few weeks prior. I had recently turned 21 and though I’d always wanted it, it was strange finally having true independence.
It must’ve been about 2 in the morning or so, judging from the moonlight’s position in my room, and finally I stood up and peaked through my door into the hallway to see if maybe my roommate could keep me company. No light came from beneath their door, so they were probably fast asleep.
I leaned against my windowsill, pulled open the window, and gazed through the mesh screen at the sleepy world that immediately surrounded me. In the house to our left was a family that’d have parties in their backyard every Friday night complete with a Mariachi band, and I’d sometimes listen to that galloping bass pierce right through my bedroom wall. We were situated close to the top of a hill among a dense cluster of homes and I could see into the backyards of almost every one of them descending the landscape. Most of them had a second house being rented out in the backyard while the rest of the backyards were small and filled with junk, cars, or tents.
I looked into my own backyard and saw the other house on the property, 5124 1/2, where a full-time student named Maria lived with her cousin. Maria and I chatted every now and then, usually just: “Hey, was my package left on your doorstep?” or “Could you ask your roommate to move their car so I can get out?” The mesh screen to her bedroom window has been removed and she leaned casually out of her window smoking a glass pipe emanating a smell I recognized as marijuana. She had light brown skin that seemed to softly reflect the moonlight, with long curly hair falling over her shoulders with a petite hourglass figure dressed in volleyball shorts and a tank top.
I was reminded of a story my buddy Kujo told me. One day, he was blasting Weezer over a Bluetooth speaker in his house and halfway through “Pork and Beans,” there was a knock on the door. He answered it and was greeted by a college student living next door asking him to please turn the music down. They started talking and began dating soon after that.
I turned to look at my record player sitting on its rickety bookshelf I’d built with scrap wood I found in the dumpster of a Home Depot and debated turning it on when I looked back to see that Maria had noticed I was staring and closed her window.
I continued to gaze out of my window, watching the rest of the neighborhood and the city lights in the distance, and thought of the only thing I know about Trotsky: the quote, "Life is beautiful." While Trotsky was pondering his impending assassination, his wife opened the door and the window of his study to let the sunlight and the soft breeze into his office, and even in the face of death he was able to write that “life is beautiful.”
It seems that the beauty of life lies in the small differences that break up the mundane. For every bad day I have at work, there is a cashier or dishwasher who knows the pain and I can commiserate with them through laughter. For every missionary who comes to monopolize my time, there is a knock on the door leading to a brief glimpse into another man's world of comfort. For every beautiful woman who closes her window, there is a friend who meets his own love the same way. Empathy and kindness can be taught and learned, and sometimes a mere dollar is enough to make someone’s day.
I flopped back onto my mattress, plugged my headphones into the stereo, and placed the needle on “Let It Be” by The Replacements as I laid my head upon the pillow and stared up at the ceiling again. This will be the first of many restless nights, and I’ll see that ceiling many more times and maybe one day know how many bumps are up there, but at least tonight, I got to see a beautiful woman.