Fiction
Larry sat on the park bench picking the dead flies off his worn out jacket and tossing them to the pigeons flocking around. Bill sat next to him, watching a moment, then leaned over and began hacking.
“Goddamnit all to Hell and back,” Bill said. “I don’t think I can sell another lick. I really don’t.”
Larry stopped what he was doing. The pigeons bobbed their heads while his stayed still. “Well,” he said. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”
“You don’t know! You don’t have any idea how bad it can be!” Bill said desperately. “The way some of those people talk to you when you’re on the phone? Jesus Christ Almighty, you’d think I was calling the Pope himself.”
“I’m sure they do,” Larry said, throwing another dead fly at one of the pigeons. “I get the same treatment every time I phone Dear Old Moms.”
Bill chuckled and straightened himself up with a cough. “I gotta do...I gotta do something,” he said.
“Why doncha get another job?” Larry asked.
“Don’t you think I would if I could?” Bill pressed. “I’m out of it man, I can barely answer my phone there anymore and the boss is laying for me good these days, just waiting, you know, just waiting for me to—“
Bill paused, looking straight at the sun.
“You’re gonna burn your corneas out you keep that up,” Larry said. “Then you’ll really be up a creek. I always though it was easier to find one if you were already employed or something like that. Just a suggestion at any rate.”
“Yeah,” Bill said, picking a piece of lint off his three-thousand dollar Armani suit. He flicked it toward a bird. The bird was obviously disappointed it wasn’t a dead fly.
“Listen, there’s no sense in being a slave. Hell, you could stand up right now, go to walking across the street and get run down by some crazy asshole, you think your boss would give a squirt about it? Of course he wouldn’t. So why should you?”
Bill thought about it a moment. “I don’t want to think I can’t do it,” he said solemnly.
“And so what if you can’t? Some real asshole one time told me that “can’t means won’t” but the guy had it all wrong see? He thought what it meant was that “won’t” came by virtue of nothing. What I mean to say is that, the won’t is not grounded in any solid rationale, see? You don’t avoid doing something for no reason unless you’re just plain stupid. If you’re smart, you can’t do something you won’t do, and why won’t you do it? Because it’s beneath you or it doesn’t define who you are, understand?”
Larry looked over his worn jacket, now free of dead flies. He looked at the pigeons and they at him. He raised his hands slightly signaling there were no more dead flies to be had, and the pigeons took flight.
“See that?” Larry asked.
“What.”
“The pigeons,” Larry replied.
“Oh yeah. They’re nice,” Bill said, obviously occupied by other thoughts.
“Nice? You think they’re nice? They’re not nice, they’re smart. You know why they’re smart?”
“No.”
“They’re smart because they realize when the run is over. There’s no guesswork or a hope that there will be more dead flies on which to feast. They know there are dead flies all over the place, and when the run is over here, they move on, which is what you’ve got do at some point. Otherwise, you’re just like everybody else. Jesus man, you’ve got a code. You think those other assholes sitting in that building have that? Of course not. There’s no such thing as a magic touch.”
Bill looked at Larry after a long moment and smiled. “Thanks Larry. You always know how to get me back in the swing,” he said.
“Better you than me Chief.”
They chuckled and Bill stood up, offering a hand.
“Well, see you tomorrow,” Bill said.
“Same time, same channel,” Larry said.
Bill walked away without looking behind him as Larry walked the opposite direction. Now that lunch was over, he’d get on the 21 bus and ride it all the way to Santa Monica, where he’d take his afternoon nap under the pier before going out in search of more flies.
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