Time for Breakfast in the Gutter. While you have the whole day to plan how to spend the rest of your life here. In this story Angel Luis Colon gives us a man whose plans may be dreams, nightmares even. And in the Gutter? Nightmares
come true.
come true.
Counting Ashes by Angel Luis Colon
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You’re
sitting in the back of a U-Haul truck with no rental papers or insurance
associated to it. There are huge scratches across the truck’s side, defacing a
picture of alligators. It’s the kind of summer morning where the air’s thick as
custard and it’s already pushing 90 degrees based on the cheap little
thermometer to your right.
You jam the fresh
pack of Newport you bought last night against your palm and unspool the
cellophane from the box. Light one up. First smoke of the morning always goes
down nice with coffee. Shame you’re still waiting on a cup—light and sweet.
Asked for a buttered roll too, but your faith on that showing up with the
coffee is low. New kid who takes the breakfast orders is an idiot.
Today you’re
selling leather jackets with no price tags. Tomorrow, who knows. Shoes, bootleg
handbags, knockoff sneakers, maybe even cases of the cigarettes you’re smoking
now. There was a time you could do this at a flea market or door to door, but
folks don’t take kindly on these hustles anymore. You lean back and wait for
your partners. Think of how you’d rather be home on the sofa watching TV—maybe
Maury or whatever fake judge is screaming at idiots. It’s the kind of day where
pants should be entirely optional, but you’re stuck in slacks and a light blue
button-down—poor choice on the shirt when you spy the growing darkness at the
edges of your armpits.
You think
about whether that SUV across the street is an unmarked cop car, try to get
your mind off the lack of coffee and the pit stains.
That’s a
terrible distraction, so you let your mind wander.
A few people
walk over and haggle over the price of a ¾ length brown leather trench. You
upsell the product—swear it’s authentic. They know your line ain’t true, but
still want to hear you say that bullshit. They’ll tell their friends the guy
who sold it said the product was legit and pretend to be ignorant, to have been
swindled. More fun to play the victim than be called out for being a cheap
piece of shit.
You pocket
some of the surplus from overcharging for two coats and a wallet.
You think of
when you dropped out of high school, of choosing liquor and weed over digging
your nose so deep in books you’d have ink stains all over your face to this day.
You always liked reading. Had a thing for Robert Frost poems.
You think
about your brother with his skinny wife and his skinny kids and their skinny
life. You think about their twice-a-year vacations to places far and wide.
Think about that big house in Greenwich and how every room has a TV that would
be better off in a movie theater. Those things cost a mint. So does all the
jewelry you’ve seen hanging off that skinny wife’s skinny neck, wrists, and
fingers. You think about how one of those vacations is coming up this weekend
and count the time between now and Saturday in menthol cigarettes. You wonder
if you can convince Ernie, your boss, to let you have this U-Haul and some
Virginia plates over the weekend. Feel confident your brother is the kind of
man to overpay on his insurance.
And you
wait.
You wonder
if you’re ever going to get that goddamn buttered roll and coffee.
