Beats Entropy

CONTINUED IN PART 2 and PART 3 and PART 4

Danny was tired. This was not a condition of the moment, rather an institutional policy; a prolonged, preemptive, surrender. He began inauspiciously: his mother claiming him an accident; his father, a deliberate act of spite. He was a bruise, a bad riff, an off hand remark that lingered. He had been inflicted more than born, and found the whole thing exhausting. Until today that was the whole of his story.Today he lost his job.

Danny had been drinking since noon. He had his pride. It was the sort of uneven binge seasoned drunks avoided: all thunder out the gates, then long maudlin stumble. By the second hour he was pinned to the floor beneath his whirling ceiling, mouthing sad vowels at a radio he could no longer reach.

His phone rang.

Danny glared at the radio.

The phone rang again, clearing the radio’s name.

Danny backstroked his way towards it, careful to keep his shoulders flush against the carpet. The phone rang again. Danny kicked it off the end table and rolled his face onto the receiver.

“Ya” said Danny.

“You live at 115 Bay, right?” said the receiver.

“What?” said Danny.

“Your house asshole…where you live. What’s the number?”

“What?” said Danny.

“Go outside…look at the door…then come back and tell me the fucking number. If you can’t count that high just try and describe the shapes. Idiot”

Danny scrubbed his numb face and tried to sort through the receiver’s abuse. As a rule he did not confront. He barely engaged. Still, he was drunk enough, and had been subjected to enough open contempt he felt compelled to defend his position.

“What?“

The receiver exploded with scorn.

“Are you fucking with me? Did I just call a school for the deaf, or are you just on the first day of your remedial English calendar.”

Danny took several heavy breaths. Despite the callers bewildering anger he felt an alarming need to connect. He pressed his eyes shut with his thumbs and tried to replay the conversation in his head.

“You want to know where I live?” Danny said.

The receiver spluttered furiously.

“Fuck you, tough guy! You want to make me pound on every door on the block? Ok. See what happens. Maybe I teach you the true meaning of Fistmas… huh, I’m talking massacre on 34^th street!”

Danny absorbed a very small part of part of the tirade.

“Are you threatening me?”

The receiver’s screaming was on pitch with a deranged and boiling teapot.

“TELL ME WHERE YOU LIVE!”

The question finally took root in Danny’s booze addled brain.

“85 Bay. Across from the big church.”

The receiver disconnected. Danny wondered for a bit at the oddly high pitched voice that had been speaking to him…and then passed out entirely.

*****

CONTINUED IN PART 2