Written by Joe Wadlington
Photo: © Depositphotos.com/olly18
Dave took a sip from his mug, but only got air. He looked and he realized it was actually a tiny, plastic tea cup — a flimsy thing with a cheerful daisy printed on the side, empty but a sip of morning air. The hell? When had that happened? Where was the large white mug he’d been drinking from every morning, as well as this morning, just moments before? He pulled his glasses down to double check. Yep, now it was a blurry tea cup.
Dave checked the clock on the stove to see how long he’d been drinking imaginary coffee from a tiny daisy cup. 30 minutes. Not possible. He rubbed his eyes, he really must be exhausted — tired enough to grab a kid’s tea cup instead of his own.
“Hey, Jessica. Did Kayla, Kara, and Johnny leave a tea set here?” he yelled to the bedroom. He wasn’t sure how it’d even appeared in their house. Jessica had her nieces and nephew over every other Sunday. She was incredible with them, but when they were over, Dave tried to be out for a long bike ride or over at Angelo’s messing around on the bass. So it could be that the last high tea got a little rowdy and they left one cup behind. That was probably it.
“Jess?” No answer. Dave leaned back in his chair to see into the living room. The house was silent. Dave remembered she’d been getting up earlier and earlier, something about a presentation that week, maybe. She was probably gone already. He set a reminder on his phone to ask about her presentation that night.
He got up and opened the cabinet, looking for his real mug. There were three more daisy tea cups, each on a bright blue saucer with dancing lady bugs. Then an empty saucer, for his cup. Nothing else. No mugs. No coffee. The cabinet had been full yesterday. Jessica drank a black cup of coffee every morning. Sometimes they did it together, two adults hmmmm-ing over the paper, like his parents had done. At least, he thought so. Had Jessica seen him drinking air from a child’s tea party cup every morning and not said anything? No way. She was funny, she’d have taken the chance to dig at him.
“The mugs are in the dishwasher.” He told the cabinet. He didn’t want to check the washer to be sure. Dave felt weird. He placed the cup on its saucer and closed the cabinet. Kayla, Kara, and Johnny were kind of old now, weren’t they? He thought one of them was 13. He didn’t know when appropriate tea party age waned.
Dave went back to the table to finish his paper. Maybe he could stop at Starbucks on the way to work. No one would notice if he was late. A doodle pad sat on the table where his paper had been, squares were drawn across it in red and blue crayon.
“Ho-ly shit.” Dave froze. He looked around. Was he out of his damn mind? He looked under the doodle pad. No paper. Ok. Was he going crazy? No. He couldn’t have a breakdown. He just needed to get to work is what was happening. That’s all. Ok. He threw the doodle pad into the trash can. Then, on second thought, pulled the tea cups out of the cabinet and threw them away too. If they were for the kids he could get them new ones with a pattern that teenagers wanted — Justin Bieber or Snap Chat or something. No happy daisies. And if the cups were apparitions indicative of a fragile mental state — well, then they were gone now.
Dave grabbed his suit jacket and left the house. He locked and unlocked the door three times to be sure. It just didn’t feel like he was doing it right today. He hit up the Starbucks right before the on ramp. Over Starbucks was a billboard advertising “The Meadows”. On it, a smiling couple laughed about how soft their robes were and how easy life was. Below them, “Get away.” scrawled in luxurious script. Dave hated this billboard, and made a tradition of rolling his eyes at it every morning. But it was real — not plastic. None of the traffic was plastic, either. None of it had daisies. It was good. It was an even better morning routine than normal. He would order coffee from now on. It was so much easier, really.
Dave had been doing events and development at Youth and Family Connect for five years. He’d planned to be gone after four, but kept getting cold feet waiting for the right time to look for something new to present itself to him. In meetings, his boss, Maureen, made a point to thank each person for any work they had done, which probably made for devoted employees and definitely made for lumbering planning sessions. Dave was looking out his favorite window. Maureen was talking about their fundraising goal. He couldn’t believe how little money their foundation could raise and still subsist. But Maureen was gleaming from it. They’d helped 30 families this year. Thirty wasn’t zero families. He kept telling himself it was way more than no families. Thirty families wasn’t thousands of families either. He should move on — go some place that had real impact. He should start looking.
“… but David will have more on that. David, do you have an update?” Dave snapped to attention at the mention of his name.
“Yes. Events?”
“The space for the gala next month. Have you confirmed it?” Maureen said.
“Yes. Verbally. And it’s on the venue’s calendar. I talked them down in price, but they haven’t signed the final contract yet. I’m, um, I’m following up with the event planner there today and should have, am expecting to have, a signature by the end of the week. Which I’ll circulate to the team. The final contract, that is.” Dave said. Maureen nodded.
“Great, thank you for being so on it, David. I have some contracts I’d like your eye on as well. And for the catering, we need you to find all the plastic, rainbow-colored rings. Then stack the rings onto the peg. They should be in rainbow order, with the biggest ring on the bottom, the red one. The red one is the biggest ring. Can you do that for Maureen?” Maureen nodded again, waiting for an answer. Dave’s mouth fell open. He looked around the conference room table. No one in the meeting had flinched at her request.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“The catering, David. I asked if they’ve confirmed a final menu and if you could send that menu to the Alyssa so she can include it in the invitation design.”
“Sorry, yes. It is the same chicken/beef/veg menu we originally discussed. But, um, I’m going back to tell them we have to cut the dessert. Coffee course instead. I’ll send to Alyssa when it’s finalized.” Dave nodded.
“Great. Thank you for doing that, David. Are you feeling alright?” Everyone was staring at him now. Shit. This was weird.
“Yes, I’m sorry. Just a bit of a headache, it messes with my head—headache, a bit. I’m fine, though. Yep.”
“Oh, ok. Good. And if you feel like you have a boo boo, go to the doctor now. We need you well and running point for the gala. That goes to everyone — if you’re going to get sick please do it this week.” Everyone laughed. Dave looked around. What the hell was going on? A “boo boo”? No way she said that. No one else had reacted. Maybe that was just the way Maureen talked to him and he’d never noticed before. If he’d been drinking pretend coffee and reading a doodle pad every morning, he couldn’t blame her.
He bet Maureen was baiting him. She’d probably found out he was afraid of managing an intern. Or maybe she found out he wasn’t saving for retirement at all. Even though he’d been there so long, he hadn’t set up his 401k. But how was he supposed to know which kind to get? That was ever explained to him. How could he know? His desk was so messy too. Well, not that messy — but not clean. It was something about his desk, probably. His desk filing cabinet just had cycling gear in it. But what was he supposed to file anyway? He wished he saw interesting enough documents to warrant his own secret desk file.
The meeting ended. Dave fled to the break room to sort his head. Had he eaten? The coffee machine was bubbling in the corner. He’d had his second cup from it every morning. Right? Why was today all about coffee? Lisa, from accounts, was pouring a cup. So it had to be real. Dave grabbed a styrofoam cup. He checked four times to make sure it was a styrofoam cup. He filled it. It looked like coffee. Black. He was fine. He had nothing to worry about. He was an adult with a good job at a small, vaguely successful non profit. Dave watched Lisa, she took a sip and tore into a Snickers bar.
“The coffee is good and free.” he said. She looked back at him, a little confused.
“Well, it’s coffee I guess!” she chuckled.
“It is coffee.” He said, eyes narrowed.
“… yeah.” She smiled uncomfortably and drifted out.
“Ok.” Confirmed. It was safe. Dave risked a sip. He sputtered. It was the most bitter thing he’d ever tasted, like he’d never had it before.
“Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.” Dave poured the coffee out and pitched the cup. Ok. Oh no. Ok. He froze for a second and covered his face. He shook his head around, shook his body too. Then he puffed up his chest, smiled, and relaxed.
“Mystery solved.” He said and smiled more. Good. Very good. He had never had coffee before and now he knew. And that didn’t mean anything else. Now he would get to learn how to enjoy coffee all over again — or, for the first time. Cool. Dave took a deep breath and bolted the smile to his face.
He walked through the office to his desk and put his headphones on. All his playlists were prime for ignoring an emotional undercurrent. He turned up a rock mix with enough complex bass to drown his thoughts. He’d concentrate on the riffs, then before he’d know it the day and his work would be done. Then he could go home and not say anything about this to Jessica. Great.
He opened his inbox. Lots of emails, most of them just needed to be sent to someone else so that person could make a decision — average day.
Maureen came by and placed a folder on his desk. She gave him an apologetic smile and left, which meant it needed to be taken care of that day. He sighed. There’d probably be vendor, client, and venue contracts inside. He was probably supposed to go through and make sure everything was in line. The vendors would have already looked at them, and Maureen would have already reviewed them. He’d be double checking for split hairs that could just as easily be split and solved the day of. “Is there an extension cord available?” “We need two pens at the sign-up table” Then he’d scan them into digital copies and update the “2017 events contracts” folder with them, but he’d also file the hard copies, just in case. It would take most of his day and be the dumbest job he never hoped he’d have to do.
He remembered fighting to get this job, thinking that’d he’d be making real change. He had envisioned a life with every professional day brimming with heroic children and newly-righted parents laughing into the sunset together. He hadn’t imagined there would be any filing cabinets or meetings he had nothing to do with, or thinking it was Thursday and realizing it was just Tuesday. But, no, this was actually perfect for today. He would do this busy work and wake up and it’d be Friday.
He flipped open the folder. Inside was a children’s activity book. “Adventures in Story Town (ages 4 and up!)” It promised a page of “over 100 stickers” in the middle. On the front, a post-it said “By end of day : )” in Maureen’s rushed cursive.
Dave looked around the office. Everyone else was dutifully typing away, or marking papers, or otherwise looking rushed and important. He could taste his stomach in his mouth. He swallowed hard.
“It needs to be done today.” he nodded and picked up a pen. He opened to the first page, a maze. The Crooked Man needed to find the way to his Crooked House. Could Dave help him? Dave really was lucky to have a job. The playlist buzzed through his headphones. Things were good here. At least he had a job. In this economy. He really should set up that 401k. He could probably figure it out. The maze was easy. The next page was a word search. He needed to find the names of the people in Jessica’s book club. They were listed on the side, in a word bank. So he didn’t have an excuse not to remember them. He was making a lot of headway. The next page was a coloring book page of his living room. The walls needed to be painted, but which color? Dave found a box of crayons in his desk drawer, each a different gray. He choose “thunder head.” Find and circle all of Mother’s Goose’s goslings. Match the email addresses to their owners. Fix the problem. Each task was important and needed to be done.
Dave came out of his concentration trance in the basement filing room. He’d completed the book and made a copy of each page, now he was carefully slipping them into the event files, labeled “Adventures in Story Town, May, 2017”. He realized it was almost 4:00pm. Good.
He walked upstairs and looked at his phone for the first time that day. Jessica had texted hours ago.
[ Hey, project prep is going no where ]
[ I’ll be here late ?]
[ Could you grab Sage from the vet? ]
[ I could bring home Indian ]
[ Yeah definitely not going to be able to leave the office before they close]
[ Sorry ]
[ If you can’t grab Sage then we’ll have to pay to board her for the night — would rather save that $ for San Diego ? haha ]
[ Could really use your help ]
[ Gwen is getting her ]
[ You’re off the hook ]
[ congrats ]
[ This is EXACTLY what I was talking about, btw ]
Why did they get a cat? Dave didn’t even know where the vet was. The shots, getting people to watch it — it was all more trouble than they thought it’d be. Too much responsibility. He grabbed his bag and left the office. The emails could be forwarded tomorrow. The cat didn’t even do anything. They just got one because their friends had them. Everyone had pets now. Everyone. It just happened one day, like Save The Dates exploding across his fridge.
Dave got in his car, there was a plastic sippy cup where his Starbucks cup from that morning had been. He merged into rush hour’s clogged highway. Her family was always around. Jessica was so successful. She had been ready for the house, but he wasn’t. What if they both got fired? Then the house would be too expensive and then they’d see that playing adults got them nowhere. How could they know they wouldn’t just get fired? They couldn’t. They didn’t make decisions anymore, just sliding and sliding. Not a staircase going up, a slide going down. Each thing made sense as it came — he had wanted the new car, and the couple’s road trip. But looking backward it was all just reactions. He wasn’t old enough for this shit. They were just making it up as they went. And why? For who?
Dave didn’t have to be on the highway long, before his quiet exit below the “The Meadows” billboard. Dave and Jessica used to make fun of the luxurious couple on it. Robes couldn’t solve real problems. Those actors didn’t have real problems. Jessica and Dave had been together only 3 months we they got to “I love you”s. This billboard couple didn’t know relationships like Jessica and Dave.
Then, on one drive under the billboard, they were talking about being stressed, wishing they could spend the weekend together and not think about dinner, or driving, or at whose place they were staying that night. “Get away.” smiled down. It became a joke. They talked about how they “just needed” to “get away” during every step of planning the weekend. They were pretending to be some other people that needed weekends away — not them. But then, once they were “away”, and the promised robes were damn soft, and the clotted cream mounded onto scones so well, and the morning light made their bed silent and peaceful, it became a not-joke. “Away” was much better than wherever “Here” had been. When Dave drove to Jessica’s condo to drop her off. They realized they didn’t want “Away” to stop. She moved in a month later.
Dave’s eyes were shining. He’d moved forward so easily back then. He’d been an idiot. He hadn’t been scared enough. They weren’t real adults. They didn’t know anything. He shook the wheel.
“Damn billboard — telling me stuff.” When he spoke, he realized how silent the street was. The engine had stopped, the car was just coasting forward. Where had the engine gone? Dave watched the speedometer drop slowly from 55 to 50, to 45. He hit the dash.
“Piece of shit car. C’mon! C’mon!” He revved the pedal. Nothing happened. Dave heard a rubbery noise behind him — like two balloons squeaking together. He looked in the mirror. The back window looked foggier than normal, he could barely see the backend of his car. The rubbery sound got louder and deeper, more plastic sounding now, like a bottle of water being squeezes. The car slowed, 40 to 35 to 30. Dave hit the dash again. Now the mirror was gone.
“The hell! I don’t even own this car.” He turned around and the backseat had disappeared too. The back window was now a scratched sheet of clear plastic directly behind his head rest. The car was shrinking.
“I’m leasing it! God, not the car.” This was ridiculous. He was really crying now and shaking the steering wheel. It got light and unresponsive in his hands, changing to thin, sluggish plastic.
The car kept slowing, 25 to 20 to 15.
“No! No! No!” He jerked his body back and forth to propel the car forward in jolts. Now the radio was just a sticker, depicting a cassette player. The rear view mirrors were gone. The horn became a tiny red button. The speedometer disappeared.
Dave started shouting as the car slowed further. Then wind grazed his face and he shut up. The roof was gone. His car had shrunk to a single seat, red plastic all around. His long legs bent over the side and once they touched the pavement, the car stopped completely. His car was just a toy — a stupid, embarrassing toy. Tears streaked his face.
“I don’t know how to do this.” he said. His breath was ragged and desperate. His hands ran up and down the sides of the car, frantic.
“I don’t know anything.” he wiped his eyes on his jacket sleeve. It was mercilessly quiet. The evening fog was rolling up the silent street. He’d had a plastic car just like this when he was young. He couldn’t believe he didn’t feel overqualified for it now. He didn’t feel like any less of a little boy.
He sat in the gathering cold. The engine was gone. Nothing could push him home. And there was no reason to go back. He pulled his jacket tightly around himself. Staying out on the highway wasn’t really an option either. He sat in silence.
“Ok.” He nodded. “Ok, ok.” He kicked against the pavement and glided a few feet forward. Kick, glide, Kick, glide. He pulled his arms under his coat and jerked his body back and forth for more momentum. Kick-kick, glide-glide, kick-kick, glide-glide. Slow progress. He didn’t know where he was going — not yet. But he hoped he’d know once he got closer, and that there’d be some downhill.
—–
Joe Wadlington (@joewadlington) lives, writes, and performs in San Francisco. He’s been published in The New Yorker, The Rumpus, and he runs Drafts — a weekly writing prompt that comes to you every Sunday morning. Sign up! www.joewadlington.com/drafts
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