Sometimes Your Dreams Follow You
The despicable “Barstow Beach Bagelry” had cages of assorted sourdough, everything, salt, egg, whole wheat and other assorted bagels in compartments against the wall behind the counter. Sal Dole scraped burnt cheese off the grill with a spatula. A glass display case housed the apple turnovers, donuts, and crumb cake between him and the customers. Sal wanted to get out of work to finish reading A Game of Thrones.
Sal was far from overweight but had a slight paunch. His thin wrists and stick-like arms made him look like a kid. The thickness of his thighs contrasted the skeleton-structure of his lower legs. His hollow cheeks made him look older than his twenty-five years of age. Triangles of baldness grew like fangs on the front of his head.
He finished cooking two eggs to put in a wheat bagel for the man in a suit and tie. He wrapped up the finished product in tin foil and scribbled “E & C” on it with a permanent marker, but the customer unwrapped it and took a bite out of it.
“Overcooked. It tastes rubbery,” he said.
“I’m so sorry,” Sal said. “I can make you another one!”
“I don’t have the time,” the customer said. “I’m not buying this.”
The owner appeared from his office. His flat forehead, sunspots on his neck, and birthmark on his chin made him look like a terminally ill patient. And customers were unforgiving and utterly inpatient.
“Just what did I hear?” the owner said. “An unsatisfied customer?”
“Exactly,” the customer said. “I’m out of here.”
“Please come again,” the owner said. “We want to make it up to you!”
The customer left out the open door into the bright spring morning.
The owner turned over to Sal. “Stop messing up.”
“Right, boss,” Sal said.
“You were better before,” the owner said. “Just cheer up and get enthusiastic.”
Another dismal day and another mess up. It amazed Sal how his boss never fired him. He must have been in desperate need of a short-order chef. Work degraded Sal.
*
At seven, an unlikely group of eight people in casual button-down shirts and blond jeans walked in. The bell rang multiple times at the open of the door. Their disdainful faces communicated a sense of urgency.
“I want a bagel with egg and cheese…” the one in the bright white shirt said.
“Get me a buttered salt bagel, lentils and a bacon, egg, and cheese on a plain bagel,” the one with the black eye said.
“I need a western omelet,” the one with the goose-head cane said.
“Let me get three eggs over easy,” the one with red hair muttered. “I’ll be fourth in line.”
And three other people ordered some bagels with butter, and another customer ordered one with lox.
Sal cracked the eggs over the bowl and stirred them with a fork. He picked up the bowl, and it slipped out of his hand. It split into four pieces on the floor with a circle of egg under the debris.
“You’re as good as a dead body,” his boss said.
“I’m so sorry,” Sal said. He wanted to crack his boss’s head open and cook his brains for a hungry customer.
Sal forgot who wanted what and asked everyone to repeat their orders.
“What kind of a short order chef are you?” the greedy boss said. “Write the orders down!”
Sal wanted to go home.
*
Two o’clock came, and Jared, the vacuous cashier, came over and talked to Sal. Jared towered over Sal but was lanky as hell and barely able to count and possibly barely literate. The register did all the work for him. He often missed his mark and miscounted often. At least he came to work on time. Customers often checked the money for Jared by sight since he had such a reputation for ripping people off or giving them more five-dollar bills and change.
“I’m a gangster,” Jared said in his monotone voice. “Wanna buy some heroin?”
Sal evaded eye contact with him. Talking with his coworker produced despair and anger every time Jared needed something simple explained to an extreme grain of detail such as getting a driver’s license or using his iPhone to take a picture. Jared had this delusion about being a criminal and he was steadily trying to make it true. Sal’s eldest brother had died after crashing a car on PCP, so he loathed Jared.
“No,” Sal said. “Heck no.”
When he took morphine after a surgery, it made him nauseous.
“Your loss,” that idiot Jared muttered. “I’m going to sell drugs with a forklift.”
Sal stared downward so the dreadful conversation would end. Jared got the gist of things and walked back to the cash register.
The boss locked the front door. Jared gave Sal’s boss all the loot of the store. The owner took it in his hand, smiling. He was a dumb bald tyrant who ruled Sal’s life from five AM to two-thirty PM. The boss got into his Nissan sedan and drove away.
Sal never wanted to work. His job took thirty-eight hours a week away from him he could never get back. He played his numbers on the lotto and scratched off a Win for Life every day for some hope. If he worked somewhere else, he would be treated the exact same.
The tulips in the park had sprouted and the green was returning to the trees since last summer. The park was teeming with people who sat idle, enjoying their unemployment.
A child-like man with a round head sat with perfect posture on a park bench, throwing seeds to the doves and pigeons on the jogging path. The dirt road Sal walked on circled around two football fields and a baseball field. His perky face was familiar; he fed the birds every day. This man probably did not have a job.
Sal stood in front of the man’s vision and said, “What is your secret?”
“I’m sorry?” the man said.
“You’re here in this park every afternoon. Do you have a job?”
“God bless. I’ve been retired from the police department for two years. I exerted myself far too much in the twenty years I worked back then.”
“I want to retire.”
“Everybody does. I wouldn’t wish a forty-hour work week on the most despicable criminal. I’m finally happy in life.”
“I need a pension.”
“You’re still young. You should get a government job.”
But Sal did not want to work anymore. The Bagelry was an oppressive factory producing disdain in him for the world. He wanted to get back home and engross himself in A Game of Thrones and predict how the good guy was going to suffer a terrible fate. Like life, the bad guys always won in the horrible world.
There was a dainty lady in a dirty t-shirt sitting next to a shopping cart full of cans and torn rags. She obviously did not have a job. Sal did not want to ask her about her secret to not working because it might make her sad.
“Please,” the woman said. “I need any change you can spare.” She stretched her hand out.
So that was her angle—begging and living without shelter. The poor, innocent woman needed a bag of potato chips or some bread. She wore stockings and a plastic top hat adorned with the stars and stripes of the American Flag. Sal reached in his pocket and gave her his last five-dollar bill. She took it and smiled with happiness, revealing missing front teeth. Now she could get food. She was not a successful unemployed person.
“The angels walking around on this great Earth are just like you. I see them all the time. You’ll be free like them if you follow your father.”
Sal smiled at her to be polite. This outcast woman was mentally ill. He did not want to ruin her fantasy of being a clairvoyant—it must have protected her from the continual disappointments life threw at her.
She raised her hands in the air and went on: “The bridges are collapsing in slime. Clear the chasm to get to the promised land.”
Sal told her to have a good day and went on walking around the park. He approached a man his age—in his mid-twenties. He wore a rainbow flannel shirt and plaid pajama bottoms. He stood with his foot on the park bench, smoking a big joint. The air reeked of the intoxicating odor of marijuana. His eyes were completely red.
“You are smoking pot in the afternoon,” Sal said. “You have a job?”
“My whole name is Leopold Fauntroy the fourth. And I’m retired royalty.” The man took a deep drag of his pot and blew out a big cloud of smoke.
“Retired royalty?”
“People work to support me! I collect food stamps and disability, and I live like a king!”
“You’re so lucky! How do you do that?”
“Anyone can do it.”
“How do I do it? I’ve never been so miserable working.”
“Hey—I love cooking up a scam. I know the system.”
“Scam?”
“You can fake a mental illness like depression. Dial the suicide hotline and go to the psych ward. From there you can lay in bed the whole time and eat a lot or a little. You’ll get the diagnosis, I guarantee. And Medicaid will pay retroactively as long as you have no income.”
*
This man had a great plan. Sal had to study up on this, so he read up on it on the internet at home. Depression was a common mental illness that made people lethargic and have negative thoughts. People with this condition did not enjoy things. He could feign this easily. And with his roommate out across town having sex with his uneven-eyed football-player of a girlfriend, there would be no interference.
He packed three changes of clothes but made sure not to bring toothpaste or anything else that could be hygienic. He dialed the suicide hotline after googling “I want to kill myself.”
“I want to die!” he said on the phone. “Help!”
He gave the operator his address, and the paramedics brought him to St. Christopher’s Hospital. He told the same thing to the psychiatric evaluator and got into the psych ward.
*
A tired-looking person in a lab coat unwrapped him out of the stretcher. The psych ward was a rectangular hall with an electronic door at the end of it. He went into the dining room. A bunch of flimsy chairs surrounded five tables. Leopold sat at the table reading a newspaper. This time, he wore a hospital gown.
“No matter how far I run or hide, I can’t escape fate.” He took a sip of his hot tea that smelled of cherries. “The psychiatrist thinks I’m bipolar. He sent me here when I told him people in my homeless shelter are conspiring to stab me to death. It’s ridiculous. They watch violent movies and fight each other. They are animals who want me dead.”
Leopold was crazy. He needed to be there.
“I’ve taken your advice!” Sal said. “I’m going to live the dream.”
“You’re secret’s safe with me. But no one would believe you even if you said you weren’t depressed.”
“All I need is a quick diagnosis to get on my way,” Sal said.
“You must play the part. Don’t take a shower until they force you and stay in bed.”
“Great idea. Thank you so much!”
“If you follow your dreams, you can accomplish anything.”
Sal called in sick to work. The boss would have to be his own terrible short-order chef.
*
Sal lay in bed drinking water all day. His gums became inflamed from not brushing his now-yellow teeth. His body smelled so much, he could make out his own foul odor of excrement. His crotch itched.
The social worker assigned to him walked into his room after knocking. Her fatness was disgusting. His ruse worked on her. She frowned and put down a change of clothes on his bed.
“Time to wash up,” she said.
She led him down the hall and unlocked the shower. He washed himself in hot water and liquid soap.
He missed meals on purpose and survived on graham crackers. He put a lot of effort into getting things right.
A few days later, he saw the psychiatrist, Dr. Arya. The social worker brought him into a meeting room with a camera on the wall. Sal sat down in front of the image of Dr. Arya on a giant flatscreen TV. The psychiatrist sat in bed and wore a red turban and a tie. Pinstriped yellow bars lined the wall behind him.
“How are you finding the place?” he said.
The social worker took a seat in the chair next to him.
“I have been doing terribly since I got here. I’m tired. Do you have a diagnosis for me?”
“It’s pretty obvious you have depression,” Dr. Arya said. “I’ll prescribe you Effexor. It should perk you up and get you out of here quickly. I will refer you to a clinic where I work, too. So, let me get this right, you have no psychiatric history since turning twenty-five?”
It was as if the skies rained gold and diamond hailstones on Sal. Prosperity struck him over the head.
“None, I just sucked it up before and traversed through it.”
“I see. There’s a lot of people like you who have it mild and can work.”
“I can’t work. I have such problems with work. I hate it. I can’t do it. I’m too messed up to do anything. All I want to do is lay in bed.” Sal rehearsed this.
“You are showing some symptoms.”
Everything went as planned. Now Sal had the diagnosis in his paperwork. His hard work paid off.
*
He stayed another week in the psych ward. He wanted to get out, so he took showers every day and paced the halls to get exercise. The meds made him a little jumpy and excited. The stay there was a resounding success. Soon, he could live his dreams.
*
A case manager was assigned to Sal. He was a burly stout man with eyes that appeared to display shock because they were wide at everything. He could never find the right words for things because English was not his native language. Vlad was his name.
“I’m here to assisted you,” Vlad said. “We’ll to go to Social Security to get your paperwork stabled. Then we go to Social Services for you to collect temporary assistance. You’ll be able to press your claim and, compared to social services, it will be the same.” He spoke with a rhythm and a rhyme.
“Excellent. So, I won't have to work?” Sal said.
“Indoubly. Yes. That’s the concerted point.”
*
When Sal got home, he put his Effexor in the medicine cabinet, hoping to never take it again or even look at the orange hexagon pills. His roommate had left to work at the supermarket, so he had the apartment to himself. He made a necklace out of pasta and a fishing line. He solved the most complicated jigsaw puzzle of London Bridge. He sketched an outline of his own hand. He baked a carrot cake from a mix. He wanted to spend time spending time. And it did not matter that he made less money. He finished reading A Game of Thrones.
*
He went to work the next morning after being out “sick.” He wore a white bathrobe and llama speckled pajamas.
“The way you’re dressed is absurd!” the evil boss said. “Get in the back and put on a Barstow Bagelry t-shirt!”
“My attire makes a statement. I’m quitting this dead-end job!”
“I’ll give you a raise! Just show up dressed normally, please!”
“I’m done with the working life. I’m retired now.”
“How are you retiring?” The boss put his hand out to accentuate his question. “You’re a kid!”
“You are a terrible oppressor. I work, and you make all the money. I’m tired of getting your parasitic ass rich!”
“You won’t quit because you’re fired!” The boss made his hands into fists. “Just who do you think you are?”
“I’m a smart person who sees all that is unjust with this world.”
“Get out of my sight!”
Sal tied his bathrobe tight and went out into the room-temperature air with the birds singing “Boop boop bedee!”
*
Vlad helped him fill out his forms for Medicaid, Food Stamps and Temporary Assistance. Sal listed his checking account with two dollars and fifty-six cents in it and honestly said he had sixty-six dollars in his pocket. Vlad handed him a sheet of all the food banks in town and would drive him for a tour to get his sustenance from all the pantries when he could. Leo did embellish a bit about how he ate like a king. Medicaid paid Sal’s psych ward bill retroactively; Leo mostly told the truth.
*
After the week turned into a month, there was trouble in paradise. He did not feel like boiling beans, so he bought sandwiches and ice cream for dinner from the delicatessen competing with his old employer. Laundry was an unending chore, so he wore the same jeans three times before washing them. His pajamas were comfortable, so he began to wear them all the time. He did not drink milk out of the container since he shared it with his roommate.
He went to the park during that painfully bright summer. Leopold slept on the park bench next to the dugout with a metal flask in his hands. He wore white shorts and a striped shirt. He sat up and took a swig. Sal waved at him.
“Ah. Fellow disability collector,” Leopold said. “I have solidarity with you.”
“Now I have all this free time, and I don’t know what to do! It’s a problem I’ve always wanted,” Sal said.
“I do drugs and drink all the time.” Leopold guzzled his bottle and took a deep inhale. “It gives me something to do and some hope. Seven dollars for a half gallon of corn liquor!
“I like getting high in the park. Away from the denizens of my homeless shelter. I don’t have to share either.”
Drinking made Sal sick during his High School prom when he threw up on his ugly date’s lap. He smoked pot once, too, on a golf course and thought everyone in the street was talking ill of him; “He’s a degenerate,” “He’s like putting your thumb in your belly button,” and “He’s a cancer.” His painful experiences made him hate drugs. At least Leopold had something to do. Drugs were good for him, so what? Sal had books.
“If you don’t get something to do, you’ll go crazy.” He tipped his flask into his mouth all the way. “Savor it! Savor it!”
Sal nodded and went back home to read Dead Souls by Gogol. Chichikov’s scams made him hysterical with laughter.
*
Dr. Arya worked at the clinic every day except Friday. On Fridays he worked at the psych ward. He let Sal into his clean office. A painted wood plaque shaped like a hand with an eye on it hung from the wall. The image did not matter. Dr. Arya sipped a cup of herbal tea.
“You haven’t filled your prescription for Effexor for two months. Are you ok?” Dr. Arya said.
“Of course I am. I’ll fill it when I get home,” Sal said. “I’ve been feeling great.”
“You seemed depressed last week.”
“The world is just bad.” Sal sniffled. “I’m fine.”
“So, what did you do yesterday?”
“I went for a walk in the park, and Leopold lay sprawled out on the picnic table. I did not bother to wake him up. I did absolutely nothing from the morning until the afternoon—I paced back and forth in my apartment.”
“Do you have any social interaction?”
“My roommate comes home and talks to me…. He’s usually with his girlfriend at her house.”
“You should get more things to do.”
“I’m fine. I’m better alone—less judgment to deal with. People are so unpredictable and nosey.”
“That’s concerning. Maybe you should get a job or volunteer.”
“Heck no. I’m too messed up to work. Volunteering is like working but not getting paid—pointless!”
“If you don’t, having too much free time may harm you.”
Sal nodded and the session ended. He walked home in the sweltering heat.
He finished Dead Souls. It was not as funny at the end as he hoped. Stories were all the same: protagonist, challenge and resolution again and again. Every time he took a bite out of chicken or beef Ramen noodles, he wanted to spit them out because he had developed an aversion to them. Oranges took too much work to peel. Maybe he should look for something else to do? Life was so heavy and burdensome. Every doctor's appointment was a source of stress because he had to be somewhere. If only he could be nowhere. He stretched his arms out. He could not remember the last time he brushed his teeth. His messy beard grew long down his chin, and he kept scratching at it. He ran out of things to do and lay in his unmade bed. If there was a god, he would be sinning just thinking about death.
It was summer. Whether cold or hot weather, either was unbearable. Existing pained him because there was nothing worth doing. And he craved chicken or steak, but meat was expensive.
He uttered a “no” and tried to count the tiles in the ceiling to stop his negative thoughts. He said “no” again. His words fell off his mouth and onto the floor. They rotted like roadkill or pig’s feet in the trash. He was no longer whole.
A good way of ripping himself into pieces would be sticking his head on the train tracks across town. His head would crack like an egg. He did not know when the train came, but it was a half-mile walk. Night approached. He changed from his dirty shirt into a less dirty one from the laundry basket and walked towards his destination. If all was good with the universe, the world would save him from himself.
*
The train tracks were over dirt and surrounded by pavement. The railroad crossed over a bump and bordered the chain-link fence of an electric transformer. Sal lay down and put his head on the left track. He closed his eyes.
Sal opened his eyes, and a tiny girl in a pink camisole stood outside the railroad crossing fixtures. She held a cellphone.
“I called the cops. You don’t deserve to die,” she said.
“No. I wasn’t dying—I was inspecting the rails. All fine!” he said. “They’re flat, and there’s nothing on them.”
The cops came with their sirens on and stopped the car before the tracks. The railroad crossing sign blinked and the railings went down. An officer grabbed Sal by the legs before the train came and threw him face down on the ground.
“You’re coming with us—good thing we got here.” The cop handcuffed Sal.
*
Sal went back to the psych ward. This time, a man rocked back and forth in the dining room. A chinless woman with a body like a cannonball banged her head against the wall until the techs held her down. Another boy shuffled down the hall, drooling on himself. A large-nosed man argued with himself in the hall. The psych ward was a horrible place. Seeing all these nuts was despairing.
An angular woman with gray hair and bangs pounded her fist against the table down the hall. “Long term is jail! I won’t go! I won’t go!”
*
Dr. Arya happened to be at St. Christopher’s that day. He frowned at Sal and wrote things in a notebook in the hall.
“You’re lucky you’re alive,” Dr. Arya said.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself!” Sal said. “Let me out. This is all just a misunderstanding! I’ve been scamming the system this whole time. Can’t you see!”
“Everyone is worried. I’m sending you for more help from long-term treatment.”
Sal glanced down and bent his posture. The scam worked, but he was too believable. Hanging around in the psych ward with all those crazy people was what actually made him depressed. Work, even at a petty job, was better than being regarded as a sickie.
~