Where Bruce Springsteen lost his notebook
You avert your eyes from a haggard bum
Suspended in front of the blue dumpster
A tentacle broad as an eggplant ripe
Vanishing up their pant leg
You recognize this poor soul as yourself,
Your aging sinewy arms extended before you holding
200 months of printed spam emails from Hotwire
And a lighter
Offering these words:
She rides your hand in the passenger seat
Like an ink horse over the plains of paper
You smell perfume, cold rain, takeaway falafel bag
She vanishes when headlights would reveal her
The paper has given up on the arrival of meaning
But still you try to smear the drops
A voice says "Bite down on this"
You do so until your jaw is broken,
But still this story you must tell
Greg and Sandy wound up on different groups for the scavenger hunt that was featured as sponsored content on their Facebook newsfeed. "The algorithm must have made a mistake." While reluctant to split, they decided that adapting to the situation was more attractive than complaining to the organizers. Indeed the organizers' composure was straining, surrounded as they were by folks trying to look unassuming before their turn to approach with another "simple" request.
The scavenger hunt participants meet near a downtown metro rail station, to encourage green modes of travel. Greg and Sandy didn't want to plan their day around the light rail's schedule, so they compromised and drove from their midtown apartment to a nearby neighborhood, parked and used the city's rental bikes for the remaining several blocks. Both are unexceptionally attractive & tall, white, and bike & beer fit.
The rules for the scavenger hunt are explained, the destinations of each group are doled out, and a list of the items of interest are posted online. Cradling her phone, it dawns on Sandy that this event excludes anyone unable to afford a smartphone. A gust of wind swings the whimsical street art on its hinges; its creaking sounds like malicious laughter. "No!" She chides herself. "I WILL enjoy this. I give myself permission." Greg's lips rest against her ear, startling her as he murmurs, "We should have just taken the light rail." He must have felt it, too. He feels guilty. It makes her feel close to him. "His suffering brings me comfort. Is that what love is?" "No! Not this time. I give myself permission. I give myself permission..." She repeats this incantation, then turns to face Greg. She places his arm around her and kisses him briskly. "You're cute. Promise you won't find a new girlfriend." Greg squeezes with his arm and his hand, cocking an eyebrow. "New girlfriend... didn't see that on the list." Sandy pouts, ironically but not really. Greg tries to reassure her. "It's just like, a couple hours. Then we'll meet at Shane's and explain our experiences to each other." Sandy pouts with sincere irony this time. "I do like explaining..." "I know. And I like listening and french fries, so... let's do this!" A quick embrace and off they go in opposite directions, looking back at different times.
Greg's group diffuses into their first stop: a boutique curiosity shop. His teammates engaged in tedious banter that seemed an awful lot like networking, and to him, rummaging through precariously placed expensive crafts in search of clues was less awkward. The old man at the counter was glaring at him, so he picked up an item and feigned interest. It is a $90 picture frame, but the stock picture is a tragic pile of bones and clay. He suddenly recalls the archaeological expedition to excavate his true self. It has been neglected, and he vividly remembers the outline that he was dusting and recognized as the fossilized bones of mediocrity that caused him to abandon the mission and start online dating.
The old man interrupts Greg's thoughts:
The mind is a sail when the devil's wind blows
You will untie none of the knowledge that he stows
And you only find peace where no other boat goes
Greg understood only the existence of words before the shelves crashed around him.
The old man grabbed his head and bellowed, "Look what you've done!" as Greg ran out the door, his jacket knocking over picture frames like a demon's tail.
Sandy found herself in a wine bar where people talk about being the sort of person who is the sort of person who is the sort of person who would like to be into enjoying liking jazz. Her teammates stare at paintings like they're those magic eye things from the 90's. None are in any hurry to find the next clue, so she strikes up a conversation with the bartender as she pours her a drink.
"So you must be getting a lot of us scavengers, huh?"
The bartender covers Sandy's mouth. "Shhhh!" She turns an ear towards Sandy's torso, then looks around the room. "Can you hear?" Sandy assumes this is a rhetorical question, since the bartender is still squeezing her face.
The body's mouth opens only to eat or speak
Mankind will starve with a pile of apples for a seat
A single bite taken from each
Will you bite?
Will you haunt the world to see who took the bite from you, and why?
The bartender turns Sandy's head, and she sees a homeless man peering in the window. He opens his mouth, and an orchestra of electric bass swells until it scrambles her vision. She is floating in space and combusting into a massive sphere of plasma while the bartender-turned-documentarian calmly describes Sandy's ideals as though they're a planet orbiting the same path as her desire for greatness. The two planets could sustain life but they are timed such that the day after life emerges on the shores of each, they pass too close, destroying both atmospheres. The documentarian reads aloud the lore of sailors on more successful planets, who always go the opposite direction when they notice her in the sky.
The homeless man finishes coughing and, containing herself, Sandy gets up to see if the others would be OK with letting the him into their group.
She approaches them, but all she can see are the backs of their heads. She runs around them a full 360 degrees, then stops, recoils, drops her wineglass and runs out the door. She approaches the homeless man and frantically opens her purse to give alms, but all of her money has turned into apples with bites missing. After staring in disbelief for a moment, she drops her purse and tearfully lunges into man's shoulder. She reaches her arms around him but finds herself holding only some dry cleaning. The address on the tag is her home address, but the garments belong to neither her nor Greg. The address of the dry cleaners is not far, so she decides to return them and let them know of their mistake.
Greg runs through the crowded streets and ducks into a bike shop. "At least I won't break anything here," he muses to himself, catching his breath. Checking his phone, he notices this is actually the next stop on the scavenger hunt. The clues are all in a mixture of poorly researched middle English and pirate speak, but he thinks it says "The past is faster because it has your best legs". Useless. Greg's strategy is to simply walk around looking for envelopes. He absently fondles a handlebar and the clerk speaks up from behind him in nasal monotone, "Fancy a test ride, Smullicans?" What did she call him? "No thanks, just 'scavenging' about, as it were." She grabs him by the wrist and places his hand back on the bike and says, "I insist." Greg moves to protest, but realizes this is probably part of the hunt. She all but pushes him out the door, then pulls it shut behind him and locks it.
Thoughts of the practicality of this in the context of a scavenger hunt pass through Greg's brain as he negotiates his way through downtown traffic. He veers into an alley and passes some teenagers, and he smells blunt smoke. The smell of trash and bad weed takes him back to Caroline. The Beach Boys song featuring the name plays, then fades as he realizes he is riding circles in a fake alley on a "theater in the round" stage set up at Burning Man. Caroline and her husband are hidden in the orchestra pit, tied at the wrists and knees, with 3 people in rubber Space Ghost masks and ska suits clutching rifles. Caroline pleads, "Greg, the audience is full of venture capitalists! You must sell them on the app Trent and I developed." "If we don't raise $6 million, they're going to kill us!" Caroline continues, "That means you can't passive-aggressively use trendy buzzwords to express your disapproval of my success!" Greg looks back and forth between the figures with guns and Caroline. "Remember your Space Ghost bed set?" "GREG THIS IS SERIOUS!" He sighs, then approaches center stage, and audience chatter dies down.
Greg clutches the mic and speaks with all available enthusiasm. "You've all seen, and probably use apps that gather data from social media to measure a person's influence. OutBurn also takes data from web browsers and operating systems to determine:
-How late someone works, and on what sort of material.
-How long they stay on which pages, and
-Which other apps they have downloaded and how effectively they use them,
All in order to appraise not only an individual's influence, but their drive to succeed. Employers need never worry about hiring another dud again!" The faces Greg sees look intrigued, but then the entire audience interrupts in unison, "The app is unnecessary, for it is easy enough for all to see the carcasses of ignored dreams you drag like empty beer cans celebrating your marriage to yourself in the First Presbyterian Church of Mediocrity. Enjoy your french fries."
Sandy arrives at the dry cleaners, which is also an indie music label that only releases cassette tapes. You get a free recording session with your order. Sandy sees a line for the recording booth, and overhears that this is the next stop in the scavenger hunt. She locates the clerk and offers them the bag and a quick explanation, hoping to get back to quietly contemplating what of her adventure to tell Greg. "Maybe you should sing about it" The clerk smiles brightly. He looks like Beck, but without any possibility of facial hair. "I'm sorry, I would but I don't have time to wait-" "No worries," he says, "you can cut in front of them, you're like, our only paying customer. Might as well enjoy the benefits." "Enjoy..." She repeats this to herself a few times. "That's why I'm doing this! I said I was going to enjoy myself today." She grips an acoustic guitar and marches into the recording booth.
She strums an acoustic guitar and begins to sing, thinking of the Internet and using her Leonard Cohen voice:
You can place your pettiness behind ideals
You can hide your smallness with beliefs
You can disguise yourself with words
You can mask your ugliness with taste
But someone is bound to follow you
To the castle of cruelty you call home
Soon after completing her 40-minute musical manifesto, she is handed a Walkman containing her cassette tape, and a case with artwork. All she hears is white noise. It sounds like insects. She unfolds the insert from the case into a full sized poster, which features her at the moment when she realized she actually looked forward to conversations with her mother. The list of instruments includes "Droning cicadas of Sandy's mediocrity", and "Garage full of crickets saying, 'MEHHHHH' before going to the garage of someone more interesting."
The clerk who resembles Beck says, "I know it's a bit rough. We have editing packages starting in the mid 9s."
She screams at Beck, spikes the cassette, walks over to where it bounced and stomps it until it is in several pieces. She marches to the door, then turns around, snatches the dry cleaning bag and storms out.
Greg replays the two gunshots in his mind a few more times with his eyes closed, then formally wakes up and focuses on a series of two-by-fours hanging at least 6 feet from a dumpster, next to which he is sprawled out. He considers his face then winces in pain. Upon standing up and emerging from the side the dumpster, he sees Sandy with the circle of teens, passing a bowl around.
Greg groans and blinks. "Hey there." One of the teenagers quips, "Oh yeah, I remember that guy!" Sandy runs up to him. "Holy shit babe are you OK? I didn't see you!" They kiss, but as his contribution grows sloppy, Sandy pulls away. "Alright, dumpster boy. Wanna hit this then bounce? Ooh, is your eye OK?" Greg nods as she hands him the glass piece. "Yep. Yep. I just gotta return this bike then we can-" he looks around. Sandy asks,"What bike?"
"Uhh... "
One of the kids pulls at his ski cap's tassels. "Fuck! Yeah, some chick came by and said you were done with it." An awkward moment passes where perhaps they are realizing they should have done more. Ski cap breaks it. "She called you a pelican." Another chimes in, "Dude, I can totally see it! The beard!" "HAAAAA!" "Spoonbilled motherfucker!"
Greg hands them back their bowl. "It's all good." They depart and head to Shane's.
Greg inspects the menu. "I'm not sure I want french fries." Sandy creases her brows exaggeratedly. "Me neither. But maybe." They both stare past their menus for a full minute. Sandy says, "Well, if we both half-want french fries, maybe we can share? Now that your dumpster cooties are gone! You look so fucking hot right now..." Sandy runs her toe up Greg's calf under the table. Greg clutches the lapel of his suit jacket. "I can't believe how well it fits. Where did you get it again?" Sandy stares off for a second. "I told you, it was part of the scavenger hunt." Greg nods approvingly, and pulls a tag off the sleeve. "Freshly dry cleaned, too."
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