The Most Unlikely Day

Nimrod went to bed at 23:58, replayed the day's events in his head on fast forward, and fell asleep at 23:59:59 & 999ms. He slept for eight hours, and woke at 1ms before 8, when his alarm went off. He heard Oppenheimer start whining about fostering or fathering the atomic bomb and turned it off. He slipped out of the bed and had a perfect piss, the echoes of the sounds of the piss splashing in the water making a jingling music like freaking Santa and his sleigh bells were about to come splashing up out of the toilet with a pair of alligator shoes, made just for Nimrod. He stared expectantly at the hole in the bottom of the toilet, getting excited when he saw the most minute bubble that it meant something good was going to happen. He made a splash sound with a muted whistle and a slap of his left index finger against his cheek to bend it. He turned around to the mirror.

He showed himself his teeth, and then decided they needed to be brushed. He checked in the morning, as if he were going to find some indicator that they needed to be brushed. The television was on, and there were white people and black people telling white people white stories about what white people should do to ensure their whiteness is properly blanched. He was probably mostly white, but he felt ostracised until the redheaded weather girl came on and told the city, "Bitch, it's gonna be *nice*" They quickly brushed it off, cut back to the anchors and moved on to a story about keeping your lawn nice. "Fuck the grass" he thought to himself. But he liked that the weathergirl just said, "Fuck it. It's the weather." in so many words. The coffee was from the night before, but he sploshed it in a cup recklessly and when some dropped on the floor, he cleaned it with his sleeping socks and became pleased that the one spot on the floor was freshly clean. Then he killed the coffee and poured another more carefully.

The hair fell off his face with the same ease that a knife goes through warm butter. A no-wiper. The shower felt clean and he zipped through a scrubdown. He even thought he could smell the soapy. It didn't matter if he really could. He liked it. It felt like the same water that percolates through the oceans, the mountains, the heavens, and the urines. Fresh, warm, transcendental and maybe a little bit salty. A baptism of Oppenheimer's hydrogen.

In his drawer were the Maritime socks, with blue and grey bands around dark rusty brown colored thick cotton. Oh yes, it was a good sock day. Similarly, the trousers, shirts, and other bits were perfectly arranged to set an auspicious nautical start, all smart and dress-sailable. A red sky at night. He felt it was going to be a good day. Too glad to spend it with you. He had a mango smoothie. Hell-yeah. A quadruple shot of espresso with hot milk and he was out the door, bouncing down the steps.

A cool morning and a beautiful sky. Light blue and pure white clouds. The ocean scintillated like the crests of the swells and breaks of the waves were schools of fish made of gold twisting and turning in the sky. He remembered that he didn't feed his fish, monkey slapped his head, ran back up the steps, did a quick meditate, and fed his fish. Then back out to the beautiful morning. The air was cool. They were spraying down the sidewalks with hoses, maybe they felt similarly. All the cigarette ends, the receipts, the flotsam and jetsam were all being washed away, an ablution. He tread lightly and purposefully on the redeemed strip like he was walking on the same sky that the fish were swimming on.

He didn't have to go far, just next door, and he was at work. Zip zip zip, he knew where the things were that he needed to commence his work, was no longer suffering rookie growing pains, and everything hummed along. He sat down at a table and drank his overheated coffee. Crisp and clean, he got up and went to the bathroom to wash his hands, meditated while he did it, and returned to his coffee. "Come ooooon, Universe!" he thought to himself, like some gambler with a pair of dice looking for double 7s. The next level. Always looking for the transcendental, one had accused him.

The other servers, particularly the young ones, grumbled and pressed their eyes, trying to make something go away. He watched with the mildest anxiety that he was missing something, was making some transgression he wasn't aware of, or was uninformed about some malady from which he should be suffering. The older servers were less burdened. They seemed ready to handle what the day could throw at them, mostly by not preparing themselves. Don't prepare for shit, he told himself. Then he stopped. He just stopped. At the same time, Mr. Corvas walked in with a sheet of paper that Nimrod had seen him read from every day but had never seen the form of what he was reading.

"Good Morning." He looked around the room at everyone's ties, their eyes, and their sad, sleepy expressions, then commenced to rattle off the sections:

Helena: 130s & 140s
Thom: 110s & 120s
Tammy: 90s & 80s
Helius: 40s, and Amy is going to be in, so set up the 30s.
Nimrod: 50s & 70s
Maria: 20s
Victor: you're inside today, the whole inside. it's not going to rain.

"OK? Good."

And so they rocked to our sections, set them up with what they needed and ordered their breakfasts. Nimrod just drank coffee & smoked cigarettes. The earliest guests began to seat themselves wherever, then look around for someone to acknowledge them. There was a host, and typically they'd be seated and given menus, but this never happened. They just sat where they thought they might like to, then wanted to move when they decided they had been wrong, creating a few trivial details to mind when you had to get their food to their new table. But everything sorted itself out. Soon enough it was full-swing middle of the morning and people were asking for this, that, drinks, and checks. It went, and so it went. By 3, Nimrod was tired and sweaty and 200 dollars richer. The sun which had given the morning a brilliant and clear light had now dulled everything with a humid haze. He was glad to be out of there. He clocked out, and zipped back home. The air conditioned apartment dried his skin out and gave him a sleepy comfort.

He had a quick shower, put on his pajama trousers, and had a nap on the sofa while Judge Alex decided that some people were wrong and others were right. He liked how boring it was except commercials came on all excited about furniture and cars and casinos and they interrupted his 40 winks. He started at the ad and told it to shut up. Then he picked the remote off the floor and turned the volume down to "2". He drifted off to a half-sleep where he had a dream that he was living with a Jamaican and a Jamaican woman came to the window with a small package. There was nothing good in the package and he woke up. It was now 5, the sun had started to cast a clearer oblique. He changed into his swimming costume, strapped on his goggles in his apartment and went outside and walked to the ocean.

He made no time for considerations, just waded straight into the shallow water until it was deep enough to swim in. The current was with him, and quickly enough he had passed 8 blocks of beach, his breathing deep and rhythmic, his arms felt stretched and loose. Like a seal, sometimes he would hold his breath and propel himself three or four strokes under water, stopping to stare, holding his breath, with amazement at some little fish or crab. And he was amazed. He meditated and repeated good words with every stroke through the perfect water. They made him cut more easily through the water.

He turned around and tried to swim back 8 streets against the current. He made it 4, decided that it was taking too long and that the sun was farther along its arc, its course than he considered day, there were no lifeguards, and that sharks and other baddies did in fact live where he was. So he walked out to the sand, and up the 4 blocks and back into his apartment. He skipped a shower, he liked the salt on his skin. It made him think he should draw sea salt out with a broom synchronously to the 4 corners of every room, starting innermost. An old Italian thing, like throwing salt over your shoulder. But for now, he was good.

Indeed, it was a lucky day. And it wasn't even night. He put on his seersucker Easter trousers and went out to see some friends. They all spoke positively, without gripe or complaint or issue. It was a comedy. Life was, for a minute, beautiful. He smoked Lucky Strike Lights and drank cafe con leche with no sugar. The latin lady knew he drank con leche with no sugar. He had been told that Lucky Strike cigarettes were not being made or at least supplied to any of the stores around him soon, and this made the cigarette take on a savory caramel. The steamed milk developed a skin as he let it cool, and he slurped it off like some sort of asexual oyster.

Then he went home, ate a large container of leftover pasta, turned the perpetual flame of his music playing at random on and climbed into his bed, salty and dark and tired. If every day went like this, he thought to himself, he may get uninspired but he would be happy and uninspired. And he was happy now. His sheets still smelled like bleach and his clean socks kept his feet warm stuck out from the end of the covers. Yes, it was nice. He almost didn't want to fall asleep it felt so good. Like he would miss the comfort if he fell asleep. So he read, and the words took on light and airy forms and he laughed at characters being mean to each other. One character tricked young Oliver, and he thought it infinitely funny. When someone has such good intentions and they get bent to accommodate a sinister agenda. If it wasn't funny, it was something else, but it was definitely funny. There are few things as great at the privacy of laughing at a book.

Nimrod turned his light off and the green light from the outside cast a corrugated shadow like a mechanical jungle scene on his ceiling. He watched as nothing moved, alternating on the umbra and the silhouetted light. It reminded him of a bedroom he had when he was younger when the train would make its percussions along the track and they would echo through the busy night to his window, bouncing the shadows along in his imaginations like so many boxcars. He would try to hop them with his eyes. Then Nimrod closed his. He began to play back of the day's events through his head.

Oppenheimer, the thousand suns, Santa's sublime sewer alligator shoes, the shower, the socks, the fish, the sidewalks & their priests, the morning meeting, the guests, the orders, the comedies, the mundanities, the cashout, the conversations, the nap, the swim, the animals and the light, the coffees and the cigarettes, the pisses, the prayers, the music & the magic, the women, the old men, the paces, the faces, the failures, their resolutions, the friends, the night, the trains and their schedules (this took some time), the ghosts, the shadows, the lights, the sheets, the other socks, the salt, the book, the telecommande, the music playing piano and string tides on the stereo and his breaths, like some sort of wonderful carnival of beautiful things. Then, he twitched and fell into the sleep of old and gods, at 02:22:22.222. Nimrod hadn't said a word all day, not even to guests as a server, not to his managers, not to anyone. It was a very unlikely day.