Next afternoon, eating cereal. Staring at the Lucky Charms box. Andrew is eating Lucky Charms because he has given up on life. He should create Anathema Charms. One time Andrew’s mom came home with Lucky Charms instead of Cheerios. She was happy and held the Lucky Charms in her right hand, not in a grocery bag. When Andrew saw the Lucky Charms it made him happy. They were in the kitchen and were both very happy about the unhealthy change from Cheerios to Lucky Charms. Now Andrew just feels like Snoop Dog all the time. No he doesn’t. He hasn’t once felt like Snoop Dog. “That was Steve,” Andrew says out loud, for some reason. He feels nauseous. He’ll never see Sara again. What if Jhumpa Lahiri were in love with him? Would he spurn her? She lives on a diamond-studded cruise ship. Her Pulitzer Prize is afraid of her. Andrew grins. As a person, he is lonelier than Sara. She is shorter. Sara Tealsden. Thinking her last name makes Andrew feel miserable and good. Sara Tealsden. Andrew will cry. He should throw the Lucky Charms. Marshmallows, flying through the air. He does it. The box hits the refrigerator and falls to the ground. No marshmallows. No future.
He feeds his dogs, takes them out, brings them in; makes coffee, showers, drinks coffee.
He passes the piano room on the way to the computer room. There is fresh dog shit in the middle of the piano room. Clean it later. There’s also dog piss. Son of a bitch. Steve in Seattle, high-fiving his dad. Go back and apologize. And then overturn a table. Steve.
In the computer room Andrew stares at the table of contents of his story collection. His story-collection. Rejected by over thirty editors. Rejection is good. Putting others ahead of self, giving things away. Success, money, power, fame, happiness, friends; any kind of pleasure — giving it all away, in the pyramid scheme of life, with the knowledge that everything will be returned, and being satisfied with that knowledge; not with the actual return of things, but the idea of the return of things. There is no return of things. There is death. Martial arts, deer, death. Singapore, octopus, death. In each story the main character is depressed and lonely. Every story is twenty-pages and about pointlessness. He opens one of the stories. If he writes good and funny enough, Sara will materialize in the swimming pool. He stares at the story. Delete it. He needs coffee. He already had coffee. Move the story casually to the recycling bin. Empty the recycling bin with cunning and speed. Start a band. You win, you lose. It’s the same old news. Write a story about Steve. Killing rampage in a casino, with lead pipes. Compare and contrast Jhumpa Lahiri and Snoop Dog. It would be funny to kill someone with the Pulitzer Prize. Focus. Andrew has worked for maybe two hundred hours on this story. How did this happen? The story is incomprehensible; rejected over twenty times. He has e-mailed it to people. No one says anything. There is no communication. Stevie Smith, I was much farther out than you thought. Stevie’s oeuvre, sitting there someplace, confused. Music is better. You can’t lie in bed with an audio book and cry and feel miserable and good. Maybe you can. Jhumpa Lahiri will never go on a depressed killing rampage. Snoop Dog, maybe. Jhumpa Lahiri. The New Yorker. One of her stories is called “Sexy.” Sexy. Sara is sexy. Sara, laughing sexily.
Andrew stands.
He lies on the carpet.
He stares at the carpet. Mark.
Mark likes Spiderman more.
Andrew drives to work. Music’s too loud. He turns it off. His parents live in a tower; one of eight. Which one? The cancer one. Sara is in the passenger seat. Andrew looks. She isn’t there. If she were she would point at something and they would climb it. A mountain. There would be mountains. Andrew would hug her. He doesn’t want to deliver pizzas. He wants to build a tree fort. Everyone at work will be trite and clichéd. Andrew is trite and clichéd. He has nothing to say to anyone. No one has anything to say to anyone, for some reason. Everything is clichéd and melodramatic. Andrew’s girlfriend in college tried to kill herself once with Valium from a tooth operation. It made Andrew feel clichéd and melodramatic. He should have laughed maniacally at her, then killed her with a lead pipe. Him and Sara, laughing sexily at the ex’s corpse. Kiss her while she’s laughing sexily. While they’re still in the tree. Marry her with cunning and speed, then kill her, for some reason. Andrew should sell his gigantic house and move to New York City. He would carry his cash in a suitcase. Sara would be there, laughing. They would stand in bookstores. They would hunt down Jhumpa Lahiri and follow her sheepishly with lead pipes. Let’s build a tree fort on her face. Sara would call one of those cops on horses a motherfucker. The cop would avert his eyes. Sara would ask directions for the wild wild west.
At a stoplight everything is calm and quiet. Andrew has the feeling of being filmed. Happens every time at this stoplight. Things must explode. Andrew’s life must change in a trite, clichéd, and melodramatic way. He puts his head out his window and halfheartedly screams. If Sara were here she’d laugh. The light turns green. If Andrew drives ridiculously fast, and insanely, Sara will sense it in New York City, or wherever she is. Andrew drives very fast and sideswipes across two lanes while making an insane turn through an intersection. At work he delivers four pizzas and then delivers Buffalo wings to an old man in pajamas. It is seven p.m. Andrew goes back to his car. There is a dolphin in the backseat.
Andrew drives back to Domino’s.
“Matt,” he says. “There’s a dolphin in the backseat. Can I go home?”
“Let me put these pepperonis on,” Matt says. “Then I’ll cash you out.”
After being paid sixty-cents gas money for each delivery Andrew has fourteen dollars.
“Give half to the dolphin,” Matt says.
They are in Matt’s office.
“Okay,” Andrew says. “Wait. Why?”
“Don’t ask questions,” Matt says. “I’m tired of your insubordination.”
“Okay.”
“Okay,” Matt says. “Open the door but don’t leave this office.”
Andrew opens the door.
“Jeremy,” Matt shouts.
Jeremy comes in the office.
The office is small.
It is a little crowded with three people.
“Yeah?” Jeremy says.
“Get everyone to come in here,” Matt says.
Jeremy leaves.
Andrew leaves.
“Andrew,” Matt shouts.
Andrew comes back.