He got out of bed. He’d been awake for some time trying to find a reason to get up and drag his comb through the thinning auburn strands that remained precariously across the top of his long, thin skull.
He’d been dragging himself out of bed since 1980. It was 1992.
He worked his way down the worn center of the narrow staircase. At the age of forty-five, he thought about how he needed a new hobby…pipe smoking, or jogging, something to get his mind off the nagging dread that wouldn’t leave his head. On his way down the stairs he wanted to light up a smoke. He hadn’t smoked since the age of eight and he remembered spewing green behind his Gramp’s sturdy pine outhouse.
Aaaaaaaaaaaa,
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,
His clock radio spewed one of those soulful wails that The Beatles could get away with.
I should take voice lessons and become a rocker. Yeah, that would work. Hell, if Mick Jagger can still pull this stuff off at his ripe old age, why can’t I?
He got into the car and the cassette tape started where it had left off the day before. He joined in the melodic wail.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaa, Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.”
The volume control was cranked full on in his car. He liked his tunes loud and growling. This morning’s commute, like every morning’s commute, would be filled with noise. The drive to work deafening with the discordant strains of the road symphony tuning up, like the banging confusion of a high school band warming up for the half time show.
Besides, he thought, I might make the news today…oh boy.
He might make his own noise. The traffic snarled at him at every intersection.
He knew why.
He was driving slower today than most days.
Why not? He had time.
A blonde-topped surfer boy was the first to flip him the finger salute as he dashed by in his neon green Volkswagen Beetle speeding by in the outside lane.
Typical.
If I wasn’t in San Fran, I could be getting flipped off anywhere, by some other asshole in Lincoln, or DC, or Jumbuck, Idaho. I could have each pilot flying by me with one opposing digit up his ass, and the other offending digit flipping me the bird. How do these idiots drive with both hands so busy?
The salutatory gestures kept flying past his three-day beard. He confirmed the solidity of both facts by starting a count of the flock of fingers in his head, while scratching his itching chin.
One…two…three.
Oh! Wasn’t she attractive? There she sits in her GMC Suburban. OAC facelift. She’s a DOA accident victim in the making; filing her nails as she meanders to work…tsk, tsk.
He smiled and waved at the little brunette in the fish tank SUV, as she flipped him a finely manicured central cuticle-topped fuck finger. He repeated the blank white smile and wave routine for every fish, finger flipper, and flounder that joined the line of outside lane lunatics. He looked down at his shoulder thinking a four star insignia must be attached as the salutations became more and more uniform. He must be a General. He was getting real attention from the school of militant fish filing by…a general’s salute.
I’m General Malaise. Prepare for inspection. He tried to force a laugh from his slumping lips. It didn’t come.
He’d left early from his new home in San Anselmo, short-cutting, he hoped, down Sir Francis Drake Blvd. to the 101 freeway, then skirting over to the 580 and on to his office in Richmond.
