The best way to do anything is to just let the water slide spit you out somewhere.
— Feist

10:10 a.m.: Several employees are talking about their upcoming summer vacations. “I just booked a wine tour of South Africa,” new guy brags.
10:10:32 a.m.: “I’m off to Greece,” music guy says. “I’m going to be staying in the village where they filmed The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.”
10:11 a.m.: Art guy says a friend of a friend of a friend’s sister’s chef has invited him to stay in Nas’ guest house in St. Croix. “Nas isn’t going to be there, but I’m going to be able to use his scooter to go to town for guava berries, chilled mauby, triggerfish and fresh conch.”
10:12 a.m.: Jesus, I mumble to tech girl. Where do people get the money for these trips? I’m lucky if I can … “Oh, I’m off to Northern Italy in two weeks,” she says. “I can’t wait. I just picked up an Italian dictionary so I can learn one sentence: ‘Antonio, come with me now, and you will not be disappointed.’ ”
10:14 a.m.: How do these people do it? I’ve been trying to calculate if I even have enough saved up to go to Austin, Texas, to watch the urban bat colony under the Congress Avenue Bridge rise into the sky at sunset. And then, I want to travel a little further south to that town where all they do is make black-velvet paintings. I’ve heard it’s like Hershey, Pa., only instead of street lanterns shaped like Kisses and Hershey-bar park benches, everything is black velvet.
10:15 a.m.: Black-velvet parking meters. Black-velvet lampposts. Black-velvet pizza.
10:16 a.m.: I hear you can roam through the town at 3 a.m. and visit with old women on their porches as they work on portraits into the night. I envision holding a frail señorita’s easel steady as she puts the finishing touches on a Day-Glo Freddie Mercury mustache.
10:17 a.m.: “Yeah, sounds real quirky,” new guy snickers. “Have fun. I have to go get my cash changed into Krugerrands.”
11:02 a.m.: Marketing guy has all the ladies giggling on the far side of the office. He’s all animated and full of hand gestures, and then, there’s a huge uproar of laughter. “OK, I’m late for an appointment,” he says, throwing his hands up and heading toward the door.
11:03 a.m.: He gives me a sly look because he told me the other day how he’s able to leave every encounter on a high note. “I set it up, slay ’em and get out fast,” he explained. “If I linger, the ladies get bored with me, so it’s all fast and furious. I always disappear on a high note.”
11:06 a.m.: Get phone call from marketing guy. “T, you gotta do me a big favor,” he says. “In the left-hand corner of my desk there’s a fax that I need the number from.”
11:07 a.m.: Oh no, I say. You don’t leave on your high note and then start giving me chores. “Come on, you heard that laughter,” he says. “I had no choice. I had to bolt. The ladies love a guy with a great sense of humor.”
11:07:51 a.m.: No, they don’t. That’s only in magazine surveys, I retort. In real life, women love Brad Pitt and guys who can fix shit.
11:08 a.m.: “Come on,” he says. “It’ll only take you a second.” Forget it, I say. You’re not going to live a life full of consecutive high notes while I scramble around like your errand boy. “Can you just bring the whole stack of papers out front to my car then?” he asks. You’re still in the parking lot? “I don’t really have any place to go,” he answers.
11:09 a.m.: Here’s a high note for you, I say, slamming the phone down.
12:12 p.m.: Get a call from a friend I haven’t heard from in ages, and he’s all excited about a catalog that sells original artifacts that belonged to Jesus. That can’t be, I say. “It be,” he says. “They have currency that he exchanged for sundries and such: Jesus cash.”
12:13 p.m.: I don’t even know if they had currency back then, I say. “They have some tools he used, too,” he adds, “and a couple of hats.”
12:13:28 p.m.: I don’t think Jesus wore hats, I say. I’ve never seen a picture of him in a hat. “You know so little,” he snaps.
12:27 p.m.: Go to lunch alone.
12:44 p.m.: While assembling my tuna kit, I try to imagine all my co-workers’ vacations. I can’t really picture the music guy diving for sponges in the Mediterranean or the art guy going to market on Nas’ scooter. There is only one thing I know for sure.
12:45 p.m.: Antonio will not be disappointed.
1:09 p.m.: In the parking lot, red carpet girl is sitting in the front seat of her car, eating a ham-and-cheese Dunkin’ Donuts sandwich. “Hey,” she says, “you know how I always tell you my boyfriend has, like, a blogger’s body? No more. He’s totally buff and lost about 17 pounds since he got that gamey thingamajig.”
1:10 p.m.: What gamey thing? “The Wii. He was playing tennis for, like, 11 hours straight one day last week. And he has, like, Popeye arms from the deep-sea fishing. I had been bugging him to get a personal trainer, but now … ”
1:11 p.m.: Wii is his personal trainer?
1:11:11 p.m.: “You got it.”
2:23 p.m.: My older brother calls and says, “The reason I’m not doing much with my life is because everything has been done. I want to leave my mark on this world, but there’s really nothing left to do.”
2:24 p.m.: There must be something left, I reply. “That’s what I thought. That’s why I got up early today,” he says. “I thought there were two things left that hadn’t been done, but I went to the library to double-check, and guess what?”
2:24:12 p.m.: They’ve been done.
2:24:31 p.m.: “Yep.”
2:26 p.m.: Decide to leave on a low note.
2:47 p.m.: On the ride home, I marvel about how, by nature, the days are as disjointed as my thoughts.
2:50 p.m.: Stop marveling.
3:01 p.m.: Suddenly everything is bothering me — why can’t I fix shit? — and my mind starts to wander between exits on the interstate. To lift my spirits, I start to envision my own vacation. With bats streaking overhead, I see myself cutting across town in a black-velvet taxi, sipping from a Styrofoam cup full of dirty tequila and then standing in the center of the street, arguing with a scarlet-haired woman over the last Lenny Kravitz portrait in town.
3:04 p.m.: My cell phone rings, and when I pick it up, the first words are, “Hold on, asshole.” OK, I say automatically. “Just a second. She’s coming. I found her on the fifth floor. She makes crepes for a living now, but she has a degree in theology and went to seminary or some shit,” the voice says. “Hold on. Here she is. Here’s your motherfuckin’ proof.”
3:05 p.m.: Hear a small gurgle and then a faint, quivering voice.
3:05:07 p.m.: “Jesus wore hats.”

#22995

I’ve been sitting here in our living room for the last 45 minutes staring at the same page in this Columbia House catalog, my eyes currently lost in Bloodhound Gang’s One Fierce Beer Coaster, #445678. Anna says we’re obligated to make four more selections, but I just realized by the time they come in the mail, I won’t be here.
Our 7-year-old daughter, Emily, is circling the sofa, chasing an almond-colored puppy. She has just said to her mother, “Daddy should name the puppy. Daddy comes up with the best names.” I don’t know what she’s basing it on. I named our last dog Havana and the only other pet we have is a gerbil named Turk.
“You have to name him tonight, Daddy,” she says. But I can’t do that. I don’t want that to be the last thing I do before I walk out — name a puppy.
#379875 Tone-Loc — Loc’ed After Dark
My parents will hate me. They love Anna and it certainly will complicate their relationship with Emily, but I … I don’t care for some reason. It can’t be about that, I keep telling myself. I was going to broach it tonight, bring up this silent plot in my head that’s been fermenting for months. But it’s Friday and I really don’t want the weekend to be hell for any of us, especially me. It can wait till Monday … Tuesday.
A guy at Publix once gave me his theory on how someone my age makes a decision like this because it’s the only thing in his life he can change. There’s no getting out of the job — you’re in too deep. There’s no getting out of the bills — they’re way too high. There’s no part of the day that can be used to create more time for yourself. But these people, to whom you made a solemn oath, suddenly seem dispensable. It’s strange how my marriage has become the easiest thing in my life to change.
#392217 Travis — The Man Who
I don’t want to hurt anybody. There’s a guy at work who told his wife he “never loved her.” After 17 years, he says, “I never loved you.” Even if you meant it, how could you say something like that? Why? To make that person feel they have never been loved? I assumed he must have just blurted it out in the heat of distress, that she wouldn’t accept every other reason he offered up so he just reached for the only thing left to say — “I never loved you.” I won’t make that mistake. I have to be more calculated and methodical, even if it makes me appear cold. I can imagine Anna calling her sister and telling her that I was stainless-steel and zombielike, but I know I have to save my softness for Emily.
#1614226 Trainspotting — Soundtrack
Anna is going to start by claiming that there must be somebody else. “I know you,” I can hear her saying. “Unless something or somebody dropped out of the sky right on top of you, you’d never even think of changing anything about your life. Who the hell is it? I know you.”
She doesn’t know me. But I’ve even made a mental note not to dare say that or she’d sarcastically rip me up. “Oh, no, nobody knows you. You’re such a mysterious and complicated man. Give me a fucking break.”
Anna’s always in motion. Each time I get distracted enough to look up from this catalog, she’s somewhere else — in the kitchen, rummaging through the hall closet, wrestling on the ground with Emily and the puppy. Now, she’s curled up on the couch reading something by somebody named Dean Koontz. “Honey, I want to pick some, too,” she says, glancing at me. “Don’t use up all our selections.”
#322891 The Crystal Method — Tweekend
I already know where I’m going to stay — an apartment down by the boatyard, near where the drift-fishing charters head out, just went up for rent. During the season, I won’t be able to afford it, but for the time being, it’ll be perfect. A friend once told me that if you’re miserable, it helps to have plenty of boats around. And I do believe he’s right, because each time I stopped by to check on the place, there were lots of people sitting alone, eating corn chips and staring at the boats coming and going. Lots of miserable people.
Emily loves boats that are large enough to force the bridge to go up and down. I imagine us sitting together on the balcony every other weekend, watching the yachts idling in the distance and then trolling through on the half hour. I can see us setting our watches by them and Emily jumping up, “Daddy, it’s time. It’s time.”
#334508 The Cure — Greatest Hits
It’s time for Emily to go to bed. Anna and I always take turns putting her in but for the past three nights, I’ve been doing it without provocation, as if the act would somehow make up for the abandonment. “Oh, at least he put his daughter to bed those last few days before he moved to that scummy shipyard.” You know, I’ve heard people talk about the secret life we have in our heads, but I really just view this as the planning stage.
As I look at Anna now, I’m trying to come up with a good reason for this escape — and not just for her, but for me, too. I really can’t point at any one thing she has done. I can’t say she has changed any more than I can say I’ve changed. She is as beautiful and energetic as ever. The only thing about her that has really been starting to grate on me is how she takes ownership of things that should actually remain in the public domain. Like when she says, “I have to watch my Will & Grace at 8:30” or “I have to have my Starbucks Royal Blue mocha.” But that’s certainly no reason for what I’m about to do to us.
Anna has just jumped up off the couch and is insisting that we give the puppy a bath. “But I was just going to put Emily to bed,” I say.
“No, tomorrow he will be too big for the tub. It’s now or never,” she sings, scooping the puppy up.
Emily is giggling and the sight of them both holding this upside-down puppy is so endearing that they quickly pull me into this circle of joy and I can immediately foresee the suds and the splashing and the laughter that could stretch through a lifetime.
It’s a good thing that I decided over five weeks ago not to let spontaneous joy get in the way of all this. Once I set my mind to it, I realized I have an uncanny ability to ignore the happiest days of my life. It may sound sad but, to be honest, I’ve never had anything I couldn’t let go of. And, for some reason, I don’t seem to care how that affects the people around me.
# 406744 Social Distortion — Social Distortion