One Day As A Lion - Chapter Two

The first concrete memory I have of that day was getting iodine dripped into my eyes. Not an altogether pleasant experience. I like being able to see, though, so I decided to suck it up for a while.

Dr. Palmer is a relatively nice guy, but I can't really gauge him as a person considering I only seem him at the most twice a year. He seems to be the type of doctor who resents that sort of thing, but I like I said, it's nothing I can be sure of.

"Okay, I'm just checking to see if your eyeballs are in okay shape. Open your eyes really wide and don't blink," he said, Inching a blue ring of terror ever closer to my eyeball. The room itself was probably designed to be as calming as possible, so that people don't freak out when they're getting crap shoved into their eye sockets. It's a worthy outcome, I must say, eye health.

I tried to remain as still as possible. I think I did pretty well, I didn't have to be told to sit still. I think they call that 'growth' in the adult world.

He switched to my left eye, leaving aerials in my right eye. Another minute of this or so and I was able to blink again. Dr. Palmer told me that my prescription didn't change that much and that I shouldn't put my contacts in for at least another two hours. He wasted no time in getting me right out of the chair and on my way out the door. It hit me as I left the office that I would have to go back to work.

I had a ten-minute walk from the eye doctor's office to the bookstore that I used to be an employee of.

What, you expected a guy who passes out in the middle of a grocery store without pants to have gainful employment?

Well, that walk usually goes by quickly. There's a cool little coffee shop that I frequent that's near the eye office, it's where I usually go for lunch. It was a path I walked pretty much every day and knew about as well as I know the freakish mole on my left thigh.

But anyway, the walk was usually quite pleasant. The path took me through the main part of town, the tall trees from the park on the left and the apartment buildings on the right providing a cool sort of canyon effect for people on the street. It was my favorite part of the walk. About five blocks from the park I would arrive at a four-way intersection, play a solo game of Human Frogger, and before I knew it I would be walking into the quaint little Corner Book Shoppe that I had been working at for about a year and a half while I took classes.
All of that is well and good, but this particular Thursday was unbearably goddamn cold. My eyes still felt a bit...gummy? Yeah, gummy's the word, after I was subjected to the iodine deluge. Coupled with an Absolute Zero wind chill, my eyes felt like they were going to be frozen open.

As you could imagine, my demeanor when I walked into book shop wasn't exactly civil. Working to further aggravate the mood, a car driven by the most rotund man I've ever seen nearly clipped me as I crossed Death Avenue on my way to work. I walked into the shop thinking about how big a person would have to become before your own gravitation started affecting nearby houseplants and small children. I settled on a half a ton but it would have to be an experiment for another day.

The shop itself is quaint and warm, with an extensive collection. All genres represented. You see, working in a bookshop is ideal for me because I love books. And writing. I also love the feeling of floating in a pool and having bubbles run along the length of your back, but I digress. Two other people worked there besides myself: Steph, the other clerk; and Jim, the owner.

To be quite honest, Steph was the only reason I worked at the shop for so long. That, and the money. But Steph was worlds better. She was also a student, but for the life of me I can't remember her major. It doesn't matter, though. She was blonde and about as tall as I am, with the cutest dimple in her chin and a body that literally caused a man to wreck his car outside of the shop last summer. She didn't physically stop traffic (the wreckers and the police cruisers did a fine job of that), but what I'm trying to say is that she's a goddamn knockout. Smart, too. We'd talk about our favorite books and what classes we were taking and our future plans. She'd talk about her boyfriend Steve and how he shotgunned a Four Loko last night and managed to knock down several traffic lights. That's where I'd usually change the subject.

Speaking of which, there's Jim. I'd really like to say he's sort of a nice guy but that would be an insult to the idea that anybody anywhere has ever done anything nice to or for others. Jim was a skinny, balding man who resembled a duck and spoke in the most gravelly voice this side of a bullfrog. He rarely came down from the apartment he kept above the store, and when he did he was always dressed in a fluorescent tracksuit and always seemed to be nursing a runny nose. I swear to God I saw him on an episode of America's Most Wanted when I was a kid, something about a man robbing a liquor store in a chicken costume or something equally sane. The man gave us shitty pay, shittier hours, and the shittiest excuses for the previous two. I once tried to ask him about installing a comics shelf to help attract business (a plan that Steph was 100% behind) and he proceeded to chase me out of his office with an Italian-leather shoe. He's the sole reason I've given serious thought to burning the shop down at least three times in the past, but the bastard would probably make a killing in insurance and I'd probably be caught anyway.

So in I walk, cold, half-blind, and angry at the planet. Steph's behind the counter, reading a leatherbound copy of something-or-other as I go to hang up my coat.

This might be a good time to introduce myself. My name's Brian. I'm just south of six feet and have shaggy brown hair that I cannot seem to tame no matter how much fire I throw at the problem. If you ever see me with facial hair, it's either because I can't afford razors or I'm too chickenshit to steal my roommate's electric shaver. I hate the taste of onions and once punched a circus clown on half-accident. That's not what I told the cops, though.

Once my ratty old trenchcoat was secure on the rack behind the counter, I asked Steph where the boss had been all day.

"Haven't seen him since I opened up. All he said was that we were, under no circumstances, to change the music," she said, not really looking up from her book but probably not meaning much by the gesture.
That stereo of his. I was convinced that it could only play one genre of music: generic 80's synth pop, the genre that no stereo plays well. On the extremely rare occasion that Jim was out of town or just generally not around for his own damn reasons, we would play more civilized music. We actually got a great deal of foot traffic in those days, but ever since my last suggestion ended in shoe-assault, I decided that I would keep quiet on this matter.

We didn't have much to do, so for a good half hour Steph and I just bullshitted about nothing in particular. She was reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time, it turned out.

"You'll love that thing. You'll love it so much that every answer to every question will be 42," I said.

She giggled. "Wait, what?"

"Oh, I guess you haven't gotten that far yet. You'll see."

"Fair enough." I let her get a little bit farther into the book as I settled into a cushy seat with a Vonnegut story.

I started noticing that the CD in the stereo was skipping. An ungodly, awful beat behind the dry, grating synth line that was being dragged behind a pickup truck was all that could be heard. My thoughts were drowned out by mechanical mediocrity, but it was only when I went to hit the stereo that I realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. The music sounded like that on purpose.

Standing there, in that one singular moment, something fundamental within me changed. It wasn't something I could easily place. Maybe the room was getting to me. Maybe the iodine seeping through my retinas was affecting my sense chemistry. Maybe the half-a-bagel and week-old cream cheese I ate before the appointment was roiling within me and lettings its hate be felt through my stomach lining. I couldn't place the exact cause but I could sure as hell place the cause.

That goddamn techno music.

I'd had it. I was sick of having to hear that shit day in and day out while I worked for a walking charicature of Everything Wrong With The 80's/Humanity. Somehow he managed to sort of ruin books for me since I started working there. He needed to be brought down several thousand pegs.

"Are you okay?"

I whipped around to face Steph, noticing a look of concern on her face. She was wearing a lovely grey sweater that did her body all sorts of good.

"Um...yeah, I'm fine. It's just...this godammn music." I noticed that I had clawed fingernail marks into the book I was holding.

"Yeah, I'm sick of it, too. He might be back at any moment, though. Just leave it alone," she said.

I couldn't. I was frozen in place by sounds too horrific to be considered anything other than the sounds of dying dreams. I'd had enough.

Without pausing the 'song,' I reached into the CD player, removed the accursed piece of plastic shame, and snapped the damn thing into two pieces.

Snapped it right in half, at the exact moment that the door opened and our boss returned.

"What in the fuck are you doing?" Jim asked.

I whipped to my right and saw that he was wearing the most offensive shade of green ever devised. A full-body windbreaker in the worst color you've ever seen. He was carrying a powdered donut, a few remnants of which were caking the facial hair around his mouth. At least some of it was donut powder. Probably.

"I'm just...sick, I guess," was my reply. I was probably staring dead-eyed at the wall at this point but it's all pretty much a blur right here.

"Sick? Like with a goddamn cold or somethin'? Speak up, dude! Also, I might add, who the fuck told you to stop the mu-," Jim stopped cold when he finally noticed that I was still holding the remnants of his techno CD.
The look of horror on his face was nothing short of hilarious. I didn't even try to hold back. I was doubled over and leaning against the sale counter for support. Horror turned to rage as he advanced on me, donut in one hand and shoe in the other.

How did he get that shoe off so fast?


I had to table that thought in order to avoid his Air Jordan from clobbering me. I did an awkward somersault past him and made my way to the door. I was frozen there, looking into the shop at this scene of rampant dumbfuckery.

Steph was frozen behind the cash register with a look that was delocalized between shock, revulsion, joy, and probably hunger.

Jim had his other shoe in hand already, poised to strike, like the tackiest jungle predator you've ever imagined.
"Who...why...why in the living fucking fuck would you do something like that?" he asked, somewhat frightened that anyone in this world could hate his music.

"I'm sick of your bullshit. I'm sick of having to hate where I work. I'm sick of your bullshit," I replied with a calm and even tone.

So he threw his other shoe at me, striking me in my right knee and really just pissing me off at that point.

I started hopping, throwing out a stream of obscenities without much regard for proper combinations. Jim remained frozen in place.

"Who...who...who would do such a thing?" he asked to nobody in particular.

"I dunno," I said. "Maybe the same person who convinced you to spell 'shop' with two p's and an e, you pretentious fuck!"

I threw the Vonnegut book at his head as best I could. I grabbed my coat and was on the street three seconds before I realized that my attempt at a one-liner was poor at best.