Inside Your Head: Part I

The roof shifted with the hum of persistence, flailing and pushing mightily against the restraint of craftsmanship, and holding true all the same. A mechanism stuck in the mold it was created for, helplessly doing its job without care or pride, but struggling nonetheless to find its place in the wind with the clouds that mocked it and the birds that used it.

And he sat under it listening for wisdom like an old sage with a fetish for shelter. The storm strummed lines of power overhead and kicked dank seawater to the street below. Simon's Lego City was now growing under the flimsy light of cheap religious candles, and his sore eyes were having a harder and harder time identifying circles and color. The pieces fell into place mainly by the deft feel of his large un-callused hands and the subtle click he'd learned through tireless practice. Simon's single portrait of Sitting Bull stared down above him with amusement. He could feel it. He could feel the sharp green eyes burning behind him in the candle light. That warrior of lost summers still held a gaze even through recreation at the sweaty hands of a nervous but talented white man. Simon added another piece, carefully.

His phone rang out in the cold stillness of the numb loft. Simon got up, slowly, and gingerly stepped over his ever growing creation with the care of a true artist.

"Hello."

"Hey Simon," her voice was soft in the darkness.

"Hey you, I'm sitting alone in the candlelight. This storm is savage."

"And yet your phone's working?"

"It's one of the advantages of owning a retro phone from the 1930's. No power needed, you should get on the trolley darling."

She giggled.

"Come out with us tonight, Simon."

He glanced over to his structure thinking quickly for a reason not to leave it. It hurt him to do so, but there were pieces to add and plastic to contort. The prospect of avoiding her, again, was not the brightest. But for Simon it seemed entirely necessary on this crisp swift night.

"I have to go to work tonight."

She sighed. "Late on a Friday?"

"Yes, it's really just some awkward timing."

There was a pause. Quick, but pure and dangerous.

"Are you playing with those Lego's?"

"No, it definitely has nothing to do with that. I haven't been adding any pieces to the structure in a while."

The lie was almost certainly useless.

"Alright Simon. Well we'll be at the booth in Lemmy's Shop if you happen to miss work."

"Thanks for the heads up, and maybe I'll catch a cold with this weather."

"Maybe you will."

And she hung up. Simon placed the ear piece on the steel hook and placed the mouthpiece below it on a small wooden structure he'd designed himself.

He walked back over to the city of Lego and looked deep past his triangular rain- soaked window. His head was spinning with his common anxiety, and waves of cutting nerves rose and fell in the darkness. The carefully designed city before him was static and lonely sitting there on his oak wood floor. Still in the night and ungrateful to the care that it had been created with. A lingering panic that always seemed to hang just barely outside Simon's perception intensified with Mary's phone call, and his swift vertigo came and went with the waves of rain. Spinning isolation, short gulps of manufactured breath, a separation from pure reality.

Simon's hands were sweaty and shaking a little as he sat back down cross-legged, and he reached into his mustard-yellow tube of plastic pieces. He grasped only air and then frantically scratched at the corners hoping for a lone piece. But there were none. The panic intensified. Everything had been running out randomly on him lately, and it started with this damned structure. It was everything.

It took over his old two-room apartment and covered the bold and prestigious living room he'd purchased it for. Upon moving in, he'd added no furniture, and hung simply his portrait of Sitting Bull and a single light bulb. He knew he'd need the space. Yet never thought the space would end up causing him to leave that small architectural school he'd been taking classes at. Leaving him to instead spend his nights hovering above like a firefly inches from the floor. That space had become engulfed in an ever expanding plastic metropolis.

But one day he'd met Mary while on a Lego mission to Wal-Mart. She was picking out finger-paints, he'd later find out, for the preschool class she taught in her free time. Her green eyes were scanning the toy aisle like a professional, and she was the one, predictably, who had lightly elbowed him to ask if copper or bronze made a more noble color for the Aztec people. That particular afternoon he had actually decided not to purchase a Lego tub.

They had begun drinking together with a small artistic group of friends at a bar called Lemmy's Shop. She had come back to his apartment a few times, and Simon had covered up the structure with two large quilts. But she had uncovered it, of course, and at first Simon thought she seemed fascinated by the complexity of it. And yet recently they had begun to see each other less and they both knew why. The eccentric vulnerabilities that had kept Mary interested in the first place had eroded over time. And although she kept calling, and occasionally writing poetic letters with dark tones and crushing symphonies, the distance grew more complicated and difficult to overcome. Simon still felt that there could be something there, in the brief moments when he let honesty scream through the distractions of self-esteem and interpretation, but he knew exactly what was creating the distance.

Now he needed more pieces. Right now. The city would not grow anymore tonight without them, and this would simply not do.

Simon didn't own a watch but from the hours of darkness, he assumed it to be around midnight. The only choice at this hour would be the Wal-Mart on 15th street. That sprawling box filled with the only fluorescent lights in this small Atlantic Coast town. And he knew there were two routes he could take to get there on foot; the long way, which took him on a muddy overrun romp through an old cotton field, or the short way, which would ironically force him to walk by the painfully clear window of Lemmy's Shop. He looked up at Sitting Bull and sighed, and then he walked back into his bedroom, grabbed the oversized black raincoat he'd bought at an army surplus store, and locked the door behind him. He walked carefully to the stairs that led to the freshly paved street below, and began to take the long way.

As he stepped into the cold late summer rain he immediately wished he owned a car. Even a scooter would due. The downtown block before him was desolate and dark. It was an old post-industrial area that was still trying to re-attract residents, and the ones that did live here tended to be either hermits or lovely old ladies with small loud dogs. But Simon liked the strange piece of city isolation, even if it could fray nerves and turn wrinkled portraits into characters. Plus, he could almost see Lemmy's Shop from the front of the sparse apartment complex. Simon noticed that his old building was clearly the only one to have lost power.

Then he found himself trudging through a muddy field in a driving rain. The coat he'd grabbed now seemed a mere ornament as think herds of salty water cascaded down every crease and bump on his pale body. The rows of long-dead cotton decomposed under the crunch of his persistence. There was a certain acidity in the rain, and suddenly he began walking with a very child-like obliviousness. His mouth agape to the falling rain like a satisfied grey whale wadding for plankton in a deep sea. And he held this basic position until he could feel the pummeling push of cool air and the rough cut of florescent light.

"Welcome to Wal-Mart," she said as she slapped a small sticker on his coat. It slid immediately off him to the gum laced tile below.

Simon ignored her and directed his Lego march to aisle seventeen with the single mindedness of a torpedo. Dodging cold steel carts, avoiding dangerously low-priced chicken, finding his way in the soulless current of the new Americana. He stopped in the middle of the toy aisle to grab the last large yellow jug of plastic delights. He'd actually planned on buying two of them (just in case), but settled for the last remaining cylinder. At least it would get him through the night.

The cashier's eyes were distant and glazed. Her smock hung on valiantly under the burgeoning weight, but lipstick bounced off her lips, true and lonely on a scarred face. Simon dropped the bucket on the tar black conveyor and searched for a rain soaked twenty.

"It still raining?" she asked. A slight smirk cracked her fierce mouth.

"Yeah, but I ran out."

She eyed him oddly.

"It's 20.63"

"What?"

She rolled her eyes. "Cash can be exchanged for goods and services."

Crisp panic. Simon grappled at the bottom of his pockets desperate for a few quarters.

"Did the price go up?" Simon asked. His hands were shaking.

"Yeah, fortunately I've memorized every price in this store. We only have a few items."

"Look, all I have is a twenty. They must have raised the price on me. It's just sixty cents, could you bum me a few quarters?"

She took the yellow jug off the belt and set it defiantly next to her on the cashier counter.

"Yeah, and then I'll work for free for the next twenty minutes. Pass."

Simon sighed and optimistically brought out his wet twenty.

"Please, I walked a long way," he said.

She smiled mercilessly. "Maybe the next time you buy Legos you should consider building a real car."

Simon was at a painful loss of how to continue.

"You know," he said. "You're not being very this," and he tapped the large yellow smile attached to her breast pocket.

Her eyebrows shot up at the contact and the gum she had been chopping on turned into a projectile doomed to join the others on the tile supporting her. The spit seemed rather aggressive to Simon.

"You know what? I don't need this, I'm calling my damn manager," and she grabbed the large silver microphone. "Mr. McKay, Mr. McKay. We got an issue down here on six."

Simon felt that hot panic creeping in. This was his only hope for the night, and the next twenty-four hour box store was miles and miles away (although it did occur to him that he could hitchhike). He was so close to the millions of possibilities in that singular yellow cylinder that he could feel it. His fingers had been twitching slightly since he first walked into the store. Simon saw no reason to give up after coming this far.

And so he lunged across the register and grabbed the jug. Simultaneously putting it under his arm and throwing the wet twenty at the conveyor. The cashier let out a wail that sounded like a wounded elephant seal. Simon could distantly hear her squawking at Mr. McKay as he eyed the sliding doors to the street. He had the bin tucked under his right arm like a giant yellow football and he extended his left arm like The Juice in 1968 as he ran full on for the doors. Yelling a like a madman all the while, hoping to discourage any act of a bystander, and he made eye contact with the elderly women who had greeted him warmly and dared her to initiate physical contact. He wasn't sure that he'd actually run her over if she tried to stop him, but he wasn't sure that he wouldn't either. She made the decision for him and stepped far to the side as he flew by. Simon could feel a roll of stickers slap by his neck as he made it out the doors and into the starless night. The shrieks of the cashier could still be heard when he finally made it to the sidewalk near the street, still running at full speed.

And he kept this pace nearly up all the way through the short route home. He pumped his burning legs and sliced through the sidewalks of the sleepy downtown, and all the while he looked over his shoulder for the bright lights of the law. There were none. Lego theft seemed arbitrary in its importance at this time of the night, and he could argue that he did in fact pay. Overpaid, actually.

So Simon slowed to a walk, awkwardly gulping for oxygen as he slightly relaxed his grip on the prize. He was on a lightly used downtown block, about a block from his apartment and Sitting Bull, when an empty beer can thrown from a fast moving car skipped into his feet.

"It's raining dude…" he could hear the drunken young man yell as the car faded into the darkness. He was about to yell back, God knows what, but the distance had made him mute. But he looked up to glare at the car only to realize, oddly, that he was standing right across the street from Lemmy's Shop with a large bucket of plastic under his arm. He had been so distracted by his feat of obtaining the Lego’s that he’d forgotten entirely which direction he had been heading. Now there she was, Mary, sipping a gin and tonic and talking with their friend Jefferson right in front of the large clear window. Ernie was there too, with his black beanie and a heavy drink that he would have no chance of finishing. Simon could tell he was stoned from across the street in the rain. And yet even he had managed to get out of the house and mingle in the crisp air of a laid back bar and the tight mix of spirit.

But it was Mary, squirming in the bars window and looking up passively at the cobwebbed corners of Lemmy's. Curling her locks of black hair and swaying a little to the blues beat of a Friday night. She suddenly made the cold plastic box under his arm seem pathetic and tiresome. Standing out there on a sidewalk after midnight in an Atlantic storm thinking a lifeless child's toy was bringing him joy. As she sat inside, knowing he would never arrive and maybe no longer caring. The plastic in the jug wasn't exactly setting Simon at ease with her in view. It was a cop out, a habit of fear, but maybe a tedious one at this point.

Simon spun the yellow cylinder in his hands and looked at it with contempt. He sighed, and then without premeditation, he simply set it down and walked with a random confidence across the street. He didn't feel any remorse at leaving it there alone on the sidewalk as he slicked his soaked hair back and open Lemmy's hard steel door. A cool stinging blast of air pulled him in and filled his pores like a thick jelly.