A Series of Waits Between Dreams

Story by James Finch Jr.
Illustration by Micah Crandall-Bear

My eye-lids wait for my consciousness to shift from dreams. They creak open, the eyes behind them imperceptibly awaiting the arrival of light. Light comes, as I hope it always will.

The carpet waits for my feet, and, after I swing them from the bed on the ends of my legs, the carpet’s dreams are fulfilled. The shower, the teakettle, the toothbrush, the Marlboros and the matches; they all wait with the unmatchable patience of the inanimate. I have grown to envy their stoicism.

I straddle my bicycle wearily, waiting for death to come screaming around the corner, gripping fastidiously the bumper of some blind automobile, smiling at me in that somehow beautiful way. The light I was waiting to see go from red to green does so, but only after I curse it—a curse it was surely expecting. My right foot shoves off from the curb and I am again adrift upon a sea of tarmac.

At a bike rack festooned like Marley’s ghost I wait and wish for the improvement of my coordination. Locking up my steed always seems to be a greater trial than it should, and the task never fails to make me feel like less of a man. I wait for the return of that ill-fated portion of my manhood while my lungs await the arrival of my habitual post-exertion cigarette—the latter being the shortest wait to which the universe bears witness on this particular day.

The classroom door yawns and I surreptitiously step inside, the students are resting their gelatinous faces in hands cupped at the ends of arms bent at elbows resting on desks. They wait, as do I, for the arrival of an instructor who will do little instructing. Upon the drone’s appearance begins the wait for his disappearance, at which point the students all breath a simultaneous sigh of relief before moving on to their next wait.

Up to this point I have used the word “wait”, or a variation thereof, fourteen times. Despite my embellishments and personifications I firmly believe that I am glossing over more typical daily waits than I am addressing. For instance: The unconscious wait for the alarm clock, waiting for the toast to pop up or for the shower to run hot, for the bus or for the waitress.

After unshackling my bicycle, a process whose description you shall be spared, I return to the bloody streets astride it, hoping for the best despite my knowledge of the worst.

I stop at the Wells Fargo on the corner of Folsom and Alhambra. I am uncharacteristically specific about location at this point because I would like to caution all that have never been there to do their damnedest never to be. The place is hell. I wait, and, yes, that’s right, wait some more to find out that I have no money. I am still waiting to be surprised by such information.

The repugnant face behind the 2-inch thick translucent bullet-proof wall of trust (erected as a monument to colossal insult and social disgrace) inspires me with nothing short of pure hate. I raise the most succinct of fingers at every economic “development” since the Neolithic revolution and wait patiently for history’s response. It never comes.

Giving up on divine intervention in my constant struggle to remain fed (I am tired of waiting for God to bring me pork), I push onward to the grocery store, where I will write a bad check and wait for the repercussions.

I take a number at the deli and wait for a butcher dressed in bloodstained white to slice a pound of flesh from a pig that stood in a kind of line few of us could imagine. I hope I can’t taste her anxiety in my sandwich, for which I can barely wait. I receive my bundle from the butcher, taking a small joy in the smooth paper holding my prized flank of sow.

I have too many products to minimize my misery by using the “10 items or less” line, for if I’m going to suffer an overdraft fee, I might as well maximize my purchase. So I get behind a woman who is surely well on her way to urban legend status.

She won’t buy anything that doesn’t come in packages of 35 or more and that she can’t ask 35 or more questions about as tension mounts behind her. She is in her sixties yet still hasn’t figured out how to write a check. She has waited all day for this minimal human contact, the hum of the air conditioner her only companion. I note with a knowing eye that half of the 3,000 things in her cart are cat-related. No being short of divinity could fathom the waits she has weathered in her time.

I achieve nirvana while waiting for the conclusion of her cavalcade of purchases, and was so downtrodden for having born witness to her existence that I step out of line to grab a fifth of bourbon (which waited twelve years in an oak barrel), and I finish the bottle while still in line. Nirvana was no longer important. I stagger out into the growing dark.

The day being Friday, the most anticipated day of the week, I am overwhelmed by wanderlust upon my arrival home. I pack a meager rucksack of cheese (milk diligently rotted), bread (that someone waited for to rise), and wine (do I really need to go into this?).

I load my car, get in and turn the key. The engine turns over like a murderer in sleep—violently and to no avail. Eventually the damn thing starts. My dog looks at me inquisitively for, having waited for little more than to be born, she doesn’t understand my now palpable frustration.

I proceed to the freeway. What follows is predictable, and I apologize.

Eastbound 50 is my prison. I am mercilessly lashed by heartless time and fed poorly his wicked sister, fortune. I wait for anything decent to come through the radio.

I wonder why people in traffic do not talk amongst the cars. It could be a great place to meet women...

I am still waiting for humanity to live up to just one of my expectations.

The traffic breaks up as I pass Carmichael, Fair Oaks, Folsom, and the other peripheral anuses occupied by the rich and pseudo-rich who ceaselessly choke the meaning from existence by cramming the world with their automobiles, satellite dishes, and offspring. I am waiting for an honest set of sesibilities to enter just one of their heads.

I pull of the highway when the air is cold and thin. I throw out a bedroll next to the ar and zip the bag to my chin. I push the love for a distant woman from my heart, wait for my eyes to fall shut and for my mind to ease in to dreams of the tomorrow where I will wait for nothing.