This was a shiny globe with a personality. The thing would look at me from across the room and I knew what it was getting at. Everywhere I went, it was after me- it would roll through the subway doors just as they were closing. No one noticed it- or maybe they did but they didn’t let on- you know how they are on the subway, everyone avoiding eye contact.
At first I tried to lose it- I climbed this tree in the park but it just waited at the bottom until I got hungry and then it followed me, rolling under the table as I ate my slice of pizza. I even -and I know this is crazy- I took a swim in the Hudson just in my boxer shorts at about five in the morning. I swam way downstream- as far as I could go. I didn’t even go back for my clothes because I knew it would be waiting there. I made it all the way back to my place, dripping wet in my boxer shorts, but before I could shut the front door to my apartment the thing shot in ahead of me. That’s when I kind of resigned to having it as a shadow. No point in getting pneumonia over it or anything.
It got really bad though when I met Mara. She was the new girl at the pizza joint. I asked her out and on the third try I actually got a date set up. But then I’m thinking I can’t show up to this fancy place with a shiny metallic globe trailing me. Plus, if I get anywhere with her, there’s the globe. You know it’s watching somehow.
On the day of our date I got some really crazy ideas in my head. Went to the sports equipment place and bought a bat. You know the whole time I was waiting in line I felt so guilty- there the globe was rolling along at my ankles- and here I am buying this Louisville slugger.
I walked down this really dark alley- way down it. I wasn’t scared on account of the bat. Then I spun around and whaled on the thing: BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! And most of the time I’m missing- just hitting the dirty cement of the alley- but I start getting some hits in and then I crack it open and this green smoke comes out.
I must have passed out because I woke up several hours later lying in the trash in the alley. The globe was nowhere around. I gotta admit I felt pretty bad. But I went to go meet up with Mara and she was dressed incredibly hot- with this tight little t-shirt. Unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy it- my mind kept going back to the globe. After we ate I just kinda got her on a cab and went back to the alley, looking for the globe. It wasn’t anywhere so I went back to my apartment.
When I opened the door I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like a bomb went off. Everything was completely destroyed- the TV, furniture, plates, everything. It smelled horrible and the carpet was smoking slightly like it had just been burned.
Mara was in there, sitting on one of the broken chairs. She turned and looked at me, taking a drag on a cigarette, and that’s when I realized she was in on this too. The globe rolled out- all wrapped with silver duct tape. Then it stopped, like it was staring at me. “You made a big mistake,” said Mara. Then she got up and went out and the globe followed her. I sat right down on the stinking, smoking carpet, everything smashed around me, and decided I needed to make some big changes in my life. Like maybe even move out of New York. Or, if not out of New York, at least to a different borough.
I went down to the subway station and took a train headed for the other side of the river, alone for the first time in months.
Copyright © 2008. All Rights Reserved.