F L A U N T
At almost six o’clock, the Man felt the skin atop his knuckles stretching taut as he gripped the leather steering wheel, the pale color underneath his coal dusting of body hair growing paler, whitening, whiter still as the muscles of the palm contracted tightly around the helm of the Toyota.
The dawn, which was shaping up to be a nice one, chilly and clean, was begging to be observed; on another morning similar to this one (of which the Man had encountered many in this car and on this road and around this particular hour), the Man might have switched off his radio knob and considered the tender swell of fog on the cusp of the hill, which might have compelled him to think about his grandfather or his daughter or some other grandiose musing on the nature of human relationships oft incurred by a small incident of natural beauty.
But in this moment the dawn would go unnoticed and the wonderful recklessness of human existence would not be pondered because, at almost six o’clock, the Man and his Toyota were hurdling quite rapidly towards a number of vehicles which were all moving quite slowly. Knuckles white, an adrenal perspiration threatening to mist his freshly shaved upper lip, the instance of imminent vehicular disaster clawing its way into reality with more surety by the millisecond, the Man pushed hard on his brakes. His Toyota halted to a stop four feet behind a Jeep, which was three feet behind a minivan, which was eight feet behind a gate, which was partitioned off a stretch of road above a cheerful waterway. The stretch of road ahead appeared to be yawning upwards, with much more ease than would be expected of a thousand-pound block of concrete. The Man, now safely stationary, swiped a clammy palm across his lap like a little boy.
Oh yes, he remembered, this is a drawbridge.
A drawbridge indeed, one that (like many other parts of his town) seemed now to exist as an aesthetic idea as opposed to a functional facet of the city’s infrastructure. The drawbridge; the train station; the promenade; all hallmarks of a time when citizens took a vested interest in the operations of the place in which they lived. He recalled, once or twice as a child, watching raptly from the clay deposits on the side of the riverbank as the bridge performed its duty. Funny now to think about the new levees and the dearth of sailboats and the complicated series of dams and reservoirs that now rendered the drawbridge dysfunctional and the city more economically industrious. Funny now to think about the way the bridge’s fantastic mechanical endeavors had once cowed him and his freckled friends, all standing desperately still, toes sinking into the viscous mud.
Decades later, six o’clock in the morning. The guard tower and the metal grate and the hydraulic lift so sharp and foreign, distinguished now from their usual appearance as 50MPH smears on a 20 minute race to an office chair.
The vertical road ahead made the Man uneasy. He wondered what kind of boat was coming to pass underneath. He wondered if the drawing of the bridge happened every morning, perhaps moments before he reached the river. How could he have forgotten about it? How could he have missed it, all these years?
The thought—a flash of anger, really—began to wheedle its way into the inner recesses of his consciousness. It joined another irritant that had been introduced to him yesterday, a scenario that had enraged the Man just enough to keep him up later than usual and awaken him early enough to force him out of the house before the brutal alarm pierced his wife’s thin slumber.
Late in the evening the day before, in a rare burst of gaiety, the Man made the decision to enter the shop nestled into the enclave by the grocery center. Truthfully, he harbored a moral distaste for stores of this ilk, all with brilliant plastic lettering, ephemeral in their bland faculties. A year—six months, even—might pass, and these shops advertising ethnic delights or sweet coffees or scones accompanied by animal petting (the worst of them all) would shutter their doors and reappear weeks later, different iterations of the same nothingness, all manned by a reliable rotation of hideous adolescents, upholding the same subpar health standards, all dying to close early and flirt and masturbate or spend more time on their phones, as they seemed to do now.
Suddenly stricken with a desire for ice cream, the Man entered the shop. He watched the gloveless girl scoop the milk; he watched her place it on the foggy stone, push the product around. Toppings are extra, she told him, not looking while she spooned sprinkles (Sprinkles! he thought. What a silly indulgence) into the mess, ossifying on the cool slab into a roll that began to take the shape of a hay bale.
The exchange occurred; a small plastic spoon given; a portion in his mouth.
Phone number? She asked.
No thank you, he replied. A useful response; happens all the time, the casual intrusion into an individual’s privacy. Not the girl’s fault. The directive of a faceless corporate employer.
12 dollars, no sorry, 13 because of the sprinkles. Sorry sir, we don’t take cash here. Card machine down. Do you have Apple Pay?
The irritant again. Like sand in a sock. He was getting angrier now. It happened all the time, but these sorts of requests were unreasonable. What did she want him to say?
Sure kid, let me take out the image of the card on my phone screen, which is a cheap facsimile of the physical credit card, which, kid, was already an uncanny and arguably unholy substitute for printed money. Let me take out this screen and give you my phone number. No, actually, silly me—let me give you my phone number and let me tap my phone-cum-money machine on your receptor. I don’t care anymore. I’ll pay the 13 dollars, which doesn’t even matter because it’s an imaginary number to me at this point, and the real value of this transaction is not that your store received money for this interaction but the fact that I came here and talked to you in the first place. I’m the product here, if I tap that thing. I will be sold as a 52-year-old man that’s drawn towards stupid storefronts like this; a man that will pay 13 dollars off of his phone for rolled ice cream with sprinkles, and tonight when my wife opens Facebook on her desktop there will be advertisements for cold stones and homemade ice cream makers, and tomorrow at work the accountant will be talking about how she remembers the first time she ate at a bespoke ice cream store while she was studying abroad, and I will say, what a coincidence, I just ate at one of those yesterday, there is one next to my grocery store, and then there will be pictures on social media of celebrities holding Italian gelato shaped like roses at their Amalfi destination wedding and then my wife will see an advertisement for cheap cruises on the Italian coast and she will say, hey, we haven’t taken a vacation in a while, please, we need this, let’s go. And because of this interaction, I will have to endure a trip to Europe during which I am sure we will not be able to afford the cabin with the views advertised online and I’ll be embarrassed and my wife will say I am and have always been a negative person. Perhaps she’ll threaten divorce like she tends to do every five years, and then we will makeup and I will have to pretend to be happy for the rest of the godforsaken cruise because in the end, we are on a boat off the coast of Italy eating gelato and things aren’t too bad after all. All of this because you, this girl not much younger than my daughter, refused to take a cash bribe. Take it, please.
I already have the ice cream, like, I already took a bite of it, he said. Take my 20.
No sir, I can’t. We have cameras, the girl said, chin jerking towards the ceiling.
God it was so ridiculous. He left without paying.
It was very warm in the stationary Toyota. This was one of the numerous things the Man was beginning to account for in the moments since the harried stop. The temperature was one thing, the nauseating disjointedness of the drawbridge road another, the animal hair settling coquettishly into the crevices of his passenger seat another. All taunting him. It’s all too much this morning, he thought.
He could tell that his wife let the dog sit up front, even though she promised him she wouldn’t. She broke promises like this all the time, actually. Even 23 years into the marriage, which, by the way, was generally a good one as far as marriages go, these small acts of selfishness on her behalf continued to incur wild, unconscionable rages within him. To an outsider, many of whom had borne witness to these tiffs at an occasional dinner party or school pickup, there was a comedic strangeness to their squabbles, a perceptible imbalance that rendered the pair theatrical; the scenes visually interesting to passerby. It was all so humiliating. The Man: red-faced, shaking, ears burning, on the brink of tears or seconds away from throwing the closest stationary object. His wife: radiant, a smile threatening to split her face into gleeful angular parts, side-eyeing outsiders, inviting them to indulge in the ridicule. He’s so mad for nothing! Twinkling! Dazzling, even, in the face of confrontation.
You are being overparticular, she would say, concealing a laugh. She knew just what to say, what lilting, syrupy tone to employ to make him more angry. You take things so seriously. She would say it tonight, he knew, if he were to bring the dog hair up. If it matters that much to you—which it shouldn’t—I won’t ever do it again, she would grin.
The first time this happened, the pair were terribly young and unmarried and she was terribly beautiful and he was frightened by his own anger; troubled by the prospect of telling her she had done something he deemed unforgivable. He recalled the instance, catching a glimpse of a stranger in a Honda eating a croissant in his rearview.
The Man was eating a flaky dessert at the time of the incident, something about it made the whole ordeal and the idea of eating while speaking to someone disgusting, to this day. Outside the lobby of a coastal hotel, he took slow bites of his breakfast and waited for his future wife to descend the stairs to begin their day; he sucked on the butter and let the saliva break down the shell, not wanting to seem overeager, and he waited and waited and finally she came down and she carried with her an expensive bag with an expensive bottle inside.
What are you doing, he said, the champagne is going to get ruined on the boat ride. They don’t allow alcohol on the boat. Put it back. Where did you get that, anyway?
Let’s skip the boat ride, his future wife bubbled. It’s a beautiful day, let’s go to a park and get drunk. I don’t much like boats anyway.
You don’t like boats? He exclaimed. Why would you let me pay for the boat ride, then? This has been planned for weeks. Put it away. Waste of money.
Calm down, love. You’re spewing crumbs, she giggled. You don’t want to get drunk with me? We can get drunk anytime. Crumbs, again, the maître d’ casting side eyes towards the table. No, this is actually incredibly inconsiderate. We’re already late. Put it away. And change your dress, while we’re at it. You’re going to get cold and I don’t want to give you my jacket because you’re going to ruin it. You’re unprepared. You’re wasting my money.
You look like a prick, she said, still laughing. Of course you want to ruin this day. I promise it will be fun. You don’t want to kiss your girlfriend and drink champagne and feed me fruits?
Fine. Be my guest. Another table, two men, laughing. I’ll feed you fruits, they called. A beautiful woman deserves to be well fed. You look ridiculous, sir. Wipe your mouth.
Screw this, the Man said.
The weather that day turned quickly. He was still wiping jelly and pastry flakes from his face later that windy afternoon, curled around the toilet in the cabin of the rented sailboat, alone.
An abrasive honk from behind him. Another one. Longer, more persistent. It came from a larger vehicle, of course, one smattered with political slogans from a bygone era and flecked with mud, the kind of car that lent itself to recklessness on the road. The Man flicked his eyes towards the rearview and accidentally caught the eye of the perpetrator. Was it worth signaling to him that he
understood the inconvenience? Sure, we can commiserate, buddy, he thought to the ruddy driver with whom he was now holding a prolonged gaze, but we’re not going anywhere. You’re making it worse for everyone involved. He contemplated throwing a sly smile to abate the strange tension that now seemed to be directed at his own car, but the honk came again. Then, a finger. How rude, the man thought. I should hop out of the car right now. I bet I could take him.
This is how he figured he would do so:
The man behind him was positioned three or four feet off the ground. To rip open the door would be too difficult, but given the aggressive nature of the honks he bet the other man would unlock the door for him, try and swoop down on him, ready for a fight. The other man’s stature was likely smaller, likely weaker in the torso, likely with bow legs and cargo pants with lots of belt loops to latch a finger onto. If the man had a gun, which he might, the Man could locate it underneath the dirty hems at the other man’s ankle and toss it to the ground if needed. Throw it at one of the other Hondas. Swift kick to the inside of the man’s knees, watch him crumple pathetically into the pavement. Toss the weakling inside his spacious cab, use the seatbelt to wrap around the legs. Sure, a few knuckles to the abdomen, a swift jab into the jaw—the Man could easily withstand this kind of beating as long as he was inflicting complex and specific pain onto the man in the cab. A seatbelt burn, maybe, as the two would tousle inside the drivers’ seat. Make the other man bite down on the gearshift column, force him to regret his uncouth noises and hand gestures. Listen to his whimpers, sink his teeth into the palms of the other man’s hands and make him apologize for interrupting the Man’s private thoughts, take him out of the cab and parade him down the line of stopped traffic. Make him apologize to the others whom he so rudely interrupted with the crudeness of his car and his behavior. Show him, truly, that the car doesn’t make the man and the gun doesn’t make the man. Respect, integrity towards other hapless traffic victims make the man.
He rolled down his window, stuck out a veiny neck. We’re not going anywhere, buddy, he called, but the man behind him seemed to have lost his fervor, the soft glow of a phone screen illuminating a downturned face.
The Man looked toward the guard tower. It was taking quite awhile, actually. Maybe the fury of the man behind him wasn’t so unfounded. He could just perceptibly make out a silhouette of the guard in the mechanical control center, sipping something leisurely as he turned towards the river. This process seemed like it could be expedited should the guard be doing their duty instead of enjoying a morning coffee. He watched as the silhouette knocked the drink into his uniform. Was he even wearing a uniform? The Man wondered.
It seemed, these days, that nobody had a desire to dress correctly for the task they were doing. He thought of his mother, her obsessive ways of categorizing clothing. There were so many rules imposed in his childhood home, dark and cool and wooded, that seemed arbitrary at the time. His late mother, her obsession with beauty and propriety, always insisted that he come into her bedroom to show her his clothing for the day. He pictured it now: The Boy, his awkward limbs collecting themselves resolutely next to his mother’s vanity, where she would frequently sit until the mid afternoon, loading and offloading accessories from her pale collarbone into the cabinet’s multitudinous compartments. You are representing myself and your father, she would say, her perfume muscling its way into his esophagus. Act like it. He recalled one of her final letters to him after he had moved away, before the disease had softened her resolve:
My son,
I hope you are well. I hope you have told your wife that I enjoyed her appearance at Thanksgiving, and I was pleasantly surprised by how intimately she knew scripture given the inappropriate length of her dress. How a God-fearing woman like her finds a fabric so sheer acceptable escapes me. While the two of you were gallivanting around Europe out of wedlock some years ago she seems to have picked up that abhorrent sexuality that the European street harlots have made acceptable to today’s youth.
This aside, I find myself curious about her. She alluded to your cousins that she would like to handle other people’s money, a respectable profession, though not one that would welcome a woman who clothes herself provocatively at family meals. Perhaps she would like to peruse my wardrobe to find more appropriate clothing. I may have some jewelry to lend her, if she chooses to start dressing like a married woman and not a prepubescent concubine.
I realize I cannot control what you or your beloved do, as you so vehemently told me over the telephone yesterday. I am only humbly offering advice as your mother, the first woman who ever loved you. Do come for lunch next Saturday. I am horrifically lonely and will probably die soon.
-Mother
There it was, finally. Smoke, billowing from the canal. How much cargo could the vessel be carrying, the Man wondered, and to where? Carburetors and plumbing parts, pipes stacked atop each other and held in place by long orange ropes, secured with total assurance that they would not roll into the water or flatten the employees on the barge like that story splayed across the front page weeks ago. The Man tried very hard not to think about casualties of the future, but as the revolting black smoke dissipated into the pleasant muted morning grey and snaked its way atop the drawbridge and into the car ventilator, filling the cabin with the offensive stench of tar, it was difficult to not think about how it would smell when his daughter’s children and his great grandchildren, and their great grandchildren, would come his age. Would the world smell this way, permanently?
His daughter, whose politics and ways of dressing would have killed his mother had dementia not gotten to her first, insisted that she would not have children because of the way his generation treated the world. The world, rife with war and clogged with pollution, was this way because of him and his peers. How casually they had left the lights on, she accused him at the dinner table, how easy it had been for his generation to fly across the world without thinking of the ways it would affect her. It was, as everything always had been, his fault. She would, of course, end up having children, he thought, and then everything would be her fault.
Despite himself, the Man let out a barking laugh, thinking of his future grandchildren, sitting with the lights off and sweating in an unairconditioned house, piss stinking up the toilet because their moralist mother refused to waste water on a #1 flush. The world, then, would stink of this cargo smoke and the cities that he once visited would be submerged. All of the luxuries of his youth would be replaced by the convenience of immediacy. The DoorDashes his daughter put on his card, the instant essays that she generated on the computer without reading any pages of the books she’d been assigned, the plastic vaporizer she hid underneath her mattress—all of these small things would add up and one day, her incorrigible adolescent children, sitting miserably at the dinner table eating nutritional food bricks and wearing ventilator masks to protect their freckled noses from pollution, would tell her that she ruined the world for them.
Perhaps by then this waterway would be dry, and nobody would have to sit in this traffic on their way to work.
The road was one again. The traffic inched forward, slowly, over the chasm, as if nothing had happened and nobody had honked and these thoughts had not begun to obscure the Man’s ability to focus on his Toyota and its position at the lip of the gulch. The knots that had begun to develop in the Man’s back unwound, in his stomach the curdling breakfast toast dissolving pleasantly into acidic particles.
The river—his entire town, actually—was beautiful at this time of morning, the Man thought. His gaze lingered across the guardrails, looking onto the island in the middle of the waterway. All of this wanting for more suddenly seemed small; selfish, even. The desperate disappointment in others, the longing for the world to return back to the way he found it—the impulse that had for so many years wrapped its fingers around his jugular loosened its grip, if only for a moment. His wife and his daughter, their gloating ways of making him feel ridiculous, the grass is greener aphorisms they tossed at him when he was feeling particularly miserable—perhaps they could make a good point.
For a moment, for a ridiculous beat in the theatrical lineage of wicked injustices constantly inflicted upon him, the Man felt hopeful. There was room, he realized, looking out onto the forested crest of the river, to think about the minor joys in life, if only for a small couple of minutes on his way to that office space. Things could be okay, eventually, if he let them. His life was not the worst life. The bubble of fog, punctured by a ray of yellow daylight. Glinting on the water. The heat of his breath, the slight texture of his palm against the leather steering wheel.
A honk, again. A gravelly yell, a ruddy face flashing in the rearview mirror. Fuck you asshole. I don’t have all day. GO, MOTHERFUCKER. GO.
Illustrated by Iris Lei
Photographed by Asato Iida
Styled by Whitney Alexandra
Written by Annie Bush
Photo Assistants: Hyaku Kobo and Zach Serrano
Stylist Assistant: Hayden Gibbs
Stay up-to-date with exclusive events and content.
