The Recipient
By Jenna Reimer
I’m very comfortable in this car; the top down allows the blazing light, the elements, the wind to form a tiny hurricane that seems more real than the ones I see on the television. Perhaps it’s the fact I’m experiencing the disaster, the mock disaster, rather than watching the box with talking pictures on it describe to me the horrific scene that has just shattered a town or village. None of it matters to me though, for all I know it isn’t even happening.
I try to stay focused on the road. But why focus on it? Most of the time the crimson sky blurs with the auburn sand and russet hills that seem to never end in this desolate wasteland. It is only after passing roadside gas stations and Indians selling turquoise jewelry where one is reminded of humanity, none of which matters to me.
Here in the desert you are under a different glass where every man is for themselves and no one looks up from their paper to acknowledge another stranger. That is what we all are, strangers, drifters trying to get by in a life that has no end. Someone once told me you got to believe in something, anything, or else you’ll never make it in this life, and I never did find that something.
See, there are limits to my ability in justifying the bullshit that circles around this earth and, believe me, I’ll do anything to make sure I got a place to sleep, cigarettes and a good meal now and then, but I sure as hell won’t start believing in something I can’t touch, feel or hear just to help myself in creating a more tolerant view of this absurd world. It is that circulatory bullshit that has gotten me in the position I am in at this moment; driving across the Nevada desert to pick up a package that will correct an unfortunate situation my pal Derek has, very cleverly, gotten himself into.
How Derek got messed up I’ll never know, but I’m no stranger to fixing his woes so I’ve quit thinking too much about it. I’m heading to see Kirill, a Russian jeweler, an old old friend of mine, in Sutcliffe who has assured me he can help. Whether he can or not I don’t care, really, Derek means as much to me as a sack of potatoes rotting in cellar; I’m in it for the wildly humid drive and something to do, more or less.
Kirill deals his jewels out of his house, a small shack that homes his morbid wife who has always hated my condescending demeanor and bowler hats. A humble duo, a relationship that predicts a future I am in no position to hope for. They make damn good Texan popcorn; nothing better than popcorn covered in hot sauce, salt and home made pickle juice as dipping sauce.
I pull up to the house knowing I am going to be walking into a stinking dump that resembles all aspects of a slightly large outhouse.
“Afternoon Sheryl.” The front door descends into the kitchen, the kitchen into the living room, the living room into the bedroom, all one. I lit a cigarette.
“Good afternoon my boy. I trust you’ve been keeping well.” Her glare is colder than a ticket takers smile at the Globe Theater in Jersey.
“Why yes. I just went to the doctor yesterday and he said I am healthy, in fact, he said I was too healthy if you can imagine that?” That was supposed to be a joke but she doesn’t make a sound.
“Kirill is downstairs.”
I nod my hat and walk down a staircase that looks to be on its last leg. Kirill’s office is in his laundry room, right beside the washer and dryer that happens to be in mid cycle and loud as hell. I push aside the shower curtain separating the unfinished basement into a tiny room housing my dear Russian friend.
“My boy! How has you been? You look like hell, how much do you weigh, 90 pounds?” He puts down a ring he appears to be setting in small diamonds, probably fake diamonds.
“Give er’ take.” Sitting in the lawn chair, opposite of his poker table serving as his work space, I grab an empty beer bottle to ash my cigarette.
“Cigarettes eh? You mind?” Kirill gestures his fingers to his mouth signaling me to light him one. He sets it between his lips and goes back to work. Beads of sweat fall from his sun spotted head down his pruned face. Whoever ordered this ring is also getting a complementary sweat wash courtesy of an obese man in white cut off shorts and a stained yellow t-shirt older than the house he works out of.
“Ahhh… smoking. What a marvelous invention Jesus has given us no? I swear if it weren’t for cigarettes I’d probably kill that wife of mine that’s been on my case about my blood pressure for the past week. I told her she’s the one who’s fatter than a used up piece of jet trash sitting in the junk yard.”
“Well that’s not way to speak to a lady my friend.”
“Lady?! The only lady-like thing I see that broad do is clean the god damn dishes, I tell ya! Sometimes I wish I would have listened to my mother and married a Russian woman.”
“Well you win some you lose some I suppose. Life works like that you know?” He looks up from beneath his magnified glasses and grunts.
“You don’t know need to tell me how life works boy, it ain’t me who’s caught in a situation that needs some unwinding no?”
I take my last puff and tuck my hair beneath my hat. He tries to make me uncomfortable but I am far beyond having any sort of emotional attachment to myself or other people’s problems. I’m simply here to help a buddy and milk some time out of this dragging life.
“Hey, I ain’t in no trouble. A friend asked for some help and I said I knew a guy. I’m here. He is there. No trouble am I in my friend.”
With a small jerk of his neck he flicks the sweat off of his forehead and leans back into his chair staring at me with an unimpressed grin.
“You know I appreciate you getting me this, I know you’re a busy man and my friend is very thankful.” Busy man, I laugh to myself.
“Well you are a dear friend of mine and it was not too much trouble. Not too much trouble at all.” Kirill pushes himself out of his seat and walks over to a box that is sitting beside that deafening dryer. His aged limp and tired stride inflicts a sort of impending doom in my mind. How unfortunate it will be when I am that age; weak and old, my life as useless as a broken compass on the Santa Maria.
“It’s hot out there isn’t it boy? You still driving that piece of shit you found on the tracks?”
Piece of shit? “Yah yah, it’s still jugging away, gets me around and that’s all I care about, really.”
Kirill lifts the large cardboard box, stained on the corners from the leaking washer, and sets it beside my foot. Boxes always fascinated me. Isn’t there something magical about a ugly cardboard box or is it just me? The contents are always unknown; even in this case, I am not quite sure what Kirill is certain will cure my friends unfortunate situation.
Kirill’s hands, old in vain, rests heavy on my shoulder as I glance down at the mysterious box then back to his shallow eyes. His eye’s always speak of an ancient art of simply being or of ceasing, mostly ceasing, and if it weren’t for that type of despair I would never know if I was here, or there, or begging for a light in another dark, another silent world.
“So what is it?” I lean over to unearth the cure packaged insecurely in the box. Kirill grabs my hand to stop me.
“No. Not here. Take it home to your friend. You need not associate with what will help him help you ok? You better start heading back my boy.” Kirill turns back to his seat to continue his mundane world of jewelling in his laundry room, till his death. His old feet shuffle on, towards an even vainer death, a vacancy that is tempting, but the thought of deteriorating flesh, till the end and end, protects me from thoughts of settling.
“Alright my friend, I guess I’ll head out then.” I stand and pick up the light weight box and turn to leave. “Thanks, I’ll talk to you soon?”
“Yes my boy, yes you will.”
Only words ever break the silence, all other sounds do nothing other than cease. If I were silent I’d hear nothing, but by keeping silent those sounds would start again so I get on and leave Kirill alone.
Back on the road I can’t help but reminisce on all the things I’ve given up on to maintain this drifting life; but it’s all given up already, nothing new, I am nothing new, this life is nothing new. I like to believe I use to be something once, I had something once. It may not have been for long but I always gave it up with an unknown condition I never intended to abide by. My life has been all open, then shut again, then opened, mixed with uttering and slobbering shit and then lapping it back up with my lips like the days when I fancied girls. The hearts not there anymore, my hearts not in it anymore, and I simply lost any sort of appetite for a promising tomorrow.
The box sits in my passenger seat, its contents rattling and shaking; I’ve already lost interest in what it contains. Yet, the unknown box echoes my soul, no, my no soul, no body or birth, or life or death; I’ve decided, long ago, to go on without any of that junk in order to survive. All of this is dead with words as they can say nothing, nothing else I don’t already know. I start right away to feel calm within the voice of my own silence. I have done nothing in this life other than be the cool receiver of all that comes my way. I slept, and gone on, doing what I do, doing what I say and giving up. That is it. I’ll have gone on giving up and having nothing and not being here like the box that will soon disappear into the hands of another without ever knowing its worth. Though none of that matters to me.
