Will Not Attend: Lively Stories of Detachment and Isolation by Adam Resnick

Author:Adam Resnick [Resnick, Adam]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Porter’s Screenplay

The nine steps I take each morning from my apartment door to the elevator occur unconsciously and in a bubble. I push the button and wait as the same mantra fills my head, ticking off like a jittery second hand on a cheap watch. I’m a disaster. I’m a lazy piece of shit. I deserve everything bad that happens to me. I’m not worthy of anyone’s respect. I should go blow some money. I don’t deserve to blow money. I’m not in the position to blow money. Fuck everyone. Ah, the sound of lapping waves. The ocean. Calming. Reassuring. I’m drowning. The undertow is sucking me under . . .

Francisco, the porter, is sloshing the mop across the tile floor in the hallway, leaving a trail of gray sudsy water. Latin music leaks from his headphones. Up-tempo, alive, foreign, awful. We stand there together every morning. Our conversation is a ritual that neither of us tampers with. It goes something like this:

“Hey, Francisco.”

“Morning, sir.”

“Hot out there?”

“Yeah, they say it rains today and it’s gonna cool everything off.”

“That’s good. We could use a little rain.” The elevator arrives. “Okay, see you later.” And I’m gone.

This is my idea of a perfect conversation. Why can’t all human interaction be like this? God bless Francisco. He gets it.

On one particular morning, however, something was out of whack. I glanced up at the elevator indicator and it was motionless: frozen on B—that subterranean no-man’s-land with washing machines, garbage cans, and a mysterious locker my wife refers to when she goes down to retrieve our Christmas decorations. Francisco kills the salsa.

“It’s coming in a minute. Hector’s fixing the lapper,” he told me. I don’t know what a lapper is or if I even heard it correctly, but clearly Francisco and I were going to have a larger space to fill today. I retreated back into my head. I’m so sick of Multi-Grain Cheerios. Why does she keep buying it? I told her to stop buying it. Everything’s a subtle “fuck you.” Except for the times when it’s not so subtle. I deserve it all. I’m a nightmare. I wonder what it feels like to save a child’s life? The grateful mother embracing me and sobbing into my chest . . . the family inviting me over for a special dinner . . . my reluctant speech at the church service held in my honor where I tell the congregation, “I’m not a hero. God is the hero.”

Francisco: “You stay busy these days?”

The words came at me like a swarm of yellow jackets.

“Uh, yeah, trying to. Ha-ha. How about you?”

He ignored my question.

“You write for the movies? I saw your name one night, I think it was on Starz.”

I cringed.

“Yeah, sometimes.”

Francisco: “I forget the movie. On Starz.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t very good, whatever it was. Ha-ha.”

Francisco: “Right. It was kind of trying to be something, but . . .”

My stomach churned. I glanced at the elevator.

Francisco: “I buy a lot of movies, you know, from Best Buy? Blair Witch, Crouching Tiger, Shawshank .

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