The Lives We Lead
by Chad Camp
It was a few hours until sunrise when the car came back. The woman had gotten into a few passing cars during the night but had remained on her street corner most of the time. The car door swung open and the red haired man from earlier stepped out. He engaged her, wagging his finger at her and pushing it into her chest, holding her by her chin as he spoke. They went on for several more minutes before she hastily opened her purse, showing the contents of it to him and taking some money out. Waving the money in her face, he slipped it into his pocket and drew back a hand, coming across her face and sending her to the ground. Pulling her into the back seat, he slammed the door, cursing to himself and climbing into the drivers side. The car moaned and again sped off through the night.
Horris followed the cherry tail lights with his eyes as far as he could before they twinkled out of sight. Slipping the cap on his pen, he closed his notebook and moved his gaze up away from the streets, across the skyline. This was news, big news. He couldn’t ever recall having something like this move onto his street. He thought about the woman. He imagined her lying in the back of that smoky car, nursing her busted lip as it swerved through traffic, carrying her away. He wondered if she’d ever come back, if she had felt his presence. Part of him had wanted to help but part of him knew that he couldn’t. He knew that watching the world required a certain amount of distance from it. The organization of everything couldn’t be muddled by interferences from people like him.
He could almost remember when he first took up writing in notebooks. It had been during his years of grade school. He had started writing things that he saw because he thought someone needed to do it. Horris considered himself a sort of visual photographer, creating verbal pictures out of a few seconds of a person’s life. They would probably never read it and never care but that was ok. He often read back through his journals, putting himself between the skins of the people on his pages. He liked seeing himself in people’s bodies, living their life in exactly the same manner they would, doing their hair in the mornings, drinking blended fruit concoctions or sneaking off to cheat on their wives.
His earliest actual memory was of his foster father, his craggy face looming over him and the oily-slick smell of cigar smoke bringing tears to his eyes as he pretended to be asleep. Horris was adopted before he could remember and had grown up being constantly reminded of it. His actual mother had died during childbirth and he knew nothing of his father. His foster mother had left when he was very young. He could still hear the shouts from the kitchen and the smacking of flesh. He had grown up in silence. His foster father had refused to work and spent most of his days right here on the roof, doing things that Horris would never know. He could remember the old man dying and nothing changing.
The sky was beginning to glow with the coming of morning when Horris picked himself up and wobbled down the sticky steps back to his dusty apartment. Inside he collapsed on his couch and let a restless sleep overtake him.
* * *
Several hours later Horris pulled himself from the couch, got dressed, clipped on his tie and headed to work. The day was warming up quickly and small beads of sweat were running across his back by the time he strolled into The Telephone Centre. He punched in, glanced at the seating chart and moved to his cubical.
He’d been making telephone calls for a living for about five years. Today they were calling people about homeowners insurance. Horris hadn’t really taken the time to get to know many people in The Telephone Centre. People came and went, picking up phones and scraping by with whatever they could. Few people spoke with him during his hours at work.
“The number today is four completed sells pre hour.” The foreman would say as he took his spot at the head of a long row of cubicles. “Four pre hour or you go home. Now smile and dial people.” He’d always give a forced smile before sitting back down behind his wall.
Horris would go through the motions like a good employee should, dialing hundreds of numbers a day and trying his hardest to build relationships with meaningless voices. Dealing with rejection was a part of the job and being able to handle people hating you was vital to your existence within the Centre. The Monitors would patrol around the office, smiling down at the top of your head while you dialed away. If you made your quota per hour, they let you stay. If not, they punched you out and would meet you at your cubical holding your yellow slip.
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