A Day in the Death

  My foot is disgusting, and the reason for this is that my shower is so ridiculous and this place is so poor that I managed to cut my foot open on the broken tile. Some neighbor who shares a name with a deer asked why I was limping and like actually expected some lengthy explanation and I had to tell her and once she was out of earshot my lip trembled and I wanted to cry but all I said was “leave.” She was leaving, though. I’m going crazy in this place.

  The whole damn city is humid and thick in the wake of the storms that have passed through, and the air is hazy and almost orange, like a sign of the apocalypse. The air inside the building smells like Stoned Baked Pizza—the preferred dinner for twenty-something tattooed losers on financial aid—and smoke. Some fucking moron managed to almost burn down their unit, and now we are all breathing in his idiocy. Like someone had set fire to a hundred sets of hair. It makes me cough and my eyes water.

  I take a picture of my foot to send to the building manager, to say, look what your shitty complex has done to me now, you rat bastard, you owe me compensation, and I also decide to send one to Jen, just to make myself laugh while sticking out my tongue.

  She calls during her lunch break, which is remarkable considering the whole workaholic thing. “Richard, why the fuck would you send me a disgusting picture of your foot? I literally felt like I was going to cry.”

  “Babe,” I cough, laughing with my tongue sticking out, wiping at my eyes. “Now sweetheart, how do you know it’s my foot?”

  “Richard, you know how.”

  “Well maybe it’s not my foot. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  “This is disgusting, this is violating, this is obscene, this is uncalled for, and I’m telling Harris.”

  “No, honey, honey—that is uncalled for.”

  “Don’t you dare call me honey, Richard. We are over, and if you can’t understand that in spite of literally everything that has happened, I don’t even know what to say to you. Now please stop wasting my time.”

  “Sweetheart—you’re the one who called me.”

  She makes this strange huff of a noise and hangs up.