by Joshua Hebburn
Pete tried not to think. Then Pete was thinking. Pete counted, instead of sheep, his own counting. One. Two. Three. One, two. One, two, three. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. One, two, three. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. One, two. One, two. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, sixteen, one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, two, three, four, five, sixteen, seventeen. One, two, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty-four, twenty-five. Twenty-six, twenty-seven. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty. Two. Thirty. Three. Thirty. Four. Thirty. Five. Thirty-five was how old Pete was. Pete got up, went to the fridge. Pete got an old bottle out of the back of the fridge, an Anchor Steam, which he’d been saving. Pete drank it in front of the fridge. Pete thought about Pete’s life. He closed his eyes. Pete went back to bed. He got out of bed. He didn't want to repeat his mental exercise. This non-exercise also hadn't worked. Pete did a lot of yoga at another point in his life. At another point in his life, Pete was a Buddhist if you asked him what he was in that kind of conversation. So he considered getting the human-stinky mat out and doing some poses: warrior, dog, triangle, mountain, bridge, insomniac.
Then Pete was taking an insomniac walk around a neighborhood. It wasn't his neighborhood, exactly, but it was within fifteen minutes’ brisk forward go. It was overcast, and the area he walked through was lined with old trees and the street was lit by pole lights in a throwback style with candle shaped frosted glass and warm orange bulbs. The neighborhood had a landmark designation, and several notable examples of the American Craftsman house.
On the whole, the neighborhood honored this high tone. There were no automated harsh LED driveway lights; only curtains, and mullions, and light puddling goldenly onto big green American lawns, or faux-desert landscapes pointy with agave, prickly pear, and the bulbous barrel and bunny ears cactus.
Only once did he see an old man, who looked a little like Pete’s father, sit behind a large open window, an exposed, well-furnished living room lit stark LED white by a large television. The old man’s walker was in front of him like the ladder rail on the side of a pool.
Only once did he see a skunk run through a domestic landscape but it was like a clumsy cat.
The thought of pool rails made him think of something he used to do to acquire decorative gravestones, and ghosts, for his houses in a video game, the Sims. The Sims was made up of two parts, the part where you built houses, and the part where you commanded simulated people living in them. Not every item in the game could be bought. (People, in Pete’s experience, who had played the Sims were one of two kinds of person, a house builder and decorator, or a Sim dramatist. Pete was a house builder and decorator.) There were two ways to reliably kill a Sim: fill a room with cheap objects and get a Sim with terrible cooking skill value to cook with the oven until they set a fire, and sell the exit or exits to the room; or, you get a Sim to get into a swimming pool, and then you sold the pool ladder. The Sim would swim and swim, unable to climb out without a ladder due to the logic of the game.
The old man was probably comfortable in his beautiful house. He was just another insomniac. He was just a night owl.
In the morning, Pete imagined, the old man who looked like his father, something about the hair line, the wispy, silvery widow’s peak, the old man came out onto the lawn with a Milwaukee hedge trimmer and a reflective yellow safety vest, and rounded, or squared off, his shrubbery, using that walker as a brace, a proud American homeowner at seventy-five.
Leaves crunched under Pete’s canvas shoes.
The whole neighborhood was as familiar to him as his childhood’s Sunday morning church routine. He sometimes wondered which were the notable houses. He intended to look up and view the beautiful houses one day. At this point he didn’t really see the neighborhood. He felt it when he’d seen it. It was just enough for something to be going on without him having to pay so much attention to it. Or anything else. He could just walk.
It was a nice place to walk. He pushed his balled firsts into his jacket and cupped his phone. He felt the crack on the screen. He turned.
Down the new street, there was a car with the interior overhead light on. A man sat in the passenger seat, and a woman was the driver. As he approached them it was apparent the difference between the inside and the outside of the car was like the difference between the surface and the body of the deep end of the swimming pool: if they had strained they could’ve perceived Pete there among the distorted neighborly shapes. They didn’t strain.
There was a serious scratch on the car’s bumper, below the headlight on the side of the curb. Horizontal black, gray lines interrupting the glittery dark blue paintjob.
He stood. They sat. He looked at them in their seats.
He and she were both looking forward out of the windshield.. Their arms were at their sides. Pete couldn’t tell if they were relaxed—or just, slack, stuck, whatever—without approaching and therefore interrupting. They were in the car for a reason that wasn’t just their arrival at wherever this was for them.
He waited for a scene to emerge, and resolve itself.
A drama, or an anecdote—something, however personal and obscure to him. Though he also didn’t want that, somehow. Somehow, he wasn’t curious or emotionally moved. But they were people.
Pete felt the ache in a band of muscle beneath the blade in his right shoulder that had been with him all day. Pete felt the tiredness in his eyes.
In his nose, his sinuses, hot despite the crisp air, the hot place in the sinus where a person felt a hangover.
Pete breathed out white. He breathed in the cold.
He opened his eyes and watched the car. Pete stood and felt, beyond the temperature, mainly a big pleasure in the thrumming sound of the car’s idling engine, the steam rising from the car exhaust. They were people who could interrupt what he was doing by noticing him. This was a moment that was between others. Pete noticed the details of the car. Pete noticed the details of the people in the car.
Then, the other man reached forward, and across the woman’s lap, and, in a gesture that perfected this moment in Pete’s life, turned on the dark.
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Joshua Hebburn lives in Los Angeles and edits fiction for X-R-A-Y. His own is recently in New World Writing, hex, HAD and scaffold. He recommends "Death Rider" by Jon Berger from the Burial Mag archive.
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