Larry

“A call for you, Larry…” Bernard called after him, but Larry was on his way out the door. He wiped the remaining beer froth from his mouth and almost walked in front of a taxi cab, but for a woman walking her dog. He caught his foot on the leash, jerking the small poodle much to the woman’s surprise and to his. He was in a drunken stupor.

“I saved your life!” she exclaimed with her brow furrowed as she stared at Larry, partly annoyed but also amused. Her dog was barking or rather yipping at the inebriated man, and it had the makings of a genuine scene on the busy Brooklyn street. But he raised his hand in a conciliatory papal gesture, and stumbled past her toward his apartment building.

He was there. It was a mere third of a block walk and he was inside. He passed an acquaintance on his way up to the second floor, to 2D.

“Your dead, Larry” said the man with an expectant smile. Larry almost turned his head but instead just winced and kept going, and the man turned for the front door and laughed to himself. Larry flung open the door, threw his keys onto the small, high table nearby (only for them to land too hard and slide onto the floor, dragging an envelope with them), and locked the door behind him.

His back to the door, he looked at the keys with that stupefied anger that never lasts when its object is inanimate. He shook his face and squeezed his eyes with marked vexation and finally moved on to more pressing matters. He walked around the privacy screen, to the couch on the other side, and collapsed onto it. The stuffing was popping out noticeably in several places, including where he’d chosen to place his mouth on the arm. He spit it out, wiped his lips clear of the stuff with his eyes still closed, and re-adjusted himself into a more suitable position for passing out.
. *
Open went his eyes and on went the TV. No sooner had he regained consciousness than his hand began to feel instinctively for the remote control. It was a familiar activity for Larry which occurred often on the borderland of slumber and wakefulness, his eyes remaining closed whilst he flopped his arm around the surface of the couch, the coffee table, the floor; a squid’s tentacle scrutinizing the ocean floor it knows too well.

He couldn’t find it right away, so he opened his eyes to expedite the affair. Voila! Under the center cushion, and seven seconds out of sleep he was enveloped in other men’s decidedly more dramatic affairs. Blam! Someone was shot dead from at least several angles, and the perpetrators holstered their guns as they approached. One leaned down and felt for a pulse. He looked up and passed the result on to his female counterpart. No kidding, Larry thought. The two officers were out of breath, and began conversing, panting out their breath and the shows plot as the next commercial break approached. There it was! A pang of dramatic music in response to some revelation unheard by the dozing Larry, as the officers looked over their shoulders in terror. A veritable deus ex machina. He woke up again, startled by the sound.

Then, a toothpaste commercial, dance choreography, a slogan, and impossibly white teeth. Blinding even, and Larry turned away. Without proper knowledge of the crime at hand, the motivations in play, the various pathos lying inside the hearts of the protagonists….he had no reason to watch the rest of the show. He left it on, buzzing in the background as he rose, walked toward his kitchen (or pseudo-kitchen at least, a collection of the necessary appliances), and stood resting his hand on his cluttered, one person eating table. Larry did not know what to do.