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• Classic-Fiction

I get out of bed. There is Sun coming through the window. Bright Sun. I don’t remember the last time I saw the Sun.

I go to the Bathroom and I shower and I brush my teeth and I shave. I avoid the mirror. I don’t look at my eyes and I don’t look at myself. I shower brush my teeth shave.

I get dressed and I leave my room. I walk into the Unit, men are doing their jobs. I look at the Job Board to see if I have one and my name is listed beneath the word Greeter. I laugh. I am the Greeter, it is my job to greet. It makes me laugh.

I walk to breakfast the Halls are bright I don’t care about the Halls anymore. They are what they are I can’t change them.

I get a tray and a plate of waffles and a cup of coffee and a jelly donut. I walk into the Dining Room. I see my friends sitting at a table in the corner. They are always in the corner.

I sit down. Miles, Leonard, Matty and Ed. There is a new man sitting at the end of the table away from us. I look at Leonard motion toward the man and Leonard shrugs. I am now the Greeter. I decide to greet the man.

I move to the end of the table. I sit across from the man. He is old, probably in his late sixties. He has short gray hair that is thick for his age, and though it is messy and spiked, it could be easily straightened with a comb. He is very thin and gaunt. His skin is covered with liver spots, his veins bulge beneath the skin of his hands. He is staring at his plate. He is slowly eating a wet pile of scrambled eggs and cheese. I speak.

Hi.

He looks up. He has sharp blue eyes, one of them is bruised and black. He has a long thin nose and thin lips. The area above his upper lip and beneath his nose is covered with bleeding blisters.

What do you want?

His voice is lean and stiff, like the snap of a ruler on a desk.

I’m the Greeter. I came to greet you.

Go greet someone else.

I laugh.

Go away.

I laugh again.

Go away, you Little Fucker.

I reach across the table. Offer my hand.

I’m James.

He doesn’t take it.

Go away, James. You Fucker.

Why don’t you come sit with me and my friends.

I motion toward the other end of the table. My friends are watching me. The man looks at them, looks back at me.

I’d rather be alone.

No, you wouldn’t.

Yes, I would.

If you really wanted to be alone, you’d be sitting at an empty table.

The man stares at me and I stare back. He’s tense, I’m not.

You’re a Little Fucker.

I smile.

I know.

My name is Michael.

Nice to meet you, Michael.

He stands and he moves toward the other end of table and I follow him. We sit and I introduce him to everyone. At first he is quiet. He sits and he listens to us talk. We are talking about the man with no arms, who left this morning and said he was going to find some smack he didn’t care that he didn’t have arms he just wanted some fucking smack. He starts asking questions, about the man, about us, about what we do and why we are here. We answer his questions and we start asking him questions. At first he doesn’t reply, but after a few minutes he says what the fuck, you’re going to find out anyway. He tells us that he is a high-level Administrator at a large Catholic University in the Midwest. He tells us that he has been married for fifty-one years and that he has seven Children. He tells us that after the last of them was born, his Wife stopped having sex with him because she didn’t want any more Children and because she believed that sex was intended for procreation and procreation alone. He tells us he started seeing hookers. Not expensive ones, but Girls off the street. He tells us that he became Addicted to them and to the danger of being with them and to the danger of getting a disease from them. He tells us that one of the hookers gave him some crack and he started smoking it and he became Addicted to it. His addictions became part of each other. He needed hookers and he needed crack. He couldn’t have one without having the other and he needed them both all the time. He needed hookers and crack every single day. He got