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By Root 359 0

it, kept my back straight, and sat once more in my invisible chair. I lifted my arms, elbows out, hands poised as though to type on a keyboard. And then I typed—stiff, burned fingers and all. Click click click click click click… There was no sound, but I heard it. I cocked my head and pretended to read from notes as though transcribing. Click click click. The bandaged arm was hard to work with, but I did my best. It’s important to stay with an action long enough for it to sink in. A novice would move from typing to the next phase too soon. Me? I typed. Methodically, meticulously, each gesture articulated and clean. Click, click. I leaned toward my imagined notes, squinted at the pages, and when I reached the end of a line—because, in my mind, I used an old-fashioned typewriter—I hit the return with a zing! Click, click, click! And after a while, as I typed I slowly, almost imperceptibly, started to hunch forward. I brought my elbows up higher, shoulders raised. I bent my knees, swayed my back until my rear stuck out, crooked my neck, and with the pacing of a bud turning into a flower on a stop-action film, my typing movements morphed from poised and efficient to pinched and harried. I bent forward farther, brought my elbows up level with my ears, opened my hands a bit, and soon I wasn’t a transcriptionist at all anymore, but was an insect, arms and legs frantically fighting the air, head rotating. With a swivel, I fell on my back, trapped! I was a bug on my back, typing or flailing, and it was one and the same: a menial job turned into a meaningless life, a short life, the life of an insect.

That’s where the story began.

“Ta da! It’s just a sample.” I stood up, brushed off, and when Jerrod clapped again I took my second bow. “There’s more…but not today.” Then I added, by way of apology or explanation, “In Kafka’s story, of course, it’s a man and he isn’t at work, but home in bed. He wakes up and finds out he’s been transformed. It’s just more dramatic, I think, to add the action, the job—”

Jerrod said, “I know the story, and I’d say it works, this way.”

“You know the story?”

He laughed at my surprise. “You think police officers don’t read.”

In truth, I didn’t know they read beyond speeding tickets and incident reports, but I said, “I didn’t mean it that way. What’dcha think?” To perform and not hear how it went over, that’s like walking naked through town, worse than walking in clown clothes even, fully exposed.

He said, “The one-person production? Pretty smart. Focused.”

I never had the luxury of a grown-up audience anymore, except sometimes Rex, and now I nodded, listening, rapt. “So you could tell what was happening? The insect part?”

“Exactly! Very clear,” he said. “I had trouble with the story back when I read it, because I didn’t get it. I mean, why’d the guy turn into vermin? Whose fault is that? Making it a one-woman show cuts out the other characters. Streamlines.”

I made it a one-person show because I had no actors, nobody who was in as deep as I wanted to be with this Kafka thing.

He said, “The way you do it, I’d say it’s the character himself or, in your case, herself”—and he pointed, touched my arm—“making choices, turning herself into a cockroach, or a beetle.”

Ah! My spirits dropped. Wrong audience. Jerrod wasn’t in the swing after all. “But it’s society turning him into a bug. Society is implied, by the wage slavery…”

He listened, nodded. Tapped a finger to his lips.

I tucked my knees in, leaned toward him, and said, in a rush, “…the social expectation that we hold meaningless jobs, trade time for money, humanity for a paycheck.” This was a key point. Was that a grin behind Jerrod’s hand? I was on my favorite terrain now, and way too eager for understanding, afraid of being misunderstood. I said, “Like the whole system, capitalism, is one big roach motel and we’re all checked in, we’re not getting out.”

It was definitely a grin behind his fingers. Slowly he said, “Society, huh?” He said, “Well, I like your spirit, but you lose me in the logic.”

Drat. Of course he didn’t get it, because he