Adrian fumbled through his jacket pockets to find his keys, past the mounds used tissues and gum rappers which he hastily tossed out onto the cement. Walking to his car, he could feel the tip of his nose and his cheeks hardening from the bitter cold air. Soon they would turn numb. Everything was numb. He could feel the Sam Adams bottle opener key chain, so he assumed the keys were attached to them, where they were when he put them in his pocket when walking into work that morning.
The alarm clock went off at 5:45 a.m., the monotonous artificial beeping marked a new day. He once wondered if the rising sun marked a new day, or was it a new day when you wanted it to be. Setting an alarm made time controllable, contained, fixed. If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound? That kind of shit. Well, that led him to feel like we all live in our separate universes where sound, color, sensory stimulation, and time are all completely different. People even taste food differently. He knew this as scientific fact because in his 11th grade chemistry class they did an experiment on genealogy and traits, some kids had ear lobs attached to the sides of head and some kids couldn’t taste bitterness on the tip of their tongue. Adrian could taste bitterness on the tip his tongue, had fat hitch hiker thumbs, and a widows peak. After he got out of work he picked up where his train of thought left off in the morning.
The Beatles “Across the Universe” came on the radio as he turned the key to the ignition, “Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup. They slither while they pass. They slip away across the universe. Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind, possessing and caressing me. Jai guru deva om .Nothing's gonna change my world. Nothing's gonna change my world. Nothing's gonna change my world. Nothing's gonna change my world..”
The car was just starting to heat up. The numbness in his nose and fingers were gradually replaced with a sensation of tingling warmth. His eyes kept to the road, staring vacantly as the song droned in his ears. Adrian felt that the road beyond his vision wasn’t always there. Who’s to say that it was? At any time really, the road could stop being there- could cease existing. He and his 2005 Toyota Camry could be the inhabitants of a new dimension that didn’t involve cell phone bills, mortgages, grocery shopping, the flu, shitty bosses, dying fathers, whiney girlfriends, and war. No feelings or regret or happiness. But reality promised that the road would continue to be under the tires when he turned the corner. He pulled up to his apartment on Eighth Street across from Gerard’s Cleaners (Adrian made frequent stops there. The owner, Zia, had the nicest bong that she bought over in India. After using the bong he would hang himself up with the business jackets and non-machine washable blouses, and coax Zia to turn the conveyer belt on) and went inside- he stripped off his jacket, tossed it in front of the closet door, hung his keys on the partially nailed in screw in the wall, and turned the t.v on. On channel 21 there was infomercial on the shake weight, so he changed it with a grimace on his face. Weights were for lifting, not for shaking, like a spastic fairy. The history channel seemed like a pretty viable attempt for entertainment, so he kept it there while he made himself a drink. He could clearly hear from the next room, “The History Channel presents: Mysteries of Black Holes explored.” He dismissed the drink and instead threw himself on the salmon colored love seat with the wine stain on the arm rest. He turned up the volume a little louder. “Black holes can be compared with rowing in a canoe, the closer the canoe gets to a waterfall, the greater the pull. A black hole sucks in everything in it’s path, and never returns out the other end.” A trickle of saliva protruded out of the corner of Adrian’s mouth. His mind was going downstream. “If a black hole changes course and finds its way into the Milky Way galaxy, the whole world would be in grave jeopardy,” An image of giant meteors crashing down toward the earth was followed by several explosions and mushroom clouds.
“WHAT…the fuck??...”
“Or worse,” the deep narrator voice slowly cautioned, “A black hole could gravitate towards the earth, at the typical speed of roughly 11 trillion miles an hour. The earth would get sucked in and the sheer forced of the gravity and speed inside of the black hole would compact the earth to the size..” there then was a golfer on the screen. He looked down and putted a ball with green, blue, and white all swirled together, “Of a golf ball.”
“……..,” Adrian’s mind was officially pulverized from this information. Adrian threw on his coat, leaving the t.v on. He wanted to see if Zia was still at the cleaners.
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