Robert Flannigan
by Josh Stewart
Robert Flannigan is dead, but that’s not important right now. He was alive yesterday. Just after waking up, at 2:13 in the afternoon, he brushed his teeth. On some days, he doesn’t brush his teeth, because he doesn’t have a toothbrush on those days, but he tries to remember to buy a new one later in the day so that his breath won’t be unpleasant the next day. But this isn’t a story about Robert’s tooth-brushing habits, so I’ll move on to something else. After spending some time in the bathroom, he changed his underpants and put on a jacket and went out of the house. His car was out there, and he used that car to get where he needed to go – to a sandwich. He had to go to work, too.
Robert drove to his favorite sandwich place – Fred’s Sandwiches. They have a parking lot there. The owner of the store, Frederick DeMarci, doesn’t speak english very well and calls himself Fred Sandwich. Yesterday, Fred Sandwich said this when Robert walked into his store - "Hello, John. How is the day?” Robert said this, quietly and not very clear – “okay.” Then he ordered a sandwich, one with vegetables and cheese and mayonnaise. He paid for his sandwich, was given his sandwich, and went outside to eat his sandwich. Halfway through eating his sandwich, he decided there was no cheese in it, because he could not find any. But Robert didn’t mind much. He was used to not getting cheese in his sandwich, and he would try to make up for ordering cheese in his sandwich and not getting cheese in his sandwich by taking a lot of napkins and condiments and straws. There was no real plan for all the napkins and condiments and straws, but at least he had them and that made him feel better about not getting cheese in his sandwich.
After eating his sandwich, Robert got back into his car and drove to the grocery store. There was something funny about his deodorant when he put it on a couple days ago, like someone else had used it and perhaps not in an appropriate way. Nothing much really happened at the grocery store. It was a quick stop and all Robert needed was deodorant, but he also bought a Jolly Rancher. He had one once when he was younger, and he liked it then, so he thought he still might like it. The Jolly Rancher ended up on his nightstand last night, but that has nothing to do with the story at this point.
The part of the day Robert usually likes least came next, and that part is the one where he has to go to work. He worked in a small movie theater, one with just a single screen. Four years, three months, and a few days ago, he put in an application there, and he was hired the following week. The manager liked Robert’s enthusiasm for movies and also the carefree look in his eyes. Yesterday, the manager liked his willingness to mop up and scrub clean unfortunate troubles in the restroom. After the former contents of a more elderly moviegoer’s bowels were fully removed from the floor of the handicapped stall, Robert was called into the manager’s office. Staring at the floor, scratching his head, Robert heard this said to him – “Bobby, Susan needs to take Christmas and New Year’s Eve off, and I was wondering if you could take those shifts. I feel like a shit asking you this, especially since you worked on Thanksgiving, but we’re really in a bind.” There was some nodding and some more scratching and then finally this – “okay.” The manager stood up from his chair, slapped Robert on the back, and said this – “I really appreciate it, Bobby. You didn’t have anything going on those days, did you?” More head movement, more scratching, more quietly-mumbled words – “it’s fine.”
Robert went back to work feeling a little less good, so he started writing his thoughts down on receipt paper when he got back to the concession stand. A young, rather large, woman, smelling of and covered with fried chicken, came out of the theater and made her way to the counter, so Robert stuffed his note into his pocket. “This shit ain’t right,” she said. “Ain’t no fuckin’ chance this is Coke. This shit’s fuckin’ Diet Coke.” Not having anything to say, really, Robert took her cup and emptied it and filled it with Coke. The customer took it back, with a look in her eyes that made Robert think she was not someone to mess around with. She took a sip of the fresh Coke, and the expression on her face was not one made by someone pleased with what they have just experienced. You might even say it was a look made by someone who was quite displeased, and possibly very much enraged, by the thing that had just happened, and what had just happened was this – an already sour customer with chicken on her shirt was given a soda that may or may not have been a regular Coke, and whether or not it was a regular Coke was not an issue, because it displeased the customer. Just so you know. So, things went badly. She yelled – “Motherfucker, this ain’t no Coke. This shit’s still diet. Who the fuck you think you are?” He responded – “It should be Coke. I pushed the Coke button. I don’t know why it would be Diet Coke. I guess it just tastes funny today.” She responded – “Give me some fuckin’ Coca-Cola or some shit’s going down.” And the final response by Robert – “Hold on a minute. I need to call the manager.” This is when the customer took a few steps back and threw a full Jumbo-size beverage into Robert’s face. For no real reason, the manager showed up right then and asked the customer to either leave or wait for the police. She took option one. So did Robert, because he was bleeding from the forehead and was a little shaky.
For his drive home, Robert turned on the radio because he thought it would calm the anger he had just acquired. He thought that maybe the customer had passed some of her anger onto him, which would then make her less angry and him more angry and keep constant the amount of anger between them, but that didn’t make him feel any better and he didn’t know why he had thought of that, anyway. After seventeen minutes and fourteen seconds of driving, he was parked in front of his house. He went inside and put on a hooded sweatshirt. “I’m cold,” he thought to himself. “Soon, I’ll be warm. Hooded sweatshirts are warm.” Then he sat down in a small wooden chair that had a small wooden writing surface attached to it. He found it outside a high school awhile back. Shortly after bringing it back to his place, Robert tied a pen to it so that he would always have a pen when he sat down there, so he used that pen to finish writing what he had started writing on receipt paper at work. It was a letter to someone who didn’t exist, and Robert hoped that someday the person would exist. When he finished writing the letter, he left the house to go for a walk. Before leaving the house, though, he found the Jolly Rancher in his shirt pocket and put it on his nightstand because he didn’t want to eat it right then and he thought it might make him happy if he found it there later.
Walking is something Robert liked to do sometimes, but not for very long. His neighborhood was pretty quiet most of the time and he found it peaceful. Last night, his walk was a little longer than usual, and that brought him out of his neighborhood. He kept walking and walking and it got later and later, and finally, at 2:13 in the morning, he had a thought. The thought was about how he once was beaten up by people he didn’t know, on the beach, in the dark. Robert couldn’t even remember how many years ago that was, but he did remember that he hadn’t been back to the beach since, so he thought last night that it was finally time to go back. It took approximately twelve more minutes to walk to the beach, and then he walked onto the beach and sat on the sand. He didn’t think it was very peaceful because of the loud sounds the ocean was making, but it was okay. Over the next couple hours, Robert slowly moved his way into the water. He was still sitting down and the water wasn’t very deep where he was but the waves occasionally touched his face. “My hooded sweatshirt is wet and no longer warm,” he thought. “I wish I could change that.” This is when he put his head in the water and took a breath. He quickly pulled his head up and choked the water out of his lungs. A few minutes later, he put his head back under and laid down. Calmly, he held his breath and thought thoughts. Some of them were about how he doesn’t want to work on Christmas, while others were about taking control of his own life and being brave. So there he laid, exactly twenty-three years and nine months old, breathing in underwater. It was hard at first, but he was tough and worked through the difficult parts. He thought he had never been more in control of his future. Someone found him today. They didn’t know who he was, but they were not happy about it.