The city sleeps but my day is about to begin. My feet tread the same path every night, the one that leads to work. As I walk, I cannot avoid to think about something that Helena said before leaving 'I would rather be somewhere else.' Maybe that's what I need, to go somewhere else. The problem is that I don't know where to. Or how to get there.
I'm not sure if I smell the coffee before entering the employee break room out of habit or anticipation, but the truth is I feel it in my nose. Once inside I can see the same four tables as always and a group of coworkers, I know most of them but some are new. The younger ones show tiredness on their faces, the older ones, their age. Hard to believe I have spent ten years in the boxing room. I lasted two years on the day shift but eight years ago I started working the nights. It's better money and usually, bosses are calmer. It's tough, but someone has to do it, I suppose.
Next to the cafeteria is the room where we change into our work clothes. I walk to my locker and take out my work jumpsuit, the faded orange from use and the years without washing. I look at it I realize that more than the machines, the noise, and the eternity I spend here, what I most hate is the damn uniform. I put it on. As I walk to the area where the packing line is I realized how enormous is the room I just have enter. So big hat it's difficult to take it all in with just one glance. There are 100 lines, just like mine, through which all the objects in the world pass, waiting to be boxed. And we, 100 operators, place each thing, each of those objects, where they belong. There must be over a million of ready-to-fold cardboard boxes, each one waiting to be filled up to the top with the dreams of our customers
There's no other way, we are told by the bosses. Things aren't going to pack by themselves, and for the management that is an obvious statement. I sit in my chair and press the button that starts the line. From my station I can see the back of the head of the next operator, in the same way that the one from the back can see mine. Tonight I can see the bold head of my friend Charlie.
‘Hey pal, found it?’ I ask.
‘Hey old man. I haven’t, no yet. But if you see a box big enough, please send me away.’ He replies. One of the jokes we repeat every day. Still, Charlie is a great guy.
After many hours I finish my shift and the journey back home feels long this time. Once I get to my flat what I encounter is a silence that goes beyond the absence of sound. Since Helena left, I can feel how loneliness has become so real, so palpable, that I almost feeling it eating and sleeping by my side.
I sit on the couch and drink some beers, thinking about life's things. My back is killing me but I am knackered and I fall asleep. I feel hungover when I wake up; it's been a while since I drank. My body remember some memories I thought forgotten.
It is one in the morning, and I should get ready to go to work. Soon after leaving the house, I see an open Irish-style pub, I don’t think it twice and I enter. A band is playing Barry White, and three groups of people liven up the place, all seeming happy. I like it and look for a free space; I sit on a stool at a high table. And at that moment, I decide that I am not working tonight. I order a beer from the waitress and look for Charlie in my phone contacts. I call him.
'Hey George!' he answers. I like that he always seems happy, although sometimes I'm not sure if he really is.
´Wanna go for a drink?' I ask.
'Like right now? I'm just about to start boxing, you know how it goes.' he replies.
'Come on, I'll send you the location,' I say. They have already served me the beer, I take a good sip: it's very cold and feels great.
'You're crazy, George. I didn't expect this.'
'Neither did I.' I hang up. I think about how complicated it is to know oneself.
The band plays a couple of songs, and I see Charlie entering.
'I was just about to leave,' I tell him.
'But we haven't even started yet,' he says. The waiter serves us beer, and we talk, about life. It turns out we're not so different after all.
'Hey, Charlie, could it be that people go through almost the same things?' I say; he laughs, quite drunk.
'I don't know, brother, it could be.' The band finishes, and we go to a nightclub. I order two gin and tonics; people are dancing, how far the packing line seems now. Some girls approach and talk to me, but the music is loud, and I can't understand them well. I'm a bit drunk, and the only thing that occurs to me to say is something I heard in a song.
'The moon is always very beautiful,' I say. They laugh, I love it.
'What are your names?', I asked
'Charlotte and Michelle,' they say. We talk about nothing and we have fun; the night passes quickly. They turn on the lights in the bar, and I suggest going to my house to continue the party, everyone likes the idea. When we arrive, I put on music, and we try our best at dancing. After a while, I get tired and sit on the couch. Michelle lies down next to me, and I feel her head on my lap. Charlie and Charlotte are standing, embracing, and kissing; it as a beautiful thing to watch, the four of us.
When I wake up, I'm still on the couch, and it's already noon. Everyone seems to have left; I stagger to the bathroom. I'm going to continue sleeping in the room, and in the bed is Michelle; I see her clothes scattered, and although she's covered by the sheets, it's clear that underneath her body is naked. I make us little noise as I can, I don’t want to wake her up.
I lie down next to her and fall asleep. When I open my eyes, she's on top of me. I'm still dressed; she's still naked.
'I thought about making you daydream,' she says. Her green eyes sing to me; she is such a beautiful girl. I sit up and kiss her. We fuck all morning, as if we were lovers from yesterday with the passion of those who met last night. When we finish, she doesn't return to bed but dresses, and from the door, she blows me a kiss that dissolves between her fingers. She's a tremendous woman.
I hear the noise of the door closing as she leaves. Perhaps there is a slam tailored to each night of passion, to every love story. I wonder how it sounded when Helena left. Not very loud, I think, it didn't even wake me up.
While I tidy up the house, I think about going back to work, to the line, and my hands tremble. At least when I was with Helena, I had a sense of purpose.
We had the idea of building something together, or at least that’s what we were supposed to do. But what now? My days are measure in carboard boxes, all our lives are. After all, some of us spend our lives filling them with things, and others spend theirs working to empty as many as possible. How ridiculous everything is.
It's the early-afternoon, and I still have a few hours left until my shift starts. I find a half-empty bottle of tequila from last night and I sit on the couch. I take small sips to pass the time. I think about Helena, but more about Michelle. About how she left, and how, by definition, everything ends. Have I lived and loved; won't that be enough? I try to think about last night, how funny was to see Charlie dancing. I wish I could be a bit more like him.
The alarm clock rings, 2 am. I'm not asleep, but I'm not awake either; I get up and wash my face. I feel the alcohol from last night, the tequila from today, the loss of the last times. But still, I put on the jacket hanging near the entrance and leave the house.
I can already see the neon lights of the façade at the entrance, and my feet seem to walk slower. My heart starts pounding hard; I can't breathe. My head throbs. I stop, trying to reason. Think. Slowly. 'It's just another shift, one more among thousands, you can do it,' I tell myself. Air returns to my lungs; I breathe deeply and walk the last stretch until the factory without thinking. I haven’t realized I got changed into my work clothes but I'm already near my boxing station.
As I enter the gigantic room, I can feel something is not right. I can feel a vibration, more of a noise, that comes from the hundred machines. Something I have never heard before. As I walked along the room some coworkers greet me, but although I can see their mouths moving I am not able to hear them. Tremendous noise. I sit in front of the conveyor belt; everything is the same as yesterday, a week ago, five years ago.
I press the green button that starts the belt. Objects waiting to be boxed pass in front of me. But they seem so far I don’t even try to reach them. As far as the moon. An electric toothbrush, headphones, a printer, they accumulate into a little pile at the end of the conveyor belt. The noise is overwhelming. It gets in my bones and does not allow me to move; even my vision is starting to blurry. The pile is getting bigger and starts to attract attention; some coworkers approach. I hear them talking to me and I want to shout and wave to them. But I can not: I am deaf and blind.
The noise is a long thunder inside my head, a storm I cannot weather. A desk phone, a folding table, a vape; the conveyor belt never stops. The conveyor belt is our god, and we live for it. The pile grows. Through the noise, I glimpse more coworkers approaching. A set of nail files, a juicer. Suddenly, the machine stops; someone must have pressed the red button, I think. But is it me or is the machine who thinks? Have I become an appendix of the belt? I feel my hands gripping the chair, my teeth clenched. I am staring at the floor.
Amidst the noise, there are voices; I know they are talking about me. I distinguish Charlie, he talks and through the thunder I understand him:
'What's wrong, my friend? Are you okay?'
I want to say no, that I'm a thousand miles from being okay, but I can only nod. Charlie stays by my side; I appreciate it. Minutes pass, or perhaps hours. I'm surrounded by people, and I feel so lonely. Just pure emptiness sitting on a chair.
Paramedics from an ambulance arrive; they talk to me and try to release my fingers from the chair. They want to inject me with something; I allow them. Slowly, the noise fades away, and my fingers loosen. My eyes no longer stare at the floor. The last thing I remember is being lifted onto the stretcher.
When I wake up, I'm in the hospital. It's daytime; light comes in through the window, illuminating the room I share with two other empty beds. I'm clear-headed, and I look at my arms; there are needle marks, but no IV line. I get up from the bed. I dress and leave; no one bothers me.
I see taxis, but I prefer to walk; I'm afraid to go home, I know what awaits me there. I take a detour to pass by the lot that used to belong to my family. It takes hours, and when I arrive, I jump the fences surrounding the site. It's been ten years, but they still haven't built anything; people say it's because of the crisis. I think there's no crisis that matters to those who bought the lot, but what do I know. Nothing, that’s what a poet or philosopher said long ago.
I look at the ruins of what used to our store and I think of my father. There was never a mother to think of. I recall him teaching me how to make shoes, the only skill he truly possessed. He would never comprehend how shoes manufactured on the other side of the world would ultimately lead to his downfall. Not even in the end, when he was consumed by debts and alcohol. It's getting late and I walk home.
I enter the flat with a clear idea in my mind: to never come out . Obviously, I'm not going back to work. The days pass slowly but they pass. I eat little and what I need I buy at the corner store. The owner is always there, looking at me with a strange expression. I usually buy while wrapped in a blanket; how could he not be surprised? The whole picture seems funny to me, and sometimes I have laughed out loud when leaving the store.
Yesterday I heard a knock. I got close but didn't open. It was Charlie and Michelle, they spoke through the door.
‘Hey brother, how are you?’ Charlie and his voice, it hurts to hear him downhearted.
‘Hey George, dear, we've come to see you, don't you want to come out?’ I didn't look my best and I didn't feel like being seen in this state, so I said nothing. After a while, they left, assuring they would be back.
Today there is only one question in my mind: Is it really worth to continue? Even feeling, as I feel it deep into my bones, that life is meaningless? I'm not going back to that factory or any other, that much I know. The cockroach life is over. It is time to go, it has to be now or I will not be able to.
I go to the bathroom and from a toiletry bag I take out a razor blade. I'm determined, I want this to be the end. I stroke the blade, press it against my finger. It's sharp and makes a small cut on my thumb. I am scared, I fear death. Not the nothingness I know is to come but the ultimate pain. I want it to end quickly. Now the blade is cutting the skin on my wrist as if it were butter. Blood is coming out. Now I can smell it. Suddenly, a vision crosses my mind.
It is me, as a kid. And in a split second my younger version reminds me of all the lives I wanted to live. Of how much I use to like waking up every morning and how things can be good sometimes. I feel the spell broken and I place the blade on the sink. I sit on the floor with my back against the wall, I curl up and cry. Not just for what almost happened, but more so for the things I want to come.
I leave the house, walk to a nearby park. I sit on a bench and the sun hits my face. I take out my phone and call Charlie.
‘Hello friend.’
‘Hey George, what a joy, how are you?’
‘Fine.’ I hesitate. ‘I'm sorry for acting crazy mate. I just couldn't take it anymore.’
‘It doesn't matter, and you know what? I've quit the job’. He laughs. ‘Shall we go somewhere?’
‘As long as it far from here, wherever you want.’
The end.
