Liberte egalite fraternite the toothbrush glass motto cried out to her as she brushed her teeth and toweled herself dry. Now the cat would be fed. He ran halfway down the stairs then stopped. I'm king of the stairs he glared up at her. Working at cross purposes again I see, she said, now please try not to kill mommy or how will you ever get breakfasses, and obviously seeing the sense in that he moved on to the kitchen for first breakfast. There would, of course, be second breakfast before she left. This had been negotiated by kitty, which is what she called him although it was not his name. When she first brought him home from the rescue in spring of 2016 a fully grown cat jaded by the system, aggressive and taciturn-- nicknamed she later discovered in a phone conversation with his foster mom the donald for both his aggression and his orangeness-- they had had differing opinions about his role. She wanted affection, companionship and was dismayed when he did not greet her at the door when she came home from work. She had explained to him that she would feed him when she came home, entering through the kitchen, and that she was willing to call him a minimal number of times, but that she expected him to greet her. He had complied, he wanted the food afterall, but over time it had become the ritual she had noticed to be enjoyable between herself and her previous companions of the cat persuasion. Kitty, however, had later reasoned that going away was categorically equivalent and hence was owing if celebrated. She could not argue, and what is more she did not wish to argue, she was happy to comply, and so had begun what would later be formally named the living document.
She got in her car, let it warm up, and drove to the exit gate. She hopped out and entered the code in the pad. She hopped back in, closed the door, drove up enough to engage the sensor, then put on her safety belt before pulling down into the decline where she could see the oncoming traffic. This had become more of a dance recently and the word hopped is used ironically. This used to be a process in which the only conscious process was to be close enough to the key pad to avoid getting out until the window motor ceased functioning. She had taken it to the shop. They could not find a part for the 1995 window. She had found the exact part on eBay and returned to the shop triumphant only to have the installed and totally functional part do the same thing less than six months later. However, this time the window stuck in the full upright position and so was only extremely annoying. Drive-thru was largely more trouble than it was worth. Every time there she didn't use a drive-thru she had a small flashback to her lost voice months.
She had been very ill in 1997, or maybe 1998. She couldn't remember the exact sequence. She had had the flu. An especially bad flu. She remembered the coughing that made her hurt so bad she couldn't sleep. She had gone to the Clinica and they had given her a prescription for codeine cough syrup which gave her nightmares but calmed the cough sure enough. She must have taken off work, difficult as that was to believe, and she had been in bed with the vaporizer going in a room with real wood paneling on the walls which created the best possible sauna-like environment. One evening she had been laying in bed, next to her the man she had lived with for several years, watching Conspiracy Theory, when he noticed that she wasn't making any sense. He had checked her temperature and it was so high he had somehow gotten her into an ice bath. The whole experience had frightened him so much she had heard a lot of stories about it, but she only had fragmentary memories of either the bath or Conspiracy Theory. Anyway, one thing and another, there had been complications and she had ended up losing her voice for about six months to the extent that she couldn't be heard over the speaker at a drive-thru. The phone had been difficult too. This was much less inconvenient than that.
Work had become a shorthand of itself for her. Monday: less than an hour to walk the department pulling signage from the weekend sales, tidying things up, making note of what needed to be ordered, reading email, reviewing upcoming sales and promotions, placing large vendor orders, and making note of anything else she needed to do catch as catch can the rest of the day. Tuesday: walk the department straightening things and making room for the incoming order stock, read email, receive orders, put away orders, place small vendor orders, catch up on items from Monday. Wednesday: usually off. Thursday: read email, place large vendor orders if necessary. Friday: read email, print signage for weekend sales, walk the department putting out signage, tidying, making room, adjusting placement for sales, receive large vendor orders, receive small vendor orders, put orders away. Saturday: read email, restock department, prep for customer interaction event, cycle count activity, host interaction event, clean up, restock key items.
So she was at the register.
She was in a dream, and she was aware that she was in a dream. She walked up to a table with two people sitting there, but she got the impression that they weren't exactly people, there was something kind of otherworldly about them, they weren't exactly in focus. On the table was a stack of what looked like lucite tablets, possibly holographic, with what at first seemed like circular cuts in them going all the way around without meeting at the end which would have made them fall through. However, as she looked at them closer they seemed more like zen enso or the writing of Arrival aliens. She felt like she was beginning to get some understanding of them, they were case files. Whatever, she had run out of time for this analysis, they were asking her questions. What can you tell us about the golden toilet, they wanted to know.
Well, it's an art piece by Maurizio Cattelan commissioned by the Guggenheim. It's an installation piece that's an actual functional toilet made out of, i think, 18 karat gold. They had it set up in the Guggenheim as an installation for people to actually use as a toilet. They offered it to 45 as an art loan but he declined. Oh yeah, and the title of the piece is America. What can you tell me about it?
It's been stolen.
She couldn't stop thinking about it after she woke up. She looked it up. It had been stolen. It had been loaned out to Churchill's birthplace. It had disappeared. There didn't seem to be any leads.
