Cracking Spines

Alex couldn’t remember what, or maybe whom, he’d smashed into last night with his Taurus. Mist accumulated on the windshield and, when he turned on the wipers, the engine revved with the added burden, and the car’s stereo quit. It had been a rainy July and as Alex drove around Lake of the Isles toward Jonah’s apartment, he watched geese bathing in the water that had risen up from the lake and flooded the walking path. By the end of the day, Alex knew, the lake would rise up past the bike path and into the street for the first time all summer. There were two deep dents by the passenger-side wheel well and Alex didn’t really mind because the car’s ruin was a common problem – a problem that other people could understand and possibly fix. Alex wished all his problems were like this, like everyone else’s, having to do with college debt or divorced parents or broken DVD players, while the sources of his actual dilemmas were vague and unreasonable.

Alex imagined his sadness had a pleasant pot-belly and wore three-piece tweed suits and used a monacle – that is, he imagined his sadness was a miniature version of Theodore Roosevelt. They played Soul Murderers IV together, Alex holding the controller while his sadness watched next to him on the couch. At work they manned the expediter line, calling out orders and garnishing plates with minced, tasteless bits of basil. When Jenna came into the kitchen with her server tray and expectations, his sadness began wailing in a high, cricket-like pitch that no medication had yet been able to mute. At especially bad moments they drove together around the Minneapolis lakes, Alex noting the urban wildlife, his sadness in the passenger seat quietly berating him for being fat and un-ambitious and afraid of the dark. The lakes were great because the streets orbiting them were all one-way, so you could drive aimlessly and still feel like you had some direction, which was exactly what he’d been doing this morning until Jonah called.