"Fluff Piece" by Cora Lewis
Now I’m cornering undecideds outside the arena.
“I believe strongly in one worldwide government without borders,” a suit with a crewcut tells me.
I prompt him to go on. He seems surprised.
“I believe strongly in one worldwide government without borders,” he says again. “But now all of the nations according to Jeremiah are tyrannical nations, ever since the last king of Israel has been off the throne.”
I hesitate.
“I'm a Jehovah's Witness,” he says, extending the Bible I now see in his hands. “But thank you for your time.”
***
Once, when my brother was smaller, our father pointed at some geese in the sky.
“Form a V,” he said, and they did, striking awe into the boy.
The next time he saw a flock, my father later told me, my brother pointed up and said, with enormous concentration: “Form a dolphin.”
***
A friend has returned from a seasonal gig at a farm with a vineyard. He tells me he encountered there a world he’d known only in language: low-hanging fruit, a windfall, seed money.
***
“Artificial intelligence won’t recreate a human brain,” an engineer is telling me in an interview the next week. “The same way the Wright Brothers’ plane didn’t recreate a bird.”
“It will be more mechanical,” I say.
“Right. It will necessarily be crude.”
“It won’t eat seeds, sing songs.”
“It won’t be winged.”
***
Some weeks; the unusual animal beat falls to me.
“The Internet Is Mourning The Death Of Zsa Zsa, The World’s Ugliest Dog.” “A Jaguar Got Out In A Zoo And Killed Five Alpacas And An Emu.” “This Family of Escaped Goats Will One Thousand Percent Make Your Day.”
They’re the fuzzy write-ups that once drew the ads that paid the printer’s fees. Now they pay for the cloud.
***
“That’s why I quit politics,” a teen says into his cellphone, juuling with his free hand.
***
Earnings season. I’m assigned a story on the average American worker. In the private Reddit group where Walmart employees post, an anonymous someone opens a thread — their thoughts on the job:
“oh, well, last night, while working dairy, I thought about 9 mm vs 40 vs 45, the rioting going on (they closed a Walmart), what gun to buy next, how I was going to spend my entire check on bills before 8AM, should I reinforce my exterior doors or get a rottweiler, should I pressure-wash my car, truck, or house, what youtube, movies, and Netflix shows I watched recently, Weds night is deli doughnut night, and usually a small truck, why both the new guys are slower than Christmas, should I mow the grass or wait til Thurs when I am off, why Walmart is spending money to reset drinks, water, and aisle 7 when we are getting a remodel next year, wow, she is hot, I wonder if she is a stripper, haha, this meat went out in August, they’re not rotating, should I tell someone, or just sneak off to jerk off. so, I guess I think about Walmart a little, but nothing important”
***
Suddenly it’s fall again in New York.
I meet a painter. He’s older, has had a measure of success, and occasionally says things like, “Artists are the only alchemists in the world. They pick up a pencil and turn lead into gold.”
Despite this, I enjoy his company.
***
The next man I meet somehow has five degrees.
“What was it like, being in school all those years?”
“Like learning all the dimensions of the river without swimming.”
***
Another weekend. I drive away with childhood friends. We make it to a beach house and break out a cobwebbed Sunfish to sail through the last days of heat.
At the tiller, Henry, the most financially successful of the group, says he’s learning a lot at the flash-trading firm where he’s been working.
“The cost of human capital’s the only downside,” he says — that these NASA-grade, rocket-science minds could be doing really anything else.
It reminds me of an interview I once did with a logger, after a notably gory accident, when logging was the most lethal job in the U.S.
“OSHA doesn’t give one solitary damn about us,” the lumberjack said. “You get hit with one of those swinging trunks, you’re a gob of goo.”
Their tones similarly unfazed, approaching from opposite directions.
***
Now Henry and I breast-stroke our way to the floating platform. The sun dries us in minutes.
My arms are badly peeling, and salt streaks both our collarbones. I can taste it without licking my lips. He tugs a piece of ragged skin, like lace, from my shoulder.
“You need a haircut,” I say, and he dog-shakes his curls in my direction.
After a spell, we jump back in and crawl towards shore, Henry out-pacing me as a former lifeguard.
Back at the house, after he showers, he comes into my room, a towel looping his waist. He leans down to kiss me where I’m seated cross-legged on the bed, still in my suit.
“You smell good,” I say, automatically. “Clean.”
“You smell dirty,” he says, soft-core-porny, laughing, and then we’re rolling around, easily, and no one has any expectations.
***
Here in Montana, my bed is sized for one, all the better. I’m covering the candidates’ debate, and the family putting me up have lent me their battered pickup to get around, in addition to their daughter’s former bedroom.
“Go slowly, but don’t stop,” the farmer advises, before I drive off across the tall, dry prairie. "If you stop, the heat from the tailpipe and engine can make the grass catch fire."
It seems a lesson for a person living a certain kind of life, maybe even mine.
Cora Lewis is currently an MFA candidate at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a graduate of Yale University, and her writing has appeared in BuzzFeed News, the New York Observer, the Wall Street Journal, and the New Haven Independent. Her stories have appeared in The Racket Journal and TINGE Magazine.
