Simon was sitting on top of a mountain of garbage that had formed a short walk away from his townhouse. The mountain had simply shown up one day without ceremony and everybody except for him had accepted it as perfectly normal. Apparently his neighbours were so used to garbage that this pretty mountain of pop cans and broken flashlights and diapers was merely the next logical extension of their daily landscape. Simon used it for ruminating: ever since Tracy had broken up with him he felt like garbage, so the mountain became his comfort zone. He could empathise with things that had been thrown away once they had outgrown their use.
The sound of a tin can bouncing off a shoe and rattling onto the sidewalk woke Simon from his cheerless thoughts; he looked down from his perch to see his good friend Thomas, who was chasing after the tin can in a childish display. Thomas lived approximately thirty minutes away by foot and rarely ever stopped by Simon’s townhouse. Simon called down after him, wondering what could have possibly brought his friend so far from his usual strolling grounds.
‘Come down!’ Thomas called up. ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying, and I refuse to climb that castle of filth you’ve made yourself king of.’
Simon waved, laughed, and then slid down the mountain. Thomas was wearing a Drowned Radio concert shirt and had an unappealing growth of beard hiding his face. Simon, on the other hand, was wearing semi-translucent skin on his bony arms, having become even skinnier than the last time Thomas had seen him due to vegetarianism and an annoyed bowel problem.
‘They butchered me,’ lamented Simon, referring to the last haircut he had suffered through. That was how he tended to greet Thomas when they had not seen each other in a while.
‘It looks fine,’ Thomas allayed. ‘It’s great; don’t worry about it.’
They shook hands and then hugged awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry I did that happy dance when you told me the news, but we all know how much Tracy hated me. I was actually starting to regret snubbing her until you told me that you had broken up.’
‘The happy dance went on for ten minutes,’ Simon said.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Thomas said. ‘So where have you been for the last month?’
‘I’ve been working on the shy guy’s manifesto.’
‘You mean the little red enemy from Mario?’
‘No, it’s a manifesto for shy, nerdy, awkward guys. It talks about how shy guys are right and why the women who take advantage of them are wrong.’
‘Right about what?’
‘That’s what I’m having trouble with. All I really want to do is some kind of grand gesture, but it keeps coming out wrong, dwarfed by what others have already said and done. If only I was a character in some old Russian novel, then maybe I could make my statement by merely killing someone. But then again I guess my mind would erode because of it, and I don’t really know any women who are any good at offering redemption – which all leads back to my manifesto, really.’
‘So you’re like Valerie Solanas.’
‘Valerie Solanas? She’s that feminist who shot a gay guy for standing for everything she was against: penises. I’m entirely pro-vagina.'
Thomas slipped a small green notepad and pen out of his pocket. ‘Wait! Let me write that down – that’s almost clever; perhaps too easy. However, I have a predilection for absurdisms masquerading as wit, so there you go.’
‘You know, by default people only think about themselves.’
Pen poised, Thomas glanced at Simon from under his heavy black eyebrows. ‘Are you saying that because you want me to write it down?’ he asked.
‘When you cry at a funeral,’ Simon continued, unfazed, ‘You’re not necessarily crying over the departed but how their absence affects your life and your emotions. At a friend’s or family member’s or whoever’s wedding you’re thinking more about how the marriage is going to affect your relationship, or if not that then how good you look and your behaviour, and what your role is in these affairs instead of the people who are getting hitched. So–’
‘Listen, you’ve been alone for too long, you’re speaking nonsense. Let’s go.’
‘Go? Go where? Actually, I was thinking I’d be up for something so long as somebody made the offer, so anywhere is fine.’
Thomas lifted an eyebrow. ‘Anywhere? Well, let’s go somewhere.’
As they left the mountain, Thomas told Simon about a new all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant that had opened in the area. They walked and chatted, catching up on every small detail that had occurred since their last meeting, while behind them a bright white light hovered over the mountain of trash and then swooped away.
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