COMING APART – a novel

“His fantasy was lost, where reason fades.”
-from Endymion by John Keats

CHAPTER 1

Bickford Armstrong dreamed of becoming the next hot celebrity chef in New York City. Basking in endless accolades. His food truck parked in front of an insanely long line of customers.

Bick’s spectacular food truck would be a showcase for his entrepreneurial genius. He remembered reading somewhere “Dream big or go home.”

In the spring of 2008, Bick was ready to dream big. He had a plan for making big happen. He needed the next three months. It was time to get to work.

Of course he would also have to persuade Steve, his significant other, to sign on.

Bick pulled a notepad and pen from the kitchen drawer and wrote down the word MONEY.

He would have to convince Eunice to lend him the money to buy and renovate a used truck. Bick called his mother Eunice by her first name. After his father fled when Bick was a high-school sophomore, Bick assumed he was the new man of the house and therefore on equal footing with his mother. After that, he never called her mom.

On the next line, he wrote TRUCK.

He would have to find a truck to buy and figure out the cost of renovations. He studied a website that advertised used food trucks for sale. One truck in particular caught his eye. Big Mamma’s Donuts was scrawled in large letters across the side. Big Mamma herself stood next to a heaping plate of steaming fried dough. The price was reasonable, and he figured the inside of the truck would smell heavenly.

STEVE.

He would have to coax Steve to come on board as his business partner. Then, he would have a difficult talk with him about personal hygiene.

SHOPPING.

He started a shopping list: a gallon of hand sanitizer, a dozen boxes of surgical gloves, several gallons of paint.

* * *

“Where the hell are you?” Bick demanded over the phone.

“I’m at El Sushi Loco,” Steve said. “I’ll be home soon.”

“You said that an hour ago.” Bick raised his voice. His bulldog Oliver and Steve’s two papillons barked next to his feet. “The dogs are raising hell here. And you know what it’s like to take all three out by yourself. You need to get home fast.”

“You’re being shouty,” Steve muttered and hung up.

* * *

Steve spent the afternoon scouring the Lower East Side for weirdness to photograph. On a good day, he could find a half-dozen quirky storefront signs. If there was a typo or two, even better. When he happened to be in just the right place at the right time, a truly oddball New York scene would appear in front of his camera. A jackpot.

A restaurant awning caught Steve’s eye. In bright red letters, it proclaimed “Open 25 Hours.” He mused about whether the place was also open eight days a week. He took some pictures and proceeded farther along the block.

Lonely People Talk Too Loud!!!—a giant message spray-painted on a wall—was definitely worth some photos. He wondered if he was guilty of being lonely and loud. “I’m not loud,” he told himself.

In the next block he noticed a store window on which two large signs were displayed side by side. The sign on the left read “Chicken Nation.” And on the right “Beware of Dog.” It must be a dangerous place. Obviously only for chicken fanatics. Steve took more pictures. The day’s outing was proving to be productive.

His phone blared with a news flash ring. His twin sister Jessica would be on her afternoon break.

“Jess, what’s goin’ on?”

Jessica had stepped outside her office building on West 45^th Street. Taxi horns blared so she shouted to be heard. To speak privately in Manhattan, people yelled.

“I’ll tell you what’s goin’ on! Listen to this!”

Jessica lived alone and saved up bits of gossip to share with whoever would listen—usually her brother.

“My boss Marjorie, she with the tiny bumps, was gone for a couple days and this morning when she came back to the office we noticed she grew like double D-size boobs!” Jessica cackled loudly. “She acted like nothing was different. We all just stared at her chest.”

Steve stopped to stare at a bike hanging from the very top of a twelve-foot-high No Parking sign. He tried to imagine how the bicycle ended up there. How was it possible to hang a bike at twelve feet and then secure it with a Kryptonite lock? Somebody must be a free-climbing rock jock. Maybe they had a ladder.

“Are you there?” Jessica shouted.

“Yeah. I’m listening.” Steve thought about waiting around for the bike owner to return. “I guess Marjorie’s breast implants were the talk of the town today,” he said absent-mindedly.

“Yeah, some good gossip,” Jessica said. “Anyway, I still hate my job.”

Jessica told anyone who would listen that her passion at the moment was hating her job. She hated her job passionately.

“Didn’t you tell me you just got a promotion?” Steve asked.

“Yeah. Marjorie D-cups promoted me. I’m a Customer Success Specialist now!” She exaggerated a tone of fake pride. “As if I give a rat’s ass. I’m still doing the exact same job. Listening to customers bitch about how hard it is to assemble the baby crib they ordered.”

“I gotta go, Jess. I’m in the middle of something.”

It was an unusually hot day in April and the storm sewers under First Avenue emitted a putrid sulfur odor. Steve turned away from the airborne bicycle and hurried down the block, keeping an eye out for photo-ops.

“Are you walking the dogs?” Jessica asked.

“No, I left Gracie and Jerard at home with Bick,” Steve said.

Jessica said she still had five minutes left on her break. “So, how is that partner of yours?”

“Oh, as usual,” Steve said. “One day we’re up. The next day we’re down. The teeter-totter couple. Actually, Bick and I have been mostly down lately.”

“Why don’t you leave that control freak?” The background noise faded as Jessica walked back inside to return to her desk.

“I don’t know,” Steve said. “You know, it’s really easy to be hard on Bick. Anyway, I gotta go. Talk to you later.”

“Remind me to tell you about my new yoga class,” Jessica said.

Steve shoved his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. He noticed a large poster mounted on a chain-link fence and stopped to take a picture.

“Dog Waste Transmits Disease! It Contaminates Drinking Water! Leash, Curb, and Clean Up After Your Dog! It’s The Law!”

Brown smears stained the poster. Steve imagined irate dog owners with loaded pooper-scoopers hurling dog shit at the sign. New Yorkers could get uppity about being told what to do. Steve shot some photos and walked on.

His phone rang again. This time, the irritating barking ring.

“Hey, Bick. What’s goin’ on?” Steve asked.

“For chrissake, where are you? The dogs need to go out. Now!” Bick said. “And we need to talk. I found a used food truck for us to buy.”

Hearing Bick’s snippy tone, Steve said nothing.

“Did you hear me, Steve? I said we need to talk! I found the perfect food truck!”

“I’m getting some great shots on First Avenue. I’ll be home soon.”

Steve was not interested in buying a food truck. He half-listened to Bick’s sales pitch.

“I found a used food truck with low mileage for sale. It’s on a mobile kitchen website,” Bick said. “I’ll show you the pictures when you get home. We need to act fast. This will be an exciting adventure for us.”

Blah blah blah. Steve looked around for more visual oddities. “Like I said, I’ll be home soon.”

* * *

Steve’s papillons, Gracie and Jerard, and Bick’s bulldog, Oliver, were ready for their walk. Like all dogs, they instinctively knew when it was time for their raucous theatrical performance that involved barking and skittering, yipping in mad circles, more yips with wild jumping, until leashes, plastic bags, and pooper scoopers were taken off the shelf and the front door opened.

Bick had all three dogs ready to go when Steve walked through the front door.

“If you’ve been hanging out with your amigos, I’m not thrilled.” Bick pronounced amigos with sarcasm, which annoyed Steve.

“I told you I was in the Lower East Side taking pictures,” Steve said. “I stopped at a Mexican sushi place. Forgive me for being hungry. What have you got against my friends, anyway?”

“Nothing,” Bick protested. “I have nothing against your friends. But I told you we need to talk about buying a food truck. Time’s a wasting.”

* * *

Riverside Park runners dodged Bick, Steve, and the three dogs as they headed toward the dog run.

“Well, you wanted to talk,” Steve said, “so let’s hear about this food truck you want to buy.”

Gracie, Jerard, and Oliver cavorted in the dog run while Steve studied the truck pictures on Bick’s phone.

“Hmm. Big Mama’s Donuts,” Steve muttered. He didn’t know what else to say, so he handed the phone back.

“All it needs is a little painting. The inside is like new,” Bick stated.

Another phone call from Jessica rescued Steve from the sales pitch.

“My brain is dying,” Jessica announced before Steve had a chance to speak.

“If you hate your job so much, why don’t you quit?” Steve asked.

“I have no idea what to do instead,” she sighed.

Jessica was friendly enough—but not friends—with her co-workers. Recently, they had stopped inviting her to join them for lunch. She didn’t know the reason. Now she ate lunch alone in her cubicle.

Steve gently reminded his sister that people seemed to like her less once they got to know her.

Jessica repeated the same spiel hundreds of times a day while seated in front of her computer on an uncomfortable chair at a desk stained with cup rings.

“Hello and thank you for calling Little Angels Furniture. My name is Jessica. How can I help you today?”

The office furniture was leased, so she hadn’t bothered to peel off the Quality Office Mart label that was stuck on her desk. The chair in her cubicle had one broken caster taped together with duct tape. Like a grocery cart with a stuck wheel, the chair was impossible to maneuver.

“I’m trapped here in a dead-end job aging my ass on a smelly chair that won’t even roll,” Jessica complained.

“Uh-huh.” Steve was eyeing a toy fox terrier trying to mount Gracie in the dog run.

Jessica continued. “Remember when mom used to moan about getting old, looking in the mirror and not recognizing herself. Now, I’m mom.”

“Oh, please. You’re thirty-two years old for chrissake.” Suddenly Steve shouted “Hey, stop that! Jess, I have to go. We’re at the dog park and Gracie is getting molested.”

* END *