note: ten-part series continued! | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

The nasty smells. He seemed to notice them more and more every day. And in most cases, he found himself doing a double-take with his nose. The lingering puff of smell from a burp. The salty steam of urine hitting the urinal. The composite smell of shit emanating from the row of stalls in a public bathroom. The stagnant air of garbage on a hot summer day. The odor of sweaty armpits sans deodorant. The smell of rotten decay from a homeless man asking for change. He blew out his morning breath up his nose. Cigarettes and whiskey – that bitter, sour smell. He did it again and again until it made him nauseous. Then he breathed in the smell rising up from the warm stream of yellow as he stood in the bathroom, scratching the back of his head.

He remembered the way Janet smelled after her accident. Soft cheese and gym lockeroom. He kept his head near her bed, breathing in all the odors from her bedridden body. On some mornings he caught a whiff of her morning breath. The nurse hadn’t come by yet for her daily hygiene care. She was bitter and impatient. She often asked him to go home and leave her alone, although he had used up all his vacation days just to come see her. She was disappointed. Not with herself, but with the fate dealt to her. She had trained obsessively for years and spent many weekends on the bike or on a jogging trail getting herself into shape. She had become a regular on the triathlon circuit, having traveled to Hawaii, Oregon, and other parts of the country to compete in invite-only events. He was always with her to support her, to catch her driven expressions on camera, and to comfort her with Gatorade and a towel after grueling competitions. It was a bike fall that had shattered two of her ribs, her right wrist, and her left leg. It would be crutches and frustration for the next six to eight months.

He had met her fiance once. It was at the hospital. He had left work early to come see her. It was a tall white man with an angular face. He was lanky but muscular. The man reminded him of Lance Armstrong. He brought flowers for Janet and gave her a peck on the cheek before leaving the room. He was standing by the door when the man walked by, not even acknowledging his existence.

“Who was that?” he asked her.

“A friend. He’s also a triathete. He just came to say hi,” she said. She turned on the television and watched.

“Oh. Introduce me to him next time,” he said.

“Sure.”

He stood by the door and looked at his wife. A breeze from the window blew over Janet’s bed and towards the door. It smelled of fruity shampoo.

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“We used to work on two or three clients every month. It was all by word of mouth. We would take a look at the place, take some measurements and some photos, and then imagine how we could make it look nice. And then we showed our clients a few ideas, let them have some input, and got to work.

“To stay within the budget, we did all sorts of shopping. We visited garage sales, flea markets, and warehouse closings, and even picked up things off the curb. Some clients let us splurge and we were getting things custom-built or ordered from Europe. But what mattered more than the brand of the furniture was the entire theme. We made sure that, on the whole, everything just worked.

“Some of the jobs were worth half a million and some were worth less than ten thousand. We didn’t really discriminate. Each one was a challenge. We took a non-negotiable 7% fee from the project budget. It was a fair sum, and money wasn’t what really drove us anyways.

“Greg handled a lot of the creative work while I did the talking with clients and suppliers. We rented a loft in Brooklyn, back when it was really cheap, and turned it into our home office. We worked in basketball shorts and t-shirts. We had an indoor hoop and shot baskets while brainstorming or picking swatches.

“We never studied any of this in school or worked under anyone before. We started by volunteering to do some interiors for friends and took good pictures of our work. Somehow word got out and we were in business before we knew it. It’s an intoxicating feeling. Running your own show only a few years out of college. We thought we would be doing it forever.”

He paused and looked down at the food. He wondered if she would sleep with him on their first date. She looked much better in person than in the photo she had sent him over email. He liked her sharp nose and thin face. He liked the way her shoulder-length hair was shiny and very black. He wondered what sort of sound she would make if he kissed her on the back of the neck.

“So then what happened?” she asked. She tried not to look too hard at the pock marks on his face. He could lose a few, she thought. But she had seen worse. It was her eleventh date in the past three weeks. Since posting “SAF seeks nice, gentle guy – 29” on Craigslist, she had been exposed to men she never even knew existed: the tall, athletic-looking attorney with blue eyes who swept her off her feet only to admit later that he had wife and kids; the fashion model with washboard abs and sculpted back who seemed too enamoured with himself; the chubby PR exec whose booming voice hurt her ears; the black policeman whose conservative views seemed so out-of-place to her; and many other interesting characters. This was her first date with an Asian male; an obligatory chance given to a poor SAM. At least dinner would be free – again.

“Greg and I had an argument and stopped working with each other,” he said.

She didn’t know if she should ask for further details. She nodded slowly and tried to give a sympathetic look.

“Yeah, it’s worlds away from a desk job. I don’t even know much about computers, and yet, people call me to fix them every day,” he said.

“Why don’t you quit and go back to what you were doing?” she asked.

“That was ten years ago. I don’t have such ambitions anymore,” he said. He realized he wouldn’t be getting any that night. Fuck – women like ambitious guys, he thought.

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He used to stand in line at Whole Foods, the one in the lower level of the Time Warner Center, while Janet ran back and forth dropping off grocery items into the shopping cart. The checkout line was always long on weekends, and this method that he and Janet had devised allowed them to save twenty or so minutes which otherwise would have been spent idly standing in line, peppered with inane comments about the nearest products and moments of awkward silence. Even in marriage, these awkward silences, when both sides wished for the other to say something interesting, persisted. Their efficient method was not welcomed by all parties. In some instances, people behind them would flash disapproving looks or mumble disgruntled noises under their breaths. Janet never seemed to pick up on the irritation of other shoppers, or if she did, she chose to ignore them. She was very good at ignoring, he often thought.

He still went to Whole Foods. Not every Sunday night as he had with Janet, but every other week, when he felt the need to save money and eat at home. He also used a basket, not a cart. Today he went to satisfy his craving for tuna. He remembered the days when he and Janet bought big chunks of dark red tuna and prepared grilled tunasteak with peppercorn and lemon seasoning at home. He walked swiftly by the fresh seafoods and walked down the aisle towards the canned goods. He reached for the 365 brand tuna, only $1.19 per can. He grabbed ten cans and stacked then in two columns inside his basket. Tuna sandwiches and tuna salads for at least two weeks. He just needed some celery.

Ten years ago, he owned his own business. Tomorrow, he would be in a cubicle waiting to answer phone calls from careless executives who spilled coffee on their keyboards and needed a replacement. He once thought about getting a dog, not long after Janet moved out. A friendly-looking one that was big and soft and would greet him at the door when he came home. But he doubted his ability to care for a living thing on his own. The city loves dogs, he thought. And yet, the idea of feeding the dog and cleaning up after it on a daily basis seemed too much of a nuisance. Laziness is often a companion of loneliness. He had been lazy for as long as he could remember.