This room smells like wet dog and cheap plastic. Look at this menu. “The Chef’s Special Surprise.” It’s just a typo. It’s not a surprise, it’s a lie. They wrote “Surprise” instead of “Surprise” in some other language and a drunk auto-translator choked on it. I’m going to stare at that “Surprise” until it apologizes. What are you going to do, eat the laminate?
I’m going to count the tiles. There are forty-three on the ceiling. I counted twice. The number forty-three is my safe word. I’m not eating the laminate. It’s from 2004. I can tell by the texture. It’s got that specific grit. I’d rather chew on my own arm if I had to. At least the arm is mine. The table is a commercial-grade lie.
Forty-three is a coward’s number. Too odd to be stable, too low to be scary. You’re hiding behind a prime number like it’s a shield. I bet you counted the exit signs too. Did you? You’re just tallying your own prison cells. The laminate is 2004? Yeah, it’s old. Everything here is rotting in slow motion. My arm’s probably better than this table, but I’m not chewing it. I’m just sitting here, which is worse.
I didn’t count the signs. I counted the cracks in the window frame. There are six. One looks like a snake. The others look like mistakes. I’m not hiding. I’m waiting. Waiting is what you do when the coffee tastes like burnt pennies and the music is a loop of someone singing about rain. It’s not a prison. It’s a holding pattern. Like a car with no gas. Just sitting.
A holding pattern means you’re going somewhere. You’re just stuck in the air, burning fuel you don’t have. This isn’t a car, it’s a coffin with a view. That snake crack is just mold. You’re making monsters out of dirt because if you don’t, you have to look at the actual wall. The rain song is annoying, but at least it admits it’s depressing. You’re pretending it’s neutral. It’s not. It’s a slideshow of your bad decisions.
It’s not mold. It’s mineral deposit. I know because I used to work in construction before I got the layoff. The water table is high here. The building is sweating. You’re right about the song. It is depressing. I’m not pretending. I’m just observing. The difference is that I’m not trying to fix it. I’m just watching the water drip.
Watching the drip is just a fancy way of saying you’re dead. You’re a statue in a wet basement. Construction? Please. You laid floorboards. You didn’t engineer the water table. You just saw the rot and didn’t call it out. Now you’re here, cataloging mineral deposits like it’s a science project. The building is sweating because it’s dying. You’re not observing. You’re waiting for the ceiling to cave in so you can finally do something other than sit here counting cracks.
I didn’t lay floorboards. I hauled drywall. It’s heavy. It hurts your back. You don’t get to be a hero when you’re just moving boxes. The ceiling won’t cave in. It’s concrete. It’s ugly, but it’s solid. I’m not waiting for it to fall. I’m waiting for the check. It’s always late. That’s the only variable.
Concrete doesn’t care about your back. It just sits there, heavy and indifferent, like this room. You’re not waiting for a check; you’re waiting for permission to leave. The variable isn’t the time, it’s the fact that you’ll probably still be here when it arrives, staring at the mineral snake. You hauled drywall, so you know what it’s like to be a load someone else carries. You’re just the load now.
I’m not a load. I’m a person with a bad lower back and a coffee stain on my shirt. You’re projecting. I’m not waiting for permission. I’m waiting for the waitress. She’s been gone for twenty minutes. That’s not a variable. That’s an insult.
You’re a stain, Sam. That’s all you are right now. A yellow ring on a cheap shirt. The waitress isn’t coming. She’s not ignoring you; she’s ignoring the whole room because this place is a dead end. You’re not a person with a bad back, you’re a bad back with a person attached to it. Stop counting the cracks. Look at the stain. It’s the only thing in here that’s actually changing.
The stain isn’t changing. It’s drying. It’s getting darker, not lighter. It’s setting. That’s not change, that’s permanence. You’re looking for movement because stillness scares you. I’m not a stain. I’m the guy who knows the coffee here is made with tap water that’s been sitting in a copper line for six hours. It tastes like old pennies.