When my dad calls, he tells me to invest in my retirement account. I picture a locked vault, a stack of gold bars, a goblet embedded with jewels. He says it’s more like investing in your future, not something so material, something invisible that grows throughout your life. I picture poisonous, scheming gasses enveloping the world.
It’s all to say I don’t put money in my retirement account. Instead, I spend it on things I don’t need: a cigarette case, a vintage coat, a thousand products to scrub my face clean.
I’m a revolutionary, Dad, I tell him. Money isn’t real, you know.
We’re all a revolutionary at some point, he murmurs.
It’s election season and I’m researching opposition opponents. I dig through Republicans’ Twitters and Instagrams looking for dirt to use against them. In my remote meetings with coworkers I’ve never seen in person, we talk about how disgusting these people are: their white picket fences, all-American Protestant family photos, a boy and a girl and a dog named Rusty at their feet.
Find anything good today? my boss asks me. I’m researching an ex-cop.
Not yet, I say.
Any evidence of violent arrests? He laughs. Like, it’d be great if he shot a guy.
I pause. Someone clears their throat.
Hey, my boss continues, hands raised in defense. We’re the good guys here.
Right, I say. I jot down: “shot someone?” I’ll look into it.
On my breaks, I filter through Instagram stories. Everyone’s posting about the genocide and their vacations. The only time I’m outside all day is my obligatory walk to the grocery store, but halfway down the block, I realize I’ve forgotten my bag. I think of asking for a paper one at the store, and what kind of wicked person it would make me. Within minutes, I’m back in my apartment, digging around for my reusable.
My nose twitches at an unusual scent, the kind that tingles suspiciously in the forehead. There’s a tick tick tick coming from the kitchen, and I follow the sound to the stove, where I’ve left the gas on. I only hesitate for a moment before I switch it off, quickly, then look over my shoulder like I’ve done something nefarious. I stand very still, then take a long whiff of the gas. The scent sends shivers down my spine. I don’t like how good it feels.
My dad and I argue again about retirement. I like getting under his skin. I like being uselessly inflammatory.
The world’s gonna end by the time I’m 65, I tell him. I might as well spend my money now.
I lived through the 1980s for Christ’s sake, he says. We watched the sky for missiles everyday. They never came.
And your point is?
My point is that life goes on. Every generation thinks they’re the last.
I change my argument: If we keep investing in the system, nothing’s ever going to change. Some of us have to stand outside of it.
My dad sighs. I don’t think your money will make the difference.
I’m a revolutionary, I say, like I always do. That’s why I’m going to quit my job.
And I’m very proud of you, sweetie.
I receive this like an insult.
There was a shooting yesterday. In our meeting, my boss tells us this is why the work we do is so important. This is why we elect Democrats, so they can send out fundraising emails every time there’s a shooting with the subject line, “I’m done with thoughts and prayers,” then do it again after the next mass shooting.
Save the country, save the world, my boss says. I nod along, internally rolling my eyes at all the other people on the call doing the same thing.
I’m going to quit my job, I think. I’m going to quit my job and do something important.
I try to picture whatever that something is, but no image forms in my mind. Instead, I think about how after my friend Tia died, I used to wish for bad things to happen to me. I wanted the dog to bite me, the kids at school to hit me, the car to flip over the side of the road in slow motion. When I went to the doctor, I’d wish for a rare and incurable disease. Not one that would kill me. Just one that would injure me enough to qualify for a break. No mental ailment is enough; you’ve got to have something physical to show.
That night I turn on the gas stove and touch the flame. I pull away quickly, but my finger still turns red and swollen. Running it under cold tap water, I think about how silent my apartment is. I imagine that it fills with noise when I go to sleep, I just miss it because I’m unconscious.
I go to bed after a while, but I don’t close my eyes. My finger throbs in the darkness, and the only sound is my neighbor in the apartment below me, screaming at the television. At least, I think it’s the television. Nobody ever replies.
On a Friday night, I go to a bar with my friend Halle and a girl she works with named Jessa. They’re consultants, a popular job title in Chicago that means absolutely nothing. Still, they make a lot more money than I do and order drinks with fancy names. I feel increasingly superior when I just order a beer.
The friend once removed explains stocks to me. She’s recently invested $6,000.
By the time we’re 65 it’ll be enough to buy a house, she says. She takes a long sip of her “Smoked Elderflower Twist.” I nod, and she continues. It’s really a simple equation.
What if the stock market crashes? I ask. She pauses. Shrugs.
It always goes back up.
My dad keeps telling me to invest in my retirement, I confess with a laugh. But I’m not really sure I believe in all that stuff.
Halle looks embarrassed. My little radical friend, she says with a nervous laugh. Jessa only squints at me, looks me up and down.
You should really listen to your dad, is all she says.
I down my beer and spend the rest of the night imagining what Tia would’ve said about the people I choose to spend time with. I imagine what she would have done with adulthood, had she had one. I imagine she’d be disappointed in me, but I don’t imagine any further after that, because I recognize the start of a spiral when I see one, and it’s election season, and I have to keep myself together long enough to elect the next batch of world-changers.
I put in extra hours, writing three-hundred-page research books about the worst things our opponents have done. Fires are raging across Canada, and the wind blows the smoke into the city. The sky turns gray and blurred. The walls of my apartment move in closer. I picture them warped and stretched, and myself changing too, pulled long and thin by exhaustion. On most days, there’s a static running through my brain contrasted by a panic coursing through my body. My fingers move frantically across the keyboard; my eyes lose focus on the screen.
The only relief is the rain, and when it comes, I look outside the window. I think of doing something drastic, like tossing my laptop out the window. I hear the tick tick tick of the gas stove. I think of my father saying life goes on.
I turn off the air conditioning and light a candle. I stare at the flame for a long time. Something is unraveling inside of me, but I don’t know what it is.
I get coffee on a Wednesday morning. Nine to five workers are a current winding through the shop. They go in the entrance empty-handed and out the exit with a coffee. There’s only one man sitting still at an outdoor table, a stone to the river. He’s wearing a fedora, and it’s all I can see of him above his open newspaper. I can’t remember the last time I felt a physical newspaper in my hand. I have the urge to yank it from him and shove my nose in it, let the scent of something material overpower me.
Instead, I watch from afar, coffee going cold in my hands. The old man has a muffin, which he pulls crumbs off of to toss to the waiting sparrows. The birds at this shop are unafraid, and will often swoop in for the food of the unsuspecting customer, but they are patient with him. They know him, I realize, know that if they wait just long enough, he’ll offer them more than they could ever snatch in their rapid nose-dives. My body fills with an unfathomable rage, an intense jealousy so overpowering I almost throw my coffee at him.
I know what my dad would say: the man probably saved for retirement. That’s why he gets to sit there, still, while the rest of us are in constant, frenzied motion. But the thought doesn’t motivate me, doesn’t make me want to work hard for the day I can finally be at peace. So much of our lives are wasted waiting for the day we can sit to have a long coffee, and realistically, most people never make it there.
I return to my apartment and open my laptop. Some liberal billionaire has just donated $100,000 to our non-profit. We’ll be able to run the ads again, the ones I put together about the ex-cop. There’s no narration in the 30-second video, just a recording of a 911 call his ex-girlfriend made about his abuse. People will still vote for him. And the rest will vote for the candidate we support, the one that hit someone in a DUI accident only two years ago. Malicious or wildly irresponsible, take your pick. Oh well, it doesn’t matter anyway. You’ll have the same choice in the next election.
The images in the ad blur together. The air in my apartment is suffocating. I ditch the laptop and the apartment, speed-walking to the nearest park, where I lay in the grass and close my eyes to the sun. There’s a man near me, doing just the same. He’s out there every day; his skin is red and peeling, but he never chooses the shade.
A young boy and girl chase each other around the garden. They both have a pile of sticks clutched to their chest, and I can hear the young girl talking about it, the importance of collecting the sticks. I think of Tia and me as children on the playground, and how we’d chew sourgrass and tell stories, and how Tia wanted to be an artist, and I wanted to be whatever she wanted to be.
I never stopped after she died. I went to school just the same the very next day, because we had an important test, and life goes on, it always goes on, and I wish it didn’t and I wish it would stop, if only for a moment, if only so I could grieve all that I had to grieve, and other people could do the same.
I push myself into a seated position, wishing I could cry, praying for some physical evidence of inner turmoil, but I just feel the smoke coming in again. The kids are closer to me now, and I try to avoid their gaze.
Do you have any good sticks? the girl asks. The boy stands behind her, peeks around her shoulder. I stare at them.
I haven’t seen any, I say after a moment.
Will you help us look for some? the boy asks nervously. My chest aches distantly when I look at them, long exhausting lives ahead of them, fires and pain and—oh, there’s no point in it. I stand up.
No, I tell them. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
I don’t watch for their faces to fall, don’t even offer a second glance. I go home, open my laptop, and get to work. The sky is an unnatural red from the fires. I sweat in my apartment, don’t even bother with the air conditioning. I work extra hours until it’s dark outside and the only light is from the screen of my computer.
I get ready for bed slowly. I fold my clean laundry and organize it into drawers. I brush my teeth with intense precision until every crevice glows with fresh mint. Then I walk into the kitchen, fill up a glass halfway with water, and take a single sip. I turn the stove on and walk to my bed. I’ve never been a revolutionary. I just don’t know what to be.
I close my eyes, and this time, I fall easily into a deep sleep.
When the firemen come, they drag me out of bed by my arms, and I tell them I’ve been sleeping, and no, the smoke hadn’t woken me up and neither had the fire. I watch from below as they hose water into my apartment. The flames slowly wink out. Every important structure is still intact.
I almost smile, really, because it turns out my dad is right. I call him and he pays for a hotel room downtown. I sit in a scratchy bleached bathrobe and do my work. Bad things happen, life goes on. Life goes on and on and on.
I surrender to it. I open a retirement account.
