The Problem With Bouncing

Paul Dodim bounces. He bounces with his hands up above his head and his eyes closed. His favorite place to bounce has to be the streets of New York, the best city in the – no wait. New Orleans is better, yes. He loves to bounce into Boston, or maybe the Capital? He is very smart in that he will not choose one or the other. No, Paul Dodim hates superlatives, and he laughs at those who think they live in the best city or marry the most beautiful girl. Everyone seems to marry the prettiest girl in the world these days, and he is not fooled. He is proud that he’s grounded enough to recognize that his wife is no beauty queen, no undiscovered gem. Of course, this is likely because Paul Dodim has no wife, but who’s to say. He maintains that his singleness is of his own volition, so that if he does happen to come across the prettiest, sweetest girl in the world, he is free to marry her. He will not, under any circumstances, be entrapped into some ordinary, mundane routine, staring down the bridge of a woman’s crooked nose when the sky opens up. All the bouncing makes him hungry and, figuring that the sky is not likely to give way right this minute, he supposes he will find something to eat. 

Paul glances around the sparsely populated legal office where he works as a receptionist. He had gone to school for Philosophy -- well, for the most part, at least. He had had a hard time choosing what to study. First it had been the hard sciences, but Paul is not inclined to believe that much can be discovered through such tiny pieces of the world. He gradually bounced in and out of general studies in Literature, Language, even some Theology, before he settled on receiving a general degree. He had not been ready to close any doors in his education. At this point, he is well prepared to enter any field, and he is entirely convinced that he eventually will. In the meantime, he answers the phone at Lyle & Anderson Legal Consulting Firm. The firm is almost empty today, and no one has called in at least an hour. He doesn’t like when the phone is dead. Often the only human interaction he has all day is the clients on the phone. Their disembodied voices interrupt his bouncing, sure, but seven-forty is not the best time for bouncing anyway. Then again, Paul Dodim hates superlatives, so who’s to say. 

“Hey Dodim, any dinner plans?” A colleague calls across the atrium. 

“None tonight Riley. You?” 

“My wife is in Vermont visiting a friend. I’m free tonight, care to join me?” The voice echoes like Paul’s disembodied friends on the phone. 

Riley’s wife is the most beautiful girl in the world. 

Paul starts packing up for the day, shoving arbitrary documents in a bag so he has something to carry. Riley’s curious gaze burns a hole in the back of Paul’s head, spilling all of his secrets onto the fake marble floor. Tears that never flow from his eyes rattle against the ceramic tiles with loud claps and thunderous cries. Moans of loneliness are punctuated with shrieks of boredom; Paul Dodim’s fists pound on the ground as if to warn the devil that after all these years he is ready to rip his heart out of his own chest and throw it into hell, where it might explode like a grenade and slaughter them all. Really it is more likely to be kicked accidentally under a sofa and gather fuzz for eternity. But Paul will not do it, so who’s to say.

A tantrum of the greatest caliber would be preferable to the blank countenance spread across Paul’s face as he turns towards Riley. 

“Ready?” 

The two men walk into the street, eyes straight ahead. There are about six inches between the men’s arms. Dodim slows the swing of his hand to avoid crashing into Riley’s. Riley moves his fists to his pockets. 

Dodim’s nose itches, but he finds no relief when he scratches it. His shirt is rubbing a rash where it’s coming untucked, but he doesn’t touch it. The discomfort he feels walking next to easygoing Riley crawls across his skin, and he can’t help but feel as if he were on the edge of a deep lake, being sucked into a stagnant friendship that will drown him. How can he be sure that Riley’s character can elevate him? Does Riley even know how to bounce? All the same, the phone had not needed answering all day, and Dodim is itching to speak. 

“What friend is your wife visiting?”

“Her sister is having a baby. She went up to help.” 

“Ah.” He wipes his sweaty palms across his thighs. 

“No wife yourself?”

“No, no. No wife, no girlfriend.”

“Why not?”

“Not sure. I can’t marry just anyone.” 

“Ah. You’re bound to find one you like, as long as you’re looking.” 

He is not looking.

“I won’t settle down for the sake of it. Seems a bit pathetic.”

In a peculiar moment for Dodim, Riley looks him directly in the eyes as if to ask, “Where in love do you find weakness?” 

Dodim is interrupted before he can defend against the unasked question. He might have said, “Where in the ordinary do you find love?” 

Who’s to say.

They arrive at the diner Riley frequents after work.

The pair walk inside the small, homey building. A black and white letterboard hangs above the counter, where prices for ice cream and sandwiches were marked decades earlier and have not changed since. A heavy-set woman in a periwinkle blouse – the same periwinkle blouse she wears every day – stands behind the shining counter. Her name tag reads Florin, but regular customers call her Baby. 

Paul and Riley sit down at a small table in the corner. A small girl with dark hair like Baby’s, her head barely peaking over the table, staggers towards the pair with a tray of water much too large for her. 

“What’s good here?” 

The girl, barely twelve, stares up at him.

“I only ever get the thanksgiving dinner. I don’t know if anything else they have is good.” 

Paul looks at the menu. Seventeen dollars for the thanksgiving dinner, and Baby doesn’t have a new shirt. And Baby’s girl isn’t wearing shoes. And Baby’s boy is somewhere in the back, scrubbing dishes. And Riley only wants thanksgiving dinner, and Paul Dodim does not want to give them seventeen dollars. Seventeen dollars Riley hands over three times a week, and still Baby’s girl has no shoes. 

In the next moment, Paul is glancing into the glowing diner window as he bounces away. Riley is sitting there with his seventeen-dollar thanksgiving dinner, breaking his biscuit in half, handing it down to Baby’s girl. She shoves it into her mouth all at once, crumbs raining onto the floor as she crawls into the seat that Paul had vacated. 

Paul Dodim bounces on. He is starting to feel his hunger more sharply, and so he turns into the first place he sees. 

Lights are low, and there are a few people smattered across the walnut chairs and tables set upon the matching dark wood floor. Paul walks straight to the bar and sits down, waiting for whom he presumes to be Duffy (of Duffy’s Bar) to turn his broad back. 

“Who’er yew?” The man who might be Duffy asks as he turns.

“Oh, I just want something to eat, that’s all.” 

“Who’er yew?” 

“Just looking for something to eat, thanks.”

“What’s yer name?” 

Paul stared blankly as maybe Duffy huffs and turns towards another customer. 

Paul’s eyebrows knit together. Does he need to speak louder? He doesn’t want to be rude, so he sits down to wait.

Errrkkkkk… Errrkkkkk….

The legs of Paul’s chairs scrape against the ground, back and forth. 

Pup… pup pup…pup… pup pup…

Paul’s fingers drum on the bar.

He sits and waits, squeaking his chair and tapping his fingers. The hunger is a stabbing pain in his stomach now, and his throat is starting to get dry. He cannot wait any longer. 

He stands up, “I’m hungry.”

He turns his back on possibly Duffy, eyes on the floor. Thin words, barely audible, dropped pathetically from his chapped lips “Paul Dodim…”

A glass of wine clacks on the counter behind him.

“…is hungry.” 

Paul walks unknowingly from where the wine sits, the air around the glass growing warmer and friendlier. A man brushes past Paul and heads towards the bar. He closes his fingers around the stem of the glass and holds out his other hand to maybe Duffy and his voice, disembodied like those on the phone, echoes, “Long day Dale?”

Paul escapes both the friendly exchange and knowledge of the glass of wine that eludes him. He had already resumed his increasingly desperate bouncing in the damp street.

Paul Dodim’s head swivels back and forth between the streetlamps, his neck waving like a flag in the wind. His eyes roll and roll and the drumming in his fingers increases to a rapid series of curling and shooting and straightening and then curling back up again. The only part of Paul Dodim’s form more mobile than his fingers are his malnourished insides, curling and folding and screaming and begging and groaning and – warm, soft flesh collides with Paul’s foggy desperation. 

The most beautiful woman Paul has ever seen, holding a small child. The baby cries, and the young girl, barely a teenager, soothes him with soft words of truth. Paul’s eyes lock onto the small, helpless infant. He sees his arms reach out to comfort the baby. He lets the tune float into his head and slow the beating in his temples. The woman’s caress and the child’s coo cool his aching bones until they break and regrow anew. He wraps his new arms around the girl’s thinly cloaked shoulders, keeping her and the child warm. He gives her seventeen dollars, and then all he has. He tells her his name. He stops bouncing.

But Paul does not believe in superlatives. His arms hang limp at his sides. The seventeen dollars weighs in his pocket, poisoning his empty stomach and dragging his bouncing feet to the ground. Under a sagging sky desperate to rupture, he slugs past the girl’s outstretched hands where the child rests. He returns home, hungry and unknown, and arms stretch across his wooden bed frame, alone. 

Winter 2021