The Dampening

It was always raining in Portland. At least it seemed like it. The rain didn’t appear like it did in the Midwest, where I grew up. Hot summer days, the unpleasantness of the heat exacerbated by oppressive humidity that built over the course of a few days or a week, capped off by a storm of torrential drops that fell so hard and fast, your windshield wipers couldn’t keep up. It was a common sight to see vehicles lined along the shoulders of two-lane, blacktop highways with their hazards on, patiently abiding the rain. From the seat of one of those cars, you could witness the entire sky lit by prolonged and consecutive blasts of lightning, pulsating flashes illumining the horizon for miles.

Precipitation in Portland manifested in different ways. Sometimes, it came down pointedly, as pin-like projectiles that would prick at your forehead, but not really leave the street wet. Other times, it was a mist you walked through, but didn’t sense, until your eyeglasses were covered with condensation and your fleece jacket was glistening with dew. It could rain in as many ways as there were days that winter. Most of the time, it was a constant drizzle that slowly saturated every piece of clothing you owned.

That’s how I felt that day. Wet, and deflated. I was sitting on a log slick with rain and moss, drinking a sixer of the strongest beer I could find at the New Seasons grocery. I had been let go from my job at the Moreland Pizza Parlor only about an hour before.

I knew I’d be fired.

The night before, while I was shutting down the front counter area and cleaning the espresso machine, a man walked through the front door, maybe, quarter hour before close. It had been a slow night, so both the cook and I had gotten ahead of our closing side work. We both had to clopen. Once a week, every employee had to close the restaurant, then turn around and come in for the opening shift. So I already was in a defiant mood.

Anyway, this guy walks in. I ask him if there’s anything I can do for him.

“Yeah. My mother came in earlier.” The man grabbed the counter and leaned down. “She told me her pizza got messed up. She said she called back and they said they would give her a free pie.”

“Okay,” I said. “You know, though, I haven’t taken any calls about a messed up pizza. When did she call?”

“She talked to the manager. She said the manager put her name in a book.”

I felt at this point like the guy was serving me a line. The restaurant didn’t have a book we wrote credits in. “So, who did your mom talk to?”

“She talked to the manager.” The man let go of the edge of the counter, stood up straight and crossed his arms.

“Do you have a name?”

“Edith. Edith Jenkins.”

“That’s not the manager.”

“That’s my mother’s name!” He seemed irritated. “Can’t you look in your book?” He remained standing, arms crossed, smirking at me.

“Sir, we don’t have a book we write credits in. The manager hasn’t been in all night. I’ve never heard of your mother. I’m really sorry, but I don’t have any authority to just give pizzas away.”

“Well…” He finally uncrosses his arms, reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. Withdrawing a hundred dollar bill, the man asks, “Can you at least change this for me?”

“I don’t make change unless you buy something.” “

I want to buy a pizza.”

“Okay. What do you want?” My patience for this guy had dwindled as the minutes ticked towards the closing hour. I knew the cook had already scraped out the ovens and cleaned the make tables, so I know passing a ticket to him would piss him off, given that we had technically closed not two minutes before. I’m sure that colored my interactions with the guy at the counter, because I’d rather be in good with the cooks than some random customer.

“Are you okay? You’re coming off as really hostile.” The guy was staring at me.

“Look, man. We closed five minutes ago. You came in before we closed, so, I’ll take your order, and we’ll be happy to make it for you.” I smiled a genuine smile at him, trying to defuse the situation. He stopped staring directly at me and looked past my shoulder to peer into the kitchen. “What can I get for you tonight?”

“Let’s see. Can I get a large pizza, hmmm, with onions, peppers, and shrimp?”

“We ran out of shrimp.”

The man snorted. “You really don’t like your job, do you?”

“We only prep shrimp in small batches because it can go bad fast.”

“No. You’ve been hostile to me since I stepped up to the counter.”

“Well, I don’t take it kindly when someone comes in, tells me a sob story about his mother trying to scam me out of a pizza.”

“You think I’m a scammer?!”

“Look.. We’re done. Just get out.”

“I want my pizza.” He leaned back and smirked.

“Just get the fuck out!” I shouted and flicked my wrist outward. The owner chose just this moment to walk through the front door. He always showed up shortly after close to count the money. He jealously guarded the combination to his safe. The only time I knew him to let anyone else count the money was once, when, after eating some poorly cooked chicken from a food cart, he firmly ensconced himself on his toilet, clinging desperately to a bucket. At least, this is how his wife described it when she came to put the cash in the safe.

The owner furrowed his bald brow. “Daniel!” His sonorous voice seemed incongruous bellowing out of a bushy salt-and-pepper beard on top his short frame. An ominous silence ensued. The man at the counter turned around to see who had spoken.

“Look, Ron, I can explain, this guy just-“

“There’s no excuse for swearing.”

“Look, I was just trying to get him out, cos we’re closed.”

“Daniel Herbert!” The owner knew I hated being called by my full name. “Maybe you should go home.”

“C’mon, I’m just trying to clean up.”

“Go Home! We can talk about it tomorrow morning.” The owner glared.

I glared back for a moment before untying the strings of my apron. I let it drop to the floor. I walked to the front door. The owner turned around to watch me leave. The guy at the counter made a kissy face at me. I held up my middle finger, “Fuck You!” And walked out the door as the owner called after me.

The next morning, I showed up for my opening shift. I expected the owner to be there with my final paycheck, but the only person there was the cook. He told me he didn’t know what the owner told the guy the night before, but he hadn’t had to make a pizza for him. This made me think the owner might have told the guy off and decided to spare me the axe. I worked through the regular lunch hour and into the afternoon. Around 1:30, the owner walks through the door. I was rolling silverware at an unoccupied table and he sat down across from me.

“Hello, Daniel. I’d like to talk to about last night.”

I paused my side work and looked at him. “What about last night?”

“Look. I really can’t have someone here that’s going to yell and swear at our customers.”

“Did you even hear what he said to me? He was trying to scam a pizza.”

“Be that as it may, that was no excuse for you to act so hostile to our guest. You know the rule of nine.”

“What? That a person who has a bad experience at a restaurant tells nine more people than the person who has a good experience? You’ll soon have ten people coming in to rip you off.”

“Now, Daniel. Let’s just calm down.” The owner reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He placed the envelope on the table between us. “You’re a good worker, but I can’t have someone here that is going to blow up at the customers.”

“Blow up at the customers?! This guy is playing you.” I was trembling with rage.

“You’re getting upset now.” He held his palms up in front of his chest like he was warding off an excited dog. The owner picked up the envelope with one hand and offered it to me. “Look. You want a good reference, I’ll give you one. But, I can’t have someone so volatile working for me. I’m sure you….”

I snatched the check from his hand and abruptly stood. In my hurry, I bumped the table with my hip, knocking a number of forks and knives onto the floor. I stuffed the envelope into my pocket, then took off my apron and threw it at the owner’s head. Sure, I was pissed, but more than that, I didn’t care for the way the owner made me work half my shift before firing me, squeezing another five hours of work out of me before sending me on my merry way. I grabbed my jacket from the hooks near the kitchen and soon found myself with a slight buzz, solemnly getting drenched, sitting on a log on the sandy shore of the Willamette River.

Three beers down, and halfway through my fourth, I upended the bottle to guzzle the rest in a gulp. As the last hoppy dregs went down my throat, I felt a tug in my guts. It was like someone had pierced my belly button with a fishhook and was pulling the line. I leaned over and grimaced against the pain, looking out at the crisp lines of the river flowing north to the Columbia.

As I watched, something emerged from the water. It was an amorphous figure that seemed to be made of liquid. It was approximately my height and general dimensions. And as it walked towards me, I felt that tug on belly pull more and more. It stopped its approach at the edge of the river, about twenty or thirty feet away. The shape of a head perched on top of a torso that twisted slightly as the legs moved about. Two arms hung at its sides, but I couldn’t discern fingers as droplets of water dripped down.

I couldn’t tell what I was seeing. I replaced my empty bottle in its cardboard packet and picked up another. I popped the cap off with the bottom of my cigarette lighter and took a drink. Looking back towards the river, the shape seemed to have bent its legs, as if it was sitting on a log, as if it was mimicking me. As I sipped my beer, I noticed one of its arms bending up towards its head.

I don’t know if it was the beer causing me hallucinations, or granting me a sense of calm. Mostly, I felt a serene sense of anger. It roiled there in my gut, bubbling right behind my belly button. Quietly, I sipped my beer, feeling more aggrieved about the loss of my job. Any night I closed, Ron would tell sexist jokes and curse a blue streak. Apparently, he could just turn it off.

The shape nodded its head and flexed its arm as I finished my last beer. The flame of anger grew in my belly, exuding heat through my body until I no longer felt cold and wet. I felt like a devil had stepped inside my body and now watched the world with cold calculation. The afternoon grew dimmer and dimmer. It was hard to tell when the sun actually set because it had spent the day shining on an opaque bank of drizzling clouds.

Once it was almost completely black there on the edge of the river, I stood up and plodded my way back to Sellwood Riverside Park. I didn’t look back, but I could feel that amorphous body of water following along behind me. I felt that strange tug in my gut, but this time it pulled against one of my lower vertebra.

I left the park and plodded along on the sidewalks in the quiet little business district around 13th Avenue and Tacoma Street. I crossed a road and turned to walk down the cross street. The water golem turned, too, and I could see it out of the corner of my eye, walking on the opposite side of the street. The ire that started as a mote now coursed through me until I was seething with rage. A car sped through a yellow light and another car honked its horn.

“What the hell?” a pedestrian across the street yelled. He was looking out in the street, peering at the cars that had just passed. But I was looking at my liquid doppelganger. The man was soaked, but didn’t seem to realize no vehicle had splashed him, he had walked through the body of water that had been tailing me since I left the park.

I kept walking on my side of the street, but now, my mind was thinking of other things. My keen belief in justice was working itself into a frenzy, and nothing seemed to feel more unjust to me than the loss of my job. Lost in my own thoughts, it suddenly occurred to me that I had been retracing my footsteps. I was approaching the Moreland Pizza Parlor. And judging by the diminishing crowds huddling under the awnings of the businesses that lined the sidewalk, it was nearly closing time.

I crossed over to the same side of the street as the water golem. It seemed to sidle reluctantly against the side of the buildings as it sloshed along the sidewalk. It seemed desperate to stay that same distance from me. I stood against the large front window of the restaurant and pressed my nose to the glass. He was there.

It wasn’t the owner, it was the guy from the night before, that jerk that tried to con me into giving him a pizza. He was standing near the counter looking at his cell phone. I saw someone emerge from the kitchen carrying a box. Her lips moved, the guy looked up from his phone, then she held out the pizza. The man put his phone away and grabbed his food and turned towards the front door. I ran.

I ran down the block, away from that strange body of water. I ran about twenty or thirty feet. I ran until I heard the man shout. “Hey!” And then I jumped to a stop and turned around. My teeth were gritted and my lips snarled. That liquid golem, shimmering among the raindrops, yet also absorbing them, stood in front of that scammer. He was too wet, and gritty, as if someone had thrown the dirty mop water down his back. His pizza had fallen out of his hands.

I lifted my right foot, shifted it away from my body, and slowly lowered it again. As I did this, the golem lifted its right foot, and slowly lowered it upon the pizza box, allowing its watery limb to seep into the layers of the corrugated cardboard.

I dipped my head. And the golem dipped its into the mouth of the man. He turned his head to his left. I lifted my right arm and brought it around in front of me. The golem pushed its right arm into the nose and mouth of the man. He turned his head to the right. I brought my left hand up to the front of my body.

It was like I was dancing with the man, though, from thirty feet away. Every time he would move his head, I would react with a motion of my body. And the golem would move its body or limbs into the sucking, begging maw of the man fighting for his life. The news would say he drowned.

The man writhed, and I writhed, too. By the time he finally gulped down his last helping of river water, I, too, was on the ground convulsing wildly, in tandem with the golem, its watery body preventing the man even one last gasp of air.

“Daniel?! Is that you?!”

Roused by hearing my name, I looked up and saw Ron. Of course, he was on his way to count the money. I was exhausted from all the movement, but I jumped right up and ran. I crossed the street and could feel the golem follow, tugging against a lower vertebra. Suddenly, I heard a splash, and felt an ice cold blast hit my side. I turned around in time to see a car speed by, about thirty feet away.