I’d been in the Midwest a month. I had stepped off the Greyhound with clothing, toiletries, documents, and a cremation urn, which I kept my savings in. The locals considered my new town dead. At first, I disagreed. Or, I figured at least, if it was dead, its corpse was flowering. Everything I needed was within the grid of a few blocks. Connecticut was unwalkable, nothing more than tree-lined roadways connecting one muddy village to the next. Soon, however, I ended up bored out of my mind, never imagining that I could do everything right and be so listless. One afternoon, I was drowsing in a booth in a downtown coffee shop when the owner, Howitzer, slid into the seat across from me. His posture was stiff, and the little hair he had was combed over his liver-spotted scalp. He gave it to me straight: he kept notice of me, trying to discern, for weeks now, whether or not I was an ‘Amoeba.’
“How often do you shave, son?” he asked, the word ‘son’ underwhelming in his timid voice. I told him I did a dry shave every few days.
“Do you own a suit, and tie?”
“What, like a penguin?” I answered.
“Do you have an income?”
“Yes, sir.” I found three within days of arriving. I cooked lunch at a daycare, walked dogs in the park, and slung drinks at a bar named Rockett’s. I lived in a former and refurbished motel for cheap. He asked what I did for fun. I told him that, like my parents and grandparents, I liked podcasts, roast beef grinders, and the smell of burning pine, and us five even shared the same galloping chuckle.
“I didn’t ask for all that,” he said. “Alone, now, I presume? They call me Howitzer. I think I have your number. Kindred spirits. That sort of thing. Write down your phone number and email address on this.” A napkin. “Okay. Next. Read this, and come back tomorrow for the key.” I asked him what kind of key, and he told me that once I read the contents of the manila envelope he handed me, I’d understand.
I commuted the two miles back to my apartment on foot and read the packet. The next morning, I returned to the coffee shop in the early hours before it opened and ran into Howitzer lugging two Airpots of coffee between his tattooed arms. He said my name, and I took one of the Airpots. He reached into his pocket to pass me a key on a chain. I followed him down the block and around the corner from the defunct Xavier’s Books, where he unlocked a side door that led to a flight of wooden stairs. At the top was a carpeted living area, flanked by a private bathroom and a sparse kitchenette. Howitzer told me they called this the ‘den.’ We set the airpots, one vanilla bean and one dark roast, on the counter. Howitzer opened the cabinet under the sink and set out Styrofoam cups and a bowl of minty herbal cigarettes.
He asked me if I had read the rules in the envelope and then, if I liked it here.
I gave him the gist of my life. I came from a simple and thrifty Connecticutian family who converted the first floor of their colonial home into a diner that overlooked a secluded road and an ocean of verdant trees. Our menu was average. The sunrise is what made us our living. I lived in a shed powered by a generator in the back, saving my 15% of the earnings in a cremation urn. The urn once housed the remains of a Rottweiler named Argo, whom my family picked up from a shelter the week after we were nearly burglarized. The Midwest was a paradise.
“Don’t say that much ever again,” Howitzer said. “Actually, anything at all. For the first few days. Got it?” He told me to review the rules, but otherwise to drink as much coffee and to smoke as much as I wanted, and that the den was open to me at all hours of the day as long as I remembered to lock up. I spent a few hours that morning there, and the mornings the rest of the week, as well as a few evenings.
It was always the same. Howitzer would set up the air-pots. Amoebas would filter in, drinking and/or smoking, sitting on the lint-rolled loveseat, or on one of the folding chairs, or leaning enigmatically on one of the console tables that lined the walls, each of which accommodated a succulent and an archipelago of coasters kept at cautious distances. The rules were clear: no chit-chat, here or elsewhere. The best we would get was a smile or a nod and that was enough. Included with the rules in the manila envelope was a black-and-white photo of Jessica, the founder. Her father owned Xavier’s books and both returned to Sioux Falls to be with family when he fell ill. In the meantime, Howitzer served as her intermediary.
In the photo, she was dressed in shorts, a tank top, and spotless shoes on a beginner climbing wall. Her hands gripped the lowest handholds. Her head was turned towards the camera, eyes widened with surprise. I got the impression this was the only photo in existence of her, and even in it, she seemed unremarkable, as if she was just a feature of the textured spectrum of the faux rockface, not even the main character of her life. I think this picture was included for this reason. None of this is about any of us. We’re trembling at the base of a wall, turning our heads upwards, only to see more wall. We were not to share names, bring outside cups or cigarettes, though packed lunches were okay. No inviting strangers or oversharing.
Amoebas would come in the morning, lunchtime, evenings, and sometimes in between. I came up with names in my head for everyone. There was Roger. Leathery skin, sucked-in jowls, poked holes in slippery belt, who would sometimes throw up in the bathroom before leaving for the day. There was Sophia, perhaps an eagle-eyed energy lawyer, bangs parted in perfect symmetry, who I’d seen around driving a lime-green beetle and who brought in a matching lime lunch box. There was Marie. Early twenties. Her nose was pierced, with a silver chain linked to her ear. Though we all had keys, Howitzer would open in the morning and tidy up at night. The den was comforting, especially when it was full. Us staring forward, or off, at an angle, evading eye contact. A fragile peace. Each of us, an unknowable, disambiguated phantom. Sometimes, out of nowhere, someone, never me, would share an anecdote, really a snippet, and we’d perk our ears to listen.
“There was this piglet on the side of a seven-lane highway,” Roger once told us. “Some years ago. One of those micro pigs, I’ve heard them called. It wasn’t bigger than….” He held his hands out, a stretch of foot dangling between.” I left it on the front steps of a humane society. I hope if someone was peeking through the blinds and saw me, they didn’t think that was my micro piglet I was running out on.”
Every once in a while, Sophia would share anecdotes about nuclear energy, a weave of storytelling, and light proselytizing.
“In Vermont,” she once began, popping an hour-long bubble of silence, “how did they offset their energy needs after shutting down their nuclear plant? Not with wind. Not with solar. Coal. Yup, coal.”
“Uh-huh,” we replied.
Marie shared occasional idiosyncrasies from her visits to apathetic doctors who refused to believe in her deliberate celibacy, and she’d recount rude comments made during an ultrasound—whose purpose was omitted from us—and who blew his nose so many times she kept count.
“18,” she said. “Or close to it.”
We inhaled and, each at our own pace, sighed.
A story was a call.
The responses were either sighs, if the story was negative, or an “uh-huh,” if positive.
When we were not sure, we guessed. It was predictable. It was addictive. We lived to hear about a tree collapsing and crushing a hanging beehive or a beloved aunt going missing and being found by a neighbor in an antique phone booth.
During all of this, meanwhile, we held Styrofoam cups and the fragrant cigarettes. This was our form of caressing. The idleness that plagues the palms of non-Amoebas was easily fulfilled for us in this way. Our lives were undeniably boring, lacking the harsh drama and welling climaxes of paired-off couples, the highs and lows of those sorts of lives, but we were beyond that, happy that our only ambitions were to hang onto these stories passing like a drizzle before evaporating.
Most days, I’d leave a fiver in the wooden collection box in the corner of the kitchenette, leaving at the very last moment and tossing my cup into the garbage. I believed that donation was a sort of magic. The money was to help keep the den’s lights on, and to help Jessica pay for her father’s treatments. It was well worth it to witness the Amoebas in our unknowable grandeur. But also, there is a karmic give and take the world over. Like, in Connecticut, when I had emptied the rottweiler’s ashes into the surrounding woods in the middle of a winter night, giving back to the planet, the following week the diner was filled to the brim morning after morning. I realized, too, the more I donated to the den, the more tips I got at work. Everything was a self-contained circuit. I’d give to the den. The den gave back to me. And I could only imagine what the other Amoebas thought of me. Perhaps they suspected I was a secret multimillionaire. Or, a scuba diver in Bora-Bora. A used car dealer. A live-in butler. An underworld celebrity who rubbed elbows with Yakuza bosses and CEOs of mosquito net NGOs. I slept soundly at night on my springy mattress, imagining things like this.
One night I let myself into the den. By then, I’d been an Amoeba for a few months, and the two-mile-long commute, the many hours spent on my feet,and the sixty-hour work weeks were beginning to really/truly drain me. For the first time, I considered how strenuous a lifetime of exertion can be and how painful it would be to start over, should something happen to my urn. My apartment door was thin and its lock was flimsy. I brought my urn to the den one night to see if there was a secure place to tuck it away.
When I flipped on the lights, I jumped. Roger was in his usual spot, looking out the window. I was caught off guard. I placed my urn on the table, next to a bunch of print-outs Sophia left behind. Howitzer must not have tidied up that night. On top was the first page of the Gospel of Philip, the line, No one can meet the king while naked, circled in red pen.
Roger looked ragged and I wanted to ask him if he was okay. Whenever I’d see a fellow Amoeba in the park or drinking at the bar, I wouldn’t acknowledge them. To do so would be like rifling through their trash or snooping through their mail. Whenever such an interaction occurred, which was rare, someone would contact Jessica, who would send out a long email, and Howitzer would have the offender return their key, change the locks, and have members collect new keys.
“I’ve been eating more,” he said. “But nobody tells you that food has caffeine in it, too. Now I can’t sleep.”
How unfair the world is. Roger had the demeanor of a surfer who survived a shark attack, and if he were to undress, I could easily picture a scar coursing over his torso, like a comet. I witnessed inequality daily. At Rockett’s, some patrons drank alone and others with loud crowds. Some dogs I walked were leaders, like a whiny husky, or followers, like the bleary-eyed dachshund. At the daycare, I could tell which kids were leaping ahead in maturity based on their grilled cheese preferences: some ate crustless white bread with a slice of American. Others like the crust. Others wanted more than one flavor of cheese, others wanted a tomato, and one kid in particular, whose parents were fast-tracking him to fabulous success, wanted minced pickled jalapenos on rye. Only we Amoebas were equal.
“I don’t trust my deadbolt at home,” I told him, my heart hammering in my chest. This was the first time I’d opened my mouth since joining. “A light breeze is all it takes to force it open.”
“Uh-huh,” Roger replied, heartfelt. I was euphoric. He went back to his window.
I began my search for a place to hide my urn. I measured the gaps under the furniture and opened the toilet tank. Too risky. I trusted Amoebas but not potential interlopers. In the kitchenette, I opened the cupboard under the sink and sifted past the beach containers and stacks of toilet paper. On a hunch, I felt the plywood sides of the cupboard, pushed at the corners, feeling around for a handhold. One slid off easily. I pulled my head inside and felt a chill emanating from this extra space and reached blindly inside. I pulled out a few objects: an antique hardcover of Gone with the Wind, a folded-up walking stick, and a decanter crammed with shirt buttons. I put everything back inside. I collected my urn from the table and noticed that Roger was gone. I slid my urn behind the panel and shut it.
I took Roger’s place by the window. After a few minutes, I heard two voices. A couple. They were loud but not argumentative, playfully bantering by saying things like oh yeah? and shut up! I kept to my post, waiting for them to pass.
The next few months were cold and fruitful. I put money into the den’s donation box, and on certain nights, I’d add to my urn, which never felt like it was getting full. (The rottweiler whose ashes it used to hold was massive.)
I was in the den one afternoon, eating a grilled cheese. Sophia was poking at something in her lunchbox with chopsticks. She had left print-outs on the table again, this time from the Gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
Marie had just recounted a childhood memory. She was camping with her folks, and their neighbors had just caught a trout. They carried it to their coal-fired grill and dropped it there, flailing, scales and all. Marie reached the part where her neighbors shut the trout in when an unfamiliar voice resounded from the stairway. Her voice rose as she climbed, which pierced our hearts. We stood up from leaning, uncrossed our legs, extinguished our cigarettes, and swirled our coffee without bringing it to our lips.
“Hullo,” a woman said when she reached the top. Her head swiveled as she took stock of us. She wore a North Face jacket, sweatpants, and bright yellow rain boots.
“Come along,” she said to a baby hammocking in the bend of her elbow. “Let’s pour ourselves a dark roast coffee, yes? Did that spill? Nope, we did good. Didn’t we do good? Okay, let’s go back and find a coaster.” Mercifully, the baby was quieter than she was.
The woman placed her cup on a Frida Kahlo coaster and sniffed emphatically. She raised her child to her nose and said “excuse us.” She entered the bathroom and closed the door. We looked at one another, bewildered. Having a kid didn’t disqualify one from Amoebahood. But bringing a child along and wantonly acknowledging us? The abrasion. There was nothing mysterious about her in the slightest.
Our postures sagged. Amoebas scratched their nose, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Sophia straightened her skirt; I cleared my throat; Roger stood up. Marie tapped her fingers as we listened to the muffled sounds of the toddler’s diaper change. We all watched on as the interloper exited the bathroom, muttering, “late, late,” and clattered down the wooden stairway, waving goodbye with her free arm, her coffee left to cool on Frida Kahlo. In the span of four minutes, she raised havoc and vanished.
“What the fuck was that accent?” Sophia asked, wasting no time.
“Australian,” I posited. My throat was dry.
“Definitely, a Kiwi,” Marie said. “I studied abroad in Wellington.”
“And who gave this ‘Kiwi’ a key?” Sophia demanded. Shrugs, shuffled feet. This was the first time in the den’s history that anyone spoke louder than in a conversational tone.
Sophia texted Howitzer, who called Jessica, who sent out a mass email.
Who invited her, this ‘Kiwi,’ and did she break any rules? No one would be banned, she promised, both she and Howitzer were post-hoc conscientious objectors, who loathed collecting keys. Jessica just wanted to know who told his woman about the den, and if someone went over Howitzer’s head to make a key.
“Again, no one will be banned for coming forward,” she wrote at the bottom of the email, “We just want assurance the den is secure.” We never felt secure again. We were quieter—what if an outsider were to overhear?—and we dallied less. We lingered now in a clearing fog, as if our cigarette smoke somehow materialized in frailer plumes. I could tell it troubled Roger more than anyone. When I would see him he would be slumped in his chair, almost lying straight on his back. If this Kiwi could finagle into our den so easily, who else could break through, ask questions?
A meeting was demanded, the first of its kind. I’d seen the den busy, but never cramped. There was no space for leaning. Howitzer stood between the kitchenette and the living area, and we strained to hear him, in his low, droning voice.
“Let’s relax,” Howitzer said. “She hasn’t come back, has she? We haven’t seen any newcomers either? Let’s allow normalcy.”
Sophia darted her arm into the air. “We should change the locks again, just to be sure.”
“Can we afford to do that again?” Marie asked.
“She’s right,” Roger said. “If she has a key. She can make more and leave them on park benches.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Marie retorted, and an argument broke out. No one could have predicted how dense our emotions could surge or how much agitation one Kiwi could carve out from us. I crossed my arms in the corner.
Several Amoebas walked out, fanning across the empty streets. We were talking to one another directly, and battle lines were drawn. The hardliners were selfish, the calm ones were naïve, and who knows how many interlopers would take advantage of the divisions?
Sophia quoted Gnostic passages to Marie. Roger punched a wall, and didn’t leave a dent. Howitzer polished the sink until the commotion died down. When Sophia tired of preaching, she called the naïve Amoebas corrupt, and Marie trailed her, and their argument carried out to Sophia’s beetle, who drove away at fifty miles per hour.
A third of the Amoebas handed in their keys on the spot. Howitzer slithered through the dying crowd to the street to meekly tell Marie to hand in her key, too.
***
When I arrived at the den the next morning, I was alone and the succulents were missing. We didn’t discover the origins of the Kiwi. No one admitted to giving her a key. We didn’t have the satisfaction of booting her, nor the Amoeba who did, and without those things there was no foundation upon which to repair the den.
Nevertheless, I tried. It’s all I had in that decaying town. I bought a lunch box and took every breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the den I could afford, gulping coffee and chain-smoking. I figured out how to mass email and reminded everyone that with closed mouths and open minds, normalcy was ours for the taking. “Don’t think about the Kiwi! Don’t think about interlopers!” Yet often I ate alone. But when I wasn’t, I led by example, sharing as many anecdotes as possible.
“We had a pet rottweiler growing up,” I told Roger and several others. “He was big and mean, and he would jump on me and no one else because I was so tall. He’d lie in my bed before I moved into the shed and growl if I pushed him. I hated him. I hated him so much. Then one night, my mom or dad or grandma or grandpa—not me, is what I’m saying, this wasn’t on purpose, left the front door ajar. The next morning, we found him on the side of the road; something powerful, like a truck, must’ve pummeled him. Strangely, he seemed at peace.”
I knew I should have stopped talking there. That was the story. Beginning, middle, end. I had already gotten some “uh-huhs” and a brisk sigh. But I carried on.
“I blamed myself. But it wasn’t my fault, like I said. But you know what I was thinking that night? I was thinking: I wish he would drop dead. And then it happened. I know it’s a cliché. Listened, I willed my dog to die—on accident! Imagine what we would do for the Amoebas, on purpose!”
Roger looked at me with disgust.
“Really, man?” He took a long drag of his scented cigarette. He marched to the bathroom and vomited with the door open. He came back and stared at me as he wiped his mouth with an open palm. “I’m out.”
Sophia sent out a mass email later that day. “I don’t know where to begin. This is all new to me,” began her three-thousand-word address. “I’ve never felt actually, totally, fully, completely, alone like I do now.”
Winter came. Fewer families asked for their dogs to be walked. The daycare merged with a bigger one on the other side of town, too far to walk to. I only had Rockett’s. Money was tight. The sky labored overcast and each day shaded monotonously. I poured myself a sour beer at the end of my shift and sat in a corner. My phone vibrated with an unfamiliar number. I ignored it.
The caller left a voicemail. I put the phone to my ear and listened.
“We haven’t met before. It’s Jessica,” a quiet voice said. I sat up in my seat. Howitzer must have given her my number when I joined.
“Thank you for sticking it out so long. You are one of the few who did.” Her voice was faint and reserved, as if she had just gotten out of bed, and didn’t carry the flavor of leadership that I was trying to emulate.
“I hate that I have to tell you this. I wish I could have done more, but my dad… Things are getting worse. I’m sorry to have to tell you that I’m selling the bookstore. The den is a part of the property. I can’t justify keeping it. Thank you. Stay safe. I hope you find a new light.”
I was out of the bar, full speed across the lamplit blocks toward the den, hoping that the locks weren’t changed yet and I could reach my urn before it was too late.
My key fit. I rushed up the steps and entered the kitchenette and opened the cabinet and pulled away the side panels. I reached my hand in and felt nothing but cool, empty air. I stuck my head in. Nothing. I heard the toilet flush. I pulled my head out and felt a presence behind me.
“Roger said you were poking around in here, but I didn’t realize…” Howitzer said.
“That was my savings,” I told him.
Howitzer’s face was pale.
“All of it?” I asked.
“Actually,” he started to say, then peered over his shoulder as if he were surrounded. “I promise. I had no idea. I should have questioned it, but I couldn’t believe our luck.”
“What about my urn?”
“Pawned it.”
I stood up.
“We helped Jessica pay off some outstanding bills. Not to mention the good luck with the buyer who actually wanted to reopen the bookstore. Our prayers were paying off.”
Before I could say anything, Howitzer averted his eyes again, looking at his shoes like a child. I knew how he felt because I was him. I realized Howitzer had mistakenly invited the Kiwi. He misjudged and undid everything. He lost more than I did. I, however, was young and hungry; I still had a chance. My urn wasn’t gone. It was donated, and good luck was around the corner, tenfold.
I stood up and held out my hand toward Howitzer. He stared at my open palm.
“I’m your barista now.”
“Okay,” he said, and shook my hand. That was that.
We walked down the wooden steps together.
“Your key.” he said, and I handed it to him, thinking, This will be the last thing I lose.
“Rock bottom is only a minor setback,” I told him. I smiled widely. I couldn’t wait for the future. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.
Howitzer squinted his eyes and told me to be in at six tomorrow. I told him I would. I wasn’t even going to go back home. I’d stay at Rocket’s till close and then wander around downtown for a few hours, appreciating the foggy sky, admiring our dilapidated architecture, and glaring at passing couples.
As Howitzer walked to his car, I looked up at the den again. We left the lights on. You could almost make out a star or two in the night sky. I would rebuild the den because I knew it was in me all along. I was the den, looking up at the den, and I knew that no matter what happened, I would be rich, I would one day be surrounded by Amoebas again, and once that time came, any and every worry would be plucked from my mind, one, by one, by one.