Junior
Carla Sue from Craigslist wants to sell me a VCR. Cash. Twenty bucks for the player, a rewinder, and a dozen tapes, including Junior, which features Governor Schwarzenegger as a pregnant man. I say fifteen dollars for just the VCR. Carla Sue says deal. I’ll meet her Saturday morning in the parking lot of the Walmart on Alafaya Trail in Orlando, Florida.
In my defense, I'm just somebody who wants to tape a Reggie Miller basketball-player-as-superhero documentary and have something to watch in my apartment with its roaches and its thin walls. I make $869.56 a month. Rent is $565. At four in the morning, every morning, I hear my neighbors blasting Training Day. I slap the walls with the palms of my hands. My neighbors slap back. I want something that's mine.
On Saturday morning, a water restoration company tarps off my apartment because mold has been detected in the air vents. The tarp doesn't part to my touch. I'm trapped. I cannot leave. All I hear is the whir of a fan. I smell paint. It might be toxic. “Hello?” I say to nobody.
I cannot leave.
Carla Sue calls me. She sounds pained, as if Governor Schwarzenegger had climbed out of Junior and taken a seat on her shoulders. I tell her I'm trapped. I tell her I'll give her not fifteen bucks, but twenty-five. I tell her I'm not a bum.
With the tarp still on my front door, I read an email from Carla Sue: “Pay me 20.00 for the VCR and rewinder and we will call it even okay??... I will look forward to meeting you on Monday at 10:00am at Walmart... and this time... do not be late (I am kidding)...”
Carla Sue's looking forward to meeting me.
Monday morning comes, and I park at Walmart. On time. Here comes her car, a gray Civic with Virginia plates. Her daughter emerges from the other side of the car and hands me a heavy cardboard box. “Enjoy,” she says. Carla Sue's older than I expected. Gray hair. Old gray sweatshirt. I give her the twenty-dollar bill. I wanted her to be more impressed that I came here. That I beat the tarp.
I buy a VHS tape for my new-old VCR. I'm excited. That Reggie Miller documentary? It's on tomorrow afternoon when I'll be at work. I can tape it. I try to hook up the VCR, and that's when I find something wrong.
Cable cord.
I don't have the right cable cord.
I'm not going to spend nine more bucks on a fucking cable cord.
My neighbors are blaring Training Day. I see an ant on my wall. The tarp is off, but I want to find it and put it up again. I will burn this place down. I will burn this place down to the ground.
— Alex Pollack is an MFA student at the University of Central Florida. His work has most recently been published on nerve.com and Hobart Online. This summer, he'll teach English in South Korea, where he hopes to update the travelogues on his website alexpollack.com.
