Free Panorama City by Antoine Wilson

the day with more events in it than any other day in twenty-seven years, came to a close with Aunt Liz and I taking turns on the foot pump, taking turns pumping up the air mattress on the floor of my quarters, until it was firm enough to support me, until the pump wouldn’t put any more air into it, and then Aunt Liz and I stretching a fitted sheet over it, she wouldn’t hear of me sleeping on an unmade bed, and then Aunt Liz wishing me goodnight and going off to her quarters elsewhere in the house. I brushed my teeth and washed my face, I used the toilet and stared at the picture of footsteps on the beach. I lay on the air mattress, it was a strange sensation, it was unlike any bed I had ever lay on before, wherever I put myself the air went somewhere else, so that it didn’t feel like I was sleeping on top of the mattress as much as it felt like I was sleeping surrounded by cushions of air, pressing on me from below on all sides, it felt like I was suspended. I couldn’t quite place the feeling, but it was a familiar feeling, there was something familiar about it, I had never slept on an air mattress before but I knew the feeling. I couldn’t sleep until I figured out where I had felt this before, where I had experienced this feeling of being suspended and also pressed in from all sides, it couldn’t have been from before I was born, I couldn’t remember that far back, it couldn’t have been from when I was a baby. It was strange, being able to remember a feeling but not being able to say what it was, and it kept me awake much of the night, it kept me awake into the wee hours of the morning, as they say, it was altogether a restful sort of feeling, it should have led me right to sleep, but the idea that some part of me, some memory, was locked away inside me was very disturbing, I could sense it trying to peek through, it was like having a word on the tip of my tongue, as they say. I tried to think of other things, to distract my mind, I tried to think about my day, about all of the new things and new people, I tried to figure out why Roger Macarona had found the sex video so funny, and why Ho had been disturbed by what I had said, and why the trays had frustrated Francis, and why the cities here were so close together that you couldn’t tell them apart, and why Roger had said we were at war with the customer, and why the skateboarder kid had asked me for fries and a Coke when we weren’t in the restaurant, and why Dr. Rosenkleig had become a professional speaker and listener if he wasn’t good at it, and why Aunt Liz sat so close to the steering wheel when she drove, but it was no use.

WAGE SLAVE
    I was early for my second day of work, I arrived before Roger, I must admit that I was excited at the idea of Roger arriving and seeing me already there, working, a smile on my face, I pictured Roger coming in and seeing me wiping counters clean before, technically, my shift even began, and thinking, There’s someone I can count on, there’s a man of the world, there’s a go-getter. Eventually, Melissa let me know that Roger was up at the lake for the day, tending to his boat, and that she was in charge, that she would be the one giving orders around here today. She was the boss now, she was running a tight ship here, the cat was away, her words, but he’d left a bulldog in his place, there wasn’t going to be any dillydallying, not on her watch. Time is money, she said, let that be your E equals M C squared. When she talked she shook her head side to side like she was saying no, like whatever it was you wanted to ask her the answer would be no. Within an hour she was back to being the old Melissa, she was back to treating us like she treated her kids. It turned out that she’d just been establishing a pecking order, a level of respect, so that she wouldn’t have to hear any back talk later on, she had learned this from raising her kids all on her own, their