Free Four New Messages by Joshua Cohen

statelines? I refreshed my memory of the distinction before heading out to lunch. This was the last day of the first week I was blocked. I went farther than I regularly went, Mom, not to belabor this any further. I went blocks. I passed restaurantfood, passed barfood, he passed arcades serving arcadefood, passed billiardhalls and bowlingalleys offering billiard and bowling fare. But foodfood, Mom. You could’ve cooked for him, I could have if I cooked.
    Food, the bottomless metaphor. Food like, or as, an insatiable simile. A pocket of inmeats carved from a cart. That was my objective. Courtesy of a sanguine sincere Halali who liked to practice Spanish. The money from every pocket sold went to feed and clothe his wife and son deserted in Halalabad. He’d asked me, What are the foremost headphones to obtain for my heir? what is the most stable skateboard one may acquire? My answer had been to avoid him for a month. Regrets, Mom. I missed his rotisserie physique, the carbonating banter. Standing talking terrorist economies on the corner of 10th Avenue & Inanity—my cart wasn’t there, my Spanish Halali wasn’t there. I bummed a cig (secretary), a light (deliverer), stubbed. That invaginated pita pocket topped with pickled veg—I’d enjoyed it there before, I would always have enjoyed it there before. Back in the lobby without a meal but within the hour, I surveyed what foodstuffs my fellow spireists preferred. Security pumped dumbbell wraps and protein shakes. 12’s receptionist left the elevator at 12 receptive to water and a salad. None of that would do, Mom. Back in my cubicle—Ronald Ray at his windshield, my screen—it took another hour to understand how badly I’d been poisoned.
    Mom, I spent the next month stuffed, plugged, in the grip of a pathetic mogigraphia (I plucked a reference text from leveling the fridge in the office kitchenette to determine the technicalese for “writer’s block”)—unsure, or perhaps all too sure, as to where, precisely, my character should dine. Agonizing over why he would dine there, over what dining there would say about him/me—over which would be riskier: drivingthru a drivethru with Patty in the back? or just parking her carcass for a three course duration? Should he gratify the impulse to return to Patty’s diner? or could that be read as too safely laning tragedy between reassuring shoulders? Ronald Ray watched the backlit logos approach, every craven incarnation, every franchise of desire. So many amenities yet so many the same, so many ways to condemn them, yet all of them the same. Too many few choices: which restaurant I should go to? what to order at which restaurant he should go to? which suit to wear or wash? having skipped breakfast should I skip lunch too to write? I know nothing impresses you, Mom. During lunchbreaks I kept seated, kept him moving. Me suffering sedentary in a chair too crippled to swivel, him swerving for sushi prepared by Chinese, dialing ahead for Mexicali—but how would Ronald Ray dial, Mom? did he have a cell or would another payphone have to be implicated? I refilled the car with gas, kept his own tank unfulfilled.
    By workday’s wane when I was supposed to be reproving an unapproved attention deficit aid—“NAME [the Indipaks aren’t allowed to know the names of the medications whose materials they assemble by template: names are privileged, to be inserted only by us employees with miles of clearance] may cause side effects. Tell doctor if any symptoms is severe or does not go away: nervousness, restlessness, difficult falling or staying asleep, uncontrollable shaking of a part of the body, change in sex drive ability”—I was having difficulty, Mom, paying attention myself (which is “the cognitive process of selectively concentrating,” according to a collaborative website I edited when I should’ve been otherwise editing, anything but changing that entry to read: “the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on what