Curbside Pickup.
Marlin Bressi

When he heard the child's scream, Hakob dropped his bag of Korean takeout onto the sidewalk in front of his office building. With reckless disregard for his own well-being he dodged the traffic, instinctively tuning out the obscenities from the cabbies and the bedlam of squealing tires, and sprinted toward the frightening shriek. Through the bloom of spectators Hakob pushed toward the tiny creature in the nucleus: a girl no older than hopscotch with nutmeg hair pulled into tight pigtails, a rictus of terror imprinted on her face. The child ceased her sobbing and instantly composed herself.

 

"Does tax season make you want to scream?" she demanded of her captive audience. "If so, then schedule an appointment with your friendly Warner-Simms tax preparation specialist today. Warner-Simms takes the terror out of taxes!"

 

The small crowd grumbled, shook their heads and drifted like flurries back from where they had come from until Hakob and a beautiful woman with silver hoops in her ears were the only two remaining. Even the pint-sized ballyhooer had disappeared from view, vanishing as thoroughly as a drop of water on a hot skillet.

 

"Disgusting, isn't it?" 

 

Hakob nodded and said that it seemed to get worse each week. The woman with the silver earrings, who introduced herself as Claire, expressed hope that the new mayor would address the issue, but Hakob had his doubts. Though recently transplanted from a small village in his native Armenia, he had been in the city long enough to know the mayor was sponsored up to his gills by Euripus Yogurt, and some strange start-up specializing in the extrusion bioprinting of sirloin steak.

 

Nine minutes later, as he rode the elevator to the fifteenth floor, Hakob was certain of two things: that he was ten minutes late returning from his lunch break, and that he had just fallen in love. 

 

The short ascent in the stainless steel cubicle lasted a few seconds, but in that brief moment Hakob lived a full life as he savored memories of events that hadn't happened yet, and, for all he knew, might possibly never happen: visions of holding hands with Claire as they walked along the waterfront, arguing over whose turn it was to take out the trash, and where they would spend Thanksgiving. Naturally, his siblings would tease him about his new pale flame with such a fair complexion and short, messy hair that seemed to riot in defiance of gravity. She was a radical departure from the type of woman Hakob generally favored, but he would endure the ribbing because Claire was unlike any creature he had encountered during his cold year of wandering the metropolitan wilderness. She was authentic, even if her designer handbag and tortoiseshell aviator sunglasses weren't.

 

Chess is the national pastime of Armenia and Hakob found American sports coverage loud and obnoxious and wildly distracting, but he was so ensnared in the web of his daydream that he paid no attention to the hyperactive anchor rattling off basketball scores on the sleek video screen embedded in the gleaming, polished door of the elevator. He didn't even notice that he shared the ascending cube with the coworker who always smelled of onions, whose name Hakob didn know, who was presently wringing his hands and whinnying about how he couldn't afford to be late again. "DeMarco is gonna have my head for this, I just know it," the onion man said repeatedly.

 

When the elevator stalled just short of the fifteenth floor, onion man jabbed at the buttons impatiently. "Hurry, hurry, hurry, come on, come on, come on," he murmured, as the video screen blinked black for a moment and then winked a message:

 

Your ride will resume after this brief advertisement.

 

"Damn it to hell, damn it to hell, damn it to hell!" bellowed the onion man over the smiling voice offering auto insurance, until [Skip Ad] appeared on the corner of the touchscreen. Onion Man jabbed the screen with such vigorous fervor that Hakob was rattled from his reverie. A lump of fear ascended the shaft of his throat when he looked at his phone, saw that he was now eleven minutes late, and realized that he, too, was probably going to catch hell from DeMarco.

 

Sure enough, after the fifteenth floor was reached and the doors spread open and the two men spilled into the lobby, the receptionist informed Hakob that Mr. DeMarco wanted to have a word with him in his office. This news made the face of the onion man glow; he clasped his hands together and tilted his head in gratitude, as if a benevolent god lived up in the acoustic ceiling tiles, and mouthed the words: Thank you, thank you, thank you, as he scurried past the reception desk and disappeared into a neutral-colored sea of cubicles.

 

"Hakob, please have a seat," said DeMarco from behind his polished mahogany plateau. Like everything else in the office, from the vases on the lacquered bookshelf to DeMarco's veneered teeth, the desk glowed garishly beneath the artificial fluorescent lights.  

 

"I know I'm late, sir, but—"

 

"Relax, Hakob, this isn't about your lunch break." DeMarco smiled, then twined his fingers behind his head and reclined in his leather throne, ever so precariously, until Hakob was certain the branch manager would topple backwards and crack open his cranium on the beveled edge of his bookshelf. "I've just been wanting to have a word with you, that's all."

 

Inside Hakob's thoracic cavity, a lung began to deflate. "What is it this time, sir? Snow tires? Renter's insurance? A new meal delivery service?"

 

DeMarco laughed and told Hakob that he merely wanted to synergize, open the kimono, shift paradigms, circle back, move the goalposts, touch base, leverage his assets, take a deep dive, and get granular. But Hakob was just as fluent in corporate lingo and he was in Armenian, and he had no desire to take a peek inside DeMarco's kimono, nor did he wish to address the elephant in the room, move the needle, or grab any low-hanging fruit. Quite frankly, Hakob just didn't have the bandwidth.

 

"I wanted to have a word with you about your performance," said DeMarco. Hakob wasn't sure if he was about to receive a pat on the back for a job well done or a pink slip for not doing his job well enough.

 

"My performance, sir?" he asked in a small, lost voice.

 

"Have you noticed a decrease in your performance lately?" asked DeMarco softly, the way a sympathetic doctor might ask about one's frequency of urination. Hakob swallowed. DeMarco bobbed into an upright position. "Decreased performance can stem from any number of factors," he explained. "Lack of sleep, stress, poor diet."

 

Hakob hoped that he didn't appear as helpless as he felt. He was sleeping well, now that he had finally given in to his landlord's spiel and purchased a Wonder Pillow. He was looking forward to his upcoming dinner date with Claire, and he would've been digesting his kimchi right about now if only he hadn't dropped it on the sidewalk in front of the building. 

 

"I feel fine, Mr. DeMarco," Hakob finally replied, flashing a weak smile. Hakob was just a lowly accounts payable clerk and couldn't afford the veneers.

 

"Sure you do, Hakob! Sure you do!" chuckled DeMarco. "But wouldn't you like to feel better than fine? I'm talking peak performance."

 

"Well, I suppose."

 

"Here's a cold, hard fact, Hakob," said DeMarco, steepling his manicured fingers atop his desk and staring the Armenian straight into the eye. "Most testosterone boosters just don't live up to their hype. Science is moving fast, and exciting new research proves that it's now possible to safely boost free testosterone levels by using Mighty Male's proprietary blend of botanical extracts and minerals. And let's not forget about your performance in the bedroom. Mighty Male is a total game-changer. Not only will it boost your libido, it will also make your erections—"

 

"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not interested."

 

"Didn't you hear me? I said game-changer."

​

"Mr. DeMarco, please, I'm really not interested," Hakob insisted. He wanted nothing more than to go back to the comfort and familiarity of his cubicle. The fabric panels, he found, worked exceptionally well in blocking out the sounds of sales pitches.

 

"You may not be interested, but what about Claire?"

 

Hakob was momentarily stunned. How anyone could possibly know about the beautiful woman with the silver earrings he had met not more than thirty minutes earlier? The eerie feeling passed as he remembered his ride on the subway the previous morning, when the elderly, hump-backed woman in a floral print dress tried to sell him minoxidil spray, and a homeless veteran, with a sly wink, handed him a coupon for surgical hair restoration—all because Hakob had looked at himself in the bathroom mirror an hour earlier while brushing his teeth and muttered something about his receding hairline.

 

Word gets around quickly, especially when there's a profit to be made. Even when you're talking to your own reflection in the mirrored door of a medicine cabinet.

 

#

​

By the time the waiter had taken their drink orders, Hakob was feeling at ease in the presence of the beautiful woman with the silver earrings, though not at ease enough to mention DeMarco's latest interoffice sales pitch. Claire, however, appeared every bit as cynical and jaded as the young Armenian and, between sips of her apéritif—a dry sherry—she railed against not only corporate greed, but the entire capitalist system as a whole. 

 

"That's what I like about you, Hakob," she said, rummaging through her knock-off designer handbag to retrieve her bleating, throbbing phone. "You're the genuine article. The real deal."

 

Hakob opened his mouth to speak, but Claire said that she really had to take this call. She excused herself politely, or with as much politeness as one upraised index finger could generate, and made a beeline for the ladies’ room.

 

The restaurant was thrumming with conversation, small talk between nervous men and weary women who tip-toed delicately around the landmines of honesty, painting themselves with the pale rose gold light of pure intentions, carefully avoiding the slippery terrain of politics, religion and peak physical performance. They ruminated about the weather, the Knicks, the weather again, and made offhand remarks about nothing of any significance, and all of the women were every bit as pretty as Claire. Hakob noticed that many of the men could use a coupon for discount surgical hair restoration.

 

At an adjacent table beflickered by the warm, magenta glow of a naked flame dancing dervishly upon a plate of cherries jubilee, an older man—perhaps the same age as Mr. DeMarco—thanked his date for a perfect evening. The young blonde, lithe and feline, purred amorously that she had enjoyed herself as well. "When can I see you again?" the man asked.

 

"Anytime you'd like, Jerry," she replied, "now that you've signed up for a six-month subscription." The waiter, hovering behind Jerry's chair like a stalker with a chloroform-soaked rag, gently placed the vinyl bill holder on the edge of the table, far enough away from the flambeed cherries to prevent a conflagration. Jerry lunged for the check, growling, "Oh no, not again."

 

Jerry's waxen demeanor, ashen and lifeless in the dim glow of the rapidly dying flame like a Madame Tussaud piece not good enough to be put on public display, indicated this was not the first time such a thing had happened to him. On the basis of the lovelorn glint of his ghost-town eyes, Hakob knew that it wouldn’t be the last. Jerry was a middle management stranger in a gray, middle management suit, and Hakob knew plenty of Jerrys from his own workplace. These were the men who jousted pie chart windmills with pointers instead of lances, who dreamed impossible dreams while staring gauzy-eyed at PowerPoint presentations, who opened and read each and every questionable email carefully, just in case they really had won the Australian lottery or inherited a fortune from third-world royalty. These Jerrys weren't gullible rubes; just maudlin, eternally optimistic modern-day romantics who dreamed of leaving the rat race. Men who fantasized about running off to a quaint dirt farm in Minnesota with the fresh-faced Vassar intern and a messenger bag stuffed with Prince Hatamba's cash.

 

"Now, just wait a minute!" bellowed a man a few tables away to his dinner companion, a svelte blonde with pastel pink balayage lowlights. "I don't remember signing up for this!"

 

The blonde woman, her patience worn to nubs, chastised her date for being so thick-headed, and insisted he knew perfectly well the terms and conditions—for they were printed right there on the back of the wine list for anyone to see, so long as they peeled off the foil sticker that said DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. The man blathered about consumer affairs regulations; the blonde yawned and buffed her nails. Obviously she had heard this speech before and was not impressed.

 

A sharp pain twinged Hakob in the chest, and he was just about to flag down a waiter and demand to see the wine list again when Claire reappeared at the table. "I'm sorry about that, Hakob," she said, tucking a wispy ringlet of hair behind her ear. 

 

Deflated, and wondering just how much his bill was going to be, Hakob went through the motions of getting-to-know-you, feeling like a relief pitcher in the eighth inning of a game facing an opposing team ahead by a century. He thought of bailing out, ejecting through the men's room window, faking an illness, calling his mother for advice, but his mother was now sponsored by some debt consolidation firm and the thought of listening to a spiel about debt relief at a time like this bankrupted his will to fight. Even worse, running away right now would be impolite. Hakob had no choice but to sit there and be a Jerry.

 

Hakob's posture had slumped and his enthusiasm had waned. He wondered if Claire had noticed the change, but would it make any difference anyway? It would be bad form to get up and leave now, but he was afraid to appear too interested. That's how it all starts, he had come to learn. Show too much interest in something and the robo-calls never stop.

 

"Hakob, if you're upset about that phone call, there's no reason to be," Claire said, explaining that she only wanted to tell her overprotective brother she had arrived at the restaurant safely and there was no need to be on stand-by with brass knuckles. There are lots of creeps out there, she explained, and a girl has to take precautions nowadays. "But I trust you," she declared, firmly grasping his hands with her own. "Don't you trust me?"

 

Hakob thought it best to reveal his hand, just in case Claire's sleeves contained a few skillfully-concealed aces, jokers, terms and conditions, or trial-size bottles of Mighty Male. He declared resolutely that he had no interest in signing up for any sort of membership, with or without a special introductory offer, and he demanded to know whether he should expect to see anything strange on his next credit card statement.

 

He may as well have slapped her across the face, so flashed the opals of her eyes with indignation, rage, and the sort of heartbreak that welled up until her emotions spilled out in precious, liquid crystals, eroding serpentine canyons through the matte foundation on her cheeks, exposing the pink, vulnerable flesh beneath.

 

She stood up on gelatine legs and pointed a quivering, accusing finger at Hakob, but it seemed that she couldn't find the words she wanted to say. Her cheeks crimsoned in anger and she ran from the restaurant into the unseasonably warm night, and Hakob—knowing immediately what he had done and regretting it terribly—attempted to follow her into the urban wilderness.

 

The front of house staff did their best to prevent Hakob's departure by presenting him with a survey about his dining experience. "It will only take about thirty seconds of your time," insisted a busboy.

 

"Please, get out of my way!" growled Hakob.

 

"If you'll only provide us with your email address, we'd be thrilled to send you exclusive offers from our wonderful network of affiliates."

 

Hakob clutched the busboy by the gaudy epaulets of his jacket and moved him out of the way so that he could peer out the glass door, hoping to catch a fleeting glimpse of Claire, desperate to find out which way she had gone. Now a red-faced server stormed into the lobby and accused Hakob of skipping out without paying. "He ordered a Pernod and his accomplice had two dry sherries," declared the server. "You call the police while I get the manager."

 

"You don't understand!" seethed Hakob through clenched teeth, as the fire of angry blood reddened his face. He thrust his hand into his pocket and fumbled for his wallet. He grabbed a fistful of bills, without counting, and deposited them into the busser's jacket pocket, while the maître d'hôtel looked on with a combination of smug amusement and utter distaste from behind a podium. 

 

"Is this the fellow?" asked a bald man with an Adam's apple that raced up and down the ropy trunk of his neck like an indecisive squirrel. 

 

The server, following closely on the manager's heels, said, "That's him! Call the cops!"

 

Hakob frantically tugged at the contents of his wallet, conjuring a maelstrom of bus schedules and customer loyalty cards, which fluttered, twirled and fell to the carpet like shotgunned doves, until he finally located a credit card.

 

"Here, please!" he cried. "Charge me whatever you want, I don't care. Take it all!"

 

The manager pleaded with Hakob to be quiet, but the Armenian man was gone in a flash.

 

In the prickly neon fog he looked for her, in every direction but up. He thought he spotted her turning down 7th Avenue, though it could have been any one of a number of people with a similar hairstyle and outfit. He sprinted with an urgency that ached his side, sprinted down the sidewalk until all of the laughter of lovers and pleas of panhandlers and horn honks and drum beats became a muddled blur in his pounding ears, white noise, hearing not even the squealing of tires as he stepped off the curb and was hurled through the air, spinning and wobbling like a broken carnival ride and falling onto the opposite curb with a sickening snap that numbed him from the neck down.

 

The needles of rain had fattened to drops, Hakob noticed, as the water tumbled down, tickling the tip of his nose and darkening the sidewalk, which he could see only peripherally but could smell with every olfactory receptor of his crushed, crumpled being. It smelled pungent and cold, fermented, like kimchi on concrete. He could see, straight ahead, the diminishing glass spire where, on the fifteenth floor, a man who smelled of onions was working late.

 

"Don't try to move," came a gruff voice from an unseen mouth. "Help is on the way."

 

Waiting for the sirens, Hakob stared into a ragged scrap of sky. His thoughts were of Claire, whose fingers were now entwined with another man's fingers, maybe the stubby fingers of Jerry. Well, good for Jerry, thought Hakob. The Jerrys of the world deserve a victory every once in a while, and maybe, in some small way, Hakob had done his part. He wished them happiness, even if it had come at his own expense. Soon the sirens came and somersaults of light danced and whirled all around, and he could smell strongly the exhaust fumes of an idling ambulance as he waited for what seemed like an eternity to hear the sound of doors opening. Hakob was in no hurry. 

 

Hakob thought he heard the crashing of waves against a beach, but it was all inside his head, and his vision was beginning to blur around the edges like a soap opera dream sequence. 

 

Finally, a boyish man with a warm smile knelt beside him and, in a soothing voice, said that everything was going to be alright. "But first," he continued, "I'd like to take a minute and talk to you about your car's extended warranty."