The Fight

I watched Eugene from across the lobby.  With his elbows pressed against the wall, and with a quarter, he had been scratching a lottery ticket for half an hour, his little body leaning towards it intimately. He looked as though he was coercing the neon-colored card to put out, the way a drunken sailor might press his prostitute against an alley wall.   Eugene needed that card to put out because it was the twentieth he had bought that month.

“I been buyin’ these for years. I know it’s gonna happen soon,” he said later, brushing lint off his tuxedo vest and pants.  “But just think of how much you’ve spent on these tickets through the years! Probably a million,” I said. Eugene shut his eyes and opened his mouth, which meant he was annoyed, but then diverted his attention to Norman, who was walking by us angrily. Eugene squinted his eyes from behind his Monopoly Man glasses, fixating them on Norman, then shot me a mischievous smile. “Hey you!” Eugene yelled to Norman. “Your mother know you go out with that on?” he pointed to Norman’s hat. It was a bright red wool hat with three braids growing out of it. One on each side, covering his ears, and one coming out the top, slightly resembling the relaxed genitalia of a large mammal. Had a girl been wearing it, she would’ve merely looked stupid, but as its owner was a thirty year old man with stubble covering his face from the nose down, I couldn’t help but be confused by his reasoning. “What’s wrong with my hat?” Norman asked, “It’s the Anne of Green Gables hat!”  “You look like a retard,” Eugene replied, straightening his bow-tie. He then picked up his serving tray and walked back into the room where coffee was waiting to be distributed. Norman also turned away and walked into his bowling alley.  I was even more confused now. He hadn’t acknowledged my presence.

A few hours later, I found a note by my phone. It was from Lisa who worked the earlier shift. It had my name on it, and I pulled the staples open to expose the meaning of his coldness. Norm is mad at you. I think it has to do with the poster.

A few weeks ago, Norman returned from his yearly trip to Vegas. Every year, he goes to the Star Wars convention alone, takes pictures of celebrities and brings back useless novelty items by the bag.  The celebrities in Norman’s pictures are always unidentifiable, because in addition to staying in his seat to take photographs (after purchasing a VIP ticket entitling him not be a stalker and to actually have the chance to be down on the stage with all the other fans mingling with the actors),  Norm insists on using a single-use camera. I always wonder how R2-D2 feels seeing the one fan sitting in his seat, watching him from a distance, sweating, rubbing the arm rests. Does Jar Jar Binks get uncomfortable noticing, out of the corner of bulbous his eye, a single flash going off amidst the rows of empty seats?

-“Pi pi pa po poo……uh oh..”

-“Hmmm…yousa point is well seen. How wude!…call security.”

No one really knows what else Norman does while in Vegas.  He doesn’t gamble, is still a virgin, doesn’t drink, and doesn’t like being outside with people.  Still, when he comes back he tells us he had the best time ever, and we flip through fifty grainy gray pictures, pausing to ask who or what is featured in each one.  If he comes back on a Monday, by Tuesday he will have bought his ticket for the next year.  He says he worries about tickets being sold out, and I worry about the event being canceled one year, because then he will quite literally have nothing to look forward to.

Norman returned from his most recent trip with a cardboard cylindrical box poking out of his backpack.  As his best friend, I was entitled to the best gift in his souvenir bag, and as his best friend, I was forced to accept this gift every year, no matter how much it pained me to find a new hiding place for it in my apartment. He pulled the roll out and handed it to me.  I tore the tape that kept it together, and unraveled his surprise.  It was a scene from outer space, with star ships flying in all directions.  In the center was a superimposed picture of Norman standing in mid air, slouching, with his backpack on, single-use camera in hand.  He looked blasé, despite the ship exploding just below his left foot. His expression said “Get it over with” and I instantly felt sorry for him. If they couldn’t make him look like he was floating rather than obeying the rules of gravity of a planet that wasn’t even featured in the scene, they could’ve at least drawn a star ship under his feet. I gasped and screamed, “I love it!” the way I usually do when I don’t love it.  I thought of where I could hide it. A pair of fuzzy dice was stuffed behind my books, a deflated Darth Vader lay under the garbage bags under my sink, a ‘someone who loves me very much…’ t-shirt insulated the cracks in my window, and the space between my oven and fridge was occupied by five other posters, three of Vegas and two of movies I had once mentioned liking.  I couldn’t decide where to put the poster, so I kept it behind the desk for a week or so, and later put it on top of the lost and found cabinet, as I still couldn’t come up with a suitable burial plot for it in my apartment. Weeks went by and I had entirely forgotten about it, and somehow it managed to roll inside the cabinet. Knowing no one would claim it, I let it sit there until one day it was gone.

I called Lisa to ask her about the note.  Through laughter, she told me that Norman found the poster in the cabinet, ‘got pissed’, and took it back.

“He said he was going to teach you a lesson. He wanted to scare you.”

“Scare me? How?”

“He said you would flip out when you realized it was gone.”

I looked behind me, through the doors of the bowling alley where Norm was polishing a bowling ball.  After saying bye to Lisa, I called him.

“Bowling, Norm speaking.”

“It’s me.”

“Yes?”

“Can I have my poster back?”

“What poster?”

“The one you gave me.”

“I gave you a poster?”

“Yes, it’s lying on the table beside you.”

“That’s not it.”

“Yes it is. I can see it from here.”

“You threw it away! You’re not getting it back.”

“Someone else threw it away!”

“Well you didn’t take it home!”

“I’m sorry.”

“Okay I’ll bring it back now.”

I smiled and hung up. Forgiveness was effortless to Norman, and for a minute I thought maybe he could be my best friend as well. I don’t know many people that cherish friendships the way he does.  And what could be more important?  Perhaps it was time I was a better friend to him.  Maybe one day I would go to Vegas with him, drag him onstage with his idols, and be the one taking pictures from far away.  I’d get a good one of Norm high-fiving Chewbacca, with Jabba the Hut giving them the thumbs up. Norman came up to me and smiled, extending the now tattered poster to me.  I took it and thanked him, and he walked off.  I paused and thought about those charming scenarios, then walked over to the lost and found cabinet and shoved the poster back in.  I hate Star Wars.