289
At the paint counter of a large hardware store. Two men consider an open can. It’s a light base. The younger man, Hani, inspects the colour code on the back of a paint swatch. The other man, Eddie, stirs the paint.
Eddie: Go ahead. Be philosophical.
Hani: OK.
Eddie: It’s fine to be philosophical.
Hani: Life is pain.
[Eddie: OK. (He stirs) Life is pain-ish.]
(pause)
Eddie: How much blue did you put in?
Hani: The amount listed on the code.
Eddie: Hmm.
Hani: If I’ve made a mistake…
Eddie: You haven’t made a mistake. There are no mistakes in tinting.
[Pause) (He stirs]
Hani: So…?
Eddie: So you’re thinking about life, thinking it’s painful.
Hani: Yeah.
Eddie: Life is paintful.
Hani: Life is paint, I guess.
Eddie: Paint is life.
Hani: Paint is paint.
(Pause) (Eddie throws away the stir stick)
Hani: I don’t think things will get better.
Eddie: Momentarily they will.
Hani: Momentarily.
Eddie: They can get better for a while, but, yes, the trend is generally downward. Maybe we should add a complementary tint.
Hani: We never get back to how it was.
Eddie: There’s not going to be another Golden Age. We will not know a Golden Age.
Hani: OK.
Eddie: I don’t know how you’d define a Golden Age.
(Hani adds two droplets of tint. They watch the blue dissipate.)
Hani: And things could get worse in ways both our generation and the previous have never ever encountered.
Eddie: Maybe.
Hani: Famine.
Eddie: I thought you meant people actually dying.
Hani: Famine could kill a lot of people.
Eddie: I don’t think we get to famine. Not here. We get to discomfort.
Hani: People are feeling more than discomfort.
Eddie: I mean this town.
Hani: People are feeling discomfort in this town.
Eddie: Are you?
Hani: I will soon.
(He picks up a stir stick. Considers it.)
Eddie: Will you pass me a new stir stick?
(Hani does so)
Hani: It’s like we’re stirring a big coffee.
Eddie: Blue coffee.
Hani: Martian coffee.
Eddie: How will you feel discomfort?
Hani: Rent goes up.
Eddie: But you still have food. There’s no famine.
Hani: I don’t know if I’ll still have food.
Eddie: Some sort of food.
Hani: Maybe.
Eddie: I know people who are eating Dollar Store.
Hani: I do that.
Eddie: No, but every night.
Hani: I eat whatever I can.
Eddie: There’s the hot dog truck outside.
Hani: I eat there.
Eddie: No one eats there.
Hani: I have. I said I wouldn’t.
Eddie: And are you hoarding food?
Hani: What I can.
Eddie: Terence in Gardening is hoarding food. He’s a prepper.
Hani: I know that.
Eddie: A forager prepper. Prepping and foraging. And he buys these buckets of food. Sixty servings. With food in pouches.
Hani: I have a bucket like that.
Eddie: A bucket for four hundred dollars?
Hani: They’re on at 229 at the moment.
Eddie: Which section?
Hani: Sporting goods. Camping.
Eddie: You’ll eat those meals?
Hani: If I have to.
Eddie: And the hot dog truck?
Hani: Once. Maybe twice.
(pause)
Eddie: You’ll have food of some sort. You’ll have calories. And you’ll still have gummies.
Hani: I was being serious.
Eddie: I am serious. When you think of advancements in how to cope.
Hani: More than drinking?
Eddie: Than drinking, smoking. I have relief in gummy form now.
Hani: I was being serious…I need money to eat.
Eddie: They’re not expensive.
Hani: I know but…
Eddie: I’m at the point where I can change my life for three hours every day, or obliterate it for three hours every night, for very little.
Hani: That’s obliteration.
Eddie: I know.
Hani: You say it like it’s a good thing.
Eddie: You want experience?
Hani: Of sorts.
Eddie: Of pain and hunger.
Hani: I’m not going to go and look for it.
Eddie: But you’ll taste some of it.
Hani: I wouldn’t want to dull my life and live in a constant haze.
Eddie: I would.
Hani: Ok.
Eddie: I do.
Hani: After work?
Eddie: Mostly after work.
Hani: At work?
Eddie: Mostly no.
Hani: Right now?
Eddie: No.
(pause)
Hani: We should seal this can.
Eddie: Just a second.
(He cups his hands, raises them, breathes in. Hani sees in this gesture his older brother at his florist job taking in the bouquet of dahlias)
(pause)
Hani: You shouldn’t do that.
Eddie: I huff it once in a while. Not in a serious way. More as a throwback.
Hani: OK.
Eddie: I used to do it all the time.
Hani: Paint.
Eddie: People are using paint everywhere.
Hani: Not everywhere.
Eddie: There’s a lot of huffing that still goes on.
Hani: You don’t have to. You can eat your things, your gums.
Eddie: It’s a thing from my past. Like listening to old music.
Hani: It’s not the same.
Eddie: It’s nostalgia.
Hani: When?
Eddie: When do I do it? At slow times. Evenings. We get these times when there’s no one here. You can hear the time passing. No one’s walking around. We have times that are so dead. I can hear sports talk radio from automotive. You can hear someone breathing.
Hani: Where?
Eddie: In automotive.
Hani: The person listening to sports?
Eddie: Yeah. In automotive.
Hani: I’ve been in here when there are no customers.
Eddie: When it’s that slow, like at night, you start to really see the objects. You see how much energy potential in each piece of hardware. All the saws are still. For now. The blades. But not forever.
Hani: That’s the kind of thought you have?
Eddie: I have all sorts of thoughts. I’ve been wrecked in here once.
Hani: When?
Eddie: You didn’t notice.
Hani: When it was slow?
Eddie: You didn’t notice. I stood over there near the saws and I could almost feel their negativity. I imagined a crisis.
Hani: What kind?
Eddie: A breakdown of society. Something happened and the store was still open and people were pouring in, every aisle. They could only pay in cash, so they were digging for cash from their money belts, from wherever, because they didn’t want to be that person at the till tapping a credit card again and again knowing the banking system was down. You know how the cashiers would be.
Hani: We’d be closed.
Eddie: But in my mind, we’re open. And it was a crisis. The cashiers are fragile at the best of times. They’re in tears, you know, trying to make changes, trying to make mental calculations, ripping at those cardboard tubes of coins, unable to handle the aggravation. They haven’t handled coins in forever.
Hani: Paint?
Eddie: What?
Hani: You just breathed in too much paint. Are you feeling the effect?
Eddie: From just now? No. I’m fine. But I did also take something today.
Hani: A gummy?
Eddie: Yes.
Hani: When?
Eddie: At lunch. (pause) A large snake gummy.
Hani: At work?
Eddie: Yes.
Hani: The snake?
Eddie: Yes.
Hani: Wow.
Eddie: Yes. Maybe larger than I thought.
Hani: I’ve seen it at the cannabis shop. Behind the counter.
Eddie: I usually cut it up into four. Or five.
Hani: OK.
Eddie: But I didn’t. I was thinking too much. I was thinking this morning so much about the breakdown of Western society.
Hani: You didn’t think to cut the snake in half.
Eddie: It’s weird. The snake. (pause) A lot of what we do is ceremony. We live without thinking. I ate without thinking.
(pause) (Hani points to the paint)
Hani: What will we add to this?
Eddie: Nothing.
(Hani withdraws the stir stick.)
Hani: What should we do with this?
Eddie: Just a second. (He breathes in again)