Cirque du Glitch
Hank couldn't remember what his glitch was or even that he had a glitch at all. All he knew was the TV wasn't working and no matter what button he pushed, he couldn't get it to KIRO for the news, it just wasn't working, he was sure it was the television, he didn't know anything about televisions. Technology was the glitch Hank couldn't remember since his stroke, along with his name, rank, and social security number. He simply didn't know what to do so he went outside, on a rainy day, to sit on the porch watching the wet people flow by to the free coffeeshop across the street, Mosaic, the one run by the church, like a Starbucks with no prices on the menu, just a donation box, free WIFI for the lord and all that, he couldn't remember if he'd ever been there or not but it seemed to be popular. He sat and watched the outside world for no other reason than his TV was broken and reality was the only other thing on.
Gary was on his way to Mosaic because the furniture was WAY better than at the House of Glitch, nice comfy leather chairs on nice carpets next to fake fireplaces. When Gary woke up every morning, the first thing he had to do was figure out someplace to go other than the House of Glitch, which was where he was when he woke up. He didn't really have anywhere to go other than OUT OF THE HOUSE, even though it was raining, so out came the scarf and the umbrella and the laptop in the backpack for a sojourn up the block.
"Hey!"
"Huh?"
"You know anything about television?"
Hoo boy. Too complicated. So many potential answers. Which one was this old man looking for, from his porch, across the street from Mosaic, where Gary wanted to get out of the rain, when he remembered where he was. This was Seattle, where you could eat or drink on any bus or train in the public transportation system without a bother, where there was no gum on the seats, and where everyone said "Thank you" to the bus driver upon disembarking. He remembered every reason, past or present, that he had admired the city of Seattle for its simple civility. It was the most tolerant society he had ever participated in and he liked it. What was he going to do now, be RUDE to this poor old man, adrift on the sea of technology, probably senile, shouting out to strangers passing by, thinks the TV is broken even though he probably just hit the wrong button. Suddenly, Gary saw it as more than a kind thing to do but his solemn patriotic duty to solve the problem of Hank and the television.
He looked to his right. Comfy ol' Mosaic and a cuppa Joe. He looked to his left. Some old man was inviting him into his house. Throwing precaution to the wind, shaking his head, he climbed the stairs to the patio, the old man in a walker, an American Flag on the side of his shirt and an old Bell Telephone insignia on the front, obviously retired, a vet, on his own, Gary shook out his umbrella, folded it up and left it on the porch as Hank opened his front door and let him in.
Immaculate and clean, old heavy furniture full of windows and knick knacks, no, not knick knacks, figurines, tiny and precisely displayed, ancient and particularly fitting for the time and place where Hank left his mind.
"See? It doesn't work."
The screen was blue so Gary knew the TV worked. First things first. Had the old man just changed the TV from channel 3? Gary found the TV remote, pressed 3, and up popped some cable channel from the cable box to the left of the TV. He grabbed the cable remote and changed channels, making sure the volume control worked, there good as new, see yuh.
Gary left that porch damn proud of himself. Not only did he remember not to forget his umbrella, he had done a good deed for a random stranger, a deed much simpler than he had anticipated before accepting the challenge, but a good deed nonetheless. For the first time in a long time, he truly felt himself to be a good person, a Seattleite, a man of the people, a mensch.
Gary settled into his comfy chair at Mosaic with a fresh well-made infusion of hot black Seattle coffee, set up his laptop, logged onto the lord's WIFI, got his mail, and mulled. He had just had a micro-adventure, and he'd recently taken a seminar in "micro-fiction" at the University branch of the public library, a new literary craze where you grab miniature stories from everyday life and paint a quick portrait. This was perfect.
He opened a new window and started typing... "Hank couldn't remember what his glitch was or even that he had a glitch at all." Gary never found out what the old man's name was so he figured "Hank" would do, and if not, what?, you never heard of SEARCH and REPLACE? "All he knew was the TV wasn't working and no matter what button he pushed, he couldn't get it to KIRO for the news," he typed next.
This is going good, Gary thought. I'm on a roll, but he stopped typing, right there in the middle of a sentence, like Hemingway told him to, and grabbed a swig of luxury along with a freshly buttered croissant. In order to accomplish this, his eyes had to leave the screen and wander. Oh shit. Across the room, at the entrance to Mosaic, was the old guy, the one he'd just recently named Hank, walking up to some other dude with a beard and saying "I'm looking for a guy."
"Hoo boy. Too complicated. So many potential answers." thought the dude with a beard who actually said nothing.
"I think that's him."
And so the dude with a beard, whom you now realize you're going to have to come up with a name for, has written himself into the story and is leading the limping old phone company vet in the walker over to your territory, where you're still trying to write what happened ten minutes ago and he's actually INTERRUPTING your getting it all down, the whole story of your kindness to a stranger, only fictionalized, the bastard, what the hell does he want now?
"This is who you were looking for?" asked the dude in the beard.
"Yep, that's him," said the old man previously known as Hank.
Gary stopped typing, stood up, and tried to explain to the dude in the beard what was happening, as though the dude in the beard were the only way out of this mess.
"It stopped working again," said Hank, previously known as the old man, because Gary named him Hank and that's it.
The old man looked at him in pity. The dude in the beard looked at him with pity. "I am not going back to this guy's fucking house just because he hit the wrong button on his remote," Gary thought, "what, now every time he gets a thorn in his paw I'm the one gotta pull it out? Be gone! I've got writing to do."
"Just make sure the TV is on channel 3," Gary actually said to Hank as Mort, the recently renamed bearded dude, led Hank out of Mosaic and to the sidewalk, returning quickly to his own latte with pumpkin.
The old man, who remained nameless outside of Gary's story, had not brought an umbrella. He only had to make it across the rainy street, but it was one of those unique baroque intersections that Gary loved, with a simple round garden island planted smack dab in the middle of the intersection to discourage speeding, but the guy in the U-Haul didn't see it coming, swerved too fast and fell over in the slippery street, spilling an entire load of figurines on top of Hank, no, Leon, who died instantly, but whose soul migrated to the figurine picked up by Gary from the gutter on the way home and left on top of the refrigerator in the House of Glitch where Leon's ghost met Angie's ghost, much to his regret.
Moral: Fuck figurines.
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