SO THEN I WAS WORKING AT SUBWAY.

I want to tell you that again: I was working, then, at Subway.

I felt my university degree in art history assisted me in these undertakings. Say, constructing a Chicken and Bacon Ranch sub, it was to my extreme benefit that I'd spent hours committing to memory the names and dates and styles of the major players in American Neo-Fluxus art, as I could then more aptly construct something that would be maximally pleasing to each individual customer's palate. The furrowed-brow acuity with which I layered each fold of cold cut in the creation of a Cold Cut Trio—not to mention my managerial bravado in splicing the shredded lettuce with proportionate strips of mustard, mayonnaise and so on and so forth—was a clear feat in and of itself, informed by an education currently valued in $67,000 school debt, which, I might mention, none of which had as yet been paid off, other than the countless interest-only installments of $500+. I could register in my clients' eyes the respect and ardor they had for my craftsmanship, the safety they felt knowing that it would be I, Art Historian, who constructed their lunch. My accomplishments would be regaled to the high walls of the city, bringing Americans of every stripe running with their hungry fingers stuffed with money to see me create their own private edible masterpiece. Soon, no doubt, word would spread further and further out from my local district, and word would reach my higher ups, upon which I'd be declared Sandwich Artist of the Year, with which would come a MacArthur Genius Grant and a new Ford Mustang with subs and sick rims, and thereafter I'd be swept away from our meager local establishment to the pearly offices of the business-suited, wherein I would become an archetype and all-around go-to guy for fast-food corporations both nation- and worldwide.

Life, any day now, was getting good.

At night I went and slept in my parents' basement.

Though while the first night back I'd been allowed to sleep in the bedroom I'd grown up in, upon my mother realizing I'd been around more than a weekend, she insisted that I move down to the basement so as not to disturb the delicate cleaning job she'd established in said prior room—perfectly Pledged wood surfaces, so that one could detect the slightest new imperfection and therefore demolish it with alacrity; carpet vacuumed so as each fiber pushed the same way, so as to create a visually appealing ruffle to the floor covering's sheen; as well as a certifiably totemic balance of accoutrement on several shelves I'd once used for pornography (of the standard tits-and-ass-and-stats variety, nothing too severe), now filled with a small but growing collection of handmade ceramic elves that my mother paid up to $200 for per piece. To make up for the basement banishment, she began bringing me breakfast in bed every morning, often well before the sun came up and always before I was awake, and talked to me, half-asunder, while she vacuumed and polished and folded the dirty clothing I'd worn the day before so as to minimize wrinkles before she had time to do the wash, which usually took place every other day, if she could stand to wait that long.

There were still carpenter bugs and ants and various other insecta sharing my quarters, despite my mother's tenacity. The wallpaper had little symmetrically placed pictures of cowboys on a bucking horse, as if in the process of getting tossed. The room still smelled like new mold.

So then I was working at Subway, if magisterially, imagined or otherwise, and living in my parents' less-than-airtight basement and my trial date kept nudging closer, a date which no doubt signified the real beginning of the end. I hadn't seen shit yet, I whispered to myself, wrapped in bed alone, covering my head with my pillow so as to block out the sound from father's full-blast television through the air vent, which he laid asleep in front of already, no doubt, the televangelism and 1-800 salesmanship, though if I went up to turn it off he'd shit his knickers. Not that I'd be sleeping anyway, mind you—I lay so busy brained I could hardly loosen up enough to sneeze. Who needs sleep? There's only so much time.

I began picking up more and more Subway hours.

Many others in my position might have resigned themselves to the black turmoil fuck of everything all at once, and effectively ended their reign in sunlight by vowing to never again grace the earth's face with their own face, yadda yadda. I, instead, took up working 60+ hours. I'd work shifts alone, at times cranking out something on the order of fifty sandwiches an hour. I requested to work more. I wanted to work 80 hours. I wanted to work 100. I wanted to work three-fucking-thousand. I'd done the math. If I worked 3000 hours a week at the beatific rate of $6.15/hour (plus tips, which, don't forget the tips—which unfailingly would average out to an additional $.35-.60 cents per hour) I could pay off my school debt in 3.63143-repeating years, interest and other accruing expenses notwithstanding. That's if I didn't go to prison. But as we well know there are only 168 hours in a week and Subway's hours of operation are 8:30 AM to 9:30 PM, thereby reducing the total number of available work hours to 91 per week. Which they wouldn't allow me to do anyway. Which they surely wouldn't want. At night, anyway, I'd go home and imagine making further sandwiches to keep my brain from shitting itself to death.

Only a couple of times did someone come in and have a look at me, and walk back out, unwilling to get fed by these hands.

Behind the counter, as in bed, my brain ran in circles, still, over every wish I'd ever made: every candle blown, every coin flicked fountainward, ladybug landed, fingers crossed, turkey bone cracked—so many years of prayer unanswered, and, as well, all the things I had or hadn't done.


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