Chew You Up Spit You Out

Chew You Up, Spit You Out by Joshua Allen Reggie looked at the address, then at the building in front of him. He walked a few steps to the corner of the block to get a look at the street signs. He checked his piece of paper again. This was the place. This was supposed to be the place.

Reggie had pulled the address straight off the Navy's web site. They claimed that this was their address, but unless the Army/Navy recruiters operated out of a van somewhere hidden in the parking garage, Reggie doubted they were here. Were they trying to make things difficult? Trying to sift out those who really wanted to join up from those who just needed a little money and were desperate enough to sacrifice three years of their life? Reggie crumbled the piece of paper and dropped into one of the City of Chicago - brand gutters. "You win, like you always do," Reggie said to no one in particular. Reggie put his hand in his pocket. He had one five dollar bill, one of those that had been crumpled and washed so many times that it hung limp. He walked back to the El and took the first train that came by. Fired. "Always quit before they can fire you," was Reggie's new motto. He'd cursed himself for giving them the satisfaction of watching him squirm when they called him into the office, watching his face turn pale when they gave him the news, watching him cry as he left the premises. "Thirty thenths? Thirty thenths pleath." The guy wandering up and down the train aisle was young, toothless and wearing a full-leg cast with his pants tucked into it. Reggie closed his

eyes and hoped lack of eye contact would discourage the young man. "Mithter? Thir?" Reggie opened one eye to see the beggar leaning close to him. The guy held a smudged, plastic cup in his hand, dirty from pocket change. "Can I have thum of your drink?" Reggie looked at his hands, remembering the Dr. Pepper he'd bought before starting this hopeless journey. Reggie held the half-empty bottle out to the young man. "Can you jutht pour a little in here?" "You can have it, man." The kid hesitated, not sure whether to move his cup-holding hand or free hand. He seemed certain Reggie was about to do something cruel. Reggie saved him the decision by putting the bottle in his hand. "I wasn't going to finish it anyway." The man gave me a scared half-smile. "Do you have thirty thenths?" Reggie reached into my pocket and gave him whatever was in there. "It's all I got." "Thank you." He said, but his attention was already on the other passengers. He seemed to be gloating at them, telling them with his eyes that he didn't need them since there was a sucker in every crowd. He then resumed his wandering, moving into the next car despite the warning signs on the door: "Only for Emergency Use."

He could hear him, through the cars. "Thirty thenths, thirty thenths pleath." * * * Reggie gathered up all his bills and bank statements and went to the Department of Human Services and applied for food stamps. He told the case worker about the rent he'd paid and the money his parents had sent him. She suggested he join the army, noting that the army was a wonderful experience that everyone should have. Reggie told her they weren't hiring. He got approved for the food stamps, which actually came in the form of a debit card the pamphlet informed him was called a EBT card. His real name was printed on it. "Peavis R. Stone" read the card, quite proud of its honesty. The name was his grandfather's. He had never gone by his real name and only saw it in print on government documents. When they required him to sign "Peavis," he did so in shaky, third-grade-level cursive. He was certain that this name was somehow to blame for his inability to get job interviews. He pondered buying a dog to relieve the loneliness that filled the time in between receiving the paper and applying to every job in it which he had yet to apply. He finally ruled that idea out when he found out he couldn't buy dog food on his EBT card. After the first couple of weeks, he realized the food stamps were more than he needed and began to buy extravagant

meals like fresh lobster and filet mignon. He went back to spaghetti and frozen pizza when the checkout clerk at the grocery story asked him if the filet mignon was for his kids. Job interviews did not go well. They came in bunches when they came. He was always called on a Monday for them, never any other day. One interview was for a teaching position. He arrived a half hour early because he didn't know the neighborhood. He smoked the time away, giving him that fresh-from-the-bar look and smell that interviewers treasured. When he went in, the small reception/principals office area was vacant. He sat and waited until a tall woman came out, saw him, raised her eyebrows and retreated back to her private office. She emerged again with a smile, moving straight toward him with military precision. "You must be Lloyd." Reggie stood, smiling at her mistake, "Actually, I'm Reggie Stone." The woman frowned, looked at the clock. "Mr. Stone, your interview is not for another hour." Reggie pulled out a scrap of paper on which he'd written the information. The scrap showed the current time. "Well, maybe whoever I talked to made a mistake." The woman smiled, looked on the verge of patting him on the head. "You talked to me, and I'm certain that I got it right." Strike one!

"I can come back in a little..." She looked at her wrist, which had a watch-tan but no watch, "We'll just go ahead and if the other person shows, I'll just have him wait for a few minutes." She led him to her office and introduced herself. Reggie then sat down, realizing immediately he didn't know if her name was "Cathy" or "Carrie." "So, you have a degree in Elementary education?" Reggie looked at the paper work on her desk. He could see the name "Lloyd" at the top of the resume she was looking through. "Actually, I have a degree in Math and English." She shot him a look, then put aside the resume and pulled out his. Strike two! "So tell me, why do you want to be a teacher?" She was looking him directly in the eye, a gaze he was able to hold through his entire, half-baked answer. When he finished, he broke the gaze and shifted his eyes down. He looked away quickly when he realized his eyes had come to rest on her breasts. He made a circle to the wall behind her and the artwork there, before coming back to her eyes, which were locked on his face. Strike three! You're out!

When he'd been fired, Reggie had enough money for rent for three months. Month number three was fast approaching. The landlord was starting to give Reggie dirty looks when he saw that Reggie was still at home at two o'clock in the afternoon. "How's the job search going, Reggie?" "Excellent sir, I'll have a great job within in the week, no problem." The landlord tried to smile at him, but Reggie was sitting on the back porch eating popcorn in jogging pants and two days stubble. After that, he quit going outside completely. The next morning, with the arrival of the newspaper, he called several of the ads he had always ignored before. They all claimed the same thing, that he could work at home and make $500-$2000 per month. The lady on the line told him of the excellent opportunity that existed. All he needed was a computer at home with access to the Internet. He had both, gifts from his parents to aid his job search. She told him that he could start right away, as soon as he purchased their software for $750. "Seven hundred and fifty dollars? Christ lady, I'm calling you out of desperation because I need money, what the fuck makes you think I have that?" "We take Visa or Mastercard. Which would you prefer to pay with?"

Reggie whipped the phone across the room. It hit the wall, battery cover, battery and phone each flew in different directions. The phone left a fist-sized hole in the wall. His neighbor pounded on the shared wall in response. She was yelling at him, but all he could hear was, "Thirty thenths. Thirty thenths pleath." Reggie reassembled his phone, which was cracked, but otherwise no worse for the wear. He took to listening to the radio all day, calling into every contest they had, trying to win some cash and prizes that could keep him going for awhile longer. He always reached a busy line and figured they all were rigged. Another Monday rolled past and Month three had begun. He figured, since most jobs paid biweekly and staggered the first check, that if didn't find employment within the next week, week after at the latest, there was no way he could pay rent. He called the Housing department and asked how long it took to perform an eviction. "Eviction. Why, have you been served a notice?" "Not yet, just wanted to check." "For eviction," the man's voice locked on autopilot, "first the landlord serves you notice, which gives you thirty days to comply. If you're still present at the end of thirty days, the landlord must contact the Sheriff's department. Things being

what they are, it will probably take the Sheriff's Department two to three weeks or more to come and evict you. In that time, it is against the law for the landlord to lock you out." A month and half, maybe more. If he could just find a job this month, he could either patch things up with the landlord or have plenty of time to find something else. This was the make or break month. The only option left would be to sell or abandon his belongings and head to back to live with his parents. This option filled Reggie with an unbelievable sense of dread and shame. Taking money from them was one thing, but living with them again was the worst of all possible worlds. Reggie realized that the month had started and his EBT card had been replenished. He decided to stock up on groceries, especially coffee, for the massive job hunt he would soon begin. This put him in a relatively good mood. He decided to shower, shave, even put on some regular pants. That done, he glanced out the back window, saw the back yard empty of any landlord types and slipped out into the alley, toward the small corner grocery store the Iranians owned. The little grocery store had a wood fence around a small back open space between the main building and a small garage. The space was always filled with boxes and usually sported an nice, green, plastic chair complete with a matching green plastic end table on which sat an ash tray that was usually

filled with half-smoked joints. As he approached the fence to see if anyone was enjoying a smoke, he was a little shocked to see the area cleaned out. Maybe they had been inspected or something. The entire setup was probably now in the garage. He walked along the side of the building, which sagged on top and bulged at the side and saw a few Hispanic kids hanging out in front of the store. "Hey dude," one of the kids stuck his chin out at Reggie as he called, "you got any beer?" "I'm fresh out, my friends." They snarled at him and lingered in his way. "Nice shoes, Dick." Reggie looked at his shoes, which weren't particularly nice. The kids looked at each other and laughed, sharing some inside joke. The ringleader pointed at him and said, "He doesn't have a dick." The leader put his skateboard down and zipped away. The other followed, mocking him as they went. Reggie shrugged his shoulders and reached out for the door to the grocery store. He looked over to see that the normal crew of Iranians were gone. Normally an older gentleman was sitting on a stool staring at the TV while two young guys scratched off lottery tickets.

Every time he went in there, the old guy told him, "I was vet in my country," and the younger of the other two would always say, "'sup man. Hey...Pall Mall lights, right man?" Today he was greeted with a blank stare from an overweight Hispanic lady with a smooth face. He glanced over at the grocery store and saw, instead of shelves filled with ramen noodles and Coke products, there were long bins stuffed with shoes. "Hola, señor," the woman said to him, her smile was timorous. Reggie just stood there, staring at her things. Finally, he turned to the smooth-faced woman. "Hola," Reggie said, struggling to remember some freshman year Spanish, and came up with "donde esta el grocery store?" "No se." Her words were almost too quiet to hear. "Uuuuh, dos hombres y un viejo hombre de Iran?" She shook her head and pointed a finger at her chest, "de Chile." Reggie poked his head outside to look at the street sign, and saw that he was at the correct intersection in the correct building, but the sign on the building itself didn't say "Groceries," the sign said, "Zapateria." "Wrong place," he said, pointing to the road sign. She let out a sigh and smiled, nodding her head profusely. "Si, si."

He left. Reggie took the bus north a dozen blocks to the larger grocery store. He was relieved to see the store was still present, where expected. Also present was a road crew that appeared to be changing the street signs. He got off the bus and watched them taking the sign down that read "32nd Ave" and putting up one that said "37th Ave." Standing at the crosswalk, Reggie watched as a guy dressed in an orange vest on a cherry picker began to bolt the new sign onto the stop light crossbar. Another one of the crew walked to his corner of the intersection to check the alignment. Reggie stood on the corner, waiting for the traffic lights to turn in his favor. The man in the orange vest was close enough to him that Reggie could smell the ammonia tang of his sweat. "Hey, are they doing this everywhere?" Reggie asked. The guy didn't look at him. "Yup, completely restructuring the city." "They going to renumber the houses too?" "Look, I just work here, you got questions, take 'em up with your alderman or whatever. I don't give two shits." The light changed and Reggie started to walk across the street. The construction worker callED him an "asshole" in notquite-a-whisper as he walked away.

Reggie purchased way more than he could carry. He collected the bags in both hands, wrapping handle on handle. Cabs didn't take food stamps, so carrying the gargantuan load of groceries on the bus with him was the only option. As the bus cruised down the street, he saw more Public Works crews changing signs. The streets were all moving up by five. For whatever reason, they were shifting the city north one mile. He got off the bus at what used to be 37th, but the driver announced it as 42nd like he'd been doing so his whole life. The grocery bags dug into the joints of Reggie's fingers. He had to stop every half block to rest his arms and hands. As he neared the building containing his two-flat, he started to wonder if the building was even there. All the signs had been changed since he'd left not more than an hour ago. Perhaps he'd simply lost his sanity and this really was 42nd Ave. He could see the house, with its green door, as he rounded the corner of the church parking lot. He had to cut in between his building and the next to the back of the house, then go up three flights of wooden stairs built attached to the back of the house to reach his apartment door. He set down the groceries at the base of the stairs and took them up two at a time, letting them flop onto the ground of his living room/kitchen before running down to retrieve two more bags. Five trips later, all the groceries were inside. He put them away, dutifully but with no sense of

aesthetics. The macaroni wound up next to the can beans next to the box of Hamburger Helper next to the bag of Doritos next to the jar of spaghetti sauce. Afterward, he twisted the window air conditioner in his bedroom up to "Hi Cool" and crashed on the mattress he'd found in the alley his second day in Chicago. When he woke, night had settled into his neighborhood. The neighbor's backyard floodlight was shining in his eyes. He got up and looked out the window. The spires of the Sear's Tower blinked red and green. The city glowed. The neighbor's house seemed off. The floodlight had always been there, but yesterday the back yard was a concrete slab, and now it was grass. The vacant lot that had stood beyond them was no longer vacant. Reggie decided he was still tired. Once on a drive home that began at three in the morning and was preceded by absolutely no sleep, he had sworn he'd seen the road suddenly shoot up and twist into the night sky. It had turned out to be a tree at the end of a bend. He'd stopped then and slept. That was what he needed now. Reggie peeled off his clothes and slid under the covers, drifting into deep, strange sleep. The morning did not bring comforting sights of his old, familiar neighborhood. Everything was different. The neighbors were gone. Now his window gave him a direct view of the side of a red brick building with a sign that read: Anderson Meat

Packers. He checked his apartment and found it was unchanged. Outside, the entire neighborhood was different. There were still houses south of him, but there were now a lot full of semi trucks to the east. He went to the front and saw a gas station where the church had been. Further up the block, he saw the street sign had changed again to 58th. He went back and knocked on the door of the apartment occupied by his landlord. There was no answer. He tried the basement apartment, and found it empty as well. He tried to peek in the windows, but could see nothing, no matter how he adjusted his hands to shield the sunlight. He decided if anyone would have an answer, the morning news would. Warner Saunders, the anchorman, talked of a murder on the South Side, probably gang related. He talked of rising interest rates, the Wal Mart conflict, the current war in Iraq. Not a word about the migration of the city. Reggie shut off his TV and went out on the porch. The spotty blue summer sky had changed to the sort of gray that contained every shade on the scale. A painter would pick out the streaks of darker gray mixed in the with the lighter blue grays and hints of black, dabs of blue and purple, a little red here and there hiding in the mixture. All Reggie saw as a solid gray. He felt like the city was draped in a gray blanket, sealing it from the outside world. There was a

chilly wind whipping up. Reggie put on a jacket. He had to see the city up close. Reggie went downtown, or at least where downtown used to be. He stood on the bridge on Michigan Avenue that spanned the river. To the south, nothing but townhouses. To the north, the Sears Tower, the John Hancock, and the others were a distance away. Skyscrapers were rooted in the bedrock, immobile. Yet there they were, like a buffalo herd that had wandered away. He was afraid if he turned his back to the buildings, they would creep away a little further, playing a game of Red Light/Green Light with him. Reggie picked some leaves off a tree growing out of a planter built into the sidewalk. He tossed them into the swirling waters of the Chicago river far below. They moved toward the lake. The river had been made to flow away from Lake Michigan since the 50s. Chicago was leaving him. Chicago was doing to him what he could never do to her. A bus pulled to a stop behind him. The door swung open, the driver addressed him, "Not much out here sir, its probably best to head home." Reggie dropped a few pennies in the coin machine, the driver processed them without looking. All the seats were open, so Reggie took one near the back, where the bus was always warmest. The bus cruised through

identical, alien neighborhoods. The bus picked up only one other passenger. The young man saw him and made a b-line to the seat next to his. "Do you happen to have thirty thenths, sir?" Reggie reached into his pocket and pulled out four pennies. He held them out to the young man, who turned his head in disgust. "One day thir, you're going to be jutht like me, needing money and thomeone will do the thame thing to you." "It's all I have, I swear." "Thath what they'll thay when you athk them. Ith all I have, I thwear." "I'm broke man, I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent." The man stood up, leaning close to his face. "RENT? I've been on the thtreet three yearth and you complain about rent?" "Where do I go?" The young man limped with up to the back exit, then turned and spit at him, "Fuck you, thir!" The young man got off, leaving the bus to him again. Eventually, it stopped in front of his building. Reggie had never seen a bus stop in front of his building before. He didn't even live on a corner. "Last stop sir, all passengers must exit." The voice was not the man driving, but the piped-in, recorded voice, one

different from the usual. The voice belonged to Kelly or Catherine, the woman he'd had one of his terrible interviews with. She sounded annoyed with him. "We thank you for choosing CTA, Lloyd. Have a nice day." Reggie went to the rear exit doors and flung them open. The voice began to recycle its message. As soon as his foot hit the sidewalk the bus peeled out, squealing away haphazardly through the residential streets. The neighborhood had changed even more since he'd left. He was surrounded by houses he didn't recognize, a few apartment complexes with boarded windows. He could see people moving inside the buildings, through the gaps in the boards, or the holes where boards had been pried up, torn away. Reggie hurried up to his apartment. He locked the door behind him and sat down on his couch. He turned the TV on. He didn't recognize the newscasters. He didn't know the shows. This was programming for another time and place. He turned the television off. He chain-smoked, staring at blank TV screen until the sun went down. He looked out his bedroom window. He could still see the city, the distant red and green blink of the Sear's Tower was just visible because the city was now on the side of a hill. Somehow, the horizon had shifted to where it was curving up instead of down. He was no longer on the earth, but in it.

Downtown Chicago was rising up. The wave of earth that carried the city was swelling. If he concentrated on the scene long enough, he could see it moving with starfish speed. The whole rotten, stinking mess was crashing back toward him, at a snail's pace. The tide would swell higher, rearing up. Like a tsunami it would begin to come back, inch by inch. The city would crash down, coming to rest where it always had been, everything back to exactly how it had been only a week ago, except for his building and his body. He would be crushed beneath the enormity of the city. He could avoid it. All he had to do was leave, hop the first bus or train or taxi cab out of town. He could go anywhere. Anywhere would be better. The city would swallow him soon, maybe tonight. The week was up. There was no way to pay rent. The only place he could go was back home, to live with his parents, and shame on all of them. An embarrassment. He would have to abandon his things. Reggie didn't move for a long while. Then, with motions that were by now built into his fingers, he opened a new pack of cigarettes and began to smoke one while his previous still smoldered in the ashtray.

THE END