[Fiction | Issue 10]

Jason Michael Martin

the meaning of the egg

I regretted putting the egg in his pocket almost immediately. As soon as I’d done it, I raced over to the elevator that, for once, was waiting with open doors. Upon reaching the ground floor, I briefly considered returning to the office but quickly dismissed the thought — I was practically free now, just steps away from the sunlight outside that was rubbing up against massive glass doors at the building’s entrance/exit — and besides, I could not risk being seen removing the egg from my office mate’s jacket pocket.

But why had I done it? I remember hastily packing my things in preparation for my exit from the office when I discovered two hard-boiled eggs (once intended as my breakfast) in a side pocket of my bag where they had been hidden away and forgotten since yesterday morning.  I threw the first egg in my trashcan without thinking; but for some reason I froze on the second egg, rolling it around in my palm and then, on an impulse, I deposited the egg into the pocket of the jacket hanging from my officemate’s chair. The pocket’s silky lining felt alarmingly intimate and I withdrew my hand with a jerk after releasing the egg. 

Riding down in the elevator I pictured him reaching into his pocket and slowly drawing out the egg — He would examine it of course. Perhaps he would smell it? Roll it around in his palm as he considered its origin and meaning?  Would he scan our shared office space for clues and then zero in on the vacant chair in front of my desk and then… what? Chuckle? Grow angry? Fearful? I had wanted him to see the humor in my gesture and I even wanted him to admire it, or at least appreciate the fact that I’d actually done it. Maybe I was trying to make connection? We don’t know each other very well.

We had shared the office for a few months but only socialized outside of work once over a game of handball.  One day I looked over and noticed him staring at me with his headphones off, so I removed mine and he said that he’d discovered a handball court near the office. He said he had already had a ball. Shall we? he said, coyly.

Towards the end of that incredibly futile first game I had inadvertently uncorked a missile of a strike — somehow my arm had slotted itself perfectly for generating maximum velocity — and perhaps distracted by this discovery, the ball remained cupped in the palm of my hand a beat too long so that my arm and subsequent throw travelled all the way across my body, rather than straight ahead towards the target, and I fired the ball directly into his eye socket.

He dropped to the ground on one knee and very tenderly placed both hands — one on top of the other — over the afflicted eye, without making a sound. He was a large man and I had been surprised by his elegance as he moved daintily around the court on the tips of his toes. (He was possibly a former athlete of some kind.) When he finally staggered upward into a standing position, still covering the eye with two hands I wondered if he might take a swing at me.

As he dropped his hands gingerly away I saw that the eye was already bloodshot and swollen. Tears streamed down one side of his face.

I need to see a doctor, he said.

I apologized for the throw and then reminded him that I couldn’t give him a ride, since I was on a bike.  I thought I saw him nod as he gathered his things with one hand, the other hand once again palmed over the wounded eye.

When I saw him at work the next day he was wearing an eye patch.

I have a corneal abrasion, he said.

At first the term sounded suspect to me, like something you would say if you were a character in a movie pretending to be a doctor and had been forced into giving an improvised diagnosis to a skeptical patient.

The doctor also told him that in rare cases like his he had seen patients lose an eye. I told him that seemed a little hard to swallow, if I was being honest, but that I was again sorry for what had happened.

Then he said that he had been prescribed painkillers and pumped his fist in mock victory. But I misunderstood the gesture as a desire for a fist bump, which I halfheartedly complied with. He looked at me strangely (while wearing an eye patch) when I pushed my knuckles against his, and withdrew right away from this misguided intimacy. It was not until a few minutes later, once we had both put back on our respective headphones and we were once again both pretending to work, that I realized what had happened.

I thought you wanted me to give you a fist bump earlier, I said. And then I remembered that we were both wearing headphones, so I stared at him awhile until he looked over and then I pointed to my ears until he removed his headphones, and then I repeated, I thought you wanted me to give you a fist bump earlier.  I wanted him to know that I would never have offered such an idiotic gesture otherwise.

He looked at me blankly and then forced out a laugh and shook his head before sliding his headphones back on. That was our last meaningful encounter before the egg.

*   *   *

Later that night, various scenarios ran through my mind as I sat at the bar, pondering the egg:

1) He reaches into his pocket, finds the egg and quickly surmises that it was me. If the cleaners have not yet removed the trash, perhaps he sees the “first” egg in my trashcan and then shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders and chuckles (This guy! What a character!) before depositing the second egg (the one from his pocket) in the center of my keyboard as a good-natured act of semi-revenge/reciprocation.

That scenario seems unlikely. After all, I had violated his personal space (I recoiled again at the memory of being inside his pocket) — and deposited a rotting egg.

2) He does not discover the egg for several days. The odor of it draws him into the closet of his room, where the jacket is hanging; when he finally reaches into his pocket he discovers a rotting egg. He most likely reaches in blindly (how else would one reach into one’s own pocket?) and inadvertently crushes the egg in his hand so that he has to pick shards of eggshell from the lining of his jacket pocket. However, enough time has passed since I originally deposited the egg and I am therefore possibly no longer a suspect and I’m most likely off the hook.

That scenario also seems unlikely.

3) He finds the egg in his jacket pocket on the train ride home. The rotting egg reminds him of his damaged eye and therefore connects to me. I am ruining his life. He is confused and then his expression turns angry.

With so many unacceptable scenarios swirling in mind, I considered texting him right away; but then what could I say? “I put a rotting egg in your pocket. See you Monday.”

When I woke up Saturday morning, I checked my phone for texts from him, but there was nothing. I wondered if this silence was strategic.

Over breakfast, I tried to form a plan for returning to work. I could march straight into the office with a guilty grin (I been a baaad boy!) and then roll my eyes (aw shucks!) with the understanding that people like me, (like us!) are prone to strange impulses that we don’t always understand, but that we owe it to ourselves to see them through and not to punish each other for them, because after all isn’t life punishing enough, and aren’t laughs in short supply during these dark times?

Or do I say nothing and just wait for him to use the bathroom in the hope that he is wearing the same jacket and the egg is still there in the silky pocket, ready to be retrieved? In any case, I would just have to wing it.

On Sunday morning, I went to the beach to clear my head. I walked down to the water’s edge and then lingered next to a pair of ragged crab claws that had washed ashore. I noticed that they had formed a kind of cross. I stared at the claws for a while and all I could think was, EGG…

Suddenly a man sprinted past me and then dove headlong into the surf in an explosion of foam and water that sprayed across my face and my shirt, and I immediately thought, EGG…

Then, way out at sea, I noticed as a massive container ship passing slowly out of view, until it was nothing but a meaningless smudge smeared into the horizon, and all I could think was, EGG…

__________

About the author

Jason Michael Martin’s writing has been featured in the literary journals, The Opitate, Hotel AmeriKa,  Alt-X Magazine, The Art Bureau, and others. His novel CHEVY NOVA SCOTIA received the Bronx Council on the Arts Chapter One Award. You can find more at jasonmichaelmartin.org.