Frayed Day 1 – Wednesday Never Put Up Much of a Fight
“In school, there were a lot of smarter kids. And when I first joined the force, they had some very clever people there. And I could tell right away that it wouldn’t be easy to make detective as long as they were around. But I figured, if I worked harder than they did, put in more time, read the books, kept my eyes open, maybe I could make it happen.”
– Columbo, The Bye-Bye Sky-High I.Q. Murder Case
As usual, it’s your bladder that wakes you up, pressing down on you like a water balloon. You swing your legs out of the fold out, scratching yourself. 1:12PM on the clock. Just some numbers that don’t mean anything anymore. You stagger past a stack of pizza boxes near the door [There aren’t enough to make a trip to the trash chute worthwhile. Better wait.] and into your tiny white bathroom. You unleash a torrent of piss into the bowl, standing there, watching some kind of beetle crawl around the cracked tile in front of you. [Oh wait, it’s a cockroach.]
You start to remember a dream you must have had before your bladder reached critical mass. It took place in a diner, a fifties style joint, the real deal by the look of it. Everything was in staticky black and white, not quite in tune, but the neon sizzled lurid pink bands of light through the scene. You were there to investigate a robbery. Someone had stolen something [No, not a *thing* per se, it was… no it’s gone.] and you were there to question the patrons. They gathered around a chrome-wrapped table: Marilyn Monroe, Benny from the academy, and some guy in a top hat and suit, looking like he stepped out of Great Expectations (the one with Michael York, not the remake with Ethan Hawke). You asked them questions, but you don’t remember what they were. Sometimes you were sitting and then suddenly you’d be leaning against the bar. Marilyn Monroe (only she denied she was Marilyn, insisting her name was actually Trudy) said “Who’s to stop anyone from taking it in the first place? Not like anyone’s paying much attention.” Benny just sat there playing with a pile of fries. The guy in the top hat just watched you go through your detective routine, a placid smile on his face. You remember realizing you were getting a hard-on and didn’t want Marilyn/Trudy to see and that’s when you woke up.
Back in the living room/bedroom/office/storage area, you flip on the TV and it starts beaming out the good word from its pulpit of plastic crates. You adjust the shades to block out the autumn-tinted daylight washing out the screen. There’s a commercial for some new kind of mop. You hear someone banging on a door in the hallway outside your apartment. [You hope they stop soon.] A commercial for McDonald’s. [The McRib is back. Might be worth a trip down there.] Finally, a show. It’s Legacy, the soap about a whole community of pseudo-Renaissance courtiers who send their personalities forward in time where they are re-enfleshed in the tight young bodies of Los Angeles’ social elite. The writers borrow heavily from Shakespearean themes, judging by the similarities to the movies you’ve seen. [Thank God for NetFlix.]
The banging in the hallway continues and now someone is yelling. [For fuck’s sake!] Ophelia just discovered that Mercutio had already asked Portia to attend the gallery opening with him, not realizing that Antonio was going to use the event to publicly embarrass Mercutio with new information about the Denmark incident. [You wonder if you have any email.] You like Mercutio because he hired a private detective in this one episode, and, well, it was cool. [You wonder if the actress who plays Ophelia is from Europe or if she is just faking an unplaceable foreign accent.]
On the screen Antonio is delivering a soliloquy as he paces alongside the billiard table in his immaculately decorated home. He holds the cue ball aloft, addressing it as though it were the head of Mercutio.
Out in the hall another voice has joined the fray. You recognize it as that of one of your next door neighbors. Brandon or something. He’s in a rock band. Sometimes they must practice in there and they are loud as fuck. You see Brandon and his roommate [John? Jim?] in the hall sometimes when you get your mail. It sounds like Brandon is trying to reassure whoever is yelling, but it doesn’t take and they keep going at it. You can even catch bits of what they are yelling: “He’s got to be in there! open the door? [If they are waiting on the landlord to get off his ass and actually do something useful in this dump they’d better pitch a tent.]
After the commercial Legacy resumes with a scene involving the two young lovers, Don Pedro and Miranda. [These two make you sick, all that fawning and going to the mall.] Don Pedro has decided to reinvent himself as a reckless bad boy by purchasing a motorcycle and cruising around town at high speed. Miranda doesn’t seem very pleased with this development.