Punchlist Sketches | Sarah Anderson

“If you were wearing one of my tin foil hats, it wouldn’t bother you so much.” The outstretched tone of a deeply troubled line two had me cradling my temples. It had more to do, I thought, with the consequences of caffeine dependence and the shortcuts of slum lords than Big Brother himself, but I wasn’t about to tell that to the guy who answered “Right?” with “The government wants you to think left.” “Why not just leave it for AM crew?” But, like running out of ranch, that was an AM crew thing to do. I was clanging a receiver in and out of position; he was calling over a shoulder he carried as though it belonged to someone else. Maybe it only looked that way, since“Are you looking to get out of here?” I cut myself off. “Nah. She’s at the beach- Jesus,” he continued to my fruitless repair attempt, ”It’s been a long ass day, why not” “Suppose I’m more inclined to ask ‘Why?’ than ‘why not?’” “Why?” For the first time since that Monday from hell, his eyes met mine. No shades, no scattered glances- one straight shot. They smiled. I was searching them, then, for all the bright, blue, brilliant things I’d missed since“Sloane… has this place… corrupted you?” he asked as though I were younger. I’ve hit twenty without what I want with you... “What? Why?” “You’re just so… or helpedyou, I guess- I don’t know,” his brows curled into the untamed mass above. “Neither,” I hesitated, lost again in the way he coiled a phone cord around himself relaying orders I couldn’t hear over the image, “In some respects… I guess neither and both.”

“Neither andboth,” he repeated, rubbing his own temples a good minute, “That can’t wait- No… You make my brain hurt.” “Well, this isthe home of the hard-working lazy” “Whoa, whoa whoa-“ he stopped me, dead squint, with all the reckless enthusiasm of a wild night at the beach he’d turned down. “What?” “Do it again.” “What?” “Squint. Your eyes- they do this thing when you squint” “Squint?” Best guess.

“They, like, it curves up-“ His shot about the room in static silence. He seized a pen crudely bound to a sharpie with a rubber band and with it gave the PM punchlist more action than it’d seen in months. “Here,” he watched for a reaction that failed to surface, “I know, my drawing’s terrible,” and didn’t stop there. Diagram two of my squinted eye filled the right margin with lashes, bound but reaching. “Anyways,” he’d closed in on me with a hint of warm detergent, “It, like, curves

up.”

“Have you not seen that before?” I managed. It was not uncommon, I wondered how, in the moment, it had trumped every other mundane marvel in the home of the hard-working lazy people. “No, I’ve… I haven’t seen anything like it,” the voice that rivaled crashing waves died down to a whisper and line two just about drowned out, “It’s beautiful.”