SmokeLong Quarterly

I was awoken by a bad rendition of this very Carpenters song. It had been playing on the intercom of the airplane while I was trying to sleep through the redeye, L.A.X. to LaGuardia, which I had been taking in order to see my family in Flushing. My mother had sprained her ankle on a downspout on Parsons Boulevard and incurred two thousand dollars of hospital debt. O, mother. My father had said something politically incorrect at the banh mi place where the Queens College students were. O, father. My brother was about to graduate high school and go to college to study Communications. O, brother. In a few hours, all three of them would pick me up from the airport, and for just a weekend, we would be together through the horrible Crises facing the world. For now, however, like a nightmare with a good sense of irony, the butchered cover would remain the very thing which arrested me from falling back asleep. For the few hours in which I was awake but no other passengers were, I would feel sorry for Karen Carpenter. There were already enough things to feel sorry toward her for, but here was yet another one.

Months before, I had been at the desktop computer, in the cubicle of my office, with a spreadsheet open, and, in lieu of wanting to perpetuate Profit-Seeking Behavior for the time being, took a Five-Minute Break with the consent of my supervisor and read an online encyclopedia entry entitled “KAREN CARPENTER.” In the span of five minutes, I learned all there was to know about her Life and Death. I found myself Happy that such a person had ever existed. I found myself Sad, and at the verge of tears, upon finding out that she had only lived to the age of thirty-two. By then, I was thirty-three, and I had done far less with my life. I didn’t know how to play the drums. I didn’t know how to sing. I didn’t know how to play the drums and sing at the same time, while on live television, and be so darn good at it that an Associate would try to catch glimpses of it, on a choppy looking internet video, half a century later, while procrastinating on the Maximization of Shareholder Value. Here, I was now, crying—at the fact that she had died, at the fact that she was so good at everything in life, at the fact that I was still alive for providing much less to Human Kind.

At the same time, an email was sent to all employees, with everyone’s addresses mistakenly filled in TO: rather than BCC:, and declared that it would be very likely, thanks to the probability figures provided by the hundreds of Vice Presidents who had the lucrative, six-figure salaried job of assigning percentages to Phenomenon, that there would be a recession. “Imminently,” it said. Right away, the Dow crashed. A trillion dollars vanished into thin air. “I mean, this is probably going to have some measurable impact on people’s lives. Trust me, I’ve looked at the numbers, and let me tell you, they’re numbers,” Guy on Left-Hand Side of Live News Segment would say. “Goodness, those numbers are really numbers,” Guy on Right-Hand Side would say. On daytime television, you would hear all about the rich assholes who offed themselves by jumping from the windows of skyscrapers. That was a Story.

My supervisor, who had been watching me all of this time through my webcam amidst my Five-Minute Break, began consoling me. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “It’s just a Bear Market.” Was I rich? Was I an asshole? Was I going to off myself? I suppose the sight was this. My head was in my hands. My palms were wet with my tears. I was bawling helplessly, without any grasp on myself, and everyone around me, at least within five cubicles, must have heard me. “Look at him,” I heard someone say. “Look at how much he cares about the Economy.” “O, the Economy,” another said. “This is the worst Economy in the history of Economies,” a third said. Everyone was talking about the Economy, and yet, there was no commiserating. Everyone simply went back to their desks. I must have been the only one who was crying about something, anything. Right away, I went to my Employment portal and put in a request for Paid Time Off. I needed Time. Mr. Supervisor approved it right away. By five p.m., I was already rushing to leave and heading down the hall, and the hall, and the hall, and the hall, and the hall, and the hall, and the hall.

When I finally landed at LaGuardia, it was six a.m. in the morning. I grabbed my carry-on from the overhead bin. I proceeded through the jet bridge, out the gate, and toward the arrivals hall. On the way, I passed by every sit-down restaurant and coffee shop and souvenir store there was. I then called my parents. They were already on Grand Central Parkway by then and told me that I would see them very soon. I passed the time by thinking, once again, about Karen Carpenter. By six-thirty, I was in the backseat of their car at long last with my brother beside me. He had been napping like a baby. I was looking out through the window now. The great New York sky was becoming more and more bright in its purpleness and then, all of a sudden, started onto the most beautiful blue. O, the blue! O, how wonderful it came to be even for a day like this! O, to be moved! All of a sudden, there was a truly awful sound emanating from the Heart Of The World. “Oh, what’s wrong, con?” my father asked me. “Con, why are you crying?” my mother asked me. My brother was beginning to wake up.