Chapter One

Shark Week was over. I was happy, I was sad. Not overly distraught, because I hadn’t really watched many of the shark programs. But I like sharks. I missed the assurance that there were sharks on the Discovery Channel. Back to normal programming.

This is what I did every Sunday night. I channel surfed. Every Sunday. And Monday. And Tuesday. And every night of the week. I sat alone in my empty, white apartment and channel surfed. I lived in Los Angeles and I channel surfed better than any tan blonde guy really surfs. It’s a sad existence. I might as well have painted the white walls of the apartment that neon blue color the TV set makes them look. I didn’t have the energy.

Usually on Sunday nights I watched one of those tattoo parlor shows. These shows made me want a tattoo. Really, I couldn’t afford one. But I wanted one. Anyway, what would I get? That’s a big decision, you know.

It’s sad when the biggest decision you have to make is which buttons to press next on the remote control.

And the tattoo show was a repeat that night.

I sat on the plaid couch, still flipping channels. MTV, VH1, HGTV, USA, TBS, QVC, BET, E!, TCM. My whole life was in TV code. I could relate anything to something I had seen on television.

Sunday night meant Monday morning was coming soon. Monday morning meant I had to get up early and go to work. I worked at a chewing gum factory. I put the complete packs of gum into boxes near the end of the assembly line. It didn’t pay much, but I didn’t buy much, so I guess it was okay. It was enough to get by on. I was on the Food Network once because of this job, so I flipped the TV to that station. The secret ingredient on Iron Chef America was some giant fish I had never heard of, clearly not American.

I had no friends at work, but I did know one old lady. Her name was Sue and she also put the chewing gum packs into boxes. She sat across from me, the conveyor belt passing between us. I hated the way her blue old lady hair looked under her hairnet. Sue and I rarely talked. One time as the workday ended, Sue said she had a doctor appointment the next morning and might be late for work. She didn’t really say it to me, she just said it. I didn’t ask her why she had to go see the doctor. It’s not that I didn’t care. It’s just some people don’t like talking about their doctor appointments. For Sue, it could have been any number of reasons. She was so old she looked dead. I felt sorry for her grandkids if she had any because she was kind of frightening looking. I was expecting any day to arrive at work and find a new gum counting “buddy” had replaced Sue after she had died getting out of her old person bathtub – you know, those tall ones that have a seat inside and a door for easily getting in and out? I’ll bet she had one of those. And she keeled over getting out of it, her leathery old lady skin exposed to the world, especially her neighbor who, while visiting to borrow an egg, found Sue’s dead body on the pink bathmat.

That’s exactly how it happened. And that’s why I met Lewis that Monday.