Category Archives: Fiction

Whenever I tell people where I live, everyone always asks if I’ve been to the Turf Club. Finally, I went, and it was magnificent.

Most nights, there’s a band or three playing and so they usually have a cover, but last Friday I was in no mood to let such things get in my way. Five dollars and a five block walk seemed worth it. I’d just gotten gotten paid from a freelance gig and felt compelled to celebrate.

Mason, miraculously, was free that night. Stranger still, he was watching TV and it wasn’t the news. He was on season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was eating a pint of vanilla ice cream. When he saw me he explained, “Someone told me it was therapeutic.”

“Is it working?” I asked.

“Yes, actually.”

“Want to go to a concert tonight?”

“Who’s playing?”

“No idea.”

“Sure.”

After we ordered our drinks and sat down at a rickety table as far from the stage as possible, the band got on the mic. They were called the Bad Bad Hats and they weren’t bad. Nor, as Mason pointed out, did they have hats.

“So?” I asked. “The Goo Goo Dolls and Barenaked Ladies don’t live up to their names.”

“But their name just screams, ‘Hipster Band Struggling to Find a More Unique, Convoluted Name.'”

“Hey, that wouldn’t be a bad band name.”

Mason sneered at me. “I’m just saying, pick a name that suits you.”

“Oh, I’m certain that there’s a great inside joke behind the Bad Bad Hats.”

I was scribbling in my notebook while we talked. Eventually, inevitably, Mason pointed and asked what I was doing.

“Got a new gig,” I said. “A nonprofit in Edina that prepares food for people surviving cancer. Supposed to give them ideas for materials for their upcoming campaign. I’m having some trouble.”

“Why?”

“They’re taking a pessimistic angle.”

He cocked an eyebrow and sipped his beer. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a tactic,” I explained. “Convince people that if they don’t give that the world will end. So, the message ends up like, ‘Donate, or a lot of people are going to starve and you’ll be a bad person,’ versus, ‘Donate a hundred dollars, and you’ll feed ten people for a week.'”

“I’m not following.”

“You play to the optimism bias. The gist of it is that people like to feel good about their actions, and you get a better response if you tell them their actions improve somebody else’s life instead of helping avert disaster. In one, you’re telling someone that their relatively easy action makes the world a better place. In the other, you’re telling them the same action prevents the world from getting worse – and you’re guilty by default if you don’t.”

Mason tapped his finger against the table. He wasn’t getting it.

I sighed. “Most people don’t like being superheroes.”

“Oh,” he said and looked up at the stage, clearly more confused than before. Finally, he nodded, as if he’d accepted the mystery, and said, “People are weird.”

“They are, indeed. Some are even weird enough to want to be heroes.”

Mason looked at me sharply and awkwardly covered the fumble. “Yeah, weird, like I said. Want another drink?”

“Sure!” I said. He wandered off to the bar. I’m going to have to remember that trick: if you want a vigilante to do something, the optimism bias is suspended.

The night before last, around midnight, I walked into the kitchen and found Mason cooking a pound of bacon on a cast iron skillet. “Oh, hey,” he said, waving a spatula. There were rings under his eyes and his stubble had somehow become an impressive beard over the course of 48 hours.

He looked at me for a moment, then down at the stove, then back at me. “Is the sizzling keeping you up?”

“No,” I said and sat down at our dirty, kitchen table. It was actually a card table that I think I found in my parents’ basement once upon a time. Maybe a garage sale. Either way, someone was glad to give it to me.

“How’s the job search going?” he asked, dishing out the bacon onto a plate and using a paper towel to soak up excess grease.

I looked at the clock again and decided sleep was a lost cause. All week I’ve been having the same dream. It starts with the world splitting in half and then everyone realizes that they can’t talk anymore, going mute. Paper shortages follow. Eventually, no one can read anymore. I usually wake up in a cold sweat realizing that the one skill I’d cultivated over my lifetime has been rendered useless.

Mason sat down across from me. “Bacon?” he asked, gesturing at the pile.

“No,” I said, “I don’t eat pork.”

“Are you Jewish?”

“No, just morally opposed. Pigs are too smart.”

“Oh,” he said, looking down at his food guiltily.

“You can eat. It’s cool. My morals aren’t yours.”

He shook his head, “Moral relativism is a slippery path, my friend.” But he started eating anyway, saying between bites, “So, you didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m up to seventy applications. Statistically speaking,  I should get an offer any day now.”

“I see. Are they all in the nonprofit sector?”

“Yup.”

“Have you considered applying in the for-profit arena? Target and United Health are big employers here.”

“Nah. I’ve heard both of those chew tweens into hamburger. And I’m only interested in working for a nonprofit.”

“Why?”

“The nonprofit sector is growing and needs young talent to take over service delivery as the baby boomers retire. I want my work and efforts to go toward a cause that improves people’s lives. Most of my friends are involved with nonprofts. And so on.”

“Do you have a specific area of interest? Like criminal justice or voluntarism?”

Since it was midnight and he brought it up, I considered just flat out asking him if his nightly excursions and obsession with justice were meaningful. But he asked a good question.

“Well, no, I’m applying across the board.”

“So, you could just as easily work for a free clinic as a animal shelter?”

“I guess so, yes. As long as I was doing communications.”

“So, why not work for Target? They do a lot of volunteerism and the Daytons make huge contributions to the arts and civic projects.”

“Good point,” I said. And it was. The machinery of my brain was working a little slow and eventually I slouched over the table, feeling it nearly give beneath the insubstantial weight of my exhaustion. “I guess I just need a mission.”

“I knew we’d get along.” Mason smiled. He cleaned his plate and leaned back in his chair. “Pigs are really smart?”

“Oh yeah. My aunt and cousins have a farm. They calls them ‘devious,’ actually. That’s good enough for me.”

My roommate thinks I don’t know he’s a superhero. It’s endearing, in a way.

The first hint was his collection of books on jurisprudence and moral philosophy. Then there’s the disappearing every time we hear a siren or a scream down the street. He tries to act casual, like he doesn’t care about anything – just another well educated bro. But he knows where all the exits in every room are and he can sense danger, deceit, and malevolence. He also was peculiarly interested in my nonprofit career aspirations, making comments about how he appreciates a commitment to civil society, duty, and altruism.

It’s taking longer to figure out which hero he is. The Twin Cities has the largest concentration of vigilantes per capita outside of Seattle, so it isn’t like this is an easy process of deduction.

I have been carefully observing his behavior. He eats a lot of red meat, is outstandingly hairy, and has an aversion to silver. It’s been about a week since I moved in, and if my hunch is correct he should disappear for about a day around the full moon.

To be honest, I had my suspicions even before I moved in, but I was desperate for an apartment and he had a room free. It was a corner lot, one story house in Hamline. I’d been living with my cousin, Casper, an entreprenureal, OCD insomniac and after two sleepless weeks of perpetual cleaning and bathing, my roommate’s house, overgrown with ivy and a Craigslist ad that read, “Roommate needed. $350 per month, not including electricity, gas, and water. Cats welcome. Blase attitude preferred” sounded attractive.

A giant that looked like a younger Hugh Jackman with more hair greeted me at the door. “Mason Wakes,” he said, and we shook hands.

“Elliot Peter,” I said, “Do you sleep eight hours out of every twenty four? And do you clean less than once a week?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Have you had anyone put an offer on the place?”

“Not yet. The deposit’s one month’s rent and-” he started to turn around and lead me into the house.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

He looked back at me with an arched eyebrow. “Have you ever plotted to kill, main, ruin someones life, or stolen anything other than hotel bath towels?”

“Categorical no.”

“Do you like House of Cards or existential nihilism?”

I briefly considered lying or rescinding the offer, but instead said, “No.”

“Deal.”

Casper helped me move in that afternoon. Mason asked if I wanted to get food at a Somali restaurant around the corner, but I said I had a networking event to attend.

The only way you get a job, is through networking. It’s a mantra I hear by every Millennial desperate to find work, especially in the nonprofit and arts sectors. Casper dragged me to three before I moved out and a fourth on my last night.

“What’s the point in all this? I thought sending in job applications was the thing to do?” I asked.

“It’s not what you know. It’s who you know,” my cousin said, counting his business cards.

“What does that even mean?”

“You claim to be a writer and you don’t understand a common idiom?”

“No, seriously. What am I supposed to do? Go in there and start handing out business cards?”

“More or less, yes.”

My cousin believes in business. If he had the same fervor for Catholicism, he would be a monk. Going to every downtown Minneapolis event like Church, reading his bibles of small business blogs and magazines. His calling was sales and I watched in awe and horror as he adopted mannerisms and buzzwords like gloves and tossed them on the floor as soon as he turned around to talk to someone else. Every time he shook  a hand, he surreptitiously doused his in rubbing alcohol.

About 60% of all jobs are found through networking. If you’re a salesman, fundraiser, or freelancer, the numbers are significantly higher. The trick is the follow up. Contact people, ask them for coffee, ask a lot of questions, weave your own aspirations into theirs. And then write thank you notes. Then stalk them on LinkedIn and repeat the process every few months. Remember – it’s about them. Casper said so.

The event that first night after moving in went about as well as all the others. I walked away with a dozen business cards and feeling like I’d just come back from an out of body experience. Out there, I was Elliot Peter the Effervescent Hack. On the street, I desperately craved the solace of alcohol and Game of Thrones.

I got as far as Riverside and Franklin on my bike when a man in a business suit flagged me down. “Hey, thanks,” he said when I stopped, then slammed his palm into my nose.

“Please give me your wallet and the key to your bike lock,” he said politely, standing over me with his fist raised.

As I reached into my pockets obediently, bleeding over my shirt, a nine foot tall, bipedal wolf stepped out and lifted the man up by his jacket collar. The man turned white and went limp.

“Say your sorry,” the wolf said sounding vaguely like Christian Bale’s Batman voice except after having his vocal chords put through a meat grinder.

“… I’m sorry,” the man said.

“You be more careful,” said the wolf to me, and then started walking away, lecturing the man in his scary, scary voice. “That suit was a nice touch. Very disarming. You’re not going to make me hurt you, again, right? This is the second time, Gerald. Second! Get clean. What would your girlfriend think…?”

I biked the rest of the way home, face aching, and arrived to find Mason sitting on the front porch. “How’d the networking… Wow. What happened to you?”

“Attempted mugging. I was the victim. A Werewolf saved me,” I said, watching him carefully.

Mason nodded, and I decided I could read volumes into it. “I’ve heard he’s new in town. Preventing petty crime and all that.”

“I was really hoping not to get involved.”

“That’s the life here in the Twin Cities, my friend. Heroes and victims.”

I lit a cigarette and he gave me a look but said nothing. “It was only slightly less brutalizing than the networking.”

After a while, he said, “There’s a trick to meeting people, you know? Don’t think about it as networking. There are a lot of interesting people out there. If they bore you or you don’t like them, don’t give them the time. I think you’ll find there are far fewer people you dislike than you think. And be honest with yourself and other people. It doesn’t help if no one knows who you really are.”

“My cousin and you have philosophical differences.”

“I don’t have the patience for nuances. Something is or it isn’t.”

I nodded.  Finally, I said, “I like House of Cards.”

He nodded. “I usually don’t sleep eight hours a day.”

Down the street someone screamed. “Excuse me,” Mason said, stood up and walked back into the house. I didn’t see him again until the next morning.

See? Endearing. I made a good choice.