Rock

They lived under the train tracks, on Chicago’s North Side, in a bungalow apartment. He was a software developer, who recently realized a salary and benefits meant he was no longer simply interning downtown. She worked at one of those boutique cupcake shops, baking and decorating and smiling at customers: mostly housewives and their young children.

She worked the morning shift; he, the day shift. They were together at home, every evening, no overtime.

It was the only single-story home still left on the street, divided into three long and wide apartments, surrounded by four- and five-story condominiums with ground-floor retail. The owner, their landlord Martin, was an old man who wouldn’t sell, and that was all it was. He’d die soon enough, and his children would no doubt part with the property, but, for him, it appeared that he enjoyed the casual visit there, if only to get out of the house.

The couple, he and she, Marshal and Lindsey, didn’t mind the tracks overhead too much. The house shook a little, but only when the driver was overzealous coming to the nearby stop. After a while, you didn’t notice the noise. Some mornings the tracks were unavoidable, though: Marshal or Lindsay would walk out of the house, and a pebble or loose dirt would fall from the cracked rail overhead, smacking them on the head or falling safely beside their feet.

He sat at a wooden desk in a room with five other wooden desks occupied by other software developers with dark hair, thick glasses, cardigan sweaters, and awkward glances. The walls were exposed rock, a hip loft feel. Above his desk hung a painting of the Grand Canyon, adding a layer of rock to the rock.

“What are you guys up to this weekend?” asked Marshal, around his low glasses as he peered at another set of code.

“Heading up to Michigan,” said Wally, to his left. Although it seemed to Marshal that most Chicagoans were from Michigan, Wally was from Wisconsin, voyaging to Michigan for recreational reasons rather than family.

“Got some guys coming over for a poker game,” added Mark, the oldest of the software team, married with three kids, stealing drinks when he invited his friends over or convinced his wife to take the kids to see their grandparents in the suburbs.

With the knowledge that no one else usually had anything to add to Marshal’s question, Wally asked, “You?”

Marshal shrugged. “Either sneaking into Wally’s trunk for a free trip to Michigan or crashing a poker game.”

A box popped up in the corner of Marshal’s iMac: Lindsey on her iPhone, instant messaging from behind the counter at work, Red Velvet, the cupcake store three blocks from their house.

“How R U?” she asked.

Marshal typed back and hit ‘send’ almost without turning away from his code. “Good. Isn’t ur shift over?”

“She’s running late. Again.”

“She’s so obnoxious.”

“She is.”

“It busy?”

“No.”

It showed on Marshal’s IM box that Lindsay was still typing, but nothing was sent. He continued working. He sneezed and turned to the photo pinned to the side of his cubicle wall: Marshal, his mother, his father, and his sister Maggie. The four of them were standing on the beach, in Oahu, on a recent family vacation. Marshal’s father was beat red from lack of sunscreen, and Marshal’s mother was too blanketed in sunglasses and towels to even tell if she was too. Maggie was annoyed. With what, Marshal didn’t remember. She was annoyed a lot, especially a few years back at that vacation, when she was still a teenager.

Lindsay wrote back in the IM box: “Customer.”

The customer, a slightly balding older woman with hanging lips like a pendulum, leaned over for a closer look inside the glass case at the cupcake selection. Lindsay was leaning back against the shelf behind the counter, on her iPhone, where the credit card machine sat for customers who bought more than $10 of food or merchandise.

“What are your favorites?” asked the customer.

“Well,” began Lindsay, leaning forward to see what offerings were put out today. “Clearly, the red velvet is our specialty. But I really like the chocolate truffle, and my boyfriend is a big fan of the…”

“I don’t want anything too sweet,” interrupted the customer.

“You may have come to the wrong place then,” said Lindsay, expecting a laugh in return, but recovering silence.

The woman pointed at the cupcakes in the front row on the left. “Those. The lemon. Are they sweet?”

“Yeah,” said Lindsay. “The only ones that are remotely more savory would be…”

The bell ringing from the opening of the store’s front door threw Lindsay from her sentence.

“Sorry I’m late,” said the woman walking in.

“It’s okay,” said Lindsay, returning back to the customer. “I’m sorry, ma’am. What did you ask again?”

“Oh, nothing,” said the customer. “I’ll come back another time, when you have a better selection.”

Lindsay practically followed the customer out the door, tossing her jacket on and heading out as soon as her coworker was suited up, apron tied, and ready to ring up customers. The cupcake shop was also near the train, but a little south. It was an easy path home, finding and following the train tracks for three to five minutes, and coming upon a busy intersection. One left past the light at the intersection, and the bungalow crept up, its broken and unhinged screen door waving at Lindsay in the breeze, beckoning her inside.

She washed up, ran some dry shampoo through her hair, and settled into the couch for a nap—one that would cleanse her of the afternoon, and wake her with the opening of the front door.

She stood and ran to it. Wasn’t it too early for Marshal to be home? Clearly, it wasn’t, as he smirked at the fear in her eye as she found him wiping his feet on the welcome mat.

“I got hit today,” he said.

“The train?”

“Four or five pebbles, right in the hair.”

“Solid,” she said.

Marshal set down his messenger bag and went to the kitchen, to make himself a sandwich, as the evening wore on. He sliced the side of his finger while cutting his sandwich in half with a knife far too sharp for bread, and caught the blood just before it leaked into the peanut butter. He wrapped it up in a bandage, and the early-evening television programming began.

It was smooth sailing today, only interrupted once, by a phone call. It was Martin. He asked if he got their rent from last month. He had. They told him he had. Lindsay was convinced he must have been lonely, and was killing time calling random numbers, making up something to say, to hear the voices he so desperately hoped to hear.

Lindsay yawned. “I’m exhausted. I’m going to hit the sack early.”

Marshal nodded, and picked up the remote. The basketball game was still on, somewhere, probably the fourth quarter by now, and he began a scavenger hunt through the channels, alternating slow and fast churning, as Lindsay walked out of the living room.

She stopped at the edge, where the hallway began, and glanced back.

“Marshal,” she said.

“Hmph,” he said.

She giggled. “You still have a pebble in your hair.”

“I would leave one, huh?” he said, and then brushed it out with one hand.