The last time Joe saw his family was his 18th birthday. This wasn’t the result of a war, or a catastrophic tragedy — it was much more bizarre. The day after Joe’s 18th birthday, he woke up in what he would later discover was the town of Salelologa on the Island of Samoa. He drank his first Mohito at a touristy bar who either didn’t care if he was of drinking age or couldn’t speak English, and he got really sunburnt on the beach. The next day, he woke up on the top of a super cold snowy mountain god knows where and spent his day in a cave crying. Every day since then, he woke up in a different, completely random place in the world. Sometimes it was in the middle of a desert, sometimes it was floating on an ocean. That was one of the constants — he always woke up on the mattress from his dorm-room in New Jersey. He was going to be an economist! What happened to that? It probably would have been lame anyways. Luckily, he at least seemed to wake up in civilization a good deal of the time. He started keeping track of the places. Mostly in his head — things he put in his pockets only stuck around as long as his clothes did. Which was probably lucky — when he woke up in Siberia he was always outfitted in long underwear with a heavy down coat on the mattress. He never wanted for clothing. Food was a different story. He went to bed hungry a lot in those early days. He found that the hunger carried through, unlike most things in his new uncertain life. He learned to hunt, fish. After reading into the wild in a single day (when he read, he always finished the book in a single day if he could help it — it was too frustrating to wait for the same book to come around again) he devoured as much as he could about herbalism whenever he got the chance. Foraging became the most dependable part of his diet, after fine dining. That was another constant — no matter what, even if we woke up in swim trunks above what may have been the Mariana Trench, he always woke up with a crisp 100 in a fire, which he had grown quite adept at making. Sometimes he gave it to muggers and highwaymen, who were often happy to receive such a bounty from such a scrawny, desperate looking traveler. On many of his best days, he often gave it to beggars and farmers who showed him kindness or inspired in him pity, in the poor parts of the world as well as the rich. On his most desperate weeks with either all snow or all ocean, he ate it, hoping for fibers or trace amounts of drugs that might keep him going. A few times he stuffed it in the mattress, even after discovering it didn’t work, hoping against hope that he could save up enough to buy a same-day plane ticket to visit his parents and his sisters again, if they were even still in New Jersey. But once when he made it big time on cock fighting in Ecuador, he had bought that plane ticket. He had been too excited to realize that it would take all night. In the morning, he woke up on a banana plantation in southeastern Uganda and cried over a stranger’s hospital offering of milk tea to this sad, strange traveler with the mattress that crushed some of the crops. The next time he made it big at a Casino in Navajo Country, he simply cashed in all his chips and gave the ridiculous wad of cash to the first young woman who was going into the CVS. He’d bought a bottle of mescal and headed into the desert barefoot, knowing the next day he would wake up somewhere new, probably with nothing familiar but his hangover.
“So are you some kind of prophet?”
“Definitely not. I don’t know what I am.”
“Like Moses? Or Jesus?”
“Well, both of them travelled. As did Noah, and Elijah.”
“No I mean, do you have a relationship with god.”
“Oh yes. Certainly. That isn’t what I call it, but almost everyday I do have questions for, I don’t know. The sky, the mountains. The alleyways and buses and the stars. Just questions, you know? Questions that no person can answer. And so I don’t ask them to people…but I do ask them, and they are always answered in the same kind of silent voice, and I suppose that is what god is.”
“Have you ever thought you were crazy?”
“No, not in the way you mean — illogical or irrational. At risk of being cheeky, I think that damnation is reserved reserved for people who work 9 to fives, and who spend a lot of time in cars. Like them, I can’t explain much of what happens, but I’ve never doubted it. But I’ve dug myself into a hole; lack of doubt is the hallmark of insanity, isn’t it?”
“Probably. It’s the sane who doubt. Although, enough doubt is probably a type of insanity in itself.”
“Yeah. Well. Do you want to use the bed?”
“You mean sleep with you?”
“Well, there are a few layers to that, but yes to each individually. I you would just like to stay in the bed overnight I’m extending that invitation before and separate from all others. Which is technically sleeping with me, but you don’t need to sleep with me.”
“And you don’t need to sleep with me?”
“Need it no. Would I like too? Of course. I’m attracted to you.”
“If I sleep in the bed, will I get the 100 dollars as well?”
“Yes.”
“Okay well, how do we do it?”
“Well we just fall asleep anywhere actually. I’m not sure if I am special or what, but wherever I sleep, I wake up on the bed. So it’s not really the ‘bed’ you’re sleeping with, it’s me.
“Ah. Well. I guess I’m too curious about you to be attracted to you. So I’ll take the sleeping with you without sleeping with you option. Maybe head to toe. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“If you’re doing it for the money…you do realize it may not be enough to cover a plane ticket back, right?”
“Oh yes, I know. I just…I don’t know who makes the rules. Who makes these rules? Is it you?”
“No…”
“Well I don’t know who makes the rules but it does seem that, if you are going to wake up in a random place in the world without anything but the clothes on your back and…what’s in our pockets?”
“Sometimes. Not money. Sometimes notes survive.”
“See, I swear someone has to be making these rules these are not just a random cosmic event. They are too intelligent.”
“The cosmos aren’t intelligent?”
“That’s not what I — agh! Yeah I’m definitely not sleeping with you.”
“Well it was nice meeting you. Good luck on the interview!”
“No wait! I still want to do this, I meant the other kind of sleeping, again, the literal — just, sorry, I’m just saying this is all so crazy and you’re, frustrating. Sorry. You’re, so indifferent, you know? Like, pragmatic. You say you’re attracted to me, and yet you have sense of attachment to-“
“Anything?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Well. That’s not really a choice I have.”
“Right. Right. Sorry. Okay so I keep the clothes. Pocket items are iffy. $100 is assured, but no rollovers.”
“Rollovers?”
“Like, you know, cell phone plans?”
“Huh. Plans.”
“Right. Anyways, I’m in.”
“Nice. 9:00. I mean, a little later is fine, but that’s the safe time.”
“Huh, that’s pretty early.”
“Structure is nice.”
“Right.”
“And some places, you know, the sun rises pretty early. You never know.”
“9:00pm it is. I’ll be back a bit before then! I just want to…make a phone call.”
**