BB Grey–musings

The phone convulsed
like a dying cockroach—
“KYLE” flashing
(or was it “KILL”?
hard to tell after
that second glass
of cheap Cabernet).

I was busy
with Doctor Zhivago—
page 52—
pronouncing it Chivago
the way my mother did
when she’d play that warped
soundtrack record,
back when I was a kid
sprawled on shag carpet,
nose two inches
from the speaker fabric,
studying Julie Christie’s face
on the album cover
like it held the secret
to why Russians
always looked so miserable
in the snow.

6:50 PM.
Work ended at 4:30.
A call now only meant
some fresh disaster.

“Yeah?” I answered,
dripping boredom
like a leaky faucet.

“Boss?”
Like maybe it wasn’t me.
Like maybe there was
some other poor bastard
who answered phones
labeled “BOSS”
at dinnertime.

Turns out they’d hung
a 16-foot 6×12 beam
14 feet in the air
and—surprise—
it was one inch short
of the bracket.

“Is that okay?” Kyle asked.

I let the silence hang
like that goddamn beam.

“You think,” I finally said,
“if an earthquake hits
and that thing
comes crashing down,
it’ll politely ask
before crushing someone’s skull?”

“Uh… probably not.”

“Then it’s probably not okay.”

A pause.
“So… how do we fix it?”

“Same way you fucked it up—
but backwards.
And this time,
measure twice,
whiskey once.”

“Got it, Boss.”

“Hey Kyle?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re killing it.”

Click.

I returned to Siberia—
to Yuri and his icy heartache,
to Lara and her doomed smile,
to the sweet, predictable misery
of fiction,
where at least
the disasters
were someone else’s
to fix.

---