Changing

Walter John came home from work. Work, these days, was not easy. Walter John had a low level management job with a housing cooperative. Good, non-profit boy work, but the work meant doing whatever needed done when it needed done. One of their buildings had gotten burnt out. He’d helped the workment rebuild it and now he was helping repaint it, put in all the new fixtures and furnishings - refrigerators, dishwashers, washer/dryers. All that. Not easy. Not clean.

He walked in his door covered in soot and paint and dust and dirt and layer upon layer of old sweat. He felt gross. He looked worse. His t-shirt looked like a pre-school painting smock reject and his jeans were so holey and oily that he thought the EPA might want to study them as an alternative fuel source. Anyway, he couldn’t wait to get out of it and clean.

There was a note on his table from his girlfriend, Amy, and it read: Walter John - Call me, stat! -A.

Ever since Walter John had taken her to his best friend’s Halloween party things had not been the same. His friends had been awful, true. He hadn’t. They had treated her a little better than a stripper and he had only half-assedly told them to stop and he had wanted to stay. She had “forgiven” him but it had stayed tense.

He called her up. “Walter John, you asshole.”

“Hello, light of my life. I called as soon as I got in. You should see me.”

“You know why I wanted you to call, Walter John.” She usually called him “Double J” or even just “Double.” He did know. He’d emailed to see if they could move their plans to see this Broadway show visiting town for a few weeks to the next weekend. He’d checked. There were tickets.

“Look, this week has just been hell. I feel awful. I want to shower. I want to change. And when this week ends I just want to chill. I want to hang, you know? Getting dressed up and… can’t it wait a little? Please?”

“But that’s not what you asked for, is it? You asked to cancel plans with me? Why? So you can hang out with that asshole crew of yours. Why can’t we hang, Walter John? Why can’t we chill?”

Why? He thought, because this is how you are these days. “It’s not like that, Amy, I just wanna..”

“You just wanna. You just wanna…”

“Look why don’t you…”

“Why don’t I what? Look, I’ve been looking forward to this and we need some time to stop being so…:”

“It’s not we,” he said, “it’s….” he paused. He stopped himself. He could feel his t-shirt slithering around his body as if the devil had him. He was sure of it.

“What, Walter John… say it.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Give me fifteen minutes. I just have to change.” Walter John hung up even though she protested. God, he felt so tired. He ripped those clothes off and it felt like an excorcism. He got upstairs and went into the shower and the water came over him, somewhat cold, the soap, the smells… the day went somewhere else. It was as if he’d been to church for the first time and it had made sense.

He got out and put some clean dungarees on. Soft old ones. He put on a white shirt, a really nice one, like he liked. He called Amy, “Honey,” he told her, “I just needed a minute. Everything is just sort of getting to me, you know. I needed a minute. Work. Us. My friends. How I’m running all the time. All of it. Okay… let’s talk. Can I come over? I’m coming over.”