I was in the rubber-band aisle when I finally understood.
Outside, it was raining. Two and a half hours had passed since I crossed the threshold into your fluorescent, grey-carpeted shop, but the tips and tops of my hair were still damp and darkened to strawberry. I came here looking for an answer, I came here because the way the train ran upside down on tracks of sky almost made sense, I came here because everything was unfolding and because I needed paper clips.
But it was in the rubber-band aisle that I found the answer.
I walked slowly down your carpeted path, the same color as the weeping sky, my boots thudding with soft, dead sounds. All around me, stacks and rows and columns and bags and heaps of bright rubber bands sat still and silent, watching me. It was like a forest, and I breathed the smell of rubber like it was fresh green oxygen as nuclear flowers bloomed in my mind.
At the end of the aisle, a small, forgotten heap of beige rubber bands lay dejectedly on the bottom shelf. I knelt beside those plain, post-office rubber bands, turning myself away from the watching loops of color that tried to trap me. The imprint of the carpet pushed back against my knees, and as I peered curiously down at that heap of shapeless beige, something caught my eye beneath the shelf. A single flabby fin, shiny and dark like a greenish eggplant, twitched gently against the carpeted floor. I lowered myself to the ground, and placing my cheek against the scratchy grey polyester, I shot beams of curiosity beneath the chipped-paint metal of the shelf, and there, I saw it.
In the shadow of those dull beige rubber bands, upon that mute, lifeless carpet, a stingray basked peacefully beneath the shade of the crouching bottom shelf.
Suddenly, I understood.
The answer was-- read more
