I’m not sleeping well.
I work construction at night. Highways. To motorists, I’m a blur. An orange smear against windshield glass.
I’m on night shift going on three years. Night shift isn’t easy. You find out you took sunlight for granted. You buy your clothes online because the stores are never open when you need them. You foil your windows to keep out the light. You wear earplugs to bed. You try to block out the infernal noise of the living.
I’m not sleeping well and not working well. There are mistakes on the job. I damage a truck. I misalign rail. I misjudge distance and almost get hit by a car.
“Take some time off, see a doctor maybe,” Horse says. Horse is the foreman. By doctor he means a head doctor, I think.
I go to a regular doctor instead.
“Not sleeping well,” I say.
“Vitamin deficient,” the doctor says.
He gives me a shot and some temporary sleeping pills. Tells me to take multivitamins.
***
A week later I’m back to see the doc. At night I’m alone with nothing to do. I’m walking the streets. Now the lack of sleep is worse. I’m taking it one day at a time like they say, but one day is an eternity. One day is torture. I’m afraid to get back into a daylight routine. The pay is too good to go to days.
Nothing’s working. Pills, Pabst, PBS. I can’t sleep.
Doctor Zeeman asks me when was the last time I had a getaway vacation. I try to think. I remember my aunt took me to Disney World when I was a kid.
“You need a vacation,” Doctor Zeeman says. “Go to the beach. Go where it’s warm. Get some sun.”
He didn’t say Florida, but he means Florida.
***
The name of the hotel is Island of Paradise. It’s along the strip in North Miami. It’s cut rate—peeling turquoise paint on the small rickety porches, weeds growing through cracks in the pavement. Busted walls and lousy TV, but it’s on the beach not close to the German tourists and Jimmy Buffett tiki bars. I have a piece of paradise right here. No harm in pretending I own the beach.
Down here, things are brighter. My eyes are sensitive. I go everywhere with dark sunglasses on, my skin slathered in sunblock. I sweat rationality onto sandy Island of Paradise bath towels.
Each day I sit on the beach under umbrellas. I don’t like the sun. I like the view of water. I see it from the porch of my motel room, but I like to be right against it. So, I rent two umbrellas from the old leather-skinned beach vendor and create as much shade as possible and watch the waves come in one after another.
At night I scrape tar off my feet in the tub with a toothbrush.
* * *
One day there is a knock on my door. I expect room service; instead, it’s a man who claims he knows me from high school. A scammer. I push the man away from my door.
There are drugs here. Cocaine dealers hanging about. People penetrate the walls, penetrate right to the center of my head as I flip through channels of crap products that promise to save time and money. Products that promise to make you attractive, interesting, and smart. Products that are machines made by other machines.
I think about how everything is a machine. A glass of water is a machine that destroys thirst. A button is a machine that holds the pieces of your shirt together. A mirror is a machine that reflects whatever you put in front of it. A vacation is a machine to make you forget who you are.
I am a machine that builds roads. I am a vacation person machine drinking a beer machine to make me relax and maybe sleep.
Who is this knocking?
This time it’s room service. Room service wants my room to themselves for an hour to clean. I have not let them clean for three days.
I go outside in sandals and grab a sandwich at a place up the strip. The logo of Wild Chicken is a chicken head with a mohawk wearing sunglasses. I drink decaf iced tea and wish this vacation machine will finally start to work. When will sleep come?
An hour later, I return to my room with five rolls of aluminum foil and some tape. I set about covering over all the open glass. I block out every possible speck of light I can and try to sleep. Cannot. The air conditioner rattles in the wall. Invisible bugs bite my legs.
I can hear the ocean and I want to be in it. It beckons me like a seductive finger. But I cannot go into the sun anymore. It makes my skin erupt violently and aggravates my brain. It’s too much.
To go into the water, I must remove the sun from the equation. To do that I must become invisible to the sun. I must become a reflecting machine.
When I step onto the beach, I am covered in aluminum foil held together by packing tape.
Some children shout when they see me. They jump and run, but I ignore them on my march to the ocean. I step into the water and let its coolness curl around my feet. I push forward until I am up to my neck, the only thing above water, my foiled-over head with eye and breathing holes cut out.
Soon enough, the kids return to their sandcastles and beach toys.
Soon enough, I am no more than a shimmering light effect on countless waves.
John Howard Matthews is author of the short story collection, This is Where it Gets Interesting.
His work has appeared in anthologies and several literary and humor publications including McSweeney’s, The Chicago Reader, SlackJaw, Points in Case, and The American Bystander.
John lives near Chicago with his wife and their Boston Terrier.
