Florida

My name is Lunch. I am the captain of the M.S.S. Honest Abe LXXVII. The ship was commissioned by my company, Mealtime Incorporated. I have two crewmates, Mr. Breakfast and Miss Dinner. We are still waiting for the sea. We are still waiting for our ship to become a ship instead of a Jeep without wheels. 

There’s this theory called the Cultural Thermostat Theory. I forget who developed it—maybe me?—but it claims that UFOs are a product of the world’s collective unconscious; that they are catalysts for a desire for change and most frequently sighted when the people of the world are burning to oust the hegemony of the current collective mindset—that rigid, dualistic, and boring creature that now seeps through most of our interactions—and bring in something new, or rather something prehistorically old. I thought this theory was crap. Yet I did see enough possibility in it to want to appropriate some its fundamentals and use them to patch together a theory of my own. So now the three of us have been sitting here for years, collectively desiring this rust-covered 1980 Jeep Renegade to change into a ship.

Mr. Breakfast was the oldest of us. We were all three but he was the oldest three-year-old (by a slim number of days). None of us were really three. We were all actually about twelve times that, but here in this timeless place where so much metal had come to die, we had decided to be three—hopefully with every bit of that age’s benighted confidence. The way we saw it, confidence had more physical sway when it was unaware of its limitations. Ask a cheetah why he thinks he can run so fast. (Don’t expect a reasonable answer.) Ask a three-year-old when his jeep’s going to become a ship. (He’ll tell you “any day now.”)

Our habitat was once a junkyard—a twenty-acre yard of junk, to be exact. Now it is simply the place we live and the only thing we really know. Because of the pollution in the air, the early twilight clings to the sky all day here. Our world is crepuscular, barren, and woefully unhealthy. It is also very quiet and very peaceful.

Mr. Breakfast was cooking dinner. Rotisserie toothcat again. Toothcats were neither cats nor did they have teeth. They were instead a sort of hairless rodent with a mouth full of what I swear looks like some curious form of baleen. They actually tasted pretty good. I could never figure out what they subsisted on, though. Miss Dinner proposed they ate rubber or maybe the contents of our latrine (which did seem to be a quite popular place at night). Breakfast says they eat each other.

My crewmates were beginning to argue with each other more and more often these days. Breakfast had become increasingly insistent on denying Miss Dinner permission onboard our ship.

“It’s bad luck. Any scientist knows that,” said Breakfast.

“Misogynist opinion noted,” said Dinner. “Sex turned off!” 

“Don’t give me that, bitch. You haven’t boinked me in—what, Lunch—months?”

“Longer than months, right? Years…So lots and lots of months.” Breakfast and Dinner were not quite married, not quite divorced.

“Two years and eighty-seven months!” said Dinner. “And no less than two thousand days.”

“It’s of no matter as I have zero intention of embracing compromise with either of you on the subject. Miss Dinner, I encourage you to acclimate to the fact that you are not coming aboard our ship…Besides your duties are needed elsewhere. We need you stay here and be in charge of land operations. Maybe make us a flag.”

“I’ll make you flag. On the ship!”

“You will not make us a flag on the ship because you will not be on our ship. Immensely bad luck. The absolute worst luck. Albatross in a skirt, that’s all you are.” He then turned to me and said, “You know how fast we’ll get torpedoed if she’s on our ship?”

“Relax, man,” I said. “Women aren’t bad luck on ships. It’s two-dollar bills you’re thinking of. There’s a two-dollar bill behind every single nautical nightmare in all the Seven Seas—”

“Eight Seas.”

“—Eight Seas…Two-dollar bills are dreadful luck, man. Even the mention of them is of ill benefit. Women on the other hand are superior luck. And statistics view them favorably. Ships that contain women are far less frequently torpedoed than ships that contain zero women.”

Breakfast, grumbling, retracted one of his arms into his jumpsuit, then using the other arm he removed his goggles and began to buff them with the arm-less sleeve.

“Scientists are not going to like your opinion,” he said at last.

 Miss Dinner, whose moniker was derived, along with mine and Breakfast’s, from her original duty, had excused herself from cooking dinner again because she was “uniquely tired.” Miss Dinner was often “uniquely tired”. In fact, she was always “uniquely tired” and with little success I had once tried to explain to that she was, in fact, simply habitually lazy. Mr. Breakfast had petitioned to have her name changed from Miss Dinner to Miss Blow-job but was able to attain only one signature (his own) instead of the minimum requirement of three. On several occasions, all of them in the loose hours of the casual pre-dawn, Breakfast had offered up questions of Dinner’s worth as a living person. Once, while drunk on sleep-deprivation, he’d even lobbied an inquiry about what I thought Dinner would taste like. He has subsequently, and with much repetition, dismissed this occasion, only to thereby attach more relevance to it than he probably intended. I’d be lying to myself if I said that I hadn’t become aware of the increased amount of lip-licking Breakfast partook in while in prolonged company of Miss Dinner.

The hills of metal and rubber that surrounded us were not the post-apocalyptic monochrome that one might imagine. Quite the opposite, really. Breakfast and I had long ago painted much of our periphery the color of the essence of the tropics. With wide smiles and sincere abandon, we had splattered our hills and valleys of debris with varied hues of orange and pink and yellow and green to constantly remind us of our destination: the land of Citrus.

Originally we desired to find Citrus because of our scurvy. Now it was the only thing we could say we were doing without hesitation. What are we doing in this place? We’re waiting for our ship to become a proper ship so we can go find Citrus.

Citrus: it wasn’t that the three of us had forgotten what Citrus was, it was that we’d forgotten was Citrus was not. We did know that it wasn’t here. Nothing in the place could be considered Citrus. We did know that oranges and grapefruits were types of Citrus, and then we figured that lemons and limes were also types of Citrus, and then, after some time, we decided that strawberries, apples, avocados, trees, plants, flowers, and some insects could be considered Citrus. Now we believed that everything not found here was Citrus.

Although our faith and desire for the Honest Abe LXXVII to stop rusting and start floating was impeccable, I did admit I was confronted with much skepticism and difficulty when I initially announced my plan to Breakfast and Dinner those years ago. They had countered with plans of their own: Breakfast had wanted to walk away from this place, while Dinner had proposed using one of the CB radios to get in touch with someone who could rescue us. Only after considerable time did they display any conviction in my agenda. And only then did we christen our ship with a name. We had originally simply called it the Honest Abe but quickly changed it to the Honest Abe II out of concern that some seafaring president-enthusiast had already beaten us to that name (the last thing you want to deal with at sea is a copyright infringement). And then out of worry of there already being a second Honest Abe, we changed it the Honest Abe III. And then out of worry of their already being a third Honest Abe, we changed it to the Honest Abe IV. And then out of worry of their already being a fourth Honest Abe….

Miss Dinner was in her car. Her car was also her house. It was actually neither. She was sitting in the back of it stroking a toothcat. Her toothcat. In a remarkable display of apostleship one day, the thing had begun to follow her around, seemingly dry of any reason other than some form of fondness for her. At first, she was baffled. And then at bit afraid after the little fellow (I say “fellow” here loosely since toothcats display no visible form of genitalia) had continued to shadow her for much of the day, stopping only occasionally to peer up at her with its expressive eyes and then tilt its head before resuming the chase. Dinner finally dropped her inhibitions, picked up the thing and cradled it, prompting it to purr and halfway close its eyes, clearly contented by Dinner’s acceptance of it. A collar was out of the question, so Breakfast and I painted the little bastard pink and named him (with the tiniest degrees of animosity and/or foresight) Snack Attack.

Snack Attack, it had been confirmed, was a cannibal. He was also, like his comrades, an excellent swimmer. He would not, however, fetch or display the slightest interest in obeying commands. I had developed a theory about names (which, ironically, I did not have a name for). I was convinced that names have the ability to sway how a person (or toothcat) looked and acted. I recalled the Brads and Chads and Brians of yesteryear and their natural prowess in the world of sport. I also remembered all those Ralphs with their crooked smiles and their softcore unkemptness, each of them always two weeks deep in need of a haircut. I’d never met a Jack that didn’t possess that combo-trait of simple coolness and amiability, nor had I a met a Lisa that wasn’t a slut. And one hundred percent of the Bridgets I had met in my life look like they slept on their face. Miss Dinner, however, would find nothing about my theory convincing when, weeks later, and due to a sudden and mutual faim terrible, Breakfast and I allowed her little friend to embrace the full potential of his fateful moniker.

I’ve noticed a change in the past few days. Not the ship, there was nothing new there, but with the ground around it: It had grown darker. Maybe damper. It was difficult to say because everywhere around this place was already damp. I brought this new development to Breakfast.

“It’s happening. Slower than we thought, eh?” Breakfast said.

“That’s the way it goes with seas.”

“But the ship—it’s changing or no?”

“Well, the sea comes first and then we get the ship. There’s an order to this. Unsaid rules and regulations and such.”

“Ah…” said Breakfast. “So, the sea grows and grows until it’s a legitimate sea and then we sail.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Without the woman.”

I turned to face him; an air of gravity debuted. “We are not leaving Dinner here.”

“If that bitch boards our ship, I’m staying.”

“C’mon, that’d be terrible. Who would I play Frisbee with? Dinner? She’s incapable of proper technique, Frisbee and otherwise.”

“Moot point, friend,” Breakfast said, solemnly. “I fear that Frisbee has merged with the infinite.”

“Why, what happened?”

“I ate it.”

Startling news, that, but only obliquely. “That’s weird. I was thinking I ate the Frisbee. I guess I just dreamt I ate the Frisbee.”

We sat in our collective state of muse for some time before Breakfast said, “We’ll decide on what to do with Dinner when the time is appropriate.”

“I’ll yield to that statement.”

“I’ll yield to my hunger,” said Breakfast, optimistically. “Let’s eat!”

Years have gone by. I’m not sure how many but I know it’s been a lot. Miss Dinner is gone. She disappeared way back. I’ve forgotten what she looked like. And I’ve forgotten what she tasted like. Breakfast has changed, too. I know this much: he’s a totally different guy. I’ve also changed. Physically, mentally, I’m all new. Of course it was a gradual thing. Nobody can just change themselves spontaneously. They may look changed or things may change around them but they’re the same. But I’ve changed a lot through the years. I’m a reduced version of my former self. I occupy so little space I’m hardly there. And my thoughts don’t follow each around anymore. They’re like a band of rogues in an old western movie: distrustful, menacing; always looking over their shoulders.

Breakfast asked me something recently. He asked me either who we were or what we were. The sign language we use now is tricky. Pronouns don’t work so well with it. I responded that we’re Breakfast and Lunch (we have good, easy, kind of fancy signals for those words: our timeless and irrefutable monikers). Then he showed me all his terrible teeth in some kind of smile and asked me where we were.

After much deliberation I have an answer. I captured and interrogated every word in my head until I found one that wasn’t affiliated with Citrus. The word I found strictly summons images of a paved expanse, enriched only with heaps of vinyl siding, shards of particleboard, and tombstones made of ersatz granite. Yes, I finally have an answer for Breakfast—and I’ll whisper it into his rotted ear.