I always eat my dinner with a stack of napkins and three plastic forks.  Between each bite, I set the fork I’m using on the table, tines down, and I form a counter-clockwise triangle with the other two.  I chew sixteen times on the left side of my mouth, and then I turn the next fork in the triangle tines up.  Then I chew sixteen times on the right side of my mouth, then I wipe my mouth with a napkin, fold it over twice, and stick it into the crack between the leaves of my kitchen table.  That’s when I can swallow.

            No.

            Arthur eats dinner with a stack of napkins and three plastic forks.  Between each bite, he sets his current fork on the table, tines down, forming a counter-clockwise triangle with the other two while he chews.  Then he turns the next one he’s going to use over, tines up, wipes his mouth with a napkin, folds it over twice, and sticks it into the crack between the leaves of his kitchen table.  Then he swallows.

            His eating is marked by soft humming in the back of his throat that he isn’t conscious of.  Mostly he looks at the wall across from the table in his little one bedroom apartment, the one that leads into the kitchen, the one he’s covered in sticky notes.  On each, in neat, tightly controlled pen, is a date and then a series of numbers in sets of three then two.  Seven eight four, one nine.  Seven eight three, two four.  Nine nine eight, five two.

Most of Arthur’s meals fall in a certain range of colorlessness.  Tonight he’s eating boiled chicken with rice.  Yesterday was pork with instant mashed potatoes.

The phone rings.  Arthur finishes his napkin ritual and swallows, then lets it ring two more times for an even four before reaching for it.

“Hello,” he says.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I didn’t even realize it was dinner.”  She did.

“It’s okay, mom.”  It wasn’t, but if he said as much he would get a lecture about compulsions winning out over willpower.

“How’s work?”

“Good.  I’ve got to go into the office tomorrow.”

“Are you going to be able to?”

“Think so.”

“Are you taking your Paxil?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why why why.”

“Artie, you need to take your meds.  You spend hours every day.  You count steps.”

“I don’t count steps.”

“You do.”

“No, they just need to be even.”

“It’s just as bad.”

“Mom, can you say goodbye so I can hang up on you?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Mom.”

“Goodbye, Artie.”

“Goodbye.”

Arthur doesn’t like to be called Artie because he likes everything about himself to be even.  Arthur has six letters, Artie has five.  Being even is a way to avoid catastrophe.  If that means he has to cut off a button on his shirt, then he cuts a button off the shirt.  Things in threes are the only exception.

The phone call means that his dinner has ended even though he’s only taken twenty-six bites out of forty.  He gets up with his plate and puts his dinner down the garbage disposal.  Then he returns to the table to collect his plastic forks and napkins, all of which go into the trash can on the back wall of the kitchen.  This is done in twenty-two steps, which he counts so that his mother won’t be a liar.

I should tell you that as I’m sitting down to tell this story at an old typewriter that used to be my dad’s, I feel like writing it down just makes it the more horrible.  When I type, I type in bursts, three then two, three then two.  Its so und sl ike thi s, except there’s no way here on the page to show you the sound of the spacebar, which sounds the same as the other keys for all that it represents nothing.  Everything I do is marked with some measured rhythm—steps, eating, showers, light switches, and now typing.  If I accidentally hit the wrong number of keys, I have to start the page over.  The same for if I make a mistake.  They’ll never publish a story that didn’t get typed up just so.  Rhythm keeps me at arm’s length from the regular world most times, which is the reason I write in third person.  And I left that paragraph in at the beginning so I wouldn’t be a liar and so I could write this part so I could tell you that my isolation is why I’ve decided to write about myself in third person, but it’s really me.  It has to be clear that it’s me, but you and I can’t connect because that’s not honest either. 

If Arthur is ever caught up in a lie that he could have prevented, then the weight of God presses down on his chest like his sternum might snap, and he’s corner-bound for at least an hour or two, and he’ll come out of it with scratch marks all up and down his chest.