What Is The Perfect Human Thinking About?

-- inspired, in part, by Jorgen Leth's The Perfect Human and The Five Obstructions --

He sits alone at a table. Not alone, but by himself. He is with a phone. An old phone, the rotary kind. He picks up the receiver and dials. It rings into his ear and he stares at the wall.

"Hello?" It's a woman's voice.

"Hi, who is this?" he asks. Outside is just beginning to wake up. The blinds are pulled, but only halfway, and light pours into the room painting everything a soft morning blue.

"This is Katie, who is this?"

He picks up the phone and moves it onto the floor by his feet. He pushes his chair back and slowly lowers himself next to it and stretches out on his back. Brown spots, burn marks, are scattered across the carpet, some forming patterns but others lost to random distribution.

"This is the perfect human," he says with a smile.

"Oh really?" she asks.

"Yes."

Books line the wall, stacked in piles by color and size. A small fern sits at the top of a tall pile of encyclopedias in a cracked red pot. An empty, stained coffee pot sits beside it on its own stack.

"Do I know you?"

"No," he says rolling onto his belly. "I don't think so."

He lights a cigarette.

"How did you get my number?" she asks.

He slowly lowers the cigarette to the carpet, watching it carefully with his jaw unlocked and hanging slightly in concentration. He touches it to the weave and it quickly turns a dark brown color, the fibers turn upwards and into themselves. He pinches the butt between his thumb and index finger and rotates it slowly, pulling the circle outwards until it is about as big as a quarter, then he smushes the cherry and tosses the dead cigarette into a small tin bucket.

"I dialed it," he says.

She laughs quietly.

"And we've never met before?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." He rolls onto his back again and blinks twice. "What do you mean?"

"What if we've passed each other on the street before? Perhaps we've even bumped elbows, we just didn't know it was us."

"Maybe," he says.

"What are you thinking about?"

Blink. "Me?"

"Yes. What is the perfect human thinking about?"

"Can I draw you a picture?" he asks.

"Please."

He sits up and starts to put the receiver down on its side before hurrying off but stops and throws it back up to his ear. "One second." He runs off to a small desk in the corner, littered with papers and pens, spare change and notebooks, and grabs a sheet. He opens a drawer and grabs a tiny box of crayons.

"Okay," he says back at the phone.

"Okay."

"What should I draw?"

"Oh, I don't know. I have to choose?"

"Yes. How am I supposed to know what you like?"

"I like everything."

"Everything?"

"Well, not beetles."

"I will not draw you a beetle," he says.

At the top of the paper, with a dark blue crayon, he quickly writes No Beetles.

"Good," she says.

Sometimes at night he can't sleep. He lays in his bed on top of the covers and stares at the ceiling fan. He never turns it on. Not even in the summer. His sheets and pillows are covered with little brown quarters, and the blinds on his windows are always pulled but only halfway.

Sometimes when he can't sleep he turns on the radio and taps his toes to the music. Sometimes, if it's a song he's never heard before, he dances to it. But never very well.

Sometimes, if there is enough light coming through the window and everyone else is already waking up, he calls somebody.

"So what should I draw you?" he asks.

"You know what, I'm really sorry," she says. "But I've got work. I really have to go."

"Okay," he says.

"But listen, draw me that picture. Anything you want."

"Except beetles."

"Right," her voice smiles. "Do you remember my number?"

"No," he frowns and his cheek hits the carpet. His eyes close. "I just guessed it before, and now I forgot it."

"Oh no..." she says.

"You're going to be late for work."

"Okay," she coughs twice and clears her throat. "I'm gonna go now."

"Okay."

"Maybe we'll bump elbows again sometime."

"Maybe."

Click.