Robbo

Feeling the warmth in his cupped plam, the moist grit between his fingers, Robbo scattered the handful of rich dirt he had taken up and saw swollen dots of newsprint rise where the loose earth fell. "It's a strange job for a young man." Marcus was the groundskeeper here and supervised Robbo's work among the flowers. It was true, everyone else on the grounds was as old as Marcus, who had a white fringe of hair and deep bruised triangles under his drooping eyes.

"My father told me if I went to art school I couldn't expect a normal career." Robbo tipped his eyes upward, sipping the blue sky. His father was right but he didn't imagine this, through coincidence and circumstance, a hand in Pete Wentz' garden. Robbo surveyed the kingdom in dissatisfaction. No one ever came here, not even Pete. The only people who ever saw Robbo's hard work were Marcus' crew, all called by last name, all tired of walking the same manicured paths every day. The garden was too subtle for Robbo. He dug in the dirt all day thinking about the intolerable slowness of plants and dreaming about immediacy.

Marcus' crew retired early, and Robbo often went to the bar alone. He looked at the yellow stains in the cracks of his fingers and caught the eye of a young Indian with shaggy hair and plastic eyeglasses doing the same thing. "Paint," the Indian said and showed the palm of his hand, splaying his fingers. "I swear I wasn't making fun of you. Honest Indian." They both chuckled. "Ollie Robnujab." Ollie said, pointing sheepishly at himself.

They knew some of the same people, mutual friends from art school. It seemed their lives were always one step out of synch, and any twist of events could've had them meeting much sooner than they did. They bought their art supplies in the same store and had applied for the same jobs, one of which Ollie held still. Robbo explained how the process of rejection had chased him from the life. He drew comic strips and with each submission came revision, a new set of notes Robbo considered and applied as best he could. He produced less and less of his own and more and more of what was asked. Robbo remembered the tipping point, when at last he had given everything requested and nothing of himself to muddy the waters. The frustration he felt was insisted upon by his urgency to work and soothed by the collapse in tension, that at last the sparring was over and the thing could be decided. He could report back home he did indeed have steady work and could erode the ramparts keeping him from a respectable life. For the last time he opened the rejection letter and attached to his samples, where the suggestions and editorial feedback would always be, was a blank sheet of paper.

His new friend sympathized, it was a rough story and not an uncommon one. “I have to admit though, turning over ideas, getting in under deadline… It makes you miss giving something time to develop. Watching it grow.”

Robbo was pruning distractedly in the early afternoon, thinking about the night before. Marcus was leaning on the sharp bladed shovel he carried all over the grounds. "Oliver," all of Marcus' crew were called by their last names. "Boy, you growing thorns or roses?"

Robbo made up his beds and thought "What a strange Goddamn world."