“Do you struggle with predicting the future?” a production assistant says from behind the camera, reading me in. The deck of tarot cards sitting in front of me is colorful. Doesn’t matter. They always film this part in black and white. The director points. My cue. I go to shuffle the deck, and the cards fly out of my hands, spraying across the table like confetti.
“Cut,” the director shouts. “Great job, kid.”
The production assistant hands me a check and my complimentary 8-Ball 2.0, the product I’m advertising, which resembles a standard 8-Ball. I’m a professional klutz. Infomercials hire me to make their products look better by contrast. Of course, actors could pretend to be clumsy, but you can always tell. If you’re selling products on daytime television, you need the real thing.
Being clumsy isn’t always cash and free stuff. Six months ago, I fell down a flight of stairs. I just got out of the full-body cast. But it’s the only thing I’m good at. I’m the best at tripping over my own feet, at covering myself in accidental bruises.
I head for an after-work drink at Pair-A-Dice, a dive bar less than a block from the studio with a pair of neon dice blinking above its signage. Crossing the street, I shake the 8-Ball 2.0 and turn it over in my hands, looking for the plastic window where my prediction should be, but there isn’t one. Then a blue triangle floats up in my mind. Watch your step. I glance down and avoid stumbling over the curb.
In the bar, I snag a booth in the back next to a table of two middle-aged men drinking tallboys and staring at a wedding ring. “All that love, and this is all I have left,” one of them mutters, spinning the ring like a top. The ring slows before wobbling like a coin. I imagine a younger version of the man gazing at a woman inside a different bar. He shakes an 8-Ball 2.0, sees Heartache, and decides to just keep drinking.
The bartender takes my order. I slide out of the booth to use the bathroom. On the way, I notice a tray of empty pint glasses on the bar. I pick it up and stagger back out onto the bar floor. The glasses ding together like bells. A blue triangle appears in my mind, Left, and another, Right, and another, Left, as if I’m a video game character and somebody’s entering a cheat code. As I glide through the bar, around the pool table and jukebox, I feel safe but not much else.
I add together broken bones and concussions, but my clumsiness doesn’t just produce suffering. There’s worth in every slip, in every fall. Maybe even beauty. I toss the tray, along with the 8-Ball 2.0, onto the concrete floor. The glasses explode like fireworks. The 8-Ball 2.0 rolls to a stop. Another blue triangle surfaces in my mind, but I refuse to read it.