Doorman
Ed is a lonely guy who pines for the female companionship of a girl who gives herself only to men she knows she can’t love in order to avoid being hurt. Marv is a miser and Ritchie an even bigger slacker than Ed. There is but one true companion in Ed’s life and that is Doorman, his dog. And the imagery which describes this Rottweiler/Shepherd mix is memorable:
“I have one housemate. He’s called the Doorman, and he’s seventeen years old. He sits at the flyscreen door, with sun painted onto his black fur. His old eyes glow. He smiles…and he stinks a kind of stink that’s impossible to rid him of…I’ve even tried encouraging him to use some kind of deodorant. I’ve rubbed it under his arms in copious amounts. I’ve covered him all over with some of that Norsca spray, and all it did was make him smell worse. During that time, he smelled like a Scandinavian toilet.”
Ghost Town
It doesn’t help Ed’s propensity toward slackerdom that the city he calls home is as ordinary and lacking in ambition as he is himself or that his living conditions offer little incentive to imagine that life could be substantially better. The imagery used to describe his home, his town, and his opportunities is depressing, but notably not particularly exceptional:
“I live in a shack that I rent cheaply…The town we all live in is pretty run-of-the-mill…plenty of teenage pregnancies…and mothers like mine who smoke, drink, and go out in public wearing Ugg boots. The home I grew up in was an absolute dump…Since my father drank all our money away, I just went straight into work when school was done. I started out in a forgettable hamburger chain that I don’t mention, due to shame. Next was sorting files in a dusty accountant’s office that closed down within weeks of my arrival. And finally, the height, the pinnacle of my employment history so far…cab driving.”
The Feeling Begins
Ed really begins to understand the essential element in life of making the effort to reach out to others in need and move beyond the limitations one has placed upon their own capacities when he follows the card to the home an old woman. Peeking through the open window into her kitchen, he sees her life as it is now played out before him and is moved. For Ed, the feeling that he can do something positive with his life begins with a recognition of shared loneliness:
“The only person there was an old woman who has no curtains on her windows. She was in there on her own, making her dinner and sitting there eating, and drinking tea. I think she ate a salad and some soup. And loneliness. She ate that, too… It kind of depressed me to think a human could be so lonely that she would comfort herself with the company of appliances that whistle, and sit alone to eat. Not that I’m much better…I eat my meals with a seventeen-year-old dog…You’d think we were husband and wife, the way we carry on. But still…”
Metaphorical Disconnect
The narrator’s use of extended metaphors which personify inanimate objects and endow abstract concepts with sentience as well as the use of synesthesia to mix and mingle sensory abilities is a persistent use of imagery that serves to further delineate the idea of a disconnect between reality and illusion in Ed’s story. Things occur which he perceives in one sense, but which turn out to have been quite different. The chasm expressed here is subtly intimated by his use of this kind of authorial transformation of the abstract into the tangible:
“Crowds of questions stream through me like lines of people exiting a soccer ground or a concert. They push and shove and trip. Some make their way around. Some remain in their seats, waiting for their opportunity.”
“The kitchen light is loud. It deafens me as I walk toward it.”
“…my voice is like a rumor. I’m not quite sure if it came out or not or if it’s true.”
