Bum Rush, a novel

Chapter 1

Brooks had enough air to survive his submersion into the East River. This wasn’t his first full dunk. It’s not what his creator had in mind for him, but he’d survive; a few scrapes here and there, but Brooks would be fine.

Too many products, not just suits, are made not to last but to be replaced. It’s not mentioned in the sales literature but the tight weave and fine stitch work that Brooks’s creator had spent on him could last repeated soakings in the East River.

The sun batted its rays at the pavement and buildings of Manhattan. Steam rose from vents clouding the commute for early morning bike messengers and alpha types on their way to become productive members of society. Derek awoke when a barge crested a wave into his open mouth. He suffered from sleep apnea, a condition that his Upper West Side doctor prescribed a $9000 machine for to help him and his partner sleep better. No machine, no fights over who is stealing the blankets, Derek led a simpler life now, one with nature in the East River.

His suit rolled with the East River current and clung around his soft body. He spit out the chemical tainted water and tried to get his bearings. When he moved his hand to wipe the water from his vision he lost his grip on the buoy. Thankfully, he spent his youth swimming. That muscle memory helped him survive these East River mornings. In his mind, no matter how distasteful, the blast from a barge was more acceptable than the klaxon from an alarm clock.

“Damn.” The rest of his complaint was lost beneath the surface. Offices from the Financial District to artisanal coffee shops in Redhook were unlocked, business went on and people like Derek went unnoticed. Not that anyone else had slept in the East River, but you get the idea — the world kept spinning.

Derek pushed himself ashore on the Brooklyn side of the river. An old man stopped feeding pigeons as Derek, dripping, approached. The old man had lived in New York all of his 87 years. 87 years during which he saw a man shit on the subway and call it art, where women dressed like boys and boys dressed like robots, where cults were born and died. Rumor had it that the East River was full of dead bodies. Seeing a grown man, bearded and disheveled, walk out of it was not something the old man had expected.

“Sorry.” It’s a slander that New Yorkers are rude. Derek pressed water out of his beard and the old man watched mouth agape. “What year is it?”

“Uh?” the old man said.

New Yorkers are not rude. Smart-asses, yes, but rude, no. Derek chuckled as the old man, puzzled, watched him walk away. If you wake up in a river you have to have a sense of humor about it.

The smell was the hardest part for Derek. It had a mild burning quality to it that was not something as much smelled as it was felt.

His suit wasn’t a fan of the river water either. Brooks’s construction was meant for dry clean only. A few more nights in the river and it might disintegrate into its constituent parts. His suit missed the days when it walked through the climate controlled halls of Spencer Howe Finance LLC. The soft leather caress of Derek’s office chair were how this suit wanted to be held. It hated the sharp angles of milk cartoons or the rough texture of concrete steps that Derek slapped it on these days.

In the old days Tang’s Dry Cleaner on 78th and Lexington cleaned the suit like angels exhaling. Now the nap on the pants had given away in spots from the synthetic bristles of a toothbrush scrubbing excessive filth. When Derek limped his suit did do. When Derek stood tall Brooks limped. His suit didn’t feel anything except for despair and longing for a life that Derek had thrown away. Brooks wished it had been thrown away too instead of being resigned to protect Derek from the wind, rain, sun and occasional East River bath.

The beard, how Brooks hated that outgrowth of apathy. Derek might have adjusted to the itchiness but the suit hadn’t. The beard hairs were tiny needles that attacked the weave of collar and lapels. Spencer Howe Finance LLC employees were not allowed to have beards. The grooming standards of the Spencer Howe family were not explicitly written down in an employee manual, but they were understood. Men wore their hair close cropped, balding would be treated with pharmaceutical or surgical solutions and their suits were to be of no older a vintage than eleven months. Derek’s suit didn’t know that it had lived three years passed its prime. It was engineered to last forever so it felt immortal. The women of Spencer Howe were to be women only in form and not function — pregnancy was frowned upon to the point of dismissal.

Brooks, if he were sentient, could trace his roots back to a farm on the outskirts of Gujurat, India. Sheared from his animal home, spun inside a poorly vented factory into a long run of fabric, Brooks begun his life. Wrapped on a spool and packaged next to televisions, cleaning solutions and tea he spent a few nights inside a shipping container. Split, Croatia is where Brooks came ashore and his container was hitched onto the back of a semi. He and his follower passengers escaped eastern Europe and entered the EU at a lightly policed crossing point at Hum na Sutli. A bored custom official went on break for a handful of Euro’s. A day later and Brooks was lying in the back room of a Ljubljana tailor. Months passed before the roll that Brooks was wrapped around was pulled out and cut into the final form that he would take. The final touch was sewing in the name and place of a high-end Italian city and designer.

A month after his birthday Derek met with a man holding a trunk sale in New York City. Derek chose Brooks and the tailor made some adjustments to better fit Brooks to Derek. The falsified papers for Brooks made Derek believe that he had gotten a good deal on the craftsmanship of Italian design.

“Nice suit,” his assistant told him. Derek smiled. It was a nice suit with a prestigious heritage or so the label said. Derek’s heritage was not as prestigious. He came from a long line of dairy farmers in upstate New York. His formative years were perfumed with manure and utter balm. Derek was the first in his family to eschew his farming roots — the fact is he had to. The small family farm was a great American myth that was not economically sound in the new economy. Derek studied and went to a well regarded State University. His humble, hard-working, and honest roots are part of the reason he woke up in the East River. The other reason was that his apartment was not up to code.

Thanks for taking the time to read Chapter 1. Leave a note if you’d like to read more. If enough people (more than 1?) want to read more I’ll post the next chapter.