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Fly on the Wall

By Ilan Herman

1500 words

ilanherman@msn.com

Fly on the Wall

I first noticed the fly on the wall three days ago, while dining at Ming’s, a Chinese

restaurant I frequent daily. I smiled at the fly, whom I’d decided to name Ernie, and

proceeded with breakfast. Ernie watched quietly, motionless, but I sensed that he craved

my eggs and potatoes and, more so, my buttered toast.

When I arrived for lunch the next afternoon, I happily noticed Ernie still

comfortably perched on the wall. A doubting spectator would insist it was my fertile

imagination, but I saw Ernie wink at me. I winked back and sat at my favorite spot, by

the window, seat B at table D, as defined by the seating chart Mister Ming had been kind

enough to show me. He did so only once, and declined my request to copy it. His eyes

narrowed, and he shook his head. “Chart secret,” he whispered, bony fingers clutching

the page as if it held the secret formula to the crunchiness of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

My hungry eyes followed his trembling hands as he reverently slid the laminated sheet of

paper into its brown folder.

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While enjoying vegetable chow mein that only the masterful Mister Ming could

create, I sensed by Ernie’s restless wings, that he questioned my meal selection. I

explained to him that I was eating lunch, not breakfast’s buttered toast, but Ernie squinted

and remained unappeased. I shrugged my shoulders and ignored him.

Later, in my room, I felt remorseful. What thoughtful person could judge a fly for

preferring toast with melted butter to a noodle dish? The noodles came in a bowl filled

with broth: what to me seemed like a pacifist stir with organic chopsticks was, to Ernie, a

vicious tide, Neptune on the rise.

Arriving at lunchtime the next day, I hoped to satisfy Ernie’s need for buttered toast,

and dared to ask Mister Ming if he’d be kind enough to serve me breakfast.

“No serve breakfast,” the rotund Asian sternly said. “Breakfast till eleven. Now

lunch.”

“You’re right,” I conceded with a nod. “Times and schedules are in place for good

reason.”

My shoulders sagged, I shuffled away, when I heard him recant, “I make you

breakfast. You good customer.”

My frame straightened with redeemed honor as I thanked Mister Ming and took

my place at table D, where I waited for my food while reading news reports concerning

man's wars. I puckered my lips and shook my head. “What can one do?” I said to Ernie.

“Man’s wars are nature’s way of riding the Darwinist rollercoaster of survival.”

Ernie buzzed his disapproval of my observation. My thesis seemed incomplete to

him, like a slice of cheese filled with ambiguous holes, an empty argument absolving
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man of his responsibility to transcend his amebic roots and discontinue the indiscriminant

slaughter of his fellow man.

I confessed to the elasticity of my statement, but reminded Ernie that when it

came to ambiguous holes, ninety-nine percent of the universe, as clearly and objectively

proven by science, consisted of a black void.

“Atoms, the building blocks of life,” I whispered, “are far less than one percent

of the infinite nothingness that surrounds us.”

When breakfast arrived, I suggested Ernie leave the wall and dine with me, but

the fly indicated that he preferred to eat alone. I appreciated his honesty, and took

comfort in the fact our friendship had come to the point of allowing our idiosyncrasies to

coexist peacefully.

Whistling a jovial tune, I returned home and spent a mentally invigorating

afternoon reading about the migratory process taken by early humans as they ventured

out of Africa. Humanity, its proverbial tentacles cautiously emerging like those of a snail

slithering on quenched earth after the rain, dispersed in a plethora of directions as it

sought to expand, to know, to understand the spinning sphere we call Earth.

At 9:57 at night, in a hurry, I ventured to Ming’s.

Mister Ming gave his customers the privilege of ordering until 9:59:59 pm, but

would budge no further. When someone barged in at 10:00:01 and cried, “Please, Mister

Ming, I’m hungry!” the tired cook would growl, “Go Safeway!”
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I entered the restaurant and groaned in agony: the clock above the counter—one

still occupying the analog hands of time—displayed 10:01:32, more than two minutes

ahead of my digital wristwatch, which is always synced with the atomic clock in New

York City.

“Mister Ming,” I cried and pointed to my watch, “It’s only 9:59:09.”

Standing over the overworked grill, Mister Ming squinted and snapped, “Go

Safeway!”

I cowered. Mister Ming had a valid point. My overbearing need to be satiated at

all hours proved a prime example of man reaching too far, much too far, in trying to fill

the bottomless pit of desire lurking in his soul. I walked away dejected, but took a glance

at Ernie, who nodded with empathy.

“Is okay,” I heard Mister Ming mutter. “I make you food. You good customer.”

Having Ernie’s welfare in mind, I turned to face the consummate cook. “But I

want breakfast,” I brazenly said, and winced in anticipation of a black hole to open and

swallow me alive.

Mister Ming’s face turned crimson; his dark eyes narrowed to tiny slits. He took a

very deep breath and waved his spatula toward table D. “I make you breakfast,” he

huffed. “You good customer.”

Cosmic expansiveness cuddled my elbows. “Thank you, Mister Ming,” I

exclaimed and bowed.

Busy cracking eggs on the grill, he ignored me. I sat at my table and winked at

Ernie. I could tell by his shifting eyes that he, in his silent way, lauded my tenacity.
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In a deeply reflective and gentle tone, Ernie said, “Few life forms are weaker than

a fly on the wall. But even so, like you, I see the injustice.”

Taken by his inflection, I felt our intimacy deepen. “I know you do,” I replied

soothingly and flitted my eyelashes. “That’s why I’m eating breakfast at ten at night. I

respect your need for buttered toast.”

“Thank you,” Ernie said softly.

Still, as much as I resisted the ugly impulse, I decided to chastise Ernie: If he

could accept the occasional noodle dish and refrain from reacting hysterically to the

ocean brewing in the bowl, all the commotion with Mister Ming wouldn’t have been

necessary.

Ernie shrugged and buzzed, “How we define necessity is of infinite possibilities.

Perhaps, by insisting on buttered toast, I help Mister Ming and you become more

intimate, more tolerant of each other.”

About to respond that Ernie was cunningly trying to use my relationship with

Mister Ming as an excuse not to face his own aqua-phobic tendencies, I observed the

Chinese cook emerge from the kitchen, a steaming plate in his hands. He set the plate on

the table and smiled. “Breakfast at night? You funny man!”

Gratified by his yellow-toothed smile, I replied, “Look who’s talking. You’re

quite amusing yourself.”

The golden toast glistened with butter. I could feel Ernie’s joy.

Mister Ming turned to leave, but stopped short when he noticed the fly on the

wall. “What this?” he inquired as he gained on Ernie.

“Don’t hurt him!” I cried. “He’s only a fly on the wall.”

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“Fly on wall?” Mister Ming asked and looked at me. His forehead wrinkles rose

so high that I feared the skin would peel away to reveal a bony skull.

“Fly on wall!” I exclaimed. “Only a fly on the wall!”

Mister Ming crept up to Ernie. He bent over in heavy concentration before

concluding, “Fly dead long time.”

“Dead!?”

Mister Ming reached into his shirt pocket, brought out a business card, and gently

scraped Ernie off the wall. He returned to table D and showed me the dehydrated shell.

“See? He dead long time.”

My heart squeezed with sorrow. Tears rose in my throat as I stared with disbelief

at the dead fly. “Then how come I can hear him buzz?”

---

The buzzing alarm clock reached deep into my sleep to awaken me. Emily, my

five-year-old, heard it too, and came skipping across my bedroom to join me in a morning

cuddle.

“Daddy, you’re sweaty!” she complained.

I chuckled with relief. “I had a nightmare. I dreamt I was talking to a dead fly.”

Emily laughed. “What did he say?”

“That it’s not easy being a fly. How about I cook scrambled eggs and crunchy

toast with lots of butter?”

Emily imitated a panting puppy. “Can I have pancakes, too?”

“Sure.”

Breakfast cooked and ready to be served, Emily joined me at the kitchen table.
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“Ernie would’ve liked pancakes,” I said, watching her pour the maple syrup.

She laughed. “His name was Ernie? That’s a funny name, like Bert and Ernie

from Sesame Street.”

“Ernie, the fly on the wall,” I said, and was caressing Emily’s golden curls when,

on the wall above her head, I saw Ernie, motionless, quietly staring at the buttered toast.