BOOK FIVE:

Irrelevant Studies For Rhetorical Portraits

MURAL ONE: AMONG STRANGERS

Figure 1: The Little Things

There was an electrical fire at Marci’s house and all that is left is a designer
travel bag, a make up bag, a velvet purse, a red finger nail ringing my doorbell and
ruby red lips that quiver gently to form the words, “Can I stay at your place for a
little while?”
“Do you have your dog with you?” I ask.
“He died in the fire.” She says.
“Oh Jesus. All right.” I say. “Come in.”
I pull the door open and she walks past me, into the living room where she
sets her bags down on the floor beside the couch. She sits on the couch and lights a
cigarette.
I shut the door and walk into the living room.
“There’s no smoking in here.” I say.
“I’m panicking.” She says, lifting the cigarette up. “Just this one?”
I take a breath, clear my throat. “All right.”
She wears a gray and brown dress with strings of beads sewn into the
seams. Her hair is wrapped up in a bow with a tattered chopstick stabbed through
the middle of it.
I grab two beers from the fridge and hand her one. She twists the top off
with her teeth and takes a long chug. I sit beside her on the couch, twist the top of
my bottle and take a sip.
“It’s unusual…” She says. “Watching everything you own disappear into
flames…disappear into…nothing.”
“I’ll bet.” I say. “How’d it happen?”
“Oh, who the hell knows?”
“I’m sorry your dog died.” I say.
 “I think he was asleep.” She says. “He was on some sort of pet pills, or
something. He just got his nuts chopped off. The pills were…for pain…or
something.”
A moment passes. She lights another cigarette.
“Why don’t you have a television?” She says.
“It’s in the bedroom.” I say.
“Is it a nice television?”
“It’s okay. It’s new.”
“DVD player?”
“Yeah.”
“You seem different.” She says.
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know.” She says. “Just…different. Changed.”
“I’m on pills,” I shrug. “To keep me…sane.”
“How boring.” She sighs. “How long have you been on them?”
“Few months now.” I say.
“They do a good job…I guess.”
“Yeah.” I say. “I’m pretty stable…these days. Calm.”
“Yawn.” She says.
“Yeah.”
“You live here by yourself?” She asks.
“No. My girlfriend is out of town for the weekend.”
“For a wedding?” She asks.
“A funeral.”
“Whose?” She asks.
“Her mom.” I say. “Heart failure.”
“Pity.” She says.
“Yeah. I never got to meet her.”
“Where’s the funeral at?”
“Memphis.”
“How lovely.” She says.
“Yeah.” I chug the beer and set it on the coffee table. “So. How did you
find me?”
“Followed my nose.” She grins.
“No, really.”
“A little bird told me. It’s not important.”
She finished her beer and drops her cigarette into it.
“Thanks for letting me stay here.” She says.
“It’s alright. How long do you think it’ll be?”
“Maybe a couple weeks.” She says. “Just until I get things figured out.
You’re girlfriend, she the jealous type?”
I ponder this.

!2
 “I don’t know.” I shrug. “I don’t think so.”
“Good for her.” She says. “You ever cheat on her?”
“No. Never. Not planning on it, either.”
“Oh, you are no fun anymore.” She says.
“Yeah. Well. Maybe I’m just getting old.”
“Boring. Old.” She says. “Same thing.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“You got any coloring books?” She asks.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“I love coloring books.” She says. “I like to color the lines instead of the
empty spaces inside the lines.”
She leans backwards into the couch cushions and stretches her arms up
above her head, yawns.
“Well,” She says. “I’m pretty spent. Had a pretty stressful day.
“Yeah.” I nod. “You can sleep on the couch if you want. I’ll get you some
sheets, or something.”
“Couch.” She says. “Boring.”
“Yeah. Well. Take what you can get.”
“Yeah.” She says, smiling.
She stretches out on the couch while I go over to the broom closet and pull
down some sheets and a pillow for her to use. When I toss them at her I realize they
are the same sheets that Helen let me use the first night that I slept here.
I turn off the living room light and Marci pulls off her shirt beneath the
sheets. I turn to walk away. She says my name.
“Benjamin.” She says.
I turn but I don’t look at her. “What?”
“Goodnight.” She says.
“Goodnight, Marci.”
I walk into the bedroom and lock the door behind me like a mental patient. I get into
bed and hug the pillow tight around my head, thinking about Helen and wondering
how she’s dealing with the funeral, and everything. Eventually I fall asleep and I
don’t dream about anything.

Morning comes like it always does and I am awakened by the sound of

nails being hammered into a hardwood floor.
I put on a tee shirt and walk into the living room.
Marci sits on the couch eating bacon and eggs off a paper plate. The skillet
on the stove still makes sizzling sounds.
“I made enough for two.” She says.
“Thanks.” I walk into the kitchen.
“It smells like dog in here.” Marci says. “Do you have a dog?”
“Yeah. Helen’s dog. Well, I guess it’s ours now. I don’t know.”

!3
 “Where is he?” She asks.
“She took him with her to Memphis.”
“I never knew anyone who took a dog to a funeral.” She says.
“Well…you haven’t met Helen.”
I grab a plate and shovel eggs and bacon onto it, then immediately set it on
the counter and stare at it, feeling nauseous.
“When will she be back?” Marci asks.
“Monday.”
“I’ll get to meet her then.”
“Yeah.”
“Will she like me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I walk into the living room and sit on the couch. I
stare at the floor.
“Would it bother you if she doesn’t?” I ask.
“Maybe.” She shrugs. “Maybe not. Did you remember to take your
medication this morning?”
“No.” I sigh, standing up. “I never remember. Helen always has to remind
me.”
“She sounds like a good girlfriend.” Marci says.
“The best.” I walk into the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet, grab
the pill bottle, unscrew it. I swallow two little blue pills with a palm full of tap
water.
“Good boy.” Marci says from the living room.
“Oh shut up.”
I walk into the living room and sit on the couch beside her.
“What are you doing today?” She asks, leaning against the armrest of the
couch.
“I’ve got some errands to run. Helen wants me to fix the toilet before she
gets back so I have to buy some tools, or whatever. Stuff like that.”
“Do you know how to fix a toilet?”
“I figure it can’t be all that difficult.” I shrug. “I’ll figure it out.”
“What else?” She asks.
“Different things. Boring stuff, I guess. I want to get some things done
before Helen gets back.”
“Are you going to clean that bathtub?” Marci asks.
“Maybe. Why?”
“It looks like shit.” She says. “Like it hasn’t been cleaned in months.”
“I guess it hasn’t.” I shrug. “You want to go with me on my errands?”
“No thanks. I’ve got…a doctor’s appointment.”
“Okay. There’s an extra key under the doormat.”
“Thanks.” She says.
“I’m going to take a shower.”

!4
 I stand and walk into the bathroom. I grab a towel and some clean clothes
and I lock the bathroom door. Turn on the shower, get undressed.

After my shower, Marci is gone. I get dressed and I lock the front door
behind me and I go down the stairs and into the parking lot where my moped sits
beneath a tree like a big rusted paperweight. I start her up and I cruise down the
neighborhood roads for a while before making a left on Main Street toward the
hardware store.

Stuck in traffic beneath an overcast sky. The radio is only static. The faces
in the car windows fade and melt, twist into deformations, misshapen things lacking
soul, destination. We are, all of us, trapped in perpetual motion that leads us,
somehow, backwards.
I get to the hardware store and am immediately lost in its mazes, labyrinths
of aisles and wrong turns. Orange vests that wander in circles, one of them stops to
ask me if I need help. I could count the ways.
“Toilet parts. I’m looking for something to use to fix a toilet.
“Aisle 37.” The orange vest says this, then wanders off. Maybe I’m
supposed to follow him. But…I don’t.
When I find aisle 37 the lights in the store begin to flicker and I fear that a
blackout might occur and Helen will never be able to flush her toilet again. But the
lights flicker again and nothing happens.
I lose myself in plungers and chains, spigots and tubes and pipes. Black
and white bits of purpose that must serve some function that I cannot understand.
I survive what feels like hours in the toilet aisle. I eventually grab whatever
looks like it might be helpful and several minutes later I find the cash registers,
upfront. The total is 37 dollars and I don’t even know what I’ve bought. I pay it and
leave.
I get in the car and turn the ignition.
A little girl sits on the asphalt in the parking lot holding her knees, which are
bleeding. She starts to cry. A woman stands beside her, staring at the ground. The
little girl looks up at the woman, and then stands up. The woman just stands there.
I pull out of the parking lot and head back home, the way I came.

The front door is cracked open. An inch, maybe two. Smell of tar and
feathers, isolation. I flinch my key ring in a fist. The keys stick out between my
fingers like dull, meaningless weapons. I nudge the door open with my shoe.
The rugs are gone. Couch is gone. In the kitchen the refrigerator is still
there but emptied of anything to eat, to drink. Even the molded, yet frozen bread
and the lettuce that has degenerated into some sort of pitch-black primordial soup.
It’s all gone. Everything.

!5
 In the bedroom…the television is gone. The DVD player. The jewelry
boxes. The baseball bat kept beneath the bed in case anybody ever tried to rob us.
Gone.
I reach for the telephone to make a call but the telephone is gone. The
phone in the kitchen is gone. Marci is gone.
In the bathroom behind the medicine cabinet. My pills are gone, too. The
pills to keep me sane, keep me level. Even those are gone.
Hands clinch into fists, vision blurs. Squeeze my key chain so hard I start
to lose the feeling in my hand.
Helen. Helen gets back in the morning. I have less than sixteen hours to
find Marci and get our stuff back. But something tells me it’s not quite going to
work out that way.
Our stuff is in a pawnshop already. Maybe a dozen pawnshops. Some
homeless derelicts are wearing Helen’s dresses and jewelry. Her favorite skirt is
being worn by some high school dropout who will soon become a prostitute and
commit suicide by the age of twenty-seven and a half.
The couch is in some squat house somewhere, already soaked through with
urine and vomit. Twelve year olds with pubic lice are shooting up on our couch and
laughing about it.
But what the hell is she going to do with my pills? Is there a market out
there among the homeless and downtrodden for prescription anti-psychotics? Well. I
suppose there is a demand for just about anything if you know the right place to set
up shop.

I pull the car into an alley. Any random alley in town, and she’s there.
Smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke at a slur of bad graffiti on the brick wall in
front of her. She watches me pull into the alley and nothing changes. She doesn’t
move.
I turn off the car and get out. I walk towards her. She smokes her cigarette and looks
at me. I stop within a couple feet of her.
“You were robbed.” She says.
I stand with my fingers tucked beneath my thumbs, the skin beginning to turn white.
“It happens. Sometimes.” She says.
What happens next, I don’t mean for it to happen. It just happens. My fist blurs
backwards across the pale, smooth contours of her soft face. Maybe it’s the
medication wearing off. Maybe I’m just an asshole.
She takes a step backwards and places her hand over her nose. She looks at her hand
and the fingers are wet with blood.
“It could have been anyone that robbed your place.” She says this while reaching
into her purse. “You could have just asked.”

!6
What she pulls out of her purse is a little black spray can. In a blur she shoves the
spray can in my face and within a split second a wave of pepper spray forces its way
into my eyes, my nostrils, down my throat.
I stumble backwards, blind, screaming. I don’t think I’ve ever been sprayed with
before. It’s something a person would remember, but my memory hasn’t been what
it once was…in quite some time. The effect is much like drowning in sulfuric acid
and habanera sauce.
I’m rolling around on the pavement and I never thought that it would be quite this
agonizing.
Perhaps she has access to some sort of special grade pepper spray. Military issue, or
something.
Anyway. She says something that sounds like, “Thanks for letting me stay at your
place.”
Then there’s the sound of metal scraping against asphalt and I’m trying to
claw my eyes out. I realize the sound I’m hearing is that of Marci dragging
something across the pavement. Then, a moment of silence…and whatever she’s got
in her hands, it comes crashing down on top of my head. The splitting pain in the
back of my skull is almost welcomed because after that everything just pretty much
goes black.

As far as I can remember, I’ve never woken up in a jail cell before. I’ve
been in a jail before. Public drunkenness, disturbing the peace. Things like that. But
I’ve never woken up in a jail before. Never slept much in one, either.
The experience is not as disagreeable as I would have expected, but not
exactly something to make a hobby out of, either.
I’m alone in the cell. Gray walls. A thin, soiled mattress on the concrete
floor. There is no toilet. Graffiti carved into thin layers of paint on the walls,
probably done with fingernails. I can’t read any of the handwriting. Doesn’t matter.
There are no voices in the air. No footsteps. Nothing. Silence. It doesn’t
make any sense for a jail to be so quiet. Has everybody just given up?
I lean against a wall and rub my eyes. The eyes are still sore. But the initial
hellfire sensations have dissipated. My throat feels like I’ve been gargling sand,
gravel. I’m still wearing my clothes, which means they must not be planning on
keeping me for very long. Probably just some derelict charges, public disturbance. I
can live with that.
What feels like an hour passes before someone calls my name, which they
must have gotten after fingerprinting me. The cell door opens and a thick black
guard stands there, staring at me. I take the hint and rise, shakily, to my feet. I
follow him into the hallway and he shuts the cell door behind me. He leads me
passed cell doors and graffiti on the walls, down a flight of stairs and into what
appears to be some sort of waiting room, a lobby. He disappears, leaving me in the
bright lights of the room and I wait for my eyes to adjust.

!7
 The first thing I see is Sandra sitting in a plastic chair, reading a newspaper.
I walk over to her. She looks up at me. Eye contact. The expression on her face
could clip a bears balls off.
“Fuck you.” She says, then stands up and walks towards the sliding glass
doors that lead outside.
I follow her with my tail between my legs.

In the car I ask Sandra how the funeral was and I immediately wish I
hadn’t. Instead of answering the question, she says, “Tell me…everything. The
whole story.”
It’s dark outside and I wonder how much time has passed. How many days.
I tell her the whole story as we drive home and by the time I’ve finished
she’s hissing, grinding her teeth.
I stop talking, afraid to say anything else.
“Okay. Well. Fuck it.” She says. “We’ll get new stuff. If you ever see her
again I want you to tell me.
“All right.”
“I can’t fucking believe this.”
“Yeah.” I say, staring out the window.
When we get to the apartment complex the parking lot is full of cop cars,
fire trucks, ambulances. The sky is alive with an orange and red blaze. The sky is on
fire and I know what’s happened before we get out of the car.
Only our apartment is on fire. The gods seem to have spared the others. There is a
crowd of people outside on the lawn staring up at the blistered inferno that was once
our home. Sandra and I stand with the rest of the gaping onlookers.
At least none of our stuff was inside when the fire started. I smile at this thought and
I almost mention it into Sandra’s ear, then decide strongly against it…narrowly
dodging that bullet.
We stand silently, lost in the crowd. The front door is half burned away to nothing.
The doorframe begins to fail, crumble into dust among the rest of the burning
debris. I light a cigarette and blow smoke at the back of a woman’s head.
We watch in silence as firemen wander in circles as if they’re looking for something
to do. No one seems to be trying very hard to put out the fire, but I guess it doesn’t
really matter anymore.
Then I see Marci in the crowd, wandering in circles. I watch her lean into
someone’s ear, a young man with facial hair, a shaved head, and she says something
that sounds like, “Can I stay at your place for a while?”

Figure 2: Fish Bacon

“I’ve lost her.”
Bobby’s voice from behind what sounds like my front door. I stir from bed,
clear my throat, swallow, get out of bed, wear a sheet around me like a cloak into

!8
the living room, to the front door. I open the door and Bobby is standing there in the
hallway with tears in his eyes, holding his hands to chest. Emotional heartburn.
“I’ve lost her.” He says. “Let me in.”
“All right.”
I pull the door open wide. He walks into the apartment, hunched over like a
mongoloid. I return to the bedroom to put a shirt on. He follows me, stands in the
doorway, continues speaking.
“I’ve lost her to a fucking GI.” He says.
I motion for him to be quiet, and I point to Molly, who is asleep in my bed.
She must have had another bad dream, poor little darlin.
He follows me into the living room where I stop and notice one of my
living room windows is broken, shattered. I puzzle over it a moment before sitting
on the couch. Bobby sits opposite me on the recliner. I light a cigarette, offer him
one. He takes it. I light it for him. Inhale, lean back, breathe smoke.
“He was stationed in the fucking Middle East.” He says. “Fucking combat
zone. How the fuck can I compete with that. A fucking war hero, or something,
coming back to reclaim his ex-girlfriend. My fucking girlfriend. Now she’s his, and
suddenly she’s my ex.”
“It happens.” I shrug.
“Fuck that.” He hisses. “After everything we’ve fuckin been through.
Everything we promised each other…”
“Promises are lies, Bobby.”
“Apparently so.” He says.
“Well. You grieve, you get it out of your system. It sucks for a while,
maybe a long time. But then you move on.”
Bobby sits still, silent, for a while. His cigarette begins to turn to ash
between his knuckles. Finally, he clears his throat to speak.
“No.” He says.
I watch the intensity in his eyes, darting from one end of the room to the
other, very carefully. He is at the bottom of the deep end. Well. He came to the right
place.
“I know where he lives.” He says, wide eyed. “The cocky little fucker.”
“Right. Well…” I sigh, lean back into the couch cushions. “What are you
prepared to do?”
He stands, paces around the recliner. He stops, looks me in the eyes.
“Sell me a gun.” He says.
“What kind?”
“Anything. A big fucker. Big enough to push his brains through a fucking
brick wall.”
I ponder a moment.

!9
 “Well. What I’m thinking is…” I clear my throat, lean forward. “A desert
eagle might be…Appropriate. Symbolically, if nothing else. Considering the
circumstances.”
His frown turns to a grin. He scratches the back of his head.
“Yeah…yeah, okay.” He nods. “That’s fucking perfect.”
“I’m going to charge you nine hundred dollars because I am never going
to get the gun back. At least, I better not. And I don’t want to see you for a long time
afterwards, either. You understand?”
He stares through the floor, nodding silently.
“When will you have the money in cash?”
“I have it now.” He reaches for his wallet. Opens it, pulls a wad of twenties
and fifties and drops them and a crumpled stack on the glass coffee table between
us.
I pick the cash up off the table and count it. The total is fifteen hundred
dollars, but I don’t tell him this. Never settle for meatloaf when you can accidentally
eat oysters and caviar. I stuff the money into the pockets of my pajama pants, stand
up, walk into the bedroom. Molly is still asleep. Her thick black hair laid on the
pillow all around her head like a religious icon. She’s eight years old and three
hundred pounds, but god damn it, that’s just more of her for me to love.
I open the second drawer in my dresser, remove the false bottom beneath
the socks and boxers. I sort through the handguns, find the desert eagle and wrap it
in an unread edition of yesterday’s newspaper. This way when he’s running through
the streets like a psychopath, screaming for revenge, anyone that sees him will just
think he’s some weirdo with yesterday’s newspaper beneath his arm.
I return to the living room and toss the stuffed newspaper in his lap. He
inspects his briefly, and smiles.
“You know you have a broken window?” He says, pointing behind him at
the shattered glass in the window frame.
“Yes. I’m aware of it.”
“You should get that fixed.” He says. “Molly might catch a cold, or
something.”
“All right.”
“How is Molly, anyway?” He says.
“Good.” I say. “Still asleep. I think she might have had a bad dream last
night.”
“Poor dear.” He says. “How old is she now?”
“Just turned eight last week.”
“Wonderful. Throw a big party for her?”
“Not really. We move around so much, I don’t think she’s ever had much
time to make any friends.”
“Yeah.” He nods. “I was a military brat, myself. Same damn deal.”

!10
 “I’ve been meaning to fix that.” I say. “Maybe stay put for a while, get her
going to the Elementary School, I guess.”
“Education is a wonderful thing.” Bobby says.
“Yeah.” I nod. “It sure is.”
A moment passes, awkward silence. His eyes shift from me to the broken
window behind him.
“Yeah, like I was saying…” He says. “A broken window can be real bad
news in a place like this. Especially with a little girl as young as Molly is, you
know. Drafts can bring in all sorts of germs and such. You should really take care of
that, Fish.”
“All right. I’ll take care of it. Now, go on. Get out of here. Go kill a GI.”
“Right, yeah. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.”
“Okay, well…thanks.”
He walks to the front door, opens it, closes it behind him. I lock it, walk
into the bedroom, crawl back in bed, careful not to wake Molly because I’m sure
she’ll wake up angry and wanting more bacon and I really do not feel like cooking a
brand new pan of bacon right now
Another knock on the door awakens me from sleep. The landlady’s voice is
screaming. Again.
“Rent!”
Sounds of Saturday morning cartoons in the living room. Molly is awake
earlier than usual. I rise from and wander into the living room. Molly sits like a soft,
fleshy boulder with her back to me, staring three inches from the television. The
split second glimpse of the cartoon she’s watching is deeply disturbing and surreal,
a far cry from the programs I used to watch as a kid.
“Don’t watch too much of that psycho cereal shit, little darlin.” I tell her,
while walking to the door. “It’ll rot your fuckin mind.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Molly mumbles. Damn kid talking back. I hate that shit.
I open the door and the landlady stands in her wrinkles and her torn blouse
and horn rimmed glasses and smeared lipstick.
“Fucking rent!” She screams in my face.
I speak slowly, politely.
“I all ready paid this month’s rent. On the first.”
“No! No, God damn it!” She screams. “You paid last month! You have to
pay every month! Didn’t your mama ever teach you damn things like that!”
“No. I paid this month, too. Check your records.”
“God damn it! God damn rent!”
She wanders to the door across the hall, and knocks, “Rent! God damn
rent!”
I shut the door and lock it. I wander into the living room, sit on the couch,
watch a moment of Molly’s cartoon program it immediately gives me a headache. I

!11
contemplate turning it off and suggesting the two of us get outside, take a walk in
the park or something, but I know she would only bite my ankles again, so I decide
to let it be. I instead walk into the kitchen, put a skillet on the stove, pull out some
bacon from the fridge to cook for Molly’s breakfast.
“What’re you coking, daddy?” Molly asks from the living room.
“Bacon.” I sigh, lighting the gas powered stove. “Again.”
“Fuck yes.” Molly says.
I turn to look at her.
“God damn it, little darlin. What did I tell you about that kind of talk?”
“Not to.” She says, keeping her eyes glued to the television.
“Fucking right.” I turn my attention to the bag of bacon, pull the vacuum
seal open, pull out ten slices, throw them in the skillet, light a cigarette.
“Smoking kills you, daddy.” Molly says.
“So does everything else, little darlin.”
Another knock on the front door.
“Goddamn rent!” The landlady’s voice again, already forgetting she was
just here.
“Oh, I am going to kill that god damn bitch.” I mumble beneath my breath.
“God damn bitch.” Molly says.
“You hush, little darlin.”
“Hush god damn it.” Molly says. “Little darlin.”
“Fucking rent!” The landlady yells through the door.
“Fucking rent, fuck.” Molly says.
I lean against the kitchen counter.
“Devil…take me now. Have mercy.”
“Daddy, I have gas!” Molly yells.
“So burp.”
“It’s the lower gas!”
“Then fart.”
“But farting is bad!”
“Only if you’re married.”
“I’m not married, right daddy?”
“That’s right, little darlin.”
“You’re not married, either, are you, daddy?”
“Nope.” I shrug, turn the bacon over. “Not anymore.”
“Daddy, when is mommy coming back?”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, little darlin?”
“I just farted.”
“Good for you, little darlin.”

!12
 I shift the bacon around in the skillet. Something catches the light in the
corner of my eye. I turn and realize one of the other windows in the living room is
now broken. It was intact just a moment ago.
“Little darlin, are you breaking windows?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
“All right. Sorry. Bacon’s almost ready.”
“No eggs.” Molly says.
“Come on. Eggs are good for you. I think. I’ll give you extra bacon, if you
eat your eggs.”
“I don’t like eggs!”
“Well…eat them anyway. Life is full of eggs that people don’t want to
eat.”
“Damn it!” Molly yells.
“Molly. Hush.”
Flicker of the lights, then the electricity shuts off.
“My fucking cartoons!” Molly screams.
“Molly! No more cussing! Christ!”
“You cuss!”
“I’m a grown up.”
“The power went out!” She hollers. “Fix it! Fix my cartoons!”
“Those cartoons rot your damn brain. You’re better off without the damn
electricity. You think the cavemen had electricity and shitty cartoons and video
games?”
“Fuck the cavemen! They’re cock suckers!”
“Cavemen are not cock suckers. And stop fucking cussing! You’re eight
years old, talk like a damn eight year old!”
“You cuss!”
“I know!”
“Daddy?”
Her voice is soft. I take a deep breath.
“Yes, little darlin?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, little darlin.”
“Then fix the fucking TV power! I want cartoons!”
“If you stop cussing, I’ll fix the electricity. All right?”
“All right. Fine.”
“No more cussing, right?”
“Right.” She says. “No more cussing.”
I walk over to the broom closet, open it, jiggle with the breaker a little bit,
turn switches, and knobs. Nothing happens.

!13
 “You blew a fuse!” Molly yells.
“I didn’t do anything! Damn it. Go read a book, or something.”
“I don’t have any books!”
“What are you talking about? I buy you fifty books a damn month, and you
don’t read any of them!”
“I like the pictures.” She says.
“Fuck the pictures! That’s like the damn cartoons. You don’t need pictures,
you need words!”
“I don’t like to read!”
“But you’re the best damn reader of any body your age.”
“I wouldn’t know.” She says.
I walk over and sit down next to her. She stares at the carpet.
“Do you miss playing with other kids? Kids your age?”
“How can I miss it?” She says. “It never happened!”
“You’ve had friends before.” I say.
“All imaginary!”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.” I ponder a moment, frown. “Wait. All of them?
Even Mervin?”
“Yes, even Mervin.” She says.
“But…wait. I remember meeting Mervin.”
“Um. That’s your problem, daddy, because Mervin never existed.”
“Oh. Huh.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, little darlin?”
“Are you going insane?”
“Way ahead of you little darlin.” I take a breath, stand up. “Anyway. The
bacon’s ready. Help yourself.”
“It’s still sizzling! I’ll burn my hands!”
“Okay, darlin. I’ll get it for you. You want the Sesame Street plate?”
“Big Bird!”
“All right, darlin. Just a moment.”
I scoop up the bacon and lay the strips on a paper towel to dry while I get
the Sesame Street plate from the cupboard. I put the bacon on the plate and take it
into the living room.
I would love to have Molly eating healthy, fruits, and vegetables, and such,
but the girl just loves her bacon, and nothing else, and I just can bear to say no to
the little darlin.
I set the plate on the floor in front of her. The lights flicker back on. Molly
immediately turns the TV back on and the same cartoon continues as if nothing
happened. Molly cheers and munches on two strips of bacon at once. The cartoon
gives me another headache. Who the hell comes up with this kind of horrible shit
for children to watch?

!14
 “Molly.” I say. “I’m gonna take a shower. The door is locked. Don’t
answer the door. Don’t let anybody in.”
“I know, I know.” She says.
“You remember where the stun gun is? How to use it?”
“Yes, daddy.”
“Okay. Good. Enjoy your…cartoons. I’ll be out in a little bit.”
“Okay, daddy. Have a good shower.”
“Thanks, little darlin.”
I light a cigarette and walk into the bathroom. I leave the door open a crack
and I turn on the shower.

“Molly, I need to send you out for groceries.”

“I’m watching cartoons. They’re almost over.”
“You can watch TV when you get back.”
“After cartoons it’s stupid golf!” She whines. “I don’t want to watch stupid
golf.”
“All right, all right. After this show, go get groceries. I made out a list.”
“Fine!”
“Thank you, little darlin.”
Molly slouches on the floor with her eyes fixed on the television screen and
growls beneath her breath.
I walk into the bedroom, shut the door and open the drawers to check my
inventory. I have enough narcotics and illegal firearms to spend the rest of my life in
a maximum-security prison. Molly would be put in an orphanage and would never
be adopted by anyone. She would spend her life in orphanages, and would die
thinking that no one in the world loves her. But it’s a risk that is never going to
happen because I know what I am doing. I know how to never, ever get caught.
I find myself pretty well stocked and I begin to relax. I walk out of the
bedroom and check the locks on the front door. Two chains, five dead bolts, two
padlocks. It pays to be extra careful these days, in this line of work. In this city.
I walk into the living room and the end credits are rolling on the last
psychotic cartoon of the day. Molly’s greasy Sesame Street plate is empty. I pick it
up and set it in the sink and run warm water over it.
“Molly, time to go shopping.”
“Aw, Daddy, can’t I go later.”
“Sorry, darlin. We need groceries. We don’t have any more bacon for
lunch, you know.”
“Motherfucker!” Molly’s says while waddling across the living room to get
her shoes.
She comes back with her shoes on.
“Here’s the list.” I hand it to her. She snatches it from my hand. “Take a
can of mace, if you want. We’ve got plenty to go around.”

!15
 “I have one all ready.” She says.
“Good girl.”
Molly stumbles slowly across the living room towards the front door. It’s
hard to see her like this, all three hundred pounds of her struggling to cross a room,
but what is a father to do? My little darlin has got to be happy. My weakness is
never being able to tell her ‘No’. My daughter is my only weakness. All three
hundred pounds of her.
Molly leaves and I lock the door behind her, hoping she’ll remember the
secret knock this time. There are three peepholes drilled into the door. One at eye
level, on at my waist, and, and one at my knees, just in case somebody brings a pack
of wild dogs to tear Molly and I into ribbons. Stranger things have happened in this
line of work. Like I said, it pays to be extra careful in this day and age. My name is
Fish Douglas and I am a goddamned survivor of this war.
I walk into the kitchen and brew a pot of coffee. I get dressed in the
bedroom. Canvas pants that let the air in, and the water, or blood, out. My dog tags,
more out of old habit rather than any kind of practicality. My custom made combat
knife slid into the side of one of my black steel toed boots. A green tee shirt, and
later, if it gets cold enough, I might put on my jacket, though it’s not even down to
fifty degrees yet. I was trained to survive being naked for up to forty-eight hours in
the middle of the Arctic Ocean, just in case I ever found myself stuck in that
particular situation. You can never be too precautious in this day and age, like I
always say.
A while passes. Molly knocks on the door, the secret code knock. I let her
in and she waddles into the apartment, waving her chubby arms in the air.
“God damn store is closed!” She hollers. “There’s no bacon anywhere!
We’re fucked!”
“All right, darlin. Calm down. We’ll just go some where else.”
“They’re all closed.” She says. “It’s a stupid holiday, or something.”
“What holiday?”
“Stupid jerk store holiday!” Molly says.
“All right. Well. You take it easy, little darlin. I’ll figure something out.”
“Okay, daddy. I love you.”
“I love you too, little darlin.”
I walk into the living room, sit down on the couch, and I notice a third
window is now broken, shattered to pieces all over the carpet. I walk over to it. This
is nonsense. There is no sound when they break. No sign of anything. Just broken
glass on the carpet and stuck in the window screens. I stand and stare at the three
broken windows for what seems like a very long time. I don’t understand what is
happening here.
I walk into the bedroom and grab a .45 and tuck it into a thin leather
shoulder holster that I buckle beneath my tee shirt. There is something very

!16
unsettling about three phantom broken windows on the fifth floor of an apartment
building. I don’t like it.
There’s a knock at my door. Tiptoe, look through the peepholes. I don’t
recognize the man’s face. He doesn’t seem to be armed.
“Who is it?”
“I’m Robby. A friend of Goat’s. Can I come in?”
“What do you want?”
“Goat wants to know if you have any garbage you want to get rid of.”
“Tell him to go to the dumpster.”
“He already went to the dumpster. He’s still hungry.”
“Tell him to go to the fucking dump, then. I’m not opening this door.”
“Aw, come on, man.”
“Why doesn’t he come here and ask for himself?”
“He’s afraid of you.”
“All right. Well, tell him no garbage today. Try garbage day.”
“That’s Thursday, right?”
I ignore him and walk into the living room. A moment passes. Sound of
footsteps echoing down the hall, towards the corner of the hallway where Goat
sleeps. I light another cigarette and wait for the world to end.

“Daddy, am I pretty?”
“Little darlin, you’re the most beautiful girl in all the world.”
“Thank you, daddy.”
“It’s only the truth, little darlin. Just the plain damn truth.”
She waddles over and gives me a hug around my knees. I pour two glasses of
orange juice, hand her one, pour a spot of soldier recipe Russian vodka into mine. I
take a long sip, swallow, take a breath, sigh. Molly drinks her orange juice down in
one swallow, clears her throat, coughs, waddles back to her room and shuts the door.
I lie back on the couch and finish my glass of orange juice. Sounds of
Molly playing her little toy piano to the rhythm of…chaos. I lay on the couch for a
while, listening to Molly’s budding skills of musical butchery.
There’s a knock on my door. I check my watch. She’s early.
I walk casually to the door, take my time with the locks, open the door
slowly. Open it halfway and her pale, sunken face stares through me with dead,
skeletal eyes. She rushes past me. I lock the door. She paces circles around the
living room, biting her fingernails down to stubs.
“Need double, double this.” She groans.
“Bad day, darlin?”
“Week, month, year.” She hisses.
“Have a seat.” I say. “Chill. If Molly comes out of her room, please make
at least some kind of effort to seem normal.”
“I am normal.”

!17
 “I mean other people normal. Sanity normal.”
“Oh.” She says.
I go into the bedroom, pull out four fat crack rocks, stick them in a little
plastic bag, stick it into my back pocket. I go back to the living room and she’s
sitting on the edge of the couch, staring mindlessly at her thumbs twiddling together
in a blur.
“Money.” I say.
She reaches into her bra and throws a wad of wrinkled bills at me. I pick
them up, count them.
“Twenty dollars short.” I say.
“I’ll pay the rest tomorrow.” She whines.
“Tonight.” I toss the bag in her lap.
She picks it up and turns it around spastically in her hands, staring through
it.
“Yeah, tonight…” She groans. “I’ll…have to hook…I guess.”
“What ever you’ve got to do, darlin.”
I walk her to the door and lock it behind her. Go back to the couch, sit
down, relax.
I end up making another Russian screwdriver with what’s left of the orange
juice. Smoke a couple cigarettes, sit on the couch, stare at the windows, the broken
windows, phantom windows that destroy themselves mysteriously.
Molly comes out of her room with a board game in a cardboard box.
Candy Land. We sit on the floor and play Candy Land for a while, until I get a
headache. Molly gets two aspirin from the bathroom and a glass of water. After a
while I start to feel better.

For a moment, the weight of everything I’ve lost in this life hits me full on,
like a psychiatric heart attack. It’s one of those freak, manic things that eventually
passes. I check my eyes for tears.
Molly sits on the floor in the living room, coloring outside the lines in a
black and white coloring book. I light a cigarette and blow smoke in the air. The day
is progressing rather slowly. Saturdays. You can never predict how a Saturday is
going to turn out.
The wife, the house, the family, the deaths. It’s funny the things you can
remember when no body’s talking to you.
“Can I have a puppy, daddy?”
“Sorry, little darlin. No pets.”
“Why not?”
“Pets die.”
“So do people!”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “But you’ll be more attached to animals then people, one
day.”

!18
 “Yeah.” Molly nods. “I don’t like people.”
“I don’t like them either.”
A moment passes.
“God spills milk all over the world.” Molly says. “And everybody cries.”
I watch cigarette smoke circle up towards the ceiling. I look at Molly,
frown.
“What, little darlin?”
“Nothing.” Molly says. “I’m hungry.”
“You want hot dogs?”
“Okay!”
“I found some bacon in the back of the crisper. You want bacon on your
hotdogs?”
“Sweet!” Molly cheers.
I go to the kitchen and pour water into a pot, set it on the stove to boil.
From the refrigerator, I retrieve what’s left of the hot dogs and set them on a plate. I
finish off the pot of coffee and brew another pot. I grab Molly’s empty glass and
empty the bottle of apple juice into it, even though she hates apple juice. I crush
some vitamins into a fine powder and mix them into the juice. It’s the only way
she’ll take vitamins.
I bring the apple juice to her. She frowns, but drinks it down, and coughs. I
light a cigarette and drop the hot dogs into the boiling water on the stove. I stick two
hot dog buns in the toaster. I grab the old bacon, only three strips left, and throw
them on the skillet on the stove.
“Fucking bacon.” Molly says from the living room. “Fuck yes.”
“Molly.”
“What?”
No more cussing. Seriously, darlin.”
“How come?”
“It’s not lady like.”
“Nothing is lady like.” She says.
“Well. Maybe. But you’re too young and too beautiful to be using foul
language like that all the damn time.”
“Am I really beautiful, daddy? Or are you just fucking with me?”
“God damn it, darlin. You’re the most beautiful little angel in the world.”
“Thank you, daddy.”
Sounds of a television through the walls, a baby crying, laughter. An
airplane rumbles through the sky in the distance. I finish cooking the hot dogs and
bacon, and the buns pop out of the toaster. I stick the dogs on the buns on a plate
and lay the strips of bacon on top of them.
“You want ketchup, or mustard?” I ask.
“Mayonnaise!”
“All right.”

!19
 I scoop mayonnaise on top of the hot dogs and bacon. I take the plate into
the living room and set it on the floor in front of Molly where she is hunched
forward, staring at the television, which is on some golf channel, for some reason.
She devours the hot dogs within seconds.
“Thank you, daddy.”
“You’re welcome, little darlin.”
The sky outside the broken windows begins to darken. It may rain today.
Rain sometimes slows down business, but the truly desperate are more reliable than
the postal service when it comes to knocking on my door.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, little darlin?”
“What does ‘fuck you in the ass hole until it starts to bleed’ mean?”
Moment of silence, confusion.
“Where in the hell did you hear that?”
“TV.”
I walk into the living room and unplug the television. Molly whines.
“No more TV today. And don’t expect to learn the definitions of dirty
phrases until you grow up and get married and have babies.”
“I don’t want babies!”
“They’re not so bad.” I lean down and give her a little kiss on her forehead.
“You were the greatest baby of them all. My little darlin angel baby.”
“Yeah.” She says. “I can barely taste the smashed vitamins anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“In the juice. I can’t really taste them anymore. I used to be able to taste
them. They’re really gross, daddy.”
“I didn’t think you could tell they were there. You’re very clever, little
darlin.”
“Can’t trick me.” She cheers.
“Apparently not, darlin. You’re too damn clever.”
She giggles, grabs one of the coloring books from beneath the couch and
starts coloring in it.
“Little darlin?”
“Yes, daddy?”
“Don’t take any wooden nickels.”
“Okay, daddy.”
“Good girl.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes, little darlin?”
“I had a bad dream last night.”
“What was it about?”
“There was a house I was inside of,” She says. “And men were
surrounding the house with big sharp knives. I knew they were going to kill me so I

!20
got a knife from a kitchen, somewhere, and was ready for them. Like you taught
me.”
“Good girl.”
“But then the knife turned into a rotten banana, and the men came up the
stairs and there was nothing I could do.”
“Darlin, no one is ever going to hurt you. I won’t let them. You know that.
I won’t ever let anything bad happen to you.”
“I know that. But it was really scary. I tried to wake you up but you were
snoring at me, so I got under your covers and went to sleep.”
“I wasn’t snoring at you, little darlin, I was just snoring.”
“I know.” She says.
“I didn’t know I snored.”
“Sometimes.”
“Good to know.”
“I love you, daddy.”
“I love you too, little darlin.”

A fourth window has been shattered in the living room. Mysteriously, like
all the others.
There’s a knock on the door, followed by screaming, scratching of nails on
wooden and steel surfaces.
“Fish! Fish, Goddamn it, let me in!
Bobby’s voice. II hold the .45 in my right hand and ˆI undo the locks and
open the door to let him in, despite my better judgment. Bobby runs in, frantic, tears
streaming down his face, covered in blood. I lock the door, then turn around and
press the gun into his face.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I did it, man! I fucking did it!” He screams.
Molly stands beside the dining room table and watches us.
“He’s dead! He’s fucking dead!” Bobby screams, crying like a baby.
“That was the idea.” I keep the gun in his face. He doesn’t seem to notice
it’s there.
“But it was real, man. It was so fucking real! He fought like a fucking
bulldog! Jesus Christ! I told him, I said, this is for fucking it up! For stealing from
me the only good thing in a life full of fucking shit! He grabbed me…we rolled all
over the place! Jesus Christ, I think my fucking arm is broken! But I did it, man! I
fucking blew his fucking head off! He’s dead! That’s it, man, that’s what he fucking
gets! Motherfucker! Oh God, oh God I think I’m going to be sick!”
I lower the gun.
“Bobby, Jesus Christ. You have got to calm down, man.”
“It’s done, man. It’s…over. Oh God.”
Sounds of police sirens in the distance.

!21
 “Oh God! Bobby hisses. “Oh God! Oh my God!”
“Bobby.” I speak calmly, slowly. “Do…not…fucking tell me…that you led
fucking police officers…here…. to my home.”
He starts pacing the room, frantic, losing it. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,
Oh God, Oh God,”
I grab him by the shoulder, shove him into the wall and press the .45 into
his left eye socket.
“Calm…the fuck…down.”
“Okay, okay.” He nods.
I pull the gun away, back off.
“Are we going to the jail house?” Molly asks, suddenly holding a teddy
bear in her arms.
“No, Molly. You will be safe. I promise.”
“Oh God, Oh God.” Bobby pulls out the Desert Eagle and cocks it. He
paces around the room again.
The police sirens are getting louder, closer.
“Oh my God, Oh my God.” Bobby breathes into his left hand. He brings
the Desert Eagle up and presses the barrel into the side of his head, into his right
temple.
“Bobby…hold on, now.”
His eyes meet mine. He hesitates a moment, takes a breath. His face is
pale, flushed, as white as desire. He sticks the gun into his mouth between dry,
cracked lips and he pulls the trigger. The back of his skull shatters and comes apart
in a blur of blood and brain matter and skull fragments, which splatter on the walls,
the coffee table, the carpet, everywhere.
Molly makes a sound in her throat. I take a breath and stick the gun back in
my holster. Bobby’s body convulses faintly in the corner of the room.
“That is so gross!” Molly says.
“Go to your room, little darlin.”
“But…”
“Go…to…your…room.”
“Fine!”
Molly goes to her room. I light a cigarette and stare at the body. This can
be my fault, if I think about it that way. But there’s never time for that. I put the
cigarette out and walk into the bedroom. I pull a large duffel bag out of the closet. It
is a customized duffel bag of my own design, one of many I had made that double
as body bags.
I bring it into the living room and lay it on the floor, horizontal to Bobby’s
body. I roll him over on top of the bag, pull up the sides and zip him up without
getting any more blood on my clothes than is already there.
The mess he’s made, I’m not sure how I am going to clean it up. I don’t
really have many cleaning supplies here, at the moment. But the body bag, I seal in

!22
thick plastic, the kind house painters use to cover floors to protect them from paint
drips. I tuck it into the corner of the living room as the sound of the pile sirens echo
off the walls in the apartment then slowly begin to fade off into the distance. I grab
another drop cloth, this one thick canvas, and I drape it over the puddles of blood,
and skull, and brains, until I can figure out what to do about the stains in the carpet.

MURAL TWO: DOORS AND MIRRORS

Figure 5: Johnson Residence

Douglas Johnson:
“It’s not that I’m trying to control your life, Jacob, it’s just that I wish you
would stop drinking so much urine.”
I’m saying this to my sixteen-year-old son, Jacob, as he glances down at
the half full Mason jar in his lap, bright yellow because of the vitamins Jane is
always giving him.
When he looks up at me, what he says is: “It’s not like I’m drinking other
people’s urine, dad. Just my own.”
Instead of responding to this I turn to the shelves on the wall above his bed,
covered in rows of mason jars full of urine. I point at them and I ask, “How old are
those?”
He turns to look at the shelves, pivoting on his bed.
“Months and months, dad. I’m stocking up in case of…the apocalypse.”
“You won’t need so much urine when the four horsemen arrive, Jacob.” I
turn away, sigh. “I want you to get rid of them.”
“No way, dad. Like, totally no way.”
“Jacob.”
“What?”
“How many times have we had this conversation?”
“Like, way too many times. One hundred times more than it should have
taken you to, like, drop it.”
“My son drinks his own urine. How do you think I should react to
something like that?”
“I don’t know, dad. But, like, Gandhi did it, um, all the time.”
“Gandhi drank his own urine?” I ask, frowning at him. “All the time?”
“Every morning.” Jacob says, nodding. “It’s, like, healthy, and stuff.”
“I seriously doubt that it’s healthy. I also very seriously doubt that Gandhi
drank urine.”
“You don’t read enough, dad. All this information is totally out there. You
just have to read the right stuff.”
“Yeah? And where did you read about Gandhi’s urine diet? The urine
drinkers news letter?”

!23
 “In, like, encyclopedias…and…Time magazine…I think.”
“You did not.”
“Totally did.” He says, raising the Mason jar to his lips, taking a long chug.
I shudder, turn away.
“To be continued.” I say, leaving his room and walking down the hallway,
then down the stairs where I walk through the living room where Jamie is lying
horizontal on the couch watching music videos on the television. I find Jane in the
kitchen where she’s dicing carrots with a butcher’s knife and humming what sounds
like a jingle from a cat food commercial under her breath.
“Honey, how are you?” I ask this while giving her a soft hug from behind,
my arms loosely wrapping around her stomach.
“I…don’t know.” Is her response.
I kiss the back of her neck and pull away. She turns to face me.
“”Our son is upstairs,” I say, sorting through the pile of mail on the kitchen
counter, none of it for me. “Drinking his urine. Again.”
“Oh, leave him alone.” Jane sighs. “You know he has troubles…at school.”
I turn and lean against the counter and look at her while she’s facing me,
nibbling on a diced carrot.
“Troubles at school?” I frown. “What does that even mean? Everyone has
troubles at school. It’s what school is.”
“Honey, don’t make a fuss. You know how he gets when you make a fuss.
It only encourages him.”
“I had troubles at my high school and I never, ever drank urine.”
“Oh, honey, he’s sixteen. Sixteen year olds do weird things.”
“Like drinking piss? Jesus, Jane, sixteen year olds play video games and
spray paint on walls and kick dogs. He doesn’t even have video games, or a TV, or
anything that sixteen-year-old boys have. He’s got plenty of piss jars on his shelf,
though. Sixteen-year-old boys don’t keep their piss in mason jars on shelves in their
rooms. And they sure as hell don’t drink it!”
“Oh, hush.” Jane says. “He’ll hear you.”
“He already knows how I feel about it. I don’t care if he hears me. And
why are you defending him, Jane? He’s drinking urine! Not vodka, not Smirnoff
Ice, fucking urine.”
“Honey, when you get like this,” She says. “It makes me want to not listen
to you anymore.”
“Oh Jesus Christ. Fine. Why don’t we all just have a big piss drinking
party? No, really. I’ll bring the drinks. I’ll just drink a whole keg of beer and a
dozen pots of coffee and I’ll dispense the drinks all night long. Come on, honey,
how about it?”
“Now, you see? I’m really not in the mood for a fight right now and I’m
not listening to you anymore. You see how that works?” She turns back to the
cutting board and continues dicing carrots.

!24
I breath into the back of her head for a moment before giving up and walking into
the living room where I sit down on the couch next to Jamie and watch a music
video with her before I realize what we’re watching is a poorly censored image of a
guitar player shoving a human fetus into a blender and putting the lid on and
pressing the puree button and smiling into the camera, winking. After this
realization I grab the remote from the couch cushion between us and I turn the
television off and I look at Jamie who seems totally not surprised and she sighs and
turns to look at me, blankly.
“Jamie, are you…okay?”
“How…do…you…mean?” She asks, breathing deeply, pausing between
each word.
“Are you…happy?”
“Sure.” She shrugs in slow motion, awkwardly, as her eyelids droop down
until they’re almost completely shut, then they spring back to life and she’s staring
wide eyed at my forehead.
Something catches my eye and I glance at her arms, pale and thin and hairless, and I
notice the tiny dots, red and almost unnoticeable unless you really look at them. My
mind jumps to the last time I gave blood and the hole the needle left in my arm
looked exactly like the marks on my daughters arms and I’m wondering how often
she donates blood and if it’s unhealthy and maybe that’s why she’s always so…
spaced out all the time.
“I think it’s great,” I say, still staring at the marks on her arms. “That you’re…doing
something for the community, but…sometimes too much is…too much. I mean…
unhealthy…you know?”
She stares at me, blinking for a long moment, then says, finally, “What?”
“Nothing.” I shrug, giving up. “How’s school?”
“It’s…okay.” She lifts her arm up then drops it on her lap, exhaling.
“Well, don’t forget to have fun between cracking the books, okay? Remember to
give yourself some time for fun, too. And…get some rest. Okay?”
Her head rolls around on her shoulders, completely clueless as to what I’m saying
and I’m not sure either. I shrug and turn the television back on: a girl with black hair
and thick-framed glasses speaks into a microphone, saying the rap artist whose new
video they’re about to play has just been indicted for armed robbery, attempted
murder, and barging into a delivery room in a hospital while a woman was giving
birth, and trying to freebase her placenta. I stand and drop the remote control on the
couch and walk back into the kitchen where Jane is standing, staring at the pile of
diced carrots on the cutting board, wide eyed. I put my hand on her shoulder and she
flinches away from me.
“I don’t know what to do with these carrots.” She says, sighing.
“Cook…them?” I offer.
She shakes her head, staring at the cutting board, biting her lip. “I don’t
know…I don’t know.”

!25
 I focus on the sound of my breathing, staring at the linoleum floor in the
kitchen. I do this for several minutes before walking out of the kitchen and going
through the living room, up the stairs and into our bedroom where I shut the door
behind me and I open the window and I pull a pack of cigarettes from my pocket
and I pull one out of the pack and I light it with a match that I pick up from the
window sill where it was lying there next to a candle that hasn’t been lit yet.
I stand by the window, leaning against the wall, blowing smoke through the screen
on the window, trying to relax. When the cigarette is halfway burned down I go into
the bathroom that’s connected to our bedroom to put the cigarette out in the sink
because we don’t have any ashtrays, which is because I am not supposed to be
smoking anymore.
When I run water on the cigarette to put it out my eyes turn to the floor beside the
counter where, inside the trash can, there are five opened boxes for home pregnancy
tests. I turn the water off and bend down to sort through the boxes in the trash and I
find the little pregnancy tests beneath the boxes, some of them still a little wet from
Jane’s urine. I spend several minutes on the floor in the bathroom double checking
the instructions on the back of each of the boxes to get a good idea of what I’m
looking at and the final conclusion that I arrive at is that all of the home pregnancy
tests read positive.

I’m driving Jaime and Jacob to school today because somehow Jaime’s car has
overheated and one of the tires seems to be missing and as we pull out of the
driveway Jacob leans forward in the backseat to hand me a picture he drew with
crayons. At a red light I look at the picture: An enormous goldfish is somehow
hovering in a blue sky and it seems to be vomiting some sort of yellow liquid onto
an ash colored city at the bottom of the page.
“Its pissing from its mouth,” Jacob says, grinning into the rearview mirror.
“And somewhere in the distance is our house…drowning in urine.”
The light turns green and I pass the drawing back to Jacob, nodding.
“Very…creative.” I say.
“Houses…don’t…drown.” Jaime mumbles, pressing her forehead against
the passenger window with her eyes closed.
Henry leans forward again to turn on the car radio. A slow ballad plays
softly through the speakers before Jacob turns the knob until he finds a dead station,
static, and he leans back and sighs as we listen to white noise on the radio, driving
down Fifth street in the general direction of the high school and there aren’t any
clouds in the sky but somehow the sun doesn’t seem to be shining. It doesn’t seem
to be up there at all.

On the way home from dropping the kids off at school I spot a turned over
trash can on the side of the road and there seems to be a child crawling around
inside of it. I start to slow the car down to pull over but the traffic is too thick and

!26
after a minute or two I give up and speed the car up and I roll down the window and
light a cigarette and I turn the radio knob to a country station, then flip around until I
find a jazz song but the jazz song ends shortly after that and I turn the radio off and I
drive toward the house, smoking, not thinking about anything in particular until my
cell phone rings from my pocket and I pull it out and see that it’s Harold, the
manager at the Motel, and I answer it and Harold says, on the other end, “Douglas,
man, we have a problem.”
I pull into a gas station and park the car, turn off the engine.
“What’s the problem?”
“You want me to tell you over the phone?”
“Well…you called me. But…what, you want me to meet you in person?”
“I’m at the motel.” He says. “How far are you?”
“Ten minutes, maybe. Fifteen.”
“Alright.” He says, sighing. “Don’t expect to be happy.”
He hangs up and I sit still for a moment with the phone still held to my ear.
I take a deep breath, exhale, click the phone off, set it on the passenger seat, light
another cigarette and pull out of the gas station parking lot and head towards the
house to drop the kids off before meeting Harold at the Motel to see what the
problem is.

I pull into the motel parking lot and everything looks the same as it did
when I left it yesterday afternoon: the swimming pool is clean and there are children
swimming in circles, unattended. The vacancy light is not missing any letters. None
of the cars in the parking lot are on fire.
I park the car and get out, lock it, walk over to the front office and go
inside. Harold is sitting at the front desk playing with the little bell, staring at it with
a blank expression. He clears his throat when I enter the office and he leans back in
his chair and pauses a moment before turning to look at me.
“I haven’t called the police yet.” Is the first thing he says to me, and that is
not a good sign at all.
“Call them…for what?” I ask.
“I’ll show you.” He says, standing, pulling his shirt down over his belly.
He opens the door to the break room where Carlos is sitting at the table
eating a sandwich.
“Carlos,” He says. “Watch the front desk for a minute.”
Carlos nods as Harold shuts the door and takes a breath before walking
past me, out of the office, then out of the door. I follow him down the sidewalk, then
up the stairs. He stops at room 207 and pulls his master key chain out of his back
pocket, fumbles with the keys for a moment, then unlocks the door.
We walk inside and immediately there is a smell in the air like rotten fruit
and burning plastic. The beds are made the way they should be. Nothing is broken,
or even seems to be missing.

!27
 Harold leads me to the bathroom at the back of the room where he reaches
his hand through the half open doorway to turn on the light but doesn’t go inside.
He steps back and stands there, staring at the floor. I take a step to stand in front of
him and I look into the bathroom. The first thing I see is the blood. The floor is
linoleum so it won’t stain, but there’s so much of it I’m wondering if it might start
to leak through the floor into the downstairs bathroom. The second thing I notice is
the body that seems to be crushed behind the toilet, the arms and legs tucked into
the torso, covered in lacerations, gauged out holes in the chest and stomach. The
body appears to be female, though I’m not entirely sure at this angle.
Then I notice the head is missing. I turn to Harold who is still staring at the
floor.
“Where’s the head?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Alright. Call the police.”
“Alright.” He says, starting to walk across the room.
As he leaves I turn to ask him why he didn’t call the police to begin with
but he’s already out the door.
I stand and look at the body behind the toilet for a minute before turning
off the light and walking across the room. I step outside and close the door, lock it. I
lean against the guardrail and I light another cigarette.

When the police arrive I’m sitting in my car listening to the radio, keeping
an eye on room 207, concentrating on my breathing. Slow, steady breaths. I watch
the cop car pull into a parking space in front of the front office. I watch in the
rearview mirror as Harold emerges out of the front office and greets the two officers
then after a moment leads them upstairs, unlocks room 207 and waits outside as
they enter the room. Harold wanted me to take the cops up there because I’m the
owner of the motel and because he doesn’t like talking to cops, or mutilated dead
bodies for that matter, but I told him that he’s the manager and it is his responsible.

A while later an ambulance arrives and parks in the middle of the lot while
the two officers accompanied by two more who have just arrived carry the body out
of the room in a large body bag, down the stairs. I watch them load the body bag
into the back of the ambulance while a crowd of guests stand and watch it all
happening and I’m wondering why they need an ambulance when the woman is
already dead and what I’m also thinking is, this is really bad for business.

Before the officers leave they go through our guest list and mark down all
the names on a notepad. They ask Harold and myself questions, mostly Harold
because I wasn’t here when the body was first discovered. By the time they leave
Harold is covered in sweat, breathing heavily.

!28
 “Jesus…” He says, leaning forward in his chair, rubbing his face with the
palms of his hands. “This is so fucked up.”
“Your first one of these, isn’t it?” I ask, leaning against the back of the door
to the office.
He looks up at me. “You mean this has happened before?”
“Once.” I shrug. “Years ago. Not…quite like this. It was an overdose, I
think, but I’m not really sure.”
“Jesus.” He says, leaning back in his chair. “The motel business is fucked
up.”
“Yeah.” I say, sighing. “Sometimes it really is.”

When I get home Jane greets me at the door and the first thing she says to
me, almost in tears, is: “I don’t think Jacob likes to eat carrots anymore.”
She follows me into the living room where I take off my jacket and drop it
on the couch. I turn to her, clear my throat.
“Why’s that?”
“He didn’t…eat them at dinner last night.”
I step to her and give her a hug, which she doesn’t respond to. I pull back
and look at her.
“Honey,” I say. “The carrots were uncooked. They were sitting in a dish on
the table, raw, and some of the slices seemed to have little black hairs stuck to
them.”
“I didn’t know what to do with them.” She says, shrugging, walking away
from me, sitting on the couch. “I didn’t know if I should have cooked them. So…I
didn’t. They were okay though, right?”
“No one ate them.” I shrug, sitting down on the couch beside her. “But I’m
sure they were just fine.”
“You like my cooking, right?” She asks, looking at me, hopeful.
“Of course. You’re a wonderful cook.”
“Thank you.” She smiles, lays her head on my shoulder.
I put my hand in her hair and kiss her on the forehead.
“How are the kids?” I ask.
She breathes into my chest. “I don’t know. They’re in their rooms…I
guess.”
I close my eyes and concentrate on her scent, breathe it in, relax.
“How was your day?” I ask.
“It was good. I called in sick because I was throwing up.”
“You were throwing up? Are you okay?”
“I guess so. I started to feel better around ten, or eleven, but I stayed home
for the rest of the day anyway.”
“Yeah.” I take a breath, open my eyes. “How do you feel now?”

!29
 “Good. Hungry.” She says, rubbing her face on my chest. “How was your
day?”
A long pause follows the question, a moment of silence that I finally break
by saying, “What’s for…dinner?”

The dinner table is set for five and I’m not sure if this is Jane’s way of
trying to tell me something or if she’s just spaced out again. Henry sits to my left
while Jaime sits across from him. Jane and I sit across from each other at the ends of
the table and before we say grace Jacob pulls a mason jar of urine out from beneath
the table and sets it beside his water glass and stares at it, waiting for my protest,
which I decide is pointless and would only reinforce this behavior.
We say grace and Jacob takes a sip from his urine jar as Jaime leans into
her plate with her eyes closed and after a moment I realize she’s falling asleep. The
plates are covered in steamed green beans, creamed corn, grilled chicken breasts
with mushroom sauce. There are no carrots anywhere on the table.
Jane stares at her plate, arranging the food, separating the corn from the
green beans away from the chicken with her fork. I start with the corn and take a
few bites of the green beans before cutting the chicken into bite size pieces. The
chicken isn’t cooked in the middle but I don’t say anything about it.
Jacob devours the food on his plate with an unusual hunger and washes it
down with long chugs of urine.
Jaime continues to sleep, her face almost planted into the food on her plate.
“Jaime.” I say this loud enough to rouse her awake. “How was your…
day?”
She rolls her head on her shoulders to look at me through half shut, glazed
eyes.
“…What?”
“Did you have a good day at school?”
“Oh…yeah.” She moans, clumsily grabbing at her fork.
Jacob sets the empty Mason jar on the table. “May I have seconds?” He
asks.
“Of course.” Jane says. “Everything’s on the stove. There’s plenty of
everything. You can have as much of everything as you want.”
“Alright.” He says, rising from the table.
Jaime takes a slow bite of cream corn, quietly spits it back on her plate and
sets the fork down. “I’m…not hungry.” She says, almost giggling.
“Honey, are you sure?” I ask. “You look like you need to eat something.”
“She always looks like that.” Jane mumbles, taking a bite of her chicken
breast.
“May I be…excused?” Jaime asks.
Jane doesn’t say anything. I look at her, then at Jaime.
“If you’re sure you’re not hungry.” I say.

!30
 Jaime rises from the table and walks through the living room and up the
stairs to her bedroom.
Jane sighs and takes a sip of merlot from her wine glass.
Jacob emerges from the kitchen with a mountain of food on his plate,
enough to feed three people. He sits down and starts eating the corn first.
“Are you sure you’re going to eat all that?” I ask.
He nods, grinning with a mouthful of cream corn, some of it dripping
down his chin.
Jane sighs again, reorganizes her food with her fork, clears her throat,
nibbles on a green bean.
“Did you know,” Jacob mumbles, his mouth full of corn. “That a human
head weighs about eight pounds?”
He swallows the mouthful of corn, then shovels green beans into his
mouth.
“I did know that, actually.” I say, taking a sip of my wine.
Jane sighs again while Jacob looks at me, wide eyed, his cheeks puffy with
to many green beans in his mouth.
“You did not.” He says, shocked.
I set the wine glass on the table and cut another piece off the chicken.
“It weighs less than a bowling ball,” I say, taking a bite of chicken. “But
it’s not as easy to carry around.”
He looks at me, chewing. “Yeah,” He says, wide eyed.
“Can we talk about something else?” Jane asks, finishing her glass of wine,
reaching across the table for the bottle.
Jacob looks at her, then stabs a piece of chicken with his fork and sticks it,
whole, into his mouth.
“What would you like to talk about, honey?” I ask, finishing the chicken,
scooping up the rest of the green beans and corn at the edge of my plate, trying to
balance them on my fork.
“The…weather.” Jane says, pouring another glass of wine, shrugging.
There’s a noise from upstairs that sounds like something falling against the
floor and I’m wondering if Jaime is alright up there but I don’t bother to check on
her because she’s very sensitive about her privacy and the last time I was in her
room was maybe a month ago when I could have sworn I smelled something
burning from behind her door and thought maybe the house was on fire and when I
barged in without knocking she became very upset and began crying.
“What about the weather?” Jacob asks, chewing on the chicken breast.
“Don’t you think it’s…lovely?” Jane asks.
A moment of silence before I nod and say, “Yes. The weather is very
lovely.”

!31
 After that we sit and eat in silence for a while until Jaime comes down and
sits on the living room couch and turns on the television, flips through the channels
for a while before stopping on a news station.
Jane sighs as the reporter on the television talks about a possible relation
between kidney stones and standing too close to a microwave. I finish my plate of
food and am about to get up to go into the kitchen to see if Jacob left any food on
the stove when the voice from the television set says the word murder victim and
Douglas Johnson motel on east 51st street in the same sentence and suddenly
everything disappears but the sound of the voice saying that police don’t have any
suspects yet, that the body was found mutilated and dismembered in a vacant room
in the motel and the head of the victim has not as of yet been recovered.
Jaime continues to stare blankly at the television while Jacob and Jane both
turn to me, wide eyed and I reach for the wine bottle to refill my glass again,
concentrating on my breathing, thinking: this is definitely bad for business.

When I arrive at the motel in the morning I find out from Harold who somehow got
this information from the police, that the room where the woman’s body was
discovered was not checked out to anybody, that in fact the room had remained
empty for several weeks prior to the discovery of the body, initially by one of the
maids, then later by Harold, then myself, and the name of the woman is Mary,
whose last name Harold doesn’t know.
What I also find out is that the maid service has managed to get out most of the
blood from the bathroom but there are still some spots between the cracks in the
linoleum and a couple tiny drops on the edge of the carpet leading out of the
bathroom. The third piece of information I learn is from a detective Myers who calls
me a little bit before noon and asks if the room has been touched or arranged in any
way since the body was first discovered and when I tell him yes, it’s been cleaned
and sanitized like all of the other rooms he informs me that because this the
investigation is compromised. When I ask him why the investigation is
compromised because the room was cleaned he informs me that it is because
whatever evidence they might have found, traces of hair, blood, whatever, are now
removed from the crime scene. Then he asks me if anyone told me to keep the crime
scene secured and not let anyone in, including the cleaning crew, and I said no, no
one spoke to me. Then I turn to Harold who is leaning against a wall, staring at the
wall, and he looks at me and shrugs.
I apologize to the detective, explaining that it was a simple
misunderstanding and that we only want to help and he hangs up on me, and I look
at Harold who is avoiding eye contact with me and he says, “Man. I know…I know.
They told me, like, don’t touch anything, don’t clean anything, that they’ll be back
to search through the room, and, like, look for evidence or whatever but I totally
spaced man, and like knowing all that blood was in there, I, you know, couldn’t
handle it, man. I’m sorry.”

!32
 “The detective yelled at me, Harold. Why are detectives yelling at me
when I put you in charge of things like that? The detective is supposed to be yelling
at you. Not me. You’re the fucking manager, Harold. You are supposed to be
fucking managing this motel, Harold. Do you understand what that means?”
“Yes.” He says, trying to back away from me but the wall is stopping him.
“Do you, really?”
“Yes, I understand.” He says, shrugging.
I take a breath, lean back in my chair, rub my eyes. “Okay. Okay. So…give
me an update.”
“On…what?” Harold frowns.
“On…the…motel.”
“Oh…well, a lot of guests have checked out this morning, most of them a
day or two before they were supposed to.”
“Uh huh. What else?”
“Three guests have checked in since this morning. Probably just got into
town and haven’t heard about…you know.”
“Any families?”
“Uh, no, just…some guys.”
“Okay. Well…I want families. I want this motel full of families, happy,
smiling families that will swim in the pool and fill buckets of ice from the ice
machine and that will generally have a great time and will tell all of their friends
about how wonderful it is to stay at the Douglas Johnson Motel. Do you understand
what I’m saying?”
“You want…happy…smiling families to…stay here.”
“Yes. And I want a cup of hot coffee and a cigarette.”
“You…smoke?”
I take a breath and stand up and tell Harold, “Take care of this, Harold.
Please.” And then I walk out of the office and into the parking lot where I stand on
the sidewalk and watch a crow with one leg and torn wings, feathers sticking out of
it at strange angles hop awkwardly through a puddle of gasoline on the asphalt and I
light a cigarette and I breathe.

As a red mini van pulls into the parking lot I walk up the stairs and stand in
front of room 207. A man wearing a black suit with a black tie gets out of the
drivers side door of the mini van and walks into the office. Through tinted windows
I can almost make out the silhouette of a woman in the passenger seat, two children
in the back seat. I pull out my keys and open the door to room 207, walk inside,
close the door behind me, lock it. I stand in the room, breathing the air.
The beds are made. The ashtray is turned upside down on the nightstand so
that the no smoking sticker on the bottom is showing. A new Gideon’s bible is in the
bottom drawer of the dresser that the color television set is on with basic cable plus
HBO and the option for pay-per-view. The air conditioner below the window is on

!33
but not too high, just enough to make the room comfortably cold, a temperature that
allows you to be relaxed in a new environment but not so relaxed that you feel
inclined to organize your dirty socks and underwear in the drawers and nail picture
frames into the walls.
The bathroom is immaculate but because I was told that there are still some
slight hints of blood stains on the floor I look for them and I find them just to the
right side of the toilet, inside the cracks in the linoleum. I stand in the bathroom,
listening to the sound of the air vent. The towels are hanging where they should be,
folded and clean. No one would notice the blood in the linoleum unless they were
really looking for it. I decide I don’t see any trouble with letting guests into this
room and when I leave 207 I take the do not disturb sign off of the door and I walk
down the stairs into the parking lot where I get into my car as the mini van eases
across the parking lot to the end of the motel and I pull out on east 51st street in the
general direction of home.

Jane is at work and the kids are still at school when I get home so I have
the house to myself. I sit on the couch in the living room with the motel keys
dangling from the key ring on my index finger and I’m watching the television on
mute, an educational program about numbers and letters. The phone rings. I get up
to answer but decide I don’t want to talk to anybody right now and I stand in the
living room listening to it ring, then click over to the answering machine and the
voice of a woman identifying herself as the principal of the high school says she
would like to schedule a meeting with Jane and myself to discuss Jacob’s future and
then she hangs up and I sit back down on the couch and toss the motel keys on the
coffee table and I stare at the television for a while longer.
A sound from upstairs startles me, a high-pitched alarm, breaking the daze
the silent images on the television had on me. I sit for a moment before standing and
walking up the stairs. There’s alarm gets louder as I approach Jaime’s room. I knock
on the door even though Jaime’s not home, and then I open the door and walk
inside. The alarm is so loud it couldn’t be an alarm clock but I follow the sound to a
small shoebox underneath Jaime’s bed and when I open it there is a large wristwatch
glowing, blinking on and off. I pick it up and push buttons on the sides of it until the
alarm turns off. Then I notice, at the bottom of the box, several unused hypodermic
needles beside two bottles of clear liquid and I’m wondering, is Jaime a diabetic?
Would Jane keep that kind of information form me? I put the wristwatch in the box
and put the lid back on, slide it underneath the bed and leave Jaime’s bedroom,
shutting the door gently behind me.

The phone rings again when I’m in the shower, leaning against the shower
wall as the water sprays on my back and I’m focusing on my breathing, trying to
disappear, just for a moment.

!34
 When I get out of the shower I dry off using Jane’s towel because mine is
in the hamper and I walk down the stairs into the living room and I press play on the
answering machine while taking a cigarette out of my pack, walking toward the
sliding glass door to the backward. I stop and stand in front of the door when the
voice on the answering machine, a mans voice, muffled and static as if spoken
through a bullhorn says, “Room 207…Mary Ashworth…is dead.” And then the
message ends and I’m left in silence, standing between the dining room and the
living room, listening only to the sound of my own breathing.

At the restaurant not far from the house where the wine is a little expensive
but very good Jane is having the chicken marinara and I am having the spaghetti
and meatballs, a classic. Shortly after the food arrives, between mouthfuls of
chicken, Jane looks at me and asks, “So…there was a…murder…in your motel?”
I swallow a mouthful of spaghetti, shrug. “Yeah. Pretty bad one…they still
haven’t found the…never mind.”
“Yeah. I heard about it on the news.” She says.
“Yeah.”
“How are you doing?” She asks. “I mean, are you okay?”
“I don’t know. This might be really bad…this might…keep going…”
“But…well, it’s not like it’s the first time,” She says. “Remember when
one of Jaime’s friends overdosed in the motel? That was bad but we got through it.”
“Wait. What? Jaime’s friend?”
“Yeah.” She says, taking a sip of wine. “Don’t you remember that? She
was like…Jaime’s best friend…overdosed on…heroin…or something like that…
Jaime was a wreck for months.”
“Huh.” I shrug, take another bite of spaghetti. “I don’t remember that.”

In bed Jane is wrapped in the sheets and covers, lying fetal with her pillow
over her head, lightly snoring. I smile and crawl into bed and I wrap my arms
around her and I stay like that for a while, listening to her heartbeat, breathing.

There are actually birds singing outside the bedroom window when I wake
up. I roll over and Jane isn’t there. I get dressed and brush my teeth. I remember it’s
Saturday as I walk through the hallway. The house is unnaturally quiet which means
Jane and the kids are out.
I sit on the front steps and light a cigarette, watching traffic in the street, a
dog running in circles, chasing its tail. I grab today’s newspaper from the bottom
step on the porch and open it up to the local news section. I flip through the pages
for a while before deciding there’s nothing about the body in room 207. I finish the
cigarette and throw it in the street.
I walk up the steps as a golden Crown Royal pulls into the driveway. I
stand on the porch and watch a balding man with a large belly pushing through a

!35
white, buttoned shirt beneath a gray suit jacket. He wears sunglasses and scratches
at his mustache as he surveys the neighborhood, the yard. He notices me and walks
across the yard toward me.
“Good morning.” He says, pulling what looks like a black leather wallet
out of his breast pocket. “Detective Sparks.” He holds the what I thought was a
wallet in the air between us and lets it unfold, a god colored badge above a bad
photo ID of him with the word detective and bold print. He offers his hand. I shake
it.
“Douglas Johnson.” I say. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you have a moment?”
“Uh. Sure.”
He follows me into the house where I lock the door and we sit on the couch
in the living room.
“Would you like…coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
“Alright.”
“I’m here about the incident in your motel, Mr. Johnson.”
“Uh huh.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
“Well…we found a body in the bathroom of…room 207. Disfigured…the
head was missing.”
Detective sparks pulls a little note pad and a short pencil out of his jacket
pocket and starts taking notes.
“And…” I continue. “Later…Harold, the manager of my motel, who…
found the body…well, after one of the maids found it…first…Harold told me that
the woman was named Mary…Mary Ashworth, I think…and…that’s about it. I
guess.”
The detective looks up from the notepad. “What did you say her last name
was?”
“Uh…don’t you know that?”
“What did you say it was?”
“Uh…Ashworth, I think.”
“And that is the information that…” He looks at his notepad. “Harold gave
you.”
After a pause. “Yes. I…think so.”
“How did Harold come across this information?”
“I don’t…really know.”
“He didn’t tell you where he got this information?”
“No.”
“Mr. Johnson, no one outside of the police department and FBI, except for
the killer, perhaps, should know the victim’s last name. Most of what we know
about her is this…she was a prostitute…she didn’t have any friends, as far as we

!36
can tell…no relatives. This man…. Harold…should not have known what the
victim’s last name was.”
“I see…well…I don’t…I’m not sure he actually told me or not.”
“Mm hmm. Where could you have gotten this information, if not from
Harold?”
I stand up, remembering something. I walk behind the couch to the little
table where the phone is. I press play on the answering machine while the detective
watches me, frowning. A message from Jane plays, saying that she’s taken the kids
to a shopping center and will be back later. I press buttons, backtracking through old
messages until I find the one I’m looking for.
“Room 207…Mary Ashworth...is dead.”
I press stop on the answering machine.
“When did you receive that message?” The detective asks, writing in his
notepad.
“Uh…a few days ago…I guess. I think it was the day after we…found the
body.”
“I see.” The detective says. “And why didn’t you bring it to the
authorities?”
“I…don’t know.” I shrug, sitting back on the couch. “I guess I didn’t think
about it.”
“Mm hmm. That could be considered withholding evidence.” He says,
writing more things in his notepad. “It sounds like he’s using some sort of electronic
device to mask his voice. I’m going to have to take that tape with me when I leave.”
“Alright.”” I stand up, pull the tape out of the machine, sit back down,
hand it to him. He sticks it in his breast pocket and continues writing in his notepad.
“Do you know why some one would want to call you and leave that
message?”
“Um…no.”
“You don’t know anyone who might be involved in this?”
“No…I don’t think so.”
“Mm hmm.”
Okay,” I say, taking a breath. “Why…exactly are you asking me these
questions?”
“Where were you on the night of the seventh?” He asks me.
“Uh. Why? What happened on the seventh?”
“According to the mortician,” He says, scratching his moustache. “That is
the estimated date of the victim’s death.”
“Oh shit.”
“So,” The detective says. “Where were you?”
“What time?”
He flips through pages in his notebook. “Uh…anytime. Tell me
everything.”

!37
 I take a breath, exhale. “I went to the gym…I played racket ball with…
Jane’s…cousin. I went grocery shopping…I stopped by the motel…I came back
here…watched TV until Jane and the kids came home…we ate dinner…watched
TV…after that I guess I went to bed.”
“That was your whole day?”
“Pretty much?”
“Why did you stop by the Motel?”
“To…check on things…make sure everything was…running smoothly.”
“I see. How long would you say you were there for?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe an hour…two hours.”
“You didn’t see anyone suspicious while you were there?”
“Well…everyone in the motel looks suspicious to me, but…no, I didn’t see
anything out of the ordinary.”
“And you were seen at the motel. Is that correct? There are witnesses who
can verify that you were there?”
“Yes. Harold will tell you that I was there.”
“Actually he already has.”
“Alright.”
“You didn’t, by any chance, go into room 207 while you were at the motel,
did you?”
“No. I didn’t have any reason to.”
“Alright.”
“Am I a…suspect?”
“Probably not.”
“Oh. Alright.”
“How well do you know…Harold?”
“Pretty well, I think. We’ve been working together for…almost seven years
now.”
“I see.” He says. “And would you say you…trust him?”
“As much as I trust myself. He manages my motel. I have to trust him.”
“Would you say he is a stable individual?”
“If you’re asking if I think that he could have mutilated a woman and cut
off her head then the answer is definitely no. No way.”
“I see.”
“Do you have any other suspects? I mean, besides me and Harold?”
“We don’t have any suspects, Mr. Johnson.”
“That’s why you’re accusing me?”
“I’m not accusing you.” The detective sighs, closes his notepad.
“Well, it feels like it.”
“I apologize if that is the impression I have given you. I am simply trying
to find answers.”
“Alright. I understand.”

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 “Well…thank you for your time, Mr. Johnson.” He says, standing. “If you
think of anything else, or if something new comes up, be sure to let me know…
alright?” He hands me his business card.
“Alright.” I say, shaking his hand. “Best of luck to you.”
“Right. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.”
I watch him get into his car and drive off. I stand on the front porch and
smoke another cigarette as a little boy rides across the lawn on a tricycle, holding a
large stick between his teeth, making screaming sounds in the back of his throat.

By the time Jane and the kids get home it’s already dark and I’m sitting on
the couch watching the TV on mute. Jaime sits next to me and doesn’t say anything.
Jacob goes up the stairs and slams the door to his room while Jane tiptoes up the
stairs behind him, very slowly, holding her stomach in her hands.
I turn to Jaime, who looks like she’s asleep. “Is your mother alright?” I ask.
She rolls her head to the side to look at me. Her eyes open and she smiles,
faintly. “She’s still…bleeding…I think.”
“Bleeding? Why is she bleeding?”
“Oops.” She says, rolling her head to the other side, away from me.
“Jaime, talk to me.”
“I don’t…speak.” Jaime says.
I stand and walk around the couch and up the stairs, down the hallway to
our bedroom. I try the doorknob but it’s locked. I knock lightly.
“Jane?” A pause. “Jane, it’s me. Let me in, alright, honey?”
After a moment I hear the door unlock. I open it and walk inside the
bedroom as Jane collapses on the bed, rolling over. I stand in the doorway as she
lies there, breathing deeply.
“Are you…alright?”
“I don’t know…I don’t know.”
“What…happened?”
“I didn’t want…I’m sorry…I’m sorry.”
“Jaime said you were…bleeding.” I say, sitting on the bed beside her,
rubbing her leg. “Are you okay?”
“Jaime told you that?”
“Uh…yeah.”
“That bitch.”
“Honey…”
She rolls over, away from me. She starts to sob.
“You know…don’t you?”
“About what?” I ask.
“If you know then I don’t need to tell you.”
A moment passes. I listen to the sound of her breathing.
“The baby.” I say.

!39
 Jane sighs into her pillow. “Yes…the baby.”
“Well?”
“What?”
“Are you alright?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why…why were you bleeding?”
“You know…I met with Jacob’s…teacher.”
“Without me? I thought we agreed to go together.”
“Doesn’t matter…doesn’t matter…” She sighs.
“Well…what did she say?”
“Jacob…Jacob pees in his pants…all the time…he…peed on another
student…a girl that he’s been giving love letters to…he gave her a jar of his pee…I
think the father might file a…restraining order…”
“Jane. Listen to me. Why were you bleeding?” I ask, losing patience.
“I took the kids to the shopping center.” She says, rolling over again to
look at me.
“Yeah?”
“The shopping center with the clinic inside of it.”
“The clinic?”
“Abortion clinic.” She says, wiping tears from her eyes.
“Jesus…Jane.”
“Don’t be mad.” She says, shutting her eyes. “But I didn’t have enough
money for the abortion.”
“Wait…so you didn’t get the abortion?”
“So…” She says, rubbing her face with her hands. “I took the kids to the
dry cleaners across the street…to get a…clothes hanger…and…and…”
My eyes follow the movement of her hands down between her thighs
where she pulls up her skirt to show blood stained panties. There’s so much blood
I’m thinking it can’t be real, it can’t be her blood. But her skin is so pale, so white.
Her body is shaking.
“Jesus…baby!”
“I couldn’t…I couldn’t have another one…another…I couldn’t…I just
couldn’t do it!”
She’s hysterical now, sobbing, rolling on the bed, screaming. I grab a hold
of her in my arms, saying, “It’s okay…it’s okay…” And I just hold her…hold her
until she starts to relax, remembers to breathe again.
“We’re going to get you to a hospital.” I pick her up and she’s lying so still
now that it’s almost like holding a pillowcase full of blood in my arms.

“Your wife has lost a lot of blood…but she’s going to be alright. The…self
inflicted abortion was not altogether successful…but damaging in such a way that
the health of the fetus has been…compromised.”

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The doctor speaks in a toneless manner, making eye contact but showing no sign of
registering anything, acknowledging that he’s not talking to himself.
“We’ve…removed the fetus…” He says. “You can go in and see her now…if you’d
like.”

Jane lies in the hospital bed beneath the covers with her legs spread,
laughing…hysterically.
“…Jane?”
She keeps laughing. I lean into the hallway to look for a doctor but the
hallway is empty. I look back at Jane. She looks at me, stops laughing suddenly.
“Honey…” She says. “What did they do?”
I stand at the foot of the bed, look at her. “They…took your baby.”
“But…it was already gone.”
“No, honey. The clothes hanger didn’t quite…kill it.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Why didn’t you talk to me?” I ask, sitting on the bed. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”
She rolls her head on her shoulders, sighs. “Oh…it didn’t matter…it
doesn’t matter…just another child…another child no body wants.”
“We could have afforded to have another kid. It would have been tight but
we could have done it.”
“No…too late…too late.” She shakes her head slowly, side to side.
“Aren’t you happy?” I ask. “Having a family?”
She opens her mouth and looks at me. She sighs. They’ve got her in a
white hospital gown and she looks like the ghost of a dead patient, an unsuccessful
surgery.
“I think…” She starts to speak, stops, starts again. “I think…I need…
something.”
“Something? What? Help? A vacation? What?”
“Just…something.” She says before rolling over in the bed, falling asleep.

“When’s mom getting out of the hospital?” Jacob asks this while shoving a
slice of pepperoni pizza into his mouth.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I shrug. “Maybe Monday.”
“Is she, like, okay?” He asks.
“She’s going to be alright.”
“Where’s…mom?” Jaime asks.
Jacob turns to her, frowning. “She’s in the hospital, dummy. Remember?”
“Oh…” Is all that Jaime says.
“Jaime…are you alright?” I ask, taking another slice of pizza out of the
box, putting it on my plate.

!41
 After a moment of silence Jaime looks at me and lets out a breath of stale
air. “I miss…mom.” She says, shrugging.
“We all miss mom.” I say.
Jacob nods and finishes the slice of pizza.
“Mom never gets pizza delivered though.”
“Yeah…” Jaime says. “…Pizza.”
I look at my plate, at the table. I lean back in the chair and look at the
ceiling, at the couch in the living room, the muted television flashing blue and white
off the windows.
“Jacob.” I say, looking at him.
“Yeah?”
“You’re not drinking urine with dinner. Is something wrong?”
“Um…do you…want me to drink urine?”
“Sure,” I shrug, sighing. “I’m not sure I really care anymore.”
“Oh…” He says, seeming disappointed.
Jaime clears her throat and says, “Your own urine is sterile to your body. It
was already in there once, so it’s not going to do any real harm if it’s in there again.
It’s not exactly harmful but it’s sort of gross and I don’t think it’s a very good idea.”
Jacob and I both look at her, shocked. Jacob turns to look at me.
“She spoke…coherent sentences.” He says.
“Uh…yeah.” I say.
“Should we…like…call 911?”
“Uh…No, Jacob, I think it’s going to be alright.”
Jaime slouches down in her chair, staring at her empty plate on the table,
sighing.

I pick up Jane from the hospital and she’s wearing the clothes she had on
when I drove her here and she presses her head against the passenger window as I
drive through traffic and I roll down my window and light a cigarette, not even
caring if she says something or not.
“I’m not going to be an asshole about this,” I say, pulling into a
neighborhood road. “Alright? I’m not going to do the whole ‘what right did you
have’ thing because, really, I’m not sure I really care.”
She looks at me with tears in her eyes. I pull into the road our house is on.
“Do you love me?” She asks.
“As much as I ever did.” I realize this sounds wrong so I amend it: “Which
is very, very much. More than…anything.”
“I…love you…too.” She says. “But…”
I pull into our driveway, turn off the car and wait for her to finish the
sentence. But she never does.

!42
Harold swivels around in his chair when I walk into the front office of the motel and
he’s holding a newspaper in his hands and he says, “They found the murderer. Or…
like…they think they did.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, man. Check it out.” He hands me the paper. “They like, found him in the
street…he was…run over by a car, they think…because…he was dead…in the
middle of the street…and there was broken glass on him and he had a lot of…
broken bones. They think it was him that killed that girl because there were all these
pictures of her in his wallet, like, Polaroid snap shots, all cut up and stuff and there
were also pictures of her before she was cut up, and pictures of her head, like, in all
these different places…like he traveled around and took pictures of her head with all
these different places in the background …so, like, they’re pretty sure it was him…
and also there was blood on his clothes and stuff and I guess they did tests on it
because they said the blood on his clothes matched the victim’s.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. So, like, I’m wondering who the hell ran him over.”
“And why he still had on the same clothes.”
“Yeah.” Harold says, shrugging. “I was hoping this would be all drawn out,
like a movie, or something. I guess he, like, deserved it, though, getting run over
like that, just some guy crossing the street.”
“Yeah. I guess this means…that detective won’t be bothering us anymore.”
“Yeah, man.” Harold says, scratching his chin. “That guy gave me the
creeps.”
“So he did talk to you. I wasn’t sure if he was just fucking with me, or
not.”
“Yeah. I’m still not sure what it was all about though.”
“Yeah. That guy seemed pretty useless.”
“Yeah.” Harold says. “Yeah, man. Useless.”
“Does it say if they’ve found the woman’s head yet?” I ask.
“No,” Harold says. “I wonder what ever happened to it.”

At home Jane is cooking tuna casserole in the oven while Jaime and Jacob
sit on the couch in the living room, watching television.
At the dinner table Jaime breathes into the food on her plate while Jane
eats slowly, delicately, while Jacob shovels the food into his mouth and I notice he
only has a glass of water on the table, no urine.
The phone rings. I get up and walk into the living room, pick up the phone
and I hold it to my ear and I say, “Johnson residence. Douglas Johnson Speaking.”

Jaime Johnson:
I don’t feel anything when Jeffrey penetrates me from behind in the wrong
hole while I’m sucking on Jeremy’s cock, ignoring the taste, and after a while my

!43
tongue goes numb and I can’t taste anything at all and I don’t realize that he’s come
into my mouth until I start to choke on it as it runs down my throat.
Later, after we’ve cleaned off, Jeffrey tosses the balloon at me and I offer
to let them stay to shoot up with me but they both say, at the same time, “No, we
have to go.” Then they both look at each other and shrug and then they leave.
So I lock the door and shoot up without them and I lay on my bed for a while,
watching the ceiling change, and then there’s a knock on the door and my father’s
voice is saying, “Jaime. Time for dinner, honey.” And all I can do is laugh.

Jane Johnson:
The kids pile into the car as I’m wondering why they’re so excited about
going to a museum on a Saturday and Douglas is running late as always, still in the
house, probably making a sandwich or something, and Jacob leans out the back
window of the car to ask me, “Do we, like, have to pretend to love dad today?”
I ponder this for a moment before saying, “Not if I don’t have to.”

Jacob Johnson:
Kevin pulls the car over onto the side of the road and turns off the engine.
He looks back at me, smiling.
“What?” I ask.
“You want to see something…awesome?” He asks.
“Okay.”
Joe, who is sitting shotgun, grins and nods and pulls an old bowling ball
bag out from the floorboard and hands it to Kevin.
I look at them and frown.
“Are we going…bowling?” I ask, taking a sip from my juice bottle that
I’ve actually filled with my urine when the guys weren’t looking.
Kevin laughs and unzips the bowling ball bag and removes a woman’s
severed head from the bag, smeared with blood, the hair is tangled and stuck
together in wet clumps.
“Uh…” Is all I can say.
“Check it out.” Kevin says, tossing it into my lap while Joe starts cracking
up.
“Dude, like…is this…real?” I ask, turning it over in my hands, examining
the neck holes, the little stump of neck bone sticking out through meat and muscle,
or whatever.
`”Yeah, it’s real.” Kevin says.
Joe nods and starts coughing into a napkin.
“Where…the fuck…did you get this?” I ask.
“Dude, alright, so…check this out.” Kevin says, lighting a cigarette. “We
were, like, driving around, you know, and we fucking hit this guy, like, some guy
walking across the street. We hit him fucking hard and we both know he’s fucking

!44
dead, like, right away. But it was, like, almost midnight, and there was no body
around so we got out of the car to, like, check it out. So we get out and, yeah, the
guy is totally dead, all fucked up and twisted all weird, bleeding all over the street.
But like, he’s carrying this bowling ball case, and we’re thinking, cool, let’s go bust
up windows or something, you know? But then we get in the car and we’re driving
down little neighborhood roads and shit, Joe opens the bag to get out the bowling
ball to throw at some dude’s car but instead he’s just holding this fucking head and
he starts crying.”
Kevin starts laughing while Joe shakes his head and says, “No, dude. No
way. I did not fucking cry. Fuck you!”
“Oh whatever, bitch. You know you did.”
“How much do you think this weighs?” I ask, turning the head over in my
hands.
“Like, eight pounds, I think.” Joe says.
“Yeah,” Kevin says. “We measured it on my mom’s scale.” He starts to
laugh.
“Okay. Well…here.” I hand the head back to him. He stuffs it back in the
bag and hands it to Joe who zips it up and shoves it back under the seat.
“Did you see the expression on her face, dude?” Joe asks, turning around
to look at me as Kevin starts the car and pulls back onto the road.

“Yeah, I saw it. Totally...sad.” I say, looking out the window at houses and
cars and stop signs and pedestrians.
“Yeah, man.” Kevin says. “You should have seen it when I had my dick in
her mouth.” They both crack up, hysterical, and they give each other a high five as
I’m taking another sip of the juice bottle full of urine and I’m wondering how in the
hell things have gotten so fucked up.

MURAL THREE: CLOSETS AND PHONE CALLS

Figure 6: Womb And Jacket

My air is a confined space, unlit. The matches I throw against the wall
bounce into the carpet and most of them go out when they hit, but one or two, the
ones I let burn for a while before throwing them, those matches stay lit after they
fall into the hairs of the carpet and I think maybe the fibers in the carpet will start to
burn but I’m not entirely concerned about that right now.
Electronic hum of recorded conversations in a crowded space creep in
through the crack at the bottom of the closet door and the phone rings from the
living room and I wait a long time before deciding to answer it but when I finally
push open the closet door and start to stand up the phone stops ringing and the
answering machine picks up but who ever is calling doesn’t leave a message and
there’s only the sound of the dial tone for a moment, mixing with the static
conversations coming through my stereo, and then the answering machine clicks off

!45
and I lean against the wall outside of the closet and my eyes aren’t used to the bright
lights yet and it’s hard to see anything for a moment but that’s okay because there’s
not much to see in this hallway anyway.
I spin in slow circles around the living room and my paintings become
blurs on the walls. The distortion of light and sight is appropriate and I’m still not
happy with any of them, any of my work.
The phone rings again and I moan and walk into the living room and I pick
up the phone and I say, “Hello?”
“Oh, hi.”
“Hi. Who is this?”
“Sally. What are you doing?”
“Talking on the phone to you.” I sigh.
“Want to do…something else?” She asks, sounding confused.
“Reagan’s having a party I think I might go to.”
“Okay.” She says.
I hesitate, wondering if I should bring her along, decide it doesn’t matter
one way or the other.
“You want to come along?” I ask.
“Alright.” I shrug in the light from the street lamps above me.
“Where are you?”
“Close to your place. You at home?”
“Yeah. Getting ready.” She says.
“Okay. I’ll be over in a couple minutes.”
“All right.”
I hang up the phone and decide it’s an okay thing that Sally is coming over
and going with me to the party because I don’t think I’ve seen her in a while and she
always tells me the truth about what she thinks of my paintings and that is
something I respect in person. Sometimes.
I light a cigarette in the living room and stare at one of my paintings, Still
Life Metaphor, that is hanging on the wall by the front door and I decide it’s
complete crap but I don’t bother taking it off the wall because it may or may not be
much better than any of the other paintings hanging up and I wonder why I even
have all my work up on my walls, it seems narcissistic and self indulgent, or
something. But it doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m getting better at this and I can someday
replace all this crap with work that’s actually worth a shit.
I walk into the living room after putting the cigarette out in the ashtray on
the coffee table and I should be getting ready for the party, going through clothes,
finding something to wear, but I don’t really feel like it. I planned things differently
and I feel like a train wreck sometimes. Whatever.
After a while Sally shows up and comes in and sits on the couch and only
then do I start going through clothes in the closet and in piles on the floor to try to
find something to wear for the party. I end up finding an outfit that looks all right but

!46
I end up having to change again because it’s too similar to what Sally has on. In the
closet, I stare at the blank canvas for a moment, the only blank canvas I have left,
and I’ve had it for months and haven’t painted anything in months because this is
somehow a special canvas and I’m waiting for just the right portrait to paint, just the
right person, and I haven’t found that person yet and I think my biggest fear right
now is that I never will, and the last time Sally was here, in my house, she asked
about the blank canvas as if it was some sort of novelty, and she asked if I had
painted the perfect person’s portrait yet and when I remember this I get sort of
annoyed, but decide to forget it since it was a while ago and it’s kind of stupid
anyway and then I go into the living room where Sally is just sitting and staring at
the walls and I ask if she’s ready to go and she says yes so we walk out the door and
I lock it.
We take my truck and drive for just a little while and we don’t talk much,
or maybe at all because I’m not really paying that much attention, and then we get
to the party and there are way more people than I thought there would be and there’s
a dance floor that we have to walk through to get to the keg in the backyard and
there are lots of people surrounding the keg and we get our drinks and some guy
starts talking to him and I talk to him and start laughing because he’s an idiot but he
thinks I’m laughing at his jokes, which aren’t funny.
“So, like, I don’t ordinarily go to parties, you know, I mean, it’s not that I
don’t like parties…or people, I mean, I like parties, you know? It’s just, I’ve got this
band, it’s like…emo, but, you know, experimental, we do some covers but most of it
is, like, original material. We’re playing a show coming up, like, the third, or
something, at the Bottom Lounge, you should check us out, I think you would really
dig it. I play bass and I sing, like, back up, and stuff. Our drummer is really good, he
like blows so many other drummers away, he’s really good. The name of the band is
Bleed My Soft Tears, and I think you might like us a lot, you know?
Oh, I want to bite this guys nose off and he’s not cute and his hair is greasy
and too long and the bead on his loop ear ring is crooked and it bothers me and I
want to grab it and straighten it out or rip out of his ear lobe but I don’t do either,
I’m just nodding and smiling at his thrift store attempt at flirting with me. I have no
idea what he’s saying after a while, completely zoned out and looking around for
someone I know but I don’t know anyone here and then I realize that Sally has
disappeared, wandered off, and I tell the guy I’m going to go look for my friend and
he says he’ll come with me and I chug the beer and the words that come out of my
mouth are: “No thanks.” And I walk off, circle the crowd but Sally isn’t among
them so I go back inside and stand in the doorway and watch some guy talking to
Sally and they go up stairs and I’m thinking that was really fucking fast. So I stand
in the kitchen and pour a Cape Cod and drink it while watching the nonsense on the
dance floor and the strobe lights and the sound of the bad techno is giving me a
headache and I light a cigarette and drink the rest of my drink too quickly and then I
have to pee so I walk around trying to find a bathroom and some girl is passed out in

!47
the hallway and there’s a light on behind a door and I try to open the door but it’s
locked and a girl’s voice from inside says “just a minute” and then I hear her snort
and sniff really hard and after a moment or two the door opens and she walks out
rubbing her nose and stumbles down the hallway and I go into the room which is the
restroom, thank God, because I really need to pee at this point, and I lock the door
behind me and I wipe down the toilet seat and take I pee and there’s a little print of
a Francis Bacon painting tacked to the wall directly in front of the toilet and I start
laughing really hard to myself for some reason.
I light a cigarette in the bathroom and then I notice there’s a little baggy on
the counter by the sink and when I grab the baggie and look at it, it’s got a little
clump of cocaine left in it. I stick the cocaine in my pocket but then decide there’s
no point taking it with me so after I’m done peeing I pull my pants back up and
button them and I dump the little clump of cocaine on the counter even though it’s
probably not very clean and I crush the clump with my driver’s license and since I
don’t have any straws or anything I pinch one nostril and stick the other nostril
basically on top of the coke, and I snort hard and hover my head around to get all of
it and I lean up and snort and rub my nostrils and snort again and swallow and it
starts to run down my throat and I take a breath and I can almost feel my eyes
dilating and this is pretty decent cocaine and that girl was stupid to leave it in the
bathroom like that.
Then I look at the bathtub behind the dirty shower curtain and I want to
take a bath, but not here, and I think I’d like someone to watch, but maybe not, and I
don’t know if I really feel like being at this party anymore and maybe I’ll leave but
I’ll have to find Sally and pry her out of that guy’s hands or whatever, and I hope
they’re not having sex because I really don’t want to be here much longer. I thought
it would be a good idea to go to a party tonight because I haven’t really gotten out
of the house much except to go to work at the stupid restaurant because I spend
most of my time painting my stupid paintings at home or staring out the windows,
but I haven’t even been doing that very much recently. And sometimes I go out with
my little sound recorder and I sit in crowded places and record the noise so that I
can play it in my CD player at home while I paint.
When I come out of the bathroom I see someone I know whose name I
think is Eleanor and she’s sort of cool, fun to talk to, I guess, but she’s leaning
against the wall at the other side of the living room which is the dance floor and
she’s staring at the floor and she looks intensely bored and I don’t really feel like
talking to her right now so I grab a cup from the kitchen and I go back into the
backyard and pour another beer and drink it and the annoying not cute guy who was
talking to me earlier is talking to some other girl at the other side of the group of
people gathered around the keg and she’s totally not even half as cute as I am but he
might have a chance with her because she seems pretty drunk and she’s leaning real
close to him and laughing and he’s laughing with her. I look away from them and I

!48
finish my drink and maybe I’m feeling a little drunk but it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t
matter at all.
Finally I go back into the house and I don’t see Sally anywhere so I go
upstairs even though there’s a sign on the wall next to the stairs that says, party
people stay downstairs, which is really stupid, and I walk through an unlit hallway
and I knock on random doors, totally annoyed and bored and about to peel the paint
off the walls with my fingernails and car keys and none of the doors open and I
don’t hear any sounds behind the doors, or walls, or anything. I start calling out
Sally’s name, and each time there’s a faint groan, muffled, which I can’t tell if it’s
sally’s voice or not, and I keep calling her name but after a moment or two I don’t
hear anything at all and I’m annoyed enough at this point to decide Sally can find
her own ride home and then I go downstairs and shove my way through the dance
floor but before I get to the door I see Eleanor again and she’s looking at me,
smiling, and she walks up to me and blocks my entrance to the door and she starts
talking to me and all I want to do is get outside and into the fresh air.
“Hey.” She hollers over the horrible music.
“Hey. How are you?” I shrug.
“Good. Having a good time?” She asks.
“No.”
` “Me neither.” She says, not smiling. “This party is fucking stupid and I
think Reagan is fucking some other girl upstairs and I don’t think I even care
enough to go up there.”
“That’s…too bad.”
“Yeah.” She says.
“So…other than that, how are you?”
“Fine, I guess.” She says.
“Good. Well, I have to get going.”
“Oh. Okay. See you later.”
“Yeah. Uh, see you.”
I walk passed her and then I go out the front door and I cross the street and
unlock my car and get into it and close the door behind me and I start it and pull out
into the street then I start driving down the road and I don’t know if I’m going to go
home yet, or not, but either way I’m just glad to get out of that house because for
some reason the longer I was in the, the more I started to feel sick, and sort of light
headed.
I drive through street lights and flashing neon and unlit billboards and
empty intersections and passed unlit store windows and houses with no porch lights
and after a while I’m just driving because I feel like driving and I don’t care if I end
up anywhere at all. But then I realize I’m almost out of gas so after a while I pull
into this gas station which turns out to be part diner, but all the pumps are turned off
which is bullshit and the diner is closed and I’m about to drive off when I see a
figure standing by the payphone next to the closed diner and there’s something

!49
about him that I really don’t know what it is, but it’s something, and I pull into a
parking space next to him and he stands on the curb and looks at me.
I roll down my window and I ask him where he’s headed and he says he
doesn’t know and then I ask him if he’s lost and he says not really and he’s got this
kindness in his eyes, a sort of suffered joy, and I think I could probably fall in love
with his eyes, if nothing else, and I tell him to get in the car, that I’ll take him where
he needs to go, but really I mean I’ll take him home with me like a little stray puppy
dog and he says that he doesn’t need to go anywhere, and then I tell him to just get
in and I even remember to smile.

Figure 7: Thin Lines

I call Helen a little after dark and after four or five rings she picks up and
says, “Hello?”
“Oh, hi.”
“Hi. Who is this?”
“Sally. What are you doing?”
“Talking on the phone to you.”
“Want to do…something else?”
“Reagan’s having a party I think I might go to.”
“Okay.”
A pause, then, “You want to come along?”
“Alright.” I shrug in the light from the street lamps above me.
“Where are you?”
“Close to your place. You at home?”
“Yeah. Getting ready.” She says.
“Okay. I’ll be over in a couple minutes.”
“All right.”
I hang up and put the phone back in my purse and I start walking down the
street towards Helen’s house.
The wind is the temperature of a lover’s breath against my skin and I can
almost taste the metaphorical musk of something bad about to happen. I think of the
bad marks I made in Dr. Littman’s course this morning and then there’s the dull
ache of a knot retying itself at the bottom of my guts…but it doesn’t matter because
I suddenly realize that it’s not Sunday, like I thought it was, but Friday, the
beginning of the weekend, and though that should, or at least could make me feel
better about something, about anything, it doesn’t.
I walk passed brick houses with unlit windows and when I get to Helen’s
house the porch light is on and there is a black dog sitting on her front steps keeping
watch. I ring the doorbell and the porch light turns off. Darkness and then the panic
of headlights circling in a turnaround at the end of the road. The door opens and
Helen stands, bathed in light from inside the house. She flicks cigarette ash at my
feet and says, “Come in. I’m almost ready.”

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 I follow her into the house and shut the door behind me. She disappears
down an unlit hallway and I stand between the television set and the couch and look
at her paintings on the walls, wishing I had a talent, any talent. Sounds of a radio
station through blown out speakers coming from the bedroom at the end of the
hallway. I sit on the couch and grab a magazine from the coffee table and flip
through it, halfway consciously looking at the pictures.
Helen’s voice from the other end of the hallway: “How have you been?”
“Good. Bored.” I say, loud enough so she can hear me.
“How are your classes?”
“Bullshit. Waste of time.”
“You’ll get through them.”
“Yeah.”
I toss the magazine on the coffee table and look at a painting on the wall by
the front door and I don’t understand if it’s a portrait or a landscape, and maybe it’s
abstract and not supposed to be obvious but I never really understood abstract art
and I stare at the painting until it wouldn’t make any sense whether it was a portrait
or a landscape or anything else so I look away and I poke my fingers through the
ashtray on the coffee table, looking for remnants of a roach or something but there’s
only dead cigarette butts. I lean back and take a deep breath.
“How’s your dog?” Helen asks, still in the bedroom.
“I don’t…have a dog.”
“You don’t? I thought you did.”
“Nope.”
“A little terrier, or something? A little black puppy?”
“Uh. No. Maybe you’re thinking of somebody else.”
“Maybe.”
She appears in the living room wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white tee
shirt. She stands there looking at the floor for a moment, then our eyes meet.
“That’s what you’re wearing?” She asks, looking at my tee shirt, my pants.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” I ask.
“Oh, fine.” She disappears down the hallway again. I lean my head back
and I rub my eyes, moaning, and I don’t feel very excited about the party, or
anything else that’s going on. But maybe it will be all right.
From the bedroom, Helen asks: “Do you have any money?”
“Sort of. Why?”
“I want to get some ice cream.”
“Ice cream? Like, why?”
“I like it.” She says. “I like ice cream.”
“It’s cold outside.”
“It’s not that cold.”
A moment passes.

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 “Yeah.” I shrug, stare at a spot on the carpet beneath the coffee table. “You
don’t have any money?”
“No way. I’m a starving artist, remember?” There’s almost laughter in her
voice.
“That’s so lame.” I say. I don’t know what to say after that, so I don’t say
anything else.
The stereo in her bedroom gets louder and there’s the mumbled home of a
dozen conversations at once and I remember that the only CD’s Helen owns are
CD’s of recordings she makes herself by wandering around crowded areas and
recording the white noise of dozens of stranger’s conversations at once. She listens
to these recordings whenever she’s painting, and sometimes just when she’s hanging
out and it bugs the shit out of me.
“Are you, like, going to take forever?” I ask.
But I don’t guess she heard me because she doesn’t say anything for a long
time after that. So I sit and stare at the floor and zone out to the sound of the music
and then she appears beside me, lighting a cigarette, wearing khaki pants and a light
blue button shirt with puffy sleeves. She’s wearing lipstick that matches mine and
she has on eyeglasses, with thick black frames and she’s also wearing earrings, little
metal loops with tiny amber beads on them.
“You ready?” She asks, grabbing her car keys from the coffee table.
“Yeah.” I stand up and follow her to the front door.
“Where are your roommates?” I ask.
She puts her hand on the light switch, then she glances into the living room
and she turns off the lights.
“I don’t have any room mates.” She says. “You might be…confused.”
I follow her down the front steps and the black dog that was there earlier
isn’t there anymore and we get into her truck and she starts the engine and pouts her
cigarette out in the ashtray in the dashboard then she pulls the truck out of the
driveway and into the street and she turns up the radio and drives down the street,
sniffing.
“You smell something?” She asks.
I sniff the air, shrug. “No. Not really.”
“You don’t smell gas?”
“I…guess not.” I shrug again.
“I smell…gas.” She says. “I hope that’s…not a bad thing.”
“I don’t know. Maybe you’re imagining it.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you have any…pot?” I ask.
“No.”
“Okay.”
We drive for a while. I look out the window at flashing neon signs and
darkened windows and people walking in the streets and there’s a dog pissing on the

!52
side of a dumpster in the ally and I laugh at it and Helen looks at me and I look at
her and I stoop laughing and shrug and look out the window again. The streets are
wet and shining in flashes of red and orange and white from flashing neon, and I
grab a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and I push in the dashboard lighter
and stare out the window some more, at a group of nuns that look lost and each one
is holding a black umbrella above their heads. The lighter pops out and I light the
cigarette with it and I roll my window down just a crack so not too much rain water
will fall into the car because even though it’s not raining anymore, there is a lot of
water on the wind shield and on the hood of the car and I don’t really want to be wet
right now.
After a while we start driving through small neighborhood roads, dim
yellow porch lights, American flags hanging limp and dead from little wooden
sticks stuck into the yards and flower beds.
We pull into a driveway of an unlit house with no cars in the driveway and
I’m thinking maybe the party was cancelled but Helen gets out and I get out and she
locks the truck and has her purse hanging from her fist and I follow her across the
street to a house with about thirteen or fourteen cars and trucks scattered all over the
yard and in the driveway and some of them are parked on the street. We get to the
door and the music coming from inside is some sort of techno thing, drum and bass,
and it’s so loud the windows and the front door are shaking. Helen tries the
doorknob but it’s locked so she rings the doorbell and I notice there are people
hiding in the bushes and they seem to be making out and moaning and I think
maybe they’re fucking and the porch light comes on and bathes them in light and
they’re definitely fucking and it seems to be decent sex because the girl is making a
lot of noise and she’s on all fours in the bushes getting fucked from behind and she’s
got scratches and dirt on her face and she looks at me and we make eye contact and
her expression makes me feel nauseous. The door opens and a guy with a shaved
head and no shirt on stands in the doorway. The inside of the house behind him is
throbbing and alive and there are strobe lights and multi colored light bulbs in all
the light fixtures and the lamps and there are dozens of silhouettes of people dancing
and writhing around behind him and the air is thick with smoke and the smell of
cigarettes and pot and incense and what may or may not be opium.
The guy grins as he stares at Helen’s chest, than mine, and he pulls the
door open wide and lets us in. I follow Helen into the chaos of the house as the guy
who let us in almost definitely checks out both of our asses as he closes the door
behind us and locks it.
We maneuver clumsily through the chaotic dance floor or whatever and
I’m bumped into maybe five or six times and people spill a lot of beer on me and
I’m wondering where the keg is, or whatever, and I’m following Helen towards the
end of the house to check things out. We get into the kitchen where the linoleum
floor is sticky and stained and there are about a dozen bottles of different kinds of
liquor and mixers and Helen leans against the counter and grabs two little red plastic

!53
cups and pours two screwdrivers and hands me one and I take a sip and she takes a
sip of hers and we walk to the back door which is open and we walk down the steps
and there are even more people in the back yard than inside the house and they’re
all surrounding what I assume is the keg and the hum of conversation is almost
something in a way and maybe it’s just because I’ve gotten so used to hanging out
in Helen’s house with her wacko conversation records playing in the background.
I stand beside Helen at the edge of the swarm of people around what I’ve
determined is definitely the keg, or many kegs, and I light another cigarette from
Helen’s pack and she lights one two and we take sips of our drinks and smoke
cigarettes and survey the group of people and I’m looking for someone I know but I
don’t see anyone I know and I decide that’s probably a good thing because I go
down the list in the back of my head of people that I might know what would show
up at this party and I realize none of them are very cool at all and not very good to
hang out with or even have a casual conversation with or even look at, most of the
time.
Helen elbows me and points to the other side of the main group of people,
all of which are holding beers, most of which are smoking cigarettes, and what she’s
pointing at as a naked guy talking casually to, like, three girls all holding beers and
playing with their hair and listening strangely attentively to what the naked guy is
saying. I look long enough to notice each girl, at different pauses in the
conversation, casually stealing glances at the guy’s penis which is thick and maybe
three or four inches and dangles between his thighs like a soggy sausage and then I
look away and throw my cigarette in the wet grass and drink the rest of my
screwdriver which Helen made unusually strong and then I push my way through
the crowd and Helen follows me and I stand beside some guys pouring drinks from
the keg and I think I hear someone say something about the keg being Fat Tire,
which is decent beer and when some of the guys see me, and then look at Helen,
they move apart and let us pour our drinks and Helen casually flirts with one of the
guys at the keg but I don’t pay attention to their conversation and I pour my beer
and step back so Helen can pour hers and the guy is still talking to her and she’s
talking back to the guy, giggling.
I chug my beer for some reason and it tastes okay and I take a breath and
burp and look around the crowd some more then I look at Helen and she’s standing
beside the keg with her cup in her hand, listening to the guy talking and leaning in
close when she doesn’t hear what he says and they’re both smiling, and she’s
giggling after every couple of sentences. I shrug and walk back up the stairs and
into the house where I mix another drink in the kitchen and sip on it while watching
the mass of people on the dance floor but the flashing lights are giving me a
headache so I turn away and there is a guy standing in the kitchen beside me and
he’s looking at me and grinning. He has a cigarette in his hand and the smoke is
circling the lights in the ceiling. I lean in close to him.
“Can I bum one?”

!54
 He grins quietly for a moment, then his expression shifts and he says,
“Sure.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of Camel lights and pulls
one out and offers it to me. I grab at and put it between my lips and lean into him as
he pulls a lighter out of his other pocket and lights the cigarette for me. I blow
smoke above our heads.
“Thanks.” I shrug.
“Yeah.” He says, sniffing. “Having a good time?”
“I guess.” I shrug and my body starts moving gently to the music and I’m
not really looking at him, but he’s staring at me, which is okay, I guess.
“You don’t look like someone who enjoys this kind of party.” He says.
I lean closer to him so we can hear each other better.
“What do you mean?”
“You seem too…grown up.” He says.
I take a sip of my drink and wonder if that’s supposed to be a compliment,
or not.
“Thanks…I guess.” I shrug, continue sort of dancing to the music, but sort
of not. My body is just moving around but my feet stay planted on the sticky floor.
“You go to school?” He asks, pointing at me with his hand that’s suddenly
holding a large bottle of whisky.
“Yeah. You?”
“Just graduated.” He says.
“Cool.”
“You a junior?” He asks, taking a chug from the whisky bottle.
“Sophomore. I guess.”
“You want to smoke some pot?”.
“All right.” I shrug, trying not to seem interested.
“I’ve got some up in my room.”
“Cool.”
I finish the rest of my drink and set the empty cup on the kitchen counter
and follow him through the dance floor where somehow he pulls me gently through
the chaos of people dancing drunkenly and he maneuvers us so gracefully through
the crowd that I’m not bumped into even once and no drinks are spilled on me and I
feel like this guy is some sort of ghost and by holding my arm I’m a ghost too and
no one can touch us when we’re like this.
We go up the carpeted stairs to the second floor where there is some guy
passed out in the darkened hallway and as we pass by he lets out a low moan and his
head rolls over on his shoulders and he’s got wine or something spilled all over the
front of his white tee shirt and it almost looks like blood.
We walk into a room and the guy closes the door behind us and I guess it’s
his bedroom because there’s a bed in the corner of the room and it’s covered in
sheets and blankets and three pillows. There are posters and framed prints of

!55
paintings on the walls. The paintings all seem to be by the same guy and they’re like
portraits, but the faces and the bodies are all blurred, distorted. The paintings start to
creep me out a little and I guess the guy notices me staring at them because he starts
talking about them and they’re all over all the walls and I’m thinking maybe this
guy is obsessed with this artist, for some reason.
“Francis Bacon.” The guy says, taking off his jacket and dropping it on the
bed. “You know of him?”
“Um. No. I don’t think so.”
He stands beside me and we look at the paintings on the walls.
“He didn’t just paint the people,” the guy says. “He painted their souls,
their emotions. It’s like he painted them as if they were dead and he was bringing
them back to life in the paintings. “
“Okay.”
“You like them?” He asks, looking at me.
“Yeah.”
One of the paintings in particular grabs my attention and I lean in close to
look at it and in the corner of it, on the little white border at the bottom of the
painting, it says: 41. Two Figures 1953. The print is of two blurred figures on a bed
and the figure on top seems to be assaulting the figure on the bed, on bottom, and
they’re both nude and it seems to be violent, obscene, and it is black and white but it
seems like the actual painting would be in color and I wonder if he tore these out of
a book or something.
Then I notice a large frame on the other side of the wall with three
paintings set in the frame side by side and the caption at the bottom of each print
says: 14. Three Studies For A Crucifixion. In the first print, there are two distorted
men in nice clothes and at the left bottom corner there appears to be two skinned
and bloody legs or something, some kind of dirty meat on the surface of a bed or a
table or something. The men are looking at the legs or whatever and one of them is
gesturing toward the door at the other side of the room. The second print is a
mangled and slaughtered person on a bed, and the person is completely distorted
and is just a mess of meat and blood on the stained mattress and the third print is a
bizarre tower of butchered meet and ribs all formed together, vertically, and there
seems to be a ring of large bones sort of in the back ground behind the tower of
meat and bones and then I notice the meat or whatever seems to have a mouth with
jagged teeth near the bottom of it and there’s a dark blur at the bottom of the print
and I don’t know what that’s supposed to be.
“His crucifixions,” the guy says, and I almost forgot he was in the room
with me. “He painted crucifixions as a bunch of butchered meat, a distortion of
blood and intestines, because, as he used to say, ‘isn’t that all crucifixions are,
really?’”

!56
 I pull my eyes away from the paintings, which are really starting to creep
me out, and I look at the guy and he’s looking at me, instead of the paintings, which
is good, and I decide to ignore the paintings.
He shrugs and goes over to the side of the bed where he opens a drawer in
a little dresser or something and he shifts clothes and socks around in the drawer
and he pulls out a large bag of weed and a glass pipe with orange and red and
yellow and blue and purple swirls all over it. He sits on the bed and I sit beside him
and watch him start to load the pipe and the weed looks really good, it’s probably
kind because I can see the crystals and the little greenish purple swirl of the dead
leaves and it looks really moist and I can smell it as soon as he opens the bag.
“What’s your major?” He asks.
I look at him, shrug, smile, look at the floor.
“English.”
“Yeah?” He smiles, nods.
“Bullshit major.” I sigh. “I mean, what am I going to do with it after I
graduate?”
“Become a teacher?” He suggests, packing the bowl with his thumb and
licking his lips.
“Maybe. But I don’t want to be a teacher.”
“What do you want to be?” He asks, handing me the pipe.
“I…don’t know. A writer…maybe.”
“What do you write about?”
“I don’t…write much. But, people, I guess. Mostly poetry.”
“The human condition?” He grins, handing me a lighter.
“I guess so.” I shrug and hold the pipe to my lips and light it and inhale and
the smoke is thick and I almost cough it all out but my body relaxes and I hold it in
for several moments before letting the smoke out and then I hand the pipe to him
and he takes it and holds it to his lips and lights it and inhales and holds it in and
then exhales and the room is full of smoke that slowly begins to dissipate.
“I’d like to read some of your writing.” He chokes, handing the pipe to me
again.
I take another hit off the pipe as the guy picks up a half full water bottle
from the little dresser beside the bed and he untwists the cap and drinks some of the
water and then I hand him the pipe and he offers me the bottle of water and I take it
from him and I take a long chug from it because I guess I’m really thirsty, even
though I didn’t realize I was until just now.
The guy takes another hit off the pipe and sets it on the little dresser and he
takes a cigarette out of his pack of Camel lights and he lights one and sets the pack
on the dresser. He takes a couple drags then hands the cigarette to me and I take it
and take a small drag and smile, shrug, and hand it back to him.

!57
 He takes a drag then puts the cigarette out in a little glass ashtray on the
floor beside the bed and opens a drawer in the dresser and starts to rummage around
in the drawer.
“What’s your name?” I ask, starting to feel really light headed all of a
sudden.
“My name is Reagan.” The guy says. “This is my house.”
“You’re…Reagan?” I ask, laying back on the bed, feeling so…sleepy,
without warning.
“Yeah. You came with Helen, right?”
“Yeah. You know…Helen.”
“Yeah. She’s a cool girl.”
“Yeah.” I moan. “You don’t have…any of her…paintings on your…walls.”
“She won’t sell any of them to me.” He says.
I let out a low moan and roll over on the bed.
“You feeling all right?” He asks, and there’s a shift of weight on the bed
and I guess he’s probably looking at me and I don’t care because I’m so tired, so
tired.
“Just…sleepy.” I sigh. My eyes are closed and I don’t think I could open
them if I was paid to do so.
“You can take a nap…if you want.” He says. “No one will…bother you.”
His voice sounds threatening, or maybe not threatening, but I don’t know if
I trust the sound of his voice, but it doesn’t matter because I can feel myself slipping
slowly, slowly into unconsciousness and there’s nothing I can do about that right
now.

Figure 8: Ambitious
The girl on the bed is totally hot and unconscious and I think I could do
just about anything to her body, her insides, and she wouldn’t know, wouldn’t wake
up and I think about it for a moment. I don’t have any condoms but it doesn’t matter
and maybe I could just take her clothes off, touch her, feel her, paint her portrait and
put her clothes back on before she ever wakes up and she’ll never know and I’ can
put her portrait in a show or something and maybe she’ll see it one day while out
with her fake artsy friends and she’ll wonder why it looks so much like her and why
even the marks on the body and goose bumps on the nipples look so identical to her
own. But the face would be blurred of course. My faces are always blurred.
Finally I decide to just fuck this chick before she wakes up and I’m starting
to undo my pants when there’s a knock on my door and I take a breathe and stare at
the girl on my bed for a moment before saying, “What?”
“Dude.” Julius says from behind the door. “There’s a horse in your
swimming pool.”
I stare at the girl on the bed, blink, take a breath.
“A…what?”

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 The door opens and Julius walks in. I could have sworn I locked the door.
“Dude, there’s some sort of pony or something swimming around in your
pool.”
“Um.” I look at him, frowning. “What…do you mean?”
“Dude, just come downstairs, check it out.”
“No, you…you get rid of it, or…give it some beer.”
“Do ponies like beer?”
“I really do not know the answer to that question.” I shrug, turn back to the
girl on the bed.
Julius notices her and points at the bed. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Just…some girl.”
Julius has left the door wide open and James walks in holding a bottle of
vodka that he may have taken from my kitchen and he stands beside Julius and
hands him the bottle and Julius takes a swig and passes it back to him and they’re
both looking at the girl on my bed.
I light a cigarette and wait for them to leave.
“Reagan.” James says, staring at the girl on the bed. “Do you have any…
cocaine?”
“No. No cocaine. And…I’m sort of busy at the moment…so…”
“Are you sure you don’t have any cocaine?” Julius asks.
“No. I mean, yes, I’m sure. They’re smoking opium in one of the bedrooms
downstairs. Go bother them, or something. I’m busy.”
Sounds of footsteps on the staircase at the other end of the hallway, then a
group of people are standing in my doorway all pointing and pushing and blowing
smoke and talking to each other and James and Julius just step beside me and
everyone wanders in as if it’s all just a big party in here and some of the people are
drinking beers and some of the beers spill on my carpet and people are flicking their
cigarette ash on the floor and stepping all over CD cases and records on the floor
and then someone’s dog comes running in and starts chewing on my ankle so hard I
think he’s drawing blood and then some guy with a cowboy hat runs in and starts
swing a thick rope around that hits me several times in the face until someone
manages to grab it from him and they try to light it on fire but it won’t light and it
just smokes up the room and smells like burning rubber and finally I’m just so
pissed off that I scream: “Would everyone just leave me alone, I’m trying to date
rape this chick!”
A sudden hush falls over everyone in the room and I’m almost certain a lot
of the people downstairs heard me too because right as I spoke there was a brief
pause in the music as if the whole thing has been choreographed and after a moment
of silence everyone in my room starts laughing hysterically and I hear laughter from
downstairs too and then there’s a noise behind me and the girl on the bed starts to
wake up and she sits up and rubs her eyes and says, “What’s…going on?” And then
everyone starts laughing even louder and beating on the walls and whistling and the

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dog starts howling and humping my leg and I am suddenly so embarrassed I could
just die.

Figure 9: Jacket And Womb

The diner is closed but the orange and red neon lights shine off the snow in
the parking lot, the street, the bushes. The glow is iridescent, haunting. I stand at the
pay phone with my hands in my pockets. I don’t have any change, any bills. Not
even a wallet. Three rusted keys hang from a bent key chain that’s tied to my belt
buckle with a piece of a shoestring. The wind begins to blow and I wonder how long
I’ve had these same clothes on. White tee shirt beneath a tattered Army surplus
jacket. Gray dress slacks. Black socks inside molded and torn black steel-toed
boots.
Traffic is scarce on the freeway behind me. Ignore the sounds of children
and dogs, families in cars, their voices blurred to a static gibberish as they pass by. I
turn away from the payphone and watch the road for a while and a moment of
silence passes before an old battered truck stutters into the parking lot from the
feeder road and cruises to the gas pumps. It sits, idling for a moment. The driver
must eventually realize the gas pumps are turned off because the truck starts to pull
away but instead of getting back on the feeder road the truck circles around the
pumps and cruises towards me, towards the closed diner and eases gently into the
parking space to my left, bathing the darkened diner in its headlights.
I stand on the curb and stare at the tinted windows, glitter and shine of
flashing neon lights, frosted with snow and ice. The driver side window rolls down
with an electronic hum. Skeletal face of a woman reflected in the lights bouncing off
the snow on the asphalt.
“Where you headed?” Her lips move with a mechanical rhythm as if her
jaw is wired shut and takes all the concentration and strength to form words.
“I don’t know.” I shrug, stare at the snow caked on her front bumper. “No
where, I guess.”
“Are you…lost?” She asks this as her eyes glance from my face to my
tattered clothing, to the snow beginning to fall gracefully from the sky, and then
back to my face again.
I look at the half eaten moon, the dim yellow street lights over the
highway, the jagged tips of pines and junipers in the distance beyond the streets and
power lines, swaying faintly in a breeze, the branches covered in snow.
“Not…really.” I shrug.
The woman pauses, as if hesitating to say something. I know she’s going to
offer me a ride before she does, and it doesn’t matter one way or the other because
there is really no place that I really need to be right now.
She takes a breath and smiles, faintly.
“Get in.” She says. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”

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 I don’t need to go anywhere.” I watch my breath escape my lungs and
disappear into the rising exhaust from her car’s tail pipe.
“Just get in.” She smiles.
I shrug and circle the truck to the passenger side where I pull on the door
handle. It’s locked. She pushes a knob on the side of her door and the lock on the
passenger door pops up with a click. I open the door and she brushes cracked CD
cases and a hairbrush off the seat and onto the floor. I wipe the snow off my jacket
and close the door.
The woman shifts the truck into drive. It’s an automatic, a luxury vehicle
that shifts itself. She pulls out onto the feeder road. Heading south, I think.
“I hope you like dogs.” She says, turning down the CD player in the
dashboard, which seems to be playing static.
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to my place.” She says.
“And…you have a dog?”
“No.” She says, pushing in the cigarette lighter in the dashboard, pulling a
cigarette out of a pack in her lap. “But the house smells like dogs…for some
reason.”
“All right. I like…dog smells.”
She throws me a crooked smile and I feel a knot untying itself in my guts.
The snow is starting to melt in some parts of the fields around the freeway. But it
will snow again, it will freeze again. This is only a brief lapse from the bitter cold
and harsh elements and I tell myself I need to remember that.
“You aren’t a…strangler, are you?” She asks, suddenly stern, serious.
I turn to her, surprised, though I shouldn’t be.
“Um. No, I’m…just a guy. I’m harmless.”
“Okay,” is all she says.
And I remember, or realize, that no one is ever completely harmless, not all the
time. But I am not really a threat and I think she knows this, somehow.
We keep on the freeway for a while, dark except for the dim lights
hovering over the roads like tiny police helicopters, like enormous lightning bugs
whose lights are going out, dying.
“Why…why are you taking me to your home?” I ask, staring out the passenger
window at blurred visions of concrete and tree trunks through the frost on the glass.
“You don’t want to?”
“No. I mean, no, I do. It’s just…why do you trust me?”
“Maybe I don’t.” She shrugs.
“Fair enough.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I don’t know.”
“I feel like I should help you.” She says. “It’s cold and it’s almost…a
holiday, or something, and you’re all alone in the streets, or whatever.”

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 “All right. Um. Thank you.”
“Is that good enough?” She asks.
“So…this isn’t a sex thing?”
She glances at me briefly before turning back to the road.
“Do you want it to be?” She asks.
“I don’t know. I just…I want you to be comfortable.”
“That’s…sweet.” She says, sighing. “We’re almost there.”
She pulls off the freeway onto an exit road and time stands still for a
moment. I remember the last time I was with a woman, not sex, just with her, sitting
beside her, breathing her scent.
It must have been months ago, a year maybe, almost, Flash of short blonde, almost
brown hair, and the taste of blood in my mouth. She shifted into 2nd and 3rd with a
mechanical gracefulness and I remember wondering how long we had been driving
before she lost control of the car and we dropped off the edge of the road, the edge
of the world, and crumbled at the bottom of a wooden and gravel ditch. The
windows had shattered and the woman was dead when I woke up, breathing
mouthfuls of my blood. Her head was split open and her scalp was hanging off her
skull in a way that meant I could look at the smooth slopes and cracks of her skull,
the wrinkled gray sponge of her brain, but I never did.
Time continues again and we pull into a frost-covered driveway of a small
house with a yard covered in long, un-mowed grass and wet stepping stones leading
to the front steps. She turns the engine off and I realize I don’t know what her name
is.
“It’s Helen.” She says, smiling as she opens her door. “My name is Helen.”
I flinch at the ease and casualness of reading my mind.
“I’m…my name is Silas. Did you just read my mind?”
“…No.” She frowns, shakes her head.
I get out of the truck and close the door, then I follow her towards the
house, and up the front steps. She unlocks the door and steps inside and turns on the
lights in the living room. I follow her into the house and close the door behind me,
then I lock it out of instinct, habit.
Her house is alive with blinking Christmas light strewn around, all over the
walls and bookshelves in the corner. The effect is a static cheerfulness, almost to the
point of psychosis, and it’s very blinding. Memory flashes to a room made of wood
and flashing lights, red, and blue, and green, and purple, and the thin, pale wrists are
cut vertically to let all of the blood out. The sheets were ruined and I shake my head
to loosen the image from my mind.
I cross the living room and stand beside a red couch that appears to be
made of velvet. She stands in the doorway of what looks to be the kitchen.
“Thirsty?” She asks, leaning into the doorframe with a…cat-like grace. Her
body is thin but not so thin that she looks like a junkie. She wears a fake fur coat
over a light blue shirt. Her pants look like they are made of wool, purple, faded. Her

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hair is impossibly bright red. She doesn’t wear very much make up and she doesn’t
need to.
“Water would be great. Thanks.”
She goes into the kitchen. Sounds of running water. She comes back with
a glass of water, no ice. She hands me the glass of water and in her other hand she’s
holding a sesame seed bagel.
“I didn’t really need to ask if you’re hungry, did I?” She asks, smiling
faintly.
“Not really.” I shrug.
She hands me the bagel and I immediately take a big bite out of it. It tastes
strange, but it’s just stale, too many days old. I finish half of the bagel before she
stops staring at me. I take a sip of the water and I wonder how long it’s been since
I’ve had something to drink. Water, or anything else. I chug the water and set the
glass on the coffee table, then I finish the rest of the bagel and I’m starting to feel
better all ready.
Helen motions for me to sit on the velvet couch and I hadn’t even realized
I’d been standing the while time. I sit on the couch and almost fall asleep it’s so
comfortable. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve slept. She offers me a
cigarette and lights it for me and sets a glass ashtray on the coffee table in front of
me. She sits beside me on the couch and lights a cigarette.
I smoke my cigarette like a spastic and stab it out in the ashtray before
she’s half done with hers. She puts her cigarette in the ashtray anyway and eyes me
with a delicate frown, an expression like broken glass. I can almost hear the sirens
in my head. She sighs, grins, stands up.
“You can watch me take a bath…if you want.” She says, sliding out of her
fake fur coat like a snake shedding its skin. The paintings all over the walls are
static and blurred, contorted like nightmares and they’re starting to creep me out. I
don’t think I have the strength to survive another poisonous woman.
“If…you want.” I shrug.
“Don’t worry.” She says, smiling as she slips off her shoes and leaves them
on the floor as she makes her way toward a darkened hallway. “I bathe with my
clothes on.”
I smile and her expression changes. She points at a black case on the
windowsill.
“Pick something to play.” She says, pointing at a black CD holder on the
floor the size of three bibles stacked on top of each other. “I’m going to take a bath.”
She disappears down the hallway, towards the bathroom. I unzip the CD
holder and flip through the pages. All the CD’s are copied discs, each labeled with a
location and time and date and nothing else. Train Station, 5-08 8:01-9:35 AM, Dog
Park 7-23 3:15-5:39 PM, Bus Station, 9-15 11:30 AM – 1:13 PM, and so on. She’s
got hundreds of these, and nothing else. I find a little CD player on a windowsill and
I pull out one of the CD’s (Shopping Mall 3-30 5:50-635 PM) and stick it in the CD

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player and press play. Sounds of static of a hand held recorder, then the
meaningless, nonsense hum of a hundred conversations at once, the moaning white
noise of a room full of strangers all speaking at once. Gibberish blur of nonexistent
words and I’m starting to fall in love with this woman already. I turn up the stereo
so that Helen can hear it from the bathroom and then I hear her giggle girlishly from
behind a door. I follow the sound of her voice and running water to an open
doorway where I stop and look at her in the bathtub and I guess she was lying about
bathing with her clothes on. Bubbles are rising up with the filling bath water and her
breasts, her thin ribs aren’t quite covered up. I wasn’t prepared for the intimacy of
naked skin. I make a sound in the back of my throat like choking. Her expression
doesn’t change and she’s flicking cigarette ash into her bath water. Smoke rises from
her knuckles and circles the lights in the ceiling. With her foot she turns the knobs
until the water shuts off.
“Do you like my music?” She asks, grinning.
I smile, nod. “I feel like I’m in a womb.”
Her eyebrows lower, she presses her lips together and stares at me for a
moment, just a moment.
She arches her back and her breasts rise out of the water like life buoys, but
I’m not going to look at her body again until she’s really ready for me to see her, to
really see her.
“Have a seat.” She says.
I take three steps and sit down on the toilet seat. I realize she’s not washing
herself, just lying in the water and it occurs to me that’s how I bathe, too. Except I
think she knows a trick to it because I always end up keeping my foul odor and
since she picked me up in the diner parking lot, all I’ve been able to smell are
strawberries.
She hands me the cigarette she’s been smoking. I take a drag and blow
smoke at the ceiling.
She turns to look at me.
“Do you like me?” She asks.
I take a breath, hand her the cigarette.
“I’m…probably falling in love with you.” I shrug, smile. “But let’s not get
into that just yet. Why do you ask?”
“I’m a curious kitten.” She says.
“Is there going to be some guy banging on the door at some point,
wondering why the door is locked and there’s some strange guy in the bathroom
with his woman?”
She takes a breath, exhales. “If there is, It wouldn’t make any sense. I
would tell him he’s got the wrong address…and it would be true.”
“That’s a good answer.” I laugh, faintly. “So…there’s no one…attached to
you?”

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 She sighs, dips the cigarette in the bubbles and bathwater then tosses it to
the linoleum floor.
“Ask me that again…in the morning.” She says.
“Um. All right.”
“Do you like Chinese food?” She asks.
“Sure.”
“There’s a menu on the fridge…a place that delivers out here. It’s…pretty
good.”
“Okay. I’ll call them. But…are you sure we haven’t met before?”
“I look familiar to you?” She asks, smiling.
I shrug. “Never mind.”
“I saw your face on the news once.” She says, staring at the bubbles in the
bath water. “But it wasn’t you.”
“Who…was it, then?”
“It was your ghost.” She smiles.
“Oh. My ghost was on the news?”
“He thought that he survived a plane crash.”
“But…he didn’t?”
“No.” She looks at me, smiles. “He was a ghost.”
“I should probably tell you.” I take a breath. “I sometimes have blackouts.
Episodes.”
“How romantic.” She says, then gives me a look, smiles. “Women take a
lot of care of you, don’t they?”
I ponder this, smile at the floor. “Like the only women left in the world are
mothers…nurses.”
“You like it, though.” She says.
“Sometimes.” I shrug. “As much as anything else.”
“Do you want me to take care of you?” She asks.
“I want you to…be happy.”
She looks at me. I look at her. A moment passes. I watch her light candles
that are lined up all around the edge of the bathtub. When she’s lit the last one I flip
the light switch off and the bathroom is alive with flickering candlelight. Helen
submerges her head beneath the surface of the bath water. I watch the ripples on the
surface of the water, shifting the bubbles around and I start to wonder how long she
can hold her breath.
Then she rises for air and her hair is slicked back like a wad of sheets that
drapes down her back and over her shoulders. She rests her head on the tiled wall
behind her and she breathes lightly with her arms resting on the edges of the tub. A
thousand conversations at once and for a while neither of us say anything. Then she
speaks and I can feel my heart beating as if it’s hooked up to a speaker system in my
chest.
“What are you thinking about?” She asks.

!65
 I take a breath, smile. “Pudding.”
“What kind of pudding?” She asks. “Vanilla? Blood pudding?”
“Something like that.”
I watch the lids of her eyes flutter like insects.
“You can go make yourself comfortable…” She sighs. “If you want to.”
“I’m already comfortable.” I say. “But all right.”
I walk out of the bathroom, shut the door behind me and walk into the
kitchen where grab the menu for the Chinese place from the refrigerator and I find a
phone in the living room but when I call the number there’s no answer and I figure
the place is closed like everything else. I hang up the phone and stand in the living
room and look at the paintings on the walls for a little while. The paintings are
blurred figures and emotions, static, and I make the connection between the
paintings and the recordings of humming conversations and I realize these paintings
were done by Helen.
I sit on the couch and stare at the blank spaces between the paintings on the
walls for a while. The sky opens up and it begins to rain. I panic for a moment, out
of instinct, because this past year or two I haven’t been used to having a roof over
my head.
If I concentrate hard enough I can hear Helen’s body move and shift
around in the bath water. Then I concentrate on the CD that’s still playing and I lose
myself in the faceless hum of a thousand conversations at once.
When Helen is finished with her bath she appears in the light from the
lamps in the living room and she’s wearing the same clothes that she had on earlier.
“How are you?” She asks.
“Fine. You?”
“Squeaky clean.” She grins.
“You don’t have a television set.” I say.
“Nope. TV bores me.”
“You listen to stranger’s conversations instead.”
“Yeah. And paint.”
“Yeah.” I glance around the room. “I’m impressed.”
“You shouldn’t be.” She sighs.
She turns and disappears into the hallway, then a moment later she returns
holding a wad of sheets and pillow in her arms, which she tosses on the couch.
“What time is it?” I ask.
“Night time.” She says.
“It’s alright if I sleep here?”
“Where else would you sleep?”
I ponder a moment. “Good point.
“Okay. Well. Goodnight, Silas.”
“Goodnight, Helen. And…thank you.”

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 She disappears into the hallway again. I lean back on the couch and notice
three cigarettes on the coffee table next to a pack of matches and a little plaster
ashtray. I lean forward and light one of the cigarettes.
When I finish the cigarette, I get up and circle the living room, turning off
all the lights. Then I lie down on the couch and I pull the sheets over me and I press
my head into the pillow and then I close my eyes and I wait to fall asleep.
The dream is of me asleep on the couch, and the walls are on fire. I’m
pissed off that the walls are on fire because it seems like every time I go somewhere
new something completely terrible happens and buildings are inevitably destroyed.
So instead of running around and trying to get out, I ignore the fire and try to go
back to sleep because I think the walls on fire are stupid.
Then I’m awake and the sun is up and shining through thin curtains over
the windows. I hear Helen’s foot steps on the carpet and I lean my head up to look
at her and she’s standing in the kitchen, wearing the clothes she had on last night.
“Good morning.” I yawn.
“Good morning, sleepyhead.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost noon.” She smiles. “Did you sleep well?”
“I don’t know.” I blink.
“Do you eat breakfast?” She asks.
“Not really.”
“Me neither.” She says.
“What are we going to do today?” I ask, immediately realizing it sounds
presumptuous and weird.
She holds up a little digital sound recorder. “Urban field recordings.” She
says.
“More voiceless humming conversations?”
“Yep.”
“All right.”
“Okay. Well. Get ready.”
“I am ready.”
“Then put your shoes on.”
“They are on.” I say.
“You sleep with your shoes on?”
“Sometimes.” I shrug.
“All right. Well. Let’s go.”
“Okay.” I grab the second to last cigarette from the coffee table and light it.
I pull the sheets off me and fold them up and put them one the couch. I follow her
out the door and wait while she locks up, and then we get into her truck and she
pulls out of the drive way and starts driving down the road.
“Where are we going?” I ask, blowing smoke out the cracked window at
falling snow in the air.

!67
 “A diner.” She says, turning left at a stop sign. “I figure the clinking of
mugs might be a nice effect.”
We drive for a while and soon the downtown scenery turns to grass
covered hills and decrepit houses and I realize how close the middle of no where is
to the big cities and the idea bothers me, for some reason. I think of Vegas, where
you drive for hours in the desert and there’s nothing out there at all and then without
warning you’re in the middle of a flashing neon circus and humanity is going insane
and desperate all around you.
I throw the cigarette out the window and stare out at wheat fields and grass
and trailer homes and power lines and leafless trees covered in snow.
I always feel anxious, uneasy when I’m the passenger in a vehicle. Behind
the wheel, I have no problem, and what I’m thinking is, it’s either that I don’t like
someone else to have control over the car because I don’t trust anyone to not roll the
car over and kill us all, or it’s because I don’t like to be incapable of causing the car
to crash and roll over in case it ever becomes necessary to do so. Either way.
“Do you ever read the comic strips?” Helen asks.
“What, like, in the news papers?”
“Yeah.” She says.
“Not really. Not anymore. Garfield says ‘I hate Monday’ and then every
one is supposed to laugh hysterically. It’s fucking bullshit.”
“Yeah. Well. Did you ever read Andy Capp?”
“The one where that Irish bum got sloshed at the pub every morning and
came home to his fat angry wife who would immediately beat the shit out of him
with a dough roller?”
“Yeah. That one.” She smiles, excited for some reason. “That happened in,
like, every single strip. It was ridiculous. I don’t know how that got into the papers.
Little kids read that shit.”
“Yeah. It was the best strip they had though. That, and Calvin And Hobbes.
“Oh, Calvin And Hobbes is the best ever.” She says.
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Anyway.” She says. “You kind of remind me of Andy Capp.”
I grin and ponder this, wondering if it should be an insult or not.
“I don’t drink anymore.” I smile. “And I’ve never been married.”
“Well, there’s something about you that makes me think of Andy Capp. Or
the other way around. If you drank all the time and had a fat angry wife, you would
totally be Andy Capp.”
“So would any other guy.” I say.
“You also remind me of a sock puppet.” She says. “Sometimes the hand is
up your ass, and sometimes it’s not.”
“I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
A moment passes. I listen to the sound of our breathing.
“How come you don’t drink anymore?” She asks.

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 “Bad things happen when I drink.” I shrug.
“Like what?”
“Black outs. Sometimes people…get hurt.”
“You get violent?”
“Sort of. I have before, from time to time.”
“How long has it been?”
“I don’t know. A year or two.”
“Do you remember much of what happened when you were…like that?”
“Not really. Most of what I know is stuff that people told me after I
sobered up. It was never very pretty.”
“Are you glad you stopped?” She asks.
“Well…if I hadn’t, I’d be dead. So, yeah. I guess it was a good decision.”
Neither of us says anything for a while after that. The blurred scenery
doesn’t change for several moments. We seem to be going no-where and I start to
wonder if time has begun to stand still again.
But then we’re pulling into the gravel parking lot of an old diner called
Diner and we park and get out of the truck and Helen locks it and I follow her inside
where the floors are stained the color of coffee and the few customers all have on
baseball caps and lean into their food as if to keep from making eye contact with
anyone.
We sit at a booth next to a window and a balding middle-aged woman
appears beside our tables and drops two menus on the table.
“What to drink?” She speaks in monotone and stares at the little order pad
in her hand while pulling a pencil covered in teeth marks out from behind her ear.
“Water for me.” I say.
“Sweet tea with ice and two lemons.” Helen says.
The woman disappears and Helen looks at me and sighs.
“Relax.” She says.
“I’m relaxed.”
“You’re acting like there’s a snake up your ass.”
“Oh. I don’t know what that means, but…sorry.” I grin. “I’ll try to relax.”
A moment passes. The waitress comes back and sets our drinks on the
table. She disappears again and we study our menus for a quiet moment. Patsy Cline
plays softly through speakers in the ceiling.
I take a sip of water and realize my throat has sand in it.
A couple of cars pass by on the interstate outside the window. I stare out
through the glass at gravel and distant specks of road kill.
We both set our menus down at about the same time and after a while the
waitress comes back and, without making any eye contact, she asks us what we’ll
have.
“I’ll have a club sandwich with mayonnaise, no mustard, and home fries.
Please.” Helen says.

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 A moment of silence and I realize it’s my turn.
“Um. Do you have coffee?” I ask.
“Yes.” The waitress says this like I’ve just stabbed her in the eye with a
nail, then asked about coffee.
“Okay. Well, I’ll have some coffee. And…a cheeseburger. With bacon…
and cheese. And fries.”
“What kind of cheese?” The waitress asks.
“I…don’t know.”
The waitress writes things down on her little order pad then disappears
again. I wipe a cold sweat from my forehead with the palm of my hand.
“Are you okay?” Helen asks.
“Probably.” I shrug.
“Do you need to go to the bathroom, or something?” She asks.
“When are you going to start recording?” I ask.
“After the food comes. So…don’t talk until it’s done, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I take a breath and choke down a mouth full of vomit. “I
think…I think I’m having a nervous breakdown.”
“Here? Now?”
“I guess so.”
“And that sounds so unlike you.” Helen says. She comes into focus and
she’s almost smiling. “Okay.” She says, pulling her purse onto the table and taking
something out of it. “Here are my keys. Go lie down, or something. If you want to.”
It takes two tries to get the keys out of her hand, for some reason. My
vision is blurring, darkening. I stand and take the necessary steps to the door. Then
I’m outside and the sunlight blinds me. It starts to snow again. I welcome the cold,
the chill in the bones like coming home again. I unlock the passenger side of
Helen’s truck and I crawl inside wondering why the hell she trusts me not to steal
her truck. I shut the door and curl up in a ball on the seat and I hug my knees against
my chest. I’m afraid my body parts are going to rot off. This doesn’t happen very
often and it’s only because of a traumatic blow to the head years ago, and
sometimes I don’t mind it so much but only because I’ve never been in a situation
before where somebody else had to deal with my own brain-damaged shit.
Time stands still outside of the truck but the snow continues to fall,
somehow, defying the phenomenon of frozen time. My breaths are shallow and
calculated. I am a child, a blurred gray and red little boy, a snowflake the color of
ash and the taste in your mouth when you catch me on the tip of your tongue is
bitter, bitter.
I let my hand drop off the seat onto the floorboard and the fingers graze
through soil and fibers and whatever else is ion the floor of Helen’s truck. Then I
feel something thin and sharp beneath a wrinkled candy bar wrapper. I pull it up into
my line of sight and I’m looking at a paper-thin razor blade, rusted and caked over

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with what appears to be dried up soda pop residue. I roll it over in my hands for a
while, my eyes fixated on it like a daydream.
But my left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and when I
associate the sting of a laceration with myself I look at the jagged line opening up in
the palm of my hand. I pull the razor away and drop it to the floor of the truck. A
second passes where nothing happens and then the cut lets the blood out, like
bubbles of red oil escaping through a crack in the earth’s surface, the bottom of an
ocean. The blood comes out in streams and I have to tongue my palm to keep from
staining Helen’s seats.
The snow falls. The snow falls and I am reborn. The breakdown passes like
a waking up hung over.
Flowers grow backwards, upside down and the roots dry up in the sunlight.
Drowning goldfish swim through candlelight and holes in the sky and I must be
dreaming again but I start to feel better already.
I find an old fast food napkin on the floor and I wrap it around the palm of
my hand to keep from dripping blood everywhere. The crotch of my pants is stained
crimson with my blood in such a way that it looks like I’ve pissed blood in my
pants.
I don’t know how long I’ve been out here. It could be days but Helen
would have come out long before that to check up on me, or at least kick my
retarded ass out of her truck so she could drive home and forget she met me. I push
the passenger door open and fall out of the truck like a body bag. I stand up and
walk back to the diner. The blood loss, though it wasn’t much at all, can’t have a
very positive effect on me and I figure what I need now is to get some food in my
belly. But I’m feeling better.
I walk through the diner and sit across from Helen in the booth. The food
hasn’t arrived yet.
“How long was I out there?” I ask.
She looks at me and lowers her eyebrows.
“Like, a minute.” She says.
“Really?”
“Yeah. How do you feel?”
“Better. Hungry.”
Her eyes shift to my hands on the table.
“What…happened?”
I look down and raise my palm up. The blood is soaking through the
napkin but I think it might stop soon.
“I cut myself.”
“How?”
“Shaving.” I smile. “Hairy palms.”
“Hilarious.” She says. “Let me see it.”
“Not here. Later.”

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 “Okay.” She frowns, and looks at my hand until I pull it away and set it on
my lap beneath the table.
“So. You want to tell me how you lost that finger?” She asks, pointing at
the space of my other hand where my index finger used to be, the lump of pink and
gray scar tissue at the knuckle. I was wondering if she’d noticed it yet.
“Um. Choking hazard. I’ll explain that later.”
“You’ll explain everything later, I guess.” She sighs, still staring at the stub
where the finger used to be. “It looks like it has…teeth marks on it.”
“Yeah. Long story.”
“Fine.” She shrugs.
We eat our food. I finish my burger within minutes and watch Helen nibble
and contemplate over each bite like a bird on Ritalin. Helen is a delicate eater,
systematic and deliberate.
She looks out the window and starts talking with her mouth full. Mother
never taught her any better.
“So.” She swallows. “Tell me about yourself.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Oh, come on.” She says. “Paraphrase.”
“Um. All right.” I take a deep breath and collect the series of events in the
back of my head.
“A woman I loved killed herself and I couldn’t save her. I saved a woman I
didn’t love from being murdered, probably, but only after she was raped at least
twice. And my finger was bitten off when, before she died, the woman I loved took
too many sleeping pills and I was sticking my finger down her throat to make her
vomit the pills up and she bit my finger off, and she…swallowed it.”
“Jesus.” She says, taking another bite of her sandwich. “Okay. That
explains that. And what have you been doing since then?”
“Wandering, being lost. A plane fell from the sky, crashed into a building I
was in. I survived but a lot of people died.”
Associating myself with the past brings back memories of the things I’ve
done, the people who have died, and I still don’t know why the police haven’t
caught up with me yet.
“When was this?” She asks.
“I don’t know. A while ago. Couple years.”
“What kind of plane was it?”
“Don’t know. It seemed pretty big at the time. Could have been a small
plane but the building was pretty much fucked. I think it’s been torn down since
then, replaced with a shopping mall, or something. Maybe a health care center, a
free clinic.”
“What else?” She asks.

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 “Well…I had a new family for a little while, a sort of stitched together
vagrancy that could have been white fences and PTA meetings but it didn’t really
work out that way.”
“Why not?”
“Just didn’t. Sometimes things just fall apart and we don’t know why.”
“Yeah.” Helen nods and eats the last bite of her sandwich.
“What about you?” I smile. “It’s your turn.”
“You want my whole life story?”
“Nah. Just the details. The plot twists, the hooks. Paraphrase for me.”
She grins. “All right. Well. My mother died giving birth to my little sister
and I hated her for it.”
“Your mother?”
“No, my sister. And then she died a little bit after I went away to college.
My sister, I mean.”
“How’d she die?”
“Car accident.”
“Were you sad?” I ask.
“No. I still hated her for making mom die.”
“Are you sad about it now?”
“No.”
‘ “All right. What else?”
“Well, I’m still in college but I’m about to graduate. I just got some
inheritance money that will help with paying back student loans.”
“Who died?”
“My grandmother.”
“Was she nice?”
“She was an angel.”
“Yeah. Sounds about right. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. It’s all right. She was lost, falling apart. Whatever.”
Anything else?”
“I started painting when I was a little girl. After college I hope to get into
graduate school.”
“That’s wonderful.”
“I guess.” She shrugs.
After a while the waitress appears and drops the check on the table. I
realize I don’t have any money. I look at Helen but she waves her hand in the air as
if to say ‘Don’t worry about it’, so I don’t worry about it and then she pays and
leaves a decent tip and we stand up to leave.
We walk out and get back in the car and she pulls out of the gravel parking lot and
we start driving back towards her house.

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 We get to the house and park and walk inside. I walk into the living room
and sit on the couch as Helen disappears into the bedroom and shuts the door behind
her.
I light the last cigarette from the coffee table and I stare at the walls and the
framed paintings for a while, almost meditatively. Then Helen walks out of the
bedroom holding a stack of maybe three canvases with their backs facing me. She
sits down on the floor beside the coffee table and keeps the canvases held against
her chest.
She lays the canvases in her lap and the first one is blank which she sets to
the side and holds up the one beneath that for me to see.
“No one besides me has seen any of these before now.” She says.
Blurred image of a man hovering menacingly over a nude form wrapped in stained
sheets on a bed. Drips of crimson, the color of blood, dripping down the halls
behind them. A door to the left of the two figures on the bed is open and a small
child, very crisp and clear in detail in contrast to the blurred and distorted figures on
the bed, stands in the doorway and watched what is happening on the bed.
I stare at the painting for a long time. I can smell blood on the canvas, in
the walls. I feel the child’s breath on the back of my neck, becoming mist in the
darkened hallway.
I look at Helen and her eyes are shut and before I say anything she hands
me the next canvas without opening her eyes.
“Wait. That one is perfect.” I say.
She opens her eyes. “You like it?”
“Of course. But that doesn’t matter. It’s fucking perfect.”
“Keep going.” She says, looking at the canvas in my hand. I look down at
it and take a breath.
It’s a portrait, but different. Blurred, not like a face, at all, really. It’s more
like what could be happening behind the face, within the mind, the brain inside the
face. The eyes in the face are scratched out but in a sort of abstract way, as if they’re
there but they’re not supposed to be seen. The torso beneath the head is wrapped in
a grey, soiled straight jacket.
“That one’s called…self portrait of a shipwreck.” Helen sighs.
“I don’t have words to talk about these paintings.” I say, looking at her.
“Just look at the last one.” She says, handing it to me.
This third painting is a mind fuck. No blurs, no distortions. A close up of a
woman’s vagina. Very detailed, almost life-like. The vagina is all sewn up with
thick black stitches. The skin and soft tissue around each stitch is pink and looks
raw, sore. I stare at it for a while and realize the orifice is stitched together as if the
vagina is a wound that wouldn’t heal on its own. Or at all.
I can tell Helen is waiting very attentively for my reaction as if this is some
sort of a test. My brain wanders absently for the proper response before deciding
there isn’t one.

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 “I don’t know how to tell you how beautiful your art is.” I say, looking at
her. “But it is. “
“Are you in love with me yet?” She asks, grinning. I think she might be
blushing.
“Of course.” I smile, shrug.
“Good.” Her grin widens.
“Your cheeks are red.” I say.
“I’m embarrassed.” She shrugs.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She says, and she leans over and kisses me on the forehead.
I look at the canvas on the other side of the coffee table and point at it.
“That one’s blank.” I say.
“I’m going to paint your portrait.” She says, standing up.
“Oh. Shit. You want me to take a bath or something first?”
She picks up the blank canvas from the coffee table and starts to walk
towards the bedroom.
“No.” She says. “I want you just the way you are.”
I stand up and stretch my back.
“You learned that from Mr. Rogers, didn’t you?”
“Among other things.” She disappears into the bedroom.
“What are you doing?”
“Come here.” She says.
I walk into her bedroom and stand in the doorway. She circles the room as
if looking for something. There is no furniture, just a single mattress on the floor.
The wood floor in the bedroom is splattered, stained with paint of all different
colors. The walls have splatters of paint on them too. She opens a closet door and
starts pulling boxes and things out of it and piling them on the floor. There’s a five
disc CD player on the floor beside the bed and she stops fussing over the things in
the closet long enough to twist around and press play and after a second sounds of
conversation hums come out of the speakers.
“Hey. You didn’t record the diner.” I say, feeling bad about messing that up
for her.
“Yes, I did. You just didn’t know it.”
“But we were talking the whole time.” I say, sitting on the floor by the
doorframe and leaning my back against the wall.
“I decided I wanted your voice on tape.” She says, smiling, stacking more
boxes on top of each, looking for something. She pushes three boxes to the side and
shoves the rest back into the closet She then pulls a wooden tripod out and sets it on
the floor facing away from me. She then grabs a milk crate and sets it beside the
tripod, then she puts the canvas on the tripod and opens the boxes by her feet. She
sits on the milk crate and sorts through the boxes which are filled with all sorts of

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brushes and paint tubes and little pieces of cardboard with all sorts of colors mixed
on them all dried out and cracking.
She sets everything up and takes a deep breath. She leans forward into the
blank canvas and looks over it at me.
“Okay. Good. Stay like that. Just like that.”
I stay how I am, not sure what sort of changes in my movement or
expression would be acceptable so I don’t change anything and I wonder how long
I’ll be able to do this for.
Sounds of brush strokes, like rubbing wet feathers against a wall of paper.
“But…look away from me.” She says. “ Look at the wall, or something.”
I look at the wall to my right and she does things with paint tubes or
something that I can’t really make out in my peripheral vision.
After a while the wall I’m staring at begins to disappear. The paint peels
off and the sky becomes midnight. My hands are wet and sore, and I am lost in the
darkness of a forest somewhere. Trees like wooden mountains towering so high, up
into the heavens, that I can’t see the tops of them. I wander through the brambles
and briars and vines until my hands and arms and ankles are cut and lacerated
unrecognizably and the wounds sting and burn as if they are bathed in rubbing
alcohol, gasoline, lime juice from concentrate In the distance…in the light at the
edge of the forest I see a fading silhouette of a little girl. The girl seems to be naked,
though it’s hard to tell in this darkness She starts running through the trees and
bushes, running towards me. And when the white walls of Helen’s bedroom come
back into focus, I realize the little girl needs my help but I don’t know how to get
back there to help her, and I probably couldn’t have been much help to her anyway.
Then I shake off the visions because they’re not real, not real.
There is a strange meditative joy in being focused on and studied so
intensely as if every pore and imperfection and scar and tiny little detail is the most
important thing in the world but I end up sitting completely still for what feels like
an hour and my mind is about to collapse under the pressure of this much empty
space, empty air, and time. Silence, except for the recording of conversations in the
CD player.
“I’m…almost done.” She finally says, after another half hour or so passes.
The intense focus it must take to do what she does would be bought and
sold for several billion dollars if they could figure out how to mass produce and
bottle it up.
After a moment I realize Helen is just sitting on the milk crate and staring
at the canvas. I feel deadly anxious to see it.
“Okay. It’s done.” She sighs, shrugging.
I sit still, unsure if this means I can get up and look at it.
“You don’t want to see it?” She asks.
“No, I do.”
Okay.” But don’t touch it. It’s not dry yet.”

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 “All right.”
“And don’t pee on it, either.” She says.
I stand up and circle around her and she gets up and leaves the room. I
stand and stare. For a moment I think there’s been a mistake and that I’m staring
into a mirror, but not an actual mirror, a mirror that reflects my soul, or whatever I
have where the soul is supposed to be. The painting is a reflection of what there is
left of the insides of my mind. It’s me. Having me look to the right might have been
so she didn’t feel my eyes on her which I think was necessary because the eyes in
the reflection, their blind. Gouged out but there’s no blood, only swarming black
holes, empty lightlessness. The portrait is abstract and eerily accurate at the same
time. The face is a scar of ash and blood, blurred and desolate and it’s so accurate to
what I am on the inside I have to turn away, stare at the blank sterility of a white
wall for a moment before I stop breathing. I lean back against the wall and take
steady breaths. It shouldn’t be freaking me out this much, but it is. I’ve looked into
many mirrors before, just like everybody else, but I’ve never really seen myself.
This could be what Helen sees every time she looks at me and I have to get that idea
out of my head before my brain snaps in half. She sees me. I mean, really sees me.
And that scares the shit out of me.
I blink and my eyes begin to gain focus again. Helen appears in the
doorway as if she knew I’m done looking at the painting. Without a hesitation I take
five steps towards her and I lean in real slow and our lips meet. My tongue darts
between her teeth and her tongue meets in briefly before we slowly, casually pull
away from each other. We share our smiles, our sighs.
She leans against the doorframe and rubs her mouth.
“How’s your hand?” She asks. looking down at the wad of stained napkin
tied around my knuckles.
“It’s fine.” I shrug. “It’ll…heal.”
“You can…sleep in the bed tonight.” She says, gesturing at the mattress on
the floor. “If you want to.”
She shrugs. I pull her into me and our lips meet again. Her smell is
strawberries and candle wax. Her arms wrap around me like a straight jacket.
Perfect, binding, complete.

Figure Ten: The Perfect Drink

Where we are is The Clayton Lounge Bar And Grill downtown where
Sherry has had too much to drink and leans close to me, saying, “Roger Moore
wasn’t all that bad.” She starts to giggle while taking another sip from her drink, her
fifth one tonight. I light a cigarette, grinning.
“Moore was out of his league taking the reigns after Connery left it.” I
speak clearly but playful, trying to remember how to flirt without making it obvious.

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 “Fuck Connery.” She cackles, slapping her palm on the bar. “What’s with
that lisp, anyway? And don’t tell me it’s his…accent, or whatever, he’s got a…what
do you call it…a speech impediment!”
“I’ll bet you one hundred dollars I can prove to you Sean Connery is the
best Bond ever.”
“Oh yeah?” She leans her face into me, eyebrows raised, eyes squinted,
smiling. “How you gonna prove it?”
Before tonight, Sherry and I, we never met. Meeting people is easy if you
don’t mind playing games half the night in some bar downtown.
This started out as a playful conversation on the pros and cons of two of
the lead actors of the 007 films, but three cape cods and a whisky sour later, all hell
is breaking loose.
“Come on.” I playfully pull on her hand.
“What?” She’s giggling. “Where are we going?”
“My place. We’ll watch every Bond film in a row until you admit Sean
Connery is the king.”
“What? You’re insane!” It’s important to note that she is still laughing.
“Come on.” Playful. Don’t look serious.
She leans into the bar, eyes shut, red faced, laughing in that ‘I’m so drunk’
way.
“Hold on.” She says, with her face in her glass. “Let me finish my drink.”
The hook digs deep.
She puts her hand on mine and there’s a faint tingle in the scar tissue
between my legs. A tingle in my stomach. Butterflies.
This is the high I’ve been working for all night. The ‘just about to go
somewhere private and get intimate, snuggle, and get laid’ feeling that nothing else
in the world can give you.
She says, “Lat me just powder my nose and I’ll be right with you.”
She gives a little wink as she gets up. I watch her walk away, disappear
into the women’s restroom, and I pick up my drink from the bar.
Now.
I drink slowly, deliberately. I swish the drink around in my mouth, studying
the taste. I swallow. There’s the warm feeling of the drink going down accompanied
by the ‘romance’ chemicals in my body kicking in to give this rotgut whiskey the
taste of honeydew tea washing down a glacier mountain somewhere where the air is
still clean and fresh.
When you fall in love, there are chemicals in your body that kick in,
creating a dopamine effect in your nervous system. Similar feelings can be felt
anywhere, at anytime, if you are capable of fooling your brain into thinking it’s in
love. With a lot of practice and an unstable mind this can be broken down to an
exact science.

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 Some people, when they’re in love, notice their lover’s cologne or perfume
smells so much sweeter, sexier than it ever did at the store or on someone else.
Some have found that the slightest touch from a lover’s can stimulate the body in a
way that causes a light tingling sensation in the skin that is not normally felt.
This is the high I’ve been waiting for. The warm tingle in your chest when
you know you’ve conquered the boundaries of a woman’s screening process. The
kind of high very few drugs in the world can give you.
Some guys take a girl home and they get off on how crisp the night sky
looks. Or the feeling of goose bumps and the hair rising up on the back of their
neck.
Me, I get it in my taste buds.
Like a man with a near death experience, everything I taste is a thousand
times better than anything I’ve ever tasted before.
Each night I go out in search of it.
The one perfect drink.
I sit on the stool savoring the drink and the woman reappears, ready to go
watch Bond movies at my place. I finish the rest of the drink, take a deep breath,
and stand up.
“I have to leave.” I tell her, trying to decide what ‘apologetic’ looks like,
then I start to walk away.
I don’t tell her that my penis and both testicles were removed six months
ago due to a case of prostate cancer with a manifest destiny complex.
I don’t tell her that the only way I can get satisfied in any way remotely
sexual is by either being stimulated anally or by seducing a girl into going home
with me in order to have that one perfect drink as the woman always inevitably goes
to powder her nose before we leave.
I don’t tell her that I’ve used her merely to taste the best drink in the world,
and I don’t tell her that I don’t even own any Bond movies.
What I tell her is ‘goodbye’ and I make my exit, out the doors and into the
street where I survey the crowd and the buildings and the fog in the air and I try to
decide which bar I’m going to visit next.

Figure Eleven: I’m Only Calling You

I dial the numbers and she picks up the phone and says, “Hello?”
“Hi. It’s me.” I say. “I’m only calling you...”
“Yes? Are you still there?”
“I’m only calling you because my girlfriend broke up with me.”
“Oh, shit.” She says. “What happened?”
I take a breath, exhale. “She found some things I had written…things about
you…back when we were still together.”
“Oh, shit.” She says.
“Yeah. And…she asked me if I was still in love with you.”

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 “And?” She asks.
“I told her the truth.”
“Oh, Jesus. That’s not what she wanted to hear. Girl’s don’t want to hear
that.”
“But it’s the truth.”
“Don’t you see...the truth fucked everything up?”
“A lie would have fucked it up…on a deeper level.”
“Yeah.” She says. “I guess so.”
“I was thinking…maybe you and I should get back together.” I say.
“No.” She says.
“I think we could really make it work this time.”
“No.” She says.
“Son of a bitch.” I say.
“Yeah.” She says. “Son of a bitch.”

Figure Twelve: A Momentary Lapse

A table in the room’s center, shrunken, corroded into itself, the dark
lacquer finish peeling off the surface. We gather at the sides of the thing with
napkins in our laps, our eyes focused on our plates and forks.
Outside, there’s nothing. Sometimes a child will wander by, the body
edging past the window on a tricycle and sometimes I want to go outside and play
with the kids on their tricycles but sometimes, most of the time, I don’t want to go
outside at all. The sound of machines down stairs in the basement, rumbling
rhythmically through the floor boards, there’s only the noise of it in the air around
us as we sit down at the dinner table.
She sat uncomfortably at the dinner table. She couldn’t eat the food she
had prepared for her family. She felt nauseous. She looked at her husband who ate
quickly. She looked at her son who was looking at her and he was smiling. She felt
comfort, looking at him, but she couldn’t bring herself to smile back at him. She
became self-conscious of the bruises on her face and turned away from the child
who shrugged and put his attention to his plate.
There are a dozen rooms in my father’s house, a world of roses lining every
wall. We’re sitting at the table eating what tastes like grapes, only dried, thick like
leather. In my father’s house you can almost taste the chemicals in the air,
deodorants, pesticides. Mother looks tired with her head resting in the palms of her
hands. She looks at the food on her plate, just stares at it and doesn’t say anything.
Father eats quickly, grunting beneath his breath as he shovels food into his mouth.
My father’s house is quiet after dinner. The lights are all turned off in the
house. I’m too short to reach the switches. Mother says I’ll grow taller when I get
older. She says I’m only a child and if she had her way I would be a child forever.
She washes her face in the bathtub, trying to ignore the soreness as she
runs her fingers along the thick, fleshy bumps on her forehead, and around her eyes,
!80
and her mouth. She reclines in the tub, letting the heat of the water soak through her
skin. She feels a subtle nausea overcome her. She feels like she’s going to cry.
Outside is everything to stay away from: rabid dogs barking through the
gaps in our neighbor’s fences, drunk drivers crashing their cars and trucks through
restaurants and day care centers and dog houses and concrete barriers on the
interstate freeways. This is the world my mother teaches to me in bed at night when
she’s already read all the storybooks in the house.
Father comes home drunk sometimes and there are noises in the kitchen when I’m
supposed to be asleep at night. I don’t feel as young as mother says I am. She knows
better then I do.
In bed, she lays stiffly with her legs spread, trying to choke down the tears
as her husband makes love to her without compassion, without looking at her. He
climbs off of her after a brief moment and dozes off lying in his side with his back
to her. It’s almost time.
At dawn I walk into the hallway where the floors are made of old wood
and the house echoes the sound of my bare feet walking across them. I’m supposed
to be asleep but the sodas I snuck into my room last night from the refrigerator and
drank all in a row kept me up all night.
The sound of the television in the living room is like a dozen voices
whispering at once. The light blinks off the walls in a way that seems foreign to me
when I walk in and sit down on the couch. Every one else is asleep unless they’re
like me and drank too much soda, so the television shouldn’t be on. Except it is on
and there’s a tape in the VCR playing an old movie of father’s wedding to mother.
I watch it for a minute before going into the kitchen for another soda even
though it’s too early for soda and my teeth feel slick and there’s a stale taste in my
mouth from last night. The wedding on the videotape looks nice. Mother wore the
traditional white gown. Father wore the black suit. I remember relatives making
jokes about the color of mother’s dress but I didn’t know what they meant at the
time. I Guess I still don’t.
She opens her eyes to the sunlight. She rolls over in bed and looks at the
back of her husband’s head as he sleeps soundly next to her. She imagines what she
could do to him while he’s asleep. Nothing.
From the corner of my eye I see something moving outside in the back
yard through the sliding glass door. I look and there’s a dog from the neighbor’s
yard escaped through a hole in their fence. I watch the dog stand tall in the grass. It
stares off in the distance then lets out a low bark.
I open the sliding glass door slowly, careful not to let the sound of metal
sliding across the frame wake any one up. The feeling of the grass is cold and wet
beneath my footsteps. I kneel down by the dog and rub its head around its big ears.
It’s fur feels matted and dirty. I can feel the moisture of dewdrops from the morning
air on its fur.

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 She lifts herself out of bed and walks into the restroom. Her face in the
mirror is bruised. There is blood dripping down her chin from her lips. She stares at
the face for a moment, thinking, surely it’s not mine. She runs the faucet and cups
her hands beneath it. She brings the water up to her face and washes the blood and
sweat away. She watches the dirty water in the sink spiral down into the drain,
thinking, it’s so easy. She turns to her husband who is still asleep in the bed. This is
the last time. She leaves the room and wanders slowly through the hallway.
I check for a collar but it doesn’t have one. I bring it inside to my room. We
don’t have any dog food so I fix a plate of leftovers for it to eat. It eats the corn on
the cob, and the fried chicken, but not the macaroni and cheese, or the steamed
spinach. It sits on my floor staring at the floor, and the walls.
When I walk back into the living room my mother is standing there staring out
through the glass door. She’s clutching a white robe together at her waist so it
doesn’t fall off. I approach her and I can hear her humming beneath her breath. I
whisper, hi mom, and she stops humming.
I ask if she drank too many sodas too, like I did, but she didn’t say
anything. I walk into the kitchen and pour cereal and milk into a bowl. Mother has
red marks on the side of her face as I walk passed her on the way to my bedroom. I
know father hits her sometimes, and I think she knows I know, but I’m not supposed
to know. I know a lot of things I’m not supposed to know.
She stares out the windows in the living room. How did it get like this? She
starts to feel sick again. She walks into the bedroom, tiptoeing to her husband’s side
of the bed, trying not to wake him.
Back in my room the trashcan is knocked over and bits of wrappers and
papers are torn up all over the carpet. I look at the dog and he looks at me. Instead
of fussing at the dog, I put the trashcan right side up and I begin to pick up the trash
that was knocked out of it.
In the bedroom she rummages quietly through her husband’s drawers
When she finds what she’s looking for she pulls it out and looks at it in the morning
sunlight coming in through the bedroom windows. She hears a dog barking in the
house, followed by the sound of her son’s laughter. She drops the object and walks
out of the bedroom.
Before I can clean it all up the door opens and I swing my head around to
see my mother standing there. Her face is pale. She doesn’t say anything at first, just
stares at the dog, then at me.
I start to explain how I found the dog, and brought him in to get something to eat,
and he only ate some of the left over food and he didn’t mean to make the mess, or
maybe he did but it’s okay because I can clean it up, and can I please keep it?
She just looks at me, then smiles. After a moment she starts laughing quietly to
herself. Then she’s laughing harder than I’ve heard her laugh in a long time. I’m
about to ask her what’s happening to her when she starts talking, trying not to laugh
as she speaks.

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“I was up all night…thinking…watching your father sleep on his stomach…
thinking how easily I could kill him…I was in the bubble bath with the lights off…
too scared to press down on the skin...I held your fathers gun…I was going to do
it…not to him…myself. And then I heard this dog barking…this dog that you
actually think your father is going to let you keep... and I just couldn’t keep a
straight face any more…sometimes a person is just so serious for so long…it gets to
the point where it’s all just so funny that…you have to laugh.”
She’s laughing again, and crying at the same time, somehow. She slides down the
wall and sits on the floor. She puts her hands over her face and cries. She really
needs a hug right now so I walk over to her and I give her the biggest hug I can and
she hugs me back, still laughing, still crying.
The dog comes over to us and nudges his big brown face between us. My mom
laughs really loud and her face has turned red. I start laughing too and then the dog
howls and he keeps howling and after a moment my mom stops laughing and she
starts howling instead, along with the dog. Then I start howling too. We’re all just
making as much noise as we can, not caring that it’s really early in the morning, or
that we’re howling like dogs even though we’re not really dogs because maybe
sometimes it’s good for people to howl.
My father yells from his bedroom: “What the hell’s going on in there?”
But mother doesn’t say anything, and I don’t say anything, and we’re all
just howling as loud as we can and nothing else really matters right now.

Figure Thirteen: Last Society

White walls. Rubber tubes. Blood and surgical shears. The visions turn to
memories, turn to faded pictures: families, houses, driveways. Everything I don’t
want to remember right now.
I lift myself up, salted in snow. I glance around me. The world is white.
Silent. I’m dreaming.
Awake. Shaking, headaches, trauma. Bright lights, white walls, beep of a
heartbeat through a machine. My body shudders. There’s a feeling of shock to
waking up, as if I've been asleep for years. This room is not my room at home. The
walls are sterile. Emotionless white: every surface, every shape.
I pat a sore spot on my forehead and my fingers come back red with blood.
My sheets pulled up over my chest stink of urine. The sky outside through my
window is sterile and gray. Trees sway in the wind, knock against the windows.
I feel warmth beneath the bandages wrapped around my forehead. There is
no peripheral vision. My eyes feel sore, pushed forward by migraines, a feeling like
my skull is cracked in half. Everything is blurred red. I feel tightness beneath the
bandages wrapped around my face like something pulling my skin together.
Stitches.
Blood spurts down my throat and I feel muscles behind my jaw twisting,
tightening up.

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 There’s a knock at the door, and a man dressed in a white bathrobe that
isn’t a bathrobe, with pads of paper, and diagrams, steps into the room.
"Awake at last?" His face is grooved with muscles that bend and contort
when he speaks.
I open my mouth and blood drips from my lips.
He looks about forty years old. His gray hair lifts in the air conditioning on
his bulbous egg shaped head like a crown.
He sits in a cushioned chair next to my bed. With papers and diagrams
spread out in his lap, he says: “You’re name is Scott, right? I’m Doctor Johnson. ”
He opens up a beige colored folder, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
“”How are you feeling?”
“Good…” I gargle, taste in my mouth like sucking on a quarter.
“You’re lucky to have survived the accident.” He says, grinding his teeth
side to side.
“Car accident?” I mumble, trying to remember.
He looks at his files and folders and rummages through them.
“When you were brought in, you were suffering from a gun shot wound to
the head.”
I blink.
“Do you remember anything about the accident?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“No.”
“You should rest now. These will help you sleep.”
He hands me a tiny paper cup with pills inside. I try to tongue the roof of
my mouth as I swallow the pills, but the muscles don’t work.

I remember I used to be so good with pain. The feeling like irreversible

damage was being done, then nothing, a pin prick, that little sensation, a sort of
physical sadness creeping through me.
Blood on the floor.
I remember the slow crawling sense in my mind that nothing really
mattered. It's funny how these things work out. A nurse comes in as I’m lying in
bed.
"How are you feeling?" she asks.
I give her a thumbs up. She smiles. Short black hair, lipstick-red lips. She
reminds me of Candice. Poor, sweet, innocent Candice. Poor sweet dead Candice
with blood on her face.
I can almost feel an autumn breeze through open windows. Brown and
orange leaves. Children playing in the streets. Except it's not autumn, and there’s no
cool breeze, and there aren't any children playing.
A doctor comes to visit me with a beige folder and asks me how I feel.

!84
 “Better. I feel better.”
He asks if I remember the accident.
“No.”
“You may experience memory loss, I’m afraid. We removed the bullet
from your frontal lobe. You’re lucky you’re to be alive, let alone conscious.”
He presses his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
Garlic on his breath, muffled by cheap, generic cologne. He walks to the
door.
“I’ll be back in a little bit to see if you remember anything about what
happened. Some police officers are very…curious to see what you can remember.”

The last time I saw my mother was in a hospital like this one. I still
remember the smell of her hair as I held her in my arms. It seems like life times ago
since I was that young, that innocent. I remember the snow in front of our house,
one morning, and there was no school that day. I remember my mother pinning
mittens to my sleeves as I galloped out the door. There is nothing as fantastic as
snow when you’re a little kid. Snow is what I remember most of my child hood.
Snow and blood.
Sleep, dream, awake in a cold sweat. The sun rises, morning turns to
afternoon. I wake up to the sound of a knock on the door.
“So how are we doing this afternoon?”
“I’m feeling much better, doctor.”
“Well that’s good.”
The doctor pulls a small stack of black and white photographs from a beige
folder and holds them in front of me.
He says, “I’d like you to look at some pictures and tell me if any of them
spark any memories, all right? Now, I have to warn you, some of these are a little
graphic.
I’m not ready for this. The first photograph is someone’s car, from the
outside, with faded red paint and peeling leather interior.
“Anything?”
I swallow. “Nothing.”
He flips to another photograph. A pretty young woman lying on the ground.
Blood splattered on the road around her head like Rorschach ink tests. Eyes open
and lifeless and her skin is unnaturally white, even in the black and white
symbolism of the photograph. Tiny detailed veins in her face, just beneath the skin,
where parts of her scalp and skull are torn away.
Tears in my eyes, I remember something.
This is Candice. With blood in her hair.
The memories come in waves, random, chaotic.

!85
 A room painted red with lipstick and nail polish, Candice eyes me with the
sort of quiet affection you’d get from a puppy and she crosses the room smoking
cigarettes back and forth, smiling as if it’s all she can do.
Between breaths of dark rising smoke she says, “Syah proposed to me
today.”
Those big eyes spread wide the way deer frozen still in front of headlights
look cute.
“I assume you said ‘yes’.”
Flash forward to nowhere really, Syah picking tomatoes from the garden,
midnight skin, scarred, calloused skin. The sky is his mother.
“She told you the news, did she? These tomatoes are for the salad.”
This was Candice’s idea with her formal life all planned out ahead of her.
Ten tower cakes. Wedding invitations.
“I can’t believe it,” I said, “you’re actually settling down.”

“Of course I said ‘yes’.” Candice pulls her hands like knives through the
knots in her hair.
“We’re getting married in April.” she says, spinning around and around and
around.
“What month is this?” I ask, leaning against the doorframe.
“It doesn’t matter,” she squeals, “I’m getting married.”
Down in the garden, outside with the wind and sun, Syah clips dying stems
from various plants with red handled shears, cutting the dead bits away for the
whole of the plant to flourish.

Right now, in the hospital.

“Can I come in?” A little girl’s voice. She crosses the room slowly.
Clutched to her blue hospital gown chest is a gray tattered stuffed bear.
“What’s your name?” she asks, smiling.
“Scott.”
She plops herself down in the chair beside me.
“What happened to your head?” She asks, pointing to the bandages.
“There was an accident.”
She looks at me, smiling. “What happened?”
“I wasn’t careful.”
“Oh,” she says, staring.
I peel the bandages to the side exposing my forehead, shattered, torn.
The ocean of distorted burger meat. She leans her head forward to get a
good look.
“That’s so gross,” she says, grinning, “Does it hurt?”
“All the time.”

!86
 “I’m sorry.” She says.
“It’s not so bad.” I shrug. “It could be worse.”
“Yeah.” She says. “I guess so.”
“Why are you here?” I ask.
She looks down at her wrists, bound in gauze. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Why’d you do it?”
“It doesn’t matter.” She moans, rolls her eyes. “Let’s talk about something
else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know.” She says. “Aren’t you so bored in here?”
“No…I enjoy the peace.”
“Well I’m getting out of here.” She grins.
“Yeah?”
“I’ll escape,” she says, “through the ventilation shafts or something.”
“That’s…dangerous. There’s probably a better way.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugs.
“Why do you want to leave so bad?”
“Because, I’m not going back there. Not ever again.”
“Back where?”
“Back home.” She says.
“What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“Will you be my friend, Lucy?”
“Why do you want to be friends with me?”
“Because, I think we both need a friend in here.”
I would smile but it hurts too much.
“Best friends?” She asks.
“Best friends.” I nod.

Somewhere else, a different lifetime ago, Candice appears in the doorway,

the walls stained brown and green from corrosion.
“Tell me a joke.” She says, barely dressed, struggling with her pants, stuck
at her knees.
“You’re going to be late.” I said
“We’ve still got five minutes. Tell me a joke.”
“I don’t know any jokes.”
She says, “These pants will never fit.”
She tugs them down violently, tosses them to the floor behind her.

In the hospital, I look out the window, dark and starless.

I remember watching the stars. Just…watching them.

!87
 Night, darkness fills the ward. I can almost feel the pain of all the other
patients in the hospital, and I’m only pretending it’s not my own. My stitches…
won’t hold.
“Are you awake too?”
A tiny voice appears from nowhere, the shadows, the stars, the hallway.
“I’m scared too.” She says.
Lucy from across the hall, eight years old with bandaged slit wrists.
“I stopped taking those pills,” she says, “the ones that make you sleep. I
don’t want to dream anymore.”
“I don’t want to dream, either.”

Morning comes, awake in the glare of the blank white walls, suffocating,
claustrophobic. A woman appears beside me, a nurse. Her dark skin hangs loosely
on her. She stands quietly, her chest heaving in and out as she breathes.
“How are you feeling?”
“The stitches, they won’t hold.”

Flash forward three days later in the psychiatrist’s office in the hospital.
The psychiatrist says, “All right, how are we going to do this?” watching
me from behind those big gray eyes. “Do you want to tell me what happened to
you?”
“I don’t remember it.”
She cups her hands together beneath her chin. “Nothing at all?”
“I want Candice back.”
“And who is Candice?”

Flash back, blur of images in my peripheral vision, memories, dreams.

“How does she keep these rose bushes so beautiful?”
“I just love those colors!”

The psychiatrist sits across from me.

“Why are you here, Scott?” She twists her eyes from side to side, looking
over my files and documents. “Do you want me to help you?”
I collapse in the chair.
“You’re bleeding.” She says. “Do you want me to get a nurse?”

The memories don’t come clearly, like static they blur and stay unfocused.
Too many memories flooding past the gates to make any sense of it.
I can’t recall the past in order, and a lot of it I don’t think I want to
remember.

!88
 Lucy lies on her back beside me in my bed, her little chicken legs
suspended mid-air above her. Clasped in her tiny hands is a small cloth doll with
painted on expressions.
“My mom gave me this doll. She came earlier. She said that I was doing
great and she’s sorry for being mean. She gave me this doll and said she was sorry,
and then she cried.”
What I know of Lucy’s mom: Cheap flower perfume, the kind you’d get at
a gas station or shopping mall. Nervous eyes.
I’m tired of having an opinion. The world seems so much safer when you
don’t voice your opinion. Life is easier when you don’t have to actually interact.
“So who goes to heaven do you think?” She asks. “ Priests, probably, I
don’t know who else.”
“Priests don’t go to heaven.”
“Why not?” she asks, puzzled.
“They molest little boys.”
“What does molest mean?”
“They have sex with them.”
She goes wide-eyed.
“And there is no Santa Clause.” I shrug, scratching at my bandages. “And
your mother doesn’t love you.”

Then flash, another memory headaches its way through my thoughts.

The house was nothing special, somewhat of an eye sore for the rest of the
neighborhood. Every house on the street was perfect, and painted and a dream come
true.
Our house was looked down on by the community, and it should have been
demolished long before we moved in. It was a structure of corrosion and decay.
“Do you rent or own?” Was a question we heard often, and never knew
how to answer. We did neither. The house was just there one day, abandoned and
left to rot away, so we moved in invisibly one night. Our neighbors owned their
houses, and were proud of the fact. Status symbols. Trophies for the mind. Fake
plastic smiles. Green grass, mowed.

Syah kept big wooden boxes in the back yard, behind Candice’s rose and
vegetable gardens. These boxes were beehives. He took good care of his bees, and
harvested the honey. This was how he made money, selling honey to local co-op
grocery stores. He was immune to the stings having built a tolerance to it over the
years.

!89
 His skin was textured leather, scar after scar covered most of his body. He
said that he still felt the pain, but he embraced it. He said it was their way of
thanking him for their home. Little painful kisses.
Candice didn’t like the bees. She spent her days in those gardens,
sometimes with Syah's help. They’d tend to the plants like they were their children,
twisting the stems to make them stronger, trimming dead leaves, picking and eating
the dying vegetables.
Several days a week Candice would run into the house with a new bee
sting, sometimes two or three.
“Your bees hate me,” she would tell him, tearing up a bit, “I just want to
take care of my gardens. Your bees are fuckers.”
In the case of a bee sting, rub saliva or water gently on the sting, then
empty out the end of a cigarette. Rub the tobacco gently onto the sting, making it
stick to the spit. Chemicals in the tobacco quickly numb the pain, and help to keep
down the swelling.
Now the memories avalanche down the mountain.
Headaches, taste of blood in my mouth.

I would have knocked on her door to make my arrival known, but it was
just too perfect listening to Candice play. She made that violin sing like it was an
extension of her soul. Every note was a little taste of a better world. I’d spend hours
just leaning against the wall outside her room, listening. Fixating on every note,
closing my eyes and disappearing. I knocked lightly on the door. The violin stopped.
She opened the door, smiling. “You didn’t hear me, did you?”
“Only a little.” I shrugged. “How are you?”
“I’m good. I’m really nervous. The wedding is coming up pretty soon. I
thought playing some Chopin would help me relax. Figured out 'Funeral March',
been playing that for a while.”
“Did it work? Are you relaxed?”
“Not really.”

“Scott, are you in there?” Lucy. It’s Lucy from down the hall with blood on
her gown. I open my eyes, sit up in bed, wave at her. “I thought you were dead. I
don’t want to be alone anymore.”

It was night. There was a fog. Three miles outside of the city, the tires
screeched. Sound of glass shattering. My eyes were closed. Just a ride to the country
with hallucinogenic mushrooms. Four grams each. It was a special occasion.
Syah was half way through with his share when I looked out the
windshield from the back seat and the view was circling us.

!90
 The car slid up the edge of a rock. Candice screamed. Glass shattered.
What seemed like forever was only an instant. One moment, and everything fell
apart.
Then the sky was upside down and I was hanging out the window. My
hands were wet with blood. There was a noise like gargling. There was glass in my
face and hands. Blood was everywhere. I tried to move. The front passenger seat
was lying outside in the gravel. Candice was gone. I grabbed hold of a root in the
ground and pulled myself out of the wreckage. There was Syah, crouching over a
bundle of clothes and hair, sobbing. I crawled close to him, and I could see his arms.
He held Candice to his chest. Her face was gone. Bits of her hair blew away in the
wind.
Syah Howled. My body stopped working but I could see them clearly.
Syah pulled out a knife, raising it up in the wind. Threatening the sky. Then he
brought it down into Candice’s chest. A wet thumping sound, like punching a steak.
He tore through her shirt in circular motions and reached his hand into her.
I couldn’t breathe. He pulled out her heart, cutting veins and hoses as he did it. He
studied it for a moment, crying. And then he ate it.

“Have you been taking your meds?” The nurse asks, clutching the brown
files and folders against her chest. I nod my head, smiling. She smiles back at me.
“I don’t believe you.” She says, still smiling, there’s a pile of them beneath
your bed.”
She steps into the room flashing a cup of pills at me. “You’ve got to take
these. You’ve got to get some sleep.”
I hold the little cup in my hands, smile, give her a thumbs up.
“You’d better take them in front of me so I know for sure.”

I wake up and I see my dead mother bleeding down on me from the

ceiling. I wake up and I see god staring down at me from the sun. I wake up and
there’s a doctor that I haven't seen before with a police officer by his side telling me
to get up and to put on my clothes.
"You're being transferred into the psych ward.”
The hallways are painted off white. The floors are black tile. It's the
illusion of control that comes into play here.
People wearing white pajamas are wandering through the hallways,
staring. Everything is colorless here: the walls, the floor, the faces; even the air has a
certain scent of sterility.
We walk through the hallways and I’m watching the policeman’s gun hung
at his side. It’s an automatic. There’s no fun with automatics. No chance, no fate
involved, just pull the trigger and somebody is dead. There’s no uncertainty, no
understanding. I’m starting to remember something.

!91
 The room is painted white. Empty, but for a wooden table circled by chairs.
Crowds people wearing hospital pajamas, like mine.
Here’s what I know so far: I'm here because I was shot in the head and the
bullet destroyed my memory. Except I’m beginning to remember…more and more.
I knew a girl named Candice, who died. And a man named Syah, who went
insane. I don’t remember who shot me.
The table in front of me is wooden and very old, grease stains from
unwashed hands and fingertips. Every one is staring at me, with that confused look
in their eyes like they’re trying to remember where they know me from, even if they
don’t know me at all.
A man in a white bathrobe that’s not a bathrobe stands to the side of the
table with a pad of paper and a tan folder, thick with pages. There’s a woman to the
left of me with glowing red hair. She’s dressed in a light blue hospital gown, dots of
dried blood painted into the fabric. Little streams of saliva are dripping from the
corner of her open, gaping mouth.
The doctor is here to guide us through our memories and try to rehabilitate
them. Sort of an Alcoholics Anonymous for amnesiacs.
Hello my name is Anne and ever since the accident, I don’t even remember
my own name.
Hi Anne.
Hello my name is Lou and I have no…memory?
Hi Lou.
I'm here because the FBI wants me to answer some questions and I can't do
that until I remember everything that’s happened.
The doctor says that these groups may help me to remember who I am and
everything that’s happened, but I'm starting to think that I don't want to remember.
I've been having these dreams at night, blurred faces, distorted words,
voices coming out of darkness, and there’s blood everywhere, and I wake up crying,
sweating and there’s blood in my eyes from my bandages dripping down my face
because my stitches come undone.
"The first step in amnesiac therapy." The Doctor says. "Is word association.
I say a word and hopefully it will spark some memory in your mind. Do any of you
remember your families?"
I remember pain, and death and losing innocence with blood on my hands.
“Mother.” The Doctor says. “How about Mother.”

In the rest room, I pour water from the faucet into my cupped palms and
rinse my face. I think about Candice. Sweet, innocent Candice. Sweet dead Candice
with blue skin turning purple and blood spraying everywhere.
I unwrap my bandages in front of the mirror and watch myself watching
myself with dried blood on my forehead and stitches holding my broken face
together.

!92
 Entry wound. Scalpel scars. Black stitches.
I am the tiny little picture in the back of someone’s mind of what pain
would look like if it was materialized and dressed in a light blue hospital gown.
This is what it is to be a man.
When someone has no memory of who they are or what they've done, no
matter who you are, they look at you with an expression of recognition as if they've
known you for years. They don't know if their supposed to know you or not, so they
fake it.
And even when its all lies, even when you know they have no idea who
you are, it makes you feel good to be noticed. To be cared about. How perfect to be
acknowledged.
They don't know that their not supposed to care about you, so they do.
They just do. It’s just that easy. No friendship, no commitment. You pop your head
in the door and you have a friend for life, or at least until they remember they don’t
know who you are.

When I sit back down in the big white room, the doctor is holding a blown
up diagram of the human brain with each section illustrated and sectioned off and
labeled.
The doctor points out each section and explains its function in the human
body. This is the frontal lobe. This is the brain cortex.
I stare at the diagram and I’m thinking to myself, if a wasp is flying around
you while your thinking about the last time you killed a wasp, will it pick up on
those
brain waves, and sting you in an act of vengeance for the death of his fellow wasp?
I sit in this room for hours with all of my brand new friends, imaginary
sisters, uncles, brothers. If I'm lucky maybe I can find a couple of my fathers in
here.
The second step in memory loss therapy is image association. You look at a
photograph, or an object, or a piece of art, and, hopefully something about that
image will tug on your memory a little bit, reminding you of something in your
past, either directly, or indirectly related to that particular image.
For some people a rotten banana reminds them of a job at a grocery store
that they used to have, or a painting of two lovers embracing in the Sun-set reminds
a woman of the way her husband used to smell when he took her into his arms and
told her that everything was going to be all right.
No one ever cries here in amnesiac support group. The meetings can get
very emotional, sometimes people start to remember times of pain, or heart break,
the first time they ever got dumped, the look in their puppy dogs eyes when it died
in the middle of the street after being run over by a truck, but no one here
remembers how to cry.

!93
 I sit here, hiding in the corner, listening to a stranger tell me how she was
supposed to be miss America, and now she can't remember how to be beautiful, and
I lay my head on the table and I begin to dream.

I wake up with my face dead on the table and there’s a little bit of blood
beneath my bandages where the stitches came apart again. I prop my head up with
my eyes just half open and I see an elderly woman standing in front of the chalk
board, chalk in hand, writing in tiny, child like letters, I remember my grandson
learning how to tie his shoes.
Everyone starts clapping, and she sits back down at the table with an
accomplished smile on her face.
“Okay, Who’s next?” The Doctor points to a middle aged man with a
bushy moustache and a cowboy hat. "How about you, sir?"
The man stands up and approaches the chalk board and picks up a piece of
chalk in his sunburned hand, pauses to think for a moment, and writes: I remember
falling off a frisky bronco.
And the doctor says, "Very good, sir." and gives him a little pat on the
back.
Everyone applauds.
The doctor says, “Who’s next?”
He points at me and says, "How about you Scott? You haven't had a turn
yet.”
I'm still half asleep with drool dripping out of my mouth when he points at
me. The room stares, smiles as I stand up and walk to the front of the room to the
chalkboard.
I press the tiny bit of chalk against the board and I think about my first
kiss. The first time I made love to a woman. The feeling of the bullet entering my
skull before I blacked out. I think about the warmth of someone else's blood on my
face, seeping into my mouth and nostrils. And I write: the bullet is the exclamation
point of modern society. You want to make a point, just pull the trigger.
Then I’m making scribbles and swirls with the chalk on the board and I
look at the group and they have contorted, wrinkled expressions, staring, and when I
look at the board again, my hand is swooping around and around in jerky fast
gestures and with the piece of chalk, grinding down to a nub in my hand, I’m
writing: He’ll come for me, he’ll come for me, he’ll come for me, he’ll come for
me, he’ll come for me, he’ll come for me, he’ll come for me.

After the accident, Syah dragged me to the woods where we hid for two
days as they cleared the wreckage and filed reports. When we got to the house,
everything had changed. Coffee and cigarettes in front of the television. Sleepless
nights. Screaming from upstairs at night, louder than thunder.

!94
 One morning I’m eating cereal at the table and Syah comes out of nowhere
and presses the barrel of a little black revolver into my right temple.
Before I can react he pulls the trigger and the gun goes click. I spit out milk and
corn flakes and he’s smiling.
“Did you feel that?” He says.
I wipe my mouth, my heart thumping like an engine.
"One bullet,” He says. “Six to one odds. The adrenaline rushing through
you, felt good, didn’t it? You feel alive.”
He presses the gun against his own head and pulls the trigger.
Click.
He lets out a sigh, breathing heavy.
“You haven’t lived,” He says, “until you pull that trigger. You haven’t been
born yet, until you pull that fucking trigger.”
I take a deep breath, start laughing. I think about Candice. I think about my
mother.
I say, “Do me again.”
And Syah says, “You do it.” And he hands me the gun.

I remember waking up the next morning with a warmth in my chest like

being in love. The next day, pressing a gun against his head at the breakfast table,
Syah says, the only way to know yourself is to look death into its face and just die a
little.
He pulls the trigger.
Click.
He lets out a breath, laughing. Then he’s munching on a piece of toast and
he presses the gun against my head and I’m wondering if there are any bullets in the
gun. He pulls the hammer back, and it makes that clicking sound that they always
emphasize in movies.
He says, "Three"
I have a taste of honey on my lips. I close my eyes.
“Two."
I wait for the inevitable. He presses the gun into my temple. I take a deep
breath, exhale.
“One.”
He pulls the trigger. Click.
He tosses the pistol down hard against the table’s surface in front of me. I
stare at the gun on the table. I pause for a moment, clearing my thoughts. Tears roll
down my cheeks. I pick the gun up and open it. One bullet. One in six odds. Better
than Vegas. I spin the wheel around, press the gun against my head. Everything
fades, the world is in slow motion. My hand shakes as I close my eyes and Syrah
whispers, “Open your eyes. How can you learn anything with your eyes closed?”

!95
 Flash back, too many years to count, my infant body resting in my
mother’s arms with songs and children’s things and the overwhelming feeling that
nothing in the world could touch me.
One look into your mothers eyes and you know, beyond any kind of
conceptual doubt, that you are truly loved and that everything will be all right. The
same way I used to feel with Candice. That is the emotion that I went back to, that
sense of comfort and security, that feeling that you can't get anywhere else.
There with a gun in my hand about to theoretically blow my head off there in the
kitchen, I went back to my mothers arms, curled up into a tiny little ball, asleep, no
worry in the world.
I pull the trigger.
That little bit of resistance, reaching out to the point of no return and then that tiny
little click that tells you your alive. I squeeze my eyelids together, take a deep
breath.
I think about Candice’s soft, freckled skin, and the way she used to walk
around the house looking for cigarettes.
I pull the trigger.
Click.
I remember my mothers face as I held her body in my arms and felt the breath
slowly creep out of her lungs with blood every where and her face contorted into a
horrid expression of agony, and I pull the trigger.

Bang.

Next thing I know I’m being operated on.

Syah is gone.
The memories are gone.
I remember this as if it’s a dream.
Here and now in the hospital, I wake up in bed, flash of an insect sting, on
the side of my neck. Instinctually, my hand slaps at my neck and there’s a splattered
bee stuck to my palm. I wipe the bee mess on my sheets and lean forward to get out
of bed.
There’s another sting on my right cheek. I slap at it, and there’s another bee
on my palm. I step into the hall to find a nurse. I can all ready feel the inevitable
swelling. I can't remember if I'm allergic or not. There’s no one in the hall.
I step towards the end of the hall where the registration desk is and I see
another bee, then another one next to it, climbing up the walls. I get stung on the
back of my neck, my knuckles, once on my cheek, twice in my armpit.
A nurse steps out of one of a room in the hallway.
“Excuse me.” I call out to her and she glances towards me with hands full of files
and folders.

!96
 "Did you get stung too?" She says. "Hold on, let me get you something for
the pain."
She steps into the tiny office and comes out with a small package of something.
"Here,” she says, "This will get rid of the soreness."
"The pain doesn't bother me,” I shrug. " I just want to know where these
bees are coming from."
"Bees?" she asks, "Other patients are complaining about wasp stings. There
are bees in here too?"
"Yes,” I say. "I think they're bees."
"Some of the other patients are saying they’re wasps.” she says.
“Nope. They’re bees.”
"How many times were you stung?"
"Twice." I say
"Both of them bee stings?"
"Yes."
"Well, just apply this ointment and try to relax in your bed. Shutting the
door will keep any more of them from getting in. We'll try to take care of the
situation as soon as possible. Just please remain calm."
An elderly woman shoots out from a doorway behind the nurse screaming
and waving her arms around hysterically.
Screaming, "They're on my face! They're on my face!"

The pretty little nurse hurries to her and tries to calm her down.
The air seems to become thicker with bees, like smoke flowing through
invisible winds.
Then the air fills with a softly haunting buzzing sound.
The air is thick with bees now.
The nurses begin to panic, running in blind circles in the hallways.
People are screaming but I can’t hear it over the sound of a million bees
buzzing at once.
I lose count of how many times I’m being stung, and begin to get a sick,
twisting feeling in my stomach.
In the middle of all the mayhem, I can feel my skin grow tighter on my
muscles.
My eyes begin to swell, and after a moment, they’re completely shut,
leaving me blind and disoriented.

I stumble around the hallways, which have become so thick with flying,
stinging bees, that walking feels like tromping through walls and walls of living
jellybeans.
Except jellybeans don’t sting.
I bump into something, knocking myself on the floor.

!97
 Someone trips over me, trying to save themselves from this terrible
mayhem.
Another person catches their foot under my back, and tumbles down on top
of me.
In the distance I can hear someone screaming, "It’s a sign from God. Run
for your lives. The end is near.”
I manage to crawl towards what feels like a wall and lean my back against
it trying to disconnect myself from the pain of the stings that has now become
almost unbearable.
With my palms resting on the floor in the middle of all this screaming and
confusion, I can feel something on the ground.
I close my fingers and grab handfuls of what feel like squishy raisins.
I kneel down against the wall and there’s a voice echoing above the sounds
of buzzing, saying, “Come with me.”
A hand pulls me up to my feet by the wrist.
Now I’m forced to run with the hand pulling me hard, the fingernails
digging into my wrist.
Blind and disoriented, we’re running and weaving around the hallways.
I try to say something but the words came out as a sort of gargling noise
with bees in my mouth.
Maneuvering with a shocking agility, we get inside of the elevator, moving
down towards the hospital lobby.
The elevator is full of bees, and I can barely hear the elevator music above
the buzzing sound.
We both stand quietly in the elevator with the music and the buzzing of the
bees.
I feel a hand on my shoulder.
The stranger says, “I’m impressed at how well you've maintained the pain
meditations I taught you."
And everything goes black.

I wake up to the sound of an engine, and out of a window I watch tops of

trees fly past us.
I try to get up but my body doesn’t work.
I look around.
I’m in a van. I can see the back of someone’s head, sitting at the driver’s
side, steering.
“Wakey, wakey,” He says.
I lay my head down, take a deep breath. “Hello, Syah.”
After a while I get the feeling back in my limbs and I climb up to the
passenger seat and sit. I buckle my seat belt.
“Your file says you have amnesia. Is that right?”

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 “You read my file?”
“You remember me, I take it. So you’re not as far gone as that.”
“Where are we going?”
“If you know who I am, you know the answer to that.
I grab a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and light one. I inhale
slowly.
I look out the window of the van.
Cliffs. Plateaus. Cactus.
A circle of vultures takes the sky, out in the horizon, waiting for the world
to die.
“The desert.” I nod.
“Only place to die,” He says, and throws his cigarette butt out the window.
We drive for most of a day. The engine overheats and Syah just keeps
driving. Smoke shoots up from beneath the hood.
Syah ignores it.
We left the highway hours ago and we’re on some old dirt path.
There is nothing in the horizon.
We are no-where. The middle of no-where.
When the engine finally dies, Syah pulls the keys out of the ignition and
opens his door, stepping outside into the heat.
“Get out,” He says.
I get out of the van.
He pulls a revolver out so I can see it and loads a single bullet.
He says, “Let’s take a walk.” And we start walking towards the setting sun.
We walk for a while, stepping over brush and dead cactus husks. Syah
pushes me along with the barrel of the gun and starts spitting out little bits of his
wisdom.
“Manhood is having a front tooth beaten from ones head
by a holy man wielding a rock.”
He takes a deep breath, pushing me along, and he says, “Manhood is
having ones foreskin served as dinner to male relatives.”
After a moment, he tugs on my shoulder, pushing me to my knees in the
sand and dirt and rocks, and he says
“Manhood is being sent into the desert alone, terrified, with no food or
water for three nights.”
Then he says, “This may be your last sun set, boy. Better get a good look.”

Pain_(pane) 1. An unpleasant sensation arising from injury, disease,

or emotional disorder. 2. Suffering or distress. 3. Pains. Trouble; effort. 4.
Penalty: pain of death. -v. To cause or suffer pain. -Pain'-full adj. -pain'ful.ly adv.

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 We watch the sun set, and when it’s gone, Syah has his hand on my head
and sticks the barrel of his gun into my mouth, saying, “This is what it is to live in
fear.”
Besides the desert and the gun in my mouth and the sense that somewhere
along the way something had gone terribly wrong, I don't know what this is
supposed to be.

I don’t have any control. Not in my life, not in the hospital, and especially
not now.
I gave that up a very long time ago in what seems like another world.
Another life.
"Your god is about to spit you out of its mouth." He says. “This is the last
society, brother. There won’t be another one. This is it. TV’s and radios and
commercials and marketing and pollution and over population and on and on and on
forever.”
As I rest on my knees with the tips of my fingers grazing against the sand,
the barrel of his pistol pressing hard against the back of my throat I begin to wander
how long he had this all planned out.
The gun is a .38 caliber nickel-plated revolver with a six shot capacity.
One bullet.
One in six chances.
His head is cocked to the side and he has tears in his eyes.
“I never meant to kill Candice.” He sobs, pressing the gun harder down my
throat.
I start gagging, the barrel is so far down my throat.
“But she had to die. You know that.”
With a gun in my mouth I don’t know anything.
He stands shirtless, his bare chest smeared with charcoal.

“Now,” Syah says, “We are truly alive.”

My eyes are wide open.
“Ironic isn't it?” he says, “that we live our entire lives of care free, simple,
standardized existences spent in boxes, and cubicles, and only in the end, at that
final moment, do we feel truly alive.”
He speaks with an unnatural accent, sort of a series of clicks and grunts.
Like deciphering communication through a rusted steel drum.
I can taste the mixture of blood and sand on the gun as my tongue twitches
from side to side in my mouth.
If my teeth are grinding against the barrel, or his hands are shaking, I’m
not sure.
What I also don’t know is why he’s taking so long to get this over with.

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 "The pain of the desert is an unreal experience,” he says, “like a sacrament
to
God, the real god, burning through the nebulas. In order to survive in the desert you
can't shut it out, you have to embrace the pain, because nothing else is more real,
nothing is more sacred than the experience, the pain of the desert. Without that pain,
without those sacrifices, you would be nothing, just a tiny little child stumbling
mindlessly through a meager existence.”
He pulls the revolver out of my mouth and points it at the ground.
These are the teachings of Syah, the last surviving member of a lost,
forgotten aboriginal tribe from god’s country.
He was my guide and teacher for these past few years, and now he had a
gun in my mouth telling me how to deal with the pain in order to accept my slow
inevitable death.
I’m starting to remember more and more.
He taught me how to find water in the desert with a long, hollow twig,
and an ear to the ground.
He taught me how to pick out the edible roots and berries from the
poisonous ones.
He taught me how to listen to the earth, to count on it for survival.
And now.
He is teaching me to die.
"You must face the exact moment of death without fear, and without
hesitation, to become truly enlightened in the end. Within that one moment of
accepting the end of your secure, safety net life, when you completely let go
and have absolutely no fear of the darkness; I guarantee that you have never
felt so truly alive."
He presses the barrel of the gun against his head, and pulls the trigger.
Click.
The odds are reduced.
"We spend our entire lives dying slowly within a world that shoves death
into our faces in every possible medium, and yet, when we come face to
face with the experience, we piss in our pants because nothing can really prepare us
for the absolute end of all that we know, all that we understand,
and all that we love. The sense of panic sets in as we feel our nerves slowly fade
away and the consciousness of our meager little minds begin to
deteriorate."
He hands me the gun. I take it from him.
He says, “You were beginning to learn when you went away to the
hospital. Now, I have nothing more to teach you. The rest of your lesson lies there,
in that trigger.”
I’m on my knees in the sand, holding the gun in my hand. I close my eyes.
I point the gun at Syah, aiming as well as I can in the dark.

!101
 I flash a little smile and I pull the trigger.
Click.
With the gun at his face, I close my eyes and breathe.
“The world isn’t yours, Syah. Never fucking was.”
Pull the trigger again.
Click.
He lets out a breath of air, grinning.
I press the barrel of the gun against my own head and because there is no
going back and because I’m never going to remember everything that got me here
and because sometimes the only thing left to do is to just let go, I pull the trigger…

Figure Fourteen: Convict Blues

There ain’t no heaven as far as we can see around here.
Ankle chains keep it the way they want it.
Boss surveys the gang like a watchdog, with those dark glasses to keep the
sun out.
Don’t let none of us where those glasses, dark like that. It seems trouble
enough for Smitty to get to wear his eyeglasses, just regular glasses, not dark like
bosses.
We wake up, don’t get breakfast until we done work, poundin’ the fields
outside, in the heat, like we’re doin’ now.
Sometimes you can hear music in the air, like someone playin’ fiddle out on a porch
somewhere where we can’t see, but we sure can hear, sometimes, when the wind
picks it up and carries it over.
But there’s no music today, reckon it’s Sunday and folks are still in church.
They’ve got a father here, comes around sometimes so’s we can pray, read with
him, though I don’t read, and a lot of other folks here don’t read either.
And we can confess sins to him. He don’t look us in the eyes.
Ain’t no heaven around these parts, as far as we can see.
I look around and smitty ain’t with us this morning.
I reckon he’s back in his cell, complain’ bout his stomach again.
He keeps that up, and the warden’s gonna stop payin’ mind to it, and make him
work anyway. Guys like Smitty, they just don’t know when to quit.
Like this guy, Smith, He’s always getting out of line to look at somethin’ and gets a
kick in the rear. Or he stays in his cell when warden calls out to line up, just sittin’,
payin’ no mind to nothin’.
“Keep that rhythm there,” Boss calls out. Then he’s on me blockin’ my
light with that big shadow of his, sayin’, “Lester, quit yer daydreamin there. Pick up
the pace.”
And I abide, because no one wants to be on the bad side of boss, ain’t no one, no
how. ‘Cept maybe ol’ Smith here. I’m watchin him from the corner of my eye as he
leans down to pick at somethin’ in the soil we’re diggin at.

!102
Some one whispers “Smith, man, knock it off. Boss’ll get ya. Keep pace.”
And Smith straightens up, fidgets with his pant waist and gets the pickaxe and starts
goin to town, whistling a little.
About this time, some one starts up a chorus, and the rest of us chime in usin’ the ax
pickin as a rhythm.
Anything to keep our minds off o what we’re doin’.
At night, in our cells. Warden calls lights out, and the lights turn off. Like
god himself, though I, being a god-fearing man, would never make that comparison
out loud.
And when the lights go off, the cells are all quiet but for a low hum of whispered
conversations.
About this time, Smith comes leanin’ in through our neighboring bars,
whisperin’, “Lester. Lester, you awake, man?”
“What is it Smith?”
“Hard work today, huh?”
“Hard work every day, Smith.”
“Harder today it seemed.”
“That’s your imagination, son. Just getting tired of it, is all.”
“Tired of it. Sure. Say.”
“What?”
“You remember that dog got through the fence somehow? Was runnin all
over the place, guys chasin after it, yellin’. Caused a big fuss.”
“I remember boss man had to shoot that dog, raisin’ a raucous like that.”
“Well, I followed that dog around, before they killed it, and I think I know
how he got in.”
“How?”
“Fold in the fence, just a tiny little opening, but enough for a dog to get
through. Might be a tight squeeze for a man, but I think it can be done.”
“Smith.”
“Yes, Lester?”
You be careful who you talk about this to. Boss or warden gets wind of you
talking escape plans, well, you’ll be in for it, for sure. Throw you in the confinement
box, for sure, or worse.”
“Nothin’s worse than here, man. There’s just different kinds of hell.”
“You really gonna try it, ain’t ya?”
“Well, sure. Shoot. What have I got to lose?”
“They’ll kill you for tryin’.”
“Shoot, Lester. I’m already dead, as long as I’m here. You know that.
We’re all dead. This is purgatory, and when things get bad, it’s hell. But it ain’t ever
heaven ‘round here. Ain’t no heaven ‘round these parts, as far as we can tell.”
“If you ain’t right about that, Smith, I don’t know what.”
“I’m thinkin’ of you, Lester. Reckon you oughta come with me.”

!103
 “You know I can’t. I’m too old, my bones are too tired. No, I’ll find my
years here, man, meals, good work.”
“Good work. Ha. Listen to the man. Good work. You’re settlin’ for this?”
“A man knows when to quit.”
“And when to fight.”
“My fights done, brother. You do what you gotta do. I respect that.”
“You’re wise, old man, I’ll give you that. The fights all gone from you, but
you’re wise.”
“Wiser for it, friend.”
Right then, a guard sweeps by with a flashlight in our eyes, makin’ the
rounds. He leaves the way he came, and we’re settled in with our blankets over our
heads.
Next mornin’s hot as blazes, even ‘fore the sun rises, and we’re off again.
One o’ the boys, been doin’ some work for the kitchen smuggled some bread and
such for some of us to eat fore boss man called us out for work.
Nice to have a bit of breakfast ‘fore goin’ out, even if it was just a bit of crust.
Chain gang rhythms.
Smell in the air like fresh baked apple pies breaks my heart.
Bustin’ rocks with a pick.
Two dozen of us, broken like old Riley’s horse back on the ranch.
Jesus. Has it really been so long?
“You daydreamin' there, boy? Get a move on now, need a road by Monday.” Boss
man grunts.
“The hell they need a road out in the middle of no where, boss?” Ol’ smith
calls out. The rest of us gasp, all at once.
Boss man is on him with the power of thunder, belts him good in the eye
with the butt of his rifle.
“Won’t be no middle of no where when we got folks drivin’ through,
buildin’ houses, will it, boy?” Boss screams.
Smith drops hard to his knees, holdin’ his face with both hands, blood
seepin’ through the spaces between his fingers.
Boss man gives him a kick to the chin and he goes down. Reckon once boss man’s
got a man on his knees, ain’t nothin’ stoppin’ him from getting’ him all the way
down.
Some of us get back to work without being told, the rest, includin’ myself stand and
gawk, not thinkin’ ‘bout it.
Boss man screams, “You boys get to work there. Three o’ you get this man
up, take him to my horse, saddle him up there, and mind her coat, dammit.”
Three No one volunteers so boss man picks three of us out, Simon, Gus,
and Pokey, and they grab ol’ Smith by the arms and drag him over to the boss man’s
horse, a mean lookin’ black as midnight colt with fire in his eyes.

!104
 “Let that be a lesson to the rest uh ya.” Boss man hollers. Guards around us
begin pacing again, keeping eyes out like cultures.
If a man slows down, or stops, a guard’ll be on him in seconds, getting’ him back up
with an arm his elbow or a rifle butt to his back.
Goes on like this for some time.
That night, Smith ain’t in his cell, which means he’s in solitary, as if he
ain’t had enough.
Reckon that’s what’ll happen, you open your mouth around here when ya ain’t
sposed to.
Night’s quiet, more than I can remember it ever bein’.
Quiet night like this, you can just feel somethin’ brewin in the air. Night’s like this,
quiet like, makes it harder to sleep than if there were freight trains goin through the
halls.
“You awake?” Voice in the darkness, young Mathew from the cell on the
other side o’ mine.
“Course I am. Can’t sleep with all this quiet.”
“Know what you mean, Mathew whispers. Gives me the willys, ya know?”
“”Yeah, I know.”
“So,” He whispers. “You heard ‘bout Old Johnson.”
“What ‘bout him?” I ask. “Got free didn’t he?”
“Sure. Couple days ago. You seen him, ain’t ya?”
“What, he’s stickin’ around. Why would I see him, if he’s free.”
“He sticks around the gates, is what Polly said, and I seen, I think. Play his
gee-tar, playin’ it real good too, far as I can tell. Reckon he’s stickin’ ‘round to play
for us still here? Seein’ as he can play real good like?”
“A man with no sense enough to leave when he’s let out ain’t got no music
good enough to make any sense out of it, least not as far as I can see.”
“Maybe it ain’t so good outside either, in the free world.”
“Don’t remember it bein’ all that free, ‘cept when I was a youngin’.”
“Right about that, friend. How long you think he’ll be out there playin his gee-tar
for us?”
“Shoot, long as it takes for the damn old fool to get some sense in that thick hide of
us.”
“Well, I reckon I fancy him playin out there like that, makes me feel like we ain’t
forgotten, ya know?”
I turn over in bed to face his voice in the dark.
“Man, I know it. But if it was you, reckon you’d stick around like him?
Playin’ yer strings outside the fence for the rest of us poor souls to hear? Reckon
you’d do that?”
“Well, wouldn’t forget ya’ll, I can tell you that much.”
“Well, rememberin’ us, and spendin’ yer free days outside o’ here as if
you’ve nothin’ better to do, sounds like you’d rather be stuck in here, don’t it?”

!105
“Least he’s got a choice.”
“Yep. And he’s made it. I hear him playin through that fence, I’ll give him a nod,
maybe even listen fer a spell, but I ain’t gonna put much else thought to it. I’m
lookin’ at reduced sentencin’ ‘pendin’ on good behavior. But still, ain’t gonna put no
thought to outside till I’m there, know what I’m tellin’ ya?”
“I get ya. Say, reckon tomorrow’s gonna be a hard day?”
He laughs at that one. I chuckle a little.
Then the warden’s light shines in our cells and a voice sayin, “Shut it in there.” And
we’re scalp deep in our blankets. Reckon yer never too old to get scared o’ some
things.
Days work is hard as ever.
Heat ain’t mercyin’ us much either.
Hot as hell, I reckon, work loads something like it too.
But it passes.
Ain’t no lunch break but that seems to only make the time seem to go quicker, not
getting a rest in the middle of it to think ‘bout bad or good, just work, steady and
hard, then it’s over, and we line up to get back to the big house when the hound
picks up a scent o’ somethin’ an’ couple a minutes after we get sight o’ a dust storm
comin’ in from th’ south.
There’s a bit o’ hollerin’ and the guards circle round us, rifles aimed an’ we’re
marched at a drum roll pace through the gates.
Fore the dust hits us I get a glimpse o’ old Johnson standin’ outside the gates sittin
on a bit o’ rocks by the road and sure enough he’s play on his ol’ six string,
something fierce too, a real solid number makes me wanna feel good ‘bout
somethin’.
Right about that time I reckon Smith gets a whiff o’ freedom from it, cuz
all a sudden he’s chargin’ out o the line, makin’ his way to the fence.
I see past him and I can almost make out a little space in the fence where the links
are pulled up a bit from the poles.
Ol’ Johnson sits just a couple paces from the fence where Smith’s runnin’ and just
when I’m thinking he might make it, a shot comes out o’ no where, then another that
clips him in the leg, which knocks him down, but he gets right back up and goes for
the fence again.
All the while Ol’ Johnson’s still playin his gee-tar cross the road but
watchin it all goin’ on.
Another shot rings out right as Smith’s about to reach the fence.
This one catches him square in th’ back, and he goes down hard.
Blood shoots up for a bit.
He ain’t movin’.
The wind begins to pick up, bringin’ a smell o’ flowers o’ some kind from the hills.
We watch as Smith’s body lays there dead, as the boss man hollers for us to move
on through the doors, leavin’ smith to lay there in that field all by himself, dyin’ how

!106
he was born and all the while, ol’ Johnson’s still playin his gee-tar across the road
from us and it don’t look like he’s gonna be stoppin’ any time soon.

Figure Fifteen: RX
Okay. Relax. Take a breath. Retrace my steps. Relax. Relax.
I was at Reagan’s party, drunk. Nothing was happening. Alice was there
but no one was talking to her for some reason, one of those snobby parties where no
one will talk to you if you don’t look a certain way, talk about certain things. No one
really talked to me either. We left early and on the ride home, she asked me how the
new medication was working out. I told her it hadn’t started kicking in yet. We got
home, brushed our teeth, got into bed, made love, and went to sleep.
Then like a flash of light it’s morning and I’m standing in an empty room where my
furniture is supposed to be, holding an empty orange pill bottle.
RX# 44738 Tuttle, John. Take one tablet by mouth daily.
The prescription is for anxiety, paranoid delusions. I’m not diagnosed with
anything specific but it was Alice’s idea that I speak with a Doctor after my last
episode.
Alice. She’s supposed to be here, but she’s not. Nothing is here where it’s
supposed to be. The new drapes she bought are gone with the cat’s litter box and the
new crib we bought with wishful thinking. The refrigerator is gone, with the food
we bought for Christmas dinner. The tiles are blank concrete floors. I check three
times to make sure I’m in the right house. The house we rent is furnished and glows
with the light of the sun through ceiling high windows. This house is vacant,
lifeless. The dust is at least three years thick. There is a stink of urine in the air, the
copper musk of blood.
I check three times and I’m in the right house, but not. Our furniture is
gone. Our television and washing machine. This isn’t robbery, this is a nightmare.
No burglar could turn a house into mold and years of decay.
A dead humming bird lays within dust and discarded cigarette butts in the
corner of one of the blank and empty rooms, the room that is supposed to be our
bedroom, but isn’t. I have memories of staying up until midnight reading magazines
in this room while Alice laid with her head beneath her pillow to block out the light
from my bedside lamp. That couldn’t have happened in this room, but it did. The
walls aren’t even the same color. She insisted on a color identical to the paint they
use in expensive hotel rooms. It was her way of pretending she was somebody
different, somebody new every time she woke up.
Flash of light from a passing car through a window in the living room and I
see Alice’s face in my mind. The day at the amusement park and her bathing suit is
becoming see through soaked through with chlorine and the sterile mix of a dozen
children’s urine. When she was twelve, she still peed in her bath water. The last I
saw her, she was holding a dusty mason jar beneath her chin to catch her tears. Now,
where once there was the pitter-patter of her bare feet on tile floors, there is the
empty sound of silence, of emptiness and daydreams.
!107
 I wander in silence through empty rooms and blistered wood doors half
torn from their hinges.
When something like a television or a washing machine sits in the same
place for years, it leaves a mark when removed. The clean space within the dust that
settles over the weeks and months. But there is nothing here. No furniture or
appliances, no sign of anything ever being here.
The empty air that used to be the space between the bed and the wall used
to be where Alice keeps her diary. Her diary, I read every night after she fell asleep
like I was going to be tested on it later. From that diary, I was the expert on her
secrets and her fears, desires. But none of it mattered, when it came down to it. I
already knew her better than I knew myself. And she knew me.
A voice breaks the silence and I twist around with my hands flinched into
fists.
“Something wrong, brother?”
The man is young, younger than I am. He’s tattered and torn in half. His
face is a forest fire, a malnutrition scarred landscape. He wears camouflage pants
and a black hooded sweatshirt. He’s missing three front teeth.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Who are you, brother?” He wears a frown like it’s stuck there in time.
“I live here.” I shrug.
“Yeah.” He grins, and smokes a cigarette. “We all do.” He chuckles.
“What…what has happened here?”
“What do you mean?”
“The…furniture, it’s all gone.”
“There’s never been furniture.”
“Of course there is. This is supposed to be my home.”
“Public access, bro. You can sleep here, if you want. Doesn’t mean you
don’t have to leave if the cops drag your ass out.”
“This can’t be the right house…but…it is.”
The guy looks at me, smokes his cigarette.
“There’s no smoking in here. Alice hates the smell of cigarettes.”
“This ain’t the Brady Bunch.” The guy says. “Who’s Alice?”
“My wife. She lives here, with me.”
“She here now?”
“No…she’s…I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where anything is.”
“You don’t seem like a person who has any fucking clue.”
“Maybe you’re right. How long have you…lived here?”
“On and off.” He shrugs. “Whenever it’s the only safe place to lay low.”
“Years? Months?”
“Whatever.” He says. “I lost track of time before I learned how to tie my
shoes.”
“What’s your name?”

!108
 “Spencer.”
“Spencer. Would you believe not even a week ago this house was full of
furniture…and laughter…and it was… a hell of a lot cleaner?”
“Nope.” He shakes his head and drops his cigarette on the concrete floor
and crushes it was his left boot. “I was here just a couple weeks ago and the place
looks the same now as it did then.”
“This doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’re really out of it, man. You really don’t remember meeting me?”
“Of course not. We’ve never met…have we?”
“A couple times. You’re here more than any of us. I was humoring you for
a while but now I see you really don’t remember anything.”
“This is a dream. You’re not real.”
“Maybe not. But if you pinch me I will punch you in the face.”
“Fair enough.”
My mind traces backwards through time. My brain is seized by panic and I wander
aimless through the blank hallways and bare rooms. Where are you, Alice? Where is
all of our stuff?
There’s a ringing in my head and I wander the empty stink in the air for a
phone while Spencer stands and smokes a cigarette. But there is no phone. I graze
my fingers along the walls and there aren’t even any phone jacks. Then I’m aware
my pocket is vibrating. I reach a hand into my pocket and I answer my cell phone.
The line is dead. But there’s a voice mumbling beneath a breath and it
takes me a moment to realize it’s my own voice.
I twist the cap off of the pill bottle and I swallow the pill for today. I
swallow it dry because there is nothing to drink in this house, not even a running
faucet.
Alice, I don’t know what is happening here. I don’t know where you are.
But I will find you. I will find you.
My eyes catch a twist of movement in the corner of the room. A pale spider
missing one leg dangles from the ceiling from a thing iridescent thread. I take a
breath and watch the spider drop to the floor like a leaf falling from the sky in slow
motion and one word bleeds like a scream through the soft tissue of my brain: Alice.
I walk to where Spencer is and he puts his cigarette out on the floor. I
ignore it.
“Spencer. I need…help.”
“Yep.” He says.
“I need to find out what has happened here. I need to find Alice.”
“Maybe she fell down a rabbit hole.” He says, grinning.
I look at him blankly. He shrugs. “All right, man. For fifty bucks I’ll help
you find anyone you want.”
I pull my wallet out and give him a hundred.
He pockets it quickly and takes a breath.

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 “All right. Start simple.”
“Okay. Like…how?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Check your phone.”
“For what?”
“Any new messages, or something. Maybe Alice called you.”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
I dial my voicemail on the phone and wander into another room. A voice
recording tells me to please enter my password. I enter it and the voice tells me I
have one new message. I take a deep breath as a stranger’s voice on the message
tells me this is a reminder that I have an appointment with Dr. Jones at 3:00 PM. I
hang up and check the time. 1:15 PM.
I find Spencer leaning against a wall, scratching flakes of dead skin off his
arm.
“I have a Doctor’s appointment.” I tell him.
“When?”
“Today. 3:00 PM.”
“Better be there on time.” He says. “Don’t want to keep the Doctor
waiting.”
“Yeah, well, I have other things on my mind at the moment.”
“I bet you’ll find out something at the Doctor’s office, brother. I’ve come to
know a bit about how to figure shit out. Seriously.”

The doctor wears a white jacket and matching earrings. She’s had her hair
cut recently, a little too short.
“So how are you feeling?” She asks.
I take a breath, remember to breath.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Any side effects from the medication.”
“Uh. Maybe.”
“How so.”
“My…wife is gone.”
The doctor looks at me for a moment.
“Nausea, dizziness, anything like that?”
“Uh. No.”
“No side effects?”
“I guess not. Not that I can notice.”
“And how about the delusions?” She asks. “Psychotic episodes?”
“Delusions?”
“Do you remember? We spoke of your delusions, hallucinations?”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”

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 “You were having hallucinations, seeing things that weren’t really there.”
“Like what?” I ask, grinding my teeth.”
“People, things…furniture. You really don’t remember any of this?”
“What people?” I ask.
“People in your house.” She says. “People climbing on your roof, sleeping
beneath your bed.”
A moment passes. Breathe.
“I spoke to one of them this morning.”
“So the hallucinations haven’t stopped.”
“Well…I don’t know.”
“Give it time. The medication will build up in your system.”
My eyes go blurry. Think, think.
“I think there’s something wrong.” My voice is a mouse.
“What is it?” The doctor asks.
“My wife.” I say, breathing loudly. “Did you ever meet my wife?”
“Not that I recall.” She says.
“I don’t…I don’t think anybody has…met my wife.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s…I don’t think she’s real.”
The doctor leans back in her chair.
“You think your wife might be a…hallucination?”
“The people in my house…I think they’re real…”
“Uh huh.” The doctor says, frowning.
“Because…I woke up this morning and…everything was gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“The furniture…the dishes, appliances, electronics…everything was gone.”
“You were robbed?” The doctor asks.
“No…I don’t think any of it was ever there…and the people in the house…
I think the house is abandoned, run down…and the people…I think they’re
squatters, homeless people…like…me.”
The walls begin to move, shift and peel. I can’t breathe, can’t breathe.
The doctor just looks at me.
“The medication made my wife disappear.” I say.
“I see…” The doctor says.
“I love my wife.” I say.
The doctor takes a breath, starts writing something on a notepad.
“I think it might be a good idea to get you some…more supervisory help.
There’s a very nice psychiatric hospital not far from here…Chamberlain
Meadows…”
“No…I’m not crazy,” I say, standing up. “I love my wife. I’m not crazy.”
I walk out of the office and through the waiting room, down the hall, the
stairs and out the door.

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 Five days later I’m sitting on the floor in the kitchen while a group of men
wander around smoking cigarettes in the house and kicking holes in the walls. I’ve
been off the medication since the visit to the doctor’s office and when Jane comes
back…she’s going to be pissed at these guys for fucking up our dream home.
I lean backwards, rest my head on the drawers beneath the kitchen skink
and at that moment I hear the front door open, sounds of footsteps, and Jane appears
in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. The floors are spotless,
sparkling. The microwave is back where it’s supposed to be, on the kitchen counter.
Jane looks at me, smiles, and says, “How was your visit at the doctor’s office?”

Figure 16: The Red Thin

“Define…sober.”
I say this to Sandra after she knocks on the door and stands there in the
hallway with her arms crossed below her breasts, frowning, and says, “I’m not
coming in unless your sober.”
She is not amused when I say Define…sober and there’s a moment of
silence between those words and the following words.
“You called me,” She says, breathing. “Either because you’re strung out
and you need money to score, or because you’re high and horny and you think I’m
going to fuck you, or because you need help with something.”
I light a cigarette and walk into the living room, leaving the door open, and
I say, “All of the above.” And my back is turned towards her so she can’t see my
smile.
“Look,” She says, stepping into the apartment, standing still as I turn to
look at her. “I’m clean. I’ve been clean a month now. I don’t know what you want
from me, but I’m here and I want to help you, if you need help.”
“How do you mean help?” I ask, blowing smoke in the air between us.
“Help you get clean.” She says.
I shudder at the thought of it and I turn away, stare out the windows at the
city.
“No thanks.” I say.
“I didn’t think so.” She sighs.
I hear the door shut, then high heeled footsteps trailing down toward the
end of the hallway. Sometimes it’s almost…scary how much things change. What’s
scarier than how much some things change is how much other things never do.
The balloon of heroin lies on the seat of the chair next to the trumpet like a
metaphor, an abstract sort of symbolism for a certain kind of life. I blow cigarette
into the spinning ceiling fan blades, wondering why the sun hasn’t set yet,
wondering if the sun will ever set. Ignoring the numbers on the clock I pace the
empty floors of the living room, every once in a while answering the telephone,
each time realizing that it never rang and before Sandra stopped by so briefly I

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haven’t heard another person’s voice in three days, only the static and lonely hum of
dial tones.

I am at a loss. The single spaces between then and now…but what are beginnings?
Where will the endings be, if not at the beginning of the beginnings?
The taste of irony in the back of my throat is that Sandra is the one that turned me
onto this shit in the first place.
The thoughts are nonsense and I’m beginning to think that time has stood
still…again…and if time has stood still then I will never be able to play the gig
tonight which means the balloon that will soon run out will be the last of my heroin
unless A. I manage to pawn the trumpet again, which is basically the same as
Russian roulette because I never know if I’m going to be getting it back out soon
enough before they sell it, or before the next gig, which are not much more than rare
these days but I’m not thinking about that.
The other option, if time has indeed stood still is B. I will never age or die
but I will go through withdrawal sicknesses forever, perpetually, the rest of my life.
But I’m not thinking about that either.
What I’m thinking about is this: if I fuck up this gig, like I did the last two,
maybe three, I may not be able to find work in this city anymore. By work, I mean
the only thing I’m good at. Blowing brass.
I take a deep breath and put the cigarette out in an ashtray. I light the
candle on the coffee table and wipe the spoon off, slit the bag open. The preparation
is second nature at this point. Strike the matches, wait for the powder to dissolve
into the fluid, let it soak into a strip of cotton, suck it up through the cotton into the
syringe, tie my arm above the elbow, flex, slap at the crook of my arm, find a vein,
(this task gets a little harder each time, but what can a person do?) puncture, pull,
watch the blood flow into the syringe like liquid smoke, push the plunger down,
slowly…slowly…
The head tilts, neck bends backwards. The needle stays in the vein while
my body becomes self aware. Dizzy Gillespie blows brilliantly through the speakers
on the little shit box CD player on the floor, the only thing that the pawnshop won’t
take.
The body glows, the blood is warm and thick and I can hear it rushing
through my veins.
Sound of the phone ringing and it’s only my imagination again and I can
barely hear it over the sound of my own blood rushing through my veins, but it’s not
my imagination anymore when the answering machine picks up and the message
that is left is a man’s voice saying, “Hey, man, we were thinking we should maybe
jam a little before the gig. Give me a call.”
The gig is no longer a factor in my thoughts or decision-making rationality
because of the warm glow of the injection but the message pulls me a little towards
tonight, towards what I have to do. I can’t jam now, not before the gig. My priorities

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are, and limited to, the following: lie here until the initial rush begins to wear off,
decide whether or not I’ll shoot up again before the gig, (no contest really) and then
get to the club and blow for a couple of hours, then come back and shoot up again
before either going to bed, or staying up watching the ceiling until I pass out. That is
the extent of the possibilities for tonight that I am allowing myself, or am even
capable of at this point in time.
But when it comes down to it I can never seem to leave the trumpet alone
for more than a few hours at a time and after I stare at the floor for a while and
smoke a cigarette I install the mouthpiece and start blowing, too lazy to put a mute
on. I play for what feels like an hour before the neighbor in the apartment
downstairs bangs on his roof with what I imagine is the end of a broom handle and
after a few more scales I set the trumpet down on the sofa cushions and I prepare
another shot for before the gig.
A knock at the door and Sandra’s voice muffled in the hallway: “Let me
in.”
I walk across the living room to the door and I unlock it, open it. She
stands there in the hallway like before, but this time with tears in her eyes.
“I can help you,” She says, walking toward me, into the apartment, putting
her hands on my arms. “I’m clean…I’m clean…I can help you.”
“Sandra…Jesus.” I say, pulling away from her. “Back off with that…shit.”
“Let me help you,” She says, pleading.
I back into the living room and sit on the couch, light a cigarette. She
straddles me and tries to hold my head in her arms. “I’m clean…I’m clean…” She
says.
The Dizzy CD ends, followed by silence except the sound of Sandra
breathing into my neck. “I’m clean.”
I shove her to the end of the couch and adjust the collar of my shirt.
She lies there with eyes half shut, staring at the wall behind the couch.
I check her arms and find a single tiny red dot, a track mark.
“As clean as I am,” I grin at her.
“It’s not what you think,” She says, still staring at the wall. “I can help
you…I can help you…you don’t understand.”
“Sandra. Stop it. Seriously. It’s over.”
I listen to the sound of her breathing as her eyes slowly roll back until
they’re the color of blood shot snow. I check my watch, then her pulse. The gig is in
four hours and Sandra has stopped breathing.
Her skin is red and warm. Her pulse is a drum roll but she’s not breathing.
She could be playing possum or she cloud be dying and I do not have time or energy
to deal with either of these possibilities.
In a matter of seconds I’ve got her by the armpits and I’m dragging her
across the living room, and through the door, into the hallway where I drop her in
front of Mrs. Hooper’s door and she’s lying so lifelessly on the floor of the hallway,

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so…still. I knock loudly, then get back into my apartment and lock the door and
watch through the peephole as Mrs. Hooper opens the door, finds Sandra there, tries
to wake her up, fails, then hollers for someone named Edgar to call 911.
I sit back on the couch and practice scales on the trumpet some more
because the gig is only a little under four hours away and I don’t want to fuck it up
this time.

At the club, Jeff is setting up the stage, connecting everything that needs to
be connected as I walk in through the back door and the first thing he says to me is,
“You look fucked.”
I stand with my trumpet case in a fist, confused, not understanding what he
means by fucked.
“Meaning…what?” I ask, staring at his black derby that I wish he would
stop wearing at the gigs.
“Meaning you look like you’re going to fuck up another gig.”
“Hey…man. Don’t talk like that. This is my fucking trio.”
“Whatever,” He says, checking an instrument microphone by tapping the
tip of his finger on it. “If you fuck it up tonight…again…you’ll be a one man
show.”
“Don’t threaten me.” I mumble while walking to the other end of the stage
to set my case down.
Jeff mumbles something beneath his breath that sounds like, “Fucking
junkie.”
My hands clinch into fists but there’s not enough left of me to confront him.

In the restroom in the club I’ve locked myself in a stall and I’m tying my
arm with my belt when a voice through the house speakers outside of the bathroom
announce the name of my trio, followed by scattered applause. The needle finds the
vein and the plunger hits the end of the syringe by the time the applause stops and
Jeff’s bass starts to ride as Martin’s drums find a beat and I realize, as the blood runs
warm and thick through my veins, that they didn’t even bother trying to find me this
time.

Outside it begins to rain and I don’t know what time it is or where the band
is, if they’re even still here, or how much time has passed, and I’m pondering all of
this when Becky appears in the light shining from a streetlight at the back of the
club where I’m apparently standing and smoking a cigarette in the rain and she says,
“Have you seen my sister?”
My eyes focus on the features of her face, and I assume she’s talking about
her sister. Sandra.
A moment passes before I say, “What?”
“Nobody’s seen Sandra in a couple of days.” She says.

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 “Oh…okay.”
“Did you see her today?” She asks.
“Uh…no.”
“Okay. Well…if you see her, tell her we’re looking for her. Alright?”
“Uh…yeah. Okay.”
She starts to walk away, lighting a cigarette. I watch her walk away from
me until the rain is so thick in the air that I can’t see her anymore and it’s almost as
if she’s just disappeared.

I lie on the tiled floor of the shower, too fucked to move and the syringe
was almost full before I blacked out and now it’s empty, the plunger pushed to the
end and I can’t move, can’t move. I can hear breathing but it can’t be mine because
I can’t feel the air in my lungs, can feel the breath escaping me.
The phone rings and it could have been ringing for days for all I know and
the answering machine picks up and Jeff’s voice is telling me they the trio is no
longer, it’s dead, it’s over, and then he hangs up and the answering machine turns off
and a little gray moth circles the light bulb in the ceiling and I’m watching it
through the glass of the shower door and still I cannot move, I cannot move at all.
I hear my voice but the lips aren’t moving and what I’m saying sounds a
lot like, “No body listens to jazz anymore…anyway…I’m better off…playing in my
sleep.”

Flash of light and Mrs. Hooper is dragging me through carpeted floors and
down mildewed wooden stairs.

“The doctor said you were dead for about a minute, maybe two,” Mrs.
Hooper says this while sitting in a chair beside my bed in the hospital. “”Which
isn’t bad, I guess…considering how much heroin they said was in your
bloodstream.”
The body is dead, lifeless. But I can move my fingers, my legs.
“That girl you left on my door step…at least, I assume it was you…she
died before we got her to the hospital.” Mrs. Hooper says this as a nurse appears in
the doorway of my room. “I’m…sorry.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” The nurse says, crossing her arms below her breasts.
But I don’t feel lucky…and I don’t feel alive. I don’t feel alive at all.

Figure Seventeen: Play And Light

“Through the looking glass you’ll be watching me for hours, you will be,
and I’ll still be the same aging old rags. I’ll never look this good again and maybe
you won’t care…or maybe you’ll just stop looking.”

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 Sally breathes the air, she repeats herself, counts the stars, stops at one
hundred, starts over, breathes again.
The sky is a nightmare, empty, starlit darkness. There is nothing out there.
“An elephant escaped from the zoo. You heard about it? Killed a couple people. It
was…electrocuted. By…the police.”
I pause, breathe, light a cigarette, listen to traffic on the bridge above us.
“The police department electrocuted an elephant?”
Cars pass over us, sounds that make me think of dragging an enormous
fingernail over ridges in a broken record, amplified a thousand times. This is the
sound of dying.
“Something like that.” Sally says, hissing beneath her breath with the
rhythm of the traffic.
“I never felt so alone.”
“You’ll never feel this alone again.”
“How do you know?”
“Because someday.” She says. “You will die.”
“You think I’ll grow old?”
“Not like those poor fucks in the old folks home.” She says.
“They were depressing.” I sigh.
“Everyone’s depressing.” She says. “But I think you’ll get the job.”
“Yeah?”
“Probably. I put in a good word for you. And they totally need people right
now.”
“Cool. So…do you think I’m depressing?”
“As depressing as anyone else. Just another reminder that I’m going to
die.”
“Okay. That’s not normal.” I say.
“What’s normal?” She says, clearing her throat, breathing.
“What are we going to do tonight?”
“You’re looking at it.”
Flash of light and we’re sitting on wooden crates stuck in the sand and
gravel and broken glass. She lights a cigarette and stares for an uncomfortably long
time at my breasts so I close my shirt and start to button it. She makes a sound in
her throat and blows smoke in the air.
“Imagine the ocean on fire.” She says. “Purple and blue flames rising with
the waves…jelly fish bursting like bubbles on the shore. Never know what it’s like
to be spineless in the dark. Never going to know God.”
“You’re…drunk.”
“So are you.” She says.
“You’re very…intense when you’re drunk.”
“I don’t know if that’s the right word. But okay.”
I take a breath. “Okay. So. Is there any wine left?”

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 “Another bottle.” She sighs. “Somewhere.”
“Where?”
“The store.” She shrugs, grinning in half-light from the spaces between the
boards above us. Lights from street lamps color everything a dim orange and yellow
shade. The effect is a lot like a blind man dreaming.
We stand, our bare feet dug into the sand, water soaked sticks and logs,
broken glass. She lights a cigarette and begins to hum softly beneath her breath.
We walk in circles along the shore, the sounds of distant birds, crashing
waves echoing off of cliff walls around us.
“There aren’t any stores…on the beach.”
“Sure there are.”
“Whatever. I think I’m just going to go home.” I say.
“You didn’t go to Reagan’s party, did you?” She asks.
“No, didn’t feel like it.”
“I was almost raped.” She says.
I look at her and I don’t know what to say. We walk for a while and then
my apartment is about half a block away so I tell her I’ll see her later and I go up to
my apartment and I lock the door and I lie down on the bed and kick my shoes off.

In the morning the phone rings and I answer it wrapped in a towel, my hair matted,
dripping, soap suds clinging to my arm pits and there’s a woman’s voice asking if I
can come in today to take care of someone named Mrs. Smith, and I say, okay

“You the girl come to waste your time?” Mrs. Smith yells at me when from
across the hallway.
I walk over and stand in the doorway of her room where she’s sitting in a
rocking chair in the middle of the room.
“I’m Catherine. I’m here to…spend time with you.”
“Well, help yourself.” She kicks a little Styrofoam cooler towards me.
She’s wearing a blue dress that stops about a foot and a half below her knees. I pull
the cooler open and there are about five or six bottled beers in ice.
“Open one up for me.” She says, rocking in her chair, breathing heavily,
wheezing.
I take two bottles out of the cooler and look around for a bottle opener.
“Use your teeth.” She lisps, grinning.
I pull a lighter out of my pocket and wedge it beneath the bottle cap, wrap
my thumb and forefinger around it, squeeze tight, pop the cap open, hand the beer to
Mrs. Smith, start working on the other beer before deciding I shouldn’t be drinking
and I put it back in the cooler.
“Why did you come here?” Mrs. Smith asks. “Don’t you have better things
to do than take care of an old lady?”
“Have to do…something.” I shrug.

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 “Ha.” She says, sipping her beer. “That must be nice.”
“How old are you?” I ask, immediately realizing it’s rude to ask.
She pauses, sips her beer. “Old enough not to tell you.”
“Fair enough.”
“I know it is.” She says.
“So…what do you do? I mean, in your spare time?’
“All I have is spare time.” She clears her throat, takes a sip. “And you’re
looking at it.”
I turn to the window and watch cars pass by on the street outside for a
moment.
“You got any cigarettes?” She asks.
I pull my pack out, hand her a cigarette, light it for her.
She takes a drag, exhales. “I’m not supposed to be smoking.” She
chuckles, blowing smoke out of her nostrils.
“Are you supposed to be drinking?” I ask.
“I’m not supposed to do anything.” She frowns, sips her beer, takes a drag,
exhales smoke. “But when you’re my age, you tend to stop giving a fuck.”
“Most people my age don’t give a fuck.”
“Time’s are changing.” She lets out a hoarse cackle.
“Yeah.”
An hour passes. We sit at a dusty card table and play poker for a while. The
walls of her room are covered in sloppy paintings and old black and white portraits.
The windows are covered in curtains. The floors are hardwood, cluttered with boxes
of various knick-knacks, remnants of a past, debris. A shoebox full of old parts from
a cuckoo clock sits in the corner of the room. The couch is in tatters, worn down to
the foam insides of the cushions. The television screen is cracked down the middle.
The ceiling fan is missing two blades. Mrs. Smith smokes my cigarettes at the little
folding card table beside the couch and stares at her cards with a blank face,
grooved with wrinkles, crow’s legs, discoloration, moles.
“We betting money?” She forces words through her lips without moving
them, never takes her eyes off the cards in her hands.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I shrug, looking at my cards, realizing I
have no idea how to play poker.
“You’re a big chicken.” Mrs. Smith says.
A half hour passes. I stand up and stretch my back after losing every single
hand, thankful that we weren’t playing for money.
“You’re a shit card player.” She mumbles, lights another of my cigarettes,
walks out to the balcony that I hadn’t noticed before.
“I’ll give you a nickel for that cigarette lighter.” She says.
“You have, like, fifty lighters in your candy bowl.”
“Those are for guests.” She says. “I need one for myself.”
“Here.” I hand her the lighter. “You can have it.”

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 She turns away from me, watches the traffic across her lawn.
I take a breath and stand beside her on the balcony, watching cars pass by
on the street.
“You don’t seem like someone who would need to be taken care of.” I say.
She looks at me. “You think I just get lonely?”
“Maybe.”
“You will too.” She nods. “When you’re my age.”
“Shit, I get lonely now.”
“How old are you?” She asks.
“Young enough to know to keep my mouth shut.”
“Since when do young people know to keep their mouths shut?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug.
“You’re…mid twenties…strapped for cash, sex before marriage, sleep
during the day, unhealthy.”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“You get to be my age,” She says. “You learn to read people pretty well.”
“What you just said applies to everyone I know.” I take a drag, finish my
fourth beer.
“The world is doomed.” She says. “The ice is beginning to melt.”
A moment passes.
“You’re a shit card player.” She says. “But you’re all right company.”
“Thanks. I guess.”
You know, I remember the first plane that flew in this state. I was a girl
working on the farm and I saw it fly by, a little single engine thing. Not many
people can say they saw the first plane in this state.”
“What was that, like, nineteen twelve, or something?”
“Something like that.” She says.
“Where’s your husband?” I ask.
“Dead.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I would have killed him myself if the damn angina hadn’t
beaten me to it.”
“Oh.” I shrug, take a breath.
“Through the looking glass you’ll be watching me for hours,” Mrs. Smith
says. “You will be, and I’ll still be the same aging old rags. I’ll never look this good
again and maybe you won’t care…or maybe you’ll just stop looking.”

I pick up Buck from the airport and he’s got tears in his eyes and he only
has one suitcase and I ask him how his trip was and he just looks at me and sort of
smiles and I realize it wasn’t good, and maybe not bad either, just a trip to some
beach somewhere and I don’t say anything else about it and we drive through town
and I realize I don’t know where we are or how to get back home and we pass a

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large building surrounded by barbed wire fences and as we pass it by there are
people in the yard wearing white hospital gowns and they all look so lost, so
confused.
Buck tells me to pull over and I ask him why and he says, just do it, so I
pull off into a parking lot that turns out to be the parking lot for the psychiatric
hospital and we sit there for a moment and Buck just stares at the building for a
while before speaking.
“I know someone…here.” He says.
I look at the building, at the glass doors, at the security guard standing
outside on the front steps smoking a cigarette.
“Here?” I ask.
“Yeah. Here.” Buck sighs.
“You want to…say hello?”
“I don’t want to go in there.” He shakes his head. “I just…I haven’t seen
him in a long time. I wonder how he’s doing.”
“Well, if he’s in that place.” I say, pointing at the building. “He may not be
doing all that well.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” He shrugs. “But he was always…different. I think he
might like it there.”
“So…he’s crazy.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s his name?”
“Doesn’t matter. He likes to piss in his pants. He could be there forever and
no one would miss him. Except for me.”
A moment passes. Buck lights a cigarette and rolls down his window.
“Jesus,” He says, “it’s been a fucked up year.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, unsure of what else to say.
“Fuck it.” He says. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Your place. If that’s okay.”
“That’s fine. Are you going to…be okay?”
“Sure. Whatever.” He says.
We pull out of the parking lot and drive down the road. A child holding
balloons on strings stands in the middle of the turning lane in the street. We pass
him by and he waves at us, smiling. Buck waves back at the kid and starts crying.
“Everything is the same.” He sobs. “Nothing ever changes but people will
always die.”
I don’t know what to say to this, how to respond, or if I even need to, so I
don’t say anything. We drive quietly for a while. Finally I figure out where we are
and I make the necessary turns to get back to my apartment and we park and get out
and Buck follows me up to my apartment and we go in and Buck stands in the
living room while I take off my jacket and check the messages on my answering

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machine and then, because I don’t know how else to help him, I walk over and I put
my lips to his and our tongues meet and I pull back and pull off my shirt, my bra,
and I take him by the hand into the living room and we strip and lie on the bed
together, kissing, touching, and we make love like two strangers and he begins to
cry as we reach climax together and I realize maybe this isn’t what he needs at all
but I think it’s what I need and after it’s over we hold each other for a while beneath
the covers and the sound of traffic from outside the bedroom windows doesn’t mean
anything to either us, anything at all, and I begin to think about the hospital, about
the people in gowns that seemed so lost behind the fences and I think about Buck’s
expression when we were in the parking lot and the sound of his voice when he told
me that he knew somebody in there and I roll over and lay my head on his chest and
no matter how hard I try I can’t hear his heart beat, I can’t hear it at all.

Figure Eighteen: The Phone Number

The television screams at me.
Like an infant starving for attention, it screams, and no matter how low I
turn the volume down, it’s as if it’s getting louder and louder.
It screams things like SEX, LOVE, MARRIAGE, COMMITMENT.
It screams during commercials for luxury cruises, engagement rings,
lingerie.
It screams at me while I’m doing the crossword puzzle, finding a way to fill every
space with L.O.V.E.
It screams at me while I’m in the shower.
It screams at me in my sleep.
It screams so loud I have to run out of the house and even as I get to the other end of
the hallway, and down the stairs, I can still hear the screaming, like a voice behind
me begging me to find someone, fall in love, get married.
I grab the paper on the way to work, and it starts screaming at me too.
Begging me, please, just try to meet some one.
It can’t be that hard.
Begging, please, find some one now before it’s too late.
Before you get old, and ugly, and no one will want to be with you.
Before your skin shrivels up like raisins, and your eyes dilate permanently like some
big lifelike doll with rubber skin and gray falling out hair.
Begging, please, fall in love, marry, start a family, be happy for the rest of your life,
before it’s too late.
Before no one can love you.
Before, one day, alone, you die.
At work, there is no television, only ties and blouses.
Designer paintings on dead white walls, pep slogans pasted on the outside of
cubicles, and the constant clicking sound of a dozen keyboards typing at once.
Phones ring.

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The elevator goes up, then down, then up again.
From inside my cubicle, I can’t see out side, can’t see trees, or the birds.
Martin, one of the upper management guys knocks on the side of my cubicle.
“Knock, knock,” He says.
I nod my head up, wave my pencil in the air.
“Hey, Martin.”
“What’s up?” He asks, sipping on a mug with steam floating up into his receding
hairline, fogging up his glasses.
“Not much,” I shrug, glancing around my cubicle, shaking the pencil around
between my thumb and forefinger.
“Just…working.” The pencil flies out of my hand and lands eraser down on my
keyboard, typing the letter H in the middle of a memo I’ve been assigned to write
addressing the ongoing trend of urinating onto the floors and walls in the employee
men’s restroom.
“And yourself?” I smile.
“Oh, you know, busy as always, just taking a coffee breather,” His face sinks like
bruised fruit for a moment, his arms crossed on his chest, his mug held to his
shoulder, then with a jolt he perks up as if remembering something.
“You know,” He says. “I saw a psychic the other day.” He starts to laugh.
“Really?” I grin, nodding.
“Really,” he says. “It was fun. Her name’s, oh shoot, what was her name, madam
something. Has a little house just down the block from here, in those
neighborhoods.”
“Right, right,” I say. “I drive passed their on the way home.”
“You don’t take 35?”
“No, rush hour, man. I like to take Cedar Brook down to main.”
“Oh, right,” He says. “Bypass all the suckers like me who stick to
expressways.”
“Right, I can get home in about fifteen, if I run a couple stop signs.
He smirks. “So, this psychic, well, actually she’s a fortune teller, but it’s
the same thing, right? She’s really good. You should check her out. The price is
minimal. She’s very professional. You’d like her.”
“Hmm. Don’t know if I’m into the whole psychic thing.”
“Oh come on,” He says. “If it wasn’t for fortune telling, where do you think the
world would be today?”
“I…don’t know.”
“Here,” He says, picking something out of his pocket. “It’s her card. Take it. Go get
your fortune read, I’ll pay for it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“You’ll pay for it?”
“Consider it a business expense.” He laughs. “Anyway, I have to get back to work,
take it easy, man. And oh, try to get those memos out as soon as possible. I just

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spent, like, five minutes washing piss stains off the cuff of my pant leg because
some moron decided to pee a fucking puddle on the floor.”
“Um…okay.”
He leaves, sipping on his coffee mug, making a sour face. “Jesus Christ, is some one
deciding to piss in the coffee now,” I hear him grunting down the hall, “Or do we
need to switch blends again?” Talking to no one in particular.
After work, I take Cedar Brook towards Main, but instead of passing by the funky
little house with a sign that says ‘Fortunes Read, Know Your Future’, like I always
do, I pull into the little drive way, turn off the engine, take a deep breath, and get out
of the car.
When I was a child, my mother told me there are things in this world that
she can’t explain to me.
Things like miracles, women lifting turned over cars to retrieve their trapped baby
from underneath, a man surviving a train wreck without a scratch on him, while
every one else is dead in the wreckage.
Growing up without a father, she felt it was her responsibility to prepare me for the
world, teach me about responsibilities, how and why to take care of myself, how to
be healthy.
But there were things that she had experienced, things she didn’t know how to
explain.
Things like ghosts, angels, fortune telling.
The bridge connects together levels of earth on either side of a great ditch, moss
eaten, moist.
The sky is alive with birds in sunlight.
The noise is casual; birds singing to each other, wind whispering through the air.
It’s all so perfect.
The sign says fortuneteller.
There’s a painting of a purple hand with deep crimson lines slit across the palm.
The house is antique, moth-eaten.
I knock on the door, unsure if it’s so private a business that these little civilities are
necessary.
There’s a sound of a voice, garbled.
I open the door, and step inside.
The woman sits at the table like she never leaves; arms hunched over the
back of her chair, the sleeves of her shirt hanging down her sides like curtains, silk.
The floor is hard wood, covered in rugs.
The walls are white behind a décor of paintings, dark weathered photographs.
There’s a smell in the air like the beach, and sandalwood.
A black cat is asleep on a dresser in the next room where a man paces
across the open door way speaking what sounds like Italian into a cell phone.
He wears thick glasses and a moustache with hair from the sides of his scalp slicked
up and over his bald spot.

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 “Welcome,” The woman says. “I’ve been expecting you. It’s all been paid
for. Have a seat.” She waves her hand to a chair sitting across from her. “What can I
do for you? You want your fortune told to you?”
“That’s the idea,” I smile as I sit across from her, trying to be cute.
She smiles faintly, retrieves a wrapping of silk from under the table. She
starts to speak.
“I deal in cards, mainly. Tarot.” She unfolds the wrapping, which seems to
be made of silk, and displays a deck of cards, sets them aside from the silk, on the
table.
Make eye contact, pay attention.
“The cards tell the future?” I ask.
“You tell your own future, the cards simply interpret what you tell me, and
I interpret the cards for you.”
When my mother died, I found I didn’t have a place for myself.
I didn’t seem to fit in.
I kept odd jobs, lived alone, took care of myself pretty well.
My mother taught me well, but there was always something missing.
I’d go to sleep at night feeling a sort of emptiness, a feeling like loneliness that my
mother never taught me how to deal with.
The fortune teller pushes the cards to the center of the table, and asks me to
separate the deck in half, setting one half next to the other, which I do.
She says, “Though the cards are common, and popular in the western
world as the most effective form of reading, it is intuition itself that tells us what we
want to know, not the cards, or dice, or crystals. By all rights, I can tell you what
you want to know by simply touching your palm, or looking into your eyes,
studying your moles.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The cards, or dice, or coins, or how ever the fortune is read, and there are
many methods, some more common than others, they are simply mediums of
reading, the same way a book is simply a way to display words, but a story can be
read to you, just as I read from the cards, and I read them to you. Do you
understand?”
“I think so.”
“You are of an inquisitive mind, open to ideas outside of your own, though
skeptical of things you cannot see.”
“You know this from the cards?”
“I know this from looking at you.”
“Well, you’re right, but the same can be said about a lot of people.”
She smiles, nods, stretches her neck from side to side.
“There’s that skeptical mind.” She hovers her right hand above the cards, then
switches it with her right, then frowns slightly, wrinkles her nose.
“I don’t think the cards are right for you.”

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 “What do you mean?”
“I’m reading your energy. You don’t seem to want the cards read.”
“I don’t mind.”
“Not your conscious, your subconscious. You won’t get anything out of the
cards.”
She picks up the half decks, piles them together in her palm, and sticks
them somewhere beneath the table, then retrieves a large wooden box, and sets it to
the side of the table.
“Give me your palm,” She says, looking at the table.
I offer my palm across the table.
She takes it in her hands, fingers the grooves and lines, studies the hills and digits.
She turns the palm over, studies the knuckles, probes the skin with her finger tips,
then motions for the other hand, and studies it the same way.
“Your life line is strong.” She holds my hand palm up, runs her finger
along one of the lines grooved into the skin.
“See how long it is? You’re going to live a long life, but…not without trauma, or…
you live a troubled life, as well as a joyful one.”
She runs her fingers along another line, joined into the lifeline she pointed out.
“You have a lot of passion for a man of your age, your skin is tender but of a thick
consistency. You have a lot of anger in your life, a kind of passionate anger that, at
times can be a little uncontrollable.’
“Yes,” I smile. “I can agree with that.”
“You’re…very artistic, almost brilliantly so. But you don’t do anything
with it. You keep to yourself.”
I nod, take a deep breathe.
“Did you finish college?”
“Yes,” I nod. “Years ago.”
“I see a continuation of your education in the future, perhaps further job
training. Your work involves a lot of paper work.”
“You can tell that from my palms?”
She turns my fingers around in her hands.
“Paper cuts,” She smiles.
She looks at me, takes her glasses off.
She lets go of my hands and I set them on the table.
“Let me have a look at you,” she says.
She takes my head in her hands, turns it from side to side, and looks at my eyes, my
nose.
Studies the shape of my ears, runs her hands through my hair.
“You are healthy, for your age. You work out, though not as much as you’d
like.”
She closes her eyes, places her hands on my arms, and takes a deep breath.

!126
 “You’re not happy with your job,” She says, “Though you’re not looking
for another one, you’ve settled in pretty nicely there. You don’t want to give it up,
for fear of not being able to find another one.”
“It’s tough finding a job these days.”
She opens her eyes. “Shoot, why do you think I tell fortunes for a living?
Used to be a stock clerk. I know how tough it is.”
She pulls the box to the center of the table, opens it by flipping an old
rusted hinge up, pulls the cover off, sets it on the table, and pulls a large clear sphere
out and sets it on a wooden stand in the center of the table.
I clear my throat.
“Not what you expected is it?”
“Actually it’s exactly what I would expect, very…cliché.”
“But effective,” She says. “This will allow me to look deeper into your
future. You have questions, yes?”
“Sure.”
“Everyone has questions, that’s why you’re here.”
She closes her eyes, rubs her hands along the crystal ball.
“All right,” She says, breathing deeply. “You are going to be at your job for
a while. Years. But soon, very soon you are going to take a long vacation.”
“I have a lot of vacation time saved up. I was thinking about going to
Hawaii.”
“You’re going to meet someone, very soon, or you’ve already met…and
that person is going to fall in love with you…or already has.”
“Will we get married?”
“Hard to tell. There are a lot of factors in work here. You may not be ready
for marriage. You’ve never had a long term relationship before.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“I know,” She smiles. “This woman, she is going to be just right for you,
you’re going to meet…or maybe you’ve already met…and you will make each
other complete.”
I ponder this for a moment, breathing quietly. It’s all too perfect, nicely
wrapped, just what I want to hear.
“No offense, but I’m not sure I’m convinced.”
“I know,” She says.
“Sure.”
“I see her as plainly as I’m seeing you now. She has light brown hair,
though when you see her next it is going to be short, and dyed darker. You’re still
not convinced.”
I take a breath, sit back in the chair. She shuts her eyes tightly.
“I can retrieve details that will settle your mind.”
“Like what?”
“What do you want to know?”

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 “What does she look like? Where does she live?”
“She lives here, in this city, but she’ll move away soon, then come back.
She’s thin, a little pale, though she’s working on getting a tan. She’s
misunderstood…writes…poetry.”
She looks at me, smiles. “Still not convinced, think I’m making all this
up?””
I smile, shrug.
She picks up a business card from beneath the table, closes her eyes, and
scribbles something on the back of it with a ball point pen.
“Here,” She says, keeping her eyes shut tightly. “I’m messing with karma
here, and a little bit of fate, but I’m giving you what I think is her phone number.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, here,” She says, handing me the business card. “You have to trust me
here, that is the number I found in your future, one of her phone numbers. She’ll
give you a different number later.”
“Then why give me this number?”
“To show you that I know more than you think I do, to allow you to accept
that you will find happiness in your life, very soon.”
“How do I know this isn’t just a number of one of your friends? Or your
number?”
She laughs a little bit. “Don’t be silly, I have no intention of fixing you up
with anyone, in fact, I’m never going to see you again.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know everything,” she shrugs. “It’s what I do. It’s my job to know.”
I check my watch. “Well, I should get home now.”
I start to stand up. She stands up with me.
“Thank you for your time,” I smile, offering my hand to shake hers.
“Don’t worry,” She says, shaking my hand. “When the time comes, you’ll
understand. You’re a smart guy, just follow your heart.”
“My heart.”
“The heart is very rarely wrong, if you really listen to it.”
I leave feeling light headed.
I pocket the business card with the mystery woman’s supposed phone number on it.
I start to laugh to myself in the parking lot, feeling giddy.
Time passes like a heart attack.
I get home and play with a fold in the business with my thumb. I stick it in a drawer
next to my bed, and turn on the television in the living room. I watch television all
night, fall asleep on the couch, feel well rested in the morning, dress, and comb my
hair, take a deep breathe, relax.
I start to think about the phone number while I’m at work filing papers into
folders marked with letters of the alphabet. Martin stops by my cubicle, asks if I’m
all right. I tell him I’m fine.

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 He asks, “Did you ever go to that psychic?”
“Yes,” I nod. “A couple days ago.”
“How’d it go?”
“Fine. I’m going to fall in love.” I shrug.
“Hey, good for you,” He says, and then disappears to another part of the
office.
I’m left with my work, learning to ignore the hum of sound; computers, whispers,
phone calls, news bulletins.
I file papers well.
I have job security.
I hate my job, though my boss is pretty cool.
Every one hates their job.
Of course there’s something missing, there’s always something missing.
It’s a safe bet that everyone wants to fall in love.
Some psychic can say you’re going to meet someone special, and you’ll eat it up
like candy, just a little taste of hope.
A little possibility goes a long way.
Everywhere you go for answers is only going to lead to more questions.
After work, I walk to the parking lot and imagine a special someone at
home cooking roast beef that will be ready when I get home, and I don’t know why
everyone complains about roast beef for dinner because my imaginary special
someone makes the best roast beef I’ve ever had.
I drive home, open the door, and there’s no one here, no food smell in the air, no
roast in the oven.
A stray cat runs in behind me as I’m closing the door, and then runs immediately out
before it shuts all the way.
“Silly cat,” I mumble to myself.
I take a deep breath, turn on the television with a beer and a box of left over pizza.
Wake up on the couch, late for work, decide to call in sick but I don’t know
my work number, then I remember I have it on speed dial, so I call and the line is
busy, so I race to the bed room, get dressed, try calling again, and a woman answers.
“Webber industries. This is Jessica, how can I help you?”
“It’s Albert, I’m going to be a little late today. Can you let Martin know?”
“Martin is out of the office today, taking some clients to lunch,” She says.
“You have time to come in, I think, if you hurry.”
“Thanks.”
“Bye,” She says.
I hang up the phone, grab my keys, my wallet, and run to the car.
It’s a beautiful morning, blue skies, beautiful sun lit trees, the kind of morning I
always miss because I’m at work, in my cubicle, shut off from the world.
I get to work and sneak into my cubicle before Martin shows up, nodding
to Jessica at the front desk as I pass.

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She gives me a wink, smiles from behind her computer monitor.
I get to my desk and there’s a white envelope with my name hand written
on it in red ink.
I tuck it into the desk drawer, and log in on my computer, retrieve the memo file
from a systems folder, add some last minute finishing touches, and send it to the
network bulletin e-mail.
I sit back, take a breath, open my filing cabinet, find a file I’m working with, one of
our new clients who is only available by phone.
Some sort of a social disorder, Martin told me, whatever that means.
Don’t we all have social disorders, in one way or another?
I flip through my rolodex, wondering if I should switch to the new
electronic organizers every one seems to be crazy over, decide I might, depending
how much they are.
Flipping through the numbers, I think of the phone number the fortuneteller gave
me, trying to forget about it but finding it impossible.
I find the clients number, and when I start to dial, I forget why I’m calling
him, so I hang up, sit back in my chair and rub my eyes, mumbling to myself,
unintelligibly.
I start to wonder who it is that keeps pissing on the restroom floor.
Supposedly, it’s an unusual amount of piss and it floods about a quarter of an inch
on the floor.
Someone must be drinking a whole hell of a lot of coffee in the morning.
I smile to myself as I think of Martin sneaking into the restroom after his one-
hundredth cup of coffee and relieving himself all over the floor and walls,
uncontrollably.
I laugh out loud, and then stretch my back, popping a bone in my shoulders, making
a mental note to start stretching more.
At home, I turn my coffee maker on, realize I’m out of filters, decide to use
tissue paper instead but when I try it, it comes all apart and makes a mess.
I’m about to go to the store for some filters, and maybe more coffee when the phone
rings and when I answer it, there’s a voice recording on the line saying I’ve won the
chance to be a finalist in a grand prize drawing of a million dollar sweepstakes.
I hang up the phone, and sit on the bed to tie my shoes and I notice the drawer in the
bedside table is ajar, and I can see the corner of the pale white business card with
the phone number on it the fortuneteller gave me.
I pull the drawer open, and start to read the numbers out loud without even meaning
to, then, feeling agitated, I jump and walk out of the house without locking the door
behind me and I get in my car and just sit here for what seems like maybe five
minutes.
Then a thought occurs to me that maybe I never am going to meet this supposed
woman, that maybe it’s this very phone number that links us, not some future
mystical introduction.

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I turn the ignition and pull out of the driveway, and into the street.
I’m wandering aimlessly through the grocery store, pushing a shopping
cart through endless white aisles with my eyes half shut.
I feel blank, like a shadow, and a little annoyed at myself for being so ridiculous.
Every one feels like they’ve lost something.
I think maybe that’s just how it is.
I buy new coffee filters, and decide on a new blend I’ve never tried before,
and on the way home I’m a little excited about trying the new coffee.
At home I relax with a cup of the new coffee, pleased with it, and feeling
pretty proud about the purchase. I sit at the dining table with my coffee, and I start
to read the paper.
The sun begins to set.
After dark, I lay in bed with the card held against my chest with my palm.
My eyes are shut.
I’m breathing deeply.
I’m obsessing.
It’s not healthy.
I can’t deal with this.
I reach over for the phone on the nightstand.
I dial the numbers, remembering them by heart, as if I had always known them, and
I sit up in bed as it begins to ring.
I let it ring about three times before I chicken out and hang up.
I clamp my eyes shut.
Coward.
This is stupid.
I turn off the lights and get beneath the covers without brushing my teeth. As I roll
over I realize I still have on my slacks. I decide I don’t care and squeeze my head
beneath the pillow, and I start to fall asleep.
Morning.
Today is Friday, which means casual dress day.
I dress in my suit, and tie and pull a blue baseball cap over my head that says on the
front of it, ‘Gone Fishin’, in big red letters.
Before I go to work, I find the fortuneteller’s business card tucked beneath the
covers in my bed.
I grab it and stick it in my pocket as I head out the door without making the bed or
locking the door behind me, and when I think about it, I believe I left the coffee
machine on.
At work I’m the only one with a hat on, which makes me feel ridiculous,
but when I notice Martin is wearing a kilt with an Armani business suit, I feel a little
better.
Then Jessica, the front desk chick finds an old goofy hat from somewhere and puts
it on to make me feel better, which kind of works.

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 In my cubicle, I find myself completely clueless about what I’m supposed
to be doing today, so I start shuffling papers around, writing gibberish on the side
banners of business fliers.
Martin appears at my cubicle.
“Hey.”
“Hey,” He says. “Working hard?”
“Not really.”
He chuckles. “Me neither.”
He takes a sip from his mug.
“I noticed you’re wearing a kilt.” I smile, nod, and start to bite on my
pencil eraser.
“It’s my grandfather’s,” He says. “Or was. I thought I’d set an example, let
the team know we mean casual dress when we say it."
“Ha. Right.” I nod.
“I like you’re hat,” He says, taking a sip from his mug.
“Thanks,” I shrug. “I’d forgotten I have it on.”
“So how are things? You fallen in love yet?”
I laugh. “No, Not yet. I have her phone number, but I’m not supposed to
call it until we meet, or something.”
“Right, right,” He nods knowingly. “Madam what’s her face can be pretty
tricky. I stopped going to her. I think she’s insane.”
“Really?”
“Well, she tells fortunes, for one thing, how sane can she possibly be?”
“Right, right,” I laugh, nodding.
“So you called that number yet?”
“I did, but no one answered. Guess it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Try it again. If there’s no answer, no harm done.”
“I guess.”
“Hey, man, better now than never. Go ahead, call it now. If it was me I
would have called it as soon as I could.”
“Right,” I nod. “I’ve been a little anxious about it. It’s just weird, you
know?”
“Right. Shit man, it’s probably bullshit. You should go ahead and call it,
just so you know, before it drives you completely insane.”
“Aren’t we not allowed to make personal calls at work?”
“Man, I don’t even care anymore,” He laughs. “But don’t tell anyone else
that. Use your cell phone.”
He slaps his hand lightly on my cubicle as he walks away.
I sit back in my chair, take the business card out of my pocket, turn my cell
phone on, and I start to dial the numbers.
As it rings, I cover my other ear to block out the sound of office phones ringing.

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I start to feel silly, calling her, or whoever it is, from work, and I’m wondering what
the hell I’m going to say to her, some perfect stranger.
Or maybe it’s not a real number at all.
But then some one picks up, the air goes quiet all around me, and a woman’s voice
on the other line says, “Webber Industries. This is Jessica, how can I help you?”
I blink, frown a little.
I check the card.
I flip it around, and then over again to make sure I dialed the right number.
“Hello?” Jessica says, her voice sounding muffled on the phone.
“Um. Hi.”
“How can I Help you?” She says, sounding very business-like.
“Um, this is Albert, from financing…”
“Hello, Albert from financing. Hey, did you hear about the men’s
restroom? It turns out someone’s kid was sneaking out of the daycare downstairs
and peeing all over the place.”
“Really? Jesus.”
“It turns out the kid has some kind of urinary track…thing. Pees like a race
horse.”
“Gross.” I say, dazzled.
“Totally gross.”
“I didn’t even know we had a daycare.”
“It’s a new thing, trying to accommodate single parents, or whatever.”
“Cool.”
A moment passes, silence. Then she says, “So…what’s up?”
“Um, I’m…a little off guard right now, but, um…” Fuck it. “You want to
go out some time? Like, are you doing anything tonight?”
Her voice changes, gets quieter. “You got my letter.”
“Your…letter?”
“White envelope, red writing? You read it, right?”
“Um. No, no, I didn’t see it.” I pull my drawer open and there’s the letter
sitting on top of some files, right where I put it, not even acknowledging it.
“Oh, well, Okay…” She mumbles.
I pull the envelope out and tear it open. I begin to power read it while we
share a brief moment of silence.
In the letter there are words like ‘long time crush’ and ‘from afar’ and ‘too
embarrassed to tell you’ and it’s signed ‘anonymous’.
This would have driven me crazy if I had read it before.
Suddenly, it all begins to make so much sense: the winks, the smiles, the
goofy hat.
Maybe the fortuneteller knew what she was talking about after all.
To the phone I say, “So…how about dinner tonight?”

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 A moment passes, Martin walks by my cubicle with a knowing grin on his
face, eaves dropping, and on the line, Jessica from across the office says, “I’d love
to.”
“Um, I’ll pick you up…or, do you want to go straight after work?”
“I’ll want to go home first, change and everything. Let me give you my
number, my real number, and we’ll make plans from there. Okay?”
“Okay, great,” I say, beaming.
She gives me her number and I write it down in the corner of a blank piece of paper.
“Hey,” She says. “Maybe we can just have dinner at my place. I make a
pretty good meatloaf.”
I smile. “Sounds great.”
“So,” she says. “I’ll…talk to you after work?”
“I look forward to it.”
“Great, me too,” she says. “Um. Bye, bye.”
“Bye.”
We hang up.
I take a deep breath, and relax in my seat feeling a wave of bliss rush over me.
I stand up, stretch my back, take a look around the office, then I spot Jessica
standing up, by her desk.
We make eye contact from across the office.
She smiles, and then blushes, and I smile back, feeling a tingling in my stomach.
She waves, then walks away with a little jog to her step, full of pep.
I sit back down, scratch an itch on my scalp, and tear the fortuneteller’s business
cared in half, throw it in the trash with a little flip of my wrist and I tear off the
corner of the piece of paper where I wrote down Jessica’s home phone number and I
smile to myself, close my eyes, and I take a deep breath.

Figure Nineteen: Bar Fight Romance

It’s only a little after midnight when I decide to leave the party, tired of the
kids and their silliness so I hail a taxi and tell the driver, “Downtown.”
“Where in downtown?” He asks: black beard, eyeglasses, Hispanic, scar on
his cheek.
“Anywhere.” I shrug.
We drive for a spell, and I take the time to admire this fine city here. The
driver doesn’t make small talk and I salute him for it. He stops in front of a bar I’ve
never been to.
“This’ll do fine.” I say.
I throw some cash on the passenger seat and take a step onto the curb. The
taxi drives off and I put on my coat.
There’s a line leading into the bar; well dressed, mostly young, groomed, talkative. I
wait in line for a couple minutes before deciding on somewhere else.

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I maneuver through sidewalk crowds in the general direction of the bars I know. I
spot someone who looks familiar and I cross the street to avoid eye contact. There’s
barely a line in front of Old Steeley’s, so I reckon I’ll go in for a spell.
The scene is alive tonight. Music is on full blast. Crowds. Pounding bass.
A woman at the bar catches my eye: brown hair, elegant slope in her lower back,
blue dress moderately slit down the side.
She twirls her hair and turns her head to the side. Her face is not all together
unattractive. I think I might have a chance at buying her a drink.
I make my way through the crowd, sit at the bar across from her. The bartender
blocks me at the perfect time so that she doesn’t see me sit down.
I don’t want to be seen quite yet. I watch her. She drinks martinis slowly, eyeing the
ceiling as she lifts the glass. A boy appears beside her and offers her a drink,
possibly a martini, but it’s tinted a light blue color.
Date rape blue.
She throws it in his face. Maybe no one told him they dye those pills blue now, as a
warning. Or maybe he thought she was too stupid to know better. Then again maybe
it’s just some blue drink, but it pays a lot these days to be real damn careful, I
reckon. In any case he’s ruined it for me because now she’s storming off, out of the
bar. He doesn’t follow her. I don’t blame him.
He makes eye contact with me and holds his glance when I mouth the word smooth.
He looks confused and walks into a crowd near the dance floor.
I order a JD on ice from the bartender who is not too friendly, and I stand to watch
over the group: some on the dance floor, some walk the stairs to the VIP section,
some sit at the bar, staring into half empty glasses.
“Do you have a light?” A voice from behind me.
I turn to face a woman of average height wearing chopsticks stabbed into a bun of
tight auburn hair worn on the top of her head. She wears a thin almost transparent
blouse (white bra) and a black skirt that follows the curves of her legs to her knees
and stops at a poorly stitched seam that’s coming undone at one end.
“Sure.” I light my lighter in the air. She leans into the flame with her cigarette
tucked between her lips. She takes a couple puffs, exhaling smoke into the air.
She says, “Thanks.” And starts to turn away.
“You’re from the mid west, right?” I ask.
She turns back around. We make eye contact.
“How’d you know?” She asks.
“Accents,” I shrug. “Bet you’ll never guess where I’m from.”
She takes a breath, exhales. “North Dakota?”
“Hell no, girl. Texas.”
“Would’ve been my second guess.”
“I’ll bet. Buy you a drink?”
As I lift my hand to motion for the bartender, a hand grabs me by the wrist
and starts pulling. I turn to face a man of large stature, thick in the chest and arms

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wearing a black tank top and a scar that grooves from beyond his receding hairline
down over the slope of his forehead to the bridge of his nose.
“That’s mah girlfriend,” he says, his speech low and hoarse, the kind of
sound a donkey with emphysema might make.
“Oh,” I mumble, feeling a little bashful. “My mistake…”
“You ain’t my boyfriend,” The woman growls, scowling at the guy.
“Ah says you is.” He says, barely looking at her.
She starts to say something, then doesn’t.
“You know this guy?” I ask her.
“Never seen him before in my life.”
I turn to Mr. Scar. “You heard her.”
“Ah didn’t hear a goddamn thing,” He coughs, gripping the front of my
shirt with two mangled claws that look as if someone stitched them onto his tanned,
muscular arms, the way the tan line doesn’t match.
The girl backs away. In my head, I’m switching from romance to fight,
when the bartender says, “Look, we don’t want any trouble here.”
“Ain’t no trouble,” Mr. Scar says. “Just gonna walk my pal to his car, is
all.”
“Look, man,” I shrug. “I have no business with you. If that’s your lady, I’ll
just find some one else. Fair?”
The woman lets out a huff of air from her lips that fans her bangs to the
side.
“No offense meant darlin’” I shrug.
Mr. Scar starts pullin’ on my shirt, tuggin me towards the doors and I let out a kick
aimed at his groin, but it completely misses and glances off his thigh instead.
He pulls back to give me a punch, but he keeps his fist in the air too long. A
dead giveaway. I manage to dodge the first blow, but his second fist comes out of
nowhere and connects to my jaw, knocking it out of place. I feel the grinding of
teeth and the sting of what is probably a chipped tooth.
Now I make the mistake of getting too mad, blinding myself with emotion.
I go for a right cross and he manages to dodge most of the blow.
By now there’s a group gathered around us, some cheering, some
grimacing. I don’t see them except for blurs, but I hear them all right.
I take a step back, and my foot catches on a turned over beer bottle on the
floor. As I’m falling backwards he swings a fist at my face but misses. I land on my
side and am already coming up for another go at him when there’s a crash and
something hard breaks over my upper back. Splinters of wood scatter over the floor
around me and I stumble down, my eyesight fogging up.
I try to get up again but a steel-toed boot connects to my left temple and I
fall on my face. I can taste blood in my mouth, can feel it seeping from my nose and
from parts of my scalp that sting like hell.

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 I lay still for a moment and I’d like to say I’m acting possum, but the truth
of it is, I’m beat. Plain and simple.
When I do get up, a lot of the crowd is gone, as well as Mr. Scar, and most
of me is glad for it, but there’s that small percent that’s wishin’ he’d come back so I
could get a shot at feelin’ all right about getting beat like I did.
“Took quite a beating.”
Turn to face the woman, smilin’ away, all giggles. I wipe my nose with the
back of my hand and I pull it away covered in blood. She hands me a wad of tissues.
“Thought it was funny, did you?” I grin, holding my head up with the
tissues held to my nostrils.
“You kind of stood up for me, huh?” She says, her hand on my shoulder, the other
hand holding a tissue to my forehead where blood is seepin’ down into my eyes.
“Kind of.” I grin, winkin’ at her from the corner of my eye.
“Well,” She smiles. “Why don’t we get you cleaned up, and you can buy
me that drink you promised me.”
“Now, I don’t remember promisin’ nothin’,” I tell her as we start walkin’ across the
bar, littered with broken beer bottles and bar stools. “But it sounds like a plan to
me.”

Figure Twenty: Found Us

Staring down twilight, eclipsed. Sun rises, fades. Air thick with moisture,
silent. Wooden canopies, shoulders, nightmares. Wandering aimless, the woods hold
me like an infant. A lost little girl, moth-eaten fabric, blood red, alone.
The woods are perfect, existing and not existing.
Sounds of a breath, deep, hollow. Eyes glow in darkness, a far away land, a
distance incalculable, existing and not existing at all. A dream.
The body materializes, becomes there, becomes real. Existing. He speaks
in breaths. The air is wet with the sound of his voice.
“Is doomsday averted yet?” He asks me.
“Not yet, brother.”
“Have you eaten?” He asks.
“I’ve eaten…before. Not sure how long it’s been.”
“Will you follow me?” He asks.
“Alright. Sure.” I shrug in the moonlight.
He turns and leads me through the thickets and shrubs, the hollowed pine
and oak trees. His hair, torn, as gray as smoke, it moves with a breeze escaped in his
breath through blistered lips. A mist, a fog. He speaks below the wind as we enter a
clearing within the woods. His words are fragments, ghosts in the air. I cannot hear
what he is saying.
We arrive at a dim fire within a circle of black stones. He sits by the fire
and stares into the flames. There sits a large pot in the fire from which escapes an
odor of meat and spices. He nods towards it. I sit by the fire and lean forward to

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remove the lid from the pot. What I can see within the pot in the light from the fire
appears to be a stew of some kind. He hands me a rickety wooden spoon that
appears to be hand carved. I dip the spoon into the pot and swallow a mouthful. My
tongue quivers. I take several more bites.
“Eat as much as you like.” He says.
“Thank you…it’s delicious.”
“It is what it is.” He says.
I eat from the pot until I am full, a sensation which I vaguely remember.
Perhaps in a former life. It takes a considerable portion to satisfy me and I am afraid
that I have eaten most of his dinner but when I look into the pot again it is as if I had
not eaten any of it at all. In fact there appears to be even more stew than when I first
took off the lid.
My eyes drift into the atmosphere and the moon screams, separates into
three small spheres. The spheres begin to circle around me, burning my eyes from
the sockets.
Darkness again, light from the fire. My eyes…there is nothing wrong with
my eyes. I look at the old man grinning into the fire.
“That’s not…normal.” I say.
“Relax.” The man says. “Make yourself at home.”
A second figure emerges from the darkness of the woods surrounding us.
Thin, feminine. The steps are graceful, silent. She stands in the light of the fire
beside the old man. Purple and blue veins like spider webs poking out through her
thin pale skin.
“My daughter.” The old man says.
She has a troubled expression but smiles faintly.
“Hello.” She says.
She wears a light blue dress stained with crimson splashes and puddles.
“Won’t you…stay with us…for…the night?” She asks.
The old man smiles into the fire.
“I…live…not far from here.” I say. “In a…hollow log. I drink…muddy
water.”
“How interesting.” She says. “Stay with us…here by the fire…for the
night.”
“Alright.” I say.
The old man keeps his gaze on the fire while the woman approaches me
and takes my hand. She leads me into the darkness. Moisture in the air. A river
nearby, perhaps a lake. We walk for a moment until we clear the trees and there’s
the dim shine of moonlight on the surface of a large body of water. I never knew
this lake was here.
She lets go of my hand and removes her dress. I watch her in the
moonlight. She stands before me nude, facing me, running her fingers through her
hair. She disappears and I can hear her body submerging into the water.

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 Her silhouette resurfaces and her hands grab at the stones and sticks on the
ground between us.
“Do you like my father’s stew?” She asks. Her voice is miles away,
disconnected.
“Yes. It’s…unusual.” I say.
“The brains of…many men.” She says. “Watch that you don’t drown.”
“It’s…winter.” I say. “Isn’t the water freezing?”
“Only if you think about it.” She says, floating on her back.
I remove my clothing. Jacket, shirt, boots, socks, long johns. I wander
blindly across jagged rocks and frozen soil until my toes dip into the edge of the
half frozen lake. My body shivers. I ignore the cold, think about the woman
undressed, wet. Frozen but her body must be so warm.
I’m in up to my waist when I feel the tickle of her fingers grazing up my
ribs. She presses her body into mine and we circle each other on the surface of the
water.
“Do you like me?” She asks.
The answer is my lips to hers. Our tongues meet, dance together. I was
right. She’s as warm as comfort. My penis swells awkwardly in the bitter, black
water. Our bodies form together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. She rubs her pelvis
into me and nibbles on the lobe of my left ear, moaning low. My hands are on her,
pulling and pushing. She grabs my erection in her left hand and begins to stroke
gently, softly, slowly.
In a moment she positions it and pulls me closer until I’m in to the hilt,
inside of her. The world disappears and the water rises and falls with our
movements together, our movements as one. She is tight and grips me with the
strength of a fist, writhes and growls and soon makes the sounds in the back of her
throat, sounds of an orgasm. I follow suit and soon we are swimming in patterns,
circling each other in the darkness.
On the shore she dries me off with her dress and licks my throat.
“You taste of sadness.” She sighs into my ear. “Of nectar and plums. Of
Christmas morning.”
We dress and she leads me back to the fire and the old man has
disappeared. She motions for me to sit. I crouch down beside the fire with my hands
hovering over the flames for warmth. She fumbles with something behind a bush
while I light a cigarette in the flames of the fire and take a deep breath.
She stands above me holding a long wooden handle. I turn to see that at the
end of the wooden handle is an axe head, large and silver, the blade of it glowing in
the light of a thousand flames and I’m wondering if she’s going to need my help
gathering fire wood.
“It’s really a pity,” She says, shrugging, clearing her throat. “That you
found us…no one can find us here…we do not exist.”

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 She raises the axe above her head and one of her breasts pops out at the top
of her dress where she doesn’t have it buttoned all the way. Before I can react she
swings the axe down with surprising force and the last thing I am aware of before
total darkness overcomes me is that my skull is probably split almost completely in
half before I die and that she is even more beautiful in the darkness than she is in the
light.

The boy bleeding from his head split in half with his brains leaking out by
the campfire was a pretty good fuck in near arctic temperatures and now daddy is
scooping out his brains with the Devil’s wooden spoon and feeding it into the stew
on the fire and stirring it around and around and my mouth is already starting to
water.
“What do you suppose he was made of, Daddy?” I ask the stars, the sky.
“Snails and tails?”
Daddy stares into the pot of stew, stirs it, around, around.
“Puppies and heart break.” Daddy says.
“That’s what I figured.” I say.
The sky glows red and orange…nightfall drinks the daylight, or the other
way around and maybe I don’t know what day it is today and maybe it doesn’t really
matter after all.
Daddy stirs the stew for a while longer and then scoops a bit of it into a
wooden bowl and offers it to me and I take a long sip of it and I start to feel better
already
Daddy stirs some more and scoops large chunks of it into his mouth.
“Eat the brains…talk to God…eat the brains…talk to God.”
I watch the sky open up. The earth swallows itself and my blood vessels
pop and burn beneath and below the surface of my skin and when Daddy has had
enough stew he comes over with his shirt unbuttoned to where I am sitting and he
starts rubbing and touching the dirty stink between my legs again and I don’t even
mind it so much anymore.
A soul can get itself accustomed to just about anything, I suppose, given
just the right opportunity.

Figure Twenty One: Black Tar Velvet

The needle is still in the vein when the bath water turns to smoke.
Blood becomes oxygen, fresh air, and I can still see my father’s face…his voice is
ringing in my ears.
“I’m…so…proud…of…you.”
Candle light dances on the tiles, casting flickering shadows over the
reflection of the face in the mirror.
My body melts into wax on the surface of the water. The needle drifts away
from my liquid form like a life raft, a call for help. The vial remains on the edge of

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the tub and I watch it glow in candlelight through the distorted surface of my
reflection at the bottom.
Blood turns to ink, to sand, and I’m sinking, sinking to the bottom.

“So…proud…of…you.”

Rise, rise to the surface. Breathe in the smoke, the candlelight. The left hand is a
carved stone on the edge of the tub but the right arm still has feeling, still has use of
muscles and I use it to pull the shower curtain closed so that the candlelight is
merely a glow in the bathroom, merely a hint of light, of warmth, but not actually
there, not actually shining light on me.
My eyelids flutter, blurred.
There is only the sound of my breathing…breathing…and like the turning of a page,
playing the end credits of a film backwards, the bathroom fades into darkness, and
this time…this time…I know…it’s nobody’s fault but my own.

“Are you sure you don’t have blood in your mouth?”

Flashing neon lights shine through the otherwise darkened room and Sally
asks me this as she pulls her lips away from mine, sucking on her tongue, frowning.
“Um. No. Do…you?”
She’s wearing a torn bra and blue jeans spotted with what looks like red
paint.
“No. I don’t think so.” She says, rubbing her lips, pulling her fingers away
to look at them. “But…I tasted blood when I was kissing you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t taste anything.” I light a cigarette and blow smoke at
her breasts.
“I don’t see any blood.” She says. “But I tasted it. It’s gone now. I don’t
know. Never mind.”
“If there was blood in my mouth, I would probably know it.”
“Yeah. I guess we’ll never know. It’s a…mystery.”
“Yeah.” I shrug, blow smoke.
“So.” She leans into the pillows against the wall. The bed shifts with her
weight. “What do you want to do?”
The question seems to dissolve the previous plans for sex, and I guess I
don’t really mind that much.
“I don’t know. You want to go out?”
“Go out where?” She asks, taking the cigarette from my hand and placing
it to her lips.
“I don’t know. Somewhere.” I take a breath.
“Do you have a car?” She asks, sighing, laying her head in the pillows,
kicking the sheets off the bed.
“You know I don’t have a car.”

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 “Alright.” She shrugs, squeezing the edges of one of the pillows around her
head, over her ears. “Well. Are we going to walk somewhere?”
“Maybe. What time is it?”
“Do I look like I know what time it is?” She asks, her face hidden within
the pillow squeezed around her head.
“I don’t know what that kind of person looks like.” I shrug and put the
cigarette out in the ashtray.
“Not like me.” She says, letting go of the pillow and sitting up.
“Okay.”
“Let’s go for a walk…I guess.” She looks uncertain but doesn’t say
anything else and I guess a walk sounds okay.
“All right. Where to?”
“Anywhere.” She groans. “I don’t fucking care.”
“Can I borrow some money?”
“How much?” She asks.
“I don’t know.”
“All right.” She says, staring at the lamp on the nightstand. “But only if we
go somewhere. I’m tired of your dirty fucking apartment.”
“It’s not…that dirty.”
“It’s filthy.” She says, biting one of her fingernails. “And it smells like
shit.”
“What ever. And it doesn’t smell that bad, either.”
“Yes. It does. But it doesn’t matter. Let’s just…go.”
“All right. Put your clothes on.”
I stand up and light another cigarette and I open a drawer in the dresser and
I pull out a white tee shirt. I stand at the bedroom door, putting on my jacket while
Sally slowly gets dressed. I watch her pull on her tee shirt, then her fake fur coat.
She slides her feet into red boots that don’t have laces on them, just buckles that
don’t have to be unbuckled to put them on.
She stands and circles a spot on the floor in front of the mirror on the wall
until she’s finally ready to go and she follows me out the door and waits in the
hallway while I lock it and I follow her down the stairs to the parking lot where she
stands and stares at the wet asphalt for a moment before looking at the sky and
humming softly beneath her breath.
She shifts her weight in the parking lot and we begin to walk downhill in
the general direction of somewhere in downtown. The sidewalks are cracked and
crumbling. There are no stars in the sky and somewhere off in the distance there is a
dog barking hoarsely and the sound of it echoes off the sides of buildings and
billboards lining the streets all around us.
Sounds of engines and heartbeats. Traffic rushes past us like mechanical
wind and Sally holds my hand in hers as we pass an alley where a group of men
huddle around a broken milk crate on the ground, laughing hysterically together. I

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get the feeling that something has happened to make them laugh like that and it may
or may not have something to do with the broken milk crate but it’s just as likely
that they’re lost and have given up and they’re all staring and laughing at the milk
crate and at the simple sour taste of life in the back of their throats.
Sally pokes me in the ribs and I realize she’s in the middle of a
conversation with herself that she thought she was having with me.
“Are you listening?” She asks, squeezing my hand.
“…Yes.”
“What do you think?”
“About what?”
“About what I said.” She sighs.
“It’s…alright.”
“Alright? My sister being raped and beaten in broad day light the day
before her birthday is alright?”
“Um…no?”
“God, never mind.” She sighs. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know. No where.”
“All right.” She shrugs.
The sidewalks are crowded, people walking back and forth. The city is an
anthill with no ceiling or walls. Traffic is meaningless and random. I feel a dim sting
in my lungs and I ignore it as I take another drag and exhale smoke into the air.
Flash of neon lights, traffic lights.

A man stands at an intersections and points a hand holding a pink flier for a
new strip club or something at people passing by him and no one pays any attention
to him or his pink fliers. He’s got a thick stack of them tucked beneath his arm and
he wears an expression of anger that betrays the jovial carnival announcer’s voice
that he shouts into the air.
We pass him by and the smoke blowing out of my lungs circles his face
like rain clouds and he gives me an awkward grimace before turning away and
yelling about the bargain prices and door prizes that no one on the streets seem to
care about at all.

We’re walking arm in arm in the general direction of no where and Sally is
mumbling about the poor quality of cheap hair dyes and how if she had that much
money to throw away she wouldn’t be self conscious about her hair in the first place
and this conversation with herself stops abruptly with her footsteps when she
notices, and then draws my attention to what appears to be a large rabbit squatting
over the edge of the curb facing the darkened windows of a used clothing store. We
take a few steps closer to it and stop again when the rabbit’s body shudders and a
small pink baby rabbit plops out of its rear end into the gutter between the sidewalk
and the street. Sally makes a wet sound in her throat and I pull my arm out of hers to

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step closer to the rabbit to get a better look. Another pink baby rabbit plops out and
disappears into the darkness of the gutter.
“That bunny…” Sally groans behind me. “…Is shitting baby bunnies into
the sewer.”
I light a cigarette and blow smoke at the rabbit and she doesn't pay any
attention to me. I stand and smoke and watch the rabbit give birth to pink babies
into the gutter until Sally grabs me by the elbow and pulls me to the other side of
the street through slow, stumbling traffic. We walk for a while without saying
anything. Then Sally breaks the silence and her voice has changed, grown smaller,
somehow.
“Did that…really happen?”
I throw the cigarette into the street and shudder at the image of the rabbits
and I try to shake the image out of my head.
“I guess so.” I shrug.
“There’s something wrong with this world.” She sighs.
I nod my head and stare at the sidewalk as we walk another block or too
before Sally stops at an intersection and pulls her cell phone out of her purse and
starts dialing.
“Who are you calling?”
“No one. I’m checking my voicemail.”
“Hey.”
“What?”
“Let’s go to Doctor Tucker’s.”
She turns off her phone and sticks it in her purse. She looks at me and takes
a breath.
“Do I have to go with you?”
“I would like you to.”
“I hate that place. You know I hate that place.”
“I know. But it’ll be quick. I promise.”
“You always say that. And it never is.”
“This time it will be. I promise.
“Alright. Fine.” She exhales, shrugs.
She follows me down an alley littered with wet newspapers, plastic bags
blowing in a stale wind coming up through gutters in the asphalt.
We walk the three blocks to Doctor Tucker’s house. The porch light is
bright red and bathes the porch in a dim haze.
“God, this place creeps me out,” Sally says as we walk up the steps to the
front door.
I ring the doorbell. Sounds of conversations from behind the covered
windows, a faint smell in the air of opium, hashish, fear.
The sheet draped over the window in the front door form the inside drifts
as if blown faintly in a breeze. Sliver of light at the edge of the window and a

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bloodshot eye scanning us briefly before the door opens and Doctor Tucker stands
in the doorway wearing a white dress shirt tucked into gray slacks. He wears a black
tie and smiles when he says, ”Come in.”

Sally shudders faintly as we walk into the house. Doctor Tucker shuts and
locks the door behind us and follows us into the living room where a small group of
people circle the cluttered coffee table. They all turn to us as we walk inside. The air
is thick with smoke, gray, almost green.
“These are my friends,” Doctor Tucker says, as he walks into the room and
sits on a beanbag at the end of the table. I’m not sure if he’s talking to us, or the
people in the living room.
Sally says, “Hello.”
I smile and wave awkwardly.
“Have a seat.” Doctor Tucker says.
Sally and I both look around for an empty chair, then we sit on the floor
with our hands in our laps.
A woman wearing a long silk dress sits between two bearded men on the
couch. Another woman sits on a wooden chair at the coffee table beside Sally and I
who are probably obviously out of place among these people…professors,
established poets.
I shrug and smile when the woman on the couch grabs a hose that is
connected to the hookah on the table and offers it to me. I take it and put it to my
lips as one of the guys on the couch holds a lighter to the bowl at the top of the body
of the hookah and Sally lets out a breath of air.
“It’s just opium,” the woman at the couch says to Sally who shrugs and
looks at me as I inhale from the hose and hand it back to the woman who handed it
to me while holding the smoke in my lungs.
“So how are you?” Doctor Tucker asks, puffing on a small glass pipe.
He doesn’t look at anyone when he says this. I look at Sally, who is
looking at the clutter on the coffee table, then I look at the people on the couch, two
of which are looking at me while the third, the guy at the end of the couch by a floor
lamp, is busy staring intently at his left hand, at the fingers flexing in and out.
“Good…I guess.” I shrug.
The woman on the couch takes a puff from the hookah hose and then offers
it to Sally who smiles and waves her hand in the air.
“No thanks,” She says.
“Would you like to borrow that book I was telling you about?” Doctor
Tucker asks, looking at me.
“Uh…yeah, sure.”
“If you’ll excuse me.” He stands and walks into a darkened hallway
between the living room and the kitchen.

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 The girl in the wooden chair beside Sally seems to be asleep. The man on
the couch by the lamp continues to stare at his hand.
I light a cigarette and blow smoke at the floor. No one says anything for a
while. Doctor Tucker comes back with a book and a little glass vial of
pharmaceutical morphine. He hands them both to me. The morphine I stick in the
left breast pocket of my jacket. I look at the book. It’s called The Nature Of
Affliction. Doctor Tucker’s name is on the cover and I realize he wrote it. He never
mentioned this book to me before. It’s just a reason to be here, a reason for him to
go into the bedroom.
“Thanks,” I say.
He smiles.

I stand up. “Well…we just stopped by to say hello.”

“And to borrow the book,” Doctor Tucker says.
“And to borrow the book,” I say.
Sally stands up and says, “It was nice meeting all of you.
“I’m having a party on Friday night,” Doctor Tucker says, while the
woman on the couch takes another puff from the hookah hose. “We’d love to see
you both there.”
“What’s today?” I ask.
“Wednesday.” Doctor Tucker says.
“We’ll be there,” I say.
Doctor Tucker walks us to the door.
“Wonderful. I look forward to it,” He says.
Doctor Tucker walks us to the front door where I slip a wad of twenty-
dollar bills into our handshake. He pockets the money in a blurred motion and
waves as we walk out the door and down the steps and across the street and he
keeps waving until we turn right at an intersection and his house is no longer in
view.

“Are you hungry?” Sally asks as we pass a pizza place with the smell of cooking
cheese and sauce and vegetables and meat swarms through the smog and exhaust
and cigarette smoke in the air all around us.
“I’m never hungry.”
“Yeah.” She says. “And we both know why that is.”
“Shut up.”

After another block I ask: “Are…you hungry?”

“A little. Yes. I’ve been off needles for, like, a couple days, so, yeah, I’m
kind of hungry now…haven’t eaten in maybe…a week. That’s why I asked.” She
says.

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 “What are you hungry for?” I ask, knowing full well she shot up with me
last night and hasn’t slept and she probably only thinks she’s hungry because she’s
tired and…confused. Morphine stifles your hunger but doesn’t diminish it all the
way, not like heroin, or too much cocaine.
“Noodles.” She grins into store windows. Everything seems to be closed,
except for restaurants and all night laundry mats and I wonder why someone would
need to do a load of laundry at four in the morning but then again you never really
know in a city like this. I check my watch but it has stopped.
“What time is it?” I ask.
Sally lets go of my hand and pulls her cell phone out of her purse, flips it
open and looks at it for a moment before putting it back in her purse.
“Five.” She says.
“In the evening?” I ask.
“No comment.” She says.
“Why is everything closed?”
“It’s…Sunday.” She says. “I think.”
We keep walking. After a while I start to get hungry too. We approach a
Thai restaurant and I stop and look at Sally, then look at the glass doors to the
restaurant.
“Thai is okay.” She shrugs.
She walks into the Thai restaurant behind me and the floors are slick white
tiles that look like they’ve recently been polished. The tables are arranged in
random order around the room.
We wait at the doors until a thin woman, not Asian, not much younger than
Sally and myself wanders out through the swinging doors of what I assume is the
kitchen and approaches us with a grin. Her lips are pressed together so hard they’re
the color of a coma. Or this could be my imagination and she asks, “How many?”
and Sally holds up two fingers and the woman stares at the fingers for a long,
awkward moment before pulling two menus out from behind a gold statue of
somebody with more arms than there are supposed to be and we follow her to a
table at the other side of the restaurant even though we’re the only people here and
there are a dozen perfectly good tables closer to the windows where we could sit
and watch the city lights and people walking by on sidewalks and crosswalks as we
eat but it doesn’t matter.
We sit and ask for two glasses of ice water and the woman leaves and we
study the menus without saying anything to each other. Nothing looks good to me
but I decide on something whose name I can’t pronounce which makes me anxious
because I suddenly dread having to repeat the name five times before the woman or
anyone else knows what I’m talking about but everything on the menu is
unpronounceable with my dead tongue so I close the menu and I realize I could
spout any series of gibberish syllables and after the fifth or sixth time the woman
would hear something in the nonsense that sounds like something they actually

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serve here and she’ll come back with a dish that is as edible as anything else I could
have ordered with exact knowledge of what it was going to be.
I watch Sally frown at the menu for what seems like a strangely long time
before apparently deciding on something and she closes the menu and shrugs and
looks at the table. The woman returns with two glasses of ice water and sets them on
the table without the stranger’s grin she previously had on her face.
“Ready to order?” She asks.
I look at Sally and she stares at the menus on the table as she orders
something that sounds like she’s having a stuttering fit. The woman smiles and nods
and then she turns to me and I panic.
“I’ll have what she’s having.” I bite my lip and remember to breathe. Sally
and the woman look at me for a moment, then the woman picks up the menus from
our table and she leaves and Sally taps her fingers on the table like a drum roll.
I take a long swallow of water and I look at the ceiling, which appears to
be covered in coffee stains. I wonder how this can be, then notice Sally is looking at
me. We make eye contact and I shrug, look away. A couple with a child enters the
restaurant and the woman leads them to a table at the opposite side of the restaurant
from us which I’m thankful for because I really don’t feel like uncontrollably
eavesdropping on a stranger’s conversation tonight.
Sally takes the time before the food arrives to arrange her fingers together
in a complicated fashion that resembles a series of flesh covered roots tangled
together in a mass of nonsense.
“What do you think?” She says, staring at her hands mangled together on
the table.
“About what?”
“It’s an elephant.” She says, grinning.
I study her fingers and try to see the elephant she’s talking about but all I
see is a mass of tiny roots made of skin and fingernails.
“It looks like an abstract tree trunk.” I shrug.
“You’re not looking at it the right way.”
“How am I supposed to look at it?”
She exhales and pulls her hands apart and shrugs.
“Like it’s an elephant.” She says.
Moments pass and when the food arrives the bowls are steaming in the air
and I realize I’m not very hungry anymore but I eat what turns out to be a sort of
wet noodle soup with spices and herbs and whatever else anyway. Sally eats her wet
noodle soup with a strangely focused inspection of each spoonful and when we’ve
finished the meal, the check arrives and I pay it after an awkward moment when
Sally stares at the wall behind me and doesn’t pay any attention to the idea of
splitting the bill.

“I’m calling Helen.” She says. “I want to be…somewhere else, right now.”

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 “What do you mean?”
“I was supposed to do something with her tonight anyway. I’ll meet up
with you tomorrow, or something.”
“You want her to pick you up at my place?”
“No, here is fine. Her place isn’t far from here. I’ll see you later.” She
finishes dialing and puts the phone to her ear.
“Um. Okay.” I cross the street and walk down the block, confused but not
altogether disappointed.
I turn around and walk backwards for a brief moment and watch her lean against a
light post and talk on the phone and she lights a cigarette that I didn’t know she had
because she had told me earlier that she didn’t have any and that she was trying to
stop smoking but she kept bumming cigarettes from me. This didn’t bother me at
the time because it seemed reasonable. But now the lie itches at the back of my
throat and it moves me to turn around and spit on the sidewalk. A woman pushing a
baby stroller with no baby inside frowns and mumbles something beneath her breath
as she passes by.
I pass by the alley where the crazy people were laughing like psychotics at the
broken milk crate on the ground. I walk into the ally and I find pieces of the milk
crate, but most of it seems to have disappeared with the crazy people. I kick the
shards of plastic around the ally for a while, wondering why I’m doing it. Then I
stare at a part of the wall where some has spray-painted: Sobriety is boredom,
boredom, in thick red letters. The paint shines in the moonlight and I stare at it until
it starts to rain but when I emerge out of the ally and back onto the sidewalk, the
rain stops suddenly.
I decide to stop by Dr. Tucker’s house for another vial.

Martin leans into the chain link fence with a cigarette in his mouth, blowing smoke
into the fog and he says, “You think I could catch that deer over there…I mean…if I
really tried?”
I look over at the deer chewing on grass while keeping a watch on us from
its peripheral vision, several yards away, on the other side of the fence.
“You’re not very fast,” I say, lighting a cigarette. “But you’ve shot enough
speed into you to have a decent shot at it.”
“What’s it…doing out here…anyway…in the fucking…airport?”
“I don’t know. What are we doing here?”
“Man…I told you…man…this is where I…score?”
“At the airport…”
“Yeah…it’s like…the safest place…”
“I’m really not so sure about that.”
“Fuck, man…you don’t know…you don’t know…”
“Yeah, well. I’m leaving.” I start to walk towards the parking lot.
“Oh…dude…you’re my ride…home.”

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 “So come with me.”
“Man…stay…”
“Nope. I’m going home.”
He starts to follow me.
“Drop me off at Megan’s house?” He asks.
“All right.”
“Cool…man…thanks…”

Later, at the apartment after I’ve prepared everything for another shot Sally pulls me
into the bedroom and shoves me into the mattress and straddles me and she pulls off
my boxers and grabs my penis that’s already getting hard, and she spits on her hand
and starts stroking it. After a moment she positions herself above me and slips my
erection inside her, slowly. She lets out a soft moan. Her eyes are closed. My eyes
are open and I’m looking at her breasts: One is smaller than the other, the nipple
positioned slightly too far to the right. Scars on her chest, diagonal, straight lines. I
take a deep breath. She rides me in rhythms. I hold her hips in my palms. I start to
feel nauseous.
I heave mouthfuls of vomit onto my chest. Some of it splashes tiny drops
on her chest and belly: green and pink chunks, yellow ooze which looks like what I
imagine stomach bile looks like.
She doesn’t seem to notice, or she doesn’t care. She rides me, I hold her
hips in my hands, the vomit stays on my chest dripping down in thin streams down
my sides. She bites her lip until a thin spot of blood trickles down her chin. She
lowers herself to the hilt. I don’t try to delay the ejaculation because I don’t feel it
coming any time soon. The truth is, I don’t feel anything.

Later I’m filling the syringe in the bathroom while she sits on the floor in
the doorway and I ask her, “You want one?”
And she says, “Just a small one.”
So I fill another needle, realizing we only have three clean needles after
this, and we shoot up together and fall into each other in the bathtub as the water
fills up and I’m only a little aware that one of us is going to have to turn off the
water, at some point, before it floods the apartment, and I’m wondering which one
of us is going to be the one to care enough to do it.

The first time I ever met Sally, it was midnight, or some time near dawn
and I was explaining to her while she was lost on speed and cocaine, my black tar/
velvet metaphor. It was some party I don’t think either of us remember specifically,
except that it’s where we met and she first started talking to me because she noticed
the track marks on my arms and wanted to ask me, “Why are you so fucking
stupid?” To which I had no ready reply. I still don’t have an answer to that question
and being the first words she spoke to me, it only makes since that I immediately

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fell in love with her. But we were strangers at that point and she only half paid
attention as I told her my metaphor.
“Okay…see…imagine the world, real life, the outside world, the day to day routine,
whatever, imagine all that, all that reality is black tar…okay? Sticky, thick, just hot
and smells bad…and now…okay…now imagine morphine is…velvet…and it takes
all the black tar of reality, of the world, of all the shit in your life…and it turns it…
into…velvet…soft…pure…it wraps you in comfort, in safety…it’s like nothing can
touch you…and…there is no pain…”
I had gone through this train of thought over and over in my head, then with anyone
who would listen, especially when I was high. Which was, and is, most of the time.
What she said to me then, the first sentence out of her mouth directed at me that
contained more than five words was this:
“If you feel no pain…then…like…what’s the point?”
She smiled then, and leaned back against the wall. Her pupils were the size
of silver dollars and I could still feel the velvet in my veins. Nothing mattered.
Nothing mattered.
“The point is…” I struggled for the right words, wondered, myself, what
the point was, of anything. “I…don’t…want…to…feel.”

Sally falls asleep with her head on my chest and I’m half aware of her
presence in the bed, of her smell, and the shot is starting to wear off, but just a little
bit, and it doesn’t because I’m falling asleep anyway…
The dream is a dimly lit fog and the eyes of animals glowing all around me
in the smoky air like approaching headlights. I feel fear in the subconscious of this
dreamland. I also feel regret for things that I can’t seem to recall at the moment.
Something tickles the back of my throat, within the dream, and when I open my
mouth a furry gray butterfly or maybe a moth flutters out from between my lips and
I chase after it, suddenly holding an enormous net in my hands made of scotch tape
and rusted nails and pieces of what appears to be a tennis court net.
The butterfly is faster than I am but he’s confident, casual about his escape
and when he stops to study a purple flower growing out of a large boulder the color
of ash I bring the net down and both the butterfly and the ashen rock are caught in
the net. The flower slips through the spaces between the strings and the butterfly is
crushed between the net and the rock. It’s not dead but the wings are crippled and
the color appears to have been pressed out of them in a way that has made them
clear, totally see through, and I wonder what this means, if I’ve done something
unspeakably wrong to this creature.
But then the visions shift and I’m at the bottom of an ocean or a lake and
I’m staring up through the surface and watching blurred and scattered air planes
tearing through the sky and tiny black dots are left in the air behind them, right
above me and the dots grow bigger in the air as air planes disappear and I don’t
realize the dots are bombs dropping until I am awake, suddenly, with no warning.

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The sweat that covers my body feels like it’s glued to my skin, like thick layers of
warm honey, but my body is shivering. I can’t tell what I feel, what temperature my
body is. My tongue feels like asphalt and my lungs feel like they are full of
seawater.
I get out of bed and walk into the bathroom and without turning on the lights I open
the medicine cabinet and pull out the bottle of sleeping pills and I take three of them
with a mouthful of tap water and I don’t think I want to have any more dreams
tonight.

“I’m…worried about you.” Sally says this while buttering a toasted bagel
at the breakfast table. We never sit at the table for breakfast. In fact, we don’t
normally have breakfast at all. This was her idea and there’s something wrong. I
don’t know what it is until she tells me.
“You’re doing too much morphine, Sam. It’s gotten to the point where not
a single minute goes by when you’re not drooling and passing out in restaurants…or
coming down and shooting up in some restroom somewhere. You never used to
shoot up in public…”
She pauses, stares at the buttered bagel on her plate. I take a breath and
wait for her to continue.
“I…want you to…stop. Or at least slow down…just cut down for a
while…okay? Please?”
The light in the room dims slightly as the sun hides behind a cloud and I
become aware of the cuts I’d made in the underside of my forearm, hidden now by
the long sleeve of my pajama shirt…cuts that I couldn’t feel at all when I was
dragging the blade across the skin in the candlelit bathtub but now I feel the faint
throb…reminding me that I can still feel.
“Baby…it’s not that easy.” I say.
I remember laughing as the skin separated, as the blood ran down my
arm…everything is so easy when you can’t feel…anything.
“I don’t want to make a big deal out of this,” Sally says, leaning back in
her chair, sighing. “I don’t want to have a fight. But your…addiction…is getting
completely out of hand…and I think you need to realize that.”
“I’m not a fucking junkie.”
“I didn’t say that you are.”
“Then stop treating me like one. You knew this about me before we even
started dating.”
“It’s gotten worse. You know it’s gotten worse…whatever it is that you’re
running away from…you’re not getting any farther away from it…you’re only…
killing yourself…and maybe that’s what you want…what you’ve wanted all along.”
“That’s not what I fucking want.”
“What do you want?”
Breathe…remember to breath…don’t shout…don’t yell…

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 “I want you to eat your bagel…I want to stop talking about this…I want to
talk about something else.”
“It’s not going to go away, Sam. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my
life…with you…and I can’t do that if you keep on the path that you’re on…I can’t
grow old with you…if you’re fucking dead.”
I focus on my breathing…breathing.
“Don’t be so fucking dramatic,” My voice is not as harsh as it could be…I
need to relax. “It’s not as bad as you make it sound.”
“It is as bad. That’s the problem. I’m not exaggerating.”
“What about you?” I ask. “What about all the speed you do? All the coke?”
“That’s an occasional thing. You haven’t even noticed that I’ve been sober
for almost two weeks.”
“Bull shit. That’s fucking bull shit.”
“Think what you want.”
“I thought you said you don’t want to have a fight.” I say, standing up.
“I don’t,” She says.
“Then stop fucking talking about this.”
I walk into the bedroom to change clothes. She appears in the doorway of
the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” She asks.
“Away.” I shrug.
“Why?”
“I guess I’m running away again, huh? Like I always do. Right?”
“Sam…I didn’t mean to upset you.” She says.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.” She says.
“I’m going on a walk.”
“Where to?”
“No where. I don’t know. I’m just going to walk.”
“Alright.” She says. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ll be back in a little while.”
“Let me go with you.”
“I just want to walk alone for a little while.”
“Let me go with you.” She says.
I look at her, take a breath, shrug.
“Okay. Fine. Whatever.”

My mother calls me before noon and she’s sobbing and whining on the
phone and her voice is a mess, a slurred anguished language and I really am not in
the mood for this because I’m in the middle of a serious comedown and I’m about
to tap into the last vial Jeff smuggled from his work, saying, this is the last time,
dude, I’m going to get busted, and maybe shoot it up in the bathroom and watch the

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world disappear, at least for a little while, and so I’m about to tell my mom that I
can’t talk right now and then hang up the phone but then my mom clears her throat
and takes a deep breath and what she says to me through the phone line from a big
house in a nice neighborhood on the other side of town is: “Your father…is dead.”
Everything stops and only my mother’s voice exists. The air is so silent
that I’m not sure if I’m breathing or not, if my heart is still beating.
“Hello?” My mom says.
“Mom…what?”
“Your father had an accident.” She’s sobbing, lost.
“Car…accident?”
“Yes, honey. He’s…dead.” Her voice breaks apart, becomes sobbing,
breaking down.
Cist stands in the doorway to my bedroom and licks her paw. I stare at her,
breathe, almost drop the phone before I remember I’m still talking to mom.
“But...” Is all I can say.
“Are you okay, honey?”
“I don’t…know.”
“I’m sorry.” She whines. “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this.”
“Somebody…had to. I guess.”
“Will you come to the funeral?” She asks.
Cist circles an invisible spot on the carpet then lies down contorts her spine
to lick her belly.
“I don’t know, mom…it’s…”

“He would want you to be there, Buck. You know he would.”
“A lot of shit…. I don’t know, mom. I’ll think about it.”
“Well, I’ll be expecting you.”
I sigh, light a cigarette. “Mom…I have to go.”
“It’s on Sunday.” She says. “Please be there.”
“What’s today? Saturday?”
“Friday.” She says.
“Mom. I’ll call you later.”
I hang up the phone, stand in the bedroom, feel my breathing increase until
something bubbles up and I put my fist through the window in my bedroom and
watch the blood trickle down my arm for a while.

I pull the shoebox from beneath my bed, open it, grab the vial, syringes,
and the little rubber hose. I take these things to the bathroom and set them on the
edge of the bathtub, along with a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. I light three
candles on the counter beside the sink and I turn off the lights. I pull the lever
beneath the faucet in the tub to close the drain and then I turn the drain on, full blast,
as hot as it will go and as the tub fills up I close my eyes, tightly, facing the mirror,

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and in the red glow of the candlelight through my eyelids I can almost see my
reflection in the mirror and for a second it almost looks just like my father.
My father. My father is dead.
I undress and get into the tub. My body flinches at the scolding heat but I
ignore, ignore my nerves, the feeling in my body. I lie back in the tu8b as the water
fills, rising slowly above my belly.
After a moment I turn off the water and I listen to the sound of my
breathing for a while before wrap the little plastic hose around my upper arm and
then I grab the syringe and vial from the edge of the tub. I stab through the little foil
lid on the vial with the needle of the syringe and I dip it into the liquid and I pull on
the stopper…just enough to disappear, for a little while.
The label on the vial says MORPHINE and usually Doctor Tucker rips the
labels off when he smuggles them out of the hospital, one of the benefits of being a
dishonest Doctor.
I flex my arm until veins start to cast faded shadows on the pale skin of my
arm in the candlelight. I find a vein that isn’t hiding beneath old scars and fresh
scabs and I puncture it, pull on the end of the hose with my teeth, push the stopper
with my thumb, slowly, slowly.
My jaw loosens and the hose slips form between my teeth…lean my head
back against the cold tiles on the walls…relax…relax.
The left hand is a carved stone on the edge of the tub but the right arm still
has feeling, still has use of muscles and I use it to pull the shower curtain closed so
that the candlelight is merely a glow in the bathroom, merely a hint of light, of
warmth, but not actually there, not actually shining light on me.
My eyelids flutter, blurred. There only the sound of my breathing,
breathing, and like a turning of a page, playing the end credits of a film backwards,
the bathroom fades into darkness and I’m sitting on a bus stop bench in the rain. I
don’t have an umbrella and I think it’s because I like the rain, I like being wet, but
maybe it’s some else, something entirely different.
I open my eyes and the rain has stopped, the rain has stopped and I’m remembering
something, a moment standing in the rain, the wind. A car pulls up, a man in a
trench coat wearing a brown fedora offers me a ride.
“A ride where?”
“Anywhere you need to go.”
“It’s all right, dad. I’ll be okay.”

The phone rings in the bedroom. It rings seven times before it stops and I
can feel the water, I know it’s there, but the temperature is no longer relevant, the
temperature of the water is no longer real. I feel nothing and that is when I hear it.
At that moment where I sink into the velvet of the warmth in my veins, the numbing

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pool, I hear my father’s voice, clear and very close to me, inside the bathroom, just
on the other side of the shower curtain.
“Howdy Buckaroo.” He says.
My body jerks and the left hand grabs at the shower curtain and begins
pulling it back, slowly, dramatically, until I see my father’s face glowing in the
flickering candlelight. He’s wearing a black suit, black tie. He stands…leans against
the door with his arms folded together at his chest.
“Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”
“Well…you are dead.”

The bench is warm beneath me, but only from what is left of my own body
heat. The car wanders off in the rain and I’m thinking maybe I should have taken
the ride. But the bus pulls up after a moment and I climb up the steps and drop the
coins into the machine. I walk to the end of the bus as it pulls out and I take a seat in
the back where I twist around to watch my father’s car disappear behind a building
and that was actually the last time that I would ever see him alive but I didn’t know
that at the time.

The track marks on my arm never seem to heal. I wear a long sleeve shirt
and circle the living room with the phone to my ear, waiting for Sally to pick up.
“Hello?”
“Sally. Hey.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Sam.”
“You sound different.”
“My…dad died.”
A moment passes before she says, “When?”
“Uh. This morning, I guess. Or last night. I don’t know.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m going back home for the funeral.”
“Alright. When?”
“Today, I guess.”
“When’s the funeral?”
“Sunday.”
“Okay.”
“Can you give me a ride to the bus station?”
“What time?”
“I don’t know. Whenever.”
“Okay. But, when?”
“How about four?”
“All right.”
“I’ll see you then.”
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 “Okay.”
“Okay. Later.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”

Sally drops me off at the bus station after neither of us say anything in the
car and she kisses me briefly on the lips and gets in her car and disappears into
traffic and I stand at the ticket window and buy a two way ticket and then stand in
front of the station for a while, smoking cigarettes, waiting for the departure time
and then I lock myself in a bathroom stall and shoot up some more of the morphine,
feeling pleased that I still have most of the vial left for the trip and I lean my back
against the wall of the bathroom stall and I’m sitting on the tiled floor and there’s
something wet soaking into my pants but it doesn’t matter. I remember to breathe as
the wave hits me and after that everything is all right until someone knocks on the
door to the stall and asks if I’m all right. A moment passes before I realize I’m
supposed to say something back to this person so I say, yeah, everything’s fine, even
though it’s not, even though I don’t know if it ever has been.
Finally the bus arrives and people get off and wander off in different
directions carrying bags and backpacks and purses and guitar cases. Then we start to
board and I give the driver my ticket and he tears it in half and hands half of it back
to me and then I get on the bus and I sit in the very back next to the little restroom
and I sit down and lean my head against the window. After a while the driver boards
the bus and closes the door and then pulls the bus into traffic and I take a deep
breath, trying not to think about anything, waiting for it to get dark but I don’t know
if it will before I need another shot.

After about an hour my mom calls on my cell phone but I don’t answer it
because I don’t like to talk on the phone around people, even though there aren’t
very many people on the bus and most of them seem out of it, ignoring every one
else, staring out the windows or trying to sleep.
I lock my self in the restroom on the bus and in the mirror I see my father’s
face, shaven, wet with aftershave, saying, “I love you, son. I’m proud of you.”
And when I sit on the toilet and pull out the vial and the needles, the voice
is saying, “Take care of yourself…take care of yourself…”

My mom picks me up at the bus station and she’s with my sister and the
first thing mom says to me is, “Why did you call from a payphone?”
I carry my suit case with my suit and a bottle of water and a carton of
cigarettes and I’m pissed off because security confiscated my lighter and my sister is
really quiet and walking behind us through the parking lot and she has her arms held

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together at her chest and I wonder how old she is now but it doesn’t matter. She’ll
be older before I know and one day we’ll both be dead and people will have to
travel across the country to look at us in our caskets and say, oh, what a shame, what
a shame.

The car ride is awkward, like another road trip with the family, but the
family is lessened, incomplete. No one says anything for a long time. I know the
tears on my face are there, but I don’t feel like I’m crying. I wipe my cheeks, my
eyes. Mom hands me a Kleenex without looking at me and I hold it on my lap and
stare out the passenger window at the familiar landscapes, the ice cream stand I
used to hang out with the neighborhood kids, the hot dog stands, the clothing stores,
automotive stores, swimming pools and parks, the mall, the courthouse. I see
everything that I haven’t seen in years, the things that used to be a part of my life, a
part of what it was like for me to grow up, I see all of this and it doesn’t mean
anything to me. Just another place, another city, another population that I have
nothing in common with, nothing to relate to them with, nothing.

We get to the house, the house I grew up in and everything looks the same,
exactly the same. Mom pours some wine in the kitchen while my sister, Cathy, sits
down on a couch in the living room and stares at he blank television screen. I go up
the stairs to my old bedroom and I know it’ll be exactly the same as it was when I
was a kid, the posters, the broken skate board leaning against the wall, the old
computer, the broken stereo and boxes full of comic books and pictures I drew for
art class that used to hang on the refrigerator before I took them down and hid them
away, but when I get up to the room and open the door and circle around, it’s not the
same at all. They’ve turned my room into an office, but I don’t know why they
needed an office in the house. My room isn’t my room anymore and something hits
me and I collapse on the floor and tears are raining out of my eyes and I’m shaking,
shaking.

In the kitchen I’m eating a microwave burrito that my father used to stock up on and
eat all the time and it’s why he always had such bad health and I realize that I never
got anyone to take care of Cist, to feed her or anything, and she didn’t have more
than a dish of food when I left and maybe she’ll die and I won’t have to take care of
her anymore.
Mom comes in and stops when she sees me and she just looks at me for a
while.
I swallow a bite of burrito and take a breath.
“Hi.” I say.
“Hi. How are you?”
“I still don’t know.”

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 “Yeah.” She sobs and walks over and puts her arms around me and I don’t
return the hug because I have a burrito in my hand and it doesn’t matter anyway
because she probably can’t even tell my arms aren’t around her.
“I’m so sorry, honey.” She says, squeezing me.
“Okay.” I shrug, finally put an arm around her, hoping she’ll let go.
“My baby.” She says. “It’s so good to have both my babies here.”
“Mom,” I whisper. “I’m going to go check on Cathy.”
“All right, honey.” She lets go and wipes her eyes.
I pull a beer out of the fridge and walk into the living room where Cathy is
sitting on the couch still staring at the television even though it isn’t on and I sit
down next to her and take a sip of the beer and I turn to look at her and she just
stares at the TV.
“Hey sis.” I say.
She doesn’t respond, doesn’t move.
“You…okay?” I ask.
“No.” Her lips move to form the words and it’s the first time she’s said
anything since I got here.
“Want to…talk about it?”
She doesn’t say anything.
“Or not, you know, whatever. Just…I don’t know, don’t take it too hard, I
guess.”
“You weren’t there.” She says, then turns to look at me and I don’t know
why I didn’t notice this before but she’s got two deep cuts along her right eye and
the skin is pink and raw.
“You were…in the car?” I ask, wondering why mom wouldn’t have told
me something like that.
“I saw him die.” She says.
“Oh…shit.” I put my arms around her and hold her and she doesn’t
respond to the hug but it doesn’t matter because somehow this is the closest I’ve
been to my father in years.
I let go of her and lean back. Her expression hasn’t changed. I look at the
television that she’s staring at and it’s a different one than they had the last time I
was here.
I’m about to ask her how school is going, then remember it’s summer and I
don’t even know what grade she’s in or if she’s already graduated so Instead, I ask,
“You want to…watch a movie?”
A moment passes before her face contorts and she’s crying, crying so hard,
and I don’t know what to do, what do I do, but I hold her, hug her, and she hugs me
back and I’m thinking now it’ll be okay, this will be okay.
Then mom comes in with her camera and takes our picture and the flash is
blinding.
“Mom.” I say.

!159
 “It’s so nice to have both my babies at home.” She says.
“Mom. Are you okay?” I ask.
She raises the camera to her face and takes another picture, then walks
away. Cathy leans back in the couch and wipes the tears from her face.
“She’s been like this all week.” She says.
“When did…it happen?” I ask.
She takes a breath, sighs. “Monday.”
“Monday? Today is fucking Saturday. Why did she wait so long to tell
me?”
“I don’t know. She’s been so…weird.” Cathy says, sniffing, wiping her
nose.
“And why is the funeral on a Sunday? Why wait so long to bury him?” My
voice is a growl, pissed off.
Cathy makes a sound in the back of her throat and leans forward and starts
crying again.
I rub her back, calming down, breathing, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

I’m driving Cathy’s car around town, looking for people that I know,
thinking I might as well see what’s up with the old gang since I’m here anyway. The
sun is beginning to set as I drive through downtown feeling depressed at how much
everything seems to have stayed exactly the same even though everything else in
the world is world’s apart from what it was the last time I was here. The buildings,
the sidewalks and gutters and streets, even the people, it’s like a moving photograph
from fifteen years ago and it somehow makes my skin begin to itch.
I drive through neighborhood roads that look increasingly familiar and I park in the
road in front of what I remember being Stacy Carpenter’s old house but when I walk
up the driveway and stand on the porch and ring the doorbell and wait and then ring
it again and there is no answer and I peek in through one of the front windows and
the house is empty, no furniture, nothing. The walls are a different color than I
remember and Lucy’s mother’s rose gardens are gone so I get back in the car and I
drive out of the neighborhood and start heading back towards home when I
remember that Derek used to live around here and I drive around for a while until I
find a little neighborhood that looks familiar and I park in front of an apartment
complex and I get out and somehow I remember Derek’s apartment number and I
find it on the third floor and I knock.
After a moment the door opens which seems strange because Derek never
opened his door without asking who is there first because he was paranoid and never
slept and he was a drug dealer and maybe he doesn’t do that anymore and has
chilled out a little bit.
But the man standing in the empty doorway is not Derek, is not anyone
that I’ve ever seen before. Middle aged, Hispanic, thick mustache hanging over
blistered lips.

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 “Yes?”
“Uh…does Derek still live here?”
The man pauses a moment, scratches his chin.
“No Derek.” He says. “Try next door.”
He shuts the door and I can hear him lock it. I look down the hallway to the
left, then the right and I’m almost certain this used to be where Derek lived, but I
guess things change and it isn’t very likely that a known drug dealer would keep the
same residence for a decade, or more. Jesus, has it really been that long?

Halfway back to the house I get a call on my cell phone from a number I don’t
recognize and when I answer it the voice is a female’s voice, familiar, saying, “Sam.
Hey.”
“Uh. Hey. Who is this?”
“It’s…Kati.”
A moment passes before the wave of memory floods in and my eyes go
wide.
“Jesus Christ. Kati.”
“Yeah. I just heard you’re in town.”
“Yeah. My, uh, my dad died.”
“Yeah, I know.” Her voice goes soft. “I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah.” I pull into a gas station and turn off the engine.
“Are you okay?” She asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, what are you doing right now?”
“Driving around.”
“Want to…want to meet…somewhere?”
“Okay.”
“You remember how to get to my parents house?”
“Sort of.”
“I can just meet you somewhere. Remember the old coffee shop?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“Now?”
“Sure. If that’s alright.”
“Yeah. Cool.”
“Alright. See you in a little bit.”
I hang up the phone and start the car and pull out of the gas station parking
lot and start driving toward downtown, toward the old coffee shop where everyone
used to hang out, back when we still had a future waiting for us.

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 I pass by the image of my father who is sitting at a bus stop bench, waiting
for a bus that will never come because the buses don’t run this late but I don’t stop
to tell him this because I really don’t want to talk to my dead father right now and it
might have been somebody that looked like him, not actually him at all.
I remember the last time I saw Kati. I was trying to explain to her my tar/
velvet metaphor for why I started using morphine in the first place. She didn’t get it.
She called me a junkie. I kept telling her, “No. Listen. The world, the real world, it’s
like…black tar. Okay? And morphine, it’s like, it takes the black tar, the world, and
turns it to velvet. Makes it softer, easier to deal with. Less…focused…less…real.”
She told me all I was doing was running away, trying to hide from
everything that made me feel things I didn’t want to feel. I told her, “You’re right. I
don’t want to feel. I don’t want to feel anything.” And since that moment, before
this morning, I haven’t.

I meet Kati at the coffee shop but it takes me a moment, a few glances, to
realize that it’s her and as lame as it is I think that my heart actually skips a beat or
two when I see her. She’s wearing an oriental dress, possibly made out of silk. Her
hair is pulled up into a bun on the back of her head, still strawberry blonde. I feel
like I’ve gone backwards in time, almost a decade, when she sees me, grins wide,
wraps her arms around me, saying, “Oh my God. It’s been so fucking long.”
And all I can do is hug her back and breathe her scent and at this moment
it’s like nothing has changed, nothing has changed at all.
But when she pulls back, her expression has changed, reverted to a somber
mask, tears already collecting in the corners of her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Sam.”
“Yeah.”
We sit at a table. I sit in the chair and look at her.
“Jesus,” I say. “You look…great.”
“Thank you.”
“How have you been?”
“Good.” She says. “I work at a waffle house, part time, going to school,
getting my degree in fine arts, which is sort of a bullshit major but I happy with it.”
“You still paint?” I ask.
“Yeah. Not as much as I used to. Just…really busy. But I have an art show
coming up pretty soon.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s not a big deal, just a couple paintings. A small…thing.”
“That’s wonderful though.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty excited.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” She says, smiling. “You want some coffee, or something?” She
stands up.

!162
 “Uh, maybe some hot chocolate.” I shrug.
“Alright.” She smiles, walks up to the counter to order.
The coffee shop looks completely different on the inside than I remember
it. The walls are green instead of white and covered with posters and paintings and
clippings from newspapers. Even the floor seems different though I’m not sure how.
Kati comes back with an ice coffee and a mug of hot chocolate, which she
sets on the table in front of me and sits down, sipping her ice coffee, looking at me.
She sets her coffee on the table and says, “So. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“What have you been up to?” She asks.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I stopped going to school.” I shrug.
“You have a girlfriend?” She asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good for you.” She says.
“Yeah.”
“Where do you work?”
“I don’t.” I sigh.
“Where do you live?” She asks.
“An apartment.”
“How do you pay for it?”
“If I tell you you’ll be upset.”
“No, I won’t. I guessed anyway.”
“Yeah.”
“You make enough money that way?”
“More than enough.”
“You’re not scared that you’ll get caught some day?”
“A little.”
“Show me your arms.” She says, reaching across the table toward my left
arm. I pull it away.
“You don’t need to see that.”
“So you’re still…using.”
“Look, can we talk about something else?”
She leans back, sighs. “Okay. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
I take a sip of the hot chocolate and it burns my tongue. I set the mug
down.
“So,” I say. “Any of the old gang still around?”
“No. Not really.” She says.
“Any of them?”
“No. I don’t think so. I kind of lost touch with most of them anyway.”

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 “Where’s Derek?” I ask. “I went by the apartment but he doesn’t live there
anymore.”
“Yeah,” Kati says, sipping her coffee. “Derek died about a year ago.”
A moment passes.
“How?” I ask.
Kati looks at me, in the eyes, and says, “Drug overdose.”

Outside Kati gives me a hug and says, “It’s great to see you, Sam.”
“Yeah.” I say. “You too.”
She pulls back, smiles.
“Listen,” She says. “Take care of yourself, alright? I mean, don’t get too
down, okay?”
“Hey, you know me. I don’t feel anything.”
I blow smoke in the air between us.
“Yeah. If only that were really true.” She says.
She smiles as she closes her car door. I watch her pull out of the parking lot
and I stand by Cathy’s car for a while, blowing smoke at the moon.

I drive back to the house and park in the garage and go in through the back door and
lock it behind me and I go into the living room where Cathy is sitting on the couch
and I wonder if she’s been here the whole time.
“Hey.” I say. “Where’s mom?”
“Asleep.” Cathy says. “About an hour ago.”
I look at my watch. “It’s not even eight yet.”
“Yeah, well. She’s…. grieving.”
I sit on the couch beside her.
“Yeah. I guess we all are.”
“I guess.” She shrugs.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“I…. don’t know.” She says.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Why did you come back?”
I turn to look at her. “What?”
“Why did you come back, Buck?”
“What do you mean?” I ask, confused. “For dad’s…. funeral.”
“But you hated dad.” She says this in a monotone, an emotionless voice as
if she’s merely reciting facts and…maybe she is. “And you hate this house, this city.
Why did you come back?”
“Because…I had to.”
“And you’ll leave again after the funeral.”
“Yes.”
“Because you have to.”

!164
 “Yeah, I guess. I don’t…belong here, Cathy.”
“No one does.” She says.
“You don’t like it here?” I ask.
She turns to look at me. “What do you think?”
“I guess…not.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I don’t.”
“How’s…school?” I ask, cringing at the lameness of it.
“Don’t ask like you care. I don’t care. You don’t care.”
“All right. Sorry.”
“School is bullshit. You know it is. You went to the same school. You know
its bullshit.”
“Yeah. Does Mrs. Daniels still teach French class?”
She takes a breath, stares at the blank television screen.
“I guess not,” she says. “Because I don’t know who that is.”
“Jesus. Everyone’s gone.”
“If they know what’s good for them.” She says.
“Cathy. When did you get so…pessimistic?”
She looks at me.
“Not long after you left home.” She says.
“But you were like, twelve, or something.”
“Thirteen. And what does that have to do with anything?”
I don’t know. I figured you would…have a happy life.”
She smiles faintly when I say this and I realize how alien it might sound to
her at this point.
“Sometimes it was. But things change. People change…and die.”
“Don’t talk about your life in the past tense. That shit freaks me out.”
“You want to know what freaks me out?” She asks, staring through me as if
I don’t exist.
“…What?”
“Remembering what dad’s blood and brain stuff looked like when it was
stuck to the broken glass and the steering wheel, when it was in my hair and I had to
wash my hair five times to get it all out. How the police wrote everything down like
some math quiz, some stupid facts and figures like it didn’t matter, like it was some
sort of seminar or something while dad was dead, he was fucking dead, like, five
feet from us and I watched them cover him up with that stupid blanket or whatever
and the last memory I am ever going to have of him is the expression on the parts of
his face that were still attached to his skull and I have to live with that memory for
the rest of my fucking life!”
She’s screaming this last part and the tears are streaming down her face and
her cheeks are red and puffy and I feel like the house is vibrating, about to fall apart,
and I don’t know what to do, like always, what do I do, what the hell do I do?

!165
 “That’s what freaks me the fuck out!” She cries, punching the couch
cushions, shaking. I put my arms around her, try to hug her, but she shoves me away
and I’m surprised at her strength.
“No! Hugging doesn’t change anything! You can’t fucking change
anything!”
She jumps up and runs out of the living room. I hear her stomping up the
stairs, sobbing, and I decide to let her go. I can’t do anything to help her anyway, at
least not right now.
I lay awake on the bed in the guest room trying to remember the last time I
saw dad and after what feels like three hours of this, I give up, and eventually I am
probably going to fall asleep and tomorrow is the funeral and I really don’t know
what I’m going to do when I’m there and I think about what Cathy asked me earlier,
why are you here, and I ask myself the same question and when I realize I don’t
have a real answer to it, I roll over in the bed and I bite my lip so hard that I can
begin to taste blood.

I fill the syringe more than I should but I’m feeling more and more and it’s
the only way I know how to stop it. The tears I shed this morning were the first tears
in almost a year and…I don’t want to feel it anymore, I don’t want to feel anything.
Lying shirtless on the floor of the bathroom with the door locked. The
syringe fills with blood, just a hint of red, liquid smoke. I shove the plunger down
with my thumb and I lie on the floor as my eyes begin to flutter, almost shut,
breathing.
“Dad…”
“Sam. I taught you better than this.”
“You didn’t…teach me…anything.”
The shadows are ghosts and the voices can’t be real, can’t really be there.

The wasp circles the ceiling for what feels like an entire day but I couldn’t
have been sitting on the bathroom floor for that long, they wouldn’t let me.
I watch the wasp land on the faucet in the sink, then fly in circles,
lowering. It lands on my arm. I shift my head to watch it crawl through the hair on
the arm then without warning its stinger comes down and it stings me. I don’t feel
anything and I don’t move. I watch the wasp sting me again and then fly away as if
nothing happened and maybe in the morning I will feel the pain of the wasp stings
but right now I don’t feel anything, anything at all.

I prepare another shot and crawl into the bathtub, run hot water that fills
the tub, rises around me, hotter than I could handle…if I could feel anything. I stick
the needle in the vein and force the plunger down.

!166
The needle is still in the vein when the bath water turns to smoke. Blood
becomes oxygen, fresh air, and I can still see my father’s face…his voice is ringing
in my ears.
“I’m…so…proud…of…you.”
Candle light dances on the tiles, casting flickering shadows over the
reflection of the face in the mirror.
My body melts into wax on the surface of the water. The needle drifts away
from my liquid form like a life raft, or a call for help. The vial remains on the edge
of the tub and I watch it glow in candlelight through the distorted surface of my
reflection at the bottom.
Blood turns to ink, to sand, and I’m sinking, sinking to the bottom.

So…proud…of…you.
Dad…what happened?
Life. Life happened. We had a lot of love, all of us.
Yeah. It’s not going to be the same…it’s…fucking hard.
I want you to stop this shit.
What shit?
The drugs. It’s not helping you. Whatever you’re afraid of, this is not
helping you. At all.
Yeah. I know.
Besides, you’ve got a beautiful woman at home. Waiting for you. She loves
you. She wants you to stop.
I know…yeah…I love her, dad.
And she loves you.
Yeah…I know.
Then why do you keep doing this? What are you trying to hide from?
Everything…I’m scared, dad…I’m fucking scared.
Hell, I’m scared too, Son. And I’m dead. Fear won’t go away unless you
face it. Face it, son. Give up this hiding shit…and face it.

I wake up on the floor of the bathroom. I can hear mom and Cathy talking
in one of the rooms of the house. I put my long sleeve tee shirt on, stick the cap on
the syringe and stick it in my pocket along with the vial. I unlock the door and walk
out, down the hall, into the living room where Cathy is sitting on the couch while
mom stands in the kitchen, talking.
Cathy looks at me and asks, “Did you sleep in the bathroom?”
I can’t think of anything to say in response to this question so I don’t say
anything.

“I remember…you and mom…you’d wait with us at the bus stop…before

school…we would get on the school bus and look out the back window…we

!167
thought we were…too cool to wave back…but you and mom…you would wave at
us…you’d wave at us until the school bus turned the corner and we couldn’t see you
anymore…but I sometimes thought…you were still waving.”

I wait for a response but there is nothing, only silence. Alone in the
bathroom, the bathtub. Alone.

I wake up on the floor of the bathroom. I can hear mom and Cathy talking
in one of the rooms of the house. I put my long sleeve tee shirt on, stick the cap on
the syringe and stick it in my pocket along with the vial. I unlock the door and walk
out, down the hall, into the living room where Cathy is sitting on the couch while
mom stands in the kitchen, talking.
Cathy looks at me and asks, “Did you sleep in the bathroom?”
I can’t think of anything to say in response to this question so I don’t say
anything.

The funeral is like any other except it’s my dad, my dad in there. Cathy
can’t bare to see him like that so she sits on a pew with mom. I walk to the casket
with my eyes shut, trying to prepare myself to see him like this, to see him for the
first time in so many years. But when I look into the casket, I don’t see his body. All
I see is a fishing trip when I was twelve years old, the time we, meaning he, caught
a two foot cut throat trout. Hiking in the woods outside of Yellowstone national park
and trying to figure out what a bear call might sound like so we could see one or
two. The bad times aren’t there, the fights, the stolen wads of cash out of his wallet
when he was asleep. None of those times are there, in the casket, but I know there
here somewhere, still floating around me. I lean into the coffin and even though I
don’t see him, not in there, not really, I know he’s here, somewhere, and I take a
deep breath and I tell him, “Dad…I’m sorry.”

“So, you’re not going to be such a stranger anymore, right?” My mom asks
me this, driving me to the bus station. Cathy is in the back seat. “You’re going to
come back and see us, soon, right?”
“You totally have to come back.” Cathy says, from the back seat.
“I’ll be back.” I say, smiling. “I’ll bring my girlfriend.”
“You have a girlfriend?” Cathy asks.
“I love you both so much.” Mom says. “You really have to come back
soon, okay?”
“Okay, mom. I will.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“You better.” Cathy says.

!168
 At the bus station I give Cathy a good hug and I say, “I know it’s tough
here. But you’ll get through it. I promise. I got through it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be back. Soon. We’ll hang out, okay?”
“Cool.” She says.
She steps back as mom steps over to me, puts her arms around me.
“I love you so much.” She says.
“I love you too.”
“Please come back soon.”
“I will, mom. I promised.”
“Thank you.” She says.

I get on the bus and take a seat in the back and as the bus pulls out I wave
at mom and Cathy through the back window and they wave back, smiling, and even
after the bus turns a corner and I can’t see them anymore, I just keep waving.

About an hour outside of town I call Sally on my cell phone and ask her to
have dinner with me tonight, something nice, fancy.
“I’d love to,” She says. “How was the…funeral?”
“Fine. Just a funeral. Listen…”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.” She says.
“I’ll see you at the bus station, right?”
“Yeah,” She says. “About an hour, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright,” She says. “See you then.”
I hang up the phone and lie back in my seat, close my eyes…and smile.

MURAL FOUR: MAYFLY MOTEL

Figure Twenty Two: A Big Life

We pull into the motel parking lot and I park the car and I walk into the
front desk office and get a room and the guy checking us in is really thin and speaks
softly and he’s got tears in his eyes and his face is bright red and it really creeps me
out but I don’t let it show because it doesn’t really actually matter after all and I get
the room key and got back out into the parking lot and get in the car and the kids are
in the back seat playing thumb war (Patricia seems to be winning) and Mary sits in
the passenger seat with her seatbelt on and a map unfolded in her lap, studying and I
notice that it’s a map of the wrong state entirely but I don’t mention anything about
it and I turn the ignition and pull out of the parking space and circle the motel to
where our room is and I park the car again and turn it off and say “We’re here.” And

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then we all get out of the car and we grab our bags and go up the stairs and I set my
bag down to unlock the door to the room and then I pick the bag up again and walk
into the motel room and Mary and the kids walk in behind me and Mary goes
straight into the restroom while the kids immediately start jumping on the beds,
every once in a while simultaneously jumping over to the opposite bed and I pick up
the TV Guide from the top of the TV and I look through it and then I turn on the TV
and flip through channels for a while, thinking maybe it’ll be nice to go down to the
pull, the four us, and swim for a little while before someone says something that
will ruin the whole trip for everybody else.
Down at the pool Peter and Patricia takes turns seeing who can hold their
breath under water the longest and we’re basically the only people at the pool
except for a fat woman who seems to be asleep on a patio chair in the corner of the
pool area who I catch myself staring at for no real reason until Mary pinches my
arm and when I look at her she’s wearing sunglasses and a straw hat that I’ve never
seen before and smiling and she says, “Are you having a good time?” And I realize
I’m just sitting here in a plastic chair beneath a large umbrella with a beer company
logo printed on it in thick red letters and I haven’t taken my shoes or shirt off and I
barely remember changing into my swimming trunks and I shrug and say, “Yes, of
course. I’m having a great time. Are you?” And she looks at me and scratches what
appears to be a mosquito bite on her left arm and she says, “I’m having a wonderful
time.” And I smile, nod, and I watch the kids mess around in the pool for a little
while before taking off my shoes and shirt and I dive into the pool and swim laps for
a little while but the kids keep getting in the way and splashing all over the pool
area and distracting me and so I get out and dry off and sit on the plastic chair next
to Mary who is lying on a patio chair reading a paperback novel and I breathe
deeply and lean back in the chair and watch the kids for a moment but turn away
when they start to argue about something that I’m not entirely clear on but seems to
revolve around whose turn it is to hold a deflated beach ball that one of them found
at the bottom of the pool and I stare out into the parking lot trying to determine the
cost and respectability of the cars in the parking lot next to our car and I decide that
none of the colors of the other cars are quite as cool as ours and I can’t imagine any
of them having a better stereo or real leather seats and automatic reclining functions
as well as windows and door locks and I take a deep breath, satisfied and I lean my
head back and rest my eyes, wondering what the weather is going to be like
tomorrow.
Mary is in the restroom changing out of her swimsuit and I lie on the bed
flipping through channels on the TV while the kids are busy drawing pictures on
notebooks we bought them at a gas station on the way hair and they’re not making
all the much noise only occasionally arguing, or simply casually making comments
about poor use of color or the sloppy-ness of an un-straight line where surely a
straight line was called for, and I’m thankful for this merely minor amount of
distracting noise because I’ve miraculously come across the middle of a John

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Wayne movie on the TV and I’m very pleased with myself for stumbling upon this
because I didn’t see it in any listing on the TV guide and I flip through it again to
see if it’s even listed and it turns out it is but I didn’t see it in there until now which
makes the discovery that much more unique and impressive and I watch some of the
movie while trying to remember how long it’s been since I’ve smoked a cigarette,
feeling rather proud of myself, but thinking about it ends up making me want to
smoke one so I turn my attention to the John Wayne movie instead just in time to
watch the duck slug the hell out of some joker and then one hell of a muddy fist
fight ensues and then Mary comes out of the bathroom wearing blue jeans and a
white tee shirt and she makes it look so sexy somehow and I ponder this, realizing
even after all these years she still looks so good to me, maybe sometimes even
better then she did when we were in school together and she gets on the bed with
me and studies her fingernails while John Wayne does what he can to keep the
peace, or rather says to hell with keeping the peace in order to give what’s deserved
to these jokers in the black cowboy hats and the kids continue drawing with crayons
in their notebooks and they’re not paying any attention at all to the John Wayne
movie which is just kind of a shame because I think that they could learn a lot about
growing up and doing what’s right from paying attention to a John Wayne movie
but I won’t force them to watch anything that they don’t want to watch because
that’s not something that John Wayne would do and even my father who loved the
duke as much as I do didn’t force me to watch John Wayne movies, it was just
something that came naturally to me and so that gives me hope for my own
children, the idea that they, someday will want to watch the duke on their own
volition and freewill and maybe then things will be just a little bit better than they
are now, not that I’m complaining, we’re a wonderful family, but maybe things can
be just a little bit better and if there is anything that can make that happen it will be
the unprompted and conscious decision on my children’s part to watch a John
Wayne movie from beginning to end, and as I’m pondering this Mary leans over and
whispers lightly in my ear, “I’m off my period.” And then my thoughts shift
completely and have accelerated into formulating intricate but casually subtle ideas
for preoccupying the kids while Mary and I can have a little bit of time to ourselves
this evening.
While the kids lie on their bed watching TV Mary calls room service and
orders two medium pizzas (one with half pepperoni/half mushrooms, the other with
tomatoes and black olives) and a 2 liter of soda and napkins, lots of napkins, and on
television is some movie with a gangster rap soundtrack score and lots of black
people running from things blowing up and a lot of them are holding guns in their
hands and I’m thinking to myself that this is not the kind of programming white
American children should be watching but I remind myself that I was given the
choice to watch what I wanted to watch and I chose John Wayne so maybe there is
still hope for my children.

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 The pizza arrives and Mary and the kids immediately dig in while I flip-
through channels on the television contemplating the world in general, and John
Wayne and cowboys specifically, and after a while I grab a slice from the box with
tomatoes and black olives and I take a bite and even though I waited until taking a
bite for it to cool of the cheese and sauce burns the roof of my mouth and I spit it
out into the palm of my hand and stand up and toss the un-chewed bite into the trash
and I turn and everyone is looking at me and I shrug and sit back on the bed and
grab the remote control from Mary who sighs and shrugs her shoulders and lies
back in bed and I flip through the channels wondering how long until one of us
figures something out to do with the kids so we can take advantage of Mary getting
off her period and I’m thinking maybe we’ll just tell the kids to watch the TV and
do not misbehave and do not let anyone in, except for us, but make sure it’s us by
looking through the peephole, and then getting into the car and driving to some
woods or something and using the backseat for what it was really made for (In
America, by God), but that plan quickly dissolves when I sense Mary beginning to
fall asleep on my shoulder and the kids start throwing wads of paper at the TV
screen, giggling, so I lay my head back and look at the ceiling for a little while,
wondering how the hell a man like me ever gave up on having what he wants.

Figure Twenty Three: Strange Prayers

The man walks in without knocking and there’s a sound of a gunshot
somewhere outside as he shuts the door behind him and walks inside, looks me
over, here sitting on this bed with my legs crossed
I’m sitting here on the bed with my legs crossed, wearing a black skirt and
a bra and he looks me over while taking his jacket off, setting it over a chair by the
door.
The black out curtain is drawn shut and the only light is from the little
lamp hanging from the ceiling above a small wooden table in the corner of the
room.
“Been here long?” He asks.
“Not long at all.” I smile in a way that I imagine is only faintly seductive because it
doesn’t have to be at all.
“That’s good.” He starts to unbutton his shirt, starting at the collar and working his
way down.
“This will cost you two hundred dollars.”
He doesn’t change expression as he looks at me, unbuttoning.
“Do you have two hundred dollars?”
“Certainly.” He says, one end of his lips rising into a half grin.
He removes his shirt and approaches me. I uncross my legs and lean
forward. He stands still as I unbuckle his belt, pull it out of the loops, toss it behind
me. I unzip his pants and pull his cock out through the flap in his boxer briefs. He’s
already erect and groans faintly as I begin to rub on it, then put my lips around it,

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bob my head slowly at first, then increase the pace, the rhythm, and it’s just so
boring that I feel like I’m on the verge of tears.
He starts to make the moaning sounds and I pull away from him, crawl
backwards on the bed, lie with my head writhing around on the pillows, my legs
spread wide, not wearing panties. He crawls on top of me, starts kissing the side of
my neck.
Within moments he’s inside of me. His cock moving in and out miserably.
I’m only fairly lubricated and I realize I forgot to lube up again after the last one but
he doesn’t seem to notice, or mind, or care at all.
He comes inside of me, grunting, biting my left earlobe so hard I think he’s
drawn blood.
After a moment he pulls out of me, slides off the bed and goes into the
bathroom. Sound of tearing toilet paper from the roll and I assume he’s wiping
himself off.
I pull my skirt down and re-apply my makeup in the little mirror from my
purse and I sit up in bed leaning against the wall and I don’t imagine there’s much
expression on my face at all as the man takes his time removing the money from his
wallet and setting it in a neat stack on the nightstand.
He looks at me briefly, hesitates, the already faint smile beginning to fail,
then leaves without saying a word, shutting the door gently behind him.
I sit still in the bed for a while, feeling catatonic, then I grab the money
from the nightstand and walk with it into the bathroom, drop the money in the sink,
except for one twenty dollar bill. I pick up a cigarette lighter from the counter
beside the sink and it only takes a moment to set the crumpled corner of the twenty-
dollar bill on fire. I drop the twenty-dollar bill, half in flames already, turning black
and rolling into itself, into the sink with the other bills and watch them all burn
together, slowly at first, as I’m crying and wiping tears from my eyes and with my
right hand holding the little razor blade between the thumb and forefinger I drag a
thin red line down the pale skin of my inner thigh beneath my skirt.
The sink is a cloud of black smoke as the two hundred dollars burns to
ashes and I take a breath, drop the razor on the floor, pull off my skirt, my bra, and
turn on the shower, as hot as it will go and I get under the spray of the water, trying
to not to scream, trying so hard, as the money burns in the skink and I crouch on the
floor of the shower and let the man’s semen drip out of my in thick strands like
muddy tear drops and I’m getting ready for the next man who should arrive pretty
much any time now.

Figure Twenty Four: The Leg Arm Routine

Frances:
Like two pink moths maneuvering through florescent light and dust
particles Elizabeth interweaves her feet together in the air. She wears the pink ballet

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shoes and nothing else, lies on her back on the floor between the two beds with her
hands on her hips. This is a dance exercise, a ballet warm up that is focused on
coordination, but right now it looks a hell of a lot like foreplay.
I lie on the bed with the TV program but I can’t get my eyes off her. She notices
and stops suddenly, but keeps her feet in the air. She’s got her behind facing me and
I’m staring at the little tuft of hair peeking out between her cheeks, praying for the
legs to spread, slowly, slowly.
“Why do you watch me like that?” She asks, leaning her head to the right
to look at me past her legs.
“Like what?”
“Like I’m a stripper.”
“That’s not how I look at you.”
“That’s what it feels like.” She sighs, pulls her legs up and backwards so
that her knees are pressed into her breasts. This is a stretching exercise that allows
me a peek at the pink lips between her legs.
“I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. You’re just so…sexy.”
“Tell me I’m beautiful.” She says, rolling forward, pushing up on her feet,
standing. Her long hair trails down the pale skin of her torso, barely covering her
breasts.
“You are beautiful.”
“Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I love you.”
She steps between the beds and shifts her weight to her left, rests her right
knee on the bed, beside my hips, then pivots and rests the left knee on the other side
of me, straddling me. I toss the TV schedule to the floor and raise my hands
between us, palms up. She rests her hands in mine and I pull her into me. Our lips
meet. She tastes of strawberries, nectar, lip-gloss. She pulls away.
“You know we can’t make love, right?”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Besides, this place is really…an undesirable location for love making.”
“Yeah.”
She sighs, looks at me. “I do want to. But you know I always cramp up and
we’ve got a performance tomorrow night.”
“Yeah. I understand.”
She rolls off of me, lies at my side with her left hand on my chest, her
delicate face resting on my shoulder.
“You’re sure people in this redneck town are going to show up?”
“People always show up. Besides, we’ve done worse towns than this.”
“If it was The Nutcracker Suite, or even Swan Lake, I wouldn’t be so
worried.”

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 “But you hate doing Swan Lake. You especially hate The Nutcracker.”
“Yeah. I do. But with those you always know there will be filled seats.”
“I can get you into The Nutcracker if you want. Jackie told me one of the
sugar plumb girls dropped out…something about a herpes outbreak.”
“Fuck the sugar plumb girls. That’s not what I mean. Besides, I’m not
playing a fucking background dancer.”
“I know, I know. It was just an idea.”
“Well, you know I’m better than that. I just hope people actually show up”
“Honey. Don’t worry. Fritz told me he’s got a full house already lined up.”
“He’d better.”
“Trust me.”
She breathes into the side of my neck.
“I do.” She says. “I don’t know why. But I do.”
An echo of what sounds like a gunshot outside.
“Did you hear something?” She asks, rolling over, looking at the thick
green curtains covering the windows.
“Probably a car, or something.” I shrug.
“Cars make gunshot sounds?” She asks.
“Sometimes. Yeah.”
“I think it was a gunshot.” She says. “I mean, a gunshot from a gun.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you think we should call the front office?” She asks. “Report it, or
something?”
“I guess so.” I shrug.
She looks at me.
“Well. Call them, then.”
“What’s the number?” I ask.
“It’s on a sticker on the telephone.” She says.
I grab the phone from the desk, find the sticker on the phone with the
number for the front desk. I dial the numbers and listen to the ring for a moment.
A woman answers with a voice that sounds like she’s crying.
“Uh. Is this the front desk?” I ask.
“Yes…” She sobs. “This is front desk. How can I…help you?”
“I heard a…gunshot.” I say.
The woman starts crying loudly, sobbing.
“Is everything alright?” I ask.
“Everything is…fine.” The woman whines. “Please…do not worry, just
a…firecracker.”
“Oh. Alright.” I say. “Thank you.”
I hang up the phone, look at Elizabeth.
“It was a firecracker.” I say. “Or…she said it was.”

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 “That was not a firecracker.” She says. “Whoever that was, they were
lying. Or just stupid.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” I say.
“Jesus.” Elizabeth says. “Since when do we have to perform in towns
where gunshots are a casual thing?”
“Since you stopped wanting to follow the circuit, honey.”
“The circuit was dying out and you know it. How many times can the same
people in the same cities see the same ballets over and over again without getting
sick of it?”
“I’ve never gotten sick of seeing you dance, no matter how many times
I’ve seen it.”
“That’s because you’re in love with me.” She says, sitting up, looking at
the palm of her left hand, flexing the fingers.
“Yeah. So?”
“It’s different.” She sighs.
A moment passes. I watch her breasts move up and down with her shallow
breaths.
“I feel like the arts are dying.” She says, looking at me. “I feel like people
don’t care anymore.”
“Some people never did care. It’s how it’s always been. The audience will
be back. It comes and goes. They’ll be back.”
“Yeah.” She says, stretching her back. “Maybe.”
“Trust me.” I say, smiling.
“Maybe.” She says.

The phone rings while Elizabeth is in the shower. I answer it and a man’s
voice asks, “Do you have any sugar?”
I frown, look at my feet.
“Sugar?”
“Yeah. We’ve got a coffee maker, coffee, cream, cups…but no sugar.”
“Huh. I don’t know.” I say, still frowning.
There’s a moment of silence.
“I’ll check. Hold on.” I say.
I set the phone down on the nightstand, stand up, walk to the end of the
room where the coffee maker sits on a little wooden counter connected to the wall
beneath a large mirror with a small crack in the lower left corner of it. I flip through
the little packets in a small basket beside the coffee maker. Lots of powdered
creamers, some mysterious salt packets, but no sugar.
I go back to the bed and pick up the telephone.
“No. No sugar. Sorry.”
“Fuck.” The man’s voice says.

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 I hang up the phone and pick up the remote control, turn on the television
and flip through the channels.

Elizabeth dries off with a white towel, moving her body back and forth in
front of the TV.
“Did you have a nice shower?” I ask.
“I thought about you.” She says, draping the towel over her shoulders like
a cape.
“In the shower?”
“Yeah. I thought about making love to you.”
“Yeah?”
“But we can’t.” She says.
I take a deep breath.
“Yeah. I know.”
“But I want to touch it.” She says.
“All right.” I say, turning the TV off and tossing the remote to the floor.
She tugs on my belt buckle, unbuckles it and works on the zipper.
“Since when did you start wearing blue jeans?” She asks.
“Since always. You never noticed.”
“You used to wear nice pants.”
“These are nice pants.” I say.
She pulls my penis out between the open zipper flaps, already erect, starts
squeezing it gently.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” She asks me, staring at my penis, starting to
stroke it, barely.
“You’re beautiful.”
“Am I?” She asks.
“Of course you are.”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course I do.”
“Good.” She says.
She makes a fist and the head of my penis turns a shade purple. She
squeezes hard, bites her lip.
“Do you trust me?” She asks.
“Sometimes.”
“Like right now?”
“Maybe.”
She lets go of my penis and watches the color return to the flesh, the blood
flowing back into it.
“Penises are so weird.” She says. “I sometimes wish I had one…just so I
could rub on it sometimes.”
“It’s not as great as you think.”

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 “I don’t think it would be great…just different.”
“Yeah. I imagine it would be.”
She circles the bed and lies down beside me with her chin on my shoulder.
“Honey?” She says.
“Yeah?”
“What did you think of today’s rehearsal?”
“I thought it was beautiful.”
“Nothing I should improve?”
“Nothing you didn’t improve by the end of it.”
“You’re not just saying that?” She asks.
“Honey, when do I just say anything?”
“Yeah.” She says. “Thank you.”
“You’re going to do great, honey. I promise.
I lift my head up and kiss her lightly on the forehead.
“Yeah.” She says. “I just hope people actually show up.”
There’s a knock on the door. Elizabeth jumps up, stares wide eyed at me,
then looks at the door.
“Who is it?”
No response.
Elizabeth grabs her robe and walks into the restroom, shuts the door behind
her.
I zip up my pants, stand up, walk to the door, look through the peephole. A
man with a shaved head stands outside, looking from side to side nervously. I open
the door a crack without taking the chain off.
“Yes?”
The man sniffs hard, wipes his nose.
“Sorry to bother you.” He says, grinning. He’s missing one of his front
teeth.
“What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you might have any sugar?” He asks.
“No. I don’t have any sugar. Was that you who called me a moment ago?”
“Called you?” He frowns.
“Yeah. A moment ago. Asking for sugar?”
“No, man. I didn’t call you.”
“Oh. All right.”
“Must have been someone else.” He says.
“Yeah. I guess so. Well…sorry I can’t help you.”
“It’s all right.” He says. “Just wondering.”
“Well. Goodnight.” I say.
“Yeah.” He says.

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 I shut the door, lock it, unbutton my shirt, fold it and place it on the desk
beside the television. The door to the bathroom opens and Elizabeth walks out
wearing her robe.
“Who was that?” She asks.
“Some guy…asking if we have any sugar.”
“He wanted sugar?” She asks.
“Yeah.”
“Did you give him any?”
“No. We don’t have any.”
“Oh.” She says, untying the robe, letting it slide off her shoulders to the
floor. “All right.”
She lies beside me on the bed, pulls the covers over her.
“Hey.” I say. “I’m going to go have a smoke outside.”
“All right.”
I get up from the bed, grab my lighter, my pack of cigarettes, and my cell
phone from the nightstand and I go outside, shut the door behind me after making
sure I have the room key in my pocket.

Elizabeth:
Try to relax beneath the covers on the bed and listen to the sound of my
breath. Lift my hands, make invisible circles in the air, rotate the palms, breathe.
I’m nervous about the performance tomorrow night and I don’t want to be.
I grab the remote from the floor and turn on the television, flip through
channels until I find the local news.
In the past twenty four hours, according to the news, a child was abducted,
a semi truck crashed and exploded on a freeway, killing three people and critically
injuring seven others, a car drove off the road and ran over a dog house filled with
newborn puppies.
I turn off the TV, feel like I’m going to cry. Toss the remote on the floor
and lie back, close my eyes. Pretend I’m on stage.
The door opens and Frances walks in holding his cell phone. He closes the
door and stands there, looking at me.
“What?” I say.
He sighs, clears his throat.
“Bad news, honey.” He says.
“What?”
“You won’t like it.” He says.
“Just tell me.” I say, sitting up in bed.
“Fritz called.” He says.
“Yeah?”
“Just now.” He says, looking at the cell phone in his hand.
“Yeah?”

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 He looks at me, takes a breath.
“It’s been canceled.” He says.
“What…has been canceled?”
“The ballet.” he says.
“For…tomorrow…night?”
“Yeah. But…” He takes a breath, drops the phone on the bed. “The whole
season.”
A moment passes. Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe.
“What?” I say.
“The season has been cancelled…due to…lack of interest…lack of…
whatever.” He says.
I look at him. Can’t breathe.
“Honey, relax.” He says.
“I’m relaxed.” I say. “I’m calm. I’m a fucking beach.”
“Honey…”
“Stop talking.” I say, putting my fingertips on my temples, trying to
breathe. “Just stop fucking talking.”
I look at him as he shuts his eyes, takes a breath. I put my hands on the
bed, watch him stand there. He takes another breath, deep and steady, then exhales. I
shut my eyes, follow his breathing patterns, breathe with him.
After a moment my air passages are opened. I am calm. A fucking beach.
“Okay.” I sigh, opening my eyes. “What are we going to do?”
He opens his eyes, exhales slowly.
“What we always do.” He says. “Improvise. Survive. We’ll figure
something out.”
“No…we won’t.” I sigh, stare at my palms.
“Yes, we will.” He says. “We always do.”

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