Eric arrived home one early October evening with a brown bag of Chinese take-out to find Laura playing a computer game, The Night’s Tale, cross-legged on her over-sized office chair. In the unlighted living room the thick glass in her pink frames reflected her Player Character, Cordelia Largeheart, slicing through a den of vampires, the baby-faced minions of the Raven King. According to prophecy the Raven King’s reign would be a dark age such as even poets dared not imagine, blotting out the very sun in its terror. It was nigh. The Raven King’s romances and dreams of world domination were recorded in The Codex of Black Birds, an ancient tome secured in the belly of the bloodsuckers’ crypt. Cordelia, full of a Halfling’s optimism in the face of inevitable doom and a Thief’s lust for plunder, was in the process of obtaining the codex, a plot-centric quest on the corpse-strewn path to saving the world.

“Why did you throw out the black bowls my mom gave us?” Eric asked, clearing off the edge of her desk.

“I didn’t,” Laura hunched closer to the screen in concentration.

“The clay ones,” Eric said. He opened a box of shrimp lo mien and used splintering disposable chopsticks to divvy it into two deep bowls. “Where did these come from?”

“What?” Her fingers stormed across the keyboard, hit the mouse.

“This.” He thrust one of the bowls, pale porcelain with a Celtic design of interlocking lines threading about its lip, in front of the computer screen. The weave was a light blue, the same hue as Eric and Laura’s eyes. If it came undone it could not be redone.

She swatted the bowl of steaming noodles away then paused the game.

“What?” She swiveled to face Eric.

He handed her a bowl.

With a mouthful of shrimp Laura observed that the bowls were new.

“But you don’t know where they came from?”

Laura sucked in a noodle before responding, “Huh-uh. Must’ve been here when we moved in?”

Maybe. But that still didn’t explain where the missing black bowls were. Eric would swear he’d unpacked them. It didn’t explain why they had new toothbrushes every week. It also didn’t explain how one garish lampshade had disappeared and a refined one had appeared in its place or where the substitutes for missing tattered sweaters and yellowing undergarments came from. It didn’t explain how the questionable gifts that the couple had accumulated had recently vanished—a shot-glass from Cancun, an Eiffel Tower magnet, a hand carved chess set from Ghana, a set of clay bowls from mom.

“Maybe,” Laura paused to set her empty bowl aside and swivel back to her game. “Maybe the cats gave them to us.”

Eric stood, laughed, and kissed the helix of hair on the peak of Laura’s head. “Maybe so.”

Before Eric carried their dishes into the kitchen, Laura leaned back to rub her cheeks and jawbone against Eric’s chin and chest. She hadn’t been joking. The marmalade had come almost daily with two helpers to wash the dishes, make sure the mirrors and windows gleamed, dust the shelves and countertops, and take out the trash. The cats swept and mopped the floors, arranged the bookshelves according to spine-color, and kept the bedroom closet meticulously organized according to clothing type—pants with pants, dresses with dresses, sweaters with sweaters, blouses with blouses, and so on. Furthermore, they segregated the wardrobe according to color: from hot to cold, shades of red to orange to yellow, green to blue to violet, and from light to dark, whites to silvers to golds to blacks, with motleys making a final section at the end of the row.

Recent college grads, Laura and Eric had moved to New York to save the world. The marmalade cat was there when they moved in, scouting, maybe, silently envisioning its future home. They found a steal in the West Village, snug against the Hudson River. On the August day they arrived, Laura took a break from unloading the rental van to buy a bagel with lox-flavored cream cheese from the bodega across the street. She smeared the rosy spread onto the sidewalk with a plastic knife. The lean marmalade purred as he lapped up the snack with a shiny tongue.

Squinting through bright humidity, Eric said, “I love cats.”

Laura squeezed his perspiring palm.

On the first night in the apartment, they shaved each other’s perfectly circular heads over the kitchen sink. Laura’s pink glass frames rested by the faucet on the rim of the steel basin. A series of metal stars snaked along her earlobe and Eric kissed the tattoo painted beneath—a dandelion head coming undone, the seeds strewn over her skull, neck, and shoulder blade. Her hairs, as if seeds themselves, scattered and lodged in his spittle, slipped down his gullet. They attached themselves to his lips and tongue, from whence they were transferred back to Laura’s body: breasts, elbows, belly-button, knees. The brunette hairs shorn from Eric’s head made use of Laura’s mouth and fingertips to travel into his ribs, run down the back of his thighs, and furrow across her abdomen. When Laura went to shower afterwards she saw a black tail whoosh in a leap from the bathroom window.

After her bathing, Eric was still sprawled across the mattress that sat without box-springs on the wood-panel floor of their new bedroom. He was nude and drenched in sweat, speckled with the couple’s comingled stubble; above him the summer’s unmovable air captured his overripe onion odor.

“There was a cat in the bathroom window,” Laura laughed, diving onto the sheets to kiss again before bedtime, her tongue still heavy with the flavor of dough and her cheeks soap-sponged into wildflowers and cut grass.

“What you were doing in the window?” Eric joked. “You could fall,” he said, snuggling into her, “and then our new neighbors might see you land naked on your hands and knees.”

“Not me,” Laura mumbled through drowsy teeth, already sunk in hypnagogic reverie. “A cat.”

Unlike Eric, Laura had always been an easy and deep sleeper. His mind full of complex continental theories and an abstract but ambitious—and somewhat paralyzing—project to save the world, Eric had trouble popping his thought bubble fantasies and succumbing to subconscious dreams. As Laura succinctly put it, he worried too much. Despite everything else that they shared—a penchant for complex images and foreign words, boredom with cinema, immediate empathy for anything with wings or feline, a pacifistic defense of individualism, a taste for simple foods and simple sounds, and a fierce sensuality—it was in sleep that they felt most unified. She was a natural cuddler, he in nightly need of a cuddle.

Laura would crash against Eric in tuckered slumber, her arms tangled around his torso, inner-thigh to tummy, the whisper of her pubic hair against his hip, eyelashes on neck, patches of cool fat and radiating armpits, her hot groin against his hard hipbones. He would turn on his side and pillow his lips on hers and drift in out of consciousness, their bodies entwined together as effortlessly as light and shadow. Laura’s deep sleep, her complete submission to another realm, would latch onto Eric’s arms, grapple around his ankles, and press onto his chest, so that he, too, would descend, even still in half-consciousness, floating just below the surface, bobbing, before sinking to join her in dreamland. Coming to, too, he would float, drift, let the waves of her breath and body sustain him, until he broke through into day and consciousness with the startling, gentle grace of a butterfly alighting from one flower to the next. It was a post-coital achievement, sure—in certain moods Eric fancied that it elevated their intercourse from animalistic to angelic. However, it was attained, also, in other forms of exhaustion, buffering after debauched undergraduate get-togethers against ensuing post-party depressions, sustaining them through long weeks of final exams, and forming a sensual conclusion to long nights hammering out seminar papers, his Master’s thesis, her senior project and make-or-break interviews with potential clients.

Going straight from undergraduate studies into a terminal MA program, a Masters of Arts had been handed to Eric after five years of obsessive, if average, scholarship. “Sisyphean Superman: Existential Motifs in America’s Übermensch,” his MA thesis, had managed to utilize four years of High School Latin, a Derrida quote en français, and still never stray far from the central genre-centered argument concerning the postwar desolation of civilization and the hope of humanity therein residing precariously on the preternaturally broad shoulders of comic book superheroes. His collection of comic books, theory, and an ostentatious array of nineteenth-century European novels filled out the bookshelves in the living room. Laura’s design books wound up on a smaller bookshelf next to her computer desk and its luxurious, graduation-gift office chair. Despite the fact, as she saw it, that every art student and computer geek no matter their specialty decided upon graduation to go into graphic design, with the aid of her program advisor she had managed to secure a few high-end clients while completing her senior project. They could coast on her freelance income for the short-term.

In the evenings they strolled the new neighborhood. When possible, they avoided Christopher St. and the better portion of Bleeker St., where tourists and New York University students congregated with local yuppies and Chelsea Boys who strayed too far south. They preferred, instead, the muted interior lights and flat facades of Cherry Lane, Barrow St., and the cobbled one-way alleys that crept with anachronistic doorframes and trellises, silent, discolored bricks and rococo window trims. In so determining their path they considered themselves to have transcended the phantasmagoria of commercialism for historical substantiality—though they believed in neither transcendence nor history.

They did not stroll alone. When they left the apartment they’d see the marmalade perched beside a newspaper stand across the street or slinking in through the complex door as they walked out. Along with the cosmopolitan pigeons and robins, and the urban rats and mad squirrels, cats were stationed at odd intervals on their meandering route. One night an olive green and basalt cat sat perched on its haunches in the ruby umbrella of light cast by a low street lamp on Carmine St. Laura and Eric would swear that the same cat had sat as still as stone on the corner of Commerce St. and Cherry Lane the evening before. In a shadowed alcove on Bedford St. a giant tabby guarded a litter of three sable kittens, its marble eyes mirroring the random lights of the city night. On Hudson Ave. six kittens cried in dissonant chorus from a third floor window, their disproportionate heads mere wailing silhouettes against the starless blue-velvet sky, but their din powerful enough to drown out the passing cars and drunk passersby. A milky-white mane would dart past them on Leroy St., disappearing into a recess between two buildings only to reappear tip-toeing ahead of them several blocks later. A tailless ginger tom mewed plaintively above them from a rusting fire-escape on Grove St. The marmalade waited at the complex door, rushing to rub his whiskers against Laura’s shin at their return.

Laura bought more bagels and spread lox-flavored cream cheese over the sidewalk.

While Laura dedicated a portion of each day to realizing her clients’ individual needs at her computer, spinning and sliding the cozy office chair around the living room floor, Eric’s fantastical vision for the immediate future deteriorated in stages: adjunct position at one of the many local universities, high school instructor, ESL instructor, private tutor, job in publishing, proof reader, and finally at the end of September he stumbled into a data-entry job making electronic files for a warehouse worth of books—mostly in English. While it was a temporary setback to the achievement of his unknown calling, it was also a temporary solution to the need for immediate income.

By mid-September they had arrived at a routine. Eric would rise just past dawn, put in eight hours of cataloging with an enforced, unpaid thirty-minute break and two clocked fifteen minute breaks for each four hour stint. On his way home after work he would stop at one of the many specialty restaurants to pick up dinner to share with Laura. He would check the mail on his way up the stairwell and every two weeks or so a sheet of unaddressed, colorful blank stationary would be waiting for him, slipped under the seam of their door. It was gorgeous paper and for the young couple it soon came to symbolize the unexpected, anonymous beauty that the city had to offer.

After a day of data-entry Eric’s level of awareness would be just greater than a zombie’s. To rise out of such murk would have required a shower, coffee, and perhaps even light physical exercise. The rub of waking in the late evening was oversleeping the following morning, being late for work, and having to stay even later at his cubicle in compensation. Instead Eric opted to climb into bed with a graphic novel (Night Fisher, shelved among the cream cheese whites).

By the time Laura crawled in beside him the sky was lightening in the bedroom window. Eric shifted with a grunt. Night Fisher thudded onto the floor.

“Shhh,” Laura said, adjusting a pastel-orange comforter ornamented with white stars.

“Huh?” Eric mumbled.

“Cordelia just rescued a fairy. Her name was Syrinx. The Raven King imprisoned her in this river thousands of years ago because he loved her and she didn’t love him back. It must’ve been torture. She hugged me and sobbed when I freed her. It took forever to find her because even once I knew she was in the river, you know, I still didn’t know she was in the river, I was trying to look through the water, to something on the floor, underneath the water. She was trapped in the water. As a reed in the current.”

Laura’s first freelance job in the city had won her a good reference and ample paycheck. Since, her greatest achievement was deciding to go Halfling and level Cordelia Largeheart as pure Thief.

Eric was now awake. “You found her though, and rescued her?”

“Yeah. Just needed a simple incantation and this dagger that cuts water,” she chortled. “Syrinx was so pretty and she told me where to find this map I need.”

Eric yawned, “Laura?”

“Yeah?” She rolled a thigh over his abdomen and nuzzled into him, arm flopped across his chest.

“Where’d this comforter come from?”

Laura laughed softly, the spicy heat of her breath caressing Eric’s neck. “I don’t know. Where?”

“You didn’t buy it?”

“Huh-uh.” She yawned one monstrous yawn against his jaw. “Maybe the cats?”

Eric had no time to bob with Laura’s body in bed. He disentangled her limbs from his and dressed in the half-dark.

Before leaving for work Eric went into the living room and pulled a copy of Anna Karenina from its spot on the bookshelf where its portentous black spine sat wedged between the lithe black spine of Graceful Exits and the abused black spine of The Structure of Complex Words. He then pulled the blood-orange spine of The Enchantress of Florence and shelved Anna Karenina in its place, so that Anna Karenina’s black spine now sat between the stout orange spine of Drawing Down the Moon and the uncracked muddy orange of Practicing the Path. The Enchantress of Florence he shelved where Anna Karenina used to sit, a pumpkin moon in a starless night.

Laura rose late in the morning. She brewed coffee and opened a can of tuna to set in the windowsill. Dressed in warm-ups and a hoodie, her thick woolen socks tucked under her on the office chair, while the computer came out of hibernation Laura listened to the purr of the coffee pot and admired a bouquet of asters, ranging in hue from lavender-pearl to dusky-purple. They hadn’t been there when she went to bed.

She double-clicked The Night’s Tale.

Once her sobs, as beautiful as a crystal flute, had subsided, Syrinx told Cordelia where to find the Undulant Map—an ancient scroll rendering in symbolic demarcations the whereabouts of the sundry portals whereby one could traverse to hidden dimensions superimposed upon this one, providing access to a world insensible. Raven Castle, the stronghold of the Raven King, lay secured in just such a realm.

To obtain the map, Cordelia traversed the craggy countryside for many moons, leaving a trail of demonic corpses in her wake. She slew countless winged harpies in the flatlands, lopped off the malformed heads of sea hags and the slimy tentacles of apocalyptic squid along the coast, trekked through forests where wicked pixies cast spells of bewilderment and confusion upon Cordelia’s stout mind, blinded her with brightness, and enchanted her with song. But she was not conquered and in the end Cordelia discovered the scroll precisely where Syrinx had told her it would be, occulted in one of the crumbling pillars of a ruined temple, now an overgrown nest for vipers, the only remnant of some long forgotten god.

Tireless in her quest, Cordelia conferred with the map and followed the coast to the Valley of Ashes, where, in a dimension immaterial, stood the foreboding Raven Castle.

Eric arrived home in the evening clutching a brown bag with falafel platters in one hand and the day’s mail in the other. They had received a large manila envelope containing an unfolded, blank missive of dense homemade paper, the palest shade of pink, emboldened with regal gold, pomegranate red, and ocean blue grains.

The marmalade cat sat in the sink, licking coagulated soy sauce from one of the new porcelain bowls.

“Laura,” Eric called. “Laura,” He called again, going into the living room doorway, “I’ve brought dinner. Let’s eat in the kitchen,” he held up the bag. “We got more paper in the mail—a nice one.”

Laura nodded in the unlit room like a curtain brushed by a slight breeze. The computer cast her profile in a synthetic glow. Eric had a sensation akin to déjà-vu, as if he were looking at a figure in a photograph or, rather, as if he himself were gazing out from a moment captured in some other place and some distant time.

Anna Karenina had returned to sit pompously with the black spines and The Enchantress of Florence waited to be read with all the other oranges.

As he made his way to the kitchen table, the mossy eyes of the marmalade cat in the sink scanned Eric and fixed on the dense paper he carried. “Oh good,” he said, “you received it. What with your lack of replies, I never do know until I see for myself.”

The cat leapt from the sink onto the kitchen table. He sniffed the brown bag of falafel and then said, “I’ve discussed the matter with the council and we are unanimous in the decision that it would be most desirable if you were to leave both the complex door and your individual apartment door propped wide tomorrow. This is in addition, of course, to our instructions that all screens shall be removed from all windows and all windows shall remain open from moonrise to moonset or until the council instructs otherwise.”

The cat studied Eric’s bemused expression, smiled diplomatically, and deemed it necessary to explain, “This will not be an inconvenience. While most of us will use the fire-escape, it could be a great pleasure for those of our more sprightly friends to have a leap at less easily accessible portals; and for our more arthritic bedfellows, the straight-shot of first floor open doors will be a welcome luxury.” He took on a thoughtful expression, nodded once, and leapt back to the kitchen counter, which he preceded to lick and polish with his paws.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Eric said carefully after a long silence.

“But we sent you ample notification,” the marmalade cat said, looking up from the counter. “I know you received our missives, I have seen them on the table or scattered wily-nily.” The cat cocked his head. “There, that right there,” he swung his tail toward the light pink parchment, “really it’s all detailed right there.”

Eric skimmed over the flecks of ocean, gold, and pomegranate. The threads spun out a spectrum of color vertiginous in its splendor. At last he said, “I can’t read it.”

The marmalade cat raised his moss green eyes, examining something on the thither side of the ceiling. Finally he said, “Ah.” He patiently licked a paw, then added, “That explains a bit. It is fortuitous, then, that we’ve had this chat.”

Eric rose and walked into the living room, where Laura was slaughtering sea-trolls along the north coast. “Hey,” he said, “there’s this cat in the kitchen that I’ve been talking to.”

Laura nodded, her fingers like busy antennae over the keyboard, sending acidic arrows through pea-sized brains.

“It says it wants to move in here tomorrow. And bring friends.”

Cordelia felled a sea-troll and immediately got to work setting it ablaze, aware of the uncanny regenerative capabilities of sea-trolls. “Cool,” Laura said. “I love cats.”

“I brought falafel,” Eric said and returned to the kitchen.

The marmalade was polishing the forks. Eric said, “Cool. We love cats.” The marmalade smiled brightly, nodded, and returned to polishing the forks.

They came the next day at moonrise, Eric had just arrived home. He stood in the middle of the kitchen as they poured in—blue-eyed snow-white long-haired cats, black cats with sparkling emerald eyes, light gray cats with dark gray hoods, brown-hooded cats with short white fur and pale lemon eyes, mottled tabbies, short and long-haired gingers, bushy black cats with patches of white, small short-hairs with streaks of moss and spots of tumbled brownstone in granite furs, fat cats with eyes of gold, broad shouldered cats with blackberry eyes, rotund and merry cats, morose and skinny cats, slim graceful cats, broad-shouldered brutish cats, and all kinds of cats in all kinds of shapes and all manners of coats and eyes of every hue. They streamed in through the windows, jumping onto the kitchen table, leaping onto the loveseat, sliding across the desks, marching curiously through doorways. They gushed into the hallway and spread into the bathroom, slid down blinds, tore through curtains, chased into the bedroom, hunted and raced all over and under the bed, stalked around corners, curled up in the hall closet, stretched out on bookshelves, sat at attention under chairs, lay with legs dangling from perches atop the refrigerator, the filing cabinet, computer, bathtub, and generally made the space their fairground, territory, and home.

The marmalade cat approached Eric in the hurly burly. “Excuse me,” he cleared his throat. “Would not a welcoming dinner of, say, haddock, be an appropriate gesture?”

“These are your friends?” Eric asked.

“Ah, indeed. There will be ample occasion for introductions by and by. Perhaps after dinner?”

Eric placed an order for smoked haddock and waited outside for the delivery.

In the living room cats sharpened their claws on the side of bookshelves or sniffed their way over the loveseat. A golden long-haired cat with matching golden eyes leapt onto Laura’s lap and immediately began to purr. A cat with white fur patched in black and orange stretched out next to the monitor where, step by bloody step, Cordelia was coming ever closer to saving the world and keeping inevitable prophecy from its inevitable realization.

By the light of a full moon Cordelia had ended the misbegotten existence of a pair of gargoyles who stood guard on either side of the towering twin doors of Raven Castle. Beyond the creaking doorway lay a massive hall of dilapidated marble where spiders the size of stallions with legs like daggers spun gargantuan webs. The floor was littered with the gruesome skeletons of hellspawned things, their very skulls contorted in the throes of agony. Cordelia went as quietly as a Halfling Thief could, her alert eyes scanning the room for traps and bogeys.

When Cordelia reached the center of the room the Spider Queen, a black widow the size of a cottage, leapt from darkness. It was a harrowing battle, but Cordelia hacked at its poisonous fangs and sliced numberless menacing eyes and would not relent though poison froze her blood until in the end she prevailed. She quaffed antidotes and bandaged her wounds in the moonbeams that fell through the ruined casements of tremendous windows. After hunting down the Spider Queen’s myriad offspring in the dark recesses of the cursed chamber, she ascended a crumbling spiral staircase, following a blood-stained banister up into the heart of the castle.

Cats colonized the bed. They hissed and shook their paws when Eric came too close. The loveseat, too, was occupied with a dozen cats, cuddled into one another and stretched out over the armrests. He had no choice but to lay out sheets and quilts as a makeshift cot in the kitchen. All night long he heard the mischievous patter of cats prancing across the floorboards and felt poking paws and the hot breath of inquisitive noses sniffing him through the covers.

Laura had no such difficulty. She retired at dawn into her own bed, just as the marmalade began to tidy up. The cats shuffled for her and when she was tucked cozily beneath the starry orange comforter they nestled into the angles of her body with warm, reverberating purrs. The trick of the matter—as Eric would learn in the days ahead—was that she naturally exuded a feline odor, sweet as paper and tinted with salmon and chlorine. They showed her the same aloof affection they shared amongst themselves; and she, in turn, never questioned her role as a sovereign host to the cats. Laura and the cats played as fancy decided, cleaned each other according to an inborn cosmetic standard, cuddled when cuddling was called for, and properly recognized when to leave each other well enough alone.

Excepting an occasional hiss, during the first week the marmalade was the only cat that acknowledged Eric even lived in the apartment. When Eric questioned him on the matter the marmalade gave a sad, presidential smile and said, “You rather stink, old friend.” So it was that a week or so into their stay, one night after moonrise, the marmalade cat called an emergency council meeting wherein, out of a unique concern for sociability and aesthetic harmony, he organized Eric’s baths.

As usual, Eric had been forced to sleep on a makeshift pad on the kitchen floor. It was a dark experience, even the streetlight reflected into the kitchen window did not so much shed as suck, vampirically, faintest lights; by a synesthetic trick of tactility and color the fingernail-pink of their tongues glowed in the darkness and occasionally an eye—emerald green, amber orange, topaz blue—would flash. The cats did not swarm, they simply rose up from where they always were. Their tongues were rough as stubble, adhering to his flesh and conveying reciprocity in their complexity of touch. So that, though passive, though he lay there merely making the crooks of his body accessible, Eric felt that his body, too, was engaged in the encounter—stroking back as it were.

The cats bathed him the next night too. And the next. It went on until Eric’s flesh burned from the caresses and he whimpered and jerked reflexively. The cats jerked back with slashing claws and willful jaws until he lay still. The ritual bathing continued in the deepest moment of each night for weeks, until Eric possessed two new skins: a raw cherry-blossom pink, redolent of iron and cream, and another skin of encrusted slashes interspersed with the first like a fake fur of fancy vermillion.

Things were changing. For a while Eric would return home from work with fish dishes and dine with the cats, feasting on grilled trout with ginger, salmon loafs with horseradish sauce, halibut in creamy cucumber sauces, crab cakes and lox. When he did not so much quit as cease going to work the household subsisted on Laura’s income. When money was tight the cats would bring home rats from the bodega across the street or fresh pigeons from the fire-escape.

Though none but the marmalade spoke to him, yet Eric thought that the cats were trying to communicate as a collective in codes of eye color, encrypted coats of fur, the length and downiness of fur, in matted tufts. Fallen whiskers made strange poetry that Eric stuttered tongue-tied to enunciate, studied to understand. He spent the better portion of days and nights lying on his back naked trying to decipher from upside-down the scratch mark hieroglyphics that inscribed the walls.

The marmalade had recruited two helpers—a runty black cat and a big-boned tabby—and the three of them kept the apartment more immaculate and glistening with a color-coded resplendence than ever. They furnished Laura’s desk with a garden of flowers, from orchids to amaranth, in the midst of which the cats prowled or lounged, swatting at the blossoms with indolent claws or creeping up on one another in surprise pounces. They traded off naps in Laura’s lap as she railed through the night.

The ancient wooden door had no lock. Cordelia pushed it open and there before her stood the Raven King. He was a twisted mockery, half-man and half-bird, a skeletal being of wickedness. Cruel flames danced in the eye-sockets of his skull. He smiled gruesomely, arose on blood-stained talons, and cried out for war.

Cordelia leapt to the side and thrust a dagger that rang off his beak. She skirted around, gaining an advantage with agility. The decayed bird spun and sliced at the air. Cordelia sank her blade into the tendon of his wing and hacked down, sending the sickening being to the floor. He cried out and once again took ungainly flight, flinging himself toward Cordelia.

At cool as winter, Cordelia stood her ground, spinning and striking as the foul beast swept down upon her. The blade caught the other wing, slid out, and burst through a decrepit cage of bone straight to a withered heart. A mortal shriek echoed in the blood-soaked rain of raven feathers—the last, lingering caw of the Raven King.

Laura pushed herself back from the desk and savored the moment. She rubbed the stubble at the nape of her neck. The hour, the day of the week, the month, the year, and all of time was a whirling, polychromatic iris, and she the gravitational tug at the boundless center. She stretched and sighed. She stood and walked gingerly, prancing tippy-toed around and over and in between the languid bodies of drowsy cats. A tom yawned and somnambulistically swatted at the chipped glitter on her dancing toes.

An alert Siamese sat on Eric’s bare chest, riding the gentle tide of his breath, and a svelte gray cat was stretched along Eric’s ribs, curling her lower hips into Eric’s own. At Laura’s approach the Siamese unhurriedly stepped down and sashayed toward the bathroom.

Laura squatted beside Eric. “Eric,” she whispered.

The gray’s tail flicked.

“Eric,” she whispered again, shaking him gently.

He opened his eyes. Laura was radiant. In the unclosed window behind her the sky was dawn-blue and her eyes were a paler shade of the same blue, enormous behind pink frames. Her impossibly broad smile beamed and spread even broader, glowing and growing until it eclipsed her moony cheeks.

“Eric,” she whispered, “I saved the world.”

Last Tuesday the sophomores attended an emergency assembly given by our health studies teacher, Mrs. Hurley, because of the gonorrhea scare that’s been going on for months. Everyone either slept through it or doodled pictures of Miss Richardson’s ginormous tits like they did during Schindler’s List in social studies. Not me. I actually learned a few things. Decided then it was time to quit looking at internet porn and do some exploring on Craigslist.

I realize looking for my ‘first time’ on a website featuring arts & crafts discussions and used appliances for sale isn’t what most people do, but I don’t have much of a choice. The only kid who came out of the closet got his nose broken last year by Anthony Brandolini, a badass who doesn’t play sports, respected by the jocks because he’s in a thrash metal band called Like Bloody Murder. Since then, the kid who got his ass beat, Ryan, hasn’t said a word to anyone other than his fag hag, Crystal Lewandowski, who is chubby and sad most of the time.

Ryan’s actually kind of cute. He’s in my chemistry class. Once in a while I catch him staring. The newly crooked nose gives him a distinct kind of look, almost Slavic, maybe even tough, despite the blonde hair. If I was ever seen talking to him I might be pummeled to a pulp. So I don’t. The other boys are suspicious enough that most of my friends are girls. Whereas they only refer to me as ‘a little light in the loafers,’ Ryan has to deal with a lot worse. Once at a school rally they were going through roll call for the members of track, and when they got to Ryan’s name a bunch of senior guys started chanting FAG, FAG, FAG. The teachers couldn’t quiet them down. I cheered along with them, not wanting people to think the same of me.

Mrs. Hurley said in that emergency assembly that your first sexual experience stays with you a lifetime, which sounds like a pretty long time to me. Hence, my reason for choosing an ad titled “The Watcher”: 27/ very dominant/6’1/205—I have a fantasy to have you watch me while I get rough with another guy. I want you to watch from outside the window. I DONT want the guy I’m with to know you’re there. The window will be cracked so you can hear me telling him how much he wants me to breed him. If you are interested we will arrange a time and what window you should look in. I like that there are no strings attached. I show up, watch this dude screw some other dude through a window, then I leave.

When we get down to instant messaging, the guy who posted the ad says he has a government job, and things have to be discreet. His name is Darren. I tell him mine’s Charlie. I almost write my real name, but it seems smart to lie. He has a really nice body in his pics. Face isn’t so bad either. Unshaven, all dark angles. The eyes are permanently relaxed, like everything is about as interesting to him as a closet full of old shoes.

My cover is Greg Gallagher, a kid I haven’t spoken to since middle school. In the fifth grade, my mother had a conversation with Greg over Shepherd’s pie one night about the Republican’s brilliant idea to spread Christianity through the Middle East and how it could change the world for the good of everybody. All he did was nod. She took this as a sign he was an extraordinary human-being.

“And how do you plan on getting to Greg’s in a car that has no brakes?” she asks loud enough for my dad to hear in the living room. According to her, the brakes have been going for months, and for just as long she’s been complaining to Dad that if she dies in a car accident it’s because he’s cheap. Truth is, Dad pays most of the bills and his job as a line cook at Patty’s Diner just doesn’t cut it in the extras department. Brakes are considered extras in my family, along with five star notebooks and fall jackets.

All I can do is look at her and pout. I think about complimenting her new haircut, the same helmet-shaped bob she’s had for years. Or the new cardigan she’s wearing that she bought at Marshall’s, the one that looks like every other cardigan she has except it’s purple.

Thankfully, I don’t have to. Dad emerges from what feels like a three-year-silence in the living room. He drops his keys on the kitchen table, a sour cloud of whiskey and cigarettes settling before plunking his ass back in front of the television. This is the first time he’s offered. Maybe he’s being drunk and generous, like the time he let me draw on my wall with markers when I was five. Mom was pissed that night. Dumped his beer, made me paint the wall over until it was back to its original color, urinal cake green.

She throws her head back, angry at Dad for giving in so easily. “There won’t be any girls…right?”

“We should be so lucky,” my father yells from the living room, drowning out his favorite rerun of Hogan’s Heroes.

My mother’s expression changes from fake anger to real irritation, one eyebrow arched. “What’s that supposed to mean, Frank?”

“He’s at the age.”

“What age?”

“Ah.” It’s the sound of dad clearing his throat. He’s done talking to her. Since he got laid off at Raytheon six months ago, he’s been doing a lot more drinking than talking. Wears the same oversized Patriots jersey every night before falling asleep on the couch.

“Fill up the gas tank before you get home. All the way,” he yells from the living room. Maybe my dad is materialistic like Mom says. He’s the one with the highest paying job in the family and he asks me to pay for gas. He knows they pay me crap at the supermarket.

I get out of the house without much more from my mother. She makes me take a change of clothes. Tomorrow’s a Saturday, which means Dad won’t need his car until the night shift, so if for some reason Darren gives an invite to join in, the coast is clear.

I go the speed limit, plagued by that nervous feeling of wanting to shit. The same as when I hear dad mumble in his sleep while I’m surfing Craigslist on the family computer.

I park at the top of Darren’s street, deciding to walk the rest of the way. Crazy as it sounds, I don’t want to risk anyone seeing the car parked out front, especially kids from school.

I’m flanked on both sides by tall, rectangular bushes, plainly sculpted in the shape of upright mattresses. The houses remind me of Newburyport, where I pick Mom up from Sunday service. We marvel at how big and old they all are and then at the end of the day share an ice cream at Treadwell’s. We don’t tell Dad. Ice cream is considered extra.

I walk by a Victorian with too many windows to count, shades halfway pulled down. A faint blue glow peering out of each, a hundred little eyes squinting at me. I imagine the family inside: The father reading a newspaper, the mother playing board games with their children. This seems ridiculous in light of what I’m going to do. Makes me smirk under a large Weeping Willow. The dark branches like strips of matted hair shaking dust into my eye.

White Shutters at the bottom of the hill, just like he said. The road stretches on, past the house, shadows of leaves from a street light sprinkling the asphalt like an Easter trail into thick darkness. I want to glide into that glove of night, to keep the nervous anticipation inside my belly brewing longer.

I amble past his red Mustang in the driveway. Locate the open window along the side of his house. The silhouette of a person hovers over a couch, the rest of the room bare in the little bit of light coming from a back room.

I’m shocked. Up till now I’d been convinced he’d chicken out, the whole thing a fantasy too weird for reality. A closer look reveals a cigarette in his hand. Smoke snakes up into the dark nothing of the ceiling. I feel dirty, but there is something so irresistible, so singular and unfamiliar about the whole thing I can’t pull away. Darren moves a little, so I duck down, the quick descent giving me a head rush. As I wait I can hear my beat in the center of my head.

I hear a car door slam shut, the guy who doesn’t know he’s being watched. The taxi rolls under a street lamp, the yellow and black checkers washed in green neon light, maneuvering a quick three point turn before speeding off. A door somewhere in the house rattles open. I wonder who the hell would take a cab to meet someone for sex. A desperate person, I think.

“In here.” Darren’s voice sounds unexpectedly like a croak, deep and baritone. Not like a voice from the beaming, tanned young guy with the glittery eyes in the photos.

I bob my head up slowly, until the contents of the room appear. Darren is still on the couch, just a flat shape, a black ghost barely visible in the blue light. The floor is covered in blankets and pillows, glimmering eerily like pastel colored lichen and coral. Maybe he does this kind of stuff all the time. Maybe used condoms are sprinkled around like dried up jellyfish.

I’m spooked by the flash of blonde hair as he plunges into the dark room with Darren, that nose – the little crook. And when he greets Darren its beyond question. Ryan. I’ve sat nearby him in the cafeteria a couple times, strained to hear him talk. I was curious if he had a lisp or didn’t. Here in the room with Darren, his voice has a weird tone, a little off, the ends of the words choking on themselves. I’m nervous thinking I’ll see him at school after watching him get fucked by another guy, but in a sick perverted way it kind of turns me on.

Darren’s voice like quick stabs, “Undress. Put your clothes in the corner.” his face dark, veiled in a violet bloom of smoke. He’s hairier than in the pictures, so I focus on Ryan, who kicks off his shoes, unbuttons his shirt.

“Faster.”

It becomes clear that the voice might not be from the guy in the pictures. Sounds more like an older voice, like the voice of my white-haired gym teacher, Mr. Carlotti. Who knows what Darren looks like. Who even knows if his name is Darren. I begin to be a little scared for Ryan. There’s a stiffening in my pants, which doesn’t match what’s going on in my head.

Ryan steps forward, reaches for one of his sneakers. When he speaks for the second time his voice is high-pitched, the same way mine is in Chem when the teacher makes me explain formulas in front of class. “Uh. Hey. I just realized my parents don’t know I’m here. Should probably go outside to call them on my cell…so they don’t freak.”

A quick flash of the man’s swollen, unshaven face passes through a stray ray of light as he gets up from the couch. He lunges forward, burying his arms into Ryan’s body, the force of it knocking the sneaker into the air. I duck down, hold my breath. It’s for sure not the man in the photos.

My head swims. What do I do? Run? I can hear things, heavy things overturn and something crack, muffled pleading. The bushes part in front of me: a path to the street, to freedom. I close my eyes, letting blackness take away everything around me, until I can’t hear or feel. Like I’m a blank piece of paper. I try to focus on something, anything other than the noises from the window.

The first thing I think of is that day at the rally. Ryan standing two rows over, everyone chanting FAG, FAG, FAG. He smiles at first, lifting his shoulders slightly, the expression of giving in to a joke among friends. But when he sits back down on the bleachers his grin straightens. He tucks his elbows to his sides like it’s cold. Smooths an out-of-place hair on the back of his head. The gesture only makes the cowlick worse. His pinkening cheeks, rigid posture remind me of the way well-behaved children sit at formal events. That no matter how well you follow the rules, you’re helpless. Just a warm bag of tubes and blood.

“You’ll fucking do as I ask you little queen!”

I run out to the street, stumbling on a boulder that lines the side of the lawn. I look both ways, forgetting where the car is. Anger, more than fear swelling inside my temples, I look back down at the boulder that almost tripped me, the surface rippled like a raisin.

I scoot penguin-like, the rock wobbling against my chest. I wind up as much as I can, squatting down, like they teach us in gym for shotput. Launch it at the center of the window. The glass shatters, but the rock falls back towards me, landing on my foot. I don’t feel anything. Just a throb, like my heart is slipping from my chest down my leg, settling uneasily in my shoe.

I stand motionless, waiting for a sound, any sound. A small rumble from the room, boards creaking. The front door flings open and Ryan spills out barefoot, shirt hanging from his waist, his body small and pale in his underwear. I yell at him to run. He’s already running. Blood threads his lip. I grab his hand when he gets close enough.

We ride in the car for what feels like forever. Past my neighborhood, past Grove Park, Patty’s Diner, the center of town, until we’re on a long stretch of road that’s not familiar, the houses on top of steep hills, far away where they can’t hurt us.

“How did you know I was there?” He says this with a weird hopeful sound in his voice, like an ember glowing at the bottom of a pile of ashes.

I wonder if he’s thinking I was there just to save him.

“Just meeting some guy from Craigslist.”

“Me too,” he says, looking out the window as we pass a sign for the highway. “You live by the old theater, right?” I remember his bus stop from middle school, the neighborhood only blocks from mine.

He pauses after he says yes, like he’s embarrassed about his voice. “Can we just keep driving?”

I don’t want to stop driving either. The police station blears by, a gray smudge wedged between bright lights. I want to turn, give him a knowing look. We sit there instead, quiet.

We go on driving for a while longer, windows fogged. I use my sleeve to wipe off the windshield. I remember the clothes my mother gave to me to bring. Hand them to him without looking away from the road because I don’t want to see my reflection in his eyes.

We end up parked next to a cemetery, down Ryan’s street, where it’s quiet. My shirt is tight on him. His lips are fuller than I thought, redder, but that could just be blood. He cries into my shoulder, gripping me with a force I haven’t felt from anyone else except my mother at Grandma’s wake. She embarrassed me in front of everyone doing that. But I don’t feel embarrassed with the way he clings to me and shakes. I’m shaking too. We sit in that position, his head on my shoulder, watching the stars disappear, one by one, like sheep over a red dune.

It’s strange how the body is involved in the kissing, but it’s the lips that do most of the physical work. How I don’t want to stop grinding my nose against the chafe of dried tears. How I’m not grossed out by the metal-salt aftertaste of blood in my mouth. Before I know it, my hands aren’t my hands, my body not my body. The sun pinkens the tops of tree branches like lit candelabras.

We don’t have sex, don’t even get close. I go before he even has my pants down. He doesn’t last all that long either. Mrs. Hurley was right. After I drop him off, I sit in my driveway, staring at the sloping shingles of the roof. I think about the tensing of his body, how it opened to the touch. How I’ll have to suck it back inside. Keep it safe.

The following weeks I won’t act any different towards Ryan at school. He won’t talk to me, either. We’ll be lab partners in Chem one day, not because we pick each other, but because we’ll be the last two left. I’ll stop looking at him full on in the hallway like I did before. We won’t become inseparable. Things won’t unravel like in the movies.

My supersoaker was filled with cow piss. Bear Claw’s was filled with lemon pudding. Union Square smelled like wet bandages, steel drums clanged, I was so anonymous in this crowd of thousands I could barely breathe. We air-kissed both cheeks for luck, Bear Claw and I, and crossed East 14th Street. Vastness never felt so vertical. This was the furthest south in Manhattan I’d ever gone; I’d been in New York three days.

Inside a store called Forever 21, Bear Claw made for the G-strings.

But I got stuck watching a huge mural near the escalators. Two painted columns of words, side-by-side:

Duck Tape / Duck Tape
Jewlery / Jewlery
A Blessing In The Skies / A Blessing In Disguise
Perscription / Prescription
Aks / Ask
Laura Norder / Law And Order
Affidavid / Affidavit
Foilage / Foliage
Pass The Mustard / Pass Muster
Libary / Library

Bear Claw came back to get me. Her ski mask revealed a pair of angry eyes.

“Get over it, farmboy,” she said, over the blaring techno soundtrack in this fashionista depository. “They don’t mean to educate you about expressions you’ve misheard, they’re not saying something clever about the permeability of language, they just think these mistakes are cute, and should be giggled at, because: ‘We all make mistakes, and if anyone’s giving you crap about mispronouncing something, then what the fuck kind of sense of humor do they have? Why do they take everything so seriously?’”

“Wow,” I said.

We clomped ahead in our black espionage garb, attracting zero attention from a dozen Bridget Jones utopists matching shoe to blouse. A t-shirt display caught Bear Claw’s attention. She read from several shirts: “‘I’m Here About The Blow Job.’ ‘Drama Queen.’ ‘I Need A Boy To Do My Homework.’ ‘MILF In Training.’ ‘Non-Practicing Virgin.’” Then she said:

“Aw, hell no.”

She pumped and fired, and I did the same. The store didn’t react, and I wondered if attacks like this were now so common in big cities that the natives simply tolerated them. We doused t-shirts, ribbed tanktops, jeweled pants, tube dresses. Urine splashed and pudding plopped, and finally a customer noticed and hit the deck screaming, Bear Claw ran and I trailed after—a couple Scarfaces on the move in a target-rich environment—and now everywhere young ladies in blonde ponytails were covering ears with elbows and shrieking and we hit the underwear department bearing stinky-sweet destruction. It was fun. A heavy lady in an official-looking vest charged me and I ducked, she slipped in pee and tumbled into a Frederick’s Of Hollywood display. I squirted her Capri-exposed ankles. Then Bear Claw was hollering, “Let’s go!” and I sprinted behind her because she was the veteran here: she’d been in New York three full weeks. On the way out, I paused and spattered that mural: a big cow-tinkle X.

*

I wondered if it ever got below 100 degrees in New York. The heat dragged everyone outside: the weirdest, ugliest group of people in the world congregated on the streets, day and night, people who smelled like sauerkraut brine. Electricity flicked on and off, traffic lights flashed helplessly, taxis overheated, and Bear Claw said there should be a public shower on every street corner. Our next assignment was sentry duty at some posh place on Madison Avenue where no one ever entered or exited, and a doorman fell asleep with his body indoors and his head sticking out a tiny window, like he was a hunting trophy. Eventually T-Rex and Billy relieved us, and seemed to have no better idea what was special about this address than we did. I made sure not to look at Billy’s eyes.

At the house on 112th Street, an ugly boy named Jack was on the phone, with several recruits gathered around him. He said, “Hello, this is Brett Scapula, and as the official spokesman for the Columbus Christians for Life, I am bound to disavow the latest rumors about the arrest of our president, Haley Sucret. The police have not arrested him, they are merely interrogating him, so Mr. Sucret has not yet been charged with trafficking child pornography.” Jack held his receiver high. “No, I just told you that it’s not an arrest. They have him in custody, but your newspaper should not believe the persistent rumors of his arrest. Mr. Sucret is supposed to have funded a Web site called ‘NakedPageBoys.com’ but there is no charge. For now they’re simply holding him.” The recruits held their hands over their mouths to stifle laughter. “I’m phoning you to deny these rumors. Yes, that’s right. You’re welcome. We at the Columbus Christians for Life encourage your newspaper to please show consideration for Mr. Sucret and his good works. Goodbye.” Jack disconnected and everyone slapped his back, a kind of ruckus duplicated dozens of times daily in this, our home. Bear Claw and I climbed upstairs past several picture frames populated by newspaper headlines: “Video Gamers Have Stronger Hearts, Study Says” “Hot Boy-Band Members Actually Homeless Veterans” “I.Q. Points Inversely Linked To Longevity.” We ate tins of deviled ham and drank just-expired eggnog, and went to sleep.

*

When a pretzel vendor’s cart crushed my foot three days before, it was not quite my first New York pain. I’d just stepped from Grand Central Station with my chin up, reckless with hopefulness, listening to a teenager behind me telling his friend, “Yeah, Manhattan isn’t as big or impressive as they say, y’know? I mean, I expected it to be big.” Rays of fog covered the street, a marble building seemed to slide toward me, and I accidentally saw down the front of a young woman’s dress, all of which thrilled me so much I ached with what is meant by the sting and sweetness of life. This was a summer morning so splendid that the power it had over my senses was like the power of memory. A few moments later, thanks to that pretzel vendor, I heard my little toe snap, and I met T-Rex and Bear Claw in the Roosevelt Hospital Emergency Room, where they were trolling for Vicodin.

“That’s bullshit,” said T-Rex, a 5’2” Puerto Rican carrying his camouflage backpack hobo-style on a baseball bat. “They got the tits, they got the onion. They got the men staring up at them, drooling on them, giving them money. Who got the power in this situation? Who got it, the sad, pathetic men, or the beautiful and wealthy woman?”

Bear Claw shook her cornrows, towered over him as they artfully looted a sleeping old woman’s handbag. I was standing on my good foot ten feet away in a crowd of grumpy convalescents; no one in this E.R. said a word, no one woke the tiny old lady in her wheelchair. Bear Claw said, “It sure as fuck ain’t the stripper, man. I’m about damn sick of it, too. One more starlet leaking her sex tapes to help her career, one more fucking book in Barnes & Noble about life as a hooker, one more fucking cardio-striptease class at your local gym….” She lifted a pill bottle from the lady’s purse, palmed it, “Fucking Girls Gone Wild, I mean, fuck.”

“What you need,” said T-Rex, “is a little vaginoplasty. Clear that bad attitude right up.”

“I’m supposed to look at myself only through a man’s eyes,” she said. “’Ats the only way to get money, power, whatever. ’Ats how I get money in my garter.”

“They’re working their way through school,” T-Rex said, and as they moved down the hallway casually testing the locks of supply-room doors, I found myself limping behind, thinking, They talk like this. They really talk like this. “Half the strippers I ever met in Miami was sending themselves through college. Use the system that exists, circumvent it for your own, whaddayacallit, advancement. How you gon’ convince the world if you a six-foot black lesbian? Men like titties. It’s unfortunate.”

“Looks like we got ourselves an admirer,” Bear Claw said, and indicated me. I was pinioned in this narrow fluorescent corridor, pretending to look away, wearing a please-don’t-murder-me grin. “What’s doin’, white boy? You stub your toe working your internship at Clinton’s office up in Harlem? You sprain your ankle kissing ass over at the New Yorker?”

I said, “What’s the New Yorker?”

“Hunh,” said T-Rex.

Bear Claw said, “It’s the place where run-on sentences live. Who the fuck are you?”

“Nobody,” I said. “I just….”

“You either want some a these here drugs,” said T-Rex, shaking his pockets. But a white-coated hospital employee swaggered by, and T-Rex didn’t give his alternate explanation for my presence. Whereas I played the caricature of a guilty trespasser, these two strangers melted into serene congruity, some urban intelligence game I’d often imagined: everyone in the big city was onto something, everyone in the big city was a spy. They eased into an unused room and I felt invited. I followed these two scofflaws, watched them boost cotton swabs and tongue depressors, grinned because they were smarter than I, they were inside, and this was how I’d pictured it, just how I’d imagined my descent into the underbelly.

*

That night I sat with Billy on a rooftop in the 100s, at the base of a lambent 30-foot billboard advertising an online university, where a ravishing woman was seen to push her breasts together and purr at the thought of higher education.

“So you weren’t ‘typical’ as a lad, eh?” Billy said. “Not just another go-along Midwestern Republican tyke with your God and your country music and your mistrust of Jews and blacks?”

“There was some of that,” I said.

“So? Why did you tell T-Rex you want to join?”

“I didn’t fit in. It wasn’t who I was. I wanted to burn things and, like, jump off stuff.”

“Bullshit.” Billy was peeling paint off a stovepipe in whorls, shirtless and sweating in the heat. “Who fits in, man? You were intellectually lazy, which is to say you were American. Poor you. Stultified by affluence and safety, paralyzed by the size of the buffet. Of course, you sensed there was something wrong and terribly greedy about living like this, but it was too scary to actually do anything about it, so you loitered, crossed against the light, maybe even set off fireworks or painted over the L’s in signs that read ‘Public.’ Wow. What a rebel.” Above the traffic I heard a distant motorcycle.

“I left, didn’t I?”

“And came to New York. Fuck. You think stupidity isn’t valued in New York? You know the first job I did when I started living in the house? I invented an oil-painting monkey. I put on European accents and left angry voicemails threatening the American press not to steal this revolutionary painting monkey named Mr. Wigglesworth. I forged notes from buyers who said they’d be interested in seeing an exhibition. I wrote reviews about the ‘empathy’ and ‘genius’ in his abstract paintings of bananas, and I got Diane Sawyer’s people interested in a one-on-one with Mr. Wigglesworth’s trainer.”

He talked and talked and I—empty-headed, thirsty, unable to recall if this was really the same day I’d arrived—was slack-jawed at the requisite Oscar Wilde and Edgar Allen Poe stories, the rap about vegetarianism and term limits and Walt Whitman and rich old men from the Middle Ages who paid for their sainthoods. “Don’t you see?” he asked me, “Don’t you see how you totally bought into what they were selling you, the myth of perpetual American prosperity, the cycle that would never stop going up?” And then he kissed me, and he was on top of me, and my foot hurt, and my pants were around my ankles and I realized I’d forgotten to take my suitcase with me from the hospital, I closed my eyes, I couldn’t help thinking this was exactly what all my old friends would’ve told me to expect in today’s Gomorrah, that on my very first day I’d wind up homeless in the big city with someone’s dick in my mouth.

*

“Who did you used to be?” I asked Bear Claw. The day after our trip to Forever 21, they sent us to a midtown book-signing: a guy from Court TV had written about contemporary desperadoes: Scott Peterson, Robert Blake, Phil Spector, and so on. We sweltered outdoors in borrowed trench coats and stood near the back of the line.

“Sharon Barraclough,” she said. “Pissed-off teller who lost her job when her bank got swallowed by a bigger one. Dumbass bitch who thought her parents would keep loving her if they found out she was queer. Big dumb community college doormat who kept trying to please teachers who were about eight times dumber than she was, sitting there praising the same old tired essay about how someone’s mom died of cancer.” We saw a flash of hair and teeth from the table inside, and the crowd here grew denser. It was nearly time. “And why’d you come to the big city?” said Bear Claw.

“I killed someone.”

“Mm-hm. Did he deserve it?”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Well that’s right. I don’t.”

I had grown up, at least, to the point where I didn’t hang onto my mistruths beyond their usefulness. I smiled. “When I was a little kid, I was part of our church and my class at school. I thought I knew what togetherness was, or whatever. But now I know. These past couple days, now I know what it’s like to belong.”

“You stumbled into me,” she said. “Maybe makes a person believe in Fate.”

“Everyone at the house is so smart. I’m lucky you guys even let me in.” I was surprised to hear myself say this. “It’s other people,” I said. “It’s what I needed. Hearing them talk.”

“You got a mom and dad out there in the red states?”

I said, “Parents are, like, so 1998,” and got a nice hearty laugh in return. Amusing any of them, it seemed, was my purest form of joy.

“I guess we better get started,” Bear Claw said. “We need to go relieve T-Rex and Billy up on Madison Avenue again.”

I blanched.

“I heard about you and Billy,” she told me. “Don’t freak out. They all get new recruits to be their boyfriends, even the straight ones. It’s the rite of passage. They come to New York, they get their ideas about masculinity all fucked up. They go from thinking how cool it is to grind their ’board down a handrail, to thinking they’d better read a newspaper every once in a while or no one will talk to them, to feeling like a pussy for knowing who Bernie Sanders is. The one-monthers always wind up diddling the one-weekers. It doesn’t mean you’re gay.”

I turned scarlet, and said nothing.

Bear Claw removed a packet of instant camera film from her coat while I shuffled down an alley off 17th Street and reclaimed the life-sized cutouts someone had made up at the house. I stood the cutouts on the sidewalk—laserprint on cardboard—and Bear Claw did a carnival barker routine.

“Step right up, folks! Get your picture taken with O.J.! Free of charge! Now you can get your throat slashed by the Juice! Get popped by Beretta, or drowned like Laci! And it’s free, free, free!” I jogged behind the first cutout, stuck my head and hands through the holes, and vamped for the camera. The bookstore crowd took notice, smirked in the cool New York way: now they’d seen everything. Bear Claw shook her first photo and passed it around: a caricature O.J. Simpson swinging a machete and lopping off my head, which had formerly been attached to a hand-drawn woman’s body.

“That is truly sick,” said a young woman, admiringly.

Soon a dozen sweaty shoppers were handing me their copies of the Court TV book and stepping into the shoes of their chosen murderee. I smiled, and Bear Claw was sure to snap two photos per customer: one to give away, one for our private use. The thrill of these folks’ complicity, the guilty indulgence in their smiles, it got to the center of our merry operation, rang tinkly bells of nauseous recognition deep in my inner ear. Everyone is a lunatic, and nobody wants to enjoy the darkness as much as they do. Watching Bear Claw laugh and point and click, watching her shake hands with the hardcover-toting public, I could almost believe she didn’t hate them. So successful was our ruckus that a handsome dress-shirted man emerged from the bookstore, and people whispered and pointed that here was the Court TV anchor, today’s featured author, and he didn’t look angry at all, he looked puzzled and then pleased, tipped us five dollars and chose Phil Spector’s alleged shooting victim, sprawled on a cartoon mansion floor.

*

We arrived at the limestone building on Madison, one block from the city’s green heart. T-Rex and Billy were missing. We could see a grandmother foot-rocking a baby carriage near the front door, where she harangued a man about genetically modified rice in Udaipur. Then a Guyanese nanny stumbled into the heat, apologizing, and rolled the carriage ahead of grandma, over a sidewalk verdant with cigar butts and Starbucks lids, down East 72nd. The doorman, too, was missing from his post. A double-decker bus made conversation impossible for a few moments, and I looked at Bear Claw, who stared up at the stiff-chested townhouses and high-rises around us. I remembered her voice in Forever 21: Aw, hell no.

We strolled under the building’s canopy, waiting to be deterred. I touched the strange limestone exterior: sinuous bands of cyma moldings that looked like a series of giant parentheses. Above the front door, deer and storks were carved in marble relief. We got closer, and I put my hand on the doorknob. This was a game to see how far we’d go; I recalled standing outside my hometown’s library with friends, whacking each other with lengths of weather-stripping, harder and harder until someone quit. These doors were imprinted with a sequence of lizards. We walked inside the air-conditioned lobby.

Nobody. This neutron-bomb feeling lasted for several minutes, my throat was dry, Bear Claw walked out into a garden court, came back shrugging her shoulders.

“Could they have gone home?” I said. “Could they have gone to get something to eat?”

“Most of ’em aren’t reliable,” she said. “T-Rex, he’s reliable.”

“What are we even here for? Has anyone asked? Why do they have us watching—”

The elevator dinged.

Bear Claw threw her bulk against a wall. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know the protocol, didn’t know the penalty for getting caught in a building where you didn’t belong. I presumed I’d be sent to jail, or back to Kansas. I was a fraud, an imposter, my world had changed too swiftly for my limited intelligence and intuition, I put my forearm over my face and willed myself invisible.

“Oye, that’s a good tattoo, bro.” T-Rex emerged, pointing at his own elbow. “A little toad right there on your arm. Cool shit.”

“It’s a poison dart frog,” I said.

“We almost started the revolution without you,” said Bear Claw. “Where’d you little boys get to?”

“Word come down from Stronzo, to make a move when the target is acquired. Turns out the target was upstairs in his apartment all by his lonesome.” T-Rex held the elevator door, motioned us to get on.

“Who’s Stronzo?” I said.

“You know Wal-Mart, right?” T-Rex pressed ‘14.’ “Stronzo’s the guy who made that famous database they got. The one that tells ’em a lady in Tacoma gon’ need some really bad patio furniture next week. Computer genius.” There were more animals in this elevator: pheasants and foxes and rabbits. Nothing but prey. “You know what this dude paid for this place? This elevator opens right into his apartment. You know what he paid? Like 15 million at least.”

“Who paid?” said Bear Claw. “Who is it?”

“You’ll see, jani.”

The doors slid apart and revealed Billy in profile, testing how many Starbursts he could fit in his mouth. Candy wrappers were everywhere. I heard someone from the apartment’s far reaches shouting, “Is it Puffy?! Did Puffy put you up to this?!” Billy’s grin revealed a polychrome wax mess. The floor here was black marble, the wallpaper white flecked with black, the circular staircase was black-carpeted up to a landing painted white; it was a perfect coloration for us, we who saw the world so simply. Billy couldn’t talk. He rubbed his own cheeks impatiently, chewed, drooled a little, then pointed upstairs. We followed him, past a lavish sitting room and a library. My Gap t-shirt was soaked through. Bear Claw was dry.

I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps I expected a captain of industry whose eventual release would bring millions to our cause. Someone horrible: a tobacco executive, a jingle writer, a political pollster. But no, I suppose my suspicions, storming down that multimillion-dollar hallway, were nearly blank, since New York was the unfathomable place, the place where anything could happen. I had an erection that made it hard to stride.

The master bedroom had ten-foot ceilings and blue wall-to-wall, a canopy bed and a bookshelf populated by a television and a thousand DVDs. A man was tied to a chair in the middle of this room, his arms roped behind him. When the four of us entered, he turned and smiled.

“Hey,” I said.

It was Ashton Kutcher. There was no mistaking his chin or his backwards trucker hat. Bear Claw said, “Just what the fuck are we doing?”

A star who made his bones filming celebrity pranks couldn’t believe this was real. He grinned and said, “Did my cousin let you guys in here? Where’s the camera? I don’t see any camera.” Billy stomped forward and punched the prisoner’s face. His hat fell off.

“Shut up!” Billy said, spitting candy, shaking his hand.

“Wait a minute,” said Bear Claw. “Just hold it one fucking minute.”

“Stronzo said take him,” T-Rex said. “It’s all part of the plan.”

“So now we’re kidnapping people,” said Bear Claw. “We’re walking into people’s houses and beating the shit out of them for being idiots.”

“He’s not just an idiot,” Billy said, standing behind his captive, still slobbering sugar-goo. “He’s the idiot. He’s made $100 million off his idiocy. He’s royalty. He’s the antidote for 50 years of progressive education. And don’t give any speeches about how there’s a hundred guys ready to take his place once he’s gone. No one’s arguing that. No one’s saying you can reverse the course of idiot history.” He danced like a boxer behind Ashton, and threw sideswiping jabs at the back of his head, tousling his hairdo. “This is just for poetry’s sake, man.”

“We’re not gonna hurt him,” said T-Rex. “We’re not s’posed to hurt him. Hey, pendejo, don’t hurt him, right?”

“The cruel are trustworthy,” Billy said. “The compassionate are lying.”

I was behind Bear Claw, in her wake. I had very little idea why this was happening, only a vague notion what kind of connection this had to the pranks at the clothing store or the bookstore. But I surprised myself. I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to be right up close. No thinking, just adrenaline, and frustration and all the old bullshit of being alive was cleared away by uncompromising acts, my memory became smeared, my nostrils widened. Living a movie scenario (the hero tied up in the second act) that felt curiously comfortable, all I knew was that I didn’t want to think, and that a part of me loved seeing shabbiness come into Ashton’s face as he realized this wasn’t just a prank. “You,” Bear Claw said. “Pretty boy. Who lives here with you? When are they coming back?”

“My cousin’s back any minute,” he said. “You guys better take what you want and get outta here.”

“He’s lying,” said Billy. “His cousin left for the airport, isn’t that right, superstar? A whole bunch of suitcases and everything. No one else around, no security or anything. Just the superstar.”

“I got security,” Ashton said. “They’re coming by. Hey, there’s money in the safe. I can give you the combination.”

“Fuck fuck fuck,” said Bear Claw. “What are we supposed to do? What did they want you to do once you got him?”

“I called,” T-Rex said. “We’re supposed to wait.”

“All across this city,” said Billy, “the righteous are swarming, ensnaring the nation’s symbols of mediocrity and dunderheadedness, those who make a living playing dumb, those who forego nuance in favor of…well, like you, you androgynous putz playing dopes and horndog moppets, you minstrel-wannabe slack-jawed example to all the kids out there, you peace-sign-flashing, big-ups-giving, hip-hop-mangling, suburbia-slaughtering…” but Billy started to choke, on anger and Starburst residue, so he dumped a row of DVDs off these shelves, shouted, “Not one book! You don’t own one single book!” and walked into a gilt-edged bathroom to wash his face.

“Get Billy out of here,” Bear Claw told T-Rex. “Downstairs. Out of here.”

“It’s not like I haven’t heard it before,” said Ashton. “It’s just a job, man.”

Billy and T-Rex vacated, and I sat on the bed. Bear Claw scratched the back of her neck, pacing, cursing, laughing to herself.

“I don’t hurt anyone,” said our prisoner. “I don’t hurt…kids or whatever. It’s all fun. It’s just meant to be fun.”

“Stop talking,” I said. I didn’t know why.

“Stay here,” Bear Claw told me, and also left, to discover our next step, to phone this Stronzo, something. It was me and the movie star, a wedding ring fresh on his finger; Ashton didn’t tremble, he had the boundless hope that comes from beauty or privilege. I could feel him looking at me, calculating which of his stock characters would work best to make me free him. I was afraid and excited, overwhelmed, chaste, a little bloodthirsty. I’d seen a couple dead bodies in my time, out in the hinterlands. I wondered if Ashton had done the same.

He said, “So at this exact moment someone’s beating up Carrot Top?”

I smiled without wanting to. “I don’t know,” I said.

Time passed. Bear Claw was shouting downstairs, then for a while they were all silent. The apartment had a view north into the park and I had to see, I touched the hot window: there were trees and enormous patches of green and a distant reservoir, so wide and wild with the city’s jaws around it, ardently mongrel. I knew it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

“You okay?” said Ashton.

“When I was young,” I said, “I was in the Young Republicans and the Young Democrats.”

“Okay.”

“Everyone keeps saying I’m a Republican.”

“I’m so not political,” he said. I turned and my shadow sprawled across him, he was blinded as he looked at me over his shoulder. His eye was puffy, and I could see his hands were turning purple.

I said, “You have a red bracelet. What’s that for?”

“I don’t mean anything by living in this place. It’s not like I’m like, ‘Dude, I’m so much better.’ I don’t even live here, my cousin watches it for me. I just stay here when we come to New York. The paparazzi hasn’t found out about it yet. But I’m not trying to say I’m better.”

“I read about that,” I said. “That string: it’s that Kabbalah thing, right? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in life after death?”

“Okay, man. What’s your name? You’re officially freaking me out. Could you please stop talking about—” I leaned forward and loosened the restraints around his wrists, fingered his string bracelet, and he exhaled. “Let me go,” he whispered. “I’ll give you so much fucking money.”

I stood and said, “I used to believe. Seriously, I’m just wondering.”

Ashton closed his eyes. “I once had surgery and got a morphine drip and they screwed it up. I got too much morphine, and my heart stopped for like an hour before they checked on me. But I didn’t feel anything. I was dead, but it didn’t hurt. I was just out. I was just gone. So now I don’t worry too much about it.”

“You know what those guys downstairs say? They say you’re like death. Or anyways, you sell it.” I swallowed. “Making shows that puts people to sleep with little stupid smiles on their face.”

“Dude. It’s an act. Nobody’s supposed to believe it. What are they gonna do? What are they gonna do to me?”

I said, “I bet you don’t even read the New Yorker.”

“My hands still really hurt. And my face. Jesus, how bad is it?”

I left the bedroom and walked downstairs. Billy paced. T-Rex played hoops on a Pop-A-Shot rigged to return all the basketballs to him. Bear Claw was on a sofa, biting her thumb. “Every country has mostly stupid people,” Billy said. “But intelligence is something to be desired in India, in Japan, in Nigeria. It’s a way out. It’s the way it’s always been. Only in America do little kids shield themselves from appearing smart. The national facial expression is the hapless smile.”

“What’s he saying?” T-Rex said. “Is he shitting his pants yet?”

“We talked about God and death,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Billy, “he’s a regular Cicero. You know what I just heard? You can have your dead relatives turned into jewelry. They make graphite out of the carbon in cremated remains, and press it into blue diamonds.”

“A bunch of people are coming over,” T-Rex said. “We just hold tight.”

“What’s going to happen?” I said.

“Nothing,” said Bear Claw. Her voice was husky. “They’ll take some humiliating pictures, get him to sign a ‘Declaration of Cultural Irrelevance’ or something.”

“He’s seen us,” I said. “He’s seen everyone’s face.”

“You don’t know Stronzo,” said T-Rex. “By the end of it, they’ll be best friends. In a couple hours they’ll be heading out to Scores for 20-year-old scotch and lapdances, and our man up there’ll be paying.”

This was good news. I wanted to escape and live free, wanted to keep having adventures with these howling new friends. Also, there was the matter of shame: the shame of feeling good that I was helping cause this privileged pop idol to suffer. Knowing we’d all be pals afterward meant my pleasure in seeing Billy punch and berate Ashton was an act. It was permissible to enjoy giving a performance, even if that performance was cruel. Who would understand that better than a movie star?

“Maybe we should get going,” Bear Claw said to me.

“Well,” I said. “Is it okay if I hang around a little more?”

Billy put his arm around my shoulder. “Sure. He’s our secret weapon, this one. He and the superstar come from the same place, the breadbasket of our great nation. He can talk to him in his own language.”

“Okay, that’s cool,” said Bear Claw, but it didn’t seem cool at all. She got up, walked to the elevator. “I gotta go sleep. You kids have fun.”

I saw what a mystery she was to me, maybe because there was no possibility of flirtation between us, and that was how I’d related to women my entire life. “Seriously,” I said, leaving Billy’s side, wanting to talk to her alone, “you seem a little mad.”

“Not mad,” she said. “Just momentarily lacking in the clever department. All outta Vicodin. How old are you, anyway?”

“Nineteen.”

“Which means,” as the elevator doors opened, “you don’t need a permission slip.”

I said, “We’re still partners, right?” but she was gone.

*

Ascending the stairs again, having told the others I was back in a tormenting mood, I imagined Ashton loose someplace on the second floor, hiding in the fireplace or one of the other bedrooms, tensed and palpitating, holding some MTV “Best Kiss” statuette high, preparing to indent my skull. The thought of a fight didn’t displease me; but no, he was still tied, head drooping, face soaked.

“Why do they call them permanent-press shirts?” I said. “Nothing is permanent.”

“Can I have some water?” said Ashton. I got him a cup, and held it to his lips. “The asshole. The one who hit me and said I don’t read. Tell him this building is where Holden Caulfield lived. It really is.”

“Y’know there are millions of us out there, picturing what your life is like. Wishing we had the money and the freedom and the attention.”

“Yeah, well.”

“A lot of people I know would be crushed if it turned out you were a human being like everyone else.” I sat Indian-style on the floor, near his legs. “They think I’m up here to smack you around some more.”

“Why are you up here?”

“Why else? I know there’s a good Christian in there somewhere. I’m here to take your confession, Ashton.”

“You’re kind of fucked-up, man.”

“You got about an hour before they start doing really bad things to you.”

“This is terrible,” said Ashton. “How can this be happening?”

I looked at him seriously, made him look back at me. “No one ever liked me,” I said. “No one ever liked me like those guys downstairs do.”

“Sure they do.” He looked wounded and sick, gaunt, hungry, genderless and terrible. He said, “Why’d you really ask me about God before?”

I reached to his wrist again and he flinched, but I didn’t tug, I just ran a finger over his bracelet. “I wanted to see if you wore this just because then the public likes you more, thinking you’re a nice religious boy.”

He grinned a little. “Yeah, that’s why, actually. It’s my agent’s thing.”

I said, “That’s hilarious.”

“You have to think about those things. You have to worry how people will take things. I mean, nobody cares if I get in a fight or get caught with a hooker or whatever. Well, my mom cares. But that stuff’s okay. But my agent would shit his pants if I ever said something about abortion or, I dunno, nine-year-olds stitching sneakers with their teeth in a third-world country. I’m allowed to be bad, though. They used to encourage me to go to bed with three different girls a week. ‘Ash, this is Gloria from Herbie Greenstein’s office? Herbie wanted to know if you made love to the Asian gal you went to the Harrison Ford premiere with. And hopefully you did it like Herbie asked, with a nice fill-light shining on her crucifix….’”

I chuckled. “I liked you in Guess Who. I knew I wasn’t supposed to.”

“What does that mean?” he said. “That’s pretty stupid. If you laughed, you laughed.”

“I know.”

He sighed anciently, shoulders slumped. He was probably thinking, Everyone’s a critic. The sun was just about gone; it was dark in here.

I stood and kissed him. He wriggled, but I had his hair—his famous hair—in a fistful and we clanged teeth, I was thinking about high school, standing around outside smoking cigarettes and ragging smart kids, jock kids, rich kids (and also kids we suspected were gay), feeling the crush of foreordination, knowing exactly what my life would be. Powerless boys made to feel potent by our control over our hearts: if we didn’t care, we couldn’t be disappointed.

The kiss ended, or, rather, Ashton was successful in breaking away. Very close to his face, I said, “Here’s the thing that I want. I want to stop feeling guilty. I feel guilty I couldn’t take care of my mom when one of her boyfriends was beating the shit out of her, and I feel guilty when there’s roadkill at the side of the road, and I feel guilty when some little kid is getting pushed around on a playground, and I feel guilty when they show someone on TV whose house is underwater, and I feel guilty I didn’t die over in Iraq, or in the World Trade Center, and I feel guilty about Jesus and the fact that I don’t really believe in him anyway, and I feel guilty I don’t have a job and I can’t buy any better clothes, and I feel guilty when people say wanting really cool shit like a cool car is bad and greedy because sometimes I want a really cool car, and I feel guilty that sometimes I don’t do the right thing even when I know it’s the right thing and I can’t figure out why not, and I feel guilty I’m not the one who’s tied up because I’m complete shit, I’m total and complete shit if you want me to be honest, and if anyone deserves to be tied up, it’s me.”

He didn’t spit in my face, and he didn’t make a crack about me being a fag. He understood this was some kind of intense reckoning for me, and perhaps he believed the results could turn the situation in his favor, that my sadness could set him free. I was thinking of all the scaled-down pranks I’d pulled in my Kansas life, just as Billy’d described them a few days ago, all the self-sabotage a young man could fabricate. How I’d been encouraged to detonate inward. How god-damned alone I was.

Finally Ashton said, “I could be your friend. We could hang around or whatever.”

I said, “Oh, gee, really?” and fluttered my eyelashes.

“Please,” he said. “Don’t let them do anything to me.”

I walked away from him, wiping my lips. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. It’s like you said before. You don’t have to worry.”

*

Our colleagues arrived wearing black hoods and dogis. They carried bags of camera and lighting equipment upstairs, too efficiently, making a silent studio of this bedroom in just minutes. They tapped my elbow and pointed to the door. As I left, Ashton was dry-heaving from fear.

I sat down in the living room and Billy massaged my neck. We watched T-Rex sink jumper after jumper until one of the ninjas poked his head downstairs and put a finger where his lips would’ve been. Billy softly said to me, “Have you read Emerson? ‘We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.’”

“What does that mean?” I said.

“It means don’t believe anything anyone says. It means it would take the patience of a saint to tolerate people like this guy, people who lie and who take advantage of weakness in the rest of us, who refuse to listen to their own true natures.”

T-Rex flounced onto the couch, made a sandwich of me. “Narcissismo,” he said. “It don’t mean that at all. It means you want to have a good time, you trust what’s up here,” and he flicked a fingernail against my forehead.

“If I’m not supposed to believe anything anyone says,” I told them, “how am I supposed to believe what you guys are saying right now?”

“You’re not,” said Billy. “Here endeth the lesson.”

We waited. I thought, briefly, that too much clarity was as awful as too little, but I didn’t say this, I just removed Billy’s hand from my shoulder and watched the empty stairway. Finally, three of them came down, trailing orange power lines and green telecommunications wire. They opened a laptop computer, plugged in, and on the screen I could see Ashton still seated in his bedroom, blindfolded now, with the fourth ninja making preparations behind him.

“We’re good?” said one of these black-suited men. “We’re live?”

“Go,” said another.

The first man lifted his mask over his chin, and spoke into a microphone. “Ashton Kutcher. Here are the charges against you. You are a dispenser of cultural Prozac. You encourage young people to adopt the pose of blitheness, under which selfish insularity may grow, beneath which fear and loathing of genuine connection is encouraged to fester. You make us a nation of recumbents, you persuade us to ignore one another as we admire our own disguises.”

“What’s going to happen?” I said, and then on the screen I saw the fourth ninja lift a shimmering sword.

“Taliban-style,” Billy said. “Excellent.”

“Because you engender a world without passion, because your followers are cautious and overfragile and sweet and sad and skeptical, and worst of all because they become passive victims of circumstance who stay numb and accept their fates, because of all these things we hereby sentence you to death.”

“Wait,” I said. “This is crazy.”

“Ssh,” said Billy.

“No, hold it.” I tried to stand, but T-Rex and Billy restrained me. “You guys can’t just kill him. You can’t chop his head off. This is America.” The spokesman standing at the laptop faced me. “You have to admit, he’s allowed to be a jerk. That’s freedom of speech, right?”

“Executioner,” the ninja said, “you may do your justice.”

I saw the pixilated sword draw back and I wriggled loose, juked the black-clad conspirators and took the stairs three-at-a-time, heard someone screaming. I hadn’t ever spoken in my real voice, not once in my life. How awful, this atom of self-knowledge which jarred itself loose: the blackness of my heart, the terror I’d always barely controlled, the terror of being touched by another human being. In puddles of my own sick, at friends’ funerals, half-delirious and gushing nose-blood at the feet of a would-be stepfather…I’d never once been vulnerable, I’d never once allowed it. And I wasn’t vulnerable now. The worst of it, the most sickening part of the ten seconds it took me to get back into his bedroom was realizing how obligatory this was, how I was the unassuming hero, how I was the boy in that chair with his throat cut, how I was everything I ever feared I’d be: irrelevant, aberrant, ineffectual, unworthy. I’d arrived in New York four days ago; I’d found the keyhole to my utter inadequacy in four days.

And I was hailed by a rush of liquid, a mist of Ashton Kutcher set free into this $15 million house to find its truth beyond all the cuteness, beyond the horndog act. I didn’t equivocate. I leapt across the room and hammered myself into this assassin, drove him to the floor, heard the sword sing against a closet door, felt breath rush out of the big man below me. No, I’d never spoken in my real voice, but if I’d been able, I’d have said, If you’re worried stupidity is keeping people apart, if you’re incensed America wants us to imagine ourselves individuals with absolute free will and no connection to one another, why the superior act? Why call attention to your ultra-worthiness? But instead I wept, dumbly, as Ashton Kutcher’s feet flailed against mine and the man beneath me rolled and fought for leverage, something cotton had come across my face as I stayed on top of him, I saw it was the assassin’s hood which my tackle had knocked loose, I wouldn’t relent, I crushed my hip against his ribcage, but then a black hand pried itself from my embrace, crawled downward against my belly, and squeezed my balls so hard I thought I’d faint. I acquiesced and rolled off the killer. The bedroom fell quiet.

“Goddamn.”

I curled and tongued the blue wall-to-wall. This wasn’t my real voice either.

“Look at me. Goddamn.”

Beside the canopy bed, the assassin wheezed. But no. It wasn’t wheezing. It was laughter.

It was Bear Claw’s laughter.

Then the movie star’s voice: “I’m fucking covered in fake blood. Can someone please get me a towel?”

To be dragged around like that. To be eaten by suffering. Bear Claw’s big stomach shook and she touched my face like a blind woman or, more accurately, like a mother.

“Ohhhhhh,” she said. She squeezed my cheek and smoothed my tears. “Ohhhhhhhhhh.”

Everything given. Everything stripped away. Even my innocent act. I knew nothing of myself, except how afraid I was of myself. A body’s worth of blood filled my face. I looked around without lifting my head or her hand, saw a dozen feet clomping, heard backslaps and a hoot, saw a floodlight accidentally knocked to the floor.

“People don’t just get in,” said Bear Claw, crawling forward, catching her breath, kissing my lips. “Just anyone doesn’t get in. We have to see you without your clothes on. We have to see how far you’re willing to go, how strong you are. But you’re strong. I bet you can feel it, how strong it turns out you really are. You did really good. Just wait’ll you see what we’re gonna pull next.”

Last night I made my way to her. I lay with her again and we made our bed beneath the stars, beneath the sheltering elms that direct their roots to her for nourishment, for payment of their faithful guardianship. I stretched my hand to run my fingers through her hair, closing my eyes and feeling the strands, close cropped and not so luxuriant as in the past, feeling in my blindness more like turf and not at all like hair anymore. I came for her, but despite her closeness she did not respond. I whispered to her and she remained silent.

In my mourning I have become poetic. Not outwardly. To speak like a poet is to be thought of by others as being touched. People associate flourishing words with mental illness or narcissism. So, I keep my conversations as pedestrian as possible. I have no need to spread concern among my friends who concern themselves with me too much as it is. They might try to give me a pill.

But at any given moment my heart unleashes a grief so fluid and angry that I feel consumed by the heat. I have become a vapor, dispersed and hovering over the shell of my life that remains attached to the earth like the husk of a cicada. Slowly I cool and settle back on the crust of my body, my spirit forming like dew and innervating my bones and muscles once more. Then I feel as if I can make it. I feel there is no other choice until I reach out in forgetfulness and find nothing, not even the scent of her skin to keep me steady. Then the full scope of memory floods me and it is too much. I burn off in a cloud. It is impossible to maintain myself and I am split, mind from body, soul from matter. Is this is what madness feels like? Things are out of control. All order is lost.

Ruth’s father is a minister. He performed her funeral. How odd is that? How odd to watch. Odder still for him, I’m sure. He has tried to be a source of comfort for me these past few weeks, but it is nearly unbearable to be around him. Joseph lost his own wife, Kay, Ruth’s mother, whom I never met, ten years ago and I think he feels beyond all of his other commitments to me a bond within this commonality we share. It is a mentoring bond. A shepherding bond. He wants to walk with me through the depths that no man should have to travel alone.

We are widowers. It is an awkward word that contains one too many syllables. Widows and orphans are expected, but that natural order seems undone by widowers. They must either remarry or quickly die. They are not made to linger. The older ones like Joseph can give their lives to God. They can die to the world and thus live on. The younger ones need a more proactive plan.

My package from Peak Form arrived this morning. The UPS man backed away when I opened the door. I hadn’t bathed in three days. Last night at the cemetery, living people avoided me as if I was a vagrant. Nothing is worse for me lately than having to keep up appearances. Bathing, shaving, ironing a shirt: it all feels artificial, like something I should do to keep myself busy so my mind will be occupied with the tedium of life. It is all a way of working through grief, but I’d rather not bother. I have found it makes me angry, because it implies that only tedium is left. I have let all pretense of normality crumble, because the foundation is missing.

I smiled at the UPS man. He seemed as startled as my friends seem concerned, and besides, I was glad to receive the box. It contains the instruments of a plan. A plan that will nullify all concern with laundry and hygenic issues.

This is the age we live in, those of us who are fortunate enough to be alive: the age of fast actualization. Next day delivery, just-in-time inventories, and internet shopping. This is the age that has allowed my mind to come back from the edge. Tonight when I go out to the cemetery, I will bypass my wife’s plot and engage my energy into an ambitious forward thinking act that will bring me closer to her than sleeping on her grave could ever do.

It was cold in May, colder still at an hour when the sun had buttered the earth with only its oblique morning rays. Colder yet again when mounted on a composite frame, slicing through the blustery cross winds, dropping down the rolling hills like a diving hawk.

There were few things that satisfied my soul as much as riding with Ruth. It was a culminating experience that affirmed the complex richness of youth. No sport represents the simultaneous collective and solitary dynamic of life better than cycling. On a bike I was alone, left to rely on my own stamina, my mental and physical grit to push me along the course. No one took that burden of motion away; no motor was present to relieve the repetitive circling of my churning legs. But Ruth was with me, beside me, behind me, and at times leading me. We drafted each other, pressed each other, prodded, encouraged and cursed with one another. We felt the burning in our quadriceps and the numbness of our exposed skin, the exhilaration of tucking in and screaming down a twisting descent and the anguish of the uphill climb.

We needed each other, were compelled by our competitive spirit past our imagined limits of exhaustion. We digested the pleasure, the danger, and the staggering self inflicted pain. We came back for more, time and again, together, until our legs lacked the strength to stand. Riding with Ruth was like making love in a freefall.

And sometimes in my fitful paralyzed moments that have replaced what I used to call sleep, I still feel an unexpected spike of joy. I sense the frigid wind and see Ruth slipping past me, smiling as she cuts downhill. She is forming a tight tuck, pulling her back horizontal, saying something that I cannot hear. She doesn’t get far ahead until she is beside me once more, repeating her pass. My heart skips each time I see her. I am so surprised to have found her again. I am thrilled by her closeness. The months have been kind. She is a bloom of health. I reach out with my left hand to feel her form rush by.

Then I notice the chill. It is not August, it is May. My heart beats rapidly in confusion and I can no longer pull her beside me to repeat her pass. I cannot hold her back and I begin to sense what I cannot bear. Something will happen. I know it. I try to retrieve her. I have foreknowledge that is making me breathless. Somehow I fear that this may be all I have left, and in an instant I decide that it is enough. It is enough for us to be like this, together on the downhill, side by side, Ruth smiling, over and over, until the end of time. But it will not be. She is too strong. She cannot hear me. She pulls too far away, leaning into the serpentine switchbacks, balancing her life on less than two centimeter’s width of Michelin rubber.

I have convinced myself that she didn’t see the truck, that she felt the fear of impending fatal contact for only an instant. The glancing blow that threw her from the road sent her high and sidelong, spinning her body, sending rider and bike off into the woods. I believe she was so disoriented that she never realized what had happened. She certainly never saw the tree. She held on instinctively, squeezing the handgrips, waiting to land, watching ground and sky swirl curiously around as a brief feeling of weightlessness enveloped her.

Shortly after Ruth’s accident – I forget the exact day because the time she lay in intensive care blurred together into one long homologous hell that liquified the distinction between hours and minutes – Joseph sat with me in the hospital chapel and broached the subject of burial.

“They’re waiting upstairs for your word,” he said softly. His hand was on my shoulder. I had not noticed him until he sat beside me. “And then we need to start making arrangements for her. For a resting place.”

I had wandered down to the darkened shoe box of a room on the ground floor following the neurosurgeon’s final assessment of brain function. How long had I been staring into the backlit stained glass window, my thoughts frozen along with my emotions?

Life support was pointless, I was told. There was simply nothing left to buttress, no aid to give while healing could occur, because all that needed to be healed had been destroyed. “She’s gone.” I can’t remember who first said those words, but I remember Joseph’s hand on my slumped shoulder as the surreal became real and my puzzlement turned to nausea.

The next thing I remember is touching her. I was back in the ICU, the stained glass replaced by Venetian blinds that hid the sunlight. I laced her fingers through mine as Joseph nodded and the respirator was switched off. It is the worst of all my memories, those next few minutes as her breathing quickly became labored. I felt her fingers twitch and jerk as I stood helplessly by and watched her body struggle to swim in the sea of the living.

Her auburn hair had been shaved away and at the edges of the snow white gauze that wrapped her head like a snug bonnet, I could see the horrid rents of cuts and incisions held together by metal staples. Staples. They had put her back together the way a child might clumsily try to repair a broken doll. They had patched her wounds with glue and tape and staples and that was the best that could be done. She inhaled with a raspy clicking noise, and with each breath a pulse of pain and desperation shoved into my gut like a lance.

“Jesus!” I cried out to the resident physician. “Isn’t there something you can do for her?”

“Yes, Lord Jesus,” said Joseph. His voice was unbroken. He was entreating the Lord to take his daughter home and he placed his hands on her forehead as he prayed.

“We can give her more morphine in her line to ease the pain,” said the resident. He was just a kid really, half a decade younger than I, and he was standing in his blue scrubs and long white coat, looking exhausted and awkward, as if he had lived this same scene too many times in a young life and feared that he would never know what to do or say.

This cannot be happening, I thought, and even as I thought it I realized the triteness. As her breathing grew weaker and her fingers moved less, I, like Joseph, began to talk to God. I commanded him to bring her back, to take the past few days away with his mighty hand and to simply let this horror be undone. I pleaded that I would be his servant and I warned him of my fury if he chose not to intervene.

Ruth stopped breathing thirteen minutes after being taken off the respirator. Joseph closed her eyes and thanked God for his mercy. I don’t know when I quit squeezing her hand. I don’t remember anything about the following few hours.

I was home that evening. Joseph and I were sitting in my living room, he on the couch and I in the matching easy chair. The sun was setting through the large picture window, casting red light on the family photos that smiled from the mantle.

“I don’t want to leave you here alone tonight, David.”

What precipitated his comment was lost on me. Evidently, we had been conversing, but I was at that moment like a man wakened from sleep. “Okay,” was all I could reply. In the few seconds of silence I began to comprehend what had transpired. My mind was flooded with gall.

“Do you want me to stay?”

“I’ll be okay, Joseph.”

“Can I do anything for you?”

“You can give me back my goddamn wife,” I said calmly.

Joseph slept in the guestroom that night. He refused to let me close my bedroom door. I noticed the next morning that my razor and my steak knives were missing.

Peak Form sends me greetings from the Colorado Rockies along with my order of their exclusive micro sized cams, Micro Blades they call them. They are tiny retractable anchors that can be plunged into a horizontal rock crevice. The spring loaded metal teeth expand out to fill the fissure and hold the weight of a climber. The smallest AAA size is designed for openings of less than a half of an inch.

Peak Form makes the best micros in North America. I have used their Dura Cams, a larger product line with more holding power for most of my test climbs in the Red River Gorge, an hour out of Lexington. Everything from my harness to my equipment sling is Peak Form, purchased from the Bluegrass Climbing Outlet. BCO didn’t have Micro Blades though, so I had to go online.

I take the cams out of the plastic case and hold each size in my hand. Going into my climb blind, I have had to plan for a variety of possible openings, so I ordered two complete kits of Micro Blades. They are indeed as thin as knife blades, flexible and amazingly strong. The reinforced nylon loops are color coded for size to eliminate guesswork. With proper placement they will help me reach my goal. In my kit, I see a free can of lubricating oil. That’s good business. After all, I’m a new mail order customer. Perhaps they would have saved the can if they knew that this was to be my last order as well as my first.

On the lid of the kit is a short product statement, written in italics. Fits in the shallowest seams to allow for multiple anchor points. Never hang your life on a single piece of equipment! Words to live by. I’d hate to die in the ascent before I had the chance to reach the top and kill myself.

Thinking back on it now, I should have seen the portents. It was all in front of me. Vultures circled overhead as we unloaded our bikes at Masterson Station Park. Ruth’s chain came off and she cut her hand on the gear wheel sliding it back on. I gave her a rag from my saddle bag while I looked for a bandage in the car. “Careful. You’re bleeding for two, now,” I told her.

She shouldn’t have been riding that day in the first place. For days she had been vomiting, complaining about a virus that wouldn’t go away. I’m not sure at what point she bought a pregnancy test.

“I’m not sure you should ride with me,” I told her.

“Are you kidding? It’s Saturday. We always ride on Saturday.”

“Things are different, now.”

“Not yet. Give it a few months.”

“Uh, huh.”

We were smiling. It hurts to think of how much we smiled. As we left for the park on Saturday morning, she dashed off an e-mail to Joseph: Have a good morning, Grandpa!

“Shouldn’t we wait before we tell people?” I asked.

“I have a peace about it. Just don’t die and make me a single mom.”

“I promise,” I said. And then we both laughed. “Seriously, I thought everyone always says to wait six weeks before making announcements.”

“What’s six weeks?” said Ruth. “The blink of an eye.”

My God, what I wouldn’t give now for the blink of her eye.

Henry Clay stands above the treeline, twelve feet tall and illuminated by floodlights at night. He looks over the city of Lexington like a vigilant sentinel from atop a 120 foot limestone Corinthian column. The monument rises in the same cemetery where my Ruth rests, next to her mother in a spot originally intended for Joseph.

The subject of Ruth’s burial site is an awkward one for Joseph and me. When he suggested using his plot for Ruth, he did so and I agreed in the shared awareness that neither of us would be laid to rest beside the woman we had loved. There were only the two plots. No more. I have wondered less about why he offered than about why I accepted. Corporeal matters seem to weigh lightly on Joseph. In his advancing age, he has chosen to focus his attention on the spirit and the afterlife.

My feet, however, are firmly planted on terra firma. So, it bothers me, my decision to allow my wife to sleep at her mother’s side. I imagine myself cut off from her forever. I want to cling to her body the way I cling to her memory. The fact that I can no longer touch her is at the core of my… restlessness? Anger.

“At the resurrection, there will be no husbands or wives,” Joseph tells me. “We’ll be like the angels.” His face glows when he says things like this. It is as if he has seen it. For all I know, he has.

“Then I’ll have to make sure to see Ruth again before that happens,” I reply.

Joseph places his hands on my shoulders. “Ruth is in heaven right now, David.”

“I haven’t seen the Son of Man descending in a cloud,” I tell him as gently as I can manage. “And I still see plenty of goats among the sheep, Joseph.” It is all I can do to not cuss a blue streak. Part of me, a part increasing in influence, wants to strike him repeatedly across the face. I feel like I’m losing control again, so our goodbye is curt. I know exactly where Ruth is: she’s in the Lexington Cemetery. I know, because I closed her casket and let dirt fall from my palm onto the polished aluminum lid the day they buried her.

Hiding in the cemetery until the gates are locked and the guards grow complacent turns out to be the easiest part of my task. I unloaded my gear, including my extension ladder, in the late afternoon, stowing it behind some thick bushes and covering the lot with a camouflaged tarpaulin. After that, I simply drove my car out the main entrance, parked it on the street, and hiked back inside.

In the darkness I blend into the scenery, like one more chiseled monument among the grave markers. When I feel confident that I am the only living breathing man outside of the guardhouse, I make my way through the plentiful shadows to the site of my stash. I slip out of my black clothing, revealing my mottled gray undersuit, and strap on my bandolier and climbing harness. I note with satisfaction how my carabineers and cams are neatly clipped to my belt according to size. I look like a professional, like I’m ready to ascend El Capitain. For the first time in weeks, I realize that I am taking pride in my appearance. This is a good sign. It bodes well of success.

I am close to my target, and hoisting the ladder overhead, I cover the distance to the Henry Clay monument in less than half a minute. Within the ten foot high pedestal of the column are the tombs of the Great Compromiser and his wife. They lie together as if sleeping, but their beds, no matter how close, are separate. I give pause after telescoping my ladder and leaning it against the side of the mausoleum. Who am I to presume a greater supply of wisdom than the auspicious senator? Yet, my plan will succeed. I will achieve reunification.

It is intensely tedious work ascending the column. So much so that I lose track not only of time but of space as well. Only the heavy tug of gravity reminds me by way of discomfort that I am out of balance with the physical laws of nature. I am resisting invisible forces which vie to limit my position. I shift in my harness and tap another climbing nail into position. The rock is similar to what I have worked with down in the gorge, and I am encouraged by how well my practice has prepared me.

The Micro Blades are better than advertised; they snap into place like tiny metal miracles. But, the column is for the most part free from rifts or cracks. My hands search the fluted lines for imperfections and find only superficial chipping. I am having to drive more pins than anticipated and begin to worry forty feet from the capital that I may not have brought enough.

I had reasoned that the sectional striations formed by the separations between the barrels of the column would give me the latitude to circumnavigate each section and find the best approach for each succeeding piece. This strategy has been even more crucial than I realized. By repeatedly replotting my course, I can utilize fewer pins which are in short supply, and use more micro cams which are extractable. By extracting my holds as I climb, I am making it difficult for anyone to follow.

The sun is breaking over the horse farms out toward Winchester as I near the top. I reach upward and touch the overhanging flourish upon which the statue rests. It will be challenging to maneuver around this impediment. I have inverted myself in training off longer patches of overhanging sandstone and granite, though nothing quite as horizontal as this man made decorative lip.

The wind has picked up considerably as morning dawned. Lexington is such a damned windy place, full of bluster and energy that serves no good purpose. Pausing to consider my next move, I sweep my eyes across the flat paved expanse of what used to be bluegrass. Intermittent swatches of vegetation dot the city. I see a few cars that are not using headlights and it occurs to me that I am now nakedly visible, like a wart on the side of a giant finger.

I begin to work feverishly, placing Micro Blades along the perimeter of the shaft and the capital. Once my carabineers are clipped I sling my body left along the trailing line of rope until I hit the terminal point of tension. Kicking off from the column, I carom to the right, kicking off in succession until nearly at the right terminal. With a final frog-like jump I fly off the column upward at an angle, reaching my chalk covered hands to meet the edge of the overhang.

It is a drastic move borne from frustration for below me I can see the flashing blue lights of a cruiser. Hanging from both hands I begin swinging my body side to side. Like a monkey I grapple and throw a foot over the lip of the base. With an effort I had not known I possessed I pull my body higher.

Voices rise to meet me, shrill commands to desist mixed with the squawk of a police band radio. For a moment I dangle like an overripe bundle of grapes. I feel the fatigue of a full night’s exertion and the despondency of being discovered. I want to drop and stop the whole endeavor. The failure of my mission seems complete.

But, I grit my teeth and hurl my tired head above the lip. Then my forearm is resting on the inclined shelf. I strain more deeply and feel the muscles in my upper back wrench in pain. Then my knee is over the edge, then my entire body. I have arrived. Late, but I have arrived. I rise to my feet and hug the hardened calves of Henry Clay.

The noise intensifies below. Now a television van is pulling up to the pedestal of the column. Blue lights are multiplying. I am oblivious to what is being said through the bullhorn. It sounds indiscriminate, like the amplified bleating of sheep.

My legs are wobbly and numb from hours in the harness and the descending slope of the statue’s base make it problematic to stand without constantly sliding. The climbing shoes are not exactly best suited to the present environment, so I begin to focus on the endgame. Cops or no cops, TV or no TV, I still have one more facet of my plan to enact. Unbuckling my harness with my free right hand, I gently slide it off my right leg and then my left. This takes considerable time and effort, because it requires me to twice rest my weight on one foot. I keep my breathing steady and work methodically, much as I have during the previous long ascent.

My carabineers are next. In a matter of seconds I am completely free. All that is left is the final plunge from 40 vertical yards. I notice that I am not standing on a side near Ruth’s grave. I will have to slide around the base and move my embrace to the senator’s knees and then the right side of his frozen figure. It will be a hazardous journey; I can see clearly that the path along the rim will take me over an uncomfortably looking slick spot to the fore of the statue while the distinguished Mr. Clay’s posture by being balanced on his rear leg leaves the opportunity for a tight grip at less than optimal.

If it is not enough that my mouth is dry and my heart escalating toward tachycardia, I hear a noise that for the first time causes me to break my concentration. An obnoxious high pitched wet plea is being cast toward heaven. I glance down to see a red Ford Taurus among the vehicular crunch amid the parking lot. While there are many red Fords in the world, one of them is owned by my father-in-law.

Joseph, a man whom I had never seen shed a tear, looks distraught even from a vertical distance. His face is wet, the shine reflecting in the ancillary light from the police cruisers. From a great height I can see contortions of anguish.

“Why didn’t you cry like that for Ruth?” I shout. By saying this I am accusing him of playacting, of a ruse, of maintaining an elaborate disconcern for his daughter’s life and the matters of this earth. We know one another well enough to know where to place the tip of the knife, though I am sorry for having said it the moment it clears my lips.

Joseph, of all people has loved me on my own terms. But has he loved me most because I married his daughter?

“David. You’re all I have left! You’re my son. Don’t take away my son!” His words pierce me as I’m sure they were crafted to do. I try to shut it off, the unfathomable interference of Joseph, the disclosure of sunlight, the failure of my purpose. It was one thing to dive into the earth with only my wife to notice, but quite another for channel 13 to be aiming a steadycam my way.

“Ruth and Kay were taken from me!” blares Joseph.

“Taken by God!” I shout. “Taken by God.”

My foot slips and I scramble to remain upright. Why do we choke on the food that sustains us? Why does the oxygen we breathe eventually kill us, poisoning our bodies with free radicals? Why does the warm light of the sun tear our DNA apart? Why did Ruth pass me that day? At that particular moment?

“How can I be angry with my maker, David? What you’re doing is not an act of God. It’s suicide. It’s murder.”

“Maybe I’d like to do it on my own terms,” I scream so he can hear it.

“I’ll be a witness, David.” His words are so filled with genuine pathos and grief, that I am slapped by their power though they are thin and crisp by the time they reach my ears.

“You’ll make us all witnesses!”

I grip tighter to the left side of Henry Clay. He had famously said, “I would rather be right than be president,” but had he become president he might have been able to prevent the Mexican-American War and thereby save his son who died fighting in it. He knew the unfathomable pain that accompanies intransigence. Now he looks down over the cities of dead and living, his gaze never strays from the horizon. His column is twenty feet taller than Trajan’s in Rome.

“That’s got to be some compensation for having never lived in the White House,” I whisper and an involuntary grin stretches my cheeks. The wind is my only answer save the electronic garble from below and the sound of fervent prayer. “What should I do?” I ask.

I am not impatient for the senator’s reply. What kind of compromise can there be with death?

My daughter didn’t come down to see me much after she went to school up North. She liked the city I guess, liked her job, and why not? An air-conditioned office in a big glass building was sure better than the mill where her father and brother and me worked when she was growing up.

But there she was when I woke up from the surgery, my stomach feeling like someone was standing on it. She tried to look like it was just where she wanted to be, God bless her, but I could tell she was annoyed that her brother was too far away and busy with his own family to help, annoyed that we had no way of knowing where her father was after all these years, that she had to brave this out all by herself. Maybe she was even annoyed with me for being so sick.

It was humiliating listening to the lady doctor tell Jill all the things she was going to have to do for me. I’d be helpless as a baby and she didn’t know a thing about taking care of people. She didn’t have a husband or family of her own. She’s such a skinny thing she probably can’t even cook. This whole past week in the hospital I hadn’t seen her eat anything in front of me but she wasn’t on a diet. She had half and half in her coffee just like always so I figured she just didn’t want to eat in front of me when all they let me have was crackers and Jell-o.

As we were leaving the nutritionist handed my daughter a packet of information about my new diet. There was a long list of things I couldn’t eat and short one of the few things I could. Basically, whatever tastes most like cardboard made the second list. Maybe he could live on that much food but I couldn’t. Still he mentioned the recipes on the last page and squeezed my daughter’s shoulder. I thought maybe he liked her, wanted her to cook for him. He wasn’t bad looking. My daughter mumbled thanks and rolled me out into the hall. She had some trouble maneuvering, what with my purse and bags of clothes and makeup and magazines hanging from the wheelchair handlebars.

When we got to the elevator the wound care specialist stopped us. She told Jill about how she needed to change my dressings but I tried not to listen. I didn’t like being reminded about the mending hole in my gut.

“Take good care of your mom,” the woman said as the elevator doors sealed us inside.

When we got home that first night Jill wanted me to sleep in my own room on the second floor, but I said no way, that my daughter was here and I wanted to see her. I made her make up the sofa bed in the living room so I could see the big TV and her in the kitchen working on her computer and making me my “meals.” I didn’t want to miss a minute with her – who knows when she’ll ever be back for this long again?

That first day, by the time I got all settled, it was five and I was hungry. She made me dinner off that damn sheet. Dry chicken, dry brown rice, and mushy broccoli with no salt on anything. White rice, mashed potatoes, biscuits and gravy were all on the No list.

I noticed she didn’t eat with me again, just sipped on a can of V8 juice. I thought it was sweet of her not wanting to eat anything decent in front of me while I had to eat all this tasteless food but I didn’t see why we couldn’t break some of the rules now that I’d finally got sprung from the hospital. I told her all this but she wasn’t budging.

“When can I eat a normal meal?”

“Define normal.”

“Salt, gravy, a little butter for Heaven’s sake.”

“A week,” she said. She was always like that. Never breaking any rules or letting herself or anyone else have any fun.

The next night I could see that she’d tried to make an effort. She’d cooked the carrots in honey and sprinkled some nutmeg on top. I hate the way nutmeg and cinnamon makes your mouth feel all gritty but I tried to eat them all to make her happy. There wasn’t any butter in the rice again but it tasted different than the night before.

“What’d you put in the rice?”

“Bullion cube,” she said.

“Smart. Aren’t you going to have any?” I asked as I handed her my empty plate.

She shook her head and took my plate to the kitchen. I thought I heard her spit something into the garbage. When she was in high school there was a few weeks when I caught her dieting, even though she ran on the track team and was skinny as a stick. It wasn’t a diet so much as she didn’t eat for a while. This was when I first started working night shifts at the mill and she had to make her own dinner. At first I thought she was just being lazy, but it lasted a while, a week maybe, and her clothes got even baggier than normal. Her father said to ignore her; she was just trying to get attention. Just when I was going to say something to her she seemed to gain all the weight back. I hadn’t ever thought of it since.

I watched her through the open double doors that connected the living room to the kitchen. She was still a little bit of a thing, but her normal self, thin but a little round at the hips like my younger sister had been in her thirties, before she passed on.

I kept looking up from “Wheel of Fortune” to see what Jill was doing in the kitchen. I saw her heading toward the back door carrying a half filled bag of garbage. I thought about asking her to come eat beside me, just a snack before bedtime, but instead I said, “Do you think I’m made of money?” I meant this to be funny because who cared if she was wasting a half full garbage bag when she had paid for the groceries and stocked my house full of food and cleaning supplies, enough for a couple months, but I kept on with it. “The garbage pickup isn’t but once a week.”

She knew just what I was talking about because she held the bag a little higher up and said, “How you can notice that the bag isn’t full from all the way in there?”

“I notice everything, Honey.”

Jill replaced the trash bag under the sink and sat down next to me on the bed with her cup of tea. I checked in the cup to see if she’d put any milk in it. She had. I wanted to say something to her but she seemed so far away from me even sitting right there on the bed beside me, our knees near to touching. Besides, couldn’t none of us ever argue with her. By the time she was six years old she had forty arguments to “Just one more bite.” It seemed like she’d been backing away from us all her life.

Jill was just looking at me and I could feel two tears running up under my chin.

“Mama what? You need your pills?” Jill tried to stand up to get the pills but I pulled her hand toward my chest and wouldn’t let her go.

“I’m fine, Honey. It’s just nice having you here.”

“But you’re going to be OK Mama,” she said softly. “You’re going to be able to take of yourself real soon.”

“I know it, Baby.” I tried to smile. “I’ll take some of those pills now.”

***

The next morning Jill was in her bathrobe and already sitting at the kitchen table tapping on her computer by the time I woke up. When I mumbled out, “Mornin’ Honey,” she smiled and answered “Mornin’ Mama,” and shut the lid on her computer.

I pretended to be real interested in Matt Lauer on the TV but really I was listening to her making scrambled eggs and toast, both things that were on the approved list if I ate them plain. I decided I wouldn’t grumble, even to ask for a little pepper on the eggs if she forgot it.

When she brought the tray out there were the scrambled eggs, a plate full, with cheese mixed in and a puddle of ketchup running into them, just the way I used to make them for her and her brother.

She sat down beside me and slowly ate a thin wedge of cantaloupe. At least it was something. I picked up a piece of the wheat toast, a pat of real butter melting at its center.

That winter they lived in the worst apartment yet, above Carmello’s Fresh Fish, in a creaky one-bedroom that always smelled like fish. Every day Molly could smell it, white fish with its slightly buttery, slightly brackish smell, the darker meatier smells of salmon and halibut, oily clams and mussels, briny lobsters, all seeping up through the splintering floorboards, the cracked and crusted linoleum, the patches of moldy carpet. When she woke up in the afternoon for her night shift at the hospital, the wet, pungent smell of fish coated her nostrils. When she was at work she would breathe in the scent of disinfectant and the high it gave her was secondary to the efficiency with which the burning sting of ammonia supplanted the remnants of the aroma of fish. Every morning as she walked back home from work she tried to hold onto the stringent smells of solvents until she spotted the storefront and it smacked her like a wave: salty and pungent and fetid as the sea at low tide.

Even her dreams provided no sanctuary. Every night she walked along foamy beaches, on the slick decks of boats, on docks festooned with rowboats, by the banks of fish-filled lakes. Sometimes she was riding in a car with her dad, returning from a long morning of creek fishing with her dad, their poles sticking out the open back window of the station wagon, pails of perch in the backseat waiting to be cleaned and then chopped up into a chowder by her mom. Sometimes she was walking with her mom and sister at low tide, the beach house in sight, the sun setting in stretches of filmy pink.

Then she would wake up and she would think for just a moment that maybe she was really there. There and not here. Back at the lake house or at the shore, and Mom and Dad and Katie nearby, maybe waiting for her, always the last to wake up, making her breakfast, near enough for her to touch them. And then the seafood smell would mingle in with the dusty resin smell of pot and the musty smell of Junior beside her, his tattooed back to her, and she would know just where she was and how far from them she’d drifted, how out of reach they were. Two months worth of waking dissolved, the fog of fish-themed dreams carrying her to the kitchen where the sound of her footsteps awakened the cockroaches into clicking retreat under the humming refrigerator.

Then one day, just like that, the smell was gone.

She might not have noticed it if Junior had been home. They would have done a few lines and the bracing effect of the cocaine would have blocked out anything else, at least for a while. But Junior wasn’t home, probably out making a connection, and, as she unscrewed the metal top from the yellow jar to release the scent of their residual stash – not the skunky homegrown Junior sold to the too-dumb-to-know-any-better college kids, but the delicate hybrid weed Junior saved for just the two of them – she realized that she couldn’t smell anything at all.

And for once, she couldn’t hear anything either. Not the scuttle of the cockroach armies, not the rustling of rats out by the market’s trashcans, not Junior waking up at the sound of her key in the door, reaching his self-satisfied hands behind the back of his head and calling out to her, “In here, Sweet Thing.” Not Junior screaming and swearing about some deal that didn’t go his way or some “customer” who owed him money. Not Junior pleading “C’mon baby” for sex when she was too tired from cleaning up puke and piss and shit all night at the hospital, not Junior begging her to never, never leave.

She sat on their unmade bed, the orange stripe sheets faded to the color of west Carolina clay, no box spring, just the flat dirty mattress on the veined linoleum floor, cradling the yellow jar in her lap with one hand and tapping the tip of her nose with the other, panicked at the sudden absence of the hated smell of fish.

She’d been 17 when she met Junior, electric-eyed and dangerous, dealing on the boardwalk at the shore, the summer her father had died, the summer she’d started failing all her classes and Katie had said she hated her for making things even harder for their mom. And Katie, perfect Katie, had said, “Why don’t you just get lost? Can’t you see how you’re killing our mother too?” And so she’d stolen $450 from her mother’s cash drawer under the phone book in the kitchen (leaving $50 for Katie and Mom, just in case they couldn’t get to the cash machine before they needed it for something), and she’d left with Junior in his tricked-out Camero.

Junior had wanted to steal her mother’s car, a Mercedes, but at least she hadn’t gone along with that. Would she have done it now if he asked? When was the last time she’d told Junior “no”? Five years had gone by and would Mom or Katie even want her back, a drug addict who’d apparently snorted so much coke and snuffed so many chemicals she’d stripped her nasal passages, killed her sense of smell? From working at the hospital she knew it could happen, had heard the grunted disgust of the nurses shaking their heads at the “junkies.” As in junk, as in trash, as in what she’d become. And why would mom or Katie want trash in their lives? It was the kind of thing Junior said when he was afraid she might leave. He was right, wasn’t he? Always right. He knew about people.

She brought the tinted glass jar to her face again and this time she thought she could smell the pot, only it didn’t smell sweet to her. It smelled like over-baked earth, and a little like dung and very dirty clothes. She took the baggy out and set it beside her on the pilled piss-colored blanket. Then she stuck her nose in the jar until its edges rested on her bottom lip and the bridge of her nose. She breathed in deeply. She could just make out the scent of honey that had been in the jar four years ago, before they’d emptied the last of it onto pieces of bread and started using it to store their stash. It reminded her of the jars of honeycomb and preserves and berry-lined moonshine her father’s patients would bring when they drove into town from the Carolina mountains for their appointments and didn’t have enough cash to pay him.

Molly leaned her head back, grateful for the feint smell of her own over-medicated sweat; she could still smell that even if the fish and filth were missing. She wasn’t that far gone, at least. Not yet. She sighed and let her shoulders hang, her head roll from side to side on her neck. Then she thought, “I’m used to it.” She felt her heart ride up into her throat, throbbing. “I’m so used to it I don’t even notice anymore.”

The jar was still in her lap. She set it aside, next to the grayed plastic bag of pot, and stood up to look at herself in the dusty mirror some previous tenant had hung on the closet door. She ran her hands through her lank hair and touched her fingers to her face. Gray skin hung loosely from her cheekbones, her sunken eyes were rimmed in purple. She was so thin her hip bones stuck out from the pink drawstring scrubs she’d worn to work the night before. Would they even recognize her?

She went to the kitchen and took a paper grocery bag from under the sink, crushing a few laggard insects under her bare feet along the way. Back in the bedroom she opened the closet and pulled out a sweater and jeans, a few pairs of underwear, socks, T-shirts. She’d leave everything else. When she came home they would buy her new things, things he’d never touched, never seen her in. They had to. Please, God, let them want to buy me all new things, clean and unstained. She closed her eyes and shook her head to hold in any tears. She didn’t have time for tears yet. It was about the time Junior would have been coming back from even his longest-lasting binges, his most convoluted deals. Her time was running out.

She untied the drawstring to her work scrubs and stepped out of them. In the bathroom she yanked at the string that hung down from the fluorescent light bulb and hopped a bit as she washed the bug carcasses from her feet, jamming one foot into the sink, then the other. She grabbed a twice-used towel from a hook on the door and threw it on the floor. She wiped her feet and shivered a little, nearly grinned. Twisting her feet on the towel reminded her of Mom and Dad practicing the Carolina shag with her and Katie when they were little. She felt elated, like drugs used to make her feel.

Back in the bedroom she pulled on a clean T-shirt and her least shabby pair of jeans. Then she bent down and picked up the baggie of pot and the jar from off the bed and placed them on the dresser. She stuck her slender hand in the jar past her skinny wrist, until she felt the roll of bills at the bottom, then she clasped it between two fingers and pulled it out through the neck of the jar.

It wasn’t all Junior’s anyway. Some of it was from her job at the hospital. She pushed the baggie back through the mouth of the jar, gently so that it wouldn’t tear and none of the pot would spill onto the floor. Then she picked up the roll of bills and held it in her hand, measuring the weight of it. She peeled a $50 from the center of the roll, twisted it into a tight, thin tube, and flicked it back into the jar.

She shoved the rest of the cash into her jeans and headed for the door, cradling the paper bag full of clothes under her armpit, hugging it to herself.

The music is very loud and the floor is very dirty. You know that the bathroom is the safest place in the club right now, akin to a bomb shelter, although there are no alarms no flashing lights. You feel like you ought to use a paper towel to open the door, but there aren’t any anyway, and you have had too many rum and diet cokes to care.

In the ladies’ room now, you would crouch in the corner of the stall near the toilet and cover the back of your neck with your hands, just like you were taught to protect yourself. Broken glass is less tough on the knuckles. Your efforts at self-preservation are foiled because you are distracted by faces in the mirror; betrayed by supposedly waterproof mascara and liquid eyeliner gone awry, making drama face signs beneath lights that cast an artificial veil. You know that you are one of them; crying, with a red nose, blurred makeup, bra straps showing and the pale flesh of stomach peering over the edge of tight jeans.

Like soldiers, you talk to each other as they wipe away black smudges with a wet paper towel and smooth back hair way from each other’s faces like your mother would when you were young and crying in that sweaty, breathy way that children cry.

You wish that you could share that there are two ways to go home, but your mouth opens and you say, “I know how you feel.”

You all have the same story – you have gotten yourself dressed up in what you thought you were supposed to wear, you drank alcohol to make the brunt more bearable, and then, at the end of the night, you find yourself face-to-face with dried vomit and a beer bottle left teetering on the edge of the toilet paper dispenser wishing that you were in your sweatpants watching Law & Order.

You think that there is only one way to go. It can be any man, it doesn’t matter: his best friend, your best friend’s ex (or not-quite-ex), the guy that always showed some interest in you but that you didn’t really like. There would be the rush of desire, kissing, fondling, sex. The sex might be aching for a moment or raw. Uncomfortable sleep in someone else’s itchy sheets, waking up with dried spit on someone’s pillow, crust in your eyes, and a desire to get home as soon as possible. You get dressed quickly and leaving before he wakes up – that is a safe way to go. He might not get up, but he might ask for your phone number with his eyes closed. That is the gentlemanly thing to do: ask for the number and write it on a piece of paper that would get lost with the cable bill.

Or else he wakes up too and wants morning sex, bad breath, sweaty skin, smelling of alcohol, the wounds from the night before are not quite healed. It feels good to be held so you do it anyways, since soon you will be on the street, trying to catch a cab that will fly you home quickly. The quicker you get home, the quicker you will shower and change into sweats and begin the morning, as if you had woken up in your own bed after all, and the night before had never happened.

You know it’s trouble when your boyfriend says, “Why don’t you dress like Natalie?”

Natalie is 5’9” with a DD chest and legs up to her neck.

You decide not to get mad because that would be immature. You look in the mirror, pout a little, adjust your hair, and wipe mascara away from under your eyes.

You pretend that you aren’t mad, but tell him that you are going out with the girls and he shouldn’t wait up. He shrugs and changes the channel on the TV from one game to another. The announcers talk excitedly and whistles blow.

Your boyfriend doesn’t really know you that well, you think. You doubt anyone knows you that well, but you think that your girlfriends do. They say things like: “Men stink,” and: “You just need a drink, girl.” You don’t even have to tell them what is on your mind, they just know. Your boyfriend doesn’t know what’s on your mind and doesn’t have enough mind of his own to ask. He never seems to have anything on his mind. You think it would be nice to be able to pretend like you never hear or see anything. What a good excuse that would be.

You and your girlfriends meant to go to a club in Williamsburg, but since the line was wrapped around the block and the bouncer didn’t respond to your friend’s attempt to pull up her miniskirt and pull down her tank top, all of you decide to settle on the dive bar across the street. You like the men at dive bars better, you say, although that really isn’t true. But you like to imagine that you are the kind of girl who is happier with a beer than a Cosmo and a man in a work shirt with a sun burnt neck than one in a blue shirt.

You sidle up next to a man in a blue shirt standing near the bar. He’s ordering a drink. You stick out your chest and your lower back arches, like an animal in heat, you imagine. You use imagery to give yourself more courage. You used to put sticky notes on your bathroom mirror and chant to yourself that “you are beautiful,” but you felt like you looked ugly saying it. You are horrified to find yourself whispering under your breath now: “You are beautiful. You are beautiful.”

He barely looks at you, but you decide it’s an invitation and ask what he’s drinking. Bud, he tells you. I’d like one too, you exclaim, as if it was very exciting. You imagine that this makes him feel very important.

He’s starting a conversation with you about democracy and the Kings of Leon. You keep your eyes wide and clear like an anime character, and blink exaggeratedly. When he takes a sip of his beer, you do too. Mirroring, it’s called in the wild.

He understands you, or he understands you at least as much as your boyfriend does. More than understanding, you want someone to make you. You have an idea of what you would like to be, like those girls over there. Natalie with her DDs.

concentrate on the urine collecting in your bladder. 
 


he looks so serious, so goddamn serious all of a sudden. 
it’s this dance that kills you. 
 


you offered him a ride back from yonkers because it’s you who has the license and the car, who grew up ten minutes from school and has been driving to and from wherever you want for the last three years, and he always takes you up on that offer and then you, still without your yearly parking permit because you seek to cheat the system, claim your space in the far reaches of the lot, the two of you fastening your coats and speed-walking to main campus where your dorm rooms sit face to face on opposite sides of the lawn, fraternal twins separated at birth. 
 


and here you are again under the streetlight that isn’t really a streetlight because this isn’t really a street, the only cars that come through are security vans or students dropping off groceries or the occasional fire truck when some drunk asshole pulls the alarm at 3 a.m. you tell him to move slightly because you can’t make out the lines of his face under the glare and then think, maybe i shouldn’t have, because it’s easier to talk when you can’t see, when you’re not wearing glasses. 
 


think about the way you guessed his soul. 
it was before or after sex, who remembers?, and you were lying downtown on your rented mattress, a mini fan blowing hot summer air into your dilated pores. you’d closed your eyes and visualized sucking his paper-thin soul from his paper-thin bones and you’d put it in a jar, the grape-jelly kind, and noticed the color as clear as day: midnight blue with a hint of purple. his eyes had gotten huge, two full moons in his head, and you’d said, am i right? and he’d said a friend with synesthesia claimed his name was blue with a purple v, and at that moment you’d felt like you knew him better than anyone. maybe you had. maybe he’d thought so too. 
 


start babbling about your dying computer because it’ll pique his interest, much the way you’ll ask about video games or japanese culture or porn…guys love a girl who knows porn. don’t bring up poetry, dadaism, your migraines, nirvana, or anything even remotely feminist because he’ll do that thing where he takes two whole minutes to respond and when he does it’s either huh? or a monosyllabic word that means to say i’m bored, you bore me, what the hell kind of girl are you anyway? 
 


try to be cute around him, giggle and pose and bite your bottom lip until it hurts. you’re not cute, you’re clumsy, but there’s nothing you can do. you’re a pc user for god’s sake, how will he ever understand you? 
 


don’t look at your watch because it’s rude. 
 


you know it’s late and you’ve wasted more time, precious time flushed down the toilet, spent watching cartoons and getting high when you could have started that paper or finished that book or for god’s sake taken those films back to the library; you’re not cheating the system by paying five dollars a day for shit you don’t even have time to watch. 
 


wonder how long this dance will take…whether or not your next step is homeward-bound across that lawn, which feels so vast and vacant and vague when it’s only you and orion calling out marco polo from behind wisps of blackened sky and you never mean to cry. you smile on the way and pinch your arm to get endorphins sliding through your veins, but you end up crumpled on the floor like someone’s dirty laundry all the same…crying into your hair that smells like bad habits. you pick yourself up ten minutes later with mucous clogging your brain to take vicodin, valium, or more pot and try to fall asleep on your ice pack because you can’t end up with another migraine: you haven’t done enough work, not nearly enough, and it takes at least an hour for you to drift off, the same four songs overlapping one another until you hallucinate or dream or cry or lie there staring at the wall. 
 


it’s funny, because sometimes this lawn is the most goddamn beautiful place in the world. when it’s 9 a.m. and he has to be awake for japanese and you’ve still got a few hours until film history and you’re kinda stinky and kinda sticky, walking braless with your hair in one giant knot like someone who’s been fighting herself all night, because in a way you have, and the sun is shining and the birds are singing and it’s that feeling of waking up nestled into someone’s armpit that tells you it’s going to be a good day. 
 


he won’t listen if you talk about anything else, so start making stuff up about the computer. there you go, he’s asking questions and it’s becoming important, a serious technological atrocity, even thought it’s not. 
 


you know his middle name, his hyphenated surname, you know what all his names mean: he’s kingly and biblical, a prince of the past. wonder if he knows that you don’t have a middle name. wonder if he knows how to spell your last name, czechoslovakian and nowheres near phonetic. 
 


sometimes you want to say: it’s not fair, all you have to do is smile and i’ll say whatever you want me to say, do whatever you want me to do, be whoever you need me to be…i am malleable like paper, i fold and bend and shred and crinkle, o yes i crinkle…i am candle wax paper, the translucent kind. 
 


and think of the way you made the bed last semester in the extra room of your on-campus apartment. you gave him your favorite star and moon sheets and your grover stuffed animal so he wouldn’t be lonely. his eyes were red and smeary and you hate seeing boys cry so you offered up all kinds of things, juice, bagels, ice cream you didn’t have, trying to give all sorts of advice: everything happens for a reason bullshit he shrugged off.

you’d waited for him, drawing pictures with your neck aching and legs asleep, waited until their official breakup was over and done and then you’d led him across the lawn, tripping on your shoelace and staring at your feet, as he sulked like a scorned lover would. in your head buzzed words like bees begging to be freed: who cares about her when you have me? when i am here and i love you? and you’d wondered, was that possible at all? you couldn’t sleep with him brokenhearted over someone else so you’d let grover keep watch as you slept brokenhearted in your own empty bed. 
 


he’s looking serious again. think: i should have skipped this whole dance tonight and gone striding straight across the lawn, cat walking like a woman who couldn’t care less, but here i am in front of his building lit up like a goddamn hotel.
 


he starts slow, perhaps unsure, but you can never determine intentions from his tone because he’s an actor and who the hell knows what’s real and what’s a lie? you’ve always envied actors. the way they fill a room.
 


i don’t want to lead you on, comes tumbling a little too forcefully and he’s staring you dead in the eye. be glad his are brown because the pupils are harder to find, the eye of the eye obscured. 
 
this is fun and all, stressing fun as if using italics or spreading the word e.e. cummings-style, but i don’t want to lead you on (again)…i don’t think i am. 
 


look at his feet and think about the customized mix cd still sitting, unopened, on his desk. iggy pop, aphex twin, nine inch nails…he doesn’t care he doesn’t care he doesn’t care. 
 
say, no you’re not. your voice is so small it’s like you’re seven years old, the father you never saw asking what’s wrong? why don’t you eat? why are you afraid of everything? and you clutching the bottom of your shirt trying to fight back tears, trying to sort out the heaven and hell buried inside of your still growing bones. even now you hate chewing and swallowing and you’re careful never to touch your eyes or mouth if anyone sneezes or coughs.  
 


wonder: what was the point of tucking him into bed like a scared little kid, smoothing back his hair? spending an hour lost in brooklyn to watch his play in a shitty amphitheater without suntan lotion, red and raw and peeling for two weeks after? waiting for cartoons to end and trying not to fall asleep so miraculously you both leave at the same time, offering him the usual ride, sprinting at the “speeding when flashing” meter on the road, laughing as he beat you by 9 m.p.h. and protesting, your legs are longer, it’s no fair! reasoning, he’s a boy after all. 
 


wonder: what was the point of telling him you’d 69’d in your catholic school skirt? that lolita functions as your favorite erotic novel? that you’d fucked your ex-boyfriend, the only love-of-your-life, in the parking lot during your break at work? and rape…telling him you like it rough, when he holds you down, forces your hands above your head until your wristwatch bruises the backside of your palm, biting and scratching and cum everywhere, staining newly showered skin? 
 


don’t ever tell him you take pictures of the hickeys and bite marks he gives you, those pretty souvenirs. don’t ever tell him you’ve taken three, at least three, pregnancy tests because you keep letting him stick it in then pull it out condom-free. what kind of girl are you anyway? 
 


you know more than he thinks you do: 

he only wears one pair of pants and they’re hand-me-downs from the ’70s. 

he has three jackets that all look the same and smell the same. 

he smells good even when he doesn’t shower. 

he wears shoes without socks when he doesn’t do his laundry. 

he doesn’t do his laundry. 

he talks with his hands and bounces to music and always knows all the words to all the songs, insisting that you hang out in his room because he has hundred dollar speakers and you know nothing about technology. 

he does crosswords, t’ai chi. 

he likes acid and batman and doggy-style. 

his biological father was a mountain man with flat knees. 

he can’t hear properly out of one ear, you forget which, you forget why. 

he fucked some drunk girl on a couch in london, not to mention three, maybe four, girls you are friends with on campus, including his heartbreaker ex who happens to be one of your best buds. she doesn’t seem the doggy-style type, though. 
 


wonder: what the hell does he know about me? does he know you can’t pee if someone’s outside the door? that your mother slapped you clear across the face one night in ninth grade when you woke up panicked and afraid, running back and forth senselessly like a trapped rat in an invisible cage? clawing at your skin, ripping out clumps of hair? she’d threatened to send you to an asylum and have each of your fingernails individually detached. 
 


does he know that you’d come into school the next day, limping from the self-inflicted hole in your knee, unable to take off your sweater (the scratches) or let down your hair (the bald spots), crying at the lunch table telling your friends it’d been a bad day? you still have the scars. 
 


every time you ask him, what’s your favorite band, favorite book, favorite film, favorite color, favorite anything fortheloveofgod because you define yourself in terms of favorites and you need to classify him, he makes that angry face with his upper lip rising and his eyes narrowing and he claims he doesn’t have favorites, he hates favorites, he never asks you yours. 
 


the urine still gathers in your concave bladder and the pressure is almost too much to handle. you must know you’re not convincing. you must know he knows you like him, you like him like him more than two friends having fun. you must know he knows you know he can use you whenever he wants to because you know he knows you can’t say no, you’re too goddamned nice, why the hell did you spend two hours making that mix cd he hasn’t listened to or watching cartoons you don’t care about so you can have fifteen minutes alone, away from his ex and all of your friends, so it’s only you and him in the glow of the streetlights racing each other back to your dance, that unavoidable dance, where more and more often you’re going home alone to cry onto your dirty rug into your dirty hair giving yourself another goddamn migraine? 
 


i don’t want things to be awkward, you say as if he were your friend and not the only quote unquote lover you’ve had for months. they’re not, he says, apparently oblivious to the fact that you’re standing in the cold instead of his room or your room and the night can end in one of two ways: two paths diverge in a wood and you take the path trampled and traveled with caravans. 
 


you make all of your mistakes twice, then three times, then three times more, and your friends are getting sick of sitting with you on this lawn saying you’re too good for this snot-nosed asshole who hangs up before he says goodbye, never holds the door, smokes all your pot, doesn’t kiss or hug or hold your hand if anyone is near, who clearly and obviously is not your friend. and you sit there and defend him: his medication gives him mood swings, his money’s running low, he’s got this hectic rehearsal schedule, really, you know…he’s an actor, what the hell can i expect? 

try to describe the way his smile widens when he blasts his songs, asking you to sing along, the way his skinny wrists flip and flop like marionettes your dad would use to cheer you up. try to tell them: his scent in my skin is better than the best poem i’ll ever construct…but still they’ll say, you’re fucking up.
 


he says, you can’t get offended if i decide i don’t want to do this anymore, ok? 

and now what are you supposed to say? 
 


sometimes you imagine punching his lights out. not only his, you imagine punching or stabbing or drowning everyone who’s ever chewed you up and spit you out like yesterday’s gum. but then you’ll fantasize about some anonymous boy scooping you from sidewalks or parking lots or dorm rooms and having his way with you. someone to give you a bloody nose and black eye and strip the clothes from your bones and spread your legs as far as they’ll go and grind your knees into the ground so the next day you’ll show off your shiners and put on a tough face, and everyone will have to admire you for it. 
 


i can get offended, i just can’t blame you for it, you mumble back. try to stare past the eyes into his midnight blue and purple tinted soul, that soul you think you know. those same pants always hastily thrown on his floor. 
 


faintly remember a time before dorms and pot and this goddamn lawn, before washing clothes cost quarters you don’t have, when you believed sex was personal, expressive of some chemical bond…the combinations of dna or the fusing of atoms, hypersensitive electrons running back and forth. it meant you claimed another’s human scent, another’s skin as your own. it meant you could whisper any dirty little secret and he’d have to listen, he’d want to. 
 


it feels like you’re caught in that tangle of wires lying in a clump at the foot of your bed. you’re in some kind of perpetual mess, clinging to old photographs and a dream you once had where kurt cobain sang a lullaby, a song you’d never heard before. now you dream you’re curled on the couch as he’s fondling your shoulder and kissing your throat even while everyone sits alongside.  
 


you wake up in the morning, dizzily confused, and stumble to your window just to watch him amble out the door, on the way to rehearsal or lunch or yonkers or some freshman’s room who fucking knows, but you always see him and he never sees you and what does that make you? psychic, optimistic, masochistic…well, aren’t you? 
 


he wants to make it perfectly clear, crystal clear, that the way it is is the way it is and nothing’s gonna change. you want to scream unintelligible utterances but your bladder is growing mold and your hands are cold, always cold, and you pick at a scab on your inner wrist and smile weakly, like someone who knows the drill, someone who’s having fun, like a good little friend with benefits fuck-buddy you never thought you could become. 
 


and still you’re dancing: what he’ll say next, where you’ll end up, undecided. you can press words to paper but you can’t cast them out like songs to his ear.  
 


wonder: on the floor of your room or the sheets of his bed? facing the wall with your pounding head or resting on his clavicle, sensing his inner metronome, your face rising and falling with his every deep breath? neck twisted, body tensed, he’ll smell good of stale sweat. 
 


he doesn’t know about the trail of band-aids lining your windowsill last summer. he doesn’t know that you scrutinize his back when he sleeps turned away. he doesn’t know that you once loved a boy who actually loved you back, the two of you in matching pajama pants watching horror movies until the break of dawn, fucking under covers in case his mother came down to do laundry. 
 


wonder which one of you three-maybe-four is his favorite, but he doesn’t have favorites, remember? he doesn’t believe in right and wrong. he doesn’t believe in self-sacrifice. he doesn’t believe in altruism. he fantasizes about becoming famous and that’s got to count for something, right?
 


well, he sashays and gives you that playful look, do you want to come upstairs? as if this were a first date, or a second date supposing you’re not that kind of girl. 
 


you have a few seconds here, only a few seconds to decide what to do. think about what your friends would say, your friends unconnected from him and this whole group where guys share women the way you loan hairbrushes, believing you’re too old to catch lice. 
 


how about we watch a movie? you want to say. how about we curl up in pajama pants and turn out lights and hold each other’s hands as leatherface chases sally because you want to see the blood? how about no sex, just cuddling, just warming each other with internal heat, flannel pants, stale sheets? then remember that he sleeps in his boxers or nothing at all. 
 


sure. 
 


you throw in, i’d like to, because it makes it sound all the more consensual. 
 


you should grab your skirt (grinning ear to fucking ear) and some chapstick, this weather makes my lips dry. 
 


sure. 
isn’t this what you want, after all?
 


and you’re off, stepping one foot in front of the other across that goddamn lawn. you’ve got heavy dream legs, the kind that refuse to run when something large and menacing chases you, a villainous vacuum threatening to suck you dry. the stars aren’t out and the moon hides behind the branches of a tree, and this is only a pit stop, you tell yourself, so why the fuck are you crying? there will be a return trip as soon as you grab your skirt and some chapstick and maybe, for once, a condom. comb your hair, finally pee, and yes you are fine. 
 

*


concentrate on the slime in your socks. 
 


glance at her watch…the glare beneath this pseudo-streetlight is strong and you can’t make out the time. wonder why you’ve spent three hours watching cartoons getting high when you could have been getting shit done…all you know is you’ve got to spend free time doing something/anything mind-numbingly entertaining otherwise you’ll wither away under the claustrophobic mess of your room worrying too much about the work you need to do after sleepwalking through weeklong seven hour rehearsals. if only you had time to do laundry. 
 


she offered you a ride again and you took it knowing you’d up end up staring while she babbles incessantly avoiding your eyes. this wouldn’t take long if she weren’t nervous all the time, if she weren’t so intent on making her lip bleed. 
 


wonder: when was the last time i got laid? a week ago, more? when she walked across the lawn in her pajama pants at 1 a.m.? you’d played video games that night until you got pissed at your dysfunctional controller and she was laughing, saying no big deal, and you’d turned out the light and climbed into bed and she’d snaked up beside you saying, don’t fall asleep, and you were saying, you have your own room you know, even though you wanted her to be there: under the sheets, folded in your ribs, knotted in your skin. that was the night you’d asked about her fantasies: catholic school and older men and s&m. you’d bit her neck her hip that space between chest and back and she’d liked it, you could tell. 
 


five minutes driving from the yonkers apartment to the parking lot, another ten (less if you speed-walk) from the back of the lot to your buildings sitting head to head on the north lawn. the entire time, in the car, on the street, you fiddled with your fingertips thinking what should i say? should i say it? should i leave it the way it is and let her think whatever she thinks or should i communicate something clear because we’re never clear and we never communicate? should i tell her, it can’t be me and it can’t be now? 
 


the eyes behind her glasses reflect florescent light and her pupils, those dark amorphous blobs, swim vacantly.

try to be serious…before she makes more mix cds, asking, always asking about favorite films and books and colors…you’ve never had a favorite color. 
 


she’s still going on about computers, mixing gigabytes with megabytes and god she has no idea what a ram is! but you need to slow this down otherwise you’ll end up with her breath in your ear losing all sense of what should have been said. your friends have been talking: she’s a sweet girl, go easy. you overheard: he’s using her, he’s using her. if only she weren’t everybody’s friend. 
 


remember the time you threw a shoe at your girlfriend’s, excuse you, exgirlfriend’s face? it’d been one of those nights when you were pissed at the world and she’d walked through the door: smiling, vulnerable, freshly washed and waiting to fuck. later she’d thrown a pillow or towels, something harmless back at you, and you’d staged a temper tantrum as if she were your little brother. wonder how you became such a jerk.

offer as much as she needs, even though you know she knows you know she has no idea what you’re saying because she’s technologically illiterate…a pc user for god’s sake. you’ve told her time and time again to get a mac, she doesn’t listen.

wonder how exactly (what exactly) you’re going to say, how much it’ll even matter. you can say you hate her guts but you bet she’ll still call to play games or smoke pot, asking, do you need a ride? saying yes is all too easy.

don’t ever tell her you can’t remember her middle name, girls are sensitive about that sort of thing. don’t ever tell her she’s done things in your fantasies too depraved to say out loud. you know she’s kinky, but not that kinky.

you’ve got seconds to spare for a much needed mental checklist. go:
cut your hair
score some pot
rehearsals up the wazoo
homework (at some point?)
laundry…sigh.
wonder where she might fit in.

one time she said that your birthdays have the same five numbers only slightly rearranged, wasn’t that strange? another time, that you were both aquarians and aquarians needed companions, being peace-makers, water-bearers, humanitarians. you’d told her the stars must have lied because you’d always rather be alone.

remember your eighteenth birthday. some friends had come over and partied in your basement and you’d cleaned the rug with club soda and hid all embarrassing family photographs. when your mom sat you down on the couch the next day you’d figured it was about that foot-long stain which hardly came out or those precious pictures stashed like popcorn bowls under the sink. perhaps she’d found condom wrappers in your trashcan, or the bag of weed stashed under the bed? she’d looked at you all serious and numb until you were ready to crack, ready to confess to every (or nearly every) crime you’d ever committed in her miserable house but then she looked you squarely in your retinas saying, you’re old enough to know that dad isn’t your biological father, and suddenly everything fell apart and came together in exactly the same instant — time is relative, imaginary, virtually irrelevant and your brain did a quadruple take on its own existence as you scanned the long stems of your hands wondering, was this really you? you’d figured it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be at all…now don’t trust your family, your friends, and don’t trust yourself.

start off slow, a little unsure, but the words fly out uncontrollably: i don’t want to lead you on. stare her squarely in the eyes, brown like yours but rounder and usually sad.

all you want to do is fuck her.

all you want is to open the door to your brightly lit building and climb three flights of stairs, pausing at each level to peer at your faces, expectant and afraid, reflected in the walls of glass (suicide-proof). all you want is to lead her past the dirty clothes heaped on the floor, past the sporadically placed paper cups of ash and resin and used condoms which you never have time to throw out, past the fallen posters and the empty packs of pills to your unmade bed, its sheets still scented with sweat from the last time you invited her in. all you want is to play that game where you pretend you’re falling asleep and she pounces on you catlike because she’s not sleepy and neither are you and she knows it. toss her from side to side, shake her off like a little bug, laughing as she falls off the bed or bumps her elbow against your wall…and you say, shhh i’m sleeping, and she says, you better not be!, and you say, well what would you rather us do then?

soon your legs are tangled like wires and she’s taking licks at your throat while you purr because she thinks it’s cute. soon there’s no time to pull the hair from your mouth (either yours or hers always sticks in your kiss) or take off her shirt…no time to get under the sheets, no time to search your chaotic room for a condom unless there’s a break midway through where you need to catch your breath, and you stumble to your jacket or drawer or pile of clothes and grab one. as you slip it on she might take off her shirt and you might take off yours too and then you’ll place one large hand on the hollow of her back and she’ll circle her fingers around the wrist that holds you up, holds her against you, holds you inside of her, and she’ll moan into the pillow and you’ll peck at her neck, all full of sweat, because you don’t want to hurt her…unless, that is, she wants you to.

this is fun and all, you hear yourself say as if watching your body from the height of that florescent light, watching the two of you cast one large shadow over the expanse of the dead-empty lawn, but i don’t want to lead you on. throw in, i don’t think i am, because that way she can’t blame you. look at the crooked part in her hair and think of that night you made her wear pigtails.

no you’re not, she says meekly, as if you were her boss or teacher or perhaps her father.

you know enough:
she doesn’t take acid (you do).
she celebrates christmas (you don’t).
she’s never been to europe (you lived there a year).
she studies film history (you’d rather star in movies than analyze film).
she writes poetry. you hate poetry. words are meaningless symbols designed to articulate sight and sound, taste and touch, but how on earth could arrangements of letters convey emotions? she’ll sit on the floor at your friends’ place in yonkers quietly listening while everyone talks and who can tell what she stores in her brain cells, soaks up for later use? you hear she’s good but you’ve never had time to read any of her stuff.

remember the morning you walked in on your ex asleep with your best friend? it was last semester, the week or two after london; you were sticking around campus before the beginning of summer when you couch surfed manhattan and performed shitty plays in brooklyn.

really, you should have seen it coming…the two of them scurrying back and forth like rats across the lawn. someone should have stopped you from drinking too much whiskey and fucking too many random girls in random beds, stopped you from twisting yourself into knots so you could have crawled across the ocean and yanked your ex back to shore.

that morning you’d bent down on your best friend’s floor and almost vomited everything everywhere. you’d almost jumped onto his bed and punched his fucking lights out, bloodying him so badly she’d never dare touch him again. instead it’s you she’s never touched again. unless, of course, she’s passing a blunt or offering your coat.

this weather makes your lips ache and still your feet are clammy. now isn’t the time to ask for chapstick.

she must know you know she likes you likes you more than a friend. wonder: what the hell does she want from me? could she know that you strangled your girlfriend, excuse you exgirlfriend, once in the shower when you were afraid she’d cheated? could she know you’ve told all of your friends (exgirlfriend included) that she means nothing to you, nothing more than a good fuck? she must know you can see straight through her: when she calls to smoke pot but only wants to make a move, when she waits to finish watching cartoons, only hoping you’ll lead her upstairs and into your room, as if this were a rent-by-the-hour motel. wonder: does she know that all you want (all you really think you need) is one friend who doesn’t expect anything? one girl who won’t fuck you over?

in the afterglow sometimes, when you’re curled together like kittens keeping warm, she’ll nuzzle into your arm or ribs or chest and you’ll loosely fold your fingers over her tightly clenched fist. it’s very mechanical, you figure. you’ve both done these kinds of things before.

remember the time you saw her cry? after slamming your best friend’s door that morning, the exgirlfriend still buried naked under his covers, you’d stomped across the lawn, barged into her room, locked the door and paced her floor shouting, i can’t believe they would do this to me! this is the worst thing that’s ever happened! i wish i could kill them both! on the ground, holding your knees, you’d whimpered: just as i was so deep in love…and she herself had burst into tears, quickly hiding her eyes in her hands so you wouldn’t see.

i don’t want things to be awkward, she says. tell her, they’re not, even though they are. if they weren’t would you be standing in the cold contemplating how to set the record straight?

you’re trying to resist. you’re trying to say no. you’re trying, for a change, to be alone, all alone like you’ve wanted from day one…even across the fucking globe you were still holding onto everyone you know, still swallowing sweat of off some girl’s back whenever you got drunk enough to score.

you’re an actor…walk into a room and suddenly fill every corner with facets of your multidimensional soul: disperse your energy, set your isotopes adrift, build a new self from the infinite atomic specks that encircle you, yes that’s what you do. there is no definable you in this universal gene pool: both existential and nihilistic, all at the same time.

remember that night in september, a few weeks into school again, when the two of you were sprawled on your best friend’s couch (the exgirlfriend nuzzled beside him in bed), talking as if you hadn’t fucked whenever you crashed at her place all summer long? she hadn’t driven her car that night and it was raining, neither of you felt like walking back to the muddy lawn. instead you’d stayed awake discussing karma and morality and free-flowing qi until 10 a.m. you’d told her, there are no boundaries between you and me because the world is matter, trees and cars and birds and bricks: everything is stars.

realize: she’s probably the only person who’ll sit up with you, letting you do most of the talking, every now and then asking, but what does that actually mean? every now and then asking, and what are your favorite things? telling you the color of your soul.

she doesn’t believe in self-preservation. she doesn’t believe in free will. she doesn’t even eat meat. she’s too generous with her body and time, but perhaps that counts for something?

tell her, you can’t get offended if i decide i don’t want to do this anymore, ok?
watch her face fall.

love is as meaningless as poetry and as complicated as dna. in order to love, there has to be challenge. nobody desires what they already have.

you can almost smell her hair perfuming your stale sheets, almost feel her slippery tongue moistening your skin, but now you have to resist. wonder: what am i trying to prove? on the nights you’re too drained from class and rehearsal, too stoned to care one way or the other, you end up lighting incense to mask the smell of dirty clothes, turning up the volume on your hundred dollar speakers until the guy below threatens noise complaint, sitting idly at your computer asking yourself precisely the kinds of questions that class and acting and pot and killing time watching cartoons prevent you from asking…such as, why are you so afraid? and who are you, anyway?

i can get offended, she mumbles back, i just can’t blame you for it.

she’s staring behind you, looking ready to cry. you hate seeing girls cry for god’s sake. it’s much easier when you’re the one playing the role of dejected lover, sitting drunk and depressed on the curb outside the bar, wishing you weren’t another nameless actor with a broken fucking heart.

wonder if she knows that the scars on your fingers are from purposely punching your hand through glass. wonder if she knows that you can’t recall a single day you haven’t smoked pot.

yesterday, your best friend said you’re in between who you once were and who you want to be. you’d wanted to tell him, i need to shape and recreate, i am only a character, there really is no other me.

realize: you don’t have enough motivation to do your laundry let alone figure out why you’re suffocated, asphyxiated, like there’s too much smoke in your lungs, too much november chill in your bones, too much energy churning in your gut and now wonder, you have to wonder: what does everyone want from me?

your mother won’t pay for a bus ticket home.
look at these sad dark eyes…you know she’d give you money and never ask for a return.

the way it is is the way it is and nothing’s gonna change. she’s smiling and playing along like she doesn’t know you know she’s falling apart and there you are a whole foot taller glaring down like the streetlight, the bad guy by default.

when she smiles big and wide as you race each other along the street, onto the lawn, away to the moon, all the way home, it’s too cute not to love. someone, somewhere, must want to love her…but you only want to fuck her.

shuffle your feet and give her that flirtatious grin: well, do you want to come upstairs?
you know you need her smile, that face, in your hands. more accurately, you don’t want to climb those steps, all three flights, with only your own jaded image in the reflective window glass.

she hesitates for a second longer than you expect. it’s almost reassuring.
sure, she says, i’d like to.

consider for one moment how you’ll feel in the morning when you kick her out of bed so you can (maybe) shower and head to japanese, having screwed yourself (once again) out of a decent night’s sleep, barely able to make it through another tiresome day. maybe what you really ought to do is tuck yourself in, listen to the buzz of silence that fills your vacant room, and cuddle the blanket you’ve had your whole life. but, consider for one second more how she’ll feel in the morning: stomping across the dew-ridden grass, grateful for the night before? honestly, you have no idea.

you should grab your skirt (you can’t keep from grinning) and some chapstick, this weather makes my lips dry.

sure.

and you’re off, one foot in front of the other up those stairs, all three flights, peeking past your dumb reflection to that small shape striding straight across the lawn. unlock your door, step into your room, and clear the clothes notebooks ashtray off your bed. fluff your pillows, light a new stick of incense, finally take off your socks. ignore the accusatory voice in your head asking, who the hell do you think you are? and tell yourself: she understands, this is for fun, we are just friends. notice the mix cd sitting face up, unopened, and remember to say, for the next time she asks, it’s not that you don’t want to listen, this just isn’t the time.

Larry Syborg cut his woman last Thursday. This time bad enough for her to be in the hospital and him in county without bail. Word around town is she—Debbie—is lucky to be alive, but talk always ends up at Larry’s sandwich.

For now, it’s still on the menu. The Syborg. But no one’s ordering it because it would just be eating a name. A bad copy put together by Juan, the dishwasher who got bumped to Larry’s short-order spot. Kid’s having a hell of a time getting the lunch crowd in and out between the two whistles.

Blaine is telling me how things come and how they go. “No sense in getting used to anything,” he says. “Like my cable lineup. I liked it when I just had twenty-five channels. Now, got so many it takes me half the evening just to flip through them all. It was better with less.” Blaine works the drill press one stall down from me and we eat lunch together almost everyday. I suppose we’re friends.

“But I loved that fucking thing,” I say, and press a grimy finger into the menu. “The best sandwich I’ve ever had. Period. Then he had to go and fuck up like that, dumb son of a bitch.”

Blaine says, “Yeah, I know. But I don’t think Larry’s coming back. Kiss that sandwich goodbye, and get on with it.”

I lift my finger and push the menu away, like a disconnection, a good start. “You’re right,” I say. “Syborg did it this time. Did it up real fucking good.”

At home, Anna’s got a new sweater. “What do you think?” she says. She’s in the bedroom door. The sweater’s white with a shimmery design on it and she pulls it tight across her chest.

I say, “Looks nice. When’d you get that?”

“Today. On sale at Wal-mart.”

“You went to Medford today. You should have told me. I need oil and plugs for the Cat.”

“Sorry.” She turns around to show me the back. Her ass looks good and I think some things. “It was impulse,” she says, “I needed to buy something.”

“Get any new panties?”

She looks over her shoulder and smiles. “Maybe you should come find out.”

So I do. But the panties are the ones I’ve taken off a thousand times. Blue cotton with frayed elastic at the hip. A darkness—like some kind of cloud—at the crotch. We do it—missionary then from behind then missionary again—for the better part of forty minutes. And when Anna comes, she says “Give it to me” over and over like she’s always done.

We lay in bed and smoke. Outside, the wind is kicking up, and each gust makes some part of the house crack or groan. The weatherman says we’ll have snow flurries tonight and I can tell just by the wind that he’s right.

“Getting cold,” Anna says.

“Yeah. That time of year. Sun’s down by six.”

“I like it. Makes me want to get cozy.” She throws an arm over my chest and a leg over my thigh and pulls herself close.

“Dark makes me crazy,” I say. “Get up, it’s dark. Come home, it’s dark. And between: the factory, no Goddamn windows. Six months of dark.”

She pulls herself on top of me, smiles. Playful. “You’re not going to Syborg me, are you?” And she makes like she has a knife and drives it into my chest a half dozen times. She makes a high-pitched noise—the killing sound from Psycho—and her hair falls over her face in a wild tangle.

I grab her wrists and pull her down. We kiss, and she grinds into me, wet and open and ready again. But I can’t. “I’m beat,” I say. “Sorry.”

She climbs off me, and retrieves her cigarette from the ashtray on the nightstand. “I wasn’t serious,” she says.

“About what?”

“About nothing. Just funnin’.” She sits with her back to me Her shoulder blades angle out of her skin like they’re trying to leave her. She’s a thin girl, and when we make love her bones sometimes hurt me. Dig into my tender places.

I tap out another cigarette and light it. Downstairs, the heat pump kicks on, and I pull the bedding up over me. I am tired. Jesus. Like I got a raw spot somewhere but can’t salve it for want of knowing what’s rubbing and where. My hands tingle because of the press. My ears ring and my throat’s dry. I close my eyes.

“Lizzy told me that she might not make it,” Anna says, “That she might not get through the night.”

“How the Hell does Lizzy know that?”

“She got a cousin works at the hospital, in collections.”

“Sounds like a position of authority.”

“Donnie, she would know. It’s a small town.”

“If you say so.”

“Don’t you care?”

“About?”

“Debbie. Syborg’s woman.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say. “It’s too bad. But you know what?” I open my eyes, and she’s looking at me. I know that look, seen it my whole life.

“What?” she says, and takes a long drag.

“Lunch,” I say, “Lunch is what.”

Next morning, there’s snow on the ground, little more than an inch. But I get to work just fine, the roads are clear. Little after ten-thirty, Blaine drills off part of his thumb. Even over all the machinery, I can hear him scream. Darrell, the floor manager, is faster than his fat ass would suggest and he gets a clean rag on Blaine before I can even think to move. Then I’m sitting on the floor, holding Blaine with two arms while Darrell scrounges under the press for any bits or pieces. Blaine is screaming “Oh shit! Oh shit!” and he heaves and torques against me, like a current’s running through him. The rag turns dark in front me, and Darrel gives up the search, realizing what later proves to be true: that a half-inch bit spinning at a thousand rpm won’t leave much.

Darrel takes Blaine to the hospital and that leaves the rest of us unsupervised. But love for our own thumbs keeps us all working, safe and slow. Come noon, our line is thirteen rails short of quota. But Darrell isn’t back, and we go to lunch.

The Breadboard is really the only restaurant in town. The Mexicans who work the orchards drive in and eat at La Familia, but none of us gringos touch that place. You never know. Anyhow, when Syborg was cook, there wasn’t much reason to stray. Now, with Juan behind the burners, I’m thinking what’s the difference. But I go anyway, sit alone, and order a hamburger. Anyone can make a hamburger. Shelly, the waitress, a girl with a nice smile and wide hips, forgets to take my menu, and I don’t have anything to do but flip through it. And there it is. The Syborg. A juicy, tender chicken breast marinated in beer and secret spices, then grilled to perfection over medium-high heat, server on a Kaiser roll, topped with honey-cured bacon, Swiss cheese and a choice of fixins. A rumble moves through my gut, and I catch a whiff of myself. I didn’t shower this morning, and the excitement of Blaine’s accident made me sweat despite the cold. I smell gamey and metallic, like shavings and hormones. I want that sandwich.

My burger comes pink and cold in the middle, but Shelly’s too nice for me to bother her about it. I eat half, pick at my fries, and finish my Coke. Then it’s time. Blaine is out the rest of the day.

Anna works mornings at the elementary school. Answers phones and runs errands for the principal. She’s had the job three months now. Makes me nervous, all her talk about the kids and how cute they are and how a first-grader named Daniel is sweet on her and how he comes to her desk almost every morning with some first-grade line. We’re both thirty now, been together since high school, and I know about clocks and how they tick. I keep my mouth shut. A kid—well, that just won’t work. I’m not paternal, and I hope Anna can see that.

She’s telling me what a dick the principal is. “Guy made me spit out my gum. Like I was one of the kids. Says to me, ‘We don’t want to set a bad example.’ Can you believe that?”

“Asshole,” I say.

“That’s right,” she says, and plops to the couch so hard her beer foams up and runs down her hand. “Shit,” she says and puts her mouth over it. I think some things again.

“What did you do this afternoon?” I say.

“Nothing. I was here.”

“Watch any TV or anything?”

“Little bit of Oprah, but she just had on some grizzled-up old writer guy on who couldn’t even sit up straight to talk to her. But Oprah acted like she might just come because this guy never does interviews, won some big awards, blah, blah, blah. I like it when Oprah helps people, gives them things, makes dreams come true.”

“Why’s that?” I say, and it comes out sharp.

“No reason. I just like it. Don’t you think that’s nice, when people get what they deserve?”

I take a swig of my beer, and it bitters up my face. “What do you mean by that?”

“Donnie, what’s wrong with you? All these questions. I like Oprah when she helps people, that’s all. I could give a good Goddamn about some writer fart who can’t even sit up straight to talk to her. That’s all.”

“Did Oprah give the writer fart anything?”

“She should have given him a slap and told him to sit his ass up straight.”

“What would you want Oprah to give you?” I ask.

Anna looks up at me, cocks her head. “Nothing, Donnie,” she says, “I got everything I need right here. With you.” She smiles, and takes another drink of foamy beer. I want her to pat the seat next to her and invite me to sit with her, but she doesn’t.

Later, after we’ve laid down for bed, we have quick, point-A-to-point-B sex, and except for her “Give it to me’s,” neither of us says much, and she drifts off without going to the bathroom first. I stay awake, thinking about sperm—mine, the squiggly billions—and how they’re in there right now, whipping themselves up a canyon towards some salty and perfect spawning ground. Anna takes her pill. Never misses but one or two days, and always doubles up when that happens. And after sex, she’s eager to get me out of her, to flush away as much as possible, because odds are only odds and you can never be too safe. The whole thing—the elementary school job, Daniel the six-year-old ladies man, and now this—worries me. I’m hungry.

What’s in the fridge is beer, milk, and a block of cheddar in a Zip-loc. Secret spices. The two words float into my head as if on a scented breeze. I go to the pantry. There’s salt and pepper and McCormick’s chili packets, a bag of Fritos and a box of Lucky Charms, not much else. Anna and me, we eat out of cans and boxes and cellophane bags. I can’t cook and neither can she. Plus the dishes—who’s got the patience? That’s why I go to the Breadboard, for real food.

I open the bag of Fritos and crack a beer. Sit at the table and alternate swigs and chips until the bottle’s empty and I’m full. Back in bed, I can’t sleep and my stomach hurts. Anna’s breathing is long and fluid.

Blaine’s back at work the next day, a bandage the size of a snowball on his thumb. “Didn’t lose that much, really,” he says, guiding a new bit into his drill, “And right now, I can’t feel a thing, I’m so numbed out on Darvocet. Doctor Jaffey says it’ll look pretty stubby and I won’t have a thumbnail ever again, but it could’ve been a lot worse—didn’t lose the joint or nothing so I’ll still be able to do everything I’ve always done. Once it gets scarred over.”

Blaine keys in the bit, and turns on his drill, testing it nonchalantly. He pulls a rail off the line and drills the five holes—zip, zip, zip, zip, zip—like nothing ever happened, like losing a part of himself is an everyday occurrence. And that makes me wonder about Blaine, which makes me wonder about me. Would I even come back here? And if not, what would I do? Where would I go? And would I take Anna with me?

I pull a rail, drill my holes, and even with a good thumb and a clear head, I’m still not as quick as Blaine. All morning I can’t get the fear out of me. I imagine my thumb caught under spinning steel, torn apart in a spray of blood and cuticle. As we’re heading for our trucks and lunch, Darrell pulls me aside and tells me I need to step it up, that I’m way under quota, and that if it weren’t for Blaine pulling my weight, the whole line would be fucked—“F-U-C-K-D.”

“I saw her when I was in the hospital,” Blaine says. He’s gripping a chicken sandwich with his good hand and pinching a home fry between forefinger and his snowball bandage (which, after a morning of drilling, has turned the color of the approaching winter sky).

“That so?” I say, “What’d she look like?”

“Didn’t get a great look at her. A nurse just happened to be there as I was walking out. She pulled the curtain when she saw me looking.”

“Well?” I jab my fork at the patty melt I ordered. The cheese, if I had to guess, is Velveeta. The bread is burnt.

“Well, not good. Tubes in her mouth. Things on her fingers. Beeping machines. IV. That shit don’t bode well. I mean, it’s been more than a week. If she were going to get better, I think she would’ve done it by now. I wager Syborg’ll be looking at a murder charge before the week’s out.”

“They need to change the menu,” I say. “I’m tired of looking at it. Every third thing you order isn’t available because Juan can’t make it. And when you do get something, it tastes like glue. And if you want to bet on something, Blaine, I’ll bet you that Pete ain’t going to hire a new chef—someone good—because he knows he can get away with paying Juan those dishwasher wages.”

Blaine leans back, chews. “Donnie, I think you need to let this go. Sure, this place has gone to shit. Everything does, eventually. And the sooner you get used to the smell, the easier it’ll be. Think I’ve lost sleep over my thumb? Sure, but not tonight I won’t. What’s done is done.”

“Okay,” I say, “You’re right. Sorry.” And we finish our bad food in silence, split the bill down the middle and then wait until the whistle calls us back.

For dinner, Anna and I have Chef Boyardee ravioli, Jolly Green Giant creamed corn, and Dole pineapple rings. We eat off paper plates, use plastic forks. The whole dinner’s eaten and cleared away in less than ten.

Anna’s wiping off the table when she looks up and says, “I really want to fuck.” She drops the rag and lets her hand come to her stomach, like she’s still hungry.

“Okay,” I say, “Let me get another beer first.” But before I can turn away and get to the fridge, she grabs me. Two fistfuls of t-shirt followed by a hard tug to her open mouth.

“No, now,” she says and kisses me again, hard and sloppy like she’s eating for prize money. “Now.”

Clothes come off in fits and tangles, enough to expose the parts that matter. Then we’re on the table, Anna’s legs spreading around me, and next comes the hunting and the heaving, her bony body bucking, almost frantic, almost out of control. I pin her at the wrists, and try to keep my thrusts matched to her pumping, erratic hips. She doesn’t say, “Give it to me.” Instead, she says, “Fill it up,” over and over until she comes and her torso goes limp, the table creaking beneath her like weak applause. Then she opens her eyes and pulls herself up. “Don’t stop,” she says, “You don’t want to stop. Fill it up.”

I do want to stop because I know what’s happening. But there’s something in me—some kind of animal engine running on lust and survival—that won’t let me, that keeps me from putting an end to this. And even after I’m done and Anna leans back on the table and pulls her knees to her chest and chuckles, I know there’s nothing I can do about it. What’s done is done.

Next morning, I call in sick. As expected, Darrell’s pissed. Says I should know this is crunch time and that winter is the season for garage doors because houses go up in spring and summer. “Shit,” he says. And then: “I’ll see you tomorrow. But be prepared for some overtime.”

I tell Anna that I just can’t do it, not today, and that she shouldn’t worry. “I just need a day,” I say.

She kisses me, smiles. “Everything will be fine. Better than fine. I promise.” She holds my head between her palms like something delicate, a curio she’ll set on the shelf.

“Okay,” I say, “But I need today.”

She pats my cheek, then gathers up her things—keys, purse, coat—and leaves. She’s not two minutes out the drive before I’m pulling on jeans and a sweater, finding my own keys, along with cigarettes, a pen and a pad of scratch paper. Outside, it’s cold, the air almost frosted, and I remember I still don’t have spark plugs for the snowmobile. Like it matters. Like I’ll have the time to spend weekends on the backside of Pincer Peak, just me and my few thoughts. Probably have to sell the damn thing to pay for something else—a sonogram or a car seat or a crib or an operation. I don’t know what to do or think or even what I’m doing or thinking right then, but I get in the truck and drive.

County Jail is in Medford, downtown in a building that looks like a parking garage, grey and squat and windowless. The corners seemed sharpened, like the walls are made from razors set blade-to-blade.

Inside, I tell a guard sitting behind thick glass that I’m here to see Syborg, that I’m a friend from town.

She looks up at, looks back down. “Name?” she says.

“Donnie—Donald—Farrow.”

She hands me a form and tells me to fill it out. Name. Address. Phone. Birthday. Social security. Spouse. Purpose/Reason for visit. I’ve never been good at broad questions like this. I think about it for a minute, then write, “Friend?”

The guard scans the form, makes a couple of quick pen scrawls, and then brings an intercom to her mouth, announces me. There’s a crackle of agreement on the other end. “Right through that door,” she says to me, pointing, “Take any one of the stalls.”

The stalls are marked one through six. I take six, as far from the man and woman in stall one as I can be. She’s visiting him, and he’s growling at her in Spanish, and I can’t make up my mind if it’s anger or lust that’s got him so bothered. She hardly utters a word, just clutches a rosary to her breast and heaves a little. Again, it’s hard to tell.

Five minutes go by. On the other side of the glass is a room just like the one I’m in. Like I’m invisible and looking into a mirror. Only difference is there’s a guard standing next to the door, looking bored, checking his watch every minute or so. He makes eyes contact with me, keeps it until I look down at my hands.

Another five minutes and then the door opens. Larry walks in, orange jumpsuit, wrists and ankles in chains. Even through the thick glass, I hear the clank of them, sense their heft and permanence. The Mexican in stall one isn’t wearing chains, and I expect the guard to free Larry, to equalize him. But he doesn’t, only extends a hand my way and pulls the steel door shut with a cavernous boom. Larry, I realize, is actually dangerous—not to be trusted—and it’s hard to jibe that with his food, the most reliable eats in town. No, the county. He shuffles over to the stall, sits down and picks up the receiver, signals me to do the same.

“Donnie,” he says. His voice sounds far away, like we’re talking across countries, on systems that might not be compatible. He is unshaven. Dark circles quiver under his eyes. I realize I haven’t seen him without a baseball cap since high school, and what’s left of his black hair is salted with grey. “What the hell are you doing here?” he says.

“Well,” I say, “I heard about what happened, and—”

“You’re the first person’s come to see me. Not even my own folks.”

“We went to school together, Larry.”

“That’s true,” he says, “But it’s not like we’re—” He pauses and searches for the word with his free hand, a gesture that might be bigger if not for the chains. “Like we’re close.”

I shift in my seat and touch my jeans pocket, the raised shape of my cigarettes there. “Yeah,” I say, “But you stayed. Like me. I think that kind of makes us friends.”

Larry says, “Okay. So what is it? You need something?”

“I do, Larry, you got that right,” I say, “It’s about food, Larry, your food. I miss it, and I was wondering …”

“Who’s Pete got cooking?” he asks.

“Juan. And Christ, he’s awful. The place ain’t the same.”

We both sit in silence for a moment, like when a whole bunch of people die somewhere and they have to act solemn about it before football games and Oscar shows.

I decide just to come out with it. “The Syborg, Larry. I love that sandwich. I think I’ve eaten that sandwich damn near every day for the past seven years—except for those few weeks you were in the first time, of course. Hell, ever since I been with ProDoor. Then, poof, it’s gone.”

“You came here to talk about my sandwich?”

“Yeah, I did,” I say, and I drop my head then raise it again. “And I’d like to know how to make it myself.”

Larry shakes his head, rattles his chains. “That’s a secret. Says so right on the menu.”

“Come on, Larry,” I say, “I won’t tell anyone. Just for me, I promise. Won’t even tell Anna.”

Larry leans back, shoots a glance over his shoulder at the guard, who’s still checking his watch and looking bored. The Mexican keeps growling, and now his woman’s growling back. Larry leans back in. “You promise?” he says.

“Hand on the Bible,” I say, and press a palm against the glass.

“Okay, alright.” His tone is hushed, like he’s about to confess. I slip the pad of paper from my back pocket and lay it on the desk. “Nuh-uh,” Larry says, “Put that away. This is an oral tradition.”

I nod, return the pad to my pocket, and ready my mind for remembering.

“Listo?” Larry says.

“Okay,” I say. My breath is shallow, palms clammy.

“Coors Light and McCormick chili seasoning. Soak the chicken breast in Coors, sprinkle with McCormick’s and grill. Done.”

“That’s it?” I say.

“That’s it,” Larry says. He leans back and tents his hands over his chest. His smile is small but proud.

I sit there a few seconds, stunned at first, then angry, pissed, hate rising inside me like a column of fire. I say, “That’s not a fucking secret, you fuck. That’s not cooking, you goddamn psycho. You know what that is? That’s a sham, Larry. A fucking sham.” I slam the receiver to its cradle, get up, and storm off. Outside, it’s so cold I’m afraid the tears will freeze to my face.