Winesburg, Pennsylvania

Lou Barlow's Smile

2007-10-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

A toxic salve,
so easy to fall into.
Saves me from myself
by consuming everything.
He is the joy of childhood crushes,
the part of awkward, shyness, curiosity
that never grows tired.
The euphoria of the first kiss,
even better, the longing stare.
What I would give to see
Lou Barlow's smile
in that moment again.

Painter

2007-09-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

In the apartment above the little clothing shop that had fallen by the wayside of time, an old woman with glasses circled amidst her many projects. Her rooms were large, yet they were cramped and almost manic in nostalgia. The place was filled with every kind of concept paper. Ideas sketched in crumpled notebooks and relics of past triumphs she could no longer discern in anything but the very best of lighting.

Lizzie Fritzinger, always aloof yet plagued by chronic pain of all sorts, did not consider herself a conventional woman. Among all the people in her town, she felt close to almost no one. There was just her childhood friend, Meyer Wilke—a practical joker and one so attuned to the measures of Lizzie’s own personality that they’d had the rarest of the rare: a lifelong best friendship.

Now, as she scuttled about amongst her many things, she could not stop herself from hoping that Meyer would come. She removed her glasses and fingered them nervously with a soaked paper towel. Then she left them on the table.

Night fell just outside the window. Slowly, ever so slowly, it crept inside. She switched on the television- an insincere effort to quell her loneliness. With Larry King in the background, Lizzie stepped before an empty canvas and started mixing colors.

Red, blue, green, yellow, orange… a squirt here, a dab there, and soon she dipped her brushes into the thick, oozing fluids. “Now we will see what the night brings.”

Her paintbrush hung off her fingertips. To anyone watching, it would have looked as though it moved independent of her; colors dripped onto the space and coalesced in a mass of lines and figures before she knew what had happened. For Lizzie, shadow had always played a large role in her paintings…

After a few minutes, lost within herself, she stepped back from the easel and focused her eyes on a huddled mass of color in the lower right corner of the canvas. Her hand reached for an exceptionally thin brush, which she then dabbed in blacks and charcoal grays. Wrist flicked several times, making contact with the surface of the space. In her mind’s eye, it was all so clear.

The figure, a hound, had escaped from his owner. Running across an open field, the dog headed toward a clustering of ducks, for he looked intent on creating a disturbance. It was not the beast, however, that so interested Lizzie. It was not the beast she pictured in her mind’s eye at all. Rather, it was the grass and the air in the wake of the animal’s charge toward ephemeral instinct—and away from his owner.

The solemn painter yearned- this was a fact- to capture what is unseen, the openness that exists, sliding in and out like a fluid between things.

A short distance from the animal- at the center clearing, beside a fountain- Lizzie painted the figures of a man and a woman chasing after it. The man was intent in his pursuit- the woman, somewhat half-hearted, barely kept up.

She imagined she had painted this very scene a hundred times before- only to have it end badly at every recurrence. She thought that the man and woman in her painting had failed to grasp its meaning. That they’d not heard her warnings in every brush stroke.

“These ghosts, these half-ingested thoughts are our regrets, warning us to turn back around,” she whispered, staring at the canvas, annoyed she could still see each of her many determinations so clearly.

Awhile later, after Lizzie had collapsed in a chair, Meyer came to the door. With her friend at her side, Lizzie ventured out of the little apartment and away from the pictures that served as her companions in the absence of pulsating flesh and blood.

As her eyes adjusted to the lamplights that dotted the sidewalk along which they trod, Lizzie began to speak of many things, avoiding talk of her paintings or the myriad ideas swirling about in her mind’s eye.

Meyer- well accustomed to such lyric rants- kept a steady stride and peered into store windows as they passed. “What is it you are trying to paint?”

Stopping, she looked down at the sidewalk- the gray, cemented earth laden with cracks, fractures from decades of elemental pressure. The painter’s eyes grew wide. Removing her glasses again, she knelt to pull some weeds from one such crack in the sidewalk. The light melted off the street lamps and the huddled old woman stared as though one looking into the face of a lover. The awed eyes, the concentrated expression of this mostly blind painter might have made her appear to others as though a protégé at the foot of her Muse.

“Between people, Meyer…” Lizzie began, than she stopped and sighed. Standing, she put her glasses back on. “Intent charges out in front of me toward my focus. Vibrations, layers of intentions, all that is never said but always felt- that’s what I try to paint.”

Lizzie's Doodles

2007-06-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Girlfriend

2007-04-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

The salesman had taken to the young girl despite his better judgment. She was endearingly compliant and yearned for his attention. As for the salesman, he liked to look at her because when he did, she stared back with the eyes of a reverent angel. It was late summer when she came to the store, came to tell him she was pregnant.

The salesman peppered her with questions and voiced his anger more passionately than he’d intended. And though she did not cry, the young girl’s intense eyes bobbled and welled up with loathing. It was in that moment he first registered a fear that he had disappointed her. He was shocked it saddened him so.

That night, after the girl had long since left the store, the salesman closed out his cash drawer in silence. Walking to the back exit, he sat for a moment on a stack of old packing cartons. Cradling his face in his hands, he considered the baby.

Seemed years since he met the girl on a warm Wednesday. They had talked of sports for more than an hour. Her lover at that time was a basketball fanatic, for that reason she knew almost all there was to know about Michigan State’s Flintstones and point guards, and the pro leagues of tomorrow. “Short equals speed,” she’d said again and again.

The salesman remembered how she laughed. Her throat began in an unexpected chortle and ended in a series of hops- all the while, her body remained perfectly still. And as they stood beside the sparkling fountain in the center of the park, her dog’s leash slipped out of her hand. The mutt was off like a shot, headed for a cluster of ducks on the bank of the creek about a hundred feet away.

“No!” the girl called out.

Together, she and the salesman darted across the clearing through the blackening sunlight. Somehow, they managed to pull the dog from its precarious position atop a smattering of wet stones.

"Those ducks are too fast for you,” the salesman chastised the dog, even as the young girl scooped him up in her arms. He petted the poor mutt and laughed at its dissatisfied expression.

In the storeroom now, all he can think is how I wish that day had never happened. Simply, if he had walked an opposite way through the park, if the dog had only taken off sooner, if he’d had the sense to not chase after it…

“I don’t want to tell your wife,” the young girl had said to him earlier that day. “This doesn’t have to be a problem. I just wanted you to know.”

He asked if she cried when she found out about the baby.

Touching him, the girl traced figure eights on his arm as she had done so many times before. “I did… I did. But then I started to think this might be the push I’ve been waiting for.” A delicate smile. “No one will ever know,” she continued. “I’ve thought about it, and I’m quite sure it’s the right thing to do.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You’ve already done it.”

On his carton at the back of the store, the tears came. If he'd only
known when he met her, he might have foregone the talk, the laugh, the dog. If he'd only chased the phantom air in the opposite direction of her.

Images of her broken body flashed in front of him now, comforting him. The salesman tried to block out the many sensations he’d drowned in at her hand. He held himself and yearned the day- that it might quickly come- when he would forget her.

June 18, 1999

2007-02-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

“Ha, it’s done,” she said.

The paintbrush a glinting cobweb,
or her wrist, dangling in the air
as if to waiting for the daybreak rousing of its next
fever. A split second. “It’s done?” she asked,
surveying the fulsome scape
of the canvas.

“The picture of safety,”
the artist decided one morning, told me in piercing and impatient tones
at the core of the broad crest
of her living room/studio. Seeds of paint spray everywhere.

Just then, a bright blob of quaking crimson
made its way down the slant of her bottled filigree tray;
there, propped on an uneven end table,
poised precariously on the air
against nothing- defiant, as it were.

The iced cobalt of her eye
became vapor when she painted, and her face
a study of fissures
the very wrinkles, the slits that sought to undermine
Time’s whispered insecurity- those static, castrate conditions.

Imagine, so slight a woman
making a canvas yield to her like that.

I’d swayed there.
Watched the swelling preludes.
Now in front of her,
further, the picture evolved.

What, exactly, does security look like?
Is it her lock boxes
balanced atop iconography…
is it a blonde, closely shorn head,
the smell of leather,
default crosses or well-rehearsed prayers…
is it stifling familiarity?

A wily old gal, silver mop and
malformed spinal cord- she’s the shape of a question mark.
Lizzie liked to talk Tuesday afternoons:
God, how unsafe the world is,
how one had everything- and nothing-
to do with the other.

A Found Poem

2006-06-07T17:45:00.000-07:00

Something for Nothing

You and I could walk into a casino,
look around and realize
this place wasn’t built on winners;
but I’m sure by now
you realize not everyone thinks the same way.

Like the gambler on tilt.

It’s no longer just a chip and a chance
for the five percent of Americans
who have an issue with gambling.

Michael Jordan bet big,
was investigated by the NBA
and acquitted.

Pete Rose couldn’t control himself,
was banned from baseball and imprisoned.

Pseudocode

2006-03-30T16:26:00.000-08:00

“a compact and informal high-level description of a computer programming algorithim.”

Do
be passionate
while I am near.
/
If nothing else
at least be that.
(It doesn’t matter what you do
or when you do it
be passionate with me.)
If nothing else
please do that.
/
Else
drain the kefi
if we are through.
/
Delete the memory,
purge the system
as we are undone.
/
Do
make haste away, love.
*//
Else
Else
I am undone
if you go.
/
Who knows his way around
my many tricks and turns
like you?
/
Do
return, love.
End-if.

Womanhood

2006-01-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

Is Carolyn Keene more than the sum total
of her flat arches and brow lines?
More than Clairol red, number 952,
self-assurance in a cardboard box?
I thought as much as a child.
Nine and ten and eleven…
Reading cover to cover every Nancy Drew mystery
in what seemed like flashes of time.

Keene’s creation, intrepid girl detective,
carried me through many a green
awkward is the night. Before long,
my attention shifted to more pressing matters like

Disco, Rock n’ Roll, Hollywood, Malibu
Barbie even had an incarnation as rocket scientist.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen…
In what other scenario could I study
a woman’s figure? I needed to know
what to do with what, and when to do it.

And though she lacked anatomic reality,
I learned feminine direction of a grander sort:
when to cry in front of Ken to get your way,
when to lean in too close, when to whisper,
when to let your gazes linger.

While peers moved on to real romance,
I still indulged in make-believe. And though eventually
my fealty was packed away in the attic,
that tendency lingered in which I fantasized the ideal,
never wasting a precious moment
on what was merely possible.

I had loved Robert, Don, Eddie. Adored them.
And as my hormones started throwing themselves
against metaphoric walls, I dreamt of these males
on a moonlit canopy bed, indulging in the impossible.
Not with me, not even with each other,
but with 21st century woman, ideal woman, perfect
“me,” version two-thousand one-hundred twenty
point-oh.

By the end of junior-high, I began to
re-acquaint myself with the lovely flippancy
betwixt author and character. Salinger had Holden Caulfield. Moriarty
ran circles ’round Keruoac. Irving’s Garp got him into
all sorts of trouble.

Meanwhile, this was all to know of womanhood:
heroines like Meg Ryan, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore.

The r sounds in each of their names
resolute, ready, rolling like the rumblings
of a standoff-ish purebred.
Nevermind Ryan’s impossibly wholesome image,
or that Roberts’ husband was married when they met,
even Barrymore, addled, ill it seemed, for a time.

Pink, cotton candy, matinee women.
Skinny, tall, ‘made to complete men’ women.
Big smiles, eyes a warm, approachable brown.
Boobs big enough to satisfy but not
enough to threaten.

Reporter

2005-11-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

She was a young girl with a dour face and oddly expressive eyes. Long before her affair with the married salesman, Miriam was a red-haired virgin who floated around Richland believing in fairy tales for a living, and cleaning other people’s houses. (Later, after she met the salesman she would always look at him- she searched him for something of Fritz).

He was short and he had bad eyesight, the reporter, and he had a way of wandering through town- lost in thought- oblivious to passerby until they were almost all the way by, almost out of earshot. Then, only then, he hollered out an excitable “Hello!” This Fritz, he had dark hair that sulked across his forehead at inopportune times, something like an obstinate child who just refuses to behave. He struck many townspeople as aloof. All in all, everyone in Richland whispered about the two, they got on so quick and so well.

Whenever the young girl saw him, her blank face lit like kindling. Dour expression, and an empty sort of canvas, she was instantly set free as her air mixed with his- their lives too enmeshed now for discernment. In the days after Fritz’s death, Miriam would sit all day in one of the apartments she was hired to clean. She stared out the filmy windows and remembered, her body growing warm, how his hands once thirsted for her- thrust deep inside of her as though his yearning could not be consoled until their bodies breathed as one.

Afterward, Richland forgot about Miriam until the married salesman chased down her dog in the park. In Miriam herself, though, there was a hint of the spectacular. Alone in her dull apartment, she worked ceaselessly- constantly remembering- trying to rebuild what a drunk driver took a split second to destroy.

A tall woman who wore the same black and white tank top for years- it was her work uniform- and as she did little else, it was her most comfortable piece of clothing. When she cleaned people’s houses, Miriam always thought of Fritz. She carried with her a notebook- the kind styled for journalists that he used to stuff in his back jeans pocket. Endlessly, relentlessly, she poured over their time together and at the precise moment of a recollection, she jotted down those words of his. Whatever they were, whenever they came upon her.

“I love you,” once… “We should go to the islands someday,” another time… “What were your parents like?”… “Why is the apartment of a housemaid so cluttered?”

She filled page after page- notebook after notebook- with her re-creations of him, and very quickly they became too heavy to carry.

The five-and-dime is closing... What was it Fritz had said about the owner’s gambling habit? The church is adding a new wing... He thought far too many people place their faith in buildings and in abstract concepts.

All in all, the story of Miriam and the reporter equals the sum of one odd tale. The girl awoke when she was in his company and he in hers. All of the town watched as sunrises came and went bleeding across the sky with frighteningly fast intensity- the difference in the days before Miriam and Fritz in Richland was equated by many to the difference on the countenances of each when they held the other. Quite possibly, the old town fell in love alongside them.

Miriam and the reporter had their exact beginnings on a fall afternoon. Fritz smirked the first time he saw her- what he called later “a smile gone wrong”- and he walked all the way to the end of the street before he found the courage to turn back around. She was beneath the awning on the stoop of the little clothing store, eating her lunch of apples and granola. When he came back, he stood in front of her and shaded his eyes. He tilted his body so he was level with her. “Best restaurant in town?” he asked.

“Their tailoring is to die for.” She locked gazes with him, she blushed.

Once, her family had been among the richest of all the legendary names in New England. That was before the stock market crash that ruined her parents’ computer business. Long after, long since the family parted ways- her parents headed to some retirement community in the South- Miriam suffered through the most horrific dreams. When she slept, her mind wound together visions of silicon transistor chips that mercilessly smothered her father.

Fritz listened to her tell this dream story more than once. “You felt like he became a machine.”

“I wouldn’t say that, no. Binary code at least gave a man like him some context. My grandmother said once ‘there was no knowing him until he learned to work a motherboard.’”

After Fritz and Miriam got together, they were rarely apart. They passed many an evening just talking in his apartment or driving his little black car through the country that surrounded Richland. She adored such things as hand holding and star gazing- he began to appreciate them as well.

“One day, I’ll finish my book,” Fritz said suddenly. Both had just finished gasping at the presence of a shooting star.

Later, after Fritz's funeral, after the arrest and trial of the drunk driver-an over-privileged teen with a closet full of fake ids- Miriam finally cleared her head enough to sort through the stacks of notebooks she’d filled with his words. If, more than anything, he wanted his story- then she would find it, here. And she would be the one to write it for him.

Goddess

2005-08-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

In the darkness he waits for her. The cool night air is punctured by passing headlights- an intermittent pulse of life. It’s a deserted place, a country road. A packing plant gone unused these several months since operations moved to Mexico. Down the road, as he observed coming in tonight, a housing development is in the works. He rolls his eyes, imagining the traffic here in a few years’ time.

For most of today, his nerves have played at him—more, it’s a sense of unease he can’t explain. They’ve been seeing each other forever, at least it seems that way. She’s younger than he is. There are times he thinks she’s had no one else. In the past, there were even moments when he’d found her inexperience charming. Now, however, he’s fairly certain that she sees other men. It doesn’t upset him like it once might have, though he worries about her judgment sometimes. He has no desire to discuss such things with her for fear it will lead to further “talks”—the very animal he dreads. Every so often, just to comfort her, on saying goodnight he adds, “Be mine.” It suffices, he thinks, to keep them on track in her eyes.

As for anticipating the woman he’s now waiting for—that stopped, as such, long ago. She’s cute enough. Heavier than he likes. And he’s never been much for blonds, oddly. But whenever he calls, she comes. And she does whatever he asks. No… it isn’t nerves. He’s unsettled, he decides, swallowing to rid the sharp taste in his mouth.

On the periphery a car slows. His body tenses as he watches for a turn signal. Nothing. He relaxes. The refrain of an old Bruce Springsteen song suddenly rattles the darkness. Cell phone display reads “Pamela,” and he takes a breath. She is the receptionist in his office. A gorgeous brunette, she’s starred in his fantasies many a night. For now, he mutes the ringer and continues his vigil. His mind drifts helplessly to the enigma of Pam’s husband. The women in his office spend their coffee breaks day after day giggling, referring to their men as louts. Not she. Pam stands out among the bulging soccer-mom nags and complainers. He wonders what she thinks of him.

Glancing to the dash, he rolls up his windows and turns the ignition off. The air is sucked out of the car and silence fills his ears. “Money is money,” he says. His watch reads 7:49. He mutters a profanity. She’s late, and when she arrives she’ll inevitably want to talk about some damn thing before they can be quiet and be together. He will tell her that he loves her, as he has grown accustomed to doing, because it gets her focused and in the mood. But he does love the perfume she wears—some nights he’d lost himself in that scent, in her eager arms, her soft hair, her warm inside. He closes his eyes and massages his shaft, daydreaming of a woman—an amalgam of she, Pamela, and of his wife (before).

A few seconds pass. A sedan with a raucous engine makes a right turn. Passing beneath a row of yellow lights bordering the far end of the lot, the car’s driver extinguishes the high beams. Making a giant loop, the car parks beside him. A woman gets out. She fidgets with her hair in the creeping moonlight. They gaze intently at one another. Then she smiles broadly and runs to his passenger door. Pulling it open, she leaps in excitedly, flooding the interior with light. “You started without me,” she says, laughing. “You couldn’t wait?” Leaning in, she pulls his hand back and places hers upon him.

For some reason she starts talking about the first time they met—then she corrects herself. “It wasn’t when we met. Weeks later, you really noticed me. Talked to me. Remember? You gave me a ride home after that Christmas party. I was tired, probably a little drunk, and I slept some of the way. But there, next to me, I could sense you wanting me. That blue jacket of yours with the plaid hood, it’s ingrained in my memory from that night. I will never ever forget it, or your annoying penchant for sports, exercise. Everything so foreign to me.” She laughed. “You’re a part of me in a way I can’t explain. (You make me feel so high and so low at the same time.)”

She says she missed him today. Longed for him in every way imaginable. She is nervous about his newly quieted expression. Begins sputtering promises of her fidelity to him—there has never been another, there will never be... She interweaves these declarations with praise for him, for his commitment to his wife. In truth, she hates his wife and chooses suddenly to say this, to scream it, but she backtracks immediately because he loved this woman once—still, she knows.
One day we’ll really be together, she whispers. Is it a question? She takes his hands and wraps them around her. She pulls him toward her and forgets all else.

These are things she feels. This is what she would’ve said when he asked “how are you?” if he had asked—if she thought, even for a minute, that he gave a damn.

That man, the man she made love to most every night, was all in her mind.

Twin

2004-09-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

encounter at court street...

Two years before she had seen him off in handcuffs. Apollo/Andrew had cursed her and swore revenge.

Some seven hundred days after the fact, after she cleaned herself up, she saw him standing at the end of Court Street. He was in the sunlight that poured off an unassuming building, cast one half of his body in shadow. Behind him, the traffic was black ghosts of a late autumn afternoon.

She thought of how they had had sex, quiet and with much vulnerability on the part of them both, when each screamed inwardly for the other. Kay thought about turning around, but she knew he'd seen her. He stared with the old intensity she could never avoid.

They met in a club, one of those many places that are all alike. All crazy light and alcohol. This one was an abandoned warehouse, detached from the normal community of industrial storage spaces on the side of town where the sky was choked with black soot. It had two levels. The first, the ground floor. And then an upstairs that was built around the open air like those suburban shopping malls buried deep inside of New Jersey- it was littered with mice and rat feces, with cartons of ribbon covered in dated shipping stickers and frozen cigarette ash. Girls danced up there on Saturday nights. Competition, and the best received a hundred bucks plus free beer all night long. The sound system was also up there, suspended in the air above everybody's heads, black and powerful. A solemn guy named Eddie pushed c.d's through his player in a back room somewhere. People said he was connected to the owner of the place. When he felt depressed, he only played Barry Manilow. It didn't matter, no one cared about the tempo.

A Friday, late in June, she first saw him. He stood in a corner, under a shock of white light that reminded Kay, at two a.m., of the sun. Blinking, she tried to be sure he was not her imagination. He looked out of place with the teenagers and twenty-year olds dressed in plastic colors wearing anxious eyes. His hair was the color of straw, like the hay that she used to feed her grandfather's horses on the farm. Had a round face, like a child's. She wanted to protect him. Whether it was the time or the amount of tequila in her blood, she didn't care. He was an angel crouching down.

"You were staring my way, girl with the gold brown skin." He touched the tender skin of her throat. When she didn't flinch, he put his whole hand there, caressed the smooth curve of her neck.

Around them, there was thrashing and kicking. The world got into a hammering dance song with some computer edge to it. Stoners were towards the rear of the warehouse. They screamed and twitched every so often. Drinkers could be found, for the most part, picking fights by the bar. In between were the kids who hadn't made it yet to either group.

"You look fifteen. " He studied her, she was in the average club attire- little clothing and lots of make up. "I mean that in a good, call me Humbert Humbert way."

"What?"

"Nothing. Lissen', you came to me for a reason, what is it? Did Renzo tell you to find me?"

"Who?"

He squinted and smiled. "No one. Business associate."

Every ten seconds someone passed by and greeted him "Apollo!" The interruptions unnerved her, he could tell. He told her to call him Andrew. She nodded numbly.

The noise in the club was defeaning. Already, you had the curse of a rhyming rainstorm that pounded on the windows, and the doors, and the eighty foot roof. The music, chanting and nonsensical drumbeats, every spare second of consciousness was stolen away. No time when they weren't hitting you, beating you down- she squeezed her eyes shut. Stoners yelled. The drinkers, they smashed bottles. Nearby, she could see a man forcing his hand up the skirt of an uncooperative girl. Couples argued, others just lazily tossed themselves across tables and went to sleep. No matter what, their faces pulsed like little, immediate, throbbing veins. Capillaries, you call them, those purple clusters. Everything was a hundred times. She took a deep breath. Focusing on him, on Apollo/Andrew, she was able to concentrate on what he was saying.

"Girl with the gold brown skin, will you hate me if I call you 'honey'?"

She blushed. "Must be ten years, Momma told me straight every day, 'Please and thank you. Please and thank you, Little Kay.' They said I had no social graces, I had no skills, they said I had no nothing. Sorry for not introducing myself. My name is Kay. Katie, Katherine, Kate, it doesn't matter which."

"I can't call you honey?" He smiled, his teeth were like seagulls, waiting. "Little Kay, please tell me you're not fifteen. You're sweet. I like sweet things."

Not sure of how to respond, she quickened the tapping of her feet. "I used to think I'd be a dancer by this time, by now. To answer you, I turn twenty in July. I weigh a hundred seventeen pounds. By Arthur Murray's standards, that'd be too old and too fat."

"You aren't."

"Okay, maybe not by his, but how about the New York Ballet?"

His front lip jutted forward, he raised his eyebrows. "That's the classiest thing I heard in awhile. How come it didn't-" he paused, glanced over his shoulder as if he had suddenly decided to expect someone who was hopelessly important. Then he returned his attentions to her. "Let's talk about where we should go." Apollo/Andrew brushed a loose piece of hair off her forehead. "Your apartment? Mine?"

And he never stopped asking her questions like that.

*****

Kay gazed at him, some sixty feet in front of her, there, on the street. He hadn't changed much- hair was still too long, skin was still too white. Tilting his head, he returned her curious glances. Both of his arms hung at his sides, much like they always had, suggesting an openess or candor that was almost scary. When he crossed his right hand over to grasp the fabric on the left side of his shirt, she realised he'd gotten thinner. Then he let the shirt go, wrinkled, and she saw his fingers close just below the joint of his other arm. She waited.

*****

"Choice. Just lookit how we're supposed to be descendents of angels an' the ancestors of monkeys. Columbus could've gone to Asia an' come back with silk, spices, fine women- be to that world what Mr. Bill Gates is to this one. Instead, he's all time. But in fifty years, the man behind Microsoft becomes just another one of those machines. An' what about abortion? Isn't life birth and death? how can the unborn be human? But thinking of a fetus as not human might be the same as saying a kid isn't yet because he doesn't pay taxes. Choice.

"Karl Marx had some good ideas, Karl Marx was an idiot. See war as a nightmare, see it as a chance to look for Oskar Schindlers, Anne Franks, General MacArthurs. Democrats have too much compassion, Republicans have too much reason. Choice.

"People done worse than me. I don't steal, I never hit a man who didn't deserve it, I don't even lie very much. There are pushers, I'm not one. I don't get anyone hooked, I supply whoever comes to me. Why not? They'll get it someplace else if I don't, so I figure I'm doing them a favor- I never added sugar or salt to the list of ingredients.

"I could go to jail, but liquor stores are legal. Sex isn't considered a drug, but it never touched a person who it hasn't hurt. Not giving to charity is a choice. What about the bookstore owner who lives on the corner? How different is he from me?"

Few had reasoning like his, like Apollo/Andrew's, even less could awaken each day and still look themselves in the mirror. Doing what he did. Explaining it away, detaching himself for love of money and not a single greater thing than that.

Little Kay spent many afternoons talking to him. She wouldn't say she learned a lot, but she picked up on the patterns and subtleties of manipulation. And how to break past defenses to needle the part of a person that always buckled when it got down to the wire on questions of desire and need. When talk became boring, she realised she had grown accustomed to him enough, by now, to take the next step. Child-like demons, the demons that prolong a holding pattern, flitted off into the night with her dreams. Little Kay found herself inside his arms. And then his bed. And, later, where she yearned to be. At the other end of his dinnertable conversations about music, about politics, and about television.

She had seen that there was more to him than a first, drunken glance. All Little Kay wanted was that reciprocation. Few friends. No one with whom to talk about what ballet school might've been. Although he cringed when she broached the subject of dance, he encouraged her in other ways. She had had a fascination with paints and canvases since she was young. Apollo/Andrew agreed to sit for her. For a portrait, one weary, bright afternoon.

His legs were in the right place. She had him seated in an old and rather ornate chair, given him by his grandmother, the only one in his family who he truly liked. Little Kay posed him with both arms resting atop the high-backed chair, so he was leaning into it, and his legs crossed in a collegiate way. He kept shaking free of her insistence. "That isn't me. That is not me. Shouldn't it be this guy?" He held a hand over his heart and she giggled. "No joke, kid, this isn't funny. I won't have a painting of me hanging in some rich guy's house, them gawking an' asking what prep schools did I go to? wouldn't it be nice, if just once, their daughter brought home a guy like me?"

All she heard was the first part. "You think somebody will buy this? A rich somebody, with a lot of cash to throw around?"

Apollo/Andrew, who took great care in maintaining things, seemed unable to get comfortable. He smiled at her. "Yeah. I guess I may not win on this one, huh?"

She puffed out her upper lip by blowing air into her cheeks. When she shook her head, laughing, her curls tossed and turned and twirled. It was something to see a sight like that. No one ever looked happy. "You tellin' me to say Andrew because you get so tired of all of them. 'Pollo this, 'Pollo that. Who do I paint? the face I kiss? the one I hate when he has no dust for me? Who should I put up on here?" Flicked the clean white canvas with her brush, it was covered in luscious red. Dots appeared everywhere. Little Kay giggled again, she loved the effect. Dipped the brush in water, and then blue, repeated herself. Her thoughts in the morning were of what to do with him. She was between abstract and surreal, certain that no matter what he said, he would not sit still for her for very long. "Who's the guy who put his canvas on the ground?"

"Jackson Pollak, yeah, he's dead. He's the one who you mean." Apollo/Andrew sat back and started on another cigarette. He had been smoking a lot lately.

She lit the canvas with more blues and greens, thinking that because of her excursion the painting had been ruined. He was manipulative. He cared, but he would not show it. He wore jeans all the time, but there was a distinct tuxedo air about all his movements. He dreamed good dreams. She knew because she heard him whisper in his sleep sometimes. He sold drugs. He worried for homeless people, and felt more pride than he should have for his own circumstance. It was in no way earned. Frowning, she drew a precise line down the center of her raindrop canvas. The easel wobbled. Her colors looked too thick, so she watered them down.

Apollo/Andrew asked what time it was, when did she think that she would be done? She mumbled something.

Her hands shook after a half an hour, she was breathing deeper to concentrate. The line separating the two sides had grown bigger and thicker since the time when she began, when she didn't know what to do with him. Her dots became an ideal backdrop, some sort of frantic cascade from a cloud that didn't know whether it was cumulous or nimbus, from a day that didn't know whether it should love the light or the dark. She sighed, perspiration ran down her forhead.

"You know what I been thinkin' just the other day, just the other day, Little Kay? Little Kay, my girl with the honeysuckle skin, I been thinkin' maybe we should get married."

She bumped the easel, knocking it over with a suddeness that shook her from her trance. It lay there, cracked, on the floor. "What?"

"Maybe we should get married. Hog tied. Swing the old ball and chain back an' forth. Then again," he paused, "there is that marriage tax to think about."

"You love me?" She tried to make it nonchalant, a search for reassurance made in passing, but it came out sounding like a question and the shock of saying those words made her voice trail off into nervous nothing.

"I like you best. We have fun, you an' I."

"'Like you best', what does that mean? Better than who?"

He grinned. "Everyone. Anyone."

"I'm a good girl." She stared at the paintbrush she loved. "No matter what my momma thinks of me, no matter what the rest of them say. I'm a good girl. I want the house, and the fence, and the little boy who pretends to be Superman. And the husband who worships ground I walk on. You understand? I want that for myself."

Apollo/Andrew studied her lovely dancer's body, it was full of pleasure for him. He sighed, and puffed another time on his cigarette.

*****

He stood in front of her on Court Street, one hudred feet from the door of her new apartment building, the place she had moved to after the trial. They had sentenced him to twenty-five years, but she heard later that he made some kind of a deal with the prosecution. That was when Kay left Seattle and moved to Richland, in Pennsylvania.

She made mistakes. She helped him sell. She saw kids die slow, horrible deaths, with vaccuums where their mouths should've been-- they weren't allowed last words, just an oxygen bubble born of their crushed insides. When he pursed his lips and gazed down at the sidewalk, she said, "Look me in the eyes, baby. Who's scared of who?"

He turned his face toward the street, toward the silken sunlight, and the late afternoon traffic. "'Member how I used to read your palm? Aunt Gwen, she thought she was a gypsy in another life. Yours said eighty-five or ninety years, kids, grandkids, picket fences, lots of love. Handsome prince. A duel. You were goin' out in a blaze of glory, I knew that. Little Kay would make a lot of noise. Who wins? Maybe she never dies, I don't know. Maybe the bad guy kills the princess. Maybe it ends in a tie." His hands were in his pockets.

*****

The kleig lights lined the roof of the warehouse, forming neat t's and h's. Someone whispered that Eddie, the depressed D.J., had signed divorce papers with his wife that morning. The sound system was hooked into raw jazz.

Little Kay was covered in paint, regretful of her spots like a baby leopard in a pack of lion cubs. She couldn't get it off of her.

*****

On Court Street:
"I wish I never met you. What? No rhyme for me, 'Pollo, no present, no nothing?"

He remained silent. He thought if he could look at her everything would be okay. Now his stomach lurched. The line that had been dividing him was gone. It left off somewhere between Apollo and Andrew, between his own attempts at combining the two, and his girlfriend. The little girl who had put him together soon enough to break him apart. He thought that if he could just touch her one more time, then everything would be okay. He reached out for the smooth and tender skin of Kay's neck...

*****

As she sat in the lieutenant's office, she contemplated a future of certainty, in jail, and the other, if she were to turn state's evidence against Andrew David Lees. Used to be, 'uncertainty' expected everything to go wrong. After all, wasn't that her life? As she smiled now, looking at the fading glow of the lieutenant's desk lamp, Little Kay wondered if what it really meant was that anything was possible. There was no one in the room with her. She signed the dotted line of a page she had been doodling in the margins of for fifteen minutes. There was quiet all around.

*****

On Court Street again, the tension is palpable.

She pulls him to her. Their mouths meet in an old embrace. Neither is hungry, they realise, after a number of seconds; it is a handshake, perhaps a "congratulations on your sobriety," yet they hold each other for a long time, both crying, both whispering apologies, promises, and fantasies about what their life together might've been. A nonsense dream. They were each other's creation. She, the painter; he, the acceptor of her vision.

After awhile he lets go. He turns and walks past her, down the street, into the dying afternoon. The last thing she hears him say is, "I'll never forget you. I will never regret you."

Handicap

2003-09-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

They had known each other little more than a week. Sheila said she wanted to take him to her favorite place in the world. After milling in an all-night restaurant for an hour, they wound up on the musty doorstep of a small bookshop in East Lansing.
“It’s closed.” He stared at her in the fine, misting rain. Her yellow dress lit like a soft halo from a car’s headlight somewhere down the block.
She leaned, whispered in his ear. “Look again.”
A glow floated in a barely visible back doorway of the shop. “What is it?” Remy asked, unsure yet if he cared or not. All he knew was the smell of her perfume, the soft fabric of her dress as a damp breeze brushed it against his trembling hand.
“Come with me,” she said, disappearing around the corner of the shop.
He followed her into the wet hedges that grew along the side of the building. They both flattened their bodies against the wall. “Are we breaking in?” he asked.
A window in front of them, shade only partly drawn. They peered through it and into the backroom of the shop. On tiptoe, they watched a man write furiously in a ledger, his left hand all the time pulling at his shaggy graying hair. “He’s not dying it anymore.” Sheila giggled.
“Oh god.” Remy hated superficial men.
“That’s Tom Mackey,” she said. “He used to teach high-school English. He was a frustrated writer.”
“Aren’t they all?” He wanted to say that, of all people, he thought writers should at least go out of their way to avoid stereotyping themselves. Instead, he asked whether Mackey had taught her.
“Everyone said he kept dozens of unfinished novels in his desk drawers. He became more and more irate that he wasn’t able to see one of his plotlines through. Eventually, he couldn’t be around books or teach classes anymore. There was an incident… a manuscript bonfire in the gym one day. The school asked him to leave.”
The scent of her perfume in the night began to pull on him. His face only inches from hers, Remy imagined her taste.
Sheila stared through the tiny opening in the shade. Mackey stopped playing with his hair. He put away the ledger and the day’s receipts. The former teacher went across the room to his bookcase. Slowly, with much thoughtfulness, he scoured the titles, his back to the voyeurs at his window. Then, armed with one, he retreated to an over-stuffed recliner in the furthest corner of the room. From this angle, only a length of right elbow was visible.
“I think he lives here.” Sheila turned away from the window. “Sometimes, I stay for more than an hour after he closes. He never leaves.”
“I don’t understand. You said he hated books.”
“An old friend of mine, her name was Darlene. We both had Mackey. Darlene’s younger sister said she’d heard rumors. For a few years he spent time in Belize, on the expat scene. No one knew what to make of it. But he came back and opened a bookstore. Now he spends some nights reading. Other nights, he has people over. They look like a poetry group. I think they critique each other’s work. It’s really quite something. It’s amazing what time can do.”
He shook his head. Sentimentality… schmaltz- these were things right up there on his list with superficiality. “Expat scene you say?” As they spoke, Remy gently took her elbow and led her away from the window. “I’ll tell you what happened. Down in Belize, Mr. English 101 got involved in the drug trade. That’s what enlightened his search for personal growth. Back here, these ‘writers’ you see him with are fellow criminals.” He grinned at her in the darkness. “They’re plotting the perfect crime. They plan to knock over the local library and steal one thousand dollars in dimes. And hundreds of those tiny pencils with no erasers.”
“I wonder what book he picked to read tonight,” she murmured.
Remy asked, “Have you spoken to him?”
The many folds of her dress had crumpled against the moisture in the wall, and the wetness in the overall air. She tugged at it, making his whole body ache.
“You haven’t, have you?” he said, after a moment. “You haven’t talked to the man since 10th grade.” He chuckled. Grabbing both her hands, he pulled her into a hug.
“I called the store once, but I hung up…”
Still laughing, his face buried in her hair, Remy finally let go of the breath had been holding. This imperfection of hers- this strangeness- it so relieved him because before now she had felt unreachable.
***
Weekends were their time together. She worked hard- he worked harder. He knew Sheila had a large network of friends, people important to her. It was for that reason he calmly accepted it when unexpected invitations or minor crises with so-and-so cropped up for her, as they often did.
But on Sunday mornings, he wanted breakfast to be perfect. Every time, he tried to finish cooking before Sheila awoke. He wanted to serve her in bed just once, but always, she was too quick for him.
Somewhere between garnishing the omelets and squeezing the orange juice, she materialized and slid into a chair at the table, wearing nothing but his black Ralph Lauren sweater. It was a game they played, and every week she found the sweater- no matter where he hid it. (Already, Remy imagined tucking an engagement ring into the sweater sleeve…)
Eggs in Spanish sauce, buttermilk biscuits, pecan waffles- every week he tried a new recipe, thirsting for her hunger, eager to see her satisfied. Every week it made him crazy when she only ate a quarter or half of what he put in front of her.
“This is good?” he asked. It was late fall.
Across the table, she licked her fingers and stared at him. Silence. After several seconds she nodded, a lock of hair fell across her face.
“Why don’t you ever finish?”
“Hmm.” Rolling an avocado crepe, she drenched it in sauce and wrapped her lips around it. She cradled the food in her mouth and smiled sloppily, wickedly. “It dalicious. Evryhing. Ahways.”
“Um, okay. I appreciate that.” He forced a chuckle. “So why do you never finish?”
Sheila threw her napkin at him.
He got up, started clearing the table. “We don’t have to… I mean, if-” He hoped she could sense what he was thinking.
“Why must you men always confuse quantity and quality? If you’re having more sex, it must be better sex. What about anticipation, enjoyment?”
“You’re right, you’re right,” he said quickly. Remy tossed the dishes into the sink and began filling it with water. The crash of silverware reminded him of his mother, a woman who in all her years never said a harsh word to his father. When they had disagreements, she scrambled tensely about the kitchen for hours, the clatter of pots and pans accompanying her- always a few broken wine glasses, a chorus of muttered profanities.
Remy shook his head. He narrowed his eyes at Sheila. “Why do people wear watches, anyway? All it does it help them keep track of hours they’ve wasted.”
Standing, she pulled at the sweater and enveloped herself in his aroma. Then, moving behind him, she wrapped her arms around his waist and whispered, “I want to say… thank you. All this is unnecessary, you know. I don’t need to be catered to. I’d come over here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I was starving and there wasn’t any food for a hundred miles.” She rested her cheek on his neck. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“I’ve got work I should look at today.” Turning, Remy untangled himself and kissed her firmly on the lips. He dried his hands on the dishtowel. “I’ll be there in a little while.”
“Hey, hey it’s Sunday.” Walking backward, moving slowly out of the room, she jutted her lower lip.
“I like my job,” he mumbled.

A few hours later, he found her asleep in his bed. On TV, a news show featured the latest group of talking heads.
Her hair was a mess. Her body faced the doorway, bare legs beckoned him. Inside the sheet covers, next to her, Remy found a little bag of pretzels, the snack she never went anywhere without.
He knew she never ate them. Sheila just rolled them over and over in her mouth, using her tongue to extricate every last piece of salt.
***
In the dream, he spins her on the dance floor. Faster and faster, their bodies move ahead of the sounds surrounding them. First, it is only a few seconds. Soon, however, they are strangely out of sync with the music. But he is not worried about what others are thinking or feeling or saying. All he knows is this- like a child on a theme park ride for the very first time, the thought of letting go, even for a moment, terrifies him.
She is a specter. Her body is there, in his arms, moving along with him to the sluggish pace of the music. Her face- she smiles at those around them. (Where are the other people? Who are they?)
Remy tugs her on the waist. He whispers a loving comment but even now- experiencing it, in the dream- it is as if he is watching it happen from a far off place. He cannot feel his feet moving, cannot hear himself talk. Neither, he realizes, can he hear the song that is playing. He sees only the effect of the music on himself. Shuddering, he tugs on her again and pulls her close. She stumbles a bit in response and scowls. He’s messed up her footing.
As they slow down to regain themselves, he determines to make eye contact with another partygoer, someone who can explain what’s happening to him. A wolf is at the first drink tray they pass. A British soldier in a black high-top hat guards the exit, expressionless…
It’s Remy’s recurring nightmare, whatever it means. He had stopped having it almost exactly two weeks ago, when she began planning their anniversary party. The other day, he considered for a moment that he longed for the dream, like an injury too well loved because of the memories it evokes.
He tried to talk to her about it. Not knowing where to begin, he finally asked if she would rather take a trip with him than throw a party to feed their many acquaintances.
“Where would we go?” She looked at him with a delicate smile.
He wanted to say Lansing, but by now, their beginnings seemed so far away. Instead, he asked her to trim the guest list. “Make it more intimate, meaningful,” he suggested.
Sheila started to speak, but she relented and took another breath. “You got it.”
The lab pup was whimpering at their feet. Remy jumped up and headed out of the house with the animal. He wanted to avoid the coming questions. Are the Ralston’s dispensable? How about the Joneses’?
Outside, he stuffed his hands in his pockets as the dog took off in circles around the dark yard. Broken Canadensis and a bitter wind stung Remy’s nostrils. Turning, he stared back at their brightly lit, living-room window. The color of the drapes matched the carpeting, matched the awnings of the house. She looked completely different to him now.
She was on their overstuffed leather sofa, a yellow #2 pencil stuck out both sides of her mouth. Her body curled over the glass coffee table, Sheila studied the list with a tired expression. Every so often a nod or a headshake, she said something to the air in front of her, and squinted at the ceiling. Another name crossed off. He knew she wouldn’t go to sleep until she had fully sorted the puzzle in front of her. Who to keep- who to throw away?
Remy exhaled a white puff of air. You don’t just go numb inside… Eyes squeezed shut, yellow light from the house still edged its way in.

EDIT>>Insomniac2

2003-09-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Dr. Phil McGraw’s Top 10 Tips for Sleeping Through the Night

Madeleine’s brother, Jeremy Weeks, was a mess after his wife left him on their 7th anniversary- this happened in Lansing, in 2002. Just days before, in the converted rec room / basement of a friend, Jeremy paused to take a deep breath in between gulps of beer. It was an elusive, profoundly happy moment- one of the few he had stopped long enough to notice since college.
He had actually convinced himself that he outlasted the curse of the Weeks family- no marriage made it to ten years. In fact, few got beyond five.
“Just another statistic,” he moaned afterward.

In Michigan, he had to move three times, each time imposing on a different friend, every time finding something unbearable about the places or the people. He was restless. He fantasized her return to him in extravagant detail:
There was candlelight. Barry White. Everyone’s shoes were off. The curtains billowed, yet the room remained quite warm. He held a woman- a beautiful, curvaceous woman. Behind them, she pleaded, begging him to take her back. "Remy," she would finally whisper, falling into his arms as woman number one faded away.
He worked in international finance. At cocktail parties, he joked he was a headless horseman in the rush to spread capitalism abroad. “We provide the funds that make you a more efficient dictator.” For some reason, no one ever laughed. And it was in those awkward pauses- couples clustered, silently searching the area for alcohol- that he felt his wife’s disdain shower over him, crowding out the old sure parts.
Sheila’s mother died when she was twelve. When she was sixteen, her father went to jail for a string of liquor store hold-ups. Working two jobs for nearly ten years, she put herself through college and became the East Coast buyer for a major department store chain. On their second date- this happened 7 months before their wedding under a waterfall in Hawaii- she asked Remy what he wanted in a woman. Remy gave the standard response- passion, intelligence, humor. When he turned the question around on her, Sheila responded, “Perfection. I won’t settle for less. You shouldn’t either.”
Remy’s dad, a sometimes-alcoholic, had a saying. “One of the pitfalls of marriage is that it requires two.”~

She sat beside him on the flowered comforter he had hated silently every night. “This a long way from happiness. This is barely getting by.”
Downstairs, dishes and wine glasses littered the fireplace mantle, the dinner table. Cigarette smoke hung in the air alongside empty chatter. And a big pile of anniversary gifts- useless junk good for god knows what.
Her hand was on his knee. She’d already removed her wedding band in a fit of annoyance earlier that evening. He shoved her away. “Does it bother you that this is a complete shock to me?”
She looked toward the door of their room. The lab puppies yipped excitedly, pleading to be let outdoors. “What bothers me is that you would tell yourself this is all my fault.”
Swathes of evening light poured into the room. She continued, “Don’t you see, honey? You never once made me feel nice. Nice was all I wanted. So what I need to know is, when did you decide I wasn’t worth it? Or did you always think so?”
“This is happening and you’re doing it. You’re playing the card women have played for years. It’s too easy just to call the man the emotional cripple. Sign the divorce papers…” He started yelling. The urge to drown out her voice, her presence even, nearly floored him. “Sign the divorce papers and you throw away a life!” Stalking back and forth, he made half-circles around the bed. “What does an emotionally mature man look like, anyway? Dr. Phil?”
One of their Labrador puppies made his way across the room. In the dusk shadows, the dog mimicked Remy’s circles, trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.
“It’s funny,” his wife went on. “I feel like you could have been with any woman for all this time. Like it wouldn’t have made any difference. And if I’m totally honest, I was happy with you most of the time. I didn’t need romance every night. For years I don’t think I needed it at all. You made me content, honey, even if the reverse was never true. And I know you would never admit it. I know you would never admit things weren’t perfect. You should realize that was one of the things I loved. Called you my eternal optimist.” She kneeled beside the pup, stroking its fur in the twilight.
“Clueless is more like it.” In a low voice, he strung together expletives.
Another deep breath. Sheila said, “What I started to wonder was… is there such a thing as knowing yourself too well? Are there people so self-aware, people cursed with such self-knowledge, that they discover early on what their greatest happiness consists of? That might have been me. You might have been it, for a while.”~

Now, in what Dr. Phil would call “the post-divorce phase of life,” now, finally sick of his childishness, Remy resolved he would not move again. He was single- that was that. All this closure crap took place before the supermarket checkout girl came along.
In the express lane, Remy grouped his can foods from his perishables, separating out the coupons. After gathering the credit receipts, the girl handed him his bags and drawled, “Enjoy your day, now.”
His hands shaking, he carried the bags to his car. Didn’t she look like Sheila? Was it her voice, the shape of her body- what?
He sat in the backseat of his Acura until dark. The food beside him began to stink, and he felt nausea welling up inside. Overhead, the parking lot lights flicked on- one by one. He listened to the neon whirr.
Outside the car, a silver helium balloon floated by attached to the arm of a blond child. The girl, pony-tailed and wearing lace, the girl reminded him of Olivia, his twin sister’s daughter. He missed her giggles. It had been ages since he’d visited Madeleine down in Pennsylvania.
I’ll go, he thought. “I’m going,” he said. Key in the ignition. “Where the hell is Pennsylvania?” Remy asked himself groggily. He struggled through the glove compartment in the darkness, rustling for a map. That little light had burned out ages ago. He kept forgetting to replace it.
For those unfamiliar with the territory, I-70something covers the expanse between Michigan and Pennsylvania in an unassuming bluish haze. Out in the world, on the graveyard shift anyway, there is a sublime calm attached to everything. Newspaper delivery people go about their business with deep sleep crinkling the edges of their faces, refrigerated grocery trucks form a procession on the road- at times weaving slightly before correction occurs.
As the radio played, Remy thought of how anxious he was to see his sister. Consequently- or perhaps it rose up in opposition to these thoughts- he felt a dull dread bubble inside his saggy, yellowed abdomen. For him, it was a feeling, an inheritance more familiar than any Weeks family thing- he hated the uncertainty that accompanied setting out on any long trip. As a child, he had despised vacations to the family ranch in New Mexico. And as a spouse, he had hated the church Sheila insisted on attending because it was more than 50 minutes from their house. “You’re talking about Sunday morning traffic, baby.” This is what he would always say. “You’ve got to remember that.”
Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez. The voice on the radio insisted it was good music to not fall asleep to. Hearing that bit of Southern something in his voice too, Remy braked hard and punched the radio dial until sound died. Soon after, his right hand was a tangle of blood and skin.
He pulled to the side of the road. As he tore a strip from the frayed edge of his undershirt, Remy had a sudden vision of the yellow dress.
It was something like their second or third date. Sheila said she wanted to take him to her favorite place in the world. After milling in an all-night restaurant for a few hours, they wound up on the doorstep of a little bookshop in East Lansing.
“It’s closed…” he’d stared at her in the fine, misting rain. Her yellow dress lit like a soft halo from a car’s headlight somewhere down the block.
She leaned, whispered in his ear. “Look again.”
A glow floated in a barely visible back doorway of the shop. “What is it?” Remy asked, unsure if he cared yet, or not. All he knew was the smell of her perfume, the soft fabric of her dress as a damp breeze brushed it against his trembling hand.
“Follow me,” she said seductively. She disappeared around the corner of the shop.
He followed her into the wet hedges that grew along the side of the building. They both flattened their bodies against the wall. “Are we breaking in?” he asked.
There was a window in front of them, the shade only partly drawn. They peered into the backroom of the shop. On their tiptoes, they watched a man write furiously in a ledger, his left hand all the time pulling at his shaggy graying hair. “He’s not dying it anymore,” Sheila whispered, giggling.
“Oh god.” Remy hated superficial men.
“That’s Tom Mackey. He used to teach high-school English. He was a frustrated writer.”
“Aren’t they all? Hey, shouldn’t authors at least force themselves to avoid clichés? Was this guy your teacher?”
“Everyone said he had dozens of unfinished novels sitting in his desk drawers at home. He became more and more irate that he couldn’t see even one of his plotlines through. Eventually, he couldn’t bear to be around books or teach his classes anymore. There was some kind of incident… a manuscript bonfire in the gym one day. So, of course, the school asked him to leave.”
The scent of her perfume in the night began to pull on him. His face only inches from hers, he imagined her taste.
Sheila stared through the tiny opening in the shade. Mackey had stopped playing with his hair. He put away the ledger and the day’s receipts. The former teacher stalked across the room to his bookcase. Slowly, with much thoughtfulness, he scoured the titles, his back now to the voyeurs at his window. Eventually, armed with the book that suited, he retreated to an over-stuffed recliner in the furtherest corner of the room. From this angle, only a length of arm and a right elbow was visible.
“I think he lives here.” Sheila finally turned away from the window. “Sometimes, I stay for more than an hour after he closes. He never leaves.”
“I don’t understand. You said he hated books.”
“My very good friend at one time, her name was Darlene. We both had Mackey. Darlene’s younger sister said she’d heard rumors. For a few years, he spent time in Belize, on the expat scene. No one knew what to make of it. But he came back and opened a bookstore. Now, he spends some nights reading. Other nights, he has people over. They look like a poetry group of some kind. I think they critique each other’s work. It’s really quite amazing. It’s amazing what time can do.”
He shook his head. Sentimentality… schmaltz- these were things right up there on his list with superficiality. “Expat scene you say?” Remy had felt uneasy the entire time they were in the bushes. As they spoke, he gently took her by the elbow and led her away from the window.
“I’ll tell you what really happened,” he continued. “Down in Belize, Mr. English 101 got involved in the drug trade and that enlightened his search for personal growth. Now back here, these ‘writers’ you see him with are fellow smug drugglers.” He grinned at her in the darkness. “They’re concocting a plot for the perfect crime. They’re planning to knock over the local library and steal two thousand dollars in dimes. And hundreds of those tiny pencils with no erasers.”
“I wonder what book he picked to read tonight,” she murmured.
Remy asked, “Have you spoken to him?”
The hemline of her yellow dress had crumpled from the moisture in the wall they’d rested against, and the wetness in the overall air. She tugged at it, making his whole body ache.
“You haven’t, have you?” he said, after a moment. “You haven’t talked to the man since 10th grade.” He chuckled, grabbing both her hands and pulling her into a hug.
“I called the store once, but I hung up,” her voice trailed off.
Still laughing, his face buried in her hair, Remy finally let go of the breath he’d been holding for some time. This imperfection of hers- this strangeness- it so relieved him because she’d felt unreachable. And there she stood, clutching him.~

In the car, on the road from Michigan to Pennsylvania, Remy referred to himself as version 2.0 “Divorce upgrades and all,” he joked tiredly. So after driving most of the night- after cutting his hand on the radio- at 11 a.m., craving sleep, he pulled into a roadside motel.
“Where the hell am I?” he yelled to the only other person in the parking lot.
A massive, trunk-like body spilled from the open hood of an old Mustang. Tools ran across the perimeter. “Earth,” the headless mass called out.
Smugness-that Remy understood.
Inside the Paradise Motel, the smell of urine floated in the air between fits of peeling wallpaper and shrunken rugs. was neither a paradise nor much of a motel. Peeling wallpaper, shrunken rugs, a smell that resembled urine in the air. The desk clerk, a pimply overweight girl not much out of school, gave him the last vacancy. He darted up the steps and down the long hallway to his room. Twirling the key ring in his hand, he resolved to sleep on his coat, wanting never to touch so much as a thread of the sheets at the Paradise Motel.
“Maybe in my next life,” he mumbled.
Near the end of the hall, he passed an open door. A man and woman were fighting inside. Undeterred, Remy kept walking, trying to ignore it. The voices in the room got louder. At the vending machine he stopped, teeth gritted.
“You’re so naive. How could you think I’d leave my wife?”
Remy counted out his change in the hall. Ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty… His eyes were fixed on the pretzels.
“Why would you lie to me?” the woman demanded, in tears. The door to room 311 opened wider.
Remy frowned without knowing it.
The man who thundered past looked like any other, except for his red face. Behind him was a woman. Long, dark hair. She was short, heavyset, an exotic outcropping in the pale yellow corridor.
At the steps, he stopped. “Why did you believe me?”
Purring noisily, the vending machine gave up its last bag of pretzels. The woman spun around, noticing Remy for the first time.
Keys and snack in hand, he disappeared into his room.~

Sunday mornings before they were married, Remy cooked breakfast. Each time, he tried to finish before Sheila awoke. He wanted to serve her in bed just once, but she was always too quick for him.
Somewhere between garnishing the omelets and squeezing the orange juice, she materialized out of nowhere and always slid into a chair at the table, wearing nothing but his black Ralph Lauren sweater. It was a game they played and every week she found it- no matter where he hid it. (Already, Remy imagined tucking an engagement ring into the sweater sleeve…)
Eggs in Spanish sauce, buttermilk biscuits, pecan waffles—every week he tried a new recipe, thirsting for her hunger, eager to see her satisfied. Every week it made him crazy when she only ate a quarter or half of what he put in front of her.
“This is good?” he asked. It was late fall.
Across the table, she licked her fingers and stared at him silently He waited. After several seconds she nodded, a lock of dark blonde hair falling across her face.
“Why don’t you ever finish?”
“Hmm.” Rolling an avocado crepe, she drenched it in sauce and wrapped her lips around it. She cradled the food in her mouth and smiled sloppily, wickedly. “It dalicious. Evryhing. Ahways.”
“Okay. I appreciate that,” he chuckled. “So how come you never finish?”
Sheila threw her napkin at him.
He got up, started clearing the table. “We don’t have to- I mean, if…” Unsure of what he wanted to say, he hoped she would somehow know.
Eye-roll. “Why must you men always confuse quantity and quality? What about enjoyment?”
“You’re right, you’re right.” He tossed the plates into the sink and began filling it with water. “Why do people wear watches, for that matter? All it does it help them keep track of hours they’ve wasted.”
Standing, she pulled at the sweater and enveloped herself in his aroma. Then, from behind, she wrapped her arms around his waist and whispered, “You can be such a girl sometimes. But what I wanted to say was… thank you. All this is unnecessary, you know. I don’t need to be catered to. I’d come over here for breakfast, lunch, or dinner even if I was starving and there wasn’t any food within a hundred miles.” She rested her cheek on his neck. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“I think I forgot some work I should take a look at today.” Turning, Remy kissed her firmly on the lips. “Why don’t you go upstairs?” He dried his hands on the dishtowel. “I’ll be there in a little while.”
“Hey, hey it’s Sunday.” Walking backward, moving slowly out of the room, she jutted her lower lip.
“I like my job,” he mumbled.
About an hour later, he found her asleep in his bed. On TV, a Sunday morning news show featured the latest group of talking heads.
Her hair was mess, strewn all across his pillows. Her body faced the doorway. Her bare legs beckoned him. Inside the sheet covers, next to her, Remy found a little bag of pretzels, the snack she never went anywhere without.
He knew she didn’t eat them. Sheila just rolled them around in her mouth, using her tongue to extricate every last piece of salt.~

In the dream, he spins her on the dance floor. Faster and faster, their bodies move ahead of the sounds surrounding them. First, it is only a few seconds. Soon, however, they are strangely out of sync with the music. But he’s not worried about what others are thinking or feeling or saying. All he knows is this—like a child on some theme park ride for the very first time, the thought of letting go, even for a moment, terrifies him.
She is like a specter. Her body is there, in his arms, moving along with him to the sluggish pace of the music. Her face- she smiles delicately at those around them (Where are the other people? Who are they? Why can’t he make himself look at them?) But it’s as if she is not really there.
He tugs her on the waist and offers her a smile. He whispers some loving comment, but even now—in the dream, experiencing it—it is as if he is watching it happen from some far-off place. He cannot feel his feet moving. He cannot hear himself talk. Come to think of it, he doesn’t even know what song is playing, save for the fact that he sees the effect of the music on himself and those around them. Shuddering, he tugs on her again and pulls her close. She stumbles a bit in response and scowls at him. He’s messed up her footing.
As they slow down to regain themselves he determines to make eye contact with another partygoer, someone who can explain what’s happening to him. A wolf is manning the first drink tray they pass. A British soldier in a black high-top hat guards the exit, expressionless…
His door at the Paradise Motel is shaking. The knob rattling. Remy rouses himself from sleep slowly. Still curled in bed, after a few seconds, he props himself up with his elbows, “What is it?”
“Let me in-” The small, female voice drowned out the remainder of his dream. In the dissipating haze, he stumbled to the door and flung it open, half expecting Sheila.
In the hallway in front of him stood the woman who earlier that afternoon had been fighting with her married lover.
“What do you want?” Remy asked.
“Can I come in?” she said softly, her voice barely rising above a whisper.
He stepped backward out of the doorway. Sweeping past him into the room, she reached up to brush a lock of dark hair out of his eyes.
“You need a trim,” she said.
“So what, do you make house calls?”
“I saw you watching us earlier.” Inside, she surveyed the room. Said her name was Celeste.
“You don’t look like a ‘Celeste.’”
“What do I look like?” she crossed her arms.
“A woman standing in a strange man’s hotel room? You look like someone who’d lie about her name. Why did you do that, anyway, why did you tell me when I didn’t even ask your name?”
“I’ll have to watch that in the future. Normal people would’ve gotten around to asking names at some point.”
“This is what normal people do?” Remy sat back down. This time in a chair by the door. Now convinced she wouldn’t soon be leaving, Remy closed the door and settled himself in a chair by the door. She was still standing.
“I saw you watching us today,” she repeated, leaning against the countertop.
“And you thought… what? That I needed or deserved or wanted an explanation of some kind?”
“I thought you seemed interested. I thought you seemed interesting.”
He pursed his lips, suddenly aware of his unmade bed. “You’re attractive. And I know you’ve had a rough day. But this isn’t my speed.”
“I just didn’t want to be alone tonight.”
He was silent as he considered the offer. The thought of spending another night by himself disgusted him.
Celeste stood crooked in front of him. She looked more alone than he felt, which before now had seemed impossible.
“Did you love him?” Remy asked her suddenly.
She bit her lip and played with her hair. “What does that matter?”
“Would it make sense to you if I said there are about a hundred other people in this room with us right now?”
Fidgeting, she tugged at the edge of her skirt the way Sheila always did. “How long ago did your marriage break up?”
“She did that,” Remy said. “She always pulled at her clothing. Like nothing fit right or something. Like she wished she was somewhere else wearing anything else. I used to think it was sexy like… like she couldn’t wait to jump in bed with me. Male ego- what can you say? Later, later it just became-”
“Discomfort,” Celeste said. “That’s what it always was. Discomfort.”
His cell-phone was on the table. Picking it up, he began to turn it over and over in his hand. ****stopped here 5-8 then redo all!!
“Sometimes I miss her voice,” he said to Celeste. “I can’t call, because she would recognize the number. When I do dial from someone else’s phone, when she picks up, when she says hello- she only ever says it once. Then, she waits and just breathes. I always chicken out and hang-up before she says-”
“She knows it’s you. I’m… I do that too, I mean.”
Celeste started twirling her hair again, and all of a sudden Remy noticed how nice it was. Her makeup, on the other hand, was smudged- probably from crying earlier in the day. Her breath smelled of coffee. She was heavier than Sheila, or the type of women Remy usually preferred. She looked completely uncomfortable in her too-small clothes. And yet, her hair was perfect.
“Where do you style hair at?” Remy asked.
“East of here. 25th and Park,” she grinned. “You could be Sherlock, Romeo.”
“It’s not so hard. Your hair… it’s nice.”
“Whoa. Slow down, lover-boy.”
He stood, backed away toward the door, where he leaned against the wall. “I hate to disappoint you, Celeste honey, but this isn’t going to happen. I don’t know if you feel like you need it tonight or something…”
“Are you kidding me? Don’t flatter yourself.”
“‘Romeo’, ‘lover-boy’…”
“I was teasing.”
“A long time ago,” Remy began, and Celeste feigned a yawn. “A long time ago, I swore never to psychoanalyze anyone- at least not to their faces. The only time I ever broke that promise was with my wife, and you see where that got me. Before that, everything was golden. So, I’m just saying, how you try to console yourself is not my business. Don’t make it my business.”
“Don’t look down your nose at me,” she shot back.
“Dr. Phil was my wife’s other lover. So I know this- if a woman gravitates toward attached or vulnerable men, she has some serious psychological issues she’s got to sort out.”
“Enlighten me. I can’t stand that man.”
“Something must have been wrong with your Daddy.”
“I never knew my father. Plenty of people are in that situation, and they grow up fine. I hate diagnosis. No one has the same body, the same mind, the same soul. How can someone with a white labcoat or a monocle ever think he knows the solution to something that’s going on inside someone else?”
“Who’s wearing the monocle in that situation? Dr. Phil?” Remy laughed. “Hey, why take medicine at all?”
“Maybe I don’t have time for relationships. Maybe I prefer working, or reading, or writing, or drawing. Maybe I like my time to be my own. Maybe I HATE listening to men talk and I would rather just have them serve their purpose and then head home to the wifey.”
“That’s a lot of maybes. Serve their purpose?” The more awake he felt, the more he realized how long it had been since he’d kissed a woman.
Crossing the room, Remy crouched down in front of Celeste. She smelled strongly of burned coffee and faint cigarettes. “Why did you come here?” he asked her again. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pressed his mouth against hers.
It was a wholly unromantic moment; neither touched the other with anything but pursed lips. Hers were chapped, his, strangely cold. When they separated, Remy felt the sudden urge for a drink.
“Not up to your usual standards then?” she said, in a loud whisper.
“I wanted to see what it was like. Men are curious creatures. What can I say?”
“‘What can I say, what can I say?’ Why do you keep saying that?” She tapped her fingers on the table as she licked her lips, removing the last trace of his saliva.
“It’s called a figure of speech,” Remy held up his emergency provisions. “Beer?” Celeste nodded, so he took a step closer and tossed it to her.
She put it on the table to settle. “Guess you don’t think hairdressers take English classes in between dye tutorials and hair spray lectures? You’re the one who can’t think of anything to say… God, were you this uncommunicative with your wife? I mean, you talk a lot, but nothing comes out.”
As she’s speaking, Remy isn’t looking at her. He fiddles with his beer tab and finally opens it in the sink- he watches it fizz onto the lid before he lifts it to his lips, to suck the carbonation off. And the taste of her lips. “I’m not ready for a woman, you know?” he ignores her most recent question and returns to a moment ago.
“I can see that. So what was it? Why DID she kick you to the curb? I hafta know. It may help with my little drama you saw out in the hallway earlier this evening.”
“I said I wouldn’t analyze you.” Remy sat down again- this time in a chair on the other side of the window. Both stared ahead at the door.
“Just don’t wait by the phone for this guy to call,” he continued on. “Don’t do that. This guy wasn’t even yours to begin with.”
“Like I said, I just wanted him for sex. He read all that other stuff into it. Sure, I cried. I think a lot of woman cried when they were with him. He thought it was emotional. Like you, he didn’t realize it was just-”
“Discomfort.” They said together.
Remy rested his elbows on his knees. Sitting forward, he massaged his face with his hands. “All joking aside- you shouldn’t do that.”
“The married guy? Thank you for your concern. You probably shouldn’t have done whatever it was you did. So? We can’t help who we are.”
“These past few weeks, it has become the defining HOPE of my life that we can.”
“You want her back,” Celeste said.
“I’m warning you not to be pathetic. I’m telling you to have some dignity. Am I ignoring my own advice?”
“I don’t care about your warnings. If he ever called me, if he said he loved me and he was finished with his wife, if I didn’t think that her money was pretty damn important to him- I would be with him.”
Remy said, “I just don’t get it.”
“The love… where it’s real… where it’s unashamed… the love is not the bad part. The love is not what I should be sorry for. He was married. Maybe that meant it was doomed from the start- that I should have known better. But I will never be ashamed of love. Or that I told him. His reaction doesn’t make my feelings any less good or less pure. I’m still me and I’ll still wake up tomorrow morning and have to live with myself.”
“There are single men out there.”
“Why do you think they’re single? It’s not that easy.” Finishing the beer, Celeste broke off the tab and dropped it inside the can. When Remy looked at her curiously, she said softly, “I think my father always did that.”
“Nothing’s as easy as they tell us it’ll be,” he smiled wanly. “I don’t sleep at night.”
“That’s nothing. Earlier, I had no tissues, no compact, not a genuine shirt sleeve to speak of. I was a wreck, streaking tears all over my face. I couldn’t find anything else, so I cried into a maxi pad. Talk about your pathetic displays… And the sicker thing is that I haven’t thrown it out.”
“A token of your undying affection?” Remy asked. He was thinking of his father, a man who trafficked joyously in hackneyed turns of phrase. That explains a lot- that explains everything- there’s the final chapter- the end is in sight!
Love. Love explains a lot.
Her eyes were a startled blue. “I’ve been through this before with him,” she said, “and with others. What’s going to get you, I mean really get you, is what got me, too. No matter what you expect, no matter how in control you feel- even up until the moment that it happens- the loss of this person just floors you.” She was rocking, ever so slightly, on the edge of her chair.
“It could happen in a day. It may take a week or three months.” Softly-compassionately, she glanced across the table at him. “But it’s utterly shocking, surprising, and terrifying all at the same time.”
He started crying. Taking several deep breaths, Remy tried regaining composure by focusing on stretches he learned from his mother, when he was a boy (she hated weak men- she told him this over and over). The control stretches were: fingers, arms, back, and legs. He willed himself to concentrate on these movements- all the while digging at furious tears.
Slowly, the cloud of grogginess that had swallowed him in Michigan started to dissipate. After a few seconds, Celeste hugged him.
He said, “On the day of our anniversary party, she told me that it died. WE died.”
“And I bet you were worried about your guests.”
“No, it happened after. What do you mean?”
“Love is constant.” She took a deep breath.
“It goes on? What are you saying? It’ll survive, and we’ll wind up together in the end?” he rolled his eyes.
“No, nothing like that. I’m saying love is constant.”
Outside, someone was banging on a nearby door. Celeste rushed across the room and ran into the hallway of the Paradise Motel.
Her mystery man, from earlier. She turned, smiled at Remy, and she was gone.~

The morning of Remy’s thirtieth birthday—he and Sheila have been married four years…
“I miss you so much, baby-doll. This bed feels empty without you. At least until all my other girls get in.” He chuckles into his cell-phone.
“Seriously, I’m 30 years old. And I realized what a lucky guy I am. I’ve got a great job- probably a promotion. And the most beautiful girl in the world by my side—when she’s not away on business, I mean.”
Remy is folding the clothes he’s just had laundered by their apartment building’s service. “Alone on my birthday… I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to see you. Call me when you get this.”

At one o’clock, sitting across from corporate VP William O’Malley…
For the third time during lunch, Remy’s phone vibrates. “I should take this.” He excuses himself from the table.
On the other end of the line, Sheila fights a bad connection. “I love you.”
“I can hardly hear you,” Remy makes his way to the bar. “Where are you?”
“Ally arranged for us to take an account on a boat tour of the bay area. I loved your message. Not the part about the other women, I mean. But the part about missing me.”
“Well you know I do. Be careful, okay? I wish you were here because I really think he’s about to tell me I’ve got the job.”
On the other end, her voice crackles. “Good luck.”
Remy motions to the bartender for another two drafts. “When you come home tomorrow, we’ll celebrate.”
“I can’t wait,” she says.

Five-thirty p.m.…
He tosses the stapler into the air. Should he pack it? Would the executive offices upstairs have some new, better brand of stapler? What about his pens? The outgoing assistant VP had imported ballpoints with his name and title. Would he get a memo about where to order those?
He punches his desk, momentarily forgetting the halting Japanese voice on the other end of his headset.
The accent deadens in his eardrum. Pressing his fingernails into the flesh of his thigh, Remy tells himself to concentrate.
The Asian market economy expects a downturn in U.S. dollars resulting from weak earnings reports of international corporations based in the United States. Those corporations include Walmart, McDonald’s, Target superstores, and Gap, to name a few…
On the edge of his desk, his cell-phone vibrates. Remy turns from the window overlooking Lake Michigan and he cups both hands to catch it before it hits the floor.
555-8746
He covers his headset’s mouthpiece and yells for his assistant, a designer-label short skirt called Grace. Tossing her the cell phone, he says, “It’s my wife. Take a message. Tell her I’m on with Asia and I’ll call her back as soon as I can. Then find me the figures for Nagai from last quarter.”
Later, his secretary tells him, “She’s flying out of San Fran tonight. She’ll meet you at The Dancing Fish, by the airport, eight o’clock. She says you know it.”
With the Nagai file spread out on the floor in front of him, he pours over the worksheets on his hands and knees. “Yes, it’s by the airport. My wife has a wonderful sense of humor. She knows I hate sushi.”
“I hear they have a new chef- maybe you can order a cholesterol burger,” Grace winks, closing the door behind her. In ten minutes, she reappears with a white paper bag bearing the logo of the corner deli.
Grabbing the hoagie, he grins excitedly. “You know me so well.”

Eight-twenty p.m.…
Sheila’s message to Remy: “Baby-doll, You did get the message, right? I got in a little early. I’m here at the restaurant. Please call me.”

Eight thirty-six p.m. …
Remy to Sheila: “The last vote ran late, and now traffic is crazy. There must be an accident backing up the expressway because I’m sitting here in bumper-to-bumper. Sorry, but I can’t move any faster than I am.”
He tries to sound breezy and apologetic at the same time. Wants to make it sound like the delay is not his fault. But there is no expressway accident. Nor was there a late meeting that ran over. He had lost track of time.
“I’ll be here,” she says. “But I’m ordering now because I’m starving.”

Ten minutes to nine…
Remy rushes into the restaurant. Without saying a word, he grabs his wife and kisses her.
“Surprise,” she whispers softly. “Didn’t really work out the way I’d hoped it would.”
“A sushi bar? Why were you thinking I’d want to spend my birthday here?” he asks dryly, as she spins an egg roll in sauce on her plate.
She takes a bite and doesn’t answer.
“It’s good you’re back,” he says.~

When Jeremy and Madeleine were young, people used to say it was impossible to tell them apart. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, similar builds. For fraternal twins of opposite sex, this comment caused the two children endless consternation. Remy worked hard at his job and Madeleine, in turn, worked even harder on her appearance.
Their parents had believed in little to no delineation between the genders, instead hoping to endow their kids with sensitivities so foreign to their counterparts. And, as Madeleine mocked Mother, “Our girl can grow up to be a scientist, a doctor, even a lawyer (god forbid!) never feeling undue pressure because of her breasts in an all-penis all-the-time world.”
When Madeleine married Ted- a conservative banker from Georgia- she became a homemaker. Mother’s disgust was always the topic of conversation. Soon after that, the couple stopped asking her to visit. And from the day of their daughter’s birth, Madeleine and Ted kept young Olivia knee deep in lacey, frilly, curly, girlie things.
Remy barely made it onto their well-lit Pennsylvania porch before the child threw open the door in unabashed excitement. “You’re here, you’re here!” The five-year old greeted her uncle by jumping into his arms.
“Relax, baby,” Madeleine appeared and took her daughter gently by the shoulders. She guided her back into the house. “Your uncle has plenty of time for that. It’s late. You go to bed, baby. He’ll be here when you wake up.”
Panicked, curls bobbing, she pleaded, “Can I stay up? Please?”
Her father picked her up. “You’ve had a long day honey. Uncle Remy just drove a long way, too. I’m sure everyone wants to get some sleep.” Slowly, he carted the excited child up the steps. Olivia chattered the entire time, Ted responded with murmured “yeses” and tired “we’ll see’s.”
“He’s going to have a terrible time getting her down, now.” Madeleine smoothed out the fabric of her skirt. “Everyone’s glad to see you. Ted just doesn’t like surprises. Lucky for you, Olivia and I love them!” She hugged him.
Remy motioned toward the stairs. “Who usually puts her to bed?”
“He works a lot, billing overtime hours. Phone calls with clients all weekend long. Tax season is unbearable… But being here with her isn’t easy, either. He can take a turn while you’re here. Maybe a couple of turns.”
Remy frowned. “Her therapies cost a lot, don’t they?” The child had a form of retardation that mirrored Downs Syndrome in many layers of its severity, though her cognitive functions tested higher than normal. Doctors didn’t know exactly what they were dealing with- for that reason a new recommendation was always on the horizon; new therapists and tutors were always in the home.
Madeleine dug through the kitchen cupboards for her stash of instant coffee. “Ted freaks if I make a pot this late at night. He says he can’t sleep with the smell.”
“It’s only ten,” Remy winced.
Awhile later, as the siblings sat on the couch drinking coffee, Ted stuck his head down the stairs. “I’m going to say goodnight. It’s good to see you Rem. We’ll catch up in the morning, okay?”
“Absolutely. There’s not that much to tell, but you’re giving me a few hours to make up some great stories.”
“I look forward to it.” Ted’s head disappeared.
“Is this okay?” his sister asked. “If you give me a few minutes, I can make up the guest bedroom.”
Remy motioned to the TV. “I’ve gotten used to going to bed with Charlie Rose. Is that all right? I’ll keep the volume low…”
Madeleine stared at him for a long moment. “What’s going on? I know this thing with Sheila hit you pretty hard, but are you really okay?”
He avoided his sister’s eyes. Grabbing for the remote, he put Charlie Rose on, muted. “She had an overbite. It was subtle, but it was there. She was a prude in bed. Completely unaffectionate in public. She had too many freckles on her body and not enough on her face. It was weird. Her skin was way too pale. Either that, or she washed herself out with all the makeup. I don’t know which it was.” He paused and sighed, finally meeting his sister’s eyes. “I don’t know.”
She sat down in the chair beside the fireplace. Pulling her knees to her chest, Madeleine cradled her cup of coffee in her hands. “I always thought what you two needed was to take care of Olivia for a weekend. You two had thought of having kids at some point anyway, right?”
“Are you saying I wouldn’t be sitting here if we’d done that sooner? You know I was never over-confident on the subject of marriage.” Remy reminded her of the laundry list of Weeks’ family members putting the children of their divorce lawyers through college.
“I think I’m asking who initiated the break-up. It was Sheila, wasn’t it? You didn’t want this. So, what I’m saying is a child would’ve made it more difficult for her to walk away.”
He rolled his eyes and threw a couch cushion at her. “I’m a bad person because I didn’t want to bring a kid into an unhappy marriage?”
Madeleine put her coffee mug on a nearby coaster and leaned forward to toss the cushion back. “I think you’re selfish. Most women want kids, anyway.”
“Tell me something. Is it a wedding band… or is it a disease?”~

“How do you stop an elephant from charging?” Remy sat beside Olivia on the carpet. The girl muted the television—Big Bird was prancing around a garbage can with his hairy cohorts.
“How?” she asked, looking up at him.
Remy leaned forward in his cross-legged position. “You buy his shoes a size too small.”
Olivia giggled, rocking back and forth as her breath escaped in short gasps of air. She made Remy yearn for a child of his own.
On TV, the big, yellow creature spoke about dental hygiene. The irony seemed lost on the little girl, so Remy quietly exited the room.
In the kitchen, his sister was sorting recipes. “How are you feeling?” Madeleine put on some water for tea, than turned down the oven temperature. “Veal. Ted’s favorite.”
In his bathrobe- his uniform since arriving at her house the week before- Remy studied her. He realized she’d dyed her hair a lighter shade of blonde. The dress, too, looked new. “What’s the occasion?” he asked.
Madeleine kicked her heels off and slid them under the kitchen table. “I just felt like doing something special. Maybe you could actually dress for dinner tonight?”
“If it’s Teddy’s birthday, just give me the word. O-liv and I will disappear.”
She shook her head and said they would all eat together at six.
“I’ve got you scared, haven’t I?” Remy thumbed through a pile of recipes absentmindedly. “This Donna Reed act of yours is for Ted- so he’ll be more eager to leave his 20 year-old assistant and get home to you on time.”
“I’m okay. Ted and I are… okay. What about you? You don’t sleep at night. You don’t sleep at all, really. So what do you plan to do with forever, Remy?” she asked. "You can’t keep waking me up in the middle of the night to talk.”
"Remember when we were little? Thunderstorms scared us and we'd stay up, just talking about stupid things."
"What are you scared of now?"
A few feet away, Olivia howled at the puppet antics of Public TV dollars.
"Do something constructive with your time, Remy, would you? Get something accomplished. Don't write, or grocery shop, or whatever it is you do. But you could clean my house. Or teach Olivia to recite Shakespeare. It would be a welcome break from Barney.”
"Maybe I should write a one-man-show. I could be Dr. Stu, a justice seeking marriage counselor who travels the countryside in search of hacks. I’ll call it ‘Jagged little Phil.’"
"Dr. Phil is not your problem. You were too different.” Madeleine turned off the burner and poured their tea.

In the backyard the next morning, Remy joined her for her sunrise ritual of re-filling the bird feeders.
"Tell me why," she asked him softly, shooing a squirrel.
"I don’t know. I guess she wasn’t having fun anymore.”
Madeleine handed him the bag of birdseed. "Maybe there's something you're meant to do now.” She surveyed her yard in the early light.
"Like what?" He asked. "Don't tell me to clean your house.”
"Well then, give me some more time to think about it.” She grinned, tossing some birdseed at him.~

Monday the 8th, he woke her at 2:37 a.m. Asked her where she kept the ‘Smores. Madeleine growled. Ted rolled over in the bed and lightly shoved her out. Remy was a force of nature.
They dug into the stash of junk food in a back corner of the kitchen. Sitting on the floor in front of the sink, a garbage can between them, they gossiped about old classmates until the newspaper slammed loudly against the front door.

Tuesday the 9th, Madeleine got the wake-up call at twenty minutes to four. On all fours on the kitchen floor, Remy showed his sister how he’d completely cleaned the space under and around the refrigerator. She gave him the plunger and told him to get started on the toilets.

On the 10th, in the middle of an especially bad week, Remy insisted it was his destiny to save the world through science, religion, or history. His sister reminded him he flunked 9th grade biology.

The 11th, 12th, and 13th he tried singing. No one slept, and Olivia took to covering both ears with her hands whenever her uncle walked into a room.

By Sunday, he considered seminary, saying it'd be great to only work one day a week.

On Monday, brother and sister sat toe-to-toe on the living-room sofa, a Humphrey Bogart movie muted on the television in front of them.
"What is it you think of at night?” Madeleine, who was two minutes older, asked her baby brother. “Is it grandiose stuff, or just what happened on General Hospital today?"
"Sometimes, even when it’s cold, I go outside. I sit on the porch. I just listen."
"To what?" she yawned. “Birds?”
Remy took off his slippers, Ted’s slippers. "I don’t know. Sometimes I think about bumper stickers."
"Hmm?"
"Remember the one that says 'To Fallen Heroes?' That's my favorite. Fallen heroes, fallen angels. I like it. It lets you know that even perfection isn't quite so perfect."
“I think you’re lucky, you know that?” Madeleine sighed. “I don’t know where I stand half the time because he doesn’t even talk to me. He’s always tired. He works so damn hard. There are people… there are people who go their entire lives without ever finding the type of passion you and Sheila had for a while.
“You keep saying ‘why am I acting this way?’ You mope around here like these emotions you’re feeling are some banner of shame for a man. It’s just the opposite, Remy. So many people spend their lives afraid to say how they feel. Afraid to feel! You were like that. Dad was like that. All the men in our family and most of the women. Mother was, certainly. But you woke up.”
“Post-divorce, Version 2.0. Dr. Phil Seal of Approval?”
She laughed and he grabbed her feet. He knew she was ticklish because he was.
“Maybe we measure time wrong,” he said suddenly.
Madeleine giggled, pulling her feet away. “What?”
“Everyone talks units of measurement, quantity. Hours and minutes until the next appointment. Quality of life ends up missing in the equation,” he said.
“Something ends—that doesn’t make it a mistake. That doesn’t mean it never should have begun.”~

The next day, as Remy tossed his bag into the trunk of his Acura, a fine misting rain began to fall. The neighborhood was mostly quiet. It was a school day, a regular weekday. Parents and children alike were wedged into their desks, hidden away in their cubicles, suckling workbooks and computer screens until the glorious bell rang.
Olivia and the tutor had gone to the aquarium. As there was a dinner party coming up on the weekend, Madeleine was at the store buying doilies and coasters.
Locking his car, Remy walked back around the side of the house. As he approached the porch, he stopped and ducked into a row of high shrubs.
There, on Olivia’s swing-set, a young woman helped a small boy onto the sliding board. Remy didn’t recognize either of them, so he continued watching, unsure of what to do. Was he a special needs child- a friend of Olivia’s from some school group?
The boy looked tired. Although the day was quite cool, and a light rain continued falling, he wore only a long-sleeved, bright blue shirt and gray shorts. His head drooped several times as the young woman picked him up from the grass in front of the slide.
Carrying him to the swing, she strapped him in the seat and brushed the hair out of his face. Leaning down, the woman must’ve gently roused him as he perked up. She began to speak louder, telling him jokes in Spanish—one-liners Remy could only discern bits and pieces of. Every so often, the boy giggled uproariously and threw his hands into the air. She pushed him higher and higher on the swing. Delighted shrieks perforated the stillness.
Remy glanced over his shoulder, then across the yard. In the back, near the alleyway where Madeleine and Ted parked their cars when they were home, a child’s large toy car was laying on its side.
As the young woman plucked the boy off the swing, she spun around. The garden fountain had caught their attention and they ran over to it. They were just a few meters from Remy.
Squinting at the toy car again, he noticed bags in the grass beside it. Were they homeless?
The woman had a cut down her lip and a large bruise on one side of her face. She had two shirts tied around her waist and Remy fought the urge to tell her to wrap one around her son because the day was still cool.
He glanced up, at least… at last thankful that the rain had stopped.

EDIT>>Insomniac1

2003-09-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Dr. Phil’s Top 10 Tips for Sleeping Through the Night

Madeleine’s brother, Jeremy Weeks, was a mess after his wife left him on their sixth anniversary- this happened in Lansing, in 2003. Just days before, in the converted rec room / basement of a friend, Jeremy paused to take a deep breath in between gulps of beer. It was an elusive, profoundly happy moment- one of the few he had stopped long enough to notice since college.
He actually convinced himself that he had outlasted the curse of the Weeks family- no marriage made it to ten years. In fact, few got beyond five.
“Just another statistic,” he moaned afterward.

In Michigan, he moved three times, each time imposing on a different friend, every time finding something unbearable about the places or the people. He was restless. He fantasized her return to him in extravagant detail:
There was candlelight. Barry White. Everyone’s shoes were off. The curtains billowed, yet the room remained quite warm. He held a woman- a beautiful, curvaceous woman. Behind them, she pleaded, begging him to take her back. "Remy," she whispered, falling into his arms as woman number one faded away.
He worked in international finance. At cocktail parties, Remy joked he was a headless horseman in the rush to spread capitalism abroad. “We provide the funds that make you a more efficient dictator.” For some reason, no one ever laughed. And it was in those awkward pauses- couples clustered, silently searching the area for alcohol- that he felt his wife’s disdain shower over him, crowding out the old surer parts.
Sheila’s mother died when she was twelve. When she was sixteen, her father went to jail for a string of liquor store hold-ups. Working two jobs for nearly ten years, she put herself through college and became the Eastern U.S. buyer for a major department store chain. On their second date- this happened 5 months before their wedding under a waterfall in Hawaii- she asked Remy what he wanted in a woman. Remy gave the standard response: passion, intelligence, humor. When he turned the question around on her, Sheila responded, “Perfection. I won’t settle for less. You shouldn’t either.”
Remy’s dad, a sometimes-alcoholic, had a saying. “One of the pitfalls of marriage is that it requires two.”~

She sat beside him on the flowered comforter he had hated silently each night. “This a long way from happiness. This is barely getting by.”
Downstairs, dishes and wine glasses littered the fireplace mantle, the dinner table. Cigarette smoke hung in the air alongside empty chatter. And a big pile of anniversary gifts- useless junk good for god knows what.
Her hand was on his knee. She had already removed her wedding band in a fit of annoyance earlier that evening. He shoved her away. “Does it bother you that this is a complete shock to me?”
She looked toward the door. The lab puppies yipped excitedly, pleading to be let outside. “What bothers me is that you would tell yourself this is all my fault.” Swathes of evening light poured in their room. She continued, “Don’t you see? You never once made me feel nice. Nice was all I wanted. So what I need to know is, when did you decide I wasn’t worth it? Or did you always think so?”
“This is happening and you’re doing it. You’re playing the card women have played for years. It’s too easy just to call the man the emotional cripple. Sign the divorce papers-” he started to yell. The urge to drown out her voice, her presence even, nearly floored him. “Sign the divorce papers and you throw away a life!” Stalking back and forth, he made half-circles around the bed. “What does an emotionally mature man look like, anyway? Dr. Phil?”
One of their Labrador puppies made his way across the room. In the dusk shadows, the dog mimicked Remy’s circles, trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.
“It’s funny,” his wife went on. “I feel like you could have been with any woman for all this time. Like it wouldn’t have made any difference. And if I’m totally honest, I guess I was happy with you most of the time. I didn’t need romance every night. For years I don’t think I needed it at all. You made me content, even if the reverse was never true. And I know you would never admit it. I know you would never admit things weren’t perfect. You should realize that was one of the things I loved. Called you my eternal optimist.” She kneeled beside the pup, stroking its fur in the twilight.
“Clueless is more like it.” In a low voice, he strung together expletives.
Another deep breath. Sheila said, “What I started to wonder was… is there such a thing as knowing yourself too well? Are there people so self-aware, people cursed with such self-knowledge, that they discover early on what their greatest happiness consists of? That might have been me. You might have been it, for a while.”~

Now, in what Dr. Phil would call “the post-divorce phase of life,” now, finally sick of his childishness, Remy resolved he would not move again. He was single- that was that. All this closure crap took place before the supermarket checkout girl came along.
In the express lane, Remy grouped his can foods from his perishables, separating out the coupons. After gathering the credit receipts, the girl handed him his bags and drawled, “Enjoy your day, now.”
His hands shaking, he carried the bags to his car. Didn’t she look like Sheila? Was it her voice, the shape of her body- what? He sat in the backseat of his Acura until dark, trying to figure it out. The food beside him began to stink, and he felt a nausea well up inside. Overhead, the lot lights flicked on, one by one. He floated on the neon whirr.
Outside, a silver balloon breezed past attached to the arm of a blond child. The girl—pony-tailed and wearing lace—the girl reminded him of Olivia, his twin sister’s daughter. He missed her giggles. It had been ages since he last visited Madeleine in Pennsylvania.
I’ll go, he thought. “I’m going,” he said. Key in the ignition. “Where the hell is Pennsylvania?” Remy asked himself groggily. He struggled through the glove compartment in the darkness, rustling for a map. That little light had burned out ages ago. He kept forgetting to replace it…
For those unfamiliar with the territory, I-70something covers the expanse between Michigan and Pennsylvania in an unassuming bluish haze. Out in the world, on the graveyard shift anyway, there is a sublime calm attached to most everything. Newspaper delivery people go about their business with deep sleep crinkling the edges of their faces, refrigerated grocery trucks form a procession on the road- at times weaving slightly before correction occurs.
Now, map in hand, Remy set aside his almost overwhelming fatigue and tried to focus on his need for his twin. Consequently- or perhaps it rose up in opposition to these thoughts- he felt a dull dread bubble inside his saggy, yellowed abdomen. For him, it was a feeling, an inheritance more familiar than any Weeks family thing- he hated the uncertainty that accompanied setting out on any long trip. As a child, he had despised vacations to the family ranch in New Mexico. And as a spouse, he had hated the church Sheila insisted on attending because it was more than 50 minutes from their house. “You’re talking about Sunday morning traffic.” This is what he would say. “You’ve got to remember that.”
Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez. A voice from the radio insisted this was “good music to not fall asleep to.” Hearing that bit of Southern something in his voice, Remy braked hard and punched the radio until sound died. His right hand was a tangle of blood and skin so he pulled to the side of the road. As he tore a strip from the frayed edge of his undershirt, Remy had a sudden vision of the yellow dress.
They had known each other little more than a week. Sheila said she wanted to take him to her favorite place in the world. After milling in an all-night restaurant for an hour, they wound up at the door of a little bookshop in East Lansing.
“It’s closed.” He stared at her in the fine, misting rain. Her yellow dress lit like a soft halo from a car’s headlight somewhere down the block.
She leaned, whispered in his ear. “Look again.”
A glow floated in a barely visible back doorway of the shop. “What is it?” Remy asked, unsure if he cared yet, or not. All he knew was the smell of her perfume, the soft fabric of her dress as a damp breeze brushed it against his trembling hand.
“Come with me,” she said, disappearing around the corner of the shop.
He followed her into the wet hedges that grew along the side of the building. They both flattened their bodies against the wall. “Are we breaking in?” he asked.
A window in front of them, shade only partly drawn. They peered through it and into the backroom of the shop. On tiptoe, they watched a man write furiously in a ledger, his left hand all the time pulling at his shaggy graying hair. “He’s not dying it anymore.” Sheila giggled.
“Oh god.” Remy hated superficial men.
“That’s Tom Mackey,” she said. “He used to teach high-school English. He was a frustrated writer.”
“Aren’t they all?” He wanted to say that, of all people, he thought writers should at least go out of their way to avoid stereotyping themselves. Instead, he asked whether Mackey had taught her.
“Everyone said he kept dozens of unfinished novels in his desk drawers. He became more and more irate that he wasn’t able to see one of his plotlines through. Eventually, he couldn’t bear to be around books or teach classes anymore. There was some kind of incident… a manuscript bonfire in the gym one day. The school asked him to leave.”
The scent of her perfume in the night began to pull on him. His face only inches from hers, Remy imagined her taste.
Sheila stared through the tiny opening in the shade. Mackey stopped playing with his hair. He put away the ledger and the day’s receipts. The former teacher went across the room to his bookcase. Slowly, with much thoughtfulness, he scoured the titles, his back to the voyeurs at his window. Then, armed with the one that suited, he retreated to an over-stuffed recliner in the furtherest corner of the room. From this angle, only a length of arm and a right elbow was visible.
“I think he lives here.” Sheila turned away from the window. “Sometimes, I stay for more than an hour after he closes. He never leaves.”
“I don’t understand. You said he hated books.”
“An old friend of mine, her name was Darlene. We both had Mackey. Darlene’s younger sister said she’d heard rumors. For a few years he spent time in Belize, on the expat scene. No one knew what to make of it. But he came back and opened a bookstore. Now he spends some nights reading. Other nights, he has people over. They look like a poetry group of some kind. I think they critique each other’s work. It’s really quite amazing. It’s amazing what time can do.”
He shook his head. Sentimentality… schmaltz- these were things right up there on his list with superficiality. “Expat scene you say?” As they spoke, Remy gently took her elbow and led her away from the window. “I’ll tell you what really happened. Down in Belize, Mr. English 101 got involved in the drug trade. That’s what enlightened his search for personal growth. Back here, these ‘writers’ you see him with are fellow criminals.” He grinned at her in the darkness. “They’re plotting the perfect crime. They plan to knock over the local library and steal two thousand dollars in dimes. And hundreds of tiny pencils with no erasers.”
“I wonder what book he picked to read tonight,” she murmured.
Remy asked, “Have you spoken to him?”
The many folds of her dress had crumpled against the moisture in the wall, and the wetness in the overall air. She tugged at it, making his whole body ache.
“You haven’t, have you?” he said, after a moment. “You haven’t talked to the man since 10th grade.” He chuckled. Grabbing both her hands, he pulled her into a hug.
“I called the store once, but I hung up…”
Still laughing, his face buried in her hair, Remy finally let go of the breath had been holding. This imperfection of hers- this strangeness- it so relieved him because before she had felt unreachable. ~

In the car, on the road from Michigan to Pennsylvania, Remy referred to himself as version 2.0 “Divorce upgrades and all,” he joked tiredly. After driving most of the night- after cutting his hand on the radio- at 11 a.m., craving sleep, he pulled into a roadside motel.
“Where the hell am I?” he yelled to the only other person in the parking lot.
A massive, trunk-like body spilled from the open hood of an old Mustang. Tools ran across the perimeter. “Earth,” the headless mass called out.
Sarcasm- that Remy understood.
Inside the Paradise Motel, the smell of urine floated in the air between fits of peeling wallpaper and shrunken rugs. The desk clerk- a pockmarked, heavy girl- gave him the last vacancy. He darted up the steps and down the corridor to his room. Twirling the key ring in his hand, he resolved to sleep on his coat, wanting never to touch so much as a thread of the sheets at the Paradise Motel.
“Maybe in my next life,” he mumbled.
Near the end of the hall, he passed an opened door. Room 311. A man and a woman were fighting. Undeterred, Remy kept going, wanting to ignore it. The fight, the voices in Room 311 seemed to magnify within his hearing. At the vending machine he stopped, teeth gritted.
“You’re impossibly naive. How could you ever think I’d leave my wife?”
Counting his change. Ten, twenty, twenty-five, thirty… His eyes were fixed on the pretzels.
“Why would you lie to me?” she pleaded through booming tears.
Remy frowned, without knowing it.
The man who thundered past looked like any other, save for an exceptionally red face. Right behind him was the woman. Long, dark hair. Short, some extra pounds, she was an exotic outcropping in the pale yellow corridor.
The man stopped at the steps. “Why on earth did you believe me?” He turned, and was gone before she could think of an answer.
Humming loudly, the vending machine surrendered its last bag of pretzels. Tearful woman spun round, and she saw Remy for the first time.
Keys, snack in hand, he disappeared into his room.~

Sunday mornings before they were married, Remy cooked breakfast. Each time, he tried to finish before Sheila awoke. He wanted to serve her in bed just once, but always, she was too quick for him.
Somewhere between garnishing the omelets and squeezing the orange juice, she materialized and slid into a chair at the table, wearing nothing but his black Ralph Lauren sweater. It was a game they played, and every week she found it- no matter where he hid it. (Already, Remy imagined tucking an engagement ring into the sweater sleeve…)
Eggs in Spanish sauce, buttermilk biscuits, pecan waffles—every week he tried a new recipe, thirsting for her hunger, eager to see her satisfied. Every week it made him crazy when she only ate a quarter or half of what he put in front of her.
“This is good?” he asked. It was late fall.
Across the table, she licked her fingers and stared at him. Silence. After several seconds she nodded, a lock of dark blonde hair falling across her face.
“Why don’t you ever finish?”
“Hmm.” Rolling an avocado crepe, she drenched it in sauce and wrapped her lips around it. She cradled the food in her mouth and smiled sloppily, wickedly. “It dalicious. Evryhing. Ahways.”
“Okay. I appreciate that,” he chuckled. “So how come you never finish?”
Sheila threw her napkin at him.
He got up, started clearing the table. “We don’t have to… I mean, if-” He hoped she somehow knew what he wanted to say.
“Why must you men always confuse quantity and quality? What about enjoyment?”
“You’re right, you’re right.” He tossed the plates into the sink and began filling it with water. “Why do people wear watches, for that matter? All it does it help them keep track of hours they’ve wasted.”
Standing, she pulled at the sweater and enveloped herself in his aroma. “You can be such a girl sometimes.” Then, from behind, she wrapped her arms around his waist and whispered, “I want to say… thank you. All this is unnecessary, you know. I don’t need to be catered to. I’d come over here for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I was starving and there wasn’t any food for a hundred miles.” She rested her cheek on his neck. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“I think I forgot some work I should take a look at today.” Turning, Remy kissed her firmly on the lips. “Why don’t you go upstairs?” He dried his hands on the dishtowel. “I’ll be there in a little while.”
“Hey, hey it’s Sunday.” Walking backward, moving slowly out of the room, she jutted her lower lip.
“I like my job,” he mumbled.
An hour later, he found her asleep in his bed. On TV, a news show featured the latest group of talking heads.
Her hair was a mess. Her body faced the doorway, bare legs beckoned him. Inside the sheet covers, next to her, Remy found a little bag of pretzels, the snack she never went anywhere without.
He knew she never ate them. Sheila just rolled them around in her mouth, using her tongue to extricate every last piece of salt.~

In the dream, he spins her on the dance floor. Faster and faster, their bodies move ahead of the sounds surrounding them. First, it is only a few seconds. Soon, however, they are strangely out of sync with the music. But he’s not worried about what others are thinking or feeling or saying. All he knows is this—like a child on some theme park ride for the very first time, the thought of letting go even for a moment terrifies him.
She is a specter. Her body is there, in his arms, moving along with him to the sluggish pace of the music. Her face- she smiles delicately at those around them. (Where are the other people? Who are they?)
He tugs her on the waist and offers her a smile. He whispers some loving comment, but even now—in the dream, experiencing it—it is as if he is watching it happen from some far off place. He cannot feel his feet moving. He cannot hear himself talk. Come to think of it, he cannot hear the song that is playing. He only sees the effect of the music on himself. Shuddering, he tugs on her again and pulls her close. She stumbles a bit in response and scowls at him. He’s messed up her footing.
As they slow down to regain themselves, he determines to make eye contact with another partygoer, someone who can explain what’s happening to him. A wolf is manning the first drink tray they pass. A British soldier in a black high-top hat guards the exit, expressionless…
His door at the Paradise Motel is shaking. The knob rattling. Remy rouses himself from sleep. Still curled in bed, after a few seconds, he props himself up with his elbows. “What is it?”
“Let me in.” The small, female voice drowned out the remainder of his dream. In the dissipating haze, he stumbled to the door and flung it open, expecting Sheila. In front of him stood the woman who earlier had been fighting with her married lover.
“What do you want?” Remy asked.
“Can I come in?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.
He stepped backward.
Sweeping past him into the room, she reached up to brush a lock of dark hair out of his eyes. “You need a trim,” she said.
“So what, do you make house calls?”
“I saw you watching us earlier.” Inside, she surveyed the room. Said her name was Celeste.
“You don’t look like a ‘Celeste.’”
“What do I look like?” she crossed her arms.
“A woman standing in a strange man’s hotel room? You look like someone who’d lie about her name. Why did you do that, anyway? Why did you tell me when I didn’t even ask your name?”
“I’ll have to watch that in the future. Normal people would have gotten around to asking names at some point.”
“This is what normal people do?” Remy sat down. This time in a chair next to the door.
“I saw you watching us today,” she repeated, leaning against the countertop.
“And you thought… what? That I needed, or deserved, or wanted an explanation?”
“I thought you seemed interested. I thought you seemed interesting.”
He pursed his lips, suddenly aware of his unmade bed. “You’re attractive. And I know you’ve had a rough day. But anymore, this just isn’t my speed.”
“I didn’t want to be alone tonight.”
He was silent as he considered the offer. The thought of spending another night by himself disgusted him. She stood there, crooked, looking more alone than he felt. “Did you love him?” Remy asked suddenly.
Celeste bit her lip. “What does that matter?”
“Would it make sense to you if I said there are about a hundred other people in this room with us right now?”
Fidgeting, she tugged at the edge of her skirt the same way Sheila used to. “How long ago did your marriage end?”
“She did that,” Remy said. “She always pulled at her clothing. Like nothing fit right or something. Like she wished she was somewhere else wearing anything else. I used to think it was sexy as hell like… like she couldn’t wait to jump in bed with me. Male ego- what can I say? Later, later it just became-”
“Discomfort,” Celeste said. “That’s what it always was. Discomfort.”
His cell phone was on the table. Picking it up, he began to turn it over and over in his hand.
“Sometimes I miss her voice,” he said. “I can’t call, because she would recognize the number. When I dial from someone else’s phone, when she picks up, when she says hello, she only ever says it once. Then, she waits and just breathes. I always hang up before she says-”
“She knows it’s you. I’m… I do that too, I mean.”
“A long time ago, I swore never to psychoanalyze anyone. At least not to their faces. The only time I ever broke that promise was with my wife, and you see where that got me. Before that, everything was golden. But I guess how we console ourselves isn’t anybody’s business, is it?”
“No, I don’t suppose so,” said Celeste.
Crossing the room, Remy crouched down in front of her. She smelled strongly of burned coffee and faint cigarettes. “Why did you come here?” he asked her again. Then, without waiting for an answer, he pressed his mouth against hers.
It was a wholly unromantic moment. Neither touched the other with anything but pursed lips. Hers were chapped, his, strangely cold. When they separated, Remy felt the sudden urge for a drink.
“Not up to your usual standards then?” she asked in a loud whisper.
“I wanted to see what it was like. Men are curious creatures.”
She tapped her fingers on the table as she licked her lips.
“We’re a pair, aren’t we? Dr. Phil was my wife’s other lover. So I know this- if a woman gravitates toward attached or vulnerable men, she has some serious psychological issues to sort out.” He made his way back to his side of the room.
“Enlighten me. I can’t stand that man.”
“Something must have been wrong with your daddy.”
“I never knew my father. There are a lot of people in that situation and they grow up fine. I hate diagnosis. No one has the same body, the same mind, the same soul. How can a guy with a white lab coat think he knows what’s going on inside of someone else?”
Remy laughed. “Why take any medicine at all?”
“Maybe I don’t have time for relationships. Maybe I prefer working, or reading, or writing, or drawing. Maybe I like my time to be my own.”
“That’s a lot of maybes.” Remy opened the small, bedside refrigerator and pulled out a six-pack. “Beer?” Celeste nodded, so he took a step closer and tossed it to her.
He flicked the aluminum pull-tab and opened his over the trashcan. He watched it fizz onto the lid before he lifted it to his lips, to suck the carbonation off. And the taste of her. After a moment, he said, “I don’t think I’m ready for a woman.”
“I can see that. So what was it? Why did she kick you out? I have to know. It may help with my little drama that you saw play out in the hallway, earlier.”
“I said I wouldn’t analyze you. And I can promise that I won’t… again.” Remy smiled and sat in a chair on the other side of the window. Both stared ahead at the door. “Don’t wait by the phone for this guy to call. Don’t do that. He wasn’t even yours to begin with.”
“That doesn’t sound very enlightened. He wasn’t ‘mine’—by whose standards? Look, I enjoyed the sex, occasionally. Sure, I cried. I think a lot of women cried when they were with him.”
Remy rested his elbows on his knees. Leaning forward, he massaged his face with his hands. “All kidding aside- you really shouldn’t.”
“The married guy? Thank you for your concern. You probably shouldn’t have done whatever it was you did. So? We can’t help who we are.”
“These past few weeks, it has become the defining hope of my life that we can.”
“You want her back,” Celeste said.
“I’m warning you not to be pathetic. I’m telling you to have some dignity. Am I ignoring my own advice?”
“I don’t care about your warnings. If he ever called me, if he said he loved me and he was finished with his wife, if I didn’t think that her money was pretty damn important to him- I would be with him.”
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“The love… where it’s real… where it’s unashamed… the love is not the bad part. The love is not what I should be sorry for. He was married. Maybe that meant it was doomed from the start- that I should have known better. But I will never be ashamed of love. Or that I told him. His reaction doesn’t make my feelings any less good or less pure. I’m still me and I’ll still wake up tomorrow morning and have to live with myself.”
“There are single men out there.”
“Why do you think they’re single?” Finishing the beer, Celeste broke off the tab and dropped it inside the can. When Remy looked at her curiously, she shrugged and said, “I remember my father doing that.”
“Nothing is as easy as they tell us it will be. Hell, I’ve stopped sleeping at night.”
“That’s nothing. That’s normal. Earlier, I had no tissues, no compact, no nothing. I was a wreck, covered in tears. I couldn’t find anything else, so I actually cried into a maxi pad. Talk about your pathetic displays… And the sicker thing is that I haven’t thrown it out, yet.”
“A token of your undying affection?” Remy joked. He thought of his own father, a man who trafficked joyously in hackneyed turns of phrase. That explains a lot- that explains everything- there’s the final chapter- the end is in sight!
Love. Love explains a lot.
Her eyes were misshapen pools of blue. “I’ve been through this before. What’s going to get you,” she said, “I mean really get you, is that no matter what you expect, no matter how in control you feel- even well past the time when all goodbyes are said- the loss of this person will just keep flooring you.”
Remy started to cry. Almost as quickly, he pictured his mother. A formidable woman, Jane Weeks had a braid of steel gray hair that was never askew. As a child, when he wrapped his small arms around her neck in an attempted embrace, he was always overwhelmed by her earthen scent.
Taking deep breaths now, Remy tried to compose himself by focusing on the stretches he learned from her long ago. (She hated weak men and had told him this over and over again on their many walks at the New Mexico ranch). The control stretches were: fingers, arms, back, and legs. He willed himself to concentrate on these movements- all the while digging at furious tears.
A few seconds passed. Celeste hugged him. He clutched her shoulders in his palms and lost himself.
Later, Remy said, “On the day of our anniversary party, she told me that it died. That we died.”
“And I bet you were worried about your guests.”
“No, it happened after. What do you mean?”
“Love is constant.” She took a deep breath.
“It goes on? What are you saying? It’ll survive, and we’ll wind up together in the end?” He rolled his eyes.
“No, nothing like that. I’m saying love is constant.”
Outside, someone was banging on a nearby door. Celeste rushed across the room and ran into the hallway of the Paradise Motel. It was her mystery man, from earlier.
She turned, smiled at Remy, and she was gone.~

The morning of Remy’s birthday—he and Sheila have been married five years…
“I miss you. Our bed is so empty. At least until my girlfriends get back in. Seriously, I’m 35 today and I’ve realized how damn lucky I am. A promotion on the horizon. And what about you? Work’s going so well that they’ve got you out there courting new accounts. I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to see you. Call me when you get this.”
One o’clock…
“Alan arranged for us to take the clients on a tour of the bay area. I loved your message, by the way. The part about missing me, I mean… I’m glad to hear that the rumors about your promotion are proving true. Wouldn’t it be an unbelievable present if they offered you the job today? Think of how hard you’ve worked. No one deserves it more than you, baby.”
Three-fifty p.m.…
“Sheila, he’s on a conference call with Asia. He’s asked me to tell you that he’ll call you back as soon as he can. Looks as though he’ll be tied up for awhile. Did you know Mr. O’Malley gave him the news at lunch today? I’m thrilled for him… We all are. It honestly could not have happened to a better guy.”
Seven-ten p.m.…
“Baby, Grace gave you my message, right? I realize it’s been a hectic day for you. I got in from San Fran about forty minutes ago. Alan said it was fine that I fly out early. I’m here at The Dancing Fish, right by the airport. It’s mobbed. I’m starving. I’ve missed you. Please call.”
Seven fifty-eight …
“The last meeting ran late, now traffic is crazy. There must be an accident backing up the expressway because I’m sitting here in bumper-to-bumper. Sorry, but I can’t move any faster than I am.”
Eight thirty-two…
“Surprise,” she whispered softly. “Didn’t really work out the way I’d hoped it would.”
He chuckled. “A sushi bar? You’ve got some sense of humor to think that I would want to spend my birthday here.”
She dipped an egg roll in sauce. Took a bite.
“It’s good you’re back,” he said.~

When Jeremy and Madeleine were young, people said it was impossible to tell them apart. Dark-haired, dark-skinned, similar builds. For fraternal twins of opposite sex, this comment caused the two children endless consternation. Remy worked hard at his job and Madeleine, in turn, worked even harder at her appearance.
Their parents had believed in little to no delineation between the genders, instead, they hoped to endow their kids with sensitivities foreign among their counterparts. And, as Madeleine mocked Mother, “Our girl can grow up to be a scientist, a doctor, even a lawyer (god forbid!) never feeling undue pressure because of her breasts in an all-penis all-the-time world.”
When Madeleine married Ted- a conservative banker from Georgia- she became a homemaker. Mother’s disgust was a constant topic of conversation. Soon after, she stopped asking her to visit. And from the day of their daughter’s birth, Madeleine and Ted kept young Olivia knee deep in frilly, curly, girlie things.
Remy barely made it onto their well-lit Pennsylvania porch before the child threw open the door in excitement. “You’re here, you’re here!” The five-year old jumped into her uncle’s arms.
“Calm down.” Madeleine appeared and took her daughter gently by the shoulders. She guided her back into the house. “Your uncle has plenty of time for that. You should go to bed now.”
Panicked, she pleaded, “Can I stay up? Please?”
Her father scooped her into his arms. Slowly, he carted the excited child up the steps. Olivia chattered the entire time, Ted responded with murmured “yeses” and tired “we’ll see’s.”
Madeleine smoothed the fabric of her skirt as she watched her husband and daughter disappear. “He’ll have a terrible time getting her down.” Hugging Remy, she said, “We’re so glad to see you.”
Remy motioned upstairs. “Who usually puts her to bed?”
“He works a lot. Phone calls with clients that last all weekend. Tax season is unbearable… Mind you, caring for Olivia is no cakewalk. He can take a turn while you are here.”
Remy frowned. “Her therapies cost a lot, don’t they?” The child had a form of retardation that mirrored Downs Syndrome in layers of severity, though her cognitive functions tested higher than normal. Doctors expressed constant uncertainty as to what they were dealing with. A new recommendation always on the horizon, new therapists and tutors always invading the home.
In the kitchen, Madeleine dug through the cupboards for her stash of instant coffee. “He says he cannot sleep with the smell when I brew late.”
“It’s only nine-thirty.”
“Is the couch adequate?” his sister asked. “If you can give me a few minutes, I’ll make up the guest bedroom.”
Remy said, “I’ve gotten used to going to bed with Charlie Rose. Is that all right? I’ll keep the volume low.”
Madeleine stared at him. She asked about Sheila. “Honestly, are you all right?”
He avoided her eyes and started pacing around the kitchen. “She had an overbite. It was subtle, but it was there. She was a prude in bed. Completely unaffectionate in public. She had too many freckles on her body and not enough on her face. Her skin was way too pale. Either that, or she washed herself out with all the makeup. I don’t know which it was.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“I always thought that what you two needed to take care of Olivia for a weekend. You had planned on kids at some point?”
“Are you saying I wouldn’t be sitting here if we’d done that? You know I was never over-confident on the subject of marriage.”
Madeleine shook her head. “You did not want this. A child would have made it more difficult for Sheila to walk away.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m a bad person because I didn’t want to bring a kid into an unhappy marriage?”
“I think that you were selfish. Most women want kids.”
“Tell me something. Is it a wedding band… or a disease?”~

Remy sat next to Olivia on the carpet. “How do you stop an elephant from charging?”
The girl muted the television. “How?” she asked, looking up at him even as Big Bird pranced around a garbage can with his hairy cohorts.
“You buy his shoes a size too small.”
Olivia giggled, rocking back and forth. Her breath escaped in short gasps of air. Watching her made him ache for a child of his own.
On TV, the big, yellow creature started talking about dental hygiene. The irony seemed lost on the little girl so, after a few more seconds, Remy quietly exited the room.
In the kitchen, his sister sorted recipes. “How are you feeling today?” Madeleine put on some water for tea and turned down the oven temperature. “Veal. This is his favorite.”
In his bathrobe- his uniform, really- Remy studied her. He realized she had lightened her hair. The dress, too, looked new. “What’s the occasion?” he asked.
Madeleine kicked her heels off and slid them under the kitchen table. “Would you dress for dinner tonight?”
“If it’s Teddy’s birthday, just give me the word. O-liv and I will disappear.”
She shook her head and said they would all eat together at six.
“I’ve got you scared, haven’t I?” Remy thumbed through a pile of recipes. “This Donna Reed act of yours is for Ted. So he’ll be more eager to leave his 20 year-old assistant and get home to you on time.”
“I am fine. Ted and I are fine. What about you? You still don’t sleep,” she said. “You cannot keep moping around. You have all this extra time. What are your plans for forever, Remy?”
"Do you remember when we were kids? Midnight thunderstorms scared us and we stayed up until it was time for school, fighting about stupid things."
(A few feet away, Olivia howled at the puppet antics of Public TV dollars.)
"Do something constructive with your time, would you? Clean my house. Teach my daughter to recite Shakespeare. It would be a welcome change from Barney.”
"Maybe I should write a one-man-show. I could be Dr. Stu, a justice seeking marriage counselor who travels the countryside in search of hacks. I’ll call it ‘Jagged little Phil.’"
"Dr. Phil is not your problem, Remy, you are.” Madeleine turned off the burner and poured their tea.

That night, he joined her in the backyard. She had a sunset ritual of re-filling all the bird feeders.
"Tell me why," she asked him.
"I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t fun anymore.”
Madeleine shifted the bag of birdseed from one hip to the other. "There is something you’re meant to do now.” She surveyed her yard in the fading light.
"Like what?" he asked. "Don't tell me to clean your house.”
She grinned, tossed some seed at him.~

Monday the 8th, he woke her at 3:37 a.m. Asked her where she kept the ‘Smores. Madeleine growled. Ted rolled over in the bed and lightly shoved her out. Remy was a force of nature.
They dug into the stash of junk food in a back corner of the kitchen. Sitting on the floor in front of the sink, a garbage can between them, they gossiped about old classmates until the newspaper slammed loudly against the front door.
Tuesday the 9th, Madeleine got the wake-up call just after two. On all fours on the kitchen floor, Remy showed his sister how he had completely cleaned the space under and around the refrigerator. She gave him the plunger and told him to get started on the toilets.
On the 10th, in the middle of an especially bad week, Remy insisted it was his destiny to save the world through science. His sister reminded him that he flunked freshmen biology.
The 11th, 12th, and 13th he tried singing. No one slept, and Olivia took to covering both ears with her hands whenever her uncle walked into a room.
By Sunday, he considered seminary, saying it would be great to only work one day a week.
The following Monday, brother and sister sat toe-to-toe on the living room sofa, a Humphrey Bogart movie muted on the television in front of them.
"What is it you think of at night?” Madeleine, who was two minutes older, asked her baby brother. “Is it the grandiose, or is it General Hospital?"
"When it’s cold, I go outside and smoke. And I listen."
"Listen to what? Birds?”
Remy took off his slippers (Ted’s). "I don’t know.”
“I think you are lucky, do you know that?” Madeleine asked. “I have no idea where I stand half the time because he will not even talk to me. He is always tired. He works so damn hard. There are people… there are people who go their entire lives without ever finding the type of passion that you and Sheila had for a while. God, you skulk around here like these emotions you are feeling are some banner of shame for a man. It is just the opposite, Remy. So many people spend their lives afraid of feeling. You were like that. Dad was. Everyone in our family, more or less. But you woke up.”
“Post-divorce, Version 2.0. Dr. Phil Seal of Approval?” he grinned.
She twisted her silver watch around and around. The skin on her arm was like a moist leaf. “Maybe the real problem is that we measure time wrong.”
“What?” He touched her hand.
“Everyone speaks of units of measurement, quantity. Hours and minutes until the next appointment. Quality of life is lost in the equation.”
“I think you may be right,” Remy said. “Something ends—that doesn’t make it a mistake. That doesn’t mean it never should have begun.”~

The next day, as Remy tossed his bag into the trunk of his Acura, another fine, misting rain began to fall. The neighborhood was quiet. A school day, a regular weekday. Parents and children alike wedged into their desks, hidden away in their cubicles, suckling workbooks and computer screens until the glorious bell.
Olivia and the tutor had gone to the aquarium. As there was a dinner party coming on the weekend, Madeleine was at the store buying bulk doilies and coasters.
Locking his car, Remy walked back around the side of the house. As he approached the porch, he stopped and ducked into a row of high shrubs.
There, on Olivia’s swing set, a young woman helped a small boy onto the sliding board. Remy did not recognize either of them. H continued watching, unsure of what to do. Was he a special needs child- a friend of Olivia’s from some playgroup?
The boy looked tired. Although the day was cool, and a light rain continued to fall, he wore only a long-sleeved, bright blue shirt and gray shorts. As the woman picked him up from the grass in front of the slide, his head drooped several times.
Carrying him to the swing, she strapped him in the seat and brushed the hair out of his face. Leaning down, the woman gently roused him and he perked right up. She began to speak louder, telling jokes in Spanish—one-liners Remy could only discern bits and pieces of. The boy giggled and threw his hands in the air. She pushed him higher on the swing. Delighted shrieks perforated the stillness.
Remy glanced over his shoulder, then across the yard. In the back, near the alleyway where Madeleine and Ted parked their cars, a child’s large toy car was laying on its side. In the grass next to it, two garbage bags.
The young woman plucked the boy off the swing. The garden fountain caught their attention and they ran to it.
It was then Remy noticed she had a cut down her lower lip and a bruise that spanned the right side of her face. She had two shirts tied around her waist. Remy fought the urge to tell her to wrap one around her son for the day, and its promise to come, was still cool.
He glanced up, at least… at last thankful that the rain had stopped.

It's All in the Technique

2003-07-08T16:11:00.000-07:00

Junior wore the smile of a prankster angel on the day of his baptism. Later, everyone discovered he poured bubblebath into the baptismal pool. Moment in time. Interviewer asks a now famous comedian to tell some of the jokes he used at his stage debut, aged sixteen. His expression brings to mind in the reporter a Christmas tree being lit that first second of the holiday season. Moment in time. There's an old woman, walking off the job into retirement after forty five years at the textile mill. She's staring at her gold plated watch, wondering how much it'll fetch toward her grandkid's college education. Moment in time. Movies, books, and paintings are one thing, but there is no art so fiercely immediate or honest as photography.
Now if you're looking to pour some quick innovation into everyday shutterbugging, allow me to pass along a few tips. Get comfortable with quirky angles, go for the too close closeup. Try black and white in lieu of color to capture wrinkles and character lines on a subject's face. And then there's the negative image, superimposed over a positive one, that offers some interesting possibilities for graphic abstractions. In other words, a new way to look at the same old bowl of fruit.

Casinos- full with lights and roaring colors- this is where the people come to lose money in Atlantic City. Most places bring in entertainment, magicians or singers to perform and dance and jump through hoops in the middle of a large lobby where the gamblers cry when the money is gone, but they won't let go of the ambiance yet. So the musician throws out there his tunes made of heartache, and David Copperfield becomes an ideal manifestation of how you had the cash and then the cash was gone. Big business, but not the only game in town. Trump draws a young executive who's just received his first substantial raise; the boardwalk pulls in vacationing families from suburbia anywhere, toting only enough extra green for tacky souvenirs. But the fire happened early Wednesday morning, and that effected everyone.
By ten, a rumor began circulating through area establishments that the fire trucks on the beach had arrived in response to a bomb threat by an extreme fundamentalist group. Actually that last part changed with each person who repeated the story. First, blame Middle Easterners. Then the lunatic fringe. Next, publicity stunt. Finally just about everybody settled on the explanation that yet another presidential indiscretion was in the process of being covered up. No one left, and no one ran home afraid. Fires, bombs? An entire situation that felt too TV movie and so much like whisper down the lane that it seemed logical to assume a well written hero would come along and clear the confusion up. So big spenders from Texas and yuppies from New York City kept hitting on nineteen or praying for lucky seven. The only further distraction to their game was a constant influx of frustrated tourists wandering across the room as their kids complained they wanted this, they needed that. The fire had taken no casinos or clubs. Rather, it burned a part of the boardwalk that catered strictly to travelers, sold souvenirs- salt water taffy, stuffed animals, anything with Atlantic City scrawled across the front. These people had nowhere to go, so they gawked at craps tables or gazed at flashing lights until mothers and fathers alike came to quiet agreement that their children might accidentally associate gambling with prosperity. Overheard on the street: "I'll have my kid stare all night long at the stars in the sky, until he sees opportunity in every one. No need for talk of insignificance. But passing by outside a business that relies on personal misfortune I say keep both hands on your wallet and one eye on the nearest cop." Folks made their way to the beach talking, speculating on the cause of the blaze. Before long, a group of gentlemen in colorful, wide brim hats began taking bets on what the fire marshal would say. Families crowded into the nearby game areas, or they went swimming. At least everybody still had their cameras.
People tried their hand at creativity, moving away from standard issue smiling pixie shots. A few took pictures of sunlight on water, or waves crashing into an inexperienced surfer. No doubt many futures were made, and we know what's in the lens on a Wednesday, 1998, isn't necessarily the same as what we'll see twenty years down the line. Hey, the tourists, who- if not them- so love the cameras? ...wearing two or three looped on the neck at a time; but it's an essential point of investigative work also, record the crime scene and all. So- with much flare, the center of attention now- a burly fellow who looked as if he enjoyed his job too much ruled the case an incidence of arson. Men in hats grinned no longer, too many people have suspicious spirits these days.
Wozniak, a middle aged guy who smelled like coffee and peaches, stood amid the clamor doing his best to appear official. On paper, he's a detective. In real life, he fell away from whatever that used to mean. Gets overwhelmed easily, circumstances like this, because he hasn't been a part of anything important in a long time. Fact, he was contemplating just going back to his dusty apartment that had no furniture. Play solitaire for a couple hours, catch the end of Rush Limbaugh on the radio, fall asleep with a bowl of tomato soup boiling over in the microwave. Before the cop could slip away, a pretty blonde being walked by a poodle gestured to him. So he canceled prior plans and ambled over.
"Did you catch the 'perp' yet?" her hair leaned into her face and she had an ex model's posture, pretended that made her taller than she was.
Wozniak studied the young woman. Mother always said to relate to a person, find them in you. Not a complex puzzle, he at once concluded. Looked like she just wanted someone to talk with for awhile. Had such an eager, friendly smile. He sighed. "Any idea who might've done this?"
"Can't say I know of firebugs in this area," she shrugged, her dog yipped. "So," going on as if the previous matter was closed. "What's it like to be among 'the few and the proud?'"
Glancing round at the day, he realised it's the kind of light where you walk in double or triple shadow. The blonde wasn't wearing any shoes- her pink toes wiggling, he felt okay. "Say, isn't that the army?" Scratched his balding head, wondered if the setup of this crime matched anything he'd seen on Matlock. Gotta start some place.
She seemed nice, probably a good listener. Wanting to stay right there with her, he gave up on pretending to work. Grinned a long, toothy grin and called her Sarah- Sarah's his ex wife. Wozniak said, "Listen, if you tell me God set this fire, I swear I won't act surprised."
As her face puckered, he realised she had different colored eyes. Right blue, left green. Made the girl quite striking actually.
"Pastor Kline was very thorough. Whenever he preached, he sang a little morality and a little more verse. Always went after complete meanings. Something about another lesson we hadn't seen in 'For God so loved...' But don't you remember everywhere in the Old Testament that it says the aroma of something burning is pleasing to the Lord?"
"That makes God an arsonist? Hey, I may not look real brilliant, but Sunday morning is the one time I shine. And you... you-" the anger spilled into her mismatched eyes, angry lips, and angrily defensive body language.
"Just a thought, potential topic for conversation." This shock...
What a lousy contradiction- beauty, masking an ugly side- lets down life. "I only assumed it might make today more reasonable. The fire, for insurance. Act of God, I mean." But Sarah stalked off, muttering about a luau. He let the comment slide, saw a firefighter heading fast in his direction.
"Are you interviewing? Did you find any suspects yet?" The fella's tall, still walking around in full uniform dress. Sweat made lines down his face, he was intent on assuring everybody of his authority.
Wozniak constantly finds himself intimidated by anyone possessed of a superior attitude. As a child, he drowned in the pool often, care of an older sister who held him underwater for the amusement of her friends. Felt something like that age again, right there in what would probably be a meaningless situation. The detective explained about his exhaustive search for witnesses. -When you lose yourself, people are always saying go back to when the loss occurred. But he can't remember anything beyond always being the odd man out.
The younger man tilted his head into a cool breeze coming off the ocean. He saw Sarah, she was strolling by again with that mongrel barking pet of hers. Then the moment passed and he said, "You'll find certain people stay out here morning till midnight. One of them must know who started the fire. Get a witness, arrest the suspect, and we can forget this mess."
The cop thought of Ada, who made it from groceries to rent check each month by selling knick knacks to tourists. She stocked a thousand statues and emblazoned containers picked up at hundreds of different yard or garage sales. Most famous had been the collection of wooden wreaths that adorned an area at the front of her store. It's all gone- everything. "What about the business owners? They won't forget."
Right there, right near where they stood, 'Joe loves Jane' was scrawled inside a misshapen and oblong heart. He stared at the discolored wood. Given name's one of the Biblical prophets, so he at times feels a certain responsibility. Like 'Isaiah speaks truth, Isaiah is wisdom.' That carving nudged a part of him and he realised Wozniak was torn by the aggravated emotion inherent to his job. Wanted to tell the dumb bastard he was headed down a long and lonely road. It's clear he's got no family, nor would one tolerate him. But Isaiah the firefighter just shook inwardly and sighed. It does no good to give anyone else your opinion on their life- even when you know you're right. Most folks figure things out in their own time, on their own terms. Finally, he said "Lookit brother, I've got kids. My job's finished, the fire's out. Now it's up to you to decide who's idea this was. I gotta go watch my son's ballteam lose."
Responding to the departure, the cop imagines his own homecoming later tonight. No children, his wife left him- let's see... five years ago, this August. Nothing besides Sam Pedro, his twelve year old goldfish that started turning white three weeks ago. That's beauty and the trappings of inspiration, it's fleeting. He'd be going to buy another fish, before too long. Wozniak's eyes closed, and he recalled the incredible face his father used to make when he played a Charlie Haden album. Free Jazz. Had no favorite song of his own like that.
When the brief flashback dissipated, he realised his partner Van Buren was close by. Could tell because he heard notebook pages rustle in a passing breeze. "How's this look to you?" VB motioned at the crowd gathered in a tight area past the firesite.
"Nothing better to do?" Might say the same of himself, but that would seem irresponsible. No- it wasn't disdain about the job, rather an overwhelming sense of deja vu. Been here already, done this too much. Watching his partner, the older cop recognized eager movements and anxious gestures.- Is youth bound to be sucked dry by age forty or fifty five; is there anything we can do to halt the slow descent? Magic, magicians seemed like half an answer, but the rest of the sentence never materialized.
Van Buren chewed his lip, a habit that forced him through two or three chapsticks a week. He's a deep thinker, but not overly emotional. Makes the best kind of cop actually. "Human nature. Disaster in another place causes a person to believe his own troubles aren't as insurmountable as was first presumed."
Fatherly laughter. There were cops he drank coffee with, most Sundays. Ones who'd been on the force as long as him. They know. They know that being a police officer has nothing to do with making the world safe for babies and old ladies; it's about control. A selfish job, Wozniak understood. Selflessness played little part anymore, because most guys he knew would do anything to avoid a confrontation. Not Van Buren, not right now, but wait a few years. There'll come a time when it's impossible to separate him from the job, when it's everything he thinks about. And then, overload. That's it, that's what a cop is. A stereotype all the way around.
A few seconds pass, the previous thought is not put into words. VB regains his partner's attention with another rambling monologue where the speaker thinks too fast and tends to get quite ahead of himself. "Hey, have you noticed the pretty girls with lipstick and painted fingers, the tourists, the inline skaters and everybody are all curious to see what we're doing? Maybe they hope the fire will flare up again, will ignite a fabulous evening sky around Caesar's Palace. And I wonder would these shop owners be offended if I smoke? But look out there- beyond us, on either side, there's no one. There's no life. Most of the businesses closed hours ago. People aren't shopping today, the mini event of disaster has yet to be resolved or sate their thirst for safe violence." He had this way of getting excited, used language to shout things at you most folks just said with their eyes, hands, or a whisper. Could've been like an old jazz tycoon if he just added 'yeah, Yeah, YEAH!' to the tail end of everything he said. Had a kind of strange, artistic energy.
Distraction, Wozniak realised this as he stepped out from beneath the overhang of Zelda's Psychic Center and Boutique. Specifically, the ravaged areas were every generic place given to selling coffee mugs with talking animals on one side. Above or below this section you have the theater, plus many larger chain and outlet stores. He swallowed without chewing the rest of a bagel Zelda gave him; he watched as Van Buren went off and running, collecting uniform cops and alerting them of his suspicions. "We want trucks, vans, guys who say they're with service companies." But the old man decided to check things for himself. He needed breathing room. Young people with big thoughts and plans tend to suck up all the air around them.
First, he saw a couple kneeling near and gazing sadly at the loss of their summer livelihood. "A seashell shop?" Strange days, in the words of Jim Morrison. But it's the tired places, every block or street in town, that reminds him of a job he held twenty five or thirty years ago. Clown at the opening of a chicken parts store, he was still wearing the wig and red nose the night his first girlfriend dumped him. For his brother. "You're better off without me," she'd insisted. Later, Wozniak worked as a gas station attendant on the edge of the city. Sometime after noon on a Friday, he finished full service for a blue Chevy, and watched his best friend died. Car accident. Happened exactly thirty feet from where he stood, holding two dollars of change in his left hand. Andy Keegan was this gawky twenty three year old kid who just wanted a wife and dreamt of the chance to play his plastic alto for a living. Ended up with neither a chance nor a lover. And it happened that the day Phil Wozniak married his future ex wife, he felt guilty about the non presence of his best friend and whatever woman who would've ended up as his best friend's wife. Guilt, to open a marriage, should've been a dead giveaway. But thank you, experience, that I should know so much diversity in my youth and come away from it yet as confused as anyone just going in- he's often thought this, and he's often wondered about the meaning of words like power. You decide stuff shouldn't get you down, and then you pretend like it doesn't because everyone will readily agree optimism is a soul sustaining force to the daily chore of keeping at it. But in his cynicism, he's sure it's faked more times than realised.
Once memory lane intersected back at the boardwalk, with the problems of today close at hand, the cop found himself infront of a giant playhouse. When Van Buren read through a rundown earlier, he said four brothers called Alderfer were in charge. The theater couldn't sustain itself but for the grace loans and grants- nobody paid for what they were selling. Cornerstone says 1989, which means not enough time for good atmosphere to develop, and the ornate architecture makes it one of those places trying too hard for yesterday. So he's a jaded purist. That just means he comes at everything a tad askew, and from a side angle. This would be no different. He went down an alley, toward the theater's back entrance. A steel door was wide open, and there were stacks of appliance boxes beside a grey van.
I'm not a cop, he says to himself.
Just a Pole from Pennsylvania.
My life starts here, now.
Least it could find a purpose, if I accidentally do something great.
Worth a shot? he wonders.
I hope so, he decides.
Exhaling roughly, he's shocked to realise he's alone.
Feels good, invigorating.
Gun drawn, he walked down a narrow, underlit hall. Stale air, muggy. At the end of the corridor came the stage, so Wozniak wandered out underneath white hot lights and gazed in awe at the set design. Magnificent backdrop, it struck something like familiarity in his memory. The house was white Victorian, complete with wrap around porch and swing. Silence, for a time, because he just stared. Then... certain girls he knew used to fantasize about the parties that went on, very Dickensian. Everyone else wanted the mysteriously sinister stories you see everywhere on foggy nights. The owner of the house, named Meredith, published a local newspaper. His son Charlie brought friends home from school every afternoon. In winter, they skated on the pond, once or twice before it had completely frozen over. He remembered the warnings, "Watch out for black ice!" Or was it white? Anyway, the willow trees poured down over children twirling around. There were flurries, mittens, and days that by each evening's end no one believed the next could ever top. But new and old interests continued to develop or evolve. He fell in love, he fell apart, he came back to his senses and ran away from them a thousand times on those afternoons. (pause) Embarrassed or ashamed to not've taken a nostalgia trip sooner, Wozniak chuckled under the influence of pictures from a long neglected past. As mother said, "It's always something." If not angst about what's yet to be accomplished, there's anxiety over past mistakes. But today, the memories call up something nice.
Deep "ahem."
He turned, expecting to see Van Buren. Instead, a smiley young woman and her shining red hair stood behind him- she burned in those brilliant stage lights. "It's funny, isn't it?" pointing to the backdrop. "Odd, how something simple can strike up something so great within you." Petite but not thin, this girl wasn't unlike the younger sister you'd die to protect. "Two people can interpret one thing very differently. Or a person may read a single thing two different ways at two different times. It's about getting where you need to go, knowing what you need to get there."
A few seconds pass. "I'm a detective."
Nod. "The suit gave you away. It is a beach, after all."
When he mentioned the fire, she averted his gaze. Told him she'd been upstairs the entire day, working on a mural. Heard the trucks very early this morning, but when no one told her to evacuate, all was assumed well and good.
"Okay," he said, and asked about the boxes outside.
She studied the floor and patterns on her paint spattered jeans for awhile. Finally said, "Can you come back tomorrow? Eddie will be here then."
"Eddie?"
"Alderfer. He kind of runs things, should be able to help you. I'm just a part timer."
"Hey, what's your name?" he called after her. She's about to pull a disappearing act, heading back into the wings.
"Alison" -and she was gone.

Wozniak left the theater by the same dark hall he'd come in. Outside, he looked around momentarily for Van Buren, before deciding to wait and see who came for the boxes. He settled for a crouching space behind a rusty dumpster that smelled like Benjamin Williams.
When the quiet set in, when he calmed his nerves about the 'stakeout,' he thought of VB. His partner would be of no use here, the kid was happiest running around in circles, stopping people, questioning them and demanding answers. But youth and good intention cause the older cop to think back on his first days with a badge. Being a police officer is either all good or all bad, there is no in between. Solve the case and win, lose the fight and it's forgotten. Feels wrong to look at anything for only one of two extremes. Feels wrong, (silence)- but then again, maybe it's the only way.
And Alison. She reminded him of a daughter who might've been. Sarah wanted children, but he never did. They argued about it for months till at last, the insulting began. Marked the beginning of truth, and the end of a marriage. He pointed out every demand she ever made, the unrealistic requests that were levied to him and everybody else. One day, she just didn't come back for their customary fight. (a tear, he doesn't notice). Yet who was the one that would never compromise? Asking to be loved isn't a heavy demand, only too much for the one who can't make a way on his own, lest with somebody by his side. But he needed her- God, that second it was true- more feeling than in all the time since their divorce. He missed things he hadn't thought of in years, tried to ride the joy without choking on the melancholy. Then... oh, then you settle back into the cool shadows, done with wanting to conquer and define. Just enjoy, enjoy an unnamed sensation. Never before had he thought of her with anything but bitterness and regret. Profound emotion, thanks for all the smiles and love she gave him had to be a big leap up.
Two men emerged from the building then, betraying his thoughts. Both fifty five or so, they wore expressions of guilt or fear or sadness- all three. Each began, with much difficulty, loading the van. Wozniak saw while lost with his inner discussion, many more boxes had piled by the door.
"Levi Alderfer, I'll be damned." He recognized one of the men from a photograph, then knew he must've read seen an article about the theater at some point. Could the other be Eddie Alderfer? And, if memory serves, there was mention of a set designer, Levi's daughter Alison. Everything fit then, but he felt a strangeness working within him; questions of his worth. He didn't know whether to like it or not.
Leaving the alley quietly, Wozniak knew they were robbing themselves. He glanced back at the brothers, still huffing and puffing, still loading the van. An insurance scam to counteract a bad investment. On the one hand, dreams can inspire you. But the other side is, they may let you down. Hard. He felt their fear and guilt and sadness.
Out of the shadows, he was back in the sunlight with a good view of the beach. People swam, watched their kids, took pictures. Weather ideal. Kicking the heel of his shoe into the wood beneath him, he decided he should find out what the cornerstone of Atlantic City's center said. Everybody knows about the boardwalk.
VB caught up with him then. "I've got a lead. Folks round here have been whispering for awhile. Apparently, these past several weeks, the theater has been trying everything to draw customers in. If the hard reality came crashing yesterday, and tomorrow the creditors pull the roof off their heads, what better day than today for a little inferno? I'm about to put a call through to the insurance company and see what they can tell me about the Alderfer policy."
"Nice dramatics." He loved the happy excitement always there in his partner's words. You're flying then, you're flying. Sarah's face and the list of baby names she tried using to convince him were there, crystal clear in that second. And Charlie. And Andy Keegan, tooting on his plastic alto. And all the rest. Shaking his head, he said, "I just talked with them, they're not suspects."
"Oh? Really? Um, okay... It was just a thought."
"I've had them too." He mentioned, could God have set this fire? Ah, well. Laying a hand on Van Buren's shoulder, he felt very fatherly and said "I could use a cup of coffee, how 'bout you?" It was a statement, not a question. That's just how these cops are, with their undeniable moments in time.

least pretend?" she mumbled.
"Onstage- when they pay me- I'll recite the

Mr. Mayor (unfinished)

2002-05-09T15:59:00.000-07:00

"I sold handkerchiefs in a department store, which means I was real bored."- That's how Patrick Moffet likes to explain his beginnings in local government. When justifying a stance against any and all things the president campaigned for, the distinguished gentleman from Richland Pennsylvania would simply say "He's an idiot."

Moffet tended to be frustrated, arrogant, anxious, and kind of showy. Drove to work every morning in a car that was the envy of those who couldn't afford it, and the fantasy of those who liked to think they knew better. Now it's been said he was compensating for a childhood full of OCD, medication, and embarassment. Then again, obsessive compulsives tell you they have radar for the same deficiency in others, and politics seems like the ultimate twelve step group.

Anyway, Moffet flashed his charm for the State Supreme Court when he protested his constituents removal of their edgy mayor from office. The charges he fought were anything and everything- but mostly in between. Some claimed he backed the mob, others called him a closet communist. Said he was a liberal, said he was bitter, a few even said he was Canadien. No one wanted Moffet in charge, in Richland--more than that, none could agree on a reason why! Finally, they cornered him for employing an alien housekeeper- a story one weekly paper had a lot of fun with- and he was gone. Banished from Richland government, but in no way forgotten.

His home away from home has become the world of ham radio. 930-1230 every night, it's where you can find him. "I'm not bitter" Moffet says, of past experience. "I get more done, work less hours. What's to complain about?" And his overnight radio success is due to not being in a position to inflict any real harm. So the former mayor of Richland succeeded where only he could- getting people angry, but never angry enough to do something about it.

July 16, 1996- 'The Patrick W. Moffet radio show.'

"Word out of the D.C. today is peacekeeping efforts with the country of Franconia have gone terrifically wrong. They refuse the release of sixteen American hostages taken during last Thursday's deadly attack at... a circus? (mumbles) Is that right? (pause) Yeah, a touring circus. Wow I guess there really is nothing sacred anymore." Moffet talks slowly, carefully, he's the type A personality who always thinks ten steps ahead. Some call that the mark of an intelligent man, others say it's the surest sign he's hiding something.

"In other news, the presidential election is heating up folks. Media everywhere debate Walter Smalley's chances for a second term. Key issues- in this, and every other election- are family values, tax breaks, and the debt.

"If the past be indicative of the future, Smalley's outta here come November. But with the current crises in Franconia, our boy in Washington may have just what he needs to swing public favor back his way."

July 21, 1996 NBS Studios- Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Barb, Roxie's assistant, said he was an ex- boxer. "You really should've read the notes they gave you for the interview."

Grinning, she fired back, "That's why I have you sweetie."

"Alex Marrs, two Olympic titles, heavyweight champion of the world four years running up 'til May of '93. He lost to some young kid, lost the rematch two weeks later and the critics panned him. Forced him out of a twelve year career where he fought everyone from Sugar Ray to Foreman."

Poor Barb, thought Roxie. She could use a boyfriend. Then Roxie imagines her career without Barb by her side- massive chaos. Even now, there are some nights when 'Roxie Waters' barely comes together by air-time.

"Let me get this straight. He wants to go on tv and confront the people who pushed him out, right? He's trying for a comeback?"

"If that was true, he wouldn't wait ten months to do it." Barb chewed her lips religiously, and as such, she regularly slathered her mouth with a tube of lipstick she'd bought sometime during Jimmy Carter's administration. "No, he quit all right. Left without a harsh word to all the jokes. Even did a couple late night talk shows. He plays basketball every Saturday with Arsenio now."

Roxie isn't listening, her mind's still on the day's events. Chasing kids to and from school, picking up the laundary, cooking supper, walking the dogs, and now about to go on television with an interview they'd given her yesterday night. "I don't get it. Why does he want to be on the show?"

Barb shrugs, "Do that thing you do so well and find out."

Then Roxie's assistant wandered off- muttering into her headset- and the journalist winked at Bobby, the cute burly guy on camera two. Ah, well. Tomorrow's Friday, and that means yoga.

Marrs appeared about twenty minutes later wearing an aviator jacket and an uneasy smile. He was humming something by Paul Simon.

"'Silent Eyes?'" she asked, and he nodded in response.

Good conversationalist, that's a plus.

Marrs collapsed into one of the tiny interview chairs so they could prepare for the broadcast. "This is when we warm- up, right?"

She shuffled some yellow pages and took a deep breath. "Okay . . . this isn't like boxing, Mr. Marrs. No 'sparring', all right? Just give me clear- cut answers and we'll make sure the audience doesn't decide to flip to the infomercial on eight."

They prepared, the two talked, and she found him almost charming after awhile. He was rather unpretentious as celebrities went. Except that he seemed sort of ambivalent.

Cut to air- time 1130 pm.

Roxie's always afraid of losing her train of thought halfway through the interview. Her mind tends to wander when there are problems with the kids. Or there father. And lately, they don't really seem to have one.

In school, teachers had said over and over for every bad interview the one holding the questions, and not the answers is at fault. "Know where the subject is headed before they do. Stay a step ahead at all times," was the conventional wisdom.

Anticipate. "Anticipate! Anticipate! Anticipate!" She could still here her old German professor pounding on the desk with his ruler.

"So, Mr. Marrs, what now? Now that you've reached the pinnacle of your career and decided to step down, where will you go?" She looked at him, prepared to wait silently until he answered her satisfactorily.

"I'm staying right here--on television," he chuckled.

"What will you do next?"

"I'm going to Hollywood!"

"Acting?" she croaked.

"Like Rocky," he grinned confidently.

"Don't we already have one of him?"

"Eh," he mulled this over for a moment. "Stallone came to California, wrote that movie, and got all sortsa recognition. If he made it, I figure I can. I've already got connections in the biz."

"Who?"

"My uncle Ned. He's Tom Cruise's pool guy."

She just nodded, chewed her lower lip. "I see, so your future is movies?"

Marrs cocked his head. "I'll do it all. Give writing, directing, acting a try. I'm even up for a play, if anyone'll send me a script," he stared right into the camera over Roxie's left shoulder. "What can I say? I've got the bug."

"Indeed," the newswoman grinned, trying to sound like her idol- Connie Chung. She exhaled slowly. "Great. Well, umm . . . Since actors are very vocal with their opinions about everything, what do you think of abortion?"

"See, I never needed one so really, I don't care. I've got no experience to come from."

"Fine. How about Franconia?"

"What about it? Isn't that north of Philadelphia?"

"A little closer to Asia, actually."

His eyes lit up. "Oh! The hostage thing?"

She nods.

"I say let the people who know about that stuff decide. I really haven't got a right to say."

"Where you're going- Hollywood- shouldn't you at least pretend?" she mumbled.

"Onstage- when they pay me- I'll recite the horrors of the period just prior to women's suffrage. Offstage, my knowledge is confined to sports statistics, Dallas cheerleaders, and Mama's Family."

She was surprised to find herself grinning. "And Paul Simon?"

Marrs nodded. "And absolutely Paul Simon."

July 28, 1996- Pat Moffet radio show.

"Marrs is right! Paul Simon would make a good president. (laughs- refreshed) God, I love this guy. The honesty is so refreshing. 'Show me your questions, folks, and where I can help I will!' It's time our legislators stood up with that kind of thinking- that kind of pure frankness- and admit their own ignorance when it becomes neccesary. Here we have Marrs- a man who was literally kicked when he was down. Someone moved the whole boxing profession without telling him and he had no way of getting back in, nowhere else to go. But he did have the grace not to make a scene- to go quietly- and to see this chance for what it was. An opportunity. A chance to pursue a different dream. A way to introduce another world to his brave ambivalence . . . Did you read it? Did you see it- front page, Philadelphia Inquirer? 'Ambivalence lands Marrs concrete movie deal with Warner.' They're thinking of calling it 'The man who knew certain things, but not others.' The nation loves him. And why shouldn't they? It's time the American public was introduced as a whole to this kind of invigorating honesty in a day when the political and social wells have all but dried up!"

He was silent for a moment. Then, his speech picked up again- even faster and more feverish. "That's it, folks! Maybe there's our answer. Maybe it's time for a change. Is it just me, or does anyone else see Marrs in office? Senate, maybe? Why not? Bono did it, Reagan did it, there are plenty more who wish they could . . . "

July 29, 1996- Marrs responds to increasing calls that he run for office.

"I don't want to be a senator. I want to be a movie star. Actors make good money. Granted, we're all just liars anyway, but I'll take the highest paycheck.

"I started my career at seventeen. Seventeen! I was so late entering the sport, I was lucky to get anywhere at all. You know how I did it? A heavy bag in the attic of my parents' little house outside Philly. A heavy bag and a dream. It got me to the Olympics- twice. That's only one goal. My other is to make it to the Oscars.

"And about Franconia, honestly, I don't know enough to care."

Later that night, at NBS studios.

Roxie smiled preenily at Willem Bradley, so- called new 'heartthrob of the daytime soaps.' The old nervousness was gone. Roxie felt more confident this past week, like she wasn't as scared anymore. Like it wasn't important to hide those fears from everyone and pretend to be something she's not. "So . . . you think Smalley shouldn't send troops to Franconia?"

"Well, no. I'm aware that they haven't listened to reason, but what's force gonna do? It'll make them play their hand and I bet anything they didn't come into this unprepared to go down fighting. Either that, or they would've given up when we sanctioned them over a week and a half ago." The young man twitched nervously in his seat. He had yet to do his trademark wink for the cameras and all the women watching at home.

"Really Mr. MIT? And what makes you such an authority? Didn't you go to community college?" She glanced down at her notes. "Says here you studied animal husbandry."

The actor turned bright red and averted his eyes from the camera, and from Roxie.

"You think the president should just ignore such a hostile act?" Her eyes narrowed. She feigned 'serious journalist' whenever the camera turned in her direction.

Bradley didn't answer her, swallowed several large gulps of air that reverbrated in the microphone on his lapel. He thought of his puppy back home, and the farm in Indiana.

"The truth of the matter is, how would you know? You weren't even alive when we went to Vietnam, were you?"

And . . . things continued in that fashion for the rest of the session.

Highest evening ratings in months.

August 2, 1996- Special News Bulletin

"Early this morning, a submarine registered with the Franconia National Guard sunk an American cruiser in waters just outside the Gulf of Dardanelles. Four seamen were reported killed. We are awaiting confirmation of this report.

"The president has been fearing this day for weeks. Advisors have warned him to tread carefully, for the entire election may hinge on how he handles the Franconia threat. And he's finally decided on indecision in the matter. No one wants to be remembered for sending the country into war, so Smalley will turn to the populous, in an effort to gauge public opinion about a military occupation of the small Asian country until a full investigation has been reached, and the hostages have been released.

"Tomorrow morning in Washington, President Smalley had arranged for a town meeting of sorts. At the Jaycee auditorium on Buickmuller circle he will open the topic for discussion among concerned citizens, media, tv cameras, the whole nine (yards). He needs our help folks. He needs our courage now, more than ever."

August 3, 1996. Jaycee auditorium in Washington, D.C.

Smalley cleared his throat, prayed to God again and for the third time that morning to give him the strength to end his addiction. Nicotine, devil's drug of choice. So far, he'd gone through one and a half cigars, his throat was achingly soar, and his hands trembled in disbelief of the entire situation.

He thought of Ziggy, thought of the cartoon where Ziggy approached the information desk and asked 'Why me?'. -- Recite the periodic table of elements, that's what mother would say could calm the nerves better than anything else. The first element escaped him. He leaned over to his press secretary and requested the answer.

"Hydrogen," Kneale whispered back.

He gulped. "Right, like in the bomb."

"Can you get me some water?" Smalley called out to no one in particular, and a few small guys in suits rushed out of the room. "All night, all night," he muttered to himself. The president had been in constant contact with both branches of government till early this morning. Each advised him, each succeeded only in disagreeing with the other. "Did we get an answer from them yet?" he asked Kneale something else that made the bum turn away from his Tetris.

"From the Franconians? No. From your mother? Yes. From Cokie Roberts, yes. From George Bush, yes."

"What did they say?" He couldn't believe he was asking his mother's advice on military strategems.

"And I quote, 'go with your gut.'"

"I wasn't even in the Boy Scouts for Pete's sake. What do I know about the army?!"

"Your the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Of all the forces. I hope you read some of the rule book they gave you."

Smalley loosened his tie, cleared his throat again, and vowed never to touch another cigar. Even the half of one still in his breast pocket. "Paul Simon would make a good president," he said beneath his breath.

"What?"

"I said I'm gonna set a precedent. Let them," he pointed out to the rows of people just beyond the curtain that hid him, "make the tough decisions for me."

"Well, go to it, then. You're on," the press secretary pushed him through the curtains and the room erupted in spontaneous questions. Flashbulbs flickered, the effect was dizzying.

As usual, the rumour mill in Washington had spent all night grinding away. By the time Smalley stumbled to the podium at Jaycee auditorium, the death toll on the sunken American cruiser had risen to the hundreds. Nobody could be sure what was truth and what was fiction. All they wanted were numbers, facts, solutions.

"That's what I came to you for," he began. "I'd hoped we might solve this thing together. Now people are talking war, bombs, casualties- I wanted my administration to be known for peace. And I wanted the public during that time to be known for not jumping to conclusions."

A reporter- a man named Jason- interrupted him calling out, "Will you really do as the people here, today, decide?"

"I've no other course of action . . . As I see you're anxious to begin, let's do that, shall we?" Smalley motioned to a woman wearing a blue and pink pantsuit who stood at the microphone far to the left in his field of vision.

"You've got to do something," Pantsuit exclaimed. Others cheered as she redefined her seat, sitting on the floor, in front of the stage where Smalley was.

He looked down at her. "What do you suggest?"

She was quiet for a long moment. Seemed to be weighing her options heavily. Pantsuit shifted her bulk form one foot to the other and glanced back at a row of boys seated a few feet away. They were dressed in army fatigues.

"I don't know," was- in the end- all she could afford.

"How about you?" Smalley pointed at a man wearing black and white.

He just shook his head. "How would I know boss?"

And another, Smalley turned toward a short, stocky lieutenant whom he recognized from several dinners at the White House. "What do you think about going to war? Would you have any reservations against fighting again? Against possibly killing Franconians, if it came down to that?"

The lieutenant- named Kareem Smith- shrugged. He considered the men on that sunken ship, remembered all the kind words said about them at a memorial held last evening at the base. Kareem did know. He hated the anger that killed his fellow enlistees but knew that revenge was all these quiet people thought of, all they were trying to express . . . Or maybe, maybe it was fear. He considered that the pregnant woman seated two rows down from him knew what she wanted to say, but couldn't. What would a young woman carrying a child know about the army? Anymore than Willem Bradley? Still, Kareem met the eyes of the officers seated around him.
"Sir? I don't care. I don't care either way, right or wrong. I don't care what happens to the Franconians. They started this. It's our turn to finish it."

Smalley nodded solemnly. He wore a peculiar expression. No one could be sure if it was because of his brother, who died in the Persian Gulf, or his own debilitating knee injury that prevented him from fighting, and ever knowing the stark realities of cold war. Either way, he left the Jaycee Auditorium right then, and didn't look anyone in the eye for weeks.

Child

2001-12-15T14:14:00.000-08:00

Leaning forward in her chair, she closed her eyes. The sunlight felt delicious- winter was at last a memory. Several bees buzzed nearby. She opened her eyes and exhaled. “Charlie was a chemist but Charlie is no more. What Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4.”

“A classic!”

With a few squirts of lemon into her iced tea, she said, “What did you come up with?” He handed her her sugar packets, and she began to rip each one open. She was continually amazed at the variety of sweeteners available in restaurants today. Pink packets, white and blue striped packets, yellow packets…

“Adam told God that he was lonely-”

“Is this joke going to disparage me in some way?”

“Wait and see,” Barry said. “Adam asked God to give him someone who would love him. God gave him a dog. Later, Adam asked God to give him someone to teach him humility. God gave him a cat. God was relieved. Adam felt much better. The dog wagged his tail. And the cat didn’t give a damn.”

If there is one thing that can be blamed for bringing Barry and Alicia together, if there is one thing that's kept them together throughout, it’s Tom Snyder. Legendary news anchorman, legendary sarcastic wit, legendary hair. His live, late-night, talk show always began the same: “Sit back, have a colortini, and relax. Thanks for catching our pictures as we fly ‘em through the air.” The show always ended with some joke Tom heard or found on the Internet. She and Barry were competing to see how many they remembered.

The waitress brought their food to the table then. Barry told her the “real” story of how the angel came to its place atop the Christmas tree.

Chuckling, Alicia said, “I’m glad you waited until after we got our food to do that.”

Across the street, a woman was pushing a caravan-like baby carriage. One of those two or three seaters- good for a couple of kids, the average ten pound diaper bag, purse, umbrella, et-cetra. An infant, a girl with a very round face and dark hair, kept lunging forward in the carriage. Her chubby arms strained to reach the child in the front compartment.

“Gracia!” the young woman said sharply.

Alicia looked at Barry. He was studying them too. His eyes wrinkled at the corners and his mouth stiffened.

“What about when Tom ended with, ‘always remember that the Ark was made by amateurs and the Titanic by professionals.’”

Barry softly said, “She waitresses at John’s restaurant on the highway.”

“Which?”

“That girl…oh, John’s restaurant is the one right after the turnpike on-ramp. You always shoot too far beyond it and have to turn around in the pet store parking lot.”

“Ah.”

Barry continued watching her and Alicia watched him.

The young woman shaded her eyes and sat down on one of the many benches that lined the other side of the street, this area, the center square. The infant Gracia continued to swing at the child in front of her.

“You see, you see?” Barry said excitedly. “The town tries to revitalize downtown here, tries to do something uplifting with it, and everybody gets upset. ‘Why not turn it into a parking lot?’ you and your friends at the hospital complained. No. I vote with the good guys to put a few bushes, trees, and hedges in, keep half the square for parking, add a few benches for people to sit on. Everybody tells us we are throwing out tax dollars the borough should be using for other things. What things? Should it all be a parking lot? Should we develop more local industry? How about building even more housing developments where there's no room? When businesses and people start knocking down the township limits, you and your friends at the hospital will be the ones complaining about continual tax increases, pollution, and crime. We at the borough, we're on good terms with life, you know? We just try to make it nice for the people who are living here now. Give mothers and children a place to sit and relax.”

“Richland Park is two blocks away.”

Across the street, Gracia managed to get her leg over one side of the carriage. The young woman erupted in a stream of foreign curses. Smacking Gracia’s leg and dropping it back into the carriage, the woman picked up the child in the front compartment. She held the baby somewhat awkwardly. Very small, just enough to fill one arm. With her free hand, she stroked his fuzzy blond head. The baby wriggled a bit and continued crying, his cries coming out like strained gasps. She enveloped the baby in both arms now. Swaying on the sidewalk, standing beside the carriage and little Gracia, she shifted her weight from the heel of one foot to the heel of the other foot.

Alicia smiled thinly. “Sometimes, I think it’s not the rocking that matters. It’s the heartbeat that finally calms the baby. Did you see how when she held him in both arms, to her chest, he started to get quiet?”

“Both actions matter equally. The rocking and the heartbeat each bear significantly on the baby’s psychological mind-set, which is just now beginning to form.” Barry nodded. “I’m sure she works at John’s restaurant.”

“I never remember her waiting on us.”

“Thank goodness. She probably could not handle your intricately detailed orders.”

“Is that right?” Alicia told herself the sun was getting to him. In the winter, she blamed it on the cold. “So do you go there often without me?” Picking all the croutons from her salad, she cradled them in her hand, eating slowly, crunching loudly. He hated that. After a moment, she gave up. “I never remember her waiting on us.”

Still looking the other direction, Barry reached forAlicia's hand. When he found it full of croutons, he smiled. Then, he stood and moved his chair around the table, until he was very close to her. He sat down again and ate a mouthful of the crunchy substance from the palm of her hand. The sensation of his tongue on her skin tickled.

On his second mouthful of croutons, he didn’t bother swallowing before saying, “We sit in the smoking section. That girl waits on non-smoking customers.” All the crumbs fell into his lap.

“The Bible according to kids states: ‘Do one to others before they do one to you.’” Alicia looked at the other faces around them, determined to find some way to distract him so their entire conversation would not revolve around that woman. To the left, an elderly man was lecturing a ten-year old boy. The boy stared into his pasta.

Behind them, a couple was breaking up. From what Alicia could overhear, the woman wanted to and it and the man just talked about the weather. He was pretty distraught. She told him he had no ambition, no drive to improve himself and his life. Poor guy.

“She can’t be making much money,” Barry said suddenly. “Do you think she's okay?”

Alicia rolled her eyes. “You and this quest of yours to save the world. Waitresses make a good living. All tips, great tips.”

Barry bounced his leg up and down. He took a forkful of salad and munched on it intently.

“Olives look like Martian eyeballs.”Alicia scrunched her face in distaste.

Across the street, the young woman sat on the bench, still cradling the crying newborn in her arms. She began to breastfeed.

Barry said, “I think her name is Selma. Her attitude is always positive. I remember one night at John’s, some customers began to yell at her. They accused her of stealing something, I don’t know what.”

“Where was I? Was I there? I don’t remember that.”

“You were in the bathroom or something. I recall it all very distinctly because that was the day you received your promotion at work. Tom had James Caan on his show that night and they discussed graveyards and spirits.”

“What happened to Selma?”

Barry glanced across the street. “Wouldn’t that be an injustice if she got fired because of one incident?”

The young woman clasped the baby to her chest. Bundled in his blanket, the baby wriggled like a cocoon from which something struggled to emerge. Selma started to jostle the baby carriage with her foot. She pushed on the front wheel to move the carriage forward just a bit, then back, forward, then back again.

“During that whole confrontation with her customers, did her boss come out? Did any managerial type appear and tell her that she was fired? Did anyone yell at her besides the customers who thought they were ripped off?”

“Maybe I should speak to John about it. You think so?”

“What?”

“Selma.”

“You didn’t get her fired, did you Barry? Did you get some poor woman fired while I was in the bathroom that night?”

“Of course not,” he said. He picked up her salad plate and placed it inside of his.

“You know I can’t sleep at night without you, so don’t tell me your having an affair.”

The waitress arrived then with their food. Before Barry lunged into his eggplant, he said, “What makes you think that?”

“I think you should do it, Barry. Talk to John about Selma. We could certainly even put her name in with some of the other restauranteurs whom we know.”

Across the street, Selma stopped breast-feeding the squirmy little newborn. Now Gracia was whining, sitting fully upright again, her arms outstretched toward her mother.

Selma gazed at Alicia. The eyes were wooden, she was weary. Alicia could see her beauty, but it wasn’t easily seen by the world. No. It took a certain afternoon light, and a far away look, and a specific tilt of the head. But that was the magic time of transformation. Alicia wondered if that was what Barry noticed at the restaurant that night. Then she looked away, guilty as though she had been caught spying.

Across the street, Gracia exploded into tears. She began to bounce up and down in the carriage. It sudddenly reminded Alicia of her brother, for some odd reason, and the baby he chose to call Alfred. Alfred was the most laid-back child imaginable. Were it not for his name, such an attitude had him destined for a career as a surfer. When Al cried, it was because he was hungry, or needed a diaper change. Those instances were momentary, and then he grew quiet again, gone back to contemplating the wonders of the environment around him. One couldn't even say that Al cried because he shed no visible tears. It was a simple call, and as soon as someone entered the room, he got quiet, faithful that his needs were soon to be satisfied. Al didn’t even like to be held for very long. After the diaper changes or feedings, when he was put down again to rest in his crib, he always looked relieved. It seemed so strange to imagine a baby feeling an emotion like relief.

Gracia continued wailing, her arms raised in a needing salute to her mother.

By now, the break-up drama at the table behind them finally drew to a close. The woman sipped her drink uneasily, and Alicia heard her say to the man, “I don’t want to hurt you, but there’s no reason to continue this relationship. I know that it isn’t going anywhere.” She was tall, dressed in a pale pink business suit.

The man put his elbows on the table and moved so his nose was nearly touching hers. “Why is everything measured in progress?” He said this loudly enough that several people turned their heads.

“You’re not making sense. Listen, I didn’t say I don’t care about you. I want you to get well. You need to go someplace where they treat these depressive disorders. I can’t handle you in my life right now.”

He began to sputter nervous curses at her.

She shook her head, got up, and wandered off down the street.

Alicia cringed for the poor guy, even though witnessing the scene made her uneasy. You're lucky you found out now, Alicia wanted to say. Better now than a few years into a dead-end marriage, two miserable kids, an incontinent dog— the requisite happy family, trapped in a suburb of Somewhere, behind a mud-spattered picket fence.

The whimpering man stood up. He pulled several green bills from his wallet and dropped them into half a plate of spaghetti. Then, he walked off slowly, disappearing in the direction his girlfriend had gone.

“We’re different,” Alicia said suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“We love each other, but there’s something more to it. It sets us apart." She had almost forgotten how many different colors masqueraded in the seeming blue of Barry's eye. “We’re allies.”

“I think John may have fired Selma. I haven't seen her at the restaurant since that night I told you about.”

“Talk to him, call him tonight.” She shoveled her chicken across her plate with the fork, trying to quiet her thoughts.

Gazing down the street, Barry fingered the scalloped edge of the tablecloth. "I'm sorry," Barry softly said.

Alicia pushed the plate of chicken away. After a moment, he picked it up and placed it inside of his. Then, he moved them to the far side of the table.

Across the street, Selma picked Gracia up and the girl immediately stopped crying. A moment or so later, a woman in a white dress walked toward her. The woman smiled and sat down on the bench beside Selma. The two talked as if they were acquainted.

Shortly, after taking several deep breaths, Gracia hopped down from Selma’s lap and rested her head on her knee. She sucked her thumb and mumbled gibberish as if to be included in the two women’s conversation.

“Where’s the blond child?” Barry asked suddenly.

Gracia had toddled to the other side of the carriage, unnoticed by her mother and companion.
She began to kick the baby carriage.

Alicia didn’t answer him at first she didn’t look up. Finally: “Maybe he ran away.”

At that moment, the street light changed. More Sunday traffic rolled by.

Across the street, the little girl kicked more forcefully now because her mother made no effort to stop her. Suddenly, the carriage started rolling down an incline.

The woman in the white dress leapt up to intercept the carriage.

Barry was on his feet, still tangled in the chair legs.

A car revved its engine. Some teen who'd gotten his hands on his parents’ keys.

Screaming at her daughter in Spanish, Selma crouched and lurched toward the girl as if to pick her up and shake her. Scared, Gracia stepped backward and fell off the sidewalk into the street. In her confusion, after a second, she ran further into the street.

She looked at Alicia. Her legs wobbled like a fawn. Then, she screamed and fell.
Just like that.

The car made every effort to stop—that was what the police recorded in their final report, based on interviews with eye-witnesses. The driver was a distraught young man, already predisposed to fits of nervousness.

“He shouldn’t have been behind the wheel,” Barry would say later, over and over again. Sometimes, in his sleep he said it.

One day, several weeks after the accident, Alicia told him, “Go and see Selma. Make sure she’s okay.” The little girl Gracia had sounded just like her mother when she screamed that final time. The memory of it haunted her.

Barry's eyes were searching.

Alicia continued, “I just know she's okay. She will be, right?"

Alcoholic

2000-09-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

David Leto was a tall, angular man with a shock of graying hair that would not be tamed. Drunk as he was, the brown blazer he always wore one night became an encumbrance, and so he decided to hang it atop the boar’s head mounted at the far end of Casey’s Bar, in outlying Miami. That he was able to drag a table, climb onto it and successfully drape the jacket upon the animal, then make it back down in one piece prompted a round of passionate applause from the others in the room. Loping back to his stool, he hollered for more scotch, shocking the bartender out of his stupor. As he waited, David rattled his keys in the palm of his sweaty left hand, an old nervous habit compounded by alcohol.

“Everything okay?” a hand clapped him on his shoulder. Without missing a beat, a short, dark-haired man in glasses hopped onto the stool beside him.

David nodded. He was quieted by the new presence.

“So what’s with this weather?” The man said his name was Fritz. He leaned in, and started taking handfuls of peanuts.

A one-time Philadelphia sportswriter, Fritz quit his job to write a book that had turned into a thousand plus pages of egomaniacal athletes using women and abusing drugs. “Same story again and again. Breaks your heart.” He had just moved to Miami a few days before, here to freelance, and added that his dog was tied up in front of the bar.

David nodded again, wearily.

“A pup,” Fritz continued. Seagulls had attacked the animal at the beach earlier, during one of the day’s brief respites from rain. “Been wired since.”

“I thought dogs came that way. Wired.”

The writer shrugged. “Nah… Mine’s usually the Tim Leary of the animal kingdom.”

Hemingway was the dog’s name, and David, a native of Florida, rolled his eyes whilst issuing a simultaneous sigh.

“Let me tell you a real story,” the drunk said. “It’s far more interesting than over-used athletes, or your dog, or the boar’s head wearing my coat.” David stuck his elbows on the bar and stared into the bowl of mixed nuts. “I have these crazy dreams. One of them takes place in a future of indeterminate… of the indeterminate. There is this guy, his name is Mark, and he looks something like me. Mark came from a small town near the Keys and on his arrival in St. Augustine for a job interview he met a beautiful redhead who worked in the ticket office.

“During her breaks, she liked to roam the platforms at the train station, cigarette, coffee in hand, guiding misdirected travelers toward their appropriate destinations. Mark’s initial encounter with her concerned a query as to the best dinner spot in town and she smiled, agreeing to accompany him. By the time they arrived at the little bistro above a bowling alley, Mark already knew he wanted to see her again.

“And even though Claire seemed perfect in every way, her habit of nervousness bothered him. He questioned her about it in the intervening weeks. Her apartment was unspeakably clean- practically unlived in- and she ate and spent all the time she could at work, roaming, studying the travelers.

“The poor sucker would realize years later that she had been looking for a particular person- not just people watching. Why had he not seen that? Eventually, following the requisite number of dates, Mark proposed and Claire eagerly accepted. This fellow stupidly thought he could gloss over the things she had not told him by putting a diamond on her finger. And in the days that led up to their wedding, the couple attended party after party. She grew more distant. On the eve of her birthday, a few weeks before they were to be wed, she told him she was very sick. She needed a new heart.” David started to cry.

The bartender made his move. Rolling his eyes at Fritz, he slid the bowl of peanuts out of the drunken man’s path and muttered “get this guy outta here.” The writer shrugged again and tossed his dog a look out the window. The mutt gazed back at him, tail wagging.

David continued, “They both held each other that night, all night long, until Mark got into his head this insane idea. It’s the distant future, you will remember. Mark took her to a doctor he had been reading about in The New Yorker. This man invented an artificial heart. I mean to say he created it. Mark wanted desperately to save her. All he could talk about to anyone who would listen was the way her hair shone in sunlight and how her face betrayed this idea he was everything to her.

“In the doctor’s office, Mark pelted the lab-coated academic with questions about his invention, electric impulses, the human heart itself. Mark also wanted to know what had caused her condition in the first place. And in my dream-” David leaned forward on the stool and poked the writer with a finger to the chest. Fritz, in turn, asked David to lower his voice as he realized they had attracted a crowd of listeners. “Let them overhear… In my dream the doctor said he knew of a way Mark could keep her alive. They would each utilize the same heart- his. Only one condition applied to the procedure. As all Mark could think of was his inability to cope without her, he agreed, although it would weaken him tremendously. Possibly kill him.”

“So what happened?” Fritz asked. He was writing on a small, crumpled flyer that read Hook a deal at Barnacle Bill’s!

David had long since displaced his rattle of keys- possibly in the peanut bowl- and he took to the frantic tapping of a gold wedding band. “After all his effort, after the frantic calls, the nights of research reading medical dictionaries, after their love… She looked at him and said, ‘Stop.’ In that moment he saw the light had gone out of her face. She was already dead.” He slumped over.

The bartender nudged Fritz again, asked him once more to take David home. Other patrons sneered in their direction.

“I guess I’m not entertaining anymore,” David shouted, slurping a last mouthful of scotch.

Some feet away, a man in a polo shirt got up from the booth where he had been sitting with a nonchalant blond. Coming toward them he said, “I’m on a date, guys. We didn’t come here to see a show.”

“Listen-” Fritz stood, holding up his hands.

“Do you know what’s funny?” David interjected, scanning the room. “I always thought my first bar fight would be with a biker type. Leather vest, tattoos. This guy is me.” No time to think. He squeezed his eyes shut, pulled back his fist and hammered the other man multiple times. “I wish I had my ring with the skull-and-cross bones!”

Polo shirt fell to the ground. A roar went up around them. Blurting a furious string of expletives, the man sprung back to his feet. He lunged at David and grabbed him by the throat. Momentum carried them backward. On tiptoe, gasping for air, the drunk struggled to laugh. “Take your best shot, big guy!”

With a sudden whoosh, the doors to Casey’s swung open and summer’s neon-dusk light streamed in. Fritz yelled something unintelligibly, and the crowd that had gathered around the fight surged. A group of pigeons flew into the bar, cooing and squawking frantically. Feathers flew. Thundering after the birds, Hemingway the dog bounded by. The manic pup’s jowls drooled saliva everywhere, and in his haste he tripped David’s attacker from behind. The man went down again- this time hard.

As pigeons swirled around the room, David waded slowly through the chaos. He leaped several times at the boar’s head, grabbing at his jacket. Finally managing to catch a sleeve, he pulled the blazer down.

Off in a far corner, Hemingway howled at the birds in the rafters. David approached, tossed his blazer at the dog, and then he lunged, wrapping it round the animal’s head. “I love this jacket,” he moaned.

With the animal writhing against his body, and hoping to avoid Polo shirt, David slipped and stumbled toward the back of the bar, out an alleyway entrance. All the time, he spoke soothingly to the animal.

Fritz was waiting for them. “Dad never taught me to throw a punch. Said I was the right height for making fast exits.” Taking the baffled dog, he attached a worn leather leash to its collar and wrapped the cord around his forearm. Hemingway hopped up and down, snarling all the time and catching his breath by exhaling comically.

The two men set out on a rapid walk. Night air poured over them, washing away the smell of cigarettes and alcohol. “I almost had the guy,” David slurred tiredly.

“He didn’t like the story you were telling.” Fritz said his apartment was a few blocks away. “You can get yourself together there, go back to…wherever.”

Lost in his thoughts, David said, “I lost my ring. It’s just as well.”

The writer asked him about his wife.

“There are these two women. One… she’s perfect. Perfect for me. Beautiful, accomplished. She comes from money and runs in all the right circles- the same ones I do. We’re married ten years. Renewing our vows two days from now in Santa Monica. In front of 350 of our closest friends.”

“Three-hundred fifty? So what are you doing here?”

“The other woman… It’s her I’m in love with.”

***

It seemed as though the night slowly calmed things in the minds of the two men. As they walked toward Fritz’s apartment, Hemingway regained what his owner called his “je ne sais something.” The animal grew quieter and took to only the occasional fire hydrant- even soundlessly passing by a black Labrador.

“I was twenty-six-years old the day I met Rita in a bar a lot like the one we just left. My father had only hours before chosen to tell me that, at the conclusion of the next business quarter, I would become president of one of his companies. A forger of one dollar bills- who looks?” David chuckled, stumbling on a curb. “He had more mental toughness than anyone, Dad did. I was nothing but a figurehead. Something of the founder working his way up the corporate ladder over again. There to encourage the stakeholders.”

The writer turned onto a street lined with trees and gently sloping driveways. He glanced over his shoulder. The light rain that had been the backdrop of the day chose then to reappear.

David followed absentmindedly, eyes drooping, hands stuffed in his pockets. “Rita grew up in a housing project in the middle of Chicago. On any night, ten people crashed in her mother’s apartment. Later, she would tell me by the age of sixteen she had been molested too many times to count. We were not an ‘opposites attract’ story. Years passed between us before she revealed anything personal, anything of substance. She had already been living in my home, sleeping in my bed, becoming indispensable to the people in my life.” He laughed wryly.

Fritz slowed his pace and directed David toward his apartment building. “Shower, clean up, sleep it off, if you want.”

He shook his head. “I am not making this up. Why did it happen to me?”

They were in the porch light of a massive, beige-yellow building lined by brick and poorly kept gardens. His eyes were red and his face so full of exhaustion that the writer’s stomach lurched looking at him. Fritz sighed. “As one who traffics in them daily, I can tell you stereotypes exist for a reason. So you fell for the wrong person. Not the first, won’t be the last.”

Again, David shook his head. He hardly felt drunk as he stood, half on the porch- half off, rain falling faster, pelting his fingertips with watery blasts. “For a writer, you’re not very observant.” He walked into the lobby of the building and squeezed his eyes shut in the bright light.

Upstairs, Fritz fed the dog as his guest collapsed on the couch. Before passing out, David managed to remove his blazer and it fell to the floor. The writer picked up a wastebasket put it beside the man’s head. Grabbing the jacket, he threw it on the chair and turned out the living-room lights.

Within a few seconds, Fritz came back and snatched the garment. At the kitchen table, with Hemingway gazing at him expectantly, he rifled through the pockets. Nothing on the outside, but an inner, zippered pocket contained David’s wallet. Flipping the worn leather case open, he came upon a series of photographs. One pictured a striking blond wearing a large diamond ring.

Several other cards in the wallet- business connections, stockbrokers, one for a gentleman’s club called Dahlila’s. In the back, in a pocket of deeply creased leather, Fritz found a folded picture of a heavyset woman with short black hair. “Rita,” he murmured.

Hemingway snarfled suddenly and did a jig on the floor, nails clicking. Rising, still holding the photograph of Rita, Fritz clipped the leash back on the dog’s collar, grabbed a plastic bag, and together they snuck out of the apartment. Walking downstairs again, the writer studied the picture in the brightly lit hallway. Fritz realized that in profile, the woman looked less as though she carried a few extra pounds and more as though she was pregnant. His breath caught in his throat. “So where are they?” he said.

Outside the building, the dog dug furiously in a bed of sagging, yellow flowers. As the plants were nearly dead, Fritz did not dissuade the pup and continued thinking about Rita and the missing child. His houseguest hardly struck him as the fatherly type, yet he wondered why David kept- out of every possible photograph he must have taken of her- this particular one. “Probably to torture himself.” He thought of the bar fight, of the provoked attack.

***

Later, Fritz lay in his bed trying to fall asleep. On the television in front of him, he had muted a talk show. Paternity results he guessed, from the procession of young men with horrified expressions and women balancing infants on their hips.

Just then, Hemingway scrambled from his position on the floor beside the bed. Whimpering, he started scratching at the door.

“What now?” Fritz asked sharply, trudging toward the dog. Pulling the door open, he leaned down to restrain the animal in an effort not to wake their guest, but Hemingway was off like a shot toward the kitchen.

The light was on, and the writer immediately saw what the dog had heard. David sat at the table, gnawing on an apple. “I’ll replace this,” he said.

Fritz waved it off. “Thought you’d sleep the rest of the night.”

“I woke up to throw-up, then I couldn’t calm back down. I’ll replace the trashcan, too.”

“You were mid-sentence when you passed out. Rita, pregnancy,” the writer nudged.

David’s eyes widened and he looked away. “I don’t want to talk.” Awkwardly, he paced the short expanse of kitchen between the window and refrigerator.

Fritz was silent for a few seconds. Then, he took an apple and began to turn it over in his hands. “So… when did your baby die?”

For a few minutes, he failed to say anything. Finally: “She miscarried in the third trimester. It happened while we were asleep in our bed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The ER doctor, Womack was his name, he seemed surprised when Rita said she had experienced no discomfort, no stomach pains, no bleeding, nothing.” David rinsed his hands. He splashed cold water on his face. “They did tests, kept her for a few hours, then we went home. A day later, they called with results. She turned pale while she was talking to them, and hung up without saying goodbye.”

He was red-faced, still leaning on the counter beside the sink. “She went to our room, locked the door, and would not talk to me for hours. When she came out, she was carrying two duffle bags. She walked out of the house. I followed her. I managed to slow her down before she got into the taxicab. She was crying, her whole body shaking. The skin on her face pulsed in this way I had never seen before. She talked a mile a minute and I couldn’t understand a word. I got so afraid that I let her go. She slipped into the cab and was gone.”

Fritz said, “So what happened?”

“In a few days, I found her at her friend’s house. She didn’t recognize me. I saw her arms, though, and I realized I had not looked at her closely since she became pregnant. All along her left arm-”

“Track marks. Pregnant.” The writer said the words as though they were curses.

David pursed his lips. For a minute, he nodded in silence, squeezing his eyes shut. “The sonogram was on the table next to her. From the first doctor visit. I took it.”

“Say you left her there. Tell me you didn’t look back.”

“For a writer… you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

***

The next morning, Fritz saw his guest off shortly before eight. He asked him what he planned to do with the twenty-odd hours that remained until his re-wedding in California.

“I was weak for ten years I did what other people wanted. Why did I care what they thought? They were all unhappy too.” David stood in the doorway. He rubbed the knuckles of his bruised left hand.

“You’re here for her. Are you serious? Another question. Are you serious?”

“Listen, every night I have the same damn nightmare. It’s about a man willing to do anything for this completely flawed person he loves more than life itself. It scares me to death, but now I need to be that man.” David started off down the hall. He tossed the writer a last look, over his shoulder. “The least you can do is call me hopeful, if a fool.”

Portal

2000-05-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

It was nighttime and she was sitting under a overhang that jutted out from the front of her apartment building. Grass was grey, green, and brown. It had been trampled early in the afternoon by a pack of kids involved in a rowdy soccer game.
"I guess you could say that I am in love with you. Deeply." Her companion said this with an air of casualness.
The night was peculiar because it didn't seem to be night at all. A full moon shone glorious and vivid. In the front of her building, a row of property lights illumined a large sign designating the place Escher Terrace. She was transfixed.
He stood behind her, both hands in his pockets, leaning in the exposed doorway of the building. He said, "We've been friends a long time. Why can't you tell me what you're thinking? I've had it with the suppositions."
Grinning, she asked him how it felt to realise he didn't know everything.
"That's fine." He kicked the doorjamb, hoping the noise would surprise her into turning around. All he saw was the back of her huddled figure, clad in a grey-white sweatshirt from the college they had attended together. "That's fine," he repeated.
She started to hum. Had suffered with insomnia since fourteen. The only thing of note to occur that year was her father's completed withdrawal from the family. At 2 a.m., she yawned and thought wistfully of lullabys. "If you really want to know about it, I'm revisiting a dream I had once. I was appearing on Jeopardy, and Alex Trebek asked me if I knew how to play a baby grand piano. I told him I didn't think that was your standard 'what is?' question. He disagreed, and said he wished he was a lounge singer working the Catskills." She turned again, smiled one time. "What do you think that means?"
"I love you," he said. "Trust me. Tell me why you spend so much time alone, why you shake when you think nobody's looking."
With good reason, she gave one the idea of weariness. She had not slept fitfully in ages. Her children's songs, her whispery-willow voice made it extremely difficult to imagine her in sunlight. Eyes were awkward and distant, fingers were too thin, skin stretched tightly across her frame as in the kind of slow-going that is over-washed silk.
She had abused herself for years.
Her hair was her one glory. Long and lustrous, it, somehow, had strayed apart from all her misery. She brushed, sixty-four loyal strokes a day. "I had this other dream... I'm inside a school, not one I attended. Everything is quiet until I hear a rattling sound-- something like the forks and spoons camp counsellors tossed together when they told us ghost stories by the fire. It was a janitor wandering down the long hall, clanking his keys. He told me I could go to that school for awhile. Said they had several openings. Said he knew how much I hated school. I don't remember hating it."
He blew smoke rings into the air. They hung a few seconds, then vanished. "Everyone lets you down if you give them half a chance. I know that's what you're thinking. What if-" he paused, crushed the Marlboro Red. "What if you've stumbled onto a man who's looking for the exact same things as you? Love, loyalty. What if I'm afraid, like you, but find myself willing to take the chance because I can see something familiar in your eyes? I'm the last, great romantic."
The stars groaned softly in response. A constellation- Aquarius, she thought- murmured through the branches of a tall, old oak to her right side. Her gaze shifted then to parked cars. Every so often, as a newspaperman or some delivery truck passed slowly by, moonlight bounced from metal to glass. It was momentary fire.
When he grew uneasy with her silence, he came and laid a hand on her. His fingers pressed into her shoulderblade for about fifteen seconds. She didn't speak. He retreated immediately back into the doorway. "This can't be because you're in love with-"
"Don't tell me how I should feel!" she snapped.
When she said this, he took a breath and leaned to catch a breeze passing across the porch. "So you've got him. How is that?" He studied her from behind, recalling the way her forehead dampened with nervous perspiration at talk of world travel- he was a Navy man- yet all she seemed to do was dream of exotic places. "He's a drunk. Or what about those little white pills he keeps in his breast pocket? What does he tell you? That's right. Asprin." He laughed sardonically. "I met him once, out here, where we're standing now. His appearance, his clothes, the slurred speech at four in the afternoon. But you let him in. You always let them in. It amazes me."
She was a cautious woman, though few could really tell. She said nothing or babbled when the capacity for sincerity failed her, as it often would. A Bible lay upstairs in the apartment, given her by one of the many who patrol grocerystore vegetable aisles, a book which she had never used.
"Ah, well," he said, the air of casualness returning to his voice. "You'll see. I've known many who slapped me on the back and promised to stick around. No one ever did. If not for your sake- if just for my own- I plan on breaking up the monotony."
She smirked. "You'll wait? For me? Are you saying you'll wait?"
A stone fence bordered the front lawn. By night, it looked as any bulky structure does-- a wall around your periphery of concern. By day, however, the grey stone and white mortar would become of the old-time fashion of castles. Escher Terrace was not a lavish estate, but made to appear as one to those watching from outside.
The porch was bone colored and wide. Guarded by crocuses on either side, and by a bed of daffodils off to the front, the gardens were a lazy confection of hues.
Occasionally, winds passed over and rattled everything like a mother who was gently shaking her child awake.
"I just think you deserve better. I know you have such trouble believing that, but it's true." They had been friends almost six years.
"More of your suppositions?" she asked.
"I went home for Christmas last year. The thrift store was how I left it. The cash registers were all the same. The druggist at the pharmacy hadn't changed. The library still charged a penny a day for overdue books. That wind- the one that hits you with old sounds and smells- it arrived on schedule. I heard fathers yelling 'Halfback!' at the soccer fields. Smelled potroasts, and cakes, and pies cooked by mothers. When I was five, I had an idea that the television only started when I turned it on." He was pleading. It was not anything in his voice, or with the words he chose, but they both knew.
"Must you repeat yourself? You told me this already."
"Did I?" He struck a match against an outside wall of the building, watched the flame swerve for awhile. "I apologize."
She sighed. "Go on."
"No, what I wanted to say was that our lives have been very different, but our moods are similar. We're depressed and weary, anxious at times, and we analyze a good deal more than we ought to. I came from picketfences, but none of that satisfies. Only you." He had been a chain smoker as long as she was an insomniac. He wondered what her lips must taste like.
"He doesn't have your edge," she decided suddenly. "Tom never tries to fix me. He takes me as I am. Moody, angry, irritable... interesting. It's enough for him. I'm enough. I want to be the brass ring. No million dollar paychecks, no face on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Me." She wrung her hands. "My first marriage ended because I wouldn't relax, and he was too calm. When we put the house on the market, I remember he took three nights to say goodbye. The bedroom, the kitchen, the attic, the livingroom. The stories. He tried reconciling a year ago, but I couldn't get beyond a feeling that he missed our past more than he wanted a future for us." Her lower lip turned white from the pressure of her teeth.
"What am I to you?"
She closed her eyes, fought desperately the urge to cry.
Neither said a word after that.

He had gone across the field of matted, dry grass, hitched himself over various droppings of birds and animals, and came through the woods, his shortcut, to reach the road. As he trudged along the shoulder, he lost his footing more than once. It had rained early in the morning, everything was still slick. His car had chosen that day not to start.
He thought of last night. Thought of her. They had said good-bye near dawn. Each embraced the other with a solemness, a sturdy and yet somehow disappointed quiet.
Houses, as he walked along, were topped with Gambril rooves. The shape of each place differed slightly in architecture, paint, and landscaping. Trees lined the road, reflected the sun in a golden, shadowy way. When he passed beneath a patch of them, he shivered.
The land sloped, flattening out more towards the center of town. He saw parents and children headed for school. The kids carried lunchboxes, backpacks- purple, pink- decorated with an assortment of cartoon characters. In the air were many sounds and smells: the town hall rang the hour of eight- fifteen minutes late, as usual; the bakery put out its first fresh samples of the day- Italien, Jewish rye, wheat, banana bread, bagels, onion and sesame seed, muffins, oat and raspberry;
the men in faded flannel shirts and well-worn jeans gassed their trucks at the Sunoco station, then left the high-powered engine running as they sat up in the driver's seat, drinking coffee from styrofoam cups and wearing their heavy expressions; old men, widowers, ate breakfast at the park, feeding crusts of toast to ducks by the creek, and to the large, agressive geese. The park smells of water, trees, birds, sky, grass, and wide open spaces- somewhere, within all of this is youth.
He thought of his own childhood, but only with a sense of bitterness because that was when he had not known her. Coming upon his love's apartment building, he counted eight windows up from the ground-floor. By now, by eight-thirty, she was dialing his number. It was a morning ritual of hers. She would tell him exactly what she had done with her sleepless night. Anything from dart throwing, to crocheting, to reading a very old set of encyclopedias that she had picked up at an estate auction some years earlier. By his count, she was to the letter 'H' now-- Habbakuk through hysteria.
No answer.
He wondered if next she called the drunk boyfriend.
Her curtains were in an odd position- not drawn, as was typical; they were thrown open as if she had spent her insomnia engaging the night, imagining herself as a newspaper deliverer, or milkman, or anyone on the graveyard shift. And now, as the sun shifted or the clouds shifted, he pictured her curled up in a ball, asleep beneath the uncovered window.
He had been inside only twice. Once, to drop off a bag of groceries when she was sick. Another time to commiserate with her over the death of a mutual friend, after the funeral at which they had watched the deceased's mother tip over the officiating pastor's lectern and open her son's casket. Everyone in the church was too mortified to move. They watched as the old woman attempted to pull him from his coffin. He remembers how his love cried that day, how he knew even then that they were meant to be together.
The decor was listless and calm- unapologetic. There were books everywhere, in every available space, magazine cut outs and postcards of Hawaii, depicting sunsets and the rapid surf; newspaper articles of book and theater reviews, those were her two passions.
Three Polaroid photographs were on a corkboard by her front door. One showed a flock of seagulls scattering into early evening twilight. A second was a bear standing full heighth inside a cage- on the bottom, in blue ink, someone had written: "San Diego Zoo, Louis." Third was of him, a New Year's Eve party, 1989.
Beside her desk, on the floor was a white, oblong box bulging with correspondence. When he asked her who the letters were from, she had been surprisingly candid. "Little love notes, ten page manifestos. They're from my ex-husband. I keep them because... I'm as attached as he is to all that we were." For some reason, her answer did not upset him. Letters. He never knew a man or woman unconnected to some ornament of the past. Anyone who disagrees is blessed with a superb memory to serve as his photo album.
This was a new feeling, his love for her, and no one had bothered to warn him of the suddeness with which it would erupt; then, no-- perhaps it had always been this way, but he had failed to see or interpret the signs correctly until she claimed serious involvement with another man. He could not recall a time when she had not been in his heart. The prospect of a future for the two of them was what pulled him out of bed each day, was what propelled him to sweet dreams every night.
"Our life"- or what he had fantasized, planning down to intricate detail- seemed flimsy now, in the morning. Despite all that she had said, what she tried to tell herself, he knew her. He knew her, and it was frightening to see how she denied him when he opened himself so freely. The only effort she made was to laugh off his attempts at a serious conversation. Her face was innocent. She stuck her tongue out and rolled her eyes. She showed, from the lack of concentration, the depth- or, rather, shallowness- of her emotions. At least where he was concerned. He tossed a third cigarette for the morning into an ashcan. The bag smoldered a few seconds until rotted food and yellowed newsprint snuffed the smoke out.

He trekked to the Western Union Office, formulating in his head a list of ten reasons not to call her for a week. If she wanted him, she would have to ask.
After retrieving an envelope sent him by his sister in Toronto, he stood outside the low, beige building, counting tens, twenties, and fifties.
The glow of inactivity hung in the streets, but the sidewalks were busy. Everyone walked someplace today, allbeit to work, the lake, or downtown shops getting ready for their spring sales. The warmth had sent the masses out early.
As he ripped the envelops in two, threw it away, and put the bills into his pocket, he spotted a tramp eyeing him. He groaned inwardly and looked for avenues of escape.
The tramp was wearing a thick, green, winter coat. His pants were torn, bruised kneecaps, bloody and swollen. His hair was thick, dark, a beard covered most of his face. Young-- seventeen or eighteen, at best. That green coat must have been gold in winter, and even in the spring, the boy would not lay it down.

"What separates man?
Two brothers go off to fight in Vietnam and each return significantly altered by their experiences. (See, the politicians had you believe you were changing them, the communists, but they never mentioned what the after-effects would be.)
One brother joined the military at a young age, when guns seemed like the quickest route to manhood. He will become a champion of peace, or else seek the wisdom to know which battles can be won, which cannot, and those you should attempt no involvement with whatsoever. The other brother- drafted- comes home cold and broken, a whisper of the man he once was. All for the cause of something as undeniable as patriotism.
What of money? We spend it, we steal it, we seek it, we earn it. We allow it to distance us from ourselves, from those we are meant to discover, all because society has decreed our dreams be of fame and fortune. No less. What of independent thought?
Women fight (but who said womens' roles are any less important than men's?) Constantly, we argue and complain, rather than accept that God gave us differences so we would need each other to be whole. We are individuals, complete and wonderful in ourselves, but through marriage, in a coupling with another, we are given a kind of deep and abiding kinship, a support that is surpassed in strength only by the love of Jesus Himself. How sad the Lord must be to see that we are causing rifts, fragmenting ourselves, our culture, our children even, for the sake of being able to stand high and pound our chests with prideful words.
What is this obsession with validation? How did self-confidence become passe? When? I must have missed it because I was with my kids, talking John through his first broken heart and teaching Shanna how to make her grandfather's famous Apple Brown Betty.
Did you know the winners- these overcomers the Bible speaks of in Revelation- are those who assume victory and stand back safe in the trust of God's love; in the knowledge that what He wants is what's best for us?
Men fight. Men and women fight. Blacks against whites. Race clashes, riots. We have been taught to validate ourselves to others, even when their opinions are of no real importance.
The Klu Klux Klan. Who cares? "The only power my enemies have is that which I give them"- so saith a wise man. If the only thing a person has to make him feel worthy is the color of his skin, than why not allow it? Let it be.
Don't join a race for money and success if you love what you are doing now, if you like your house and think the only real problem with it is an overgrown garden. Overgrown gardens- blessing.
Don't feel pressured to prove yourself to anyone. In the end, if you know something is true, that's all that matters. There is no changing certain people's minds and attitudes, but we have arrived jointly in a time and place when we must protect ourselves. We cannot cow-tow to the opinions of others any longer. There must be no more exposure of our kids to insult, injury, and depravity- and then wondering why they turn out as they do. No looking for and expecting the worst. Time to believe in Romans 8:28 again. All things work for good.
A master of the martial arts was asked to teach a few of his moves. He reached out, and shook hands with the boy who had made the request. He said, "Learn this, and it will be the only move you'll ever need."-- Eve Spencer, The Mind's Eye, Tennessee House Publishing, 1989.

He imagined how his own life could have easily replicated the boy's were it not for incidental wirings like his brother's marriage to a wealthy woman. The cash in his pocket filled him with a sense of guilt and relief. He prayed never to have to know the fears of the boy infront of him.
While he contemplated giving the boy money for food, a figure approached from the opposite side of the street. Stepping up onto the curb, the man clapped the boy on both his shoulders, shouting at him, "Halloo!"
The alcoholic boyfriend. Tom.
He watched as Tom pulled out a silver flask, shook it, offered the boy.
The boy refused.
Tom offered again.
Aggravated, the boy threw it into the street, where it cartwheeled twice before settling squarely in the path of an oncoming car- a shiny BMW. The car appeared out of nowhere. Swerving down Halliwell.
Tom chased it. His flask. His vodka.
The boy ran after him. Pushed Tom hard. They both rolled to a patch of grass and lay there. Stunned.
He made his way over to them. He had been too far to help.
Slowly, they got up. The boy said to Tom, "Tell me you're stupid, mister, and not crazy."
Tom stared at the smashed flask that was glinting in the sunlight.
Shrugging, the boy disappeared over the hump of the street.
"You're her friend."
He nodded. "You're an exhibitionist. That's my euphemism for the day."
"Nobody wants what I give them." Tom shook his head.
"How much did you drink this morning?" he asked.
Tom answered, "A little more than usual."
"Looks like you shaved the dog clean."
"She wants to break up with me."
He nodded. His heart quickened. He felt her hand on his arm, a phantom touch.
"Without her, I'm nothing."
"She deserves so much."
Tom said, his voice breaking, his eyes changing color, "I've never had anyone believe in me like she does."
He recalled her words from last night- how she needed someone who would cherish her above all else. He thought of his dreams. Travelling, sailing, learning different languages, tasting new cuisines each night. Foreign ports of call.
Some years ago, he went to Alaska to hike the backcountry of Denali. Past Cathedral Mountain, the wolves, the air, and the vastness of space overwhelmed him. He was unable to complete the hike. He had photos he would cherish forever, but knew he could not then live up to the expectations of that place.
He was a conquerer. He took his time.

Wife

1999-04-28T13:45:00.000-07:00

Bob Edwards, a computer parts salesman, was average height and of a slender build, and for the whole of his life so far everyone told him he had his mother’s eyes. He was twenty-seven and had never known her, for she died while in labor with him.

Vaguely- can a man be vague, even in his everyday actions? - so he went about the cluttered old store, staring at gaudy, blinking displays, tester promotionals, all the newest must-haves for what they in the business ridiculously referred to as “PC health improvement.”

His girlfriend Madeleine Weeks was a firm and pretty enough woman, with auburn hair that he loved. She spent inordinate amounts of time reading women’s magazines and taking the self-help quizzes. With these as guidance she concluded, one day at lunch, that Bob was unhappy at his job.

“Not unhappy… unfulfilled,” she clarified.

“What do you mean, exactly?” Cautiously, he waded into the waters.

“You need more in your life.”

It was then he said the very thing he had been thinking for years and never voiced. “I’m tired of him. I don’t want to be around him anymore.”

Bob still lived with his father in the same Richland Victorian two-story where he grew up. It was the house his mother loved, the place she’d insisted on buying and renovating with her own sweat. The home of the woman he’d never known. “I’d like to stay. What I’d really like is for him to leave.”

“Don’t say such things. Your father is all alone. He’s helpless in a lot of ways.”

Bob leaned in and caressed the length of her neck. Brushing a lock of hair off her face, he told her in a whisper how much he appreciated her.

“Hey, you may live with him but it’s not because you have to,” she said. “It’s because you feel a strong connection to your family… to your mother, anyway.” Laughing, she explained that according to Cosmo, such personality traits in a boyfriend belonged in the plus column.

When Madeleine said such things, he worried that she over-thought while reading her magazines on relationships and babies and diapers. “It isn’t so much ‘family,’” Bob said. “He doesn’t talk to me. I see him in a chair, staring at old photo albums, and I wonder what might have been- how things could have happened entirely differently. I look at him and I see that I made his life miserable, basically.” He stared at her with a concentrated expression.

She sighed. After a few seconds spent toiling with the remains of her pasta, Madeleine offered the words he’d waited for. “I’m not looking to have kids either, Bobby.”

“I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you.” He smiled.

*****

The alliance between the young man and his father was born of a mutually tragic past. When Bob left work, or his girlfriend for the evening, he arrived home many times to find his father asleep on the well-worn living room sofa. It was a plush, brown-grey, heinous thing. On a day Bob felt especially compassionate, he asked his father about this.

“Why don’t you buy a new mattress? Or…make a proper bedroom out of the living room, if you really can’t stay upstairs.” He offered to switch rooms.

The old man, gaunt beyond his sixty-some years, coughed his Smoker’s cough. After coughing, he presently looked at his son and smiled. “Thank you. You know I sleep up there sometimes. It’s worse certain nights than others.”

Bob shook his head and threw himself back in his chair. Looking up, he squinted at the ceiling. At the off-white paint, at the cream color his mother had probably agonized over for weeks. “You should sell this place.”

His father got up to leave, slowly his right hand plucked along the wall for support.

Exhaling, Bob decided suddenly that he wanted to see her. He went to the pastel florals calendar that hung above the sink. Paper-clipped to the bottom of the page on the following month was a Polaroid of his mother, working in the garden that once flourished at the back of their house. On April 16, a Wednesday this year, the calendar read, “Carol is 60.” He looked again at his mother. All of thirty years old, spade in hand, back-lit by the afternoon sun, she appeared as contented as any woman possibly could. “Sixty years old,” he softly said.

Many times, his father referred to that photograph as ‘Rita Hayworth at play.’ On January 1, without fail, transferring it was the first thing he did as he got out the new calendar- always exactly the same or as close as possible to the old one. He never threw them away- or so Bob thought, imagining they were all in a drawer at the top of the house, possibly the old armoire, beginning with that first year. Beginning with Bob’s birthday, the day Carol died.

What little he knew of his mother could fit in the palm of a baby’s hand. All anyone bothered to tell him, all he knew was “She was vibrant, pretty, and young.” Vibrant, pretty, and young when she died. What else could they say? What else do deceased loved ones become but that, in memories? Vibrant, pretty… he had the photographs, that much he could see that much for himself.

“What is it you want your dad to tell you?” Madeleine asked, on a walk one evening. Before Bob could answer, she took his hand and said, “You’re afraid if you let him go, all of a sudden he’ll open up about her to someone else.” She added that the old man probably thought if he spoke to Bob at length, the two would be unable to avoid the fight that was coming, the one that would culminate in Bob’s moving out. “Who knows?” she said. “It could be the way you squint your eyes or how you sit in a chair. That’s all that keeps Carol alive for him.”

“But I want to know something real. She hated golf, she loved ping-pong. She believed in God, she wasn’t sure.” He had only one idea why his father could not grant him some small wish in that regard.

“He isn’t punishing you,” she said. “I can’t believe that. I don’t. If it were true, if he really couldn’t handle it, he’d have given you up for adoption.”

“My mother would have hated him for that!”

“How do you know?”

“It’s about the children.” Bob cut himself off before he said ‘because parents don’t do that!’

Madeleine extended an arm to him- she pulled him into a hug. Bristling at the heavy fabric of her shirt, he buried his face in her hair. As she stroked his back, she whispered to him. There are men, this woman speculated, men who just don’t know how to communicate their feelings. And then there are those who, for some reason or another, keep them hidden- always locked away. “One day he’ll talk,” she said, assuredly.

After a minute, he backed out of her hug. With a few inches separating them, he stared intensely into her eyes.

“What?” she giggled.

“I’m in love with you. I want to get married soon. Tomorrow, maybe. Friday at the absolute latest.”

She jumped ecstatically, and threw her arms around his neck once more. Her eyes overflowed with tears and she called out, laughing, “Why not tonight?”

(In fact, he loved her because she was the opposite of love, completely without challenge for him…)

*****

In the morning, he met his father in the backyard. The old man leaned, coffee cup in hand, reading the newspaper, against the side of the house.

“We set the date.” Bob told him the ceremony would be in a few weeks’ time.

The old man nodded. Without looking up, he asked, “Where will you live?”

“At her apartment for awhile. We’ll decide what comes next after we pay for the honeymoon.”

He lifted the mug to his lips. They stood in silence until he said, “Do you want something from me?”

“I have savings… we have savings.” Eyes wide, Bob said, “I don’t need anything from you.” A nearby collection of birds flew off.

Nodding, the old man seemed satisfied. “Should I come?”

Bob stepped off the patio and turned away from him. “If you want.”

“Truth be told, if it’s all the same to you I’d rather not.”

Clenching his fists, he dug his nails into his palms and counted to ten. Both his parents were dead… he started practicing what he would say to Madeleine’s relatives.

His father took another swig of coffee. He swirled it in his mouth for a long time. The old man said, “I’d still like to see you, Bobby. Church has never been my thing.”

“What is your ‘thing?’”

He finally looked up at his son. Folding the newspaper, he tossed it aside. With both hands, he rubbed his face until his cheeks grew red from the flow of blood. He turned then, and gazed at a back part of the yard- the location of her old fruit patch. He shook his head and said nothing.

“What was Mom’s thing?”

“I remember she cried the day we got married. I remember how beautiful and happy she looked.” He sighed. “Weddings were definitely her thing. If she was here, she’d plan every damn minute for you.”

He blinked furiously, his vision now blurred. “You sure you won’t come?”

The old man had a far-off look. Shaking his head, he said, “I never knew just what to do with you, Bobby.”