Third down

You’ll tell me life isn’t fair, and I know that. But this is how it played out for me.

I've been running sideways, parallel to the goal line, for years now. Every so often there's a whistle on the play, and today I've set the ball down in Bolt's basement. It's WASP heaven... you know, it's cool in summer, the colours are subdued and cheerful, the couch is covered in ass-worn fabric that suggests to me it once had the starring role in the living room, but has been put out to pasture in the rec room, where its real life has begun. The three of us are seated on it: me, Bolt, and the bowl of popcorn between us. Bolt rests his hand in it, even between munches. Whether this is just out of ignorance or actually some sort of passive-aggressive territorial dominance thing, I don't know. I reach; he relents. But as soon as my hand is full of the stuff he's been sweating on and leaves, his is right back.

The carpet is extremely woolly; it feels good under my feet. The room's dark because Bolt insists on that when he watches movies. Not that we're really watching this one. It's on... it's running... but it hardly captures the imagination of either one of us. He says, "I'm working on this commission. Did I tell you?"

Through a mouthful of Bolt-flavoured popcorn, I mumble, "I dunno; what is it?"

He holds a handful of popcorn up to his mouth like it's a microphone and speaks into it. "It's this girl sitting on a fence in the countryside. Some guy in Texas wants it. Sent me, like, fifty bucks, U.S." Done speaking, he stuffs the popcorn into his mouth, now free for other duties.

"Nice."

"Nude pose," he adds.

"Cool."

Someone gets shot on screen; we pause to indulge ourselves in the end of a fictional life that's already imbued with more meaning and substance than our real ones. The man expires. Bolts says, "I'm thinking of asking Pat to pose."

I turn and look at him, his features dancing in the shifting light of the television. He doesn't move, except to finally shift his eyes to meet my gaze. "Think she will?" I ask.

One shoulder shrugs. "Prob'ly. You know what she's like after a couple beers. Everybody's seen her take her shirt off."

Bolt, I know, has on occasion seen more than that. Pat loves to tease him. It's clear she doesn't really like him. But she likes to lead him on, and for guys like us, that's enough. Paying her this compliment will, we both know, probably get him what he's after, at some point during the 'posing session'. Emotions flash through me, excitement for him, envy, and then a sudden disgust. A generation ago, guys our age — twenty-something — would have been well on the way. Decent jobs, probably married, family started... not sitting in the basement of the parents of one or the other of us, waiting for life to suddenly happen and contenting ourselves with whatever sexual opportunities presented themselves, however sad and desperate. I mean, fuck, is this as good as it gets? Is this all life has in store for guys born at the butt-end of the 60s or the ashtray of the 70s?

I have to ask it. "Think she'd let anyone else sit in?"

He gazes at me out of the corners of his eyes again, hand perched possessively in the bowl. "I dunno. I can ask. She might. She's kind of vain." He lifts his hand and nudges the bowl at me. "Fat chicks usually are."

Yeah, lucky for us. I think it, but I don't say it. Neither of us is catch either.

"Did Lare tell you he's coming today?" I ask.

"After he gets done with his pick-ups and deliveries," Bolt says. Larry is really more my friend than his, but Bolt's place has become kind of a nexus for us. I'm not sure why. Of the three of us, Bolt has the absolutely worst relationship with his parents. I fully expect to see him on the news some night, covered in blood and being led away in handcuffs ranting. I never really appreciated the meaning of the word "shrew" till I met his mother. As for his father, the man might have been carved out of ice, painted boring, and brought to life by someone feining an incantation reading out of the phone book. And yet, out of the three of us, it's Larry who's never home. I mean, he still lives at home, but aside from sleeping, he's there about as long as it takes the put on pants and flush the toilet, sometimes even in that order. Of course, of the three of us, he's the only one with a steady job. Right now, mine is "call me when you need me". Bolt has none at all. Aside from making $50 to try to get into Pat's pants, that is.

The bowl is empty, and Bolt lifts his feet off the coffee table. "You want a can of Coke?"

"Sure."

He pads off, up the stairs. He calls, "You wanna order a pizza?"

"When Larry gets here."

"Okay."

I hear him moving around in the kitchen above me, in a house that belongs to someone else, raiding a fridge stocked with other people's money. I get up and wander to the tiny window near the ceiling and I can just glimpse the sky, with its clouds skating by, busily occupied with getting on with whatever business clouds do.

setting son

after work
my father smells of
sweat and oil
coffee and alcohol
as he drives me home

he sings songs
tells jokes
makes me laugh
weaving the hempen threads
that will have to sustain us
when time and reserve
make friendship awkward
love embarassing

Fire-eater

I haven't known you to cry out loud
or confess to secret fears
Your world consists of granite smooth
you've prowled alone and naked
__basking places you shouldn't be

Sunburned now, and yearning for
__ the shelter you denied

Pray for rain,
__ark or no
__the hiss of steam abounding

Footprints on the Windshield

There's footprints on the windshield
ten little toes
footprints on the windshield
without their clothes
I tell myself I'm seeing things
tricks playin' on my mind
but there's footprints on the windshield
I know they sure ain't mine.

A butt-end in the ashtray...
ain't seen you smoke.
They say it keeps hands busy
that ain't no joke
you been drivin' in the bush:
deep valleys and tall pines—
there's footprints on the windshield
I know they sure ain't mine.

footprints
walkin' on my heart
them footprints
leadin' us apart
footprints...

The music is romantic
the station's new
but since I didn't pick it
I sing the blues
all the wipers in the world
will never dry my eyes
not with footprints on the windshield
I know they sure ain't mine
yeah, footprints on the windshield
you know they sure ain't mine.

papercuts

you open your diary
and there i am:
your imaginary friend
who's walked far

talk to me
tell me what he's done now
stack your triumphs on my head
drape the lei of your tears around my neck
and beckon me with fingers wet
from the well of yourself

close the book
to gather dust
till the next entry swells you heavy
to give birth in my ear;
lift me again from the pages
if only to admire your reflection
in my eyes

Downslope

The leafy hair of summer turns
the freckled face
of fall's
forest floor;
A white beard
not long in coming—

White wine and firesides
Scones and Montovani
Ice-hung windows and
____the twilight-flavoured woods;
these genteel trappings
____of waking hibernation

Don't call
Don't knock
Don't ever be
____ever so
____bold
Unless your name is
Spring.

Mix in the Pudding

So we made eighty-five dollars worth of chocolate pudding and we fucked in it. I wouldn't call it a romantic weekend, but it was certainly interesting. I think the whipped cream was a little over-the-top, though.

Corrigendum

The light from the reading lamp seems harsh, as though if given enough time it could set the newspaper in his lap on fire. He might not mind. His eyes are tired from busily not reading the same page for half an hour.

She has descended the stairs at last and is preening in the hallway mirror. He forces himself to raise his head, crane his neck, and look at her. She's more mature now, and somehow thinner, but she still looks like she did 17 years ago. But only to the eye.

And she is humming softly to herself. Something swift and full of promise. He wonders if it was like this back when he couldn't see her... when he was sitting out in the car, humming the same way, waiting for her nightly debut.

"Will you be back this evening?" he asks. His stomach knots, punishes him for his temerity.

She turns and regards him, and offers him a sloppy, silly smile of dismissal even as her eyes dart away. "Yes, of course I will. It's only a meeting to work out a few last details." She closes her hand on her clutch purse like a venus flytrap, suddenly and definitively.

The ice wiggles in his glass as it farts a trapped bubble. He takes a deep breath, wondering if he's drawing in the liberated air with the scents of rye and cola. He forces his expression to brighten; he says, "Knock 'em dead."

"Oh, I will," she smiles. Whether she's being ironic or rewarding him for playing along isn't clear. She blows him a kiss and her heels clack as she marches with determination along the hardwood floor, a model in a wrap about to turn on some private catwalk. "I shouldn't be too long," she calls.

No, you shouldn't, he thinks. You shouldn't be going at all. But she is. His throat tightens and his eyes sting and he suddenly feels like he's outside himself, considering the plot of some soap opera. How will it end? Divorce? A gunshot? Will she give it up out of boredom or disaffection or some latent sense of loyalty, guilt, love? Or will it never really end, simply trailing on and on forever like some bad cough you can't quite shake?

The car starts. Leaves. The garage door comes down. From the wall, the ticking clock watches him, taunting him with each second.

Hunting Snoopy

Whenever I hear someone say the word iditarod — which, I admit, isn't all that often — I have the overwhelming urge to quip, "Yeah, me too, but I was in college and going through kind of an experimental phase..."

But Whose Is It?

Something is up here

I've had the vasectomy,
but she's still on the Pill

Something is definitely up here...

You Lead

It was 1:15 in the morning and Bobby was discovering the expression 'if you can't find it, grind it' didn't only apply to driving a stick. It had its uses in the back seat, too.

She put her hands on his hips to guide him (they were too close together for her to reach much else), and panting, he steadied himself and followed her gentle direction. And like a penitent in Purgatory, the gates opened for him and there was Heaven...

Unrenaissance ii

She has your balls in her paw. You smile at one another knowingly as she fondles them, as your cock emerges from your sheath and arches, rigid, into the night. All around you, the sounds of song and laughter, storytelling and lovemaking. Some eyes are on you as your turn comes, and you’re proud… excited. You can’t believe you’re unashamed. Someone nudges his friend and points, chuckling, and they watch.

At first licked only by the firelight, your cock now glistens with her spit as she dips her head to tongue it. Tails wag as your admiring audience take in the show. You don’t know her name… or at least, you don’t remember it… but it hardly matters here. She’s a villager. You, though newly-minted, are a villager too.

You’re in her mouth, moaning softly as you work your paws though her long, unfettered mane. Her head bobs slowly, keeping time with a folksong being sung at a neighbouring fireside. You know you’re going to love that song all your life; whenever you hear it, you’ll be right back here… The naked, white-pelted bodies appearing and disappearing in the smoky dust of late autumn, balls and boobs and bottoms. Dancing, walking, running, sitting, wrestling, fucking. You reach around, your paw straying under her tail, which she lifts. Your fingers dive into her cunt, finding her welcome deep, warm, wet, overflowing with readiness. You shift, and she immediately understands and lifts her head; standing, you take her hips, and put your cock in her. A few more people pause to look on. Cocks stiffen, eyebrows arch over smiles. They all agree, you’ve adapted quickly, and well. One of your admirers can’t contain himself anymore and he rises, leaving his friend’s side to step up in front of the girl you’re fucking and take your place in her mouth. You smile and chuckle at one another over her back as she pleasures you both. Your city life is far behind you, seeming like a bad dream from which you’ve awoken at last.

A Walk In the Snow

He steps out from between the towering pines, hung heavy with wet snow. His mane is ragged, his poncho time-worn and full of stories. The wind lifts it, revealing his gun belt; all he wears beneath it. He has come armed. You would have been amazed if he had not.

The scent of his females creeps to you in a shift of the wind; the clan he has sired and shepherds is nearby. He’s at the end of his rope. This is the only reason you see him at all. His eyes are like steel, fixed on you from across the hollow. Even your horse fidgets, unnerved.

“You came alone?” he calls at last. Under the brim of your cap, you nod. Once. Sharply. You meet his gaze. You have to.

Your uniform. It still seems warm from being pressed this morning before you set out. Blood red. Commanding attention. Unmistakable in its arrogance; daring any foe to take a shot and bring millions more just like you down upon him. A single red dot in a spreading sea of changing ways, washing over the prairies.

His poncho flaps in the wind. His tail, his mane, are his only flags; the living standards of his people, pressed to the river, mournful at the prospect of crossing over, leaving all this behind, forever. But that’s why you’re here.

“You knew Greyshadow?” he calls.

Carefully, slowly, you reach into your pouch. You draw out the talisman given you long ago in a moment of peace and friendship and celebration. It’s barely visible, but in the eyes of this man, something softens… glistens.

“You did know him,” the man says.

“Yes. He called me friend. Though I knew his daughter much better.”

“And that is why you’ll help us?” His voice is cold and flat, but behind it you hear both hope and incredulity.

“I will help you,” you say, “because it is right.”

“How can we trust you?”

“I’ll be one, among many. The moment you doubt me, you’ll kill me. I’m resigned to die. I will either die at your hands, or the hands of the men I’ve just left. Which, is up to you.”

He nods. “You speak well.” He steps towards the trees. “Come. But if you would be among us,” he says, “then you must free our brother.” He means your horse. His kind do not keep horses, and kill only what they need.

You dismount, stepping down into the cold snow. You move your paws over Commander’s neck; he whickers and nuzzles into your palm. He’s a clever beast; he will make his own way back to the fort. “Good-bye, old friend,” you mutter to him, the wind kicking off your cap and sending it tumbling stupidly across the field. “Take care of yourself.” Now your mane and your tail are flags. Your only flags. You pace through the deep, wet snow towards the wild man, and whatever awaits you.

The uniform itches. It has itched for a long time.

Today is the day it comes off.

It Really Is Like This

The President brooded darkly in the Oval Office. Clearly, his erectile dysfunction was going to cost some country dearly. But which one? Needing sage counsel, he summoned the Secretary of Handing Out Billions of Tax Dollars to Defense Contractors to his office. "Who can we blast?" he snarled.

"How about England? They're getting pretty smug about being in tight with us. Maybe it's time for a smackdown in ol' Londontown?" grinned the Secretary.

"Yeah! I like it! It works for me!" squealed the President.

"That's not what I hear," snickered the Secretary.

Luckily, the President didn't get it. "So what's our cover story?"

The Secretary stroked his chin. "That's going to be hard one," he said... then started giggling again.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, nothing, sorry..."

The President had an idea, and beamed with pride. "Listen to this: we found out the British have been hiding Hitler since the end of World War II! Huh? Huh? What do you think?"

"Um, well, sir..."

"You don't like it."

"It kind of sucks."

"Yeah. I thought it would."

"Don't feel bad, it was a good try."

"No, I suck at this, everyone's always smarter than me, and better, and funnier, and... and smarter, and—"

"Well, look, sir, we could just do what we usually do..."

"What's that?"

"Bomb the shit out of 'em and come up with a reason afterwards. Besides, there's a lot less arguing that way."

"I like how you think. Keep it up, and you'll have my job someday."

"If you could keep it up, we'd all be out of a job," murmured the Secretary.

The President reached for the phone. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Nothing, Mr. President. Now dial M for murder."

Brackets

Steel-glass bauble
__timeless, set
__the moment suspended

__tiny gem waiting
__the jeweller's strike
__in wonder:
__will the flaw give character
__make it unique
__or make dust of
____what might have been?

Rain slams down like time

__dry inside
__timeless, set
__in fading light
Take me back
__ready to be unready
__waiting for the clock to tick

10:43½ a.m. — Café Orlando

There’s a clock on the wall. I look up from my coffee for a moment and watch the second hand beating against the 22nd tick mark over and over again, like a wave throwing itself fruitlessly against a rocky coast it can never overwhelm. It’s just like that moment when a clock’s battery is so worn down it can’t advance the second hand anymore, but it still has enough juice to keep trying for a while. Except it’s like this for all clocks. Everywhere.

I can’t tell you how long it’s been like this. Obviously. How could I? My own watch demands that it’s 10:43 in the morning, August 18th, and has steadfastly done so for quite some time, despite the fact that I’ve slept soundly three times since I started noticing that nothing was changing. So I guess it’s been three days now. Maybe four.

I’m really losing hope.

I drain the coffee cup. I put it down. The guy behind the counter, whose name, unfortunately for him, is Gayle, pours me another cup. I stand up. Turn my back. Step over to the window. The blue Datsun blows past the café window, left to right. I turn away for a moment. I look back outside. The same blue Datsun blows past the window outside, left to right.

I flick the door open, but don’t step out. I move as though I were entering. I head toward my open seat. My coffee cup is gone; so is the greasy plate of bacon and eggs I’d not quite finished. As I sit, Gayle plunks down a clean white cup before me and pours me a cup of coffee. “What’ll it be, mister?” he says.

“Bacon and eggs,” I say. It’ll be my third plate today, maybe my tenth since this all started, and I haven’t paid for one of them yet. As far as Gayle’s concerned, he’s never seen me before in his life. It’s quarter to eleven in the morning for him, and I’ve just walked into his restaurant for the first time. “Sunny side up, please.”

“Sure thing.”

“So what’s there to do around here?” I ask him. This is one of the rules. No one notices the passage of time, but it will pass for them if only I keep them engaged. If I turn my back, they’ll just keep doing whatever it was they were doing, in short little loops of a few seconds, forever. Or at least till this spell or whatever it is is broken.

“You new to town?” He breaks a couple of eggs. The bacon hisses on the skillet. To my right, a man named Chester turns the paper to page A9. Again.

“Yeah, I just got in last night,” I say. Chronologically, this is true. At least for all of them.

“There’s a railroad museum down the east end by the tracks,” he says. “A good place to kill a couple hours if you like that kind of thing. A lot of people come through for that,” he says. Of course, I already know this. He’s informed me a half a dozen times. I have to keep him busy or the meal will never get finished.

Chester turns to page A9. A woman whose name I haven’t learned yet stirs her 90th spoonful of sugar into her coffee and sips it. Talk about your bottomless cup. She sets it down with that same, perfect lipstick mark on it. If I look away, it’ll be gone.

I gaze at the phone. I’ve tried. Janice doesn’t answer. She never will. She’s in traffic somewhere, hundreds of miles and two time zones away, on her way to work. The phone could ring for a thousand years for me, but she’ll never arrive to answer it. I ache inside, thinking I might never see her again; she is trapped forever in a car traveling 120 km/h and she doesn’t even know it.

“How those eggs coming?” I ask Gayle.

“Pardon me? Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t see you…” Shit. I look past him; the eggs are gone, the bacon still raw on the sideboard. Gayle plunks down a clean white cup before me and pours me a cup of coffee. “What’ll it be, mister?” he says.

God tech America

Out of my ass I pulled
     the starship Enterprise
to spare the human race
the fear
of having to decide
what god to pray to before breakfast
what shoes to wear after
and what to eat during

Cloudy forecast

There were soft gaps in her life we knew nothing about. She would come home on the weekends and resume her presence in our lives, only to vanish again come Sunday evening. The little girl who’d once chased Frisbees through the park had become a woman who drank and dated and studied and fretted over grade point averages in St. John’s. Back in the outports, things were different now.

Carrots. Carrots in cheese sauce. She was trying to impress us with what she’d learned, the tendrils of the outside world reaching into our sure, quiet, secure lives of cod and beef and potatoes. Carrots and cheese? We humoured her. As though adopting this little change would mean she wouldn’t make a life in Toronto or Calgary or Vancouver or New York someday. Close at hand. Carrots in cheese would be cosmo enough.

“It’s different,” I allowed.

She smiled. “Velveta’s kind of junk cheese, I know,” she said. “But it’s got its uses.”

“Kinda like snot,” Dylan said.

Myra sneered. “Fish and bubblegum more your speed?”

“Up yours.”

“Hey. Hey. Enough. Both of you,” Alice warned.

I brushed the cap off Dylan’s head. “You like cheese. You like carrots.”

“I don’t like carrots.”

“You like carrots.”

Myra said, “There’s no hope for him. He’ll be a small town nobody the rest of his life.”

Her mother growled, “There’s nothing wrong with small town life. It’s the backbone of this island. This country.”

“There’s more to life than this,” Myra told us, as if we didn’t know. “Dad, you were in the Navy. You remember Halifax. I love Halifax.”

Halifax was sure a hell of a lot closer than Toronto. “Halifax is a good town. Solid folks. Good Atlantic folk. Good bars, too. You could do well there.”

Myra waved her fork around like a wand, like she was casting pictures for us. “Dave’s from Truro; he has an uncle in Bedford. We could get jobs at MT&T.”

Alice looked up while Velveta oozed onto her rib-eye. “Dave?”

Myra’s fork was still but her smile was a little too animated. “This guy I know…”

My head was swimming. If Dylan had opened his mouth then, I'd have exploded. Dave… Halifax… carrots in cheese. Jesus Christ. I needed a drink.

By Association

Corrosive
and over that beer-frosted smile
you'll tell me
all those witty things

There's a little hollow spot in my guts
that keeps growing
like the heart rotting out of a tree still standing
My leaves are green
but your termite smiles condemn me

9:16 a.m. — Marsha

[3x²+2xy-2y²=14 Where y=3.5, solve for x.]

Okay… let’s see… 3.5 times 3.5 times 2 is… 24.5… 14 plus 24.5 equals… 38.5. 38.5 divided by 3.5 is…

[Hand extends across aisle with note in it.]

[Eyes flick up to teacher, writing on blackboard with back to class.]

What’s this… “Mark J.” She’s passing notes to him again. Can you believe this? With texting and all that, we’re forced to hand notes around like it’s the Dark Ages or something. I shouldn’t; I could get in trouble. Besides, she still calls me “Brady Bunch” sometimes. Yeah, that was clever in grade three, Erika.

[Erika glares, gestures to pass note along.]

Alright, alright. …I should read it. What could she do? Well, nothing, here. But afterwards there’d be hell to pay. But I’d love to know what she’s saying to Mark. Oh, well… better not.

[Turns, eases note across the other aisle. Girl turns, looks, softly shakes head. Indicates teacher with eyes.]

[Turns to Erika. Shrugs.]

[Erika leans, drills stare at other girl. Other girl rolls eyes; turns palm up. Receives note.]

38.5 divided by 3.5 is… 11. So the rest of the equation is equal to 11.

Jesus.

I wonder if she’s screwing him. I bet she is. She’s always acting like she’s so in control but I know it’s a front. She’s scared to death of rejection so she acts like she doesn’t give a damn. But I’ll bet—

[“Ten minutes, people.”]

Shit. Okay… 11 over 3… that’s what x²+x equals. I think. Fffffuck. Why couldn’t it be 12? Who dreams these things up?

[Chews pencil.]

Tammy’s hair is really sensational. I wonder if she’d tell me who did it for her if I told her that? Would I? Mmmmnah, I’d keep it a secret. Well, anyways, mine’s so stringy, it could never look like that. She’s lucky. I bet she doesn’t even know how lucky she is…

11 over 3… minus x… equals x².

Ohhhh, God.

But since you brought it up...

I’ve always wanted to do a TV show called Crispy Waltons. It would be just like The Waltons, except that instead of the show ending with them all saying good night, it would start with that. Then, after a few moments of silence, you’d see a flicker of flame in somebody’s window. To cries of alarm, you would see the fire quickly spread from room to room, closing off any avenue of escape. Then, for the next hour (not counting commercials), you would watch the house slowly burn to the ground. I think people would like it. The only problem I can see in pitching it to the networks is what do you do for the second episode? I suppose you could watch the same thing happen at Ike Godsey’s place, or that house where those two booze-bag spinsters live (man, that place would go up like the Hindenburg), but really, that just drags out the problem. Still, I think it’s a good premise… it just needs a little work, that’s all.

9:16 a.m. — Muffin

This One’s ears turn because This One hears noise in the kitchen. Then comes the smell of food. That One is pouring food. This One’s eyes open and This One stretches and yawns and licks This One’s leg, and This One jumps down off the bed because if This One waits too long, The Other One will eat all the food and there’ll be none left for This One.

That One has the things on That One’s tall, lanky body again that mean that That One is going out; This One can tell. This One loves That One. Why does That One go out? What does That One do when That One’s out there? Does That One hunt, stalk, chase? Does That One fight and mate? But This One wishes That One would stay here. This One likes it when That One is here. Sometimes when That One is out, The Other One is mean to This One and This One hates The Other One when that happens. The Other One sometimes holds This One and bites This One. Why does The Other One do that? The Other One is afraid of That One, because That One makes angry noises when The Other One hurts This One. But when That One is out, That One’s not here to make those sounds and The Other One can do just what The Other One wants. Sometimes The Other One wants to play and lick and purr. That’s when This One likes The Other One. Maybe The Other One will be like that today when That One goes out.

This One rubs That One’s legs. This One rolls because This One wants That One to stay. That One makes pretty noises to This One, but That One goes to the door anyway. This One goes to the window to see That One go inside the moving thing and go away. This One hears The Other One at the dish. This One wonders if there’ll be food left. This One better go see.

Caio Baby

“Is it a shallow grave?”

“Yes, it’s a shallow grave.”

“It has to be a shallow one.”

“I assure you, it’s a shallow one.”

“Good. It’s the appropriate thing.” The man’s voice crackles on the cell; Rick is a long way from town. Sunlight is fading. He won’t see sunrise. He leans, sweaty and dirty, on the shovel.

“What happens now?”

The man is quiet. “You never held much fascination for me,” he says.

“I’m sorry.”

“A tailored job should be better. I ought to be able to get my money back.”

“I wish I could help.”

“Lie down in the grave,” the man instructs.

Rick feels fear but he fights it down. There’s no point in being afraid, no point at all. With a word, this man can kill, and he’s going to, and there’s nothing Rick Hilton can do to save his life; not a goddamn thing. He leaves the shovel in the pile of dirt, the only marker he’s likely to get.

“Alright,” he mutters. “I’m in the grave.”

“Pull some of the dirt onto yourself.”

Rick pulls the cool brown earth up to his chin like a blanket. He remembers a childhood that was probably really someone else’s, but it’s a strange, comforting thing all the same.

The man says, “Listen closely.”

Rick swallows. “I’m listening.”

“Princeps… Goldstein… watchfob… thrush.”

Most of what is Rick Hilton closes off; a tiny pinhole of consciousness remains. “Command interface initiated,” he says.

“Accept order…” The man pauses, flipping pages in some other corner of the world. He finds what he’s looking for and says, “Accept order K87706, terminate.”

“K87706 terminate acknowledged,” Rick says. There’s an involuntary gasp. What remains of Rick Hilton still aware senses his heart slow and stop, but there’s not even a fight to be raised. It’s an order. It’s absolute. Consciousness fades, synapses starve, tissues shut down.

There’s a click as the man hangs up. The battery runs down as the flies gather to clean up after science’s mistake.

9:16 a.m. — James

Christ, it’s hot.

Isn’t that always the way?  Been living here for twenty-six years, and now I hear they’re making this a four-way stop.  I don’t know how many fucking weeks of my life I’ve wasted sitting at this cocksucking stop sign, but now that we’re moving next week, now they’re going to give me a fucking break.  It makes me want to pull the sign up, go down to city hall, and beat one of those planning shitheads to death with in.

Jesus Christ, it’s hot.

Fuck, I wish this traffic would give me a break.  It’s always like this when I want to turn left.  Oh, look at this fucking guy.  Enough of a gap for me to turn, but that would prove he had no dick, so he’s going to speed up and close it.  You fucking asswipe.  I hope something heavy falls off a fucking bridge on you.

Fucking air conditioning.  I’ve gotta, gotta, gotta get this piece of shit in to get looked at.

And it’s not even my trip!  She’s the one wants the goddamn pork chops this evening.  I am so fucking sick of fucking pork chops.  If I see another pork chop this month, I swear to God I’m gonna have to divorce her and start fucking pigs or something.  But is she the one sitting here waiting for some douche bag to cut her a break?  No, she’s at home with the air conditioner and Reverend Sendmeabuck on TV.  Okay — whoa.  Hang on.  Here we go, here we go… I think I can make this…

Tangerine

When I think back to that summer and close my eyes, it all closes in on me, condensing down as though into a black hole, a singularity, this one stunning, blazing moment. A sensory cornucopia. A backyard pool. Water splashing, smacking my ears, punctuating joyous cries; the mingled tang of chlorine and semen; him above me, his hands on my shoulders, arched naked half out of the water, the sun above him like a halo, casting him in shadow; a bronzed god, some son of Neptune. My god. My god that summer.

He was my cousin, somewhere between three and four years older than me. My focus, my point of reference in a world where I was cast adrift, in what I suppose they considered a controlled manner. Security, friendship, familiarity all sacrificed to my parents’ doomed, last-ditch attempt to salvage their marriage; the three of us, my sisters and me, dispersed to various relatives around the country. Me, alone, half way across the continent, dropped from the sky into arid prairie suburbia… with family, yes, but family I hardly knew. Even at home, he was a lonely, awkward kid; perhaps it wasn’t just compassion but some measure of desperation that caused him to offer me his friendship. To me, he threw it like a life preserver. I was grateful beyond words.

I adored him. Everything about him. How he looked, how he sounded, what interested him, where he went, what he wore. Everything. Like mine, both his parents worked; his sister was college-bound and rarely home; and so the empty hours of the early summer were filled up with one another. Minds and conversations wandered. I was curious, and he was semi-knowledgeable; I suppose it was almost inevitable when it happened.

It was only a part of who we were to one another, of course; for the most part, we were about bike rides and wanderings in the forest, trips to the mall and matinees, records and comics and batting practice. But there were those other moments. And that was the deepest, most exciting, intoxicating aspect.

I don’t know how many nights we spent out in that tent in the woods behind his house, lost to the world, but found to each other. I can’t put into simple words how honoured I felt, what a privilege it was to explore him with my hands, my mouth; or the profound compliment I felt in his reciprocation… The discoveries, the revelations... while all around us the world was engrossed in moon landings, we mapped out together what human beings have been discovering and rediscovering for eons. Starlight, crickets, marijuana, sweat, lurid hours in the gulf between waking and sleep. Some of those nights lasted a thousand years. But always, always came the shock, the miracle of morning, sunrise, a new day. A different world.

It was the end of the hippy age, and he was arriving in it just a little too late. He practiced so hard on his guitar. I remember the song he particularly worked to master; Tangerine, by Led Zeppelin. Slow, methodical, fingers plucking the wrong string, then the right one, grinding out the lyrics, over and over. I would sit cross-legged on his bed in the lamplight, listening for hours. It was like he was learning it for me. That I didn’t really understand it then didn’t matter. I would come to understand, I knew.

And then she came.

She was his age. I think they knew each other from school; at any rate, they linked up somewhere and suddenly, there she was. Around. All the time. I tried so hard to hate her. Believe me. But I couldn’t. She was pretty, and she was kind, and she never tried to exclude me. Her own parents were divorced; she would talk to me about it. I wanted her to go away, leave us like we were, but I knew it wouldn’t be like that, that it was never going to be the same again. His wings had dried; he needed to fly. And he needed to fly with her.

He and she, now ‘they’, would often generously invite me along on their excursions, but I would beg off, feeling acutely that I was a third wheel, and more acutely still the demotion from the heady heights I had ascended on wings borrowed from Icarus. The last few weeks of that summer before I went home to school and a broken home were cobbled together from long, bitter days and lonely nights. By day I would wander the neighbourhood, joining in where others let me, feeling the futility of trying to strike up friendships that could barely hope to survive a Junebug’s age. By night, alone, I was forced to confront those things that terrified me… the things that being near him had chased away. The day I went home, he hugged me at the airport, gave me his ball glove, told me to write. I did. He didn’t. But even then, I understood. I didn’t forgive him… because I never had to.

As the years passed and we grew up, I would see him from time to time at family gatherings. But very quickly he had moved out of the place we’d shared and into the realm of men, where precocious flirtations with beer and tobacco were winked at, dirty jokes were the currency of the hour and curse words its spare change. Always, though, he had the kind smile, the nod. The wink. It was something we still shared. And I still loved him for it.

Years later, at some relative’s wedding, he was to pull me aside. Wracked with guilt, he begged my forgiveness, blaming himself, berating himself. With a lump in my throat, fighting hard to keep back tears, I gave him false absolution. How could I make him understand that, until that moment, my heart had been whole, full of wondrous love for something lost but singularly precious in memory? How could I tell him that, at that moment, he had broken my heart, and killed the very last whisper of my innocence? In taking that free, unfettered, affectionate moment of mutual discovery and twisting it into something fearful and monstrous, he had committed the only sin that I could ever hold against him, his only real betrayal — of him and me both.

And now a thousand years between…

We Grew Together

Let the grass grow under my feet
Let it curl around my ankles like a cat
Green and tonguelike, let it lick my heels with morning dew
__and caress my passing calves
__stain my knees
__cushion my seat
Let it crowd around my shoulders, braid my hair,
__offer itself a pillow to my cheek:
I will accept it, adjoin it, adore it.

They Make You Cry

November rain had pressed the faces of dead leaves to her kitchen windows and stuck them there, like Jacob Marley’s ghosts condemned to watch a living existence they could not share.  Beth watched one flap miserably at the glass until at last the wind took mercy or tired of the torture and flicked it away into the more diffuse torments of the maelstrom.

It was nearly five o’clock.  Her eyes wandered to the stove, where the meatloaf had been cooling, simmering in its own heat and juices for the last several minutes, just as her mother had taught her in the years after the war.  Most of the time she dined alone, but she knew at least one night a year she was guaranteed company, and this was it.

One hour.  By six o’clock, she’d be alone again for another year.  But it was as yet only ten to five.

She thought how funny it was that she’d never had the will or the courage to tell him she wanted out.  Divorce.  Even when the kids were grown up and gone, there was some stupid remnant of her mother sitting on top of her head, demanding that a couple stays together for the kids.  What kids?  The grandkids?  But still, through all the drinking, the lying, the spendthrift foolishness and all the other things that didn’t bear thinking about, much less mentioning, she’d stood on his arm for every anniversary photo, every Christmas gathering, every Thanksgiving embarrassment, with that same silly grin… the one that all at once absolved him of his coarseness while beseeching the world not to include her in whatever ill opinions it might form of her by proxy.  She came to think of it as her forgive us smile.

The clock in the hall chimed five.  She didn’t even have to look behind her.  She knew he was there.  “Hello, Clark.”

“Beth…”  His voice sounded more distant, more haggard than it had the year before.  Hell was hard on a man.  Well, that was the idea, as she understood it.  She turned to face him.  Yes, he certainly looked the part.  Tattered flesh and eyes beyond despair, all dressed in an ironic, immaculate, tailored Italian suit that surely had them all roaring with laughter below.  She thought it was a wonder they drew the line at a top hat.  It almost made her feel sorry for him.

Almost.

They stared at one another.  Nothing sprang to the lips of either.  Beth sat, and finally Clark remembered himself.  “How are the kids?”

“Sharon had a baby in September.  A little boy.  They named him Dylan…”

Clark winced; for a moment, he looked every bit the way he had in life, five years before.  “Aw, that’s a shit name,” he moaned.  “Weak-chinned little son-of-a-bitch name.  Why did you let them do that?”  Hell hadn’t changed everything about him.

Beth took a long, deep breath.  “Mike and Tammy are separated, I’m afraid.  I don’t know, but I think they’re going to get a divorce.”

“Divorce is wrong.”  He challenged her with his dead eyes, the suffering having drained out of them, for the moment.

“I know… I know.  But sometimes it—”

“But nothing.  You think I don’t know?  Me?”

“Clark, you’re only here one hour a year.  Do you want to spend it arguing?”  Maybe he did.  Maybe it was his only outlet.  Who knew what happened down there?  He’d tried to tell her once, in defiance of some rule, and his mouth had instantly sealed over.  In truth, she wondered if she could bait him into that again.

He looked cowed.  “No,” he said.  “I want my supper.”

She rose.  “Well, it’s ready.”

“What is it?”

“Meatloaf.”

He looked discouraged.  “I saved your life.”

“I know.  Believe me, Clark, every day, I was aware of that.”  Not to mention, on this day every year.  The Powers That Be had decreed this to be his one just act, and this annual liberty its reward.  It sometimes occurred to her to end her own life, and thus his privileges, but the realization she would condemn herself to eternity alongside him persuaded her otherwise.  She would endure.

But so would he.

She rose, carefully and diligently laying out the perfectly-formed mashed potatoes, the vegetable medley, the steaming slices of meatloaf.  There was a look in his face of a hunger that a thousand meals wouldn’t satisfy.  One would imagine that a crust of moldy bread would be heaven to someone such as him, but Beth had learned better.

She sat.  “Aren’t you hungry?”

He gazed at the plate anxiously.  “I saved your life.”

“Yes, you did.  That’s why you’re here tonight, darling.  This is your reward.”

Clark sighed.  He cut a piece of meatloaf and raised it to his mouth.  The stricken look of realization pinched his features.  “It has onion in it.”

“Oh, dear… I’d forgotten you didn’t like onion.  But my mother always made it that way.  Old habits die hard.  Well, try the potatoes…”

“They have onions too, don’t they?”

“You know, come to think of it, I had some of the onion soup mix from the meatloaf left over, and to spice it up a little… oh, dear.  Yes, I’m afraid they do.”

His eyes strayed to the vegetables.  Two or three little pickled onions, with all their overpowering influence, peered up at him from under the cover of green beans and corn.

They stared at each other across the table, marking the fifth observance of an annual ritual that would persist for the rest of her life… the life he had saved.  Yes, you saved my life.  A life full of you.  And I made you a meatloaf.  A meatloaf full of onions.  There was no need to say a word, but she did.  Her face lit up with that same pleading smile that had seen her through married life with him.

“Forgive me,” she said.

Donuts and Beer

Doug was sugared up; now he was ready.

He sat in the pub at his usual spot, awaiting her arrival. The six donuts he’d downed on the way over had been followed up by the three pints of beer that would serve him as a psychic equivalent of a flak jacket. This time of year, any assault from her could be particularly ferocious.

She arrived; she made her way over to him through the crowds of late-year partygoers, and sat down in the booth across from him. "Hello, Doug," she said, soundlessly. Or at least, whatever sound she made was swallowed up in the music and exuberance of those around them. Consequently, he leaned across the table, pantomiming cupping his hand to his ear. She leaned forward, and repeated her greeting.

"So... how have you been?"

"I'm well. Jake's well too."

"Is he, now?" He was never sure just how to take that kind of thing. Was she just making small talk, was she trying to be kind and be reassuring, or was she trying, in her own subtle way, to let him know that they were both doing fine without him? Maybe it was all those things.

"He got 85 on his Christmas essay," she told him

"What was it about?"

"I haven't read it yet. He just told me what the mark was. He hasn't brought it home yet."

Something about that struck him as unlikely. Jake had told her the mark, but hadn’t brought the paper home? If he had the mark, it stood to reason he had the paper back. Why not bring it home? It wasn’t worth fighting over. He wasn't about to bring up his misgivings. Things were tough enough as it was.

"Well, I’d love to read it when he does bring it home," he said, quietly enough that it might be lost in the ambient noise. He could always say he offered.

"I wanted to tell you that I’m taking Jake to see my parents for Christmas this year," she told him. "We should be back on the 27th. I was hoping you might drop by to see him."

"Yeah, I'm sure... I don't think that'll be a problem." There was a time when he would have raised a fuss. Made an issue of the whole thing. Laid a lot of guilt on her; basically ruined her holidays, her time with her parents. He supposed that was why she left him in the first place; that kind of thing. He’d learned a little bit late not to do it. He’d learned how to give in, how to compromise, only after the war was over. And there were no clear winners.

She seemed to recognize the change; she smiled slightly. "Thanks," she said.

He wondered if he would ever see his son open Christmas presents again. Had there really been a time when that seemed like such a hassle? Had it really only been a couple years ago?

"Scott is coming with us."

He closed his eyes. There it was. The bullet he’d been armoring himself against all evening. His blood pressure soared. It rose to his face. He wanted to leap up, grab her by the shoulders, call her terrible things. It wasn't so much that she was replacing him as a husband. It was the sure and sinking notion that he was being systematically replaced as a father. Here it was, just two years later, and already some other man was going to watch his son open those presents.

But the beer sloshed in like some emergency squad, and put out those fires almost as quickly as they had been lit. It all just washed away. Well, nearly. He simply nodded.

She stared across the table at him, waiting for some kind of reaction. Pensive. Silent. Almost as though she were demanding some kind of reaction. None was forthcoming. "Are you okay with that?"

He allowed himself this much dignity: "Would it matter if I weren’t?"

Her face darkened, but only slightly. "Of course it would matter."

Yeah, sure it would. It would matter only so much, only so far, as it ignited another flight; drove another wedge between him and what was left of his family. Right now, if he never saw her again, it wouldn't faze him. But he knew in his heart that every one of these arguments was one more stake that she could point to in the further alienation of him from Jake; until they were no longer stakes at all but a fence, a wall, the bastions raised between him and his son; and that small, fertile, beautiful patch of ground would be forbidden to him forever. No. No, that he would not allow. He had that much control. He exercised it.

He raised his head, looked at her, put on this best ten dollar smile, and he told her, "I'm really okay with it."

Something conciliatory seemed to be in the air. After a moment, she said, "Do you have any plans for New Year's Eve?"

He shook his head. "No, nothing."

"Well, Scott and I were thinking about going out... if you're not doing anything, maybe you can come by and look after Jake? You can stay over. You can ring in the new year together."

The start of the new year with his son. There had been a time when the whole idea was to get away from Jake for New Year's Eve. He couldn't help smiling. A date with his son on New Year's Eve. "Yeah, I'd like that. Be nice to spend some time with him."

She slid out of the booth. She moved to leave. She actually put her hand on his shoulder. "Let’s consider it penciled in," she said. "I’ll give you a call in a couple of days to confirm, okay?"

He patted her hand. He nodded.

She lingered for a moment. "Talk to you in a couple of days." She drifted back out through the crowds.

Donuts and beer. Donuts, beer, and the knowledge that everything was different now; everything had changed.

Unprotected Synapses

She wears a fragrance that’s vaguely reminiscent of stuff you spray on yourself at the campgrounds to keep the bugs off you. Maybe that’s the idea, I wonder. But she’s hoping to keep bigger things than bugs off of her. Well, in this case, mission accomplished.

We’re waiting for the light to change and she’s talking to her friend about some play she saw. Doesn’t sound like one of the biggies downtown; it sounds like a real one. You know, where amateur nobodies who are jealous of the somebodies study at home for weeks and then perform in front of three dozen people who are even less talented and sit there in jealousy of them? That kind of thing. So you can see how far down the jealousy food chain Ms Eau-de-Deep-Woods-Off actually is.

The light changes and I’m worried they’re going to keep pace with me, but they’re coming back from lunch and they’re taking it easy, so I easy outdistance their leisurely gait and I’m out of earshot (not to mention noseshot) in pretty short order. Man, the things you endure when you don’t have your MP3 player on you. How did we ever survive being out in public before we invented Walkmans and cellphones and laptops and portable Segas and all the other palm-sized magic we use to keep the social universe at bay? Here I am without my intellectual force field of noise, condemned to have to deal with other people’s experiences and opinions and knowledge. I don’t know which is the greater imposition: her scent or her discourse.

Back at my desk, I run the name of the play through a search engine. Surely, in some odd, subtle way, I’ve been violated.

Savannah in Monochrome

Trent’s carefully-crafted façade had fallen apart.  Someone at the gallery party knew him, and openly asked if he were still working at the shipping counter.  Shipping counter? every eye in the vicinity asked, turning to the man who claimed to be the managing director of accounts receivable at a small but growing geometrics software firm.

The woman he’d been speaking with, to, at, with great expectations, smiled and shrugged in a charitable way.  “That must have been quite a while ago,” she said, offering cover that saved face for them all.  Yeah, quite a while ago.  Yesterday afternoon, in fact.

He knew he didn’t have a chance.  A kiss turns a frog into a prince, but a badly-timed banality from a shithead does just the reverse.  Already, men who’d presumed themselves outclassed were easing back, like lions who’ve just realized the zebra who outpaced them moments before is limping.  So he was quite surprised when she said, “So what do you do in your spare time?”

The creeping lions paused, every bit as puzzled as Trent.

“Oh, um… amateur photography,” he said.  “I know the guy exhibiting this evening.  Well, slightly.  He kind of got me started.”

“Really?”

The young lions were on the retreat again.

“Yes, I saw some of his work in a store window downtown when I was in college and we wound up talking.  He helped me find my first equipment.”  Trent licked his lips, his mind raced.  The next step was so natural, and he felt good that it was also the right one.  “How about you; how’d you happen to be here this evening?”

“I know the photographer, too.  He’s my uncle.”  Trent’s eyebrows shot up and they both laughed.  “Do you shoot mostly black and white?” she asked.

“Mostly.  I’m like your uncle… I reserve colour for special subjects.”

“Oh, yeah?” she breezed.  “Like what?”

Trent smiled.

Unrenaissance

Pick your way through the ashes of a city, like a fly in an ashtray looking for the lump of pork that shouldn’t be there. You move with purpose, in a straight line over the rubble, your feet finding their toeholds instinctively, as nimbly as your ancestors did in the forest, which rings the city on all sides, as if waiting patiently for the collapse.

There’s a woman in the patch that used to be a building; she lifts her eyes and they narrow; her ears go back and her tail bristles. Proud, she rights herself from pawing at the garbage. She resents your presence because it makes her feel like a beggar. She ranks you; you salute. Times were she would have done likewise, but the discipline of the nation has eroded with its own stature. The end is near.

There aren’t even shellings anymore. The enemy — enemies — are enfeebled, and another long, general lapse is commencing. There were hints of this in history class. Civilization has risen and fallen here myriad times and left not a trace. The only things remembered are blood and semen. You carry both. You are the thread of memory; your body is a word in a sentence. The only question is if there is a period after yours.

And this is the question that haunts your mother, above all. She sits in the darkness, nursing a cub that is not your father’s, for he is long dead. Or practically so, at any rate. Once the home abounded with offspring; as the Party decreed. Gone for soldiers, every one, your brothers; your sisters pulled one by one from the streets to sheltered breeding camps. As if the nation could hold its breath for fifteen years for the next crop of soldiers. As you enter with the small cache of food under your jacket, she smiles, cups your face in her paw. “If they come for you,” she tells you again, “take off all your clothes. Run to the forest. Don’t look back. Don’t come back.” It is deadly treason for her to say this. You can tell she wants you to do that now, but hasn’t the courage to lose the last of her company. And she needs you.

The web-shattered mirror in the hall regards you with a dozen clones. You, like everyone else, wear the uniform of your nation, the pale grey canvas jacket and trousers, your junior-level insignia faded and torn now. There are no civilians. Your nose and eyes glisten in the gloom; in another world, in another time, you might be said to resemble an Arctic fox, or a white wolf. Here, you resemble what you are: a defeated member of a dying society surrounded by dying enemies.

The forest beckons.

With the sunset comes the full blackness. Animals — both sentient and not — prowl the streets; full-capable-murder.

You sit up in bed. There is light on your wall.

An army. An army is in the city. Whose? At this point, it doesn’t matter. Friend, foe alike; it’s danger. You haul on your uniform and make for the door.

Your mother is there, the scent of fear thick on her like a bath of molasses. The baby squawks. She clutches your shoulder. “Remember,” is all she says.

Remember what?

Silently you pad down the crumbled stairwell and ease your nose out into the street. Keeping low, you creep from ruin to ruin, drawing nearer, reading the indications. Search lights. Distant cries. Lamentations. A gunshot; your ears fold. Evidence is it’s a round-up; the army looking for the last few bodies to throw at the enemy. Or to make more bodies to throw at the enemy. Your heart ices as you think of your mother. You rise to warn her.

“You! Stop!”

You don’t. You hear the bullets fly before the concussions that loosed them. Panicked, you turn corner after corner. You hear feet scrambling over brick; they will not stop. This is the last sweep. They mean to have it all.

Panting in the moonlight, in an alleyway poised at the edge of the forest, her admonishment comes back to you. Remember. Remember her? Or remember her advice?

Or both?

You peer at the forest.

You peer at the dark shape that is home.

Was home.

Your uniform is shed; you blaze in the moonlight like a falling star as you streak towards the nothingness of the wilds. There are tears in your eyes. You will never see her again. But you will know, even if she never will, that you carried forward the thread. Or tried.

The branches are cruel; the trees and brambles close in around you. But after a lifetime of pavement and then broken masonry, the clay underfoot is strangely friendly and oddly familiar somehow. Raspberries feed you; muddy streams quench your thrist.

There are scents in the air. The odd sound. People.

Timidly you seek them out.

In a clearing below you, you see them. Several dozen people, a longhouse, fields. Huts.

“Alright, turn around.”

You look into the faces of two men, clad only in archery. One touches the point of an arrow to your chin. “Please,” you beg. “My mother told me to run to the woods.”

One of them nods to the other, and takes you by the upper arm. “Come on,” he says.

Down through the forest he leads you. Your frantic questions and assurances of peace are met with mutterings, non-committal, but not unfriendly. He leads you into the village. People stop, eyes following the newcomer and his guard. Like you, they are naked. There is not a uniform in sight. Not a vehicle, not an engine, no hint of electricity, civilization, or war. No hint of rank.

In the dark longhouse sit three elderly women, cross-legged, laughing, repairing fishing nets. “I found him in the hills; he says he’s from the city,” your guard tells them.

The one in the middle has a strange, foreign accent. She says, “What is your name, boy?”

You tell her.

She smiles. “Serinka and Naross are just getting started here. They lost their eldest to the army. I’m sure they could use some help. And I think you could use a home. Why not see how it goes.”

This is the decision. It’s offered softly, a suggestion, not the sort of steel and iron command to which you’re accustomed. Still, you snap to: “Yes, ma’am.”

“My name is Heressa, child.”

And the guard leads you, free now, out into the sunlight, and across the compound. Again to the edge of the woods, now guarding rather than skulking. A man and a woman work a field, helped by a couple of cubs. The guard brings you up, and introductions are made. There are smiles, tails wag; it seems sincere.

“We sure could use some help,” Naross agrees. The guard eases away, back into the forest to patrol, leaving you with… your new family.

“Come take the hoe, son,” Naross says.

All around you, cities die. One by one, they flicker out in the night like failing stars. But out here, where the night is filled with real stars, sleep is deep.

Yabba Dabba Doofus

She has a laugh on her like a 45 rpm recording of Betty Rubble giggling, played back at 33⅓. It drives me nuts. It wouldn’t matter where I was or what I was doing in the building, it would cut right through everything else and get to me like a guided missile. A guided missile of shitty laughter that detonates in my skull. I want to detonate in her skull, if only to keep her from giggling for a few minutes.

The mailroom guy comes down the corridor. He’s been the one she’s been talking to, snorting her brain-sanding giggle at. I wonder if it bothers him at all. I want to ask him. But you can just imagine the impression that makes. Launch a conversation about how much you hate someone for the most trivial of reasons, and by the way, Chatty Chuckles, don’t you hate her too? Might as well just resign and get it over with. That’s not badly playing your hand, that’s wiping your ass with it and flicking the cards at the other players, then pissing the poker chips onto the floor for good measure.

He hands me my copy of The Economist. Yeah, I get it delivered at work to shine the rest of them on. I bet they think I’m a pompous jerk for that. But I see what they get delivered… The Walrus, Wall Street Journal, London Times, New Republic. We all have appearances to keep up. I’ve been thinking about getting Giggles over there a subscription to The Flintstones comic book. Do they still have those? I wonder if she’d get it. Probably not. Deciding to read my magazine later, I strategically leave it at the edge of my desk where it will be noticed. To return to my poker analogy: sometimes, you do let ‘em peek at a card or two.

Mr. O-Face comes around and spots it. About the last person I wanted to. He picks it up, assuming if it’s visible it’s on display. I want to jerk it out of his hands, but if he hasn’t learned to respect other people’s property and privacy by now, what’s the point? He thumbs through it as if looking for the centrefold. “Wuzzis?”

“Just a British magazine. Politics. Economics. World trends.”

“Huh.” He plops it down. For a second, the word ‘British’ seems to spark something, like the hope if he turns back he’ll find the Page 6 girl, but the rest pisses all his poker chips off the table. Okay, I’m repeating myself here.

“So… what’s up?” I prod.

Shrug. He’s bored. I’m one stop on the line. I already know this; why do I even ask? In the hopes something will be different this time. You never know.

I jerk my head at the screen. “If nothing’s up, I’m gonna get back to it, okay?”

“Yeah, I need to get back anyway,” he says.

“To what, grade nine?” I want to say, but of course I don’t. He sticks his hands in his pockets and off he goes like some flesh-and-blood model of the Queen Mary.

I check Page 6 of The Economist. Nope. Ah, well.

Mesopotamian Yonge

My vantage offers much admired
Greens, and blues to catch the breath
Of denizens who long aspired,
Cast in greys, to conquer death

By raising in immortal stone
That clads a hidden heart of steel
A skeleton of bedrock bone
Enamel marble at its heel

Not legs: a backbone, shown all
A broken spine pressed to the sky
That presages a giant’s fall
That was not born, so cannot die

But only fade, reduced to lurk
When twilight brings the gleam to murk.    

Drink Me

Drink soft poison
he tells me, flexing the muscles of his mind
     just this once
He wants me to beat my wings too
Spiral in butterfly stupidity around one another
In truth, flame-kindled moths numb to the fire

And when it’s dark and knowing better he still slips out
riding black on black through black to battered stillness
he leaves me there like incorruptible ruins
whose bricks he covets
     but cannot steal
And what would he do with them anyway?

He holds out the promise of bliss
somehow missing
that its roots strangle contentment.
What grows
on the rocks?
Oh, soft poison.  Just this much water, no more.

Imposter

Mary ran the water and heard the screaming.  The dog bites didn’t bother her anymore but the persistent shriek, like fingernails on a blackboard down the right side of her soul; this bothered her.  She knew there was no one there.  The doctor told her so.  That made it all the worse.  There was no one for her to hush.  No one whose head she could, as a last resort, cave in to stop the madness.  It was her own.  Something misfiring in her brain.

The water was cold.  Cold.  Cold.  “Goddamn it,” she said.  She turned the hot water tap all the way open; cold water ran faster.  Frustrated, she turned it off.  It only made matters worse; now there was a blood-covered girl huddled howling in her bathtub.  Mary wanted to yell at her; she had no desire to clean up the blood.  Some part of her mind that was no longer fooled reminded her that she wouldn’t have to.  Turn away, it said.  Have breakfast.  Give the water time.

Still bleary-eyed, she lurched down the hall, past her living room, into her kitchen.  A bowl of blood that was really strawberries.  A bowl of brains that were really oat-ring cereal in milk.  Slipping, squeaking noises from the bathroom; the wailing, dog-bitten girl.  Mary wanted to throw a thousand darts at her, leaving her a silent, leaden pin cushion.  “Can’t I eat in peace?” she asked her cereal as she piloted its shoals with her spoon.  She slammed her hand on the table; the spoon whirled away into space, astonished, trailing Cheerios.  “Don’t you think I know?  Don’t you think I feel?  I know how you feel!  Now feel what I do!”

There was silence, for the first time in hours.  She sank into the chair.  The milk and cereal rocked in the bowl, perhaps trembling, perhaps complacent.  She watched until all motion ceased.

The water was warm, anyway.  Tepid at least, at last.  She dabbed her face, able for the first time in a long time to hear the crystal fullness of the water trickling back down into itself, delighting in the pure audio experience of it.

“Will you wash my bites?  Please, please,” the girl pleaded.  It was the first time Mary could remember her having spoken, ever.  She turned to the girl, the red-rimmed blue eyes under greasy black curls, the blood still pulsing up from the myriad punctures after all these years.

“Of course I will,” she nodded, kneeling beside the tub.  Lifting the warm washcloth, she let her eyes play over the smooth white stars in her own arms that made a mockery of the world ‘healing’.  But she knew warm water would do it.    

Magnificent Vespers

Magnificent vespers
like the sleep of a child
before awareness of the world creeps in
and makes of sleep a thin veneer
over nightmare
and ever-present reality

Magnificent vespers
like a seed under snow
before the fever of spring sets in
before the fury of summer;
the fear and longing and mourning of autumn

Vespers lost
but not forgotten

Hard to Live

Bad move, icing the target without a silencer, I know; but the important thing was to get the job done.  But Jesus, the guards were everywhere.  I was out the door but they were already on me.

Hit the stairwell.  I could hear them below me.  Nothing to do but go up.  Hope for a niche; someplace small enough to escape notice but big enough not to wind up either suffocated or, worse, crippled.  Suffocated I could live with.

No luck, though.  About what I expected.  We were on the roof in no time.

Jesus, what a gorgeous day.  Acapulco, July.  The cloudless sky darker than the sea; like the glimpse below the tan line of some gorgeous azure lady.  Don’t ask me what the sand symbolizes; I didn’t have enough time to think of how to labour the simile.

Shots barked into the air behind me.  Not at me, over me.  They wanted me alive.  Of course they did.  Not a fucking chance.  I can usually tell when the game’s over.  No way was I going to make their job easy for them.  Assholes.  No, I was going to leave them with a big, soggy, sloppy mystery on their hands.  A real mess.

It’s always fun to see the shift.  They always make the wrong assumptions.  It’s when you do something like climb onto the lip of the retaining wall 27 stories up that they suddenly realize they’re not holding the trump cards.  The guns are lifted.  The hands are conciliatory.  Pleading.  Even in Spanish, the meaning is clear.  Tough luck, fellahs.  I got more important things to do than spend my time growing old with you.

I waved, smiled, and jumped.

I could feel their eyes on my back all the way down.  I spread out like an eagle — a dying eagle, I guess — and for several seconds, just watched the parking lot rush up at me.  I braced for impact, though I can’t remember ever having felt it when it happened.

There was a brief, still, nothing moment.  A sudden readjustment.

In the tank, my eyes opened.

The Rev'nooer Shoots Back

Act I, Sc. I

Exterior: Outside a tax office.  A dozen or so protestors with anti-war placards march back and forth, shouting rhythmically but incoherently.

A young man in rumpled business attire emerges, carrying a clipboard with many pages.  His sleeves are rolled up and his hair is moist with perspiration.

TAX MAN
Hello, uh, excuse me?

PROTESTOR #1
Yeah?  What do you want?

TAX MAN
I’m Wade Keston, one of the junior relations officers here at the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, and I’ve been asked to—

PROTESTOR #1
The what?  We thought this was Revenue Canada!

TAX MAN
Well, it was, it is, but the name changed a couple of—

PROTESTOR #1
Hey, fellahs, we’re in the wrong place!  This guy here says this is customs!  We want revenue…

TAX MAN
No, no, wait, wait wait… you’re in the right place, you’re in the right place.

PROTESTOR #2
Yeah, so?

TAX MAN
This is in regard to a tax protest… is that correct?

PROTESTOR #3
Damn straight!  We object to our tax dollars being used in the war in Afghanistan, and we want it stopped now!

SFX: General cheering from protestors.

TAX MAN
(over crowd)
Well, that’s what I’m here to address!  You see…  you see… we here at the agency are a little… if you’ll forgive me… sick of hearing about how everyone does or doesn’t want their share of their huge, voluminous tax bill going to this, or to that, or to the other thing.  So… I’ve come out here today to tell you all exactly where your tax dollars are going.

PROTESTOR #2
Huh?

TAX MAN
You see, it’s very simple.  You’re all under the misapprehension that everyone pays some equal percent of their taxes to everything the country funds.  No, it doesn’t work like that.  See, we just earmark the dollars to the projects as they come in.  So I’m here to tell you where your dollars go.

PROTESTOR #1
But… but how can you do that?  You don’t know who we are…

TAX MAN
No, not to look at you, but you did present us with a petition when you arrived this morning with your names and towns of residence on it.  It’s not really that hard to cross-reference.  So, the boys and girls in accounts receivable have been busy all morning just to make you happy.  Now what’s your name, for instance?

PROTESTOR #1
Me?  Uh… Bill Lavordeyer…

TAX MAN
Of Moncton, New Brunswick?  Let’s see…  Hmm…  Says here that your tax dollars are mainly earmarked to pay for the chemical castration of a repeat sex offender in Abbotsford, British Columbia.

PROTESTOR #1
What?

TAX MAN
That must give you a warm and happy one, huh?  Well, you have absolutely no say in the war in Afghanistan… because you’re not paying a penny for it!  You might as well go home.  But, you can console yourself with the knowledge that you’re making Abbotsford, B.C., a better place in which to raise a daughter.  And you, sir!  What’s your name?

PROTESTOR #2
Colin Ferrucci… Woodbridge, Ontario…

TAX MAN
Hmm…  Ah, here we are.  Yeah… says here that for the past seven years, you’ve been helping to fund a study into the mating habits of freshwater drum fish in Lake Winnipeg… for which no reports have yet been forthcoming to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.  Wow, you must be so glad your money’s not being pissed away on something trivial like attempting to rebuild an entire country, huh?  Okay, who’s next?  You, ma’am?

PROTESTOR #4
Um, Lorna Dovorski…?

TAX MAN
Dovorski, Dovorski…  Lethbridge, Alberta.  Right.  Ahh, yes.  You’ll be pleased as punch to know that you’re helping to provide the town of Chibougamau, Quebec, with a statue of their hero, former premier Jacques Parizeau.  Cigar, wine glass and all.  Wow, Lorna… that’s a lot of brass.  Kinda gets you right here, huh?  And who’s next?  How about you, sir?

PROTESTOR #3
Uh, me?  No, I’m, uh… I’m nobody.  Not interested.

PROTESTOR #1
Mac Leblanc.

PROTESTOR #3
Shit!

TAX MAN
Mac Leblanc.  Mac Leblanc…?  Mac Leblanc!  Oh, you’re Mac Leblanc?  Wow!  Well, I mean, according to our records, you haven’t filed a return since… let’s see now… niinnnneteeeennnnniiiinetttyyyy…  …1990!  Wow, Mac, have you got a major pair of stones on you to stand here in this crowd!  Oh, hey, wait here just a minute… I’ve got about a dozen guys just dying to meet you…

PROTESTOR #3
Shiiiiiittt--!!

Protestor #3 drops sign, runs..

The End.

Starlight Sees Phillip

Starlight saw him first; she was sitting in my bedroom window and she said, “Therrre’s a little boy overrr therrre who’s dead.”

I crowded the window and peered out, squinting.  “I don’t see anything.  How do you know he’s dead?”

“Because I can’t smell him and he has no shadow.  He is only shadow.”  She never took her eyes off where she was looking.  I kept trying to see but I didn’t.  Finally she began to lick her paws.  “He is gone now.”

“Where?”

“In the grrround.”

“Into a grave?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you know which one?  I could read his name.”

“The stones talk to you.  You may know.  Not this rrrow.  Not that rrrow.  The rrrow afterrr.  And into the stone just underrr wherrre that point is on the shorrre… do you see it?”

“I think so… I think so.  Hey, I’ll be right back, okay?  I’ll look back, and when I’m at the right one, bat your tail three times, okay?”

“If you find the rrright one.”

“Thanks, Starlight.”

“Rrreaccchhh,” she mouthed, stretching.

I ran out of my room and across the big open space of the cottage.  “Where you going?” my mother asked.  “It’s getting dark.”

“Just going out for a minute, I’ll be right back!”

“Craig?”

I hauled the heavy glass door shut before she had time to compose an objection that would make sense to her — whether or not it made sense to a ten-year-old boy was, ultimately, immaterial.  So I left her composing while I still had my liberty.

My parents called her Ginger, but her real name was Starlight, and I know that because she told me so herself.  I had long ago realized none of the others around me understood her.  I did.  I don’t know why.  But I did know enough to have long ago ceased getting them to hear, or even believe I could.  Now when it was brought up, I would laugh it off with the rest of them.  To Starlight, I was Reach, because when we got her and I was four, I would always reach for her.  As she quickly outgrew me, she decided, firmly, that whoever my parents might be biologically, ultimately, I belonged to her.  Reach, the giant forever-kitten.  That was who I was to her.

And now I scampered through the field beside our cottage and jumped the stonework fence into the churchyard across the little dirt lane.  Third row in… that much was established.  I sighted the point.  Sighted my window.  Put myself between them.  Pointed.  Here?

Starlight stared, passive.

Here?

Nothing.

How about this one?

Pat.  Pat pat.

I dropped to my knees in the grass.  The headstone was white, flecked with lichen, and weathered by over a century, but it was still legible.  Phillip Jacob Jaeger.  Born, May 18, 1851.  Died, November 26, 1860.  I whispered his name, running my finger in the letters, the numbers.  I rose to my feet, feeling creepy in the rapidly deepening gloom, the grass already clammy, and I realized I was standing on his grave.  I leapt back.  “Sorry,” I said.  “Sorry…”

I looked up at Starlight.

Pat pat patpatpatpatpat… flick flick flick flick, pat patpatpat…

Goosebumps rose all over my body, despite the summer heat.  I strided back to the fence and lifted myself over it.  I did not look back.    

Shield

You’re over it
You’ve been up and up and down the far side
And you’ve seen the fair vistas
below you

The path fine-grained and soft
pine-needle woven
sunlit, great suspension bridge cabled on
the bones of the world
vaulted over lava
You crossed
with your eyes heavenward

Always yearning
Chin up.

Roscoe

We’d had a nice chat through a warm Louisiana evening.  Now I was ready to buy.  “Do you think I might see the potion?” I asked.

“I suppose we had to come to that,” she said, and she began to rise from her chair.  Her withered old arm strained on the rest to lift her tired, heavy body from the seat, and as I got to my feet, I gently reached out to help her up.  “My, you are a gentleman,” she said.  “Your mama raised you right.”  She began to shuffle her way slowly towards a bookshelf.  “I can always tell when someone was brought up right.  It just shows.  Ain’t that right, Roscoe?”

“Uh… Roscoe?”

“Mm hmm.  Roscoe,” she said, briefly lifting her cane and indicating the little caged hamster on the shelf.  As she approached, the hamster hopped into his wheel, and began running in it.  I watched in amazement as one whole segment of the bookshelf began to turn on a hinge, opening to a whole secret room, unsuspected by me until that moment.

“That’s remarkable,” I said.  “Did he open that by running in the wheel?”

“He surely did… didn’t you, Roscoe?”

“That’s a magnificent job of training.”

“Oh… weren’t much in the way of training involved,” she said.  “See, Roscoe here, well… he wa’n’t always a little hamster.”

“…No?”

“Oh, nooo.  Big strappin’ man, he was, once.  Refused to open a door for me.  Was pretty mean and nasty about it, too, let me tell you.  I mean the words that came out of his mouth, oh!  I knew right away he had not been brought up right.  So… I thought I would give him the opportunity to open the door for me.  To make amends like.  And ever since then, he’s been polite and mannerly as you could want… a hamster in a house full of cats.”  She let out a few long, low chuckles.

“Tell me… does he still think?  Can he still understand?”

She leaned in close, with a broad smile.  “Now, what do you think, hmm?”

I glanced at the hamster, who was indeed paying very close attention to us.  What did I think…?

“After you,” I said, bowing to the lady.

“Such a gentleman,” she patted my cheek.

Making Change

Vanda came in the store and like, she told me my tits were too small.  Well, it’s not like she actually said that.  She’s not the kind that will give you the ammo to shoot back with.  She just says, “Well, you’re better off without Dan Faley anyway.  The only thing he cares about is big chests.”  Like, excuse me?  First of all, that is so not true about him.  Secondly, even if it was, which it isn’t, what makes Vanda think I’m not good enough?  Like she’s got so much to boast about; hardly.  But I don’t I know who I’m more mad at now, Danny or Vanda.  Vanda got me so worked up I made the wrong change at least twice.  Those were the times I heard about because I shortchanged someone.  I don’t know how many times I gave someone too much change.  You almost never hear about that.  It makes you realize the whole world is made of two kinds of people.  Scumbags who keep the change, and idiots who give it back.  But I guess that’s not about them, really, it’s about me.  I’m way too cynical.  Why can’t I just see the good in someone giving the change back?  Why do I have to think they’re fools to do that, especially when I don’t have a kind word for the people who don’t?  I’m messed up.  Anyway, it’s Vanda’s fault.  And I am better off without Danny.  He wasn’t all about tits.  No, he was all about… well, maybe I shouldn’t say, but put it this way: the guys on his team better not drop the soap in the shower.

In Hopes of the Resurrection

Seven years old and nearly naked, I’m standing there in the sand, fidgety. My bathing suit is still wet, my hair damp, but otherwise we’ve been standing around long enough to be dry. It’s hot. I’m uncomfortable. I’m bored. I’m a little scared; this is all so unusual. Five or six dozen others, of all ages, are milling around on the beach, feeling just the same as me. Some woman is quietly arguing with a policeman, and though he’s apologetic, he refuses to let her pass.

A boy has drowned. Well, he’s missing. I recognize his name. He’s not a friend, but I know him, or at least of him. He’s a year older than me, and at this age, that’s a huge and nearly unbridgeable gulf. I look out over the water of the tiny lake; my eyes are stabbed by the hot sun dancing on its surface, below which some boy lies at the bottom, where no boy is meant to be. People are gathered around his sobbing mother. Little boats move back and forth; policemen in wetsuits tip over the sides and come up, shaking their heads. The lake is at the edge of a rotary, where traffic has been slowed to a honking, snarling crawl even at midday, thanks the rubberneckers who always have to gawk at such tragedies, drawn around them like flies on a turd. We don’t have any choice in our world coming to a stop. They do.

I don’t know why the police won’t let us go. I suppose they need to maintain order. The last thing they need is for parents and kids to get separated and complicate things. And so we gather around, one to another, waiting to see what will come up out of the water.

After nearly an hour of this, it ends, abruptly, and not in the way anyone expected. A young girl comes bawling into the crowd, calling for the boy’s mother. She is a neighbour. The drowned boy is, in fact, waiting with her mother. Apparently he had gotten bored, went home without telling anyone, and was discovered asleep in the basement. And now in the midst of the frantic shrieks of motherly joy at answered prayers, there are sighs of relief, mutters about stupidity, nervous chuckles. The police cordon lifts. A few children plunge back into the water, but for most people, the bloom is seriously off the afternoon, and we drift home. That boy might not be dead, but I have a feeling shortly he’s going to wish he were.

A thousand miles and a decade and a half pass behind me, and the news comes of a high school buddy who had been struck in the head while sail boarding, and vanished unconscious beneath the waves. There was no comedy of errors this time to comfort a grieving mother. And though the two events had nothing to do with one another, they impressed upon me the fact that death is not cheated. Ever. You might cleverly dodge an appointment here and there, but not the bill.

The Dead Drop In

“So why’d you do it?” he asks me.  “I think I have a right to know.”  Guy sounds like he’s talking from the bottom of a submarine.  I can barely understand him.

I’m over the shock of seeing Gary by now.  Well, no, I’m not.  But I’ve settled down.  It’s been three years.  He must have been looking for me all that time.  There’s no more lying, no more fighting, no more sense in running away.  He’s got me dead to rights.  So we sit there at the table and I try to remember what the hell was in my mind that night.

“I thought if you vanished, the business would improve.  It would be essentially mine to run the way it should have been run.  And I managed it, Gary.  Things are booming.”  It’s funny.  I’m feeling less guilt for having murdered him than embarrassment for telling him what he was: a shitheaded partner who was flushing my financial future down the toilet along with his own.

“So you get the business, and I get a shallow grave.”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t see any other way…  I tried to make it quick,” I offer, sleezily.  I feel the immediate need to change the subject.  “Are you going to testify?” I ask.  We’re in one of the jurisdictions that allows for that now.  I guess the thinking is, no one knows better than the dead that judgment is near, so a ghost is going to be eager to show up in front of God in a clean sheet without the stains of recent perjury on it.

“I don’t have time,” he says.  I don’t ask him how he knows this; I suspect he doesn’t know how himself.  He just knows it.  “I want to see Alice and the kids before I go.  I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do.  It’s going to traumatize them a bit.  But I’ve been talking to others and in the long run, it helps the survivors move on.  That’s what I’ll be doing.”  By now we can hear the sirens in the distance.  He rises from the chair, and for a moment I wonder what it feels like to sit when you’re dead.  What’s anything feel like when you’re dead?  Gary says, “And anyway, I think I can count on you to give a full accounting of yourself on your own.”

I nod.  I don’t know why, but having been confronted by the man I murdered and confessed to him, I can’t imagine not owning up to others far less involved.  I hear the cars pull up, and doors slamming.  They’re banging at my door now.  “Yin?  Vince Yin?  We have reports of a murder.  We are coming in.  Our weapons will be drawn!”  And I’m wondering what the hell Gary told them to get them this worked up.

I rise, my hands raised.  “The door is open,” I call.  They kick it in and aim their pistols at me.  The police are greeted with the sight of a ghost, translucent hand raised in accusation.

“There’s your man,” Gary says, and disappears.

End of Act One

Sunday morning.  I think.  Yeah, Sunday.  I don’t even bother calling her name.  I just wander through the house taking a quick inventory of the rooms.  They are as empty as they were last night.  And the night before.

I feel a little shaky, but I'm not hung over.  That's good; when I find a half empty can of beer in the fridge, I finished it off.  Flat, but I don't like to waste beer, and it gets me started on the day's drinking.

Sunday morning.  As I stand there in the kitchen, bollocks naked as they'd say in England, I remember that at this time on a Sunday morning 12 years ago, I'd ordinarily have been dressed in my best clothes; she and I on our way to church.  I can’t believe there was ever a time when that seemed normal.  As it was, I haven't bathed shaved since Friday.

New beer.  I crack it open.  The head overflows; I slurp it up as it runs down the back of my hand.  I lift it to my lips and pour it back, barely tasting it.  Already I can sense the buzz from the first can making its debut on the dark stage just behind my eyebrows.

The doorbell rings.  On Sunday morning?  Fuck ‘em.  I raise the beer again.  The ringing becomes knocking.  Loud, insistent knocking.  I ignore it.  I just want them all to go away.  The knocking does, finally, stop.  And of course, it’s right at that moment that the icicle stabs my heart: what if something’s wrong?  What if I haven’t heard from her because something’s happened?  I look around frantically and finally grab a dishtowel and hold it like a loincloth.  “Wait!” I shout, and vault towards the living room.

I’m headed off by the sound of a familiar voice in the back yard.  “Adam?  Adam!  It’s Bryce.”  I stop in the doorway of the living room and peer back into the kitchen.  Bryce McGregor.

Good old Bryce.  I pad back into the kitchen; he’s on the patio and standing by the door.  I open it and let him in.  He comes in and spies me there in my birthday suit, at first surprised, and then not in the least surprised; he even nods softly.  Sure.  Does he know?  Well, anyway, it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before; we play squash together at lunch sometimes.  “How you holding up?” he says.  Yeah.  He knows.

“Is anything wrong?” I ask.

He looks bemused, as if, y’know, what a question, and then the import of my question suddenly hits him.  “Oh, shit, Adam, I’m sorry!  No, everything’s fine!  Uh, well… Linda’s well, I mean.  Nothing… Jesus, I’m sorry.  I wasn’t thinking.”

“She hasn’t called,” I say.  He nods.  Apparently, he knows that, too.  Oh.  So that’s what this is about.

“She, ah… she came by yesterday.  Talked to me and Jim.  Um… she told us what happened Thursday night.  She asked me to come over this morning.”

“She’s still there?”

“No.  No, she left last night to stay with a friend.”

“Who?”

“A woman.  A friend.”  It’s all he’ll say.  “Adam, look… she asked me to come over because we’re friends.  Y’know, and… because I’m a lawyer.”

I swallow.  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Adam, um… she’s filing papers.  She wants…”  He sighs.  “She wants a divorce.  And this time, she means it.”

I’m suddenly full of rage.  My skin glistens with beery sweat.  I’m standing naked in my kitchen and a man is telling me my life is over.  “Are you representing her?”

“No.  There’s no way I could do that.  I want you to know, she asked.  I said I couldn’t.  I’m not coming between you.  I… I did refer her to a friend of mine, though.  Someone fair and professional.  I promise you.”

“Uh huh.  Do you have someone fair and professional for me?”

He blanches; his mouth pinches a bit.  No doubt about it, I’ve just clenched that Asshole of the Year trophy.  “Yeah, I can… I can find you someone.”

“I’m sorry.  Really… I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.  You’re a good friend to…”  Suddenly I’m in a chair and I’m sobbing my guts out and I don’t even know how I got there.  He’s sitting beside me with his hand on my shoulder.  I used to be scared to death of gay men.  Now his sympathy is the only lee in all this storm.  I don’t know how long we just sit like that.  But all I can feel around me is it all folding up.  The house we spent all summer looking for.  The up-and-coming couples whose friendships we cemented because we were just like them.  The children we tried so long to have, who never were born and now never possibly could be.  All the things I thought I’d be and have and do for the next forty or fifty years of my life are pouring out of me in tears that will simply evaporate.  It’s the end of the first act of my life; all those scenes behind me now.  And I can’t imagine the play has a happy ending anymore.