Saturday, May 31, 2014

The Wound

He was just a stupid kid, which is how these things always start. And it's not that he was cruel or unfeeling, he was just a kid trying to figure these things out, just like we all are. And when he made her cry he felt horrible, he did.

"What...?" She couldn't believe she was hearing the right words. So he repeated them. Some things don't get easier the second time. And some things do.

"Don't do this." But it was done.

It was the first time he had ever truly hurt someone, in the way that you hurt someone deeply, where it matters. He picked a quiet spot, halfway up the steps on the landing before the second floor, right after rehearsal, where there were less people around and he had an excuse to get away.

He made excuses. He made jokes. He made anything his adolescent mind could make to salve the wound.

"I have something I was going to tell you."

"What was it?" he asked.

"You won't want to hear it now." He went to wipe a tear from her eye and she pushed his hand away.

"What took you so long?" his father would ask him when he finally got in the car. He knew he had done something big, something important, hard, necessary. Still, he would not tell his family for a time.

Friday, May 30, 2014

The Death of Friends

He wished she would get worse. Even a little. But she didn't, she apparently couldn't, she was unable to find that action in her body. To say or do something that would start him on the decline toward disinterest. It didn't seem like it would happen anytime soon.

He breathed a painful sign of relief when he found the red flag. Something of faith, something that always made him feel uneasy. But, no, it wasn't a flag, it was only a herring. No, she was tolerant. Yes. Tolerant. Open, jaded, edgy, she had an edge, there was edge. Beyond the veil of purity and loveliness, underneath that fresh truth, he was learning of all the things he dreaded. All the things he thought, all the things he agreed with. And the things he liked, dear god, the things he liked. The ways in which he spent his time, the ways in which he cared. It was on the surface and underneath, it was in the core. It was bumming cigarettes and The Shins and alcoholic fathers. It was the death of friends. It was No, go on, I like listening to you.

He picked and pried at things at which he could continue to pick. He tried in vain. Because there were none. Not now, at least. And the things that were there were so big and little and important and insignificant and all of them good that they could outshine and weigh them all, all those others, they would, he was sure of it. And he hated himself. He hated this situation, all too familiar, one he'd be in before and one he'd be in again and he could not have her. Not then, he knew, and probably (possibly?), he thought, not ever.

He feared. He doted and he feared. With every question and answer and match he brought to her lips and way he found to touch her he could feel himself getting nearer, getting sucked in, getting attached to an immovable object. And he wondered why he always did this. Why he couldn't see a beautiful girl and learn her beautiful ways and just be happy with what was and not what might or could and never would be. And he wondered why he thought it never would be. Things change, he thought. Always. Things always change, always, that's what they do. People, everything, always.

And he wondered why he couldn't focus on that, on that possibility. But if he did, he knew, he knew it was a slippery slope and he was already scratching for balance. He was flailing. Always flailing. And there she was, smiling at him, beautiful. And she had no idea.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Repetition

Sitting on the park bench he could feel, he thought, her heart beat, and he hated the nearby softballers. Some after school, intramural, "fun" type of league, the kind where you shout because you're a child and you don't know any better. She was telling a vaguely racist joke that made him laugh. He never got that feeling from her between nine and five. "Don't date a chick from work," his friends told him. But he didn't listen.

The girl, Hazel, the girl next to him, had finished saying something and he was pretty sure it wasn't a question. "So," he started, "you said you found a cat, right? How's that working out?" She told him about the cat, about its green little eyes, and its flat little nose, and its white little paws that looked like boots. Three schoolgirls passed from one periphery to the other, and the one in a fluorescent orange dress drew his eye away, until it finally landed on two guys trying to push each other off another bench. "Sorry, what was that?" She repeated herself.

There were dogs everywhere. This isn't a damn dog park, he thought. Big dogs, little dogs, one man walking four at a time. There was one, howling, some twenty or so yards behind him, howling as if it was trying to save little Timmy down the well.

He looked at Hazel's skirt. It had buttons—he supposed you'd call them medium-sized—going down the front all the way to the bottom. The second to last one was missing. It was cute and quirky, like her.

Some boy (Sam he thought he'd heard), was running in from left field. "What? What! What?!"

"What do you think?" He looked at her.

"Oh... yeah, totally." Her face told him that it was either the wrong answer or the first part of a right one, and he wasn't sure which. So he turned and looked ahead. "A lot of dogs out here today." There was sudden gust of wind and a car alarm. Then another. And another.

"It's getting late. I should go."

"I'll walk you home."

"I'm not going home."

He asked if he could give her another call sometime and she said she would see, but that her schedule was very busy right now. He understood, he told her. And he did understand, but still he didn't change anything. He understood as he was doing it.

It wasn't the worst date he had ever been in charge of, the worst he'd ever acted. But it stayed with him in his stomach, all the way home, as he thought about how to act at work the next day, and whether or not to look at, or speak to, or avoid the girl entirely.

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Click Click Fire

Click.

Click.

Fire.

Press of a button, warmth of a room. There's something great and unholy about that. What's that wood that doesn't look like wood? Something that doesn't burn. What doesn't burn? What doesn't burn...?

Room warms up quickly. Such a little thing giving off so much warmth so quickly. Strange isn't it? That a few flames could keep us this cozy. This snug. Warm. Fast.

What doesn't burn?

Uneasy at first. Who would want fake fire? Who would want a fire you don't have to work? Click click fire. And that's it? That's satisfying? But now I see. Feel. And it is. It is satisfying.

What doesn't burn?

I want another.

What doesn't burn?

And with a click of a button it goes off. But still it will give me lingering warmth. I will feel good, for a time. But slowly by slowly it all of it will dissipate, rise, disperse, vanish. And be gone. Until I click click again. Until I have to.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Part of Something Greater

He grew attached to things quite quickly and he wondered why that was. He tried to trace it back, to a person, a place, a thing, an event. Something on which he could put his finger and say, This. Because it bothered him. Not the attachment itself, but the mystery of it. Why when he bought a shirt he kept it a decade, even if he hadn't worn it in years and knew he never would again. Why if his mother sent him baked goods in the mail with a note telling him to divide them amongst his friends he rarely would. Why if he spoke but a few words to a beautiful girl he thought they might be rather happy together, thinking this long after she'd gone.

Sentiment. Greed. Lust. They were these things, yes, but they were part of something greater, and he wanted to know what. He wanted to say, This. He sat and thought, he walked and thought, he wrote and put his thoughts on paper. Finally, he concluded that, yes, it was more than mere nostalgia, more than petty selfishness, more than his carnal desires. That there was a true and deep honesty to these feelings, a longing in every one. Something of history, of the past and present and future. He decided—and he was glad when he did—that it was, Hope.

He smiled at the word, then immediately questioned it. He realized how naive it sounded and he thought himself a fool. But he decided that there was nothing particularly wrong with connecting a blissful past to an undetermined future, and that if his todays had any part in it, he would do what he wanted.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Such Intimate Things

when r u free? wanna get together this week?

He wrote something and deleted it and did this three more times.

Yeah. I don't know exactly when but yeah, what's your sched like?

im free just let me know ;)

It's a cold, calculating way to go about such intimate things. It's a strange society, and it was new to him. He let her take control while he found how he fit into all of this. He was damn near certain her name was Gillian and not Jillian. They had talked about an actress with that name. "Oh, I don't watch that show." It was one of the many things she said that night that made him wince inside. But a man has his priorities.

It would be two days later, meeting for drinks. Then the walk home, that long dark walk to the inevitable, to the thing he wanted. But there were so many other things in his way, drinks and money and opinions and that laugh. He smiled through it all and hacked at the brush of her personality.

She spent the night and stayed through lunch and into the hours he considered dinner. They ordered in and watched a movie. They fooled around. To the casual observer it might appear as though they had a very nice time.

When she left she kissed him, and he felt horrible. An hour later he heard from her.

thx, i had fun ;) talk to you soon! xo

His thumbs got into place for a response, but they just hovered there, as he scratched and scrambled desperately for the perfect phrase, before it got to be too long after to respond at all.

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Sharing a Bed

She turns over again. Are you asleep? she asks. And for a moment I'm not sure what I should say. That is, I know what I should say, but I'm not sure what I'm going to say. Finally it's I know you're awake, and Then why did you ask? and It's what you do, you know. It's what one does.

What's up? and she's silent. And I can only hear the slow and steady breathing of what she wants to say. But the words never come. It's what you do, you know? It's what one does.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

They'll Forgive Us

"Don't talk to me like I'm some sort of child, Howard, I'm not!" He was about to roll his eyes when he was informed, "And don't you dare roll your eyes at me. I know you, this is a serious conversation." He never tried to tell him otherwise, although he thought it. "When you roll your eyes it invalidates me." It did do that, although Howard thought Troy needed invalidating.

The argument had started like this: Howard made a joke. That's, at least, how he saw it. A harmless joke that he saw and then made. The joke was in reference to one of the side dishes Troy had prepared along with tonight's dinner, the mashed potatoes. There was talk of Howard's work at the construction site, and lumps in the potatoes, and how maybe he should get his hammer. It was a quick connection, and Howard was glad that he had made it.

"You make dinner then," was the only response he got, aside from a clinking of discarded silverware.

"Oh, you know I'm only joking," the typical rebuttal.

Troy hoped that his glass of red wine would help him relax. It did not. But why relax? Why move past it? No, he had an earnest question and he wanted an answer and he wanted it now.

"What do you have to gain?"

It was a moment before Howard realized that, yes, Troy was talking to him. There were no other strange men in the room. He put his fork down after it delivered those same potatoes to his mouth, and half-full it spoke, "What do you mean?"

"I mean what do you have to gain? From making a comment like that. This little joke of yours. Where were you hoping it would get you, what were you hoping it would accomplish?

Howard was dumbfounded. He didn't think to accomplish anything by it, other than to let off some steam. He wasn't sure what there was to be gained. "I... A laugh? I suppose?" It hurts when your day's work is overthrown by something as meager as a laugh, and when that order is given not by you, but by the recipient of your work. Only joking. Only. What a terrible word. What a horribly small word. What a devaluing word. Troy knew that this encompassed everything. He thought very well this could be the last supper they ever shared. He thought maybe, maybe he could've found it in his heart to forgive his Howard if the joke had been funny. If you're going to make a joke then at least make it funny! But it was easy, it was there, it was low-hanging and Howard had plucked it, and dropped it shortly afterward. And he knew the joke was small. With that word only, he proved it.

"Well neither of us fucking laughed did we?" It was rare for Troy to swear like this, hotheadedly, and at the dining table.

"Hey, take it easy! And watch that tone, I've had a hard day—"

Which is where we started. "When you roll your eyes it invalidates me."

"Good."

"Good?"

"Good!"

"I cared about your hard day, you know! I know how hard they've been lately. So I thought that I would do something nice. Did you say anything about the lamb? No. Did you notice how tender and juicy, how expensive it was? How new? It's a new recipe. I wanted to do something new, something exciting, something delicious for you, for us. When you have a hard day it's difficult and I understand that, that's fine, but the second you come home that hard day is over. It's in the past. The second you come home you have the chance to change it, you have the power. You can let that day, those nine or ten measly hours, ruin the rest of your night and mine, or you can decide that you're bigger than that. Or decide to ruin the one nice thing someone's done for you all day, the one thing someone who loves you did for you. Make him the fool, put the target on his back. Because, ha, apparently, I deserve it, because I'm here. Well."

Troy got up from the table and headed to the front door. Howard stopped him.

"We're cruelest to the ones we love the most. Because we know they'll forgive us."

They looked at each other for a silent moment and shared a kiss, knowing very well it could be their last.

Friday, May 23, 2014

The Show Must Go On

When I awake the time tells 5:14 AM, although I must have woken up at 4:45 and turned off the alarm. I'm surprised I was able to wake up again, and that I didn't sleep right through. I am very much awake, alert, and clearheaded, and I think how strange it is.

I go into the living room and turn on the TV. I turn the volume down low because my two roommates are still sleeping and it's a small apartment. I've missed the opening procession and part of the service, but I'm still able to see William and Catherine take their vows. He looks stately in his uniform, and she looks beautiful in a classic gown that resists stuffiness and exits with a lengthy train.

The guests cheer. The crowds outside and elsewhere watching giant screens cheer. It is a very respectable spectacle. The country loves their future king and queen. And I get the feeling much of the world does as well.

The ceremony is over but it is still early. I make an unusually sizable breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, and orange juice. I've never been much for a big breakfast, but I have been up for a while and it is still quite early and I have a long day ahead of me.

I get to work by 8:00. I make my calls and conduct my interviews. I go through the motions and it's easy.

At noon a friend invites me to lunch with a friend of hers. On the short walk over I notice how particularly nice the day is, with just a hint of breeze. I feel good in the outfit I'm wearing, one that I actually bought off a mannequin, which I never do. The three of us sit in the designated lunching area at Whole Foods, enjoying the tacos or sides or sandwiches we've ordered. I notice that it's getting close to the half hour I'm allotted and I need to get back to punch in. They laugh. They've both been working there a while. We take an hour lunch.

I leave work at 2:00 and I don't do much of anything in the afternoon. It is a regular afternoon. Nothing much happens. It is Friday though, and I am glad to have the weekend. I am always glad to have the weekend.

I get to the theatre by 6:30. I warm up at the piano, get dressed, and do a few small vocal and physical exercises. At 7:30 I sit down at the piano and introduce the show. It's a cute show with songs, a three-people-playing-thirty type of thing. I rush on and offstage, quickly changing costumes, sing, dance, and play through nearly 100 pages of piano music. It is a delightful show. I have grown a lot doing it, and am happy to be a working actor.

My mother, father, and stepfather are all stage actors, so it is a rare occurrence when one is able to make the trek from Minneapolis to Chicago and see me perform. My stepfather had a show, but my mother and father were able to see me in this. Afterward my father handed me a card. On the inside was written, Welcome to the theatre. That was three weeks ago.

The show ends around 9:00. The audience applauds and we bow. We go backstage, change at our various places, and leave one by one. I walk out of the dressing room into the empty theatre but I stop when I see my mother sitting in the front row, a suitcase beside her.

It is a fall unlike anything.

Mom? I question. Because surely it isn't her. Not without warning.

Nick, she says.

What. I shake.

Something horrible has happened.

What. I am shaking.

She begins to cry. Julian died, she tells me.

My mother tells me my father has died.

I fall further.

I drop my bag and hit the floor. I collapse, inward and outward and in every sense. She says she's sorry, she's so sorry, and I grit my teeth and sob and scream and smash my fists into the hard ground. She tells me details, about a heart, and it was over quickly, and there was no pain, and hideous things that I cannot and will not hear. Because surely this isn't happening. Not without warning.

But as the one side of myself explodes the other is there to say, But there was warning. You all had your warning. He had his warning. The alcoholic had his warning. And, yes, steps were taken. Situations were reversed. But it was too little too late.

My mother helps me up and takes me into the lobby. We pass a couple of people who work for the theatre, people my mother must have spoken to, people who must have heard, Where does my son come out? I have to give him some very hard news.

We go outside and get a cab. I tell the driver where to go but he isn't sure of where that is. I have to, in my insanity, direct this man on how to take our shattered bodies home. It becomes unbearable and I lash out at the man. My mother calms me down and confides in our driver, Sir, we've just received some terrible news, please just get us there.

He does. My mother and I go up to my apartment. One of my roommates is out of town, but the other is watching a movie. Jay, Jay, she says, can you turn that off? We've received some horrible news. Nick's father passed away. Jay turns off the movie. He's not sure what to do. How could he be? My mother makes him get up, he gives me a hug, we talk for a moment, and we go to our respective bedrooms.

My mother and I talk. There are ups and downs, and I get angrier and angrier and cool off and get angrier again. I think of all the emails I ignored, the texts I barely responded to. I shout at God. I raise my fist to him. Thanks a lot, God! If you're even fucking up there! It comes from a deep, true place. I apologize to my mother. I cry and blow the snot from my nose and maybe even feel a little better. I feel bad for feeling better.

We call my stepfather. We call my grandparents, who had the duty of telling my sister earlier in the day. My sister, on the opposite side of the country, who was still in college, who received no visit from this father three weeks ago, who had not seen him since Christmas, who has no parent there beside her now because my mother is with me and my stepfather has a show, who knew before me and couldn't tell me when I texted her. My grandparents have seen friends and family die for years, and I am sure they relay the information to my sister with as much grace as they can. I am sure they know how to comfort her in her sorrow. And I hope, if she has outbursts like mine, that they understand.

We talk about the event some more. I get more details. My mother says the time of death was recorded as 5:11 AM. She tells me that she woke up at just about that time, and had the strangest feeling. I tell her, So did I.

I have a show tomorrow night. I close the show the following day. The day after that I start tech for another show that I open in less than a week, and I have rehearsal for it tomorrow. I don't know if I can make it. I do not know if I will be able to make it. You can do it, my mother says. We go to bed. It is late, past midnight, and I have a long day ahead of me.

The next morning we change our minds. I call my stage manager, tell her the news, and that I will be unable to attend rehearsal. She understands. My mother takes me grocery shopping. She takes my roommate and me out to lunch. I call friends of mine who were close to my father, or who knew him, or who knew how much he meant to me. I get angry with an ex-girlfriend who keeps asking me to repeat myself. The bad reception isn't her fault, but I cannot understand that at the time. The anger feels good and I let it happen. I apologize to her afterward. She understands. Everybody understands.

I go to the show. Everybody has been told what's happened. They are cordial, sympathetic, distant. Everybody understands, nobody knows how to act. My mother watches the show again. Two of my friends that I called earlier are in the audience. Afterward my mother cries and tells me how good I was and my friends agree. I hold back tears, angry with myself, and say that I wanted it to be better. I wanted it to be perfect. To prove that I could do it. I've said the old maxim before but I know it now. The show goes on. It must.

The next day my mother flies back home. She sends me a text on her way: I am so proud of the man you've become! I close the show. I help strike the set. It feels good to put a hammer in my hand and destroy something. There is peace to be found in ruin.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Matchbook

He reads at his favorite coffee shop, that one close to him around the corner. Sipping an iced Thai coffee on a finally beautiful day, he makes his way through page by page. There are a few people there and he's surprised that there aren't more, on a gorgeous day like this? But he found a table, and he can concentrate, and he can enjoy his book.

A big black food truck, emblazoned with the Hellman's crest, pulls up. The Ogilvy team gets out. They seemingly come from everywhere and in an instant. The coffee shop manager—My god, he couldn't be any older than I am, he thinks—jumps outside and greets the creatives. It's testimonials they're there to shoot, about today's event, about the mayonnaise, how the goddamn mayonnaise unites us all.

The manager goes first, repeating every question before answering. "How did the event go today? The event today went really good." "Did we give away a lot of sandwiches? Oh yeah, we gave away lots of sandwiches."

A girl walks up in between shots. She catches the reader's eye. Short black shorts, short black hair, some speckled mustard three-quarter top, a white tank underneath that shows a crescent of skin. She goes inside the coffee shop. He watches the door. "Can we get this bike moved?" someone asks. The manager goes in and out and around but the bike apparently belongs to no one.

The girl emerges, without any beverage. Instead she holds a cigarette, which she lights with a match as she walks by him, by him and out of sight. He smells the smoke, taking breath after breath, but soon the smoke, and the girl, are gone. A local, dreadlocksed, bearded fellow tells a story of a patron. "If that's craft mayo," the patron supposedly said, "I'll cut your motherfucking balls off." The creatives stifle laughs that they let loose when cut is called. Everyone finds it very funny, especially the director, who has the man retell the story with different severe and violent endings. Our reader, he sips his iced Thai and ignores them.

The crew preps another shot. But then he smells the smoke again. His head turns and sees the girl. She crosses through the creatives and waits on the other side. She smokes her cigarette casually. She holds her matchbook like a master and he thinks how sexy it is that she even has a matchbook in the first place. Something brought her back, he thinks. Perhaps she wanted a glimpse of the business, see the crew at work, hear some of those stories they were capturing. Maybe it was me, but why would it be me? Maybe she was just wasting time, like he was. And if she didn't buy a drink, what did she buy? He goes through the list: a piece of fruit, a pastry, a bagel, a bottle of water that she put in her purse. Maybe she gave a look and got to use the restroom without buying anything. He wondered how old she was. With the college nearby he supposed she could be of that age, maybe younger, maybe older, he could never tell and she seemed timeless. He typically used height and bust to determine age but they were not always the most truthful criteria. She looks so cool, smoking there with her matchbook, she looks in control. He had kissed a smoker once, deeply and passionately, too. And it was pretty much true what they said, that it's like kissing an ashtray, or at least what your mind thinks an ashtray tastes like. Smell and memory and all that. But he doesn't care, he thinks about kissing this girl. What harm in thinking? And perhaps she was just a casual smoker, gotten some bad news, perhaps she was feeling rebellious, perhaps it didn't matter.

Suddenly the creatives all move at once so that each one is perfectly placed to keep this girl from view. Conspiracy! Collusion! he thinks. He tries to look through to her, to not look like he's looking for her, like he hasn't completely forgotten his book. And as the crowd shifts again he can see that she's gone. Like a phantom, a ghost, a memory, all she ever was and will be. The Hellman's people, the Ogilvy people, whoever these people are, pack up and disperse. "Yeah," he hears, "it would've been really nice to not have that bike in every shot." The reader wishes the bike were his, that his silence meant something more. He sees the reflection of the overhead leaves on the glass face of his phone and he looks at them for a very long time. All that remains in his cup are a few straggling pieces of ice and the last milky-white drop. He wants to keep this spot, so he goes in to buy a bottle of soda. He takes it outside, and reads, and drinks very slowly. After that he gets another coffee, hot and black this time. He drinks that, too, as the cool evening air comes in, as all the people pass by, on their way home, on their way to their loved ones.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Haze

Now, Lacey, she was teaching herself to run. Or, that is, to like it. She wanted to form some habits, she decided, and she started so many that it seemed she was in the habit of forming habits. She was now always making her bed in the morning. She was now making her lunch before bed. She was sure to call her parents every Sunday. And she was running after work. She would get home, change clothes, and run. Lacey worked for an accounting firm, a decent job, she told people, because she didn't want to get into it any more than that. Her office was so similar to that of her previous job at the law firm that somedays she wasn't sure if she was moving upward or downward. And so she ran, to clear her head, and it made her feel good.

It was the first proper day of spring, it was how spring should be. After work, Lacey ran to the great expanse of Lake Michigan to find many with similar ideas. People were showing skin and enjoying the breeze. She paused a moment to stretch and take in the city behind her, and though it wasn't fog, there did seem to be some faint haze laying across the city's bottom half. It couldn't be fog, she thought. Fog's little brother. It was something.

Lacey got onto the path and ran. People passed her, on foot, on bikes, but she didn't care, this time is hers. She could stop if she wanted to, but she didn't, because that's not how habits are formed. Only a few weeks into this new thing and she was already finding it easier, to go a little farther, to breathe a little deeper.

She saw some middle-aged woman throw scraps to the gulls, attempting to take a picture of the avian frenzy, to capture some sort of real moment, and Lacey hated her in the small way you hate a stranger. She kept running.

She came up behind some kid, some teenage boy with a skateboard and a tattoo on the back of his neck, saying to his friend, "What a beautiful goddamn day." Lacey didn't appreciate his cursing. It tainted this new sunlight. She sped up, passed him, and kept running.

There was a couple, dark hair and olive complexions, taking pictures of themselves with the great blue background. She saw so many people with cameras it made her feel as though she were the only one without one, the only one not doing enough to freeze time.

She stopped running when she got to a beach, one of the many beaches that lined the city. It looked deserted, which Lacey thought was odd for such a beautiful day. This was farther than she'd ever gotten before. She took off her running shoes and sport socks and dug her toes deep, deep into the sand. It was so soft and white, no midwestern sand, how could it be? She took a handful, lowered her head, and put it on the back of her neck. It was so cool.

Lacey walked to where the water met the sand. She saw only blue before her. A blend of water and sky with only the breeze to tell them apart. She looked behind her in the direction from where she came. The city was gone. The path curved enough where you couldn't see it. And with the city vanished and the sand beneath her feet and the blue before her, she felt as though she were somewhere else entirely. And she dreaded going back, but this is how habits are formed. Lacey wondered, shoes in hand, if perhaps that haze had grown, and thickened, and swallowed the city whole, so that she wouldn't see it no matter where she was.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Trees Take Care of Themselves

The lawn in the front of his home was something Homer MacEwan felt good about. He was proud. It wasn't a large or spectacular thing, this yard, but he worked it and kept it even and green and good. He kept tulips and a few shrubs, and had somehow managed to protect them from the hordes of invading neighborhood rabbits. There was a path of square mosaic tiles that serpentined its way from one side of the yard to the other. Everything had been planted or placed there by him, save a single tree. It had been there as a younger version when he bought the house, many years ago. And over those years it grew, without attention, and still stood healthy, and bloomed every spring.

He called it the Purple Tree, for lack of a better name. It had purple flowers on its branches that dissipated down the trunk. Homer didn't know specifically what kind of tree it was, or what these flowers were, and he liked to keep it that way, to keep it in mystery. The tree had no other foliage except for these small purple flowers that popped against the street's more common wood. He would sit on his porch with a good book and a drink of some kind, and read, and drink, and would get sucked in by this thing in magenta. It was a tree that caught people's eyes as they passed, and he enjoyed hearing the odd remark of approval.

He was looking at the tree that afternoon and saw a bumblebee, hovering around its blossoms. This fat fuzzy thing making love to these small and delicate flowers. There wasn't so much difference between that and us, he thought, or an orchid that deceives a bee into pollinating, into making it think the orchid is something it's not. He could relate, Homer nodded to himself, and he doubted that there would be any man alive who could speak to the contrary.

Homer's neighbor, Luke, stepped out of his house. He was a younger man, and didn't remind Homer much of what he was like as a man of that age. Luke snuck around the side of his house and returned with his green garden hose. He stretched its length out to the patch of grass beyond the sidewalk. There, in the short width of the patch that measured his house, he recently had a sapling installed, and around each young tree was a gathering of grey oval stones. Luke then proceeded to squeeze the trigger of the nozzle and release water, and water, and more water, onto these piles of stones.

Homer studied this action before asking him what he was doing. "Just watering my tree. Got to keep them watered, help them grow, especially while they're young." Homer couldn't make sense of it. He had a tree, a beautiful tree, and he hadn't touched the thing in decades, he hadn't touched it at all. But there it was, every year, beautiful. He mowed and planted and watered and was a good caregiver. But why give this kind of love to a tree, when they do so well on their own? The trees take care of themselves, he thought. Who was he to interfere? No, he would let nature run its course.

The old man pulled his gaze away from his young neighbor and focused it on his own tree. He searched for the bumblebee, but it was gone. The tree had gotten what it wanted. It was doing just fine. It was still standing. It didn't need him.

He took his cup of water, wanting to finish it, but as he brought it to his lips he noticed in it a few flecks of nature's debris. He inverted the drink onto his porch, splashing his shoes. Homer then made his way to the door, he didn't want to read anymore, not outside, not like this. And when he opened that front door he noticed a fresh spiderweb in the corner, and for all the strength that's said to be found in spider's silk it was impossibly easy to destroy.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Write to Him

He stays up late. He makes a list.

      - I should write.
      - I should eat.
      - I should go to sleep.
      - I should at least go to bed.
      - I should read.
      - I should watch something.
      - I should figure it out.

He makes a list, hoping that one thing will jump out at him, but everything's so normal. So he thinks about what's not normal, for him, for now, what he could do.

      - I could go to a bar.
      - I could get some food.
      - I could go for a walk.
      - I could write.
      - I could go to bed.
      - I could try to sleep.
      - I could talk to her.

But would talking to her really be a good idea? It wouldn't be a bad idea. But it wouldn't be a good idea either. What's not bad and not good? What isn't bad and also isn't good? What's just there? What's apparent? What is something that's out in the open and you see it but you don't acknowledge it, something you take advantage of, something you think will always be there and then suddenly it's not?

      - I should write to him.

He thinks about his father. He thinks about the horrible day. He thinks about hearing others say, This, this is when my life changed forever, this is the moment that made me who I am, this is it and it was this. And that was his and his was death and now he is who he will be forever. Or, if not forever, well, then, at least, he supposed, for a very long time.

      - I should write to him.

He gets a drink of water. He goes to bed.

Sunday, May 18, 2014

I Liken You to Elves

She had a pointed nose, he remembered that. And hair that hung down in front of her eyes. It moved back and forth. She had teeth, white, mostly, that were spaced neatly together and seemed to fit her mouth perfectly. Her ears stuck out from her long hair, her hair with the wave, and the bangs that hung in the front. She was elf-like. But he would never say this, not to her, but it was an easy way of describing her. No, to her face he might say she was...

But how to put it positively? He might say she was whimsical? Fantastical? Otherworldly? All of these seemed out of place, seemed wrong, any one word, they were far too big or small and not wholly right. Perhaps it was too hard to put into a single word, and perhaps that is why he chose a poor one. But he would think of ways to justify it, his choice of word, should the situation ever arise, should he ever blunder and let it pass his lips to her ear, sticking out from her hair. He thought of what he might say.

"Elves are fictional. They're made up. And because of this they can be as perfect as the author wants them to be. And they are. They're described, everywhere you find them, as beautiful, talented, young, striking, perfect. And they can be all these things, they can be perfect, because they are not real. They do not exist in this world. Though if they did, I believe they would be an awful lot like you. And so I liken you to elves, because in you I see beauty that I thought could never exist. Not in this world." Ethereal, he might say.

He remembered she had a way of looking down and looking up. When she laughed. She would look down and up, slightly, slightly more down and then slightly less up so—and perhaps this was by accident—she almost seemed to be giving him the come-hither. But we see what we want to see. But we see what's there, don't we?

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Red Square Table

It was his turn. He looked his opponent in the eyes, looked at the cards on the floor in front of him. The pairs that had been laid down already gave him information his six-year-old mind didn't yet know how to use.

I know a ways out of this, he thought.

"I have to go to the bathroom."

The boy got up and walked around the small circle. The rest of them thought nothing of it. Surely, he was just planning to use the tiny toilet, just like he said. Surely nothing more than that.

He stopped and stood behind his opponent and looked at his hand. He was quickly found out.

"Teacher, teacher, he's cheating!"

Why did I do that, the boy thought, sitting at the Red Square table with his head down. It was a question he would ask himself for the next twenty years, and still have no answer to. Why, at six, he wouldn't just take a guess, why he wanted so desperately to win that one game. Why he couldn't sit there with kids he normally didn't sit with, and wouldn't sit with when he was older, and lose that game.

It was a question he would ask himself for the next twenty years. For that game, that girl, for today, but hopefully not for tomorrow.

Friday, May 16, 2014

The Dead King

Davis realized he was looking at the television. Not watching, looking. A glaze. He wondered if his wife had noticed, there, sitting on the couch next to his favorite chair. His wife, Sandra, was a good woman who had suggested they play a game.

"What kind of game?" he had asked.

"Oh, any old game," she'd shrugged. "We have lots."

"I'm too tired for a game," was the thing he had told her. "Perhaps another night. Besides, there's a program I wanted to watch." And, luckily, there was a program on. "Ah, here it is," he said when he had found it, and he kept his eye fixated on the television screen because he could tell, but would never check, that her eye was fixated on him.

The program was on Henry VIII and his wives, and how one by one they all came to meet their particular fates. It turns out, Davis learned, that Henry VIII was not always the gorging beast of a man he thought he was. That once he was a slender fellow, handsome even, but that through years and years of ailment and neglect Henry turned into the picture Davis had in his mind if you had asked him to imagine the dead king. The program was narrated by an intelligent sounding gentleman, English, and Davis wondered what it was about the English accent that established intelligence and trust. And why it was able to establish it so quickly, and whether or not others found this to be true as well. He wondered what the answers would be if he asked his friends and colleagues what his voice meant to them. What those adjectives would be, how good, or how bad, and if it would hurt to hear the truth this time. He thought about this as he saw through the looking glass to the television beyond, and considered turning and asking his wife, Sandra, the woman he loved, what her answer would be. He thought of it for a moment, and decided against it.

The local news was now on, and Sandra was wrapped up in a story about a young girl who was hit by a car. "Thank God she's OK. Did you see that? And hardly a scratch. Thank the lord." Davis came to at the end of the story, just in time to see the little girl's mother tell, "It's a miracle. I don't know how, but you don't ask how. You just accept and be thankful." Sandra said that she agreed, and that she was tired and would go to bed soon. She left to go to the kitchen for her cup of decaffeinated tea that she always had at this time of night.

"Are you coming up?" she asked him. She asked in the way you ask a question where you don't expect an answer. Or, at least, the answer will not change your present plans.

"Not yet. I'll stay here a while longer. You go on up." He said this knowing full well she would have gone up anyway. This was their understanding.

He took the clicker and powered down the television. For a moment he projected the negative onto the screen. He blinked, and it vanished. He saw only himself, sitting in his favorite chair, looking back at him from across the room. Everything was darker in that glass, he thought, dark and curved, not a real reflection at all. But still he studied it, and wondered what the point was in using this thing as a mirror.

Sandra woke him the next morning. He sensed a firm, soft hand on his shoulder, squeezing slightly. "Davis. Davis, honey, wake up." He blinked, and blinked again, and looked up at his wife.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," he told her. "I fell asleep."

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Experiment

And it's this look she gives me, this look of How did this happen, and not even that but How could you, how could you let this happen. And that's the thing that really gets to me, the presumption, the accusation, that for whatever reasons in her head, reasons that make total sense to her, somehow this is all my fault. Doing. A plan. Laid out before me in clear and printed blue.

I explain to her how I see it, how it is, but it's a restaurant and there are people about which of course always sets me on a cautious edge. Careful not to raise a voice or finger, careful not to let the corners of my mouth do what they do. It's a simple explanation: They misplaced it. Or they did whatever it is they do when reservations are made and then not there when you arrive. Misplaced, lost, deleted, erased, just plain not written down because he couldn't find a pen. But everything's done on computers these days. And that's the problem.

It's not that we won't eat for a while. It's not that she doesn't believe me. She just can't stand to be watched like that, studied by these people. Look at her, look at them, pretending to be something they're not. This isn't dinner, it's a social experiment, and if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem and tonight I'm part of the problem. And that's all she can see, all she wants to see. And how could anyone want that?

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Jenny and the Baby

Jenny walks into the kitchen and opens the refrigerator to get a bottle of wine, but she notices that it's still on the counter from the previous night. She takes the open bottle and puts it to her lips and lets the warm wine slowly find its way down her throat. It quenches and it satisfies and after a moment her headache begins to fade. She sets her purse down on the table and rifles through the mail. There's nothing she's interested in, although the Victoria's Secret catalogue looks all right, so she sets it down to read it later, maybe in bed before she turns out the light. The bottle gets tipped completely vertical and the last drops fall on her tongue. She goes back to the fridge to get the other bottle, but then she sees that there is no other bottle, and that this bottle is the other bottle from when she had another bottle last night. She checks the cupboard, she checks her bedroom, she checks the closet in her bedroom and the closet in the hallway. She checks the garage, but she finds nothing. And even though she just drove stop and start for over an hour she gets back in her car.

Autumn is finally here and the leaves have split themselves into two groups. There are the leaves that cover the grass and the roads, brown and dead and crispy and cracked. And there are the leaves on the trees, and as Jenny drives she notices how green they are. They are, in fact, all green in their various shades and stages of green. She is startled by this and she stares up and around at the trees in awe. There is no red, no orange, no yellow and no purple; there is brown, and there is green. They are alive, or they are dead. They are alive, or they are dead, she thinks, and she gets her first glimpse of yellow and red and stops at the light, jolting her car more than she likes because she finds it hard to pay attention.

A woman pushes a stroller slowly across the intersection, slowly and nearly methodically, Jenny thinks, and she imagines she's done this a million or two million times before. It's routine, it's built in, it's a part of her, almost as much as her own child. Her face is bored, it's routine, and her mind is either moving a hundred miles an hour or not at all. She stares ahead, blankly. The woman stops the stroller in the middle of the intersection right in front of Jenny's car and reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a cell phone and smiles instantly as she opens it. Jenny wonders if the call is from a lover or friend, relative or spouse, and for a moment she contemplates what would happen if she ran the woman down. This woman and her child, the mother on her phone, the little baby asleep in the stroller, or maybe it's not asleep. But the woman pushes the stroller again, talking on her cell phone, smiling and talking, smiling with her baby. Maybe Jenny could steal it and she wouldn't even mind. Maybe she could get out of her car and take the baby and run the woman down and nobody would mind. She could name the child Catherine, or William, she thinks. The light turns green and Jenny is about to press down on the gas but a car comes racing on her right and runs the red light. She is just slightly out of breath, and her headache is just beginning to reappear.

The time is 6:18 in Minneapolis. Jenny knows that where her sister lives in 7:18. People forget about Mountain Time, she thinks. Television advertises every show with the Eastern and Central Times, and everyone knows about Pacific Time. But she feels as though people forget about Mountain Time, and how it just sits there unacknowledged, how it sits there while everyone talks about the time in every other part of the country. Maybe I should move to Colorado, she thinks, or Montana or Idaho. I could go skiing and I could wake up every morning and look out at the mountains, or I could move to Arizona and look out at the desert. The vast, open wasteland with nothing but sand and the only water you can find is in a manmade lake or inside a cactus, or the rain that falls not that often.

She pulls into the parking lot of the store and turns off the radio, but the radio was already off so she presses the dial again. Her feet hit the pavement, covered by a crunchy blanket of fallen leaves, and she kicks a few in a hesitant spurt of a playful mood.

The store is virtually empty and close to closing, the last few making their purchases or on the way to do so. Jenny walks up and down the aisles, although she knows that she will inevitably head straight for whatever happens to be on sale. She looks for the cheapest bottle of white wine and grabs three and doesn't bother to look at the name. She goes and sets the bottles on the counter and opens up her purse and takes out her wallet. She heads the amount and looks for cash or a card. She looks in her purse and her pockets.

"Christ."

She walks back to return the bottles to their place in the aisle. When she sets them down she looks over at the counter again, and the cashier is busy with the last customer. Jenny walks next to a nearby display of vodka and puts two of the smaller bottles in her purse, smoothly and easily, and with a final nod to the cashier she's out the door and in her car, and as she turns back onto the street she thinks she hears someone, faintly, screaming for money.

A kid on a bike darts out in front of her car just blocks from her house and she slams on the breaks just in time. The belt catches her and she jolts against the seat. She starts crying, softly, slowly, and watches the child pedal away. She reaches for her purse to pull out a tissue and notices a flattened cigarette pack on the ground of the passenger's side. He must have thrown it there, she thinks, it must have slid underneath the seat. But she doesn't touch it, and she wipes her eyes and blows her nose and checks around her for any more children, and when she is certain that it's safe she drives away.

Jenny thinks about packing up and leaving. She wonders what it would be like to live in a place like Montana, Arizona, or Colorado. She wonders what it would be like to be the one who leaves. She wonders if she might like to live overseas. She could pack up everything and just leave, she could leave and go and never come back. Jenny could move somewhere where they don't speak English, somewhere where she doesn't know a word of what anyone is speaking. She could go to Switzerland or China. She could move to Iceland, and live where it's cold up in the mountains and never come down unless she absolutely had to. And she would never come down unless she absolutely had to. Where she could sit and think and drink during the night and day and be alone. And the more Jenny thinks about it the more she thinks it would be a good idea, to get a fresh start, to cleanse, to walk away without looking back. That might work, she thinks. But the more she thinks about it the more she thinks she couldn't go anywhere, not even if the plane were leaving and someone handed her a ticket.

Jenny sometimes wonders if there's a god. Some people believe in nothing. Others believe that God causes everything. She thinks, what's the difference?

She tries to think of other things, she tries, but she can't help herself. She pulls into the garage and wastes no time getting out and into the house, she's sick of being in the car today. The house is dark and sullen and abandoned, and even though she's lived there for years she fumbles for the light switch. She opens the closet to hang her coat and she does and when she closes the door it gets caught on a hanger. She pulls the door a few times before she forces it shut but it catches a coat and knocks it to the ground. It is a familiar, worn, brown leather jacket and she is hesitant to pick it up, but she does, and she runs her hand over it and could swear, she could almost swear, that it was still warm. But she knows it isn't. She goes back into the kitchen and gets a glass and fills it with ice. Jenny takes the two bottles out of her purse and throws the catalogue away. She walks down the dark hallway to the room at the end, but she doesn't bother to turn on the light. There is a rocking chair in the corner, and she sits in it. She opens one of the bottles and empties it into the glass. There is a box on the other side of the room that contains a baby's crib that was never put together. And she sits, and rocks, and stares across the room, and as she brings the glass up to her lips she can smell the faint aroma of cigarettes on her fingertips.