Hummus

My hand smells like old hummus and it's only after several carrots covered in the stuff that I realize it's gone off. I had to get the Mediterranean style, I think, I had to be persuaded by the herbs and oil. And now because of those very same herbs and oil I might be ingesting bad condiments.

Was it really just the oil, I think. Was it really just the herbs? This is where you have to go for your hummus, she'd told me, if you really like it. And even if you don't, still go here because it's just that good. I didn't want to trek all the way to the far north edge of town. It didn't seem worth it. It's hummus.

But I did. And it was good, but not all that good, not good enough to finish before it went bad. And here I am about to throw the stuff out. I'd told her, yeah, I checked the place out, I got the special Mediterranean recipe you told me about. She smiled and asked me wasn't it worth it? It was a lot, I told her, I couldn't finish it all before it went bad. Next time, she said, you get some and you invite me over. We'll eat it together. And isn't that what it's all about.

It's All Around You

"Even if this is all there is," he said, "well, at least it's something, right?" He was a short man, old, or at least older than me, sitting on a bar stool three down from mine. I didn't provoke him, one way or the other, I had no context. Forty minutes of silence, the local news, a mediocre sitcom, and then him.

"How's that?" I asked him, regretting it immediately. In my experience I've found it better not to engage in the musings of the random drunk, the random anybody.

"Innkeeper, get my friend another one of whatever it is. I said, even if this is all there is, at least it's something. Right? I mean, it's not nothing. Which is not nothing. Ha ha..." I motioned for the bartender to not serve me another, but he gave me a look and poured anyway. A look that said, But don't you know who this is? I let him pour.

"Thanks." The man tipped his hat at me.

"Don't you think so?" He swayed. "Don't you think that something is better than nothing?"

"I don't know," I answered truthfully. "I guess it depends on what that something is."

"Ha ha..." This seemed to be the only laughter he could make. "It's this, chum. It's all around you, every day, it's there when you get up in the morning until you go to bed in the morning, ha ha..."

I clocked that. Morning, trees, coffee, newspaper, car, cars, people, person, place, thing, bookends of news, bottles of malt, the occasional hat, a lifetime warranty. "And," I added, "I suppose it matters on what comes next." He furrowed his brow in my direction. "If you think there's something after this."

The look he gave, I don't think he'd ever thought of that before. Or, perhaps, he'd thought of it one time too many, and he'd forgotten, and now I was reminding him, and he did not like it one bit. "That doesn't matter," he said, finally. "You have to learn that this right here? This now? This is now. What happens after that, well." He got up and walked, with some ease and elegance, towards the door. "Ha ha..."

Had it only been the three of us? The bartender, the man, and me? Was the room really that dark? I thought about that. What comes next... I understood why he was upset, if upset is what he was. His gratis drink stood before me, somewhere between a gift and a sacrifice, and I did my best to get it down.

Through the Cracks

I can smell the smoke through the cracks in the wall. Your smoke, I think. Along with it your laugh, which I can hear, again through the cracks, hear just as much as I can small. I wonder what's that percentage.

You're always there yet I've never seen you. That what's-his-name comes and goes, improper suiting, patterns that don't quite go, sizes that don't quite fit. But he drives a car and of that I am envious. And, of course, there's you.

Is it possible he's got you chained up somewhere? Is is possible you're held captive but still find the time to laugh? Is that why you smoke? You figure he'll never let you go, maybe this is one way to get out sooner. Six of one slow and painful, half a dozen of another.

You could cry for help. You could slam your chair on the ground. But all I get is laughter and smoke, laughter and smoke. You're happy, aren't you? You're happy with him.

I have gotten up before the sun, I have stayed awake long after it's gone. Sitting on the front porch with the paper, a coffee, a book, a dead cell phone. Waiting to see you coming or going. One glimpse, against my better judgment. It will probably all come crashing down, once that happens. Better perhaps that I have not seen you. That you only exist through the cracks. That I can only barely just make you out.

Shock

Taking the high road was never my forte. Even when Jonathan twisted my ear during recess in second grade I made sure to trip him the next day and kick him good and hard when he was down, in the section behind the jungle gym that was most out of the teacher's line of sight. It wasn't revenge, it was a way of making things even. Maybe giving me the edge. Revenge really.

The kid was a snot. Not Jonathan, although he was, too. But Len, short for Leonard. His father's name was Leonard and his grandfather's name was Leonard and well wasn't that something. The middle one, the dad, had made a killing selling his technology start-up right before Len was born. He took that money and bought the house you'd think a guy like that would buy and filled it with all sorts of terrible art and decorative pieces. My guess is that he named his son Leonard to give the idea of old money, that this was a name that had been passed down from long ago and would continue to be so. My other guess is that he really named the boy after himself, and not after his grandfather. These are the kind of people I'm talking about.

I was the "pool boy," that's what they called me. Although besides cleaning and maintaining the pool and the water inside it I also taught little Len swimming lessons. Which was to say that I mostly supervised his splashing of me. "Boys will be boys," his walking Pinot Grigio of a mother would tell me. Boys splashed, they horsed around. They deliberately disobeyed any and all authority figures because they knew they could get away with it because parents like this let them. I was getting paid, and well, too much, so what was I to do. I grumbled and closed my eyes to the splashes, the Fun Noodles, the hard rubber torpedo he'd send shooting my way. The little plastic basketball. It was the apathy that infuriated me the most, the notion they held that this was the way to raise a child and somehow things would work themselves out. He would right himself eventually and they were there to ensure he didn't break any bones while doing it. I was at the mercy of an eight-year-old terror, with limitless funds, limitless energy, limitless joy-filled cruelty. And then Len kicked me in the face, knocked off my goggles, seared my eyes with the chlorinated water. That's when I got the idea. As I said, the high road has never been a road I've been interested in taking.

The nice thing about being pool boy was having a set of keys for access, in case any extra work needed to be done and they weren't around. I'd built up enough trust, plus there was nothing in the house I'd want to steal even if I made a habit of stealing things. Money doesn't buy good taste. Anyway, if I wanted to show up in the middle of the night I could, which is what I did. I parked a few houses down, took my bucket of chlorine, and made my way.

Chlorine tablets were kept in the skimmers to help keep the water clean. But every now and then the pool would need a shock. That's when the liquid chlorine would come into play. I'd walk along the sides, pouring it in as I go, tossing some out into the middle, trying to mix it in as best I could. I'd give the pool a day for the chlorine levels to lower to a body-friendly amount, and then swimming could resume. The pool was around twenty thousand gallons so I would use around two gallons of chlorine. This time I used five. I carried it out to the edge of the diving board and poured every last drop in. I didn't toss, I didn't mix, I took the empty drum back to my car and went home, and was back six hours later for swimming lessons. And when I closed the gate and walked up to the pool in the morning, like clockwork ran little Len, tearing around the edge, straight onto the diving board, cannonballing off, plunging into the chlorine patch.

He came up screaming. "My eyes! Ow! Ow ow ow ow ow ow owww! Mom! Mom! Mommyyy!" He dog paddled his way to the ladder (because of course he never paid enough attention to learn any proper strokes) and tried to climb out, but he was so frantic he slipped off the step and fell back in. It was all I could do hold in the laughter. I grabbed the skimmer and when he surfaced, shrieking, I told him to grab it and calm down. He got out successfully and ran to his towel. I asked him what happened, what was wrong, as he wrapped the towel around himself. He rubbed the water off and screamed louder. That's when Belinda, his mother, came out.

"What's going on?!" The kind of question that conveys more annoyance than concern.

"I don't know," I lied, "he jumped in and when he came up he was screaming. Len. Len, are you OK?"

But he was not OK. He was scratching all over, coughing and panting and gasping for aid. He was clutching his chest going "ow ow ow." He was squinting and blinking furiously, rubbing his eyes trying to get the hurt to go away. "Oh my god," Belinda said. That's when his nose started bleeding. "Oh my god!" That was when she finally went over to him, taking a towel to the blood on his face. "What did you do to my son?!"

It worked as well as I could have hoped, although the brat was playing it up. Maybe not consciously, but his little body had only experienced so much up until this point. Had the same thing happened to him ten years later would he have been running around like a chicken with his head cut off? Probably not. And it's not as if he touched the chlorine out of the water, that's when the real trouble happens. Here the water had diluted it, had at least six hours to do its job. He wasn't going to get cancer, he wasn't going to develop lung problems, he wasn't going to get any permanent burns. In fact, if this was the worst thing that ever happened to him I'd say he'd still make out like a bandit. This may turn out to be but a blip on the radar of his experience, he may hardly remember it at all. But I didn't do this for him. I did it for me.

Nice Day

And I saw building up all around me an undeniable crust. A thickness to people and anything outside myself, and even some things therein. I excused it as a protectant, allowed its presence, classified it as benign. Very little could get out, and even less of it in. Unless it was those days where very little could get in, and even less could find its way out.

I sat down to make a list, a clarifying activity. A way of simplifying, of bringing things to a boil. I took a pen and piece of paper and sat down. I came up with nothing. Hours of unknown hours manifested nothing beyond a series of tapped ink specks scattered in no discernible order.

"There are going to be days," Mother would tell me, "where you feel like giving up. I am here to tell you that, after all these years in this life, what I have found is this: Giving up is OK." It is a profound thing to say to a seven-year-old, although I did not know it at the time.

The world is spinning out of order it seems. Not out of control, but out of order. Whether it has to do with the moon, a gravitational pull, some sort of axis, the weather, Buddha, things are not as they should be. And I suppose that of all the people in all the world, most are like me. They have recognized the glitch in the system but are too dumbfounded to say anything other than "Nice day." Perhaps we are all of us ignorant. And if I recognize the ignorance in myself does that make me better off or worse?

People would try. Family, friends, women and girls, they would try to crack it away. "There is something there," they'd say, "there is something underneath." Everyone wanted to be the one, as everyone wants to. But there are very few who can be. And I worry that of all the people in all the world, the only one who can break through to myself is me. And, as we have all of us seen, I am nowhere near a place where I would begin to think to try to try.

Irish Arms

I wake up at eight and get a soda from the corner store, something large and unwieldy with added cherry syrup. When I struggle back there's a pack of them, the Irish kids, standing outside the door of my building. They're smoking thin cigarettes, hand-rolled, and they look like they've just gotten up, too. One of them, some boy with a red mane, comments on the superhero donning the side of my enormous cup. But my eye goes to the blonde girl with the slightly crooked smile. She's the one I've seen. I ask her if they're all here from the same school, part of some program. All of a sudden the building was flooded with the Irish and every day it seems I see more and more. No, she tells me, she was actually only here with a few friends. That's what this was, several small groups put together to make an invasion. And somehow they all ended up here.

She invites me up to their apartment. The air is thick and off when the door opens, as if stored up in an airtight box and shipped across the ocean with them. What I find inside is not far off, as the place is crawling with students. Trash and loose change litters the floor. There is a room with half a dozen mattresses and half as many sheets. Nothing is made or in its place. Whatever the empty take out boxes held is long gone. The beer is warm and the cups are used. How many people are living here, I ask the girl, whose name I now know is Erin. Seven or eight she says, she doesn't seem to know. I ask how many it's supposed to hold, and she makes me promise not to turn them in. Everyone is having a good time.

A DJ starts playing. The songs are long and simple, bass-snare-bass-snare. The boy wonder DJ, Liam, is apparently learning, and I think it's funny how much attention these kids who don't want to be caught are drawing to themselves. He's just starting out, things don't meld and mew as they should, but no one seems to care. It's a hundred degrees and the walls are filthy, but their time and energy are spent on more important things, like drinking, and where we should be drinking next. As a joke I suggest Irish Arms, the worst bar I know, and they love the idea. They bet they can get free shots. There's talk of going but no one really goes. Maybe everyone is stuck to the floor, I wouldn't put it past anything. Liam's drones get louder and louder, the mix of rock and electronic never quite achieving anything other than loud, and suddenly half the apartment is gone and we all follow suit. Come on, American, they shout at me, take us to the Irish Arms. Take us home.

I lead my little children out of town to the establishment, telling them all along the way how truly awful it is, and that it was a joke, and that I can pick another place, and that they'll hate it. Nonsense, they tell me, which makes sense, considering their living conditions. I'm starting to think they're not wired the same way I am. We arrive. This bar has carpet, and that's really all you have to know about it. What bar has carpet? You feel the humidity and beer festering in it. Everything is stale, and damp, and soft. If the room was quiet you'd hear the squish of my footsteps, the squish of my soul. The Irish kids love it, and the first round of Jameson is on the house. The fulfilled prophecy is met with thunderous, thunderous approval.

Underneath one of the TVs is a patch of wall and I post up underneath it. In a minute Erin comes up to me and sits, two pint glasses in tow, snakebites. It's a crisp, refreshing drink on a night like this, a night filled with hot oxygen and cloudy minds. I ask her why she chose here of all places to spend her summer. There must be European cities, other American cities, places far more exotic with far more history where she could have spent three months. She says she wanted somewhere cheap where she could have a good time and not have to worry about constantly making the most of every moment. She asks me why I moved here, and I tell her the same thing.

The next morning I wake up next to her on a mattress. I'm nestled against her, her arm hangs over me, her hand clutching my T-shirt. I don't know where my sweat ends and hers begins, I only know we're stuck together. Somehow we've gotten one of the bedrooms all to ourselves, and the sun is pouring in, it's egregious. I figure it's the morning light although I'm not sure. And the bass-snare-bass-snare that starts up from beyond the closed door doesn't give as much information as you'd think.

The Lie

I clipped my nails. I put on cologne, a bit from the bottle I've had since junior high and have been unable to empty. I lubricated my initiative with a handful of beers. I was careful not to get too carried away. Sometimes I can do that.

I spent two hours in front of my closet, looking. Just looking. Thinking about the last thing you'd seen me in. Thinking about the next time we might meet. Thinking about all the days in between. Thinking would I have to see you again.

I ironed a few shirts. T-shirts even. Not my pants but you get the idea. I bought gum.

I waited by the phone. I told you I didn't but that was a lie. I waited by the phone all night, checked it every three minutes. I tried to wait five and I couldn't. But I don't like you so I couldn't tell you that. The lie is a way to keep the power. So I suppose I have gotten something good out of this. I know why people lie.

Simple Pleasures

I know we've only just met, so forgive me if I'm sounding rude, but I just wanted to say one thing. If you hear me say that I'm looking for candy (which I know you did because I said it right in front of you), and then a few minutes later you take out a bag of chocolate chips and start eating them, I'm going to take that as a slight. Maybe you don't think of chocolate chips as being candy, but ask around and I think you'll find that when you throw them into a plastic baggie like that that's basically what they become. You take them out and start eating, and then just toss them on the table inches from me, and I'm supposed to act like I don't desperately want them? I'm supposed to buy this whole thing you're doing? That you don't know exactly what you're doing?

Like I said, I know we don't really know each other. But how close do we have to be for me to get a couple of those chips? How long would I have had to know you for you to spare a little chocolate? The bag was decently full, you had plenty, you could've given up five or six and your belly wouldn't even have noticed.

And I think it's odd that you took them out right after I mentioned I was looking for candy. It couldn't have been more than three or four minutes and then WHOOPS out come the morsels. And, I don't know, I guess I couldn't be sure, but it looked like you had a smile on your face. It really did. Not a big one, but a smile nonetheless. And I couldn't quite tell—was this the smile that came from the simple pleasure of eating chocolate chips, or the simple pleasure of looking down on your fellow man?

Three Days

In a perfect world I'd celebrate at my brilliant selfishness. I'll take your husband by the throat and squeeze out his life, or throw him from a mountaintop. I'd explain it to you, so very clearly, that finally we could be together. Three days is an eternity, and it is a thing we've earned. You would ask me about the child inside you and, in a perfect world, I'd know exactly what to call it.

And that's what I love most about a perfect world. I would know every thing by its proper name. I would know what to call this plan, idea, what to call you, us, what to call myself. Because I vary so much now as it is. Monster. Man. Fool. In a perfect world I could have my cake and eat it, too. I could eat cake all day until I felt like throwing up.

Pretty Young Thing

I don't pay much attention. I have my coffee and hold my paper and sometimes I even read it. But I like the sparseness of the morning, the slight movements and breezes. Women walking their dogs, men walking their girlfriends' dogs. I take in the newsprint, rub it on my fingers, sip my Fair Trade Nicaraguan medium dark roast, and let the world of this street flow around me. I don't focus. I don't feel the need. But every now and then there is something that focuses itself for me.

"Like, I'm all for women's rights," she said to her friend, "but at the same time you kinda have to be careful. Stuff like that's gonna happen." I took in her hair (strawberry blonde), her cutoffs (short), her sunglasses (bold and black). Her friend's summer dress skipped lightly on the sidewalk, her sunglasses blocking out half her face. There was too much light for the both of them. And then they were gone.

I had no context, no beginning or end, only middle. The ends of the situation—to her at least—were entirely justified. Whatever had happened was bound to happen, and it has happened and will happen again. To her friends, to others, and to her. And suddenly the world of this street, and others, the trickling sunlight and early air, seemed to me cold, and dark, and spiraling inexplicably out of control.

Over the Fence

The pool was old, deep, made of cement and covered in cracks. Tiles were missing, caulk was abundant. It sat in the ground of a deck surrounded by trees. Whoever had built it there, decades ago, must have not built very many pools. Leaves, branches, any and every forest debris found itself in the water. The cleaning was constant, and a chore.

After a storm the filters would be stuffed with leaves. That was the situation that day. Clumps of wet and muddy foliage, sticks and bugs, waterlogged critters. On a good day the water would spin, pass the chlorine tablets, get sucked through the basket. On a day like that nothing would move and it would have to be cleaned out. I opened the cover to the mess inside, and I saw the frog.

I scooped him out. He was lucky, he was still alive. Usually when frogs were found their bellies would be bloated, their legs outstretched, giving them the frozen look of taking a breath and then leaping. But this one was breathing, blinking, just. He must have been in their for hours, caught, spinning and spinning and gradually, gradually slowing down. I rested him on the cement. I didn't want to take him to the woods, to some shrub behind a rock. I thought he might prefer this, the chance to sit on dry land, catch his breath, think about how he could learn from this and how to move on. I thought he'd prefer it.

I dumped out the basket, put in another chlorine tablet, and got to skimming. The water was decorated with white fuzz, ants, seeds. I always found the skimming relaxing. It gave me a chance to think, to take my time. I would see how much I could get in the net before I had to dump it over the fence. And that's what I was doing when I felt the soft crunch under my sandle.

My eyes shut. I dropped the skimmer into the water. I knew what I'd done but I looked. The frog wasn't entirely flattened, I'd stopped before it could get that far. But whether or not he was dead I couldn't tell. Had I forgotten him already? I picked him up, gently, and threw him over the fence, hard as I could at the biggest tree trunk I could see. And of course I don't know if the impact killed him. But I hope so.

Retrograde Zoom

Is this me? Walking down the dark hall, hands outstretched to brace myself on the cold surface of either side. The floor beneath me only just reaching my feet. I can feel myself getting closer as the end gets farther and farther away.

Is this me? Cracking shoulders, neck, and knees. Becky says to take more vitamins, pills, oils. What I need is a strong Nordic woman, well-versed in the art of muscular release, stretching me out on a table and kneading me like so much dough.

Is this me? Sitting in a shape of my own devising, clutching my toe in one hand and my glass in the other. Smelly and graphic, rundown and all too well-defined. My phone sits on a cushion in an adjacent room and I can only hope that it's too far, and too cushioned, for me to hear any attempt at communication.

Is this me? Eating ice cream for breakfast. Fingering through Becky's shirts. Vacuuming this hard wood floor. She should be home soon and I need to start waking up earlier. Brush the mint chocolate chip out of my teeth just as the clock hits five.

Is this me? X'ing the days off the calendar one by one, waiting for the big red O. Sharpie-stained fingers seasoned with potato chip salt, these pants used to be my good ones. There are a lot of things, now, of mine, that used to be good. Sometimes I think the days of two versions are over.

Is this me? I guess I don't know who else it would be. And, furthermore, I do not know whom to ask.

This is a Test

THIS IS A TEST FROM THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM. IMPORTANT INFORMATION TO FOLLOW.

You are not alive. Not in any real sense, any sense that matters. Every person is alone and wandering, every person wakes up not knowing they are already asleep. You are one of these people. Knowing this will not—and, more important, CANNOT—change the course of anything. Not the course of you. Or him. Or her. Or anyone.

We repeat: You are not alive.

THIS HAS BEEN A TEST FROM THE EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM. IF THIS HAD BEEN AN ACTUAL EMERGENCY YOU WOULD BE FUCKED.

 

Comin' Atcha Live

We're comin' atcha live from Little Caesar's Pizza Studio! All the hottest singles are here and my wife still won't talk to me!

DJ Chee-Z will be spinnin' the hottest tracks, layin' down the sickest beats, and making me think about my life choices! Feel this bass in the hole where your heart used to be!

The ladies here are turned up to eleven and their skirts are even higher, making it a generally unsuitable place for children! But I still can't even see my kids on the weekdays!

Drink specials all night! Two-for-one divorces with a malt liquor sidecar! Our house-made triple-infused Non-Senze™ Vodka will have you wishing you had gotten that abortion, Caroline! Our housemaids are Venezuelan and are far more trouble than it's worth!

Light show provided by Giuseppe and Son's Strobe Palazzo! Their Italian-American prices will have you screaming fantastico! You'll be screaming from a place so deep and dark you never knew it existed within you, but now you realize it's the only part of you that's left! Fog machines, too!

Five dollar big sausage HOT-N-READY® pizzas all night long if you know what I mean! It's a veritable hellhole of sex, drugs, and hip 'n' hop here at Little Caesar's Pizza Studio! Caroline, just call me back you stupid cow!

Which Saint is Protecting You?

I took an online test. I said I wasn't going to but I did it anyway. It was "Which Saint is Protecting You?" It was only seven questions. A saint decided in seven questions, poor English, few options. I don't think my friends enjoy my patience, advice, or knowledge of when to shut up. I'm not sure I possess any of them anyway. Definitely not supernatural powers. "No" to Question 3.

And so it tells me I am protected by Saint George. That I am a fighter. That he was a fighter, too. Slew the hideous fire-breathing dragon. A martyr. Venerated. He has his own feasts, entire countries love him. He has his own cross. I wondered if each saint had his own cross. I will, more than likely, never have my own cross, or my own feast. I don't know that I've ever fought, not really. But it's nice to think—even online, some test, some nothing some nobody threw together in two minute's time, even something that means nothing—that there is possibly someone who has, and he is right over my shoulder.

From the Helicopter

I was happy with her there on the sofa and I told her so. "I see you looking at the crowds," she said. People were in the streets, screaming, laughing, a helicopter putting them on television. It was a celebration. "You can go."

"I don't want to go," I told her.

"Yes, you do."

"No," I said, "I don't." She glared at me. I don't know if she glared because she thought I was lying. If she glared because of the way I was telling her the truth. She didn't like hockey, that was fine. I love it more than I love most things and that is also fine. She didn't want to go out and I didn't make her. She agreed to watch it and I agreed to stay in. It was nice to share it with her, even if she looked at her phone a little more than I would have liked. And now this.

"You can go," she assured me, "I won't be mad."

I smiled at her. "I want to be here with you." And that was the end of it.

I looked at the view from the helicopter, the hordes and hordes, the dropping crowd surfers. If I joined them now I would need to pound at least two beers and a shot. I would need to do jumping jacks, pushups, something to get my blood flowing, my joints working. It would take me a while to get there, by which time some of the alcohol would be wearing off. Everyone would have been together all day, for hours, drinking and connecting. There was nothing for me there. I wanted it, badly, but it was not for me.

Forties

I do not trust a man, forty-something, who is dressed like a high school slacker. Short sleeve plaid button-up, baggy jeans and old sneakers, hat just slightly off, full backpack hanging off his slumped shoulders by his ass. A vacant look, like he's missing his skateboard, or his bag of meth. He looks high, drunk, and is probably both. He calls over to his "babe," rifles through her makeup bag and takes out two cigarettes. She has a hooded sweatshirt on and it's eighty-five degrees, hair pulled too tightly back into a ponytail that's either is wet or shellacked with hairspray. And it has that curl to it, that terrible cheap curl. They light their cigarettes, and stop the ice cream man on the sidewalk, they get two Tweety Bird ice cream treats and just bite them, staring ahead, smoking.

Their friend meets them, the winner with the neck tattoo. He has a rolling suitcase, a Disturbed backpack resting on top, covered with some smiling skull face made out of fire, red and black. They're not happy to see each other, they're not anything, they're just there. The three of them smoke and the two of them bite their ice cream and they have all these bags.

They leave the corner and walk down the street to the liquor store. When they come out they're each holding a bag, containing what I assume is six-packs of cheap beer, forty-ounce malt liquor bottles, probably both. I know what they buy and what they'll do next. I know what tomorrow and the rest of their lives will be like. I know their diets and their children's names, the cars they drive and the places they don't drive to. I know what color their carpets are.

"Babe" opens her little pink bag again and takes out cigarettes. "Disturbed" takes out his own pack. "Slacker" spots someone and starts half-running, dragging, stupid, down the sidewalk. He's trying to get their attention.

Skin and Bone

"I'm moving my skin with the bone!" The boy wagged his finger at his father.

"All skin does that," he father told him. I was behind them, shaking my head. What does your skin do you sad man?

The boy's hand went down. His head went down too, looked at his shoes. His feet dragged just a bit more.

City

She had a large fountain cup filled with something that looked like milk, with the big red words "Boston Market" on the side, and she was walking some little mutt that looked like a drain clog. It was nearly two in the morning, and I didn't understand it.

"Excuse me," I carefully said, "where is there a Boston Market open?"

"What?" I was fairly surprised she said anything at all."

"Where is there a Boston Market open right now?"

"Um," she said, "how should I know?" She jerked the neck of her little clog and hopped her step farther down the darkened street. How should I know?

The city is a place I'll never understand. Every time I think about leaving, abandoning it, I realize I could frequent every establishment and corner I could and still not wrap my head around the slightest thing. Will I ever really know the city? Will I ever really know anything? And will I ever find this Boston Market? And was that milk?

I could ask myself questions until the sun comes up. And I did. I sat on a bench, at a bus stop, waving all the irritated bus drivers away. I was hoping I would have an epiphany, that the sunrise would hit me like a movie star and it would all suddenly be made known to me. But all I really learned is that people walk their dogs at really any time of day.

Leader

In the end I can't say I won't be entirely selfish, that I won't try to grab as much food and water and utterly useless electronics as my arms will let me carry. Let me carry, because they're in charge. My muscles, it's true, in the end only the muscles will matter. The brains will try to have the upper hand, will try to put the brawns in their place. And they'll succeed, for a time. Maybe it's the pessimist in me, but I think it's just reality, although the truly cynical will tell you they're the same thing.

Can I read enough? Can I lift enough tires? Is there some sliver of a Venn diagram where one can be equal to another? I scour my brain to think of examples but I cannot come up with any, which perhaps says more about me than it says about people. But if you're known for one what are the chances that you're known for another? Could I be the first? Could I be a leader?

In the end I dot know exactly what I will do. It's hard to tell, not knowing what kind of person I'll be, and it seems foolish to start preparing for a world that will never come. But we have to prepare for some world. We have to do something. And if one day I not only have the facts, but the strength to back them up, that doesn't seem so bad.

So Sorry to Bother You

It didn't make much sense to him, that you could swamp out a coffee or tea for a vodka or beer and have everything be different. If the music was louder and worse, if the light was gone, if the space was cramped, if the people weren't so pleasantly hush and considerate—and if there were many, many more of them—then suddenly a "Hello" became acceptable. Take everything decent and friendly about the place, change it up, or at least overcharge people for alcohol, and the sky's the limit. Who set those standards?

Halfway between retro and trendy, chic and punk, she had circular sunglasses and a timeless skirt. He wanted to say "I've seen you before," "I really dig your style," "I'm so sorry to bother you but..." But he couldn't. Could he? People around would hear, they would scoff and judge as they do, they would think I can't believe this guy, can you believe this guy, who does this guy think he is, let her work in peace. They wouldn't think twice at the bar just down the road. But why not? Why couldn't he say those things, ask those questions? Would she not see how perfectly nice of a guy this stranger is? Wouldn't she appreciate the difference in it all, the absence of a implicated tryst? Wasn't he, in a sense, a pioneer?

But she left, as he was thinking, before he could say or ask any of that. Better to leave it alone. Leave the courage for the pint glass, anxiety for the mug.

A Creature of Habit

I knew she didn't want to meet me. Which was fine, I wish she had just told me that. Not put on that smile, not told me that oh, of course, she'd love to, just in a few weeks when things calm down a bit. A few weeks where she can get her stories straight, know what to emphasize, how to look, what to wear, so that I know she's doing OK. I know she's doing OK. I assume she would be. I had no doubt. I never doubted her. Maybe I'd say that.

We meet at a coffee shop, a place by her, not our old usual one. I'd picked it out. I wanted her to be able to leave, book it, rush home, not waste too much time, if indeed that's what this turned out to be. I wasn't sure whether to show up early, if maybe she'd already be there, if maybe she'd let me wait extra long just because. So I showed up on time, which I thought a novelty, and she was in line. I said hi, she said hi back, and we shared a truly terrible sideways hug.

She started to say a drink and paused. She was changing her order, I was sure of it. Got something I bet she'd never had. That's a profound effect to have on someone, to alter the way they take in caffeine. People are particular about their coffee like they are their hair, clothes, it is a part of them. I got a large dark roast, creature of habit that I am.

We sat by the window, each sipping immediately, thinking of something to say, how to start this conversation. We could've said anything, it didn't matter, it didn't have to be this difficult, it never did. We were just two people, kids really, figuring it out, still figuring, still trying to get through life hurting as few people as possible.

I'd been happy, thrilled with myself, that I'd finally gotten to a place where I could say that I wanted out. That I was no longer sticking around, letting myself decline into savagery and indifference while things slowly crumbled around me and I could emerge somehow unscathed. That I was upfront, honest to a point, that I hurt her only so I didn't have to hurt her more later. I thought I had done a good thing. But it was only up until that point, and then nothing. Then silence, no explanation, nothing of substance, nothing she could wrap her head around. She'd known it was coming but obviously not in the way she'd thought. She'd wanted more. There was supposed to be more.

She wanted the truth. She wanted to know what had happened, why suddenly I had left. I'd wanted to tell her. But I was protecting her. Wasn't I? I didn't want to tell her. Why couldn't there be no good reason, why couldn't there be nothing? Why couldn't I hurt her so thoroughly and walk away her friend? Why couldn't she let time heal all wounds? Why was she dwelling on this so completely?

"I wasn't in love," I said. "That was it. I didn't love you."

She smiled the way I always remembered her doing. Things were fine between us after that.

Under the Fan

I get out of the shower, towel off, but I'm still wet. It's that hot. Humid. I stand naked under the fan, windows open, hoping no dog walkers or schoolchildren chance to look in. The moving air doesn't seem to be doing any drying, it's just pushing the moisture around. Even standing exerts too much effort, I am sweating.

I stretch out onto the wooden floor, nice and cooldirt be damned. I'd sit in a cold bath but I want so badly to be dry, so badly. I don't want any wet pits, no sweat creases, no discomfort. I'd like to be clean, dry, not gathering dust on the floor while my fan fails to cool me. Sweat helps with cooling. That's what they say. They say a lot. I have found, in my time, that they are mostly wrong.

I wake up, fell asleep, there on the floor. The fan spins, the lights have gone out. I shiver, my own fallen hair attached to my back, adhered with my own residue. I could bathe. I could shower again. But right now I want a shirt, pants, and I cannot seem to move. It is only the briefest of moments, this sleep paralysis, but all these thoughts happen at once. I cannot walk, I will never move again, and I am here on my dirty floor, never to feel quite right again.

My Dirty Laundry

I'll curl up in a pile of dirty laundry when she's gone. I let this slip to a friend once. "Don't you mean clean laundry?" he said. "No," I told him, "dirty." He winced in disgust. That is the only word I have found to describe it.

But cleaning it would only make it smell of detergent. There is nothing attached to that scent but "fresh," and who cares about that? There are no meals, no long walks home, no holding hands under the café table. There's no scrap of anyone there, just a blank slate, a canvas on which no memory has been painted. No, I hold close to her soiled undershirts, her stained jeans, her weeks-old bra. I could get clean clothes anywhere.

Thirsty

I would wake up in the middle of the night and shout, "Mom! Mom! Can I have a glass of water?!" And she would bring it, whatever day, whatever time, she would get up and walk down the stairs and into the kitchen and get me a glass of water and walk back up the stairs to my bedroom and give it to me. It never took her very long. She never complained. Never told me to get my own glass.

I visit her now. There is always a water bottle in the fridge, a piece of tape on the cap with my name written on it. My mother is still always bringing me water, whenever I need it, whenever I'm thirsty. And here I am, splayed out on my bed, head in a vise, and I can't turn on my side to get the glass ten inches from me.

Racist

"What I want," I said, "was for my rich white university to give me a little more than three meals for a couple hundred bucks."

She paused. "What does 'white' have to do with it?"

And that's when I realized I was racist. It's as small as that. It's a fact you state that you don't even think about. Because it's there, it's always been there, you've never given two thoughts about it and you're surrounded by people who haven't either. Rich equals white, and I had no idea.

"Haha," I said. "You know what I mean."

Write and Edit

"Are you drunk yet?" she asked.

"I don't think so."

"Well," she said, "don't start until you are."

I don't know whose idea it was. A pen, a piece of paper, a love letter each, and we weren't supposed to start writing until we were good and drunk. She'd seen some blasted meme, "Write drunk, edit sober," some iffy advice attributed to Ernest Hemingway. She was drinking vodka tonics and I was drinking beers, crushing them quickly, perhaps too quickly, in the way that eating too quickly makes you full before you realize it.

She was looking at me funny. "What?"

"Just thinking about all the things I'm gonna write about you." She winked. She was a good winker. It was quick, sharp, not awkward, and awfully cute. "You better have another beer," she said, "I'm drunk. I mean I'm, like, drunk." I opened another Pilsner. I didn't like Pilsners but she kept buying them for me. Maybe I'd write about that.

After about half of it I told her, "OK, I think I'm good to go." And we started writing.

I was drunker than I'd let on. I was drunk beyond drunk. I was keeping my composure, lying I suppose, as best I could. I was afraid of what I might do, what I might say, the words that she'd read. She was so happy, so eager, to try this out. A fun little thing staying in on a Friday night. An exercise. A workout.

She crumpled my paper in her hand, I remember that much. I didn't get the chance to read it after. I blame the masses, the World Wide Web, the asshole who made that stupid picture that she saw. Ernest Hemingway never said those words a goddamn day in his life.

A Sister and a Brother

We'd gone to our friends' for dinner, a pot roast, simple enough and rustic. They sent us home with half a pie and two kittens. The first was a little white thing with black marks around her eyes that made us think of Angels with Dirty Faces. Her brother looked straight out of Pinocchio, the dream of an artist's pen. Angel and Figaro.

Angel pushed her paw underneath the bathroom door when you were occupying it. Figaro attached your feet when they were covered by a blanket. They'd bring in mice, they knew the clink of their dinner bowls, they were cats. They slept curled into one another, they cleaned each other's fur. They would go out and not come back when called, crying and batting at my bedroom window in the middle of the night. Figaro was a risk-taker, playful and temperamental. Angel was a homebody, sweet and open to strangers. We never saw them apart for very long, and if one was sleeping the other was never too far behind. They always found the time, no matter when in the day, to rest beside each other. They were a sister and a brother.

One day Figaro disappeared, and Angel cried her eyes out. And there was nothing I could do to take the pain away. They say that cats are independent, that they really don't need us at all. But I couldn't help but think that Angel needed me that day. I wanted to tell her I'm sorry, I wanted to say what happened. I wanted to tell her about the coyote, the fight, that he didn't just go out into the woods for a walk or to hunt. He would never ever be coming back.

But I couldn't. I tried, I did, but she couldn't understand me. I even purred it into her fur, hoping that somehow the feeling would translate, some sort of humming grief. But she stood, every night, on our dresser, looking out the window into the backyard, waiting for that cartoon cat to come bounding out from the bushes, chipmunk in his teeth. She cried, and mewed, and howled, and watched, and waited, and there wasn't a goddamn thing anyone could do. We could only hold her, pet her, watch the spots on her face change from black to white.

Deadlines

It doesn't matter how late you are or how deep you go once you're past the deadline. Once you're past the deadline it's all the same, it's all after. When you get things done early, when you have time left, that's when the time actually matters. Minutes, hours, days, weeks, that's when people take notice. But the second the clock strikes midnight that's when you can relax. That's when you can let all your stress and anxiety go, your worry warts fade away. They're already disappointed in you, you've already let them down. You may as well open a bottle of wine and let them scowl a little more. They will learn to wait, they will learn to think of you as the one who is always coming in after. They will push "on time" back for you, and back, and back, and back, until no one expects much of anything from you at all. And by this time you will have grown fine with it, you will have had your wine. You will have plenty of time to think about all the thing you could do with your time.

The Boy

When they pulled him out of the water they were hoping it wasn't a person. They were hoping that his waterlogged clothes were scraps from an old sailboat, hoping that his hair was mangled seaweed, that his shriveled grey skin was the flesh of a dying fish. Somehow, some way, all these things got caught together to resemble a little boy. But it wasn't the thing itself, surely, please. It could not be somebody's boy.

He had no identification, no tags on his clothes, no cards in his pockets. His coat fabric was woolen, rough, nearly burlap. His shirt was frayed and closed up with wooden buttons. His socks were long, his shoes had buckles, he wore little suspenders to keep up his shorts. All that was missing was the books and apple and you could have seen him running down the lane to the schoolhouse, his friends waiting for him, the teacher spelling in clean lines on the chalkboard. He was of a different time and place, Eastern Europe, decades ago, a century, he looked just the part, it was uncanny. They couldn't understand what he was doing in small-town Minnesota, in a half-frozen lake, buoying up in the dead of the spring thaw.

Had he fallen in? Had he fallen from the sky? Did he slip through that treacherous black ice and get trapped underneath? Had he been preserved somehow for a hundred years or more, only now to float his way back to civilization, to his ancestors that had long forgotten him? Did he have ancestors? Did he have a name? But, of course, all children have names. But to them he was just the boy, and they carried him into town.

"What shall we do with him?" "Where does he go?" "Do we bury it?" "Do we bury him." "Someone get the doctor!" "He's already dead, what'll a doctor do?" "He looks so sad." "I think he looks peaceful." "How can you even tell what he looks like?" "He looks like my little boy." "I don't like this one bit." "Why did we drag him out?" "We should have left him in the water." "We should put him back." "How can you say that?!" "This was somebody's child." "Maybe we should throw you in the lake." "Let's all settle down." "How did he come up anyway?" "He looks so old." "Ancient." "That poor boy." "What do we do?"

They stayed there through the night, through the dawn, into the next day. They drank pot after pot of black coffee and wondered what to do, wrote ideas on paper, called neighboring towns, put a warning out to the police. They waited. They waited and waited and drank more coffee, the ladies brought sandwiches and the men brought beer. They heard nothing back. No children were missing, no families in distress, no costumes gone stolen from any nearby community theatre. It was simply a dead boy, drowned, no more than eight, spread out on a town hall table, and he belonged to no one.

In the end, a week later, they decided to hold an evening mass and bury him in the town cemetery. They all pitched it to buy the boy proper burial clothes, a casket and flowers, every last little thing. They turned out in droves, clutching their children, somber and broken, crying mysterious tears. They spoke of their childhood friends, their parents, their own experiences with death. They sang songs and read scripture, they held a moment of silence that lasted for an entire minute. They took him out to the plot and lowered him in the ground with a crowd so large most could not see what was happening.

"They say," someone mentioned, "that drowning is one of the best deaths. That it's actually a very peaceful way to go. You struggle for breath and your body focuses on that, it locks up. But then, after that, you become very relaxed, you accept it, you enter a state of euphoria. You're not scrambling anymore. You're going home. And then you just... drift away."

One by one they threw on clumps of dirt until the grave was almost completely filled. They walked, slowly and silently, out of the graveyard and to the waterfront. They stood, scanning the water, perhaps looking for bodies, perhaps only watching the ripples. There was still too much ice. It was melting so slowly. It was far too cold for this time of year.