​When he grows up, Edward Jr. wants to be just like his father.
His father who sits him on his knee in the back garden in their quiet, atavistic South Wales village and tells him stories, fantastic stories, stories of the two sleeping giants either side of their little house, the sleeping giants who were once wide awake and at war with each other for hundreds of years, carving canyons in the land and painting shapes in the sky with the spectacle of their battles, causing mayhem and misery for the few scattered farmers of the countryside and their bewildered pigs and cows and sheep who got trampled and squished or just kept awake, until one day, after the sleeping beasts realized they were too perfect a match for each other, too equal in their strengths and weaknesses and brutality and mercy, the two roaring giants collapsed, exhausted, reached a truce, and fell asleep for a thousand years.
Now the two giants rest, either side of Edward Jr. and his family’s house, all peaceful and serene and languid, like the wise old grandparents of the world, watching over the villagers that have since settled in the valley between them.
His father tells him these stories and Edward’s mouth and eyes are both wide open in astonished joy.
On days so bright and brilliant blue and clear they can make out the painted stripes on the bodies of the little dotted sheep grazing in the fields atop the sleeping beasts, Edward Jr. asks his father about the old house, right at the top, lonely and desolate and crumbling, and his father gives him another story, as stories are their currency and lifeblood, this one about the peacekeeper, the brave noble man who in fact brokered the truce between the two giants in the first place, and built his house on the belly of the one who lies in the East, where he could keep his foot on it and his eye on the other, to ensure they would keep to their word and that the villagers who live between them would be safe.
On other days, on the grey days when the beasts let out moist yawns, cloaking themselves and everything in a hanging drooling mist, Edward Jr. begins to fear the beasts’ breath might swallow up the peacekeeper, that the giants might wake up and start the fighting again, and the villagers, who would have no way of knowing in time to pack up their things and escape, would be doomed.
On those days, when Edward Jr. feels a nibbling inside that won’t quit, his father tells him to close his eyes and dig his fingernails into the dirt and hold on, and if Edward Jr. is ever sceptical of this his father does it first, and the two men, different in age and size but fatally alike in every other way, crouch down in the garden and clench the blades of grass, force their fingers into the earth and close their eyes, feel for any vibration in the land, any signal that the two giants might rumble into sore wakefulness, grumble and scratch their heads, then remember with a bang their fierce timeless crusade and resume their earth-shattering fight.
His father stays alongside him, both their hands snug in the mud, until Edward Jr. is convinced they are safe, and if he cannot be convinced, if he cannot shake the fear that just the other side of the curtain of mist the beasts are stirring, his father tells him all he needs is patience, then leaves him in the dirt and goes back inside to quench his thirst, while Edward Jr.’s mother watches on carefully and stoically, keeping count of exactly how many times the man has felt the thirst that day, good days being five times, bad days being into double figures and vaguely between two integers, keeping count for no reason because her statistics and protests are futile, always on the verge yet reluctant to ask the man how many he has had that day to see if their totals align, aware he will shrug nonchalantly and act out the apparent insignificance of that number, maintaining the illusion that the thirst is casual for him and not in fact at the forefront of his thoughts for each minute of each day, always tempted but afraid to tell the man that maybe just maybe now listen perhaps it’s about time he gives up on trying to quench the thirst as no amount of drinks seems to do to the trick, always aware that on most weeks she asks him this anywhere between four to ten times, always aware of how easily he can be triggered into defensive attack mode, always aware of how much their son is observing and noticing and picking up things even though he is still just a boy, a boy with his hands in the dirt, who sometimes remains in such a position in the garden until the sun falls down behind the sleeping beast where the peacekeeper lives, and has to be fetched in and put in the bath.
This inner battle is a daily habit for his mother, as fixed and routine as his father’s thirst, and like his father, she too stays silent about it most of the time.
Edward Jr. asks his father if he has ever visited the peacekeeper’s house, to which he nods, why yes of course, in fact the peacekeeper and Edward Sr. are on close personal terms and often spend the long lazy hours of the evening talking together, and when Edward Jr. declares this impossible, his father assures him he will bring it up with the man on their next meeting, and Edward Jr. then goes quiet, afraid to anger the peacekeeper and in turn the sleeping beasts.
Edward Jr. vows to himself that when he is bigger and stronger and smarter and braver, he will climb up the sleeping beast and visit the peacekeeper himself. He will sit down next to him and listen to his stories, as the two of them look out over the village and the distant towns and even the sea.
Edward Jr. shares the story of the sleeping giants and the war and the peacekeeper with the teachers and children at school, but they are all dull empty grey people, in fact most people in the world are this way, dull and empty and grey, all getting dressed and going to work and watching TV and drinking tea and eating takeaway and going to the supermarket and reading the newspaper and counting the days away, all nodding their heads along to a rhythm playing on a frequency people like Edward Jr. and his father aren’t in tune to, all mumbling the same harmless little phrases they repeat because they have no original thoughts of their own, all called John and Margaret and Phillip and Susan, all carbon copies of each other incapable and undesiring of colour and light and adventure and danger and fear and more, much much more.
His teachers listen to his stories and whistle with a glaringly fake enthusiasm that he can’t believe they think he is dull enough to fall for. His fellow students dismiss his stories as lies, tell him the sleeping giants are meaningless mountains, and when he smacks them in their faces, he is the one made to stand in the corner, not them.
No one can see the world in the same shades as him.
No one expect his father.
One evening he asks his father when his next appointment with the peacekeeper is and his father tells him he plans to see his old friend tomorrow. He begs his father to share every detail of their conversation with him when he gets home from school, and his father nods, why yes of course.
He comes home from school the next day, a day he spent most of his time in the corner with his head against the wall after calling his teacher something she wished not to repeat to the headmistress in her official incident report, something she felt was a severely unwarranted response to her simple efforts to get him to focus on his Welsh numeracy booklet instead of his silly little scribbled stories about sleeping beasts and peacekeepers; he comes home to sit on his father’s knee again and hear about the incredible things he and the peacekeeper must have talked about, but his father is not there.
His mother is on the living room sofa and her eyes are red.
He asks nothing. He sits down next to her and waits to be told.
 
*
 
When he asks his mother the question, which is at least five times day, over and over again like the information just refuses to sink in, his mother gives him the same answer with growing weariness and a more discernible snap to her voice followed by immediate guilt.
She tells him - Soon.
His father will come home soon. He wonders when soon is. He learns that soon is not today, not tomorrow, or next week. Soon is not next month even. Soon is on no calendar. Soon is in no one’s diary. Just when it seems soon is around the corner, it edges out of vision again, playfully egging on its chaser.
Young Edward Jr. waits for soon while he stares up at the peacekeeper’s house on the sleeping mountain every evening, wondering if the man who saved the world from the giants is also patiently awaiting the return of his father, waiting to sit down with his old friend and catch up on all the important things in the world while the sun goes down.
He waits for soon as he goes to class and argues with his teachers who once called him bright and full of potential but now call him flippant and too clever for his own good and he wonders how it feels for them to be outwitted and outfought by a child, a child who, unlike them and all the other dull empty grey adults all around him, sees the picture of the world for what it really is and dismisses the platitudes they give him about the ruthless nature of time and life because he knows he is special, different to them, immune to their problems which give their faces wrinkles and their shoulders invisible weights to carry.
He waits for soon as his mother cries in her bed every night until she falls asleep and he listens from his room, his room where he grows intimate with the colourless floral patterns of his ceiling  as he stares at them long into the forbidden hours of the night, afraid to drift into the daunting void of sleep in case a woman dressed in white floats in through his window and takes him away forever, and despite his mother’s assurances that this woman only exists in his imagination, she is more real to Edward Jr. than all the blank silhouettes of people around him.
He waits for soon and thinks it has arrived one night when, while counting the cracks in his ceiling for the thousandth time yet somehow coming up with a different number on each go, he hears the front door to the house cracking open, the furtive appearance of a body in the doorway.
His heart sings.
The waiting is over. Soon is finally here. His father has come home. He has chosen an inconvenient time to arrive, in the terrifying silence of night, when everyone is asleep, everyone except young Edward Jr., but that’s just how his father is, a player of his own game with its own illegible-to-most rulebook, a puzzle piece the wrong shape for this ordinary square equilateral world with its flat and smooth and nothing people.
He jumps out of bed and rushes to his bedroom door. He reaches for the light switch but before his hand can reach it, before it can squeeze and turn and drag itself closer, it is forced into retreat, back to his side where it belongs.
The harsh, secretive whispers of strange voices. Two of them.
Then footsteps, quiet naughty footsteps, the kind only taken by those in places they know they shouldn’t be.
He stays exactly where he is, listening to the sounds from underneath him, keen to move his ear closer to them by crouching down and placing it on the carpet but finding himself physically unable to move.
He hears it, hears them. Two large men. Breathing and shuffling. Muted words shared under tight breath. Doors and cupboards and drawers opening. Though he wants to meet the faces of the night-time invaders, he finds his feet will not obey his thoughts so he remains limp and stupid on his tiny spot of carpet.
He knows his mother is a heavy sleeper, and is even more so now that she has started taking those tablets she guzzles down so fondly and eagerly each night, so there is no one, no one around to protect him, his father is gone and does not even phone, but it is better he learns this now, that no one can save him, at his tender age, rather than growing up with the false belief that there are those responsible for him, adults, parents and teachers and bosses, because the harsh truth everyone learns but he has got a head start on is that we are all completely alone and no one can save anyone, and the sooner this is accepted the easier growing old becomes.
He can feel the vibrations of his mother’s snores in the tips of his toes, and he realizes he is sweating as the footsteps below reach the bottom of the stairs.
His hands grow colder as the steps grow louder and nearer, and at the same time he finds his feet are tingling and alive and able to obey him and move again, so he springs from his spot by the door back to his bed, where he shuts his eyes as tight as they can possibly go and slows his breathing to a coma-like crawl.
The footsteps reach the landing and stop for the longest time imaginable, then resume.
The shadowy figures join the young boy in his bedroom. He remains still and soundless, remembering those times he was angered by the emptiness and density of his classmates at school to the point of near blackout, where he grew so exasperated all he could do was collapse and play dead on the playground, refusing to move or be moved from the floor until the headmaster had to be called to deliver threats, until the bell went and everyone went home and the sun started going down and his parents had to pry him from the cold concrete floor and carry his rigid ironing board body home, where they would scald him for being such a nuisance, unaware of what good practice it was, to be dead and motionless and undetectable, for a dangerous situation such as this exact one.
The figures move like deft mice around his bedroom, but to him their presence is loud and large and fills everything. They stay in his bedroom forever, while he tries to tell himself it is all a dream and it is all okay, lies which he names as such and dismisses before they have even fully formed as thoughts.
The slow unzipping of a rucksack.
The quiet pain of material things and innocence lost.
His heart rate slows to nothing and he remains still as the sleeping beasts sit either side of him, beasts he wishes would choose this exact moment to wake up from their great slumber and unleash the many years of unspent rage on these two cowardly invaders.
He also thinks but tries to quash the thought down as it is too black - If only his father was here.
He would teach these men things only violence can teach.
After forever and a bit longer, the ghosts leave young Edward Jr.’s bedroom and inspect the rest of the house. Then when they are satisfied there is nothing left worth taking, they leave. The little boy remains in his bed all night, wide awake, no longer afraid of the white woman of sleeplessness who might float in and take him away, because he has felt a threat much more immediate.
The next morning things are gone. The white portable television, the wireless radio, the cassette player and the assortment of albums and singles, the telephone, the VHS tapes, the jewellery box, the china plates, the perfume, the toys, the comfort of home.
They call the police and the police do nothing, only send an officer around who tries her best to sincerely express sympathy and condolences and assure the authorities will do everything they can to track the culprits down, and even Edward Jr., the young boy who sees things no one else sees, can tell that everything they can do amounts to very little, he sees it in the futile look in her eyes, that the cowardly invaders will never be caught and will go on to violate the homes and lives of more.
After that night, young Edward Jr. keeps a baseball bat under his bed.
 
*
 
He waits for soon until new people arrive.
At first they visit on weekends but then before Edward Jr. notices they are living with him in his house, his house vacated by his father who now, he is told, lives elsewhere, all alone, somewhere an impossible distance away in England.
He is never consulted on the issue but is forced to share his bedroom with a boy a year younger than him, an overweight child named Rhys who farts and snores in his sleep and has a permanent snail trickle of snot on his upper lip, whose mother is apparently dead from some disease, the son of a similarly grotesque man who has taken his father’s place on the three piece sofa and in his mother’s bed and in the garden which to young Edward Jr. is sacred territory between him and his father, a man whom he is told to address as Gwyn, though he does no such thing and stares at the floor whenever the big quiet man tries to talk to him.
The boys fight constantly. Over the television, the bathroom, the sofa, the front seat of the car, the toy from the box of cereal, the biscuit tin, and if they have nothing to fight about they fight about that.
When Rhys laughs at the story of the sleeping bests and the peacekeeper Edward Jr. scratches a hole in his face and then intentionally wets his bed every night for a month in an act of filthy protest. He begins to relish his days at school as at least there he can get away from the parasites who have crawled into his home just like the cowardly invaders, although he still has to put up with the dull empty grey people who populate his classroom and tease him over his messy handwriting and scruffy clothes and strawberry blonde hair, and yet it is still he who gets the blame when he refuses to lie down and take abuse from people who may as well be holograms and strikes back with first words and then when they don’t do enough damage, fists.
His hatred for Rhys burns and glows like something made of gold, he nourishes it and cherishes it and talks to it like it is a living person, a true friend, he holds onto this hatred for weeks and weeks, even as he feels it slipping away, like on Saturday mornings when the pair of them are dumped in front of the television and find themselves jumping in their chairs with excitement as The Rock finally wins his championship belt back from Triple H, when Bart Simpson prank calls Moe the bartender and asks for Hugh Jass, when Malcolm and his brothers fight the same way all brothers fight, and he hates to use this term as he would rather die than call Rhys his brother, but despite his concentrated efforts to maintain and sharpen the knife point of his hatred for this diseased boy who has invaded home just like the strange men of that traumatising night, he finds himself looking forward to weekends where they can enter the world of American television, which will do far more towards raising them and the rest of their generation than just about anything else, weekends where for a few hours before sundown they are allowed outside to explore their rustic village, where there are no shops banks schools or post offices, only fields mountains trees and rivers, where the reluctant arranged brotherhood comes alive, takes to the wilderness and grows like a lifeform, where the boys explore together and build dens made out of sticks and hide away from the world and talk for hours, where they discover hidden gems like the bamboo jungle and the frog pond and the elephant tree and the forest with a ground so soft it almost feels like it is breathing beneath their feet.
Some breezy Saturday, the kind with hours so free and yawning and easy, sees the boys walking along the river, the river which seems to go on forever, to faraway places, walking silently as they like to, chopping down anything in their paths with their sticks, sticks with pointy edges which they found and picked out and carved to perfection themselves, their companions, weapons.
They are bold explorers.
The world is so big it is impossible for them to even think about but they are ready to see it all.
It will be disputed for weeks afterward who truly spotted it first, the crumpled wrecked car lying in the river, half hidden by weeds. Rhys will claim he saw it first and cried out in wonder while Edward Jr. will claim it was in fact he who shouted - car! - and had to convince his brother to brave the treacherous slippery river bank and wade their way through the current towards it.
Edward Jr. reaches it first, knee deep in hepatitis inducing river water, then his brother arrives breathlessly at his side, and they inspect the rusted burned out machine, each wondering aloud as to who would be insane or foolish enough to dump their car in a river and leave it there. They look around for somebody to tell them they should not be there, that they should leave it alone and return to the safety of their homes, but there is no one around for miles.
It might as well be only they who exist in the whole world.
They try to open the doors and the boot but they are jammed shut. Rhys vocalises his fears of there being a dead body or bodies in the boot, or even worse living bodies waiting to be freed or waiting for naïve vulnerable young boys to happen upon the planted car wrecked for them to devour. Edward Jr. ignores him as his eyes have landed on something promising, something in the passenger seat which he leans in through the smashed window and drags out.
A black handbag.
Rhys tries to take it from him but his brother pushes him back and he falls on his backside in the water and both of them laugh. Their attempts to open it go nowhere as the zip is rusted and sewn shut, but this is the moment where the true value of their sharp sticks shows itself; they tear and hack at the old, weakened fabric material until a hole appears, a hole big enough for them to jam their fingers into and use their might to tear the thing open and see what secrets wait inside.
Most of what they find is unremarkable.
Bank cards, receipts, vouchers, makeup, a hairbrush, a mirror.
They find a driver’s licence with a picture of a woman on it. Her name is Georgina. Her birthday is three days before Edward Jr.’s, and to him she looks like she could be kind, colourful, bright and alive, unlike the dull empty grey people all around him every day.
He wonders if she is dead and drowned and washed up somewhere far away.
They drop the bag in the water when they find something which makes them stop breathing, which makes them laugh out loud and shriek and jump around, the same way they do when The Rock delivers his spinebuster and removes his elbow pad and the whole crowd knows what’s coming.
A damp and flimsy but still intact twenty-pound note.
More money than either of them has ever seen or held at one time in their little lives.
The possibilities are endless.
They wade their way back through the river, holding on their treasure, which they lay out on a rock when they reach the other side. They talk about all the things they will spend it on as they wait for it to dry.
A new house, a rocket, a horse, a sword, a Nintendo 64, the WWF championship belt, every Simpsons boxset ever made, Haribo, Fanta, ice cream.
It will all be theirs, as will the world.
 
*
 
The brothers brush their teeth together every night, standing over the sink, debriefing each other on the day’s invariably dramatic events at their school where playground fights are common and broken up by vigilant twitching manic staff members so quickly and to the chagrin of both competitors and spectators, so rematches are scheduled outside the gates on the rugby fields after the last bell, where the interested parties gather and sometimes place bets of up to fifty whole pence or a coveted Pog or Pokemon card, where victory is flaunted but defeat is never final as there is always tomorrow, tomorrow which the boys at the sink make plans for as well, their plans ranging from building a new den or maintaining an existing one to seeing how far up the mountain they could get this time before darkness comes and forces them back home.
One night Rhys tells his brother about a strange sighting in the farmer’s field adjacent to their house, the field with the grass so tall it reaches over their heads, making it the perfect arena for hide and seek, for racing away from imaginary velociraptors, or for running to the centre and simply sitting down on the spot and embracing that feeling of being totally lost and invisible.
Rhys spits his Aquafresh into the sink and speaks.
- I saw something Ed. In the field, today. A creature. I don’t know what it was. Like a dog . . . But with no fur.
- How big?
- Like a dog. A medium dog. But with no fur.
- How many legs did it have?
- Five. I mean six.
Edward Jr.’s eyes widen first with wonder and then fear and that tingling combination of both which always teeters on the edge of either phenomenon but always manages to stay in the middle, prickly and gnawing and heavy.
- You’re making it up.
- Shut up, I’m not.
- When did you see it?
- Today.
- Who was with you?
- Nobody.
- Don’t lie.
- I’m not, Ed, serious, I swear on my mum’s grave. Don’t tell my dad, but I took a slice of bread from the bread bin. I wanted to see if the monster would eat the bread. I took the bread to the field and left it there. I wanted to see if the monster would eat the bread.
- . . . Did it eat the bread?
- The bread was gone.
Edward Jr. feels a familiar crawling sensation in his vital organs, like the sickly stirring of insects walking all over each other.
He knows these creatures well already. They are his friends.
The boys go to bed and stay awake long into the night discussing what needs to be done. The monster is likely dangerous, likely to be capable of killing and eating everyone in the village, likely to be desperately hungry to do just so.
They know if they enlist the help of their parents, their parents will tell them to stop wasting their time with such childish fairy tales.
They know if they are going to stop the monster and save everyone, they can rely only on themselves.
 
*
 
The dangers in his head and all around him keep him awake into the long hours of the night where he knows little boys like him are not supposed to be awake, where he has grown used to and even fond of the colourless floral patterns of his ceiling as the backdrop and the sounds of Rhys’s pig snores as the soundtrack to his sleeplessness.
On some night just as lonely and endless as the rest of them, the sounds of his mother’s hissing whispers come from downstairs, harsh and desperately hushed.
Someone is at the door.
The sleepless little boy with his head full of monsters gets out of his bed, nimbly hops over Rhys’s sleeping body and cracks open his bedroom door.
He needs no longer than a second to place the voice responding to his mother’s, familiar and close and warm, however far away, the voice that brought the magic of the stories to him what seems now like an impossibly long time ago.
His father is home.
The boy feels the urge to sprint down the stairs and launch himself into the arms of his hero but intrinsically knows something is wrong with this visit, knows that his presence at this untimely scene will only prompt frantic shoos and shouts from his mother, so he tiptoes across the landing, to the top of the stairs where he can see what he needs to see and stay hidden in the shadows.
His father is in the doorway, swaying from side to side, speaking but not saying real words. His mother is trying to close the door but his father is blocking it with his foot.
The shrieks she makes sound loud enough to wake the entire village.
- Look at you, look at the state of you.
- Tell ‘um face me and down ‘ere, come on, like, bosh, who is he? Huh? Real man? Piss off.
- If you won’t leave, I’ll call the police.
- ‘Umnum the right to see my boy.
- It’s the middle of the night. You’re pissed.
His hero shakes his head violently and thrusts himself toward the door frame. The five foot two woman finds the strength inside to push the towering man backwards and send him falling to the floor in a broken heap, after which she hurriedly slams the door shut and lets out a whimper, which is met by enraged growls from outside the door which go on for a time and then quieten in defeat and disappear altogether.
The boy at the top of the stairs shoots back across the landing and into his room, where the colourless floral patterns of his ceiling and the ticking away of the night await him.
He does not sleep for even a second.
The next morning he waits for his mother to inform him of his father’s return while she plonks breakfast in front of him, he waits while she gets dressed for work, while she lays out his school uniform for him on his bed, but she offers nothing, has the audacity to act as if nothing ever happened, and this infuriates him, makes him question his mother in deep, disturbing ways, makes him wonder what else she might be capable of hiding from him.
She finds him in the bathroom delaying the brushing of his teeth.
She sighs impatience, and he snaps.
- When is dad coming home?
- . . . What? He’s . . . Edward, it’s time for school.
- He’s not coming home, is he?
- Edward, listen –
- Don’t say soon. You said soon before. Soon isn’t real.
His mother looks upwards as if for some guidance and when none is forthcoming, for her or for anyone, she lets out a long, embattled sigh.
- Your dad is sick. He’s too sick to come home.
- What’s wrong with him?
His mother tries to find a way of saying what she has held swirling around in her head for the best part of a decade, what she always quietly known but tried to downplay or reject.
- Your dad has a monster inside him. He’s not a bad man, but the monster makes him bad. Does that make any sense?
Young Edward Jr. does not respond as his voice, his whole identity, is caught somewhere in his windpipe.
The monster.
It is real.
Firm, undeniable proof. His brother has seen it with his own eyes, the pair of them have spent long hours in the night planning their attack, but neither of them has done anything to stop it.
Something is metamorphosing in his gut.  
- What? What monster?
- . . . It’s . . . Time for school –
- Where is it?
- . . . It’s inside him.
- How did it get there?
The exhausted woman lets out another weak sigh as the imagination of the little boy in front of her winds and ties itself into pained knots, picturing hundreds of these oversized insect monsters, thousands of them, all over the world, scuttling around and crawling inside people, enslaving them and turning them into incoherent, dribbling, swaying fools in exile.
- It’s time for school.
The car journey to school is silent.
There is nothing to say. Only something to be done.
 
*
 
The plan is simple.
Another two slices of Hovis will be swiped from the bread bin when the grownups are preoccupied which the boys have noticed is increasingly more often, as their respective parents spend night after night at the kitchen table going through bills and other meaningless bits of paper, with calculators and pens and notepads, rubbing their heads, looking at each other and sighing at regular intervals.
The Hovis slices, one of which is a backup in case the first one fails for any number of potential reasons, will be taken to the field with the long grass by the boys, who will also carry with them their sharpened sticks.
They will throw the Hovis slice into the grass, then fall where they stand, concealing themselves.
Then they will wait.
They will wait for something, anything, a flicker of movement in the grass, the scent of a wicked creature on the wind, the damp sounds of animalistic breathing.
They will wait as long as it takes for that vile monster to show its cowardly self and when it does, they will kill it. Young Edward Jr. has repeatedly expressed his desire to land the first blow, has described in rich vivid detail how he longs for the creature’s blood to stain his hands. It is not just about his father. It is about preventing the parasite from crawling inside someone else’s mouth and planting its horrible babies there. He already walks around with the cold crippling fear that the babies have already been lain inside him, as he feels them chewing and tickling his insides at night, but this he has refrained from sharing with his brother. He fears he will become tainted in the eyes of others and seen as another one of the infected.
Rhys throws the Hovis slice into the grass and holds onto the backup.
The brothers crouch down in the long grass, in perfect disguise.
They wait.
Nothing but wind passes through the blades of grass around them. At various moments, they look at each other, sharing a deep, knowing look of pain and patience. No one will understand them, but they will be thankful.
An hour passes, two.
Nothing but the wind, which is now joined by the first gentle signs of rain; the blackening clouds above them and the inquisitive moist drops on foreheads.
Edward Jr. instructs his brother to throw the second slice of bread out, a hail Mary to further tempt the salivating beast, which they are certain is about to show itself any second.
The rain picks up and brings with it shivers to their spines. Rhys shakes water from his hair and speaks.
- I want to go home.
- Rhys . . .
- It’s raining.
- So? It’s only water.
- I’m cold.
- This is what it wants. It wants us to give up.
- I’m hungry. I’m hungry and cold. I’m going home.
Rhys gets up, shows himself to the monster and to the world, and undoes all the hard work the boys have done. He makes his way out of the field with the long grass, back to the village.
Young Edward Jr. spits at the boy he once called his brother.
- Coward.
He waits in the grass for another hour, until his hands turn blue and his teeth shake and spasm in his skull. Darkness comes and the monster is still hiding. His teachers constantly tell him he is bright and capable of anything he sets his mind to but they are wrong and liars and cheats and he is a failure. He cannot save himself, his father, or anyone.
As he walks home, the determined young boy steels himself against the wind and the disappointment, does his utmost to assure himself all is okay, because tomorrow is another day which will bring another chance to catch the monster and murder it with his bare hands.
Suddenly he can hardly wait.
 
*
 
He refuses to believe what he has heard. He plays it back in his head again and again hoping that somehow by doing this the words will mutate and transform into what he wants them to be.
The boy he once called his brother has shown his true self. He refuses to join young Edward Jr. on another mission to the field with the tall grass. He has given his various reasons, the first of which was a fear of getting caught by his dad stealing slices of bread, the second of which was a simple and flat lack of desire, and the third, the fatal one, the one which Edward Jr. cannot stop repeating in his head, was that the whole thing is and always was just another story.
There is, and never was any monster.
It is all made up, just a bit of fun.
- . . . You wouldn’t lie about that.
- I didn’t think you’d actually believe it. You’re a little baby.
- It’s real. The monster is real. I know it is.
- I made it up because I was bored and you believed me because you’re a baby.
- It got my dad.
- Shut up. I’m not going to the field. Go by yourself.
Rhys takes to the sofa where he gets comfortable with whatever happens to be on Nickelodeon while young Edward Jr. breathes heavily and tries to fight off nauseating light-headedness, as he pictures the monster’s eggs inside Rhys, manipulating him and twisting him into claiming the whole thing a lie, as he pictures the creatures inside himself he knows are there but is not yet ready to admit out loud, the creatures which scuttle and dance on his nerve endings, playing haunting symphonies which only his ears are tuned to, the monsters inside his mother and his teachers and everyone, turning them into dull empty grey drooling slaves.
That night, deep in the forbidden hours, as his eyes trace the colourless floral patterns of his ceiling again, he feels the churning of the insects inside him and he reaches a moment of awakening, a clarity so precise he wonders how it took so long to reach him, because although he may be powerless to stop the monsters of the world, in the field and in his father and in everyone else, he knows he can destroy his own private monster. All he has to do is deprive the bastard of nourishment. If he does not eat, neither does the monster, and the thought of starving them slowly and painfully brings a sick smile to his face, there in his bed, in the middle of the night.
For two days he refuses to eat. His teachers ask him why and he wants to tell them but knows how they will react to stories of monsters living inside people so keeps his mouth shut.
When the school calls home and informs his mother it takes the combined strength of her and the big quiet man, Gwyn, to pin him down and force feed him some mushy peas which he immediately spits back out and screams.
- I’ve got to kill them! You don’t get it!
His mother is already in tears which she tries to stifle long enough to get out a choked response.
- . . . What are you talking about?
- They’re inside me! I have to kill them!
- Kill who? Kill what?
- The monsters! They got dad! They can’t get me too!
The sounds which come from his mother can be likened more to primal screams than to sobs, and it takes Gwyn all night and the next week to calm her down and get her to see that her son needs a doctor.
The doctor shows young Edward Jr. an x-ray of his insides which show no trace of parasitic insect like creatures thriving off his suffering, though this means nothing to him as he knows them too well to have them so easily dismissed, and he knows everyone in his world, including this doctor who claims to know everything but knows very little, to be dull and empty and grey, their eyes unable to see things right in front of them
Edward Jr. sees things no one else sees.
This is his gift and his curse.
The doctor recommends the boy has some counselling which his mother gently tries to bring up on the car drive home but is only met with resounding and disgusted refusal.
That night the young boy packs things into his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack; three pairs of pants, three pairs of socks, a pair of shorts, a pair of tracksuit bottoms, two t shirts, a coat, a notepad, his Gameboy and a set of batteries, all he needs for his life on the road which he is forced to take as no one around him can accept the harsh ugly truths of life he has already come to know.
The boy he once called his brother walks in on him just as he is zipping up his bag, ready to sneak his way to the front door.
Rhys takes one look at the scene and screams for his father.
Young Edward Jr. lunges at him and knocks him to the floor.
The adults come rushing upstairs to find the boys entangled in a violent huddle. They separate them and keep them in locked rooms for the remainder of the night, creating prisoners in what was once a harmonious home, while they hide away downstairs and discuss what they can possibly do, about the disturbing behaviour and about the mounting pile of paper at the kitchen table signalling their financial doom.
In the end, his frayed and distraught mother can only think of one way to convince her boy that there are no creatures devouring him from the inside out.
She takes him to see his father.
He lives now in a one bedroom flat with no windows and no light, with brown sticky carpets, with a small black and white TV, with a smell of piss and despair.
Young Edward Jr., who was excited to the point of having almost forgotten the monster and its babies inside him on the long drive, is revolted at the sight of his hero, now visibly smaller, frailer, greyer, buried in a hole of ash and spilled cans and pizza boxes and magazines with nipples on the front covers and old sticky tissue and misery.
Just like all the other slaves. Dull and empty and grey.
The man tries to pick up his son and place him on his knee, tries to hug and touch and kiss him, but his affection only causes uncomfortable squirms in the boy who has spent much of his nascent life waiting for this exact moment.
His mother stares at the picture, father and son, the two loves of her life, with a sadness so profound it disables her from speaking for quite some time, but then, as the boy wriggles his way free of his father’s grasp and back onto the filthy carpeted floor and over to his mother, she manages to find the words to ask the question she came here to ask.
She tells the man to assure his boy, their boy, that there is no such thing as monsters and he needs to eat and everything is going to be okay. The man pretends not to hear and coaxes the shy boy back over to his knee to sit and talk for a while. The boy stays close to his mother and the safety of her hand. The man gets up and goes to the fridge and opens a can of something that to Edward Jr. smells like underpants washed in sick and hung out to dry in the baking sun, swigs half of the contents inside, belches and falls back to his chair with a resignation that this spot is as far as he is going to make it now, for the rest of his life, that this dark little room covered in dust and insects and mould is his waiting room, because all he has left to do is wait, wait until the pain stops resurfacing after every time it is washed down, wait until the liquid drowns and kills him, wait until it is over.
His mother bends down and whispers in Edward Jr.’s ear, asks him the simple question of what he wants to do which is answered immediately: the boy wants to go home.
On the drive home they stop for a Happy Meal which the boy devours rapidly, without mercy, thought or breath. His mother never thought she would be so delighted to see him eating such garbage. 
Neither of them speaks for the whole journey because there is nothing which needs to be said.
The boy has seen enough.
He forgets about the monster for a little while at least, his overactive imagination moves onto something else, as life goes, just a series of things he will eventually forget and wonder how they could ever have meant so much to him.
 
*
 
Plates are slapped down on tables and met with groans. Economy baked beans and mushy fish fingers. Value beef burgers and peas. Halves of frozen tomato and cheese smart price pizzas. Plastic sausages and instant noodles. Ketchup sandwiches. Glasses of lukewarm tap water and absolutely no seconds or desserts.
Despite the fact that the adults of the house both get up when it is dark and go to work all day and come home when it is dark again and do just about nothing else besides work or think about work or worry about how working is killing them, while their boys grow up secretly vowing to themselves to never turn out to be slaves like them, they find themselves, like countless others, struggling to come up with the seemingly arbitrary sums of money printed on the letters sent to their house in intimidating brown envelopes marked urgent or very urgent or open this immediately or suffer unspeakable consequences, struggling to fill the cupboards and replace the broken or outgrown shoes of their boys who seemed to getting taller and larger by the minute, struggling to mend the holes in their clothes which in turn prompts the other boys in their ruthless school playground to refer them as the skippy twat brothers, which in turn causes Edward Jr. to throw one to the floor and strangle him until his air cuts off and his eyes close and his skin turns a strange colour and he has to be dragged off by teachers and sent to the isolation room for the rest of the week and have long terribly boring conversations with professional strangers who call him sport and champ and young man and do not realise that the boy sees right through them the same way he sees through everyone and their translucent meaningless words, struggling to find even a single moment of relief from the choking fear that any minute the whole thing will come crashing down and they will end up on the streets.
Things are made worse one night when Rhys decides to go for a walk and does not come back.
He leaves the house at seven pm and tells his father he is only going to the end of the lane. When an hour passes and he still has not returned, the big quiet man, who is stressed enough, expecting a package with a big mean word beginning with R on it any day now, delivered from his boss at the factory where the profit margins could stand to look a little more impressive to the shareholders, gets in his car and drives around the village and the surrounding valley villages.
He returns home in tears and shakily dials for the police who ask for a description and last known whereabouts and assure him they will do everything in their power to find the young boy.
Young Edward Jr. is sent to his room where he slams the door behind him and listens in to the increasingly short and tense snaps coming from the grownups below, the grownups who try to remain calm and in charge and sure of themselves but are quietly falling apart inside.
The police find nothing and report this information to Gwyn, the big quiet man, every time he calls and asks for information which is at least twice an hour until the sun rises.
Sometime in the morning, as Gwyn flits from consciousness to an ethereal sleep in which he is convinced he is awake and the walls are just dribbling and changing colours around him and this is how they always are and always have been, Rhys casually walks in through the front door. His clothes are covered in mud and ripped at the knees. His father grabs him by the scruff of the neck and screams at him. The boy is quizzed on his whereabouts for the entire night and cannot account for anything, even fails to see what all the drama is about. He politely asks to be allowed to bed where he can sleep, and his father has no choice but to let him go and fall back on the sofa and pass out himself.
He misses work that morning which gives his boss the ammunition to send that magic R word in the post, ammunition he did not really need as he was preparing to send it anyway but now has the choice easily made for him. It arrives in the post and does not even need to be opened. The big quiet man knows what lies inside the envelope. It is the end of everything.
The boys find their respective parents sat at the dinner table that night. Both of them are quiet and calm, which tells them in a deeper way that something is wrong than if they were screaming and throttling each other.
Young Edward Jr. sees his mother’s red eyes which tells him all he needs to know. He looks for someone to blame but is now just starting to grasp that no one is responsible, for him, for them, for anyone.
Everyone is clinging on, desperate and clueless and doomed.
Gwyn, the big quiet man, packs bags for himself and his son. They find a small flat in a town the other side of the valley. Young Edward Jr. at least gets what he wanted even if now he does not know how it feels.
He and his mother are alone again.
 
*
 
To his surprise, the young boy who is looking more and more like a young man misses the obese, unhygienic boy he once called his brother and shared days and nights and seasons with. He expects them to come back one day, the same way he expected his father to return, but more days and nights and seasons and even years pass and they never do.
One day he finds a phone number for Gwyn, the big quiet man, in the phone book, a trick he learned from television, and calls him, but a miserable sounding woman answers who tells him to never call again and slams down the phone and that is the last he ever tries to contact them or anyone.
He waits a long time before he makes anything close to another friend, so long that he finishes his SATS exams in year six and strolls out through the gates of his primary school for the last time, celebrating a false sense of freedom because the summer ends as quickly as it started and he is thrown into big school, which to him is aptly named as everything about it is exactly that, big, the hall, the yard, the classrooms, the scowling teachers, the oversized bearded teens who prowl the corridors with menace looking for anyone foolish enough to not give them a wide enough berth and punish them with flicks of elastic bands or charlies or rugby tackles, who wear diamonds in their ears and have blonde slim shady hair, girls who smell like chemical fruit with sinister high heel shoes that are more like weapons than footwear, whose very presence makes the young Edward Jr. feel small and frightened and dumb.
Now he has to walk from class to class carrying his belongings on his back instead of staying in the comfort of a single chair for the whole day while the teachers came on a conveyor belt to him. In some ways it is like something from the American television he has grown up with, gossiping teens with piercings and skateboards and lockers and cigarettes, only less shiny and perfect, more brutish and ugly.
He moves into year nine before he makes a single friend.
Her name is Rebecca West, a boyish girl with dirty, crispy ginger hair, a freckled face and cheap school shoes, who the boys in school treat as diseased, pushing each other into her and mocking each other for having come into physical contact with her, branding each other infected, diagnosed with a highly disgusting and highly contagious case of West germs, which no doctor in the civilised world can cure, while the girls were less thuggish but no less cruel in their treatment of her, keeping a radius of several feet around her in the gymnasium changing rooms, putting their bags on empty stools in the canteen when they saw her approaching, talking loudly about how she is a mutant from the sewers.
It all starts one morning at the bus stop in his bucolic village where he learns that lots of other children live whom he never knew existed. One of them is a cocky kid named Ashley Watkins, who, despite being a year younger than Edward, is not terrified of and overwhelmed by the process of growing up the way he is supposed to be, and spends the morning wait for the bus persistently ridiculing the short length of Edward’s school trousers, until Edward snaps and pushes him to the ground.
The appalled gasps from the other children let Edward know he has just made a mistake.
The bus arrives and they get on and start the plodding journey to the big mean gates of school. Word soon spreads to Ashley’s cousin, Craig, a rough kid with an eyebrow piercing from the year above Edward.
Craig gets off the bus in the school car park and waits for Edward. When he finds him, he lands a punch in his gut and throws him to the floor, spits on him and walks away.
Edward refuses to speak all day. His teachers ask him what happened and he simply shakes his head or scribbles on a piece of paper the word “no.”
He thinks he has served his punishment but this is only the beginning. Craig and his friends establish the casual routine of torturing the young boy every morning during their commute, while young Ashley sits with them baring the fiendish grin of someone who knows they are well protected.
- Did you hear his mum tried to kill herself?
- Oh aye?
- Threw herself in front of a train. Train was late. Everyone was pissed off. Had her name taken and everything.
- Genuine?
- Fuck aye, my uncle’s a rail guard. Told me. Ini? Edward? You scruffy twat. Why did she try to kill herself? Eh? Edward? Don’t ignore me you little prick, why did your mum try to off herself? Is it ‘cos she has to live with you? Isi? Eddie boy? Why’d she do it?
Edward Jr. spins around, at first to Craig’s surprise and then to his amusement.
- She didn’t try to kill herself.
- Yeah she did boy.
- Shut up.
- Pauline Williams.
Edward Jr.’s entire body turns cold.
- Jumped in front of a train she did, daft bitch, but missed. How dumb do you have to be?
The boys laugh like predators and Edward Jr. turns around again, digs his fingernails into the seat until his knuckles turn white. There is no way it can be true. He is certain of that. He knows his mother is unhappy but she is not launching herself in front of moving trains. He never even brings it up with his mother as he knows it is too absurd to even think about.
He does his best to forget about it but his gang of oppressors ridicule him and christen him with a new nickname: Choo-Choo.
They chant it at him one morning relentlessly until something pops inside him and causes him to scream at them with rage, which brings the whole bus full of children to its knees with laughter. He wants to shrink and shrivel up into a tiny ball and go to sleep for a long, long time. But his mind ticks on and so do the awful days.
The nickname grows popularity. An entire movement is sparked. Like insects the schoolchildren march together. Strangers from all the year groups latch onto the seemingly random moniker, the hooting sound, the pulling of an invisible chord, and the hilariously furious reaction it prompts from a boy no one has noticed before. They walk up to him in the corridor and scream it in his face. Girls sing it to him with wicked lipstick smiles. There are incidents of entire classes chanting it at him, and even Mr. Jenkins, the chemistry teacher who is secretly gay but makes jokes about boobs with the rugby boys to gain their approval, puts an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine on his overhead projector to uncontrollable whoops and cheers from the audience.
It evolves into a game played by the entire school, all twelve hundred animal adolescents of the valleys, with the sole objective being to get the biggest reaction possible out of the innocuous little boy with the untapped wellspring of anger inside.
A record is set by a year seven boy who throws a full can of coke at Edward Jr.’s head before screaming - Choo-Choo! - and running away full of giggles. Edward Jr. tries to chase him but has no chance, all he can do is gasp for air and watch his smiling attacker saunter away, so he takes out his white boiling rage on his own belongings; throwing his bag onto the floor and destroying his schoolbooks and pencils. A teacher catches him in the act and puts him in the isolation room, where he tries to coax an explanation out of him but receives only stern silence.
He becomes a cult icon in the school, infamous, a reluctant celebrity, known to all who are eager to go through the rite of passage, to scream at the strange boy who always gives chase and never even comes close to catching anyone, the perfect victim.
At breaktime, lunchtime, in the corridors between classes, every moment is another chance to play the game, just another schoolground fad. And every time, young Edward Jr. folds and crumbles and gives into his exploding rage. He can hardly even explain the abandoned anger himself when quizzed about it by the support workers who tilt their heads sympathetically at him and make laughable attempts at trying to communicate with him on his level, though he suspects it has been waiting dormant inside him all along, bred by those sickly insect creatures that crawl around inside him, which give him stomach-aches, make him doubt himself and doubt everything, make him scared of the night time, the private friends he has always known are real despite his mother’s best efforts to convince him they are only alive in his head.
It reaches its climax one day in the lunch queue, when a dumb faced kid named Jordan Day in year eight, with spots, round glasses and an impish circle of friends, gets brave and eager to join in the fun, to establish himself as bold and daring and elevate his playground rank to new heights.
He tiptoes up to Edward Jr. but gets a little too close.
He cups his hands over his mouth and shouts the magic words – Choo-Choo! – but he does not count on William’s heightened state of alertness, agitation and bare aggression. The boy dashes away but only makes it two steps before Edward shoots out an arm, grabs him by the throat, squeezes until his forefinger and thumb meet, and throws him to the floor, off which his head smacks and bounces back up, creating a thwacking sound loud and clear enough to halt the many conversations going on all around them.
The boy does not move for exactly one minute and fourteen seconds apart from a spasm in his lower leg. Crowds gather round with hand covered mouths. The boy’s friends kneel beside him and try to slap him into revival. The circus turns to Edward Jr. and berates him, scalds him and punishes him for manhandling a defenceless year eight boy half his size, and he cannot take it, a ringing starts in his ears and all he sees is a bright light with a hot centre. He is the victim, not the assailant, brought to near insanity by the hive consciousness of abuse, the masses who gang together to gawp at public torture, who collectively presume his worthlessness and comicalness.
He screams and cries and throws his fist into the wall with rising force and fury until the spectators back away, both disturbed and amused by the mental breakdown happening right in front of them, until a teacher stumbles onto the gruesome scene and shouts things in anger at the barbarism of youth and drags Edward and his bleeding knuckles away from the cracks in the concrete wall.
The situation is serious, as is explained to his parents over the phone.
Both of them.
The most miserable family reunion imaginable is staged in the office of the school social worker who smokes ninety cigarettes a day just to break even.
He looks back and forth between Edward Jr.’s parents and says his piece, speaks of his concern for Edward Jr.’s wellbeing and those in danger of him.
His father, who is less than pleased at being dragged across the border for a grilling on his failures as a parent, finds the word hyperbolic and speaks up.
- Danger? Are you serious?
- The boy was sent to hospital. Concussion. His parents could quite rightfully choose to press charges, you know, but, well, by some miracle, they’re not. Luckily the boy is showing no signs of brain damage. It could be much worse.  
- The little shit provoked him. Everyone knows that.
Edward Jr. looks at his father and does not recognise the man, the man whose knee he once sat on and listened to fables of sleeping giants and peacekeepers, the man whose hair is now the colour of ash, whose nose is oversized and red, whose eyes are wide open and panicked at all times.
- But –
- I don’t’ see the point in making a big deal out of it. The kid was asking for it.
- I . . . Well . . . I can’t say that excuses the excessive reaction. The violent reaction. Yes, Edward was provoked, by name calling, but that doesn’t justify violence. That’s the way I see it, and the way others will see it too, I’m sure of that. He needs to control his anger. Take a look at your son’s knuckles again, if you would, Mr. Williams.
Edward Jr. tries to hide his hand away but everyone in the room and all those present in the lunch queue have already seen his raw mangled knuckles, the red stains on the wall, the unconscious child who is now in hospital and being temporarily fed through a straw.
The social worker coughs something up, then swallows it, winces and speaks again.
- . . . The wall will need repairing . . . That’s just the start of it . . . We need to, and most importantly Edward needs to, understand and appreciate the gravity of what has happened. Now the school has already expressed an enormous gratitude to the boy’s parents for not taking further action, which, as I say, would be expected. Having said that, the last thing I wanted to do with this meeting is cast further blame and punishment on Edward here. He knows what has happened. What we need to do now, is talk about it why it happened –
- Oh, come on. Why? Why do we need to do that? Why do we always have to talk about why? What will that achieve?
Edward Sr. is clearly angered by this and throws his hand up in the air dramatically before bringing it back down with a slap.
- . . . Like I said, Mr. Williams, we need to come to terms with the gravity of the incident.
Edward Sr. turns to look at his son who doggedly keeps his eyes fixed on the floor. He looks up once but only sees a poster on the wall, covered in little blob cartoon characters with various caricature-like facial expressions and the bubbled question – which blob do you feel like today?
His father grabs him by the shoulder.
- What’s wrong with you? . . . Kids call each other names. You can’t go around beating the shit out of people, especially not kids half your damned size! What’s the matter with you mun?
Edward Jr. has nothing to say and neither does his mother who watches her painted fingernails overlapping each other.
- . . . Now, you see, I think asking judgemental, provocative questions like these can do us no good, Mr. Williams. Edward knows what he did. Obviously he is upset. This is not the reaction of –
- What’s he got to be upset about?
- Why don’t you ask him yourself?
- We’ve tried.
All eyes land on Edward Jr. who keeps his head down. The social worker’s eyes suggest that now is his chance to prove his father and everyone wrong and speak his mind. The young man knows this is a chance to let it all out but he prefers to watch it slip away, as his mind is too dark to be spoken of, so he holds it in tight and waits for the acidic ball to dissolve, something which he is finding he is hereditarily adept at.
- . . . Jesus . . . I got called names in school, come on, everyone did. I didn’t strangle anybody or smash their heads off the damned floor!
Edward Sr. throws his arm in the air again. The social worker does his best to keep his own at his desk.
- Edward is at an age where hormones kick in and wreak havoc. Some have more difficulty than others in dealing with the sudden onset of emotions. I’m sure you both remember what that was like. Do you think Edward’s home is the kind of environment that can support this transitional stage?
- Oh, okay, yeah, it’s our fault, right, of course. Glad you got that out of your system, you’ve clearly been dying to say it.
- I . . . I didn’t suggest that, now, if we go down an antagonistic road –
- So what are you suggesting?
- I asked a simple question. I mean, all I’m saying is that something isn’t right for Edward, somewhere, something is wrong, wouldn’t you agree that’s clear?
- Yes! He was being bullied! You’re the bloody ones who told us that!
- Mr Wil –
- That solves your little psychic mystery doesn’t it? Why did he go toxic and hit the boy? Because they called him names. There you go.
- Please, Mr –
- Look, mate, I know you’re just at work right now so you don’t actually care about any of this, but he’s my son. I know him.
- That’s not true. I do care. It’s my job to care.
- You know that phrase is a paradox, right? Will you be up all night? Losing sleep over this?
The social worker exhales and watches the frantic man across from him closely, trying his best to remember passages from the books he read in his training about how to deal with defensive, obtuse people.
Edward Sr. lets out a long sigh, ready to go home.
- What’s his punishment?
- . . . Mr. Williams . . .
- Come on, let’s get this over with.
- . . . He will obviously have to be suspended from school.
- How long?
- Ten days.
- That’s it?
- That’s quite severe.
- Right.
- Now, please, Mr –
- You know what? His mother will punish him at home, to an extent we both see fit, right?
Edward Sr. turns to his ex-wife who has grown almost entirely absent from the room. She has to fetch herself from her thoughts which were mostly questions about how things have reached this point. She nods her head, unaware of what she is responding to.
- That will be all then, pleasure chatting with you.
The social worker watches Edward Jr., who keeps his eyes downward, holding everything back, while his parents get up out of their seats and head for the door.
He does not immediately follow.
The social worker speaks.
- Edward, when you come back to school, you should come talk to me. I’ll be here.
Edward Jr. then sharply gets up and follows his parents out of the door, out of the school and home, sickened by the social worker and everyone around him.
He comes back to school after ten days of staring at the colourless floral patterns of his bedroom ceiling and finds himself among the exiled, which leads him to Rebecca West, who spends all her time in the indoor club, the safe haven classroom for outsiders, where she scribbles dark cartoons in her sketch pad and speaks to no one.
She is accustomed to her status as a social freak, an experienced veteran, whereas Edward Jr. is a novice. In Rebecca he finds a mentor, an ally, a spirit similarly sick of living. They find comfort in each other. They spend lunchtimes together in a perfect spot in the bushes behind the arts faculty where no one can find them and they can pass the time talking, joking, storytelling.
Or sometimes, if they feel like it, they don’t talk at all and simply hold hands.
To the populace, she may be grotesque, but to Edward, Rebecca West is more real than the blurred cartoon characters of the playground and the streets all around them, the dull empty grey slaves, the carbon copied plastic people who walk around as if they are happy and have it all figured out but inside are screaming and terrified, most of all about what others might think of them.
After a few weeks, Choo-Choo, the chases, the fights, the whole phenomenon, all fades away, and when someone smears the walls of the girls’ toilets in faeces, the schoolyard’s attention is diverted, in that unspectacular way that life plods on, and Edward Jr. goes back to being ignored, which is all he has ever wanted.
 
*
Year nine becomes year ten and the first signs of sideburns appear on his innocent cheeks, cloaking and reddening them, similar hairs appear in other areas which he does not understand but knows they must remain a dark secret.
One easy May day, when the exams are finished and the term trundles to a close so the teachers fill up the surplus classes with quizzes and movies and free chat times, Edward Jr. and his new best friend go on an adventure, one which starts with the legendary rumour they heard during their first days at the school, a rumour which most have heard but have dismissed, the rumour of the Wall of Names.
The Wall is hidden somewhere between the second and third floors of the school building, only accessible by entering the lift, pressing the emergency stop button and wrenching the doors open manually. Edward Jr. has always been eager to find out the truth about the wall but has been held back by his fear of getting caught, but with Rebecca by his side, he finds that fear is less daunting than it seems.
Mr. Johns, their geography teacher with a high pitched nasal voice who has been caught staring down the unbuttoned polo shirts of year eleven girls on more than one occasion, sends the two of them on a photocopying errand during a class in which they are watching the movie Volcano for the seventeenth time without even the pretence of being educated or even entertained, conversing in small, sinister clusters around the room.
This is their chance for adventure.
Edward Jr. asks his best friend if she wants to finally look for the Wall of Names and his best friend says yes.
They get in the lift on floor one and press the button for floor three, staring at the electronic display, waiting for one to become two, at which point their hands link as they slam them down on the stop button and rip open the doors and behold the sight, the true sight, the Wall, in its glory, decorated in names, surnames, nicknames, dates, swearwords, smiley faces, penises, swastikas, joints, phone numbers with offers of blowjobs, cartoons of teachers declaring their sexuality and innate racism through speech bubbles.
They hold their hands together and stare at the wall in amazement.
Then Rebecca notices that in their giggling excitement neither of them ever thought to bring a pen. They are looking at history and they have no weapon with which to leave their mark. The chance to have their names engraved in the structure of the building itself for the rest of time is passing them by as they stand with their mouths held open.
Rebecca suggests going back to Mr. John’s classroom to get a felt pen and claiming a malfunction of the photocopying machine which they need to return to fix and trusting that he will buy it because he is an old pervert who puts on mediocre 90s films to kill time for a living.
Edward Jr. agrees.
They pull the doors closed once more and press the button for floor one and nothing happens. The stillness is disturbing. They press the button again and get only a perfect nothing, they press it again and again and again and gradually are forced to come to terms with the fact that they are stuck which makes them slowly turn to look at each other with the whites of their eyeballs and teeth on show.
The first thing Edward Jr. does is look for someone to blame, his father, his mother, his teachers, the government, society, god, but no one is responsible for him, he is here, was planted here without his consultation, and now he has to figure out how to make it to death all by himself.
He is trapped in more ways than one.
He grabs at his hair and spins around in circles. Rebecca tells him to calm down and this makes it worse, because hearing those words out loud, the words that are only used in decidedly uncalm, dangerous situations, confirms to Edward Jr. that he is in trouble and all alone.
She grabs him by the shoulders and steadies him by looking him right in his hazel eye.
- What do we do? The alarm?
- . . . We’ll get in trouble. They’ll find the wall.
- You got a better idea?
- . . . Uh . . .
Rebecca sounds the alarm.
The lift shudders and jerks into life and she shoves her hand into his again, he feels a surge of warmth and strength coming from inside, but it is extinguished as soon as the vehicle they are trapped in stutters and halts once more, and the lights go out.
Her fingers squeeze around his, both sets of knuckles turn white.
Rebecca whispers something but Edward Jr. does not hear it.
She presses the alarm again.
The metal box enclosing them plods another metre or so downwards in a fit, and then they hear a teacher’s voice from outside the door.
- Who’s in there?
The best friends look for each other’s eyes in the darkness. Their mouths say nothing.
- Are you stuck?
They say nothing. While the teacher calls for back-up and summons a team of stern faced educators concerned with health and safety and bad press stories of children caught in and decapitated by ill-maintained school facilities and neglect and tribunals and swarms of furious protesting parents lining up outside the offices with picket signs showing graphic images of dead children with rhetorical captions, they say nothing, while they wait for three hours until the fire brigade shows up and stand around asking questions and scratching their heads, they say nothing, when a team of them disable the lift and crowbar open the doors and find them in there with grins on their faces and pull them out by their arms, they say nothing, when they are shoved and sat down in the headteacher’s office and asked question after question about what they were doing and why and make irate phone calls to the lift company, they say nothing, while their parents come to bring them home, they say nothing, they say nothing to anyone about the secret Wall and the legacy of yesterday’s generations, about the electric tension they shared, the fear and excitement, the closeness that an emergency brings, they keep it all in, hold it tight, as to speak about it will let it out into the air where it will fade and disappear and lose all its weight.
And for their silence they get a day off school due to potential perceived “trauma” which even Edward Jr., the reckless irresponsible naïve teenager, knows can be translated to “please don’t make a fuss and let’s keep this quiet”.
Win-win-win.
They use their free Thursday for another adventure.
Edward Jr. tells Rebecca, like he has never told anyone before, about the stories his father told him as a child, in their back garden, those stories about the sleeping beasts and their raging war and the peacekeeper’s house and the wonder he felt at those moments, a wonder which he has never been able to replace.
Rebecca snorts and dismisses it as childish drivel and Edward Jr. agrees but silently still clings onto some hope that the magic he felt on those long lazy afternoons on his father’s knee still exists, that that home they made and shared together can still be returned to someday.
They decide to climb the mountain and see for themselves who lives in that old house at the top which Edward Jr. has stared at from his bedroom window for a large portion of his young life.
They meet at the old tram road near Edward Jr.’s house, both revelling in the excitement of seeing each other and seeing what the day looks like free from the gates and walls of schools when all the other fools are still trapped inside.
This kind of freedom has never existed before.
They go to the River Tawe which runs along the foot of the mountain and cross the bridge to the tarmacked cycle path where more walking takes them to the crumbling overgrown footpath at the sleeping beast’s base, a semi-discernible route which, if they can manage to stick to it and not veer off into the unknown nettle bushes and hidden swamp puddles, will lead them most of the way to the summit.
The walk is steep and difficult but neither of them gets tired.
They talk the whole way, about the future which is so far away it is not even real, about their classmates and the failures they will inevitably become, about their private dreams and fears and hopes.
Rebecca tells him how she only mocked the idea of him and his father living in daydreams together because she is envious of him and the mythical stories he got to live in as a child, because her father has never shown up, not once, not even for Sunday dinner, especially not for long lazy afternoons of make believe, and her mother has never recovered from the day where the man she loved went for a long walk, the longest walk in history, and has used various things as coping mechanisms like cigarettes and food and medicine, and none have worked at all, not even slightly, and no wonder her brother has not attended school in over a year because he has no one around to grab him and throttle him and tell him he is throwing it all away and the only reason she does attend school is for some relief from the bleakness of her and her family’s cracked council house.
After two hours that is really more like five whooshing minutes they reach the waterfall, stop, gaze at its crystalline spears of glacial water, screaming things into the void created by the gushing cacophony.
They stop to eat the packed lunch Edward Jr.’s mother insisted they bring; ham sandwiches and bananas and crisps, then head on, until they reach the abandoned coalmine, which for Edward Jr. is something of an historic achievement, as this marks the furthest up the mountain he has ever gone; his previous expeditions with Rhys all failed after the boy he used to call his brother would complain of fatigue and hunger and boredom and anything else and would demand they return, while his solo attempts only led to him getting scared of being lost and trapped on the side of the mountain in the dark until wolves found and snacked on him, or even more afraid of reaching the peak and having no one to share it with, going through the unique pain of witnessing beauty alone, but here with Rebecca by his side to talk to and listen to and share everything with, he knows this time he has everything he needs to make it as far as he wants to go.
They look around the place, at the dumped and rusted trucks, at the old portable office cabins, still equipped with chairs and phones and notepads and stationary and coffee cups, now all covered in dust and cobwebs and insects and decay, as if something terrible happened which caused the whole operation to shut down and evacuate urgently, something like the death of a miner, or the earthly stirring of the sleeping beast starting to open one eye.
They find a sledgehammer and throw it through one the windows and watch it smash to pieces and laugh at their power and how there is no one, no one around for miles and years, to hold them back.
They find a deep cavernous hole dug into the side of the mountain which goes so deep and so far they cannot even begin to see or comprehend the end, they shout obscenities into it and listen to the ringing echoes around the trees, they find rocks and launch them down to hear the bouncing and skittering, all the way down to an underworld far away.
Edward Jr. sees his best friend, the tomboy who everyone else in their town calls hideous and diseased, and who until now he has thought of like a sister, transformed into an uninhibited, strawberry glowing beauty, a force of nature, a photograph, capable of stirring feelings in him he is neither used to or prepared for, feelings which he instinctively wants to hide, which are inherently mischievous and dirty and exciting beyond anything that has come before.
They march onward.
As an embarrassed dusk sets in, they emerge from a dense thickening of trees and see it and as they do music starts playing in Edward Jr.’s fingertips, which unknowingly reach for and grab Rebecca’s, dovetailing them, and together they race for it, the peacekeeper’s house, right there in front of them, somehow both smaller and bigger than it seemed from down there on the ground, shouting to whomever awaits them inside that they do not have to be alone anymore because they have been found.
He has made it. After all these years, his whole little life, he has made it. He wonders where his father is right now and wishes he were here to see his boy, the mountain conqueror, on top of the whole world, about to shake hands with the peacekeeper, his old friend, but what he does not know is that at this exact moment his father is scared and confused in the back of a van with blinking lights and loud sirens, after a series of incidents in which his memory failed him, the most recent event revolving around frozen fish fingers left in the oven for two hours before catching fire, fire which spread to the rest of the flat, filling it with smoke, causing the confused old man to pass out in front of the television with a Kestrel in his hand, causing the neighbours to shriek and call the emergency services and have his limp body rescued from the melting picture.
They stop when they see that the house, the house young Edward Jr. has spent so many hours staring up at, is not a house at all.
It is a two-dimensional shape, a single wall, one side of a house of which all walls but one have crumbled and turned to rubble, to be eaten up by the earth.
No peacekeeper lives here, only thorns and birds and moles and insects.
Edward Jr. falls to the floor, landing on his backside, where Rebecca joins him, aware that there is nothing for her to say in this moment.
They simply stare at the derelict building which falsely served the foundation of the boy’s childhood dreams.
Although he always quietly knew the story was a fairy tale, to see they grey stone reality in front of him like this still stings in a way more profound than his young mind is ready for.
He wishes he never climbed the mountain, never found the house, he wishes he could have just left it as it was, an untouched, unviolated memory.
His home has been taken away from it. It was never even really there.
In the darkness, they tentatively feel their way along the path, back down to the normal world where they should have stayed all along.
 
*
 
He can tell by his mother’s stillness and the fresh redness around her eyes that what she wants to tell him is serious.
- Your father . . .
She does not need to say much else.
At first he refuses to go. He sits down on the carpet with his arms folded and shakes his head over and over. His mother reminds him that he is old enough now to understand that sometimes mums and dads make mistakes too, make terrible, lifelong, irreversible mistakes, and that he should get up off the dirty floor and stop being a baby, and also sorry, overwhelming, excruciating amounts of sorry, for blindly putting him on this earth without ever asking if he consents to it, for making him and dumping him in his consciousness which will always exist within the tiny frame of his skull no matter where he travels to or what he sees, for passing on all of her and his father’s terminally flawed and insecure and incurable genes onto him and watching him turn into the same mess as everyone else.
He still tries to argue the futility of visiting while listening to the click of the seatbelt in his passenger’s seat and then before he knows how he is waking up in the car park of a hospital somewhere in England.
As they timidly walk towards the entrance Edward Jr.’s hand reaches out for his mother’s like it has not since he was a little boy, something he is growing distinctly aware he no longer is.
He stares as they walk by an old man with a tube in his face shakily smoking a cigarette by the entrance. The old man stares back then coughs something large up in his throat.
His mother leads him through bright sterile corridors where dead looking people are wheeled passed them until they reach the ward where his father is strapped to a bed with his head shaved and his eyes half open.
Edward Jr. does not recognise the man and the man does not recognise him.
A doctor or at least a man in a doctor’s uniform talks to his mother in a quiet voice, the kind of voice his teacher’s use when they’re passed screaming, the kind of quiet that signals an oncoming storm.
Edward Jr. stares at the floor and tries not to listen but catches phrases like “cerebral atrophy” and “symptoms in line with Wernicke’s” and “really remarkable at this age” and “treatable but no not curable”.
At some point during the hushed, sombre interview, his father opens his eyes fully and lands them on Edward Jr., who looks up from the floor at his father and there they are again, the two boys and men, together.
Edward Jr. feels the urge to shout at him and ask him why he lied about the peacekeeper’s house and why he lied about everything, but just as he opens his mouth he sees in his father’s eyes that his father is not there anymore, only this wasted old body is.
He looks down at the floor again and chews on his sleeve until his mother and the quiet doctor finish their sorrowful dialogue and it is time to get out of there, to say goodbye to his father who has already been gone a long time, to go back to Wales, to his home, which may not be there when they return.
 
*
 
Assemblies full of teachers who hate their jobs preaching at children the importance of career conscientiousness reach a close, and the penultimate summer of not so young Edward Jr.’s school life arrives.
He meets Rebecca’s older brother, Vinnie, and is floored; the sixteen year old who wears necklaces and rings and smokes cigarettes and spits and swears and does not care one little bit about what others think of him, which Edward Jr. is slowly learning is the most precious trait a person can possess, far above intelligence or empathy or determination or the other nouns his teachers throw at him when they tried and failed to explain what being successful means.
It will take Edward Jr. a long time to learn that being successful is being happy and so few people are able to make that connection and that is why the whole world is running around on fire screaming and naked and crying and looking for someone to blame.
To the young boy whose role model now lies dribbling in a dark bed, Vinnie West is something like a god.
Vinnie scares away the other boys of the village, the mean apes who seek Rebecca out to throw stones at her, call her a pig and grunt at her, cough up brown phlegm and spit at her, make sweeping public accusations of each other’s secret affection for her which are met with jeers and cries of denial, and if they seek her out and find Edward Jr. with her, which they invariably do as these days they are almost inseparable, they aim their blows at him too, singling out his haircut and shoes and anything else they can find, the older ones remember the days of Choo-Choo and do their utmost to bring back the once so popular craze, and although he feels the familiar little twinging and gnawing of those insects and the fury they are capable of creating in him, he mostly keeps it together, because he knows, like Rebecca knows, that her brother will come and lay waste to anyone who messes with his sister, his sister who he treats far worse than anyone but does so with the unique privilege only enjoyed by the equally cruel and protective older brother.
Vinnie knows all the secrets of their rustic little village in the Welsh mountains, and one Saturday afternoon brimming with spontaneity and promise, exactly one week before Edward Jr. will become fifteen years old, he shares his most prized one: the old plastic factory.
The three trailblazers squeeze onto Vinnie’s bicycle and speed together out of the village and down the long stretching hills, zipping past the trees and fields and scattered houses, the smile on Edward Jr.’s face growing as the wind rockets through his ears and he feels a sense of the possibilities life can offer to those free enough to take them.
Their journey ends and Vinnie’s brakes screech as they pull up outside.
The old factory is derelict and barely standing, the smashed windows and rusty frames just about hold up crumbling walls and hollows doors, the floor covered in rubble and filth.
No one knows why or how the thing has not yet been knocked down and no one bothers to ask. The wasteland of economic opportunity becomes the playground for the deviant and disillusioned.
Vinnie leads them through a jagged hole in the rusty perimeter-surrounding fence. Edward Jr. hears the quiet squelches of those insects of anxiety but holds his breath and pushes them down, puts his faith in Vinnie, his protector and saviour, and steps through the fence.
They enter the building through a hole in the back of the building that once was a door. The first place they see inside looks like it used to be a canteen; tables and chairs, fragments of plates and cutlery, the remains of a kitchen and serving area, an empty vending machine, the dining place of past generations of factory workers, whose current state of life Edward Jr. cannot help but wonder about while his jaw hangs wide and he takes it all in. Are they all dead now, or old and full of memories and pain, these are the questions he silently asks himself as he tiptoes his way through the detritus, the others in front.
They make their way out of the old canteen and through a door at the rear.
They walk into a desolate, unsettlingly silent room, a room that gradually reveals itself to be more like an arena, a giant cavernous hall with an area so vast and a ceiling so high that they can hardly see where either ends.
Rebecca holds in a gasp as her eyes look upward and all around, she looks to her friend beside her, who feels that music in his fingertips again.
The friends step forward, finding around their feet scraps of metal, glass, card, plastic, waste.
Edward Jr. is in awe of the place.
Inside he feels stirs, but not the stirs of those crooked insects, the stirs of something new, something exciting and scary and electric and glowing and soaked, something his old world could not even dream of, his old world which he is sick of, the world of waiting for his father, staring at the colourless floral patterns on his ceiling through the forbidden hours of the night, the dull empty grey people who blurt out the same trite meaningless musical little phrases to try and mask the harshness of existing day after day, all the limitations and pretenders and boredom, he is sick, sick of it all, he wants more, more than anyone in his entire life will ever be able to give him.
The trailblazers walk around the room in their own directions, at their own paces, discovering the treasures around their feet: beer bottles, pairs of gloves, smashed up pairs of glasses, stationary, clipboards, shoelaces, cigarette packets and ends, lighters, dirty tissues, cardboard boxes, socks, shoes, hats, gloves, used condoms, needles, doll’s heads.
Edward Jr. stops and looks up at the frightening ceiling, at the black defunct industrial fans hanging from the rafters waiting to fall at any minute, at the far edges of the room, along one of which he sees a set of double doors, the most curious, inviting sight there is, and he feels a sudden undeniable urge to open those doors and see what is on the other side, an urge that grows until his knees shake and he laughs and runs around.
He shouts into the big empty room which tells too many stories to comprehend all at once.
- This place is amazing!
Vinnie picks up an old analogue radio and launches it to the floor, watches it smash into a million pieces, Rebecca jumps and screams and laughs at her own echo.
- Told you, didn’t I? Been here loads of times, boy.
- What’s through them big doors?
They walk across the room and reach the double doors.
The young ones stand back and watch as their leader pries them open, their eyes peer in from behind and first can only make out darkness but when the density of the gloom thins, they make out a long corridor, a mystical hallway with more doors and rooms all along it.
Edward Jr. has never seen something so mysterious and full of wonder before, his hand naturally makes it way towards Rebecca’s, but when he looks at her he sees signs of fear on her face. He asks her with his eyes what there could possibly be to fear, in the whole world, now that the three of them are together.
She bites her lip and speaks.
- It’s dark. What if there’s hobos and rapists in there?
Vinnie laughs and calls his sister a pussy and a bitch and a whore and punches her in the arm and struts his way through the corridor.
Edward Jr. follows and again uses his eyes to implore Rebecca to do the same, which after some more hesitation, feeling empowered by her friend, she does.
As he walks along the corridor Edward Jr. tries to picture it as it would have been years ago, lit, alive, breathing, the rooms full of people sitting at desks and talking on telephones and writing in ledgers, chatting and laughing as they passed each other.
Now he can only see the skeletons and ghosts of it all.
Most of the rooms are empty, one has a table and only the legs of an office chair, another a few plastic bags and rubbish.
But in one room, there is something which makes the trailblazers stop cold and stare in, each holding their breath.
A tent.
For a while, they watch it, silent and waiting, waiting for movement or the sound of breathing. Vinnie is the first to brave breaking the quiet, and hisses through his teeth at Edward Jr.
- Go on son, have a look, is it?
- Me? You do it.
- I told you about this place though. You got to look.
Edward Jr. cannot find a way to fault this line of reasoning so steps forward, feeling unlike the version of himself he lives with every day, feeling no fear while in a scary place, feeling new and boundless.
He nears the tent and sees it is full of holes, giving him a clear view of the inside, where he can see a blanket, empty bottles, a lighter, a spoon, a needle. But no people, murderers or demons.
He whispers despite knowing they are alone in here and everywhere.
- Someone was living here, guys, seriously someone was living in this place, by themselves, can you imagine that?  How cool that would be?
- Probably a bum or tramp or hobo or something.
The others move up behind him and inspect the tent for themselves. Vinnie finds an unfinished pack of cigarettes and pulls one out, picks up the lighter from the tent floor and is amazed to see it still works and uses it to light up.
The flame momentarily draws Edward Jr.’s eyes to a sheet of plastic on the floor.
There are words written on it.
 
A spider wanders aimlessly within the warmth of a shadow
Not the regal creature . . . (illegible) cunt!
I am a sinner and . . . (illegible)
Your carnation will rot
We’re all insects and flies. All to blame for ourselves.
Love Paul. 2002
 
Edward Jr. reads the words and has no idea what any of it means but feels certain whatever meaning it has is hugely significant. He shows it to Vinnie who smokes his cigarette and shrugs and spits and he shows it to Rebecca who believes it to be the ramblings of a drug addled mind minutes before suicide.
Years later when the internet becomes widespread he will try to remember those words written on the sheet of plastic in the old factory but they will flutter and circle around the edges of his memory and he will be cursed forever.
Then Vinnie finds it, in the corner of the room, behind the tent, the container with the red label, the clear liquid inside, and he holds it in the air like a trophy, even lets out a shriek of joy.
Edward Jr. has never seen anything like it before and does not understand the joy but is certain of his faith in Vinnie so trusts that whatever is inside this bottle must be good.
- What is it?
- As if! It’s almost full! Who would leave this here?
Vinnie opens the bottle, sniffs it, nods as if assured, then takes a swig.
- What is it?
- Vodka.
The bottle is passed to Rebecca, who takes it without trepidation and drinks, before holding it out to the hand of Edward Jr.
The insects inside him belch, releasing something vile, which bubbles and squelches, floats up into his organs, where it morphs into some winged creature with fangs, dribbling sour venom, nibbling and prodding.
He takes the bottles and drinks.
It is the worst thing he has ever tasted, like poison, like plastic leaves doused in corrosive battery acid, like bottled electric sickness.
He chokes, gags, almost throws the mouthful back up but keeps it in and buries it. His eyes water and his lower lip shakes.
Then from the same toxic hole inside him where those insects lay their eggs, he feels shivers. Bright, tingling fireworks. A furry warmth wrapping itself around him. He feels lighter, stronger, louder, brighter, bigger, more, he feels more, more, he wants more.
The trailblazers drink the whole bottle together, and for the first time Edward Jr. catches glimpses of what life can offer, the happiness waiting for him somewhere if only he can access it, he feels it all burning inside him, all the potential he has been told he has but has never believed in, suddenly it’s there, rich, glowing, screaming to be let out of its box, its box where it’s been kept locked up all this time, but no more, because now he has found something to kill those crawling termites inside him, smother them, drown them, and nothing can stop him now.
Rebecca sees him, her best friend, the broad smile, the magic in his eyes, the life spilling from within him. She decides in this moment that it is just about certain that she loves him and always has and always will.
After the last drop of the life-giving liquid is finished, Vinnie throws up and falls asleep on the floor.
Edward Jr. and Rebecca sway and stumble and hold onto each other, falling into a slow, tender dance, right there on the dirty floor of the old factory, next to the old tent where someone once lived long enough to scribble down their innermost thoughts onto a piece of dirty plastic before switching off the lights forever.
They are both unaware of the boundaries they are crossing, but they know that they love the feeling of each other’s hands on their bodies. They get closer and closer until their mouths are touching and what shines brightest is the burning in their jeans.
They check to see if Vinnie is out cold and he is.
They lie down together. Edward Jr. touches Rebecca and she touches him back. They please each other and hurt each other in ways they never knew were possible.
And then they fall asleep, in the tent, next to the sheet of plastic with the words written on it.
Edward Jr. will wake up tomorrow and not be aware that he is now irreversibly on the way to at last getting his wish: growing up to be exactly like his father.
 

​Bluestone’s 150th Annual Apple-Picking Festival (VT)
2:54pm, parade
 
“I’ve been coming here for 60 years. My husband Jim & I moved here a week before the festival, so we thought it was the best way to meet people. It’s such a small town, so I figured that some sort of big event like this would be fun. Sam and I met Louise here at the orchard. Well, Louise & her late husband Dave, God rest his soul. Louise here dropped her whole basket of apples & I helped her pick them up. So many bruised babies. But Louise here, don’t you remember Louise, Louise said to me, ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll make some pie when I go back. No one can tell the difference.’ & Louise sure did. It turned out that Louise & Dave, God rest his soul, lived down the street from us. She rang our doorbell the next day carrying the best pie I’ve ever tasted in my life. I don’t know how Louise does it, I think it’s butter brushed on the crust or something. She makes three pies every Sept, & every year we fill up three baskets each from the orchard.” – Melanie Parker, 85 yrs.
“This parade is the funnest part! That’s my best friend Angelica up there w/ her older sister! Their mommy spent eight hours making their outfits & putting on all those jewels. It looks so sparkly. I said that she looks pretty. She’s so glittery on that apple float. It only looks nice because it is sunny. I think that the rain & clouds would make it ugly. We practiced her wave so that she’d look like a princess. Like Princess Sophia. It’s her first year doing this. We like playing the apple games over there, but she’s doing the parade. Mommy said that I can be on a float in the next parade. Maybe she can make me an apple outfit or I can look like Tinkerbell. Do you think I look like Tinkerbell? She’s my favorite fairy in the movie.” – Shelby Hicks, 9 yrs.
“I live, like, 45 minutes away. Yeah, I know it seems like a lot to just come for apples. Hell, back home, Mama wouldn’t let us go 30 minutes away to a mall that had the only Claires w/in a 100 miles. Oh, my home? Way down in VA, in a town so small that this feels like New York City to me. I know, that’s crazy. Just like my love with these apples. But they’re so good! Just the freshest apples you’ve ever eaten in your life. That snap & crunch when you bite into the apples is so loud, I love it. Let me tell ya, that’s when you can tell you got a good apple. Each of the kids get their own bucket to take home, so our kitchen is always overflowing w/ apples. I take a bunch to work & everyone in the office loves it. I don’t even need to bake them into desserts or anything, b/c everyone just grabs them. Then for the next few days you just hear those snaps & crunches in the office all day. Music to my ears, let me tell ya.” – Wanda Shelby, 28 yrs.
“I grew up near Chicago, & here you just really feel a strong sense of community. There’s a huge Desi community downtown, but I lived in the suburbs where I was one of the few non-white people in the neighborhood. I loved the community in downtown Chicago, but when we moved I barely had any friends. No one wanted to be around me if it wasn’t for school projects. But here is different. I don’t live in this town, I’m a professor at Middlebury, but whenever I come here I always feel like I’m back in downtown Chicago. Everyone seems to know each other & it seems like some families have been here for generations. I love it. I don’t know, it feels like everyone belongs here. & it’s not just white people here, it’s a whole slew of diverse people that it just makes me feel happy to be around them all. I wish I had festivals like this growing up. I bring my kids here every year, even now when they’re starting to outgrow it, b/c I want them to experience what I didn’t. Even though they are fine at their schools, I want them to come here & feel like everyone at the stalls & the orchard knows their name, that they feel safe & comfortable here. Yeah, you’re right, like a little safe haven. Or something like that.” – Mariam Ahmed, 41 yrs.
“It’s not the same as it was 50, 55 years ago. When I was a kid, they didn’t have the parade. I guess it’s a way to bring more people here. B/c I’m sure people from neighboring towns are coming even though they’re not from here. That’s why it’s so crowded now. What happened to just going to the orchard & picking those apples? At least the apples look & taste the same. You know you’ve found a good one when you can see the shine all the way from up in the tree. I remember my youngest daughter, Sadie, always found the good apples. She doesn’t come anymore. I don’t know, she’s somewhere in the Midwest, in Ohio I think…she doesn’t talk to me anymore. Says she got her own life & is working all the time & doesn’t have time to come visit me. The other kids are the same way, you know, but sometimes they still come with my grandkids for the festival. Not every year, mind you, but just enough so I don’t feel too lonely. My wife got cancer six years ago, so it’s just me at home. I don’t know why Sadie doesn’t care.”  – Jason Crews, 62 yrs.
 “It tires the kids out. We let them run around the orchard, pick the trees they want to pick the apples from, & play the kids games. We make it a whole day for the kids. There’s just this parade, & then we’ll go home. We’ve been here since the orchard opened at 9, so I’m not sure how long we’ll last in this sun here. But the festival always tires them out. They usually go to bed at 8, but w/ the festival they’re out at, like, 6. It’s great for us. One year, though, it rained during the festival, & it was horrible. I mean, the kids had fun. They wore rain boots, but their boots & clothes were covered in mud b/c they jumped in too many puddles. But can you imagine the chaos when we got home? Never again. I told my husband that if he wanted to do that again, then he’d be taking them to this festival, not me.” – Janice Clement, 35 yrs.
“We never get a break from face-painting, so this is nice to relax. I’ve been out here since 10am painting. It’s just me & Jeffrey here, & we’ve been working this stand for 20 years. I went to college at the art school in Burlington & I grew up in this town. The mayor was golf buddies w/ my dad. But yeah, it’s nice. We usually have two long lines filled w/ kids waiting. I’ve done it all – butterflies, zebras, pandas, mermaids, unicorns, cats, dogs, frogs, bees – you name it. I love working w/ the kids & talking to them while I’m painting their faces. They’re usually really nice kids, little chatterboxes really. They could talk for hours if there wasn’t a line behind them. I don’t have any grandkids, but this is what I imagine having grandkids is like. I’ll be painting their faces all the time like here.” – Roland Hayes, 47 yrs.
 
 
 
 

Johnson dreamt of nothing. 
He woke up, brushed his teeth, ate his breakfast, and went to work. On the train he listened to music so he didn’t have to think. He got to work, worked, ate lunch, worked some more, and went home. He ate dinner, watched some tv, and went to bed. 
Johnson dreamt of shapes. 
He woke up, brushed his teeth, ate his breakfast, and went to work. He forgot his headphones and so thought about shapes on the train to work. He got to work, ate lunch, worked some more, and went home. He ate dinner, watched some tv, and went to bed. 
Johnson dreamt of shapes and colors. 
He woke up a bit late and had to skip breakfast. He left his headphones at home so he could think on the train to work. He got to work, daydreamt, ate lunch, worked, and went home. He ate dinner, went for a walk and thought about shapes and colors, and then came back home and went to bed. 
Johnson dreamt of shapes and colors that slowly started to become something he couldn’t quite discern. 
He took the day off from work. He walked around the city and tried to pick out different shapes and colors and combine them into something meaningful. He ate lunch at a diner and drew shapes in his ketchup with his fork. Eventually it grew dark, and he looked up at the night sky and tried to find the outlines of clouds in the grey and dusky sky. Soon he went home. He ate dinner, lay in his bed awake for a few hours, and went to bed 
Johnson dreamt of an open field. In the middle of the field was a woman in a silken robe - her face was featureless, a slab of smooth skin. Johnson tried to walk over toward her but found he could not move. He woke up screaming. 
He woke up, brushed his teeth, ate his breakfast, and went to work. On the train he listened to music so he didn’t have to think. He got to work, worked, ate lunch, worked some more, and went home. He ate dinner, watched some tv, and went to bed. 
Johnson dreamt of nothing. 

​

​And neither was Lady Liberty in their depictions shown only as Amazon with single breast exposed, but also as astonished and trembling muse, adumbrating by her hanging lamp the timid beginnings of wisdom with a waxy light down the dark corridor of some ancestral estate. Our estate, replete with treasures long forgotten. Upon her frame a boundless delicacy, a tender query on silent lips the answer to which I thought to know when from that fevered dream she became my own dear one. No longer the muse of a holy fable but the wife of this holy life. Life made holy by her, by the light hung from slight and marble fingers after slight and marble wrist. The answer to a wordless question in this wordless brute of flesh - so much the native of paradise the one, so vicious and forgetful the other. And yet this vicious one remembers. By the light of her hanging lamp I remember.
 
«»
 
With this vision and reality ends a year-long period of affliction under the hot yoke of fevered dreams. Today I can write from the privileged perch of success and the uniquely clear view of the past which it affords. And clarity is itself my prize. Those dreams I mentioned, they yielded a terrible obfuscation of even waking life. But the pains which they caused were at first less a consequence of their content then of my knowing what they represented. You see, I am the scion of a proud and ancient family. I do not mean a rich family. Nor do I mean a family of decrepit aristocratic holdings. I mean a solid family. We have prospered by honest work and good fortune. But we have suffered also, for my father, like my grandfather and a line going back several generations, endured a congenital form of madness which makes its first intrusion through the dreamscape when we turn thirty. Quickly it begins to lacerate our waking life. I speak of a madness. It does not affect the body, insofar as that may live on as much as in ordinary men. If anything, we enjoy – although this latter is not altogether the right word – some advantage of longevity over the average person. But we have become accustomed to producing heirs to the family estate at a relatively young age that we might raise them as far as we can, leaving the rest to our spouses, the ever-sacrificing wives and mothers of this accursed house.
 
Now, the specific content of the madness in question is, I can imagine, a matter liable to raise some interest in the detached reader. I will detail it so far as I can, although it is a morbid subject, gaining knowledge of which required some labour on my part, for none wished discuss it. So far as I have determined, over the course of only three years, and as the dreams grow more traumatic, more forcefully impressing themselves upon daytime impressions, the men of my family gradually become convinced that everything ordinary is in fact an illusion. That there is really no such thing as a person, making decisions, interacting with other people, and that all of the various objects we see have no genuine relation to our thoughts about them. Indeed, it is all a trick of the light. It is a fancy which has entered into the mind. The truth is that nobody except one’s own self actually exists. Indeed, one’s own self doesn’t either. The mind perceiving this illusion is an accident. An electrical discharge lasting longer than usual. There are no people, there are instead phenomena the character of which is quite straightforwardly unintelligible. And yet, in spite of its entirely alien quality, we can glimpse one truth about it: it is monstrous. There is no such thing as a human person, no succession of day by night, no world. No, none of that. But whatever is real, is grotesque. A further element here seems to be that at a certain point one begins to believe that one is a (very unfortunately, but entirely accidentally, self-conscious) planet, or something to that effect. One is inhabited – in fact, composed – by entities of some sort who would suffer greatly were one to commune with the fantasy of the world any longer. One becomes bound ethically, for ethics continue to apply somehow, to remain perfectly still in order not to disturb these legion creatures. No amount of pleading by the illusion that is one’s wife or children will sway the subject from his duty not to destroy the dwellers – the constituents – of this bizarre teeming complex which he is, and which should not be aware of itself in order to suffer about the affair but, well, there it is. Hitherto one’s belief that one was a person in a world with family relations – an absurd series of concepts – has led one to engage in all sorts of actions, to pursue all kinds of ends, to move, and movement is a terrible, destructive force which has been wrought on the creatures, the legion of little ones. This I pried from my mother, who remembered my father describing it during his descent. It was my only testament of disaster. My only roadmap to the inevitable.
 
What my mother could not tell me concerning the onset of this grave delusion, because she had never been told herself, is that it all begins with a strange recurring dream in which one is visited by a woman who sits at the feet of one’s bed, places a hand on one’s suddenly exposed leg, and simply repeats the words – in a tone that seems to want to be sensuous, or to mock sensuality - “tend the little ones, tend the little ones”. Oh, those little ones. Those fiendish multitudes, those hiding secret scaffolds of every nightmare’s architecture. It seemed to me that the images this expression conjured – of sharp-toothed gnomes or clawing miniatures, of inhuman conspirators whispering behind human thought – was something profoundly anchored in the human soul, for otherwise it could not inspire such movements of fear in me. I did not wish to look with open eyes at the nightmare, not because I was afraid of her, the woman – the sight of her was at the very least comprehensible – but because I did not dare to see her odious little ones (hers, or maybe she was theirs).  No sooner does she speak her devil’s prayer than the skin and meat begin to turn granular until one’s body turns to ash, not by ignition, but by force of meticulously concentrated insinuation. These turn each particle of the body against every other, and in becoming isolated they drop whatever moisture previously bonded them into one fabric organism, so that they are dry as ash. So too the mind, which is a teeming confabulation of audible screams, every thought, every impulse, however unimportant in the light of sanity, becomes a commanding voice at once tyrannical over one’s awareness and agonistically at odds with the rest of the murderous hive to which the mind is now transformed. And soon, ash as well. Soon, death. But not yet. First the teeming. Or perhaps ash and death are not the end. They are not the result of the rage which possesses every thought to sharpen itself against the rest. Rather, every flake of ash is still alive and still enraged, yet it has so separated itself from the rest, and from the water of life which binds together, that it is entirely alone and entirely dry, and so cannot act, cannot move, for there is no longer any ligament, nerve or muscle, no mechanism of movement at all. But inside, incommunicable, unknowable, it remains alive, it remains enraged. This is the final stage to which my fathers must be condemned: to move not, to allow no outward sign, and yet to perceive each atom of their minds, fully alien and fully hateful. Cast a cold eye, reader, on life and death, and read on, ride on past markets and graves, but can you so easily cast a cold eye this colder fate? It is a difficult thing to look upon future insanity from present sanity.
 
Evidently my forerunners had not considered this an appropriate level of detail to share with their spouses. I do not know how the subconscious mind speaks to the conscious in order to announce the full character of impending insanity by way of so suggestive of formula. But I feel assured that if the impression which has rendered so many of my antecedence wantonly paralytic is as consistent as it is, then this first symptom, which I had now began to experience, must be as well. I am likewise ignorant as to how these words gradually produce in the listener a disintegration of the sense of self so complete as to cause him to consider himself a pure accident in relation to the teaming plethora of beings that apparently constitute his body and mind. But such is the result. In these terrible words spoken by that terrible would-be seductress at the threshold of sleep, is contained the whole of my house’s ruin, the end of sleep and wakefulness both.
 
Yet I am exceptional in one regard. The symptoms began before they are reported to have done so in any past case. Owing to this fact, and to my uncle’s severe tutorship – for he was self-charged with taking hold of my education after my father became unable to do so, overseeing my lessons within the estate – I had never had the opportunity to secure a future for our line. Where others had toiled to produce an heir and quickly pass on something of themselves, I had not. I would soon be mad, and the house would have no youngling to await his turn of the curse. 

Before the beginning of madness, I considered my next few years with generous expectancy. I would fill them with finding a wife, starting a family, and surely my uncle would let off my education enough to allow the enterprise, for he knew as well as I the necessity of the thing. Gradually I would go into the surrounding villages more frequently and meet people beyond our grounds. For now, however, my only escape was inside the embrace of the surrounding gardens, and tended always to a certain tree, my refuge since I was a boy. It was a powerful oak whose green always looked gold to me, and whose branches would filter the day into a cool and luminous pool, so much in contrast to the stuffy interior of the house.
 
At night I often walked our halls awake – but with no more attention then had I been sleepwalking – until I was outside. Awake, but from within sleep, lucidly dreaming around the house. Through the corridors made narrow and dark and dusty by crowded nightmare phantasmagoria, sliding, squeezing out of the long trap as though I were a snake. Then I was beaten into greater lucidity by the naked sky, her stars like fists above me in the hours of darkness and the minutes of gold before daylight hides them. Stars like fists. The wind, cold as river water, is their falcons, perched on resting huntress hands and gliding down to take me. Better to be hunted by this stellar cast of angels than haunted by dusty nightmares indoors. But they are converted. The firmament is baptised. The celestials are recruited into an army of mercy in these, the end times. Every night as a child I dreamt apocalypse. Dreamt a final good. Dreamt the conversion of every nature. Maybe it isn’t all a dream. Maybe there are secret allies in the sky, in the wind and river. I felt ignited by their high, white light, I felt the heat of an invisible midnight sun which does not consume what it burns.
 
Weather out of the body or in, I know not, but often during these nocturnal recesses I would climb my tree. Through haunted corridors and greeting starlight, through sleep, up I would go, up its branches like a ladder. The easiest path was marked by a streak of autumnal gold leaves running through its green immensity. The very top perch was a perfect view of the Earth, the sky’s own native terrace. From there it seemed to store all life’s roots. But the magic of these nights was soon taken from me. Replaced by the witch and her little ones.
 
Now before the beginning of my descent, indeed, nearly immediately before, a strange visitor came to the estate. I went to the door and found a vision of keen eyes and timid manners. She was a young lady who I let in, asking if she had business with my uncle or perhaps my mother (although the latter had not taken visitors for many years, and had for some time reduced her contact even with me, such was the contagious effect, cumulative in its severity, that my father’s condition was reaping upon her – there was, though I will not dwell on it, a relative paralysis also in my mother, traumatized as she was by the long expectancy and eventual culmination of her husband’s tragedy). The visitor had not come with any merchandise and had about her not an inkling of salesmanship. Finally, I coaxed her into the astonishing confession that she had come to see me. Me? I do not think that in all my life I had ever received a visitor. But as her lips began to part as though parched with a thirst to pour out some pressing declaration, my uncle appeared out of his study and quite unceremoniously bid her leave. He was a tall man, seemingly lacking all muscles and composed entirely of bone and hypertrophic tendons, not imposing in the physical sense but difficult to resist in his determined resolution not to acknowledge other people as anything but impediments to his ever-pressing business. So violent was his manner that she was unable, finally, to remain steady enough to finish articulating any part of her intended news. “Don’t you know this boy belongs to me!” was his vampiric utterance, emphasizing the last word as though she should know him. Indeed, I felt then that the two recognised each other, and that his later hand-waving about her having been but a beggar, about my knowing better than to let such ilk into the house, and bid for me to resume my studies, were all a bit of a theatrical put-on.
 
Catalyzed by the strange visitor and our un-climaxed meeting, I began leaving the house regularly – always without my uncle knowing, for he considered my education a full-time employ. My business was to find explanations and, in weaker moments, consolations, from what could have been parental figures in the surrounding villages. Of course, the topic at hand could not be broached directly, family secrets could not be revealed, but the issue of suffering, fear concerning the future, even of madness and, beyond this, of curses, could all be discussed. It is difficult for one who has lost a father to gauge, even scientifically and detachedly, the character of mature manhood. We hear of the wisdom of old men, but in what exactly does it consist? I do not mean to say it is difficult to acquire its habits and attitudes, those invisible tapestries woven with appropriate guidance over many years. I accepted that such might be irrelevant to me given my impending descent into insanity. But at least I could make some account, some short-list of aphorisms to summarise what are, in general, supposed to be the lessons of the life I would not live. Yet all I encountered was surface grime. Angry men raving about life and its indulgences, the hypocrisy of rules and limitations, and the need to simply follow one’s heart, follow it until it is nearly choking one’s tensed and vein-throbbing throat, for they were angry indeed. Other old men would say the same things in softer tones, for they were not angry, but flaccid and melting at their seams. And sad, always sad. They all criticised or threw a hand up at the recent violence which had swept some of the larger townships, but would unanimously conclude that the young were right to do as they did and save themselves the frustrations of life. I was quite uninterested in the specifics, the politics, of all that, having enough on my mind.
 
Still, I continued journeying out and unavoidably observed the developing character of a sort of revolution affecting the hamlets. It was a turmoil as if to matching my own troubles. The cities were overcrowded, conditions ever worsening, and the once-humble builders of familial fortifications in the country were now seen as a privileged class, their homes and holdings to be shared out and the country turned into a suburb of the always sprawling centers. But that was nothing. I was aghast to find inscribed in banners and announced vociferously from rasping throats, that same devilish formula which each night drilled a little deeper, like a drop of water secure in its ultimate victory, upon the stone of my sanity. 
 
I have already mentioned that mine is not a house of vast aristocratic landings. My station was once an ordinary one in these lands, which are so replete with castles that our neighbors will say of a thing which is of no great importance that it is like owning a castle in the land of the bards (which is the name of this country). To this proverb they give the additional meaning of disparaging our castles, for they are no castles at all, they say. Indeed, this is so. They are homes. It was our way that each man and woman would be king and queen in a confederation of stony enclaves. But of late the phenomena of grand cities has come about, with their stacks of people upon people, and as they grow, they eat, and the spaciousness of our guarded gardened wilderness is a ripe and ready thing.
 
Somewhat more distressing than the inexplicable use of my nightmare for their politics was the simultaneous realisation that my madness had progressed beyond what familiar sights, the corridors and gardens of the estate, had let on. For a known object maintains an anchor in our perception of it. I know the chair, the portrait, the window. Madness has a hard time affecting muscle memory and the automatic interactions with things we have known since childhood. But now, exposed to entirely new streets and the faces of strangers, it was plane that my awareness of ordinary sites was thoroughly distorted. Some of what I narrate, therefore, will bear that imprint, insofar as I cannot well distinguish what I saw from what it was that I was seeing, so to speak.
 
For I saw columns of ash from the mouths of old men with shoulders like cotton washed out by the moon. Ash-flakes looked like butterflies in their beards, pretty words born burnt-out, and this despite the absence of any fire. It is not so exceptional a thing to have a father driven mad, I thought, for an entire generation has turned out mad. Ash almost looks like marble by moonlight, but marble doesn’t fall when the wind gets blowing. They don’t stand, they hold no roof. Forget their talk of palaces and temples. Their ash scatters like snow, like winter falling on homeless, roofless, naked children looking for Christmas, for the fire of a hearth. No, the old men of this country have no fire, they hold up no chimney, they are no atlases, but generous nature by heaven’s mandate has given them Hesperides for daughters all the same. I saw one. She guards gold sugar, gold skin and seed. Guards it for this insane Adam to come back home to Eden. But he isn’t coming empty handed. I have trophies for that new Jerusalem, that heavenly Rome. 
 
And I saw naked young men dressed in ash and spit crowding the streets, coming at me littering plastic wrappers from the riottm they were buying. They thought their ash was armour and pretended it was new, like they didn’t get it from the old ash-talkers, old men, mad salesmen of a generation that built no homes but talked a good game. The ash-dressed boys tried to strip whoever they met and throw their burnt-out dust at them and spit on them. At least it was not all dry. At least they spat. At least there was the insinuation of giving life to ash, although obscenely. And this they reflected by the calligraphy of glossy posters with pin-up goddesses holding pitched forks. Old revolutionary standards recycled for the occasion. They dress in ash but wish for water, and they are from the city and rail against the country but their standards portray a farmer’s garrison, they listen to bitter men but put women on their flags.
 
I saw all this with the eyes of a psychotic break and ran as far as I could. I hid a while in a cave on beaches in the sky lapped by waves of cloud. It landed at an airport and so I began my sojourn as an exile. I was gone. I know not exactly how much my will and personality contributed to this rash decision. Surely it was mainly the produce of madness. But that didn’t much matter. I had gone to an airport, I had bought a ticket, and I had left. I had left the home of tragedy, I had left the country, haunted country, where the cause of tragedy was now the slogan of revolt. I knew not what the connection was. I knew not whether it was pure hallucination or genuine impression. I did not care to find out. I only knew and I only cared to be away from it. And yet some of those places I now travelled to reminded me of the old nightmare, for I had flown to the cities, and came to know these, one by one. Their tall grey buildings, each alone, each identical to the rest, were too much like the mute ashes filled with incommunicable rage which I had imagined in the throes of anguish.
 
Still, I was away, and over the course of the next several months, the dreams became less frequent. They did not come nightly, but weekly, and then monthly, and then, after about a year, they were gone. But I would not return. I wrote letters to my mother which, I hoped, she would keep from my uncle and his judgement. I let her know I was well, and inquired into the things of our home. But no, I did not return. Not yet. I was waiting. My expectation – all of my hope – was to reach the age at which my predecessors had, for so many generations, fallen definitively, bedridden by insanity. Well now, do you know what? The date of my 33rd birthday came and went. I had done it. Still I waited another year on top of this. Mercifully passed the months, and in all that time I never hallucinated the way I had before leaving. By my return every trace of mental instability had left me.
 
I arrived without telling anybody. I wished first of all to meet my mother, who I surprised and who greeted me tearfully, and hugged me and wondered at my having evaded the curse. “Perhaps it is this place. Perhaps if your father and I had left...” she wept, and we agreed I would not stay in the house. I would not again lie were so many had lied in living sepulchers. The air was not good there. Instead I went to town, where the revolution continued much as it had before. Except that I did not see them dressed in death, but in plastic-like accoutrements of the present fashion. Other things also were now less literal than metaphorical to my eyes, for visionary delirium had mercifully left me.
 
I decided to get myself a room at a hostel, and be near my mother. As I began looking, I saw something which almost cast me into the darkest fears I had experienced before my happy exile. Was it a hallucination? Yet as I fixed my eyes upon it, and upon its surroundings, I knew it was real. It was consistent in texture, proportion, and movement with everything else. There, across a crowded street, was the lady of those terrible long-gone dreams. She was there. Her long mouth and thin lips, the broken angles and sullen cheeks. I described her thusly even though, by any conventional account, she would make a beautiful, if striking, image. But to me she was dread herself. I saw a certain mock of disgust affecting the outsides of her mouth, a slight flaring of the nose, a distortion owing to the angle and affect with which I regarded her which caused the face to seem impossibly long. Then, as I waded through these thoughts, I saw, coming beside her and speaking to her as an old acquaintance, my own uncle. I observed the pair from behind passers-by so as not to be seen. They were arguing. Something had happened to upset my uncle. They resolved to go and began walking together. I followed as furtively as I could. This was easy at first but became more difficult after they took a smaller dirt road out of town, so I hid behind a tree and stayed there until I saw where they were going. Having lost sight of them, I continued walking until I arrived at a cottage. As there was no other structure nearby, I concluded they must have entered. This was confirmed when I heard my uncle’s shrill school-master sing-song. He had developed this tone despite apparently only ever having had me as a pupil, or else it was simply his manner of speech.
 
“How is it that with all these potions and spell books you cannot find him?”
“Do not be short with me.” Answered back the voice of the woman, so different from the monstrous whisper I remembered, and yet the same. “You are the one who lost him. He was not so much as to leave the house. I cannot appear to him if I do not know where he sleeps. Anyway, is this not, in its way, a fortunate turn? If he never comes back, the house is yours and you may simply give it to the coven.”
“But he may come back.” He let fall upon these words the full weight of some jaw-clenching frustration, “And come back a man, at that. Possibly even with wife and child. Then everything will be delayed another generation. Then you will not have me to help you.”
“If he does return, we will resume driving him mad, and if that doesn’t work we will simply take the estate. We have aroused enough people’s frustrations to make that viable. You see? We have contingency plans, unlike you. You were careless. Ever since you allowed that girl into the house and we had to step up our plans lest he fall in love. And you! We will not forget what you did.”
I heard as if the faintest whisper in response and was struck in my chest by a sensation painful and familiar, so I looked in through the window ever so slightly and saw the girl who had come to the estate all those years ago. She was chained by her ankle to a post near a stove and was brooming the floor.
 
My uncle made some final caustic remark and started towards the door. I quickly hid again, this time behind a thicket, and watched him leave. I considered what to do and eventually saw that the woman left as well. This was my opportunity. I went to the window again, leaned in and made eye contact with the young woman. Her face was pale white when it met me. Then, like a rosy sprite, she leapt towards the window, but the leap was not completed. She stopped herself and stood as if suspended by surprise.
“You recognise me.”
“Yes.”
“You came to the house that time.”
“Yes.”
“You wanted to tell me something.”
“Yes.”
“Well... tell me now!”
“I... you are the heir to that house.”
“Yes. But from what I have gathered your mistress and my uncle do not want me to be.”
She shook her head, “Not just you.”
“They have driven my ancestors mad.”
“Not them. The ones who came before. The coven has wanted those grounds a long time.”
“Coven?”
“They took my home. My father gave up his title in contrition.”
“What did he do?”
“Nothing!” A passion flashed from her face and she furrowed her brow for the first time, “But they made him think he had. They can do that. Many a crime was not committed in the flesh, or in control. False memories are their chief weapon. They cast illusion. They carry us away in dreams. They make us think we have done terrible things. If you cannot tell the difference between being told something and thinking it yourself, or between thought and will, you will be deceived. But with you the deception is different. One of your ancestors was made to think he had committed atrocity, but he would not reap the punishment upon his children by giving up their birthright. He only left to live a life of repentance. So, they engineered another strategy.”
“How do you know all this?”
“They brag about it. The mistress of the coven and her fellows.”
“What then? They opted for slowly driving us mad?”
She nodded sadly. That a creature so clearly deprived could give herself up to so effortless a surge of compassion for me warmed my heart. I had to free her at once. I climbed in through the window and began to hit her chain with an unwashed pan. Then, she raised a hand as if to stay mine, and pointed to the keys, which were hung from a hook on the wall beyond her reach. Cruelly, just beyond her reach. Having liberated her we both left and determined to face peril together. I resumed my efforts to find lodging, now fit to accommodate both of us, and decided upon a beautiful manor with a sign at the entrance indicating room availability.
“Excuse me,” I said to the receptionist “is this a hotel? It has the air of a house.”
“Oh yes, must tend to the little ones, you know. The farmers who lived here were evicted to make room, lots of people from the cities, you know. They want a piece of country living too. Not fair to hold on to a piece of land generation after generation. Things change.”
 
The revolution, it now seemed, was carving out cheap apartments, hotels and time-shares from old country houses for the brimming city. It was a business opportunity of the first order.
 
“Who are the little ones?” I asked, mustering up some measure of courage, for I had never used those words out loud.
“What?”
“The…little ones.”
“Well,” the lady hesitated, not really wanting to describe herself or anyone else by what now must have suddenly seemed to her, partly due to the tone of my inquiry, a demeaning title, “that is, they had it too good out here!”
The little ones, it seemed to me, was not a self-descriptor that anyone identified with, but more the term by which, subconsciously, without interrogating the matter too much, they designated others on behalf of whom action had to be taken.
 
Once we were settled my companion explained things a little further. It seems the coven made it its mission to take our home. To this end they would appear in dreams and hypnotize us into disintegration. But my uncle had been a new opportunity. He was to prevent me from contracting marriage and having children so that, once mad, he would take the estate by right, and give it over to the coven, gaining for himself a position of outstanding authority therein.
 
“She appears to you in a seductive form to draw you in.”
“Seductive? She is death.” I said, causing the vapour of a smile to appear on her usually somber face.
“But why by age thirty three?”
“It is their belief that a man should be morally ruined by his 33rd year, and that whatever injury is inflicted at that time he should not be allowed to recover from.”
“But why our estate?”
“Some places have a special significance in their philosophy. Of yours they say that the founder of your line was a member of one of the armed guilds, the fencers, charged with the protection of nearby towns. Indeed, they say that he founded that guild, and this after a most perilous and perplexing adventure. I know not how much is coded fable, but what I heard I will relay: Long ago, somewhere in this country, though few if any still know where, there stood a great tree which survived the flood of whose waters it is said that Noah was spared, and Dardanus among the Greeks, and Manu according to the sages of India. A mystical sorority whose origin is lost in the days of the patriarchs was entrusted to guard it, and vouchsafe the fruit thereof, which ripened only once in every twelve generations. Now this became more frequent as the generations of man grew shorter, for mortality encroached upon him with a fury of diseases and degraded living. But it was believed that the golden fruit held the secret to reversing the calamities of history and returning the species to its lost longevity. Dark times grew darker, however, and it came to pass that wicked men became marred in their understanding and would see darkness in light, evil in righteousness, until they came to see the tree as their enemy, and burnt it to ashes. But they only burnt the tree down after trying to use its shade as a sacrificial ground, its trunk as a blood totem. First, they took people there to be slain. And to witness, also, that none would feel free of guilt for the murders. And the fruit turned red and bitter and died before ripening. In this way, they declared that they had mixed nature with human labor, the fruit of the tree with the blood of humanity.”
“Why?”
“Because they knew the tree was old, from a time before the deluge, and in their twisted way they believed they were honoring it. The earth was hard to their touch. These were times of struggle, for humanity was dim in knowledge. And so, through a familiar mistake of the human perception, they concluded that they should kill to gain life, that offering up another’s breath to the divine would gain them favor, and that in order for all to benefit they should be bound together in the spectacle of murder. They had no faith in receiving the provisions of life, and thought the world a closed system with only so much life to go around. For each boon gained, someone would have to be slain. But the tree made itself terrible in their sight, and shook its roots until the earth shook with it, and twisted its bark into the forms of their fear, scenes of starvation, until they thought it a demon growth and resolved to burn it down. In truth it but reflected their darkened minds, for they had cultivated such horrors in themselves. In this way it escaped the terrible cult, and made them killers of a tree, of a thing that does not die, of itself, rather than of each other. The sisterhood was only able to salvage a single bloom thereof. This they guarded for another turn of the generations, until it was stolen by a cunning serpent, who swallowed it whole, and entered a mountain to hide. They called on the men of the village nearest to the mount that the serpent had fled to, and one hearkened their call. He was promised a seed from the fruit if he could retrieve it. He would have to enter the mountain through a watery sinew which flowed out, swimming against the current, yet without making noise so as not to warn the beast of his advance. Once inside he would have to climb the rocky escarpment, for the snake had hung itself at the higher apartments of the hollow stone, so the high priestess of the guardians had seen, for she had entered after the snake in spirit while in a trance.
‘I will turn you into an eel that you might enter swift and silent.’ Said that sibyl to the man.
‘How then will I reach the fiend, and how will I strike against it, if I am naked as a fish?’ he asked,
‘When you have entered, speak to me in your mind, and I will make you into a hawk, that you may quickly fly up, armed with sharp beak and talons. However,’ she warned, ‘when you are in its presence, ask the mysterious serpent if it be a good Genie, a spirit of among the friends of mankind, and entreat it by the Great Spirit to return the fruit to its rightful holders.’ In this way, she said, he might be able to avoid killing it, and thereby leaving traces of a magical being on the earth, which can be used for ill by sorcerers. It was also possible that the entire business of stealing the fruit was a means to test its guardians, and also to test the man himself. But he did not trust enough, and so did not undress to be made into an eel and enter the mountain where the reptile slept, for he feared facing the serpent without a weapon, disbelieving also that once inside he would be made into a hawk with beak and talon as weapons. So, he walked against the stream with sword attached at the waist, and in so doing alerted the creature who, hearing the splashing, awoke. Once inside, he found that the serpent had crawled down to meet him. He was struck dumb by its venomous eyes, shinning as if by their own light, a light not of the sun but of some infernal abode to which they served as twin gates. Taken by so strong a terror, he did not recall to ask anything of it, or to entreat or otherwise pause in his work, but simply thrust forward his stabbing blade and immediately delivered it into death. As the monster succumbed, it turned to ashy smoke, revealing itself to be other than an ordinary snake. The force of those fumes burnt the fruit in its belly, until only one seed was left. Now, the great initiatrix of the guardians and her fellows would not take back their word, and so the man was given that final, precious seed, for he had retrieved it, although not by the proper means. He would be its guardian now. He planted it and built his house nearby, which is the estate of your family to this day. The story goes that despite his lack of trust, the man and the high priestess had developed feelings for each other. But this could not be pursued, such was the propriety of the sisterhood. However, she gave the man a lock of her hair and, for sorrow at their parting, it grew back grey thereafter. For his part, he buried the lock with the seed that was so precious.”
“A streak of silver like yours?” I noticed.
“It runs in the family. Twelve generations would pass before the new tree yielded fruit again. The twelfth turning has come to pass, and you are the thirteenth. With you it yields its fruit. That is why there is no more time to wait. That is why I came to speak to you that day.”
“They said all this, the coven?”
She let fall her eyes in a grave gesture, “Some of it, but most I learnt from my mother. The sisterhood did not disband, neither did it go far. It set itself up nearby, and my mother, descendent of the high priestess, told me these things in stories when I was a little girl. But she died young, before I was old enough to learn her ways, and so, without her protection, and knowing none of the magical arts myself, the coven was able to drive my father mad. I hid myself a long time, and finally appeared to the coven as a poor wretch in need of money, determined to work for them and be near to them, to learn their plans and somehow thwart them from within.”
“Who is the coven, then?”
“They are the result of your ancestor’s mistake. He was to deal a deathblow only if necessary, and not out of haste or fear. For when a magical being is killed, especially if it is killed by one who is not in control of his passions, it leaves behind traces. There were those who knew lower arts, as there have been in ages since. They are descended from the party who first burnt the tree down. These went into the cave, called by the power of the serpent’s death, and made pouches of the remains with which to practice the casting of illusion. That is how they enter dreams and create impressions in the minds of those who cannot distinguish the real from the imaginary, or their own will from the thoughts placed in them by others. Few can resist.”
“Why do they hate the tree?”
“They reject the immortality it grants. They have been instructed by evil spirits that true immortality is gained in the dream-worlds, in illusions woven from thoughts, which their occult sciences allow.”
“I think I know the tree.”
 
We went together by night, climbing over the fence around my home’s gardens, to avoid detection by my uncle. Purpose driven, I picked oats from my oak, climbing up the streak of gold, dropping them carefully below where she caught each one so that it would not thumb and placing them gently down until there were enough for both of us to carry, and we escaped again. The sun began to rise a few hours later, and so we took these into town to be milled, and with the flour she made a bread of golden baked hue, of which we both partook, mixing nature and human labor, and the enjoyment thereof. That very night as I fell asleep, I thought of how our mission had given her hope, for after we had arrived with my shirt folded up and holding oats like a bag, I had seen a smile on her face more complete than I have ever seen her display before. But as this thought began conjuring lovely dreams, it was interrupted by the shadowy body of our she-nemesis, which had just become palpable to my drowsy awareness. And when a weight was felt near my legs and I began to pray, and to speak with my companion inwardly, and a hand of cold slighted my skin, that tense silence was cracked a thousand times by an inhuman shriek, and I saw that my entire body was aglow and that the shadow presence burnt and was gone. At this I was awake and shot up in bed, seeing my companion sitting up also.
“I heard you in my mind,” she said, “and in a dreamy form went to you, against my former slaver.”
 
I only saw my uncle one more time after that. I had gone into town and was reflecting on the profound change making itself felt all about. The urban sprawl that so angrily had railed against the privileges of the country in space and continuity of family occupancies was now taken up in a different battle. As it had been in past times, new homes of stone and wood were being built in a labor of brotherhood. Old men who previously spoke were building with the young. The revolution was changing colors. And among these transformed scenes I saw my uncle inside a carriage, legs propped up upon a large metal-bolted chest, evidently intending a long or permanent journey. I asked my mother about it, and she told me that he had decided he should leave now that I was back, my education being complete. He must have known accusations would ensue if he stayed, and perhaps the coven had made known to him what my accomplice and I had accomplished. Speaking of which, she came to live with me at the estate, which is how this story began. Before long, as we were busy letting in new life, opening windows and airing halls, we were faced with the striking image of my own father, sentinel-like visage of my tenderest childhood, heavy hand on the timber frame, walking down the stairs from his ancient chambers in the upper rooms, clear-sighted and with an expression of keen observation I thought I must have imagined, like a dream of virgin memory, for over many years I had only seen stoic fear in him during my visits to his bedroom. He simply appeared and began confessing to having not a clue how he could have been swallowed up by such nonsense for so long. Well, the tearful celebration and explanations of what had happened that followed over the next days were met at their heels by a letter from my beloved’s father who, apparently, had likewise recovered his wits and was eager to apologize for having given up their home on account of an entirely invented guilt. He was invited to join us at once and we likewise regaled him with what had transpired.
 
And it has come to pass that here, in this estate, for the first time in many generations, is born a curse-less heir. The house transformed by this, transformed like the life outside. Transformed by its shinning pregnant lady.
 

​Dim, compressed light shined on the venue, lit and full of people. A young woman removed my plain water glass. She wore a clover green spaghetti strap mini dress and walked over to the round table closest to me and reached for two glasses with only ice left in them. Was that Perry?
“Harry?” she said.
Perry Jones caused me more than a bit of trouble. In our brief period of high school romance, she took me through a rocky first relationship. It finally culminated with her showing up uninvited to my family gatherings around Christmas time and stealing from my family’s jewelry shop, making my uncle look wide-eyed at me like ‘good choice, kid.’
“I’m surprised to see you,” I said to Perry.
“Me too!” she said.
I doubted that.
“It’s good to see you, Perry,” I said.
“You too,” she said. “It’s been too long.”
“Can you get us something to drink?” I offered.
 “I don’t usually serve drinks and am not supposed to drink on the job.” She glazed over the room. “But I think I can make an exception.”
“Okay, great. Get some of the good stuff,” I told her. “I’m feeling a bit left out. See all the other glasses. They’re monogrammed. And here’s me with a plain one.”
            “I’m not sure what to say,” she said. “I didn’t see any Harry’s on the table out back. Sorry about that. But I can grab two glasses and any whiskey you want—? Oh, yes! I saw a bottle of your favorite in the kitchen. No, it can’t be here. Meet me over there after I run these glasses back.”
            She motioned to a dark hallway by some stacked tables and chairs.
My date, June, had signaled to me that she was going to round up her friends and let them know the limo was leaving shortly and would be back in a minute. This was about ten minutes ago.
It was easy to disappear as I felt my way through the dark back hallway. Perry didn’t say anything and came closer to me until we were within the space of slow dancers. She pulled two drinks up from behind her hips and handed me the one in her right hand. I took the one in her left hand and said, “I’m heading out.”
“With June?” she asked.
I was proud to be associated with June.
“You two were always so friendly,” she said.
“Friendly?” I said.
She took a long sip of her drink.
“Better not get me in trouble for drinking on the job,” she said.
            “I’m not the one who usually brings the trouble,” I said.
“Especially since it could be more than a one-time thing.”
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
“This guy I’m seeing got me the opportunity,” she said. “It’s pretty cushy.”
She looked out over the stacked chairs and tables, which moved.
“There you are.” A voice came from behind the stacked chairs and tables.
June Albright stood in fashionable heels and looked her best while Perry and I slowly turned in her slight shadow.
I definitely need to explain who June is and why she is looking for me.
June, my childhood best friend. That June. Have you really not heard of her? I’ll give a refresher: June had this voluminous sandy blonde hair. She made you feel warm and attended to. Anyone could be a pretty girl and appetizing on the eyes, but she had one facial feature that drove everyone wild.  
As a child I knew that June never liked-liked me, so I became unattached to the idea of ever fulfilling that crush. But as I went through high school and college, I noticed that a few girls who were not interested in me at first came up to me and introduced themselves and gave me a chance to win them over. So by the time I graduated from college in a little city while Junebug steered elsewhere, I didn’t completely rule it out.
I heard she was asking around for me since she moved back home for the summer through my sale of a necklace to one of her longtime friends. One thing led to another and June and I went on a few dates. It was like we were getting to know each other really well again. I eventually saw the same look in her eye of a girl saying, “Hey, you’re not so bad.”
We came to this fundraiser together. June Albright, a contributor. Me, her +1.
There she was. Busting me for talking to the girl who once stole from my uncle’s jewelry shop—and some would say was the bad half in an emotionally abusive relationship. But June embodied a calm and centered manner, standing there, slowly walking closer until it felt like there was no light at all in the dark back hallway.
 
 
 
On the ride to the fundraiser June and I were a shape two make who are clearly not just friends. Some upbeat, rhythmic, and repetitive music played while she returned glances to our fellow limo-riders, old high-school friends who were jubilant and crazy around us. On the ride after the fundraiser, she was a friend’s length away from me and didn’t return the glances of anyone else either.
The limo came to a stop. Everyone scooted out and hurried onto the sidewalk and in through the wooden doors to the once dive bar converted into a drinking and socializing establishment. Every time the door opened, three bells rang in a minor chord that resolved when the door closed with a major chime. The dimensions were wider than they once were. Legal-age, dark-shirted bartenders hurried glasses around affecting calmness while they took orders and picked off goblets and wine glasses one by one.
June dispersed with all the others who sailed in through the doors. The feeling that she was too pretty for me always held me content with not being a brave soul and ‘taking her hand’ (like a man) but now the transcendence I thought I felt was already slipping away and losing its ability to morph further into what I wanted.
This building had a tri-facade structure. There were three main socializing areas, one of which was a Fake Brewing Tank Display. The other two were a Top Golf Simulation and a Mock Vacation Suite Balcony overlooking the ocean—which was a one-hundred-by-thirty-foot virtual simulation display with a curved screen so that when you walked out onto the balcony you could turn almost 180 degrees and still completely see programmed ocean water and sand. The balcony was about as big as a waterpark wave pool. Each area branched off from the small bar that once was the entirety of the dive.
The first I encountered this place was when June snuck me in late at night in high school when there were two beers on tap.
June’s lips weren’t their usual crescent smile when I finally locked eyes with her after practically following her around all night.
“I’m not the only one here, you know,” she whispered, and averted her eyes quickly and walked over to a circle of modestly dressed young women embracing in hugs and kisses.
When we were ‘just friends,’ June would be mad at me for a short period of time, but then forgive me and be her regular old self shortly after. But in the week since she and I had rekindled and taken it up a notch, things had been joyously different. This time it felt like she would never get back to her regular old self, I guess that is the gamble in this sort of thing. Joyous in the moment. But I felt her slipping into the future.
June came back over to me around a half hour later, unable to hide a smile on her face.
“Why so lonely, boss?” she said.
            “Do I look lonely?” I asked.
            A switch turned on in June like she remembered something.
            “Not at all,” she said.
Right next to the bar was a worn-out, wooden pool table that looked like it hadn’t been played on in years.
            “Let’s play pool, big shot,” she said.
            We tried to put the quarters in but the configuration would not properly take them and release the balls. The bartender came over and spent a few minutes trying to fix the mechanism. June wandered over to the bar.
            My first memory of June was when she moved into the neighborhood. At the beginning of summer, my uncle made me bring them a housewarming raspberry pie, and when I showed up to the door, her dad—gruff, handsome, and exhausted—asked me to stay and play with her.
June used to sit on a living room sofa that overlooked their backyard and tell me about all sorts of professional ideas she had for what she was going to do when she grew up. Which at the time: was like any other child. What was mindboggling looking back on it: when we aged and graduated college, she was well on her way to accomplishing all those big late-night fantasies.
            I missed nights where she wore t-shirts and yoga pants—but that night of the fundraiser she had on glitter and long eyelashes, and I couldn’t even look at her dress, because I knew the second I did I would realize I’m way out of my league and completely blow it. My uncle once told me the best advice to showing a girl you like her, is to never let your eyes trail to her body—even when she’s not looking.
            The bartender could not fix it and decided to manually bring the balls out; he also grabbed two sticks from the back.
“Two little shots for Harry in corner A!” June sang, coming back over and placing two tall thick whiskey shots on the table.
“This is pool,” I pointed out. “You’re not announcing a boxing match.”
“Since you’re way better than me,” she said, scrunching her nose and laughing, gesturing at two tall shot glasses thick with alcohol.
            “I guess this evens the playing field,” I said, and popped one back.
            I was waiting for her to take hers. She just watched me.
            “Okay,” I said.
            “Oh, they’re both for you, silly,” June said.
She satirized the motions of how a gymnast might warm up before a routine, essentially doing pirouettes and leg stretches. I had to laugh at June’s brilliance, and she could see in my eyes that I knew it. She kissed the rum off my lips and made some comment to the effect of how those shots must have not been pleasant. Then she talked for a while about the play she was going to run on the pool table.
She voiced her opinion that she would end up scratching by not properly hitting the ball and making an embarrassment of herself. But she took the shot strongly and broke the diamond.
            “Those had me feeling wobbly from the smell,” I told June. “Which liquor did you pick?”
            “The bartender’s favorite cheapie,” she said. “Told him I was on a budget.”
            I took the stick and made a shot.
            “Really funny,” I said. “You never used to lie.”
            She kept missing easy shots, being goofy about them, and even blew on a ball softly rolling into the side pocket. June threw off my balance and focus by nudging me with her foot, and I hit one of her balls in.
 “No, you can have a do-over. I interfered,” she confessed.
 “No, how about you take it?” I offered.
 June straightened her shoulders and knocked a ball into the back of a pocket. She split two balls for a one-two punch and made an offhand chipper—not smiling or letting her eyes glance over to the door where the bell just resolved.
“I love that sound,” she said.
 “Why?”
“Happy sounds better when sad is behind it.”
She was poetic—but still not good enough to beat me. I couldn’t dare say I was as successful and well-rounded of a person as June—but you wouldn’t sign Michelle Obama up to play Tiger Woods if the game was golf and not the contest of who was a more outstanding individual.
When I made one ridiculously improbable shot, June licked her lips and looked me up and down—but other than that she watched unbiased from afar and did not graze my fingers when handing me the stick.
The game went on until all I had to do was hit the 8 ball in, an easy shot. Maybe a 3 out of 5 in difficulty. Something serious overtook me and I started to feel impending doom.
I chalked the tip of the stick. The minor ding rang out. The pool shot actually had a slight degree of difficulty I didn’t notice upon first inspection. The minor ding continued to ring and not resolve. June put her pool stick down and came over closer to me. Even though it was straight on, it was a long, cross-table shot. I took the shot. Someone wearing a green mini-dress came in through the open doors while I saw the eight-ball head into the called pocket. And as the green felt of the pool table somehow smacked me in the face, the cue ball spun toward the corner pocket with a little more speed than I would have liked.
 
 
 
The thermostat must have been turned all the way down, but I was still sweating. Cushiony covers and sheets cocooned me. I thought I saw June at the foot of the bed, but no one was there when I threw the covers back. The blinds weren’t doing their job so scintillating morning light came into the room and weighted my head.
 Female perfume (must have been June’s) was all around. She may have even slept in this bed. Her clothes were still here: June’s jacket and dress laid out over the sofa. I looked around the room for her but only saw rays of dappled sunlight.
I left the room to find through the window that we were on a high floor in what must have been a hotel. Through lush dark red hallways with gold-trimmed designs on the carpet and wall I walked until I entered the common area where all of the hallways meet to an open breakfast room.
Someone was with June at a high-top table by a window overlooking the city. June was drinking a coffee and had a croissant on a napkin with her laptop out, sitting across her best friend from high school, Ming. (Or as I called her, Mingificent).
“Hey there, lightweight,” Ming said.
“I’m not a lightweight,” I said. My voice was croaky. “I must have been drugged.”
I sat next to June.
“By Perry?” June said.
“Yes. Even though—” I started.
Ming had on silver-framed glasses.
“Even though when she went to give me a drink I took the one behind her back,” I said.
Ming had two-foot long matted black hair.
 “If she were trying to drug you,” June said. “I assume you would know to take the one she handed you.”
“And let her drug me?” I asked.
“No, Harry,” June said. “She knows you don’t trust her. She’s obviously going to think you wouldn’t accept it in the first place. So she knew to drug the second one. You knew from the beginning it was bad news.”
            “I can’t believe someone would do that to you,” Ming said. “You just had one drink with her?”
            “She asked me if I wanted a drink, said she was going to have one too,” I said. “She was serving, so I agreed.”
            “Makes sense,” June said, sarcastically. “She poured herself a glass while working a one-time job that she surely wants to make long-term.”
            Don’t be so sure June’s a genius. She could have heard us talking in the back hallway. That was right about the time before she found us.
            I made a mistake, but I wanted to get back to June and me. I’d prefer to talk about something involving us, not Perry.
            “I’m just glad I beat June in pool,” I said.
“That’s not what I heard,” Ming said.
             “Actually,” June said. “Harry watched his 8-ball go in.” She grimaced like reporting an injury. “And then right after he passed out, the cue ball scratched.”
            I leaned on my elbow and turned to her. “June, I saw it go in before I passed out,” I said. “I highly doubt I’d scratch on a shot like that.” I did remember I hit the cue ball a bit too hard. “I thought you didn’t know a lot about pool.”
            “Everyone knows you lose when you scratch on an 8-ball shot,” Ming blurted out.
            “Because of the state you were in, you deserve the win anyway,” June said.
            “Aw,” Ming said.
            I went to reach for June’s arm—at first not knowing if it was okay, but then I thought about how it’s always best to be brave and commit to what you want. She was a genius. But I wanted her to be my genius. So I put my hand on her knee, like I had done on our first date a week ago in the movie theater.
Ming slammed her hands on the table. “Shoot!” she shouted.
            “What is it?” I said.
            “O my god. Ming?” June said. “Is everything okay?”
            “Yes.” She began packing up. “No biggie.”
She looked haunted.
“It seems pretty big.”
“Were there mystery charges on your credit card?”
“Are you pregnant with triplets?”
“Have you contracted a deadly virus?”
“You didn’t find a replacement best friend, did you?”
Ming chuckled at us, and for a second I thought she was laughing at us for being two in a shape that are more than friends. But my hand was not on her knee. June withdrew to emotional miles away.
“No, nothing like that, you goofs.” she said. “One of my old sorority sisters was driving on the freeway and her car broke down. Her triple A expired last month, so I have to go help her. Call me later for deets,” she said to June.
After Ming left we were silent for a while. This place was ominous and serene at once. Chatter from other happy couples at tables. No music. And we were so high up we couldn’t hear traffic. Just a magnificent view of the forming city buildings.
The space between us seemed so wide and heavy once Ming left. Unlike what I wanted to feel and had felt when we first rekindled. No, this was just like my deepest, darkest fears: everything that I wanted to avoid. I hate to think that if I hadn’t thought about avoiding it, it may have never been known to happen.
June left the breakfast room with her stuff, and I followed in tow. I caught up with her in the red hallway.
            “Did I buy the room last night?” I mentioned.
            “Excuse me?” she said.
I just got a promotion and actually have enough money on my card to afford this for once. It felt good to have that money because I earned it, and I wanted to let her know that I would be more than willing to spend it on her. Sure, it didn’t matter to Ms. Successful June—we know she can afford it.
“I did,” she said.
            “Well, I just got a promotion. It’s no problem. I actually get penalized on my card for not spending enough for some reason,” I said. “Either it’s some new advanced way to contribute to the economy or my bank is just ripping me off.”
When we were back in the hotel room, I remembered being on the sofa last night talking intimately with June while she got me orange juice and animal crackers.
The maid service must have opened the doors to the balcony. A warm breeze came in.
“Come look at the city,” I said. “Wow, June.” The view was of newly-formed corporate buildings and on the outskirts the nearly-finished neighborhood communities.
June didn’t hear me tell her to come on out and witness this view with me. When I came in through the open doors she claimed to have a meeting to get to across town. I heard thunder and the sky got darker.
“So unpredictable,” June said.
“What’s that?”
“Summer showers,” she said.
Rain pellets started to patter on the balcony. They sped up until the rain was pounding on the stone of the balcony and lightning flashed behind the city’s growth, temporarily put on pause.
We made our way down to the lobby. She held her purse and had her dress folded over her arm.
“Alright, Ms. Albright, you’re good to go,” the clerk said.
June let me know again that she had a meeting to get to.
I held my sport jacket. I felt a pain—like a mental stinging. Every cell of my body felt weighted and drowsy.
 “Already?” I said.
“The city’s growing,” she said.
 
 
 
            This type of distance I felt open up between us only happened one other time that I can recall in our twenty years of on and off best-friendship back when we were twelve. It was a verbal slippage on my part. I knew I shouldn’t have said it once I did.
To make this make sense, I have to backtrack and let you know what happened to June’s mom when June was seven. Well, I guess it wasn’t that anything happened to her; it was the absence of her that stung. On a night in November she ran away and hasn’t contacted anyone in the family since. She disappeared. Something that unfortunately a lot of people claim to have seen coming.
What ties this story all together for those who are confused on how a person can just up and leave her family (though it happens) is that June’s mother had a different set of morals than the average person. A very successful model-turned-businesswoman in her younger years, becoming a mother changed her. She took a long leave of absence to tend to her child and could not find the same type of work five and a half years later when she eventually hired a full-time nanny. Unhappy with the life of a stay-at-home mom, her marriage broke down and she began seeing other men.
She always had a partner in crime. It was her ex-husband for so many years, but when he wouldn’t agree to hide some of their incidental earnings in an illegally influenced non-taxable bracket—and many continuous adult differences—it couldn’t be anymore. And Ms. Albright was a woman fueled by passion. She hardly had her most productive days when alone. June’s mom was looking for somebody new.
 She apparently had a thing for the meanest of men. (Because, think about it: they weren’t mean to her and were very powerful—and what’s danger if not to heighten romance?) She began taking international trips with them (and allegedly became a kind of mob boss muse, though the men she was with weren’t exactly immersed in criminal activity—they were the corporate version of mob bosses). Every time she disappeared for a full week, June’s dad said—even after they were happily divorced and cordially managed custody of June—he always felt a small chance in his gut he’d never see her again. And even though she was a despicable woman at times, he had no problem letting his glorious daughter, June, take her mother’s maiden name as her last name in honor of her.
Well as for the other time I inadvertently created this much distance between June and me, we were pre-teens in the stages of goofy jokes that are only for fun. It was a weekend night around 10 p.m. and June and I and bunch of other neighborhood friends were gathered around in a driveway. We were all hyped up on sugar, finishing a game we used to play called Celebrity and Paparazzi. The girls played celebrities and had to evade the boys, who played paparazzi, chasing after them snapping iPhone pics (the most experienced of players even brought Nikons). The winner might not be who you expected in a game like this. The winner was not the girl who appeared the least frequently in photos, but it was the one who made it seem in the low frequency of photos she appeared in that she looked important and self-confident, which almost translated into the teenage comic affectation of royal and fabulous.
We were all comfortable with each other, being goofy, joking around, and having fun. Blurting out anything. I can’t believe I didn’t think ahead and prevent myself from saying this. I knew the tragic story of her mother at this time, but it just snuck up on me and the whole thing was terrible timing.
But yes, I am ashamed to say in the heat of the moment, my sugar-filled hyperness overpowered my logical mind that overrode anything which would vaguely hurt June—easily my best friend out of the whole group—and I did, when she asked me who was picking us up to take us home (we lived in the same cul-de-sac), I said, in a joking manner, as many other children do with each other daily at this age (for harmless fun), with a raising voice and on the crescendo of a laugh, “Your mom is.”
It was maybe the seventh your mom joke said that night. I had heard it so much it just crept into my vocabulary. If you hear something enough, you are bound to repeat it. It was the first ever your mom joke directed toward June by anyone who knew her. And I knew I should be crucified for saying it.
Everyone said, “that’s not cool,” and “c’mon, Harry, you dumbass,” in the startlingly strange mixture of a serious tone with the whiny and high characteristics of a prepubescent voice, and then everyone looked away from me. All my friends got chilly and distant and went home in their rides—until it was just June and me, riding home. She left me there in silence, heading into her house across the street. While the others’ distance was temporary, she continued to ignore me for three months.
It haunted me. Having her be literally so close that I passed her house daily (she must have taken great caution to avoid me) and theoretically so far.
It was one thing when someone June didn’t know very well said a your mom joke—she could dismiss them for not knowing her situation and taking it as something that just happens (plus, can’t get truly mad at people you don’t love). But this time it was me saying it. Right to her face. All up in her ears. Absentminded and not thinking about the power of words. Even as slight and unintentional as those suckers may be.
 
 
 
Looking back on the night of the fundraiser, one of the things I think about is the difference in Perry. Though she was still trim, she used to look bulimic in high school. Now she looked like an ordinary person who will have a second donut on cheat day. The old Perry wouldn’t even have one. Her skin used to be splotched with red seemingly every day. Now it glowed. Not in like a cheesy way where I have nothing else to say about her so I’m saying she glowed—but I swore she was a bad writer’s warm white moon in a crisp low sky.
            Which is why it was so weird that she went out of her way to drug me and then show up during our pool game. Thankfully June was with me and took care of me all night. I could see the young, redskinned, misunderstood Perry doing something like this. But this new Perry didn’t have any visible lust in her eyes. She was the most whole I had ever seen.
I remember that young, red skinned, misunderstood Perry. Like the evening I met her: She sat on the couch drinking soda between two tattooed teens smoking hookah. She eventually went out to get some fresh air, making it away from the second-hand smoke. I joined her, asking why she was even at this party; it didn’t seem like her type of dig. She said, funny enough, it was her apartment. Her roommate always had her friends over and it was nonstop chaos. She said she liked this though because she was able to sell her antidepressants and ADHD medicine in high enough demand to make money for rent and food. She just turned eighteen and moved here from a poor rural town down the backroads.
I hadn’t ever even kissed a girl. But I took her on dates riddled with kisses and couldn’t believe the luck I had of running into her. Almost hysterical, I was so lucky to be in her arms.
A couple months into my relationship with Perry, my first ever relationship, she started coming with me and my friends when we went to an action movie; then she came with us to a blizzardy football game in the northeast; and she was planning to come with us on all-boys trip abroad the summer of senior year. So because it was my first relationship, I thought that she liked spending time with me and I liked her for it.
Until one day, June, who was in most of my classes, texted me for school notes. (She started to miss a lot of school when her internship was underway.) Perry intercepted the message. She said she always suspected this and here it was: out in the open like an elephant in the field (clearly her analogy).
When I saw Perry next (weeks later, since she did not go to my school, or any school) she had been crying and was a mess, red skinned and detrimentally thin. She spoke in quick spurts. Her brown eyes were dark beads with no vision. She showed up in front of everyone in my uncle’s foyer. Everyone was just leaving for the night. The lampposts behind Perry were turned on and well into a night’s worth of shining by the time she caught my uncle’s family and closest friends just as he was telling them goodbye and Merry Christmas and to see them real soon after a warm quiet evening.
She said she was sorry I did this to her, but that I was what she deserved. She told me that she’d seen June text me before and always ignored it—even though I’m fairly sure June was always texting me about something in relation to our final senior classes. Perry said I looked through her, when she could barely see at all.
A month or so after this Perry broke into my uncle’s jewelry shop. Well, she entered by using a key-pad combination she learned from me. She was careful to take small, high-priced items so she wouldn’t have to carry anything larger than a backpack and make out with enough to validate stealing at all.
Heroic June was just heading home from tough after-school internship hours. Some enigmatic woman she worked for became a motherly figure in her life and got her a job after three quick years in college as well. I’ve never had the pleasure but heard she has an aura of mystique around her.
June, putting a pile of manila folders on top of her vehicle, spotted a redhead saucering down the boulevard in the upper district a block away. June figured Perry had no reason to be in this area; plus Perry was carrying a backpack downtown far enough from any campus to rouse suspicion; and finally Perry was walking at something above a casual pace and kept checking the corners and rooftops. June knew coincidence can be overruled with a group of three.
The way I met Perry way back in high school was a complete anomaly. I mentioned I was at an apartment party the night I met her, but I did not explain why my high school friends and I decided to go to a party, as we did not usually attend parties in an apartment of someone we didn’t know two hours earlier.
I guess it all started during a game of Friday flag football at recess in middle school, almost time to head back to class for the afternoon when we had one more play. My friend ran for the end zone with the ball. I tracked him down and knew I wouldn’t be able to grab his flag in time—all I could do was push him out of bounds and not allow him in the end zone. So I pushed him right before he crossed the goal line. I directed him to the metal fence. He ended up running straight into the pole of the fence and smacking it real hard with his head. Whack! Thud! He fell to the grass, pale and still.
He couldn’t look into the eyes of the people running to help him. There was mud he fell in. His khakis were soaked poo-dark and he was unsteady standing up, unable to cry, absolutely shocked the life had been smacked out of him.
Eddie eventually dropped out of high school due to his mental incapability. I was on the way to June’s for a study session when I found out this news. I remember I turned the car around and drove straight home and cried and turned my phone to silent.
It was a Friday so my friends were out and about and anxious. They showed up to my house and rang the doorbell like boomers and said to hear them out about this party they found. We were juniors and hadn’t been to one yet. The way they found this one was that they were in CVS using tip money to buy soda and candy when an attractive hippie girl came up to them. When she let one of our nerdier friends know she had access to a new study aid three times stronger than the last, she convinced them to come over. She turned out to be Perry’s roommate.
That was also the night I called Eddie and we all went over to his house and did the same thing to him that my friends had just done to me.
 
 
 
Maybe it was from the accident in middle school that made him think it was a good idea to climb through a vent on a routine delivery. What happened was before he entered the vent, his phone had showed that he was right outside of the apartment, which he was, but he was at the back side of the building (there was a service access door that he opened from the outside, and a set of stairs he walked up, and then only a large vent). It ran along the vaulted ceiling of the apartment. 
Maybe this wasn’t the best idea of all time. Maybe Eddie was struggling with little things like this since middle school: Riding out the pathway of a vent thirty feet above a luxury apartment to save a few extra steps. Leaving the lights on at night. Putting the trash in the recycling. Taking the freeway to an unfamiliar town. Parking in an illegal spot. Waiting for the light to turn green to take a right. Answering the phone upside down and complaining about the signal. Eating 215-degree soup. Wondering why the end of a movie felt familiar. Realizing at the end of a movie that he had seen it before. Entering the wrong address on the GPS (something he had improved on once delivering for Dine and Dash). Crying after running over a squirrel. Eating pudding with a knife. Letting his cereal get soggy. Contaminating a wound. Breaking an electronic device. Getting bitten by a small dog. Thinking he had the state-wide winning lottery ticket when he actually had the three-figure county-wide  3rd place sweepstakes ticket. Getting the wrong color of a bath towel his girlfriend preferred and then having her break up with him over it. Stepping in dog dung. Signing up for a new mail service that includes tracking down lost mail but losing that registration paperwork in the mail.
Intending to dial a number from the 910-area code, but in an honest mistake pressing the call button prematurely after entering the third digit as a 1 instead of a 0. Being unable to kill a deer when hunting. Taking a by-foot shortcut across a frozen lake to a delivery spot. Skipping out on taking medication. Applying for a program to be a welder. Stepping on an ant hill. Driving off road. Sleeping alone. Renting a book from the library that turned out to be a children’s coloring book. Misplacing a renewal ID. Wiring the television poorly in the common space of the living room and having his closest friend knock all the plugs out of the sockets. Burning a chunk off his wrist in his first and last welding class. Cannonballing in the shallow end. Staring too long when handing smokeshows their food. Not flirting back when an average woman brushes fingers on the passing of a pen for signature. Following a pretty barista home on a whim. Leaving his phone in the car for the night in a sketchy downtown parking lot.
Freaking out thinking he’s lost a cat in a girl’s home, telling her that the cat is missing and how sorry he is, having her leave early from her in-law’s house and then using the hallway bathroom where the light purr of an all-white long-haired Polynesian cat curled up in the sink startles him. Using the wrong lane on a running track and colliding with a Division 1 athlete preparing for regionals. Crawling through the vent of a Ms. Powell and praying she won’t hear him and maybe get him arrested for trespassing or something ridiculous yet realistic in that a thing like this would happen to him.
Using the wrong parking pass when delivering to the routine apartment complex that has given out special parking passes to avoid the issue of tickets on delivery cars for the apartment complex since some new apartment complexes were so big they took the same amount of time to get into as an airport. Not hanging the proper parking pass to hang from his rearview mirror to assure him no penalty for parking in a specific area. Hanging the wrong one instead. Having the one he hung be the old parking pass that allowed delivery persons only fifteen minutes max to leave their car on the curb or in a restricted parking lot. Having the parking pass he meant to put up be these parking passes that are part of the new benefits of Dine and Dash Chef service, where a person would not just bring the food to your door but would actually come in and cook the food for you. Not taking part in the Chef service. Using the wrong parking pass and getting towed and going on a $300 cross-city debacle to get it back.
Sleeping for a full day after the boys claimed a light beer and cigarette would do wonders for the getting dumped problem, having dreams of two opponents running at each other on a large playing field. Trying with his everything to forgive his friend but just knowing he will always be the guy who took his life away. But then being thankful of the life he has and realizing it is partly that friend’s acceptance that gets him through each day.
As Eddie continued to crawl, someone walked directly underneath, so he had to stop. The end of the vent was so close.
“You’re marvelous, dear” a woman said. “Don’t pout.”
“I’m a timepiece’s reflection,” another voice said, this one younger, sounding like it could almost be the daughter.           
As Eddie kept crawling quietly in the dark, the end of the vent came closer and closer until it was on his fingertips. When he opened up the vent cover he was careful. It mattered to him to be quiet and not make a loud bang. But when he unscrewed the last screw, the vent cover keeled straight back and fell toward the ground.
He was able to grab onto the smallest portion of it right before it crashed. It did skid up against the wall making a small thump like a car door and leaving a gray scrape mark on the white wall and a cut on his wrist (tiny spurts of blood got on the wall); but he managed to get his body out of the hole in the wall while putting the vent cover back on with little to no detectable noise ending this whole ghastly situation and just delivering the food for Pete’s sake. Once he was out, he was able to screw the vent cover back in tight enough. He was just on time—who knows?—maybe he would have surpassed his allotted parking time if he went all the way around on foot.
“Can we reverse and go in slo-mo?” I said. “There’s no way you saw her at the door?”
On my uncle’s doorstep Eddie was bleeding from the wrist.
“She wasn’t at the door—” Eddie said.
“See, there you go. It wasn’t her.”
Eddie spoke a little louder, “She was behind the woman who answered the door.”
“Who?”
“It was some woman—but as the door was shutting, between this woman’s torso and the door closing—”
 “You were checking her out?” I said, handing him a band-aid.
“No, I saw June walk by inside the apartment.”
If what Eddie is saying is correct: June had found someone to confide in about our ‘break-up.’ Was this the woman whom she worked for? If so, it was Lacey Blankenship, executive manager of June’s worktime. June let it slip one night that the woman has other aliases she goes by as well at times—all within legal lengths of the law, but nonetheless, intriguing. Her companies are made up of mostly women and are run on some very effective neoliberal western traditions. But to say I could tell you about the half of it would be a lie.
So assuming that Eddie is in his right mind, then it makes sense it was her, venting to the motherly figure who stepped in. But to be honest I bet Eddie wasn’t in his right mind, since that didn’t sound at all like June.
“This was in the month of June?” I said.
“Yes, it so happens to be. But about thirty-five minutes ago I saw June Albright.”
“She’s going through a lot because of me,” I told him.
“It didn’t sound like something personal or romantic. I never saw you two that way.”
I threw down Eddie’s water glass and asked him why not. He tried to calm me down as I bolted to the garage. I grabbed my uncle’s Cartwheel chainsaw and ripped it out of the mess of other tools and boxes and strode across the driveway to the yard. I secured the little handle and yanked it back as hard as I could, firing up the blade and chain. I sailed by the ligustrums and potted plants to a big oak tree at the back of the yard. I wound back with the chainsaw revving. I cut through the bark of the tree and lost grip as it sawed through. The chainsaw went ricocheting over at the fence while the top of the large oak came down on top of me. I fell to the grass and rolled over while getting pricked by dozens of small tree limbs and hard leaves. I had nothing but pins in my back and grass in my mouth as the chainsaw still ripped and sputtered across the yard.
 
 
 
The following are all the details I know of what happened the night my parents had to go away to witness protection. This was when I was five.
All I know is that there was a woman my parents were therapeutically and secretly trying to help with some very heart-crushing issues involving a powerful (and criminal) boyfriend. One night in the building where they held their sessions, there was a candle to window shade incident in a room on the same floor by the stairs. My parents went on the first elevator down to safety while the woman claimed she had left something important in her purse concerning her daughter.
This powerful man blamed my parents for her death; he needed to retaliate somehow. So he sent all sorts of ghostly armed figures to visit my parents in parking lots and driveways multiple times a day before my parents decided—without the company of me, their child settling in with his peers in Kindergarten—it would be best to get authorities involved and leave the city.
 
 
 
I received a call from a government number. There was a trespasser caught with an over-the-counter bear-killing spray that has the ingredient dubbed Morbidine (highly-poisonous, known for being extracted from the bottle and used for contaminating water supplies) near the house and farm my parents live on under witness protection.
The trespasser was being held in the living room. She had on a bodysuit the same green as the fields outside on which her blonde hair fell. On the wooden table was a chipped brown enamel decorative mug with dense steam leaving from the brim.
A former alcoholic and divorced security guard on the last few months of his contract of employment saw this young woman in some sort of sinister crouch on the final rounds of his early-evening patrol. When he furtively went to take a picture of her making these kind of movements, his phone’s flash was on and lit up the shading forest, so, he claims, the malevolent young woman transformed into a cute, innocent single hiker doing the ridge.
The guard was livid and persuasive enough to convince a sketch artist to draw her exact movements and facial features when he saw her. When the sketch artist heard the guard’s proposal, he made it clear that what the guard wanted to have recreated was not just one facial expression, but an amalgamation of them. So this wouldn’t take days—it would take months; and the final product would be like a cartoon flipbook.
The interrogation was pointless. She was saying: “So in certain areas there’s these big black bears. They’re not evil creatures—what they are is hungry and scared. We waste so much food in the US that could potentially be going to these animals. But they will claw you in the heart so that they can eat—not just for themselves, but for their family. In a matter of life or death, we are advised to spray the bear with Fifty-Fifty. It immediately shuts down the nervous system of the bear and puts them into a lethal sleep. The mortality rate at 50% is lower than all of its less-successful competitor products. Hence the product name: Fifty-Fifty. Because we don’t want to kill the bears—we just want to get away from them. In a matter of fifty-fifty life or death, you’ve got to choose yourself. Go buy some now—if any of you or your relatives plan to do any hiking soon.”
She seemed about as intelligent as June, which was rare for me to find in someone.
 “We heard whispers that this is a drug common for poisoning water supplies?” the interrogator pressed in a tone I once considered strict that I now considered formal.
 “Of course. Instead of spraying a dangerous animal, the toxic liquid inside the bottle can also be used to contaminate water supplies, rivers, drinks, really any form of a controlled liquid,” she said. “Its street name is Morbidine. I wouldn’t carry something so dangerous if I didn’t know anything about it. To be clear, that is an illegal use of it and one I would never partake in. Since we can create these amazing products that can do so much, we have to place higher moral value in whom we sell these to. If they are in street clothes and don’t look like they can hack a day of sun or miles of trails, I doubt they are making a purchase for the right reason. The ingredient in Fifty-Fifty that kills was purposefully tested in an inmate’s water, from which he immediately became sick and died twenty-four hours later.”
“However, you did have the Morbidine in a non-issue spray bottle.”
“Sometimes in order to keep my pack light, I need to transfer the Fifty-Fifty into a small spray bottle for reasons of leftover waste as well. I have the purchased bottle and the receipt at home. I’ll be sure to provide them.”
“Your attire, what is the purpose of this jumpsuit?”  another interrogator asked.
“It keeps me light and agile from spot to spot. See, there’s these log-cabins I can stop and rest at, with proper equipment to last me as many days as I choose before I arrive at the next spot. The hike I was doing today involved no gear, heavy meditation—”
“And bear-killer.”
“Imagine meditating and having a hungry bear come up and say, ‘ready for your last day on earth?’ I would beat the odds if I were you.”
“Why not a gun?”
“Those terrible things? I told you all the coordinates already and the name of the program. You should be confirming this now.”
            She checked out with every search they did. A Powell Co. funded her events to this area with a premier hiking retreat up the mountains. The hiking retreat offers this exquisite service that let hikers board in different lodges nightly all along the beautiful hill lines.
 
 
 
In late December—so about six months after the fundraiser with June—Perry said she must meet me in the parking lot immediately because she was moving but had to give me something before she left.
It was a warmer, bright winter day. The sun was ridiculous outside—like it had serious work to do. Perry was getting out of her car when I arrived. Her hips were even fuller and waist skinnier and skin healthier. She walked with firm, sinuous steps and had on professional black pants and a partially buttoned white dress shirt, holding a familiar looking glass. She strutted in heels across the parking lot’s black top and stopped a car’s length away from me.
 “You look good, Perry, I’ve been meaning to—” I said.
“Harry, I have something for you,” she interrupted.
She handed me a whiskey glass.
“It was silly, but I took it for memorabilia,” she said, lipstick on and hair blown out.
The whiskey glass looked familiar because it was just like the monogrammed ones everyone else got the night of the fundraiser.
In tiny writing my initials were on the base of the crystal glass.
She had purple lips, darker vixen hair, and amber Ray Ban shades on. She looked to not be taking cheat days anymore. When we dated she wouldn’t have a donut based on lack of appetite; back at the fundraiser she looked like she’d be down to have two, so careless and fun; but then in the parking lot she looked like the person who has the discipline to have none—not because she didn’t want one or would become out of shape from one, but because she was at the point in her life she could convince herself she would be slower the next day for it.
This whiskey glass with my initials in beautiful cursive once had the value to make Perry commit thievery; now it was so worthless I could smash it and she wouldn’t care.
“Why are you rushing out of town? Where are you going?” I said.
“My boyfriend and I both got jobs somewhere else.”
            “That’s vague. Where exactly is it?”
            “I can’t tell. I don’t want you to stalk me.”
            “Ha ha. And his name is?”
            “Henry.”
            “Henry?”
            “Yes. We’re leaving at—” She checked her thin stainless steel Bulova wristwatch. “A couple of minutes ago actually.” She let out a nervous laugh and walked back to her car. I followed close in tow.
She twisted in the driver’s seat, lips pressing, and soothingly running a hand through her blown out hair. She adjusted the frames on her nose and smiled to a woman putting groceries in a car next to us.
“Didn’t I recommend those sunglasses, Pear?”
 “You may have,” she said. “I don’t think much about our time together anymore.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I never did.”
“It is perfect,” she said with enthusiasm. “Well, I’m going.”
She backed out and kept her eyes keenly ahead while driving out of the parking lot.
 
 
 
I drove over to the business district and parked by the curb, where I swiped my parking pass card on the new city meters and headed away from my uncle’s jewelry shop and over to where June once worked her internship.
Walking in through the door, tons of white light flooded in from the high boards. A maternal-looking woman sat still behind a desktop computer. Two younger women stood on either side of her.
I said I’d be back in a minute. I stepped outside and voice texted June. I told her: I’m sorry if I did something wrong. That’s not the real me.
I told her one more thing: Something just reminded me of you. I’d love to meet up. Do you remember your monogrammed glass from the fundraiser? Well, it turns out you left it there. So Perry returned it to me, thinking we were still together, and yeah, it’s been a couple months because I was scared to give it back to you since you won’t talk to me. But how about it?

​The clouds were pure and white, bright and almost shining, with the afternoon sun soaking into every crevasse and highlighting every curve on top their gently shifting forms. Dustin cast his eyes out over the clean horizon, deceived by the look of an attractive blue sky as the plane skirted the seamless cotton-ball field, something which, in itself, caused and concealed a more overcast, sun-filtered day below. The plane was headed to Vancouver, the city in which he was raised. It was a work trip, and while he was idly staring out the window, he exercised his imagination with who he might greet, how he would assess the inefficiencies he was tasked with, and the fantasy of how he would be received. He considered himself a professional ambassador, and over the years it had become a habit of his to visualize his own bearing and charm. But it would be unfair to think that this vanity was uncalled for or to his detriment. No, it only helped to manifest the confidence necessary to inspire trust in a client. He was a man who was always preparing to make a strong impression, or at least what he considered a strong impression, insomuch as, through every aspect of his work and civil relationships, it was a point of pride. He was a man of assuring smiles and firm handshakes, and he had always felt himself to be well suited to his work. His procedural greetings were a source of comfort and personal affirmation for him, and on many occasions, he found he even preferred the playful back-and-forth he would provoke at first blush to the relaxed familiarity he received from his friends and family.
He hadn’t been home in almost two years and felt obligated to stay a few more days than his trip demanded so he could visit his parents. It was a commitment he considered mildly, not for any overt displeasure he expected in seeing them, but simply out of a stressful preoccupation in his thoughts, which were anywhere but home. He was at once tired and restless, incessantly and rhythmically tapping his forefinger on the armrest, but the flight was approaching its predicted time of arrival, and knowing this, he did his best to distract himself and suppress some of his more persistent worries. For a small while he considered how his night would unravel. He needed to be on client site and present for a meeting early in the morning, but after the flight his day was unscheduled. For that reason, before departing, he had made plans to have dinner with a long absent friend in the city.
He had received a message from his erstwhile companion, a man by the name Joel Kazowitz, months prior. In it, he had asked if Dustin would be returning to Vancouver over the winter holidays and suggested that, if he was, they ought to make some time to see each other. Dustin responded that he wasn’t planning on going anywhere through the holidays, but Joel's request remained in his mind, arousing some rowdy and fondly held memories, so a few days before his trip, he messaged Joel and asked if he was still interested in meeting up, to which he replied he was. At first, Dustin was surprised to hear from his friend. They hadn’t seen each other in years, and considering the time that had passed, he had expected they might never see each other again. They had been friends since high school and illicit partners in their tumultuous years of early adulthood. At that more restless age, Dustin would often go to watch Joel perform in a jazz quartet, or quintet or trio or with however many musicians were at hand, at a popular bar on Beatty street, after which they would share drinks and prime themselves to let the night take them wherever it might. Such reflections lured him into the past, swathing him comfortably, but it was short lived. His future always robbed him of whatever semblance of peace he would find.
As he skimmed over the antics of his younger self, he also suffered, and struggled to ignore, the sharp, nagging worry which, over an unending period of time, he found he could never fully escape. He was compulsively reminded that what loomed ahead of him, after his dinner plans, after his professional obligations, after his parents, and after his return flight, was a painful state of affairs which were predicated on the decay of an altogether different friendship, that which he had with his wife. Their marriage had just reached its fourth anniversary, and it seemed to Dustin that whatever animosity had now come between them had, actually, been a long time coming. The backdrop to his growing trepidation was a home life of increasing silence, punctuated only by moments of either detached, uninterested remarks between them, or outbursts of anger and verbal attacks from his wife.
You think I want to be here? It doesn’t even register— what I gave up to come out here. And now? What? It’s like I’m a fucking house plant! You can’t even look at me when I’m talking to you! You think I like living like this? You’re really not as smart as you think you are Dustin. I know what you’re thinking. This is a problem coming from me. Like you can judge me? Well, what about you? You can just sit there.
Imagining it, he could feel the shrill pitch of her words, like an untuned string section, pry at his nerves and move down his spine. It had been a great while since he assumed to have any understanding of her, her anger, or what she wanted from him, and he could often only respond to her aggressions with a stony look and an exasperated disdain. He had come to find only discomfort in her presence and believed that she must have experienced something similar, but she, in rebellion of a quiet, stifling end, reacted emotionally and with redundant accusations.
The plane began to dip. The light from the window turned gray, and the city came into view. He saw the downtown thicket, what would otherwise be the skyline, the blue mote, and everything else that sprawled out around it. For whatever reason, fate had always conspired to keep him from having a window seat while flying back home, so, with curiosity, he took the opportunity to scan the ground in search of once intimate territory, and although it was difficult to make out, he managed to locate the neighborhood where he had grown up just a short distance into the mainland. He thought he would find some sense of nostalgia looking down at those cramped townhouses, all comfy brown with that knee scarring, rocky, and old pavement weaving in and about them, but he felt only a vague disappointment. He reasoned that this was a product of the alien perspective he had in flight, and that he would probably only feel sentimental if he was immersed in the place itself. Looking away from the city, he turned his attention to something which he knew he would recognize warmly: The North Shore Mountains. They were a ways off in the distance and a little obscured in the hazy light, but he could still discern their craggy silhouette. Those enclosing figures, raised on two sides, absent on one and then again on the shore, had always comforted him, as if they were there to stand guard for the city. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say he regarded them with a certain kind of respect. A kind of admiration for their unflinching stoicism.
 The plane touched down on the runway and slowed to a halt, and an announcement signaled passengers to disembark. Dustin collected his things and got up to leave, but for a moment he was stuck in queue behind an old man who wrestled to dislodge his carry-on from the overhead. He felt his patience being strained, standing still and looking down at his feet, imagining wriggling and pushing his way past the struggling senior. The man turned to him and apologized. Dustin smiled at him politely. “Nothing to apologize for.”
 Once he was out on the floor of the airport terminal, he took the opportunity to stretch and yawn himself alive. He thought to himself that he would like to lay down for a little while before he went to meet up with Joel. It was only four, and he had a few hours to kill. He gathered his luggage and carried it outside to where he found a single, expectant brown and white taxi, stalking tired, jet-lagged travelers like a vulture that had missed the wake.
 On the way to his hotel, Dustin watched familiar places go by. He noticed his driver taking a needlessly circuitous route, but he didn’t care. He was sleepy and full of memories that were fractured but consciously edited together in a dreamy montage. Before he got married, and before he left the city to accept a job offer in America, he led an untamed social life, and he couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to the bulk of those people he once called friends. Most of them no longer used social media, and those who did treated it as nothing more than a platform to share their globe-trotting pictures, like they were personal accomplishments, or to announce their engagements and pregnancies, their common purposes and lifelong turmoil. The thought of Joel’s message stirred up wistful feelings in him. The taxi drove him past the university and past the nearby reserved housing with the peeled back paint, unkempt lawns, and interspersed fraternity crest writing. He began to slip into a recollection of all the sweaty, drunken nights, and then the throbbing mornings which he endured with strict composure. Those pains seemed quaint to him now that he was more familiar with life's steep difficulty curve, which to him, so far, looked to be a steady march from a child kicking at pebbles to poor Sisyphus.
It was there, somewhere, where he had met his wife. He couldn’t remember fully how the night went, but it was certainly a party and he was certainly pissed. At the tail end of the night, he found her sitting on his lap, shifting around with suggestive friction, and staring into his eyes with immense heat and anticipation. Their relationship continued on as it started that night: deeply sexual. Over the course of a few months, they enjoyed themselves in a manner that developed their romantic feelings much too fast for any strong, interpersonal roots to take hold. Fortunately, once the passion had consumed itself, Dustin was still happy to have her in his company. She was an exceptionally beautiful woman in many regards and for that reason alone he could respect her. She, in turn, seemed to appreciate his brusque manner and social presence. They remained an affectionate couple for a year before Dustin felt compelled to tie the knot, and through all that time he was content. After his proposal, he remained optimistic and prepared to enter a new phase in his life, as he felt it was the proper time for him to do so.
An hour before it came time to meet with Joel, Dustin had to rouse himself from his queen-sized hotel bed and an unsatisfying nap. He sat for a few minutes with a dull ache in his head, and when he was feeling cogent, he ordered another taxi to the hotel front. He had the driver take him to the downtown area where Joel had chosen a place for them to meet, but as they approached their destination, the driver, a heavy and hairy man with a husky accent, asked him if it was alright to drop him off a block away from their destination so he could avoid getting caught up in a backed up lane where traffic was stalled. Dustin told him it was fine. He paid the man, giving him a generous tip, and climbed out of the car. He was familiar with the area and knew the restaurant Joel had picked by reputation. Back in their younger days, the two would sometimes pretend to be gourmets, and they sampled many extravagant places in the city despite the often-times steep cost. He took a deep breath and started briskly towards where he remembered the place being.
The restaurant was at the base of four towers which converged on a four-way intersection. Their undefined shadows, hunched over from the west, kept him from whatever vestigial glow of sunlight that managed to seep through the clouds. He had passed by the place many times before and spotted it quickly across the street from where he was, first recognizing the dark and tinted windows. He had always felt comfortable in the mid-city, a place he thought was mostly the same as any other metropolitan district in every other city he had been to. A place that mixed with savvy, dressed pedestrians, decisive professionals, and cramped traffic that left the streets constipated, with chic cafes and other small shops crowded together to fill in the gaps. In his mind, there wasn’t much that was unique to Vancouver apart from the gratuitous number of cyclists. Of course, there was also the homeless population, which was much larger than what was found in other cities of the same size. Those unfortunates had always inspired his contempt.
Only a few feet away from him as approached the intersection was a slouched over man in washed out layers, seemingly unconscious, and as he passed him, Dustin caught the familiar stench of body odor, alcohol, and urine that was typical of the down and out. The sight of him brought to mind a habitual platitude that his father was fond of. The man had a stance on panhandlers that he felt he needed to champion whenever the topic of the homeless came up. It was something he considered to be indicative of considerable virtue, and something Dustin heard many times through his childhood. Whenever he had the opportunity, he would proclaim that if he met a man with an empty stomach, he would gladly take that man out and buy a meal for him, but he would never give his money to a bagger whose actions he could not follow, as he could never be sure that his money would be spent on something he approved of. Thinking about it, Dustin scowled. He was not sympathetic enough or, in his mind, fool enough to even match his fathers half-hearted posturing. Standing at the intersection, he saw around the corner another pair of shabby looking people holding up a cardboard sign. One of the baggers turned to look at him with plasticine features and Dustin found himself locking eyes. His face reflexively took on a sneering expression. They examined each other for a moment before he turned away dismissively, and when the lights changed, he crossed the street with confidence and approached the restaurant.
He expected the place to be lavish, but once inside, his expectations were nonetheless humbled. The light was soft and flattering. The tablecloths draped across the tables looked impressive, with intricately stitched edges and dimensional patterns on their bodies, and the chairs surrounding each table were smart with black leather cushioning and copper looking legs. In the center of the room hung an elaborately winding and twisting chandelier with many crystalline bulbs dangling from its limbs like hesitant drops of water, something which he found particularly eye catching. Everything was angular and measured, from the patterned scheme of blacks, whites, and golds, to the polished, glistening bar top, it all ran together into an elegant, contemporary pastiche of atmosphere and finery. Even the air itself felt clean and crisp. The place dazzled and had him questioning if he had ever truly known such luxurious aesthetics before, as, although he thought himself somewhat cultured, it wasn’t until that moment that he, for the first time in his life, felt himself somewhat of an intruder in such a setting.  A hostess approached him and he told her he needed seating for two. She asked him if he wanted a booth, as patrons were sparse, and he told her a booth would be nice. She led him to a half-circle with a circle table and asked if he wanted anything before his company arrived. He told her he didn’t.
Dustin was waiting no more than fifteen minutes before Joel showed up at the door. He didn’t recognize him at first, but Joel spotted him and walked to the table before he was greeted by a host. Dustin stood up as Joel came towards him with a wide smile.
“Joel.” He put his hand out for Joel to take, but it was pushed it aside and he came in with a full body hug. Dustin did not return his friends embrace, but he did pat him on the back a few times while he was gently squeezed. He could feel Joel’s ribs pressing up against him, and although both of them were built slimly, he couldn’t help but notice that Joel’s body felt particularly bony.
“Buddy.” Joel let go and took a step back, then put both of his hands on Dustin’s shoulders shortly before dropping them to his sides. “My friend, how are you?” The both of them moved to sit down and slid into the booth.
“How am I? Well I guess I could say I’m pretty good, keeping busy, living the humble life,” Dustin said, returning his smile. He could not help but examine his friend. Joel had grown out his hair and it fell past his shoulders. He brushed a bit that fell on his face back with his hand and Dustin was struck by the look of him. He didn’t expect to see him as he did, unshaven and with small creases at the ends of his mouth and cheekbones. The shadows under his eyes were pronounced and his skin almost looked as though it was pulled too tight over his face. It took a moment, but after accepting what was unfamiliar, he saw the same man he had known years ago. “Your hair. I can’t believe it,” he said, softly shaking his head.
“Believe it.”
“How come—what made you grow it out so long?”
“It’s something different from what I always had. I’ve been like this for a long time, it’s not like it just happened. You’ve just been,” he paused, “uh, in absentia.” Looking at his friend, Dustin both smiled and winced at the affectation, but then continued:
“Your face too. You’re hairy all over.”
“I’m a hairy man. I like it, you know? I haven’t seen you for fucking ever. And know who else likes it?”
“I can guess.”
“Women.”
“Okay Fabio.”
“So,” Joel paused to look at him, and he looked back. Any concerns Dustin had about being under-dressed were, to his relief, eclipsed by the fact that his friend had shown up in a loose, medium blue, long sleeve flannel; dark, indigo jeans; and sneakers, or at least it did for a moment before recognizing how Joel's company might reflect on him. “How are you really?”
“I’m really okay.”
“I can’t remember, I know someone told me but I can’t remember, where are you now, Montana?”
“Oregon, Salem.”
“That’s right, that’s right. Huh.”
“Yup.” Joel sat motionless, keeping a natural smile, and a silence passed between them.
“What have you been up to? What’s kept you so busy? It really has been a long time. Tell me.”
“I haven’t been up to anything much, really. Just work I guess. I was thinking I might like to travel sometime soon. Thinking about it more and more often these days, but, I’m not sure, there are obstacles. Other than that, there hasn’t been much going on in my life. I might just be boring. I just can’t think of what else I do these days honestly.”
“You're still working at…”
“Lendricks, yeah.” Joel coughed and cleared his voice.
“Corporate life huh?” He looked his friend in the eye. “Married life too. How is Daphne? Happy wife?”
“She’s fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes.”
“You’re okay and she’s fine. Glad to hear it.”
“Not much to say about it honestly.” Joel heard him and stopped a moment to decide what he would press upon his friend.
“Alright. But jeez. You guys have been together a long while though, hey? And I don’t mean to pry, but any… you know, family plans?” Dustin turned his face away.
“I don’t think so. No plans really.”
“What about Daphne?”
“What do you mean? I don’t know,” replied Dustin sourly, irritated by the bold question and assumed familiarity of the topic, thinking to himself that they had only just sat down together for the first time in half a decade.
“Huh. I always thought that was the, you know, the trajectory you were on. I half expected you to tell me you already had, you know, a burgeoning family. It’s been a long time. I always thought that’s where you were headed. Not to suggest that there’s anything wrong with that, I just, like I said, I thought that’s where you were headed. It seems like that’s where everyone’s headed.” Dustin felt himself slowly growing more annoyed with Joel’s commentating, so he made an effort to take control of the conversation.
“What about you,” he replied, restraining his annoyance from his tone, “what is it you’ve been doing with yourself?”
“What have I been doing? I don’t know. I guess I’ve been doing the same stuff I’ve been doing since I last saw you.”
“Such as?”
“You know, performing when I can, working a shitty job as a laborer, livin’ it up. I’m just trying to enjoy life. A bit frustrated with my situation, I guess. Just don’t want to be working where I’m working, but I don’t want to be poor either. But you know, I’m good overall I think.” Dustin listened to him, and when he stopped, they were softly interrupted.
The same hostess who had escorted Dustin to his seat approached the table. She was a lithe and beautiful girl, young, with russet bangs that curtained her neatly trimmed eyebrows, a soft, fragile neckline, and the gently hip-cocked posture of an unassuming sylph, and when Dustin Glanced at Joel, he saw him admiring her, smiling a familiar smile and steadying his eyes on hers while she returned his smile. She asked them if they didn’t want something to drink as she set menus down in front of them. The two of them both asked for water. Joel continued to watch her as she turned around, still smiling, and went to fetch their water. They both picked up their menus. Dustin scanned over the large card which listed its options only at market price, assuming everything would be appropriately pricey. Turning his menu horizontal, he asked Joel why he chose this particular restaurant.
“Because I couldn’t remember us ever being here before. Actually, I searched online to find high end places with reviews if I’m being honest, and I saw this place and recognized it, and, you know, I figured it was warranted as we haven’t met in a long time. It’s good to match rare occasions with rare indulgence I think.” There was a pause as both men raised their menus, and after having made a decision, they laid them flat on the table. “You know, I don’t actually remember the last time we saw each other,” piped Joel.
“My wedding.”
“Is that right? I thought it might have been after that, but I guess not.”
“Nope.”
“That’s a good memory though. That was a good time, I got shit-faced, but I still remember the reception clearly. Everyone was out of it, but, I mean, what's the point in celebrating something like that without an open bar?”
“Well it’s expensive. We could have done without, and probably would have if her parents didn’t insist on throwing their money into it. The Harbourfront was not cheap either.”
“Oh well. Rare indulgence I guess.”
“I guess,” said Dustin as a gentle, reflective, and sullen look came over his face.
“Good memory.”
“Yeah.” He stopped himself from getting tangled in his thoughts and searched for something to talk about. “How is the music going? Still playing I know, but branched out at all? Making any headway?”
“Headway? I mean, in regards to what? Not many people care about jazz. As far as ‘branching out’ goes, yeah, I meet new people all the time I guess, and I play whenever I can. Did you think I would become self-sufficient?”
“Well, no, but I thought you might have had a goal or something. Didn’t you go on a short tour or something way back when? I was just curious I guess.”
Joel sighed. “Yeah, for sure man. How is it going… I mean it’s fine. I still play on the weekends. It’s not like my life isn’t still centered on it—well I’d like to believe that anyways. It’s not like I would stop, but I guess I just didn’t expect everything else in life to play out like it has.” Joel looked at Dustin’s with a sudden, weary sincerity before turning his head down toward the table. “So… I’m kind of feeling stuck, you know? Like I’m just going to be trapped and too worn out to go on indefinitely, and lately I’ve felt a little worn out. And I mean, going back, it’s not like I went to school with the idea of being a career artist. Well, actually, no, I guess that isn’t entirely true… Like, there are two different aspects to something like postsecondary arts. You have yourself believing in the lack of practicality in such an education, but that’s only really on the surface. There’s also your hopes, and your hopes are unrealistic, but deep down you fantasize and you prepare, and you think to yourself that if you really go hard at it you can take hold of your future. You can’t deny that deep down what you really believe is what you want to believe, but at the same time, you tell yourself that you recognize the lack of practicality, and that you’re simply learning something that will enrich your life or something, and that there’s no better purpose than that, you know? You believe yourself to be a practical person, but it’s just a trick. No one can believe that their fantasies won’t ever come true, there has to be that little bit of hope that sustains a fantasy, however unreal. Like all fantasies are pleasant, and they invite themselves into your thoughts, and they overtake rational belief, and as you dream them, there is nothing but belief. But when they go and get replaced by that need to be practical, they go painfully. They go until you let them come back, for whatever reason, and they eclipse the belief that you’re a practical person again. I’m just… over that. I’ve thought about looking for work in a tertiary role, but honestly, what I’m doing now just pays so much better, and I need that. And that’s pretty much how it’s going. It’s tiring.” 
“Oh.” Dustin was surprised by his friends long, candid answer, and although he could not think of how to reply, in that moment, he saw the man he remembered Joel to be, liberal and honest. Conversely, in seeing his friend struggle to respond, Joel was set upon with a certain disappointment. There was another silence between them, and all that was heard were the gentle murmurings of other diners.
The both of them felt some relief when the hostess returned with their water moments later. Dustin turned to her, handing her his menu and giving his order. Joel looked at his menu for a moment, and then handed it to the server. “You know what? I don’t think I’m all too hungry.” Dustin looked at him and the hostess asked him if he was sure. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll eat, I’m not terribly hungry, but could you bring me a vodka tonic?” She told him she surely could, but as she turned to walk away, he stopped her. “Actually, can you bring me a shot of whiskey too?” She nodded, smiled, told him she would bring a drink menu, and walked away. “Let’s have a drink. We’ll put it on my bill. What do you want? I’ll tell her when she comes back.”
“Nothing. I don’t think I will. I have to be ready and feeling sharp tomorrow for work. I want to have a good rest, and I’m still feeling kind of off after the flight.”
“You’ll have a good sleep if you have a drink. And it’s early, you’ll have plenty of time to put yourself in order before you go to bed.”
“Sorry, I don’t think so.”
“I think having a little drink in you can make for a better sleep, and I mean when are we going to see each other again?”
“No,” Dustin said bluntly.
“Alright, I won’t press you. You don’t mind if I drink do you?”
“No, feel free. I don’t mind.” Joel began to roll his fingers on the table as the both of them searched for something to sustain their conversation.
“So, what’s it like living in the States?”
“It’s pretty much just like living here. It seems like people act busier, and they’re maybe a bit more political-ish. I’m not an expert, but I’ve never met anyone there who seemed like they had a substantive understanding of such things. But that’s just anecdotally. It’s hard to say. I don’t know too many people outside of my co-workers and neighbors honestly.”
“That must be weird hey? Going from the politics of one country to another. Like you have to develop a new patriotism altogether. Well maybe patriotism isn’t the right word, but concern? For a new country.”
“Well, I think that might be the case for some, but I think a lot of people in my position would feel like I do. I don’t really have it in me to get invested with that stuff. I don’t have it in me to care. I don’t care for what is happening down there, it’s a mess and people desperately insert themselves into these disputes that never escape their own heads, and so when they do speak up it’s always some mentally rehearsed diatribe. Sometimes people get so serious—sometimes, socially unhinged. This, here, is my home. I don’t really want to be down there forever, and I don’t plan to be.” Joel nodded, approving the sentiment.
The hostess once again approached the two men in the booth, carrying a single, lonely drink on her serving plate.
“Well that was fast.” She set down Joel’s drink and slid another menu, hand written, in front of him. She pointed out the stock of whiskeys and asked him if she should give him some time. He glanced at it once. “I appreciate it, but I think I already know. The Whistlepig. Thank you.” She asked him if he wanted to hang onto the menu, just in case, and he nodded and smiled.
He watched her walk away to another table, where it seemed she was simply checking in. “She’s pretty, isn’t she,” he said, still watching.
“She is,” agreed Dustin. He leaned forward and his mouth bent into a smirk as he mugged at his friend. Joel sighed.
“Maybe I’ll try and talk to her when we finish here,”
“If you’re drinking on an empty stomach, it might just be inevitable.”
“My stomachs not empty.”
“Okay. I guess you have no one in your life at the moment?”
“Uh, no. I guess not. Things come and go, you know? I meet a lot of people.”
“Sounds about right.”
“I don’t know anything about myself when it comes to… companionship, I guess. I mean I don’t know what I’m doing really. You’re lucky.” The comment struck Dustin in his nerves once again, and he dipped his head a little, but then quickly readjusted himself.
“Well I can’t offer much advice in that regard.”
“There was someone, an actress. Or aspiring anyways, and that lasted for a few months a little while ago. I met her at DeVannies. Knowing her and her friends though, it’s kind of given me a negative opinion of actors I think.” He laughed a little. “Vapid, but what do you expect?”
“Yeah.”
“Lowest rung among artists. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious who that kind of work would attract.”
“Yeah,” said Dustin, trying to maintain his little smile but making note of his friends' pettiness.
Joel brought his drink up and began to suck on the straw, draining almost half the glass before setting it down again. He took a relaxed posture and leaned his head back on the cushioning. Although Dustin had so directly dismissed his friend's invitation to have a drink, he felt a sudden thirst while watching him. He was developing a mild headache and knew what would help.
“So,” said Joel, “do you have plans to see anyone else while you’re here?”
“No, I don’t. Just my parents.”
“I like your parents. I wonder if they remember me.”
“Of course they do, how many times did you pass out in my basement, then wake up in the morning to go upstairs and gab at them.”
“Yeah, well I wanted to be friends.”
“My mom is always asking me if I keep in touch with such and such. I’m sure you’ve been mentioned.”
“That makes me happy.”
“Do you still keep in touch with…anyone? Anyone I used to know?”
“That’s, uh, pretty vague.”
“Anyone from high school, or the U. You know who we, you and I, used to hang around with.”
“People I keep in touch with.” Joel stared forward with a thoughtful look on his face. “I still bump into people from high school or whatever, yeah. Sometimes I guess.”
“Any interesting developments?”
“Not really, just, you know, ho-hum stuff. I’m sure there’s something interesting to be said, but probably not from me.”
“That’s disappointing.” Joel then took a few minutes to rattle off a list of brief encounters he had with the people he and Dustin used to share a sphere with.
“Actually,” he said, as if interrupting himself, “there was something kind of stupid, like two weeks ago. Do you remember my friend Steven? Kind of lanky, glasses.”
“Uh, maybe, slightly. Was he the guy with us right after grad, and we ate the mushrooms?”
“Yeah, and do you remember Vincent? Bulky guy?”
“I think so. Yeah, Yeah I remember.”
“I know you must have met them multiple times.” Before Dustin could respond the hostess came silently up beside the table carrying his food. “Well that was fast,” said Joel, repeating himself. She set down his whiskey before she walked away, and he quickly threw it into his mouth. “Mmm,” he hummed, “that’s wonderful.” He hunched over the table while Dustin unraveled his cutlery from his napkin. He drained the rest of his highball and pushed the glass aside as he began to talk.
 
-
 
“It was like two weeks ago and I got called up by Steven and asked if I wanted to come hang out with him and Vincent. I stopped by his place, but I had already made plans for the evening, and I told him that. We didn’t do much, just killed an hour or two with some beers, you know, whatever. But while I was there, shortly before I left, he and Vincent started packing up some water and some food into a back pack that rattled. Full of aerosol cans. They tried to convince me to go with them, to take some trip c’s they were divvying up, and to have an adventure, wherever they were going. I said I couldn’t so Steven put down a handful of pills, enough that was common for him, then Vincent swallowed what was left, which was about twice as much as Steven took. And that was the last time I saw or heard from them, until Steven called me up a few days later and told me what had happened to them after I left. He told me that he and Vincent were going to try and press charges on the police for misconduct. I was like, ‘what?’ And he started to explain to me what happened.
“I think he was a bit off when he called me, but I still listened to him tell me this story with, you know, curiosity. So, after I left, I guess they just grabbed the back pack and went outside, going nowhere in particular, just walking, like you do sometimes if you’re going to get high. So, they just walked for a while and after about two hours they started to feel the pills kicking in, which is, you know, usual. At that point, they had wound up in an open ally behind—do you remember where that Blaze Pizza is? Well anyway they were there, and Steven I guess was feeling pretty good, but Vincent started stumbling and kind of let out this really slurred appeal to stop. So they stopped and Vincent just kind of stumbled and collapsed with his back against the restaurant. And he started trying and struggling to talk. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just got to sit down. I feel heavy, and not good,’ but of course his words were a lot more unintelligible. He swayed back and forth and kept on trying to say something, and like I said, Steven was feeling pretty good so he just put his hand on Vincents shoulder, telling him that it was alright, that it was going to be alright. So they were kind of stranded there. He hadn’t seen anybody walking by or coming into the alleyway, so Steven went to unzip the backpack and took out a spray-can, shook it up, and despite the fact someone from the street could have walked by and seen him, he began to spray out the large and round base of a tag with white paint. He was only able to get halfway through it when Vincent started saying ‘don’t, don’t,’ and Steven asked him why, but Vincent only replied ‘please don’t,’ so he didn’t and instead put the can away.
“Vincent started to tell Steven he was scared. ‘I’m going to die,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to die. You’ll be fine. Do you want some water?’ and Vincent said ‘no, no, please don’t leave me.’ And obviously Steven told him that he wasn’t going to leave him. I guess Vincent kept on talking but became incomprehensible, with his head swaying from one side to the other, so Steven just sat down beside him, unwilling to leave him. Then all of a sudden, this back door, the back door of the restaurant I guess, swung open and this guy in an apron and little hat came outside, carrying some garbage bags. He looked at Steven and Vincent but then busied himself with the garbage. Then he turned and looked at the two guys again. He approached them and asked ‘are you guys okay?’ Steven said that they were fine and asked if they couldn’t be left alone. Vincent flopped his arms around a bit then pulled his knees up and toward his chest, wrapping his arms around them, and his head continued to roll around on his shoulders like a basketball circling the net. His mouth was agape and his eyes alternated, as I was told, between moments of closed concentration and wide-open terror. Steven told him they wouldn’t be long and asked to be left alone. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘every-thing’s fine man.’ The man in the apron said ‘okay,’ and went back inside the restaurant. Steven didn’t mention it, but he must have been kind of, you know, worried.”
 
-
 
On her way somewhere else, the hostess saw that Joel’s drink was nothing but ice and had been pushed to the edge of the table, so she approached the men, first asking Dustin what his initial impression of the food was, and he nodded, wiping the corners of his mouth with his napkin, saying “It’s wonderful, thank you.” She then asked if she could fetch Joel another drink.                “Yeah please,” he said, “actually could you make it a double?” She nodded and took both his glass and shooter. As quickly as she walked away Joel told Dustin that he needed to piss, stood himself up, and disappeared. Dustin sat quietly and ate by himself. He had been listening to Joel's story with interest and was eager for him to continue, but felt it would be best to not make that interest apparent. An aloof bearing was something he was very practiced in, although he would never question himself as to whether or not it was a necessary comfort.
Joel returned quickly enough, sitting himself down. Dustin looked at him plainly and waited for him to continue, but when Joel returned him an absent stare, he made himself look as though he was preoccupied with his food. The hostess came and set down Joel’s drink. “Why thank you miss.” She smiled at him and walked away. “So, yeah. Sorry if I trailed off a bit there.” Dustin looked back up at him expectantly, and he returned to his story.
 
-
 
“So yeah, I was saying, these guys were sitting there, but I guess Steven was getting kind of anxious being stuck where he and Vincent were clearly visible. So he tried a couple of times to get Vincent on his feet and moving, but could only manage to get him through a few steps each time. He would just kind of fall back, and whether that was because he was too fucked up to want to move, or he was just too fucked up to move, I’m not really sure. And I mean he’s a big guy. Honestly, I’ve been there, if not a long time ago. It sucks. After a while, I guess Steven just gave up and slouched down beside Vincent. He was high so he probably didn’t want to be stuck where they were, because, like I said, they were in an open alley and could clearly see out on to Granville. It’s always busy there, and they were just as visible to all the passersby as the passersby were to them. This was just like about two weeks ago, and I don’t remember exactly, but it must have been pretty hot, it’s been hot for a while, except for today I guess. Steven said he tried to give Vincent some water from the bottle they had packed and Vincent just kind of shook his head, or choked a little, and most of it just dribbled down his chin. He tried talking again, saying ‘this isn’t right,’ and ‘I’m sorry’ over and over. I guess Steven thought about leaving Vincent for a moment so he could find a taxi and maybe explain to the driver that his friend was very drunk and they needed a ride, but he hesitated to leave Vincent alone, and imagined trying to get him to stand up and walk enough to even get him to the curb and how much effort it would take.
“So they sat for a while. It wasn’t long until some officers drove up into the alleyway and stopped their car next to those guys. These cops got out and approached them. And you know that really familiar way they talk to you, and it’s really condescending, like they’re always in the right, and their ego is justified with a badge? What most police do, they took that really casual tone. ‘How you doing guys?’ one asked. From the way Steven told it, he was just resigned to their fate at that point. One of the cops pointed to Vincent, who was curled up with his face in his knees and said ‘Your friend doesn’t look like he’s feeling very well. Is he okay?’ Steven told him they were fine, then asked him if someone had complained about them, to which the officer replied ‘Yeah, yeah there was a call from, I guess, one of the managers here,’ he gestured towards the building, ‘I guess he was kind of worried about a couple guys hanging out back behind his store. What have you guys been up to?’ The other cop picked up the backpack and shook it a bit, then opened it. He set it down and touched the still wet paint on the wall with his index finger. ‘You guys were doing a little painting huh. There’s nothing wrong with that, I paint a bit, but you got to stick to a canvas, you know? I’m assuming you guys know you shouldn’t be painting where no one asked for an artist,’ is what he said because they’re always fucking condescending like that. And Steven said nothing. ‘I have to ask you honestly, can you tell me what’s going on with your friend? He doesn’t look like he’s feeling that well. If you can’t tell me I can’t help, and he looks like he needs a bit of help. You know I’m going to have to ask you guys to come with us anyways. We can’t really let you off with a warning this time. You can’t be painting someone else's property. I just want to make sure that your friend gets some help if he needs it. I don’t wanna have to bring him into the station and wait for someone to tell me that he needs to go to ER or something. If you can tell me what you guys have been up to, I’ll be able to call ahead and everything will go a lot quicker.’ Steven surrendered to his request and explained that Vincent had just taken a bit too much Coricidin, and that he was going to be fine. ‘I see,’ said the officer. He walked back to his car while his partner loomed over them like they were children. He came back no more than a minute later and told Steven that they were going to bring him into the station but they would stop by the ER where one of them would escort Vincent, ‘We’re not going to call an ambulance, but we just want to make sure nothing happens,’ he said.
“They stood Steven up, cuffed his hands behind his back, and walked him to the car where they had him take his seat. Obviously Vincent was not having a very good time. His arms were limp when the officers cuffed him. It took both officers to stand him up, but when they did so he began to flail around in rebellion. The officers warned him that he needed to settle down, but nonetheless they got him to the car. He put up a pretty strong resistance and the cops continued to warn him, to which he only replied ‘please, please,’ but they couldn’t understand what he was saying. They had to force Vincent in the back of the car, but I guess when they tried to do so, Vincent’s head whipped the top of the door frame violently. After he was in, the officers tried to explain to him he could be charged with resisting arrest, but they also understood trying to communicate with him was likely pointless. So I guess that Steven and Vincent sat quietly, but after some time Steven noticed that Vincents head was hanging, and that he had stopped moving altogether. When Steven tried to inch himself over and talk to his friend, he saw that Vincent seemed to be unconscious. There was also blood in his hair and it was starting to drip onto his cheek. Luckily, they had just arrived at the hospital and Steven leaned forward and tried to get the officers attention through the glass divide. ‘He’s not okay I think you guys hurt him.’ One of the officers turned around and said ‘hey… hey!’ There was no response. He and his partner, after they had stopped, got out and opened the car door where Vincent was. He was unconscious. Both officers needed to lift him and carry him to ER where he stayed for a while and was later told he had a concussion.”
 
-
 
Joel turned his head and coughed into his shoulder then looked around to see if the hostess was near. She was flitting between tables and seating newcomers, as the room had started to slowly fill up with men and women in formal wear. Others, men in business suits, started to line the bar.
“So yeah, fuck the police and all that. I seriously doubt anyone will actually get in trouble. Shit like that happens all the time and no one ever does anything.” Dustin pursed his lips.
“What exactly is there to be done. It sounds like an accident.”
“What do you mean? There wouldn’t be any accidents if they didn’t employ excessive force.”
“The way you told it, it seems like it was unavoidable.”
“I’m inclined to believe Steven when he says it was avoidable. I mean it’s no uncommon thing for police to be dickholes. You can’t really be sure, you weren’t there.”
“Were you?”
“I know for certain that a job like that attracts a certain type of person. Usually not the kind I have much respect for.”
“I think anti-establishment feelings are supposed to fade with age.”
“Agree to disagree I guess. I’m disillusioned with that reality.”
“I think I’m the one who's disillusioned with that reality.” What Dustin took away from the story, more than anything else, was a sense of the familiar. Joel was still living the life that he had been long ago. He imagined him going through the same weekly routine, getting drunk, or getting high, and having no interest in change. When they were both teenagers causal drug use seemed like a mark of precociousness, but in truth, Dustin thought, it was often the beginning of a stunted lifestyle.
Joel had been sipping on his drink intermittently as he was talking. There was a pause between the two men. He took a long drink and finished it, pushing it to the edge of the table. Dustin watched him with some small envy. His headache had grown and he began to feel like having a drink would make their company move along so much easier. He questioned if having a drink would actually cause any stress, or hurt his ability to deal with his work the next morning. One drink couldn’t hurt, he thought. Considering Joel’s earlier offer, he also wondered if he wasn’t being rude. Of course he wasn’t, he recognized the mental gymnastics he was starting to reason with, yet looking at Joel’s drained glass, sweating and full of ice, he was failing to dissuade himself.
Joel looked at his friend, who seemed to be deep in thought, and felt a little guilty.
“I mean who knows. It’s probably unfair to make such a blanket statement like that.”
“Huh?” Dustin looked up. “Oh no, sorry, I was just caught in thought, it’s all good, I was just a little distracted.” Joel laughed. He was relaxed and becoming cheerful.
“You know I’ve got to ask again. Sure you don’t want to have a drink with me?” He shook the ice cubes in his glass like dice. Dustin said nothing for a moment, and then looked up at Joel.
“Yeah, okay, what the hell.”
“Atta boy,” said Joel, beaming. He turned his head to look for the hostess, and when he caught her eye he smiled. She put one finger up to let him know she would be there as soon as she could.
When she came around, she first took Dustin's plate and asked him if he was satisfied. He nodded without saying anything, and she then asked Joel if she should bring him another drink. “Yeah, and my friend will have one as well.”
“Do you have a list of beers?” She pointed to the drink menu in front of Joel. He lifted it up and looked it over quickly. “Just a Hoegaarden thanks.”
“I think we’ll have some shots too. Two of them. The Whistlepig.” She nodded and went on her way. Dustin scanned the menu to find the whiskey, and when he found it, he grimaced.
“Jesus Christ Joel, that’s not okay. I guess this is the price for a drink, but still I can’t ask you to buy that for me. That’s like… forty dollars for four ounces of liquor.”
“You don’t have a choice my friend.” Dustin looked at him with discomfort. “Really, don’t worry about it. Honestly, I’m just glad to get out with you. It’s been such a long time. I find myself thinking a lot about how things used to be. Life really does divide us. There are some people I still see, but for the most part people just fade from your memory. And it’s kind of striking because I think it’s only at this age that we’re really able to appreciate that for the first time. I mean you're always forgetting about someone, but it’s taken on a different meaning when you’re leaving your twenties, if you know what I mean. Like crossing into old age. Well, not old age, but maybe real adulthood? Unpretentious adulthood. Undeniable adulthood.” Dustin nodded, his eyes drifting elsewhere. “But no, really, I thought it would be different seeing you again, I’ve always appreciated your company.”
“Well, thanks Joel, I wanted to see you too.” Dustin smiled and thought about how long it might take for his drink to come now that the place had started to fill up.
“Uh huh, I guess I’ve just felt a little weird. And I thought, well that guy always knew what was what.” Dustin turned his head to see where the hostess was. Joel began to talk at length about the mischief they had once enjoyed, stopping sporadically to ask Dustin if he remembered, to which he would nod his head reflexively.
“I mean, can I be honest with you?” Joel asked, leaning forward a little.
“Sure.”
“You know, earlier, when I said I was kind of worn out, with the whole music thing, I think I misspoke. I just meant I felt a little run down in general. I’d never stop playing. It’s just hard working up the enthusiasm after a fifty-hour week. I wish I could…” he trailed off and Dustin watched his eyes fall.
“Do you, uh, make any extra money?”
“Not really no.”
“Well…”
“You know my dad was a laborer. I’m sure we’ve probably talked about this before. Never knew him too well though, but now that I’m pipefitting I feel like I understand a bit more about his life. That probably sounds stupid. Like it’s uncommon. It’s not. I’m just saying, all this money, just to live in a nice house and get out on the weekends. No real time or energy for anything else. Of course he had other kids, so who knows how he split his time up. For me, doesn’t even really seem like living sometimes. It’s like, ‘what am I doing?’” Dustin looked away as he tried to come up with some way to recognize his meaning and respond with understanding, but he simply didn’t know how. “Sometimes I do actually worry about music though. Sometimes I wonder if playing music was only ever a focus in my life because it suited who I thought I was going to be when I was still young.”
The hostess came with the drinks, balancing them on her serving tray, setting them down on the table one by one with her free hand. She had taken a while longer to fetch them, but the men were nonetheless grateful. Dustin was even relieved.
“Perfect,” said Joel. She walked away and Joel pushed one of the shots toward Dustin, holding his own up in the air, waiting for a wordless toast. Dustin obliged him and threw the liquor into his mouth, swallowing quickly.
“Hoo. That's what a twenty-dollar shot of whiskey tastes like?” Joel snorted.
“Now you still have to catch up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m saying put it back. If you finish your drink before me, I’ll pay for it.” Dustin, at that point, had already committed himself. If he was going to drink, he might as well follow through. He put the bottle to his lips and drained it by half. Joel also sucked greedily on his straw. “Jesus, maybe I shouldn’t have asked her for a double.”
He kicked at Dustin's feet under the table playfully, and Dustin was reminded of their younger years. He recognized where they were, not physically, but in regards to the state they were approaching. He could see it in the smile of Joel’s thin lips and the creases on his face. He thought about what Joel had said on their exiting their twenties. It was true, they were in a strange and uncertain space. Becoming what they were then becoming, and the both of them trying to escape what they had otherwise become. This was a scene out of time, he thought, not at all appropriate, but there was no fighting it now. He looked at his friend and couldn’t help but question why they were even together after so much time. He did not know how to value it. Much in the way Joel was becoming disenchanted with his music, Dustin couldn’t help but question if he was disenchanted with Joel. Perhaps he too was merely what Dustin felt was once suitable, as if he was merely conditional. Dustin became caught up in his thoughts, allowing Joel to needlessly elaborate on his feelings towards his music, repeating much of what he said about the reality of being a career artist. He pretended to listen politely, but he was feeling as if he were being drawn away somewhere, distracted by his own thoughts and registering less and less of what Joel had to say. Joel had shared his troubles, but then went on in endless after-thoughts and emphasis and elaborations on nothing that needed elaborating.
“What I hate more than anything else is these guys I have to work with, and they’re exactly the kind of guys that would… that would be like stereotypical of the kind of work I’m doing now. Like, they’re absolute pigs. And every time I have to stand outside and listen to them slacking off to each other, it’s just gross. And it sucks because I’m always around them, you know? In some ways I guess I’m glad I’ve got the job I have, because there isn’t a ton of work around right now, but I feel so out of place, I shouldn’t have to be there. I can’t imagine you being there, or just guys like us in general. You know… listen, I get, and I always have, really got you. You know what they say about people like us, with our particular body type?”
“What?”
“Well we’re ectomorphs, right? Like when have smaller or slimmer bodies, but tend to be much more intelligent. I know you’re like that, I think that’s why we always got along because we’re both like that.”
“Yeah?” Dustin kept the emotion out of his face, but his eyes nonetheless were mocking and pointed.
“I’m serious, it’s true, you should look it up. I mean, I don’t know how you feel about your job, but I think we aren’t where we are supposed to be. We’re really not, you know? It’s like, it’s kind of messed up the way things seem sometimes. Everything is controlled so that everyone is treated equally and fairly. But that’s a contradiction, what is equal isn’t fair, and it never will be. And in reality, that fucks people over and out of what they deserve. And common sense is an oxymoron!”
A few well-dressed patrons of the restaurant threw some cutting glares towards the two men, and Dustin felt some embarrassment. He raised a finger to his lips. “Come on.”
“Oh shoot, sorry, sorry,” said Joel, lowering his voice, “I don’t know why I was a bit loud, sorry.”
“It’s okay, you weren’t that loud. I think it’s less that you were loud and more that this place is very quiet. So, it sounds like you’re itching to start a revolution.”
“I think people should have to pass an aptitude test before they’re allowed to vote, at the very least.”
“I can imagine something like that being abused.”
“Yeah, maybe.” They nipped at their drinks. “But hey look, I feel like I’ve been talking about myself forever. Really, I’m sorry, I just got caught up on some thoughts. I know you didn’t really mention much, but how are you doing really? And I mean if you don’t want to say you don’t got to, I just want to know what's going on with you.”
“I don’t know, I’m fine.”
“Come on.” Dustin finished his beer, and seeing him, Joel bent forward and finished his own drink. Between the beer and the whiskey, Dustin was just a little buzzed. He didn’t know if he wanted to share his life with him. It was true that Joel had approached him with heavy handed honesty, but he felt no urge or duty to reciprocate. At the same time, he felt it might be nice to talk to someone sympathetic, even if it was drunken sympathy. Joel’s words, they were full of tactless self-regard, as, he thought, was typical of those who would talk endlessly about themselves. It was just the vapid comradery of the freshly drunk, but ultimately, Dustin, looking him over, felt that he was of little consequence and that confiding in him would be of little consequence too.
“Okay, well, like I said, I’m more or less doing just fine. I guess, sometimes, more so recently, I feel anxious of what the future has in store for me. Just kind of going day in, day out, sometimes I feel like I’m just waiting for catastrophe, I guess. Maybe I’m even preparing for it.”
“You mean you don’t think your job is secure?”
“Well… no.” He paused. “It’s just me and Daphne. I don’t think things are going to work out. I think I’m going to ask her for a divorce, that is, if she doesn’t first.”
“Oh no way. Why do you think that?”
“I don’t really know how to explain it, but it’s pretty set in stone at this point I think.”
“There’s no big reason to it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand her. I know her, but I guess I’ve just kind of lost respect for her. Actually no, that’s kind of unspecific. She’s just always so angry, and I struggle to make sense of it. It’s a womanly anger. No, it’s more like, we don’t talk and she blames me for it. I don’t know how it came about really. She gets angry, I think, because she knew before I did that things weren’t working out, but she didn’t want to acknowledge that. I think she doesn’t know any other way to express her unhappiness or disappointment, so she gets angry. I mean, I’ve known her for a long time, and whenever she’s not mad, it’s just like I’m living with a stranger.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah.” Another silence passed between them.
“Well shit man, that sucks. Not really unheard of though. I think a lot of people, especially people like, you know, you, people who get married early, they just lose respect for each other. They're just not prepared to take that plunge into another person's problems and faults, because really it’s dark there, and that is the same for everyone.” Dustin felt as if he was being patronized, but he appreciated the sentiment. “It happens a lot, I think. It definitely doesn’t mean that either of you guys are bad or anything, it’s just, you know, it’s just a part of life. You found each other, and experienced what you weren’t familiar with, and jumped the gun maybe. It’s nothing you need to hide.” The hostess came to check in on them, and when she approached the table, Joel said “Perfect, perfect timing,” and he smiled up at her. “I think we need some more drinks. Same round as last time. You remember?” She remembered. Dustin examined her face as she addressed Joel. Behind her smile, and behind her eyes, there was a look that said ‘this is no place to get loaded.’ She asked him if a single was okay. “A single? I am. I’m sorry, are you?” She laughed said she was just looking out for him, and that he had already hit peak charming, too much more would hurt him. “Oh god don’t break my heart. I’ll trust you. A single is fine.” She left and he turned back to Dustin. “Sorry about that. But hey I’ve got to be real with you now.”
“What do you mean, were you not being real?”
“I just um, I mean I need to ask, can I be honest with you?” Dustin shrugged. “This all ties back into what I was saying you know? When I said we were alike, and this is how I know this. Like, you just jumped in without looking. We all have to do our own thing, but I think what you did was really taking the easy way out. I wasn’t going to say this, because I thought it was just about your job being unworthy of you, you know?” Dustin furrowed his brows with confusion. “It’s what so many people do, it’s taking the easy way out. Honestly? You got married because you had no other ideas man, when I hear about stuff like what's going on with you, it’s impossible to not come to the conclusion that you just did it because you didn’t want to put in the effort to be yourself. Like really, be honest with yourself, you guys didn’t date for a super long time. Did you ever actually like her? I mean, love her I guess, I know you liked her. But Daphne? I’ve never had any doubts about who she is. She would have been with anyone who was willing to take care of her, you know?” Dustin's face went flush with anger. He kept himself contained, but he lost all intentions of carrying on a sincere conversation with Joel. “Like that’s just the appeal of a pedestrian life, you don’t got to think. No, she was more interested in settling down than she was in having a good relationship. That’s for sure. And for you, well it was just an easy opportunity to not look at your life man. Like come on, you can’t have been honest with yourself if you married her. You just didn’t want to put in the effort of being, like, fully mature. The easy way out, pretending like you guys were deep. I mean really-”
“You need to shut up Joel,” he said sharply.
“Oh Jesus, I uh, I’m sorry. I was trying to say- I mean nothing, never mind. I’ve had a few drinks. But I mean really, I thought it made sense. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I mean, it’s just an opinion, no not even that, just a loose thought. I didn’t mean anything by it.” He was shaking his head. “No, it’s okay. I’m not respecting boundaries. I just feel like I know you, I mean we haven’t seen each other in a long time, but I still feel like I know you, because I think we’re a lot alike and I feel like I always knew that.” Dustin sat without responding.
The hostess returned with their drinks and an expression on her face that showed some weariness. Joel stared at her and she smiled at him before she left. The two men sat and drank in silence. “I hope it’s okay, I didn’t mean to make you angry.” Dustin glared at him for a moment.
“It’s fine.”
“Hey.” Joel lifted his shot glass into the air, his hand shaking a little. Dustin reluctantly obliged him, but his thoughts were wandering away. Joel’s accusation ate at him, and he couldn’t help but try and find some evidence to the contrary. He asked himself if he had ever loved his wife, but could not come up with an answer. He struggled with the notion that, perhaps, he had never even known what love was. But what was it really, he thought, nothing as substantial as people might like to portray it. There were happy memories that he had held onto even as their relationship suffocated. She was still a beautiful woman, but he didn’t know what that meant to him, or if there was anything else to it. He could remember her smile and the way she once held onto him and other times when they seemed so satisfied with one another, but he failed to understand meaning beyond such things. Perhaps she was simply there at the right time. Perhaps he had failed to discriminate on such serious matters of life. Joel went through his drink fast and started to talk casually at Dustin once again.
“Remember when we crawled and snuck into The Ranch club? Kicking up the sod and then just talking under the tree. Who was there? I wonder what they thought when they found our mess and all the cans and shit.” Joel talked about the good times he thought they had together. Partying. Not caring. He tried bringing up some sentimental moments that had a long time ago happened between them, but they were always stories of being drunk or high; things that, when Joel brought them up as though they were deeply meaningful, now seemed disgracefully indulgent to Dustin. He spoke emphatically about these once powerful moments, and the more he listened, the more Dustin felt melancholy, seeing how Joel clutched such things. Perhaps he was just lonely in his own right. “It would be nice to go back sometime, you know? The thought has been stuck in my head for a few days honestly. It would be nice to go back. But I think everyone must feel like that, right?” Dustin shrugged.
“I think I should probably get going here, I’ve got some stuff to do to get ready for tomorrow.”
“Okay, okay. You know what, I’ve got the bill. I won’t take no for an answer, it was my idea to get together.”
“Go nuts.” They both finished their drinks. Dustin stepped outside while Joel went to settle of the bill. The sun had set and there were only a few people walking about. He felt a mild breeze, one that carried only the little noise of tumbling litter being swept around in the street. He looked to where he had earlier seen the beggar, but there were only shadows. He then dialed for a taxi and waited. After a few minutes he started to wonder if Joel was making an ass of himself in front of their server, but at that moment Joel sauntered out of the restaurant and came up next to him.
“Quiet. How you getting back to your hotel?”
“Taxi.”
“Oh yeah.”
“You?”
“I’m in the parking lot on Seymour.”
“You’re driving? Probably shouldn’t.”
“No no no, It’s okay I’m fine. Really.” Dustin thought about protesting, but the wind came and rinsed away any pretenses of concern. He had been in the situation many times before and there was no point in trying to stop him. Joel swayed a bit and was in no condition to drive, but Dustin told himself it wasn’t his responsibility. Maybe he would kill himself one day, but it wouldn’t be that night. He was much too present to die that night. “Well, uh, it was good seeing you again man.” Dustin nodded.
“I’m sure I’ll see you again sometime.” Joel walked down the street to where the parking complex was. He turned around once to wave at Dustin, probably unsatisfied with the tepid farewell. Dustin raised his hand once, then turned away. He felt numb on the inside, warmed only slightly by the liquor. Their friendship had ended long ago, the fact that his opinion on Joel had soured that night had little to do with the reality of things. For him, the dinner was going to be a farce regardless of how it played out and he could not think of why he had ever thought differently. He told himself that Joel had very much been the product of circumstance. He was a friend when he needed him to be, and was wild when he needed to be wild.
His taxi arrived and drove him through the dark, desolate streets and to his hotel. As he quietly unlocked and entered his room, he became aware of how tired he really was. He also felt a little unwell, as if he were developing a cold, so he decided to go directly to bed without showering. He would take care of himself in the morning.
In bed, alone but for his thoughts, he found he could not ignore the manifest ember that kept him awake, a kernel to illuminate the forever approaching collapse of his life. There was an anxious tension, and he realized he was afraid. He could not suppress that fear—that fear which he found when questioning the bonds of his life. He tossed to one side then the other, as if he could put his thoughts to rest through physical comfort. What was most painful was the idea of loneliness. He did not want to be alone, but at the same time could not banish the thought that he was fundamentally alone, just as much as anyone else. But he was now something rare in being conscious of it. He wondered if it was even possible to know someone with truthful intimacy, as what he would find, what everyone would find in one another, was something too repugnant to fully accept. Reaching that certain depth, he thought, meant only that one would cease to know another for their person, and instead know them only in the recognition of the helpless, spasming child at the very root, demanding everything without purpose. In knowing someone enough, it was impossible to not see the worst not only in them, but oneself too. Who would admit such a thing? He wanted to believe that he might be wrong, and that maybe one day he would find something truly different, different enough to know that he was not alone, but he could not believe it. All these thoughts came to him, and to him they were all new, and at that moment he wondered if he wasn’t some kind of pioneer. Looking too deep into another was a fathomless proposition. But he was different, he thought, he was brave. He knew at that moment that he was beholden to no one but himself, and no happiness but that which he made for himself. He told himself that in him there was not the barren wastes where everything that was so human was reduced to its most natural, vacuous simplicity. He tried to affirm this as an unquestionable truth within himself, for who could know such things but him? But then there was doubt. He kept himself awake, worrying until his exhaustion got the better of him. He began to shut down, but as he did, he unconsciously sought something. Something fixed. Something certain. His last thoughts were of his wife's body when it was still intimate, pressed up against him, and he could almost feel her warmth as he drifted off to sleep.

​Sam leaned in close to her reflection in the broad, aging vanity and swept the spoolie through her eyelash with a practiced and meticulous hand, making sure the mascara was not too heavy and not clustered anywhere.
“How long are you going to take to finish? Well don’t answer that, I already know. You’re really like an artist, aren’t you? Or maybe, like, a clown. I’m joking, I guess, but hurry up please.” Marlo sighed and watched her friend work for a moment before rolling onto her back and stretching her arms out across her flowered pink bedsheets. The room was pink altogether, as it had been since she was young, with the distinction of the peeling white vanity, a white dresser, and some over-sized stuffed animals resting against the pillows at the head of the bed. She sat back up when she heard Sam setting down the brush and turning herself around on the stool.
“Sorry,” said Sam, “I just- I didn’t have time and you asked me to come over. I needed to shower and then you called. I just wanted to be clean before I left, and I didn’t have any time to get ready after my shower. Figured I could just get ready here.” Her words came out in a meek whine as she sought to excuse herself from Marlo’s disparaging tone. She put her hands together at her knees and tugged at the typical sweatband on her wrist.
Marlo snorted to herself in such a subtle way that it was imperceptible to Sam. “Could have just done it earlier, it doesn’t really matter. I just need a little help. I don’t want to go too crazy, but I need your help for tonight.”
“Sorry.” Sam turned back around to face the mirror and picked up another brush.
“Oh, you’re not done.” Marlo stood up, walked over to her friend, and looked over her shoulder into the mirror. She was a rotund woman with a chubby face, sloping cheek bones, and a thick brow. She brushed her hair back and consciously avoided looking at her friend's reflection.
In contrast to that plump figure, Sam was a slender and fragile looking girl with soft features, one who was always heavily made up and always carefully dressed. Although she usually found great anxiety in sight of herself, she nonetheless had an inborn knack for aesthetics, and if one found her in public, with an unfamiliar eye, they could never deny that she was a stunningly beautiful girl. Unfortunately for her, cosmetics were only a transient fix. A simmering revulsion was part and parcel of the most recurring and dominant judgments she made on herself. Such conceptions informed the discomfort that only ever allowed her to venture anywhere people gathered when she was pacified by the careful application of high-end foundation, concealer, primer, blush, and so on, and her irrational standards sometimes crippled her ability to cope with even the smaller social discomforts of life. Any extended time she spent in public would tend to leave her both agitated and exhausted. She was a woman who would wake up every morning and feel oppressed by the sight of herself. She would examine her face, then her figure, then her face again, and it was a face which she thought to be, without preparation, mousy and unappealing, so she always took great care and gave generous time to her rituals.
The both of them looked into the mirror with some disdain. “You remember that Lina girl I was talking about? I knew her through high school after you had gone. Remember I told you she was in one of my classes now? She’s still the same as I remember. She does this really obnoxious thing. I last saw her before our finals. I know she always does well, but she does this thing where she preemptively handicaps her expectations before she does anything. I know she was coming out of the class with an A, but she always acts like she’s not prepared and like she’s going to bomb. Of course she never does. I think she just can’t handle the idea of someone else judging her like that, or her judging herself I guess, so she preemptively acts like she has sabotaged herself when she hasn’t. I think she has a complex.” What specific conditions constituted a complex Marlo didn’t know, but after spending four university semesters studying psychology, she liberally dispensed psychological profiles and observances, and she did so mostly with confidence and frankness.
“Yes, I remember you saying,” said Sam, cautiously dabbing at her face.
Marlo said nothing for a minute, then scowled. “Don’t you ever feel like you’re being dishonest?” Sam paused for a moment, her expression wilting. “It seems like the only thing you can’t hide is the bump on your nose. I’m not a preachy person, you know, I just sometimes think it’s unhealthy. I’m not like that.”
Sam exhaled. “I’m good at makeup,” she said, quietly.
Marlo looked her over once. “Well there’s no changing who you are, I guess. A big shame about life. You should stay for the party here, all my family is coming, and some other friends too, and we can see the fireworks from the balcony.”
“I can’t, I really want to see Evan. He was like my best friend when I was younger and I miss him.”
“Does it really matter how much of a friend he was at this point? Usually people don’t pick up right where they left off.”
“I think so. I want to see him.”
“You knew him from school? I certainly don’t remember.”
“Before I left I did. In the first and second years, he was like the only person I could talk to. We skipped more classes than we went to, and I was always able to talk to him. I was sad when I stopped seeing him, I just couldn’t go back there, and I didn’t want to see anyone after that. I couldn’t keep going there, but I don’t really want to think about it. I almost didn’t leave because of him though.” She stalled her hand for a second as painful memories came to her. The truth was that Evan had simply met a number of qualifications Sam didn’t know she needed her friends to have, and for the rarity of that alone she had very much loved him, or at least she did in the time she knew him. If there was one most crucial attribute he had, it was that he wasn’t a woman, so he was exempt from the most immediate defense Sam employed. She had always struggled greatly to make friends with other women—women apart from Marlo. It was one of many reasons she withdrew socially and so often found herself lonely, so when she happened to reconnect with Evan by chance while shopping with her dad one day, she couldn’t help but imagine her whole life on the upswing.
“Okay, whatever. Are you just going to go out to the field?” asked Marlo.
“He said I should come with him and his brother to the bar, and then across to Lochwood to watch the fireworks.”
“Oh, a bar on a national holiday that’s essentially one giant excuse for stupid people to get drunk. I’m sure that’ll be fun.” Marlo backed away from the mirror and towards her bed. “Well, here, there, doesn’t matter. I know you’re really the life of the party.”
“Sorry,” said Sam, not knowing why. She thought for a minute about Marlo’s point and recognized that it might be uncomfortable, but the idea of seeing her old friend again overtook her worry. She had been anticipating the day for a while, and there was nothing that would be said to dissuade her. “It won’t be all night.”
“Are you going to call me after? You call me after.”
“I guess so.”
“I might be drinking a bit myself, but you call me. Okay?”
“Okay.” Sam set the brush down and examined herself in the mirror. She turned her head one way, then the other, looking for inconsistencies no one but she would ever notice. She got up and took a step back, twisting at the hip and smoothing her blouse, looking in her own eyes and running her hand along the hair that draped over her sharp shoulders.
“Are you okay? You’re done?”
“Yes.”
“I hope you’re up to standard.”
“What time is it?” Marlo pulled out her phone.
“Quarter to seven.”
“What?”
“Quarter. To. Seven.”
“Oh shoot, uh. No, I have to go. I’m sorry I didn’t realize how long I’ve been here.” Sam walked over to where she had thrown her purse on the bed, and she scrambled to gather the items that had spilled out when she did so.
“Uh, what? You’re going to help me get ready quick.”
“No, I can’t, I’m sorry, I have to go, if I knew the time it would have been different. I’m already going to be late. I’m sorry.”
“What? You’re going to help me get ready.”
“No I can’t I-”
“Seriously?” Marlo looked hard into her eyes, and Sam was silent. “Text your friend and tell him you’re going to be late.” Sam relented, and, distraught, she pulled out her phone and started typing with her thumbs. Marlo sat upright on the stool and Sam came up behind her, running her fingers through Marlo’s hair, and as she worked, she intermittently threw glances at herself in the mirror, compounding her anxiety in a way not fully understood by her. She held herself back from rushing, although she desperately wanted to.
 
 
She was an hour late by the time she reached the neighborhood where she agreed to meet with Evan and his brother. After texting him about her delay, he responded that it was fine and that she didn’t need to worry so much. It was a warm summer evening and the traffic was dense. The cars crawled slowly along, only a cars length at a time. It was a grid-lock caused in large part by lengthy processions of pedestrians crossing the roads with their families and friends, carrying collapsed lawn chairs and beach blankets as they went to stake out a nice patch of ground at the park. She had trouble enough simply finding Evan’s house with the directions she was given, let alone navigating such traffic, but she eventually found herself in a shared parking space surrounded by condominiums that matched what Evan had described to her. She reached for her phone but then saw Evan and his brother approaching her car, and she got out to meet them.
Evan came up to her and they hugged affectionately.
“Hello beautiful,” he said, “and you are beautiful right now. Really, I’m being genuine. I missed you.”
“Hi,” she responded softly, smiling. Evan took a few steps back.
“You remember my brother Ricky?”
Ricky smirked at her and gave a stiff wave, lifting his hand and opening it in the way a magician might demonstrate an object disappearing from their closed fist. “Hello, yeah we’ve probably met at some point I think, maybe,” he said. Sam looked back at him, and with he and Evan standing close she couldn’t help but notice the contrast between them. She knew Evan had a twin, but looking at them without knowing it, she never would have guessed it. Ricky looked to be almost half a foot taller with bushy and tightly coiled hair distinct from his brothers short and straight hair done up with a little cowlick. She gave a sheepish little wave and then turned to Evan, attempting to hide the discomfort she felt in sight of his brother.
“I’m sorry I’m late, I am. I got caught up doing something and it took more time than I thought and I kind of-”
Evan interrupted her, running over her words until she stopped, “No, okay, you can stop. Stop-stop-stop. Honestly, we are going to be waiting even longer regardless. And I’m not in any rush, I never really go out for stuff like this. What’s there to celebrate, really?”
“Ok.” She tried to summon something to say, but couldn’t help but be feel embarrassed in Ricky's presence. She pulled at the sweatband on her wrist and thought that she would much prefer to have Evan alone. “I don’t really celebrate either.”
“I don’t know where to start,” said Evan, “what are you doing? Are you working?”
“No, I’m just living with my dad.” Sam closed her gaze on Evan, but was still very conscious of his brother standing to the side of them; she was trying not to look at him, only seeing him in her peripherals. She felt nervous, and her nerves sparked a need to reaffirm something in herself. She imagined his eyes scanning her, she could feel it, and with her hand she inconspicuously tugged at a belt loop on her tight jeans to reveal a small bit of skin, then cocked her exposed hip at him. As it happened, Ricky’s eyes were pointed at the road where a pilgrimage of many people was taking place. He wasn’t much looking at anything.
“Oh that’s good, you guys are close hey?”
“Yeah. And just so you know I was only late because I had to help a friend get ready for a party.”
“Would you stop? It literally makes no difference.” He paused and looked contemplative for a moment. “It’s good that they asked you. I don’t have any friends as pretty as you Sam,” he told her. “I think the term is on point. Not that you even need to be, you’re beautiful all the same.”
“Thanks…”
“Mhm.”
“Different from high school?”
“Different? Maybe.”
“There’s stuff I hoped I wouldn’t always be there, like the bump on my nose.”
“Oh god, stop.” His face looked serious. “I’ll be perfectly honest with you. You are like the only girl I’ve ever been attracted to. I mean that with total certainty. God I don’t even know how I would feel otherwise. Because, you know, obviously.”
“Because you like the dick,” Ricky interjected and laughed to himself. He had been listening to them and had a wide smile on his face. His remark was sudden, abrasive, and bold in a way that Sam couldn’t help but smile a little too.
“Yeah, well I still won the genetic lottery between us. There wasn’t much dick left for you I think. Sam, choose one of us.”
“Your very handsome,” she said to Evan.
“You’re also as glib as a teenage girl, and you stink, God,” said Ricky.
“Why, because I took the time to put on cologne? Did you even shower?”
“I’m naturally odorless.”
“Is this how you’re gunna be?”
“I haven’t drank in a long time, if you think that’s the worst you’re going to get tonight, you’re very mistaken.” It wasn’t until that moment Sam noticed Ricky holding a small paper bag with the mouth of a bottle peeking out.
They continued to bicker, to Sam’s amusement, in a way she thought was comical. The longer they went, the more she approached a sense of ease and the more she started to anticipate the night.
When they stopped the three of them all looked to the road where someone had begun franticly honking. “We’re walking. Obviously,” said Evan, “it’s going to be hell pulling out of here later. Actually, now that I think about it, how are you going to get home? Are you just going to leave your car here? Maybe you should have taken the bus.”
“I don’t take the bus,” Sam responded.
“Why not?”
“I hate it. I’ll call a taxi later.” She watched Evan pull out his phone and check the time, then waited a few seconds while no one said anything. “Should we go?”
Evan shook his head. “Well, we were supposed to, but we’re waiting for someone. Some two I guess. Friends.” Sam was suddenly and once again dismayed.
“There are more people coming?”
“Yeah, actually it was him and her who asked us to go out before I got in touch with you. Sorry, but they’re fun people sometimes. I’ve just known them for a long time is all. Her more than him.” Evan looked back at his phone. “They’ll be here soon. Do you mind at all?”
“I guess not.” Sam thought to herself that maybe going out was a mistake, wondering if Evan would be busy and preoccupied with others around. Maybe she could have made plans for another time, when he was alone. Maybe he could have gone somewhere quiet with her. She knew she would not leave, however. She did not yet think her night ruined. In a way, she was simply happy to see her friend, but beyond those sentimental feelings which prompted her to come out, she also felt bound by a mix of habitual inertia and timidity.
As Evan predicted, soon enough a car pulled up and into the stall next to Sam’s. A young man climbed out and then approached the three of them.
“Hello hello,” he said as he came close.
“Well hello Kyle,” said Evan. Kyle nodded at Ricky who returned another crooked smile. Sam looked him over while he was greeting the twins. He seemed like a remarkably ordinary man, the sort who you might look at in public without ever actually registering, and the sort who might be forgotten just as quick as they had passed by, but Sam couldn’t help but see a certain pride in his bearing. “Sam, this is Kyle.” He turned to her.
“Hi,” she said.
“Nice to meet you.” He met her eyes and smiled.
Sam quickly turned her eyes away and back to Evan. She felt the same discomfort as she did with Ricky only a small while prior, so she did not say much while the three men spoke.
“Where’s Lisa?” Evan asked Kyle, and in response, he sighed.
“She’s gunna come meet us at the bar. She’s busy with… some shit, I don’t know. But she’s just gunna come later. That’s all I got out of her.” His tone was salted with indifference and a small bitterness only Sam seemed to recognize. She kept him in her periphery and felt as if he was looking her over, carefully inferring it from the mild movement she noticed in corner of her eye, like a skittish animal might, unwilling to look at threat head-on. After feeling as though one of his movements was evidence of him looking at her, she threw a quick glance at him. As it happened, he was looking at her with sidelong eyes just as she thought he was. Their eyes met for only a split second before Sam broke away nervously.
The three men continued to talk leisurely until whatever they were talking about had exhausted itself.
“Well I suppose we should head out,” said Evan. Ricky craned his head back to pour the remnants of his bottle into his mouth then tossed it into a neighbors nearby blue bin.
 
 
The pub was as chaotic as Marlo had predicted. It was warmer than outside and the density of the bodies made the air thick and stifling, like the air itself was there to be drunk. Everywhere Sam looked were laughing, tinted faces with flush complexions. The cacophony of voices and the underlying swell of music submerged both the crowd and their sense. Sam, who was not at all a drinker, was apprehensive in confrontation with the place, as it was a place that seemed just as unpleasant and overbearing as the unwelcome comradery that she felt was typical of the drunk. The few words and phrases she could pluck from the noise were crass and masculine, like the shouted but casual curses that came from the men crowded around the pool tables, accented by the aggressive snap of the glossy pool-balls colliding. The only other distinguishable facet she could make out in that hazy boiler pot of spirits came from the VLT’s near the back, ringing and celebrating small victories. Those who occupied the machines were all older men. They worked the handles and buttons, and the bright displays cast unflattering light on their faces, revealing the creases and stress-lines of age, while scantily costumed women would show up on the screens and usher them into their next play.
Evan pulled at Sam’s hand, guiding her and the others to a table where another group of four were standing up to leave. He had seen a server walking away with the debit machine and acted to seize the table before anyone else. It was still littered with empty glasses and crumbs of some sort, and they all kept their hands at their sides until a server came with a damp towel to wipe the table down and collect the glasses. Sam lifted and put down her feet a few times, as the floor was sticky and she felt some strange satisfaction in the sensation of peeling her shoes off the ground. They all waited for the server to find her way back to them so they could have their drinks. Sam sat next to Evan with Ricky and Kyle opposite them. Sam watched Kyle say something to Ricky, leaning into him so he could be heard, and Ricky grinned in amusement. She turned to Evan who tilted his head at her, and she struggled to think of something to say.
“I never come to places like this,” she said in his ear. She looked around to see men from different places looking her over.
“I’m sorry Sam,” replied Evan, “We won’t stay for too long. We’ll leave an hour before the fireworks so we can find somewhere nice to sit. Ricky wanted to get drunk. Lisa and Kyle go out often, I think. If anyone wants to keep drinking we can stop by the store.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to complain, I just meant I don’t usually come to places like this.” Sam could not hide the tension in her face. She was being watched, sized up, and for a moment was even excited to feel some small semblance of her own influence, as she sometimes did when she went out, but as soon as she recognized that excitement, she recoiled internally and looked down in self-contempt; it was a familiar routine that would often follow such, in her mind, dishonest feelings. She pulled upon her sweatband and felt, inside of her, the shame of what it meant; she could feel the weight of her history, etched onto her wrist and hidden. Evan gently rubbed her arm. A server approached the table to take their orders, and the men all asked for pints. Sam asked for a rum and coke. She wasn’t sure if she liked the drink, but she didn’t drink enough to have any real preferences.
She turned her attention again to those across from her. Ricky was talking into Kyle’s ear and it looked like he kept interrupting himself with his own laughter. Kyle sat with a bemused expression. When Ricky had finished whatever he was saying, Kyle bent over the table to try and get Evan’s attention. Sam turned her eyes away when she saw him do so, refusing to look at him strait. She stared at the table, then looked around the pub again to see if she had kept the attention of men from other tables. She had. She lowered her head and waited for Evan to be free again, but just then the server returned. Ricky welcomed her with wide open arms. Evan and Kyle made space between them so she could set down the glasses, and they all took their drinks.
Sam continued to wait for Evan's ear, but Ricky drew her attention, no more than five minutes later, when he suddenly stood and craned himself towards the entrance, putting his arm up high to signal at someone. Kyle and Evan both turned to look as a woman approached the table, and when she did, Evan stood up and they hugged. Sam was struck at the sight of her. The woman looked around, then walked over to another table that was not fully seated, asking if she could steal a chair. She brought the chair back to the table and sat at the side, in between Evan and Kyle, then she leaned into Kyle’s ear, saying something, and an unamused look came to his face. Evan turned to say something to her, gesturing at Sam with his thumb, then he turned around and spoke to Sam.
“This is Lisa, she’s an old friend.” Sam looked at her and they smiled politely at each other, as they were too far apart and there was too much noise to greet formally. Getting a good look at her, now that Sam’s eyes had adjusted to the dimness of the bar, she saw someone immaculate. She felt anxious and uncomfortable, and she turned away. She looked at Ricky who, with a raised eyebrow and a smirk, bowed his head at her and lifted his glass up high, then took a long drink, causing her to stare into her own drink, fall into thought, and wait.
When Sam noticed Lisa was distracted, bent forward and trying to hear something Ricky was saying to Kyle, she took the opportunity to examine her more thoroughly, and once she did, she looked at her as if she had fallen into a trance. Lisa was immensely, fiercely beautiful. Her face was refined and her eyes were steady and confident, framed with a pair of thin and sharp glasses that complimented the noble composure of her features. Sam searched her face and thought to herself that Lisa was naturally beautiful in a way she had never been. Her makeup and her dress were unassuming, but it made no difference. She looked like she could have been a model, or an ivory mannequin that had grown colour and become human. Sam had difficulty looking away. Here was a woman who she suddenly imagined could do anything, who could sway anyone, and as she watched her, she lamented as if in envy, but lacking that resentment made in envy; she only felt longing and pain.
Lisa turned to her and Sam panicked, quickly pulling out her phone for something to look at, then after a moment of pretending to be engaged with it, she was struck with a strong desire to break away from the environment, but she could only shrink into herself. She wanted to distract herself, if only for a little while, and she thought of Marlo. It would settle her nerves a bit, she thought, so she brought up their text log and began typing with her thumbs.
“How is your party?” She waited a full two minutes for a response, although, to her, it felt much longer.
“Bumping. How is your whatever you’re doing?”
“It’s loud and stuffy and it smells.”
“Yea.” Sam paused before she responded, thinking about what might catch Marlo’s interest.
“Do you think it’s wrong to let someone buy drinks for you if you don’t wanna talk to them?” She bent over and took the first sip of her drink, then used the straw to stir the ice cubes around as she waited to see if her bait interested Marlo at all.
“For you? I don’t know. I can tell you that I certainly wouldn’t do that. I think it’s disingenuous, and I’m not that kind of person. Why? Is someone buying drinks for you?” Sam waited another minute before responding.
“No.”
“Then why are you asking?” Sam put her phone away and returned her focus to the table.
Ricky was taking a long drink, and Sam watched as Lisa put her hand on top of Kyle’s, tapping her forefinger on his knuckles. She watched Lisa lean into Evan and start talking to him, then returned her attention to Lisa's hand. The way she rested her slim fingers on his hand almost seemed like something regal, both justifying and claiming Kyle. Hers was a consecrating touch, even in that muggy, bleak hive. Sam tried to imagine who these people were.
With curiosity she turned her attention to Kyle himself. He was distracted by something Ricky was saying, but when Ricky went for his beer, Kyle noticed her eyes pointed at him. He looked back at her, and although Sam had the instinct to turn away, she steadied her eyes on his and felt a rush.
When Lisa finished talking to Evan she turned back to Kyle, and he and Sam quickly broke their contact. Lisa began to talk in Kyle’s ear. He heaved his shoulders and listened to her until she finished, then he turned and said something back to her. He picked up his beer again and drank a good portion of it before she again spoke into his ear. They began a conversation in which neither of them looked pleased. She would say something and he would shake his head, then he would turn and say something back, frowning. It went on for a while as Sam periodically snuck looks at the two of them.
The server emerged from the dimly lit mass of bodies and the noise and came up to their table. Sam had hardly put a notch in her drink, Evan had emptied half a pint, and Ricky and Kyle slid their empty glasses towards her, signaling her for another. When the server leaned in to ask Lisa if she wanted anything, she only shook her head and thanked her.
Everyone at the table seemed to fall into a rhythm of conversation except Sam. Evan with Lisa, again, and Kyle with Ricky. As she grew ever more listless, she struggled, at an increasing rate, with her sense of being misplaced, not knowing where to turn or what to do with herself. She set her hand on top of the hand Even was resting on the table, the way she had seen Lisa do, then he pulled his hand out from under and gripped the hand she gave him. He leaned into her. “It’s impossible to talk in here, I’ll ask if everyone wants to go a bit earlier, we’ll go to the liquor store. How are you doing?”
“I’m okay,” said Sam, shrugging.
“I’m sorry, it’s boring for you, I know. I’ll ask okay?” Sam nodded, looking across at Lisa and feeling a gnawing discomfort. She then turned her attention to Kyle once more. Who was he next to her, she wondered, as he must have been someone, maybe someone with worth and standards and convictions, but who? Kyle noticed her and again they locked eyes. She felt exhilarated once more, and felt herself being drawn into this new-found and developing secrecy between them.
Ricky then stole Kyle's attention, putting his hand on his shoulder and saying something to him. Their drinks arrived and they both pulled them close. Sam watched them talk, and she watched them drink deep, then watched as the two of them burst out laughing. After watching the men drink and jab at each other a little more, she noticed Lisa watching them as well. There was an indignant look on her face as she waited to steal Kyle’s attention back. She seemed to grow ever more impatient and eventually took out her phone. Evan still had Sam’s hand in his, and after seeing how little Sam had drank, leaned close.
“You really don’t drink much do you?” Hearing him, she bent forward to suck on the straw, and then came back up.
“I don’t really. I don’t like that it might make me act different.”
“It’ okay, I don’t either.”
“Oh.”
“You know I’ve never actually been here before. I thought it would be different. I thought there might be people dancing, but no. Half of the people here look like regulars. This seems like the kind of place that has regulars.” Sam put her other hand on top of Evan’s, making a sandwich, then pulled away to take a quick look at her phone. Marlo hadn’t messaged her, and at that point Sam began to feel like she had discovered all she could in her situation. The noise no longer distracted her, and the thick air became habitable, but she still felt like she wanted to leave. She wished she could take Evan’s hand and leave with him alone. She wished that they could go out to the field, be under an open sky, and talk. But there was something else keeping her from asking, something that held her and something she could not decide to be terrible or not.
After some time had passed Sam saw Lisa abandon her phone and say something to Kyle. He looked at her sideways, but then discarded whatever she had said and returned to his conversation with Ricky. Clearly annoyed, Lisa tugged on his sleeve and again spoke into his ear. His face hardened and he reluctantly turned around. He said something back to her and the two of them stood up.
“I wonder what’s going on there,” said Evan, leaning into Sam. Across the table Ricky rolled his fingers along the side of his drink and beckoned Sam and his brother to come close. Sam and Evan leaned forward and Ricky spoke with a slight slur.
“Love birds gettin’ pissy. I wasn’t supposed to say anything but I think they’re on the out and outs,” Ricky said, “plenty of girls in the sea, guys too, and you know what? None of it matters. See that girl over there?” He gestured towards another table. “I think she might be the love of my life. But it’s so dark in here, she probably can’t even see my physique.” He pulled back his sleeve and flexed some small, underdeveloped muscles. “This is how you communicate today. It’s just a joke. Don’t tell me I’m limp. I could be Mr. Universe if I wanted. But all my biggest muscles are on the inside, like my heart. That’s what’s important. But I could be a manly man if I wanted! I could be a monster truck.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” replied Evan, dryly, as the three of them were close.
“Yo, you wanna talk a walk? I’d pile-drive you.”
Sam turned around to see Lisa and Kyle standing at the bathroom entrances, openly arguing. She watched and thought they ought to just step outside and escape the noise, but, instead, they stood extremely close, both speaking at once. They looked like they were only picking up an argument that had already existed, something they were familiar with, and something predestined to end sourly. Lisa stopped speaking, leaving Kyle to gesture dramatically and bring them to a close. Lisa examined him for a second, then turned around and decisively left out the front entrance.
Kyle started to walk back to the table and Sam and the twins made it to look like they were busy with themselves, innocent of any petty voyeurism. Evan went so far as to ask him where Lisa had gone, to which he replied “I don’t know, I guess she wasn’t feeling well so she left.” Hearing him, Sam sensed that he was merely playing along, knowing that everyone present was aware of their display, but maintaining convention and manner. He took up his drink and drained it. Evan and Ricky followed him.
All three men leaned over to the center of the table, as if to jointly devise a battle plan of some sort. Sam followed them and tried to hear them all talk, but all that really came of it was an agreement to step outside for a smoke. Kyle suggested waiting for the server to come so they could have drinks waiting for them when they returned, and Evan said they could find her on their way out.
“We’ll be back okay?” Evan told Sam. She nodded and watched them get up and muscle their way through the crowd. On their way out she saw Ricky stop and bother their server. He pointed back to the table and Sam, and she nodded.
As soon as they left out the front door, Sam saw another group of displaced men point towards the table, and she thought quickly on how to protect it. She pulled her purse up and slid it to the center of the table as if to say it was reserved, and she hoped it was enough, for she had no other ideas. She worried someone might approach her now that she was on her own, but she also felt some sense of purpose in her job as the table guardian. It was the only real purpose she had served all night. The server caught her off guard when she came to set down the men's drinks. She stretched forward and asked Sam how she was doing, to which she responded by smiling at her and bending over to suck on her straw. After she was left alone again, Sam began to wonder if anything would be easier if she actually committed herself to her drink. Even just a little alcohol had its way with her, as her body was small and her tolerance non-existent. If she drank, perhaps she could find some courage in the way she understood was common. She finished her drink quick and waited. She looked around and again saw men rise and meet her gaze as she discovered them. The skin she lived in could never satisfy her the way she thought it could such men, who only ever saw her with intent and without fair scrutiny. Undiscerning men who only revealed their lack of self-respect when they eyed her, like she thought so many men did. She began to think about her father, a limitlessly kind and cautious man who knew her in a way no one else ever would. She did not have any clear memories of her mother, only hazy images from an undeveloped age, but she knew her father to be loyal beyond death, never seeking romance and content to never more. Of course, there are rarely such simple explanations, but she liked to believe it. Was she not drawn out that night by the promise of long lost company, she would’ve been nestled beside him, watching reality T.V. or docudramas under a blanket until the fireworks started.
She turned to check if the men had come back just as they returned through the door, with Kyle leading the twins through the crowd. When they reached the table, Sam was overtaken by panic as Kyle took the seat next to her. Evan bent over to protest but his brother pulled him away and he submitted, shrugging and mouthing “whatever.”  Sam was thrown in such a way that she could do nothing but look downward. Kyle acted as if nothing had changed and nothing would occur that wasn’t already in motion. He sat forward with his elbows resting on the table and his arms crossed, and Sam kept him in her periphery. She moved around a bit in her seat, split on the paper-thin verge that sometimes disappears between fear and excitement.
The men all took up their drinks and drank. Sam gripped her empty cup and thought about her placement. Having this man close to her brought butterflies to her stomach, and she waited in anticipation for something, anything, to happen. She waited in that painful anticipation until she could not bear it, then turned her head to face him. He was drinking his beer with large, steady gulps, but he noticed her nonetheless. His face had taken on a slight red hue, and she saw his glassy green eyes become narrow and intimidating. He set down his drink and they watched each other wordlessly until he leaned a little closer and spoke.
“Ricky says you’re an old friend of Evan’s from high school. I went to the same high school as those guys, but I don’t recognize you.”
“I dropped out.”
“I was there all three years. I think I would have remembered you.”
“Oh.”
“Can I get you another drink?” Sam squirmed a bit in her seat.
“Okay.”
“You’re very quiet, aren’t you.”
“I guess.”
“It’s okay, talk isn’t the end all of communication.” Sam raised her eyes to his once more and they locked together as if magnetized.
Sam turned away, and from across the table she saw Evan watching them in consternation. He leaned forward and tapped Kyle’s hand to get his attention, and then he switched seats to the side of the table where Lisa had been sitting. He spoke to Kyle and Sam watched them with curiosity, wondering what could have warranted Evan changing seats to be closer to Kyle. While coupled in that conversation, Kyle surreptitiously moved his hand and placed it on top of Sam’s thigh, sliding his fingers, then his palm, up and down the length of her jeans, occasionally and boldly running it close to her upper, inner thigh. Sam felt vibrant and alive, feeling all the risk of such a secret, hidden act. Her breath became shallow, and she felt the tempo of her heart accelerating. Kyle removed his hand and picked up his glass.
Evan made a motion with his hand to Sam, beckoning her to come closer, so she leaned over the table as best she could.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” Sam nodded in response and returned to her seat.
Across from Sam, Ricky looked both bored and annoyed that no one was paying attention to him. He bent over the table and spoke loudly so that everyone would hear him.
“Let’s leave this place, I’m getting kind of sick of it. Let’s go to the liquor store and be outside. I’m done with this place.”
“Let’s finish our drinks at the very least,” shouted Kyle.
“Well obviously.”
For a reason Sam did not want to explore, there was a fresh sense of apprehension she had towards the idea of leaving, despite feeling the opposite only a little while earlier. As much as the environment had worn on her through the night, she felt, at that moment, that new prospects had emerged and their leaving came too soon. There was something unfinished, something all the noise and movement disguised that would be taken away by the clarity of the outside world.
Her thoughts progressed in this manner, wondering what would happen now, and she came to the conclusion that if they were going to leave, she wanted a minute to readjust herself and ease her back into the night. Her mind was pulled in different directions. She just wanted to be alone, but then she didn’t. Now that they planned on leaving, she needed to get away from everyone and everything, or she needed, at the very least, a brief reprieve from the momentum of her senses and desires. She stood up and walked over to Evan, and in his ear, she told him that she wanted to go get some fresh air while the rest of them finished up. He nodded and brushed her arm.
It had become dark outside, and quite a few patrons had spilled out of the pub and onto the road. Most of them were smoking and interrupting one another. She could see across the parking lot to Lochwood park where an expansive crowd flooded the field. Many were sitting on the grass. Only children were up and playing, weaving in-between different groups and chasing after one another. Around the corner of the bar, Sam found a somewhat isolated space where she could be alone, and she leaned herself up against a metal grating that sectioned off some outdoor furnishings that the pub had failed to set up. She hung her head. She checked her phone to see if Marlo had texted her but saw nothing. Sam thought about Marlo’s night, then began to compare and contrast her own night against what she thought Marlo’s party would have been like. She did not know how to feel, and she pulled at the sweatband on her wrist. Kyle walked around the corner to where she was hidden and approached her. Sam froze. He looked a bit more drunk than he had inside.
“I was hoping to catch you alone,” he said. Sam said nothing. Kyle ran his hand down her arm and cupped his hand on her hip, drawing himself a little close. He lifted one of his hands and brushed some hair off her cheek. Sam felt electricity run through her in a sharp and pleasant way. She stood still. Kyle came more forward.
She felt another jolt, but it came too quickly and too strongly, and she recoiled from it. She did not understand exactly what was happening, but every touch filled her with disgust. Her stomach turned over and her mind fell into disorder. Who was this stranger? She tried to shake his hands off her and protested.
“No,” she said, twisting uncomfortably. Kyle gripped one of her free hands and pushed it back against the grate with some force. “No, stop it.”
He released her and took a step backwards, confusion contorting his face. Sam stepped quickly back around to the front.
She deftly weaved her way around the bodies that filled the bar in a way she would have never done were she not driven by some sense of urgency. She came up to the table where Evan was talking to his brother plainly. Ricky looked as though he was not paying attention, waiting for his turn to interject. Sam tapped Evan on the shoulder and leaned towards him.
“I’m sorry, my dad called me and there was kind of an emergency and I have to leave early. I’m sorry.”
“What? What happened?”
“It’s just an emergency that I have to go and see my dad, I’ll tell you later.”
“Sam, are you okay? You can’t tell me what happened?” She didn’t answer his question, and as he waited, she saw a sudden spark of anger come to his eyes, as if in revelation.
“I just have to go. I’m sorry.” She stood back up and was about to leave when Evan tugged on her sleeve.
“Wait.” Evan stood up. He wrapped his arms around her and she let her weight press against him, bringing her arms around him and holding him tightly, nuzzling her face in his shoulder. When they released each other, she gave Evan a look of regret before turning and walking away, leaving him standing there. She didn’t have a straight plan, only wanting to escape, only hoping to find a taxi somewhere without having to phone for one, and luckily enough, there were a number of taxis interspersed across the parking lot which she had not noticed when she last stepped outside.
She passed Kyle on her way out, throwing him a distressed look and seeing him purse his lips. She didn’t even know how to regard him, so she went quickly out to an unreserved car. She knew he was watching her leave even when her back was turned to him.
 
 
She was driven past the open park where jubilation massed. The taxi made the trip easy enough, pulling onto the back streets of a nearby neighborhood as to avoid the traffic and crowds. When Sam arrived at her house she entered unceremoniously and kicked off her shoes. She headed for her room, desperate to be alone. She passed her father in the living room where he was watching T.V., and he called to her as she tried to slip past his notice. She explained that she was not feeling well and that was why she had come home so early, and with unspoken suspicion, he furrowed his brow, watching her walk away and to her room.
On her own at last, she crawled onto her bed and buried her face deep into a pillow. She sat back upright believing it would help her think more clearly, but reflecting on what had happened proved too painful, so she pushed her face back down into the pillow and started to cry, her tears coming easily. She wept for herself, her physicality, the vanity to which she submitted, and the imprisonment she faced due to such anxieties, which, in turn, led to the unjust guilt for her desires, her instincts, her baseness, and even her sex, in the collective of whom she believed herself assuredly, particularly warped. When she stopped crying, she wiped her face on the pillow, wiping her makeup all over it, then laid unmoving for a while. She stood up and walked to the full body mirror that hung on her wall. She stood there, looking at herself and the makeup smeared all over as if her face were the focal point of some abstract portrait. She turned this and that way, trying to see her figure. The blouse she had worn was wide at the neck, and the sight of her collar bone disturbed her, for it was much too pronounced. She grew sick of herself and went back to lie on her bed. She stayed there until her restless mind got the better of her once again, and so, on top of her sheets, she wriggled her way out of her clothes, even taking off her sweatband and throwing it in the corner of the room. She stood back up in front of the mirror naked. She bent, she twisted, she pulled in and pushed out, moving her head to keep a clean line of sight, trying to see herself from the back side, and then she started to cry once again, her face a mess and her body unnatural. She stood there for a while with her face pressed into her hands. Then came the climax of the night with the popping of ribbons that were somewhere over and beyond the houses of her neighborhood. She imagined them diving up in the sky. The sounds, the hissing and the whistling, encroached on her; a celebration meant for others, not herself. She moved to close her open window and mute the noise. She grew tired and went to lay down in bed, but she tossed and turned for hours before she was able to sleep.
 
 
When she woke up in the morning, she was numb to the mix of self-pity and self-loathing that had carried her off to sleep. It took her a while to summon the motivation to climb out of bed and find some pajamas to dress herself with. She felt drained, and went over the events of her night out in a slight stupor, as if they had not happened to her, but someone else. There was a coldness in her heart that whispered to her, reminding her who she was. After laying back down for a while longer, she began to feel restless, so she went to find where she had tossed her phone, somewhere in her pile of cloths that she had cast off that previous night. She found it, dialed Marlo’s number, and put the phone to her ear. It rang four times before Marlo picked up.
“So, how was your night?” Marlo asked as she answered.
“I don’t know, how was yours?”
“It was fine, got kind of drunk and sat around until the fireworks, then started a fire in the backyard and sat around that for a while. What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I just don’t know.”
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know, I just-”
“Yeah?” Sam was quiet, and she waited for a few moments before she responded.
“I had a couple drinks, and I think too many, and…”
“And what? What happened?”
“Evan had one of his friends come, and his friend came with his girlfriend. They got in a fight and she left. And then, I guess I just had too many drinks and I went to his place and I slept with him after.”
“Wow.” Marlo sighed deeply, as if in great disappointment, but Sam recognized a familiar sense of satisfaction in her breath.

 
     The opening notes of Schubert’s “Impromptu” filled the music hall just before the theater suddenly went dark. Cameron stopped playing the Schubert piece in mid note and tried to stay calm. In a moment he heard the conductor’s voice from the far side of the room and a faint light began to stream in as he watched him pull back a curtain.
“I’m sorry everyone. They have been working on the building all week. Looks like they have knocked out the power again.” Thomas shook his head. “Do you want to wait awhile and see if it comes back up?”
Cameron had been up since 4 that morning with throbbing pains in his head and his migraine was not letting up. He stood up from the piano bench and went over to the window where Thomas, the conductor of the orchestra was standing watching the construction workers and power company employees engage in an animated conversation. “Tom, I would stay but I’m really tired. Would you mind if I went home?” He watched the forced smile form on the conductor’s face because he already knew the answer. It was his charity concert, and he was the headliner. There was no one to stop him from leaving. The idea was to try to keep Cameron happy, so that he might come back again or give them a positive mention in interviews.
“That would be fine.” Tom smiled. “We can finish this up tomorrow. Just to get the timings right. You sound wonderful of course.”
“Everyone is doing a great job.” Cameron deflected his praise as he went back to the piano bench and began to gather his music folder. He glanced at the door for his assistant Allison out of habit. She was on a two-week vacation in Hawaii. As Cameron thought about how cold it was at night here, he wished he were in the islands too. It was not that he couldn’t handle doing things for himself, he liked taking steps toward independence. Gerry seemed to fight him every step of the way though, especially since he had gotten out of the hospital this last time. Allison was Gerry’s idea. She was like a babysitter for an adult. He almost smiled when he remembered how he had complained about not wanting an assistant. Gerry was only trying to help, like always, because he cared about him and was used to doing things for him, Cameron thought. But he was well now and did not need constant care. Cameron was not sure how he was ever going to get him to notice that he was not still the six-year old he had taken in as a favor to his troubled housekeeper and who he discovered was a piano phenomenon.
He said his goodbyes to the orchestra members who were still in the hall and headed for the lobby. His driver was usually sitting in the lounge on his phone or watching television, but today the place was empty. The black SUV was not out front and did not arrive while Cameron waited. He looked at his cell phone and noticed the voice mail icon blinking. He selected the speed dial number for his voice mail and waited for the message. His driver had taken the SUV for service while he waited and it would be right about 6 when he got back. Ordinarily this would have been all right, but today, with the power out at the theater, Cameron was quite ready to go home now at a quarter to 4. He was about to call Frederick and ask him if he could postpone the car maintenance and come back when his cell began to vibrate again. He answered before the second ring.
“Hi Gerry.”
“Oh, hello. I’m surprised you answered. I was going to leave you a message.” Gerard hesitated. “Is the rehearsal going any better?”
“It’s not going at all. The power just went out.” Cameron frowned. This concert had been Cameron’s call. Gerard thought he wasn’t ready for it yet. After ten years of sell out concerts and four platinum classical crossover albums, the trouble had come out of the blue, and he had spent two months in the hospital. During that time Gerard had come to see him every day. He would not have recovered so quickly if it had not been for Gerard’s unwavering support. But then Gerard had been his support system since he was a child. “I guess you were right again. I have a bad headache.”
“I’m sorry about your migraine. Are you in the car now?”
“Frederick is getting the car serviced. He won’t be back for a couple of hours.”
“Well, I can...” Gerard began.
“You’re still getting over bronchitis. Just stay home. I can...take a taxi.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll call a car service to come pick you up.”
“How long will that take? I don’t feel like waiting. I don’t even have that medicine with me or I would take it now.”
“Look in your brief case pocket.” He said and Cameron slid his hand into the side pocket of the tan leather case where he kept his music. His fingertips brushed against something in the bottom and he pulled out the small silver pill case.
“You’re a life saver Gerry.” Cameron set his phone down, put one of the pain relievers in his mouth and washed it down with his bottle of water. His vision was getting blurry and he felt the beginning feelings of nausea. “I could be half way home by the time you find a car for me. I see three yellow taxis out front. I’ll be okay.” He said after putting the phone back to his ear.
“You haven’t taken a taxi in a long time and besides...”
“Please stop treating me like a child.” Cameron’s head throbbed when he snapped at his mentor.
“Will you just text me the cab number you are in and the driver’s name? It should be visible.”
Cameron felt a sting of regret as he caught a glimpse of himself in the hallway mirror. “I’m sorry Gerry.” He paused as he gathered up his bag. “Yes, I will text you from the cab in a few minutes.” He said cordially before disconnecting the call. It was not quite dusk when he went out to the sidewalk filled with a steady stream of people. The theater doorman, Les, volunteered to get him a cab. He was about to call out for one when he turned back towards to Cameron.
“Looks like you are in luck Mr. De la Valle. Here’s one right here near the corner.” Les, a slender man of about 50 dressed in a uniform, got to the taxi first and leaned down towards the car window. “You have a fare.”
Cameron saw the driver jump slightly as he turned around. “I’m not working. I don’t have time.” He stammered.
“Your sign is on.” Les said. “You can take Mr. De la Valle over to Long Island, can’t you? I’m sure there’ll be a nice tip in it for you. Just drive careful.”
Cameron got in the back seat and gave his address. He smiled and nodded at Les. “Thanks.” He looked back and wondered why Les was looking at the taxi with an uneasy expression. When he turned back around, he looked right in the eyes of the driver who was staring at him. He looked around for the taxi information and saw the number, 1254, near the meter. The visor was up where the driver’s picture should have been displayed.
“Is something wrong?”
“Uh...no, I didn’t see your ID.” He said casually, but he couldn’t get rid of the nervous feeling he’d had since he gotten in. Maybe Gerry’s nerves were rubbing off on him. After all, just because he had not traveled alone in years did not mean there was anything for him to be afraid of.
“Oh, I’m Danny, Danny Jackson.” He gave a small smile. “I know who you are. I saw your concert on TV a couple of Christmases ago. It was great.”
“Thank you.” Cameron was used to being recognized. He had deep green eyes and wore his dark hair in its usual low ponytail. His diamond earring sparkled as much in everyday life as it did in photographs.
The earring and growing his hair long had been a rebellion. He had spent almost his entire life working with people who were three or four decades older than he was. Every now and then he sought out ways to remind himself and those around him that he was still a very young person. He was only 20 years old. He took out his cell phone and texted the cab number to Gerry.
The traffic was beginning to pick up. A red Honda changed lanes without any warning and Danny slammed on the brakes causing them to pitch forward. He yelled at the driver. He got so excited that for a few moments he did not notice that the visor had fallen down. He reached over and pushed it back up but not before Cameron saw the ID photo for the taxi license.
“Sorry about that. I get a little carried away sometimes.” He said in a much calmer voice.
 Cameron nodded and pretended to be busy searching for something in his bag. He did not want to appear nervous. Besides maybe he was over-reacting but he knew this was not Danny’s cab. If that was his name. He was not the man in the photo ID. He pulled the novel that he had been reading out his bag and turned to a random page. He was not reading it, couldn’t really see the words, but he did not want the driver to know how sleepy he had become after taking his medication.
When Cameron saw signs approaching the tunnel, he breathed a bit easier. After the tunnel it was only 30 more minutes to the bridge and then the house. He would call Gerry before they went into the tunnel because once inside, he would not have a reliable signal. He felt the cab slow down and then come to a stop.
“Where are we going?” Cameron asked.
“Uh that’s why I didn’t want the fare. I’m kind of having a bad day.” He stopped the cab in front of a gas station that looked as though it had was surely in the process of going out of business. “Where did you want me to take you again?”
“Look, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I can report you for this.” He sounded sure of himself. “We were only going through the tunnel. We should have been there by now.” He glanced at his watch.
“I just forgot for a minute.” Danny looked at Cameron in the rearview mirror. “Are you sure we didn’t meet a couple of years ago? I was on my way home and didn’t want a fare that night either.”
“I don’t know what you mean. I just got a ride from you in front of the theater downtown.
“Sure. Sure.” He started to drive again just as Cameron put his hand on the door handle. He took out his phone and texted Gerard, but it did not go through.
 
 
     Since he had been staying at the house on Long Island Gerard had formed the habit of listening to the early news on his satellite radio. For a person as active as he was, being stuck at home ill was excruciating. When they had started the tour in Los Angeles, he thought he had a cold. By Dallas it was more like the flu. In Chicago he had asked the hotel doctor for some Advil and the doctor told him he suspected bronchitis. Now here in New York he had spent closing night of Cameron’s tour in the rental house on strict bed rest.
 Promptly at 4 he put his cell phone on his night table and reached over and turned the radio on. He did not even notice the phone fall softly onto the thick carpet. The broadcaster’s voice filled the room. At 3 pm there had been a report that a mental patient may have escaped from the psychiatric ward of the hospital downtown, but they were still doing some additional searching of the building. The hospital was locked down until they were sure. Gerard had listened closely because that was the hospital where Cameron had been briefly and it was also only a few blocks from the theater where he was rehearsing today. The 4 pm update only said the search was still under way. Gerard looked for his phone on the table as he fumbled with the radio remote. He found it and dialed Cameron’s number without reading the text message alert on his home screen. The call did not go through; it went straight to his voicemail recording.
 
At the hospital on 95th street a nurse in a crisp white uniform directed Detective Sam Ramos down a long gray hallway. He did not like hospitals, especially this kind. It reminded him too much of his old man. Being called in an hour before his vacation time was about to start was not improving his mood either. He wanted to find this guy and get out of this place quick, in that order. The doctor who rose from her chair to greet him was a poised, chic looking young woman who almost seemed too calm in this chaotic setting. “I’m Dr. Kahn, you are detective Ramos?” She looked at his badge as they shook hands.
“Yes, I’ve just been assigned. They brought me up to speed on the way over. Has anything new happened in the last half hour?”
“No, my staff is still searching the hospital floor by floor. They should know if he is still here soon.”
“What can you tell me about Daniel Jackson? Why is he here?”
“He was a cab driver. Three years ago he was in a bad accident. His fare was trying to rob him and he wrecked the cab. In the process he struck and killed a pedestrian. After he got out of the hospital he found the guy again, his passenger, and killed him.”
“Because he hit somebody with his cab?”
“It was his fiancée. He is here now because he wasn’t responsible at the time of the murder.”
“How did he kill him?” Detective Ramos frowned.
“Forced him off a bridge.”
Ramos had not realized that he was shaking his head. “Detective, Danny can be quite reasonable for long periods of time, but in stressful situations he can become quite violent. He may be right here in this hospital.”
“But if he’s not, where would he go? You probably knew him better than anyone at this point.”
“Other than Leslie, his fiancée, he loved driving a cab. He’d be looking for familiar settings and behind the wheel in a cab would be about as close to happy as he ever got.”
 
Cameron sat frozen in the backseat of the taxi and thought about his options. This was not a neighborhood that he was at all familiar with, but there was still daylight left and he would have to take some chances. Danny had been going through intersections on yellow traffic signals for several blocks. At the last light before the Lincoln Tunnel he stopped when the light changed before he could get through. Cameron seized his opportunity and got out the moment the cab stopped.  He put the strap of his messenger bag over his shoulder and ran away as fast as he could. His phone kept showing no signal strength so he couldn’t be sure if Gerry had even gotten his text message.  Almost as soon as he started running towards the corner, he heard a voice behind him. “Hey! Where you going?” He tried to ignore him and keep walking without looking back, but he heard the sound of footsteps running towards him and could not help but look behind him as he began to run towards the intersection. He could see that there were a few more cars there than on the side street where they had been. But he was disappointed when he got to the street. In a major metropolitan area, no one wanted to stop for a hysterical man yelling for help in an intersection.
Cameron dodged traffic and crossed before Danny could get by. Once he realized no one was going to stop he looked for another option. The bag he was carrying was slowing him down, but he decided to hang on to it. Danny had stopped running and was only walking following him now, and to onlookers it may not have even looked like too much was going on. Cameron stopped at the first open business he came to on the next block over, a rundown cafe. Everyone looked up when he came in and the small place seemed to go quiet. “Is there another exit?” He asked the man behind the counter.
He seemed to debate for a moment as he looked at Cameron. He nodded towards a swinging door in the back of the restaurant. “Through the kitchen.”
“Thank you.” He said before he quickly went to kitchen area. The startled cook looked up from the hamburgers he was frying and Cameron gestured towards the exit sign. The staff was busy with their work and did not notice that he ducked into the pantry.
A few seconds after Cameron came in, Danny approached the counter. “Did a guy just come in here, pony tail, carrying a bag?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see where he went? Can you believe he stiffed me for my fare?”
The clerk shook his head. He had a bad feeling about this one. “I didn’t see which way he went.”
Danny began to scan the tables and then walked back towards the men’s room.
Cameron looked at his phone and was relieved that he had a cell phone signal. He dialed 911 and tried not to panic when the automated system put him on hold. He didn’t know how long this was going to last before someone needed something from the pantry and threw him out, so he sent out a text message to Gerry to call the police too. He had no idea what the address was, but he remembered the sign had read “Mike’s Place” and that it was before the tunnel. He clicked send and waited for the message to go through. A message popped up asking if he wanted to try again because the delivery failed. He jumped when the voice came on the line asking him what was the nature of his emergency and just as he began to speak the pantry door burst open and Danny was screaming at him.
“I thought I took care of you before! How did you come back?” Danny was at his throat in an instant. Cameron regained his footing and managed to push him off before swinging wildly. To his surprise he made contact and Danny fell backwards. As he got up the clerk from the counter came in and got in front of him. “I don’t know what is going on with you two, but I have already called the cops! Get out front, both of you.”
 
Almost immediately after they went out front, police cruisers started to arrive. The police took Daniel Jackson back into custody and he would be taken back to the psychiatric hospital under closer surveillance this time.
About half an hour later, Cameron finished giving his statement to detective Ramos. “How did you get here so fast?”
“A lady called in about a guy yelling in the intersection who had just run away from a cab. Mr. Jackson has a history driving cabs. It was just a hunch.”
“I’m glad you followed up on it.” Cameron shook his hand and was surprised to look around and see his driver waiting at the curb. “Dr. Wright called me and told me the street you were on. He got the location from your phone.” He explained.
Once inside the vehicle, he realized his headache had gone away. He let himself sink into the plush leather seat as his phone began to vibrate in his pocket. “Cameron, are you...”
 “I’m okay, the police came and Frederick is bringing me home now. I will tell you all about it when I get there. And Gerry, next time I’ll wait for you to call a car service or even drive in to the city.” He laughed as Frederick pulled the vehicle out of the parking space and headed towards the tunnel.
 
 
 
 

​No boy can out-fish me!
And I intended to prove it by becoming the first girl ever to win the Annual Seabrook Surf-Casting Classic. I practiced all the time: mornings - casting my line in the channel outside my back door; afternoons – trying out new bait and tackle in the calm of the harbor; evenings – charting links between fish movement and air and water temperatures out on the jetty. By the time August arrived, I'd know more about fish than fish knew about fish.
But then, a few days before ninth grade let out for the year, my father sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast and told me: "You'll be taking care of your brother along with your other chores this summer."
"I most certainly will not," I shook my head. "I got to practice for The Classic the next three months."
Dad drew a deep breath. "Don't make this difficult, Mikaela." He rubbed his face with his hand. "I'm stringing five miles of traps this season. I've asked around the marsh, and everyone's too stretched to help."
"That's not my problem," I shot back.
He opened his mouth to talk, but I jumped up from my seat. "Don't you think you have an obligation to support your daughter?" I grilled him. I paced around the table and ranted that he was a sexist, and I was considering reporting him to the authorities.
"And I don't mean the local authorities where you can pick up a phone and fix it. I'm talking ACLU. You know what that spells?"
He mopped up a streak of egg yolk with the last piece of his toast; put it in his mouth and chewed it slowly.
"It spells your picture plastered across the front page of every newspaper in the state," I informed him.
He picked up his plate and rinsed it in the sink. He turned around and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
"Are you through?" he asked.
                                                                        ***
I stand on the Shore Street sidewalk. Patrick's school bus squeals to a stop in front of me. It's short and stubby like a yellow bread-toaster on wheels. A bunch of the kids inside it wear helmets, and their heads bobble like balloons on a string. The Carson boy who lives a few stops down the route is gawking out the window with kitty-cat-pendulum-clock eyes. His mouth is hanging open, and his teeth are as jagged as a dragonfish's. Sometimes, the kids on Patrick's bus remind me of the broken toys in the discount bin at the secondhand store.
Patrick stands up from the back seat and totters up the center aisle. He's small for an eleven- year old, and his head barely reaches the top of the seat-backs. He taps the shoulders of a few of his classmates as he strolls past them and laughs when they startle. When he reaches the bus's bottom step, he halfway turns around and blows a distracted kiss to the driver. She leans across the oversized steering wheel and grins down at me.
"He's a piece of work, that one," she shouts over the whine of the engine.
"I suppose," I shrug. "Have a good summer."
"You, too." She nods. "Have a good summer, sweetie," she calls to Patrick. He mumbles and raises his hand 'goodbye' without looking back.
I grip Patrick beneath his bicep and steer him onto the stone dust road that leads to our neighborhood. Our home is one of twelve cottages that sit on the flatlands of the Seabrook coastal salt marsh. We're an island attached to the mainland, the forty or so people who live here like to joke.
Acres of wispy seagrass stretch between Shore Street and our house and the narrow stone dust road that cuts through the middle of it is barely wide enough for a single car. Most of the twelve houses are split-shake ranches with saggy rooflines and hooking chimneys. Wood pilings elevate them off the marsh. Once I get Patrick on to the road, I untangle the backpack from his shoulders.
"How was school, Bugs?" I kid him with the nickname he earned from being a pest. He doesn't answer. He stops, holds up a hand in front of his flat face, slowly twists it front-and-back as if he can see through the skin.
"Quit counting your bones and c'mon," I shake my head and pull him forward. His nose is snubbed, and his eyes are green and shaped like almonds. They twinkle when the sunlight bounces off them. His sneakers slap the road with each step. When we're halfway home, he yanks his arm away from me and plods off the road into the marsh grass.
"C'mon, Pat," I call after him. "We don't have time to hang around the pools today." I know already that my words are useless. He's a shark stalking a bloody fish.
"Ju-just once." He turns and holds up his index finger. I sigh. He likes to spy on flat-footed sea bugs skimming across the water or panicky minnows flashing in the afternoon sun. Once in a while, I go with him, and our passing shadows spook skittish spider crabs into stage-left exits.
I baby-step backward and watch him crouch over a tidal pool as if he is trying to see his reflection. He reaches out with both hands and dips them deep into the pool. When he stands, he is breathing fast and heavy.
"Mik-k-k-ayla! Wait!" he yells.
I stop. His cupped hands drip as he stumbles through the marsh and back onto the road. When he gets closer, I see that he's cradling a starfish in his hands. It's about as thick and round as a hamburger, all pink and purple and pimply, and its legs hang over the edges of his hands like thick noodles. He sets it down and kneels beside it.
"Too many," he says, touching each of the starfish's legs and squinting up at me. I'm not sure what he means right away, but then I see that something is different.
"Yeah, Bugs, you're right," I say and bend down for a better view. "What the heck? Six legs?"
We watch it for a while as it dries and tries to blend-in by camouflaging its colors to match the gray granules of the road.
"You better get it back in the water," I finally say, but he'll have none of it. He stands up and smiles, as happy as a seal in the harbor. He cradles the starfish out in front of him with both hands, and we march home without my once having to hurry him along. When we get to our house, he lowers the starfish into the big tidal pool outside our back door and kneels on the bank. And he stays there, spellbound, watching his new friend get accustomed to its new home.
                                                                        ***
"A fixed heart is a fresh start," my mother used to cheerily preach whenever she was trying to console gloom.
Today, my father - in his usual absent-minded way - botches my mother's old motto. "Can I help you fix your heart?" He says. He sits across from me at the kitchen table, waiting for my reply, and I stare blankly at him. I have barely talked to him since he told me I would be watching Patrick for the summer.
"It's not what she used to say," I finally snap at him. "Besides," I tell him, "you can fix my heart by finding someone else to take care of Patrick." I stomp upstairs to my room.
My father has been pestering me about expressing my feelings ever since my mother died. Three months ago, she woke up, went to the dentist, and never made it home. An artery in her brain broke, and she lost control of our car, drove it into a section of guardrail that bordered the busy boulevard up in Hampton Falls. I was in school when it happened, and was summoned to the front office over the loudspeaker. I peeked through the glass in my principal's office door and saw my father pacing in front of her desk. I wondered what I had done wrong.
"It's Mom," my father turned and said to me when I knocked on the door and entered the office.
We hurried to the hospital but were too late. Afterward, standing outside mom's room, the EMT's who took care of her introduced themselves and told us how sorry they were. They also told us that my mother was confused and kept repeating the same thing while they pulled her from the car:
"He's going to be scared if I'm not at the bus stop."
On the morning of my mother's service, my father asked me if I'd like to speak at her funeral.
"I know it's a lot to ask, but she'd have liked it. And it's a good opportunity to say a proper 'goodbye'," he said.
"No," I told him.
How do you stand up and tell your neighbors about the warm swirl you got in your stomach when your mother sat on the bed beside you, biting her lip and hoping the thermometer in your mouth hasn't risen another degree? How do you describe the flush of pride that tingles your skin when she gushes over the good grade you got on a test? How do you look out and tell neighbors that you were afraid what they might think about a girl who only wanted to fish; and that your mother - who didn't even know how to bait a hook – was your biggest fan.
While every family in our community quietly stood beneath the tent that sheltered my mother's casket, Patrick sat in the grass at my father's feet. Reverend Manning gathered us into a flock and preached that we'd one day be together. Near the end of the sermon, Patrick began to hum a lullaby that my mother always sang to him. My father leaned over to quiet him, but the reverend held up his hand and stopped Dad.
And as Patrick sat and plucked grass blades while humming his soft song, the entire congregation turned and listened. I glanced at my neighbors' faces: a group of mothers instinctively reached out and held hands with each other while a half-dozen weather-beaten fishermen stoically clenched their jaws and stared at the ground. After Patrick hummed his last note and raised his head, someone moaned, and the full force of my mother's death crashed over the congregation like a rogue wave. And the instinct to protect one of their own overcame the flock, and they closed ranks and formed a circle around Patrick.
***
It is two weeks into the summer, and I am enduring the demands of my stubborn father.
"Mikaela!" He yelled from the bottom of the stairs last night. "Where is the picture of your mother that I put on the mantle?"
I opened my bedroom door. "It's in the top drawer of the laundry room's bureau," I told him.
"What's your mother's picture doing in a draw?" He stomped up the stairs and faced me. I closed my door and jumped into bed.
"Don't move it again. You understand?" he said through the door. "I like it on the mantle, and so does Patrick."
Today, I wake up and walk through the front room. I don't look in the direction of the mantle. I just can't. When I walk into the kitchen, my father and Patrick are sitting at the table.
"Do Candle," Patrick pleads with my father.
My father looks at me and grins. He has been reciting "Candle" for us since we were in diapers. His father used to quote it to him. It is a verse from an old poem, The Keeper of the Harbor. My father stands up and winks at me and clears his throat; summons up his best baritone.
He sits a' top a lighted candle
For crippled boats to see
On stormy night he steers lamp handle
Beams healing light to thee
 
"Again," Patrick says. "Do Candle again."
My father laughs. "What do you think, Mik?" My father asks me. "One more time?"
I open the back door to go to the shed and gather today's fishing gear. "You do realize that he doesn't know it's about a guy in a lighthouse, right?" I say.
My father smile droops. "What are you talking about?"
"He only wants to hear it is because he thinks some guy is sitting on a candle," I say.
My father frowns and shakes his head. "You're not very nice, you know it?" He rubs Patrick's shoulder. I walk outside and close the door behind me.
At the bottom of the steps, I stop and turn around. I start to walk back up the steps to apologize but pause. What would I say? I wish my mother were here. She'd guide me right. I don't want to think about her, though. Every time, it ends in the same place.
When I come back from the shed, my father has already left for work. I clean the house. I cook breakfast. I sit outside and watch Patrick kneel beside the tidal pool in our backyard and stare at his starfish. I have to come up with a plan that allows me to practice. When I win The Classic, things will be better. A picture of me smiling and accepting the first-place trophy will be in the local paper. The whole town will know what a good angler I am. Maybe then, my father will stop pestering me about fixing my heart.
After lunch, I take Patrick to the channel and bring his starfish in a plastic pail. "You sit there, Bugs." I point to a sand clearing in the marsh grass. "I have work to do."
I pitch my lure into the rippling current, and Patrick gets antsy. "Put in pool," he holds up his pail and crowds me on the shore.
"C'mon, Pat. You're annoying! Let me practice," I say.
"Put in pool." He ignores me and continues to crowd me.
"Stop it!" I yell. "Ask Dad to help you with your starfish!"
After a while, he has me too frazzled to even fill out my fishing journal, and I finally just take him home.
***
Adnan, our new neighbor, has wandered past the front of our house eight times. He peeks in our backyard to see what Patrick and I are doing. Adnan and his family moved into the vacant house at the end of the road a month ago. He attended the last few days of school and sat as still and quiet as a mannequin in my class's back row.
Adnan is brown like the sandy bottom of the channel, and his straight hair is as black and shiny as a shark's eye. His father does not work the ocean like every other father on the marsh. In the early morning, his father treks to his job at the tailor's shop a half-mile into town. Adnan's mother hangs laundry on her clothesline, and she, herself, looks like a walking clothesline. Headscarf and robes, as colorful as a tankful of tropical fish, flow from the top of her head to her ankles.
When they first moved in, a couple of the men assembled on the road outside of our house. I listened from my bedroom window.
"They're Muslims," crotchety old Mr. Creegan, our next- door neighbor, said to my father. "What's a refugee family of Muslims doing in a fishing village?"
Everyone turned and studied the house.
"Don't be worrying about storms until the rain clouds blow in, fellas," my father finally said, and a few of the men raised their eyebrows. Before they parted, one of the men said: "Let's keep on top of this."
On Adnan's ninth trip past the front of our house, I run out to the road.
"Are you here to fish in the Classic?" I confront him.
"The what?" He scrunches his face.
"You know…angling?" I cast and reel a make-believe fishing rod.
"I do not like the ocean," he says in carefully pronounced English.
"You live on the marsh and don't like the ocean?" I interrogate him. He opens his mouth and stares at me.
"Ummm," he mumbles.
"Why do you keep walking past our house?" I ask.
"I saw you and your brother in the yard," he stammers. "I don't know anybody."
"Okay," I finally nod. "If you're not the competition, you'll do. C'mon and meet Patrick."
We walk into the backyard. Patrick is kneeling beside the tidal pool, and he looks up at Adnan.
"St-st-st-arfish," Patrick stutters and points into the pool.
"Ohhhh," Adnan crouches beside him. "It is beautiful," he says to Patrick. Then he turns to me and raises his eyebrow. "Is it his pet?'
"Pffft," I shake my head. "Starfish aren't pets."
Adnan stands and blushes.
"I don't know what you'd call it," I nod. "I think Patrick believes it's magic 'cause it has six legs."
Adnan nods and turns to Patrick. "What is your starfish's name?"
Patrick squints and stares at Adnan. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was sizing him up. It unnerves me a little, but not Adnan. He waits patiently for Patrick to reply. Patrick finally shrugs and turns back to watch his starfish.
***
I wake up early and glimpse out my bedroom window.
It is still dark, and on our front yard beneath me, my father stretches his back and steps onto the stone road toward the community dock. I stumble into Patrick's room and wake him.
"Starfish," he sits up and yawns.
"Yes. Get dressed," I tell him. "That kid, Adnan, you met yesterday is going to help watch you. Don't bug him. I need him."
While Patrick eats his cereal, I pack lunch. Adnan knocks on our back door at six-thirty.
"You came!" I open the door and laugh. Patrick tiptoes across the kitchen, stands behind me, and peeks out at Adnan.
"Yes," Adnan says, and tilts his head to examine Patrick.
"Let's go catch some fish!" I clap my hands.
We tread out back to the tidal pool where Patrick scoops up his starfish and plunks it into his pail. We march in unison toward the channel.
"So, here's the deal," I turn and tell Adnan. "I need to practice to win The Classic in August. But, Bugs here," I motion to Patrick with my head, "he can be kind of a pest. So that's where you come in."
Adnan chews his lip. "This Classic?" he asks. "How do you win?"
I nod. "I have a rule book at the house. I'll lend it to you. It's six hours of shore fishing from anywhere within town limits. The heaviest haul of edible fish takes the title."
Adnan rubs the side of his head. "If everyone is fishing at different locations, how do they keep track?"
"It's simple," I tell him. "Everyone gets assigned a separate judge."
Adnan nods. Then he stops walking. "You get to win The Classic. What do I get?"
I stop and smile. "I like that. Straight to business. Right to the point. You help me watch Patrick, and we'll split the fish I catch while I'm practicing."
"But, what if you don't catch any fish?"
I smirk. "Trust me," I wink at him and jerk my head to signal him to follow. "You and your family will be wolfing down fresh bass tonight."
We go a little further until we reach the flat rock on the inlet. The tides are changing, and the fish will be moving. We stop on the beach where the channel meets the inlet. Adnan stares at me.
"One condition," he says solemnly. "I want it to be clear. I do not go in the ocean."
"Suit yourself." I shrug and pull my journal from my backpack. I write down the time and air temperature from the tiny thermometer I keep clipped on my jacket. I pinch a sea worm's head off, so it doesn't nip me and thread it to my hook. It wiggles like a charged wire. I cast it out into the current and bump it along the sandy bottom on the retrieval. Behind me, Adnan and Patrick dig a hole in the wet sand. Patrick protests a little, but Adnan convinces him they will make a pool that the starfish likes.
"It will be like a Disneyland for starfish." Adnan grins at Patrick.
They dig a hole about the size and shape of a bathtub. It fills up with six inches of underground water. Patrick gently places the starfish into the pool, and it spreads its legs like a parachutist and floats to the bottom.
After a half-hour of unproductive bottom fishing, Adnan strolls over and points to the sea worm on my hook.
"Will my family be wolfing down worms tonight?" he asks, as blank-faced as a dead fish.
My cheeks flush. "Whoa, Adnan." I hold up my hands. "I never guaranteed…" I stammer. And just as I do, Adnan winks at me and laughs. Then he saunters back to Patrick.
I fish the bottom another five minutes and keep peeking over my shoulder to see if Adnan is still laughing. He's not. He and Patrick are decorating the hole they dug with empty clam shells and round rocks and sinewy limbs of driftwood. I switch over to a top water jerk bait, and the water explodes as soon as the lure slaps the surface. My heart beats as fast as a flapping tuna tail, and I turn around. Adnan and Patrick are already on their feet, cheering. I drag my catch on to the beach. It's a small, 'schoolie' striped bass. I know there's more where that came from and toss it back in the water and cast my line out again. Another hit! While I'm reeling it up, I note that if the Classic is coming down to the wire and the tides are right, I can come to this spot and catch a lot of fish quickly.
About noon, Adnan taps my shoulder from behind.
"Please," he says. "Watch Patrick."
He strides about twenty yards down the beach. I sit beside Patrick.
"Get him," Patrick points to him and says.
"In a minute, Bugs," I whisper and watch.
Adnan folds his arms across his chest, and I see his lips moving. After a bit, he drops to his knees and presses his forehead into the ground. It goes on that way for a few minutes, and then he stands and walks back to us.
"Salat," he stands in front of us and must see the confusion on our faces. "Noon prayer."
"What are you praying for?" I ask.
"I prayed that my…" He stops and studies Patrick and me. "I just prayed, is all," he finally says and goes and sits next to the pool that he and Patrick dug.
***
"Can I help you fix your heart?" My father takes a seat across from me at the kitchen table and stares. Earlier, I turned up the music on the radio when I heard him in the front room, telling Patrick that Mom was in heaven.
"Fix your own heart," I say, and pick up my dinner plate; walk upstairs to my bedroom.
After I am finished eating, I lean back and listen to that unrelenting voice that lives in my head: 'Someone out there is practicing more than you are,' the voice taunts me.
I sit up straight and rub my face with the palms of my hands. "I am tougher than everybody else," I whisper defiantly to the voice. "I am stronger."
I talk to myself a lot since Mom died. It distracts me from thinking about her, and it helps me push past the day-to-day challenges of having to take care of Patrick, cook, clean the house, and do the laundry. I wonder if the voice in my head will go quiet after I win The Classic.
During June, I focus on bait. I bump shrimp, sea worms, and a bushy buck-tail across the sandy bottoms of the flats with good results, and a red-eyed spoon spinning at mid-depth is always a solid choice to snag a straggler. Jerk baits and slash baits flashing glints of sunlight tempt prowling game fish away from their schools, and there isn't a sport-fish swimming who can ignore the frantic splashing of a top water popper.
When July comes, I build my game plan. I cross-check baits with water temperatures, air temperatures, and tidal currents. I am surprised to see how consistently the fish move and feed with tides and times of day. I record everything in my journal and, afterward, chart bait graphs based on air and water temperature and general weather and tide conditions.
And while I focus on fishing, Adnan keeps Patrick entertained with his starfish and also helps me plot a strategy for the non-fishing element of The Classic:
"Competitors have to move if they want to fish in a new spot," Adnan paces on the shore behind me one afternoon and pores over The Classic's rule book while I fish, and Patrick plays with his starfish. "So, we have the advantage. Our legs will be younger and stronger than many of the entrants. We can move faster."
"It's only six hours of fishing," I cast my line and glance over my shoulder at Adnan. "No one gets tired in six hours."
"In the heat they do," he says and smiles.
"How do we know that someone won't cheat?" Adnan asks me on another day.
"Stop it!" I scold him. "I told you, they're volunteer judges. All of them live in town, and it's a random draw who's assigned to whom. No one's going to cheat."
When August arrives, the change-of-season east winds appear and water in the channels bubble up and lick the tops of the channel banks. Water temperatures bob up and down like a seal in a school of herring, and the winds ball my fishing line into a tangled birds nest. I experiment with snap weights and different gauges of line, and by the end of the first week of August, I devise a workable game plan should the day of the Classic be windy.
During that first week, the afternoons also turn humid and sticky, and Patrick and I swim in the channels after practice. Adnan stands in ankle-deep water on the shore and watches us.
"Aren't you hot?" I ask him one day. "Come in." I splash him.
"I do not like the ocean," he shakes his head and runs.
"You're sweating," I tell him. "Just come in and cool off."
"I do not like the ocean," he insists.
I laugh. "How can you live on a marsh and not like the ocean?" I ask. He doesn't answer, and I dive into the water with Patrick.
***
It is August, the month of The Classic, and my game plan is in place. From six AM to eight, I'll fish the deep pools along the jetty's south side. Once that dries up, I will sprint the length of Sandy Beach and fish off the flat rock on the inlet until ten. In the last two hours, I will skim a popper over the water's surface at the mouth of the channel. The record catch for the Classic is forty-three pounds. That was set twenty years ago. Three days ago, I caught and released fifty-seven pounds of fish on my practice run.
"We are ready," Adnan pumped his fist after our trial run.
Adnan is going to be my second. He is going to help me move my gear from one location to the next. Patrick is going to be Adnan's second. At first, I wasn't sure of Patrick joining us – he may slow us up with worry about his starfish – but Adnan insisted.
"He will wake up our luck," Adnan predicted.
This morning, I'm casting a broken-backed lure into the channel when Adnan taps my shoulder. "I need you to see something," he says.
"I'm kind of busy at the moment," I say, and whip up the tip of my rod to set the hook into a passing bluefish. After I reel it in, Adnan taps my shoulder again. I turn around, and his mouth is stretched tight. "Please," he motions with his hand for me to follow him.
I set down my fishing rod, and we trudge through the sand to the hole that he and Patrick dug earlier. It's about as round and deep as a kiddie pool. Behind the hole, Patrick stumbles out of the marsh holding a small crab in one of his hands. He lowers it into the hole, and the crab scurries under a shell and tucks its claws and legs beneath its body. Patrick sits beside the hole and stares at his starfish.
"Patrick has decorated the hole by himself today," Adnan turns and tells me.
"Okay," I say. I scan the hole and turn to Adnan. "Thanks for the heads-up, Adnan, but I have to practice."
I start to walk back to the water, and Adnan grabs me by the elbow. "Please," he stares into my eyes. "Look closer."
I hunch down and peer into the hole. There are two crabs, two minnows, a couple of sea worms, a sand shrimp, and some shells. I glance up at Adnan and back into the hole. I focus. One of the crabs is missing a claw, and the other one is minus a few legs. All of the sea worms have lost segments off their back ends, and both of the minnows have twisted top fins that are causing them to swim sideways. The sand shrimp has no tail, and even the hollowed shells have cracks in them.
"What the heck…?" I look up at Adnan.
"Yes," Adnan nods and whispers. "They are all… broken."
Patrick places a few rocks in the bottom of the pool. He works slowly, so he doesn't startle any of the wounded creatures. He's lost in his world.
"Why would he…?" I ask Adnan.
He shrugs. "I was hoping you might know," he says.
I shake my head and stand. Beyond the marsh, the low moan of a distant foghorn interrupts the silence. I look up and see the tip of the White Island Lighthouse poking through the haze. I turn around and look at Patrick.
"He sits a' top a lighted candle…" I whisper.
***
Registration for The Classic is tonight. My father has to come so that he can sign the under-age permission waiver.
"Are you still going to help me sign-up?" I stammered this morning while Dad rinsed his breakfast plate in the sink.
He grabbed his jacket and lunch pail off the countertop on his way out the door. "I didn't forget," he said.
After he leaves, I wake Patrick and feed him, help him get dressed. I'm antsy about registration, and I take Patrick outside while we wait for Adnan. Patrick wanders over to the backyard tidal pool and sits on the ground. He watches his starfish creep along a kelp-covered rock beneath the water. I try to calm my jitters and sweep the outside walkway. When I am almost finished, I stop.
My mother is here. I don't know how, but she's here. I look around. Maybe she's woven herself into the soft wind that's bending the marsh grass. Or maybe she's transformed into pure light and has hitched a ride on the bright strands of sunlight warming my arms. She's here, as sure as I'm standing here. I look over at Patrick, and he is no longer watching his starfish. He is staring at me. He is smiling.
"Are you OK?" Adnan's voice startles me.
"What!" I turn. "Oh, y-yeah," I stutter. "I thought I just felt something."
Adnan tilts his head and studies me. "Felt something?" He asks.
"It's nothing," I say. "Let's go. I have a new lure I want to check out."
Later that night, I ask my father if it's ok for Adnan to come with us to registration. "Yes," he says, and I see a look of relief wash over his face. I don't think either of us was looking forward to suffering through the twenty-minute car ride to registration. We barely speak to one another.
"There's been a change, Patrick," Adnan teases Patrick in the back seat of the car. "Instead of a trophy, the judges have decided to give your starfish to the winner."
"NOOOO!" Patrick squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head, and my father peeps in the rearview mirror and chuckles.
Once we get inside the gymnasium, my heart beats like I've just fallen overboard into a school of sharks. It's finally here! In the corner, a group of leathery old men good-naturedly tease each other.
"You couldn't win The Classic…" one of the old men tells another, "if they let you fish with a dragger and a net."
The other men laugh. They are dressed in bright yellow slickers and rain hats as if the fishing competition is going to start as soon as registration closes. A couple of them nod to my father when we walk past. In the center of the gymnasium, three rugged-looking fishermen with buzz-cuts and camouflage jackets pick each other's brains about ocean currents and water temperature and how to drift a top plug on a riptide.
While we're standing in line, the back doors open, and two middle-aged men saunter in. They're wearing windbreakers that say Long Island Bass Brigade on the back.
Both of them chew on unlit wooden tobacco pipes and wear floppy field hats stitched with fishing licenses and shiny lures. The gymnasium goes quiet. Whispers of "New York ringers," and "Who are these squatters?" circulate, and the three toughs in the center of the gymnasium eye the trespassers with suspicion.
"You boys are going to have a disappointing ride back to New York!" one of the old men finally yells, and everybody in the gym laughs and cheers. The two New York men wave, and one of them wags his finger at the old man who called them out.
Word comes down the line that there will be over fifty anglers this year, the biggest field ever to compete. When we get to the checkout and payment counter, my father hands the tournament clerk my completed application and the twenty-five dollar fee.
"This for you?" The clerk glances up at my father and scrunches his nose.
"No," my father says. "I'm here to sign the underage waiver."
The clerk studies it over the top of his glasses. "Michael?" He squints and asks.
"Mikaela," I step in front of my father and tell the clerk.
The clerk analyzes me like I'm a two-headed fish. "You do know this is an open tournament…no Women's Division?" he asks me.
I open my eyes wide and bring both hands up to my mouth. "Will there be men there to help me put the icky worm on the hook?"
Behind me, Adnan snickers. "Uh-oh," he whispers to Patrick. The clerk blushes and turns to my father. His eyes plead for help.
"I'm staying out of this," my father shuts him down with a nod.
The clerk eyes me again and quickly stamps the application. I hear Adnan whispering to Patrick: "She's getting feisty. She is going to win."
The clerk looks at my father. "Sign here," he points to the waiver line on the form. He hands me my entry packet.
"Good luck," he says dryly, and we walk away.
***
It is three days before the competition. After morning training is over, I take Patrick swimming in the channel. Adnan stands on the shore and watches.
"Come in," I splash him, but he backs away from the water's edge.
We eat lunch around the pool they dug in the sand and watch Patrick's six-legged starfish deftly crawl along the face of a slanted rock.
"Aren't you hot?" I ask Adnan as I dry my hair with a towel.
He glances away and chews his bottom lip. "I am from Jableh," he says suddenly. "It is a fishing village in Syria."
I laugh. "You're from a fishing village?"
He looks at me, and his eyes squint in confusion.
"You won't even hardly put your feet in the water," I explain.
He smiles and picks up a plastic shovel at the edge of the starfish's hole and stares at it.
"My little brother, Nizar, played with a shovel like this back in Syria," Adnan says. His voice sounds different, like he is speaking from the bottom of a deep well. "Everywhere he went, Nizar carried it. His shovel was yellow, and he even took it to bed with him."
Something about the tone of Adnan's voice makes Patrick set down his sandwich. I set my sandwich down, too.
"You have a little brother?" I whisper.
Adnan lowers his eyes and nods.
"Nizar used to cry when I left for school in the morning. He would stare out the window and watch me leave. He thought I was never going to come back."
"Patrick used to do that when my mother would leave," I reach out and hold Patrick's hand. "Remember, Bugs?"
Adnan smiles sadly. He playfully splashes Patrick with a few drops of water from the hole.
"I used to come home from school and take Nizar to the shore," Adnan continues. "He liked to play in the water and search for shells and round rocks. Every day I took him swimming."
The air suddenly turns dense and hard to breathe. Patrick slips his hand away from mine and shuffles over to Adnan and sits beside him. Adnan draws his mouth tight.
"We had to leave Jableh," he says. "There were things that were happening," he looks at Patrick. "Scary things."
Patrick rubs his hands on his thighs. I doubt he understands everything Adnan is saying, but he knows it's serious.
"My father saved enough money for passage," Adnan scans the ground and says. "The boat was crowded, and people were afraid. It wasn't long before we saw Greece."
Adnan raises his head and stares out into the channel. The tendons in his jaw pulse. He turns and studies me with bright and shiny eyes. "During the crossing, I was holding Nizar, and my father held my mother," he says. "We knew it was dangerous, but the things happening on shore were even more dangerous. When the boat tipped, people were screaming and crawling over each other."
I quietly stare at him. So does Patrick. Adnan stands and absent-mindedly messes up Patrick's hair. He brushes the sand off his shorts.
"I was afraid," he concedes. "Everyone was. People were crying, grabbing us and forcing us underwater. I held Nizar and tried to swim away from them."
He starts to walk down the beach for afternoon prayers, but turns around and takes a deep breath.
"Goodness: The English Dictionary defines it as a state of being virtuous and kind." He says. "It is a fitting description of Nizar."
Patrick stands up and sits beside me. I hold his hand. Adnan stares at us and smiles sadly.
            “I never cried. I was afraid that, if I started, I might never stop. What does that make me that I cannot cry for my own brother?” Adnan whispers softly.
            He turns to walk away and stops. “When we first met, you asked me what I pray for,” he says. He looks down at the sand. “I pray that Nizar forgives me for letting him go.”
***
Stay focused, I wake up the next morning and remind myself.
Yesterday, after Adnan told us about his brother, I practiced a little while longer, but it wasn't the same. Adnan and I couldn't look at each other. He didn't even say 'goodbye' when we walked from the channel and got to my house. He seemed small and frail, tottering down the road toward his house. Patrick chewed his fingernails with worry.
"He's not mad, Bugs," I reassured him while we watched Adnan. "He's sad. He had a brother, Nizar."
"Niz-ar," Patrick scrunched his face and struggled to pronounce it.
"Yes. But don't say anything," I told Patrick. "It'll make him sadder if you talk about it."
This morning, two days before The Classic, Adnan knocks on our backdoor at his usual prompt time, and we pack up and hike to the inlet. Adnan and I avoid each other's eyes. While I fish, Patrick and Adnan sit behind me and dig a hole in the sand for Patrick's starfish. With each cast, I glance over my shoulder to make sure they are OK. Usually, Adnan and Patrick quibble all morning over where to place shells and driftwood and rocks in their new hole. But both of them are quiet today.
We hike back to my house and eat lunch. Afterward, Patrick sits next to the tidal pool in the backyard, and Adnan and I ride my bike and spin wispy gray clouds off the stone dust road. It cheers up Adnan. When the afternoon sun is at its highest, the heat becomes too crushing.
"I have to take Patrick for a swim," I tell Adnan.
I roll my bike to a crash under our back deck, and Adnan and I run across the backyard. Patrick is sitting beyond the dune, out of earshot. He's talking to himself. Adnan and I stop and smile at each other.
"Shhhh," I put my finger to my lips. "Let's surprise him."
We crawl up the dune and peek up over the marsh grass.
I slip off my sneakers and the hot sand scorches the skin between my toes. We move slowly so Patrick doesn't hear us. When we get closer, Adnan and I peek at each other and stifle our laughs. Patrick is sitting upright on the bank of the pool and, beside him, his starfish is lying on top of an upended pail.
"He's talking to it," Adnan grins and whispers.
We inch closer and Patrick cups his hands into the pool and dribbles water over his starfish. One of its legs gently lifts. Patrick smiles down at it and wags his finger.
"Ni-zar," Patrick is pointing at his starfish and preaching patiently. "Your n-n-name is Ni-zar, okay?"
My face flushes and my heartbeat skips. I look at Adnan and his face is drained of color.
"I have to go." He blinks his eyes and runs through the marsh grass toward home.
***
It is twenty-four hours until the start of The Classic, and Adnan does not show up for this morning's practice. He has never been late. I sit at the kitchen table and try not to think about him. I focus on finding any flaws in my journal. Patrick stares out the front window for any sign of Adnan approaching, and then runs to the back window to make sure his starfish is safe.
"Get dressed, Bugs," I finally say after reading the same journal entry for the fifth time. "We'll go check on your starfish."
We push through the side door and into the backyard. On the banking, close to the marsh pool's edge, a shiny new yellow shovel rests on a patch of carefully folded grass. Patrick looks up at me and wrinkles his nose.
"Adnan must have come back and put it there last night," I answer his unasked question.
After Patrick sees that his starfish is safe, we go back into the house so I can finish my chores. At noon, there is a knock on the back door. Patrick and I scramble across the kitchen floor to open it. Adnan is standing on the porch landing. His face is blank.
"My mother…" he stammers.”She has invited the two of you for lunch?"
"Okay," I nod. "I need to get Patrick ready. We'll be down in a few minutes."
After I get Patrick cleaned up, he insists on taking his starfish.
"I don't know if that's a good idea, Bugs," I say.
"Starfish," he points to the tidal pool and says.
Adnan greets us on his back stoop. He glances at the pail hanging from Patrick's hand, and invites us into the kitchen. On the countertop, a couple of colorful, brightly colored bowls are filled with vegetables and beans. A silver pot on the stovetop spouts a funnel of steam that fogs the window above the sink. Adnan's mother is standing at the opposite end of the kitchen, smiling nervously and smoothing her robes and headscarf with the palms of her hands. Adnan says something to her that ends with the words 'Patrick and Mikaela', and she bows as if we are visiting dignitaries. I smile and nod and try not to stare.
"Nizar," Patrick blurts and holds up his pail. "This Nizar."
I gulp in a quick breath. My heart races. "Patrick…" I start to say, but am not sure what to say after that. My face flushes. I look across the kitchen at Adnan's mother, and she is smiling at Patrick. She turns and whispers to Adnan in a language I don't understand and he nods. Her hands wrestle with each other and she shuffles across the kitchen floor. When she is a few feet away from us, she stops and peers over the edge of the pail. Patrick's starfish is lying quietly on the bottom of it.
"Th-Thank you," she stutters to Patrick.
I turn and look at Adnan. "Sorry," I whisper. He shrugs.
His mother motions to the kitchen table. I put Patrick's pail in the corner of the kitchen, and we sit. She sets a platter of grilled chicken on rice in the center of the table. There are bowls filled with bright tomatoes and green beans; and a platter with warm bread.
"Thanks for having us," I say, and nudge Patrick to say the same. He ignores me. He keeps glimpsing over at his starfish. We pass each other the platter of chicken and bowls of vegetables and fill our plates. I help Patrick. We eat in silence, and the clinking of silverware echoes off the kitchen walls. I peek up and see Adnan's mom reaching across the table and spooning more rice onto his plate, and I can't help but think of how my mother used to do the same for Patrick and me.
After lunch, Patrick and I are invited into the front room for dessert. While we sit on the couch and wait for Adnan and his mother to join us, Patrick rocks back and forth.
"Calm down," I whisper. "Your starfish is fine…"
He pays no attention to me. He stands up and paces the length of the room. At the opposite end of the couch, he stops and gapes at the framed picture on the end table.
"Mikaela…?" he says and scrunches his face. He picks up the photograph and looks at me.
"Put it back," I hiss, but he brings it over and hands it to me. It's a picture of Adnan and what appears to be a smaller version of Adnan. They are waist-deep in the ocean, laughing. Whoever took the photo captured them at the precise moment both of them got the joke.
"It is Nizar," Adnan walks into the room and startles me. His mother is behind him, holding a tray filled with glasses of lemonade. She sets it down on the coffee table.
"I'm sorry," I stand up and stutter. "Patrick didn't…"
The mother speaks to Adnan, and he nods. He turns back to us and says: "My mother is happy that you are looking at it."
The skin on my face flushes. I glance down at the picture then up at her. "He's beautiful," I tell her.
Adnan flinches. He turns to his mother.
"Hmmm?" She asks him what I've said.
He points to me and speaks to her. She listens, then presses her lips together and nods. She turns and says something to Adnan and he squirms. "Yes," she puts her hand on his forearm and urges him to tell me what she has said. Adnan looks down at her hand, then turns toward me.
"My mother wants me to tell you," Adnan whispers hoarsely, "that her greatest fear is that Nizar will be forgotten."
I blush. My body tingles. I stare down at the floor.
"It's the opposite with me," I hear myself whisper. "I try to forget my mother. It hurts too much when I remember her."
No one says anything and I'm embarrassed to look up. When I finally raise my head, Adnan is studying me. I stare back at him and he smiles sadly. His mother tugs on his shirt sleeve and he turns and tells her what I said. She listens to him and frowns and tilts her head to the side. Then she turns toward me.
"Nooooo," she moans and shakes her head. "Nooooo," she takes a step and kneels in front of me and Patrick. And she starts talking, saying things we can't understand. And she keeps placing her hands over her heart. And then she reaches out with both arms and pulls the two of us close. I hug her neck and say: "I'm so sorry about your son."
***
It is the night before The Classic, and I am fidgety. My father has fallen asleep again on his chair in the front room. I spread a blanket across his lap. The soft skin around his eyes is grooved with wrinkles. His hands and fingers are twisted and swollen with knots and bumps. These past months have not been easy for him.
I walk upstairs. From my bedroom window, I see darkness drop from the sky and blanket the marsh. The rain pelts our roof. I slip into bed and mull over my game plan one final time. As I drift off to sleep, I push back the creeping doubts that I can win and remind myself of all of the work I've done. I want to win for Adnan and Patrick. For my father. I want to win for my mother.
It seems like only a minute later and I startle awake. It is still dark in my bedroom and I look at the clock: Midnight. Outside, the lightning crackles over the channel. My bedroom door creaks open and Patrick tiptoes past my bed to my window.
"Go back to bed, Bugs," I sit up and whisper.
"Starfish," he stares out at the tidal pool and mutters.
"He'll be OK. Go back to bed."
He shuffles over and stares down at me.
"You scared of the lightning?" I ask him.
He shrugs.
"Alright, c'mon," I pull back my quilt and scoot close to the wall.
He slides into my bed and falls instantly asleep. Outside my window, the thunder rumbles. I reach over and brush the hair off his forehead. His mouth is partially open, and his breathing is as steady as the surf. The moonlight leaks through my window and makes shadows in the hollows of his face. I watch him and wonder if he dreams.
***
I open my eyes, peep at the nightstand clock: 4:30. It's go time!
It's still dark, and I no longer hear the rain drumbeating our roof. Patrick sleeps beside me with his mouth open. I slip out of bed, stagger downstairs and put the coffee on. You got this, I remind myself. Upstairs, I hear my father's footsteps, and I tiptoe out the backdoor to check the weather.
A light wind swirls my hair. I walk down the stairs and when I get to the bottom one, I step down into cold water. My breath catches. I scan the surrounding area. The channels crested last night, and floodwaters have covered the marsh. A ribbon of pale moonlight bounces up from the glassy sheet that is now the ground. My thoughts race: The flat rock at the inlet will be submerged. Should I stay at the jetty or move to the channel mouth? I take a deep breath, slow down my mind, and think. In weather like this, the fish will swim for cover in the deep pools along the jetty. That's where I'll go. My breathing steadies. I start to step up the stairs and glance in the back yard.
"No, no, no," I say. I bust through the back door, and my father is in the kitchen pouring a cup of coffee from the pot. He turns around and smiles nervously.
"Are you ready….?"
"The starfish!" I cut him off.
"What…?"
I grab the long flashlight hanging in the back hallway and slosh out back to the tidal pool. It's gone. The whole marsh is one big tidal pool. I turn on the flashlight and sweep the light beam across the flattened seagrass. The wet ground is strewn with shells and seaweed as if a hurricane has passed. I hear a splash behind me, and my father is gently pushing away blades of sea grass with his foot.
"Anything?" he asks.
"I don't know where it is," I say.
We keep searching. We fan out to cover as much ground as we can. After a while, I hear more splashing. I look up and see Adnan running toward us.
"Did you find it?" He is breathing heavily.
"No," I say.
"Does he know yet?" He turns around and scans our house.
I shake my head and keep combing through the grass. A short while later, Patrick busts through the back door of our house wearing only pajama bottoms. His eyes are opened wide.
"Mikaelaaaaa," he moans. "Mikaelaaaaa."
He wanders in a circle around the area where his tidal pool was a few hours ago. I don't make eye contact with him. I just can't. The four of us rake through the flooded marsh in the dark, turning over rocks, piling clumps of seaweed, and separating the marsh grass until their knife-edges made hairline slices across our hands and wrists.
Just as the sun is coming up, my father wades over to me.
"It's getting late," he whispers. "You and Adnan go on to the tournament. I'll stay here with Patrick."
I glance at Patrick. He is bent over, inspecting the muddy ground beneath an overhanging rock.
"A few more minutes," I shake my head. My father nods and continues sifting through the grass.
"C'mon," I whisper to myself. "Please be okay."
I try not to think about time. I grab a garden rake from behind the house and use it to push away wide strips of grass and storm debris. I work my way toward the road. After what seems like only seconds, my father wanders over to me again.
"You're not going to make it if you don't leave now," he whispers. "Go on. Take Adnan. I'll stay. You worked hard for this."
"OK," I nod and put down the rake. I turn. Thirty feet away, Patrick and Adnan are lifting a driftwood log and examining the ground beneath it.
"We'll find it," Adnan stands up and says to Patrick. "I promise, we'll find it."
"Five more minutes," I tell my father, and bend over and pick up the rake.
My father stops reminding me about The Classic's start time after the sun comes up, and he knows it's too late. Adnan is so focused on finding Patrick's starfish that I think he probably just forgot about it for a while. We fan out away from the tidal pool and separate. I'm half-looking for the starfish. The other half of me wants to fall and cry. There'll be no trophy this year; no picture on the front page of the newspaper. While we're searching, the overflow trickles back into the ebbing channels. The sun re-bakes the wet earth and awakens a family of rippling spooks that floats over the fields. I search along the road and find the starfish close to the area where Patrick first discovered it.
"Dad," I call out.
He looks up and hurries over to me. The starfish is lying on the stone dust in front of our feet. It must have tried to camouflage itself before it died because it is pale gray around its edges. We stand there and stare down at it - dried and crispy and absent of the bright pink and purple colors that had made it beautiful.
"Jesus." Dad shakes his head.
Patrick sees us staring at the ground and sprints across the marsh. He pushes between us and looks down. "What?" He asks with alarm, and bends over and picks up his starfish. It makes a crackling sound when he separates it from the roadway. It is as stiff as a rice cake, and he turns around and holds it out in front of him with both hands.
"Dad," he wails. "Put in pool!"
My father spreads his arms and scoops him up. "I know, Bugs." Dad says. "I know."
Adnan hears the commotion from where he's still searching up by the bus stop. He races down the stone dust road with panic in his eyes.
"Adnan!" I try to warn him, but he runs past me and stops; stands and watches my father comforting Patrick.
"Nizar," Adnan whispers and drops to his knees.
And - in an act I can't imagine having ever happened before - I stand helplessly and watch a charming Syrian teenage boy bury his face in his hands and inconsolably weep over the passing of a starfish.
"Oh Dad, please," I finally say, and hurry over to where he is hugging Patrick. "Help me fix my heart."
***
We buried Patrick's starfish on the shore close to the community dock. My father came with us. After it was over, he pulled me aside: "Your mother would be proud of you."
"I miss her, Dad," I said, and held his hand.
The day after we buried Patrick's starfish, we found out one of those New York 'ringers' won The Classic. He netted a measly twenty-nine pounds of fish. Adnan was outraged.
"Next year we will set records that will never be broken!" Adnan shook his fist and vowed.
At our community's summer end cookout, all the marsh families get together on the shorefront and celebrate another season of fishing. There's a clam and lobster bake, and families cook freshly caught striped bass and bluefish on their charcoal grills. Folks set up tables and bring their dogs, and we play horseshoes in the sand while the women talk and the men drink beer and relive their summer's close calls on the water.
While I'm helping to put plates on one of the tables, I glance up and see Adnan and his parents walking over the dune toward our cookout. His mother is dressed in her usual flowing robes and headscarf, and his father looks skinny, tired and meek. Adnan is out in front of them. When they get to the beach, everyone at the cookout stops and looks at each other. Adnan and his family stop, too. And then Patrick sees them. He runs across the beach and hugs Adnan's mother around the legs, and that seems to break some kind of tension as if some secret code word has been muttered. Some of the women stroll over and introduce themselves as best they can. They help Adnan's parents with the platters of food they're carrying. A couple of the men walk over and shake Adnan's father's hand. Even grumpy old Mr. Creegan, who was wary of refugees moving into our community a couple of months ago, warms up after he tastes Adnan's mother's lamb kabobs.
"Young Fella," he sits on his beach chair and jabbers to Adnan. "You tell your mother this is the best piece of lamb I've ever eaten."
After lunch, all of us kids go swimming in the channel. Adnan does, too. Well, up to his knees, anyway. But, knees are deeper than ankles. At least he's headed in the right direction.
I splash in the surf like a seal pup full of mischief. I poke my head above the surface of the water and scan the shore. Patrick and my father are sitting on the beach on a quiet spot away from the cookout. They're digging a pool in the sand. Patrick stands up, holds up his index finger and says something to my father. I smile. "Ju-Just once," I can almost hear him saying. He runs off and plods into the bordering marsh. He high steps through the waxy blades of knee-high grass and away from my father. And then he suddenly stops.
And when he bends over, I know that he's looking into a marsh pool.
I stand up, close my eyes, whisper a silent prayer that the wind on my face will find Patrick, and scatter his spirit across the marsh. I am luckier than most to have been born who I am; in a place where I belong.
I never understood why the tides changed.
I open my eyes, and Patrick is stumbling out of the marsh and running toward my father. His hands are cupped in front of him, tenderly cradling his newest treasure.
 

I am called by the name, Ulric. The prospect of party and jest has always piqued my ecstasy. My exhilaration knows no bounds when someone asks me to tag them along in a party. Another party is awaiting me today.  
I am extremely excited and over the moon to attend a party with my college buddies. My group of friends has remained constant for a long time now. We have not lost touch even after a considerable amount of time has passed since we graduated from Jorhat Engineering College. Twenty years sure is a very long time and the fact that we have managed to preserve and protect our bond from the vicissitudes of life is no mean feat. The seven of us used to be always together. However, I am not aware of what exactly they are doing these days. Other boys  in college would call us “ The 7 Musketeers” and mostly, they would call us an “ Unlucky Group”. What is still fresh in my mind is that I topped the list of the most unlucky students amongst the seven of us as I was star crossed. Our group was popular because we were all-rounders. We actively and successfully discharged all our duties like participating in annual games, inter hostel competitions, always ready to help friends in need etc. Other than that, we were also famous or rather, infamous, for drinking the whole night during good and bad occasions and not completing project assignments on time. Thus, my group excelled wherever it set its foot but we majorly lagged in studies. It was impossible for us to excel in engineering as we did in other fields. Nevertheless, I was better than the most as I never failed a semester. I do not want to come across a braggart but I  passed all semesters with minimum cut off marks and sometimes with grace marks. I would burn the midnight oil a day before the exam with my other 6 buddies who too were sailing on the same boat as mine. In my group, I would get the least marks because the papers did not cover what I had studied. Instead, questions were asked from the portions that I chose to leave. The story of my bad luck does not end here. None of my romantic interests reciprocated me with the same fervour. All of them turned down my proposal. I was indeed unlucky. Amongst us, Nilesh, Uilliam and the twin brothers Christop and Kanti had girlfriends. My jealousy shot up especially during Valentine’s day although I made sure to not put my envious side on display. On the contrary, I used to wrap the gifts meant for their respective girlfriends with golden papers. I am unsure of why I used to choose the color gold, maybe I was fond of the colour then. That was not all,  I also wrote romantic poems on their behalf.
Nilesh was born in an affluent family. Both his parents were established entrepreneurs and we all knew he would join the family business after college. But he was divested of emotional and psychological support.  Since his childhood, he used to see his parents only once a year during his birthdays. His parents were so engrossed in their work that it was impossible for them to take some time out of their busy schedule to be with their son. A group of au pairs and maids have brought him up since his childhood.
Uilliam was the most handsome amongst us and undeniably, the most  popular with girls. He was always conscious of his physical appearance and left no stone unturned to enhance his looks. His obsession with fitness had him hooked to the gym. Emilly, the blue eyed beauty with long silky hair made a great match with him. Even though he hardly studied before exams,  he was still able to pass semester.
Christop and Kanti were identical twins. However on an acute observation, it was easy to point out that Christop had bluish green eyes while Kanti had greenish blue eyes. I wonder how  Pooja and Susane identified them. Susane argued a lot with Christop. While hearing their argument, we would wonder what would happen  if he gets cardiac arrest? The twins were plagued with heart disorders right from their birth and hence, the doctors advised them to steer clear of heavyweight and stressful activities.
Luna was the apple of his parent’s eyes. He belonged to a lower middle class family. His father was a truck driver who never got a chance to receive education. His father worked hard to eke out a living and would work assiduously day in and day out to earn sufficient funds to pay Luna’s college fees. We all loved sharing our books with him since it was difficult for him to buy his own.
Yaron was the last entrant to our syndicate whose luck seldom favours them. He was another reason for our group being hailed as ‘unlucky’. His parents parted ways when he was as young as 2 years old and they had moved on in their respective lives. His custody was with his maternal grandmother who was an angel-figure for him. She passed away when he was in his last semester, leaving him devastated and miserable. He could have superseded me as the unluckiest person in the group but then came the news of my father’s demise, and my position was intact. The fact that I was supposed to spend the rest of my life without the guidance and blessings of my father shook me completely from within. His death brought about a change in me.
I don’t remember how I used to feel when people  addressed us as an “unlucky group”. What I remember and cherish the most is that myself, Nilesh, Luna, Uilliam, Christop, Kanti and Yaron were best buddies and we had time of our lives in college.  I vividly remember the drinks and the conversations we had at the farewell party. The day was special because we laid bare our ambitions and dreams in front of each other. My sole aim was to attain a good job, marry and settle down. None could shake my resolve to make my son the luckiest kid ever, unlike me. Luna expressed his desire to get a job at the earliest so that his father could rest and be finally free from the struggle of toiling hard. Uilliam was worried because Emilly’s parents were looking for a wealthy groom for her. He let it out at times that he desperately needed a job. The twin brothers wished to complete masters before taking up a job. They were also bothered by the medical protocol in the companies wherein fitness of the employees was a prerequisite. Yaron drank like a fish. He rested on the hostel bed, with stretched legs and closed eyes and whispered in delirium, “ I will have lots of children so that I never again be lonely in life”. And yes,  loneliness haunted him the most.
My heart was beating fast as I handed my car keys to the reception for parking. I headed towards the restaurant in spite of the raging nervousness. However, a mere sight of my friends wiped every vestige of nervousness. With an explosion of laughter and a plethora of hugs, we all greeted each other to our heart’s content.
Ulric : You all look so different, Uilliam you look the same …
The  same old Uilliam with grey hair touching his eyebrows, added to his matured look.
Nilesh (smiling) : Ulric, I last heard about your marriage. Do you have sons?
Ulric: I married my colleague who was also my good friend. Aasmi, my daughter will soon turn 12. After several years of legal process, we finally adopted her. When we first saw her, we felt a divine connection with the 6 month old. Whenever we see her grow, it gives us immense satisfaction, I mean fulfilment….I mean completeness.. Aaah!! it's  an inexplicable feeling.
Ulric (leaning towards Nilesh): Nilesh,  you must be a billionaire by now?
Nilesh: Of Course, a billionaire in terms of love and happiness, but not so much in terms of money. After college,  my wife, Julia, and I started an NGO with an aim to dedicate our lives in service of poor and needy children.  We decided not to have our own kids but honestly, the amount of happiness we get in the company of these adorable kids is immeasurable to say the least.
Luna: You are a billionaire in the true sense of the word.
                                                 All applaud for him
Nilesh: What about our handsome boy?
Ulliam: Aah! You guys are the same, still pulling my leg. My wife passed away 5 years ago, leaving behind our son. After college, my relentless attempts to get a job proved futile. Then, Emilly suddenly caught me off guard with her wedding invitation. I got into the gymnasium business and today, I own a chain of gyms in all the major cities. I hope you must have heard about “Ronny Fitness Studio”, it’s after my son Ronny. Ronny too is a fitness freak, you see. Ha Ha !
All nod and laugh
Nilesh (in a whispering tone): Yaron, do you have lots of kids?
Yaron: Ha ! Ha ! I married thrice and have a son with my first wife. I am trying to find my luck in the prospect of my 4th wedding, which will be finalized soon.
All (nodded together): That’s the spirit….Excellent!!
Yaron: The custody of my son is with my ex wife but he would come down every weekend and we would have a gala time together. These moments with my son are priceless because they let me forget all my worries and troubles.
Ulric: Whom are we missing here? Where are the twins?
Yaron (with a heavy heart): I really wish that they are fine. Some years back, I heard that they were not keeping well.
Silence followed
Yaron: Luna, tell about yourself.
Luna: I got a decent job after college. I am still serving my parents and choose to be single.
Nilesh: But why single? Do not wish to destroy a woman’s life?
A sudden outburst of laughter followed
Luna: No specific reason, it just didn’t happen. I have come to realize that a life of adventure is my calling; my heart cannot rest until it has been spurred to experience thrill and excitement of highest order. Last month, I tried trekking to the base camp of Mount Everest, located at an altitude of 17500 feet high. I almost reached the camp but alas! What’s life without a horde of surprises being thrown our way? I got an emergency call from the office. If it weren’t for that call, I would have made all of you proud.
All nodded in appreciation and acknowledgment
Ulric: We all are happy in our respective lives. It’s so good to see that the “unlucky” group finally turned out to be lucky.
Luna: Were we not lucky then in college?
Nilesh: To be honest, I have fond memories of those days. I think of those days in times of distress and despondency and trust me, reminiscing them brings a smile on my face.
Yaron: True, I still cherish and bask in the memories  of my youthful and mischievous days.
Luna: Those were the glorious days of my life. Did any of you know that we were called an unlucky group because of the initials of our names?
Ulric: It’s hilarious that I was always the topper of the group – a jinx.
All (laughing in unison): Ha ha ha….
Yaron: Actually, if we take notice of the last letters of our names and join them,  we become champions!
All: Really? Oh  yes! We never tried looking at it the other way.
                                    All spelling the last letters of their names
ULRIC
NILESH
LUNA
UILLIAM
CHRISTOP
KANTI
YARON         
 
Ulric (with a serious look): I  wished Christop and Kanti were here!
A very feeble voice from behind
“Sorry for being late”
A sudden outburst of laughter followed
Kanti: I remain mostly ill these days. I stay with Christop and his family.
Christop: Yes, Kanti is an indispensable part of our family. My sons love him a lot and he too showers them with uninhibited affection.
Ulric: Is it the same girl?
Christop (chuckles): Yes, it’s her, Susane. You see, we have decided to torment each other till eternity so we are still together ha ha ha !
All roaring with laughter      
Ulric: I am glad my golden-wrapped and decorated gifts and the romantic poems  which I wrote for all your girlfriends got one of your girlfriends to stick with you for a lifetime.
All laughing in unison
Christop: A small correction, poems which you wrote “on our behalf” ha ha ha
Ulric : Needless to say, each of those poems were on your respective behalfs.
All (standing together and raising a toast: Cheers to all the champions!
As I drive  towards home, my mind is occupied with the thoughts of my family. I cannot stop thinking about how long the day has been and that I have been away from my family for far too long. I cannot make them wait for dinner. The sense of contentment in me has reached its acme today. Never in my dreams could I have thought that someone dubbed as “unlucky” would one day walk with his head held high as a champion.  
                                       ---------------------The End---------------------------
 
 
 
 

​The packing was nearly complete, the boxes mostly filled. The smell of cardboard and dust hung in the air, mixed with the aroma of fresh-cut grass drifting in through the open window. Somewhere down the block a radio was playing, loud, the Mariners game. Chris Morrison straightened up, stretched, and looked once again at his watch. This was good – they would easily be finished by mid-afternoon, would be ready when his brother Phil showed up with the U-Haul van. It had been several days getting to this point but now, after the yard sale, the many trips to Goodwill, the piling of rejected belongings next to the curb for collection, the end was in sight. The once full house was nearly emptied. He and Jamie had dealt with all the big stuff, now it boiled down to trivial cleanup, gathering the last few unallocated items together, deciding their fate.
          They were going through his office now, a rat’s nest best saved till last. He couldn’t help it, he might have been tidy and organized throughout the rest of the house but in his own lair it was chaos. The bookshelves alone had taken most of the morning, struggling with whether to keep or jettison volumes he had not opened for decades. His desk was hopeless; that was Jamie’s job, to figure out which of the bundles of papers were worth keeping, what correspondence needed to be saved, how many pens, pencils, and paper clips his father would need in his new apartment.
          He had just bent down, rearranging some paperbacks to make room for a larger volume, when he became aware of Jamie’s voice, speaking to him, asking a question he hadn't caught. Chris straightened up again, grunted a ‘huh?’, and looked over at his son. Jamie was walking his way, a puzzled look on his face, a small manila envelope in his hands. “Uh, Dad, I was wondering what you wanted me to do with these?” Chris frowned, not understanding. His son drew closer, stopped awkwardly a few feet away, and offered the envelope. Confused, Chris accepted the package, opened it, then paused, his breath caught up short, his heart pounding. “Who is she, Dad?” his son queried. “She's really beautiful! Is she Chinese?”
          Chris felt his hands starting to tremble, a lightness in his head. He looked around desperately for a place to sit, settled on the ottoman next to the door. It had been years. Decades. He had thrown out all the photos when he and Sara were married. How could he have overlooked these ones? He thought he had obliterated any record of her. His first love. His first lover. The focus of his life for far longer than he wished to admit. The one who still haunted his dreams, leaving him to awaken in tears.
          Amy.

Jamie has gone, leaving him alone with a bottle of Aberlour and an insomniac’s dread of the coming night. The apartment seemed larger when he rented it a week ago; now the few belongings he has brought with him seem to choke the place.
          Chris finds a glass in one of the boxes stacked in the kitchen, fills it with a hefty shot of Scotch, and walks to the desk crammed in a corner of the room. He stands there for a few minutes, sipping the whiskey, making up his mind. At last he pulls open the top drawer, takes the envelope in his hand, holding it gingerly as if it were something alive, something menacing. I don’t need to see these, he says aloud. No good will come of it. I just survived one loss, I don’t need to relive an older one.
          He feels his pulse start to race, takes another slow sip. Thinks of the old wound, wondering if it has healed, if the years have given him strength. Resilience.
          Chris drains the glass, walks slowly back to the counter and fills it to the brim. Returning to the desk, he sits carefully in the worn chair. After cleaning his eyeglasses and adjusting the lamp he takes a deep breath and slips the first print from the envelope. It is going to be a long night.


                                                  *  *  *

It is a group photo. Early spring, 1970. Barren trees in the background. A clutter of boxes, strewn about a small white Ford. In front of the boxes a group of students, three women, two men. He is the third, behind the camera, joking with them. Jan is staring straight into the lens, an impish grin on her face. She will share his room that evening. Jim and Brian have enveloped Kathy, arms linked, lifting her slightly. In the close foreground, commanding the frame, looking at him with a radiant smile, is Amy.

None of them offered to help. They just sat there reading the Globe, pointedly ignoring him as he made the dozen or so trips down the stairs, each time with a box in his hands. So this is it, he thought, this is how they're going to be. He still couldn’t see why it was such a big deal, why it mattered that much to the roommates he thought were his friends. He wasn't abandoning them, not in any real sense. He was just moving out, that was all, relocating barely a mile away. They would still see him in classes, would still get together from time to time. If they wanted to. With a grunt of farewell he carried the last box down to the car.

Jan was waiting when he drove up, along with Brian and Jim. Both were casual friends, fellow émigrés from Winthrop House. It was Brian who had introduced him to the world that waited on the far side of Cambridge Common. A year or so earlier he had taken Chris to Hilles Library, where carpeted floors and a snack bar offered stark contrast to the musty, wooden austerity of Lamont. Soon Chris was making the trek to Radcliffe on his own. He quickly found the experience there far more normal and nurturing than the oddly monastic life the Harvard houses offered. When the long-rumored living exchange became a reality, he had eagerly added his name to the list of hopefuls.
          Both Chris and Brian looked forward to living in a world where commingling with women was the everyday norm. Jim, on the other hand, had signed up in hopes of getting laid on a more regular basis.
          As he switched off the ignition Chris saw Brian’s girlfriend Kathy hurrying to join them. He smiled, gave her a quick wave. He really liked Kathy. She was upbeat, easy to talk with, either unaware of or ignoring any attraction between them. He envied Brian, would have loved to take his place. Not that Jan wasn’t great, of course. She was cute, quirky. A lot of fun for sure, but not a soul mate or even much of a friend. Their bond was a loosely affectionate, temporary one. A snuggle buddy.
          Kathy stopped a few yards away and another girl, shorter, slighter, came out of her shadow. Chris’ welcome stuck in his throat as he looked at the newcomer. Later he would try to dissect his reaction, articulate the elements that caused him to pause and stare. At the moment, though, he was simply overwhelmed. Golden skin, jet black hair, bright eyes that pierced through him. And a smile like none he’d seen before.
          Her name was Amy Chen. A freshman from Brooklyn, complete with the accent. Living in Holmes, the dorm adjacent to his new home in Moors Hall. He caught himself staring, made himself look away, toward the others.
He popped the trunk, opened the doors, and started unloading boxes. As the group swarmed around his belongings, gathering them up for the slog to his room on the second floor, he stole a quick glance over his shoulder. Amy had just embraced a box of books, looked up as she turned toward him, and smiled. He smiled back, awkwardly, then hurried with his burden to join the others.

Jan was slouching against him, pleasantly stoned, oblivious to her surroundings. Kathy and Amy sat on the bed across from him, so close in the small room he could easily touch them. Brian had returned to Winthrop for a final night, no one knew where Jim had gone. Chris had opened a bottle of cheap wine, watched as it was passed around, was disappointed when Amy declined. Small talk, sharing backgrounds, experiences, likes and dislikes.
          There was an awkward pause after he had gone on too long about himself, trying to be nonchalant while gently embellishing a history he hoped would intrigue Amy. A few seconds of painful silence carried the weight of hours. When Amy spoke he almost leapt, eliciting an irritated grunt from the woman in his arms.
          “So where did your parents go to college?”
          “I’m the first.”
          “Of course you would be, aren't you the oldest?”
          “No,” Chris explained, "not the first child. The first in the family. Ever. Dad made it through high school, but mom dropped out in the 8th grade.”
          Amy looks briefly stunned, quickly recovers.
          “Oh. Well, I'm sure they are smart to have a son like you.”

                                                 
Amy is sitting at a desk in an alcove of Hilles. His favorite place to study, a tall evergreen just outside the window, the one he would gaze upon whenever homesickness caught him. She is looking up from her textbook, slightly backlit, her eyes locked on his. She is irritated to be caught again by his camera, gives him only a half smile. His Mona Lisa.

Chris waited until breakfast was almost over, until she was about to get up from the table, before he finally had the courage to ask. Would she mind if they studied together tonight? He knew she was a regular at Hilles, he was too, maybe they could go over some of their notes from the history class they were both taking? Prepare for the test later that week? She seemed hesitant at first, then said okay, lets go over after dinner. He watched her walk away as he finished his coffee, trying to hide his delight.
          That morning he tried to sit close to her in the huge hall, but she was surrounded by a trio of Radcliffe friends; the best he could do was two rows back and far off to the side. He spent the entire lecture watching her, barely taking notes, fantasizing. Tried his best to focus on the lecturer’s dry delivery, came up empty. Skipped his next class and took a long walk along the Charles, doing his best not to think about her, failing miserably.
          Chris deliberately sat far from her at dinner, worried now that he was being too obvious, too intense. Promised himself he would be more casual, indifferent. When Jan asked him his plans for the evening he was intentionally vague, to her obvious disappointment. By the time he had disentangled himself from that conversation Amy was gone. Momentary panic, then he remembered she liked to read the Times every evening, wanted to keep up with events in her home town.
          He found her an hour later in the newspaper section, convinced her to follow him to the top floor, to his favorite alcove. It was almost dark but the tree was still visible. They sat side by side, going over her notes at first (he lied and said he’d skipped the lecture that morning). After that they each withdrew to their own reading, sat quietly, inches apart, for what seemed an eternity. Once he looked over at her just as she raised her eyes to look at him. An awkward moment, salvaged by her smile. When she touched his arm and asked if he wanted to take a break, go to the snack bar for some tea, he almost yelled his assent.
          Back in the alcove, when she reached over and took his hand, he could barely contain his excitement. And later, at her door, when she gave him a kiss on the cheek, he found her lips in return.

                                                 
She is standing in Cambridge Common, framed by snowy trees, beaming, showing off her new winter coat. From B. Altman, Manhattan, she had told him proudly, as if he knew what that meant, could grasp the importance. She is dazzling in the late afternoon sun, her smile bright. For him. He holds the photo in his hand long after he has looked away, his eyes closed, savoring the image.

“I told them about you,” she offered nonchalantly. “I don't think my mother was too upset. My father, though...”
          Chris reached over to pull her closer, gathering the blankets over them, thwarting the evening chill. His radiator had stopped working weeks earlier, was still cold as a stone. No amount of wheedling had been able to restore warmth to his abode. They could have gone to her room. Should have. Except she was uncomfortable, would rather her floor mates not know they were sleeping together. And he, despite his current discomfort, was happy she had made the choice. He did not want to let her go, did not want there to be empty spaces in their time together. In the few weeks since they became lovers he had watched, helplessly, as his universe realigned itself with her at the center.
His newfound possessiveness bothered him, yet he was unable, or perhaps just unwilling, to do anything about it. He did not want her smile shared with other men, was jealous of her girlfriends when they went off together for a cup of coffee, a biology crib session, without him. It worried him, this reaction, this dark controlling side of him, but he would not stop. He knew that.
          “So what did you tell them – exactly?”
          “Well... that you were smart. And kind. And from a public school.”
          “And?...”
          “And that you were a scholarship student. That your father was a carpenter. That you were Caucasian.”
          “And?...”
          A long pause. She turned so her back was pressed into his chest, snuggled into him.
          “Could we not talk about this? Could we just be together?”
          Yes, he murmured as he pulled her closer, hoping she could not feel his pounding heart. Yes. Let's not talk.

                                                 
Amy is standing next to the reflecting pool, the Washington Monument in the far background. People are passing by, as oblivious of her as she is of them. She is wearing a bright blue top, short sleeves, blue jeans, white tennis shoes. Holding her sunglasses so her eyes aren't hidden, flashing her usual captivating smile. May of 1970. Kent State. Cambodia. They are in the capital to protest the latest twists in the gruesome plot called Viet Nam. If he'd had a better camera the scene might have made a post card.

Nine hours, five of them crammed into his Falcon, chipping in to cover the tolls. Bad coffee at the Howard Johnson's on the Connecticut Pike. At last they arrived in Bethesda, a short drive from the Capitol. All of them crammed into Michelle’s parents’ guest room, he on the floor with the other two guys, Amy and Michelle sharing the one bed. His joking met with no success, the two women were committed to being bedmates. He was caught up in the chivalrous sacrifice.
          The next day dawned bright yet surprisingly chilly. They split up outside the House offices, each on a mission to confront the representatives of their home state. Chris’ was not in his office, was back in Seattle for some reason. His secretary smiled but clearly had no time to listen to this disheveled, bearded student intent on wasting her time. He gave up, left with her the two-page statement he had carefully worded the night before leaving Cambridge. Walked out in the sunshine wondering what to do next.
          After a while he found a bench with a view of the office building, sat and reflected on his day so far. The five had agreed to meet at the entrance to the Senate offices prior to their next lobbying attempt. There was still an hour or more before their rendezvous time. Watching the small groups of tourists pass by Chris felt himself nodding off. Just as he was about to slip into the comfort of a well-deserved nap he saw Amy and Jim, a fellow New Yorker, come down the steps together, laughing. She leaned into Jim, who put his arm around her shoulder. Chris jerked awake, seething. The two spotted him and hurried over, eager to share the positive reception they had experienced, the discussion they had been part of. He listened, glaring at Jim, until Amy took his hand, reached up and kissed him on the cheek. The tension evaporated as quickly as it had arisen. They went off in search of coffee.

                                                 
They are in Maine, spending a long weekend near Bar Harbor. She is leaning against the back fender of his Falcon, a bottle of Mateus rosé in her hand. Her hair is in a scarf, she hasn't washed it for two days. Her irritation shows through her forced smile; tent camping is not something she will ever do again. The small cabin in the background is more than he could afford, but he would sell his blood, his body, his very soul, to keep her happy.

Sometimes when she smiled it was so broad that she squinted slightly, lifting her eyes to meet his. He loved that expression, the childish aspect, the look of pure joy. He lived for the moments when he could make her happy, eager to accept the favors she might bestow. It seemed he was always searching for the comments he might make, actions he might take that would summon that smile.
          “I really don’t see what you find so special about sleeping on the ground,” she said. “I feel stiff and dirty. The only time I went camping before we stayed in cabins. Summer camp. At least we had showers. Don’t you get tired of this?”
          Chris started to describe a favorite experience, backpacking in the Olympics, a week alone in the mountains, waking one morning to find a small herd of mountain goats just outside his tent. She had stopped listening, was looking out the window of the Falcon at the trees that lined the narrow road.
          “Do you think we could stay indoors tonight? Just this once?” she asked.
          Sure, he said, reluctantly. She leaned over, suddenly upbeat, happy, and kissed his neck.
         
                                                 
Amy is leaning against the gunwale, smiling with eyes closed, backlit. Salt spray forms a halo around her. In the background, his hand on the wheel, grimly looking straight ahead, her father. The mother and sister hover outside the frame, apart from the image. Jamaica Bay. The last visit. The one that turned his world upside down.

Chris didn't look forward to these visits, wished he had enough backbone to escape them. Amy loved the trips to Brooklyn, chattering happily away on the long drive down the crowded turnpike. And as much as he understood her excitement, as good as it felt to be doing what pleased her, he couldn't find a way to share in her delight. He would be bored listening to her parents updating her on their friends’ children’s accomplishments, describing the goings-on in their close-knit Chinese-American community. About the only thing that made his presence worthwhile was the cooking. Li, the Chen's Szechuanese housekeeper, fixed the most amazing spicy cuisine. He had grown up thinking Chinese food was chow mein and noodle soup. Li took great pleasure in putting dish after delicious dish in front of him, basking in the compliments he heaped upon her.
          Today was no different. Whole fish, prawns, peppers, something that looked like eggplant. All delicately seasoned, spicy hot yet not uncomfortably so. And dessert yet to come – coconut ice cream with dense sweet cakes, jasmine tea. Way too much food for a Sunday lunch, Chris thought. He was feeling contented, his guard down, daydreaming. When Amy’s father suddenly spoke his name, angrily, he was caught unaware.
          “You must leave Amy alone. We do not want you seeing her anymore!”
          Startled, uncomprehending, he looked first at Amy, then at her mother, her younger sister. Amy’s mother was staring at him, no expression on her face. Amy’s eyes were downcast, her sister got up quietly and left the room. 
          Chris started to say something, was cut off by her father’s gruff interjection. “You must go now. Do not try to see her again.”
          Dazed, he got up from the table, knocking over the chair in his haste. He strode angrily out of the room, down the hall to the guest room. Grabbed his small bag and walked back through the dining room to the front door. Not a word from anyone, no sound at all save the pounding of the blood in his ears, the squeak of his shoes on the hardwood floor.
          He had unlocked the door, was about to slip into the driver’s seat, when a breathless Li appeared at his elbow. “Take these,” she said, her voice breaking as she held out a paper bag.
          Halfway up the Merritt Parkway he reached into the brown paper and pulled out the first of several still-warm steamed dumplings. He snacked on them till the bag was empty, the salt from his tears mixing with the yeasty dough. They tasted like cardboard.

                             
This one is not a photograph. It is large, ornate card, elaborately decorated in Chinese characters and artwork. Glued feathers, gilt script. A note inside, Amy's writing. 'I am so sorry. My father doesn't dislike you. It's just that he wants the best for me. He wants me to be happy.' Then, crowded in at the bottom, clearly inserted as an afterthought, 'You know I love you.'

“Why now? Why did your father feel it was so damned important that I stay away from you?”
          “I think he’s worried I’ve become too attached to you.”
          “And there’s a problem with that?”
          She looked away, gathered her thoughts. When she replied he could tell she was carefully choosing her words.
          “He worries we are getting too serious. That I might not be considering other options.”
          “Options? What the fuck does that mean?” Then it dawned on him. “You mean other men? Is that what this is about?”
          She was quiet, ill at ease. At length she answered, her voice so soft he had to strain to hear her.
          “His name is Thomas. Thomas Chen. They were joking about how I wouldn't have to change my name when we got married...”
          He looked up.
          “I mean, if we get married,” she continued, hurriedly. “His parents and mine are close, best friends. I thought I told you that.”
          He turned away, stared through the window, focused on a small branch visible there, defiantly alive against a cold background of brick. Watched it twitch in the breeze. Willed his pulse to stop racing. He was almost sick.
          Amy was visibly uncomfortable, got up, moved to the far corner of the room, looking away as well. When she spoke he could barely hear her over the pounding of his heart.
          “It’s not a big deal,” she said softly. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
          She walked across the room and let herself out, pulling the door shut after her.

                                                 
Crane Beach, near Ipswich. A freakishly sunny day in early December. T-shirt weather. Amy is barefoot, the hem of her jeans wet from running into the ocean and retreating, over and over again, each time barely missing being splashed by the surf. The wind is whipping her long black hair randomly about her face, a beautiful Medusa without the serpents. She is wearing a red top and a smile.

It was too good to be true, but Chris was willing to take the chance. The forecast that morning called for clear skies and sunshine, balmy temperatures in the high fifties, possibly reaching sixty by the afternoon. Maybe not tropical weather, but a real welcome after the cold and rain of the past few weeks. He quickly found someone to take his shift at the library, convinced a rather reluctant Amy to skip town with him after her morning classes were finished. By the time she emerged from Mallinckrodt he was idling outside, a hastily assembled lunch – sub sandwiches, a bottle of wine – in a paper bag on the back seat.
          As the Falcon worked its way up Route 1 to the North Shore, windows cracked open to the breeze, Amy seemed unusually quiet. Oh well, Chris thought, she has a lot on her mind. He tried a few times to coax some conversation out of her, asking about her labs, her upcoming biology exam, but her answers were short and indifferent. He gave up, resigned himself to silently watching as the naked trees slipped past, their shadows stark in the crisp light of the late morning sun.
          When they pulled into the parking area at Crane Beach there were few other cars around. Amy headed straight for the ocean, leaving him to catch up, slipping out of her shoes to race into the ankle-deep foam at the edge of the surf. She was like a child playing in the water, staying one step ahead of the incoming waves as they rushed onto the sandy beach, laughing when one caught the cuff of her jeans. Shrieking when a sneaker wave splashed halfway up her torso.
          After a while she had had her fill of the chilly water, came running back to him, a smile on her face for the first time that morning. Yes, he thought, this was worth it after all. We’ve had so few good times together lately, so little time at all. Once he felt her frozen feet he offered to run back to the car, grab a pair of his wool hiking socks from the trunk. And lunch, of course. She readily agreed, her teeth chattering slightly as he wrapped his jacket around her.
          They found a calm nook among the dunes, sheltered from the wind, where they could feel the warmth of the thin winter sun on their faces. He opened the wine, she accepted her usual token amount. As they were finishing the sandwiches he leaned forward to take her in his arms. She tensed, moved away from him slightly. He was about to ask what was wrong when she turned toward him, a look on her face that caught him by surprise.
“You know we can’t do this anymore,” she spat out. “If my father found out he would disown me.”
          “Bullshit,” Chris retorted angrily. “The worst he’ll do is yell at you some more, disparage me some more, make you feel guilty some more. Why do you let him do that?”
          “You don’t understand. He’s my father.”
          “You’re damned right I don’t understand! Don’t you want to be with me?”
          A lengthy pause. She looked away.
          “Don’t you?” he asked again.
          Amy looked back at him, her mouth set. He couldn’t tell if she was angry or just at a loss for words. He waited.
          “I saw Thomas again last week. His family was at our house for Thanksgiving.”
          “And…?”
          “He told me he loved me.”
          Chris felt light-headed, his fingers started to tingle. He took a deep breath in a futile attempt to steady his world. When he spoke his voice caught.
          “And what did you say to him?”
          Amy looked away again. After a few moments she got up and started walking back toward the car.


This one is a newspaper clipping, small and faded. A photo of a smiling young couple. She is resplendent in an ornate white gown, he looks uncomfortable in his tux. The caption below tells the story. Thomas Chen and Amy Chen were married on some date in some church somewhere in Brooklyn. He is a physician, she is a medical student. The couple will make their home in Manhattan…
His gut clenches, even now, even after all these years. He gets up and refills his glass.

Two years had passed since he last saw Amy, since he last spent anguished moments trying to win her back, convince her to choose him. They were living separate lives now, in very separate worlds, he in Washington, DC, she in med school in New York. Chris had left Cambridge at last, having exhausted his options. He’d chosen the life of a low level bureaucrat, a small cog in the massive machine that was the federal government. A dull job, but one he was lucky to have. He had ignored his future, done nothing with his degree after graduation. Was perversely content to keep working part-time in one of the Harvard libraries just to stay close to her. But a sane man, even a lovesick fool, can only look failure in the eye so many times before giving up. 
A quiet Sunday morning, settled in with the Times. He was working his way through the paper, saving the crossword till last, when by chance he skimmed the society section. When he came across their wedding announcement he felt his heartbeat falter. This is it, he told himself. It is finally over. I am free of her now, my life is my own.
He got up and left the room, navigating by rote through his tears, in search of something to dull the pain.

                                                  *  *  *

Chris sets the last photo atop the others. A minute passes, another. He rises suddenly, gathers up the images, walks to the overflowing wastebasket. Catches himself before he lets them drop, turns, his face a pained mask. Carefully he puts them back into the envelope, drops it on the desk, and slips from the room.

                                                  *  *  *

The letter arrived one random afternoon, weeks after he had given up hope. Chris had long since forgiven himself for his foolish impulse, his absurd act of reaching out. He thought he'd gotten away clean. The envelope with the New York postmark, addressed in a painfully familiar hand, destroyed that option. It sat atop a small pile of bills and junk mail, challenging him, screaming to be opened.
          He had found an address for Amy, wrestled it from the alumni office, concocting a tale that convinced the keepers of all that should be private to grant him passage back into her world. Most likely a stale datum, a relic almost three decades old. Surely she had moved since then, likely more than once. Chris had written the note more as an act of exorcism than a true communiqué, feeling strangely at ease as he wrote it. It was a symbolic act, a ceremonial effort. He never really expected a reply, had grown somewhat fearful should he receive one.
          Her note was short, simple, ambiguous. She was widowed, had been for several years. Thomas had been older than her, his heart a problem. Two sons, both grown, both married. Both doctors like her and her late husband. She recalled Chris fondly – that was the word she used – and would like to hear more from him. She signed the note simply Amy.
          He had signed his with love.

                                                  *  *  *

Her voice was still familiar, though a bit deeper, huskier, the Brooklyn accent almost nonexistent. Would he like to come for a visit? Spend a few days in the city, catch up on old times? Yes, he agreed, not pausing to think his decision through, yes that would be nice. They talked a bit more, about logistics, timing. After promising to call as soon as he had his arrival pinned down they said their goodbyes. He waited for her to hang up first, listened for a while to the dial tone before putting down the phone on his end.

*  *  *

The flight from SeaTac was a morning nonstop, touched down in LaGuardia in mid-afternoon. Plenty of time to find his hotel, get his bearings, prepare for the evening. They were to meet for dinner in midtown Manhattan. He hoped he had packed the proper clothing. New York style was still something he was clueless about.
Chris got to the restaurant early, way early, went to the bar where he could watch the door. He sat nervously sipping his drink, playing and replaying alternate scenarios in his head. He was about to order another when she arrived. He knew right away it was her, even before she turned her face in his direction. Not quite as slender as in college, hair cut short now with a sprinkling of gray, but it was Amy. He was already moving toward her when she recognized him and smiled, the same smile, the one that always made his pulse race, his face flush.
          “Chris, it’s so lovely to see you,” she beamed. “You haven’t changed a bit!” Neither have you, he mumbled, suddenly tongue-tied. Perhaps she has changed, he thought, the years have done that to all of us. A few wrinkles, a bit less youthful vibrancy, but she still causes my heart to stir. She is still beautiful. Damned beautiful. He caught himself smiling.
          She held out her hand for him to take and it was all he could do to simply grasp it for a moment, to not pull her to him, envelop her in his arms. Instead they stood awkwardly until the maitre d’ appeared and acknowledged their presence. She took his arm as the waiter ushered them to their table.
          It was a French restaurant, one of her choosing. Not Chinese, much to his disappointment. The irony was not lost on him. For his birthday, the first after they had met, she had taken him to Chez Jean in Cambridge, several steps in formality above the eateries he had known before. It was an uncomfortable evening; Chris had no idea what to do with the abundance of silverware placed before him, could not read the menu, felt helpless and confused. Tonight, at least, he only felt nervous – definitely an improvement.
          He ordered a bottle of Bordeaux, ignoring her protestation that she still didn’t drink much. Maybe you don’t, he thought, but I definitely need a few glasses. He felt the sweat trickle invisibly down the side of his torso, had to clean his glasses more than once. I feel like a goddamned teenager on my first date, he thought – then let an embarrassed smile slip out at the thought. Amy was watching him. She smiled back.
         
Talk was awkward at first, like an engine sputtering and misfiring, but eventually things evened out to a smooth idle, catching its rhythm on the mundane: his flight, his hotel, how New York had changed since their visits there together in the early seventies. Amy was quick to inquire about his life since they parted; he felt ill at ease discussing its many twists and turns. He talked a bit about Africa, Nepal, Alaska, the places he had visited, lived in briefly. Careers he had begun only to abandon after a year or two. He was suddenly aware that he was rambling, dominating the conversation much as he did when they were together in college. He quickly stopped talking.
          Amy was not ready to take her turn, would not let the silence prevail. She asked him about Sara, Jamie, his current life in Seattle. He answered honestly. It had been hard these past few months without his wife, his lover. She was taken from him far too suddenly, no time to prepare for her passing, all he could do was try to adjust to her absence. They had met rather late in life, married in their forties. Jamie was a surprise, a blessing. He had never wanted children, had done what he could to avoid them, yet when their son was born his life took on another dimension And now, with Sara gone, Jamie was the bright spot in his existence.
          Chris started to say something else, thought better of it, fell silent again. Amy was absently sipping her wine, barely half a glass gone, while he was starting on his third. A long pause, the silence weighing heavily on both of them. He realized it was now his duty to keep the conversation moving.
“And you, how have you gotten on since Thomas’ passing?”
          “I’m doing better, much better. The first few years were difficult. He was such a good man, kind, caring. My best friend. A wonderful father. We had so much in common…” She looked up quickly, apologetically, aware of the pain that might be carried by so innocent a remark.
          “Yes, I know what you mean,” he said, trying his best to smile. “You were very lucky to meet someone like Thomas. You two were made for each other.” He couldn’t help but inject a bit of venom into that last remark. She noticed, wincing ever so slightly. At once he was embarrassed, apologetic. “I mean, I’m happy you found someone with whom you had so much in common, who could give you the support you needed in your profession, in rearing your family.” He knew he was making things worse, wished he could just shut up. But it was too late. Chris felt he was observing the two of them from some point high on the restaurant wall, watching himself behave poorly yet powerless to do anything about it. Out of body. Detached. He fell silent again, took another sip of the wine.
          Their entrees arrived, and they were mercifully spared further conversation, thankful to have full mouths. When they did resume it was once again about the trivial, the everyday. Had he been back to any Harvard reunions? Did he ever see Brian? Was she still in touch with Kathy? With Michelle? How was Carol, her sister, doing? By the time dessert was served they were chatting like neighbors who have been apart a few weeks, carefully avoiding anything that might stir the emotional pot.
          Chris picked up the check, asked if he could accompany her in the cab to her place on the Upper West side – then, realizing it was the wine talking, tried to rescind the offer. She just laughed and declined, but invited him to see her for dinner tomorrow at her place. It will be Chinese, she added, a knowing gleam in her eye.

There was never a longer day. He woke early, skipped breakfast at his hotel, opting to stroll the avenues until he found just the right greasy spoon. Eggs over easy, hash browns, thick coffee, served by a huge Greek with heavy stubble and a minimal command of English. Spent the morning exploring the park, the afternoon in a few museums, bookstores, anywhere that would make the time pass quickly, unnoticed. Six o’clock found him ringing the bell to her apartment, a bottle of chilled chardonnay tucked in his arm and a strange fluttering in his chest.
Dinner was delightful, a collection of delicacies from all over China, mostly cold, though she warmed a few dishes in the microwave first. When he complimented her on her cooking, she awkwardly admitted it was all takeout, carefully selected from several favorite spots in Chinatown. She still did not know how to cook, that was always Thomas’ special talent.
Tonight she was drinking one glass of wine after another. They quickly finished the bottle he had brought and she pulled out a riesling that had been chilling. It was too sweet for him; he sipped sparingly, but she relished it. Soon she was tipsy, then downright drunk, having to carefully articulate her words. He had never seen her inebriated before, was uncomfortable with the spectacle.
Once the riesling was gone they adjourned to the sofa, where she snuggled next to him. He could not help himself, found his arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. She burrowed in even closer. Soon she was snoring softly. He sat there for what seemed an eternity, finally woke her. “Amy, I think I should be going now.” She looked up at him, startled, then held him tighter. “No, stay with me. Please? Just this once?” Chris fought back the panic that was rising in his gut, softly agreed. He got up carefully from the sofa, took her hand, and led her back to the bedroom.
          It was no good. They undressed, crawled under the sheets, began to caress each other. She stopped, sat upright, sniffling softly. “I just miss him so much. It isn’t the same. I wish you were him, but you’re not. I’m so sorry.” He held her a while, as sniffles turned to sobs then back again. When she was calm he gently laid her down on the sheets, covered her with the blanket, and went out to sleep on the sofa.

The next morning he was awake well before she was, found some crusty instant coffee in an ancient jar, had two cups before he heard her stirring. She walked out of the bedroom looking the worse for wear, puffy eyes, wrinkled brow. He offered her a cup but she declined; she was a tea drinker, of course, he should have remembered. Amy filled the kettle, put it on the stove. Sat in the chair farthest from him.
“I really don’t think we should try to see each other again,” she said. He silently agreed. He didn’t think she even noticed he was wearing the robe, Thomas’ robe, that he’d found hanging in the bathroom.
Chris took his time getting dressed, wanting to prolong his departure as much as possible, but at last he was finished. He retrieved his coat from the closet, folded it over his arm, and walked toward the door. As he was about to leave she rushed back into the bedroom, returned with a small envelope and thrust it into his hands. “Please – don’t open this until you are back home in Seattle,” she said, a hint of urgency in her voice. He agreed. They kissed goodbye chastely.
Once on the street he began walking downtown, through the park. It was too nice a day for a cab and he desperately needed time to work away his confusion, to put the night before in perspective. Well before he had reached 59th Street he was calm, accepting. Resigned.

The plane had just reached cruising altitude, the seat belt light winked off. As Chris reached into his bag for the novel he’d picked up the day before his hand fell on Amy’s envelope. Oh hell, he thought, I might as well see what she has to say. Probably a polite goodbye. More likely a ‘don’t call me I’ll call you’ note. He ripped open the paper sleeve and pulled the contents out into the bright light from the plane’s window.

It is an old photo, tightly cropped, the color fading. The two of them on the steps of what must have been Widener Library. He is bearded, his hair nearly as long as hers. They are holding each other tightly, smiling into each other’s eyes, oblivious to the world. He does not recall the photographer, but what has been captured is almost too painful to countenance. He catches his breath, feels the tightening in his throat.

Wrapped around the photo was a small sheet of paper, folded once.  He opened it, held it close so he could make out her small, delicate handwriting.
 
Dear Chris,
          It was wonderful seeing you again. Being with you brought back so many good memories. Though we could never have had a life together, you must know that you will always have a special place in my heart.
 
He carefully folded the note back around the photo, tucked both away inside his bag. Looked out at the clouds passing below, felt the tears welling. Closing his eyes, he embraced the steady low throbbing of the engines as the big jet hurtled westward, away from a painful past, carrying him home. For the first time that morning he smiled.
          She had signed it with love.