It was the spring of 1918. The winter had finally passed, as had the rains. The sun had just begun to rise up out of the rolling hills surrounding the field making them look like the lounging hips of a woman in repose, laying dietada in the violet light of dawn. It had been a very long winter. when I close my eyes now I can still see the open eyed corpses of my frozen companions almost filling the trenches behind us. For every trench we captured, and every trench we dig, there is always another for the Hun to overtake. For the moment, I am grateful for the quiet.

At first this seemed heroic, as if we dough boys were valliantly heading off to slap some sense into the arrogant Prussians, and teach them a lesson which would not soon be forgotten. On the shoulders of our confidence and bravery, the dance halls were decorated with garlands, candles were lit in bundles and hoisted to rafters. We danced in the heavenly glow of Victorian tombs. We stood arm in arm singing songs which reminded us that we were united, fighters, and lovers. We danced with each and every girl we could find, and if we couldn’t find a girl we danced in each other’s arms, twirling, laughing, spinning, swooning, feeling alive with no one among us had ever felt before. We talked about the adventures ahead of us, and the bright pink of the cheeks of the girls we liked best. Pink like a fresh bruise, as if they had just been pinched hard enough to sting a little, bursting with life. It was the time and the place, daring and risk were in the air, on our lips, and dancing from the tips of our tongues. Each and every last one of us was unretrievably intoxicated by the moment.

We trained hard and quickly. Our barracks at night were filled with husky tales of heavy petting, deep set eyes which seemed to fail entirely at containing the cruel separation between love, home and here. However soft our eyes, we ended each night’s whispering with the promise of just what type of beating we were going to give the Hun when we got our hands around his collar.

But the moment for hand to hand combat never quite came. We didn’t meet the Prussians, the Germans, or the Hun in the middle of fields like we’d been trained for. Instead we climbed out of trenches — one by one — up and over the bodies of our brothers until there was nothing but silence. How we ever gained even an inch of ground is beyond me. One moment you are almost warm, sipping at a cup of tea and trying not to fall apart, the next you are springing through a clearing, the crunch of snow below your boots, and even though you are screaming, all you can hear is the crisp flakes of snow landing on your ears, turning to water, and then it is gone.

Now, in the dim light of dawn, I lay beside what is left of the old battalion. I have a half written letter, the stub of a pencil, two squares of chocolate, and a tattered photograph of you in my breast pocket. My rifle is gripped tightly in my fists, the brass bayonet is firmly attached in place. The air smells of flowers and smoke, and all I can hear is the beating of my own heart. Someone coughs from down the line.

We have gained a lot of ground since winter. Some say it’s a retreat, that the Hun knows he is beaten and this war is nearly over. We don’t ask questions. We scramble up and out of our holes to dig hasty trenches, or dive into those of the enemy and overtake them. We tuck in as quickly as possible. And then we are silent again.

A few months ago, staring into the frosted over eyes of a boy about my age I had to wonder about him. Seeing lifeless men in a pile is not an easy sight, but somehow it is far easier than sitting alone, face to face with the corpse of a soldier who surely had a mother, perhaps a sister, a favorite song, and something to look forward to after this was done. Someone just like me. We called them Huns to dehumanize them. We needed the men jeering and shouting, shooting and stabbing at us to become something in the night, something vile and foul, something other than human. We talked as if we were hunting dogs. But to huddle alone in the frozen darkness beside the corpse of a boy my own age I began to wonder.

What was I doing here? Why was I panting breathlessly in this trench, alive and well, while this boy, this mirror of myself was frozen solid with half a bayonet sticking out of his neck? Is this an heroic sacrifice? Or was it the bungling of diplomats and business men? This kind of thinking is how a fellow like me could end up dead, and fast. There is no time for thinking. There is no real progress in this skirmish. We take a trench, we dig a new one, and the Germans take another, and another. We have been chasing these lines in the earth since 1914 and it makes less sense to me now, without food, without water, huddled up beside this dead boy, frozen stiff, than it did when I first slipped my collar disks into my jacket and buttoned them up.

“Gas!” I heard someone whisper in the darkness. “Gas masks at the ready!”

As I slipped the cold rubber over my face, looked up into the morning sky. Yellow smoke was rising above the trench. Rising up in swirling stems like blood dropped into a wide glass of water. I gripped my rifle tighter, and bit my lips. The line began to move, silently we jumped up and over the sand bags of the edge, out into the open, darting through the cover of dense orange and red smoke. Run, don’t look back. The chocolate must be melting in the paper, I am sure it’s going to ruin your photograph. It doesn’t matter, I can’t even remember what color your eyes are anymore, and I am certain I will never finish this letter.

He arrived at the ferry dock. In the hours before dawn it was almost warm, as if the sun might soon rise and lift the heavy smell of the sea, drying the slippery wetness below his sandals. He knew better, that the instinct was left over from years of living beside a decidedly warmer and brighter bay. Making his way carefully down the coarse rope ladder to the uneven surface of the stones below, he switched on the disposable flashlight he’d had for years, but never used. It was there in the bowl on the top of a boulder carved slowly by the wind and the waves. The guard who had reluctantly given his permission to let him descend below slipped an unfiltered cigarette out of its packet and held it between his swollen fingers. It might have looked as if this character was looking for sea urchins, or maybe he’d dropped his keys. That happened a lot. People would return, sometimes more than a week later to ask about a hat which had blown off just as the ferry had begun to motor away, or a cell phone. Lots of people dropped a lot of things. The man held something in his hands. The guard couldn’t tell what it was from his vantage point.

“D’ya find it?” Called the guard.

The man climbed up by the thick ropes and stepped onto the moist wooden planks of the dock, looking down into his hands and said “Yep.”

“What was it?”

The man flashed a sad smile, looking up into the guard’s wet eyes. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem”

He set the parcel beside him in the passenger seat and started the engine. He looked over the map and tossed it into the back seat, slipped the car into reverse and backed carefully out of the narrow, staff parking space beside the booth. It would be daylight in about an hour. He had some time to kill.

Back in town he stopped at what used to be Minnie’s diner. It was out of business. He just sat there in the parking space looking at the out of business sign, unable to accept that such a strange diner with such great breakfast would somehow fail as a business. He rolled down the window and breathed in the smell of the sea, seven months of grey, and a little bus exhaust. He opened the car door, tucked the parcel under his arm and walked down the road to a Starbucks, got a double espresso, stood outside and knocked it back quickly. When he tossed the cup at the garbage can it fell out onto the sidewalk. Laughing to himself, he picked it up and dropped it into the can. Some of the last drops of coffee spilled out on his hand and he wiped it off on his pants. He fished out his cell phone and sighed. “It’s still too early, but what the fuck?” He thought.

A few minutes later he was walking softly up the porch steps of a house he’d never seen before. For a moment he considered just leaving his charge beside the front door. This was a little over the top, and who knows what might come of it. Still, he advised himself that if he left it there it’s possible no one would ever find it, or worse. So he tucked the bundle tighter under his arm and knocked on the door. From outside anyone would have imagined that no one was home, that no one had ever lived here. He felt his pulse grow stronger in his chest and decided to leave the bundle and depart. It was for the best. It didn’t matter anyway. Then the door opened. It took about two seconds for her eyes to adjust and instead of anything either one of them had feared, she simply said “Hi” in the exact same way she had said it to him years ago. As if this had been arranged well in advance, and either one of them had had some time to prepare.

Thoughtfully he unwrapped the towel from under his arm and handed her back her heart.

ady Aeraillia did not marry for love. She spent the first years of her marriage establishing her household, learning her way about the mansion, and finding her voice among the servants. Much of what we viewed as her “coming of age” was more to do with her internal revulsion at having to do her wifely duty for her husband. Not that Lord Aerallia was a terrible man, he wasn’t. He was a kind and thoughtful land baron who executed his obligations, smoked only in his study, and was never so intoxicated that he was unable to climb the stairs himself. She knew he was a good man, but his hands were coarse, and his manner brief. They almost never discussed anything unless he had a problem with something she had overseen, or failed to attend to.

It was several years later, well into the public life of Lord and Lady that Madame Aerallia found herself wandering the gardens, clipping rosebuds whose petals were found days later, dry and curled in the pockets of her aprons, warm coats, and at times beside her bed. She would mutter the verse of Keats (who never did put his scarf on… bastard!) from very far away, and dreamt in paragraphs of Stendhal where palms were pressed and heartbeats raced, or images from Constantinople which she was forbidden to see, but had stolen and devoured without being betrayed. She would awake in the middle of the night, soaking wet and feverish and spend the quiet mornings saying soft prayers for the happy few.

Lady Aerallia had not married for love, it’s true, and the world appeared to understand these feelings. But it seemed as though had come to some other arrangements. Only an embarrassment to the family would consider doing anything other than what she had done. She had done exactly what was expected of her, and everyone considered her to be quite fortunate indeed.

And yet we make heros of beautiful women who surrender to what comes next… It is heroic to stay, to find decency and respect. It is heroic to leave, from this place of property into who knows what. The moral of the story seems to always be correct. No matter if she loves the gardener, the wife of the preacher, or having condemned the world, resumes her duty and tromps off into the mud of middle age without passion. She is smart for taking the money, stupid for following her heart, lucky if she gets away with it, blessed if she discovers love among the ruins. We cheer as she discovers herself, and does as she pleases… this is what men do, and why shouldn’t a woman do the same?

At middle age myself, perhaps more than the middle of my age… I find that there is no such thing as happily ever after. We do not arrive at some point of awareness and then continue forward as if the point in time is upon us, we are full, done, ding, and from here on out this existence will be a flat line of joy and lack surprises beyond the birth of grandchildren, and the ever blossoming fruit of our labor. No. Perhaps happily ever after means that the rest of the chapter went well. But the book is long, much too long to sit and read in one afternoon.

We awake early in the morning and begin to read and write. At times the sun is so bright we can not concentrate. Other times our tears blur the words faster than we can scratch them out onto the page. For as long as we live, these pages write themselves.

What would I be if I didn’t know you? Where would I be if I had never noticed that beautiful smile of yours, and said hello? Would this conversation, this strange and beautiful dance have never been? Or is it like all the grown ups I know seem to keep telling me… They smile and look away, or keenly into my eyes and say, “Yes but you have to be realistic.” And it’s never a question. They suggest that this business of soulmates never works out… that love and partnership are ideas, mere constructs of the ego, childish horse shit, nothing.

It’s possible that for those who find the beating of their hearts to be little more than “horse shit,” irritable bowel syndrome has become their love cry (strange as it seems, and certainly no less unpleasant.) I have always felt that our lives show on our faces, and I regret no part of my experience. Aside from the thinning of my hair in the spirit of the Scottish Mange, I welcome the hard lessons as they arrive below my eyes, cracking my cheeks and parsing my lines with texture. To my eyes it’s only horrible when these demarkations arrive as some kind of surprise. And then to tragically slather yourself in lotion, powdering it over, hiding yourself is perhaps even more horrible. But this is superficial. It is not my experience. I can not say (even though I already have, haven’t I. I trust in your forgiveness.)

What I do know is that my love has no windows or doors. There is no way to say goodbye, no more than there is any way to say hello, or even “No, no! Get out of here you bastard!” I have said those words, all of them, but it makes no difference. Love simply is. It can grow, but will never thrive without dialog, experience, and above all space and time.

I am no Madame Aerallia, though I read Stendhal as if I had a fever and my corset was much too tight. Yes, I was the woman and you were the man, the student, the boy. We had no idea what lie beneath the corset’s strings nor your own filthy trousers until we had them off completely, and the warm sunlight streamed in through the cracks in the wall. Are there really chapters in these books? Aren’t all of the pages blank? And aren’t we simply storytelling? Finger painting? Radiating from within our Tunisian palaces as we knock through the world singing and shining, and our secrets are betrayed? No? Is that just horse shit too? I never imagined myself to be a man who preferred the company of horse apples to those from the tree of life. Perhaps I have been mistaken.

This is the moment to sneak up behind you and whisper “Boo” into your ear, and then we smile, and laugh together… rolling off the heavy brocade from La Chartreuse de Parme onto the floor with a thump. This is where we whisper, and kiss tenderly. And when your heart is quiet, and I can see your love for me reflected back into my eyes, I softly tell you the rest of the story.

Out of character, and the accordance of her nature, she wrote and asked “Was it all for nothing?” and enclosed a somber image of herself. Not that the image was unhappy, but it was serious and grave in the way daguerreotypes often are. In person she did possess a kind of weighted sadness, but rather than a look on her face, or a posture of any kind, it was something deep within her eyes, or strewn out behind her in the invisible chemistry of the air. Nothing a photograph would capture. And yet, there it was in his hands. He tried not to think about it, but the feelings arrived on their own, as if someone had opened the windows and it was suddenly freezing cold in the room.

“Tell me it wasn’t for nothing.” He whispered into his hands. The sound reflected back into his own ear as if someone else had taken possession of his own voice and was using it against him. He looked up quickly, eyes darting about the room. He half expected to find himself puttering about in the hall and mumbling something about how every experience we share is of value.

With a heavy sigh he nodded and while the weight of the exchange flowed out of him like water suddenly being released from a plastic bag he waved his hand softly in the air and said “No experience is without some form of value.” And spent the rest of the afternoon quietly watching the shadows move across the ceiling while his trousers dried, and the room was in darkness.

Once upon a time there was a very happy little boy. He spent his mornings hidden behind the door of his bedroom waiting for someone to come so he could jump out and shout “Boo!” He would get carried away, lose his balance and topple over at the slightest gust of wind. When he got up he would explain, “I fall down and go boom.” Immediately resuming the horseplay. This was so frequent a display that the second family nickname he was given was Boomer which stuck, and was what everyone called him until he was at least seven or eight years old. He spent the rest of his time reading, drawing, and dreaming of being a singer, a musician, a super hero, doing good in the world, and rescuing beautiful princesses from car accidents, helpless little creatures from trees and traps, and going up against the gigantic and impossible forces of evil in the world (and in outer space too.) He spent summers on Lummi island in the Puget Sound collecting unpressed bottle caps, trying all nine flavors of Crush, reading Mister Miracle, and the New Gods, and refused to take off his electric purple, short sleeved, zipper front, mock turtle neck.

From as far back as he could remember, and ever since as well, this little boy dreamt of a beautiful girl with mousy brown hair, maybe even a couple of freckles, who also liked cherry popsicles, singing out loud together, and laying quietly for hours just listening to music. Once, out of frustration he cut the photograph of the girl from the kool-aid package out of the package and put it into a frame and showed it to everyone, describing this girl as his true love, the very woman he would marry one day. He described her as pretty, tender, but strong and smart. The little boy could tell stories of all the amazing things they did or would do together. He went on and on and on…

No one believed him. Everyone knew that this was the girl from the kool-aid package. But he didn’t care. The little boy knew that this was the girl from the package, but was perhaps too young to express that this was only a metaphor, a symbol of his future love. No one understood why he threw the picture away, ripping it from the frame when he’d wept all the way home from the renaissance fair after looking into the eyes of beautiful girl with strawberry blond hair who was waiting at the gate by herself. He simply threw the photo away, after smelling the tropical fruit powdered kool-aid from the back of the foiled paper backing first.

The world didn’t seem to work that way, and perhaps love was not going to appear like magic. Not like he’d expected. Not at all like he’d hoped. So he tucked his dreams away into a safe place where even he would eventually forget how to return to, and carried on with the business of growing up. No one was more surprised than he was that life had other plans, that there things which we place into ourselves for safe keeping might outgrow the locations we have stored them in. No one was more surprised than he was to find himself a man, with fireworks exploding around him against his will, against his wishes. Nothing was more confusing than the silence which followed the bursting of his containers, and the slashing of the paper walls within his heart.

And the wind carried strands of mousy brown hair from what felt like continents away and they danced in the sparkling lights before his very eyes. The child climbed the leg of the man until he hoisted him up over his shoulders to see the display. And when it was over, they gazed into each other’s eyes, smiling beautifully with almond eyes, warm and brown, until they were one.

And love was awakened within the little boy, his dreams revived with the kiss of life from all this beautiful light.

It was tuesday, new people always come on tuesdays. A sea of people, pale and overweight were waddling off the purple and lime green striped busses and worrying about their luggage. Brown skinned hotel staff in off white uniforms were briskly ushering the new arrivals from the stone entrance into the hotel and sitting down with them at low tables filled with elaborate drinks and handing them brochures and inviting them to a presentation about buying into the time share scheme. The occasional soaking wet child wrapped in a towel ran through the crowd, pushing past the swollen hips and overdressed legs of the new arrivals as if they were not even there. Others who had been here for almost a week, sun burned and undressed approached, needing to enter the hotel, but paused at the sight of this crowd, and retreated into the side paths and walkways which lead around the hotel. It was easy enough to find another way into the hotel.

The rose and orange watercolor of the day’s end was dancing on the inside wall of the hotel lobby. Everything goes gold at twilight, and on days when people are not arriving, the energy shifts from frantic play and hurried guests trying to get a taxi, or change money in order to make their boat, or meet a swiftly approaching reservation. However hot the evening is in Latin America, we wear long pants, and clean shirts and comb our hair for dinner.

I saw her standing calmly in front of the window. She and her sister were watching the sea of people coming and going, waiting for an opportunity to pass through the main entrance and head out into the night. Neither one of them were tall, but they had the air of height, and elegance. Her hair was blonde, and beautifully twisted and pulled back into a clip at the back of her head. She wore almost all white, and had a gentle tan. Her cheekbones were high, as were her sister’s, and their eyes calmly blazed out of their faces in a different language.

Time stopped for a moment, as it always does when I see someone I feel I am related to. We who look like we are from another time, or a distant place which no longer exists. The modern world with it’s stretched and inflated people talking too loud about things that mean nothing, laughing only when they are drunk, breathing through their mouths, and resonating their voices exclusively through their septums, imitating their parents long after they are dead, is no place for us. We can see one another through walls, we hear our heart’s beating in the dark at night. I noted to myself that these two girls were certainly a refreshing sight, and most likely Swedish, or perhaps Norwegian. The first girl’s sister was darker, her hair pulled smoothly back over her head, revealing the same high cheekbones, and heavily lidded eyes. The light danced around them, and gold and silver sparkles seemed to linger in the beams of the setting sun about them, creating a forcefield to protect them from the melee of the lobby.

I exited the hotel, smiling because I had seen them. Because I had seen her. It is always encouraging to find your people, even if they don’t see you.

I walked the short road in the dark to the restaurant and did my shopping. The faces around me were blank and ordinary, doing what needed to be done. I gave the little boy who bagged my groceries five pesos and collected my bags and walked out into the indoor promenade. Children were leaping from the top of the bouncy castle, doing courageous belly flops onto the ground. Parents were talking to one another, shopping for sandals, replacement bathing suits, and standing in line at Mac Donald’s. I sat down under one of the umbrellas open indoors at each table at the center of the promenade and wondered what happened to the designer of this indoor area. Had they died of bad luck? What would possess someone to create the false sense of outdoors in a Mexican shopping mall, and why would we need protection from a sun which doesn’t exist? I was smiling to myself about the vague irony of this when I noticed the Swedish girl sitting at the table right next to me. My heart leapt for a moment, the kismet of coincidence is never lost on me, and while I may be superstitious, I assign meaning to things which recur, and present themselves to me without my participation. I suppose it’s fair to say the cynical thing here: You see what you want to see. Many people have said that to me, yet, I strive to be in the moment. I seek the present tense, and want only to be available to the cosmic symbolism of God. Besides, you can’t manifest physical objects, or human beings. God uses them for translation when the subtle hints of the corners of our eyes isn’t enough.

“Hello.” I said with a smile.

“Hello.” Said a voice slightly too quiet to make out the accent. Her face bloomed into a generous smile, and her eyes sparkled slightly.

“Where are you from?” I asked. I hate that question.

“Chicago.”

“Ah…” I said feeling the leading of the stained glass begin to give way a little. “I saw you in the hotel lobby, and I thought that you were Swedish, or maybe Norwegian.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You and your sister are so different from the other people here. You have such beautiful faces. I noticed you both right away.”

“Thank you.” She said, as the light began to flicker out of her eyes.

I stood up and smiled, offering “Have a wonderful stay.” When someone begins looking over your shoulder, its a sign they are a little uncomfortable. People don’t tell each other they think they are beautiful. We keep our hands to ourselves and our mouths shut for the most part. I can understand how my visceral connection may only be my own, and while we may or may not both speak the same language, it means nothing, and there is nothing between us but the underground river of our souls. Perhaps we danced together in heaven, or maybe she brought me water two thousand years ago, or perhaps she was once the queen of Gondwanaland, and I was her foot soldier. It doesn’t matter now, not here in this indoor shopping mall in Nayarit, Mexico.

Chapter One

In the spring of 1981 things were going great. Punk rock was enjoying a kind of revival. Just a few months before it kinda seemed like things were coming to a close. The clubs were closing up, and the records had slowed to a trickle, and what was coming out of England wasn’t really “punk” anymore. Bands like the Specials, the Cure, Wire, Magazine, Japan, the Au Pairs, Pere Ubu, and the Jam were popular, and topping the UK charts, but they weren’t punk. Things were shifting, becoming much more interesting, but nothing had really happened yet, so I was just waiting, and trying to keep my affection for David Sylvian’s eye shadow a secret as long as I could.

It was DOA who coined the phrase “Hardcore” and the suburban kids from Los Angeles who embraced it. A whole new wave of punk rock arrived, and it was built like a drunken jock. It wasn’t snotty, or self-destructive at first, it looked healthy, and athletic, stupid and bleached. It was thick, and loud, and it rode a skateboard. I wasn’t inspired by the Adolescents, or the Circle Jerks like I had been totally moved by Negative Trend, or the Sex Pistols. This new thing seemed to stem from the wealth and well being of the middle class, and while I could relate to their pent up frustrations, and really did enjoy the new burst of energy they brought with them, I was not gonna slam dance, and you just can’t ride a skateboard in your jack boots. I folded my arms in contempt and waited for something to happen.

The only thing that happened was that more of these bleached hair types arrived. They drank beer, and did stage dives. The music got faster and faster and more literal. They sang about society, and the bourgeoisie. They sang about what they knew. It was high school now, not art school anymore. But how was I gonna get out? How could I change? There was nothing to do but ride the wave through the sewar, out the drain pipe and let it all fall down to the bottom of the canyon with everyone else. I didn’t have anything but complaints and bitterness to protect myself, so there was really no use trying to fight it.

One afternoon we were hanging around in front of Rasputin’s Rock Store, back then record shops were divided between “rock” and “soul,” sometimes it was sectioned, but Rasputin’s had this idea that if they did whole stores dedicated to each genre they might better sell records to people by creating an environment more appropriate to the audience. So if you wanted a Marvin Gaye record, you went to the soul store, and if you wanted a Judas Priest album, you went to the rock store. We hung out in front of the rock store mostly. That afternoon we were down a little, toward the corner of Durant and Telegraph, just spitting and fucking around. Nothing was happening.

This was pretty typical. Being together was what we did. Just hanging around, throwing stuff and getting into trouble. We weren’t particularly good friends, and didn’t even know each other’s last names most of the time, but we knew one another’s faces, and we hung out together. We were a crew. I was bored. I wanted something new, someone special, anything but this. The girls all started running down to the corner. Me and Victor and the rest of the guys stood there watching them go. They were talking with some kid on a moped. He was wearing a huge green army jacket, and he looked familiar. So we all walked to the corner together to see what the girls were so excited about.

Mike Bowen was sitting on a Lambretta scooter, wearing a parka, and a suit. His hair was down, smooth, and he looked clean and happy. Everyone gathered around his bike, and admired it. He looked a little bashful, but you could really see how happy he was. I stayed back, I didn’t approach him. Mike and I went way back, and we were not friends. So I hung back and watched my friends all grin and smile and laugh with him. Mike had been a beautiful punk. He was brave, wearing skin tight black and neon pink leopard print jeans, ad stuff like that. Those kind of clothes always looked good on little skinny guys. I was huge, so I had to be really careful what I wore. I was also more of a uniform type, and not much of a fashion adventurist. So I kind of refined my look day to day, and never really took huge leaps. But mike was a great punk. He was smart and sharp. He sang for a band, and people seemed to really like him. Naturally I hated him. He had everything that I wanted. There was nothing else to do but hate his guts.

But I had always hated Mike’s guts. He didn’t appear out of nowhere, we went to elementary school together. We were never in the same class, but we knew all the same people, and walked to school together. He stole my friend Chris from me, and tried to steal my friend Andy, and Adam too. He didn’t like me either. Maybe it was because we were both greasy haired, down jacket wearing losers with no friends. Maybe. But I’d never liked him.

Standing there watching my friends admire him, asking all kinds of questions about his Italian motor scooter, and new outfit, I remembered how I’d tried to kick his ass back in middle school. It was raining lightly. One of those California winters where the sun is out, and it looks like its cold, so you bundle up against it, but it turns out to be warm, and you spend the whole day sweating in your coat, wishing you hadn’t worn it. It’s decent protection against the rain, and since you can’t carry an umbrella, you’re just kinda screwed. The slippery mud of the field was exposed, and the patches of grass had been pushed aside for the footprints of football players running three wide through the rainy swamp of our school’s back field. The grass was still brown from summer, only little sprouts of green had begun to grow at the base of these awkward clumps of golden stalks, bend and dirty from being trampled as the athletes ran the quarter mile, acting like men, looking forward to life. I was soaked through, my long shiny hair was like spaghetti flapping against my face. I took another swing at the little guy in front of me. He ducked out of the way an my arm moved over where his head had been. We were out in the middle of the field, between classes, soaking wet. I was trying to beat down Mike Bowen, but all I could hear was the rain.

I don’t remember how it started. I really don’t know what happened. We were never friends, in fact, I guess I figured that this dorky little kid with the dark green down jacket was part of the reason I didn’t actually have any friends. I’m just guessing, because I was a kid, and when you’re a kid you don’t really know why you’re doing what you do. You just do it. Mike Bowen lived on the opposing hill from me, he lived near some kids I liked, and hung out with sometimes. He would always take my friends off by themselves, and when they came back, no one liked me anymore. I’m not really saying he had it out for me, or that even what I perceived was true, but that’s how it felt, and I’d had enough of it. Mike was a short, skinny little kid, his hair was always greasy and disgusting. He had a severe bowl cut, and never took his jacket off. In a lot of ways he was a short, and even skinnier reflection of me. He was a perfect mirror of my self esteem. I had to kick his ass. There was no doubt about it.

I hit him in the face, I shoved him to the ground, I flung my fists at him screaming things like “Fuck you!” and “You’re a fucking loser, you little geek!” but Mike didn’t break. He took it, without fighting back. He slipped and fell into the mud, but would get right back up and look into my eyes. I swung at him again with both fists. I couldn’t break him. In my desperate little heart, he had to break, I had to crush him somehow. This kid was below me. Someone had to be below me. I couldn’t possibly be the bottom feeder I felt like, and if I could just break this silent, miserable kid, then everyone would see it. But his dark eyes just peered back at me with contempt as he got up from the mud, over and over again.

After about fifteen minutes of futility, I shoved him to the ground and stood over him. “Stay down!” I shouted through the rain. “Just fucking stay down you little faggot!” I was treating him the way I had been treated. I didn’t have any language to express this outwardly, or internally. If someone had said to me something like “Listen kid, you have been abused. People, for whatever reason, have singled you out and beaten you down. Don’t you realize that they’re just afraid? Can’t you see that the hatred they express is really just a reflection of the hatred they feel for themselves? Can’t you see that you are doing the same thing? Why don’t you stop fighting. Why don’t you forgive these poor fuckers, and let it go? Just drop it. Let it out of you, and heal kid. Heal.” I most certainly would have turned my fury on to the speaker. The words would not have rung true. It simply was how it was, and in that moment Mike Bowen had to stay down on the ground. If he didn’t then it would prove that I was the loser I suspected I was.

There I was, towering over Mike Bowen, making a case for myself. It was useless, and not at all satisfying. Mike peered up at me as if to say, “Are you done?” I shoved my muddy fists into my jacket pockets and ran off the field, up the concrete steps, and out through the parking lot. School wasn’t over yet, but I was. I was going home. Fuck this stupid place.

And now, there he was, dazzling my friends again with his snappy suit, expensive scooter, and a new hairdo.

I didn’t realize it at the time, I don’t suppose we ever really notice the moment when it comes, but this was what I’d been waiting for. Change was here, and someone was demonstrating that it was possible. There was something more than this, and all you had to do was cut your hair, and change your clothes. I didn’t do anything right away, fact is things got a lot worse before they got any better. But eventually I discovered that the fear I lived with all the time, the rift between what I did all day, and what I wanted to be doing would close up. It wasn’t going to be a unanimous decision. I could tell. When Mike Bowen rode away on his scooter, my friends laughed and talked shit about him. They’d been so charming, and seemed to really be happy for him and his change, but the moment he was out of sight they were deriding him, and laughing about what a trendy he turned out to be. They called him a Mod. I had no idea what a Mod was, but it looked really good to me. It looked like freedom. It looked exciting. I wanted some of that.

I wanted some change.

The Spanish countryside was not rugged, or particularly treacherous to travel. Shrubbery was scattered about, and the slope upward had been easy and regular. The climb didn’t seem particularly steep or long until he rested and turned around to review the progress he had made. But it was the altitude mostly which seemed to take its toll on his stamina. It had been a long climb, and his water was gone. His only hope of salvation was a safe arrival at the retreat of the Marqués de Dos Aigées.

He stood there, before the plain wooden door and pounded on nothing, letting out no sound at all. Exhausted, and parched, he flailed himself out in the blazing sun without mercy until he was overcome by his own pantomime and collapsed on the ground in a heap. The sound of his body hitting the ground upset the birds which had been pecking away at some unseen treasure in the pale red earth. With the flutter of wings they were gone, and the temple returned again to silence.

When he awoke he had expected to be either dead, or possibly shaded, carried inside of the temple and washed. But he was still laying in a heap at the foot of the door to the temple. He tried to go back to sleep, but somehow felt that if he stayed there another moment, the deaf monks would begin pelting him with rocks from the lodges above the outer wall. He’d heard terrible stories of there quiet little monks, always smiling, eating only vegetables, who carried fierce slingshots and lead ammunition to fend off attack. He hadn’t come to attack, but try explaining that to a monk who can neither hear you, nor speaks Spanish at all, and will not speak regardless. It didn’t matter really, let them pelt him with their lead. He had not come here to make peace, nor to ask anything at all.

He had made this journey against all advice and council. No one had supported his efforts. No one believed in him. He had been dreaming the same dream, every night for two years. The dream never varied, and would not let him go. The whispering changed, and sometimes the dream was in color, other times it only had one color. The color changed, but his dream was the same. At his wits end, one Wednesday without warning, he closed his shop and set out to climb the mountain and present himself before the temple.

Now that he was here, without water, without dreams, he was no longer the man who had embarked upon this task. He looked like a wild animal now, filthy and tattered, dry and silent. He had barely been gone a week, and yet his hair was gnarled, and his trousers were fouled. His head spinning, he tried to complete the sentences which began in his mind. The words fractured, and flew apart in all directions. He was embarrassed, and had lost all sense of why he felt it was so important to come here.

Perhaps there was no one inside? He considered the possibility for a moment. That was impossible. If there was no one inside the temple, then where did the agua curativa come from? It was brought to Valencia on the back of mules once a month. He had seen the deep burgundy robes of the travelers who exchanged the bottled waters for food and dry goods. He could see them from the window of his office. Of course they were here, this was the temple. It was printed on the bottles of the water which he drank with his meal every night.

The man realized that he had come undone. It was clear that he could not stand out here all night in silence. Resigned to confronting these demons, he wiped his face and made an attempt at adjusting his hair. He had not seen himself in a week, but the shadows which grew long across the ground betrayed his disarray. He bit down on his lips, and inhaled through his nose, raised his hand to the door to knock. But before his knuckles met the texture of the wood, the door was unbolted from the other side, it gave with the sound of a large mechanical bolt being thrown, his eyes took in the vibration of the door, and he gasped as it slowly began to open.

The loon and the spaz tried their hand at some yoga

The loon was patient, and kind. She tied herself into a knot very gently before the spaz while he picked at some paper which had come loose from the wall. When she was done, the loon smiled and said,” Now you take a turn.”

The spaz scratched his head, because when you’re a spaz you often have very itchy hair. He hoisted his trousers and gave it a try.

Afterward the loon pecked for a while at a dry corn tortilla while the spaz sipped a hot cocoa with whipped cream. They stared in different directions, each wondering why the other wasn’t saying anything.

Occasionally the spaz had to re apply the edges of his bandages to be sure they would stick properly, because spastic people tend to roll them off a little without meaning to.

All in all it turned out to be a lovely day.

I have always stood here. Not in this exact spot, that’s not possible. Considering the tide, and the current, and how buoyant this thing is, there’s no possible way to stay stationary. I am definitely in motion, but I have always been here straddling this thing. My feet aren’t tied to the beam, I could, in theory, just remove my feet from the straps and take my chances. I could I suppose, but it took so long to get up onto this floatation that I don’t know if I would ever find another one, or get back aboard this one.

For years I swam in the water. I’d heard about people flying, sailing and tall tales of dry land, but I just called bullshit. Everyone has managed to dredge up a sand bar or two, that’s easy, but it never lasts. A pile of sand in the sea, however large, just isn’t anything you can rely on. The more you try to get up on it, build on it, or protect it, the faster it slips away. It doesn’t even matter if you get a really big one, or a seemingly sturdy mound of sand. Soon enough the winter storms will come, and erode whatever it is you think you have, and you’ll be back in the water swimming for the bottom like everyone else. At least that’s what I always thought was true.

I found it by accident. I was tired, and allowing the air out of my lungs, feeling the weight of my body sinking below the surface of the water, then swimming back up to the surface quickly, and repeating the process. The feeling is lovely, and very relaxing. Anyway, after a few of these trips to almost the bottom I cam springing back up to the surface and cracked my forehead on the thing. I was bleeding and everything. When I realized it what it was I was pretty happy. This strange balancing beam, bolted to an iron pontoon. I thought if I could just drag myself up on top of it, I could rest, maybe even sleep. It was strange, after years of jeering at people who talked about boats, and islands, or dry land, to be so excited. Anyone who knew me might have expected me to puncture the buoy, and break the wood into little pieces. The last thing anyone would have expected me to do was to scramble up the side of the thing and hang on for dear life.

To maintain balance it is essential that one be attuned to the waves. Strong or gentle, the object is to roll in the opposite direction of the force with equal velocity. this way you ride the water’s surface to the crest, and then glide down the other side. It doesn’t feel like you’re moving at all, rather, the waves are rolling underneath you. It’s nice to be above water, but sometimes it’s exhausting. Sometimes the waves are overwhelming, and the end seems to be upon me. Rain sheets down, and the forceful swells crash down on my head, snapping at my neck, testing my strength. I must meet these forces as if they were the gentle breezes of spring’s calm. If I struggle at all I will be torn from the deck, and cast into the sea.

The best time of day is twilight. The waves lull to a gentle roll, the sky lights up in a hundred different colors, the birds are gone, and there’s only the sound of my breath and the lapping of the gentle water at the base of the craft. At this time of day I can crouch down on my knees and relax for a few hours. This is almost the only time I sleep.

The trick is to stay calm. That’s not easy to do. I am easily riled into happiness, or emotional display. I can’t allow myself to be that reckless. Not if I want to stay aboard. My task is to welcome all things to me, the crusty salt, stringing the cuts at the bottom of my feet, or in the tiny cracks of my fingers must be as welcome a guest as a playful bird, landing on my bow, singing sweetly to me, or even a fish who hurls itself up on the plank for me to snatch up and eat. The aim is not joy, nor despair. The aim is balance, and the measure of this balance is twilight, when I can finally rest.

It’s always there. She lives here. She thrives just below the surface of everything. There’s no explanation, and I’m not going to try and write any sort of erotic poetry about it. Music doesn’t express it very well either. Not my music anyway. It’s like a sliver of glass in my mind, no, not in my mind. Well… yeah, it’s in my mind. It may all be in my head. I don’t know… how would I know?

Somewhere between silence, heartache, longing, devotion, and doors flung open all out adoration, admiration, respect, compassion and friendship is this unconditional self abuse I picked up somewhere. She’s been a companion of mine for some time. Years.

We don’t talk, but she’s always got her hands in my pockets. Before I can reach in to grab the change in there you know… the penny to avoid getting back another 99�� to add to the already jingling pocket full? her hands are already there, keeping warm, holding on. We don’t touch, but when I go to take off my jacket, I can’t get it off because her arms are wrapped around me. I don’t want to take it off. So I sit on the couch, or a hard wooden chair, and take a deep breath. I want her arms around me, so I just wait until she lets go so I can hang up my coat. She never lets go. I sleep in my coat.

We don’t see. But i see.

I haven’t got any oatmeal for her, nor would I ever show her the door. So I sit quietly and just listen to my heart beat. With my fingers and toes crossed that somehow, some way this love will radiate outward, out from the core of my being, and into the universe. May my particles be absorbed into all things, somewhere, far beyond this treehouse, where love is welcome, received, and a blessing indeed.

Today the light and moody-monster came for breakfast. Trouble is he arrived about 9 hours early. He’s never been kind to me, always convincing, always pathetic, I swear to funk he’ll never change, but somehow I love his ugly face and scowling mouth so much that I give in, like an idiot and invite him in for oatmeal.

He is kind and sweet, or maybe at least quiet while I sprinkle raisins, and brown sugar into little bowls, but by the time I pour the milk into the pitcher and reach for the wooden spoon to serve the oatmeal he’s criticizing me again, looking at my ass as if it were Jessica Simpson’s, and thinking unpleasant thoughts. To be quite honest, any thought in the same brain that might compare my buttocks with Jessica Simpson’s, however complimentary, is downright unpleasant.

Whatever shall I do? I’m too tired for this game. I don’t want you sitting here at my kitchen table, looking horny, clearly hungry, and irritiating me. Yet I feel this swooning sentimental feeling for something that you used to be, or someone I mistook you for in the parking lot of that club they tore down last year. Do I throw you out, and cause a row so i can go back to bed? Or shall I simply serve you up a double helping of oatmeal instead?

Later, in the sun lit kitchen, alone, I did the dishes and listened to him snore. Disgusted with myself, but somehow still feeling a little sentimental.

Everyone makes me mad. Everything is working my last nerve. Tender things which I should be thoughtful about make me want to throw shit, and tell them off. I admit I am a little paranoid right now, it’s sad but true, I get that way sometimes. Comes from too much confrontation, and not enough communication. But that doesn’t make this mood anyone else’s fault. It’s just a mood. But if you say that shit again I swear I’m gonna start fighting for the sake of fighting with you… so watch it. We might be up until 4 am talking about talking.

Ooohhh my old friend Mr. Irrational has come for tea, but he hates tea. What ever shall I serve him?

I think I’ll take a deep breath, let go, and show him the door.

Once upon a time there was a bear. He was a great big bear, and he lived in a cave by himself. He liked his cave very much. There was just about everything a great big bear could need in there. He had a warm fire, a clear stream of water, some dry grass to sleep on, and a hole to go potty in. Occasionally the bear would venture out into the world looking for food, because bears get very hungry. Otherwise, he was very happy, and quite content to remain in his cave most of the time.

One day the great big bear was hiding in the long grass, waiting for something delicious to come along. He waited for a very long time. soon he began to get cold, and the sun started going to bed. So he stood up and looked around. The great big bear sniffed the air with his cold, wet nose and pondered what he could smell. He caught the scent of several delicious things to eat, but when he looked around there was nothing in sight. He went back to his cave and tried to get some sleep.

In the morning his stomach was growling. He rubbed his eyes and walked out into the clearing just outside his cave. The bear was all itchy from the straw bed he’d slept on, so he scratched himself all over with his claws. It felt wonderful to scratch the itchies. But somehow for every itch he scratched, another one cropped up. He scratched his head, his ear, his arm, his leg, his nose, and his foot, until all the itchies made their way around to his great big bear back.

The bear spotted a tree, and loped over to it slowly. He leaned back against the trunk of the tree, and could hear the itchies peel with laughter. He began to rub his back against the rough bark. The feeling of pleasure quickly overtook his hunger, he forgot where he was, he forgot his name, and delighted absolutely in the scratching of his back against the rough surface of the tree.

The tree smiled at the bear, and though some of her bark went flying in all directions, she was delighted to help the great big bear with his itchy back.

When the bear was done, he was relieved. He felt so happy he thought it might be time to take a little nap. The growl of his stomach advised him that napping right now might not be the best idea. The bear pondered his stomach, and sniffed the air carefully. Again he could smell all sorts of delicious things to eat in the breeze, but he couldn’t see a single one of them.

The bear remembered waiting all day in the long grass, and decided that today he would climb up this friendly tree and see what he could see. He dug his sharp claws into the tree’s trunk, and began to climb. When he got to the first branch which was strong enough to support the weight of a great big bear, he shimmied out and lay there quietly, peering around the clearing.

After a while his paw dropped to his side, and then began to dangle from the branch, and his toes wrapped around the base all nice and snug, and the bear fell fast asleep.

When he woke, there were two little feet on his nose. His lifted his paw to scratch at the feet, because feet on your nose are itchy, but they lifted up into the air and he scratched his nose instead.

“Hello!” Said a squwaky voice.

The bear opened his eyes and saw a funny bird hovering above him. It was an unusual bird, with bright colors and a big nose. Birds sometimes made the great big bear feel very hungry, but for some reason this one made him smile instead.

“Hi.” Said the great big bear.

“You were sleeping in a tree.” Said the funny bird. “What a silly thing for a bear to do.”

They looked at each other and laughed. The bear felt embarrassed, being unaccustomed to anyone pointing anything out about what he did or didn’t do, but because the funny bird made him laugh, it didn’t matter this time.

“I like you.” Said the bear.

“Don’t you mean you’d like to eat me?” Said the funny bird.

The bear scratched his nose again and tried to imagine eating this funny bird with all his bright feathers and great big nose.

“No.” Said the bear thoughtfully. “I meant to say that I like you.”

“Aww…” Said the funny bird, and he spread out his wings to give the bear a hug.

The bear reached his paws up to return the funny bird’s hug, but his sharp claws gored the bird, and it fell dead onto his chest.

The bear looked around to see if anyone had noticed. He could still smell all sorts of delicious things to eat in the air, but no one appeared to be watching. So he ate the funny bird all up.

The funniest thing about birds is that they are usually quite small. Birds don’t make a very good meal for that reason. If you’re going to eat birds, it’s best to catch a few of them. There’s little room for appetizers in the life of a great big bear.

After a while of looking around in the long grass, the bear felt sad and went back into his cave. He lay there in the dim light of his fire, and listened to his tummy growl. He was sorry he ate the bird, he hadn’t meant to kill it. He was a great big bear, and had very sharp claws. He imagined that he should have known better than to try to give a funny little bird any kind of a hug. He thought about this for a long time.

The next morning the bear came out of his cage into the clearing and sniffed the air. He had rested well, and the sun felt lovely on his face. He glanced over at the tree from yesterday, and she smiled sheepishly at him. He stared at the place where he had rubbed off the bark for a little while, and then wandered into the field.

It wasn’t long before the bear heard something. He stopped and cocked his head. He felt the breeze blowing past his whiskers, and the sun warming his fur, and he heard something that sounded like crying. the bear looked everywhere, up in the sky, over his shoulder, off into the distance, and down at his feet. When he looked down he saw a very small, white bunny.

“Oh!” Said the bear self-consciously.

“Waahhhh….” Cried the bunny.

“Oh dear, what’s wrong?” Asked the bear.

The bunny stopped crying and looked up at the great big bear. The bunny looked strange. Its eyes were red instead of brown or blue, and his little fingers and toes were pink. The bear wanted to laugh at the bunny, but tried to be as nice as he could.

“No one loves me.” Said the bunny.

“What do you mean no one loves you?”

“Give me a hug!”

“Oh dear.” Said the bear. “Where is your mother?”

“She threw me away.” said the bunny. “She said I was an albino, and that Father would eat me if I didn’t run away.”

The bear wondered if being an albino was something he could catch. He looked at the little animal’s deep red eyes, all wet from crying, and his shaking little body and felt all warm and strange about himself.

“What is albino?” Asked the bear.

“I don’t know…” and the bunny burst into tears again.

The bear pondered the situation. What could be done about a little white bunny sick with albino, who hadn’t anywhere to live? What sort of a mother would throw her child away? What sort of a father would eat his own son? “This world is very strange.” Thought the bear. He kept his mouth shut because he didn’t want to upset the bunny any further.

“Waaaah!” Cried the bunny.

“What’s the matter now?” Asked the bear.

“Pick me up!” Demanded the bunny.

The bear looked at his sharp claws, and then looked at the tiny little bunny. He had a vague idea that perhaps little bunnies should be left alone, and a great big bear would be wise to avoid them altogether. Besides, he didn’t want to catch albino. He would look funny all white with red eyes and pink claws. But, against his better judgement, the bear reached down and scooped up the little bunny with his very sharp claws.

The bunny quivered a little, and then closed his eyes and seemed to go to sleep. The bear stood there in the clearing feeling silly. He decided to smell the bunny. It didn’t smell ill. In fact, the little bunny smelled delicious. The great big bear began to tremble. His mouth got all wet and runny until drool began to slip out from between his teeth and run down his face in tear-like drops. His eyes grew deep, and he stared at the sleeping bunny for a long time.

But great big bears are dangerous, and they aren’t terribly smart. Soon the smell of little bunny had intoxicated the bear so completely that he stuffed the little thing into his mouth and chewed him up.

Then the bear was alone again. He stood in the field for a while looking into his paws. It was curious to the bear that only moments ago there had been a soft little bunny with tears in its eyes curled up in his hands. Now that bunny was just a warm feeling inside of his tummy.

“The world is very strange.” Said the bear to himself, and went back to his cave to go potty.

When he was done with his business in the cave, the bear decided to take another nap. So he curled up next to the stream and closed his eyes. That night he dreamt of flying polar bears. He was flying over the forest, with soft, white fur and blood red eyes. There were thousands of other bears just like him, and all together they looked like a cloud. He loved clouds.

He awoke when the sun was high in the sky. He knew that he’d slept all day again. He didn’t mind sleeping all day so much, but there seemed to be better food prospects in the morning, and he liked food. He felt a little hungry for something delicious, and decided to head outside and see what there might be to eat.

When he got out into the light, the bear remembered his dream. First he looked up into the sky to see if there were any clouds. There weren’t any. Then he looked down at his fur to be sure he hadn’t caught albino and turned white in the night. He was a deep, dark, brown like always. But what if his eyes were red? He worried about things like that sometimes. So the bear walked slowly down to the river to see if he might be able to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the water, and maybe catch a delicious fish to eat.

When he arrived at the river, he peered into the water. It was hard to see exactly, but it looked like his eyes were brown like always. He scratched his head and sniffed the air.

At the river it was difficult to smell delicious things. There were many smells, and they were very strong. So he stepped into the water, and sniffed at it to get some perspective. He saw a shadow flicker beneath the surface, and the bear followed it with his nose. The shadow flickered back toward him, and the bear raised his paw up into the air. Just as the shadow came close to him, he slashed at the water furiously. The splash got him all wet, and he wiped the wet away from his eyes. He looked at his paws and found a big fat trout stuck to the ends of his claws.

“Oh!” Said the bear, almost surprised, and a little proud of himself. “Hello.”

The trout opened and closed its mouth, and sadly flipped its tail.

“Yes of course. I don’t imagine you feel much like talking do you?”

The trout closed its eyes.

The bear stared at the fish for a while watching every little movement it made. Soon the fish was completely still and the bear stuffed it into his mouth and chewed it up.

The bear sat down. The cool water felt nice on his bottom. He liked the way his fur seemed to float, and wave back and forth in the current. The bear looked back at the shore, out past the field, and into the eyes of the scratching tree. He thought it might be nice to smile at the tree, she was so kind to him, but the great big bear felt strange. He didn’t smile. Instead, the bear just sat there in the water for a very long time and cried.

When he returned to the clearing he had forgotten what he was crying about. The tree shook her leaves in the breeze, and the bear stopped to look at her.

“What’s the matter bear?” Asked the tree.

The great big bear just stood there quietly looking at the tree.

“Would you like me to scratch your back?” She asked.

The bear felt sorry about the bird, and the bunny, and even the fish. His back itched, but he no longer wanted to take pleasure in the trees. He wished that the bird was still here, standing lightly on his chest. He wished that the bunny was still here, sleeping in his paws. He even wished that the fish might still be swimming in the water, making the shadows that caught his eye. He wanted to be just like the tree. He wanted to stand up nicely, and shake his leaves gently. He wanted to be kind and gentle with everything he touched. Instead he was a bear. He was a great big bear. And he killed everything he came into contact with.

“Bear?” asked the tree.

The bear looked up at her sadly.

“Why don’t you take a nice little nap?” Suggested the tree, sensing that the bear wasn’t quite himself today.

The bear nodded his head gently, and lumbered back into his cave.

In the morning, the sun was warm and bright. There was only a hint of a breeze, and the bear woke up early. He strolled out into the long grass and sniffed the air with his cold, wet nose. Everything smelled delicious. He could smell everything, but when he looked around, he could see nothing but grass and butterflies.

Fear and Love went shopping for new pants together. They both needed pants desperately. Fear hated to shop, and felt there was never anything that fit right, or looked good in the stores. Love was crazy aout shopping, and always wanted to buy everything on the racks. Fear hadn’t considered what sort of pants they’d buy, and hoped the stores weren’t crowded. Love wanted a pair of those really tight, stretch denim, lo-rise, rocker pants cause they look like so much fun.

When they got to the store, Love ran through the aisels touching all the fabric and laughing out loud. Fear stood near a sales person hoping they would notice and ask if they could assist them in any way. Love laughed from across the store, and invited Fear into the fitting room.

“What do think of these?” Asked Love, slipping into a pair of purple velvet whaler bells.

“Oh dude, I hate those pants, and I can see your butt-crack.”

“You don’t like them?”

“It’s not that, but I bet people are gonna think you wanna be Cherry Vanilla in those. Don’t get those.”

“Well, what about these?” Asked Love, quickly trying on another pair of pants. “Do you like these?”

Fear looked at Love, up and down slowly. What Fear felt was admiration, a little excitement, and some envy. Fear wanted to have a butt like Love’s. Fear’s butt, according to Fear, was wide, and low, and uncomely. So fear looked at Love and said, “They’re ok.”

“Do you like them?”

“If you do.”

Love laughed and patted Fear on the arm, “You always say stuff like that, and I never know if you’re just being nice, or what… Just tell me, do you like them or not?”

Fear looked down at the floor of the fitting room and said,” I dunno…”

Love was beginning to feel selfish, and uncomfortable holding Fear hostage in this little fitting room and asking opinions and making them feel bad. This wasn’t as much fun as Love had hoped it would be after all.

“Aren’t you going to try any pants on?” Love asked Fear quietly.

“No. I don’t really need any pants. Let’s get out of here and go home.”

So they left the store without buying anything.

He came every day. Before sunrise he would wake and dress in silence. Kissing the muslin wrap and whispering prayers, he carefully pulled the turban into place on his head. He packed his flute, a few crusts of bread, a bottle of pomegranate juice mixed with water, and a pouch of tobacco into his pack, draped it across his narrow torso and slipped into his sandals. He washed his face and hands, and gazed into his dim reflection in the small mirror above the basin. He stared into his own eyes, but barely recognized the reflection. Before his head wandered too far in the direction of doubts, the call to prayer would begin and he quickly dried his hands, and face and set out into the street.

The cool morning breeze blew through his tunic’s hem, brushing the hairs of his ankles, cooling him peacefully. There were never many people in the Mosque at this hour. Most people stayed at home to pray with their families, but as dawn broke through the dome’s ceiling he was standing in the atrium composing himself for the day’s arrival. The mosque was lovely, it was a breathtaking symbol of devotion to God, but Khumarawaih had been a frivolous ruler, and the country was now in ruins. It mattered little to the musician, he played music for the stones, and they were attentive in times of great wealth, and in abject poverty as well.

As the heat began to spread through the city, and life began to awaken in the streets, he made his way to the back courtyard of the old municipal building and sat down. He gazed at the stones thoughtfully, licked his lips, extracting his instrument from the canvas bag beside him. He paused, his eyes searching the stones one by one, the flute gently held in position. He wondered if they would dance for him today. He wondered if they would ever dance again.

With a deep breath, a sweet melody wafted up from the end of his instrument. Haunting and slow, a song wrapped itself around the stones before him. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, his fingers knew what to do, and the music was always an equal surprise for him. What came next, he did not know. This was the music of his soul, the music of God. He merely meditated on his breathing, and prayed to be used by his Master to sing the stones to sleep, or to enchant them into a wild dance of passion. I did not matter to him, he was only there to be used by the Czar of the heavens, nothing more.

Some days the stones would dance. They quivered, and seemed to vibrate until one of them broke from the ground and danced above the others in the air. As each stone witnessed the levitation, they too would vibrate and alight into the air. The dance was dictated strictly by the music, one day they would be whirling in circles, the next they would simply hover before him, shimmering, almost singing along.

Once in a torrent of swirling stones, one of the smaller rocks flew out of the group and in through the window of the tea house at the end of the alley. As the window shattered the other stones hovered in awe of the escape, and then softly fell to the ground without making a sound. He stopped playing his flute and turned to see what had happened. There was a man standing in the doorway of the tea house with a red face, and a cloth held up against his head. He scowled at the musician, and shouted something. He stood there for a long time staring at him. The musician gazed back softly without saying a word. It took four of the tea shop’s owner’s friends all afternoon to lift the smaller stone up out of the lobby and back into the courtyard. While it was impossible that anyone could have thrown the stone in through the window, or that such an elaborate vandalism could have been perpetrated, the culprits vanishing into thin air in the moments it took the shop owner to get his bearings, clasp the towel to his skull and rush outside to see what had happened. But the shop owner kept his eye on the musician for some time afterward. He did not go into the tea shop. He would sip his pomegranate juice in silence, and imagine that tea and mint were in the bottle with the bitter juice. Tea cost money, and the musician had none.

Today as he began to play, the stones made no notice of him. His fingers began to move rapidly, the tones swirling wildly into the air. Only dust danced with his melody, the stones did not so much as vibrate. After several hours he stopped playing and slipped his flute into the bag with a sigh. He had played all the notes, he had concentrated carefully, and devoted himself to the awkward chunks of stone. And yet the stones had not responded.

What he did not know then was that the stones would remain still for more than a year. During that time he tried playing more passionately, playing unconcerned, playing seriously, adopting the challenge before him, preparing music the night before, carefully selecting the scale and devising plans to move the rocks with his flute. But the weeks passed and as winter approached, they would not dance for him.

Sometimes he would weep, sobbing quietly into the reed of his instrument. “Why have you stopped dancing?” He would cry. The stones were neither defiant, nor indifferent. They were stones, and everyone knows stones can not speak. He would select a stone which seemed more emotional, or reasonable than the others and crouch beside it whispering his heart’s contents to the grey lump. He would rub the surface of the rocks and try to encourage them to dance again.

People passing occasionally stopped to watch the crazy man with the bright red flute waving his arms in the air, talking with the stones. Even the owner of the tea shop would sometimes step into the afternoon sun and watch the musician rant and rave. The entire quarter felt sorry for him, and he became known as a lunatic.

At the end of a very long day, the musician walked slowly home through the city streets. He had not been sleeping well, and he was exhausted. He had given the stones everything he had, there was nothing left of him. He was asleep before his body touched the straw mattress of his bed. He slept deeply, and dreamt of stones dancing in the night sky.

He shook his head softly. Standing in the airport, watching the flow of people passing around him. He clutched his boarding pass. Plane tickets made him think of her. A cold glass of water made him think of her, so that wasn’t surprising. He didn’t do anything, or move in any direction, he just closed his eyes tightly against tears and listened to the announcement about how if you didn’t move your car that the officials would tow it away.

The airport had changed. In 1972 he’d flown from Los Angeles to San Francisco all by himself. He was only seven, the flight attendants were called stewardesses then, and they were young and pretty. His mother had once explained to him that these women were fired if they got pregnant, that they had sued the airlines and won the right to work in whatever condition they were in. Now flight attendants were mean, and usually fairly unattractive. On the flight to San Francisco a ginger haired young woman named Maggie had sat next to him and brought him cups of tea. They played cards and she stroked his shoulder length feathered hair when he vomited into the air sickness bag. He learned at seven that women smell wonderful, and black tea on an empty stomach can make you throw up. At the airport couples kissed at the gate, and people were allowed on the plane to say goodbye before take off. There were smoking rows on the plane, and if you weren’t seated in one, you could always stand in the aisle and use the ashtrays back by the bathrooms. On a 747 there was a bar up a spiral staircase, and the bathrooms were large enough to have sex in. He didn’t know any of that, or care about it when he was seven, but he learned about it later. Flying in the 70’s was more like a nautical experience, and not at all like the security gates which we enjoy today.

He slipped off his belt, and placed it into the grey plastic tray on top of his shoes, wallet, keys, cigarettes, change, necklace, and glasses. He kept his lighter in his pocket, and held his breath as he passed through the metal detector. It was absurd that he had to give up his lighter every time he flew. He refused. Was all this inconvenience the result of other people’s thoughtless action? Wasn’t it just like traffic? How the selfish and the ignorant mock the kind and the patient, driving in parking lanes, and causing delay for everyone else. Those who imagine they are smarter, and more important cause suffering, cause traffic, and don’t arrive any sooner than anyone else. Once he thought that he might want to make a bid for the highway campaign, design a series of signs reminding people that one at a time was the most efficient way to merge lanes, and the visual image of a zipper would be a good reminder. People didn’t seem to know, or care at all, not even the people stuck sitting behind the jack-ass who was creating the traffic. Then he thought that maybe it would be a better idea to create an evaporation ray so that idiots and thoughtless ass-holes could be teleported into a lock down compound and lectured about courtesy and community when observed driving poorly. In the end he gave up and just stopped driving. Traffic is for the commuters, the fully employed, the ordinary. He slept until noon most days and didn’t usually have to be anywhere, so it wasn’t actually his affair to correct. and yet, he was here in line at the airport security desk, and the thoughtless acts of others had changed this experience forever.

He kissed the medallion of Ganesh and slipped the thin chain over his head first. As he looped his belt back around his waist he shook his head. “Stop it,” He thought to himself. “She doesn’t love you, just stop it.” He had to think the worst of her. Although it physically hurt to do it, he had to force himself to remember how poorly she had treated him. Her silence, thoughtlessness, selfishness and the impossibility of her in order to stuff the torrent of emotion back inside of himself. It had changed the way he looked at the world. Walking around with a burning ember of overwhelming emotion inside of himself wasn’t really new so much as this was uniquely different.

Everything reminded him of her, her tattoos, her eyes, her fingers, her toes, her hair, her earrings, her smell, her glasses, her voice, her accent. Everything, all the time, everywhere he went. It didn’t make any sense. He hated tattoos, southern accents, the south in general, and even the idea of complaining exhausted people who hate themselves so much that they bury themselves with pleasure, without a second thought below the very things they loathe. He’d felt empathy for people like this, but never love, never obsession, never pain. The south had murdered his heroes, produced the idiot president, and worst of all young country. Ugh. He felt stupid, and naive. The bias was only a feeble effort at some pathetic from of self-defense. It didn’t work.

It took considerable effort to recall her words. He had to fight against everything inside of himself not to forget her casual conversation about other people who still loved her. There was really only one, possibly two or three, but because there was one, it invalidated everything he felt about her completely. It isolated him, and left him feeling as if his experience was little more than an hallucination, or something he felt for her as opposed to something exchanged, or real. He was just another one. He, who felt that she was her and had devoted himself, without any physical evidence, completely to her. He was one of more than one, and so whatever it was he had conjured up about her was more like a painting, or a terribly sad song than anything based in reality. So he shook his head instead, allowed the excess to rise up from his shoulders, out of the ends of his hair, and pushed the rest of himself back down inside.

It was difficult because he felt sure that it was ultimately miscommunication, distance, and fear which had smashed at the edges of everything until it shattered. Miscommunication is easily corrected. Distances are bridged with ease, and simplicity. Fears, he thought, must be faced, and walked through. As complex and remote as it all felt, the difficulties were really trifles, and with some degree of effort could be repaired. So it was easy to get lost in a one sided argument about it all. He would talk to himself in the elevator, or standing nude in his kitchen at night. In the end he would only shake his head and sigh. There may be methods of repair for ordinary people, but it had never been his experience that anything could restore the shattered glass of his heart. The argument only continued because the connection remained. He tried to sever it, and had done a very good job of it. But nothing changed. It was like water roaring over rocks in a stream. Perhaps in another century, in the next life time. Maybe.

He was kissing a woman in New York. They were seriously kissing. Her breath had changed, and she had relaxed beside him, her legs up over his. she had been softly stroking the back of his hair, but now reclined and made it clear that she was open to the idea of his exploring her further. When her tongue touched his, he extracted it from her mouth and resisted the impulse to wipe his lips on his sleeve. She was beautiful, and she was smart, and she was present. Her lips were moving, she was talking to him. He could not hear her. His heart pounded in his head, and he only thought of her. It was pathetic, and when the woman asked him what it was, there was no way in fuck he was going to explain. So instead he looked down and simply said he wasn’t ready for anything like this. He wasn’t ready for kisses from anyone else. He might not ever be. Trust is a mother fucker, and kissing is steeply underrated. He took a long, hot shower later, and prayed for forgiveness. Much later he kicked the shit out of himself and lay awake in the dark, completely confused.

Sitting on the plane, the woman beside him struck up a conversation. she was stocky, perfumed and southern. While they talked he thought of her. this woman’s southern accent reminded him of her sweet voice, and quick temper. The woman beside him was annoying, and wouldn’t shut up. She didn’t take the hint that he wanted to be left alone, and instead talked without stopping about people he didn’t know, and would never meet. Eventually she finished her bloody mary and settled into her magazine. When she was silent, he shook his head and missed her. He was half in love with her simply because of her cultural proximity to her. He shook his head again and studied the lipstick which had built up in the corners of the middle aged woman’s mouth. He sighed and looked out the window. There was nothing below them but clouds.

“You know,” Said the woman, still looking at her magazine. “Whatever it is that’s troubling you. It’s going to be ok.” She didn’t say ok like he would have expected. She said it with a thick, and leisurely accent so that it sounded more like oh-kaay. Rather than take comfort from her, he thought of Mr. Macky on South Park. She searched his eyes, and he struggled past the idea that South Park wasn’t funny anymore, and tried hard to get back to his seat and return this woman’s gaze.

“Is it?” He asked.

“Well, I don’t know exactly what’s troubling you, but I do know that even this too shall pass.” Her eyes twinkled like an over confidant Christan’s. He wanted to be angry with her, and lecture her about Ganesh, Tara, Vishnu, Vedanta, and blast her with the bitterness he carried for people who laid their religious trips on other people. He closed his eyes and tried to let go of his resistance. She lay her hand on his arm. He opened his eyes sharply and looked into her eyes.

She was right. All things pass. Did it really show on his face? Was this just vanity? Was there nothing which wasn’t polluted by self, by ego? He was out of his mind. He softly shook his head and patted the woman’s fingers tenderly.

“Yes.” He said. He loved it when she told him yes, but it had been a very long time since she had told him anything, and it was time for him to let go.

It was in this spirit, and with these feelings in mind that she packed her few belongings and set out upon the road which lead east, and out of town.

Years later this story would surface among her great grandchildren. The story of the Italian woman and the Czechoslovakian Chauffeur with feathers in his hat would be told, and changed, until it was almost completely unbelievable.

His charge was a dreary little man, a Count. He scowled and refused to speak to him. The little man with his silly hat sat in the back of the car and frowned out the window at the world. It didn’t matter if they were on the Moravian promenades, in the heart of Europe, or by the sea, his passenger was silent, and stiff, fully dressed in his uniform. Once when they were in Pilzen for a week, he had purchased a bouquet of feathers and secured them to his driving hat. He walked the streets of the city, feathers flowing from his head, drunk from the peppery lager which came from barrels and mocked his Count by standing stiffly and scowling at even the most beautiful of women. The hat became a part of his uniform, and though he half expected to be fired for his burlesque, the Count said nothing.

In transit between Rome and the Capital, Jan was surprised to see a young girl walking by the side of the road. There wasn’t anything so surprising about seeing a person by the side of the road so much, as this woman was beautiful, delicately fair, and entirely unaccompanied. They stopped for water shortly after passing her, and the Count stood stiffly, sipping his water from the ladle itself, drinking his fill and staring into the direction they had come from.

Soon the woman appeared in the distance. Jan wanted a drink of water, but the count stood there hoarding the only utensil with which to extract the beverage, and stared at the figure as she slowly approached. Eventually she arrived at the well and stood silently before them. Jan smiled at her. Her cheeks were flushed, as if she were blushing, and she appeared to have a moist glow about her. The Count stood at attention, holding the ladle out to her. Jan laughed because he knew the count would neither speak to the Italian woman, nor remark in any way until his rank was acknowledged, or formal introductions had been exchanged. Jan knew no Italian, and this beautiful girl did not understand the Count’s gesture.

Jan’s feathers danced in the breeze. He rubbed his nose and cleared his throat. both the Count and the Italian girl looked up at him. He presented his hand to the Count, who placed the ladle into his hands. He filled it with water and offered the girl a drink. She nervously stepped past the count, who turned to scrutinize her, and drank from the cup. When she was finished she smiled kindly and her eyes darted between them quickly. Jan laughed and refilled the ladle. The Count stood at attention and waited for something to happen. Jan and the Italian girl laughed softly, and shared the ladle. The Count drank nothing more.

When they were rested and relieved, the Count held the door open for the Italian girl. She stared at him curiously at first, and then with the flash of understanding, bowed slightly and climbed into the car. This woman had no Czech to speak, and between them they had no Italian for her. So they drove in silence. Where they might deposit her, this beautiful and most unlikely creature, was anyone’s guess.

The Count had always been a very short, and ugly little man. In his uniform he looked official at best. If he could keep himself in good posture and with a calm disposition then he was presentable. Despite his scowling, and general refusal to acknowledge anyone he had not been formally introduced to, the Count considered himself to be kind hearted. If he was not a man of the people, then at least he was a man who cared deeply about the people. He had tirelessly devoted his life to his position. Yet somehow love had eluded him entirely.

Not even the arrangements made by his parents, nor the Court of the Empire had managed to pair him with a suitable mate. He blamed his father, Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, for being barely 4′ 8″ tall, who’s sexual exploits had shamed his mother, and defamed his ambitions. He refused to accept the burden himself. It was true that he may be somewhat unpleasant, but that accounted only for his public life, and he felt quite certain that in a decent society even the slightest of his gestures might prevail and demonstrate a finer temperament, and might in some way procure at least a single vote of confidence or affection from a suitable partner. While this theory did not appear to be true in any way, the Count relied upon it entirely, and had pinned all of his hopes securely to it.

He was particularly vexed at his chauffeur. His very tall, and stately chauffeur. Even this tiny little woman, which he had so charitably agreed to transport through the Austro-HungarianEmpire to the safety of Czechoslovakia had begun to bat her eyelashes and steal horrible little peeks at his driver of all people. This bizarre little washer woman who’s delicate curls danced so playfully behind her ears, who’s impossibly huge skirts gave her the appearance of an ostrich was unimpressed. This Italian, with her laughable hips, whos tiny little head and waist floated like a neck extended atop of a tent of skirt, batted her eyelashes for this giant of a driver. Her eyes had never once looked up to meet his, the Count of an Empire. Nothing was stolen from him save the opportunity itself. He was vexed indeed.

His driver would most certainly be fired the very moment they arrived. It went without saying. What sort of comedy was this? Life had turned out to be totally ridiculous, and completely unfair.

The air inside the patisserie was crisp and cool. There wasn’t any sort of tacky fan blowing cold air around, or any visible source of relief from the blazing heat outside, but the lights were low, and the walls were dark, and the air was the perfect temperature.

She stood there gazing absentmindedly through the glass. Her eyes scanned the various pastries, and occasionally focussed on her reflection. There was a mirror behind her, and another one in front of her against the wall behind the counter, but she was not willing to look up at herself. She hated people who did their makeup in pubic, besides, it was overwhelmingly humid and hot again today. There was no reason to look up, she was a mess, and she knew it.

The patisserie had been here for years. She passed it almost every single day on her way to work, or while she was out running errands. Usually she would steal a glance at herself in the window as she passed, the dark interior made for a decent reflection from the bright sidewalk outside. Sometimes something would catch her eye in the window and she might remember a time when she’d eaten something so decadent, or come up with an idea for something to make herself, but she had never actually inside the shop before. It was bias essentially. She had enough money to buy whatever fancy desert caught her eye. Even on a teacher’s salary, her husband had provided her with enough money to buy anything they needed. Without children, they had a nice life, and were very interested in fine food, imported beverages, and new things. yet somehow the dainty uniforms of the young women behind the counter disturbed her. Though she never really stopped to carefully examine the women, the doily-like paper hats on their heads and white gloves they wore was more than enough information for her.

The afternoon had gone badly. She was muddled, and unable to really focus. Nothing had been done, and there was no specific pressure in particular which she could explain. Still, everything that happened seemed to pile up on top of her, like another parcel to lug around, and it was beginning to piss her off. She spent the morning at home, reading, trying to pretend that it was not going to be another day of record breaking temperatures. When she realized it was three in the afternoon the irritation began.

She dressed in a light cotton outfit which she had never worn before, and a pair of flats which she loved. Her husband would have loved this dress, he may have actually bought it for her. He was always buying her skimpy little outfits on his trips abroad, or on their vacations, smiling optimistically as he handed her the expensive looking bags stained along the crumpled edges with moisture from his thick fingers. He would grin, his appetite for easy women, and gluttonous disposition all over his face, and eyes and lips. The dresses were often lovely, but there was something in the way his hands clutched the bags, that revolted her completely. She had loved her husband deeply, and sometimes wore the clothes he bought for her. But she had never worn this dress before. It had never been this hot before. She was irritated by everything. Nothing was going right today.

The cool of the patisserie was lovely. She had hoped to pass unnoticed. There were people in the shop, women buying bags of cream puffs, croissants, and discussing elaborate deserts with the women behind the counter. A woman wearing a dark blue suit was pointing at the glazed strawberries and arguing that they were pointing outward as opposed to up as she had specifically instructed when ordering the desert.

The patient faces of the employees, their bright white uniforms, and crisp paper hats left them somehow well below the position of anyone who entered the shop. White gloves and delicate pastry seemed like a recipe for disaster. Yet somehow the women kept them clean, and didn’t appear to be changing them constantly. The women seemed cheerful, kind, and deeply interested in making sure your strawberries were pointing in the right direction, or that the eclairs you wanted were the nicest ones, and were packed just right, wrapped perfectly, so they would make the journey home with you unharmed. Rather than offending her, or provoking her in any way, the women in white seemed to assure her that they were in control. She was disarmed by their manner.

As the crowd began to disperse, she began to study the contents of the racks of pastries. Her eyes passed over the deserts and rested upon a soft, velvety brown cake. There was something about the texture of the cake’s surface which made it look impossible. It did not look like chocolate, rather, the soft surface of the cake reminded her of fabric. She stared at it, past her reflection, into the case. Something stirred deeply within her. She stood there feeling awake, and sexual, peering into the impossible texture of the cake.

Nothing could persuade her mind that this was a confection. It was a flawless thing. It was a perfect thing. It looked as if someone had upholstered, or delicately tailored. Not one single speck of the fine, suede-like bur had fallen from the cake to the tray, the lighting in the case gave it the color of a rich espresso.

She thought of coffee, and how it had been much too hot for coffee. She thought of chocolate, and cocoa, and how it never snowed here.

She had loved the snow when she was a girl. Her mother and father would take annual winter vacations to the mountains, and spend the entire trip indoors reading. She would sit in the window, safely wrapped in a warm blanket with a mug of hot cocoa and watch the thick, white flakes of snow drop to the ground covering everything in sight.

“May I help you?” Said the woman behind the counter.

Instinctively she clutched her hand bag, and looked up with a little gasp. The smooth, twenty year old face gazed at her kindly. She noticed the girl’s eyebrows, unwaxed, and natural. Her lips were dark red, and moist. Her skin was powdered. The girl had perfect skin. She had had perfect skin when she was twenty. It was something she had always taken for granted.

Her lips moved, she wanted to say “No thank you.” and then smile, or perhaps explain that she was “just looking” and continue to enjoy the cool of the shop, but her eyes withdrew, glancing back at the soft surface of the cake she’d been staring into. Then, without saying anything, she quickly turned and left the patisserie.

The street was still hot. Fewer people were on the street, but traffic had not improved at all. Traffic never seemed to improve. She hurried up the hill without stopping. Her husband was already home when she arrived. Opera was playing in the kitchen, and he was struggling to open a bottle of wine. She stopped in the entry hall and watched him wrestle with the cork. He was impatient, and never put the screw far enough into the cork to successfully extract it in one piece. She watched him pull on one side, and then the other. She watched the cork break and fall back into the wine with a silent little plop. “Merde” he said to himself, and then wiped his forehead and laughed. She smiled. He was a filthy little man, but she loved him.

“Having trouble?” She asked softly.

“Mada! You are just in time.” His face was full of sun, and his head had gotten burned today. He looked like a red light bulb, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“What have I almost missed?” She smiled.

“Why my delicious cooking of course.”

They ate on the balcony. He’d made an omelet with potatoes and capers. She quickly made a salad, and even though she had managed to fish the tip of the cork from the bottle of wine, they drank cognac and cold beer. He talked at length about his day even though she hadn’t asked. He had the glow of conquest on him. She could see its stain on his fingers as he mopped up his dinner with a piece of bread he’d torn from the loaf. The beer was cold, and she drank several glasses. While he talked, she thought that whatever it was he was saying had all been said before.

He wasn’t a stupid man, he provided the two of them a comfortable living, but she didn’t want to hear him make up events and exchanges, or classroom replies to his riveting lectures on a day he’d clearly spent in the sun with some student or would be professor.

They had an open relationship. To him that meant that he was free to conquer every woman he could dazzle with his theories about the unwritten cultural revolution. Somehow interest in his work translated to sexual exploration. To her it meant that she had a fair amount of time to herself, and she could engage in flirtation, and fantasy without shame or reprisal. She had been in open relationships before, and they usually meant that it was common knowledge that her lover was free to sleep with anyone they liked, but she was not allowed the same liberty. This situation had its limitations and difficulties, but it was the most agreeable compromise she had entered into so far.

While he talked about someone called Amelia, she thought about the surface of the chocolate cake. HEr mind traced the circles around the pastry. Her fingertips delicately traced over the surface of the paper beneath it. She felt each impression, every indentation. While she watched her husband’s mouth move, she imagined herself alone in the patisserie, alone with this chocolate cake. She was aroused again. She could feel herself slippery with wetness between her legs. This was irrational. She blushed, and glanced carefully at her husband. He was talking, but clearly hadn’t noticed her blushing. What was it about the cake? How had they made such a texture from powder, sugar, and eggs? Why was this bourgeois pastry of any interest to her? Why did it seem to have so much power over her. It shouldn’t matter, it was just a cake, and yet, the velvety suede of the surface made her mouth water. She swallowed hard and made an effort to pull herself together.

“Mada, darling.” Her husband said with his mouth full. “Are you going to eat the rest of your omelette?”

“No.” She said as if she were full.

He poured the last of the cognac into his own glass, and reach across the table and scraped the omelette onto his own plate and began to eat it with his hands. He continued to talk, occasionally a piece of bread, or fleck of egg would drop out of his mouth. She would watch carefully to see where it landed. Sometimes it would drop sadly into his mustache and ride there as he chewed, occasionally he would fire a crumb from his lips out across the table. The idea that we are always spitting all over each other made her smile.

Her thoughts returned to the cake. She imagined the cold knife softly cutting into the surface. From the center of the perfect circle, the metal would slice through the velvet texture of the pastry like a hot knife in butter, pulling the pile, forcing it to one side or the other, and reaching the edge. Separating the slice, creating pieces, division, segments, orderliness, bliss.

“Mada, darling…” He said softly. She felt his hands touching her. “Darling what is it?”

He had gotten up from his chair and come to her. He was red-faced, and sweating in the evening heat. They were drunk, and he was horny. She smelled the capers and cognac on his breath mixed with the faint smell of another woman’s sex. His teeth were perfectly white, and they seemed like dentures in the mouth of a homeless person. The smell of him brought her back into the moment, and she was no longer aroused in the least.

“Maybe I’ve had too much beer.” She said quietly to herself.

Her husband closed his lips and looked at her, snorting through his nose, as if too much beer were a lucky accident for him.

“Darling I would like to make love with my wife.”

“I have to take a shower.”

“Mmm…” He said, pressing his face against her cheek. “You can take one after.”

“I’ll just go and shower quickly.”

“I’ll be waiting my love.”

She stood up from the table, and left. He swayed there on the deck. He collected the dishes and put them in the sink. He rinsed his hands, and turned off the stereo. He heard the water begin to run in the upstairs bathroom. He put the eggs and potatoes back into the refrigerator, and switched off the light.

In the dark he climbed the stairs, looking through the crack of the open door to the bathroom. He saw his wife standing in the shower through the etched glass of the sliding doors. You couldn’t see the shower from the bathroom doorway, but you could see the reflection in the mirror.

He walked into his bedroom, kicked off his shoes, unbuckled his belt and felt his abdomen relax as his trousers fell to the floor. He peeled off his shirt, and scratched himself. He thought of Amelia, and how pink her ass had been when she stood up from the grass this afternoon. Amelia had loved their picnic, and so had he. She was going to make an excellent professor. He was lucky to have gotten his hands on her now, while she was still interested in men like him.

When she entered the bedroom she was wearing a muslin dressing gown. It was a little cooler, and she felt much better after a shower. Her husband was laying on the bed with his mouth open, sound asleep. She smiled, and softly climbed into bed, switched out the light and went to sleep.

He sat upright in bed. His head was pounding. He groaned. It was hot again. The clock’s green numerals came into focus, and he realized he was late.

“Fuck.” He stood up and pulled his trousers up around him. He grabbed a fresh shirt from the closet, and began to button it as he rushed into the bathroom. “You should have woken me up.” He called.

She rolled over in bed, her head was pounding. It was hot and uncomfortable in the bed. She sat up and checked the time. He was going to be late. She smiled.

“Mada, you should have woken me up.”

“So it’s my responsibility to wake you up now?”

He appeared from the bathroom looking irritated. She was sleepy, and her hair was piled up to one side of her head, matted in the back. He used to love how dreamy and messy she looked in the mornings, but right now it made him angry because she hadn’t woken him up and it was all her fault.

“Well…” He began.

“Yes, yes.” She said to the floor. “Whatever.”

His face changed, and he tried to explain again, but she had retied her gown, and gone down the stairs.

He walked back into the bathroom in a huff and blew his nose, took a couple of aspirin and splashed water on his face. He washed his hands with soap, and stepped into his shoes. When he arrived in the kitchen there was almost coffee, and Mada was out on the terrace. He glanced at the newspaper, and ate a piece of bread, poured his coffee into a stainless steel portable mug, and knocked on the glass door.

Mada stood up and walked toward the door. He gave her the finger and grinned. She scowled at him and sat back down. It was going to be another very hot day.

After he was gone, she went into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. She sat in the shade of the kitchen and sipped it slowly, reading the newspaper. She had married a pig. She had married her father. She had married a child.

In the newspaper, more people were dead in the world, and some young woman’s breasts were on the front page. As if it were actually news that someone she had never even heard of before had augmented their breasts for a film role they’d been awarded.

She imagined all of the women in the world who get breast implants each day and don’t have their surgeries acknowledged on the front pages of newspapers. Perhaps it would be a good idea to begin an augmentation gazette. There is clearly a market for this. People could send in before and after photos, and the day’s surgical procedures would be listed in it, like obituaries, the public could read about breasts, and talk about augmentation, surgery, youth, and the girth of bosoms, boobs, breasts, tits, and teats with a frankness which we currently lack.

She laughed at herself. She hated breast implants, and imagined herself with breasts the size of canteloupes. She tried to imagine the look on her husband’s face when she woke up from the surgery. She was about to get angry again when her phone beeped. It only beeped when she received a text message, and her husband was angry with her for text messaging with her friends because it cost money every time. Occasionally he would send her one. She was sure this was a message from him.

She clicked through the menu of her phone and read the message which said “I’m a pig. Forgive me?” She laughed and typed a reply with her thumbs.

As soon as she set the phone down on the counter, it rang. She answered and it was her husband.

“I’m a pig.” He said.

“Yes you are.”

“Mada, I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

“I am a grown man. It’s not your job to wake me up in the morning. Please forgive me. I drank too much cognac last night. I should never drink.”

She could hear her own breathing, but said nothing.

“My only regret is that we did not make love last night.”

“Mmm..” She said.

“Darling, Mada, it has been much too long since we made love.”

She parted her lips to say something.

“I had the most curious dream last night which I only just remembered.”

“Oh?”

“Darling, I must go. I will call you later. We will have something special tonight for dinner, and we will only drink beer. ok?”

“Ok.”

“I will call you later my darling.”

“Fine.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“Of course.”

“Mada?”

“Yes.”

“Tonight we will make love.”

“Goodbye.”

She put the phone back down on the counter and finished doing the dishes.

She had made a long list of things to do today. Yesterday had been so hot and humid that nothing was accomplished. There was laundry to collect, food to buy, people to visit, and various things to purchase. There was quite a bit to do. But today was possibly hotter and more humid than yesterday. She collected herself, and walked with a serious face toward the avenue. She was going to buy everything on her list, and perhaps return home in time to do some reading she’d meant to do. Also, she wanted to shower and change before her husband came home from work. She felt bad about last night and this morning and resolved to do better today.

Walking down the hill she passed a woman who had once been a friend of hers. They were in a reading group together, and met at her house to discuss the assignments a couple of times a week. She liked her, but was daunted by her habit of generalizing.

“Everyone knows that people like that are stupid” She would say.

It wasn’t so different from most people really, but it irritated her anyway. They stopped speaking after she fucked Arvan. It was difficult for her, despite her own insistance upon her relationships being kept open to befriend or remain friends with anyone her husband took as a lover, however casually. Passing the woman without meeting her eyes or saying anything was not nice. But in a way she felt that she was doing her the favor of having to avoid her. A kindness reserved for those she felt she may have hurt.

At the corner she stopped and took out her list again, she looked at the long list of items, and tasks. It was so hot, and the cars passed quickly. The smell of exhaust was choking. After scanning the list several times, she folded it up into a tidy rectangle, tucked it into her purse, crossed the street, and walked into the patisserie.

The cool of the shop was the same as yesterday. It took her, and embraced her completely. Walking into this shop was like being recieved on the lodge of an opera house, or welcomed into a spelndid circle. She took a deep breath, smelling the delicious deserts all at once, and then walked over to the cake. It was there, just as she’d left it yesterday. Perfectly round, perfectly smooth, perfectly illuminated. She stared at the cake with her hand on the glass for a few moments and then caught the attention of one of the girls.

“Good morning Madame.” Said the calm, and pretty face from yesterday. “May I help you?”

“Yes.” She said softly. “I’d like this cake please.”

“The fruit torte Madame?”

“No, no. the chocolate cake.”

Th cake was wrapped carefully for protection against the heat, and the various conditions of transporting it. She carried the parcel by the ends of the strings it was tied with, and went straight home. She walked quickly up the hill, deeply aroused, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She didn’t buy anything else, and did not stop again until the box was safely in her refrigerator.

Afterward, she sat on the terrace, sipping iced tea and reading. When she would refill her glass, she would gaze at the pale paper texture of the surface of the box. The cake was in this box. Something lovely, and decadent was inside of it. She wondered after a couple of hours if the cake had made it home intact. So she untied the string, and opened the box to look at it.

The suede-like texture of the chocolate had very slightly begun to moisten. It wasn’t so much that it had melted, but it was obviously chocolate now, and no longer the perfection it had been in the shop. She quickly closed the box and shut the refrigerator and sat down. Biting her fingernails she wondered about the cake.

“What a stupid thing to do.” She thought.

Disgusted with herself, she went upstairs and took a long shower and lay down for a nap.

It was dark when she awoke. Opera was playing, streaming softly from the kitchen. She looked at the clock and wondered why he hadn’t woken her up when he got home. When she got down stairs she found Arvan making an elaborate meal, sipping a huge can of Sapporo and singing along with Giacomo Puccini.

He looked so happy cooking. He must have been home a long time because he wasn’t sweaty. She put her arms around him and kissed the back of his shirt.

“Mada! Hello my darling…” His face was brown, and the mitt of hair around his bald head was light from the sun.

“I must have fallen asleep.”

“You were exhausted my love.”

She looked at him curiously.

“I have prepared a masterpiece.” He turned at looked into her face. He was tan, and his face was hopeful. “Tonight we will feast upon Sapporo beer, and my world famous pomegranate chicken with garlic rice and green salad.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“You are the occasion.”

“Me?”

“Mais naturellement.”

“I see, so we’re French now, are we?”

“Oui.”

She thought of the cake, and opened the refrigerator to make sure he hadn’t stuffed half of it into his mouth the moment he discovered it. It was untouched. But the texture of the surface was still imperfect. It remained slightly softened, and looked like fine and short chocolate shavings instead of the flawless suede it had been in the shop. She had ruined the cake buy buying it so hastily, and traveling home on foot. She ruined everything.

“I noticed your delicious desert.”

“Did you?”

“How could I miss it?” His lips were wet, as if he’d been licking them in anticipation of eating the cake. She was revolted, and was thinking of some way to explain that the cake was not for him, but perhaps for some occasion. But what occasion? Before she came up with anything, her husband was running the plates outside onto the deck, and had resumed his singing. She calmly walked out onto the terrace, took up a chair and sat down.

The cold beer was wonderful. The food was terrible. Her husband had a way of undercooking everything. The pomegranate juice was cool, and had not soaked into the flash completely. the chicken was pink at the bone. Even the salad was thick, and had too much vinegar in it. She picked at her dinner, and drank too much beer. He let out a triumphant belch and pushed his plate aside.

“I’m going in for another Sapporo, would you like one?”

“Yes.”

He smiled darkly, as if the next beer would ensure an evening of sex. He loved it when she got tipsy, even a little drunk. She was much more flexible, and willing to go along with his desires. The rest of the time his once moldable and quiet wife was now quite rigid and difficult to satisfy. She never complained, but he knew. She was nothing like the students or salaried teachers at the university. They were hungry, passionate, desperate to learn, talk, touch, taste and feel their own visceral pleasures. She had never been like that, but she certainly had a beautiful ass. She would have slapped him if she could read his mind. They had never had a relationship based on carnal interest, rather, they were meant to be equals, peers. She looked after his house, and he looked after her security. He must be drunk. He reflected quietly and burped a few more times into his napkin which he then left in a wad on the counter.

“Arvan,” She said from right behind him in the kitchen.

He wheeled around guiltily and peered at her as soberly as he could.

“I am just going to go and lie down.”

“Not again my love. What’s wrong are you ill?”

“Yes I must be.” She said, but she knew she was lying. “No, no I don’t think so. I am drunk an I don’t want to be. I want to lay down.”

He kissed her on the forehead and smiled. She went upstairs and he put all the dishes into the sink, pots, pans, trays, empty cans, forks and knives. He vaguely realized that this wasn’t what you are supposed to do with dishes when you are done eating, but he didn’t wash them or rinse them, or change anything. He simply crushed a few cans so that the whole mess would fit into the sink, switched off the light and followed his wife up the stairs.

He showered, and combed what was left of his hair with a whistle. He was already partially aroused. “Sex with Madame” He thought. He stopped making tipsy faces long enough to convince himself that he was still an attractive man. Staring into the mirror with the face he only made when he stares into the mirror. The face resembled an overweight dachshund. His long, fat face allowing the wrinkles in his forehead to smooth artificially, and his eyes to stare back at him in the mirror. He was happy with this posture, although he never made this face in his real life. It was a pose which gave him some kind of confidence, especially when he was drunk or fresh out of the shower.

When he was done he threw the towel on the floor and walked slowly into the bedroom. She was awake, but she was tucked into bed, her back to him. He put his hand on her shoulder and whispered,” Mada. Mada darling are you awake?”

For a moment she stayed completely still. She knew that if she stayed right there without moving that he would quickly be discouraged and climb into bed, switch the television on and start snoring. Her heart was tight in her chest, and even though she would have rather broken every single tooth out of his head in a single blow and spit in his face, she lifted her head and looked up at her husband.

“I’m here.” She said quietly. He smiled a sleepy smile and relaxed his hands. “I’m going to freshen up. I’ll be right back.”

He watched her get up, and walk around the bed. He closed his eyes and hummed to himself.

In the bathroom Mada brushed her teeth and washed her face. She was hungry. The toothpaste felt sharp and powerful in her mouth. She felt he stomach gnawing at her torso. She ran her hands over her abdomen and looked at herself in the mirror. Every line, ever blemish, every sign of fatigue stared back at her.

With a sigh she scrubbed at her face with the wash cloth. Scrubbing, toning, rinsing, and toning again. She tied her hair up with an elastic band and switched off the light.

When she arrived at the bed, her husband was asleep. There he was, laying on his back, mouth wide open, one sock on and a hand down his boxer shorts. She pulled the covers up around him and climbed into bed. She turned on her side, switched out the light and lay there staring straight ahead in the dark.

“For God’s sake!” He cried. “Please, no!”

“Wait a minute. I’m dreaming.” He said to himself. The sound died in the room. He was sitting up in bed, sober, and wearing only his boxer shorts and a sock. His penis was erect, and sticking out of the opening in his boxers. His scrotum was being twisted in a mass of fabric between his buttocks. He arranged himself and then stood up. Laughing he turned to the other side of the bed.

“Mada?” He whispered, reaching out to her in the dim light. “Mada I have to tell you about this terrible dream.”

He patted his hands around the bed, but she was not in bed. He looked around the room in the dark. He looked in the bathroom, she was not upstairs at all. He scratched himself, the dream almost completely forgotten, and walked downstairs to the kitchen. He instinctively opened the refrigerator to see if there was anything new, or different, or left over for him to eat. There was nothing but a soft pink box. It was open and empty.

The kitchen was a mess. How had this happened? The kitchen was always clean. Yet there were crushed beer cans, dirty pots and pans, and plates stacked up inside of it. On the counter were crumbs and wrappers. On the island in the middle of the kitchen as a knife, it was standing up straight, impaled into the butcher block surface of the island. It was covered in what looked like a chamois, or perhaps some kind of feces. He went to turn on the light to try and figure out what the fuck was going on when he caught sight of his wife’s profile on the terrace. He went to the door and slid it open.

“Mada?” He said into the slight breeze which had begun since they went to bed. “Mada are you out here?”

She sat there in the dark, staring straight ahead into the lights of the city. She had eaten every last bite of the cake. At first she had cut a piece, an elegant, sultry piece of cake. She ate every bite of it, and slowly licked the rest from her fingers when she was done.

Absentmindedly she returned to the kitchen for a second piece, and returned with the entire cake. She sat down in the chair and began to devour it. It was all over her face, and the thick texture of the frosting was all over her hands. She could feel it between her teeth, under her fingernails, between her fingers. She could feel this cake inside of her.

His head was face down. The light from the street reflected on the glistening sweat of his torso. His strong back was flexed, haunches up, pressing backward. The muffled sounds of his voice seeped into the air through the pillow. It might have been pleasure, or protest. There was no possible way to tell which it was. Maybe it was both.

Arms gripped his shoulders, shoving him downward. His resistance created a tension that pulled so tightly it felt as if it were going to snap at any moment. Knees locked, arms flexed, and neck bent hard against the bed. From face down in the pillow he had a vision of her, hovering in silver light above him. Her eyes closed, hair floating in all directions as if she were submerged in the sea, golden light shining from somewhere behind her, above her. Her bare breasts and elegant torso were decorated in jewels, and her arms made symbols in the shimmering light. Though her lips parted softly, she did not speak, and her legs disappeared into the darkness.

The sound of sirens lacerated the surreal visions in his head. Flashes of red and yellow. The color of blood on the inside of his closed eyes. The pounding of drums pulsing in his head made the entire world completely evaporate. It was hard to breathe, and it hurt, but it was perfect, it was just right.

Tearing into him, the force slashed into him like a torrent. The stream looked calm from the surface, silent and nothing to make note of. The current quickly overwhelmed him as he struggled to wade across the narrow stream. Slashing up into his mouth and over his nose, the water was inky black. His feet, though wrapped in olive grey boots, quickly sucked into the soft mud of the riverbed. He struggled, and only managed to pull one foot out of a boot, the other hopelessly lost forever.

His fingernails dug into the palms of his hands, he was not in his body, and blood ran in a small rivulet from tightly clenched fists. His hair float upward toward the dim light of the moon. The roar of traffic, a sudden motorcycle roaring around the cars brought him back into the moment, but the moment was lost. The force had stopped, and now no one was touching him.

He lay there catching his breath, sucking air into his open mouth through the wet dacron filling of the pillow. The wounds were glistening in the darnkess. They weren’t any new ones. These wounds were old, and had given under the pressure. He wiped the side of his face, and smeared black blood acros his cheek. He sat up and looked around in the darkness, listening to distant floorboards, and the sound of traffic outside. The door clicked closed, a toilet flushed somewhere in the building. The passing sound of a distorted car stereo played some undefinable beat.

The wounds dried in the darkness, and dissolved. They were gone, but anyone could see them if they looked closely. The scars itched, but were healed and gone. A yellow cat jumped up onto the mattress, carefully stepping around his legs and sitting quietly beside him. He opened his swollen eyes and watched a tail flick once and then softly curl around its haunches.

Sleep came like a violent attack. The anesthesia of exhaustion closed his eyes for him, though he fought against it, swimming upward toward the ceiling, it was useless. He was gone, and it was over.

She had been beautiful. She was still beautiful even though you could tell she didn’t think so. Her face was broad, and the lines of time creased her lips and the corners of her deep, sad eyes. When she was younger, an newly married she had made a decision to remain here. Although she never liked it here, and could not stand the sight, sound or smell of her husband, she did what was expected of her. She had done the right thing.

The boy had written beautifully. She loved his letters, and replied without thinking. If she’d thought about it, she might not have written anything. Instead, her fingers trembled, and she wrote hastily. When the reply was complete, she would fold the paper tightly and put it into an envelope and then hold it to her chest and listen to her heart beat for as long as she could stand it. She might promise herself that this letter was going into the trash, or that she wouldn’t mail it, but she never kept those promises. She would open the envelope, unfold the paper and re read her reply several times. She felt light, happy, and free. Her heart was broken, but all the pieces seemed to rise into the air and dance around her when she read her own words. The helpless reply to love’s urgency had a deeper effect on her than even the boy’s letters. She was in love, finally.

Her mother had always told her that she was a stupid girl. The cold accusation of a mother, followed by affirmations like You are smarter than that, and You know what to do were not confusing. She was a stupid girl with good upbringing. Her own mother had married for ease, and security. She had done just the right thing. She had done the smart thing.

Like her mother, she had married a young man her parents approved of and they took a house in the center of town. Her parents never visited them. There was an expectation that if they wanted to be a part of the family they would have to go and be a part of the family. Weekends were austere and lonesome. Her husband worked long hours, and talked of little else. He was a cold man, with sweaty hands. When they made love he would molest her without compassion, and kept his eyes closed tight against the darkness. It was over quickly, and he would retire to his own room, leaving her there, often in tears of fury, still staring straight up at the ceiling. She would clean herself carefully, praying never to have children by this man. He was a suitable husband, and she was a dutiful wife.

When the boy’s letters began to come in pale blue envelopes she grew silent and withdrawn. “My dearest love” they began, and told her of emotions, dreams, and distant visions. She read them, re read them, and then destroyed them. There was no reason to suspect that her husband had any interest whatever in her correspondence, but she tore them into small, uneven pieces and burned them in the stove. Reading his hopes for her, his love for her, she grew moist, and opened. She could smell a change in her breath. She loved his letters.

The days when a letter did not arrive were difficult. She would check, and then re check the post. with a sign of resignation she would carry out the day’s chores, and then suddenly imagine an overlooked letter in the neat stack of mail on her husband’s desk, and rush into the study and look through the post all over again. On her knees, scrubbing the kitchen floor she would mutter to herself that this boy did not even know her, could not possibly love her, and although she saw him at church, and occasionally in passing on the street, he never spoke to her. He only wrote those terrible, brutal, wonderfully passionate letters. By the end of her chores she would sit quietly in a wooden chair facing the back garden and catch her breath and feel the longing slowly overtake her.

The boy’s letters began to talk of New York, and Europe. His tone shifted and changed. He seemed to waffle back and forth as if he were having a discussion with himself, and pretending she were participating. Her replies were always kind, calm, and loving, but she was careful to never encourage him. She witnessed his conversation as if she were reading a book, or following a serial in the Saturday Evening Post. It was very romantic, but the idea of joining this boy in a conversation like this was terrifying. She tore these letters into smaller pieces than the others, and burned them often without reading them more than twice.

A parcel was delivered. It was a train ticket, and a booked passage abroad a transatlantic ship called the Sea Princess. Enclosed was a letter explaining the journey, and asking her to join him. She held the documents in her hands, and scanned them. She looked at the clock, wiped her palm against the flower print of her dress, and tucked the letter into the pocket of her apron.

She resumed the chores of her day, muttering to herself that this boy was a fool, a stupid boy. She shook her head as she scrubbed the floor, and washed down the back porch. Her husband arrived late that night, and they ate together at the kitchen table. He did not speak during the meal. She watched him chewing his food, smacking, and allowing bits of bread and chicken to rise up and down in his mustache as he ate. When he was finished he unbuttoned his waistcoat, and sighed as if the meal had been adequate. She smiled without thinking, and he got up and went to his study.

She talked to herself for several days about how going with the boy was impossible. She thought of asking her mother what to do, but she knew what her mother would have to say about this. “Stupid girl.” She said to herself as she plunged the toilet, splashing water onto her apron. “you know what to do.”

When the day of departure came, she did not pack her belongings. She simply put on her coat and walked to the station. The boy was there on the platform with several trunks and a bouquet of flowers for her. Their eyes met, his face was pale, and desperate. She was trembling. the boy reached up and touched her elbow delicately, and said “Darling…”

She pressed her fingers over his lips to stop him from saying anything else. Her heart beat like a piston into her head. People were rushing about the platform, luggage was being hand-trucked and loaded into the compartments of the train. Steam filled the air.

“I can not accompany you on your journey.”

Her lips were cold and firm. Her face was stern, serious and appeared calm though her heart was screaming, and in her mind all she could hear were the alarm bells of the fire brigade. She wanted to say more. There was much to say. But when her lips closed, no more words would come.

The boy looked away, and then back at her. He searched her eyes, looked down and said, “I will write to you” to his shoes.

The boy faded into the crowd of people climbing aboard the coaches. The three trunks were carried by unseen men and loaded into cars. Whistles blew, the engine whooshed, and began to pull out of the station. Soon she stood alone on the platform. Had she expected relief? Had he actually expected her to go with him? Whatever she felt, this was certainly not relief. There was no possible way she could have gone with him. This was silliness. the first few words of a thousand thoughts began to sound at once in her head.

She walked back to her house, placed the flowers into a vase on the sideboard, and hung her coat and hat in the parlor closet. She sat in her chair and waited for the sun to go down.

Years later, after her husband was dead she told this story to her grand daughter. Her face deep and sad as she explained how her granddaughter had almost never come to be. It was the deepest regret of her life, a poison which soaked every moment that followed. She never forgave herself for being such a stupid girl. She never forgave herself for doing the right thing.

They walk in a line, never touching, never looking up. Each one of them carries the weight of their own hearts. Dragging the tails of the cotton robes draped around them in the muddy tracks behind them, they walk. Some carry baskets, some have cords of lumber tied across their shoulders, others have their hands clapped over their eyes as they struggle forward.

Each one of them arrives, sooner or later, at the precipice where they unload their burdens, pouring baskets of dust into the canyon below. The wind pulls, and swirls, but the load is released, memory set free, and all pain is vanquished in exchange for a series of razor sharp slices across the surface of their hearts.

The blood comes, like tears, at first as an unlikely welling of fluid on the dry surface of each of their pulsing organs. Soon the weight of the tear is too great, and it begins to run.

No wind, no breeze, and no further weight of life’s brutality could explain the emptiness which arrives like a virus, finally overwhelming its victim. As they fall to their knees, and hands raise toward the sky, shaking, no sound escapes dry lips. Sun burned limbs stretch out over the surface of the stone, until prostration is accomplished. No matter how long they have walked, or how difficult the journey, it is incomplete until they extend themselves in total submission before the sky.

The wind blows flecks of skin from their limbs and fingertips. Unseen pieces of flesh so small no eye could follow the dance as they climb into the sky, and swirl into the breeze. Until there is nothing left of them. Not one remains. There is only a soft, dusty rag stained by their struggle which remains as a reminder to all who continue to dream.

May the sun heat the rocks so that they might pierce the skin of your feet as you pass over them. May the wind burn your skin, and leave caustic boils all over your face. May anything which is required come swiftly and have no mercy. May your journey to the precipice be done in the blink of an eye. May you never again choose to wail at the walls which wink and whisper your name along the way.

We were introduced at a party that my friend Rosen had thrown at his apartment. I don’t usually go to parties, and definitely not dinner parties. I love the idea of civilized people sitting around a table sharing a meal and a wonderful conversation, but it doesn’t usually go down like that, so I avoid them. Rosen had convinced me that he was cooking vegetarian and I would have a good time. I nodded and had no intention of going. The idea of even taking a bite of Al Rosen’s portobello mushroom steak, or even having to sit in that tiny little front room of his with three or four people I didn’t know smelling his cooking, and listening to them all smacking and talking with their mouths full about their jobs, and other people I didn’t know sounded like torture to me. I say I like people, but I really don’t like people at all.

The morning of the party, which I had totally forgotten about, Rosen called me up and asked me to bring some ice cream with me to the dinner party. I agreed and said I’d see him later. I called him back a couple of hours later to ask about the flavor. He said he didn’t care, bring vanilla. Vanilla? Ok. I decided that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Most people seem to like those dreary (and prematurely) coagulated ice cream disaster flavors like Pinko-Stinko and Woopie-Doopie which are supposed to be fun and yummy but only end up tasting like couch, or the unsampled brainstorm of some art school reject’s loud mouthed daughter. I like vanilla, and saw it as a good sign.

She was sitting at the window when I walked into the front room. the house didn’t have a particular odor, I was relived. She leapt right up off the window seat and stepped over the four smoking people sitting indian style and leafing through a picture book about hot air balloons and slipped her soft hand into mine. She had a twinkling set of eyes and a genuinely professional smile that charmed me. We stepped back over the couples and took a seat in the window together. She said her name was Netta. She knew Rosen from another friend of hers whom I actually knew. We talked about her, and how in love she had always been with Rosen. Rosen was gay. We all knew it. But that never seemed to stop the nicest girls from coming around and longing for him. He had gone bald early in his twenties and exhibited the confidence of a man who knew what was what. No silly comb-overs, or funny hats, Rosen was bald, and he wore the soft blonde mitt of hair around the sides of his head like the executive producer of ABBA. He had no apparent self-consciousness, and was generally a really good person.

The food was terrible. Rosen served some sort of philo dough concoction which had been undercooked. The soggy vegetables stuck to the bottom of the dish, and the dough was stiff and stuck together. About half way through the meal he asked if maybe the pie shouldn’t have been cooked a little longer. Everyone laughed, and Rosen laughed too. Netta spit her first bite back into the napkin, and I never even tried it. I just looked at it and could smell the frozen deli takeaway counter a mile away and just smiled, thinking I’d have instant mashed potatoes and toast with orange juice and water when I got home later. It was bad, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Cooking accidents are one thing, but it’s another matter entirely when you are trapped in an apartment with people who are leaning their heads back with pleasure and slurping up appetizers which smell of illness and experimentation. The rest of the night is usually an exchange of recipes and repeated compliments which blend so horribly with the smell of under or over cooked adventure food that it’s eleven o’clock before people realize they’ve got some mild form of gastroenteritis and have to go to the hospital.

We talked about other parties we’d been to where the food was bad. Rosen told the story of the canned clams. I love that story, and Rosen tells it exactly the same way every time. I think everyone had heard it before, but it’s always a treat to watch Rosen demonstrate the heimlich maneuver and you can almost hear the wet little splat of the unswallowed clump of clams as the scattered across the dining room floor, and the desperate gasp for air as the hungry bra-less woman began to breathe again. Clams aren’t for everyone. I haven’t had one in years, but I still remember how to eat them, one at a time, and very quickly. Rosen cleared the dishes and then suggested ordering a pizza. Netta looked into my eyes and whispered “Let’s get out of here” through the clutter of people who were cheering at Rosen’s defeat. I agreed and we got up, collected our things and said goodnight.

Out on the sidewalk we talked about going to a diner, or maybe to a late movie. Netta rode a 50cc scooter and suggested that we take it. She unlocked the front wheel, and handed me the keys. “You drive” she said. My first instinct was to recoil at the thought of driving a Yamaha scooter. I’d been a mod, and Vespa or Lambretta was the only scooter I would ever dream of riding. Netta stood there in the golden hue of the high pressure sodium vapor street lamp, the curve of her hips, the pleat of her skirt, and the long smooth legs which reached out toward the ground. I looked up at her eyes, twinkling at me and snatched the keys out of her hands. She sat behind me, and wrapped her arms around me. One way to make me fall in love with you immediately is to wrap your legs around me, and then hold on for dear life. I hate to admit that I’m as shallow as all that, but I am. There’s nothing I can do about it.

We set out for the diner, but the scooter ended up being a lot of fun to ride, Netta’s laughter danced into the night from behind me, her arms softly reaching into my pockets, and her bare knees digging into my thighs. I went back up the hill and we circled the park until I felt comfortable enough to pull up onto the sidewalk and ride us along the walking paths. After about twenty minutes of laughter and dangerous 50cc scooter adventure the sprinklers came on. We laughed harder and drove through the sprinklers. I pulled off the sidewalk and back into the street and drove all the way down Oak street to Market, and then all the way down Market to the pier. By the time we got there we were freezing cold and our clothes were wet. Netta’s eyes twinkled at mine, and we kissed. She smelled delicately of soap and flower petals. Her hair was dark, and so were her eyes. She seemed to love everything I said, and could meet me in the middle with a story, or observation of her own. She was beautiful, she liked me, I was very happy for a moment.

Later at Netta’s apartment we lay there for a long time in her soft bed. We wore our underpants and caressed each other. She felt soft, and clean, and gentle. We twilighted and caressed like that until the sun came up when she looked me in the eye and said “Doesn’t this make you crazy?” I choked back the urge to ask what she meant, and removed her panties and we made love. Something about me you should know, something Rosen doesn’t even know, is that I’d rather spend the whole night kissing you, caressing you, loving you, and never enter you, or even come really. My sense of romance and intimacy are more rooted in the visceral experience of tenderness, or a non verbal dialog. I would rather feel you shiver in my arms over and over than get off on you. To me, if you mean it, and you surrender to it, then I am full, I am content, I am safe from any harm and love you back completely. I’ve been with women who only want to be pounded, or feel that they know what I want, but unless they know themselves very well, or are willing to find out about themselves, discover the fear, and pass through it elegantly, then there’s no point really. Not that straight sex isn’t nice, a quickie on the airplane, or up against a wall in the rain is very romantic, erotic because it’s dangerous and impulsive. But that isn’t my idea of lovemaking. Rosen says it’s because I’ve never liked sports and while I’m competitive, I am anticompetitive by nature and the idea of sport fucking is just not in my vocabulary. Rosen is proud of his sizable pouch and likes to use it. I have been known to admit that sometimes I wished that my penis would wither and drop off of my body. Regardless, Netta and I consummated our affection for one another and I evaporated for a week or so. She looked into my eyes and actually told me that she felt I was a wonderful lover, so I wasn’t responding to fear or doubt. I felt violated. I wanted to caress her, to share the hours between sundown and sunrise, the smell of sprinkler water still in our hair, and caress each curve of her, every soft curly hair, the tip of her clitoris as it retracted and swelled with arousal. I was not at all interested in spreading her legs and taking her. But after a few hours, it seems, Netta lost patience, and wanted something more traditional. So I responded, which I am certainly capable of. Being a people pleaser, I wanted her to be happy, and I wanted her to like me, so I gave in.

A week later Rosen called me up.

“Hello”

“Call Netta you idiot.”

“What?”

“Just call her ok?”

“Ok”

I called her and she was hurt that I hadn’t spoken with her in a week. I apologized and tried to explain that I was embarrassed, but I don’t think I knew what was wrong, or why I hadn’t called her. I felt bad. I felt hurt. So did she. Netta suggested lunch. I agreed. We met in the basement of Macy’s on Union Square. A strange place to meet for a meal, but I assumed that she worked near there, and maybe she ate there all the time. We had salad, and talked. She explained that she liked me very much, and that she would like to see me. I explained that I liked her very much, and that I would like to see her. Her eyes twinkled back at me, and I felt myself being drawn into the bubble of her all over again. We didn’t talk after that for the rest of the meal. I know I’m not explaining this very well, but not much was said, so there’s really not much more to tell than this sort of summarial overview. It was after lunch, standing on the sidewalk by myself without the details of our second date, or next meeting that I began to question the whole thing. I wondered.

Later that night I got a telephone call and Netta wanted to come over to my apartment. I agreed, and in about three minutes the buzzer sounded. I looked out the window and there she was, with flowers. I made a little pasta with Sagra olive oil, and crushed garlic. We ate and we drank water and talked about the world. She told me about a man she had been seeing, a guy in advertising. I told my only story about advertising where I thought it might be creative and interesting, but it was dull and essentially an industry full of people who were always afraid of losing their jobs. Nothing like fear and lies to motivate an industry. While I was talking, and the whole story was rote, I’d told this tale of disillusion so many times I could think about my toes and the all the things I had to do tomorrow while I told it, I noticed that Netta’s hair was long and straight. The last time I’d seen her it was crunched up and wavy. I tried to remember if her hair had been straight at lunch. I couldn’t remember.

She moved in shortly after our fifth date. Her things were much nicer than my things. I liked the way her black leather chair looked with my rose print over stuffed couch. We made tea and admired the apartment. Netta was happy. She was so happy that her eyes changed from a reflective brown to a bright blue. Her hair curled and uncurled, lightened from almost black to almost blonde. The curve of her hip swayed from slight to heavy, and back again to almost boyish. We grocery shopped together in silence and made love every single night. She wanted to get pregnant, I didn’t figure that out right away, but the thrill of a woman looking into your eyes, her chest covered in beads of sweat, whispering “I want you to come inside of me” is just about the most arousing thing a woman can say, so for a few weeks we flirted with disaster, and eventually she just came out and said things like “Shoot your load” and “I want your sperm to fertilize me, enter me, harder, deeper, take me, give me a child.” She would curl her legs up into a ball and rock back and forth afterward. I think it was to allow my semen a better opportunity to reach their instinctual goal of her egg, but it was alienating. I wanted to caress, and softly touch, to talk. she was on a mission and as sad as it made me feel sometimes, it was kid of charming.

We had two children before we were married in the city hall offices of San Francisco. Our daughter, Helen, had green eyes and hair like mine. Our son, Albert, who we named after Rosen, had brown eyes and a kinky black afro. Netta’s eyes were beige and her hair was a flaming red bob. I thought the bob was a little much, but I never said anything about it. We were trying for a third child, she wanted another girl, when I realized that something was wrong. We were talking in bed one night and was, as I always did, softly caressing her thigh with my head on her abdomen, and I sensed that she was sleeping with someone else. It was acceptable that her ethnicity continued to change and shift, her hair was different from day to day, and sometimes she would say more about this man who was in advertising. Sometimes she would point out a billboard he had designed, or talk about the brand of shirt he liked best. She knew his sizes, and they spoke often on the telephone.

It was when she decided to introduce herself to one of my friends as Annette that I began to question my sanity. Netta had said that she hated her name because of the Mickey Mouse Club, and how with dark curly hair and dark eyes people invariably made reference to Annette Funicello. Annette Funicello had been a little disney sweetheart in the 60’s but had grown up to make Skippy Peanut Butter commercials, or was it Jif? I don’t remember, but the point is that this lady was a has-been, and Netta was embarrassed about her kindly nature, and easy smile and couldn’t stand being compared to some dweeby 60’s ex-star of the Mickey Mouse Club. I always thought that Bobby and Roy were really strange. They were these old guys who considered themselves kids and ran around with the rest of the gang singing songs and grinning like they were fifteen. I assumed, like my camp leaders and teachers, that they were creeps out for kicks with kids. But none of that mattered, and now that Netta had eyes the color of the sky and thick, sun bleached, blonde hair with sturdy swimmers shoulders and broad feet it was somehow acceptable for her to introduce herself as Annette.

I decided to leave her. I rented an apartment downtown, nothing nice, but something I could tolerate for a while. I just packed up a few things and moved one day. I left a note and included my new phone number asking Netta to call me if I was wrong, or if she wanted me back. I couldn’t go on living with her or these children whom were definitely not mine. Netta had never stopped seeing this man in advertising, and I suppose, as cruel as my departure was, there was just one too many sample products in the bathroom, and one too many Foot Cone and Belding 3M calendars in the kitchen for me to feel that there was any hope of ever being embraced in return, or caressed with the sort of delicate ambition and serious interest which my heart longed for. I was gone, and Netta never called.

I got a call from Rosen about two months after I moved.

“Buddy.” He said “I gotta talk to you.” Everyone called me Buddy. Did I introduce myself? It doesn’t matter. If you’ve gotten this far then you already know me. So let’s move on.

“Hey Rosen”

“I saw Annette and the kids.”

“Oh?”

“They were downtown.”

“Yeah?”

“Buddy, they were downtown with one of those cardboard signs.”

I looked for them out of the taxi window. I thought about the man in advertising hammering away at Netta’s crotch. I remembered the sweet smell of her skin, and the nice things she would say. I remember when Albert began to speak. I wanted to find them, but I didn’t see them anywhere.

After meeting the face of a college student at the door of what had been our home, I sat alone at the lunch counter below Macy’s eating a salad and replaying our conversation in my head.

“Hi there, who are you?”

“Um…” She looked past me “Who are you?

“Is Netta here?” I asked, laughing.

“Who?”

She said she lived there for several years, and there had never been anyone there named Netta, or Annette. Nothing in the apartment seemed even familiar to me. There were a few less rooms, and the place needed a coat of paint. I searched the butter lettuce in my bowl with the plastic fork, and began to question if it had been Steiner or was it Fillmore? Where was that apartment? I decided I’d go and see Rosen. I wasn’t feeling too well, and I needed to see for myself with the grip of someone more well grounded than I was if everything was as I remembered it.

Rosen’s apartment building was no longer there. I stood there, at fifteenth and market in the parking lot of the gas station staring at the vacant lot across the street. “What the fuck?” I said aloud, running my fingers through my hair. I looked behind me and saw the Swedish American Hall, just like I’d expected to see. The Safeway sign loomed at the top of the hill, and everything was as it should be. Yet, impossible as it was to believe, Rosen’s building was simply not there. It was gone.

I dialed his number on the Call anywhere in the USA or Canada for 50�� pay phone and he answered the phone.

“Rosen?” I said.

“I’m sorry you must have the wrong number.”

“But…”

He hung up.

I didn’t have another fifty cents, so I walked to the gas station and bought a five pack of juicy fruit from the blank overweight man behind the glass. It was seventy nine cents. I still didn’t have enough to make the phone call, so I asked the man for four quarters and slipped a dollar bill through the slot in the glass. He plopped the quarters into the divot one at a time, and i collected them. The man smiled.

“How long ago did they tear that building down?” I asked.

“What?”

“The building” I said pointing behind the gas station. “When did they tear it down?”

“The what?”

I smiled at the man and walked back to the phone. I dialed Rosen again and he answered. I knew it was him.

“Rosen, it’s Buddy.”

“I’m sorry.” Rosen almost sang into the phone. “You still have the wrong number.”

“Rosen! Cut the crap. Stop being such a…”

He hung up.

I went back to my apartment and just sat there for a while. I looked through the pictures in my wallet. My sister, my mother, a few maxed out credit cards. No pictures of my kids, no pictures of Netta. I’d left with almost nothing, but I did bring my wallet. Where were my pictures? I tore everything apart. I searched the box I’d brought, my book bag, my jackets, I re searched my wallet and in the end I found no evidence of ever having been married, or ever having fathered any children. I called my mother, the phone rang several times before I remembered that she was dead. She’d been dead almost ten years. I waited, listening to the telephone ringing, wondering who had her phone number now. When no one answered I placed the handset back into the charger and lay on the bed for a long time and wept.

The next time I saw Netta we were at a street corner downtown. I walked up behind her. I knew it was her because she was still wearing that pleated skirt, and soft black cardigan. Her hair was crunched up and shined in the afternoon sun. I stood there smelling her hair, my nose almost nuzzled into the black curls at the base of her neck. The soft aroma of soap, and flower petals rose up into my nostrils and I whispered “Netta.” She did not respond. So I said it softly, right into her ear,” Netta.” The light changed and she walked forward across the street. I stood there, on my corner, adjusted my sign and shouted “Bitch!” at the top of my lungs. The entire crowd of people turned as if something unexpected had happened. It was Netta all right. Her deep, root-beer colored eyes, and swollen red lips. It was unmistakable. “Annette Funicello!” I shouted after her. “Annette fucking Funicello!” The moment was gone. The crowd turned and continued on their way.

I adjusted my cup, and propped the sign up against the newspaper dispenser and zipped up my jacket. Someone tossed some change into the cup. I looked up and said “Bitch!” San Francisco sucked now. It was nothing like it used to be.