jocelyn vye

“You’re going today?”

“Yes.”

Lily stood there in the hallway, her black robe slightly undone toward the top, her breast showing nearly to the nipple. She was holding herself up with one hand, her hips tilted to one side, her hair pulled back.

“Okay.”

Tom kept his head down, avoiding her eyes, not wanting to see the pain in them. She just needed to do it. No questions. No final pleas. They’d talked about it. That was that.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“Yes,” she whispered. She leaned her face into the wall. Put her whole body against it. For support. To feel something. Something to hold her up. She started to cry. Silent sobs like blowing bubbles.

Tom stopped what he was doing. Dropped his bag on the table, next to her purse, next to her keys. He frowned and moved toward her, slowly, held her there in his arms. She lay her head against his shoulder, staring into the living room, beyond him, seeing nothing, unblinking.

“Shh. Shh-sh-shhh.” Tom rubbed her back a bit. Big circles around her spine.

“I can’t. I-” Lily sobbed more audibly, gasping in and out of his armpit. Tom worried about his white dress shirt, about her makeup. He held her out at full arms’ length.

“Hey, come on.” He leaned in. Kissed her forehead. “You can do this. You’re fine.”

“I’m fine.” She was unblinking, now smiling a little, laughing even. “I’m fine.” She started to laugh through the mucus and tears.

Tom dropped his arms to his hips. Shook his head. Gestured for the joke. Waiting for the punchline.

“What is this?”

“I’m fine, Tom! Isn’t that lovely!” She tightened her robe at the midsection, the silk shining against the soft yellow tint of the hall.

“Alright.” Tom turned around, hands to his hips, smiling to himself, slowly walking away. “Alright. So, I’m fucking insensitive now.”

“No, no, no!” She laughed, maniacally, like he hadn’t heard before. It startled him. He stopped at the edge of the hallway. Turned to look at her. “No, Tom! I’m insensitive. Me. I’m not sensitive enough. You have all the feelings, and I’m not there for you. Right?”

“Fuck, Lily.” He wiped his mouth in his hand. Something showy. Something he’d seen a man do in a movie when he was expressing disbelief at a woman.

“No—you are the one with all the problems.” She smacked the wall with her palm. “Right?” She pointed a finger at him. She could have been drunk. He knew she wasn’t. But she could have been.

“I’m sorry about the other morning, Lily.” He held his arms out.

“The other morning…” She coughed a tiny laugh. “That’s it, Tom. Just the other morning. Not years of this. Just one morning. That’s what this is.”

“Where is this coming from?” He started to lose his temper. Took a step back. Remembered what this was. “You’re just not thinking clearly.”

“You’re right.” She snapped straight up. Smiled the widest smile. He was feeling sick. “I’m not thinking clearly.”

They stood staring at one another. Just staring. Breaking right there in that hallway. Dividing. Like the panels were splitting between their feet. Like plates were shifting. Drifting from one another without moving.

“This is about today.” Tom took a step toward her. She retreated. “This is about today. I’m sorry.”

“This is about so much more than today, Tom.”

“What is it, then?”

“No, you’ll be late.” She wiped her cheek with her full hand. Made a face like she was better now, just go. “I know you hate that.”

“What is it about, then, Lily?”

“No. Just go to work.”

“And leave you alone like this. Before your appointment?”

“Yes.”

“No. Fuck!” Tom ran his hand through his hair, punched his palm, spun in a circle on one foot, starting to lose it again. “What is this? What is this? What is this? What is this? What is this? Fucking talk!”

“It’s about ripping me back and forth, Tom!” The vein in her head pulsing, hair springing out of its tie.

“Ripping you back and forth?” He shouted down the hall toward her, four feet and a continent away.

“Yes, Christ! Yes!” She buried her face into her palm, pushed her shoulder into the wall, knees dangling in suspension. “A week ago we’re picking out names. You’re going to tell your mom—”

Tom bolted across the carpet toward the crumbling woman, a hand straight out toward her, gripping the air in his fingers.

“A week ago, my mother—”

He broke abruptly. Tore a picture from the wall. The colorful one she’d hung there to cover the hole in the drywall. That one of the two of them in Cancun. Dancing. When they were still desperately in love.

“A week ago….”

Lily cried. She fell to the ground, bare ass on the carpet, legs open with the robe covering nothing. Fully exposed in a wilted heap, her hands pulling the hair back over her head, feeding her ponytail, letting the tears and spittle smack against her knees, sweating a bit around the temples, turning red around the ears.

Tom backed up toward the living room. Slumped himself down on the opposite end of the hallway floor, massaged his face, his eyes to the ceiling. He’d never noticed the cobwebs in the vent, blowing in and out of the current.

Lily sobbed for a few minutes, maybe hours, with him there at the other end, trying not to make things worse. Feeling something had shifted. Something was different between them. He wanted to care, but couldn’t. Until that moment he had cared so much. Too much. He was unbearably caring. Now, suddenly, right there, he didn’t care at all.

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”

“Lily, God.” He dropped his chin, stared into the carpet between his thighs.

“Just go to work.” She pulled her legs together, pulled her robe tight around her waist. Left her arm there. “I’ll take care of it.”

***

The light switch cracked, a branch snapping in an empty wood. Tom drove the door open fully, forcefully. He tore over the threshold and ripped across the floor, raking each footfall, not compromising his distance from the door. He slung his keys into the chair beneath the light. They struck off the suede back and splayed over the floor with a violent chime.

Lilian, after a time, flowed over the frame, her purse in both hands, softly setting each step, the stems of her heels muffled by the delicate motion. She turned back toward the night and the handrail and the porch and the street. She lingered. She reached her right hand out, careful not to let her purse snag the petals of her frilled dress, and pulled the door slowly shut, holding the lever beneath her thumb until it aligned in the frame fully, so as not to cause a sharp clack. She released it, her hands red from the cold, her thumb white from pressing down on the handle. She wrapped her right hand in the left, the folds of her thumb and forefinger conforming to the other, stifling the shaking. She untangled her heels. She stared at them for a few moments, wiped her moist feet over one another until they were warm. She picked up the pumps and placed them near the closet in the adjacent corner. She set her purse down on the table. She turned around, into the apartment.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“Yes.

“Liar. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I am in a mood.”

“A bad mood?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing.”

“Will you just talk to me?”

“Haven’t I done enough talking tonight?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You let me do all the talking.”

She stared at him, unspeaking. Staring, silently, with no effort of response. Then she thought of the right words, she thought.

“You didn’t want to do all the talking?”

“I never want to do all the talking.”

“That’s not true.”

Tom pulled off his rain jacket, threw it into the couch and started unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. It was all very showy, he thought.

“Tom, what’s wrong?” Lilian approached him, slowly, like a child approaches a new dog, her hand out and tentative, evaluating the reaction with each advancing step. “Just tell me.”

Tom rolled his sleeves to his elbows and moved to the kitchen. He uncorked a bottle and pulled a glass from the cabinet. He poured it full and drank a little. It was very strong, and he didn’t want to taste it. He drank it again, larger.

“Tell me,” she said, caressing his arm as he set the glass back down. Her perfume wafting up to meet him. Fresh floral rush.

He wavered for a moment. Took another drink to blot out her aroma.

“I am on the other side of needy.” He’d rehearsed in the cab.

“What does that mean? What is that?”

Tom didn’t look at her. He and his drink crossed to the window in the living room. He set it down on the sill. Next to the sad little cactus, yellowing at the edges. He pulled the curtains apart. The rain had tapered off and the glass ran with the residue.

“What is the other side of needy, Tom?”

“The mood that follows after you allow yourself to be open, Lily. For God’s sake.” Tom made an exasperated thrust with his hands and began shredding his shoelaces from their grommets. “When you permit vulnerability momentarily. Does that make any sense at all to you?” He kicked his shoes into the wall. Like it made any sense to anyone. To him. “When you reach out to others to quench your social thirst, only to be found untimely.” He picked up his drink and took a larger fill. “I am on the other side of open.”

“That’s very vague,” she shook her head. “It sounds pretty, but it’s just vague.”

“I feel quite vague.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m the boy who interrupted his father’s phone call to play catch, only to be told ‘Not now, I’m on the phone.’ I am on the other side of an important lesson.”

“You think no one wanted to talk to you,” she took a few steps toward him, a hand wiping the surface of the kitchen island. Watching him watch rain.

“I don’t mind if that’s true. I simply hadn’t realized it was the case. I was under quite a different impression. That I needed to be more present.”

“I don’t understand where you are right now.”

“I am at home, learning how to enjoy being alone, in that unfilmed scene after the guy walks through the rain. Past that window with the party I wasn’t invited to. And that doesn’t have to be sad.”

“Is this what sad is for you?”

“No.” he smiled. He walked to her and caressed her shoulder twice. “This isn’t what sad is for me.” He stole away back to the window.

“I never know when you’re joking or when you’re serious with me.”

“It’s torturous, isn’t it?”

“Why do you do this?”

“Because I’m evil.”

“You’re not nearly as evil as you wish you were.”

“Why would I wish that.”

“Forget I said anything.”

“No. By all means. This is a fresh change. You’re actually speaking. Not staring. Saying nothing. Expecting me to say everything and owning none of it. Please go on.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Naturally.”

Lilian leaned on a planted foot, her hand draping over the kitchen counter, keeping herself steady. She stared down at the carpet in front of Tom’s feet. The skin of her head crinkling, working inside herself. She leaned and said nothing, digging desperately for something that would help. Something to help him. She was desperately in love with him, but she didn’t know what he needed. He drilled his stare into her delicate, despondent face, and he wanted to release her and let it go, but he had already started. He was callous and cold when he was like this, and she could feel his eyes burning into her like a magnifying glass in the sun and she tried but nothing came.

She turned her face from him. She cried silently. Just a few tears that wriggled down the grooves of her cheeks and slapped against the granite countertop in the heavy silence.

Tom puffed a breath and shook his head, releasing her. He turned and put his hands on the windowsill, staring off through the glass behind it.

Lilian wiped her damp cheeks and turned to him.

“At least I don’t speak just to be cruel.” She lowered her hands to her sides and sniffed away the last tear. “When I can’t figure out how to say it, I don’t say just anything just to hurt you.”

Tom didn’t move. He kept his hands on the sill, gripping gently, giving her nothing.

“I know you don’t mean it. You aren’t as cruel as you want to be.”

She stood for a moment, gazing over him with wet irises, hoping he wasn’t sad. She uprooted herself and drifted down the hall to the bedroom.

The boy crossed the room and pulled out the dining room chair. He sat and stared at the wriggles of rain slipping in and out of grooves down the glass. A dog barked somewhere nearby. He thought it should have been inside. Or perhaps it was learning a lesson as well.

He sat still for a while. Laughing to himself, half at himself. Laughing softly at how unnecessary it all was. How unnecessary it always was when he made it that way.

He stood and slid the seat in more gently and walked to the chair beneath the light, next to the couch. The chair he had been given by some friend somewhere who hadn’t felt like moving it. It was made for a person who hadn’t felt like moving it. Suede with most of the fiber rubbed dry in the cushion. Splotches from a spill or two some drink or other ago. He sat and placed his glass down on the cheap side table. In the center to keep it stable. He sat.

There were paintings on the wall. Things Lilian liked. A piece from a local artist titled Blue Bird on Branch, and a few still lifes. He liked them too, but not as much. She liked everything more. Paintings and little china and warm feet and especially him.

He reached for his glass at the center of the cheap side table. It still had taste and he wanted to drink until it didn’t. He wasn’t sad. He simply didn’t want to taste. He wanted to sit and be empty but not sad. He didn’t want to think about liking things or tasting things or hurting her or being careful. He wanted to simply slide down a groove without direction. Not to fall but to wriggle without weight.

He set his glass back down. There was a ring in the surface of the cheap side table. He wondered if he had made it with his glass. It was too dry. He may have made it before, or over time.

He reached down and picked up the keys at his feet, clamping them together so as not to make a clank.

She was perfect to him, at least he thought. She was. Unassuming. Patient.

He didn’t mean to be cruel. Not to her. He often was and he knew it, but he didn’t mean it. He meant to be cruel to others. Others who didn’t know he was being cruel and who thought he was just being odd or funny. He didn’t mean to be cruel to her and that made it all the worse when he was. He became vicious and biting and stubborn. He wanted to shake her. To break her composure. To push her patience. Make her lash out. She never bit.

He thought of her and how reluctant she had been from the start. And how much he wanted to be good to her. To be good for her.

“But you aren’t good. You’ve never been good.”

He had always been so thirsty for thrill, so wound up in his own journey to enlightenment. His desperate hole-plugging. His unrelenting burning.

He lifted his glass again. It had been too long.

He had tried with this one. He had tried to make it real with her, though he probably only told himself that to help calm his brain and not think of how little he actually tried.

He had wanted to try. That was the truth. He had always wanted to try. He had wanted so much to try and when he didn’t it hurt him so deeply and that was the love he experienced.

He drank.

He had never loved. Even platonically, he thought. That couldn’t have been true, but he thought it.

He had never truly let her in. He had let Jack in. Jack was the only one, he thought, who truly knew who he was. He wished he’d been born gay. Did anyone ever wish that?

He drank.

There was a book beneath the coffee table. Paperback and far enough away to make it too much work. He was in the mood for too much work. He leaned forward and it was the book he thought it was. The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings. Of course it was Poe. It was always Poe unless it was Fitzgerald. But it was never Fitzgerald. It was always Poe because if you were in Baltimore it had to be. Fitzgerald would have been better.

He had never cared for Poe. Poe would never care.

He lifted the book and the stack beneath it slid onto the carpet. A few notes, a stationery set called Avian Friends, and the books he had actually been reading, that weren’t for show. A little yellow envelope poked out from the corner of A Farewell to Arms. He set The Tell-Tale Heart in his lap and reached down for it.

“Tom” and a single heart, written in Lilian’s cursive.

It was sealed, placed in the pages of the last book he had read. Like she’d placed it there knowing he’d find it soon, without prompting. He unpeeled the envelope and withdrew the card. It was dated a month earlier. Had it really been that long since he’d read?

On the front, “I Love You.”

He opened it and read the poem printed inside.

“I want to dream with you,

Wake with you,

walk with you,

talk with you,

try with you,

day with you,

night with you,

dance in moonlight

with you,

winter and fall with you

summer, spring, all

with you.”

He took another drink.

In Lilian’s writing below it, “Because cards have a way of finding the words that I cannot. Please remember that I love you. Always.”

He sat for a moment. Took a drink. He thought of some line he’d read about serendipity. He was too drunk to recall. That letter was serendipitous, he thought. It just materializes when he needs it most? That was serendipity. Like there was a God.

He placed the card back into its envelope and slid it back beneath the cover of Hemingway’s abrupt tragedy.

She was down the hall. In the room behind that closed door. Sad and he was not. He felt worse. He shouldn’t have been so cruel. He wasn’t sad.

He was sure he wasn’t sad. He hadn’t read in a month and it had felt like only a few days. He was wasting it. All of it. Wasting it sitting in a chair. Playing needless games with a girl who just wanted to be a part of him. Drinking so that he didn’t have to taste. Shutting off senses so that he didn’t have to acknowledge them. He was wasting it and he hated it.

He sat back deep in the chair and opened the Poe book, hoping to find something to scorn. He was in the mood to hate something, just to feel it.

He flipped through. A Philosophy of Composition. An essay. He had seen it before, in flipping through pages of the book, when company was over and he needed something to do with his hands and the book was the nearest thing. He read a few passages and hated that it wasn’t drivel. He thought it may have been the only thing the drunk bastard had ever written of value. It made the most sense.

Tom scanned the essay for clichés and bad advice. Finding none and being unable to focus his vision to the task of reading, he set the book back in its place and wrapped his hands instead around his drink.

He sat back into the suede, scrolling over the battery those walls had taken. He threw a deck of cards against that wall, once, near the door. He was very angry and knew that type of thing was for show, but he did it anyway, and the deck flew through the air, the core stack sticking together and slamming the drywall, leaving a hole the size of a hockey puck. He’d punched through the drywall in the hallway. She’d covered it with a picture from Cancun.

The entertainment center was an unfinished project. He thought they could both work on it together. She thought the same, that’s why they’d bought it from that secondhand store. They would sand it and paint it and dress it with new knobs and knick knacks and everyone would ask about it and Lilian would say, “Oh, you should have seen it when we found it! Tom and I worked on it together. I guess you can say it’s the first thing we raised.” And they’d cluck and chatter and Tom would pour a bit more in his glass.

He searched the chamber further, resting on a picture on a shelf to the left of the unfinished project. It was framed in its silver coffin, the bodies inside completely colorless in a sepia filter.

Lily stood forever there to Tom’s left, Tom to the right. Standing, holding each other in the carbonite of that moment. There was a flower in Lilian’s hair, a large wild one that resembled a peeled banana without the fruit, a starfish in a voluminous sea of brunette. Tom wore a baseball cap, his favorite one, black and orange and water resistant, though it would never rain in that picture. In that picture it would always be smiling true smiles and blushing wide cheeks. Lilian’s face was painted that night. They had been to some party with some theme and it suited her well and she knew it and Tom couldn’t resist loving each morsel of her and knowing that he loved it all far too soon.

She was so different then, the girl with the paint on her face, a few stray strands of hair flowing over her forehead, her chin tucked into Tom’s chest. She was so wild, and so unearthed. They had only just been dating and her life, her history, her future was all so boundless and fresh and Tom would learn it all, digging as deeply as she’d let him. He didn’t know her favorite color yet, or her allergies, the name of her first pet, if she liked the cold or the warmth, the beach or the woods. They hadn’t broken down on that road trip just yet, and the Tom in the muted colors of that frame didn’t know he’d be glad for that time his mother had run out of gas when he was a kid, so he’d know what to do.

That Tom had no inkling of the way she’d be gone a few years later, that life would be different. Abruptly. Empty.

They were new in those dusted tones, budding in the springtime of courtship. Blissful and immortal, the dewy hope of the future on their hairless lips, the warmth of thrilling unknown blazing in their cheeks.

Holding him down so he wouldn’t float away.

Tom drank and thought about what they were in that moment. He was sure if he could freeze the Earth and encase one night it would be that one. Pick one. Any one from that luscious spring. He would bottle them both, in the prime of their bodies and harmlessness of their minds, the throes they thrust over one another before they knew too much. Before she knew too much about him.

“TOM.”

Something slammed in the bedroom and Lilian wailed, a violent, intestinal sob. Tom jumped up from the seat, tore across the living room, down the hall, flung the door into the wall.

Lilian knelt there on the carpet in the middle of the room, just below the sprinkler, her hands around the birdcage, her face ugly and screwed up in agony.

In the center of the cage, resting on the yellow bedding, snuggled two finches, flat on their backs, like figurines knocked over on a shelf.

Dead in eternal embrace, like they’d planned it.

Lily wiped the wet from her cheek. Spittle over her chin. Tar smeared around her eyes. She looked up at Tom.

“I’m pregnant.”

***

The bedroom door was open to a sliver. He noticed it from the front door, across the living room and down the hall.

He thought she must have been home by now. He’d taken his time. He’d usually tried to beat her home. He didn’t care that day. Not after the morning they’d had. He didn’t hear her moving around. She must still have been at the clinic, at her appointment. He looked up at the clock on the microwave. He hadn’t remembered he’d destroyed it a few days before. That was an ugly morning.

Tom passed by the dining table, by the living room, throwing his bag into the couch, watching to make sure a book didn’t tumble off the shelf. He went straight for the bathroom, straight for the toilet.

“Lily?”

He peed with the door open. He didn’t like doing it. Too classless, but he hadn’t heard her, so he’d assumed she wasn’t back yet.

He washed his face in the sink, wiping it on a moldy towel. He thought he should wash that. His face was darker in the summer, the lines stretching out from the corners of his eyes more pronounced. The little hairs between his eyebrows lighter, nearly blonde.

He buckled his belt. Went back to the kitchen. He opened the fridge, but he knew there was no beer. It was very hot in the apartment. Lily would have changed the thermostat if she were home. He needed to change into something else. His shorts, his tee shirt.

Then he noticed her purse on the table. Her keys beside it, her shoes kicked off in the corner like she’d never left. They hadn’t moved an inch since he’d left that morning.

“Lily?”

He felt it in his intestines first. Lava boiling.

She wasn’t there. She wasn’t back yet. They’d kept her there, at the clinic, to let her recover. She didn’t need her purse, somehow. They knew her. She took cash. Wore different shoes. That all made sense, somehow.

He knew none of that made sense.

The door had been locked. He was sure he’d had to unlock it when he entered.

She must have been back. The appointment was early. She was asleep. That was all. Exhausted from it. She was probably on some medication for it. He’d try not to wake her up.

He glided down the hall, stepping gently. The bedroom door was open to a sliver. She hated open doors. She thought a murderer might creep in if it weren’t fully shut. She was irrational like that. Imaginative. Not irrational.

“I’ll take care of it.”

He turned around. Thought better of going into the bedroom. Thought he’d just take his shirt off and sit in his underwear instead of waking her. He turned back up the hall toward the sofa. She was simply sleeping. His hand was shaking. He didn’t know why his hand was shaking. He wanted to be somewhere else.

He was having an episode, he thought, that’s all. He nearly tripped at the end of the hall. He’d keep his shirt on. Go for a walk. She was just asleep behind there. Just asleep behind the door that she never left open to a sliver.

He was sweating. He tried to unbutton his shirt, but his hand was shaking too violently. He steadied himself against the wall at the end of the hall. His insides fire.

He just needed Lily. As long as she held on to him, he wouldn’t drift away. He just needed her to hold him. He thought he’d turn around. Go in the room and cuddle with her, and that would make it better.

He walked back down the hall, back toward the bedroom. Over the floor gently like he might wake her with his footfalls. Like she was even asleep back there. Like he really believed it.

Like he didn’t know.

“I’ll take care of it.”

He lifted his hand to the door, but it was too weak. He was convulsing. He knew he was convulsing but he couldn’t stop it. It wasn’t real. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to be somewhere else.

“I’ll take care of it.”

He knew he couldn’t open it. He felt sick. He was sweating so badly, through his dress shirt and his slacks. Through his hair gel and crying, shaking, prostrate on the ground. From his hands and knees, he pushed the door open and vomited.

He saw it.

Not her but something that was. Something heavy, suspended, spinning slowly, only just. He spit all over himself. Crawled through his vomit, nudging the door open fully with his shoulder, keeping his head down, convulsing and spitting down his chest, sweating and shaking until he reached it.

He rolled over, fetal, put a hand up and tickled the foot like dangling shawls. He didn’t look at it. He lied there, covered in himself, sweating and blacking out. His eyes were kaleidoscopes. He thought he was having a heart attack, or a seizure, or something worse. He couldn’t move, but for the trembling his body was doing viscerally. He lied there. Sobbing. For hours, maybe days, he couldn’t look at it, couldn’t touch it but to tickle the foot.

When his eyes cleared up and his body dried out and all he had left were intermittent heaves, he saw it. Folded neatly on the floor. Just a small piece of the Avian Friends stationery. Directly below her dangling arm as if she’d been holding it. Like she’d meant to be holding it.

He reached out. His arm was too tired to shake any longer. He unfolded it under his palm, with one hand, against the carpet, he unfolded it. And through the darking room with the blackout shade and the shadow of death looming over he read.

“Look, we’re like the birds!”

“Alright, guys, be good and stay here.”

“Why are we here?”

“Just be good and it will all be ok.” The man turned back to his F-150. He would be right back. Tom was sure.

“I want to go home.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll be back. Just stay here.” The man called out from the driver’s seat.

An old gray woman in an old gray sweater that read “Hard Rock Cafe: Cleveland” led the boys up the sidewalk toward the heap of a house. There were children in the yard. Many children. And dogs. Many dogs. And Liam held tightly to his brother’s arm, scraping across the concrete in velcro light-ups, his head on a swivel, watching the pickup with the red velvet interior disappear over the black horizon.

An Australian Shepherd with murderous blue eyes peeled over the yard and pressed its paws into Liam’s chest. The boy whimpered and thrust himself into his brother’s side. Tom pulled him in and kicked at the dog, small for its breed, but big for the boys.

“Get. You shit. Get.” The gray lady shooed him with her limp wrists and and a scowl that was more forced than her smile.

In the yard, below a tree with limbs like lightning, barefooted children played in the grass, digging for worms and writing their names. A boy with a bright orange tee shirt stood on the swing strapped to a low branch, rocking back and forth, watching the newcomers with blazing bright eyes beneath dirty blonde locks. His mouth hung open slightly until he reminded himself to breathe. A little girl in lime green shorts chased a boy on a big wheels bike, a stick flopping lazily from her half-pointing hand. The boy pressed his body against each pedal, struggling to make the plastic wheels turn over the patchwork grass. The lime green shorts bounced erratically as the boy churned onward, yelps of excitement piercing the breeze blown from the wide yard fenced in by a thick dark forest.

The lady and her wispy hair tottered along beside them, a hand holding the air behind their backs, in case of more dogs.

“Y’all go on an’ get up in the house for sec.” The old woman lacked any semblance of nurture, but she was comforting in the haze of it all. Tom wondered if any of the children in the yard had been hers. He guessed she had never had any children of her own. Liam wondered only of where the dogs were tethered or if there were tethers at all.

On the crumbling porch, between lawn chairs and couches, and lite-brites, and unused refrigerators, and a doll house, and a legless couch sat a girl with a yellow spotted dress and big brown bangs and a white band across her head. She was taller than Tom, but only a bit, and most girls were then. She was very clean, when the other children were not, dirtying themselves with their scurrying through bushes and jumping from trees. While they were jumping, she was dreaming, gazing out into the world, wondering why birds never flew backward.

Tom nudged Liam for release and the little brother obliged reluctantly and they both climbed the stairs and the outside shut off. The world was all on that porch, along with most of the items found at a secondhand store and a few found only in this place in all the world and a little girl in a yellow spotted dress.

“I’m Bridget.”

“Tom.”

“Let me show you this.”

The girl climbed over the couch and her dress flew up and Tom was embarrassed for her and didn’t know why and Liam liked her right away and wanted to be as close as possible for safety’s sake. She rummaged through the garden of lost sundries and crawled down on her hands and knees, a mole digging for something it had left just there.

“Over here. Look at this.”

Bridget waved an emphatic hand and Tom put his in hers and she pulled him down and there they were.

“It’s supposed to make ghosts come in the house.”

Liam crawled over between them, terrified at the prospect.

“Ghosts?”

“They aren’t real, Liam.”

“Yes they are!”

Tom covered Liam’s ears and begged her not to scare the kid.

“I mean. There are none here. Don’t worry.”

Liam lifted his head and dared a peek at the ouija board, but only for a moment and not to truly see it. The girl smiled at him warmly and drew out the windowed planchette. She placed it on the board.

“See. You put your hand on that, and I put my hand like that.”

The little girl and the little boy took a deep breath and let the movement come to them in harmony, scrolling over letters they couldn’t read, landing on a few, looking up at each other from under thick eyelashes. The planchette held and the little girl gasped at Liam.

“Thought y’all was goin’ up the house!” Liam shot up and screamed.  The gray lady and her gray sweater stood over them with her hands to her hips. An accusatory, albeit playful, expression creeping from the corners of her eyes.

“I told you it makes ghosts come in the house.” Bridget whispered to Tom, and Liam started and grabbed onto her again. She rubbed his head and laughed a little and Liam was fine.

The gray lady grabbed a broom by the door and pushed a shoulder into it. A percussion of barks and growls met the end of the broom and Liam ran to the end of the porch.

“Back you damned dogs. Go on.” The gray lady looked back at Liam and lifted the broom up, “Don’t worry fella’. I got ‘em. Come on get on over here.”

The three children crossed over the threshold and the boys rebuffed at the blast of dander and urine that met them. Tom pretended not to notice. Liam pulled the collar of his purple LA Gear shirt up over his nose. Bridget giggled at his new fashion statement.

“Y’all can get ya’ some water in here, it’s the kitchen.” The gray lady reached into a cupboard and pulled down two plastic cups, their Shoney’s logos shining against the orange kitchen light.

“An’ if you need ta use the bathroom, it’s right here.” She opened a door to a small half bath with black and white floor tiles and cracking teal walls. “Need some toilet paper, so go upstairs if ya’ gotta use the toilet paper. Get. Ya’ dumb dog.”

She put a foot out to keep a Basset Hound at bay. Liam stood behind the wall of Tom and Bridget’s  bodies, not as frightened by this one’s comical shape.

“Now y’all can either go watch the TV in ‘ere with them, or you can run around outside ‘til it’s dark. Just don’t go to the street and don’t go to the woods and I won’t be mad atcha. Y’all just get comfy and play with the others and you’ll be fine.”

The gray lady picked up a Dachshund and hobbled up the carpeted staircase, pushing against the wall to steady herself. The Dachshund’s head bobbed between her neck and shoulder.

Tom peeked around the open doorway to the small living room. A few kids sat on the floor, watching Allegra’s Window, and drooling over their chins. A black man sat on the couch above them, wearing a wife beater in the warmth, sweat pants on the tepid spring day. A white girl with slim shoulders and slim legs and slim arms and a bulbous little belly bounced in from somewhere beyond the doorway and handed him a plastic souvenir cup from a 7-11 Slurpee, or a Super Sized Hi-C. She kissed the man on his head and he stared on intently at the television  as the little blue cat played his piano, too cool for the rest of the puppets.

The slim white girl put her arm around the black man’s exposed shoulders. He put his hands in his pants and slid down on the couch farther. He seemed tired, but he didn’t blink. The slim white girl’s head rolled around on her neck, heavy and dirty, her hair up in a knot. She couldn’t sit still, plopping her legs over his lap, playing with his corn rows, scratching her arms until her white skin reddened. She wore a purple tank top with a nude bra showing from the top and the bottom of the tiny shirt.

She confused Tom. He thought she must have been pregnant, with her bulbous little belly, but the rest of her was thin. Except for the little naked folds between her breast and her armpit. Tom stood for too long in the doorway, trying to understand her. The black man hadn’t blinked in too long.

Bridget wrestled him from his stare, her clean little fingers wrapping around his wrist.

“You wanna’ go play in the yard, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on.”

Bridget grabbed Tom’s arm, still stubby, but longer than it had been, and led him over the piss stained shag carpet of the tiny living room. The wind blew the muslin curtain into the back of the black man’s head and his white waitress with the popping belly yelled after Bridget, “Hey where you goin’ little Ms. Thang.”

“Showing them outside. They just got here.”

The slim armed girl leaned down the couch, over her belly and poked one of the drooling children on the carpet, “Ooh, Bridget got a little boyfriend!”

“Shut up, Tracy!”

“I’m just messin’ witchoo!” Tracy pushed herself back up, clawing at the black man’s arms to hoist herself up. “y’all go play. Hey– no kissin’!”

She cackled and mumbled into the man’s bare arm. He sipped his Hi-C, his full devotion to Face and the cast of Nick Jr.

The deck was a cousin of the porch, but far less cluttered. There were still some boxes of toys and broken hand me downs, but there was room to move around the flaking wooden planks and rusting bolts. The back of the house was enclosed more closely by the edge of the wood, the trees looming dark, keeping the children in the yard.

“Aw, there’s a pool!” Liam scrambled over the weather worn patio and bounded down the steps. They raced through the thick grass in the shade of the forestline, ambling toward the tall above ground pool. Liam reached the ladder first and climbed too slowly and Tom caught up and pushed him up the rungs to move faster and they were nearly there when they looked over the edge and saw the dry basin and dead leaves and live squirrels and a few toys flung over and lost.

“It’s too cold anyway.”

Bridget waved to them to follow her across the field and toward a group of children gathered around a plastic Sesame Street clubhouse. The little house was big enough for four Liams, but most of the children were a little bigger.

“This is Tom.”

A few of the kids waved at Liam and Tom and Liam ran over to a black kid swinging a yo-yo. Tom reached out to call him back.

“He’s fine.” Bridget put a hand on his shoulder, her little yellow dress shining against the sunlight. She had freckles on her nose. Tom decided that was a good thing.

“Come on, we play house in here.”

Tom and Bridget went inside the little Sesame Street house, ducking to fit under the door. It was small and smelled like feet, but there was a little table and two chairs built into the mould. The other kids waved at them from outside the glassless windows on either end.

One of the other girls crawled inside and placed a frisbee full of mud and grass on the table.

“Alright. I made us spaghetti and meatballs and there’s cheese on the spaghetti too, also.”

“Mmm it smells delicious, Molly.” Bridget picked up a handful of dirt and placed it in front of Tom, and Tom wondered what Liam was doing outside for a moment, but Bridget’s little freckles and perfectly straight bangs made him forget again. “Ok, Tom. You eat up all your spaghetti.”

“I made this special, just for us.” Molly was a skinny little girl with blonde hair and a white turtle neck covered in little floral pock marks. One of her eyes was very red.

“Your eye is red.”

Molly covered her eye and tucked her chin into her chest.

“Tom!”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s itchy.”

“You should get some medicine.”

“I don’t want medicine.”

“Medicine is good for you.”

“It hurts.”

Molly uncovered her eye, showing the conjunctivitis. Outside, Liam was running in and out of the little boy’s range as he swung his yo-yo as far as it would stretch and fetched it back to his palm.

Suddenly, all the little children outside of Tom’s broken little Sesame Street home began cheering and running away from them. Tom crawled outside and  saw a taller kid with glasses and a high top fade walking toward the crowd of children with a remote control in his hand. Above him, a battery powered helicopter buzzed in tight circles.

“Leonard, let me see. Can I play, Leonard?”

“Hold on, everybody, hold on.” Leonard was the oldest kid there and had the coolest things. He was very, very skinny, and he coughed every time he spoke. He had an inhaler clipped to his belt. His elbows hovered over all the dirty heads of hair following the chopper through the sky.

Tom stood a few feet from the rest of the children, looking on at the scrappy pile of mudpuppies. They were all grubby and brightly colored and bouncing up and down in excitement. Tom thought there must have been twenty at least, of all different races and sizes and hair colors and all happy together, but in some way broken, like toys in a thrift store bargain bin, all mostly pieced together, but missing an ear, or a hat, or the button on the back for judo chopping action.

Bridget stood beside him. A little taller, but only a bit and she smiled every time she looked at him. Tom was sure there must have been something wrong with her too, but he hadn’t found it. She seemed to be just out of the box, fresh and porcelain and vibrant and happy to be out for play time.

Across the yard, Liam chased his new friend and the other children dispersed from Leonard’s show. Tom watched on as Liam ran around the tree, uncontrolled, and skidded onto his knee. His new friend kept running, but Liam turned over and held his leg with both hands, then he poked his head up and looked around to see if anyone saw his accident. Tom darted across the grass and down to the ground in front of him.

“Ow, I hurt it, I hurt.”

“It’s just a scratch”

Liam’s knee was bleeding. It was just a scratch. The boy was terrified of blood. Tom helped him up.

“See. You’re ok.”

“I need a Band-Aid, Tommy.”

“Come on.” Bridget waved them toward the back door. They walked back to the deck and by the pool, full of everything but water, Liam milking his injury, Tom angry that he’d ruined play time.

“You’re faking.”

“It hurts real bad!”

Inside, the scene had gone mostly unchanged. The children had gone away to play somewhere, but the white girl and her boyfriend were still glued to the television. She had since slid to the carpet between his legs. He hadn’t blinked since they’d last seen him.

“Hey little mama, why you back inside?”

“He hurt his knee.”

“Ohhh, little baby, go get you a Band-Aid out the kitchen.”

Tom stood just inside as Bridget took Liam’s hand and led him into the kitchen.

“What’s your name little cutie?”

“Tom.”

“Is that your little brother?”

“Yes.”

“He’s fakin’ ain’t he?” She laughed and Tom nodded. She was very nice to him, with her empathetic expressions, wildly splaying her skinny arms out and buckling them back in to her pop belly as she spoke. “My name’s Tracy.”

“I know.”

The black man looked over at Tom, breaking his gaze for the first time.

“What you wearin’ a football jersey little mans?”

“Yes.”

“You like football?”

“Yes.”

“You think you could tackle me, huh?” The man laughed and scratched his stomach, spreading his legs out farther along the carpet and slouching in his seat.

“I could tackle you.”

The man laughed and clapped his hands languidly. “I bet you could. Damn. That’s a tough ass kid, man. Damn.”

Tom tried not to smile. He was proud of himself, but didn’t know why.

“You wanna’ come watch this wif us?” The girl spread her skinny arms out and patted the floor next to her. Tom walked over and sat down. They smelled bad. Like a towel left in the washer too long after its cycle. But there was something familiar and comforting about them.

They were watching Cops. Tom had seen it before, but wasn’t allowed to watch it. His mom didn’t like him to see things that were too real. The people always looked too  much like her friends.

“He’s all better.”

Bridget and Liam came back around the corner from the kitchen. Liam still crying, he scurried over the carpet and sat down next to Tom, poking lightly at the Band-Aid stuck to his knee cap.

“Aw what’s wrong guy. You got a boo boo?”

Liam sniffed and wiped his nose and nodded, his pupils dilated in the poorly lit room.

“What happened?”

“Fell.”

“Aw, well that’s alright. Boo boos makes you stronger!”

Bridget sat down on the other side of Tracy.

“Here, come here, lemme see.” Tracy patted the floor in front of her. Liam looked up at Tom, and then back down at his knee. “Come on, I ain’t gonna bite you.”

Liam pushed himself up and limped over to her and sat down between her outstretched legs.

“Lemme seeeeee,” she walked two fingers up his good leg and poked his non Band-Aid knee, “does that hurt?”

Liam shook his head and hiccupped.

She walked her fingers up his tummy and poked his chest. “What about that?”

Liam shook his head.

“No?” Tracy laughed and rubbed his head. “What aboooouuuuu….”

Then Tracy stuck her claws into his stomach and tickled him relentlessly. Liam squirmed and rolled around the carpet giggling and coughing for her to stop and she kept going until he turned red in the face and begged her to let him go. He lay there on his back, breathing and sweating heavily, crying but not in pain. He sat up and held his arms over his belly.

“You feel better?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” Tracy sat up straight and leaned over her bulbous belly and drew in closely to Liam. “What if I let you play a game since I tickled you so hard?”

Liam nodded his head.

“Aright. So I’m gonna lay down right here.” Tracy rolled over and lay flat on the ground, her belly sticking up, the rest of her thin like molted scales on the carpet. “And you can take my hands. Come here stand over me and take my hands.” Liam did. “And I uh lift you up and you can hop up and down on my belly since I tickled your belly and then we even.”

Liam hopped and hopped and the girl coughed and coughed and the black man watched Cops and Tom and Bridget watched Cops too. Then Tracy sprung from the rug and ran into the kitchen and slammed the bathroom door shut and the kids all sat quietly for a second until they heard percussive convulsions from behind the closed door and decided it was best to go outside.

The black man slouched a little farther in his seat, the muslin curtains blowing over his exposed shoulders.

The sun was beginning to settle in beneath the treetops. The kids were still outside. Some tired and lounging on the grass. A few with gas left in the tank chasing after one another with bubble wands and hoola hoops. Leonard sat beneath a tree, his inhaler in his hand, his glasses sliding down the tip of his nose. Tom and Liam sat on the porch, watching one of the fatter kids in the driveway, trying to pass just one round with the Skip It while none of the other kids were paying attention.

“Tom.”

“Yeah?”

“Do we live here now?”

Tom sat at the edge of the step and kicked off a piece of the chipping brick. He wiped his eyes and looked up at the lush treeline, the sun melting the canopy into the blue setting.  

“I hope so.”

“I miss mom.”

“I know.”

Bridget edged around the brick wall, her hand out toward Tom.

“Come over here”

Tom stood up and helped Liam to his feet. They followed Bridget to a the shade of a giant Beech tree, where a few kids were swinging in a hammock. Liam crawled over to where his yo-yo friend was digging into the soft earth with a stick. His knee seemed to be better.

“Can we get on with you?”

The other kids scooted over to make space for them, and Bridget held down one side of the latticed ropes to let Tom hop up. He had never been on a hammock before. Bridget jumped up from her tip toes and turned to lay gracefully in the maliable netting, her freckles glowing under the warm orange sun as the dusk shooed the birds back into the trees.

As they lay there in their unsupervised paradise, a green Astrovan plummeted into the driveway from somewhere very fast. Tom jolted up. He searched for Liam, who was just at his feet and grabbed his shoulder and shook it.

The van peeled up to the edge of the grass and the sliding door screeched open. His mother crouched there in the opening. On her knees, her arms flung forward and her mouth wet with tears from the dark purple orbs socketed into her cheeks.

Her eyes bleeding tar and her hair slathered against her face like wet newspaper. She bent herself out of the van her hands spread out like Moses and her knees red roses she was something too dramatic, or maybe she wasn’t. She was crying under the sun but it all slopped together under the deep purple of her eyes. She was red all over from rubbing and crying.

Tom hesitated and waited for Liam, who rushed past him and right into the van, unknowing. Tom waved goodbye to the little girl on the hammock and her little freckled nose and walked across the yard, the guilty walk through the pews at trial. His mother folded herself around him, engulfing him, bringing him into the van, wiping his cheeks down with yellow fingers  and sucking back snot from her drenched face. She sobbed and groaned the boys’ names, and Liam crawled over on his hands and knees to sit in her lap in consolation. Tom didn’t look at her. He didn’t want to see her wet, wrinkled face. He didn’t want to feel her sopping hair against his neck. Her eyes burned through him and he couldn’t bear it; while she had wept for hours, searching for him, considering the worst, expecting his body washed up on the road, he had played House with a girl in a yellow spotted dress, swinging in a hammock and laughing with his hand on her hand, and he wanted that to be it and forever.

They’d never play with those kids and their toys and that little yellow girl in that little spotted dress with her little freckled nose ever again.

I’ve had a lot of fat kids lie on top of me. At least two. And not because I wanted them to, but they happened. Very distinctly and for very different reasons and that seems like too many times not to feel like a lot.

I was eight years old, I think. For simplicity’s sake, I was eight. For both of them. The same year. Perhaps I was just the right size.

The first one happened like this, as I can remember it….

When we were kids, Mikey would dare me to do things. He was four years older, still is in fact, and had a particular influence over the dangers to which I exposed my body. He’d dare me to do things, and I’d do them. A bit of it was to impress him, because he was older and I was younger and that’s the way it works. A lot of it was to surpass him. To show him how much more daring and strong I was and how weak and pathetic he was. Stronger or weaker, he never had a fat kid lie on top of him. I think he won.

Once, on a day we were both pretending to be sick from school, he convinced me to escape the house with him. He had a plan. Probably something scandalous.

“Hey, we’re sneaking out.”

“What?”

We were in our respective mattresses, side by side beneath the tiled basement ceiling. We made a mount for the 24 inch TV/VCR out of a Merriam-Webster’s First Dictionary, and a boxed set of The Chronicles of Narnia, and a children’s bible we’d never opened. The Dark Crystal playing. We’d broken the flap of the VCR that covered the spine of the VHS while it spun, so the white and blue rental sticker poked up from the reel as it played. Skeksis and humanoid porcelain elves. The whole setup was precarious and nauseating, but we weren’t sick, only pretending, to stay home from school.

“I said: we’re sneaking. out.”

My chiefest concern was that we would be caught. Dad slept just a few feet and an L shaped turn away from us. He’d been home for two weeks, which was strange for him. He was normally up and out of the house before were awake for school, his boots leaving a sprinkle of sod on the landing near the side door, the F150 leaving the driveway wide and damp as he peeled off for whatever job he had that day. He’d been sleeping so late lately that he would still be in bed as we were skipping down the path through the woods to the schoolyard to our classrooms.

On that fake sick day, we’d already woken him up early to tell him we weren’t going to school. At least, Mikey had already done so. If he heard us moving around now, he’d know we were faking it.

I was afraid of what dad might do if he heard us out of our mattresses, but after a small amount of coercion, Mikey convinced his new conscript that we’d be out and back in time before dad woke up to see we’d gone.

“Besides, he wouldn’t care if we left anyway. What would he say?”

“If we get caught, I’m telling on you.”

“We’re not going to get caught. We’ll be back before he wakes up.”

He was a liar. He had always been a liar.

“Come on. We need a paper bag.”

“For what?”

“For what? Wah. For what? Just come on.”

“He’s going to hear us.”

“No, he won’t.”

We rolled out of our beds, two grubby little moles crawling off of flat little mattresses spread out on the basement ground to face each other. We sifted off the springs like eggs from a pan and collided on the floor between them.

“Ow, stop it!”

“Ssh!” His giant blue eyes set wide in his skull, piercing me in the dim gray of the room in the morning dark. Mikey had a disarming ability to slide in and out of alertness when reprimand hung in the balance. He was an adroit little mole.

We unstuck our paws and scuttled across the floor to the staircase. Mikey was wearing his favorite shiny track pants, or parachute pants, or swoosh pants, as we called them, for the “woosh, woosh!” they made when the legs rubbed together. He crawled with a wide crabby gait to keep them from swooshing.  He jerked his pale blue face back at me twice, or maybe only once, to remind me to be quiet. We had very short attention spans.

We liked paper bags in our house. Not because we hated the Earth. We didn’t think much of the Earth at all, really. Paper bags served many purposes in our household – trash bags, textbook covers, Halloween masks—they were extremely versatile.

A paper bag carried other benefits, too. A paper bag was sturdy, so it could hold a lot more than a plastic bag. And if you were interested, it was also quite flammable. That morning, though I wasn’t aware of it yet, we were interested.

We snuck upstairs, on all fours to muffle our rustles, over the fifth step with the big hole in it, where the moisture had rotted through, where Mikey always said a monster under the staircase would reach its hand out and grab me if I walked too slowly. I didn’t believe him, but I kept my pace just in case. Pride shouldn’t kill you when you’re eight.

We made it upstairs and quieted Molly. She was a Dachshund, mostly, with markings like a Doberman, and we told everyone her father was a Rottweiler, but she was really just a Dachshund. Her nails were too long and they clacked relentlessly on the tiled kitchen floor when she saw us. I dove over her to stifle her floor scratching.

The kitchen was a wreck most days, with children coming and going, leaving messes, and adults with poor diets who loved to snack and hated to cook and a dog and two cats with limited rules and open access to most surfaces without restriction. That day was no different.

We crawled across the floor. Because of course we did. We were on a mission and crawling was the most tactically efficient movement of any secret mission. Mikey opened the snack drawer, withdrawing a paper bag from the stack behind a near empty box of Oatmeal Cream Pies. He whipped it through the air, slung it at my head, and paper bags really truly cut the air, and it struck me right above the eye, and I started to yell, but he threw a finger to his lips and hushed a fast hush over his knuckle and I knew I couldn’t scream or I’d be in just as much trouble.

I grabbed the bag and slapped him with it, once with the flat edge and it didn’t really hurt, and he tip-toe-ran out of the kitchen, laughing to himself because it didn’t really hurt. We skipped over the carpet and to the front door. It was less loud than the side door, but more prone to neighbors’ eyes, but they wouldn’t see, or care if they did, so we took that chance. Mikey opened the door, holding the knob at its fullest rotation so as not to let the flick click and awaken dad, wedging his foot against the storm door to thwart its rattle.

We were both outside, on the vermillion porch and he closed it, quietly, but let it clank a little louder because we were outside and if we couldn’t see something we couldn’t be within earshot.

“What are we doing?”

“I’ll tell you. But first, you have to go fill this bag with dog poop.”

I wanted to ask why, but this sounded serious. So, I took the bag and snuck into the backyard.

I snatched a shovel from the pile stacked against the old tin shed, adjacent the high fence that separated our yard from Solomon’s house behind us, diagonally. Inspecting the unkempt lawn, I found two or three ample samples and sent them cascading from the spade and into the paper, the masses sliding against the side and slapping to the base. Once it was heavy enough, I collected the bag, waved inside to thank Molly, because I was eight, and ran back around to the front yard.

Mikey was waiting with his arms crossed at the top of the stairs, bold as Napoleon, his swoosh pants whispering, “woosh, woosh!” each time he switched his weight from left foot to right foot.

“Did you get it?”

“Here.”

I handed him the bag and his eyes lit up. Those crazy eyes, sunken and malnourished, beaming at the weight of the bag I produced.

“It’s so heavy!”

“There is a lot of poop in there.”

“Aw, it reeks.” He held the bag out with his skeletal little arms. “Good work, young one. Good work.”

“Can you tell me what we’re doing now?”

“Alright. I’ll tell you. But not here. It’s too dangerous. Molly could bark and wake up dad. Then we’re both screwed.”

We scuffed our feet down the driveway, making more noise than if we had simply walked, but what was the fun in that? We ran now, across the fence and out of view of the house, toward the forest on the edge of the schoolyard where we sat in the woods just by the field.

Mikey sat on a tree stump and I on the ground in front of him and he set the bag of poop down and reached into his swoosh pants pockets. His arms were so skinny the pockets swallowed him straight to the elbow. He fidgeted around, shoveling through Pokemon cards and a pocket knife and string and probably cookies and finally he unsheathed it. A pack of lighters. A five pack of Bics. A jubilee of blues and purples and greens, and clear so you could see the fluid splash if you tilted the package. This was real.

“That’s dad’s.”

“I don’t see his name on it!”

“He’s gonna kill you.”

“Not if he doesn’t know I took it.”

Mikey ripped open the plastic and pulled out the orange lighter. He flicked it. Three times until he could make the flame ignite. Then he flailed his hand in the air and sucked his thumb and rubbed it on his shirt to stifle the pain. He unfurled the paper bag and deposited the lighters.

“Ok. Here’s the plan.”

It was a masterpiece. One of his best yet.

I should back up. You see, there weren’t many white kids in our neighborhood. In fact, we were one of only two white families in Seabrook, Maryland. We didn’t make much of it, and really didn’t notice it until much later on, and we had plenty of friends. But there was something written somewhere that said we weren’t allowed to be friends with any other white kids in the neighborhood, or else it looked like we were scared, or racist, or something. It was almost bad enough Mikey and I were brothers, but people let that one slide because we couldn’t help it.

The other white family lived two streets north. There were three streets that ended at the forest on the edge of the schoolyard. Our street was the last street with an outlet to the south end of the woods. The other white family street was the last street with an outlet to the north end of the schoolyard. Solomon’s street separated the two. We didn’t see much of the other white people, except when we went to play on the playground, or to the basketball court, or to play football on the soccer field.

Mikey was in a dicey situation. He knew he wasn’t allowed to be friends with their son, Herdick. Yes, Herdick. That was really his name—as if it weren’t bad enough already he was white. The kid followed Mikey around like he was made of chocolate. He also wasn’t all that bad, but he was dumb and big and his skin was really red and his teeth were misplaced and jagged, like they’d been sharpened down with a file, and he cut his hair really short like a neo Nazi pig farmer. Like he didn’t know he was in a black neighborhood. Mikey was nice to him in secret, when it was just the two of them and no one else could possibly see. But he didn’t like that Herdick tailed and tried to play with him when other kids were there. It was too suspicious. Mikey couldn’t have his real friends thinking he was friends with the other white boy—as if it weren’t bad enough already he was white.

This newly hatched plan would put an end to that. Once and for all. The lighters. The poop. There was only one ingredient left to gather.

“We need some eggs.”.

Dad didn’t cook, so we didn’t really keep eggs in the fridge. We had other things and we ate cereal for breakfast, and I didn’t even like eggs, though I think Mikey did. At any rate, Solomon’s family would definitely have eggs. They were always cooking. Meat and eggs and sometimes even monkey brains, or at least that’s what dad said. He didn’t like African people too much when they cooked.

Dad would stand in the backyard, smoking his strange cigarette, the one that smelled like skunk musk, with the basement window open so we could hear.

“They’re cooking that fucking monkey brains again.” He puffed his skunk musk. “Smells fucking awful.” It smelled awful.

Dad didn’t smoke the skunk musk inside. He smoked his Marlboros inside, but not the skunk musk. We lived in grandpa’s basement, during the week, since the split. We were with dad on school days, until mom could find work. Out of the two of them, I guess dad found more of it. Dad said grandpa didn’t like him smoking the skunk musk inside.

In the woods, on that day, when we were supposed to be in soggy little mattresses, Mikey had already thought through our egg predicament.

“I already told Solomon to leave eggs out for us.”

“How do you know he did it?”

“Trust me. He did it.”

Mikey gathered up the bag and we scurried over brambles and brush and a sticker bush pricked me, but you had to keep going right there, in that part of the woods where the side of our house loomed clear through to the schoolyard, because if dad poked out from his basement window, we were screwed.

Solomon lived in the house behind ours, diagonally, with his Nigerian parents, and American brother, and American sister. Mikey and Solomon were best friends most of the time. They played basketball nearly daily, until dark, and sometimes after, when the lights on the side of the school building turned on. It wasn’t the type of basketball court pre-pubescent kids should be enjoying after sundown, but the neighborhood was filled with the type of parents who bore the blame for that. So, the ill-attended pre-pubescent kids dribbled over school basketball courts after sundown, and were introduced to the kind men who littered the playground in dime bags, and the kids fell into the cycle, and the neighborhood would always be the type of place they shouldn’t enjoy after dark.

In the woods near the school, passing over Black & Mild tips, and condoms, and poison ivy, and harmless things, too, we kept a soft gaze on our periphery, to the window with the brown blinds, where dad’s face might pop up at any moment.

“Hurry UP.”

“Shut up!”

We crossed safely, our little house out of view, tucked in neatly behind Solomon’s. Solomon’s house was big and white, with a high fence that was always unlocked, expecting children of all ages entering and exiting. There were no cars around the front of the house in the driveway. Solomon’s parents were one of the educated sets in the neighborhood. They worked at NASA, or NSA, or something like that, we could never remember, but they lived behind us, surrounded by poor black people and a very few, but even poorer white people. Something about emigrating and the American dream and prosperity and purpose had been lost on the families around them. They didn’t socialize with the adults. What was there to say? But, their kids were athletes, and very bright, and were very popular with all the other kids.

Mikey unlatched the fence, taller than both of us combined. A black squirrel whisked through the high grass in the backyard, pouncing over the tufts weightlessly. Black squirrels were everywhere in our neighborhood. Throughout most of the county. I never thought that was odd. I never thought anything about being black was odd back then. Everything was just everything.

“Aw, perfect. Here.”

Mikey squatted down by the side of the house, where Solomon’s little basement window poked out on ground level. It was black now, he being at school, while we were out being bad. Solomon had a Sega Dreamcast in that room. We’d go over some nights, when dad was out and we knew we wouldn’t see him until tomorrow. Solomon’s family always cooked that awful smelling meat. Maybe it was a stew of some sort, but we just knew it as monkey brains.

His parents knew we wouldn’t eat it, but they were so kind to us. When we were over to play with Solomon, they’d order us all food from the Danny’s carryout a few blocks away. Chicken Cheesesteaks and French fries with mambo sauce. Everyone in our neighborhood dipped their fries in mambo sauce. Pink-orange tangy syrup we used like hot sauce. I never thought that was odd.

“What do they think I don’t feed you?” Dad would blurt out, his eyes milky and piping hot, when we strolled around the corner with our leftovers. “We have food. Mikey. We have all kinds of food up there!”

We didn’t have Chicken Cheesesteaks or mambo sauce. We’d sit in Solomon’s basement room and eat from our styrofoam with brittle plastic forks. So many wasted salt and pepper packets and single ply napkins. Who used those?

Solomon would eat what his parents made for dinner. He didn’t seem to mind at all that we had good food and he had to eat monkey brains. He’d eat with his family while we played Sonic, or while I watched Mikey play Sonic, really, and then he’d join us. Usually he did his homework, though he was always on Honor Roll, so I wondered why he worried so much. Then again, he never seemed to worry at all. He did it all so peacefully, that affable many-toothed smile on his face. Kids should be wise like Solomon.

On that day, while Solomon was wiser than us at school, we pushed the fence wide to his backyard, to where his room looked out to the world. Right next to the window, nestled in the weeds at the base of the siding, rested three eggs, each set perfectly upright, as though Solomon had reached out of his window and felt them there carefully.

Mikey scooped them up a little carelessly, dropping one onto the thick bed of grass. He gaped at me with his mouth wide and his eyes wider.

“Thank God they don’t cut their grass.”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, put these in the bag.”

“With the poop?”

“Yeah. Carefully.”

“What about the lighters in there?”

“It’s fine, just don’t shake it.”

“I don’t want to open it.”

“Just open the BAG!”

“Shh!”

We were separated from dad by only very tall planks of wood. A yell like that may have flown up over the backyard, hopped the fence, and rushed right to his resting cochlea.

“Just set them in there gently.” Mikey whispered.

Back in the woods, we rested our legs for a few minutes, watching unseen animals and unfelt wind bounce the wild strawberries on their springy stems, fishing bobbers signaling bites. The woods surrounding the school housed so much fetching flora. Most of the green things around us seemed like accidental transplants. Like some foreign dignitary sent them on to Washington after a World War, to be spread along the lawn, but the trip was too long, and the seeds fell off in that little patch of woods in Seabrook, Maryland, instead. Everything grew with everything else, without discrimination, deciduous, coniferous, it didn’t matter, this was Maryland. It was all so exotic and wild and regular. Even the black berries might have been poisonous. They weren’t, though. We knew that.

“Black is clean and good to eat. Red is bad and makes you gag.”

That wasn’t always true. You could eat the little wild strawberries, if you washed them under the hose in your backyard. But, most of the red ones were bad. Mikey used to throw the little red ones at Stephan in our backyard, when Stephan wore that same white shirt. He’d beam them into Stephan’s chest, the red jelly flaring into little pink blemishes all over him.  But, Stephan would just keep wearing white to play with us. I wasn’t sure if he owned another shirt. He wore Ramone’s old sweatpants.

We used to play football with Stephan and his big brother Ramone and Jamaal and Mark and Solomon and everyone else. Always on Sundays. Always after the Redskins game, which was almost always at 1pm. Ramone was so much older, so he was always automatic quarterback. I’d always end up covering Mark. He was a year older, but I was better, and he hated it. Ramone was the only high school kid who came to play with us. I always thought it was weird, because he wasn’t a little bitch or anything– he was actually one of the cooler high school kids in our neighborhood. He was just so nice to his little brother Stephan, and all of Stephan’s friends. I guess he just wanted to spend as much time with his little bro as he could.

Ramone was shot in the chest that year.

He died in the helicopter. On the ground.

Something to do with gangs and guns and things I didn’t fully understand. He was always so nice to us. How could someone that nice have been in a gang? I guess that made him pretty easy to shoot in the chest.

Mikey stopped pegging Stephan with red berries after that. He even gave him some red and black shirts from his collection.

Older brothers are strange.

“Oh, SHIT!”

Suddenly, across the schoolyard, the sides of the school split and fractured and bled with the little clots of children on their way out to recess, pouring over the jungle gym and the basketball court and the soccer field. The little faraway figurines spilled out over the grass, covering it in black and grey, and edging closer and closer every moment. Children’s faces became clearer. Jamaal and Mark were the first ones out to the basketball court. It was first recess and we were in a really sparsely covered portion of the woods.

“RUN!”

We jumped up from the forest floor.

“Grab the bag!”

We bolted over the brush, sprinting through splinters and prickerbushes, smashing little empty Doritos bags beneath our feet. We were climbing north through the woods toward Herdick’s street, the last street that opened into the trees lining the schoolyard. I kicked the toe of my Filas and nearly lost a shoe, but caught myself and filed in behind Mikey, my hand on his back as we came to a stop behind a large tree in Herdick’s side yard.

“Do you think they saw us?”

“No. God, get off me.” He slipped his shoulder and turned to face me. “Ok. Alright.”

He was breathing heavily. From the sprint and from the excitement of being right there, bag in hand. Ready to set the world on fire.

“This is actually good.”

“What?”

“Yeah. She’ll think someone else did it.”

“Who? Did what?”

Mikey was visibly nervous, now. He kept wiping his hands down the front of his swoosh pants, exhaling harsh animated breaths, trying to convince himself he was calm and everything was okay and we wouldn’t be caught. It wasn’t like him.

I had only ever seen him that nervous once before, when he came home long after I’d gone to bed. Dad had gone out on a Friday evening, and Mikey was sure he wouldn’t be home that night. So, he took his ziploc bag of quarters and dimes, and left me in the basement well after dark. “Just don’t tell dad I left, okay?” “Whatever.” I was too tired to care.

But dad did come home that night, sliding off his boots on the landing and barreling across the basement floor. He leaned over me for too long, while I pretended to be asleep, the skunk musk and mustard gas leaking from his lips, hovering above my head like he couldn’t quite tell if I was his son, or a little squirrel that snuck in through the pipes and nestled into the mattress.

He didn’t seem to notice Mikey wasn’t there. Until Mikey came home.

He tried to sneak in the side door, but the storm door shook too loudly, and dad was still awake anyway, watching reruns of SportsCenter an L shaped turn away from me on his side of the basement. Mikey stumbled down the stairs, like he’d slipped on the monster’s tail at the fifth step.

The lights cracked on, and my father, seething, sucking in soot and breathing back flames stood with his shoulders hunched, shirtless at the foot of my bed, facing a white-faced eleven year old who had just snuck back in the house. Mikey pissed himself. Right there inside his pants, so it leaked out under his Jordans and stained the carpet. He just pissed.

I pretended to be asleep.

That was the only time I could remember Mikey’s face so pale. There, in the woods next to Herdick’s house, with elementary kids swinging and scurrying over the schoolyard, recess monitors patrolling the perimeter, Mikey may have pissed himself. He didn’t, though. Instead, he took advantage of our bad luck.

“No, no. This is great.”

“This is not great!”

“Shh, listen” he knelt down in front of me, so his dirty head reached my chin, “we’re going to do it now, while all the little kids are playing. So, if we get caught, she’ll think it was one of your little friends.”

“Get caught what?”

‘Alright, look.” He stood up and looked over his shoulder, toward the beige house with the tattered blue Suzuki truck in the driveway, the confederate flag decal on its door, like they didn’t know we were in a black neighborhood. “We’re going to blow up the bag.”

“No.”

“Listen.”

“No. Not.”

“Just. Listen. Okay?” He put two skinny palms on my shoulders. I thought I might cry. I just wanted to be home, watching that little elf with his little pan flute. Waiting for Allegra’s Window to come back on at 12:30. “All you have to do-”

“Me?”

“Yes, you’re the fastest, and the sneakiest, and the strongest.” He had me. “All you have to do, is set the bag on the porch. Then, take that stump from over there,” he pointed out to the recently cut firewood in the Herdick House yard, “and drop it on the bag.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what happens?”

“Just drop it and run.”

“Why?”

“Just run. Just trust me.”

“I don’t like this.”

“It’s your destiny, young one.”

It was my destiny. I had to do it. It was a task only I could carry out– the strongest, the bravest, the fastest. I had to do it.

Mikey watched on from behind our tree as I crawled beneath the large window at the front of the house, the bag of poop, and eggs, and lighters, the size of Molly’s dog food dragging through Herdick’s mom’s garden, thrashing her tomatoes to shreds.

I was at the edge of the porch, ducking to avoid the white people inside. With some difficulty, I set the bag on the welcome mat at the foot of the door. Mikey gave me the thumbs up and waved me back to the woods.

“Alright. Log time.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

“You have to now. You can’t just leave it on the porch like that.”

I reached the firewood and pulled the stump from the earth like the sword from the stone, but with more of a struggle and no grace. It was too heavy for me, as big as my torso. It took two hands and all of my strength and I had to push it with my stomach to move my legs at all.

I plodded up the side of their house, too short to worry about anyone seeing me from the side windows. I stood at the corner, set the stump on my Filas. The clouds were so fat that day, so low. Dollops of cream cheese suspended in blue icing. The sun was somewhere. I could hear Rachelle laughing from the swingset, from the schoolyard, beyond Mikey and the woods. That unmistakable laugh. She was the prettiest girl in third grade. I was sure she would go with me if I asked her. She always liked my jokes when we read in our small groups. “A” group, for “Antelopes” but really for “smart kids.” I was probably only in that group because I was white. I didn’t know that then. Rachelle didn’t know I was white, either. Everything was just everything.

I took a big, exaggerated kid breath. Looked over at Mikey one last time. Gave him a nod, like Edmund Pevensie nodding to Peter, the High King, before rushing into battle. I heaved up the stump, turned the corner, and tumbled over the garden, as fast as my widespread legs would carry me, stomping what was left of the vegetables  into the soil, stamping my shoe tracks into the soft dirt, rearing back as I reached the porch, summoning all my core strength, swinging the stump high over my head with two hands, blocking out the cream cheese, the sun somewhere, I thundered the stump down onto the bag. In a fiery, crashing flash the shit and eggs smacked me in the throat, just above the collar. The yolks and bits of brown Shoppers bag ripped the air, slapping against the window along the front of the house, wet shit slapping the sides of the Suzuki, smearing over the red and blue flag, soiling the confederacy.

And at some point the window had opened, and a stringy-haired witch with a pulsing red vein in her forehead poked out, spitting into my eyes.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

There was no time. No thinking. Just run.

“Just RUN!”

We ran.

Streaking through woods. It was recess and all of the little kids were out on the playground and playing football, and Rachelle was swinging and laughing close by. If she saw me covered in shit, she’d never go with me. We would be easy to see. The only white kids streaking through the woods when they weren’t at school that morning. We cut up Solomon’s street as soon as we could and waited near his fence for things to calm down.

Breathing from hot sticky red kid faces. Heaving over our shaking knees. Hair damped against our cheeks and foreheads.

“We can’t stay here. We’ll be caught!”

“We’ll just wait til recess is over.”

“It’s only first recess!”

“Come on.”

We ran back through the woods, heading north, right toward Herdick’s house, toward the scene of the crime, toward eggs and smoke and yolks. We veered right and ran right by it, Herdick’s mother standing on the porch, back turned to the yard, kicking at the bag in gray sweatpants.

We turned to the right, to the bigger woods at the top of the schoolyard. We tore through it, kicking up fallen leaves, just running, far and deep.

“This is the woods with the acorn lady!”

“ What do you think is worse?”

There was nothing worse. There was nothing better. We were stuck no matter what we did.

All the dangers: Mr. Bridges monitoring recess, lurking around the school, looking for runaways. Dad waking up and realizing we’d gone. An ancient acorn lady with a taste for children. Or Herdick’s mom, with her torch and her crazy throbbing head vein.

“We’ll wait here.”

“For what? We’re screwed, Mikey!”

“I know. We’re fucked.”

“Don’t say the F word!”

“Who’s going to hear us?” He stood up and shouted into the treetops, “fuck fuck fuck!”

We were so deep in the woods, far enough from the schoolyard not to be heard, but still close enough to see the shapes of students and teachers prowling the grounds.

I sat on the bed of decaying leaves, my head between my legs, ready to cry, but knowing if I did Mikey would turn on me. Then I’d be all alone in the middle of all of it.

We waited there, through three recesses and long after, all the way until the end of the school day.

I thought maybe I could just turn myself in. Mr. Bridges, the school disciplinarian had always been so kind to me. Maybe he’d go easy on me? Once, Crystal Reed punched me in the face and I was sent to his office.

“What are you doing here” I was never in trouble. “What could you have done-” he saw me crying, the fist print visible red and glowing on the side of my face. “Hey. Stay here until you feel ok, man.”

What would he think if he caught me out of school, sneaking around in the woods with shit all over my neck? I decided to stay there, with Mikey. To let fate handle it, however it would.

After hours of waiting, playing dodgeball with red berries, drooling over Mikey’s holographic Charizard card, telling stories of the Acorn Lady and what she would do if she found us in her woods, the bell finally sounded.

The kids all filed out, but we waited until we saw Solomon walk around the corner to pick up his little sister. He walked from the middle school everyday, a thirty minute hike, to pick her up on his way home.

Suddenly, Mikey wasn’t afraid anymore, but proud and exuberant and nearly hysterical. He grabbed my arm and pulled me from the woods, out onto the field. We raced across to meet Solomon and walk beside him as he crossed toward his big white house.

“We did it! You should have seen her. She was so pissed.”

“I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“Did you hear me? I did it, Solomon!”

“You’re gonna get in trouble.”

“By who?”

“Pick one.”

“Whatever. You’re just mad you weren’t there.”

“Alright, man.”

We strolled along with Solomon as though nothing was wrong. No bookbags, no school clothes, clearly out of place. Then we saw her. Standing there in her gray sweatpants. Her brittle wiry hair shuffled everywhere.

I had never seen his mother until she poked her head out of that window earlier that day. She pointed a finger at me, covered in dried egg yolk and caked dog shit, and let out a shrill cry blasting over the elementary school field.

“Herrrrrdiiiiiiick!!”

Birds leapt up from their canopy perches in giant startled flocks. Kids all over the school yard cackled at his ugly name, yelled from his ugly mother, in that shrill ugly voice.

Then I saw Herdick. Big and red and nearly bald. He bumbled over the grass toward us. The three of us. Three white people standing in the middle of the field. Did my friends think that was my mom?

“Run! Let’s go.”

Mikey grabbed at me and we sprinted. Over the field, through the woods, to our house, Herdick right behind us, but slower, fatter.

Mikey hopped our low wooden gate at the edge of the front yard. I tried to squeeze through two panels, but Herdick was on me. He pulled me up and punched me in the stomach.

“You shit on my house!”

“He didn’t shit on your house, you idiot.”

I jumped over the fence and into our yard, thinking in the moment that that somehow meant I was safe. I was on base and Herdick couldn’t touch me.

I stood there, my clothes covered in excrement, facing him like Paris before Menelaus. Mikey just off behind me, on the red porch, watching on. Hector couldn’t help. Those were the rules. He couldn’t help.

Herdick climbed over the fence without touching it. He was so tall. He dropped his bookbag and laughed, stamped a foot and charged at me, a bull. I was too fast. I was the fastest, the strongest. I had to remind myself. I had to be the strongest.

I wasn’t the strongest.

I was eight. Herdick was ten. He was fat and tall and had razor teeth and black shark eyes and skin-close hair.

“I’m gonna kill you.”

He charged again and this time he tackled me. I twisted as we fell, trying to avoid the big root of a tree that used to shade our yard. I hit the back of my head against a smaller, harder root instead. It stung for a second, then went away.

And suddenly he was on top of me. His whole body. HIs whole weight over my sweating face.

I was numb, just painless all over in the rush of it. The only thing I could feel anywhere was the hot fluid splashing inside my lower intestines. I knew I was fighting, or wrestling, or aggressively hugging, but I couldn’t feel Herdick pressing my arms down, jamming my left foot beneath my thigh as he pinned me with his full weight. He slid his shirt off. I knew he was doing it, but I couldn’t stop it. He rolled his stomach up over my mouth, over my nose, my eyes. I didn’t feel a need to escape. I didn’t feel anything.

It wasn’t me on the ground as Herdick lifted his shirt up over his fat pink nipples. I was watching from some other kid’s camera. I was watching from some other kid’s lenses when Herdick fell down with his entire torso, shading the sky with his taut round porkbelly. Everything black but the edges where light burned hot into the pink pigment, red and white burning at the edge of the gray expanse. It was all happening to someone else, it couldn’t be real. I thought I must have fallen asleep with my face in the pillow again. Nothing like that ever really happened to a kid with good grades. I was in the Antelope reading group.

Sweat and sweet smelling stick beneath his fat waist. Like a child giving a raspberry all wrong. My body was moving of its own volition. I was flailing, ripping dirt from the dry ground, flinging dirt into the collar of my shirt. Clumping grit between the folds, sticking to the dog poop dried there. It itched so badly, stuck to my sopping neck. If I could just reach under him and scratch it.

Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t been able to breathe. Such an unconscious function. Something that never had to be remembered, suddenly, for the first time, I remembered it. I remembered it and my chest sank into my bowels, and I thought I might shit myself, and I pushed up from my pelvis, that struggle that springs up in absolute survival, that last summon of all strength left in your core before your soul slides out of your pants. I was conscious, but I couldn’t tell my eyes to stop sliding up, flashing black and gray like the end of a reel with no pictures. Just white and gray and black flashing. I knew I was supposed to breathe, but I couldn’t remember where the air was. I was suffocating, blacking in and out beneath a pink balloon.

And I bit him. As hard as I could.

It was the only thing I could do. I bit him, and his blood juiced out of his belly like Gushers, and dripped warm and thick over my chin. He jumped up and grabbed his wound. It was bleeding badly. He needed a grown up. Quickly.

Gazing up from my back in the dried yellow grass, I finally found the sun, gleaming on an angle as it began its descent, the glare forming little bright bubbles around Mikey’s head as he leaned over eclipsing the light. He flung down his flat white palm, pulling me up quickly so we both nearly fell over. I wiped my nose. It was bleeding. Or I had Herdick’s blood in my mouth, swashing around my tongue, penny-tasting. I spit, spraying the dead hay grass in pink foam.

“Ugh, move!”

Mikey jumped, visceral.

“Sorry. Come on.” apologetic.

My legs wouldn’t work. I tried, but I just buckled and fell onto my knees. Mikey picked me up from behind, put an arm over my shoulder. I leaned into him and we sauntered toward the porch.

There were kids at our fence. Hundreds of them, I thought. All laughing and yelling and cheering about the white kid fight. Darnelle King came up to the porch and patted my back.

“I hate that fat redneck.”

I smiled. I hadn’t realized they had been watching. But I won, and they all saw, and now I was the man. You weren’t supposed to bite. That’s not how it worked. You didn’t bite in a fight. You fought like a fighter, or you lost. You never bit. But all the kids seemed to overlook it. We were their favorite white boys. We were barely even white.

I hadn’t thought of dad since we escaped that morning. Now, as I plodded up the porch, head aching and feet drilling the maroon stairs, I felt a fear like breath leaving my body beneath a boy’s stomach—dad was standing, in the window of the living room, watching, disappointed like Priam behind sheer curtains. He was smoking the skunk musk inside. He never smoked the skunk musk inside. He must have seen it all. He must have watched from the moment Herdick challenged me to the end where the light nearly left my eyes. He must have seen it all, not a muscle moving toward intervention, just staring from the window, glassy eyes and copper wire stubble sprouting up from unemployment.

Mikey looked over his shoulder at me. A truthfully sorry look over his face. A look that acknowledged its own fault. He should have let me lie in bed, watching Henson’s little puppets struggle for power and truth, soaking Oatmeal Cream Pies against the roof of my mouth, sleeping foggy sleeps in the dim light on my tiny basement mattress.

He opened the door and let me in to face our father. Chin bloody and grass blotched over my Levi’s. Shit and dried white egg painted against my neck, down my shirt, my shoes covered in brown, in green, in pink. I pulled a heavy leg over the threshold and let the sweaty brown hair fall over my forehead, staring at my untied shoes against the piss stained carpet, Molly licking ferociously at my soles, avoiding my father’s glazed stare.

“Guess you’re feelin’ better.”

The second fat kid happened that same year. I guess I was nine by then, probably. I don’t know. It was at Mom’s house though. Well, apartment. And it was different.

We went to Mom’s on the weekends. She was supposed to have more custody, but it didn’t make any sense, and it would have been a lot of work.

“I just can’t work and take you guys that far every day, twice a day, back and forth. And I’ve got Matty, too, and Grandmama– you know I’ve got to take care of her now– and your POS father won’t help, no that would be too much. You guys understand, right? Mommy still loves you both.”

“What’s a POS?”

She’d have to go so far just to take us to and from school. It wasn’t worth the two extra days. So, we went to Mom’s on weekends, after school on Fridays, until after football on Sundays. Dad was fine as long as we were home between the four o’clock games and the Sunday night game. Just not in the middle of them.

“How the hell am I supposed to watch two quarterbacks, two running backs, and a million fucking receivers if I have to go in and out of the house every five minutes?” Dad managed a football team. He watched every game.

So, Mom tried to have us back by 8:30, before the Sunday night game.

It isn’t that she minded much if we left earlier or later. She would have been fine if we wanted to go back at noon or even midnight, and sometimes we did. It was our choice to go back later. After Ramone was shot and football at the school at Dad’s house stopped, there wasn’t much reason to go home early on Sundays.

There were a lot of reasons to stay at Mom’s.

Even though the apartment was cramped and humid with Mom, and Matty, and Grandmama, and all of their strange plants and lizards, the other kids in the neighborhood had all kinds of nice stuff, and we were allowed to go anywhere around the lake, just as long as we were back before it was too dark. It wasn’t even Mom’s rule, it was our own rule, because of the calico cat.

Billy told us about the calico cat when Mom first moved in to Grandmama’s, after that Easter when Dad hit her. That was right before Matty was born. We didn’t celebrate Easter, but the Easter Bunny brought us baskets anyway. Not a bad deal.

We had only been at Grandmama’s for a couple of weekends at that time, but we had already played with Billy outside a lot.

“See that rock out there? The one in the middle of the lake?”

“Yeah.”

“You know why it looks like a man?”

“No.”

“Cause it is a man. Or was.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“Shh don’t cuss.” Billy checked around for his mother, who didn’t like that Mikey and I cussed, and didn’t like that Billy had slipped up a few times since we started showing up on weekends. “It’s true. It’s the body of Mr. Higgins.”

“Nuh uh. How?”

“You don’t know the story of the calico cat? Everyone knows that story. That’s why you never see any of the kids out after dinner time.”

“What happened?”

“Well, one day, like a really long time ago, like thirty years or something, Mr. Higgins got stuck out there. He lived in that green house on the other side of the water, with his cat, Red Knee. Anyway, he finished his dinner, and he was going to go feed Red Knee, but he couldn’t find her.”

“Why’d he name her Red Knee?”

“How should he know?”

“Fuck you, Mikey.”

“Shh!” Billy looked around for his Mom, “Anyway, so he couldn’t find her. So, he went all around the house looking for her, ‘Red Knee! Red Knee! Red Knee!’ After looking everywhere he could, he got scared that she went outside. So, he went out there to look for her. He checked all around the house– you guys have seen the green house, it’s real big– but he couldn’t see her.

Then, he heard it.”

“What?”

“Seriously, shut the fuck up.” Mikey punched me.

“Fuck!”

“Shhhhhhhh! Don’t cuss.” He jerked his head back and forth. The coast was clear. “Anyway. That’s when Mr. Higgins heard…’meow’ real soft coming from the lake. He got even scareder because she didn’t like water. So, she might be in trouble or something, cause she wouldn’t go to the lake by herself.

But, it kept saying ‘meow, meow, meow’ and he knew it was Red Knee. So, he put on his shoes and he started walking down the hill– you guys know that little hill up to the green house?– and he kept hearing her ‘meow, meow, meow’ and then he got to the walking path and he saw her. Standing out there. Right in the middle of the lake.”

“Standing on what?”

“Nothing! Just on the water. Just standing there!”

“Nuh uh.”

“Yup. So, Mr. Higgins was freaking out, cause he was like ‘my cat’s just out there in the water! She hates the water.’ So, he was like, ‘I gotta save her!’ So, he started to call to her to come out of the water. And he kept going closer to the water, til he was right on the edge of the water calling her name, ‘Red Knee, come here.’ But, she just sat there and looked at him. So, Mr. Higgins was like, ‘I guess I gotta go get her.’ So he started to walk into the water. And it was real dark outside and nobody was walking around the lake.

So, he walked out in the cattails and walked out through all those lily pads and then it was deep so he had to swim, so he started swimming. And he swam all the way out there, but when he got to the middle of the lake, Red Knee was gone!”

“What!”

“Yup. She was gone. So, he was freaking out again, and he thought she drowned. So, he started diving and feeling around for her, and he couldn’t feel anything, and then he started to get really tired, and he was really sad and scared. And then he was starting to drowned too, and he looked back at the green house, and right there, on the edge of the water….was Red Knee. Just watching him drowned.”

“How?”

“No one knows!” Billy stood up and kicked some dirt at the water. “But, now Red Knee walks around the lake at night, looking for kids to trick into going in the water and drowneding, just like Mr. Higgins.”

So, even if dinner wasn’t any good, and it was always good at Mom’s house because she always ordered something, we’d never stay out later than dinner time. We’d start playing so early that by the time it was dark, everyone was exhausted and just wanted to go home and watch movies or something anyway.

We had a pretty good routine worked out with the other kids in the neighborhood, depending on who was around on a given weekend and what the weather was like. We’d go over somebody’s house on Friday night, after we had dinner with Mom and Grandmama. Usually we went to Corey’s house, but not always, it just depended on his sister, who was a real bitch and didn’t like us. At all. Corey lived in a huge house with three bedrooms and a basement on our side of the lake. Just a few streets down from our apartment complex. We’d go over Corey’s and eat chicken nuggets and watch TGIF and play Mario Kart until we fell asleep on the floor. Then, on Saturdays we’d wake up early, run back to Mom’s and put on our play clothes, grab every ball and Nerf gun and pocket knife we could find and go outside with the other kids until dinner time.

That Friday, when the second fat kid in a year lied on top of me, a lot of the other kids were out of town on a summer vacation, and a lot of new kids were around the lake, moving in with their parents. There were always a lot of new kids around the lake, with all the apartments and townhouses and all the good schools around, but you noticed it more when the normal kids weren’t there.

“Anyway, Grandmama wants to make dinner tonight, and I told her we would all eat like a family. Together. So, you boys have to stay home tonight.”

“Mom are you serious–”

“No, we were gonna go to Corey’s, he just got a new TV–”

“We’ll see. We are having dinner and then we’ll see. I just never get to see you guys and then when you’re here you go play, and I love that you have friends and you’re playing with the other kids– they’re much better kids than the kids in Seabrook– but I just feel like you guys don’t want to spend any time with me. I know, I know just mother’s guilt.” She sighed and flicked the hair out of her eyes, browsing our expressions in the rearview mirror as she took the exit onto Broken Land Parkway. She was about to cry. “I just, you guys spend so much time in that shithole with your worthless fucking father, and I know that’s my fault, but I’m trying you guys and I can’t do it all on my own and I can only work two jobs–” and she began to cry, little muted exhalations, until she stifled it with the back of her hand, looking away at the road, pulling the tears from her cheeks back into her eyes like yo-yos. “Whew. Ugh.” She wiped the spilling ink, pulling her face taut with a frown in the rearview. “Anyway, your Grandmama is making lasagna. Old family recipe. I think? Who knows. And she is making that garlic bread you like. Michael. Right? You like Grandmama’s garlic bread?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right. And we have brownies for dessert, too.”

“Aww! Yes!”

She smiled through the mirror at that. Finally eliciting response, positive response.

“See, it’s going to be real nice, and you are going to have a good meal.” She sniffed back the last tears, shifting from sorrow to spite. “Shit, probably the first real meal you’ve had all week. Christ, what are we going to do about that?” She pulled the old indigo Taurus onto Cradlerock, onto the street that went to the apartment complex. “He is feeding you, right? Like real food? Not just Steak ‘Ems and Spaghettios and shit?”

“Yeeeeees, Mom.” Not really.

“I’m serious– is he cooking anything at all?”

“Yeeeeeees, Mom.” He wasn’t.

Sniff. “Well, that’s good. Good. Okay. Enough of that. Fuck your father. Let’s have fun, yeah?” She turned around and started unbuckling Matty who was jammed in his car seat, pinched in between me and Mikey.

“I’ll get it, Mom.”

“Okay, thank you sweetie.” She wiped the ink beneath her eyes and sniffed. “Good boy. Such a good boy. Good boys.” and opened her door.

The apartment was on the top floor, three flights from the parking lot, on the back side that faced the lake. Grandmama had been there for three years or something, since grandpa died, and she’d brought everything with her from the big house.

There were the paintings, of course, the big oils with the gaudy frames that they’d bought together, and a few that he’d painted himself, that she kept for her in her bedroom, and all the statuettes– The Thinker, and David, and every Rodin replica ever mass produced– and the cassettes, as if she needed them, and the furniture, so many antique sidetables, and the candles, and plants, and the geckos, and two snakes, and a terrarium full of little dart frogs, so the suffocating home had to be kept at a balmy eighty degrees, at least, at all times, even in the summer.

Grandmama didn’t seem to mind the heat. In fact she always wore a sweater, and sometimes even a scarf or a hat, as if she’d just gone out to the farmer’s market, though she never left the apartment.

When we were there it was even worse. So many bodies in such a tight space, in such heat. It was fine in the winter. But this was a summer weekend, so we hated being in there. Even at night, when Grandmama went to bed and Mom went to her night job, the house was so congested with the heat and hordes, and the walls glowed red from the lamps over the terrariums, so I had dreams that I’d made it to Hell, and gremlins were carrying me to cauldrons to cook, salting me through my screams, watching me boil.

We liked to go to Corey’s on Friday nights. Saturdays, too, if we could, if his sister wasn’t being a bitch.

“Grandmama. Kids are here.” Mom struggled with the keys, carrying Matty in her arms. He was too old to be carried, and too big, but she kept doing it. She pushed the door open, the spray of cinnamon spritzed over swamped snake soil and human sweat splashed into our faces. “Go say hi to Grandmama.”

“Hiii Grandmama.” We hugged her together, like Mom liked, her soggy stinging perfume sitting on the heavy humid air. She had an atmosphere.

“Oh, hi. Hi boys. Here, go give these to the girls.” She craned a shaky claw over our hands, dropped us both a palm full of crickets, and we walked over to feed the geckos, who were girls, we supposed, or Grandmama supposed, at least.

She never cared for the reptiles at the big house, when grandpa was alive. They were his, and he had plenty of others. Whenever we’d visit, he had something new, and we held everything. Chuckwallas, Burmese pythons, skinks, and newts, and frogs, and chameleons. When he died, most of the animals died, too. Grandmama didn’t know how often they needed to eat, and she’d kept the house too cold for too long. Only the geckos and two of the ball pythons, and a few of the frogs survived. She brought them to the apartment when the bank told her she had to move, and the apartment never fell below eighty degrees.

I guess they were the only bits of grandpa still breathing.

Too bad she’d killed the Burmese. Ball pythons were so regular.

“Ma, you’re still going to cook lasagna tonight, right? While I get ready for work?”

“What? Sure. Yes. If you want me to.”

“I thought you wanted to. You said you wanted to.”

“Fine. Sure. I can make it. Lasagna.”

“I could really use your help with this, ma.”

“Okay, fine, fine.”

Mikey and I put our bags down in the living room, which became our bedroom while we were there, for the limited time we spent in the actual apartment. There was a balcony, but we weren’t allowed out there. Something about someone’s son. Mom’s friend’s son or something.

“No, get back. Do not go out there by yourself. Understand? That’s how Eric Clapton’s son died.”

There was a big couch in the living room with two reclining end units, so we would sleep without having to stop watching TV on the nights we didn’t go to Corey’s. Grandmama had one of those huge projection TVs with the wooden panel frames. One of the lights was starting to go, so the corner of the screen had begun to bleed a dull light green over the image, but it was fine. Better than the TV/VCR at Dad’s house.

“Okay, well I think the boys are going to go outside for a little bit– right boys?– unless you need any help?”

“Yeah. We’re going to go meet up with Corey.”

“Okay, but remember you’re eating here tonight, and then you can stay over his house if you want. But I want us to have dinner together.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“Yes, Michael, but not until much later. I can still have dinner with my handsome boys first.”

“It’s Mikey.”

“Right, yes, Mikey.” Mom rolled her eyes and glided off down the hallway and into her room. “Just wait until you start chasing girls. Then it’s Mike.”

Mikey went to his bag and grabbed his Game Boy.

“Alright, let’s go.”

“Bring Matty?”

“Why not?”

“Come on, bud.”

It was pretty empty around the lake. It normally was on Fridays. Even when all the parents came home from work, they were normally inside on Fridays, if they weren’t taking their kids away for the weekend. The trail around the lake covered almost two miles, so the neighborhoods speckled along its perimeter were demographically varying and constantly transitioning.

On our side, there were at least five apartment complexes, three townhouse communities, and somewhere near ten cul-de-sacs with outlets to the lake trail. On the other side, there were endless rows of houses. They were all nice on that side, and the kids all went on a vacation and had clean clothes. There were three playgrounds around the lake, and the apartment kids and townhouse kids typically played at the big wooden one near the dock where old white guys pretended to fish.

“Come on let’s find Corey.” Mikey said.

We tumbled down the stairs and out into the parking lot. The park was only two buildings away and Corey or Billy or some of the other kids from the townhouses were normally there buy now.

Corey and Billy were both white and so were Todd and the other Michael, who we called Mike, and some of the other kids from the townhouses. We had black friends too, but not like at Dad’s house where we were the only white kids, aside from Herdick, but that was something different.

For some reason it didn’t seem odd that the rules changed at Mom’s house. It was just natural that when we were there, white kids were okay to play with each other. Black kids too. Really there wasn’t much division between the kids there. People didn’t seem to notice quite as much if you weren’t black. We even had Asian and Hispanic friends at Mom’s house.

When we arrived at the park it was empty. The three swings oscillating in what light evening breeze the lake whisked over them.

“Where the hell is he?”

We trudged over to the swing set. I strapped Matty into the baby swing, though he had nearly outgrown it. Mikey twisted his swing clockwise and counterclockwise, his right foot under his butt, his left drawing lines in the mulch as he played on his Game Boy. At Mom’s house we had play shoes, so we didn’t ruin our Jordans.

I pushed Matty in the swing that was shaped like a high chair so infants and toddlers couldn’t fall out. It wasn’t true though. A baby fell out the year before. It was right around when we moved in. I remember because people confused the young mother and her infant for Mom and Matty, piercing poisonous stares into us as we passed by in the parking lot. The real mother was from the apartments, as well, and she left the baby in the swing while she talked to a friend passing by on the trail. The baby slid out through one of the leg holes.

We saw the mom around sometimes. We never saw the baby again.

“That good, Matty?”

Matty nodded, tucking his chin into his neck too deeply. He made weird faces.

Matty was old enough to talk and he could speak if he wanted, but he just wasn’t much of a talker. Mom was such a talker. It must have been enough for the entire apartment if she did all the talking and Grandmama and Matty did all the listening. I guess that’s why people are put together.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

Corey hobbled over the black concrete curb that bordered the wooden playground.

“Sorry. My sister’s being a real cunt.” Corey said.

White kids at Mom’s house used different words.

“Alright I need to trade.” Mikey said. “I gotta give you Machoke so I can get Machamp. And then you trade it back.”

“I already have Machamp, so that’s fine, whatever. You have your link cable?”

“Yeah.” Mikey dug into his swoosh pants, knuckling through the essential accouterments of a preteen who planned to be outside for a while. A yo-yo, and a few games for his Game Boy, Pokemon Blue, Zelda, and double As, just in case, though he saved his game so often it wouldn’t be a big deal — he hadn’t saved it once after a long time and lost a few Pokemon he caught at the Pokemon Safari and he broke his pinky punching the window of the car. Mom cried the whole way to Howard County General, but Mikey was just too angry to be sad or hurt– and a little bit of candy, and a holographic Charizard, in case anyone had anything worth trading, and a pocket knife in case of danger.

He pulled out the gold link cable and hooked up to Corey’s Game Boy, which was red, like Corey’s clothes and his favorite N64 controller.

Mikey and Corey traded and battled a few times, before they became bored and Corey told Mikey he should go see his new TV.

“I’m going over to Corey’s for a few minutes. I’ll come back by and grab you and Matty. Okay?”

“Mom said we have to eat at home tonight.”

“I know, you mothafucka. I’m just going to Corey’s for a few minutes.”

“Okay.”

The two stumbled over the wood chips and up the hill to the townhouses where Corey lived.

“Okay, Matty. I guess we’ll hang out for a little bit. That okay with you?”

Matty didn’t say anything but he nodded his head and put his hands to his mouth, chewing on the cuffs of his long sleeved shirt. It was too hot for a long sleeved shirt, but Mom was afraid Matty would fall, or catch a cold, or otherwise find a way to mutilate himself if he weren’t completely covered from the dangers of the world.

“Stop it. Don’t chew.”

We’d been going to Mom’s every weekend for a while. At least two years, since Matty was almost three. But, there were plenty of kids we were still meeting and plenty of new ones we never met but we saw around.

A little while after Mikey and Corey left, three new kids I’d never seen came to the park. Two of them looked like brothers with bright red hair and plain white undershirts they were wearing like tee shirts. We wore plain white shirts in Seabrook, but it seemed different in Columbia. Trashy. The fatter kid wore jeans. The skinnier one wore camo pants with cargo pockets. The third was a little girl about my age, or maybe just a little younger by a grade or two. Her hair was dirty blonde and she was sort of pretty, but tired like kid Jenny from Forrest Gump. Mom rented it the weekend before. Told us not to watch it. We waited until she went to her night job. Matty was like Forrest.

I walked Matty off to the trail so that I didn’t have to meet them without Mikey there. I didn’t like to have to introduce myself and start talking about things I didn’t care about. Most of the kids we didn’t know already were from the houses or townhouses, and they always had really awesome stuff and went all kinds of places. They liked to talk about places like Wisp and Jamaica and skiing and taking piano lessons, and I didn’t really have anything to contribute once they started.

Usually I didn’t end up being friends with those kids anyway, though there were a few exceptions. Corey was sort of one of those kids, but he was also really cool and shared all of his stuff. His mom didn’t seem to mind us either. She was always sending us away with food and snacks and sometimes she even bought us clothes. They were white kid clothes, so we didn’t really wear them. Mom didn’t like her very much.

Matty and I wandered down the hill, about twenty yards  away from the park to the lake and sat. Matty on my lap, a little too big for it but I was too afraid to let him sit on his own that close to the water. If he fell in, Mom would cry herself to death. We sat on the dock, my feet dangling down, strumming the overgrown cattails, rustling up Doritos bags mossed over at the surface.

While we sat there staring out at Mr Higgins’ body in the middle of the lake, two more kids vaulted across the grass from the apartments over to the park, one of them running much faster than the other. I had seen them before and I thought they were brothers, as well. Only the taller brother was much cleaner looking and wore better clothes. The other brother was very round had glasses and his face was ashy like he didn’t use lotion. They had the same haircut, but the round brother’s head was just so disproportionately small to the rest of his body, he looked like he was pulled out incorrectly at birth and they couldn’t mould him back. They were two of the only black kids in the area, so I assumed they were from the apartments like us.

I watched them out of the corner of my eyes as they went into the park and started using the swings. The tall, thin brother was more competitive, swinging higher and higher, egging on the less coordinated brother next to him.

The two redheaded brothers shouted over to them from the lookout of the jungle gym. I couldn’t make out what they were saying but it seemed okay. Just kids learning boundaries with each other.

“What are you doing over here by yourself?”

I jumped and nearly dropped Matty into the lake. The little blonde haired girl was sitting right next to me, her dirty locks curling over her cheeks, the way they do when the light hits them just so in those movies, only less radiant. She was chubby, but it looked like it was only because she was a grade or two younger. Baby fat. She was wearing one of those long-sleeved turtlenecks with little cupcakes dappled all over. They looked like long johns, threadbare at the elbows, but a lot of girls wore them like they were playshirts for outside. Purple tights and white shoes, so white the sun exploded in the space between the black tar lake and those feet as she dangled her them next to mine.

“I’m waiting for my brother so we can go eat lasagna.”

“I had lasagna this week.”

“That’s funny.”

“You should come play on the playground. Is that your brother?”

“Yeah this is my little brother Matty. Say hi, Matty.”

Matty covered his eye with a curled fist and hid his face in my chest.

“Those are my brothers, too.”

“With the red hair?”

“Yep.”

“Oh, that’s weird.”

“Why?”

“Cause you have blonde hair.”

“I guess so. Come play.”

“Okay.”

I didn’t like the looks of the redheads, and I really didn’t want to play, but I’d never met a girl near my age at Mom’s. I scooped Matty up and climbed the little hill to the park. We sat on the bench while the girl pulled herself up over the ladder and onto the wavy bridge of the jungle gym, where her brothers were having a contest to see who could bounce the other highest.

They were clean and had all of their teeth, but they had these angry red eyebrows. Something threatening about them. It was probably more the way they played. Too rough and too physical. Nothing clever about anything they did. All trial and error, fall and stand back up. I never liked kids like that.

Meanwhile the black brothers who were on the swing set moments ago were now running around playing some version of freeze tag I didn’t know. Every time the taller brother tagged the ashy brother, he had to squat down and say the name of a TV show before he could chase again.

“Binya Binya!”

The fat one yelled out from a crouch just a few feet from me and Matty and our bench.

Up close there was definitely something wrong with him. His mouth never closed when he breathed and the spit collected in the corners of his lips, so he had to suck it back in any time he lost his breath or became too excited. He looked over at me, and I realized that beneath his glasses, one of his eyes was covered over with skin, like flesh saran wrap pulled over a bowl. I turned away quickly so he wouldn’t see I’d noticed.

“That’s not the name of the show, Delmon!”

Delmon, who only had one eye and another that needed glasses let out a happy grunt. He was still frozen but he was playing like his brother. His tall brother who had two eyes and a patently symmetrical head and well moisturized skin. He was just playing like that didn’t matter. He was happy.

“Mmmm” Delmon reached down and gripped some dirt, trying his hardest to remember the name of the show, “Gullah. GULLAH GULLAH. GULLAH GULLAH!”

Delmon sprung up from the earth and twirled away after his brother. They looped the jungle gym, where the taller brother climbed up, narrowly avoiding Delmon’s slap, and onto the platform, where he nearly knocked into the camo redhead.

“Watch out. We’re on this.”

“So!” The thin brother retorted, not expecting to talk any further. He turned around and hopped on one foot, dodging a plump finger from Delmon, who was below the jungle gym poking up at his brother through the wooden slats.

“So watch out!” The younger redhead in his camo pants pushed the boy, who hardly moved, but clearly wasn’t expecting hostility. He calmly put his hands over his head and backed up a few steps. The older, larger redhead walked over the bridge to the platform, right by the little Jenny girl who moved to the other side, out of harm’s way.

“We’re just playing TV tag.”

“You’re on my bridge.”

“I’m not even on the bridge.”

“You better just get off.”

Delmon, who had been laughing and spitting, his mouth wide and his one eye wider, scuttled out from beneath the platform and backed away toward me and Matty and our bench.

His brother, outnumbered and unprepared for a fight– he was wearing a really nice pair of Nikes– took a few more steps back and climbed down the ladder. He didn’t want any trouble.

Delmon sat on the mulch, shaking a bit and upset by it. His brother walked over and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah you better walk, nigger.”

Nigger.

I’d never heard it before.

I’d heard it countless times. I’d heard it from friends at Dad’s house, in the songs we listened to at recess on Jody’s Walkman, from the guys who hung out by the carryout place in Seabrook. I’d heard it every Sunday playing football before Ramone was shot, on the basketball court, in every conversation every black kid had with another black kid, and sometimes even with me.

I’d never heard it like that. Never from a white person. Never as a cuss word.

My intestines swam, boiling noodles in my bowels. I was angry or scared or shaken somehow, and I needed a bathroom or to be somewhere else.

Delmon’s brother turned around and shook his head at them. He didn’t seem angry enough. As if it were just something he heard every once in a while at 7-11 when he and Delmon pulled their allowances for Big League Chew.

“Niggers shouldn’t be here.”

They were laughing now and pushing each other back and forth on the jungle gym. They were proud.

“Fuck you. “ Delmon’s brother mumbled.

“What, nigger?”

Three times. Three.

He snapped. “Fuck you! Redneck racist!”

A flash of red and white and the brothers were lumbering down the ladder, barreling forward toward him.

“Whadyou say, nigger boy?”

Four. I was dizzy from it.

I’d been scared before. I’d been scared that morning Mom couldn’t stand and they took Dad away for a few days. I’d been scared when I accidentally stabbed Mikey in the neck with a pencil. I’d been scared when I thought I’d die beneath Herdick’s fat belly, the life escaping my lungs. Real fears. Physical threats.

I’d never been so petrified as I was hearing a white kid use that word in that way on that mulch.

The older redhead walked up and pushed the kid in the chest, hard. He nearly fell over. Delmon covered his knape with crusty clasped hands, and tucked his head into his legs.

“Leave him alone, Bobby!”

“Stay up there Crystal. And shut up.”

“We’re gonna teach this nigger somethin’.”

Five and I couldn’t help it.  I burst forward. Matty slid off onto the bench, on his butt, and suddenly I was in front of them.

The redheads took a step back from the tall brother and gaped at me. Dopey red faces screwed up at the eyebrows.

“What do you want?”

I’d already been in a fight with a redneck that year. I knew I could always bite them.

“Go back up there.” I told them. Imitating what I thought Lieutenant Dan might do, if he still had legs. Nudging my chin toward the jungle gym, my thumbs hooked to my pockets. “Play with your sister.”

The fatter redhead shuffled over, his beefy shoulder rolling as he limped up to me. I guess that was an aggressive strut.

“You must be new here, so I’ll give you a pass. But if you’re going to be on the good side, you need to be on our side.”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“We’ve never seen you before.” The younger one said. His face was sharper, pointier, but his eyes were softer, like he still hadn’t learned that much about the world. His camo pants were too big for him, like they’d been passed down from the fatter one.

“Where do you even live?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“We live in the houses over there.” Little Crystal said. She edged over to us.

“Go back up on the jungle gym.”

The chubby little girl bumbled her way over to the jungle gym and sat on the bottom of the slide with her arms folded, her little cupcakes wrinkling at her elbows.

“Well, you can get the fuck off our playground, queer boy.”

“You’re not even from this side. You have your own playground.”

“I think I like this one now.”

“Whatever.”

I didn’t want to fight anymore and my stomach had cooled down. They weren’t worth it, and it seemed like Delmon and his brother didn’t want to fight either. I turned around to go grab Matty and walk the trail towards Corey’s house to wait for Mikey.

The black brothers started to move off behind me.

“Yeah and we don’t want any niggers on our playground.”

Six. Six times and that was it. I turned and rushed at the fat one, lunging my head directly into his stomach, the way they told us not to tackle in football. He went flying back and I bounced off of him, nearly hitting my head against the concrete partition in the mulch. The skinny redhead surged out after Delmon’s older brother, who juked his tackle and fell on top of the redhead, holding him down without punching.

The fat redhead recovered before me. He hopped up, knocked me to the ground, rolling on top of me, his sweaty white shirt bleeding grey, dripping inside my mouth, mildew and mold like he’d left it in the washer overnight, he straddled me, sizing up a target, compressing my sides with his knees to stifle my writhing. He was about to punch, but seemed to think better of it, and he put me in a headlock and rolled over, his chubby forearms sweating into my neck, his denim legs wrapping around my thighs, pressing in all over so I couldn’t move.

“You give up?”

“No.” I groaned through my collapsing windpipe.

“This is a choke-hold. You gotta tap out.”

He squeezed harder into my throat, I couldn’t tuck my chin low enough to bite him, and if I moved he pressed harder.

“You gotta tap out!”

He was fat and ugly and redheaded, and of course he liked wrestling, and he couldn’t just fight normally, like everyone else. Looking around for help, flinging mulch up over both of us, I saw Delmon’s brother holding down the younger redhead, Matty starting to wander around the bench, not paying attention.

The hold was growing tighter, the snot swirling with the spit on my face, screaming into his forearms, the sour of the fresh chopped mulch seeping through, stinging my desperate sinuses, when, finally, I saw Mikey on the trail. He looked up from his game from the path and dropped it, sprinting toward us, toward the playground. Corey picked up the Game Boy and put it in his pocket for safekeeping. Trotting a little more slowly behind.

“Get the fuck off.” Mikey stormed down the path, over the mulch and launched into fat one. The fat brother split wide open, releasing me, splaying out over the wood chips, his confused face straight to the sky.

“Seriously? Why are you fighting again?” Mikey pulled me up. “Don’t you fucking get up.” He hissed, pointing a finger at the dazed redhead next to us.

The fat boy sat up, angry but outmatched. Delmon’s brother released the younger one, who scurried over and knelt down with his fat brother, wiping his nose and staring at Mikey like he’d never hated until that moment. The two black brothers stood up and inched a little closer to us, waiting to say something.

“He said the N-word.”

Mikey laughed, looking quickly over Delmon and his brother. “So what? He’s allowed to say it.”

“No, the redneck.”

“Oh, shit.” Mikey walked over to the fat kid on his butt. “I better not hear you say that shit again.”

“Fuck you.”

Mikey kicked a little mulch onto his sweaty stomach, laughed and walked away from them. He was in middle school. The fat one was still, at most, only a year older than me. Mikey would have destroyed both of them. He was too smart for that, though. Once, he beat up a younger kid. Some punk a grade older than me who tried to fight me for an Art Monk rookie card I’d been showing off that day at recess. Mikey hit him in the face with a basketball on the way home from school. We thought it was over, until the boy’s older sisters showed up that Sunday night and chased Mikey through the woods with a bat and an airsoft gun.

Mikey didn’t fight unless it was necessary anymore. I didn’t show cool things at school anymore.

“Alright, we need to go home.” He skipped over to the bench, his swoosh pants scratching themselves as he picked up Matty. “We have to go eat, but we can probably come over after Mom goes to work.” He said to Corey.

“Not tonight. Sister.” Corey said, handing him the lime green Game Boy.

The redheads gathered themselves while Mikey’s back was to them. The young one helping the fat one up.

“Let’s go, Crystal.”

She rose from the slide, her arms still folded. She must have cried at some point– her eyes bright red, noticeable even from the other side of the park. Her sweaty curls stuck to her chubby face, she was really a lot like her brothers when she walked. The three of them waddled off, ugly, red round splotches rolling down the hill toward the houses on the other side of the lake.

Mikey wore Matty like a backpack, giving Corey a sliding high five and started up the path toward the apartment. Corey split off the other way toward the townhouses, his head down in his red Game Boy.

“Deion.”

I started, having forgotten everything but breathing and steadying my shaking legs.

“Mark.”

“This is Delmon.”

“I know.” I tried to shake Delmon’s hand. He floated a limp palm over to me, withdrew it quickly at my touch, rubbing his wrist like I’d burned it. “Sorry?”

“He’s just shy.” Deion put an arm around his brother, who tucked his chin into his side. He was too old to act like Matty. Matty was too old to act like Matty. “Thanks for helping. Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” My neck was sore, but more from that poor form tackle than from the head lock. The dirt from the playground floor congealed against my arms, grimy and brown and sticky. “Just dirty. Sorry he said the N-word.”

“It happens.”

“Really?”

“Sometimes. Doesn’t matter. He’s just a hick.”

“I’ve never heard white kids say that.”

“Yeah.” Deion laughed and wiped some of the dirt from his knees. He wore swoosh pants, like Mikey, but tighter. “You play football?”

I was wearing my white Lanham Raiders jersey, even though I was only supposed to wear it Tuesdays and Thursdays for practice. Number 7. I was the only white kid on the team, at Dad’s house, so I think they thought I was going to be a quarterback. I was a lineman within two weeks. I did get to play linebacker on defense, though, because I liked to tackle.

“Yeah. Lanham Raiders.”

“I play for Laurel. Wildcats, not the Seminoles. 95 pound.”

“Oh, I’m 85.”

We stood for a moment looking at our feet.

“We gotta go I think.” He said.

“Yeah, we gotta be home by dark.” I started to turn toward the apartments.

“I saw a cat last week, you know?” He whispered it to me like volume might summon it.

“Shut up!”

“Yup. I’m not staying out after dark.”

“No way.”

We laughed, for some reason, and high-fived and Deion backed up and started to turn toward the path.

“Wait, where’s Delmon?”

Delmon was nowhere in sight. Deion looked around himself, standing on his tip-toes like that might help.

“Shoot.”

“Did he run away?”

“No. He wanders sometimes.”

“I’ll help you.”

Deion started off at a run down the path around the lake, away from the apartments. It was growing dark and we were all supposed to be home. I trotted across the trail, to search behind the balconies, along the treeline.

I walked slowly around the back of the apartment buildings like I was hunting. I was a ranger, searching for a lost hobbit. It was fun. I was on an actual manhunt. Like a hero. I edged along softly, quietly over the brush, like I needed to be stealthy. Like Delmon might startle and run off the second I approached him.

Then, I found him.

He was squatting down next to a green electrical box. Behind the apartments, where people kept wet towels hanging from balcony rails, and chucked beer cans over the side into the grass.

He was just sitting there, breathing heavily through the spit in the corners of his mouth. Staring through his one eye into the moist dirt.

“Delmon?”

He didn’t look up. He just puffed bubbles from his lips, his head bent over. I thought he may have been crying.

“Hey, Deion is looking for you.”

He looked up at me. Maybe he remembered Deion.

He smiled suddenly and sprung up, his uncoordinated round frame tottering violently. In a flash he was charging at me, a giant smile across his face, his glasses hanging from his ears, sliding down his nose, spit rolling over his plump cheeks back to his neck.

He crashed into me, laughing and spitting, flat on my back, pushing my arms up over my head, his exposed belly against my own, our navels kissing. He chortled giggles into my ear, wet and warm, gurgling into my hair. Just hugging, like saying thank you. Just playing. Just two boys playing. Just laughing and rubbing his round belly into mine, happy and unknowing and affectionate and jubilant and daunting and moist and rough and erratic, and pure love in its rawest form and it suffocated but it was beautiful and a window slammed into a window pane behind us–

“GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY BOY.”

Delmon didn’t move, heaving atop me, laughing with one eye at his mother hanging from the first floor kitchen window. She ambled back down from the counter, slunk around the living room on the other side of the wall, pushed the sliding glass door of the patio and scuffled out to pull Delmon up.

I pushed him off me, stunned and shaken, but knowing it wasn’t violent and Mikey was there now with Matty, staring at me from the treeline just ten feet away. His eyes wide, astonished, but without accusation. Just confused, but knowing, more than me, more than the mom. He relaxed his expression, set Matty down on the grass, swooshed over to me in those loud pants.

“Come on.” He pulled me up as Delmon stumbled back into his mother.

“You keep away from my baby.”

“He tackled me–”

“Don’t touch him!” She wiped his bottom off, put an arm around him and turned toward their apartment. “Where is Deion? Rollin’ around like a couple of faggots. White trash corruptin’ all the good kids.” She looked over her shoulder at me, her chin hidden on the other side of her pink robe.

I turned to Mikey, pleading.

“But, he tackled–”

“I know.” His wild blue eyes, soft as they’d ever been, avoiding my gaze directly.

He scooped up Matty and we started up the hill toward the apartment. Neither of us spoke. I couldn’t. I should have. I didn’t know what to say. I knew it wasn’t me, but I didn’t know what it was.

It was dark and the hooded lights in the brick apartment facade burst to life, dim orange.

“Mikey, I didn’t–”

“Just come on before she blames me.”

We were late for lasagna.

The third flight of stairs, sticky and dirty, I pushed the door open, cinnamon and rotting reptile molt stewing in tomato and garlic. Humid and red as we kicked off our shoes at the door.

“Oh, god you look awful! What is that? Dirt? Oh my god are you bleeding?” I hadn’t noticed the blood crusted around my nostril. “Ugh why can’t you just play like normal kids? Did you do this?”

“What, no! I saved him!”

“Goddddd.” Mom attacked my face with a wet paper towel. “Look at your jersey! Off, take it off. I’ll wash it before coach sees it. Can you imagine? And I told you not to wear it around like that. Christ you’ve got mulch in your ears. Go. Shower. Right now.”

“But, I want to eat.”

“No. Nope. Go.” She pushed me down the hallway, kicking my butt on the way.

“Do you want lasagna in there, Marky?”

“Ma, what? No he doesn’t need lasagna in the shower.”

I showered.

Stood and stared into my confused kid face for too long in the steamed mirror. Clean and dirty. I did something wrong. I was different. There was a secret now. Or there wasn’t. I was just different. Older, maybe. Or younger. Just different. Rollin’ around like faggots. I was dirty.

“Oh, Marky, here’s your dinner now…”

I sat down next to Mikey. He looked up quickly, barely a glance, went back to his plate. I pulled up and poked at the lump of cheese and red and moist, squished it around like hot spit bubbling in the corners of lips. I put my fork down.

“Slow down, no one’s going to steal it from you, Michael. Marky, eat.” Mom sliced Matty’s lasagna into small bits. “Michael-”

“Mikey.”

“Ugh, Mik-EY, share the garlic bread with your brother. No–” She slapped Matty’s hand “use your fork, you’re not a baby.”

Mikey slid the basket over to me. He looked up this time, apologetically, sympathetically. I was dirty. I was different. A couple of faggots.

Grandmama sat at the table, a full plate in front of her. Staring at it, seeing nothing, eating less.

“Ma, you need to eat something.”

“Oh, yes I’ll eat. Yes.” She stared into her plate, her loose-skinned neck folded up into her chest, into her sweater, in the humidity of the apartment.

Mom shuffled in her seat a bit, chewed exaggeratedly, eyeing me from her periphery, pretending to separate her lasagna from her bread. She flicked her hair from her eyes, leaned toward me over her plate, pupils barely grazing my face.

“So.” She she stabbed at her pasta. “Did you make any friends today?”

“Tammy do you have to?”

“What? It ain’t hurtin’ nobody.” Tammy spun around and shrugged as she lit a cigarette, tucking the Newports back into her bra and sucking in deeply. “Besides, you smoke!”

“Not inside. Not right in the kids’ faces.”

“Bless ‘em, the little angels.” Tammy put her chin in her hand and spun her netted legs back round to blink lovingly toward the sleeping boys. “You think I’d make a good mom, Mo?”

“Don’t call me that in here.”

“Sheesh, sorry! I just can’t do anythin’ right can’t I?”

“I’m sorry, Tam.” She stood from her stool and walked over to Tammy, resting her hands on her bare shoulders and kissing her on the head in consolation. “I just don’t like having them back here. Of course you’d make a good mom. You’d be a lovely mom.”

“I knowww.” Tammy sighed and put her hands to her mouth in a prayer and blinked back over to the boys. “So precious!”

“You’d make a much better mom than me.”

“Oh, hush you!” Tammy swiveled and put her palms to Lisa’s gaunt cheeks, pulling her down to meet at eye-level. “You are a fantastic little momma! You hear me?”

Lisa shook her head and smiled plaster.

“You hear me?”

“The whole world hears you, Tam.”

The young girl drifted slowly toward the corner of the dressing room, where the two boys were hidden behind a coat rack from the light and smoke, like puppies under an overpass. They had been nestled pressed together, their backs elevated on a basket of heels, their fingers tickling the feathers of a neon shawl dangling from their makeshift divider. Liam had been asleep momentarily, while Tom danced his knuckles through the weightless scarf, watching his mother’s legs glissade from her stool to Tammy’s, to the counter, now approaching. As she grew near he closed his eyes and rested his head against Liam, warm and pulsing.

Lisa pulled back the curtain of lace and leather and feather and sheer and looked down over her two boys huddled there.  They were still so young, she promised herself, that they wouldn’t remember any of this. Their memories would be all shapes and colors and blurs, punctured with spikes of emotional highs and birthdays. They were lovely there. Curled together between their fighting, their red cheeks and full heads of hair supporting one another as they dreamt. Of what?

She shut the blinds and Tom opened his eyes to a sliver. The potpourri sting on her backdrift air filled him as he lay watching her calves grow smaller, sweeping silently back to the stool in front of her mirror. She sat and kicked a leg over the other, her right foot swinging forward and back, coming to a tranquil float as she leaned in.

Lisa was a composition. A waxwork of rouge and hairspray, she wiped away the powder clinging to the coffee-stained glass with yellow fingers. Staring into herself with calcified umber eyes, she fixed the robe trickling loosely off one shoulder and turned away quickly, stonefaced, to unfurl her makeup bag. The purse splayed itself over the counter with a snap. Its debris danced playfully through the fluorescence and stuck to her reflection. She wiped it back and the robe fell off her shoulder anew. Staring into herself again, she espied the quiver at the corner of her lips as her eyes fell over the velcroed shoes of little boys beneath a coat rack in the background. With a resolute breath she released herself, inadvertently blowing powder across the counter like a magnet falling into iron filings.

She was young. And she was tired. And as she lifted her calloused hands to her eyes to blot away the deep purple orbs that had begun to settle into her face, she shivered and remembered how she used to stare at herself, enamoured with the mirror. Now it was the cold shard buried in talc that chipped away at her life-expectancy each time she gazed in to smother a veil over malnutrition.

A door cracked open, spilling metal guitar riffs and strobing white light all over the room and the girls snapped to attention.

“Two more, then you.”

“Thanks.”

The door vacuumed back up the desensitization and the room was all dim bulbs and floating skin again.

Liam fidgeted his elbow into Tom’s side and Tom pushed lightly against him, distancing himself without waking his brother. He slowly melted away, careful not to make too much noise, but determined to give space between them as he watched his mother’s feet beneath the hanging fabrics. They pushed down into the tiles as she lifted herself, the robe rippling behind her knees as she crossed to Tammy’s stool.

“Here.”

“I don’t need much.”

“Ya’ fine! Take it!”

The bare left foot pirouetted and the right patted down surely in front as they moved off smoothly toward the darker side of the room.

A tapping and a sneeze, two feet returned moments later in a rush and scuffled shiftily to the stool, pressing down as she sat herself back to the mirror, kicking a leg over the other briefly, the right foot shuddering desperately against the left leg, pressing now as she lifted herself again and back to Tammy, “thanks,” “of course, of course,”  one foot now and shaking into straps in clear stilettos, the other now and balancing unsteady and cramped in clear heeled shells, clopping as they spun around and straightened out, and the robe fell unceremoniously, and they clacked on toward the white light and riffs and the door cracked….

“…clap for Moan-aaaaaaa Lisaaaa!”

“Your boy find a woman yet, James?”

James paid by check. Ten Dollars and 99/100. He shook his head every day, blew out a puff of disbelief. It had been $9.99 for years. He picked up the brown paper bag. Cradled it in one flanneled arm, while he dug in to unglue the flap of the twelve-pack with his other giant red paw. Prep it for the one mile ride home.

“Naw, not yet.”

“I have daughter, James. Unless….” Amit waved a finger, slipped his eyes up under the rims of his oval glasses, teasing the poor drunk. Amit was the only brown man James knew.

“Yeah, yeah, awright now Emmitt.” He couldn’t call him Amit. he just called him Emmitt. Emmitt made sense.

The man kicked the glass door open with the tip of his Bates work boots. A little harder than he’d meant. They were new boots. His wife bought them. He was a Hytest man. Had been for years. But, she’d found those Bates at Bass Pro Shop, so he trusted them.

He waved a giant red paw back at Amit, who waved him off and shook his head. He climbed down the sidewalk, his flannel shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum, pulled out the prepped Budweiser, nestled its eleven friends into the bed of his F-150. He’d driven Fords his entire life.

He pulled the koozie from his glove compartment, wiped the top of the can. He didn’t trust them. Whoever they were. Putting chemicals on the tops of cans. Whatever chemicals were.

He sucked up the crisp pussing tip of the cracked can and slid it into the koozie, between his legs. He pulled out of the Camelot Liquors parking lot.

His wife was home. Laura. She was fine.

“Hey, honey.”

She stretched up from the sink to kiss him inside his mustache.

“Hm.”

He kicked off the black boots, set them upright in front of the doormat.

“How’d they work?”

“Fine.” He sat the paper bag on top of a stack of clippings on the kitchen table. Laura had taken up scrapbooking. James didn’t mind. They didn’t eat at that table and it kept her busy, out of his face. “Need to be broken in.”

“Oh, I’m so glad you like ‘em. Oh, good.” She wiped her hands on her pants, crouched down to place the boots in line next to the other shoes near the door. Repeating it to herself, “Oh, good. Oh, good. Oh, good.”

James stopped listening. He bent down to pet the cat, but recoiled with a stinging in his lower back.

“You okay, honey?” Laura scuttled over to him, threw two soggy palms up to his his massive shoulders.

“Yeah, shit, jus’ went down too fast.” He pushed her arms away with his giant red hands, too hard, unintentionally. “I’m awright.”

The cat scampered off to sit on the windowsill above the sink. Laura went with it.

James opened the particle-board door to the garage, reached down, slower this time, to pick up the tiny blue Igloo cooler he kept on the step there. He walked it over to the sink. Laura took it mechanically, without looking, poured out the yellow water from the night before, the ants floating in the corners.

James unbagged the twelve pack. Crumpled the paper bag tightly between his great palms, threw the crushed knot across the living room. It sliced right, missing the wide-mouthed wastebasket.

“Shit. That close.” He laughed a little to himself as he pulled out eleven beers. He counted them Eleven. He recounted them. Eleven. He slapped his palms down on the scraps of paper and glossy photos. “The fuck?”

“Wht’s wrong, honey?” Laura spun around, suds up her forearms, his cooler open and shining in the tap water.

He remembered he’d had one on the way home. He stood up, relieved. He liked Amit.

“Nevermind. Forgot somethin’.” He flattened the box, set it down beside the sink, beside the shoes near the door. The unstuck cardboard flopped over on the doormat, made a trapezoid.

Laura wiped the cooler dry with a washcloth, handed it to James as he walked back to the loose beers on the scrapbook clippings on the table. Laura crouched down and lifted the cardboard he’d left collapsed on the doormat, folding it once over and sliding it in next to the other recyclables beneath the sink.

James grabbed a plastic Shoney’s souvenir cup from atop the refrigerator, and placed it under the ice maker. He filled it three times, dumping it out into his cooler. He placed the cup back on the fridge, nestled each beer into the ice. Only eight fit in the cooler at once. He took the remaining three and put them in the fridge, next to the other “loosies” he kept on the bottom row. He collected them all week, adding three each day. By the time the weekend came around, he’d piled up fifteen, and had no need to leave the house until Sunday evening, when he’d go out to wash his F-150, play poker at Kirk’s.

He slapped the top of the cooler down, thwap, and the cat leapt from the windowsill to follow him into the garage with it.

“I’ll call you when dinner’s–” Laura’s voice trailed off behind the particle board door.

That garage was his temple.

When Jimmy went off to college or whatever, James gutted it. Tossed all of the Big Wheels, and toy bins, and fish tanks out onto the curb. He power washed the cement floor. Took a copper-wire brush to each wall. Insulated the whole thing, recaulked each crevice. He spread out a rug he found at the thrift store. Fifteen bucks. Red and black with a few stains that looked like dried candle wax. He moved his big screen TV out there. Ran an industrial extension cord from the side of the house, propped a heavy VHS cabinet against the garage door. It wasn’t for entering anymore.. He hung drapes over the windows like curtains in an RV. And in the middle of the it all, right in the center of the room, he plopped his crusted, greasy brown recliner. Laura hated that recliner. She wiped it down with every treatment she could find, but she could never seem to restore its natural shade and texture.

James didn’t care. It was his recliner. He was glad she didn’t like it. One less thing of his she’d carry off for herself.

He set his cooler down next to the ancient chair. Propped open a dinner tray from the far wall, pulled his koozie from his back pocket, slid a beer in, onto the tray table.

He watched American Pickers, Lizard Lick Towing, some show about building motorcycles. Stuff he thought he was supposed to like. He didn’t really watch. He had eight beers to finish. He just kept it on in the background.

Around eight-thirty, Laura brought his food out to him. He wouldn’t eat until he’d finished at least half his beers. He was disciplined that way. It typically took him until eight-thirty to do it.

Laura carried his food on one of those handled serving trays from some secondhand store. It was deep brown with some flower pattern a the center, where the plate was placed. James took his dinner on a paper plate, tucked into one of those wicker paper plate holders. He didn’t want to have dishes all over the place. Laura couldn’t seem to remember when they’d ever had a problem with dishes all over the place, but she did as he asked and brought his food on that paper plate on that deep brown serving tray. Every night at eight-thirty.

She’d already eaten by eight-thirty. She’d bring his food, use the opportunity to ask him a few logistical questions, “You want me to send a card to cousin Suzy?,” “I’m going to Wal-Mart Saturday morning, you need anything?” “Did you call Jimmy back?” He’d tell her “Sure,” or “No,” or “Yup.” She’d say, “Oh, good.” She’d repeat it to herself as she sauntered back to the particle board door, “Oh, good. Oh, good.” She’d take off earrings. Place them on the window sill, to let them recharge in the moonlight, and retire to the bedroom upstairs.

James would eat, listen for her quick little feet to creak the floorboards up the staircase. He’d listen for her shuffling above him, crossing from the bathroom to the bedroom closet, to the bedside table, back to the bedroom closet, to the bed, and one final slouch into the floor as she sunk into the mattress to sleep.

That was normally enough time for James to finish eating. Porkchops and baked beans that night. He’d pick at it, not very hungry, and slide the remains onto the concrete floor, nudging the wicker just out of reach along the floor with his giant red hand.

He wiped his hands on his jeans. Reached down, flipped open the Igloo cooler, pull up Budweiser number five. He cracked it, slipped it into his koozie, onto the tray table.

He unzipped his Wranglers. Pulled the down over his ass, clawed the legs off with his gray socks, his bare thighs sticking to the grimy leather chair, his stained Hanes a little damp from work in his jeans all day. He’d pull at himself until he was comfortable.

He always chugged beer number five and six. He didn’t want to masturbate until beer number seven, so he’d have one to keep him company while he did it, and one to refresh him when he’d finished. He was disciplined that way.

He chugged beer number six, slowly pushed himself up from the seat, and stumbled over to a soggy box beneath his tools. He kept his tapes there. In Blockbuster boxes he’d stolen. in case somebody ever came snooping. They’d have to go to a lot of trouble to find his tapes.

He found the one he wanted. The tape with the black girl about halfway through. Jungle Fever. That was the name of the scene. The letters scrolled from the bottom of the screen as the image of a dark, dark black girl in a leopard print bra popped up. She twirled her curled hair in a finger, giggled a few giggles into the camera.

When he finished, he crushed can number seven in between his massive palms, reclined all the way back in his chair and stared up at the garage ceiling.

Laura was asleep directly above him. Same longitude and latitude. He thought that was pretty funny.

***

James wrote out the check. Nine Dollars and 99/100, handed it to Amit. Amit stared up at him from under his oval glasses, accusingly, half-jokingly.

“What is this?” He plucked the note with his brown finger.

“Aw, shit…” James slapped a giant red hand down on the glass counter. Shook his head, beckoned for the paper back. Amit waved him off.

“Is fine.”

“No, no, now Emmitt, I’ll write another one.”

“No. Too much work. You’ll put an extra on there tomorrow.”

James cracked his neck, huffed and puffed at his mistake. He couldn’t believe he’d fucked that up. He shoved his giant red hands into his Wranglers. Walked away from the counter while Amit finished with the register, bagged his twelve pack.

There was a model barn in the center of the floor behind the register where the twelve and thirty packs of Budweiser stacked. It was real wood. About four feet high and five feet wide. Red, with the Budweiser logo painted across the barn doors. Amit had the Budweiser rep stack the thirty packs in front of the barn, inside of the little model fence.

The display was massive. James drank a lot of Budweiser.

“Hey, Emmitt.”

“Mmm?”

“How long you been sittin’ on this?”

Amit leaned over the counter to look past James at the model barn. James had admired it every day for as long as he could remember. Since those twelve packs were $9.99. He’d always thought it would look great in his garage. He could store his tapes in there, and his tools. Close the barn doors.

“It’s trash. I’m throwing it away. Too much space.”

James couldn’t believe his luck. He turned back to Amit, eyebrow raised, waiting for the switch. It didn’t come. Amit was really just going to throw the thing away.

“That’s a nice barn, now.”

“You take it. What do I care? Put it on your big gas monster Ford.”

James liked Amit. He picked on James for everything, but James liked it. He was the only brown man James knew.

“I can’t just take it from ya’ like that.”

“Why not? I’m going to throw it away.”

“I’m a Christian man, Emmitt. That’s stealing.”

Amit laughed at the poor old drunk. He was certain he knew more about being a Christian man than that poor bedraggled flannel man before him.

“Fine, James. Fine. Give me all your money. You do it anyway. Why not?”

James wrote out a check. One Hundred Dollars and 00/100. He handed it to Amit with a giant red hand, raised an eyebrow, watching the brown man meaningfully as he took the note. Amit shook his head and laughed a guttural laugh at the gluttony of it all. He waved a hand and shooed James out of his store. He opened the drawer and slid the check in beneath the cash.

“Hey, honey.”

She leaned up from the sink to kiss him inside his mustache.

“Hm.”

He kicked off his boots. Walked with his damp gray socks over to the kitchen table, set his twelve pack down on the clippings and photos.

“Jimmy’s gonna be here in about an hour for dinner, so make sure you wash up and all.”

“What?”

Laura turned around. She knew he’d heard her, but she took the safer road.

“Jimmy’s gonna be here–”

“I heard you, I just don’t know why you didn’t tell me earlier.” James threw two giant red paws in the air, his wingspan wider than Laura was tall.

“I asked you if you called him–”

“Shit.” James spun around, swept up the paper bag, crushed it in his hands. “Shit, shit!” He slung it across the living room to the wastebasket, not even aiming. He didn’t watch it land.

“I thought you knew. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a bad night Laur.”

“Why, what’s wrong honey?” She scurried over to him, threw her hands over his chest like he’d told her he was ill. He glared down over his moustache into her baggy little eyes. He was convinced she wanted him dead. She was just waiting for the day he’d come home and tell her he was dying.

“I got a project I’m workin’ on.”

“Oh, good! Oh, good, what is it?”

“Somethin’ I picked up from Emmitt.”

“From that Arab liquor store?”

“He ain’t Arab.”

“Okay, what is it?” She stepped back, pressed her tiny palms together, beamed at this new motivated man before her.

“Do I ask you all these questions about your paper watcha-call-its all over the table? Shit.”

James placed the loosies in the fridge, on the bottom row, carried his cooler out to the garage.

He was on beer three when Jimmy knocked an indiscriminate little rap on the door. James was embarrassed every time. Waited until the boy knocked like a man before he acknowledged it. Even then, he pretended he didn’t know who it might be.

“Is it?”

“Your son, father.”

Father. Like he was some stranger. Like they’d just met or something.

“Well, come on now.”

Jimmy was a good-looking kid, just scrawny. He’d taken after his mother. Not Laura. His mother was James’s first wife. She’d died when Jimmy was a little boy, maybe three. Cancer. James didn’t believe it. Still claimed it was his fault. He’d slept with a prostitute in Greensboro, the weekend before he found out about her cancer.

He was still driving trucks then, before he lost his CDL when the Statey found the open cans under his seat. A lot of the guys bought girls in the towns they visited. They’d show up at the diners attached to the truck stops. Find a clever way to let the drivers know they were available.

“You want some sugar in that coffee, hon’?”

“You got a bed in the back uh that truck, baby?”

“You wanna fuck me while the sun’s still up, boy?”

He’d been pretty good for the first decade or so of driving. Then, he started to go to bunny bars.

“Slippery slope.” That’s what Kirk said. He used to be a driver, too. James went to play poker at his house on Sunday nights, after he washed his F-150.

One night, in Greensboro, after he’d left this one bunny bar he’d found off 95, he pulled in to the truck stop a few miles up. She came knocking on his passenger side. Asked if she could come in. It was cold. He let her in.

Three days later, Milly told him she had cancer. He didn’t believe in medicine. Never had. She died two months later. Jimmy was three, maybe four.

“Hey, son.”

JImmy kissed his step-mother on the cheek, as Laura poked her head in to let James know she was going upstairs while they talked.

Jimmy pulled the particle board door shut, nearly tripped down the stair onto the concrete floor.

‘You awright?” James asked, eyes on the big screen, wishing the boy would just be more coordinated.

“Whoo! Yes. Always forget that’s there.” Jimmy pulled a folding chair from the side of the wall, propped it open to his father’s left.

They sat there for a few minutes, watching some show about pawn shops. James didn’t watch it. He just kept it on in the background while he drank.

“You ever seen this show?”

Jimmy laughed, like he’d picked up on a joke. James turned to him, lifted an eyebrow, waiting for the punchline. Jimmy shook his head.

“Uh, no, dad. No, I can’t say that I have.”

“Good show. These boys go around to all these pawn shops, and they find all these things in these cases these people don’t even know they’re sittin’ on.” James didn’t watch the show, but he understood the premise.

“Ah.” Jimmy didn’t care.

“I did somethin’ like that today.”

James remembered his new barn. For a moment the excitement overcame him. He nearly erupted from the seat, eager to show his son the project. Thinking he must be interested in this. He composed himself before Jimmy noticed. Pushed in the leg rest of the recliner.

“Take a look here.”

Jimmy rose and rounded the splintered model. He’d noticed it when he’d walked in, but decided not to ask. His hands on his hips, he looked at it, cocked his head.

“Oh, look at that.”

“You believe he was gonna throw it away?”

Jimmy laughed, like he’d picked up on the joke. There wasn’t one.

“Crazy.”

“‘Swhat I said. Told ‘em, hell I’ll take it.”

“That makes sense.”

“$100. That’s it. You believe that?”

“I thought you said he was going to throw it away?”

“Son, I couldn’t just steal it from him. He didn’t know what he had there. Had to give him somethin’.”

Jimmy exhaled, shook his head, smiled to himself.

“Awright, well, you’ll like it when it’s done. Gonna sand it down, add some new paint to the words on it. Probably sell somethin’ like that for $400.”

“Sure.”

“Easy.”

“Sure.”

They sat back in front of the pawn shop show. There was a large bleeding green mass in the corner of the television screen, where the color was starting to go. Jimmy mentioned it to his father a few months ago. James reclined back, drained beer number four. He pulled the empty can out of the koozie.

“Put ‘at over there, will you Jims.”

Jimmy sighed, received the empty can from his father, and placed on the mountain of cans ballooning from the storage bin behind him.

“I take that down to the scrap yard every month. Easy fifty bucks. Beer pays for itself.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Sure it does.”

“You spend fifty a week, Dad.”

“So, I get one week free.”

“Right.”

They sat for a few minutes, while the hosts of the show uncovered a signed album cover from Elvis at some shop near Vegas. Jimmy thought it was too contrived to be real. James didn’t really watch it, just kept it on in the background while he pulled out beer number five.

“I usually eat right now.”

“Yeah, I know, Dad.”

James reclined back, sipping on beer number five. He wouldn’t be able to watch his tapes properly, at this rate.

“So, tell me about your girlfriend.”

“You know I don’t have a girlfriend, Dad.”

James gulped down more of his Budweiser.

“You don’t want to tell me?”

“I’m single, Dad. Nothing to tell.”

“Why, cause she’s black?”

“Jesus.”

“You think I never seen a black girl naked?”

“I’m sure you have, Dad.”

“What you think I fucked a black girl?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Hmm.”

James leaned back. It felt better that his son would be okay with it if he had. He needed to know that. He hadn’t, but just in case he had. His son was okay with it.

“Lot of girls at that college, boy.”

“Don’t I know it.”

This was the only important information James could ever manage to extract from his son. He lived for it. It was his favorite part of Jimmy’s visits. When Jimmy would tell him about all the parties and the girls dancing. It made him feel alive again. Young and in control.

“You got a thing this weekend, huh?” James drank more of his beer.

“A thing?”

“You know, a social, watcha-call-it?”

“Oh, a social?” Jimmy laughed and leaned back. He’d never admit it, but this was the only topic he liked discussing with his father. Not for the reasons his father assumed, but because it was the only time his father ever seemed proud, interested.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me ‘bout that.”

“We have a social this weekend with Kappa Delta.”

“Oooooo.”

“They’re the blondes. Rich girls from Montgomery County, Howard County, New Jersey.”

“Little blonde ones?”

“Lots of them.”

“You got a uh, whatcha-call-it–”

“A theme?” His father asked every time. It was the same conversation every time.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell me ‘bout that.” James sat up, pushed in the footrest of his recliner, reached down for beer number six. “You want one?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Plenty loosies in the fridge.”

“I don’t need a loosey, Dad, thanks.”

“Theme, theme. Tell me.”

“This Saturday is ‘80s themed.”

“That’s it?”

“As opposed to…..”

“Well, shit that ain’t a theme. I can show you that. You need one of my shirts?”

“Do I nee–no, Dad, I don’t…I don’t need one of your shirts.”

James was proud of his son. He leaned back into the slimy leather recliner and cracked beer number six, slid it into the koozie and down between his legs.

James became worried that he wouldn’t be able to watch his tapes. He could hear Laura upstairs, already shuffling from closet to bed.

“Why you here anyway.”

“I can’t just come say hi to my dad.”

“Not likely.”

“I’m helping mom with her scrapbook. She asked me to find a few things online for her.”

“She’s not your mom.”

“Dad.”

“She ain’t your mom, Jimmy. That’s all.”

“She raised me.”

“Sheesh people ain’t got no loyalty anymore. That’s the problem.” He took a swig from beer number six.

“Like you had for mom?”

James always regretted telling his son about that time in Greensboro. But, once Jimmy turned 14 and was a man’s age, he figured it was only right. Jimmy had a right to know as a man. From man to man. Father to son.

“Why you here anyway?”

“Dad if you want me to go just ask me. You don’t have to do this every time.”

James was embarrassed. The boy thought he was so smart.

“You think you’re so smart huh?”

“Well.”

“Shit I see they haven’t taught you a damned thing at that college. How you gonna be able to take care of a lady if you can’t do nothin’?”

“What do you know? You don’t take care of anyone.”

James stared at the boy, flabbergasted.

“You shittin’ me, boy?”

“No, dad, I’m not shittin’ you.”

Jimmy was feeling bold, and tired, and through with his father’s games. He knew his dad wanted him gone, but couldn’t resist antagonizing the old man.

“Boy, I took care of your little ass for your whole damn life.” He pulled the recliner up and turned to face Jimmy. “I worked every goddamned day to put food on the table and keep you wearin’ all them fancy clothes. I took you to football practice.”

“I never wanted football practice.”

“Well, I took you!”

James began to cry. Drunken tears he couldn’t verbalize. They just swelled and rolled down his red cheeks, as often they did. He worked himself up about something inconsequential, something to do with JImmy, and then he’d cry, and then Jimmy would feel satisfied, and then the boy would leave.

“I done the best a dad can do, Jimmy.” He wiped his eyes with his giant red hands. “That ain’t good enough for you, well shit.”

“Dad, you’re fine. Don’t get so worked up.”

“I care, Jimmy. That’s why I get worked up.”

“Okay.”

“That’s why I want you to find a nice girl for you.”

“I’m good, dad.”

“What about Kristy.”

“Kristy Wilson?”

“Mm.”

“What about her?”

James leaned back in his recliner and finished beer number six. He handed Jimmy the empty can to place on top of the mountain of empties. James filled his koozie with beer number seven, slid it down between his thighs.

“Nothin.”

James was worried he wouldn’t be able to to watch his tapes. He could hear Laura settling into bed above him.

“I ain’t bothering with it no more.”

“Bothering with what?”

“You and none of it.” He wanted Jimmy to leave now. “No time for it. You come in here all arrogant mister college man no girl no skills. Not me. Take it somewhere else. Shit.”

“Good night, dad.”

James didn’t look at him as he walked from the garage and back into the house. James waited until he heard the boy’s car start. His own car start, he reminded himself.

“I bought that, too.”

He began to chug beer number seven.

He ripped his wranglers down over his ass, picked them off with his gray socked feet.

He dug his great red hand into his soggy box, pulled out College Sluts X. He chugged beer number seven as a blonde cheerleader entered the football coach’s office. The big screen TV bled green from the top right corner. The girl looked like the Wicked Witch. James leaned all the way back in his slimy brown recliner.

He could see the woman across the street looking directly at him from her kitchen window. He just kept going.

A man named Gill, who was just over the hill, had drifted through life without much of a thrill.

One day, in mid-May, at the beach, just him for the week, he thought he’d go out to the water. Just to go out, to lie on his back and float to where the dolphins showed off. He’d start at the shore and wade out into the shallows and hop along through the standing-height water, but he was tall so he hopped a little longer, and then, when the water was just too high to hop, he’d turn over, kick his legs up and float backward to the dolphins. So, he did.

As he skimmed along beneath a sunsetting sun, all around silly children spit and splashed and spun, blowing blue-brown bubbles, swallowing sea scum. They jumped and kicked and poked at fish and bravely rode waves back to the beach, buckled knees and bruised cheeks from bumping their seats. None of them heeded a long man on his hairy back floating by, his hands clasped to his bulbous tummy , gravity pulling the corners of his lips to a smile, his eyes stuck up, straight up to the clouds, the gurgling girls and brightly clad boys all neon darts on his periphery. Two little mermaids held hands, and broke apart to let the man slide by, and came back together, sucking big sucks and kicking off the surface, plunging down beneath it to test at holding their breath.

And the boats tore by across the low tide, their banners and signs tacked to their sides, saying “Come to the Crab Shack At 8:55, Dollar Beers, Free Cheers, and Half off the Wine…At the Corner of Coastal and 145” all the way up, at the end of the line, in a place where those young kids couldn’t quite find. And they dunked and held breath and a man floated by.

With his eyes stuck up, straight up to the clouds, he wouldn’t see the women who had all turned around, watching as waves whisked way too far out what surely they thought had been a tall, rotund man. He had his eyes stuck up, straight up to the clouds, so when the women waved, and asked their friends if that was safe he wouldn’t see their fingers. He had his eyes stuck up, straight up to the clouds, so when he floated just too far, he couldn’t see the lifeguard drop the lid to his Banana Boat tan-in-a-jar,  his flags dangling loosely down from his arm, standing up in his high chair, whistling imperiously at a tall, rotund man who had floated too far.

He floated back and sometimes he’d use his hands and sometimes he didn’t need them, so he’d lay them out flat to his sides like fitting his coffin. Solitary, at peace. He floated out and let his feet slice the top of the ocean’s surface and for a moment he peeled his eyes from the clouds and tucked his chin into his chest and looked down over his belly to watch the white jetstream that fizzled off toward the shore as his toes cut through the sea’s cloth.  He didn’t look to know how far out he’d passed or the reactions from the others all speckling the beach, now he was so far beyond the buoys and bodyboards. He looked to see the white jetstream that fizzled off toward the shore as his toes ripped through the sea’s cloth, nothing more.

The women with their wagging index fingers looked round to see if they were the only frightened beachcombers who had witnessed a body float off into the clouds.

“It was a man.” “And a tall one.” “He was handsome.” “You don’t know he was handsome.” “I think he may have been dead.” “Oh, he wasn’t dead he was just asleep.” “He wasn’t asleep! You can’t sleep that way!”

He wasn’t asleep. You can’t sleep that way. He was solitary, and at peace.  His eyes fixed back to the clouds. He didn’t bother making out shapes. He wasn’t interested in any of that. He simply liked to have them there, puffed up and hanging fat.

The water was colder now and the sun was hotter, lower, and the clouds were fewer and he floated on.

On the shore a young lifeguard was standing up on his seat, and waving a helpless little flag at another guard down the beach. And his compatriot, who had been all but asleep, finally caught the flashing sign, and rebutted with his own shaken gesticulating jive, and the first one sprung out and climbed down from his hive, the salted breeze throwing streaks through his whipping blonde hair, and a girl gazed on longingly.

A man was floating and he was very far out and he hadn’t made shapes with the clouds, but his fingers had begun to parch at the water and curl through the current. He didn’t move, but for the moments when his rhythm was threatened by an inconsistent stream, or the threat of daydream, or the accidental brush of a fish, and then he thought the worst. He could have thought nothing of it at all, but then he thought the worst.

He must have seemed quite strong out there with no one else and nothing else and only the water. He must have seemed quite strong, but he was simply playing with the clouds as clouds and not as shapes. He may have done this many times, but the women wouldn’t know that and the lifeguard couldn’t know, and perhaps he didn’t either and he floated along.

And the women all stopped with their waving index fingers and flicked them back to the pages of their Vogues and Peoples and thought about vampires in love or another blockbuster sequel. Or physics, or engineering, or when things would be equal.

“It must not have been a man.” “When did you see a man?” “I told you a long time ago it wasn’t a man.” “Well, I saw a man.” “When did you see man?” “About fifteen years ago!” And they laughed and put their index fingers to the pages of their magazines, and the board or the ball or the mirage they all saw was far too far out to have thought of at all. And a man floated on.

He floated on and so did his hands and the elastic waistband of his shorts, too, it was involved. It was involved now that it was cold and with every big thrust it released its grip on his hips and allowed the cold blast to jut down in the places no floating man wishes for it to shoot down. And he stared at the sky, but now he looked down to his feet and checked to assure that they were still cutting through the deep, and not to see how far from the shore they had cut, but that happened too. He made out the golden brown in the distance and knew that that thin strip was land, but he averted his eyes and looked back to the lightening blue and kept his back to the black and floated.

And the golden brown was distant now and almost too far to have thought of and so was the board or the ball or the mirage.

And the lifeguard had seen a board or a ball, or certainly a toy and not a man. And if it had been a man he would have gone to life-save it. But, it hadn’t been a man. That was certain. The man he saw had returned to shore a long time ago and had gone back to his family, and his children wanted ice cream and they would jump on his knees and claw at his stomach, and he would allow it. The children would have ice cream, and the scratches would heal and his knees would remain intact and his wife would smile and he hadn’t seen it in quite some time, and the lifeguard was off the hook. And it certainly wasn’t a man to begin with, out at the distance he thought that board or ball had floated. And the others hadn’t seen it, except maybe a few on shore, but they were unsure, or there certainly would have been an uproar and he would have life-saved it. But the board or ball he thought he saw had passed off so far along and so long ago and he was sure it couldn’t have been a man from his side of the shore and he waved a flag and it was done. And a board or a ball floated on.

He was sore and stiff beneath the sunsetting sun. His fingers white blisters, his belly a plum, pulled tight down over his pulsating lungs. And still he floated, because he always had. Out so far from the others, out so far from the shore, he wasn’t quite sleeping, he wasn’t quite bored. He was alive there, though stiff to the core. And his wrists began to relax into a position of least resistance, but his head still rested against the back of the water, or the front, or whatever it was, and his neck didn’t work as much, and he kept his dark eyes up to the pink-purple skies. The sunsetting sun had nearly sunset, and they met in the middle for one last wet refraction, or two, and it was bright and blinding and blurry and new.

And the women on shore who thought now for sure they hadn’t seen what they’d seen packed up their bags and rolled up their towels and hiked the harsh hike to the hotel compounds. And the skies turned darker and the moon was up now, and the lifeguards waved flags, feet pushing off their chairs, high above the brown, to be sure they could see, and they swung over their ladders and crawled the climb down, and looked once more out. They picked up their jars and were off to take showers, then out on the town.

And the man floated on, with his back to the black, the beat of the ocean thumping only for him. The sun set behind him and his clouds bled with pink, and his eyes watched them shrink as the dusk hushed their puffs and his toes cut the water, so far out from land.

He lifted his palms out over his face, closer now with the darkness, his fingers leather, like dates. The hair on his hands whisked over his knuckles, the salt and the crisp stinging his sinuses, the sky grew deep and a star popped over him, and he floated on.

Back in their rooms, the women peeled off their suits, and wrangled their makeup, and mustered the troops, and rested short rests, and creamed on their masks, and brushed through hair, and spritzed perfumes, and moved on from there.

And the lifeguards all showered, from the tops of their towers, where they all lived together in summer bunk bowers. And they drank from their bags and bottles and boots, and took sparkling shots straight down their chutes. They dragged combs through their hair and wrapped cuffs to their wrists, and jumped into jeans, all dark blue and crisp, and counted their cash and dreamt of moonlit trysts.

And a TV was airing a tale of the daring, of men in the water, and demons of the deep, and the riptide the rolled through the ocean at night, and for a moment those watching all wrestled the fright, that it was even possible, just maybe they might have seen a man out there without floats, without light.

But the clocks struck the town at just the same time, all ringing in splendid little synchronized chimes that women and lifeguards should throw fears to the side: it had just now turned 9! And if they lingered much longer they’d be stuck in the line for the crab shack that served dollar beer, half-priced wine, at the corner of Coastal and 145.

And a man who was nearly a plank by now, the sun fully down and deep water all around, closed his eyes, and rested his head so his nose poked up high, a periscope above led, in an ocean bed that bled into the black sky. He sucked in the spray and smiled for the day, and was glad to be out with the dolphins in May.

In the morning, Rick wakes up. He brushes his teeth. That’s the first thing. He strips down, everything off. He steps on his scale. He’s never upset because he’s always aware. He walks to his dresser and puts on a shirt. He puts on her panties.

He walks his dog. His dog is a Shih Tzu. He does not like it. He passes the little lady with the Border Collie she can’t control. He feigns geniality. He picks up his dog’s shit. His dog is a little Shih Tzu. It’s shits are little. It does not like him.

He goes inside. He feeds his dog. Just a little. He feeds himself a little more. He brushes his hair. He brushes his teeth, again.

He crawls into his Jetta. He does not like it. He plays a book on tape. Something about living his best life. He feigns interest.

He parks in his parking spot in the parking lot. It is not assigned. It is just his. It is next to a tree which obstructs the view from his boss’s parking spot. It is assigned.

He takes the stairs. It’s just three flights. He likes the way the panties ride as he climbs. It’s just for him.

He sits at a desk. It is his desk, until it isn’t. He doesn’t decorate it.

His cube mate is Don. Don decorates his desk. Don has kids and his desk is decorated with their faces. Don wants you to know he has kids. Happy kids.

“You should have kids.” Don sometimes says.

Don cares about politics. Don likes to talk about them. Don isn’t a liberal, but he does vote Democrat. He does not believe in abortion. Don is upset about things the news tells him.

Rick wears panties and does not care about politics. He does not decorate his desk and he does not like Don. He does not dislike Don. Don likes Don. Rick does not care about Don.

At noon, Rick eats Quaker White Cheddar Rice Cakes. He eats three of them. He dips them in low-sodium soy sauce. He has never been to Asia. He has never met anyone who has been to Asia. He does not plan to go.

Don orders take out from Geno’s. Don never packs his lunch. His wife does not like it.

“She’s gonna kill me one of these days.” Don says.

Don suspects his wife is not happy with the money he spends on lunch. Don suspects she is not happy. She tells him so.

Rick does not have a wife who tells him things. Rick does not have a wife. Rick’s ex wife is dead. Rick’s dead ex wife has been dead for a long time. Don does not know Rick’s dead ex wife is dead. Don does not know Rick has an ex wife.

Rick worked somewhere else when his dead ex wife was a live married one.

Rick does not drink while he eats his Quaker White Cheddar Rice Cakes. Rick drinks a gallon of water after he eats his Quaker White Cheddar Rice Cakes. Rick uses the restroom three times in the afternoon.

Rick uses the urinal. He moves the panties to the side when he urinates into the urinal. He does not think anyone notices. No one is there to notice.

Don uses the restroom only once in the afternoon. He does not use the restroom when Rick uses the restroom.

Rick’s boss walks by their cube once late in the day, around four, when he leaves.

Don and Rick leave at five. They were not told to leave at five. They simply do.

When Don leaves, Don takes the elevator.

When Rick leaves, Rick takes the stairs.

When Rick reaches the ground floor, Don reaches the ground floor.

Don jokes about it, he says:

“What’d you jump?”

Rick does not laugh. Rick opens the door for Don.

Don goes right to his Kia Spectra. It will take him to his wife and his kids. He will spritz his Spectra with a tiny bottle of body spray from Bath & Body Works. He will spritz his Spectra to cover up the smell of cigarettes. His kids will not ask him about it. His wife will not ask him about it.

Rick goes straight to his Jetta. His boss’s car is gone from its spot, blocked by a tree. Rick crawls into his Jetta. Rick’s Jetta does not smell like cigarettes. Rick’s Jetta does not smell like body spray from Bath & Body Works.

Rick drives his Jetta to the Howard Frankland Bridge. It is five thirty. There is traffic. The cars are still.

Rick opens the door.

Rick steps out of his Jetta. He leaves the door open. He walks to the guardrail. He takes off his pants.

He likes the way the sun feels through his dead ex wife’s panties.

He jumps off the side of the Howard Frankland Bridge.

In the morning, Don takes the stairs. He does not smoke. He will not smoke again. He does not know what to do with the remaining spray from Bath & Body works. He orders take out from Geno’s. His wife does not like it.

Rick’s Shih Tzu does not like him.

Two boys cradled each other from their knees behind a stack of packed boxes, fresh from the truck, atop a metal desk crushed over on its side, next to a pair of chairs toppled over in the confusion. The basement was shadow, the only light peering through a hole in the dark fabric draped loosely over a solitary window. It was dark. Not dark because it was early morning or sundown, but dark like the charred edges of a treeline after the ravage of wildfire. Dark like the decayed innards of black stumps after the snow melts, after the soot decays, after a terrible blaze rips through a dry wood.

Two boys cradled each other, stifling each breath, pushing their wet faces into their wet arms, straining every tendon to clench their trembling.

“Let’s go.”

“Get your fuckin’ hands off me.”

“I said let’s go.”

“This is bullshit. This is bullshit!”

“Alright, come on. Out.”

Two boys cradled each other, daring a glance around the metal desk crushed over on its side, watching three sets of large feet plotting the course to the staircase. Two sets of black boots pressing decisively onward, one set of socks slipping occasionally, resisting each step clumsily.

“This is bullshit. It’s fuckin’ Christmas. I didn’t do shit.”

“Out.”

“Ask her!”

Three sets of feet climbed over the landing, one set of socks slipped over the lip and back down to the floor. Two sets of boots hoisted the socks back up. Three sets of feet turned the corner and thumped against walls. A door creaked open. A storm door shook, tin foil in the wind. A door clicked shut.

Two boys released each other. They sat in place, watching for a set of socks to slip back around the corner and down to the basement floor. They lifted their heads to one another, pushing vision through clouds of damp eyelashes and suffocating dark. The little light through the hole in the dark fabric sifted through the shadow and swept through the space in muted surrender, shining blue against the railings of the metal desk crushed over, hazing the cove in a charcoal blanket.

One boy wiped the clouds from his eyes and urged silence to the other through his enlarged pupils. He turned his weight on a knee and steadied shaking fingers on an unpacked box. He pushed his palms down and urged silence to the other. He poked his head up through the molehill and breathed the stale open air with  shivering sucks. He checked for socks on a landing and back to his brother, afraid to look toward the little light straight ahead. No socks were coming from the landing, from his left. The little light splayed gray over the tops of boxes and a queen bed. The little brother crawled closer, the first boy shunned his motion, clawed his arm gently in caution.

A little gray head poking out of boxes looked out into the clearing. The floor imperceptible without feet to trace its surface. The vastness of unfurnished gray expanse fell out without end. There was a queen bed, dusted over in dim gray. And a couch. A couch that was white in the light. A couch against a wall, a measureless distance from a stack of unpacked boxes. On a couch that was white in the light posed the white pile of clothes and white folds of skin that was a girl who was light in the dark.

The pile crumpled over, the white folds of skin shining in the little light through the little hole in the dark fabric. A girl who was crumpled clothes and folded skin wrapped her arms around her knees. Her head bobbed forward, her neck too weak to keep it. The pile convulsed and choked grunting sobs into the knees wrapped in arms. The moans burst forth slow and full from the caverns of her chest, the hands wringing folds of flesh and mesh, the hair stamped to her cheeks in tears and sweat.

She posed, her knees to her lips, cotton clinging to spit, drying and rewetting under her chin. Her crumpled, mangled clothes framing her weakened frame, dangling from her elbows to the floor, her head against her knees, coughing out her core.

A little gray head retreated, downward until the rims of his eyes met the brim of the desk. The crumpled pile convulsed and shot soot through the air and over her knees, snot glistening in the tiny beam, stretching taut from her wringing folded hands to her damp white cheeks, her neck too weak to keep it.

And a little gray head claimed one more shot of the dimly lit visage of a girl who was light in the dark, and a string of snot that strung, shining in a stitch of sun, from her elbow to her hair, damp in dried blood.

And little dainty motes of dust danced playfully up the ladder through the little light in the hole in the dark fabric draped over a solitary window.

Outside the convenience store, an old man squatted against the brick wall, his knees to his ears. He held his hand out to a group of young men passing by in pastel shirts and clean cut faces. They veered away from him. He didn’t look very clean. They didn’t want their pants smudged by his outstretched fingers.

As I approached I could make out the military insignia stitched into his grimy ball cap, and his now brown New Balances untied beneath his chin. They always wore military ball caps. Like that mattered. He was worn down to his cheekbones, and he was very old. If he were younger he would have been an addict. But he was very old, so maybe he was an addict in his life, and maybe still was, but either way he was too old to enjoy the high and likely only did it to stave off death, so it didn’t matter. He was too skinny.

He didn’t look when I passed and didn’t stretch out his hand. It must have been my shirt. I was a little offended.

He tipped over on a forearm, falling asleep, or into cardiac arrest. I was drunk. I leaned down to stop him from smacking his face on the pavement. He pushed himself upright, staring at the ground.

“‘Scuse me sir. I don’t mean to bother. Could I get a dollar so I can get a egg roll?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have one, or it would be yours.”

“Aw, that’s alright. ‘Preciate it. But, listen– you think I could get a Pepsi?”

“I think you can.”

He unglued his eyes from the pavement, looked up at me. He hadn’t expected it, I guess. A break in the late night routine of inquiry and rejection. His hollow cheeks pressed against his jaw, beneath a beard that had never been shaved.

I felt like a fucking hero. I just told a man I’d spend less than a dollar on him. Like I’d promised to take his son to my kingdom. Teach him language and astronomy in my fucking court. I really needed to feel important.

“I thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Very much.”

I felt important. Like I mattered. Like any of it mattered. Just a Pepsi for a homeless guy. Give him forty. Fuck it. I couldn’t take it with me anyway.

“Don’t be so dramatic.”

“Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

I made a lot of promises.

I walked over and pulled open the door to the convenience store, the bells like Christmas, warning of my entrance. It was packed. It was always packed at that time, with barhoppers and dancers and little white girls in little shiny dresses. I passed by the hot food. There weren’t any egg rolls. The withered vet with his unlaced shoes was in the wrong place. Or he was a liar. Or he didn’t know what taquitos were. It didn’t matter. I would grab him a soda either way. Cans were cheap and at the very worst, he would simply pour a shot of whiskey in it and stay warm through the night until he found a dollar for his taquito or egg roll.

I was pretty drunk and all the perishable foods looked good, but I wasn’t hungry for food. I hadn’t been, lately. Just Chinese carry out every few days. I probably had an egg roll between a couch cushion at home. Maybe I’d invite the guy home.

In the aisle in front of the drinks, a man in his forties towered over a much younger, indecisive girl. He was frustrated and she had been drinking. She couldn’t choose between one candy bar or the other or something in another aisle in a different store and his patience was wearing and she was wearing a very short skirt and every time she reached down to change her mind, her skirt rode up and he had to bend down to yell a whisper at her and she had to wave him off because she didn’t care and he was lucky just to be in the same aisle as her.

“Pardon me.”

“Sorry, man.” The older man moved in close to the younger girl to let me by, his face an apology as he placed his hands on her shoulder and moved her to the side a bit.

“No worries.”

I rarely bought sodas and I was feeling very drunk, but very proud of myself for being so generous, and every brand carried fifteen flavors and I couldn’t remember if the old man wanted a Diet Pepsi or a Pepsi, so I just grabbed both. They were less than a dollar, or something, at most. I should have bought him ten.

I caught my colorless reflection in the refrigerated glass as I swung the door open. Did I still have blood on my face? Did I ever? I checked my mouth in the glass. A couple of guys passed behind me. I would have been embarrassed in a past life. Standing there, turning my chin to see different angles against the green and blue of the Sprite row. Trying to pick out any abnormalities in a spectral face reflected back at me. Light blue and fuzzy at the edges, like I was slipping away. My eyes dark orbs with no irises, the shadows in my cheeks deep dimples.

“Yo, can I get in there?”

I would have been embarrassed if I weren’t a wraith. Instead it didn’t matter. None of it did. I had already crossed over. Maybe I had two months ago.

I turned around and the older man and younger girl had moved across the buffered tile to the line spanning the length of the store. I stood in behind a couple of teenaged boys with backpacks on who were waiting to buy hot dogs or cigarettes. They weren’t happy with the length of the line, and intermittently they’d bark at the cashier to hurry up, and the cashier must have heard it every night, because she just kept up the same pace. She wasn’t moving slowly. The line was very long.

The boys were simply boys and time had not yet slowed down for them. Everything needed to happen now. I thought I must have been that way back then. That everything needed to happen instantly or it would never happen and I’d miss out on something that was happening somewhere that I’d never be able to miss again. If they were older I may have said something about their barking. If they were older I would have told them to deal with it like everyone else and to be courteous and patient and that yelling at the lone cashier wouldn’t help and that they were stressing everyone in the store and there was no need for it. But they weren’t older. They were teenaged boys with important things to have happen that would never happen again. And they were probably right.

The line dwindled and the boys reached the front and the taller one leaned over the counter and asked for one Cigarello and the shorter boy grabbed a bag of chips and threw it on the counter and the taller one pushed them away, but eventually conceded and emptied his pockets to pay with what paper and coin he had. And I envied them.

“Next.”

“Hi how are you?”

“I’m good. What can I get you?”

“I have these.” I placed the two soda cans on the counter, hands a little shaky. Like I’d just murdered.

“Dollar sixty-four.”

“And, also,” I leaned in to try and make out the packs of cigarettes behind the round girl in the visor. I didn’t buy cigarettes anymore. I thought that mattered. Like anything had changed in two months. “I’ll just have the Marlboros.”

“Which ones.”

“Huh,” cigarettes were like sodas, “the gold ones. That’s fine, yes.” Like Mr. Jim used to smoke. He knew who worked hard. The real ones. Those were the ones you kept around.

She rang me up and I paid and pocketed the cigarettes so no one would see them in my hand. Like God was watching. Like there was a God.

“I’m sorry, do you have matches or something?”

“Here you go.”

“Have a great night.”

I picked up the cans and looked behind me. The line wasn’t that long, all its occupants adult aged. I didn’t feel so bad about my lengthy transaction.

I pushed the door fully and nearly hit the pile of old man to the right of it with his cheekbones down to his dirty shoes.

“I couldn’t remember if you asked for Diet or not. I hope you don’t mind. I just grabbed both.”

“Aw, that’s just fine. Thank you. Thank you, sir. God bless you.”

God bless you.

“You as well.” It felt odd to say. “Stay warm tonight.”

“Now I will, now. Thank you, sir. Thank you.”

I ashed the cigarette. It wasn’t very good, but it satisfied something.

I’d become merely tactile. Or I wished I had. Like one of those guys. Not feeling. Only fulfilled by physical sensations. Smoking. Masturbating. Drinking. Those were the only things that brought any joy in the last two months. Crying was alright, but it took too much work. It made me tired. Sleeping didn’t help. Sleeping was like being awake, only I couldn’t repeat Stengel’s shitty practice phrases to myself while I was asleep.

Awake I could at least pretend I was trying. Choose when to try and “turn it off” and enjoy being alive. Whatever that was.

“I want you to try meditation, Tom.”

He was a young psychologist. I was probably his first real chance. He’d publish a paper on me. Give me some anonymous name. John, or Paul, like a Beatle. Something Biblical. Was Stengel Jewish? I’d springboard his career. At least I’d be important. Fuck him.

It mattered so much to everyone. Careers. Futures. It all mattered. It had never mattered to me. Especially after everything ended. Nothing mattered. I only felt anything when I let myself slip into the memories. None of that was good.

Why not skip the slipping and take the leap?

Relax. Stay away from alcohol for a while. And no more smoking. Poor Dr. Stengel. He cared so much.

As I stared off over the harbor, toward the fort and out past where it opened up, I caught a small figure inching, limping around the corner near the convenience store. He couldn’t see me in my tiny alcove. He walked slowly and I knew it was the old man in the military hat. He barely moved at all. There wasn’t much reason to move quickly. That was his day. Asking for dollars or Pepsis. Hoping he was in front of the Chinese Restaurant. Swallowing disappointment when he realized taquitos weren’t the same.

He shuffled along and around the small patch of trees planted in the courtyard near the pier. He should have gone left, toward the open space, toward the light. That was the sensible path. But he didn’t. He turned right, toward my nook, rocking his spine along, peering up beneath the brim of his cap every few steps to make sure he hadn’t begun to walk on water.

He walked right up to me. He hadn’t tilted his head high enough to realize I’d been sitting on that ledge. I would have been annoyed if I were still Tom. But I wasn’t anymore. Just some shadow world version. I wanted to be alone and thinking about how sorry my life was. I didn’t care much.

Once he was close enough, he spotted my feet dangling from the ledge I’d found. He started and craned upward and put out his hands.

“I’m sorry, ‘scuse me. I’m sorry.”

“Colonel Pepsi, sir, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Naw, now you spooked me is all. I didn’t know nobody was there.” He turned to limp away.

“No, please.”

I hopped down and stepped out of the way and he cranked his spine harder to look at my face.

“Oh, now you bought me the sodas. God bless ya’.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Do you smoke?”

“When I can get one.”

I took two cigarettes out of the pack. Stuck them in my pocket. Handed him the rest of the pack and walked away toward the pier.

You can’t take it with you. Calm the fuck down.

I sat down at the edge of the dock and let my feet fall close to the surface.

Fort McHenry was over there. Just over the water. The place where citizens of Baltimore held off British assault and Francis Scott Key penned our national anthem. All of that happened just there. Just where I’d witnessed a man vomit at the water’s edge, and where I’d accidentally dropped a pint glass while taking one of those terrible tourist cruises around the harbor. There was a water taxi that would take you throughout the day. You could go from any neighborhood in the city to any other and never have to battle traffic on Pratt or Lombard.

There were a few small boats tethered to the dock, rocking into the splintered wood, and endless racks of green and orange canoes. She’d taken one of those canoes out before. One of those harbor cleanups with some non-profit. She cared so much. Like any of it mattered.

She cared so much.

I was drifting away. She was supposed to hold me down, like a tether to a little floating boat. I was untied and unchecked. Sitting over the harbor, unsupervised like I was fit to be out and about. Have a normal night. Go see friends, see Jack. What terrible fucking advice. What a terrible fucking idea. Like he was egging me on. Like the universe was tempting me. Betting I wouldn’t do it.

“Promise me you won’t do anything you’ll regret.”

I made a lot of promises. I’d promised her I’d put her first. I promised her I could make it work. Make myself work.

I leaned over, staring into the blackness of  the water. No reflection bouncing back up at me. Like there was nothing to reflect. Like I was already dead. She was somewhere on the other side of that. Some place I could go. Just get away from all of it. Everything pushed into my skull, the pressure in my ears, world slipping away. The thwap, thwap of the tiny waves lapping against the slip, against my face. For the first time I could really do it. Right there. Numb and unblinking. Like mother like son, bobbing in and out of the current—

“You wanna see somethin’?” 

The old man put a hand on my shoulder. I whipped around at him, my eyes wide, probably crying. I must have looked ridiculous. He didn’t care. He looked ridiculous all day.

He had followed me from the little nook. That was fine. We were the same.

“Sure.”

The little skeleton, his hunched back and long fingers sat down next to me. He smelled like rags in the rain, but I didn’t let him know it, and it was familiar anyway. He took the Pepsi can out of his left pocket, showed it to me, the dark blue shining against the streetlight behind us. He smiled a few-tooth smile, held the unopened can in his palm, and chucked it into the water. 

The Pepsi dipped down below the water instantly. It never resurfaced.

“It’s a good thing those are cheap, Colonel.”

He laughed with a few teeth and put a long index finger up in the air between us.

“Wai-wait. Look.”

He dug into the other pocket and pulled out the Diet Pepsi. His hands shook a bit, so he used them both to hold the silver aluminum up to his face. He wound back and chucked it.

The can dipped down below the surface for a moment, then sprung back up, swaying, weightless along the top of the water.

He smiled, the silver can bobbing slowly closer to our feet along the crests of the little waves.

We both sat for a moment, watching the wrinkles circle the spot where the dark blue Pepsi had sunk, the revolution of the silver can as it rolled along the water. I turned to the old man, his few teeth smiling at me, expectant, his long fingers stretched out at the phenomenon below.

I reached a hand over and patted him on the back a few times, gently.

“Thank you.”
I rose and helped the old man onto his feet and he stumbled off, back toward the street. It was worth the dollar and sixty-four cents.

I sat back down, watching the edge of the black speckled blanket bounce against the tankers at the shipyard across the harbor. The Patapsco eked out to the east, losing itself in the night where the lights didn’t buzz.

It was good to have talked to someone. It was good to be wanted. Even if we had only spoken a few words.

“I thought I’d find you here.” Jack took the old man’s place, his feet dangling down over the gentle rippling water, closer to the surface than mine.

I’d been crying again. Jack pretended not to notice. He just stared out across the water. Patted his thighs like nothing was odd. It was normal. I was normal.

“I’m not going to see a guy’s body bob up over there am I?” Jack asked, jerking my arm.

“Fuck you.”

“Easy.” Jack put his hands together between his legs. Looked off over the water. He was very handsome when he was being thoughtful. Nearly a different person. “Look, man I know this sucks.”

“You do?”

“Don’t do that.” He shook his head and looked at his palms. “Don’t do that thing where you go all, ‘you don’t know what it’s like, no one knows what it’s like.’ I know, man. I know that.”

He turned to me, making sure I saw him through the night and the drunk.

“I know that. That doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to care. Doesn’t mean,” he leaned back, put his palms on the pavement, “it doesn’t suck for everyone else, too. For me. Knowing I can’t help. Knowing I really don’t know what you’re going through. I wish I could have taken some of it off of you.” He shook his head again, gazed up at the light-polluted sky, exhaled heavily, like he really felt it. Like it really mattered. Any of it. He was probably just drunk.

I folded my arms. He’d sobered me up a bit. Forced me to listen. I hadn’t realized how cold it had become.

“What are those ships?” I gestured with a closed elbow.

“Across the water? Carriers.” He sat back up. “Import, export. In and out, in and out.”

I pulled a stray cigarette from my pocket and offered it to him. He stared at my hand, the little white stick hanging limp between my fingers. He shook his head and scoffed at the ridiculousness of it all, but took it anyway. He lit it and laughed at me again, shaking his head.

“You know that’s how the port started?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tobacco.” Jack flicked his cigarette flakes into the water, falling over the empty Doritos wrappers and scum crusted against the dock. “Yup. Tobacco. Started as a trading port for tobacco. Primarily. With England. Saw how that relationship went.”

“I don’t think they look back at Baltimore fondly.”

“No.” He smoked the cigarette, not to enjoy it, but as the consummate companion. “I mean they don’t give a shit about us anymore, but…”

We were never very good at faking it with each other. Pretending small talk was interesting. Diverting what we really needed to say. Anyone else, that’s all we ever did. Together, it was useless.

We smoked together over the black liquorice below our heels. I thought they should have put rails around those docks, so close to the bars and clubs. Anyone could stumble right over, splashing soda cans and knotted styrofoam to the surface, losing themselves to the dredged river floor forever.  There was something Darwinian to it. Survival of the least drunk.

I’d never finished The Origin of Species. That was one she’d bought me. I’d never finished with her.

“I never should have started with her, Jack.”

I began to belch a bit. To sputter over my chin. My drunk came back up with the thought of her. Flooded my chest. He put a hand on my back. Rubbed a little. In a soft, masculine way. 

“Come on. We’re good. Easy.”

“I should have let her go. I shouldn’t have, I shouldn’t–” and it broke. I threw my head into his armpit. Sobbed. Dry sobs run out of tears. Just heaving into him for too long. Maybe a few minutes. Maybe longer.

Someone walked behind us. I thought we looked gay. Was that still a problem? I sat up. Wiped my face.

“Fuck man. Sorry.” I exhaled.

Jack flicked his cigarette. Pretended nothing happened. I laughed a little, wiping beneath the crow’s feet, sucking back up the mucus. I thought I might have been nearing the edge. That space between reality and infinity. Like the dust around the event horizon– part of me being absorbed involuntarily, the rest evaporating. I couldn’t hold it together. It had been weeks. Months. I couldn’t hold it together. I was probably just drunk. 

Doc told me to avoid alcohol. All I did was drink and stare at that fucking photo of us. Order in Chinese. Crawl out of my hive for long enough to sit on that worn out microfiber couch of his. Listen to him regurgitate textbook phrases about coping. Shit I already knew from living. Insurance covered it, so fuck it. The receipts gave me liberty to stay home and drink instead of working. Instead of engaging. Instead of moving forward.

Have a normal night. Go see friends. Go hang out with Jack.

“Can you guess what those ships are carrying?”

“Below the Domino Sugar sign?” I coughed.

“What do you think they’re carrying?”

“Sugar?”

It felt like too obvious an answer. It must have been. He grinned out of the corner of his eye, teasing suspense. This was normal. I was normal.

“Yeah, probably sugar. Definitely sugar.”

“They’d have to change the sign, if not.”

“Could be anything, though. Not those. But the port itself.” He flicked his stick into the harbor anew, still respectfully fixing his eyes out over the water, instead of my red and wet face. There was something admirable about a person like Jack. “A ton of machinery goes through Baltimore. Anything, really. Farming equipment, paper. Cars.”

“Is that so?”

I was good now. Breathing. Just there. Normal.

“You have to think, we’re in a great spot. Most of everything heading for the midwest, certainly everything in the Mid-Atlantic.”

“Useless knowledge. All of it. Everything you know.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Bar trivia. That’s it.”

Jack laughed and the river joined us, slapping against the sleeping cement of the slip. The breeze was crisp and chilly now, crashing gently against my neck, the air full and clean near the water, the smell of dough dissipating in the open wind.

I leaned forward and looked out, nostalgic, or feeling that way about everything. Upset about how it all went on with or without her. With or without me. Too numb to be daunted by it. Too listless in everything I did.

We stood up, wandered around the perimeter of our little slice of the harbor without direction. Slowly, soaking in the radiation from the bulbs and the lamps. I think Jack wanted to let me make a decision. I was too listless. We just weaved in and out of each other in figure eights too close to the water, like children waiting for parents to tell them where to go next, just smoking cigarettes we didn’t want, testing our balance against the edge of the water.

Eventually Jack stopped. Not annoyed, but something that smacked of it, but gentler.  Something that was just too tired of the artifice. The showiness of all of it.

“You know eventually you’ve got to make a decision.” Jack said, his tone like a cool dad trying to be real with a son for a moment. “Not now, but eventually.”

“About where to go?”

“About all this.” He looked up at me from under his brow, expectantly. “I mean can you be here anymore?”

“Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know, man. But here? The same apartment? Same people, same- shit – same smells?” He stopped pacing to kick something off the bottom of his shoe, his hand on one of the trees they’d planted in the sidewalk. “It’ll drive you crazy, won’t it?”

“Probably. Maybe I should be a little crazy.”

“Too easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a cop-out. It’s bullshit. Just stay here and let the city swallow you up? Call it quits. Twenty seven. That’s it. You win, world.”

I just shook my head and breathed. Looping around the tree, around Jack. Just pacing. Not thinking of her. Of any of it. Not the way the hairs curled up around her ears, or the fresh floral rush splashing over me as she slid by to sit on the other end of the sofa. Could I remember how many earrings she wore?

“Tom.” He cut in front of me, back pedaled while I wandered. “The fuck is that going to do? Sitting around here waiting for- fuck, what? I don’t know. What are you going to do, Tom?”

“Well what the fuck do you expect, man?” I was a little irritated with him, now,  “Where the fuck am I supposed to go? Huh? What the fuck am I supposed to do? Just pretend nothing’s different. Pretend I can just move on with dreams. With a new woman somewhere? After what I did to her.”

“Hey, this is NOT your fault.” Jack pointed a finger decisively, stopped in his tracks facing me.

A couple started around the corner toward us,  toward the water, but retreated immediately. Some gay couple was fighting near the canoes, or something.

“Of course it’s my fucking fault! What? Of fucking course it is, Jack.”

“No, no no no no.” He was inches from my face, a finger in my chest. “That’s where we draw the  line, bud. This is not your fault.”

“Oh, come on, Jack.” He knew. He was too smart for all this bullshit. All the pretending. “I practically tied the fucking knot. Sent her out like she was running an errand. Like she was just taking out the fucking trash on her way to work. ‘I’ll take care of it.’ She took care of it alright.”

I ripped at a branch from the tree. Tried to tear it off. Like that would show them. Whoever was watching. Like that would let them all know how fucking wrecked I was. It took two tries just to bend it. I gave up and doubled over. I thought I’d vomit in the mulch. I didn’t.

“No, Tom. Look, I’ll let you say a lot of dumb shit. That? No. This is not your fault. Definitively. You cannot blame yourself.” 

I just laughed. A guttural, visceral laugh. I’d never heard it before. I think it’s what humans sound like before they learn how to laugh. Before they hear the way a laugh is supposed to sound. It was alarming. Like hearing deaf people fuck. It was unnerving. It embarrassed me, or it would have.

Jack noticed. He put his hands in his pockets. Started meandering again.

“Look, I can’t say anything to change it. To change you. But, I can tell you I think you’re going to have to get away. Even if only for a little bit.”

“Yea.”

“What does Stengel think?”

“Thinks it’s PTSD or some shit.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He just kept his eyes on his shoes, running little infinities next to his tree like a salsa dancer.

“You think so, too?”

He stopped and put a hand on the tree’s trunk, leaning in and out, played with the limp limb I’d pulled. “You’ve been through a lot, man.”

“Yea.”

Our space near the water was slowly being infiltrated by passers-by, pouring out of neighboring bars, heading to their homes, or strange homes, or to pizza, or other bars. All hugging the back side of the buildings around which they’d walked. All just hoping to take the scenic route. To be closer to the water or farther from the noise. For the view, not for us. Not to hear us. They wanted to enjoy the water. I was finding a way to ruin water for strangers.

“Let’s go.”

“Sure.”

We walked back around the corner, in front of the convenience store. Colonel Pepsi was gone. He must have been happy enough with two wasted sodas. They were cheap.  Jack was leading us back toward the others, toward the club, but I crossed over Thames before we reached Whalen’s. I was too embarrassed to pass the club again. As if someone would recognize me as the guy who headbutted a dude for no reason. As if anyone would recognize me for anything.

On the other side of the street, I slid in along the Admiral Inn, and turned up Broadway. Jack realized he’d been talking to himself after a few moments, hopped over the cobbles, splashing little puddles, and scuttled up to stride alongside me.

“We’re not doing what I think we’re doing?”

“What do you think we’re doing?”

“I think there’s only one place you’d want to go up this way.”

“Why not?”

“Mkay.” Jack rubbed his palms together and flashed a wicked grin. “OKAY!”

It had been a long time since we’d gone to the strip club. I thought we’d both grown out of it a bit, but then I really wasn’t sure what my values were any longer. Faking them hadn’t netted me anything. Pretending to like the right things for a while. Forcing myself into propriety, for her, because she was more important than any of the foolishness. Because she was the only one I needed. The only one-

Breathe. Have a normal night. Have a foolish night. Have any kind of night! Do anything but obsess. Change your thought pattern.

We were passing through the heart of Fells now, near the market, approaching Fleet. Inside Phil’s a light burned over the bartender. She was reaching across the counter and enjoying a shot with a few patrons. She and the rest of the bodies inside posed, warm and joyous, framed in their patches of the window quilt. There were a few people sitting at a high-top through another tile of the window, laughing and sipping their cheer from steins like the bar’d forgotten it was pretending to be Irish. Through the tile above them a young couple held each other, waltzing slowly as the girl placed her head against the man’s sweatered chest. They turned like dancers in a noise box, wedding toppers on a lazy susan, plastic and perfectly present. In the tile just above the bartender sat Jonathan Baker, between two other men, smiling boyishly, red in the cheeks but happy. He had been in the same bar the entire night. In that same tile, between those same two guys, without ever feeling the urge to move. Without ever suffocating between the same two men. Without ever tiring of the same voices in the same ears from the same people in the same lighting. He was happy in his tile.

A glass shattered in the street. A taxi passed by with an excitable group in the back seat, headed for home, or to the next party. One girl shouted out at us from the middle seat of a cab. I couldn’t understand her, but she looked pretty enough, her hair sweating at the ends, drying to her chin.

I hadn’t had sex in months. Maybe I never would again. Maybe I never should. I’d been able to masturbate again recently. That was the only thing that gave me any drive. That’s the only thing that had always been entirely separate from my life with her– wholly mine. Maybe that part of it was still whole. Maybe that’s where the healing could start. I could just go see some naked girls. That part wasn’t broken.

We passed a middle-aged white guy in a dirty leather jacket holding a bottle of windshield wiper fluid. A group of younger black men walking without jackets, hands thrust deeply inside their jeans. They may have been coming from The Ritz themselves. There were only a few other bars that way, and they were Spanish-speaking places. The city was a veritable crock pot. That part wouldn’t change. It wouldn’t care about my woes. It would go on with or without her. That was nice.

“Don’t do what you’re doing, Tom.”

“I’m alright.”

“You can’t trap yourself in guilt. Nothing can change it.” Jack upped his pace to look back at me directly. “Staying in the same routine. Visiting the same places. Walking the same streets.” 

He must not have convinced himself he’d convinced me back by the water. I lost a little respect for him somehow. I never thought that would happen. I was fine now. I wasn’t feeling.

We passed by the market, its letters fading and sun bleached. They were a bright red once, now gravy pink, the cinder block flaking and unwashed. Paper bags and Pennysavers scraped along the pavement, old Impalas with their tops lit spilling poison over the flagstone, crunching as they passed, the people who were proprietors of etiquette by day– lawyers and nurses and teachers– pissing in corners and kneading thumbs into thighs as soon as  the  streetlamps snapped on.

I didn’t make eye contact with him. Just looked around for something I liked. I couldn’t find anything in particular. Just Lucia’s  up ahead on the left, across Fleet. I had always meant to stop in. I had always meant to appreciate art.

“This place is ruined for me.” I said to him, looking off.

“Then let go of it.”

“I don’t ever want to let go of it.” We stopped at the corner of Fleet and waited for the light. Across the way, heading toward the water, a young man held close the petite frame of a pretty brunette beneath his jacket. “I don’t deserve that luxury.”

I told Jack I’d meet him. Another something someone wanted me to do. I promised I would. I wasn’t sure what time it was. It was either six o’clock, or eight. It must have been six. The rotting cactus was still reflecting indigo from the window.

“Just the regular group. Just friends. Nothing about anything. Just hanging out. No talking about anything.”

It took a few tries to stand up. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d stood. Did I piss myself? I think I must have made it to the bathroom at some point. It didn’t matter.

I chucked the bottle I’d finished earlier into the mountain in the corner. It slapped the wall, cracked into half the bird cage. I walked to the fridge. I was groggy and dirty. Everything brown and dim and dust. I drank enough to be drunk that day, but I wasn’t. I drank enough to be drunk forever.

There was one beer left. I wasn’t sure I wanted it. Maybe a cocktail. I wasn’t sure. There was a Yoplait and some salmon and rice she’d made. I hadn’t removed it. I couldn’t smell it anyway. Just that shirt draped over the chair. Everything else was stale.

I showered, spent too much time in front of the mirror, staring into my dilated pupils, the shadows around my eyes. Purpling, like my mother. Crow’s feet I’d only noticed in the last couple of years. A few little hairs between my dark eyebrows. Copper wire stubble all over. It didn’t matter.

I left the light on. Fuck the world. Fuck climate change. We’d cared so much before. It didn’t matter now. Let it burn out.

The towel was rigid and flat until I’d cracked it apart. Like breaking an ice pack. I wrapped it around my waist like it mattered. Like God might see. Like there was a God. 

My clean clothes were in the room. In the back. Over the floor. I’d have to walk the entire carpet to the closet, to my pants. I’d have to pass under it, under the sprinkler, under the cracked paint. I could smell the shirt. That was the only reason to do it.

I pushed the door open. Dead skin drifting like snow from shingles. The little light let in from the window smothered by the blackout shade. It was all still there. Untouched. Of course it was. I don’t know what I expected. As if a rat may have started rearranging the furniture by now. Like someone may have crept in while I slept in the night. Tidied up. Like the police would have dusted before they tied me up. Took me out for questioning. That was months ago. I think.

The stillness is what kept me out. The absolute absence. It isn’t what you think it’d be. Like there’d still be some spirit there. Some energy that lingered to let you know love once occupied that space. Like you’d walk in and breathe in the joy you’d shared there. No, it was just empty and cold and too still and dusted over. Just stuff in a square in the back of the apartment. Shit that would need to be moved or donated, whenever a more responsible version of myself emerged. Maybe I wouldn’t.

I crossed the carpet. Stepped on her sock. Picked it up. It had no scent. Not like the shirt. I could smell things a little more clearly after the shower. The towel was just mildew. I would smell like that the rest of the night. Who cares?

Her shirt was there. Draped over the chair. I’d put it back each time. Like she might come back and want to find her things the way she’d left them. I dropped to my knees in front of it. Let my towel slip off as I fell. God wasn’t watching. What God? I took the fibers into my face, into my nostrils, sucking in every petal, every particle of nectar, every drop of dew. I stopped. I had to save it. I didn’t want to smell it all out of fragrance in one sitting. I might have cried.

“Have you had any crying? Have you cried at all?”

“I don’t…maybe…”

“It’s okay to cry. Tom. You know that? Healthy, even.”

“Yea, Doc.”

It was healthy. Like any of it was healthy. Breathe. Compartmentalize. Change your thought pattern.

Like there was a pattern. There was no pattern. There were just flashes and triggers and uncontrollable driftings. I couldn’t believe they’d let me go back there. To the apartment. Alone. No supervision. I must have given them all quite a performance.

My mother could do the same. She’d been a performer her whole life. Even when she started to grow tired of living at all. When she would end up in the hospital. When she’d tried to end things. Somehow, they always let her walk the next day. Like she was perfectly fine. Just a bad night.

Like there wasn’t a pattern. She sure showed them.

I remembered the night I’d gone to see her. The night I’d gone to tell her about Lily. I thought she needed to be involved. Needed to be a part of our lives now. It felt so important two months ago. How sweet.

Of all that I’d remembered of the last few months of my life, I remembered that most vividly. It wasn’t even the worst of it all. It hurt me far less than Lily just a week later. Not even a week. But, I remembered going to see my mother so much more clearly.

I thought it would be a big moment in my life. A big moment for us. I was right.

I never did tell her. About Lily. She knew anyway. It was in the cards.

She must not have liked the idea of being a grandma.

Breathe. “Why don’t you go see friends, Tom? See Jack?”

I’d promised him I would. Maybe there was some clean breath somewhere outside.

Crossing back over the stone street and up onto the less traveled side of Thames, I passed by the fire station where a TV show or a movie had been filmed once. The city dedicated a plaque to the achievement, as though, until that point, nothing of the building had merited attention from passers by. A young girl with damp running cheeks sat pressed against the stones of the archway, her body pale in the moonlight, against the water. She stared down into her knees, lost or forgotten or too sentimental over something trivial.

Lost or forgotten. Crying small heaves into her knees.

I could go home. I trudged along.

Against the rails protecting the public from the bay, a group of young people in light canvas jackets and tight denim stood smoking and talking under the streetlight. A girl reached out and hooked my arm.

“Hey” she fluttered her hand away from the man with whom she had been standing  and pushed herself on me too drunk to help herself, “hey you. Hey are you alone?”

“As alone as one could be surrounded by so many people.”

She steadied her trembling eyes, not processing anything. “That doesn’t make sense. You don’t make sense.”

“You aren’t the first to tell me so.”

“Heather, stop messing with people. Sorry, man she’s wasted.” 

“She had me fooled.” I smiled and helped her under his arm. “Take it easy.”

People don’t step into Whalen’s. Visitors aren’t aware of it. Most locals don’t care for it. It’s a smoky, backwoods dive thrust between an uppity city taphouse and a stylish city club. There are dives all over, but this one was especially gritty, unpredictable. Where the boys wring sweat from their shirts during happy hour. Where the esoteric three piece band plays at night. Where the crowd is never the same, but the musk of sawdust and molasses lingers.

The windows were always dirty or fogged through, like plexiglass rubbed once over with sandpaper. Stickers covered the door, band names and skateboard companies and that year’s social crusade. The building itself dwarfed so dramatically by the club to the left that it resembled a local cleaners more than a public house vying for patronage on a steeply contested corner of the market. The general, dilapidated drowsiness of the facade was enough of a deterrent, before the cluttered blend of cultures was confusing enough to ward off any who didn’t know. 

I liked that most about it. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t. People search for likeness. At Whalen’s, there was no likeness. Any night, the bar was covered with the forearms of firefighters, or the tapping fingertips of university professors, the elbows of young girls in party dresses, or the flannel sleeves of a burnout musician. It was fluid, like the streets themselves, a microcosm of the society that mostly passed by without ever taking notice of its door.

That’s where I met up with the others, reluctantly, willing myself through the too-heavy door.

The one-man show was in progress as I stepped into the scene. His silhouette moving from one person to the next, delivering his monologue with abrasive grace across the bar, he had them eating from his palm as though he, not the band setting up in the corner, was the entertainment that evening.

He had the charisma of a Vegas regular. He was smart in his harmless flirtation. Seductive, even platonically, to the most standoffish man or woman, and intermittently he laced his exuberance with the relational experience of a man who had been introduced too early to the physical plane by a babysitter with a wandering grip. Thank god for that babysitter– people liked him the way he was, not the way he might have been. Eccentric and over-stimulating, in an instant stoic and perceptive. The encroachment to his innocence as a young boy was one of the various vagaries of a life in full motion. No time to dwell. Always onward and upward. He was a force unimpeded by trivial little things like bad memories.

He was unreliable and at times disappointing as a friend, but in the flashes of unprompted intrusion he brought to his acquaintance’s lives through the years, he was at all times the best human. Honest and unfettered by morals. Respectable only in his selfless self-deprecation. He was at once a rubber ball on a springboard and the gravity which pulled it back.

At the moment I stepped in and faced them from the threshold, he was in full swing, retelling a classic so well-rehearsed that only to the trained eye did he break character to hold me in a nearly imperceptible glance, all the while holding his enamoured crowd in a motionless trance.  The remnant of a smile passed between us.

“…and that’s how I convinced him to let me land the thing!” The roars of approval from those around him rose filling the holes of the bar. He brought the presentation to a close and the people nearest him close to his body as he turned openly to face me. “Hold on to your panties, ladies. The handsomest man in Baltimore just walked through that door.”

I walked through the vestibule and up onto the platform to face him.

“You’re not fooling anyone.” I said. “We all know you’ve been here since they opened.”

He gripped tighter to his willing prisoners and released a howl of presentational laughter. “Tom Streeper, everyone!”

I bowed. It was normal. This was normal. Like nothing had changed.

“There he is.” He laughed holding his arms wide toward me, stepping close. The crowd went back to their conversations and drinks and the noise dialed down to a lively murmur. “Where the hell have you been?”

He led me into the circle of acquaintances with a gentle arm.

“Where do you think?”

“Masturbating.”

“If only.”

“You’ve been drinking.”

“A few.”

“A girl.”

“Never again.”

“An ugly girl.”

“If you want her to be.”

“She sounds perfect.”

“If she walks she sounds perfect to you.”

He stopped walking and turned on a dime to look up at me from under his eyelids. He stood for an inordinate amount of time without speaking and still without causing the slightest tension. The audience disappeared behind him and it was only us. Then he asked, meaningfully, “How are you?”

“You know, man.”

“I know.”

The circle around his stage was a wholly familiar crowd. The faces the same as they were in their college years, while their bellies had transformed, some fitter, most fatter.

Brian, whom no one had ever formally invited slouched, coughing laughter and unsavory remarks into the faces of two girls seated facing one another. He was short and paunchy, with a generally greasy look about him. He wore a sweater and jeans and pressed his face too closely to anyone kind enough to withstand his company. He wasn’t dumb. He had a good heart and he was loyal to a fault. He simply lacked any propensity for subtlety.

Brian didn’t know anything. In general, but also particular to my situation. Whatever the fuck that meant. Jack had assured me that only the girls knew.

“Only the girls. Had to tell them. Claire knew anyway, so of course Kayla did. I told Carol, too. For obvious reasons, I guess.” He gave me an apologetic look. Like it mattered. “Not Brian, though, poor kid. Nick either. Why tell that fuck?”

The two victims of Brian’s current assault were never seen individually. They were best friends in high school, roommates in college, and again in the city, and they had a reputation for drinking most men under.

Claire was blonde and only slightly more attractive than her friend, though that was best attributed to her welcoming nature. She knew when to jump into a conversation and when to sit back and console. She had a day-turning joviality about her, but she cried at a pinprick when she drank.

Kayla was the rougher of the two. She was broad-shouldered and severe. She played field hockey, or something, in college. An enforcer, I’m sure. Something about fourteen concussions she’d doled out or something? I couldn’t remember. She was agreeable but curt, and she often gave the impression she had experienced better company with the passing breeze than with you. She had never worn a dress and no one had ever impressed it upon her to do so.

I hugged them both. Claire kissed my cheek, stepped back, stared at me for a moment like she might cry. She hid it so poorly. Brian slapped my back too hard, Jack’s arm over my shoulder, towing me around, keeping me close until the formalities were over.

“There’s your best friend.”

Poised in a corner, his facade obscured by the shoulders of others, Nick deeply resented me. He was a stoic, internal fellow who harboured a great deal of misplaced malevolence. Some deep-seated misappropriation of his childhood made him half-empty, though he was the type of guy whose problems never really existed. He was that kid with affluent parents and a dog in the front yard behind the white fence. He wanted so desperately to have a reason to be pitied. I never liked the guy, but he was a part of our circle.

He was there, looking directly after me, counting my footfalls. He was in love with Carol. Whatever love meant to him. He hated that Carol had always prefered me. Until Lily. Everyone thought it would be me and Carol until Lily.

Breathe.

“Have you ever been with her?”

Relax. Normal night. Small group. Just friends. No talk of anything.

Carol. Carol, who had always been the prize of the outfit. Devastating, she was never unfashionable, nor was she ever concerned with being elegant as she was. She was a lady, and a clever one, but her beauty had cheapened those around her to her true brilliance. She was the smartest person in the room, and the most gifted in all she did. 

She thickened the air around me. I hadn’t felt that in months.

It had always been that way, though. Things just never lined up. She was always off on adventures. I wasn’t leaving Baltimore.

How different would things have been if I had just gone with her one time? That first time? How much better? My mother would still be there. Not that I’d have talked to her, but she would still be there. Lily would be happy with someone else. Playing house with some douchebag Downtown. If I’d only followed my heart and gone with Carol to Italy, or Tucson, or wherever she was going when I met Lily.

Normal night. Compartmentalize.

“Looks good in that dress, huh?” Jack leaned in.

“Looks good in anything.”

“Go talk to her.”

“Probably not a good idea.”

“No, it would be good for you. Normal night, right? Go.” He’d been talking to Dr. Stengel. They probably met about how to deal with me. Like I was a walking suicide case. Too delicate.

Carol sat perched at a high-top to the right of where we stood, facing off toward the door, her elbow on the surface, her chin in her palm, her eyes smiling at the young girl speaking to her from the other side of the table, genuinely smiling, truly enjoying. She had yet to turn, but I knew that she knew.

Seeing her there, stardust in the vacuum, was like all the first times ever. Like the tightening of your intestines the first time you see the perfect woman before the next time you see the new perfect woman. I had seen Carol. I knew Carol. But each time she returned from an excursion was a renaissance.

She changed things. It felt like cheating on Lily just to look at her. Like I hadn’t earned the right to be attracted. Like not enough time had passed. Anyone but her. What a betrayal for it to be her. But we can’t control that, I don’t think. And Lily wasn’t there.

“You can’t just stare at her.”

She felt our peripheral glances. I acknowledged and smiled at her and she bowed her head and smirked back. Nick, who had been no more than a pair of dark eyes in a poorly lit section of a wall ten feet behind Carol moved in upon seeing our subtle interaction. He slithered over to her, struck up a diverting conversation about nothing, his meatless back blocking her from me.

“I’ll talk to her when Malvolio saunters back to his corner.”

“So, no time tonight.”

“It’s fucked up anyway. I can’t.”

“Fucked up? To who?”

“To Lily.”

“Just to talk to her?”

“You know it isn’t just talking with her.”

“It’s been two months.”

“Tell me in two centuries.” I pulled away from Jack a bit. “I shouldn’t be out. I need to be in my place. Anywhere but here.”

“Come on. Let’s sit down. Get you a drink.” He put a hand on my shoulder. Corralled me to the table.

The band had begun to set up in the nook at the far end of the lounge. Two women and a man, a fiddle, a guitar, and one snare drum. They were probably good. They were normally probably good if they weren’t too loud.

“Test-test.”

They always do it the same way. Sultry and sensual into the microphone, undressing it before making love to it.

“We’re going to play some things now.”

“Informative. Decent of them.” Jack whispered to me.

The long-haired vagrant at the mic threaded himself through his guitar strap and wiped the strands from his already sweating forehead.

“And you may like it, or” he strummed a few strings, “you may not.”

Carol clapped from behind and initiated the applause. Jack and I pulled chairs and sat open to the band as they drove into a tickling melody. Jack put a hand on my shoulder, passed me a glass of something stronger than beer.

“There is nothing you could have done, you know.”

Jack sat next to him, turned away toward that nook in the far side of the bar as the indigo sky dusted over the plexiglass window. Tom let the words flow over him. He was smiling slightly, facing an adjacent wall. He was mostly unblinking.

“About your mom, Tom. It wasn’t your fault.”

Tom wasn’t blinking. Maybe he hadn’t blinked in days. Since he found her. Since he’d done it. He was mostly inside himself, enjoying what happened there. He let some of those happenings gestate too long and they took twists that hurt him.

“Don’t do what you’re doing, Tom.”

“I’m merely sitting.” Tom said it without looking at Jack. Staring off into haze.

“Don’t do what you’re doing.”

“I know.”

As they sat, two people with an understanding of one another that transcended the conscious, one of the staff began kicking wires around and preparing the nook for the evening’s entertainment. It was a Tuesday. It was barely seven. And Tom was mostly unblinking.

A man approached the nook. A large man with large arms completely uncovered and a barrel chest covered only partially by a torn denim vest with some missing buttons and a head fully covered by a red paisley bandana and hands mostly covered, except the knuckles, by leather gloves with makeshift finger slots. His boots stomped the floorboards deeper into the earth and the chain from his belt loop chimed in his heavy-footed wake. He coughed out his evening cigarette and dragged a barstool harshly over the wooden floor and set it down in front of the microphone and sat himself down on top of it and laid his guitar down over his lap. His guitar was black and bruised, with holes like mines hammered into the drum and a large ugly flame painted around the rosary.

The grizzled bartender stepped in front of the microphone, in front of the man in the paisley bandana and finger-holed gloves.

“Awright, everybody.” His hands lifted at his sides, as he raised the air higher from the earth, “We got some enertainmint tonight. Open mic night. You know that. If ya’d like ta partispate, just come on over and let me know and we’ll git ya up.”

He stepped across the man with the flamed guitar and holes like mines ready to erupt the moment that fire reached its wells, and scurried back behind the main bar down one step from the lounge area. The man in his denim vest with a few buttons missing pulled the microphone stand closer and choked a cough out again and adjusted his instrument and the patrons went back to their conversations, disinterested in the man with the goatee and the ripped-off sleeves who clearly hadn’t judged the evening’s crowd, which clearly didn’t want to hear his bluegrass, or southern rock, or rendition of Wild Horses.

The man with the barrel chest pushed himself into the microphone stand and licked his lips and rubbed one half-gloved hand over his thigh and spoke to the unlistening audience.

“I lost my wife of twenty-seven years last week.” He rubbed his fingers against his thigh. “This was her favorite.”

Those who heard it were more attentive, out of respect, and many turned toward him to hear his scratchy lament, expecting a tear-smattered power ballad and a moment of silence to follow.

Tom considered how much worse that was. Twenty-seven years. A wife. Tom had known his mother just as long. He’d read something about serendipity somewhere recently. He thought the man’s loss may be worse.

The man in his doo-rag, turned his bruised guitar and rested his bruised heart on its neck and looked up once more and Tom blinked.

He didn’t strum. It wasn’t that song. He didn’t croak John Denver from his cavernous chest. It was something more beautiful. It wasn’t something you’d hear on your radio, or something you’d hear at open mic night, or something you’d hear from the man in the ripped denim vest. It was something that passed through a dream in a valley, surrounded by posies and thrushes and streams and brushes and warmed against your cheeks, wet and happy, damp eyelids in a sunbeam, waving over glistening fields, hovering under the hugging shade of a walnut and resting there.  It was Bron-Yr-Aur and it could have been Tarrega. His fingers trickled, individual tassels of the same windblown streamer, fanning, flowing over the strings in effortless oscillation, bending in and out, weaving over one another in a ceaseless game of chase. It was gripping and torturous, terrible and overwhelming. Consoling and reassuring, uplifting. A balloon ripped away in a summer gale.

Tom thought it must have been worse than a mother. A wife was worse. A lover was worse. He replayed the morning he and Lily had. He’d been too hard on her. If he hadn’t been so hard on her he’d be with her, with her parents right now. Explaining to them why they’d chosen not to keep it. Why it just wasn’t the right timing, with everything that had happened. She wouldn’t be in bed, crying, managing all of those hormones alone. While he sat listening to something beautiful. Feeling sorry for himself. It hadn’t been a week since he’d found his mother.

He replayed that morning.

“Are you having a bad day?” She’d asked him.

“Just feels like every day.”

She hugged him, kissed his cheek.

He crossed over to the fridge, pulled out a water. Ran his finger along the magnetic Orioles schedule. He’d already triple-checked, but he wanted to be sure. They were meeting her parents for the game, and they wanted dinner first, early, before first pitch, so they could explain. Her parents would tell them they understood.

“So much going on, Tom, so sorry.” Her father would say.

“A mother, gosh. Not exactly what we were hoping, but times permit…” Her mom would guilt, but only lightly.

They’d understand why it just couldn’t be. Not then. Not in the shadow of all of that.

“What time do we need to be there?” Lily asked.

“5:30, at the latest. We need to be back here by 4.”

“Oh, I thought we needed to leave work by 4.”

He scoffed and shook his head. Her face wrinkled.

“That’s not a lot of time. That’s a lot of pressure.”

“It shouldn’t be. “ He shook his head and slammed the microwave closed, a little harder than he meant. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Tom.”

“I expect us to fail so why even have my hopes up.” Tom headed for the door. Without turning, “Love you.”

Her eyes shadowed his silhouette, his slumped shoulders engulfing the threshold, seeing him for the first time, from behind, but clearly. 

“Love you.”

He pushed the door over and stepped out into the hallway. 

He was normally better than that. It was too mean. Too honest. He was normally better at protecting her from feeling that. That was too vicious. He had promised not to be vicious anymore. Not to her. 

It was the way he felt that morning. He wanted to be biting. That’s why he was. He wanted her to feel exactly the way he was feeling. He had the impression she never felt that way about anything. He felt it so much, so often, that he just couldn’t contain it. He just couldn’t protect her from it this time. He needed her to feel it.

He needed to deflate her, so they could both rip from the sky and fumble toward the pavement.

He couldn’t stand leaving her that way. He pushed a shoulder back into the door. She hadn’t moved.

“I really needed you these last few days. And you weren’t there for me.”

“I’m trying to be there for you. Right now. I’m trying to be there.”

“I know. And it’s fine. But, right now is too late. Right now I’m already over the edge. Right now I’m done. I needed you to stop the right now. You didn’t even see it. That’s not very good.”

“How am I supposed to know that? You’ve just been acting like nothing happened! You don’t say anything? How am I just supposed to know?”

“I don’t know. I just assumed you would.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

She crumpled as her knees buckled, her spine slouching into the arm of the couch, barely upright. She started to cry. The cactus behind her browning in the morning sun.

“Now I’m the problem. Now it’s my fault. It probably is. I probably shouldn’t expect anyone to love me.”

“What the fuck? What? I love you. This has nothing to do with that.”

“Don’t make me sound like a weak little bitch, ok? Is it so much for me to expect that person I’m sharing my life with, the person I love more than anything, is it so much to think she’d know when I need a fucking hug? When I just need a fucking hug?”

“You never say anything!”

“That’s exactly the point! That’s the point. How do I have to say anything? I just found my mother in a fucking bathtub, Lily. How? How are we so in love, but I have to explicitly tell you I need a hug for you to stop for ten fucking seconds and notice it? That’s not love!”

“What are you saying?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t make this something it isn’t.”

“You’re the one who did that! What do you mean don’t do that? You did that. ‘That’s not love,’ Tom? What the fuck was that? You said that. Just now.”

“Then, I said that. Cool. I’m going.”

“Why? No. It’s only 6:30. We’re talking.”

The display on the microwave read 6:30.

“Oh, now? Because it’s convenient for you? Because I’ve sorrowed my way into your fucking calendar? Give me a break.”

“Yes, because you sorrowed your way into it, Tom. Because you let this build up until I said the wrong thing, instead of just telling me how I could help. Instead of just saying something.”

“Goddammit that’s the point! That’s the whole-fucking-point, Lily. If I have to say it, how the hell is that love? Why can’t  you just see it and help me?”

“Why can’t you see it and help yourself?”

Tom shifted on the doormat, paralyzed. He shook his head and laughed to himself. To her. For show. For time.

“Tom, I’m trying. But this is a lot. I can’t coddle you every hour. I can’t sit here and cater to your moods. I can’t guess which mood it is this time and know how to respond to it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tom shook his head and stared at his toes, smiling. He’d found his mother just days before.

“No! No, I’m not fucking kidding you. I can’t do this. I can’t keep doing this.” She collapsed into the couch, put a hand to her forehead, wiped a tear. Three shelves above her head, a cactus rotting behind her. “Constantly figuring out what’s wrong this time. ‘Why’s he sad? What color disrupted his day? How can I help him?’ God dammit it’s exhausting.”

“You’re right.”

“Where are you going?”

“To work.”

“It’s only 6:30!”

“It’s 8:30. I’m late.”

She checked her watch. It was 8:30.

“But, the microwa-”

“I broke it. Just now.” He turned down the hall. “We’re always late. I’m sure we’ll be late tonight.”

“Good bye, Tom.”

“Yeah.” He waved his hand and ambled down the stairs.

But they weren’t late. Because they didn’t go. She’d called her parents. Canceled. Told them they just weren’t feeling well enough. Next week, maybe. Just not that night. She called out of work. Stayed in bed, blacking the pillow in hot tar and rouge. He’d gone to the bar to drink it away with Jack.

Tom sat and he listened to the man and his guitar, and a shiver rushed through him and splashed all through his stomach and he let it take him as he melted into the music, remembering how it felt when he first heard it, before sex and before he was sad. He listened and the cold crisp indigo air and the youthful ignorance breathed into his mouth and into his lungs and washed away the tobacco stains and the cynicism. He heard it and as he did the feeling of running without falling short of breath and of falling without bruising filled his chest and he was invincible like a child who has yet to acknowledge his mortality. He heard it and he was pure happiness and that was all he needed and all anyone ever needed and it would end soon, but it was certainly nice to have felt it again.

Every soul stopped working. Every face transfixed on the contradiction before them. Every conscience stricken with that guilt-riddled moment of self-reflection following a preemptive profiling. And the moment of silence did follow, but not from an obligation to the man’s tragic circumstance. But for a collective catching of breath.

“Thank you.”

Jack gaped and turned to Tom, but Tom didn’t see him. He was too busy blinking to have seen anything at all.

I felt like dying. I needed to leave. This was a mistake, coming here. Breathe. Calm. Babbling brooks, or some shit. Just clean air.

“Hey,” Jack turned around on me, looked me in the face. “Hey– this’ll be good for you. And if it gets to be too much we’ll go. You and me. We’ll go. Just give everybody a chance.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re good, brother. I’m here. No one is going to say anything.” He leaned back into his own chair, kept a hand on my shoulder. “Christ no one knows. Except the girls.”

“So everyone.”

I felt the weight of the table shift behind us, felt the conversation come to a close. Attention now on me.

“So, Tom, where have you been?” Claire leaned over the table and shook my elbow. 

“Cloistered in my cave.” I drank a few sips of the drink Jack had had waiting on me. Dark and stormy? Something very Jack. “I have been working on a few projects.”

“Bullshit!” Brian barked out. He didn’t know. Just the girls.

“It is one of those things you say to pacify, Brian.” I said, smiling politely. I had always tried to be polite to Brian. People were not very polite to Brian, so I had always tried to be polite to Brian. Brian didn’t make that easy.

“You’re going to be a lonely old man if you never let anyone in there, Tom.” Claire said it with the best intentions, Kayla met it with a hushing nudge to her thigh under the table. She thought it was discreet. I appreciated it.

Jack, seeing that Brian was preparing to interject, cut him off with a “Shots?” Everyone pulled up a seat as Jack left his own to hop down to the main bar below. Brian forced himself in next to Claire, who was too nice to tell him off, Nick leaned an arm against Carol’s high-top perch and turned to face our low table. He didn’t sit.

“Alright. Here’s another one. Something a little different, but” The frontman had begun to enjoy himself in that nook and his bandmates had begun to loosen up, “we think it’s pretty cool.”

Jack returned with eight whiskeys and we all stood and extended them to one another.

“To living life fully, the best way we know how.”

We all clinked glasses and shook our heads at Jack’s cheerfulness. Nothing ever tempered him.

We reclaimed our seats, Nick still standing his ground between both tables, a nearly nonexistent space. The high-top had been placed directly next to ours in an effort to join so many people. The idiot just wanted an excuse to brush his shoulder against Carol every few minutes.

“So, Nick, I hear you’re moving up in the world?” I wanted to fuck with him. Take the attention off myself. “Middle management?”

“Yea, yea, it’s uh-” He took a sip and placated so no one else would know the resentment, “it’s a good thing.”

“It suits you.” I nodded and tipped my glass toward him and moved on.

“You’re still with the same company, yeah?” Nick asked feigning interest. “You must be close to owning the place by now, huh?”

I’d forgotten that I even worked. It had been so long since I’d been there. Bereavement. Like a ballplayer.

“Not quite, but you’re right. I have been there for some time.”

“Well, I’m sure that promotion’s coming soon, then, bud.” he sipped his overly-complicated drink and glared over the brim haughtily.

“Yes. And, until then, drinks are on you.”

Jack laughed and Kayla toasted her glass and Brian took it all literally. Nick smirked and turned back to impose himself on Carol and her conversation with the girl across from her.

“How long have you all been here?” I asked the table. I felt better. Shots were good. They were poison, but they were good.

“Oh, just hours. Wondering if the elusive Tom Streeper would actually grace us.” Jack guilted me and shook my arm.

“That’s something coming from you.”

“We see more of Jack than you these days.” Claire said, a tenderness lingering over her eyelashes like she wanted to hug me.

“Well, Claire, what do you expect?” Kayla added passively.

“I’m just saying.” Claire was so nervous, just trying to have typical conversation. Jack must have told her to act natural. Like nothing had happened. She would have done better if he hadn’t. “I think we’ve seen Jack twice in the same month. That’s a new record.”

“If anything you’re the new Jack.” Kayla added.

“Yea, you’re the new Jack now.” Brain piled on.

“Don’t put that title on me. That’s too much to live up to.”

“There can only be one.” Jack put his fist to the table without disrupting our drinks.

“It’s true. I don’t know anybody quite like Jack.”

“At least we know Jack. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore!” Claire declared dramatically. She had had some drinks. Kayla slapped her arm. Made a face like she couldn’t believe Claire could be so dense. “But, seriously, Jack’s been around a lot more.”

“Well, we don’t expect much from him. So.” Kayla took a drink of her Bud Light.

“I have a reputation, you know.” Jack grinned and leaned back in his chair.

“Yea, we actually want to see you, Tom. You’re a good person.” Claire laughed to herself and Jack shook his head accepting it.

“No one is a good person.”

“You don’t think I’m a good person?” Claire pouted from across the table.

“Except for you, darling. You’re one of the precious gems.”

Jack stood and scraped up everyone’s glasses. “I’ll grab another round. What would you like, Jack?” He addressed me and we all laughed.

“Wait, I thought Nick was buying?” Brian blubbered. Everyone shook their heads and Kayla patted him on the back as Jack whisked away to add more to his generous tab.

Claire and Kayla struck up a conversation of their own. It was a wonder they had anything left to say after being with one another so often. Brian plopped up and plodded off down the hallway toward the bathroom, pushing himself off the wall to keep his balance. He would have needed the support, drinking or not.

Jack returned and rested five pint glasses down and spread them out in front of each seat.

“Thanks, Jack!”

“Thank you.”

The girls tipped their glasses and went back to their conversation. Jack sat down and pulled his seat in, folding his hands and nodding toward me.

“Whiskey and Diet, I presumed.” He inched my glass toward me.“You know me too well.”

“Scary isn’t it?”

“Mortifying.”

“Says something about you.”

“Only the worst, I think.”

“No, not the worst.” Jack drank. “Well, the part about me knowing you too well, yes. But, not the part about the Whiskey Diet.”

“What does that part say about me.”

“That you’re a creature of habit.”

“We’re all creatures of habit.”

“Maybe. But you’re an addictive personality.”

“I am. It is a critical piece of my makeup. It’s what makes me so awful.”

“You only wish you were awful.”

“Is that something people wish to be?”

“No. Just you. You’re a good person playing  a rogue.” Jack leaned back and looked off toward Nick at the high-top table. “I mean, you’re a bullshitter.” he broke it with a joke. “But, I wouldn’t like you if you weren’t.”

“Said the joker to the thief.” We clinked glasses.

“You are the company you keep.”

“Why do you think I’ve been such a hermit lately?” We laughed and drank.

“I know why, and that’s not it.”

“I know.”

This was okay. This was better. Pretending it was just normal. Just playing. Ragging on one another. Just banter. All empty. Nothing too real. This was good.

Have a normal night.

The band struck a crescendo and the patrons, who had accepted the music as lovely white noise, turned and watched as they ended with a rush and the man at the microphone bowed with his hands out. We clapped and turned back around as the musicians took a break to grab drinks for themselves.

“How have you been, anyway?” I asked. I never asked anyone else. I always assumed they’d just tell me. I learned that wasn’t the case. I learned that the hard way.

Breathe.

“Don’t undermine me with formalities, Tom. You’re better than that.”

“Am I?”

“Eh, probably not.” He laughed and leaned in. “I’m good, man. Everyone’s good. We’ve all just been worried about you. Not worried. Just thinking. Hoping you’re okay.”

“Yeah.”

“Stengel says you’re doing well.” I knew they’d been talking.

“I thought we weren’t going to talk about anything.”

“You’re right.” He leaned back in his seat, pulled the invisible zipper over his mouth, threw away the key.

Brian hobbled back down the hallway and stopped to pat Nick on the back and bark something into his face. Nick excused himself and swept around our lowly table and toward the bar. Brian wobbled uncomfortably next to Carol and waved. She smiled politely and pet his arm. He pawed the high-top a few times and turned back toward us to take his seat next to Jack.

Carol watched after him as he lumbered along the few steps back to his seat at our table, half-concerned, half-anticipating a tumble. Brian sat and she spread her gaze along the space like whipped butter, rested her eyes on mine. She pursed her lips and jerked her chin away in playful accusation.

“I think someone is feeling a little neglected.” Jack was omniscient.

“I had better say hello.”

“You had better say more than that.”

“She knows?”

“Yes.”

“She’ll be weird.”

“Won’t know until you try.”

I stood up and laughed toward Jack to seem less contrived, he laughed as a friend does when he knows the other is making a show, and I slid by him toward the high-top.

“I don’t believe we’ve met, I’m Tom.” I extended my hand to the young girl across from Carol and she shook it.

“Amber. Nice to meet you.” She was very pretty and very soft spoken and she wore a burnt orange dress with a cut that was prepared for a night of dancing. This was not their last stop of the evening. Not with that dress. “I was just going to the restroom. Excuse me.” Amber stood and walked around the table and toward the restroom.

We were there. Alone. I was standing where Nick had stood. I moved around behind her to stand on the other side. Bad energy. She watched with a feigned air of indifference. Quietly pressing her lips to her drink, holding it politely with two hands.

“Well.”

She placed her drink down and stared off toward the door without looking at me.

“How long is the dashing Thomas Streeper going to go on with this unspoken tug of war?”

“Pardon me, miss. I was hoping to have said hello when your adult supervision went to sleep.”

“Don’t be so analytical.” She sighed and put her chin in her palm, gazing over at the meatless back ordering drinks at the bar for her, “Though he is hovering more aggressively than usual tonight. Even for him.”

“Is that the trick to being that intelligent, and still that well-liked?”

“What’s that?” She asked.

“Looking devastating in a midnight blue dress?” I mirrored her chin to palm and looked at her for the first time ever, since the last time. “I swear I can pull it off, but they always ask me to leave when the music comes on. Apparently I’m too provocative when I let these legs breathe.”

“I think, Charming Tom, your problem isn’t your attire.” She sat straight up and put her hand on mine and her other on top and breathed ice, “It’s that you think being intelligent is just a tool in a bag of tricks.”

I looked into her clear blue eyes, maybe green, maybe both. I had the feeling I was naked. Stripped in the middle of the floor of a formal dance and cold.

It was wrong. It was bad to Lily. It was bad to me. I should be less open to it. Stick to the formalities.

“You don’t have to be so buttoned-up with me, Thomas. We can just be two people coming back from very long trips. Two people who like to bandy quips.”

“God, no one will ever know who you are, Carol.” I shook my head and removed my hand from hers. “You’re too pretty. That’s all they’ll see. They’ll never know who you are.”

“That’s not true.” She pushed out her chair from beneath her midnight blue dress and stood up and picked up her glass and turned away and then turned only her head back to me and asked, “Don’t you?” and she walked off toward the restroom.

I sat back down across from Jack who had carried on, nodding and agreeing with others as he watched over my interaction with Carol, unseen.

“How was that?”

“As brief and as biting and as beautiful as it ever was.”

“She turns you into a poet.”

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, shut up.” He kicked me under the table. “Just have a good time. Just let the night be a good night.”

“I’ll grab the next round.” I stood up and I was feeling much better.

They were as welcoming as they ever were. I had worried that my evasiveness had embittered them. I paid a small price for having been so distant for so long. A few jokes to acknowledge it. A few more to bury it and move on.

That’s the way it is, though. The anxiety. Walking out on people abruptly and trying to walk back in unnoticed. The unknown inflates the worry. I’d assumed they’d blame me. The way I blamed myself.

The last time I’d seen them I’d blacked out. Just two days after it all. I’d pretended I was fine. Told them what I needed most was a drink. I went crazy. Broke down in the middle of The Horse. They had to scoop me up. Carry me out. Watch me all night. I thought they’d resent me. I thought they’d think less of me. That I couldn’t handle it. That I was weak.

But, it’s mostly nonsense. So much of the rationalization is unnecessary and the guilt is never warranted. Nothing is ever rehashed. People are all drunks and mistaken and criminals and would just as soon have you forget everything they did and everything you did and carry on for the next bout of sin-soaked toxification. It is one big unspoken truce. Like putting on a fresh coat of paint. Cover the graffiti.

It took a lot more to face them this time, after having avoided them, after having ignored them and evaded for so long for no reason but a selfish deflection of conflict. Not wanting to acknowledge it. That was the real guilt. Having felt so sorry for myself, so guilty for what happened last time. Like they cared enough about my blackout. Like that was more important to them than my health.

Even in normal circumstances, everything is forgiven and no one remembers any of what you thought you did to offend them.  I had good reason to be worse than I was. They knew that. The girls did, at least.

Outside, the purple of the night had melted with the damp red brick. The lamps speckled against the cars and bounced off the windows through the street, and the sweet of the bread factory had begun to give way to the drenched dusk.

The strip had taken on that late night murmur and the parties of pretty people began to grow looser and less worried about their errands and those unfinished reports. It was still too uncomfortable for Whalen’s and I hadn’t figured out what to drink, but it was growing tighter and sloppier along the walkway. People were louder and closer and I felt sober and I walked from the main strip and off toward Wolfe Street and away from the square. There was a little bar that way I had never visited, but it seemed perfectly remote from the noise and the scene. I thought it as good a time as any to have a beer while I made up my mind about drinks.

The place was empty aside from the few people scattered like abandoned set pieces at lonely tables throughout the floor. It was fashioned to be intensely Irish, like so many of the small bars in the area, tactlessly pulled together with a collage of worthless green treasures the owner had slung over the walls. There was a bookshelf in the corner. It didn’t look out of place, but it didn’t look like anything worth reading. I chose a seat far from the door, a few seats from where a young girl sat looking vaguely over some papers she had brought. She was alone. She was dressed well enough. I thought she may have been educated.

“Hey, sweetie. Watcha’ in for?” The wiry bartender popped up from somewhere below as soon as I sat down.

“Do you have anything on tap?”

“Just Heineken and Coors, hon.”

“No Boh?”

“I don’t make the rules, I just work here, babe.”

“Ah, I see.”

“I just show up and work, that’s it. I don’t make none of the rules.”

“That’s the best way to be.”

Like any other, bottles lined the mirrored backdrop of the bar. It was a small blue collar place for a small host of blue collar people, some working, some not. The bar area was compressed with a few tables strewn across the floor, vacant save for the occasional stumbling patron on his way out, or a cane waiting for an older gentlemen who stumbled for apparently different reasons. Sweet pit barbeque wafted out from the kitchen and a shedding German Shepherd kept watch over the place as it salivated from patting hand to patting hand. I rested back into the stool, feeling for the sticky lip of the underbar.

“I’ll just have a Miller Lite, then.”

“Coors Light?”

“Miller, please, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, a Miller bottle. We got bottles. That’s all we got.” She shuffled around, nodding forward and backward erratically as she pointed toward seemingly important places around the bar, figuring out where she left her memory. Her straw yellow hair shivered as she wiped her hands up and down her arms and then tapped along the bar and then scratched at her neck. She moved assertively in no particular order, forward and backward on her feet.

“A Miller bottle is just fine. Thanks.”

“You wanna pay for it here or startya tab?”

I flitted over the reflection of the young, presumably educated girl sitting at the bar with her papers. Her drink was full. I couldn’t tell if she was pretty. But she was a pleasant presence against a harsh working class scene.

“Would you mind starting a tab?”

“I do tabs.” She smirked and lowered her head as though she had offered me something particularly scandalous.

“I see, you do tabs.”

“Cause I can chase ya down if I have ta.”

“You do look quicker than me.”

“Yes sir, I could track ya down. I could catch if I needed to catch ya. I’d get ya.” She kept on, miming every way she could catch me as she tottered over the ice bin, shakily withdrawing a brown bottle. She reached back and snapped out her tool and slid the drink down the bar, I respectfully fixated on something distant as she wavered through the place.

The walls were low in the little pub. Every foot stuck to the floor as I sat gazing around a place familiar. Behind the tiered bottles of liquor the mirrored wall reflected back on the young girl and her papers. A stained glass lamp shone dimly, gold light humming through undusted roses and stems where empty bottles lined the lower shelf. Above the kitchen entrance hung a sign:

RULES OF THE INN

No Thieves, Rogues, or Tinkers

No Skulking Loafers or Flea Bitten Tramps

Fetlocks, Cudgels, Daggers & Swords

 to be 

Handed to the Innkeeper for safe keeping.

To its left another:

Cead

Mile

Failte

It must have been Gaelic. People were always Irish. Especially people at bars. Unless they were something else. Of course, they were always Native American, too. Or Injun. Christ. They always had “some Cherokee in ‘em.” People were always proud of that. Some made up heritage.

I needed to drink. Have a normal night.

“What’s your name, hon?” Her chin barely visible over the Keno machine behind the register. 

“Tom, ma’am.”

“Tom! I got a son named Tom!”

“Thank God it isn’t a daughter.”

“Nah, one uh my son’s name’s Tom.”

“Then I’m in good company.” The beer was going down faster now. I sat it gently onto the battered bar. “He’s obviously your favorite.”

“All my kids is my favorites.” She smiled a wrinkled smile beneath her heavily bagged eyes.

“You sound like every mom.”

“Love my kids. I may not uh done much right, but I’m a good mom. That’s right.”

I needed a drink. A real drink. Breathe.

“Where the hell you been all day?” The wiry bartender let out a shriek and bounced toward the edge of the counter to stare at the old woman entering with a limp. She wore sweatpants and white orthopedic shoes. A flannel sweater. Her hair was spiked and gray like wolves’ fur and her pink face rested set inside a thick pink neck. The woman sat and slammed both hands against the glossy surface, staring wide-eyed at the barkeep.

“Well I gotta work don’t I?”

“Like hell you gotta work. We all gotta work.”

The two went on yelling at one another at the corner of the bar and the old man and his cane shuffled in the chair behind me. I could see the young girl a few stools down start to reorganize her papers in finality. She slid them off to the side and pulled her glass in closer to drink, her face right down to the straw over the bar, never lifting it or her head. She looked straight into nothing, her reddish hair pulled back out of her face. A few times I caught her looking at me through the reflection behind the bar. I wondered what I looked like to her. To anyone.

I finished my beer and asked for another. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone yet. They were playing Duck Dynasty on the small TV in one corner, the O’s game had just started on the other.

“How dem birds doin’?”

It was too comical. It was too coincidental.

I needed air. I needed to breathe.

I stepped outside while the bartender grabbed my next beer. Tapped the counter, and put a finger up on the way out to let her know I wasn’t leaving.

I stood under the lip of the low-hanging awning. Drops dripping onto my head. I let them.

“Look like you need a smoke, bud.”

One of the rusty old men in his Ravens jacket leaned over and held out a box of Marlboro’s.

“You want one?”

I thought I might cry. I felt that burning crying feeling coming on.

“Want one, bud?” The man held out the pack of cigarettes and spit out smoke over his shoulder.

Clean breath. You need clean breath. Change your thoughts. Don’t obsess. Stop thinking of it. No more of the bad ones. Focus on the good ones. And no more smoking.

“I’m all right for now.” I didn’t want anyone to recognize me. With the cigarette or outside that place.

I was becoming less interested in going to Whalen’s all the time, and seeing all the pretty happy couples across the street wasn’t helping. I could drink more, sure, that would help. But if I drank I’d do something. I’d do something I’d regret.

“Promise me you won’t do anything you’ll regret?”

I craved something drinking  couldn’t give me. Something that would blot out the last two months of my life. Maybe the last few years. Something irrevocable. I could simply go home and sleep it away and check another week from the calendar of a fleeting existence. Why exist anyway?

“You need normalcy again, Tom. Go out. Go be with friends. Have a normal night.”

Doc didn’t know what normal meant for me before any of it. Normal was already bad. Now? Who knew. Who knew what I’d do? I should go home. I’d promised Jack. I’d go to Whalen’s.

I pushed the door open and stepped back into the dingy green and brown. The German Shepherd trotted an uninspired trot to meet me with its wet nose and the bartender bobbed and shouted too loudly “Y’all come back to see me!” She threw her hands to the sky, tickling the heavens, as she retreated to the kitchen.

It hadn’t been five minutes. I guess I could have walked out on that tab after all.

I pulled the door shut and wiped my feet before stepping onto the tile.

I approached the bar, an appropriate distance between myself and the reddish girl in the corner, and waved for the spasmodic woman behind it. My drink wasn’t there. She must have forgotten it.

“What’ll it be babydoll?”

“Just that Miller please. A bottle is fine.”

“Awright, Miller bottle. I can get you that. Miller bottle. Miller bottle.” She craned her neck around on her tip-toes, relearning her map of the space with her crooked fingers. “Miller bottle. That’s right, Miller bottle.”

She found it, and placed it in front of me, tilting over the counter and letting the light cast over the canyons of her cracked face. “You got a name hon’?”

“I do.” I cocked my head to remind her. It hadn’t been five minutes. She didn’t budge. “It’s Tom.”

“Tom! I got a son named Tom!”

“You don’t say?” What a world. Why exist?

“‘Ey Linda” she coughed into her armpit and waved her fingers over toward the introspective wolf lady who had worked that day, “Linda, guess what his name is!”

The old lady fanned her arms out over the bar and gyrated, “Well how the hell should I know!”

“’Is name’s Tom. Jus’ like Tommy. You know my Tommy.” She slapped a bushel of fingers down on the wood and locked the other to her hip in an accusatory jerk.

“Hell, I know Tommy.” The old lady folded her arms across her flannel sweater and stared up at the crossbeams. “That’s your Tommy down there?”

“Naw that ain’t Tommy, Tommy!” She threw her hands up and shook the straw from her head, circling tightly around herself “Sheesh al’ mighty. Said she thinks that’s Tommy….” and staggered off to the kitchen.

The old lady with the flannel sweater was limping around the bar now and she drifted into me midstep. I reached out gently to keep her upright. “Are you Tommy?”

“I am a Tommy. I’m not the Tommy, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, I was gonna say.” She leaned against the bar for support. “I was gonna say. You look too nice to be Tommy.”

“I’m sure he’s not so bad.”

“I thought you were Tommy.” She leaned in very closely. She had one hairy mole beneath her nose.

“Sorry. Just another Tom.”

I chugged the beer and put some cash on the counter. It was too much. What did it matter? She needed it. I didn’t need it. What would I do with it? You can’t take it with you, right?

Stop that. Breathe. Normalcy. You need normalcy. What a joke.

I stepped back out. Back into the open. Sucked in. Clean breath. No bad ones. Just alive right now. Lucky to be that way.

“So unfortunate.”

‘If there’s anything we can do.”

No more. Compartmentalize.

I stood there for a moment, sucking in the crisp nighttime chill. Breathing it away. The scene outside was untouched. The gay waltz of the early city evening had carried on without impediment while I’d been in there. The night didn’t care that I was a part of it. Nothing cared.

“Don’t be so dramatic.” That’s what Jack said. He knew it was exactly the time to be dramatic. That’s why it was okay to say. That was Jack. That’s why you needed one around, a Jack.

I had spent enough time and had enough bad beer to feel assured that I was human for the night. I was happy to go to Whalen’s and keep a promise. One last promise.

It wasn’t cold enough for a jacket, though it would be, but I’d be drunk, so that was fine.

I stepped out onto the landing, squinting like light was new. I hadn’t been outside for days. Even then, it was only to take my Chinese, tip nominally, retreat into my den. It was cooler than I remembered. Two months did that to a climate like Baltimore’s.

The streetlights flickered over the dangerous part of town. A young Hispanic woman carried a toddler on her chest like a mother opossum as two more children trailed behind her. The little girl, her hair braided down her back, shuffled across the pavement, her mother grabbing at the air in front of her, searching for the girl’s hand. The boy trotted behind, his bowl basin hair flopping as he bounced his dark chin against his chest, hopping along. He stopped in the road as the light turned green and reached down for a penny or a plastic bottle cap and his mother turned and scraped back to grip the boy’s arm and wave an apologetic hand to the oncoming Volkswagen.

Near the bus stop where the little boy had narrowly escaped death for, perhaps, the first of many times, a group of black boys and black men shoved each other and shouted. One of the younger men wore a hooded sweater, zipped to his nose, his hands deep in the pocket across his midsection. He paced, up and down the street corner beneath the spinning candy cane that barbers hang outside their buildings.

An older gentleman approached the group. His hair was gone at the top, and the last bit of evening sunlight splashed against the roof of his head and straight through the hole in his mouth where the front teeth had once been. He jigged his way down toward the bench, waving off the young men who spoke to him with a laugh. How could anyone that close to death be that happy?

“How dem birds doin’ boys?” The old man yelled.

“Man, nobody watchin’ baseball.”

The old man waved them off, jaunted his way down the sidewalk, smiling with his whole being, unfazed. Good for him.

The other men laughed with their fists to their mouths, and the young man in the hood paced, up and down, beneath his candy cane.

“How dem birds doin’ boys?” Of course. Two months in a hole and the first thing you hear. “How dem birds….” Breathe. Change the pattern. Clean breath.

I looked away and along the line of cars leading down toward the water. It was dusk, and the young men and women of the safe part of town were just beginning to crawl out of their row houses and into the streets, some in pairs heading toward the water hand in hand. Others clambered down porches, shoving and howling into the early night sky.

It was reaching that chilly time of evening when young ladies uncovered their legs and blistered their feet. They clopped along the walkways, entering one bar after another, ever smiling, never staying. The trees drifted in and out of the breeze wafting over the bay, sweetened by dough baking in the factory on the harbor’s edge.

We’d walked that stretch so many times. Just as the sun set. Looking for something down there we couldn’t find in each other, not alone in our apartment.

That’s better. Those are better ones. Remember those. It was probably the fresh air. 

“You have to leave that apartment sometimes, man. Probably for good, but definitely sometimes.” That’s what Jack said.

It was probably the fresh air. The clean breath. The good ones. The happy ones. Not the ones that destroyed her. That destroy me. Breathe.

I stepped down the small flight of stairs carefully, and strode out into the open air. Crossing over the alley, I thought I should have brought a jacket. I had already crossed over.

It was a Friday evening. The construction workers were still out, milking every bit of overtime possible. They were putting in new luxury apartments. Gentrification. Poor Baltimore. 

The tan men dragged tarps of rock from the demolition site and off to the side of the fence that separated them from the public. They were working on a non-government building, and many of them were illegal immigrants from El Salvador, or Guatemala, or Mexico. Mr. Jim told us all about it when we were little. Me and Liam. How it worked. How they worked.

“They work too, boy. Especially the real ones. You know when they’re real.”

The younger men were packing up their lunch bags and canvas packs and tossing shovels over the rusted F150 parked on Bank St. They joked and spoke quickly back and forth as they climbed over the rubble and debris, making their way to the truck as they peeled off their chartreuse vests.

“If they work through straight to night time on Fridays, they get  overtime on top of their eight-dollars.” That’s what he’d told us. “Saturdays, they get time and a half, too. Sundays– double time.” He tossed his empty Budweiser can behind him, through the window and into the back yard.

One man with a moustache like Marquez and deep wrinkles in his chin dug into the soil in a swift, repeated motion. The sweat dripped slowly down his forehead beneath his canary hard hat and over his lips as he worked on mechanically. The young men sat on the curb and unlaced their boots, but the work lamp sparkled on against the old man’s moist forearms and gritty neck as he dug deeper into the earth. His boots caked with clay, he shifted smoothly back and forth from the outer sole of his right foot to the upper ball of his left, working steadily, efficiently into the ground. He was one of the real ones. Mr. Jim would have liked him.

I passed the Chinese carryout. A puff of pork fried rice clouded the air of the block, sweet and sharp. I made them deliver to me every day. They were just two blocks away. I hadn’t taken the trash out in weeks.

The traffic was too heavy to cross at the signal in front of Lucia’s Portrait & Framing. Inside, the walls suffocated beneath hundreds of paintings, and photographs, and canvases, and street signs, and magazine covers, and old recruitment posters from the World Wars, and mirrors, and a few ornate clocks, and one coat hanger at the entrance. Like someone might stay awhile. Make themselves at home. I should have brought a jacket. The place was dimly lit and fully open, with no door separating pedestrians from the little museum of local artwork. I had always wanted to peek in. I had always meant to appreciate art.

The signal turned and I crossed over Fleet, funneling into the ever-growing flood of human bodies. They plodded along through the streets where the pavement turned to flagstone and in through the expectant doors.  The sun was still splattering across the water as the mass crossed over Broadway and into the courtyard in the heart of Fells Point.

The poplars scattered throughout the square hung low from the wet afternoon and a man strummed folk music through his guitar. Like anyone listened. People passed and dropped crumpled dollars at his feet and the man smiled and sang in their direction as they moved on. Someone bumped into me.

“Sorry, man.”

“No worries.”

“Hold on a second, Tom!” The man, Jonathan Baker, stopped and threw his hand out as his group teetered on toward Phil’s Irish Pub. “I thought that was you!”

“Sorry to disappoint.” I shook the guy’s hand, feeling his sweat slick against my palm. Jonathan laughed and slapped me too hard on the back. Men were always patting each other too hard against the back. I gently withdrew.

“What are you getting into tonight?”

“Just stopping in for a drink or two. Nothing extraordinary.”

“Oh, right, listen to you ‘nothing extraordinary.’ There’s always something crazy going on with you. Are you living around here?”

“No, just headed into town to meet a few friends,” I lied. I wasn’t interested in any future back-pattings that evening.

“Should have known you’d be meeting up with some wild group.” John laughed hard at himself and ran his sweaty hand through his short blonde hair.

“Looks like you lost yours.” I pointed to the other two men passing along the poplars without him. I recognized them from college. Dumb guys like John. Good guys.

“I’d better get in there. Don’t want to let those bastards have a good time without me.”

“It wouldn’t be the polite thing to do.”

“You’re a joker, Tom.” Jonathan put out his hand again, this time pulling away toward Phil’s as he reached. “Good to see you. Maybe I’ll catch you later on.”

“Maybe you will.”

He half ran over the flagstones in the direction of the bar, veering away from the guitarist, waving back at me lazily as he jolted over the curb and through the doors.

He was nice enough. Just simple. I envied him. That’s all he needed was a pub and a couple of high fives. That was the best way to be. To think little.

Not to think of them. Either of them. Constantly. Just to be empty. Breathing and laughing and having sex and drinking and giving high fives. Not obsessing or replaying or thinking of the best way to follow their lead, to take a dive, tie a knot.

Breathe. It’s just public. No one knows. No one cares. Jack knows. And Claire and Kayla. Carol, I was sure. Carol. She was back. Jack will have told her. Maybe she’d feel sorry for me. Come home with me. Maybe I’d want that. Maybe I’d kill myself.

Crossing over the courtyard and toward the main strip of bars on Thames, I thought it was too early for Whalen’s. That’s where we were meeting. That’s where we always met. Somewhere less cramped would be better, first, until a bit to drink. Until I calmed down, felt normal. It was just after seven o’clock. It was too early for Whalen’s. Too early for all of that. For all of them.

“Tom, oh Tom. How are you?”

“Are you ok?”

“Tried to call.”

“How are you?”

How the fuck do you think I am? I’m fucking perfect. Never better.

Breathe. Change your thought pattern. In and out. Calm down.

I needed a drink before all of that.

I turned left and passed the ice cream shop where the last of the evening’s parents and children were shoveling the last of the season’s soft serve into waffle cones. One boy had smeared his chocolate cone all over his face and down his long white shirt. His mother dabbed at the shirt, gripping it from the bottom. The boy smeared more across his face and laughed at himself and the mother gave up.

The crowd trickled through along the tight walkway next to the curbside dining tables. I meandered alongside the dining couples, avoiding evening runners, dodging a few specials boards heralding, “Friday Fresh Catch Crabcakes $5.00” and “Drink! For the children.” They were normally more clever. I passed along Slainte and a friendly Pembroke Welsh Corgi, who climbed up my leg, his tongue dangling over my pants. I reached down and patted him twice, careful not to distract the conversation at the dog’s table.

Royster’s was open halfway along the strip and I moved through the slim entrance and away from the door to choose an empty stool at the far edge of the bar. I left two seats between my stool and that of a fat man and his brown leather jacket sitting alone. I couldn’t remember if that was etiquette, or if I was simply antisocial. Either was fine.

“What’ll it be?” The sweet little voice floated up from the other end of the counter. The small brunette in cut-off jean shorts stood over the cooler, a carton of beer hoisted over her shoulder as she placed them three at a time into the well.

The lacquered wood slick under my palms as I leaned over to be sure she could hear me. “Two Bohs, please.” It was too far to order anything too complicated. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything too complicated.

“Keep it open?”

“Not just yet, thank you.”

I placed the money softly into her hand. I had cash. Like a barbarian. I’d drained my account after it happened. Two months ago. After all of it. I didn’t have to interface with the bank for any reason that way. It was easier. The Chinese place loved it.

She returned with the change. A third of my bottle disappeared and I leaned back a bit to soak in the throngs of bodies floating by. Across the bar and through the window the parade of eager men and women shoved past one another on their way to the perfect location they’d never find. They all laughed and prodded each other and chased around like children in a schoolyard. 

The small brunette was working all over as she propped up on the balls of her feet, leaning in to talk to strangers. She had very nice legs, for being so short, and her hair was neatly tied up so that the ponytail swung back and forth the more excited she became with the conversation. She had a lot of space to move. It was good to have a lot of space to move, even being so small. She had a great deal of space and being smaller gave her even more of it.

I hadn’t had sex in months.

She was working alone in the slowly crowding bar. I thought she must have been tending bar for quite some time. She knows the space well. Look at her, slinging empty bottles into the trash behind her without looking. She pulls up bottles three at a time from a given well without considering which one she’s opened. She’s something in her element. Or were all bartenders something in their element? No. They were not always that way. There were plenty who were uncomfortable or too new to be comfortable yet. There were some who took too long to find the right bottle and some who took too long to pull away from one stranger to help another.

There are some who were worse in a different way. Some moved too quickly. Some knew their space too well and never took the time to learn the right thing about a stranger, or to pretend to learn the right thing. Some had jobs in the day and kids at home and no need to learn the right things from strangers. Some had only the clock to tell them when they should and shouldn’t speak to a stranger, or help another stranger with a drink.

This one was right in the middle. Not yet jaded by too much knowledge. Not quite perfect in her space. She learned just enough.

Two girls sat down next to me and I looked off through the wall and focused deeply on something that wasn’t there. I could make out the curly bush of hair swinging violently in the next stool. That was Melanie. Like the universe knew where I was. Like there was a God. Like I needed that. My first beer was finished with one more swig. The curly bush of caramel hair was standing on the footrest now, waving her hand toward the perfect bartender in her perfect shorts. 

“Vodka water!” She yelled through the slowly rising volume of the bar. “And—what do you want?—and a vodka cranberry!”

She sat down and turned her back to me to chat with the friend. The fat man in his fat jacket took a drink from his glass. Probably scotch. He would have ordered scotch without actually knowing about it. I didn’t know about it. It didn’t matter because he wasn’t concerned with the scotch. The scotch hid his eyes as he slipped a peripheral glance at the Melanie’s chest. The scotch hid it poorly. Good for him.

The brunette shot the vodka into two glasses and nestled its bottle back between the others on a shelf too high for her reach. I turned away as she looked up and toward my end of the bar with the two drinks in her hands. I looked off arbitrarily and then turned back toward the other end to see her thighs as she bounced back to a few new arrivals.

I hadn’t had sex in a long time. At least two months. I’d thought about finding a hooker. I didn’t want to go through all the trouble. I just masturbated until I fell asleep.

“Oh my God! Tom!” She’d finally noticed me. “Oh my God!” She swung her hair to the opposite shoulder and leaned in for a deep hug. I hugged her, my hand touching her exposed shoulder blade, and tried to withdraw. She clung on.

“Ahhh good to see you, miss.”

When she finally unclamped, she placed both hands on my cheeks and stared wide-eyed into me. Melanie was not picturesque. She had high cheekbones and very little chin and her eyebrows were quite thick. She had untamable, indiscernibly colored hair that was probably blonde at some point, and she rarely painted her nails or wore gold jewelry. Her eyes were simply brown and whispered at an ever-declining passion for life, which she covered, with a barrage of swift, succinct gestures in all directions so you could never stare for quite long enough to make out what made it wane. And still she was lovely.

“If only the rest of the world greeted me that way.” I returned and nodded toward Melanie’s friend.

“Look at that smile!” She laughed and grabbed my hand. I hadn’t expected it and I sat back a little embarrassed but tried not to show it. I wanted her hand to stay there a bit longer. “Tom, Tom. Oh– Tom, this is Sally. Have you met Sally? I’m not sure you’ve met. I don’t know how you would have to begin with…”

“Sal.” The girl extended her bawdy hand, smiling a tight-lipped smile.

“Excuse me: Sal. How could I introduce you as Sally? What is it—your name, or something? So very sorry to offend you, Sal.” The wild bush of hair swept back and forth as she looked from Sal to me in sharp exaggerated flicks. “How have you been? What are you doing? Is that your beer?”

I looked back at the restrooms and reached for the full beer. 

“Which would you like answered first?”

“It’s been too long!”

It had always been too long. It was always too long and we should always spend some time together sometime. People were always so glad to see you, though it had always been too long, and you always looked so good. People were always introducing you to people you would never know or learn from. I admired the brunette in her cutoff jean shorts behind the bar. She was always being introduced and always knowing and learning just the right amount.

“Are you here alone? What are you doing?”

She didn’t know. Maybe she did. She knew Jack well enough. She knew me well enough. She probably knew.

I glanced once more down the hall to the bathroom and tapped for my footing along the plank of the bar.

“You’re never alone in the city, are you?” I pacified and tried to avoid looking at her chest. Instead I diverted the attention to her friend. “What do you have there? Seabreeze?” I knew her order, but it was the wrong impression to make it obvious you had heard a conversation you weren’t explicitly meant to hear.

“Vodka cranberry. Would you like to try it?” I thought it odd at first blush, but considered how many strangers had been so open to sharing glasses with me in the past.

“Oh, believe me, I’ve had quite enough of them to know what sort of night you’re in for.”

It was all so showy. All of it.

“I wish!” Melanie spouted out over her glass. “This one wants to have an early night. Why do you want to have an early night? Why not have more to drink and enjoy the nice breeze? You shouldn’t go back so early. It isn’t good to miss such a great night. You haven’t even sipped your first drink. You shouldn’t go.”

“You’re too much for one person.” Sal smiled a plaster smile and drew from the straw in her glass. A modest draw. She wanted to have an early night.

“You’re too much for one drink!” She hadn’t framed it in her mind before she said it aloud to a large-framed girl. “And you look so pretty tonight. Your hair’s done up so nicely!” she floundered on.

The hefty girl twirled the strand of hair down her cheek and gave Melanie a skeptical snarl. Melanie waved her hand without coming up from her glass and pulled off her bag to hang underneath the bar. The hefty girl left her satchel stretched across her chest. She wanted to have an early night.

Down the hallway a young couple sat across from one another sharing a late dinner. The young man with his hair parted and his shirt neatly pressed sat with his back out toward the walkway. He tucked in as waiters and customers passed behind him. The girl, in her nice floral dress, rested comfortably against the back of a cushioned booth, her hands folded properly in her lap and her eyes fixed intently on the young man’s face. He pushed his plate forward an inch or two, and after a few false “No, thank yous,” the girl reached out with a fork and drew in some of his chicken, holding her hand beneath it as she brought it to her mouth. She danced her bottom around in her seat and chewed on happily.

She was perfect. And I’d destroyed her.

“Tom?” Melanie grabbed my arm. I started a bit, but tried not to blush.

Breathe. Compartmentalize. You’re alive. You’re here.

“Mmm? Oh, yes.” I turned to the larger girl. “Mel would never lie to you. If she didn’t think you looked nice she wouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Exactly! Why would I even say anything?” Melanie nudged the big girl and went back to her drink, holding back her dirty blonde mane as she sucked in. “Anyway. Tom! Where have you been?”

“Living the dream, of course.”

“Living the dream. You’ve always lived the dream. You’re Tom Streeper, after all.” She laughed and put her elbow on the counter. She placed her knuckles beneath her chin and tilted her head, blocking out Sal’s face as the light hit hers just so. She was a strange beautiful. I had always loved her place in life. “I’ve missed you.” She pouted and reached out her hand to grab mine. I obliged and chugged the rest of the beer and laughed falsely at her trite remark, though I knew it was true. At least, it was as true from her as it had ever been from others. Perhaps that meant it hadn’t been at all, but it was something.

“Enough of how great I am and how much you’ve missed me.” I leaned around her, diverting the conversation again, “how do the two of you know each other?”

Mel turned quickly to Sal, who simply held her palm out and deferred the conversation.

“Oh, you want me to talk?” Mel joked with her.

“You always do.” Sal curtly replied.

“Rude!” Mel snapped and turned back to me. “Sal and I roomed together when I was abroad in Italy! She just moved down here to the city and I told her we have to hang out!” She was exhausting.

“Oh, very nice.” I leaned again toward Sal. “How do you like the city life?”

“It’s alright. A big change, but there’s a lot to do. Especially when this one drags you out.”

“I know the feeling.” I smiled and nudged the empty bottle toward the brunette in cut-off shorts to be replaced– whenever she had the chance. It made no difference to me.

It hadn’t changed much since the last time I had been there, though bars rarely do in the city unless they turn over ownership. That’s what makes them likable, the smaller ones. This one: the same framed Johnny Unitas jersey hanging above the bar, the same captain’s wheel tastefully anchored to the support beam at the stair landing, the same painting of the tuna leaping high above the water, the sun splashing over its fins. I didn’t think tuna could dive. I could have been wrong. The stools were still just a tad too high for the bar, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did.

“One more, hon?” The bartender asked leaning up on the counter.

I looked over Mel, whose drink was quite full, and Sal whose drink was quite empty.

“Yes, please. Just one.” I handed her a few dollars and shooed her away from bringing back the balance.

“Do you still live in the same place?”

“Yes. Same place. Just a few blocks up. An easy walk to the bars.” I added to Sal, “Too easy.”

“You’re insane! You can never be too close to the bars.” Mel blurted out. “See you should be excited to be down here. I love it down here. Tom loves it down here. Don’t you love it, Tom?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“See. Tom loves it.”

“I’m going to the bathroom.” Sal scooted off the end of her stool and wrapped her satchel around her with both hands. “I think I’m about ready to go.”

She shuffled off along the narrow walkway toward the ladies’ room. She was wearing khaki shorts down to her knees and a rainbow striped halter top with every tank top she could find beneath. She began putting her sweater over her shoulders as she reached the bathroom door, pardoning herself out of the way of a busboy carrying a tub of used glasses. She wanted to have an early night.

“Seriously, Tom.” Melanie lowered her shoulders and turned to face me. It was remarkable how quickly people could snap from jovial to cerebral. “How are you?”

So she knew.

“You know me, Mel.” I smirked to make her feel better. “When have I ever had a problem finding joy?”

I drank the new beer back a little. She stared from under her brow. She looked older. Our meetings were always so familiar for being so intermittent. She knew me a bit and I knew that.

“I really hope you are, Tom.” She ended her interrogation like a lost cause and went back to her drink. “I really do. You deserve to be happy.”

“Have I given the impression I’m unhappy?”

She stared for a few moments. “Of course not.” Sal was just bumbling her way back up toward the bar when Mel finished the rest of her glass and slammed it on the table, going into a little victory dance and letting out a refreshed sigh.

“Can we go?”

“If we must!” Sal began walking toward the door and Mel kept her legs together as she slid from her stool. She placed her hands on my cheeks and kissed one. “I better see you soon!”

“It’s all I can hope for. Have a nice night in.”

“Oh, my night just started!”

“Meeting up with others?”

“After I drop the old lady off.” She started to walk out, her hair springing down her shoulder blades. She turned back, bumping into a tall man with short hair. “Maybe I’ll see you later on?”

“Maybe.”

There was always a later for everyone. It was so hopeful. People had so much hope.

I waved a sharp salute and watched as they exited over the threshold. Sal stepped down and out in front of the streetlamp diners, clutching her bag as if it might be stolen at any moment. Mel stomped exaggeratedly toward her and put her arm inside Sal’s and they were gone.

Liam wouldn’t stand at first, too young for a sense of urgency, as he examined the webbing between his toes, his head at Tom’s feet, their mother monolithic above them.

“Stand up, Liam.”

He did with restored awareness, devoid depth of conscience, his mind still pondering bipedalism.

“What did I tell you?”

Their mother towered, her wrists small buckles snapping her arms to her hips, her knuckles white against her sides, bearing down on the brothers.

Tom’s face was in his toes, too, though standing and without wonder. He didn’t dare look up, for fear his pupils would latch to her stare and sting the back of his skull.

The carpet of their basement was bevelled in tired brown checkers that spotted the space between the vinyl paneled walls. The metal desk in the corner stood tight against the pattern’s edge, cornering off the wardrobe where they stored heavy blankets in the summer. Tom would hide there when Liam would count during hide-and-seek, nestled in a thicket of rough downy and fraying seams.

“Hm?”

The mother’s foot shifted his glance and reattached his focus to the present trouble. She wasn’t wearing pants, and it bothered Tom for the first time, his face fleeing from the flesh and lace, controlling his urge to look at them, sensing something forbidden. Liam shuffled at his flank, unable to detect the level of severity. Tom was yet unsure of it himself, but unwilling to assume any expectation but the worst until given more context.

He raced through their recent misgivings. They had spent the morning unattended while their mother was out finding money and losing it again, so time had gone unchecked. They crawled through the gunk-caked carpet all morning, chewing the dander, shooing the dog from their faces. They had emptied each couch of its cushion, each mattress of its sheet, and flung and fastened each strip of fabric to build a fort in the center of the basement, turrets aimed at all open spaces.

They tired of that quickly and refurnished the room in covers and soft seats. They moved outside, as soon as the sun would let them, dodging dog droppings as they jumped through the lumped back yard. They hid a time capsule in a small personal safe. They dug a hole near the gate near the old lady’s house and beneath the yellow-leaved Sugar Maple and Tom placed in it a signed picture of Patrick Ewing from the time he didn’t meet him, but Mom tried and he almost did, and a Cal Ripken Jr. Topps card, and Liam added his Yomega, the one he couldn’t untangle, and a Giga Pet with no life left, and a Husky pencil Tom had won from Nico Ramos when he used his Pentech and won the pencil fighting championship in the boys’ bathroom, and a note he wrote for Liam that read:

Dear Liam,

Good job. You found me. This is Tom. Make sure mom is good. You are my friend. You are the president now. 

Love,

Tom 

They made a new club in the tree with the knobbed limbs and spiked foliage and Tom let Liam in, only if he could climb to the top branch and poke the robin’s nest without falling out.

They found a hole in the trellised wall where the stairwell began. Bees were hiding in there and they took turns running from one end to the other, tempting the fates and the wasps. They hid behind the bushes and watched for what was certainly hours as five bees came and went. They gathered small twigs and mud and a few rocks smaller than a quarter and created a pile as close as they could. After enough time had passed since the last worker wriggled into the hole, Tom ordered Liam to place the first twig in. Then he the next, until the hole was plugged and the boys unstung and the bees no longer buzzing.

In everything they’d done that morning, little Tom couldn’t recall a single transgression worth reprimand. He perused the pattern in the carpet, loose strands of fur trapped under his soles, the stench of feet and piss and mildew sticking to the corners of his nostrils. His mother’s bare legs just above it all.

“Tom. What did I tell you about going in there.” She pointed her yellowing fingers toward the bathroom beyond the desk, the one place they weren’t allowed, under penalty of punishment, corporal or psychological.

Tom snapped to in defense, “We didn’t even go in there!” he defied and darted from Liam to his stern mother in disbelief of the accusation. “I didn’t go in there!

“Someone went in there.”

She switched her weight and Tom folded his stubby arms and glared into the side of his brother.

“Liam?”

Liam knelt down and pinched his feet, forgetting where he was.

“I don’t know what to do with you two.” Her voice rasped over them, honey catching on the lumps in her throat, her unadorned knees bending to and fro. Tom’s head only reaching her navel, he unfolded his little arms, his brown hair falling into his eyebrows, his lips pursed in frustration.

He avoided her eyes, his own falling over the curves in her ankles, the tiny hairs up her glossy legs. She stood in sheer underwear, her boys too young to worry. Tom’s gaze strayed tracing lace, his curiosity betraying him,  lost in the the intricacy of the stitchwork weaving intertwining ivy from where the thighs met to the elastic band around her waist, the mesh hiding little. The shame burned his face, his cheeks glowing. He relished in the warmth as his hazy vision failed to fulfill his wonder at what made her different.

“Tom! Stop looking at my panties.” He recoiled and remembered to feign frustration and relocated his attention to anything else, embarrassed for the first time by some secret he didn’t understand. 

She moaned as she turned on her heel, marching off toward the bathroom, grabbing a towel as she went. The two boys peered over one another, discerning guilt if it existed, beckoning the other to admit it.

They stood in the center of the room they shared with her, the space separated cheaply with battered furniture and a sheet Lisa hung from the tiled ceiling in half-hearted desire for privacy.

The water ran from the sink in the bathroom, beneath the fuzz of its flow, the tapping and scraping that always accompanied, the leather coughs that chopped through it,  a fit of sneezes sharp against the close walls of the pantry-sized toilet, the flushing and the sniffs as the water shut off. Lisa emerged, wiping her hands on the towel now wrapped around her waist, her face red and her sullen eyes darkened beneath her heavy brow, the purple orbs around her pupils shining against the light.

There was a fumbling at the screen door up the stairs out of the basement and a crash as it slammed open. The boys scampered to their bed, shielding their bodies head to little toe beneath the sheet. The silhouette of a man passed across the light permeating the fibers of their cover, stumbling slowly over toward the small bathroom. It spoke in rushed hisses in the space between Lisa’s bed and the door to the toilet. The bathroom door swung open, its hinges creaking as the knob slammed into the vinyl planks of the wall, the hanging mirror slapping back and forth in the quake.

“The fuck is this.”

The man hissed and the door creaked shut and the shadows of two adult bodies passed over the filtered rays of the dim bulb from beneath the covers and a man’s arm raised and cut through the light, striking and a towel fell off and a smaller shadow crashed into the vinyl and a man’s silhouette hovered over it.

“Fuckin’ touch my stuff. I fuckin’ told you.”

Sobs poured from the spectral heap in the glow of the light near the ground. “My boys. Please.” The little patch of shadow curled tighter and smaller against the wall.

“Ever touch my shit, I told you, little slut.”

“I’m sorry.” She spit into the air. “My boys, please.”

“You fuckin’ hear me?” The shadow grew larger, closer to the sheet, blotting out the dim glow in masculine overcast, and the boys clung closer to one another, breathing hot breath into each other’s sticky faces. And the man pressed his face into the mounds of their sheet-covered heads, his chin prickling Tom’s cheek like the needlepoint tips of feathers through rough pillow cloth. he whispered, his breath like old milk and mustard, “Your mom’s a whore. Get used to it.”

The glow returned and the screen door slammed against the latch and a man was gone.

Tom lowered the sheet and Liam scurried back beneath it, hiding his face and crunching his body, fetal.

Lisa lay, her eyes glass and fire, makeup staining her porcelain cheeks in hot tar, wrists splayed over the beveled floor, framed between two panels of vinyl, flesh and mesh damp in the space between glossy legs, the stench of feet and piss and mildew.

And guilt swept over little Tom.

They should never have disassembled the fort to bury bees.