"You ain't saying nothing that I don't already know."

Their faces were like lemon-drops and their eyes watered readily/reality. (Pretty girls make me blush.) I need some kind of structure; some kind of BELIEF. (It's like a kid on a cellphone! It drops things, and bends extravagantly over to collect them again.) This sharpness is in bad taste, I think.

It's the one thing you can't think about, be assured. How fragmented you must be! What sort of alternative would I prefer? Were it that you were here, with the face that you wear--open and full in front of me...then you wouldn't see me with eyes this foggy? My mood wouldn't drip tangibly and rich-viscous with wake. If you were here? You wouldn't know me at all.

Ah, but this doesn't save me from wanting you. I want to taste the flavor your eyes choose for ignorance! I want to listen to you telling me somethingsomething, your voice fluttering on and on in its brevity. What would you look like? Sitting here, with nothing but me for a distraction? I want to count your yawns; follow your drifting glance. Almost, I want you here without me.

[Don't put it past yourself to be here now. Your desires entail your presence. Yes. Practice, then, not abandoning yourself (while you still can see that you are).]

Ciarra

"Oh my fucking god. Where did it come from?! Why the fuck'd you bring it here?!"
"I found her in the bushes behind the complex! Goddamnit, listen! She's really cold, okay? Fucking--run a bath or something! I can't just let her fucking freeze, you know? Kell(?)... Kell(?), I can't take her home."
"Fuck, Dom!? What do you want me to do about it, huh? Jesus Christ! What if it's dying? What if it's fucking dead already?! A dead fucking baby in my fucking kitchen?!! Oh my god--oh christ..."
"She's not dead, Kell! (Don't worry.) Please. Come on, help me get her into some bathwater. Stay with me here, okay Kell?"
"Fuck. Okay! Okay."

*~*~*

"Ciarra! Girl, where the blazes are you?"

"Shhh," came from beneath the porch that the gray woman was just then standing on. She took the two rickety steps down and onto the pale-colored grass to kneel down breathily.

"Sweetie-pie, what the devil you doin' down there?" she wheezed.

"SHHH. I'm hiding."

This time the woman thought to lower her voice, "Who ya hiding from, Girl?"

"The clouds," the child whispered.

Unprepared for this, she still managed to keep her surprised laugh quiet enough for the girl's sensibilities when the woman responded. "Haha! Hon, the clouds ain't gonna hurt you this time o' year."

Ciarra (the girl) made the face of something scandalized when she looked up at the only other person on the planet. "I know THAT Grandma," she whispered quickly. "We're playing hide 'n' seek!"

MysteryGuy?

Working the taps, MYSTERY GUY felt his arms wake up--finally being appreciated beyond their monotonous swaying of the back and forth kind. (Or Hale's line when starts to work again...?)

"You're a distinctual sort of dude, mate. You know what I'm saying?"
I had no idea.
"Absolutely," I said.

The man in the pink hat scoffs for the third time that evening, so that by now I recognized it as an expletive of approval. Luckily there was no one around to see me gloat. I poured Pinky another shot without being asked, good bartender that I am.

Tonight at the bar I saw someone in the midst of a crowd of her friends. Do you know what I mean by that? There were at least a dozen of them, but no matter where she stood she seemed the one surrounded. I keep thinking, 'Does that say something about her? Or does that say something about me?

If it's the latter, I think I'd better grow out of it soon--I can't believe how easy it is to utterly ignore the individuality of seeming pack members.

What's she look like? The better question might be, what doesn't she look like? Or maybe, for an edging of flair, what does she exude? Something like thoughtfulness, I think. Ah! But what does that mean? What next? Something generic--something barely there. Like a patch of sky, painted/allowed in the corner of a ceiling--of a low ceiling, that is.

Anyway, I mean to answer the question, 'Why?' if I can. First things first, she wore a backwards hat, and her eyes narrowed painstakingly with each fixation of her gaze. Absolutely, which is how she seemed to see things.

Maybe that's all it was--a matter of movement. No, but it wouldn't be a case of physical stillness, what with how often she pulled a chosen friend into the crowded room and made her real--even into the crowded room blaring with the dissatisfying music, t-shirt hanging over her shoulders in all the wrong places. She wasn't the only girl grinning either, but it was just as well--I was only curious about hers.

Images of her smiling face watching itself in the mirror for a fleeting moment, and then wilting maybe, they manifested of their own accord by the design of my imagination. I saw her with an inscrutable expression, showing the clothes she would wear that morning. Yawning, and then rechoosing. Would she smile self-deprecating before she did it. Would she get an arbitrary sense of her choices? Of her life, perhaps? And would she keep right on smiling?, I wondered.

Like tonight, though? Why was I wondering about this girl anyway, when each of the other people I saw would have been subjected to the same processes of the days. Why couldn't I seriously care about their expressions, as if they'd be as invisible as my own through my eyes?

Her colors were monochromatic; she was all browns and grays. Cedar-skin, sequoia-hair, and lips and eyes. Shades of sand at midnight ensemble, as if feigning colorlessness. (Almost colorless?) None of this would mean a thing on someone else--I wouldn't even have noticed! How easy it is to get nowhere.

Janey

Jane stammered bodily among her things, bracing herself for the sudden wakefulness she still knew to regret. Her chamomile smile fluttered past her lips at the most unexpected of times.

When she awoke she had changed her mind again. Last night's late hour clarity had seduced her into sleep but now the morning had replaced it and she still didn't know what to do. Though she knew what was expected of her and therefore what not to do. [Which was to go at all...?]

Of course the funeral arrangements had been made far in advance and she and her love had played dress rehearsals with their eyes hundreds of times, but she was to be alone for the real thing. How could she have let herself forget this?

The phone rang downstairs to remind her that she'd unplugged the one on the nightstand across the expanse of the bed: his side, the left. She lay staring through that strange space at the quietly sitting handset when the answering machine next to it clicked on to talk to/speak with her in hushed tones, using the voice of her father-in-law.

"Janey... I hope I'm not waking you. Dear...Dolores and I just wanted to check up on you. Please let us know if you decide you want to come with us this afternoon after all. We can pick you up just like nothing and you can come back here with everybody after, if you want to. To eat something...you know. We love you Janey. Give us a call back when you get up, okay?"

She watched as the thing did nothing to commemorate the passing of Adam's voice, it's disappearance going unnoticed, like everything.

She'd only lied to him once when he was alive, and now with his death she found she would make herself a liar just once more. The first time was when she said she'd let him take care of her. This last would be ruining his expectation of her presence at his funeral. She wanted to sleep more but knew it would only generate/materialize people to put/with their hands on her shoulders and arms. She felt on the edge of a decision that wouldn't allow spare time. She didn't know how she could know this unless she knew what she was going to do, but whatever part of her already did wasn't letting on just yet. So she continued her scrutiny of the ceiling but didn't let her eyes weigh themselves down.

Although she now had the choice to let it have its way with her whenever she liked, exhaustion hadn't any real power ever since she had become a person she could no longer relate to. Sleep would always have to wait on her, she couldn't change this now.

She found herself noticing her breath for the first time in 11 hours. It was a shorter kind of the deep breaths and it filled her body with itself, solid enough to cause her left-center ribs to creak in a wince of pain. She allowed herself not to prepare for the end of the next ten minutes. She breathed instead.

Hale (plus Ciarra, Indie, Mitch & Jane)

"It's good to meet you, Ciarra."

The girl nodded in response, gifting Hale with a joyous smile to go with it. Always forgetful to reminding herself to return smiles at appropriate times, Hale's lips nonetheless worked of their own accord to meet this particularly joyous challenge. [Your characters are always so smiley! Why such smilemonsters, love?]

Curbing the bizarre urge to prolong this first meeting with a curiosity that would ostracize the rest of the room, Hale let go of the girl's hand and stepped backward once more, barely touching the kitchen counter right where it met the cheerily yellow-stained ceramic sink. [Use more concrete terms! Describe the feeling of the situation through the (apparent) physical characteristics of the folks that make it up, yeah?] Finally looking away, Hale did one more quick room glance trick before settling down at Indie's side for a minute to address the still-to-fore neglected inquiries of her dearest, silly friend.

"Since you ask, lovey--I slept something like an awful pitiable excuse for sleep," now, just as not-accidentally, positioning herself away from Ciarra's potential translation, less she offend the girl whose bed had been most graciously relinquished to her. Knowing it wouldn't matter anyway, she didn't extend the same courtesy to Jane--the mother's ears were physically perfect, no doubt, but her attention was inevitably elsewhere.

"It's so goddamn SILENT in this godforsaken sad imitation of a civilized town," Hale finished with faux-forlorn simplicity.

"What d'ya mean "silent"!? Didn't you hear the spiteful garbage kids at daybreak?!!"

"The only hour of peaceful shut-eye I got. And lemme tell you--the screech of breathing life!...'twas a sweet thing, girlfriend." She sighed heavily into Indie's skeptically bent/cocked/tilting head, and then addressed her friend's man/beau, the lumberjack look-alike lover, Mitch Beckham. "Mitch. What's up with getting me some work tonight? If I don't start working again soon y'all are gonna find me unnaturally hanging from my walk-in closet with fuckin' slit-wrists & ankles."

The guy smirked, mildly amused but not about to get crazy about it, it seemed. "You're up, nine to close, no problem."

"That's what you say now, but if you don't let me come till freaking nine, I'm liable to get shitfaced beforehand. How's about seven instead, cool guy?"

"Eh..." Mitch hesitated, not slightly irritate at the damn-near blackmail right along with the utter sense of almost bored entitlement in the face of his favor--spouting like nothing from the ungrateful mouth of his lady friend's best friend. Hale didn't take a word of it back in the down time though, and he reluctantly conceded, needing an experienced bar"man" after all. And being a practical sort of shrewd fellow, he recognized this hard won acceptance of her friend's "situation" would put him smack dab in the middle of a saint's photograph in Indie's wild camera-shot mind's eye. Plus, he liked helping people out...occasionally even without direct praise/appreciation for doing so. [Not a fan of Mitch suddenly, huh?] [Come on, come on! Let's make it more in line with reality...people like Mitch aren't all bad, and maybe aren't even due our casual scorn! Rather, they are aware of the multitude of reactions and consequences of their actions, paying close attention to these, and making colorful plan-outs of where they want to be, and how they will be seen when they get there. Remember, and be compassionately aware that the most evil of our nature can only/best be borne through intelligent means. You know that, love...you live with it too, recall. As most people do.]

(It's like the biggest fuck-ups are the easiest ones to cover-up with claims of most unfortunate irresponsibility...)

Beth (& MysteryGuy?)

Busking was a tricky thing.

Under the guise of artist, I had made it my right and their privilege, but I knew the precipice I walked. I thought of it constantly and so far the view was still worth it.

"My good Gentleman, would you by chance spare--" I heard snippets of the mobile panhandler Jay during a long rest as he made his way toward my corner of town, on his dozenth round of the night. My cello drowned out his approach when it came but he stopped in my line of sight to address another of our worldly patrons. His appearance was more frequent during certain songs for they tended to have an impact on some folks, and as the distracted woman listening fumbled with her purse and generously handed Jay a fiver, he winked at me. I wouldn't have let anyone else get away with it.

The wild-haired sage had a face seemingly gray with its permanent coat of dust and at the moment the angle of the freshly risen moon put a gleam in his wide eyes that I knew he would use to his advantage at the game. Clothes more ragged than necessary draped his every limb, and in layers as it got colder quicker now. His hands were perfectly calloused and clean. He, too, was a musician, but not here; he thought himself pure. I watched him keep my time on his way back against the foot traffic.

The woman five dollars poorer stayed to hear me play twenty minutes more. She was a regular charge, if ever I could claim one, and had been for the last month. She came at the same time each night, stuck around for half and hour or so, and then leave. She always approached from the same direction and the returned again without ever passing me, so I knew that i was the main event of her journey, though she never left any money for me even while I'd seen her dish out plenty to Jay, among other. Not only did I not mind this, I dreaded the evening that would see her drop off a handful of cash and then take back her lunch-break, robbing me of another worthy audience.

When my momentary admirer had gone for the evening once more, I stopped my playing for a while as was my timed habit. The baby crowd that had gathered continued on their way after leaving me with a quantifiable/the counted amount of their appreciation.

I smiled steady at them all as they went steadily on, but didn't respond to the compliments the threw carelessly my way. I never talk to them, it was an exceptionless rule. The fact that most didn't notice wasn't what kept me silent, though I couldn't say exactly what did. Nonetheless, if that one woman ever spoke to me, perhaps I would answer.

I got up to look and saw Jay almost to me again. My cello set carefully on the second-hand stand next to my stool. I bent to retrieve my first shift's wages and then tucked the soft gray case between the two objects. When I rose Jay was there, and I smiled my gratitude as he painstakingly perched himself atop my former seat. I told him I'd be back in a few minutes and he nodded solemnly before hunching forward and closing her eyes. He'd been walking the same hour long routed for the past decade and he was looking old these days. A good man, Jay was, I thought to myself.

Leaving him then I crossed the street. My spot was located on a steep slope; when I play I'm completely facing the folks climbing the hill while my back is to the faces of those coming down. The position seems to work well since most of the people who stop to listen only do so for an excuse to catch their breath. Then they have to pay out something so that they can continue to think nobody noticed.

The other thing this tilted perspective effects is where I go on my breaks. I choose entirely based upon how tired I am or how hot it is rather than where I might like to go or for what I hope to fetch. Consequently, I hardly know what I want anymore. (Aren't the lot of us mood-oriented?)

Up the hill and into the heat, I went as a closet masochist will do. I felt I needed to be tired and slightly feverish to pull off the rest of the night. It seemed I might even play better that way. Too bad for my retired fan.

The places on my right stood still and let me pass. I could distinguish them from those on my left only for the side of my neck that currently throbbed. I could see sounds being created in the distance but what I heard moments later was bodiless and distinctly alone. I stopped suddenly on my intent passage when I noticed a new face to as old a profession as mine.

He was a youngish boy, probably nineteen. Sitting cross-legged on the concrete, he had a cat on his lap and held a harmonica to his mouth, wailing on it in a way that I hadn't realized was possible. He'd yet to draw any serious people but I knew that would change; his hook was an irresistible one. Even to me. I left him a quarter of what I had made so far (we don't think in terms of amount when we give up our own earnings, but rather percentages). He didn't even look up at me and I knew pride at this. After staying to listen for a little while I turned completely around and left, hoping he felt the same way I did when my woman did this. I bought Jay a sweet, sweet coffee on my way back to him, carrying my own bitter brew in opposite hand.

Mitch & Indie

There was nothing wrong with them--they only had to move one, without one another. That night the look in her eyes was foreign to him in a way that he could hold no curiosity for. Like an absence of light that's not quite black, but perpetually at its bidding/on its track.

All along, she maintained that the things which must be made up of more than one soul--that those things themselves have no true substance. Coldly, she'd concluded that their love was intrinsically reciprocal--so that his (perceived) failure at its altar meant that it had ceased to exist. Poof she'd said, cruelly, denying his eager/own wan apologies.

Indie & Mitch

"Do you know that this is not okay?" That grasping your eyes does to my throat somehow when they meet my eyes, might not happen this time, I thought. I close my eyes anyway, instead of looking at you, letting you panic alone/with privacy.

"I only knew you were going to say that," you said. I heard the subtly shaking tone, despite the flippant/calm words. I felt so drained at what would happen next, luckily this new challenge of yours piqued my old anger just enough to get each next word almost fully out of me. What of these I kept, I already realized that I'd never again shake them.

Speaking a bit too slowly, I felt, I said this time: "I want you to know, that if you don't offer to move out by the end of tonight('s end), I won't stay to the morning." My voice sounded like belting-down hale onto a gray parked-car that lived in our past. So much arbitrary history...arbitrarily betrayed?

"Why would you tell me such a thing?" No longer pretending Mr. Cool-Guy, I noted from somewhere farther away then the mere feet that set us (engulfed and) apart. "You don't have to go anywhere, and why the hell would I!?"

"Stop it," I didn't have to look at him to see him drop his arms at my fatalistic tone. "One way or another, tomorrow we'll be living separately. But please..." I felt/heard vaguely the telltale signature of a voice about to break, even though it was my own. "Could you do something for me tonight? Could you sleep with me just life we slept last night? (But) could you not let go (this time)?" Ever the coward solely where my heart is concerned, I still didn't look into the face of my (first/only) love.

He could suddenly reach me and lifted my chin with the scratchy pads of his be/well-loved fingers. I raised my glance to fall into his in the way that I would never again allow myself to. His eyes were so warm, mingling anger and love and shame, perhaps. His face was blank, but to me its very reticence spoke secrets aloud. Locking his jaw, I saw him swallow hard before letting out his withheld breath to harshly and/but pulling me too gently into his arms/chest/body, as though/like he too believed I embodied something broken. He petted my hair while he held tight enough to hurt a little, and actually managed to make me feel temporarily better. But (then,) what else is there? What else c/would I dare to expect/hope for?

Ciarra

There are certain streetlights as yet unwatched by sensors. These change instead with a timer and move with the speed of snow(flakes--freezing, falling, and fading away). On a night that's cold this is seen by gray-anxious eyes, confounded by/disengaged with the contentment they embody as they flick from red to greed and hesitate, before letting in yellow to return them to red once more, and every time.

The shade belonging to the eyes is a light one, a quality when inherent to gray which can be disconcerting to say the least. Both the colorless state of her irises and the intensity thrumming within the prefect stillness in which she holds herself, looking up at the light, impress upon a person something like a disgusted awe: most have felt nothing like her, even stranger though she is, and desire to never again.

This is not her concern.

Besides which, it is much too late in the evening for this city to play her witness. She likes the temporary belief that she could remain the single person still in the grips of wakefulness. As her and her steel-restless companion are the only ones up waiting for god, she is humbled at last.

("How can she look at the world with empty eyes and be right about it--?"
"Well it's not that she's right, she just understands something to it--"
"But even then, I'm not sure if it's possible, I mean, you've got me believing it but still, I suspect I shouldn't...or something--"
"I know, it's like nobody ought to know what she knows--"
"Yeah, exactly--"

At the school for the deaf, she wasn't able to understand her classmates or the bitterness they follow with prideful tenacity; the bitterness they trusted with biting naivety. She felt that for all they thought they were, they should at least believe something greater their own sake/ then themselves. She wondered what it would be like to expect nothing more just because no more could be imagined, and she hoped they were curious about her behavior when it differed from their own. And she still didn't know how to explain this.

But it stayed when she stood here beneath the hum-shouts of the traffic light that knew only of what it did, so that she felt as close to being something other than herself as she yet found to be otherwise possible. The worthlessness struck her with the truth of futility and she forgot even these thoughts with a solid sense of gratitude.

As beauty can never be tolerated for long, she continues her walk. She knew that there would be other streetlights, willing along the lengths of her sidewalk, waiting to keep her company. She was perpetually in between them.

Withholding from herself the lavish privilege of dissatisfaction, she went smiling on. The sky complained a symphonic fiasco to give (the context?) an ambiance to her thoughts, so she only half noticed. Her mind seemed a hosed-down battleground that remembered anyway. Her eyes held the most persuasive argument for sleep as her blinking became slow and halting. Had she been driving it would be time for coffee, but as her slight stumbling became more regular it acquired its own rhythm: She knew the feeling wasn't dangerous in itself, and she allowed herself to enjoy the closing in that it consisted of. Her frame of reference shifting, everything began to shine in the lighted question of just how comfortable it could be to lay down upon.

Small evidences of the fatality within human nature were placed deliberately on the things/ what her eyes could reach to see. The deserted shopping cart by a lake; the refuse scattered in the grass; the swelling jealousy of one another evident in every fenced yard; the compulsive ruination of anything beautiful, no matter how humble.

And all for nothing. For the thrumming desperation pushing these things into reality from imagination is in itself telling of all wonder with its slight intent. Of beauty, still breathing.

MysteryGuy?

The bitch is fickle. She jumps out of my lap in the same instant that the sliding-door slides next-door; between my neighbor and I, only one of us spoils her without restraint or shame, so suddenly I'm cold again. Not that I mind--it's time I head off to work, and anyway, the love of my life is still just a dog.

Without distaste, MysteryGuy stares into the negative spaces that contaminate his apartment. He's holding very still, thinking that he understands the being of his corduroy waistcoat hanging away in his bedroom closet. He watches his foot tap rapidly against the leg of his armchair, and feels matter-of-factly distinct. He wonders if he'll be remembered, but he doesn't wonder by who.

Through his thigh MysteryGuy feels the wake of motion of the foot bobbing before him. He imagines the billions of tiny processes that occur in the realm of his body, half-hoping they wouldn't suddenly cease, and also equates his own self with every one--responsible for all possible outcomes or failures of the moving shoe attached to him--in complete control of the thing that seem to effect him. His footsteps while he thinks in this way--seemingly unobserved.

Particularly awake, MysteryGuy uses that [un?]disembodied foot to very deliberately stand up.


My dog--gathered up, curled in front of the window so's to sleep through the traffick sounds. My heart means to be strongly felt; my skin warming to it easily. My long breath is displaced by this arrangement of words, so trying to be concerned.

Why distraction? Why disapproval? didn't you ever memorize the number of holes in the ceilings of your classrooms, after counting them, countless times?

There are people that come into and leave my life, not gently, and moving quickly. They taste unfinished in my eyes--they have neither desire nor chance to distract me, and neither would I allow them to. But it is their theoretical selves that leave me this bewildered; knowing you're at least that real. How is it that I am the same!? What do we do with this? These ancient implants sitting before each other with half-lidded opportunity?

Way better at accidents than intention. Don't forget how annoying it is! And ridiculous! This is certainly not about choice.

Mitch & Bethany

"Have you told Indie anything about this?"
"Immediately at hearing her name, Beth watched the tension of defense creep into Mitch's forest green aura.
"What does she have to do with this?" he asked with a new warning in his still soft tone.
The noise shot from me; I laughed at him cruelly, knowing it would do him good but feeling a little bad anyway. "Come on, Mitch! It has everything to do with her!"
"Why (the hell/fuck) would you say that?" his foul/dirty mouth demanded, once again sounding familiar/recognizable to Beth.
"We both know I'd never give you a chance to fulfill this oh-so-risque sudden fantasy of yours--fucking the lesbian girl-next-door that's madly in-love with your sister who's conveniently off travelling?! Ha! Talk about too freakin' easy, my man."
"I said, 'make love,'" he stated redunantly, angry now but as stubborn as ever.

"Mitch." I looked at him as sincerely as I could, and tried putting a little smile of forgiveness in my eyes, because I knew that's all he really wanted. His glare lost a bit of the fight they'd begun to hold. "Look kid, I know you love me, just like you know I love you. How could we not when we've known each other blissfully for ages!?" I paused to/and let the casual confession drift away. "But there's no way we could ever manage being lovers, and we both know that by now, too. If you're suddenly thinking about me like this...it's only because something not-so-good is going on between you and Indie." That is/in other words, the woman the poor guy was in-love with. "Something that you don't want to think about. And I'm not the bangin' easy out you almost think you want (me to be). Don't be getting scared enough to do yourself a disservice, okay dude?"

Silly Mitch sighed heavy. "Quit lecturing me Beth, okay? And then maybe I'll talk to you--even though I know you're wrong."
"Ha! Fair enough," Beth exclaimed cheerfully. "Well, you know how I love to be enlightened, my goodly mate!"

"Yeah right," Mitch too-darkly replied, happily without any hint of forsaken apology. Then we sat in crazy tense silence--his--until he untied the big red love-balloon and exhaled aloud his coming-to-terms. "Do you remember how Indie and I first met?" he asked me, suddenly so unintense in comparison to only moments ago. [Thinking about Indie rather than something that excites him--at least, still seems interesting to him. :(]

"Not really...actually, I don't know if either of you have ever told me! And I'm pretty positive that I would have asked you guys by now, didn't I?" Perplexed, my/her face (was).

"You did. Almost everyone did, since that's what you do when you meet a brand new person hanging with your age-old friends. And we never told a one of you guys--I don't even know how we pulled it off! But it was definitely (a) deliberate (move)."

"Oh yeah?! Well that's pretty mysterious Mr. Honesty! What would possess you to do such a thing? Overpowering and hollow black shame? Red-hot passionate blushing sessions? Unforgivable sudden loss of memory!?"

"Quit being strange. It was sort of an unspoken reticence... the scene was just lame enough for both of us to be embarrassed, without wanting to be called (out) on it." He hesitated, then, "You know what I mean? From the very start, it was like we formed our relationship into something neither of us could be proud of--and we each made that damning choice all by ourselves." [Eh! but maybe only he did...and then took a course in projection.]

We let this sit--and then I couldn't contain myself any longer/more: "And you're not being just a tad bit melodramatic, dear? 'Damning' isn't too strong of a word here?!"
"Whatever. The point is that we ended it before we started."

But now it's been two flippin' years! I thought, flabbergasted. In that much time, something must have happened that bested this argument... Sheesh! Talk about a tired case of fatalism--as if neither of them could fix a fuck-up!? But I wanted him to tell me about this date from the unfortunate limits of a hellish limbo. That is, BEFORE my big-opined and unrelinquishing mouth buttoned-up his--especially without giving our expected flaky-crusted kiwi tart a chance to shine its light through to the tail end of this tunnel.

(Enjoy the cold, my most gracious love!)

Indie

The sound of the alarm clock not going off woke me. When I sat up realizing this I though I ought to cry, but decided against it and took a shower instead.

In spite of my logical assertion that bathing was best done before one goes to sleep, for well thought through reasons which I'll not go into at present, I find myself stumbling into the stall each morning (and I use the term lightly, as it was five o'clock in the evening at present) and I'm halfway through the process of cleaning myself before it dawns on my that I'm breaking my most reasonable of rules. Still, I'm not ready to give up on myself just yet.

After dressing and such I stood in the middle of my bedroom and tried to figure out what to do on this, my day off. Being that it was too early to safely go on a long walk, I figured I'd save that pleasure for later at two or three in the morning (when even the bad guys slept, I thought) and set off now on a short one that would end with me at Hale's bar.

I didn't drink...or smoke...or experiment with drugs and sex...or with much else in fact, but at least I was easily entertained--so while I didn't often make an appearance among my peers when they were intimidatingly concentrated in one place, every now and then I made an exception so as to witness the surreal transformation that people are capable of. Besides which, I liked to glimpse Hale in her current natural habitat before she succeeded in changing it past what she could stand. Television is exceedingly dull when you've got a good seat for your ever amusing version of real life.

January's End was three and a half miles from the house, so by the time I got there it was probably seven. Hale still had some time before she wanted to take her break, but she separated herself long enough to get me one of the three occupied booths to have for myself. I couldn't tell you how she did this, but it was the same each time. She walked up to our favorite booth with a view of the whole bar, regardless of who sat there (at the moment there was a grave looking couple looking as out of place as I probably did) and said just a few muted words. The woman paled steadily and the man hopped up and pulled his lady friend out of the bar with him. It had taken thirty seconds. Hale turned and grinned at me and I walked over and sat down with a confounded expression spilled onto my face, but I didn't ask. "I'll see you later," she told me before she pushed herself back across the crowded room.

There I sat half in waiting but happy there, a single person in a booth meant for a comfortable six, so that I occupied the only space in the entire room which would allow outstretched arms in just about any direction but back. This was a position I meant to take full advantage of, if only for the sake of rarity, but unfortunately I opened myself up for the following remark, "You look like you could use a hug," shouted at me over the din by a Brooklyn-accented kid, aging before my eyes from somewhere between 24 and 29 on.

I promptly put my arms down and squinted up at him, taking care to cock my head slightly to the right. "I think you're lying."

He draws his eyebrows comically together as if thinking real hard before deciding to ignore me. "I suppose I could help you out," he says like a first-rate creepy-guy, then he presumptuously slides around my booth without the slightest invitation to sit. Though I don't move away for pride, my knee rises of its own volition and lays down beside me, forcing him to stop his progress a foot and a half away.

Janey: The curvy mug peers seductively into its pool of icy innards...

The moment was, then, so she got up. She could feel every falsehood in the apparent solidity of the ground, as it rose up to meet the bottom of her father's boots, awkward on her feet. "You know we have to go," said her thoughts, " from this minute to another, on & on no matter how still we stand or stay." She smiled at this, and though no one noticed of the few smattered groups sitting around her, had they happened to, they would have thought blankly on it. "I was flabbergasted!" The stale sentence drifted stiffly past her and convinced her first step forward, then down the four pretentious steps that would lead outside.

She didn't know why she got like this--like she suddenly needed the relief of motion to take her away from nowhere. "You know often I'd rather not talk, and would prefer even less to listen--but even so I keep glancing around, planning on distraction." Oh! but where else to go?! This programmed to a destination, every beginning merely awaits its own end! Like how I wait for the conclusion of this thought, the period to this here sentence... .   Whatever for, when I know I'll just write another, and hope always for another again?! Where else do I even claim to want to be? As a matter of fact, I'd like the answer to be 'nowhere', and identical to the question, wouldn't you just love this to be IMPLIED? Wouldn't you like to apply it to the days--all of them? we're always talking about somebody! If it's not ourselves, then of course it's someone not there to inconveniently disagree--or take a personal stake in the outcome of the conversation, and our final judgement. (Only admittedly dynamic after the fact of our decision. Ahh! try not to talk like this anymore, m'dear... Look how loose your writing looks, the more buried becomes your point. :)

Janey

Music pounds, echoing in her head like an unexpected guest. She starts up violently without warning her startled bed mate. Before she thinks to be aware of it her flailing arms are pressed firmly while still writhing against her abdomen, and just like that the weight of her terror presses heavy on her chest. Unlike so many times before the feeling fails to ebb immediately and Janey hears her scream-sobs vacantly as though they emit from a phantom radio transmission. Held tightly and unable to move, the tenseness in her muscles begin to throb their painful protests. The thump of them beating in her ears almost drown out the worst of the sounds.

"Love, love, love! Shh, be calm, be calm, everything's fine. Wake up now, love, open your eyes. Open your eyes, love... Thatta girl. There you go, there she is..." Clayton held her still a bit too tightly but now she was grateful for his grip. They sat on the bed with her in his arms while he looked both at her and as scared as hell, but his dark eyes were as intent as ever in their fixed gaze. "Hi," he finished with at last.

"Hi." She didn't even begin the string of sheepish apologies this time because by now she knew they had both outgrown them. Instead, she let her shaking arms wrap around his waist and squeezed with the last of her might. She burrowed her tangle-haired head into the the curve of his bent arm to press her cheek to his chest. Exhausted, she shuddered her gratitude into him and hoped that he understood.

Hale

Sprawled bluejay-style and belly-surfing slept Ms. Hale Larck. New to town, she nonetheless snoozed straight on through the unfamiliar rumbling of the secretly smiling garbage-persons, and afterwards she kept right on sleeping. About the time that breakfast had ended for most of the townsfolk and they all readied for that next morning step from the driveway to the broken-in-by-decades Fords and Chevy sweating-nightscares of the adorable Green party, Hale sat up. Glancing at the shiny old light on the brand new wall, she half-heartedly cursed her internal joke of a clock and unconsciously shuddered at the unusual quiet that had lulled her to sleep and then some--nothing like the constant percussive music of her newly abandoned N.Y. By now she imagined that her stomping grounds of the last three years would be like a jaded lover, not-at-all surprised to finally see her go. Thinking this, Hale felt a pained guilt like a tiny dagger colored the ice-blue/deep/shallow-slate of her eyes, and allowed herself to miss New York for a full forty-five seconds before she shook off the feeling and got the fuck out of bed.

Feeling like a stalking lion(ess) she slammed each foot down taking the steps across the room and reached the itsy-bitsy excuse of a closet, settled in by the viewless window which opened to the north. Swinging wide the singing door that creaked miserably to the stress of use, Hale tried her best not to notice the sinking-heart horror at the crystal ball future she looked into, seeing there stacked all haphazardly before her, boxes of stupid crap that seemed to puke the peaking colors of too many clothes spilling gently from lids left askew. Instead, in the pure(st) name of self-denial Hale grabbed hold of what seemed to be the navy blue arm of a t-shirt and pulled with all the might necessary to ignore the inevitable. Slamming the door with (accidental/pointless) flair she pulled her consolation prize over her head and forgot entirely about searching out a bra to go with it. Returning to the bed, she hunted around for just a moment before discovering yesterday's jeans tucked half-beneach the nightstand. These she pulled on, blowing off the effort too of finding a pair of underwear/panties, probably for consistency's sake. She reminded herself to dig out her alarm clock as soon as possible as she exited the soon-to-be-painted-over bright(ness) of the godforsaken/head-ache-inspiring/(thought) provoking yellow bedroom. She took the wooden stairs two at a time in her descent to the communal kitchen.

Entering with besocked feet that slid on the ancient tile (floor), Hale took in and swallowed up her surroundings. A sense like the pretense of vertigo swept over her when the sink turned out to be on her left rather than straight before her as she had remembered. Seeing the texture and shade of the dark sepia cabinetry likewise deceiving her expectations, she ignored the small group of people as yet unacknowledged and sitting at the corner of her eye. For a moment longer she let them await her inevitable attention and slowly slid her way to the center of the room to peer carefully around once more, for only the second time in the space of three months.

Yes, single sink on the left of the hallway entrance, uncolored stainless steel. And the cabinetry she now realized seemed too dark (only) because the room stayed dim this time of the year. Autumn. The visible changing of the light as the year progressed would be hard to get used to, she thought, so accustomed as she was to strictly artificial light. The rest of the kitchen turned out to be equally unrecognizable to her, though this time no shredded and useless memories desperately attached themselves to her mind's eye so that she could rediscover the interior as if for the first time. Plain, was the overall conclusion/result of her interpretation/study.

Turning around again definitely/pointedly, Hale at last paid homage to the housemates of hers who were evidently fellow bums, drinking coffee with bleary eyes at half past noon. (Really!?) The table enclosed by the hunched and hulking forms of the three present persons was of questionable quality/origin to be fair. It could quite possibly have once passed for a respectably good impression of wood, but those glory days of threaded grain were long past gone, and in their place was coat after coat of pale paint, probably/likely bright pink in a former life, something like sadly reminiscent of a fadingly too-vibrant bottle-assisted blonde man of maybe ninety-two. Hale glanced up (and away) instead, blushing awfully.

And at last her eyes alighted on the companionable bunch sitting above the false-jovial/joyous tabletop. The figures were Indie Parks and Mitch Beckham, the picturesque couple made up of her oldest friend and that chick's beau; Jane Levlin, her buddy-buddy, quietly budding landlord; and a younger woman than the rest of the small group--a girl Hale had previously seen only in a photograph--Jane's birth-deaf, lovely (grand?)-daughter. For the past few weeks prior to finally moving herself & stuff officially in, Hale had been waning curious about the girl and the rumors that came attached to her name/person. Seeing her now for the very first time in the flesh, her ebbing interest once more flowed and Hale's glance lingered into a gaze that was fully met by the mute(d) young person.

As ever reliable, Indie piped up upon Hale's entrance when no one else had yet thought to speak, including Hale, the bra-less intruder herself. "Hey there, sleepy-head! Come to join the land of the living, did we? How'd ya sleep? (How goeth the slumbering?)

Half ignoring the crazy girl, Hale addressed the whole lot of 'em: "Morning everybody." She removed her eyes from the girl in order to skirt them across the rest of the faces. They paused on their landlord before they returned once again upon their original curious subject. "How's it going these days, Jane? Can I guess that this is the (grand)daughter you mentioned, Ciarra?" Hale thought to position herself full frontal for the girl so that her lips might be read without much strain of effort.

Immediately the silent figure still looking with interest back at Hale stepped forward at this inquiry and stuck out her ridiculously tiny hand, as Hale noticed with her acceptance of it, presumably to be shaken not stirred, thought Hale's strange bartending mind.

Indie & Hale

"I know what it means to be dead."

I looked at my companion with not a little skepticism and she clarified. "Well, I've never been dead before, obviously, but I completely understand the implications and personally I don't see a problem."

"I know," I replied simply.
"But when I told him that, he shot me anyway. What do you think it means?"
"That depends on where you went when you died."

Hale Larck had just finished telling me about her dream during the night before. In it, she had been debating religion with Jesus Christ over coffee. Apparently, in spite of his presence, she had nobly stuck with her conviction/belief that his existence was unlikely. Raising his hand she had seen that Christ was toting a .356 Magnum. When she called his bluff and told him that her intended afterlife was made up of absolute oblivion, and that she gazed upon the prospect with wistfulness rather than dread, he shot her very dead.

"Of course it does, if I knew that I wouldn't need you to figure it out for me," she scoffed.
"In that case its pretty clear. Your subconscious says its me."
"Who's you?"
"Jesus Christ."
"I don't think it's saying that."
"Now that's what the experts would call denial."

She heaved an unnecessary sigh and indulged me, "Fine Indie, why do think you're Jesus?"

"It's you who--" she stopped me with a withering 'hurry-before-I-get-really-bored' look and I got on with my makeshift interpretation. "Okay, so you're having coffee with "Jesus". We'll, that's all we ever do. We're doing it right now, even! (I hope it's not too hard for you.) And your talking theology: one of our favorite subjects. Plus, he shoots you!"

She cocked an eyebrow at me, "And you do that all the time, huh?"

I pretended to look exasperated. "It's a metaphor, dear girl. I'm constantly putting a hole in the fabric of your reality, know what I mean? The similarities are too many to be denied."

We paused for a moment. Then, "You're not trying very hard," she says to me. And I thought my problem had been trying too hard. I shrugged. "If you want to doubt your one true savior, that's your problem. Besides, I don't buy into dreams as prophetic. You won't go down like that, I bet."

"That's not what I'm worried about..." Hale said with characteristic random mystery. Of course she didn't elaborate.

Shortly thereafter we decided it was time to go. We parted ways until that night when we'd both return to the house we shared rent on, along with three of our other friends.

It was four in the afternoon smack dab in the middle of a misty New York summer. While Hale went to start her bartending shift at a place called 'January's End', I left to return from my intentionally late lunch (consisting of coffee and still more coffee) to my own place of employment.

I used to wear the title of Librarian's Assistant, which basically meant I was a librarian without the proper, if ridiculously excessive, credentials. That was where I'd grown up in an itsy-bitsy town in Louisiana so that it felt less like a dirty government job and more like a community one. When I moved to this silly city though, I found out that government jobs are taken far too seriously. Still possessing an obsession with the scent of old books, I moved to the profit version of the same trade and now work in an independently owned used bookstore by the name of 'Tattered Remnants'. Sometimes we get customers in there just for the meaning behind the title. When we tell them they usually linger awhile, all charmed-like.

I, by the by, am Melinda Parks. My first name reminds me of the color gray for some reason so I try to go by 'Indie instead. I'm drawn to its possibilities: independent; indistinct; indifferent; indelible; in...decisive. My favorite is ????, yet in this I am deceived, for the instant devastation of change is...?!

[I wish for once "I owe my life to you" wouldn't sound so much like a reprimand.]

Mitch & Bethany

"If you could do anything right now, what would you do?"
"I would make love."
"Ha!"
"What, hey!?"
"That's just pretty sweet, dude. Not 'have sex' or 'fuck some' or 'bone like rabbits', but 'make love'."
"'Bone like rabbits'?"
"It's a euphemism, I hear."
"From who?!"
"From you!"
"..." ... "Oh."
"Ha!"
"Whatever! So what would you do--if anything?"
"Well I would make love," I responded with a facetious-feeling grin.
"Oh yeah?! Who with?"
"With myself--I'm the best I've had yet! Hey what about you, big guy? Since you apparently had some specific body in mind, hmm? Indie?"
"No... Never mind, forget it."

I blinked at my friend in surprise at his indicative and sudden bashfulness. I decided to risk goading him on a bit anyway. "You were totally gonna say with me!"

He turned beet red at this unexpected turn of his skirting flirtatious efforts, but then reminded me why I liked him. "So what?" he asked simply.

"Where would you have sex with me, dude!? We're at a freakin' coffee shack!"
"I said, 'make love'," (he insisted,) still red.
I looked at him until he looked back up again to meet my eyes. I had quit pretending to laugh, for the moment.
"Where?"
"In my bed," with less hesitation.
"How long have you been thinking about this?"

"Since I woke up this morning. I was just laying there and it dawned on me that I wanted you with me." The son of a bitch looked at me the whole time he said it. My freakin' stomach tightened, which I didn't expect, but I took it (well).

"Are you gonna tell me about it, then?"
"Would you like me to?"
"Yeah," I said.
"Alright," he said.

You would have been sleeping still, and I begin quietly because I don't want/I'm not ready to wake you up (yet). I run the pads of my fingers softly down the line of your jaw, then follow the rail with my tongue as slow as I can, tasting you. You wake up instantly, like I knew you would, and I can tell because you are no longer breathing. But you don't move, and you keep your eyes closed. The scent of you skin reminds me of myself and your silent encouragement convinces me to ignore the slamming in my chest. I lick my lips and press them against your throat, feeling the sudden motion/movement of your pulse.

I open my mouth very slightly and bring a small flavor of you between my lips, moving at the same time into a better position. Still laying on my side, I close the distance between us so that I am pressing against the side of you as you lay on your back, almost shaking it seems to me. With one hand I lift the thin sheet that still covers your chest and I move my mouth slowly away from your neck, lowering my lips near the top of your breasts and kissing you there, just below your collarbone. With my free arm I encircle your fast rising and falling rib cage, letting myself brush across your nipples and watching your whole body react to that tiny touch. I look up at your face and see that your eyes are squeezed tight now, but at some point you had resumed shallow breathing. I duck down before you can recover and close the whole warmth of my mouth over your right nipple. I almost lose it when your body spasms against me, jerking your hips upward and making you gasp sharply. Your eyes snap open then and after only a moment your hands find my face and you pull my mouth to yours, kissing me for the first time as I finally move to place myself gently over you. Pressing down slowly, I feel that my hands are shuddering now.

Sheet still between us, you start to squirm as though impatient beneath me, even while your arms have found their way around the back of my neck, keeping me where I am. Right before I think you'd just as well kill me then move one more time like that, at last you loose one of your soft hands, moving/placing it between us to stroke me. I moan wretchedly into our still-joined mouths and you press yourself upward again, somehow freeing one of your legs from the sheet and wrapping it around my waist. So sweetly inviting now, I feel your lips gently/finally press a smile into mine.

[While we only pretend, to pretend.]

Carrie

"No more of this! Be here!" I think, forcefully demanding my thoughts to stay put, behave, and be content for a moment. "Focus for a second! Focus on the parallelogram that the shadowed window makes. Look around, goddamnit!" The open-air room of the cafe spills out into the day as though desperately seeking the cloud-hidden sun. Lovely, youthful people fill up the tables that pepper the space surrounding me, and they seem to laugh continuously like staggered breathing, beaming like children and with the happy extravagance that only the miserable eyes of self-pity could ever bear witness to. Realizing this bias of my pointed sight, I try to focus on the table furthest from me while keeping my own arbitrary circumstances at bay. Valiantly, I fix my gaze and graceful imaginings, and pretend myself capable of the singular translation hiding and embodied by this particular light-lacquered table across the room, its bar stools sporting three engrossedly bored individuals.

An outsider, I want to know what they are filling their conversation up with, what words they have deemed worthy of this clueless & sunny-sunny day. Being out of earshot, I study the appearance of the persons away yonder there to tune into mannerisms, gesticulations and expressions, feigning recognition of the most intimate and minute of signaling details that they send solely to me, their ever willing and appreciative audience.

They sit half-moon style, semi-encircling the square table. From my view, two faces showed in profile (one male, one female) and the lovely round face of a woman sparkled between these, facing me straight on. I decided that her name must be Lydia. Lydia's companions ruled the conversation as they waved their hands harmoniously and in rhyme, while Lydia herself sat quite still, grinning marvelously, beatific, and slowly pivoted her glance from one animated monologue to the next, probably not listening. Or at the very least, dear Lydia was virtually unable to bridge a connection between the segregated, self-perpetuating discussions.

The man spoke of flowers, I knew, and of their wild variety; his passionate, muted voice gave the impression of brightly orange-lit scents. In contrast, I felt that the woman must sound agitated. Her chosen subject matter, cream coffee, seemed not to warrant quite the same level of admiration from our lovely and traitorous Lydia, whose lingering gaze upon the man still cared nothing for wildflowers, as everyone knew.

Watching the three half-participants paying homage to the art of speech, I was well aware that I ruthlessly lied to myself on this matter of topic: all people ever talk about is other people. I hardly believed that out Lydia could be the exception to this disease of conceit that we all seem to have. Her beauty would make the ailment ever more fatal, I thought morbidly, at last rising from my table for to escape the viciously pleasant scene. The cash I tossed onto its surface made me think of cheap, dewy-eyed Venetian whores from the year 1495, collecting alms from poor and lonely letches.

I remained ruminating upon the circularity of days when a friend of mine interrupted me from my reverie-walk away from the cafe.

I couldn't remember his name. It dawned on me that we weren't friends at all when I recognized him now as the bearded barista who worked the taps of my favorite pretentious cafe-bar down in the town that was yours and mine. This lovely twentysomething guy had far too often concocted magical mixtures for me, bearing life-thumping caffeine. The sudden shock of a familiar face within the strangeness of unexpected surroundings had had me momentarily baffled. But the trick of a cheap mystery revealed, I remembered that I'd never known the handsome fellow's name at all (fellow creatures of habit, though we were)--despite the silly bit of an infatuation that would rise within me when we were separated by a lone counter, and my acute awareness of his proximity made it hard to get on with my neutral order of a tame latte.

The point of all this: my nameless coffee-server-potential-lover appeared before me in a bizarre twist of my sense of normalcy. Recognizing each other over a thousand miles from the only other context in which we'd had a simultaneous, if bit, part, meant that we stopped and laughed incredulously together as if it was the only natural thing to do, given the circumstances and among well-placed foreign strangers. I realized then that I'd never watched this mysterious man laugh in all of my existence, and strangely, the sight wasn't as attractive as I'd convinced myself that it would be. Heh. His eyes squeezed shut when he laughed, such that only folks that loved him would claim it was in a cute way.

"This is so CRAZY!" Man was saying to me now. What are you doing all the way over here? Sorry I can't offer to make you a coffee or anything!" He joked lamely.

"Hey, you can always offer to buy me one before we change subject," I said to him, flirting completely by accident and wishing I could take it back or stop (talking) soon. I pushed on quickly instead, before he could respond with anything but a stunted explosion of a snort-cackle crazy thing/sound. "I'm here for school. I leave in a week after bumming around out here for 16 days. What are you up to? Learning the ancient art of an Italian brew, are ya?"

"Haha!" (Laughing way too much of course--like the coupla amazing manics we were.) "Not exactly," 'twas his initial reply. "I'm actually about to begin taking classes here as well...over at the biggest University I've ever seen in my whole life." He finished with faux-poetic/notable flair and a sideways grin like a mouth-wink.

Before I could get around to thinking up something clever he shot out spurt-like, "Hey!" I don't even know your name! I've always just thought of you as 'Latte-Chick' in my head, ha!" Cute. And I've always just thought of him as 'Take me! Take me NOW!' Or sometimes 'Bob'. He looked like he could be someone's cranky uncle--especially on those early mornings when my need for a shot of espresso was at its wildest...

Mitch & Bethany

Rounding the corner of Cedar and Elm, a young man walks near the middle of the day. The houses pile up behind him as he passes by and each one is occupied in a random degree; whole lives play out their existence around him, but he doesn't fully appreciate this. And right now he doesn't think about it all.

"Dude, what's going on!?" A girl marches out of a storefront with oversized books showing through the window. On a plank affixed above the single doorway, 'The Scribe' is carved and painted in black shadow.

"Hiya Miss Bethany. How goes it?" says the man trekking toward the itty-bitty woman. (Indie is exactly his height, in fact...not this blessed waif-girl.) On his lips tease a flickering spark of smile as though he anticipated the punchline to a joke he'd heard before that promised satisfaction.

"It's going good, Mitch. I've just had an epiphany as a matter of fact, waiting around all day for you--as usual."

"Oh yeah? How so?" the man responds. He wondered if she had any idea that she was grinning? Squinting her eyes as if considering whether or not he was worthy of this new discovery of hers--did she know that she undermined her coarse scrutiny every time, grinning this way?/like this/that?

The woman with the open smile shifts her weight from one foot to the next, back and forth while she studies the man before her. She has brown-bobbed hair and large/ish dark teal eyes. She'll chew on the right side of her lip until it's fully digested before hurrying along her careful regard of him. And hypocritically so/at that. "I think you should invest in 'The Scribe'," she tells him at last.

"I am invested in 'The Scribe'," he laughed at the serious expression accompanying her bizarre proposal. "I spend all of my free afternoons here, remember?"

"Exactly--so why not buy me out of a portion and pay yourself back a bit?" the woman finishes rushing then stands with every appearance of self-satisfaction.

The youngish man scoffs and takes his own turn squinting his light blue eyes in exaggerated distrust. He couldn't imagine what she was talking about--he had thought that she wouldn't have parted with that place of hers even if she had to start paying to keep the damn thing open!

"What's this madness you're playing at Beth? Since when are you willing to give away any real share of 'The Scribe'?"

The woman shifts her weight again. "Go and tell your lady-friend 'hello'. She won't want to leave today, so come out to lunch with me and chat a bit, yeah?"

Carrie

[How the fuck do you express a tree?!] "Listen to the laughter!" I tell myself, but of course the thought drowns out both intention and sound. I think of you instead. Then I stop thinking altogether and compulsively eat raisins.

Just as a paranoid notion quivers before my mind--something about the likelihood of death by raisin engorgement--a blue pasty drink of some sort manifests itself before me in the guise of 'savior', and on the pretense of having been set there as though by a waiter. Obviously this could not be possible, given the fleeting wraith-like quality that is requisite for the elusive wait-creatures who only seem to share this 2pm diner with me as they forever flutter about, as though searching for a cigarette.

God, I need a cigarette. And when are you coming back? I wonder. So then I wonder if you wonder the same thing sometimes.

I can feel the raisins tug on my wandering attention and I glance at them guiltily, sitting there to the left of the damn chalk-violet drink which I have begun to suspect is the smoothie I ordered hours and hours ago. Finally, with what I hope to be a grandiose and symbol-ridden movement colored by glorious victory or some such awful thing, I pick up the fucking murderous container of former fruit and shove it into the black messenger bag at my feet. But then I watch a woman walk by dressed all in purple garb from crazy top hat to plastic shoes, and I have to take the poor raisins back out one last time, needing a little comfort in this godforsaken town/city.

When you left I cried for thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds. A minute for every year since puberty; each minute signifying the countlessly counted few hairs skipped casually across the back of your knuckles. You're worth the mysteriously absent floor in every hundred-some level building in San Francisco, my love! My tears, then, almost match the hour, now--middle of the hellish afternoon--and I find myself wishing there was some meaning to this. Go figure...it turns out that I cannot imagine you without me. And I don't take this to be a good sign in the slightest.

MysteryGuy?

His strumming stops. Six feet above his head a leaf lets go of its branch and settles on his shoe. Its colors are gray and soft yellow, he notes, and just like that the moment felt contrived.

He closes his eyes again and continues to strum. He imagines himself in a deserted peasant graveyard in France, pretending to play with a brimful saddened heart. He thinks he hears the tink of appreciation or guilt, and though grateful, he doesn't acknowledge his patron as she walks by glanceless and graceful.

Janey

The sheet looks like tile. The back of my arms are twin bundles of barbed wire and I push one forward to let my knuckles drag across the cloth. 'When he wakes up,' I think, 'he won't remember at all.' With an inward heave I lift the granite sculpture over my head, the one shaped like a clenched fist, and bring it down to crush the smile on your lips.