She filled out her first dating profile in a frenzied whirl, half-drunk on the yet-undigested news that her ex had brought someone with him to Thanksgiving that year.For a photo, she uploaded the professional headshot that was on the “Meet Our Team!” page of her work’s website, then quickly removed it, fearing these unknown, savage internet men could reverse-image search their way to learning every private facet of her life. She snapped a brand-new—and thus unsearchable—photo of herself standing and staring into her hallway mirror. She intended a smile, but only captured once its bloom had faded, her expression already wilting into its usual wrinkle of woe.That first night, one man messaged her. She felt dangerous and desirable when she saw the alluring dot of the notification, red like a woman’s sex. The man’s name was Alan and all of the photos on his profile were selfies taken in his car.hi, he messaged.She stared at the little text bubble, and it was invigorating but then immediately she felt unsafe—who was this guy, this stranger? Why had she purposefully exposed herself to an unvetted man who would inevitably just bring her hurt? Then that initial, sharp instinct towards self-preservation withered and underneath it she just felt foolish.She closed the app, then reopened it and in one decisive press of her finger, deleted her profile. She closed the app again and uninstalled it from her phone. Who was she kidding? Who would want to date her? Before her marriage had ended, back in their courtship’s tender beginning, she had only become her husband’s pre-ex wife by dint of them both having been young and stupid. There was no way anyone else would ever want her, not now. There was no possibility that Alan could actually like her. He probably just messaged every profile he stumbled across. He probably was a bot.She went to work the next day and wore a high-collared, conservative blouse, like the one in her picture on the website, that hid any suggestion her body could be engaged in something as unprofessional as romance. She thought of emails and meetings and spreadsheets—but then, in the car on her commute home, suddenly she thought of Alan and his selfies. Where had he been driving to? His photos had been taken on different days, evidenced by his different outfits, but his expression was always the same. It was a stern, perceptive look; a look like he was really seeing her, even through the screen of her phone. His was a gaze that traversed time, traveling via the power vested upon it by the holy quintology of 5G mobile data, staring up and out of the phone screen and then deep within her. His was a look that trespassed upon the secret caverns of her mind, witnessing the heavy list of every bad thing she wished she could’ve undone. His seeing was her immaculate confession, and when his gaze at last averted from her hidden shames, she would finally be granted the freedom to forget them.That night she dreamt of Alan. They were in his car. He turned his face towards hers. They locked eyes. “Hi,” he said.She found herself thinking of Alan every time she drove her car. “Hi,” she started saying when she turned the ignition, when she buckled her seatbelt, when she stopped at a red light. “Hi.” It was like their secret code word, hers and Alan’s, the verbal key to unlock their world.Soon, her dreams of Alan became more complex. They’d drive around a dream city, for hours. She’d beg Alan to speak to her, but now he was always silent and distant. She’d plead with him to only just say their private word, to just say, “Hi.” He would instead stop the car, mutely turn towards her beside him, and stare. The stare was awful; it swallowed her in its thick blackness. And then, after a while, he would turn away and resume driving the city’s streets, and yet she would still feel trapped in his darkness.In the dreams, in the unspoken contextual fabric that swaddled them, it became fact that she and Alan lived in this car, and maybe always had. They were married, in the dreams. She would scream and curse at him to tell her where they were going, what unreachable place was their final destination, but of course he didn’t speak; in the dreams it had been years since she had heard his voice, since he had whispered what had become her pet name, her sobriquet: Hi, hi, hi. Hi had been prayer and dirty talk all in one syllable and now he had taken it away. He wouldn’t even look at her anymore, kept his unblinking eyes trained on the endless road ahead. She started weeping, in the dreams, a heavy, sticky kind of weeping that invaded her whole being like sickness.Even when awake, she now couldn’t speak their private word without sobbing, even just in greeting to her colleagues. Soon just the sight of her own car brought her to tears, and soon enough, everything else did, too: the couch in her living room where she and Alan would never lounge together on lazy weekends; the trashcan in her kitchen that he would never chivalrously empty before even being asked; the spot on her desk at work where his picture would never sit, declaring their love to the world.Her coworker caught her weeping in the bathroom, and she didn’t have words to express what she was going through.“Alan,” was all she could croak through the stall door, before being overcome by another sob.“Ah, breakup,” the coworker said knowingly, and silently exited the room.Then, abruptly, the Alan dreams stopped. She still dreamt at night, but she’d returned to her usual carousel of familiar stress dreams: the one where she was back in high school; the room full of spiders; being pulled by a wave out into the ocean with no way back to shore. In the mornings after these dreams, she somehow felt more tired than she had the night before. Throughout her days she now yawned as much as she had been sobbing. Her eyes were perpetually puffy and bloodshot but it was indiscernible whether it was from these restless nights or just the cold blanket of lingering despair.And then, early one morning, she woke herself up. The well-trodden high school dream had whirred into place: she was a student but she was her same adult age. Confused, she walked up and down the school’s labyrinthian halls. In this recurrent nightmare, she never knew her class schedule and she could never find the administrative office—the correct corridor was always locked, or she made the wrong turn and ended up back where she had begun—and she was overwhelmed by the pervasive suspicion that she wasn’t even supposed to be there. As always when she had the high school dream, a feeling of stress and frustration and powerlessness swelled within her. But then—in an unprecedented act of REM-cycle defiance, she simply thought, “No.” The dream ended. Her eyes opened. Somehow, her desperation had instinctively manifested the ability to dream lucidly.She started waking herself immediately if the wrong kind of dream began. She’d wake up five, six times a night. Just before rousing herself, she’d first whisper, “Hi,” as a last-ditch attempt to ferret out if Alan existed in that same dream universe.She woke herself from spiders and water and reenacted memories of her marriage failing, until finally, finally, she had a dream in which she was back in the city, their city, her and Alan’s city. Nervous, hopeful, and scared to feel something as perishable as hope, she whispered, “Hi,” out into the empty city streets. It rang true. She could feel the whole block vibrating—she had uttered the key and the lock was somewhere in this dream landscape. Alan was somewhere, here in this dream. She had to find him.She ceased waking herself from her other dreams. Instead, she discovered that with an invocation of her nascent powers of lucidity, she could simply leave her initial dream surroundings and go from there to the city. All she had to do was exit the high school, walk out of the arachnids’ nest, swim back from the shore. Once she arrived in their precious metropolis, she roamed its streets, calling, “Hi.” Her trembling voice’s echo reverberating back was her beacon, her compass, telling her where to turn next. “Hi, hi, hi, hi.” Soon she did not even have to say it, would just hold the unspoken word in her mind and it would guide her, through the dream streets, through offices and gardens and shopping malls. She started going to sleep as soon as she got home each evening, in order to grant herself the maximum time in which to explore the city. She started sleeping on her breaks at work, curled up under her desk or on the back seat of her car. And then she started sleeping in, and not even going to work at all.She wandered the dream city for dream years, saw dream seasons change, saw dream buildings crumble, saw dream snow and dream sleet and dream storm. She devoutly followed the beacon wherever it led her. It warmed her with its soft internal glow until at last it burned bright and clear and she knew he was close, she could feel him.And then she saw it: his car, driving towards her, out of the mouth of a tunnel several blocks away.The beacon burned brighter and brighter inside her, searing and hot. She ran towards the car, a run so fast it approached flight, only halting at the behest of a Do Not Walk sign’s demandingly authoritative red hand. She was so close. His car was stopped at the light on the other side of the intersection. Desperately she stared through the car’s windshield, but he didn’t notice her. She waved her hands and she flapped her arms and she jumped and she danced and then—and then he looked over. But—his face. The beacon inside her wavered and dimmed, and suddenly she was unsure if it had ever even been guiding her, if it had ever even warmed her with its light, if she was not just empty inside, suffused with her usual unrelenting darkness. His face—it was unfamiliar and uninviting, a cold, unexplored landscape. All at once she realized she could not remember if this is what he had looked like. If this man in this car in this dream city was even the Alan for whom she had been so desperately searching.The light changed. The car drove through the intersection and then past her. She tried to call out their secret word, their signal, but she could say nothing at all, and then he was gone.She woke without making herself. She rooted around her twisted bedsheets until she found her phone. She swiped past all of the email notifications and the texts and the missed calls. She reinstalled the dating app. She seamlessly clicked “forgot password,” opened her email and artfully ignored every message but the password reset link. She typed alanalanalan into the box, and then, after that was rejected for not being secure, alanALAN@1@n!She had to create a new profile and this time she used her professional work photo. She was unperturbed, had no reservations about him reverse image-searching the details of her life—for Alan would soon be in that life: sweetly serenading her at happy hour karaoke; softly kissing her beneath mistletoe at the office Christmas party; candidly beaming at her beside him in a framed picture that so captured their immaculate happiness co-workers would involuntarily stop beside her desk to smile back at this photograph. “That’s the look of love,” they’d say.For her bio, the only written section of the dating app profile which she could not leave blank, she just typed, “hi hi hi.” She clicked accept and then here she was, back in the portal connecting her to Alan’s gaze. She hungrily clicked on the button that said All Messages.The inbox was empty.She incredulously stared at the blank space on the screen that had once held hi, that had once held the world. After a while, the phone’s screen went black due to inactivity, and soon after that, her eyes closed, her vision went dark and she fell back into slumber. It was the ocean dream. From the shallows she could see the dream city blinking at her far in the distance—its skyscrapers and its overpasses, its churches and its penitentiaries—but she turned away from it, and she lay back on the surf with her arms outstretched, and she let herself drift out to sea.
I’d been in the Midwest a month. I had stepped off the Greyhound with clothing, toiletries, documents, and a cremation urn, which I kept my savings in. The locals considered my new town dead. At first, I disagreed. Or, I figured at least, if it was dead, its corpse was flowering. Everything I needed was within the grid of a few blocks. Connecticut was unwalkable, nothing more than tree-lined roadways connecting one muddy village to the next. Soon, however, I ended up bored out of my mind, never imagining that I could do everything right and be so listless. One afternoon, I was drowsing in a booth in a downtown coffee shop when the owner, Howitzer, slid into the seat across from me. His posture was stiff, and the little hair he had was combed over his liver-spotted scalp. He gave it to me straight: he kept notice of me, trying to discern, for weeks now, whether or not I was an ‘Amoeba.’ “How often do you shave, son?” he asked, the word ‘son’ underwhelming in his timid voice. I told him I did a dry shave every few days.“Do you own a suit, and tie?” “What, like a penguin?” I answered. “Do you have an income?” “Yes, sir.” I found three within days of arriving. I cooked lunch at a daycare, walked dogs in the park, and slung drinks at a bar named Rockett’s. I lived in a former and refurbished motel for cheap. He asked what I did for fun. I told him that, like my parents and grandparents, I liked podcasts, roast beef grinders, and the smell of burning pine, and us five even shared the same galloping chuckle.“I didn’t ask for all that,” he said. “Alone, now, I presume? They call me Howitzer. I think I have your number. Kindred spirits. That sort of thing. Write down your phone number and email address on this.” A napkin. “Okay. Next. Read this, and come back tomorrow for the key.” I asked him what kind of key, and he told me that once I read the contents of the manila envelope he handed me, I'd understand.I commuted the two miles back to my apartment on foot and read the packet. The next morning, I returned to the coffee shop in the early hours before it opened and ran into Howitzer lugging two Airpots of coffee between his tattooed arms. He said my name, and I took one of the Airpots. He reached into his pocket to pass me a key on a chain. I followed him down the block and around the corner from the defunct Xavier's Books, where he unlocked a side door that led to a flight of wooden stairs. At the top was a carpeted living area, flanked by a private bathroom and a sparse kitchenette. Howitzer told me they called this the ‘den.’ We set the airpots, one vanilla bean and one dark roast, on the counter. Howitzer opened the cabinet under the sink and set out Styrofoam cups and a bowl of minty herbal cigarettes. He asked me if I had read the rules in the envelope and then, if I liked it here. I gave him the gist of my life. I came from a simple and thrifty Connecticutian family who converted the first floor of their colonial home into a diner that overlooked a secluded road and an ocean of verdant trees. Our menu was average. The sunrise is what made us our living. I lived in a shed powered by a generator in the back, saving my 15% of the earnings in a cremation urn. The urn once housed the remains of a Rottweiler named Argo, whom my family picked up from a shelter the week after we were nearly burglarized. The Midwest was a paradise. “Don’t say that much ever again,” Howitzer said. “Actually, anything at all. For the first few days. Got it?” He told me to review the rules, but otherwise to drink as much coffee and to smoke as much as I wanted, and that the den was open to me at all hours of the day as long as I remembered to lock up. I spent a few hours that morning there, and the mornings the rest of the week, as well as a few evenings. It was always the same. Howitzer would set up the air-pots. Amoebas would filter in, drinking and/or smoking, sitting on the lint-rolled loveseat, or on one of the folding chairs, or leaning enigmatically on one of the console tables that lined the walls, each of which accommodated a succulent and an archipelago of coasters kept at cautious distances. The rules were clear: no chit-chat, here or elsewhere. The best we would get was a smile or a nod and that was enough. Included with the rules in the manila envelope was a black-and-white photo of Jessica, the founder. Her father owned Xavier's books and both returned to Sioux Falls to be with family when he fell ill. In the meantime, Howitzer served as her intermediary. In the photo, she was dressed in shorts, a tank top, and spotless shoes on a beginner climbing wall. Her hands gripped the lowest handholds. Her head was turned towards the camera, eyes widened with surprise. I got the impression this was the only photo in existence of her, and even in it, she seemed unremarkable, as if she was just a feature of the textured spectrum of the faux rockface, not even the main character of her life. I think this picture was included for this reason. None of this is about any of us. We’re trembling at the base of a wall, turning our heads upwards, only to see more wall. We were not to share names, bring outside cups or cigarettes, though packed lunches were okay. No inviting strangers or oversharing. Amoebas would come in the morning, lunchtime, evenings, and sometimes in between. I came up with names in my head for everyone. There was Roger. Leathery skin, sucked-in jowls, poked holes in slippery belt, who would sometimes throw up in the bathroom before leaving for the day. There was Sophia, perhaps an eagle-eyed energy lawyer, bangs parted in perfect symmetry, who I’d seen around driving a lime-green beetle and who brought in a matching lime lunch box. There was Marie. Early twenties. Her nose was pierced, with a silver chain linked to her ear. Though we all had keys, Howitzer would open in the morning and tidy up at night. The den was comforting, especially when it was full. Us staring forward, or off, at an angle, evading eye contact. A fragile peace. Each of us, an unknowable, disambiguated phantom. Sometimes, out of nowhere, someone, never me, would share an anecdote, really a snippet, and we’d perk our ears to listen.“There was this piglet on the side of a seven-lane highway," Roger once told us. "Some years ago. One of those micro pigs, I've heard them called. It wasn't bigger than…." He held his hands out, a stretch of foot dangling between." I left it on the front steps of a humane society. I hope if someone was peeking through the blinds and saw me, they didn't think that was my micro piglet I was running out on.”Every once in a while, Sophia would share anecdotes about nuclear energy, a weave of storytelling, and light proselytizing.“In Vermont,” she once began, popping an hour-long bubble of silence, “how did they offset their energy needs after shutting down their nuclear plant? Not with wind. Not with solar. Coal. Yup, coal.”“Uh-huh,” we replied. Marie shared occasional idiosyncrasies from her visits to apathetic doctors who refused to believe in her deliberate celibacy, and she’d recount rude comments made during an ultrasound—whose purpose was omitted from us—and who blew his nose so many times she kept count. “18,” she said. “Or close to it.”We inhaled and, each at our own pace, sighed.A story was a call.The responses were either sighs, if the story was negative, or an “uh-huh,” if positive.When we were not sure, we guessed. It was predictable. It was addictive. We lived to hear about a tree collapsing and crushing a hanging beehive or a beloved aunt going missing and being found by a neighbor in an antique phone booth. During all of this, meanwhile, we held Styrofoam cups and the fragrant cigarettes. This was our form of caressing. The idleness that plagues the palms of non-Amoebas was easily fulfilled for us in this way. Our lives were undeniably boring, lacking the harsh drama and welling climaxes of paired-off couples, the highs and lows of those sorts of lives, but we were beyond that, happy that our only ambitions were to hang onto these stories passing like a drizzle before evaporating. Most days, I’d leave a fiver in the wooden collection box in the corner of the kitchenette, leaving at the very last moment and tossing my cup into the garbage. I believed that donation was a sort of magic. The money was to help keep the den’s lights on, and to help Jessica pay for her father's treatments. It was well worth it to witness the Amoebas in our unknowable grandeur. But also, there is a karmic give and take the world over. Like, in Connecticut, when I had emptied the rottweiler’s ashes into the surrounding woods in the middle of a winter night, giving back to the planet, the following week the diner was filled to the brim morning after morning. I realized, too, the more I donated to the den, the more tips I got at work. Everything was a self-contained circuit. I’d give to the den. The den gave back to me. And I could only imagine what the other Amoebas thought of me. Perhaps they suspected I was a secret multimillionaire. Or, a scuba diver in Bora-Bora. A used car dealer. A live-in butler. An underworld celebrity who rubbed elbows with Yakuza bosses and CEOs of mosquito net NGOs. I slept soundly at night on my springy mattress, imagining things like this. One night I let myself into the den. By then, I’d been an Amoeba for a few months, and the two-mile-long commute, the many hours spent on my feet,and the sixty-hour work weeks were beginning to really/truly drain me. For the first time, I considered how strenuous a lifetime of exertion can be and how painful it would be to start over, should something happen to my urn. My apartment door was thin and its lock was flimsy. I brought my urn to the den one night to see if there was a secure place to tuck it away. When I flipped on the lights, I jumped. Roger was in his usual spot, looking out the window. I was caught off guard. I placed my urn on the table, next to a bunch of print-outs Sophia left behind. Howitzer must not have tidied up that night. On top was the first page of the Gospel of Philip, the line, No one can meet the king while naked, circled in red pen. Roger looked ragged and I wanted to ask him if he was okay. Whenever I’d see a fellow Amoeba in the park or drinking at the bar, I wouldn’t acknowledge them. To do so would be like rifling through their trash or snooping through their mail. Whenever such an interaction occurred, which was rare, someone would contact Jessica, who would send out a long email, and Howitzer would have the offender return their key, change the locks, and have members collect new keys. “I’ve been eating more,” he said. “But nobody tells you that food has caffeine in it, too. Now I can't sleep."How unfair the world is. Roger had the demeanor of a surfer who survived a shark attack, and if he were to undress, I could easily picture a scar coursing over his torso, like a comet. I witnessed inequality daily. At Rockett’s, some patrons drank alone and others with loud crowds. Some dogs I walked were leaders, like a whiny husky, or followers, like the bleary-eyed dachshund. At the daycare, I could tell which kids were leaping ahead in maturity based on their grilled cheese preferences: some ate crustless white bread with a slice of American. Others like the crust. Others wanted more than one flavor of cheese, others wanted a tomato, and one kid in particular, whose parents were fast-tracking him to fabulous success, wanted minced pickled jalapenos on rye. Only we Amoebas were equal. "I don't trust my deadbolt at home," I told him, my heart hammering in my chest. This was the first time I'd opened my mouth since joining. "A light breeze is all it takes to force it open." “Uh-huh,” Roger replied, heartfelt. I was euphoric. He went back to his window. I began my search for a place to hide my urn. I measured the gaps under the furniture and opened the toilet tank. Too risky. I trusted Amoebas but not potential interlopers. In the kitchenette, I opened the cupboard under the sink and sifted past the beach containers and stacks of toilet paper. On a hunch, I felt the plywood sides of the cupboard, pushed at the corners, feeling around for a handhold. One slid off easily. I pulled my head inside and felt a chill emanating from this extra space and reached blindly inside. I pulled out a few objects: an antique hardcover of Gone with the Wind, a folded-up walking stick, and a decanter crammed with shirt buttons. I put everything back inside. I collected my urn from the table and noticed that Roger was gone. I slid my urn behind the panel and shut it. I took Roger’s place by the window. After a few minutes, I heard two voices. A couple. They were loud but not argumentative, playfully bantering by saying things like oh yeah? and shut up! I kept to my post, waiting for them to pass. The next few months were cold and fruitful. I put money into the den's donation box, and on certain nights, I'd add to my urn, which never felt like it was getting full. (The rottweiler whose ashes it used to hold was massive.) I was in the den one afternoon, eating a grilled cheese. Sophia was poking at something in her lunchbox with chopsticks. She had left print-outs on the table again, this time from the Gospel of Thomas:
Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
Marie had just recounted a childhood memory. She was camping with her folks, and their neighbors had just caught a trout. They carried it to their coal-fired grill and dropped it there, flailing, scales and all. Marie reached the part where her neighbors shut the trout in when an unfamiliar voice resounded from the stairway. Her voice rose as she climbed, which pierced our hearts. We stood up from leaning, uncrossed our legs, extinguished our cigarettes, and swirled our coffee without bringing it to our lips. “Hullo,” a woman said when she reached the top. Her head swiveled as she took stock of us. She wore a North Face jacket, sweatpants, and bright yellow rain boots. “Come along,” she said to a baby hammocking in the bend of her elbow. “Let’s pour ourselves a dark roast coffee, yes? Did that spill? Nope, we did good. Didn’t we do good? Okay, let’s go back and find a coaster.” Mercifully, the baby was quieter than she was. The woman placed her cup on a Frida Kahlo coaster and sniffed emphatically. She raised her child to her nose and said “excuse us.” She entered the bathroom and closed the door. We looked at one another, bewildered. Having a kid didn’t disqualify one from Amoebahood. But bringing a child along and wantonly acknowledging us? The abrasion. There was nothing mysterious about her in the slightest. Our postures sagged. Amoebas scratched their nose, shifting their weight from one foot to the other. Sophia straightened her skirt; I cleared my throat; Roger stood up. Marie tapped her fingers as we listened to the muffled sounds of the toddler’s diaper change. We all watched on as the interloper exited the bathroom, muttering, "late, late," and clattered down the wooden stairway, waving goodbye with her free arm, her coffee left to cool on Frida Kahlo. In the span of four minutes, she raised havoc and vanished. “What the fuck was that accent?” Sophia asked, wasting no time.“Australian,” I posited. My throat was dry.“Definitely, a Kiwi,” Marie said. “I studied abroad in Wellington.”“And who gave this ‘Kiwi’ a key?” Sophia demanded. Shrugs, shuffled feet. This was the first time in the den's history that anyone spoke louder than in a conversational tone. Sophia texted Howitzer, who called Jessica, who sent out a mass email.Who invited her, this ‘Kiwi,’ and did she break any rules? No one would be banned, she promised, both she and Howitzer were post-hoc conscientious objectors, who loathed collecting keys. Jessica just wanted to know who told his woman about the den, and if someone went over Howitzer’s head to make a key. “Again, no one will be banned for coming forward," she wrote at the bottom of the email, "We just want assurance the den is secure." We never felt secure again. We were quieter—what if an outsider were to overhear?—and we dallied less. We lingered now in a clearing fog, as if our cigarette smoke somehow materialized in frailer plumes. I could tell it troubled Roger more than anyone. When I would see him he would be slumped in his chair, almost lying straight on his back. If this Kiwi could finagle into our den so easily, who else could break through, ask questions? A meeting was demanded, the first of its kind. I’d seen the den busy, but never cramped. There was no space for leaning. Howitzer stood between the kitchenette and the living area, and we strained to hear him, in his low, droning voice. "Let's relax," Howitzer said. "She hasn't come back, has she? We haven't seen any newcomers either? Let’s allow normalcy.” Sophia darted her arm into the air. “We should change the locks again, just to be sure.”“Can we afford to do that again?” Marie asked. “She’s right,” Roger said. “If she has a key. She can make more and leave them on park benches." “That’s ridiculous," Marie retorted, and an argument broke out. No one could have predicted how dense our emotions could surge or how much agitation one Kiwi could carve out from us. I crossed my arms in the corner.Several Amoebas walked out, fanning across the empty streets. We were talking to one another directly, and battle lines were drawn. The hardliners were selfish, the calm ones were naïve, and who knows how many interlopers would take advantage of the divisions?Sophia quoted Gnostic passages to Marie. Roger punched a wall, and didn’t leave a dent. Howitzer polished the sink until the commotion died down. When Sophia tired of preaching, she called the naïve Amoebas corrupt, and Marie trailed her, and their argument carried out to Sophia’s beetle, who drove away at fifty miles per hour.A third of the Amoebas handed in their keys on the spot. Howitzer slithered through the dying crowd to the street to meekly tell Marie to hand in her key, too.
***
When I arrived at the den the next morning, I was alone and the succulents were missing. We didn’t discover the origins of the Kiwi. No one admitted to giving her a key. We didn't have the satisfaction of booting her, nor the Amoeba who did, and without those things there was no foundation upon which to repair the den.Nevertheless, I tried. It's all I had in that decaying town. I bought a lunch box and took every breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the den I could afford, gulping coffee and chain-smoking. I figured out how to mass email and reminded everyone that with closed mouths and open minds, normalcy was ours for the taking. "Don't think about the Kiwi! Don't think about interlopers!" Yet often I ate alone. But when I wasn’t, I led by example, sharing as many anecdotes as possible."We had a pet rottweiler growing up," I told Roger and several others. "He was big and mean, and he would jump on me and no one else because I was so tall. He’d lie in my bed before I moved into the shed and growl if I pushed him. I hated him. I hated him so much. Then one night, my mom or dad or grandma or grandpa—not me, is what I'm saying, this wasn't on purpose, left the front door ajar. The next morning, we found him on the side of the road; something powerful, like a truck, must've pummeled him. Strangely, he seemed at peace."I knew I should have stopped talking there. That was the story. Beginning, middle, end. I had already gotten some “uh-huhs” and a brisk sigh. But I carried on. "I blamed myself. But it wasn't my fault, like I said. But you know what I was thinking that night? I was thinking: I wish he would drop dead. And then it happened. I know it's a cliché. Listened, I willed my dog to die—on accident! Imagine what we would do for the Amoebas, on purpose!”Roger looked at me with disgust. “Really, man?” He took a long drag of his scented cigarette. He marched to the bathroom and vomited with the door open. He came back and stared at me as he wiped his mouth with an open palm. “I’m out.” Sophia sent out a mass email later that day. “I don’t know where to begin. This is all new to me,” began her three-thousand-word address. “I’ve never felt actually, totally, fully, completely, alone like I do now.” Winter came. Fewer families asked for their dogs to be walked. The daycare merged with a bigger one on the other side of town, too far to walk to. I only had Rockett’s. Money was tight. The sky labored overcast and each day shaded monotonously. I poured myself a sour beer at the end of my shift and sat in a corner. My phone vibrated with an unfamiliar number. I ignored it.The caller left a voicemail. I put the phone to my ear and listened.“We haven’t met before. It’s Jessica,” a quiet voice said. I sat up in my seat. Howitzer must have given her my number when I joined. “Thank you for sticking it out so long. You are one of the few who did.” Her voice was faint and reserved, as if she had just gotten out of bed, and didn’t carry the flavor of leadership that I was trying to emulate. "I hate that I have to tell you this. I wish I could have done more, but my dad… Things are getting worse. I'm sorry to have to tell you that I'm selling the bookstore. The den is a part of the property. I can’t justify keeping it. Thank you. Stay safe. I hope you find a new light.”I was out of the bar, full speed across the lamplit blocks toward the den, hoping that the locks weren’t changed yet and I could reach my urn before it was too late.My key fit. I rushed up the steps and entered the kitchenette and opened the cabinet and pulled away the side panels. I reached my hand in and felt nothing but cool, empty air. I stuck my head in. Nothing. I heard the toilet flush. I pulled my head out and felt a presence behind me. “Roger said you were poking around in here, but I didn’t realize…” Howitzer said. “That was my savings,” I told him. Howitzer’s face was pale. “All of it?” I asked.“Actually,” he started to say, then peered over his shoulder as if he were surrounded. “I promise. I had no idea. I should have questioned it, but I couldn’t believe our luck.”“What about my urn?”“Pawned it.”I stood up. “We helped Jessica pay off some outstanding bills. Not to mention the good luck with the buyer who actually wanted to reopen the bookstore. Our prayers were paying off.”Before I could say anything, Howitzer averted his eyes again, looking at his shoes like a child. I knew how he felt because I was him. I realized Howitzer had mistakenly invited the Kiwi. He misjudged and undid everything. He lost more than I did. I, however, was young and hungry; I still had a chance. My urn wasn't gone. It was donated, and good luck was around the corner, tenfold.I stood up and held out my hand toward Howitzer. He stared at my open palm.“I’m your barista now.”“Okay,” he said, and shook my hand. That was that.We walked down the wooden steps together. "Your key." he said, and I handed it to him, thinking, This will be the last thing I lose. "Rock bottom is only a minor setback," I told him. I smiled widely. I couldn't wait for the future. I wouldn’t be able to sleep.Howitzer squinted his eyes and told me to be in at six tomorrow. I told him I would. I wasn't even going to go back home. I'd stay at Rocket's till close and then wander around downtown for a few hours, appreciating the foggy sky, admiring our dilapidated architecture, and glaring at passing couples.As Howitzer walked to his car, I looked up at the den again. We left the lights on. You could almost make out a star or two in the night sky. I would rebuild the den because I knew it was in me all along. I was the den, looking up at the den, and I knew that no matter what happened, I would be rich, I would one day be surrounded by Amoebas again, and once that time came, any and every worry would be plucked from my mind, one, by one, by one.
Yo ho ho, adventurers, but beware: Poisonaut Buccaneers are pillaging the Indigo Coast! But Quartermaster Zabbrock’s informant has the coordinates to their secret base…Can you weather the pirate lair’s toxic traps? Damnèdfall Ship Grave is now open to bands of powerful and well-equipped adventurers! [Welcome to Version 2.32 - Full patch notes available online.][Family filter is TURNED OFF.][1. Auroradread Mountains - General] [Fabianette]: lfg heroic auroradread sepulcher looking for two more (cc + heals)[Order] [Evanstone]: yessssssssss[Order] [Evanstone]: almost friday bb!!![Order] [Rivola]: friday the 13th even!!!!!!!!![Order] [Aizar]: ki ki ki ma ma ma[Order] [Rivola]: ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ[Order] [Evanstone]: that supposed to be a knife[Order] [Evanstone]: ?[Order] [Rivola]: yes lmao[Order] [Aizar]: hehehe[Order] [Rivola]: im gonna get a tattoo tomorrow [Order] [Evanstone]: are those interrelated[Order] [Aizar]: freshman [Order] [Evanstone]: wat???[Order] [Evanstone]: shit up lol[Order] [Evanstone]: *shut[1. Auroradread Mountains - General] [Fabianette]: lf cc & heals heroic sepulcher then g2g. come on ppl [Order] [Aizar]: its a thing[Order] [Rivola]: ya like 99.99% tattoo parlors have good good deals on flash every friday 13th [Order] [Rivola]: you cant get anything crazy/color (usually) but you can get a cool lil piece for like $40 or 50 [Order] [Rivola]: its fun. my left leg is all friday the 13th pieces[Order] [Evanstone]: how many[Order] [Rivola]: tomorrow will make it 5[Order] [Aizar]: gratz[Order] [Rivola]: ty lol[Order] [Evanstone]: i want a tattoo i think[Order] [Aizar]: when you grow up[Order] [Evanstone]: shit up[2. Auroradread Mountains - Social] [Mikky]: any1 in auroradread mountains rn watch new aot ln? shit was tite[Order] [Evanstone]: I want a tree tattoo[Order] [Evanstone]: in color on my back [Order] [Rivola]: botanicals are cool. big tree would look nice there. lots of really good artists specialize in botanicals [Order] [Rivola]: what kind of tree[Order] [Evanstone]: southern live oak[Order] [Evanstone]: the one right outside my window more specifically[Order] [Aizar]: cute[Order] [Rivola]: that would be sick tbh [Order] [Rivola]: do u like american traditional? [Order] [Rivola]: i wanna get a tiger american traditional[2. Auroradread Mountains - Social] [Mikky]: rly? nobody here watchin aot?[2. Auroradread Mountains - Social] [Boneblade]: jesus christ shut up dude[2. Auroradread Mountains - Social] [Fabianette]: lol[Order] [Evanstone]: tiger would be cool. or snake [Order] [Evanstone]: my dad is so so against tattoos but idrc [Order] [Aizar]: daddy would be SO upset[Order] [Evanstone]: dude shit up [Order] [Rivola]: lol shes just messin dude[Order] [Aizar]: it is my nature[Order] [Rivola]: it means she loves you[Order] [Aizar]: lmao it does[Order] [Evanstone]: it better[Order] [Johngarden]: watch the AOE[Order] [Johngarden]: stay out of the cloud thing[Order] [Aizar]: keep it in party chat jg[Order] [Johngarden]: LOL oopsie [Order] [Rivola]: not on voice?[Order] [Johngarden]: none of em have mics [1. Auroradread Mountains - General] [Fabianette]: lf one more heals for heroic sepulcher then good to go[Order] [Evanstone]: how long til youre done jg? wanna do a few colosseum queues with me?[Order] [Johngarden]: theoretically i would but it might be a bit[Order] [Johngarden]: these creeps are fuckin TERRIBLE—we have almost wiped 3 times[Order] [Aizar]: what you running?[Order] [Johngarden]: heroic eggmine shafts with randos [Order] [Johngarden]: awful spiritualist for heals who im pretty sure is a scientologist IRL[Order] [Aizar]: lmao[Order] [Rivola]: how do you know theyre a scientologist? [Order] [Johngarden]: l ron hubbard quote in their biotab [Order] [Johngarden]: this is copypasted Men who know are secure and men who do not know believe in luck. - L. Ron Hubbard[Order] [Aizar]: thats so menacing [Order] [Evanstone]: open & shit [Order] [Evanstone]: godamit lol [Order] [Rivola]: you should macro “shut”[Order] [Aizar]: he is hopeless lmao[Order] [Johngarden]: JFC just wiped for real[Order] [Evanstone]: which boss get you?[Order] [Johngarden]: breeding priest[Order] [Rivola]: nasty guy[Order] [Johngarden]: need to dump some shit at the auction house but then i will do colosseum queues evan [Order] [Evanstone]: dope[Order] [Johngarden]: i have to take a pegasus from thorntally pub so[Order] [Johngarden]: still gonna be a bit [Order] [Evanstone]: i figured dw [Order] [Aizar]: JG can i ask you something[Order] [Johngarden]: uhhhhh [Order] [Johngarden] i guess [Order] [Johngarden]: i mean yes LOL just riffing i am just sitting here 12 min on the pegasus timer YEEHAW I LOVE THIS GAME [Order] [Johngarden]: but if i take a while to answer its cuz im pissing [Order] [Rivola]: sicko[Order] [Johngarden]: what do you want to ask me [3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Zybaz]: There is a group of 3 goblins in tier 5 gear camping Sepulcher summoning circle. I would jump on my alt but she is on the other side of the continent. Anyone who can help please help.[Order] [Johngarden]: ?[Order] [Evanstone]: lol i bet she went afk [3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Gool]: omw [Order] [Johngarden]: ?[Order] [Evanstone]: lol[Order] [Rivola]: she played you[3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Jubillince]: coming with 2 more [Order] [Aizar]: lmao sorry, negotiating for ore [Order] [Aizar]: 1 min pls[Order] [Johngarden]: JFC[Order] [Johngarden]: i am gonna have a panic attack[Order] [Evanstone]: jg…i might have to bail…[Order] [Johngarden]: fuck no please please i need a dub [Order] [Johngarden] i need a cool clean dub after what I just went through [Order] [Johngarden]: I land in 7 minutes will put my stuff in the bank and jump right into queues with you [Order] [Johngarden]: PLEASE[Order] [Evanstone]: my sister is screaming at me to use the computer[Order] [Evanstone]: she has an assignment[Order] [Aizar]: hahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahaha[Order] [Johngarden]: IT CAN WAIT [Order] [Evanston]: she says its due tomorrow[Order] [Aizar]: better get going buddy[Order] [Rivola]: this is sooo classic[Order] [Evanstone]: i really do have to go sorry jg[Order] [Evanstone]: keoki said earlier hes coming on tn so try him[Order] [Evanstone]: i owe you[Evanstone] has gone offline. [Order] [Johngarden]: COME ON[3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Zybaz]: Thank you to all who answered. Goblins retreated. [Order] [Johngarden]: :/ [Order] [Rivola]: :’([3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Gool]: no theres still one camping hill behind pegasus master[3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Gool]: ganking anyone who lands or tries to fly out[3. Auroradread Mountains - Defense] [Jubillince]: omw back[Order] [Aizar]: actually this is good, i can ask you my question with no distractions[Order] [Johngarden]: o.O[Order] [Johngarden]: well????????[Order] [Johngarden]: seriously what is it[Order] [Aizar]: i wanted to know what actually went down in goldriders[Order] [Johngarden]: oh wow [Order] [Johngarden]: not what i was expecting[Order] [Aizar]: what were you expecting? lmao [Order] [Johngarden]: not that[Order] [Rivola]: whats goldriders? rings a bell[Order] [Aizar]: before your time[Order] [Johngarden]: biggest order here during vanilla for a while[Order] [Aizar]: they fell apart before 1.5 like most of the big orders did[Order] [Aizar]: and not to put him on blast but JG was an officer in it at the end [Order] [Johngarden]: lol[Order] [Johngarden]: loukinn resubbed actually[Order] [Aizar]: thats why i wanted to know[Order] [Aizar]: i kind of knew him i heard he was playing again [Order] [Johngarden]: i gave him some silver he got locked out of his original account [Order] [Rivola]: dang thats not like you lol [Order] [Rivola]: who is he[Order] [Aizar]: his dad was torinheart the goldriders CM and he was a high officer[Order] [Johngarden]: but they dont live together IRL. game was like their bonding activity[Order] [Johngarden]: dont spread this stuff OK?[Order] [Aizar]: I won’t [Order] [Rivola]: ofc[Order] [Johngarden]: well what i heard is they never got mediator approval to play together [Order] [Johngarden]: loukinn playing with his dad violated his parents custody agreement LOL[Order] [Johngarden]: i mean…not LOL[Order] [Johngarden]: u know what i mean, its just crazy[Order] [Aizar]: yea[Order] [Aizar]: dang……[Order] [Johngarden]: there were other {big}issues with goldriders leadership but yeah the mom was reallly angry at pinnacle (thats lous dad) I think he was not so nice to her and in the end a fuckin judge said they couldnt play together and it cascaded from that[Order] [Aizar]: god[Order] [Rivola]: (◞‸◟,)[Order] [Aizar]: thats rly depressing[Order] [Johngarden]: obvi IDK them in the flesh so maybe they are real losers IRL but they have both been super nice on here so its all very sad to me [Order] [Rivola]: what was the dads characters name?[Order] [Aizar]: he said alreadt[Order] [Aizar]: pinnacle[Order] [Rivola]: thats a funny name[Order] [Johngarden]: TBH pretty badass no???You have entered channels [1. Broodburgh City], [2. Broodburgh Trade,] [3. Broodburgh Defense].[2. Trade] [Eleff]: 250g for a single stack??????????? lick my chode u conartist bitch[Order] [Johngarden]: ok finally landed if anyone else wants to do queues [2. Trade] [Cherryhouse]: emphasis on ‘artist’[2. Trade] [Eleff]: reported u fuckin bitchSleigh bells ting and ling throughout the Dueling Kingdoms, which can only mean one thing: Snow Festival is here! Adventurers drop their weapons out of holiday compassion…for now…[Welcome to Version 2.36 - Full patch notes available online.][Family filter is TURNED OFF.][Order] [Rivola]: are you going anywhere for xmas?/leave city/leave trade/leave defense[Order] [Johngarden]: disney. for new years/join craft syndicateYou have entered channel [4. Craft Syndicate].[Order] [Aizar]: lol rly?[Order] [Johngarden]: yea not my choice[Order] [Rivola]: anaheim??[Order] [Johngarden]: florida[4. Craft Syndicate] [Frogg]: you provide the mats, i charm your shit: level 350 charmer grinding to master level 50—TIPS APPRECIATED BUT NEVER DEMANDED[Order] [Aizar]: im going to my aunts in eugene[Order] [Johngarden]: fun?[Order] [Aizar]: yeah out of her and my mom shes the cool sister[Order] [Rivola]: whatre you gonna do lk [Order] [Rivola]: if you dont mind me asking[Order] [Loukinn]: ofc dont mind[Order] [Loukinn]: staying with my mom. shell drink and weep till she passes out im guessing lol[Order] [Loukinn]: ill prolly do colosseum queues while watchin like event horizon or the terminator or sumthin. also i downlowded clive barkers undying[Order] [Johngarden]: OH SHIT thats a goodass game[Order] [Johngarden]: underrated even[Order] [Aizar]: doesnt sound so bad[Order] [Loukinn]: itll be nice[Evanstone] has come online. [Order] [Aizar]: merry merry biotch[Order] [Evanstone]: hola gubnuh[Whisper] [Loukinn]: u got a sec to chat jg[Order] [Evanstone]: what i miss/r Loukinn: ofc[Order] [Rivola]: were talkin holiday plans/r Loukinn: isnt that what were doin? [Whisper] [Loukinn]: heh[Order] [Evanstone]: hmmmmmmmm[Order] [Aizar]: ?/r Loukinn: whats up [Hereward] has come online.[Order] [Evanstone]: who?[Whisper] [Loukinn]: actually brb lmao[Whisper] [Loukinn]: lets chat later[Loukinn] has gone offline. [Order] [Hereward]: gm[Order] [Aizar]: ?[Order] [Hereward]: ?[Order] [Evanstone]: are you like [Order] [Evanstone]: in like honolulu or something[Order] [Hereward]: gm just sumthing u say[Order] [Evanstone]: its 9pm where I am[Order] [Evanstone]: when did you join up[Order] [Aizar]: evan lmao[Order] [Evanstone]: wut[Order] [Aizar]: relax[Order] [Evanstone]: wat???[Order] [Rivola]: i invited them[Order] [Rivola]: we did gore plateau [Order] [Hereward]: i know my gore plateau [Order] [Evanstone]: are you somebodys alt[Order] [Hereward]: ofc [Order] [Hereward]: aint we all[Order] [Johngarden]: i think what my friends asking here is actually have we met already[Order] [Evanstone]: ya that[Order] [Aizar]: i promise it isnt always like this in here[Order] [Hereward]: lolol[Order] [Hereward]: its ok[Order] [Hereward]: dont think weve met[Order] [Hereward]: nice to meet u all :)[Order] [Johngarden]: likewise [Order] [Rivola]: dude can play[Order] [Hereward]: if u ever wanna do heroics i kno my shit [Order] [Aizar]: nice to meet you man [Order] [Evanstone]: ya[Order] [Hereward]: dont worry i am l33t af [Order] [Rivola]: lol[Order] [Rivola]: (he rly is good fr…)[4. Craft Syndicate] [Frogg]: you provide the mats, i charm your shit: level 350 charmer grinding to master level 50—TIPS APPRECIATED BUT NEVER DEMANDED[Order] [Johngarden]: …you wanna do eggmine shafts??[Order] [Hereward]: wen[Order] [Johngarden]: …now?[Order] [Hereward]: cant rn[Order] [Hereward]: just logged in 4 dailys [Order] [Hereward]: kids coming over [Order] [Aizar]: you got kids?[Order] [Hereward]: 1[Order] [Hereward]: my son[4. Craft Syndicate] [Wolj]: selling ingots in bulk[Order] [Evanstone]: i wish i had a son/w Woli: can you do 200 for 1000 [Order] [Aizar]: hehehe[Whisper] [Wolj]: 150 for 1000[Order] [Hereward]: he lives w his gma half the time. his moms mom[Order] [Hereward]: his moms stationed at aafb. he didnt want to go [Order] [Hereward]: tbh im glad he didnt [Order] [Hereward]: i love my kid/r Wolj: meet in the middle? [Order] [Rivola]: awww[Order] [Evanstone]: good/r Wolj: 175 for 1k?[Whisper] [Wolj]: ok i can swing that[Whisper] [Wolj]: meet in front of the post office. need 15 min to get there/r Wolj: sounds good, thanks very much dude /r Wolj: seeya in 15[Order] [Hereward]: im 17 btw[Order] [Aizar]: thats ok. we don’t judge here[Order] [Aizar]: maybe evan does but hes like 15 just fyi[Order] [Evanstone]: im just jealous[Order] [Rivola]: lol[Order] [Evanstone]: like i said i want a kid…boy of my own…maybe in a few years…….[Order] [Hereward]: u mite wanna wait on it lil longer[Order] [Evanstone]: are you gonna go to college?[Order] [Evanstone]: tradeschool?[Order] [Aizar]: dude chill out[Order] [Johngarden]: evan what is your agenda here LOL[Order] [Hereward]: no its ok[Order] [Hereward]: im in cc rn [Order] [Hereward]: on track 2 transfer[Order] [Aizar]: hell yeah right on[Order] [Evanstone]: ya thats good[Order] [Evanstone]: i can barely do hs with no kid so that is impressive [Order] [Johngarden]: what? you been getting stuffed into lockers?[Order] [Evanstone]: no no lol[Order] [Evanstone]: i cant stay awake. dunno what it is[Order] [Aizar]: so drink coffee[Order] [Evanstone]: anyway[Order] [Evanstone]: before you logged on hereward we were talking about xmas[Order] [Evanstone]: you got any xmas plans?[Order] [Aizar]: evan if you dont fuckin calm yourseld down i am literally gonna suspend you[Order] [Aizar]: dont like to threaten orddies but will do it fr[Order] [Evanstone]: i will shut up[4. Craft Syndicate] [Zabyx]: LF 350ML50 jeweler to craft me 2slot necklace, i have mats and gold for *generous* tip /w Evanstone: you good dude??? LOL[Whisper] [Evanstone]: that dude is lying about something [Whisper] [Evanstone]: dont know how i know but i know he is[Order] [Rivola] gonna hop on my alt[Rivola] has gone offline./r Evanstone: he barely said anything what would he be lying about tho???[Rapallo] has come online. [Order] [Rapallo]: me back - miss me???[Order] [Aizar]: yes[Order] [Hereward]: ur riv??[Order] [Rapallo] mmhmm[Whisper] [Evanstone]: trust my sus meter jg/r Evanstone: watch this/r Evanstone: and dont say im active duty. maybe aiz will blow my cover there but trust me, watch[Order] [Johngarden]: whats AAFB???[Order] [Hereward]: andersen air force base[Order] [Rapallo]: ofc lol[Order] [Hereward]: in yigo guam[Whisper] [Evanstone]: keep going lmao[Order] [Johngarden]: what does your babymama do out there???[Order] [Hereward]: lol. tbh idrk [Order] [Hereward]: she cant tell us[4. Craft Syndicate] [Zabyx]: LF 350ML50 jeweler to craft me 2slot necklace, i have mats and gold for *very generous* tip /r Evanstone: can’t say why exactly/r Evanstone: but i think youre right/r Evanstone: somethings off with this dude[Order] [Johngarden]: youre awfully forthcoming[Whisper] [Evanstone]: see /r Evanstone: like hes giving too much[Order] [Hereward]: ?/r Evanstone: and not enough at the same time [Whisper] [Evanstone]: exactly [Order] [Hereward]: im an opem book[Order] [Aizar]: dude[Order] [Aizar]: dont start[Order] [Hereward]: ?[Order] [Aizar]: i mean jg [Hereward] has gone offline.[Order] [Aizar]: …[Order] [Evanstone]: ? [Order] [Johngarden]: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [Wolj] [says]: ok lets do this[Wolj] [says]: (srry for taking a minute)/s: oh DW yr good[Order] [Rapallo]: drinkin eggnog[Order] [Evanstone]: virgin eggnog?!?![Order] [Rapallo]: rofl[Order] [Rapallo]: yes[Order] [Aizar]: virginogSleigh bells ting and ling throughout the Dueling Kingdoms, which can only mean one thing: Snow Festival is here! Adventurers drop their weapons out of holiday compassion…for now… [Welcome to Version 2.36 - Full patch notes available online.][Family filter is TURNED OFF.][2. Trade] [Boorooboo]: love this fckin game on chrismas day[2. Trade] [Boorooboo]: shortest colosseum queues of the year and my family isnt \ here[2. Trade] [Zabyx]: roflmao[Order] [Loukinn]: this is bad……[Order] [Hereward]: y[Order] [Loukinn]: im gonna get in trouble[Order] [Hereward]: u wont[Order] [Hereward]: i promise[Order] [Johngarden]: am i interrupting something?[Order] [Loukinn]: no. merry xmas jg[Order] [Hereward]: merry xmas jg[Order] [Johngarden]: same to you both[Order] [Johngarden]: just you dudes???[Order] [Loukinn]: you missed keoki[Order] [Hereward]: ya we did oozing temple[Order] [Johngarden]: sorry i missed it!![2. Trade] [Boorooboo]: i love living alone[2. Trade] [Boorooboo]: living alone can fix anyone[2. Trade] [Zabyx]: you are broken rofl[Order] [Johngarden]: you wanna go again??[Order] [Johngarden]: off duty for the rest of the day (thank effing god)[Order] [Hereward]: u wanna?????[Order] [Loukinn]: shit i gotta go[Loukinn] has gone offline.[Order] [Johngarden]: hehe[Order] [Johngarden]: guess its just you and me man[Order] [Johngarden]: got another run in you?[Order] [Johngarden]: nothing to do here[Order] [Johngarden]: base is dead[Order] [Hereward]: im gonna log[Order] [Hereward]: srry[Hereward] has gone offline.[Order] [Johngarden]: byebye prickEmissaries from both kingdoms are missing! Last seen en route to a peace summit at the Diplomat’s Lodge—the only clue: thick, gore-flecked webs lining their abandoned peace-caravans. Could this be the doing of the Spider Viziers? Silken Parliament is now open for investigation by bands of powerful and well-equipped adventurers…if you dare step inside! [Welcome to Version 2.51 - Full patch notes available online.][Family filter is TURNED OFF.]/join defense [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: anyone able to help?[Order] [Aizar] i advise waiting until at least a day after mothers day to ask your mother for money[Order] [Loukinn]: oooof lmao[Order] [Rivola]: what happened? [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: arseholes killed the auctioneer [Order] [Aizar]: i mean[Order] [Aizar]: she didnt give me the money[Order] [Aizar]: lolololol[Order] [Rivola]: u good??[Order] [Aizar]: am for now[Order] [Aizar]: idk [Order] [Evanstone]: dude…[Order] [Aizar]: wat[Order] [Evanstone]: i could have my dad send you a little money[Order] [Aizar]: :/[Order] [Aizar]: shut up biotch[Order] [Evanstone]: no i mean it. he thinks this game is good for me[Order] [Evanstone]: your my friend [Order] [Aizar]: im going to be fine[Order] [Johngarden]: how about all of us cover your sub [Order] [Rivola]: ya thats a rly good idea[Order] [Evanstone]: i will throw sown[Order] [Loukinn]: moi aussi [Order] [Aizar]: thats really sweet of you guys[Order] [Aizar]: but tbh[Order] [Aizar]: could probably use a little less of playing this game[Order] [Aizar]: if yall cover me i will sorta feel the NEED to make your investment in me worth it re playtime[Order] [Aizar]: prolly not a good idea for me rn[Johngarden]: OK that makes sense[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: they are camping the auction house just an update[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: omw back[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: you should bring some orddies theres 5 of em now [Order] [Aizar]: are there any actually good f2p mmos[Order] [Evanstone]: imo no [Order] [Loukinn]: star wars ones kinda fun[Order] [Johngarden]: guild wars 2 is pretty good[Order] [Johngarden]: you have to buy the retail game still for $50 but no monthly sub just xpacs once a year if youre into it[Order] [Johngarden]: ends up being cheaper by like half [Order] [Aizar]: i tried it when it launched but i couldnt get into it[Order] [Aizar]: dont worry about it [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: orddies otw[Order] [Aizar]: i should like read books [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: how many[Order] [Loukinn]: yo not to be weerd but[Order] [Evanstone]: books are good[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: we got enough[Order] [Loukinn]: did u guys ever talk to someone on here called hereword something like that[Order] [Loukinn]: mebe 3 months ago [Order] [Evanstone]: lil longer than that [Order] [Evanstone]: around christmas[Order] [Loukinn]: ya[Order] [Evanstone]: we did [Order] [Johngarden]: he quit/deleted without saying anything about it[Order] [Aizar]: accounts fully gone[Order] [Loukinn]: wher can u see that [Order] [Aizar]: checked characterfinder they have no character data for that name at all which means all the account metadatas gone which means the whole account is gone not just the character [Order] [Johngarden]: hmmmmm[Order] [Evanstone]: told u [Order] [Loukinn]: whatd u tell him?[Order] [Evanstone]: that he was…suspect[Order] [Johngarden]: something seemed very off[Order] [Loukinn]: it was my dad lol[Order] [Johngarden]: whoa what[Order] [Aizar]: pinnacle?[Order] [Loukinn]: dont tell the mediator lol[Order] [Evanstone]: whoa[Order] [Johngarden]: was he spying on you[Order] [Loukinn]: he wanted to spend more time with me he only gets one weekend a month[Order] [Loukinn]: but this violated their mediation agreement [Order] [Aizar]: oh shit[Order] [Rivola]: r u ok???????[Order] [Loukinn]: yes ty lol[Order] [Loukinn]: i am still processing life with my dad i will probably always be processing it [Order] [Loukinn]: even wen hes dead [Order] [Rivola]: its my fault[Order] [Rivola]: i invited him[Order] [Johngarden]: its OK dude gore plateau is tough as hell, i woulda brought him in too[Order] [Aizar]: hehe[Order] [Loukinn]: he was doing psycho shit anyways [Order] [Loukinn]: dont worry[Order] [Rivola]: im sorry if i made yr life harder[Order] [Loukinn]: u rly didnt – just an interesting wrinkle lol[Order] [Evanstone]: i am a child of divorce as well[Order] [Johngarden]: he knows LOL[Order] [Aizar]: rofl[Order] [Evanstone]: do i talk about it that much[Order] [Johngarden]: yes haha[Order] [Aizar]: and even if you didnt you kinda just like conduxt yourself like a child of divorce [Order] [Evanstone]: :([Order] [Johngarden]: no its OK [Order] [Aizar]: its pretty charming shtick in like a my dog skip sorta way [Order] [Evanstone]: wats my dog skip [Order] [Aizar]: its a movie about a boy whos pathetic until he gets a cool dog [Order] [Aizar]: the boy is frankie muniz[Order] [Aizar]: agent cody banks[Order] [Evanstone]: ah[Order] [Evanstone]: do they kill the dog[Order] [Aizar]: im not gonna tell you that youll have to watch[Order] [Evanstone]: ok[Order] [Evanstone]: ill put it in the queue [Order] [Evanstone]: louk do you play other vidya w yr dad[Order] [Loukinn]: ya if hes in a ok mood[Order] [Loukinn]: madden cod halo [Order] [Loukinn]: all the hetero games[Order] [Aizar]: lmao [Order] [Loukinn]: sumtimes we play mario tennis [Order] [Rivola]: <3 mario tennis [Order] [Evanstone]: my dad wont touch em. but hes glad that i have hobbies[Order] [Evanstone]: he is like a progressive dad reads books and decided to learn about games when i got into em and in the end he decided they are normal [Order] [Evanstone]: he wouldnt let me play m rated games but my mom let me play anything because she doesnt give a shit she was an army brat her childhood was like a novel she was quite neglected[Order] [Evanstone]: also she musta known it would make me go over there more. it did [Order] [Evanstone]: she let me play any game except for games with violence against women[Order] [Evanstone]: no grand theft auto [Order] [Evanstone]: in the end i had to convince my dad to be the one to let me play grand theft auto. i told him it was pushing the medium forward. and that they were no worse than like pulp fiction or 24 with kiefer sutherland [Order] [Evanstone]: and then my mom relented probably so id go over there more [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Johngarden]: do you guys need help?[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: we got their asses dw [Order] [Loukinn]: my parents dont understand that some video games are violent and have curse words and some didnt [Order] [Loukinn]: i mean they literally understand at least my dad does[Order] [Loukinn]: but they dont make a distinction [Order] [Aizar]: my moms super religious = thinks all games are satanic[Order] [Aizar]: for a while growing up there was a total ban in the household but she gave up [Order] [Evanstone]: you wore her down [Order] [Aizar]: once i hit like 13 i started to scare her because i was a person[Order] [Aizar]: then i could do whatever i wanted[Order] [Loukinn]: i can do whatever i want p much[Order] [Evanstone]: i cannot[Order] [Johngarden]: LOL[Order] [Johngarden]: im in the same boat brother. except my dads uncle sam [Order] [Johngarden]: but at least theres hella downtime here on base [Order] [Johngarden]: everyone here games. even the vice-admiral has halo/guitar hero [Order] [Rivola]: these are the guys with the nukes [Order] [Evanstone]: but also its good to know theyre building eyehand coordination[Order] [Loukinn]: lol[Keoki] has come online. [Order] [Johngarden]: yoooooooooooooooo[Order] [Rivola]: whats up k[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: sup[Order] [Aizar]: hail hail order master [Order] [Johngarden]: louks been dropping bombs on us[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: o yea? wats goin down[Order] [Loukinn]: my dad infiltrated the order [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: ???[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: tf u mean lol[Order] [Evanstone]: dont worry about it[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: ??????[Order] [Loukinn]: he made a second account rolled an alt and joined up[Order] [Loukinn]: revealed himself only to me [Order] [Loukinn]: but he deleted[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: wat was his name[Order] [Aizar]: Hereward [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: wtf[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: i ran that fucker thru magnet hills[Order] [Loukinn]: he was violating a court order [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: so do i gotta call the cops??????[Order] [Johngarden]: no[Order] [Evanstone]: dont do that[Order] [Rivola]: o.O[Order] [Loukinn]: ya its ok[Order] [Loukinn]: it was awhile ago [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: #strangerdanger [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: well not a stranger…u no[Order] [Aizar]: but it all is pretty weird……[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Johngarden]: things still good?[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: ya ag[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: well i dont mean to diminish any revelations or watevr but does any1 wanna do queues thats y i logged on[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Johngarden]: LMK i am very close[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: or heroic blood forest [Order] [Johngarden]: heroic blood forest you say???[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: i do say [Order] [Johngarden]: got a daily in there [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: lfg [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: ok now we do need yr help johngarden[Order] [Johngarden]: can you gimme 10 min[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: ya [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Johngarden]: OMW[Order] [Rivola]: im guna join as well[Order] [Rivola]: need blood cloth[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: ok hell ya [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: any1 else[Order] [Aizar]: nah i’m gonna log [Order] [Loukinn]: im in queues [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: evan?[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: ah fuck[3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clington]: they brought a lot of buddies… [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: evannnnnnnn[Order] [Rivola]: i think hes afk [Order] [Johngarden]: need 5 min[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: yr good[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: evannnnnnnnnn[Order] [Evanstone]: wat[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: heroic? blood? forest?[Order] [Evanstone]: ok ok[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: yes[Order] [Aizar]: pece friends[Aizar] has gone offline. [Order] [Master] [Keoki]: sup w her?[Order] [Rivola]: shes broke [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Clio]: well im fuckin dead [3. Broodburgh Defense] [Johngarden]: samesies haha[Order] [Master] [Keoki]: damn. same
“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice says, cooing. “May I call you Sam?”The voice is low, mellow, musical. The English it speaks is careful, cultured, unhurried, seductive (or so Sam thinks; he’s become a connoisseur over the years). Its tone is polite and comforting with just an edge of anticipation. Normally, this voice has rarely been given the freedom to speak so much, to reel off so many carefully-edited chunks of information. It senses an ultimate victory.“Sam, or Sammy,” Sam says.“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice repeats. “Now, all you have to do—”“My mother used to call me Sammy,” Sam says. “And both my grandmothers. But not my grandfather on my mother’s side: he called me Ig, short for Iggy, I dunno why. My grandfather on my father’s side didn’t call me anything. He croaked long before I was born. I didn’t know him, obviously. Although I did dream of him, once. I recognized him from the old Polaroids, and in my dream he sort of had a static, faded appearance, and he approached me while I was in a library, the first library I remember, torn down long ago, he just sort of slowly came my way between the stacks, walking like he was in a swimming pool, and he called me Nathan, which is my father’s name, and I told him so, and boy was grandpa confused, he was in the wrong dream, which is absurd, but I don’t look anything much like my father, so I don’t know why grandpa called me Nathan, but then again I suppose because he never met me he didn’t know I’m Sam, and I felt very sorry for him, it must have taken a lot of effort to show up in a dream only to discover you’ve screwed up, that you’re in the wrong damn dream. My father, by the way, calls me Samuel.”A moment as the voice realizes Sam has finished.“That’s wonderful, Sam,” the voice says a third time, hesitant but pushing forward. “Now, all I need you to do is send the two hundred and eighty-five dollars to the address I’m about to give you, and once we’ve received it…”Sam, calm, listens, writes, nods. He worries about the dead grandfather he never met, worries that his grandfather is still wandering from dream to dream, looking for his son and never finding him.Sam sends the money.The next time he orders a bacon cheeseburger, Sam asks that the pickles and lettuce be left off. This is the first time he has done this, rather than pick off the pickles and lettuce later. “I don’t seem to be digesting them properly,” he tells the kid taking his order. “I love them, but now they don’t love me. It’s like I haven’t even eaten them. They just slide through me, and it’s disgusting. Same goes for the fried mushrooms. Next morning they’re there, swimming in the bowl, shorn of breading, otherwise intact. I don’t understand. Anyway, the burger comes with fries, right?”Sam calls his doctor, makes an appointment. He goes to the appointment, is early, brings a stool sample, pisses in a cup, opens his veins for an armada of blood tests.He follows up with a dietician, buys over-the-counter probiotics on his own initiative. He switches from table salt to sea salt. He avoids milk. He buys four bottles of sparkling Moscato D’Asti because it’s cheaper to do so in bulk with his CVS rewards membership, and is carded at the register. “I’m forty-six,” Sam tells the checkout lady. “No, you’re not,” she says, looking at his ID, “you’re forty-four.” Even though he is taken aback by this—who in their right mind goes around thinking they’re older?—Sam laughs and says, “Well, I’m thinking ahead,” and gets the hell out of there, bottles clanking in the inadequate plastic bag which is only seconds away from breaking.“Now, what this means,” the voice says, rolling right along, “is you are not charged a single penny for the first two months, and after that it’s only a nominal weekly charge, and you won’t be bothered by reminders, it’s all done automatically. With me so far, Mr. Riboste?” This voice is strong, clear, aware of its teeth, exudes confidence and knowledge. The voice hasn’t asked him if it’s all right to call him Sam, although Sam has been waiting to give permission.Sam nods, with no one to see him. “Still with me, Mr. Riposte?” the voice says.“One hundred and ten percent,” Sam says, “although I know there can’t be more than a hundred percent of anything, unless I’ve been misled. I’ll never forget the way Mr. Klebber, my fifth grade teacher, tried to prepare us for fractions. You sound just like him, only without the smoker’s rasp. A couple years ago I saw him at the bar of a strip club which is now a Burger King. I remember that he sat at the bar, his back to the strippers, nursing some tall drink in a frosted glass, and I never understood why anybody would go to a strip joint and not look at the strippers, but then I saw that the wall behind the bar was nothing but mirror, so you could see the action, only in reverse and a trifle warped. I said hello to him, but he didn’t know me, and when I reminded him that I had been his student back in the day, he only made one of those ‘pffft’ sounds when I mentioned the school, and he didn’t have anything further to say to me, just went back to clutching his drink, which had an umbrella and cherries on a spear, and watching the reflection of the stripper who, at the time, was my Aunt Patti on my mother’s side and was only ever invited to the big yard parties, nothing intimate like Christmas. She’s still around, although she’s not stripping anymore, which is probably all for the best, considering she’s north of seventy.”“That’s great, Mr. Riboste—”“Call me Sam.”Sam learns there is nothing wrong with him, but his doctor suggests he might be under a lot of stress or might be developing an ulcer. Sam doesn’t respond. His doctor presses the point. “I’m under no stress at all,” Sam says. His doctor says okay and hurries off to be late for his next patient.Sam’s sister asks him what happened with Uncle Herman’s electric trains because she wants them for her son, Toby, who hasn’t been born yet. Sam says, “Ask mom.” His sister tells him that Mom was the first person she asked and that Mom said Sam had taken them when he moved out. Sam denies this. “Where would I put all that junk?” Sam asks. His sister has never visited him; she has no idea of the cramped dimensions of his dump. “All that stuff is probably still in the basement,” Sam says. His sister says if the trains were still in the basement, Mom would have told her. “Go over and look anyway,” Sam says. His sister says he should go over and look, he’s closer. Sam reminds her once again that be that as it may, that yes he is closer to them, distance-wise, he is no longer closer to them, emotional-wise, even though he’s still closer than his sister, and besides, all those trains that Uncle Herman left behind were from the early Fifties, and that her future son, if ultimately desirous of fun in the form of scale-model trains that ran around in a loop, would probably want the latest models and not a pile of heavy junk that was so old its machinery growled whenever they were pressed into action. His sister says she doesn’t know why she calls; she can’t talk to him.“Everything you’re doing is perfect, Sam,” the voice says, aggressive and bright. “Now just go ahead and click on the link I just sent you.”Sam does as he’s told. “And now?” he asks.“Do you see the attachment, Sam?”“Yup.”“Go ahead and download the attachment, Sam.”Sam downloads, waits. A rainbow wheel spins. He and the voice wait for the wheel to disappear.“I hope you aren’t feeling pressured in any way, Sam,” says the voice. Bright, aggressive, but not bullying. The voice of the younger brother Sam always wanted.“I’ve always been good at following directions,” Sam says, “except for this one time when I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to put up a pup tent, and I think that was because it required two people to put it together and there was only me. This was at a camping trip, my first, I was really young, during college, I think junior year, a bunch of us drove across the state to a place just along the river, the camp sites high up, you had to drive a long, curving road that wound its way up, and I had to drive separate because my friends and their girlfriends had loaded up the van with all sorts of stuff, and they were busy putting up their tent, a real deluxe thing, it slept six, but they had suggested I not bunk in with them because, well, at some point they were going to get intimate and they didn’t think I’d want to suffer through something like that, so there I was with this little tent I’d picked up last minute, cheap, couldn’t figure it out, and the little hammer that was included wasn’t much better than, like, a jeweler’s hammer, tink-tink-tink, not doing much of anything, they were all laughing at me, tink-tink-tink, then they weren’t laughing because, as you can imagine, it got to be annoying, and then later there was this big storm, you could hear it coming through the trees before it hit, a great whooshing, and my tent blew away, I ended up sleeping in my car.”“You didn’t deserve that, Sam,” the voice says. “Now go ahead and open that attachment.”Sam sees her when he was certain he would never see her again. She is there, handling plates, telling a young salesperson that she’s just looking. She hasn’t seen Sam.Sam considers making his presence known to her. “Well, this is a nice surprise,” he imagines himself saying. To which he imagines her saying, “Oh my God, I’ve been thinking of you,” while Sam says, “You have?” while she says, “Quite a lot, actually,” while Sam says, “Good things, I hope,” while she says, “There are no bad things,” and then he imagines them telling each other how they’ve been for the past eighteen years, what they’ve been doing, how each other hasn’t changed at all, and she says, “You know, I’ve always wanted to tell you that I made a mistake,” while he says nothing, not maliciously, but he hopes he knows what’s coming, and she goes on, “The thing is, Sam, you’re the love of my life, and I didn’t know it then, or I did know it but was too afraid of my feelings, they were that strong, so I ran, and I really, really hope you can forgive me.”None of this happens. Sam watches her pick up a box of stemless wineglasses, tuck it under her arm, and head for the closest register. As she passes, she sees Sam, but there is no recognition in her eyes, he could be one of the displays, she’s on her way, no doubt to the man she told him, long ago, that she was going to marry, the man that wasn’t even there to lug her wineglasses.“You need to act quickly, Sam,” the voice says. This voice reminds him of the elder pastor from his church who baptized him and who later, when Sam was fresh out of college, listened to Sam’s ongoing concerns about life and love and trauma without giving so much as spiritual advice before hastening off to a Stewardship Committee Meeting. “But you’ve been so good at acting quickly,” the voice continues. “I don’t want you to feel pressured, however, Sam.”“I’m good,” Sam says.“Love it. I know it sounds too good to be true, Sam, or maybe you think it’s too true to be good, ha ha ha.”“When I was little boy,” Sam says, “First Grade, I went out during recess and I went on the slide, but my foot got caught in the side rail, my left foot, I was wearing blue sneakers with white laces, I can remember it like yesterday, and the kid behind decided to slide down anyway and I went over the side, I was dangling by my left leg, looking straight down at the asphalt, nobody noticed, and I don’t know why I didn’t call out, maybe I was certain that I was seconds away from my skull busting open like a ripe melon, but this other kid, Brady Sorrentino, was suddenly below me with his arms outstretched, telling me he’d catch me, he was a bigger kid, he’d been held back a year, not the brightest kid but real sweet, very handsome, the girls all had crushes on him at one time or another over the years, and there I was swinging from that slide like a piñata, certain that Brady wouldn’t catch me but hoping he would, and still nobody, none of the teachers, none of the other kids, had noticed my peril, but there was Brady’s sincere, trusting face, Brady reaching up to me, and I didn’t fall, I hauled myself back up onto the slide, slid down, got up, walked away as best I could, and by ‘best I could’ I mean limping, and I never went back on that slide, and when I turned to thank Brady for the help he had offered, he was already off kicking a ball across the playground, and I never thanked him, not properly, not at all, because he hadn’t saved me, and I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of the other kids by thanking him for being so brave and coming to my rescue. Years later I heard that Brady had gone to jail for something, I don’t know if I ever heard for what, and he might still be in jail, but I don’t know.”“You can pay with gift cards or cryptocurrency, Sam,” the voice says, “and I, for one, am so glad you didn’t take a header off that slide.”“It sucks, after nineteen years,” Sam’s boss tells him, “but what can you do?”“Twenty-one,” Sam says.“Twenty-one what?”“Years.”“Is that so? Huh. Well, it doesn’t matter, because we, as you know, don’t have a severance package, although in certain cases leadership will decide to maybe throw in a month’s pay, even two months’ pay.”“What’s leadership giving me?”“I said in certain cases, Jim.”“Sam.”“Huh? Oh, yeah. Sam. I always got that wrong, it sounds so much like Jim. The things our minds do, right? I just need you to sign there at the bottom, and you can just leave your badge on my desk.”“How was your day, Sam?” the voice asks. Sam is almost certain he’s heard this voice before. It is like satin. It is like sunshine. He tells the voice how his day was.“Did you sleep okay, Sam?” Sam says he assumes he did because he felt rested, if not refreshed, when he woke up.“What did you eat for dinner, Sam?” Sam says he wasn’t hungry, but he’d had a can of smoked oysters and a bag of raisins for lunch.“I love talking to you, Sam,” says the voice. “I love talking to you even more than I loved talking about my husband, who died, if you remember me mentioning it. I love the fact that you were so sorry to hear that even when you didn’t know the man. I love that you’re sincerely interested in my child, in my child’s health and welfare, and that you think that my child going to school in another country was a smart move even considering our little problem right now. I love that you’re here for me, Sam, or there for me, and I’m here for you, Sam. I don’t have anyone, Sam, no relatives, no friends. Just you, Sam. You listen, you tell me such wonderful things about yourself, you make me feel like you’re right here in the room with you, Sam.”Sam feels warm, despite the heat being shut off. He doesn’t just feel warm; he feels engulfed in radiance. He listens to the voice and feels himself looking up at a small boy hanging from his left foot from a slide, he feels himself smiling, a forced smile of encouragement; no, a genuine smile of responsibility, a smile encouraging trust, the small boy so close Sam can almost reach him and release him, take him away in his arms.
First guy says: you’re gonna see a UFO. Like, BOOM. He lays this on me. Right now you’re probably thinking well, if that doesn’t torpedo the whole thing for you. But it didn’t. Okay? It didn’t. I sat there and let him tell me I was gonna see a UFO because sometimes you’re in the middle of a divorce and sometimes staring down the barrel of your life and sometimes you’d pay someone, anyone, to tell you that you’re not completely fucked. “Where do I go with this,” he says. “Do you believe?”“In UFOs?” I ask. “Sure, what the hell.”“You’re gonna have some kind of experience,” he says. “Very abnormal.”Buddy led me into a room in the back of a woo shop three blocks from our apartment. The room was dark but for a salt lamp. Took my hands into his. Told me he was blind from birth, that he sees things. Takes someone’s hand and sees flashes, impressions. Big life events. Traumas, he calls them, both good and bad. His hands smelled of menthol.“Looks like a spaceship,” he says. “With an octopus on it.”“Feels a little on the nose,” I say.“You will have trouble believing it,” he says. “And even more trouble convincing other people.”“No shit,” I say.When he was a kid this guy took the hand of a school teacher and told her she lost her ring, and that she’d find it in the couch cushions. Sure enough. My problem is that I am prone to believing these things. I am, as my ex says, suggestible. Open-minded at best, gullible at worst. I sit down and say hit me, motherfucker. “It’s not gonna hurt me, right,” I say. “Mm,” he says, unconvinced.“I don’t care if I see it,” I say. “Just don’t hurt me.”You might not believe this, but there’s logic to it. People visit psychics and card readers for control. To know everything is gonna turn out okay. Like if I only know what’s coming, I can prepare. The bad will hurt less. The good will sustain me. But nothing prepares you for a fucking UFO, and nothing prepared me for what he said next. “Have you ever had a kiss, like, BANG,” he says. “Fireworks.”“No,” I say.“Not yet,” he says.“With the alien?” I ask, helplessly.
***
Nobody tells you you’re going to get divorced while snorkelling with sea turtles in Maui. Not right that second, not exactly. But maybe one day you’ll be on a tourist boat cannonballing along the broad side of a crater into water so blue it makes you seize up, like you’d drown happy. There isn’t a word for how blue the water is. Around you there will be other sweaty tourists flapping in the water, huffing through masks, pointing and waving at sea turtles. Your husband kicks gently toward them and as you watch him hover above, giving them space, just curious, not an intrusive jackass like the others, you will see him engulfed in the blue and your first thought will be oh, no.Maybe, I mean. Not exactly like that. But something like it. There’s always a moment. The first in a long line of them which leads you to lawyers, and long talks with family, and whispered goodbyes to his back in the middle of the night, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I love you, I’m sorry.
***
In the middle of the reading, menthol guy goes to blow his nose. I record the reading so I can remember everything and the part that I keep coming back to is the part where he leaves to blow his nose. I whisper what the fuck just barely loud enough for the audio. I remember that what the fuck because it felt like being knocked out. One haymaker after another, sitting there, being told all these, I don’t know—things—about you.“I like this one,” he says. “You go to take hands and dance. He puts his hand on your back, like—and I can see you through his eyes. He really treats you like a lady.”“Oh?” I say.“There are rings involved,” he says. “You pick them out together.”“Oh,” I whisper.He turns a little bit red in the face.“You really enjoy undressing him,” he says. “You waste no time, girl.”“OH,” I cried, belting laughter. There were other things, more specific things. I wanted to know everything about you. I wanted to know but was struck too dumb to ask anything useful. All I did was repeat, oh, okay when he found a new memory, or future, or whatever it was he was seeing, all these beautiful scraps of you, and when I did finally get the courage to ask what you looked like I inhaled sharply—the sound of it, a hiss on the recording—because the big dumb asshole he described looked exactly like the one I’d asked for when I stood in front of god.
***
When I left the woo shop we went to the grocery store. We were still living together. We gave ourselves a year and it was okay, because we were still best friends, still needed each other. Made shopping lists and fed the cat and hollered at our sports team. But I couldn’t tell him about the psychic because he doesn’t believe in them. Fair play to him. He’s very studied in science and medicine. Things that you can prove, things that don’t need wild faith or willing delusion.So I stood in the toilet paper aisle feeling tilted. Like I’d been knocked off an axis. The lights were screaming fluorescent. Carts and people flowing around me. If this were a movie there would be some kind of excellent soundtrack, something profound playing while I had my little spiritual crisis, but this is hot stupid life and so I stood there stunned while Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” droned on around me like my own personal Vietnam.No proof, but possibility. You are a possibility, now. Something I can’t unknow.
***
I didn’t mean to go to more psychics. I swear. But it became something like an experiment. The idea was to cross-reference the data. Like if someone could tell me, again, what you looked like, or about the slow dance, or the rings, or the tearing your clothes off—maybe I could believe it for real. This was how I found myself in some grandma’s garage on a hot July day, an hour and a half out of town in a suburb. You don’t want to know what the Uber bill was. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, honey. He’s a mess.”“Uh,” I say.“Does he cry a lot?” she asks. “I get the feeling he cries a lot.”We had a couple of iced teas between us, sweating in the humidity. Her husband had half the garage, some kind of snarling muscle car with her guts falling out all over. The other half was decorated with plants and crystals and stone buddhas and wall hangings that highlighted rainbow chakra points. This lady used to have a call in show on local cable. She had been in the paper. She sat before me in a bathing suit, fanning herself with a handful of junkmail.“I just want to squeeze him,” she says. “He’s a real turkey.”“What does he look like,” I ask. She considers.“You know,” she says, “my youngest daughter is about to get engaged.”“Congrats,” I say. “I called my son-in-law the day he bought the ring, knowing without knowing, and told him he’d better size that thing down. He called me a spooky old bitch.”She took a big gulp of her iced tea and drummed her nails against her forehead, frowning. Her grandbabies were in the pool out back. Screams and splashing over a steady cicada buzz. Heat rose in waves on her freshly paved driveway. “He’s in a relationship,” she says. “He’s not ready to leave yet.”“Oh,” I say.“He’s sad all the time,” she says. “Feels like he has to see it through.”“Oh,” I say. “His eyes, though,” she says. “Goddamn.”“Oh?” I ask.“Bluest you’ve ever seen,” she says. “Like you’d drown happy.”
***
When the divorce was done I took a trip out west. Found myself in the tourist part of a California town. Mexican restaurants and breweries and things. Thumping baseballs at a place near the beach, a batting cage. They weren’t coming fast enough. I turned the speed up, up, up. Each crack of the bat a release I didn’t know I needed. Step in, hips before hands, follow through on that swing. My hands hurt, after. I found the third one because what the hell, I was on vacation with money to blow and there is not a single thing anyone could tell me that would surprise me anymore. She had a little shop at the end of the pier, a real tourist trap. I was probably better off firing money into those old Zoltar machines. The lady was dressed all in black, like you’d expect these people would be. She had some kind of accent that felt Romanian but was more likely fake. She looked haunted as shit. “You have aura,” she says. “Psychic aura.”“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”“It’s purple,” she says. “Tinged with white.”Something that might interest you to know is that I didn’t bring you up to any of these people. The psychics, I mean. Part of rolling in there like hit me, motherfucker is daring a stranger to tell you about yourself without giving anything away. The trouble is that people are predictable. They want the holy trinity of prediction: love, wealth, health. So you could say that about anyone, the love thing. I could use a good word about health or wealth but I never get it because all they ever tell me about is you.“There’s this man,” she says. “Jesus,” I say. “Again?”“He’s going to be in the palm of your hand,” she says. She held her palm out. Without warning, she brought her other one down on it with a sharp SMACK. It made me jump.“He’s scared to get crushed,” she says.“I’ll hold my applause,” I say.
***
There is a lady I see sometimes, on a Zoom call. I found her online. She has a big thundering laugh and platinum blonde hair and very thin eyebrows. She swears a lot and calls me hun and tells me I am not crazy; that you do, in fact, exist. You were the first thing she saw about me. I frowned at my laptop and stonewalled her. “He’s in your energy, hun,” she says. “Ohhh, he’s coming.”“But my wealth,” I say.“Hm,” she says. “You’re going to get a promotion. In about two months.”Sure enough. “But my health,” I say.“Fix your guts,” she says. “Jesus Christ.”Sure enough.She describes you exactly like the first guy did, and then some. Tells me what you look like—That hair! That build! That smile!—how sweet and funny you are, how you talk and talk and talk. Tells me about your big goofy feet and your kind eyes. How I’ll know you anywhere, when you finally get here. She lights up when she talks about you. Says one day I will email her with a picture, and she will get to say a big fat fucking I TOLD YOU SO. “When,” I say.“Soon enough,” she says. “These things happen in perfect time.”She takes my money, keeps the faith. I pay her when I want to visit you. You’re not just data, now. You’re a composite sketch, someone I could describe to a police department (are you a criminal? Nobody ever says anything bad about you.) I wonder if you are just someone that everyone wants to hear about—the sweet, the funny, the eyes. Love stories recycled for a fool. “Big feet,” she says, cackling. “Lucky girl.”
***
Two years after the divorce, I took a trip out east. I ate slices of pizza dripping with grease and bummed around the East Village until I found a tiny shop. Hole in the wall with a big obvious sign. No bigger than a closet. Two chairs, a big blanket covering the wall with a zodiac wheel on it. Incense smell. Told myself it would be the last time, though, of course, it never is. The guy draped himself over his chair and pulled tarot cards. He told me the wrong interpretations. I know, because I pull them myself. “Oh,” he says. “There’s a man.” “Bullshit,” I say.“There’s always a man,” he says.Logically, I know that he is a grifter. Most of them probably are. But I’m compelled, now. It’s like I can’t stop. Love stories are a drug I can’t quit; just one more fix, one more fix. I’m a sucker for a future that may never come.“He hasn’t shown up yet,” he says, “because you have a block.”“Oh,” I say.“I can help you get rid of it,” he says.“Oh,” I say. “Oh, I’m sure.”“There’s a darkness in your heart,” he says. “You’re faithless.”I’m tempted to believe him. It’s easier to think that it’s my fault, somehow. That I am undeserving of the love I want. The stupid part about this psychic thing, about playing chicken with fate, is that you’re living in the anticlimax. That if these things ever come—the bad you prepared for, the good that sustained you—you will only say, oh, okay. And if they don’t come—well, it doesn’t matter, does it? You survive just the same.“Five hundred,” he says.“No,” I say, and leave.
***
The day I sat my ex down and told him I wanted a divorce was like any other. There wasn’t anything special about it. It was just a day. We went to work and came home and I told him. I don’t remember the weather. March, it was March. So the weather could have been anything, really. I don’t remember what I ate. I don’t remember feeling much of anything. Except sad, I think. I was really sad.“Why,” he asked.“We’re not in love anymore,” I said.“Oh,” he said.He didn’t fight me on it. There was the love thing, and then the kids thing. The hard stop. The way he deserves them, if anyone on earth deserves them it’s him and I was never going to be the one to give that to him. We loved each other enough to let go. “What do you want,” he said.I almost choked on it. It felt too big an ask.“I want fucking fireworks,” I said.He considered for a moment.“Does that even exist?” he asked.I don’t know who I felt more sorry for. Him, for not believing. Or me, for wanting to. But I said that six whole months before seeing that first guy, the menthol guy. And buddy took my hands and, without knowing a single thing about me, told me one day I’d have them—the fireworks. Maybe you think I am stupid, or naïve. But maybe you could forgive me, too, for needing to know I had good reason to make my life go BOOM.
***
There is about as much chance of me getting that fireworks kiss as seeing a UFO. Maybe that’s what I’m trying to say. That I’m rooting for it. The alien, I mean. I want to stare that octopus motherfucker down and know, somewhere, somehow, that you do exist. That one day you’ll light up the night sky, too.
The Gimp BoxI lay in my apartment worrying about death and worrying that my constant worrying would eventually manifest in my sickness and death. So, when I saw a job ad looking for a “big guy” who was willing to “become anonymous” and to live in a “dungeon”, I said: Bingo. Because I really needed a place to hide out from Shovel. Mrs Beatrix’s place of business was on the cobbled streets of the Rossebuurt district, Amsterdam.“That house,” said a man, pointing at a terrace house. “The dungeon is below,” he said, with a terrible excitement. “Are you the new Gimp?”I said nothing. “How old are you?” he said in a whisper.“Twenty-six.”The man swallowed. “Mrs Beatrix makes the Gimps wear masks, so you never see their face,” he said. He looked crazy, but crazy in a way that I could handle. Not the pitiless kind that made Shovel a monster. My first month working for Mrs Beatrix, I learned to hog-tie clients, and gag them. I learned that clients liked to laugh as they whipped me. And I began to feel like maybe I wasn’t as heinous a person as I had thought. This all happened strictly under contract, on Tuesdays through Saturdays, matinee and evening sessions. Mrs Beatrix turns the dungeon lights off at ten pm each night, and I get locked up in the Gimp box with Gary. I’m 6’4” so the box is tight, it’s wide enough but not long enough. Gary gets in first, curls up, and I spoon him. We sleep together like big puppies.Gary used to be an accountant. He is short and pudgy with grey skin and greying hair that’s flat almost as if it’s been ironed. He is teaching me the Gimp code. In our situation it’s good to stick together, he says. Follow the code, he says. He’s a good leader. You know? We live in symbiosis. We ablute together. We eat together. That shit engenders a closeness. Gimps are supposed to be occasionally “naughty”, sometimes we’re supposed to resist the clients and—but what happened was, I punched out a farmer from Nacogdoches, TX. Broke off his tooth.This farmer was strangling me. Not in an out of the ordinary way, but certain kinds of men remind me of Shovel. And this Nacogdoches toolbag reminded with more veracity than most. And I fucken lost it. À la his broken tooth.So after we get locked up in the Gimp Box, Gary says, “You’ve got a lot of repressed rage, buddy. You broke the Gimp code.”“I know, man. I’m sorry.”“Also, you breached your contract. You’re lucky Mrs Beatrix didn’t fire you.”“I know. Thanks for talking to her.”“The client wants to sue. Litigation, buddy. And we couldn’t find that tooth. Luckily, she’s got a soft spot for you.”“She fucken hates me.”Gary sighed...“I’m sorry man. I know you’re trying to help me.”“I’ve never seen a Gimp go ape-shit like that,” said Gary. “With one of your arms chained to the wall? No, I have not seen that. Just between you and me, that was impressive.”I didn’t say anything.“You’ve had some experience brawling, huh?”“Some,” I said quietly.“Buddy. Are you hiding from the law?”“The law? No. I got myself in trouble with a guy.”“And he’s not a good guy to be in trouble with?”“Yeah.”“It’s okay,” said Gary. “This is a good place to hide. You’re anonymous. But you also need to be submissive, okay. Calm.”“Yeah.”“Now, let’s go to sleep. And no more bad dreams, okay?”“Okay.”“Because we live in a nightmare world, buddy. A world of the dark and the depraved. And so our dreams are our freedom. So dream of white sand, untouched and serene, the ocean lapping warm over your feet, coming and receding like a heartbeat – Dum-dum, dum-dum....”Gary goes through the ritual, and I fall to sleep. Since I’ve been working for Mrs Beatrix, my nightmares have been less. They are almost gone, Gary says. He says it’s just training. You do the work, work hard on yourself, then you change. You change yourself. Rather than external shit changing you. Then you’re on a path to freedom.Doing the workThe dungeon has brick walls and slate floors. Easy to clean. It has a wooden door like a castle. It’s heated by pipes and is always warm. Sweating is important to the clients. Two Saturdays a month, Mrs Beatrix runs the beginner sessions. Mrs Beatrix has to work hard to get the newbies into the zone. Every new face, I’m looking for Shovel. Would he recognise me in this devil-horned oni kabuki mask? While I’m chained against a wall and getting limply cat-o-nine-tailed by a short fat guy with his balls duct-taped against one thigh and his dick duct-taped against the other? Gary is in a leather onesie that you crawl into via an ass-crack zipper. He has a red-fanged oni kabuki mask on and an elegant lady is tentatively slapping his bottom with a paddle.When Mrs Beatrix finally creates a suitable atmosphere of fear and adrenaline, when the clients enter the zone, what I see is: Gary is getting hot candle wax dripped on him by a bird-like male in a fedora hat. And Gary’s oni kabuki mask, is it smiling, or grimacing? I can’t say. But it’s just a mask, and under the mask Gary is calm, because Gary is on a white beach, feeling the sand between his toes, feeling the sun on his back, seeing the wonders that God hath made. The fedora hat man gets me in a choke hold and I’m gagging for air while Gary serenely submits to about twenty pegs being latched onto his nipples. I wish for that kind of serenity.What does the Gimp contract allow?-Open handed slaps,-Pinching,-Tickles and horsey-bites.Just for starters.Gary and I have different contracts. In my contract there’s no nudity. No sex. General cleaning duties. Light battery. Slapping, whipping, etc. Strangulation within reason, no blackouts. Those are the basics, which is good enough for most clients, apart from the more sickos. The sickos want more and pay more but are still never happy. That’s why I also have “security duties” in my contract. The idea is I’m a Gimp primarily, but also a Security Guard in the event of some sicko getting out-of-kilter. My safe word is Bananas. But if a sicko gets out-of-kilter and my role becomes Security, then the code word is Thunderdome.A hundred dollars an hour, plus board.But Gary’s got different clauses in his contract.Because Gary can take almost anything, submissively and contentedly.-Getting peed on, for example.At the same time as wrestling a client, Gary is watching Mrs Beatrix’s back to make sure no one sneaks up on her, and also keeping an eye on me—he can tell just from the pallor of my skin what my O2 levels are. I’ve seen him subdue volatile clients with little other than gentle patting; love basically. What Gary does, it comes from compassion. The clients come for Mrs Beatrix in the same way that fans went to see Nirvana because of Kurt Cobain, not realising that there in back was the hero Dave Ghrol.By the end of the beginner session, Mrs Beatrix is stepping on client faces, twisting her foot down on strangled balls. She is six-one and PVC-clad. Only wears black. She is visually ageless, and raven. How I see all of this is through a plastic bag over my face held there by the pale, hazy form of a plump patron. My hands are chained to the wall and there is a moment of panic but Beatrix pulls the bag off my head just before I call Bananas.She has a sixth sense for that shit. And she whips the frenzied plump guy into a corner and he begs for forgiveness.I will kill that fat shit if I ever see him in the real world.Oh I will. Oh my God, I am a killer at heart.I memorise the motherfucker’s face.Which, of course, is a breach of the Gimp code.Sometimes in the Gimp box, Gary coughs. He tries to muffle the coughs, but we are pressed together in just loincloths, so I can tell. I’m not sure why he’s trying to hide it. But the morning after the Saturday session I see a fine mist of blood adhered to the wall of the Gimp box.What does the Gimp code say about secrets?The same as every other decent code. So I wipe the blood clean and say nothing. On SundayWe clean the dungeon. We use a high pressure washer. But first we scrub the walls with a Makita Power Bristle and a Bulk Blenz Industrial Cleaner that smells like Forest Pine. We mop the floor. We lubricate the chains and whips. Disinfect the swings, slings, cuffs, restraints, masks and gags (anything leather). Wipe down the nipple stimulators. Fold the laundered hand towels. And oil the dildo machine. This is all contractual.Afterwards we sit in the small courtyard out the back of Mrs Beatrix’s terrace drinking coffee. It is cold but sunny and I can sit out here without a mask. Gary says Mrs Beatrix is married. Her real name is Carol Smithers. “How long have you worked here, Gaz?”Gary looks up from the De Telegraaf, shrugs. “Ten years,” he says. Gary is wearing cargo pants and sandals. He is also wearing socks. “It’s been interesting work,” he says. “There’s always more to learn.”“Learn what?”“Inner peace,” he says, standing. “Let’s go for a walk.”I don’t know about that. No one knows me in this old part of the Dam. However, my likeness is easily described. Shovel has ways of finding people. There is an answering machine in an apartment that I still, theoretically, rent; and I called it not that long ago, and there was a message. Come see me, he said. Don’t make me look, he said, not indifferently but not without heat. The anguish of waiting, buddy, isn’t that worse than just plain blackness?“Come on,” says Gary. “We’ll be fine.” I pull my cap low and put my grey hoodie up over my head, and follow Gary into the gothic adventureland of De Wallen.The streets are one-way ruts made in Medieval times that are used now almost exclusively by Volkswagens. Sex workers in windows remove sleep from their eyes and stifle yawns. Gary buys a twenty-four pack of toilet paper and carries it around. In a church hall beside the Hash & Hemp Museum there is ballroom dancing on Sundays.Gary can dance.Waltz, Samba, Rhumba, Capioeria, Salsa, Tango, swing.He dances, portly Gary. He can lead. Good leading is invisible, unnoticeable. Gary maintains tautness between himself and his partner. When Gary and a new partner become synchronous, each surrenders to the other. Gary’s ability to surrender is his strength. It’s why he’s a good dancer and it accounts for the deftness of his fingers as he hogties a client, for his tolerance of fear and pain, and for his oneness with the revs of the dildo machine.HaircutGary wants to get his hair cut. I sit on the stoop out front of the hairdresser. “I’ll mind the toilet paper.”“I had a son about the same age as you,” says Gary. “He never made an effort with his appearance either.” Gary is smiling but there is pain there. The door bell chimes as he goes inside and sits and the hairdresser floats an apron over him.What I do with the info that Gary had a son is I wonder what if I was Gary’s son. Gary would be a great father. I lean back against the building and close my eyes.In my mind I see a debtor, a man so far in debt that it cannot be repaid by money alone. The man is on his knees, holding his forearm protectively across his face but it doesn’t stop the bat as the bat comes crashing down on his arm and his face and he lies shivering there, flat on the wet bitumen. Haha, harhar, goes Shovel. Again, he says to me, as I am holding the bat.When I open my eyes, a man across the road is staring at me. “You were talking in your sleep,” he says. He puts his finger to his lips and sits back into a shadow. I can see why I didn’t see him before, the building is grey and he is grey–grey face, grey beard, grey beanie, sitting in a grey sleeping bag, ready for the Arctic, but wearing black sunglasses and holding a bunch of dead flowers. This man is a chameleon against a wall, no predator would ever find. Perhaps this is a choice he made, to hide. Or, he has become like this through being forgotten. Does it matter? What it comes down to: he is no one.“What you doing with all that toilet paper?” he says. “You going to use it all?”“In time,” I say.But I get up and I give the man two rolls, and he asks how much money I have. I don’t like his smell, he smells like piss, I don’t like that I don’t like it but I still don’t, and for this reason I don’t lie to him. I tell him I’ve got fifty Euro on me. But I’m keeping it. I don’t know what you would use it for, but that’s not why I’m keeping it, I say to him. I’m keeping it because I’m selfish. I want it.“Well, thanks for the roll,” he says, holding the flowers and the rolls. “Happy dreams.”I take a mental snapshot of his face for this is a man who has seen me at my weakest and knows that I am vulnerable.Ampallang As I lay down with Gary and close the lid of the Gimp box, the dungeon door opens and Mrs Beatrix comes in. I can see her high heels through the breathing holes at the bottom of the box.“Hello boys,” she says as she sits down and crosses her legs. “How is buddy today?”Gary says. “He’s doing well, Carol.”Mrs Beatrix says, “He’s doing a lot better, lately.”Gary says, “yes.”I don’t speak to Beatrix. Gary is The Gimp Rep. Beatrix is negotiating an appropriate reparations deal with the farmer from Nacogdoches, TX. His dental bill was four thousand dollars. We don’t want any police or lawyers involved, so she is having to figure out a way to console him, financially. “What are you getting at?” says Gary.“Well, I’ve had a request that might help us with the finances,” she says. “A well connected, potential, new client, who is willing to pay extra if you were both to be ampallanged.”I feel Gary tighten. The tip of Mrs Beatrix’s heel begins to jiggle.“Body piercings are excluded under contract, Carol.”“Yes Gary. This would require an amendment. You’d be compensated. We’d all be well compensated,”“How well compensated?” “A thousand dollars, for each of you.”I try to advise Gary through touch that this is more than fucken okay with me.“I’m unsure if buddy knows what ampallanging involves Carol.”“Tell him it’s a male genital piercing that penetrates horizontally through the glands.”“A barbell through the head of the penis,” says Gary.My grip on Gary weakens.“Yes,” says Mrs Beatrix. “I’ll need to discuss it with him, Carol.”“Of course,” she says getting up. She pauses though. “Gary, this is an... important client. I...” she sighs.“It’s okay, Carol. Let me speak to buddy.”“Good night boys.”“Good night,” says Gary and there is a solemnity in his voice and great power, the amazing power of the unsaid and a kind of love. Gary says there’s nothing in the code that obligates a gimp to respond to non-contractual requests like this. But there’s the money though, Gary doesn’t mention the money. Gary’s question is: if it’s not in the contract, and it’s not in the Gimp code, then why (aside from the cash, I’m thinking), would we agree to this? This painful thing. And the answer for Gary is that Mrs Beatrix has been good to us and cares for us, and pain is just pain. Because Gary does things out of kindness. But I want the money, a grand might get me out of a good part of the trouble I’m in.A Bullet In The HeadThe body-piercing place is in a tattoo studio just over the Rokin. We have a booking under the name Carol Smithers. The receptionist’s eyes flick to my pants before she looks up. “Right,” she says, jabbing her thumb backwards. “I just need to get... Bear,” she calls.A bear-sized man comes out from the curtain, wizened and rough with scars. He assesses me professionally. “That’s some crazy ink, brother,” he says about my face. He slaps his palms together. “So, who’s first?”“I just need to sit down a minute,” says Gary, and he begins coughing.“You alright?”“Yes.” He nods, coughs. “You... go...”There is a white room behind the curtain. There are instruments. The young receptionist joins us. There is a big boned woman in there with a Maureen nametag in a nurse’s outfit who is wiping down tools with alcohol swabs.The Bear asks me if I want to sit or stand. He says that the young receptionist is going to do me. She hasn’t done genital stuff before, because she is a trainee, but that’s why we got the discount, he says, smiling.I stand in front of a waist-high workbench. The young receptionist puts a wooden block down perpendicular to me and I take out my dick and lay it along the block. Like a corpse at the morgue. She looks at it. Then she looks at Maureen. Maureen looks at it with a medical expert’s indifference. “Bear,” she says, “you want to take a look at this.”Bear comes over, raises an eyebrow. ‘Better use the bigger gauge,’ he says, and he selects a long, tri-bevelled, steel needle from a tray of equipment.. The average penis has a 3.2 inch circumference. You drive a 12 gauge needle through 3.2 inches of dick, then there is a scientific law from which you can deduce how much meat will be displaced by the needle. But displaced where? Out the side of the head? Like brains from a gunshot wound?The young receptionist holds the needle a half inch above my dick. The second before you shoot someone in the head for the first time, as the gun is shaking in your hand, that’s the moment you remember, the moment when you could’ve, in theory, refused. Through the back window I can see a timber Ferris wheel, its empty cages trundling up and over, the whole thing seeming to move like a giant cog driven by some mechanism of wind and time. The receptionist’s hands are trembling.…… “Just fucken do it,” I say to her.Gary and I shuffle back to the dungeon like two critically ampallanged soldiers. There is nothing for the throbbing except to ice ourselves and become absorbed in a few rounds of Canasta.But, there is something wrong with Gary in the Gimp box that night. I wake up because he is so hot he’s burning me. He goes stiff, then his body becomes a bag of air, then it’s like the bag has wild rats in it. But I can’t wake him. I shove up onto my hands and knees and press my back against the Gimp lid. He’s convulsing. I slam myself upwards until the hinge gives. And I get out and Gary flails against the walls of the Gimp box. I bang on the dungeon door but it’s soundproof. The dildo machine weighs about 15 kilos so I grab it and ram the door open. Then I limp upstairs to the interior door that leads into Beatrix’s house. I bang my fist on the door. “We need help.”Bang. Bang. Bang.“Hello?”“Something’s wrong with Gary.”“Pardon?”I can feel Beatrix’s presence behind the door, strangely tentative.“Open the door Carol... Don’t make me bust it down.”The door opens a crack. There is a light behind the door and Carol–Mrs Beatrix–Carol Smithers is way older than I thought. She is an elderly woman. Dressed in a terry toweling robe, her hair in curlers, she looks fragile. Her eyes widen as she sees my unmasked, tattooed face, as she sees the version of me that I have long cultivated. I have worshipped all versions of the devil. “Call an ambulance,” I say.I carry Gary upstairs into Carol’s living room. The room is cluttered by two skirted, overstuffed sofas in floral green and floor lamps with lace-fringed shades. In the corner is an ancient man in a wheelchair, Mr Smithers I assume. He breathes through an oxygen mask.Carol is on her knees holding Gary’s head in her lap, talking to him. The way she talks to him, and smooths his hair, it’s what Gary deserves, that love. The Gimp BoxGary doesn’t come back the next morning. So I clean the dungeon. I clean it once so it’s clean and then a second time, because I’m in here alone but if I’m cleaning I’m not just alone I’m doing something.I’m sitting on the Gimp box icing my penis when there’s a knock on the dungeon door.“Buddy, can you get in the box please. I’d like to talk to you.”Beatrix comes in. She tells me that Gary is out of hospital, but he is not coming back. The doctor recommended against further Gimping.“What’s wrong with him,” I say. “Was it the ampallang?”“He’s...dying buddy.”“What?”“I’m sorry. He’s known for some time.”“What’s wrong with him?”“He said you’d ask that, but he doesn’t want anyone to dwell on it.”“Dwell on it... Well, how long has he got?”“I don’t know,” she says her voice shaking. “Not very long.”“Where is he?”Carol sighs. “He said you would ask that, but even if I knew I couldn’t tell you buddy. I’m bound by confidentiality.”“What, by the contract?”“Yes.”“... did he tell you not to tell me?”“I’m sorry buddy,” she says quietly. “It’s not about you or us, he wants to be alone.” Through the holes in the box I can see her heels and the shins of her leather pants. “I’ve known him since he was a boy,” she says. “I loved him, very much, before I met Alfred.”“Alfred. The old guy, with the tank?” “Gary says he doesn’t know if you’ll want to stay, if he is gone.”I don’t say anything.“Gary wanted me to read you something. Okay?”“Okay.”“Dear Buddy,” she reads. “I’ve known a handful of Gimps in my time and not ever have I felt as strongly for one as I do for you. I know you are a gentle man under all the smoke and mirrors, and I like that man. I know you hate the thought of yourself alone in the gimp box. But buddy, the sufferer is the liver of life, experiencing life as it is. The hedonist only ever searches for life. To live with suffering and worry is a learned skill like any other, to forgive is a learned skill too. And there is forgiveness in the box buddy. I found it in there. We live in a nightmare world buddy, but there’s a white beach somewhere with your name spelled out in its sands.”Carol folds the note. “You know I can’t do the shit Gary does.”“I know, we need to expand your capabilities.”“I don’t know about being in this fucken box alone.”“I know. I’m scared too. I’m scared of you. You’re a fearful creature. I want to do this though, if we can. I need to. Can I rely on you?”“I don’t know.”“Gary says I can,” she says.I can’t answer for what Gary says. I can’t say if Gary is right or wrong, all I can say is only Gary would say that.Carol tells me that she has done a deal with the farmer from Nacogdoches where we don’t have to pay his dental bill but...he wants to come back, with two Texan friends. For what she is calling a forgiveness session. “Is that something you could handle?”“I don’t know.”“It avoids any legal consequences.” “He looks like a guy I know. A guy I do not like.”“I’ll help you.” “Okay.”“Okay? Okay. I’m locking the box now buddy.” She’s had new hinges put onto the Gimp box with 40 mill screws. There will be no breaking them. I already miss Gary. I don’t want Gary to die. I don’t care about the Texans or the whips or the choking. What scares me is what is in this box.She locks the Gimp box and her heels click across the floor and the dungeon door locks. And what is in front of me is pure darkness and the questions that this darkness brings.“White sand,” I say. White sand.
When she found the babe under her woodpile, it was October and already cold on the mountain. Poor thing shivering under the logs with skin blue and veiny. Eyes bulging and pupilless. She scooped it up and swaddled it in a quilt, one long ago rendered by her own knotted hands, and took care to tuck its thin limbs into the folds of the fabric. Thin limbs that twisted like corkscrew worms. She brought the thing into her cottage to warm by the fire and watched as the heat revived it, brought presence to its eyes, a look of health returning to its cheeks. But its skin remained blue. Its skin would remain blue always.She took right away to calling it—him—Little Arlo. Though there were no discernable parts, none that she could find anyway, she felt that the babe was male. She knew men well. And boys. Had been surrounded by them in a past life, a husband and sons. Isn’t that the nature of the world? To be surrounded by a husband, and sons? Men who were always lingering in her effortful recollections, always too high. The tease of a box on a shelf edge. A husband who melted away in startlingly few years, a hoary, coughing soup. And boys. Boys who were also blue, wore blue, wooly blue that became mud caked, and blood soaked. Artillery. Amputation. Consumption. Dry eyes that stared into the sky and would ask for nothing, plucked out by crows, turned to birthing pits for insects. Push that away because here is a child, lovely and innocent. Here is a child, new and yours. Child, who are you? What do you see?Little Arlo had no interest in bread or vegetables, nor what little salted meat there was, but when she opened a jar of rhubarb jam he began to squirm. She scooped it into his triangular mouth, and he sucked the syrup down and cooed. Black tongue wagged, and she obliged, nearly half the jar, and then the boy slipped into a deep sleep. So wonderful to listen to him breathe those long breaths like that. Her own sleep did not come so easily and had not for years. Intervals of unsatisfying beinglessness punctuated by terror, faceless men in the shadows, drumbeat haunts emanating from within the dry air of her cabin. And then, the ringing of church bells, always church bells. Gentle, impossible, far.In the morning, Old Lady Murray sat on the porch and smoked and oscillated on her rocker, swaddled infant in her arms, and watched across the treeless ridge as Mr. Dalton, the postman, trotted in from the direction of Nimbus, giving a loud “Ahoy,” and a “How do you do, Mrs. Murray? I’ve brought you some preserves,” and “What is that you’ve got in your arms there?”“My new babe, Little Arlo.”“Oh? A new babe, then. Little Arlo, then. That’s—how nice I suppose.”“What did you bring me?”“Oh, just some pear and apple preserves, and some bread and—oh, but perhaps I should have a look at Little Arlo? Just to—and where did you say he came from?”“Better to not. Better to just leave the things on the stoop there. And, well I found him outside under the woodpile. He had such a chill, oh, but he’s nearly convalesced now. A terrific appetite for rhubarb jam, and I’m sure he’ll like pear. My boys, you know my boys, how they loved—my boys, oh, oh, and Mr. Dalton, just leave the things on the stoop there, thank you so dearly!”Mr. Dalton obliged, accustomed to the widow’s occasional episodes, and rested the sack of groceries on the rough boards of her porch. Then, giving a little bow, he spun around and trotted back down the mountain path, tut-tutting and shaking his head, and such a shame, really. The woman having completely lost her senses. Changed from the pragmatic schoolteacher of his youth, that formidable manner, and always that soft generosity beneath. And, of course, remembering that day after the meeting in Appomattox, the boys marching back into town and her sons’ not among that procession of shineless eyes. And the supposed babe, just a bundle of straw? Or a bag of flour? Or maybe something, an animal, an injured opossum. I think I saw the swaddle move.
***
Sad intrigue can spread with epidemic ferocity through small mountain hamlets, especially when carried by the lips of an unabashed gossip. Consider the bed bug, whose colonies can multiply by orders of magnitude on a monthly basis. It was in this way that, over the course of remarkably few days, Mr. Dalton had cultivated a general awareness of Little Arlos’ presence within the town of Nimbus.Gossip. Mr. Dalton felt all right about gossip. He felt that it was his employ and currency, his special talent. Gossip was a little distasteful, yes, but only a little. After all, it was gossip that enabled his charitable visits to the old woman. It was through gossip that, besides a certain prideful, self-serving generosity, shopkeeps justified the handouts they provided on her behalf. Without the extraction, and exchange of gossip, what mail, what food, what human interaction would Mrs. Murray receive? Without gossip, there might be three generations of Little Arlos living in that cabin by now. And frankly, most days there was nothing for Mr. Dalton to report. A remarkably boring person, really, just smoking and rocking in toiled remembrance. A hollowed-out woman in a hollowed-out town, drained of its youth by the undertows of war and industry. Nimbus, the unadaptive. Nimbus, monument to obsolescence. Boom and bust. Vestigial limb of a world whose new language was coal— bituminous and anthracite—was rail, land-rights, incorporation. No space for your people and their bald mountain, their total depletion of hemlock, beech, maple, chestnut, now just black shale and grey sandstone, dramatic, exposed bedrock geometries, brittle cliffs that crumbled away into angular shards, pencil lead thin.The morning was just ending as Mr. Dalton returned to Old Lady Murray’s cottage. He stood for a long time and watched as she teetered forward and back and said nothing. Just a mutual watching. He was struck by the way she held the swaddled object to her chest, her ironic resemblance to the Virgin Mary. “Well, Mrs. Murray, did Little Arlo enjoy his preserves?”“Oh yes! You should have seen him suck it all down. So quick, rabbit quick!”“I’m sure. Say, why don’t you let me hold the wee babe?”“Better to not, Mr. Dalton. He’s asleep in my arms here. Better to let a growing boy sleep, don’t you think?”Mr. Dalton climbed the first steps to the porch, leaning in close. “How about you just pull the swaddle back a bit? I’d be so pleased to have a look at him.”“Don’t come close. You’ll wake the poor thing.”There was a suggestion of embarrassment, a subtle loss of confidence appearing in the wrinkles of his forehead. “Of course, pardon me,” he said, blinking hard. “Goodbye, Mrs. Murray, and take care now. I’ll be seeing you.” Following the mountain path back towards Nimbus, Mr. Dalton crooked his neck around for one last look at the woman. He watched her release a plume of white smoke, which formed a rolling puddle of milk caught in the gentle slope of her awning. Strange mother. Blessed Mother. Recall your own mother, the lines in her face, the way her body had once seemed a landscape. Knees like mountaintops, amazed by the whiteness of the scalp where her black hair parted. Her expansive kindness, without horizon. Her resilience in the face of embarrassing, petulant torments, masculinized rage, the way she protected you with that selfsame body. A body that eroded and became wan, and then just pebbles. Just pebbles and silt. Recall how you found the stony thing that had been your mother at the kitchen table. Recall how you felt relieved.
***
After Sunday worship, during the sharing of joys and concerns, Mr. Dalton stood and reported on certain alarming developments as they pertained to the Little Arlo situation. Most congregants, those vectors of gossip, were already familiar with the story of the so-called new babe, but hearing now how the old woman still clung to the delusion, how she still cared for the mysterious swaddle of indeterminate provenance, this was certainly distressing news. Mr. Dalton listed a number of considerations, chiefly, the health threat—should the swaddle contain an animal, even the carcass of one, the widow could be at risk of injury or infection. Otherwise, say a bag of flour or object of similar inertness, she may incur emotional or spiritual harm, poor woman on the brink as it was.“What if we threw a party?” Suggested Edith Wainbridge, as she often did. If you asked Edith, a party might solve any of life’s problems. “But here, let’s throw a party to celebrate the young babe. All that drink and merrymaking, the dancing, Mrs. Murray would show us. She’d simply have to show us.”It seemed to be a good idea, a way to get many eyes on the swaddle at once. With so many well-meaning supplicants, she’d have to pass the babe around. Right away they began adorning the walls of the adjoining social hall with blue paper streamers, made last minute preparations for cold supper foods and desserts, and diluted the dregs in their liquor bottles. As for the old woman who had not stepped foot in a church since the end of the war, Mr. Dalton tasked himself with relaying the invitation. Once again, climbing the disused summit path, he found her rocking with that swaddled infant in her arms. Sun beams filtered through the trees, then the slats of the awning, then fell upon her face, where a circle of pipe smoke portrayed an almost druidic look.“Oh Arlo, won’t that be fabulous?” She said after Mr. Dalton had disappeared back over the ridgeline. “An entire party in your honor. How befitting, how deserved! My beautiful infant, my wonderful savior.” And there he was, staring at nothing in particular, sphincteric mouth clamping hard around the wooden spoon, the heap of golden apple mush.
***
It had passed well into the evening and very perceptibly the time of night when partygoers begin thinking about their own beds. Jaunty music still filled the social hall, plucked out by the fat-fingered hands of John Miller and John MacLeod, but only Edith Wainbridge, by herself, still flatfooting and stomping on the wriggling boards. The few remaining slices of cake were collapsing on the tray, and the watery liquor was very nearly finished. But still, no one had glimpsed the child, Arlo, who was completely swaddled, not a patch exposed. Nothing could breathe in a swaddle like that. There was no stink either, no reek, but a strange odor if you got close. Something botanical, almost bitter. Not entirely unpleasant.Old Lady Murray remained at the center of it all, holding court from her folding wooden chair, humored through the night by the masses. She sat and told meandering, nothing stories that rushed apart and broke, tumbled over cliffs, formed logic eddies, loops of adoration for sons whom she described with increasingly blurry distinction. And still, the kernel of her former self was present tonight, present for the first time in years. That self-sacrificing woman, teacher of a one-room schoolhouse, mother for many. Mrs. Murray, who nourished her students with stories of a world which would never be theirs. One of great kings and prophets, mathematicians, inventors. Students, who would know only the lives of soldiers, the labor of serfs. Where there were gaps in her droning recollection, partygoers took turns descending upon the old woman, asking to hold the babe, to at least have a glimpse beneath the swaddle. “Better to not.” This was her refrain, without variation. Better for his face to be hers alone. His strange features, his blue flesh. To hold his writhing body, to caress his jawless chin, the undulations of the muscles beneath. Gravel through a hopper, a meager but steady stream of attendees bade farewell and departed, hiding their frustration. Mr. Dalton paced. He noticed the spiral of the party, the unspoken, shared desire to end the night. He held onto one final gambit. It had occurred to him days ago, a means to retrieve Little Arlo, to detain and inspect the swaddled object. But a cruel means. Or at least the aesthetic of cruelty, but beneath that it was genuine, kind-hearted concern. Her wellbeing at the forefront of all things. Yes, this was Mr. Dalton’s intention, the old woman’s wellbeing. Good intentions and, in the end, a good outcome. He was counting on a good outcome. Concern for the old woman’s wellbeing. Genuine, real concern. And curiosity? The desire to know? To see? Admit it, how often you think about her all alone in that sad cottage, just memories, and cloying dreams. Phantoms are real in a place like that. You know all about phantoms, don’t you? Recall your own mother, the whispers in the wind that you can still hear. Didn’t you let your own mother down? The surrogate whom you call Old Lady Murray, the care-drive of a son transposed. To help her. To bring her back. To gawk. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You voyeur, you pervert. No, no. Genuine concern. Care. Righteous intent. These are the things that matter. These are the truths at the root of your being, the goodness there, the generosity and charity. These are the things you know to be true about yourself. You need these things to be true about yourself.The drunken music faltered now and went quiet. Mr. Dalton looked up. The crowd had thinned, only a handful of supplicants remaining, the most zealous disciples of morbid fascination. The candles flickering in their puddled, dwarfed stumps. The waning of the grey light filtering through thick window glass and the weakening definition of the clouds beyond, which had become a single, soft sheet. And Old Lady Murray, clearly on her way out, moving across the boards towards him, curtsying to the well-wishers as she went. “Mr. Dalton, I think it’s about time for me to be headed home. It’s Little Arlo, you see, the babe needs his rest. And I’m feeling a bit tired myself, to tell the truth.”“I see. Well, come then, let’s walk you back.”“Thank you, but there’s no need. We can manage.”“I insist, allow me to walk you.”“Little Arlo and I can get by on our own. Isn’t that right, wee one?”“Ah, but please just wait a second,” Mr. Dalton said. “I was thinking about the war, you see, remember the war? Yes, yes, of course. See, it just occurred to me, it just hit me suddenly, you see—and I hadn’t realized it when you asked before, all those years ago—but actually, I woke up this morning with the pang of a memory that, yes—yes, I did see your boys. I did know them. We were comrades, don’t you see?”“My boys?”“Yes, I remember them, three of them, yes? I remember that they always asked after their mother. They worried about you, Mrs. Murray, and they always said how lucky they were to be your sons.”“Oh—”“And they asked me to take care of her, should anything happen to them. And something did happen to them, didn’t it? To each of them.”“Oh, my boys. My boys—” Old Lady Murray swayed and gazed miles away, out beyond the plastered walls of the social hall. Out to where her boys might be. Three of them. She saw them face down in the mud, no bubbles blown into opaque, grey puddles. No more holding them, no more feeling the weight of their heads in her lap, comforting them on a journey to a place that did not exist. I cannot hold you. I cannot throw a party—no parties for you, ever. No weddings. Boys in their blue uniforms with shining brass buttons, their eyes which had once been the eyes of children. To hold your heads, to feel the weight of you, to see your faces again. Never. Not since their farewell waves from half-opened train car windows. Not since the plumes of black smoke, white steam shooting geyser-like from heavy, sooty locomotive wheels. The cold, awesome machinery that rotated them around and around again.The old woman took on a look of syncope and crumpled into a nearby chair, still holding Little Arlo, pulling the swaddled infant inwards. The few remaining partygoers fluttered paper fans in her face, held tins of diluted whiskey to her lips. “Oh, pass me the child,” said Edith Wainbridge, leaning in beside her. “Give Little Arlo to me, Mrs. Murray, before you drop him.” Her aching arms suddenly unburdened, the swaddled object lifted up out her lap, empty fingers curling around nothing, pale eyes held shut, wet-lidded.Edith brought the bundle up into her own chest and was surprised by the heft of the thing. Certainly not just a roll of fabric. Too heavy, it seemed, for even an opossum. She felt a definitive movement within the swaddle, a subtle throb and an occasional twitch. There was something alive in here. The remaining partygoers closed in around her, many hands outstretched, many eyes wide and searching. It struck Edith now, a stab of frightening consideration, that this may indeed be a child. And then, with haunting clarity, she noticed that she was rocking the swaddle, gently bouncing it against her clavicle. Mr. Dalton met her confused, startled eyes and held his arms out, as if the child were the sphere of Atlas, a titanic burden which he would accept without complaint. She passed—nearly tossed—the babe to him and then took a seat beside Old Lady Murray, almost as pale herself now. The onlookers shifted their focus to Mr. Dalton as he unwrapped the quilted pupa. How strange to peel back so many layers and then to keep going, the fabric growing damper, more yellowed as he approached its center. And then that smell, at once acrid and appealing, it caused a tingling in his sinuses.Outside, the early evening became dusk. Crepuscular animals stirred in the forested valleys below. But up here on the bald mountain carved up like a rotten molar, up here it was stone silent. Up here, twilight seemed to last for hours—darker than midnight, when the moon casts its image upon all things. Up here, where there was no shade. A century from now, dark nights would be rarer still, but by then, Nimbus would be a ghost. Its buildings devoured by the first pioneer species of ecological succession. The families who had nested in its once lamp-lit homes, long since dispersed and integrated into the larger cities of the region: Charleston, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Huntington, Cincinnati. The last few layers of swaddling were oil-slick and stuck to themselves, audibly peeling away from the surface beneath. Mr. Dalton was the first to see the babe, its bald, blue head, elongate and ambiguous. The sphincter of its mouth, clenching and unclenching. Its huge, dark eyes that reflected but did not blink. And arms, delicate arms. A number of thin arms, but which number? More than two. They twisted and reached, one of them winding around Mr. Dalton’s wrist, an immense strength apparent despite how slender, how gentle. “My Lord! Wha—God, what is it?”He dropped the thing to the floor with a wet thud, where it made the first sound anyone had heard from it. A sound like a puppy’s sigh, more a whimper than a whine. And then silence again. Deep silence. The small crowd of supplicants staring dumb-eyed, something breaking within each of them, something long fermenting at the center of it all, suppressed by the decades of politeness and boredom. They shrieked and pointed, some of them fainting. It was in this commotion that Old Lady Murray awoke, slowly habituating to consciousness, and then upon seeing her child on the ground, leaped up with a throaty, glottal yelp. A mother’s yelp. She dove forward and hefted the child over her shoulder, bounding out into the twilight, heavy double doors swinging shut behind her. Then just the crowd standing baffled, lingering with confused, dumb eyes, the terror of a deer on the interstate. Some of them mumbling, some of them shutting their eyes and shaking their heads.What words are there to describe that which cannot exist? Mr. Dalton was the first to capture and transform the horror—the first to reach desperately for rage. For violence. “Get it! Devil! Get—God, stop!” his voice buzzed in a new, tinny register. “Go get her! Stop her! Devil!” He pushed through the herd and pulled an oil lamp from the wall, sprinting out after the old woman, the others following quickly behind. They armed themselves however they could, cutlery, long-handled collection baskets, heavy-bound hymnals, bottles, their own pocketknives. They ran out into the dusty streets after the old woman. Only Edith Wainbridge remained, locked to her seat.
***
Follow her past the tavern and up the slope of the bald summit. The vision-fade of twilight, the lactic burn, the stiff and frightening arthritic pangs. Little Arlo clings to her now, blank eyes full of knowing, mouth opening and closing in mollusk fashion. “Hold onto me child, you won’t be harmed. I will not let them. Lord knows they will not lay a finger upon you.” And the jeering mob closing in behind, the cloud churning up beneath their footfalls, their mean noises. “Hold on, Little Arlo, cling tight to Momma,” her words spitting out between laborious pants. “They are the devils and you, an angel.” She rushes past her cottage and continues to the other side of the summit, where she hears faint bells ringing out in the gloaming. A soft chime and deeper, brassy harmonies.The mob gains and corners her against the mountain’s far-facing flank, just the steep valley beneath. They form a wide line and choke in, no choice for her but to descend the harsh slope. She has trouble with the steepness of it, the breakaway shale beneath her feet. Her gown catches on a pathetic hemlock fledgling and she comes down hard on her knees, cries out, but does not drop Little Arlo. She does not even flinch to catch herself, arms in a firm cradle as she tumbles end-over-end, rolling down the talus until she crashes against a sandstone boulder. A phosphene flash in her vision as something—many somethings—shatter within. The feeling of warmth beneath skin. “Help her!” Shouts Mr. Dalton, “Get away from it!” The mob clamors down the slope, shards of loose stone bunching up in mounds beneath their feet, the talus spilling down and burying her bloodied legs, pebbles bouncing up into her face. And all through the hurt, the old woman smiles at her child. Little Arlo, still unharmed. Little Arlo, still protected. “Take me to them, Little Arlo. Take me away, please, you angel, you divine thing. If my boys are somewhere, please take me to them. Please, you’ve been there, you’ve seen them, I can tell by the look in your eye. If they are nowhere, I’d rather be nowhere. But they are somewhere, aren’t they? What place is it? Tell me, is it the place where you’re from? I’m not your mother, I know that. I’m not your mother, but I could be. I could show you what it is to have a mother, to have brothers, to be held, to be worried. Please. I’m ready now.”The child does not nod, but closes his eyes, becomes a mess of limbs that stretch out and wrap themselves around the woman. Her arms and legs now bound in blue helixes. The crowd watching in gape-mouthed horror as the child encompasses and subsumes her. Kudzu on a maple tree, the union of two beings. The old woman then rises to her feet as Little Arlo stands up on her behalf, walks for her, moves each of her limbs in his own. He turns her around and sprints down the slope at a full gallop.“My God!” cries Mr. Dalton. “My Lord, God Almighty!” He has no other language for this. His ears ring, a tightness at the base of his neck, blood rushing past his temples. He’s heard stories from the war, strange lights in the night, wounded bodies that emit a green glow and are healed, but nothing like this. His head pounds and his body trembles, shaking without his permission—an angry body with a frothing mouth—the reptile inside him cursing and yelling, grieving for itself. And beneath it all, genuine concern. Genuine guilt. An expanding thought loop that would not cease until his death three years later. The distinctions of memory collapsing, subjects losing their referents. There is a gestalt that precipitates from this soup of recollection: the woman who raised him, the woman who taught him, the woman who bore God. His mouth hangs open as he cries out, “Mother!” “Little Arlo,” says Old Lady Murray, her voice weak now. “I’m ready,” and then her body goes limp inside his. She is carried down the mountain at panicked speeds, eyes closed, smiling, listening to the bells that are so much louder now. The same bells she has heard each night for the last forty years, but never so loud, never so clear as this. And something else, too, something so quiet, interpolated over the percussion. Something like the voices of young men. No words. Only meaning. Little Arlo carries the old woman into a small cave, nestled beneath a curving, gable-like syncline that is etched with glimmering veins of quartzite. Nobody watching as mother and child disappear into the mouth of the Earth. Then there is a sharp green flash and a sound like thunder. Stones break and crash down, burying the entrance. No more cave, no trace ever found.
***
Unseen by anyone out in the deep night, out in the forested isolates that pen the river in, there is a heap of refuse where the waters meet a bend and regurgitate their burden. Here, an opossum searches for her meal. It is bleak, hard winter, when the insects are buried, and berries do not fruit. She eats garbage, bones not stripped of their flesh, whatever smaller creatures have congregated here for the same purpose. She must eat well tonight. Her pouch drags against the ground, sagging under the weight of four babes. She must eat well.
“You’re in luck,” the innkeeper said. “The Grotto is available.”The innkeeper was a large man who wore suspenders, wire-rimmed glasses, and a fisherman’s cap. He looked like a builder of model ships. Seamus smiled and waited for the innkeeper to continue.“The Grotto is our most popular room. Usually booked months in advance. We had a cancellation, so it’s yours—if you want it.” “I’ll take it,” Seamus said. “What brings you to the Seaside Inn?” the man asked as Seamus filled out the registration papers. “I was in the city for a conference and decided to stay for a few days.” Seamus felt a tickle in his nose. He hoped there wasn’t a cat on the premises. “Wonderful,” the innkeeper said. “You’ll find plenty of peace and quiet here—if that’s what you’re looking for…” “Yes, yes, peace and quiet,” Seamus felt compelled to respond. “A word to the wise,” the innkeeper said as he handed over the key, an actual key with a bow in the shape of a skull, “if you decide to go exploring, stick to the path. We wouldn’t want you to fall into the sea!” “No,” Seamus said. “We wouldn’t want that.” “Let me know if you run into any trouble in The Grotto!” Seamus was a quiet man who didn’t like to be fussed over. He imagined that all weekend long he was going to have to assure the innkeeper how happy he was with his room. Seamus trudged up the narrow staircase with his suitcase, angling it to avoid banging into the bannister. Although it looked like a grand old house from the outside, there were only two rooms on the second floor. The words THE GROTTO had been painted on the door at the top of the landing. With something like foreboding, Seamus inserted the key and opened the door.
II
Seamus contemplates a mural
It was otherwise a simple room. A bed and a dresser with a bench beneath the window. What made the room remarkable was the mural that covered all four walls and gave Seamus the impression of being in a cave. There were stalagmites painted on the baseboards and stalactites descended from the crown molding. Rock formations spread outward onto the adjoining walls. Crystals sprouted in all shapes and sizes. When Seamus closed the door it all but disappeared into the wall. Seamus was not adverse to close spaces. He lived in a small shoebox of an apartment and he had always made do with cramped quarters. He was a writer after all. He didn’t need a lot of space. All he required was his imagination.But the composition of the mural irked him. Lichen grew on the rocks, the walls seemed to gleam with condensation, and rows of bats hung from the uppermost reaches of the cavern. Everywhere he looked there was more information to absorb. His first instinct was to leave the room and go for a long walk along the cliffs, drink in the wind blowing over the waves, but Seamus was tired and hungry and soon it would be dark. He had spent the week walking all over the convention center. He had trod high-traffic carpet with baffling patterns, looking for conference rooms without numbers in hallways without names. He used to like these affairs, looked forward to them even, but each year fewer of his friends and acquaintances attended, and those that did seemed a little older, the disappointment in their faces more pronounced. Then there were the people he used to know who went out of their way to avoid him, as if the stink of his failure was contagious. Seamus kicked off his shoes, opened a granola bar (they were giving them away at the conference; he’d taken seven of them) and chewed without pleasure the dry oats and chalky fruit while staring at a section of the mural that depicted a school of black fish in a dark pool until he swore he saw one of them move.
III
Seamus makes a discovery
Seamus woke in the middle of the night. He thought he heard a noise, a faint droning sound, and now he couldn’t get back to sleep. An incident at the conference earlier that week had been troubling Seamus, and apparently it wasn’t done with him.He’d been invited to sit on a panel called “Exploring the Edge.” The other two writers on the panel were a novelist named S.W. Sidewinder who wrote Westerns set in deep space, and Angela Danbury, a former adult film actress who’d written a series of erotic detective thrillers. Unfortunately, Danbury, whose books were wildly popular, had to cancel, and the panel was moved to a smaller room. This struck Seamus as reasonable until the young man who’d been assigned as his minder led Seamus and Sidewinder to the lobby where a shuttle waited to take them to a satellite location. “It’s not far,” the minder assured them. “This is for your comfort.”“This is a load of horse shit,” Sidewinder said. Sidewinder was right. The satellite location turned out to be a branch of the local library that had stayed open to host the event. Sidewinder became agitated when he was told the box of books he’d shipped hadn’t arrived and he stormed off in a huff. Seamus set out a small selection of his own books that he’d brought with him. Some of them were quite old and showed wear and tear from having been carted around the country, from conference to conference. In lieu of a discussion—since there were no other panelists—he read a short story from his most recent collection. No one attended the reading, but afterward, one of the ladies who worked at the library told him how much she liked the story. She asked him if he had a card. He didn’t, so he simply handed her the book, which embarrassed them both. Outside, there was no sign of his minder, just the driver, who urged him to hurry aboard because he had another run to make. On the way back to the hotel, Seamus thought of all the things he’d say to the conference administrators, but he was thunderstruck with shame over the whole sad affair and he spent the remainder of the evening sitting in his room. . Whether it was this memory or something else that stirred him he couldn’t say, but now Seamus was wide awake with little hope of going back to sleep. There it was again, the unusual noise that had roused him, only this time it seemed to be coming from underneath the bed. Seamus slowly swung his legs around and slid his feet into his slippers, which he always brought with him when he traveled. He went to the door and flipped the switch. The lights came on and the mural rose up out of the gloom—he’d forgotten all about it. He got down on all fours and looked under the bed. A white cat with icy blue eyes peered at him from a rug underneath the bed. The cat regarded him with the impertinent expression of a rich old woman who’d been caught dozing during a play. Seamus stood and opened the door. The cat stuck its head out, slowly crossed the room, and went out on to the landing. Seamus shut the door, turned off the light, and climbed back into bed. Well, that’s one mystery solved, but as soon as that thought left his head another took its place: Why was there a rug underneath the bed?
IV
Seamus solves a mystery
The rug was small, but elaborate. If Seamus stretched out his arm, he could just barely reach its tasseled edge with the tips of his fingers. He thrust his arm under the bed until his thumb grazed the carpet and he yanked it like a stage magician performing a trick. The carpet came away but what it revealed was difficult to say. The room was just too dark.Seamus was not a large man, nor was he particularly strong, but once he set his mind to something he was determined to see it through to the end. There had been times in his life when this imperative had felt like a curse. Some mistook his commitment as bullheadedness or even a deficiency of intelligence, but the years had taught him this quality might very well be his best attribute. If he said he would do something, whether it was writing a book no one wanted, or giving a reading no one attended, he did it. No one could say Seamus had broken his word.The bed lifted easily, and before he could give much thought to what he was doing he swung the foot of the bed toward the window. The headboard protested with a squeak. There was a groove in the floorboards where the bed had been and when he ran his hands along the seam he found a place where he could grab hold of the trapdoor—for that’s what it was—and give it a quick tug. The trapdoor swung open. Seamus felt a gust of cool air, invigorating and inviting. The opening revealed a tunnel that was large enough to pass through and as soon as Seamus saw the iron ladder bolted to the stone, he knew he was going down. But that was crazy. He couldn’t go exploring secret tunnels in the middle of the night. Who did he think he was? Nancy Drew? Seamus pulled open a drawer in the nightstand and grabbed a flashlight, as if he had known it would be there. The torch felt good in his hand, solid and cool to the touch, and when he clicked the switch it sent a strong beam across the room, illuminating the mouth of the tunnel at his feet like a spotlight.
V
Seamus impersonates a childhood hero
The tunnel was like a well, a hole in the earth that shot straight down, a tower pulled inside out. He focused on lowering his body into the hole one rung at a time. He didn’t look down and he didn’t look up. He’d made up his mind to see where the tunnel took him. The ladder was in excellent condition, especially considering that his room was on the second floor. How did that work exactly? Was there a tube between the walls that allowed him to bypass the rest of the house somehow? Seamus didn’t know, but he saw no reason why he should stop, so down he went. The farther he descended, the stronger the scent of the ocean became. He thought he could hear wave noise and imagined he was tunneling into the cliffs that overlooked the sea. At any moment he expected to plunge his feet into an icy pool of seawater, but after several minutes of steady climbing he reached the bottom. He took the flashlight out of his pocket and shined the light. A single passageway led away from the bottom of the ladder in what he guessed was the direction of the sea. Seamus set off at once. The tunnel was narrow and curved this way and that so that he couldn’t gauge how far he had to travel to reach the end. Seamus felt certain it would be a short walk. With each step the sound of the ocean grew louder as the waves smashed on the rocks. Underneath all that noise was another sound, faint yet persistent, a droning that might be the wind whistling through these chambers of the cliff like blood moving through a body. He imagined a large undersea cave with pools of crystal clear water and chandeliers of gypsum that hung down from above. That must be why his room was called The Grotto, he reasoned. As above, so below. Seamus hurried along, pleased with where his curiosity had taken him and thrilled to discover what was around the next curve of the tunnel.When he rounded the corner, the tunnel abruptly came to an end. It wasn’t blocked off or closed up. It simply stopped. It looked to Seamus as if whoever had dug the tunnel had simply abandoned the job and gone no farther.The rough stone registered as a taunt. He wasn’t heartbroken exactly, but he was greatly disappointed. He’d tricked himself into thinking he was on a grand adventure and he’d stumbled into a dead end. How was that any different from the rest of his life?
Interlude
“Your cat was in my room last night,” Seamus said to the innkeeper the following morning as he checked out of the inn a few days earlier than planned. After his disappointment in the tunnel, he’d decided to go home.“Cat?” the innkeeper asked. “Yes, white with—”“We don’t have a cat,” the innkeeper interrupted, looking down his nose and over the rim of his glasses. He seemed annoyed that Seamus was cutting his trip short. Seamus decided not to bring up the matter of the tunnel when he turned in his key.
VI
Seamus receives an unexpected invitation
A week after the conference, Seamus received an email from Belinda Barnes, the vice president of a booksellers’ organization. She wanted Seamus to know that she’d read his most recent book and loved it. Would he be interested in attending a luncheon the following month? In subsequent emails Ms. Barnes explained that it was a showcase for hidden gems—books that didn’t get a lot of attention, or the right attention when they were released, despite their considerable merit. They’d have plenty of copies of his books to sign and they’d pay for his travel and accommodations. It turned out that Ms. Barnes had seen him read at the conference. In fact, she was the lady at the library to whom Seamus had given a book. She confessed that she’d been profoundly moved by his short story and couldn’t get it out of her mind. She recounted to him how the story reminded her of a dream she’d had as a little girl, a dream she’d thought about often but couldn’t recall exactly, its meaning graspable but just out of reach. Seamus’s story, she admitted, inhabited her imagination in much the same way.Seamus accepted the invitation. Even if the event fell through, as these things often did, it felt nice to be appreciated. Ms. Barnes, however, was true to her word and the luncheon was a success. The house was packed and he signed so many books he used up all the ink in his pen. Ms. Barnes introduced him to representatives from other regions who wanted Seamus to read at their luncheons, dinners, and galas. The next morning, an agent called offering to represent him. Then another the following afternoon, and two more the day after that. This is strange, Seamus thought, but he met with the agents and ate shrimp cocktail every day for a week. One of the agents, a young woman who was an acquaintance of Ms. Barnes, had read many of his books, including some that were long out of print. She laid out a plan for reacquiring the rights to his work and reissuing them as a series.Seamus gave her the green light and it was done. His books appeared in actual bookstores. He had money in his bank account again. He flew in airplanes. He bought new shoes. Once a month he allowed himself to shop at the expensive new grocery store down the block instead of taking the bus to the market he’d been going to all his life. When his books came out, they were written about in magazines and newspapers and he received charming letters from readers all over the world. After all these years of eking out an existence as an underground writer, his stories had finally found their audience—although it felt like the other way around. His newfound fame, such as it was, introduced a host of new headaches that revolved around trying to be in as many places in as little time as possible, but even that wasn’t entirely awful. People were mostly nice and his fellow travelers told him interesting stories. The odd rude flight attendant or indifferent concierge reassured Seamus it wasn’t all a wonderful dream.
VII
Success at last
A few years later, Seamus found himself back in the city on the coast where the conference that changed his life had been held. He was wrapping up a multi-city book tour for a new collection of stories. When his publicist presented the itinerary, Seamus requested an extra day at the end of the tour to rest up and he impulsively booked a night in The Grotto at the Seaside Inn. He hadn’t given the inn much thought during the tour, but now it was all he could think about. His career had undergone such a swift and sudden change that he’d scarcely had time to reflect on how unusual that night in The Grotto had been, creeping along the secret subterranean passage like a detective in an adventure book. Had that actually happened? Seamus was certain it had. He recalled the way the stone looked damp in the glare of the electric light but when he brushed his fingers against the rough-hewn rock it was cold and dry. The rich smell of the tunnel was both bracing and fecund, an ancient reminder of the things that stirred in the briny deep. And there was that sound, mechanical in its persistence, but when he remembered his room at the inn was located on the second floor, he doubted himself all over again.
VIII
Trouble in the grotto
After he checked into his room, Seamus peered under the bed: the cat was gone, but the rug was still there. As he moved the bed and opened the trapdoor, all his doubts deserted him. He grabbed the flashlight from the drawer and checked to see if it worked. He breathed in the familiar scent of the ocean and scampered down the ladder with the joy of a boy returning to a childhood haunt after a long time away. Seamus didn’t understand this compulsion to descend into the tunnel again, but he’d learned long ago to trust his instruments, and down he went.At the bottom of the ladder, Seamus clicked on the light and shined it down the passageway. Everything was exactly the way he remembered it. The pungent sea air, the rumble of the waves, the cold rough stone—it all filled him with happiness—but after walking for several minutes the flashlight flickered and so did his confidence. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Shouldn’t he have reached the end of the tunnel by now? The air seemed colder and the distant rumble was now a roar. The walls were damp to the touch and when he shined the light at his feet he discovered he was standing in a shallow puddle. Had the tunnel lengthened in his absence? The tunnel took a sharp turn. As he went around the bend he beheld a widening of the shaft and realized he was standing in the mouth of a vast cave. The mural in his room was an exact replica of the cavern. The sound of bats and birds wheeling overhead filled the air and water trickled from a dozen hidden places. Great mounds of rock rose from the water and columns of stone dripped from the upper vaults. In some places, the two came together, dividing the cave into compartments. Most of what he could see of the grotto’s floor was covered in pools of clear water inhabited by tiny black fish.On the other side of the cavern walls the ocean thundered and he could detect a faint droning. Seamus shined the light around but he couldn’t locate the source of the sound. Seamus thought he caught a flicker of movement in the center of the grotto where a formation resembled a creature that crouched like a cat, but as he moved closer he realized it was just a rock, and the sound that blended into the background and sat in the forefront of his mind went up the slightest sliver of an octave. Seamus turned around but he could no longer discern the entrance to the tunnel. The droning grew louder, a difference so subtle he could almost talk himself into believing he was imagining it. Seawater lapped at his feet and the white foam filled his shoes as the water in the grotto began to rise. He frantically searched the folds in the rock for the entrance to the tunnel but it simply wasn’t there, like a riddle he couldn’t solve. The water rose past his knees and then his waist, and the cold water dispelled the faint hope that he was dreaming, that this was all a product of his imagination.Seamus thought how different his life had been the last time he ventured down the tunnel and how much better it was now. What if all the success he’d enjoyed since then wasn’t luck that had transformed his old life but a different life that he’d somehow stumbled into? What if there wasn’t a single tunnel beneath the Seaside Inn but many and each of them led to an alternate future? Seamus felt as though he’d wandered into one of his stories, and if that was the case he knew without having to be told that everything would be different when he went back to his room because he wouldn’t be returning to his new life, the life he’d always wanted, but venturing into an altogether different future.The water was at his neck now and lifted him off his feet. The grotto filled with wave noise and sea spray and the loud booming of unseen forces. As he slipped beneath the waves the droning stopped as if a great machine had been switched off.
I awake on a Saturday. It is my birthday. All my friends are here. My wife is telling me about the preseason. Kevin is still coming. Don't blow out the candles until Kevin arrives. I won't, dear. Her father tells me about the Los Angeles Kings. I unwrap a Los Angeles Kings jersey. I’m a fan of the L.A Kings. My son asks if we can throw the puck around a bit outside after the party. That'd be great, son. My wife's father asks me about the roster. Think we got a shot this year? That rookie's a phenom. Sure as hell is. The candles burn, and Kevin arrives. Hello. My wife embraces Kevin. My son embraces Kevin. I embrace Kevin. I am jealous of Kevin. His ability to enter a room. He tells me to make a wish and I make a wish and I blow out the candles. Tell us what you wished for, Dad! Can't or it won't come true. We all laugh. I bet you wished for something like this. Kevin hands me a present. No bigger than my hand. I open the present. Season tickets for the Los Angeles Kings. For you and the whole family, Kevin says. My wish has come true. I wake up on the first day of the season. Time for the hockey game. I pull on my gift jersey. I help my son into his jersey. My wife puts on a Kings sweater. It fits tightly. I drive to the hockey game. My son sings the Canadian National Anthem. Do you think the Kings got a shot this year? We got a rookie. Do you think the other teams think their rookie is a real phenom? I try not to think about it. But it's our rookie who is a real phenom. First class potential, right? Right, son. I feel bad for the other teams. Me too.Great seats. Kevin spared no expense. He's quite a friend, isn't he? The best. Right near the penalty box. But our guys won't spend too much time there. Not our guys. During the American anthem, the players of the Los Angeles Kings and the players of the away team stand at attention. This is the first time I lay eyes on the rookie. His hair is styled in a rolling black mullet. He has a thick beard. His smile lights up a room. He has bright green tape on his stick. Hank Bang. Number 11. That's the rookie. I see someone in the crowd holding up a sign, Will You Marry Me, Hank?! A bit premature, I think. But I don't tell anyone. The puck is dropped. The Los Angeles Kings are dressed in all black uniforms. The other team in white. Nobody scores across the first couple of lines, but their play is exhilarating. Hypnotic. As though sourced from a dream. I smile. I bang on the glass with my fists. My son waves an inflatable noise maker and bashes it against another inflatable noise maker. Then Bang's line enters the ice. The rookie on the fourth line. Right Wing. The Center passes the puck along the edge of the ice, but Bang is laid out by the opposing Defense Man. Slow to get up. Following the action, Bang returns a hellish hit upon the opposing Center cutting through the middle. The Defense Man, the Bruiser throws down his gloves. Bang follows suit and the two tussle, before Bang unceremoniously levels his fist across the Bruiser's jaw and sends him to the ice. I howl in delight. Bang is ushered to the penalty box and I've never felt closer to God. After his five penalty minutes are up, the game is all Hank Bang, laying hits and scoring goals. Ending his first NHL game with eight points. A rookie record. The Los Angeles Kings Have Found Their Star all the papers say. On my drive home, I am ecstatic. Excitement pulses through me like electricity. I sense my son loves me more. So does my wife. Revelatory. This is one of the greatest days of my life, and I can't wait for the next game, my fingers fidgeting over the pages of the book I read to my son just before bed. With such a tremendous initial outing, I expect even better from the rookie phenom as his skills grow. The sky is the limit. First Class potential.The days fly by. I again awaken on game day, buzzing with excitement. I put on my jersey. I help my son. My wife wears her sweater. We drive. They wear their black jerseys again. The other team in whites, but different whites, or perhaps the same whites with different accent colors. The puck is dropped and our team scores ten goals to the opposing team’s two and they win another one. Two and Oh. Helluva a start to the season. Exhilarating. Bang is awarded First Star again. He records his first hat trick. And is already appearing in the radio sports chatter for the Calder Trophy, the award awarded to the most phenomenal rookie each year. A bit premature, wouldn't you say? I don't know, my wife answers. Kevin seems to think he has a shot. When did you see Kevin? The day after the last game. After work. I told you. I don't remember, I say. Well, it was a busy week. I carry my son's sleeping body in from the car. Poor guy. Tuckered out.By the end of the first month of the season, Hank Bang is a front runner for the Calder. Bang is also starting Right Wing for the Los Angeles Kings, who have yet to record a loss. My team is like an extension of me. They are winning. I am happy. I couldn't be happier, in fact. When the zamboni runs its circles, I try to think of what could make me happier, and that makes me sad, but then my son arrives with the popcorn and the Los Angeles Kings return to the ice to lay down another thrashing.For weeks, the same. The Los Angeles Kings in their black uniforms. The other team in their uniforms. A walloping ensues. Hank Bang leads the league in minutes played, goals, assists, penalties, plus/minus, hits, penalty minutes, short handed goals, power play goals, hat tricks, fights, and blocked shots. He's a real phenom for sure, dad. Sure is, son. Say where'd your Mom run off to? Don't you remember, Dad? She had her dinner tonight with Kevin. Oh yes. He's a real pal. The best a dad could have, ain't that right? Think they'll win tonight, son? If the Goalie stays true. Can't outscore Bang though. On the car ride home, I listen to sports radio. Hank Bang is a generational talent, they say. A bit premature, I tell my son but my son is asleep. He should win the Calder. At home, my wife isn’t there. Dinner must have gone late with Kevin. He’s a real talker. And a hell of a listener to boot. I tuck my son into his bed. I ask if he wants me to read to him but he shakes his head no. And before I know it, it is already the NHL playoffs. The Los Angeles Kings exited the regular season without a single loss. Top of their division. Top of the league. Eighty-Two and Oh. Forty-one of those wins, I was present for. Never missed a single home game. The team has broken every statistical team record, while Hank Bang has broken every individual record. Two hundred more goals than the previous record. A plus/minus above 500. I am so proud of him. I wear his jersey to every game. I feel instrumental to his success. My jersey makes a contribution. I turn to ask my son if he thinks they will win the Stanley Cup, but his seat is empty. Oh, that’s correct. He didn't come with me to the game. He must have had a prior engagement. Season tickets are a full-time commitment. Not for the faint of heart. Not everyone can love the Los Angeles Kings like I love the Los Angeles Kings. Not everyone can love Hank Bang.The Los Angeles Kings have won their first playoff game. A real shellackin', sports radio called it. I drive home faster than the speed limit to share with my family. The excitement. But my family is not home. My family hasn't been home since I left for the game. When was the last time they were? They’re missing an all-time season. Sports radio says the playoffs are another beast entirely, but the Los Angeles Kings beat their opponent handedly. Perhaps, this round's opponent just isn’t up to snuff. But there must be a challenging opponent coming up, right? The beast awaits. I begin to wonder what the other playoff rounds look like. I turn on the tv. It is a game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning players are dressed all in white. The same uniforms he'd seen them play in, but the Montreal Canadiens, to my shock, are not wearing their usual white uniforms with red and blue flourishes, but instead their entire uniforms are made up of that garish red and blue. It hurts my eyes to see. I watch the game, nonetheless. The Montreal Canadiens’ Center scores a goal. The camera zooms around the arena and settles on a trio of celebrating fans. They look strangely familiar, and as I stare longer at the family, I recognize them to be my son, my wife, and Kevin. All three in garish red Canadiens gear. I am upset. I go to bed. The Los Angeles Kings have made it to the Stanley Cup. I admit I was doubtful, but I knew we had a phenom for a rookie. And Hank Bang is absolutely that. The other team in the Finals are the Montreal Canadiens. I hope to see my family attend the game. But they only attend the home games when their team wears that red and blue. I almost vomit. But the Montreal Canadiens aren't a good team. Same as the other teams. No match for the Los Angeles Kings. No match for Hank Bang. The Los Angeles Kings win the first three games of the series by a wide margin, but the final game of the season is in Montreal. I watch the game on TV. Sure enough, my wife and my son and Kevin are at the game. My son in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My wife in a Montreal Canadiens sweater. Kevin in a Montreal Canadiens jersey. My son banging red and blue inflatable noise makers. How can they not see that it is in fact the Los Angeles Kings that is the greatest North American hockey team of all time? How can they smile and laugh rooting for the Montreal Canadiens when the Los Angeles Kings will clearly win the game? A travesty. I feel good watching the Los Angeles Kings demolish the Montreal Canadiens. The Kings, led by Hank Bang slice agile lines across the ice, lay a succession of glass-rattling hits along the boards, and unleash a firestorm of shots upon the opposing goalie. Pure domination. Never even close. And as the players celebrate, I look in the crowd for my wife and my son. I want to see the distraught look on their faces. A look they never would have had if they’d stayed loyal to the Los Angeles Kings. But they aren't present. They must have driven to their home already. A different home than the one I sit in, watching the game on the television. Still, I await their arrival. Perhaps, now that the season is over, I can figure out where it all went wrong. But when I check the mailbox, I find an envelope from Kevin. Inside are tickets to the upcoming season of Los Angeles Kings hockey. Another season. I can't imagine what improvements the rookie phenom will make in his sophomore season. How much better could it get?
My wife looms at the ledge of the bed. The cold meat of my brain, freezer-burned with slumber, is still in defrost mode. Meanwhile, my wife has already risen, showered, powdered, dressed, breakfasted, read the morning news, cried about the morning news, genuflected and regurgitated, and undressed again. Now she stands naked in the middle of the room, like an unflappable art-class model, waiting for her indolent husband to get up and do something meaningful, and maybe felonious, with his life. I can’t fake it anymore. I get up and go to the closet, where we keep the new suit piled atop the canoe cushions we used at four months, the pillows we passed off as five.I try to chirp the theme music from some public-television programming—the kind of children’s show that takes place in a psychotropically colorful wonderland populated by ragged hand-puppets and a smattering of adult actors, always in supporting roles, who teach sensible, low-impact morality lessons while struggling to beat back the melancholy tide of time. I whistle three trilling notes. My wife interrupts me with a dejected sigh of her own and reaches ceilingward. “Just strap the fucking thing on,” she says.I glide the foam mold over her upper body, negotiating its blunt juts and bony angles, her knuckled spine, the curled shrimp of her ribcage. She resembles a famished insect sliding into its shell. Sure, she could do it herself, but it’s the collaboration she needs. A co-conspirator. Someone to share the secret and blame, and maybe, too, some kind of vestigial love. I double-knot the flesh-colored straps and tuck the washing-instructions tag inside the hollow bowl of her armpit. “How do I look?” she asks, draping a floral-print maternity shroud atop the big belly. The shroud is sized extra-large to create a bit of ambiguity about the duration.“Like six months,” I say, a little too hesitantly.My wife fixes herself in the mirror and turns smoothly, like a showroom automobile on a rotating stage, something too glossy to believe, let alone buy. Her face empties. The lower lip starts to jiggle. “I look like I’m nine months,” she says. “I’m ready to rupture.” Me, I am doing my usual hangdog grovel, the one look in my repertoire I do not have to falsify or embellish. “They only had the one size in stock. You still appear ravishing to poor cretins like me.”She takes my loose face in her hands and lifts it, me, to the light. Semi-sweetly, she says, “Who are you fucking kidding?”“There is literally a shell of ice around my brain. If you give me a few minutes to thaw—”“We are so hopeless,” she says.I lie: “I don’t think that at all.”She releases me but holds to her reflection, glaring hard at the boyish hips, the vitamin-deficient skinny and pall. “You’re going to be late for work.”“I’m not going to work.”“You’re still going to be late,” she says.
***
That first slothful winter: I sat in my car, the heat low, the radio off, depriving myself of the commuter life’s few amenities—in lieu of legitimate penance, I suppose—while the car sat in one undistinguished parking lot after another. I wasn’t looking very diligently. I just stared at the slabs of opaque frost my breath left on the windshield. How spectacular, the things the body did when nobody was paying attention, when nobody cared. Instead of music or talk radio, I listened to the clamor of my shivering organs and somatic departments, tabulating the chattiest offenders. Curdled fluids, tired fibers, damaged loins. All my spooky nooks were gossiping about me. I etched my initials in the frosted glass, X’d them out, then wrote different initials. When I returned home at the end of the day, my wife was on the couch, beta-testing a new breed of pout, one that combined compassionate disappointment with compassionate disgust.“What happened?” she asked. “Huh?”“You’re limping.” “My leg got crampy from sitting all day in the car.”“You were in the car? How can you get one when you’re sitting in the car?”The television was muted, flickering in the dark. I tried to flutter my eyelids to synchronize with the strobe. All any of us want, I guess, is an allegiance with something. Even something inane.“It’s like an arctic expedition out there,” I said, peeling off my itchy mittens and wool scarf and false beard. “They’re bundled up and getting pushed in strollers, or they’re leashed up and dragging their parents across the frozen tundra. I’m not fast enough to chase sled dogs. I can’t loaf around the stores like those do-gooders from the Salvation Army.”Her pout solidified, aged, fossilized. I could count the gloomy pocks and cragged ridges now imprinted across her frozen tundra. So many ancient, incredulous creases.“The office called,” she said.“What did you tell them?”“I told them there were complications. I said the doctor sent us to the hospital, and the hospital was sending us to a specialist.”“That’s smart.”“I feel like we’re the stupidest people alive.”“That, too,” I said.I left my goulashes in a puddle of muck by the door, and I joined my wife on the couch. She was watching her wildlife program again. This episode featured a pride of lions gorging on a buffet of eviscerated zebra carcasses. Black-white-red stripes striated the screen like an experimental test pattern. Our clandestine panics and emergencies seemed to be articulated so purely in the wobble. The most unnerving part was the lack of sound. All that ferocious churning, the lazy and thoughtless carnage, zero repentance, not a single groan or complaint or scream of thanks. I turned to my wife and tried to find her face in the dithering half-light. Her lips were stained brownish, as if she had been feasting on chocolate mousse. Better than the wallpaper. She was balancing a mug of hot cocoa on the stuffed koala that was bulging out of her sweatpants—the second of her stomachs. The hand towels kept slipping out.I laid a hand in her lap.“Please don’t touch me,” she said.I nodded. “Because of the complications. We’re going to see the specialist. We are living the role. Just like those TV lions with their talent agents and SAG cards and publicists.”“You should ice that leg.”“I’ve had enough ice for one day. Can I get you anything?”“Yes,” she said. “Please get off the couch.” “What else?”“Go out.”“Where?”“Try another parking lot. Maybe an elementary school or playground or pediatrician’s office. If you stay here, we’ll never get pregnant.”
***
Springtime delivers its own silver platter of ripe disappointments. I spend my mornings loitering on a half-acre of grim, sun-scalded blacktop outside one of five Discount Utopias in the tri-county region. I avoid the popular supermarkets because their parking lots are populated by squads of embittered teenagers in dirty khakis and too-large smocks who tend the shopping-cart corrals and pretend to look competent. Discount Utopia has no such extravagance. The clientele is a mix of whiskered retirees living on fixed incomes and young unwed women who cannot possibly bear the thankless burden of motherhood alone. Best of all, management is too miserly to refurbish the outdoor sodium lamps or install security cameras. This rankles me as a citizen and potential customer, but as a needy, skulky father-to-be, I am content to exploit the lapse.I never venture into actual stores. Sadly, I no longer have the disposable income to make superficial purchases that justify my public sharking. My wife and I live off the dividends of her dead parents’ stock portfolio, which is not as robust as it used to be. I can barely afford to put gas in the car that I can barely afford to lease or insure. I’ve been on alleged paternity leave at work so long, I don’t think I have a job anymore. I also don’t think I have the chutzpah to call up my company’s HR hotline and ask if I can have my old position back, or maybe get a different position, or at least pay the office a perfunctory visit and box up my things. It’s midday. I’m hunched at my car’s front left tire, pretending to fix a flat. Occasionally I stand up and sulk around, scratching at the cheap nylon wig that hugs my head. Nobody stops for me. Nobody offers any help. Certainly no Good Samaritans with small, fledgling Samaritans in tow.After a while, I notice a bagboy with an unflattering flattop and a face of pusillanimous acne, lingering at the corner of the building. He’s sneaking a cigarette on his lunch break. I imagine this violates some stodgy corporate protocol, but I am probably not the best person to lodge a complaint with his shift supervisor. Maybe this makes us allies of a sort? Maybe not. The young guy coolly observes my helplessness charade, his lank fame leaned against the brick wall like a bracket too loosely screwed, his sloughy potato face leaking smoke. The kid’s dawdling makes me nervous, and I decide I better flee. I kick the tire a few times. I shrug like it’s no big deal. But I can’t find the keys to my car. I’ve misplaced them. When I glance up again, the kid has flicked the butt and is wiping the ash off his apron as he strolls over. He wants to give me a few helpful pointers.“That tire isn’t flat.”“Thanks,” I say.“Look at that tread. You’ve barely driven on it.” He has a particular gloat in his voice, but there is something uncertain in his expression, a weird fissure or breach. His eyeballs are skittering in their sockets.“Anything else?” I ask.He scans the expanse of the parking lot, formulating some special notion behind those rootless eyes. He sidles up next to me. “I get it,” he whispers. “Pretending your car is busted and you’re stranded here, so some lusty lady will pick you up, take you home, and serve you a dish of piping-hot poon. It’s a good shtick.”He winks at me.“You’ve got the wrong idea,” I say. “I have a wife.”“That’s cool, man. Did you skeez up on her in a parking lot, too?”The kid flashes a nervous smile. He tries another wink.“Stop winking at me,” I say. “You look diseased.”He slouches against the adjacent car, a station wagon with more rust than paint, and fusses his nametag: Karl. Maybe this is just me, but I find something greatly destabilizing about spelling Karl with a K. He lights another cigarette and tries to smoke in stoic solitude. I can tell the hypotheticals are niggling him.“I met my wonderful heterosexual wife,” I explain, “in one of those comedy improv classes that were all the rage a few years ago. The point had been impressed upon me by several colleagues and supervisors that such a class might help me burnish my social skills, which apparently needed a whole lot of burnishing. I had big dreams of being a normal human being.”“Did it help? The class?”“Of course not. But I met a strange, pretty, shy woman who was just as lonely as me, and just as unfunny, and we started a hopeless, laughless life together.”“My folks met in Al-Anon—” “I’m unspooling a narrative here, Karl-with-a-K.” The seventeen-year-old gives a stiff nod, worldly and resolute, as if bluffing knowledge is the same thing as knowledge itself. Maybe that’s true, and this bagboy career is but a springboard to some loftier trade, like bagel slicer or latte flunky. Either way, he hasn’t traded the agony of adolescence for the agony of adulthood just yet, and those sour teen years bring a wisdom and pain of their own. We’d all do well to heed the lessons of the Karl-with-a-Ks of the republic. They will be the ones, after all, who will usher us into assisted living facilities, ladle out our pills and morphine drips, and launch our ghastly ashes into space.“The narrative?” he says, urging me on.I tell him she wanted a child more than anything, probably more than she wanted a husband. But there was a minor problem. I’d already had the procedure done.I point to my groin.“You got circumscribed?”“Yes,” I say, grinning. “Circumscribed. Exactly.”It had been an extreme course of action, perhaps, but I had been a pitiful bachelor for so long. The loneliness may have deranged me. I wasted most of my twenties and early thirties going to craft fairs, yoga retreats, prochoice rallies, anywhere single women might congregate and need companionship. But they must’ve smelled the desperate pheromones wafting off me, and they stayed away. I thought I’d be alone forever and that’s what I deserved. The vasectomy was a form of revenge against myself. Then I met this sweet woman who suffered a crippling sadness and believed that having children would fix the terrible, broken thing inside her. I didn’t want to disappoint this woman. I didn’t want to lose her. I acted as if everything was fine. Maybe a miracle would stumble along and save me. It had happened already, my meeting her. Maybe it could happen again.The kid rubs his haircut, so short and unforgiving, I can tabulate the dents in his scalp. He also has this weird cauliflowered ear that seems a consequence of some barbaric junior varsity sport.“They can reattach them,” he says.“Huh?”I look down. He’s doing the groin point, the unseemliness of which is now apparent to me.“I wasn’t castrated, Karl. I’m not livestock.”He nods evenly. “Science.”“Anyway I already tried that. There was this dodgy surgeon in a strip mall. I should’ve found someone more reputable, someone with steady hands who wasn’t quivering on gin. This hack was all I could afford. He hacked me up, all right. Now the machinery is totally kaput. I didn’t tell my wife about that, either. What could I say?”I catch him side-eyeing the store entrance. His interest is flagging, but I’m not ready to let him leave. This confession stuff is invigorating. Unfortunately, I can’t speak this way to my wife. Her brittle constitution just couldn’t handle it. Ergo, I need to purge every last ounce of honesty from my system before I get anywhere near hearth and home.“It’s strenuous work, pretending you want a child,” I tell him. “You don’t happen to have any younger siblings or cousins, do you?”The kid chuckles and gives his patchy skull one final rub, then traipses off, back to the store, before I can grab him and wrestle him into the trunk.I locate my car keys, glinting, on the ground. Maybe I have a gaping hole in my pocket, the same size and shape, roughly, of the gaping holes in my head and loins and life. Maybe all of me is one large rupture, too tatty and moist to ever be stitched back together. I grab the ring of keys and—I don’t know why—I pitch them overhand, with mild fury, at a nearby car, not realizing the car isn’t empty. Some haggard guy pops up from the backseat, where he was evidently napping. Is he homeless? Jobless? Familyless? Is he an unfortunate guy or a lucky guy? What are the odds he’s a disgraced genital surgeon looking to redeem himself with a little pro-bono work?I shrug and meekly wave. Then I do my funny, joggy walk of shame to fetch the keys from underneath a battered hatchback. I notice this vehicle is also occupied: an old dowager wielding a pair of scissors, clipping coupons from the local pennysaver. I check another car, and another, and another. Dozens of people are sitting in dozens of vehicles, their postures cramped, their faces vacant, everyone waiting for some miracle or accident or statistical fluke to restore order and comprehension to their day. In the last car, I see a glazy, hunched shape in a rainbow-striped shirt and corduroy dungarees, tiny and alone. I scrunch closer. But it isn’t an abandoned child. It’s a CPR doll that some sadistic prankster has buckled into the backseat. The molded-plastic face looks a thousand years old. The decal eyes gaze back at me, an expression of blank, readymade oblivion—and the awful joy of it.I hustle home.
***
My wife is in our bedroom with four years’ worth of funeral wear spread flat on the bed. I’m not sure what she’s trying to tell me, standing there, silently reviewing all that mournful black. I’m in the doorway with a wine-in-a-box that I’ve been ferrying around in the boot of our car for months. Neither my wife nor I drink. Honestly, we don’t do much of anything aside from bicker and grieve the loss of a future that was never ours to claim. Now she’s afraid of leaving the house, and I’m afraid of her fear. I sometimes wonder how it would look on TV, a wife who likes to play dress-up to baffle her biology, confuse her uterus, into fertility, and a husband who lurks the world’s loneliest parking lots, too cowardly to steal children he doesn’t really want. I don’t know if we’re living a harmless sitcom or one of those vulgar true-crime shows.It’s late evening. Despite a fine selection of morbid clothing, my wife is still wearing her cheetah-spotted bathrobe. No preggers suit, no plush belly. She gives me this tolerant yet terrorized look. There’s a great frenzy of eyelash involved. “What’s going on?” I ask. “Nothing.”“Honey? Baby?”“Don’t call me that.”“Tell me,” I say, trying not to stutter the words. “Is this…another miscarriage?”My wife folds her arms and ekes out a low moan. Near the baseboard behind the bed, where she thinks I won’t bother to look, is a strip of pink sirloinish paint that resembles a living organ, a living something, where the wallpaper has been finagled and peeled away. My emaciated wife is secretly stripping the house bare and cramming it down her digestive tract. Then she vomits up the chewed chunks, along with her meals, her sadness, her spite. I have heard that pica is a risk for pregnant women, but their disconsolate impostors, too? Perhaps there is a special degrading flavor in wallpaper that we all long to taste. Here’s another fear: The more our little prenatal ruse gets drawn out, the sicker and weaker my wife grows, so I must prolong the ruse, if only to protect her from reality, making her even sicker, weaker, etc. The destructive urge? I understand that. It’s the cleanup that confounds me. We bury another bedraggled bath towel in the backyard, and we start again.
***
This morning belongs to a field trip of senior citizens who are bused in from a retirement enclave outside of town. I watch their leisurely parade across the blacktop with their twinkling wheelchairs and chrome walkers, a coagulated mudslide of tweed, pilled flannel, garish polyester. By lunchtime, the housewives arrive in their shapeless muumuus and defeated sweatpants, and several hours after that, the five o’clock business crowd, i.e., my people, their neckties loosened, shirttails untucked, trailing their usual draft of smothered despair. In between the clusters, I spot several truant teenagers, a few runty, genderless individuals of ambiguous age. No children, though. The daylong sun is cooking me into my vehicle’s upholstery, and in a fit of heat-infused delirium, I fantasize about grabbing one of the old folks, lashing it like a Douglas fir to my rooftop, and speeding home. Maybe I could fasten a pink bow around the senior’s skull and make it shout “Mommy!” as I drag the poor thing kicking and crying through the front door. Then, I don’t know, maybe I reward it with a lollipop or pension or something?Eventually, I get so restless I climb out. I walk around the car. I walk around the lot. I walk all the way into the store. I know I should sidestep the one-way mirrors and hidden cameras and loss-prevention experts masquerading as incognito shoppers, but I’m just too tired for any more subterfuge. Assorted customers amble in the aisles, aloof and distracted, trying to desperately suppress their pitiable dreams long deferred, the cravings and nostalgias and wry hopes that have both buttressed and doomed their lives, and mine. I don’t encounter any abandoned carts or deserted offspring. These people have watched too many news programs. They’ve seen too many horror movies. Right now, their children are safely at home, locked in the basement with electronic monitors clamped on their ankles, GPS chips imbedded behind their golden smiles.Then, as I’m standing in the party-supply aisle, mired in reverie, I’m nearly T-boned by a woman navigating an overloaded cart. She grumbles an apology, and I step out of the way, whereupon I notice, rather helplessly, the child slotted in the cart’s foldout seat. I feign interest in a rack of crepe streamers and bend around to get a better look. What I see mortifies me. The toddler has a face so mean and crumpled—red meaty cheeks, wet chin jutting—so utterly judgmental, I could almost be staring at a picture of myself.I’m already sorry it is happening: I clench up, set my feet, rear back, and I smack the child so hard it tumbles sideward into a bin of holiday tinsel. The shouting is instantaneous. They tackle me from all sides. Customers, shelf stockers, managers, cashiers, custodians, the lone security guard waddling out of the restroom with his pants half-hitched. The entire world descends upon the party aisle—upon me, screaming, too, at the bottom of the heap—and everyone begins pulling me apart, ligament by ligament, broken piece by broken piece, and I feel like finally, finally I must have done something right.
