Comic: Resignation of Sight

Comic: Resistance to Change

to your summer snapshots, which is why I still have them. Because we are

one, your memory and I, surviving only through change of habit. And since we

cannot live with each other, we will survive without.

Comic Decorum of Whim

And if God really were my spoon
He would have thanked me.
"There is no spoon," he said,
rich breast milk dripping down
his unshaven chin.
"Shut up."

Comic: Virtues of Hunger

His mood was rife.
Demeanor remained frank.
He felt led estray by the manifest of time
Separated from beauty, and her lover.

Bring back dreams of green meadows!
Blue seas under a cobalt sky!
This discord is strange
like a lost river
in forgotton lands.

Mergers, Acquisitions and Letting Go

(Part: 1 2 3 4 5)

A lingering limb of fog nestled into the innermost nook of that cavity known as the South San Francisco Bay, and sunrise on such a warm day made every other irreconcilable struggle in my life melt away at a powerless surrender into the waiting arms of home. A few hours after whiskey shots until sunup on the prairie, a few days into the newest of new years this side of the Gregorian Calendar, and a few too many secondhand newspaper articles about bankruptcy and foreclosures, my head spun and sung and getting from the airport to home took longer than it should have because I spent the very last of my money in Iowa and walked along the unseasonably sunny streets seeing bucolic sights through dark masked eyes, cats coming home from their nocturnal hunting rounds and little children marching sleepy legs across monitored crosswalks and off into fenced-in playgrounds of public educational sanctuary.

"These children are our future," bespeaks President-elect Soundbite Obama from the News laden homepage I open up after over a week away, the same page that informs me "Spending enough to save the economy will create an ocean of red ink. Experts estimate $800 billion a year would be required to achieve full economic recovery, and spending on that scale in a time of weakened economy will produce some really scary deficit numbers for Obama."

An IM window bleeps its incoming hail:

4thr5tring6xtus: wheretofore art thou now masked man?

DMsqdMn17: Across the arches of sky have I sailed, availed to land in this plastered sunlit deluge Known, as Home.

4thr5tring6xtus: any plans now that ur back?

DMsqdMn17: Whatever happens today, there is no shifting of moments that’s worth a man’s honor tomorrow.

4thr5tring6xtus: ?

DMsqdMn17: In short. Nuthin' much. Might go to The Place I Go tonight, get a drink.

4thr5tring6xtus: wish i could share in the luxury. as it is i can't even free up my mind enough to get out of the house. theres so much to do

DMsqdMn17: Still looking for a job?

4thr5tring6xtus: I should be, but I gave it up. If there hadn't been a lack of work and stuff, they wouldnt have laid off all there employees to begin with...

Napping hours pass during which the sun outside my window slowly sifts into the jaded ocean, and waking to the lingering rush-hour darkness, I throw my travel clothes into The Dude's washing machine and wear don the last remaining vestiges of fashion I have in my possession.

"You look like shit." Says the smoking guy outside the bar, coursing vicious smoke out with every word, "No, I take it back. Shit looks pretty good compared to you."

"Thanks, nice to see you too."

I edge around him and notice in the window a new sign as I reach to get some ID for Jeff. New Management.

"New Management?"

"Yuh," he grunts, "Gowaanin."

"When did this happen?"

"While you was gone ah guess."

"I was only gone a week!"

"Thas funny. Seems like I ain't seen you in here since last year."

"BYAA HA HA HA HA!!" laughs the smoker. "Happy New Year!"

I walk in, stung by the flashing disco lights of a new jukebox in the corner, and caught off guard by the electronic music blaring irrepressibly from all angles.

"Masky!" announces the bald guy as I step forward toward the bar, "We were just talking about you."

"Liar."

"No, it's true. I was just telling Alice here about your trip."

"What trip?"

"Your trip. To find your brother!"

A tall dark-haired woman stood up from behind the bar

"He read about it on your blog Mr. Masked Man, if that is your real name.”

The air in the place sunk, it felt empty all at once, like a vacuumed gush and then an empty stillness.

"What happened to the bartender?"

"I'm Alice," she said, reaching out a long tattooed arm to shake my hand, "I am the bartender."

I noticed she wasn't wearing a bra and felt even more un-nerved. "No, I mean what happened to the old bartender?"

"The new owners thought…"

"I thought he was the owner?"

"No, they live up in Marin. Or did anyway. I dunno."

I spun around, to collect my bearings and noticed more inconsistencies in the place that never changes. The geeks who could usually sit at tables in the back playing D&D and Magic: The Gathering, were now huddled at the starboard tip of the horseshoe bar, paired off in twos and uncomfortable threes. Their tables were noticeably absent, replaced by a patch of painfully bright dance floor where, unbelievably, two bony protuberant Japanese roller girls awkwardly danced and tittered.

The bald guy hands me a drink and I take it down in a gulp, something vicious and unbearably sweet slithers down my throat and I almost cough it back up.

Things change.

Three-to-Six empty glasses later and I am feeling a little bit better about the loss of my favorite dive because everything looks a bit too blurred to have any incensing detail, and I am listening to a grey-bearded man with a resonant baritone talk about his screenplay ambitions: "The trouble is it'll never get funded because I insist, absolutely insist on snagging Paul Reubens for the lead."

"Pee Wee Sperm-in?" a gulletted-woman asks.

"The man is the most versatile actor working today. Except maybe for John Malcovich. So there's that."

"And the baby," adds the bald man, listening in with the kind of knowing smirk that suggests he's heard the whole story a time or two already but still can't wait to re-hear the good bits.

"Oh right, the baby, yeah," says the baritone, “there's a scene at the beginning of the movie that the studio keeps insisting I axe where a live baby gets shot in the head."

I paused.

"It represents his separation from a childish self," he explained. "The emancipation of the inner man."

"Can't you just show him growing up? Or hearing a baby cry and followed by a gunshot off camera?"

"No. It has to be seen onscreen. Otherwise…" his voice trailed, “anyway they said it was a deal breaker. Something about a 'total disinterest Hotpoint for every available female demographic.' Which, in all fairness, is also a pretty accurate appraisal of my entire life so far."

I raised a solemn toast with lassitude. "Cheers."

They toasted, though I don't think the baritone understood why. The dance music stopped and some Def Leppard came on. Now that we could talk without yelling, I considered going over and sharing some choice words with the Japanese girls. First, another drink perhaps?

"So Masky," the bald guy asked, seizing on his chance to sway the subject of conversation, "who was it that called."

I checked my phone. No one had called me all night.

"No, in the story. In your blog. It just finishes with… "

Alice, the new bartender, tears a few top sheets of paper from a small stack tacked to a wooden beam behind the bar and reads: "My cell buzzed incoming and I saw that it was her, "

I felt threatened, accosted. "You Printed— Out— My— Blogs?"

"Well I wanted them to see. It's some damn fine writing. Even Joel liked it, sometimes. He said you use 'And' too much."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Yeah, good job, Masky!"

"Encomiums!" another voice cheered.

"But who was she? How did it finish? Was it the Chicago girl changing her mind that called? What did she say?"

"I don't know," I said.

"What do you mean you don't know? What happened?"

"Anything happened. Everything happened. Why's it got to be my life that I assimilate into narrative resolution? Why can't I just say I made the whole thing up?"

"You couldn't have made the whole thing up! You've been gone! Your friend, from Texas… and we saw Nigel here, we started the whole thing and you've been gone to try to find him!"

"Look me in the mask and tell me I didn't make the whole thing up."

"But, but…" the bald guy stammered.

Alice laughed. "Do you even have a brother?"

"Brother Obama." I answered.

"They thought they were voting for the Messiah, only to find out they were voting in the third Clinton Administration."

"Selling hope to the American people, that's just good capitalism."

"Let's take shots at the inauguration every time he says the word CHANGE."

"Careful. You just said ‘take shots at the inauguration. The Secret Service is gunna be here any minute."

"Or Nigel!"

"Man, some poor DC photographer has probably been taken in like a dozen times just planning for the 20^th."

"Scuse me while I whip this out."

And so it goes. The old voices take over the place and the brazen nerd banter that made me fall in love with the place hilariously digresses into the night. Some things change, and some things stay the same.

Such a beautiful day had given way to a remarkably pleasant night. There are times when the California dew drills a little too deep to ever want to return, but tonight it was clear and warm and I was glad to be back. Glad I had gone looking for Nigel, and glad for much else, besides… when they closed down and kicked us all out I walked into the city, still masked but affecting a confident stride.

The night twinkled and whispered its thoughts to me as I dreaded going back to work in the morning. I needed more money. Passing protracted souls asleep along the park benches and air-grated sidewalks, no where else to go. Passing sad graffitiied corner boxes filled with nothing but yesterday's sad news, one sad foot in front of the other I walked, putting it all behind me. Through the city and beyond into the hills and onto the first train of the new day. When the sky took to light and I was nearly home I watched the morning commuters dislodge their cars and slip softly into the highway breeze, safe in their suits and seatbelts and coffees and routines.

The sun was nearly up. Rounding the corner to home I couldn't have told you what I was thinking about except maybe fear over whether or not the Dude would be laying in wait, an ambuscade in the bushes. Maybe pride that I had not made a phone call all night. Maybe sadness that my laid-off friend across the country was unable to secure a new job. Maybe it wasn't any of those things that I was thinking about, (its best to keep some things hidden behind the mask) but I certainly wasn't thinking about the statuesque Persian girl from the basement apartment across the street, who at that very moment was singing a song to herself as she balanced her keys, purse and papers while unlocking her car. She looked up at me, wide brown eyes thicketed with long lashes, framed by a mane of shiny black hair, and smiled.

"Morning."

The world was full of bright beginnings.

Culmination Rounds

(Part: 1 2 3 4 5)

Reached under the wobbly barstool and pulled the postcard out of my bag, reading aloud:

      "November the third, 2008.  How Do! my Syrian brother!"

      "Syrian?" the Cyclops burped, "I didn't know you were Syrian."

            "Damascus," I sang, drunkenly.  My eyes hazed over.  Nigel's tunneled inksprawl came back to me and I continued, "Dark days digging up Juneauean dirt.  Traded numbers for a gig with the big time, you might have heard of him, the Jr. Senator from Illinois.  Not easy staying on the DL in a bloody city this small, lucky I learned from the best on how to conceal my identity.  You're right, chicks do dig the guy in the mask.  If all goes well I'll be working for you next year!  Let that get to your head?  Don't! Forget to vote!  -N"

            My new friend the Iowan Cyclops falters, raising his hand to order another drink then freezing midgesture and meeting me eye to eyes.

            "You said yer brother was a womanizer right?"

            "Categorical."

            "Fuck me.  I could be sittin' next to… next to Bristol Palin's baby's uncle!"  I ordered a double.  Outside, rusty eremitic cars chewed their way through the year's last new snowfall, and red cheeked parties made their way inside in twos and threes.  New Years Eve in Ames Iowa.  "Stew!  Stewart! Come look at this! Yer buddy in the mask here is a blood relative of the newest member of the Sarah Palin clan!"  Stewart mock-gagged and cocked an eyebrow at me.  "It makes sense," the Cyclops formulated, "You said yourself you don't think he's still there.  He probably left this postcard on the poor girl's bed stand and she, knocked up and alone, didn't know whether to mail it or burn it, but then Christmas comes around and she feels sorry for the poor guy's brother…"

            "Since her own brother is fighting in Iraq I heard,"

            "Yes! Right! Exactly! And so she mails it to you now!"

            "May be.  And here I am."

            "And we're glad to have ya buddy," said Stewart casting a fat arm around my shoulders.  "You tell that girl she doesn't know what she's missin', passing up New Years Eve with you."

            "She said she had a date."

            "The guy's a pussy!"

            "I told her I loved her."

            "And she chose this other guy over you?"

            "Said she doesn't believe in love, and to call her in the morning.  I've burned too many other bridges this year to scrounge up another New Years Date last minute so it's the bottom of the heap.  No offense."

            "None taken.  Whatcha gunna do?"

            "Call her in the morning, I guess."

            "Fuck that.  Let's get wasted!" Beamed the Cyclops. 

And so we did. 

 

            Drinks on top of drinks on top of drinks.  Enough to take the edge off, and blur the edge, and throw you over the edge.  Drank a toast to Innocence and drank a toast to Now and Dan Fogelberg and John McCain and Stewart, my old college buddy proposed a Jaeger toast to 2009.  The Cyclops toasted Schnapps to 'Getting More than Meets the Eye', and then he grabbed his crotch and started pulsating it against some little Mexican girl in a fishnet halter by the bathroom.  As soon as I proposed my own toast, to 'The Impingencies of Reality and the Impending Annihilation that Awaits us All!" I felt a sudden lurching in my gut making its way up for air, and hastily excused myself out into the cathedral of night.

 

 

            Around the block I stumbled, my cell clutched in hand.  Still waiting for a call.  Still waiting— perhaps a pretty girl would be just around the golden corner, waiting to offer me a smoke— perhaps some guy is going to meet her, my competition, coming up right behind me— got to stay ahead of that guy right behind me— every rear streetlamp shadow of myself catching up with the fore streetlamp shadows and scaring the shit out of me, running now, surrounded by the shallow rushing opacities other Me's running from Me and catching up with Me and — out of breath.  I stopped, my distorted reflection in a frosted car window glowered back at me like a brute Neanderthal.  I walked on.

            Feeling miserable.   Jealous at some guy I'd never met, stealing the one thing I dared unmask— my heart.  Miserable at the phantasm of my smirking brother right around every corner and untouchably pompous while he undoubtedly steals some poor loving girl's every conceivable ounce of value and moves on into the night to Change into some other girl's smiling bright-eyed knight in sliming armour.  Change you can believe in. 

Went down on my knees in queasy shame, leaned into a brick wall and vomited green.  The dark wind at my back and perfectly still I felt all the thrumming of the world condense into cold sweat all over my body.  I stood.  Sad, disgusted, and disgusting I felt almost admirable in my misery.  Courageous, even.  The wind so deliciously cool and low, clouds flushing eagerly overhead I felt ready to move on.  Ready to give up on all these torturous obsessions and start to find myself again.  Ready to have another drink.

 

            But coming back into the imbued red light of the bar I was keenly aware that something was different.  The room reeked, an ambient sentiment of conceit and—

            "Hello brother."

     "Wha."

     "Join us for another pint?  If you're tummy's up for it that is…"

     "Wha?"

     "Now then, that doesn't sound like you, the striving tortured blogger, or blogecist isn't it?  Always keenly aware of a startling new pronoun or luxurious adjective to—"

     "I thought it smelled funny in here.  I've been looking for you Nigel."

     "I know."

     "Of course you do.  You look good.  Missed a spot though," I said, licking my palm and buffing it against the receded hairline of his high and lonesome upper brow.

            "Whatever man," he tore away, "your hair's so Emo it probably cuts itself."

            "Ha! That's a good one!  Learn that while you were stealing a teenager's inheritance, or are you onto candy from babies now?"

            His pale eyes flashed for a heightened instant then softened.  "My my, hadn't you heard? It's Republicans who steal candy from babies.  I work for Obama now."

            "OBAMA!" the mindless crowd echoed from the recesses of the bar.

            "Cut the crap Dickweed, what are you doing here?"

     "It's New Years.  We've got lots of friends here from the primaries and since the big guy is off on extended Obama Ohana vacation we came here to celebrate.  I could ask you the same question but you don't look so good so how about we sit down and I buy you a drink."

     "I don't need your charity!"  We sat down.

 

            Nigel ordered two dark beers and I took a few deep breaths and looked at him.  A pretty good looking cat for such an ugly fucker.  He looked extremely tired more than anything, with dark bags set deep under his eyes.  But you wouldn't notice if you didn't know him, since he never stopped smiling for a second.  Exquisite suit, tie loosened, fashionably unshaven, he looked like a man immaculately sure of himself, and after regarding me for a moment as well he took a yawning gulp of his beer and wiped his dirty chin with a hand that looked uncannily similar to my own, save the dirty fingernails.

            "So where are you living now?"

     "Still in California."

     "I'm surprised.  I'd thought that either that Dude you live with would have shot you by now or the ATF would've done it when they came in to raid the damn place.  Missed him and got you."

     "Ya, not yet.  I've thought about that…"

     "Now that I'm in the Administration I could probably orchestrate a raid if you…"

     "Thanks, but no thanks."  I tried some of the beer.  Tasted terrible.  I drank it away.   "What's the deal with all the hopping around Nigel?  I feel like I've been at your heels wherever I go in this country.  Milwaukee, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston…"

"Don't forget about Ohio and Pennsylvania…" his smile beamed.  I wanted to punch him. He must have seen the impulse because he swiveled his seat away from me and pretended to type something into his iPhone.  "I don't know," he said, "I guess I just don't believe in things I can't see and so I try to see as much as I can."

"And what about the girls?  Don't think I don't know what you're up to, leaving a trail of shattered lives wherever you go?  You may have figured out how not to get caught but you can't fool your own brother!  I know you better than –"

            He interrupted "we are here to do things!  Who cares what, just so long as we are acting!  Verbs, you writer!  In my case its seeing things.  Beauty lies only in what cannot be completely seen, like a misty mountain valley in the Himalayas where anything could be waiting for you when the winds change."

"Or like a new girl in every town every night?"

"What are you, jealous?  Because I've always been able to get some and you can only imagine what its like?  Squirreling away in your room and making up comics and stories all day?  Its guys like you who believe that heaven lies on that mountain valley, guys like You who think of heaven as beautiful because you can never see it, but I don't.  I don't believe in heaven.

     "You said so yourself, I heard you when I came in, some girl is out there seeing other guys, expecting you to call her in the morning anyway and has told you repeatedly she doesn't believe in love! And yet you do?

     Years from now you'll walk past precocious school kids with your cane in hand and they'll yell: 'There goes The Masked Man, he believed in things he couldn't see.'"

     "Well it's better than wasting everything you can!  They said they saw you, in California, my friends they saw you treating some girl like shit!"

            Nigel laughed.  "You don't have any idea what you're talking about brother."

     "I do! They said it was you! Said you looked and sounded just like me!  And what about Christine?  The girl from your trip last winter, where'd she disappear to huh?  D'ja drug her in her sleep all at once or do it gradually so she thought she was going mad?"

            He stood up and peered across the heads of the crowd.  The place, it seemed, was now packed.  Bearded guys in ISU sweaters and red ballcaps. Girls in bluejeans, knit scarves and glasses.  Nigel gestured for someone to come over and sat back down.

            "I was in Frisco with Christine.  She's the reason I'm here, she started campaigning way back a year ago and got me in this summer.  And the only reason I treat the little bitch like shit is because I have to defend myself when she beats me up and treats me like garbage.  Isn't that right sweetie?"

            A small brick-figured woman with short black hair and defiant blue eyes stepped up on Nigel's feet and sat on his lap.  "You got it jerk."

            "Christine, meet my weird brother."

            "Oo!  Is he the one who wears masks" she asked.

            "No," I groaned, adjusting my mask.

            Someone started yelling and my eyes hazed over and a vision of Stewart trying to stop a fight between his friend the Cyclops and a runt baldheaded biker materialized before me and I realized it was everyone who was yelling and I looked to the TV and the ball was dropping and I joined in at "Seven! Six! Five! Four! Three! Two!..."

 

     "Happy New Year brother."

     "And to you," I said.  His eyes flickered and he cocked a wicked grin before falling into the waiting kiss of that perky little female concoction on his lap who promptly hopped up and pulled him away into the yield of the singing and dancing throng, careful to avoid the flailing fisted arms of the biker who was beating up on the Cyclops who was laughing, laughing, laughing, with Stewart passed out with a black eye in a droolish pool in his arms.

 

            My cell buzzed incoming and I saw that it was her,

Dead Ends

            Slept away the morning of Christmas Eve on a flight into Houston, overcoming the futility of blue balls with dreams arisen through the transcendent ecstasy of bleary high altitudes.  Washed out bloodsuckers falling from the feathers of an exotic bird like meteors at the end of a bad movie with lots of big plastic guns.  Dreams.  The promise inherent in the number of a buxom Texas brunette whose bed I ended up in once a lifetime or two ago.  Dreams.  The hastily delivered goodbyes in Chicago.  The 200 dollars I have left and the outstanding message in my voicemailbox from work asking when I plan to return.

            I feel sore.

            "More," I said, indicating the bar full of empty glasses, "we need more of everything."

 

            The funereal stream of cars outside baggage claim, the nondescript van to slink me to my hotel, taking a surprisingly long time to reach the highway during which time I imagine that at any moment the enormous driver will turn around and chloroform-gag me with no warning, take me to some unmarked house out in Humble and do horrid things to me before I ever get let go.  The kind of van that looks like all the blood has recently been washed out of the seats.

           

            Which is more real: The swaddling baby Jesus begot by horny angel and dimpled virgin, under a shining parallax of interstellar conjunction, or Golden broken bloody bearded crucified Jesus, suspended in the air above the barroom door with a sprig of mistletoe tied around His pained and skinny pointed feet?

 

            Twin beds and a stainless steal Kleenex dispenser beside a bolted-down TV.  The end of the toilet paper folded into a pleasant little triangle, seven drawers and only a Bible and a phonebook to fill them.  Nigel used to work at a place out on Smith Street.  By the time I'd showered, shaved, dressed in my best wrinkled Dockers and striped shirt with the uneven collar from Mervins, got a cab into the city proper and walked my way to the address I had written on the bottom of a coaster from home, it was nearly 12:30.

 

                Watching wet blotted beer rings slowly erode away the last definite trace of my brother.  George Strait songs blaring on a big pickup truck out in wet asphalt the parking lot.  Everything is a little wet, a little misty, a little lost, or is it me?

 

            "Mr. Saltzman won't be back from lunch for… nutha half hour I 'magine."

            "I'll wait."

            "Might be easier sometime after Christmas hon'"

            I checked my reflection in the mirror, smiled lopsidedly at the pale masked man without his mask.  Shriveled into clothes he never wears and bravely bearing on well out of his element.  Stand Strong.

            "I only need a minute.  And I won't be here after Christmas."  I gave her Nigel's name.  Asked if she remembered him.  She smiled sweetly and shook her head.  I sat back and looked out the window and thought about the spaces in between the buildings.  Everything bigger in Texas.  Joints expand more.  Contrasts of shade and light engorge the pupil.  Desires enflame with greater passion.  I am in my brother's old office building, closer to him than I have been since I started looking for him, and suddenly his distance seems all the further away.

            Stupid Texas.

 

            "Heya slim?  Merry Christmas stranger?"  D-cup with a not unpleasant smile.  I could hear her 'Har Har Har' laughing with her ugly friend, whose diffident giggles were kinda turning me on.  If I were Nigel I'd have gone home with her by then.  Or the pair of 'em.  As it was I sat at the bar, turned slightly away, sending Mry XMas texts from my lap, and wishing I'd done things differently.

                "Hey Sugar, whoncha come lil closer.  We don' bite… hard!" Har Har Har, giggle giggle, giggle.

               

            "No, I don't know where he went." Period.

            "Didn't anyone call you for references, didn't he leave any forwarding address?"

            "I'm sorry to have to put it blunt like this, but NO.  And even that is more'n I should be telling you.  There are certain rules of confidentiality in place here you understand?"

            "Can you tell me anything?"

            Mr. Saltzman rubbed his hands for a moment and then reached for a dry star-shaped Christmas cookie on a platter on his desk.  "He was only here for a couple of months.  Straight out of school, I barely knew him except for the work he did, which was, to say the least, very good. High caliber that one."

            "That's it?"

            "We're still a very young company, kid.  Turnover's pretty high.  People come and go.  It's a growing industry.  Lots of promising upstarts.  You're his brother aren't ya?  Heard he got a new job, why not call and ask him where he's working?"

"Don't you think I tried that already?"  I shot back.  He straightened in his chair and looked haughty and insulted and I thought better of my snap.  Stay cool Masked Man.  I was glad I'd left my mask back in the hotel room though, starting to feel vulnerable without it.  But I figured this guy never would have talked to me if I'd come in dressed as I normally dressed, asked all the questions and left.  They expect you to show all your cards out front before they give you anything.  "Sorry.  He is my brother.  But he won't answer his phone and  I just thought… I just thought you could tell me something I don't know."

            He hesitated.  A good businessman with information will always assess what advantage might be gained or lost before divulging.  His eyes traveled back and softened into an alcove of remembrance where, I imagine, he too had a brother who was irrevocably absent during the holidays.  I took him to be about sixty.  His office had no pictures of family.  No personal ornaments or mementos of any kind.  Just the walls, the desk and the windows where a cloud rolled away in the reckless Texas blue sky and a swath of midday sun shone in, cushioning us into its bright flavor of intimate sanctity.

            "I did get one call," he said, "but I don't know if anything came of it or not."

            "Who?"

            "I can't tell you who.  But I can tell you the call came from Washington, and you might have better luck there." He got up and opened the door, signaling apparently that we were through.  We shook hands.  "D.C." he said, "and a happy holidays to ya."

 

            "What's your name sweetie?"

She sidles up close, clasping my skinny arm between her breasts.  Breath like Mexican wine.  Beads of sweat on the near empty beer in front of me come into focus, (who knows if its mine?), tastes as warm as blood.  Take and drink, in remembrance of …

Who am I?

"Nigel's brother," I say.

 

                When someone informed me that it was Christmas and the bar was closing I opened my eyes drowsy, angry, and hummed a Christmas song of joy and peace and mosied out of there feeling like shit.  Could've taken those girls home.  But who would I be if I only took what I could get?  Stupid Texas!  Stupid Christmas!  Stupid Nigel!  Stupid Me, taking a piss in the bushes.  Alone in a shining city, rising suspended above the stretched skin of the earth by woven boughs of scattered smoky holiday suburbs where all fallen dreams weave and meander and are lost and are reborn as fucking terminal aspirations that feed the machine.  I walked in the night and had a terrible 4AM breakfast at the hands of a slow and sullen waitress who spilled coffee on my pants. 

Gathered my things at the hotel and checked out while it was still dreamy dark and flew out of there as soon as I could, (Stupid Holiday Commuters).  Rising over the slumbering gaze of Texas thinking Long Lay The World in sin and error, pining…for brothers they cannot save and girls they cannot have and money they are foolishly wasting.

Slept away the morning of Christmas on a flight back to Chicago, another day at an airport waiting for another night, lying in bed next to a girl who I am not sleeping with.

"Stay.  Just  for a few days.  We'll have New Years together!"

"What about him? Won't he— "

"You can go if you want to!"

 

Later, while she slept:

SuppleCinStringSextus: nothing good can come from texas

DMsqdMn17: DC! What the fuck am I going to find in DC?! That doesn't tell me anything!!

                SuppleCinStringSextus: bad news

DMsqdMn17: I'll never find him until he wants me to find him.  And the worst part of it is, he keeps taunting me.

SuppleCinStringSextus: bad news

DMsqdMn17: I should just give up.

SuppleCinStringSextus: bad news.  hey did i tell you i got laid off?

DMsqdMn17: What? Really?

                SuppleCinStringSextus: ya. but more on that later.  its late and I'm going to bed

                SuppleCinStringSextus has signed off.

           

"And that's when I got the news about the postcard."

            "What postcard?"

            "Haven't you been paying any attention at all?"

            "Ohhh! the postcard from Nigel!  From Alaska!"

            "Yeah.  Only, it was dated November 3^rd, and postmarked December 20^th."

            "What's that mean?"

            "It either means he's still up there, which I don't believe.  Or that he gave it to somebody to mail, and they sat on it until now."

          "Why don't you believe he's still there?"

            "Here! Here! I'll show you! This is what it says: