Breezes Unhurled

Something made him mad.  I assume it was something hidden deep, he certainly didn't have any tells, that is, he never told us what it was directly, just lots of shouting.  Turns out we only caught the one-foot waves from the deeper Tsunami.  When his wife turned herself in for blowing his chest out she was blacker and bluer than one of those endangered Japanese monkeys, and she had half a pool stick stuck in the side of her thigh.

When Kevin's older brother asked her about it later he said "she smiled like my Vegas Aunt."

This memory wafts in over breakfast, hot oatmeal and hardboiled eggs.  I like my eggs sliced evenly.  Kevin is there, reading up on this inexhaustible spectacle of a president.  I want desperately to be out of the country.  I had finished work at 3 in the morning.  All day one big long strategic assault on my senses, like a sloth boxing Mayweather, and to drive home without a horizon meant that at three I usually fell into bed.  But today I had looked at the tablet - not sure why - seen the numerous unread emails and texts of the last day - and about an hour into them I looked up feeling that only seconds had passed and decided to make breakfast instead of sleep, remembering having been told as a child that there was nowhere that God couldn't see you and hoping it wasn't true, thinking God was like my little sister who one constantly suspected of sneaking up on you but if you could only distract her with her shows for long enough you could tiptoe out and escape to a secret place. 

A cold morning.

"Wanna go fishing?" Kevin gives an alchemic smile.

"I don't know nothing bout no ichthyology."  A flock of birds showers out of the woods, followed closely by a hawk. 

"If your father never did you won't either."  I think about all the people I've chased out of my life, accidentally and on purpose. Out our windows crammed with paint jars low clouds crowd out the higher clouds, a mad mosh pit in the sky. The sun had yet to even take the stage. 

"What was that guy's name," I asked.

"Who, Ted," guessed Kevin, referring to the guy who vanished after the first round of layoffs.

"No, that guy from the Horseshoe, the one that died." 

"Dunno, why?  My brother would know.  I wonder whatever happened to Ted."

"Could be almost anywhere by now."

We run out of coffee so we squinch into my Mazda. I stash the carton of Pall Malls into the glove box so Kevin can swing his bony popping ligaments into the low seat, and we coast in neutral down the hill to the Starbucks while a guy on public radio reads out the names of fake-sounding soviet era government bureaus.  "The Central Reserve of non-Existent Premises," he intones. 

The wind howls as I park, three wide open spaces out front saving me from having to parallel. I miss the organic democracy of parking in unmarked gravel lots.  

That nutty aroma inside is so dense I feel diminished by it.  The smallish early crowd bridging all the gaps between the Americas, anglo and hispanic, black and white, rich and poor.  An old man by the window shares a table with the two small school-aged girls, imperfectly prim little pixies, puckering his whiskered cheeks to whistle at the rising cup of steam.  A woman is talking to her friend on the phone.  I crane my head seeing that she is older than she sounds.  Ahead of us in line, a short dark man in African vestments orders something, thick, like his accent.

"Manolo" a barista barks, placing a drink on the counter.  An old hunchback nun clutching her knuckles into fists emerges from the restroom.  Red and white flashing lights appear down the street before the sirens can be heard.  An ambulance rears past around the corner.  "Carmen!"  the barista calls.

We take our coffee to go and after I have drunk it I go directly to sleep, Kevin to work, I wake myself an hour later with my snores, I open my eyes and continue to dream, feeling that old electric fervor, the  rootless angry howl.  The apartment is mine all day so I forage in the fridge and walk around naked, seeing this new version of myself in multiple reflections and remembering how it used to look, the original incarnation, the ole' band lineup as it were.   Are there connections between who that person was and who I am now?  I used to be a guy trying to live in a mythical construct and now I'm a guy obsessed with destroying that myth.  My gut had broadened and my chest sagged, I still had my hair but the lines had all changed, standing up as tall as I could I thrust my hips a bit. So like, you know, well yeah.

I hold my breath.  Take a hot shower until the manic panic subsides and my palms are wrinkled.  As I towel off my phone buzzes.  The day takes a whole 'nother direction.

She said to meet her at Caruso's at noon and I didn't protest.  Since the breakup we've been crawling toward better things, is what I tell myself.  But what things?  The inner sky is still overcast, it might snow.  

I pass the Horseshoe there alongside the freeway and see a rowdy guy I know from work braced cowboy style out front, what did we even see in that place?  He's a salesman, the nasty pushy type that I despise, I watch the road and hope he doesn't see me but I fantasize that he does see me and the next time he comes up to talk to me I can let some of my hatred toward him boil out.  That'd be a good way to get fired.  I'm all hot air.  The man on the radio said "In ancient Egypt, the servants of the Pharaohs were coated with honey so that the flies would not disturb the rulers themselves."  I switch it off.  The tires roar across asphalt, like crinkling cotton balls in my ears.

I don't see her car and so it feels conspicuous walking into Caruso's, like she's going to pull up behind me, but when I turn around to look she's gone.  What I had wanted was to be her slick secret, a cavernous tunnel into which she could disappear, but she burrowed down and then didn't like it,  she cut me deep, coming up for air and in the process uncovering my insides, I'd been bleeding ever since.  Less cavernous than gaping, less slick than sickly. People like me who hide their problems until they can find no solution except to kill their darlings probably shouldn't be allowed to procreate.  Maybe that's why I pushed them away.  I thought about Trish.  I often do, though we were only together for a short time.  You can never control the thoughts, never prepare for them, they rush in unimpeded, I open the door to the restaurant accompanied by a gale, a loud chime rings.  Be right with you.  I think about her when they interrupt the music at the grocery store to announce a sale, when I'm dialing a client's phone number at work.   Two please, two minutes ‘hun.  I think about Claire, that sweet secluded girl I wooed relentlessly but couldn't figure out how to give any pleasure so I gave up and got mine instead, twice, before she blew away too.

A woman's hand on my shoulder.  Hi.  Nicetoseeyou.  We sit by the window where its slightly secluded but cold.

"Things are good, nice... odd, I guess.”

“Be more specific,” she says.  Her voice has a texture I could wrap myself up in.

She wears glasses because she'd “slept with these contacts in, again.” Her face looking older in glasses, not old, more adult, elongated.  I stretch my legs until they hit the metal bar under the table. I resist the urge to reach across the table and remove her glasses, rub my knuckles against her temple.  I also resist the urge to jam a fork through my dorsal filaments whilst simultaneously pulling away from the table at a sprint, instantly ripping my hand into a Y. 

We order tea and water.  Real big spenders.  She asks some pointed questions, trying to show concern, I think, trying so hard not to look at me askance, that sad emphatic skepticism, that I feel bad for her feeling bad for me.  Why are we even here?

“And how’s your family?”

“My Uncle Russell died,” I say.

She arranges the packets of sugar and sweetener, each in amongst its own kind, bottom to bottom, top to top.  “I’m sorry.  I just…”

We let it hang there.  The waitress returns with our drinks and we drink them.  She checks her phone, giving it more attention than it deserves.  Just like me.

It's been a year," she says at last.  No wonder she asked to meet me.  "I just thought, I didn't want you being too hard on yourself.  There's no formula to this, no spec sheet, it's just, it's hard enough to let yourself love anyone, flaws and all, and then to have all these layers of the past holding you back every day.  I just...”

"Layers," I repeat.  A hint of burning bread wafts in from the kitchen, like a piano with the A^b out of tune.

“Do you know what I mean?”

I nod without looking at her, almost smelling the perfume, or imagining I smell it, her transparent reflection in the window says that this is hard for her.  I should have known.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.  Are you okay?”

"I’m empty as a pocket."

"Who said that?"

"I dunno,” I say, “I might’ve come up with it myself.  Y’know, I am pretty clever."

"Paul Simon," she says, putting her phone back in her purse.

She has to go.  Rather than cavil about the bill I say goodbye.  We don’t hug.  I don’t get up.  I watch her.  I watch a young woman walk in, with tan legs, and when she scooches into her chair across the room her skirt flashes up a bit and my heart leaps at the bareness of the upper thigh.  I blush, imagining the regions I cannot see, all flayed and warped into torrid sexual positions and I laugh out loud at what a joke I have become.  When does it all stop?

Never.  It never stops.  The ego, the pent-up anger, the wandering eyes, the bottomless lust - all together they just might be the breath of life, inhale, exhale, what else is there?

I thought we'd been doing a good job of being inconspicuous but now I suspect that I was wrong.  Too many eyes are looking at not me.  I wish I was a chameleon.

Carrying myself out into the fresh air like breezes unhurled.  Walking back to the car I cast no shadows.  Better get some more sleep before I go back to work.  The sky is a glaucous dome.  Maybe I’ll stop by the Horseshoe.  My stomach gurgles like a man trapped at the bottom of a well.  “There’s no escaping.”  I say.

What was that guy’s name?  It’ll come to me.

F) Fructuous Feuilletons

Time warps in odd shapes in this house. Upstairs the clock says its 6:21. My watch says it’s 6:08. My phone says it's six.

In the kitchen it’s February already. But the fridge is still showing November of 2008. One wall of my room says its January, but the other proudly displays December. In my car its 6:30.

So this was maybe February. It was sometime at night. The sun was setting. The sun is always setting. My phone, telling me it was a minute after six, did not ring. I had started feeling like everyone in the world was out to get me. Or, more accurately, every one was out to forget me. Can you consciously go about trying to forget something, or someone? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right. But it also seemed like something I could do something about so I puttered around, getting ready to go out.

Outside, the mail had come. There was mail for my roommates and a package for me.

Honey,

the note read,

here are some things you left and I thought you might need.

:)

Love Mom

How is it that I know what Clark Gable looks like? When I see a photo, and know, "Hey, that's Clark Gable," how much useful information is not getting through to my brain so I can carry around a useless tidbit of recognition like that?

There was a poster of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in the package from my mother. It wasn’t mine, but I recognized it. Underneath that there were clothes that weren't mine either. I held up a red shirt, two breast pockets, freshly pressed. A pair of shorts. A school sweater. Clothes belonging to my brother. And a book. After I showered I put on the shorts and the sweater and headed out.

The night drive felt like a repeated experience. I was alone, for a time, with the wind. I tried to lose the wind by veering right, onto a frontage road, but it stayed with me. Crowing. No, not crowing. What was the wind saying as I drove? Not much. I wasn’t really listening. But it felt like a repeat experience. I turned on some music and a man sang about surrender. The streets were lonely. The clock said it was 6:45. In my backseat was the book I had brought from home. The book my mother sent me. Wealth of Nations. Who knows where a party will lead, I had thought without thinking. Perhaps it would come in handy.

I picked up the girl. Waiting outside her studio I turned off the car and a whole world of sound emerged from the underlying emptiness of night. Perfect fifths from the freeway, low skids from the overpass, a siren faraway and closing steadily. The girl got in the car. "You're late" she thought but didn't. I imagine she thought this but do not know. She had that 'you're late' look in her eye. What should I say about this girl?

She’s fun. She’s different. I’ve got a big crush on her. This was to be our first date.

There is a panel in the dashboard of my car which I never use and have rarely even noticed, so integral is it in the landscape of my days. At first I must have decided it served no function, I think, but maybe not. Perhaps I had never noticed it before. It was right in front of me, and it was hidden, and when she first got into my car it was the first thing her hands reached for. A secret! Touch it, open it, let us see what is inside.

There was nothing inside, of course. She took the sunglasses from my sunvisor and put them in there. It felt like a gift, even though they were my sunglasses. We had a long drive ahead of us to the party. Soon I was seeing nothing except that panel in my dashboard.

She’s a city girl. "Where are we going," she asks me. I had not told her about the party. Well, I had, but I had not told her where it was.

"This way," I say.

"You don't have any idea, do you?"

"Sure I do. We're going this way. This is the way we are going."

Where she sees the city as a network of roads that lead to specific places, more specific places dotted along the very specific way, I see it as a grid of cardinal direction. I’ll head towards the bridge. Head towards the water. I don't know the streets. I don't know the names. I just know which way I am going. And I will get us there. I do not like to turn around.

"I'm thirsty, let's get a drink before we get there," she says, and so we stop and get a drink. Because who can imagine a world where there is not a drink ready to be purchased and consumed wherever your car may chance to stop?

I can.

Our warmup drinks were cold. While we drank she started talking about children and her voice made my heart recoil. Suddenly I became very aware that I was in a room where I'd never been before. The lighting was low and red. I felt a certain terror, that there was only one way out of this room. I began nervously scanning for other exits. A man needs to have at least two ways out at any given time. I cursed myself for not remembering this sooner.

Then she put her hand on my leg and when I looked at her she was smiling. She had stopped talking. Her smile was meant to make me smile too so I smiled. I thought of happiness. I thought of telepathy. She began talking about work and I thought about what a dick I was to call girls by their cities. By their countries, at my worst. Girls have names too, you know? They are not merely the names of places where they are from. Like trophies and conquests, its denigrating to call them by their cities and not their names. I felt bad that I had done this, and resolved to stop doing it in the future. She asked if I would like another drink and I said I would. The party could wait. I was feeling less trapped in this room with this girl. I was feeling more trapped in these clothes which were not mine. I felt like a poser, dressed in my brothers' clothes.

The bartender had a long two-pronged beard. We ordered more drinks. As he poured them, two frizzy women in black dresses came in, each carrying an handful of balloons tied to strings. Their hands were full of the strings, not the balloons. The balloons were black and blue. One gave her handful of balloonstrings to the bartender. The other released them into the air and they dispersed along the ceiling, and began to disseminate throughout the bar.

"Does this mean we get free beer?" one of the women asked. I could not distinguish her from the other. They looked like the same woman. "We have just come from our friend's birthday party," the other woman said to me, smiling. She had a large nose. Perhaps this is what distinguished her from her friend, I thought, but later when I got a closer look at her friend I saw that it was not. Although, maybe I saw the same woman twice and mistook her for multiple women. "The party is over and no one knew what to do with one-hundred and fifty birthday balloons so we all took them with us!" She seemed quite pleased with herself. My date was flirting with the bartender. Leaning across the bar to tie a balloonstring to each prong of his beard. I looked away. Looking around I saw how much joy had come into the place by the very existence of these black and blue balloons. All the mournful red people were now looking up, white teeth smiling. All except the man sitting next to us.

He has a look which I take to express loneliness. He is slouched against the bar in a bout of voluntary isolation. There is a girl beside him. She is doubtless lonely also. The possibility of talking with this guy haunts her, she's aware of his presence, she fantasizes of his embrace, of holding him close and keeping him secure. He is absorbed in fantasies of his own, two girls who cannot satisfy him because he cannot satisfy himself. But he requires their counsel, their admiration, the comfort they can give him, which he denies tonight because he cannot comfort either of them. Sleepless nights give way without differentiation to sleepless days, all of time but a hopeless setting on love’s humiliating stage. He cannot talk to the girl, because he is imagining another far away. But he could enter her, if only he would turn and talk. And he tells himself he would walk on his hands and knees, across a frozen thousand miles, to be with the other. Once there she would care for his wounds harshly, and he would wish that he were home with another. As it is, he sits alone.

When we arrive at the party David is midstory bragging "…so I beat the snot out of him," he says. "Once he was on the floor I started kicking him. It took me a while to get him down, so I wanted to do as much damage as possible."

I flinched. The room was full of people, spreading out into the yard. The whole room felt like a projection of my brain, the one true home, the only shelter, unfamiliar and teaming with unknown elements, each mingling body a neuron, fusing, stumbling, disappearing, reemerging. Setting, rising.

"I don't know how long I kicked him once he had fallen. There was blood all over his face. His nose was fucked up! Just a bloody pulp!” There was a glaze in his eyes. The circle of revelers were sniggering and dazed. Heartless, all, I thought. Pride.

I snapped out of it. Went outside for a smoke and to look at the stars. One of the girls followed me out. Pen.

"I've been at the full brunt of the force. I've been the devil of darkness' horse."

"Blake?"

"Maybe. How are you?"

"He is watchful while they are at peace."

"Protect me. He is here."

We started drinking. The conversation lapsed into watchful staring, the girl claimed she needed protection. I was getting drunk. I would close my eyes and listen for threats, and strange broken sounds scuffled around us. Who knows where a party will lead? I heard without hearing. There were voices talking about children, a problem child, a baby, voices, and faces flickering with smokey dots through two windows. She read me monologues about the roundness of the earth, and the protection inherent in fathers' voices. I wasn't following. My mind was elsewhere. Relenting to the standard arsenals of distraction, searching for exits. Trying to think about the things I'm trying to forget. Trying to find a use for the word unctuous. Fructuous. Feuilletons. Write that down. I reached for a pen in my pocket, the pocket of my brother's shorts. They were lined with sand, white sand from a beach halfway around the world. All the way around the world, depending on your means and methods of travel. Across the dateline, where it is tomorrow already. Soon it will be tomorrow here. Then it will be two days from now there. 12:07, according to my watch. 12:01 according to my phone. Two months from now. Three years ago.

Fate is a blanket. My date was gone. All the girls were gone and alone I drove home. Fuck this, I thought. Write that down. The dashboard taunts me with what is hidden. 1:23. My watch chimes the hour. I opened the door and took off my brother's clothes. Day began to dawn somewhere. Somewhere else the sun was setting. In my mind they are the same place. I was going to make a call, but there was no point. It didn’t seem right. Or, it seemed like something I could do nothing about. I decided to join the human race in their mass attempt to forget me. I took a shower, and went to bed. I wasn't going anywhere anymore. I was going everywhere. Which is another way of saying, I was going nowhere.