Bellamonia Intro

 

Downtown Manhattan, March 1988

 

 

He woke up in the living room, facing a scratch on the wall. His knees were separated at the joint and some of his toes scattered over the floor. Something stank. It wasn’t puke, just bad sweat, smelling like a filthy bar rag. He pushed himself up on his elbow, saw the halo of dampness beneath his body, and dropped himself back down. It was the spare bed he’d kept in the living room. The clock’s LED blinked twelve noon, as it probably had for the last several hours. He bounced up and ran to the bedroom. Bank receipts, envelopes, and coins went flying as he rummaged for the travel clock. Nine-forty. He saw it for a moment before it went blank, as the battery flew out of the back. That would make it about nine-twenty-three. Skipping a few steps on the way to the bathroom, he grabbed a photo of Sally that was stuck to his toe.

In the mirror his eyes swelled. His hair stood like a thicket of undergrowth. He splashed hot water on his face and lathered it, grabbed a disposable razor and only cut himself three times. His bloody gums turned the toothpaste pink. Reaching behind the curtain, he turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature before stripping. Letting out a long and emphatic flatus he stepped into the tub.

“Riiiinnng...,” went the phone.

Grabbing a towel, slipping on the floor, he steadied himself and dripped back into the living room.

“Hello. Yeah, I’ll be right in. No, don’t let them go without me. I’m out the door. I’ll grab a cab.”

Slam!

Sally stood next to the soap dish. As he stood drying himself, he fought an urge to masturbate spawned by the fear of impending doom.

 

His hair was wet and it was cold out, but it helped him wake up. A swarm of yellow cabs passed before he got to the corner, but by the time he arrived there was nothing. His jaw locked and his shoulders rode up around his ears. There was an empty one about three blocks down the avenue waiting for the light to turn. A woman beside him in a leather coat and tights held up her hand. He felt an inclination to pummel her, but turned away and let her take the ride, peeping down at the pathetic brown wing tips, draped by the gray that fell from his tattered black raincoat. He shamefully tucked his copy of Amour Fou into his coat sleeve and turned his twisted face away from the avenue.

As tension turned another notch, the neighborhood zoomed back, as if pressed tightly against a lens bulging outward from where he was standing. On the edge moved a cab with its roof light on. He held up his hand, and when it pulled up beside him, threw himself in.

“William and Fulton,” he rasped, “just below the Brooklyn Bridge, two blocks east of Broadway.”

The cabby was grayish, several days unshaved, with a frizzed pony tail. He fiddled with something on his lap and stuck it behind the visor, saying “Jeez, what a strange morning. You’re like the third fare I picked up, and it seems like I’ve been out for hours.”

“Oh yeah, slow?” Peter asked, pushing himself into the corner to get as much of himself out of mirror view as possible.

“Menacing. Frightening. Just look around. Some real baddies out there.”

Peter looked out the window. He didn’t notice. Beyond his own immediate terror, nothing seemed any more frightening than it ever was. “Sure, I see what you mean, man.”

“I knew you would. I could tell the way you scrunched your head between your shoulders and rocked back and forth. Like you had to pee. Do you have to pee?”

Peter turned his attention to his bladder just to see if the lunatic was reading his mind. “No. Not yet.”

“Yeah, see?”

Peter glanced at his watch. He didn’t have a watch. He had lost it over a month ago, and didn’t see the point in getting another one, not with all the clocks in the city. It didn’t matter anyway. Late was late, though at this point life offered him a huge flexibility, one of the perks, he guessed, of this recent disintegration of credibility.

“Are you the searcher?” asked the cabby. He scratched his gray head and looked again into the mirror.

“Huh?” said Peter, startled out of his daze. The driver didn’t repeat himself for a few moments, but when he did Peter realized he had heard right.

“Ah, what do you mean by ‘searcher,’ and what do you mean by ‘the?’”

“Nothing. Just someone I was supposed to meet. I thought you might be him.”

“Me? Isn’t that like some John Wayne western?”

“Something else, what I’m talking about. A card reader lady told me. You understand. I know it’s a little weird. People think, too many tabs of acid,” said the driver, tapping the side of his head, “maybe, waiting to get shipped off to Vietnam. Stuff like that. Sometimes I think it’s TV that does it.”

“I understand.” Peter did. “I stopped watching.”

“Christ! How’d ya do it?”

After avoiding television, movies, radio, and most magazines, for several months Peter was still suffering from heavy withdrawal symptoms, and had trouble picturing himself without the image getting overlaid by that of a cop, rock singer, or a standup comic. This happened particularly during times of duress or fatigue, and especially while trying to visualize his way out of an unpleasant situation, say, when he found himself trying to explain himself to people, most frequently his boss or Sally. He hoped that something of his real self might eventually emerge if he flushed the system, something besides a willowy emptiness, a turbulent nothing, if there was, in fact, anything else.

“I turned the damn thing in,” he said. “Gave it to Good Will.”

“Drastic measure.”

“Takes determination.”

 

Ten minutes later he was in the elevator drilling a fingernail into the seam of his coat pocket. He got off at the 14th floor and tried to sneak past the receptionist.

“Peter, good afternoon,” said sweetly smug Marion, looking and sounding like Mother Theresa’s fashion model grand niece. “Dave would like to see you first thing.”

He grabbed the message she was holding out to him, a radiant fuchsia-pink paper rectangle inscribed, in perfect penmanship, with Sally’s name and other crucial details. The time, checked off, was 9:15 AM. He stuffed it in his shirt pocket and rushed to his cubicle, removed his coat, brushed himself off, felt himself sweat for a few moments, and walked over to Dave’s office. Dave’s secretary was away from her desk, so he knocked on the door. It opened with a grave swing, slowly revealing the blue vested, red tied figure.

“Hi Dave.”

Dave stood, looked at him blankly, eyes slowly sharpening, individual hairs rising electrically out of his auburn dome. He wore a look that struck Peter on the chest and sent him backwards a few millimeters. Eyes locked, they wrestled for a moment, and Peter felt himself diffuse into the atmosphere of the room, shocked into attentiveness. Dave looked away, went back to his desk, sat.

“The other day I saw a woman with feet so swollen she could hardly balance unless she held onto something,” he said. “She was also missing some toes. You know I’m not a charitable guy but I gave her a few bucks because I don’t need shit like that on my conscience when I’ve got an office to run. It makes me feel like a good guy, like I care, like I’m doing the best I can. A couple of weeks ago I ran into some clown whose skin looked like it was just about to fall off of him, and I gave him a five-spot just for the show.” For a moment his head turned, his eyes giving Peter a disinterested stare. He turned back to the wall and continued. “Again—I’m not generally charitable, and I don’t want you to confuse me with someone who is. I don’t go handing out paychecks around here just out of the goodness of my heart, you know.”

Peter behaved himself: sat and listened, as if taking in some new and important information.

“I like to run things pretty loosely around here,” Dave continued, standing up again, pacing briefly as he kept his eyes on Peter, “as you can probably tell. I like it that way, and that’s the way other people like it—I think.” He looked away and walked to his chair and sat down, put his elbow on the desk and stared out of the window.

“Some people don’t.”

There was a pause. A silence of fifteen seconds. It spread itself throughout the office like a mist, making the air seem fresh and light, ready to yield, with traces of horror film glimmer seeping in from the edges.

“My boss, for instance, Mort Johnston, doesn’t like it one bit. People like him would just love to shut us down, Pete. He could absorb our services into a whole lot of other areas he can more easily justify keeping alive. He’s from the old school. Can’t live with ambiguity. I think he even goes to church.” Dave’s head rolled back around, drawing Peter deeper into his trance. “I’d like to keep it. I worked hard to get this thing going. You don’t know the resistance I go up against almost every day. And every day I beat it. And sometimes your input helps a great deal.”

“But I had that meeting with Schenk today—Schenk the ballbuster—and where the hell were you? I looked like an idiot in there. And you, snoring away at home with the bottle shoved up your ass. Don’t tell me it was the plumbing again. That didn’t work last month. It’s late in the quarter, Pete. You know that.”

“Yes sir.”

Dave picked a cigarette out of his pocket and tapped it on his desk, then held it down on an angle until it bent. “I can’t take another chance like this. I know you won’t fuck up again. On another day it mightn’t have made a bit of difference. You know I’m not a stickler about time. You have it, when you need it. That’s the way I want it for me. And it’s only fair.”

Peter began wondering what was wrong, whether he was still drunk from the night before, or something more severe. What was this Buddha-like calm he seemed to be bathing in—no sweating, no panicking like usual.

“Just don’t fuck me up again or I’ll let you have it.”

With this, Dave’s eyes radiated toxicity. His head changed size and shape minutely, but his eyes stayed locked in place. At this point Peter was back to being his old self again, feeling the percolation of his stomach, the increased activity of his sweat glands.

 

When he got back to his desk, Peter yanked at the fuchsia note in his shirt pocket, tearing small sections off one by one until he decided to leave it, feeling his hangover shift gears. He dropped his head in his hands, pressed his palms into his eyes, watching the geometric patterns forming over his closed eyelids. He tossed a stack of old papers in the trash, picked up the phone, and gingerly tapped out Sally’s number.

“Verity Travel. How may I help you?” came a cheerfully bloodless voice.

“Yes. I want... Is Sally Cantor there?”

“Sure thing. Hold just a moment.”

His fingers tapped twice and grabbed at his knee. On top of the computer monitor stood a picture of Sally, blonde and softly chiseled. The glare of the Plexiglas frame was broken in the middle by a faint scratch, which fell across her chest like a palm, making her look most generous and tolerant.

“Hello, this is Sally,” said a voice he drank in like a flammable liquid.

“Hi. You called?”

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “I was worried. I thought you might have done yourself in.”

“Shit…” said Peter. “I know I keep promising. But things aren’t that bad. I don’t think.” He listened eagerly for her reply.

“If they were you’d probably have me to blame.”

“Not to blame. You’d be involved.”

“I’m always involved, aren’t I?” Sally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Somewhere inside you’re always blaming me for everything.”

“That’s not true. I never gave you any reason to believe that. That’s you, your guilt. I only said that when things are good with us nothing else seems to matter as much.” He slouched and sketched invisibly on his desktop.

“So I’m at least the cause of your feeling the brunt of it, that mythic agony of yours. If I was more considerate you’d be happier. You think.”

“Okay, okay, let’s get off it. I don’t feel like arguing. I feel like my whole life is an argument.”

“Fine.” He heard something between a grunt and an exhalation.

“But Peter,” Sally continued

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do if you lose your job?”

“No such luck.”

“No, I’m serious. Think about what I’m saying! What? Are you going to move back with your parents or something?”

“A—I’m not going to lose my job over this. That’s not how the story goes. B—Even if I did, I would be able to find another one. I’m not helpless, you know.”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

“Look, I’m here every day. I never call in sick, late sometimes, yes, but they’re not getting rid of me over something like that.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“It’s just that my brother, you know how he likes to live it up. It’s not like he’s in the city all the time, you know. He’s like…”

“I know, Mr. Hyde, after finally killing Dr. Jekyll.”

“No, no, no—not anything like that. I used to think Rasputin, before he shaved his beard.”

“Ha! He’s nothing like Rasputin. Rasputin was intelligent, first of all, and he was a hell of a lot more charismatic than Dennis will ever be. He was kind of wise, a mournful schizo, maybe, you know, like that guy we met that time at Moisture.”

“Oh, you mean that hippy hypocrite? The one who tried to read your palm? What was he, Eh-stone-ian? All those snitty eurotrash jerks are the same. Think they’ve got soul because they can rattle off a lot of fluff, like their spoiled-brat American, Harvard-fed cousins, i.e. your friend Janet, as a for instance. They’re really all pretty two dimensional.”

“Oh, and you’re not.”

“I don’t know what I am. Fractured. I feel like a broken mirror, a wheel of surfaces.”

Sally spat laughter into the phone. “Yeah. Yeah. Almost right. More like a broken record.”

Peter rocked and then slouched in his chair like an old man in front of a snowy black-and-white.

“I hope you at least made him stay,” said Sally.

“Oh, Dennis? Nah. But don’t worry. One thing I can say about him, he’s got a great automatic pilot.”

“Make sure he wills it to you. You can have them remove it at the morgue some night.”

“Forget it. There’s more chance he’ll get mine, but I don’t see how it would do him any good.”

“Oh, and by the way, the reason I’m calling, my brat friend Janet can’t do it any other night this week, so I’m getting together with her later. If you want to meet me for a little while, I can do it, but you’ll have to come up here.” He sank further into his chair. Janet hated him. He hated Janet. Though he had tried briefly to befriend her, she just wouldn’t have it.

His stomach began to wrestle with itself. A small red light began flashing on his phone. He stammered and watched it blink, feeling it pulse in his temples. “Look,” he said. “I’ve got another call coming in. I’ve got to take it.”

“That place at Grand Central. You’ve got an hour, hour-and-a-half before she shows up.”

They hung up, and so had the other line. A list gurgled up from his inner database:

 

Record 1 She think(who) she is?

Record 2 Doing.always this_to_me.

Record 3 Shefeel() Not= love-me.

Record 4 Do(care) not what says(she).

Record 5 Me -> just_a_toy & piss_me_off.

Record 6 How (long) I_going_to_take_it?

Record 7 Me -> Feel small.

Record 8 CanDo(1, “yo_tengo”) -> nothing.

Record 9 I not(can) even_stand_up_for_myself.

Record 10 Me -> (perfect) slave.

Record 11 ***Why_do_I_let_her_do_this_to_me?

Record 12 Id_never_Get_away_with_Anything_Like_that.

Record 13 She.rights <- she->important.

Record 14 Im_not.

Record 15 Im_not_as_lovable_as_She_is.

Record 16 Im_Not_Beautiful.

Record 17 Im_Ugly_and_Despicable.

 

<<FATAL ERROR>> eof() = .t.

 

He let his head fall into the palm of his hand. He wore it like a patch over his left eye as his right blurred and fell on the stapler, daring it to transform, lose its banality. The cartridge shot out when he pressed the button on the back, spilling staples across the top of his desk. Composing himself, he eyed a small woven square of matches made like the rafts children make of popsicle sticks. He picked it up gently between his thumb and forefinger and inspected it like an archeologist would an object he was trying to catalog, disturbed by the precision and delicacy he had at certain mindless moments. Four bulbs flush against each side—cardboard sown like fabric. A chill traced through him as he realized he couldn’t remember doing it, although he knew, and recognized his handy-work. There was a small terror that had often accompanied Peter’s hangovers, with the idea that he was losing his mind, or that his consciousness was getting sucked away from him. As the blinding dread began filling him like a balloon, he shook his fist at Sally’s photo and swept his arm, dumping the staples and the stapler into the trash.

 

Up above were the constellations painted on the ceiling of Grand Central Station, and around them the ostentatious curlicues of Social Darwinism. He looked around trying to imagine himself a Morgan, a Vanderbilt, but couldn’t straighten his plebe spine into anything but an awkward kink. What would it have felt like? It was easier to imagine being a dog. A dog sits up and listens, waits for a treat, foolishly runs off after a stick, or craps in the appropriate place. He tried to strut, to flourish, but then stiffened, noticing a panhandler stamping his feet and laughing at him. Peter turned to walk away, but stood for a moment, remembering.

Years before he had seen a gorgon of a woman pass that very spot. She must have been eight feet tall, with clubbed feet and a sausage nose, and she had shocked him into an eerie sort of reverie. It was when he was still young, when there was still quite a bit of leakage between the real and imaginary worlds, something that used to panic him excessively. But it was one of the reasons he decided to find work in New York, since he was always looking for further proof that the present-day western world wasn’t as pathetically void of interest as he was led to expect. For a moment he felt the memory flicker, tried to hold onto it, but it flashed away with a comic-book rudeness, and soon he was off scampering around the halls of the station like a rodent.

After a lively interrogation of every corner of the concourse he found the place. He stuffed himself through the crowded doorway and huddled in his raincoat between the juke box and the door, until a spot at the bar opened up. He wedged himself in between two other bodies and stared at the mahogany counter, working his jaw loose with his hand. It was an up-scaled dive, reified by the installation of chipboard walls, and a number of sand-blasted Plexiglas panels trying to look like cut glass behind the bar. He sat drinking a scotch, grinding his teeth, imagining what he might tell the guy who redesigned the place, while the woman on his left continuously leaned back against him or jabbed him with her elbows every time she laughed. On his right was a man with a two-day beard, and slitted, moist eyes, who smiled and raised his glass as if trying to provoke conversation. Peter grabbed a pencil that somehow made it into his jacket pocket and tried, very unsuccessfully, to make wood grain tracings on a cocktail napkin, until remembering that there was a buffet in back during happy-hour. He gave up his stool and pushed his way back.

The steaming serving tin gave off a sweet, not-quite-rotting odor of leftovers. He gripped his sweating scotch glass, and taking a biting slug, clapped it down on the corner of the table cloth. Grabbing a hot hors d’oeurves plate he lifted the cover of the tin. Egg rolls and ziti sat side by side in two separate trays. He filled his plate with a little of both and began chumming it down, occasionally lifting his glass for a small dribble to dampen his mouth. He continued noisily on for some minutes, filling his plate twice again, until he felt a tug on his jacket. He turned around in irritation, his right elbow almost striking Sally’s chest.

“Well, well,” he said, trying to garble through a mouthful of mashed pasta.

“Been here long?” she asked.

“I’ve been here since before six. Finally…I stopped and had a drink. It’s about time you showed up,” he said as he wiped his mouth on a damp cocktail napkin.

She crossed her arms and smirked. “You jerk.” She shifted her head and pointed with her chin. “I’ve got a table over there. I’ve been watching you make a pig of yourself.”

“Bullshit.”

“Uh huh.”

“Yeah well, how long you been there?”

“Oh, about twenty minutes, probably.”

“Bullshit. I haven’t been here for twenty minutes.”

“No. You just got here. I’ve been here that long.”

He held his breath and followed her to a table. “Honestly,” he said, “I checked back here.” A waiter came and dropped a basket of bread sticks between them. Peter reached inside his jacket and threw a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches on the table, waited for a response, and then grabbed the pack and tore open the cellophane with all the brutality he could muster. Sally sat calmly back, wine glass in hand, without a sign she’d noticed. It wasn’t fair; she always made him jump and he had no affect on her whatsoever. He thought back to the flow charts he had tried to make of her inner-life: simple but varied drawings he had made on yellow legal pad, with felt-tipped pen, in hopes of discovering points of leverage, but the fragile diagrams fell to pieces in his head. There was a chattering like geese through which a disco beat could be discerned. Into the cheerful bedlam, shards of Sally blew around like confetti.

“So you won’t go out with us tomorrow night” she said, looking away. “Is it that you don’t like dancing anymore, or have you just grown out of clubbing?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said I was a little short this week. I’d rather wait till next week. I don’t see why we can’t just stay home, you know, alone together.” Peter flicked his swizzle stick against his front teeth.

“Will you stop that!” Sally grabbed it out of Peter’s hand. “I hate it when you do stuff like that when I’m trying to talk to you.”

“You’re a wreck,” he said. “You gotta learn to relax a little.”

She laughed and shook her head. “I can’t believe you.” She took a sip from her wine glass, poised as if she were looking through him. “If you’re always having trouble with money, well, why don’t you do something about it, huh? Or do you just want to have a convenient excuse all your life?”

“No.” Peter sat up and shifted, as if buckling his seat belt.

“I can’t see why you don’t get a roommate. I’ve been saying it all along. Your space is big enough. You just won’t listen to me.”

“I am. I mean, I’m working on it. I put up flyers.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

Peter began flicking his teeth again, but Sally tolerated it. “No, I’m not. I actually got a call already, but only one, and I’m planning on putting more up tomorrow.”

“Well?” Sally sat forward and shot her pupils into his.

“Some guy named Frank. Didn’t sound like someone I’d want to live with.”

“How’s that?” She sat back again, grabbed Peter’s cigarette pack and began tapping it against the table.

“He made me nervous; not a lot, but the way he sounded—I detected a pathology.”

“You what?” She smacked the pack down hard, denting an edge. Peter took it calmly from her hand and leaned back, bringing together the fingertips of his splayed hands.

“I feel I intuited something I didn’t like about him.”

Sally’s hand still stood suspended and curled, as if clutching something. “That’s a lot to get from a message on your answering machine. So, what did he sound like?”

“He had a stutter.”

“Oh, Peter.”

“No, but it was a mean stutter. And it sounded purposeful, like he was mocking me.”

“You don’t stutter.”

“Not outwardly, no.”

“That’s it—you’ve got to see a shrink or something.”

“I’m working on myself.” He poked his chest with his index finger. “Me! Me!”

“Right. You’re working on my patience, more like it.” Sally seemed to recede into a shadow. She tapped softly, her bracelet clicking rhythmically against the table. “Peter, why don’t all the other people we went to school with have problems like this, condescending phone messages from weirdo, would-be roommates? I don’t know why I have to put up with this all the time.”

“You don’t. That’s it. Maybe it would be different if you did.”

“But I don’t see it that way.”

“Look, I had a hard day, all right? And I admit that maybe I’m a little hyper-sensitive, but I’m not making this up. The guy sounded rude, and a little crazy, besides.”

“Well, that decides it; you two should get along just fine.”

“Ahhh…” Peter dropped his head on the table, a little harder than planned, and then sat back up, rubbing his brow.

“Peter, if I were you I’d consider plugging the TV back in, tearing off that wretched drawing you taped over the screen, and read less of those creepy books you’ve been reading.”

He looked at her sideways like a mistrustful bird.

“Really,” she continued. “I might even come over more often if there was some entertainment around your place.”

“Hmm…!” Peter lit a match and stared at it, resting his palm on his chin. “You just want me to be like everybody else.”

“You’re already like everybody else.”

 

He heard the clunk of his boots as he walked down the sidewalk, carefully trying to avoid the place where he slipped on dog shit earlier. Half way down the block he realized he was headed the wrong way and turned back, stepping right into it. Under a nearby streetlight he looked at the bottom of his boot and tried rubbing it clean in the dirt beneath a tree. He thought about going back and changing his shoes, but then continued on, after considering where he was going. As he rounded the corner the lights grew brighter and the traffic mounted. A white truck rumbled by, pouring thick black smoke into the air. It washed over Peter as he held his breath. With each reek he picked up he began to feel more himself. It was good to smell like diesel in the cold air, better than dog shit, at least. It reminded him of when the garbage trucks would come on winter days, when he was a squirt playing out in the snow. All the kids would stop and watch the monsters brush off the lids with worn leather gloves, breathing big clouds of frost. Peter would breathe with all his might, but his little lungs could only exhibit a cloud about a quarter of their size. Now he forced out a slow breath as he walked, but the steam scattered quickly in the breeze blowing out through Tompkins Square Park.

Outside The Source was a throng of people being herded by wooden barricades. A man’s head hung over his huge shoulders as he scanned I.D.’s with a pen light and waved them in one at a time. He didn’t move a muscle save his arms, and his head sometimes when he’d raise it a half an inch and let it fall again. In front of Peter was a woman with bleached cellophane hair and the thin arms and legs of a junky. Her throat was pink and smooth, delicate and medieval, but her mouth was a deep blood red. She was with a man as thin and fragile as she was. Peter thought of himself and compared, as he looked through the mess in his wallet and dropped his driver’s license on the ground. No need for so much meat, not around the midsection. In a sweeping motion he picked it up, scratching the edge against the concrete, holding it for the titan who paid no attention and let him pass. Inside he handed a girl at a podium five dollars and received an invisible stamp on his right hand, one of an eye in a triangle, an eye that looked much more like a gaping female genitalia.

Dry mouthed and introverted, moving into the smoke and din, he passed a concession and bought a can of Bud. It was twice what he’d pay somewhere else, which was twice what he’d pay at a grocery, that being about twice what they paid, and how much did they pay the poor slobs in Milwaukee who made the stuff? He went on with his Pythagorean accounting until he decided it was okay because the bastards probably had lots of rent to pay, and who else was going to pay it if not other poor bastards like himself.

Almost pealing the paint off the walls with explosions and sounds like the warblings of truck-sized dolphins, the speakers barked an ear-numbing melee, coagulating and segmenting time in repetitive shapes, set on shutting down the mental processes and putting everyone at ease. Peter, who always had trouble finding the track switch between one mode of mood and another, strained his attention until the noise grew sensible. A voice sang, “Mama I wanchoo. Baby, I got your panty-urge.” He was settling into the ebb and flow of sounds and bodies. The next tune, though it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began, was even more braided with barbed-wire cacophony. There were numerous instruments breaking in, squawking, disappearing while a number of voices said things he could neither hear nor make sense of, a walk through a crowd of lunatics at a street fair bathing him in phantasms and vague recollections, exotic and obscene graffiti.

Gray smoke rose and filled his brain, eyes dulled and crossed as the watery forms of sound and movement laid claim to his body, penetrating with an absent-minded rock and sway. By the time he had become a mere object on the edge of the dance floor he responded to something tugging at a thread of his person, turning him around in a semi-circle. A pleasant panic registered, cued somehow by his eyes until the form took shape and he was back again. The blood redirected itself into his face. Out of the cloud of erotic mayhem emerged the form of Sally’s friend, Iris.

Around her face, the brown, least abstracted flesh he had noticed since he arrived, billowed a cloud of dark, electrically fried hair. From the middle, her mouth drew the rest of her features back invitingly, making the corner of his own mouth twitch. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen her for a while. But her smile began fading as he stood dumbly. He took this to mean that the others were very near, and so struggled to speak. But the words came out of her mouth much quicker than they could form in his own. His opened up just as she began telling him something and he missed it.

"Nothing," she said when he asked her. "I was just saying hello."

"Oh, hello then."

"Same old Peter. God, I missed you, and this is what I get.” Her face wrenched in a half grin and turned to the side.

"Shit, I’m sorry Iris. It’s just that I don’t know what to say sometimes until somebody else starts off."

"Ho ho. I can remember you having plenty to say, usually when you’re drunk. Whatever. At least I got you talking. Now go on. Say how nice it is to see me."

"It is. It really is. How was your trip?"

"Great, but I’ll tell you about it later. It’s too noisy in here. Now, give me a hug."

They embraced and Iris planted a wet kiss on Peter’s neck which made him shudder, almost driving him away.

The place was still sparsely populated, so it was easy enough to spot the others coming. There they were, the menacing blonde and her evil cohort, Janet, who stepped up without looking at him or saying a word. Sally moved in beside Peter and put her hand through his hair. "Now," she said, "that wasn’t too long, was it?"

"No, but it was a beautiful walk down here. I think you would have enjoyed it," Peter said.

"There he goes again," said Iris gleefully.

Janet’s jaw slung low as she shook her head. "It’s fucking cold out," she said in a way that seemed almost friendly for her.

"He’d probably walk rather than take a bus if Manhattan was under attack," said Sally. She looked at him smirking.

Peter was flustered. “Who would ever attack Manhattan? Shoppers?” His eyes met Janet’s and an uneasy trill made him look quickly away. He looked back, but she was already gone.

The predatorial club regulars were filtering in and seemed to gather around their little group, mainly boys-soon-to-be-men perhaps trying to score older women for self-enhancement and sexual credibility. Groups of them appeared to be theme-dressing: the black or gray shirts with single-tone variations of red-spectrum tie, the camouflage pants and under-sized tee shirt and crucifix, turtle-necked drones in mod hair and horn-rimmed glasses, the down-to-earth plaid flannels over waffle thermals and jeans. Peter, himself, may have fallen into the category of cowboy boots, faded black khakis and limp v-neck sweater. He generally tried to dress as banal as possible in order to deflect the wrong kind of attention (i.e. his own), but he wondered what he was doing with the particularly self-conscious, not to mention uncomfortable, foot-gear, though it was probably the single feather in his cap of hipness that sneaked through his self-critical filtering system. There were holes everywhere, and you couldn’t block every one of them, or else you’d be blocked, he’d tell himself, waiting for the next thing to tear, hoping it would at least be for the best.

Janet returned and passed out beers to Iris and Sally and began to scope out the uninvited visitors for a victim. Peter tipped his empty can and looked into the opening. An eyedropper’s quantity of suds sloshed around the bottom. He tipped his head and felt it hit the back of his throat and crushed the can, giving the invaders a stern look, and was off to get himself another.

The woman at the concession ignored him while she served three people who had come after. Eventually he got his beer, but not without a mild confrontation. Looking over his shoulder he saw Sally flirting with a broad smile and bright eyes, and turned away to explore a corridor. It was poorly lit, but lead to a room whose brightness threw shadows back at him from the braces set into the walls. It was only a lounge area outside the piss rooms, furnished with automobile seats, tiled along their edges with small plastic toys, otherwise vacant except for a badly rendered mural of Dali’s The Great Masturbator, and a man approaching with a smile, wearing a thin moustache and short, gelled-back hair.

“Jonesy!” said the man, addressing Peter in an upper-crusty, British twang. “Jonesy, you evil bastard, how’ve you been?” He stepped up. Peter stood mute and embarrassed for a moment, as the other extended his hand athletically. Peter grasped it saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not who you think I am.”

“Such crap!” said the man. “You do this to me every time, well, one time. Of course you are. You’re that lad from Michigan with the brilliant Ecstacy. Right? Remember? How about a bit now? Either that or change the lights in this place, they’re making me feel a little too present.”

Peter’s memory could be spotty, but not this spotty, and though there was evidence he might drift temporarily into fugue at moments of high intoxication, the man’s story didn’t fit with any of his collection of self-narratives, not even any of the most masochistically adventitious. But no matter what he said he couldn’t convince the fellow, whose mouth seemed to function with far greater fluency than did his ears, and far more formidably than his own mouth and ears, and in fact far more than almost anything Peter had except perhaps his ability to panic.

Peter finally tried to bring the whole transaction to a halt with a “Well Lamont, it was sure nice making your acquaintance, but I’ve got to get back to my people,” which beaded up and fell away like a sweat droplet on the hood of a freshly waxed Jaguar XJ6. Peter honestly did find the man likable, mistaken identity and all. So instead of abandoning his companion, he compromised by inviting him back to the group. Lamont declined, but followed him out anyway, and when Peter reached his party, stood at a few yards, squinting through a glassy aloofness.

The predators had gone while Peter was away—obviously the work of Janet and her indelible charm. When he rejoined the group they all moved toward the stairs without a word said. Lamont followed a few steps behind, slit-eyes peeping out of his lowered head. Up above, in the dance hall, there were more people than below, but still plenty of room to move. Most of them swayed, careened and sweated as the volume of the music rose almost unnoticeably slow. Some stood shouting at each other and laughing. Peter noticed that the ceilings were very high and covered with big pieces of chipped paint in leafy patterns. At one end was a stage where perhaps cabarets had once been performed. A chic looking boy with an exquisitely torn tee-shirt and a tangle of chains sat on the edge drinking and surveying the crowd. His eyes met Peter’s for an instant, lifting a beer to his lips, and then looked away. Peter watched him for a while trying to remember what it felt like being young and having the type of arrogance it took to hold that kind of composure. All he could accomplish was having his mild dread bump into his soft wall of repugnance. As it caressed him and held him gasping inwardly he compressed back to a point of senselessness. There was a music in him, or more a tone, that stretched and rose above all the peaks. It was his own inner voice telling him to quit, to go home. When the girls started dancing he hardly noticed, though they took turns pecking at him and tugging on his shirt sleeve. Lamont stood facing him waiting like a butler a few yards away. Peter gazed at him and he approached. He stopped before Peter and put his hand to his mouth coughing as his eyes swept the floor.

"You know, you look menacing like that, just standing there. I wouldn’t put it past someone to start something with you," he shouted.

"Why? What do I look like?" asked Peter.

"You look like a hooligan waiting to take what you think is owed you."

The side of Peter’s mouth rose in a troubled grin, his eyes vacant. "I guess I sort of feel that way, only it’s me I feel that owes something."

"Oh, really. And what’s that?"

"I don’t know. Being here. For her. But I’m not really, you know, not the way she wants."

"I see. And it’s the blonde, is it?” Lamont motioned his chin toward Sally. "She seems to thrill more when you’re squirming in your pants if I have it right. But hold this stance a little longer and she’ll be over to you. Meanwhile you keep me company. I like the somber type. Besides, there will be someone here soon who will go red-faced seeing us together."

Peter nodded and lifted his empty beer can to his mouth. "You care for another?" he asked.

"Yes. Yes. But you stay here and let me buy you one. But do stay."

Peter stood watching the dancers, thinking about how much he really hated the place, how he’d almost rather be locked up than be there at that moment. The place was bullying him, pointing its finger at him, at how little sense of belonging he had in this world he had tried to make himself a part of. He was all flesh, heavy flesh at that, the kind that seeps down to the floor dragging its thoughts with it. The others seemed to be made of other substances—poses, ideologies of rightness and hipness he could never shape himself into. Every group had its motto, its banner flying, and his own and only was: I’m tired. He felt if others would just leave him alone he’d be able to find something else, that faint pulse barely ticking beneath the riot. But the finger pressed against his breast bone, putting pressure against his center near his lungs and heart, threatening to collapse him inwardly. It didn’t matter who you were aligned with, it said, as long as you are. There was no place for the stranded, the speechless, the damaged ones without affinities. You must be maneuvered. You must find home. It pressed him hard and he realized he had no place to go and that he would disappear if he let it continue, so he became hard and pressed back. Sparks came, and it was over in less than a minute, but it left him hurt and angry. It was then that he had the first real wish he had in what seemed like forever, and that was to completely and utterly destroy the place.

He wished: He could loom over the crowd like a giant and hurl hate-rays and stars of his pain at it.

He wished: Heads would explode, throwing chunks of concrete and dust.

Lamont stepped up beside him and looked on bewildered in the direction Peter’s eyes were cast, handing him his beer. Peter turned his eyes to the walls, blasting and felling, as the bodies of dancers went on twisting and swaying, unaware of their predicament. These are my people now, he thought, and entered the throng with outstretched hands, whirling like a drunken ballerina. From behind he heard a voice, as if from a tiny transistor radio. "I thought you were the type that didn’t like to get involved."

He reeled around the crowd for what may have been hours, stopping only to buy himself and Lamont beers, Lamont who had followed him around mournfully, never meeting up with his friend. Both of them were getting drunk, and Peter’s mania was settling. He had only begun to notice that Sally had been dancing with a shirtless and muscular something or other for most of the night, and in a spasm of jealousy he approached her and grabbed her by the shoulder, planting a swampy kiss on her mouth which went unresisted because she was drunk also. The shirtless muscle boy bobbed up and down for a few moments and then turned quickly and ended a few feet back, folding his arms and tipping his head to talk to a friend standing beside him. Peter grabbed Lamont above his ears and kissed him on the forehead. He and Sally said goodbye to Iris, who they left to baby-sit Janet, and left the club, taking their time walking back uptown.

Swaying together, wrapped in each other’s arms through the acrid diesel and urine smells, they’d break apart only to tickle one another or for a mock dance now and then. It was about half way when they stopped on a corner in the thick bean musk by a Mexican restaurant for a long kiss.

Sally mumbled, looking down. She looked back up at him sadly and forced a smile.

"What’s the matter?"

Sally slurred something meaningless, and tugged on his hand to get going.

Back at Peter’s place, Sally hung up her coat and saw the remaining flyers Peter had been pasting up around the neighborhood. “I’m proud of you,” said Sally. “I know how protective you are of your privacy. I respect that," she said with the gravity of a drunk. "I don’t completely agree with it.” She slumped down on a nearby chair.

Peter lit a cigarette, and chose a place on the floor in the middle of a fake Persian rug. "What do you mean by agree?"

"Well, I’ve been thinking it would be good for you to be around people more. Being alone so much can make you a little weird."

Peter took a long drag and stared across the room. He blew the smoke out in a heavy cloud which Sally batted away.

"It doesn’t help that you keep blowing me off."

"So what am I supposed to do, come crawling into your fucking shell with you? I’ve got my weirdnesses. I don’t always need yours."

After a long silence Peter slid himself in front of her and held her calves as he looked up toward her eyes. Sally had her face turned toward the wall, but moved her head fractionally as she looked over the table and let her gaze fall on Peter’s hand, which had begun rubbing her thigh. Her arm lifted from the table and her palm landed on his wrist. Her eyes were big and sad. They raised themselves and met his and she smiled uneasily.

"You frustrate me so completely, I...," she said, thrusting her hands upward. She flung them at the sides of his head, grabbing and leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. He rose to meet her lips.

"Stop worrying. Just love me. That’s what I want."

"I do. I do love you. Probably more than you’d imagine, considering," she said, hesitating for a moment. "I just don’t like myself sometimes when you’re around. That’s all.” She brushed her hair aside and looked into his eyes. Peter reflected how different she appeared now from the self-possessed image in the picture frame above his desk at work. She leaned her chin on her hand and squinted between curtains of hair. Then her face relaxed and turned to a smile.

"What?" Peter asked, leaning back to get some distance.

She said nothing, but kicked off her shoes and began scratching the instep of one foot with the heal of her other. Soon she was stroking the inside of his thigh with her toes, and then his crotch, looking at him directly, void of expression. Peter resisted. Something had to change or she was eventually going to drive him crazy. A faint, nearly unperceivable smile crept over her face, like a late afternoon shadow, a favorite of his—secret, invitational, alluding to abandonment. She was giving him what he wanted and needed, but was it really anything? He would pretend not to notice. A little longer. Frustrate her just a little bit, take some of her power away, and next time it will be easier.

Not a limb of his body moved, but the muscles in his arms and back had begun tensing. She had no power over him, since it was his own energy field tugging at him to take her, grabbing her around her bottom, pulling her off the chair and onto his lap, her skirt creeping up to her waist. Realizing this always made it easier for him. She wrapped her legs around his back and nestled in. He felt the softness of her thighs juxtaposed with muscular fiber. Their mouths cupped, her cheeks sinking with the force of suction against his, drawing him in. He pressed hard, his tongue attempting to set itself free and lose itself.

It would be over before he got his pants off if he couldn’t find a distraction. The pressure and heat in his groin had begun to reproduce itself, spawning families of little flames that spread throughout his body. He tried counting backward from one hundred, but it reminded him too much of what he did at work. He put his arms around her back and squeezed, and she let out a breath of air, and they rejoined lips. Letting his head rest on her shoulder, he tried to think of something else, anything, and willed his attention to be drawn off by the first idea that struck his mind. His soul was a woman, he thought, but what did he mean by that? He concentrated harder on the image and placed it standing aloft a cliff where it could be the first to see the sun. Around her was a circle of many torches throwing flickering tongues and specters on the nearby crags and twisted limbs of bushes. She sang mournfully at the first rim of light to stain the edge of horizon, calling for it to appear, and as if listening it grew slowly upward and outward.

Sally unlocked herself and pulled his head up in front of hers. "Is there something the matter?"

"Nothing," he said. "I’m just trying to preserve the moment. I’m happy."

"What?" she asked, running her finger through his hair, looking intently into his eyes.

"I’m happy, I said. Aich aye pee pee why."

"Are you sure? You seem kind of distant. Is something the matter?"

"No," he said turning his head to the floor, "I just don’t want it to be over in a flash. I’m withdrawing myself, just a little."

"Shit, Peter, I’m here now. I just can’t tell if you are.” She held his head and stared at him intently.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m here. I’m just sort of shifting my attention, you know, the way they...” Peter glazed over and fell silent.

“The way they what? You never finish your sentences. You know what they say, an unfinished sentence is like a limp dick.”

“The Kama Sutra. The way they say in the Kama Sutra.”

“Yeah, I forgot. A lot of good that’ll do us if you’re not around.”

“I find it interesting, it’s something I’d like to explore.”

“How about me? Am I interesting, am I something you’d like to explore, or am I a practical solution for your appetites, or just some interesting fuck for you? Solve one problem with another.”

Peter went red and tried to pull himself up from under her, but she leaned all of her weight forward against him to hold him down as she pressed her mouth again against his. He sat back and tugged off her pantyhose, which peeled from her like a protective skin, revealing her pubis and legs. Her scent filled the air immediately. It was strong and sweet, augmented by the aroma of sweat and body waste. It was never just the smell of lust, but the smell of something else, Peter thought. A private fragrance. Sally’s odor was one of the things he was alive for, as much a part of her personality as anything. It washed everything quickly from his mind, everything that had been said and done.

Kneeling between her legs he lowered his head and kissed her pubic mound. The hair was like hemp, and flavored lightly by salt and urine. Raising his head he was seared with delight. Down he went again. A sigh came, a tightening of Sally’s thighs and buttocks, and a slow rising and sinking of her chest. Peter sucked and swallowed the effluvium, and felt it on his face. Her hips rolled, and she grunted affectionately, kneading his head with her fingers. As his cock hardened against the rug, threatening to trigger, he got the woman singing again. This time at a red, half-bent orb jutting over the rocks and sea in the distance. The flickering of the torches died down to a quiet shimmer. The sky had grown lighter. Pink, and then a royal blue above, veined in the cracks of clouds with red, like volcanic flow.

Sally sat up and lifted Peter’s face, kissed him hard on the lips and licked a little bit of herself off of him. Sliding herself forward, so that the rug creased and rose in the middle, she started unbuckling his belt and pants. Peter rolled over on his side to pull them the rest of the way off and go back on his knees, but then rolled back on his behind when Sally pushed gently against his chest. She sat on his lap and slid him easily inside her. He felt the wet warmth of her body surround him, the embrace of her inner flesh. They sat like that for a while, barely moving, staring into each other’s ecstatic red faces—eyelids drooping, mouths grimacing pleasurably with each slight movement. Peter reached under Sally’s skirt for the base of her spine, which he held in the palm of his hand and pressed towards him as hard as he could. The shimmering changed to a steady cinematic surge. The song continued, not louder, but crazier and painfully joyous. The magma of the sky carved deeper, the glow broader.

They stood up without disconnecting. Peter carried Sally into the bedroom. When they passed the table, she looked down at the advertisements, saying dreamily, "I can’t wait to meet your new roommate. I hope you pick somebody good."

"Me too," said Peter, plopping his bare ass down on the sheets, watching her unlatch her skirt and pull off her top. She didn’t say anything, but climbed around him and laid on her side, tugging at his arm to follow. He spun around and rolled over, slinking up beside her on his chest.

"Wait," she said, and reached her hand between his hip and the bed to grab his cock. He raised his buttocks to help her and flattened again, lowering his lap into her open hand, and reached between her legs sliding his middle finger through her crevice and implanting it in her anus, slowly to the second knuckle. Shifting on his side his tongue touched her nipple, and moved around to the side of her breast, and down her stomach to her thigh. He worked his way down to her feet and licked between her toes, and sucked on her big toe, massaging her pubis with his free hand. Sally wriggled and pulled Peter back on top of herself. The sky was a full blaze of red and purple. The singing was a sweet murmur lilting off the leaves and blades of grass as the sun, in its white fury, scorched its way over the horizon. Peter felt his legs turn to water as a spasm shook his body. Part of him was going into her. It dripped with the force of each shake. He was going into her. He disintegrated, running through into the flowering morass.

The two remained in their embrace, feeling the tepid pleasure of their limbs resound gently, and more gently still, slowly fading in the soft pulse of waning excitement. They exchanged a few languid kisses as they slowly relaxed their grasp of each other, pouring outward further over the bed as time passed. Peter, rolling over on his back, flicked the light switch off and smiled up at the ceiling, which was still partially lit by a rectangular column of light streaming through the window. The blankets were snowy in the blue dusk of the room. He laid back, one arm pillowing his head, one hand lying on Sally’s belly. He was happy and light, and felt capable of enormous things.

He imagined himself floating upward like a miraculous bird, through the ceiling into the apartment above, and then through the next, and finally up into the sky above the city. It was still night, but the light was tweaking through at breakneck speed. The gray and black prisms below began glistening with pink edges and sparkles of white, growing louder until the eastern side of the tallest one rang each of their fierce colors, throwing hard shadows into the tranquil morning chill.

It was turning into a spring morning. The freeze was gone. The birds could be heard doing their twittering rite, and every tree imagined itself wrapped in the garlands its buds would soon become. Peter stroked Sally’s stomach, and she took hold of his hand. He wished he could show her, but perhaps she was somewhere similar. He felt her sunny and warm as pink peonies against a field of green and lush willows swaying, spinning in long sheaths of silk amid the blooming mimosas. Rising up again like a feather lit by a breeze he watched the wash of light describe dilapidated rooftops and somber alleyways. It was a lonely sight, and Peter headed toward the west to see if he could spy the first bustle of Broadway. Trucks and cabs moved downtown slowly, diesel engines, and a horn now and then blanching out the bird song. A huge Ronald McDonald sat cross-legged and serene on one of the tops. Peter imagined he flew by and looked into its clownishly vacant gaze. It made him think of a time he and Sally were visiting Mona Scarlatti, a friend of Sally’s from college. They were sitting in Mona’s parents’ kitchen, and Mona was slicing up fruit when her father came home from a hunting trip. He and his friend came in carrying boxes of evangelical tapes, and were throwing slogans about and discussing the bible loudly. Peter had met Mr. Scarlatti a few times previously, and got the impression that he wasn’t well liked by the man. Peter felt he was looked at as an unwanted and demonic influence on his daughter and his daughter’s friends, being young and male, with an outward rebellious pout. The two men were making a lot of noise and acting out angrily on his behalf, which was unnerving to a point, though he ultimately felt welcome, being the guest of the daughter, not the father. When the plate of sliced apples, carrots, and several types of cheeses were delivered to the table, noticing one of his favorites, Peter exclaimed with what he thought was country style humility, "Gouda! I love Gouda!"

With that Mr. Scarlatti seemed to take notice of him for the first time announcing, "Buddha is dead!"

As he drifted off, and the fantasy ran into dream, he found himself in a real estate office looking for a new apartment with Sally. He was full of delight at the thought of them moving in together. A real estate man with polished back black hair and a full double breasted suit took them to a place a few blocks up from where Peter lived, in a small section called Funerealville. The area was lush with trees, flower boxes, brownstone buildings immaculately cut, like sanctuaries in a monastic garden. Peter was so overcome by the warmth and beauty that he was almost in tears. For Sally it was just fine, just what she wanted.

"Finally," said the real-estate man, at the end of his pitch, "the really good thing about living in Funerealville is that everyone in the community gets his own key to the cemetery.” He pointed his hand in the direction of a fenced-in greenery, displaying a broad gold watch band on his naked wrist. "It is only asked that everyone help keep the graves covered with flowers."

 

At work the next morning Peter sat back in his chair, crossing his arms self-satisfied, but feeling a little strange. He could tell now that Sally loved him. He should never have doubted it, but until last night she was always remote when they had sex. Something changed, and it was beyond Peter’s imagining what it could have been. His guess was that he should simply accept it, and not worry, although it made him anxious.

He looked up at where he had stapled the little square of woven matches and thought a while. In a way, he realized, it was evidence that he was capable of more than he usually considered. Reaching up, he carefully pulled out the staple and held the object in his hand. Little ideogrammatic serving tray, he thought, and rested it against the frame that held Sally’s photo. But the picture wasn’t her. It was flat, and seemed inappropriate now that it was more obvious than ever that she was not the Sally he had inside his head, but something more like himself. She was teeth, feet, words, smells; she was diasporizing, bleeding out of her plastic holder. The ever-mutating face: try catching that with your camera. It was all very mysterious to Peter, even disturbing. He couldn’t quite figure out what she was. Until now it never really mattered. He never thought about it, was always so sure that he had at least an inkling, and that’s what mattered. But now that he had experienced her differently, so richly, it made him uncomfortable. Before she was simply Sally, just like the girls in high school, over a decade ago, had been this girl or that. The photograph was so much easier. It stood still and was definite. He could never get Sally to do that, not now. He realized intuitively that it was somehow his own fault. He had willed it, had wanted to own her, to see through everything. A feeling of nausea went through him. It wasn’t a dream after all. She was no longer what he wanted her to be – though he still loved her. Right? She was now herself, and he was he. The recognition imposed itself on him and he paled with morbidity.

With a flick of the power switch Peter set his PC rattling and grinding. He had wasted enough time dithering. Time to get to work! Out came scraps of paper covered with notes, graphs, and coffee stains from his top desk drawer into his jittery hands. Should he marry her? Wait a minute – here it is. He pulled out a folder containing his A-1 priority project, the one he saved for such emergencies. This is it. Yeah. They’d go for it—fewer fugues and sexual dysfunction caused by a newer antidepressant medication. Peter was always on a mission of sorts, and here was another right in front of him.

"Is that the Opinions Analysis, or have you just been drawing pictures again?"

Startled, Peter twisted in his chair like a spring unwinding from the bottom up. It was Dave slouched and grinned-up in his most unthreatening of selves, a disguise which tended to make Peter tense. Mind-fucker Dave was never very clear about how playful or serious he was being. Besides, there was still the shadow of Monday, the big opportunity bartered off to drunkenness; could mean trouble-shooting and memo-writing for eternity, loss of employment, homelessness, humiliation.

"Yeah, this is it. It’s stuff I’ve been working on since, uhh..."

"You mean, since then."

"Yeah. It’s a little…," he waved the papers in the air and searched for the right word, "undeveloped. It’s still a rough draft. I can explain it to you if you want."

"Undeveloped? Ha! It’s a fucking mess, and so is this desk. I don’t understand how you can work like this. But you do—I guess. Sometimes I expect you to pull a rabbit out of your hat. I don’t see a hat, but there could be one under all this shit."

“Well, you see this line...”

“No. Stop. That’s not what I’m here for.” Dave straightened up like a general. A wisp of hair on his forehead almost seemed to be blowing in a breeze. Peter looked up at the ceiling to see that it was caused by an air duct. “I just wanted to make sure everything was all right between us. As far as the threats go—I have to make that stick—it’s part of being a boss, that’s all. But I still appreciate you. I want you to know that.”

“I understand. Look, I know I fucked up. You don’t have to apologize to me.”

“Oh, I’m not.”

“Hmm… It’s just that my brother, he was passing through the city on his way home from Pittsburgh. He called me before he left and we planned to go out for one drink. Just one! I would never have planned to do what I did. No way. It’s just that... I guess I was having trouble with my girlfriend. We talked. We drank. It got kind of disgusting.”