(draft)

Phoenix, Arizona   ||   May 10, 1994

C H A P T E R   O N E

By sunset Nicholas’s vision had been reduced to garish ribbons of color. He thought that as one sense dimmed the others should grow stronger, but perhaps that took time. For now the steering wheel wormed incandescent beneath his fingertips, the air tasted of a thousand dead cigarettes, his head was a tangle of ghost murmurings and faraway alarm bells.

As he drove, memories of the day played like an old newsreel fed backwards through the projector, color-stained and wobbly and sequenced in reverse. Most immediately he recalled leading Socks down the mountain. He passed a few hikers, some who paused to talk to the dog. Most looked through Nicholas like he wasn’t there.

Before that he stood still on the mountain for a time. Hours, maybe. He was watching the airport and his eyes watered and burned.

Nicholas liked his particular place on the mountain. The trail bent sharply once and quickly again, angling past a throne of red sandstone, a quirk of erosion that left a waist-high bench of rock joined to the sheer cliff wall behind. Of course, he was hardly first to discover the site: MIKEY CLASS OF '87 had been here, as had CINDY LOVES JAY, and METALLICA RULES and JOHNNY SUCKS DICK and FUCK YOU SUE, too. Nicholas had sketched ideas for his own tag, but with little enthusiasm for the results.

Today he set only his backpack on the throne, abdicating in favor of a small outcropping of rock on the opposite edge of the trail. The perch was a precarious one, especially with Socks by his side, but the reward was a dizzying view of the city over the rust-colored rocks, the cactus and the creosote that blanketed the mountain.

The airport lay at his feet, to the southeast. Nicholas couldn’t help the way his heart fluttered with every jet that took to the sky, sank with each landing. Maybe he hated the airport, the futility of recapture endlessly following escape. But then, why keep returning here? Maybe he needed a place to think. It could be something important was on his mind, all that time spent staring at the planes, but it was long gone now. All that remained was a memory of that obnoxious kid, the one who approached Nicholas earlier that afternoon, back when his body faced away from the airport, to the west, towards the sun.

“Hey mister.”

“Hey mister.”

“Hey mister.”

The kid called and called and Nicholas ignored him as long as possible. A solar eclipse was due this afternoon and it beckoned to Nicholas and he was here to see. The eclipse was once and it was now and he faced it head-on, everything, the sun livid and the moon stone dead and the sky enormous and hot and flat like a mirror, perfect everywhere but the horizon, where its clean slate blue cracked into a cloudy piss yellow. The sky was eternal and its ruin was the triumph of the modern Western city, the combined passions of a million drivers in a million cars poured across a million miles of asphalt. If the drivers, the noiseless pilots of these humble death machines, were to pause a moment to look up, they might see Nicholas, looming on the mountain like a gaunt teenaged Cristo Redentor overlooking the city. The drivers wouldn’t stop though, not ever. The cars plunged on and on into the filthy horizon and the sun remained high above, for now shedding little of its terrible brilliance. Nicholas imagined he saw the sun ringed by a thick black halo, though it was hard to say whether the cause was the eclipse or the strain on his eyesight.

“Hey mister. Whatcha doin’?”

The kid was tugging at his sleeve now. Nicholas responded without looking.

“Teaching Socks here a trick.”

“What kinda trick?”

“Seeing eye dog.”

“He don’t look like a seeing eye dog to me.” The boy reached down to pet Socks, who tilted his head happily. “You call him Socks? Like the president’s cat?”

Nicholas, blinking hard, looked at the boy for the first time. The kid’s face was an irritating pink smear. “Huh?”

“The president’s cat is named Socks.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Hey mister. How come you were staring at the sun?”

“I’m watching the eclipse.”

“My dad says don’t look at the sun, even when there’s an eclipse. You never heard that, mister?”

“What’s with calling me mister? I’m eighteen. Barely.”

“I bet your eyes hurt.”

Nicholas sighed. He pulled his sunglasses and a stick of gum from his shirt pocket.

“Look kid, why don’t you get the fu–I mean, leave me alone. Go bug someone else.”

The boy petted Socks once more, then scampered around the bend in the trail and out of sight. Nicholas was left alone to study the airport, to hike back down the mountain, to find his car and drive it home with his eyesight newly compromised.

He was behind the wheel now and he was actually driving, but his scarred vision gave his surroundings a dreamlike quality. He drove the car and he thought of a dream he once had of airplanes. He saw himself as a kid, alone, kicking a ball aimlessly around his backyard. Suddenly he heard a roaring overhead, and looked up to see two jumbo jets collide in midair, producing a fireball to rival the noonday sun in size and intensity. Though the walls of his yard stood high, he somehow knew the neighbors all saw. Yet no one screamed, no one moved. People just watched.

The explosion realistically should have left no survivors, but this was a dream: men and women floated down slowly, held aloft by invisible parachutes. As the people drifted closer, Nicholas saw they had no faces, and they fell headfirst, tumbling softly onto the featureless planes of skin where their eyes and noses and mouths should have been. Some bodies landed in the gravel, some in the palo verde trees, some in the swimming pool; yet they caused no splash, raised no dust, whispered no sound.

Socks barked from the passenger seat and Nicholas returned his attention to the present. He was using tiny suburban roads rather than major avenues, to avoid the traffic and to get away with driving half-blind. What’s to see? A yellow sign warning him to WATCH FOR CHILDREN when there weren’t any. Quiet homes, manicured lawns, silvery cars at rest in long arced driveways. There were men in each doorway – overfed men, groaning and scratching like bears, bathed in the flickering backlight of living room TV sets. It was trash night in the suburbs, and the men rolled heavy containers to the curb with the lumbering, arrhythmic gait of the undead. And Nicholas was nearly home.

Death Letter (revised)

Wednesday morning before work, I felt a twinge of anxiety as I opened the mail. A letter should have come already confirming direct deposit of my paycheck. A day late shouldn’t have caused much concern, but it had arrived every other Monday as far as I could remember. The money wasn’t much, sure – enough to pay the bills, keep the cat fed, get drunk when I wanted. But its absence unnerved me.

I spent all day yesterday fretting about the missing deposit, then drank enough after work to chase it from my mind. A Humphrey Bogart film was on when I came home from the bar, but I fell asleep and missed the ending. It worked its way into my dreams, though. I was climbing a lonely hill at night, and had a raincoat pulled tightly around me. It was windy and the clouds sailed past the moon at an insane speed. I wore loose dress shoes with poor traction, and I would periodically slide back a few steps and have to scramble to my feet. When I finally reached the top I came to a bus stop beside a deserted street, where dead leaves and plastic bags whirled past rusted cars. The weathered remnants of handbills for last month’s carnival were pasted to the reverse of the bus stop’s glass partition; the mirror image of a torn clown, its pointy-hatted head pinned in the jaws of a tiger, grinned obscenely at me. A payphone stood nearby, and though it didn’t ring I held the receiver to my ear. I could hear Bogie over the line, telling someone a good love scene involved him slicing grapefruit, dopey and half-asleep. I can’t recall how I reacted to hearing this, but when I woke the film was over and static filled the screen.

I flipped past a few envelopes destined for the junk pile – get this credit card, save that creature, elect some city councilperson – and found a letter from my job. This one felt unusual: my address and theirs were typed directly on the envelope rather than visible through a glassine window, and it weighed next to nothing.

The letter inside was terse:

Dear sir,

We regret to hear of your untimely passing. Effective immediately, all deposits to your account are hereby suspended.

Sincerely,

I held the letter towards the kitchen ceiling light, as if a change in angle would reveal new truths. The paper felt suspiciously thin, but the company’s logo was faintly embossed about two-thirds of the way down the page – a seal of authenticity, I supposed. But I didn’t feel dead. I pressed my thumb into each finger on one hand, then the other. Five fingers per hand, all with feeling. I cleared my throat, coughed; the sound was staged, hollow, but at least I had made it. I had seen enough bad comedy films to know better than to run face first into the bathroom door, but I did run my hand down its surface. Decaying paint was peeling off firm plywood – I scraped a few flakes loose with my thumbnail. So I couldn’t pass through solid matter, anyway.

I imagined human resources could sort this out, but all of a sudden I didn’t feel like going to work. I lit a burner to put a kettle on for tea, and waved my hand into the flame, which if anything hurt more intensely than I expected. Apparently I could outwit the walls but not the stove.

As I rinsed my sore fingers, I contemplated the existence of the letter. Why bother informing me I’m dead? If my job intended to reach a close relation I had none, and I lived alone, except for my cat. I half-suspected Baxter could read, but he in any case lacked the manual dexterity necessary to open an envelope. I hadn’t seen him this morning, but I didn’t seek him out. I felt confident cats could see ghosts, so a conversation with Baxter wouldn’t prove anything.

I sat staring out the window, nursing my tea for the better part of an hour. I wasn’t really thinking, just allowing my eyes to wander over the rooftops of shorter buildings in the neighborhood, watching weak sunlight reflect off miserable old patches of snow. It felt liberating to hear the clock strike nine. I hadn’t called in sick in years, and couldn’t remember the last time I was home when others weren’t.

At nine-thirty I reread the letter but discovered nothing new. I wandered downstairs to check the mailboxes, searching for my name; it was there below my mail slot, just the same as all the other residents. I leaned against the wall, not necessarily reassured, and noticed a lingerie catalog sticking out of box 3B. I wiggled it gently until it came loose and began thumbing through it. I didn’t feel particularly moved by the images, but I couldn’t say that meant much. One model was pretty enough, with a vaguely exotic face, generous curves, actual hips. The others looked unbalanced: stick frames, massive tits. And the airbrushing was out of control – the blemishes, the wrinkles and the stretch marks had been predictably erased, but so had the nipples, the pubic hair and the labia, the tiny islands in a sea of skin that could send nations to war. Or something. I dropped the catalog on the floor and went back upstairs.

An alien feeling settled over me as I reentered my apartment, as though I had chanced upon a meticulous recreation of my living room in a foreign museum. I turned around slowly – with the bathroom door open I could see almost the entire space from where I stood. I could sense a labored authenticity in the most trivial details: the ten-and-two o’ clock arrangement of teacup handle and sugar spoon on a saucer I left on the kitchen counter, the accumulation of dust on the books and records lining the shelves, the patterns of wear on the floorboards. I wanted to sit down but seemed unable to comprehend the utility of the sofa; the fabric bristled under my hand the way the skin of a frightened creature in some exotic petting zoo might.

The clock radio was playing softly in my bedroom, though I couldn’t remember turning it on. A voice as flat as newly minted paper money announced that today was the anniversary of the death of jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan. It seems his wife shot the poor bastard following an argument outside a club where his band was relaxing between sets. A curiously mid-tempo number followed the story; it was neither an upbeat celebration of the trumpeter’s life nor a mournful reflection on death. Just a song.

Baxter emerged from behind the bed, brushed across my legs. “I am here,” I told him, louder than intended. He looked at me funny, then wandered off to the kitchen and stuck his face in his food. “I am here,” I said again, softly this time.

My cell phone rang. I almost didn’t answer, thinking it was my job investigating today’s absence. But they thought I was dead, didn’t they? I picked up after six rings.

“Hey.”

“Jane?”

“Yeah.”

“What time is it there?”

“We’re in the same time zone, mister. What’s with asking me that, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

“So how are you? You busy?”

“No. I’m not at work.”

“You sick?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“Jane. I think I might be dead.”

“How so?” She answered calmly.

“It’s my job. They sent me this letter canceling my paychecks. It said I was dead.”

“But you’re talking to me.”

“I know it’s absurd, but it sounds plausible. How do I know I’m living?”

“Does your heart beat? Are you breathing?”

“Ghosts breathe.”

“I wonder. You can’t talk to someone at your job?”

“What for?”

She was silent. Through the wall I could hear the muffled sound of radiator pipes banging in my neighbor’s apartment. It sounded like chains clanking on a jailhouse floor.

“I wish you were here, Jane. Since you left the city I can’t seem to figure anything out.”

“So go to the office.” Her calm sounded forced now. “Let someone there figure it out for you.”

“I don’t mean just the letter. It’s–”

“I know. But you have to start somewhere. There must be someone at work who can explain the error.”

“But who goes to the office to prove they’re alive?”

There was a long silence as we considered this. When she finally spoke it was to ask if I’d been outside today.

“I went down to the mailbox, but I suppose I haven’t properly left the building, no.”

“Do. Walk around, interact with people. Call me later.”

She hung up. I grabbed the barest necessities – coat, keys, wallet – and, after a moment’s hesitation, folded the death letter into my pocket.

The streets were quiet for a weekday. The few people I saw hurried one place after another, eyes down, shoulders hunched against the wind. I tried wishing it were summer, but it was impossible; I couldn’t remember how it was to feel the sun.

I trudged down familiar avenues for hours, never once considering where I was going. I stopped once for coffee and a sandwich, but the guy serving me moved so swiftly, so mechanically, that I felt less than certain I was present at the meal. I felt warmed by the coffee, but couldn’t taste the sandwich. I wasn’t hungry when I ordered it and I wasn’t full after I finished it. I felt like a cigarette afterwards – probably the strongest sensation I had felt all day, and the strangest. I’ve never been a smoker, but a slow, satisfying post-meal cigarette, the kind Humphrey Bogart might have in the movies, sounded like just the thing. The feeling lasted only as long as an empty plate was in front of me; by the time I left the café and walked past a market I desired nothing.

Soon I reached the park. It was dusk and the light was pathetic; the stripped branches of the trees bent forward like talons, low and sharp. A fog enveloped the east end of the park, and as I moved towards it I could hear voices, murmured conversations. I stood closer; the words grew louder but I couldn’t understand a thing. The sound was like the tower of Babel, a confusion of tongues. And yet for a moment I distinctly heard the voice of my grandfather: as an old man suffering from dementia he told stories of his youth during Prohibition, of moving cases of bootleg liquor on the Philadelphia trolleys. “Bring me my gangster hat,” he once insisted in a state of confusion, and this is precisely what I heard in the fog: “Bring me my gangster hat.”

The murmuring resumed. I stood still for a time, facing the fog. I listened but didn’t recognize another word. My hands were in my pockets and I felt along the folded edges of the letter with my fingertips. I thought about my grandfather, about the fog; I wondered what it would be like to take another step forward and maybe disappear forever.

I was still thinking long after the fog pulled away from me, receding like the remnants of a wave, leaving behind damp, clammy ground. I was alone and I was cold and I had nowhere to go, nothing to do. No – I corrected myself – Baxter needed me to feed him. And Jane asked me to call her back. That was at least something.

I turned around, away from the fog, and started walking home.

Coconuts

TODAY

Colin X woke up alone on the beach. The tide was rising, and the ocean lapped at his shoes and socks. He checked his watch. Not that he was especially interested in the time – it was 11:30 – but he wanted to compare the skin underneath with the sunburn on his wrist. He had no idea why he had a suit on, but he was grateful for the protection; somehow he had even thought to cover his face with his blazer. Only his hands, salmon pink and starting to blister, concerned him.

A pair of sunglasses peeked out tentatively from his jacket pocket. The frames were bent and one lens was cracked, but they would do. He ran his fingers through his hair, returning sand to the ground. Taking inventory of his body as he stood, Colin found everything in more or less working order. His head was ringing – and his hands stung, obviously – but he could walk just fine.

He checked his pants pockets and found them nearly empty. No keys, no money, no identification, no lint; just a nameless phone number written on a cocktail napkin. He considered calling it then and there, but alas – no cellphone.

The sun, angry and green through his tinted lenses, taunted him from the apex of the sky. For a moment he was sure it hissed at him, the sound of a vast fiery cobra poised to strike. He needed shelter, but saw only sloping dunes covered in thin reeds. “Well, then,” Colin said to nobody. He loosened his tie, turned his body parallel to the sea, and began walking.

An hour passed before the scenery changed: the reeds grew dense, the dunes moved farther from the shore, the odd hermit crab scuttled by. Around the bend he saw a small cluster of cottages, raised upon stilts to withstand the temperament of the sea. The surf did look rougher here, crashing aggressively against the remains of a pier. A gravel road led away from the hamlet, cutting through the dunes, but no cars were parked alongside it. The curtains were drawn in every window, and the balconies facing the sea were empty; yet the cottages were in good condition, suggesting a place vacated for the season rather than abandoned. But why close a seaside village in summer?

Circling the buildings, Colin found an elderly couple sitting on the front porch of one of the smaller cottages facing the road. The air was stifling away from the sea, but the couple rocked contentedly in their chairs, reading worn paperbacks and sipping iced tea.

“Uh, hello.” Colin spoke from the foot of the porch stairs.

“What can I do for you, son?” The lady responded; the man glanced down briefly, adjusted his glasses, and resumed reading. “You look a little lost.”

“Yes ma’am. Frankly, I have no idea where I am.”

“Seems that’s the only way anyone ends up here these days. Believe it or not, this was once a popular vacation spot.”

“What happened?”

“It’s funny you should ask. I was just telling Burt – this here’s my husband Burt, and I’m Mabel – ‘Burt’, I said, ‘you know the trouble with this town?’”

Burt shut his book. “Mabel, can’t you see the poor man’s exhausted?” Turning to Colin, he added, “Where did you come from?”

“I don’t know the name of the place. It’s about an hour’s walk that way.” Colin gestured down the beach with his right hand.

“South? There’s nothing south of here, not for a long ways.”

“That’s true. I woke up by the ocean. I can’t remember how I got there.”

Mabel clucked her tongue. “Well, come on up and take a rest. Burt, get this man a glass of water, and aloe for his hands. They must be frightfully sore.”

Colin climbed the stairs as Burt disappeared into the cottage. “Much obliged, ma’am.”

“Call me Mabel. And you are?”

“Colin. And I would like to hear more about this place.”

“Well, we started summering here during our courtship, not long after Burt came back from Korea. Must’ve been the mid-fifties. Used to be you had to plan ahead to get one of these seaside cottages any time between Memorial Day and Labor Day. You’d see kids, teenagers, young couples, old folks. Vendors sold trinkets and food. Someone would always bring fireworks on the Fourth, and we’d have a big communal picnic.

Burt and I did our share of traveling over the years – Europe, Mexico, Brazil – but we always liked it best right here. When we retired fifteen years ago, we decided to live here year-round – or nearly, I should say. The wind gets a bit nasty come December, so we spend the winter in Tucson with the grandkids.”

“When did the place empty out?”

“Things have been slowing down for years now. Some say times are tough, that maybe nobody can afford to vacation, but times are always tough. I tell Burt it’s a lack of civic pride – people get caught up in their tv and their internet and they stop caring about what’s around them.”

“But the buildings seem well-kept.”

“Oh, people come occasionally, and Burt and I make the maintenance rounds now and then. Nobody locks their doors here – never have – so if we see something that needs fixing –”

“We fix it.” Burt had returned with a glass of water and a container of aloe. Colin started gulping the water eagerly, only to cough and sputter. “Better take it easy there. The sun’s done a number on you today.”

He finished the rest slowly. Mabel helped him with the aloe, as his hands were too raw to pry the lid open.

“You need a place to rest a while, Colin? We have a spare bedroom.”

“I’d appreciate that, Mabel. Any chance I could use your phone?”

“You betcha. There’s one next to your bed.”

Burt showed Colin to his room, and left to refill the water glass. Colin dialed the number in his pocket – the call went straight to voicemail without ringing.

“Hey, you’ve reached Colin. Leave a message.”

Burt came back with the water as he hung up. Colin took only a few sips before setting the glass down next to the phone.

“Any idea what happened to you today?” Colin shook his head, and Burt gave a strange smile. “Is it a lady? Seems to be the root of every problem, if you ask me. Don’t tell Mabel I said that.”

“A lady?” Colin repeated. “You know, I can’t say for sure.”

“Well, you rest now. We’re on the porch if you need anything.”

Burt closed the curtains and left the room. Colin laid on top of the comforter, listening to the waves beat uneven rhythms against the shore. Eventually he faded into a troubled sleep, and dreamed of a mouth full of sand.

-----

YESTERDAY

The hotel bar was on the fourth floor. Colin sat beneath an umbrella on a balcony that afforded an impressive view of the sea. Less impressive was the view around him: sun-dazed tourists tippling piña coladas, wearing Bermuda shorts and flip-flops. Colin, by contrast, sat stiffly in a three-piece suit, pale as the devil, drinking a white Russian. Seagulls chattered listlessly, floating down from the sky like the balloons and paper streamers of some misplaced New Year's celebration. People drifted by, the sun sank slowly, the wind carried the scent of the sea; Colin alone sat motionless.

“Need another?”

He looked up, expecting a waitress, but instead saw a striking blonde in a cocktail dress. He felt instantly gladdened – she looked like the only other person in the bar who received the right invitation to the wrong party. She was tall, maybe taller than Colin in her heels, broad-shouldered but appealingly curvy. Her lips were full, her lashes were long, and she knew how to put on makeup. A knockout.

“White Russian. Thanks.”

He watched her hips wiggle as she walked away, then returned his attention to the seagulls. Some were squabbling now, fighting for possession of a few discarded scraps of hot dog bun. Blood appeared to be dripping from one gull’s beak, but it was probably ketchup.

The woman brought two matching tumblers. She slid into the chair across from him, stretching one leg over the other languidly, seductively. Twilight was approaching, but Colin sweated nervously; he imagined he could see physical waves of heat in the air, pulsing towards him like slow blasts from a raygun, making his brain liquid.

“Cheers.” They clinked glasses, drank. Her eyes were intense so he studied her wrist. Something was tattooed there in an Elizabethan script, but it was hard to read thanks to the bangles sliding by. Eventually he settled on “Some Weird Sin.”

“Iggy Pop?” he asked, gesturing at the tattoo.

“Things get too straight, I can't bear it / I feel stuck, stuck on a pin.” Her singing was throatier than expected, but not at all bad. “You a fan?”

“Mm-hmm. The Idiot especially. His ‘China Girl’ is perfect.”

“You’ve won my heart already.” Her smile could strike a man dead. “I’m Janice.”

“Colin.”

“So, Colin….” She swirled ice around her drink, took her time in continuing her thought. “What brings you here?”

“I – I hardly know, just at present. If I came here to forget something, it seems I’ve overdone it. My watch is accurate, and I use two alarms to wake up each morning, but since I’ve been here I’ve become detached from time, or immune to it. No, that’s not quite right – I’m perpetually aware of the time, to the minute. It’s the days and weeks, the months and years, that baffle me.” He trailed off, sipped his drink. “I’m sorry, it’s a tedious response to a simple question.”

“It’s alright.”

“I do what I want: eat, drink, swim, read, go back to sleep. It’s liberating and it’s terrifying. I can’t tell if I’m experiencing a pleasant escape or the slow unmooring of my personality.”

“What are you reading?”

“Huh?”

“I said, what are you reading? If these generalities are so frightening, let’s talk specifics. A few minutes ago we were talking Iggy Pop – even you, with your shaky grasp of time, ought to remember that.”

“You’re right. I apologize–”

“No need. Just name some books.”

“All I have in my room is One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I’ve been borrowing from the shelves in the hotel lounge. I assume it’s things other travelers leave behind. Harry Potter, Catch-22, Roots, Jane Eyre. John Grisham, Margaret Atwood. There’s a travel guide to the Scottish Isles for some reason. Biographies of Abe Lincoln, Walt Disney, the woman who invented Kevlar. Probably three different Erma Bombecks. A children’s book about hippos. The Bible.”

“You’ve read them all?”

“Not the whole Bible.”

“Huh.” Janice waved to a barmaid, ordered two more White Russians. Colin took an enormous gulp of his – staying caught up might prove difficult. Then again, he had done most of the talking.

“So what about you – what brings you here?”

“Me? I’m a performer. Singing, dancing. Cabaret-style. Mostly hotel bars around here, though I do private parties now and then.”

“Is Janice a stage name?”

She smiled wickedly. “I’ll answer that once we know each other better, Colin.”

“So will you be performing tonight?”

“Heavens, no. With the amount of preparation I go through – makeup, hair, costume, vocal warmups – you wouldn’t find me drinking at this hour if I were. Plus, I prefer to play classier joints.”

As she said this, a balding man brushed by their table wearing a t-shirt barely long enough to conceal his Speedo bathing suit, plus socks and sneakers. “I see what you mean.”

They talked until their drinks arrived, then they drank.

All at once the entire balcony fell into an awed silence as a full moon, bold and ominous, emerged over the sea. It seemed fearfully close – its cratered surface in sharp focus, its sway over the tides a palpable force. Minutes passed before anyone dared to look away. When they finally did, Colin whispered “to the moon” and touched his glass to Janice’s, even though both drinks were half-empty.

Colin felt good. Maybe not drunk, but getting there. And happy; it was nice to be reminded of what it felt like to feel anything. “I’m glad you found me tonight, Janice.” She smiled, blushed. “And I have to go to the bathroom.”

He stumbled across the bar, shoved through the swinging door into the men’s room, and walked into a stall. As he unzipped he felt something bump his shoulder; he turned and saw Janice standing there.

“But this is the men’s room,” he said lamely.

“Shhh. Open your mind.” With deft movements she withdrew a compact from her purse, and a small vial. She closed the toilet seat lid and hunched herself over it. Colin remembered that he still needed to pee, but it could wait.

She rolled a dollar bill into a straw and offered it to him. “Halcion and cocaine, crushed together,” she explained. “Shuts down the mind and keeps the body going. If you’re going to be with me tonight, you’ll need it.”

“Well, then,” Colin said to Janice. She handed him the dollar and he leaned over the mirror.

-----

TOMORROW

“COLIN SLOW THE FUCK DOWN.”

He was behind the wheel of a silver luxury sedan. At present the car was traveling sixty miles per hour – which, Colin had to admit, was a bit excessive given his current location in the spiral entrance ramp of a parking garage. Janice sat next to him, screaming. He tapped the brakes.

The car handled itself beautifully in crisis. The tires screeched but remained responsive as Colin guided it with his left hand to a safe stop, just inches from the wall. His right hand shot out reactively to push Janice back into her seat. Her breasts felt unnaturally firm as they collided with his arm, almost like coconut halves. He explored them curiously – probably for longer than the situation called for – but she didn’t seem aware of it.

“Why. The. Fuck.” Janice was hyperventilating. Colin moved his hand to her back in an attempt to calm her, but she smacked it away, which hurt like hell. A container of aloe rested between the seats – Colin applied a thick layer to his sunburn.

“I’m – I’m sorry, Janice. Lately I don’t have much control over my actions.”

“So you’ve said.” She managed three words in one breath – a sign of improvement.

Colin started driving again, this time absurdly slow, as if to atone for his earlier transgressions. He guided the sedan neatly into a parking space across from an opening in the wall that provided a view of whatever it was the garage belonged to.

He rubbed Janice’s arm. “You okay?”

She nodded. He left the car and walked over to the opening in the wall. They were at the airport – an incongruously small airport, given the relatively massive scale of the parking garage. Colin could only see one terminal, and at the moment no planes were departing or arriving.

It occurred to him he might be late for a flight, thus justifying his driving somewhat. He hurriedly checked his pants pockets, relieved to find them full: keys, wallet, cellphone, lint. In the left pocket of his jacket was a folded note with his name on it; in the right pocket were two plane tickets. Three hours until takeoff – so much for justification.

He read the note:

Dear Colin,

It was lovely having you as our guest. If you're ever in the area again, don’t hesitate to look us up. And please, please take good care of yourself – no more wasted nights on the beach.

Your friends,

Mabel and Burt

Janice approached while he was reading; she placed her hand on the small of his back. “What’s that?”

“A reminder.” Colin smiled, took Janice’s hand, and led her back to the car to collect their bags.

Fiction Writing 1, Homework 5

“Robert.”

She squeezed his bicep. He squirmed loose, reshelved the book he had been holding.

“Robert! How are you?”

“I’m doing fine, Vera.” He paused. “You’re looking well.”

“It’s lovely to see you.” She touched the same place on his arm. “Simply lovely. How long has–”

“Three years. Almost.”

“Three years. That long? You still live around here?”

“Not the same apartment. The new one’s tiny, but it’s cheaper. But the same neighborhood, yes.”

“I can’t get over how it’s changed. Do you still like it?”

“I like it fine, Vera.”

“Is Johnny’s place still open?”

“It is.”

“Oh, do tell him hello. You know, Max and I bought a great big place uptown, near the park. I suppose that was two years ago now.”

He watched over her left shoulder. Two children, each maybe six years old, caught his eye. One sat quietly, absorbed in a copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends. The other had made three separate trips to the drinking fountain in the last two minutes.

“You don’t like when I talk about Max, do you Robert?”

“He’s your husband.”

“You don’t like him, do you?”

“What’s not to like? People like Max. He bought you a big place near the park.”

“I work, Robert. We bought it together.”

“Sure.”

“How about you? Still seeing the same girl?”

“No. That ended.”

“Seeing anyone, then?”

“I’m awfully busy, Vera.”

“You always were. What is it these days?”

He checked his watch. “Look, Vera, it’s been really great–”

“Listen, I have news. I’m not supposed to tell yet, but I’ll bust if I don’t. Robert, I’m pregnant.”

For these last two syllables – preg-nant – her voice shifted to a stage whisper, loud enough to be heard three aisles away.

“You – you what?”

“I know! Can you believe it? Max wants a boy so badly, but” – she exhaled – “I’m on cloud nine either way.”

“You’re pregnant.” He stared, and she nodded. “But when I wanted kids –”

“Oh come now, Robert. You never really meant that.”

“I did!”

He wailed so loud someone actually shushed him, causing him to mutter, “It’s a bookstore, not a goddamn library.”

“Robert–”

“You know I did, Vera. I always wanted kids. You never did.”

“But could you imagine? Us with kids?”

“If you couldn’t imagine it, why did you marry me?”

“You musn’t ask me things like that, Robert.” She put her hand on her belly. “I don’t know how to answer right now. I really, really don’t.”

Neither spoke for some time.

“Well.” He glanced towards his watch. “Again, I should be going.”

“Take care of yourself, Robert.”

He brushed her upper arm, mimicking her earlier gestures. Walking past her, he grabbed a book at random, and charged it to his debit card without checking what it was.

As he exited the bookstore, she took a seat on a bench at the end of the aisle. Two children, each maybe six years old, caught her eye. One sat quietly, absorbed in a copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends. The other wiped his mouth as he turned away from the drinking fountain.

Death Letter

Wednesday morning before work I felt a twinge of anxiety as I opened the mail. A letter should have come already confirming direct deposit of my paycheck. A day late shouldn’t have caused much concern, but it had arrived every other Monday as far as I could remember. The money wasn’t much, sure – enough to cover expenses, keep the cat fed, eat out once or twice a week, get drunk when I wanted. But I needed to know it was there.

I had meant to call the bank yesterday but never got around to it, and I was tired when I got home from the bar last night and tossed the mail unopened onto the kitchen table. There was a pretty good film on starring Humphrey Bogart as an unlikable fellow accused of killing some lady, but I missed the beginning and fell asleep on the couch before it ended. It worked its way into my dreams, though. I was climbing a lonely hill at night, and had a raincoat pulled tightly around me. It was windy and the clouds sailed past the moon at an insane speed. I wore loose dress shoes with poor traction, and I would periodically slide back a few steps and have to scramble to my feet. When I finally reached the top I came to a bus stop beside a deserted street, where dead leaves and plastic bags whirled past rusted cars. The weathered remnants of handbills for last month’s carnival were pasted to the reverse of the bus stop’s glass partition; the mirror image of a torn clown, its pointy-hatted head pinned in the jaws of a tiger, grinned obscenely at me. A payphone stood nearby, and though it didn’t ring I held the receiver to my ear. I could hear Bogie over the line, telling someone a good love scene involved him slicing grapefruit, dopey and half-asleep. I can’t recall how I reacted to hearing this, but when I woke the film was over and Lee J. Cobb was arguing with someone offscreen.

I flipped past a few envelopes destined for the junk pile – get this credit card, save that creature, elect some city councilperson – and found a letter from my job. This one felt unusual: my address and theirs were typed on the outside of the envelope rather than visible through a glassine window, and it weighed next to nothing.

The letter inside was terse:

Dear sir,

We regret to hear of your untimely passing. Effective immediately, all deposits to your account are hereby suspended.

Sincerely,

I held the letter towards the kitchen ceiling light, as if a change in angle would reveal new truths. The paper felt cheap, but the company’s logo was faintly embossed about two-thirds of the way down the page – a seal of authenticity, I supposed. But I didn’t feel dead. I pressed my thumb into each finger on one hand, then the other. Five fingers per hand, all with feeling. I cleared my throat, coughed; the sound was staged, hollow, but at least I had made it. I had seen enough bad comedy films to know better than to run face first into the bathroom door, but I did run my hand down its surface. Decaying paint was peeling off firm plywood – I scraped a few flakes off with my thumbnail. So I couldn’t pass through solid matter, anyway.

I imagined human resources could sort this out, but all of a sudden I didn’t feel like going to work. I lit a burner to put a kettle on for tea, and waved my hand into the flame, which if anything hurt more intensely than I expected. Apparently I could outwit the walls but not the stove.

Why, I wondered while holding my fingers under running water, would my job bother informing me I was dead? If they intended to reach a close relation I had none, and I lived alone, except for my cat. I actually half-suspected Baxter could read, but he in any case lacked the manual dexterity necessary to open an envelope. I hadn’t seen him this morning, but I didn’t seek him out. I felt confident cats could see ghosts, so a conversation with Baxter wouldn’t prove anything.

I sat staring out the window, nursing my tea for the better part of an hour. I wasn’t really thinking, just allowing my eyes to wander over the rooftops of shorter buildings in the neighborhood, watching weak sunlight reflect off miserable old patches of snow. It felt liberating to hear the clock strike nine – I hadn’t called in sick in years, and couldn’t remember the last time I was home when others weren’t.

At nine-thirty I reread the letter but discovered nothing new. Though I held the mail I wondered absently if the post office thought I was dead. I went downstairs to check the boxes and found my name below my mail slot, just the same as all the other residents. I leaned against the wall, not necessarily reassured, and noticed a lingerie catalog sticking out of box 3B. I wiggled it gently until it came loose and began thumbing through it. I didn’t feel particularly moved by the images, but I couldn’t say that meant much. One model was pretty enough, with a vaguely exotic face, generous curves, actual hips. The others looked unbalanced: stick frames, massive tits. And the airbrushing was out of control – the blemishes, the wrinkles and the stretch marks had been predictably erased, but so had the nipples, the pubic hair and the labia, the tiny islands in a sea of skin that could send nations to war. Or something. I dropped the catalogue on the floor and went back upstairs.

Though I had left my apartment just minutes before, an alien feeling came over me now, as though I had chanced upon a meticulous recreation of my living room in a foreign museum. I turned around slowly – with the bathroom door open I could see almost the entire space from where I stood. I could sense a labored authenticity in the most trivial details: the ten-and-two o’ clock arrangement of teacup handle and sugar spoon on a saucer left behind on the kitchen counter, the accumulation of dust on the books and records lining the shelves, the patterns of wear on the floorboards. I wanted to sit down but seemed unable to comprehend the utility of the sofa; the fabric bristled under my hand the way the skin of a frightened creature in some exotic petting zoo might.

The clock radio was playing quietly in my bedroom, though I couldn’t remember turning it on. A voice as flat as newly minted paper money announced that today was the anniversary of the death of a certain jazz trumpeter. It seems his wife shot the poor bastard following an argument outside a club where his band was relaxing between sets. A curiously mid-tempo number followed the story; it was neither an upbeat celebration of the trumpeter’s life nor a mournful reflection on death. Just a song.

Baxter emerged from behind the bed, brushed across my legs. “I am here,” I told him, louder than intended. He looked at me funny, then wandered off to the kitchen and stuck his face in his food. “I am here,” I said again, softly this time.

The phone rang. I almost didn’t answer, thinking it was my job investigating today’s absence. But they thought I was dead, didn’t they? I picked up after six rings.

“Hey.” This was a voice I hadn’t heard in some time. Jane and I were longtime friends, almost-lovers, occasionally at each other’s throats. She split for Michigan years ago when things got too weird between us.

“What time is it there?”

“We’re in the same time zone, mister. What’s with asking me that, anyway? Not happy to hear from me?”

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have known the answer. I needed Jane, but talking to her always made things hard for me. I assumed she felt the same. “You don’t know how glad I am.”

“Yeah?”

“Jane…I think I might be dead.”

“How so?” She answered calmly.

“It’s my job. They sent me this letter canceling my paychecks. It said I was dead.”

“But you’re talking to me.”

“I know it’s absurd, but it sounds plausible. How do I know I’m living?”

“Does your heart beat? Are you breathing?”

“Ghosts breathe.”

“I wonder. You can’t talk to someone at your job?”

“Who am I to stand against a tangled bureaucracy? I can just hear them ordering me from one department to the next, insisting their computers don’t make errors.”

“You could try.” Her tone was one I knew well – she was losing patience with me. “How many people work in your office, anyway? Fifty? It’s not like you’re taking on the government.”

“But who goes to the office to prove they’re alive?”

There was a long silence as we considered this. When she finally spoke it was to ask if I’d been outside today.

“I went down to the mailbox, but I suppose I haven’t properly left the building, no.”

“Do. Walk around, interact with people. Call me later.”

She hung up. I grabbed the barest necessities – coat, keys, wallet – and, after a moment’s hesitation, folded the death letter into my pocket.

The streets were relatively empty for a weekday. I saw no one I knew, and nobody paid me any attention. People bought their groceries, walked their dogs, hailed their taxis, hurried one place after another. I hate winter in the city because everyone moves like they have somewhere to be. In summertime the parks swarm with people killing time, usually in entertaining ways. On the other hand, I told myself, winter’s probably not a bad time for a ghost. A chill shot through my body as I had this thought, but it left as quickly as it came.

I trudged down familiar avenues for hours, never once considering where I was going. I stopped once for coffee and a sandwich, but the guy serving me moved so swiftly, so mechanically, that I felt less than certain I was present at the meal. The coffee warmed me, but I couldn’t taste the sandwich. I wasn’t hungry when I ordered it and I wasn’t full after I finished it. I wanted a cigarette afterwards – probably the strongest sensation I had all day, and the strangest. I’ve never been a smoker, but a slow, satisfying post-meal cigarette, the kind Humphrey Bogart might have in the movies, sounded like just the thing. The craving lasted only as long as an empty plate was in front of me; by the time I left the café and walked past a market I desired nothing.

Soon I reached the park. It was dusk and the light was pathetic; the stripped branches of the trees bent forward like talons, low and sharp. A fog enveloped the east end of the park, and as I moved towards it I could hear voices, murmured conversations. I stood closer; the words grew louder but I couldn’t understand a thing. The sound was like the tower of Babel, a confusion of tongues. And yet for a moment I distinctly heard the voice of my grandfather: as an old man suffering from dementia he told stories of his youth during Prohibition, of moving cases of bootleg liquor on the Philadelphia trolleys. “Bring me my gangster hat,” he once insisted in a state of confusion, and this is precisely what I heard in the fog: “Bring me my gangster hat.”

The murmuring resumed. I stood still for a time, facing the fog. I listened but didn’t recognize another word. My hands were in my pockets and I felt along the folded edges of the letter with my fingertips. I thought about my grandfather, about the fog; I thought I could take another step forward and maybe disappear forever.

I thought about it, but in the end I didn’t. Baxter needed me, and I owed Jane a phone call. I turned around, away from the fog, and started walking home.

Fiction Writing 1, Homework 2

“If you’re gonna write, you’re gonna need adventure,” says Mister Smartass for like the seventh time. I tell him to keep his fuckin’ eyes on the road. Besides, he picked me up hitchhiking, ain’t that adventure enough?

“Nope. You gotta live, man. Taste the rainbow. You get a story worth tellin’, you look my friend Lewis up. Works in publishing out in L.A.”

He pushes a Doors tape in and I study the cassette case. I figure I got twelve minutes ‘til “Light My Fire” comes on. Song drives me fuckin’ bananas. “Drop me off in the next town.”

He does with seconds to spare; I can hear that godawful organ intro as he peels away. It’s sunset now and I duck into some shitkicker bar for a beer and a sandwich, and as it arrives a comedy show starts, of all things. This guy Freddy Something gets introduced and he seriously takes the stage in a Groucho Marx getup and I can tell there’s gonna be trouble. Sure enough his lousy act gets him booed, then threatened; one drunken fool launches a bottle at him and nobody does shit about it, though it draws laughs as it explodes behind him. I form a sort of vaudeville hook with my hand, pull Freddy off the stage before someone kills him.

“Thanks, friend,” he says. “What’s your story?”

“Thumbin’ rides. Headed to Los Angeles,” I say, though truthfully I hadn’t considered where I was going.

“I got a Studebaker.”

“Yeah?” I look at him funny, but he’s serious. “You probably could use a career change anyhow.”

“You got that right.”

So we drive. Things are quiet on the interstate, but the first time we stop for gas we get into a wreck with a truck driven by a wiry fellow with a huge mop of curly hair, so black it’s almost blue, wearing these crazy mismatched patterns. Calls himself The Weirdo. We like him.

Both cars are fucked so we trade ‘em in for a station wagon. There’s three of us so we drive in shifts, one person asleep in the back, and we ride until The Weirdo gets hungry and makes us stop at this county fair. I meet Missy, a proper country girl; I buy her ice cream and she ends up heading West with us. She’s curvy – Freddy calls her porky under his breath, so I punch him. Just hard enough.

We’re gassing up again in Eastern California when I get jumped outside the station bathroom. “Been chasin’ you for days,” this dude wheezes, all beady-eyed and drunkenly. He’s got a knife, and I don’t see Missy or The Weirdo or Freddy anywhere. Just as my attacker lunges, a dog emerges from nowhere and bites his leg, snarls, chases him off. He acts all sweet with me and seems stray so we put him in the wagon.

In the end it turns out there is a Lewis in publishing; I tell him this story and he digs it. There’s a rainbow hanging over the bookstore parking lot during my book signing, and as I consider tasting it I get to hoping Mister Smartass will come tearing through the embarrassingly large “Meet The Author!” banner. I think he’d like my new friends.

Fiction Writing 1, Homework 1

My neck hurt.

I blinked hard in the discordant light, a combination of the awful florescence illuminating the train and, through the windows, the first syrupy fingers of dawn streaking an ashen sky. I was seated on a powder-blue bench in one of the shiny new subway cars, with its mechanized station announcements and scrolling LED signs all politely informing me it was now 5:11 a.m., that the next stop would be Neptune Avenue. Coney Island? I blinked again, harder.

The car was predictably deserted at this odd hour. I saw a pretty girl, maybe nineteen, in an unzipped hoodie exposing an iron-on “Lady Picasso” t-shirt epigram; a one-legged Dominican man, apparently asleep, four plastic grocery bags tied shut in a neat circle around his lone shoe; a thin man and a fat woman, crammed into a corner seat; and a cop. The latter waddled through the car, the nightstick at his hip sculling heavily through the air. His eyes lingered uncomfortably long as he passed the pretty girl, then turned his head towards me.

“Mornin’ sir. You been drinkin’?”

“Have I been drinking?”

I wasn’t sure why he was asking, but I don’t think he heard me respond. He nodded vaguely towards the couple in the corner, moved through the sliding doors separating cars, disappeared.

I eyed the couple a moment. They wore matching wedding bands of a tacky gold - the man fidgeted with his periodically. His oversized suit, wove from a nondescript brown linen, made him appear ludicrously narrow. His face was sweaty, pockmarked, actively unhandsome; his mustache, like him, was twitchy and willow-thin and crooked in posture. His wife, on the other hand, was heavy, but not inelegantly so. Her dress was close in color to his suit, but it clung to the folds of her skin gracefully. Her facial features were petite relative to her mass; she could have been beautiful, but something in the slenderness of her lips, the wrinkles on her brow, the severity of her ponytail signaled danger. Her husband angled his lean frame crazily to avoid touching her, sweeping his eyes desperately across ads promising impotence cures, laser fibroid removal, hasty divorces. Her stare, meanwhile, bore into his sunken cheek like a dentist’s drill.

The man leapt to his feet as the train pulled into the Surf Avenue station, only to tumble comically into his wife’s lap as the engine braked. She responded first with a two-handed shove to the small of his back, then by swinging her purse into his kneecap as she stood up. He assumed a look of contrition, humbly allowed her to pass him, and then stomped on the heel of her shoe as she exited the car. I never heard a sound from either partner, but I could see their silent war of jostling and tugging, slapping and jabbing, continue as they crossed the station platform. I craned my still-aching neck, watched until they disappeared from sight.

The next stop, Stillwell Avenue, was the end of the line. Lady Picasso split the second the doors opened; the Dominican slept on. I thought about riding back home, but changed my mind and left the train. I don’t know what it’s about, Coney Island at dawn, but I felt like an egg sandwich.