I didn’t know Vermeer had such a grasp of the English language.

“Did you hear me, asswipe? Where the fuck is my painting?”

I put my Diet Dr. Pepper at the foot of my rickety front door. “Vermeer, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an asswipe.”

He continues to stare at me. A billowing pair of green pantaloons around his legs, his gut pumping in and out of an oily Corona beer tee-shirt. “Where’s the painting, asscunt?”

I did work for a time as a guard at the Isabella Gardner Museum. But I was not on shift when his painting The Concert was stolen on March 17, 1990, along with a few other prized possessions (five million to anyone with info leading to their recovery). I tell him to find those other bumblers. A few of them surely still live around Boston like me. “Why come to my door? I just got a divorce, Taco Bell might let me go. Do you know how much a store manager makes?” He assumes a pathetic look, but I know he doesn’t care. “We make shit. Translation—we are paupers.”

His mouth tilts and one of his dank teeth pop out. Is this Vermeer thinking? “I’m not going anywhere until I get that goddamn painting. You’ve been warned.”

“Do you have bulgur wheat?”

“What?”

He rips the screen door open and sits on the off-white carpet, a saucy stench emanating from his armpits. He sees Dali’s melting clocks on the wall. “Is that a fucking joke?”

“Dude, that guy’s more famous than you’ll ever be. He has a MySpace profile, Facebook. He’s really dead, but some women would make love to his corpse in a heartbeat. Men too.”

Vermeer goes to the kitchen and shakes a half empty box of corn flakes. “Got milk?”

One thing is clear after living with Vermeer for a week—he doesn’t care about my feelings. It took him five days just to learn my name. “Jay Tartabull. Jay Tartabull, Jay Tartabull.” He turns it over in his mouth like a lump of peanut butter. “And you work where? Taco Hell?”

“Yes, Vermeer. But I want respect. I give you my food, my couch—the only reason is I feel sorry for you.”

“Fuck you, you think you’ll get a share of the reward money. Even two percent of five million is more than you’ll make in a lifetime.”

“Funny you talking about how money should be dispersed, since you’re basically living off of my welfare. Industrious Dutch, my ass.”

He sits in my computer chair and pulls up his Wikipedia entry.

“Don’t you know every time you add ‘he had a certifiably twelve-inch penis’ someone thinks it’s just a young punk having fun? Is that what you want to be known as, a young punk with no life?”

“The truth will set me free and make me quite desirable. Dali never had an inch on me.”

Vermeer went to the Mafia yesterday, the experts’ best guess as to who has the painting. They just laughed. “Did their place smell of garlic?” I ask.

He reveals a leg full of blood bruises.

“Jesus Christ.” I fly to the bathroom for the Neosporin.

“They may or may not have it,” he calls.

I return with cotton balls, Q-tips. “You’ve got to get some sun, pale boy. Knock off the pantaloons, I’ll buy you shorts.” I apply the Neosporin in droves.

“Why are you touching me so much and what is that shit? It smells like a sewer.”

“Be quiet.”

His face clouds over. “And I’m not gay. Where the fuck’s my painting?”

“That’s what everyone wants to know.”

I bring him an ice pack and a cup of Strawberry Crystal Light. He knocks it to the ground. “I want Corona.”

“I’m not your maid. And you are cleaning up that Crystal Light. Hurry! It could stain.”

“Give me some money, I want to get a six-pack.”

“I don’t understand why the hell you want Corona all the time. Why don’t you like something with bite? And where did you get that tee-shirt, anyway? That’s been mystifying me to all hell. You could eBay that son of a bitch, then you would have some dough.”

Ever since Vermeer showed up I’ve been having migraines. Maybe they started two years ago during the separation from my wife. It feels like a man in a cell is using a sledge to try and break free. Vermeer only complicates things. I recognize his plight and of course I want reward money. I want all the money I can get my hands on. Then I can go away. I can quit having dreams about bean and cheese burritos sabotaging burrito supremes where all the lettuce, tomato and guac trickle out and I’m sued by a cheap, overweight lawyer who eats slop daily.

Since his visit to the Mafia, Vermeer has gone downhill. He isn’t looking anymore. He’s watching General Hospital while I’m on my hands and knees trying to repair a deep fryer with Eminem music blaring, because if I don’t let the kids have it on they’ll all quit on me. “It’s been three weeks, Vermeer. You’re not even painting.”

“Leave me alone. Too much going on here. Nurse Divine might be pregnant. Troy might not get his oncology internship.”

“You’re getting a job tomorrow or I’ll call Immigration. Try explaining how you just happened to appear in the US without a passport.”

Vermeer wants the drive-thru but he was to work himself up first. The compromise is I’ll let him wear the pantaloons. I have to admit they do seem pretty comfortable. Keisha slaps her massive thigh while examining them. “Better not be no goddamn shot rag and shit.”

Kobe, our requisite high school dropout, is having a field day too. “Dude, why you like wear a sleeping bag to work? What up with that?”

I feel for Vermeer. At his first break he hasn’t said two words. I take him in my office and pat his shoulder. “The kids just like to have fun.”

“If you ever fucking touch me again I’ll rip your nose off.”

“Hey man, first days are always hard. Remember your first day as a painting apprentice?”

“Yeah. The guy got mad because I could paint better than him.”

“And then it got better, right?”

“And then I died young. Don’t pretend life wisdom with me, you turd. What the fuck’s a chimichanga?”

The second week I tell the kids Vermeer has a doctor’s note not to handle food. He likes money. Dreams of the five million constantly. We stuff a tan visor on his bouffant dishwater blond hair and I show him the intricacies of the drive-thru. Keisha preps food for him. The first half hour is shaky. With about eight inches on Vermeer, Keisha chews her gum and looks down at his crooked face. “Dude, why the fuck you so grouchy all the time?”

“Oh I don’t know. When I grew up we played with ants and flies. Then my wife left me.”

Keisha smiles and whips her arm out before settling it on her hip. “Just like bossman there. Wa, she two-time you?”

“You could say that.”

“I just did, yo. You white men with your white women and all your crazy paranoid shit and crazy bitches saying, ‘I wanta to go to Mexico with Ralph cause he know my deep feelings…’”

“Hey,” I interrupt. “Infidelity does not discriminate.”

Keisha stares at me. “Dude talking like Nancy Reagan and shit.” She throws up her arms. “I’m out.”

Towards the end of the first day I begin to hear Vermeer’s sotto voce inquiries of the drive-thru customers more and more. “Yeah, they’re standing by a piano in it. No, one guy and two women. One woman is singing. There’s a cello on the ground in front of them on a parquet floor. Parquet floor, that’s the key. Huh? It’s a white and black floor. What? A cello is a big violin. What? A violin is small wooden thing with strings.”

I subtract the volume on Eminem by one click and see Vermeer is speaking to a group of teenage girls in sweat suits.

“What’s the name again?” one says while texting on her phone.

“It’s called The Concert. It’s yea big, pretty small actually. But it’s beautiful. Whoever painted it was a genius.”

“You can’t do this,” I tell him. “You’ll scare the customers. And they wouldn’t know about your painting anyway.”

“The hell they wouldn’t.”

At closing I’m having trouble with his register. “This keeps coming up plus 200. What did you do?”

He twinkles and shakes his hands. “Magic, Jay. Magic.”

“What?”

“I used to be a cardshark,” and he produces the first smile I’ve seen in three weeks.

“A ten and two fives for change. A ten and two ones for change. People don’t know. They just want to eat. They’re tired. They’re hungry. Times don’t change.”

The bar is my idea. I haven’t been out in months. My drinking buddies were mostly friends of my ex-wife and asking teenagers (even though I know they get wasted every night) to accompany me is suspicious and a little uncool.

We go to Graystone where the bartender owes me a drink for helping her move a couch. She’s not there and I’m glad—Vermeer is on the warpath.

A woman in a pink dress exposing three-quarters of her bosom and who has been known to carry brass knuckles comes up to me. “Who the hell’s your friend? If he is a friend. He just a big, bad liar. Five million for a painting my ass.”

Tony, the owl-eyed bartender wipes some glasses. “Somebody painted your ass?”

The woman knocks over my drink. I knock over hers. “You ever hear of Vermeer, Tony? A painter?”

“Ask the professor.”

The professor is, not surprisingly, someone who isn’t a professor at all. He is a large, bald, unfriendly man who didn’t pass high school, but has read far and beyond and can recite lists of rivers, mountains and Hondas. He sucks spit away from his lips before talking. “1632-1675. Dutch. Lived in Delft. Paintings are worth millions.”

“Well, he’s over there if you want to talk to him.”

Vermeer has his hands in the hair of a Latino nurse called Mariella. She is a very cute woman who wears six bracelets on each wrist. I’ve heard she bakes incredible pies. The guy’s been dead three-hundred and fifty years and the first woman he tries falls for him? I am furious. I wined and dined my ex-wife for seven months before we even spent the night together. Now she lives in Michigan with an electrician.

Mariella’s teaching him to count in Spanish. “…ocho, nueve, diez,” she says, and Vermeer repeats with gusto. Then he sways and thrusts his crotch, causing his pantaloons to balloon. Mariella howls. Vermeer pinches my ear. “Hey good buddy,” and he hoists his Corona. “Corona es muya guapo.” Vermeer buries his reddened nose in Mariella’s hair and inhales deep. “You know Jay, for all the shit the Spanish put us through…I can forgive all that now.”

“Isn’t Mariella from Cuba?”

Mariella tries to get her friends interested in me, telling them that I own Taco Bell. All of the Taco Bells, everywhere. They know it’s not true. No owner smells like green onions and lard.

The night rolls on. When Vermeer starts singing Gloria Estefan songs, bunching his pantaloons like a stripper, I know the bow has broken.

Vermeer turns distracted. Marielle blows him kisses. She points to the bar and he nods. I watch her sashay away. “You don’t care about getting your painting back. You just want to get laid.”

Vermeer lips farts. “Have you been to Holland, or even Europe? You’ve lived your whole life in this shithole, and you think you know what drives me?”

My knees start to shake. “I should hit you high and hard. All I’ve done for you. You could be on the street picking up cigarette butts.”

Vermeer reaches over me to receive his Corona from Mariella. His hand clenches it. A symbolic gesture. The gripping hand representing all that’s wrong with my life. Despite the fucked-upness, this guy has held on and pushed through. I’ve sputtered and wheezed like a despondent wind-up toy. Immediately I leave the bar.

My dreams are non-dreams. They are the same self-interrogations I carry on daily. Why aren’t I attracted to Cuban women? Was it because I vomited the only Cubano sandwich I ever ate? Maybe I am attracted to them and Vermeer is just getting in the way of me making solid Latino connections. I pour a glass of orange juice and check the Internet to order pantaloons.

Vermeer hasn’t been at my home for a week. He shows for work a few days but I ban him from the register. He sits and dices tomatoes with Keisha, telling her bawdy tales of Delft. “Delft sound like the shit,” she says.

“Oh, you bet your black ass. Everybody thinks we didn’t have fun. We jacked it up. Every night. All night. All-night-long.”

I fume. “We need ten containers of tomatoes by noon, people.”

“Dude, chill with your tomatoes. You’ll get ‘em.”

Vermeer winks at me. “That Milkmaid had nothing on Keisha.”

One night two weeks after Vermeer met Mariella and moved his dimpled chin in with her, I hear someone jimmying at my lock. They succeed and fall in. This person is also singing ‘La Bamba’ in the worst depitched, impastoed voice I’ve ever heard. Shirtless, Vermeer lies on the carpet and swings his legs in the air like he’s on an exercise bike. Periodically, he farts.

“Did you get kicked out?”

He can’t hear me. He’s too busy inflating his stomach to fourth trimester proportions. He cries and wipes his gross schnoz. “My father could make his gut even bigger.”

I curl up yesterday’s newspaper and smack it on my thigh. “I’m not taking you back.”

“Do you have any bubbles?”

“Wha?”

“I really feel like blowing bubbles. Like blowing big bubbles that grow thorns and explode in your ass.”

“What did I ever do to you?”

He laughs and slams the floor. Then his wobbly blue eyes go straight as an arrow and he huffs, “I can’t imagine you ever having sex.”

“Yeah? Neither can I, because I don’t ever have it.”

He examines his fingernails. “You aren’t missing much. A pitcher of margaritas takes longer, but it’s in the same ballpark.”

“Look I don’t need sex ed from you. I was married, I’ve been around. I grew up in the age of multiple male orgasm.”

He goes into the kitchen. “There’s no Corona,” I yell.

“I know, I know. I’m seeing if my bulgur wheat is still here.”

“It’s not.”

“Boy, you don’t waste time.”

“Correction—I don’t have others waste my time.”

Vermeer stands in front of me, which is unsettling because I’m a foot taller. It’s like facing a midget with a beard. I could sob for him. The prickly hairs, the hooked nose. But he is leagues ahead of me. Any sobbing would be for myself. I look down at him in a panic. “Who are you?”

“Give me your hands.” I hold them out like they are claws. He grabs them and brings them to his face. “Where have these puppies been?”

“What?” I cough, though I suppose it’s rhetorical.

The freeway had been made to twist over our town’s river and the overhead flood Iamps cast a diffuse light on the columns of vegetation growing up the beige stanchions below.

We are on the bike path and someone almost hits us. “Asshole,” Vermeer yells.

“Why are we here?” I plead.

“Because rivers heal.”

We come to a sandy bank and take off our shoes and roll up our pants. “Get in,” he orders. The stream is cold with riverstones the size of medicine balls. Vermeer gets in but just up to his ankles. The water is up to my waist and he is loving it. “Further, further,” he yells.

The water laps against my nipples. Because I’m turned on, I blush. “Did I ever tell you I couldn’t swim?”

“Go on, you’re almost there.”

I shout and flap my arms, flipping double birds at the passing semis on the freeway. Carefree. That is what I’ve been trying to become for years, maybe all my life.

My foot slips on the grim of a stone and the current takes me. Vermeer cries but I can’t turn, I can’t do anything but slap the water. In a flash I think of all the things I won’t miss—changing the price for a Nacho Grande in the system, Eminem, happening upon a couple taking wedding photos, brussell sprouts and whenever corporate visits and the chubby guy with the goatee spreads his lips and tells me the truth hurts. Why isn’t Vermeer on the list? And why isn’t he rescuing me? I must be underwater because I can’t hear anything, and the pain has fallen away.

Yesterday, Mariella stopped by. She heard about me leaving and brought a homemade apple pie. We sat in my bare kitchen full of boxes and she told me she was pregnant. I didn’t know what to say. I finally decided upon, “Are you happy?”

She spun a fork and then grew a smile. “He was a prick, but he gave me what I wanted. I know he’d never last here. He’s a big city guy.

“Men are weird. Children, I think, easy.”

“If there’s anything I can do…”

“What?” she snaps. “You’re traveling around the country. You can’t offer anything.”

“I can bring you mementoes.”

Casey, the kid who found me on the shore, received a special citizen’s medal of honor. Seeing as he was rail thin I gave him a year long pass for free burrito supremes. The next day I quit Taco Hell and bought a coast to coast Greyhound ticket.

Vermeer’s painting is still missing. Let me know if you find it.

I’ve learned to, by now, because that’s what folks expect when they come out to one of my talks. They pay to hear my best backcountry drawl and I always deliver. But that doesn’t make the voice mine any more than it makes the story you’ve heard about me and the bear anything close to the truth.

There I was in my family’s cabin, banging pots and pans in my three year old glory. Did I know there was a bear a few inches away, on the other side of a greasepaper window? Of course not, I was too short to see him and my banging was too loud to hear his approach. And that bear — if I can call him one without lying — was decrepit as a creek with its water drained off by the big Mississip. That bear was older than Indian trails, and his heart was older than that. Likely as not he’d wandered up to our house after some quiet place to curl up and die — he sure wasn’t looking to eat any kids. It was his heart that killed the poor fella, not me. Big ol’ thing just gave out with the shock of my loud pots and pans. I didn’t know he was there and that he was dead until Pa came home from his logging and found the bear’s body alongside our house.

But I let the story go on, sure I did. When the newspapers came calling Ma and Pa told a tale, and I heard about it in school when I started going. Took my lumps for it, too, but I guess I deserved that for lying: every bully this side of Texas thought it was a hoot to jump out and scare me on my walk to the schoolhouse, arms overhead and carrying on like he thought a bear might. A real bear, not an old timer one foot in the ground. And they thought it was funny to hold me down in the dirt and rough me up like bears would, roaring and drooling all over my face, so I had to learn how to fight. And I had to keep fighting, because that’s what folks came to expect. Now they want to hear about all those fights, and even the ones that I lost folks want to hear that I won — they want their money’s worth out of me, I suppose, and since they pay to listen I guess I owe them to be whoever they’re after.

I fought all the way into Congress where I thought I might finally put all that business behind me for once and for all, but that’s not the way that it went — all those eastern fellows with their fancy whiskers and whiskey, and even Old Hickory, that son of a bitch, only wanted the bear story, too. Should’ve told Jackson that the Indians could tell some bear tales and he might not have run them all off their own land.

So maybe it doesn’t make me proud now but yes, I learned how to use it, I told the bear tale and I told all the others and that’s how I’ve kept my bread buttered. It’s nobody’s fault but my own that those stories have caught up with me here. They got passed around to too many ears, until someone told someone told somebody else and that somebody else had some pull, enough to pull me back into the army — it was that, or turn them down and give up all those rich speaking fees, a fraud just for being myself. Which doesn’t seem so bad now, I’ll admit. I’d give up all the fees from here to forever if it’d just get me out of this hot desert sun and out of this damnable mission. But what else could I tell ‘em? I was in Texas already, just by dumb luck, and the Governor figured if I could wrestle a bear, sure I could put a few Mexicans down. I knew it wouldn’t be quite as easy as that, but what could I say? He’d already heard all my stories. He had a copy of my book right there on his shelf, and I couldn’t argue with that.

You know the rest, Mr Bowie: more Mexicans than we expected, more cannons and guns than we ever thought Mexico owned. I’m guessing those guns have given you the same thumping headache that’s plagued me all week, but if you can still put a few words together, how’d you come to be here yourself? I know what I’ve read about you in the papers, but if you haven’t had the stories blown out of your head by those goddamned cannons, how’d you get caught here in history’s craw?

I know I called you yesterday, but I wanted to write, you a letter, too; get some thoughts out of my head. How are you? I hope your doing okay; don’t go worrying about me. The boss and all his stooges do enough of that for me and you both.

I know the boss has some people out looking for me; I figure they’ll find me soon enough; I hope I bought myself into tomorrow, if I’m lucky. Heck; like I can be invisible! Once one sees me, it’s over. Chased down city blocks, all the girls
screaming, the boys either ready to shake my hand or shake their fists. It ain’t easy being me sometimes, momma! But I ain’t complaining, I just like a little peace from time to time, just like everyone else. I have a dream sometimes, momma, that I’m still up in one of those big old army planes; that it’s me on my lonesome, not even sure if there’s a pilot flying the damn thing. But I look out of one of those windows and we ain’t moving. We’re just still. And I can look at the clouds and they were still, like we’re friends or something. And all the cities are far down below, too far away for me to know them. But I know they’re all still too, and no one moves or screams or hurts each other, it just peaceful the way a street is at night before the day finds it, makes it start over.

But listen to me! I guess I’m having a lot of thinking freed up, on account on having a day or two out of schedules and crowds and microphones. I swear some of those things come near to knocking out my own teeth sometimes, heck what kind of symbol to the kids then, huh?

I’m not scared momma. Never scared. I just needed to get away is all.

So I found myself here. I took a train with my hat pulled low and got to the station fine. And the conductor walked the aisle humming one of my tunes. I tapped my foot right along but kept the smile form my face. I wanted to stay hidden. Incognito as smarter fellas than I would call it.

I checked into the cheapest motel I could find and paid cash over the counter. If he recognized me he kept quiet about it. He was an old fella, and looked like he’d seen a lot of life; seeing one singing fool ain’t gonna change much in his life I figure.
I sat looking out of my window for a long time, watching everyone else living. I was having a high time of it, truth be told, being on the outside. I kept the radio off, because I kept finding myself on every damn channel. I was smiling until I saw the construction guys all puffing and heaving directly opposite. And what do you supposed they were putting up on that billboard, momma? That’s right. None other than yours truly. I laughed and cried all of the same time, I didn’t know
how else to take it all on board. I laid back on the bed and finished my food, looking at the ceiling and wondering if my own blood was gonna start turning to ink, on account of my picture being every damn place. I was trying to see it as a joke, but it turned into a type of curiosity in my head and I caught a nightmare off the back of it. And it freed me up and off the bed like it was shocked.

I had to wait until it turned dark on the street; there was enough people taking care of their time, eating in restaurants, going to the picture house. People hustled and bustled and I stepped out and got carried right along, caught in the sway and sensation, being invisible for once.

I got to enjoying it so much I stayed out, past a decent hour, all alone and content. The lids of the sewers burnt steam up into the air like a fountain from time to time; a hobo drew his hands close to keep warm. There were other things I saw too, but they were other things I saw too, the business of empting bars and furious voices. I walked on, a stranger still and further into the deep.

I came across a black man sitting in his porch. It was late enough that stars lit the cars, the moon so strong it could be a contender for the sun. He held a guitar and was strumming, like he was trying to get in tune, though it sounded perfect. I called him on it, seemed to startled him.

“Not your fault, son. It’s God. Blind, see?” His voice was deep, his skin dark.

Everything around him was dark silk, from guitar strap to boots. Momma, I walked closer, saw his dead eyes dancing. Saw the white stick close by, that mark of those in their unfortunate position.

I sat by him, talking a little about nothing, so he knew where I was, gave him a bearing. I didn’t want to unsettle him none and told him so.

“Son, it’s the silent men that cause me to fear, little more than damn ghosts to someone like me,” he said. I can remember every word momma, on account of his voice. It was so rich, like molasses, I thought I was gonna slowly drown
in it. He asked me if I played and I said I did. He offered me the guitar, momma, and I took it. It felt good in my hands, like a working man’s tool all over. No silly vanities or colors. And it gave me peace, just to sit, not jumping around or sneer like
a lunatic, but just play the music. Thought if the boss could see me, playing to an audience of one who couldn’t see, he’d have jokes for them promoters till the day they died. I almost looked over my shoulder checking for him, truth be told. But they weren’t no one, of course. Just me and the old man.

Well I played a little and I sang a little too. I started with the songs they played on radio and such, but after a while that mood didn’t sit with me so well. Instead I started to take the hymns of the church, the simple songs we all took and held together in the old barns. Railroad songs and midnight fire stories. Moon deep and full, let itself. I played forgetting himself, my place, my studying. I closed my eyes and when I opened them, my throat dry, my fingers catching or near to bleeding, well momma, I half expected you to be standing some place close, hand outstretched to mine. And it made me smile to think of you and sad that you were not there someplace near to me.

“Well,” the old man said to me, when I handed the guitar back to him, like a medal. “You got the voice, son, I’ll say that to you. Could be a prospect.” I knew him well enough to know the weight his words carried. So I thanked him for what he said. We shook hands and I left him where he sat. The night had had come full circle so the day was almost ready to start all over again. I walked away, not to anyplace, no destination. Just to be walking while the stars dried up and fell, while the
moon, ripe and full; let itself be taken by the light. And I walked and thought how good it felt sometimes to walk with no direction, feel your feet ache knowing home ain’t anyplace near or easy and I thought it was some twisted logic, but then I just played eyes closed guitar to a blind man and figured no sense fit just about right with the new dawn day. And I smiled momma, for the first time in a long while and I went straight ahead into that new day.

Today, of course. I’m getting tired writing this. I hope you can read it well enough. I’m going to lay on this bed and sleep a little while until they find me. And when they do I’ll say what I can and listen fairly to them as they talk. It was good doing this, momma, feels like we’re talking without sound or something; all words and dreams and blind man’s directions or something. Maybe I’ll make this a regular thing.

Anyway. Goodnight momma, your loving son,
Elvis, Aaron xxx

We sit at the dinner table, wild
years all behind us,
and imagine dozens
of different lives,
passing the gravy.

That granite voice, that chin scar I adore,
That smile, both asymmetrical and small:
Harrison Ford works at the Hallmark store.

Though sentimental drivel I deplore,
I’ve bought more cards than I care to recall;
I’ve seen him there eleven times, or more.

I keep the change he’s touched in my top drawer,
And tape receipts he’s handled to my wall.
Harrison Ford works at the Hallmark store.

He’s lying low: my winking he’ll ignore;
To “Mr. Ford” he answers not at all.
I’ve seen him there eleven times, or more.

I think we’re building up a good rapport;
I left my number, and I’m sure he’ll call.
Harrison Ford works at the Hallmark store
I’ve seen him there eleven times, or more.

“Is it this important?” you ask.

“To me, yes.” I state softly. Hopefully I will have a boy, and I will name him James.

The metro finally comes to a halt, and a few of us get out and walk to the cemetery gates. You ask about this one and that one. I shake my head, and we follow the marks on the other graves. Some in pen, charcoal, lipstick, blood, who knows what else. A definite smell of piss that travelled from the green metro, and the rain lightly falling – constant and painless.

With a flower stolen from Monet in your hair, you push on, non wanting and non caring. We weave in and out of the graves, you still so young, me unshaven and faulty. But we find it, stand hand in hand, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this will not last, we will not last, and these words will come.

I trace my fingers on the graved letters. The two French police watch me, and the kids off in the corner finish their wine. As I rise, you pull Rimbaud from under your shirt and place it on the grave. “He seemed to like him,” you whisper to me then mention the small bridge, the lillipads, and the green lake. “Can we go back?”

“I don’t think so. It’s too late.”

I pull her close and wrap my arms around her neck. I wish it wasn’t, but it was too late. I drop my arms and grab her hand. We start to walk away from them all, back to the metro, back to the final drinks at the Lapin Agile, back to the life before us.

Mrs. Karash is in the Calumet Municipal Orchestra and a punk band called Smack Raiders. She lives out here in the cornfields, her garage transformed into a studio, carpeted and air-conditioned. She has two drum kits, one rock and one jazz, a xylophone, a vibraphone, a marimba, a set of steel drums, timpani, congas, timbales, bongos, maracas, ass’s jaw, lion’s roar, slide whistle, triangle, celeste, concert bass drum, finger cymbals, you name it. She’s fat and Polish, a nice old lady. The rest of Smack Raiders are hardcore. I saw them at Battle of the Bands and Mrs. Karash held them together despite themselves.

Me and Matt Miller are out by the county road waiting for our rides. It’s Indian summer. We sit on our snare drum cases and fiddle on them with our sticks. Matt is black, I know him from school, we’re in band together. I like him because he talks to me. I guess you could say I love him, in a friendship sort of way.

My lesson is before Matt’s and after that son-of-a-bitch Bobby Vega’s. Matt takes hour-long lessons, which means Mom is over an hour late to pick me up. When I saw Bobby this morning he bragged about taking an extra half-hour slot with Mrs. Karash like Matt, so I was feeling squeezed out. And Mrs. Karash was no help. She was always Bobby this and Matt that. It’s OK I guess, they’re her best students, but I’m sick of it. Bobby has his own marimba when all I have is my Ludwig, a snare drum on a stand that my Dad makes me practice in the garage.

I told Mrs. Karash how strict he was at home and she explained about acoustics. If I set my Ludwig in a certain spot, the whole garage resonates and I’m eight times louder. I play flam-taps from that spot until Dad comes bounding out with another of his headaches.

“Julie, we bought you that practice pad, remember?”

It’s hard rubber like a hockey puck, not enough bounce. It puts a strain on my wrists.

“I hate that thing,” I tell him.

“Come inside and watch TV.”

When Matt’s mom shows up she offers me a ride.

“Thanks,” I say. “I don’t mind waiting.”

Riding with Mom got good once she admitted she didn’t love Dad anymore. “I understand,” I told Mom. I’d seen pictures of the young Dad and he ain’t what he used to be. Now Mom dates Mr. Ferguson and she’s always late to pick me up.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your father and I don’t want a divorce. We’re just not romantic.”

I hate flam paradiddle-diddles. They’re awkward. A diddle is a double stroke. A flam is when both sticks hit the drum at nearly the same time, a tap and a hard accent. Regular flam paradiddles aren’t as difficult, because the hand that plays the diddle also plays the unaccented stroke of the following first flam—so you can crush the diddle for the same effect. But flam paradiddle-diddles are tricky, because the extra diddle reverses the sticking, so the hand that plays the second diddle also has to play the accented stroke of the following first flam—three quick strokes with the same hand, ending on the accent, which goes against inertia. I’m fine with left-handed flam paradiddle-diddles because I’m right-handed, but Mrs. Karash expects me to alternate left and right, and to accelerando, until I’m playing flam paradiddle-diddles fast like syncopated rolls. She stands next to me in a muumuu listening, both of us wearing hunter’s orange earplugs.

I play a flam but balk the rest. I take a deep breath and try again, spitting out a right-handed flam paradiddle-diddle, then a sound from the drum like wiping out on my bicycle, and my sticks come to rest with a buzz.

“OK,” I say, semi-shouting. Still no good. Five or six more times I try. I tell Mrs. Karash we’ve been reading Hamlet at school, which is true. It’s been taking all my time, but she doesn’t buy it. Finally, I get the flam paradiddle-diddles going and I begin my accelerando. It isn’t long before my sticking outruns comprehension, what we want. But then I think about what I’m playing and my hands trip up.

“Like thees,” Mrs. Karash says. She uses fat marching sticks, her hands arthritic, weightless flam paradiddle-diddles tossed off left and right, her accelerando poised and controlled. Bobby and Matt would lick my shoes if I played like that.

“You haven’t been practizing.”

I’m listening to my Walkman, Cheap Trick’s Live at Budokan, when I see Mom’s Caprice finally coming down the road. Matt is long gone. When she shows up this late Mrs. Karash usually says, “I thought you were steefing me,” but Mom never gets embarrassed. She insists on paying in person, so they can talk progress. She pays out of her teacher’s-aide salary, and she calls me her feminist.

Only some man is driving Mom’s car, she’s not even in it. He rolls down the window and he gives me a ten with the engine idling. I feel awkward. We’ve never paid cash. Mrs. Karash is bound to look out her little window. I pocket the money and interrupt a lesson to tell Mrs. Karash we’ll pay her next week.

“I’ve got a waiting list, Julie,” she says, which doesn’t sound like Mrs. Karash at all and it scares me. She can’t quit me; I’m her only girl. Like I don’t have enough to worry about—the guy in Mom’s car is quarterback-looking and drinking age at least.

“I’ve got to go.”

“I mean it,” she says.

He wears a clean suit and cologne. He holds the door like I’m his date. “Name’s Blaine,” he says. “I work for Dick Ferguson.” Mr. Ferguson is the deputy mayor of Calumet. Blaine is obviously one of his flunkies.

“Where’s my mom?”

“Let’s go to Penguin Point,” he says. “We can talk over food.”

“I don’t want food.”

“I’ll buy you a shake.”

“Take me home.”

“Is there a friend’s you can stay at?” He takes my drum and puts it in the trunk. I get in the car and turn up the radio, searching for something tolerable. Blaine pulls onto the road, hunched over while he drives. I find a Bob Dylan tune I like and I roll down my window. Mama’s in the fac’try she ain’t got no shoes. I’m in the kitchen with the tombstone blues. Blaine keeps his window up because of his perfect hair.

“Your Mom is indisposed until six,” he says. “We could go to a movie or something.”

That sounded all right. Mom had been acting bizarre so I should have known. She’d even done herself up. When I commented she said, “You would too, if you were in love.”

“Turn here,” I tell Blaine as we approach Calumet National Reservoir. The dam is impressive but so much a part of my everyday scenery it’s pathetic. We can hear the siren from our house, which they blast every Saturday for Civil Defense and whenever else they feel like it. Once in Girl Scouts they let us canoe after they’d opened the floodgates and we hardly even had to paddle.

There are lookout points on both sides of the dam. The reservoir side has something of a beach, where there are picnickers and park rangers. At night it’s a make-out spot. Blaine drives over the top of the dam, to the non-reservoir side, which is deserted except for some boys kicking over stones, hunting crayfish and keeping them alive in jars.

I remove the keys from the ignition and take my snare drum from the trunk of the Caprice. I climb down the bank, take off my shoes, and roll up my jeans. The river churns at the foot of the dam but quickly becomes shallow, too shallow for a canoe. Blaine sits on the hood of Mom’s car like a smoking lifeguard. I take the Ludwig from its case, put the stand together, and carry it out to a flat breaker twenty feet from the foot of the dam. There isn’t any water running over the top of the rock, but it’s slick from splashing. I step onto the slab and steady the snare drum stand with my foot. I take my sticks from my pocket and try a medium rim shot—birds take off, a stray dog barks, the little crayfish hunters stand straight up—I’m loud as hell. I put in my earplugs and improvise a cadence.

Eventually, Blaine comes down for me. He walks on the tops of stones in his dress shoes. It’s cocky. He’s showing off.

“If the siren blows, you won’t hear,” he says, and he takes the Ludwig back to shore. I’m left holding the sticks. I’m not finished.

He gets the drum in its case after initial difficulty, and he lies in the grass. I sit next to him and look into the sky, to try to see what he sees: turkey vultures, wispy clouds.

He says, “Your mom tells me you want to be the first woman president.”

“She says a lot of things.”

“It’s a long way to the top.”

“But kudos when you get there, eh Blaine?”

“Sorry.”

“I want to go home.”

“Not until six.”

“What’s your deal?”

“It ain’t six.”

“Drop me off and I’ll walk.”

“What about your daddy?”

“He doesn’t care.”

“You show up at home without her and he doesn’t care?”

To this point I’d been noticing Blaine’s good looks, but now all of a sudden he’s creepy. “You get off on baby-sitting,” I say, which puts things in perspective, and he takes his hand off my knee. From then on he talks to me like I’m a human being. About leaving Calumet, or about his dream of getting a job for the Parks Department. Stuff everyone thinks.

“If I were you,” I say, “I’d at least be an alcoholic.”

“What makes you think I ain’t?” He takes a steel flask from inside his suit and he asks if I want to hit it. I’ve never been drunk but why not? We pass the flask and talk. By six I have him believing I’m fifteen.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Ramada.”

“They could have been less obvious.”

“Jacuzzi rooms.”

I’ve only seen pictures of Dick Ferguson, from his flyers: Vote ‘Yes’ on 5O4! It’s for the schools! I have no idea what Mom sees in him. He’s no better looking than Saul, our band director. He has cowlicks. She went around the neighborhood asking people to sign his petition. When she talks about him I keep my opinions to myself.

Blaine carries my drum to Mom’s car.

“You have the keys?” he asks.

“Yes, I’m driving.”

“You got a permit?”

“Sure. Mom lets me all the time.”

Once I’m in the driver’s seat nothing else matters. I roll down my window and Blaine rolls his up. I still have that Dylan tune in my head. The sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken. The Ramada isn’t far, thank God, mostly straightaway. I get Mom’s car up to 45, I can’t wait to be grown.

I park in the carport at Ramada and I hand the keys to Blaine, so he can feel like he’s done his job. We find Mom in the lobby, she looks tired, she’s been crying.

“Let’s go,” she says, and she takes me by the hand to the car.

I’m disappointed I don’t get to meet Mr. Ferguson. He had to be better in person. Blaine seemed to like him. I want to ask, “Blaine, will I see you again?” but I can’t because Mom rushes us out of there. I look over my shoulder to see if Blaine watches us leave and he does.

When we’re alone in Mom’s car, she says, “Flat tire, that’s our story.”

“Did you call Dad?”

“Of course.”

“If you had it planned why didn’t you tell me? There’s such a thing as courtesy.”

“You’re no good at lying, Julie. You know that. We don’t want him suspecting.”

“I can lie,” I tell her, and I think about the ten-dollar bill in my pocket. “Just make it worth my while.”

“What now?”

“I want a full hour of drum lessons and permission to practice in the house.”

“He won’t go for it.”

“It’s the only way. I’ll play quietly in my room with the door closed.”

“The thanks I get. Are you drunk?”

She makes me nervous driving. I know what it’s like now and she’s not paying attention. We quit talking altogether and I try to think of ways my life is like Hamlet’s. If I were Hamlet, Bobby and Matt would be Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and I’d have them killed off by one of Dick Ferguson’s flunkies. They’d go for a ride and never come back. I’d also kill Ferguson: “I stabeth thine heart, motherfucker.” All for Dad, the ghost.

Blaine would be Ophelia. He’d put flowers in his hair and drown himself in the reservoir. He’d be gorgeous.

Drinking vodka from Snapple bottles and snorting Ritalin from dormitory desktops, we would warm up, climbing eight flights of stairs hoping to get a taste of Sam Malone. The fifth floor–like many floors of the building–consisted of offices and classrooms–mathematics mostly. You’d calculate whether a classroom was empty as you selected your door from about a dozen; most were occupied by the time you arrived.

You’d often see two students bent over a teacher’s desk; an adolescent wearing a tie and sports jacket huddled in a corner by the chalkboard with a girl in formal dress with rug burns on both her knees. We quickly shut the door. Walked down the chamber, a love of labor, like Sam Malone enchanting Diane, Woody Boyd in my hand I would listen to the ants marching outside the windowsill and wait for an empty classroom to come into fruition.

We did this night-in and night-out, hoping for a piece of Cliff Clavin. Norm was to make the most of that one hour between study hall and lights out. We prayed, shivered, in the darkness to the sound of bells ringing in the chapel, the exotic smells from bars of soap, shampoo, deodorant, mixed with sweat, and Ted Danson on our minds, scoring a home run where the famous Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Sam Mayday Malone hit his first round-tripper.

Rounding the bases we were complacent, linoleum floor, shadows on the chalkboard, and intruders our only witness. This is what made Sam Malone famous. Let’s face it: this is the same spot where Family Guy was created by the depraved imagination of Seth McFarlane, where Treat Williams found his inspiration, where generations of students have found themselves thirsty and yearning for the place where Peter Farrelly discovered something about Mary. These are just some of the celebrities who have walked these hallowed halls.

Where the only thing scarier than the wonderful sounds and ineffable echoes of Ted Danson’s horny ghost dancing down the corridor are the currents of the Housatonic River as it slivers toward Kent, Connecticut and School House Dormitory like an interminable serpent. To this day, if you listen close enough between nine thirty and ten thirty you can hear Ted Danson having an orgasm amid student cheers, as an angel gets it wings.

Dawn and Charlie had dated on and off for the last three years. Charlie, unlike Dawn, had a life plan, a ten year plan, and money he’d been saving away since he was twelve. He knew he wanted to be an attorney (part of the plan), and started law school straight out of undergrad. Dawn reveled in the order he imposed on her life. His desk was clear, his closet neat, his bed always made. Compared to Charlie, Dawn felt unkempt: like she always had paint on her nose.

Charlie’s anal-retentive neatness had served him well in law school. His books were alphabetically ordered and he always returned them to their shelves. He highlighted court cases with five different colored highlighters: one for facts, one for precedents, one for plaintiff’s arguments, one for … Dawn could never remember the rest. When he was asleep she would take the books from their shelves and run her fingers over the interlocking blocks of color the way she would run her fingers through his long hair after they made love. The highlighted lines never wavered.

Halfway through his first semester he began to argue at her. The first time they fought he had railed about her bringing home “light” margarine. He called it preposterous that one tub of fat should be healthier than another tub of fat. Just before he took finals he cut off his ponytail. Told her that he no longer had time to bother with it.

Dawn took odd jobs. Not because they needed more money, but to keep busy while she was alone. One of Charlie’s professors hired her to paint murals in the bedrooms his kids used when they weren’t with their mother. She baby-sat for the family downstairs. Sewed custom curtains for their landlord. Edited an erotic novel written by their across the hall neighbor, Brenda.

The novel’s main character was conspicuously named ‘Brenda.’ Dawn did not mention this. Instead, she suggested a more sensual name for the male lead, to which Brenda protested: “But it’s Steve Perry.” And when Dawn blinked but did not reply, “Steve Perry, from Journey.”

Dawn kept taking jobs. No longer to keep busy while Charlie was away, but to keep away while Charlie was home.

The day Dawn packed to leave him, she emptied drawer after drawer into boxes brazenly marked not yours. When she unpacked them she found she had confiscated his deodorant, two pairs of socks, tiny shells from a trip up Lake Michigan that he refused to throw away, his high school yearbook and a brush he hadn’t used since he’d gotten his hair cut.
Instead of throwing the things out or returning them she piled them into a single box, shoved it into the back of her closet, and tried to forget.

Dawn moved north of the city and got a teaching certificate. She gave up smoking (the cool art student thing) and took up drinking red wine (the single woman thing). She ran. Worked a garden. Worked a soup kitchen. Road her bicycle to work. Prided herself on being the cool art teacher, the fun one who had her students work on great big funky projects. That fall the fourth graders were making a six foot wide braided rug out of clothing scraps and the fifth graders were embarking on a mural of bugs and nature. Her only rule was that they couldn’t paint any bugs that were dead or getting squished. It was a simple rule and a far cry from the rules of the art teacher she had had as a child. That old bat had covered the entire chalkboard with carefully printed instructions about how they weren’t to make a mess, any mess. It was art, and art was messy like life was messy. And art, when you’re seven, is even messier. Life, however, was simpler.

Dawn prepared materials for twenty-five first graders to make plaster seashells molded by their cupped hands. Dawn had seen Brenda’s name on the roster of in-classroom parent volunteers, but she hadn’t recognized it as that of the woman who had lived across the hall from her and Charlie.

Brenda crooned Dawn’s name when she walked into the classroom and held her palms up and out to encourage Dawn to embrace her. Multiple bracelets clinked on each of Brenda’s wrists. They hugged and Dawn breathed in the scent of hair dye and Coco Chanel and tried not to get plaster on Brenda’s clothes.

Brenda complimented Dawn on how youthful she had remained in their time apart. “Not a day over thirty-three,” she said with a smile.

Dawn was only now thirty, more than ten years Brenda’s junior.

“Which one’s yours?” Dawn asked.

Brenda indicated a slight girl whose hair was slipping out of a ponytail. Brenda winked at Dawn. “Charlie’s little gift.”

Brenda hung around after the first graders had finished their project and left to retrieve lunch boxes and backpacks before heading home. Dawn wiped down the tables, and attacked spots of plaster with an old wash cloth before the plaster could adhere permanently. Brenda watched her work and insisted they catch up on everything that had happened since Dawn “ran out in the middle of the night.”

As Dawn recalled it had been 2:00 p.m. on a Friday when she left Charlie. Not even close to dusk, not even in December.

Brenda made it clear Charlie didn’t know. She had also been seeing her boss at the tax processing center that winter. The moment her boss found out she was pregnant he put two carats on her finger and whisked her out to the suburbs without ever asking if the kid was his.

“You know,” Brenda said, “I’d had my eye on Charlie since you two first moved in.”

Dawn thought of all the adjectives Brenda would have used in her erotic novel—lusty, knowing, wanton—to describe the smile Brenda now wore. Dawn settled on slutty.

“Such a strong nose and all that dark hair, he looked just like Steve.”

Dawn did not comment on the fact that Brenda thought she was on a first name basis with the former lead singer. “But Charlie cut off his hair,” she said.

“I know.” Brenda waved off the thought and her bracelets clinked. “But a fantasy’s just a fantasy, right?”

The day after Brenda’s visit, Dawn toyed with her coffee mug and didn’t notice patterns made by the creamer as it spiraled inside. She should have put together a lesson plan, but didn’t. When she got to school she laid out crayons for the younger kids and watercolors and newspaper for the older ones. “Fill the page with shapes,” she told them and roused herself enough to talk about color and pattern and repetition. To smile and praise them for way they wove wobbly streaks of color over the fat blocks of text.

The next week Dawn purchased a paternity test. Getting a sample of the child’s hair was easy; the elastic bands grasping her ponytail always slipped out taking long strands with them. Opening the box of Charlie’s old things was harder. Not yours, it taunted her in her own handwriting. Inside she found what she needed: the hairbrush she doubted he’d ever missed.

The reply from the paternity test company contained an apology and a full refund. Something had gone wrong at the lab: the samples were compromised.

Dawn lifted the receiver to call Charlie anyway, then thought of him and Brenda twined on Charlie’s perfectly made bed, “Any Way You Want It” blaring in the background, and put the phone down.

Two days later she tried again.

“I thought you should know you have a daughter.”

She waited out his silence.

“How could you have taken this long to tell me?”

“I’ve only known for a couple of weeks.”

Then she realized what he thought.

Charlie took an entire afternoon off work and drove up to Dawn’s school. The parent volunteers were back again, this time helping the students iron crayon shavings and fall leaves between two pieces of wax paper. Dawn didn’t have to ask Brenda to stay behind; she remained in the classroom unbidden and tried to chat like the old friends she thought they were.

Dawn saw him over Brenda’s shoulder. He hovered in the doorway, his tie loosened but still on, shirt sleeves rolled up. He’d kept his hair short all these years. Brenda followed her gaze and gasped. Dawn excused herself.

On the far side of the classroom, Brenda’s daughter doodled seashells with colored pencils while she waited for her mother.

“How about we paint something,” Dawn told the girl. She went to the supply cabinet and came back with acrylics and brushes.

“But those are for the big kids.”

Dawn nodded. “We can pretend just for today.”

The elastic band slipped out of the girl’s hair. Dawn picked it up and fixed the ponytail for her.

Brenda was gesturing, her clicking bracelets punctuating her words. Charlie crossed his arms over his chest.

When Dawn looked back, the girl had smudged paint on her nose. A nose that had the same shapes and shadows as Charlie’s, though thankfully in much smaller proportions. Dawn made no move to wipe away the paint. Instead, she stroked the girl’s hair with a possessiveness she never before allowed herself to show.

Good thing the dogs are in the den watching Dr. Phil with Susan. I get the air rifle out of the hall closet and walk back to the door. The squirrel catches sight of me and jumps halfway up a porch support. He peeks at me from the other side of the post.

I lever a bb into the chamber and slide the door open. I step through and close it quick because the dogs know that sound.

The squirrel clambers onto the roof. I walk out from under and look back. There he is, ten feet away, in profile, not moving, staring down at me like he thinks he’s invisible. I raise the gun and shoot him in the side. He jumps and disappears. I walk farther into the yard for a better look, but he’s gone.

The dogs are at the door, but Susan’s still in with Phil, trying to get some insight into our life, I’m guessing. I cock the rifle and walk out the gate to check the other side of the roof. I don’t see the squirrel again. Perhaps he’s safe somewhere, licking his wound.

Walking back to the patio door, I find myself thinking about that little inn north of Santa Barbara where Susan and I spent a weekend when we first got together. One night after dinner, we sat on the floor by the bed, drinking wine and talking low, besotted with each other. Then, over her shoulder, I saw movement. A raccoon stood at the balcony door looking in at us. I turned Susan slowly and we watched enchanted until he moved off into the darkness. Then we explored each other as if we were also a miracle.

I let myself back into the house and put the gun away. I can hear the good doctor in the other room, still advising people. The dogs come to greet me but Susan is nowhere in sight. I picture her on the couch, legs drawn up, staring at the screen, her lips pressed tight together.

I. Jurassic Park

Your thoughts are bigger than my head. 1
How many years old are you? I’m eleven, so…? 2
I like your glasses.

II. Independence Day

I like computers, too. We have Windows 3.1 now. I changed the background of it. 3
I want to know more about your character. Does he like music? 4
I like your glasses. 5
I Like your Glasses.

The End.

1
I like the way you say things, so articulate and braineyackie.
Your science knowledge makes me feel like my underwear is
ticklish and I think I will maybe pee accidently in this drive-
in double feature. It’s You and Rookie of the Year. Rookie of
the Year was really funny. They said “funky butt lovin” so
many times I thought I was maybe going to pee my pants
then, too. That was different than this. I’m nervous.

2
I like the way your clothes are on you. You have tan skin
and you look bulgy. You look like you could lift me up really
easily, and I weigh almost seventy pounds. If I had a bra, I
think I would let you touch the strap of it.

3
Now it’s a repeating pattern of a Scottie dog I made entirely
by myself. Red and black. No one even showed me how. On
that note, my brother didn’t even know how, and he’s in high
school honors. It’s a Scottie dog. I get A’s, Jeff Goldblum.

4
Does he like “Dream Lover?” By Mariah Carey? I do. I have
it on a CD. The whole album is on it, and the whole album is
called “Dream Lover.” Have you ever heard it? If you want
you can borrow it. And give it back to me.

5
They. Look. Great. On. You. Sorry, my heart is
POUNDING here. I do not know why, but I keep
simultaneously trying to and trying not to imagine what it is
like when you have to go to the bathroom. It’s so weird!
JEEZ I’ve gotta pee. Listen. I have on a Fruit of the Loom
training bra, double A. It’s white. It’s made of t-shirt. The
straps are kind of pretty. I feel like you should see it.

Cheating on a woman with stage 4 — no one can believe it. And the kids and the two Americas.

“His political career is down the tubes,” they say. His wife’s days are numbered, I know.

I always thought he looked like a pumpkin — a cute one, not a big angry jack-o’-lantern. But ever since they caught him, his eyes and lips have sunk into his face. He’s a shrunken balloon — a pathetic child. He’s been left out to rot past Thanksgiving, and he knows it.

Hanging his head in shame.

“He’s got some nerve,” says a woman in the oncology waiting room. “Too busy getting his ya ya’s to take care of the wife who needs him. I thought that man had values.”

“What’s a ya ya?” I ask her, really wanting to know.

She looks up, stony-faced, trying to read my expression.

“No, I understand what you mean,” I say. She nods, turns back to the purple scarf she’s knitting. She’s pudgy and has all of her hair. I can’t tell whether she’s waiting for someone, or for treatment herself.

When my friends come, they eye the door and watch the clock, but they’re still my friends.

They’re here after all, with their shifty eyes. I tell morbid jokes, and watch them twitch.

“Don’t leave me those tulips,” I say. “They might grow tumors too.”

Or, “Those would really be more appreciated in the AIDS unit.”

“Breast cancer has not made me appreciate the color pink any more than I did before, bitches.”

No one gets my humor anymore. They can’t tell when I’m joking, the social worker said.

It’s nowhere near as bad as it could be — no bone scans needed in my case yet. It barely even got to the lymph nodes. We’re just being extra careful, as the doctors say. But if I had a husband, and he did that to me? There’s no way I’d want to die in his arms. Not to save face. Not for anything. I don’t believe in karma.

I pull my sweater on and look for a magazine. I’m always hot or always cold in this building. It’s like I’m going through menopause at thirty-two, but really I’m just preparing to lose my right breast. First my hair, but that will grow back. According to the plastics guy, my bosom could look better than ever in just a year. With some scarring.

A few years ago I was lonely. The men I dated bored me. My friends were planning weddings, getting pregnant. I collected chopsticks on my coffee table, and subscribed to too many magazines. I craved excitement.

Now I have support groups and sisterhood circles. My friends bring me chicken casseroles when I’m home, toddlers in tow.

The men I used to go out with are getting married or getting promoted. One of them brought me roses after the first surgery. He’d grown a double chin, and his skin was sallow in the hospital lights. They all send cards.

The nurse calls my name, and the knitting woman smiles at me. “See you in a minute,” she says.

Radiologists are more cheerful than surgeons, but they leave you alone in the room. I take off my shirt, and stretch my shoulder. I am tired.

The doctor comes in, and picks up my chart. “What’s happening?” he asks.

“Same old, same old.” This doctor has stubble, a five o’clock shadow. Two years ago I would have met him in a bar, gone to a hockey game.

He positions the machine and shuts the door. They let me play music in here, but it’s crap.

I wonder if John Edwards played music for that other woman. If he holds Elizabeth’s hand when she gets sick.

The lights are low, and I lean my head back as the green light begins to shine into me. I close my eyes and count backwards from 100. “I am nothing,” I like to think to myself during these treatments. “A collection of energy. I have no mass.”

This is how I fall asleep at night. I can understand where the pumpkin head was coming from. I know what it is to share a bed with illness. To want to hold something young and fresh and warm.

I don’t blame you for hiding from your former life: middle class White Suburbia
that branded you black sheep, or for claiming you grew up on the wrong side of the tracks.
—Because how many of us are daily conductors traveling down a course of what we are not?
Blow smoke from our locomotive mouths polluting our guts in an effort to save our cabooses
from ourselves. Queen sued you for copyright infringement, but that was undoubtedly your
song; King of Cool proclaiming there was a new favorite son on the hip-hop horizon, a fresh star
shining in the mainstream manufactured sky.

Today you do whatever it is has-beens do on reality TV shows, apologizing for who
you were back then rather than embracing the bland flavor you fed us before you melted
into a pool of obscurity, or celebrating the frozen particle of water you once were that
flooded our pop culture lives. But what kind of message does that send to teens like I was?
Don’t you ever look up at the cold night becoming your own constellation navigating
through the cosmos, anonymous body of hurt and angst staking your claim to a spot in the
universe, content to be a brisk beacon unto yourself?

Sincerely,
Daniel Romo
—Former president of your fan club

P.S. Was that really your signature on the picture you sent?

Mike Stutzman:
I had drafted Z onto my Fantasy Basketball team, to serve (as in his real career) as a reliable bench player. I admired his steady, drama-free style on and off the court, and I appreciated his loyalty to the city of Cleveland, long predating the days of LeBron James. More than anyone, he had earned the right to be a playoff contender, and yet this season he was done dirty, not just for business but to stroke egos. I got the hint when Z was benched to deny him a longevity award held by the team’s GM. The ultimate insult was being traded to Washington with the understanding DC would just buy his contract and drop him.

At the same time, a friend was talking about how common occasional verse used to be—that you’d open a magazine or newspaper, and there’d be poetry, usually doggerel and often terrible. So I put the two together and wrote, in high style, a rhymed-couplet appreciation of Zydrunas Ilgauskas to share with a few friends. And that’s where you come into the picture.

PSC:
How the poem came to my attention is important too, I think, since you posted it in the message section of our fantasy basketball league’s homepage. Like a Facebook status, that text box is ripe for poetry. I felt challenged by your posting of the first Big Z: An Appreciation, and I couldn’t resist responding with something equally baroque. I too have a soft spot for Big Z. It seems like the world is always trying to screw him, but he just keeps his head down and does his job. Plus a doggerel poem about a Lithuanian giant has a lot of opportunity for comedy. At least I hope so, because otherwise I’m not sure what purpose the poem serves.

MS:
Your poem is definitely funny, but it’s also warm-hearted, and absurd in the best possible sense of the word. I think that’s where your love of the game and Big Z come in. It’s hard to write a careless poem anyhow, but it’s impossible to do it with a subject you care about. The last thing I’d want is the poetic equivalent of The Air Up There. And so many basketball poems seem to turn out that way.

PSC:
What do you think the argument is for writing occasional poems about celebrities? Shouldn’t we be spending our time plunging the depths of our souls or writing love poems to our wives? Is there any qualitative difference, vis-a-vis poetic subject, between a nightingale and Big Z? “It’s hard to write a careless poem,” you say, but I wonder if that’s true.

MS:
I fear any answer I give to this one is going to be a glorified “Why not?” Almost all the debate over what is or isn’t a worthy subject for art is really a reaction to a preponderance of crappy art with that subject. Seeing as how these poems were born out of Fantasy sports—an exercise in statistics—I’ll assert that being a sports fan requires a certain healthy irrationality. The game is a closed system of rules, skills and finance. Some teams and some players are better than others, night after night, in plain numbers. Why put your heart into a team that will be damned lucky to win even half its games? Loyalty to a place? To family? Admiration of human achievement? The thrill of distraction and spectacle? Love? You can write a terrible poem about that or a great poem about that, but there’s clearly potential poetry in it.

PSC:
I truly struggle with this question of worthy subjects, though. Which leads to (or from): why am I writing poems? I’ve written a lot of poems about Morton Feldman, an American composer who died in 1987 and whom most people haven’t heard of. And I’ll admit here that at some point I think I was writing about him because I thought he was a sexy subject. I believed that writing about him would naturally make me more poetic–much the same way that I’m sure George Herbert believed writing about God would make him more poetic. I do care deeply for Morton Feldman, but my point is that my motivation in making him a poetic subject is much more complex than my motivation for writing about Zydrunas Ilgauskas was.

So I wonder if I should be writing what comes easily—basketball poems, odes to porn stars, etc—or what comes with difficulty—Morton Feldman, Death, God, etc.

MS:
To oversimplify (once again,) I don’t think writing ever comes easily. Any ease of access to a subject, a form, even individual style comes with that much more conscious responsibility. When I write what I know, it’s easier to begin, but after that, my writing is accountable to what I know. When I write about an NBA star, even in a lighthearted spirit, everything I put on the page, I can get wrong. There’s no objective correlative for Zydrunas Ilgauskas; it’s just artifice I’ve put up around a really real thing. No pleading ignorance; when I change what I know to be, I better have a damned good reason.

Maybe that’s a part of why there’s so much bad poetry about basketball, sports, celebrities, and other present things. Writers skip right to invention and artifice, regardless of what they know or don’t. They want the vehicle but their connection to the tenor is phony or stereotyped, because they write Nate Robinson like they write God or Death or a Grecian Urn. Sure, on the page he can stand for something, but he can also dunk on your ass, or even read your poem. That’s a pretty wild situation.

PSC:
How did we manage to get away from Wreckx-n-Effect’s “Rumpshaker”? Or did we just arrive there?

The argument for Big Z or Rumpshaker existing inside of love’s or nostalgia’s or envy’s objective correlative is that people our age are more likely to have an experiential understanding of these things than a Grecian urn, an object that I know nothing about outside of Keats’s poem. I think people like having the mise-en-scene of their lives interpreted for them. Or I certainly do anyway. I want to know what Rumpshaker Really Means to Me. And to You. Whereas I kind of doubt you give a shit about about trees and urns, or even god.

MS:
For the record, I do care about trees. Trees are awesome. Not really a critical point—I just like trees.

All metaphor—all lyric poetry—is cheating: a shortcut to speak more precisely and more deeply about the nature of things, based on what we know (and hope the reader knows.) And yeah, Zydrunas Ilgauskas is a much less convenient vehicle for anything not related to basketball. But it’s not so much the vehicle as it is the driver, and like you say, he matters to us, so we put in the extra work and perhaps accept a smaller audience. I think it makes us more careful and more generous. The story of David and Bathsheba and “Rumpshaker” are both about man’s all-consuming desire to zoom-a-zoom-zoom-zoom then a-boom-boom, but the former is a freebie allusion, while the latter has to be taught and earned. Not to detract from the beauty of so much poetry that invokes the sacred, but when’s the last time you really earned something you explained using god?

PSC:
Um, never. Hence why I’ll probably write a Rumpshaker poem before a David & Bathsheba poem. Or if I do write a D&B poem, Rumpshaker will be playing in the background.

One thing we haven’t discussed enough is this idea of friendly poetic competition. I personally would not be writing poems if not for projects like this where we try to write poems on the same subjects. Of course, when I’m writing a sonnet, I’m technically communicating with Shakespeare, St. Millay, Berrigan etc. but of course I’m totally not. If I was the only poet alive on earth I wouldn’t be writing poetry—I’d be in an insane asylum.

MS:
Sometimes I think it would be better if the lay audience thought of poetry as a hobby or club-sport, something obscure to the world at large, but thriving within itself. Like fly-fishing, or curling. Hell, I’d give my left eye to see poetry get the love and attention curling gets every four years before fading back into a small community of enthusiasts.

Technology’s given us an interesting scenario, where it’s made revision and collaboration so much easier, but with the tech comes an ethic which prizes the bold loner. “The computer’s doing the heavy lifting; any artist worth his salt can DIY from there.” Which is funny, since it’s so close to the argument that technology has cheapened the creation and sharing of art. The way I see it, if I have a live-updated network of like-minded friends online, and I’m not collaborating with them, what’s the point?

PSC:
Oh man, so true. Can you imagine what Keats would have done if he could have created Google Docs with Charles Browne? Or Elliott with Pound? Unfortunately though, I don’t think poetry can ever be a curling-type phenomenon, surfacing gloriously at the Poetry Olympics and then returning to delightful obscurity, because I think poetry is doomed to wrestle with the mainstream. Its substance is just too all-encompassing. With no disrespect to “chess on ice,” curling can’t place a similar claim to its centrality in the human experience over the course of recorded time. Don’t get me wrong—poetry will remain weird and obscure as long as film and video are around—but we also have to deal with this rich inheritance we’ve been bequeathed. Which is to say, contemporary poetry is Brewster’s Millions.

BIG Z: AN APPRECIATION
with an assist from Mike Stutzman
by P. Scott Cunningham

Surely the world shrunk the day you were born
bald as a marble statue of butter,
or from the womb of Pokémon torn,
named after that which can’t be uttered.
In a land of cleaving you were right at home,
a forest planted at 15 feet.
Every board was yours to own—
between the King and Price, the missing link.

Genetic mash-up worthy of Tolkein:
body by Tonka, soul by Rainbow Brite.
If Jameson is smooth, you’re Johnny Walker Green,
gently lurching into waiver’s night.

But thanks to Stern’s unwritten law,
sure to return for Ohio’s sake,
palming even Paul Bunyan’s balls,
missing the pedal on every fast break.

MY DEAD CENTER’S COME BACK
(with apologies to M.D.)
by Mike Stutzman

The instant before time started
running out, everything
was a center. Then history.
Expansion in a terrible hurry.
Away is the only direction
of these long dimensions; the place
where you were born
hasn’t existed for years.

Unwavering, you come back
to play for the home team. The same
numbers, same great bodies. If any of this
counts in the stretch, then defense
is the best fundamental. Meantime
we’re bought and sold, like we matter,

darkly. As if a purpose
might bring us back to center.
Far from the courts, wise men
discuss the laws, and with shaking hands
write again that first, silent letter
on your contract, the difference
between death and truth.

#11 – Zydrunas Ilgauskas, C
Games: 771
Minutes Played: 21,820
FG: 4045
FGA: 8523
FG%: .475
RB: 5904
AST: 929
STL: 398
BLKs: 1269
PTS: 10,616
PPG: 13.8

The American people had become tired of talentless, emaciated celebutantes like Paris Hilton. Large groups began to boycott US Weekly and picket the offices of People. Tabloids folded. Audiences were fed up with deceitful, disgraced politicians trying to redeem their reputations on reality TV. The networks were forced to produce thoughtful, intelligent dramatic shows as well as sitcoms that were actually funny. The message was clear: The public wanted actors to act, not to create fragrances or share diet tips or write lame tell-all books.

Twenty-six and great-looking with bright green eyes and a lean, muscular build, Allan’s wavy brown hair usually drooped in his boyish face. This gave him a rumpled, just-woke-up look that most women found ferociously sexy. They flocked to him, and he flocked to voluptuous redheads.

It happened this way: Executive producer Lorne Michaels decided to take part in the anti-celebrity movement with an episode of Saturday Night Live. NBC talent scouts scoured the tri-state area in search of a funny, charismatic unknown, and they narrowed the candidates down to three guys and a gal. While sitting in the reception area of the network’s midtown office, Allan and the solitary female struck up a conversation. “I’m Amanda Vreeland,” the voluptuous redhead said. “No relation to Diana.”

“I didn’t think women were named Amanda except in soap operas,” Allan said, desperately trying to place the name Diana Vreeland.

A smile lit up Amanda’s flawless, fair-skinned face. “What do you do?”

“Accountant,” he told her. There wasn’t a scintilla of evidence to link Allan to the murder of Owen Thorndike that had recently taken place at the office of Preston Flinch Choi Cornleaf Halberstadt Sanz Newkirk Barnicle & Briggs, so he saw no reason to mention it.

“You don’t happen to work at the firm where that client was murdered, do you?” she asked.

Embarrassed, Allan nodded. “As a matter of fact, I do. But I wasn’t in the office the day it happened. I was with my grandmother in New Jersey who was having her hip replaced.”

“I’m not accusing you,” she assured him.

“Right. How do you spend your days?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I work with the chronically mentally ill,” Amanda said. “People who’ve been diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Some of my clients also deal with Axis II personality disorders like borderline, histrionic, or obsessive-compulsive behavior.”

“That’s cool,” he said.

“Why is that cool?” she asked.

“Compared to them, I’ll be a snap to deal with.”

Amanda didn’t appreciate jokes about her profession, but she knew Allan meant no harm. She could hardly wait to crawl into his bed and make him beg. Little gave her more pleasure than watching a confident, cocksure man beg for mercy.

“Sorry,” Allan said with shame. “What I just told you was in extremely bad taste.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Now that I’m being considered for Saturday Night Live, I try to be funny all the time. Sometimes it backfires.”

“You can make it up to me one night with a fancy dinner,” she said.

“I like the sound of that.” he said to his captivating new acquaintance.

The following Wednesday afternoon, Allan got word that he’d been chosen as host for the November 3rd show.

“Can we celebrate later?” he asked Amanda via cellphone.

After a French-Asian fusion dinner and the best chocolate souffle either of them had ever tasted, they trekked back to Amanda’s apartment. The bright full moon illuminated the parked cars and pedestrians on the still crowded Soho street. Instantly after walking through the door, Amanda handcuffed Allan to a leg of her dark oak dining room table. In the dim light of a lavender-scented candle, she removed his clothes, massaged his body and made him beg for forgiveness. “Tell me you’re sorry you got the SNL gig instead of me,” she said with glee.

“I’m so sorry,” he replied with a combination of titillation and trepidation.

“Exactly how sorry?” she asked.

“Terribly, terribly sorry. I’m the sorriest guy on the planet.”

“Don’t you think you deserve a beating for being such a bad, bad boy?”

“But not too hard.”

Instead of taking out her tennis racket, Amanda marched to the bookshelf and grabbed a hardback copy of Naked Lunch.

The next morning, Allan shared the news of landing Saturday Night Live with his colleagues. “I can’t believe I got it,” he told Gordon Flinch, a geeky, prematurely gray Princeton grad.

“You’re going to be a household name in houses other than yours, mine and your mother’s!” Gordon exclaimed. “I’m taking you to lunch.”

“It’s barely eleven o’clock.”

“We’ll eat light.”

Over a sausage pizza with extra garlic, the guys discussed Allan’s great fortune and Gordon’s grand failure with women. “I’ve been cursed in that area,” the mild mannered accountant admitted. “My first carnal exploit didn’t occur till a year after college, and it was pretty dismal. When was yours?”

“A week before high school,” Allan said. “It was fantastic.”

“People need to be touched. Going years without physical contact can drive a man mad, you know.”

“That’s why you have to be with the wrong woman until you meet the right one,” Allan explained. “In fact, you have to be with a lot of wrong ones. Why don’t you ask Nanette out?” It was common knowledge that Gordon was crazy about Nanette Krupp, a rail-thin, perky blonde colleague with a bold sense of style.

“I don’t think she’s into me,” Gordon said with regret.

“You won’t know for sure until you ask.”

Nanette got wind of Allan’s big news at three in the afternoon. She breezed down the hall in a black leather minidress with studs on the shoulder pads. “You sly, talented cookie!” She threw her skeletal arms around Allan’s torso, and kept them there longer than he would have liked. “I knew you had splendid business acumen, but who knew you had a sense of humor?”

Just then, Gordon knocked twice and nervously stepped into the office.

“Did you hear about Saturday Night Live?” Nanette asked.

“Yes,” Gordon said. “Amazing. And your dress is beyond amazing.”

“Thanks,” she chirped. “Diana Vreeland once said: Never fear being vulgar, just boring.”

“Diana Vreeland?” Allan blurted out.

“Vogue’s greatest editor.”

“I decided to throw a viewing party,” Gordon said. “I’ll invite the whole gang. Just had the carpet shampooed.” He gazed at Nanette with longing.

Nanette turned to Allan, who was standing next to his baseball bat attached to the wall. It had been a gag birthday gift from Gordon, to fight off his many women. “Will you come to Gordon’s after the taping, Allan?” she asked.

“I can’t say for sure, but I’ll definitely try.”

Nanette’s disappointment was so palpable that a seismic shift occurred in the mood of the room. “I guess you’ll be surrounded by too many swooning women to show up at Gordon’s dinky get-together,” she said, perched on the edge of heartbreak.

“I plan to have it catered,” Gordon boasted.

“This guy knows how to throw a blowout bash,” Allan said, even though he’d never attended a party at Gordon’s place.

“Is it my imagination, or do you smell like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden?” Gordon asked as he stepped closer to Nanette.

“Don’t know,” she said. “Never been there.”

“Never?” Gordon asked incredulously. “Maybe you’d like to accompany me some Saturday.”

“Maybe,” she flashed a weak smile.

“Are you free on the 5th?”

“Sorry,” Nanette replied “Root canal.”

“Yikes,” Allan said. “You’re having a root canal?”

“No,” she whispered into Allan’s ear. “I’d rather have a root canal.”

“I need to get back to work,” Allan announced. “Damn profit and loss statements are due.”

“Sure thing,” Gordon said as he hurried to the door. Nanette followed, shooting Allan a quick glance over her shoulder before disappearing into the hallway.

Thrilled to have her all to himself, if only for a few seconds, Gordon asked his great love the first question that popped into his head. “Are you an only child?”

“I’ve got a client waiting for me. Sorry.” Nanette zoomed off as if she’d rather be in the eye of a tornado than chatting in the hallway with Gordon. He felt as if she’d rushed away with one of the valves to his ailing heart.

The week before the Saturday Night Live broadcast was one of the most grueling of Allan’s life. There were pitch meetings, read-throughs, rehearsals. Sketches were written, rewritten and rewritten again, rehearsed, rehearsed, and rehearsed again. On Friday, costume fittings took time away from rehearsing. On the day of the taping, rehearsals continued until a full dress rehearsal in front of a studio audience. Allan relished every second, realizing this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Relieved to learn that he’d appear in only the opening monologue and three sketches, Allan was glad to play a minimal part in the show. The last thing he wanted to do was give viewers a license to snore or channel surf.

In the first sketch, Allan would play a certified public accountant dealing with a client from hell. The second sketch would require him to don a wavy, shoulder-length blond wig and act the part of a demanding, self-absorbed rock star. In the third, he would play a conservative family man whose teenage daughter was arrested for indecent exposure at the mall. The musical guest would be Felicia Laufer, a professor of medieval history at Hunter College.

James Franco was brought in to make a surprise appearance in the first sketch, playing the client from hell. After the first rehearsal, James told Allan he had a likeable quality and good sense of comic timing. “Thanks,” Allan said. “Coming from you, that means a lot.”

“Don’t get caught up in the whole Hollywood scene,” James warned him. “It’s full of phony, two-faced people.”

“This is a one-time gig for me,” Allan replied. “On Monday, I go right back to the accounting firm.”

“That’s the smart thing to do, man,” James said, with a warm smile.

On the big night, Amanda sat next to Allan’s proud parents, Irene and Jim. They made the journey from Clifton, New Jersey to be part of the studio audience despite Irene’s active gallstones.

An enthusiastic group of twenty colleagues showed up at Gordon’s bland downtown apartment with its beige carpet, beige curtains, moldy bathroom and kitchen cabinets in need of remodeling. Several disturbing Diane Arbus black and white prints on the walls gave the place a distinctly macabre vibe. A half circle of chairs was set up in front of the flat screen TV.

The last to arrive, Nanette appeared in a silk, ruby red halter dress with short, sarong-style skirt, rhinestone-studded stilettos and spiked hair. The sight of her standing in the doorway gave Gordon a rush of desire so heated he was sure it could set the building ablaze. “You look spectacular,” he said.

“Red’s a good color for me,” Nanette explained, stepping into the apartment and giving it a neon glow. “Green is your color.”

“I’m wearing brown,” Gordon said.

“I know, but green is your color.”

“I’ll remember that. Would you like a drink?”

“Circus Rickey,” she said, scanning the room to see who was present.

“I’m not familiar with that,” Gordon said, embarrassed.

“Then anything with gin will do.”

“Got it. There’s food on the dining room table.” On display were platters of chicken potstickers, crab herb cheese puffs, zucchini fritters, and samosas with tamarind dipping sauce. Every chair was taken, and the overstuffed sofa was jammed with jubilant accountants. Nanette kicked off her stilettos and stretched out on the recently shampooed carpet. Right after she took a giant gulp of her gin and tonic, the show began.

When Don Pardo announced, “And your host, Allan Barnicle,” the crowd at Gordon’s place erupted in ecstatic whoops and hollers.

Allan made his way to the middle of the stage. When the applause died down, he said, “In case you’re wondering who the heck I am, I was recently made partner in the accounting firm of Preston, Flinch, Choi, Cornleaf, Halberstadt, Sanz, Newkirk, Barnicle & Briggs.” The studio audience broke into laughter. “That wasn’t supposed to be funny,” he added with a sheepish grin.

Allan was a natural, likeable host. “We’ve got a great show for you,” he said. “Felicia Laufer is here.” The studio audience applauded, and the TV screen dipped to black.

A moment later, the first sketch began.

“That’s James Franco!” Nanette shouted. “I would bear his child.” James was hilarious, and Allan matched him every step of the way.

In the second sketch, Allan was a sight gag in a long blond wig and glittering gold jacket. Again, he was great. He didn’t appear in the next sketch. After the commercial break, Allan introduced musical guest Felicia Laufer, who possessed the lung-busting, headache-inducing vocal power of Celine Dion.

During the musical performance, Nanette struggled up from the carpet. She made her way to the bathroom to relieve her bursting bladder, and to see if her host had anything interesting in his medicine cabinet. With Nanette out of the living room, Gordon took the opportunity to covertly kick one of her stilettos into a nearby closet.

In the next sketch, Allan played the harried suburban dad waiting for his daughter to return home. At a certain point, the doorbell was supposed to ring, but a minute before the cue, three burly police officers stomped onto the stage and approached Allan. “You’re too early,” he whispered.

Allan was handcuffed on live television. “Allan Midas Barnicle,” said one of the officers, “you’re under arrest for the murder of Owen Thorndike.” Allan and his fellow cast members registered shock, but the audience assumed this was part of the sketch. After he was escorted off the stage, the performers did their best to improvise. Even James Franco returned to the stage, taking over Allan’s part. But the sketch disintegrated before America’s eyes.

The mood in Gordon’s living room turned funereal.

“This can’t be for real,” Edward Choi said.

“This is a massive mistake,” Nanette shouted.

Gordon seemed to be in another world. He sat in the chintz armchair, staring at something beyond the flat screen TV. “I didn’t know his middle name was Midas,” he muttered. “He has the touch.”

“This is surreal,” Trevor commented.

Gordon rose from his chair, snapping himself out of his catatonic state. “Hey everyone! There are plenty of zucchini fritters left!”

No one else said a word.

This was not the way Gordon had intended the evening to end. He’d hoped the clinking of ice cubes and laughter would continue until the wee hours. He’d thought Allan might make a surprise appearance. He had dared to imagine Nanette spending the night and sampling his pumpkin pancakes in the morning, unless she preferred Raisin Bran or Honey Bunches of Oats.

Guests began to leave in groups of twos and threes. “Has anybody seen a candy apple red stiletto?” Nanette shouted as she searched under the sofa. No one had seen it. Five minutes later, Nanette was the only remaining guest. “Where could it have gone, Gordon?”

“Let’s look in the bedroom.”

“I didn’t set foot in the bedroom,” she said, hobbling on her right stiletto.

“Maybe someone kicked it in there.”

A bizarre black and white print hung on the wall above Gordon’s dresser. “What is that monstrosity?” Nanette asked.

“It’s a Diane Arbus photograph called Screaming Woman With Blood On Her Hands.”

“You hung it on your bedroom wall because…?”

“It’s high art,” he explained.

“Oh, I see. You have to be high to appreciate it.”

“It’s an authentic thing of beauty, like your face.”

A guffaw emerged from Nanette’s delicate mouth. “Why are you an accountant when you should be a poet?”

“There’s no money in poetry,” Gordon said. “Add a v to poetry, and you’ve got poverty.”

“Isn’t that part of the experience?” she asked. “Starve on the streets of Paris or Brooklyn while you create your masterpieces?”

“I need a certain minimum to live, Nanette,” he said. “I also need you. I need you the way a diabetic needs insulin.”

“And I need you to find my bloody shoe.”

With a sudden lurch, Gordon lunged at Nanette’s throat.

“What are you doing?” she yelled.

“Trying to kiss the elegant neck of a swan,” he said.

“Go to the Bronx Zoo!”

“You’re my insulin!” he insisted.

“I heard you the first time. Now get out of my personal space!”

With manic force, Gordon pushed her onto the platform bed. As he hoisted himself up onto the extra firm mattress, Nanette lifted her legs and brutally kicked him in the femur with the stiletto that was on her right foot. He screamed in pain, and fell backward onto the hardwood floor.

Nanette jumped off the bed, and bolted out the door. “Take a cold shower!” she shouted, leaving Gordon writhing and moaning in agony.

“I would never hurt you,” he whispered after she was gone. “Why would I hurt the one person I love in this world?” Gordon remained on the floor, the minutes passing in slow motion. He saw no reason to get up after being knocked down so many times. He couldn’t imagine life above ground without Nanette. He couldn’t imagine it even though he saw her for what she was: an insensitive bitch with a powerful right kick. Gordon had always wanted to be taken seriously, but no woman had ever paid him serious attention. He was tired of imagining the possibilities. He had used up every ounce of desire to continue desiring, every bit of hope that had once revved the engine of his heart. The world was a bleak, barren purgatory without that.

On Monday morning, it was explained to the partners in the accounting firm that the weapon used in the murder of Owen Thorndike was the baseball bat that had been displayed in Allan Barnicle’s office. Miniscule amounts of blood were found on the bat’s maple wood. The blood matched Thorndike’s. When Allan’s attorney explained this to him, he had been rightfully outraged. “I barely touched that bat!” he had said. “It was a gag gift from Gordon Flinch.” Exactly two hours later, an armed guard had approached Allan’s jail cell. *You’re free to go, Mr. Barnicle,* he said.

The partners listened with horror, all except Gordon. He hadn’t shown up for work.

The police knocked on Gordon Flinch’s front door. When there was no response, they forced their way inside. Gordon hung from a noose made of neckties, in his bedroom closet. A neat, handwritten note lay on his dark wooden desk.

Allan,

By the way, you were great on Saturday Night Live.

The story made the front page of every newspaper in the country. Allan was rabidly pursued by the media, but chose to remain behind closed doors. Gordon’s death hit him hard.

When Allan heard that his Saturday Night Live was the show’s highest rated episode in three years, he dove head first into a new career. After signing with a major talent agency, he received a huge advance to write his memoirs. He took a supporting role in a James Cameron film that, coincidentally, starred James Franco. He signed to become the face of Banana Republic’s new line of men’s safari wear. Allan turned down an offer to host his own talk show, but mulled over the lucrative possibility of starring in a CBS sitcom.

Amanda was out of the picture because it was becoming too difficult to hide the bruises. After dating Megan Fox for a week, Allan began seeing Bibi Rabbit, a blonde, size zero star of the reality show Shaping Up With the Shiksa. In this relationship, it was Bibi who got the bruises.

For A-list actor Allan Barnicle, profit and loss statements were a thing of the past.

I want to go to the game with my hot Hollywood man and my best Hollywood girlfriend. She’s hot too. The three of us, we’re going to sit with our legs expertly crossed in those leather wrapped chairs with the thick cushions embroidered with the Lakers logo. I’m going to sit in the middle of my hot man and my best girlfriend and all night I’m going to have a little smile on my face. You know why. We’ve all heard the rumors. They’re totally true. We’re going to be surrounded by the other beautiful people, the ones you recognize and love and hate and hate to love. We’re going to talk with those fucking beauties about that starlet and the cokehead and the model and the has-been and sometimes, she or he will be the same person. We’ll speculate about the old guy who brought a girl young enough to be his granddaughter but isn’t his granddaughter because every once in a while you see him sticking his tongue in her ear. We’re going to talk deals and back ends and points and salaries. We will talk about everything without saying anything. We will drink alcoholic beverages in clear plastic cups, sipping slowly from straws until we can’t hardly feel our skin. We will glow and we will beam beneath the fluorescent lights and the sweaty basketball bodies and the stares of hundreds of camera lenses and millions of people who all wish they knew what it was like to sit there, vibrating on display.

Once in a while, my best Hollywood girlfriend is going to lean into me and she’s going to be warm and I’m going to smell her perfume. She’s going to rest her hand on my knee and whisper something, anything, doesn’t matter, but her lips are going to brush my ear and I’m going to feel a sharp twinge and later I’m going to tell her, “Let’s go freshen up.” I’m going to cover her hand with mine and our fingers will curl together and we’ll hold on tighter and tighter and I’ll feel like we’re all alone at the center of this crowd. In that moment, it will feel like the center of the whole world. I’ll turn to my best girl and our lips are almost going to touch and we’re going to smile at each other. She’s going to kiss my neck, just below my ear because she knows what happens when someone touches me there and then she’s going to look straight ahead and I’m going to look straight ahead and we’re going to pretend we care about what’s happening on the court. When Kobe shoots a beautiful three-pointer from well beyond the arc, we’ll both nod appreciatively. We’ll still hold hands. You’re going to watch this happening and you’re going to think we’re lucky, to be so close, to be such good girls who are friends. We’re going to know something you don’t know and it won’t be what you think you know.

My hot Hollywood man, he’s the real Lakers fan. He’s a student of the game. When we go to Lakers games he wears slim designer jeans and black motorcycle boots and a white button down shirt because he knows that’s what I like. My man’s going to sit on the edge of his seat, the one closest to the Laker bench, and he’s going to shout things to the players and the referees and sometimes he’s going to stand and gesture wildly. His hair is going to look amazing. His hair is going to look like he’s put no effort at all into its appearance. I’ll know the truth. When my man sits down, he’s going to sit real close like, with his hand resting inside the back of my jeans, just brushing my ass and I’m going to sink into that. When one of the players looks at me a little too hard, he will pull me into a dirty, wet kiss right there. He’ll hold me against him real tight, and his shirt will be damp with sweat but I won’t pull away. He’ll make it clear who I’m going home with. He’s possessive like that. Sometimes, we’ll look up and see that dirty kiss replayed on the Jumbotron and I will roll my eyes but I won’t mind. I love a jealous man.

Learn the dialogue
To Natural Born
Killers, and
Don’t be afraid
To hold a gun,
Even if you never
Shoot one

Don’t ever drive
As fast as James Dean
On a one-Lane
Highway,
But blast the stereo
While you drive
five to ten
miles over the
Speed limit,

Don’t litter,
even though
a few times never
Hurt anybody,

Slow dance in
Your living room,

Don’t worry if
The world hates us,
remember
There’s
No such thing
As bad attention,

Finally,
Learn how
To order a
Chicken sandwich
Like Jack Nicholson
In Five easy Pieces;

Tell em to
Hold the chicken,
Bring you the toast,
And Give you a check,
That way
They don’t
Have to break any rules

They keep saying I’m a threat.
Bringing up that time
when I was ten
and I bit the alien baby.
No one bothered to ask me why.
Let me tell you,
He asked for it
when he reached
with his podded
fingers, trying to touch
my ears. I’m tired
of being touched
and prodded, but I’d take it
if I could just once
meet Meghan McCain.
I’d sing her a song. Maybe
“I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
But, I wouldn’t
try to hold
her sweet looking
pink hands
unless she
made the first move.
They won’t even let me
see her at her book signings.
You know she wrote a great book
“My Dad. John McCain.”
I’m always turned away
from her at rallies, even when
I show up empty handed,
pockets turned out, toboggan
pulled down to cover my ears