The TA'CONE

This is my official notice to you, the Public, that I've just birthed the concept that will bankroll any future decades drooling in a convalescent home. I present to you the TA'CONE: a fast food delicacy with the shape and texture of an ice cream cone, but consisting of a crispy fried yellow corn tortilla filled with customizable scoops of such gooey sensations as beans, beef, salsa, guacamole, orange-colored cheese shreds, and sour cream. Mexican/Arctic fusion, yet 100% All American.

To the legions of corporate strategists grasping for new combinations of the same sixteen ingredients that will fatten both the populace and your pocketbooks as quickly and efficiently as possible: eat your hearts out. I thought of this first.

The Security man

If you worked for the Department of Homeland Security, would you walk around wearing all black, with a walkie talkie strapped to your belt, and the logo of the Department of Homeland Security silk-screened in silver on your ball cap, your lapel, your jacket sleeve, and the back of your jacket? When I ask you how's it going, would you reply "Long as things stay quiet tonight, fine"? Is it the Department's strategy to recruit out of shape and slightly overweight people to mosey through their days dressed like a SWAT team, thereby hoodwinking ever-watching enemies into believing that the Homeland is barren of truly scary defenders? Or would this be an impostor, perhaps a white-supremacist militia member, patrolling a grocery store in Montana where almost everyone's white anyway... I want to know, but this is a story I'm not writing. It's one with only empty space where the next words should be.

Millisecond

The first second a person looks at me, there is an instant of honesty before the curtains draw. I see a woman who is sick of life. I see a guy who is ready to fight with his buddy. The girl in a track suit wishes the cake were hers and not the salad. The soul of the staggering man writes novels but can't maneuver a notebook close enough to spill them into. Then the faces register a spectator, the fabric drops over and the polite smile, the harried endurance, are screened over its thick folds.

Residency

I call the university to ask about proving state residency and they direct me to a form on the registrar's website. I go to the registrar's office to pick up a copy but am informed it is available only online. I return home to print it but my printer is out of toner. I go to the library and print the form there. I fill in the form but don't understand some of the questions. I call the registrar's office but they are not open so I leave a message but never get a call back. I call again when they are open and the person who answers transfers me to the woman who handles residency applications. The call goes to voicemail, where her message instructs all students with questions about residency applications to send an email and allow five days for a reply. I send an email with four questions and wait ten days but there is no reply. I go back to the registrar's office and the man there answers some of my questions. When he reaches a question he cannot answer, he directs me to the real registrar's office, the existence of which I was unaware. Until now I had been visiting only an outpost of the real office. I go to the real office and discover that the woman who handles residency applications has a desk there, and office hours, and that, voicemail message to the contrary, the best way to get a question answered about residency is to visit her in person. Her office hours are happening now, but she is with another student and I must leave for work. I return another day and sit with her, and she answers more of my questions. Then she discovers that I am not currently attending class, that I intend to start in the fall. "Oh," she says, "then this is the wrong application for you. You need to go to the admissions office and use their application, because you are still an incoming student." She gives me the name and number of the woman in admissions who handles residency. I leave her office, almost toss the old application into a recycling bin, and go to the admissions office. The woman is at lunch. But it is fortunate that I kept the old application, because it is identical to the new application, save one page. I kneel at the desk and fill out the one page then and there, heedless of the offer of a chair in which to sit while I do so. I reluctantly entrust the paperwork to the receptionist to put into my file for safekeeping until within thirty days of my one-year anniversary of state residency, at which point I will return and officially submit my application to the woman currently at lunch and pray that the receptionist actually saved and correctly filed the copies of my taxes, driver's license, voter registration card, lease, and vehicle registration, which I had collected and copied and had notarized from various offices around the city.

Multiply this by federal taxes, by Montana taxes, by Georgia taxes, and by several other mundane and kafkaesque matters of paperwork that have entered my life. I awaken at 5:38 am to write a blog about it and the server nearly resets my entry to a blank screen when I attempt to publish the paragraph.

And I wonder where my time has gone.

Rain

It crawls over the horizon, sending promising filaments of white into the mountain pines at high altitude, then cedes to an hour of unforecast but familiar sun, which blasts cheerily into the valley. It makes happiness, of course, but buds and roots hunger for the gray edge in the west. Then the wind whips up and the temperature drops off, and the cloud pulls down over the peaks again, rushes down until the mountain is invisible, white only, and the air in the valley crackles with change. People lean into the wind. They walk faster, shop faster. The pace of business quickens as those in the store hurry to finish their missions of resupply, but few new customers come through the doors. Those who do dart through the aisles, hastily plucking three or four things to get them through the short term.

By the time it arrives, the rain finds an empty canvas in the parking lot. It spatters it with tiny uniform dots, testing, testing, then with medium ones, then large, now covers it completely, along with every surface under the sky, the whole valley subject to its brush, then its sponge, then its roller. For the first time in months rain falls in steady constancy, layer upon layer, filling every opening, crowding out air and loosing a smell of freshness, rebirth, ozone, energy, spring. Gravity pulls the rain to earth yet faster, as if water needs encouragement to sink, to penetrate, to fill every gap in concrete, dirt, or skin. The workers idle and watch it come, no longer workers but rainwatchers every one.

Reading

It has been a drought, reading only for information, clicking staring at the Latest Headlines tab from the BBC online, ticking off joyless strips on comics pages under bowls of soup consumed in short breaks in small rooms, reading self-improvement tomes and taking notes, wheedling a stubborn brain to shake free a little insight. There have been instruction manuals, cookbooks and guides to filling out the necessary forms. While striding in place on an elliptical trainer, a parade of vacuous magazines offer cliches and one-page profiles of success-oriented individuals. It's wise to sanitize afterward. A fat book of philosophy by the bedside, excellent but dense as a brick, provides three or four sentences of bushwhacking each night, then the forager falls off the cliff into sleep.

Then a book on the table. Left by a visitor for someone else to read, but after driving home through the rain and eating a long chain of crackers and peanut butter and falling into the couch while the intended someone else programs a computer, the book is there. Opened randomly in the middle, picked up and entered. And it's like diving into the ocean. Doesn't matter which story, which of the seven basic plots, only that it engulfs, eclipses, and one plunges in. Time is gone, and task, and the pages devour the reader and the reader the pages, waves of narrative and motif breaking over not only the brain but the being. Several hours later, much later than advisable for tomorrow's mood, spent but unfinished, rising from the trance, a slumbering thirst has been awakened and for the moment fulfilled. A tired joy endures, of existence beyond what's seen and merely informed.

Parting cloud

A wing unrolled from the cloud. The cloud continued its eastward drift, but its appendage did not. It stretched away from its source, angling toward nothing. The netting of water drops connecting cloud annex to cloud central thinned languidly, strands releasing and parting. The whiteness of connection disappeared bit by bit, though nothing changed: the water, still all there, the wind, still moving, the weight of the air, the sun striking it, the land below. And like that, the wing was off, and then it melted out of visibility entirely. Gone but there; there but gone. And the cloud itself unravelled into sky over the next while, so slowly that it would not be measured in time, only perhaps recorded in an unwritten book of events that are sure to happen nearly unnoticed for no particular reason in a way that changes nothing although afterwards, a very full emptiness drifts on.

Lists 3: Sucked under the belt at the grocery store.

(In order of increasing size.)

Stickers.
Dollar bills.
Deli meal tickets.
Coins.
Arguments made with eyes.
Packets of powdered Emergen-C.
Packets of seeds.
Focus.
Vacuum-packed bacon, 6 oz.
Portion of my palm.
Bunch of green onions in rubber band.
Weeks.

(Cell phones are unfortunately not yet thin enough to be sucked under.)

Sister

My sister is giving birth one thousand miles away. I lie awake, my oven on the self-cleaning cycle, cramps and sleeplessness and too much thought, while her oven has baked its bun brown and ready to pull out with burning hands. She lies awake feeling her insides glow orange and the bread rising, steaming. I bend to one side, hope to melt the cramp, and send my energy to her side. I charge toward sleep, for in dreams they will reach me: the faroff cries of new life.

To let a quiet man be

The man seated in the deli was motionless. There was no plate or cup before him, nor newspaper nor wallet. His head was bowed. I went round with my broom and pan to glance from the corner of my eye, pretending to sweep crumbs. Yes, he is asleep. Sleeping in the deli after sunset on St. Patrick's Day. I should tell a manager, I suppose, and do: "There's a man sleeping in the deli."

I expect action but she says, "Oh yes... he's been there since six, I think." She blinks. "He doesn't seem to be drunk and he isn't noisy, so we will let him stay."

I am glad and tell her. How hard was that? How hard to let a quiet man sleep, here in a place of commerce on a night known for wildness? So easy. An easy kindness. Why not? Who would be hurt? Yet so few I know would let him be.

In the dark before dawn

In the dark before dawn when you roll over in bed and discover that you are mostly awake
There is a space inside where you move about, even as you lie still and hope for more sleep
Sometimes you wander through glens of green flowers with yellow stems
Sometimes you follow the sound of crashing water, knowing once you arrive
You'll dissolve into the falls
But sometimes mind grabs control, and you become instead a dot matrix printer
Grinding out lists and points of contention and important things to remember
And it goes like this, wandering in place, until dawn.

The laugher

He's got the curse of drawing people, the curse of ants to honey, of rubber necks to car wrecks, but his is the smallest and most odd I've seen: it's a monumental laugh. Audible from fifty paces, a series of joyful barks as from a seal with an amp, from an otherwise nondescript man. When he lets loose, one can barely believe the din's coming from him. I admit, sometimes when I see him coming, I ramp up the schtick just to see if I can get him going. Awful, no? Some people attract others not by their real being, but by a surface beauty, or a stockpile of assets, or a viper of fame round their necks, and must filter true friends from the swarm of moths drawn to their flame. This fellow has only to sort out who's goofing him from true camaraderie, and who's goofing just to get their ears blown back.

You're all the ones I've been waiting for

It's you! At last! I've been here all evening, and finally it's you! Let's talk, let's smile, let me look into your eyes while we transact. You're the chosen one, you've won the lottery for delight. What's new with you? Tell me all about your life, then have a good night, a best night if you can. Enjoy your purchase, but don't be surprised that I'm just as excited for the one behind. There's something in my eye, a namaste you might say, so all I see is each chosen one in front of me. By morning it'll wear off, dissolve away, but as long as you're within range of my beaming, caught in this dream, let's laugh. What do you say?

Her companion

The young woman has a limp. Also a wooden staff, ornately burned, which shows that the limp is committed to her and she to it. The staff shines on each end: one rubs the ground and the other her hand. Though indoors, she wears a leather cowboy hat and black sunglasses. A coiled wire figure-eight, or is it a tilted infinity, pins a pair of blue feathers to her hatband. She leans into one bookcase and then the next, going about chores in silence. There is no smile under the hat. The limp has introduced her to many more years than she owns. Still, she is content, and as anyone would, fills her tilted basket full.

Germophilia

"Hope you feel better soon," I tell Imma, handing her a receipt as she leaves. The next lady in line, inches away from releasing her purse onto the counter, suddenly frees herself from gravity and sucks her possessions and facial features upward. She leans away, but hisses with the air of someone leaning in: "Does she have The Flu?"

"Oh no, just a sore throat I think," I reply, from within a mask of cheer.

"Oo. Ooo," she coos, peering at the counter as she would a fresh grave. "I'm a huge germophobe. I think I don't want to set anything down here."

"Well, ah, I'm sure I could wipe it down for you, or would you like some sanitizer?" I reach for my spray bottle and cloth, but her face remains frozen in arches.

"Um, I think I'll just go to another desk."

Her caution has saved her from the plague, she thinks. But who do you think touched the door handle, I want to ask her, or the pens? The delivery confirmation slips? Who stacked the brochures there for you? Who stocked the walls with boxes and stamps? Who coughed in the entry? Who sighed? Her lack of thoroughness in paranoia is disappointing. Why settle for neurosis? If one really wants to be positive of one's hygiene, commit to psychosis. Witness the colorful festival of bacteria dancing on all surfaces, not just toilets and doorknobs. Acknowledge the legion of supremely creative viruses, struggling to evolve as all life forms do, all of us parasites thriving upon other beings to survive. Tremble at the ugly, though incomplete, truth: it's a race to the death, and enemies dwell within necessary oxygen, food and drink, elimination. There is no escape.

The woman has settled at Shanelle's counter. Shanelle hands her a book of stamps, perfectly concealing her sinus headache and congested nasal passages, smiling and nodding. Meanwhile, I greet my next customer, who twiddles his sniffly nose, then reaches forward kindly to shake my hand.

Students at the asylum

She walks us over calm green lawns into the stuccoed belltower building. A fountain bubbles, carved with ample time by long-since-dead artisans in Roosevelt's WPA. It's tiled in yellow and blue ceramic, brightened by a flood of California sun. Once an asylum, today a small public university. Here is her office, admissions, a counseling center. There are now gates in the fences, which were fences built for show, one senses: anyone with a hint of pep and a three-step start could clear them and tackle the foothills beyond. She passes us by the art studio, wide and luxuriantly stocked. Colonial windows bow open to yield summer air, filtered by rising green scribbles of ivy. Students past, among you Charlie Parker, was it too bad a place to be stuck, in either sense of the word? A few say the Eagles wrote Hotel California about the place in its mad days, but only an unrefurbished dormitory makes sinister suggestions: smoke stains, windowless cells. Soon painters will come and leave a cheery white coat. Masons will make holes for the sun, then the new class will arrive.

The voice of Judy Collins

The voice of Judy Collins plain and powerful comes from the tape player across the room while I lay looking at plastic stars taped to the ceiling, glow-in-the-dark. I am in bed, not falling asleep. The voice of Judy Collins sings five songs, then the player clunks and the tape hiss quits. I get out of bed and flip the tape to the other side, six songs. Words I know by heart. I also know most people my age listen to pop from now, not folk from twenty years ago, but I don't feel strange. It is true, but not something I know, that the voice of Judy Collins is what my mother's voice would sound like if she were to sing, if my mother were to stand in front of people and sing from behind long hair and a white dress. Those are the songs she would sing and how she would sing them, if she ever raised her voice.

E1

It was the baby's fault, maybe. "I got to stop somewhere, Mam," I say. "Gini's thirsty."

"Not one of those places," Mami carps as I turn toward a shop. She hates coffee that comes in paper cups and is not Bustelo. But I hold the door open, steadying the stroller with one foot, and she goes in. I leave her at a table by the window, paging through a daily paper.

Twelve minutes later, I come out of the bathroom and if Mam isn't under the table pretending to faint. The newspaper's still on top, fanned open. Lucky for me it's 3 pm and very slow and the coffee servers are busy typing into their phones, not worrying about the lady who slid onto the floor. You couldn't even see her from the street, just a paper on a table with a girl rushing toward it, carrying a baby.

Mam's god is not subtle, that's for sure: right on E1 is the photo of me modeling that ostrich feather stuff of Doro's, with the hat that looks like Rubik's cubes stuffed inside a hen. Leave it to her God to stick that photo under her nose. Leave it to me to forget to hide it. I rub her shoulder, but she ignores me. Gini thinks this is extra fun and crawls onto Mam's neck, squealing. But Mam's staring into the future and sees a teenage Gini begging, or talking to a psychiatrist, or majoring in women's studies or something awful like that. She sees herself in a sweatsuit eating cat food, calling pigeons to her windowsill for company. As if imagination were destiny.

"Mami, get off the floor. If you stay here they'll make you buy something."

"That job will make you famous and you'll leave us. You'll fly off and be flat and cheap like that photo." Perfume rises where Gini tugs the folds of her blouse, making a small atmosphere around us.

"No. I won't. We'll be fine." Is this true? My mother takes five long breaths, staring at the bottom of the table, deciding. She is beautiful there, braid pressed into the floor, baby pawing her brooch of false gold lilies. She feels my eyes on her beauty, the beauty she gave me, copied in papers to sell clothes, that will maybe let my daughter live in beauty too. After the last exhalation, she turns her eyes to mine and, for now, forgives:

"Next time you show me first. There's more rotten pink gum under the tables in these places than a lady should see."

Homecoming

The city is suddenly antiseptic. Sure, I moved to the suburbs to escape the filth, but I'm a little nostalgic for the cocked shoulders of gutter punks, for the rhythmless hippies flogging djembe, for the minor river of paper and dust that teased ankles and eddied down alleys. Mayor Schwarz did a bang-up job, I've got to admit.

I had envisioned a parade of turning heads, old haunts glowing with they-knew-me-when. Instead, newspapers hang open off coffee shop tables, abandoned after the business-lunch rush, their me-centered headlines readerless, unappreciated. This was supposed to be my homecoming.

The cell phone whines in my pocket and I ignore it. No doubt it's Marie wanting an explanation for my lateness to the benefit. I've quit smoking, I decide, except for one more here and now, though I half expect some cop to politely ask me to crush it out. Perhaps it's good to have a disappointing return. Discontent is a great motivator, and if I intend to follow the limelight, I'd better work up a few more stones in my shoes, burrs in my gloves. Nicotine tars my lungs, then disperses tiny clouds of pollution and ego into the neighborhood.

Our sky

We look at the night sky, and what we most want to find are invisible lines between stars that other people have fixed, and named, the shape of a hunter or a woman, a house or a crown or an earth animal. And we like best the brightest ones, the ones closest to us. This way the sky is ours: in our image, members graded by their nearness to our own star. On this planet we are all the dust of stars, clots of aggregate miraculously aware and centered in our own selves. We are all stars. But stargazers remember: stars are not all us.

The last

This is the last time I will see you, he tells the hotel receptionist, silently. And you, and you, to the man pouring paper cups of white waffle batter in the breakfast line, to the squat woman with a wheel of arms who pops in and out of bedrooms, undoing their recent rumples, whirling them back into an original state of cleanliness, as if they had never smelled of guests. He did not know for sure: he might again come through this city, years later, might perhaps stay in the same hotel. But the odds favored finality. He was already sixty, and hotel staff turnover was high. Wondered, if somehow his vision marked those whom he would not see again in their present forms, say with a red glow or dot, just how red the subway throng would be, or the movie crowd, or the family reunion. And who would remain unglowing to the end: who would be with him at the last.

Invisibility

They don't hide their quarreling from me as they would from a person of higher status. As a cashier—a servant—I am invisible until useful. Often, it is the woman who has charge of the transaction. She determines bags or boxes, she's in charge of coupons, she knows if it should be check or credit card. If he's late wandering the aisles, if he picks the wrong broth, or packs ice cream with basil, she reproaches, and I become useful: I should affirm her glance, which says: Men! And very occasionally, a man will belittle his wife before me. He's exasperated that she thinks you use an ink pen to sign the tiny screen. His seeking glance says: Isn't my wife stupid? Both glances are ugly, but his, being more particular, is somehow uglier. Either way, I gaze intently into my scale as if it were a tiny portal to the old invisibility.

Lists 2: Night shift

9 am. Temperature 34, clouds bright but thick, passerby twelve.
9:14 am. Oranges must be peeled in single spiral, else unclean.
9:27 am. Phone Gretchen, get reports on son, dad, weather six miles southeast.
10:01 am. Nap on couch thanks to blissful heat from oven.
12:31 pm. Out of oranges. Also Cream of Wheat, rice.
12:42 pm. Aim to leave, cannot leave, cannot be sure I would not leave oven on, ignite house, immolate journals and pathetic wardrobe.
12:43 pm. Also cannot be sure I would line plants up in correct order. Might disappoint plants.
12:44 pm. Chair, couch, bed.
5:00 pm. Call from Gretchen, rent not paying itself, etc., OK, OK.
5:41 pm. Outfits unfit. Sweaters stretched, taupe, beige. Drowning in ocean of neutrals.
6:12 pm. Beige must suffice.
6:14 pm. But better with orange lipstick.
6:22 pm. Time to go.
6:28 pm. Time to go. Time to go.
6:29 pm. But rituals.
6:59 pm. Must buy fireproof lockbox for journals; can't stand this every day.
7:04 pm. Plants wary but wet. Sleep tight beautiful greens!
7:06 pm. Off to work. Late in both senses of the word. Good night world.

Lists 1: Found in bags left for re-use

Half-eaten string cheese.
Popcorn.
Potting soil. Once rich, now disappointed.
Human hair. Subsets: curly, grey, brunette, wavy.
Dog hair. Mixed.
Earwig. Subsets: living, dead.
Tears. Subsets: oily, spattered, pooled.
Orchid bloom.
Snow.
Laugh.
Shadow of cat.
Hole of mouse.
Sigh.

Empty

Beyond everything is emptiness, they say. It is beyond and also immanent in sunsets, lice, chimneys, beans, philosophy, cribbage, reiki, my god, their gods, love, hell, flannel. The ground of being, from which all is made, into which all dissolves. Unconsoling, unpunishing, unanything, it is also fullness, complete potential. But how can emptiness be the highest currency of spirit? Who can pray to emptiness for clarity? Who can visualize emptiness for concentration? And what did emptiness think it was, to write us into this book of colored chaos?

Minneapolis

Minne from the Dakota water, polis the Greek city. Metro laced with dirty slush, faces tight under scarves and hats and hoods against a cutting wind. Blocks torn up and blocks torn down in perpetual construction, reconstruction, deconstruction. Some are pushed to cheaper rents, some pulled to hotter spots, white flight and black flight and brown and yellow and red flight. But you are home. In dreams some see your true name. They crawl under wreckage, deserted projects and churches and communes. Graffiti signals the low way below the highways: here is where the pure river flows. Wide channel, slow and clear, here your people wade. A baby floats with eyes open. A pair of buffalo enter to drink, a covered wagon pulls to the edge, old ones fill a jug. A round mother, her thin lover, children whoop echoes off the bridges above. Lost vets push into the current, the dirt that had assailed them carried away. A row of paralytics swim, swift and free. High-rise foundations and ghetto beams rise all around us, but light filters through and we swim here in minne the temperature of love.

The blessing of tongues

Three voices bounce off each other, resonating up the stairwell. Two guys and a woman are speaking in Japanese, balancing lunch trays and exchanging jokes on their way to or from the break room. Languages surround you: as you blow on your microwaved soup, as you wait for the bus, as you move your whites from the washer to the dryer. The many tongues remind you that you don't know everything, that other ways exist. That speech is a musical and percussive tool of consciousness, rather than consciousness itself. That the stilted English you hear on the phone is the echo of a deep, full mind, its richness filtered through the coarse sieve of translation. You live in a world of six point seven billion teasing, griping, flirting, exulting aliens, of whom you are one, with whom you are kin.

To the poet

I can see that you're sitting there, pretending to read the paper, fantasizing about me. About my piercings and tattoos and how you could please me by buying me patchouli and fresh local irises and shiitakes. You would rent a loft and have me move in and life would be sunlit and candlelit by turns. I'd be an easy catch, late thirties and still pouring coffee and toasting bagels. But maybe you don't imagine that I have two children? One with a learning disorder? A live-in sister? Psoriasis? You know as well as I do that even if I hadn't, we wouldn't spend the rest of our lives making love on the futon. Anyway, you're not my only gazer: there's the Swedish human rights attorney, and the bass player with the houseboat, both at least ten years younger, I might mention. Does someone pay you to write dreams in your notebook, to stare through the steam of your half-caf? What's behind your glut of down time? My life's bound up, all hours, with ties most folks can't see. And all my dreams are free.

Sanctuary

I pull open the door of the only church in town that isn't locked. Four hours past dark by now. Damn the Methodists, Catholics, First Presbyterians, First Christians, UUs and Baptists; two wet thumbs up for the Second Presbies. “It's raining out there and I'm alone,” I announce to the dark room. “I'm sleeping here.” It's ugly, and not very warm, but at least it doesn't echo. Felt banners with goofy cutout doves and trumpets absorb my words, and fuzzy carpeting absorbs the gunk my boots track down the aisle. Rain or no, I'd have slept outside, in a covered dumpster or maybe under an alley awning, if Liza had been with me. Dog warmth and dog sighs even let me get a little dreaming in. But since we got split up at the train crossing, it's been churches and piped-in air all the way. I can't sleep out without her, and I sure haven't dreamed in two weeks. The best spot for curling up, if I've got to be in, is usually behind the pulpit. It's like a little fortress. In six hours or so, when a janitor or old lady or somebody comes in to straighten up, I'll have a few seconds unseen to formulate an exit strategy. I get into place and cover up with a cloth drape from the altar. “No I don't believe,” I add, addressing the drop-ceiling. “And if you see my dog, tell her to come home.”

Winter recipe

When chains of grey days crawl over the valley, grave and unrelenting, your eyes become empty and hungry. This is when you must forage and provide a feast.

Find a yew berry in an alley. You may have to kneel. Lean in. Let your vision be a giant sun of red. Your bloodstream may tingle, may even ache with consciousness after several minutes, but this is normal.

Find a yellow rose, in an arboretum or a warm shed with a window, however small. Bring your lashes to its petals, but do not blink. Your rods and cones will drink yellow, gulp it. They will become intoxicated. Yellow seeps down your spinal cord and you remember that you are a vertebrate, capable of passion and evolution.

Find a cobalt vase. It has been vacant for months. By now, you know what to do. Swim into the blue until you can close your eyes and still see blue, then swim deeper. Blue will unfold into your marrow, feeding the deepest recesses. Your cells are again prisms loaded with rainbows, stocked with nutrients of color.

At the gate

Kaczmarek and I leave the USO lounge and walk to Gate E13, sit down in a couple of glossy chairs with chips off them and foam flecking out of the torn spots. Most other passengers have Blackberries or laptops or at least a USA Today, but we just sit and wait. Then this guy, fifties-ish, who'd been sitting across from us and a few seats over, comes over and sticks out his hand and starts talking. He wants to shake our hands and thank us, I realize, because we're in Desert Battle Dress Uniforms and about to go somewhere. I'm polite, but it's weird. I look about twelve in this haircut, it makes my ears stick out, but here I am, a man to him, whereas otherwise he'd have been following me around Dillard's trying to catch me shoplifting. I doubt this guy's ever been in uniform himself; something about the extra-big smile. Maybe his dad or a brother or two. He doesn't look rich, so we're probably not protecting his investments, maybe just his gas tank. I know the military statistics: working for not exactly noble causes, getting PTSD, being more likely to abuse women or become a drunk, etc. I'm not as clueless as the pair of hippies stealing glances at us supposes I am. I know what this is about, and I'm not especially doing it for my country, not sure why I'm doing it, actually—something new, maybe some money, get me out of here, maybe transform myself. I'll pick a reason later, in hindsight. For now I'm sitting at the gate with another pale-faced rookie from Wyoming, ready to go. The lady at the desk gets on the intercom and starts boarding first class, and everyone gets busy with their own baggage and leaves us alone.

Total dance

The wheelchair bounced and shimmied, and her hair shook free of its ponytail. Her hands fluttered at the ends of her arms like white birds straining at the end of ropes, about to break away and fly off. The bearded brown man bent his knees, making himself even shorter, though he was already barely taller than she, though she was seated. His features were asymmetrical, his beard wild and uneven. He did not smile, but his eyes held hers, animated with intensity. She whooped and, encouraged, he shook his hips. They leaned together, sweating, immersed. The room was a sauna of dancers trying to look good, trying to pass time, trying to blend in, trying for cool. Only she and he did not try, only danced, total joy danced.

Smoke and mirrors

He leaned against the tile in the boys' room, avoiding his reflection. He was reading the Bible and sucking in the last of his stash. He wanted to dissipate like smoke into air, or like an Old Testament guy into a swarm of progeny. Distant chanting and drumbeat poured faintly through the vent. Pep rally. God almighty. His classmates packed the bleachers, content, he supposed, with their understanding of good versus evil: home team versus rival team from three miles away. Decimate them, destroy them, score points: victory. Why was he here? Why was he hanging out, in a Sex Pistols shirt turned inside-out by decree, in a dingy lavatory with a book that everyone claimed to love but very few actually read? He had been born too late. Two thousand years, or at least fifty, he figured. But now the prophets were dead or co-opted, and the acid was doctored. No flaming pillar of cloud to follow, no parting ocean to be drawn across, no bread from the sky to trust. He pushed himself away from the wall, was headed for the door and the next door and the road behind the school when he caught a movement in the mirror. It was Jesus. Jesus in the mirror, his own reflection absent. The kid stopped, reached toward Him. Jesus leaned in, plucked the joint out of the kid's hand and brought it to His mouth. He blew a smoke ring over His head and it hung there, a little in-joke, without dissolving. Then he smiled without moving His mouth. The kid gaped, praying that this was genuine, not drug-induced, as Jesus tapped ash and passed the joint back and they stood there, unmoving, looking into each other's eyes.

The monologist

I push open the bathroom door to hear a woman's voice from the far stall, mid-stream in a phone conversation. It is a business call, evidently, which rules out the exceptions I make for women calling the hospital upon discovering they are in labor, women calling the police to nab an abusive boyfriend outside, and women who are in fact secret agents remotely dismantling bombs ticking in amusement parks. I take a seat in the adjacent stall.

“...So I will be taking 35% for my expenses,” the voice announces. “No, yes I will... because I have uninsured medical costs, and I need a new laptop, and the car is toast. It's only fair. Here's the thing, Suzanne...” The voice rises with a note of urgency. I begin to whiz as loudly as possible. “My higher power and I need to get my monologues out. That's just what we need to do this year.” Ah, people who use My higher power says as an abbreviation for Give me what I want. I trumpet my nose into a tissue, hack, and flush. “...And I met this lady who is a professional dancer, and she's from New York City. New York City.” Another flush, just to make sure, as I leave the stall. “And she has so much more experience and knowledge. She's going to help me cut them so I could fit five in an evening, not four. This is going to be a really big year for me...”

I wash up, then activate the blow dryer for a thorough thirty seconds, but she is still not done telling Suzanne what she requires and why, so I leave, ceding the chance to see how she justifies herself as she exits her impromptu office. The rest of her words will echo off the tile, unappreciated by any captive, full-bladdered audience members.

Dostoevsky in the deli

Thin and angular as an architect's compass, he stood several feet back from the pastry cases, examining croissants as if ascertaining not their fillings, almond or jam or chocolate, but their very essences, their crescent moods. He wore a black coat and, restless, his thin nose led him through the aisles. Arrays of packaged meats and cheeses clamored before him, but he bought nothing; the aggression of advertising could not touch him, delicate though he was. Or perhaps he just had no money. For whatever reason, he seemed to prefer hunger and observation to satiety and commerce. When I next looked up from the serving line, he had gone.

Trajectory

She did not think very often of the other paths she could have taken. She read short story collections, called her sister in New Mexico, invested a percentage of her earnings in socially responsible funds. She accepted roles in slasher films. She modeled sweaters for QVC, auditioned for sitcoms, had the occasional walk-on in a crime drama. There were touch-ups, though she was only twenty-three. She knew needles were involved, but mostly immersed herself in deep breathing meditations. This was part of being an actress. Spreads for men's magazines, lying in front of cameras with her top off, pretending coy excitement. She was also, privately, a feminist, and a hiker. Her dog was well-adjusted and did not wear jewelry. She was one of a small number of beautiful people who awaken to find themselves earning a living with their faces and bodies and mouths, one among the galaxy of minor stars.

Farm

The farm was beautiful. It drew us each June down eleven hours of highway, seven minutes of rural route, and a long gravel drive between cornrows, where the farmhouse stood under the giant oak. Its beauty lived in the woodwork around each doorknob. In the stairs to the second floor, narrow as if built for smaller, shorter people from old centuries. In the jar of marbles, and the jar of little pastel soaps shaped like flowers and shells, which never changed position from summer to summer, which collected no dust.

Afternoons, I'd stretch belly-down on the brown and gold shag in the parlor and sort the marbles by size, then color, then beauty. There were few toys, so I drew the oak, or folded napkins for dinner, or tried to lure wild kittens to a metal dish of kibble in the barn. My brother would examine the tractors, would struggle to get a kite aloft. We dug our first potatoes in the kitchen garden, guided by my grandfather. We were ignorant of the earth and its fruits; we held hoes and shovels awkwardly.

At dinner the locusts hushed and crickets took their place. During the blessing, I would thank my lucky stars that I was not asked to say it. Grandpa ate sandwiches of sliced liverwurst and Miracle Whip, or peanut butter and lettuce and butter. Grandma cut watermelon for dessert. A small metal napkin holder spelled out SHALOM. It was from the Holy Land, Grandma and Grandpa's great pilgrimage away from Nebraska, taken several decades before.

The farmhouse was sold years ago. The SHALOM now rests in my brother's apartment in Urbana. The farm may still be beautiful, but I feel certain that it smells different now, that some of its beauty has lifted, blown from the plains into other corners of the world. Sometimes I walk through a patch of air that seems to know it, to possess a part of it. I shut my eyes and am drawn across the fields under the oak tree again.

Protection

Hirohito suggests a lead-plated Bible in my breast pocket. It makes good press with a tinge of holiness when a bullet is arrested mid-epistle, or even more excitingly, as deep as Revelations. Oh, and plus I'd live to tell, unless the mythbuster types are right, the guys who jump for an excuse to hang out in their backyards peppering encyclopedias with the fruits of their second amendment rights. Hirohito has an endearing suspension of disbelief when it comes to putting science before a good story, though, but even if his simple faith is worth its salt, I'm the kind of guy who'd be shot from behind. Suppose I could strap a phone book to my backside, call up whoever stopped the bullet and give 'em a few hundred dollars and their fifteen minutes of fame. They'd probably curse their luck. But forget protection. I'm a cockroach type, the guy who'll dust the toxic powder off my slacks, pop my head out the manhole cover, and start sniffing the purple air for fresh opportunities.

Papillon's reply

Dear Jen,

I missed your letters. I didn't even know how much until all the drama left my life, as if when I went through the flat with my very thorough vacuum it was as if our entire fantastic mess was hiding under the bed, not just a warren of dust bunnies and two long-drained wine glasses. The flat positively shines with cleanliness, it is so Zen and neat these days. It is cleanliness that belies idleness that belies loneliness. I love and loathe it all at once. I am thinking of getting a pet gorilla, or maybe an aging game show host, to fill the void.

So you want me out there on Pacific Daylight Time with you. Oh love. How dear. I don't know what to say. You accuse me of a distant royalty act and tell me to drop it. What might you be holding up and peering from behind, though? I half wonder if I'd get there and you'd be living in a fetid two-bedroom with six other bohemians, rather than shooting music videos in a Hollywood mansion. I don't mean you might be lying, I just know that your eyes can make kaleidoscopes of oil slicks. But really—what would I do there? Here I am employed, for the first time in ages, despite my ridiculous disabilities and checkered work history. What work is there for a deaf receptionist in Lala Land, love? And you know how we get when one or both of us is too often at leisure.

It has been forever since Jersey Pier. Leave it to you to know just which buttons to push and levers to pull to get the secretary's heart flip flopping under her cardigan. (New, babe, Abercrombie, and staid plaid, not sunny plaid – how d'you hate that?) Maybe forever means it's time to move on, but here's my proposal: You tell me what it is I would gainfully do out there with you. And if it passes my distant royalty test—Mutt and I'll be there. Greyhounded, grumpy, frumpy, and utterly yours.

I'll sign off now, your butterfly a bit too comfortable yet in the cocoon, but awaiting your response,
Your dear
Papillon

Dear Papillon,

Done shooting vid. for "Enchantress." Wiped. Woof!! Oh but you'd laugh. All the MTV standards: mansion, Lycra, spangles, fur, 25 ft anaconda. (HEAVY! 4 wranglers + massive tranquilizers, kept that creature doped!--SPCA would shit bricks.) Oh and 3 guys waxed/oiled (like sportscars!) to slipslide all over pretty me and pretend they want to eat me up. Funny they're all gayer than Liberace yet the Eyes of TV so easily believe. Amazing. We must be thankful for teens and middle-aged nurses and their lust for hetero glamour, which pays our precious phone bills, yes?

Speaking of phone bill, luvly Papillon-- let's cut it to 0. Honey you know what I mean: give up, come over, join me-- PLEASE! I miss you like Monsieur Mutt misses any kind of thrown ball. Minifridge is stocked with watercress, V8, your favorite reds, if appealing to your luvly belly will do any good.

YES I know, media schmedia, no privacy, my long hours, what the heck wd you do, etc. But we're the ones. We are. You know we are mansions, passion, glitter, all that but without cameras and fake oilyboys, AND we also eat tacos and fart and talk about nothing for hours and argue about old shit and get ancient together and love every minute. Remember Jersey Pier, remember you showed me everything real about life, remember the bugbites, remember I'm eternally grateful, remember we go so far back and so far down! Drop the distant royalty act Lady P., my love, fly your marvelous chest in its hi-buttoned Bean turtleneck sweater OVER HERE. Bring Mutt, bring a grudge, bring every one of your ridiculous tics and worries--you know I miss you. Don't call, don't write, just FLY.

YOURS--

LIA SHIVA

aka ole Jennine Parrish, your best girl

We're gonna die

We both know this. As for me, you tell me that maybe I'll fall into an unmarked hot spring and boil. Maybe I'll buy a car without side airbags and be crushed. Maybe Yellowstone will blow and I'll have picked an apartment on the wrong side of the Mississippi. Maybe I'll lick cookie dough with salmonella. Maybe I'll puncture my throat gesturing with a sharpened candy cane. Maybe I'll walk to the bus stop on a dark night instead of driving, and be dragged off to an unspeakable end. Yes, one of these fates which you illustrate for me out of love, out of care, or one of a thousand other fates all ending the same place, will be mine. And despite vitamins, safety features, savings, insurance, prudence, mistrust, fear, despite health food, moderation, and vaccinations--one day you'll die too. Cautious one, beloved friend, choose your path through the wondrous wreckage of this world. Step with all the care you please. The way may be just as you like, or otherwise. And as we fall, one by one, or perhaps hand in hand, as we lose gravity, weight and our entire collection of atoms, may we be thankful for our days. May we die in pain but without bitterness. May we think not "If only I hadn't--" but "Oh! this was worth it!"

Ayiti

I miss my arm, my right arm. I cannot see it. Sometimes this is because my eyes are closed. Sometimes this is because there is no light. But even when my eyes are open and the light shines in, I do not know if it is there. Anyhow, my arm is of no importance now, though I have much time to think about it. I am not sure why time goes so slowly or what I am supposed to learn here lying under the weight of my house, waiting. Who knew such a small house could be so heavy? Perhaps it is the five hundred years of history pressing down as well. I try not to think or ask anything; these hurt. Instead I imagine I am eating fruit that falls from the sky without weight. The juice drips down my chin. I'll swallow this fruit until I drown in purple juice, not thinking, not asking.

I miss my other half. The boy who was stomping one leg, then the other, pretending to be a giant, though he only ever rose to my hip. He is nearby but he makes no sound. He did sing, all night, but then light came back through the gaps and told us that the night was over, and I hear his song no more. So. We both make no noise now. Perhaps his feet awoke the giant quake. Perhaps his song was too much joy for this land. Perhaps he will be a bird next time. A bird who drops fruit to the thirsty. Or perhaps he will be a left side, and I will be a right. We will join at the heart.

New Year's Eve

She put on her green high-top Cons with the silver frog pin on the left toe, wide-wale corduroy overalls, and a camo t-shirt, plus a plastic magenta hibiscus behind her ear. There were grey spots under her eyes from staying up too late the night before. After everyone went to bed, after the thermostat dropped the house down to a chill, she had a habit of planting herself by the record player with an afghan and the headphones plugged in, imagining that she was a singing star. The record spun, giving off soft crackles even when the music was over, until she lifted the needle and swiped the dust off with a brush in a gold lipstick tube. If she needed to be alone when the others were still awake, she would go to the basement, where it was always cold, and curl up by the space heater, toasting balls of bread on its ledge while she read poems or novels. But now her friends were knocking, pressing their noses into the window by the door, grinning, ready to drive around the suburb trying to out-intellectual each other, and she was ready to be kidnapped. She loved the hormones that caused her to pulse with excitement and desire, suddenly and without warning, even in the midst of the incredible boredom of classes. The hormones also regularly crushed her to a pulp, making her fall in love with impossible people, have raging fits at the drop of a hat, and cry for whole weekends after eating too much. She never got drunk and never broke the rules, didn't know where a person would go to find some weed. She never lived the rites of passage that rock bands eulogize in their forties. Still, rebellious joy was hers as much as anyone's, despite her unintentional innocence and obedience. She sucked at every straw of honey she found: Dylan Thomas, silent film stars, Philip Glass, staring into people's eyes. She threw on a coat and got in the car and let it take her away. Two hours later they'd climbed to the top of Suicide Hill with plastic sleds, overlooking a thousand suburban homes with Dick Clark on TV as the ball dropped another year on the world. They watched snow sift from clouds colored violet orange from light pollution, watched as if they had just arrived from another planet. She gulped cold, sweet, sober air as if it were her first breath on earth.

The calling

I've only flown once, to Aunt Cintia's funeral. But I knew it was my future career right away. Mama laughed to hear me say it, but what would she know? She had her eyes shut the whole time, and was popping pills to boot. Ruled by fear, that's what I say, and no imagination. So I'm four foot eight, height/weight proportionate--for Jabba the Hut. I know that. And I know they want you to get into these little uniforms like dolls. But picture me saying Tray table up, Sugar: I wouldn't be towering over the businesspeople in first class, I'd be right at their level. And you know they don't like to be talked down to. Plus there's my voice. Gravelly, soothing, soft. I have the speeches memorized: In the unlikely event of a water landing, your seat can be used as a flotation device... makes you want to go swimming, practically, doesn't it? Plus my talents in massage and sachet-making, to bring a creative touch to the flight experience. And shot-put. I am best in class bar none. Those gals they have up there would break like candy canes in a heavy lifting emergency, but not me. I am solid. And CPR trained, and I can mix drinks, and am the least queasy ever. I tell you what. I will reach great heights.

Night drive to Spokane

An eighth of an inch of mottled ice fused to the windshield. The scraper was a mere toy scratching at the glass in the dark while the car warmed. In gear, the tires whined that the roads were ice too, not a pinch of salt to grip. I tried not to think last thoughts, not to imagine family receiving news, as the drive began, glacially paced, into deeper night, away from the sunrise advancing from the east. Traffic crawled like a funeral procession past two transfer trailers on their backs in the snowy ditch. Braking was a thrill without joy. My car slid across the highway as I willed white hands not to steer too sharply, drubbed the pedal to simulate anti-lock. But slowly and inevitably, daylight overtook the traffic, the road, the ice. The car climbed Lookout Pass, steadfast, lucky, into a paradise of white trees, dry roads, and a safe and narrow passage to the airport where an airplane would whisk me aloft, no traction or personal effort needed. The adrenaline dropped from my bloodstream and I noticed a sweat of relief at my collar. I was going to make it home today.

The guest

I didn't invite him in, but he visits everyone, so I knew I could not shut the door. He entered without speaking, picked up a yellow marker and highlighted my lack of focus and gumption. He stole my work, my powers of observation, my interest in the world; I am not sure even now where he left them. He locked me away from the whims, fortunes, and happenings of everyone but myself. He drank all the energy in the house and left the cup unwashed on the counter. He shuffled through my priorities, tossing favorites into the recycle bin with a sniff. I opened a catalog, and my eyes skimmed past the running shoes and world traveling books, dwelling instead upon heated massage pads and memory foam pillows. Days knocked, received no answer, and left unnoticed; I was aware only of increasing dust, new scuffs on the floors. My sole joys were the first three moments upon awakening, motionless and fresh before his dull ache returned to consciousness. Three beats of empty bliss. Then my guest would tap on the wall from the next room to let me know he was up, too, ready for another day.

Makeover

The earth is made up. Her wrinkles are smoothed, powder packed into the gaps. Exfoliated, then painted with foundation, concealer, shadow, each hopeful layer instead making her appear more weary. Her skin can be smelled from lifeless, distant planets; her natural oils drilled out, colored moisturizers injected in their place. Some of the piercings and tattoos, impulsive attempts to prove eternity, have grown infected. Her stylists are ill-advised; creative differences keep us from a unified design. She has begun to self-mutilate, much to the puzzlement of the stars: we, her hands, her artists, mark her as in need of attention. We invoke our unseen pain upon this common body. The unsewn scars from mines and bombs are not nihilistic. We are whining for a deep and divine makeover.

Eggs

Crack it, cold and sweating, into the hot pan. Pierce the yolk and watch it gush over the white. Salt and pepper. It begins to sizzle. Brown and crisp edges recoil from the pan. Flip, and the smell of frying egg swishes past. Caught between browned top and searing heat below, the last of the raw liquid cooks, clicking and snapping with change. Too eager to wait for it to cool, tear pieces of egg straight from the spatula, taste the fat on your tongue, swallow the protein, feel your own eggs confer, chatter, comprehend. OK, yes, this is life coming in, animal life; we must make life too. Intricate signals are triggered. The body is ready. Eggs line up and go, go, go.

Carwash

The Mazda cocoon rocked and swayed in the crossfire of water and foam. Humidity and the smell of clean packed the car through every vent, a warm shadow of relief from the frigid blue day that had frozen grime to her every surface. Soap and wax sluiced over the shell as she was dragged down the track, dripping salt and the earth of three states. She became no longer a car, the wheels locked, the steering useless. The windshield gave no view; it was opaque like a dark marble or a locket, and I was the twist of color captured inside, powerless and giddy.

To Do

• Eject Woodvole, roommate ordinaire, loathesome drag to entrepreneurial spirit
• Get Chaz to paint shingle to hang from 2nd story window—crimson and gold; yellow if Chaz too stingy to use gold
• Butter toasts for parakeet
• Google how to start escort service
• Google is it illegal to hang sign advertising escort service
• Print gift certificate for 3 hrs. free to pay off Chaz, little worm
• Call Staples: still offering 50 free biz cards? If affirmative: Madame Bistique, Madam, address, phone #, image of slipper? heart? sultry parakeet?
• Mend 3rd best kimono
• Find appropriate drape for parakeet cage, otherwise perhaps small gag?
• Pray for clients, mattress, self
• Dinner—KFC? PBJ if no more cash. Raisins if no more J.
• Practice sashay
• Beauty rest, if stupid parakeet ever shuts up

Middle Nebraska

It was an oven in summer and a frozen wind tunnel in winter. The amenities along the highway were mostly outhouses, and gas stations with depressed Happy Chef diners tacked on one end. Yet the farmstead we pulled into each June after eleven hours of driving yielded sweet corn and fireflies, feral kittens and a crick—a tiny oasis one mile square. My grandfather had planted a row of windbreak pines, and uprooted from the acres musk thistle by the thousands, as well as the occasional lonely marijuana plant. Cows stared as I passed their field on the way to the ravine, their attitudes dull and xenophobic. The soil was dried mud, cracked into hexagons, broken and thirsty. But I loved to walk upon that dried mud. It was the skin of a proudly suffering brown giant, the very skin of the earth, exfoliated of foliage and showing bare only, I supposed then, in middle Nebraska.

The bestseller

The private underground garage gates open and the Maserati GranCabrio glides in, finds one of the three most convenient spaces, then purrs to a stop. The door opens and a black Edward Green oxford emerges, polished by elbow grease other than its owner's own, followed by the trouser leg of a conservative yet perfectly tailored suit. Wesson has arrived at McCarthy Singh & Wesson, unfolding from the comfort of the sedan to his full, imposing height. Uncharacteristically, tiny beads of sweat glisten at his temples. While too small for others to notice, he feels their slight chill. As the wood-paneled elevator speeds smoothly up the shaft toward the office, he prepares for the day—and night—ahead. He'd started out three years ago as a greenhorn attorney representing the people of the Baltimore slums, and had swiftly risen to apprenticeship at a superstar firm, which had been brought down by a massive scheme involving pharmaceuticals and South African diamond mines. He had brought the swindle to light despite no small risk to his life. After that, he had had enough of toeing the line at giant firms—he wanted to call the shots. So he, Blake McCarthy from Balti Legal Aid, and Anjali Singh, the brilliant young lawyer who had been the only one to believe him and get out while she could at Solomon & Holmes, had opened MS&W. They were now enjoying incredible wealth and challenge, in exchange for a mere hundred or so hours of their time and energy each week.

Wesson reviews the case mentally. Although he carries a slender attache, it is nearly always empty, except for a photograph of his fiancée, Lisse, smiling disarmingly in her bathing suit on a beach on the Marau Peninsula of Brazil. Part of his power in the courtroom consists in his freedom from thick sheaves of paper: his photographic memory allows him to appear spur-of-the-moment, reasonable, and refreshingly lacking in smoke and mirrors. The case is a corporate fraud lawsuit. Textbook, but he has a feeling: this is going to be another big one, another wild ride. He wonders why his life is like this. He imagines the novel that spells out the following six months of his life, runs his fingers over its embossed cover and feels its heft. He knows how things will go: long hours, twists and surprises, death threats, perhaps a beating or a kidnapping. A new woman on the scene, dubiously trustworthy, yet spellbinding. He'll lose a great deal of money, his reputation will be in question, but he'll pull through in the end. His hard-headed secretary, sprung from the hood but in strict retention of her survival instinct, will point him toward a vital clue. And he'll topple giants, win back his acclaim and then some, and as a result will own sheets with an even higher thread count, between which he will recline alongside the warm body of Lisse, who always returns to primary status by the last page. The end. Until the next time, the next blockbuster.

Truth be told, sometimes he wishes it were otherwise. The dweller of a non-bestseller life is allowed to wear red college sweatpants on Saturdays; to frequent Hardee's, and sigh while eating. To put his foot in his mouth, or to stomp that foot in impatience, or to stub its toe in situations other than muggings performed by the thugs of drug cartel kingpins. And beyond this, such a person might have an opportunity to change, to really change. Such a person might become more or less ornery with time. He might develop dementia, or an embarrassing racist streak, or a love of nurturing plants and children. All horrible to consider, and thoroughly impossible for him, but on mornings such as this—mornings of the damp brow, the foreknowledge, the feeling of teetering over the edge of the same cliff yet again—Adam Wesson is wistful.

W. Hegel's holiday

When Sgt. Roscoe spotted the form slouched over a suitcase at the bus stop bench, she could not tell its gender or age. An oversized checked sweater concealed any shape, and the limbs were pulled in like a turtle's. Only the head emerged, dwarfed in a cherry-red hunter's cap, the tip of the nose pointing north into the wind as if waiting, perhaps sniffing, for the bus. She pulled over and lowered her window. “The late bus don't run on Christmas Day, sir.” Cold air rushed into the car and made her words sound more fragile than she liked. The shape did not move, and she repeated herself. “You OK, sir? Sir?”

When the woman was unwrapped at the hospital—for it was a woman, overweight, around forty five—the staff found her comatose and nearly frozen. Her fingertips were stained with an unknown substance, in addition to being frostbitten. While they nursed her vital signs, several of the less occupied workers opened the suitcase. “Let's see what Mrs. Claus brought the ER,” said an intern.

The newspaper lady was glad to get the call on the holiday. First Christmas after a divorce, especially if the kids are with their father and his folks, warm around a beautiful tree and floating in torn wrapping paper, while you're alone in the apartment with the dog and a box of assorted See's—you need something to do, she thought. The moment she walked into the hospital and met the policewoman holding the open suitcase overflowing with photographs, she realized she had received the gift of a lifetime. There was no ID on the comatose woman, the suitcase, or its contents, but she knew the photographs instantly. They were the work of the reclusive W. Hegel, obviously recently developed, newborn black-and-whites. Moreover, they were unexpected: W. Hegel had not come out with anything new for a decade, and was supposedly dead. The photographer was a master of lighting and angle, and shot anything and everything, except for W. Hegel. No one knew the first thing about the one who held that camera, who had failed to come forward for three Pulitzers, whose books recorded the goings-on of a fragile and oblivious world. But now W. Hegel was in the next room thawing, her fingertips stained with photographic developer, her veins coursing with warmth, taking a well-earned day off.