She thinks he is having an affair. How can you live in a place, and not have a life in that place? she asks. This is not the only question she asks. There will always be affairs. There will always be the past. He gestures at the spot in front of them. He puts his hand on her leg. This is not the moment she says: I know, I know, am I being crazy? I'm being crazy. Don't tell me I'm being crazy. She turns over and it is not that she is giving up or letting him do it. He aims and she puts it in. Oh, she says. She does not say it to make him feel good. She tells him to do it. She wants him to do it. He does it. Don't I love you? he asks. She stands in front of him. She nods. He wants to stop it right where it is. He wants to touch the ruffle between her breasts. There, he says. How can they be there? One hundred, one hundred and one, one hundred and two. He counts to make it last longer. She is sure that something must matter. Love, she says, is not enough. Enough is enough, he says.

This was last night:

She told me not to bike, but I biked. She was curled up in the blankets. She thinks too much, her worries all compressed into possibilities, the tight lines on her forehead, the innocent crest of her lips.

Her breasts swing loose. It's a show. I fall into her. I fall on her.

I thought you were going out, she said.

We always seem to be falling.

Swaying home, 2 am.

Her position, eliminated.

Well at least, I explain.

Whoever's smoking pot, says the waiter. If I catch you, you're outta here. Fitted white t-shirt. Tight black plastic shine pants with zippers running vertical over his thighs. Someone giggles. Pass it over here, the bass player says. The band kicks in, a Tom Waits song. I pick up a glass of beer.

Chokrin: I can't make it here.

Chokrin: I'm moving back to New York.

Chokrin: Art is dead here.

Chokrin: Everything is dead.

Around us, a frozen tableau of immobile hipsters, their flapping tongues crusting saliva dry. Where are we. That's all we know. Tight pants picks up my glass. I stick my hand in the air, two fingers out of a curl. He nods.

Chokrin: I'm going back. I've decided.

Chokrin: You come too.

Going home, swaying, yelling something that sounds like a Tom Waits songs even though it isn't. I hit an iceberg in the middle of Queen Street.

16 Shells from a 30-Ought 6, the singer whispers. Drummer's wearing a toque that goes from the top of his head to his shoulders.

If you think anyone understands, I say.

What? Chokrin says. We're both yelling.

Forget it, I say.

All this? Forget all this?

She's asleep and I do my best to be quiet, my twisted bike, my boots, the sprawling jointage of my bruised limbs. Can't help falling into you. Can't help going to sleep and waking up next to you. You're right of course. You always are.

Wipe out.

And anyway, with my beer breath and cigarette hair, with my alcohol skin, with my dreams on me - loose, vaporous, veiled. She's asleep despite everything. Her position: a ball of curls, an apartment we call home.

After the first round, I buy all the drinks.

Busboy, labourer, envelope stuffer, van driver, data coordinator.

His hands on his head. He's broke.

There's nothing here for me. (Chokrin.)

Here? I say. Here?

That band seems to be playing the whole Swordfish Trombones album.

Bold, someone slurs.

Here? Here? Here?

Thin strip cords. Boots. Thick gray socks. Striped button down shirts, fifties style.

And when we're old and fat?

I don't know from cool. I don't believe in cool. (Chokrin?)

I have this idea about someone who has all these ideas but no money. Money=ideas. Do I have to make you understand everything? This is what comes in the mail: We can't understand everything. We can't make this work. We like your idea. But we can't -

The

Public.

Canada, Chokrin says. I was doing better in New York.

Just a place, I snap. Like every place.

The two of us, we have this theory about luck. When it comes your way you have to wrassle with it, it'll be bucking, it's some kind of greasy beast. You get it around the neck, hold on for your life and before you know it your sliding off its haunched rear, your hands just slipping through the fronds of luck's tail. And then you're back in the dirt again, waiting - hoping - for another ride.

Only our graduation dates are different. Otherwise, we are all the same. Pick us up off the floor of the club's back room where the band plays live Tom Waits funeral dirges. Position us just so. With our hands around our glasses. With our eyes wide open. For realism, someone has stuck a burning cigarette in Chokrin's lips. I watch in paralytic horror as the stub burns down, the stink of blistering, put a piece of liver over it someone suggests. I know what they're thinking. I account for my organs. Flashbulbs, vid-cams, circumstance. Someone's getting famous. Someone's capturing the moment. The -

Public.

How can they do that? I say. How can they?

Well, she says. They did it.

Those fuckers.

They might close the whole hospital, she says.

I follow her into the kitchen. She's in her work clothes, reserved dresses, long skirts - Oh the creases! Oh the conservative finery!

Look, I explain. I didn't get a chance to do them.

You always say you'll do them but then you never do them.

She stands where she is. Arms crossed. We stare into the sink, the pile of dishes a lurking wild beast, crusted forks jutting out like quills. (I was -

waiting for a call. I was -

hoping against hope. I was -

riding luck's lucky beast.)

Too dirty, I mutter. Needed to soak. (My position - spiraling down the drain - so much dirty water - eliminated.)

I can remember as far back as last week. That was the week they banned smoking in all public places. Hipster outcry ignored. Chokrin's long artist fingers are sideways stained. He's not the only one puffing away. Anarchy? Victory? Stupidity? The waiter doesn't care, some fines are just the cost of doing business. Above our heads great gaseous clouds of smoke hover, first looming, then threatening, then encompassing everything.

Waiter! I hold up two fingers. I punch a hole in the fog. I tip one dollar.

After the first round, I paid for everything.

(Go, she said. I don't mind.)

I had to borrow just to buy a few fucking groceries, Chokrin says. Two degrees and I can't get a fucking job in this city. My luck, my luck

is

smoking.

(Just don't buy him drinks. You always spend all your money buying him drinks.)

Fine, go, I say. I don't mind.

She's my only true love, croons the singer. The drummer's toque has slipped over his torso, he's wiggling, imprisoned, keeping time by crashing his head into the cymbal. It's a slow song.

Made in Canada, I say.

He says: My application was due, so I ducked into the pub to have a quick pint and look everything over. At the last minute, I changed my mind and applied for the lower grant, a thousand dollars instead of five. Pathetic. I changed my mind. I figured that at least this way I'll have a fucking chance...

He nods while he talks, agreeing with himself, encouraging me to drink up -

Weaving my bicycle. Shouting something I know to be singing. On my way.

Fuck grants, he says. When was the last time someone any good got a fucking grant?

She takes these pills to keep it going. Her heart beats louder and harder. In the afternoons, she guides the kid through the tests. Then she calls me:
Poor kid, can barely speak, I had to skip the second battery. Poor little guy.

Get out of my way, I say. I'm not even looking. My eyes are shut.

Chokrin: Oh shit look over there. Remember that guy? (This guy we knew from university - lining up to graduate, shiny paper caps lying gingerly on our palms, 225 dollar graduation fee already deducted, cap and gown included, included, absolutely included. Later, when he's gone, Chokrin tells the story of his New York Master's degree graduation, how his brother came up to witness the event, how they both got so drunk the night before neither of them could make it to the ceremony...)

Chokrin: Shit he see's us.

Squirrels over, peers in our direction, his eyes PhD bright. He's wearing: sneakers, faded Gap jeans, a sweater (brown [academic]). He's drinking a Carlsberg. Light.

Chokrin: How ya doin'?

(He's just finishing up. After that, who knows?...A teaching job, probably somewhere in the States.)

The phone rings. I jolt into the hardware of it, planes crashing, cars revving, ambulances running red lights, bikes folding into pavement.

This was last night: Kneeling in front of the fridge, rice in a shaking spoon, my mouth a round dark trough, farts out of me in oval squats.

Nothing goes uneaten. My meals swallowed in a space beneath the sun. The beasts circle. I chew on strips of dried salted flesh. The truck comes. I give them what they want. They leave.

The inside of a large leathery egg can be eaten slowly with a spoon. Bury it in the sand for fifteen minutes. I hike to the top of the ridge and see the hiss of dust dragged behind the truck like a trailer. The road ends and they take what I have left and leave me what I want. When they are over the first hill I run down. Things circle and sniff. I run. A clicking brown animal drives its teeth into the package. I kill it with my hands.

Certain things can be forgotten. The scent of electricity. The taste of gasoline. I don't know what to say. There are things I haven't said. I set traps for campers. Motor-homes are expendable. Go past the garden, a field of wilting cactuses in the sand. Veer in any direction. Garden gives way to ocean. At the ocean they dive in together. Sand floats down their throats. They swallow the taste of an old promise. I trace my hand along the white stone of my wall. This story is not over. They come in the morning. They walk over me. The baffle of feet is a sermon. I eat the sound.

Don't try and creep up on me. I'm warning you. Don't try it.

The children, all lined up on the big stage, their shy faces blushing and glowing under strings of Christmas bulbs. He thinks about their little throats opening, closing, singing and singing, all the words he has forgotten come back to him. He will hum along, the children in their red school jackets and blue pants, marching. He puts one foot out the door. Lowers himself carefully down the stairs. Already, he is tired. The children are scampering backstage, dancing and shoving and pushing and trying out the words.

He squints through his good eye, sticks his cane out, feels it dig through the crust of ice and slip. He swings his legs forward. Is he late? The cold is killing him. He tries to go very fast. The people - the many people - rush around him. He isn't even moving. I'm not dead yet. He feels dizzy. One boot in front of the other. When he turns the corner he sees the red circle, the neon words. Another year he made it all the way to see the children. The night is rubber, his legs melt. He is halfway stuck when the light changes. A taxi edges forward trapping him. Good, let him try and run me over. When my son gets here - well let him. I'm old anyway. He makes it over the curb, laughing out loud, I'm not that old, the tears out of his blind eye thick, sticky.

Ticket please.

The girl holds her hand out.

Behind her he can see the lovely lobby lit up and decorated. The girl is smart in her red bow tie and vest.

I've come to see the children.

You need a ticket, she says.

There are people behind him. A crowd. Pushing.

I come every year, he tells her. With my wife. My boy, Joseph. Where is Joseph?

The box office, she says. Just outside and down to the end of the building. This way. She takes his elbow. She pushes him along a few steps. Tickets please, she yells, have your tickets ready.

Well where is he? The door opens fast and he holds on to it so he won't fall.

I've come to see the children, he says.

Can I help you? the boy says. Sir?

I've come to see the children.

He leans in at him, his nose almost touching the metal, his cane shaking.

Joseph, he says. You're late. We'll miss the children.

Tickets under Joseph? the boy asks. And your number?

We're late now, he says. He isn't really worried. We're late.

Oh, the boy says, plenty of time before the show starts. Fifteen, twenty minutes.

Joseph, he breathes. His nose is running. He brings his hand up to his pocket. The gap in his jacket. A tight pocket, nothing there. His cane falls out in front of him.

Joseph, he says. Hand me my handkerchief.

I can't find any tickets for Joseph, the boy says.

He can't get the handkerchief out. It's gone. It's gone, he says, surprised. Gone. And then looking through the grille and seeing the boy in there.

I have no reservation under Joseph

He isn't Joseph. That boy in there, anyway, he isn't Joseph.

If you had the order number...

The children. I've come to see the children.

I'm afraid we have no record of your ticket sir. If you'll just...

The boy looks down at him from behind his metal sheathe.

I can give you something on the gallery. Is the gallery alright sir?

The children, he says.

The gallery then, the boy says. That's twenty-three ninety-six.

Joseph's late.

Sir?

I need Joseph, he says.

Sir, the boy says, if you'll just -

The boy picks up the blue ticket and holds it between his fingers. He looks at the old man.

If you'll just wait over there. He points to the other side of the room.

We're late already, he says. He takes an uncertain step. There is heat on his face. The heavy door swings open for him. He moves back around the corner. He sees the girl in red. The bright red smiling usher -

Please, he says to her, to the red, to the smiling usher.

I am not an usher, she says.

He was drowning. I'm drowning.

There were mirrors.

On the way down the stairs he was thinking about the train, about the subway going North. He was thinking about the subway so hard he ran into the mirror on the wall. His only vision was of himself.

He walked by his house. He had to stop on the corner and think about things. Already, he was questioning himself, thinking: Hey wait a minute - What about when we get old? What about that?

The knees are next to him.

When he licks the first time they are glossy and prescribed. Things must be protected from the air by a thin sheet of fabric tight on the bone. Also such things should consider a certain resistance to mucus and the warm seep of abundant fluids. At the theater he is sitting next to her, and her knees are making up the story. Oh god if the knees could be close together or spread far apart instead of this endless sense of timing, a space, a gap between her knees - he wanted to touch it, but it was nothing. He isn't very efficient himself. He knows about gaps. She thanks me for something I never did. The tickets, I got them for free from someone, I told her I bought them for us.

All through the performance I was drowning. I grabbed for a leg, felt the lump of her knee and slipped off the gentle bend.

How come you always want to do it after we eat? she said. I need to digest after we eat.

It's not swimming, he snapped.

Well maybe it is, she said.

Don't let go of her hand, someone said.

The phone was ringing, disturbing the performance. The knees, the beautiful knees. A plot is a series of lies arranged in conducive order. He spent three days afraid to open his eyes. In the crowded rows of seats he was squeezed between people - knees, he kept thinking, feeling the bend and sway. He was horrified by people. People might talk to him. Suddenly he went cross-eyed. There were twice as many people in the room. None of them whole. Excuses, he said. Pardons. They made room for him to leave, but not to get back in. He had to push. Another time, he saw spots for an entire day. They spread around the peripheral edges of his vision, drapes of light breaking through the brackish green of a lonely pond. He kept his eyes closed not thinking about what might happen if the phone suddenly rang or if he went to open up when he was already at the bottom.

I wanted her so bad I had to pretend not to know her. The play refused to end. He had nowhere to put his hands. His arms stuck out at angles. An uncomfortable shift. They say it takes years to fully adjust. Is this my date? You can only be as desperate as your itinerary.

He said things he regretted, whispering into her ear in the middle of the performance. She shifted away and refused to listen. He tried to put his arm on her arm-rest, thinking there was room on the padded blue velvet for both their arms to be side by side. The full length of his white pressed shirt pushed against the changing colour of her sleeveless limb. Her arms were naked. She crossed them across her body. The knees pressed together, exclamation points punctuating what he was trying to say. It's going to hurt he kept insisting, or it might have been her to him. Over and over again, whoever it was. They were in group session. There were only the two of them. It's going to hurt. Just the two of them. It's really going to hurt. When the spine is soft they give you something for the pain, then sample your fluids with a hot water tap. They give you something for the pain, she says, but it doesn't do a whole lot. It's going to hurt? he asks. He throws himself into the water. The last thing he sees are her knees, pointed twins gleaming in the night sky.

The phone still ringing.

We don't have to, he says.

But you want to, she says.

Not if you don't, he says.

You could just come over, she says.

But if I - But I would want to, he says.

It's okay.

No, no it isn't. I'll want to do it. I don't want to do it if you don't want to do it. You don't sound like you want to do it.

I do now, she says.

Really?

Yes really. All this talking about it...

Well I'll come over.

Come over.

You're sure?

Is it going to hurt?

He said he wanted to now but she said I have to go to the library maybe after when I get back from the library.

He thought if he sucked her breasts, which were bigger than usual. So he did and then she put her breasts back inside and got her coat.

Finally, then, he slipped down into the crack of his seat. He watched the proceedings. The play was a famous one. Everybody knew the story. The main characters were the woman and the gas furnace.

The phone in his pocket is ringing. People are looking around. He stares boldly ahead, leaning his body forward as if to catch the dialogue over the sound of this inconsiderate bleat. People around him touch sharp objects they keep handy. Extra large bobby pins, metal combs with spikes, retractable toothpicks. He leans further forward. Knees touching. The sound of shifting blades.

Angela: Hello? Hello? Who are you? Why are you calling me? What do you want? What do you want from me? Do you want me? Are you watching me? I know you're watching me. If you want me, you can have me. Anything. Just stop calling. Here! (Angela rips open her shirt.) Do you like them? Come and get them. Who are you? Is this what you want? Is this it? Do you like this?

He notices certain deviations from the original text. In the original, Angela does not bare her breasts. Rather, she pulls at her skirt and offers her rear portions. In the original, her tormentor, the gas furnace, responds quite gentlemanly and explains his predicament in the kind, upper class accent he picked up from his last owners, a fading dynasty of former plantation purveyors who rarely required his services on account of their Southern locale.

This is a modern version, he whispers to her, disgusted. Her seat is empty.

In this modern reenactment the furnace has to gradually acquire language. He calls and calls, but cannot communicate his need - more gas - until it is too late and he is already deeply and tragically in love with Angela. The furnace's side of the conversation is recreated by recordings of actual gas furnaces going on and off. He finds these dialogues disarming. The long creaks and groans of the hot desperate metal sound to him like the slow shuffle of a dying old man. Where is she? The gentleman sitting in front of him flicks open a straight razor.

She's missing the best part, he says.

Quiet!

She's missing the best part.

He cries at the sad parts. He cries when the gas furnace reveals in his torturous bass vibrato of furniture shifts and winter rhythms that he started calling her because her number had once long ago been the number of the gas company. The furnace was designed to call the gas company automatically as soon as he went empty. For years he had been calling, never getting an answer. It was automatic. After he heard her voice, the voice of fuel, the plaintive hysteria of warmth - well his was a grilled sweet sheet metal heart, but did that mean he couldn't love? Even though he had only called to get more gas, he fell in love, and his calls became more than desperate notices that service was required. Oh god, Angela cries, sinking to her knees, rending her clothes to reveal both her bosoms and her bottom as she twirls in the agony of revelation, yes! yes! She also loves the gas furnace.

He was drowning.

How about staying down there until I'm finished?

He was trying to put it in.

She tightened her legs.

He looked at her, her legs locked around his body.

How about that?

He picked a hair off his tongue.

Someone was trying to contact him. To think, out of all these people, someone was trying to contact him. He dropped the phone.

Bravo! Magnifico! Encore! they yelled. He felt proud. The phone sent up ripples. He supposed he was drowning, because he thought of his mother, the way she used to touch him in the afternoon when he was a baby. He grabbed the phone long after it stopped ringing. Then, as if in a cartoon, he realized that he was drowning.

Dad came to the dark country where Dave lived. Dad wore a suit and tie. He came on business.

They went drinking.

The pub was sunk between two cloistered cobblestone streets.

"This is an old pub," Dave told Dad. His favourite beer at the pub was something called #3. "You've got to try #3."

They drank pints of #3. A man came and put more logs on the fire. Shadows hid under their chairs.

"Hey Dad," Dave said, "Why do you think they call it #3?"

Dad told him why they call it #3.

"Cask conditioned ale," Dad said, draining another pint.

It was raining black drops. They started walking back to Dave's flat through the parks. One park was connected to the other park. One park was called the Meadows. The other park was called the Links. The way it was in the dark country was that during the day fog sat on top of everything so that feet and ankles disappeared. At night it rained and pushed the fog right into the ground.

The wind blew. Dad stopped and winced. He pressed his hand to his stomach.

"What's wrong," Dave yelled over the sound of rain through leaves.

"I have to go the bathroom," Dad said.

"Me too," Dave said.

Dad stood there.

Dave unzipped.

"No," Dad said. Dad pulled the folds of his soaking trenchcoat around him. Streaks of rain ran down his glasses. He started walking across the slippery grass. He stopped again. He turned his face to the rain.

"I can't make it," he yelled.

The rain was very dark.

"What?" Dave said.

She had her finger hooked into him and she was holding on.

When he woke up, he was bleeding. He was alone. There was no one with him.

He rang the great bell.

"Bring sponges," he yelled. "And a rubber coat. We're going in."

She put the bucket down.

He approaches. She watches him as he shuffles across the sand, bobbing up and down. She sits up and slips a t-shirt over her bathing suit. Every day he climbs over the cliff at the far end of the beach and hunkers down in front of her. He drags a weathered stick behind him. He offers his hand.

Adeou.

Yeah, hi.

She wants him to go away. She wonders about him. He worries her and she hates his intrusions. Not now she thinks, not now. Not when she is so in between something that is not about him or anybody else. In front of her the hand wavers but does not disappear.

Adeou.

He is alone. He closes his fingers around her hand and holds on in victory, clutching to her as long as she lets him. Finally, she yanks her hand away in disgust. She does not understand how someone like him can be so desperate for human contact. And yet. There. She did it. She gave him something that she did not want to with all the bitterness and pity that act entailed. There. Her hand is her own again. The helpless creature stands at the top of her towel looking down.

Fuck off.

Adeou?

A line of drool forms beneath his lip. He tries to suck it in. His lips form a hole. He makes a convincing noise. He crouches at the foot of her towel, his stick protruding. She waits. He picks up her book and looks at it. His eyes peek over the top of the pages. He follows the twirling of her fingers in her hair. She stands and walks into the ocean. She looks out over the horizon, waiting for him to go away. She regrets the passage of time. It seems a waste.

He will go now. He always does.

She listens. She tugs at her hair.

When she turns back to the shore, Big Stick Drool Boy is walking along the beach toward the cliff, her money belt in his hand.

She runs out of the water, not thinking that it's faster to swim. She sees that he is almost at the far end. He moves languidly through the late afternoon, putting one shuffling tennis-shoe step in front of the other. Her bare toes slap the firm part of the sand where the waves fall and pack the beach tight. Pebbles bite into her heels as she runs, her hair streams out behind her.

Come back here you fucker.

He looks down, hearing the curse, surprised, dolorous, ambivalent. He is approaching the first ledge. Tiny rocks peel off the firmament. They shower her as she climbs, muttering between breaths:

Fuck.

It's the way he climbs, not the speed of his movements. He knows every foot-hold, every problematic over-hanging ledge, every ankle-twisting crumble or thorny Mediterranean bush. Not that she is such a bad climber. Faster and stronger than him, and without the baggage: the stick and that made-in-Hong-Kong waist-belt packed with all the things that make travelling possible: passport, money, credit-cards, traveler's cheques; things, jiggling incitingly in front of her. For an instant she thinks that it would take just as much courage to abandon them. But she hurries carelessly up toward the sun and sky and clouds. Caught in the sun, he is within reach. He is almost at the top.

She sees the cumbersome arc of his leg swinging over the last ledge. She lunges as the scrawny limb moves over her. With one hand she holds on to the rock face while the other flashes through the air, cutting a determined swathe out of the day.

She feels it go out of her all at once: it is a loss of control, an imperceptible second made up of too-lates and should-have-beens.

She yells as they fall together, hitting the rocks below. He lands on top of her with a snap.

The water faded into the distance like evening coming. Her head propped up on a stone pillow, raised at just the right angle to appreciate the waning light.

Sight is one's companion through the world. Although, she thought, hearing the lap of the tide, it is not always accurate. If she had her journal she could write in clear, neat, black pen that sometimes things are farther away than they really are. And sometimes closer.

The prickly shadow of the thief was somewhere to the right of her head. But the amorphous lines of his insubstantial reflection were not after-images. It was him, disappearing into the darkness of the cliffs all around them. He had been there for hours, lacking the courage to approach her, his hand aimlessly digging through the impenetrable rocks with the slim twig he had found - a poor substitute for the big stick. She heard his slurp, the nervous sound of spit.

He squatted on the rocks, licking his wounds, looking at the thing he had found with his stick that day. He did not know whether to approach or retreat. The moment was forever, he refused to let it end. He watched as she flogged the slick rocks with her nails trying to find a purchase, a hand-hold...anything. The tide tickled her like a pet. She gave up trying to drag the paralyzed lower half of her body up the rocks to higher ground. He twitched as her strained giggles proclaimed the taut night.

He was closer, looming over her, less than an arm's length away. The water, too, insouciant in its friendly proximity. The waves cleansed the cuts and callouses of her feet. She did not notice. It was only when she felt the damp of her bathing suit against her stomach that she realized her lower body was submerged. It bothered her most to know that she could no longer share in the slow rising love of the ocean's curves.

She shivered from that feeling of betrayal. And not just that. There was the distance of Big Stick Drool Boy. It kept her separated. From what? she asked herself. From that thing. How could it be? But it was true. In the darkness he felt her fear and recognized it as his own: The secret buried under the beach; Everyday he dragged his stick across the sifting sand, tracing imperceptible paths which were gone the next morning. He never found what he was looking for. It was always gone like the scattered lumps of delicious flesh that littered his walks, always gone until he finally found one which stayed or had he found something else? and they were the same thing.

Her. Self. When she left she wanted no part of him.

She is back in the past now and she clutches his hand with the disdain of love. A familiar grainy claw. He squats before her. Spitty warm air across her face.

Adeou.

Fuck off.

She draws him to her.

This is the way I imagine it:

I make my way down the street.

The neighbours clap. Not your neighbours. Mine.

Can I help you?

The neighbours aren't clapping for me but for their dogs. By the time I am halfway up the street the dogs have all done their business. The neighbours have picked things up with plastic bags turned inside out.

I am lost.

I scratch my head. I try to swallow. The retard boy comes down the sidewalk. The retard boy! I love the retard boy.

Tonight we push the breeze through the streets. Tonight it is so dark I cannot put the key in the lock.

Paul peered down the stairs.

"Dad?"

He heard grunting.

"Dad?"

"Well go get him," his mother yelled.

Paul surveyed the gloom. He stepped down. His foot disappeared. He put his hand on the rough bannister. There were sounds. Noises. Grunting.

At the bottom of the stairs Paul heard muffled swearing. He squinted and saw a darkness in the darkness.

"Dad?" Paul said, feeling along the wall for the light switch.

"Mnt mnt mnt."

Paul closed his eyes. He flicked the light switch. He opened his eyes. Nothing happened. The shape teetered precariously and shined a flashlight in his face.

"Fucking hell, what's the matter with you? I told you not to turn on the light. I said: Don't turn on the light. Don't, I said. Do anything, but not the goddamn light. Are you trying to kill me?"

Paul blinked. The flashlight flickered. His father's flapping lips distended the darkness.

"What's going on down there?" his mother yelled.

"Is it off? Is it off now?" his father bellowed, sticking the flashlight between his teeth and reaching his fingers to the empty light fixture.

Hands to his ears, Paul nodded.

He met the famous woman under a tree.

Let's stay out of the sun, she suggested.

She said something about where she was from, something about her childhood.

He clenched his nails into his skin. He wasn't sure yet. It was real, wasn't it? He never thought she might have had a childhood. He took out his camera.

Don't, she said.

The flash lit up the lines of her face.

No, she said.

The boy stood outside the alley. He hit his gloves together, the sound muted, crashed. The sun made things ooze. Even the cold dripped and fell. The boy followed the drops, sweating and swelling off the leaves. He didn't like the sound, the drops hit the ground before he could find them in the air. They pounded into the hollowed crusts of snow. The boy darted his head back and forth. The winter was behind him, the sound deafening.

The boy heard the door slam. From the back of the alley, he could hear the crunch of snow and ice, skeletal, blinding. He stared at the growing shape. Adam? he said. He put one gloved hand on his forehead. The sun left spots in eyes. He could hear drops dropping. He turned, ran down the street. He wanted to look, wanted to see everything behind him shining.