Nothing changes at the end of this story. And I mean it.

This is life. It’s always unfolding. Verbs are happening all around the details and the scenery. Characters are being verbed, maybe because God has a passive voice. Characters are doing verbs, maybe because people have desires and wants. We have wants and desires, we have an active voice. Maybe that’s important somewhere down the road. There’s tension, drama, and people change. Sometimes.

This is life. Frank walks down the street. Walk Frank, walk. He has dusty, faded jeans on, and a deep blue windbreaker. It doesn’t matter what he has on underneath the windbreaker, at least not now (a Boston Red Sox t-shirt). His long-ish, curly brown hair blows in the wind. He’s running on a timetable. In ten minutes, he could get hit by a car. In ten minutes, a lot of bad things could happen to Frank.

Take the night before. It was Frank’s weekly stave off the week drinking night. With his friend Carver, a man who reminds people of a bear- big, bushy hair, bushy beard, black eyes. The hair is long because he’s missing most of the external pieces of his right ear, but that doesn’t matter, not to this story. Carver acts like a circus bear when he’s drunk- dancing and fighting and doing tricks. Frank acts like a fountain when he’s drunk. This does matter, because that’s why Frank is on the street right now, and why Frank woke up facedown on strange orange shag carpeting, his Red Sox shirt more than flecked with vomit. Frank didn’t think to take the shirt off before rushing out.

Now he’s walking down the street. Maybe he should retrace his steps from last night. It sounds better to him than going to work. A scene like this happens every morning, but we’ll stick with this one for now.

This is life. Birds chirping, cars honking. A rooster may crow. Here, we have a room, eggshell white walls, a fluffy striped comforter, which is red and white, and matching sheets. Wrapped in all of this is a person somewhere, if we’re lucky. We are. In ten seconds a verb will happen. Nine. Many verbs, actually. Eight. Wait for it. Seven. But don’t anticipate. Six. It’s hard not to anticipate. Five. Especially when there’s a countdown. Four. After all, everyone loves a good countdown. Three. Almost. Two. Gears are starting to roll. One. Nerves and muscle memory twitch alive. There. The alarm clock is raising Cain, and the comforter and sheets are even more tangled with this person.

“Shit.” Under the sheets, she scratches herself, and blood pools up but doesn’t flow, trickle, pour, or bleed. Finally a tattooed arm reaches out and gropes for Mickey Mouse. If Mickey Mouse were more than gears and quartz and bells, he would be cowering. The hand grabs onto Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse pounds into the wall.

Sara pulls back the sheets, the comforter. She’s afraid to open her eyes all the way. But she needs her cigarettes. A scene like this happens every morning. Let’s stick with this one, too.

In five minutes, Frank could be hit by a car. That’s God. In five minutes, a car could hit Frank. That’s us.

Oh shit, Marty thinks. I can’t be late again. Marty alternates his thoughts. Could she really be doing this to me? He said I can only be late again if it’s something serious. She couldn’t, not again. Serious, there’s a lot of seriousness in this one. I should’ve listened to my mom. If I get there now, I can get out of lunch early and find someone to take care of it for me. Marty shifts his eyes, and sees no traffic ahead for a few blocks. His foot goes down harder on the gas.

Four minutes. Frank thinks maybe he should’ve gotten on the bus or taken a train. A half hour walk sober is different than a half hour walk hungover. He can see the sign for a stop a few blocks ahead and across the street. Frank hurries as fast as he can, and every step touches off a reaction that goes straight through bone, synapses, nerve connections, right into Frank’s brain. The reaction spells out a message in dull flashes. Maybe there’s a p, an a, an i, an n. Or maybe it’s an s, an osh, an i, a t.

The medium priced sedan slices the air. Marty thinks about how he shouldn’t have spent the night playing cards, but once the boys brought the real money, well he couldn’t himself away. About how she wasn’t in his bed when he did finally get him. The morning shock jock distracts him- there’s a pornstar on talking about oral, and Marty grins when he remembers what Petey wagered, and lost, against five hundred dollars to Marty. That bitch, Marty thinks, doing it to me like that again.

In three minutes, Frank could be hit by a car. In three minutes a car could hit Frank. Same thing, and Frank doesn’t even know about it. But all he seems to know at the moment is that drinking with Carver was a bad idea, he needs to get home, he smells terrible, get cleaned up for work. Then Frank remembers the Monty Python episode with joke warfare-

“My dog has no nose.”

“How does he smell?”

“Terrible.”

Frank smiles faintly, then coughs. His throat flashes, brightly, with pain, and he scratches his neck as if it would help. He notices that he’s staggering less. That can only be a good sign, as far as he’s concerned. No, scratch that. That is a good sign to Frank, Frank knows that it’s a good sign. Remember, if we all strip everything down and get below what we’ve attached to it, below all the baggage, all the excess, and just down to it. You can strip down the essence of it all. Walk Frank, walk.

Sara winces as she turns the knob and cold water comes shooting out. She wasn’t ready for that. She couldn’t rehearse for it either. Under most conditions, she would’ve just gone straight to work without showering, but she got another piercing, so she needs to clean it. Besides, the place reeks of so much coffee that no one can smell her anyways. She was halfway considering a whore’s bath, but she wants all the soap to be cleaned out of the hole, to not dry on the surgical steel and become crusties, hurting her as it rubs against the healing pink flesh. In two minutes, Frank could be hit by a car.

He looks down at his watch. An hour before work. If he gets onto the train now, he can go home and take a six-minute special shower, not shave, and make it in on time. All the office orders for morning meetings start coming in around 9.30, so they bolster the opening crew of two with two more. God, Mondays suck. I hate this, it’s worse than Sunday afternoons when there’s nothing to take up the time for Sunday evening except thinking of how the weekend has ended on a low note. I can’t believe this shit, I’m never doing that again. I wait until I’m 21, I do the legal thing, and it fucks me over. I’m so stupid. Just a little bit longer of a walk. One minute.

Frank doesn’t think to look both ways, or to wait until he has a straight shot across the road to the steps down to the train. Maybe he should. Frank is thinking too hard on a lot of things, and he realizes that he needs to lose the vomit smell, and fast. He’s bolstering with Sara today. He can’t have the vomit smell. Oh. And for the customers, he can’t have the morning-whiskey-buffalo-peanuts-breath. Then he might not get any tips. He needs the tip money. He has a weakness for quarters, he collects the state ones. When it gets kind of slow in the afternoon, and no one is watching, he’ll dip into the jar and sort through the change, looking for new ones.

Sara got the scented Dial to clean it out, just because. Normally she could care less about what she smells like, but today might be different. She pops it open, and realizes that there’s two reasons she’ll have to keep the pawing to a minimum tonight. She hasn’t had anyone come see the show yet, and she’s giddy and nervous and forgets that she’s in the shower and slips down. She’s still smiling and her face is red. She’ll be cool by the time she goes in. Marty is determined. After all, the old man won’t take him late again, and if he shows up on time, he can leave for lunch earlier. The gas pedal goes down that much further. Thirty seconds. Frank walks, keeps walking. A nondescript gray sedan is attempting liftoff, straight towards Frank. Walk Frank, walk. Ten. Seems familiar, right? Nine. Yeah, it does. How about we skip it? Frank walks across a white line into a middle lane. Cut. Marty is tired of hearing the pornstar talking about how her husband deals with her sleeping with so many other men. Cut, worm’s eye. There’s a reflecting light from the road that hits the bottom corner of Frank’s eye. Cut, closeup. A hand reaches out for the radio, eyes focused. Cut, closeup. A hand reaches out for a quarter, eyes focused. Cut, wide angle. This is where you smile because you know what happens. Cut, splitscreen closeup. The hands reach their goals. Cut, wide angle. The sedan cruises by Frank kneeling down. The car didn’t hit Frank. Frank didn’t get hit by the car. Same thing. Texas, Frank thinks. That’s good. He didn’t have that one yet.

Let’s jump ahead a bit. We don’t need to know the rest of the details about Sara and Frank getting to the coffeehouse, or Marty getting to work on time so he could leave early for lunch. We should pick it up about when there’s downtime, and a chance for conversation at the coffee shop. Take it away, Sara.

“So we’re doing a new routine tonight.”

“Yeah?” Frank’s eyes, voice, posture perks up.

“Yeah. Uh, you should come, and check it out.” She turns like she needs to clean up the counter by the blenders that she just wiped down.

“Yeah, alright. Uh, yeah, sure, I will. Um, I don’t want to sound cheap.-“

Sara didn’t want to feel prepared with the comp ticket, but she brought it out anyways. “Don’t worry about, they gave me a few tickets to give away to, you know, friends.”

“Cool. I’ll be there.”

Sara smiles. Frank smiles. Alright, things are looking up. A customer puts in an order for their usual, and Frank makes it. The stainless steel shell of the Capresso reflects back on Frank. He should get a haircut before he goes.

Marty feels like slamming the door. He just feels like it though. Slamming the door would not be good in this situation. Talbot is a private investigator, but most of the time he just follows people and takes notes. He’s more like a private observer. He doesn’t even carry a gun or throw punches or anything. He just gives the notes and diagnoses the problems when he meets with his clients again. Marty was referred to Talbot after making a few calls, on the clock and on guard, from a friend who had to use him for the same situation.

“So, what do you want.”

“Shadow my wife. I hear you bargain for rates?”

Talbot rubs his very square chin with his hand. “Expenses is the base. We’ll talk from there. Now,” Talbot says, leaning forward in his chair. “Where is your wife right now?”

Talbot rolls up to the house at just the right time. There’s Minnie, hopping onto a hog. The Crown Victoria with a spotlight follows the machine down some roads, but not onto the highway, instead double backing to the house, waiting. The turns treat the bike like crap, there’s too much rubber on that back tire. It’s clean enough, the V is framed by the chassis, just like it should be. A good fit. The rider looks just big enough to handle the hunk of metal and rubber, and especially its speed as he kicks it into fifth gear, no overdrive. The freedom of the open road. Minnie loves it because Holden loves it. Holden is passing through and wanted to check in on his Minnie, his old high school sweetie. Not that they went to high school together, but that Minnie was a floozy who liked older guys. There was a rally for a biker gang a few cities over, and Holden, being the dedicated patch holder he is, went, tearing up hell the whole way. From the way things look like they’re going, Holden still has that priority.

Frank gets his thirty minute lunch break from the coffee house and quickly tosses off his green apron, and wolfs his stromboli from the place next door down. He has a phone call to make. “Carver.” Silence. “She asked me to go. Do I bring anything when I do?” Silence. “Are you coming?” Silence. “I’m sure I could ask her for an extra ticket.” Silence. “Well, what about a haircut?” “You sure, I mean, I know it’s kind of shaggy.” “Yeah, it couldn’t hurt.” “Thanks for last night, but not for this morning.” “Yeah, well, I’m still waking up, you can’t expect me to be really witty.” “Alright, see if you can afterwards?” “Right outside the club.” Silence. “Back entrance.”

Marty is back at the office. Frank and Sara are once again on duty barristers. Talbot waits in his Crown Vic for Holden, while Holden and his patch and Marty’s wife speed down backroads because it’s a nice morning. Mid morning. Afternoon. Mid afternoon. Two are relieved, two more show up. That’s how it works. Marty gets into his sedan, and wonders how he’ll not be late tomorrow, because he sure as hell does not want to see the office ever. Verbs are being verbed all around the players, the players are verbing the setting, the subjects go into and out of focus.

Smoke break. Frank normally doesn’t, but he’s nervous. His co-worker is with him.

“You mean she’s a stripper?”

“Kind of. But more tasteful. No nudity.”

“Dude,” the co-worker, who could’ve been written out of this story, you could’ve just had this in the conversation with Carver, so don’t worry about his name, “Dude,” the co-worker says, “That’s jackpot right there. Too bad you work with her.”

Frank feels like coughing again. The smoke irritates his throat, slash and burn, or maybe that’s just what smoke does to populations. “Why’s that too bad?”

“Well, you know, fraternizing, man. You aren’t supposed to fraternize your co-workers. Things could get weird. And if they get weird between you two, that’s weird for all of us. And man, remember that one time,” but Frank doesn’t remember, and he doesn’t listen.

Marty could almost piss his pants in shock that Talbot is sitting basically right next to the house in his Crown Vic, the window down and cigarette smoke drifting out.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Making sure you don’t do anything stupid. You- you need to go get out of here so she comes back normal likes and then I can follow them some more.” Talbot’s lantern jaw sticks out of the window of the former police cruiser, or maybe taxi cab, to impose his professionalism onto Marty.

“Shouldn’t you be following them or something?”

“Yeah,” Talbot says smartly, “and then have them notice me. That was part of the game plan too.”

“Oh.”

The jaw inches further out the window.

Marty has left and Talbot moved the Crown Vic around the block to chain smoke more inconspicuously. The teardrop tanked, wide raked bike pulls up in front of the house, and Talbot takes out a bionic ear.

“Sure you don’t wanna go? There’s some guys you haven’t seen since years back who’ll be there, supposed to be a helluva show.”

Minnie slides off the bike, always keeping three points of contact with the biker. “I have to be at home and be a good little wife. It was great seeing you.”

“You two babe.” He holds up two fingers when he says this, licking them, then takes the fingers to smack her on the ass. “Gimme some sugar, then go on home and make something good for your husband.”

The clippers are warm now, easier to handle. Frank used to shave his head a lot when he was in the punk scene, so it’s old hat. The hair is going into the sink, which he can clean out later. He’s going over to Carver’s apartment to get ready fully anyways, maybe clip some flowers from the well tended garden kept on the roof. The clippers buzz over Frank’s scalp, then he shakes his head, lines up, making sure to overlap, then does it again. When Frank was a teenager he loved mowing the lawn. There was a certain zen appeal to it. Now, Frank mows his hair.

Talbot follows Holden, but not too closely. Holden is being followed by Talbot, but not too closely. Holden notices the Crown Vic, and wonders what the hell is going on that some asshole keeps following him. Talbot smokes a cigarette, and butts his chin out, determined. He feels so cool, just like in the movies. At this point, we can write out Minnie and Marty. They aren’t important anymore. Just the catalyst between Talbot and Holden, that’s all. We aren’t seeing them, they aren’t part of the story anymore, they don’t matter to us. Scratch them off the page, take them from your memory.

Smoke break. Meandering time. It’s fair to all of us to be open, so here goes- this story has been accused of: featuring characters of no redeeming value; repetition; having no point; having the point that life is always changing; featuring rude inconsistencies; confusion; having bad language that poisons the children; and having its virtues be its downfall. That’s perfectly alright, though. After all, those are all just winks and nudges to those of us that are in on the joke.

This is life, happening all the time. A night out on the town, seeing the hot new movies that did good at the weekend box office. Maybe an evening strolling through the parks, down to the water. Heavy drinking, heavy fighting. To some people the weekend is still going on. Go to a strip show, or as we find our prime players doing, to a campy send up of a strip show. It’s part of the nationwide boom in this kind of thing, bad girls pretending to do bad things, with piercings, tattoos and loud, hard rock music. Holden meets up with other patch holders in the parking lot. They wait, and sure enough, the Crown Vic pulls up and into the lot, then around the building. That’s all they need to know, and the patch holders go into the club, to take their seats at the foot of the stage. Frank is around back, pounding on the door, but the bouncer won’t let him in. Vinny tries telling him there are rules and that rules are rules.

“Come on man, I mean, look, I’m trying to give her flowers.”

“I don’t care. You can’t come in.”

Frank gives up when he realizes that he’ll need to go get a ticket and pay the cover. The ticket seems to have disappeared from his pocket, along with a certain quarter. This, he thinks, is a major bummer. Talbot thinks that too, as he finds out as he walks in that he has to pay a parking charge too. What is this, he has half of a mind to say, his teeth grinding together, making his chin look like it’s ready to pounce, a night at a club or a more sophisticated form of highway robbery? Oh well, at least he can write things up to expenses. Then he sees the bikers. Holy crap, Talbot thinks, maybe I should reconsider this. No, it’ll be fine, I’ll just sit next to the door, he decides.

A simple beat plays and soon a wailing guitar is heard, and some sirens. The emcee takes the stage, calling herself Ringmistress Payne. There are some song and dance numbers, some dance numbers. And then Ringmistress Payne introduces their star performer, Seraphim. Frank’s eyes get big with lust as he sees her walk out onto stage half Marilyn Monroe, half tattoos and giant fluffy angel wings, and with an extra special wink straight at Frank. She sings some ancient crooners song that no one remembers or cares about anymore, but that’s only from where Frank is sitting. From where the patch holders are sitting, she’s lip synching. But that’s okay, because the patch holders are drunk and ornery and like most patch holders, don’t care very much about women in general. Holden starts them up, reaching up to touch Sara. She’s used to it from all her older, much more audience friendly routines. Then some of the others start up, Boss Hog, Huggy Bear, and Potsie encouraging the rest. Frank sits where he is and it looks like it’s all part of the show.

The music is loud and Talbot is relieved when the show is over. The bass was up so high that he knows he’ll be constipated the next day. He walks out of the dark club into the parking lot when a picture is taken of him. It wouldn’t matter one way or the other if the picture was being taken for an art exhibit of flash photography- not just the light going off, but the sudden, random act- or if were to be a promotional picture for the show, or if it was someone finishing the roll. The camera blinded Talbot. Talbot was blinded by the camera. Same thing. He stumbles forward, trying to clear out the sun spots and neon signs drawn into his eyeball. He isn’t recovered when he walks into the motorcycle parking area, and knocks into a laid back low seat wide rake shined chrome hotrod exhaust chopper. It goes over onto the next bike, and clean, fluid lines flow into each other, custom paint jobs are shared, and dominoes become motorcycles. No, beg pardon, and to steal a line, scratch that, reverse it. Basically, it makes a pretty big clanging sound.

Ponch, Chico and Greg Brady all rush out to see what’s happened to their motorcycles, leading the rest of the patch holders outside. But Holden loops around and goes to the back to investigate the Crown Vic. Vinny is rushing out with the patch holders to keep order. Frank waits and waits, then finally sees that all of the commotion has gone outside, so he can get out there without ruining his flowers.

When he does get around back, he smiles because he sees Sara coming out of the door. Alright, he thinks. She’s waiting for me. Then there’s Holden, Holden telling her to dance for him like she did on the stage, Holden drunk, Holden grabbing onto Sara. Frank runs and runs, and doesn’t feel like he’s running fast enough. He jumps onto Holden’s back, dropping the flowers, but Holden simply reaches around and punches him. Frank is on the ground, and Holden just looks at him. Well, he didn’t get any fightin’ in over the weekend. He kicks Frank hard in the gut, and Frank rolls onto his back, not really wanting to fight back. Holy crap, he thinks, that hurts.

“Get up,” Holden tells him, “and make this fight worth it.” Holden throws his jacket on the ground by Frank, and the patch stares up at the sky, sitting there open. It’s a doctorate in bad ass. Frank tries to get up, and grabs onto a handle of a cardoor. The door is connected to a Crown Vic that is unlocked and Frank starts to lift himself inside it.

“So you’re the little bitch that’s been following me.” Holden slams the door against the frame, but catches Frank’s legs in between that. “Come back out here you piece of shit ‘cause you don’t want me going in.” Holden pulls the door back again, then something swipes at his head and the patch holder goes down to his knees. The big hand pushes Holden face first onto his jacket, then opens the door for Frank. Maybe he roars from his throat. Frank lets himself out, cursing as he walks over to where he dropped the flowers. He picks one of the flowers up. One of the flowers is picked up by Frank. He holds it towards Sara.

“I got you flowers.”

She says thank you, and rubs his shaved head for good luck and goes back inside because out front you can hear something that sounds like stone being shaped. Maybe it’s a jaw. Frank looks up to Carver.

“You wanna go get a drink or something?”

The big man shrugs his shoulders, points down. A chain wallet has spilled open, and Frank bends down. Texas. They start down the road for the nearest neighborhood bar.

Scarlet Morning Light

The story. I think it should start like- The man who held court and slouched into the ripped vinyl of the booth did not have a rock star name. Regardless, he was treated with the utmost of respect and coolness, riding a wave of hip, literate, musician's music to the height of the scene. They were profiled in the free trendy weeklies and in the city paper's “Living” section. He was looked up to as if he invented rock and roll or he saved it or he revived it and where he walked he was followed. The college crowd loved him and that he had actually dropped out from their very own college was whispered and spread and hushed out in excited tones. The long time scenesters, rivaling him in age and cynicism loved him. Finally they had someone they could truly relate to who didn't write something that was going to catch on and then they'd look like a modern rock listener when they wore his shirt out, even as they tried to get him popular, blogging about him, plugging him on the internet, in zines. The high school kids who were too cool for the high school bands and most music made after John Bonham died latched on once they heard about him through the weeklies or the zines or some blog, and considered him the ultimate in cool. He wasn't a lush, far from it, but he did like his alcohol and no one said anything about it. A true professional, you couldn't tell he was drunk when he was on stage because Denny Marlan knew his act. Drink was necessary for his line of work. A way to ease a way through the night, putting a yacht through a bathtub faucet. He despised his audience. All of them. His lyrics weren't nearly as deep as they thought and they were basically just taken from other places, turned on their mouth, and put together to fit what he knew. Every song, every verse, every line, every word was his response to a book or an intellectual, black and white foreign film. Without subtitles. It seemed plain, clear and reasonable to him. He said it in enough interviews and he was taken for being modest. No, he wasn't being modest, he was being serious. Stop looking for something in him. Give him room and space and time, and he just might breathe. And Denny held court in the booth and drank beer that people bought for him and tried to shrug off conversation. He lied even to himself. Not all the words were in response to books. Barely any were, actually. Of the seven albums in five years that Scarlet Morning Light- crimson seems too easy and invocative- had released, four were entirely about the three years he did spend in college. Three years he spent in love with a girl he barely knew and that had, in the entire three years, generally ignored Denny and wrote him off as scum. His habits at that time included smoking dope and watching kung fu movies. He was in a punk band whose shows were regularly broken up for violence. She wasn’t too far off. Denny needed a place to go for Thanksgiving break and had nowhere. She also, had nowhere, and they determined to give thanks for acquaintances. Then, after giving thanks, she carved the bird, he had no idea how, and they ate a small dry and overcooked turkey with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce that held the shape of the can. Small talk was a day behind them. It’s not very good, is it, she asked him. No, well, it’s a bit dry, but it’s great. And even if it doesn’t match up to Mom’s, at least I don’t have to watch football here. His goofy grin, evidence that he was being honest, broke free and shoved his freckles away. Thanks, this is great, probably the best Thanksgiving I’ve had since I was six. The grin stuck around. Now it was her turn to be a bit embarrassed. You should do that more often, she told him. He asked her what, and she said smile. Red ran into his cheeks and beat on his eardrums. Luckily for Jo, red stopped at her neck. And, she said, shave. Those freckles are kinda cute when they aren’t hiding in stubble. Geez in mock anger. Everyone has to say something about the freckles. She laughed like he always wanted her to. Denny was inseperable from Jo after then, and Jo was fond of Denny herself. Their winter break was spent driving and camping their way South. It was wonderful and they were the new bohemians. No big car, no caviar. He waited all the way to North Carolina before zipping the sleeping bags together when he was setting camp. What, do you think you’re doing? Oh nothing, he grinned nice and wide, that you know you don’t want me to do. Are you sure about that? Setting red to run was far too easy. She didn’t want him beating himself up all night, so she leaned in and gave him a little peck on the cheek. Camp looks good, she said. Seeing the South turned off the safety and Jo felt her calling to go West and find the country, even more than she did. It was always a calling of hers from as far back as she could remember. The long lonely plains of Texas and Kansas and Oklahoma. The hills and mountains of Denver. Yellowstone in Montana. The marriage and divorce in Nevada. California, of course, the land of everything. Then up north, to the rainforests in Seattle. She wanted to fish in Alaska. When she was seven, one day after school, she was waiting in her dad’s office because they were going to do something fun. Not that she remembers what, or even this incident at all, but it happened and it’s worth noting. Eventually she meandered into the waiting room, and saw magazines filled with great advertisements for great products like Marlboros with the wide open Western country stretched out before a lone cowboy and his horse. She stuffed her pockets full of them and then getting her safety scissors and glue, put them up on her walls when she got home, covering all the white paint, and all the cotton candy pink polka dots too. Her parents yelled at her, but she stayed calm Why, they asked, Why, they yelled, Why, they demanded, red in the face with a brilliant New Mexico sunset. She told them so she could look at her walls and see the future. Denny couldn't even think of leaving the city, not when Snot Rag inna Back Pocket was finally getting notoriety for their lack of musical talent as well as the chaos they caused at bars around the city. Jo, he said, I really think that this is my calling. I have to stay here, label guys are coming around and looking at us. This is what I need to do with my life. There was silence, and Denny knew what was coming and Jo didn't know but her mouth moved anyways. I need to leave. You aren’t even staying for the spring semester? Honey, please, she started to say then turned around and was ripped apart by his quivering face. Honey…don’t make this harder than it has to be. She packed that night and they didn't say anything to each other. They both knew better than to cry because that got nothing done. She left his life just as easily as she came in and the break was just as clean, if clean means half full of promise. Denny stopped waiting for a letter after a few months. Fall semester didn’t seem to mean anything to him. He stopped waiting for a postcard after a year. That was the day that it finally came back to him, when he resigned himself to being a part of her past. The day she left, he saw her off to the bus and then went home. He showered and cried. Under the shower head, uncontrollably, he let loose tears because he didn't know what would happen next. When he realized he was merely something from her past, he didn't cry. He shook and poured himself a drink. The first binge lasted a month and produced the first few dozen songs and sketches and poems and false starts about her. That notebook became the Scarlet Morning Light demo, then the first album, the one that everyone was sure was absolutely the best thing they had heard since the last best thing they heard since the last best thing they heard. Denny chugged the beer and behind his sunglasses his eyes shrunk back. The band was to be announced any minute now. He excused himself to go onstage and took in a tinted crowd. They've waited the entire week for this, and they begged without sound for him to do something, say something. Sing for them. If this were a feel good story, Denny would come out of his stupor and realize he needs to sing for himself. I don't think I've earned the right to have Denny say nothing and have that be the dramatic ending. That doesn't sit right at all. They stood in the bar and waited for him to sing. I'm sitting here now hoping you're waiting, and I'm waiting for him to sing, and Denny took one step with the microphone closer to the apron of the stage and remembered his days in a punk band and having fun with music and not thinking about it as a job. He remembered just the way Jo laughed at his naiveté and amazement at the world around him and just the way they would laze about in the morning not getting out of bed. He breathed in. Hi, he said. We're the Scarlet Morning Light, and we aren't anything special.

the orinthologist said

but one thing i am certain of is that in due time everything will be paid back in full which is something that has not happened yet. maybe it won't be a cosmic judge with a cosmic gavel and a cosmic, antiquated sentencing system, i don't quite know, but i do know it will happen. there is a reason i am so certain and that is because i have faith in it and faith is a peculiar imp that likes to dip its paw in the fountains of reason and belief, and tip the scales of righteousness and rightness, faith is a troublemaker for sure but no longer is he troubling me for i have accepted what he's done and now must deal with it. sometimes i think the world would be better off without the imp faith but without faith there would be no love, love is faith's shadow, of course, and without love where would i be right now, i ask you, where would i be right now? that is why i have accepted faith and even recognize him for i am grateful to faith for giving me love. love is spectacular and does all the things faith does, being faith's shadow, of course, but in a much more whimsical, effervescent way. faith stomps and love bounces. faith has cut a hole that love leap frogs through. but love has a shadow too and that is the want of love and it is not so much a shadow but just what happens when love leaves the room. the want of love isn't so much an imp as an albatross or a millstone. if it is an albatross, like in some cases it is, it will hang and hang and hang and there it is, never to go away. if it is a millstone it falls quickly and kills instantly. i'm not sure which is better. i have met survivors of both and i have survived both and neither are very pleasant, though i am told the albatross is more pure, but then what is purity but a lark? the orinthologist said this to me, and i don't know if he was lying. he looked very distinguished in his pith helmet, binoculars hanging from a straw-woven laynard and butterfly net at his side and he said he was very important. i asked him if he knew the president, but he shushed me and then chased after an emu that was passing by and i never got my answer. as soon as the orinthologist had started after it, the emu turned and said meep meep, what i do to get paid. the imp faith seized me at that moment and i knew the orinthologist was very important. faith's shadow, love, of course, seized me soon after and i pursued the orinthologists's daughter, a sufragette with no name except the one i call her. like her father, she is important. she paints in a cafe down the street, and she speaks in unrhymed, free couplets. i asked her how they were couplets at all and she threw day old coffee near my face and left the room and that's when the want of love came into being.

other unimportant things

Around the cafe the important people- the nephilim, the poets, the artists, the diplomats from unrecognized countries, Surrealista, X, sometimes t, sometimes L, Wamperlundt, Annarchoses, the technorati, the influential, dwarfs on giants- converse about Life and other unimportant things. There, in the corner, two conasaurs ignore each other when the speak. Johnny Thunderstorm clutches his pen the whole while. It never touches his paper. It never knows a word. Johnny Thunderstorm's hopes of osmosis go deaf.
"If I threw the knife hard enough, it would shatter the water."
"Water is just glass."
"Looking glass and stained glass are different, but in the same Media. What does this all say"
"Pull the string to find out.
Hay Haystacks HaySeus considers this for a moment, his mouth curving up, up, up, and a snail comes out of this shell in words.
"Of course! That's what I should do! I'll pul the string and destroy this sweeter"
And before Hay Haysoos Haystacks can find the needle, a Himalayan stands up.
"This is sweeter than thouh knows. Thou knowst not the true sweet, the true thing that rots teef and that coats hearts and echoes the sound of high heels coming for mine own bed!"
And the sweet pounding of Johnny Thunderstorms' candy-coated heart sheds his jacket of inability- he breaks his pen and pours the deep black into a cup.
"This is Truf! This is beauty, nakedness and art. The hand printed word."
A lost soul- not from the world but from a struck boy she didn't know- saunters up to the table.
"I am a book now! Great literature. To be remembered."
She drinks it and the small glossed over cracks are filled with melville's whale. She does not know she is

across Baylor St.

Juliana ran from the door out to the street, not looking back at the brick building that slowly poured out black smoke, infinitely blacker and clearer than the night sky, which she also did not look at. Others running out of the building were shouting. "Fire!" "Help!" "There's no way this is happening." She shouted, too. "What about me? Whatever happened to your princess?" She ran across Baylor St., and kept running. Sirens and flashing lights invaded the neighborhood, mounted on a sickly, yellow fire truck. Still more people gathered on the street, escaping the fire, escaping sleep, escaping bland sex, escaping Johnny Carson. Firemen, buried in their pounds on pounds of life saving equipment, ran into the building, or off to the fire hydrant to set up the hose. Baylor St. knew the hose too well, and some residents decided it best to go back inside. Juliana kept running, past the buildings where lights were slowly turning on for the ruckus, past the red and blue strobes of the cruisers and trucks and ambulances. She ran and collapsed. She could not get up. Softly, her breath caressing the air that didn't smell like years being lost as kindling, she hoped this was new.

in her company

"And just what the fuck was I doing here?" I recoiled in horror, I was speaking out loud, and I was staring just beyond my reflection in the recently broken mirror. The situation needed to be assesed. "There is no-" and I stopped myself because I do not think out loud in my own company. There is no, I continued, just to myself and only to myself, good reason for me to be here. I should leave. And I should've left before things started breaking, but I didn't reprimand myself, not at the time. It was not what I needed, though I've called my judgement in what I need into question since then. I should've done it sooner. I should've always done it. But you know what they say about hindsight. Makes an ass out of you and me both. So, what I did was decided to wash my face, maybe the cold, I reasoned, would help. I ran the faucet, looked down, and that's when I started thinking out loud again. "Broken fucking glass." I held my hands to my face, checked them over, front, back, and I wasn't cut anywhere. Of course, a great sign. But if I wasn't cut anywhere, whose blood had just finished washing down the drain? "This is all too much." The best course of action in this type of situation, as I knew it, was to leave, taking as many valuables with you as you can since you are not going to be seeing these people again, at least not for a long time. To make it easier, I found the bathroom was connected to the master bedroom, a very dark room, horribly green and plush. It wasn't dark just because the only light was coming in through the windows, from the...party below. "Party," I said, and thought about the implications of all this, noticing for the first time that my tie knot was slid very far down and the topmost shirt buttons were undone. That I was in formal attire, really. And that I was sinking into the carpet, slowly.

"Some more? And here I was thinking you had enough."

I made a noise of not understanding, and looked at where the very feminine voice had come, underneath heavy blankets on the bed. They had the same deep green, but also had crisscrossing bars of gold that made diamonds, or x's depending on how you looked at it. Thinking back now, there was something creepy about the green that was everywhere. It was the same green that had been in my nightmares for years, the same gilded iron lattices, too. I can only place it back to a room I used to be scared of. I don't know where this room is, or whose room it was. It was just a room that scared me as a child.

A bathroom.

It was wallpapered, even on the ceiling, with a heavy, unnatural green colour and gold diagonal bars that revealed patches of black. Why was it on the ceiling? On the toilet and the black marble sink counter were dead flowers. Not flowers that had died, but dried out flowers. Flowers that were killed. And hanging on the walls............seven walls.There were seven walls, and three paintings, and they were still lifes of flowers that were alive. On the matting was an elegant, illegible script in gold ink,scrunched,lineafterline, all of it unread a ble. There was a gargoyle door knocker on the inside of thedoor. The room seemedto grow and shrink when you were in there, contracting,expanding,contorting. It scared the shit outof me. I was frightened. It had an angelnightlight whichseemed tomakeit evenworse Though I don'tknowhy it wouldothat Maybecauseitwaso low nearlytouchingthedarktilethatsometimesee

medbottomlessYoucouldloseyourselfinthatroomIknowIdidIwascaredofiteveninto"No, I haven't had enough yet," I managed to say to her. "I'm just going downstairs to get another glass."

She mm'd at me. "Don't be too long."

Being poetic, I kept her waiting forever. I forgot about valuables and all I wanted to do was get out. The party was still going, and strong. I slipped out. And my car wasn't anywhere. I walked up and down an unfamiliar gated community street, ten minutes, a half hour, almost an hour. A security guard in a nicely painted Bronco stopped me.

"Excuse me, are you a guest?"

"On my way out. My ride decided to stay at the big party, and well, I'm all partied out. Mind if you get me a ride to the gate so I can call a taxi?"

"Sure, hop in."

His nametag said Roscoe, and I asked him about this.

"It's just a lark. I'm Jim."

"Hello Jim. My name is Roscoe."

"No shittin'?"

"I don't shit."

And then we laughed. A large part of the hut-management fund, as Jim called it, went to high quality reefer, which he was kind enough to share while I waited for the Taxi. I was somewhere near the coast.

"So whose rich-bastard house did you trash tonight?"

"To tell you the truth, Jim, I don't know. I can't remember the past few hours at all."

"Ha. That sounds like the kinds a' parties Wendi throws."

"Wendi?" The phone began to ring. The taxi was pulling up.

"Yeah, the actress. Wendi da Capo."

"Oh wow. In her company?"

"Maybe," he said, answering the phone.

I got into the taxi, asking to be taken, as fast as he can, to LA. I could hear Jim screaming part of a sentence, "a body," and told the driver to leave. I looked straight ahead, while the cabbie looked into the rearview mirror. "Your friend is running after you." "It's okay," I said, "he'd call if it was really important."

Luckily for me, there were pills involved. But now, I'm not sure that really solves anything.