the novel

okay. here it is. as some of you know (and some of you whom i've tagged on facebook), i took a writing challenge to write a novel in the span of a month.
The challenge was to write it kamikaze style--meaning, no editing as you go.

SO, here it is--the rough raw unedited version, complete with typos, misspellings, probably switches in verb tense and some illegible ramblings. but her, editing is gonna be a blast.

about the novel, i won't give much away. But theres some...um...i guess, PG-13ish subject matter in it, so you might wanna read it before you let anyone else read it. It's not the sex and swearing type of subject matter...its just some weighty stuff is all. i guess i should say that viewer discretion is advised.

Hope you enjoy:
"the apathetic ennui of disenchanted disillusionment" by e.s. grodberg

* * *

Part One

Grilled cheese.

He can definitely smell grilled cheese and instantly wonders why. It’s not a grilled cheese kind of day, not by a long shot. Turkey, yes. Stuffing, perhaps. Other victual odds and ends, quite possible. But grilled cheese? It’s an anachronism in his nostrils.

He slides his key into the doorknob. Not that he imagines it’s locked, but out of his own personal habit. The door is unlocked. But his parent’s car is not in the driveway. His own rented car hums itself toward cooling.

As he opens the door, the odors he expects hits him: turkey, stuffing, some kind of bread, the oily aura of cooked vegetables. So does the grilled cheese smell. “Hello.”, he calls out.

“In the kitchen”, comes a response. It’s his sister, Lucretia. He drops his overnight bag in the foyer and crosses through the den to the staircase. There is another smell in the house, the smell of his family. Any family’s house has a certain smell to it. He can remember, as a kid, his friends’ houses having smells autonomous with particular families. He can now sense his, having not smelled it in almost two years. He can only classify it as His Family’s Particular Smell.

We walks up to the kitchen. Lucretia is at the stove, making a grilled cheese sandwich. “Hi, Emyl”, she doesn’t look up.

“Hey, Lu. Where’s mom and dad?”

“They’re visiting the Strongo’s. Probably be back in an hour, maybe?”. She flips her sandwich over and looks up. “How’s tricks?”

“Good. Good.”, he takes off his jacket and hangs it over the back of a kitchen chair. “Yr not in the mood for turkey today?”, he nods at her frying pan.

“I am, but I’m starving. Want one?”

“No thanks. I made the mistake of buying a Cinnabon at a rest stop. It feels like it’s invaded my entire being and is subsequently shutting everything down.”. She smirks. Steam trickles from one of the pots on the stove, looking like a vaporous ballerina—twisting and twirling at a fixed point. “How’s school?”

She shrugs, “School’s school.”

“You passing everything?”. He glances at the coffee pot and realizes it’s empty. He walks to the cupboard to start a pot.

“I’m…not sure.”

Emyl pulls down the filters and a can of Chock Full O’ Crap coffee, grimacing inwardly, knowing the paltry finished product the grounds will produce. “Yr not—how are you not sure?”

“Meh.”, is all she says. Emyl pours water into the reservoir on the back of the coffee machine. It’s a Senor Coffee machine. The needle on his crappy-coffee detector is vibrating in the red.

“Are you--?”

“Emyl, I’m doing…I’m, I think I’m doing okay, okay? Just. Can you just leave it, yeah?”

He switches the coffee pot on and grabs a mug from the hook under the sink window. “What’s going on, Lu?”. He stares with concern at the back of her head. She heaves her shoulders in an exasperated sigh.

“How the city, Emyl?”, her voice is intent on not pursuing the previous line of questioning.

Emyl acquiesces. “It’s fine. They’re publishing some of my older works and essays and stuff. Like, an anthology of stuff from magazines and quarterlies and stuff.”

“Didja run out of new material?”

It’s Emyl’s turn: “I’d rather not talk about it right now. I’m trying to decide a few things and…”. He trails off, seriously not wanting to get into it. Not now. Not with his sister. Not on Thxgvg, when he just wants to focus on family being here. Home. On furlough from a world that is spinning just a little too quickly for his own liking.

“Great”, Lucretia reaches for a plate from the shelf above her. “Two siblings who haven’t seen of heard from each other in years, in the same room, not talking. That’s got the beginnings of ‘dysfunction’ written all over it.” She transfers her sandwich to the plate, shuts the stove off, and puts the pan in the sink. The sink is already halfway filled with knives, plates, forks, wooden spoons, pot lids.

“Did you learn that word from you prerequisite liberal arts psychology class?”, he pours coffee into his mug.

“Bite me.”, she sits down. “I forgot how above everyone else you were. At least I’m going to college with an intention to finish.”

“And, it is now yr turn to bite me”, he sits across from her. She picks gooey bits of melted cheese from the sides of her sandwich and wipes them on her plate. “Although”, he continues, “if you intend to finish, I don’t see how you will if yr own personal involvement and investment in the whole venture is at the ‘Meh’ level. She shoots him a glare. “Are you goofing off, Lu? Doing stupid stuff? Wasting yr time and money?”. He sips his coffee. If his tongue could, it would leap out of his mouth and run away, become a hobo, hop freight trains and subsist on canned baked beans. It’s that terrible. He goes to the fridge for milk.

“And if I am?”, she posits.

That statement stabs him somewhere deep inside. The thought of his little sister reveling in acts of stupidity and irresponsibility comes within just a few millimeters of making him queasy.

“If you are”, he tests his coffee and decides that it now needs sugar to make it somewhere close to palpable, “I’d advise…no, suggest that you stop. Before it’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”, she barks thru a mouth full of food. “Do you even know what I’m doing?”, then quickly adds, “If I’m doing anything at all?”

Emyl sits back down. “So what are you doing then?” He can feel his face taking on a smug look and quickly tries to counteract it. It’s too late. Lucretia throws poison-tipped daggers from her pupils.

“That’s none of yr business. If I want to experiment with whatever, that’s my choice.”

“So you are slacking off. And what are you experimenting with? Drugs? Drinking? Bunsen burners and graduated cylinders?”

“Go ahead. Make jokes. And what’s with the sudden deluge of concern? Was the big famous writer finally able to pencil his family into his busy busy schedule? Did he have an attack of conscience and finally realize that his family is important after all? You know what I think? I think you miss yr family and you think you can make up for years of neglect by coming home for a few days and acting like you give flying fig. Like that will absolve you of yr previous indifference. Like we’ll—I’ll—take you back with open arms cuz yr my big brother and I’ll just forget how much of a raging stinking horse’s rump you’ve been to me. To the family.”

Emyl doesn’t flinch. He sips his coffee and looks at her. “So, is it pot? Coke? Ecstasy?”.

She chews her food angrily. “Yr such a pompous jerk.” She gets up and puts her empty plate in the sink. Flatware rearranges itself loudly. “Why don’t you tell me what yr big secret is, huh? Yr elusive ‘Oh, I’m trying to decide a few things’. What’s the big secret, bro?”

He leans back in his chair and sighs. “Honestly?”

“No, weave me lies, Emyl.”

“I’m just tired of it all. The industry. Trying to top myself with each book. And now this collected works thing. It’s as if people will by my name, not the work. If I scribbled the word ‘tangerine’ or ‘hexagon’ for 300 pages, people would buy it.”

“Boo-friggin’-hoo. You don’t get my sympathy.”

“I don’t want yr sympathy, moron. You asked! And when did you get so jaded and angry?”

“That’s right, you haven’t been around for a while. You haven’t been here to see me grow up or enter academia or even come to my high school graduation”. She can tell that last one hurt him. Good, she thinks, let it. “Mom and dad are doing great. I’m away at college doing whatever I choose to do, with no one telling me what to do, no one to answer to, no rules, no boundaries.”

“That might not be good thing, Lu.”

“Stop it. Just stop it, okay? You don’t get to be concerned about me. You lost that privilege when you wrote yr family off.”

“Wrote my what?! Are you serious? Is that what you think I did? You think I just cordoned off you, mom and dad from the rest of my life? Yr delusional. Whatever it is you are doing is making you paranoid. And presumptuous.”

“Why do you care about ‘what I’m doing’? You were barely even around when I was younger. And when you were, you isolated yrself from all of us. You never spent time with me or asked me how I was or got interested in anything I did.”

“You were a kid, Lu. We lived in two different—“

“Oh, don’t give me that. Don’t just write it off as age difference. I’m not stupid.”

“But yr acting stupid.”

There is a pause. Emyl is hunched over his coffee mug at the table. Lucretia leans against the counter. The soft hum of the oven fills the room and the hot water heater clicks on in the basement.

“I need to check the food.”, Lucretia pushes herself upright and grabs an oven mitt. Emyl looks out the back door onto the deck. The trees are all bare. It’s a sunny day, but everything seems just a shade darker than it should, like a photograph wrapped a few times in plastic wrap. The bland taste of the coffee has taken dominion in his mouth.

Lucretia squints as she open the oven door. Emyl watches her prod the turkey with a huge fork. She closes the oven door and shakes the oven mitt from her hand onto the counter. She takes turns lifting the lids of the pots on the stove, stirring each with a different spoon. “It must be tough being you.”, she eventually says, stirring.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Emyl, yr a published writer, famous, with loads of cash and, yet, yr still not happy.”

“Money and fame doesn’t—“

“Will you let me finish.”

“Go ahead.”. He can’t believe he’s still drinking the coffee.

“Yr family obviously didn’t make you happy. Yr current lifestyle isn’t making you happy. It’s like you’ll never be happy. With anything.”

“Seriously, Lucretia, don’t try to psychoanalyze me.” She knows she’s hit a nerve. He rarely uses her full name. It’s usually ‘Lu’. Or, when they were younger, he used ‘Lu-cretin’ to piss her off. Emyl using her full first name is the same as parents using their child’s first, middle, and last names when scolding or disciplining them. “You don’t now thing one about anything.”. Emyl realizes this is a bit of an overstatement. Lucretia may not have hit any nails on the head, assessment-wise, but he can tell she’s at least wielding the hammer and nails in an attempt to. “And I don’t know, like seriously I have no idea how, you can possibly actually think I have some messed-up longstanding dislike and animosity toward the family. That couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“Oh, please! You—“

“Lu, let me finish now.”

She huffs.

He continues. “For whatever reason—those we won’t get into just yet, trust me—that I wasn’t around as often as you’d’ve liked me to or as often as you thought should be appropriate for me, it remains as a fact. A simple fact. A sad fact. Yes, I wasn’t here a lot. And if I reached some personal realization about it or had an epiphany or whatever and decided that I wanted to go ahead and change that, why on Earth would you begrudge me that opportunity? Do you want me to stay on the distant fringes of the family for the rest of my life? Just so you have something to be angry and rage against. Seriously, all this anger doesn’t fit you. And, if I helped to fuel that anger, by whatever measure you’ve conjured up that I actually did fuel that anger then I’m sorry you feel that way. I really do. But taking it out on yrself? Seriously? It’s just giving you reason to hate me more. And it won’t stop at me. It’ll trickle out onto Mom, Dad, family, friends...onto everyone everywhere.”

She cocks her head at him. He finishes his coffee and has a debate-team style dialogue with himself about the pros and cons of getting another one.

“Taking it out on myself?”

“Lu, I’m not stupid either. I can tell from yr behavior that yr involved in something. Something you otherwise wouldn’t be involved in if you still lived under this roof. Something that’s making you less of what I remember.”

“I’m surprised you can remember.”

“Back on the ‘you were never here’ thing? C’mon Lu.”

“How am I supposed to react, Emyl? Huh? Put yrself in my shoes. I grow up with someone who’s a brother pretty much in just name. Then you disappear from the family landscape and you come back expecting things to be all roses and rainbows? And I’m supposed to be all ‘Oh I love you big brother and life is swell again’? Y’know, just because you wanna make amends now, like right now, doesn’t mean I’m ready.”

“You just wanna stay angry?”

“And if I do?”

“You obviously do.”

“Then it’s my choice. That’s the wonderful part. You can choose to patch up yr mistakes and I can decide not to let you. I can even stay angry til I die and do poorly in school and pass out drunk every night and smoke joints in the woods behind the dorms and try he—“

Lucretia hasn’t realized how worked up she’s made herself. She feels the tears queuing up behind her eyes. But she won’t give Emyl the satisfaction. Not now. Not today. And not tomorrow, if she has anything to say about it.

“Try what?”, Emyl is deathly serious.

“Try what what?”, she counters.

“You said…you were saying…you were gonna…Lu, are you doing heroine?”

Her lag in response time confirms it for him, yet she responds, “Am I doing heroine? No, I’m not doing heroine.” She throws in an ‘as if’ laugh.

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, Emyl. Mind yr own business.”

“Lu, if yr getting involved in—“

“I can do what I want, Emyl! I already told you that you don’t get the privilege of looking out for me.”

“I don’t understand. Yr doing heroine just to piss me off? To have someone to blame?”

“No, Emyl! No!”. She slides up her sleeve and holds her arm over her head. A few red dots show faintly on her inner elbow. “This isn’t about you! I’m in college. I supposed to do dumb things and learn from them. I’m supposed to test my personal limits.”

“Are you friggin’ serious?! You have no idea…NO idea…what yr getting yrself into! Trust me.”

“Why, in the name of all that is good and decent and just, should I trust you? Why?!”

Emyl finally notices that he had, at some point gotten to his feet. He’s leaning on the table, propped up by his hands. He takes them off the table and they’re shaking. He sits back down and puts them in his lap. “Sit down, Lucretia.” There it is again, the full first name.

“Do tell me what to—“

“Lu. Please. Sit down.”. It’s the first trace of genuineness she’s heard in his voice since…since…since ever, maybe. She sits down and suddenly feels like she doesn’t want to hear what he has to say. Not that it’s going to be condescending or patronizing. She just feels like he’s going to conversationally go some place where she’s not ready to go. “Do you remember when I was in college?”

She slowly nods. “Barely. I was, like, 8 or so.”

“Do you remember when I came home? It was for Christmas break, but it wound up being longer?”

“Uh-huh.”

Outside, a squirrel skitters across the deck, chattering, being chased by another squirrel.

“Why did I stay home so long?”

“It was…wasn’t it pneumonia or something? You were really…”, she pauses and breathes in deep, “…sick? Right?”

“Yeah. Well, in a sense, yeah. I dropped out of college that semester. And I never went back. You obviously know that part.”. She waits intently for the rest, for what he has to say, even though another part of her, deep down, is trying to plug up its ears. Emyl, trying to figure out how to phrase it delicately or without a clichéd confessionary tone, just says, “I was a junkie.”

“…huh?...”

“I didn’t stay home because of pneumonia. I stayed home cuz I flunked out of school and was trying to kick my habit.”

“…but…”

“And I didn’t spend time around you or the family because I was a horrible person when I was drying out. I was angry. I was violent. I was mean, Lu. I was really mean. I stayed away from everyone because I didn’t wanna hurt anyone more than I already had.”

“…no…”

“And I moved to New York City because that’s where the rehab center was. Just as you were growing up and becoming less of a kid sister and more of an actual person. I left. I left you and Mom and Dad. If I wanted to someday be close with you all again, I had to.”

“Did…did…”, there is a triathlon of questions racing around in her head. “…did Mom and Dad know?”

Emyl stares into his empty mug. He stands up and walks over to the coffee machine. “Yes, of course they knew.”

“They knew?? And no one told me?”

“Don’t go there, Lu. Don’t.”

“Don’t ‘don’t’ me, Emyl!”

“Lu…”

She spins around in her chair, kneeling on it, gripping the top of the back rest. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? What else have you all been hiding? Emyl? Emyl?!”

“You were so young, Lu”. Emyl forgets that he’s holding the coffee pot in has hand. It just hangs there, unmoving, just a numb extension of his hand. “You wouldn’t’ve…there was so much going on. With me. Between me and Mom and Dad. I thought it was best to leave. To keep you from being around it. Mom and Dad thought differently.”

“Why didn’t you listen to them?” The knuckles on her hand throb white. “You left me to grow up an orphan.”

“An orphan? Don’t be so—that doesn’t even make sense.”

“You weren’t there to scare off boys in high school, or, or, or buy me cigarettes or…brother and sister things that brothers and sisters are supposed to do.”

“I didn’t wanna stay around cuz I knew I’d hurt you. More than I had.”

“No.”, her eyes squint. “No. You were selfish. You didn’t wanna stick around and work thru the mess you made. You ran away.”

“Lu, I—“

“Why didn’t you tell me?”, she whispers.

“There wasn’t any…”, he trails off.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”, she says louder.

“I just…I couldn’t…”

“WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?!”

The tail end of her shout whips around the kitchen, intermingles with the savory smells, and finally evaporates into the ceiling, the formica countertop, the country-themed light switch plates, the stack of wicker baskets on top of the cupboard.

There is only silence as Lucretia’s knuckles pulsate. Emyl’s arm starts shaking from holding the coffee pot for so long, yet he doesn’t move, or look at Lucretia. He just focuses on some point between his toes and the chair she is kneeling on.

They both hear the front door knob rattle as the door creaks open. “Hi kids. We’re home.” Emyl looks at Lucretia. She hasn’t stopped glaring at him.

“Don’t…”

* * *

Emyl leans on his rented car. Could be some sort of Hondabishi or Oldsmobuick, he’s not sure. Dinner sits in his stomach like a lead weight wearing ski boots. He can’t tell where his breath begins and his carcinogenic exhalations end. The mug in his hand is already cold. Which, he thinks, might be an improvement on the state of the coffee at this house.

The night is clear and cold. He imagines that the coldness magnifies the night sky, brings the stars into starker relief against the countless miles of deep black space. A dog barks somewhere. The fuzzy hum of power lines drones somewhere near. He can almost hear himself breathing.

The house lights glow against within the shadow of the house. Behind curtains, he can see his parents walking back and forth. The light in the upstairs bathroom window switches off. He takes another sip and a drag. When he blinks, he can feel his eyeballs mustering all they can to try to thaw for that microsecond that they are covered. He can feel the wind blow against them.

Muffled conversation careens thru the house. They are a family of carrying on conversations from other rooms—sometimes even different levels of the house. He chains his last cig to a new one, flicks the old one onto the solid lawn. Frost sparks up into the air and settles again.

The front door opens and Lucretia, swaddled in a heavy down coat, scarf, toque, and wool gloves walks slowly with her arms crossed over to Emyl. She nods at his pack. He gives her one and lights it for her. The leans on the car next to him. They don’t look at each other as they talk, they just stare blankly at the driveway as it sucks up any and all light around it.

“Are you taking drama or acting in school?”, he asks her.

“No…”, her brow furrows in confusion. “Why?”

“Cuz you did an A+ job in there. Acting like nothing was bothering you.”

She wants to smile. She really does. But it’s not happening for her. She feels like she may never smile again. And the thought of never smiling frightens her.

“Well”, she mumbles, “it’s not like I was gonna flip out and ruin dinner for Mom and Dad. But…”, she takes a drag and exhales, “…way to drop bombs in there, bro.”

“Look, don’t blame Mom and Dad for any of it.”

“Oh, believe me, I won’t.”. Emyl is surprised at how evenly and calmly she’s speaking. It doesn’t sit well with him at all, but he puts it aside for now. He doesn’t respond and the two of them finish their cigarettes in quietness. “Nice car.”, she finally says. “Buy it with a book advance?”

“Rented.” He lights up another smoke and grabs his mug off the roof of his car. Lucretia takes another, too. “What’s on yr mind, Lu?”

“Huh?”

“Yr obviously out here for a reason. And I don’t think it’s the comradery associated with smokers.”

“Why do I have to have an ulterior motive to be out here?”

“Not an ulterior motive, Lu. A reason. That’s all.”

“Whatever.”

He looks at her and looks away. “Yeah, okay.”

They share another long silence. It’s Lucretia who breaks it again. “I wanna know what you did.”

“With what?”

“With yrself. What drugs you got into. What it did to you. What happened to you. Where you went. All of it.”

“You really don’t wanna know.”

She turns a little to face him. “Don’t do that to me, Emyl. Don’t downplay my curiosity or need to know as vindictiveness. I can see how you would.” She wipes her nose and sniffles from the cold air. “There’s almost 10 years of yr life missing from my life. And a lot of it stems from the family keeping me in the dark about you. I don’t want to say that I deserve to know but…I think I deserve to know. And I want to hear it from your mouth first.”

“I don’t think you really wanna know. I just think you want more artillery against me.”

She shakes her head…more to herself than at Emyl. “Stop”, she says slowly, “deciding what’s good for me and what’s not. You don’t get—“

“I don’t get that right, I know”, he interrupts. “You’ve made that abundantly clear, Lu.”

There is another silence. His eyes blink against the cold and he cups his cigarette hand and huffs warm air into it while putting the mug back on the car. “You were young.”

“Don’t give me--!”

“Do you want me to tell you or not? I’m telling you.”

She drops her shoulders and leans back against the car.

“You were young, but so was I, maturity wise I guess. The year before my freshman year of college, my senior year in high school, I started hanging out with the wrong kids. School wasn’t doin’ it for me anymore. So, the summer after my senior year, I went kinda nuts. Drinking, smoking pot. Eventually, someone got their hands on cocaine and ecstasy and acid and all that crap. Then someone brought H into the mix. It was all over from there. The money I’d been saving from working started to disappear. Then I went off to college. Being away from it sorta helped for a little bit but, hey. If you want something bad enough, you’ll find it right? Well, I found it. There was a bar near school. What was it called? Rhoda’s Bar? Roma Bar? I dunno. Anyway, they were really lax on their carding policy. So I always went there. One night, I was in the bathroom at a urinal and I heard this violent, y’know, deep deep sniffling sound from a stall. I don’t remember what I said, but I think it was something like, “If anyone at this bar has coke, I’d totally buy some and share it.” The guy came out of the stall. His name was Ponytail. Or so he said. I’m sure it wasn’t his real name, but that’s what he called himself. And, yes, his hair was long and always in a ponytail. He became my dealer. Somehow, out there, in the middle of rural Vermont, heroine was easy to come by. And, as you can guess, my grades slipped.

“The low point of school was when the R.A. of my dorm found me passed out in the showers…I still had a needle in my arm and there was blood, like, everywhere. Evidently, I punctured something the wrong way. So, Mom and Dad were called and Dad came up and dragged me home. After one semester as a freshman, I dropped out of school and moved back home.

“And once I moved back home, I hated everyone and alienated everyone and tried to make everyone around me as miserable as I felt. I’d sneak out to meet up with my old drug buddies and come home at all hours just wasted and reeking and unintelligible. I have no idea how I survived some of those rides home, cuz I’d be behind the wheel a lot of the time. I acted terribly to Mom and Dad and whatever friends I had left back here. Like, my non-drug buddies. And…and I steered clear of you.” Emyl pauses and looks at her. She just stares straight ahead, arms folded over her chest for warmth. He continues. “I steered clear of you because I didn’t want to, not even accidentally, have you in the line of my fire. I didn’t want to turn away the only person in my life I hadn’t hurt yet. And I didn’t want it to be a ‘yet’, even. I wanted to keep it at ‘never’. I never wanted you to be affected by who I was.

“Anyway, it got so bad that Mom and Dad gave me an ultimatum. Either I go to rehab or I get kicked out on my ear. Well, I told them neither. Then, the next day, I took whatever money I had left and bought a one-way ticket to New York City. When I got there, I checked myself into a facility that was more or less one of the cheaper ones. Like, the kind you might see in a movie where the facilities are pretty sub-par and the attendants beat everyone. It was called St. Vitus Rehab Clinic and Sanitarium. It eventually got shut down because of their practices. Like, one of those television news magazines did some sorta undercover investigation which led to the—anyway. I went there and stayed for 6 month. It actually worked for a while. One of the conditions of my release was that I had to stay employed. So, I got a job. As a bike courier. Like, messenger.

“And I loved it. I loved biking thru the city streets. It kept me on my toes. It needed me to be aware and keep my head on a honed swivel. Like, I wouldn’t’ve been able to do it if I’d still been cracked out. And that kept me going. One of my usual delivery spots was the DoHa Publishing House. Did I mention that that was when I’d started writing? At St. Vitus? Well, it was there that I started writing. Just meaningless stuff. Escapist stuff. Stuff to get my mind off getting clean. Well, no, not the getting clean part, but the mental havoc it wreaked on me. And emotional and physical havoc too. It wasn’t all mental.

“Anyway, I applied for an internship at DoHa. I started off working only 2 or 3 days a week. And I was just a gopher. Y’know, gopher this, gopher that, gopher coffee, gopher lunch. And on top of the internship and being a courier, my roommate, Sean, got me a job one day a week at a coffee joint he worked at, called Odnax. I used to be a pretty cool little chain of cafes, but then they got bought out by some crappy sandwich conglomerate called Isoc. But that’s beside the point. I had three jobs and was writing in between, sometimes even at, all three of them. I got to know one of the agents at DoHa, who actually became my first agent. His name was Paolo Sweebeck. Ironically, he got stabbed to death by a junkie in a subway station in Brooklyn a few years ago. So then well but he then he and I got to talking and I told him I did some writing on the side and he asked to see what I have. I gave him parts of what would finally become Off…”

“I actually liked that one. Kinda my favorite one.”. He looks over at her. Her nose is pink and runny.

“Lu, let’s talk in the car. Yr face is gonna freeze off. I can turn the heat on.”. She nods. Emyl goes around to the driver’s side and gets in, leans across to unlock her door. The car starts right up and Emyl adjusts the heat. “Where was I?”

“Off.”

“Okay, so, he liked it and said there was potential and blah blah blah but that I’d need some work. Grooming, he called it. So, over that next year, I worked on it and revised and worked on it more and even took a night class at some community center. It was a grammar class. Then the book got published and it went nowhere for the first few months.”

“And it got me frustrated. I kept asking to do in-store readings and they said they didn’t have the funds for it. They had the funds, of course, but I was still wet behind the ears as far as they were concerned and the didn’t wanna shell out for a mini intra-city book tour. So, I organized my own.

“By this time, my courier job was only 3 days a week and I was managing a coffee joint in Manhattan. And this guy Ramon Richards—“

“The director?”

“The same. Yeah. He worked there too. And I asked him to help me out with it. Like, read my stuff with me, trade passages back and forth in front of a crowd. He was toying with becoming an actor at this time. He’d been in a few horrible student films by then and it was kinda leaving a sour taste in his mouth…the whole acting thing. Well, he and I had a great rapport with each other and we’re both on the same kinda sorta semi-twisted wavelength as each other. So, he agreed to it. We would start off reading bits and pieces from the book but…I dunno…somehow, at some point, we strayed off topic and just started riffing on each other…like, setting each other up to change the direction of it. Oh, we’d still have the books in our hands and pretend like we were reading from it, but we’d just be making stuff up and going in all different directions. Then, when it couldn’t get any weirder, we’d look at the other one and say something like, “Ramon, would you mind continuing this passage?”, and we would just go on and on. It was so much fun.

“Well, these readings grew more popular and DoHa was getting requests for me all over the city. There were two other people I worked with at the coffee joint. There was an artist, her name was Hyla Street, and yes, wow, big surprise, another struggling actress named Carolyn Key…you might know her as Lyn Keys. She’s kinda up and coming in the independent film industry. So, it was the four of us. Oh, and my friend Sean, who still worked at Odnax. And we’d come up with ideas to do at readings. At one of ‘em, Carolyn came to one, like, dressed up like she was preganant…with, like, a basketball under her dress. And mid-reading, she sneakily spilled water on the floor and pretended to go into labor. So, the whole crowd comes to her aid and finally the basketball comes out and when they turn back to where I was on the platform, it’s just Sean up there grooming a long-haired cat with a comb. People had no idea what to think.

“Anyway, while all this was going on—wow, this car’s got good heat. While this was going on, I started working on my second book, which eventually became two separate books, Collages in B Minor and, a year after that, Palimpsests. Same sort of thing happened. Except book chains outside of the city started booking me. I took leave from the courier job and the coffee joint. It was a New England tour of, like, college towns. And I made sure we stayed OUT of Vermont. It was pretty successful. I started submitting short fiction and essays to magazines and stuff, too. So, it picked up pretty well. And from there, well…it just kinda…went.

“But…because of it all, I lost sight of a lot of stuff. Especially you. And Mom. And Dad. The last time I was here…what was that? Two years ago? Three?”

“Two.”

“It was…I was actually off the wagon a bit, at the time. And I wasn’t myself and I was…well…”

“Rude.”

“Maybe a little.”

“And stuck-up. And self-centered. And self-righteous. And horrible to be around. And a complete a—“

“Okay! I get it. I know. I was. I know I was. Look, I…I’m not gonna make excuses for anything I’ve done. To say that it was the alcohol of the drugs is just a crutch, I know. An easy way out. I’m just…sorry that I was like that to you. To all of you.” Emyl rolls down his window a crack and lights himself and Lucretia a cig. He exhales and asks, “Do you have any questions?”

“Oh, you bet I do.” She flicks ashes out her window and purses her lips, then tightens them together. Emyl waits. He would prefer her to start talking because the silence is heavy. Heavier than his jacket. Heavier that his past. Heavier than the busloads of people he’ll never see again, people he’ll never me able to make amends with. But they can wait. His sister, right here and right now, is the one person he wants to make amends with. She’s the one person who’s forgiveness he’d sacrifice all others’ forgiveness just to get.

Emyl hasn’t felt this uncomfortable around another person in ages. Even at St. Vitus, where he roomed with addicts who’d scream in the middle of the night or claw at their skin til it bled or fight one another to feel something other than their inner pain, he hsan’t felt this discomfort in a long time…

…and he actually pinpoints the last time. It was about a month before he ran off the New York City. He and his old friend, Val Brothers (wow, he hasn’t thought of her in ages, he realizes), were catching up.

The day had started when he picked her up and they decided to go to Seatown Hills, specifically to make fun of tourists. They were in his car and Val was next to him, flipping absently thru his CD case, decrying his use of CDs. Stuff about ‘this day and age’ w/ comments of ‘dinosaur’ and ‘fossil’ aimed his way. It was at times like that that Emyl’s hypothesis that Val isn’t even a real person—just an amalgamation of the stereotypical parts of annoying people—seemed to hold the most water. The example he gave himself is the fact that the 2 of them were headed into Seatown Hills, not to partake in the rampant summeriness, but to mock tourists. Maybe, he conjectured, at one time he enjoyed his haughtiness, liked looking down at others for them not living in the supposed enlightened and superior state he did. But it’d gotten old hat for him. He knew he wasn’t going to enjoy this outing and predicted that it’d be his last time going into S.H. w/ that as his m.o.
Val asks him snarkily if he owned any music made after 2005. Emyl told her the exact spot she could put his CDs as well as the procedure to achieve that success. She was taken aback and could tell there was something…up.
Emyl navigated thru traffic, having to hit the brakes when out-of-state cars stopped suddenly or threw their blinkers on randomly (usually after they’ve changed lanes). The mood in the car was charged w/ something, neither of them knew what. Val tried to cut thru it, asking him where they’re gonna park, tho she knew full well.
“F Street”. Just south of Seatown Hills. The northerner part of Seatown Park. Which means they’d hafta walk. They crossed the bridge into Seatown in silence, Val having disregarded looking for music to play. Only the staccato dub-dub of car tires over raised speed-readers could be heard over the hum of the a/c. As soon as they get over the bridge, Val ventured to ask Emyl what his deal was…
Emyl said that he just didn’t feel like being mean that day. Or really anymore. It affected him, he explained, deep down. And that maybe he and also her weren’t that so spectacular in comparison. Like maybe all these times, there’d been people watching them making comments and then also people watching and commenting on those watching. That it was a chain he’d rather not be a link in anymore. That looking on and judging all their surrounding sadness actually made him sad. That maybe just maybe, crazy idea, maybe they should just enjoy the day at the boardwalk, spend exorbitant amounts of $ on skeeball and cheese steaks and yeah…enjoy the day…instead of making it an exercise in deprecation.
Val looked at him w/ a blankness he doesn’t expect. It wasn’t until after they parked and get out that she said something. Angrily (but keeping it at a simmer, he could tell) she asked when, at what hour, did he get so high & mighty. That him not wanting to do what they’d always done, him thinking it was beneath him, was a vanity in itself.
He argued that, no, it actually wasn’t. That he just didn’t have it in him anymore and she shouldn’t get so bothered by it, which to him it looked like she is. Bothered by it. He culminated his defense in requesting from her some clarification concerning what her beef actually was, throwing in his oft-used name-label, ‘dude’ in place of her legal nomenclature.
She stopped walking and shielded her eyes from the sun, hips in a stance to reflect her annoyance. Because she was. Annoyed. Not only at the fact, she told him, that she hated hated hated being called dude but that plus also, his casualness, his affected aer of very-too-laid-back was so forced that it was measurably closing in on being excruciating. That it frustrated the uric acids right out of her.
They continued up the street, thru the parking lot and up to the boardwalk. She’d left her leather sandals in the car &, tho she wouldn’t fess up to it, regreted not having them now. The hot wood scortched her feet.
He told her she doesn’t even need to waste her insults behind the backs of total strangers. That she had a valid target right here & now in him.
The blisters, which instantly formed on her feet—on the fatty bits beneath the toes & on the heel—, did nothing to placate her annoyance. In fact, it did quite the opposite. She just wanted to know when it was—like, how & what happened—that he was struck so self-righteous and better than her.
He protested that he in fact didn’t think he was in any form better than her at all. That this was just him. That this was how he felt. That it was nothing personal. That it wasn’t a directed affront to her. That if she could just for perhaps maybe one millisecond not be so ready to take the world (in all of it’s ambiguous entirety) so personally and try not to look at things with her own fabricated (& unsubstantiated) perspective, she just might, against all dark horse odds, learn an errant iota of…something.
People flowed with & against pedestrian grains. Bodies tanned. Bodies reddened by a slapping sun. Bodies greasy w/ protective lotions. Bodies reeking of the fried victuals w/ which they stuffed themselves. Coconut. Sweat. Heat.
Over the sound of game-barkers, she beseeched Emyl, with no veiled sarcasm, to tell her when oh when did she become such a horrible person and an abhorrent influence.
He explains to her that she didn’t get it.
She asked him if maybe now, on top of being emotionally derelict towards others, she might perhaps be dim-witted also?
They were both silent. Gulls cawed and circled out over the ocean.
Needles. It felt like a bundle of fire-tipped needles were poking thru her skin with each step. Emyl noticed Val’s stride, the way she’d been trying to keep a regular gait. He asked of she’s okay. She pursed her lower lip and blew a lock of hair off her face and told him not to get so concerned about her, i.e.: someone else, i.e.: someone so beneath him. She called him ‘Saint Emyl’.
The pains on Val’s feet were akin to the ones in Emyl’s chest. He felt hurt because she was hurt. Cuz she had made it all about her. Took his feelings personally. The sun beat down unrelentingly. He was hurt cuz she wouldn’t listen to him. Really listen, without her ears.
She was hurting because she felt something she couldn’t put her finger on…a feeling of impending loss. Like she was on the verge of losing some one very important. Like the person was a needed component in her life. Tho she’d never filtering her view or words or opinions (never had & determined never to (not just w/ him because of their friendship (based on whatever it was based (that intangible instant faded from view like a laundered list left in a pocket)) had always been about open views and unfiltered conversation), not out of any my-way-or-the-macadam stance or like-it-or-lump-it aer—it was just how they’d always been) she felt that maybe just maybe one hastily-spoken word or ill-timed snide remark would drive him (& therefore his friendship) away. She tried to remember when they met. But she only came up with a blank black bank of memory. & she didn’t feel like indulging in their usual tourist stereo-typing if he wasn’t gonna throw in his ha-penny’s worth.
He asked her if she just wanted to call it (the excursion) quits. She blurted too quickly why yes, of course why not?...that’s the easy way to go.
Taken aback, he realized what she was talking about (not the excursion) and tried to clarify. But she was already spouting at him. She could find her own ride home, thank you. Didn’t need his charity. Suggested that he might as well stop trying to grip on those last few strands of relational semblance. She told him how and what he could do with himself. Emyl saw the conversation disintegrate--emotion by tattered emotion… saw it crumble like sand castles under waves. Saw the shapeless lumps of what it once was. Pain moistened her eyes & Emyl felt miles away from her, from a ‘her’ he once knew, even tho she was right there now big as angry life, leaning to one side as to give one foot a rest from the scorching wood planks.
Then, she hobbled away. Emyl stood there, his insides crumpled. He couldn’t see her face red with the battle of anger and sorrow. He felt all alone in the flowing mass of bodies. She got assimilated into the undulating swarm of people, turned ambiguous & untraceable among them, her individual person just vague outline.
He jangled the keys in his pocket. Took a breath, deeper than he’d expected. Looked up at the sun witout shielding his eyes.

That’s what Emyl is feeling, here, in the car, waiting for his sister to speak. She coughs into her hand.

“Why did you fall off the wagon? And why did you avoid visiting us? It’s not like we’re in another time zone. The city is only, like, 2 hours away from Luker Creek. Here is not that far from there.”

“I’m still not sure why I fell off the wagon. Maybe it had to do with all the attention I was getting. Like, the media and stuff. And I just didn’t know how to handle it. That’s the best I can guess. And—“

“Do you really think you can do that?”, Lucretia asks incredulously.

“What?”

“For crying out loud, Emyl! You just…just…just write it off so easily!”. She’s livid. She goes in to a voice, imitating him, “’Oh, fame sucked, so I drank a lot.’ Seriously”, now back in her own voice, “that is the most played out, over-used cliché ever! Notoriety drove me to drink. Puh-leeze! Even I can see how much of a cop out that is.”

“Look”, now Emyl is getting frustrated with her, “I didn’t say it wasn’t cliché. It was just what it was. Excuse me for not being able to put into words that suit you! What do you want from me anyway?! None of my answers or explanations are good enough for you! None of them. I should just make stuff up since yr not gonna believe me anyway!”

She spins in her seat to look at him. “Fine! Why didn’t you visit us? Ever? Why?!”

He turns the key off and yanks it out. “Get out of the car!”, he opens his door. “Get out of the car now!”, and slams the door.

Lucretia writhes about in her seat as she opens the door and gets out. Emyl yells at her over the roof. “I didn’t come home because I felt horrible about everything I did! And coming back here only reminded me of it. And I felt unforgiven by Mom and Dad. I know they forgave me for everything, but I still felt it. And being here, being told I was forgiven and that everything would be okay? It didn’t do it for me! I didn’t feel it! I felt like being told I was forgiven was just a cloaked reminder that I wasn’t. And the only way I was able to avoid those feelings was to be away from the place where I felt them the most. Here! And now, it seems, those feelings are justified. In you! You want to complain about my absence one minute and berate me about now being here the next? Fine! Go ahead! But don’t be surprised and don’t complain about it if it happens again!”

“Gonna run away again, big brother?”

“Dammit, Lucretia!” Emyl doesn’t know what gets into him, but whatever it is, it urges him to send his fist thru the driver side window.

What Emyl first takes note of is how loud it actually isn’t. It’s like a glass wrapped in a few dishtowels, bring crushed by a honeydew. That’s the image that enters his mind. He doesn’t feel the pain at first, but he does assume that pain should be involved in what has just happened. Bits of glass send off soft, tamped thuds as they hit his driver’s seat. A few shards make clicking sounds on the driveway.

He stands there, breathing heavy, looking at his hand. There are some cuts on his knuckles. They’re not deep. He can’t feel them yet. Maybe it’s the cold, he thinks. He can feel the snot accumulating up in the back of his nose. A small gust of frigid late autumn wind whips by and chills his teeth. He looks up Lucretia. She is expressionless except for her mouth. It is open a little and her teeth are clenched together.

Up at the head of the driveway, on the farthest side of the porch, the front door opens. The silhouette of their father is there. They can’t make out any features? “Everything okay? What happened?”

“Nothing. Dad. Sorry.”, Emyl calls back to him. “Think I shut the door too hard. The window just shattered. I dunno what happened.”

“I’ll get a broom. You sure yr okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine. Thanks.”

Lucretia crosses her arms and turns and walks up the driveway.

Emyl watches for a few seconds then looks back at his hand. He can’t tell if the pain he’s feeling is from the cuts or cold.

* * * *

“You don’t have to wait, Emyl.”, Lucretia says for the umpteenth time. They share a bench at the Luker Creek bus station, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee, waiting for her bus to East Eastburgh, PA where she goes to school.

The sky is grey and flat above them. Emyl glances across into the parking lot, trying to think of a way to explain the garbage bag in place of his window. He decides that the truth would probably be the best choice…but he’s still lingering on notion of fabricating something, either believable or grandiose.

“And you don’t have to keep saying that, Lu.”, he blows air across the sip lid of his coffee cup.

“And you didn’t have to volunteer to take me to the bus station. Is this some sort of last ditch effort of yours to make amends or bond or something?”

Emyl looks to his left, at the bus depot, lined with bus after bus, all the same kind, all with the orange and blue and black stripes across them, all with the serif-less NJ Transit logo on them. There are people to their right, queuing up in line for the northbound Newark bus that is pulling around. “No.”, he answers.

“Then why did you want to take me to the bus station then?”

“To spend time with you. Cuz yr my sister.” He hears another bus pulling around. It’s her bus. She sees it and gathers her stuff.

With a sigh, and rubbing her cigarette out with the tip of her sneaker, she tells him, “And yr my brother. Too bad I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

She walks calmly over to bus which hisses to stop and opens its doors for passengers to get on.

Part Two

NYC

Dog crap.

That’s all Emyl can smell. Of the thousands of redolent and odorous scents and discharges the city has to offer, why oh why is it dog waste that’s causing the most olfactorial damage?

Sean Nicholson sits on the bench with him, next to the dog run toward the north end of Union Square. The sound of the skateboarders on the south end is drowned out by the yapping and barking of canines.

Emyl is wearing big obnoxious women’s sunglasses, a stark white wig, and a straw hat with a big fake sunflower on it. The disturbing part is that He hasn’t shaved and his beard looks both creepy and awkward with the get-up. He peers thru binoculars at the entrance of Narnes & Boble on the north end of 17^th Street.

“He there yet?”, Sean asks. Sean is, as usual, nursing a hangover. Last night, Sean had gone to a party after the premier of his new film, “Cauterized”. Then there was an after-party. Then an after-after-praty. Emyl bets himself that Sean hasn’t slept in about 2 days.

“Not yet.”. There is a line formed out the door, down to the corner, and up toward 18^th Street. It’s a line to hear Emyl do a reading from his forthcoming collection, Words Rock, Math is a Jerk.

But he’s not doing it. He’s having Ramon Richards go in. But Ramon won’t be reading Emyl’s book. Instead, Ramon will be reading—not singing—lyrics of Bon Jovi songs. The line starts to undulate. They’re letting people enter.

“Okay, let’s go.”, Emyl taps Sean’s knee because, oddly enough, in this frigid weather, Sean fell asleepfor a sec.

There is a bar in view of Narnes & Boble. Emyl buys them a round and they sit in the window, watching the line surge and halt, move and stop, crawl and bump.

“It’s still weird”, asserts Sean for the zillionth time since Emyl came back from his Thxgvg trip, “seeing you drink. Seriously, c’mon, what got you back on the wagon?”

“Off.”

“Yr book?”

“Huh?”

“Yr book got you back on the wagon?”

“No, off. The phrase is ‘off-the-wagon’.”

“What phrase?”

“Just…drop it.” Sean is mess most of the time. He met Sean when the two of them worked at Odnax. They hit it off pretty well. Sean was struggling actor. Emyl was a struggling writer. The common bond united them. As each started to excel in their respective fields, their energies (for lack of a better word) energized the other. Now, they are both at the tops of their chosen games. Emyl is tired of it. And Emyl thinks Sean is becoming a cliché of it, quite possibly traipsing the line of flirting with becoming a casualty of it. Emyl hasn’t seen Sean sober is almost two weeks.

Sean has gotten puffy, too. His face bulges a little around the mouth, and his eyes have retreated noticeable millimeters back into the inebriated regions of his skull, sunken and black-ringed. Sean is also sporting a gut, no doubt make by the bubbly retentive gases of beer.

Emyl sticks to watered-down scotch.

“I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t. I ain’t yr mama. I’m just saying it’s strange seeing it. Like, I’ve known you, yeah, to fall off the wagon for a few weeks every year or so. It doesn’t dampen the impact, tho, what with yr history…”

Sean is saying something, Emyl is sure of it, but Sean is addressing a spot between the side of Emyl’s head and a framed Chet Baker poster on the wall. Emyl knows where the poster is…he saw it before he sat down and had commented to himself, ‘Ah…Chet Baker…’.

Emyl wants to answer the text he got earlier. It was from Hyla Street. She’s one of his old coffeeshop friends as well. Hyla is an artist and has made a name for herself as well. She does photography, sculpture, painting, mixed media, collages, street art, pretty much anything that’s not acting, directing, dancing, singing or whatever else could be crammed under the enveloping umbrella of ‘Art’. Her text wanted to know what he was up to.

Emyl, reveling in a daze, snaps out of it to realize that Sean has fallen asleep in his chair. Rather than wake him, he shoots Hyla a text:

“@ Shanklys Pub. Ramon doing reading @ N&B un.squ. Sean asleep in fog. Come down.”

Sean’s hand is still up, it’s fingers meeting together at a singular point, as if he were trying to make a point of something…then he just faded, but his hand was still on the subject. Sean’s mouth slides wetly open. Emyl is tempted to throw peanuts into it. Instead, he lets him sleep. His mind wanders back a bunch of years…

…To a night he had gone out with Sean and Ramon. Ramon was (and still vigilantly is) a die-hard Red Sox fan. Wear the hat and all. In fact, Emyl is guessing that Ramon is wearing one to the ‘reading’ right now (and Emyl would be correct)

So but like anyway, on this one particular night, during a week or month or season when Emyl wasn’t drinking, he went out with Sean and Ramon anyway. They wound up at some sports bar in the Midtown West area and it was crawling with Yankees fans. The Red Sox hat wasn’t entirely welcomed, nor was the guy wearing it. After about 15 minutes of sports debate and insults flying around, Ramon went to the bathroom. Then we left. Guys followed us out and there were guys waiting outside. The insults got worse and a few guys rushed at Ramon…

…(who, apparently, when he was in the bathroom, had broken the wooden handle off the plunger and slid it down his back, the way one would holster a gun)…

…who pulled from seemingly nowhere, a wooden stick. Sean laughed maniacally. Emyl actually found himself jumping between Ramon and the nearest Yankee guy saying something like, “Whoa, hold on there now, fellas”. Emyl doesn’t remember how they got a cab, but he remembers Ramon, grabbing the headrest of the passenger seat in front of him, giggling, saying, “See what you miss when you don’t drink, Emyl?”

Sean’s arm has slouched to the chair’s armrest. They are nice chairs, Emyl notes. Leather, probably. Hyla has texted back: Imma pass on that load of fun, thx. Call me l8r.

Emyl sighs.

In his head, he has a flash of memory: him looking out a door onto a roof, Ramon is spraypainting an unhinged door, it’s raining, there is banging going on behind him and odd shadows from unusual lighting behind him.

Emyl isn’t sure whether he wants to stay or go…and if he goes, to wake Sean or not.

* * * * *

If they wanted to, they’d be able to see across rooftops, across the Hudson River, and just make out the last bright smudge of sunset disappearing somewhere over the greenery of NJ.

But they are busy not paying attention. The four of them have sequestered themselves in Emyl’s ‘study’. He calls it his study, even though he doesn’t really study and a crux of his writing happens either sitting at his kitchen counter drinking coffee, or with his feet up on his couch, also drinking coffee. But the counter and the couch and the coffee are all out there in the rest of his apartment, which is crawling with celebrities, critics, peers, colleagues…none of which he wants to talk to right now. He just wants to be around his friends.

The room has elevated ceilings, like most renovated loft apartments. On the far side of the room, the side directly across from the side which is all glass windows, a ladder is propped against the wall. It gives access to a loft section, in which Emyl keeps boxes of personal stuff and not-so-personal stuff. Sean, for some reason, is up there.

Carolyn Key is sitting on the sofa (not the couch Emyl usually writes on, no, this is his ‘couch in the study’ sofa), fiddling with her phone. Hyla is sitting at his desk, trying half-heartedly to solve a Rubik’s Cube. Emyl is leaning sideways against one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking over his shoulder out it, intermittently squinting or extending his head forward to get a better look at something.

The sound of revelry makes it’s way back to them. There are two ways in or out: thru the door on the side, or thru the hallway under the loft. The hallway leads to a door to the kitchen. Which is where Emyl would love to go to make himself a pot of coffee.

“Why are we hiding from yr own party, Emyl.”, Carolyn drones, not even inflecting it as a question, but stating it. She doesn’t look up from her phone. Hyla whacks the cube with a screwdriver she has somehow found. Emyl doesn’t recall owing a screwdriver.

“I’m not hiding. I wanted to talk to you guys. About some…stuff I’m gonna be doing.”

“Then why don’t you get monkey-boy out of the loft”, Carolyn suggests, aiming her thumb up.

“I heard that, you hornet’s nest of a horror show.”, Sean calls down from above as he swings his legs over the edge of the loft, then leans back on his elbows. “Dude, Emyl, you’ve got a lotta useless stuff up here, man.”

“I know.”, he walks over to his desk, where there is still about two fingers of watered down scotch left in his glass. He takes a sip.

“So, Mr. Mysterio, what’s this stuff you need to talk to us about?”, Hyla asks, spinning herself in circles in the swivel chair. Her straight black hair fans out as she spins.

“Could you toss me a beer first?”, Sean asks, hunching forward.

“I don’t have any beer in here.”

“You fascist!”

Carolyn gets up. “I gotta use the can anyway, I’ll grab you one on the way back.”, she mumbles as she walks down the hallway. Hyla gets up and walks over to the other door, opens it just a sliver and peers out.

“Look at all the low-life, name-dropping, self-absorbed…”, she shakes her head. “I’m kinda sick of it”, she nods at Emyl.

“Which is what I wanna talk to you all about.”, he responds back. Hyla’s eyebrows crumple…not in confusion, but in interest. She shuts the door and returns to the swivel chair.

“Oh, do tell”, she goads, “You don’t have to wait for”, she points down the hallway, “Princess Diva-pants.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“What’s this?”, Sean calls from his vantage point in the loft. He holds up a plaque of some sort.

Emyl squints at it. “What does it say?”

“’Association of Beleaguered Authors’. Some sort of award?”

“I can honestly say I have no idea. I’ve won so many awards, I just don’t care anymore.”

“Tired of the whole racket?”, Hyla tries again.

Emyl sips his drink and smiles over the rim at her, without answering.

“Sick of critics?”, she throws in.

Emyl walks over to the ladder. “Dude, come on down before you fall.”

“No.”, Sean says, “I’m enjoying looking thru yr abundance of tacky accolades.”, as he leans back and tries to grab something else. Emyl returns to the window and peers intently out.

“Emyl”, Hyla speaks seriously, “What’s going on? You’ve been staring out that window all night. And no but like really seriously, is everything okay?”

“Yeah. Well, no. But it will be. Or it’s not. Or it won’t.”, he stops, his own train of response having confused him. The door at the end of the hallway creaks open and Carolyn’s heels clack-clack as she comes back. Hyla sits on the sofa. Carolyn sits next to her. Since they are all facing him, he decides he’ll start.

“I’m tired of all this”, is not how he wanted to start, but it’s what comes out. “I’m tired of all the media coverage and, and, and the parties and the labels and…kinda tired of writing, too. I’ve become some sort of something that I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Like, I’m a well that other people draw their waters from…but, like, not in a good way…this isn’t making sense, now that I’m saying it.”

“Then stop.”, adds Carolyn. Hyla gives her a side-long glance.

“Where’s my beer?”, asks Sean.

Carolyn turns to him. “Oh. Yeah. Oops. Sorry.”, she says without the slightest trace of being sorry for it.

“So,”, ventures Hyla, trying to flesh it out, “yr just sick of all the…like, the lifestyle? The fame and stuff?”

“In a sense, yeah. But, also partially no. I mean, I love writing. Or, at least loved it at one point. My previous two books had no…me in them. It was almost like I knew which button to press to produce a story, like I’m housing a hundred monkeys in my brain, all chained to typewriters, trained in how I do things, and they’re just haphazardly pounding away at the keys, producing some sort of coherent randomness that I can pass off as ‘mine’.

“Like”, continues Hyla, “a public will buy anything, as long as yr name is on it.”

“Kiii-iii-iii-iiinda”, Emyl relents. He turns and looks out the window, then back to his friends. “I did something. Or, rather, I’m gonna do something. About to do something.”

He takes out his cell phone and makes a call. The only thing the other three hear is, “Yeah, it’s Emyl.”, “Yeah.”, “I’m ready whenever you can.”, “Uh-huh.”, “Five minutes? Great.”, “Thanks. Bye.”

He looks up at Sean. “Hey, there’s a telescope up there. See if you can find it.” Sean scrambles back out of view. Emyl goes over to his desk and takes his binoculars out of his drawer. Hyla gets up. Carolyn just looks bored and impatient.

“Is this it?”, calls down Sean. He’s holding a long cardboard box.

“What’s in it?”. Sean shrugs. “Well, open it.”

Sean opens it. “It’s not a telescope.”

“Okay…”, Emyl feels like a parent, over-simplifying so that a child would understand, “…then find the telescope. I don’t think it’s in a box.”

Hyla is looking out the window, her hands on her hips. “What am I looking for?”, she squints out and looks back and forth.

“The other side of the river. New Jersey.”. Sean creates a commotion up in the loft. Things fall and clunk together. An almost inaudible, “I’m okay”, issues down to them. Carolyn makes a show of getting up and joining Emyl and Hyla at the window, huffing and dragging her feet.

“There’s, like, tons of people out there in yr apartment, Emyl.”, she points out. “They’re eating yr food and drinking yr booze and probably making a mess of stuff and talking about you behind yr back.”

“Let them.”, he raises the binoculars to his eyes and scans the far riverbank. Nothing yet.

“Got it.”, Sean shimmies down the ladder with the telescope. On the way over, he stops at Emyl desk, down’s the rest of Emyl’s scotch, “Ahh!”, and hands him the telescope.

Emyl raises the binoculars again and sees what he’s looking for, then starts extending the tripod’s legs.

“There’s something across the river.”, Hyla observes. “Lights.” She steps closer to the window. “Does it spell something out?”

Emyl trains the telescope on the first word. Carolyn is the first to look. “Big deal. It’s yr first name.”

“Sentences read right to left, m’dear.”, Emyl smirks. Carolyn returns to the lens piece. Hyla grabs the binoculars from Emyl.

Carolyn stands upright and looks at him with, what Emyl would describe as, disbelief. Even disappointed shock. A how-could-you? sort of look. Sean bends in to look.

“You did that?”, Carolyn asks.

“Emyl…”, Sean reads aloud. Hyla pans back and forth across it, a small smile growing on her face.

“Yup.”, Emyl answers proudly.

“What are you trying to accomplish with that?”, Carolyn pries further.

“…Garrets…”, continues Sean.

“I’m tired. I’m tired of all of it. I don’t wanna be famous anymore.”

“…is…”, Sean keeps going.

“I wanna be un-famous. I wanna see if I can pull myself out of the public eye.”

“…a…”

“Like this? A bit over the top don’t you think?”

“Not at all.”

“…hack.”, Sean stands up, “Brilliant!”

“Yr an idiot”, Carolyn concedes. Emyl is not looking at Hyla’s smile. He’s looking at Carolyn, who, for whatever reasons of her own, looks like she’s just been betrayed.

* * * * *

Emyl is standing out on the sidewalk, smoking, in front of the Hudsucker Hotel on 50-somethingth Street, he doesn’t remember, nor does he try to look for street signs. His wool hat is pulled down to his eyebrows and his fingertips are freezing in his fingerless gloves, but he still continues to wear them day after day. Last night’s generous dusting of snow has left banks of dirty slush on the curbs and random patches of slick ice on the sidewalks. His wool coat is doing it’s best to keep him warm, but is failing overall. He’s waiting for Ramon.

He looks over his shoulder into the hotel. Right behind the glass doors, two escalators extend up into brightness. The escalators are lit from above and the sides. They look like two conveyor belts made of light. He has been here before, years ago. Up at the top of the escalators, a corridor extends off to the left which leads to the infamous Hudsucker Library Bar. It’s a bar of leather and wood and green accents and bookshelves out of reach, lining the room from the middle of the walls up to the high ceilings. And, there is a fireplace, if he remembers correctly. Hyla is having her opening here. She has a new series of photographs, which, she told Emyl, she made at the last minute because her previous photos, the ones she was going to exhibit, just seemed to her ‘trite and jaded.’, a label she ironically borrowed from a critic years back. She and Carolyn and Sean are up there now, Sean no doubt snuggling warmly into the arms of alcohol.

Emyl spots a Red Sox hat bobbing up the sidewalk. As Ramon nears, he blurts out, “Remember this place?”

“Yup, yup. I sure do. Twenty-dollar tumblers of bourbon.”

“When we couldn’t afford it”, the two enter the hotel and ascend the escalator.

“And we got loud.”

“And kicked out.”

“Did we ever tell Hyla about that?”, Ramon wonders.

“Maybe. Maybe that’s why she picked this joint. For nostalgic yuks.”

“Maybe. Oh, hey, sorry I couldn’t make it to yr shindig the other night. Sean and Hyla told me about yr self-sabotaging thing yr doing. I don’t understand it, but I support ya, buddy. And anything I can do to…I guess…help? If I can, I will. Was the Bon Jovi idea part of it?”

“Kinda. How did it go over?”

“Not well.”, Ramon nods, then looks at Emyl, “But I’m gonna assume that ‘not well’ was what you were kinda aiming to do anyway.”

Emyl dramatically gives a guilty shrug.

“I hear Carolyn’s pissed at you, too.”, Ramon adds.

“Let her be. She’ll get over it.”

They reach the top and head down the corridor. It’s warm, Emyl guesses from the fireplace which, when they enter the room, he realized he was dead-wrong about. There is no fireplace. There is an old-timey radiator off in the corner, but no certainly not, it couldn’t generate this amount of warmth, could it?

The room is packed. Half way up the walls, Hyla’s prints stand out in stark relief against the muted tones of the room. Hyla is across the room, talking with a small group of people, nodding, smiling, looking like she’s actually enjoying it. Sean and Carolyn are at the bar, small glasses with brownish liquids sit in front of them. People are milling around, looking at their programs, pointing at the prints, tildes of confusion crinkling their brows.

Emyl (nor Ramon, nor anyone for that matter) needs to study the photographs to make sense of them. They are simply just close-ups of smashed and crumbled Oreos. Emyl smiles a little on the outside, but even bigger on the inside. Hyla notices them and excuses herself from her group. “What do ya think?”, she asks them.

“I’m hungry.”, says Ramon flatly.

Emyl waves his fingers at the prints with a smile and says, “What are you doing, Hyla?”

With a knowing smile back, she says, “I’ll tell you later. Needless to say, you slightly inspired me.”

Ramon gives Emyl an overly-dramatic ‘well, how about that!’ face. “Go drink, guys.”, she urges, “It’s all free.”

“I like drinks and free.”, Ramon goes over to Sean and Carolyn.

“Inspired you?”, Emyl is afraid to ask.

“The short of it is that I’m tired of the whole industry, too. So, I’m gonna start off doing things no one expects. Things that are…how should I put it…?”

“Safe?”, he suggests.

“We’ll go with that for now.”, she acquiesces.

“I see the entire Art Pack is here tonite”, a voice says, as a body comes through the crowd over to them. The body is short and bald…not the kind of comb-over bald, but the kind of bald when someone shaves their entire head and keeps it clean-shaven because they were beginning to go bald. That confuses Emyl, the fact that people shave their head sparklingly spear bald because they want to camouflage the fact that they are indeed going bald. Emyl also doesn’t understand it because he still has a full head of hair.

Anyway, this short bald guy also wears black thick-rimmed glasses, the kind people in their 30’s and 40’s wear to ‘look’ intelligent and brainy, but ultimately come off looking like some neophytic trend-jumper who’s trying just way too dang hard. This particular guy here, Emyl knows for a provable fact to be in his early 50’s.

And this here guy? He’s also wearing a shirt with a saying it, which unhilariously reads ‘I know I’m ironic’. Emyl has a long-standing self-applied rule: do not wear graphic or phrase-laden shirts after the age of 25 (30 if yr a woman). A band t-shirt is apropos once in a blue moon. Emyl, when wearing T’s, usually wears a single-color one. A friend described it as ‘being utopian’, which Emyl never really understood. But this guy? With the glasses and stupid shirt? Emyl wants to punch him. Instead, though, he says, “Hello Fred.”

“Mr. Garrets.”, he shakes Emyl’s hand and turns to Hyla, “Ms. Street.”

“I’m sorry”, she shakes his hand, “who are you again?”

“This”, Emyl informs her, not even trying to hide the overt kindness that’s coating his disdain, “is Fred Optalmech, art critic for the Greenwich Sound.”

“Oh, yeah,”, Hyla nods and sips a drink that Emyl has no idea when it got into her hands…which makes him want one. “I’ve heard you’ve panned many of my shows.”

“Quite possibly.”, Fred assents, “But don’t take it too personally. Art, after all, is all relative.”

“Of course it is”, Hyla agrees. “What other aspect of popular culture is so universally relative that it needs something as useless as an art critic imposing boundaries on it? In fact, don’t take this personally, I think the phrase and office of”, she makes quote-fingers, “art critic is about as valid as being, oh, let’s say, a dragon tamer. Or a CPA for leprechauns. Or, oh! Life coach. That’s also a good made-up non-profession. By the way, are you friends with any unicorn wranglers? Or professional shoppers? Oh, and by the way”, she smiles at his face, reddened by hold his tongue, “it’s Mrs. Street.”

It’s Emyl’s turn to look awkwardly at her, which he does just as the critic turns just a bit less red, probably in hopes of latching on to some bit of juicy gossip. “You’re married?”, he asks.

She shakes her head, “Nope.”, and just looks at him. Not sure what to say or do, he slinks back into the crowd.

“I gotta say”, Emyl and her head over to Sean, Ramon, and Carolyn, “you sure know how to make someone feel awkward.”

“Thanks!”, she beams. Carolyn is talking to Sean and Ramon is behind her, ripping napkins into tiny bits and stealthily placing them in her hair. There are hugs all around and Carolyn turns to Emyl. Her eyes are slightly bloodshot, so he know what’s about the pour forth from her is gonna have a measurable sheen of sentiment to it. “Emyl, y’know, whatever it is yr doing with whatever it is. I dunno. I think yr selling yrself short.”

“How do you mean?”

“Like, c’mon. Like, we all of us, we all did the struggling thing, the starving artist thing. And with all the hard work we put into getting where we are?”

Emyl waits for more. When there isn’t any, he asks, “Wait, was that a question?”

“What I’m saying is”, wow, she’s kinda trashed, he thinks, “We all got here together. Why would you wanna leave it?”

“I’m not sure I—three fingers Tullamore Dew, two fingers water, please—not sure I understand. You think I’m doing something against you? Against us as a group of friends?”

“Aren’t you?”

“No. Dear God no. My friendships with you—with all of you—is something I’m gonna have for ages. I hope. I’m just tired of the whole fame game and I want out. And I wanna see if I can do it with my own two hands.”

“Why?”, she demands.

“Cuz I’m not happy, Car.”

“But I am.”

“I’m glad you are. Stay that way. Please. By all means, stay happy. I’m not begrudging anyone their happiness. All I ask is that you let me try to find mine.”

“Like this though?”

“It’s worth a shot.”. With that, Carolyn just stares at him, then excuses herself. Emyl notices that Ramon and Sean are gone too…as well as, like, a quarter of the guests. And the people that are left are whispering in each others’ ears, pointing out of the bar, and leaving. Hyla sips her drink.

“Where’s everyone going? And where’s Sean and Ramon?”

“Doing something stupid, no doubt.”, she turns around and places her elbows on the bar.

“Should we go see what’s going on?”

“Watch them be idiots, you mean?”

“Of course”, he places his drink in the bar next to her. “Their inanity is always good for a larff.”

“Okay, we’ll check it out. Just promise me you’ll never use the word ‘larff’ in a sentence ever again.”

“I can’t promise anything.”. They exit the bar. There is a crowd of people at the top of the escalator. Carolyn breaks from the crowd. Seeing the two of them, she wanders over.

“What’s going on?”, Hyla asks her.

“Sean and Ramon are having a race. One going up the down escalator, one going down the up escalator. It’s ridiculous.”

“Obviously”, Emyl agrees as he goes over and makes his way thru the crowd. Sean is positioned at the top of the up escalator. Down at the bottom, Ramon gets into position. There is a hotel security guard down there and, for a second, Emyl thinks they’re gonna get shut down. But, standing behind Sean, a walkie-talkie crackles, “Ready up there?”. The security guard, a short squat man with a horseshoe of curly red hair around his bald spot and a hand-stitched name tag saying ‘Wendell’, answers “All set up here.”

Emyl pats Sean on the shoulder and whispers in his ear, “Be the escalator.”

“I am an escalator.”, he announces.

Emyl can hear people behind him shouting out wagers.

“Ready…”, the walkie-talkie says statically.

“Hey, Emyl…”, he picks out from the crowd. It’s Carolyn’s voice. Or, wait, no. Hyla’s?

“…set…”

“…you might wanna—“

“…go!”

* * * * *

East Eastburgh, PA

Patchouli. And vanilla something. Sandalwood, too? Definitely strawberries and over hints of citrus. That’s all Lucretia can smell. Which surprises her, after the key she just inhaled back in the seclusion of the store bathroom. It’s where she always goes for a quick bump. Her manager here at Body World Palace hasn’t caught on yet. But, the bringing of the bump habit to work is a relatively new thing. Lucretia thinks that maybe sometimes she’s being careless—driving while in possession of substances, doing blow at work, being generally lit in public. But her sense of wanting to do what she’s doing has been continuously overriding her common sense. Hence slacking on her studies. Hence calling out of work fake sick on occasion. Hence not showing up for band practice. Hence, again, neglecting her studies. She neglects one thing for another which she winds up neglecting.

Her spring semester is a full load—mostly pre-requisites for a major she has yet to procrastinate declaring—Western Civ II, Health & Applied Physical Education, Statistics, Intro to World Lit, Behavioral Psychology, Gender and the Modern World. It’s only been a few months, but she’s already creeping up on being way behind in all of them. Plus also she has work, here, in this chain store of body lotions and soaps. Plus also her band, Sheez Pist, is getting slowly booked around town in the college bars and coffee joints. Plus also, she’s kinda just caring less and less about all of it.

“Could you stock the crème brulee face cream up front please, Lucretia?”, her manager asks, walking by. Her manager is Arthur Gactch, a man as wide as he is tall. His red work aporn hangs off his gut the way an awning looms protectively over a sidewalk. He has a reek about him, like dank rot covered in the lotions and scents he hawks. But, aside from the odor and his shape, which tends to encroach on the space around it, he’s actually very nice. That is, until his bad side gets uncovered. Then, he’s a bitter wretch.

“Sure, Arty.”, she says, and “Hey, Arty?”

“Yes, Lucretia.”

“Hey, I was wondering if I could have next Wednesday off? Like, I’ve got, like, a ton of homework and I’m kinda slipping, grade-wise, so I wanna y’know regain my foothold. Academically, y’know? It’s not like no I’m not doing bad bad but it’s getting there, like, encroaching there, and I think…”, as she speaks, she is resolved to actually concentrate on her studies the next Wednesday. She already has her mental planner marked up with graphite up until then, and truly truly truly wants to set aside that time to truly truly truly catch up on what she’s been disregarding. As she asserts herself to 100% follow through on this, some other region of her resolve is having quite a rough time of being convinced. She also realizes that she’s rambling, “…and then and so the one class I mean is, like, I’ve got tons of math work in both, right? Like, I think all my professors get together at some haunted grotto somewhere and plan to have things due all on the same day. Y’know, just to frustrate me. Which it does! I get so…”. And she makes the mental link that it’s the cocaine driving her jaw to open so frequently and let all these useless words careen out, of their own free will and volition. She can feel an aching tightness in her jaw bone socket. Which might be good, since she can’t feel her sinuses or throat at all.

And as she yammers, and as Arthur’s face twists in confusion (and disgust at how Lucretia’s jaw is scraping sideways back and forth between sentences, and the smacking sounds her tongue is making), she wonders about how important it all really is.

She can’t believe it. She’s having her ‘what’s it all about?’ moment. And she can see herself having it, like she’s watching herself contemplate it.

School.

Family.

Job.

Life.

The future.

What’s it all mean?, she poses to herself. Like, it all ends in death, right? I’m not gonna ultimately accomplish anything. Whatever I do do won’t last. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything and if I fell off the face of the planet, it wouldn’t make one lick of difference in the long run. And, in the short run, nothing I do will add up to anything.

Her mind and mouth go a kilometer a nanosecond. She doesn’t even know where to start to regain control.

* * * * *

She stares at the black laces of her red Chunk Trainer Five-Star sneakers. There is linoleum under them—an unpolished linoleum, scuffed with dark skids of past sneakers. She can feel her heart slowing, the pounding in her ears getting less percussive…not by much, but still noticeably so.

She’s in the back office. The past half hour has been a blur. She remembers blathering ceaselessly to Arthur, the actual words of which she can’t even remember, the entire structure of the conversation currently hushed and muted in her mind. She remembers somehow being on the floor and still carrying on her one-sided conversation, this time with people looking worriedly down on her. She remembers paper towels drenched in cold water being pressed onto her face and the back of her neck. And now she’s here, in the office, among file cabinets and papers and damaged goods as of yet not sent back to distributors and product back-stock and company handbooks and store guideline books and bits of shelving and rubber-banded signs and clusters of sign holders and promotional merchandise and unfolded red aprons stuffed arbitrarily among it all. She concentrates on listening to herself breathe.

The door creaks open. It’s Arthur. He shuts the door halfway and sets a cup of ice water down on the desk next to Lucretia. She chugs it hungrily, each gush of coldness more refreshing than the last, almost as if it won’t slake her thirst. She finishes it in no time at all, ending with a relieved, “Guuhhh…Thanks.”

“So, what’s going on, Lucretia?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

She hears echoes of her brother in his voice, but without the self-righteousness. “I’m not, I…”. She sighs. “School is just rough and I’m pushing myself.” Arthur pulls up a seat across from her. His stench somehow stays in orbit around him and doesn’t emanate too far out. She goes on, “I dunno. Maybe my nerves are shot.”

“Or maybe yr coked up.”, Arthur assesses flatly.

“What?”, this catches her off guard.

Arthur eyes the doorway, then leans in a bit closer. “I know the signs, Lucretia. Plus, you somehow dropped a bit onto the sink spigot.” She’s speechless. He continues, “Look. What you do to yrself is yr own thing. But here? At work? I know it’s not brain science or rocket surgery, but you gotta be level-headed. What if the verbal jibber jabber you gave me was given to a customer instead? You’d be fired. I might get fired for having you obviously under the—look, Lucretia. Whatever you do, whatever. But keep it out of work. You’ve gotta make a few boundaries for yourself or else…well…chaos. I learned how to draw the line. So must you.”

She sits silently. Then it hits her: Arthur learned how to draw a line? A line for what?

“Wait, what?”, she says.

“Hmm?”

“You…hang on…you draw a line too?”

“I do.”

“For what?”

“My personal life is my personal life. As it should be and as it should stay. So should yours. Next time,”, he stands up and heads to the door, “you’ll be either written up or fired, depending on the circumstances. But for now, tonite, go home. Yr done for the night. And I’m giving you tomorrow off. Get yr head straight.” He steps out the door, then leans back in, “Or straight enough.”

“Wait, Arty!”, she calls. He pokes his head back in. “What, um, what was I saying out there. I don’t really…I don’t…”

“Most of it was gibberish. You started talking about a day off, then…even I couldn’t figure most of it out. And you decided to lay down on the floor too.”. He shrugs and leaves. Lucretia’s mouth is dry again and every tooth feels cottony. She sits there, staring at the back of the office door, with its laminates of Department of Labor Standards and Practices hanging above tacked-up OSHA policies.

* * * * *

“Heatherette!”, I hear my name roll down the hill, then thru the trees to where we are standing, waiting. Ned Dendelback has been telling us the miniscule problems he’s been having with Lucretia. Nothing big but he can see it becoming, like, more. Like, a possibility of becoming big. Which is why I feel like a bit of a hypocrite out here, waiting with him for her so we can smoke a joint and down some 40’s.

I can barely make out the back of the 3-story dorm boys dorm, Daryll Hall, and I can just see a small sliver of the girls dorm, Annie Hall. Lucretia’s voice seems to be coming from somewhere in between. She knows where to find us though. The path to this ‘secret smoking spot’ is well worn. And I highly doubt the actual secretiveness of it. With a well-worn path, we are probably not the first students to call this patch of woods our own, and I’m certain we won’t be the last. The location of the spot must have been handed down from previous classes as I’m sure we will also tell incoming students of its location as well.

My breath tumbles out in rolling clouds, mixing with Ned’s and Nikkolette Puzzleton’s. My hands are thrust as deep into my pockets as they can go, straining against the threads that make them pockets and not pointless jacket flaps. I have on two scarves and a wool hat. My down jacket covers a sweater covers a hoodie covers a long-sleeve shirt covers a thermal shirt. I can only assume that Ned and Nikkolette are attired likewise.

Lucretia comes crunching through the brush and over thick blankets of dead leaves, evidence that she has foregone the path itself.

“You’ll never guess what happened?”, she’s slightly out of breath.

“Yr right, I won’t”, huffs Ned. We had agreed to postpone his anger, to put it off til after we’d smoked. He’s not thrilled about playing second fiddle to Lucretia’s burgeoning new lifestyle. She gives him a sideways look—

--(which, this sideways look, is known and has passed through the generations of her mother’s side of the family, the Argos line. It involves the eyes glaring at a subject (in this particular case, Ned) as the head slowly turns the opposite way. It’s known as ‘The Argos Look’)—

--then looks back and forth between me and Nikkolette, saying “My boss? Like, my manager? He, I think he does drugs, too. Cuz, like, at work, I was totally tweaking and he had to pull me off the floor—literally off. the. floor, and into the back room until I calmed down. But anyway, he said something like he knows how to control his habits and I hafta learn to control mine? Something stupid like that. But then he then now I have, like, 2 days off. He told me to go home. Get some rest….”

“Have some chicken soup and drink plenty of liquids too?”, sarcastically asks Nikkolette.

“Yeah, right!”, Lucretia answers, fishing thru her pockets, “Take an oatmeal bath and some Tussin!”.

“Sit on the couch and watch soaps.”, I throw in.

“Get better and feel better.”, Ned tries. It silences us all. Lucretia rolls her eyes at him. Like, right in his face. And she huffs again.

“Ah-ha.”, she says as she pulls a joint out from her inner pocket. I reach down for the 4-pack of 40oz Eglantine beers and pass them out. They’re twist-offs. I love how much we ooze classiness. Lucretia sparks the pinner and passes it to Ned, who only takes a small drag. The puff of smoke he finally inhales is the size of a marble. I take a small pull, too. I have tons of homework awaiting me and I don’t wanna be incapacitated and unable to do it. I just wanna take the edge off my day. I pass it to Nikkolette.

“Heatherette, do we have any homework for Psyche?”, Lucretia asks me. She hasn’t been at the last two lectures.

“Yeah.”, I say matter-of-factly, “We’ve gone over chapters 5 through 8, done the review questions at the end of each chapter. Oh, and we have a test, like, tomorrow. Which I’m going to study for after this.”

“Is it a lot?”

“Yeah, Lu. It is a lot.”, I try to make my voice sound like a suggestion, like I’m advising her to do the homework and study. I don’t think she picks up on it.

“Do you wanna come down to Raisa Bar?”, she asks, with a ‘pweeze, pweeze, pweeze’ inflection to it. “I have to meet someone there at 11.”

“I have way too much homework.”, I shake my head.

“I’ll go with you.”, Nikkolette volunteers.

“Me too.”, Ned pipes in.

“No, Ned. I think you should stay here. It’s gonna be a girl’s thing.”

“Why do you do that?!”, Ned erupts.

“Do what, honey?”

“And that?! Yr always pushing me off to the side, and when I say something about it, you apply a cutesy little nickname to me. Why are you pushing me away all the time?”

This is what we didn’t want to happen but, truth be told, Lucretia has been avoiding Ned for the past week. It’s actually been since around Thxgvg, but it’s more visible now. I’m not too sure why, but I think Ned knows. Tonight, before Lucretia got here, he expressed a dumptruck-sized load of worry for her. He didn’t say anything too specific, but kept referring to ‘what Lucretia is doing to herself’, which, God’s honest truth, could be anything. Lucretia could be branding herself, building a meth lab, running guns, laundering money, who knows? All I know is that it’s slowly tearing Ned up inside.

She raises her palm to his face and, not even looking at him, says “I’m not having any of this right now.”

Ned inhales deeply and walks off back toward campus. His steps are slow, as if he wants Lucretia to call after him and tell him to no wait come back. But Lucretia doesn’t and Ned keeps going. The lights from the dorm reflect off the frost on the grass. I want to say something. Tell Lucretia how unfair and mean she’s being. But I know I won’t stop there. I’ll tell her how much I’m worried about her lack of presence in class and her recent tendencies to not share anything and be aloof. I don’t want to get into it right now. Mainly because I’m freezing.

“Well, I’m heading in cuz I’m freezing”, I say after taking one last drag on the joint and pass it to Nikkolette.

“Study for us, too”, Lucretia says, making a joke of it. But I don’t find it funny at all.

* * * * *

“Nikky, I’ll be right back.”, Lucretia tells me as she slides off her stool and heads toward the restrooms. Some one I don’t know, a guy, follows her in to the same restroom. I’m kinda too buzzed to care and I return to my free Midori sour. The bartender has been giving me buy-backs all night and I’m not about to neglect a good thing!

I wish Heatherette woulda came out. I like hanging out with her. Her, Lu, and I have this crazy fun chemistry when we all go out. It’s like…it’s like the rest of the world could burn and it wouldn’t matter cuz we have each other. And all the things we might find unfunny on our own are super-funny when we’re together. I’m not crazy about the Bee Eff Eff phrase, but it fits us.

And I’m not sure I understand what Lu is doing with that Ned guy. He’s okay, I guess. I mean, he doesn’t really hang out the way we hang out. And Heatherette is kinda pulling away from our social outings, too. I understand that she wants to do good in school and all that stuff. But she’s in college! We’re all in college! She’s supposed to be letting loose and going nuts and all that.

But that Ned guy? I dunno. He hangs out with us sometimes. But I never hear about he and Lucretia hanging out, like, alone. Just the two of them. They seemed kind of sweet on each other back in the Fall. But I dunno what happened. Lu doesn’t seem to care for him—or even about him—anymore. So, I dunno why she keeps him around. Like, why she hasn’t called the whole thing off.

Lucretia slides onto the stool next to me. She has a manic grin and taps my thigh w/ her balled up hand. I look at it. She opens it up a little bit and there is a deux-bag (2 ounces) almost filled with a white powder. I actually debate with myself about doing it. The bartender lays two shots in front of us.

“What’s this?”, Lu asks.

“Black Haus.”, he smiles. It kinda creeps me out now, but hey, free shots!

We do the shots, and Lu gives him a “Thanks, Princess.”

“I don’t know”, I shrug at Lu. “I have a 9 o’clock class in the morning. And I skipped it last week. If I do that”, I nod at the bag, “I’m gonna be a mess.”

“Aw, c’moooonnn”, she practically begs. “I don’t wanna be the only one bein’ all crazy like.”

“Lu, if this was a Friday or something, yeah. I’d be all over it. But I can’t tonite. If there’s any left by the weekend, sure.”

Her shoulders heave with a short laugh. “Heathy, this is cocaine. It ain’t gonna last til the weekend. Heck, it probably won’t last ‘til dawn.”

“I’m bowing out on this one, gal.”, I state, drawing my lips in and opening my palms to further get the point across that it’s, like, not debatable. To drive the point home that that’s that and that’s all there is to it. I also can’t tell if I’m swaying and the room is staying still or if the room’s swaying and I’m staying still. Alcohol I can recoup from. Coke, not so much.

The bar is pretty crowded for a weekday. I notice half of the people from my classes. Most of them, like me, are under 21, with fake IDs that are so obviously fake, I often wonder how, in the name of truth, justice, and the American way, we are allowed to drink. Maybe the bar owners just want the money. Maybe the bar owners could care less about their clientele. The thought of that makes me not even want to be here now. Like, if they don’t care about me, why should I be giving them my money?

“Lu, I—“, I turn to talk to her, but she’s not there. I pivot on my stool and look around. Nothing. I stand up on the stool rungs to look over heads. I walk to the bathroom, swaying only a little.

“Lu!”, I call out as I eyeball the stall doors. “Lucretia Garrets! You in here?”, I check out the feet that I can see. Then I realize I have no idea what kind of shoes or sneakers she’s wearing. “Lu!”. She’s not in here. I go back out into the bar and make a circle around the room. People are playing pool, throwing darts, crammed into table, playing Quarters or card games, laughing, nodding, talking, drinking, enjoying, smiling, frowning, whispering, pointing, sitting, standing, leaning, smoking, coughing, blinking…but none of them are Lucretia. I go back to the bar and ask the bartender if he has seen her. He says he doesn’t, then offers me another drink.

“No, I hafta…”, but I don’t finish. I throw on my coat and leave.

Maybe it’s the warmth of the booze in me, but the cold winter air doesn’t really it me until, like, 20 seconds after I leave. The music from the bar is muffled. There are small clusters of customers outside, smoking or talking on cellphones, walking those tight ellipses people tend to make while talking on a phone. No one out here is Lucretia either.

She wasn’t in the bar and she’s not out here. Maybe she went back to school. I head one block down to get the bus.

Sitting on the bench, waiting, is Lucretia. I wobble up to her and sit down. “I lost you.”, I say.

“I’m right here.”, she’s staring at her mittened hands. She doesn’t look happy.

“Look,”, I say, “if yr mad at me for not partaking with you, I’m sorry. I just have a ton of stuff tomorrow and I know that if I do do it, then everything, all my plans for tomorrow, are gonna get thrown off.”

“No, it’s not that.”. I can’t stand when people withdraw and clam up when, like, two minutes ago, they were all full of smiles and joy.

“Then what is it?”

She takes in a strong, deep breath and exhales it with as much gusto. “It’s nothing.”, Then, in case I don’t believe her (I assume), she reiterates, “Seriously, though. It’s nothing. I just…got to thinking about stuff which led to other stuff which led me to some stuff I don’t want to think about. And, like, trying to concentrate on not thinking about it made me think about it even more. That ever happen to you?”

“Yeah.”, I smile. “Like, if I’m hungry and not around food, I tell myself, ‘Okay, don’t think about food’. But then I think about myself not thinking about food which means I am thinking about food. And then and then I think about something, like, totally different, but that totally different thing become the thing I’m thinking about to not think about food…which brings me back to food!”

Lucretia smiles. I’m glad she does. Bus headlights crawl up a low rise and shine toward us, their reflections severe and amplified on the ice patches that spot the road.

* * * * *

I’m jarred from my sleep. It must be Nikkolette. I squint at my alarm clock. Almost 3 a.m. Nikkolette sounds like she’s taking great pains to be as quiet as possible, which is making her louder than she probably thinks. I switch on my bed-side lamp.

She looks at me as if she’s been caught doing something, then relaxes, “Sorry”, she whispers loudly, “I was trying to be as quiet as possible.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Yes, mom, I do.”, she smiles. She actually seems to like it when I slip into maternal mode. It’s not often, but it does happen. I think it’s because she misses her mother, whom she’s apparently close to. Maybe I’m her surrogate while she’s here at school. Maybe she likes having someone trying to look out for her.

“Where’s Lu? Did she come back with you?” I lean up on my elbow. My other arm flops over the top of the comforter. The room is noticeably colder that it is under the covers.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“We got on the bus together. I think. I’m pretty sure. I dunno, I’m kinda wasted. And so was she. I’m pretty sure she was with me on the bus. Which means she musta gotten off too, right?” She’s leaning against her bureau, wobbling a bit, trying to take off her socks, but can’t seem to reach down far enough of lift her foot up high enough. She sits down on the foot of my bed to do it. Which doesn’t seem to help much.

“Uhhhh….you tell me.”

Nikkolette sighs hard. “I’m not—yes! Yes she was on the bus with me.”

“Did she get off the bus with you?”

She almost falls forward off the bed, but manages to steady herself. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“This is Lucretia we’re talking about here.”

She stands up and walks over to her tiny closet. “What’s that supposed to mean?”, she takes off her top and pants and wriggles violently into a matching pajama set. They are covered in rubber duckies.

I don’t want to go into it, but I did bring it up. “It means”, I explain, “that she hasn’t really been looking out for herself lately. Don’t stop me. You see it too. I know you do. I’m not her mother or anything either. I just worry about her is all. That’s all. So, if she was possibly but not definitely on the bus with you or possibly got off or possibly didn’t get off, then…well…you know what I mean. If she did or didn’t, neither one would surprise me.”

“I guess.”, she ponders for a minute. “But…whatever. We’ll see her tomorrow.”. She clambers up the ladder to her top bunk. The wood above me bows a little and settles as she gets herself comfortable. “What time is yr alarm set for?”

“Six.”

She groans. “Fine.”. I reach over and shut off the light. The room is lit only by the hallway light spilling weakly under our door. I pull the covers around my neck and curl up, trying to make myself the warmest place in the coldness of the universe.

* * * * *

All Lucretia feels is cold. An enveloping cold. A cold that goes thru the skin and somewhere deep down, the kind of deep down that’s immeasurable, the kind of deep down that makes oceanic trenches seem like kiddie pools. Lucretia is cold down to a core she, until now, didn’t know existed.

She opens her eyes, which takes a concerted effort of both her brain and eyelids to work in unison—which, with the way she feels, is a big step in cooperation for the two. She can’t make sense of what’s in front of her. She blinks at what she sees. Still nothing. It takes her a full minute to realize she’s lying on her side.

And on a sidewalk bench no less. She uses every muscle to push herself sitting upright…every muscle that will cooperate, at least. There is frost all over her jacket. She has no idea where her gloves or hat are. She licks her lips and feels how rough they are. One side of her face feels like it was smacked with a big flat mallet. She shudders violently.

She looks behind her at the chain link gates of the East Eastburgh Transit Authority. She remembers getting on the bus with Nikkolette. But after that, it’s all as blank as unwritten checks.

Her leg muscles don’t automatically oblige her when she tries to stand. She shakes a bit and wobbles until she can finally stand without leaning on the bench. Her legs don’t feel right. They feel like someone borrowed them for the night, got them into a fight, backed over them with a zamboni, then gave them back to her. Her head feels similar, plus add the feeling that the insides have been picked clean by ravens. She does a half-hobble, half-mummy-walk to the gates and slides her fingers thru for a grip.

“Hello?”, she yells. Or tries to yell. Or thinks she yells. It’s a sunny day. Lucretia surmises that her words are melting before they can reach anyone’s ears. Like they’re being struck down by the rays of the sun itself. “Hello?”, she tries again. Nothing.

She turns around and looks down the road to the right. It bends out of view. Same on her left. In front of her, across the road, a waist-high barrier keeps cars from careening off the road into the base of the mountain that rises above her.

She can’t believe she’s stuck like this. Middle of nowhere. No phone. No one around. No viable landmarks.

Wait.

No phone?

She hasn’t even checked yet.

She pats her pockets down but can’t feel much since her hands are so numb. She starts shoving her hands into all available pockets. Outer jacket. Inner jacket. Jeans pockets both front and ba--AHA!!!!

She pulls the phone from her pocket and switches it on. But something’s wrong. The display is all wrong. Something has gone de-pixelated. Something has busted the screen and made everything askew and blotchy and disjointed…all except for the upper right hand corner where she can see that she not only has no reception, but that her battery is about to kick the metaphorical bucket.

“No…son of a…”, she whispers. She jams her hands into her pockets as far as they can go. She can’t tell if it’s early morning of late afternoon. And she has to choose which road to take because she just can’t stand her in a confused stupor all day.

NYC

“How’s Sean’s arm?”, Hyla asks as she blows across the top of her cup’s sip lid. She and Emyl are taking advantage of an oddly warm winter’s day. Not regular type warm, but warm for February. It’s in the upper 50’s and the sky is clear and perfect and letting the sun have free reign of warming things if it so wishes. Not much is actually getting warmed though. The sun hangs tacked to the blue in much the same way a photograph of the sun would. They are heading south on Bowery, in fact passing the Bowery Poetry Club where Emyl, in what seems like a jumble of lifetimes ago, had used to come do spoken word. He didn’t think he was good by any means, but enjoyed getting up in front of people to read stuff that had poured out of him onto a page. He used to like the fact that once it was spoken, it could never be unspoken. Could never be unheard. Couldn’t be edited. Couldn’t be taken back. Carolyn had actually once tried to do spoken word, too. The actress in her liked being in front of people. But she never really understood the concept. She had spoken some words, but they weren’t hers. They were monologues from plays. The artsy crowd there picked up on it quickly and, with surprising restraint, came within a few degree of booing her off. Instead, everyone just turned from watching her on the stage to talking amongst their own groups at tables. It was an unspoken action, but everyone did it. Except for he and Sean. He and Sean kept their eyes on her, uncomfortable for her uncomfortable-ness as she realized what everyone was doing. She had locked eyes with Emyl and Sean and they didn’t look away from each other until she was done. And when she was done, she walked off stage to the sound of two pairs of hands clapping. And she walked straight out the door.

“Fractured ulna. Bruised humerus.”. Hyla winces when he tells her. “The funny thing is that it probably wouldn’t have been so bad of he had fallen down, like, a regular staircase. The fact that he was falling down an up escalator, though? He, like, tripled the amount of stairs he woulda fallen down normally.” After a pause, “So. I hear the Oreos backfired on ya?”

“Don’t get me started.”

“But I want to get you started.”

“It’s like. What you had said last month? About being tired of the industry and all that? I’ve been feeling that for a while, too. It was at the point where people were, like, expecting shock art from me. Not that I think I got pigeonholed, which, yeah, I probably did--but I don’t really care about that. Let someone pigeonhole me, whatever—but, I had no wiggle room. I didn’t feel like I was free to express myself as freely as I wanted to. I felt like I was only able to express myself in the shock arena. Like, like I was in a creative bubble that wouldn’t expand anymore. But don’t get a big head about it, Emyl. You just inspired me is all.”

“And managed to inadvertently piss Carolyn off. Bravo, me.”

“Whatever.”, she takes a sip, “She just doesn’t understand. Not that I expect her to. She worked hard to get where she is. And I don’t expect her to change anything. I just think that…how do I put it?...”

“She thinks that our…whatever you want to call it…self-sabotaging is gonna affect her career. Like, it’s gonna be an Art Pack thing.”

“Rrrgghh.” She squeezes her cup enough for the lid to pop off. In a feat of quick reflexes, she actually catches it.

“Easy there, tiger.”

“I hate that label.”, she puts the lid back on. “Hate it. Absolutely all-caps, italicized, underlined, bold-type HATE IT. It doesn’t show any…creativity. Don’t get me started on labels. I’d rather talk about Oreos.”

Maybe it’s where they are. Maybe it’s the mention of Oreos. But Emyl has an old memory shimmy its way to the forefront of his memory. It’s from ages ago…another heap of lifetimes ago.

In his memory, he can still see himself standing over a table, not really wanting to touch the Oreos. They were no longer in their queues. Upturned, broken, halved cookies just kinda sat in the packaging as if they were just dropped there. And if he’d had any, he’d be forced to wash it down with what the meeting organizers were passing off as coffee. Wasn’t sure if he wanted to do that either. But he wasn’t here for the cookies or coffee or what’s that? Some sorta crumby coffeeish cake? Like, with ick! Raisins?! Behind him, he could hear the speaker testing the mic. People milled about, some talking in clusters, others watching other people. He noticed nervous tics on people: hands, eyes, necks. He kinda knew what they were going thru, but probably not to the extent that he assumed he knew exactly what they were going thru. But they were here. That was the important thing. And so was he. Not so much for himself, but for Ria, who was slouched in a folding chair, hood up, chewing the life out of her fingernails. He grabbed a couple of coffees and cookies.
“Happy Birthday.”, he said, offering her a paper plate piled with dilapidated Oreos. She looked up and grabbed the plate of cookies and one of the coffees.
“Thanks.”. Emyl sat down and decided right then that the chair was going to be uncomfortable for the entire meeting. Almost everyone there smelled of cigarettes. They included.
“How are ya?”, he asked. Nibbling the end of a cookie, Ria gave a hint of a shrug, not even looking at him. Emyl nodded to himself and sipped the heinous concoction he had made. The coffee was so bad, he’d had to throw in cream and sugar, but added too much of each, so now it tasted like sweet dairy about to turn bad. And it was room-temperature which just kinda added to its offensiveness. There were people sitting alone, no one talking to them.
A few more people got involved w/ fiddling w/ the mics. It was a tripod mic on a six-foot-fold-out-table deal. Three cushioned folding chairs were already placed at it. Feedback sent eyes squinting and faces scrunching. He could tell already that the acoustics were gonna be horrible. After all, they weren’t in a hall or a club. The two of them, along with a few dozen others, were in a private school’s gym which, evidenced by the stage in the back of the room, doubled as an auditorium. Emyl put nickels to beignets that the school productions here sounded as if acted underwater in a giant rusty tank. Up above the basketball keys on the floor, hoop-&-backboard arrays had been mechanically winched up against the ceiling. So as to not get in their way? The odor of physically over-taxed children hung in the air, and plus also mixed with those here now perspiring, detoxing, stressing. But covering it all was the pervasive smell of burnt coffee.
Chocolate dust gathered in the corner of Ria’s lips. It was her birthday, for real. A monumental one at that. Emyl looked around at everyone, trying not to judge them at first glance. And for a good measure of seconds, he wrestled with the notion that no one was here for anyone but themselves…which he found both noble and repulsive. Then admirable and sad. He couldn’t reconcile the facets of one side to the other. His brain hurt. Emyl shook his head and wondered whether he d time for, and the ramifications thereof, a cigarette. The mic check was full of bass. And the room gave off way too much reverb.
“Are you…?”, he started looking at Ria. Her jawbone was pulsating. People were filling in the seats. The room echoed the sounds of rubbed-tipped chair legs skidding across varnished planks.
“Thank you”, came thru the speakers, “Everyone. If we could just. Thank you, yes. Welcome, everyone…” With forced airiness, stragglers over by the snack and coffee table made their way to seats. Like they wanted to be seen. As if they were somehow special, differed in some past experiential way than those here who would, no, never ever ever understand what they went thru—as if the way they got here was far superior than everyone else’s, hence, they would take their sweet old time getting to their seats. Someone from behind the dais went out front to collect the smokers for the meeting.
It was Ria’s 21st birthday. It was her stance of aiming toward recovery that partially inspired Emyl maintain his sobriety. The thought of staying sober had seemed like too much of a chore. But seeing her wrestle with it somehow strengthened his resolve. And here she was, finally of legal age to drink, sitting in such a way that felt that if she could ball up all fetal like, she would. Right here and now. They smelled the smokers come back inside. More rubber on varnish as they took their seats and the meeting got underway…
…The sun was still out afterward, but it was hiding somewhere behind the buildings down the street. Ria and Emyl sat on the stone steps leading up to the gymatorium. They quietly lit their smokes. Her, not as easily with her shaking hands.
“See? This is what makes me wanna drink.”.

Earlier, in the meeting, after the designated speakers said their thing and added, what Emyl though to be, a bit of over-indulgent pride to their recollections, there was a call to the room. That if anyone was having trouble right then, please, raise their hand and share. It was Ria’s 21st birthday which, she weakly & unconvincingly rationalized, should be spent getting all stupid kinds of super-trashed. Like, since when should a 21st birthday be spent at an A.A. meeting? Emyl had just listened and smoked. She had put her hand up in the meeting. She’d had that ‘burning desire’, as they called it, to go out and get blitzed.

And no one had called on her to share.

Emyl had noticed that the people that were getting called on were a.) either friends of those up at the speakers’ table or b.) actually did not have that so-called (and not so aptly-named (he thought)) burning desire to drink, but just wanted to publicly congratulate, offer kudos, give props to those up on the dais, on their bravery, courage, strength, gumption, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Which, he felt to be kinda bunk because right here next to him, Ria’s emotions and resolve were going bug-nuts.
So they left a few minutes early and came out on the steps. Ria kept talking, kept getting angrier. Her voice let loose a few cracks. Emyl listened. They lit cigarettes off the finished ends of others’. The tears eventually came. A girl from the meeting came over and asked what was wrong. Ria, trying to paste a smile on her mood, offered the girl just a skeleton of what was wrong. This girl, smoking also and making a dramatic show of exhaling to the side, pointed out the annoying obviousness that at least they all still had all their arms and legs and fingers and toes and eyes and teeth and organs still intact.
Without any sobs, tears streamed down Ria’s face. “That’s not really doin’ it for me right now.”. The other girl just shrugged and walked away. Both Ria and Emyl wanted to stab her in the face.
They got up and walked back down the block, deciding to walk west to Union Square instead of taking a taxi. The two of them eventually wound up at a little falafel shop, silently scarfing down hummus and stuffed grape leaves. And the evening found them clutching huge to-go cups of coffee on her rooftop as the city’s ambient light blocked out all stars. Emyl looked down the 3 stories as people came out of bodegas and restaurants and bars and brownstones and apartment complexes. They were all headed out for a night of God knows what.

“So, tell me about Oreos”, Emyl prods Hyla.

“Welp”, she starts, “apparently it was a”, using quote fingers, “bold move on my part. Whatever that means. It’s almost like…this might sound scary or paranoid but, who ever is in charge of reviews and galleries and all that crap? Like, it’s like they…caught on. Like they know I’m trying to…do my…go another…y’know? Even me trying to not do what I usually do is being met with accolades. I’m actually kind pissed.”

“Heh!”

“What’s so funny?”

“Pissed. It’s weird. My sister is in a band called Sheez Pist. Ess, aych, double E, zee, pee, eye, ess, tea.”

“How is yr sister anyway? You don’t talk about her much.”

“Yeah, I know.” He thought about Lucretia often, as in ‘countless times daily’. She hadn’t gone back to Luker Creek for Christmas vacation, had opted to work thru the winter break and crash on a friend’s sofa while the dorms were closed. She never returns his texts or phone calls. Their parents have heard about as much from her, too.

He feels an overwhelming guilt. He doesn’t want to. Doesn’t even feel like he should. He’d made the efforts toward reconciliation and amends, but she wouldn’t have any of it. The ball, so to speak, is solely in her court. But that doesn’t stop him from worrying about her. Deeply worrying. Sometimes almost to the point of physical pain. He shouldn’t let it affect him like this, but he feels hugely responsible for her withdrawal. And he’s been there. He’s done the family-neglect thing. He remembers how terrible and alone and scared he’d felt. He had known the purest form of isolation. In a city with millions of people, he’d never felt so alone. The fame was a good sidetrack for him. It had kept his mind diverted from his worries. But that’s all over now. Now, the important things in his life are his family and friends. The family facet is a tad shattered. The friend facet seems to contain polar opposites of good and not-so-good. “We’re just…”, he starts explaining to Hyla as they wait to cross over East Houston. “…I dunno.”

He wants to tell her about being home for Christmas, around a table with his mother and father as the three of them take turns calling her every half-hour or so, with the hope that she’ll see them trying so desperately to contact her, and maybe just maybe, she’ll pick up one of these times. Just cuz they want to wish her a Merry Christmas. He wants to tell Hyla the sinking feeling he got when he had called her last week and her voice was no longer part of her personalized voicemail message…that it was just now an automated woman’s voice telling him to leave a message after the tone or, for more options, to press the # key.

What Emyl is slowly realizing is that he wants to open up to Hyla. Tell her everything about himself. Sure, his close friends know a lot about him, but no one really knows his deepest darkest dankest stuff. He wants her to know. Or, at least, wants to be able to know that he can tell her that kind of stuff, the all-inclusive ‘everything’, the other stuff he won’t or hasn’t or can’t tell anyone else. He’s beginning to realize that maybe his feelings for Hyla run deeper than he had thought.

She’s looking at him. The look is telling him that he’s free to share with her, to tell her what’s going on in his life, but also that he’s under no obligation to do so…but that she’s here to listen if he needs it. He ventures forth with, “We just don’t get along.”

“Regular brother/sister stuff?...Which…I don’t know what that is since I’m an only child.”

“You got off easy, then.”

“Are ya kiddin me? Man, I woulda loved to have a brother or sister. Someone to grow up with and…hang out with…y’know?”

“It ain’t all sunshine and lollipops, kid.”

“I know, but…”, she catches herself veering from what’s on Emyl’s mind and she tries to steer it back. “Like, why don’t you get along?”

“It’s a long story.”

She looks at her wrist which has no watch on it. “I do have all day, y’know.”

“You don’t have any Nutter Butters to photograph?”

“Ha. Ha.”

He takes a sip of his Americano. “No, we don’t get along. I’m not sure we ever have. Well, we might have. When she was younger. She’s somewhere around twelve years younger than me, so, when I was all in my early twenties, she was, like, eightish. When she was small I used to play with her. A lot. Though, I’m not sure she remembers a lot of that. When I first got my drivers license, I’d take her with me as often as I could. Even if it was to the store or the library or even just taking her to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.”

“So what happened?”

He looks down the street. A few blocks ahead, there seems to be a traffic jam on Delancey. “I happened.” He can feel her eyes on him, waiting for him to elaborate. “I started drinking and doing drugs and the family just kinda fell by the wayside. I pushed everyone away. Especially her.”

“Why?”

“Because I was a horrible person and I didn’t want her to be a victim of it. So I kept her, and my parents, and a lot of my friends at more than an arm’s length. Like, I pushed people away. On purpose. And with force. So…”, he lights up a smoke, “fast forward to this past Thxgvg. I go home to visit and she’s there, too. And I hadn’t seen or heard from her in two years. And, just…a lot of stuff came out about me and about the family and how things were dealt with and stuff we hadn’t told her about my addiction days in New Jersey. She just kinda holed herself up into herself. Like how I had done. And now, she doesn’t really talk to any of us. We try to call her but, y’know, nothing really.”

They reach Delancey Street. Horns are blaring everywhere. The lights change from green to yellow to red on all sides, but the cars are so intertwined and unable to unintertwine that it has just turned into a big metallic standstill and audio chaos.

“Which way?”, Emyl asks.

“I don’t care.”

“Wanna walk the Williamsburg Bridge? Head into Chinatown? West Village?”

“Bridge sounds good.”

They head east on Delancey, toward the source of the traffic’s confusion. “So,”, she asks, “after you did yr big drug thing, you finally came to a point where family mattered, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, so will she, then.”

“I don’t know. She’s really doing some stupid stuff.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No, I did but…”

“But what? The stuff you did was way worse?”

“No, most of it is the same stuff.”, he’s getting frustrated.

“So what makes you so different from her?”

“She’s doing it out of spite. Like, to get back at me.”

“I dunno. Did you do all those drugs out of spite to anyone?”

“No.”

“Did she say she’s doing it to spite you?”

“No, but—“

“Well then yr taking it too personally.” At this, Hyla feels she may have just overstepped her bounds. He throws out his coffee cup.

“Of course I’m taking it personally! She pretty much flat out told me that I’m a terrible brother and that she wants nothing to do with me!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean—“

“And y’know what? It is different for her. She has no idea what’s ahead for her. I do. I’ve been there! She doesn’t have to do this. Any of this.”

“Then you maybe just have to let her—“

“She’s my kid sister, for cryin’ out loud!” He can feel his hands shaking. He looks down at them to confirm it. He stops walking. Hyla stands in front of him and cups his hands in hers.

“Emyl, I am sorry.”, she offers. It’s not out of pity. It’s not out of trying to right a wrong she may have thought she committed. It’s her trying to get across that she’s trying to empathize with, at the least, his feelings concerning the whole situation. He blinks away the tears that come. Drops run down onto his scarf.

“It’s my kid sister.”, he says softer. He doesn’t hear the traffic. He doesn’t see the thousand tiny suns reflecting off windows, hoods, trunks, and rims. He doesn’t feel the mucus fill up his nose as he tries to sniffle it back. There is no crowded street. There are no subways rumbling and shrieking underground. There are no city buses hissing out hydraulic farts. There is no international music tumbling like wads of tin out of delis and bodegas. There are no pedestrians yelling into their cell phone. There are no buildings. There are no roads. There is no city. There is only a tiny space of existence in which no sobs exists. The only thing there is he and Hyla, his shaking hands enfolded in hers and her eyes fixed on his, trying to bring him back to where he needs to be.

“Yeah.”, she nods at him, watching his face relax. He takes a big breath, to clear everything out.

“Yeah.”, he agrees. She lets go and they head once again toward the bridge. They still can’t see what’s causing all the traffic commotion, but foot and bike traffic on the bridge seems to be flowing smoothly.

East Eastburgh

Lucretia is randomly loosing then regaining sensation in her fingers and toes. And her eyeballs and lips. Also, in her mouth and stomach and knees. Pretty much all over. The medicinal cocktail she had concocted for herself is coursing through her veins, sending her entire system into some strange feel-good/bring-down tizzy.

Having to sit in class and take a test isn’t helping matters either. She’s not sure if this is a science or math test. Or even either of those two. When she blinks, she swears she can feel her eyelashes hitting each other.

The dextromethorphan, that’s what must be doing it. It’s all that cough medicine she took earlier. She took it for a cold she actually has, not for recreational use, which surprises her—not that she has a cold, but that she hadn’t thought of abusing cough syrup until today. No, the cold was to be expected. She had to walk most of the way back to the dorm from the bus depot last week. She had went the wrong way at first, not heeding any road signs until the one that read “Now Entering West Eastburgh”. Frustrated, tired, hungry and cold, she backtracked, not forgetting to flip off the bus depot as she passed it, heading the right way, finally. Two miles out of town, one of her classmates had seen her and picked her up.

But the cold was a given, she thought. You can’t be out in that weather for that long and come out unscathed, she surmised. She’d actually settle for a cold. It’s as if she needed it. Maybe as some twisted incentive to get healthy from it and maybe just maybe all that getting-healthy would rub off on other aspects of herself.

Or, it could be the doxylamine succinate. She knows it’s an antihistamine mixed with an hypnotic. The words on her test page seem to forming an oval, a moving rotating oval, like band of protestors around a political issue.

She had done straight dextromethorphan, or DXM as she calls it, once. In pill form. It had given her closed-eye hallucinations. She hadn’t liked that. Sleep had become a horror show for her.

The acetaminophen, maybe? She doesn’t rightly remember what drug does what to the body. But she does momentarily forget that she also has some vodka and cannabis and diet pills in her system, too. The test paper has somehow chameleonized itself to be the same color as her desk. She silently panics. The printing on the paper also takes on the color of the desk. Everything in front of her is a blank. Since she’s hunched over her desk, her face covered by her hair anyway, she squeezes her eyes tightly in hopes that when she opens them, everything will be back to normal.

But, as they are squeezed shut so tightly, bursts of light erupt behind her eyes. Muted reds and violet is big blobby bursts. She stares at them as they begin to swirl around each other, then into each other. More bursts erupt inside and around the others. The new ones are white and yellow. Some have a greenish trim on them. They dance around each other, in some kaleidoscopic synchronization. Now she can’t open her eyes. She tells herself to, but she’s also concentration on the tangoing light bursts.

She snaps her eyes open. She swears it made a ‘thwack’ sound. Against her own intuition, she looks around to see if anyone heard it. Everyone else is too focused on their own tests to notice. It suddenly occurs to her that she’s been holding her breath. She has no idea why. But, if she has been holding it for some reason, it must be a good reason then or else, like, why would she be doing it, right? She convinces that she has to has to has to hold her breath. Like, for dear life. Like, for the good of mankind. Like, for the fate of the universe. It’s all dependent on her.

The color of her test hasn’t returned to it’s original hue. As she notices this, she realizes that she also hasn’t blinked in, like, a reeeaaallly long time. Hours, maybe. She flexes her eye muscles and wills herself to not blink. In doing so, in concentrating on not blinking, she has actually started breathing again. When she finally realizes it, she is so flustered that she blinks. She can feel the world crumbling. It’s beginning with her. Apparently, her will is gone, what with all the involuntary breathing and blink she’s doing. It’s only a matter of time, she fears, that those around her will fall apart as well. Maybe in not the same way she is, but they’ll fall apart nonetheless. Maybe they’ll shatter like glass. Or slowly unravel and peel. Or they’ll evaporate from their heads on down to their feet. Or bottomless hole will open up beneath them and swallow them up.

With that, Lucretia looks under her desk to see if any holes have opened up in the floor beneath her. None have. She wraps he ankles around her chair just in case.

It totally hits her now that she’d had a cigarette before class. And no but that cigarette was one of the ones from the other night. She had dipped the filters of a few of her cigarettes in liquid PCP. She musta smoked one of them before class.

She can feel her lips peeling away from her teeth. And she can feel her teeth sliding out of her mouth. She can feel her nostrils imploding. She can feel her eyeballs shaking. She can hear the blood flowing thru her veins, babbling like a mountain brook. She knows, deep deep down, that her left arm and leg want to switch spots with their right-side counterparts. She mediates between the two sides, whom agree to just stay where they are for now, but that they will all get together later, some time real soon, and talk about it again, maybe next time without her there to mediate. Lucretia breaths onto her paper and it falls through the desk. She reaches after it but comes into contact with the desk instead.

And now, she feels something real. So real that it can’t be mistaken as unreal. There is something in her nose, at the top, tickling her. And the tickling is slowly filling up her nostrils. In waves, air rushes to her lungs and she can’t seem to keep her eyes open. Her slowly mouth drops open in a grimace. All these sensations build up and build up until her body and mind can’t take anymore and her head explodes in a cacophony of shattering, splintering and exploding.

“Bless you.”, the girl three seats down whispers.

Lucretia looks at her desk. The test is on it. The letters on the test are legible and stationary. The school’s heating system pumps in warmth thru vents that hum. She can hear the droning, behind her and to her right. It’s almost soothing. It has the quality of an angel’s hum…constant and otherworldly. The clock over the teacher’s desk tik-tik’s the seconds away. Someone in class, more specifically, the guy in front of her is tapping the tip of his rubber sneaker against the ground. Probably no one can hear it. But Lucretia can. She can hear everything. She even knows what her thoughts are saying to one another. Feet, maybe yards, away, she can hear the bees in the heating ducts. They’re taking their time getting here. They are patient and move with unwearied purpose. The clock’s hands bang against the wall sending cracks up to the ceiling, showering the smallest particles of plaster and paint on the teacher’s desk. The guy in front of her is only a few taps away from sending his foot straight thru the floor.

Lucretia checks under her desk once again to see if any holes have opened up there. Still, none have, and she wraps her ankles around the chair just in case. But that won’t save her from the bees. No, the bees will be here soon, bursting out of the vent and attacking everyone.

Lucretia clenches her eyes shut and tries to hide between the bursts of light that soon arrive. She can squeeze in there, into that infinite line between rays of light and shadows of darkness. She knows what exists in both extremes and wants neither. She can live down in the middle of the two, where it’s soft. Where nothing makes demands to shine or not shine. In there, between bursts of light and waves of shadows, is a place that neither touch. It’s a place of solitude, a place to go when the demands of everything gets too much. Pain is forgotten about. Worries are shelved. Aspirations are indifferently just out of reach.

And it’s from that place that Lucretia, against her wishes, slowly receeds. She wants to hold on to it, but can’t grab on to anything…because there’s nothing to grab on to. She claws at nothing, almost certain that there should be something there to grasp, to anchor oneself onto. She slides away from the spaces between the images behind her eyes back into the classroom, where she hasn’t even begun the test, and almost everyone else is finished.

NYC

“It’s basically Care Bears...”, Hyla is explaining. Emyl glances back behind them, at the accident at the entrance of the Williamsburg Bridge, right where Delancey meets Suffolk. He’s not sure how it happened, but three cars had managed to get stacked one on top of the other. Like a stack of steel pancakes. It didn’t look like anyone was hurt, but there are ambulances and fire engines and police cars everywhere, trying to unsnarl the traffic both going on and coming off the bridge.

“Huh?”, Emyl snaps back to attention.

:”You didn’t hear a word I said, didja?”, she smirks.

“I’m sorry I just…how do you get cars to crash into, like, a stack? How much force and what direction were they all going in that the result of impact is…”, he gestures behind them, “that.”

They don’t talk about much as they walk over the bridge. The accident has helped increase foot traffic…which is a detriment to bike traffic since neither ever really stay in their own designated lanes on the bridge. The orange railings glow in the afternoon sun. Emyl doesn’t delve to deep into anything because he’s thinking back to his little freak-out back there in Manhattan. He’s not embarrassed by it. He’s just surprised at how, without a word, Hyla was able to clam him down.

He looks at her while she’s talking. She gesticulates with her hand, usually using a pointing motion when she’s stressing a detail. She alternates looking down at the road and over at him. Her eyes are wide with enthusiasm she’s really really passionate about what she’s talking about. Emyl isn’t sure what that exactly is, as he’s listening to her face talk, not her words. If she stopped right then and there to ask him what she’s talking about, he’d be stumped.

He tried to think back to when he first met her, like the first instant or day. He has recently gotten a lot of it confused—the whens and hows and under what circumstances—getting facts wrong in interviews, telling anecdotes. It wasn’t just her, it was all of them. He sifts thru the miasma of memories to try to figure it out.

He definitely met Hyla when he was working at Brew’s Café, on the Upper West Side. She was finishing up school up at Columbia University, getting a degree in art therapy. And she was a steady customer, too. She’d come in for hours and just down mug after mug of coffee while studying or reading or drawing. The two of them had good conversations back and forth and she’d occasionally join him and his friends went out. After graduation, and before her assiatant-to-the-curator job at the D. Patton Gallery in Chelsea, she needed an income. She got a job at Brew’s. It was one of those friendships he didn’t fully understand at the time. But looking back, it made sense. They were both passionate about their respective arts and did it for the joy of it, rather than it being a means to some highfalutin end, such as fame or money or notoriety. And they feed off the intensity and drive that each other had. In fact, it infected their small group of friends, who, soon after Hyla became somewhat of a permanent fixture in their lives, pursued their respective goals with gusto.

Ramon had started working there right before she was hired. It’s hard for Emyl to forget Ramon’s first day. Ramon had worked in food service before. In L.A., he was a waiter at someplace Emyl had dubbed ‘That Garlic Place’, since Ramon had talked about the food a lot, and how about everything there was served with garlic. He also worked in a coffeehouse in Boston called Captain Dave’s Spooky Fun Coffeehouse of Mystery. He had moved to New York City to go to The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and Sciences Academy [sic]…which Hyla once nicknamed The Redundancy Academy of Redundancy.

So, on Ramon’s first day at Brew’s, he pretty much got everything down within the first hour. Within his second hour, he and Emyl were trying to concoct new drinks with the booze that the café carried. By the end of his first shift, Ramon had also almost gotten into an altercation with two different people, both Yankees fans.

Emyl had met Sean at Odnax. In his mind, Emyl had somehow arranged the memory that it was Sean who got him the job at Odnax, when it was really just the place where he met him. The circumstances surrounding why Emyl got a job there is still something that eludes him.

Sean was already working there as a waiter when Emyl started as a barista. Sean was very quiet, but smiled and laughed a lot. Emyl realized later that Sean studies people. Sean’s a people-watcher. It helped him to create characters with his acting.

In fact, he and Emyl, if they had simultaneous same-days off, would go to busy parts of Manhattan and watch people and make comments and invent histories for them.

Carolyn was working at Odnax, too. She was a bit over the top, personality wise. But one day, Emyl had said something and Carolyn had responded with, “Well, aren’t you a wordsmith?”. Emyl fired back with, “Just call me Kerouac.”. Carolyn flipped out. She loved Kerouac and all the Beat writers. He and her would have long talks about writing. There was even a phase they went through where they mentally planned all these crazy cross-country road trips that they would never take.

One night still stands out to him. He and Carolyn picked up a bunch of 40oz. bottles of ghetto beer and hung out at her apartment in Washington Heights. The smoked and drank and read to each other and their heart-to-heart—the conversation that friends have when they realize they’re more than just acquaintances and that they’ll exist in each others’ lives for years to come. The even created their own oral story. Emyl would start off, then pass the narrative over to her. The she would do the same and pass it over to him. Back and forth all night. That night was the inspiration of some of his first readings.

In the beginning, they all fed off each other. Hyla was the first of them to catch a break. A tiny art studio in Greenpoint showed her ‘Assassinating Warhol’ series, which was basically what was depicted. Hyla had blown up prints of many of Warhol’s celebrity paintings, then had defaced and vandalized them: blackened in some teeth, doodled eyeglasses, freckles and horns on them, given a few of them scars and/or stink line squiggles. Plus also, each celebrity had a bleeding bullet hole in their forehead. It was a hit, for some reason she couldn’t understand.

Around this time, Emyl was just beginning his readings. He wound up doing one at a gallery that was displaying Hyla’s stuff. It was a great night. Sean wasn’t there because he was away in L.A. on a movie shoot, in which he got his first speaking role. Carolyn just drank the whole night. Ramon had showed up and almost gotten into an altercation with a Yankees fan.

The Williamsburg Bridge walking path empties out into a plaza. Kids are skateboarding all over it, doing small kick flips and rail slides.

“So, tell me about the Care Bears again?”, he says to Hyla.

“Well”, she starts. He like when she starts with ‘Well’. He finds that if she’s interested in something, he usually is too. “It’s Care Bears doing, like, volunteer work. They’re paintings. One had them serving in a soup kitchen. Another has one helping at a needle exchange. Another has a Care Bear refereeing a youth basketball game. Stuff like that.”

“I like it.”

“Thanks.”

“When is it going up?”

“Couple of months. Chelsea, of course.”
”But of course!”

“So”, she puts her hands together, “what’s yr next big move on yr…thing?”

“I dunno. Kinda working without a blueprint. I sabotaged a few readings. I’ve besmirched my name in lights. I’ve been pondering, like, an autobiography disguised as fiction…y’know, sullying my name and all. But that would drag you guys into it, so I’m steering away from that. So…I don’t really know. Any ideas?”

“Why don’t you murder someone?”

“Do you know how quickly my stuff would sell if I did that? It’s like when a movie star dies, their DVD sales go thru the roof.”

“Hm. Good point. Oo! Why don’t you write something, like, horrible. Not topic-wise, but just something poorly written.”

“Remember my last two books?”

“Oh, c’mon, they weren’t that bad.”

“That bad? So they were bad?”

She nibbled on her top lip. “Let’s just say that I’ve read better stuff from you.” Emyl is glad she is as honest as she is. It keeps him grounded. Keeps him from thinking something he’s not.

“Thank you. Seriously, thank you.”

“I’ll never lie to you, Emyl.”

“Well, how does this sound.”

“Shoot.”

“What if I pull a J.D. Salinger. Just stop writing and disappear from the public eye?”

“Emyl, do you really want to disappear from the public eye? Or do you just want to… I dunno…fade back into the social woodwork?”

“I think…both. I just don’t wanna be Emyl Garrets the writer anymore. I just wanna be Emyl Garrets the…”

“The what?”

“The brother. The friend. The son. That’s all.”

“Well, maybe we can figure out how to do that over some coffee and sandwiches? I know a nice spot on Kingsland Ave.”

“Yr treat.”

“Absolutely.”

East Eastburgh, PA

Excerpt from entry on www.blogsitejournalspotpress.ned_dendleback.us.com:

The Dendelblog

…not really digging the new Humble Hamster album. It’s almost as if they found a formula that works, that sells. And there [sic] doing that with every album now. They’re [sic] last album, Standing Tall in a Small Town, was only a borderline disappointment. That was the one with the hit, “Drift Off”, thats [sic] bieng [sic] used in car commercials now. There [sic] newest album, Putting Off the Turn On, seems to have glommed onto the hit-factory formula. The whole album is 18 tracks trying to be hits. There are maybe 3 good songs (“Afterburners”, “Moved to Yesterday”, and “Can’t Budge”) that border on them trying new directions. The remaining 15 songs should of not [sic] been layed [sic] down to wax at all. Their [sic] well on there [sic] way to selling out.

It almost feels like a girlfiend [sic] has become someone I don’t know anymore. Which actually did happen to me recently. Lets us [sic] call her Lucinda.

I don’t unnerstand [sic] what happened. It started off good. I met her in my macroeconomics class. We both sat toward the back of the lecture hall and make snarky comments to each other under our breathe [sic]. Toward the end of fall semester, we were going pretty strong. Then when she came home from Thangsgiving [sic], she wasn’t the same.

Before she had left, she had been drinking everyso [sic] often. Which was fine. So was I, even though where [sic] both underrage [sic]. But she was getting crazy with it. But then when she came back from Thagsgivng [sic] break, she started pulling away from me. She didn’t wanna to [sic] hang out or talk or anything. But she also was getting really involved with her band, too.

But I treated her so well. She started treating me like [obscenity deleted]. Why? We got along so good, then she fell in love with her lifestyle: drinking, drugs, rockin’ [sic] roll and I got thrown to the wayside.

Does she have any idea how lonely I am without her? She was kind of one of the few things that kept me going. My family has all but writting [sic] me off. I don’t have many friends. Why????? Why is it that guys always fall the quickest and hardest in love? I think maybe, I think I’m almost afraid to realize that what I saw as ‘courting’, she saw as ‘hanging out’. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I smothered her. Or moved too quickly. All I know is that, at the end, I don’t think her feelings for me matched mine for her.

Why do I always fall for the wrong girl?

This hurts so much. It’s like she stabbed me in the heart with her love. I don’t know how long I can go on living this fassade [sic] of acting like it didn’t mean a whole lot to me. Because it did mean a whole lot to me. The world, even. She meant the world to me. But I’m not going to tell her that. It would make me sound winey [sic} and wussyish [sic]. If I could of [sic] only found a way to hold onto her, I’d be happy now.

Why me?!

(--transcription from evidence files of Eastburgh Township Sheriff’s Department--)

* * * * *

Smoke and beer.

That’s what I smell like. I’ve been smoking cigarettes, but people have been spilling drinks on me all night. The Hostelry Bar is packed for a Thursday. Could be that the showcase for the night has four bands, all from EEU. So, like, almost the entire school is here. Lucretia’s band, Sheez Pist, is up next.

Now, I’m pretty much just a social drinker and smoker. But Lucretia. She’s turning into a pro. And Nikkolette is quickly following her down that road. I have no idea how Lucretia is passing all her classes. Which she is. My cell phone buzzes. It’s a text. From Ned: ‘Why wont she tlk 2 me :( ?’.

I huff and put my phone away. Lucretia dumped him a few days ago. He’s been a mess. And I think Lucretia has been a bit down about it too. I’m not sure what happened between the two of them. It looks to me like she soured on him for some reason, but she doesn’t talk about it. And I don’t ask. Although, now, I’m gonna hafta say something because I don’t want to get in the middle of this. And Ned is dragging me into it.

‘Talk 2 her not me.’, I text back.

Sheez Pist is setting up on stage. It’s Lu, who plays drums, Beckany Kell on bass and vocals, and Carrie Tucker on lead guitar and vocals. Just a three-piece. And they’re really good. Not good-for-girls, but actually good.

‘She wont talk 2 me’, Ned texts back.

‘Not my prob.’, I text back, and kinda feel a pang about it. Like maybe that was too mean. But, Ned’s gotta get over it. He’s gotta move on. Pull himself up by the bootstraps and trudge on down that road.

There are buzzes and feedback as they plug in and get ready. The Hostelry is a narrow place, covered in beer signs and band stickers. The people at the bar move out to the floor as people move up toward the stage. I can feel myself being slightly crushed as the momentum of the crowd surges forward on the opening strains of their usual opening song, “Pistol Whip”.

* * * * *

I yell something mean as Heatherette leaves, disappears out the front door of Pi Chi House. She can just go, fine. I still have Lucretia here with me. Somewhere. I turn around and head into the throng of the bash.

Whoever made the announcement earlier at The Hostelry was an idiot. Didn’t the know that pretty much the entire school would show up? A frat party on a Thursday night before Spring Break. Who wouldn’t come?

Everyone smells like cigarettes and bad breath. The booze is actually seeping out of their pores, it’s almost disgusting. My drink fell from my hand a few minutes ago and I have no idea where it is…or even what it was. “Lu!”, I yell, looking for her. I get a knowing sense of déjà vu. About a month ago, I was searching thru a crowd for Lu. I feel oddly out of place, like I shouldn’t be in this situation again, but I am. The last time, I lost Lu, then found her, then lost her on bus. She wound up sleeping outside the bus depot and having to walk home. Then she got really sick from all that exposure. I thought she was gonna die. I met her parents that week. They came up to help nurse her back to health. They were very nice. She mentioned a brother, too, but I never met him. He’s never come out here.

“Lu!”, I try again. I make my way over to the staircase. Some sorta loud crappy techno-d&b-dub-trance-happy-hardcore-dancehall-reggaeton is playing. It’s literally making me dizzy. The staircase looks unwalkable. People are spread out on it, leaning, necking, standing, swaying. I finagle my way up it as if I’m avoiding landmines. It’s all tiptoes at odd angles. I get to the top. “Lu! Lucretia Garrets!”. The hallway is packed too. Everyone’s conversation melds into a dissonant droning accentuated with yelps and growls. I pop my head into one room. Dim lighting and no people. I try another room. Nada. At the end of the hall, a door is ajar. I creep down to it and peer in.

The room has a red glow. There are about 6 people sitting in a circle on a large bed. Some sit cross-legged, some with one leg off, one kneeling and palms on their knees. I sloftly walk up to the bed. Lucretia is there. And so is Beckany. There are four, no, five! Five other peopleI don’t know. I musta miscounted at first. In the middle of the circle they’ve all made on the bed lie, what looks like, a bunch of pens and someone’s leather belt. There are a few spoons and lighters in the circle too.

“…Nikkolett-ah…”, Lucretia mumbles, looking up at me as she leans back against my torso. “Have you come to find me? You found meeeee….”. She doesn’t sound herself. Her voice is lilting, sing-songy. Her eyes seem to be looking, but not landing directly on anything. It’s like she’s looking around my eyes, not at them. She reaches up and rubs my arms. Something dark drips down her inner elbow.

“Lu, what are you…?”. Everyone is looking at me. Not harshly. Or condescendingly. It’s, like, as if I’m interrupting. And they’re waiting for me to either sit down or leave.

“I’m fiiiiiiiinnnne….”, she hums, stretching her arms wide an smiling. “Have some.”

“No?”, I ask, then, “No. No I don’t want to. Any.”

“Aw, c’mon…”, she pleads so softly. But I don’t stick around to hear anymore. I turn and leave the room, shove my way down the hall, almost break my neck trying to take the stairs two by two, and shoulder my way thru the foyer and out the front door. I’m not sure, but I think I hear my name being called out a few times.

I’m on the lawn, staggering across it. There is a bus stop for the campus bus across the street. I trip on beer cans as I finally make it off the lawn, as I finally feel the breeze of night. I stop a few feet off the curb to catch my breath.

The night is clear. I can feel an instant. In it, winter is loosening its tendrils on the weather. In it, more stars are out than usual. In it, wind gusts smell like diesel and fresh rain. In it, change comes rushing on, bright and violent.

NYC

Emyl’s blueberry pancakes lie half-eaten and wilting on his plate. Sean has consumed his entire meal—a lamb and feta burger, mashed potatoes, and borscht. He used the leftover bits of hamburger but to sop up his soup and small smears of fluffy spuds. The rain hits the glass hard, like million fingers drumming on a table: waiting, waiting, waiting…

Veruka’s Diner is one of Emyl’s favorites. He can usually get pancakes or peirogies here and it usually makes him feel better. Not this time, though. Not that he feels terrible either. He’s just very confused. He has more on his plate than just unfinished pancakes.

It’s about 2 a.m. The bars haven’t emptied out yet, but this was the first nice spring day since winter. Then evening came and brought a storm along with it. Outside, people run from awning to awning, trying not to get wet, shielding themselves with hands or tattered copies of the Greenwich Sound, taken from sidewalk dispensers just to be used as temporary shelter. Veruka’s is packed.

Sean had been at a party. Emyl had called him up, needing to talk. Sean protested that he was, in no way, shape or form, cognizant enough to talk to. Emyl didn’t care, he just needed ears to unload onto. And into. Sean informed Emyl that he (Sean) would have to be picked up at his current location because he (Sean) didn’t trust himself out of doors, on his own. Emyl acquiesced.

Emyl had to go to the Jans Hotel Bar which, if it was one more street west, woulda been in the middle on the floor of the Hudson River. The bouncer knew him by face and let him in. Emyl hated that. He hated being let into places based on his fame. It made him feel like he didn’t earn it. Not that he wanted notoriety. Not that he wanted to be let into joints. He actually just wanted to be turned down once in a while. Shown the door. Denied access.

The Jans Hotel Bar had a huge door made of wood, and it was pretty soundproof. Emyl was bombarded by hip hop as he entered. He passed a little alcove which led to the bar proper and went into the main room.

It was a hall, almost. A huge, sprawling, cathedral-like expanse. The walls were all thin windows, wood, dark muted blue accents. A one-story high fireplace sat on the far side, with a life-sized taxidermy-ed ran atop it. And the place was packed. Emyl figured that everyone here literally photoshopped and airbrushed themselves before they came, because they were all perfect. The kind of perfect he only saw in movies. The kind of perfect he knew came at a price—and that price was that these people probably spent every hour of every day caring only about their appearance and their lives. Heck, thought Emyl, if I spent that much time on myself, too, I’d be gorgeous.

Sean was at the table that was smack-dab in front of the fire place. He was amidst a group of people Emyl didn’t know, about a dozen, sprawling on couches and lounges, filling their glasses from the buckets of ice and vodka on the table. Sean was in the middle of all this, except no one was talking to him. He sat there, sipping his drink, watching people interact, until he noticed Emyl. Sean nodded, shouted something that sounded like, “Be right back!” over the noise, and grabbed his coat. He pointed toward the door and said, “Let’s get outta here.”

So, here they are at Veruka’s. Wet patrons come and go. Emyl has just given Sean an earful and Sean, as he himself predicted, neither has any advice nor remembers much of what Emyl had said. Something about Hyla, he thinks, but don’t, like, quote him.

“Thanks.”, Emyl says, “I just needed to get all that off my chest. I’ve just been, y’know…I’ve had her on my mind for a while and I think, yeah, I just had to talk out loud all of it.”

“Well”, Sean actually formulates an opinion, “it would make sense. The two of you, I mean. I can see that. I know Ramon can see that. And…uh…who cares what Carolyn thinks?” Emyl notices a splotch of ketchup on Sean’s cast.

“Thanks. That means a lot. But, like I said, I’m not gonna press it. I think it might be mutual, but I’m in no rush to find out.”

“Whatever”. Sean notices the ketchup and lifts his cast up to lick it off.

Out of nowhere, a big man stumbles by, knocking into Emyl and Sean. “Watch where you go.”, he says in a heavy Eastern European accent.

“Watch where you go, ya dumptruck.”, Sean fires back.

The man, who had been half-turned away turns and looks at Sean. “What you do about?”

Sean spins around on his stool, grabs a utensil, and hops to his feet, holding his weapon at his side. The man looks at him and smiles, then pats Sean shoulder. “You are okay guy.” He looks behind the counter at one of the workers. They exchange words in a foreign tongue. Then the big guy points to himself and Sean and Emyl and tells the counter jockey, “I have.”, and walks away.

Sean confused, looks down at his hand and sees that he’d grabbed a spoon. Milky droplets of coffee fall from it to the floor. Emyl smiles. And it’s the first time he’s taken notice that he’s smiling since…he doesn’t even know. It’s been a while. Probably a little over a month ago, when he’d heard from his parents. Apparently Lucretia got really really sick up at school and they went up there to take care of her. They told him it was pneumonia, which Emyl didn’t doubt at all. But he also thought that maybe her lifestyle choices were wearing her down, that is, if she was still doing them…which Emyl wholeheartedly believed she was. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to her. She was that sick. But his parents kept him posted until she came through. His parents said that Lu said she’d call him when she was 100%. That was a month ago. He’s heard nothing since, except that she’s going to stay in East Eastburgh for Spring Break, to work and play shows with her band.

Thunder rumbles outside. The lights flicker momentarily and all the patrons let out a fake “…Oooooo…”s of fright.

* * * * *

“It’s gonna be complete drivel. I wrote it in two days.”, Emyl explains to Hyla as they pass the Kraft Service table.

“What is it? Like, what’s it supposed to be?”

“It’s a stock mystery slash cheap romance novel slash graphic novel slash spy thriller. It makes no sense.”

“And yr doing this…why?”

“To fulfill my contract. I have total creative control. So, to get outta my contract, I’m giving them utter crap.”

“You really want out that bad.”, Hyla observes.

He wants out so bad, it’s eating him from the inside. “Oh dear God yes.”

Hyla texts ‘Were here’ from her phone.

One block behind them, they hear their names being called. They turn to see Carolyn leaning out of her trailer, waving at them.

“This is gonna be fun.”, Emyl says as they double back to the trailer.

“Keep yr joy to yrself, Captian Happy.”

“Heeeeyyyy guys.”, she hold the door as they duck into the trailer. It’s a nice one, Emyl levies, for someone of Carolyn’s level. Sean, he knows, has huge trailers. Sometimes even a room in an apartment or a whole house near whatever shoot he’s at. This whole trailer is hers, not like the two-room foot-locker sized ones that smaller part actors get. She’s really making it, Emyl smiles.

“So, what is this movie again?”, Hyla sits on a couch and nibbles at the vegetables and dip on the coffeetable.

“It’s based on a graphic novel called “Strokes”, which is a modern version of the feud between Monet and Manet.”

“Who?”, Emyl asks.

“Claude Monet and Edouard Manet. They were both French Impressionist painters but…”, she turns to Carolyn, “..weren’t they both, like…they both got along?”

“Well, yeah, but”, she sits down next to Hyla and finds the graphic novel under newspapers on the table, “not according this novel. In this novel, their DNA has been used to create clones to bring a new rebirth to the modern day art world. Except something goes wrong and the two become mortal enemies.”

“What part do you play?”, Emyl asks, looking thru the cabinets.

“I play Dr. Ennerthund. I get killed by Monet. He stabs me through the eyes with fiery paintbrushes.”

Emyl looks at her over his shoulder. “Awesome. I’d pay top dollar to see that.”

“No need to be sarcastic, Emyl”, Carolyn sighs.

He turns around. “I’m not. I seriously think that’s awesome. When’s the last time you saw a movie about two reconstituted Renaissance painters slugging it out on the streets of New York? I really, truly, honestly, seriously think that’s awesome.”

“Well, thanks.”, she smiles at him. And for a split second, Emyl sees the Carolyn whom he used to make stories up with; the Carolyn he’d occupy diner booths with until 5 or 6 a.m. would tap them on the shoulders and remind them of the progression of time.

“Look, guys, I asked you both here for a reason.”, she says, turning a bit serious. She leans back on her couch. “I know for the past few months, you’ve both kinda been trying to sabotage yrselves or whatever it is yr doing. And I’ve been vocally against it, as you know. In fact, I’ve been kind of a diva lately. But, seeing you two focus on something other than yrselves is actually kinda nice. Like, after it all, after everything you’ve been thru and we’ve been thru, the two of you still don’t have a false bone in yr bodies.”. She takes a breath. “I do. I’m not gonna blame acting or anything, but I guess I need to keep a front of falsity just to protect myself. And here and there, that false part of me will show up around my friends. You two. Sean. Ramon. And I just want to say sorry that it has. I try to take it off around y’all, but sometimes I don’t even know I’m wearing it.”

“Yr not being false, Carr.”, Hyla offers, “You just have a public persona and a private one.”

“Maybe that’s it, too. But I use the wrong one sometimes, y’know? Seriously? I, like, support the choices you two have made, even if I don’t fully understand yr motives or what you want to accomplish…if, that is, you want to accomplish anything at all. I don’t know. Whatever. But what I wanna say is that you two—especially you two—tend to keep me in my place. Keep me mentally grounded. Kinda remind me that I’m no better than anyone else.”

The trailer is quiet. Emyl and Hyla have just had their boats run aground on the shores of Speechless.

“Thanks, Carr.”, Emyl manages to mumble.

“Sheesh. I actually managed to shut you two up? That’s pretty amazing. I should compliment the two of you more often.”

“Don’t get into that habit”, Hyla stretches.

“So.”, Carolyn segues, “Do you two wanna see the plaster cast of my head that they’re gonna use to stick fiery paintbrushes into?”

“Heck yeah!”

“Abso!”

East Eastbugh, PA

Lucretia sits in the waiting room, nibbling the Styrofoam lip of her cup. She hears doctors being paged. She hears the beeps and clicks of machinery every time the emergency room doors glide open. Somewhere back there, both Nikkolette and Heatherette are being looked at, assessed, diagnosed.

She doesn’t know much so far. All she knows is that Heatherette was jumped on the way back to her dorm. And Nikkolette was in the street in from of a frat house when a car skidded and hit her. She doesn’t know how serious either one of them is. She moves from biting the cup to gnawing on her fingernails. The clock says it’s almost 3 a.m. Both sets of parents have been called.

Lucretia goes outside to smoke. The ground outside is wet, but she doesn’t remember any rain. Could be the result of an unfocused sprinkler system. She hears an ambulance in the distance, whining.

She paces back and forth for a while, subconsciously putting the guilt for her friends’ conditions on herself. If only she hadn’t cared just about her habit. If only she had tried to stop Nikkolette from leaving. If only she had tried harder, no half-heartedly. If only she hadn’t been trying to pit the two against each other. If only, if only, if only.

The ambulance she had heard comes barreling into the lot. EMTs rush from the building and open the back doors as it stops. There is a lot of hubbub and commotion as they lower the gurney and pop the wheels down. They rush by her and she gets a quick look at the person they’re rushing it. It’s Ned. Her heart falls into her stomach, flails about, and drowns.

She drops her cigarette and slowly walks in. The waiting room is still empty, except for her gnawed cup on a side table. Lucretia asks the nurse about the patient they just brought in. “I know him. His name’s Ned Dendleback”, she says.

The nurse looks with pity on her. Lucretia isn’t sure why. Maybe it’s because there are three people in the hospital that she knows…all having come in in under an hour.

“Oh, miss, I’m sorry.”, the nurse says, looking down at a chart. “He…didn’t make it.”

“What happened?”, Lucretia can hear the panic rising in her voice.

“Suicide”, the nurse says softly. “I am sorry.”, then answers the ringing phone.

Lucretia doesn’t move. Her legs won’t let her. A heat swells up in her head and chest. The nurse moves the mouthpiece from her mouth and covers it, looks with concern at Lucretia, “Are you okay miss?”

Lucretia can’t speak. She puts her hands out to find something to stabilize her. She grasps at empty air. The nurse puts the phone down and leads her to a seat. “It’ll be okay. You’re okay.”

Lucretia can’t handle it. Yes, she’s okay. Out of the four of them, she’s the okay one. Heatherette? Assaulted. Nikkolette? Run down. Ned? Deceased. Her? Okay. It doesn’t make sense.

She stands up. The nurse peers over the counter. “I’m just hafta…”, Lucretia murmurs, then walks into the hallway. An old man in a wheelchair is being pushed by an orderly who looks the opposite of enthused. She turns and just walks. She passes the bank of elevators. She passes the closed gift shop. Small Mylar balloons press against the glass, wishing one and all to please, not later but sooner, get well. She stops at a vending machine and digs through her pockets. A lighter, a piece of paper, a spoon. Her hand freezes on the spoon. As she touches it, she can feel Nikkolette’s warmth. She can feel Nikkolette stepping backwards and stumbling to a bedroom door, her face a wrinkle of disgust and disappointment.

Lucretia senses something moving next to the vending machine and looks. It’s Emyl. He’s leaning against the machine. Lucretia steps back to get a better look. There is no room between the side of the machine and the wall it’s next to to fit a whole person, no matter how thin. She then realizes Emyl is actually leaning out from the wall.

“What do you want?”, she sighs and moves back to the machine, still fishing her pockets for change.

“I don’t want anything.”, he replies. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fantastic”, she sarcastfizes. “I have one friend plowed by a car. Another possibly injured. And I have a dead boyf—ex-boyfriend. And they may all be my fault. I’m on top of the world, bro.”

“Who said they were all yr fault?”

“I’m not stupid. I know when my actions affect another person.”

“Do you?”

“What, is this gonna be about you now?”

“I’m a product of yr imagination, not Emyl’s.”. The Emyl mirage reaches into the machine and pulls out an illusory candy bar.

“Do you have any change?”, she asks the ersatz Emyl.

“Tons.”. He pulls out a handful of transparent change and it falls silently and to the ground. “Not that it’ll help.”

Lucretia leans her forehead on the front of the vending machine. “I was the one who pissed Heatherette off. I was the one who Nikkolette caught getting my fix, which made her run. I was the one who dumped Ned.” She sighs back a sob. “Ned. He was a good guy. I shouldn’t’ve treated him so…” She squeezes her eyes shut tight to keep anything from gushing out of them. “I’ve been horrible.”

“Yeah.”, Emyl agrees.

Lucretia stands up and looks at him with bloodshot eyes and a hint of snot in one nostril. “You don’t have to agree with me.”

“I’m not. You are.”

She rubs her eyes and nose with the back of her sleeve. “You are the most annoying imaginary person I’ve ever met. Why do you have to look like my stupid brother?”

“You tell me.”, he shrugs, then seems to think for a second before saying, “He ain’t so bad, tho, is he?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Guess?”

“He cares about me. A lot. He’s always texting or calling me but…I never call back or anything. Let him worry for while. After what he put me through, I’m okay with letting him squirm.”

“Was what he did that bad? Was he maybe looking out for yr own personal peace? Right or wrong, does it matter? He does care about you. Why do you want to make him suffer?”

“He made me suffer!”, she whispers loudly. She looks around. No one else is in the hallway to see her whisper-shouting at nothing.

“But is it unforgivable?” She glances at her feet then looks back up to answer, but Emyl isn’t there. It’s just her and an empty hallway. Down the hall, she has two friends hooked up to medical machinery, because, Lucretia is sure, of her own actions. She doesn’t want to be here. She sees the desire to run and flirts shamelessly with it.

NYC

Irkustk is about to fall. As is Kamchatka, Greenland, Iceland, Egypt and Peru. And Scananavia and Ural. And Papua New Guinea.

“Are you even paying attention?”, Ramon asks. Emyl, who’s eyes are wandering to the books in the shelves, looks down at the board.

“Huh?”

“It’s yr turn. Y’know, I got other things to do today then sit the backroom of a bookstore playing Risk while I wait for you to degrade an adoring public.”

Emyl cocks his head, “No you don’t.”

“Yeah, yr probably right, but go.”

They are, indeed, in the back room of St. Mark’s Book Sack, an independent bookstore in the East Village. Out in the main part of the store, chairs are set up facing a ramshackle stage (milk crates as a foundation with a plank of wood on top). Emyl is winding up his inter-city book tour for Word Rock, Math is a Jerk. This is the last scheduled place. And it feels to him like he’s been on a long journey, except the journey was longer than he’d expected. The last station stop is in sight, around the bend at the bottom of a slowly sloping hill, surrounded by plains covered in soft stalks of grain, with a soft wind tousling them.

“You sure you don’t want me to do this one? I don’t mind.”, Ramon offers. Emyl thinks Ramon has gotten used to doing these things. Not that Emyl minds. Emyl actually feels slightly bad that, after this reading, there might not be any more readings to do. Ever.

“No, I got this one, thanks.”, Emyl assures him, rolling the dice…which makes him loose two armies. He surrenders Papua New Guinea to Ramon. “But stick around. You’ll enjoy it.”

“Yr really gonna, like…go for the throats on this one, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Lemme ask you something.” Ramon stretches his arms across his front and sits a bit straighter. Emyl nods at him to go ahead. “I know you’ve got yr plans and ideas and everything. But, is this what you really wanna do? Like, the whole unfamousness thing? Have you thought it through thouroughly? Like…I’m just making sure. Cuz I care and all that crap. Are you sure this is the way you wanna go?”

“I’ve thought it thru. The pros, the cons, everything. The thought of not having to write for a deadline of to top myself or whatever. It looks like a peaceful place. Which is where I need to be. I haven’t known that kind of peace I think…ever. When I was younger, maybe. In my teens, hanging out with my baby sister. Back when responsibilities weren’t big huge responsibilities.”

“Gotcha”, Ramon nods and rolls. “I’m attacking 5 of yr armies with 30 of mine.”

“I hate this game. Seriously. Who’s idea was this?”

“Mine. You drag me down here, you hafta play my game.”

“Meh!”

* * * * *

The cameras flash. Emyl doesn’t mind because he has gotten used to them. He minds, though, that he has gotten used to them. Poised, in the audience, are columnists, reviewers, fans. He looks out the store’s windows and sees people pressing up against the glass, trying to get a look. He waves at the people outside. Their joy is almost epileptic. He looks down at the paper in his hand. It’s just a folded up 8½ x 11 piece of loose leaf notebook paper. Ramon is walking around outside the rows of chairs, trying to find somewhere to sit or stand. The crowd quiets itself down and waits. Emyl unfolds the paper and leans toward the mic.

“You are all horrible, terrible people.”, he says in a monotone. No one knows that the paper he is holding is blank. He continues, “You have no sense of the important. I’m yr flavor this month. And last month. And next month. I will lose my flavor. You will find someone else to cannibalize, to chew to bits with yr scrutinizing teeth. When you sleep, you dream of destruction. And you awaken only to destroy. I have nothing for you. I’ve given more than I had and I am dry. Anything more will be rubbish. I have nothing for you.”

He stands upright and steps back from the mic, crumpling the piece of paper in his hand. He drops it to the ground and approaches the microphone one more, this time, only to say, “Please. Go home.”

A soft murmur starts as he steps offstage and walks toward the door. He can hear people shifting. He manages to find Ramon’s face and it is a mask of surprise.

He pushes the door open, only to be greeted by fan who couldn’t get into the reading. They hadn’t heard a word he said. He just puts up his hand, smiles, shakes his head, and walks away. He heads toward the subway station at Astor Place.

East Eastburgh, PA

If she stares at a place right between Nikkolette and Heatherette, Lucretia can ave them both in view. Both of them have fluids being pumped into their arms. Both of them have oxygen lines going into their noses, secured with tape.

The only difference is that Heatherette is conscious. She looks up at Lucretia and lets out a small moan, which Lucretia takes as an attempt at a hello. Heatherette has bandages on the right side of her face. Under the covers, she also has bandages on her right-side waist and torso. Her right forearm is also heavily bandaged. Both her arm and face bandages have small flecks of red that have seeped through. Lucretia walks over, looking back and forth to her two friends as she does. She pulls a chair over and sits on Heatherette’s left.

“Hey, Heath.”, she says, gently holding her hand.

“Lu?”, she manages. “Can you do me a favor?”

“Sure.”

“I won’t be out of here for a while. But whenever you see Nikkolette, tell her sorry. Sorry for being so uptight.”

So Heatherette doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that she’s sharing this cordoned off room with Nikkolette. Lucretia doesn’t think it wise to point that out yet.

“I will. Yr parents are coming up. They should be here in a few hours. I’ll wait with you, though. Are you in a lot of pain?”

Heatherette tries to scrunch herself up to a more sitting position, but winces when she tries. “Only when I move”, she smiles. Lucretia tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear for her. “How do I look?”

“Beautiful as always.”

Heatherette gets a tear in her eye. “They cut my face, you know. My face.”

Lucretia doesn’t know what to say. She just squeezes her hand a little tigher.

Heatherette continues. “I’m gonna have a huge scar on my face.”

“Maybe not.”, offers Lucretia. “They can do amazing stuff with plastic surgey nowadays. I’m sure they can make it look like it’s always looked.”

Heatherette starts sobbing. The crying hurts her side. The tears turn from tears of sadness to tears of pain. “Ow…”, she croaks. A nurse walks in.

“Is she gonna be okay?”, Lucretia asks her.

“We just have to change her dressings. If you don’t mind waiting outside?”

“Sure. I’ll be just outside, Heath.” But Heatherette has turned her face to the wall to hide her tears. Lucretia goes out and leans against the wall next to the doorway.

She chews on her sleeve and stares blankly at the floor as she waits. She stops the nurse on the way out. “Excuse me. Um, the other girl? Nikkolette? I’m friends with her too. How is she?”

The nurse signals with her head to walk down the hall a bit. “Not so well.”, she starts. “She’s in a coma. She has lots of internal bleeding. A fractured skull. Two broken arms. She’s going in to surgery in about ten minutes.”

Lucretia is beside herself. She thinks that any second now, she’ll wake up and this will have been just one big heroine-induced dream. Heatherette will be fine. Nikkolette will be fine. Ned will be alive. “Okay, thank you.”, she hears herself say, but it sounds to her like she’s saying if from the bottom of a well. She goes back in the room with tears in her eyes. Nikkolette’s chest rises and falls with her breaths.

She sits next to Heatherette again, who is looking at a random spot on the ceiling. She doesn’t wanna be seen like this: weak, weeping, sad.

“Heatherette, if you want to apologize to Nikkolette, do it now.”, Lucretia, against her own better judgement, nods to the bed across the room. Heatherette turns to look.

“What..?”

“She got hit by a car tonite. Only a half hour or so after you left. Heatherette, she might not make it.”

“Nooo…”

“Say what you need to.”

“No. This isn’t happening.”

“Heatherette look at me. Look at me.” She does. “I made a stupid choice with someone this week. Ned. And he killed himself. Tonight. I can’t make my peace with him. But you have a chance with Nik—“

“What’s going on?”, Heatherette tries even harder to sit up. “Nnngghh!!” and collapses back onto her pillows, he eyes rolling back into her head.

* * * * *

The campus is abuzz. It’s almost 5 a.m. Lucretia predicts that not one soul is asleep. After watching Heatherette faint, she couldn’t take much more, so she came back to campus with the plan to pack a bag. For what, though, she’s not sure.

She’s in her room. Her roommate is down in the quad with the rest of the dorm. Lucretia has a duffle bag open on her top bunk. Underwear and socks are already in it. She can hear crying down the hall.

Maybe she can make it back to that party, she thinks. Find the guy that sold her the stuff. See if he’ll let her crash at his place. Or her boss, Art Gactch. He’s been checkin’ her out, she’s sure of it. And he’s into the whole H thing too. Probably. Well, he might have somewhere to crash at the least. She tries to think of any other friends she might be able to get a hold of. The only three that come to mind are Heatherette, Nikkolette, and Ned. She throws a hoodie into the bag.

It occurs to her that se treated not only Ned horribly, but also her two closest gal friends. Looking back over the past few months, it seems as if she hung out with them only if they were going to drinking or smoking. Like, the choices they made influenced her decision to hang out with them or not. Lucretia sees that she had been also pushing Heatherette away. Heatherette had gotten more serious about school and Lucretia had not. It was that simple. It was that difference that supplied ample reason for Lucretia to start driving a wedge in between the two of them. Heatherette had voiced her disapproval once or twice. And Lucretia, at the time, didn’t want to hear it.

Her face feels flushed. She drops the hoodie on the floor. There is a different person crying down the hall now. She weakly shoves the duffel bag over against the wall and crawls into the bed. She presses her face into the pillow. It’s soft and her breath warms it.

Somewhere, a growl creeps in. It starts of low and far away, but quickly increases. Now, it’s a shout. A pained shout. A shout born out of confusion and anger and even more confusion and misunderstanding and miscommunication and bitterness and animosity and physical and mental and emotional exhaustion. Something is muffling the shout. It should be louder. But the pillow beneath her face keeps it from being heard by anyone else.

NYC

From the roof of Hyla’s Greenpoint apartment building, she and Emyl can see the Manhattan skyline. The sun, slowly finishing its downward trajectory, keeps peeking out from between skyscrapers. Lights in some of them are already on…of could have been all day—they don’t know (it’s hard to tell if lights are on during the day). Closer to them, a large swatch of the Williamsburg Bridge is also visible, it’s reds now black with the back-lighting. The buildings and factories of Williamsburg and Greenpoint are like silhouettes, almost shapeless. They are more like shadows or unadorned cut-out. To their south, the taller bits of Dumbo and Downtown Brooklyn peek over roofs, bathed bright and luminescent by the setting sun, their facades almost glowing. To their north, the lone Citybanc tower stands sentry over Queens, wrapped in a cloak of what looks like mist but is probably just an aura of pollution.

Emyl and Hyla laze on folding cheap dollar-store type chaise-lounges, drinking coffee. They are using one of the many barbeques on the roof. Theirs is a red circular one, globular even, on legs with locked wheels. Their bag of charcoal leans against it as smoke churns out from the lid’s vent. It’s a salmon steak kind of night for them.

“So, that’s it then, is it?”, she asks him. She hadn’t been able to make it to his last reading, but she’d heard enough about it, both from Ramon and in the press: The Greenwich Sound, Time For New York, The Big Apple Press, JMZ Mag, New Yorkering Magazine…not to mention the podcasts she’d listened to from NPR’s website. Even the daily rags mentioned it in the gossip sections. There is a unanimous decision in the press that Emyl Garrets has gone bonkers and turned on his adoring public. Still others think that what he did was pure genius and is just some sort of publicity ploy. Emyl is done trying to figure it out and is even more done with explaining it to the public. He’s been denying interviews to everybody all week. Below them, 5 stories down, Metropolis Ave is alive with crawling evening traffic, people on bicycles, dogs being walked, a pick-up game of basketball across the street on the school playground.

“Looks like it.”, Emyl responds. He can hear the subway cars rattling and clanking under the street below. Sean is away on a shoot somewhere (Emyl forgets (or loses track (or, he’s kinda afraid just doesn’t care (not about Sean, but about whatever he’s doing cuz he knows that it’s prol’ly gonna be great and all and he’ll just wait to see the, like, finished product)))). Carolyn stopped by his place to see him yesterday and was trying really really hard to conceal her displeasure, still trying to maintain her grip and stance that Emyl can do whatever he wants and she will more or less support it.

“Are you gonna disappear from the public eye and all that? Like, if Sean or Ramon has a premiere, are ya gonna bail? Or, if I have an opening somewhere?”

Emyl looks at her over the rim of his mug. The steam lines soften her image, making her look like a dream. “Of course not. Why would I ditch you?”

“I don’t think you would. It’s just…you say that now. You say you won’t. But that might change. And you’ll be around less and less and then you’ll kinda just fade into the crowd of billions and be another face I don’t register. I don’t want that. I’m afraid of getting that.”

Emyl can vouch for his own feelings. He could wax exponentially about how much Hyla means to him. But he is, just now realizing how much he means to her.

“I’m not gonna…”, he trails off. He knows himself what he’s been thinking for the past month. And he knows it will lead him out of the city for and undetermined amount of time. So, he doesn’t feel like he can pacify her fears…just yet.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

She tightens her lips together and furrows her brow. “Are you going away, Emyl?”

Emyl gets that feeling again. It’s the feeling he got the last time she saw Val Brothers. It’s the feeling he got on Thanksgiving, explaining his life to his sister in his rental car. And he feels it now, that impending loss. It hangs over him like some ominous threat.

“I’m going away to find my sister.”. A ray of sunlight sneaks out from between two skyscrapers and warms his face, then disappears.

“Where is she?”

“Somewhere in Pennsylvania.”

“No one knows? Your parents?”

“She didn’t come home for Spring Break. She hasn’t shown up at her job. There was a suicide at her school. And a few other tragedies. No one has seen her since.”

Hyla just stares silently at him, trying to read him, trying to guess how he’s feeling. But Emyl isn’t giving anything away. Not on purpose. She can tell by his voice that there’s other stuff at work inside his head somewhere.

“So…yr gonna go out to her school?”

“I’m gonna stop at my parents house first, learn what I can, then yeah. I’m gonna go try to find her.”

Hyla exhales hard. She can’t think of anything to say but, then again, doesn’t feel like she has to say anything. Emyl turns his head and smiles at her. “Imma check the fish.” He gets up and goes to the grill. When he lifts the lid, a cloud of smoke rolls out and up, quickly disappearing into the air. He grabs the tongs from the grill’s side handle and flips the filets. “There are lookin’ mighty fine.”

“Emyl?”

“Yeah?”

“If you don’t mind me asking something…”

“I never mind you asking anything.”

She smiles. “Did yr sister ever understand, like, you? As a writer? As a famous writer?”

He puts the tongs back, closes the lid and sits back down. “That’s a good question. And I’m gonna hafta say, I dunno. For the last couple years, if we ever didn’t see eye-to-eye on stuff and if the argument turned scathing, she’d say stuff like, ‘Oh, the big famous writer is so this-or-that’ or ‘Well, pardon me, Mr. Celebrity.’. It wasn’t a jealousy thing. I know that. I think it might have been that huge gap of years I had put between her and me. Like, that gap was filled with me working my way to where I eventually got to. I think, actually yeah, there might be jealousy. But it’s a jealousy of Time. My Time was used by me and its effect was my fame. Maybe she’s mad because I didn’t use the Time to get to know her. Or care about her. I dunno. That’s just my guess. I could be totally wrong.”

“When are you, uh…going?”

“End of the week.”

“In three days?” she asks with surprise. She kicks herself for sounding so shocked. She didn’t want it to come out that way. But she continues, “When were you gonna tell me?” She thinks that last question might have been too much.

He smirks at her. “Tonight. Like, now.”

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about yr…like, things here? Yr next book? Yr apartment? All yr friends?”

There is an unasked question hanging in the air. She hasn’t asked it out loud but believes it was cloaked in that last group of questions. Emyl is pretty sure he heard the unasked question. Behind it is deep sense of lonliness. The question she didn’t ask is, ‘What about me?’.

“I don’t have another book in me right now.”, he states. “If DoHa wants to take legal action, fine. Whatever. I’m not concerned with the money aspect of stuff right now. My apartment is totally paid for. And my friends? I know exactly where they all are. I’m not in any position or inclination to have them disappear from my life.”

“You really love yr sister.”, she affirms. “I don’t know if I could what yr doing. Like, if I had a sibling and if I went half a lifetime not paying attention to them and if…”. She realizes she’s rambling, then stops. She gets up and takes a turn at checking on the food.

Manhattan glows like a gigantic panoramic roadside advertisement. Brooklyn looks like a jumble of layered landing strips. Emyl feels a point of time—the point where evening actually starts. He can feel the day itself sigh its last breath, can feel its hand open up and release the embryonic particles of night into the air to soar, grow, breed, and spread its soft wings over the borough. The sun is gone, and its colorful wake begins to fade. Hyla sits back down.

“Emyl?”

“Hm?”

“Can I go with you?”

“Huh?”

She takes a sip of her coffee and breathes out her nose. “I’ve been…I want to say…I need to say something. To you.”

“And what is that?”

“I’ve found that it’s rare—and it’s a little sad that it’s so rare—that friends rarely tell each other what they mean to each other. So, I dunno. I guess—no. Not ‘I guess’. I know that you and yr friendship mean a lot to me. Like, tons. Maybe more than you’ll ever know. And if this is that important to you, finding yr sister, well. I want to be there with you. For you. If you need it. If you want it. I feel like I don’t want you to do this alone. You know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

She smiles. She doesn’t realize how big she’s smiling and it makes Emyl’s heart do a few flips, a back somersault, and a few other moves he doesn’t know the names of . “That was one of the hard things for me.”, he says.

“What was?”

“Being away. Y’know, going away for an indefinite amount of time? I was worried about, like…missing you.” Hyla is speechless. “So, if you come with me, then I don’t have to miss you. And you don’t have to worry about me.”

The smell of the salmon fills the sky. The first star of the evening is visible almost directly above them. To the west, an airplane banks and descends, probably heading to LaGuardia Airport. Somewhere down the street, the tinny muffle of a band in a bar comes crashing out onto the sidewalk. The neon lights of the General Mills Diner hum on in red and blue. Emyl gets up and opens the grill.

Part Three (a)

I can hear Hyla behind me, thinking. I know it seems impossible, but I believe I can hear her mind going. I’m at my parent’s housse sitting at a new desk in my old room, writing an article about narrative voice for an online academic zine out of, I think, either Omaha or Tulsa. I’m using a pseudonym.

Hyla is sitting crossed-legged on the bed, leafing through a shoebox filled with old stuff of mine: papers, report cards, scribblings, pictures. She lets out soft breathy chuckles every so often, or a “hmm…” here and there.

We left the city yesterday. In the most arcane of all coincidences, I rented a car from the same car company I had back in the Fall. And they gave me the same exact car.

The trip out of the city was fairly uneventful. There was the usual swarms of traffic out the Lincoln Tunnel, the noise of aircraft landing and leaving from Newark International Airport, the stench of a stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike, then the 50 mile block of road down the Garden State Parkway to Luker Creek at Exit 82A.

My parents were glad to see me and took quickly to Hyla. And she to them as well. We caught up and I got all the info on Lu that I needed: names, place locations, directions.

“You were a fat kid, huh?”. I swivel my head around. Hyla’s holding a picture of me and Lu. I’m about nine, and she’s just a baby. I’m hold her and looking at the camera with an open-mouthed pride. Lu has her hand stretched toward my face, which she’s staring intently at.

“Yeh, I was a big of a pudge.”. I turn back and keep typing. I hear Hyla slide off the bed. Her socked feet slide over the dingy ugly goldish carpet which, I’m surprised, my parent’s didn’t go through any lengths to replace. There is all new furniture in here, but the hideous carpet is still here. I feel her forearms rest on my shoulders and her chin rest on my head.

“You can’t stop writing, huh? Kinda unnatural?”

“I guess.”, I concede. I can feel her breath roll down to my forehead. I twist my head a bit to see her. “I am gonna be okay. You know that, right?”

She stands upright and stretches, then puts her hands on the back of her hips. “I’m well aware, yes.” She looks around the room. “I like this. I like seeing what yr childhood was like. And where you came from. I dunno. I think sometimes, from what you’ve told me, that yr life was one big sinking hardship. But then again, for years, you never really talked about yr life back then…and back here.”

I spin my chair around to face her. “No. I didn’t. I’ve noticed that there’s this thing I do. I break up my life into sections. Of, like, time. Seasons maybe. I have my childhood, then my adolescence, then my abuse time, then my early New York City Time, then my latter New York City time.”

“What’s this time? Now?”

“No idea. But, maybe I shouldn’t be classifying my time. Like, it’s all just one big river. And rivers aren’t chopped up into smaller, more manageable bits. They’re not made sense of section by section. They have their own entire rhythm and existence as a unified whole. A wave upstream causes a ripple downstream. All that crap you know. But, I do know that I’m happy. Happier than I’ve been in ages. Also…well, y’know.”

She sits back on the bed and grabs the picture she had just shown me, the one of me and Lu. She asks me if I remember the picture. Like, the circumstances behind it being taken.

I tell her that, yeah, I do. That Lu had been in the hospital for a month or so because of jaundice, which, I had been told—or had heard, I’m not sure which—is very common in babies. So, the picture is of when she was brought back home again. I tell Hyla that I don’t remember going to the hospital to see her. I’d been told that I did, and that I cried every time because I thought it was a scary place, and I didn’t want my sister in a scary place. So then anyway, they brought her home and they let me hold her. And I was so excited, I remember that. I even remember telling my little baby sister that I’d never let anything bad happen to her again, that they weren’t gonna take her to another hospital ever again. That picture was taken a moment after then put her in my arms.

“It’s alright.”, Hyla whispers right before I realize I’m crying.

“Ah, jeez.”, I laugh it off, wiping my eyes with my sleeve. “How many times have you seen me cry these last few weeks, huh?”

“Have you cried over her before? I mean, since she was in the hospital as a baby?”

“No.”, I sniffle the snot back from dripping out.

“Then maybe yr emotions are making up for lost time.”, she leans back on a pillow against the wall.

“Thank you, Dr. Street.”

“Go ahead. Make fun. But I’ll betcha yr not all cried out yet. Not by a long shot.”

“Okay, I’ve had my little cry. I need to get back to work.”, I swivel back around to my laptop.

“So, what makes this article different than anything else you’ve ever written?”, she asks, pulling the shoe box back up onto her lap.

I tap the laptop screen, “Because this isn’t about me. It’s about literature. I have a detachment. It’s not from my heart. It’s from my head.”

“Can I read it when yr done?”

“Sure. Oh and hey. I was wondering. What’s yr next art thingy gonna be?”

“Haven’t decided yet. The Care Bear thing is almost done and I have a gallery all set up for it. I did get asked to be art director on some project Sean and Ramon are working on.”

“Interesting.”, I say with enough lilt in my voice to come off a bit more knowing that she might think I am.

“What’s that mean?”

“I gotta really…I gotta finish this article.”

“No no no no…”, the bed squeaks and grunts as she wriggles herself off it. She practically spins me around and grabs my shoulders. “You know something. C’mon. Out with it.”

“Or what?”

She looks around, my guesstimation, to find something to threaten me with. Not finding anything, she smirks at me…then gives me a heat butt. Not hard, but enough to jostle my skull a bit.

“Hey! What the heck?! Really??”

“They’ll only get harder. And, remember, I’m part Irish, so I can do this all day. So. Out with it. Spill the beans.”

I look up at her. Something about her smile melts the hardened crusty bits of my heart…the parts I’d spackled over, reinforced with mortar and brick, and coated with bulletproof glass. Her smile destroys all that, makes me softer. Destrucatable. Vincible. Open. Vulnerable. And I like that I am. And I’m glad that she’s the one who can do that to me.

“Fine. Just…chill.”. She sits on the bed again. “Sean and Ramon wrote this screenplay, like, years ago. When they first met. After work from Odnax, Sean would stop into Brew’s and drink. The two were actors—or struggling actors actually—at the time. Somewhere in there, they managed to crank out a screenplay. But they’ve never had the time or wanted to risk their own money to do it themselves. So, I offered to be their Executive Producer. They have full artistic say in everything. I’m just footing their bill.”

“Do you even know what it’s about?”

“Nope.”

“And you trust them with…with yr money and everything.”

“It’s not about the money.”

She leans back against the pillow again, studying me, surveying me. “It really isn’t.”, she says more than she asks.

“It really isn’t.”, I confirm.

“So, yr giving up yr name…in a sense. And yr prepared to give up a chunk of yr money or—this is just a guess—all of it. For yr sister.”

“Bingo.”

“Why?”

I fail at putting it into words. Me, a writer, failing at words. The truth is, if I didn’t have the fame, didn’t have the money, didn’t have all those trappings, I’d just be a few things. I’d be Gerson and Elsa Garrets’ only son. And I’d be Lucretia Garrets’ only brother. That’s it. That’s all I really want right now. But I say the first thing that comes into my head. “Because I think it might work.”

Hyla looks at me like she doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t press the subject, which I’m glad about. I turn back to my laptop and Hyla returns back to the shoe box.

* * * * *

Hyla is talking with my parents. I silently watch. Bowls are passed, napkins get used, glasses get refilled. She’s not talking at them, just telling them information about herself. She’s engaged beyond that with them. She’s asking them questions too. And then questions on the tail end of the answers to those initial questions. Every so often, she’ll look at me, wanting to wink, but smiles instead.

I slowly chew my food. I try to picture a world beyond supper, a world beyond tonite. In it, I see Hyla. I see life decisions being made. I see houses being chosen and self-renovated. I see family road trips with children strapped in back seats. I see bad report cards and discussions with one another about what we’re going to do about it. I see vacations alone to places off the beaten paths, to nowhere towns on the end of nothing counties, where the time spent is the vacation, not the location. I see each of us taking care of each other—colds, fevers, old age. I see arguments ending in forgiveness and a closeness we didn’t have up until that point. I see a progressive lifetime of getting closer and closer and it always still just needing to be a little bit closer.

I look across the table. Hyla has a bit of spinach wedged between her two from teeth. I flash her the tongue-on-the-teeth look and she expertly dislodges it mid-sentence and keeps going.

* * * * *

Her room isn’t pink. I never expected it to be. Lucretia wasn’t a girly girl. But she was never a tomboy either. Just kinda somewhere in between.

Her bed is made, which could’ve been done by her when she was last here, but more likely, my mother changed the sheets and remade it. The posters in her room are random. I can find no link among them. One of The Smiths. One of Einstein on which are taped two different eyes, probably cut out a magazine. There is a poster of The Ozarks, too, for some reason. She has one of those ‘Hang in There!’ posters—the one with the little adorable kitten hanging onto a tree branch by, like, the molecular ends of its claws. Except, Lucretia has replaced the kitten’s head with the head of Michael Hutchence. I didn’t know her humor was so dark.

There is a cork board over her bed, on which are still tacked an endless amount of slips of papers. I walk over to it. It’s mostly phone numbers. People I don’t know. People I’ve never heard of. And, if these numbers are still here, turning atom by atom into parchment, why does Lucretia need them? And does she even know these people anymore? In between the slips of phone numbers are little doodles on sticky-note paper: a flower, a swirly, stick figures holding mugs or geometric shapes or guns. There is one with an elf hat and a candy cane. Or a bent barber’s pole. I pull off a clump of numbers and look thru them. I can hear Hyla and my parents yakking it up downstairs. This is part of one of my little tests, too. I’ve done this with almost every girl I’ve been involved with. I leave them momentarily with my parents—like, maybe five minutes, maybe ten—to see how well they get along. So far, I—

--wait. No, not ‘involved with’ involved with. I’m not involved with Hyla. Yet. Or I don’t know even if…ugh.

I get the feeling she’s kinda the same way toward me. There’s definitely something there between us. We just haven’t defined it yet. He haven’t ventured to making the aether of it into a solid. Haven’t even begun to consider giving it a name. We’re at the point where we both know its there, and we’re just waiting (not impatiently, even) to where the feeling to progress to a different other arrives. So far, it hasn’t.

I take off another clump of phone numbers and look thru them. Hyla doesn’t dot her lower case ‘i’s with hearts of smiley faces. She uses lower case ‘x’s or actual diacritical tittles.

My eyes rest on one slip of paper. The name is a bit awkward. It’s ‘Annawellia’, followed only by a capital P. But next to her name, Lucretia (I assume it was her…who else could it have been?) made a doodle. It looks like an amorphous blob at first, but the squiggles coming from one end give it away. It’s a joint. I pocket the phone number.

I turn around and walk over to her desk. It’s a clutter of pens and books and paycheck receipts and desk caddies filled with markers, pencils, rulers, a fork or two, a calculator, a commercial syrup pump, highlighters, scotch tape, masking tape, duct tape, lock de-icer. And a composition book with “Open & Die” written in thick black felt-tipped marker. She couldn’t have meant it. If this notebook, here in my hands, was that important to her, she would have brought it with her. But she left it here, with a lot of her other stuff, a lot of her younger days.

I have it in my hand and I can’t believe that I’m having this dilemma. I should open it. It might have a clue as to where she’s gone off to. And anyway, she hates me already. How could my looking at her diary make it worse? What if, like, she wrote down something this past Thxgvg, some little snippet about school. Maybe she came into her room and saw the book and though, ‘Oh, yeah…this thing’ and scrawled a little sumptin-sumptin in there for old-time’s sake. I lift my head and look at the wall above her desk. There is a picture of me and her. From two…or, wait, is it three? From two or three Thxgvgs ago. I’ve got my arm around her shoulders all brotherlyish, with a kind of sloppy tired smirk on my face. My eyes are a bit sunken it and I look puffy in it. Lucretia has her arms crossed and is leaning against me, but looks like she’s trying to lean the other way. Her half-smile is forced. Her eyes are pure disdain. I look back down at her composition book and set it on the desk. But I keep the phone number.

* * * * *

Seatown Hills isn’t busy. It’s till early spring. The place doesn’t really start picking up until somewhere just before Memorial Day. The seagulls are out, cawing, picking ravaged meat from near-empty mussel shells on the beach. A few people walk the boardwalk, bundles up a little more than they would if they were inland. The ocean breeze. It’s cold. I’ve prepared, and made sure Hyla did, too. It’s a hat-and-gloves kind of day.

I had called this Annawellia P. last night. Told her who I was, asked if I could stop by and talk to her about Lu. She had asked, in a pretty thick (I think) Russian accent, if I was the police (what she actually asked me was, ‘Are you being police?’). I assured that, no, I was not being police. She told me to come by in the morning.

“…and I worked here back in, I think, ’91? 92?”. I’m giving Hyla the Personal Tour. I had worked in various boardwalk stands thru a few various years when I was in high school. An ice cream shop. A wheel of chance. A pizza joint. I did lots of grunt work back then. Hyla is taking it all in. She has her hands jammed into her pockets. Part of my wants to pull one of them out and hold it between my hands to warm it. Another part of me strongly advises against it, presently.

We walk down off the boardwalk and onto the street. We’re in front of a run-down looking apartment complex. And by complex, I mean a duplex split into an upstairs apartment and a downstairs apartment. Annawellia P. lives upstairs.

“After you, sir.”, Hyla feigns courtesy. I walk up the stairs. They creak with cold and age. I can hear Hyla’s Doc Martens clunking up the stairs behind me.

At the top, we can see out over most of the buildings on the boardwalk. Beyond them, the cold thin line of the surf on sand pulsates with each crashing wave. The horizon is a smear of light blue and white. The door has no doorbell. I knock on the outer door. The metal resounds like broken cymbals.

“Who is it?”, comes from somewhere inside.

“Annawellia P.? It’s Emyl. Garrets? I talked to you yesterday?”. I tilt my head closer to the door. I hear footsteps so I stand straight.

The door opens. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the girl that answers the door is nothing like I thought. With the deepness of the voice and the thickness of the accent, I guess I was expecting someone heavy-set. With maybe a mole. And some sort of kerchief tied around her head. Possibly a few wrinkles. Or, no kerchief on her head, but a big unruly tangled bird’s nest of hair.

The girl standing before us is in her, I’d guess, late twenties. She has straight brown hair, tied back in a hair tying rubber-bandy type thingy. Her face is wrinkle-free. She’s wearing an unbaggy New York Jets sweatshirt. Her glass frames are a dark green as are her fingernails. And she has all her teeth which, I realize, I had went ahead and assumed that she hadn’t. “You know of Lucretia?”, she asks, just to make sure.

“She’s my sister.”, I remind her. I think her face softens a little bit.

“Come in from cold.”, she says, holding the door wide for us. “Have seat. You like tea? And who is this?”, she asks, not rudely, just out of courtesy.

“Hi, I’m Hyla. I’m friends with…”, she points at me with her head.

“Husband?”

We both start for a second. Hyla is the first to recover, “Me? Us? No. Just friends.”

Good save.

“Well, friends now make for to have better friends later, no?”

“That’s very true.”, I agree.

“Sit. I get tea. Make selves home.”, and Annawellia P. disappears into a door way over which hangs a horseshoe set against a velvet green shamrock. There is a couch and a recliner. The couch has a plastic cover on it and the recliner looks like an old sock. We opt for the couch.

There are pictures on the fake-wood-paneling wall behind the couch. Photos of old sailors in regalia definitely not American. Expressionless matriarchs and patriarchs all bedecked in black. A black and white picture of some mongrel dog, with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen on an animal.

“Annawellia, I—“

“Heela, are you of Russian?”, she interrupts me.

“What? Me? No. I’m Irish, Romanian, Dutch, and Comanche Indian.”

“Romania is almost Russian. You have good sitting.”

“I have…huh?”

Annawellia sits bolt straight, like a plank, a points to her back. “Very straight sitting you have.”

“Oh, uh…thank you. And you have a lovely home.”

“Is pig sty.”, she smiles and looks at me. I look over at Hyla. Her mouth is open, her eyes are confused and I could bet that her mind is spinning a bit right now. “How is Lucretia?”

“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about. She’s actually missing. She’s away at college. I don’t now if you know that, but. Yeah, she’s away and, like a lot of college kids, she kinda went a little crazy with her social life this year. And um, no one has heard from her in almost a week.”

“You try cops?”

“Yeah. She’s over 18, so she’s no longer a minor. And the cops out there are, like, half-heartedly looking. I don’t think they’re taking it seriously enough. So, I came down to try and find out more about what she was doing last year. Like, maybe it’ll gimme a clue as to where she is now.”

“I’ve not seen since last summer. She work with me in beach chair store. We had many fun.”

I pull the phone number from my pocket and show her. “This sort of fun you mean?”

She looks at the slip of paper, then back and forth at me and Hyla. “You say are not cops.”

“No no no.”, I assure her. I think the doodled joint spread some paranoia into her. “I’m not a cop. Neither is Hyla. Whatever you do with yr own free—“, I pause and gather my thoughts. “I just want to find my sister. I found this phone number with a stack of other phone numbers. I saw the joint. I figured maybe you might know…something.”

“Lucretia do okay?”, Annawellia P. asks, a few drops of concern entering her voice.

“Honestly, I don’t know”, I sigh. “I hope so, but I don’t know. She’s gotten into stuff worse than—“, I pantomime toking on a joint. “I’m just very worried. Very worried.”

“You good brother.”, she breaths. Then she looks pained. “But I can’t help you, good brother. I don’t know of where is she. Last time I saw, she was working my store Labor Day. That was last time I see her. I ask her, ‘See you work here next year?’ and she will say ‘I am do that.’. Last I see her.”

“Okay…”, I don’t know what to do, so I stand. The tea kettle starts whistling in the kitchen. “We will get out of your way, Annawellia. Thank you for all you’ve…”

I don’t go on. Annawellia P. looks hurt. Like, emotionally hurt. “She get high a lot last year. I tell her not to, but I have some also with her some of the times too. She wasn’t listen to me.”. The tea whistle gets higher. Annawellia doesn’t budge yet. She looks up at me and hands me the phone number slip. “You keep. When you find Lucretia, you call and tell me she is being fine and okay. Please.”

I agree. There isn’t much in the way of good-byes. I don’t think any of us even say a word. She shuts the front door behing us and, compared with the warmth of the inside of the house, the ocean breeze whipping up at us feels sub-Arctic.

* * * * *

We pass Olaf’s Diner on Route 70, somewhere near Cherrytown Heights. The ride up Route 70 has been tedious and un-scenic. Emyl points out Olaf’s as the place he and his friend’s used to stop on their way home from seeing concerts in Philadelphia. Most of the shows, he says, took place in underground college cafeterias and random warehouses. He says he used to know parts of Philly with the same familiarity he has of the backside of his metacarpals. Now, he doesn’t think he would know it at all. I throw in the fact that it’s probably a very good thing that we’re not going to Philly, then.

“I liked yr response to the husband question. Very calm. And it wasn’t one of those, ‘Oh dear God, no!’ sort of responses.”

I’m taken slightly aback at this. Why would it be an ‘Oh dear God, no!’ situation. So, I ask him. “Why would it be an ‘Oh dear God, no’ response?”

“It wouldn’t. I mean, I don’t know if it would. Would it? I mean…”

His awkwardness amuses me, but I don’t want him to get too squirmy about it. “Relax. I’m only half toying with you.”

There is a long pause, then he asks, “Then what’s the other half doing?”

“What’s the what?”

“You said half-toying. Meaning another half is not toying?”

“No, that’s not…no.”

“So…”

“No, it’s like, I’m not putting 100% into toying with you. I’m only giving around 50%.”. It seems to me like Emyl is trying to force a subject into conversation. And that subject is of the ‘what going on between us?’ variety. Which I’m not presently inclined on getting into. Not now. Not when we’re going to hunt down his missing sister. He’s got other, bigger fish to fry on his plate. We can wait on the conversation. THAT conversation.

Not that I don’t want to have that conversation. I do. My feelings for him have gone beyond platonic and I’m pretty sure his feelings for me have also. To me, it’s practically pulling the sod out of Obvious’s lawn. But, no. Not now. I have the feeling that he and I have nothing but time to talk about it, work on it, figure things out.

* * * * *

There isn’t a whole lot of traffic on the S. 34^th St. Bridge. And it’s not as cold as I thought it would be. People are honking at me. I’m not gonna jump. No way. I have a laundry list of reasons to, though. Dumping my boyfriend made him kill himself. One of my friends is in a coma. And another friend is probably going to be I disfigured for life. Because of me.

I lightly flick my ring finger across the body of the joint, to knock the ash off. The entire joint slips out, falls past the concrete railing, down thru the night air to hiss into oblivion somewhere in the darkness of the Schuylkill River. I curse myself and pull out another one.

These past few days have been a blur. I left my dorm with a bag half packed with things I’ll need, and things I won’t need at all. I haven’t even shown up at work. I’m probably fired by now. I’ve been couch surfing among friends and dealers. Well, okay, mainly dealers. I root through my mind to see who I know or where I can go to get some money.

My parents, no way. My trust for them has significantly lowered since I learned they were in cahoots about keeping a secret from me. About my brother, even. My brother. He was in on it too. It still irks the life out of me.

My cell phone rings. I look at it. It’s one of my dealers. His text says, ‘Hv sum. Supr cheep. U in?’

I look up and down the bridge. I’m gonna hafta hike back to get the bus at—

Hike.

Hiking boots.

I have money in the sole of my hiking boots.

The boots are at school.

I have to get back to school.

I put away the unlit joint and take one last look out across the river. Cars trickle like patterned white Christmas lights across the Schuylkill Expressway, which is only a stone or two’s throw away.

I put it all in the back of my mind: the dead, the dying, the deformed. I lock them away into a recessed nook that I hope never to look in again. If things work out, I’ll never have to worry about anyone or anything ever again.

* * * * *

“No, no, no”, Hyla disagrees into her phone. The lights and wires of the Ben Franklin Bridge hum by us, bright and long. Philadelphia sits in front of us, welcoming us with stacked layers of luminescence and color.

I just got off the phone with Ramon and Sean. Mostly Ramon. Sean had apparently so mind-numbingly drunk, he was trying to get into a fight with Ramon. Ramon, the one who would usually take someone up on a fight or two, was calming him down.

They called to ask about the production (the name of which they haven’t told me yet (if they even have one)). They wanted to spend a little more on catering. They’re not fans of Kraft Services. Ramon knows of caterers who employ helper-monkeys. I told him, go right ahead.

I’m not sure who Hyla is on the phone with but I think it’s about a gallery. From what I can gather, there are a few building code violations that they can’t circumvent or get around.

I’m kinda glad we both received phone calls. The conversation was heading down a road I wasn’t prepared to go down, even though I was steering it there. I don’t know how I lost control of the thing…I just did. But the phone calls helped distract us enough to forget what was going on. Though, it’s not really working for me since I’m still thinking about it.

I don’t miss the life one bit. The celebrity life. The fame. The money (though I still have tons of it). I like…this. I like not having to do what’s expected of me. For a long time, I was feeling like I was living someone else’s life for them. And now, I’ve finally tried on my own life and I like how it feels. It’s not irritating my skin. It’s not too tight. It’s roomy and fits pretty much just perfect.

“Emyl?”, Hyla is off the phone.

“Yeah?”

“What if this big production bombs?”
”The what does the what?”

“This thing. This Ramon and Sean thing. What if it bombs? I know you could care less about the money part, but what about Ramon’s and Sean’s careers?”

“It’s their choice, isn’t it?”, I try to say with finality.

“Not all of it, no. It is your money. And if, whatever it is they’re doing, if it bombs, if it destroys their names and reputations in the film community, would you be okay with that?”

I think about it for a minute, unsure of were this line of questioning sprung from. “I personally don’t think it’ll ruin them if it does bomb. Call me irrational, but I trust what those two do, artistically. Granted, I’d probably never let either of them watch my cat and water my plants for a weekend. But when it comes to the choices they’ve made in film? They’ve been pretty spot-on.”

“You don’t have a cat.”

“I know.”

“Or a plant.”

“Yes this is true.”

“But that’s the thing. Every actor and director has a bomb or two under their belts, right? Like, what if this thing is their bomb?”

“Then…”, I correlate the thoughts to form some sort of logical semblance, “…then they know what they’re getting into. They always know. Each project is a risk. Same with novels, same with art. One could be lauded, one could be panned. It’s all up to the public. We make what we make, be it a book, a painting, or a movie and then…then it’s done. It’s a baby given to the public to raise. Either they let it live, or they let it die. Once it’s out of our hands, it’s forever out of our hands.”

I glance over at Hyla. Her face is pure contemplation. I think she’s actually going over what I just said, not just jumping to a conclusion, or looking for an window in which to pop in her opinion. She’s actually considering my words. She’s not taking them as golden or law just because they’re from my mouth (like my ‘adoring public’). She’s weighing it against what she believes. I think. Whatever it is, I like it.

“I’m gonna think about all that,”, she says as she lights up a smoke for herself and one for me. She passes it over.

“Thanks.”, I say and add, “Think about it how?”

“You said a lot. I need to digest it.”

“Want me to say it again? Cuz you’d be out of luck since I’ve forgotten most of it.”

“Ha.”, she smirks at me as I glance over again.

“Oh!”, I exclaim as I see a sign saying ‘East Eastburgh University 25’ on the side of the road. “You got the map?”

“Yeah, I think it’s in…”, she opens the glove compartment and looks inside. “Nope. Lemme check yr bag.” She leans the top half of herself between the seats to reach my bag in back. As she moves, I smell soap and tobacco and remnants of coffee and some form of flower, I think. Chamomile flowers? I don’t know what it is, but it smells comfortable and endless.

“How many pockets does yr stupid bag have?”, she grunts as she twists herself to and fro.

“42. Take yr time. It’s still, like, 25 miles away.”

“Har-dee-friggin-har.”, the top half of her comes back into the front of the car. “It isn’t in there.”

“Well, we can pull over at the next rest stop or gas station and find it. And I need more coffee.”

“Ugh. This road coffee is getting to me.”. I’ve found that she refers to non-gourmet coffee as road coffee. Stuff found, particularly at rest stops, gas stations, run down bodegas, city corner news stands, even Charbucks coffee.

“Middle America is made of road coffee.”

“Middle America? We just passed Philadelphia. Hardly Middle America, buddy.”

Street lights flash thru the car like lazy strobes, vivid and lingering. The road unravels, and I’m not too sure where it leads.

Part Four

NYC

“Budgetville Rent-a-Car on 18^th, please”, Emyl says as Ramon Richards gives the top of the cab a pat as it pulls into traffic. Inside, Emyl cranes his neck and waves. It doesn’t take long for the cab to be just another colorful dot among many others. ‘Emyl and Hyla’, he thinks, ‘That makes some sort of sense.’.

He steps back onto the sidewalk and goes into Astronaut Deli. He grabs a 4-pack of Dr. Whirlington’s Ham Stout and a meatball parm sub, then goes into his apartment building next door.

Up in his apartment, he can see the Empire State Building out of one window, and Washington Square Park out the other window, the window which is actually double doors onto a large balcony.

His desk is littered with papers. He doesn’t even want to begin to organize it. He starts rethinking the whole directing thing. Not seriously, though. It’s just that the mess of papers reminds him of all the other stuff involved with it. He had an assistant once, but in the end, Ramon insisted on sticking with his own chaotic, sloppy system of order. He shakes his head and steps out onto the balcony.

Down below, in the park, people sit on the cement rims of empty fountains. People lounge or sleep on benches. There is a Frisbee and a few footballs getting tossed back and forth as well. And music. Someone is playing music, and the breeze is carrying it up these 16 stories somehow. He’s on the verge of something, he can feel it.

Years and years and lifetimes and eons ago, he and Sean had an idea for a movie. Sort of a ‘Waiting for Godot’ meets ‘Dr. Strangelove’ meets the Marx Brothers meets ‘Fight Club’ meets every cheesy horror movie ever made meets Kabuki meets old French new-wave cinema. Something like that. And, recently, seeing Hyla doing what she want sand Emyl doing whatever it is he’s doing, they got inspired to dig up the old thing and look it over. And they found that they still enjoyed. They brought it to Emyl as a ‘remember this’ sort of memory. He borrowed it for a day then told them he wanted to produce it. Like, executively produce it.

There was a big discussion-slash-argument about that. Ramon and Sean didn’t want Emyl to ‘waste his money’. Emyl asked Ramon and Sean if the two of them thought their collective idea ‘had any cinematic potential or merit’. Ramon and Sean agreed that it just may have a ‘resemblance to cinematic potential and merit’. Emyl then asked that, if they believed in it, how could it be ‘financially unreasonable’ of him to ‘invest in the dream’. Ramon and Sean had no answer. Emyl told them to think about it. Emyl also told them that money was no issue.

Ramon sips one of his beers as he sits in a wrought iron patio chair and puts his ankles up on the railing. Emyl’s money thing worried Ramon. Emyl seemed like he didn’t care about money. Which, y’know, was good to an extent. Ramon had always hear that the love of money was the core root of all and any types of evil. But Emyl was treating money like water.

And Emyl hadn’t been the same since, like, mid-winter. And his little diatribe at his reading hadn’t done much for his public image. He was either being attacked or praised in the papers, but mostly praised. It also helped his book sales. ‘Maybe’, Ramon thought, ‘that was part of his plan all along.’. But, that seemed too easy for Emyl. Too much of a stunt and a cop-out. He knew Emyl pretty well. He didn’t want to use the word ‘deep’, but he couldn’t think of a more apropos adjective for him. Emyl was ‘deep’. Ramon can’t put his finger on any tangible situation as proof, but, knowing the guy for as long as he has, he just knows the guy well. He’s ‘deep’.

He’s not enjoying the beer. Not as much as he thought he would. Too much ham flavor. He knows that the movie should be shot in black and white. Maybe add some sepia tones here and there.

He stupidly looks around the patio for pen and paper to start writing stuff down. He knows there is no pen and paper out here. He groans as he gets up and goes inside.

The desk.

It’s still there and still cluttered.

He find a pen and paper, goes back to his position in the chair, and starts jotting notes. He had already asked Hyla to do set design. And he and Sean are still in extended debate as whether to ask Carolyn to act in it. She’s gained a bit of a diva side lately. In fact, in Ramon’s theory, Emyl’s treatment of his own career brought it out in her. Ramon sees it like this:

Carolyn watched Emyl and saw him (in her opinion) throw his career out. Now, if it is that disposable, what is stopping anything or anyone from taking her career from her and throwing it out? She has clung to acting with piercing talons since the winter, since Emyl started saying good-bye to writing (or, rather, commercial writing. Emyl had shared with him that he’d be doing online columns and commentaries under pseudonyms. But that’s being kept under lock and key and another lock inside an old wooden chest welded shut and tossed into the deepest trench in the sea. For now.)

So, Carolyn as a prospect is still a bit wishy-washy. He and Sean need to meet a few more times to come to a decision, but they have to do it quickly. Sean isn’t a gossip, but it might slip out. As for Emyl and Hyla, they’re going to be gone for a week or so. A trip to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, was it? Ramon isn’t too sure, but he’s not worried about them letting it slip, either.

Not to take advantage of Emyl and his financial investment, but, posits Ramon, why don’t they go all out? Like, make it huge. Product tie-ins, novelizations, a clothing line, a prospective Broadway musical based on it. Emyl had said he didn’t want any profit from it, for Ramon and Sean to think of it as a ‘labor of love’.

Monkey caterers! He had heard of a catering company that has monkeys serve people. He jots down a note to call Emyl with that one. Because, if, like, Emyl says yes to monkey caterers, then Ramon knows he’s serious. That he really doesn’t want to keep going with the life he’s been leading.

A new life. That’s what Ramon thinks Emyl wants. He’s not even sure he can blame the guy. For the past couple of years, he’s noticed a change in Emyl. His fire was snuffed. Or, if not snuffed, then heavily suffocated. Emyl seemed, to borrow a phrase Sean (for some reason) always uses, ‘uncomfortable in his own skin’. Like he wasn’t there emotionally. Or mentally. Or even spiritually. He was just there scientifically. He was taking up actual space as mass, and that was it. His movements and choices weren;t his as much as they were…well, not his.

Ramon is just now glad that Emyl did what he did to himself. The self-sabotaging. The withdrawl from the whole life and lifestyle. Ramon thinks that if Emyl stayed with it any longer, he’d’ve gone 100% certifiably bug-nuts. And he would’ve been completely useless to anyone and everyone at that point. And this whole Hyla thing—not that there’s anything quote-unquote official going on, but Ramon suspects and has his own thoughts on it—would never’ve happened. Or be happening. Or soon happen. Ramon will worry about the verbs of it later.

He finishes his beer and takes out his cellphone. He texts Sean, “Got ideas. Com ovr. Need 2 discus Carr, 2.”

He looks down the neck of the bottle and sees tiny shreds of something on the inside, clinging to the bottom. He decides that it must be ham.

* * * * *

Carolyn sits on a bench just outside the Great Lawn in Central Park. She feels…well, she’s not sure how she feels, or rather she does know, but doesn’t want to use the word to describe it: dirty. She feels dirty.

She has just come from a photo shoot. It was her and 6 other women whom have been noticed and watched recently in the film industry. Sort of a group of up-and-comers in the mainstream world, no matter their cred in the independent film industry. The photo shoot made her feel dirty.

The photos themselves will be very tasteful, she has no doubt. But the being around those six other women and listening to their conversation was one of the most uncomfortable things she’s done in ages.

Like, for instance, if one of the girls had to pop out for a second of leave the room, the other girls would say horrid things about her verbally tear her apart—stuff that would make sailors and truck drivers blush. But when the girl they were talking about returned, it was all hugs and air-kisses and smiles and kindness. It made Carolyn sick deep deep inside.

And worse, it made her wonder whether this whole acting thing is really what she wants to do. Like, is she ready to move up to a next level of sorts.

Not only is her life and career on her mind. But a host of other things. Namely, her friends.

She knows she hasn’t been the nicest person lately, maybe letting her slow ascension thru the celebrity ranks puff her head out a little wider. She knows she’s been pretty horrible to Emyl. Wow, she thinks, Emyl and I have been thru a lot and…I’ve lost sight of that.’

There’s some kind of war going on inside her. Part of her likes the acting thing and the photoshoots and premiers and parties and interviews. Another part of her misses her friends. Misses small pointless times spent doing, in the grand scope, absolutely nothing, but it was a sacred kind of nothing. The sort of nothing used in remembrances to indicate a simpler time or an era devoid of career responsibilities. The autonomy, really. Autonomy used to be a big huge 24/7 nothingness, in a good sense, she thinks. But, she speculates, there must have been something about that autonomy that she didn’t like, that didn’t suit her, that got stale for her. She tries to think of what it was.

As she searches, she only comes up with stuff she might use at the end of ‘Hey, remember that time we______?’ questions. She can see herself years ago, 85 hair colors ago, with her stomach leaning on the window sill, head out in the city air, looking over to her left where Emyl is hanging his head out the other window. She can see it clearly, the two of them smoking, ashing out three stories above the street, down onto the foot traffic of a Friday night on Avenue B. Behind them, in her over-priced studio apartment, there are countless drank and crushed cans of Parpst Blau Rippon beer on her floor, the remains of a can-wall gone awry. She yells over to him: “So then, um…she found out he wasn’t going to night school and that he had actually joined a…uh…midnight bowling league. But it’s not just any midnight bowling league, no sir! It’s a….”, she nods at him, signifying it’s his turn to pick the story up. Emyl takes a drag and spits out into the air. His eyebrows go up in astonishment in himself as he blurts out, “It’s a cross-dimensional bowling league of cross-dressing cross-country track coaches…wearing cross-trainers! Y’know…instead of bowling shoes.”

“I dunno”, Carolyn protests, “You kinda had it for a second there. Then it kinda nosedived.”

“Nosedove.”

“Nose…huh?”

“It’s nosedove. The past tense of nosedive.”

“No it’s not.”

“Yes it is.”

“Lies.”

“Nuh-uh. Truth. Look, what’s the past tense of dive?”

“_______”

“Don’t gimme that look.”

“It’s ‘dove’.”

“Right. It’s not ‘dived’. You don’t say, ‘I dived into a pool’. You say, ‘I dove in.’”

“Yr lying!”

“Not one bit.”

“No no no. I know what yr doing. Remember that time you tried to convince me that ‘moosen’ actually is the plural of moose? Rememver, you went on about, like, clover-footed animals—“

“Cloven-hoofed. Ungulates.”

“That’s the word. You told me that since ox pluralizes into oxen, that moose, in some form of English no longer spoken, actually did at one time have the plural ‘moosen’.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that alright.”

“Yeah. Ha, ha. Or remember that time you tried to convince me you were born with one lung? Or also, like, and the time you told me that yr middle toe got severed off in a sliding van door when you were five? Don’t laugh. It’s not funny. I believed you.”

Carolyn looks down at the street, then up at the stars and slides herself fully back into her apartment.

Emyl slides back in, too. “Yr a bit temperamental, huh?”

“I am not.”, she kicks at a small collection of empty beer cans. They clonk and dink across the floor. She looks at the clock. It reads 1 a.m. “Maybe you should go.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea. If you don’t agree with something, just send it out the door.”

“That is not what I’m doing!”, she snaps as she starts grabbing beer cans and throwing them at Emyl.

“Hey…!”, he deflects them with his forearm. “What are you…? Knock it off you psycho.”

That’s when Carolyn snaps even more. “I hate! Being! Called! Psycho!!”. She makes some sort of inebriated lunge for Emyl’s feet. He staggers back out of the way and Carolyn just kinda flops onto the floor, landing on and knocking aside beer cans.

She just lays there. A sob forms somewhere inside, but dissipates into nothing before it can grab a hold of anything to grow on. “I’m not sending you away.”, she says. Emyl can’t hear it because her face is in her arms on the floor. He just hears a prolonged groan.

He squats down next to her.

“Huh?”

She looks up at him, eyes red, but no sign of tears. Might have just been from them being pressed against her arm. “I’m not sending you away. I don’t do that. I’m not like that.”

Emyl puts his hand on her shoulder. “Not always, no.”

She rolls over onto her back and looks up at him. “What do you mean, ‘not always’?”

“Carr. I don’t know what you wanna call it. Call it a defense mechanism, call it ‘looking out for number one’, call it whatever you want. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just how you are. You’ll put aside things that don’t help you, personally. Sometimes. At least, that’s what I’ve noticed”

Emyl looks around and spots a 6-pack of unopened beer. He grabs two and sits down next to Carolyn.

“What does that make me?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, gee. Thanks.”

“No. I don’t mean it that way, like yr a nobody sort of nothing. It’s just how you are. Who you are. Like, a character trait.”

“It makes me sound horrible.”, she opens her can and scrunches her chin deep into her chest to drink it without spilling.

“Well, look at me. I have a hard time letting people get close to me.”, he cracks his beer and sips it, leaning against a bit of wall.

“Really? I don’t see that.”

“Of course you don’t. I don’t let people see it. I’ll let certain people in at a distance I deem safe. And usually no further.”

“Why?”

“No idea.”

“No, but I mean, like, why do you think you do? If you had to guess.”

“I really don’t know.”

She looks sideways at him. “Is this you putting up a barrier right now? Not letting me in?”

He smirks. “Heck, it just might be.”

They sip their beers in silence for a few minutes. Carolyn finally sits up. “Hey. Wanna go outside, run a round the block, then find somewhere to get coffee?”

“Abso.”, he replies with a smile. And, if Carolyn remembers correctly (which she does), they did run around the block, then wound up on the L.E.S. at some hole in the wall coffee joint, drinking coffee and smoking for hours.

She leans back on her park bench, trying to fir together chronological bits of memories between then and now. Emyl just recently hightailed it out of the city, she’s not sure why. After all, he’s being shot down in the press. Maybe he just needs to lie low, regroup, rethink.

Which, she considers, might be what she has to do also. She doesn’t wanna ditch her acting altogether. She thinks she just might have to personally evaluate herself and what she wants and what it takes to get it and if she wants to do what it takes to get it.

Yes, she might.

Just have to.

Do that.

* * * * *

“Frederico Fellini would sue us if he was alive today, you know that?”, Sean points out. He and Ramon are on Ramon’s balcony. The sky is featureless. Just flat and grey. One big scrim of cloud hastily capping the island of Manhattan. No threat of sun or rain. Just a pointless sky, Ramon muses.

“Is it the ‘film-about-films’ angle?”, Ramon asks. He’s looking at the notes he and Sean have just jotted down.

“Well, that. And the black and white. And the non-linear linearity. And the industry in-jokes and references.”

“Hm.”

“Then how do we change it? Or…do we?”

They sit in silence. They had talked to Emyl the other day and asked him about the monkey-catering. He gave them the go ahead. So, they know now that the sky (not the sky above them, the uninspirational sheet of near colorlessness, but the metaphorical sky) is the limit, as far as what they want to do.

“Well”, begins Ramon, “what if it’s, like, a film about a film about a film? Too meta?”

“If we won’t be able to follow it, how will anyone else?”. Sean is on his seventh beer and surprisingly lucid for being so.

“Okay. Well. What if we kill the main character, like, halfway through, then have the rest seen thru a minor character’s eyes? But then, that character is also dead. Like, has been dead and is just a phantom in the main character’s afterlife?”

“Yr losing me, buddy.”

“No, but hang on. Get this. The main guy…what should we call him anyway? We never figured that out. Maybe if we had concrete characters it would help us more. Like, help solidify everything else.”

“I thought the characterless main character thing was to help the film retain some sort of ambiguity and confusion. Like, what the character is going thru, his disorientation, is felt by the audience too, no?”

“Well, how about for just writing? Like, make up a name for him for us. To give us something solid to go by. We can always remove it before we shoot.”

“What name did you have in mind?”

“Just something middle-of-the-road. Unassuming. Common. Nothing special. Like, I dunno…how about Eric? That’s kind of a blah name.”

“Hmm. Not sure. I knew an Eric once. Kind of snarky fella. He thought he was a writer, but all he did was start books, but never finish them. And they were usually pretty heady. Like, lots of observations about humanity and crap. Big words on purpose. Needlessly introspective, y’know?”

“Well, isn’t our main character like that?”

“Meh. Sort of. I guess. Sure, fine, let’s use it. So, how does that name work into…”, Sean reaches over and taps Ramon’s notes, “…this?”

“Well, we have the silent bits. Like the non-dialogue bits. Which could work itself into the city-wandering bits and the slapsticky stuff and the absurdist stuff.”

“Okay…”

“And the heavy dialogue stuff works great with, also, the city-wandering bits plus the slasher stuff society versus industry stuff.”

“Alright, so lets go over it from the top and see what we can do.”. Sean pulls another beer out of the cooler next to him. He twists off the top and flicks it over the railing as if it was a coin.

“What are you--?”, Ramon makes a move to stop him but it’s too late. The cap twirls end over end in an arc and disappears out of sight as it falls into the pulsing artery of the street below, not a ray of sunshine reflecting off it.

* * * * *

Carolyn leaves the wrap party early and in tears. She’s astounded. And appalled. If the mainstream industry is anything like she experienced this evening, she wants nothing to do with it. Her craft is too important to her. Her scruples mean too much to her.

The cobblestone side streets of Soho have small rivulets of water still sitting in them from the afternoon’s quick rainstorm. The street lamps echo in the puddles, wobbly and unstable. She hears sounds next to her. There is a dilapidated awning and a green light over a glass door. Inside, she hears the sound of revelry. She walks up and looks in.

It’s a bar. Just a small regular bar. No beer signs. No loud music. Just a place to get a drink. She goes in.

The place isn’t even crowded. Just a few people at the bar itself. The place has only, like, six tables and they are all occupied. She pulls up a stool and orders a Jack on the rocks.

It stings as it goes down. A good kind of sting, she tells herself. She twirls the glass around, focusing her ears on the sound of the ice cubes clinking heartily against one another. She takes another sip. The bartender slides a napkin in front of her. “Bad night?”, he asks.

“Huh?”. The bartender is pointing at his own eyes, then hers. She looks past him into the small mirror behind the bank of liquor bottles. There are dark circles and smudges around her eyes. Her mascara must have had a field day on her face. It runs down her cheeks and is smeared from the corners of her eyes up to her temples and back to her ears. “Oh, jeez.”. The bartender slips a glass of water in front of her as well. “Thank you.”. The bartender nods in affirmation and moves to a patron at the other end of the bar.

Carolyn dips the corner of the napkin into the water and uses the mirror to rub all the errant make-up from her face. She is cheering up a bit, finding it funny for some reason. She ends her clean-up in a deep breath which makes her feel a few zillion times better.

She finishes her drink and lays a twenty on the bar. One last glance in the mirror, and she walks back out into the city, where she can do whatever she wants to do.

* * * * *

Either the world itself has become elastic, or there are tiny men underneath the sidewalk, pushing up on the concrete squares as he steps on them, Sean thinks, because he’s all over the sidewalk and everything around him has lost its rigidity.

I’m supposed to be doing this, right?, he asks himself.

He sits down on a curb and lights a cigarette. He has lost count of how much he has drank today. Could have been a twelve-pack’s worth. Could have been a whole bottle of the hard stuff. He has no idea and can’t even begin to figure it out. He tries to spit, but it only comes out as a drool string. He doesn’t have the wherewithal to actually spit. He’s that shot.

Air, he think, Air will help.

He manages to get to his feet. He unnecessarily dusts off nothing from the front of his pants and heads forward toward the street corner. He knows there’s probably a subway there. He’s at the point where he can’t shut his eyes because of the spins, yet doesn’t wanna keep them open because of seeing double. He tries to make a bee line for the phone booth, to lean against it. He undershoots and winds up face down in a pile of garbage bags.

If my parents could only see me now, he thinks. His parents. He thinks of them. About how they’re unhappily divorced and don’t speak to each other. About how he used to have to stretch himself between two Thxgvg dinners and two Christmas days. About how he left them and his accent behind in Mobile, Alabama. About his brother, successful in the banking field and living a nice comfortable unassuming like in San Diego. About all the ennui he felt down in Mobile. The disenchantment. The disillusionment. The apathy he felt toward everyone. Did he really feel that way, though?, he wonders. Or were his sights set so vigilantly and staunchly on an out, an escape, that he labeled everything as such only to justify his leaving? Were things, like, really that bad?

His tears drip down over the raunchy garbage bags. With a bit of a struggle, he makes it to his feet. He spots the big green globe of a subway entrance. He centers himself on getting down into the station and going back to his apartment. Sure, he can take a cab, but he already predicts the motion sickness involved. For him, the subway’s movements—it’s back and forth—are like a cradle, lulling him into a tranquil state. For him, a subway ride is pure quiescence, offering a serene transcendence he’d be robbed of in a cab.

And he doesn’t feel at peace, either, about the piece he and Ramon are working on. Sure, years ago, it seemed like a great idea. But Sean can’t seem to muster the excitement about it. He is filled with total disinterest and indifference as to whether they do it or not. It kills him that, maybe, he’s become jaded behind his own back.

He finds himself at the top of the staircase. If he can just make it down there, he knows he’ll be fine. He takes it step by step. He soon finds himself at the bottom of the stairwell. But he’s looking back up it at an odd angle. From, like, a floor angle. And he feels pain. Not just inside, but outside. Parts of his body throb. He aches all over. And he can’t seem to stand up. Trying to hurts even more.

Part Three (b)

East Eastburgh, PA

The elevator lets us off on the fifth floor. Dings and bings come over the paging system. The place smells like urine and bleach. Not in a dirty way, but in the way that, yes, this is, after all, a hospital.

At the nurses station, Hyla and I sign in. Heatherette’s room is down at the end of the hall. We walk up to it and knock softly. I hear what sounds like, “Come in.”

We peek around the door and walk in. The first bed is empty. All we can see of the far bed if from the knees down because of the curtain. “Heatherette?”, I ask.

“Yeah?”, comes a reply of curiosity.

I walk to the foot of the bed. In it, a girl is propped up with pillows. She’s reading a book. She has a bandage from the right corner of her mouth back to her ear. She is very pretty, but her eyes hold a sadness I can’t even describe. “Hi.”, I introduce myself. “My name’s Emyl. This is my friend Hyla. I’m, uh…I’m Lu’s brother.”

She blinks at me, then creases a page of the book and sets it aside. “Nice to meet you. Have a seat.”

We pull chairs over to the right side of her bed, shaking hands with her before we sit. “How are you?”, it seems only proper to ask.

“Doing okay, I guess. They gotta do some reconstruction on all this”, she points to the bandage, “so, I’ve got some surgeries ahead of me. And I might be out the rest of the semester, so…”, she stops herself. “But enough about me.”. She folds her hands on her lap. I take this as a signal to talk.

“Well”, I start, “I heard about all the stuff that went on around here last week. And, um…well you see, Lu has been missing ever since.”. I stop, thinking maybe Heatherette might offer a bit of elucidation. She doesn’t, so I keep going. “We’ve tried calling her and nothing. We called the school and they said she hasn’t been to class either. We even tracked down her roommate…um…Bed…something…”

“Bidwalla.”

“Yes. But she never really stayed in that room anyway, so she had no idea. Lu’s R.A. suggested maybe we come talk to you? She said you’re good friends with her.”

Heatherette sighs. She looks at her hands. She folds, then unfolds her fingers, then folds them again. She looks up, he eyes moist. “I really miss her.” She sighs again. “Y’know. She was here. The night I was admitted. I don’t remember much of it. I was on a load of painkillers, but I remember she stopped in. My other friend, Nikkolette, was ironically in the hospital too. She got hit by a car, like, less than a half-hour after I left her. She’s one floor up, in a coma. But, what I do remember is that, from what I know about Lu, I think she blames herself for what happened. Oh, and her ex-boyfriend, Ned, killed himself that night, too. So, I think she’s felt…or probably still is feeling a lot of, like, guilt. Like, about all of it. Me, Nikkolette, Ned. All of us. I don’t know where she is. And, like, judging by what she’s been doing lately, I don’t think that wherever she is is a good place. If she’s a mess, then she’s probably…”, she trails off.

“I have an idea of the kind of stuff she’s been getting into, if that’s what you mean. We had a big falling out at Thxgvg. She pretty much wrote me off.”

“Yeah.”, Heatherette says with a tone of concession, “She’s kinda done that with a lot of her friends too. Like, for the past few months, it’s as if she’s alienating people on purpose. Like, she’d rather turn them away now then drag them down with her…” I look at Hyla, who looks back at me with knowing eyes. Yup, it’s the same thing I had done when I was using. “…but, I dunno. I think that’s kinda dumb. Like, I care about her. A lot of people do. And she just, I guess, willingly turned them away. Which, in a small sense, I understand it. But, it doesn’t make it less stupid. You know?”

“Yeah. I do know.”

There is a stretch of quiet where Heatherette and I both gaze sadly into our respective laps.

“Heatherette,”, Hyla speaks softly, “do you have any idea where she might be? Like, people who would let her crash? Places she’s go?”

“Have you tried her job?”

“She hasn’t shown up for weeks.”, Hyla says.

“I don’t…”, Heatherette’s brow crinkles in thought, “I don’t really know. I mean, she had connections. Like, drug connections, but I never talked to her about who they were or stuff like that. I mean, I might be a bit hypocritical because I used to get high with her earlier this semester. But, y’know, my grades started slipping so I stopped. She, on the other hand, just…didn’t. She just went more and more hardcore with it.”

The images going thru my head won’t end. I see Lu face down dead in a ditch or a lake. I see her strung out and passed out on a dirty carpet in some flophouse. I see her on the streets, stinking, a victim of the elements, gaunt and twitching. “Is there anything we can do for you? Like, while we’re here?”

“No, that’s okay, thanks. I’ve got a book. I’m fine.”, she holds the book up to indicate that, yes, she’s okay. I glance at the cover. It’s strangely familiar. In fact, it’s a copy of my first novel, Off.

“Is that a good book?”, I ask her.

She shrugs. “It’s okay. I need distraction so, it does the trick.”

This makes me smile. In my mind, it’s probably the best review the book has gotten. Ever. “Well”, I pull a card out of my wallet and place it face down on her bedside table, “if it’s cool, I’m gonna leave my number with you. Like, just in case you see her or hear anything, cool?”

“Yeah, that’s fine. And hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Lu never talked about you. I mean, she mentioned having a brother, but it never really went beyond that. Are you two close?”

I look up at Hyla, who has already stood up, then back at Heatherette. “We were. Long ago. But lately, no. If anyone should feel guilt about anything, it’s me. I feel like I pushed her to where she is.”

“How?”

I choke back a lump of something in my throat. “By not being there when I should have been.”

“Don’t kill yourself over it. And if you find Lu, tell her that goes for her also. Please.”

“I will.”. We exchange short good-byes and Hyla and I walk back to the elevators. We are the only ones inside. On the ride downstairs, I have an emotional breakdown. Hyla holds me as tight as she can. It helps a little.

* * * * *

Lucretia doesn’t have much time. She snuck back into her dorm, but she has a suspicious feeling that she’ll be found and ratted out or something on that level. She has already turned out both her and her roommate’s dresser drawers. The sheets and blankets and pillows of both bunk beds are all over the floor. Their small closet has also been ransacked.

Bunk beds!, she screams in her head.

She throws herself to the floor and sticks her head underneath the bottom bunk. There are three shoeboxes under there. She pulls all three out. Kneeling, she opens the first one. It’s Bidwalla’s documents. College transcripts, scholarship award letters, tests. Lucretia tosses that box aside and delves into the next one.

Hikng boots. Her hiking boots.

She pulls one out and tries the sole. Nothing. She hurls it across the room. It lands on her desk, scattering books and papers and writing implements. She grabs the other boot and tests the heel. It gives. With a strength she has no idea she has, she rips the sole completely off and a bundle of money falls to the floor. All fives and tens. She counts it. One hundred and twenty-five dollars. She stuffs it into her jeans pocket and goes to her room door. She peeks her head out. No one in the hallway. She pulls the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and keeps her head down as she heads to the end of the hall.

Right before she gets there, she hears a door open behind her, and the voice of her R.A., “Lucretia?” She stops and turns.

“Lucretia? My goodness, is that you?”, the R.A. walks toward her, full of concern. “Where have you been? Everyone’s been worried sick. We kinda thought you were dead or something.”

“No,”, Lucretia confirms, feeling the urge to flee, “I’m not dead.”

“Well, good. I mean…wow. Are you okay? Like I said, everyone has been worried sick. Even yr brother. He was here earlier looking for you.”

“My what?”

“Yr brother. Him and some girl came here looking for you. I told them that you’ve bee missing all week. But if he comes back, I’m sure he’ll be glad you—“

The R.A. doesn’t get to finish her sentence. Lucretia’s overwhelming desire to flee reaches a zenith, and she punched the R.A. in the face. Lucretia doesn’t stick around to watch her fall. She lunges out the door and down the staircase.

She can hear her footfalls as they catch every other step. She can hear her heart in her ears, drumming away like a storm. She can hear the R.A. shouting something two floors up. She can hear doors opening and slamming all over the building.

She exits the stairwell into the dorm lobby. Her pace slows to a brisk walk. Two security men are coming through the front door. She approaches them as they come in. “Oh, good, yr here”, she says. “Someone just slugged Marthette up on third. I think she’s still there.”

The security guards thank her as they rush into the stairwell. Their clunking boot steps fade. Lucretia bolts out the front door.

It’s officially spring, but some sort of cold front has moved in. Almost everything is covered in a shiny veneer of frost. She just needs to get a mile down the road. That’s all. She keeps her head low as she walks off campus and on to the main road. There is no sidewalk, just trees on both sides. The trees lead off into dark woods.

She heads about twenty yards into the woods and uses its darkness as a cloak. She’s beyond the range of prying headlights. Leaves and twigs crunch under foot. She can see a porch light less than a mile away. It’s the only one on this side of the road for miles. That’s her destination.

Her fingers hurt. In fact, her whole hand does. She didn’t know she had it in her to punch another person in the face. But Marthette was in her way, keeping her from going where she had to go and doing what she had to do. And if anyone else had seen her, then she doesn’t know what she would have done. Punching her was the only option. Plus, it made enough of a distraction for her to slip off campus.

She thinks she hears maybe an owl. It’s far off, but still audible. Cars hiss by on the street. She can still hear that. And she can hear a siren somewhere, too. No doubt, she thinks, on its way to the campus. She’s gotta be no more than a half mile away from the house she’s aiming for.

And Emyl?

Here?

Why?

She doesn’t get it. She explicitly told him that she wants nothing to do with him. Is he trying to score big brother points? ‘Save’ her? Is he going to drag her home and force some sort of hokey intervention detox sort of crap on her? Her footsteps are getting angrier. She grits her teeth together. Well, she thinks, after tonight, he won’t have to worry about her. No one will. Heatherette won’t be able to blame her for anything. In fact, Her and Nikkolette would probably do just fine without her, thank you very much. Lucretia realizes that her hands are out of her pockets. The cold air is also accountable for the pain she feels in her fingers. She lights up a cigarette and, by touch, double checks her pocket to feel if the wad of cash is still there. It is.

She can see multi-colored lights playing over the tree trunks. She hides herself behind a tree as she hears a police car whiz by. She looks back and sees its taillights on, slowing down for the entrance to the school.

Lucretia walks past an old antique RV. The white exterior is covered in rust and moss and dirt and ivy. The front windows are boarded up with wood. There is a smell coming from it. It smells of earth and oil. The RV means she’s not far. Up ahead, she can see the clear section of dirt driveway leading to the house. She feels beyond chilled to the bone.

She walks up the driveway to the ranch house. Behind the house, she can hear a chain rattling and a dog barking, heavy and mean and full off deep bass.

She opens the storm door. The screen has peeled away and lies against the lower part of the door. The porch is filled with boxes and long-neglected garden tools and shovels an rakes different-sized tires from vehicles and bicycles. She knocks on the front door.

She can hear music inside. And movement. The inside curtain on the door slides aside. An eye peeks out at her. The head it’s attached to turns and calls to someone, “It’s a girl.” There is a muffled response and the head yells back, “I don’t know.”, followed by another muffled response. The head looks at her and, just loud enough for her to hear, asks, “Who are you?”

“Lucretia. I’m here to see Spielmacher.”, she responds, starting to feel the shivers. She looks back over her shoulder at the driveway light. She can see small white bits begin to float down. The head and the other voice got back and forth until she hears the locks being undone. The door opens a crack and a hand beckons her in.

It’s warm in the room, the kind of warm that encompasses and swaddles. Next to her is the guy who opened the door. He’s short, maybe not even five feet tall. He has a bald spot, but it’s not symmetrical on his head. It runs from his left temple to halfway toward the back of his skull. She tried not to stare, checking to see if maybe it was shaved, but it does have that bladness look to it—thin wisps trying to cover it. And the wisps look soft and combed over.

She’s in a living room of sorts. Against the wall next to her is a couch. There is a woman curled up on it. She is covered in a blanket which is either being clutched tightly by her or was tucked securely around her. Small moans escape her mouth. Thru the spray of hair that covers her face, Lucretia can see that her eyes are closed. Lucrteia’s face itches just thinking about all that hair.

On the wall next to that is another couch. It’s made of, what looks like, leather. Except its worn. Like, long worn. The corners of a few of the cushions have foam flowers blooming from them, like jaundiced flora. There is a guy sitting cross-legged on it, meticulously packing what is probably marijuana into a pipe. He doesn’t even look up.

Against the far wall is a bar with three stools. The top is surprisingly clean, considering the rest of the room seems to have some sort of film on it. Residue? Dirt? Smoke stains? The walls may have been white, but they are now an uneven mélange of beiges and umbers.

The wall to her left has a door way in it, leading to elsewhere in the house. She hears foot steps come down the hall and looks just as Spielmacher enters the room.

He’s tall and gaunt. He, too, is bald, but shaven that way, except for a devil lock, which is usually ponytailed on the back of his head, but which now hangs down in front of one eye, reaching to, about, his sternum. He wears a dirty white t-shirt, suspenders, and heavy brown wool pants. “Hello, Miss Lucretia.”

“Hey.”

He waves her over as he walks over behind the bar. As Lucretia goes over, she tells herself to watch what she steps on, since the room is littered with papers, clothing, and wayward needles. She makes it over and occupies a barstool. Spielmacher grabs a box from under the bar and sets it on the table. “What can I do for you, Miss Lucretia?” When he calls her Miss, it creeps her out a bit. But she’s not in any position or mind to start an argument on conversational etiquette. She just wants what he has. No, she tells herself, she needs what he has. ‘Want’ has a connotation of being just a passing fancy. She ‘needs’ enough to get to where she wants to go. And he usually has the best stuff.

“I’ve got one twenty-five. Whatever that gets.”, she pulls out and lays the wad on the bar. He smiles, picks it up, counts it, then pockets it. He opens up his box and takes out a plastic zipper bag the size of a sandwich bag. It’s full of a white powdery substance. Lucretia only notices the scale at the end of the bar as he reaches for it and pulls it closer.

She absently bites her nails as Spielmacher spoons some of the product into an empty baggie on the scale. The moans from the woman on the couch get louder. He can hear the man on the couch flicking his lighter and inhaling deeply. She can also hear the other man, the one who had answered the door, walking back and forth around the room. Spielmacher freezes for a second as he hears a police car coming down the road, the heading elsewhere. Lucretia finds herself mentally looking a bit of information titled, ‘The Doppler Effect’. After the police car passes, Spielmacher continues weighing out the powder.

“How are you doing in school?”, Spielmacher asks as he works. Lucretia can’s stand the sound of his voice. And his breath always has a stench to it. Almost like a stinky foot odor mixed with bad oral hygiene…which would account for his yellowed and browned teeth. Also, she’s not in the mood for pleasantries. But, word on the street is that Spielmacher can get unpredictable sometimes and just decide, at the drop of a metaphorical hat, to not sell. So she carries the conversation forward, albeit with lies.

“Good. Acing most of my classes. I’m having a touch time with chemistry, though.”. She’s not even taking a chemistry class.

“Doesn’t seem to me that you have a tough time with the chemistry. Seems to me that you enjoy the chemistry.”, he snickers. Lucretia gives him an obligatory chuckle.

“The pharmaceuticals, right?”, she adds. He giggles again. It’s a high girlish giggle and sends tiny shivers up Lucretia’s spine and down her arms, standing the hairs to attention.

He puts the spoon down and takes the baggie off the scale. He ties it into a neat little knot and places the bag, about the size of a golf ball, in front of Lucretia. “There you go, my dear.” He puts the large bag back in the box and stows it under the bar, then slides the scale to the side. He leans forward, on his elbows, and asks, “Is there anything else?”

“No, just the stuff, thanks.”, she places her hand over the bag and grips it tightly. She’s unsure of whether to leave.

“Would you like to do it here?”, he asks, reaching under the bar and produces a gear bag.

“Sure.”, she says. Spielmacher reaches in and pulls out an unopened syringe, some cotton, a shiny spoon, and small corked beaker of rubbing alcohol. “Thank you.” She gets off the stool and goes over to the couch with the man smoking on it. She sits on the far side and lays the stuff on the coffee table. She reaches into her front pocket for her lighter. She places that on the coffee table. Spielmacher watches her, the smile never leaving his face. She unzips her hood and takes it off, glancing down at the inside of her elbow and the small red cluster of scabbing holes on it. She takes a deep breath and reaches for the rubbing alcohol.

* * * * *

“Which way is it?”, Emyl asks as he slows for a stop sign.

“To the right.”, I tell him. We haven’t said much since leaving the hospital. Our plan is to check the campus again and, if there’s no luck, find a hotel for the night and try again tomorrow. Bits of snow land on the windshield and melt just as instantly. I’m not sure where he’s at, mentally. I can tell that all of this is taking a toll on him. His eyes have bags under them and he hasn’t been eating well…or much at all. And he’s quieter than usual. Not that I’m blaming him for anything. Not at all. I just don’t enjoy seeing him like this. I wish that there was something I could do that would, like, make it all better. Make him feel better about the whole thing. But I can’t. I know I can’t. The most I can do is just be here for him. I wouldn’t…no, I couldn’t deny him that.

And I think he needs me here as much as I need to be here. Not to sound haughty, but I think I help ground him in some way, help him keep his head as level as possible, considering what he must be going through. And keeping his sanity at an even keel helps me keep myself strong for him, if he is ever on the verge of losing it or giving up.

A siren wails somewhere behind us, and is getting closer. I spin my head around to see blues and reds spray all over the road and the woods buffering the road. Emyl slows down and pulls to the side to let the police car pass. I roll down my window a crack and light a cigarette.

The road shines. It’s getting a bit wet from the flakes. Emyl puts the windshield wipers on. Another police car sounds behind. Emyl pulls aside again to let this one pass.

“I wonder what’s going on.”, I offer, to get a conversation going. Not to occupy the silence. The silence is good. I think two people sharing a silence is a great thing. There’s no need to fill in time with words. There’s just a shared quietness which, because it’s so calm and cozy, is it’s own reward.

I try to start a conversation to keep Emyl’s mind occupied, at least until we get back to the EEU campus. I know that he can over-think sometimes, and I just want to help ease his train of thought, keep the tracks smoother than they can appear.

“Could be the roads. What with all the snow. Maybe there’s some ice somewhere. And someone crashed.” He inhales quickly. “Oh, that’s a horrible thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Could be worse.”

“How?”

“Um…”, I try to think of something so outlandish that it would be wholly unbelievable. “Maybe there’s a cat stuck in a tree. Like, frozen to a branch?”, is all I can come up with.

“That’s morbid, Hyla.”, he grins.

“Hey, yr the one with the writing talent. You try.”

Another police car passes us.

“Well maybe it could be,”, he starts, “a UFO crashed into one of the dorms and all these cops are preemptive crowd control until the government guys in dark suits and glasses and earpieces come to erase everyone’s memories.

“That’s totally not original.”, I conjecture.

“You got me there.”. We round a bend in the road and come up on the university’s entrance road. We turn on it.

There are red and blue and white lights bouncing off all the campus buildings. Between swipes of the windshield wiper blades, we can see officers of the law walking around, barricading sections with ‘Police Line Do Not Cross’ tape.

Emyl parks out of the way and we get out of the car. With all the bright lights, things take on a dream-like state. There is too much going on for the visual senses. We head over toward the girl’s dorm, where the activity seems to be concentrated.

We walk past an ambulance. Emyl peeks his head in and stops. I come around to see what he’s looking at. It’s the Marthette girl we had met earlier. She’s sitting on the bumper of the ambulance, wrapped in a blanket, as EMTs attend to her eye.

“Emyl?”, she notices him.

“Marthette? What’s happened? What’s going on here?”

“It was yr sister.”. There is a little bit of venom in her voice. “She was here. She came back for…something, I have no idea. I tried to talk to her, but she attacked me.”

“Do you know where she went?”

“I have no idea. And I don’t really care. She can be dead in a ditch, if it were up to me.”

Emyl’s face hardens. Something inside me leaps to my throat. I watch Emyl as he breathes out and says, “Marthette, I know you don’t care. But Lucretia is in trouble.”

“You ain’t kidding.”

“No, I mean, she’s in some real serious personal trouble.. I need to find her. Before she hurts someone else. Or herself.”

Marthette sighs. She rolls her one visible eye and reluctantly tells us about two security guards who had encountered her. They were heading into the building as she was leaving, but didn’t know who Lucretia was. Like, they didn’t know she was the one who had assaulted Marthette.

“I’m sorry about all this. Really I am.”, he tells her before we take our leave and head over to the security guards she had pointed out. They are being questioned by the police, so we hang back. Emyl looks at me and he looks helpless. His eyes don’t have that pulse of hope they’d had on the ride up here from Luker Creek. I grab his hand and squeeze it with mine. Partly to reassure him that things will be okay, and partly because he doesn’t have gloves on and his fingers are cold as winter stones.

The sound of car engines and static-y voices over radios float over the clusters of people outside. It looks like everyone is here: administrators, students, janitorial staff, campus security, local law enforcement agencies, first aid people. It’s almost like an event.

The is a police officer over by the ambulance, talking with Marthette. One in a while, she looks over at us or points. The officer nods and keeps talking to her. The snow is coming down heavier. Emyl squeezes my hand tighter. I look at him. He’s staring at the building. Or, rather, staring past the building. I can’t even begin to guess what he might or might not be looking at.

* * * * *

We’re both exhausted. Back at the hotel room, Emyl sits on his bed and watched the Weather Channel. I sit over on my bed, scribbling down ideas for set designs.

The meteorologist rambles on in soothing but cautionary tones. There is a cold front moving in from the north, bringing snow to the tri-state area. The hardest hit spots will be eastern Pennsylvania and the southern half of New Jersey. Every ten minutes, the local weather chimes on, smothered in unpretentious Muzak. The digital clock faces Emyl, so I can’t see the time. And my watch is over on the night table and I don’t feel like leaning across the bed to check it. We have a wake-up call for 6 a.m.

There was a lot of hubbub at the school. The cops asked Emyl a load of questions, many of which he didn’t have the answers to. Like, where was Lucretia? Who might she know in the area? When is the last time he saw her? Is she armed? Is she dangerous? Has she mentioned any names lately? What was she wearing? Does she have a criminal record? How much did she have to drink tonight?

Not having any answers only made Emyl more jittery. He also reached a point where he stopped looking at me while they questioned him. I think it was because I didn’t have any answers. And he knew that. And looking at me probably reminded him that any answers he was seeking were definitely not in me. It kept reminding him that questions would remain unanswered, maybe for an extremely uncomfortable amount of time.

I can’t seem to focus on my notes. I put them aside and slide under my covers. I don’t like sleeping with lights on, by Emyl is still up, so I don’t day anything, except for, “Goodnight, Emyl. Try to get some sleep.”

“Uh huh.”, he agrees. “Good night Hyla. Thanks.”

“Anytime.”. I lay on my side, facing the wall, and pull the blanket down so it covers my neck. I breathe into the pillow. The warmth reflects back. Emyl coughs and his bed creaks as he shifts. I press my eyes closed a it tighter, hoping that when day comes, that all the answers Emyl needs will be sitting, neatly stacked an collated, in front of the hotel door. I hope Lucretia gives up whatever ghost has latched itself onto her, causing her to do what she’s doing. I hope for a happy ending to all this, yes, even the kind where the two of them hug and cry over lost time and bad decisions and promise each other never to put the other one thru such things ever again. I hope for them to be in a family picture—the kind that can be looked at and you can just tell that the family gets along and has no secrets and are patient and understanding of each others’ flaws and idiosyncratic quirks. But most of all, I just hope for Emyl’s heart to stop breaking and finally, eventually, wholly heal itself.

The last thing I hear, before drifting off, is pen being feverishly applied to paper, in zealous strokes and slashes.

* * * * *

The world is going on without me. I can feel it. I hear voices and they sound worried and frantic and frenetic. Something about being caught. I think. Something about leaving. I think. Something about blame. I think. I can’t tell. And I can’t see. Either I can’t open my eyes or I won’t. None of that matters to me.

I can feel my limbs move, but I’m not controlling them. Either behind my eyes or with them wide open, I see extended smears of earth tones. And I can smell panic. It smells uric.

I feel myself leaving warmth. I tell myself this is what birth must feel like…the transfer from warmth to non-warmth. I’m floating. Or sliding. Or being dragged. Warmth gives way to a stinging cold.

My face gets cold. It could be rain. Or snow. Or dirt being tossed down on me, to cover me, to bury me. Or it could be small slivers of the night itself, peeling like old paint. And the crystalline splinters of the night sky rest on me. Flecks of moon dust atoms from long dead stars press their tiny sharpened fingers to my face and don’t let go.

I can still feel myself moving. Things look black now. It’s a deep black that squinting into won’t produce anything to give any sort of bearing. Random streaks of light appear either before or behind my eyelids. Colored globes dance brilliantly before me and disappear into bottomless aethers. Voices still carry on, but now in more hushed tones. It’s the tone of secrets. Secrets to keep and secrets to forget. I can sense the night around me. It reminds me that it is hard and unforgiving and ready to hide whatever needs to be hidden.

I stop moving. I can feel the ground beneath me, not giving any indication that it is going to keep me warm. And the voices have left. Only mine remains. It tells me that I may stay here for a long time. It tells me that, if I had done things differently, I’d be elsewhere by now. It tells me that the other voices from my life were right about a gret many things and that I will probably never hear them again, unless they are flung eternally upward. Or downward. My voice hasn’t decided which yet.

There is a warm throb coming from what I can only guess is my arm. I try to will it to spread to the rest of my body, but it only fades. I can feel wind. It settles on me and I feel it enter my nostrils, stir my insides with icicles. And on this wind, I think I can hear my mother and my father and my brother calling me, telling me that everything will be fine. Just fine. That I need not have any worries. That all the frozen hands presently pressing in on me will soon turn warm. And that I’ll be better than I’ve ever been. And that I’ll know why everything happened the way it did. And that I’ll be okay with it.

If I do hear the voices again, the voices of my family, I want to hear them from heights. That’s my choice. And all that goes along with it.

I try to move. I try to create words. I try to feel the world around me. I try to open my eyes. Or close them. I can feel my breath enter my lungs. I can feel it churn inside, and slide out into spirals of wet air climbing up. Up past the brittle trunks of trees, up past the stratums of air shared by birds and airplanes and bugs and the billions of other exhalations for the billions of others who have lived and died. My breath pushes toward the stars.

Part Five

Dear Lucretia,

I’m done. I don’t know what else to say to you. If I ever find you, I think I am going to be speechless. Because I’ve said it all already. I’ve said enough. It’s up to you to decide what it is you want to do to and who you want to be. I’m done

I’m in a hotel room in your collage college town. I’ve been looking for you here all day. I went to the hospital to see your friend and I came back to your dorm to find out that I’d just mised missed you. And that you attacked someone. Lu, that isn’t you.

This past week, I was back in Luker Creek, visiting Mom and Dad. I saw some old photos of us. I wish you’d remember those times—the times we did get along, when we were younger. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten when you the times when you were younger and I’d hang out with you all the time.

There was a time when I made a promise to never let you feel hurt ever again. I promised myself too that I’d always be there to watch over you.

I failed at that. No excuses. Just: I failed.

I wish I knew where you were. I know you can’t read this right now and that I may actually wind up throwing this out after I write it. I think I just need to write it down and see it, to make me feel like I really am talking to you. And to say things I might not otherw get to do otherwise do.

Was I so terrible? Was I really a horrible brother to you? I really don’t think I was. And if I ever see you again, please understand that I can’t go on the rest of my days apologizing to you and virtually begging your forgiveness. It’s yours to give, not mine. Altho, just know, that I dream of having it.

I’m thinking of moving back to Luker Creek, too. Seriously considering it. I’m just trying to iron for myself what I need to do to get myself there. I want to be around the family. And I want to be around you. I’m not cooking up some ploy to make up for lost time. I want the times ahead to be something I remember fondly rather than regret daily. I’ve lived too long with regret. And if you feel that too, let me tell you—stop. Stop living with it. It’ll only eat you up and harden you to the point where you don’t even notice it’s there. Once in a while, the opportunity might come for you to stop felling that regret, but if you miss it, the next opportunity will be longer in coming and harder to notice. I don’t think the opportunity ever stops popping its head in, but, I think its presence gets less and less obvious.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. Like I said, this will probably end up in the trash after I write it. But, if for some strange reason, this letter does somehow make its way to you, I just want you to know that I miss you. More than you could know. And I want you to know that you can always return home. Not just to New Jersey. I am your home. And Mom and Dad are too. You can always return home without judgments and misgivings.

I hope to see you soon. I hope so much, it literally hurts.

Love, your brother,

Emyl