Is there anything I should be doing?

…..

Irwin’s favorite CD was beautiful, melancholy music. Erik Satie. The pulse of the music was slow, the melody repetitive too. It made me imagine an old man climbing up stairs. Each step seemed deliberate and premeditated, a small victory as the old man gained a small distance from his start. After only a short time listening to the music, it became familiar to me as it kept its steady pattern and inspired only the diminished gamut of sensations between a sigh and a sough. It made me feel peaceful, and with a quiet mind I tilted my chair. The paperwork was light and my hands were clean.

…..
I once heard Bach on the radio while I drove to the mountains with Max. It was such intricate music. It made me concentrate on the mountains that grew before me. I drove faster, so aware of each curve and each steer. Max closed his eyes as he listened, but I couldn’t. Of course, I was driving … but besides that, the music held open my eyes and made me understand how important details can be.
In college, my pride grew as fast as the mountains I was racing to.
Not only do the mountains grow as you approach them but they change color and become rough, and the music turned like the mountain roads until the song was over and the car was parked, and the proud mountain could be grabbed … or even chewed up and spit out in song.

…..

My office intercom buzzed. I leaned up in my chair and pressed the button to answer the call.

“Yes,” I said.

“Boss, I just want you to know that I told Irwin to stack the road salts next to the entrance. They’re in big demand this time of year.”

“Do you mean ‘winter’, Bosco.”

“Yes sir. I figured you’d agree.”

“Sure Bosco, that’s great.”

I tried hard not to sound glib.

“There isn’t anything else you had wanted him to do, is there? Like I said, I thought it would be a good idea?Oh, and I told Marla that she should take her lunch break, OK?”

“Was she hungry?” I said.

“…I don’t know.”

“Now Bosco, why would you send her to lunch without knowing if she was hungry? What if she isn’t. She might get hungry later, and you would have made her use her one break. What happens if, later, she passes out on the sales floor. All of the customers are going to think that I mistreat my workers. Thanks a lot Bosco, sending her to lunch and not asking her if she’s hungry. What are you, a jerk?”

I couldn’t resist teasing him. There was a short pause. I had done a good job at sounding serious … even if it was a bad joke.

“Oh…I didn’t?”

“Bosco, relax. I’m joking…It’s fine.”

“Oh…. OK.”

He sounded confused.

I hung up. A furtive smile bridged my face.

…..

I wonder what keeps me here. What makes me shirk the future and carry on without giving a shit? I think I know what my epitaph should read. ‘Here lies Benjamin Carol Bouchard, the only man on earth who could not see the future … a dreamer of old dreams, until he was dead.

…..

The intercom buzzed again.

“Hello,” I said.

“Boss, I have a little problem.”

“Is this Bosco again?”

“Um … yes sir.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t sound like Bosco.”

“It’s Bosco sir …  Man, you’re weird today,” he said.

“Alright, what is it now?”

“Well there’s this guy here who wants to use a dollar with graffiti on it.”

“What do you mean graffiti?” I said.

“Well, there’s a phrase of some kind written on it.”

“What, one of those prayer dollars?” I said.

“No … It says, ‘Takes from Chachi from pledges not throwing up,’ and it’s written very large with a black marker.”

I was quiet for a second.

…..

My relationship with Emma was four weeks of sex. We knew that we didn’t have any real feelings for each other. We were just freshman, living a life that was free from our parents’ judgment. We explored our freedom with booze and sex, and then she dumped me after finding a different guy to be free with. I was bummed, but was glad. It was a fun way to get acclimated to college life.

The day after she dumped me I went to a frat party with Max. Even though it went against Max’s principles to be seen at a fraternity, we went. We had to. We were both underage, too young to get into the bars. Parties were the only places we could go to get beer. Max made that small sacrifice.

At the party there were all types of women, from all different years, with many different shapes and colors, and only a few different of outfits. A lot of jeans, a lot of tight t-shirts. That’s where I first met Chachi. He was a lacrosse player, and a sophomore. He was in charge of the pledges. He introduced himself to me.

“You’re Bouchard. I heard about you,” he said.

“Really, how so?”

“Tim, one of my brothers is on your boxing team. He told me how you flattened Mike with one shot, said it was the coolest thing he ever saw.”

“Thanks man. What’s your name?”

“Chachi.”

“Is that your real name?” I said.

“Yeah it’s my real name motherfucker. What … you think I made it up?”

“No. Sorry man. It’s just different.”

“We all can’t be John. Am I right?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“How many beers you had?” he said.

“This is my first.”

“Well, get moving. The keg’s not gonna last all night.”

“Sure.”

I took a sip of the beer I held.

“Listen.… You want to pledge? You look like a cool kid. We could use another tough guy around here.”

“No thanks man. No offense, but this just isn’t for me.”

“No doubt. You seen the bitches here?” he said.

“Bitches huh.”

“Look at that one over there. She’s mine. But you can have any other one.”

“OK.”

“Man, you see the tits on her.”

It was Emma.

“Nice catch Chachi. Enjoy yourself,” I said.

“You bet hombre. I’ll check you later.”

“Sure. See you later.”

Chachi went to Emma. She looked over at me, smiled, and when Chachi got to her she put her arms around his waist.

I drank fifteen beers that night, and the next morning, when I woke up and it felt like a fat man was sitting on my head, I decided that there was something wrong with that life. Not so much the party aspect, but the women one. I didn’t want to call women bitches. I didn’t want any more empty sex. I loved women, I respected them, and even if I couldn’t stop men from treating them like mere carriers of tits, ass and pussy I wasn’t going to be part of that. I wasn’t going to help bullshit survive. I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted to feel vulnerable with a woman, not animal.

Max walked into our room a few minutes after I woke up. He had gotten laid.

…..

“Boss, you there?”

“Bosco, now listen very carefully,” I said.

“OK.”

“Now … what side is it on?”

“What side of the dollar?” he said.

“Yes.”

“It’s on the back,” he said.

“OK … good … now turn it over … and tell me who’s face you see.”

“Um … George Washington, sir.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Good, now … is he smiling?”

“What?”

“Is he smiling?” I said.

“No, sir.”

“Then what you have there is a dollar bill.”

“Right…” he said.

“…”

“…”

“Just take the goddamned dollar.”

I hung up.

…..

Now, that was pretty funny. I always wondered if I’d come across one of Chachi’s dollars. That thing must be about six or seven years old… He threw a pretty good party back then. Loud music, cheap beer, drunk dancing girls, lots of laughs. Too bad it was at a fraternity. Chachi made me an ‘honorary brother’. That was only because I boxed well. He was the fraternity president by his junior year. Phi, Upsilon, Kappa… He really beat up on those pledges. I remember when he explained it to me.

“Get this Bear.”

“What Chachi?”

“See those pledges over there.”

“Yeah, what about them?”

“Well, I got a rule, that the pledges have to be throwing up whenever they see me. If you watch, you’ll see a few hiding from me. Cause what I do is sneak up them, right.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah … I sneak up on them and yell, ‘Pledge, why aren’t you throwing up! Pledges must throw up,’ and shit like that, you hear me.”

“You’re spitting on me.”

“Oh, sorry Bear…Wait?listen to the best part.”

“What, you stick your fingers down their throats?”

“Fuck you man. I’m sick, but I’m not fucked up … No … If they’re not throwing up, which usually they’re not, I make them take out a dollar bill and write ‘Takes for Chachi from pledges not throwing up.’?You get it. Those are my takes…right.”

“So what do you do with the dollars.”

“Shit Bear, you gotta see my room. I got those fucking bills pinned up all over the place. I only take them down to help pay for more parties.”

“Well, that’s kind of clever Chachi.”

“Yeah man, you know what else I tell my pledges.”

“What else?”

“I tell them that my ‘takes’ is gonna be circulated all over the place, and one day, maybe they’ll find their dollar and remember where it came from. The way I figure, that’d make for a nice laugh one day when we’re old SOB’s, right.”

But Bosco had found one of Chachi’s ‘special dollars’.

Chachi ran up to me one night. He had just finished doing a beer bong. Same place, another frat party of Chachi’s.

“Yo, Bear, c’mere.”

“What’s up?”

“Remember my dollar experiment I was telling you about?”

“I do Chachi, why?”

“Well I want to show you this. I’ve noticed that sometimes this happens.”

“What?”

“Check out this bill.”

“Yeah, it’s got the writing on it.”

“Yeah, but read it.”

“OK. ‘Takes from Chachi from pledges not throwing up’.”

“You see that. ‘Takes from Chachi’. Sometimes they’s so drunk they write ‘from’ instead of ‘for’. That’s funny, right. It’s ironic, you know. I’m taking from the pledges, not the other way around … Bear … that’s funny. I got a few like that.”

Chachi’s an ad rep for Rolling Stone now. I never though he’d go that far in life?Who am I to judge. I don’t know people’s paths, or if people even have paths.…

Chachi is a salesman.

I run a grocery store.

I bet my path surprises people, but I’m used to it now. Even in school people thought I was wasting my time, studying and reading. Bear’s gonna turn pro, fight for the big bucks. The fact that I graduated Magna Cum Laude was only the ancillary frill around a dream they had already woven for me. I was a fighter, I was Bear, and they had the plan for me.

…..

The intercom buzzed again and I ignored it.

…..

Once, while I was touching Cary’s breasts, I realized how sensuous it is to be alive. It struck me like hundreds of static shocks, and I think that joy dripped from my fingers, because her breasts became the most beautiful of textures, and by feeling them I made her come, and I nearly came to.

…..

The intercom was still buzzing.

“What is it now, Bosco,” I said.

“Boss, we got another problem.”

“Do you remember what I said about being able to deal with problems on your own, Bosco?”

“Sure boss … but I think this one’s more for you to handle.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“Well, there’s a boy here who tells me that his friend just went behind the store to have a fight. He thinks his friend’s gonna get hurt.”

“Shit. I’ll be right there?Where are you, at the front?”

“Yes”

“Wait there!”

I stood up fast and tried to jump over my desk but I wasn’t graceful or agile enough to pull off the maneuver. Rather, I slammed my knee into the corner of my desk. I didn’t stop though. I ignored the pain as I threw open the door to my office and started to run down the aisle of cans.

“Hey, Mr. Bouchard,” I heard someone say, but I didn’t stop. My knee hurt, but I ran fast anyway.

When I got to the front I saw Bosco standing with the boy. The boy was trying to free himself from Bosco’s hands, and he looked panicked and pretty pissed at Bosco.

“C’mon, let’s go. It’s happening now,” the kid screamed at Bosco.

The customers in front had stopped whatever it was they were doing to stare at my assistant manager as he stood and restrained a screaming boy.

“Let him go Bosco,” I hollered from the base of my squirming gut. It startled Bosco. He immediately let go of the boy and moved out of my way as I tore through the checkout.

“Show me son,” I said to the boy.

We squeezed through the slow-moving electrical doors and ran outside. My knee still hurt. It pinched like a bee sting, but I ran as fast as I could, around the corner of the building to the back of the store to the shipment docks. As soon as I rounded the back corner I saw a clump of five boys. One boy was being held, his arms pinned behind him. The others hit the helpless boy in the his stomach and face.
“Hey. Stop,” I screamed, just as loud as I had yelled at Bosco. A flock of gulls took flight. The kids that were doing the punching turned around immediately, saw me coming and took off. The boy who was doing the holding let go and ran after the rest of his bully friends. Immediately, the boy who had been beat bent down and picked up a large piece of loose tar. He threw it at the boy who had held him. The tar spun in he air before it hit the running bully on the side of his head. When it hit his head the boy who threw it screamed. “Fuck you. I’ll kill you.” I saw the boy in the distance grab the side of his head, and he kept running.

“Fuck you. I’ll kill you. Fuck you!”

I ran up and grabbed the boy as he jumped and screamed. “Calm down, alright. It’s over,” I said to him. The bullies were gone, the had all run away. There was no use for me to chase them.

“Come here, kid. Let me see you,” I said.

He was a skinny, short and frail kid compared to the ones who had run away. His left eye was swollen and his lip was bleeding. He grabbed his brown, messy hair and winced. His eyes had been washed clear, and his bottom eyelids each held a few tears I knew he would try hard to keep from falling. His swollen left eye made it hard to hold the drops, and water creeked down his face…. He blinked and tried not to look at me.

“Are you OK, how’s your stomach?”

“I’m fine?” he said.

His friend picked up the baseball hat that laid against the brick wall. “Here you go,” he said as he handed it to his friend.

“What’s your name?” I asked the boy as I bent down look at his swollen eye.

“Scott,” the kid said.

“Scott………………..don’t throw rocks at people, even if they do deserve it, please,” I said.

He pulled away and nodded his head. I stood up straight.

My heart still raced. After hitting my knee on my desk, sprinting around my store, seeing Scott get hit, and then seeing that other kid get hit in the head with that menacing clump of tar, I felt more messed up than Scott. I felt like my heart was punching my insides.

Scott breathed heavy, and he bit his lip. His fists were clenched. A line of blood from his lip fell slowly down his chin, like syrup. His tooth was red above the cut he was biting.

I wanted to know exactly what Scott was feeling. I felt that I could not help him. I didn’t know if he wanted to cry or scream, if he blamed anyone or if he was thankful that his friend had run to get me.

Was Scott ashamed of himself for what he screamed at the boy, or did he really mean it? Could his anger be so deep as to encourage that level of hate? Did he understand what it meant to wish that someone would die, or to say that he would kill them? Did Scott’s friend feel sorry for him, or was he proud that Scott had thrown the tar and hit the running bully? Did Scott feel like he was beaten, or did surviving the fight alone give him a sense of victory? Did he feel cheated that I had come? What had brought on the fight? Was there really a good reason? Why did he agree to go behind a supermarket with four boys, alone, the smallest one? Did he feel brave, or was he sad, and did he hope that maybe by fighting he could turn that sadness into something else, something that made him want to fight everything, his own troubles as they too might be ganging up on him? I wanted to see inside of him. I wanted to relate to him rather than lecture him about throwing stones. I wanted to say the one thing that would be most meaningful to him as he stood, looked frustrated, and bled.

He walked over to the wall and kicked it, gentle as if it was only an action to burn off what was left of his rage. But I didn’t know that for certain. I realized that I didn’t know anything, and that these boys weren’t going to tell me anything either. I had to know. I wanted to help.

“What were you thinking Scott?” I said.

He didn’t move from where he stood, facing the wall and kicking it. His friend walked up behind me and pulled on the sleeve of my sweater. His breath smelled like cinnamon and his teeth and lips were still red from the atomic fireball he had probably eaten earlier.

“Can we go now?” he said.

“Why don’t you two come with me inside. Scott…you should get cleaned up, and we should call your mother.”

“She’s not home,” Scott said.

“Well, I can’t just let you leave. I have to tell someone. Do you understand?” I said.

“Why?” said Scott’s friend.

I felt a strong current of sadness shock me. I also felt a tinge of panic. I didn’t know what to say.

“Because, that’s what I’m supposed to do,” I said.

“Why? Do you have to? Who said?” his friend asked.

“I don’t know who said … and … I guess it doesn’t matter. What matters is what they’ll say if I don’t.”

“Who?”

“… Everyone, I guess. You shouldn’t be fighting,” I said.

“Why, did you ever have a fight?” his friend said.

“… Yes, I have.”

“Did they tell your mom?” he said.

He looked innocent to me.

“No,” I said.

“I don’t think people should tell on anyone,” he said.

“But maybe it isn’t telling … it’s helping,” I said.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“… You’re right,” I said. “Listen, Scott … just come into the store and let me have you cleaned up, then … I’ll let you go?If your injuries aren’t serious.”

Scott was still kicking the wall, but his friend was smiling.

“OK,” his friend said.

“Scott…come with me.”

I put my arm around him, my hand on his shoulder. I pulled him away from the wall. His hand clenched around his cap.

“Come on, Scott,” I said.

He turned and looked at me. His eyes were more swollen than they were before. He sniffled. My own sadness became heavy and tiresome. I needed to sit down before I fainted or either broke down and cried myself.

“Let’s go,” I said.

I walked him back to the entrance of the store. His friend followed behind, and stayed silent.

When we walked back into the store everybody in the front turned to see. It was quiet, and the contemporary radio station that played over the speakers of the store seemed loud, as if it was important to hear the words of the song. It’s a little too ironic, don’t you think? I paid little attention to the customers, and I remember feeling that the sunlight outside and the sound of cars in the lot was the peace, and the irritating fluorescent lights and whiny pop music that droned my store was clamor. People still looked at us as Bosco rushed up to me, Scott, and his friend.

I ignored Bosco, and told Irwin, who had been stacking salt near the entrance, to come over to me.

“Boss, is he OK?” Bosco said.

“Irwin, do me a favor.”

“Sure,” Irwin said.

“What do you need?” said Bosco.

“Irwin … this is Scott, and his friend?What’s your name?”

“Ben,” he said.

“Really? My names Benny,” I said.

Ben shrugged.

“Irwin, take them to the washroom and help Scott to clean himself up, OK.”

“Sure boss?Come with me guys.”

“Thanks,” Ben said to me.

They walked away. The people still watched.

“I could have done that,” Bosco said.

My sadness met rage.

“Bosco,” I said, under my voice. “Don’t ever lay a?fucking?hand on anyone in my store again…. Restraining a screaming kid like that. What? Are you fucking crazy? What do you think the customers thought of that, let alone how the kid felt to be restrained and held like a criminal? What were you thinking Bosco?”

I clenched my jaw until it was tired. Bosco stood quiet for a few seconds. I stared him down.

“But?”

“I’m going to my office,” I said.

I walked through the checkout, the aisle, and into my office. I saw nobody.

…..

I have come from there to here. I was ten when it happened, there, in the schoolyard, during recess, behind the swings near the edge of the playground. I was only noticing how nice spring smelled outside of school. But, the kids didn’t like me. Because I was strange? What was so strange about me? I was nice to everyone, quiet in class. What? Quiet? Daydreaming is strange? Because I was a chubby kid? Strange is the fat kid who daydreams out the window? Sometimes I feel like it didn’t matter how they felt about me. They just needed a victim. Like young tigers learning how to hunt. They had no reason for what they did, it was only their instinct to follow what they had seen the older ones do. So they were lean when they came up to me, they were gawky and traveled in a pack. Pete was the leader, he was the biggest. “Hey Bouchard, come here.” Why did I go to him? Did I really have no idea about what was going to happen? Right when I got close to him he grabbed me, pulled my windbreaker over my head, pinning my arms above me in the air. He punched me, and then I saw more feet than just his, and felt more punches, in the stomach, in the face, in the stomach, in the stomach. I saw their feet through my zipper. They were in single file. A punch and move to the back. A punch, laugh, move to the back. It hurt as I squirmed. I heard Pete. “Fat fuck Bouchard.” He hit the hardest, all over my head and abdomen, my neck, and then he threw me down on the ground. A kick in the stomach and then the feet were gone.

I got up, fixed my windbreaker, and fell down again, rolling on the dirty ground. Mrs. Mason found me. “What happened?” I said nothing. I remember the sweet-salt taste of blood in my mouth. I couldn’t answer her. The blood would have covered my chin. I never told. I never told. But I changed, so angry that it seemed a destined change. The anger pushed it, not me. I couldn’t ever be helpless again. Never, never futile and weak, never dumb and naïve, never trusting, never, never weak, never weak again. Mom never asked about the bruises. I had lied to her before she could ask, told her I fell, and begged for a set of weights. She bought me the set and she never asked why I needed it so badly.

Five years. Angry, going to school, going home to lift. Violence could be a part of any day, so be ready. I became firm, not pampered and soft. And then one day I’m fifteen, and I’m the largest and the strongest in my class, and I’m never threatened, never challenged, and I still needed to take it further. The gym was down the street from my mother’s coffee shop. I walked in one day after visiting her, and once I saw it I had to join. Martin let me join for free. Such an old style to Martin’s gym. Nautilus what? Never. All free weights, and in back, through a green hallway, was the ring and the bags and the boxers. First, I only lifted weights, and went back to watch the boxers train. They were powerful, calculated and fear didn’t exist on that other side of the green hallway. I had to learn what they knew, to fight for sport. And then Martin saw that my interests were not going to be swayed, and he trained me. I hit the heavy bags and the speed bags. The boxers accepted me because I was strong and I trained hard. They also saw how hard I hit the bag. Martin spent so much time teaching me, but never let me get into the ring to fight. I was too young, he said, and he made sure that none of the men would spar with me. But patience, and balance, and speed and intelligence?these are what Martin never kept from me, and finally I possessed them. And there I’m graduating from High School…and I’m strong and confident, yet ashamed…because?

I let the shame disappear from my goal’s picture though. I was large and unbeatable, and had worked hard with Martin who never doubted me, who almost fathered me into a great fighter, one who had forgotten the beat-up ten-year-old I once was. I now had a purpose, a skill that made the anger vanish. A sport. I had all the tools to become one hell of a boxer, and it was time for me to go away and box for the first time.

And there I’m in college, and I try out for the boxing team … and I’m nervous. I became very aware, as I waited to be called, that I had never really boxed before. But Coach called my name, and I said OK to the match that he assigned to me, the most inexperienced of would-be boxers. The kid I had to fight was big, my size, but mean?ugly mean. He was a sophomore, light heavyweight. He had experience in the ring. He spit when he stood still, on the ring, on the floor of the gymnasium, everywhere. He had wrinkles all over his face. He had pimples on his shoulders, and I told myself not to punch him on the shoulders, not to get puss on my gloves. My shiny, new gloves that Martin had given me. My opponent smelled like a County Fair elephant, but, even though I was wary when the bell rang, I charged with silent, staunch enthusiasm. I had no choice. I wanted to fight him … and I kicked his ass with one punch.

He was able to hit me a few times. We grappled and bumped each other. I tapped him in the stomach, but that wasn’t really a punch. I felt him, felt the way he was going to move. I could tell where he would open for the hurt, how his arms spread right before he lunged, and I saw it coming and threw an uppercut that sent him backwards into a dark knockout. It was ecstatic, the feeling.
Boxing seemed much easier than I had expected, so much easier than hitting a bag. The bag never tells, never flinches?but a man, his eyes and his skin and how it shifts before the motion, and the way the boxer’s feet move. Those things tell. Those things tell where and how to hurt the most. The point of boxing seemed to be mainly a hunt, with observation as your soundest weapon. The point was to get the information, and to make it unbearable for the opponent to tell you anymore about him. After that first fight I was on the team, and each fight went the same way, almost. Hit till the fright flows out like secrets. Forget blood, ignore the blood, not many were really scared of seeing their blood?but fear. The fear of seeing your secrets revealed, my opponents bled that fear when they saw my focused eyes, my revealing eyes that reflected back to me projected on their eyes, that day in the schoolyard when after I went home and coughed up blood and my mother asked me what was wrong and I told her that I fell, tripped over a rock and landed on my stomach over another rock. All of that played like a movie inside of me when I boxed. It was my motivation, and sometimes maybe I fooled myself into thinking that it wasn’t my motive for boxing, that I truly did love it … but whatever it truly was, it was what made me a victor. It came out of me as muscle, strength and well landed punches …but it came back to me as hate. Hate … with everything else I see in my memories, and it’s funny, because an activity that had so much to do with old hate brought me new love from a new community. I became the pride of the school. Students, townspeople, teachers yelled ‘kick some ass Bear’ as I walked by them. Two Regional Championships, and one State, and then I graduate, and I stop boxing…, … I wasn’t going to hit people for a living….  And now I’m here, replaying my past.

…..

I was alone in my office. It smelled like old coffee. The poster of Jimi Hendrix on my wall made me think the same thought that it always did. It was a picture of him, eyes closed and playing his guitar and he looked like he alone, at that moment when the camera clicked, was the had every answer to every question. Deep, purposeful thought. His face looked like it was covered in dream, but his body and posture, bowed towards his instrument, looked awake and in motion as he told the world everything about his dreams, everything they meant to him, for an audience he couldn’t see.

…..

There was quite a crowd of strangers in the dormitory the day I moved to New Guernsey. I had chosen to take a bus, rather than let my mother make the nine hour drive back to Maine alone. Truth. I didn’t want her there. I didn’t want to be one of those guys whose parents help them set up their rooms, and take them out to lunch, and insist on buying them start-up groceries, iced tea, bag of fruit, box of cereal, and a twelve-pack of soda. I wanted to check into my new home on my own, make my own agenda, and I was glad I had come alone. There were enough strangers, and strangers’ stranger parents in the dorm to make it seem like if one more person had entered the walls would have crumbled to the ground. Yes, my mother would not have fit.

I hadn’t brought much from home, just a couple of suitcases, one bag with CD’s and a small stereo. I had spent the summer working at the gym in Maine, and the money earned, in addition to the money I was given by the men there, was more than enough to use for whatever else I needed.

It was a big, square, drab dormitory and it looked the same on each side. It was the ugliest place I had ever been happy to be.

The paper in my pocket had printed on it, ‘Room 304.’ I didn’t bother to ask for assistance. The Resident Director looked too enthusiastic and I was a little too tired from a long bus ride to deal with a healthy dose of civil happiness. I just figured, third floor, room number four, and I was right. My entire high school education had brought me 580 miles, three floors up, and two doors down the hall, on the right. Where would college take me?

The room had perfect symmetry. Two beds, one on either side. Two identical dressers, one on either side. Two open closets, one to the left of the door and one to the right. Two identical desks, one on either side, flush against the wall-sized window at the head of the room. The only unsymmetrical feature was the sink, which was directly to the right of the door if you were facing the window.

I was there before my roommate, so I had my pick of sides. I had no preference, they were both the same. It was left or right. I figured, “Well I’m right handed,” so I took the bed on the right.

I put my stuff away, and periodically stopped and looked out the window. The room faced a large pond that had a few willows on its bank. Around it was a paved path. It looked like a good place to do some running.

The whole dorm still buzzed with clamor. Through the walls I could hear a father as he lectured his son about the evils of alcohol. I figured that the kid would be drunk by midnight. I heard another father telling his son to study hard, that this was college and it was time to think serious about what you want to do with your life. Listening to them I theorized that when people have children their memories of life between the ages eighteen and twenty-three get erased. I can accept that having children is a form of trauma…but…. Wake up!

I wonder what my father would have told me? Probably to booze it up and be a fucking asshole at all times.

It only took about twenty minutes to set up my side of the room. When I was finished I decided to go for a walk, but my roommate walked in before I left.
He was dark. He had on black, buck shoes, blue jeans that were faded down to the horizontal threads at his knees, and a black short-sleeved button-down shirt.
He looked Jewish. I can admit that there is a certain type of appearance that … is Jewish. He had a big blunt nose, dark eyebrows a triangular jowl and a full, loose and curly, black afro. I immediately thought he looked like a cool guy…. I was relieved.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Hello.”

“Max,” he said.

As  he reached out his arm the strap of his bag slid from his shoulder to the inner joint of his elbow. I shook his hand.

“Benny,” I said.

“Some grip you got there big guy. You look like a jock, are you?”

“No. Not at all,” I said.

He threw his bags down on the empty bed. One of his bags was a very large, leather rectangle with handles.

“No. I guess if you were a jock you’d go by Ben, not Benny. Benny sounds a little too harmless.”

“Thanks.”

“But you do play sports, right?”

“Not really … but I am going to try out for the boxing team.”

“Boxing’s a sport, Benny.”

“Yeah, I know, but I’ve never actually boxed before. I’ve only trained for a couple of years,” I said.

He began to put away his clothes. A few pairs of jeans, a few black shirts, and a lot of white undershirts.

“But you’ve sparred before right?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I trained at this little gym in a small town. Most of the men there were much older than me. They said I was too young, that they wouldn’t hit me. But I think it was because they all knew my mother,” I said.

“Really, sounds interesting,” he said as he raised an eyebrow and stretched out his words.

“Shut up, it’s not like that. She runs a coffee shop a block from the gym. Most of the guys went there for breakfast while I was at school. I guess they didn’t want to have to face her if I got hurt.”

“Maybe she asked them not to,” he said.

“Yeah … it could’ve been that too.”

“Well, have you ever been in a fight,” he said.

“Let’s change the subject, OK?”

“Sure,” he said.

Max finished putting away his clothes and his CDs. He had one huge red duffel bag that looked like you could fit six pairs of skis inside of it. Besides having removed his clothes from it, he unpacked about twenty paperback books. A lot of them were by Kerouac and Vonnegut. Two were William Burroughs and the rest were Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. There was something else in the bag, but he did not take it out.

“What’s your last name, Max?”

He unzipped the large leather rectangle.

“Sandmann,” he said.

“Sand-man?”

“Do me a favor. I’ve heard most of the jokes, so—spare me. Do that and I won’t bring up whoever it is you killed.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Hey. New subject, right?”

It was a portfolio bag. From it he pulled some paintings, and some drawings.

“Where you from?” I said,

“Manhattan. We live up on Central Park West.”

“Pretty fancy,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess. My dad’s in investment banking and my mom’s a superintendent of schools. They’ve got money, so I guess I’ve got money … which I guess is fortunate to have, if you’re an artist. I don’t think they’d let me starve, although my father likes to tease me with the idea—Hey, you mind if I put these up?”

“Whatever. It’s your side.”

“Alright. So how about you?”

“How about me what?” I said.

“Where you from?”

“Camden, Maine…. It’s a suburb of Bangor.”

“And you parents, what do they do?”

“I told you, my mother runs a coffee shop.”

“Oh, yeah,’ he said.

Max’s paintings were bold and bizarre. With the exception of a few demonic faces, most of them were paintings or drawings of tornadoes. Many colors and sizes, bent funnels, straight funnels, some turbulently extended from the skyline to the ground and some faintly reached up from the clouds, and they looked like tents.

“What’s with the tornadoes?” I said.

“You really want to know?”

“I asked.”

“OK, well … the condensed version…. Nature creates a tornado and the tornado destroys nature, destroys man. To me, the tornado is nature acting like a human. Man creates things that are meant to destroy things—and I don’t just mean bombs and guns and Satan worshipers and stuff. Man creates ideas that destroy, promises that destroy, investments that destroy, politics that destroy, and so on.”
He was very still, as if he had forgot what he was doing.

He remembered and continued.

“To me, a tornado is like man’s reflection, what we see when we look at ourselves through our own eyes, driven to change everything it touches.… But there is one big difference between man and tornado. Man is predictable, tornadoes aren’t…. Art shouldn’t be predictable, I think.”

“Pretty deep Max,’ I said.

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I could ramble on for hours?I won’t though,” he said.

“I like your work.”

“Thanks man,” he said.

I stood and looked out the window while Max hung up his art. I was both happy and relieved. Max seemed like he’d be an interesting guy to live with.

I turned around as Max pulled a small wooden box out of his enormous red duffel bag.

“You play dominoes, Benny,” he said.

“Actually … yes, I do. A couple of guys from the gym used to play on Sundays. They taught me.”

“But would they let you play,” he said.

He smirked.

“Yeah, but they wouldn’t let me drink beer with them, no matter how much I pleaded.”

“Bummer,” he said.

He put his portfolio case on the floor and dumped out the dominoes on top of them. He sat down and scrambled them with his thin hands.

“Fives?” he said.

“Yep.”

“First double, spinner?” he said.

“Yep.”

“To 150, three houses,” he said.

“Sure.”

“Know how to score?”

“Yep.”

“Good. You keep score,” he said.

He went to his desk and grabbed a pencil and his letter of acceptance.

“Here, write on this,” he said.

I had never played dominoes with anyone my age before.

Max stood up and walked over to his duffel bag and pulled out a large brown paper bag, as well as a picnic cooler.

“How did you carry all that stuff by yourself?” I said.

“You’re not the only one in this room with muscles, man.”

I nodded.

“Besides, we’re only three floors up,” he said.

“But didn’t you take a bus?”

“No. My parents dropped me off.”

“They didn’t want to come in with you?” I said.

“I didn’t want them too. They didn’t care. They’ve seen the town and the buildings a long time ago. They met here.”

“Cool.”

Max brought the cooler down to the floor.

What’s in the cooler?” I said.

“My mom filled it up with soda before we left.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.”

He opened the cooler and took out two forty-ounce bottles of Colt 45.

“The soda’s under my bed at home,” he said.

“And the brown bag, more beer?”

“Nope…Vodka, Gin, Bourbon, Scotch and Tequila—but don’t tell anyone else on the floor. We’d have a lot of goons trying very hard to be our friends if they knew we had a stocked bar under my bed, and at least one asshole would tell the RA.”

“No problem,” I said.

We twisted off the bottle caps. Max raised his bottle.

“New shit,” he toasted.

“New shit,” I toasted back.

The malt liquor was cold, and tasted like old bread.

“So we’ll play a few games, finish these forties, and go to that orientation meeting at three. We should have a good buzz on by then,” he said.

We both picked up our seven dominoes and held them four in the right hand, three in the left.

“One thing Max,” I said.

“What?”

“Don’t be giving me any bad dreams, Sand-man.”

“So did you break his neck, Benji?”

We both nodded our heads and smiled sly smiles. Me on the right side, Max on the left.

“Double six.”

“Nope.”

…..

My office chair creaked as I swiveled. My desk was covered in invoices that I didn’t give the slightest shit about. My sadness, my concern, my uselessness pushed my head down to a droop … and made it seem unlikely that I’d ever get up from my chair.

…..

If my house were to burn down, and I were to be in it with no hope for escape, then I would lie down on my bed and watch my trophies melt. I wouldn’t hear traffic or people or any sound save for the crack and break and roar. I’d get under the blankets and breathe deep the soot and poison, as I wait for the pain.

And when it comes, then maybe I’ll dream something different. Maybe I’ll realize that I’ve only healed from the mysterious pains I’ve caused myself. That I’ve ruined myself by carving pristine figures of demons, and that the demons are merely sculptures of me. I’ve worn my fear. I’ve slept under my own created ruin, but I’ve never felt pure, raging, destructive, natural pain.

But … maybe when the flames would reach my feet, and I think first before I scream, I’d realize that I could never hurt myself as much as nature could hurt me….I might even be sad to see my trophies melt.

…..

I sat there. Irwin’s CD had never stopped playing, and the songs were sad and unpredictable. I was annoyed at Bosco, but I also realized that I had been too sensitive. I had judged him and treated him unfairly. I imagined that I would apologize to him. He did a lot for me. He always provided what I asked him to provide, a loyalty to me as one type of person, a boss who needs loyalty to maintain his duty, to make the situation that was handed him profit and yield well for farther days.

That’s bullshit.

I sat some more.

…..

I fell in love with Cary the first time I heard her play piano. At the end of the fall semester, sophomore year. It was her winter recital. She looked beautiful in a long, evergreen dress, her hair clipped back with berets on both sides, and a pearl choker sat at the base of her soft neck.

She held herself proud at the piano when she sat down and stroked the keys a few times before she began to play. I sat in the back. Her father, the Mayor, and her mother sat in front. Cary hardly noticed them when she had walked in to the hall, but before she played she had looked through the crowd, found me, and smiled.

She played Grieg’s Sonata in E minor. It started out liquid and smooth. Her body leaned forward, her arms seemed weightless. The first movement became full and poignant. It balanced fast, furious lines with smooth, round intervals. It was triumphant and sad at once. She played it as if she didn’t exist, as if she was only music, as passive as only the notes on paper are.

I listened to the music and watched her body eschew the motions of the lines she played, and as I saw how her emotions covered her eyes I fell in love with her. And then I felt special. She treated her heart with meticulous attention, no feeling she could have would be light. She wouldn’t touch anything that didn’t move her in the process. I was under her fingers, I was a deep look in her eyes. I was music.

She had such a pure talent, and the audience, stoic and silent, took from her the feelings that she dressed each moment with. It was as if individual memories had no place in that room. There only existed the talent Cary had for expressing her heart, and it effected and changed the feelings and the imaginations of the crowd.

She was a powerful woman.

During the slow movement I got chills.

By the end, when the sadness lifted off the music and the sounds were joyous, I truly loved Cary. I loved what she did to me. She took what was inside of me, my regrets, grief and guilt, and she turned them into joy under her fingers. When she read me, when she sang me, I became better, I became imagination, and most of all I became a beautiful coalition of all my past and all my hope. She had changed me in that room. She had made me selfish, and by realizing that I was selfish I was forced to look at only myself, inside of myself, to realize that I loved her.

…..

Awake again, the CD had stopped. I took a deep breath…and heard a voice.

A tornado is reflective reason

I heard it clearly, and picked up the phone. Dial tone. I checked to see if I had left in on speaker mode. I hadn’t. Nobody but me was in the office. I looked around. I stood up, frantic, and whipped my head from side to side as I searched my small office. I hurt my neck a little, a light pain in the pivot of my neck. My eyes were stretched wide. I was certain that I had heard a voice. A tornado??Max. ‘Max is obsessed with tornados,’ I thought. But Max wasn’t in my office. I was alone. I repeated the phrase to myself. ‘A tornado is reflective reason.’ What was that? Who, what was that voice? And then I remembered lying in bed last night, I remembered the voice, the same phrase…and I was scared. I stood alone in my office, afraid. Was it a ghost? Was I being haunted, haunted in spaced out moments, returning like the night terrors I had felt as a child. I tried to calm myself, because I was trembling. I had long given up on supernatural fears, dark fears. I searched for a rational reason for the voice. I didn’t feel like it was telling me anything, like somehow I was being given a message. This sounded more like an idea. Yes. Maybe it was my own inner voice, although it sounded nothing like the voice I dreamed with. But whatever the voice was, it carried with it an idea that seemed virgin as I had yet to understand it. ‘A tornado…?’ I no longer believed in ghosts, in demons. I had beat that fear, the terrors hadn’t come since. I didn’t know. My fears had left. This voice had to be my idea, my own juxtaposition of the work of my friend Max. I grabbed a loose piece of paper from one of my desk drawers and wrote down the phrase. I said it again to myself, still trying to stay my trembling body….

I couldn’t even feign an explanation. ‘Reflective reason?’ It had no meaning to me. It didn’t even spur a direction, a thought pattern. It was like gas, colorless, odorless, and more random than any other state. It was random in my mind, yet the eerie voice that had brought it was certain, was real, was not mine, and was in my office and my bedroom. The voice had followed me. What was it?
I stopped thinking about the phrase, gave up on trying to decipher it. I put down the pen, looked around my office again, bit my lip, felt my arm hairs stand, and was afraid. I was afraid. I was spooked. Scared, like when I was a boy, when the monsters came at night, and I felt them pull on my sheets, the sheets I had wrapped around my head and body. Fear, like music, like shrill whistling that oozed from my millions of pores. A clamor that was silence as I breathed, and shook…and jumped when the phone, with its computer-church-bell-chime, rang. I stopped thinking, took a deep breath, and answered the phone.

“Hello”

“Bear…is that you?”

“Max?where are you?”

“What?…I’m home?Why?”

“Don’t fuck with me Max. Are you in my store?”

“Bear?What? You sound crazy.”

“C’mon Max. Are you here?”

“Dude, what the hell are you talking about,” he said.

“…”

“Bear?”

“…”

“Are you there?”

I was acting ridiculous.

“Yeah? Max, listen…sorry.”

“For what?” he said.

“I don’t know. I’m having a weird day.”

“Yeah? What’s wrong.”

I grabbed a pencil and rolled it through my fingers.

“I don’t know. I feel…like I’m finally losing it…like I’m losing my mind, like everything I know is being sucked out of me.”

“What’s that Bear?”

“Forget it. You’re not even listening,” I said.

“Dude?I’m listening.”

I snapped the pencil in half and threw it against the far wall.

“I just feel like a crazy man today. Everything’s in my face…and some things are really strange. Maybe I’m getting sick,” I said.

“You think?”

“No…I don’t feel sick….just tired I guess.”

“Still not sleeping well? I’m telling you…it’s time to move out of that place.”

I scratched the back of my head.

“Yeah. The noise from Main Street’s getting pretty bad. You know, last night somebody was yelling ‘How’s your pussy’ over and over. ‘How’s your pussy, how’s your pussy, how’s your pussy’,” I said.

“That’s kind of funny, Bear.”

“…I guess. But that with the ‘bitch’, ‘motherfuckers’ and the ambivalent ‘woos’, well…I guess that’s not the kind of noise you want to fall asleep to. It gives you bad dreams.”

“So move?I’m saying this for the thousandth time,” he said.

I sighed.

“Yeah. Maybe?”

“You OK?” he said.

“Hey, good show last week,” I said.

“Shit Bear. It was great. They’re going to write it up in the Times.”

“Nice, Max. I think you might have made it,” I said.

“’About time.”

“…Congratulations.”

“Thanks man…so…did you have lunch with Cary yet?” he said.

I took my last cold sip of the thick, bitter coffee.

“No…I’ve been dodging her calls,” I said.

“Can’t deal, huh.”

“I just don’t think I can handle it, talking about her ex…her kid’s father…. It’s obvious that, you know, we used to?and…to hear about who came after me. That’s tough,” I said.

“Sure.”

“And…I left her, and then this guy leaves her with a child. It amplifies the guilt. She was to good to be left once. But twice? With a child?”

“Bear. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t spoken to her in a very long time. Who says this guy left her. She could have left him… Or maybe it was a one night stand gone wrong…. There’s no love in that…so no broken hearts,” he said.

“Except for the kid’s”

“But not if he never knew his father. There’s no memory to contend with. There’s no loss to remember having. It’s just how it is,” he said.

“But Max. Trust me. It hurts…to have an imaginary father…who might turn up and shatter whatever dream you thought he was.”

“…Sorry Bear…I.”

“No, forget about it.”

I picked up an invoice and ripped it in half. Fuck it.

“So…Are you going to call her?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Well…listen. I can’t chat much longer. I have to go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Nowhere…I just have to take care of something,” he said.

“Take care of what?”

“Nothing…I don’t want to talk about it.”

This was a hushed Max I had never heard before.

“Troubles?” I said.

“You could say that.”

“Just tell me Max.”

“Listen, Bear. I can’t now…”

“…Alright, well…How ‘bout catching a drink later, we’ll talk then?”

“Yeah. I’ll need one…and it sounds like you’ll need one too.”

“I need one now,” I said.

“…Yeah…me too.”

“What is it Max?”

“Later, Bear. OK?”

“…Sure. How ‘bout meeting me at…Rusty’s…eleven o’clock,” I said.

“Rusty’s?”

“Can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?”

“Bad idea Bear. After ten that place turns into a zoo.”

“Yeah. But maybe a little nostalgia is what we need. It could be good.”

“That’s weird Bear. But…sure,” he said.

“Sound’s good. Then I’ll se you later,” I said.

“Hey Bear.”

“What?”

“Maybe you should get out of work, go home…I mean…seven hours in a Warhol painting could disturb anyone,” he said.

“It’s still a bad joke, Max.”

“Not funny? Not at all?”

“No”

“You sure?” he said.

“Positive.”

“Damn. I still like it.”

“That’s because you’re corny Max.”

“Well?Who’s closer to corn right now. Not me, grocery man.”

“Stop, alright. You’ve annoyed me. You win,” I said.

“OK. You’re the boss of broccoli.”

“Ugh. OK, I said you win.”

“Commander of cans. Lieutenant of latkes.”

“Latkes?”

“OK. That’s bad. I’ve annoyed myself,” he said.

“Alright Max. Go do your mystery something.”

“And you keep getting your mind sucked out of you,” he said.

“Al right bro. I’ll see you at eleven,” I said.

“Rusty’s?…You’re crazy.”

“Bye Max.”

“See ya…General grocery.”

He hung up.

I felt better.

Max loved to make bad jokes until you got so annoyed that you screamed. When he stops, it’s funny and we laugh, but during his onslaught, it makes you squirm.

…..

I hate puns. They remind me of elementary school. Say lettuce…spell cup.

…..

I smiled and took a rag from my desk, and polished my phone. Not a smudge left behind. I liked it to be clean. Its crisp, off-white, plastic luster. The only spots on my phone were the miniscule shadows that my lamp caused the Braille on my buttons to cast. Not a fray or a knot in the cord, no coils stretched. I kept it in perfect condition, so each day it looked new. Each day followed the next, yet my phone was always new. My office was always clean, and when I closed it I left no trace of me ever being there. Even as I sat in the middle of it.
I stared at the broken pencil on the floor, and the torn invoice in front of me.

…..

I am waiting for her, my  dream. I have always been waiting for her. When I was engaged to Cary I looked for a crack in the world, where my brunette would slip out. It wasn’t that I had no love for Cary. I did, and I miss her now. But I was too weak to tell her that in my mind was a different dream. One that I did not just admire for her poise and talent, one that I did not cherish because she was sweet and kind, and destined to succeed. And more importantly, one I didn’t venerate just because she chose me. My dream was like every all-human dream. To love without words or reason, without details and reminiscences. To love someone because they had already existed in your heart and mind, long before you even had a body. A perfect love, a circumstance already set in the realm of all time. I chose that ideal over the only woman, besides my mother, who ever admitted to love me…and instead of marrying her, I went to work and hid with my dream.

…..

The phrase. I was calm about it now. Still puzzled, still a little frightened…. All I knew was that I did not want to be in my office anymore.

In the brief moment it took for me to rise from my chair and shift my shoulders towards the door, I was consumed and cursed with pain. A piercing howl, a high-pitched ring came on quick, pulsed through my ears and it felt like the ringing tore through me. This was not normal. It disarmed me as the shriek was a siren, as high pitched as a human can hear and a shade louder than one could handle. I grabbed my ears with almost enough force to rip them off. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. All my focus was on the painful sound. All my strength went towards dealing with the pain. I could feel my ear parts shake, beat and almost stretch. My eyes started to water. The light in my office blurred in the wet salt. Tears covered my vision and the drops licked my face. The light dimmed further. Blurry, dark, blurry dark until I was blind to everything except for the squirming shadows I saw in the blur. I could taste blood in my mouth, faint. No texture, no real blood, only the taste of it. The pain, the ringing, the blind-blur, the taste wouldn’t stop. I felt pressure in my skull as if first in a vice, pressing inward, and then as if my skull filled with air and the pressure was outwards. Every one of my muscles seemed to tug in opposite directions. Spasms spread through my back, my legs, my arms and my neck. The sound, the howl stayed as I felt like my body was being pulled in half and my brain was being sectioned by a piano wire, with electric currents running through the cutting wires. The pain made it seem like every synapse in my body was being held over lit matches, burning severe pain into me. I fell to my knees. I groveled to only the blurred shadows that looked like the outlines of specters as they stood around me and watched me writhe. I begged them to make it stop. I begged the ghosts that were opaque around me. I started to feel the pain in my stomach as well. I felt my stomach fold, caving in itself, and the acids and stomach liquids lurched up, burning my throat. I felt the gag coming when everything stopped.

Silence.

I was on my knees, shaking, sweating. My gums hurt. My breath was quick and shallow and I coughed dry, empty tastes. Hot and parched. Tears covered my face, a glisten of film that fell in drops from my nose to the floor. Still shaking, cold and frightened. I lay down with my back on the floor. My body twinged as it lay there. My mind was only focused on the soreness. I lay. I tried to slow my breath, and became cold as if I was about to fall into a state of shock. Drooling, clenching my fists and slowly blinking to clear the blur from my eyes…. And then, all of the pain was gone, all of the tears were dried, and the floor was hot and soothing. I was fine, as if nothing had happened. Except, I remembered, I knew what had happened…. My goddamn head almost exploded.

A tornado is reflective reason

Again, the voice, and then I was insane. I felt cornered, trapped by ghosts, by voices, by delusion. I was confused. I felt my hands shake and a sweat came out hot from my pores. Was I dying? Not the pain again. Not again. I’m crazy, I’m dying. And then, instead of the ringing in my ears and the body pain I expected, a different reaction fizzed up and boiled through me. It was rage, and it was a giant fast. I trembled, I sweat, I broke. The rage burst through my wall, and there was no restraining it. “What the fuck is going on,” I screamed from deep below, through my wide open throat. I started to pace circles around my office. My fists were clenched, my knuckles white, and sweat now fell from my brow in creeks. I twitched and picked up the phone, grabbing and squeezing it with both all of my strength and all the restraint I had left. I threw it hard against the wall and it shattered. The deformed pile that was left of it, on the floor, I stomped on, speeding shark’s teeth of plastic and little transistors across my green office rug. A haunting, again a fucking haunting. I will not be scared. This was not a true haunting. It was a tease. That voice, that phrase?nothing to me but a temper of confusion. Fuck?I took my tight clubbed fists and smashed them through the wall, over and over again. Dusts of sheetrock danced like cigarette smoke in the air. Fragments of the wall flung fast across the room whenever I pulled back my fist. I stopped punching and turned to my desk, kicking one of the wooden legs until it snapped off. I moved to the next leg and kicked harder. When it broke, the desk fell to a tilt and most of the papers on my desk fell to the floor. I kicked them up in the air, and then I picked up each one and ripped them into pieces and threw them all over the room. I moved to my swivel chair and picked it up over my head, and slammed it into the floor. It bent, and bounced into my coffee maker. The glass pot broke and the three cups of coffee that were thick inside of puddled and stained my green carpet. It looked like shit on grass. I stepped on the pens that had been thrown from my desk. Fuck. I picked them up and broke them all in half. The ink ran over my hands. The office smelled like a locker room and a dusty, dank garage. The ink covered my hands and spread sticky and black. No. Not on my hands. I ran to the sink in the corner, turned on the faucet and was frantic as I worked a white lather, which turned grey when mixed with the ink on my hands. I covered my hands in the foam, and rinsed, and lathered, and bit my lip, and started at my grey, foamy hands and rinsed until every drop of ink was off. My breath was quick. The t-shirt I had on under my sweater was soaked, my hair was wet, and I looked up into the mirror and freaked further when I saw the puffs, the wrinkles around my wide, frantic, scared eyes.

A tornado is reflective reason.

God dammit. I ran across the office and grabbed the CD player, ripping the plug from the wall. I threw it, into the mirror, and Irwin’s CD that was in it flew, twirling like a flipped coin in the air, and landed on the tilted decline of my desk…in tact, groove side up. Fuck. I looked at it and stood erect, taut and still. I breathed deep, shook, and closed my eyes. I opened them after my breath had slowed.
I walked carefully to my broken desk, opened the drawer, pulled out the case for Irwin’s CD, and put Erik Satie inside of it. I was fragile … about to break again.

The door opened.

“Boss, what’s??”

“Bosco, get out!?Wait.”

I threw the CD case at him.

“Give that to Irwin,” I said.

Bosco was stunned.

“But, what the?”

“Get out now!” I screamed.

He shut the door fast.

I once again shut my eyes and breathed.

Rage left.

My office was a disaster, a bombsite. Everything was broken.

…..

I have to leave, I have to leave now. What’s going on? Shit, I’m lost…OK…but how can I walk out there? The whole store probably heard that. No, the music’s on. Maybe just a few people in the back of the store. I just won’t look at them. They don’t know anything. They don’t know what’s happening to me, and…who fucking cares? This is my market, I am the boss. I don’t need to be explained. They fear me, with these big arms. Yeah, big arms. From what?do they remember when I used to train? Yeah, these big bulging arms, with a pen in one hand. Strong arms, from what?paycheck signing? They’re afraid of me? For what? Because I do check-ups, because I do the same thing every day? They don’t fear me, they humor me…. I can’t stay here. I gotta go. Maybe I just need a nap. I just going to walk out, as if nothing has happened. Nothing’s happened. Nothing happened.

…..

I locked my office on the way out.

A small group of customers scattered when they saw me come out of my office. Some looked over their shoulders as the walked, and some did not look back. Two kids stayed put, and came up to me.

“Are you going crazy?” one kid said.

“Yeah, it sounded like you were,” the other one said.

“Yes,” I said.

I winked at them and walked away, down the pasta aisle.

Bosco wasn’t to be seen.

I kept a sincere smile on my face as I walked, easy and without hurry, to the front. On the way I passed Maureen and nodded. At least I looked calm. The wet t-shirt under my sweater was making me cold.

When I got to the front I saw Michael, a clerk, Windex-washing the windows. He was young and tan and a few wisps of his hair were always out of place, sticking out from the back of his head. A sporadic, pubescent moustache laced the ridge of his thin lips. I cocked my head, and said to him, “Not a smudge.”

“You got it boss,” he answered, low and monotone…and from the back of his head, deep inside where the folds are, a sound formed for only him to hear…a thought. His eyes were teased to a coy glance. He looked like he was cleverly plotting. All I saw was a faint smirk wrinkle his meager lips. I walked past him…and I heard his voice.

Loser

I turned around quickly and posted an evil-dictator type expression.

“Excuse me? What did you say?” I said.

His eyes widened, he looked nervous, caught and cornered … and then I heard his voice again.

Oh shit, did I say it…I don’t think…oh shit, I didn’t realize I said it out?Did I?…fuck, Ok…deny it.

“Nothing, sir…”

I didn’t move. My jaw loosened and fell limp. I had heard Michaels voice but his lips didn’t move. He didn’t say it out loud. But I did hear him, in my head, as if the voice I normally thought with was now Michael’s. It was clear in my head. It was loud, louder than my own inner voice.

He’s just looking at me…What’s wrong with him?…What do I do?

It was the same, clear in my head. As I watched him, his face became different, with less mystery and more life. I looked back into the store, and the gift then gave in full force. The voices rang in me, single file, one after the other. Man, woman, woman, man, child, employee.

At one register a woman was unhappy with how carelessly Simon was bagging her groceries. She was debating with herself whether or not to say something to him. Her voice was like a clarinet. I don’t want to be a prude. Her voice.

Over in Aisle 4, a man in a flannel shirt realized that he left his wallet at home. His cart was full of groceries. He was deciding to leave the cart where it was. He was going to pretend that he left it in his car. Shit. He walked to the exit, patting the pocket of his jeans with his hands and shaking his head. As he passed, he looked at me and said out loud, “I left my wallet in my car,” and left. But I also heard what he didn’t say. He was really going to go home, get his wallet, and go to another supermarket a few towns over.

Will was thinking about the shape of Maureen’s nose, how cute it was, and how adorably her lips curled when she spoke.

I looked for Maureen. She was still in the pasta aisle. She was thinking about Will, but she was having doubts. She was confused because she didn’t want to have a relationship with someone she worked with, but she loved how funny he was and she liked the way he combed his hair. Her voice was like a marimba.

Jimmy, the deli clerk was thinking, the older you get, the stupider you get, and the old man walking away from the deli counter thought, now there’s a polite young man. It’s good to see.

A young guy with a Yankees hat was about to be rung up. He had a bag of limes and a case of Corona. He was nervous. It was the first time he was going to use his fake ID.

Irwin, still stacking salt thought, Tattoo, and Bosco appeared as he came down the toothpaste aisle.

He’s nuts. I know it, most people know it, but he doesn’t have to treat me like shit. I do everything for him. He’s always late, just shows up whenever, and I don’t care. I’m just trying to succeed. This is what I want to do, and I like it. He doesn’t have to be a fucking dick. He’s crazy. He trashed his office. There were holes punched in his wall. Should I tell someone? Oh?there he is. He’s looking at me. Hi. Fuck you boss, fuck you. I should tell him that I’m not going to stand for this. He’s gonna show me the same respect I show him. Fucking lunatic.

Now he stood in front of me.

I was too shocked to say anything. The voices kept coming, different people, different plans for dinner, all in my head. I heard it all, the minds, the mundane. I was amazed, had no idea how to explain it … but I was happy. Michael was still scared, and Bosco was trying to gain the courage to tell me off. I turned my back on them, and left.

It was warm outside. A spring day in winter’s reign. I accepted it…I embraced it. I didn’t care what it meant, or how it happened. But I believed, because I had no choice. I was the evidence. I was the voyeur, I was chosen. Whatever the reason for it was, or if it was for the sake of circumstance alone, it didn’t puzzle me. I was not vexed. I had made a wish, many times in the dark, and now it was granted.

I heard thoughts.

Flickr photo by lanuiop