Excerpt from In Season: The Nuclear Option

Between the scratch I bring in and her salary, we can get by about as well as we've ever gotten by. Catching up is a distant dream, and one that I don't think about very often. Too depressing. Maude thinks about it a lot; she has her third eye focused on that ethereal moment you see in stock broker commercials during the Sunday morning talk shows. Lately I've begun to feel like I'm letting her down. She hasn't said anything like that; but the weight is still there, bearing down on us both. I'm starting to wonder about her old age, how she'll live, how we'll get by. I don't worry about myself so much because I figure I'll keep going until I collapse on the street; maybe still writing about chili cook offs, maybe mumbling to myself and scribbling odd two line poems on the back of fast food wrappers. And I'm really okay with that … for me. But Maude deserves more. It's just difficult for me to see that far forward.

When I don't have anything on the burner to write about, that means foraging: which is by far the most meaningful part of my job. I think of it as loafing with purpose. That means I hang around looking useless, eavesdrop on conversations, pay attention to local gossip. One of the problems with being a small town freelance hack is that most of the news isn't really new. Everybody knows what's going on before the paper even comes out on Wednesday; so it's not really a matter of informing people as much as confirming what they've already heard. This frustrated me, initially. But once I realized that I was under no real obligation to inform anybody of anything, I was free to write about whatever I could find that was timely and interesting. The highest hope I have is that I can at least dispel the inevitable hearsay that's a part of every well-established ear-to-ear gossip network. This may not be the kind of illumination I always looked for in poetry; but it's something.

Then I figured out that no one really read the paper except to get the high school football, basketball (boys) and baseball scores.

But in a way it was also a liberating experience to realize that regardless of whatever got printed in the paper from one week to the next, people most likely choose to believe the shit they overheard in the line at Blaine's Farm and Fleet instead of anything I carefully researched. Then I came to understand that the issue was not that I wrote it as a member of “the liberal media”, or that it was too honest, or even that they saw my articles as an out and out lie. The major hurtling point was that I actually took the time to research it instead of just talking to the Pharmacist or getting my facts from the grizzly old bastards who ate lunch every week day at the Moose Head. They sat around this one large round table, where they were often joined by the County Clerk – who had the clarity of mind to get most of his opinions and at least half of his ideas from the eight men sitting at that table – and called themselves the Round Table. Most of them were round, too... though that had less to do with the table and more to do with a diet consisting of fried food, salt, and shit beer. They meet each work day at noon for the lunch hour, order whatever the special is for that day (Monday Chili and Fritos, Tuesday Tacos, Wednesday Open-Faced Pork, Thursday Pizza Burgers, Friday Fried Fish Sandwich) and solve all the world's problems. They loved politics and especially loved that each of them agreed with one another on three basic tenets:

1. Country life is the only way God intended man to life;
2. Cities are bad, and only made worse by all the blacks and illegal Mexican immigrants living there; and
3. The only thing worse than blacks or Mexicans is a democrat.

Their solutions for all the world's problems: war, poverty, the national debt, the educational crisis, gun control, or anything else not listed, were as uncomplicated as they were predictable:

1. Shoot the democrats;
2. Shoot the blacks and Mexicans; and
3. Shoot anybody that didn't look like they belonged there.

As a matter of fact, they often sat and talked about the advantages of full scale nuclear war, which they saw as the sum total solution to all the world's problems:

1. All of America's enemies would be destroyed.
2. Most of the cities and tainted horrible people in them would die. And
3. The ones who didn't die right off would eventually because they didn't grow up in the country and didn't know how to take care of themselves. Plus, they'd be deformed and if they wandered into town, they'd be easy to spot.

It took them the entire hour to actually say these things. Or things suspiciously similar.

Not much going on, and I still had some cash and nothing to do. It was important that I be productive, that whatever I do that day in some way relate to getting paid; I decided last night that I would get work done, no matter what.

It's harder than people think... not working. You drop a enough points below the poverty line and you have to be smart. Sneaky. Like being turn a few pennies into a hamburger. Or being able to turn the money for one scotch on the rocks into several cocktails and maybe a beer or two. It requires finesse. And if I was careful, I might be able to extend my scotch and get a story or two for the week, and earn a little scratch.

That, I told myself, was all I really expected from a good day. That, and a night of restful sleep.

But I have to get through today first. And then... we'll see what happens.

Vox Humana

When's the last time you left the house, she asked.

What day is it?

She shook her head and didn't answer me. Sometimes I think she gets more aggravated at me when I validate that she's right than when I prove her wrong. There's no point in reminding her that there's nothing to do, nowhere to go, and that even if there was, we didn't have the money for me to do anything, anyway.

You need to get out of the house.

Has the outside world changed dramatically?

She shook her head again. That's not the point, she said. It's not healthy for you to stay in all day every day. People need sunlight.

It's been raining for three days.

You KNOW what I mean, she said.

I did. Not that I intended to let on. She only got onto me about getting out of the house when she had to work a lot; it was her way of telling me she felt bad about leaving me alone all the time without having to actually tell me. I don't mind walking around, actually. I just like to have an eventual destination in mind. Or some purpose other than to walk around. People in small towns like this one don't simply walk around. This isn't like out west, where people exercise for the sake of exercise. This is the heart of the Midwest, where the food is fried … even the vegetables … and the logic isn't really all that logical. There are nice people, and I do, on occasion, try and wander out among them. Among but not one of. I usually give myself away within a minute or so of striking up a conversation. Most of the conversations I have with people around town are less than a minute. Strangers usually take the first 5 to 30 seconds sizing up people they don't know. They compare the appearance of the newly met person to mental images of everyone they know. Then they spend another couple seconds – never more than 5 or 7 – listening to the person to see if they have anything in common with this newly met person. We learn to do this almost instantly. The human brain is capable of such amazing things. Like deciding in less than a minute whether the new person is a friend, a foe, a fuck buddy, or just another douche who ought to be ignored. This is part of what psychologists and other skull crushers call socialization. And I knew that she wanted me to socialize. Spreading the joy. Or whatever.

You should give people a chance, she said.

What fun would that be?

There are good people out there.

Then they should come in here.

She shook her head and sighed. You don't even go to the bar anymore.

It's always the same conversation.

She sighed again. She knew I had a point.

So start a new one.

It's not that easy. The last time I went to the bar I sat in on the same conversation. The old men at the bar talk about corn, cancer, and who recently died. Everyday is a maudlin wake, sad broken old men drinking to the memories of people they probably hadn't talked to that much in life. Once I tried to start a conversation about politics. I was roundly ignored.

You should still try, she said. You used to try.

I know.

She paused. Are you? She asked. Going to try?

I took a drink of my beer and lit a smoke. I loved her, among many reasons, for her eternal optimism. We'd probably have the same conversation again in a few days. But I really hated disappointing her. I was really  tired of disappointing her. She was working a lot and having to be my only point of human contact was one more stresser she didn't need.

Sure, I said. I'll try.

Mood Killer: A Love Story

She had four cats and a string of boyfriends that often spent the night. Her name was Ester. Gordon slept on the couch and paid the rent. The couch always stank of cat piss and spray. Ester wouldn't get the cats fixed; she said it wasn't fair. Gordon even offered to pay for it, since he figured (correctly) that she didn't have the cash. Ester still said no. But whenever she brought some boyfriend or another over and he spent the night, she always made it seem like the place stank because of Gordon. Poor, pathetic Gordon. Gordon who usually drank himself into a stupor so he wouldn't have to listen to Ester fucking another guy all night. Ester was a loud fuck; she wanted everyone to know she had somebody's dick in her. She wanted Gordon to know that it was somebody's dick besides his.

He would wake up early in the morning and leave for work while the apartment was quiet. He worked first shift in a printer factory. He hated his job; but it was the only job to be had. On the way home, he would stop by a bar and have a few drinks. Gordon typically drank alone. He knew it was because of the smell; he always smelled like cat spray. On the way home, he would stop by the liquor store on 9th Street and buy his nightly bottle. By the time he came home, Ester was gone and so was the boyfriend. Sometimes she left him a note. They were out of coffee. They were out of bread. The cats were out of cat chow. Some collector or another had called one of her credit card bills. The cats despised him, but they wouldn't leave him alone until he fed them; so when they were out of food, he'd have to drive to the store and buy them some. Gordon told himself it was the price of peace and quiet.

Things had been going on this way for seven months. Seven months ago, Ester had broken up with Gordon because he was too boring. That was what she said. “I just thought there was MORE,” she said. “I thought you were hiding all this STUFF, you know, UNDERNEATH.”

“I never said I was.”

“But that doesn't mean,” she went on like he hadn't said anything, “that you need to move out right away. You can sleep on the couch until you find a new place.”

He didn't thank her. But he did move his shit – what little of it there was – out of her bedroom. He had moved in with her three months before when he had been out of work. She said she wanted to take care of him. She still had a job then, working in a tuxedo shop. A week after he moved in, she quit her job because she said the owner had been sexually harassing her. It hadn't yet occurred to him that he was the world's biggest sucker. That thought didn't creep in until she brought home the first of her many boyfriends the night after she had broken up with him.


When he got back to the apartment after work, it was quiet. He poured himself a scotch and water and sat on the couch, thinking. One of the cats – a malcontented hermaphrodite – was sharpening it's claws on Gordon's copy of Butler's Lives of the Saints. He'd been reading it the night before, when she had come in with one of her boyfriends. They were both laughing, and the boyfriend – whose name was Morgan – looked at Gordon and shook his head in disgust. Then they tumbled into the bedroom, slammed the door behind them, and got to it. Ester was nothing if not an aerobic fuck. Gordon still remembered the way her tits bounced up and down when she rode him. Her tits bounced and she laughed and shrieked like a little girl on a amusement park ride. She was making those same sounds again, with Morgan. Morgan was a regular. She had known him for years. Been fucking him for years. The problem had been that Morgan had been married. But he wasn't with his wife anymore.

The hermaphrodite cat sat on the edge of the couch and hissed at him. Then, looking straight at him, the cat sprayed his pillow. Gordon thought of himself as an animal lover. When animals were bad, it was usually because they had bad owners. Animals were honest. When they didn't like you, they hissed at you. Or sprayed your pillow.

There was something to be learned from animals.

Gordon drained his glass, stood up, and grabbed the cat by the scruff. The car started yowling and snarling and digging it's claws into his arm; but Gordon didn't care. He let the blood drip onto the carpet, walked over to the bedroom door, and kicked it open. Ester was on top of Morgan and he was reaching up and squeezing her tits. Gordon threw the cat on top at them. Ester screamed and Morgan yelled and Gordon shut the door behind him before he walked over to the kitchen sink to rinse off his bloody arm and wrapped it in a dish towel.

Ester stormed out of the bedroom, still naked. Her stomach had claw marks on it. Gordon poured himself another scotch. “Wow,” he said, pointing to the scratches. “You kids are playing it a little rough, aren't you?”

“YOU BASTARD!” she screeched. “What the fuck did you do to my cat!?”

“Nothing it hasn't done to me already.”

The Morgan came out. He had stopped to put his jeans back on. “Dude,” he said, trying to look all menacing. “What the FUCK is your deal?”

“Let me handle this!” She turned and snapped at him. “So does hurting a poor defenseless creature make you feel like a man? Does it?”

“Defenseless hell,” Gordon answered. He took a drink.

“I LET you stay here,” she went on. “I LET you stay here until you find a place, and this is how you thank me?”

“I CAN'T find a place,” Gordon said. “I'm too busy paying your rent and feeding your fucking cats.”

“Well maybe if you didn't DRINK so much,” she countered, “you'd be able to save up enough to move. You knew how it was going to be.”

“Oh?” Gordon smiled. He was amazed by his level of calm. “I knew that your cats would destroy my shit while you ride every cock in a fifty mile radius?”

“Now you wait just a goddamn second....” Morgan said.

Ester turned and shushed him. “I'M ALLOWED TO HAVE MY OWN LIFE!” She was screeching at the top of her lungs. “YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO ANYMORE!”

“Where do you get that shit?” Gordon answered. “I never told you not to do anything. I had sort of hoped that maybe you wouldn't fuck other people. That's all.”

“IT'S MY BODY,” she was still screeching. “IT'S MY LIFE.”

“Yep,” he said. “And you can have it.” Gordon drained the glass and tossed it in the sink, causing it to shatter. Ester screamed bloody murder. Morgan looked like he was about to punch Gordon. Gordon walked by them both, grabbed his stuff – a suitcase of clothes and a few books that the cats hadn't yet destroyed – and walked back by them, towards the door.

“Where are YOU going?” Ester sneered. “You afraid that a REAL man will kick you ass?”

“Nope.” Gordon looked at Morgan. Morgan tried to look intimidating. Gordon shook his head and focused his attention back on Ester. “I'm leaving.”

“You can't just go without giving me notice!”

“Why?”

“The rent's due in two days!”

Gordon nodded at Morgan. “Ask him. Or earn it. I'm sure some of the guys you have in and out of here can throw some cash your way.”

“You're a bastard!” She was crying now. Big sloppy tears.

Gordon tossed the apartment key on the floor and grabbed his half empty bottle of scotch off the counter. “Besides,” he said. “I quit my job today.”

“WHAT?” The tears shut off almost instantly.

“I said,” he turned and smiled. “I quit my job.”

“You're nothing but a goddamn bum!”

“Maybe.”

Gordon turned and walked out of the apartment. When he got out to the parking lot, he looked back up at the apartment. All the lights were on. He smiled. He got in his car. As he was pulling out onto the street, a police cruiser pulled into the parking lot. He wondered if it was the same cop she had gone down on, she claimed, to get out of a speeding ticket; he remembered when she had come home to him, crying about it. Big sloppy tears. Driving into the darkness, Gordon felt better than he had in years.

Any ay You Curb The Homicidal Impulse is A Good Day For Other People

He came home from work and immediately poured a drink. Zorby thought of his old sponsor, William and his sage voice that often comes with the recognition – real or not – of hitting bottom. William's poison had been vodka sevens; Zorby preferred his liquor dark. He drained the first scotch he had poured himself in more than three years without even bothering with the ice. The minute it hit his throat, Zorby's body absorbed it almost instantly. He took more time with the second, putting ice in the glass and then topping it off. Then he drained the second and poured another on top of the melting ice. This one he sipped, as he turned and walked from the kitchen into the living room. He took the bottle with him.

“What a shitter of a day,” he said to the empty room. He sat down in his worn out orange rocker, took in the silence of his surroundings. He would be alone in the house for several more hours. Trina wouldn't be happy that he was drinking again. Depending on the kind of day she'd had, she may or may not say anything right away. But he supposed he have a few and put the bottle back under the kitchen sink before she came home. That was the original thought, anyway. That would require impulse control. And Zorby was pretty sure he'd used up what little impulse control he had.

The idea of moving to a small town had been that the quiet would be good for them. Well, mostly good for him. Quiet. Quietude. Peace and Quietude. It had seemed like a good idea. Phoenix had rubbed him the wrong way. Trina was tired of him being so angry all the time. But that wasn't all of it. She had pretty much hated Phoenix ever since they moved there. She didn't like the weather, especially the oven like quality of the summers. She didn't like the west coast lite cultural miasma. She didn't like shallow people. Zorby didn't like people anywhere, so Phoenix for him was no different than any other place in that respect.

As he drank and stared into the blankness of the television that he didn't want to turn on, he thought of the them. The people he'd seen that day. The ones he fantasized about doing horrible things to. Their gaping, yapping, toothless maws. Their limited vocabularies. Their weak chins and clearly inbred faces. The sounds of their voices set his teeth on edge, made his backbone tighten. Made his head begin to hurt. He had almost gotten to the point to where he could stand the sight of them; but then they had to talk.

He drained his drink and poured another. “They don't know,” he said. “They don't know how easy it would be.” One of the games he played to keep himself entertained was to imagine how he might kill them all. No one would die in quite the same way. That was one of the things he hated about how serial killers were depicted on television and in movies. Always doing the same thing over and over again. Recreating some moment in time. Zorby had no such moment. He liked the idea that each one of them – from the spiteful bitch at the drug store that eyed him like a thief to the Methodist minister who always tried to talk to him and convince him to attend church – would die in some unique way. It would be doing them a favor, actually. They could then achieve in dying what they had never achieved in life.

Not that he was a serial killer; not really. Zorby understood how people could BE like that. But there was something in him that prevented him. Not fear, necessarily. Not some high moral regard for human life. Something else. Something that held him back.

He drank this last drink slowly and checked the clock. Trina would come home and know he'd been drinking. She would say something. Why is there even a bottle in the house? she would ask. It had been a present from his brother. His brother still drank because he hadn't hit bottom. Zorby never felt like he hit bottom. But everyone else seemed to think he did.

The faces of his fantasy kills flashed through his mind. He saw each of them die. But it didn't make him feel any better. He turned on the television, hoping to drown them out.

Dubuque in the Fog

Boone remembered the first time he'd ever seen the Mississippi River; he was riding a Greyhound bus from Lexington to Phoenix, on his way to a new job and a new life – foraging ahead to prepare a place in the way he imagined the early western settlers did. He went first and would send for Maude when it was time. The bus crossed the river into Dubuque Iowa; it had been early morning, and the fog was rising up off the water and engulfing everything the way the fog engulfs everything in stylized Gothic movies. The hangover was more or less gone, but his head hurt from sleeping on the bus and from not having any aspirin and from not sleeping very well at all. He had opened his eyes long enough to see the river around the middle of the suspension bridge. He'd always wanted to see the river – ever since he read Huck Finn when he was a kid; he didn't quite know what to expect, but for some reason, seeing it from a suspension bridge crossing from Illinois into Iowa was not what his imagination had planned for him. And it didn't look like he expected it too, either.

He had made reference to his two days before when he and Maude crossed over on their way to visit friends of hers in Waterloo. I've been here before, he had said. Maude was driving and looked over at him with her nose all wrinkled and her eyes saying she didn't believe him. He'd come to realize she didn't believe half the stories he told and a fair amount of what he said; but that was what she asked for, marrying a writer. That was the way he figured it, anyway. Boone had given up trying to convince her that he couldn't make up the silly shit he said, that it wasn't how things worked. How is that possible, she had asked. I was, he had answered. On the bus to Phoenix. It was even this time of day. Early morning. The fog's the same. She shook her head. That's strange, was all she said.

But now it was the return trip and he was driving. Boone didn't mind driving; but he missed the freedom he used to feel when he first learned to drive. He was sure he had lost the urge to drive around the time when he spent so much time in a car. It was right after he divorced his Rhea's mother, and the only place he had to live back with his mother. She hadn't cared, but something about the arrangement bruised his already battered (from the divorce) ego. So he started living in his car. Visiting friends, sleeping on their couches. Sometimes he slept in the car when he was parked somewhere safe. If he was out of money and out of friends, he sometimes stayed in libraries. On weekend he saw Rhea, he stayed with his mother, and during holidays. But that was about the time when a car changed from an implement of freedom to one more weight around his neck. Just one more thing to have to think about when he was tired of thinking at all. That was what he had decided, anyway. He didn't mind driving the return trip to Mt. Arliss, though. It was only a three hour trip, and he knew if traffic worked in their favor and there weren't any cops out, he could make it in around two or two and half hours.

Even two hours was seeming like forever, though, because Maude wasn't speaking to him. She was staring out at the road and chain smoking.

Both of them were exhausted because they had been up late, arguing. Boone was still unclear as to what the argument was actually about. Whenever Maude dug into him – which was admittedly not very often in spite what he probably deserved – it was with a laundry list of offenses that he had committed. His most recent offense was always the first one – the one that had started the deluge anger, anxiety, fear, and frustration. But she never stuck with that one. Rather than talk about one thing at a time, Maude's approach was to bombard him with his sins until he was incapable of responding. Then she would stop talking and go to sleep – which was the final insult, since nothing was ever resolved. And with nothing resolved, Boone was in for a long night of not sleeping and going back in his memory trying to find the thing that tied all the seemingly random events together.

The sin that had unleashed the torrent this time wasn't even a new one. It started after he woke up hungover.

“You know that you lie when you drink, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Last night,” Maude explained. “When we were over at Andy and Audrey’s. You... well, it wasn't lying, exactly. Exaggerating.”

“I exaggerate? About what?”

“Oh,” she sighed, sitting on the bed. “It's not even anything worth remembering. But be aware.”

Boone didn't answer. He wasn't sure what it was he had been so disingenuous about. The four of them were sitting around the kitchen table. He and Andy were drinking beer and shots of Jameson. The three of them talked a lot about theater – which always left Boone out, since he only really cared about theater when it was something Maude was doing. He had just been trying to get into the conversation. Later Boone found out that not only was he liar, but a belittling, interrupting asshole... so much of an asshole that Audrey had inquired, when Boone didn't accompany them on a shopping trip but stayed in the motel room to nurse his hangover, whether he was still “grumpy.”

The coup de grace came that night, though, when they were hanging out and Boone said hardly anything at all. He hadn't felt right all day, and while he would have preferred to have a few drinks to delay the hangover, Maude didn't want him to drink. She was on another one of her mini-quests to save him from himself – or to save herself from what she saw as a repetitive pattern of unhealthy behavior. Or something like that. Boone suspected that she felt bad because she hadn't noticed his booze intake all summer when she was working 12 hours a day at the theater. Boone had thought he was doing pretty well; he was maintaining, getting things done – most of the time – and he was always there to focus on her when she was home, to make the time matter. But now that her schedule was more or less normal, she was noticing all of his little faults and petty sins and, in the way she tended to, inflate them to mammoth proportion.

But she didn't stop there. “And what are you going to DO?”

“About?”

“About you! What are you going to do for work?”

“I have a job.”

“You hate it!”

“It frustrates me.”

“You want to quit.”

“I didn't. I haven't. I probably won't.”

“I'm TIRED of being poor,” she said, crying. “I'm tired of worrying about whether you're going to tell another boss to go to hell.”

“I haven't. And he's not my boss, really. I'm freelance.”

“You're acting like the world's out to get you! You always think the world is out to get you!”

“It is.”

The argument went on like that for a few more hours before she fell into silence, got into bed, and turned the television onto some unbearable reality show or another. Then after about a half hour she turned out the light and turned off the show and went to sleep without saying another word to him. He laid awake in bed for another couple of hours, trying to figure out how find the balance between what she expected and what he knew he was capable of.

They were cordial in the morning. She woke up and took a shower. Boone went to the lobby and got them both a cup of coffee and a few donuts. Then he took a shower, they packed, checked out, and started the trip home.

By the time they reached Dubuque, it was nearly ll. Boone much preferred the city covered in fog. Maude looked over at the clock. “We're making pretty good time.”

“Yeah.”

She put her hand on the back of his neck and started playing with his hair. “You feeling okay?” she asked. “Are you still able to drive?”

“Yeah. I'm fine.”

“You look tired.”

“I am.”

She sighed. “I love you, you know.”

“I love you, too.”

She looked at the clock again. “We should be home in another hour or so.”

“Yeah. A little more than an hour, I think.”

She removed her hand from his neck, rubbed his right leg, and leaned over on his shoulder. He liked having her there.

It was supposed to be a good idea. Dog-Eared Books had an open mic on the first Friday of each month, and Maude told me it would be good for me to go. “You need to get out,” she said. “You used to read in front of people all the time,” she said. “Once you're up there, you'll feel fine.”

I wasn't convinced. The truth was, even when I got up in front of people at open mics in college, it was hardly ever to read. Mostly I emceed; it's a lot easier to introduce other people than it is to stand in front of a lingering crowd of the collegiate and the confused and read some fresh lines. I knew people who didn't read fresh work; some of them had been doing it so long, they simply recycled stuff when they thought no one was paying attention. They read because they liked the sounds of their voices and the temporary notoriety. A few read because it got them laid. I was much more comfortable hamming it up when I was under no pressure to read my own work. It also helped that I never got up in front of people unless I drank at least four beers. When I knew I was going to read and there was no getting out of it, my routine was three beers and two shots of bourbon... a way to relax and muster courage at the same time. I hated the sound of my voice, and my writing was never the kind that spread the legs of young impressionable college girls. I wasn't one of those guys. Even when I tried to pretend I was one of those guys, I was never one of those guys. I used to watch those guys – the ones who used poetry to get laid – and wonder how they could take themselves seriously as artists. Eventually, I figured out that they never took themselves seriously. Two years out of college and away from the sticky microphone and bad coffee, they didn't write anymore. They became accountants, clerical secretaries, and store managers on the executive fast track.

“I don't know if this is a good idea,” I told Maude the evening of the book store reading. “I don't know this crowd. I don't know what they're like.”

“You need to get out,” she said.

“I wish you'd come with me.”

“I have to work...”

“I know, I know.”

“Besides, you never know. You might meet some interesting people.”

Yeah, I thought. And I might end up meeting another group of pretentious assholes,too. Guess which one I thought was more likely? “I know, I know.”

She dropped me off in front of the bookstore on her way to work. It was in a strip mall, like everything else in Phoenix. Next to the book store there was a bar called Bobby's Tap & Grill. I'd been in there before. They ran a burger and beer special – $8. In a city where the prices are generally as inflated as its sense of self, that was considered a bargain. And the place did serve a pretty decent burger.

I wasn't sure what I was going to read; I grabbed a stack of new drafts, planning to sift through them until the last minute. That was part of my routine, too. I tried to avoid reading anything that was too much like what was being read. If there was a run on anti/political poems, I'd read something funny or crass. If there was an unusually large number of bad love poems, I'd read something dry and acerbic. Not that I was ever too worried about anybody having stuff that sounded like mine. There's a lot of overlap when it comes to poetry; not because there isn't a lot of options and forms, but because no one really reads poetry anymore except for poets. And poets hardly ever go to open mics anymore because the musicians and performance artists have taken the over the venue. Not that there's anything wrong with music or performance art; but the simple art of poetry – simple in it's delivery, complex in it's meaning – has been lost to everyone except the cadre of academic poets in their cloisters of higher learning. Real poetry, like real art, is rare. And while this may make it more valuable, having to sift through everything else is exhausting. And while it's true that I learned a lot about poetry in college, I learned more about poetry when I actually had to figure out how to live in the world. That's where poetry finds meaning.

Maude knew how I felt about readings, and she knew why I stopped reading in public. But I think she was tired of me hiding out in the apartment and sick of being the only person I talked to on a regular basis. I didn't blame her; I can wear people out. Eventually. That was why I didn't argue... to much, anyway.

I went into Bobby's and found an empty stool at the bar. Bobby's was one of those places worked toward classy kitsch – the walls were covered with album covers from the 60's, 70's, and 80's. The Doors. Zeppelin. T-Rex. Janis Joplin. Aretha Franklin. Blondie. Lita Ford. Joan Jett. I was looking for The Runaways and The Dead Kennedys when the girl behind the bar asked me what I wanted. I asked her what was on tap.

“We don't serve draft beer.” She answered like she'd said it a million times.

“You don't?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn't you used to?”

“Not that I'm aware of, sir.”

“The name of the place is Bobby's TAP and Grill, right?”

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and smiled. The things people will endure for a tip. “YES, sir.”

I shook my head and ordered a bass. When she brought it back, I asked if they had Maker's Mark behind the bar.

She sighed again. “Sorry, sir.”

“What do you have?”

“Knob Creek, Jim Beam, and Jack Daniels.”

“Those don't belong in the same sentence.”

She stood there and waited for me to order a shot. I obliged her and ordered a Knob Creek. She poured it and walked back into the kitchen... probably to smoke and bitch about the asshole at the bar.

“They did used to have beer on tap,” a woman's voice said. I looked up and there was woman, maybe a few years older than me by the crow's feet around her eyes and the deep smile lines in her face that she was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide with make-up.

“I thought so,” I said.

“The new owner kept the name and took out the taps. It's cheaper that way.”

“You mean the owner isn't some guy named Bobby?”

The woman laughed and shook her head. “Nope.”

“Too bad.”

“Did you know him?”

“No. But I used to have a friend named Bobby. I like the name.”

She laughed. “Are you going to the reading next door?” She nodded at the pile of papers I wasn't looking through.

“That's the plan.”

“Have you been before?”

“To this one? No.”

“It's a nice crowd,” she said. “A good mix. Sometimes we get some people from the university. But it's a friendly crowd.”

I emptied my shot and took a sip of beer. “That's good.”

“Is that part of a manuscript?”

Fuck. “I don't know yet.”

“I'm working on a collection of poems.”

“Good for you.”

“I like to read them out loud. It gives me a sense of them.”

Uh-huh. You could read them to yourself at home for that. “Cool.”

“Don't you find that reading them out loud helps?”

As a rule I don't talk about writing. Especially with other writers. I looked up at the television in the corner. 

“Looks like the Suns are going to actually win,” I said.

“Oh,” she sniffed and looked let down. “I don't really follow... sports.”

“I follow the teams I like,” I said.

“That's nice,” she said, standing up. “I'll see you over there, I guess.” She walked away before I could answer.

If the beer hadn't been $5 a bottle, I would've probably skipped the reading and stayed to watch the game. Basketball wasn't a sport I followed a lot – but it wasn't bad to watch. The best part of the game is always the last few seconds. Both teams trying like hell to finish on top. And when a game's really contested, somebody tries for that impossible half court shot right as the buzzer rings and time is temporarily suspended until the ball either hits the net or bounces off the backboard. Plus, the Suns were having another lousy year, and I always like underdogs.

Against my better judgment, I finished my beer and walked over to the book store. There were some chairs –maybe a baker's dozen – set up in the back corner near the travel and self help sections. In front of the chairs, there was a rickety wooden podium standing on top of a makeshift dais. The woman from the bar was sitting in front, along with three other women who looked like they shopped in the same overpriced shabby sheik store in Scottsdale. I took an empty seat in the back and looked through the disorganized pile of drafts in my lap. I didn't know which one I was going to read, or if I would have time to read more than one. I didn't know if there was a sign up sheet anywhere. No one appeared to be in charge. This wasn't a bad thing. But it wasn't necessarily a good thing, either. If the people there were regulars, they had a routine. That meant they may not put up with some newcomer with his non-manuscript intended lines and his interest in sports.

A few more people showed up. All of the chairs were filled, and other people were filtering around the shelves. I looked around for someone who might be worth talking to. I couldn't see anyone that might be able to hold down a conversation about anything more interesting than comparing brands of tofu.

The reading began when a high school girl got up and rushed through a poem about getting her driver's license and losing her virginity to her driving instructor. Then a bald guy stood up and read a poem about his father's fishing rod. Everyone clapped and was very polite.

Then the woman who talked to me at the bar stood up and walked grandly up the three small steps to the dais and took her place behind the podium. Her comrades in the audience sat in a state of rapture, waiting with so much anticipation that they were sitting on the edges of their folding chairs.

“THIS piece,” she declared, “is dedicated to the whole of my sisterkind.”

The women in the front sighed audibly.

“It's called Things A Man Can Never Do.”

The poem began as a laundry list of things in a rough iambic pentameter. Child Bearing. Love and Nurturing. Menstruation. I checked out mentally after that one. Biology wasn't one of those things that made me squeamish – though I, like every man who still had his balls intact, tried desperately to avoid the tampon /maxi-pad isle in the grocery store and I never engaged in the usual tactics of the gender political. I opened the door for Maude, but I was perfectly fine with her paying the bill. I neither looked down on women for not having penises nor did I think better of myself because I have one. Life seemed too short for all that bullshit.

I knew she was finished when the small crowd erupted into louder than appropriate applause. The woman from the bar smiled gracefully, bowed her head, and clasped her hands together like she was blessing them for clapping for her. The poet's version of the plenary indulgence, I guess. Then she flowed back down the steps and back into her seat to the welcoming pats and hugs of her friends.

After no one else went up to the podium after a few seconds, I stood up and approached. I still didn't know which poem to read. I set them down on the podium and tried to lean on it; but it nearly tipped forward and I had to catch it from falling into the lap of the woman from the bar and her entourage. I looked at her and she smiled – a pontifical kind of smile.

Bitch. I straightened up and introduced myself. Then I took one last look through my drafts. I read a poem about taking my daughter to the park when she was 7 years old. It was an angry poem, meant to be read angry. So I started reading it, clenching the podium and rocking back and forth. I still hated the sound of my voice; but I hated the presumption of the woman at the bar, too. I'm not some woman-hating asshole. I know damn well that there are good women in the world, and that there are probably more good women than there are good men. But there are bitches in the world, too. And all of them are some dumb bastard's ex-wife for a reason... half of which was probably hers.

When I finished the poem, the small crowd of listeners sat stunned. A stunned silence can be every bit as edifying as a thunderous applause. More even. The woman from the bar was glaring at me, and so was her entourage of sisterkind. I took my seat and sat through three or four more readers. Then the reading was over, and I caught the bus home.

Later that night, Maude asked me how the reading went. “Fine.”

“Did you read?”

“Yes.”

“Did you meet anybody.”

“Nobody as sweet as you.”

She sighed, shook her head, and went into the bedroom to change into her night clothes.

100 Pumpkin Hill

He woke up each and every day when the sunlight broke in through the curtains of the small, barely furnished bedroom. It was so small that there was only room for the full-sized mattress and box spring and a short three drawer night table that doubled as his dresser. There was no clock there, or anywhere else in the tiny house on top of Pumpkin Hill. Randall had no need for clocks; he didn’t need a contraption whose function was to remind him of the passage of time. After he got up, he washed his face and put on fresh clothes – sometimes they were clean, if he had just done laundry. Sometimes he simply rotated his five shirts and three pairs of pants until they were beyond filthy. He had exactly seven pairs of socks, seven pairs of underwear, and seven t-shirts. For the winter he had two pairs of long underwear and two sweaters. He liked that he could pack his clothes up in a single-suit case in case he ever decided to leave.


Randall shuffled into the kitchen and made his breakfast. It was the same breakfast he had every day: coffee, three fried eggs, half a grilled onion, and three prunes. After he finished his breakfast, Randall drank three beers and listened to the radio. His favorite station was the public radio station. When they talked, it was only when they had something important to talk about, like the weather, or news. After he drank three beers, he poured himself a scotch and looked through the photo albums. The albums contained pictures of his family. His wife. His brother Zack, Zack’s wife Deidre, their kids Sarah and Isaac. His and Zack’s mother and father. Birthday parties, Christmas parties, Halloween costumes. Randall wasn’t in most of the pictures. He never liked getting his picture taken. That was why he learned to take pictures. And he learned it so well that he opened a shop of his own and took pictures. Senior Year. Prom. Homecoming. Family portraits. Baby pictures. People had liked him. They liked his wife, Carolyn, better. Everyone liked Carolyn.

If he got hungry around mid-day, Randall ate a piece of bread with butter and jam. Mostly, he didn’t get hungry. Food had very little taste for him, and he only ate to stay alive. That was the promise he made to Carolyn when she was dying. That he would stay alive no matter what. She wouldn’t have liked him staying in all day, looking through the same photo albums over and over again. She had never liked his drinking; but he only ever tapered off because of her. And without her, he saw no reason. There was no reason for any of it. He kept his promise as best he could; but there were some things he was simply too angry about. He knew Carolyn would want him to stop drinking, to start taking pictures again. But as much as he loved her, he was angry at her, too. Angry because she died. Angry because in the decade since her death, he had been unable to leave their house, or even get rid of her things.

The only time he walked outside was to check the mail. He did this once a week, on Fridays. As he sat drinking and looking through the albums and listening to the radio, he realized it was Friday. So he stood up, slipped on house shoes, and walked outside. The sun was shining and the light hurt his eyes. He wasn’t always sensitive to sunlight; he didn’t become sensitive until after Carolyn died. Then everything about the world seemed too bright, too shiny.

The mail box was stuffed full of junk mail. Hiding amongst the junk mail, there were a few bills. They were all past due notices. Nothing else. Carolyn’s family cut off contact when he followed her wishes and donated her body to science. They wanted something to cry over, a tombstone to put flowers on. Randall knew the lifeless body wasn’t Carolyn’s anymore. They probably knew that, too. But grief does strange things to people. Everyone has their own way of not letting go.

Randall dropped the mail in the empty chair by the door, walked into the kitchen, and poured himself another drink. He knew it was getting late because the neighborhood kids were home from school and running through his yard. The kids ran through his yard because it was a short cut and because he never yelled at them. The grass needed cutting, but he simply couldn’t force himself out to get it done as he had managed in past years. He knew it was pissing off his neighbors. Not that any of them had bothered to talk to him about it. He knew it by the way they looked at him when he was in the grocery store or the way they pointed at the little old house and shook their heads. If they had their way, the little old house would be torn down. It was the oldest house on the street. It was falling apart, and they were tired of it hurting the value of their homes. He knew this because he’d gotten a letter from the town council saying as much. They were going to give him fifteen days; then they were going to evict him. Today was the fifteenth day.

Randall knew that if it were Carolyn that was alive instead of him, there wouldn’t have been any letter from town council. Everybody loved Carolyn. And they liked him until he stopped taking pictures. A drunk who takes nice pictures is still useful. A drunk who is nothing but a drunk is not. Randall knew they were going to send the Sheriff for him. Then the house he had lived in with Carolyn would be demolished so that the neighbors could look at an empty field instead of a dilapidated house.

Randall didn’t know when they would come for him. But he knew it wouldn’t be much longer. The only things he would take with him were his suit case and the photo albums. The albums were heavy, and he intended to make the Sheriff and his deputies carry them out. He drained his glass and poured more scotch on top of the same ice cubes. He had promised to stay alive. But that didn’t mean he was going to like one minute of it.

Third and Long

They were desperately trying to lose. It was nothing new. As long as I’d been watching them play, the Bengals have tried to lose more consistently than any other professional football team. Other teams that sucked continuously sucked because they lacked the talent. With the Bengals it’s never a question of talent; they lose in the grand tradition of the art of losing. Watching them play is like watching Greek Tragedy. So much hope. So many dreams. Every game I watch, I think about the time I went to watch the Bengals play in 1984. It was a home game against the Chicago Bears; this was back when they had Walter Peyton and Refrigerator Perry. That was the year they were unstoppable. The day of the game it snowed, and Dad took a thermos of hot chocolate. The Bengals were near the end of another bad year and everyone thought the game was done before it started. The Bengals won that game. Even though it was cold, my dad stood up and cheered – which was something he never did.


There was something in them … in their wiring … that seemed to propel them towards defeat. It wasn’t that they wanted to lose. They didn’t. In fact, the Bengals want to win more than any time in the NFL because hardly anyone every thinks they deserve it. Ever.

I was sipping on a beer and watching the offensive line crumble for no particular reason when my cell phone went off. It was a text message from Rhea, telling me to call her.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Maude was into the game as much as I was. I showed her my phone. “Rhea. She wants me to call.”

I called her back and she told me her grandmother was dying. Her mother’s mother. She’d been dying for a long time… years. Even before she got cancer from smoking cheap menthol cigarettes, she’d been dying. Eaten bit by bit over the years. Eaten by life. Back when I was married to Rhea’s mother and the dying woman was my mother-in-law she told me a story about how she died once before. She was on the operating table. You’ve heard those kinds of stories before, where the patient dies on the table and floats above everything and wanders into a bright light. She told me she was pulled back to life because her family couldn’t live without her. She said that sometimes when she thought about the heaven she’d been pulled away from, she was angry. Angry at her husband. Angry at her daughter. Angry at still being alive.

When Rhea had told me a year before the old woman was stopping the treatments and letting the cancer take its course, I knew why.

I called her back and asked her how she was handling things. Fine, she said. She said she was fine. It was a little weird. But fine. I asked about the dying woman’s condition. Mostly asleep and moaning, she said. On morphine, once every hour. I knew what that meant. She was all but gone. The odd moments of clarity becoming increasingly rare and short. Lucidity slipping away. All of who the woman had once been – slipping away. She’d been family once. Of course, when Rhea’s mother and I split up, the two of them went about attempting to destroy my life. Turned friends against me, trying to guilt me into “doing the right thing.” Used little baby Rhea against me, trying to compel me to fill the role of husband and father as they understood it – which of course meant handing over my balls in a silk purse. The marriage not working out was tragic enough. Rhea’s mother and I were both at fault for that. But trying to manipulate me into staying in miserable situation by turning me into a local pariah? That had the old woman’s bitter manipulating fingerprints all over it.

“How are you?” I asked Rhea. “How are you feeling?” I knew there wasn’t anything I could say about her grandmother. I couldn’t commiserate. I could sympathize in as much as I’d lost people I loved. But because people I loved had died, I knew there was no point in spouting all the usual bullshit people say when someone dies. The only person who feels better is the person spouting the bullshit… about how the dead person is out of pain / in a better place. That may or may not be true. But it’s also true that death after a long illness is a blessing for the people have had to sit and watch death take hold. At first, you feel guilty about feeling relieved. And then the guilt goes away and you just feel relief. But no one talks about that.

“I’m okay,” she said. I could almost hear her shrugging her shoulders over the phone.

“Is she saying anything?”

“Not really.”

I asked Rhea to describe her breathing, and knew from the description that it wouldn’t be long. Rhea told me she was going to stay home from school the following day. Then she said it would take anything from an hour to three days.

“Not three days,” I said. Nowhere near that long.

“I have to go back inside,” she said. Outside was the only quiet place left. Her house was filled with people who were sitting and waiting for the old woman to die. Family. Relatives. Thiers was always a large, unwieldy family. One I never felt comfortable with. Not really.

“Call me when something happens.”

“Ok.”

I told her I loved her. She hung up and I went back to watching the game. They were still trying to lose, even though they were three points ahead. The other team didn’t want to lose; but they didn’t have the talent to win the way they wanted to, either. The other team fumbled the ball and the Bengals turned it into a touchdown. If it had been a home game, the crowd would have gone cheered. Since it wasn’t, they jeered and booed. All they had to do at that point was play out the clock. Sometimes it’s not about scoring. Sometimes it’s about waiting for the clock to run out. A simple strategy that ends up being much more complicated than it should be.

About an hour after the game ended, the phone rang. It was Rhea. She was crying. Her grandmother was dead.

“She’s not in pain anymore,” I said, trying to console her.

“I know,” she answered through her tears.

I wanted to hug her. Words never help. Hugs do. She told me she had to make other phone calls and that she’d call me the following day.

Sketch of An Important Man

 The only thing Dolf Packer despised more than news reporters was when some stupid son of a bitch parked in his parking space in front of the County Courthouse. And when it was a god damned reporter parked in his space – that was both despicable and unforgivable.

           

He was already in a bad mood when he pulled his truck onto Main Street.  His business wasn’t at the courthouse, but at Town Hall across the street. Dolf Packer was going to have a sit down with the mayor and tell him what’s what. He knew that dwarf motherfucker, Leslie Banes, would be there. It was Thursday, and that was the day he came into the office.  Thursday was also the day that Sarah, the college intern, was working. Sarah did the filing and the typing. She was learning about government and administration because that was what she wanted to do. Dolf Packer didn’t like her; well, that wasn’t quite right.  A more precise way of describing his feelings is this: whenever Dolf fucked his wife Janine, he imaged he was fucking Sarah. Sarah was young and had a young woman’s body. Janine’s body had been destroyed over the years from carrying Dolf’s four sons and from taking care of them and Dolf. Janine was old; but she knew her place. Sarah was young, and like all these young girls going to college, they thought they deserved more. Dolf knew she needed a real man – not one of these college boy pussies – to point her in the right direction. But that wasn’t his job. Banes only came into the office on Thursdays because he was chasing after Sarah the way he chased after every young woman in town. Dolf figured that she was too smart to give herself over to a midget; but then again, he reasoned, she was just a dumb pretty twat with delusions of being a city manager.

           

He knew Banes would see him. He damn well better, he told himself.  Banes needed Dolf Packer’s support to stay in office. He needed Packer’s money. He needed Packer’s influence. He needed Packer’s backing, because nothing got done in Arliss County unless Dolf Packer wanted it to get done. And the purpose of his visit to Leslie Banes was to make sure something DIDN’T happen. 

           

What Dolf Packer didn’t want to happen was for an ordinance to pass at the next Town Council meeting. Most ordinances aren’t that big of a deal, and since Packer didn’t live in town, most of them never impacted him.  However, this ordinance would. There were a lot of old buildings in town, and there had been a push to either fix them or tear them down. The historical society wanted to save them, because they were all college educated pussies or bored housewives. They squawked in the paper about remembering the past and how this or that building was an important piece of architecture. Sentimental bullshit.  The common sense approach, Dolf knew, was to simply tear them down. That would be cheaper. That was also the way of the world. Old things crumbled and new things were built right on top of them.

           

And that was exactly what he intended to do. He’d bought old man Thompson’s old garage at the base of Main Street because he intended to demolish it and put up a new building… then he’s sell the new building, or lease it if there weren’t any immediate takers. Packer paid old man Thompson’s son pennies on the dollar of what it was worth, and he intended to triple (at least) his money.

           

But then Paterson and those Historical Society pussies decided it was “architecturally significant,” and started petitioning Banes and the town council to pass an ordinance that would limit what he, Packer could do. With his OWN property. Besides the fact that it was un goddamned American, he told himself and everyone else who would listen, it was also just goddamned inconvenient. And by the time he paid for all the changes the new ordinance would require—preserving the “architectural integrity” and “historical accuracy” of the crumbling pile of bricks – he’d be stuck with a white whale of a building that he could never unload, except at a loss. And Dolf Packer didn’t take a loss on anything. Not ever.

           

The mayor could care less, but Packer had it on good authority that he had managed to tap Paterson’s college age daughter when she visited over Christmas. The twat was clearly a whore… and a freaky one at that, Packer figured, since she spread her legs for that dwarf… but Packer figured maybe she threatened to yell rape if he didn’t support her daddy’s idea.  That was the only reason Banes would even let the thing get as far as it has. Banes was too much of a pig fucker to fall in love with a piece of ass, and he could give a shit less about historical preservation. So Dolf planned on reasoning with him. And if that didn’t work, he’d tell the midget son of a bitch that maybe it was time for a new mayor come November. “The world’s full of dip shit midget who want to be mayor,” he’d planned on saying.  He even practiced it in the mirror while he was shaving that morning, he liked the sound of it so much.

           

 And then… that fucker was parked in his spot.

           

Packer knew him. His name was Rafferty. He had come from some other  place, started writing for one of the papers, and started making trouble. He’d been the one who wrote the article that got ol’ Paterson tied up in knots, which led to the ordinance that was going to be voted on at the next council meeting. Packer had it on good authority that the ordinance would pass, whether he showed up at the meeting or not.  He wasn’t sure where all this backbone on the town council was coming from; he’d helped all of the council members but one get elected. But he knew that somehow, Paterson had leverage and that goddamned outsider Rafferty stirred up the pot.

           

The spot next to his spot was empty; and actually, that spot was closer to both the steps leading to the courthouse doors and to the town hall.  But that wasn’t the point. Instead of parking in the empty spot, Packer parked right behind Rafferty’s car – blocking him and the street.  Rafferty was leaning against his piece of shit primer orange ’84 Subaru sedan, smoking and staring off into the sky. When Packer put his truck in park and got out, Rafferty looked over at him, smiled, and waved.

           

I’m going to get that little son of a bitch, Packer thought. He’s made my life difficult one too many times.

           

Affable: Draft 1 (Click on the pages to make them bigger)

Sketch of The Reason Why (Zed's Justification)

Everything about her seemed deliberate. No. Deliberate’s the wrong word. Practiced. Everything about seemed practiced. Yes. Practiced. Not like she stood in front of the bathroom mirror every morning going over her accent, elocution, smile, wink, and blink that made her come off more like a Victorian Era coquette than a Gen-X burnout. She was practiced in the way a woman becomes practiced because she always did the same things. A lovely creature of habit that, if she had bothered knowing anyone long enough, her mimicry of herself would have been found out.

But Alice didn’t get to know people. Or maybe it was that she didn’t get close to them. Not really. Alice was warm and friendly, flirty, fun, a good conversationalist. Good drinking partner. The kind of person that people instantly fell in love with, wanted to be around, wanted to talk to, wanted to impress. And yet, she never told anybody anything about her. That was her. She wasn’t a woman you wanted to know as much as she was a mystery you needed to solve.

We had mutual friends because she had an affair with my best friend Donnie. Calling it an affair makes it sound seedier than it was, though, because he wasn’t married. But they were together for almost an entire month; they were always together. In that whole time, he never knew anything about her except the exact number of tattoos on her body and how she liked her coffee. She liked her coffee with amaretto and whole milk. Donnie wouldn’t talk to me about the tattoos.

Then I ran into him one time and she wasn’t there. I asked him where she was.

He shrugged. “I dunno.”

“She didn’t stay over last night?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“You guys have an argument?”

“Nope.” Donnie seemed satisfied and not all that heart broken. Women usually liked Donnie. Donnie was exciting. Dangerous. Or, at least he played the part. So I assumed I’d see Alice again eventually. I thought about her from time to time and sometimes I’d ask Donnie if he’d heard from her. He hadn’t. Sometimes I would call her. She never picked up or returned any of my calls.

When I saw her again, it was two years later. I was standing in line at a coffee shop in Seattle. I was there on business. She was standing right in front of me. Her hair was a different color; but I knew it was her. I said her name, and she turned around. It took her a minute; then she smiled and asked how I’d been. She talked to me like she couldn’t remember my name.

“Zed,” I reminded her. “I’m doing fine,” I said. “I’m here on business.”

“Hmm,” she answered. “That’s nice.” I expected her to ask me what kind of business I was in. She didn’t. She also didn’t say why she was there or how long she had been living in Seattle.

“Do you ever talk to Donnie?” I asked

“Hmm?” Alice looked up from ordering her coffee. She ordered espresso with whole milk and amaretto syrup. She looked like she was trying to remember who I was talking about. “Oh. No.”

“Oh. Well, he’s married now.”

“Good for him.” She smiled. I didn’t detect a hint of sadness. I didn’t detect a hint of anything.

“I’m still not married.” I regretted it the instant the words came out of my mouth. I knew how it sounded. Desperate.

“Oh. That’s nice.” She paid for her coffee and moved on. She waved at me and smiled. I thought about asking her if she wanted to meet for drinks; but she was out the door before I could.