Segment 15

         When he passes you have to be delicate you have to grasp with utter precision at the right moment you have to-
         Barring all danger, I slip away.

         “He’s watching us,” the man says, staring directly at me.
         Lights condense like dewdrops, faces form like old paint pressed through a screen, in sections, in segments. I’m back in the box, the cage of the world.
         “That’s your reflection, asshole,” a girl who isn’t you says, slapping him on the shoulder.
         Wide windows stretch to the horizon of my perspective. I see tables and chairs and people with knives and forks eating while others run from place to place, keeping the whole operation moving. A restaurant. I almost know the place.
         “Well then, so it is,” he says with a laugh. He presses his hand up agains the glass, I see the whorls of his flattened palm. I could read it all in there, the story of his life, the path he’ll unravel and eventually fray. “I was going to say, if it was a ghost, it certainly was a handsome one.”
         The girl sitting across from him, she’s attractive, a thin redhead. She’s got a short sleeved shirt on, but there’s a jacket hanging on the back of her chair. It’s not yet spring, the wind outside tells me, the undulations of time’s own fingerprint, the day you can’t name but you can surely taste. “You know, you really are full of crap,” she says, her hand twitching like she’s ready to smack him again. It’s an old game they play and one they don’t want to wear out. I’d see her cry, if I followed her long enough, before her life was up, I’d see her wail as everything came apart around her. Perhaps he beats her, when no one else is looking, in a way that they don’t notice and she’s too ashamed to say. He might do it, and compliment himself on his total lack of control. A handsome control. But it’s not true. Only time is. I’ve seen too much, goddammit. There’s a callous soup in my veins and if I was solid I may be able to admit to myself that I just don’t care anymore. But I’m not here and if I’m not here then I can’t feel, I can’t have emotions. So I can still care. But I’m not here. And I’m not sure what that makes me. She could tell me. I’m against the glass and I can’t get in. Let me in. I want to be in your lives again.
         “Ah, but it’s a fragrant and pleasant smelling crap,” he says easily, casually, waving a hand toward her like he’s fluttering a napkin. She smirks, leans back slightly. It’s just a game to them, this banter. A million times old. I see him with a knife in his chest, staring from marble eyes and asking why without words. This story. I can’t extend it. If I keep staring the stars will go out and everyone is dead. But I don’t know that for sure. That’s what we’re told, that it all has to wind down. That a spring is wound not just in us but the world and the stars and the fabric itself and as we stand here it’s all unspooling in a gradual ease, a graceful demise and all we can do is try and fit in as much as we can before the final fold unwinds and we’re forced to stop moving. Because the engine is out and all the fuel spent. It will be cold, in the last seconds but there won’t be anyone left to remember what cold means. If there’s a radio picture of your voice it might still be travelling, carrying an image of you to the very edge, to the place where the border collapses and all existence is suspended. A bit of us always survives as light, careening further outward, static and stiff but still something, a tangible memory, as long as you know where to look. This isn’t me. These aren’t my thoughts. Damn. Dammit. I have to get out, before it consumes me. Before I forget what I was and what I am.
         There’s other people at the table. The lighting in the restaurant is all wrong. I don’t get what people see at all. Plates with the remains of food are still present, pushed to the near center of the table, eating implements scattered haphazardly around. But the check’s already come, there’s money stuffed inside. You have to pay your way, without the loss there’s no way you can move forward? Where are you? There’s a guy sitting next to the man. That tells me nothing. He’s about to speak, I think. His body language tells it all.
         “Do you ever listen to yourself?” he asks his friend, the guy who was talking first. “I mean, because I do and I’m just amazed at the stuff that comes out of your mouth.”
         “I don’t have to, if the rest of you are going to bother,” he replies, raising one eyebrow.
         “Don’t even talk to him,” the girl says. “When he gets like this, he’s just going to be stupid. No matter what you say, he’s going to have some smartass comeback.” What she does to him doesn’t involve talking.
         “You’re just so . . . beautiful tonight,” he says to her, in a low quavery voice, just caressing the bottom edge of sound. She throws up a middle finger in response. Everyone laughs, but I don’t get the joke. I’m locked out, an outsider in an outsider’s dream.
         “Why do you stay with him again?” he asks, giving the other fellow a sharp glance. Perhaps he’d like a taste. There’s another person at the table, and it has to be you. The table’s long and you’re at the end of it. No. That’s not right. I can’t crave the metaphor.
         “I really can’t say,” she sighs, sitting back in the chair. “But I’m sure alcohol was involved somehow.”
         “Hey, whatever keeps us together,” her man says, reaching across to her. She dodges him while remaining stationary, sticks out her tongue at him. “Besides,” he continues, as if nothing happened, “we can’t break up. A fortune teller said we were soulmates and I’d really hate to disappoint her. She was having such a bad day.”
         “No,” she says, waving a finger, “what actually happened was that he got a fortune cookie that said, you’ll meet your true love today.”
         “Yeah, I was reading it as I walked out the door,” he says, slipping into the groove easily, not even caring if it’s true or not.
         “And he tripped over me as I was fixing my shoe,” she adds, pantomiming the motion, at least the sight of him falling down, which seems to amuse her greatly. I can feel your gaze, lurking around here somewhere. But I know where you are. And I can’t focus.
         “So she’s stuck with me, really,” he says, almost apologizing.
         “Because the cookie says that I’m his soulmate,” she says, with a note of skepticism.
         “And she can’t prove me wrong,” he notes, nodding toward her.
         The other guy, his brow is furrowing. “But what if it’s not her but one of the other girls in the place that day? And you’ve been annoying the wrong person ever since?”
         The two of them both turn to stare at the speaker. He says nothing, tries to sink back into the landscape. Her gaze shifts to the guy she’s with. “I’d kill you,” she says, with deliberate speed, stretching out every word. “That’s how I’d start, at least.”
         “That would never happen,” the man says, with good cheer. “Fate pointed me true. It happened the only way it could. It happened just the way it said.”
         “But, ah, what . . .” the other man says, with obvious hesitation, “what if the cookie was lying?”
         “It wasn’t,” he replies quickly, warningly.
         “But what if-“
         The man fixes his friend with a deadly gaze. He rests one hand on the table and says in a low, raspy voice, “I think this conversation is over.”
         The girl covers her mouth to conceal a laugh, while the guy breaks his serious expression into something more accomodating to humor. She looks away, then glances toward the end of the table. I’ve tried to move but I think the world is just moving away from me, I haven’t gone anywhere but everytime I open my eyes it’s all changed. Eventually it will go, I feel it sailing away under my feet. I can’t be anchored. Will you let me see, one last time, before this all dissipates? If I can wring just a bit of meaning out of it all, I might go down satisified. I might hear you and not feel the time was wasted, because it was all we had.
         “You’ve been quiet tonight, hon,” she says to the person sitting at the end. Which is you, which is where you always rest. You are quiet, I haven’t heard you yet, the window muffles all ambienet sounds, your breathing is silent, barely there. “Nothing to contribute?”
         You smile, a gesture meant for the whole table. I’m excluded, of course, but that’s fine. I can’t feel too offended. Otherwise I might lose touch. “I’m just taking it all in,” you say. “It’s fun watching you guys work.”
         “Yeah,” the one guy snorts, the one who’s sitting next to you. Not the other one. It’s important I can tell you who is who. Because I’m not here. “We’re a regular comedy team, all of us.”
         “We could take it on the road,” the other guy says, his eyes lost briefly in wonder. “Just the three of us . . .”
         “Oh, leave me out of this please-“
         ”The three of us,” he stresses, smiling at the fellow next to him placidly. “Think about it, travelling from place to place, honing our material, becoming one big bizarre family, sharing stories and good times before eventually getting on everyone’s nerves and knifing each other to death sometime after we’ve come down from our prime.” He leans back and crosses one leg. He’s wearing a buttondown shirt, the top few buttons laid open like he’s pretending he invented a new style. “They’ll look at our corpses, all covered in stab wounds and think, God that’s horrible . . . but also, God damn they were brilliant in their day.” He spreads his arms wide, taking in the odd looks from all the assembled. “Come on, it’s certainly better than working.”
         Next to him, the guy stares at him with narrowed eyes. “What the hell is your major again? Other than free association.”
         “I haven’t decided yet,” comes the easy reply.
         “Yes, he has,” the girl says. She reaches across the table and tags him with the tips of her fingers. “Why do you have to act like that all the time.” She turns to everyone else, eyes flashing. “He’s going into friggin’ biology, like he always said he would.”
         “I prefer to keep them guessing,” he tells her, with something shadowed in his face, like she has just ruined a good joke. But it’s too hard to tell with him, there’s too much going on, the interplay of light and negative space is creating patterns that aren’t there.
         “I’m not surprised at that,” the other guy says, giving a low whistle. He turns to you then, seeming to startle you just a little bit. I wonder if you’ve been drinking, alcohol always seemed to make you distracted. The first time I saw you get drunk, you forgot my name and found that hilarious. Slightly intoxicated myself, I didn’t find it as funny. We argued, for some reason and I left in a huff, walking ten blocks before I realized I didn’t know where I was. You found me later, both of us utterly sober, and led me back to shelter. I’d like to do the same but now there’s no body and no refuge. Everything these days is exposed. “What have you been up to, that I haven’t seen you in a while?”
         You give him a cockeyed stare. I press again against the glass but there’s an invisible membrane resisting me, keeping me back. And yet I can see all the angles, my vision spread out. That’s how I am now, mist. Fine particles, easily scattered. “Nothing much, lately.” You chew on your lip, debating something internally. Carefully, you ask, “And when was the last time I saw you?”
         His face falls briefly, signifying a sense of disappointment but almost immediately he recovers. “A few months ago, maybe last year, a whole bunch of us went to the diner to try and study.”
         “I remember going there . . .” you say, stringing out your words, perhaps hoping that the memory will reappear.
         “You’d best stop, before you go and destroy his ego,” the girl says, tapping the table like she’s trying to get your attention.
         “Oh, it’s okay,” the other guy says. “There were a lot of people there and we really didn’t talk to each other . . .”
         “No, geez, I’m sorry,” you say, looking a little flustered now. Your eyes are clear though, something else is bothering you tonight, if anything. But I really can’t say. You all must be in college, a time long after I was gone. I don’t even know these people, I have no presence anymore. This is what it’s like, after you’re dead. After enough time has passed that you don’t make a difference anymore, where any impact you ever had has faded and no longer leaves a mark. I’ll draw a scar on myself in the shape of you, if I have to. So if they ever find me they’ll know what it means. You lived and I can’t forget. But so did a lot of other, forgotten people. But I don’t care. I only have so much. “I really am, normally I’m pretty good with faces, at least I know if I met somebody . . .”
         “Hey, you’re so unmemorable you’ve totally flown under her radar,” the other guy says, giving out a barking laugh. The person near him glances over and looks away quickly, smiling sheepishly. Perhaps this is a nightmare of his, to be forgotten. I could take him to a point where he’s just a man in a photograph out of context, devoid of meaning. “That has to mean something.”
         “Stop it,” you admonish him and although I think he wants to say something further, he keeps quiet. His eyes do seek out the girl across from his and his eyebrows send out a message that only she can read.
         You don’t see any of this, however. “Don’t listen to him, I was . . . I probably wasn’t feeling well that day and that’s why I don’t remember.” You touch his arm briefly, I see the desire in your eyes to make contact, it’s hard wired into your bones, like grenades desperate to go off. With the time you had, the explosions had to come that much faster. “Don’t be offended by it, please.”
         “Honest, I’m not,” he assures you. “Really, it’s okay. If you had remembered me, I’d be impressed. It was just once, a while ago and there were a lot of people there.” There’s a baby faced complexion to him, like he’s not the age he should be, he’s out of step with the crowd. He keeps himself poised just so, with a tiny amount of tension inherent in his body, like he’s balancing on some kind of slim wire. Where he might fall, it’s hard to say. There may be nothing with foam underneath, in the end. I’m able to move side to side but nothing lateral. If I went up, where would I be? The roof? The stars, and escape? But there’s nowhere to exit. I’m in a box and the box is the world. And there’s nothing outside. “Now, if you don’t remember me after tonight, then I might feel a little bad about it.”
         “That shouldn’t be a problem,” you say, smiling pleasantly at him. You’ve still got a glass of something in your hand. The whole affair is a painting to me, bright swatches of color and the closer I get to it, the more details pop out. It’s clear but it’s not water.
         “Yeah, don’t make him cry,” she says. “He can’t stop once he starts. The last time, he sobbed on my shoulder and got it all soaked.”
         “Oh I said I’d wash it,” he protests. The guy next to him only smirks, keeping whatever comment he has to himself.
         “No, you said you’d keep it,” she counters. “And that’s just creepy.”
         “I never said that,” he says, glancing over at the other guy for help. But he only nods his head.
         “You sure did, I was there,” he says.
         “You said it smelled nice and you wanted something comfortable to rest your head on,” the girl says, crossing her arms over her chest. The guy across from her is playing with a fork, holding it between two fingers and tapping it until his fingers reach the bottom of it, then flipping it over and starting again. Light glints off the stainless steel, hits the ceiling and creates a jagged shape. Eyes, staring from some place beyond.
         You give the poor guy a crooked smile. “This is true?”
         “Apparently,” he says, shrugging helplessly.
         “Well, she does have nice taste in shirts,” you say, glancing over at your friend.
         “Hey!” she says. “Don’t encourage him. Next time he’ll be going through my closet or something.”
         “Do you want me to be honest or what?” you ask, giggling.
         “You do have nice shirts,” the guy across from her says, his voice deadpan. “I wear them sometimes, when you’re not home, just because I like the way they feel.”
         “Ah, Christ,” she says, covering her forehead with one hand, leaning on the table. “See,” she says, with one eye staring at you. “See what you’ve started?”
         “Oh and the taste is simply divine . . .”
         “Getting back on topic,” the other guy says, trying to rein in a conversation that got derailed a long time ago. I don’t even consider myself part of the background, I’m wallpaper, fading out, ready to be covered in paint and forgotten. Your grandchildren will remember, when they strip the scene away and wonder who put that layer there, so long ago. I’ve walked in the footprints of giants, unable to see the heights, merely wallowing in the wake. Tall trees are nothing but leafy fingers, closing me off from the world above. One of the diners is staring right at him, tapping his partner on the shoulder and trying to point without pointing. Inclining his head. Maybe they see me. Maybe someone behind me has a gun. “I think what she’s describing is an incident that occurred under a rather . . . fragile emotional state.”
         “You said you were drowning in despair,” she points out. “Big heavy sheets of it.” She looks at you. “That’s a direct quote, mind you. Of course you really can’t get the full effect if you don’t slur your words.”
         “And muffled because his face pressed into that sumptuous fabric-“
         ”We get the point,” she says sharply, an evil smile hiding at the edges of her face.
         “But I’m really not like that,” he says, pleading his case directly to you. “Most of the time, I’m quite normal.”
         “Well, compared to this crew . . .” you say, resting with your chin cupped in one hand, using one finger to indicate the rest of the table.
         He laughs. “I know, it’s an odd benchmark. But trust me, I like to think of myself as refreshingly bland.”
         “Now that’s damning with faint praise,” the other guy mutters.
         “There’s nothing wrong with that,” you say. He pretends not to hear you. “Not everyone wants all the guys they meet to be total whackjobs.”
         His eyes widen mockingly. “Whackjob?” he mouths, looking at the girl across from him.
         “I’m glad you said it,” the other fellow says, moving closer to you like he’s diving for cover. Of course, it may just be an excuse. You don’t shift away, however, perhaps silently enjoying the proximity.
         “Easy, I don’t think she meant you, honey,” the girl says.
         Expelling a breath, he wipes the back of his hand across his forehead. “Well now, that’s a relief.”
         You shake your head without laughing, although a smile clearly indicates your intentions. With a scraping sound your chair goes back. “Speaking of relief . . .” you say, standing up. “You mind if I take a minute?”
         “You go right ahead,” the girl says. “We’ll wait for you to get back.”
         The guy snickers, tries to cover it and fails.
         You give him a withering look and depart, vanishing around a corner.
         “Okay, now we have to hide,” he says, “so that she thinks we left.”
         “That’s not nice,” she chastises.
         “Well, that is true,” he admits. “But that never stops me.”
         “She’ll figure it out,” the other guy says. “Your car is still in the lot.”
         He turns, draping one arm over the back of the chair, his face staring out at me. The two men are gone, and there’s two women in their place. I don’t detect the anomaly. There’s just cuts in the sequence, but I can’t bring myself to notice. “Dammit, you’re right. Curse her intelligence. Why can’t all our friends be like you?”
         “Thanks,” he responds sourly.
         “Leave her alone,” the girl says, sounding serious for the first time. “I don’t think she’s feeling well tonight, it was enough work just to get her to come out. I had to practically beg. Don’t make her regret it.” She smiles sweetly. “Because then I’ll regret it.”
         He wiggles his eyebrows. “And don’t I know where this is going.”
         The other guy is staring at the space you used to occupy with a quizzical expression. His eyes are following the trajectory of your departure, the path your ghost might make, if you died right here. But you didn’t. There’s a hospital bed, waiting up somewhere in the future, big enough to hold what’s left of you.
         “Does she normally hang out with you guys?” he asks, his voice slow, his words carefully chosen. I know what he’s trying to hide. I sounded the same way once, vaguely casual, offhandedly curious. They found me out, anyway. You can’t hide what you have, not even if you try. “Because other than that one time I don’t think I’ve ever seen her before.”
         “We’ve got her on loan tonight,” his friend, sitting next to him, says.
         “What he means by that,” the girl explains, seeing the confused expression on the other guy’s face, shooting a look of exasperation at her boyfriend’s placidly smiling face, “is she normally has a group of friends she hangs out with.”
         “An odd bunch, all around, if you ask me,” the other guy sniffs. Oh, but there’s some you’ve never met, I’m sure.
         “Oh, we only met them once,” she says. “And they were fine.” She turns back to the other fellow, “But she asked if we were doing anything and nothing much was going on . . . so here we are.” She chews on her lip for a second before adding, “I’ve got a couple of classes with her, so we have lunch together all the time. But like I said, we don’t really hang out all that much.”
         “She seems nice,” he says casually, with a sense of distance to his voice. His eyes drift to where you went, almost of their own accord.
         “Uh-oh,” the other guy says.
         “What?” he answers, quickly, tearing away his gaze from the empty spot. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
         “Is that the gentle stirrings of attraction I see in you there?” the other fellow says playfully.
         “What? Why? Is that a bad thing?” he seems utterly flustered by this, either not realizing how obvious he’s being or counting on his friends not to point it out. Whether this is normal or not I can’t say. You’re all mysteries to me. “Why, does she have, like, a boyfriend or something?” Almost immediately he realizes the fervent insistence of the question and proceeds to correct himself. “You know, ah, just out of curiousity. Since she’s here by herself.”
         “Does it matter?” his friend asks, with a fiendish grin.
         “Jesus, you’re bad tonight,” she says.
         “Basic human drama brings out the best in me,” comes the reply.
         “No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend,” she says. “Not that I know of at least.”
         “But I’m sure she’s taking applications,” he says, wickedly. “Not that it matters, since you don’t care and everything.”
         “It’s not that I don’t, it’s . . .” he attempts a line of argument, sees its uselessness, changes tactics. “I was just asking, that’s all. I was just curious.”
         “She is really nice,” the girl says. “I wish she’d come out more often with us, she’s a lot of fun.”
         “Well, ah, that’s good to know,” he says neutrally. “I mean, she seemed like the kind of person who, ah . . . who’d . . .”
         “Oh, just be out with it,” his friend states.
         The other guy gives him an annoyed look but then sighs, part of his will escaping. “The hell with it . . . you think she’d be interested in me?” he says with a sudden fire. Oh, you know what you want. You could be me, without the experience, without the tarnishing. But you’ve never seen a man die. Or a woman. Or a hole blown out of your chest, closing with inexorably slowness while you wait and pray that the person who caused it doesn’t turn around and see it closing so you might have a chance in hell of escaping. I don’t know how to relate to my own life.
         “Oh, probably,” the guy says easily. “I’m sure you’ll make a fine addition to her list of suitors.”
         She gives him a look, followed shortly after by his friend. He meets this all with jocular good will, smiling in an attempt to discern what all the fuss is about.
         “Okay,” he says, after a second has passed. “I’ve let everything else slide, but that one you have to explain.”
         “I thought it self-explanatory myself,” he answers, without elaborating.
         “Come on now, don’t . . .” she warns.
         “What?” he asks, and his face turns serious again. It’s like something he can switch on and off. I’ll never see him again but I think if we knew each other, we might get along well. Or kill each other somehow, because that’s the way destiny works. Outside people are getting out of cars, streaming into the restaurant. Can they see me? Am I some kind of heat haze, a man-figure, defying all attempts to define it. If you took my picture, what would you see? Something so heavy that it might just slip through all color. I’ve got the burden, you see. The weight of lost time. Someone has sewn it into my stomach and I can’t shake it loose. Where have you gone, that you have to be away for so long? The hole’s not big enough, I can’t chase you down. All I can do is stand here, as the seasons degrade and wait for you to emerge again. But there’s snow, you see, all around me. It’s up to my arms now, I can’t feel them. The chill, you see, it’s dissolving me. And it won’t stop, until I’m buried. And then I’m no good. Then I’ll never find you again. It’s falling and it’s so pretty and pristine but it hardly matters. There’s beauty and there’s death and there’s the stillness that comes when you allow them to mingle. The trees are heavy and forlorn, weeping invisible tears. Ice crystals and snowflakes, encasing me. Outside the winter is fading into spring, into summer maybe. The gaps are so small these days. You can hardly tell when one ends and the other begins. Just the marks on the wall. The seasons turn and the planet whirls and these people they lie so quietly, never knowing what they’re missing. It goes on, you know. I never told you that but I’m sure you knew it all already, we all know it somewhere deep inside. It moves on and eventually they forget because they have no choice. That’s the way, the only way. It turns, and you’re alive. It turns, and you’re not. And what are we supposed to do, stop moving? The inertia alone will murder us, the pace has already been set, if you stop now, the force will tear the bones from your skin. For fifteen miles out they’ll see the dust and know what a fool you were. Had been. Why do we talk, if it just fills the silences? There’ll be enough of that, when the time comes.
         “What?” he asks again, like nobody heard him the first time. But the area is sparse and I haven’t seen a waiter for the longest time. Perhaps they’ve all been abandoned to their own devices. A real dining experience. The women at the other table are back to being men. They’re watching me, in the curved reflections of their glasses. Their empty glasses. But I’m not here. I exert no focus on this time. Can’t you understand that? That I didn’t mean to be totally passive. It’s just the way it works out. “He should know, at least, what he’s getting into.” He pauses, waits for the girl to say something. She doesn’t, so he turns and looks at his friend. “If he wants to get into it, if you know what I mean.”
         “What are you trying to say?” he asks, looking strangely cornered now, although he’s not the one on trial here.
         “Informed consent, that’s all,” the other guy tells him. “It’s a science thing, you liberal arts folks never understand.”
         “Is she some kind of man-eater or something?” he inquires with a laugh, amused by the absurdity of it all. How can someone like you cause so much damage. It’s just the way it went though. You didn’t mean to throw me out of sequence. But I’m a cartoon hole punched in the walls of time, my shape all contorted into running. Into abject flight. He leans with one forearm on the table, ready for the hardest hitting of news. Will they tell him? What will they say? “You make her sound almost frightening.”
         “Yes, he is making her sound that way,” she says, with a note of rebuke toward the other guy. Her look says it all, glinting and trenchant, to the point. But when he asks her to do something unbearably intimate, she’ll do it. Perhaps she’ll even ask him, to make it seem like it was her idea. I could be wrong. These afterimages mean nothing, they’re the debris of possible lives, the paths you take and the paths you don’t take. Because even the things you don’t do affect your life and the lives of others. You didn’t live, and here I am. “And he shouldn’t be. Because-“
         ”How many boyfriends has she had?” he asks, trampling right over whatever she was going to say. His voice is too calm, he’s shouting without raising the volume. But there’s a skittering harshness underneath it all, it’s a layer of criticism shielded by a smile. “Since you’ve known her. In the, what, year and a half. Two years?”
         “I don’t know, I don’t keep track,” she mumbles, staring at him and looking down at the same time. The other guy is watching them warily, like he’s stumbled into some kind of bedroom war and he isn’t sure how it’s going to erupt. I could tell him. I see his corpse, suspended in the river, a fish gnawing at the soft flesh inside his slack mouth. “I’m not her keeper, you know? It’s not my job.”
         “It’s someone’s,” he insists. “Someone has to keep track. Why don’t you give us a ballpark figure? No one is asking for dates and times or anything.” His smile is less friendly now, there’s a bullet someday that will crumple the front part of his skull, leaving hairline fractures and a deformed face. He’ll cower in his hand and people will leave disgusting things at his doorstep, mocking him to come out and clean it up. It ends in locusts, devouring us alive. This is the problem, I told you already. I’ve seen too much and each time it ends the same way. Who wrote the world like this? But is the problem with the finale or with the observer. Maybe it’s sewn into my vision and I refuse to see anything else. I’d like a smile, just once. Something to take with me, when it all closes in.
         “I told you, I don’t-“
         ”Come on now, I know your memory is excellent. Why, just the other day in the library you knew exactly how to-“
         ”Five or six, maybe,” she slurs, stutters, almost leaning across the table in an attempt to stop him. He sits back, his voice retreats from the near inexorable screw that it was. “That I knew about, I mean I wasn’t keeping track.” She looks to the other fellow, almost pleading with him. This is a terrible thing, her eyes say. Look what you’ve made me do now. I’ve spilled it out, for all the world to see. “No one was, no one cares. It changes nothing.”
         “I know,” he says softly, perhaps trying to comfort her. But she’s not dead yet. That won’t come for a few more years. It’s counting down now while she’s in the restroom. We need to pause and realize how it’s going to go down. When it comes. “It doesn’t matter, really. Why should I care?” He addresses this to his friend, who is only watching, balancing himself and waiting for the next barrage. If I had known him, I would have hated him, I think. I would have spent my free time plotting his downfall. And he knows it, too. Because he’s already placed himself downwards, to prevent that. He’s settled in and he’ll stay there, for as long as time permits. “It makes no difference, in the end, does it?”
         “Probably not,” his friend admits with an offhand shrug. “In the longrun it makes no difference at all. But we both know that’s not what you’re interested in.”
         “If you’re saying she’s easy I’m really not-“
         ”Let me finish,” he orders, holding up a hand. It barely stops the other guy, he was done anyway. “Let me just say . . . nobody is saying she’s a slut or anything . . .”
         “You better not be,” the girl says, with a spark in her tone.
         “But she does go through men with frightening speed and her tastes can be . . . interesting, let’s say.” He looks over at his girlfriend. “Did I put that right? Was that tactful enough?”
         “That was fine,” she says, with a hint of a smile. A knife to his ear would barely pierce his brain. Oh, but it might hurt. Do you understand spiralling, twisting pain. When you lose something and you know it’s gone and all your memories of it are falling from your numbed fingers into the void, bit by bit. You don’t know. You can’t. “And you’re right.” She has her arms folded on the table, she’s looking between them so she can see them both. Or me, maybe. I’m out of sight. When will you capture me and make me free? When? “The guys I’ve seen, it’s been an interesting variety. That’s all I can say.”
         “So?” the guy says. “So what? I haven’t heard anything terrible yet. Nothing that doesn’t make it worth trying.”
         “Nobody is saying she’s terrible,” the girl says, her hands shaping her words, trying to wring sense out of it. Out of this. “Nobody’s saying that at all. She’s great, she’s one of the nicest people I know, she’s a lot of fun to be around. But, ah, but if you wanted to, you know, date her or anything . . .”
         “You’d best count your anniversaries in weeks if you want them to count for anything,” the other guy chimes in. “I’m serious, here,” he adds when nobody answers immediately.
         “She gets . . . I don’t want to say bored because that’s not the right word . . .” the girl is still searching but there’s no treasure hidden here. Just more sand and a hole that goes straight to the molten center. “It runs its course, that’s all I can say. And she moves on. They both do. It just . . . it seems to go quicker, that’s all.”
         “But who cares, as long as . . . if it’s good when it lasts then what does it matter?” The guy’s making a case that they can’t refute because they don’t have the evidence. But that doesn’t make it less than true. He’s staring at them as if they might find a way to prove him wrong. His eyes suggest he’s hoping for it, that’s he steering himself onto a road he can’t sustain. But it’s too late. And I could be wrong. “A week, two months, if you enjoy yourself then you can carry that with you.”
         “Hey, if you’re cool with that,” his friend says. “We’re not trying to talk you out of anything, trust me.”
         “Good,” he says. “Good, because . . . people forget, you don’t get married to the first person you date. You . . . sometimes you just have fun, you know?”
         “You don’t have to tell me, pal,” the other guy says, sharing a knowing exaggerated wink with the girl. She flips her back and tries to avoid his gaze. But she’s smiling. “We’re just making sure you’re informed. That you know what you’re getting into, if you choose to get into it. That’s all.”
         “Thanks,” he says after a second, in an expulsion of air, not looking at either of them.
         Another second passes. Something in me twists, I’m facing the wrong way. You men, have you totally deserted? There should be postings, all around the camp. So nothing gets in. So we can’t escape.
         “So what’s wrong with her?” he asks then, just as the conversation is about to shift.
         “Wrong?” she asks, glancing at the other fellow. “What do you mean by-“
         ”That cough she had, she’s had it all night,” he says, still not looking up. Perhaps he’s watching his reflection in the table, all transparent and wavery. It’s a sickly world, that allows you to go out like that. That lets you view yourself in such a light. I can’t see my hands. Where have they gone? There’s nothing to grab hold onto anymore. “It wasn’t a new thing.” His gaze snaps up to her, to try and pin her. “So what is it?”
         “I, I don’t know,” she stammers, sliding back a bit. The night’s crashing down, they’ll all be fleeing soon. “I never asked, I just, someone told me it was something she was born with, something with her lungs. I don’t know what it means. I’m not sure what it is.”
         “Just ask her,” the other guy says. All his humor is dissipated, he could cloak his words but he just isn’t bothering. This is what happens, when you don’t care. When nothing matters. “If she gives a damn about you at all, she’ll tell you. Maybe not right then, but eventually. Because you’re interested, because it’s her and it means something.”
         His friend stares at him uncertaintly. “Yeah, I . . . you’re right, I guess.”
         “Damn straight that I’m right,” he responds and the mocking smile is back, just the edge, the tip of the sun that peeks over the horizon, just as dawn is breaking. Or maybe the last portion that leaves, in the second before darkness falls. She’ll see that, perhaps, as the lights go out, for as long as her retinas and memory will retain. I’m making all of this up. I shouldn’t speculate, not there. There’s too much that’s mallable, that could spin into the real if certain aspects were left unchecked. But fiction is all I have, in the end. I could spin a tale of your life and maybe if we push it far enough it could slip into mythology and somehow become real and somehow last. Embed itself into the collective psyche and linger forever. There’s notes out there, music slumbering, buried in the dust revealed by the parking lot lamps. The hum you don’t hear is in the air, the drone of revolving time. You’re out of it, we have to find another zone for you, to secure you safely until you can pass into history. There’s too much forgotten, all marks evaporate too quickly. I’ve said this before. I don’t have anything else to say. How can I make you solid when condensation is just a mask. Ah, damn. Ah, it’s just rambling. I don’t know how to tell you, if there was anything to say. Where have you gone, that you’re not here? You’re gone for so long and the time above so brief. I, dammit. This glass is cold, the air stiff. I don’t know how long I can last, before I’m torn. I just want help. I just want to be where I’m supposed to be. Even if you’re not there.
         And then, you’re back, appearing from the other side, taking your seat at the other end of the table. “Hey, miss me?” you ask impishly, not really directing the question at anyone. The one guy, staring at you almost nods before he catches himself. I imagine you slept with him eventually. Because you had to make contact. You needed the reminder, that you’re alive, when everything else about you was telling you differently. You look at the other guy, the one sitting furthest from you. “You couldn’t convince them to leave without me, could you?”
         He grins and shrugs. “It wasn’t for lack of trying, trust me.”
         You look from one face to the other. “One time at the diner, I went to the bathroom and this asshole has everyone get up and leave and hide somewhere outside.”
         “My powers of persuasion are not to be trifled with,” he says, sitting up a little straighter. “Plus,” he adds, after a beat, “I’m sure alcohol was involved somehow.”
         “You think?” the girl says, raising an eyebrow.
         “So I get back and they’re all gone . . . thank God we’d paid the bill already or there would really have been a problem . . .”
         “What? You had a credit card.”
         “The only thing I’d be using it for is slitting your throat, when I finally found you.” There’s a strange fire in your eyes, an aspect of you that’s been polished in the years since we last saw each other. You can change without changing. Some things become refined and other things spread like desolate trees, branches scratching at the sky.
         “Ooh, she’s feisty tonight,” he says. But he’s getting up, too, reaching at the back of his chair for his coat. “But let’s finish this story outside, if we sit here any longer they’re going to start charging us rent.”
         “That explains the dirty looks we’ve been getting from the waiters,” his friend says, trying to interject into a conversation where he’s hopelessly lost. He can’t keep up with this, he needs an injection of the absurd. You’ll go for him anyway though, because he’s normal, because he’ll be nice to you and at the end of the day, that’s all anyone really wants. A dollop of kindness.
         “They’re looking at us and all they’re seeing are lost tips,” the other guy says, tossing out the comment like it’s something he’s already considered unworthy and discarded, he’s eager to get rid of it. Maybe someone else will hear it and use it later and pretend that they made it up and people will think that it’s genius. This myth, I can’t stomach it. To fall into story, you have to die first. Or at least stop existing. Because stories have to end. I want this to end. People, stop looking. There’s nothing more to see here. Nothing else I can show you.
         But it goes on. They’re all following suit, gathering belongings, getting ready to exit. You wait for them to get closer to you, so that you can all move as a group, a pack. You barely fit in the pathway, you brush past tables of other diners. You slip out of sight but your voice comes to me, I’m pulled into your words. Stop looking. Stop looking at me and do something. Before I’m too ill to reconstitute.
         “So I figure that they’re all trying something cute, because that’s just the kind of people they are. My friends back home, they tried the same thing one time.”
         “And here I was, thinking I was being all original and stuff.”
         “Well, you didn’t go as far as they did. You didn’t actually leave.”
         “Oh, geez, they really did go without you?”
         “Yeah, just around the corner but still . . . I didn’t know that.”
         “Oh, no, we just hid outside and left the car there. I wasn’t leaving her there, she knew too many people who liked to hit things. My punching bag days are behind me. Well, most of the time, anyway.”
         “So at least I knew you hadn’t left but I was damn confused, I’ll tell you that. Because I really didn’t know what to do, I figured you were all waiting at the car and then I thought maybe I was at the wrong car. I mean, it was dark and I wasn’t really sure what your car looked like.”
         “It looks much the same in the light as it does in the dark.”
         “Screw you. Really.”
         “Hey, I have no trouble finding it.”
         “I was about to start wandering around the parking lot when you all jumped out. You’re all lucky nobody was sitting near a door on the way back or I would have pushed someone out onto the highway.”
         “Which is why we let you sit in the front. Chivalry be damned, when you get mad you get ideas.”
         I see shadows, drifting behind glass. It’s a reflection of me.
         “So, but now . . . with your friends, the one who did leave you. What happened? What did you do?”
         “Panicked, mostly. I really thought they forgot about me . . .”
         The foyer bulges. The doors burst open and they emerge into the night, walking four in file. It’s a formation designed for protection. I could enter it easily. Nothing stops me but nothing urges me on either. I hover, dispossessed.
         “. . . which of course they didn’t,” you say, telling the remaining trio but the one who’s paying the most attention is the one who’s the most interested in you. The other guy has one arm wrapped around the girl and she’s nestled in his reach comfortably, her head a scant inch from his shoulder. “But I didn’t know that and by the time they came back to retreive me I was on the pay phone with my parents screaming.” You giggle, the evil sound I remember. “My friends steered clear of my father the next few months.” The laugh turns into a brief cough. The guy starts and stares without looking, trying to study you. “God,” you say, “it’s so warm during the day now I keep forgetting it’s still so cold at night.”
         “It’s a bit brisk out,” that guy agrees, lamely.
         “Yeah,” the other fellow says, his flat tone indicating some kind of unflattering imitation is going on. The girl snorts a hidden laugh and buries her face in his jacket. Nobody notices but me. But I have no memory, here. They’ll slide away, like water, the minute I’m on a different plane.
         “So what’s the plans for tonight? Anything?” he says, discarding his thinly disguised mockery for other game. “You’re all welcome to come back to my place for a bit.” He looks at the girl. “I guess I already know your answer.”
         “Oh, do you?” she asks, archly.
         “I was probably just going to go home,” you say, digging your hands into your pockets. The lamps overhead envelop you, soemhow shrink you down. “I have some stuff to work on and an early class tomorrow.” A shoe scuffs the pavement.
         “Sure, sure,” the guy says. “A bloody likely excuse. Admit it, you have to step back or you’ll be having too much fun.” The girl slaps him on the chest, trying to make him stop. Fiction. We all make it up as we go along. The other guy is watching this without expression, a fish baited and waiting for the proper moment. This opening, it’s all you need.
         You brush some hair out of your face. It’s not as long as it was, but it’s getting longer. A sly smile is only part of the answer. “You got it, I’m just stuffed with fun.”
         “Are you living up here this year?” the girl asks. “I always forget to ask you, I know you were going back and forth-“
         You shake your head. “Not this year, I’m living at school. It was getting to be a pain in the ass even when I didn’t have early classes. It’d be murder now, trying to get up.”
         “Oh, where are you living?” she asks casually. Her eyes drift to the other guy who’s standing loose, his back stiff. She’s channelling him, his thoughts are coming out of her lips. It’s not probing when it comes from a friend. I’m too close to this, I know all the tricks. I reenacted this, years ago, when I had to find out who you really were. I had to scratch the friendship and pray it didn’t get infected.
         “The new dorms,” you answer with a cheery grin.
         “Oh, nice.”
         “Tell me about it. And the best thing is,” you continue with a secretive glance around, “they put me in there by myself.” There’s a secret glee in the way you say it, like you’ve somehow beaten the system. In a life of setbacks, this was your one moment to get ahead. But that’s not true. A lot of things aren’t.
         “Really? You have your own room?” someone asks and I can’t be sure if it’s the guy or the girl, because both of them are speaking. Conversations of the world, unite. Maybe this cacophony can become something melodious, if the strains are allowed to prolong themselves. Ah. I’m not functioning anymore. I can’t gather myself coherent. Look at this. Look at what I’ve done.
         “How did you pull that off?” That last sentence is definitely the girl. “You either had to kill someone or sleep with them.”
         “Or both,” her guy states, with a devil’s smile. “Perhaps at the same time, if she’s into that.”
         You give him a withering glare.
         “Hey, it’s all right,” he says, not fazed at all. “We don’t judge, here.”
         “No, I mean we’re paying a little extra but . . . it was easier that way,” and I know exactly what you mean, it’s part of that secret language of you, the facets that not all of us were allowed to see. You let us in, but there were curtains everywhere. I could read what I could by candlelight, try to decipher the shadows, in what time I had. Inside you there’s a world, an island tipping into the endless sea. “I would probably wind up panicking whatever roommate was unlucky enough to get stuck with me anyway.” You shrug then, your eyes wander to the glow overhead, the clear whiteness pinning everything down. “I may get a roommate someday, once I get used to living here. I have to develop a routine, first.” Your face breaks into a grin. “Then I start officially driving people crazy.”
         People laugh, a broken sound, the noise you make when you don’t know what else to do. Sometimes we’re seized in these moments, we feel that they’re wonderful because there’s nothing else like living and at the same time we’re horrified because this is all we have. Moments, strung together until you run out of them. I’ve got more than my share, but whose fault is that? It’s not a fair balance, sometimes. Sometimes it’s more than enough.
         Silence falls and follows. The girl closes her eyes and moves closer to the guy, leaning against him enough to knock him a step off balance.
         “What are you trying to tell me?” he asks, glancing down at her. His fingers are stroking her side, tenderly, with tentative hints of promise. She’s got it, here. It’ll end in a hotel, someday. I’ve seen the patterns on the walls, the thin slice. You don’t know what’s real and how it works, when everything else is broken. I’ve seen the spires, the twisted wrecks. I know the uneven scraps of time that we tumble between, in a child’s nightmare. “You want to go?”
         “If it’s not too much trouble,” she murmurs, pushing against him a little more. They stumble, waddle. I don’t know where his car is, I imagine it’s nearby. These people are opaque to me, I knew our crowd, I knew how all the pieces fit. Even removed, the angles don’t change, I can fill in the blanks and extrapolate. This is just guesswork and I can’t bring myself to care. “While we still have time.” She might not have said that last part. I’m guessing, I’m hearing the things I want to say.
         You watch all of this with a thin smile. I know what you’re thinking, even in the shadowed light, the lines of your face are still roadmaps for me, they lead to the places where they always went. “If you two think you can restrain yourselves long enough, maybe you can drop me off.”
         “Not a chance,” she says, with a giggle, and kisses him. In the dark they seem to merge.
         “Yeah,” you say, stretching the word out and rolling your eyes, pivoting away slightly on your heel. You share a glance with the other fellow but he barely seems to notice. Instead, he’s watching you, his lips are moving but he isn’t saying anything. His body is trembling, he’s trying to shift out of phase, into a place that’s here and isn’t here, where he could be braver, if only time would allow. It might happen the way he wants it to, he’s trying to tell himself, if only he had the nerve.
         “I can drop you off,” he says suddenly.
         You’re in the process of turning away from him, probably about to release a different sarcastic comment, when he speaks, forcing you to turn back around. Your shadow whirls, elongates, becomes something horribly stunted. It’s evolution, this is.
         “Really?” you ask. “I thought you came with-“
         ”I didn’t,” he says, and his hands are shaking, somewhere deep in his pockets. Was I like this, when it first happened? “I took my own car, I, ah . . .” he lowers his voice, becomes a conspirator, “I figured they’d get sidetracked.”
         Your gaze flickers over to them and slides back. They aren’t even paying attention at all, wrapped in each other. Oh, I could make it all up and it might come true anyway. I’ve got her, pinned to the bed, screaming a name we can’t pronounce. Everything he ever wanted, bleeding all over the floor. Nobody ever realizes until we’re cut just how much we can lose, just how much we have.
         “That does seem to happen often, doesn’t it?” you ask, giving him a lopsided smile.
         “You can set your watch by it,” he responds, finding some kind of solace in the old phrases, in the things we can say that mean more than what we’ve spoken, so embedded are they. He waits a second, churning over other phrases, looking for something to connect. “You know, if we left them right now, I bet they wouldn’t even notice.”
         “Yes, we would,” the guy says, shouting across the gap. A pair of diners coming out of the restaurant gives the scene a puzzled stare and moves on. We’re outside the oasis, surviving in the wilds beyond. “We just wouldn’t care.”
         You look across from him and shrug mischeviously. “Well, you heard him.”
         “We should still just leave them,” he says, sniffing, looking over at their merged huddle.
         “It’d be poetic, in its way,” you tell him. You’ve come closer together, though not by design. “I wish we could steal his car, though. That would just make it perfect.”
         “Nah,” he answers, frowning, “they just wouldn’t notice.” His tone never altering, he adds, “No, we’d have to steal their clothes or something.”
         You laugh at this, although I don’t think it’s that funny. Can I be jealous, after the fact. Dear God. You look away, snicker a bit and then stare at him again.
         “That’d be a good idea,” you say, pointing at him. “That’s definitely an idea.”
         “But not right now, though,” he says.
         “No,” you agree. “But we can definitely table it for another time.”
         “Want to discuss it on the ride back?” he asks, inclining his head toward wherever his vehicle might be.
         This brings you back to the original question. “Are you sure you want to, I mean, I can always go with them . . .”
         “No, don’t worry about it,” he says, already walking toward his car, taking steps away and hoping that you’ll follow. “My place is right by the new dorms, so it’s on my way anyway.”
         “All right,” you say, still uncertain, unwilling to impose. “As long as it’s not any trouble.”
         “Would you rather go with them?” he asks simply. You glance back to see them even closer than they were before, obscenely ignorant and blissfully unaware. “If so, you may have a long wait.”
         You rub the legs of your pants together. The swishy sound it makes seem out of place here, too organic in this zone of asphalt and steel, of detached smells and people just passing through.
         “No thank you,” comes your reply, finally. “Let’s go.” The decision seems abrupt, and final. “But if you’re going out of your way I swear to God . . .”
         “It’ll be all right,” he says, with the certainty of a man who knows things are going right, who can comfort himself with this one small thing, no matter what else happens to him in the future.
         You smile at him and go then, and he goes too and I can’t follow. Events have me locked in and I’m rooted to this spot. I drift near the couple, who are still trapped together, blending into some kind of odd whole, their jackets cut from the same tenuous quilt. Out of my sight you go, walking away into a broad plain ringed by hung lights, strolling past the stillness of a season caught in suspension, about to change from one thing to another and hushed, not sure what the change will bring, even though it’s the same thing every time.
         “Where does he live again?” she murmurs into his shirt, her eyes closed and imagining something that won’t even become real, no matter how much she wishes.
         “Nowhere near her,” the guy answer with a stark laugh. “But by the time she finds out, it won’t matter.” He kisses the top of her head. “And I have to give him credit for that.”
         “Why? Because he’s doomed?” she asks, her voice blurred, half-asleep.
         “Maybe,” he admits. “But they both are, I guess, in different ways.”
         “That’s not nice.” Her arms encircle his back, her hands finding his spine. Out here, they’re the only things in the world. You’ve been swallowed up already and I don’t hear the car start. Where is everyone? Where is this world that I know?
         “It may not be,” he says. “But it’s true anyway. And I can’t blame her and I can’t blame him.”
         A half minute of silence follows. They don’t move and I can’t. But I’m sugar, dissolving in the invisible rain. I’m falling through, again, I try to hold myself together. I want to hear it. I want to know what happens next. In the parts of your life I couldn’t be here for, that I’d never know.
         “I don’t think, I can’t say I saw it coming,” she says, her cheek pressed up against him. The wind blows some of her hair into her face and she’s obscured, hardly there. I’ve got rain in my eyes, I’ve got to clear it away.
         He laughs, throwing his head back and chuckling into the numbed air. “I know,” he says, when his humor has settled down. He squeezes her, just a little. “I know,” he says again, “and I love it. I love the fact that it’s even possible.”
         “You’re weird,” she says and he laughs again and doesn’t say anything more.
         Or maybe he does but then a hand scrapes itself across my vision, clearing away the water, creating streaks and blurring everything. And I’m taken with the flow, even as the scene stops, even as people keep moving out of step with the nonaction.
         I’m cast into stripes, struck through the filter and what’s left of me is tugged away, out of their reach, away from anything that could be construed as you, or rescue, or anything in between.
         Did you see it, did you see where he-
         Oh, you too visible loss. I have nothing else.