- W -

Honestly, the View From Up Here is Just Terrible

         What did I do?
         I died, I guess, if you want me to put it into words.
         How? The same way as everyone else, really. By doing something stupid. It's not that I thought I was invincible or immortal, death just never feels real. Even after you're dead. It's really a smooth transition, no bright tunnel, no beckoning relatives. Sort of like the way they describe those out of body experiences, the ones those psychics on TV rant about all the time, except at the end you don't reconnect with your body. You just sort of float all detached and airy and it's a while before you get the vague feeling that something has changed. I don't miss my body, frankly. As far as the afterlife goes, it's really pretty empty. I actually haven't seen anyone I know here just yet, but I figure I have the rest of eternity to find them, and even if I don't it's not like I'm going to miss them. Being dead won't make them any less annoying, I figure. Might as well enjoy the peace and quiet while I can.
         I can go wherever I want, it turns out. I look at my hands and it looks real but I feel like a radio transmission, there's this fuzzy static on the edge of my fingers and sometimes I think I hear thoughts that aren't mine. It's very strange, very different. But again, I have a long time to get used to it. I wandered around a bit for the first day or so, and even that really doesn't get old. I thought it would. Walls aren't a problem anymore and getting from one place to another is pretty fast. I still walk but it's more like gliding, there's just no friction. It's weird, I still find myself acting like I have bones and muscles and stuff even though I know I don't. So far I only bend at the knees, elbows, the usual joints. I shouldn't have to. I'll have to work on that. My goal is to get my head to turn all the way around. Eventually, I hope. It's good to know that even dead I still have ambitions.
         It was interesting to take a walk around the city, peek into rooms, see what people are doing. There's a lot that goes on behind these closed doors, which I always suspected but seeing it. A lot of bad stuff too, I thought it would be more balanced, but that wasn't the case. Maybe it was just the places I picked. Sometimes I can feel a tugging, like little fishing lines are buried in my arms. Everywhere I went I think I saw someone being beaten. Perhaps it's the violence. I couldn't say. In any event, I just stood there. There was nothing I could do. It's like it's happening in a movie, because all you're doing is watching, you can't affect it. Maybe eventually I'll figure out to throw around plates and stuff, but that doesn't seem too exciting and certainly not worth wasting my time. Maybe if I'm bored.
         Contacting the living isn't really a priority either, come to think of it. No one bothered to tell me what this was like, why should I go out of my way to give them a headsup? Sometimes I think people can almost see me, I swear if I stand just right I can spot my own shadow. It looks like there's more substance to it than me. One child was just staring at me, but you know how kids just like to stare into space. Pets don't notice me, which I was sort of disappointed in. All the ghost books tell you that dogs and cats are ultra-sensitive and after all those stories where Spunky the dog barks at the invisible evil presence I was hoping I'd be able to reenact one of those creepy scenes. No dice, though. Just goes to show you, I guess, death is full of little disappointments. Nothing much changes.
         I did go to my funeral and burial. How could I not? The one chance I have to see what people really think about me, it was too sweet an opportunity to resist. It was basically what I expected though, a bunch of people standing around crying and saying how tragic it was that I was dead. I think everyone cries at funerals because they feel they have to, or it's just hardwired into us. I mean, I've seen people cry over movies and people they don't even know. Those people aren't even real, so to speak, and these folks are sobbing like babies with overflowing diapers. I wish I could hear more of what was said about me but my hearing is funny, it sort of fades in and out. If you've ever gotten water in your ear after swimming and how it all feels so clogged and all the sounds are just muffled and sort of far away? That's how it feels. So sometimes I can't make out words and when I can all the voices just sort of blend in together in this big soup and it makes no difference anyway.
         Of course, seeing my family upset was a bit unpleasant but I figured they'd get over it. My sister always wanted my room anyway. Boy, that's callous, isn't it? That's sort of how I feel now, being dead. A lot of things just don't bother you anymore. I think of all the stuff I used to do when I was alive, all that racing around, appointments and dates and trying to impress people and get this done and get that done and you're just racing and racing against this force that never tires. And now I'm here and I realize that all the stuff I wanted to do, it can pretty much wait. I can't say I'm complaining.
         My mom was trying to be strong for the family, as usual, greeting everyone with a smile, trying to talk to everyone, make them all forget that it was her son that had died. Typical Mom. My father just sort of sat there in shock. He looked like he had taken it pretty hard, I guess being the only son and all that he probably had all these plans for me, legacies and whatnot. He can pass it onto my sister now, in the spirit of equality for the sexes. But, no, really she's a good kid. We always used to joke that Mom and Dad favored me because I was the oldest. Well, sis, now you're the oldest. It's your time now. Go for it.
         It was actually worse seeing my friends all broken up, I think I was closer to them and friends just take it so much harder because they're not used to death and people their age dying. Especially the girls. The guys are standing there in the corners patting each other on the shoulder and flashing somber faces at each other and trying to lighten the mood with old jokes and stale anecdotes and it's so an act. I think I even saw some guys using the ladies' grief to their advantage, which I thought was great. That's how I'd want my funeral to be. A party. None of this weeping and sobbing crap, it's one thing if I'm crippled for life or in a coma but I'm only dead. I'm free. It's not that different from living, there's more to do with less people to bug you. But at the same time it's nice to see everyone together in one place, maybe for the first time in years. It's probably nostalgia but I like thinking my death pulled everyone together, like those old movies where a friend's death helps friends rediscover each other and reforge bonds of trust and loyalty. Maybe they'll pledge to never lose touch again. I find that appealing for some reason. I never used to think that way. I guess death makes you sentimental. Funny.
         At night it's weird because I don't need to sleep, so I'm just wandering around mostly. I used to wonder what I would do with the extra seven or eight hours if I didn't need to sleep. Now it just means I have all this extra time. I'll have to start budgeting my endless time better. Don't want to blow my wad all at once. For kicks I went to my old bed and laid down on it but I was just staring at the ceiling not feeling tired at all. And honestly, it struck me as sort of creepy. I think that's when it first really hit me that I was dead. I felt lighter than the pillow and I realized I wasn't breathing and I started to comprehend that this was a permanent thing and not some weird dream from surgery or whatever. I'm still okay with it, not that I have any choice, but it definitely alters your perspective. I stared at my alarm clock for a long time. I had expected to find that the hands had stopped, isn't that how symbolism always goes? There wasn't even a thunderstorm or ominous portents when I died. I had kind of hoped it'd be a little special. But, no it was just like everyone else's. Here and then gone. I watched the minutes tick by and remembered how I was always tired because I never got enough sleep and the days always seemed so short and time was so fast when you were enjoying yourself and still sort o fast even when you weren't and it hit me that I had done a lot in my nearly twenty years. As short as it had been, I had gotten a lot done. I found that comforting, you hate to think that your time is wasted. And then my parents came in all solemn and shaking and after a while they sat on my bed near me and started crying and I had to leave.
         The burial itself was straightforward too. I liked the plot that my parents picked out, the scenery is nice and it looks pretty isolated, I won't have people stomping all over my body every other day. I'll have to go back on nice days to admire the view. Other than it was no different, I'd been to some of these things before so I sort of knew what to expect. Just because it was me in there didn't really change anything. And with the casket closed there was no way to tell it was even me. Not as many people were crying, which was good. I hate to think of people wailing over me for weeks after. Even my family looked like they had accepted it somewhat. It occurred to me that I had never read my obituary. I always thought I'd get a certain thrill out of reading it. My father used to read it and he always said it was to make sure he wasn't in there. I wonder if he'll be reading them from now on. A definite plus was finding I could float a little bit so I got a nice birds eye view of the whole thing, especially when they slid the casket into the ground. We always left funerals before that part and I was always curious how they did it. Now I know. I did my best to think of any other questions that I might have, now that I have all this time to go and get them answered but I really don't have many. I don't know what that says about me. I have an accepting personality, I suppose. Or I just don't care. Let life's mysteries stay life's mysteries, if makes the whole affair seem that much more interesting. Even if the grandeur is false, you can't help falling for it a little bit.
         I was expecting it to feel weird when they finally finished burying me, but I didn't feel any different. I guess once you're dead that's it, there's no stages or anything. That's good, I was getting used to being like this. Going to heaven or wherever strikes me as sort of anti-climatic. What's wrong with right here? I'm content. My headstone looks nice, all eternal looking and proper, and as a bonus they got my name spelled right. Immortality is mine. For a while, a couple of days maybe I hung around to see who would visit, since you figure those are your real friends, or the people who at least cared about you enough to show it. Showing up at wakes and funerals is easy, the homes are generally close by and it's only a hour or two of your time. Even with our short lives, how much is that? You can spare that much. But driving out of your way to visit someone's grave, that's dedication. Unless they're just doing it because they think I'm watching and if I don't I'll kick their asses when they get in here with me. But even then, that's sort of neat, too. Intimidation from beyond. It's strange how you affect things when you aren't really around.
         One friend has come around so far, I almost didn't recognize him. My vision is messed up too sometimes, I'm not sure how much stuff I'm seeing is really there. Mouths appearing where they shouldn't, the world blinking into a sort of color negative, bubbles I can't touch, I keep feeling feathers brushing my neck, stuff like that. Just bizarre. But when you don't see people for a while you start to forget what they look like. This guy looked really broken up though, he stood there for a while and looked okay but then suddenly he just sat down and cried. All of a sudden he just lost it. I think he was angry with me, if I had been able to appear there in all my ghostly spookiness, I think he would have tried to kick my ass. But he couldn't so I think he was trying something else, forcefully trying to evict his grief. Exorcise. That might be the word. Someone else joined him later but I couldn't hear what they were saying, I kept hearing like this army chanting and swords clanging together. The other guy's face kept breaking up into these disconnected abstract squares, as cubist as could be. I'm sure it's a matter of focus. But until I figure it out, it's darn annoying.
         I think they left eventually, but I really don't remember. I'm not interpreting time in the same way anymore. Sometimes I think I hear my mother's voice and she's yelling at me like I was five years old ago. Out of the corner of my eye I can see hooded people with blank eyes laughing at me. Occasionally I can taste tears for no reason at all. I think it has something to do with people saying my name. Once I thought I was in the womb again, it was dark and wet and all around was this booming thudding noise. Strange, strange stuff. But I think I'll get used to it. I don't have much choice.
         Still, it's not as bad as I thought.
         Certainly not as boring as sitting around and playing video games the whole damn summer, which is what I really did. But I had to make up something for this stupid assignment. What did I do on my summer vacation. For the love of God. I thought I had finished with this stuff in grammar school. It's not how I expected creative writing to start.
         Got your attention, though, didn't I? Eh?
         It's going to be a fun year.

For Sale: Box of Loose Ends, Cheap

         "Honestly, I don't know where my brother got half this crap from . . ." Jackie said.
         "Don't be so harsh," Brown warned, getting down on one knee and gingerly scooping up a twisted piece of metal, the bare spots revealing that it had once been painted. "I'm sure this is a very valuable . . ." he peered at it closer, squinting, "er, whatever it is." He smiled and met Jackie's eyes, shrugged, before putting the object back down again.
         Jackie frowned and glanced around at the stuff spread around her, arranged in a circle as if blasted there from an explosion that she at the epicenter of. She was kneeling on the floor, appearing surrounded by an army of the most ragtag assembly of misfits ever thrown together.
         "I thought I'd be nice," she said, running her hand over what seemed to be very dusty coins, afterwards rubbing her fingers together with a slightly disgusted look. "I said I'd start to sort through some of Don's stuff, try to separate junk from . . . junkier, it looks like." Sighing, she added, "You know, in some cultures, a person's possessions get buried with them. We should have considered that." Her voice was light but nobody laughed, not even Jackie.
         Brown, still on the ground, now balancing on the balls of his feet, turned a deck of dirty playing cards over and over in his hands. "I think your brother subscribed to the out of sight out of mind school of cleaning." One of the cards snapped in two and he dropped the rest in surprise. They hit the floor with a wet flop. "Though he definitely earned his degree in pack rat, too," he muttered, trying to gather the rest of the cards into a neat pile.
         "What you need," Brown continued, shaking a finger at Jackie, "is a person with a cleaning philosophy that's the envy of all those women in those sitcoms who vacuumed with high heels and pearls on. Someone who has declared war on dust and decay. A man to whom dirt is no friend." Casting a glance over his shoulder, he said, "Fortunately, that man is here."
         "Me?" Tristian asked from the doorway, which he was leaning against, hands in his pockets. Raising his eyebrows, he noted, "I hope I'm not that anal."
         "Why?" Brown asked, wide eyed. "I'd embrace the analness. It's what makes you the fine warrior you are. It's what you draw your strength from." Twisting toward Tristian, he spread out his hands, intoning in a low voice, "Be the anal. Be one with the Clean."
         Tristian stared at Brown with a bemused expression. A snort from behind the two of them cut off his potential response. Tristian looked past Brown as the other man slowly turned around.
         Jackie was shaking her head, trying not to laugh outloud and only partially succeeding, making a noise not unlike dried beans shaken in a loose bag. Her hair fell into her face, caging her features in fine auburn cobwebs. Brushing it aside with both hands, she glanced at the two of them askew, biting her lip to in an attempt to keep anything else from escaping. She jerked a little as a chuckle burst inside of her, sacrificing itself for the good of the rest.
         Puzzled, Brown looked back at Tristian, who only shrugged. "It wasn't anything I said," he noted to Brown dryly.
         With a noise like air violently escaping, Jackie's composure fled and she fell into a fit of laughter. "You guys . . ." she gasped, hardly able to breathe. "How do you . . ." inhaling deeply, "how do you do that . . ."
         The two of them exchanged curious glances again. "I'm afraid my esteemed colleague and I are a little mystified as to what you're referring to," Brown said. "So, please, enlighten us, if you would. We hate to be doing anything that might keep you in good spirits."
         "What's this we," Tristian complained. "You've been doing all the talking. All I've done is blend in."
         "And you are doing a wonderful job, my little strip of wallpaper," Brown replied offhandedly, shifting his weight so he could face a still giggling Jackie. "Other than the fact that he keeps reminding us, you barely know he's here, right?"
         "Even my voice just fades into the background," Tristian interjected.
         "Did you hear something?" Brown asked Jackie, cocking his head to the side. "Because I could have sworn I heard a man trying to be funny."
         Jackie was shifting her eyes from one man to the other like she was watching a tennis game without friction, her gaze not able to follow the back and forth, the forth and back. Finally she just gave up and chose a sort of middle ground. "All the time, you guys, you . . . how do you keep such straight faces? I can't even tell when you're kidding half the time."
         "Really?" Brown asked noncommittally. Spinning on his knees to face Tristian he put his hands out, forming an invisible mime box, as he stretched his face into an exaggerated smile, eyes wide. "Did you hear that, Tristian?" he enthused cheerfully, his voice falling into a slippery staccato rhythm. "We're not obvious enough. What should we do about that?"
         By this point Tristian's face had taken on features remarkably similar to Brown's. "Why, there's only one thing we can do," his body shifting in time with the emphasis of his words, his voice cracking with bursting joviality.
         "And what's that?" Brown asked in a smiley fashion.
         "Why, be more over the top!" Tristian replied, even adding a cuckoo-like giggle at the tailend of his sentence.
         "Oh, duh!" Brown said, slapping his forehead in slow motion. "Of course! I should have thought of that!"
         "Hey, are you guys making fun of me?" Jackie asked threateningly, crossing her arms over her chest. The barest twitch at the edge of her lip gave her away. It'll do it every time. "Because I wouldn't."
         The two guys' faces immediately switched back to a dour demeanor, radio stations crossing into country music territory. "Who? Us?" Brown said, his voice the consistency of ice water.
         "Nonsense," Tristian added, giving Jackie a very serious nod.
         Jackie's shoulders slumped in defeat as she started to laugh again. "I give up. You two need to start a comedy act of some kind. Anything so you can get out more."
         Tristian and Brown swapped glances again. "Nah," Brown ventured. "My day job keeps me occupied enough. And besides," he added after a beat, "our sophisticated brand of anti-humor wouldn't go over well with audiences unless we compromised the basic integrity that makes our smiles sparkle so." He grinned broadly at Jackie, who gave him a amusingly skeptical glare. "We can't do that."
         "Damn straight," Tristian intoned, smacking his fist into his open palm.
         "Whatever," Jackie smirked, shaking her head and brushing some hair out of her face. Her other hand idly sifted through some of the trinkets strewn around. Looking down at the assorted knickknacks she said, "You two do whatever it takes to maintain your credibility. I think you'd be a hit either way."
         "Well we're guaranteed at least one person in the audience," Brown quipped to Tristian.
         "But we'd probably have to let her in for free," Tristian noted. "So we'd have no choice but to keep our poor day jobs."
         "Mm, good point. We'd just have to pretend we don't know her so she gets charged anyway," Brown remarked casually. Pointedly ignoring Jackie's venomous stare he made a show of glancing at his watch. "Oh gosh and speaking of day jobs, I have to get back to mine or else I'll experience that little thing they call demotion." Grimacing, he said to Tristian, "And I've worked so hard to get what little I have."
         Tristian only smiled and cast his eyes downward. "Yeah, the small fish like you never get any breaks."
         "Now you're talking," Brown responded, arching his back and nearly flipping himself acrobat style back onto his feet. His body wobbled like a sheet of aluminum but he kept his balance.
         "Going so soon?" Jackie asked, putting her hands on her knees. Spreading her hands out to indicate the still life hurricane around her, she said, "You're going to miss all the fun."
         "Trust me, if I stay here and have fun they'll make me do pushups until I dislocate my shoulders," Brown said, stamping his foot lightly to work the blood back into it.
         "So you are leaving," Jackie said flatly, her face suddenly serious. Her expression set amongst the odds and ends scattered on all sides of her made the scene oddly absurd, an art school photograph on the random insanity of life. Even with its meaning implied, it wasn't too far off.
         Realizing that she must have thought he was still kidding, Brown told her gently, "Yeah, I have to get back. Sorry." Absently scratching at his wrist, he added, "I just wanted to come and say goodbye, since I don't know when I'll, you know, be around again." His face brightened maliciously. "And Tristian here is my ride, so he had no choice."
         "Don't listen to him," Tristian argued, his face partially hidden by Brown's head and shoulder, rendering his voice disembodied. Perhaps he did blend in too well. It wouldn't be the first time he had made it seem like walls could talk. "I practically had to drag him here." The staggered cadence of his words suggested he didn't really mean what he said. Brown had his own reasons, Tristian had no desire to take them away.
         "It doesn't matter," Jackie replied to both of them, or neither. Rocking back on her heels she staggered to her feet, brushing the dust off her legs, wriggling her foot in her shoe to rid herself of the pins and needles. Stepping gingerly over the debris, she crossed the room to reach Brown and Tristian. "Thanks for stopping by, I really appreciate it." A wistfulness in her tone spewed lazily from her lips like a cloud of vapor, briefly obscuring her face. Arms crossed lightly over her chest, making a kind of x, one hand idly rubbing her shoulder, she didn't make contact with either of the two men.
         "No problem," Brown replied with offhanded charm. After a moment, almost tenderly, he asked, "Are you going to . . . you know, be okay?"
         She blinked and seemed to skip a breath, but quickly caught herself. Glancing up at Brown and then quickly back down again, she said dismissively, "Oh, yeah . . . yeah, I'll be fine . . . I've got plenty here to keep me busy," indicating the now mournful looking items looking longingly at the empty spot on the floor. "And if not, I'll . . . I'll be okay," she finished matter of factly, nodding to herself as if finally confirming the fact for the first time. She smiled wearily at Brown, the face of someone ordered to one more push on the last night of the war. You know it make any difference, but you go anyway. "I'll go through his stuff and, ah, sort out what we can and . . . I'll get used to it," the phrases didn't sound connected at all. "For a long time I thought he was gone," she said softly, perhaps ashamed of even letting those impressions ever claw out a foothold in her brain. The admission appeared to gouge a new ache behind her eyes. "And I got used to that and . . . and now he is dead and so I have . . . I have to get used to that now." Hugging herself tighter, as if it might help keep her together, she continued with brisk firmness, "I don't have to like it, but . . . I'll get used to it." Shrugging weakly at Brown, she asked, "What else can I do? Life goes on."
         "Yeah," Brown agreed, strangely quiet. His eyes weren't seeing the room. In a thousand years this will all be underwater. Brightening in stages, like the sky being repainted the color of dawn, he said to her animatedly, "But if you ever need anything, you go talk to this guy over here," he hooked a finger over his shoulder, indicating a silent Tristian. The other man's face never even flickered, except with maybe the barest of acknowledging nods. "And he'll find me and tell me and . . . I'll take care of it." A crooked smile cut a shallow gorge in his face. "Unless he gets to it first. But I just want you to know . . ." and he shrugged himself, trying to complete his sentence with a fractured body language he just didn't possess.
         Jackie seemed to get the message anyway. "It's okay," she said, and it wasn't clear who she was speaking to. Suddenly she moved toward Brown and hugged him. Taken momentarily by surprise, he nevertheless returned the hug warmly, squeezing her gently as if he might armor her through his touch before letting her go. "Thanks again for coming. And for everything else." With her face pressed against his shoulder, her voice was muffled, her words boulders tumbling erratically down a bumpy hill.
         "Make sure you come back and visit," Jackie told him sternly, taking a step back and clasping her hands loosely behind her. "Don't wind up disappearing on us again. Or we'll come and find you."
         "You know," Brown said over his shoulder, "I keep hearing that a lot lately. Guy can't go take an extended vacation anymore, it seems." Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he said, "Don't worry. I'll be back. Don't know when, but I'll be back."
         Jackie gave him a delicate half smile. "I'm going to hold you to that as a promise, you know."
         "Yeah, yeah, take a number," Brown replied with a grin, waving his hand dismissively at her. Pivoting smartly on his heel, he turned to Tristian and said, "You ready, comrade?"
         "When you are," Tristian said, zippering his jacket up and stepping back into the hallway. The dusky nighttime streaming through the windows seemed to envelop him, leaving only the whites of his eyes untouched, rendering him a solid shadow, having finally broken free.
         "Wait," Jackie suddenly called out, causing both men to halt in mid-step. Her face was abruptly pinched and nervous, her voice knots woven so densely that it might as well be opaque. "I . . . I, don't want to keep you but . . . could I talk to . . . Tristian, I just wanted to talk to him . . . just for a moment." A jittery smile broke out on her face like a rash. "That's all. Then I'll let you guys go. Honest. Really."
         Tristian and Brown looked at each other. Brown stepped behind Tristian, nearer the stairs. "I'll wait outside," he said simply, the steps creaking childishly as he slowly bounced on the ball of his foot.
         Shooting him a surprised look, Tristian said, "We'll only be a moment. You can stay." Jackie didn't say anything to further either cause.
         "I'll wait outside," Brown said again. Without lingering for an answer, he backed down a few steps before twisting and disappearing around the corner. The one note symphony of creaks and moans faded shortly afterwards.
         Tristian continued to stare down the steps until he heard the door quietly open and shut. Turning back to Jackie, who was fiddling with a bracelet around her wrist in a vaguely agitated fashion, he merely raised his eyebrows, taking only a single step closer into the room.
         "On . . . on the news," Jackie said in a hushed tone, staring at the flickers of gilded light coming from the twisting bracelet, "they were talking about this . . . fire that started, they said they don't know how it started . . . but it only affected the one apartment and I think, the news mentioned that in the soot and . . . and stuff they found traces of . . . of drugs." She swallowed, lifting her arm and shaking the bracelet further down her arm, adjusting her sleeve to cover it. "When I saw it, I . . . I thought about what . . . people have been saying about you . . . and I just . . . I . . . Tristian, did you . . ." she trailed off, suddenly staring at him like he were the one in the cage and she was desperate to get in there with him. The studied regimen of this barred world offers nothing but safety. You add freedom and you add uncertainty. Anything can happen. Anything does happen.
         Tristian, his face expressionless, said nothing.
         "Don't tell me," she blurted out, wincing and turning away her face if struck. Jackie was breathing faster now, gathering her hair into a ponytail, staring wide eyed at a point past Tristian, deliberately taking slow, deep breaths. "Don't." Releasing her hair and letting it cascade wave-like over her shoulders she said in a small voice, as if trying to sneak it past herself, "Was anyone hurt?"
         "I think there's been enough people hurt already, don't you?" Tristian replied evenly.
         "Yes," Jackie whispered, her reply occupying a territory between relief and numbness. Closing her eyes lightly, speaking from the dark side of Little Nemo's country, she said, "Tristian, a few days ago I . . . I asked you a question, that . . . that nobody could answer. And even though it wasn't . . . even though you didn't have to answer it, you . . . you went and tried." Opening her eyes, she ventured a wan smile, "I bet you think you failed, right?"
         He shrugged. "I . . . didn't do as well as I'd hoped, no." By this point the admission was as natural as waking up. "What I did do . . . I'm not sure I can really say." His words were said in detached wonderment, seeing a living dinosaur for the first time and your only thought where the hell did that come from?
         "I was looking for someone to blame," Jackie told him. "I think that's what I meant by why. When I asked you. Someone or something. I wanted so bad for it to be anyone's fault than my brother's." She closed her eyes again and pinched the bridge of her nose, keeping her emotions tightly bottled. Give them any opening and the bastards will take the chance. "And . . . I'm starting to realize, I'm think I see . . . that it was Don the whole time. He may have had help, people may have . . . steered him down roads he shouldn't have gone but . . . he made the decisions, he did it to himself . . ." the phrase was a fresh wound ripped anew. These things we hate to say to the air. The flaws are in the genes, encoded in our very fibers. We're just getting in line to be the next to fall. "What . . . what happened was a stupid, senseless thing but it was . . . his stupid senseless thing and . . ." she shrugged helplessly, letting her arms drop to her sides. "Don killed himself," she whispered and someone had stretched a film across her eyes. "I wish he hadn't."
         Tristian went to take a step toward her, not really sure what he could possibly do. His touch split and rendered things, it wasn't in him to put it all back together. Only by picking it apart can you see how the world works, how the pieces connect. But sometimes when you take it apart, it stops working. It's what people do to themselves every day. Every day a gear falls loose, every day a sprocket cracks, and we leave the parts in our wake. Eventually it breaks down. But it's so slow. The breakdown takes so long. Unless you decide to hurry it along. But who wants to do that? Not a rational man. Certainly not. But this world isn't made of rational men. It's not.
         "It's all right. I'm all right," she said quickly, wiping at her face, leaving faintly glistening streaks where her fingers had been. Tristian, now in the room, stopped, rocked back a half step on his heels, waiting.
         "The thing is, I could have figured that out on my own," she added, her laugh collapsing on itself before it was really born. "You didn't need to . . . do all you did when . . ." she sighed, not so much in resignation as a fight for space, a fight for air, "I needed time. I still do. But I think I'm . . . starting to see what I should have known all along." Biting her lip in thought, her body rigid with a trepidation there were no easy names for, she added hesitantly, "I just . . . I wish I'd understood earlier." Shifting uncertainly on her feet, Jackie looked to be bracing herself for some kind of blow, a motion that might knock the grief right out of her, leave it shuddering pathetically on the floor, jelly-like, putrid, waiting for someone brave enough to stomp it flat like any other disgusting insect.
         "It's okay," Tristian said, his voice tugging at the emotion but not evicting it. But that was never the goal. You had to tear it out yourself, or else risk taking something important with it. A bit of flesh, a strip of muscle, the dust of your bones. You don't feel the greatest gaps until you really need what went away. "In the end . . . I wasn't doing it just for you. I said before, you were the only one brave enough to ask outloud." He didn't know what else to say to her.
         Jackie blinked and smiled lightly, inhaling deeply as she did. "It wasn't bravery, it was . . . I don't know what it was." Taking a step closer to him, she looked about to touch him, perhaps even hug him as she did Brown. Tristian didn't budge an inch. His body language remained open but impenetrable, a glass wall around the fort, allowing a peek in but never a connection. To onlookers, it was only a perverse form of theatre. "But, I think that it made you spend a lot of time doing something you didn't have to do." Looking down she rubbed her hands together nervously, squeezing warmth back into them. "I'm sorry," she told him plainly. "And thank you," looking into his eyes and smiling awkwardly.
         Tristian blinked in mild surprise, not really sure what he had been expecting. "Ah . . . you're welcome," he said softly, lamely. For a second he felt she was going to take his hand and squeeze it, use this moment to forge some sort of connection, some shared link. But this was no place and their only bridge was a request pledged for the wrong reasons. The attempt would leave them both adrift in the air, apart but with a magnificent view. "I hope I helped. Somehow. I hope it was enough."
         Jackie nodded. "It was," was all she said. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she was twisted away from him, her body facing the wall. Her thoughts were elsewhere. The mess at her feet spelled out a life, her organizing was a necessary restructuring that came far too late. It was time to leave, he knew. Memories were crowding him out, jostling him to one side. He didn't mind. He was an intruder here, in this house, in these lives, a foreign body that could only be devoured once having served its purpose or else risk a visceral sort of irritation, the type you always feel without knowing the source.
         Time to go, then. Waving a little to catch her attention, he said, "I'd better go before Joe is cleaning toilets for a month because of me." He had never thought a lie might actually be fun. You do learn something new every day. "You take care, Jackie. Hang in there." The words only felt as wrong as he did.
         "Yeah, you too," she replied. "I will. Don't worry about me."
         Dragging it out would only close the loop again. The breach beckoned, he backed up, stepped through. Turning toward the stairs, he caught one last glimpse of her, tucking some hair delicately behind her ear, beginning to bend down to sift some more through these relics of her brother's life, finishing what he never was able to even start. Her face was distant, losing herself in a maze where all the exits were marked but where she stayed anyway, stepping deeper to linger for a bit longer. Sometimes escape isn't what you need.
         And then he was down the stairs and gone.
         Her voice chased him out, slithered at his heels, the words catching his ears edge on, leaving him wondering what exactly he had heard.
         "Who'd have thought," a girl's voice murmured, sliding on grooves in the air, on wings that might not have flown today, "that a guy like you would go and leave such a damn mess."