I remember that night well. A breezy June night. We’d just finished dinner with friends. The laughter, conversation, and ambient Sara Vaughn from dinner still rang in the hollows of our ears. The taxi glided silently uptown along the FDR. Our minds were at ease, our bellies full of food and wine. We huddled together in one corner of the taxi. A small photo, a rosary and a cross hung from the rear-view mirror, chinking together silently . The cab driver’s eyes hovered in the rear view mirror, occasionally glancing up at us. The only sounds were the rhythm of the regular bumps in the road and the whoosh of cars around us. And with his eyes illuminated like that, and his back turned to us, the cab felt momentarily like a confession booth. Silent and reassuring. On one of his regular glances I noticed the cab driver catch my wife’s eye. I felt her posture adjust in response. After a few minutes of silence he spoke.

“Are you expecting?” he asked.

At first I didn’t hear him…or at least I thought I didn’t. His voice was soft but gravelly as if spoken from the stomach. His words tumbled over his tongue in a way that sounded Russian…or Czech…or something like that. My wife looked up at me as if to say ‘What did he say?’ and I thought to myself “Great, another crazy New York cabbie to cap off a perfectly good night.”

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I asked playing along, hoping to humor the man long enough to just get us home.

“When are you expecting?” he said again, this time a bit more sheepishly.

So I had heard him correctly. A laugh coughed uncontrollably from my wife’s chest.

“What!? Why? Did I look pregnant when I got in? Did we eat that much?” she joked, gesturing at her midsection. His eyes squinted slightly, implying a smile.

“No…no ma’am.” he said as if realizing just now how his comment might have been misunderstood. Then his eyes were apologetic.

Seeing this piqued our curiosity. What had he meant then?

I leaned forward a bit in my seat.

“So then what made you think she was pregnant?” I asked.

The man looked up at me in the rear view mirror.

“So sorry…It’s just what I think…feel…when I look at her face….Back home, in my village, I had reputation for this.”

My wife and I exchanged glances. I refrained from rolling my eyes.

“Reputation for what?” I asked.

“Many things like this. To see if a lady is pregnant. To see sick people’s place of pain….Like doctor’s helper…I worked in  clinic back home for many years.”

I was fairly sure the man was a loon. A loon with an Empath complex? I was just curious.

“Really!? How long did you do this?”

“I worked in small villages in Herzegovina for 24 years. Helping doctors. In peace and in war.”

A small wave of seriousness washed away our cynicism. My wife looked at me, less sarcastic this time.

“Wow. You mean during the Bosnia thing?” I asked sitting forward a bit more.

The man nodded, looking at me. An ID Card hung behind his driver-side headrest. It was illuminated by a shoddy salmon colored light:

Vladimir Pliny

His photo painted him as an average man, shoulders hunched with some invisible burden. The lines that had etched themselves into his brow and corners of his eyes made him look worried and sympathetic. His skin seemed leathery and pock-marked. Despite all this evidence of world-weariness, his eyes were youthful, smiling, and kind. These same eyes now hung hovering in the rear-view mirror and peered up occasionally at my wife and I.

“Why didn’t you study medicine Vladamir? If you had this ability?” I asked.

I heard a sarcastic chuckle bubble from his belly.

“Sometimes education is good. Sometimes it is bad. For my skill, education was bad. I did not need to know ‘why’. I just needed to use my skill to help.”

My wife nodded silently. Cars swooshed by outside.

“Why did you come to the States?” I asked.

“It was time. There was nothing left for me back home.”

I could see the photo that hung in his mirror next to the rosary. A woman with a small child sitting in her lap. An old photograph. -Nothing left for him back home.

“Do you consider yourself a Holy man or a spiritual man?” I asked.

“Not holy. That would be arrogant! To think I am special!” his eyes smiled. “But there is a ‘big mystery’, we all know this.” he said.

“A ‘big mystery’.” I repeated under my breath.

He continued “We are all of us children of vast and incalculable improbability, No? Sometimes you can feel it, sometimes not. But when you do feel it, it makes inside you such a - How do you say? Warmth? No. Surpise? No.”

“Awe?” I said.

“Awe…yes…’awe’ is the word. It makes awe inside you. This awe is so strong that some people feel purpose. Like hands made the world and all things purposefully…like a woman knitting quilts. But some people are more wary…skeptical. No matter who they are though, they all feel this awe, it is what makes us human…this awe with the ‘big mystery’.”

The rosary chinked softly again. My wife looked lost in her thoughts. A few moments passed.

“Mr. Pliny, may I ask who that picture is of?” I inquired, gesturing at the one hanging with the rosary.

“This is my son, and my wife.” he said. His eyes were proud.

And before I could ask, he rebutted. “They are gone, they are not here.”

I refrained from asking what “here” meant. -Nothing left for him back home.

“You should feel happy for what you have.” he said looking at me, his eyes gesturing toward my wife. Then he gazed away from me, as if his eyes were losing focus, or he was looking ‘through’ me. After a few moments he spoke.

“Like a cat I would wander in the dark…” he said “but always when I come home, she was there, my wife. She was always there for all my….how do you say?…dark nights of the soul? This made me so grateful. She was like big fire I could start my torch from. It would keep me warm when I wandered through the dark…far away from her. She was herself no saint, of course…” he chuckled, smiling, clearly remembering. “She was no saint, no. But she was like railroad, like train, delivering something to me from a greater place. Bigger source. Bigger fire where everyone like me…lost souls…lit their torches. I was loyal to her in my ways, but not in my words. I thought only my ways mattered, but this simply this is not so…I did not learn this until she was gone one day, and after much wandering, I had no fire to light my torch.”

My wife looked up at me in a way (that to this day) I can not describe. It was like my mother’s glare. Stern and absolute.

“When you make promise to her “ he continued “you are promising not just her, but the greater source, the bigger fire. It won’t smite you if you wrong it, it will just turn its back on you. And then you’ll be back to wandering in the dark. This is perhaps the worst punishment, the greatest damnation.”

We sat in that silence for a while longer. I felt the weight of my wife’s body leaning on mine as we turned a corner. Maybe a bit heavier because of a baby? Nah. We paid Mr. Pliny with a silent gratitude. No goodbyes.

The following March, when my son was born, I named him Vladamir.

“Hurry up!” she yelled before vaulting the fence. Her lithe body moved like something viscous. She was up and over the second fence before I’d even jumped to grab the first one…Her favorite red tabi boots were ablur, flashing as she lept. She’d just shown me the first half of her “pichacao masterpiece” (as she’d called it). I didn’t really “get” it…some half finished mural on some train and subway cars…then there was an unfinished mural near the top of some office building. The colors were nice but I didn’t have the heart to tell her they all looked unfinished.

Here I was, reluctantly following her to “where it all comes together…” as she’d  put it. I didnt know what she meant by that, but her tone was convincing and I had nothing better to do. She’d said this was “the one”. Her Magnum Opus I guess. Her Brazilian tongue leaked the words “pichacao en rondo” as she thought aloud.

“You know? kinda like theatre in the round but for graffiti” she tried to explain…I still didn’t know what she meant. I’d just smiled and nodded, and said I’d probably agree after I saw it.

She was waiting for me on the other side of the fences. Her posture mocked me. Her hands impatiently at her hips, foot tapping. But her face glowed with that smile of hers. After we’d hopped the fences, I followed her through a large field behind an abandoned factory. It was one of those forgotten places…rusting car parts, rotting tires, overgrown grass and dead leafless trees that reached up like withered hands to gray unforgiving skies. Horror movie shit. You could almost smell the tetanus beneath the dryness of oil and junkyard.

“Your mural is out here? Where we going?” I asked carefully watching my steps… 

“…going to where it all comes together.” she said again cryptically without turning around. 

I rolled my eyes and trudged on. I’d gotten accustomed to these ‘walkabouts‘ of hers. Last night, as we left the theatre she’d given me that look, so we snuck back into the theatre and into a dark stairwell. The credits were rolling on the next showing when we finally came out exhausted and thirsty for our usual pineapple juice.Her impulsiveness was boarder-line manic…and I knew it. But still…she has that ‘thing’…that ‘manner’.  In those in-between moments, when she doesn’t know I am looking…its her posture…or something. It’s the vapor trail she leaves as she moves through the world of things.  One part mystery. One part devilish. And a small part: quiet and naive innocence.

The grass was slightly taller where we stood now, almost knee-high. She’d stopped walking several yards ahead of me.  The abandoned factory was off on the left and the train tracks were ahead of us at the end of the field. Just beyond the tracks were small buildings, sitting like foothills to man’s artificial mountain range of skyscrapers off in the distance.

“What? Where is it?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “We wait here…” And she began to sit down. 

“Wait here? For what? Where is your mural? Your pichacao?” I asked starting to get annoyed.

“Well you can see the first part I showed before just ahead …”

And sure enough, the building she’d shown me earlier was directly in front of us. The first building on the skyline’s foothills. She’d completely defaced the upper part of some 10-story office building. From here, her mural made it seem the  side of the  building on fire, set aflame with her pastels and brush strokes. It looked great, but still “incomplete”. She rifled through her bag, popped some pill and broke the seal on a Poland Spring. I watched her neck as she drank. And this was one of those ‘in between’ moments that seemed in slow motion. She tucked her hair behind her ear, tilted her head and drank. Her throat undulated with each gulp. She capped the water and looked at me knowingly before abruptly grabbing my wrist and checking my watch…

“Soon” she said.

The anticipation in her eyes was the only thing keeping me. As if almost on queue, a subway train emerged from the tunnel off on the left and another rounded the bend off on the right.

“Here!” she said.

As the trains approached, I could see that each train carried one of the cars she’d defaced. In the afternoon sun they were alive with her pastels…but still incomplete.

“Watch closely!” she pleaded.

And just as she said it, the two trains passed in front us elevated on the tracks. As they passed each other, each carrying a piece of her art, they also passed beneath the burning building…For a split second they all were perfectly aligned: the two trains and the flame on the building. It was complete. The two trains and the building each carried a crucial piece of a large tribal mask, red and orange and angry. It was demonic with a furrowed brow and piercing eyes, all backed by a firey haze which had risen up and set a poor little office building on fire. The roar of the trains growled a heavy rumbling moan that rang in your ears and the hollow of your chest. Goose bumps rose on my upper arms. And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the demon fragmented again into three powerless pieces with the two trains carrying his eyes and his mouth hurriedly away in opposite directions. The subway cars seemed like orange scaled serpents, their backs burning, howling their iron screams as they retreated.

“Wow.” and a sigh of relief is all I could muster as I rubbed the goosebumps away.

I turned to look at her, but she was already walking towards the abandoned factory. She was looking back at me over her right shoulder, her hair in the wind, and that look in her eye.I smiled because I could already taste the pineapple juice.

She hopped out of a Jeep Wrangler. The Jeep had “New York” plates, but she probably didn’t live in the city. She wore wrinkled white tshirt  cuffed at the shoulders a bit. The shirt was so large it seemed it was all she was wearing, except for the hint of khaki on her upper thigh. And the way with which she hopped out of the Jeep would not have been out of place on a farm in Montana, rolling hills in the background. But here she was, 1st Ave and 83rd in Manhattan.

“Are you Kevin?” she asked as I stepped from my stoop.          

Before I could respond, it was like two magnets pulled together, slowly at first, then snapping together with absolution, backed by cosmic law. The forces of nature exercising themselves.

“Yea.” I said eventually, not paying attention to the words.          

She had these big smiling brown eyes.

“Good, I’m Julia.” she said.”If you remember me, I was your broker’s partner-”         

“Yea, I remember you…from the office…” I said.

“Well I was just visiting casually on behalf of the brokerage because we noticed your lease was coming up soon, and we wanted to see if you were considering moving…”

She had perfect teeth and a tongue so pink it was as if nothing bad had ever gone in or out.

“I was thinking about Brooklyn…” I said “…I was just running an errand, you wanna walk and talk with me for a block or two? I am going down to 80th.”          

She nodded and we turned to head down the block…Conversation quickly and naturally diverted. There were apparently more pressing things to talk about than leases.  It was as if we were old friends catching up on old times, and eager to burrow through the simulacra of ego and get back to that thoughtless place where conversation is on autopilot, and its ok to be yourself. That place where you know that they are equally as thirsty for you as you are them, and its ok. In hindsight I don’t remember ever looking away from her, and in the past showing that level of interest that soon had been disasterous. But she absorbed it, and I could tell she liked it. We talked about so much in such little time. At some point the conversation even devolved into her own walking variation of the game of charades. She’d strike a pose and then glare at me inviting me to guess. When I guessed right she’d shuffle her posture and then freeze conjuring something else. The first one was Michael Jackson: Smooth Criminal. easy. She shuffled again. The next one was “The Thinking Man”. Which I’d incorrectly guessed as Michaelangelo’s “David”. She thought for a bit, then half block later, she shuffled again. 

“Now?” she said softly.          

I considered for a moment…and then like a cough bubbling up from nowhere.

“Klimpt? The Dancer? ” I sputtered.          

The answer seemed to stun her, and I too was surprised at my own answer. I’d heard of Klimpt by name, but didn’t know any of his paintings, certainly not enough to blurt his name out. The strangeness of this was not lost on her, and plunged us both into a quiet walking introspection. After a while I looked over at her walking chin up, eyes still smiling, but engrossed in her thoughts. And for the first time I noticed, there on her right arm, upper bicep, a small bit of a tattoo peeking out beneath the cuff of her sleeve. I’d seen another on her inner thigh back during her Michael Jackson pose, but didn’t ask.

“What’s that ink?” I asked.           

She stopped and looked at me. She turned slightly offering her bicep. I smirked and slowly slid up the sleeve with a soft forefinger. She watched me do it, and looked at me devilishly as if I were undressing her.  Raising the sleeve was like lifting the curtain on a small serene diorama. The color was vivid, and it glowed unnaturally against her skin. The color and gradient was so smooth, like a Japanese block print. There was a big red Mountain, and rolling hills. Birds in flight, and villagers in hats attending the rice fields. scattered trees, and even deer and squirrels. And just looking at it was relaxing. And at the center of the landscape standing out against the background, a samurai, practicing his art, weilding a sword, or something. 

“What is that? A samurai?” and then correcting myself with a bubbling of intuition…”no….its Musashi…”          

I looked back up at her…And the look in her eyes was as if I had guessed a great secret. One that so many had tried and failed. Musashi was no great secret. What had I said or done? In her eyes was this great look of relief and resignation. And it was as if I’d silently proposed and she’d wordlessly accepted there under the crosswalk at 1st Ave and 40th street. 

    Moshe had been dreaming of Tipperary long before he’d even known its proper name. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t laid his head to his pillow and soon thereafter heard the familiar bells of the tower in the center of town. Every night since his earliest memories, the Sandman, like some Venetian Gondola boatsman, deftly rowed him to the shores of the Township. Every dream and every nightmare took place in the Township of Tipperary.It wasn’t until he was around ten years of age that Moshe became aware of his relationship with the Township, and how unique it was.  The realization was abrupt and accidental (like the loss of innocence or onset of adulthood). He’d asked Richard (his best friend throughout grammar school) what his town was called… 

“What!?” Richard had asked, distracted burying his action figure beneath a pile of Lincoln Logs.                                           

“When you sleep Richard! What is the name of the town you go to?” Moshe asked, impatient with Richard’s impetulance and disregard for such an important question.   

“Town?” Richard continued without looking up “Town? I dont go  to no town…Sometimes I fly over towns, or drive a race car… or go swimming, but mom told me to get out of the water when I swim in dreams, b’cuz I pee the bed.”   

“Oh.” Moshe responded.  

     And in that simple exchange Moshe learned early that not everyone had a Township of Tipperary into which they could escape with a comforting regularity.  Moshe had many ‘firsts’  in the Township of Tipperary long before he experienced them when he was awake.Mr. Hanklin the Herbalist taught him to tie his shoes. Kevin, the farm hand down at the stables taught him to ride a newly broken pony.  He’d even had his first crush there in Tipperary.      

Mara.  Her father was the Township’s best baker. Her hands would be soft from helping in the kitchen, and she often smelled like vanilla or cinnamon or baking bread. She had unusually thick eyebrows, and lips that looked like the lines children draw to depict a bird in flight. She carried with her a soft spoken calmness that often put him to sleep after they’d strolled through the high grass near the marsh. Many of his ‘firsts’ in Tipperary were with Mara, and it was eventually through Mara that he’d learn the most important secret about the Township of Tipperary…it’s fragility.   One Sunday afternoon after brunch, Moshe sat at the table finishing his food as his mother read in the sitting room nearby. The recent exchange with Richard was only a few days old, and had been wearing on Moshe’s conscience. In many a quiet moment since, he’d sat brooding over Richard’s response. After a few minutes of silent consideration, he ventured to tell him mother about the Township of Tipperary.   

“Mom?” He said sheepishly, still turned away from her, staring down at the last if his fruit and sandwich.                       

“Yes?” She responded. He heard her stir softly in the chair. He turned to see her sliding the bifocals down her nose, and setting the book in her lap. 

    He turned to look at her, orange afternoon sun spilled in through the picture windows behind her casting her in an angelic halo. Her movement had rustled lint which was set aflame in that pool of orange light. It danced in the still air like fireflies, and her eyes glistened with motherly concern. Moshe took a breath and continued.

“At night…well…every night since I can remember…I dream…the same place…a town…called the Township of Tipperary”.          

 He braced for some kind of anticipated impact, but there was none. No immediate consequence. He immediately wished he could suck the words back in. His insides slouched. Slouched with that sinking feeling of betraying the trust of a close friend that might never ever even find out. But the damage had already been done. His mother inquired further of course. Intuitive, though she was, with some vague details and with a dismissive tone, she eventually shrugged it off to childhood flightiness. He couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere distant something had gone horribly wrong. That night, when he arrived in the Township of Tipperary, the town square was all abuzz. Mr. Meyrink, the farmer (famous for his strawberries) had been trampled to death by his ox. There had been two house fires. One at the Chemists’ and the other at the Bakery. Mara’s mother, Mrs. Saunders, had breathed too much smoke and was not expected to survive the night. Moshe remembered standing next to the fountain at the Town center, fists clenched at his thighs, his face hot, streaked with angry guilty tears. Mara, strangely unaffected, would find him and comfort him. Days later after her mother passed, she would be sent away to live with Aunts. She’d left on the night of Moshe’s 11th birthday. Moshe had not seen sickness or death in the Township of Tipperary before that day….or since.  Read the rest of this entry »

    It was a humid saturday afternoon. And I can remember it perfectly.The jingle of my car keys, the satisfying chunk of the car door as it  closed. The click of the sandals against my heels as I made my way up the driveway…and then, clearly,  distant windchimes on a dry breeze, like church bells…blurred vision as I fell to the hotblack asphalt. The heat of the ground against my cheek, the wavy convection lines dancing on the asphalt just beyond my twiching feet. I smelled roses and cherries and tasted iron in my mouth as laughter bubbled in my chest. Laughter, because it was all somehow…very funny.  And my entire body felt tickled as if a woman’s fingers were brushing softly across the inside of my elbow…then abruptly there was the stabbing pain, the darkness and the cold…..

……The doctors told me I was lucky. They told me that aneurisms generally left lasting damage. Now in this hospital bed, as I pulled the dinner tray to me, things were different. They felt, sounded, and tasted differently, like a blockage I’d never noticed had been removed. I don’t remember ever hearing this clearly. The food tasted not differently, but just tasted more….It was if life before had been sleep walking. And with all this time on my hands…in this hospital bed…the long stretches between visits of the nurse. All this extra time gave birth to a horrible brooding, an introspection. Memories came flooding back as if high resolution glossy photographs. Flashing before me and narrated by some strange third party.

    One of these was the image of the coarse dry skin between his father’s thumb and forefinger…His father’s hands had always been so inexplicably rough for a man who’d never once known manual labor. As a boy he awed at how the skin of his father’s hands felt plastic and inanimate. He also remembered the way his mother had sat silently and tightlipped night after night at the dinner table. Her eyes saying more than she ever would: A life unfulfilled. He remembered Kara’s eyes when she’d whispered to him that she wanted to give him a child, long before either of them were ready for such a move. And then the memory of the look in her eyes when he reacted. As he chewed, the bland hospital food tasted differently than he’d remembered peas and carrots…It wasn’t a new flavor, but rather as if there was simply more information behind the flavor that had always been there…information he’d just previously ignored, passing it off as “the blandness of peas and carrots”. Even in the carrots and peas, the memory of Kara kept resurfacing.  She had wanted to give him a child, and in turn he’d yelled at her, turning her eyes from emerald pools of reflexive adoration, into the eyes of a frightened animal, cowering. The thought of her made his chest sink in, and his breathing heavier and erratic. Now on his lips was the saltyness of his own tears…and then the image of his mother crying into the calloused hands of his father as he lay in his funeral casket…’Too little too late” he’d overheard a relative say. 

    The faces of his closest friends emerged from his memory as if selected from a lineup of ‘forgettables’. He remembered those few women, that had silently (and in their own softspoken way) offered him the promise of a new beginning, and the way he’d ignored it, speeding through life like a restless child flipping through the pages of an over-read comic book. And the eyes…the look in all their eyes. The honestness in their voices as they’d spoken words of wisdom. He now saw the value they’d seen in him that he’d not see in himself….and the realization was too much. An overwhelming feeling of appreciation and gratitude descended upon him causing his chest to heave with the shame of his own stupidity. He sighed heavily, straightened his posture, and chewed defiantly, intent on tasting everything thoroughly. Intent to never again ignore even the blandness of peas and carrots…

The Pendulum was a running group. Well, it was on the surface. It was a running group that played a game called “Hounds and Hares“. Karl had first heard of the game in stories his father recounted of playing it in the streets of Moscow during the ‘recent unpleasantness’. His father, you see, was in Moscow during the seventies as a ‘research scientist’,  and even as a boy Karl knew there was more to that title than his father let on. Karl had found The Pendulum group during his medical rotation in Jakarta. They met early one Saturday at a local park. The people were friendly and all smiles, mostly expatriate professionals or military. No one really talked about what they did, not at the beginning of the hash that is.The games started off normal enough. A designated group of ‘hares’ took off running in many different directions into the city, and the group that lagged behind (the hounds) had to follow their tracks to the end of the race. The tracks were fairly obvious (if you knew where to look), usually as a series of predetermined chalk marks on the asphalt. The marks served as “trail markers” that indicated whether paths were good or bad. The first group of “hounds” to find where the “hares” had all convened, won. The termination of the race was generally at a pub, where there was open bar for all participants. There were always less participants at the end than there were at the beginning, as if nature itself had selected those fittest for their grand celebration. But, noone ever said what they did or who they really worked for.

The best of the hashes were those on which the hares cleverly set false trails, forcing you to think on your feet as you ran. Karl had quickly become addicted to the game, participating more frequently, until soon he was running with the Pendulum twice a week.  Eventually the more skilled players invited him to smaller more secretive games, played at night where the tracking was much more difficult. And the trail markers themselves grew less overt until soon they weren’t chalkmarks, but bits of debris on the ground. A curiously crumpled tincan here, a precariously perched rock there… all things “out of place” for those aware enough to notice.At the termination of these advanced hashes, the stories came out. Stories (always told in the third person) of clever escapes, isolation, and near misses. Some stories were more macabre, of fallen friends, torture, or imprisonment.  Geopolitics, economics, and business were also at the heart of many a discussion. At these pubs, the advanced hounds passed around newspaper clippings and books like “The Tracker” , “Falling Through The Earth“, “Foucault’s Pendulum“. Stories about people learning to pick up on the subtle clues we all left as we passed through the world of things… And what Karl learned on the hashes began to awaken in him a keen sensibility to things and smells. Like he was more alive. One evening after returning home from work, his girlfriend in the shower, he walked to the rustled couch where her book lay face down. He felt the warmth of the seat, and as if in a trance, tracked her movements from the last hour through the apartment following each subtle clue, until finally he reached the bathroom where she invited him into the shower for their own celebration.  He noticed fingerprints on beakers at work, he could identify his lab assistants by their perfumes and the sound of their steps. And several weeks prior, noticing something in the eyes of Michelle (his lab partner) he impulsively asked how long she’d known she was pregnant. Her stunned reaction had confirmed his suspicion. It seemed that he’d become host to a growing awareness of a world just beneath this one, one more real, subtle, and nuanced.  The floating world.  At the termination of last night’s advanced hash he was approached by a man, who (until now, Karl had only silently admired). One who’s quiet presence had gravitas which somehow commanded respect. If those men had been wolves, this man would be the elder Alpha…The man had kind eyes, and a methodical baritone voice.  He went by the moniker “Aleph“… and by the nights end, the Aleph had invited him to the hash of a more advanced group of “hounds”. “There are higher consequences and greater rewards” he’d said slowly. “There will be some familiar faces…and some unfriendly ones…quite a bit of travel, and many new experiences.”. 

The waitress placed an old-style glass bottled Coke in front of Miles, and a plate of sausage in front of Chris. ”The rest is on its way…”she offered without even looking at them.

Chris: “Your girlfriend better get here by the time her food does…”                                        

Miles ignored Chris and set his lit cigarette in the lip of the ashtray. The wisps of smoke fashioned a question mark in the center of the table. Miles was too preoccupied with the Coke bottle to notice. He quietly admired the weight and look of the full bottle before finally taking a sip. ”…for some reason Coke tastes so much better from these bottles.” he finally said. Chris rolled his eyes as he stabbed a plump sausage with his fork. Sausage juice and oil squished out in protest.

Miles: “I can’t believe you are gonna  eat that shit…”                                        

Chris looked at him indignantly. “Don’t start with that shit. We been comin’ here for 6 years. Pro’lly twice a week. You and your girl always open with the same old shit. Aren’t you vegans supposed to be openminded? You’re like a Nazi with this ‘meat’ stuff…”

Miles: “I  *am* open-minded…Jen put me onto this vegan shit…I’m just spreadin’ the gospel. You are just my friend so I’m trying to tell you what the fuck you are putting into your body.”                                   

Chris: “I know exactly what the fuck I am putting in right now…. ITS MEAT!…prob’ly from a cow, and it tastes goooood…”

The “good” came out as a cow’s moo.

Chris: its not like its….cyanide….or anything…so do me a favor and chill with all that shit when she’s not around…”              

Miles shrugged it off and picked up his cigarette and puffed…He sipped his coke thoughtfully. “You know Hitler was a vegetarian!?”

Chris: “Ok…now where the fuck did that come from?”                                       

Miles: “Cyanide. ….. Nazis.” he said, gesturing like the words themselves had conjured this trivia from deep within… 

Chris: “…sounds like bullshit.”

Mike: “Nah…its for real…something about being stuck indoors…some gastrointestinal issue…you know that guy was prol’ly in the closet right.”

Chris: “Hah…yea with the bombs, the S&M, the torture, the general moodiness…and the veganism. I can see it…”.

Chris smirked as he bit into another sausage. Miles donned a mocking German accent:” ‘Herr Hitlah why dont joo have a girlfriend?’ 

Chris: “Heh, yea…and he was a writer right?…”                                       

Miles: “Yea…and had a cat…”

Chris: “Yup…Really quiet sensitive type…If he was alive now I bet he’d have a blog: Mein Blog…..or a secret Myspace page with a self-portrait photograph, his shirt off, taken from his iphone…”

Miles nodded slowly as if caught in a revelatory daydream. “favorite music: Cat Stevens and Ramstein. favorite book: The Color Purple….yup…and those boots…Hitler was completely gay…we should write this all down.”

Chris:  ”‘Racially motivated genocide, is the perfect cover for the latent homosexuality of a political writer.”

The waitress passed, catching the tail end of Chris’s last comment. She paused for a moment and with disgust she eyed Miles who was accidentally holding his cigarette wedged between two really effeminate fingers which dangled from a limp wrist. He noticed immediately, and stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray, cleared his throat masculinely, and corrected his posture. Chris too adjusted his posture and diverted his gaze.  The two sat in silence for a moment, avoiding eye contact. In an attempt to break the awkwardness Miles forced laughter and began to continue on about Gay Hitler.

Chris: “-No! New topic…and next time she comes back flag the waitress… I’m gonna get one of those stupid bottled cokes.”             

In the height of his panic he screamed “Please Sir! We have no wish to die here…we are not thieves…your bungalow hacienda looked warm and inviting, and we are just so cold…” His last word was sucked out into snowy silence. They’d ducked behind the snow covered wood pile when the man had fired the first shot. The rest of the world was bright and still.The man yelled back “Hacienda? Why’d you call it a Hacienda?”Handel peeked up slowly from behind the woodpile. The man was still pointing the shotgun, although less aggressively.Handel yelled back “Well thats what it is…isn’t it?”

 After a pause, the man’s gun relented and pointed at the sky. He sighed. “You can come out…but no funny business…” Handel looked down at his sister who was just beginning to uncurl, her hands unclasping from behind her head. She looked up into Handel’s uneasy grin. Minutes later the three were trudging back through the snow towards the man’s home.”I am Artemus…Artemus the Architect” he said plainly and without pomp.”I am Hendel” Hendel offered “…and this is my sister Greta”.Artemus nodded at her. His eyes were warm and calming…a luxury she appreciated after the events of earlier that day.”So whats your story?” Artemus inquired.”Our car broke down this morning, and we passed under an overpass to find help, and when we came out the other end we found ourselves…” Hendel paused. “…here.” Hendel continued as they ascended the stairs, shook snow from themselves and hung coats. “When we started back, the bridge and overpass…were just…gone.” Artemus smirked, his back turned. Hendel sighed…”Its like some kind of nightmare…we’ve been chased by a group of evil little children, a two headed dog, and a group of hookers.”Aretemus listened as he cleared a place for them on a couch near the fireplace.”Yes…the ‘hookers’ you saw were the Furies…they are relentless…you should’ve known  not to approach them, scantily clad as they are in this weather.”As Artemus spoke Hendel and Greta were taking in the decor of the den. The walls and ceiling were large dark wood pillars. All around were photographs, sketches and technical drawings of complex patterns. A photo of tangled scrap metal, another of woven teflon, another of computer circuitry…baskets , molecules,  rug designs, and sand paintings.”What is it that you do?” Handel asked.”I design cities…but my love is of labyrinths…” Artemus said, motioning them to sit. Hendel glanced at his sister who was also taking in the room with reverent awe.”Well, perhaps you can help us get out of this strange place we’ve managed to wander into…” Handel said, his voice tinged with sarcastic desperation. Artemis went off into another room to prepare tea. ”….yes…perhaps.” he said softly on his way out.

She collapsed into him, and then rolled bunching linen under her arms and across her chest, turning the sheets into her evening gown. She exhaled loudly and rolled onto her back.

“Wow” she said to the ceiling. She heard his mouth crack into a smile of self satisfaction. She rolled onto him and rested her head on his chest listening to his lungs. She lifted his hand from where it lay limp on his stomach and fashioned it into a clasp with hers. They lay there in the inky black of night straining their eyes to see their hands…and soon their imaginations had conjured a likeness that would suffice. They each imagined his large black hands with their large hairy fingers, calloused stony features, and thick fingernails. They imagined her soft white small delicate fingers interleaved with his like piano keys alternating soft, hard, soft, hard, black, white, black, white…from pinky to thumb. And as if on cue he spoke finally.

“I cant believe you let us do that to you?”

A pregnant pause.

She spoke up at him from the pillow of his chest.

“What do you mean?” she inquired, knowing already what he meant.

“Well, it all seems so very destructive doesn’t it?” he began.

“Well actually its very CONstructive if you think of the potential causality.” she quipped.

“no no no, I mean the act itself…allowing my brutishness to intrude on your…” he paused to find the words…”your virtue…”

He was being poetic again, and she smiled with a slow blink as if he’d caressed her with the words. He was waiting in the dark for a response from her. She was using the darkness as a veil now, she simply wanted to hear this writer develop his thoughts aloud. “‘Virtue’?” she asked mockingly. “…your euphemisms are sometimes too flowery.” she lied.

“Mmmm” he hummed in agreement. He continued on unfettered “Nonetheless…You women spend so much of your existence cultivating your ’softness’…physically, socially, and emotionally; only to then allow us to ravage you physically and emotionally…and you love us for it, like our roughness is….is scratching an itch in only the way roughness can…”

His words, breathy and baritone in his chest silently aroused her, and she answered him by throwing a leg over him and sitting up on him…towering above him in the darkness…And when he was ready she emphatically thrust herself upon him. He’d been right of course, there was a sick duality somewhere in that darkness…his roughness and her softness thrown violently together…and that, he figgered, was the whole trip. And with this realization her back arched convulsively, and his hands were solid and steady at her hips. They meditated together in this way for what felt like hours…mutual completion. And when they were done, and she lay again softly at his side (the part he loved most) all he could think of was an old oil painting that had hung in his father’s study when he was a boy. It was of two snakes: a red and black one…feeding on one another from the tail up…

When he’d started, he didn’t know shit about architecture. Sure, he’d pause to admire a building that caught his eye, but his understanding of “the why” was spotty and adorned with platitudes. But he still appreciated buildings nonetheless…and every since he was a boy, he’d specifically liked train stations. On this trip he’d seen many of them. He slept in them. Ate in them. Pissed in them…waited in them. And all this time he spent in them made him more aware of them. He discovered that each had its own look, smell, manner, presence, and charm. And perhaps like a woman, each held the light differently…some in their cheeks and on their lips, and some in their eyes…but each invoked in him a certain kind of quiet awe…like being in a great cathedral. These were great hollow spaces that were like sanctuaries for a pensive silence. But this one was somehow different than all those before it. The morning’s light spilled in through large windows in the ceilings, filling the great room with light like fine grey powder. The invisible powder floated like snow, falling first on the great clock in the center…before floating down…down…down onto the benches and people as they buzzed along to wherever. He was the only one stopped in that shower of grey. Grey that was bright and strong…strong enough to flush away the anticipated black of tomorrow, replacing it instead with a sliver of optimism. All this misty grey was jailed by carved limestone and concrete with the stone carved faces of gargoyles keeping unflinching watch from high on the walls. And the air was crisp and still, reminding him of weeks prior, in the mountains, where snow squealed and crunched under the rubber of his boots. That day had been white, and he’d heard himself alive in that silence…his breath…his pulse…and the leathery strains of his satchel’s straps. But that was then, and this was now…and this silence was a bit different. It didn’t absorb like the snow had. Instead, this quiet reflected his noises back at him, but not without first dusting them with grey before setting them afloat in that cascade of light. Light that brushed past crestings, bas-reliefs, and intaglios in its descent, softly strumming each as if harp strings, making them sing individually but harmoniously in a perfectly tuned orchestra of silence conducted by noone…All this, for an audience of those select few that simply chose stop and listen.