NEW!

Author's Notes:

Look here to see notes and annotations in <brackets> throughout the segments.

<"Graced Ave." is a weak reference, but I can think of no better model for this apartment building than one on Memorial in Richmond. Grace street contained a bar we frequented for disco night, and is but one of the sappy, self-gratifying references to Richmond haunts in this story...

Another place forever etched in my mind when it comes to this Richmond territory is Bogart's, lovingly referenced as "Humphrey's" here.>

<Here I reveal a horrible secret: I not only had a jean jacket, but it did indeed have a Def Leppard patch. A giant one on the back. Awful "Animal" design too. There, I said it...>

<Here's a neat trick for coming up with fake college names: find a college that's most like what you're thinking of; take the name of that school and replace each name with the last name of your high school guidance counselors. Voila, instant higher education!>

 

10-23-2k
23 comes to an end.
Read the author's afterword...
Please share your feedback on the series by e-mailing us here...

A classic battle of good and evil raging on the rooftops of a tiny southeastern city. Super powers and agility prevail as they exchange blows and reasons and diabolic plans capped with sinister confessions. Mutually stroking their egos as they strike their foes.

This is what I think of when I enter a city: How jumpable are their rooftops and how easy is it to imagine heroes and villains getting thrown through the buildings.

I was smiling again. Janet, seated beside me at the helm of her Volvo, caught the smile and knew what I was daydreaming about. She's one of the few who would. We careened between Jonshall city's buildings on its freeway, at Janet's usual breakneck speed. Every interstate fly-by had a conversation interrupted by my complete focus of attention on the view outside.

"And you lived here once, huh?"
She knew I had, she was teasing,
"Hate to see how distracted you'd be in a new city."

"Huh? Oh, sorry. I'm listening-"

"Sure you are, you goofy bastard."

The conversations between airport and apartment rocketed between my convoluted purpose in returning, Janet's recent break-up, the status of many old friends, and the various restaurants or bars that have changed hands or addresses.
The condition of old haunts was the topic as we parked on Graced Ave.

A recent rain slicked the streets, but the freshness of the rainwater momentarily helped the smell of garbage piled in the alley. A block down is the 60+ year old house, squashed between others of its kind, where Janet kept her apartment for four years.

There's a tightness that rests in your gut that appears every now and again when you want to tell someone something. It was happening right now for her, I can tell. For really practical, "he'll be better off" reasons she wasn't saying a word but I've known her long enough to detect it. The car ride had been quiet even when we talked, and she'd been chewing on her lip a bit when she wasn't chatting me up. She was real polite at times, but I knew she would break hard soon, not in a sobbing way, but in a "I've waited to this precise moment of strength to tell you something." Janet was smarter than she was stronger.

We walk into the apartment and right away I realize I was both wrong and right. She had something say, but she didn't ever have to say a word.

"Shit. Um, so which box do I sleep on?" I tried to joke.

Her cranky apartment in semi-historic downtown Johnshall was littered with well-taped boxes and stacked clothes. Janet appreciated my wanderlust not because she could help, but because she was feeling it too. And she was getting out of this town, even while I was coming back.

I think we stood in the door jam staring at the bay of cardboard for like, ten minutes before I broke the ice.
"So....um..."
"Want to get something to eat and talk a bit Alex?" She says over my shoulder quickly. I was still standing in her way inside.
"Fuck yeah."
A very familiar walk a few blocks to Humphrey's and a booth nab later left us with our menus to hide the impending talk. A sigh and an order passed and now only the salt and pepper lay in our path.

I break the ice again.

"Janet, I want to thank you for taking-"
"Shut up. Give me a second. Look, I didn't know you were coming. You surprised me, remember?"
"And what if I had called a week from now? Or even a few days? Would you have answered the phone? Were you going to tell me? Look, I'm thinkin' pretty selfish here, but this, I THOUGHT, was MY fucking crisis! I had no idea. No, fucking....clue..."

Lotsa silence. Economy sized, Sam's Club version of silence.
I broke the ice and fell in.
"So where are you moving to anyways?"
"Ohio."
"So is this punishment?"
She tries to laugh, which I have to give her credit for, but she's pissed so it disappears fast.
"Alex. Where were you moving to?"
"I was--am, just 'back.' If that makes any sense. I just wanted to be 'back' and so everything was dropped or dropping already so....here I am."

She gave a curt laugh and a worried sigh as she pulled some hair from her face. It was condescending. It hurt. But I know what she's getting at. What was the world supposed to do for me? Janet is in front of me, about to be several states away because of a job opportunity or cheaper living and its a huge upheaval for her. And here I am in front of her, having dropped and broken a good life because, as she sees it, "I got bored." And she isn't totally wrong.

"So."
"So."
We both had to admit we are a little envious of eachother's position. She has a job, and a settled reason to even be concerned about living expenses and probably the future. I have the balls and ability to drop and pick up pieces with only a fleeting concern as to a future. I like both our boats. I just don't want to be on the water anymore and nobody's home to hold my hand.
"Look, I-" she gives a sigh like she's about to do something nice,
"My rent is paid for another 3 weeks."
"Okay..." I act stupid but I am excited at what this might mean.
"And I can't take all my shit with me at once, so my apartment will be just full of boxes for a bit. But the phone will have to be turned off, and no AC."
"Gotcha---so I can stay?"
"Yeah. I'm leaving day after tomorrow. I'll take some stuff, but like I said I'll have to leave some boxes, so I might send you some money to ship it up if you get on your feet enough to call me. Otherwise I'll drop back down and kick your ass out and get my stuff."
Janet smiles at me. We exchange some more stories before the night rounds out. Its so awesome to be near her. And it sucks so much that she is leaving. I'm going to have to be far more resourceful than I'd planned....

It is my five hundred and four hours now, the streaks of white that give the room that careful glow are mine. Some of the boxes are gone so there is more room for me to do my work. My work. The possessive value is very subtle. At least the undeniable longing isn't there anymore. It just isn't. Its my dusty floor, my stale, pale window. My life. My life, isn't it? It certainly isn't her's anymore. That's my statement of ownership and sorrow.

They aren't my neighbors however, not my electricity or pipes or stairs or nearby chinese restaurant or sinewy, steamy streets of asphalt licorice lapping between the cubicles and parking garages. The churches aren't mine as much as they look free. Everything from the well groomed city park to the dilapidated soul storage devices of downtown is not mine and never was. Right up the frontispiece of brick through the ajar screen door, past the post boxes, up the dangerous stairs and through the simple olive door with the brass locks you'll find the edge of my territory. And for all the feeling that this piece of prefecture was mine, there's the dark reality of it all. Reality, like a fat man sitting on my chest as I lie on this hardwood floor, that no matter how much I may think this is mine, that I only have three weeks. Three weeks before I have nothing. A twenty one day salute of subtraction and I will be divided. All this thinking made me sleepy. But the hardwood floor and the decisions to be made would have none of that.

I spent two days out of the twenty one considering. 

***

I must have been laying on Janet's ex-floor for what was easily the better part of a night (some of which was admittedly trying in vain to get her old TV to work; there was a reason she left it behind). I woke up to what I thought was a familiar lyric, something pertinent and god-sent like deity-placed deja vu. Gave up trying to figure it out/But my soul got lost along the way. But after fully waking I was embarrassed to discover it was only a familiar guitar lick that had triggered the Pavlov musical area of my mind. Something by mega-autuers N*Sync if I am not mistaken. Turning over to face the ceiling improved the ditty's clarity. This began the day.
I could hear or interpret every nuance of a family's morning. As I said, it began with the auditory treat of N*Sync, so how good could these people's lives be? Obviously, the gussied up pre-teen's room was the command center auditorily. The mother and father? were remarkably silent until they had to wake the other spawn. Cheerily, the daughter yelled over the music and makeup to help with the brother's rising. His muffled but clearly unsatisfactory response got father? angry. A shower started for the second time, along with an intercepting bout of sink use as daughter rinsed her sugary cereal bowl. Boy must be up. Father? mumbles something, and then repeats the grunt and the N*Sync ritual is abandoned for weather and the light flutist that accompanies it.
The entire ritual, no matter how oft repeated or how utterly predicable even by my first listener-status seems to surprise, infuriate, excite, numb and placate the psuedo-family as the entire 90 minute ordeal ends with two doors slammed, the weather left on and the subtle din of crying...coming from what? Was that the master bedroom? Like a pet left unfed, mother has probably been weeping for the entirety of the daily debacle. If I remember right, I think I did hear the harmony with the father?'s shouts for his keys, the videogame left paused all night by the helpless brother, and of course, the echoes of the strapping, bright, white young men that are N*Sync. I don't care if I'm wrong and there's some non-white member in the band. For my fiction, for the transcript of pity I record in my t-shirt and jeans staring at a ceiling that's dirtier than the floor I'm spread-eagle on, the music is of a crisp, clear, white sheen of urban bliss and suburban You'll get yours/We promise/We can make things like this happen!/The cutest boys will like you/Your mother will love you and your male role models won't touch you/We love you!/Thank the good Lord you see on Sunday that you bought our record!/Keep sending letters!.

8:30AM hurts.


My back was killing me and my self-pity has succumbed to the actual logic of hunger, comfort and socialization. The 1BR 1B had none of these amenities. I had three dollars and fifty sense in cash and a vauge recollection of a bar and a grocery store within walking distance. The fact it was morning made my choice for me.

I used to have a great leather jacket that I'm positive was stylish at some point in time (but not necessarily when I owned it). Its since gone the way of the ex-girlfriend, but every time I put on some sub-standard coat or jacket I think of it. Putting on an even more unstylish jean jacket I find in Janet's boxes returns the guilt to me. No shower, little money and a jean jacket I would later realize has a Def Leppard patch on it is my only guise as I leave the apartment for the first time alone.

Moving down the stairs ridiculously fast, I halfway expect to run into father? brother or daughter, even tho I know they're at school or work or wherever worker bees go. I nearly kill a small asian man trying to get into the building through the same door I tumble through. The morning is fresh. I feel good (I think). Newspaper dispenser is ajar: free paper, good sign. Three blocks down I successfully dodge a pedestrian-hunting SUV: good sign number two. Pass Humphrey's and its neon Guiness sign, take a right and I know the tiny Daves Market with its misspelled sign is nearby. The city is wet and uncomfortably humid, but the recent cloudcover provides a gloomy canopy over an otherwise awake metropolis. Tell that to those who live inside the beast; the same people that are the machine's ants and wheels don't bother to spell metrolpolis much less consider the "global impact" of the cities name or market share or blahblahblah. There are people that think. I am not some air-riding coffee shop ponderer with a black turtleneck and a book of poetry. I'm realistic, I used to listen to the Cure and I feel like I've really "figured out" something whenever I'm not longing for the relationships, money or purpose everyone else got by actually working. I pass by two old women with dogs, one chipper man in tiny running shorts and a gaggle of hispanic men who eye me but pass without incident. A lanky middle-easterner survey's me as the taped-glass door of the market swings open. For two dollars I can barely afford some milk and some chips. Better reconsider. Milk and bread? Small milk and bread maybe. It was like shopping for groceries at the movies! The bright orange stickers shouted prices you'd expect to haggle down from. Frowning and looking up at "Dave" for every disappointing price didn't seem to brighten his mood. "Oh, I'm sorry sir! I make you a deal, anything you want...for two dollars and that lovely jacket!" I imagined he'd say if he REALLY wanted a deal. About then I noticed for the first time the Def Leppard patch in the glass milk-door's reflection. That probably devalued what would have been "a real find" for him, I bet. But the unsightly birthing scar form the jacket's bout with the eighties was there, precariously sewn somewhere between the center of the back and the armpit. No doubt this devalued it more than the Queensryche symbol hastily drawn in pen near the left cuff.
Picking up a box of mixed doughnuts and a gallon of low-grade "citrus drink" I started home, feeling scammed out of $2.15. It dawned on me that I felt Janet's old place was homey. Was this because it had any qualities I associate with comfortable living? Probably not, but it did fit my current sleeping needs of: not being an alley. But I had no other place to go. Not yet, at least, until I make some calls. Revitalize my presence. Reconnect. But I needed to be resourceful, get a phone (85 cents won't make too many calls at the Daves Mart phone) and maybe even get a shower at this point. First tho, I'll take the long way back to the place. Back home.



Strangely, I fell asleep. The walk wasn't far, but perhaps the impending rain got to me. I couldn't remember exactly when I must have dosed off, or when I even sat on the pile of boxes. But a sound echoed in my head alongside the tumult of rain spattering the open window near my head. A cool breeze chased the sound in. My eyes opened.
A woman's voice. I was receiving some clarity of the sound. Singing? That was my first guess. My eyes stayed still as my ears looked for the source. Above me, I thought. Stretching my head out the window a bit, not far from my pillow of boxes I could see her. "Daughter" singing to herself as she sat in her window, no doubt asleep in some meditation while tonenail painting and enjoying headphones of her music. I was careful in my disappointment, hoping I could doze back off, still unsure if the voice was that of a girl or a beautiful woman robed in thin linens, leaping from falling raindrops to arrive at my window. It was no good to pretend now that the song was anything more than an adolescent whine. I turned my head fast to make sure I wouldn't miss seeing the raindrop hopper if she was still there. She was gone. I accompanied what I could remember of the song with a percussion beat on the boxes. I entertained myself for minutes with this before I realized the daughter was talking on the phone. And yelling at the parents. All at once. She wasn't happy about having to go to the dinnertable, apparently. No, wait: she didn't want to go out to eat. That was it. But the parents won, she said goodbye to her call and with a few residual screams from father? she left with them. Left with them. What noises were missing now? I lay my head back on the boxes. The singing was gone. Just the rain now. The talk of dinner was gone. But what sound didn't enter the picture? The window didn't close.
I sat up quickly, educing a headache, and stuck my head out the rain sheathed window. Neck crooked and eyes against the pelts of water I could see the phone. In the open window. One floor up, with the receiver cord dangling in the slighting droplets.

Sure, lots of ways to do this if I had an inkling of coordination. The ability to flip about or toss objects with uncanny accuracy wouldn't hurt either. How much easier this all would be if I just had a grappling hook for an arm?

I do the awkward but reasonable thing: check for pedestrians looking up from the well-traveled alley, stood on the ledge, said "Okay God, you know the drill" and in one panicked swoop, threw my arm out, felt the cord and leapt back into the room, onto the boxes, rolling onto the floor with more thuds than planned, but on steady ground. The clamor made a cat nearby yelp and meow, and I honestly had no idea if I'd even pulled the phone in..I jumped in at any indication I might screw up and die. Looking at the window and feeling the lump from my head to floor conversation I see I was only partially successful...the receiver bounced off its hook by its twirly cord and was busy spinning this way and that- right at my window.
"Long cord." I mumble to myself. A yank that thankfully didn't rip it out of the socket pulled the base down and I managed to catch it with a fairly deft move. My only heroic was rewarded with what I had surmised: her phone was on a doubly long cordfrom the wall, so it was still plugged in. I imagined her not having the type of parents to get her a separate phone line or portable, but reasonable enough to let her have an absurdly long cord to walk about the room with. If it hadn't been long enough plan B was just to toss it to the sidewalk below and smash it to pieces. "But it must have fallen from the window!" would be her tearful explanation when her parents refused to by her a new phone. Still, I had to figure out how to not resort to smashing it to bits when I was done with it. But that would wait until after I'm done with it...

"The crux."

I found a marker and I tried to figure everything out on the wall opposite the window. Lisa, Karrie, Cindy, Amy (shit, lots of "ee's") and Sandy all girls, all sort of ex's in some form of hook up or relationship, all either not home or rude. The rude part gets me. Not home is difficult (I can't leave a message to have them call me back on this borrowed phone) but rude is unexplainable.

"Oh hi. Alex. Yeah, how are you? Hey I have to go-"

or

"Alex. Hey. Um. Look...I...I..."

"-need to go, huh?"

Why am I helping her?

"Yeah. Thanks. Bye."

Two of them actually hang up on me when it dawns on them completely who it is.

Do I know why they do this? Hell no. These are the same girls who would give me picture frames for Christmas o, puffy-paint birthday cards and baskets of goodies. I hesitate to say they were at my every whim, but it probably looked like it from the outside. That was last year--well, two years ago. In theory things should still be on speaking terms at the very least. I was their friend, just not as close as I think they thought they were to me. Does that make sense? Males, nod yes, females bear with me. So why do each of them, the last girls I was close too other than Janet, shove me off so hard? The feeling in my gut pre-phonecall was a chipper they'll-be-glad-to-hear-from-me attitude, with a dab of I-hope-they-can-help-me, I-dig-them-and-I-need-to-get-back-on-my-feet. Now it's a collective lump in my abdomen. My mind scuttles through the individual reasons each girl might have this adverse reaction. Strings left undone, things maybe not covered up (small, illicit things I mean; they don't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but schemes that matter are short and plentiful to these particular women). A handful of them should still be in college, the college, our nearby Ahner-Jackson College to be precise and informative. The rest of them have managed to secure nice day-trading/Circuit City farming/Smokey Plough waitressing jobs that may or may not spell the end of adventure. Ok, back up. Reform the last few years based on the details you know. I'm the linking verb in this sentence circa two years ago...so... Who may have crossed the paths of these women? Got it. Egg. Edward. Mr. Longman. The perennial friend. He was in an Astronomy class with me and did a lot of leering and silent dagger throwing at me for the last year or two I was at AJC. He also had one of those unfortunate "brother" relationships with at least two of those girls. Not the "big brother" kind. That's the advantageous one that everyone acts like they hate having with girls, but the payoff after you wade through a boyfriend or two is, "I need a guy who's my friend and a boyfriend" and voila, the search is over and the two of you are an item. No, I mean the albino younger brother that gets an incredible amount of attention, the really enviable "sleep over" status and hugs no matter the time of month. But its all a very attractive cage from which you better get used to being fed but not feeding. The minute a hand gets near and you try anything, you're a scary animal and have been the whole time. You aren't just thrown back into the wild, you're blacklisted and forced to the ugly zoo downtown in no time. Egg was one of them. He had the power to ruin the men in their lives, but it was coated with the bittersweet notion that they'd never be the guy that sweeps in the vacancy. Egg hated me, I'm sure of it. So in retaliation 'd pat him on the back a lot and give him tons of compliments, more to annoy him than to win his favor. I was immune. Not an egotistical unstoppable guy-force or anything (I was in the theater- I was an Ab Fab video away from gay as far as everyone was concerned) but in a charming, sincere guy who had a voracious appetite for attention and friendship. I didn't like doing anything alone even if I felt I could. Let me clear this up: I'm not calling these women for sex right now, I'm calling them to help reassure me I'm not already dead, and that its worth kick starting my life again. Sex may be for later, once my shit is together. I feel like I've lost you already, but trust me-- I have as many girl confidants and friends as guys. More probably, and just because my life hits the fan and I'm not instantly calling an entire football team or frat house for help doesn't mean I'm some shark--it means I wasn't in a frat or on a football team. I was in the theater and anybody in it can tell you when the chips are down you call those that saw you kick ass and suck, because you know they know the real you regardless of the details. And largely in the theater, these people are the opposite sex. The fact that you've messed around with any of them just means an even more bonding history. The fact that it largely happened at the same time is one of those aforementioned details you regard less. I dial the hapless Egg.

"Hello?"

I hang up. Shit. That's it. Maybe they- *gasp* no. Uh oh. Traded notes. Talked. Pow-wowed. Shitshitshitshit. Oh god.

Its important to point out something again here: this isn't a worry for image, or a worry that now I won't get any help from them. This is a genuine worry that somebody got hurt in the loose but delicate sphere that is your friend-base and that you were the one who left the oven on.

Egg. I'm sure a dork like him has caller ID. Or would bother to Star 69. It'd be worth the buck fifty or whatever they charge just to know I'm scared. Which I'm not.

"Hel-LO?"

"Eeeeeeggg. It's-it's Alex, how's it goin man?"

So it begins. Niceties. I ask him how the rest of school is going (fine) and what he's been up to (not much, classes are hard but the bars are good--a lie, he doesn't know).

"I tried the number I had for Amy and Lara and both weren't home without machines, so I figured they might be wrong--could you help me out?" he does. It's a trick tho: He never knew Amy as far as I was SUPPOSED to be aware, and in fact, Lara was home, she just blew me off. He retrieves both numbers and seems happier after doing so.

"There you go man. No problem."

"Thanks, I apprec-"

"But man you should know they might not want to talk to you right now man. Last weekend-"

Fuckfuckfuck. Now see, I had assumed that the juxtaposition of the moons had happened sometime within the last two years but not so recently that everything was immediately unsalvageable.

"Last weekend what?"

"Well the girls and Steve and Shannon and the girls and I went down to Nags and-"

He told me the rest and I heard none of it. I was nervous now, and Egg's story, no matter how pertinent, wasn't listenable.

"Thanks for the heads up. I'll ah....uh...see you soon, I hope." I lied, but now I felt bad since he did technically help me out. The warning was a truce offer even if the whole circus was pleasing for the little brother to see. Shit. Now I had to like him.

"Take care Alex"

"Yeah, seeya."

Hang up. Lift receiver. Slam it down on the phone's base. Lift. Repeat.

My mind went nuts. I imagine dark fireside pow-wows with evil eyes and a dagger piercing some doll with a lock of my pubic hair. Or some trial-esque drunken porch chat with everyone swearing to never speak to me. Shit. I replay it in my head over and over again. The phone rings.

"Hello?"

"Is stagjhgakeliaelae there?" I couldn't make out the name.

"Nope, wrong number, sorry."

Then I realized this wasn't my phone. It rings again and I have the brains not to answer it, thus successfully dashing the "a strange guy answered your phone" line being delivered to the phone's actual owner. Proud of myself but still reeling from the hook-up convention news, I start trying to remember the numbers of guys I know.

There's a point in all of this life stuff where you just have to sigh and smile. I'm looking for that right now, but at least I'm looking vigorously. And how am I searching? Well, through repetitive motions and a lot of jumping and nodding. What you may ask? (And you may.) Well, good old-fashioned air guitar, head banging and jumping up and down. If it was a sport then- well, if it was a sport then I'd actually play a sport.

So here I am, rocking out, taking care not to trip on boxes in my fury (I did that earlier before I got in the groove). Why the happiness? Look now inquisitive one, who said I was happy? I've been shit on by a ton of old friends and I'm borrowing a phone from an NSync lover and the whole situation hasn't exactly blossomed to my advantage. But therein lies my reason: it certainly can't hurt to just get happy. Do It Yourself. Christ, the whole world is gonna spin and toss your dumb ass off the ride without a second thought if you just mope around. I figure I have some time before my phone buddy upstairs gets back, so I take some time to get psyched up with my internal head music.

I'm justifying this so hard because I'm sure I'd look like a freak to anybody watching. And its that fear that makes me halt in mid jump and slap my feet on the floor with a halt when I see a shiny gleam from a window outside my window...It belongs to another apt. building a bit away, and it looks like its just someone moving around....but what if its a telescope? A voyeur....maybe some really beautiful--wait, no, they are never model-esque, but rather a girl-next-door with untapped beauty kind. Ohh yeah, that's it. And she was busy um...just looking in people's windows in the middle of the day. Okay, far-fetched I know, but IF it is true, then I need to cut it out. Tease the poor thing.

I smile and I have no real concrete reason why.


Once I catch my breath about ten minutes later, it was time to dial the only two numbers I could remember.

"Keith!" It was a lot of rings, but finally he picked up.
"Hey, just leave your name and number and we'll get back to ya-" shit. Fooled by a machine.
Beep.
"Alright, whats up. Its Alex. I know what you're thinking, 'where the hell are you?' but I'm actually right here in Johnshall...but maybe you knew that by caller id or something. Anyways, I hope you're doing alright man, I miss you buddy, we got to get together. Give me a ca-" Waitaminute, gotta remember,
"I'll call you okay man, talk to you soon. And tell-"
Beep.

I'm not the best at leaving messages.

Second call is a wrong number, but I think of another one to dial anyways. One of those friends that remained the same for years and years, more of a drinking buddy style. Okay so he was just a drinking buddy and our entire sober conversation could fill a chicken nugget dip cup, but I knew his number from the beginning s of our nights on the town. He was basic, fun and-

Well and right now if he was even home it'd be worth alot to me.

" Christian."
"No. No fucking way. Duuuuuude! Fucking Alex! Alex my man! How are you?"
"I'm doing okay man, its good to find you man, I'm in town-"
"What are you doin tonight man? Are you here for the weekend?"
It dawned on me at that point that I had no idea what day it was. Apparently a Friday (I think).
"Well and then some-"
"Fucking RAD man....you HAVE to come over to this party, its next door, my neighbor is chill, he'll be cool with you showing up-"
"I'd love to man but I don't want to jump in on your thing man...I mean, I can just hook up with you later if you want."
Dead silence.
I would apologize for all the language Christian uses but that might mean I feel guilty enough to omit it. But its is just the way you talk to him, his rites and rituals that he requires in order to understand or be understood. I know that holds no water whatsoever, but trust me (if you can yet) Christian is a good guy. Don't disappoint me by being picky on his vocabulary. You don't yell at your grandmother for having a southern accent do you? Nope. Because that's just the way she talks.

"I swear to god you cocksucker, if you don't come tonight I will eat your mother." He was laughing, but secretly it reminded me I should call home.
"Nothing you haven't done before shithead-"
"You bastard, she told you!"
I promise you, this is how you have to communicate with him. Full, clean remarks will get you nowhere with Christian.
"Alright, where and when, I don't have a car-"
"Where are you now?"
Now this was an interesting moment do I give away my situatio-
"I'm at Janet's" I guess I do. Energy must still be up.
"Dude, we're like three blocks away. You know where Clarence Street is?"
"Mmm-hmm."
"Don't give me that mmm-hmm shit, tell me if you're with me or not motherfucker..." he was laughing so hard, it genuinely seemed like he was happy to hear from me, which felt good.
"Yeah dumbass, I know where it is"
"We're like two doors from that Chinese place, 276 wait, no, 274 its my neighbor. He's got some stupid blue bunny thing painted in his stupid inner-city-mini-flowerbed in front- you can't miss the damn thing."
"There's like 4 Chinese places on that street, what the fuck are you talking-"
"Don't start with me you-"

Okay, so I went around and round with him for a few more minutes, got directions and effectively had my first real meal and party all lined up. I hung the phone up a lot more lightly this time and I had a genuine smile on my face.

I laid back on the floor, where I started out the day. Christian didn't have any idea who most of my friends at school had been. He was an outside-the circle buddy who I could always count on to meet me downtown even if he was in no condition to do so. Don't get me wrong, he wouldn't drive, but he exudes such an impish charm how do you turn down someone who says "Baby, if you take me downtown I'll love you more...than...I...already...do..." no matter how drunk he is. Say yes and he's your buddy, say no and he'll find someone to take him and the whole time he'd loudly exclaim how that fascist murder wanted HIM to drive but luckily he found YOU to take him where he needed to go.

It was good to be back in the fold even if I was still stuck in the crease.

Shit. Now I had to get a shower.

The shower looks a lot trickier than it really is, and I survey the whole situation before proceeding. Janet left some soap in there and about a half dozen bottles of hotel-shampoo, which is nice because that's my preferred brand. Contrary to my other preferences, the lack of what must have been her light fixture means I have to leave the window shade open, and the lack of AC means the window itself might as well be open too.

In the shower I run through some funny options.

Okay, I need psuedo-quick cash that doesn't require a lot of effort or a phone. I need an address, but worse comes to worse I just use Janet's (I remember how she showed me her mailbox latch was broken and you really didn't need a key--that was three years ago). Now I need to eat, I need a car, and I need some lifestyle (so some weekends off)... The top five jobs from this vantage point:

5. Fast Food: Okay, you laugh, but I need quick money, and for the three weeks I have I'll get free meals and maybe a nice girl that will be cool enough to date (and obviously in a similar economic situation). Therefore, I might have a place to crash when the Janet-apartment deal ends. The meals are the big plus tho, until I realize how fat I'll be by the time 3 weeks goes by.

4. Pizza Delivery: Okay, so I'd need a car for this one, but maybe if I just take certain shifts I could borrow Christian's car or something. Even a couple of nights a week you can make a lot if you manage to get good areas. But, I've never done this before and it scares me. Pizza delivery drivers and their "home base" remind me of a prepubescent "Taxi" episode.

3. Astronaut: That'd be cool.

2. Get a job on the Ahner-Jackson campus. Now this would piss the hell out of anyone that has this grudge against me--and that'd be fun. Plus its likely to pay well and be easy to get. I'd need to use the bus, which would bite, but maybe I can swing living quarters somehow. Who knows. But this might be a keeper.

1. Professional Masseuse: seriously, how many poor women go to those day spas? But, there must be a lot of ugly old women too. Okay, bad example. This shouldn't be number one, but I'm in the shower and it sounded good for about 2 minutes.

New #1: Coffee shop guy: Now that would be cool. It'd be food service, but with a cool yuppie twist. Something about java taps that seems inherently cooler than even a similar paying job at Wendy's. Now if I knew much about music I'd do the record store thing, and don't think I know anything about coffee either, I just know a lot about magazines. I could talk any yuppie up about anything in their mags. I'm a periodical pariah. Hell, throw in an hour at the local library's internet computer and I'll be up to date with anything...and that means connections and tips and jobs....

I thought about this too long, the shower's gone cold and I'm just standing there, thinking. That glint again from out the window! I bet its a windchime. Shit. Of course, there's no shower curtain, Janet took that (and for the record, she is very possessive of that Fish-adorned curtain, I was there when she picked it out). A window shade pull later and I was getting dressed and drying myself in the dark. Luckily I had found a towel I found in Janet's stuff. Did I look good? Well, probably not, but I did find some Dep to tame my coif. Of course it looks like the goop Janet used twenty years ago to compliment her Def Leppard patch, but it works wonders on my ratty young-Christian Slater look.

It is getting to be afternoon and the sun dips just enough to throw a beam or two straight to my eyes in the former living room. The view- Shit. I looked outside and noticed the cord, then noticed the phone, then noticed that someone might notice upstairs if I forgot to get that thing back up there. I have the presence of mind to write the number down that was scrawled on the top for future reference. Okay. Time for a trick. Right foot on ledge. Left foot inside for now, leaning on right so head and right hand are outside...left arm up and holding on the top of the window for dear life. Slowly... The sounds of the cars below give that don't-bother-looking-if-anyone-sees-you lesson that you learn by looking down for the first time. Shit I'm high up. The whole city has a flavor to it now tho, even "out here."
For a moment I realize that even for a small one, the fact that Johnshall is a working city is impressive. Buildings and shapes are touched by a slowly descending sun. That aware feeling that behind every batch of buildings is another set...and then another... Its a nicely overwhelming feeling. All those windows and lofts and drapes and blinds and little people and little lives and little movements. The likeable feeling that you're comparatively small. Its not altogether different than when I would travel with my parents on car trips: that mind-blowing concept that every car had someone going somewhere, all had little lives, missions, thoughts and ideas. It was comforting that you weren't totally off the path if you have people near you doing something similar, but what is opposite is the weird feeling that you aren't all that special or unique. You buy a CD and even if its something totally obscure you can bet somewhere several people did the same thing. Maybe you meet someone just like yourself, but instead of being excited you're a little depressed because it means you're just a little less different. But looking at the face of a city, even a small one, is pretty interesting. I can hear someone listening to a baseball game on a radio nearby, and I see a woman watering plants a few buildings over on her balcony (I wish I had a balcony--wait, this isn't even my apartment). She's still wearing her work clothes, a gray suit with a badge of some kind pinned on a lapel. Or maybe she's going to work, a later shift. Or maybe its not a badge, but a corsage and she's just attended a funeral. She looks like an old friend's mother. Allen's. I've only seen her in the photo albums he showed me, albums he showed me on our first week of college. She had died recently before he left his father and siblings for school. Allen's an incredible guy. I need to look him up- soon. I would have called him earlier, but I have no idea what his number is, and Christian and Egg wouldn't have known. Allen was too good for them, and I mean that in the nicest way. He probably would have bored Christian ("what? you don't drink? what are you fucking amish or something?") and he wasn't a threat for Egg since he was always just so nice to everyone, and he only liked one girl ever really, for college at least. The baseball game on the shitty Radioshack radio below me reminded me of him too. Man. All these thoughts. And everyone in all these windows have their own histories and friends and emotions and memor-
I relax too much, and slip. SHIT. My hands grab the sides of the windows and I don't fall down thank god...Luckily my left leg gets caught. But it is scary! My heart leaps out and my eyes have a hard time focusing with a delirious look down.
I'm crumpled up, hugging the window. It is stupid because I'm totally safe now, mostly inside. But it gets me. I can't stop breathing hard. All the introspection about cities, people, souls, blahblahblah its all put into terrible focus with the oh-shit factor. I look for the phone.
It sits about 10 feet behind me on the floor, cord still strung out and up the top of the window to its real home above me. I take a deep breath...trying hard to regain some balls here...
Mission Impossible time. I back roll from the window to the phone, which I'm sure looks cool, but it screws up my hair and I know gives me a streak of floor-dust-crap down the back of my carefully tucked white t-shirt. Dammit. Wait tho-it's Mission Impossible time, I can't be stopped. I pick up phone, jog (all of 10 feet, for no reason) to the window, one hand on the phone, the other grabbing the window side, I plant a foot, swing out, reach high, and lay-up-toss the phone back into the window 6' above me. Fucking incredible. Swing in, dive in, and I'm back on the floor clumsily, but proud. Everything was exact, perfect. At least it felt like it. I sat, tired, for about five minutes.

Euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh, euanh....

The awful noise was coming from a phone off its hook. Wait, I must have tossed it far enough inside that the impact knocked the receiver off its base....right? Sure agent Alex. A glance at my the window reveals a thin white cord stretched taut from top to bottom. Uh-oh. I make it to the window in time to hear the baseball game broadcast get noticeably quieter and a gruff voice yell,
"Hey! Hey did anyone drop a phone?"
I peek out. Shit. Not only did I not perform some sort of graceful Mission, but apparently I missed the window and bludgeoned the phone against the side of the building. I figured this out because the phone's base looked like someone threw it into a building. Miraculously, the main wall cord was holding it all together despite what might have looked like my best attempts to make it snap under duress. A floor down, an older gentleman who apparently likes baseball was trying to get a decrepit hand around the receiver, which dangled perfectly at his window like he had an incoming call.
"Um, its from the apartment above me--I think" Need to sound unsure.
"so, I'll pull it up and take it up to them."
"Okay. Sure. Whatever."
His words trailed off and the din of a baseball crowd trailed in as he turned up the volume on his game and forgot everything immediately. Or did he see it all? Doubt it. But now I had a witness that this phone fell, so I certainly didn't pull it down. As if I'd have to call him into court. After yanking it up I gave the wall cord a surprisingly light yank and it came right out. Noise stopped. I quickly ran up a flight of stairs to a door identical to the one on my/Janet's place (save the palm leaf cross tacked up approximately four years ago and never removed). Dropping the phone with the cord neatly wrapped around it like a babe in swaddling clothes, I wondered if I should leave a note. All evidence left means questions, so I let them deal with the issue that a babe phone is sitting at their door, slightly used and beaten, and needing the attention of its plug. Of course, I dash back down to the apartment at an absurd speed so even the termites would have a hard time placing me at the scene. Phone taken care of (itís a wonder I didn't just do that to begin with) and now Iím all nice and sweaty and shitty. Another shower?
Oh why not. I mean, if I take a shower twice in one hour, it means Iím extra clean right? I slump on a box. Actually, I think I can be pretty confident that there were not many people today trying to lob telephones into nearby domiciles. At least none with a Mission Impossible theme. So doI feel unique after my tiny ordeal? Yes.

I take another quick shower, freshen up, and try to look halfway decent. Never too early to start drinking with Christian, and suddenly I'm nervous like a date or performance. Time to relax, but still have the air that things are starting to look up. They just have to be. One small air-guitar session, a breath check and a peek up the stairs and inside the hallway to see if the phone got to go inside (it hadn't yet) and I was off.

Real contact with real people was about to begin... And with that, the reset button on the Nintendo game of my life was officially pressed.

The clouds make good on their threat of rain and start throwing a rain drop or two on my walk to the party.

But that didn't stop me from swaggering. Yes, that's right: swaggering. When I left the apartment I was as nervous as a comic book and videogame boy at an eighth grade dance, but as I walked....Well, as I walked the confidence built itself a nice tower. The city was barely lit in a pre-night glow between rain clouds and I felt good in it. I had a place to go, people to meet and I could be whomever I wanted to be. And by the time I was where I am now, in line of sight of the garden gnomes in front of his neighbors, the night was a different beast. And so am I. I picture a spider-like figure leaping from building to building above me, chasing some flying villain and tackling him into the street below. My mind runneth pleasingly amok.

Nirvana playing my head ("Drain You" for all you musi-philes out there, and please don't get the impression I know anything about music) and a skip in my step, the rain stops its pitiful effort to soak anything as I reach the charmingly overused steps of a Johnshall City downtown mini-house. If you can, imagine that positively suspenseful bass-line build up in that Nirvana song and picture my ascending the steps. If you've never heard that song, or have no one to borrow the disc or tape from, then just know its a fantastic little crescendo and- well, hell its cool and I'm scared it's only a few years away from becoming Classic Rock. Anyways, I climb the short stairs like a music video and I can hear some music inside, people milling about within the windows (I see one lanky, bird-like gentlemen and -yikes- a very cute earth-tone-clothing girl). Except for any blunders that could happen inside, this moment of whether to just knock on the door, open it cautiously, or just barge on in is crucial in the party-going scheme. I could smell barebeque out back, so people must be spread everywhere. And did anyone in the window see me? Do they know I'm standing at the door? Could I make any bigger deal out of this?

Fate smiles. The door opens. Cute girl exits (damn!) and smiles at me before letting me in, like I must have meant to walk on in. She lights a cigarette and stays on the porch (yes!) and I politely close the door, look for Christian and stop all my ridiculous exposition.

"Dude!"
The call came from beyond the narrow hallway that bridged the only first-floor rooms: the multi-function giant room in the front, and the tiny kitchen in the back that lead to the grill outside.

"What-the hell-is up?" We do a half-hug that nearly pours his plastic yellow cup of beer all over me.

"Man, it is SO good to see you....Shit! I'm glad you came. Seriously. Hey, let me introduce you.." My first scan of the room showed a strange mix of dirty white hats and dreads, peircings and polos. Not on the same people, of course. Christian looks confusingly around the room.

"I don't know half of these people....Where am I? What have I pulled you into?" He grins. He's kidding, but only half-way. He finalizes, "Let's go outside."

Through the Dixie-Cup sized kitchen and outside we went, to a relatively nicely kept rectangle of backyard. Fenced and more dirt than grass, it still had a bird bath and some really unrealistic looking pink flamingos (when will they EVER get those things right?). But, our target is the huddle of three people around the grill.

"Alex, meet Jeff, Linda and Kyle." It is absolutely fine if you forget those names, since that is the impression Christian gives me, and they look like 30-somethings who are happy to have anyone visit, and who Christian has pseudo-conned into throwing a little shindig. And if I didn't catch that vibe, the sheer speed of the encounter clued me in. Christian wisks me away with a "we need to get this boy a beer" and in seconds we're in the crowded bathroom where the keg rests among a tub of ice. There's about 20 or so people in the house and outside, and 6 are trying to maneuver in this room alone. A lonely little-brother character operates the tap and apparently has for most of the aprty so far. People wait for their beers, but Christian commands attention, and a beer for an old friend, who he introdces to everyone with a shout. Everyone is not only not upset that I'm cutting in line, but they all seem genuinely happy to meet me, and after recieving the yellow cup filled with yellow beer I promptly forget all of their names in one sip.

"We must catch up man....Here, to the porch..." I'm following like a puppy, but Christian has a very ring-master quality to him and his effect is mysteriously widespread in the house. He's a gregarious personality and I feel lucky to be his special guest.

The porch...The PORCH! That's where the cute girl went. My idiot instinct is preparing for full on-early-party embarrassment apparently. We get out there to get away from the people and music (and the music does suck; its MatchCandleCreedBox) We get the terriffic bonus of an after-rain evening sky, old friends, beer, and a new cute girl. Dear God: Thanks; love, Alex. She is sitting post-cigarrette on the steps. Christian collapses on the swing, which creaks with terrified exhaustion. I look and sit in an uncomfortable looking wooden chair nearest to "the girl."

"Christian." She calls.
"Oh! Dude! Alex, this is Heather..Heather, Alex. You guys are both cool...know that."
We laugh to ourselves a bit and Heather continues,
"Nice to meet you. Christian, that's not what I was gonna ask but, when do we eat?"
"I don't know. Soon, soon, soon."
"I wasn't sure how long I would stay."
"What? Heather, Darling, you musn't entertain such fucked up thoughts. Chill. It's a nice night."

His logic was good enough for her, and she rested her head against the banister of the front steps and stared out past the houses across the street and into the clouds beyond. I didn't even care if I was in the conversation...I could stay invisible on a pleasant night like this.

"Alex!"
"Yes?"
"Dude. You must tell me what the fuck is going on.... How have you been? What brings you here? What the hell happened to you after grad? The public wants to know!"

Shit. Well, I knew that eventually these questions would come up. Even more, I knew for the last few minutes that Christian would ask them. And normally I would have either the truth or at least a well brewed response ready. But the relaxed atmosphere and confidence had blocked out all that pre-here nonsense and I probably looked a lot more surprised than I should have. That, and now I was answering these questions in front of the only girl so far that had caught my eye. Plus, how much does Christian really need to know?

"Boy, what the hell? Gimmie the scoop? I wanna know what you are up to? Like are you and Tammy still..."

Time to cut him off and spill some.

"No. No. Here, I'll give you the 411...Its just a long story so I'm shortening it. Just thinking for a sec..."
"I know it takes you longer to think than most motherfuckers."
"Damn you boy, damn you. Alright, here we go."

Heather is listening, and even looks over at me for the story. This was not a bad nor good thing.

"Um..well.....Chris, alright. Let's just take it from Graduation. So I had no job lined up, just plans to move up to Ohio with Tammy. So, I did and it was okay. I mean, it really, really was okay for a little while. She got me a job at this office-place, I had to wear a tie,"

"No way."

"Yeah, it sucked. But anyway, it was decent money and Tammy and I were happy I guess for awhile." I catch myself being way too general. Christian doesn't want huge details, but at the same time Heather is watching intently and taking this all in. This might be a good time to think aloud about this.

"But beneath this surface of what seemed like a good idea at the time, there was like, no more connection for Tammy and I. I mean, there was nothing to do up there. I had no other friends, and Tammy and I had drifted apart during my senior year anyways."
"She didn't go to school with you?" Heather interjects.
"No, she was at Erasmi College, in Ohio...she transferred her freshman year there."
"And you graduated from?"
"Ahner-Jackson."
"Of course" she gave a look to Christian, doing the math on how we knew eachother and apologized,
"Okay, go ahead, sorry to interrupt."
"No, that's cool...I 'm sorry if this is boring, I don't mean to ramble."

Christian puffs his chest a bit, "Get on with it fucker, I want another beer."

"Ok, ok....well, things were empty. I mean, I had a job, and a car and a girlfriend and a life, but they were all distorted versions of what I wanted. So I left."
"What do you mean left?" Christian isn't satisfied.
"Well, I mean. Something happened that woke me up a bit, nothing with Tammy, but just an epiphany of sorts. And I uh, sold my car, took my savings, broke it off with Tammy, bought a plane ticket and came here."
"So WHEN did all this happen?" Christian began to understand how recent this all was.
"Um. About three days ago."
"And where are you now? Like where are you staying?"
"Janet's. She moved out but I'm hanging at her place for the last couple of weeks of the lease til I get on my feet." This sounded much better than I thought it would, more like I planned it and less like a last-ditch mooching.
"Wow man. Well I'm glad you're here. Heather here just broke up with her boy too- ya know, ya know..." He winks and nudges his shoulder at me as he gets up for a beer. Christian crosses in front of me and I barely catch Heather's grimace at his revelation and whacks him on the leg.
"Asshole."
"Whatever beautiful, I'd go after you but I'm not into that monogamy thing...know what I mean man...Haha, HA!" He is such a playful loser. He pats my shoulder and scrambles inside. In one beat of the moment, Heather and I both realize we are outside together and alone. I don't think (this is all guesswork) that either of us has a good reason to go back inside.

I hope.

"So. So um, sorry to go on and on like that." I bite my lip.
"No, that's cool. I was interested. I mean, that's a real story. Do you feel better now? I mean, now that you've moved?"

I pause too much.

"Yeah. Yeah its better. Starting over tho. Trying to get back in touch with everyone from school and stuff. It's hit and miss."
"I hear ya. I knew Allen. He went to AJ right?"
"Oh yeah! I love Allen...He's so great. I need to call him. How do you know Allen?"

I finish the question, hopefully one of many, and Christian pokes his head out the door, and the rest of him appears soon after, bearing two plastic beers which he hands to us.

"Sorry to leave you ladies alone again, but I have to go put a fire under Jeff's ass to get those burgers done."
Who's Jeff? Oh yeah, the griller. The owner of this house. A gulp of beer later and the name was forgotten.
I started to get him back for his "Ladies" crack but he zipped out. I look to see Heather's mood. She had looked like she could get up and leave, but now she shrugs and leans back with her beer, appearing content that all her needs are met.

Our gulps of beer and lack of meals have a quick effect on us. I get ballsy.

"So, what's your story?"
"You mean, with my recent ex? No story to tell."
She smiles to herself tho, so she might tell. Her brunette hair is stringy and hangs nearly into her beer, just a few inches past her shoulders. Her dress is a bizarre brown/green pattern that makes my eyes hurt to figure out, but its long enough that it rests on her sandaled feet. But even sitting she's hidden, with her knees a bit scrunched up, and her really adorable face hiding behind strands of wiggly hair. A tiny instant-crush going on here with me? Probably.

She breaks the silence.

"Long story short, Boy meets girl after girl hadn't been with boy in awhile, boy woos girl, girl falls for boy, boy obviously hadn't fallen for girl like girl thought and girl gets her heart popped like a balloon when boy drops her on the same day she gets fired from her crappy job."
"Wow."
"Yeah."
"When did this happen?"
"About a month ago. I'm uh...." She looks away a bit, smacks her lips once and raises her eyebrows, "Living at home now. Never thought I'd be back there."
"Got any extra rooms?"

We laugh. That helps a lot.

"So your name is Heather....Heather what?" I'm asking questions so that if later I make an ass out of myself and start babbling at least I hadn't been doing it the whole time. Plus, it gets her enganged. Or annoyed, I forget which.
"Heather Pearson."
"Cool."
"Well I didn't have much choice."
"I had an ex-um..ex-bosses name that was heather. When I, when I worked at a...a video store."

There was a droplet of silence wherein I tried to see my reflection: how obvious was that?

"You, um... you were going to say you had an ex-girlfriend named was heather."
"I was?"
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure."
"Well, yeah..um..that too." I smiled charmingly. she didn't, which killed my smile, then she smiled and I tried to look like I'd been smiling the whole time but it came out goofy looking...imagine that.

It was uncomfortable for a sec. But there was an outcry in the silence that said we didn't want to join the party inside. Maybe her reasons were because the music was bad, or the people were stupid, but my reason was her. And so for that reason, I had to test the water.

"Hey you, ah. You want a beer? I'll go get us one if you want."
"Yeah. That'd be nice. Thanks."
I get up, and by the time I get near the door Christian comes flying out, excited about dinner.

"Time to eat guys, c'mon I'll get you in first..."

And he does. We follow him in (Heather goes in front of me, and I notice she's just slightly shorter than me and ah, well, very shapely as the dress floats against different sides-ahem, I'll just, ha, digress now). He gets us to the grill and we get our typical picnic fare from some guy (Jeff?) And eat. It all happens very fast and I'm not sure if it's the beer or the good time or Heather or just life. Things feel good, and we eat out front again, on the porch, her in the swing and me in "my chair" which she dubs as we return. Chris got us beers because the line was too long and he joins us on the steps in a nice bit of musical chairs.

"So Alex," Chris begins, and I have to admit that I'm tensing up a bit, scared he'll ask something that for whatever reason will put a bad light on in front of Heather.
"Yeah man."
"You got a job yet?"
"No. No not at all. Why? Hey where do you work now man?"

Totally rude but totally Christian, he chews and talks at the same time, but with wild hands that distracts the real impoliteness of it.

"Well there's this big museum downtown you might remember, and they hired all these extra people for this swanky black tie and champagne millenium bash so I needed cash and I did it and I met this kick ass old man with like tons of money but he was really cool and he said to me, 'Christian my boy, you need a job with more ooOOOOMF' and he said it just like that, and he introduced me to this..."

I apologize to any fans of Christian here, because I totally stopped paying attention to him and just sort of looked off a bit, and around. Thinking. This was great. The evening felt good. I had a buzz from the beverage, finally a good meal in my stomach, and an incredibly interesting and likeable girl to my right, swinging lightly so her dress ebbed in the air, and the moment seemed framed right, you know?

Then, the ultimate blunder, or the ultimate misfortune happened. I look over and she's looking at me. Not paying a lick of attention to Christian's story, and I make two guesses: 1) she saw me staring off, or maybe even at her and she's deciding that I'm a freak or 2) She was looking at me.

I come back to reality. She looks away.

"...and so all I have to do, is massage this old lady like twice a week and I get fucking 15K a year! Isn't that great!"

My eyes are wide open with surprise, partially because of his job, and partially because I realize I have no idea how his story got there.

"Wow. I hadn't heard that full story Chris, that's awesome!" Heather exclaims, lying. She didn't hear it that time either.
"So, anyway man, if you need a gig, I can see if this chick needs like a yard guy or toast butterer or something. She's loaded." Something tells me there's a point when a woman over 50 isn't referred to as a chick anymore, but I'm not sure when it is, but I figure Chris doesn't know either.
"Well Alex, if that doesn't work out there's a volunteer job at the center I work at that..."
I cut her off but the joke is worth it,
"Maybe I wasn't clear enough, I will need to exchange my services for that which your people call money."
Nope, it wasn't worth it. I cut her off and she isn'tthrilled. My sarcastic side lashes out a bit more with beers inside me.
"What I was going to say was, they've been meaning to make that position a paying one, and the last person just quit so its open again.....but of course, maybe we don't have room for sarcastic asses..."

Ouch!

"HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA" Christian loves this. Laugh it up fuzzball.
"Sorry..."
"S'okay, it was funny...just not then." She smiled and leaned back in the swing. It creaked signifigantly less for her than Christian.
"Ugh. Well I'd love to stay and watch you two go at it," I know he means fighting, but we both take it as something else and we both show obvious signs of negative reaction...a closing up...
"...but I've been neglecting my other posse. If you come in Alex, I'll introduce you..or, whenever, no rush." He looks at me and genuinely means it, and smiles out of the corner of his mouth an indication that its okay for me to stay out here. It is quite possibly the single most genuine thing Christian had ever conveyed to me.

He leaves again. Heather and I look around. There's a bit of silence.

"Soooo.... Come here often?"
She smiles. I do too.
"Um, actually I hadn't been down here before. I met Chris with some friends at a bar and I helped him hook up with a friend of mine, so we've hung out since. I don't know who most of those people are in there. You know anyone?"
"Nope. Just Christian."
"So. Alex." She stretched, sort of distracting herself to numb the question's weight a bit.
"Yes?"
"Where did you grow up?" Not the question I was looking for, but it'll do.

We talk forever. I tell her about my growing up an only child in Williamsburg, VA and how I haven't seen my parents in a year, and how that makes me feel so guilty that it extends the avoidance. My relationship is, or was, healthy with them, and I care a lot about them. I talked to them on the phone about two weeks ago and I told them everything was great, which is a difficult lie to suddenly overturn when you left everything that was going "good" in their eyes. I tell her about nights alone thinking at the river shore, and getting caught by the police making out in the back of a '76 Buick Century on the Colonial Parkway.

She tells me about the sky in Baltimore. How the water seems more friendly there, and how she wanted to be a marine biologist because she loved dolphin, but she studied English when she finally got to school (Wilkerson University, just outside Baltimore). She has an older brother, Mike, whom she loves and is very close to (but not in an Angela Jolie way she points out) and that her parents used to be very close but seem very distant now, even with her moving back in. Maybe especially so, I point out and she reluctantly agrees. She tells me that she's scared of the dark and of the sketchy parties in Baltimore she would frequent before her senior year, (when they moved just outside Johnshall for her father's work). She tells me how she would con guys she didn't even like into taking her to Orioles games when she didn't have any money, and how much she missed those games being stuck in Johnshall. And I have no idea how we will remember any of this later but we are so sincere and open and it feels really....really........nice?

By the time I finish my addendum on my own love for baseball (picking on the bat boys from the stands) I am off my chair, on the porch, and very near to her, and she has leaned forward with her hands tucked in her lap. We're close. Not that close, but not terribly far.

"Well no matter how mad those bat boys get, its still not appropriate at a family game to flip me off so many times....two wrongs don't make a right.....I learned that much from my mother." I learned far more than that, but I'd be hard pressed to admit it right now. Not now, when I'm busy climbing out of the hole all those wrongs made.

I pause for a bit...then continue,
"And I guess in my life I'm about average right now; one wrong for every right. Its not a bad average I think. Of course, that's assuming that breaking even is a good thing..." my words trail off and I start looking for that lost, deflated, why-did-you-make-me-listen-to-you look in her eyes. I don't find it. Its amazing. She's alert, breathing AND listening to me.

I think I blink once in a five minute period of looking at her.

"What is it?" she pleads, obviously not as taken with herself as I am.
"I mean, did you understand that? I'm pretty confusing sometimes and most of the time I bore my self-"
"Okay. Shut up."
I have a habit of inducing that remark quite well. She sits up, and looks like she's going to go somewhere.
"Um-Okay."
"SHHH."
"Ok-"
"Shut up! SHHHHHSHHSSH!" I listen this time.
"You're cute."
"Thank-"
"SSSSSHHH!" My learning curve is dangerously close to flatlining.
"But you're trying too hard. I'm gonna go get a beer and talk to a guy in there."
I raise a finger like a school boy. She grips it and pulls it back. It hurts.
"LET ME FINISH."
I nod.
"I AM GOING to talk to that guy that was pouring for everyone with the keg. It's a non-threatening conversation that should not concern you right now. He's a good friend."

I keep my mouth closed. But try to talk, of course.

"Euiiike A UUther?" I mumble through closed lips. I am an idiot, for those of you keeping a tally.
"What? Like a brother? Well not that close. I guess if he's like a brother he'd be like a..."
"A wuuhddul uuther?" There is a pause, and she is graciously letting me finish my question. "Ooooorrrah, a iigg uuther?"
"A little brother or a big brother?"
I nod, confident that all my doofus-talk was interpreted correctly.
"Well, a little brother I guess....Yeah."

If it is possible to grin both happily and wickedly while keeping one's mouth completely shut, then I have just accomplished this. If not, then I tried it, and I look like an idiot.
She furrows her brow for a second.
"I don't get it. Anyways. You wait here, or go flirt or chum around. I want to give you an hour and decide if you're still cute then."
She touches my face. It takes longer than she meant it to.
"See..ya." She leaves.
The door shuts and I'm left alone, but not unhappily, on the porch.

I exhale.

Two hours more at the party leaves us with only the stragglers. The gathering was near dead when she gave us the egg-timer cute test, and now I'm left talking to someone whose nickname is "Klepto" and has kept me on the subject of dirt bikes for half an hour. Heather rescues me.

"Alex!"



Thank God. I excuse myself and move quickly to her. She looks pleased to see me and takes my arm (or she's just tired and cuddly).



"That guy's name is Klepto."

"I know, you still have your wallet?"

I check. Oh yeah, I don't have one. So technically, I don't still have one.

She sighs hard. The party hasn't been raging but now its certainly dead though its not terribly late. Christian seems particularly aware of this, pacing about between friends, unsettled and aware that it will end soon. I have never seen Christian at the end of a party. He's a lone-ranger, John Wayne party type that is forever traveling to the next. One long, divine duty.

Heather nods toward him.

"Look at him."

"Yeah." I am very eloquent.

"He's like a cowboy...time to move off into the sunset..."

MY GOD. I resist the urge to jump up and down and shout that I was thinking the same thing.

"Yeah." She has to be impressed.

Christian makes his way to us. His party barometer is showing negative readings.

"Okay. You know the hour. Time to get the fuck out of here." He speaks to us like he's a super-spy.

"What's your plan my man?" I speak his language. Heather doesn't care.

"Dude, its time for a recharge. Humphrey's for a cig and cola, then I know a place downtown with cheap Guinness poured right." His last bit sounds like a commercial, and it is: I know the bar, its one of his favorites.

"Well Humphrey's sounds good."

"Yeah, I agree." She agrees!

"I'll play it by ear...I guess I don't have any work to be at tomorrow." I completely and deliberately forget about my apartment mooch for the moment. No need to dwell in the negative.

"Yeah, we'll go. You ready?" She said "we'll!" Like as in--oh I'll shut up.

Christian looks around. He's happy to go with us, but wants a date in case we bail on future plans. A girl looks lonely near the house's stairs.

He points lightly.

"Two minutes. Meet me outside."

The floor almost slides him to her, and immediately they are deeply engaged in a Christian charm-fest. We leave the thinning ranks of a weak party to return to the porch where we had spent most of the party.

She lights a cigarette. I forgot she smoked. It was almost a turn off, but not right now.

Puff.

"So where do you live?"

"A few blocks away. Janet's place."

"Dunno her."

"She's very cool. You'd like her."

Puff.

"Cool."

"Where are you at? Where is...your parent's place..?" That was a tricky request: trying to ask where she lives but not trying to harp on a you-live-at-home thing.

Puff. Smile.

"Southside. In Endlewood, near Fantasy Records."

No idea where Endlewood is, but Fantasy Records....oh yeah.

"Oh I see, yeah, I know where that is." Small lie. Very small. I sort of knew.

Puff.

"You're cute when you lie a little. You smile too much when you do." She was smirk-smiling. It was adorable. I was terrified.

"Naw-I-uh...Well I know where..."

"You all ready to ditch this bomb?" Christian comes careening out the door, cute target girl in tow, saving my day as usual.

Puff. Discard. Stub out.

"You bet."

"Right on man."

We learn the girl's name is Becky. She's my age (so maybe I'll be referring to her as "woman") but you'd never be able to tell by looking at her tiny form. She has a very attractive look to her, but it looks like someone's been playing with her T.V.'s contrast knob; she has a bright short mop of glowing blonde hair laying on top of an entirely too tan face. Her tank top reveals more dark tans, and her tight, perfect jeans reveals that it was not "wash day" at the Becky home. I should point out that at Ahner-Jackson College she might be in the groups that attack cafeteria walls with construction paper and have puffy-paint covered plastic cups welded to their hands at all times. Not a bad thing; let me make that point. But the squinty bloodshot eyes, slightly off-kilter walk and immediate cuddling with Christian suggests that she might be lucky she got stuck with us. Christian was looking for a date to Humphrey's, not to his bed (not that he is oblivious to her good looks). Plus, he's goofy right now, but not drunk. She can't say that. Maybe even literally.



The cozy, small atmosphere of Humphrey's isn't uncommon in Johnshall, but its local and an old haunt so it works. The bells on the door jingle when we walk in. We get a good booth seat, ironically just across from where I sat with Janet. A round of non-alcoholic drinks and an order of fries later, we spring from our comfortable silence into a conversation about movies.



Christian likes comedies, particularly any involving Bill Murray, to whom he swears his fanhood.

Heather likes insightful movies that she says "touch a nerve in her age group" like Singles, Reality Bites and Jerry Maguire.

Becky likes the movie Scream, and some movie that had Tom Cruise in it; but it wasn't Jerry Maguire.

"Top Gun?" I ask. I swear to you I'm trying to help.

"No. No, I don't THINK so....Mmmayybe it's...no, no..."

We spend at least three minutes waiting for her to reveal the thought to us.

"I mean, was it really early in his career? Was he young in it?" Now Heather really is trying to help, where my help-o-meter is firmly turned off now.

"Was there big whooshing planes?" I make a plane noise. Christian snickers, Becky doesn't get it, and Heather thinks I'm being mean.

"No, no..." Thankfully we move on.

For the record, not that I was asked, I like movies that I have to see several times to understand, like Usual Suspects, or Transformers the Movie. You know, the deep ones.

Finishing the fries, and the colas doing nothing to wake us up (it just counters our leftover buzz) Christian brings up his favorite pub.

"C'mon guys...what are you gonna do? You HAVE to come...No sense not coming. Don't be fools. The powers of Guinness are too much for you..."

Then Heather speaks heresy:

"That's the fucking truth. I hate that stuff."

"God bless you child." Says Christian, aghast.

I'm wide eyed.

"You drink that piss at the party but you won't drink Guinness?"

Heather has a routine answer for this that she gives for my benefit, because Chris has obviously heard it before. Becky falls asleep against the wall.

"I've only had one thing in my mouth that had the same consistency as Guinness and I don't drink that either. Look, you guys can drink it all you want, but count me out and I'm not kissing either of you for the same reasons you all wouldn't kiss me after-"

Christian has had enough of the visual and explodes,
"Christ! I get the point! Enough already- shit, how many times have I heard this?"

I want to be sarcastic but true and offer to kiss Heather after she's performed her referenced scenario, but I don't think she'd appreciate it.

"Christian likes it because he swallows." I opt to say instead. When in doubt, insult your buddy.

"Dumbass, you wish."

Becky wakes up.

"Swallow...swallowin's for first time only. I hate that-" She makes a cute cartoon face with her finger in her mouth to suggest "yuk." We all look at each other.

"I think...I think I'm just gonna call it a night." Heather's bomb hits me hard. My heart sinks.

"Oh. Um. Okay." I'm stammering like an idiot. She stands to say her goodbyes. I have no idea what has made it so sudden...if she's been thinking of leaving since we got here, if it's the conversation, or what. What does that say about me? Even Christian is surprised and gives me a look...

"It was great hanging out with you again Chris, take care, ok?" He rises and hugs her quickly. Becky flaps a hand goodbye from her spot on the inside of the booth.

"Nice meeting you!"

"Nice meeting you too!"

They say in girlspeak.

"Alex, would you walk me out?"

"Sure. Sure sure sure...." I slide over and follow her out, feeling like a cross between a trip to the principal's office (wherein she'll let me down slowly that she really doesn't want anything relationship-y right now, and maybe I'll see her around) and a surprise birthday you know about (wherein she'll ask me to stay over, and we go have hot, wild, unbridled, we-hardly-know-each-other sex). Look, a guy can dream, right?

The door jingles and closes behind me.

"Hey, I um. I want to see if you'll go with me."

"Go with you where?" Or is this like the time I didn't know what "go out with" meant and I botched a potential relationship in the 8th grade and all subsequent relationships were marred by"oh shut up Alex.

"Well...I was thinking we could-"

Then, time stopped. She interrupts her own sentence with her cobra-strike move, rendering me helpless.



She kissed me.






Epilogue to the evening:


I won't go into details, at least not yet, but suffice it to say there is a bit more kissing, and really more holding and hugging than anything.

It happens in that swimmy, delightful haze of sleep that comes to both of us, curled in the moonlit (if empty) former apartment of Janet's on an old sleeping bag I'd found a day earlier. It's almost a romantic atmosphere.

There is no signal or even feeling that we should take it any faster or slower.

Just the legitimate, safe and unanimous feeling that we sure would like to wake up in each other's arms.



And so the next day we do.

After a slow and thoughtful ride, (we were both pretty happy and content with being quiet this morning) we pull up to Heather's house in her very used blue compact car. (A car that, for the record, smelled just like all used blue compact cars, and contained the exact same cassette tapes in the backseat that come standard with all used blue compact cars.)

Heather's Mom was outside, planting something near the mailbox. Probably a "did you sleep with my daughter?" detector.

I take forever getting out of her car, partially out of nervousness, and partially because I don't want to leap around in some glowy, "I got laid" fit. Not just because I didn't, but because I certainly don't want to appear too happy around her Mom. In my experience Mom's like a certain level of very polite nervousness.

Heather rounds me and waves me toward her Mom, who has appraoched us, discarded her bizarre-looking gardening gloves, and begun to smile. She hates me.

She's very attractive, but not in a "Mrs. Robinson" way. Short cropped black hair totally contrasts Heather's more brown locks. Her dirty jeans and jogging suit (that's never been jogged in) suggest she's in full gardening mode.

"Mom, this is Alex. I met him through Christian, I forgot I promised to hang out with him today, so I picked him up this morning after I left Becky's."

"Nice to meet you! Sorry I'm a bit rough looking." She extended her hand and I tried not to look utterly bewildered as to where that story came from. I wasn't prepped or in any way warned that the concocted tale would even be necessary much less used right in front of me. I wondered if she had even thought it through.

"Oh that's okay...Nice to meet you too. You have a lovely house." I gesture to the structure, having not even really looked at it yet.

"Thank you..." to me, then to Heather,

"Heather, there's some mail on the counter for you, and if you two are hungry I have some sandwich meat in the fridge." She was very nice, if a bit Mrs. Cleaverish. But An awful lot like my own mother, which made me relax.

We leave her to her gardening with a "thank you" and i wondered how far out of earshot I should get to say anything about her brilliant if a bit long-winded excuse. Or maybe not saying anything, and just being glad its not an issue would be the better way....yeah. I think that's it. Its not like I want to fight it, go straight up to her mother and proclaim that she was actually with me, and proudly, we didn't hump. I laugh at the thought, Heather asks "What?" and I say "Nothing."

Heather's was a two story cookie-cutter house alongside others this end of her neighborhood. It wasn't a bad thing, I mean, it was a nice house. But it was the kind you could navigate through and find the bathroom, bedrooms and hiding places to every house in a mile radius. Killer games of hide and seek would be dominated by the boy or girl that figured this out.

They had the strange (or maybe not so strange anymore) gestapo lawn-care maintenance policy, which had to maintain its perky behavior and uncluttered decor at all times. I follow Heather from the rocky single lane driveway to the house, and I think an alarm would ring if we didn't use the walkway provided. We step inside the pretty if gaudy door. I may have just met her Mom, but entering the house and seeing pictures on the wall remind me this is alien family territory. And peoples' Dads in family pictures always look goofy so not having met him mattered less all of a sudden.

She pinches me on the arm and takes off up the stairs, which requires me to follow her at a speed unhealthy for my coordination. I get up there, not far behind her, to see her slam the bathroom door in my face.
She cracks it.
"I'm taking a shower."
"Alone?!?"
I try to say it with such ridicule that even the most ardent heterosexual male would have reconsidered.
"Yes, alone. You doofus-" a word I've never liked, for the record,
"my mom is out back raking."
"Does she usually help?' I get a shove between the door and doorjam for that one, but at least she's smiling.
"Go right there on your right and that's my room--or used to be--or is...aaahhc."
She is obviously frustrated by the moving-back-in motif. I wander over to the doorway of her room. I was upstairs, in HER room. I kept repeating that to myself. The past tense of it makes it sound like I could be there again. It's a nice feeling.

The room she grew up in had been transformed by her parents while she was gone to school into a very nice (if not too brown) version of a hotel room. Heather's recent stay is evident all around the room, almost defying the "not my room anymore" air the room is trying to convey. There's a few tops across the chair, a pair of glasses and some spare change on the dresser next to several scrawled-on post it notes with the sticky side folded in. The very nice bed with the 1970's comforter was made quickly but not badly. The closet is open and I can see a dress or two.

It's a strange feeling like we are both guests here for the moment, even if she's been spending her nights here. A small room, but it's a room where no amount of paint, wallpaper or furniture could move the memories she had there. She'd stuck a few pictures in the corners of her mirror like people do in movies. Family shot, some girls I don't know. Ski trip. Woah. Ski trip with Allen? How'd she know Allen?

Sure enough there was a picture of Allen, really young (probably 7th grade or so) with Heather and what looks like both their mothers in the background. Wow, they were family friends. That is so weird. Allen's mother died a few years after the picture was taken, I gather. So that makes Heather a real find. Any friend of Allen's---

As threatened, the shower begins with a watery jolt in the next room, and I can see the door (which had been playfully left open--I was oblivious) is now closed...
I can assume that I have a couple of minutes to myself.
"Hey. Alex!"
So much for that. I go to the door so she can hear me over the shower's din.
"Yeah."
"Go into my purse and get the address book out--is little red thing."
"Little red books? What are you communist?"
"What?" She couldn't hear me. Or she was pretending to ignore my horrible jokes. She's a quick learner.
"Where is it?"
"In my purse."
"I didn't even know you kept a purse...where is that?"
"Um....try the closet, on the floor."
There is a pause in which I am suppose to be doing something. I finally move and meet the closet door and open it all the way. Yeesh. It feels weird. I'm not a "go through people's things" guy, much less what is obviously a closet left untouched by time. I didn't image her with a giant collection of dresses and what few were here were mostly from a high-school era (I think). The letter jacket was there, which made me laugh. Among her pairs of mixed-up shoes, at the foot of the smallish space, are two purses. One black. One white. It was like female Spy vs. Spy agents left them.

Thinking that everything from a bomb to feminine products could be in them, I return to the door for consultation.
"Can't find it."
"What?"
"What color is it?"
"Oh I'll get it when I get out...."
"Hey." I have an idea. After seeing that picture of her with Allen I think it's safe to say she might have Allen's number in her address book. I need to call him. As in NEED. He's a close enough guy that the fact I've been here more than a couple days means he had every reason to be mad at me. That, and I miss him. He'll be happy for me..that I found Heather. And I'd be happy just to talk to him. Hope he's not disappointed in me.
"What?" The steam quietly rises from underneath the door.
"Hey, is Allen's number in that book?"
There is a pause, but she's supposed to be taking a shower so it's not out of the ordinary. "Um." Pause.
"Allen Hamilton?"
"Yeah. Sorry-- I noticed the picture. He's a really good friend of mine from college. I wanna give him a ring."
I did the math in my head. Maybe that's how she knew me outside of Christian? Made sense.
"He used to talk about you alot."
Oh. Uh-oh. Used to. Maybe they aren't friends anymore. Hard to believe with Allen. But who knows. I'm stubborn, I'll try again.
"So do you have his number?"
"Maybe. Yeah." She sounds unsure.
"Alright. Well if- just don't worry about it...take your shower."
If Allen is a friend of the family, then I'll just ask her mother.

I try to be quiet but the stairs are made out of some uncarpeted "alarm wood" grown in Africa or something. The things make creaks and squaks like an old pirate ship. So I make it downstairs. Okay, skip asking mom, let's find the family addy book. To the kicthen and that desk/phone area everyone has... The kitchen is very clean, with a small dinette area dropped near the sliding glass door. The colors are a bright yellow and slow brown and the light is dipping in enough this afternoon to give it a really neat glow. The light from the foyer (near the stairs) shafts in beside the front door's flanking glass sides. I don't want to be real obvious, but I'm alone and I'm sure there's an address book here somewhere. Drawer. Drawer. Shuffle, shuffle. Nothing. There's one of those long drawers, and I try that. Bingo. A medium sized black address book with letter tabs hidden between scraps of paper is wedged between pens, a deck of cards and a small plastic tray of rubber bands. I start looking for "Hamilton" and a voice scares me out of my skin.
"Alex?" Shit. My heart is racing a mile a minute. She scared me.
She speaks from the sliding glass door which must have opened really quietly.
"Oh, yes. Hello. I'm sorry. Heather asked me to look up a number-"
"Oh, no problem. I can help you."
She hears the water on upstairs.
"Is she in the shower?"

Shit. Suddenly Heather and I weren't 23 and 24, but rather 16 and getting caught.
"Yes?"
How can I say that in the form of the question and not sound like an idiot?
"Okay. Here I'll help you find this."
She almost seems relieved that I'm not upstairs so my points rise in her eyes. I yield the book and the open drawer to her and step aside, into the light streaming from the corridor to the foyer.
"Now, what name were you looking for?"
"Oh. Hamilton. Alex-"
There was the sound of horses coming down the stairs. A quick look up and there was Heather in a towel, one hand on the banister he other keeping the towel on and I'm not sure why she looks so concerned and-
"Heather. Really." Heather's Mom sighs.
I think its not normal for a would-be (is?) boyfriend seeing your daughter in a towel. At least not with Mom there. But the mood was still.
Heather was just staring, now standing in the foyer. One hand still on her towel. The other at her side. It's hard to see her face with the sun in my eyes. She looks angelic, but the posture is too strange.
One more second of pause and I realize- She's shaking.

"Hamilton. Is that what you said? Or you mean Allen Bearce-"
Heather's Mom rambles, oblivious until Heather cuts the scene for her with the knife of the stillness.

"Mom."
"Heather honey get upstairs, you'll catch a cold-"
"Mom." The second time was so serious I think I'm going to faint.
What the hell is going on here? Her mom catches on, but to what? Anyone going to clue me in? I look at Heather, who I can't see well. Then back at her mother, who is white as a sheet for the moment.
"Oh. Um. I'm going. I'm going to leave you two-"
She doesn't even finish her words!
In a heartbeat or two she moves behind me and I assume out the door. But I can't take my eyes off Heather.
"Heather."
She's shaking, but moving towards me. I am totally lost. A family secret? A disappointing birthmark? I am lost. So lost. And she looks so angelic with the sun streaming between her shoulders and head and legs, but its not sexual, or anything. Its just beautiful. Serene.

I start to walk and with the very first step I'm close enough and her face is in the shadows to see that she's crying.
"Alex."
"What- what Heather...I don't-"
I can't finish. And I don't. She's trying to tell me something but I have no idea-
Oh. No.
No.
"Honey. Alex. Honey. Allen died last-"
No.
"Nonononononononononononononononononononononono..."
Oh my god.
Oh God.
I fell into her arms.
Into the light. The light of that corridor. My mind isn't ready for this. Or anything. But not this. I can't....I can't even picture him right. I can't even think. Even the thought.
Plucking the single string of his name sends thoughts of him through me like electrical current. The strumming. The notes. The song in my head is overwhelming.
Oh god. Al-. Alle. Allen.
I come to for a second and I'm sobbing in her arms. The towel has mostly fallen and she's holding me so tight, but its not tight enough.
It just can't be.
I'm going to slip away.
I'm going to fall.
I don't care that we're crying. Or that the visual of me, hugging this angel and I wish it was Allen because it's suddenly not enough that I miss him. I don't remember if I loved him enough, or if I ever told him that I did, or if he knew how often I thought of him or that I hope he isn't too disappointed in me or anything I ever did-
My mind stops.

In the suburb of Johnshall city, in the two story house, in the hallway, in all that light, in Heather's arms, in my tears, in the pit of my heart right now, I know:

There is nothing more I can say.

It's still raining. Figures.

The last two days soaked the city, and but I spent all my time in my-Janet's- apartment anyways, so the rain was just a backdrop for my feelings. Sometimes I was alone, but Heather brought me lunch one day, and dinner the next. That was nice. But the general feeling still isn't.

I'm awake now, day three of what now feels like a stupid period of mourning. We've only spent one night together so far, since she's been working so much, but I have a real hankering to hold her right now. Its just one of those days, one of the rainy kind where you have no sense of time, and its looks like late afternoon all day. The air sits patiently between rains, and so do I. I'm feeling slow. My eyes are drier than they've been lately. Crying over Allen's death precluded crying over what Allen must be seeing from his heavenly perch: Alex on a bare floor, having traipsed through his life with ridiculous ease, taking as many things for granted as he was given, and now lying curled before a rainy window feeling sorry for his loss. I imagine Allen looking around in heaven for the seat saved for his friend Alex, and not readily finding it.

Shit. I stand up, face the window. Close enough that the large raindrops spatter my shirt. It was time to stop. Not time to stop missing Allen, but to get over that you missed his funeral, and get over that he wasn't buried anywhere (Heather told me his family had him cremated, which aggravates me to no end), get over that a whole host of girls and friends don't give a crap about you any more thanks to your own boneheaded moves, and get over that you feel so sad. Shit. Now I'm talking to myself.
I keep waiting for Heather to get tired of me. She's already so close and its only really been four or five days. I keep waiting for her to show up and let me know she met some guy. Or maybe just got tired of me moping. But she's doing a great job of at least appearing like she won't run out on me. Like she'll stick around. Like she's sure I will. As if I deserve her.

How much does our life weigh? I mean, in parts?
The air is cold in the breeze. It feels real nice.
Seriously tho, I understand that some actions weigh more than others, but does the weight of my life, all my screw-ups, my misgivings and misunderstandings, drag down the life I have yet to live? Am I karma-screwed already? Usually I note the ridiculous here and say "well you haven't ever shot anybody" or "never robbed a bank" (its worth noting I see "bad deeds" in a sort of comic book light). But that's avoiding the issue.
Can I be a better person?
If I had to grade myself on my life performance so far, I think I'll give myself a- nah, nevermind, fuck that. I'd feel like an Oprah show and I'd score too low to feel good about myself.

Now if I had to grade myself using modern music references (you have to admit this might produce more "cool" results, and nothing makes you feel better than the industry that spawned "Turning Japanese")...

Ages 0-16: Granted I spent much of this time learning to poop in the right place and napping, I'd have to say my coming of age period is best captured in the essence of the melodramatic Don Johnson's "Heartbeat" and pretty much any They Might Be Giants tune.
Ages 17-18: Well at the time I'm sure I thought I was being as cool as Rage Against the Machine, but in retrospect I was more like Devo.
Ages 19-22: I could have been the target of a Liz Phair song. I was a subversive ass.
Age 23: Well I guess that'd be me now huh? Staring out into a rainy day makes me want to pick some English band. Maybe Radiohead's "Stop Whispering" would do. Or "High and Dry." Or maybe I'll just leave that alone for now. To Be Announced.

Wow. My list looks so simple. Aside from name dropping to make me feel better about my music-reference memory, I'm not sure it did any good. I smile anyways. For a moment I consider making one based on my parent's musical tastes, but I honestly don't know the names of enough Yanni or George Benson songs.

Some boy band comes crashing into my world from the demon girl upstairs, disturbing the din of the rain and the music in my head. Must be early yet. If I wait til she leaves for demon school, I might be able to score that phone again....call Heather, try to get my life on track....get a job....get going....get a hug at least...

There's a knock at the door, and the knob turns.

The girl I don't deserve smiles and walks in.


****

An hour of chatting, she reveals she's got the day off, and we climb into her car.

She's determined to cheer me up.

Did I mention the sun was shining?

The strangest thing. I was distracted by our talk and hadn't noticed the rain move a bit, peter-out and clear up. Not totally, but the clouds have fractured and revealed some "this is God and I'm making my presence known" shafts of light...I know you know what I'm talking about.

So as of right now we're breezing with the windows down around the sort-of beltways this city offers, the concrete and metal braces to the city's pitiful smile of high rises and sky-scraper-wannabes. She's bopping her head to something faintly heard on the radio, and just looking over at her makes me smile...a little. She's gorgeous. Not in a drop-dead beach-volleyball way but in a really genuine, everything-works way. Her hair matches her brown corduroy overalls, and that face is perfectly set on the nodding head...She softly pulls in and bites her lower lip as a particularly jamming part of the song comes on. She's really...really....great.

The wind feels good on my face. It feels like her skin.

I remember feeling like this before. I can't lie to myself and say that I've never been to this spot on the emotion map. And I can't deny that the circumstances aren't totally bizarre and certainly an influence. I'm beaten by the missing of Allen, (I swallow hard just thinking this) the females I once knew that want nothing to do with me, and the nagging back-of-the-mind thought of Tamara...Tammy, up in Ohio, wondering why I left, if I'd come back. The answer is no. But I feel bad saying that into the wind, in a car, swinging around Johnshall city with a girl that's making me happy.

I look over at her, and she notices. She smiles. The wind teases her hair around enough that a strand interrupts her eyes and she has to move it. She elegantly plucks and moves it and looks back towards the road.
"What....what is it."
She's cautious to ask what I'm thinking of. Letting me have space. My eyes water a bit.
"Nothing. Something....but nothing, ya know?" I turn to look outside the car again.
"Yeah. I know."
"I'll tell ya when we stop."
"Okay." She smiles when she says this. Its the single most comforting thing to hear and see out of the corner of my eye. How do you tell someone that the reason your eyes are misty, and your headaches are gone, and that your stomach is in knots, is because you've made them feel more important than you know you really are? How do you tell someone that they shouldn't be with you and at the same time, from your perspective right now, you can't be anything without them? Because I could just hurt her...like everyone else. Or at least she'd be worried. About who I've been, who I was....

After a little bit of silence, save the slight radio volume and the wind, she asks,
"Wanna know where we're going?"
"Sure."
I forgot I didn't know.
"We're gonna go for a walk. Maybe get something to eat later and bring it back, but we're spending the day at the river today."
"Cool."
"Is that okay?"
I must not have been very convincing, but I did think it sounded cool.
"Oh yeah...yeah..sorry. I-uh..."
"Yeah?"
She took an exit from the bypass and had to keep her eyes more on the road. I still haven't answered her...

So many questions. They all have big answers. The answer is just to tell her. Tell her every reservation, every good and bad feeling about her, about Tammy....about...everyone. But how can I be sure she won't be totally freaked out by all that? What if she doesn't even feel remotely the same way, and I suffocate all this good feeling just to find out she's not that into me....why let that topple?

We get to the bottom of the exit ramp and my mind blurts out a question to answer her question.
"Would you mind if I....If I told you about me? About Tammy....About all of who I used to be, who I don't want to be anymore and- and....and I really don't know how to tell you how much I want to tell you all this without saying that its all so I know you know how I feel and its real and I'm worried and scared you won't feel..the...same..."

I swear I make no sense.
Not far from the end of the ramp, she pulls over, throws the car in park, clicks on her hazzards, unbuckles, opens her door, and gets out.
Shit.
Shit, I made no sense. Or I pissed her off.
I made no sense, and she's getting out of the car to run away.
She comes around the front of the car silent and determined.
I made no sense, and she's gonna throw me out.
She stops at my door and opens it.
"Get out."
I made no sense, she hates me, and she's gonna hit me.
I unbuckle.
I get out. In time for her to slam the door shut.
I made no sense, she hates me, she's gonna hit me and I have no way of getting back into the city-

In a heartbeat I wince for the slap I probably deserve.
She kisses me instead.
It's short, sweet. My heart is slamming.
She leaves around the front of the car again, and I notice the trees, the few leaves on the ground she sweeps onto the road as she crosses, and the sounds of the car engine still running.
She opens her door and stares across the roof of the car at me....smiles....
"So, you going to the river with me or what?"
The smile is a slow, creeping line across her face, almost smug, almost perfect. She's proud of herself and I am too. The air is particularly sweet smelling, even with her horrid car's exhaust. She slides into the car. I'm still standing, a little stunned but happy.
From inside the car she calls,
"Alex."
"Yeah."
"Come tell me anything."


I get in.

I swear to you it was like classical music was playing.

I'm on the bank of a small creek, mini-river, whatever you call it, and just the minor memories that skip and ebb through my mind of the last few hours are put together like an "Olympic Memories" montage. First, walking along the riverside, talking to each other but looking at the leaves at our feet. Then, circling a tree with our hands on its trunk like dazed and love-struck school kids. Finally, some kicking and playing in the leaves, our hands in our pockets because its cold, and our feet swinging high, trying desperately to kick up on eachother what little leaves had fallen. We laughed. We talked.

And now, at the conclusion of the song, we're reflecting. Up on my elbows half lying down, her head in my lap, we talk in short sentences sprinkled with long smiles and pauses. I've told her how I feel, everything from the car that I was scared about, and although she's said relatively little (except small questions to understand what I mean) I know its alright. We wind down. The wind picks up. A leaf hops and sails, landing on her similarly colored overalls. She twirls it by the stem.
"Alex."
"Yeah."
"I don't want to tell you that I'm falling for you."
"I don't want to tell you that I'm falling for you either."
"No matter how much I'd like to hear you say it to me"
"I know."
She smiles and twirls the leaf. I melt.
"So." She sits up.
"Yeah?"
"We need to get you a job. And reconnected if you want. I mean what friends haven't you seen?"
"I dunno. I mean, it feels sort of... I feel like I've just started over here. Everyone is either long since gone or doesn't want anything to do with me..." There is a white lie in that. There are some friends from school that I am sure are still around...but they aren't really friends. Just old suite-mates, or intermural football guys, or melodramatic theater people (who would send you Christmas cards if they knew your address, but wouldn't have much to write inside them).

"All of my close friends either moved away and got careers..." she drifted for a minute, "...or found somebody. I don't want any of that if it doesn't just happen naturally. I don't want to force any of that because of some stupid peer-clock. Know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Sort of..." I made the same sort of lapsing pause, "...I keep thinking how I could be in that now. I left that sort of opportunity. So it begs the question that if I suddenly settle down for a career and 2.5 children, does that mean that I didn't leave for any good reason? Ya know, did I drop it all and run because I didn't like the flavor of the ice cream or because I don't like ice cream."
There was another pause. I don't think it's because I said anything deep.
"You're a freakin' goof."
"Thanks."
We have a good laugh but the question never gets answered. And we sit really liking the touch of even each other's clothing, trying hard to ignore that we both stated in a round about way that long-term=bad, but we're both need each other to not be short term. Ah, the great early twenties' mystery...to grow up in your way or mine? Or not grow at all, and still be sitting around with frat brothers, drinking cheap beer, watching golf on a Saturday, talking about masturbation and fart jokes with someone's part-time girlfriend in the room...a disturbing thought. Luckily I have none of those things right now to even think about falling in that kind of trap. But then again at the end of the day I'm going back to an apartment I'm not even renting, with no phone, few lights and no furniture (unless you count Janet's boxes).

"Hey."
"Huh?"
"You hungry?"
"Sorta. Yeah. Kinda." I was dodgy because I have no more money...I am supremely uncomfortable with her paying for everything. Not so much in a chivalrous way, but in a way I'd be with anyone that did this much for me.
"Its getting cold out here. Maybe we should just go get some soup or something and make it at your place."
It was getting cold. And soup was cheap.
"Will the oven work?"
"Yeah! The electricity is still on, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then the oven will work..."
My ignorance grabbed me and slapped me around a bit.
"Oh. Sounds good."
We got up, stretched, (trying to jab each other's stomach as we put our arms high--that's irresistible) and looked at one another. In no time, my courage had returned and I kissed her hard.
She responded.
We angled and touched foreheads looking down at our lips. She touched my lips with her finger and smiled. I kissed it. We kissed again, and it wasn't long before we were again lying on the ground.

No longer cold.

*******

After nearly an hour more at the creek's edge, we took a trip to the grocery store where I serenaded Heather (much to her dismay) with the lyrics of "Coming to America" or whatever that horrible Neil Diamond song is they were playing at Akrons grocery. And after that, we sailed back to where we are now, slowly going up the stairs of the apartment building, carrying the weak plastic bag of cup-o-soup, (we realized we had no pots or bowls for making the normal canned stuff) bad supermarket sushi, free chopsticks, and a newspaper. 

Getting to the door, opening it with my key....and...
Kick. Kick?
An envelope sails across the dirty empty floor and smacks up against the far wall.
"What was that?"
"Rat."
"Oh that's not funny." She says this over my shoulder before shoving me aside and heading to the kitchen.
"I wonder what it is..."
From the next room she calls, "Open it dumbass!"
Plodding towards it, I crouch and inspect before I touch. Mamma didn't raise no dummy. Could be a bomb.
The puffed white letter-envelope had my first name scrawled on it. I turned it over.  from: Janet was on the back, with an address. I sat loudly and moved to quickly open it.
"Its from Janet."
"What is it?"
"Opening it..hold your horses..."
Inside was a smaller envelope....a letter and....WOAH. Money. Yikes.
Better read the letter.

Alex,

I had my friend Stephen drop this by since you probably weren't checking the mail. I really hope everything is going well, but I know you're a resourceful guy. The new job I have is fantastic, and so is the new place. You are probably wondering what the cash is doing in the envelope..and its not so you can start a drug habit. I need you to mail me two of those boxes, the ones marked "living room" to the address I have on here. make sure you get them insured, but you can send them the slow way, I don't need them right away. The other stuff Stephen will pick up later, he has my old key. Speaking of which, if you get this the day I think you will, you'll only have about a week left. Give me a call when you get settled anywhere, my number's at the bottom, and yes, you can call collect.
I'm sorry I had to leave right when you may have needed me. I hope we can both talk about our new lives soon. 
Love and miss,
Janet

P.S. Yes, you can keep the extra money after mailing me those boxes! Take care of yourself Alex!

I felt good after the letter even if it should have scared me as a "I better get my butt in gear" memo. I miss Janet, and I wish I did have the time to really gel with her...I was relying blindly on that when I showed up here, which wasn't fair to her. But I'm glad we're still there for each other.
Heather was watching me from the kitchen doorframe.
"Everything okay?"
Yeah. I stand up.
For some reason, maybe the clouds looking rainy again, maybe the thought of not sleeping alone in this cold apartment, maybe because I feel like things are really looking up....I get some balls.
"Hey..." I stroll over to her, envelope in hand. I pick up her handand hold it to my face, kissing the top of it lightly. I'm probably acting too sheepish.
"What is it..." She smiles, but she can tell I'm gonna ask for something or I'm going to ask some stupid favor like get her to take me to the store again. But that's not it.
"Hey...um..." Shit. Balls fading. Blushing. Sheepishness has officially begun...
"What?!?" She's growing impatient.
"Um...hold on!" I take a deep breath. I am such a wuss.
"Okay..."
"If ah...if you stay the night...I'll buy ya breakfast..."
Another smile from her...paydirt!
"Is that what Janet's letter said? Take some girl you meet to breakfast?"
"Oh not just meet. It said explicitly that if I find some amazing," I kiss her hand. "...incredible," Kiss, "and beautiful girl that seems to really make me happy and get me on the right track, then I shoudl take her out to many meals..."
"Oh really..."
"Yeah."
"And what if I say no?"
Time to go for the gusto.
"Well..."
"Huh?" She's baiting me.
"Well then its your loss..."
"Really?"
"Well, yeah...'cause you'll be hungry after a long night of lovin' so you might as well take the free breakfast.."

I get hit. It's worth it.

She stays.

The night and breakfast were flawless. I knew of no better post-hangover restaurant than the Texas-Wisconsin Cafe and it still held the same grandeur. The omelettes were still the best I'd ever had despite my lack of headache and dry mouth that usually were present when I ate them. Heather made a phone call to Christian for an afternoon movie date, and we were off and happy and arm and arm and just..right...

Christian meets us at the movies, late of course, with--yikes, Lisa on his arm.

The two were late enough that we were actually in the theatre watching the previews before we heard him stumbling around in the dark, bothering everyone within a hundred feet of him and softly cooing for us,

"Duuuuuuuuuude" All to get us to respond in a silly "Marco-Polo" game.

I'm sure it embarrassed Lisa, because crap like that used to embarrassed her when we dated.

Yeah. You heard that right. So you see my horror for the next 100 minutes as I paid no attention to the feature, and spent thought after thought trying to figure out if she knew I'd be here, what she thinks of me, what Heather will think of her, and if I'd ever really named her in my long list to Heather. What was she doing here if she knew? Christian wouldn't have kept it just a mean secret would he? It was a strange mystery that he even knew Lisa...but maybe I should be reassured that she was here, and she looked happy (and looked good I should add). She and I had one of my few actual friendships after failed dates...maybe things were okay? Emphasis on the question mark in that one.

I have no idea what this movie is about...

The credits started to roll and so did the sweat on my palms. Wiping them on the slightly bumpy plastic armrests didn't dry them any and I looked as Heather, Christian and Lisa rose and stretched.

Christian moaned and yawned and we started out. Out the main doors and into the parking lot, Heather and Christian started arguing about the movie's plot and walked ahead. Lisa dropped back to me and commented,
"I haven't seen a movie with you since you made me see Boogie Nights..."
"I didn't make you see it...it was a good movie!" Both intrinsically different arguments. But hey, I was nervous...
"I just remember gawking at the end and you making some smart ass comment out loud like, 'that's not that big!' and everyone laughing. I can't remember if they were laughing at you or with you..."
This was a funny, if embarrassing story and Heather laughs a bit, to show she's listening to us, but then goes back to ripping into Christian about being insensitive or something.
"So.." I get up some courage and like a light switch, turn the mood serious.
"...how are you? I mean, everything cool?"
Pause. She keeps walking. I'd forgotten how cute she was, and she'd stayed that way apparently. Shoulder-length black hair bobbed with her steps in Doc Martens. 
"Yeah." She replied, thought for a second and continued,
"...things are good. And you?" she smiled. That creeped me out. What was she expecting?
"Okay. Really good actually. Emotionally at least." Shit. I feel like I don't deserve to be happy. I never really hurt Lisa directly, ever, but her trust had been trod on by me, and I think that's probably enough. I just wonder why she's even giving me the time of day, much less talking to me.
"I bet you're wondering why I'm still talking to you."
My hand is called.
"Yeah. I um...I haven't gotten the best reaction coming back."
"I know. You deserve that."
Ouch. But she was right. My heart sank, but for the right reasons.
"I know I do." My voice trailed off. I caught Heather looking back. Lisa touched my arm. We stopped walking.
"But we've both been through some shit. I have a hunch that you're okay now but there's a lot of me that doesn't believe it. So, let's leave it at that." She walked towards the car again, just a few more feet, and I caught up soon after.
Heather smiled at me, but that doesn't mean I'm any more comforted. Things are just weird. Part of me really wants to know what everyone else thinks of me, and part of me doesn't care, and thinks I should just worry about those with me now. Lisa hangs inbetween the two. Why did Christian call her? Why do this to me? Maybe he didn't even think about it (I should know that is the real answer).
"Shit. Now we walked to your car and we're parked off on the other side. So what are we doing?" Christian barked.
Heather chimed in,
"Well, its not too late, you want to go play pool somewhere, just hang out? I mean, you guys have time?"
She was talking to Chris and Lisa, but I answered.
"Sounds like a good idea. That's cool. I'm up for whatever."
"Yeah. Pool would be fun!" Lisa was speaking only to Heather, and Heather seemed excited to hear she was going. Probably happy to not have to endure just Christian and I all night (because would choose pool over a girl almost any day).
"Fuck yeah!" Chris acted like someone offered him a bag of money. Or toys.
"How 'bout we meet you at Tornadoes, its early enough we should be able to get a table...." Heather offered, and they accepted and we were off two by two.

Heather noticed I was uncharacteristically quiet in the car.

"Lisa. I take it that got to you some, huh?" It was a loaded question. I wasn't keen on talking about it, but...I dunno. part of me wanted to play the "you don't know me well enough to leave me alone when I'm like this" card but that was bullshit.
"Yeah."
I am very eloquent. I'll win a Pulitzer for that answer.
"Hmm." She just nodded. A little miffed I wouldn't answer with more, but dealing with it. But she didn't know Lisa, and didn't know me with Lisa, so she can't be expected to understand...I guess that's reason to shut up, and reason to tell her.

I keep pretty quiet. 

Tornadoes was a dive, but it was our dive...only one straggler was at the bar, and it was obvious he was only there to talk to the cute bartender with her lip pierced. I'm still confused at how practical that is. Can you eat like, corn on the cob, or does it get lodged in? Do people ever finish eating and not know there's a glob of mashed potatoes hanging from their lip ring?

Lisa had her eyebrow pierced now and I noticed it when we walked in the bar. Christian had set a land speed record to beat us there. He's late everywhere except for bars. There are small frames of publicity shots (autographed by the tiny bands that had visited) covering the walls. The most recent don't have frames. Occasionally you'd find one or two you recognize, and occasionally it was because they had actually made it big. The semi-tribute had a "hotspot" marking feel to it, and at the same time the sullen, sobering reality that very few ever make it in music. The red pepper lights around the bar blinked. A silent TV played football game highlights. Christian racks the balls and Lisa stands posed with her cue like a magazine model. Heather and her smile to each other and I start razzing Chris.
"Get used to racking those balls bitch..."
He adjusts the position of the triangle with goofy precision.
"Only balls gettin racked around here are yours bizzatch..."
"I'm getting beer." Heather remarked and doubled back.
"That's right you are..." Chris smirks....he doesn't see the finger Heather displays for him.
Lisa sets her stick against the wall and remarks,
"I'm gonna find the girls room." 
I hate it when women call it that. Something weird in the name makes me think its some doll house in there. Bad enough when you see the condition of a guy's restroom, then get a peek into the ladies' only to find a couch or some flowering plant. That's bullshit. We don't even get a cigaretteless urinal, much less a plant.
I take the opportunity to whisper to Chris.
"Dude, what the fuck? Why did you bring Lisa?"
"Man-" He says it too loud and I try and quiet him,
"Shhh....Look, I guess it hasn't been too bad, but you KNOW I'm not having a great time with some of the old crowd...I mean you had to know it'd be weird to bring her..."
Christian stands up straight and seems genuinely sincere about saying something when Heather strolls back with the beer.
He and I both shut up but he shoots me a look. Bastard. What the hell is he going to say in his defense? 
"Alright, I got a pitcher of Mobjack 'cause they're out of Legend. So don't bitch at me." She knows us too well. I pour a glass for her and Chris. 
She sees we're a glass short.
"Oops, here, I'll get another glass." She trots to the bar.
Chris approaches me, gets his mouth near my ear and says,
"Lisa called me jackass..."
I froze.
Wait.
Hold on.
That means the call Heather made from Texas-Wisconsin this morning, or afternoon, whatever- that means she called Lisa, not Chris...So she knows Lisa? But-
Heather comes back and Lisa emerges from "the girl's room" at the same time, not allowing me to digest any of this.
"You alright Alex?" Lisa and Heather both say, not at the same time, but it might as well be.
"Um. Yeah. Just zoned for a second. I'm cool."
"Good." Heather pecked me on the cheek. It was the first "in a relationship" contact we'd made in front of Lisa...or Chris for that matter.
Lisa touched me on the arm for a "good" response too.

This was just too weird.

Our pool score is currently as follows: 0-1, then 4-1. The first set is the Heather-Alex team versus the Christian-Lisa team. Christian and I played so poorly and talked so much smack that they put us on the same team. Then, claiming we would never get beat in the girls versus guys routine, we promptly lost 4 straight games. Luckily, they just botched one by knocking the eight-ball in early. 

Christian is busy shouting "comeback" as they rack up the table for the first time all night.
"Oh just shut up you little troll!" Lisa yells, as Heather doubles over in laughter.
Lisa and Chris had been fire and Ice all night. Heather and I had been pretty calm. I was pretty quiet so far. And I think I'll stay that way for awhile. I finish my beer.
We hadn't drank all that much, surprisingly. There were four of us and we'd only had two pitchers in two hours. Even setting my glass down right now there isn't much thought to drinking more. We're enjoying each others company, and the night just didn't feel like one of those nights...plus it was really early. Tornadoes was just beginning to fill up, and since we had gotten in so early after the movie, even after a couple hours it wasn't even 8 o'clock yet.

Chris decides to break, and manages to screw up (shock?) and somehow fly the cue ball off the table.
We all laugh...
"Shit Chris, you dumbass..." Lisa laces into him. 
I mutter, half remembering/half trumpeting,
"Allen used to do that constantly somehow...It seems like every game that ball would pop off the table."
You'd think I said something really rude. Everyone froze, except Chris, who acknowledged my comment with a smile and nod and chased the cue ball. Lisa stares at me. Heather looks listlessly towards me.
"What...I'm sorry I was just remembering..I didn't mean to be flippant I-" 
I back-pedal. I don't think I'm out of line, c'mon! Lisa sets her cue down and storms outside...past even Heather's outstretched hand...I didn't even think she knew Allen, how could she get so bent out of shape? I am so fucking confused. I walk a few steps, trying to decide if I'm too miffed to do any good, and Heather stops me.
"I'll handle it..." She walks away, and out the door after Lisa. I am confused. Not even an explanation. This is so fucked up....
Chris shrugs. I roll my eyes at his lack of help.

We shoot around a bit. Finally, Heather comes back in. Lisa is a noticeable distance behind. Heather consults us like a sideline coach. 
"Guys, lets' go out a bit, Lisa and I were thinking the playground near my parents. Then we can go to Mima's for pizza."
She pauses for our enthusiasstic reaction. There is none. Then Chris realizes he heard the word "pizza."
"Fuck yeah, Pizza!" 
"Guys, pay up the tab, I'll pay for the pizza later....we'll meet you there."
Heather pecks me on the cheek, and Lisa (who never got very close to us when she came back in) heads outside with Heather.
"Guess I'm riding with you." I exclaim obviously, and walk to the pay the tab.
"Don't try any funny stuff." I hear him mutter.

The drive is easy if a bit long. Chris wasn't thrilled with leaving a bar before 9, but he figures (probably correctly) that we'll end up at another bar by night's end.
Chris knew exactly what playground she was talking about (I had no idea) which again proves he's known Heather for a bit..and he really seems to listen to her...its weird...given at least that he never listens to me. We're relatively quiet in the car, but it's not a bad quiet, just a listening-to-his-rap-mix-tapes kind of quiet. Plus, we have the windows down some, and the air and sound is relaxing despite the bass thud of Chris' mix.

We pull in, and thankfully no suburban urchins are already parked there or hanging around drinking their first beer. Lisa and Heather are parked and talking, and get out when they see us. 
"I got dibs on a swing" Chris yells as he easily zips by all of us and into the partial darkness of the playground. Only a parking lot security light throws a glob of visibility, so the smallish playground of the adjoining elemenatry school is only residually lit. Empty, equally unlit tennis courts nearby play home to swirling leaves. Heather careens towards Christian and the swings, and Lisa holds decidedly back...and I do too.

"Alex."
"Yeah." I pretend, like an idiot, as if I didn't notice she was hanging back.
"Can I talk to you for a moment?"
I am totally unprepared. Willing to talk, yes, but I have no idea who Lisa is much now, I have no idea why she's even here, what Heather's told her, why she even knows Heather or....sheesh...
"Yeah. Yeah, of course."

I walk with her to the curb farthest from the parking light. The leaves have blown and collected in this cul-de-sac direction. 
She sits. I do too. Shockingly, she actually cuddles up to me a bit, which makes me largely uncomfortable...
"You deserve an explanation....I'm sorry about storming out. You...You couldn't have known."
I stay silent. One of my smarter moves.
"I was with Allen when he died..." 
Oh damn. I didn't even think--oh man...
She continues,
"No, well not with as in beside him...he was at home, visiting his family..but I mean we were...I was...we were seeing each other then."
I hadn't even known Allen to date...hardly at all. But that does make it remarkable, explains alot. Maybe Heather knew what she was doing, thought Lisa could help me sort through my feelings...
Lisa pauses and I start to say something but again, smartly, don't.
She starts to cry. My arm goes around her....Maybe its so I can help her sort out her feelings...I don't know. I don't understand karmic connections or "meant to be" scenarios but I do feel like there should be something here between Lisa and I that isn't being said and I'm not sure who is supposed to say it. She tries to collect her thoughts...lifts her head up. I see in her eyes and face emotion I never saw in my dating her, which makes me sad to think that I played our relationship that loosely. It reminded me of my callousness and aloof behavior to feelings then...hopefully not anymore.
Lisa makes an emotional jump and I try and catch up.
"I was...I was just beginning to love him. You know?"
I don't know, but I try...I try to nod but my head is spinning. I was suddenly full-throttle remembering Allen and everything I've ever taken for granted. All my energy is bent towards holding her with my arm and trying to hold my heart in my chest. 
I still, wisely, say nothing. 
"Alex you have no idea....no idea....I never even knew him before that...he was the single most sincere, honest, incredible person. And he didn't think he deserved anyone and here I was...this diluted, mixed up girl with all these...issues...always wanting a guy like that, always saying I want a guy like that, but always going for some easy to make out with guy...my standards were if he was cute and seemed to smile at me...I was so, so stupid..." Her eyes puffed and she wiped her chin and nose and looked ahead, into nothing.
"He was ready at any moment to make me smile. Even if he had a worse day and I was just piling on the excuses and reasons why my day was awful..he would always concede and just hug me or talk to me...for Chrissake, I don't think I ever saw him mad in three weeks. He waited two weeks just to kiss me...But...Three fucking weeks. That's all I had with him. If I'd only known those would be my only three-"

Lisa breaks down hard again and I'm totally beside myself...I can't imagine her experience with him, but a very jealous, bitter part of me wishes I had even three minutes before. Its not a bitterness toward Lisa, but rather a bitterness towards my own mind...that I had a hard time imagining how even looked, what his voice sounded like. I can remember his laugh but little else in my cloudy mind. Lisa was struggling so hard tho....and just the idea that Allen kissed anyone meant she was special to him...it was that combination of always being the nice guy that never got the girl, and also his incredible, distinct tastes...when he fell for someone he fell hard....but I never imagined the scenario of someone doing the same...and right now I cringe at my thought that I never would imagine someone like Lisa. And know I mean someone like me, a little driven by lust, a little outside the ballpark of normal, a little not good enough for him.
I hate myself for thinking those words.
With my free hand I grip my thigh and pinch it hard. Trying to hurt myself. Feel a punishment. I have no idea how to handle it.
She musters up some courage to go on. Every word burns.
"I...feel..." she cries, sobs, chokes with each word. The wet, impulsive stutter is the sound of a soul speaking.
"I...feel...I feel...like I killed him." Her body pulses with a violent sob. My arm couldn't be less recognized. My mind couldn't be less out of control. What is she talking about....I should feel that way....the remorse is so fresh....she hasn't gotten over this at all...
I try, futilely, to understand and comfort,
"No no...no you didn't....there's no one to blame..." My stock answers were my best attempt. I had no idea. I spent most of my life faking ideas.
She blurts and stands,
"Shut up. You don't understand. You don't understand. No one understands."
I stand to retake my position as consoling entity and she shoves me away.
"Alle-Alex, you don't...God, I don't understand..." Her subject slips from me to her...
Every step I take towards her she stumbles back. The wind blows leaves around her like God is answering, encouraging her to talk...
"Alex...Alex..." She calls into the dark, not beckoning me, but rather trying to start a thought.
"Alex...I was pregnant."
The emphasis was on the word "pregnant" but I clearly cannot get past the "was" and Allen's connection...
My eyes water. 
I should let her talk but I choke up. My mind pushes to ask,
"Oh god....with Allen's-"
"NO!"
"Oh god..."
My feet shuffle, my head bobbing between the clouds above and the ground below, I don't understand-
"Alex I was pregnant...I didn't fucking know until I found him...I didn't know....I didn't know....and I couldn't tell him."
I grab my head.
"Allen you have to believe me..I couldn't tell him..."
She stumbled to me and collapsed in my arms...as much for comfort as to plead...as much for someone to hold, as for someone to not look at as she spoke...she buried the side of her head in my chest and spoke away from me. My hand rested on the small of her back. She was a sobbing rag doll, convulsing but trying to stay aloof enough to explain. I understood instantly, but needed to hear her say it. It was both the equation of her brief time with Allen and the answer to her feelings of guilt now. I could not possibly appreciate, or offer enough respect to her feelings, but I could make my try at just being there.
"Allen....I had to do something.  I had...."
"I know..." It was the smartest thing I'd said all night. It kept her from having to say it, and it seemed to help in that respect.
"...and I feel like..like when I did that...that I killed him....that the baby could have been Allen...that that could have been anyone... and when God took Allen away..."
For one incredible, overwhelming second I think I understand. It passes, because I don't think a man can ever truly comprehend some things, but there can be those moments...
"...it felt like it was punishment..."
"Oh God no Lisa...no, that's not..."
"Alex.....Alex I feel like I killed Allen..."
Lisa turned her head to my chest and gripped my shirt like the sides of a mountain. She was so scared of the retribution that she believed caused Allen to leave us...I think she knows I know the choice she made was not an easy one but a neccasary one, but...but I see how she thought the math added up. I wonder if she's told anyone else. Heather maybe...she needs reassurance, but can I help?
"Oh no...no you didn't, no one did....Oh God...Lisa....Lisa...you..."
She stops sobbing and for a moment I fear she's suffocated in my shirt, but she looks up.
She needs me to say something. Anything.
Something better than I know how. Something I don't understand I need to speak on, possibly help with, and at least convey that I don't think she had anything to do with Allen's death. That it was a medical problem, long understood but possibly not feared enough. I had to speak...
So, for the life of me, maybe of us both, I spoke.
"Lisa. Lisa I don't know how to say this...I don't know...any..of the words I need to use....and I can only begin to feel and know what you're going through.....but...."
I suddenly can't stop crying,
"...but I do know that Allen would...would never, ever, blame you....He is up there, he is up there looking down....and he loves us....he knows you weren't trying to hurt him....he knows everything....and he may know how ugly we have been inside, and the stupid mistakes and the mistakes we'd never wish on anyone else...and he still misses us....almost as much as we miss him..."
I find myself burying my face in her shoulder....I try and speak, muffled but still....still trying...
"Lisa....Lisa...it is so comforting to know that he cared so much, that we would worry about disappointing him...but we for got the other amazing thing about him...."
I lift my head, and with my hand I lift hers, wanting her to please, just look in my eyes. Just know that I am a goofy, stupid bastard that doesn't deserve anyone, that everything I have and am is a gift I didn't earn, and all I can do now is give back because I'm still here...and I'm, trying..God Lisa I'm trying...

She does look into my tired, long overfilled eyes. 

"Lisa he cared that much, but we know that no matter what....he'd never be disappointed in us. He might be mad, he might shake his head, and I can't say he hasn't at either of us...in my few years with him, or your potent weeks....but he'd never, ever be disappointed in us.....He'd tell you the same thing if he was the one holding you now. He'd say it better, he'd understand more, and he'd be far better a guy than I'll ever be...."

I cry.
She is with me. Our tables turn. But I think for once in a long time, she's ready to hold.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't think we might kiss in that held moment remembering and being there. But it'd be the wrong reason. And it'd be because she saw Allen in my eyes, not in me...and it'd be because I needed someone and that's how I so often filled the void. I always needed that attention instead of real comfort. It was my escape route. It was my weakness. Not biological or genetic, but a flaw I'd cultivated.

But with Lisa in my arms as a friend; and Heather, nearby, as a savior; and Allen above us, surely crying with us....

How could we not feel safer?

There are moments when your life takes shape, and the container it's kept in isn't sure how to cope, and the edges and curves have to stretch and creak with the new form your life takes. And I firmly believe you can feel it when this happens. I belive that those moments of--well, not clarity because its rarely very clear, but maybe just moments of knowledge. When you can actually feel wisdom form, like a gift, like a large coin slipped through the slot of your soul. Its not random by any means, but it can finally happen when you aren't looking, maybe when you're exhausted. It's fully dependent on the past, but riding on the present. It is reverse deja vu.
I've noticed change like that before, although the memories are cloudy as to exactly when. The wisdom or hint that life just took a turn happens whether you acknowledge it or not...but I think a handful have special receptors. Maybe it's the human version of a dog whistle. Whatever it is, I hear it now.

The laundry list of this evening's news (all of which begin with "P"):

-Pool Playing: poor, plus I managed to upset Lisa...but that lead to...
-Playground Talk: incredible, emotional, crucial, healthy...
-Pizza: nice and relaxed, with the four of us actually simmering into a nice niche group...and in fact, where we are now.

I'm mulling this all over while staring into a random spot on the Mima's pizza place south wall. The dining room is packed, but we managed to snag a booth pretty soon after we arrived, which just sped up everything. So now that we've eaten, and our sleepy, dazed but happy glances around have little conversation, I've been just trying to digest all this new information, feeling and purpose that Lisa helped me understand.

Christian breaks the silence like a plate.

"Did you fart?"

It's unclear who he's actually talking to, but because of our country's double standards in gender, the girls look at me as if I'm the only possible candidate.

"Shut up. No." But we laugh. Well, Christian doesn't, he was serious and curls his nose and mouth in ugly reaction.

Lisa asks,
"So...what do we do now?" She's holding her glass of water, now drained mostly to its ice, and I'm not sure if her question is about all of us, or addressing our lives. Maybe I'm just thinking too much.

"I'm tired as shit. But..I dunno. I just want to hang some more, then maybe crash. Nothing wild tho." Heather responds. Her head rests in her hands, and she cocks it my way.

"I don't care. I'm....just thinking. Maybe too much."

"No such thing." Lisa offers, and gives me a smile I haven't seen in awhile.
Heather smiles too and for a moment I feel a little funny with two pretty women I've been with smiling at me at once.
"You glad I called Lisa?" Heather wants instant credit for this, but I'm not crazy about the "hooray for me" tone of the question. Yeah, Lisa and I needed to talk, but I am still weirded out that Heather set it up. I don't think she planned all the good stuff, but don't take too much credit. I feed it to her anyway.
"Yeah. Yeah. Things are...looking better." I smile at Lisa who impossibly smiles even bigger. I lend it to Heather too, who sips her coke and smiles at Lisa too. Eegads, you'd think I was orchestrating a love-fest with these two...

"Dude, I am fucking serious: Did you fart?"
Oh yeah, forgot about Christian. Love-fest concept cancelled.
"No you idiot, will you leave it alone?"
"Dude I think-" he tries fruitlessly to whisper, "-I think the guy in the booth behind us ripped one.."

"Time to go." Heather takes charge, tosses our after-dinner-mint gift from our server and grabs the check. We exit, Christian making a screwed up face at the party behind us as we file out. Lisa gets me outside for a hug while Heather pays as promised.
"Alex..."
"Yeah?"
"I actually have a present for you." She smiles, and by the way we're still hugging sort of. Look, I need to express here that Lisa is attractive and that despite the fact that we've had an emotional explosion earlier, I am still human and she is still very hot and its weird as shit with Heather right in there that Lisa hugs me like this. It's like some sexual litmus test, I dare you to get an erection...or something.
"Okay..what's the present?"
"Money."
"Hello!"
I waited for her to pull out some wallet and hand me cash. Didn't happen.
"My company I do boring file work for needs another boring file worker. Its easy money, Monday thru Friday and you get Health insurance. No strings."
"Wow...um, okay...I guess that's cool. Do I need to apply? What do you want me to do?"
"Not much. I'll have you come by tomorrow, the person doing the hiring is a friend of mine, so you'll get it...so yeah, just come on by and I'll get you in..."
"...wow..."
"You okay with that?"
I was. I really was I just wasn't sure why its that easy. Its all in who you know I guess...of course, its just filing, but considering that my current job status is "apartment mooch" I suppose it will do.
"That'd be great...thanks Lisa..."
Heather comes out, shoving Christian ahead of her.
"I can't take you anywhere you idiot!"
"Oh god, what happened." I ask, Lisa stops hugging me.
Heather puts her hands on her hips in the most aggressive posture I've ever seen her in, and yells the summary at Christian, who can't stop laughing.
"This IDIOT stops that man's wife on the way to the bathroom and tells her that he's a medical intern and thinks her husband might have a bowel problem..."
"AND SHE BELIEVED ME!" Christian has just received all the proof he needs that he is indeed the funniest man alive.
"Asshole..." Heather storms towards the car, and Christian, determined to spread the gospel about his revelation, follows.
"Babe, that was funny as shit, you gotta admit!"
Lisa follows, I start walking forward much slower...I'm a few steps behind everyone, and I'm mesmerized by the series of street lamps across the lot against the street. The air tosses a breeze...My legs stop in their tracks.

There are moments when you aren't moving, and it seems like the whole world stops with you, and if you listen very carefully, you can hear your soul turning the page, about to finish a chapter, about to close one book and open another.

In the parking lot of this pizza place, seemingly inconsequential on the cosmic map, seemingly unimportant in world affairs, I stop walking. A bright street lamp I focus on flickers off. The wind goes calm. Sound freezes.

And only the creak of the book of life is heard.
And I feel like my chapter is both nearly written and read.

It is 6am. At least. That's what dawn means right?
Sitting up, hands planted in the ground on either side, legs parted for Heather to lie in, head against my stomach, back against my pelvis and the ground. We face the water. Even closing our eyes the picture was clear. The wind blew with a cold and supple stroke across us and the water. She is tired. She drove for at least two hours for us even though I offered. We had to get to the real shore; the river wouldn't do. I am tired. My eyes slink open with the bob and weave of my head, in time with a music I can't hear. It lulls me into the sand, and subsequently, into sleep. Lisa is tired. She's down the beach some, walking towards us barefoot, shoes in hand. The laces hang next to her legs and rolled up pants. I think she smiles at us. She walks slow. It will be a minute before she's upon us and I might be asleep by then. Christian is tired. He's still asleep in the car as far as I know. But even though Lisa and Christian are here I still feel alone with Heather. It's the sunrise that creeps unsurprisingly but potently up into view. It's the simmering sound of the water scrambling up the shore like an anxious child, then sliding back like an unrequited hope. The cycle is peaceful, but the detail is intense. Trying to focus on each broken wave, every difference in ripple...the repetition of imperfection makes it perfectly comforting.

God pauses. I fall asleep.

"FUCK! A SUNSET!"
God wakes up. He tells me to kill that boy.

"Sunrise...sun-rise jackass."
Chris accidently kicks sand to the back of my neck and my body's weak enough to almost collapse my arms. He tumbles and sits hard next to us. He's wide awake.
"Sunrise, whatever...Its pretty."
He's right of course, but it's only just begun. The light is leaking from the horizon, seeping into the sky like dye in water. He is wide awake. This bothers me.
"Yeah." I muster.
"God its been so long since I saw a sunset..."
"...rise."
"Rise, whatever. Its been forever." He sees Lisa, who's not far now. Chris shouts,
"LISA! DO YOU SEE THIS? IT'S FUCKING AWESOME!"
"Yeah...it's the same over here Chris.." Or at least I think she says that. It's faint and she isn't as interested in yelling as he is. 

Chris turns to us, turns towards the sunrise, and promptly lays on his stomach, occasionally spitting out sand from his sand maneuvers.

Lisa catches up to our position and tosses her shoes and self near Chris. Everyone is visibly beat and tired, but somehow, in the wake of the sun's slight rays I wake up a little.

My eyes widen.

One of those moments hits again. But hard.

It wasn't long ago (by life's standards) that I was standing in an airport with my backpack and my new ticket. Nervous as hell, fidgeting with a magazine someone left on a blue set of chairs, I waited for the plane. The ride was tolerable because I spent most of it staring out the window, imagining what it'd be like to be a flying man. Those kinds of fantasies always kept me afloat before, I reasoned the same would be true now that I was older, but also scared. It was little comfort, but helped pass the time. The strangely 70's airport I landed in was small compared to the first one. Everything bathed in strokes of beige and orange, the carpet a headache inducing paisley. I waited there an hour or two before I had the guts to call Janet. Because what would I say? That I left a sure thing? That I'd need some help because for the first time in a long time I can't just fake it...I can't just invent some new reason to go on anymore. Because I was that stupid guy that let everything fall down around him, and has the gall to crawl out of the rubble begging for help?

The sun peeked from the clouds, threatening to roll over them. They move further out of the way. Dawn was an inevitable power.

Thoughts leap to the lonely days on Janet's floor. The strange mini-depression. I don't know what to call it. It was a wake up call too early. At 23 I was starting a mid-life crisis. Us spoiled children of the 80's and 90's weren't equipped to wander and find self-enlightenment. Unless we saw a movie about it or something. We drove around life with our parking break on. We get really drunk and hope something philosophical drops out of our mouths by midnight. We feign concern over war and don't flinch when we hear of our grandparents being put into a home. Our heros wear tennis shoes and "The Big Chill" is too wordy a movie. God is constantly trying to kick us in the ass to wake us up and we still think he hates us.

Then you listen just a little bit. You take a chance. I meet Heather.

The sun has his hands on the horizon and has begun to pull himself into view.

So you get some confidence, and convince yourself that the equation's solved, since the goal in life it just to get laid, and/or find someone cool to be with so that happens more than once, right? You block out a lot of other things, slip your blinders on and happily go trotting down the new path. Then I found out the truth. Allen's death, which for me happened on that cold foyer floor, holding the angel Heather whose naked emotion propped up my broken soul. "...once was lost..." right? And after feeling sorry for myself and anything else I could imagine, life had to go on, and God was still kicking my ass. What more could God want from me? I'm tired of learning....that's what i wanted to say...the pathetic full stomach of our soul has such a low tolerance for pain. Our threshold for bad times is a small fraction of our need for constant good times. We are the only ones in this world. Everyone else is on my stage, right?

The sun stretches its tendrils of light as far as it can for the moment, bathing the morning air in a glow humans only comprehend in paintings or fractals. It's nice to see we can still be surprised, and from the eyes reopening on Lisa, Heather and Chris, the theory is proven.

My mind fast-forwards to meeting Lisa again. Not much more than 24 hours ago she reentered my life and tore apart my preconceptions like a hurricane's path. Our dialogue on life and love and Allen and just the sheer weight of the matter was more important than any conversation I could remember.

The colors change more rapidly than our minds can comprehend. Rapid enough that we doubt they even changed. Must have been those colors all along, right? Everyone is still and silent.

And as all these thoughts...the transition from airport to rushing tides, from full of worries to full of hope, from death to life, and from the death of one life and the beginning of another...clouded a thought that tried to poke through. A simple idea poked at the scene and as I tried to understand the sunrise and my life at the same time, this lone needle came up from my brain and to the forefront.

Like an asshole, I break the silence.
"Heather. What day is it?"

There is a pause as everyone scrambles for their sanity. It was like I threw a shoe through a church window. To Heather's credit, she did respond.
"What?"
"What day is it? Sorry."
She tells me what day it is now, this early morning.

My mouth opens a bit to say something, but I don't.

I think Lisa has an idea of what I'm thinking, but I don't see how she'd remember.

It's my birthday.

I can't pretend that I didn't know it was coming. I'd thought about it a few days ago, but everything's been so blurred and I haven't had any time to dwell on it, much less arrogantly talk about it so someone would do something.

But, unlike The Great Gatsby, which is all I can think of right now, someone seemed to remember in our group.

"Happy Birthday Alex." Lisa says in the sweetest voice. Heather sits up, surprised at me, I think. Chris even smiles a bit.

Lisa, Chris, and Heather are all looking at me. From my vantage point an incredible sunrise bursts behind them, but here they are...smiling even....looking at me...happy I'm here.

Heather looks incredible with the sun behind her. It reminds me for just an instant of the moment in her foyer, surrounded in the bent light from the windows, the scene teary and heavy. But now it's a very pleasant, tender feeling. She's actually glad to be with me. And it's not that fact that really, really gets me. I think- well, I know that people have been glad to see me, be with me, maybe even love me. Tammy loved me. I think I loved her too at some point. But I left her in Ohio and there's little turning back from that kind of asshole move. But here was Heather, who knew all the shit, all the horrible muck I'd covered myself in over a long time, and she was still sitting here in the sand in front of me. Smiling even.

The sun reaches an apex of sorts and just looks incredible. The light was so strong I almost tune out the slow, tired sounds of their singing. It is the saddest, most out of tune version of Happy Birthday I've ever heard. But it's there.

They might as well be singing "You Can't Always Get What You Want" but the impact on my life, in this instant, is incredible.

I don't know what years are supposed to be those big turning points, but last night marks the last time I was 23. So that makes this the first day onward. The first day I feel like I really know myself, and that others do too. And the world isn't going to end because I don't have a job (which I do now) or because I don't have a place to stay (which I'm working on) or because I found out Allen is gone (which I know means he's just somewhere else smiling)... I'm 24 and I feel like I've been let in on a secret. Like a breath of life in my ear, one that I don't know if I deserved, but one I'm not going to squander.

I'm not sure what answer I received, or what questions I must have asked... But I know that if I don't take this turning point for all its worth, then I might as well have given up a long time ago. I lasted 23 years on luck and things I never appreciated...

23 down. And thankfully, it looks like even better ones to go.

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