11 of 30

Everyday my phone goes in my left front pocket, my keys go in my right front pocket, the wallet goes in the back left pocket and my handkerchief goes in the back right. It has been like that for at least awhile now. It’s a reliable system but sometimes I still reach into my pockets to remind myself of what’s there. If, on occasion, I have a fifth item in one of my pockets, like my knife or some change, I will reach into whichever pocket that thing is in to ensure that my fundamental belonging is still there. I suppose it may be just an occupier of time but I sometimes have moments of real panic. They are very brief. I might be driving along and I’ll feel the jingle of nickels and 3 pennies and a quarter and I will think that I no longer have my keys. My hand will then dart into my pocket and grasp around frantically until I find the original, recognizable object.

               “Old Tony, they call me, that’s my nickname.” The homeless man told me. I went to make a token chuckle of acknowledgment but the water I was drinking went down the wrong pipe and I choked. A guttural, sort of desperate cough came out of me. “Whoooaaahahaha.” Old Tony wheezed. “Easy now.”

               “I’m fine.” I told him. Then, to even the score for him having seen my vulnerability I said, “How old are you?” He had been hanging around the same park that I was working in for the past few days. Like a pigeon, he had been inching closer and closer to me as his interest grew. He hadn’t asked me for any money yet but I figured that since he’d seen me around he was working up to it. No reason to rush in to things.

               “Oh, well, I’m old now.” He looked at the sky for reference as he spoke. I didn’t bother to look up and see what he was looking at. The guy who I was hired to watch was inside of his building across the street. Each day this week he left on foot to walk around the city. His wife thought he was cheating but I had not seen any evidence to support her worries.

“You hungry, Old Tony?”

“No sir, no.”

“What’d you do when you were young?”

He bent over his grocery cart before answering, “ I worked for the city, I did the bottles.”

“I’m watching a guy who lives in that building.” I pointed across the street. “His wife hired me to watch him.”

“Mmmmhmm.” He said like he’d heard the story before.

“Wait, if ‘Old Tony’ is your nickname, what’s your real name?”

“Tony.”

“What do you do with the bottles you have now?”

“Oh I turn em’ in.”

“But…when you were young did you, I mean did you do anything cool with all your stuff? Like make artwork or anything?”

Tony ran his fingers over one of the empty glass bottles and shrugged.

“Can I ask you a favor?” He asked with his hands now vacant. I reached in my pocket and felt my keys. The guy in the building walked outside and headed down the street. I got up headed after him.

10 of 30

 

         “Angelo and Mike will meet you at the customer’s building.” The boss said. When I got to the building I found neither Angelo nor Mike. Aria was there though so I started to move her stuff alone. After two trips from the apartment to the truck she started to grow a little agitated that she’d gotten only one mover when she’d paid for 3.

         “I’ll call them.” I promised and headed downstairs. I didn’t have to use the phone though. Two men were standing by my truck. Angelo was huge, like a carnival strong man. His limbs were abnormally long and his head seemed small in relation to the rest of his body. It looked like he was doing an impression of Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four, but he would not stop the impression. Mike was the wise cracking, scrappy little sidekick that you knew from cartoons and comics. Only Mike didn’t make wise cracks or talk much at all, but he was scrappy, and little. Both of his forearms held tattoos, one of the designs was a skeleton head smoking a blunt and wearing a Viking helmet. I wanted to ask him about the design but I was afraid his explanation would only disappoint me. I knew that they would have difficulty with my name.

         “You’re Graz…”

         “Granger.” I stopped Angelo short. “ C’mon lets get the rest of the stuff.” I wanted to keep things moving fast. I had loaded most of the stuff myself and only a couple of heavy items were left.

          “Is there anything I can do to help?” I heard Aria ask while I was in the hallway. I knew either Angelo or Mike would answer before I could get back.

          “You just stay out of the way.” Angelo said. I could tell that he wasn’t being malicious but he scared Aria anyway. When we were in the elevator I felt the need to align myself with the two guys.

          “Not too much heavy shit.” I manufactured with disappointing results. They both nodded at me but lost interest quickly when Mike produced a pink, rubber ball from his pocket. While the two of them exchanged turns bouncing the ball across the elevator, I feigned interest, and tried to decipher the crude images on Mike’s arms.

After we loaded the truck we all squeezed in the front. I was driving, Mike took the middle and Angelo rode shotgun. We passed a female cop on the corner. Mike pointed at her. I expected him to say something sexually debasing about the cop. Instead he said.

            “Why you think she became a cop?”

Angelo shrugged because he didn’t know, or care. We passed Madame Tussaude’s Museum where a wax sculpture of Samuel L. Jackson stood by the door.

           “You see that movie?” Angelo asked no one in particular. He might have been asking just Mike but I answered with a question.

           “What Movie?” I asked.

           “Him and Bruce Willis, Die Hard.”

          “Yeah, it was part 3, I think.” I knew it was part three, but I wanted to avoid coming across like an authority.

           “No.” Mike jumped out of silence “But I saw ‘The Simpsons’ last night, the one where Homer is trying to climb down a tree and falls out.” Then doing a Homer Simpson voice. “D’oh.” Then he chuckled and repeated his impersonation.

           “I saw another movie too.” Angelo said. “It was with Nicholas Cage called ‘City of…’ no it was ‘A National Treasure’. In the movie they find a city filled with gold bricks. A golden city.” He spread his arms while he spoke. The palms of his hands were facing down as though he were caressing a scale model of the golden city. “A city of gold.” He finished dreamily.

          “I wish we could get one of those gold bricks.” Mike interjected. “We wouldn’t be in the furniture moving business no more.”

        “Yeah, we’d be in the gold moving business.” Angelo added.

 

 

 

this —- happen —–

                There are too many magazines in the kitchen. I feel like I have to read them all. If I don’t read them all then I will be missing out on what’s happening. If I do read them I will learn about all of the exciting things that other people are doing and that will just add to my sense of lassitude. I wish people would stop bringing all this information into my home. I don’t think I really want to hear about any of the stuff in the magazines, but I know that other people do, and those people are being admired by other people. I just want other people to be just as satisfied with settling as I am. I don’t mind settling for less if other people are also doing it.

I’m growing dumber rapidly, I feel. Maybe this is how I’ve been and it’s just now that my desire for learning more is coming into collision with my established and absolute ceiling of learning. I tried writing lists of goals. I started to amass far too many list and the sheer number began to overwhelm me so I threw them all out. I get overwhelmed easily. Maybe I don’t. I don’t like the way this is turning out, it’s one long, whiny trip of self indulgence. This is the type of writing that I would make fun of someone else for writing. Unless I saw that this type of structure was being lauded, then I would be empowered by my intrinsic knowledge of style. Self indulgence is common place in established artists, I’m sure. I feel too scatterbrained. Scatterbrained can sell if it has a publicist though. Now I will waste time googling publicists. Maybe I should be a publicist. No, it’s probably the type of thing where it’s all about who you know and I don’t know anyone.

I was walking in Park slope. I passed a stoop where two little boys were seated. I overheard a bit of their conversation.

            ”…and I was at the park, or the zoo and we saw a badger.” One said.

            ”Oooh, that’s nice.” Said the other.

9/30

        Now it’s snowing, and the internet is not working. Gabe says that his brain is starting to fail. I told him that he’d better consider himself lucky since he had a big brain to begin with.

        Now he is walking around the goddamn house, strumming away on his little guitar while I try to write. I’m going to take a break.

Maybe if I start drinking now, I will be inspired to write something really important. It’s too bad that I can’t turn all suffering into art. I told Gabe that we have to leave the house.

          “We have to leave the house, Gabe.” I told him again. I don’t know where we’ll go but I think it’s important to just do something. “I can’t go on the internet so I have to go out and have some experience that I can write about.” I said.

           “Don’t you have a reserve of experiences that you just haven’t written about yet?” Gabe asked me. I did have a reserve. But I said no.

We still haven’t left the house. I got caught up looking at a map of old New York. There used to be many ships surrounding this city. Now I have to go remind Gabe to get ready to leave.

Now we’re at the coffee shop. When we came in here it was full of people and the only seat without a person had a small dog in it. The dog was wearing a small coat. I looked at the dog, it was shaking cold despite its coat. The guy sitting next to the dog saw me looking at it. “Moxy, c’mere girl.” The guy called out. Moxy looked over at him and then back at me. I reached down to pet Moxy. Her fur was soft. The hood of her small coat was fur lined and soft as well. While I was petting several seats opened up in back of the shop. Now we have seats in he back part of the shop and I just got done writing about Moxy.

Gabe is to my left side. He’s clicking away on his keyboard. The woman sitting across the table from us is exhibiting a forced cordiality. Acting like she didn’t mind scooting her chair to the side to accommodate us. She was probably expecting to get the whole surface to herself after the last people left. I would be angry if I was her. I’m going to make a joke at Gabe’s expense to ease the tension among us.

I just said, “Gabe, it’s not appropriate to watch porn in a public place like this.” Gabe shook his head at me. I looked over at the woman to make sure that she heard my joke. She was looking down at her book.

Gabe said Breuk just sent him a message about a plane landing in the Hudson River. I don’t know why she didn’t send me that message.

When I left Sterling Antiques it was cold out. When I was inside I had seen a book on a table titled ‘The contemporary Gentleman’. I had picked up the book and when I did I’d said, “Well, they finally made a book about me.” Robert laughed and I waited until the laugh came to a natural end before I left.

Now I’m back home. Every online news outlet is featuring stories about the plane in the river. David just sent me an email. In it he wrote; ‘if you write about that plane crash, you’d better praise the pilot’s heroism’. I’m not going to write about it though.

           “Why are they calling it a miracle?” Breuk said. “It’s not a miracle, the pilot was doing his job, and he did a really good job. But if you say ‘miracle’ you’re saying that it was god’s work and not a person’s. If a person does something it’s not a miracle.”

8 0f 30

        I was unloading a truck in SoHo with Rob. I went inside for no more than two minutes. When I came back out everything was gone. I opened the cab of the truck, noticed that something was different, but it took a second to register what had happened. The GPS was ripped from its cradle with the power adapter left behind. Without the adapter the GPS would only be of use to who ever took it for another twenty minutes or so. My bag was also gone. I felt rushed to recall what had been in the bag. I checked my pockets. I had my wallet, phone, and truck keys on me. The bag had contained tools, my car and house keys, and my notepads.

        ”Fuck” was the word I came up with. I scanned the streets for someone who would have been carrying my bag. I was holding a screwdriver in my hand. I thought about throwing it. There were people all around. If I threw it then all the people would know I was upset. But I might hit a person with the screwdriver if I threw it. Then I would have to apologize and explain myself. Then my reason for throwing a screwdriver would seem paled in comparison to the new problem that the person I hit was having. I would end up looking unjustified and spoiled. “Fuck.” I said it louder as Rob approached from across the street. Rob wanted to know what was wrong. I told him.

      ”Damn, we should check the subway,” he said, “There was some bum looking motherfucker who was asking me for a cigarette a minute ago. I bet he took it.” We sprinted down the block and underground. While I ran I tried to remember what notebooks I’d had inside of my bag. One green spiral pad where I’d been jotting down ideas. The subway was relatively empty. I swiped my card and entered the platform. Rob didn’t have a card.

“What’d he look like?” I yelled back as I sprinted down the ramp away from Rob.

“Like Hispanic and short, with a sleeveless shirt.” There had also been a larger Moleskin notebook in the bag. That one contained many pages of writing ideas in their infancy. I felt sick when I thought of all the storied details that would be lost with the bag. I scrambled through my pocket as I ran. It was too difficult to identify anything in the pocket while my legs were moving. I stopped and fished out a scrap of loose paper and a pen. No one on the platform fit Rob’s description. I kept moving. What had been in the notebook? Recent events, but they were in memorable detail. Not memorable enough that I didn’t have to write them down though. That’s why I’d had the book. I wasn’t as worried about the tools as much as I wanted the book.

Two days ago, while I was driving in Washington Heights, a squirrel ran in front of my car, but he was carrying another full sized squirrel in his mouth. Rob had been with me, but he hadn’t seen it. I called his attention to the squirrels but it was too late. They had passed. He said he saw them, but I think he was just saying that he did to please me.

I slowed just enough to scratch the word ’squirrel’ onto my scrap paper before I resumed my sprint. A transit cop watched me as I ran. I thought it would have looked more suspicious to abandon my run to a walk, so I kept running past the cop.

After I’d seen the squirrels, I had gone to an apartment building to move some guys’ furniture. There wasn’t anything that special about him, but in the lobby of his building there was a computer printer left unattended. A small boy and his mother walked past. “I want that,” the boy had announced while pointing at the printer. The mother lightly dismissed the request and continued on. I walked outside, but when I returned the boy and his mother were still in the lobby, this time engaged in a more passionate argument about the printer. “Nooo,” the boy’s voice threatened to turn into a shriek, “I want to put it on my wall.” “Well…that’s not what it’s for, so…” The mother seemed at a loss. I’d watched them go on with their struggle for the next several minutes as I went in and out of the building. I had made notes to remind myself to write about them. I had written something down along the lines of “The boy could not possibly be able to appreciate the printer.”

I neared the end of the subway platform and still had not seen my bag or anyone who looked like the person Rob had described. I slowed to a walk. I felt certain that something else had happened on the same day as the “squirrel” and the “printer” occurrences. There were things written in the notebook, about my youth. They were most likely some sort of laments about not capitalizing on past opportunities. I knew there were some notes written about a Hasidic guy that I gave a ride to in Williamsburg. The ride with that guy had not happened on the same day as the squirrel or the printer, but maybe I would’ve written it into the story for a more filling product. I scribbled “Hasidic Guy” to remind myself, but the words looked more like “Hasidiccy”.

He had flagged me down at an intersection. “Yeah?” I’d asked, rolling down my window. He nodded at me. I figured that he wanted a ride so I waved him aboard. I asked him his name, and when I told him mine he looked excited. His large beard made him look older, but I could tell that he was around my age. “You are married?” He had asked me. “No, no.” “It is good, life, until the day you are married.”

A man passed me on the subway platform. I saw a book bag out of the corner of my eye and whipped my head around. It was not my bag on his shoulder, but I had reached the end of the platform. I turned around and was surprised to find that I had not traveled as far as I thought. The transit cop was still in sight, and I could make out the silhouette of Rob’s head poking through the turnstile in the distance.

“You have many girlfriends?” the Hasidic man had said. At the time, I knew he was asking a question, but I was undecided about whether or not I would re-write it later as a statement for the sake of humor. A lot of his questions and comments revolved around him living vicariously through my sex life. I remembered that he seemed to shrink into his seat as we drove together.

I passed an advertisement in the subway station that caught my eye. It featured a young woman with a word bubble over her head. Inside the bubble were words that testified to the power of a local bank. Someone had taken a cutting implement to the ad and removed the mouth portion of the woman’s face. Underneath where the smile had been, the multi-colored surface of the previously posted ad was revealed. The final result being the young woman’s face with a green hued mass where her mouth had been.

The Hasidic guy had said something like “Luck and blessing with work and women and the new year” when he got out of my vehicle.

      ”Not down there huh, G?” Rob asked when I got close enough to him.

      ”No,” I told him. “It’s fucked up, too. Now I have to replace my house keys. Fuck, and my car keys.”

7 of 30

I was fairly certain that I had told the story to Pierre before. Maybe I had just told it before in his presence, while there were others around, and he hadn’t been listening. But he may have heard it before, and now he just wanted something to fill the void in conversation. Either way, I was the one who brought it up, so I must have just wanted to talk about myself.  I have recited the story on multiple occasions to different people, so it’s possible that he really might never have heard it, and I just don’t remember.

It was about a time when I was living in Florida. I had just bought some pot, and I got pulled over by a cop. The cop said he’d pulled me over for a broken taillight.  He took my license and administered protocol. He had asked me if I had any weapons, and I told him about the pistol tucked into my waistband.

While I spoke, I watched Pierre’s eyes move around the table and out the window and then back to me. I thought that if his eyes caught my eyes spying on his interest level, the rest of the story telling would be tainted by awareness. I looked down to hide my boredom. I sensed that later on I would be over analyzing the whole situation.

The cop had taken my gun from me for safety’s sake, while he explained the scenario. He said that, due to a clerical error a while back, my license had been suspended. In accordance with the law, I could have gone to jail and had my car impounded for driving with the suspension. I pleaded ignorance of the license error, and the cop took pity on me. Pierre was fishing around for additional creamer packages for his coffee. I flicked several of mine in his direction.

“So the cop was getting ready to let me drive off, then he’s like ‘okay Mr. Greenbaum, I can’t just hand you your gun, so I’m gonna put it back in the car’ so then I’m like ‘okay’. So while we’re walking back towards my car, I’m going to the driver’s side, and the cop is going to the passenger side. The whole time…” I stopped for a moment to observe Pierre’s level of concern. Then, I continued with the words I have said so many times before. “But this all happened so fast.  The cop goes ‘okay Mr. Greenbaum, I’m just gonna leave this right here in the glove box’, now I didn’t have time to say anything, or really even have anything to say, so the cop just reaches in with his free hand and opens the latch, then with his other hand he puts the gun in the glove box right next to the 1/4 bag of grass! While he’s doing this, he looks up at me and he’s like ‘okay, go ahead on home’ and he shuts the glove box.” Pierre smiled the way people do when they’ve heard a joke before.

“So I drove right home and I was just shaking, sort of literally.”

“Oh man.” Pierre said. I checked my watch to see how long we’d been waiting. “What time did she say she’d be here?”

“Twenty minutes.” I said. “Maybe thirty.”

“Okay, well, let me tell you my story about being stopped by cops while there were drugs in the car.”

“Alright.”

I listened to Pierre’s story for a while, and then Ursula called to say that she was ready for us. We left the diner and walked half a block to her house. She opened the door with one hand, while holding the pointer finger of her other hand vertically across her lips to signify a request of silence.

“My roommate is sleeping.” She whispered.

“Oh.” I whispered back. She showed us to the boxes that she needed to have moved, and Pierre and I got to work. We loaded the van very quickly and readied to leave.

“It’s alright that I ride with you?” Ursula’s accent was more noticeable when she spoke at a regular level.

“Well, it’s sort of a liability…” I started my routine speech. I normally hem and haw for dramatic effect before I agree to give a ride. I feel that it helps guilt people into tipping. It was very cold out, though, and I just wanted the door to be closed as quick as possible. “…Get in.”

The three of us squeezed into the front and drove at low speed through the West Village.

“What do you do?” I asked of Ursula.

“I’m a professional; organizer.”

“What does that mean?  What do you do?”

“Well, I do things like sort and organize closets and things.”

“You must deal with a pretty affluent clientele.”

“Yeah.”

“Who famous have you organized for?”

“Well, I can’t really say.  Sworn to secrecy,  you know.”

I didn’t know how serious she was, so I pushed for more details.

“Come on.” I said. “Who would I tell?  Pierre is the only person I know, and he’s right there.”

“Well, I work for both of the Coen Brothers.”

“Wow, I love their movies, but they’re sloppy though, huh?”

Ursula would neither confirm nor deny my assumption, but she tried to switch direction of the conversation.

“What about you.” She said. “You ever move anyone famous?”

“Oh no.  Famous people have people to deal with people like me.”

“Oh.” She whispered, like when we had first met.

“Where is your accent from?” Pierre asked.

5 of 30

There is never that much traffic around the navy yards but this morning I was the only one driving around that area. The sun wasn’t up. I kept taking my eyes off of the road to look at the skyline. When I stared at the skyline I imagined that I might hit a person crossing in front of me. Little by little the lights in the distance began to dim away under the rising sun. My old landlord George says “Lilly by lilly” when he means to say “Little by little.” I turned up the radio to hear a song that had come on. The song had a sort of hopeful and haunting melody. Something about the time of day and the song combined with the idea of privileged isolation made me want to write what I was feeling. I grabbed my notepad and held the pencil at ready while I steered with the other hand. Nothing immediately went from the pencil to the paper. I thought I should write about the recent trip I took to Pennsylvania but then I thought that I should stick to what was at hand.  After a minute I still could not conjure any words to narrate what I was thinking of right then. More vehicles started to join the road and I realized it was too dangerous to try to document while I was moving. I settled for telling myself that I would remember what was in my head at that moment and write about it later. Then I thought that too many things might occur in the course of the day for me to remember a particular instance so I took the pencil and quickly jotted “about driving this morning in BK”. The shape of my B bothered me, I closed the notepad and threw it to the floor before I would be tempted to try to correct my sloppy penmanship.

I made it out of the Holland Tunnel with no hold up since it was the weekend. New Jersey’s roads were also sparsely populated so I drove fast. I entered back into Pennsylvania a day after I had left it, only this time I was going somewhere new. Quakertown was where I was heading. The name of the town drew images to my head of an Amish type of farmer jumping from his barrel-laden wagon at the last minute before it submerged in quicksand. There was no horse in the picture to be threatened though. The near vacant stretches of highway made the drive seem longer. I started to think about how many long drives I’d been on. I have multiple notepads filled with random scribbling and various notes from long trips in the car. A lot of the stuff I write down while driving is shorthand meant to remind me of what I see along the way or hear on the radio. I might pass a forest or a billboard that spurs my imagination and I write down some paraphrase for what I see in order to build on later. Later on I usually just leaf through page after page of ramblings that then seem out of context. The idea of all the paper I had filled with observations and corollary plans that never materialized made me feel kind of wasteful. I passed a sign advertising a scenic overlook. The timing was perfectly appropriate for such a thing. Something like that could be a workable symbol for appreciating the journey. I was pleased with the promise of a mediating break and wanted to not squander it.

The entry route to the overlook crept up on me and I almost missed it. There were several signs prohibiting entry after sundown. It was far from sundown but the red colored signs of deterrent and the lack of other travelers almost made me not enter. I did enter and I followed the winding road to the top. The top was not far from the entry and the view was disappointing. The spot overlooked the highway I’d just been on and not much more. Still I parked for a minute. To my right was a red pick up truck with a guy asleep in the driver’s seat. I stared at the guy and his truck for a minute, then a minivan pulled into the lot. Just as I assumed a family dumped out of the van replete with fat children and their broken parents. The kids wasted no time in running over to the guardrail, screaming about the sub par vista. My van was parked in such a way that it obscured the passed out truck driver from the kids and vice-versa. I began to back out slowly and remove the division with the hope that the screaming kids might wake the sleeper who would then frighten them with a bewildered stare. As I reversed the little fat boy continued to shriek with the reckless abandon of a tasered criminal but the man didn’t wake. I got bored and left.

Farther down the road the fog got thicker, I drove as long as I could before putting on the wipers. I needed to stop at a bathroom but I didn’t want to have to buy anything in order to use the facilities. In the city nobody will let you use the toilet without buying something usually. It’s so common that it has become a habit for me to pick up a token item in exchange for pissing. I don’t mind that much since I enjoy gum and candy and the like. And while these more rural areas aren’t as stingy with their bathrooms I still feel sort of obligated. Today I didn’t have much petty cash though. I stopped at a gas station at the edge of Quakertown that looked busy. The amount of people around would serve to camouflage my task. The clerk was a middle-aged man, beaten by his own appearance. I walked past him without being acknowledged. The door to the restroom was locked. I returned to the clerk.

“Hey.” My hand petted a small box of mints on the counter as I spoke. “Can I get the key?” The clerk shoved the air between us before he spoke or raised his head.

“If, if it’s locked then…then someone’s in there.” He was able to sound both apologetic and angry at once. His eyes bore the red tint of someone who’d been crying but there was no moisture to corroborate. I returned to the restroom door and pulled on it again. It was still locked and I heard someone shuffling around inside. A sign on the adjacent women’s room warned of wet floors. A woman with two small boys walked toward my direction with caution. The woman’s chubby arm was held stiff and outstretched behind her to prevent the boys from charging ahead. She stood at a safe distance from the bathrooms and me and craned her neck as though she were looking over a chasm with trepidation. I sunk deeper into the wall to minimize her worry. She nodded her head at the restroom sign and continued to nod as she turned back to her kids to let them know the coast was clear.

“Wait here and don’t leave without me.” She told the boys. The boys stood outside when she entered. Inside the men’s room the shuffling continued but nobody exited. I hoped that whoever was inside was extremely old in order to justify the delay. I turned up to see the two boys horse playing

“Lets leave her.” The older looking boy said.

“No!” The littler one replied indignantly. The clerk looked up at the commotion and then to the front door that just opened. An older lady walked in and to the counter and started complaining about gas pumps. The clerk raked his fingers along the sides of his head and through his remaining hair.

“It says inoperable.” The old lady whined.

“It’s not, it’s operating.” The clerk sounded defeated already. The woman came out of her bathroom and ushered her boys away. Whoever was in the men’s room had still not emerged and I went over my options. I thought about just going into the unoccupied woman’s room but I knew that I’d only be hurting myself. I wanted to be present outside of the men’s room when the current user finally left, to punish him with a glare that would let him know how inconveniencing he’d been. If I missed that chance I knew that the entire ordeal would have been for naught.

“I want this to work.” The old lady at the counter was saying. “ I already paid and I don’t want to go elsewhere but I can’t make the gas come out.”

“Well you’re not even out there trying.” The clerk returned.

“You’re saying that I don’t know how to pump gas…and I know how to pump gas!”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I just started here and…” The clerk’s arms flailed to the sky in a show of helplessness. “People come and ask me about stuff…” One of his motioning hands flung towards me as an example. I looked at the clerk and his eyes retreated. “…And I don’t know.”

The bathroom door opened and a sheepish little man slunk out, he wore the costume of a Dunkin Donuts employee. The relief that came with my imminent turn ushered out any animosity that I held for the guy and we nodded at each other.

When I left the toilet the old lady and the clerk were in the death throes of their struggle.

“Just, just give me my money, I know how to pump gas just give me my money back, I’ll go pump gas somewhere else.” The old lady seethed out. The clerk handed the money over without apology. He was a proud, sad man clinging to his shred of the gas dispute. The old lady left and I moved toward the exit in tow. I stopped short by the drink display. I wasn’t really thirsty per se but I felt sort of obligated. Not just because I used the facility but also out of slight compassion for the flustered clerk. I looked in the direction of the counter and him. He looked back with suspicion hyphenated with shame.

 

 

4 of 30

 

 

Today in the car Gabe was trying to explain the finer nuances on the potential of information time travel to me. According to him a scientist somewhere is claiming to have broken the code on how to send computational information through time. Gabe said that to test the functionality of the time machine the scientist would only have to turn it on. Then, if it worked, a message would transmit from the machine. This in turn would prove that the scientist’s future self had sent the info to his past self, which would also be the present version of him, as we knew.

“How would the future scientist who sent the message ever know if it worked?” I wondered. “He would never get to appreciate his sacrifice, unless the past/present guy sent confirmation back, but then the guy getting the message would be the same guy who sent it and that would be just like e-mailing yourself.”

“No.” Gabe said. He then went on to give in detail the paradigm of time travel and the ethical and philosophical cans of worms that lay waiting to be opened. I zoned out while he was talking. I started to think of simpler matters, like my injured toe. There is a BB lodged in the toe closest to my right pinky toe. It’s been there for three years and it only bothers me when the weather gets cold. Gabe was then saying how time travel could lead to a very grey area in the realm of free will. I said that if you were ever time traveling it would be best to keep your head inside the vessel, lest you knock off the head of your time paralleled self in passing.

“This is a good song.” I say about the song on the radio.

“Yeah, I used to do this song at open mics.” He says. The woman singing is singing about morphine and its famous users. She is listing the names in familiar shorthand as though she was an intimate friend. William Burroughs became Billy for example.

“I changed the names when I sang.” Gabe says. “People would go crazy for this song.”

“You should have been screwing tons of girls after those shows.”

“I did.”

“How many.”

“It was always just the one girl I was seeing but we always had sex after the open mic shows.”

We drive up onto the BQE and I look down at the streets below where we had just been driving.

“We should get in the forgery business.” He says.

“You can’t just jump into that sort of thing, you know how many people are trying to do that, with more credentials than us.”

“You know how much a forged Pollock would bring us?”

“How about an engorged pollack.”

Traffic slowed to a crawl.

“This is taking too long.”

“Yeah, and my damn toe hurts, I think it’ll have to come off maybe.”

“Well we have to do something, this recession is killing us.”

The way he said that last part was funny to me but I looked out my window to conceal my smirk. One time I’d been talking to my brother about the troubled economy and off the top of my head I said “the economic reception.” He laughed. After that I said the same thing in different company, when appropriate. I think I had said it around Gabe before but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t say it again, just to be sure.

3 of 30

The guy who came to the door introduced himself and almost immediately I forgot his name. My brain was focused on the weather. The guy showed me into his house and I noticed first how much more stuff he had than I had. One corner of the home held only a single glass display case even though the corner could have accommodated more. Within the case stood just two anime figurines that looked like collectibles.

         “So there’s more over here.” The guy said. I turned to find what I expected to see; crate after crate of records. So perfectly the records fit into empty milk crates. The uncanny symbiosis had always troubled me. “This is Kate.” The guy said, this time pointing to a woman who had glided in from a back room without any audible warning.

          “Hello.” My voice emerged smaller than I anticipated it would. “How are you?” I said louder. Kate headed for the front door but stopped short at another door and opened it. Behind the opening was a mirror that she used to admire herself. The guy and Kate both watched her reflection and I reached for the paper in my pocket.

 ‘Scott’ the paper read.

“Scott.” I read and the guy looked up. “I’ll just get started.” I walked outside where it had begun snowing. Elya was smoking a cigarette and looking up at the sky.

         “Never seen anything like it.” He said twice.

         “What.” I asked. “Snow”

         “Yeah but look.” The snowdrifts were each about the size of English muffins and they were falling in slowed motion.

         “Like a pestilence, some locusts or something, it looks like.” I then reconsidered my comparison and decided instead that the thick, sedated downpour looked more like the view from the bottom of a murky body of water. “It looks like you’re under some cloudy water.”

          “Really, I never have seen anything like it.” Elya said again.

         “Someone’s throwing snowballs at us eh?” A voice said. I turned to see an old man who was walking his dog. The man had a humorous hat. When he saw me look toward him he pointed to the falling snow to justify his claim. His hat had furry earflaps that stuck out the side like electric current was passing through them. For a moment I wondered what the old guy would have said if I had said something in a really accusatory tone like “ who’s throwing snowballs? God.” The idea passed away in an instant. I just didn’t have the energy. Around the intersection various people had come outside to watch the abnormal snowfall. 

         “Wow.” Scott giggled from his front step. “I should really take a picture of this.” He went back in presumably to look for a camera. I then felt a need to document the setting but I had left my camera behind. I decided that a photo would never do the scene justice anyway. Video would really be necessary; a picture would just be boring later on.

We waited for a few minutes for Scott to return before we got too cold and just went in after him. Kate had vanished and Scott was trying to tell us something about records. I never cared about vinyl records aside from their packaging. Scott was probably older than me though, with some nostalgic connection to the dated media. He led Elya and me through the apartment while pointing at certain things of his and giving a brief history of them. I stopped at a window to check the progress of the snow. The large clumps that had been falling had given way to smaller, more conventional flakes. Out of my periphery I saw someone come over and stand to the side of me by the window.

“Oh, now it’s all changed back to normal.” Elya’s voice came from right next to me. I looked up lazily, surprised that it was him standing there. Across the room Scott was looking at some liner notes.

“I’m going to go get the truck.” I said as I walked. 

2 of 30

              After the first trip up Kathy’s stairs I felt that each subsequent time would be uncomfortable. Inside the entry way of her front door was a full length mirror that could not be avoided. My reflection in the harsh winter light disgusted me but I could not help but to look with each passing. My skin was terribly aged and weather beaten and my frame managed to look gaunt yet puffy. I found myself reasoning that the terrible reproduction I was seeing was not one of great fidelity but rather a temporary product of several unfortunate elements all merged at once. I pushed my mind to concentrate on the task at hand and I began to move boxes in greater speed, all the while keeping my head down as I passed the mirror like it was a schoolyard bully.

    ”Either of you guys want this?” Kathy asked while pointing to a taxidermy sculpted bird. I might have taken it but the feathers were cheap looking. “This is also up for grabs.” This time she was holding up an old black light painting of Jesus. I told her that I needed neither item and Elya shook his head as he walked by. He was carrying a heavy box and grimacing under the weight of it but he quickly smiled at the Jesus offer before returning to his strained look. Kathy shrugged and continued to rummage. Her age was hard to guess. She had a pudgy body that bore the collapsing look of age but her hair was a vibrant red and she had the spry, darting eyes and mild acne of a pre-teen.

        When we had first arrived at her door she looked right at Elya and said “Hey, I know you from 12th street.” He grinned with recognition and nodded. I assumed that she must have been a customer at the bar on 12th that he used to work at. They both then just stood in the doorway acknowledging each other in new context but giving no follow up statements.

          ”It’s a small world.” I gave them, discontent to let the situation diffuse naturally. 

          The tenth or eleventh box that I carried was rather large and the stairway was too narrow to accommodate both it and myself side by side so I dragged it behind me. Halfway down the steps the hole in the cardboard broke away and my hand shot upwards with every bit of the force I’d been using to drag. In the time between leaving the box and reaching my face my hand had refused to relinquish its fist-like posture and as a result I punched my own nose. I waited for the initial shock to wear off and then I gave a very conservative, measured amount of cursing meant to satisfy only me. I could tell that I had done no real damage but I was going to have to look in the mirror regardless.

          ”This lady is a good tipper, you should give her a ride to the storage place.” Elya told me after we had loaded everything. His news was delivered stoically, like he had nothing to gain personally from the proposal. I didn’t like the idea of Kathy or anybody sitting that close to me in the truck right then but I couldn’t argue with the possibility of more money.

On the drive over I made token small talk and Kathy answered in kind about her job and her move away from New York.

        ”I can leave the city because all of my work is online.” She told us. “I do some graphic designing and web stuff and some fetish photography and artwork.”

       “Please tell more about fetish photography.” Elya and I requested in clumsy. overlapping fashion.

       “Well, I started by answering an ad.” She paused, weighing whether or not to go on. She must have decided that the confessional was safe since we would never meet again, so she continued. “A photographer first had me just do like, putting on shoes, then I started doing foot fetish videos and, I know what your thinking cause I thought it too, I’m 45 and fat but I guess there was a need so now I do full on food fetish videos.”

Again I asked for more details and my sincere curiosity must have overshadowed my malaise because she became more excited and giving in her telling.

       “Just last night a guy paid me $100 for ten minutes to just pour chocolate syrup all over my head and eat mashed potatoes, like real sloppily.”

I wanted to bring up that it didn’t seem like that great a deal once you factored in grocery costs and clean up time. Washing chocolate syrup from your mane must be a 20 minute chore in itself.

She turned to Elya. “And you, with your cigarette, you could be in a fetish smoking video, guys is Europe love that stuff.

           “Now your going to Texas where you can continue your job remotely?” I asked and she said yes. 

           “It was never something I planned on doing, but hey, you need more than one job in New York?”

           “What about Texas?” I asked.

           “Why not?” She shrugged happily. We passed by all the new buildings springing up on Fourth Avenue and Kathy and Elya started to talk about something along the lines of construction or progress. I lost focus of their conversation and just looked out the window like a child feigning boredom at an adults language that they can’t understand.

      At the storage center Kathy looked back and forth between the transport unit she had rented and the truckload of her belongings.

       “Will it all fit?” She wondered aloud. I shook my head yes but she didn’t see so I just started unloading from the truck and reloading into the transport cube. See watched anxiously as her things were stacked, not to be seen again until Texas. She might have asked during the task if we thought it would all fit. I didn’t hear because of the wind but I saw Elya nod his head up and down. When the last of it was safely stowed she rejoiced and thanked us. She handed us a pile of bills and said goodbye. We wished her luck on her trip and left. I counted the money as we pulled away and was satisfied to find a $60 tip left for both Elya and myself.

        ”I told you.” He said. I felt overwhelmed by the obvious conclusion I’d drawn about the situation and also compelled by the need to say it to someone.

        ”Isn’t it funny, the lives people make for themselves, that lady with all her jobs and little stuff and she’s been in New York for 25 years, now she’s going to leave and be a part of a different scene entirely, and we’ll never see her.”

Elya tipped his chin once in accord and looked out the window. I looked out the other window and saw a grouping of stray cats living around a semi-truck. My phone rang and I looked down and saw Kathy’s number.

        ”Hi.” She said as I opened the phone, before I could say anything. “I’m not a retard but I just can’t get the damn door to close or lock.”

 I circled back around through the parking lot and and found her fighting with a padlock in the cold. She had been trying to secure the door mechanism the wrong way. I corrected the mistake and said “bye” again. Her face looked pained in the biting wind. I thought how my face might have looked. I caught a glimpse of it in the window of the driver’s side door when I climbed inside, but only for a second. And the mirror inside the cab was useless, spider webbed into shards.