The envelope

It all came crashing to a halt that New Year's Day when I finally had the guts to open the envelope. Inside were a small brass key, two photos, and another envelope, scrawled with a heavy "FUCK YOU" on the outside.

I started shaking and sat down without thinking. The photos--one was a picture of her in bed. The other I stared hard at and finally moved my thumb to better see the right side... turned it over and stared at the blank back, then up at the wall, heart pounding.

I had taken both. The second was a scene I'd held in my memory for two years, since the day I'd met her. It was on a beach outside Cabo. She stood with wet pants in the surf, the setting sun making the fringes of her black hair gold. That was the image that kept me going for the last two years. Her loveliness and her laugh were in it; I pulled that moment out every time I was sad or missing her, which had been a lot.

But the photo was different from the memory.

We'd met on that beach--I was traveling alone, she with friends, but we were so drawn to each other we'd had sex on the second night. And you have to really like someone to have sex on the floor of a laundry room in a Mexican hostel and still have it rank as one of the most unbelievable, most spiritual experiences of your life. She snuck away from her friends to spend time with me every other day for a week but then she flew back to L.A., and I eventually to San Francisco, and that was when the pain began. The excited first visits and heartbreaking goodbyes, the phone conversations, the overnight meetings in motel rooms that went from elation to misery over the course of twelve hours, the excuses.

He was in the photo. Along with a couple of her other friends that I remembered, he was just a little further down the beach, beer in hand. He had been there.

In our last phone conversation she'd told me that she thought he knew, and she was angry at me for my indiscretions. She screamed into the phone and I pulled it away from my ear and set it on the table and walked outside for a minute. When I came back I told her that I loved her. And she didn't relent--she was furious, I could hear the tears in her voice and the clack of her shoes on the floor as she paced.

The key I didn't recognize. I held the smaller envelope, the Fuck You envelope, in my fingers for a moment before I opened it and pulled out a folded sheet of notepad paper. It read, "For two years I have been asking you to be there for me. You know what I have been going through and how much I needed your support. I needed you, I loved you, I gave you my heart and soul, and I thought we'd be together for the rest of our lives. So FUCK YOU for doing this to me and for saying you would always be there. Never, ever contact me again." I didn't recognize the handwriting.

I looked again at the key. I had no recollection of what it could be, until I suddenly did--it had been on her third visit to San Francisco, when we stood on the Golden Gate Bridge and she took out the lock we'd just bought at the hardware store. She ripped open the packaging with her teeth and we wrote our names on it with a Sharpie and locked it onto the chain link. And then she took the key out of the package too and tossed it up and over the fence and I tried to follow it all the way to the water.

But she hadn't thrown it. Or there had been two keys and she only threw one. And she hadn't been "on a break" from her relationship when we met in Cabo. She had been cheating on him under his nose.

She had told me a couple months ago that she was feeling ready to leave him, and the new year would be a good time to start fresh. I don't believe in New Year's resolutions myself, but sometimes they're forced on you. Before I slid everything back into the envelope I stopped to look at the other photo. I had taken it here, in my bed. She looked five years younger than she was. She was half-naked and asleep, catching a few more minutes before having to get up for her flight, sprawled awkwardly with her arm under her belly and one thigh pulled up to her chest. At the time it had been achingly beautiful.

What to do with that

I guess I'll just begin again. I went into the Army because they were going to train me to be a mechanic... the recruiter said they would... and my life had been going nowhere. I was living in Bitter Falls with a girl named Jamie who already had two kids, and working maybe two days a week at her uncle's shop, just running parts for them. I was twenty-two and the only friends I'd had who'd left Verona County had just graduated from college, one in New York and one in Florida, and the friends I had who hadn't left town were all married to women who had kids by different dads, and I wasn't sure what depressed me more.

Jamie didn't want me to go in the Army, but it wasn't like she was doing a lot to keep me here. She spent half her money on beer anyway. When I left for Afghanistan I told her I'd come back to her, but even then I didn't mean it. And I'd probably stopped thinking of her within a week of being out there.

The first week my unit had two IEDs to deal with. I didn't realize they were that common. Maybe I'm stupid but I didn't think we'd be over there if it was that dangerous. Just that it would be the Rangers or something, not regular troops. If it was that bad. I was just getting used to things a little when the explosion went off that day under our truck. The next thing I remember was the hospital in Germany, and then all those days my mom visited at Walter Reed.

The thing about traumatic brain injury is that you're not yourself anymore. Not that you're in a bad mood; that you're literally not the same person. Like you're this stranger with a different personality, different likes and dislikes. A stranger to your family and to yourself. There was a lot that I hated about what happened to me and a lot that I cursed out God for and even cried about, some things that were really bad, but this was just strange. I don't know if I'm supposed to be upset about it or not.

Today they had a party for me and I felt like I was at a party with strangers. But what do you do when you're at a party and you don't know anyone there? Just party even harder, right? I thought I was going to be one person at twenty-four, and instead I'm another person. Still trying to figure out what to do with that.

(Googled "I guess I'll just begin again" and went off this picture.)

Figured out

He had it figured out. He could keep living alone if he built a big ramp into the kitchen. He could build a big ramp if he lowered the table saw to a height where he could work it seated, and re-hung all his tools so he could reach them from where he was sitting. He could lower the table saw if he rigged a harness for himself so he could stand and lean without any risk of falling. The harness could be suspended from the ceiling of the garage. Somehow, he'd have to get up there on a ladder, but he'd figure that out.

They told him there was a chance he'd be able to stand without a walker again, but that to be safe he shouldn't--that his balance was so bad, even after the broken leg healed he ought to keep using it, shuffling around like a frail old man, whether or not he actually felt like he might fall. Since he hadn't felt like he was going to fall the first time, he was inclined to listen. He might be stubborn but he wasn't stupid.

No, he was too smart to try to go on living the way he had. But damned if he was going into one of those nursing homes. Anything a man could think of to build, he could build. And he'd do it. Slings to help him get out of bed, one of those chairs on a rail to get up the stairs, a higher toilet seat, a post he could strap himself to while chopping wood so he wouldn't fall. Because a man's got to be able to live on his own. He might choose to live with others. But he's got to be able to do it on his own, because relationships with others that aren't based on choice aren't worth anything at all.

Googled "He had it figured out" and went off this picture.

But of course

She was the last one left. We hadn't wanted to get a Dachshund--Gary said a German Shepherd was a dog, a Dachshund was a type of rat--but we had come already decided we'd be taking home one of the rescue dogs, so we did.

This dog was one of the rescues from the Jersey flood. They told us she'd been found on top of a snag of trees in the middle of Ketchum, one of the towns that was inundated. Her owners had never come forward. It was hard to believe--she was about as cute as a button, with little brown "eyebrows" that always looked worried, and tiny ears. At the shelter they said they thought she was less than a year old, and would get a little bigger, but I was hoping she was a miniature Dachshund and was always going to stay so tiny. Small enough to ride in my backpack as I biked around the park.

We named her Daisy. That fall, Gary lost his job, and I first started experiencing the grinding exhaustion that would be diagnosed 2 years later as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I missed a lot of work, and Gary was home when he wasn't at the library. We fought a lot. One of my clearest memories of that time was of Daisy sitting between us looking back and forth at us, her tiny eyebrows giving her the most fretful, vigilant expression.

I wish I could say that she became my comfort during those long months when Gary moved out and then we split entirely just as I was becoming unable to work. But by then, Daisy was gone. It was the oddest thing. I had been worrying about everything--about Gary, about how I was going to support myself, about how I was going to take care of the dog when I didn't even have the strength or energy to take her for a walk most days. And one day I let her out into the yard, and she never came back to scratch at the door. And I, God forgive me, didn't even notice until she'd already been gone for over 24 hours.

I don't know what I could have done. I suppose if my neighbor and I had gone out driving around the neighborhood sooner we might have found her, but I have to wonder if Daisy knew what she was doing. If leaving was her way of trying to help me.

When I thought of that I thought of her, alone, on that snag of trees surrounded by flood waters and how her owners never claimed her, this cute little thing. I wonder if she'd left them in order to make their lives easier, too, somehow. Of course I miss her and her funny little expressions. But of course I was relieved, too, when I realized she wasn't coming back.

Googled "She was the last one left" and went off this picture.

Untitled

If I could do it all over again, I would wait just two more minutes at that door. And then leave, just like they told us in training. But it was my first house call and I was nervous. So I did the next best thing: I walked around to the side of the house to peek in the window and see if I could tell whether anyone was home.

What I saw in that window can never be unseen.

There was a very white man with a very saggy butt on his hands and knees. The black apron hanging off his body hid absolutely nothing. Standing close to the window, facing away from me, facing him, was a very slim young black woman in stiletto heels and a black corset. Her hair hung to the middle of her back and she had a riding crop in her right hand.

I was so startled I dropped the box of Pyrex® Sexy Sixties products I was carrying onto the garden stones, and the high pitched tinkling on impact told me I'd just lost at least half of the $400 investment I'd made in the brightly painted, heat-resistant bakeware. That was my seed money, the money I needed to turn a profit on, so I could buy more and better bakeware, and make more money, and eventually progress to holding Pyrex® Sexy Sixties parties in my home, and soon be raking in the $1000 a month the other independent representatives said they were making in their spare time.

Nobody at the training had said anything about this.

At the sound of the shattering glassware, the tall woman turned around. She looked at me through the window. She had purple mascara. She had red red lipstick and long red fingernails. The corset did not... contain her. It seemed to have been cut specifically to expose her feminine gifts. Below her and to the side, the very white man also looked up over his hairy shoulder. There was something round and red in his mouth.

The woman crooked a finger at me.

I turned to run and tripped over the box, then stepped in it, the violent shattering of an avocado-and-cream Amish Butterprint four-piece nested mixing bowl set ringing in my ears. I was into the car and halfway down Center St. before I even became conscious of what I was doing. At that point I was faced with a choice: go back and see if anything salvageable remained in the box, or go home.

I went home. To this day I refuse to imagine what they might have done with the box of glass shards I left them.

Googled DP's inspired starting sentence of "If I could do it over again, I would wait just two more minutes at that door" and went off this picture.

World's only SuperBall xylophone band

Someone could have stopped it. In Flagstaff, in La Jolla, in Eugene. By the time they got to Portland there were only three of them left but the tour wasn't over, and it seemed a shame not to finish in Seattle like they'd planned. They eased the van into a gas station north of town and pulled some cardboard out of a dumpster. Pete got a Sharpie. Dave got one of xylophones out and set it up on the cracked asphalt. Ben went in to use the bathroom.

"We're going to play here?" Pete asked.

"Man, what the hell else are we going to do? We could be here for a long time."

It was chilly, but Dave blew into his fingers and worked his hands open and closed in between pulling SuperBalls out of a cardboard box and testing their bounce against the inside floor of the van. Pete was writing, in skinny block letters:

PLEASE HELP US GET TO SEATTLE

NEED GAS

WORLD'S ONLY

Dave jogged across the parking lot to toss a red SuperBall in the trash, then came back to look over Pete's shoulder.

WORLD'S ONLY SUPERBALL XYLOPHONE

BAND

The word "band" didn't fit on the same line. The dumpster cardboard wasn't long enough.

"All right. Warm up?" said Dave.

"Put this over here. Put your hat under it." Pete propped the cardboard against the back of the van. Ben had returned from the gas station store.

"Guys, I think I have dysentery, or something."

"Can you play?"

"Um." He sat down on the back bumper of the van. "I think I need to go to the hospital."

Pete had taken three balls and was juggling them downward against the keys of the first xylophone, experimentally. A few random notes sounded and then the strains of "Mary had a little lamb."

Dave put his hand on Ben's forehead. "You're sweaty, man."

"How are you going to afford a trip to the hospital, dude?" Pete clutched the three balls in one hand now and reached into the box for another.

Dave turned around. "How is he going to afford it? I don't know, you tell us. How much money's left in the emergency fund? The one you said we could restock if we started eating out of dumpsters. Huh?"

Pete shrugged and began bouncing the balls against the keys to the tune of "Oh when the saints come marching in," sustaining the long notes with multiple strikes like a mandolin player.

"I'm not sick. You're not sick. We're doing fine. He'll get over it."

"Well if he doesn't the tour is over. I'm not chasing after balls. It won't work. And nobody's going to pay to listen to you play the same three songs you know how to do by yourself over and over."

"So don't drop any balls." Pete didn't look up, now.

Ben was doubled over now, his blond head between his knees. Dave knelt beside him. "Look, man," he said quietly. "Go lie down in the van. If you still feel crappy in a half an hour we'll get you to the hospital. Don't worry about it." Ben nodded and Dave helped him up, around to the side of the van where he slid open the door, turning the painted SUPERBALL XYLOPHONE WORLD TOUR into the condensed SUPER HONE WOR.

"K, Pete," Dave said, dragging the box beneath the instrument and reaching in for a few balls. "I don't think either of us is capable of playing through all of, say, Stairway to Heaven without dropping at least once." He bounced his balls on the low end of the xylophone, tapping out "Hava Nagila" with stiff fingers. On the last note he missed his pickup and knocked the ball to the ground with the back of his fingers.

Three of the people who had been getting gas were now standing in front of them, looking from the instrument to the van and back, hands in their coat pockets. A teenage girl in heavy mascara leaned in and put a five in Dave's hat.

"Wanna bet?" said Pete.

"Yeah," said Dave. "I do. If I play with no drops, we take that five and put gas in the van and get Ben to the hospital. If you play with no drops, we take the gas and start heading up to Seattle."

"What if we're both perfect?"

Dave looked at their audience of three. "If we're both perfect, you guys are gonna shower us with dough, right?"

They chuckled. "I have a fiver," said a man.

"All right," said Dave. "If we're both perfect, we split the ten dollars. You get the van and I get Ben. If you're so damn good you can go to Seattle on your own. Me and Ben will figure out how to get back to Jersey."

"Fine," said Pete, so quiet the word registered more as a drift of misty breath in the cold air then as a sound. He lifted his arms a foot above the xylophone, ready. "We go on three."

Dave blew on his hands.

Note: Googled "Someone could have stopped it" and went off this picture.

It wasn't like he needed permission

It wasn't like he needed permission to go out. He didn't need to ask her. And it wasn't like he needed permission to have friends over, either. She'd always told him he didn't need to ask.

It was more like nobody wanted to come over anymore.

That Friday night, Jessica and her friends took up all the seats in the living room. They were on their third bottle of wine. They were so loud Mike could hear half of what they said through the closed study door. He heard "That's why they call it brainwashing!" and "No Washington bureaucrat man is gonna tell me abortion is good for women."

Mike had the Colbert Report turned up so loud it was hurting his own ears, but his wife's meeting still came through in the silences. It was like being back at school, except instead of blasting Credence to cover up his neighbor's New Kids on the Block, he was blasting politics. He was just as embarrased as ever, though, for the person on the other side of the wall.

He sank lower on the couch, holding a pillow over his chest. This wasn't his fault. Was it? This terrible mismatch. He had had no idea. They'd been together six months before Jessica had said a peep about the second amendment. Or baby-killers. He wondered if he was crazy, if perhaps there had been signs he'd been blind to in his infatuation with her energy and humor. And her lips.

What about when she told him that of course she'd shot a gun before? Or the time she got on him for making fun of rednecks? At the time, he'd assumed she was a true liberal, somebody who really believed in equality and open-mindedness rather than just preaching about it. Now he wasn't sure if the mistaken assumption was more to his credit or to hers.

He could list the things he loved about her, sure. There were a thousand things. The problem was that none of them was big enough to get over... this. How can a person seem so sane when talking you through the reasons you should start your dream business and so crazy when talking you through the reasons why conservative feminists are the real feminists?

Mike turned the TV off before the show was over. He stood up and listened at the door for a moment, then opened it. None of the women looked up at him. They were howling, half in amusement and half in rage, bright-eyed, wine glasses in hand.

When the noise died down, he opened his mouth. He spoke and then there was a sharp and engulfing silence in which he realized that although he'd meant to say, "Abortion does not increase rates of child abuse," he'd somehow said, "I want a divorce."

The relief was instant. Mike blinked once and then walked to the hall closet to get his coat while every woman turned her head to watch him. This was satisfying. This was the silence he would have liked to achieve with a well-timed and cutting argument about abortion. He couldn't have, he knew now. They weren't interested.

But they sure were interested in this.

The silence still hadn't been broken, but lingered round and full and complete and perfect, by the time he closed the door behind him.

Googled "It wasn't like he needed permission to go out" and went off this image.

Because it was Rome

I lost 32 pounds during that time. Now I remember it as being very dark, but in my pictures it's sunny every day. I was a student living in Rome. I'd gone to Rome because I loved language, loved art, and wanted to be as close to these things as I could, language and art. (I knew both of these things existed in Minneapolis, but at 18, I wanted a lot more than what I could see around me.) I was so sure I'd love it there I didn't even bother looking at year-abroad programs. I signed up for four years at a little school in Rome that took a lot of American students. As I got off the plane into the sun I was so excited I was actually shaking.

After one day of immersion classes I was ready to quit. Twenty years later, now, I could do it, assuming I wanted to. But at 18 I was possessed of the powerful notion that as I had had a 4.0 in high school, had taken eight AP classes, had been captain of my volleyball team, I ought to be immediately good at anything I put my mind to. I sat through one class not understanding a thing, and felt a mild irritation with myself. After two classes I was nearly in tears. I'd been off the plane for 36 hours and all the things I'd loved or was up to that point had vanished as the world narrowed to the singular, overwhelming and deep-seated conviction that I could not learn Italian.

I have a picture of the Colosseum, taken, I suppose, during welcome day, when the new Americans were bused around the city before we were left to find rides to the apartments we'd managed to reserve a room in while still in the States. In the picture, the sky is washed-out and the structure looks oddly two-dimensional, as if it were a stage set that might blow over in a high wind. I have another picture of the interior of the little cathedral near the school where I spent so many hours. It also looks oddly washed-out, almost like a black and white photo someone had gingerly colorized. This is not what anything in Rome really looks like. In person, every piece of dirty marble is so real and full of character it's impossible not to touch them.

I struggled badly that first semester. My classes were about art and literature and history, my best subjects, subjects I'd already learned past the level of what was being taught here. But with each day that I failed to understand more than a few of the instructor's words, I became more convinced of my failure, and spent less time studying and more worrying. All of my hours outside class I spent either at the cathedral or in Lisa's noisy apartment. Lisa and I would never have been friends back home, but here she was the only person I wanted to be with, to get away from my Italian roommate whom I couldn't understand, and who was--I was sure--constantly making fun of me with the skinny boys she always had over. They would say something and then look at me, look at me and then say something to each other, until my ears were burning and I would leave.

Lisa didn't know where I was when I wasn't with her. Over the holidays we drank a lot and managed to visit a few of the sights the bus hadn't hit when we'd first got into Rome. I didn't think about Spring classes until I got into them. After the second day I stopped going to class and spent all my time in the cathedral, in a pew in the back row, watching the tourists come in and out and trying to pray. I would pray that God would make me stronger, braver, smarter, more capable at this monumental thing I'd taken on. Mostly I'd pray for the strength to go back to class.

I never went back to class, but it wasn't until the last day to sign up for Fall classes that it even occurred to me that I didn't want to be here another year. That I could go home. I'd spent hundreds of hours in a pew in a little cathedral and only a couple dozen in class, and yet all that time I'd held the idea in my head that I would simply press on. Because I loved language and art. Because it was Rome.

The plane ride home was the worst thing I'd ever experienced. I hadn't eaten in two days, had gotten no sleep the night before, had a sinus infection, and was convinced everything was over. My chance to live a great and rich life were gone. But then I saw my family when I got off the plane, and that Fall I was at the University of Minnesota, studying English and playing volleyball, and by October I wasn't thinking about Italy at all.

People have strange ideas about things. Everyone does, but if we're lucky, we grow out of them. I've never been back to Europe, and mostly, people are surprised when I tell them I spent a year in Rome. I tell them it wasn't for me. People need to hear that sort of thing. Kids need to hear it. I say it as often as I can.

Googled "I lost 32 pounds during that time" and went off this picture.

The way that works for me

Not everybody does it this way, but I do. First, take a single match and a very sharp knife. Place the match down on a piece of wood and slice it lengthwise, carefully. Now you have two match halves.

You have wood, you have kindling, you have tinder, but make sure you have very small pieces of twigs. This is the most important thing. Pick up the smallest things you can find that are actually twigs. They should be thinner than the tine on a fork. Thinner than... what am I thinking of? Thinner than a piece of string.

Take your small sticks and lay them in the firepit in any way you choose. The sticks that are as big around as your finger. Some people like to make a tepee, or a lean-to, but I always make a log cabin, because you can make it every time and it's not dependent on the size of the sticks you have at your disposal. Two things are very important: Make sure you have a hole you can slide the match into, and Make sure you have more holes for air.

Once you've built it up a couple inches, I like to make sure the final sticks at the top are close enough together to lay all the tiny twigs across without them falling in. And do so. Before you get your match, put increasingly bigger sizes of twig close at hand, because you'll want to add them on.

Then take one of the match-halves and strike it, and get it under the tiny twigs. Once they start to burn, put slightly-larger twigs on top of them. Then once they burn put some larger ones. Soon your fire will be going, no doubt about it. But if something goes wrong, use the other match-half. Be very careful about wind.

That's how you start a fire on one match. I've been doing this since I was twelve and I still win the contest every year. My dad taught me and like I said some people do it other ways, but this is the way that works for me.

Googled "Not everybody does it this way, but I do" and went off this picture.

This crazy ocean

Third time's a charm. I bought another boat in January and in April I made it here. Standing under the pier watching the waves come in and out. My first thought's I wasn't wrong, it's still the same dream blue and white, the colors so strong that was how I could think I'd had it wrong for the past year, just like I thought I had it wrong last time. You did things to me, I always thought. Like you made everything brighter and warmer and stronger. Miami and Junior's and our little green boat. Except I guess Cayo Bravo doesn't need it. Cause apparently it's still part of a dream, even when you're not here.

But it's still different from the second time I came back. The second time I was still in love with you. I cried right here, right into the ocean. Everything was blue inside me and out. We were tied up here for five days waiting for Octavio to come take the load off our hands, and every day was torture. Because the memory was so strong. You and me here one year before, you in your panties at the wheel, blonder than the sun, tying up I was so happy I was dizzy that we had this whole island to ourselves and our hash and we were in love. Had so much sex there wasn't hardly any time to smoke. I remember the white sand sticking to your skin like you were covered in sugar, just a big donut out of the oven, warm and ready to eat. I remember that more than the real things we did.

You wouldn't have sold me out in San Juan. If you'd been there we would have found another boat, gotten out. I tried to call you from the jail cause I didn't know you were already gone. Don't know what you would have done for me except make me think everything's all right, I guess. It was all over anyhow. Took me almost a year to get out of that place and get back in Miami. But it took me a lot longer than that to feel better. Seems like I just couldn't get myself together.

When I had to come back here last year with the crew it just about killed me. I was shooting up, then, nobody was stopping me. Right where we rolled around under the pier. Five days here trying to make it all go away.

Things must be changed now though because I don't feel like throwing myself into the ocean anymore. Or getting high. The drowning feeling that made me feel like I was choking just standing here is gone, all there is is this sweet blueness inside and out. You left a big hole. But I can smile because it's all so sweet now, thinking of you and me here two years ago. I wanted to come here a third time because I had to fix how the second time was and because I had to say goodbye. And I wanted to know, I guess, if it was really over. If I could be here and not want to kill myself. It's over. So our love affair is over. So I guess I can let go of everything now, the drugs and Junior's, get out of Miami and do something else with this new boat. And I'll just know that it always looked like this, it wasn't me being high or high on how you made me feel. Someplace there is a place that looks just like this. This crazy ocean.

Googled "Third time's a charm" and went off this image.

Felt so bad so long

I sure am glad I was drunk when it happened. My memories are all so soft and blurry, merciful. It's funny because the day it happened I felt so bad about being drunk. I felt bad about it for months after it happened. For a couple years actually. But I don't feel bad now. I'm just glad.

The reason I was drunk was that I'd been up till 5 AM drinking because I'd just gotten fired. I wasn't working in the Towers--that would have been too weird. And I wasn't drinking alone. We had a party. I'd known for a long time they were probably going to fire me because I was barely showing up anymore, and I kept saying we'd have a party when they finally fired me. Me and my friends, I mean. So I came in that Monday morning and they fired me, and by suppertime I'd already been to the gym, gone to see a movie, changed the sheets on my bed, and been to the liquor store and bought three twelve-packs and eight bottles of vodka.

People started showing up around 8 and I remember we had music on incredibly loud and there were women I didn't know, because I told people to bring women, and my friends are amazing, even though almost everybody had to work on Tuesday. I got drunk so fast. I was drunk maybe by 9 PM and I stayed drunk until Tuesday afternoon. At 5 AM there were just three of us left, me the only one still drunk, there was silly string all over the apartment, and a hundred Solo cups, and I was so happy because I had such great friends. I went to bed happy as it was just starting to begin to get light outside.

I guess I woke up at about 9 because that's what time it would have been. I only know my phone had been ringing for five minutes because that's what Jess told me later.

"Ricky, are you okay?"

"I was until you woke me up!"

"Are you still drunk? Are you okay?"

"Yes, why?"

She tried to tell me but she didn't make any sense, and then she told me to go up on the roof. I went up on the roof and saw the smoke in the west, and it looked just like a nature show I saw about a forest fire once, and I guess that's why I just knew there was a forest fire. In downtown Manhattan. Until Jess finally got through to me.

"Ricky, I'm freaking out. Nobody knows what's going on. They think maybe all of New York is going to be bombed. Jackie said people are trying to get out on the bridges and they can't, everyone is trapped in the city."

I couldn't focus myself to save my life. Everything was funny, like amusing funny, even though I knew in the back of my mind it was deadly serious. I heard myself talking more than I actively talked. I heard my voice coming out and hoped I didn't sound too stupid. "It's all right, Jess. Just stay calm. You're not in any immediate danger. Right?" My head was floating about five feet above my body all day as I talked to Jess, and Jackie, and Brian, and Rachel, who said that one of her cousins worked in the Towers and wasn't answering. She was freaking out, she was crying. Everyone wanted to know if I could see anything from my place. I spent all day out in the sun on the roof. Somehow I had to be there for all these people and as the day went on I began to understand that there was no way to do it, there was no way to make anything okay, and I was completely and totally inadequate and I never should have gotten drunk the night before. And I felt like shit about that for a long time.

Rachel moved out of the city a couple years ago because she still couldn't sleep. Brian is in Afghanistan. And I'm fine, I still live here, that whole day is now like a tape of a cartoon to me, barely real. It's funny I felt so bad so long about something that was really just a big blessing.

Note: Googled "I sure was glad I was drunk when it happened," went off this picture.

The five things

There are five things that need to be done today.

One is that I have to get all of the robots working. I have thirteen robots and three of them are broken. I need all of them to be working because we are having a robot soccer game on Saturday and Josh Michael Henry Tommy and Jake are coming over and there needs to be enough robots for all of us. Ben probably isn't coming but he might come.

Two is that I have to make the invitations for the robot soccer game. They have to have a picture of a robot that I have to draw and they have to have the time the date my address and RSVP on them. I already told everybody about the robot soccer game but I want to have invitations because this isn't like a normal everyday party. This is a big deal and there needs to be invitations. I will give them out when people get here.

Three is that I have to clean my room. There are way too many clothes in here it's like crazy! There are so many clothes that it would be like the robots were climbing over mountains, and they couldn't get the soccer ball. We are just doing soccer this Saturday. On another day we could have war with soldiers and robots.

Four is that I have to be nice to my sister. No hitting yelling pushing or shutting her fingers in the door. I didn't shut her fingers in the door on purpose but she was trying to get in when I was doing explosions and I had already told her no girls were allowed but she wouldn't listen.

Five is that I have to call Josh on the phone because he needs to bring the soccer goals we made because they are at his house. I was supposed to bring them home when I was over there but I rode my bike and I forgot. Also you can't carry them and ride your bike at the same time. Josh is very absent-minded and so he might forget to bring the boxes on Saturday. I am worried, but he will probably bring them. Josh isn't allowed to use the raptor robot because he broke it one time.

Note: Googled "There are five things that need to be done today" and went off this picture.

Post-Improvement

I wanted to be told what to do. I wanted this, suddenly and profoundly, more than I had wanted anything lately beside a piece of chocolate pie. Bones were scattered around me, all over the floor, I had put the other astragalus somewhere unknown when I stopped to take the phone call because I always do that, my hands move completely independently of my consciousness when I'm on the phone. Trying to break up over the phone. Saying, "No, I know, I know that," my hands picking up astragalus and ulna and metacarpal and hiding them on me while my mind was twenty miles away. My body misbehaves.

It is impossible to work when one is ending a love affair. It is especially impossible to do creative work. Moreso when one has been hired, one suspects, on the strength of one's resume and not on one's knowledge, the resume having been concocted from scratch while drunk at the behest of this man. When I got the call for this particular installation I was dead sleepy, which is almost as good as being drunk, which explains why I wasn't too startled and frightened to say yes.

I was surrounded by the bones of one medium-sized Deinonychus, plus one replica of the Arc of the Covenant, one mounted oryx head, and one life-sized wax figure of Buffalo Bill Cody. My instructions were to create a Post-Ironic display for my employer's gigantic foyer using these four objects as motifs. I didn't know what Post-Irony was. I'd meant to Google it before I left that morning but once again I'd set my alarm for 7 p.m. instead of 7 a.m. and woke up at 8 and so there was no Googling.

I did know how the bones of a dinosaur go together. But I had never worked in a museum--as my resume averred--because museums don't hire people who don't have degrees. I learned how the bones go together from him, the way I learned how a lasagna goes together, the way I learned how a resume goes together. He was very interested in improving me.

It was impossible. I attached the skull of the Deinonychus over the skull of the oryx that night, in the silent cathedral-like place, and slid one of the long femurs into Buffalo Bill's hands in place of the rifle, which implement of destruction would then make up one of the legs of the dinosaur. The Arc I draped with Bill's fringed calfskin coat for an altar cloth. I found the lost astragalus on a windowsill, and eventually placed it back there in a hopefully Post-Ironic way. I picked up my phone and put it down again ten times. I didn't know how to break up with a man who had made me his life's work any more than I knew how to put together a proper art installation. I was without a prayer. I was Post-Improvement.

Somehow during the night one of the little foot-bones made it into my pocket. I didn't find it till I got home, but you know that of course I kept it. I love the shape of metatarsals, like distended drums, lithe and instantly recognizable. It was a message. It said, "What you take without thinking is more important than what you are willingly given."

Note: I googled "I wanted to be told what to do," and this image came up, is where this odd little story came from.

Jeshua and the final act

He knew it was going to happen as soon as he walked in the door and saw her there. She was standing by the table in her blue dress and she hadn't gotten Timba from school yet. In the space of a second he felt hot, then cold, then nauseous, and then that it was absolutely imperative to keep her from saying whatever it was she was about to say.

He opened his mouth and brought up a hand sharply, but she was already talking. "I had a vision," she said, her head tilted down but her eyes looking up, into his. She seemed to be speaking to his shoes but then she seemed to be speaking to his chest, then his face. "As soon as they brought us on the ship, I saw it. That if I gave in to them immediately, everyone would be spared, but if they had to go to any effort to get the information out of us, we'd end up being destroyed. I don't know how. I just saw it and trusted it." Then she stopped talking and finally, slowly, stood up straight and faced him square with her eyes on his. She was completely calm and waiting for him.

His body was cold and his ears were hot. His tongue was thick in his mouth. He saw her there by the table, the blue dress taut over the shapeless middle, the slack shoulders and the dark shadows under the eyes and the coarse hair, and the nausea in his stomach curdled with hatred. This old, ugly, foolish woman. He could not stop staring at her graceless face. His teeth ground together and his lip curled up and he was so hot that his vision began to tint red, and he wanted to do something terrible to her. Netra was there in her crib in the side room, quiet.

"I was accepted onto the council today," he said, his tongue so thick he could barely get the words out. He had a bitter disappointment that he couldn't say it with triumph.

She nodded.

He knew he wouldn't hit her, and he knew with a sicker and sicker sinking feeling that he wouldn't disbelieve her. He knew she had chosen this day to speak because this was the first day in twelve years that he wouldn't have disbelieved her. But how close it was! The hatred for her was complete and animal, a raging culmination of everything he'd ever felt for her over the past twelve years pressed into one day; more. For her weakness, her betrayal, her cowardice, her age, her reputation, her lack of beauty, her lack of desire for him. And it still couldn't obscure that thread of knowledge that was so thinly but solidly there for him now, that she was telling the truth. He saw it like he saw her eyes were blue.

His hand was still on the door latch. For a minute or longer he could manage to do nothing but hold onto the door latch. Finally the swooning hatred abated a little and he backed out of the room, swung the door behind him and slammed it shut, and soon he was in the small one-windowed room by the dock without having seen where he was going. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. He was sick with disappointment. This was the worst thing that could have happened to him. This was the worst thing. Everything he'd been fighting for for the last decade and a half, all in pieces. The world was upside-down. He'd known as soon as he'd seen her standing by the table.

And yet she had waited for him all these years... waited for him to grow up, he knew, thinking of Netra in her crib. He could barely wrap his mind or his heart around the enormity of it. This woman. Calla. A liquid warmth trickled into his misery; he was cracking open like an egg. And he had thought he was one of God's faithful! How he'd resented every sacrifice; the waiting, the awful marriage, every night in that bed with her and the compromise to his principles that Timba had represented.

His heart was peeling open. Feeling it he knew that this was what he had wanted, more than anything. To be shown by God what true grace was, to be shown what truth itself was. The fact that it was being shown that he didn't have it and she did, he knew, was immaterial. His hatred had passed and he rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. The world was so much larger than he thought! He thought of Calla, in their quarters, her slouched and shapeless body now poignant to him. Why would he have been so sure she stooped from the weight of guilt and not from some other weight?

She had waited for him.

He went back to his quarters, again without having seen where he was going. He opened the door and she turned from Netra's crib.

"I'm unworthy to be your husband," he said.

Tears shone in her eyes and she shook her head and came forward to take his hand. "Do you think I'm some kind of saint?" she said. "Do you know how angry I've been at God, do you know how I've hated my life and hated you, despite how everything you've done has been for our people? I've been so inconstant."

"But you kept faith all this time."

She laughed, which gave her beauty instantly and which he had never seen. "I did not keep faith all this time. If you could've heard what was in my head some nights... the only thing I did was keep my silence all this time."

And he was silent too, for a moment.

"It's unbelievable," he said. "And yet I know it's true. Because you were silent all this time."

She gazed at him and nearly laughed again. "How I've hated you."

"I'm ashamed to say the things I've thought of you. God," he called, lifting his eyes, "forgive me for thinking I would never see a true miracle." And then he closed his eyes and was quiet again and the disappointment and weight of everything began to sink in, heavier than before.

"So you're on the council now," she said.

He was going to say something about the impossibility of his task now, to not only change the laws about children and save the People from extermination, but to right the years of injustice to his wife and the entire system, the entire way of thinking, that had allowed her to be so scorned and shunned and hated since the day her team was taken by the enemy. Seeing it all at once now he thought it was impossible that he should be able to accomplish this, that the most he could hope for was to start things and perhaps his children would be able to do the real work. Because he would not be a successful and an acclaimed councilman as he'd dreamed. He saw now that he would be hated too.

"Dear woman, I need your help," he said.

Welcome

...to my new visitors, and to those of you who already know my fiction, welcome back. I started blogging fiction in 2005 as an exercise in writing fast, without the "internal censor" that is the devil of creativity. I chose to blog because I thought it might be more motivating to write knowing that somebody might actually see what I wrote. The stories and scenes you'll find below, from 2005 to today, vary widely in quality and in length; most are science fiction, and they allow me to toy with ideas about both the future and my own present. If you enjoy a story, leave me a comment! I need all the motivation I can get.

You say she left you an hour ago

"The only reason you don't want me to do it is because you won't let yourself do it," she said. "And you won't let yourself do it because she wouldn't let you do it. But you say she left you an hour ago, so why are you still taking it out on me?"

He stood there with the phone number between his thumb and his index finger, staring at her. "That's not the reason," he said.

Her eyebrows shot up. "It's not dangerous."

"You've got a funny idea of danger."

"You're more likely to die in a plane crash," she said.

"Who's talking about dying?" Kevin waited until she looked back at him, and said, "You're not worried about the risk to your personality?"

Amber snorted. "No."

A slow grin crept out on Kevin's face. He pushed the piece of paper into the back pocket of his jeans. He crossed his arms. "You're not worried at all. You want to be changed."

She lifted her hands and let them slap down against her legs, rolling her eyes. "Who would do this who doesn't want to be changed?"

"Yeah, but you don't just want enlightenment. You want to... not be Amber anymore."

By the time she had stepped up to him her face was blank, and her hands on the back of his jeans were rough, careless. "Why should I? You didn't want me as I am," she mumbled against his neck. "Still don't."

He shook his head but remained mute. His face was hot as she pulled away, the phone number in her fist. "So you're going to go... let some dirty Korean with a giant magnet jolt everything away."

"I'll remember everything. It just won't matter anymore. My agonies will be gnats. They say that. You and her, gnats." She was already turning to walk away. "And you still won't let yourself do it!"

He stared, and kept staring, as she walked. Was he immature for not wanting to make his agonies into gnats? "It's just that I don't want to change who I am," he called.

"No, Kevin. It's just that you're not hurting badly enough. Wait."

Been mistaken

Every guy I dated was a pilot. The first one, I went with because he was a pilot. The second one, I went with despite that he was a pilot. The third one didn't tell me he was a pilot. I found out later. The fourth one told me he was a commander, but he turned out to be a lying pilot. After that, I decided the universe was trying to tell me something. I decided to become a pilot.

I only met two other women up here. One looked like a man, and the other one looked like my mother, and I never made friends with either of them. It took me four damn years to get my wings and when that was done, and I started to fly ships, I realized that nobody had any clue what to make of me. Not the other pilots, not the mechanics, not the soldiers-on-contract that were all so bulked up their shoulders pressed against each other when they all sat down. Half of them treated me like a little girl and half of them treated me like an untouchable, and one treated me like his sister, which creeped me out so bad I kept the cabin door locked for the whole flight. Nobody's nice up here unless they want something from you. If you can't figure out what that something is, you better run.

After the universe told me to become only the 16th woman to qualify to steer a freighter, I kept waiting for some other message, like "Start the fourth war," or "Sleep with the commander to steal his secrets," or maybe "Steer the ship into the sun and sing 'Band on the Run' as it goes down," but nothing came. Not a whim, not a thought, not a peep. So I began to get angry. I started to take zeiger pills. I'm not one of those idiots who thinks zeigers improve your performance, I know they're just a palliative, but it's true they make you feel good and it's true they're undetectable, and so I flew one, two, three missions with my blood hot as runny lava.

"India," said Lincoln my nosy co-pilot on my fifth run high on zeigers. "What are you doing?"

"Flying like a zeiger freak, Lincoln," I said, tapping the engines up to full.

He laughed in a rotten way. "Okay, but you're not on zeigers. And you don't want them to think you are."

"I am on zeigers." I looked him full in the eye. How obvious can a girl be?

He twisted so his harness strap was cutting across his neck. "India... and you complain about people not taking you seriously?"

I stared straight forward again. "No complaining here. Woman of action."

"Just throttle down. I can't keep covering for you. You know some of the brass is looking for an excuse to get rid of you."

The anger mixed with the hot love in my blood in the most thrilling way, sending me into a wicked little euphoria that made the hairs stand up on my thighs and set my tongue to clicking in my mouth. All the controls looked a little green to me. The red had drained out of my vision. It had been seduced somewhere else. "Do they think I'd ever do anything to endanger a ship full of..." I fished around in the soup. "...aristocrats and mercenaries?"

"And volunteers? No, not dangerous, they don't think that." He twisted in his harness again. "They want to think you're incompetent. And lately you're not doing very much to dispel that impression."

Anger is like a warm milkshake sometimes, so sweet and thick I can hardly stand it.

He said, "You're not exactly fitting in."

"You're not exactly pilot material yourself," I said, hearing the words come out of my mouth more than saying them exactly, wanting to giggle at my own childishness. I didn't giggle but I did grin.

Lincoln stared straight forward. Through the blur of the zeigers he looked like a rock star, a lit-up mop-haired boy with shiny lips. I drummed my middle finger on the engine lock. These things, these pills, are absolutely the hail and hallelujah for cancer, and if I'm not cancer, a lump of unwelcome matter in the midst of all these men, then what am I?

"You're not on zeigers," he said. "I wish you'd stop trying to get attention. Just do your job. You don't think I get sick of them sticking me with you? Don't you know how everyone sees you?"

"The universe told me to do this," I said.

Lincoln sat there a few seconds then flipped open the cover for the radio.

"And if it isn't going to tell me what to do next," I said, "I'm going to steer this ship into the sun. The universe owes me that."

"The sun is 50 AU from here."

"Five minutes," I said. "If I don't get a sign in five minutes, we're all going down." I was happy because my body felt so good and my mind felt so loopy and supple, but I knew I wasn't happy.

"CT-789, this is CR-990, come in," said Lincoln into the radio.

Jarrod was my first boyfriend. He'd wanted to be a pilot because he thought they had the hardest training. He gambled so much he sold my car to pay a debt, and I called the police and then I dumped him. Micah was my fourth boyfriend; he'd wanted to be a pilot so he could make commander. He cheated on me with another girl, and then he dumped me. Harry was my third boyfriend. He wanted to be a pilot because his father wanted him to. He was a doormat and I dumped him. Skylar was my second boyfriend. He wanted to be a pilot so that he could defend our people if the fourth war came, but he also wanted to be right and punched me in the face when I took that away from him. Then he tried to force my pants off. Then he dumped me. I was as humiliated then as I am ten years later.

"Lincoln. Zeigers don't do anything. They just make you feel good."

"Shut up, India," he said, waiting on the radio. "The crazy act might have gotten Boomer a medal, but it's not doing anything for you."

"Five minutes up," I said. I reached up and shut down the engines. It got so quiet I could hear my red blood cells banging against each other.

When I didn't say anything else, he said, "Some people just aren't cut out to be pilots." His shiny lip curled a little. I saw it.

"I might have been mistaken," I said. "Been mistaken before. But I don't think I was. Maybe it's the pills talking but I still think I was right," I said. That the universe wanted me to be a pilot. But our leaders didn't and they were coming to rectify their mistake. Clap me in irons.

"Give me a break," he said to the control board. "Pretend to be doped out on painkillers but you won't just admit you're not cut out for it."

"Give me a break," I said.

Vance and Lexy do the Flame Chain, part 1

A hollow-cheeked young man stood on the humming deck of the Red Ring of Flame Chain Station, his saffron furodo gi hanging limp in the centrifugal gravity, and tapped the doorbell with a finger. As he waited a young woman slid up behind him, black bowler hat pulled low over her eyes. She slung a natty violin case off her shoulder, knelt and opened it silently and lifted out a black length of cloth, wrapping each end around a hand. In one motion she stood and whipped the loop of cloth up above the young man's head.

The man moved barely at all, only leaned the upper half of his body to the side, but he had the woman's arms pinned against his side before the door glided open. A shadowy skull-faced figure appeared in the doorway, its round eyes and gaping mouth suggesting humanity without quite reproducing it.

"Sam, Lexy wants me to wear this mood headband," said the young man to the figure. One side of his mouth crooked downward.

The woman's quick lips grinned under the shock of blue hair that spilled from the hat. "I do," she said. She twisted, trying to pin the cloth on the man's head as it shimmered to pink and orange in her hands. "Vance! You'd be the baddest furodo master!"

Vance pulled Lexy into the room, where Sammy the Faj--not their only alien friend, but the only alien friend who wanted to take them out to wild alien parties--was standing, still open-mouthed, with a drink in his hand. "So, where are we going?" said Vance.

"Hold on," said Sammy in his slithery voice. "Let me see your costumes." His green eyes looked them over with the appraising squint that always made Vance think the faj was amused, though he knew Sammy smiled differently than humans did. The glow-white skull Sammy had smeared on his face had already begun to crack and he looked even more like a work of art than he usually did, with his long sculpted limbs statuesque in the dim light. "You're a gangster," he said to Lexy, peering at the pile of faux gold chains hanging down over her black tank top. Then, immediately, "You need a mustache."

Lexy blinked. "All right," she said. Sammy was fascinated by human facial hair. So Vance continued to hold her arms while Sammy got out a black pencil and sketched a painstaking affair that drooped over Lexy's lips like an indolent caterpillar.

"No!" said Vance. "She looks like a gigolo. You might as well draw chest hair on her now." The faj wiped off the attempt and penciled in one fine line, then popped off Lexy's bowler (placing it on his own rounded head) and picked up a tube to squirt something clear into his thick, three-fingered hands. He soon had Lexy's mop smoothed back into a slick, manly coiffure.

"What is that stuff?" said Lexy.

"Gel, for human hair."

"Why do you have human hair gel?" The only hair Sammy had was the fine, silky fur on his arms and legs.

"For when I want to smell like a human. I have human deodorant and human toothpaste too."

"Do you have anything for us to drink?" said Vance. He had dropped Lexy's arms and was gazing intently about Sammy's small quarters, the cramped angles of which resembled a pack of trapezoids trying to have sex with a circle.

"You know, humans don't smell like hair gel and deodorant and toothpaste. We smell like humans," said Lexy.

"You have faj perfume, Lexy," said Sammy. He dropped Lexy's hat back on her head and poured a pull of candy-pink faj liquor for each of them. Vance grabbed his off the counter. He took another glance at Lexy--her blue eyes exposed for once, her fine brows and freckled nose below the suddenly crisp and aristocratic hair. The incongruent mustache... she had such long eyelashes. Then he took a big gulp of alcohol.

"Oh my God, this is terrible," he said, his face flushing.

"I'll drink it," said Lexy. "I like it." She took the stem of a glass in each fist.

"We need to go," said Sammy.

"Where are we going?"

"We're going to crash a party." Sammy was touching up his make-up. He drew a black line around his startling lips, the faj lips that seemed to split his face in half and made a lavish setting for his canines. He pursed his lips around the toothless center of his mouth. It was this eerily half-human palate that gave the faji their lisp when they tried to speak English. Vance watched Sammy's hands work, his two opposing "elbows" on each arm giving him a sinuous grace. The black outfit he was wearing made his face seem to float. He was a fine faj ghoul--or a deliciously creepy human one.

Lexy smiled at Vance.

"I'm fine," he said.

"I know."

Vance tightened the black belt around his waist and stepped back into "waiting heron" stance. The anti-grav martial art didn't exactly lend itself to full-grav practice, but if he was going to be lazy enough to not make a proper costume he could at least ham it up a little. "Ready to go, Sammy?"

Sammy chucked his make-up in a drawer, drained his drink, said something in his own language and punched the door panel. It slid open and all three partygoers tried to step through at once. Sammy caught his shoulder full on the jamb and launched a stumbling pirouette into the corridor. He careened into Lexy, who fell on Vance. Sammy chuckled in his birdlike, whistling laugh.

"Oh, boy," said Vance.

The Legend of Danny Engall, part 4 fin

I came out of Harold's office hugging an offer of 11.5 million dollars to my chest on a tablet. I was choked up with triumph and disappointment. I had certainly gotten more out of OMC than what Dynacorp had offered me... but in my fantasies, I'd imagined millions more being tossed around. Fifteen million, twenty million... who knew what I was worth?

I went back to my bunk and tried to plan out what I'd say to Dynacorp. Could I get more out of them? Probably, I figured, maybe I could get another half a million. Maybe they'd have me for twelve million. I wondered if that would be a record. Jack Lipstein, best orehound in history! The thing was, though, I wasn't really sure I wanted to work for Dynacorp. I didn't know anything about them, of course, but that was the problem. What if they expected more from me than what I was already giving to OMC? What if they wanted me to do something I liked even less than what I was doing now? What if it was even more dangerous? For twelve million, did it really matter?

Since I knew I wouldn't be working with him much longer, I decided to I might as well just get Terry's opinion.

We were digging out a little pocket of platinum on a knobby rock I could have sworn I'd visited when I first got up here and not found anything. But who knows? The rock was really friable and there was dust and chips around us everywhere, making it hard to see what we were doing, which was pretty tiring. We decided to take a break and chew a little juice back at the hopper.

I felt pretty good after I'd had a few bites, tired and relaxed at the same time, so I just told him, "I got an offer of 11.5 million from OMC and can maybe get more from Dynacorp... I just want your opinion, which one do you think I'd get more out of working for?"

Terry didn't even take a second to think. "Jack, you'll get more out of working with me. I told you that."

"Why do you--I don't even know what you mean," I said. "I'm making pretty lame money, all I have up here is a tiny little bunk and about five possessions, honestly, I bust my butt out here all day and hardly ever get any acknowledgement, from you or anybody else... you tell me what I'm getting out of this!"

"There you go," said Terry.

"There I go, what?" I jerked the juice nozzle off my helmet so I could stare at him.

"I wish you could hear yourself, Jack, I really do. I tell you, Danny Engall was a little dense at first too, but I don't think I've ever met a man who had just your combination of talent and pure blockheadedness. And I don't know how else to--"

"Who the hell is Danny Engall?" I shouted, on my feet without having made a decision to stand up. I was suddenly afraid I was going to cry.

Terry laughed, that scumball. "He was just a guy we had here before, all right? I don't know why you keep bringing him up."

"You keep bringing him up! You keep comparing me to him! Everybody does. I'm supposed to be the next Danny Engall, I'm supposed to be the best at what I do, heck, I'm supposed to love what I do, but I still have to drag myself out of bed every morning!"

He'd stopped laughing. He leaned forward a little. "Look... all right, I'm sorry, Jack." He took a breath. "You know I never apologize. But I am, all right, I'm sorry, I'm not always the best teacher."

I kept waiting for him to continue and he didn't. So I sat down.

"I don't know what to tell you," he said at last, "so I'll just ask you something my teacher once asked me. Who do you hate more, me or yourself? Give me the truth."

"You!" I said, with a little more anger than I meant.

Terry nodded. "Good." He had a little smile.

I felt somehow like a little valve had opened in my chest and let some of the pressure out. I was confused. But I didn't feel as angry. I looked away from him and out the door of the hopper and then I saw it, a little spire of rock that was very familiar to me.

"We were here before," I said. "Before I met you. Didn't find anything."

"I'm not surprised," said Terry. And then, after a long pause, "You've gotten exponentially better since I met you."

"It's all right. You don't have to say it. I get it." I glanced at him and he was grinning again. "I still don't know what to do. Twelve million dollars a year is a lot of money."

"Jack--" he began sharply, then stopped. "Jack... I just asked you who you hated more. Who would you hate more if you signed that contract? Either one of those contracts?"

I looked down. I knew the answer, I just didn't want to say it. "But I don't like this job," I said to the floor. "I don't like being here. I don't like orehounding, damn it, I don't care how good I am at it."

"I know that, dummy!" said Terry. "You think you're going to like it any better for twelve million? They going to pay you to like your job?"

Something was flipping over in my chest.

"You got how many more years on your contract here with OMC, three? I've already told you fifteen times what's the best way you could use those years. You really think it matters whether you like what you're doing? I'm sorry I'm so bad at getting you to understand me, I really am. But you tell me what would be smarter than using this time to tune every cell in your body to maximum awareness? And don't think it matters that it's platinum you're looking for. I swear, sometimes you're just clueless."

"But Danny Engall signed with Dynacorp..."

"Will you let go of Danny Engall? He was just this guy."

"I thought you were being selfish," I said. "Just wanted to have one more great trainee to your name."

Terry shrugged. "Who wouldn't want that? But really, Jack, if fame was all I wanted, I'd spend every day by myself in the Hatch Patch. Why should I come out here and torture myself trying to get basic rock smarts through your thick skull? Why should I turn down promotions? You tell me."

I stared back out the door of the hopper. I was afraid I was going to start crying, again, but for even stupider reasons than before. I wished I'd brought the contracts with me so I could tear them up that instant. I just thought of Mojo, for some reason, how amazing it was to have been able to work with that dog, that once-in-a-lifetime dog. I didn't know how a guy could be so lucky.

So that was what happened three years ago and now, you know, I'm still working with Terry and I still don't like prospecting for platinum. Well, I like some parts of it, I like seeing just how big the ore pocket is and thinking about the platinum being processed and going into electronics and things in people's homes and bodies. Wedding rings. I wouldn't say that Terry is a great friend, not so much, but we still watch poker together most evenings and I tolerate whisky, and I can't even imagine never working with him or seeing him again. But my contract is up next week and I'm going back to Earth.

We're heading back to the Hatch Patch today, just for a lark, just for the sake of old times. We don't talk the whole way in and we don't talk once we land. This asteroid is huge, another that makes you feel almost like you're on a planet or a moon, with its own faint gravity and its own horizon in the distance. I can see Orion on the horizon. Terry heads off in one direction and I in another, and I know he's there just a word away, he will be in my ear instantly if he finds anything, but we're silent. I want to go back to Chicago when I land, I want to see snow again... I have a brother-in-law who runs a catering business and he always needs help. When I lived there he must have asked me five times if I'd take a job with him. And God, I am going to be happy to never see another asteroid in my life. So happy.

As for Terry, I don't know. I don't think we'll write. Why would we write? We have nothing in common. But I'm going back to Earth about a ton lighter than when I came, and it's not just because he makes me wrestle that drill around everywhere. I have nothing to say. So we finish up the day in silence, and then next week I go live my life.

The Legend of Danny Engall, part 3

We worked in the Hatch Patch for weeks. This is a part of the asteroid field a bit further out that's known for its copious amounts of junk. But everyone wants to go there because every once in a while, someone finds a rock that's loaded with ore, breaks all the records and makes its finder famous. Terry didn't like to work out here as a matter of course, he said, but it was good for a lark if you'd already met your quotas that month. And we had probably met our quota in the first half of the first week.

"Came out here with Danny Engall once," said Terry. "Found a little rock that was near solid platinum. He saw it across the field from the hunk of junk we were standing on."

"You said that already," I said.

"Well, get your tools. We're not going to find anything if we stand around here yakking."

I pulled the bag out of the hopper and clipped it on my belt, and shuffled across the surface of the massive asteroid we'd landed on. It was jagged and rubbly and didn't allow my boots a very good grip. It was big enough to have its own horizon, though, a barely-arcked line in the distance between black rock and not-so-black sky. I automatically swung my head back and forth as I walked, my light sweeping the rock around me as fast as I could. Terry was twenty steps ahead of me and I was five steps out of the hopper when I stepped right on it. A little nub of shiny rock, I saw it before the brushy pad of my boot covered it. I slid my boot off and I already had the drill out and going into the rock before I really regained my balance.

I didn't bother to call Terry over. I wanted to find out how big the pocket was more than I wanted his attention. I drilled a hole near my left foot. Rock. Drilled a hole on the other side of the platinum nub. An inch of rock, then more platinum. Drilled a few more holes around the nub, then further away, toward where Terry had disappeared to, then up back toward the hopper. Platinum. Platinum. Platinum. Platinum. I was starting to get excited, but I just wanted to find the edges of the pocket. Kept drilling but I wasn't finding it.

"Where the hell are you?" Terry's voice sounded tinny in my ears.

"Found something," I said.

And in half a minute he was there beside me. "How far's it go?"

"No idea. Half the damn asteroid."

Terry was laughing. He looked in a few of my drill holes and shook his head. "All right, keep going. Wait, I'll help." He got out the backup drill and went off on the other side of the hopper. After half an hour I heard his voice, "Think I found one edge of it over here."

"I found an edge, still going in one direction," I said.

"You know we can't get this out by ourselves," he said. "We'd be here all month."

I grunted, more focused on the drill than anything else. It took me another hour to outline the pocket, then me and Terry took a break by the hopper.

"Show me what you saw first?" he said.

It took me a few minutes to find it. A little bump with a faint shine to it under the lights, no bigger than my thumbnail. That was the only part of the lode that was exposed at all.

Terry didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, "I feel like a moron for missing that. Not that I ever would have seen it."

I didn't any anything.

"Let's put the beacon up. We can work on establishing the edges some more and then we'll turn it over to a crew." I didn't really want to stop working on it... I was too curious to see just how deep it went... but we were going to be late as usual. Terry was uncharacteristically solemn as he drove the hopper back.

"This one's big, you know," he said. "I'll be sure to tell them who found it." His voice was quiet.

I nodded. I hadn't told him about my meeting with Harold Slawski, but I'd been thinking about it. I had no idea what to expect. I kept thinking what I'd do with eleven million dollars. I didn't know whether or not I was as good as this Danny Engall guy, but heck, I might be even better. Maybe I could get more. Maybe I could get a bonus I could use right away. Maybe I could get new quarters, visits to Earth, my own hopper with a pilot who worked for me instead of the other way around. I wondered what Danny Engall was doing for Dynacorp and whether it was better than what I was doing for OMC.

Then Terry said a funny thing. "You want to come over and watch the poker championship tonight?"

"Uh," I said, "You mean, over to your place?"

"Yeah, I got a good screen. Vaclav Horn is in the finals again."

I didn't know a thing about poker, and Terry wasn't particularly the kind of guy I would have hung out with on Earth. I looked over at him where he steered the hopper with light hands, the size of a boy's but far hairier. He was looking up at the displays.

"What time?" I said.

"Just come over after dinner. C324. We'll have some whisky."

"All right," I said. All I could think was that I didn't have to sit around in my bunk after supper.

I showed up at C324 after I ate. Terri's door looked like it hadn't been cleaned in a while. There was a black smudge across the center where it looked like he'd pushed it open with his hip about a thousand times. He didn't have his name up. I rang.

Terry opened the door in shorts and bare feet. He already had a glass of whisky in his hand. He motioned me in and sat down on his couch and poured me a whisky and put his hairy feet up and turned back to the screen. I took the whisky and drank it slowly, trying to swallow without tasting it too much, and stared at the screen for a while. Yep, there were people playing poker.

He still hadn't said anything.

I watched the poker for a while and finished my drink. I felt very sleepy. "You like this stuff," I finally said, and my voice sounded hoarse to me.

"Uh huh," Terry said. I wondered suddenly if he had any friends.

"Harold Slawski told me they wanted to promote you but you wouldn't," I said.

Terry put his drink down. "Harold has some funny ideas about things. You been talking to him?"

I nodded. "He said they might renegotiate my contact."

Terry was very quiet, then he laughed. "Trying to cover all his bases, as usual. Well, they might. What are you going to ask for?"

I stared at the poker players. "Fifteen million a year," I said.

Terry laughed again. "All right. And what are you going to do with it?"

I shrugged. "I'll think of something."

"All right," said Terry. He picked up his drink again. "You know I'd have to find somebody else to justify my existence as a pilot," he said.

I glanced at him. He was looking at me, his gaze amused under the bushy eyebrows. Was he serious? "You could always take that management job," I said.

"What the hell would I want to do that for? Get some sense, Jack!" He snorted and I looked back at the poker. "Piloting's about the only thing that's worth anything, unless you count orehounding."

"What do you mean?"

"What do you think I mean? I mean it's the closest you can get to working for yourself. I'm responsible for nobody but me and you out there, and what I do matters. Plus it's hard. At least if you want to do it well it's hard. So's your job. And you might want to take a promotion or take a contract somewhere else but let me tell you, Jack, you still have a hell of a lot to learn and it's going to take you more time, not less, to learn it if you move on now. Trust me."

My face was burning. That was the most I'd ever heard Terry say at once before and somehow it stung in a way that all his comments out on the rocks didn't. What did he mean, I had a lot to learn? Obviously I was still new to what I was doing and I needed a little more practice, but he said it like I was still a kid. Like I was an idiot for thinking I could get fifteen million. I sat there seething, not paying attention to Vaclav Horn.

"Well," I said. "What if I wanted to get some experience with some other pilots, you know? While I was here. Obviously you've seen a lot but I know there are other guys who've been out here just as long."

Terry gave me a hard look, then shrugged. "Yeah, Earl Hardwick's good. Some others. But you wanna learn, I'm not shitting you, I'm going to teach you more than they can. Earl's all right. He knows some good tricks. But you'd be an idiot to leave me." He had his jaw set so hard I could see the muscles bulge under his chipmunk cheeks.

Well what the hell? I thought. What the hell is this guy on? I didn't want to learn! I didn't even want to be here on this station, let alone in this room. With this friendless caveman who thought I was his protege and still couldn't manage to ever say anything nice to me. I wanted to scream at him, "I don't want to learn orehounding!" but I didn't, because I didn't want it to matter that much. This wasn't something I was going to scream about. What did it matter to me? I used to think I had a calling, but I was wrong. Now I thought I had a meal ticket, and maybe I did, but it wasn't worth getting into a fight with anybody about it.

I sunk into the couch and didn't say much the rest of the night. Neither did he. After the matches finished up he told me I should come back again the next night, and I did, because it was still better than my empty cube. Had whisky and watched poker. And it became a regular thing. We really didn't talk. I started to get into the poker a little, not as much as Terry, but it was a good thing because at least I wasn't bored to death. I asked him once why he liked it and he said, "Because it's hard... to do well, anyway," though I got the idea he wasn't very good at it himself.

We kept going back to the Hatch Patch but, ironically, never found anything else. It was a little frustrating. A crew was excavating the big lode on the rock we'd hit the first day, and we kept landing on these piddling chunks and not finding anything besides scraps. Terry was treating me a little better, I have to admit, but the times he was critical it just made the frustration all the worse.

Once we were excavating this tiny, walnut-sized chunk of platinum and I popped it wrong, so that it spun up into space. Terry grabbed at it and missed and then it was way out of reach, heading off into the field. "Shit!" he said. "I don't believe it! You were doing so well, Jack, now you just made a mistake my sister's three-year-old kid wouldn't make."

That made me angry. "What do you want? It's barely worth bringing in."

"I want you to do your job, Jack. Just do your job. It's not nothing. The demand goes up every year."

I stood up. "You think I care what they need this stuff for?"

"All right, so you don't care. Fine. But I expect you to care about the kind of job you do. You know how I feel about people cutting corners up here."

"I just don't understand why it matters," I said. "That piece was scrap."

"Well, if you don't know that, I'm not sure I can teach you," said Terry, and he turned around. He was walking back to the hopper. Him yelling at me was one thing, but I'd never seen him pissy like this. I caught up to him and he turned around again before I could say anything. He was glowering. "Whoever Dynacorp is paying at OMC probably already leaked the news of your big find, and that'll convince 'em to move if nothing does. I expect you'll be hearing from them before next week. You'll get a big offer and you'll take it. Why not? You're clearly not interested in anything I have to offer."

I was practically panting, I was so worked up. Steam condensed for a split second on the inside of my helmet before the air conditioner whisked it away. And yet I didn't want to be upset. Not at Terry, crazy Terry, little, foolish Terry. "I don't get it, why do you care what I do?"

"I don't get why you don't care," said Terry. "That's what I don't get." He climbed in the hopper and took the controls.

Apparently we were heading home. I climbed into the hopper too. I looked out the little window on my side. I had an ugly feeling in me, a feeling like I was being used, like Terry wanted something from me but didn't want to pay for it. I knew he'd worked with Danny Engall. I knew Danny had jumped ship for Dynacorp. What if they'd been close or something? What if Terry just wanted me to be Danny? This phantom I kept hearing about... I suppose I'd meet him if I ended up at Dynacorp. See him for real.

Terry told me he'd see me at poker and he did, though as usual we didn't talk. Two days later I came home to a note from Dynacorp. Terry was right. They wanted me, as soon as they could get me. They didn't want me to talk to OMC about it. They mentioned Danny Engall in the note. They said I could expect something similar. I almost picked up the stylus to tap something back to them, but I knew I had to talk to Harold. I knew I could get more.