Coda  

A Novel by Ian Cox

Part 1: First Ending - The Boy.

                Now where should I start? Or, rather, the decision not being up to me, where does the story actually begin? Where does that primordial light first cast its omniscient luminescence; birthing knowledge that unfolds like a tapestry of vignettes rolling out onto a blank floor?  I suppose like anything with anyone it really starts with my parents. I guess it all logically starts with your parents though, doesn’t it? Your parents in a steaming bedroom somewhere; or a fogged up, parked car; or their best friend’s basement couch while his parents are gone to the Town Hall Fundraiser Meeting. But that’s a pretty horrendous thought isn’t it? I really think to make sense of my story you don’t need to go that far back. Everybody’s story begins with that, so going into it wouldn’t add anything to my story that you yourself didn’t already know. Going back right to the start, to the very beginning, to that, would make for a pretty long and boring story and I don’t want to bore anybody. God, I’d feel so horrible if I bored anybody. I think that is just about the worst thing that you can do to people - bore them. Life’s boring enough as it is without all these bores running around boring people to death. If I ran around boring people to death I’d essentially be just like that horrible bore R.J. Sands. Sands is an alto player at school who constantly criticizes Charlie Parker’s playing. Imagine that! A first year, eighteen year old snotty student with the balls to criticize how the great Charlie Parker plays his sax! How Bird’s got it all wrong! No - boring people would make me just like old R.J. and realizing you’re acting like people you dislike is one of the worst realizations in the world.  It’s a realization you don’t want to realize, unless of course you don’t realize that you are doing it but you are, then you want to realize that you’re doing something you should realize is horrible so that you can realize a change in yourself. Anyway, at the very least I’ve realized that R.J. Sands is a real asshole.

                So, that’s basically where the story begins – with a bunch of assholes. A collection of over-privileged, uneducated hacks that are collectively known as the Golden Gate Conservatory Music Department. Scared little boys and girls who’ve barely been out of their parent’s houses, yet profess to understand the music of men whose whole lives have been a struggle for self-realization (and that, after two torturous semesters, I’ve realized). The school has these ridiculous ideas that they’re going to produce the next crop of great, free-thinking men and women; great artists that will change the landscape of American culture - at least that’s what they promise to do with their tired, boring old faculty. It’s really just an empty promise to put on a glossy four-colour brochure to get people to pay the tuition. Yeah, and that faculty - I tell you those guys look like a collection of relics in the Museum of Disappointment and Regret. People who teach and play in the campus recital halls because they couldn’t get a gig in any of the big cities or happening clubs. Or at least were too afraid to even try. Or too square to care. Blowing the music of intrepidity and freedom while clinging to their comfortable little lives and safe, secure existences. Going on and on like a broken record about meaningless certificates and degrees and diplomas; all that academic bullshit. I mean, nobody great came here and nobody great ever will. The greats just took their horns and stepped off into the pool of life that was outside of their doorsteps, sinking immediately neck-deep into everything that comes with throwing your life to the wind; living it, dealing with it, playing it. Those guys learned from listening to the sound in and around their heads and to the greats that went before them. They just blew what was inside them and how everything in their lives – all that doubt, grief, happiness and discovery - made them feel. Man, I really wish I could do that – just play what the world had built up inside me from my experiences; all that disappointment, subtle surprise, joy and regret spilling out in a torrid wreckage of noise. Flotsam and jetsam of a shipwrecked life. That would be a real connection, that would be showing the world who I really am.  Like a moving slide show bleating out of my head in a calculated stream of consciousness. Man, I really wish that I could do that.

        The beginning of his story was exactly the same for him, too - with his parents somewhere igniting a spark that would one day explode into one of the most creative geniuses of American culture. It’s always just a little spark that sets off an inferno. From a loving spark of connection to a violent spark of hate, that’s all it takes and we’re here. Click, bang, boom. Flames of passion enkindling a conflagration of contrition, or a blaze of bliss - all depends on how it pans out. Which roads fork down into pathways, meandering story beginnings of divergent geniuses. However different and genius he was, it began exactly the same way for him as it did for you and me. It’s only what happened along the way that turned him into a legend. In "him" I am referring to the only person I can really say I am full of stupid idolic failtuery for. The kind of fascination and fixation that dopey girls have for dopier teeny-bopping idols (and I hate the use of the word ’bop’ in that context) - worshipping someone with their images plastered on the walls, having imaginary conversations with them, feeling a phantom connection to someone you’ve never once met. An un-apprehended spectre drifting through an unfulfilled life, a pacifying placebo of a ghost-god. No, I’ve never gone in for that kind of crap - but with him it’s different. I just feel like there’s something in him I admire - perhaps something I’d like to see in myself. A hopeful mirror drifting somewhere in my contemptible conscience. It’s not just his genius, but his uncompromising attitude. He was the original original and never swayed from his own convictions; however, just like me, for him it began with his parents, Charles and Addie, sometime around the end of 1919; perhaps even Christmas - it could be possible. A winter fire closing upon the gift of life? Charles Christopher Parker, Jr. was born in Kansas City on the 29th of August 1920 - nine months earlier would have been December.

                So why am I here? Well, like I’ve said numerous times, it starts with my parents. My dad is a radio jingle writer. He composes music for all those horrible, disgusting ad spots you hear on the radio all day long. You know the ones – you hear them between the News and commentary shows trying to get you to buy washing powder or haemorrhoid cream or shit like that. Pointless audio-drama suffusing thirst in the imbibed conscious of America. He’s a prostitute, basically. A whore-monger for the useless. He sells the small amount of talent that he has to rich men trying to reinforce commodity fetishism so they can deceive the world and get even richer; which somehow makes them feel better about their pointless existence. I guess that’s how consumerism works, though, isn’t it? Everybody feeling better about either selling some shit or buying some shit that nobody really needs or wants. Like mercury filling the rotting tooth of soulless ambition. Anyway, my father’s a duplicitous asshole. His bosses are greedy assholes. The people that fall for all that shit and buy that pointless crap to justify their alienation from a real meaningful existence are pathetic assholes. I tell you, the world is full of nothing but assholes: assholes, assholes, assholes.

                So, anyway, basically because of my dad I was put into music lessons at an early age. He’s a big Dizzy Gillespie fan, so I was brought up playing trumpet. I wasn’t quite as good as they (my parents) wanted me to be so instead of Juilliard or Berklee they compromised and put me here. Pretty much everyone here is a compromised case. There are really only a handful of guys that can actually play, I mean really play, and I have no idea why they came here. Perhaps their parents really fell for the Golden Gate promise. Callow begetters of nascent percipience. Although, I don’t know how stupid parents could create genuinely intelligent offspring. Perhaps it has something to do with genetic mutation or something. Could intelligence be a mutation? I don’t know. That stuff’s really hard to comment on. Especially when you have no idea about things like Biology and Genetics.

                Anyway, it was the weekend of the fourth year recitals (where the story begins, that is - yes, the story is actually beginning). This was supposed to be the penultimate educational moment for seventeen of Golden Gate’s finest. It was the culmination of all the bullshit fed into the heads of the compromised and half the school was going crazy with excitement. A buzzing collage of counterfeit conviction. I couldn’t give a shit, myself. I mean, I wasn’t being examined and even if I was I wouldn’t care what those boring old never-has-beens would say about me anyway. The only people who care about that kind of thing are parents and I already explained what assholes they are.

                The story really begins on a Friday. The time of day was the evening; a cold evening for the time of year. The wind pushing ideas from my trembling hands, thought slipping into blustery oblivion.  I was standing by this statue of some boring old nobody who gave a pile of money to the school to buy lavatories or something. I saw mad kids running in every direction with manuscript papers and music cases under their arms, anxiety on their faces: the same anxiety on all the same-looking faces. The younger kids were following the older kids around, asking who was scheduled to play when, if a notice had been posted; boring shit like that. Asshole parents were chasing after their precious little sons and daughters like the human possessions they were, fussing over their clothes and hair while at the same time telling anyone in earshot how incredibly talented their offspring were. Everyone was crazy about it, everyone was running around like the school and its pointless exams really mattered; everyone except me, of course.

                So there I was standing on this lawn in front of that pointless statue because I had been looking for Johnny. Johnny’s real name is Jonathan Middleton. He’s one of the intelligent guys with stupid parents, a product of mutation in my opinion. A glorious mutation. Believe me, if you met his mother it would be your opinion, too. He’s actually not the greatest player, but he’s a real nice guy to talk to. He’s smart, you can tell. Smart in that non-judgemental way that really smart people always are. Wise, I suppose you would say - if you can call a person under 25 wise, that is. He just has a great outlook on things. He never says that one thing is any better than another or puts anyone down. He doesn’t criticize like that. He just discusses. I would call him equitable. He just talks about the subject at hand and how it makes him feel. He’s subjective in a modest, reassuring way. That’s nice. That’s different. It’s really hard to find people like that.

      Anyway, the reason I was looking for Johnny was that he was testing and I wanted to wish him good luck and all. He’d be leaving school after he was done. He had put in his four years of penitence and completed his sentence. He’d soon be free. I wasn’t sure if I’d see him again and he’d been one of the older guys who had been nice to me. In fact, he was one of the only older students who ever even noticed me. More often than not, I wouldn’t really want to be noticed, though, ‘cos it usually just meant I’d get made fun of; but Johnny was different. That’s why I wanted to wish him good luck and say goodbye and all and that’s why I was standing on that hill looking out for him being loomed over by that ridiculous statue. I couldn’t help but feel a strange sensation of being watched by that hunk of a monument to rampant capitalism - and I was sure it was a disapproving glare. Those statues of rich old men that do nothing but hand out money for crap like toilets are always critical of you. I think they must always chisel them with angry, disapproving features or something; like a carved-in-stone account of your father’s most deploring gaze. Reified scrutiny for the eternally misbehaving.

                So there were all the younger kids running around shaking hands with the graduating students, some of them carrying their shit for them, asking them if they needed help with anything – all that pathetic stuff. They do it so that they can hope to make “contacts”. They do it to the boring, sad old faculty, too. They kiss the asses of people they’d never even stop to say hello to if they couldn’t further their careers. It gets really infuriating to see every day. Everyone thinks that if they know someone who gets successful then they have a better chance of getting successful, too. Sad thing is that it’s probably true. Life really is just a big, incestuous fraternity. There’s scores of tired, old geniuses huddled under bridges somewhere just because they never got let into the warm glow of the old boys club. They never got to enjoy the company of assholes. They were too genuine, and now they are starving.

                Anyway, it was May and the Sun was just beginning to set over the horizon. Like I said, it was pretty cold and windy for the time of year - it wasn’t as warm as it should have been but you could tell that the nice weather was on the way. The reinstatement of summer nights was on the cards. It’s strange how you can always tell stuff like that. The seasons just have a feel about them. I love that about the weather – it has a personality all of its own. There’s something mystical and primeval about it all. I’m not surprised when I hear about people getting crazy at certain times of the year and stuff like that. I mean, I think astrology is a bunch of crap, but there’s definitely something strange about the cycles of the Earth. It just makes sense that Nature dictates more than we could ever understand. We just have to try and cluelessly cope with it all the best we can. On account of the chilliness I was wearing my cream woollen turtleneck sweater, the one that that sad, clueless Higgins said looked like the sweater Miles wore in some of the “Kind of Blue” session photos. Golden Gate was crawling with guys like Higgins – everything had to be referred to something else more famous; it wasn’t my cream woollen turtleneck sweater and just looked like my cream woollen turtleneck sweater, it had to be identical to the one Miles wore in the “Kind of Blue” session photos. It stemmed, I guess, from that God-awful musician’s habit of always having to recognize that something sounded like something else. “That’s the bridge from Giant Steps” or “that lick was played by Bill Evans on Waltz for Debby”. It was always a pathetic attempt to show off one’s great musical knowledge whilst, at the same time, belittling someone else’s compositional originality. I’m continually amazed at how musicians, who are supposed to possess the skill to collaborate more vitally than any other artist, are compelled to put each other down. Covetous little kids afraid that something was going to slip away under their music radar.  Anyway, I kept standing next to that pathetic statue, keeping my eyes peeled for Johnny, watching all the pathetic kids run around. But really, the truth is that I wasn’t sure why I was standing there at all. I mean, I could have gone running around like those other kids, asking after Johnny, but then I’d be the same as them all. No, I was different; I just stood there - just stood there realizing how absurd it all really was. Stood there feeling the weather change and the wind shake notes from my trembling fingers, drinking it all in, guzzling the stupidity of existence.

                Then it hit me, just how pointless it was to stand there hoping I’d catch a glimpse of my friend so that I could wish him good luck and say goodbye and all that. Like a flashing moment of drunkenness. It was worse than the kids running around, really. It didn’t matter. Johnny probably wouldn’t care and it’d make no difference to his recital whether I wished him well or not. It was one of those absurd human things; human and ridiculous. It was etiquette bred out of superstition. It was de-evolutionary. It was a negative mutation - much different from what Johnny had. It reminded me of all the ceremonies we had at the school, all the pompous processes that made no difference to anything but that they made you do anyway – all in the name of tradition. Tradition should be the line of great musicians the school has turned out, but we didn’t have any so we replaced the claim on talent with pointless rituals that generated the illusion of prestige and fooled all the idiot parents. It even fooled people into donating money for crap like toilets so that they can get a God-dam statue erected and be part of all the “tradition” and prestige. It was then, right at that precise moment when I realized all these things that I decided to get out of there and just ran. I didn’t think of anything else as I did. I just ran.

                I ran all the way across campus, past the recital hall teeming with anxiety filled faces, past statues of pride-filled philanthropists, down the main roadway lined with budding trees and all the way to the school entrance gate. I paused for a little bit at the gate, bent over with my hands on my knees – the way you always inexplicably stand when you are tired and out of breath; and then I continued running. It was getting even cooler but the Sun was golden in its brightness. Gorgeous rays were painting the leaves of the trees a graceful colour as the wind gently blurred shimmering green into a rustling replica of life, and the freshness of everything just made me want to dive into the landscape like it was a reflection on a deep, serene pool. I guess I just wanted to be swallowed up by everything. To have that idyllic picture devour me in its tranquility. I wanted to be swallowed so there was no trace.

                When I stopped running I found myself standing outside of the heavy, oak door of my friend Tim Hayes. Tim’s a decent guy, a bit on the pretentious side – he criticizes too much; but he’s at least fun to be around. He’s not a bore. God, I hate bores. If there’s one thing that is worse than a pretentious fake, it’s a bore. Of course, I’ve already told you about bores though. Although, it’s possible that you can be both a fake and a bore at the same time and I’d wager that most people are. Most people are terribly boring pretentious fakes.

                I was pretty out of breath and my lungs hurt from all the running. I knocked on the old, heavy door and then reassumed my bent-over, hands on knees recovery position as I waited. You’d think that a guy who blew horn all day long would be in better shape cardiovascularly. You’d think that - but then you’d be wrong. I made a promise to myself right then to get into better shape for the summer. I had to exercise more. I was always making promises to myself, though. It’s one of the things I hate most about myself – I can never keep my promises to myself. I make so many of them that if I kept them all or even eighty-five percent of them, I’d be a God-damn superman. Perhaps that was my problem: I just made way too many promises. I promised to get up every day at five a.m. and practice my horn, I promised to do all my homework the day it was given, I promised to eat well, I promised to save more money, I promised to be more confident around girls; the list went on forever. If I could promise to promise myself more promises I probably would. It was that bad.

                Finally, old Hazey (that’s what we all called him) opened the door. He looked like he had the flu or something.

                “Rich!” he exclaimed. Oh yes, I forget to mention my name as I told the beginning of the story. My name is Richard Matthews. Most people call me Rich. I always forget important things like that. I could go on forever describing my childhood and my school and my friends and you’d never even know my name.  I’m terribly forgetful sometimes. One time I left my flugelhorn on a train to Boston. Man, was my dad angry when he found out. He almost...

                “Err, Rich?” Hazey snapped me out of my daydream. “Do you want to come in or are you going to stand there bent over like that in front of my door all day?”

                 I jumped up and tried to act normal as I came through the door.

                “Hazey! Just out for a jog... Thought I’d drop by and see how things are.”

                “You jog? Don’t lie to me you old bastard! You’d have to quit smoking to jog”, oh yes I smoke quite heavily. That’s also something I forgot to mention.

                I wiped my feet on the welcome mat on the Hayes’s doorstep and then stepped into the hallway.

                “So, how have thing’s been?” I said. “How are those chorales coming?”

                “Man, you’re weird. How have I been? You saw me this morning. I told you then I am coming down with something, flu probably. How would I be any different 4 hours later?”

                “Just asking, y’know. Some people in our society still like to act politely”.

                “Yeah, they act polite, but they don’t ask stupid questions all the time”.

                “Fuck off Hazey”, he was being really annoying. He could really be annoying sometimes. If there’s one thing I hate its people being annoying when you’re just trying to be nice. No wonder nobody tries to be nice anymore. It exposes you to bastards who call you stupid for asking how they are. How’s that for a friend?

                “Come on in, man. I’ll show you what I’ve got so far”, he could obviously tell that I was sore about the stupid question comment. At least he had a scrap of empathy somewhere. A tiny scrap bundled behind that blanketed, flu-ridden exterior.

                The weirdest thing about Hazey was that he was by far the youngest member of his family. I mean, he was 18 like me but his parents were eighty years old or something. At least that’s how old they looked – all white hair and loose, flapping skin over brittle bones. I’d hate to have parents like that. I mean, my parents annoy me and they’re pathetic in their age and all, but at least they don’t look like that. Hazey must be so embarrassed when his crumbling old mother stumbles out with a tray of tea and biscuits. I’d die. I’d never let anyone in the house. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being embarrassed by my parents in front of my friends.

                But at least Hazey had his own room. When he was younger he had to share with his older brother or something like that but, on account of his being so damn old, his brother moved out. He married some woman in Sacramento or someplace like that. Imagine that – having a brother who already married some lady! My brother’s older than me but he sure as hell isn’t old enough to go off getting married to some lady in Sacramento. I don’t think I could handle it if he went off and did something like that. I mean, it would make me feel so old. It’d make everything seem so serious all of a sudden. Life’s not supposed to be that serious that quickly; at least not for me, not yet. I mean, he’d probably go and make me an uncle or some stupid thing like that. An uncle! Me! With all the responsibilities being an uncle comes with. I tell you that would just ruin everything.

                Hazey’s bedroom door was wide open. You could see all his shit piled up all over the place. He always had tons of stuff just sitting around doing nothing. I think half of it was left behind by his brother when he moved out. It always looked like it hadn’t been touched in ages; all spider web covered and decrepit looking. It reminded me of Hazey’s parents and their flapping skin. I paused a little at the door before entering. I think out of a mild sense of disgust more than anything.

                “Come on, Ritchie. I’ll show you those chorales I’ve been working on.” I hated it when he called me Ritchie. If there’s one thing I hate it’s being called Ritchie; although I never tell anyone. I’m stupid like that. I always get angry about something and then never tell anyone. It’s one of my worst flaws. I’ll probably go through my whole Goddamn life hating everything everyone is doing but never telling them. I made a promise to myself right there to start telling people when I hated something they were doing.

                As soon as I walked in to the room I wished I had kept running on past Hazey’s door and stopped somewhere else. The smell of old people – that dusty smell of neglect, was everywhere. I just got so depressed when I smelled it. There was Hazey all happy to show off some four-part harmony exercise he had just finished while his family were slowly dying around him. I mean, they’d probably be dead before he graduated. There he was – all proud of his first year harmony studies and he’d never get to be chased around by his appreciative parents like all those graduating kids back on the hill. It made me so sad I could barely stand it.

                “Sit down, sit down right there Ritchie”, he was motioning towards the bed. There was a ratty old blanket spread across the foot of it. There was always a ratty old, smelly blanket spread across the foot of Hazey’s bed. I sat down reluctantly on it.

                “Let me show you what I’ve got for that bass part in exercise four”, he was so excited about it; so excited about some pointless little harmony exercise. “Did you bring your book? Oh, I guess not.” He started to laugh. He always started to chuckle in a really stupid manner when he said something redundant or missed the obvious. I guess you could say it was one of those defensive chuckles.

                “You know, you should take classes more seriously, Ritchie. You’re a great player but if you don’t do the work they’re gonna kick you out”, all of a sudden just like that Hazey got serious on me. From nervous chuckle to dead serious, just like that.

                “I didn’t come here for advice.” He started just staring at me. Real serious eyeballing. It made me so mad because it really felt like he was judging me in some way. Here he was, the same age as me with ratty old parents, and no clue that these stupid book exercises meant nothing at all and he was holding me in judgement. Man, he had no clue. He had no idea and he was pretentious enough to think he could judge me. Wow, I couldn’t believe how much he really missed the whole fucking point of it all.

                “Did you even look at the work we were supposed to do for end of term?”

                “Yeah, of course, I looked at it.”

                “You know that we’re supposed to turn all this in for our final grade and second year placement, right?”

                “Yeah, of course I know that. Fuck, it doesn’t take a genius to know that at this point, Hazey. It doesn’t take a genius to fake some bullshit harmony parts, either.”

                “But it takes talent and some amount of effort to write something good and you’ll never get any better if you don’t keep doing it”, Hazey was starting to drive me crazy. He was being so condescending; like I didn’t know you actually had to write something to get better at it. But what the fuck do you write about when you’re tucked up in some little, comfortable school? When you’ve had no experiences to write about? When the only thing interesting you could probably write about is how your parents are slowly dying in front of you, but you’re too damn ignorant to see it anyway.

                “Oh, I write stuff, alright. I write stuff all the time.” I was being defensive but didn’t want to hurt Hazey’s feelings. I wasn’t enough of a bastard to bring attention to his dying parents. Some guys would do that. Some real bastards would bring attention to his parents to put him in his place and win some sort of stupid pissing contest but I wasn’t going to do that; and, besides, he was so into his stupid little choral exercises. I really felt sorry for him.

                “What? Like that crazy quintet you brought to class last month?” Hazey was being a real bastard now. I had gone easy on him, neglecting to bring attention to his bizarre parental situation and here he was with the gloves off, making a jest at a piece I had written a while back that had been an honest attempt at originality. I had really tried to do something that expressed my madness at the time, something really out there. Hazey was just too wound up in the bullshit of the school to give me a chance. Man, I was really beginning to hate the fact that I’d stopped by.

        Hazey really started then to make fun of the music I had written like it was some sort of circus-freak accompaniment or leitmotif for a demented mutant. He even started to hum the main theme while doing some kind of stupid dance. Man, he could really be an asshole sometimes.

        "OK, I get the point", I said.

He kept up with it, though. I guess he found himself quite amusing. Pretentious people always find themselves amusing. I guess somebody has to. I had to just sit there and take it. I felt like punching him right in the stomach, right there where he was standing; but, instead, I just sat quietly and pretended like I was ignoring him. I guess I hadn’t kept my promise to myself to speak out when something bothers me. I have to promise to stop promising myself things.

         Hazey finally stopped and sat back down on his bed. I was beginning to really hate him.

        "That was quite a work of genius", he said in a really sarcastic tone. Why does everyone these days have to be so sarcastic? Everyone is so sarcastic all the time. I think it’s another manifestation of the evasion of truth in our society. Nobody can say things honestly anymore so they have to skirt around issues by using things like sarcasm. I never thought someone I counted as a friend would be so sarcastic, though. I guess people are just generally mean. Or, I think they are mean. I can be quite misanthropic sometimes.

        I think he could actually sense my sudden contempt for him, Hazey. It was pretty obvious. But I would never make fun of an original piece of music that he would write like that. I’d probably think it was shit and would very well tell him, but I’d never make fun of it. Why can’t anybody just tell anyone anything anymore instead of having to make fun of everything like little kids? Even little kids are more honest than we are. Especially little kids are more honest than we are. I wonder at what age we lose the ability to just be honest. It’s probably around the same time we lose the ability to cry when we hurt ourselves or run everywhere instead of walking.

        "I’m just trying to help you out, Ritchie."

        "Yeah, sure Hazey", I said. I was so angry but I didn’t want to upset him. That was one of the crazy things about me. Someone could upset me and be a real mean, smug bastard like Hazey, but I’d never want to speak my mind and upset them. Perhaps I was scared. Perhaps I was a bit of a coward inside. The weird thing was, I wasn’t afraid of physical violence, I just never wanted to upset anyone. Even a mean, smug bastard who was making fun of my attempt at art. I guess that honest little kid inside me was gone forever.

        "Look, its fine to experiment but you’ve got to do the assigned work, too, Ritchie. You’ve got to learn the basics before you go off on tangents." You could see he was feeling bad about making fun of me. Sometimes it’s best not to get confrontational with people. A lot of the time when you just sit and take abuse the abuser gets self-conscious about it. Sometimes silence is the best resistance. I guess it’s a conscience thing.

        We sat there and just chatted a bit. I went along with his "learn the basics" thing and he patronized me by saying how he found experimenting with harmonies cool, after all. It was one of those situations where friends try to make up more from social obligation than anything else. I still thought he was a smug bastard with pathetic parents, though.

        The crazy thing is, once we started talking I just kind of tuned out. I somehow knew our conversation was now just a formality and my brain shifted to another place entirely. It’s kind of like when you read a sentence or, sometimes, a whole paragraph while thinking about something completely different like having sex with some girl you saw in the train or something. I mean, your eyes scan the words like normal, but your brain is fixed on the naked skin and heat of your imagined partner and what you just read doesn’t register at all. You could read the paragraph again and you wouldn’t remember any of it. That’s exactly what Hazey’s and my conversation was like.

        What I was thinking about was the playground near my old school back home. I wondered if kids still played there like we did when we were young. Did they enjoy the same exact slide and see-saw that I did all those years before? Did they steal nervous, heart-pounding kisses with the next door neighbour girl in the plastic tunnel? How many generations of kids lived out days on those swings in the sunshine, the rays of light washing their innocent faces? It was always sunny when I thought of that playground.

        All of a sudden something Hazey said wrenched me out of my daydream.

        "How do you feel about school, Ritchie?" the question was a good one. As you can tell from the beginning of the story, I pondered it a lot. It was something, one of the only things, that I was pretty sure about. "I mean, from what you’ve told me, you didn’t do so well in Highschool either, did you?" He was being mean again, a bit nasty. Perhaps he had sensed my disinterest in him.

        "Oh, I did OK in Highschool", I replied matter-of-factedly. "I mean, I was the top player in the Jazz ensemble. I took most of the leads."

        "I mean academically. You’re grades weren’t all that good."

        "Academically? What’s that got to do with playing?" I really didn’t feel like having to defend myself. Hazey would have never understood, anyway. He was like my parents: people who are always obsessed by numbers, grades and awards. Everything had to be quantified and stamped as valid by someone else. That’s because they weren’t smart enough to know themselves when something actually had something. They had to be told.  Always worried about what others thought of them. Almost everybody’s like that. The World’s flooded by people obsessed about what their neighbours think of them. Frantically running around trying to justify their social worth to everyone around them. Listening to and believing the commercials my father scored and then working themselves to the bone so they can buy the things that qualify them as a success. It was such a pointless third-party existence. It just drove me crazy.

        "Do you care that you’re gonna fail, Ritchie?"

        "If I fail, I fail. I’m not gonna compromise myself for the hacks in the faculty. I really don’t think about it too much. I guess I’m not the kind of guy that dwells on the future."

        "You should, though, Ritchie. You gotta have a plan, man. Time’s going fast and what are you gonna do in five years from now if you’ve got nothing?"

        I hate it when people come up with all that ’think about your future’ crap, it’s so fucking overwhelming and depressing. My parents are the worst for it. ’What are you gonna do in five years from now?’ For Christ’s sake, I was eighteen! In five years I’d be twenty three. Still young. Still with my whole life ahead of me. Who gave a damn?

        "I don’t know, man. I don’t really think about it."

        "I don’t wanna sound like your parents, but I don’t wanna see you flunk out, Ritchie."

        I guess, in a way, he was trying to be nice. He really was concerned about me, you could tell. But the problem was, we were two really different people. Perhaps it was on account of him having such an old family. He always acted older than he was. He was always more serious than the other eighteen year olds I knew. Perhaps that’s what happens when your parents are really grand-parent’s age when you are born and your brother gets hitched with some woman in Sacramento. It was really depressing to think about.

        "Yeah, thanks Hazey. Thanks for the advice", I was actually trying to be sincere but I think it came out all sarcastic sounding. God I hate when I say something and it comes out all sarcastic sounding. I got up to leave then. I couldn’t take it anymore. The lecture. The smell of decaying people. The ratty old books. It was just all too much. "I guess I’d better get going now. I want to see if I can track down Johnny Middleton." Hazey looked up at me and fixed me with this examining, faintly disapproving stare that accompanies every memory I have of my father. God, I couldn’t believe that we were the same age. I really felt sorry for him. Poor guy; but I had to get out of there knowing how totally different we were. And with all that shit piled up around us. And that old-people smell. And the cobwebs. And that blanket.

        "Hey, don’t worry about me, Hazey. I’ll be alright, whatever happens."

        "Yeah, sure Ritchie." It really kind of bothered me the way he answered. I hate it when people answer like that. There’s nothing worse than people answering like that.

        The worst part, though, was how Hazey’s Mother came in with a tray of tea and biscuits just as I was leaving. It was so uncomfortable. It was so sad, too, to see her there all boney and frail and old while Hazey sat on his bed, flu-stricken and hoary. It depressed me to Hell.

        "Would you like some tea and some biscuits, Richard?" Oh man, was I ever uncomfortable.

        "No, thanks. Sorry but I really have to get going." I shook Hazey’s hand in this really stupid, awkward way while his mom stood there so pathetically. It made me so sad. I had to get out of there as fast as I could.

        I got out into the hallway and as I was leaving through the door I heard Hazey’s mom yell goodbye. It made me feel bad, like I was taking flight and they both knew it. It made me feel like I was doing something wrong and she was calling attention to it. Man, I really wish that I had kept running past Hazey’s front door in the first place.

        But I can’t remember why I was running there in the first place. I have the worst memory of anyone not clinically diagnosed with amnesia. It’s terrible. I can forget the reason I’m walking to the store halfway before I even get there. Sometimes I forget why I’m walking to the store and where the store is at the same time. It’s probably pathological. It gets me into so much trouble. For example, I always lose things. It’s the worst when I lose other people’s things. I guess I’m just careless. I should try and be more attentive, but how do you remember not to forget? I’m sure I’m going to die by leaving the gas on in the kitchen or something. I just hope I don’t take my whole family with me.

        The good thing about Golden Gate, perhaps the only good thing, was that I didn’t live at home. I shared a room on campus with a couple of guys named Chris McMechan and Steve Spenderson. Chris was an alright guy - we didn’t get along all that well but he didn’t bother me all that much either. I remember when his dad dropped him off on his first day. His dad was some sort of hot-shot business guy. Made piles of money selling bonds or something like that. You could see how disappointed he was that his son was going to a music school when they arrived. It’s terribly upsetting for a hot-shot business guy to have a son at a music school. I’m surprised he even let him go - most of the time kids of hot-shot business guys have to go to law school or someplace like that. They have to follow in the footsteps, so to speak. It’s one of the laws that ensures all the same people keep doing all the same things and earning all the same money. It’s why nothing ever really changes, no matter what you do as an individual. The hot-shot business guy line of accession.

        The best part of the first day at school, though, was when that old joker Stinson came out doing his Marlene Dietrich bit. What he did was, he found a pin-up head shot of Marlene Dietrich and cut the mouth out. The craziest thing was that he had found this lingerie somewhere, all really girly, frilly stuff and came out wearing it while holding the photo over his face. With the mouth cut out you could see old Stinson’s lips when he talked. He kept sticking his tongue through the hole and saying crazy stuff like "How about it boys? Aren’t you glad you came to Golden Gate?" It was a hoot. God dam funniest thing I ever saw. All hairy legs and frilly panties. Just bizarre. The best of all, though, was when old man McMechan walked right into the middle of it all. You could literally see his heart breaking. He was trying to ignore it and remain stoic, but his face kept getting redder and the veins in his neck started to pop out. You could tell that not only was he thinking his son was coming to music school, but he was coming to a place where boys ran around in lingerie. It was hilarious. I almost died it was so funny. That night Dean Moore almost canned old Stinson. Said he had sullied the proud name of Golden Gate. The two of them were in his office for ages. Old Stinson said steam was coming out of the Dean’s ears. Problem was that they don’t get too many people like old man McMechan sending their kids to the school. They always make a big fuss about rich families. You could be the biggest asshole in the world and they’d make an enormous fuss over you if you had money. Poor old Stinson. If only his dad were richer than old man McMechan; then, perhaps they would have been light on him. They made him do all kinds of serious work in the end. All for a harmless little prank. I still think that was the funniest thing I ever saw, though.

         When I got back to my room, Chris wasn’t there. It was nice to have some time to myself. It felt relaxing. After the episode with Hazey, I really wasn’t feeling like talking to anybody at all. I took off my jacket, hung it up and then sat on my bed. The beds in our room were pretty saggy, on account of all the people that had slept in them, I suppose. You’d think at some point they’d buy new mattresses, but they never did. The beds were comfortable enough, though. I never had any trouble sleeping in them and I always sat on my bed to read rather than in my chair. I guess the beds, in all their sagginess, were still more comfortable than the chairs.

        I took out this book I was reading once I sat down on my bed. It was a book I had found on a park bench last summer. I had wanted to return the book to whoever had left it there, but there was no one around and no name in the book. I would have handed it in at the lost and found, but the problem is that parks don’t have losts and founds. Everywhere else has them - libraries, movie theatres, restaurants; but not parks. If you lose something in a park there’s nothing you can really do about it. It’s usually just gone. Trust me, I’ve lost enough things in parks.

        Anyway, the book I found was this crazy intellectual thing called "The Dialectic of Enlightenment" by these two German professors. I didn’t really understand any of it, but for some reason I liked to read it. It just felt good to read something different from all the usual crap they give you at school. Perhaps I was hoping the book would turn me into something of an intellectual myself. I’m really bad for that sort of thing - hoping that doing something enough would make me good at it eventually, whether I understand what I’m doing or not. Perhaps that comes from the fact that I spend most of my time practicing an instrument. Playing music is a curious thing where you do something you actually can’t do over and over again until you can do it. Anyway, I was hoping that reading this book over and over again would make me as smart as those two crazy German guys.

        It actually wasn’t true that I didn’t understand anything. I mean, I did understand snippets and the odd sentence. That was one of the things that I like about the book - I’d get a little part and that would get me thinking about all sorts of related things. I’d start formulating my own theories and ideas about stuff. I guess it got me using my brain whether I understood it or not. I might not even be getting it the way that the guys who wrote the book wanted me to, but it still made me think. It was like good music - you might not get it and it was never easy to take at first, but it always made you think. Not like the majority of mass-produced media. That has the opposite effect - it shuts off your brain and stops you thinking. That’s why most people enjoy it, it makes you not have to go to the effort of actually using your brain. I guess encouraging you to use your brain is what they call inspiring. I found "The Dialectic of Enlightenment" very inspiring.

        For instance, there was this one chapter called "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" that I found really interesting. I wanted to make my dad read it. It reminded me of all the stupid jingle music he writes and the radio stations that play it. My dad would never read it, though. He’d dismiss it as some radical left-wing bullshit that has no worth because it’s not on some bestseller list somewhere. It’s kind of ironic that way. I guess not reading "The Dialectic of Enlightenment" because it’s not a mass-produced comfortable book, the likes of which we’ve all read a hundred times before, kind of justifies exactly what the book is about. My dad always says absurdly repulsive things like "oh yeah, then if so-an-so is so smart, why isn’t he a millionaire already?" How can somebody be so old and still be so stupid? He just didn’t get it at all. He didn’t realize, not even a sniff, that some people in this world have higher purposes than the accumulation of wealth. What an asshole.

        So I sat for a while reading my book, not really understanding anything but getting excited and inspired all the same. It was hard on the brain, though. That was the thing with that book - I had been reading it for months because I could only read a couple of pages at a time.  It was just too heavy to take a lot of. I’d probably still be reading the book years from now. That is, if I didn’t lose it before then. Probably on a bus, or a train or maybe a park bench where there is no lost and found to check to get it back.

        I put my book down and got up from my bed, yawning as I did. It was stuffy in the room and it made me feel sleepy. I hated feeling sleepy in the daytime. Fact was, that I always felt sleepy. I don’t know if it was my diet or hormones or something but I could sleep all day if I wanted to. It’s probably one of the reasons I wasn’t doing so well in school - I missed a lot of classes ’ cos I was sleeping. Fact was, when I even made it to class I usually slept through at least part of it, if not all of it. I think I could be the laziest person I know. I should probably go to a sleep clinic or something like that.

        I couldn’t think of anything else to do but read, but my brain was tired so I just tossed the book on my bed and left the room. In the hallway I ran into Tommy Weatherly. I think we were the only two people left in the building as everyone else was still chasing each other around outside.  It was stuffy as hell in the hallway, too. I think Golden Gate has a ventilation problem in all the buildings. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the students woke up dead from suffocation one day. It’s probably a horrible thing to think but I can’t help but think it anyway. Just droves of student corpses eternally sleeping in their doom rooms, like rows upon rows of anesthetized sheep. They really should build some statue of a rich guy to get him to donate money for a ventilation system.

 Tommy stopped in the hallway when he saw me and gave me a curious look. For a moment I wondered whether he could read my thoughts and had learned all that stuff about the dead students. Sometimes I worry that people can read my mind when I think of stuff like that. That’s why often, when I am around a lot of people, I try to think of nothing or maybe music or just one word, like repeating “aubergine” in my head over and over just to make sure no one will read my mind while I’m thinking of dead students or having sex with someone or something embarrassing like that. There’s probably a word for a condition like that. I’m sure its related to memory loss.

  Tommy was whistling "Summertime" when he saw me, but stopped as his eyes fixed on my face. I was glad he stopped. He was a terrible whistler. A terrible flugelhorn player, too; but I’d never tell him. You don’t tell people like Tommy Weatherly things like that; you just let them get on with life in blissful ignorance. It’s just not worth the confrontation. Funny thing is, people like that often end up becoming successful because nobody tells them they are shit.

        I think I already mentioned how pretentious R.J. Sands is. Thing is, Tommy Weatherly is just as bad except he’s actually a worse player than Sands. He’d criticize things he couldn’t even play as being juvenile. The self-comment that was implied in a statement like that completely passed over his stupid head. You didn’t even have to criticize him - you just had to let him talk. Every time he opened his mouth he proved your point. He was so stupid he couldn’t even hear how stupid he sounded. I guess that’s always the way with stupid people, though. If they could hear how stupid they sounded when they talked they wouldn’t say so many stupid things; or at least they wouldn’t talk as much. The reason Tommy talked so much was because he loved himself so dearly. He thought he was the smartest guy in the whole God damn world. His idea of himself was so far from the truth, that I thought he was the dumbest guy in the whole God damn world. I mean, how could he not be? But the worst part was that there were people who thought he was smart.  At least they behaved like he was. Maybe they were humouring him or something. One of the worst things about me is that I never know when someone is humouring somebody else or not. I just can’t tell. I never could. Maybe it’s related to my hatred of sarcasm. It can get really embarrassing sometimes when someone is humouring some guy and I just don’t know it. I have that experience often. Often I’ll ask somebody after a conversation with someone why they said all these things about them and they’ll tell me they were humouring them and I just didn’t get it. Why do they call it humouring? I don’t find it at all humorous that’s all I can say.

        Anyway, I was standing there in the hallway with Tommy, wearing my cream woollen turtleneck while Tommy fixed me with that gaze. I really was hoping he wouldn’t say something stupid about my cream woollen turtleneck or something like that. It would be just like Tommy to say something stupid about my cream woollen turtleneck. I kind of wished he would just barge past me and not saying anything at all.

        "Hey Dick", Tommy said offensively. "You been here jerking off while everybody was out?" God he could say the stupidest things. If only he could hear the words his mouth was producing. I often wondered if he was deaf to his own voice due to some strange physiological construct.

        "Nice to see you too, Tommy", I replied in my best sarcastic tone (which as has been previously established wasn’t very good). I don’t think he really picked up on the sarcasm. That’s the thing with stupid people - they never pick up on subtle things like intonation. They just go through life oblivious to everything but the totally obvious. I think that’s why mass culture is devoid of all subtlety. Most people would just never get it. Self-reflection - hmmm my numbness to sarcasm.

        "You’re not chasing around after your boyfriend?" He said.

        "What’s that supposed to mean?"

        „Shouldn’t you be tracking down Johnny like all the other virgin girls?" He was insulting the first year students. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Tommy was a third year student and hated freshmen. He always called them virgins. He thought it was clever as hell or funny or something. Nobody else did. Because it wasn’t.

        "Why would I do that?"

        "Everybody knows you’re in love with him - ’Johnny said this’, ’Johnny played that’, ’have you heard Johnny comp?’ It makes me sick that you can’t shut up about him".

        It was obviously jealousy. A lot of people liked Johnny on account of his being a decent guy. Not to mention he was a million times the musician Tommy was. It drove Tommy crazy. Stupid people always crave admiration. It’s one of the things that makes them say so many stupid things in public.

        "At least he’s worth talking about."

        "What’s that supposed to mean? You wanna say something to me?" I didn’t answer him again. It was the silent treatment like back at Hazey’s. The problem was that only worked with people who had a conscience. Tommy was like a big dumb, clueless bull.

        "Not really", I finally said.

        "Oh, ’not really’. That means maybe you do but you’re too fucking chicken to come out with it. Come on virgin, don’t be a chicken-shit, come on out with it." He was being his typical stupid self. Trying to cover up his lack of intelligence with aggression. I’ve found that a serious lack of intelligence underlies all aggression. If everyone was smart there’d be no violence in the world. "Not gonna tell me what you wanna say then?" He spat. „I think you wanted to tell me how much you loved Johnny Middleton and you are dreaming of marrying him one day - huh, fagboy?"

        That’s something else that I can never understand and pisses me off no end. Whenever a dumb brute of a guy wants to be confrontational he always gets homophobic. Tommy was always doing that. He wanted you to think he knew you had some secret homosexual side that would somehow manifest itself as a love for him that you couldn’t express and he would, in his glorious masculinity, vehemently reject. It was an extension of his need for everyone to admire him, even physically. Truth was, he was probably as queer as Liberace and scared to Hell about it. Those guys always were. He was obsessed with homosexuality in a negative way. It was terribly embarrassing the way he went on and on about it.

        I was getting bored and irritated with Tommy’s bullshit, so I decided to just walk away from him. I was trying to remove myself physically from the unpleasantness of his presence. I really had nowhere to go, but I just wanted to be away from this oaf. The difficult thing was that getting away from someone who is arguing with you and desperately needs attention is not all that easy at the best of times.

        "Look, I’ve got shit to do", I said pacing down the hall. "I’ll see you later if you’re still around.’ Tommy just stared at me, almost fuming. I could tell that the absolute worst thing for him was being dismissed as uninteresting to the point that the other things I had to do were more important.

        "Where’d you get that turtleneck? “ Tommy was inexplicably asking me now about my sweater. I guess he had cooled down a bit or was afraid he’d lose my attention if he didn’t engage me with some meaningless line of questioning.

        "My aunt gave it to me as a birthday gift, why?"

        "It looks like the sweater Miles Davis wore in some of the Kind of Blue sessions", he was definitely trying to keep my attention with a pointless line of questioning. His desperation for attention was incredible in its patheticness.  "Did you talk to Sands today?"

        "Fortunately, no. Why? “I had spun around and was facing him again now that he had decided to be somewhat civilized.

        "I’m supposed to be taking his girl’s cousin out tonight but the bastard hasn’t got back to me yet."

        "Well, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him. I try and steer clear of Sands whenever possible."

        "Yeah, I hear you two don’t get along too well." I wasn’t surprised that Weatherly and Sands were good friends, idiots tended to congregate. Sort of like that foamy crap that forms on the top of water and collects around drain-grates and river banks. I was actually quite proud of the fact that they both didn’t like me too much. I took it as a compliment to my character.

        All of a sudden the door at the end of the corridor opened and in walked my other roommate Steven Spendersohn. He had been away for a few days visiting his sick Grandmother and looked like he hadn’t slept the whole time he was gone. I wondered whether his Grandmother had passed on. I didn’t really know what to say to him in case that was, indeed, the fact. I never really know what to say to people in awkward situations like that. I mean, if I acted politely and asked him how his Grandmother was doing and she had died, I would feel terrible. Especially with Tommy there to witness it. But if I said nothing other than hello, I’d look insensitive and uncaring. Sometimes I wish there was a book that told you how to behave in situations like this. I’d definitely benefit from a book like that. Although, I’d probably forget what each specific action in each specific situation was and end up doing something wrong anyway. Perhaps a book wouldn’t help, after all. Oh, yeah, and I’d probably lose it somewhere. Probably on a bus or a train or on a park bench somewhere.

        "Hey Richard, Tommy", Steve said upon seeing us. You could tell that he didn’t really feel like talking. He was kind of moping, if that is the right word. "How was your guy’s weekends?"

        I figured that this was a hint that his wasn’t so good. Perhaps you need to pick up on things like that to end up saying the right thing and not something embarrassingly stupid or inappropriate. I guess you don’t really need a book after all. "Been busy with all the end of term stuff", I said.

        "Yeah, sure", he kind of acknowledged my reply without really hearing what I had said. He looked pretty upset. I took this as an obvious sign. "I just came to get some of my things. I have to head back home tonight." He wasn’t saying anything specific but I kind of knew what he meant, so I decided to say nothing. Sometimes I decide to just say nothing when I don’t really know what else to say. A lot of people blurb out pointless things that they somehow feel obliged to say in situations like this, but I felt quite comfortable with silence. I wonder what the book would say?

        Steven passed by me and entered our room, disappearing like a spectre into a veil of mist.

        "I hope she’s not a dog. I haven’t seen a picture of her or anything." I had totally forgotten Tommy was still there in the Hallway, standing behind me. Apparently his intuition wasn’t as fine-tuned as mine, or he was just completely insensitive. Both hypotheses could be completely true.

        "Well, she probably looks like Sand’s girl."

        "Why would you say that?"

        "Because she’s related to her. Cousins, wasn’t it?" I was totally uninterested in Tommy’s date but I kind of wanted to forget about Steven moping about in our room, collecting all his stuff by himself.

        "That doesn’t mean anything. I’ve seen sisters who were as different as night and day." Tommy was again trying to impose an air of authority.

        "Well, of course there are exceptions to the rule, but most family members resemble each other at least a little bit. It’s not ludicrous to say they might look a bit like each other." I was trying to defend myself and be logical at the time but I was beginning to sound incredibly boring.

        "They’re just cousins", Tommy replied.

        "I heard about these girls that lived in Peekskills who were cousins but looked exactly the same. Identical cousins or something like that. They say it’s impossible but I heard about these girls and even saw a picture - God damn craziest thing I ever saw. My brother showed me it in some magazine. I think it was called -"

        "Look, I gotta get going, Ritchie", Tommy interjected, "if you see R.J. tell him to come and find me in the library."

        I was really getting excited about those twin cousins. I really was. "Well, I have no idea where he is", I replied, "and if I’m lucky I won’t run into him anytime soon." The last statement was muttered to myself as Tommy disappeared through the door at the end of the hall.

        I wasn’t looking forward to going back to my room and wondered whether I should just head down to the playing field or something; but then the image of Steven all alone in there gathering up his things made me sad as hell. I just couldn’t leave him in there by himself and so decided to give him my company.

        "You need any help?" I said upon entering the room. "I saw Hazey today. I think he’s sick or something, probably the flu."

        "Oh yeah?"

        "Yeah, I ran over to his place. I was only there for a few minutes. We got into a bit of an argument. Damn Hazey can be so God damn serious sometimes. His mother was there, too. God damn lady gives me the creeps." I was rambling. I really didn’t know what to say to cheer Steven up.

        "I’ve never met her. Never been over to Hazey’s place actually." Steven replied. He was pretty normal acting for a guy who had just lost a family member.

        "No kidding? “ I said. I couldn’t believe he had never met Hazey’s decomposing parents. "But he lives, like, two minutes from here." Steven was packing books into a cardboard box. It was an old washing powder box.

        "She’s ancient", I said. "The whole family except Hazey himself, actually. His brother is almost my dad’s age and married some woman in Sacramento. Imagine that! Marrying some woman in Sacramento! Hazey inherited his room. It’s really bizarre - all that second had stuff cluttered around. Piled up everywhere. His place feels and smells like a museum."

        "What does a museum smell like?"

        "Old and serious."

        "Serious! Jees, Ritchie. You’re the only guy who could smell seriousness!"

        "Yeah, well; you know, it’s that still clinical smell mixed with dust. Like nothing’s moved for centuries - kind of stuffy but with a musty smell, too. Like a yellow, an off-whitish yellow. I dunno, when I’m in there I just smell seriousness. Maybe it’s the mothballs in the closets or something. It didn’t help that Hazey was being all serious either. Maybe when you live with that smell all the time it turns you serious, even when you’re only eighteen."

        Steven didn’t say anything. I think my line of reasoning sounded absurd to him.

        "Hazey’s mom used to play bridge with my Aunt", I continued, "I used to hear about Hazey’s exploits third hand from my mom after my Aunt had told her everything. I’d hate it if my parents talked about me to people they played bridge with. Luckily neither of them are card players. They used to play sometimes with my grandparents when they came over. I think it was Rummy or something like that. Rummy or Gin or Gin-Rummy. My dad hates cards, though, and my mum prefers to just gossip. The cards distract her and she never pays attention to the game anyway. We did once go to a playing card museum once, though. I always wondered why - on account of my parents not being card players. Maybe there was nothing else to do where we were. We were on holiday out East. I think it was Orchard Beach or someplace with a name like that. I did like the card museum, though. It’s amazing how interesting you can find card museums when you don’t play cards. I often wonder how interesting people who do play cards find it. Maybe they actually find it less interesting than people who don’t play cards on account of them already knowing so much about cards. But I don’t think that is the case. I mean, people who know a lot about cars find car museums more interesting than people who don’t know much about cars. Or maybe not. I’m not sure. I don’t know much about cars but I’ve also never been to a car museum. Maybe I would like it a lot. Do you think anybody has ever mixed up a card museum with a car museum? Like if car enthusiasts drove all the way across America and ended up at a card museum? Do you think they would like it or be upset about going to the wrong museum? Maybe it would be a nice surprise. I went to a train museum once by mistake and I really liked it; but, then again, I know a thing or two about trains. Well, not like I am an expert or anything but I had a train set when I was a kid and I really liked it. My dad bought it for me from that model shop on Market Street. Do you know that model shop on Market Street?"

        Steven wasn’t listening at all anymore. He was just filling that box with more and more books. Books for boxes.

        "I think Hazey’s parents had him when they were, like, sixty or something", I said. "Can a woman still give birth at sixty? I don’t really know. What age does a woman become infertile at? My brother showed me this article once where a woman of ninety or something had twins, but I don’t know if it was true. How come no one ever teaches you things like the age a woman stops being able to have children? Did we learn that in biology class? Did the girls learn that when we were in gym class? That’s really something I have no idea about... hmmm, interesting. I’m going to have to look that up."

        "I dunno", Steven said inquisitively. It seems he was actually interested in the thought. It was a very sensible question after all.

        "I’ve had a lousy education. I’m not kidding", I really wasn’t kidding. My education was really lousy.

        Steven was now finished packing his box and had gone back to ignoring me. "Ninety years old with twins", I kept pondering the possibility. "Damn that can’t be true can it?"

        "Why don’t you try and find out? “ Steven said.

        I walked over to the window and looked out but there was nothing to see. "I wouldn’t know where to start", I said. It was true - I really wouldn’t. It had kind of made me depressed and despondent, the fact that I would never know if the story was true. "I really couldn’t be bothered, either." I stared out of the window for a while not saying anything. I really had nothing else to do and the possibility that I would never know if that story was true or not was bothering the Hell out of me. "How long you gonna be away?" I finally said.

        "For the rest of the year. Term’s almost over so they’ve given me bereavement allowance."

        "Did Dean Moore talk to you personally?"

        "No. For Christ’s sake he didn’t. I just got a letter", Steven said. He had finished arranging the books in his soap powder box.

        "Well, I’m really sorry, Steven."

        "Ok", he replied, but I knew it wasn’t. I could tell the fact that he had just received a crummy letter from the faculty saying ’sorry you’re grandmother died, take the rest of the year off’ made him angry. It made me angry, too. I mean, it was so impersonal. It was typical Golden Gate, though. Typical Dean Moore, too. I bet if old man McMechan had dropped dead they would have had a memorial parade and cancelled classes. It was all such bullshit.

        Steven left the room and went downstairs with his boxes. I stuck around for a while and then decided to go downstairs, too.

        When I got downstairs and out of the main gates I saw Steven cramming his boxes into the back seat of a taxi. I couldn’t believe he had to get a taxi up from the city. By himself. I stood there and sort of watched him for a while, all the time thinking about what assholes his parents must be to let him come up here alone.

        "Hey", I called to him, „do you need some company on the ride to the city?"

        "Ok".

        That was the great thing about Steven - he was so honest. He didn’t mess around with all that polite ’oh you don’t have to’ and ’not on account of me’ bullshit. If he wanted you to come back to the city with him he’d just say it. I like honest people much more than polite people. Polite people are such a pain in the ass sometimes. Maybe not as much a pain in the ass as boring, pretentious assholes, but a pain nonetheless.

        "Just let me get my jacket", I said. It was brand new and I hadn’t even worn it yet.

        "Ok. Hey, bring some cigarettes, too, will ya?"

        "Wouldn’t leave home without ’em." I never went anywhere without a pack of smokes. "Is there room for my horn, too?" The idea of playing a bit in the city excited me.

        I hurried up the stairs back to our room, swiped a pack of cigarettes and matches off the desk, picked up my horn case and grabbed my new brown leather jacket. In less than thirty seconds I was slamming the door and making sure it was locked behind me. I don’t know if I was totally conscious of it then, but looking back I guess that was the exact moment I decided to quit school for good.

        When I got back downstairs, Steven was already in the back of the taxi. I jumped in beside him with my horn in my hand and my leather jacket over my arm.

        "Should you really be leaving school at this time of year?" Steven asked me. "You know, with finals coming up and all that.

        "I’m failing anyway. They won’t let me back in next year. Doesn’t really make a lot of difference to me."

        I really didn’t like the way he asked the question. It felt a little bit like the interrogation back at Hazey’s. "Anyway, it’ll be more educational for me to spend a bit of time in the city. It’s about time I got out there and did something for a change."

        "God damn right", Steven said. He had a faraway look in his eye as he said it, like he was reflecting on his own last few years of existence. I felt bad that we were talking about me, but I supposed anything taking Steven’s mind off of the long ride home was ok. Only, I’m not sure my comments were taking his mind off of anything.

        I didn’t say much more for the first few minutes of the ride. I didn’t feel like it. I kept thinking about that ninety year old and her twins, and Tommy and his stupid date with Sand’s girl’s cousin and if the two cousins were identical. It kind of made me angry. I nearly went crazy sitting there in silence having to think about all that stuff.

        All of a sudden, Steven just burst out in tears crying. It was really an awkward situation. I didn’t know what to do or say or anything. I just kind of stared out of the window trying to keep my mind on those twins so that I didn’t have to notice Steven. It’s hard not to notice how self-conscious you are about something when you’ve got nothing else to do. I kind of wished I could count the money in my wallet or clean my nails or something. One of those menial tasks that takes you mind off of how awkward a situation is. So there I sat, just concentrating on those twins while watching the scenery go by outside my window.

        The drive back to the city always looked the same to me. Everyone always said what a beautiful drive it was out here. I just always saw the same cars whipping past the same boring trees and pretentious houses. I think most people just said the drive was nice because they felt like they had to complement the area. A lot of rich people had homes up here and you couldn’t question the geographical preference of rich people. Especially if they might be in the car with you. Anyway, I didn’t like the drive on the best of days and it was becoming especially unpleasant with me not being able to decide what to say to poor old Steven. It felt like every second that went by made me a bigger asshole.

        It was nice, though, when we finally got to the outskirts of the city. There was the usual layer of fog rolling in from the sea, but the bay looked beautiful. It looked sad and gloomy, but that was the way I always like it. Atmospheric, I suppose. Melancholic and beautiful. I couldn’t help but think, a little guiltily perhaps, that the weather kind of mirrored Steven. I believe my English teacher used to call it pathetic fallacy. It was sad but intriguing.

        I had no plans or anything, so when the car stopped near Steven’s place I kind of bid him farewell and all and then decided to take a bus down to Division Street and have a deli sandwich. I didn’t feel like sitting around with Steven’s parents and I was sure that I’d be unwelcome anyway. I was thinking about asking my old friend Hal if he wanted to come and join me, but I didn’t even know if he was home. The reason I thought about it was because Hal and I always used to go down to Clancey’s for deli sandwiches. Hal was crazy about those smoked meats, especially the European ones.

In the end, I decided to go alone and jumped on a streetcar coming down Market Street. When I got on the car there was an old man singing kinda crazy-like. All the other people on the tram were trying to ignore him with these embarrassed looks on their faces. I imagined they probably looked like I did back in the taxi when Steven started crying. It made me feel embarrassed myself that I didn’t know how to react back then, like I was heartless or something. I hate feeling like that. I hate feeling like I act just like everybody else in those kind of situations.

        The weird thing about the guy singing was that I actually liked him. He had a nice voice - not great, but nice. It wasn’t like he was some crazy guy just screaming at the top of his lungs, his voice was just pleasant to hear. It reminded me a bit of my grandfather’s voice when he was telling me a story. It was soothing, comforting in some way. Just an old guy singing out loud on a street car making everybody uncomfortable. I smiled at the guy and he just kept on singing. He just didn’t give a damn either way.

        When I got off the tram it was beginning to get cold out. There was a chill in the air. I put my hands in my jacket pockets and found some paper in the right one. It was a flyer inviting students to some dance that I didn’t go to about a month ago. I never go to dances, the music just drives me crazy and I’m too shy to ever ask any girls to dance, so there’s really no point. As I walked, I screwed the flyer into a tight, paper ball. I got it down to a really small, dense little sphere. I wanted to drop kick it and see how far it would travel, but I didn’t. It just looked too round and perfect to be thrown away. All I did instead was walk down the street trying to pack the ball even tighter and harder, get it really round and heavy. I pushed and pressed and rolled it through my fingers like it was some sort of task I had to get that ball infinitesimally small and all the while no one had a clue that I had that ball in my pocket. I still had it with me when I got down to Clancey’s.

        There wasn’t really anybody around that I knew at Clancey’s when I got there, so I just ended up eating a sandwich and playing the pinball machine for a while. I put my paper ball on the glass on top of the pinball machine while I played. It was kind of like my lucky charm in my quest to post the highest score. I had been playing that God damn pinball machine at Clancey’s for years and I hadn’t yet posted a high score. The truth was, I wasn’t really all that good at pinball. I was never bold enough to tilt the table when I had too and lost a lot of balls as a result. I just didn’t want everyone looking at me with those accusative eyes every time I gave the table a good shove. It wasn’t worth a high score. After playing for a while, I began to wonder if I could pack the paper ball so tight that you could use it as a pinball. I bet you could. Eventually. You might need a machine or something but I bet you could. I began to get excited that I had devised a new way to create pinballs out of paper. I just wondered how much paper you would have to start with. Probably a lot.

        I didn’t really care about not seeing anybody. I didn’t really feel like talking much and you always have to talk to people when you see them. Especially when you are back in town after being away in school. I’d have to explain why I was back and if there’s one thing I hate it’s always having to explain yourself to everybody. No, I was glad that there was no one around that I knew.

        It was getting into the evening when I lost my last game of pinball, still with no high score, and decided to get a bus to the park. I slung my horn case over my shoulder and headed out of the door. There was a number seven coming up the street just as I got outside, so I leaped on and got a seat. I always liked the number seven. I don’t know why; maybe because of where it goes or perhaps the people on it, which was related when you thought about it - but I always like the number seven. I started thinking about what it would be like to be a tram driver. If I did it, I’d be different than all the usual tram drivers. I’d greet everyone that got on, all friendly like. I’d be the God damn friendliest tram driver there ever was. Everyone would love to ride in my car.

        I got off at the stop in front of the park and sat on a bench. I couldn’t think of anything to do or why I came to the park. I’m not too good at making decisions, so what I did was I opened my horn case and started reading all the messages under the lid. Whenever I play with someone new I get them to sign my case with their name, the date and venue of the gig and a little comment. It was a great idea, I thought. It really was. I had a whole history of my playing career under the lid of my case. Not everyone signed it. When I played in a big band I didn’t ask everyone to sign it and sometimes people didn’t want to sign it. I don’t know why. Why wouldn’t you sign a horn case? Sometimes people are impossible to understand.

        Some people would write little poems and other sayings and stuff like that. A lot of it was corny but I liked reading it when I had nothing else to do. Shawn Linklater signed my case on January 19th, 1969. He’s dead now. He was a really good trombone player in my middle school. He was a hundred times better than me. The teachers were always saying things to his folks like "that’s boy’s taken to trombone like gasoline to fire". And they weren’t spewing a bunch of bullshit. They really meant it. But it wasn’t just that he was the best player in our school, he was also one of the nicest guys I ever met. People who are genuinely good at something have nothing to prove, I suppose. It makes them much easier to be around than people who have to show off all the time. Shawn never bragged or lied about anything. He had these crazy big, green eyes. He always looked like he was staring at you with wide eyes, but he wasn’t; he was always looking like that. The priest at his funeral said he was too good of a person to stay on Earth and God wanted him back in Heaven. I usually think that kind of crap is the biggest pile of bullshit ever, but with Shawn you could actually believe it. All the bullshit people usually say to be nice and polite was actually true in the case of Shawn Linklater. Perhaps for the first time. Perhaps for the only time.

        "Dear Richard, blurry eyes, empty nights - here’s to the faces in the front row and the ghosts we’ll never know...

        - Shawn Linklater Deerhurst Social Club, Jan. 19th, 1969."

        That’s the kind of thing Shawn would always write. He was usually trying to make the best of things. He used to laugh so hard at jokes you’d make in the cafeteria that he’d almost burst. He’d laugh at everyone’s jokes, even if they weren’t funny. But he wasn’t being patronizing or trying to make people like him, or humouring anybody - he just found everything genuinely funny. I was only fifteen when he died. It was eighteen months after that gig we played together. The whole school was really sad when it came out that he had died. I remember being so angry that no one could save him. I remember being so angry that I couldn’t save him. It all seemed such a waste and there were so many little variables that could have made it different. It could have been so different if a million other things had happened. I still don’t understand it all. I still haven’t come to terms with it yet. I guess you never really come to terms with the death of a friend. I mean, who wants to come to terms with something like that? No, those terms can stay away as far as I am concerned.

        Anyway, that’s what I thought about on that park bench. Old Shawn Linklater. Whenever I read my horn case, I always ended up thinking about old Shawn. There were other people who had signed it and died but they weren’t so tragic. They were always old guys and most of them I didn’t know that well. Teachers, a few famous musicians who I had had a masterclass with, guys from an old person’s home I played at during Christmas, my great uncle. Most of them I couldn’t really remember. It made me sad as hell to think about Shawn. It was getting cold and damp out and I was getting depressed as hell. I started to wonder whether I should get another case.

        It’s hard to know what to talk about. I mean, a million people walked by me on that bench and I thought strange things about a lot of them, but I don’t know if it’s interesting to talk about. I probably looked really suspicious sitting there by myself, my horn case open in the twilight, but I didn’t think about that. When I start thinking about people like old Shawn I can sit there and just stare in the distance forever. It’s kind of like meditating. I don’t even have to blink my eyes when I think like that. I don’t want to be interrupted, even by my own eyelids. If you knew old Shawn, perhaps you’d sit there thinking about him sometimes, too. I’m sure you’d sit there thinking about him. He was someone you really wanted to remember so he wouldn’t disappear. I was so damn afraid that if I spent too long not thinking about him then I’d forget what he looked like and how he sounded. I was really afraid to forget.

        All of a sudden a voice shocked me out of my thoughts.

        "You gonna play that thing or you trying to sell it?"

        "Huh, what? “ I said startled.

        "Well, if you got a horn sitting in an open case you either about to play that there horn or if you ain’t then you must be tryin’ to sell it."

        "Err, no Sir."

        "No What? No you ain’t gonna play it or no you don’t wanna sell it?"

        "No I could never sell this horn."

        "Well, then, either start playin’ or shut that damn case lid. Horn like that’s gonna get all rusted up in this weather." I didn’t really know what to reply. The truth was I was so absorbed in my thoughts I was a little confused as to who I was talking to and why. As I started to regain my faculties I realized that who I was talking to was a tall, slender black man. Probably in his mid-sixties; he was wearing a trench coat and a Panama hat. The why, however, still hadn’t become apparent.

        "God damn it." He was irritated. He seemed frustrated by my cluelessness. "Kids these days walk around with beautiful instruments like that and don’t know what they for. Carry them like God damn accessories. Like handbags for Christ’s sake", he said with disgust. "Did you buy that horn to carry around and impress girls?"

        "Erm."

        "Did you buy that there horn ’cos you thought it’d get you more pussy?" He was inching closer and looming over top of me.

        "Of course not. No. I’m a musician", I replied defensively.

        He didn’t answer me, he just stared at me with this accusative look. It seemed as if he was trying to decide if I had just told the truth or not. It was pretty uncomfortable sitting there being scrutinized. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being scrutinized by strangers. God, it felt like ages sitting there in silence being watched by some crazy stranger in a trench coat and Panama hat. A Panama hat for Christ’s sake!

In San Francisco! I thought people only wore those things on trips to Mexico or places like that. Places like, well, Panama I guess. It looked so ridiculous in the fog and mist. He didn’t say anything more to me after about fifty hours of silence so finally I said, "I study at Golden Gate Conservatory of Music, but I think I’m gonna quit. I’m failing anyway."

        He was stroking his short-cropped white beard contemplatively when I said that. "Not damn surprising if all you do is sit around with your horn in its God damn case getting rusty." God, I hated judgemental strangers.

        "Do you play, sir?"

        "What the Hell does that matter? You’re the one with the horn." He looked at me all squinty-eyed. "You see me with a horn?" He kind of leaned in to give me this close-up look. "Listen", he said, "if you’re gonna sit in a park with an open horn case you’d better be ready to play. I might very well blow like bird but you don’t see me sittin’ in this miserable cold with an open instrument case for all the passers-by to gawk at." I tried to ignore him. I didn’t close the lid on my case or pickup my horn or anything. All I did was sort of look down the street like I was expecting someone to come along. What a day. Always trying to divert my attention from the situation at hand.

        "Oh, so now I don’t exist - is that it?" He said.

        "I don’t feel conversational." I really didn’t. It wasn’t a lie.

        "Don’t feel much of nothin’", he said, "don’t feel like playin’ that’s for sure. Well, people that don’t feel nothin’ can’t usually play worth a damn anyway. What the Hell they teachin’ you at that school?"

        "I just don’t feel like playing right now. Not here anyway." He didn’t respond to that. He looked all frustrated like he was going to leave but then he didn’t.

        "Well, then, why don’t you close that case and stop advertisin’?" his voice was shaking a little as he said it. Boy, he sure seemed frustrated. I was getting curious as hell wondering why he cared about me playing or not.

        The guy took a step back and shuffled his feet a little. He really looked like he wanted to say something important but wasn’t sure if he should. Finally he sighed a defeated sigh and just stared at me. "What is it? “ I said. "What do you really want to tell me?

        "Nothin’", he said. "Wouldn’t sink into that thick head of yours anyway."

        I was really getting angry at being insulted by some stranger. Who was this guy? Why wouldn’t he just leave me alone? I hate being bothered by people when I just want to sit quietly in the park. What a lousy city! You can’t just sit quietly in the park without being bothered by strangers.

        What happened next I don’t really remember. It’s strange how you don’t remember the seconds before you are knocked unconscious. It’s frustrating because you never know exactly how it happened and something like that you’d love to know. I’d love to write a big, exciting account about how I was accosted but I can’t. All I could do is make it up; and that would be lying. That wouldn’t help anything.

        Anyway, the next thing I knew I was lying on my back, the wet grass all around me. My head felt as though there was a pillow wrapped around it and there was a terrible buzzing in my ears. I couldn’t get up; or, perhaps I didn’t want to get up. I just lay there on that cold, damp grass for what seemed like ages.

        "Damn, you alright kid? Can you hear me son?" The words of the old man were fuzzy in my ears.

        "My head hurts. The ground is cold." I sputtered out. An intense pain was starting to grow from the base of my skull up into my temples. I can’t remember if I said anything more at that point. I seem to remember asking a bunch of questions; or maybe I was just thinking of asking them, kind of asking them to myself. I wanted to know what had just happened but then again it didn’t really matter. My knowing wouldn’t change anything or make me feel any better. Still, it’s funny how you always want to know stuff like that even though it won’t make any difference.

        "Sit up if you can." The old man said gently. "Take it easy now".

        "What happened?"

        "Looks like those guys made off with your horn", he said. I really wasn’t following him. "I tried to stop them but I’m just an old man. Damn, I told you it wasn’t right to sit there in the park with that horn on display."

        "My horn? Those guys? Huh?"

        He said it over again, only slower and more carefully, "Those thugs that came by and socked you made off with your horn. I tried to stop them but... but -"

        "Shit!"

        He helped me up and got me back on the bench. My head was throbbing like hell. "Somebody took my horn? The case. Where’s the case?" I asked groggily.

        The old guy looked really sad. He dropped his big, wrinkle-framed eyes to the ground. "They swiped the case with the horn in it. Whole lot of it is gone. I tried to... I tried, but God dammit I’m just an old man!"

        "God damn bastards", I said. I was probably yelling. „I hate this city, full of lowlife’s and miserable tram drivers and stinking thieves. Always grey and lonely. I gotta get someplace more-" The old guy was holding my collar trying to calm me down. My head hurt and my ears were ringing but all I could think about was that case. Truth was, I didn’t care too much about the horn. It was a real nice one, real expensive - a Schagerl my dad bought in Germany in the 60’s, but I could get another one. What I was really thinking about was losing the only piece of Shawn Linklater that I had left. It made me so damn mad I started to cry. I felt so angry - those bastards didn’t know what that case meant to me. To them it was just a few bucks at a pawnshop, but to me it was so much more.

        "It’s ok, son. We’ll scour the pawn shops in a few days. They bound to sell it off at one of them places so’s they can buy drugs or somethin’. People that steal a horn from someone ain’t musicians. They won’t be keepin’ that horn to play it theyselves." The old guy’s suggestion and voice were soothing for my pounding head. He sounded a bit nervous though. There was some sort of uncertainty underlying the tone of his voice. He was probably scared that I had internal bleeding or something. You can actually die from a real light knock on the head. Sometimes even days or months or years later. You really can. It’s some sort of hemorrhaging or something. I read about it in a magazine. Or my brother showed it to me, I can’t remember. Boy did that old guy look worried.

        I sat there on the bench for ages. I really just felt like lying back down again on the wet grass and falling asleep. I was so mad, all I could think about were all those signatures and little poems. Gone forever. And Shawn. Slipping away with every piece of him I lost, with every day that wore down my memories, and now this.

        "Look, why don’t we go and get you washed up?" The old guy said. "Maybe get a drink?"

        I hadn’t even noticed my nose was bleeding. There was blood running down and dripping off of my chin onto my trousers. I must have looked a real mess. When I started to gain awareness I looked down and noticed there was blood all over my cream woollen turtleneck. That made me really angry, too. My cream woollen turtleneck! The one I bought because it looked exactly like Miles’ turtleneck in the Kind of Blue session photos!

        Finally I got up but almost immediately fell back down. My legs were really wobbly and my head was spinning. I started to see myself as one of those prize fighters that’s just been knocked out. You know the ones that stumble around the ring after the bell goes and they’ve been counted out, their mouth guard hanging out and a dazed look in their eyes. I’m sure my eyes had that exact same look. Perhaps I was trying to get my mind off of the loss of my case and the blood on my cream woollen turtleneck. Sometimes I imagine myself in those crazy situations. It’s really childish. It’s a nervous habit. I guess it’s a mechanism to cope with stressful situations, projecting my image onto some other personality. Anyway, I imagined myself to be one of those knocked out prize-fighters right there near that bench in the park.

        When I could finally get up and stand confidently the old guy and I made off for a bar just down the street. It was a groggy, clouded walk for the first few steps. "You sure you can make it?" The old guy said. "We can get you to a hospital if you feel really bad".

        "I think I can make it."

        It was getting pretty dark out and I kept stumbling on the sidewalk almost falling on my head again. The old guy was sort of leading me along like I was an invalid. It must have looked funny - this old guy leading some young guy down the street, like we’d swapped places or something. A sixty year old man leading a bloody teenager by the arm down the street. I bet we looked a right comical pair. "Where the hell are we going anyway?" I asked.

        "Vic’s place", he was huffing and puffing as he carried me along the street. "I know the owner, he’ll get you cleaned up."

        "Jesus! What the hell did you bring me now, Milton? “The stocky guy behind the bar exclaimed as the old guy shuffled us into the bar with a hand-painted sign that said "Vic’s Place" over the door. He was probably startled by my crimson woollen turtleneck.

        "This poor boy’s had an altercation in the park. Three punks jumped him and stole a beautiful Schagerl off of him."

        I sat down in a chair at the bar. There was no one else in the place. I don’t know how old Vic stayed in business. "I’m ok", I said, "have you got anything to numb the pain a bit?"

        "You’re still bleeding, buddy. We’d better get you cleaned up", the stocky guy said.

        "It’ll stop. How about a scotch and soda?"

        "Scotch? I think you’re a little too young, buddy."

        "Aww, c’mon. Consider it medicine for my injuries."

        "Medicine!" The guy exclaimed with a smile, "Kid’s a freakin’ wise guy, Milton. Listen, let’s get you cleaned up and then we’ll talk pain relief, ok?"

        "I’m fine, I don’t need seeing to", I told him. I was really beginning to want that drink and I didn’t want some old, stocky bald guy dabbing at me with a handkerchief. I was being indignant.

        “Vic here used to be one of the best cut-men in the state of California. He’ll get you fixed up in less than sixty seconds, don’t you worry. Then you’ll be able to have that drink, ain’t that right Vic?” The old guy, whose name I had now learned was Milton, said with a wink. I thought back to my prize-fighter fantasy and how appropriate it all seemed now.

        "All right", I said, "but if I let you go messin’ about with my face, I want you to promise me I’m going to get that drink."

        "I’m promisin’ nothin’, kid. I ain’t the one with a busted nose, but I am the one with a liquor license to lose", Vic replied to my ultimatum. That really excited me. I straightened up in my chair.

        "You really think it’s broken?" I said with a glimmer of curiosity. "You can tell that just by looking at it?"

        "I’ve seen a thousand busted noses, kid, and yours is the most recent."

        "Wow! I’ve never broken anything before." I was feeling masochistically pleased at my present condition. "Less than one day out of school and already I’m having new experiences" The two older men looked at me all puzzled. You could tell they thought I was a bit of an idiot. The lives these guys had had, they probably had broken noses before they were out of middle school. But it really did mean something to me. Instead of being in a safe, boring school and having nothing to talk about, now I could explain to people that my nose is crooked from the time it was broken in Golden Gate Park. This was the first day of a long list of character-building experiences. I was slowly building a personality, a history. I just wish I hadn’t lost my case.

        "Who the hell jumped you? You get a look at them?" Vic asked as he fished some cotton wool and rubbing alcohol from a cabinet behind the bar.

        "I don’t remember anything", I said.

        "Nothin’?"

        "Nothing at all. One minute I was talking to Milton, the next I was waking up on the grass."

        Vic wiped away the blood on my face with a damp towel. "Nothin’, huh? Total blackout. It happens, believe me. I’ve known fighters who got knocked out in the tenth round of a big fight and the last thing they can remember is walking to the ring. The brain’s a funny thing, kid. You get a look at them, Milt?" Vic directed his question to the old guy as he pressed a cotton swab to my throbbing nose.

        "I saw there was three of ’em, but with my eyesight it could have been the musketeers and I wouldn’t know", Milton started to get that nervous look again.

        "Ugh, this stuff stinks", I said. I was talking about the rubbing alcohol. "Do you really have to use this stuff?"

        "Keep still, I know what I’m doing", Vic said. He was a pretty stubborn guy. "This’ll clean you up better than anything."

        After rubbing away all the blood with the alcohol soaked swabs, Vic pushed a couple of large wads of cotton wool up my nose. It hurt like hell. It felt as though he was trying to push my nose up into my head. I guess he was trying to seat it or something. It was really difficult to breathe after he was done. I always get that sticky, crusty saliva building up at the corners of my lips when I have to breathe through my mouth. It disgusts me. It reminds me of being sick in bed with the flu or something.

        "So how about that drink now that I’m all fixed up?" I beamed to Vic.

        "I’ll get my license pulled for serving liquor to a kid", he replied, unimpressed.

        "Ahh, come on Vic. Give the kid a break. He’s almost old enough and he’s been through a lot this evenin’", Milton interjected. "And while you’re at it, how’s about pouring me a double?" The surly old barkeep gave the old black guy a disapproving look as he lined up two rock glasses.

        "So, tell me what happened from your perspective, Milton", I boldly asked after sipping at a hastily poured scotch and water, although I order soda.

        "Ain’t nothin’ to tell. Three guys jumped you and took your horn", Milton was now more interested in his drink.

        "D’you get a good look at them?" Vic interrupted as he polished a glass with one of his ubiquitous towels in that typical bar man way. "Even with those poor old eyes of yours you could still give a description to the police."

        "Police ain’t gonna do a damn thing. Police ain’t never done a damn thing", the old guy retorted somewhat aggressively. "Most useless thing about this city", obviously Milton was no fan of the S.F.P.D.

        "I’m gonna spend the next few days checking ’round the pawn shops", I said.

        "Don’t worry about it, kid, we’ll find your horn", Milton was calmer now with his drink in his hand.

        "I’m not worried. I’m just a bit sad about my case. I hope those guys didn’t just ditch it and sell the horn-"

        "Relax. Why would they ditch the case? Horn’s worth more in a case."

        "I had a lot of personal messages written on it. Maybe they won’t try and sell it with the case ’cos then it might be traceable to the owner. My name’s all over it."

        Milton got a concerned look on his face after I explained my case messages. I kept wondering why he was acting so nervous every time I brought up the horn. I was also really worried that my case would just get ditched somewhere. If it was sold at least there was a chance someone would trace it back to me. I knew a lot of guys on the circuit and in schools and they might recognize the name. At least I hoped so, anyway. It was really my only chance of getting it back, outside of the small chance I might find it in a pawn shop somewhere.

        While we sat there sipping our drinks, Vic began to ask me all sorts of questions - where was I from? What did I do? Why was I walking around Golden Gate Park with a trumpet? I kind of liked it, actually. It took my mind off of my pounding head and the need to know what the hell happened in the park. I was dying to know and several times I was on the brink of just demanding that Milton tell me exactly what happened, but I always stopped. Somehow his reluctance to elucidate on the situation made me nervous to ask. In the end I just decided to let it go.

        I finished my drink then started to get depressed as hell. Vic wouldn’t serve me another and there’s nothing worse than being stuck in a crummy old bar not being able to drink. My head was feeling so rotten I began to regret asking for a drink in the first place. The sides of my mouth were caked with sticky saliva and my nose was hurting like hell. I even began to wish I hadn’t left school. All of a sudden all my character building experiences didn’t seem as appealing as my warm, saggy bed back at Golden Gate.

        "Hey Vic", I said in a defeated, feeble voice. The old barkeeper’s back was turned as he stocked glasses on the shelf behind the bar. "Hey, Vic!" I shouted louder, my voice hurting my own head. He heard that and spun around to face me, glass in hand. "How much do I owe you for the drink?" I asked.

        "You kiddin’?" He said. "Save your money so you can buy a new horn."

        "What’s the deal on training to be a fighter?" I asked him. My fantasy of being a prize fighter that I had imagined on the way down the street had intrigued me and, at the very least after tonight’s encounter, I was interested in learning to defend myself. I was also interested in taking a completely different path in my life. Who knows how little decisions like learning how to box might change your life completely. I had made an agreement with myself to grasp new experiences and take pathways that I might have never imagined back at Golden Gate. "Do you have to join an academy or something?"

        "Kid, you have to be a lot younger and be from a much worse neighbourhood than you to consider something like that."

        "Aww, that’s ok. I’d probably get an aneurysm or something in my first fight knowing my luck." The truth is I probably would. I’m really unlucky when it comes to my health. When I was a kid I had scarlet fever really bad and my parents thought that I was going to die. It really scared them a lot. It really did. I think that’s why they’re a little overprotective these days. You can’t really blame them. It irritates the heck out of me, though.

        "Well, you wouldn’t win too many fights with a nose like that. Referees stop fights at the first sight of blood these days. Not like the old days-"

        "Oh shit. Here comes another rant on the downfall of the art of pugilism. You see what you’ve got him started on now, kid?" Milton interrupted as he emptied his glass. I got up off of my stool and made ready to leave. I didn’t want to hang around in that depressing atmosphere anymore. Especially if the old guys were about to begin some boring argument. I reached over the bar and extended my hand towards Vic.

        "Thanks for everything", I said in this very sincere voice. I can sound very sincere when I want to. "I don’t know what I’d have done without you guys."

        "You’d still be lyin’ on the grass in the park, your nose all bloodied up" proffered Milton playing with his empty glass.

        "Yeah, that very well may be", I said as I started towards the door.

        Outside in the street everybody was making their way home through the damp greyness. There was an empty beer can just outside the door to Vic’s place and while I walked down the street I kept kicking it on in front of me. I wasn’t very good at kicking that can and it went all over the place, sometimes even in the street, but I kept at it for at least a kilometre. People must have thought I was really bored. I decided then to get a room in the city somewhere, a place I could relax and catch my thoughts after my disturbing park incident. I was a little nervous walking down the street. The truth was my mugging had upset me more than I wanted to admit to myself. There was something else troubling my mind, too. I couldn’t help thinking that Milton had something to do with it all. The way he just approached me like that and started talking and then refused to explain what actually happened. The way he behaved after I was jumped and later at Vic’s place was really strange. It all made me feel so uneasy. I was dying to find out what really happened and who that old guy really was.

        It occurred to me that if I was going to stay in a hotel for a while I’d need a few things - clothes, money, perhaps another horn; things I didn’t have with me but that were in my parent’s house. It also occurred to me that if I was going to get that stuff now would be the opportune time. Both my parents would still be at work and I could let myself into the house with my spare key, get the things I needed and be gone before anyone knew I was even out of school. Then I’d retreat to some real inexpensive hotel and just take it easy for a few days. I’d hang out, decide how I was going to tell my parents I had quit Golden Gate, then go home to face my destiny. I didn’t really want to tell them at all, but I guess I’d have to sooner or later. The problem was, my Mother gets very hysterical when hearing bad news. She flies into these fits and starts asking God why these things happen to her, like he’d know. I really wanted to just disappear, but then they’d probably call the police or something and that’s the last thing I needed right now.

        Anyway, that’s what I decided to do. So I hopped back on the number seven tram that ran past my neighbourhood, smiled at the miserable driver and was on my way. When I got to my house it was still in total darkness - a good sign. I slipped the spare key I had out of my pocket and quietly went inside and up the stairs. My room was the first on the right. I went inside, turned on the light and started packing. There wasn’t too much to take. I grabbed a few changes of clothes, some comics I was fond of and my wash kit. The main reason I was here was for the one hundred and twelve dollars I had saved in my top drawer. That should last me a few days. I threw everything into an old case I had and was finished. It took me less than two minutes to collect it all, then I was ready to go.

        It was a strange feeling packing all that stuff and especially taking the money. It felt as though I were robbing my own house, my own room. Creeping about in the darkness looking for stuff to take. Even though I had switched the light on, it still felt wrong. That depressed me. I could see my parents talking to the neighbours about how I was finishing my first year in school and here I was, a drop out robbing my own house to run away. It made me sad. Although I don’t like my parents, it still makes me sad when I think about upsetting them. I swear I’m the most confused person I know. I’m a real crazy bastard.

        After I got all packed I headed back down the stairs and outside with my case. I closed the door, locked it back up, then turned to go. As I stood there I kind of started admiring my own front garden. We have this gardener who comes twice a week who’s really talented. He really is. He’s old as hell and totally crazy but he takes care of our trees and shrubs like they were his children. He takes more pride in our garden than anyone. He admires our garden more than any of my family do. I bet he goes home and dreams of all the gardens he has worked on. My parents barely ever notice what he’s done with the place and, honestly, I never did either. But for some strange reason, in that brief moment, I saw how beautiful he made the place look. I saw the garden the way he probably sees it, the way he dreams about it. I really started to appreciate it. I could see the passion of that old, crazy bastard manifest itself right there. It was beautiful.

        The really crazy thing was that he probably didn’t have enough money to be able to afford a big garden like all the rich families he worked for. Imagine that! Being so passionate and so talented at something; creating something that you can’t afford yourself for people who don’t even appreciate it. That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I could think of. It made me really sad and kind of angry when I thought about it.  I imagined him lying there at night thinking about those beautiful gardens that he had made and didn’t own; could never own. It was so unfair. All of a sudden I hated our house and our stupid garden. I decided that I’d never hire a gardener who didn’t have a big garden of his own.

        Anyway, I had to get going before anyone came home. They could arrive at any minute, so I decided to head down the opposite end of the street that my parents arrived from to prevent running in to them. It was a stupid way to go in terms of distance, but I couldn’t risk a meeting. On the way out I passed the Wilson’s barking dog. I hated that dog. Always had. It always barked at you no matter how often you walked by. It never got to know you. People always say ’oh he just has to get to know you’ when you first meet a dog. I think it has something to do with your smell. It must have something to do with your smell ’cos dogs don’t really have any other senses. Well, people always say that and after a while the dog usually does calm down. That usually takes a few minutes or hours with most dogs, but not the Wilson’s stupid mutt. I had been walking past that mongrel for at least ten years and he still hadn’t got to know me. He still barked at me like I was some kind of stranger. That dog must have had the worst sense of smell of any dog in the whole city. I guess he suited the Wilson’s - old Frankie Wilson was the smelliest kid in our entire school.

        When I got to the end of the street I stood under the lamppost for a while and took a last look down at our house. A really strange feeling came over me. One I can’t really describe. I just felt different all of a sudden. More different than I have ever felt before. Different, but good. It felt new. The world felt new. The damp, cold air felt new. The dim, orange light bathing me in the gentle fog felt new. I turned away from the place I had lived my entire life and began walking, and it all felt new.

        I really didn’t feel like getting a cab or a tram or anything, so I walked the whole way to the city centre. It was quite far and the damp coldness of the foggy sea air made me shiver. It was kind of nice, though. It was fresh and invigorating. The only bad part was once I got near the downtown area and the twilight began to turn to night, I started getting all nervous about being mugged again. I kept thinking about the hundred and twelve dollars in my pocket and how long it had taken me to save it. I’d hate to lose all that money. I was lucky, though, and got downtown without any problems. The place I decided to stay in was really cheap and in a pretty scummy area, so I was happy to get to the reception and off of the street. The guy at the counter wasn’t as happy to see me, however - perfunctorily going about his job to give me a key to one of the rooms so I could check it out. He wouldn’t even take me to the room himself, but I guess that’s how it works in those crummy places.

        I always liked hotel rooms. The outdated curtains and one obligatory window. The lonely single chair by the too-often used bed. The night table with the copy of Gideon’s bible in the sliding top drawer. I bet those Gideon guys had a bible in every room in America. I had no idea how they did it. They must be the most efficient group of people in the world, not missing a single hotel room. I bet they distributed fifty Million of those bibles. It was amazing when you thought about it. If I ever had to distribute anything I’d definitely hire those Gideon guys to do it. Perhaps some ex-Gideon guys, seeing as the current ones would probably be busy all the time putting those bibles into those top sliding drawers.

        The room was ok in a crummy, run-down kind of way so I decided to take it and went back downstairs to pay. You always had to pay beforehand in those cheap places. When I got into the lobby there was this lady asking the lazy receptionist to call a cab for her to head downtown. She had this big bag with her and seemed to be more than a little irate. She kept checking her watch and fiddling with her handbag as the receptionist dialled the phone. I gathered she was about forty or something. I’m not very good at guessing women’s ages but I always like to wage an idea. She was quite good-looking either way, though, young or old. She had sharp eyebrows and nice cheekbones. She had sort of a cold look to her but it was sexy in some way. I guess you could say she had a sophisticated air. What a woman like that was doing in a place like that hotel, I wouldn’t know. I had believed the only women who frequented hotels like that were whores. This lady looked far too mature and sophisticated to be a whore.

        Anyway, I was standing there waiting to pay for my room when all of a sudden the sophisticated lady turned to me and said, "Excuse me, but you wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?" She was staring right at me with these icy blue eyes.

        "Yes, of course", I said. I was pretty intimidated by her presence but was trying to act all suave-like. The way you see guys acting in the movies when they talk to sophisticated looking women with icy blue eyes; very fake and boring.

        "You aren’t staying at this rat hole are you?" She said. I was surprised by her sudden vulgarity. She looked so proper and incapable of coming up with metaphors like rat hole. I really expected her to have a God damn English accent or something. She looked that sophisticated.

        "Yes, just checking in.", I replied.

        "That’s too bad. I hope you don’t have a phobia about roaches."

        "Well, I just need a cheap place to crash for a few days while I explore the city."

        I was surprised by her character. It was so different from the way she looked. She even said things like ’phobia about’ instead of ’phobia of’. I’d have thought a woman with her striking looks would know the proper prepositions when she spoke. That’s the kind of thing that blows me away - you meet a beautiful, mature, sophisticated-looking woman and when she opens her mouth all the wrong prepositions come out.

        "You still got that cigarette?" She said. She was being a bit of a wise-ass. I hate it when people act like a bit of a wise-ass. "Thanks", she said as I passed her the cigarette, "may I ask your name?"

        "Richard Matthews", I said extending my hand. She didn’t take it.

        "Do you like San Francisco, Richard Matthews?" She asked me.

        "It’s not bad. It’s not Chicago or New York or anything but it’s as good as most places. Some of the neighbourhoods are pretty nice."

        "You from Chicago?"

        "Well, no", I said. Then I started getting really nervous and feeling a lot like a stupid kid. "Actually I’m from San Francisco. I live here. Well, used to... and in the holidays, well, some of the year."

        "Why you checking into a cheap joint like this if you live in town? You having an affair? Making some old man’s wife happy?" She exhaled her cigarette smoke and her lips turned up into a wicked smile as her sentence trailed off accusingly.

        "Oh, no, no. I’m just spending a little time by myself", I said. I was enjoying watching her smoke. Some women you can really enjoy watching smoke.

        "You’re the only person in the world who comes to a place like this alone", she looked away as she exhaled another puff of smoke. She was starting to get this bored look on her face. The strange thing was, though, it looked quite rehearsed; like she had practiced that look for situations when she wanted to give the impression she was uninterested. I couldn’t help but think how bizarre it was that she rehearsed the expression of boredom. How boring is that? Probably even in front of a mirror or something, too. "I thought these places were solely patronized by adulterers", she said. „A dirty little place to hide our dirty little secrets."

        "How do you mean?

        "A dirty, cheap place for dirty, cheap activities. They’d never tolerate the goings on that happen here at the Ritz, darling; and it’s far enough away and tucked in a wretched part of the city so no one ever has to find out what goes on. No decent people, anyway. Decent people never come down here." ’Decent people?’ I thought to myself. What was decent these days? The fat, greedy phonies wallowing around in the trendy fashion district sure weren’t decent. The immoral bankers in the financial district weren’t decent. And most of the over privileged bastards spending a hundred dollars a night to stay at the Ritz definitely weren’t decent. I’d be surprised if you could find ten decent people in the whole God damn city; or even five, or for that matter even one truly decent person.

        I looked at her as she smoked away. I wondered how such a beautiful woman could hate herself and everybody else so much. Perhaps for what she and whoever else were doing? But it was her choice wasn’t it? People killed me sometimes. They do all this shameful, despicable stuff then hate themselves for it. What’s the point in hating yourself for something you are doing in full consciousness? If there’s really no point to it all in the end anyway, then why be so ashamed of it? I think most people are at least slightly insane when I think about it.

        "So what are you doing here?" I got up the courage to ask her. She looked away and then looked back at me. "If it isn’t obvious then you’re too young to know, anyway, honey." It was pretty obvious but I wanted to hear her say it. Perhaps it was the perversion of the place rubbing off on my like a cheap paint; or perhaps it was my growing dislike for her, for her misused prepositions and cynical, self

deprecating attitude.  Her wise-ass remarks and disdain for anyone that ventures outside of the entertainment district or decides not to stay at the Ritz. Perhaps it was my latent anger from my earlier assault in the park, the aggression just hitting me now, but I wanted her admission. The truth was it was probably just a testosterone-fuelled adolescent thrill, but I wanted the words to come out of that beautiful, wicked, sophisticated mouth. I wanted to hear her say it.

        But she didn’t say anything. She just kept on smoking in her rehearsed, boring way. She was quite sexy, though, I must admit. She had a physical appeal to her even when she looked bored. I kept wondering if her partner was still upstairs somewhere sleeping on that crummy mattress; or if he had left already in a rush, trying to get back to his wife and kids before she got suspicious and rang the office. Trying to get back before the dinner was put on the table.

        She gave me a funny look as I stared at her wondering those things. "That’s quite a black eye you’ve got there", she said all of a sudden.

        "I got mugged", I replied matter of factedly. "In the park. They stole my horn." I wish I could have explained it better but the truth was I still had no idea what happened myself.

        "Sure it wasn’t her husband?" Her lips curled up into that wicked smile again.

        "It was pretty random", I said, "I have no idea who it was". Then I watched as she stubbed out her cigarette in a tall, standalone ashtray.

        "I don’t believe that anything’s random", she said. She looked up at me with those ice-blue eyes. There was a hard look in them. You could tell she had had a lot of experiences in her life, probably not the easiest life, either. I guess you would say she was worldly, or street-smart or something. "Everything happens for some reason or another", she said. "Not always for good reasons, but for reasons all the same..."

        "What do you mean?"

        "Well there’s always a cause in something to happen. Sometimes you have to look really hard, but it’s always there."

        She was trying to be philosophical, trying to be wise even though she got her prepositions all mixed up when she talked.

        I stared right back at those piercing eyes. I tried to imagine what kind of a life she’d had. What mistakes had she made? What reasons for her being here at this point in her life did she construct to give it all meaning? What happened after the bonfire of passion that landed her here? Which meandering road led her away from genius? I wondered if she lived a normal life with kids and laundry and thanksgiving dinners. Was that faded existence tucked away somewhere in a distant past?

        "When is your cab supposed to be here?" I asked her.

        She looked around the lobby. "I don’t know, perhaps he’s late already. I’m sure there’s a good reason."

        "Well, there always is, isn’t there?" The lips curled again. Wicked. "I could never be a taxi driver. I don’t pay enough attention to where I’m going and I always get lost. I’d be late all the time if I was a taxi driver. I bet I wouldn’t last a day on the job"

        You should have seen the way she was looking at me when I said that. You could tell she thought I was a real idiot. I honestly don’t know why I said it in the first place. It was kind of stupid to say.

        "Did you hear about that murderer?" I asked her after a few more seconds of extremely uncomfortable silence and rehearsed boredom. "The taxi cab killer?" She shook her head. I could tell she genuinely wasn’t interested in me anymore.

        "There was this guy in the city, a taxi driver. He’d cruise around and pick up single fares, then he’d lock all the doors with this central locking device he had built into the car. His car had sound-proof glass in the windows, too, so you couldn’t hear his passengers scream for help", I was really getting excited telling the story, "anyway, he’d drive his victims off to a remote area and then cut them up with a steak knife. It was all really grisly." I looked at her. "Didn’t you hear about it?"

        "No, I didn’t."

        I went on, „I read it in this magazine. Or did my brother tell me about it? No, it was a magazine my brother gave me. Anyway, apparently he was never caught." I was really excited about the story.

        "How’d they know about all that stuff if they never caught him?" She was still mostly disinterested but was trying to discredit my story all the same. You could tell she wasn’t impressed by it. The truth was I didn’t really know how they knew all that stuff myself. I had read the story in one of the magazines my brother gave me, probably the same one with the identical cousins in it. It was a bit silly. Suddenly, I started to feel really embarrassed for bringing it up. That’s the thing about mature women, you can’t ever talk to them without feeling like a stupid kid. I think it’s a mother thing. After a while all middle-aged women make you want to sulk in a corner like a naughty child who has just been told off.

        Just then the receptionist peered out from behind his plastic window and gave me a chance to quit embarrassing myself.

        "That’s twelve dollars for the room if you’re going to take it, buddy." I pulled out my wad of one hundred and twelve dollars and peeled off a few notes for him. "Checkout’s at eleven", he said.

        "Are you going to a club downtown?" I boldly asked the woman after paying my bill.

        "I might be. What’s it to you?"

        "I thought maybe we could share some drinks. A few cocktails or something?" I said. "I was thinking of going downtown for dinner and perhaps a drink or two, maybe you’d like to join me?" As much as she intimidated me I’d have liked to have her as company. She was quite attractive, after all.

        "Are you even old enough to drink?" She said. "Cos quite frankly, honey, I don’t think there’s a bar in this town that would serve you a drop."

        "I know a few places", I said smoothly.

        "Oh yeah, like where?" She somehow found that amusing. Again I was feeling like the little boy.

        "Vic’s bar", I replied indignantly.

        "Never heard of it." I was starting to get more and more anxious, now I was feeling scrutinized - like when a teacher is questioning you about something you were desperately trying to get away with and failing badly.

        "It’s down on 7th street. Vic’s an old boxer, or trainer or something."

        "Oh God, one of those places" she said with a roll of her eyes. "No wonder they let children drink in there, I’m sure no one else does." I was started to feel intimidated, and a little surprised at her accurate assessment of Vic’s.

        "Well, we could go somewhere else, anywhere you’d like." I was getting really nervous now. I was starting to wish I hadn’t brought the subject up.

        "I’m not really into taking children out to bars, sweetheart." That got me really offended. I hate when people call me a child, it’s so offending. God damn it I was eighteen.

        "I’m not a child. I’m eighteen."

        "Well, then, I’m not into taking adults less than half my age out to bars for drinks." I wanted to retaliate. I wanted to spew out all the hurtful things running through my head in anger. She was being so condescending, the way she said adult so sarcastically. All I asked was if she would like an innocent drink and I get this abuse in return. She must really hate men, I supposed. Although the way they probably treated her I guess it wasn’t surprising. I guess she was pretty cynical when it came to men, young or old. I suppose she assumed my proposition had lewd connotations, like I expected something after the drinks. The truth was I did kind of ask her out with something indecent in mind, especially with a woman so old, but how could you blame me with those cold, blue eyes and that wicked smile? Even so, I was offended that she thought that I was thinking something like that. I mean, I was thinking something like that but she didn’t know that I was thinking something like that and for her to think that I was thinking something like that when she didn’t know I was thinking something like that was offensive.

        We didn’t talk much after she said that. I really didn’t want to, anyway. She started reading this fashion magazine she had with her and I toyed with the idea of either going upstairs to my room , leaving the hotel, or sticking around in the lobby to see what the lady would say next, if anything. I didn’t care what she might say next but part of me wanted to stick around to see if she would say anything next and, if so, what it might be. God, I must have looked stupid standing there speechless. I was pretty embarrassed, actually. I tell you, I really hate middle-aged women.

     Her taxi finally pulled up and without saying a word more to me the lady grabbed her bag and headed out the door. I watched as her silhouette disappeared into the foggy night air and couldn’t help but think about that story I was telling her earlier about the taxi driver. The lights on the back of the cab slowly faded into grey as the car pulled down the street and I went back upstairs to my room.

        As soon as I got upstairs I flopped onto the bed and stared at my suitcase. I hadn’t even changed my blood-soaked cream woollen turtleneck yet. Luckily, the jacket I had slung over it at home hid any evidence of my earlier altercation, otherwise I really would have looked like a maniac to that woman. I decided then to change into something clean. If I was going to go out for some drinks I had to look at least presentable.

        After changing I felt like giving somebody a call. I really didn’t feel like going out alone. The truth was, the encounter with the woman in the lobby had excited my teenage hormones into action and I started running through a mental list of girls that I knew who might want to go out with me. The list was, sadly, not very long. I’d never really had a serious girlfriend before, but there were a few girls I knew, some I had dated, some were just friends. I guess I was craving female companionship of any kind. I think, partially, my ego had been a little bruised in the encounter in the lobby. I thought first about calling Fleur Stapleton, but then I remembered how boring she was on our last date. She kept talking about God-awful things like her cheerleading team and how her dad had funded the buying of their new uniforms with some stupid donation to the school. She was so proud of her stupid little dress and college sweater. I had trouble not committing suicide with my steak knife right there in front of her at the table just to end the torture. I really did have difficulty not ending it all. You know it’s a bad date when you have difficulty keeping yourself alive through it. Her dad didn’t like me much, either. He told her I never applied myself, that I’d never get anywhere in life and she would be better off with one of those sweater around the neck guys. I tell you he’s kind of right in the fact that if I was with Fleur I’d never get anywhere in life. It would be too short because I’d kill myself with a steak knife as soon as she started talking about how great her new pom poms were. He’s also right about her being better off with one of those tennis racket carrying, checkered trouser wearing bores from a "proper" school. They would be a good match. They could talk to each other about horribly boring, completely pointless things while their fathers funded their wardrobes.

        In the end I decided to call this girl who I went to high school with, Laura Hughes. I don’t think she ever really liked me much, though. I could tell on the phone that she just wanted to hang up. She kept saying she was tired and had a lot of studying to do because the end of term was coming up - stuff like that. I wish she could have just said "I don’t wanna talk, Ritchie". That would have been so much easier. Sometimes people are difficult.

        After the failed attempt to find female companionship, I decided to go downtown. I changed out of my bloodied woollen turtleneck, splashed some water on my face and then left the hotel room, making sure to lock up behind me. I descended the creaky, rundown staircase, walked past the receptionist who gave me a quick disapproving look and then hailed a cab out on the sidewalk.

        I wasn’t sure exactly where to go, so I gave the driver the address of the Edgemont hotel. It was downtown near most of the clubs and bars and I figured I’d walk from there and see what was happening. It would be the most central place from where to begin my exploration of the downtown nightlife. I still had the woman from the lobby on my mind. I asked the driver, "Would you happen to know any girls that might like to accompany me tonight? I’m new in town and wouldn’t mind a companion to have a good time with."

        The driver was seedy enough that I figured he might know about stuff like that. "Aren’t you a little young? Shouldn’t you be asking your classmates if they wanna go steady or some shit like that?" I was offended again at the age crack but I didn’t want to start an argument.

        "Well", I said, "would this make any difference to my age?" I pulled out the one hundred dollars I still had left after paying for the hotel room. He turned around and glimpsed at the wad of notes in my hands.

        "Jesus, but, where’d you get that kinda cash?"

        "I’m loaded", I said. "I’ll pay triple fare if you can put me in contact with some nice girl."

        He didn’t say anything for a minute. I figured he was thinking it over or maybe going through a list of girls in his head like I had done earlier, only I hoped his list was longer than mine. Finally he said, "Okay, triple fare. I’ll give you the number of a lovely girl who lives downtown."

        "Well, the thing is, I don’t really want anyone too professional if you know what I mean. I was looking for more of a companion. Someone I can go out for drinks with and have a good chat with", I said. It sounded like I was backing out of the deal when I thought about it. The truth was I was a little bit nervous. I didn’t really want to be hooked up with a proper whore or anything. I mean, I did initially but when it really came down to it, I was too nervous to hook up with a proper whore. I really just wanted to meet a girl and have her near me, talk to her, enjoy her femininity.

        "Look, I’ll give you the number and you can call her. What you work out it up to you. You can arrange flowers together for all I care", he certainly was sarcastic.

        "Well, ok. How much is it gonna be to the Edgemont, anyway?"

        "One twenty. Three sixty with the number." It was a lot of money just to give someone a call.

        We got to the Edgemont, I paid the cabbie his $3.60 and was handed a small piece of paper on which was scribbled "Lorraine" and a telephone number. I took the contact and hopped out of the cab onto the busy sidewalk outside the hotel.

        I decided to go into the hotel bar and see if there was a decent band playing. I didn’t really care too much but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I was too nervous to call this girl, Lorraine, straight away so I decided to see if I could get served a few drinks. Sometimes I can get served if I put on this casual air like I don’t really wanna have a drink. Sometimes it works, it really does.

        I got a seat at the bar, non-chalantly ordered a scotch and soda then took a look around the room. Ordering then looking immediately away didn’t allow the bartender to stare at me too long, so he couldn’t gauge my age properly. It seemed to work as he left to get a glass and a battle from the rack on the wall behind the bar. Sometimes you just have to behave like you don’t want that drink at all, like you are bored as hell and the place you are in is the most boring place in the world and you only really feel like ordering a drink because it’s the expected thing to do, which really makes you boring as well. I guess that’s the thing about looking grown-up, you just have to look boring.

        It’s amazing what you see in a hotel bar when you really take a look around. People from out of town not afraid to flirt their bad behaviour in front of all those strangers. I saw this one guy, a professional looking man in a black suit, sitting in a corner seemingly having an argument with an invisible acquaintance. He’d point his finger then say something while shaking his head angrily. It was really heated, that argument. I’d hate to be the imaginary person whoever they were. Perhaps it was his work colleague, or his wife, or his deadbeat son. Sometimes he’d sit back and put his hands on his stomach. It was like he was listening to the invisible acquaintance’s response, probably all made up in his head. Then he’d fire back with the finger pointing and head shaking, refuting all the points he had just dreamed up himself in his imaginary friend’s argument. He looked so alone there arguing all by himself. Sometimes I think having an imaginary partner is more lonely than having nobody at all.

        Across the room from the lonely man was a couple. They were both very well dressed - he was in a dark tuxedo and she had on this sequined red dress. They looked quite glamorous, but they kept laughing all stupid-like and doing this ridiculous routine where the guy would feed the girl a cherry and some ice-cream from this fruit salad thing they had and she’d seductively suck it down. He’d dab a cherry in this pot of cream or ice-cream that they had and then hold it in front of her, kind of pulling it back like he was teasing her. She’d finally wrap her smooth, red-lipstick covered lips around it then pull away chewing on the captured fruit. Then she’d start sucking her finger ’cos there was left-over ice-cream or something like that on it. The whole time the two of them were laughing like crazy little kids. They were acting as if no one could see them. I couldn’t believe it, you should have seen them. It would have driven you crazy.

        The real problem was, I was kind of enjoying watching the couple. I guess it was arousing. I bet if someone was watching me watch those two they would think I was a real pervert. That’s my big problem, really - I always think other people are strange or ridiculous but I usually end up being the one who’s seen as weird because of thinking like that. I mean, I would have loved to have been doing that with that woman, really. I probably looked like a real loser staring at them, getting all turned on. I guess I was a real loser, really.

         Sitting there watching those two really gave me an urge to give this Lorraine girl a call. I was starting to fantasize how it’d all go. I’d pick her up in a taxi and we’d go to some swanky place where we could have cocktails and perhaps dance a bit. Then we’d start talking about stuff, real deep stuff. You know, like where we used to vacation as kids and how we both hate tram drivers. We’d connect. Then I’d order a sundae and feed her the cherries while we laughed about it all. It’d be me at that table and some loser would be watching me have fun. That was how it would all work out.

        I hadn’t noticed that my drink had been served and was sitting in front of me. I sat there in my chair, smoking and drinking my drink, trying to get the courage up to make the call. I was feeling pretty horny, I really was. I took out my wallet and pulled out the slip of paper. It looked so unofficial. For all I knew, the cab driver could have just wrote any name and number on that slip of paper and be laughing  his ass off right now with my $3.60 in his pocket. I began to wonder if the girl really was a whore. Maybe she was just a stripper or something, or maybe just a party girl. Anyway, I left a buck on the bar for my drink, finished my second cigarette since arriving and went out to the phone in the lobby. I really hoped Lorraine was home, or in the hotel, or wherever the number connected to.

        I pulled out the inofficial looking slip of paper and dialled the number. It took a while for anyone to pick up but eventually there was a voice on the other end of the line.

        "Hello?" It was a pretty smoky female voice that answered. A raspy alto. I wondered if I had woken the woman up.

        "Hello", I replied.

        "Who is this?" She said. "Is that you, Tommy? I told you not to ever call here..." I was a little bit nervous. I didn’t really know what to say.

        "Umm, no, my name’s not Tommy", I said in a defensive voice. "I got your number from a friend. I’d be very excited to meet you." I really didn’t know what to say.

        "Who the hell is this?" She said.

        "Well, my name’s Edward Danforth", I didn’t want to give my real name over the phone. I had no idea where "Edward Danforth" came from, though. "I’m in town and I thought you might like to get together?"

        "Who? Eddie Danbridge? Never heard of you. How’d you get this number? „Her voice was getting raspier. She was damn near yelling at me down the phone.

        "Is this Lorraine?" I asked. I was trying to dodge her question, because the truth was I never got the cabby’s name. I had no idea who gave me the number.

        "Yeah, this is Lorraine. So, how’d you get this number?" She sounded genuinely surprised. I decided to take my chances and invent another name.

        "Tony the cab driver gave it to me. He said I should give you a call." I figured Tony was as good a name as any for a cab driver. I said it all casually like when I mentioned it, too. I was trying to be subtle. I didn’t know how to go about asking a strange woman if she was a whore. I’d never done that before.

        "Tony? Tony... a cabby you say?"

        "Yeah, that’s right"

        "You work with Tony?"

        "No, I’m in banking." The rich banker Edward Danforth. Where do I come up with this stuff?

        "So then, how do you know Tony?" Suddenly Tony existed as well. Tony and Eddie, two imaginary friends. God, was I ever lonely.

        "I was one of his fares tonight"

        "Don’t you bankers usually take private cars?" She asked.

        "Well, yes, but tonight I was in a hurry and had to hail a taxi, I couldn’t wait for a company car to arrive", man I was really laying it on. I had no idea at all if bankers had company limousines driving them around. I was way out of my depth in story-telling after less than two minutes of phone conversation. I’d be a terrible spy, my story would come apart after the first couple of minutes of interrogation. I really have trouble of keeping track of what I have said when I make things up. It can be really embarrassing sometimes.

        "So, then, where were you going in such a hurry, Mr. Danbridge?" She was getting friendly and interested all of a sudden. Some of the rasp was leaving her voice, too.

        "Well, I had a meeting about the locks on the vaults and then I had to meet some Germans to talk about printing some francs." I really had no idea what bankers did. I was hoping Lorraine didn’t, either. By the sound of it, she didn’t.

        "Oh, that sounds exciting"

        "Yes, very exciting. It’s a very exciting life being a banker. On Monday I have to fly to Switzerland." I was getting a little bored of the banker rouse and wanted to get to the point of my call. "I have tonight free, however. Perhaps you would like to join me for drinks?"

        "But I don’t even know you", she replied soberly.

        "Well, err, Tony said", I was trying to be diplomatic but was probably just sounding like an idiot, "that you might like to go out for some fun. That you were that type of girl." It sounded much worse when it came out of my mouth than when I imagined it. I cursed myself under my breath for letting it slip out that way.

        "What you tryin’ to say", the unfriendly tone was back. Apparently the fantasy of the jet setting banker had faded. "You tell Tony to stop givin’ out my number to total strangers."

        "I’m sorry. I think I misunderstood." I was disappointed and felt guilty. Damn Tony! The bastard.

        "God-damn right you misunderstood. I’m a decent girl! “She shouted the words into the receiver but you could tell she didn’t really believe them herself. It was as much a scream of defiance for her as it was for me. I was all too familiar with the feeling, with the scream.

        "Well, we could just get together for a drink and some pleasant conversation."

        "We’re already having a conversation and it’s not really all that pleasant."

        "Well, I’m sorry..."

        "So you keep saying."

        "Perhaps we could start again? Forget that stupid stuff Tony led me to believe."

        "How about I forget the stupid stuff you led me to believe. You’re not a banker at all are you, Mr. Dunston? Your name probably isn’t even Dunston."

             "Danforth."

        "Whatever."

        "Let me explain", I said.

        "No. I don’t think I will. Please don’t call here again", and with that the phone went dead. So much for the pleasures of Mr. Danforth. I guess I would have to make do on my own. Thanks a lot, Tony.

        It was still pretty early. I’m not sure exactly what time it was because I never wear a watch, but it definitely wasn’t late. I still don’t know what I was going to do with the evening. I guess the Lorraine thing was out. I decided instead to head over to a club. Somewhere more happening. Somewhere that actually had a band. There was this nightclub, The Silver Dollar, nearby which was owned by a guy I knew, well that everyone knew actually, called Stitchy. I don’t know why they called him that but Stitchy always had a decent band in his place.

        While I was walking down the street, making my way over to The Silver Dollar, I started thinking about Jane Althorpe. I almost stopped at a damn phone booth to give her a buzz. I really felt like talking to her, I really did. She was somebody I could really talk to. But she wasn’t home anyway. She was away at college and they don’t allow calls to be taken after eight in the evening. I was pretty sure it was after eight. I thought of maybe calling her dorm and telling the receptionist it was an emergency or something but then that would worry old Jane and she’d be mad as hell when she just found out it was me. Then she wouldn’t want to talk to me and I would have ruined the whole point of calling her in the first place, or we’d spend the whole night arguing and I wouldn’t want that.

        Oh yeah - Jane Althorpe is my ex-girlfriend. I suppose I should explain that before I go any further. I always go too far without properly explaining things. It’s why I confuse so many people with my stories. Anyway, Jane was the only girl I had had a serious relationship with. We didn’t do it or anything. I guess it wasn’t that serious. The truth is, I’ve never done it with anybody. I’ve fooled around with a few girls and did a lot with Jane, but I’ve never actually done it. Anyway, the most serious I ever got was with Jane. She’s really nice, Jane. Smart too. She always had As in school; the whole time, from the very beginning to the end. Always As. It’s unbelievable really. You ought to see her, too. She has this amazing corn-blonde hair and green eyes. It’s pretty long too, her hair. Sometimes she puts it back in a ponytail, but I hate that. I always told her I liked her hair better when it was falling all around her face like shining strands of gold. I know that stuff sounds so cheesy and fake and all, but girls still like it when you say things like that. It really was beautiful hair, though. She’s got a good body, too. Skinny but not too skinny. Just healthy looking. She’s quite active. She loves to play tennis and swim. That’s what she’s got - a tennis body. Strong but lean and long. She’s considerate, too. She listens to you when you are talking. You know she listens because she remembers what you’ve said. She always says things like "remember the time you said this?" That’s how you know she listens and is considerate. She knows quite a lot about music, too. I mean, she’s not trained or anything and can’t play an instrument but she knows when somethings good. One time I took her to see this great avant-garde trumpeter, Sean Leclaude, and she loved it. Most people would be tortured by that guy ’cos they can’t understand what he’s doing. They’d want him to play "Misty" or something God-awful like that. But Jane really liked it. She could respond to the music. The only trouble with her is that she’s too practical sometimes. We’d argue ’cos I’d have crazy plans like moving to France to hang out in little French bars and drink absinthe with those European cats, and she’d blow them out. She’d start asking how I was going to pay for it, where I was going to work and all that. "You don’t speak a word of French", she’d say. It would depress the hell out of me and my dreams would be ruined. That’s why we broke up. That and the fact that we both left for different schools. It’s good that we broke up, though. I mean, I miss her a lot - especially at times like these. Especially after the woman in the lobby and Lorraine; but if I had stayed with her I would never have decided to leave school. She would have talked me out of it. Too many wonderful dreams have been ruined by practical thinking, level-headed people talking people out of things.

        But I did miss old Jane. She used to write down all these thoughts she had in a book. It wasn’t really a diary, there were no dates or anything, it was more just a catalogue of thoughts. She called it "Daily Considerations". That always made me laugh. She really was considerate. She let me read it once in a while. She would write things like "Why can’t I say what I want to people who don’t matter?" and "Do people see what I think they see?" It was pretty philosophical, but pretty kitschy. I guess it was philosophy as authored by a sixteen year old girl. I found it cute, though. I often wondered what she did with it. If she ever read it over again or not.

        Most Sundays we used to go to the park and feed the ducks in the duck pond. We’d sit on the benches and talk about all kinds of stuff, just the two of us. It was nice. She’d always wear these white socks and a skirt. Damn, she looked good. We’d talk and then she’d get all excited and say things like "one day we could have a big house on Mission Street, with one of those circular driveways and a blue fir tree in the middle." She’d get really excited about a boring, typical future. A blue fir tree! I wouldn’t ever think of something like that, but it showed you how practical and considerate she was and how different I was. I mean, I didn’t even know what I was going to do this evening and she had already picked out the kind of tree that would be in her driveway!

        She’s at Stanford now, old Jane. I’m not surprised, what with the way she applied herself at school. I guess in the end you could say we are opposites. I never apply myself. At least that’s what everyone says. Maybe it really is true that opposites attract; although they never seem to attract for all that long, or at least stay attracted for any significant amount of time. It’s all exciting to meet someone totally different to you and live that life that you’ve been missing but after a while the differences don’t complement you anymore, they just begin to wear on you and the whole situation becomes unmanageable. I still miss old Jane, though. I’d love to give her a call.

         I made my way into the back room of The Silver Dollar, winding down an old wooden staircase that creaked like the bones in old Stitchy’s ageing body. You could hear the band as soon as you came into the room. They were pretty tight, as usual; not playing anything all that interesting, but what they played they played well. It was pretty crowded in the back room but I still managed to get a table. A lot of people were dancing and there was a thick haze of smoke over hanging in the air, so you couldn’t see the band all that well from the tables. It was ok, though, because I didn’t feel like standing there alone. People might have thought I was some kind of madman standing there perusing the crowd. At least at a table I looked like I was waiting for someone.

        As I looked around I noticed that there weren’t too many young people in the place. Stitchy always had a great band, but the music they played appealed to an older, jewelry flashing type of crowd. The people on the dancefloor were pretty good dancers, however. That’s one thing about old people - a lot of them learned how to dance properly. I mean, they don’t move all that well on account of their being so old, but they know which dances are for which songs and they usually get the steps right. Watching those old people dance and hearing the band made me want to dance, too. I started looking around the room to see if there were any decent prospects.

        Most of the people sitting at the tables were pretty old, older even that those dancing. Some even had grey hair. There was this one old granny sitting at a big, round table clapping her hands along to the music. She looked so old I thought she might die any minute. It was pretty sad. I wondered why someone like that would even bother going out. I thought she’d be better off at home with her knitting or something. She sure didn’t look comfortable clapping along to old Stitchy’s band. I was just glad that she wasn’t able to dance.

        As I was scanning the room a waiter came up to me and asked me if I wanted to see the menu or just order a drink. I was still pretty stuffed from the sandwiches I had at Clancey’s, so I decided to just have a drink. I ordered a brandy alexander, that’s brandy and cream, ’cos I was feeling a bit swanky. The crazy thing was the guy didn’t ask me for ID or give me a hard time or anything. When a place is hopping like The Silver Dollar was that night, sometimes those guys are too busy to bother asking you for ID or giving you a hard time. They’ve got too many customers waiting on their drinks. If you wanna drink and you’re underage, you should go to a place that’s really hopping.

        The waiter came back with my drink so I lit a cigarette, sat back and got comfortable. I kept scanning the crowd looking for a dance partner, but I was out of luck. It seemed to be a real couple’s night tonight. That’s the other problem with an older crowd - everyone is a damn couple. I resolved myself to just sipping on my sweet, milky drink and enjoying a smooth cigarette. I was pretty content. And then she came in. A woman in a silver full-length dress that made her look like a God-damn mermaid or something. I spotted her as soon as she walked through the door. Short blonde hair, a killer figure. She looked like a movie star or something, one of those old movie stars from the forties who always used to make those great entries; like Marlene Dietrich or Lauren Bacall. I was sure some big hunk of a guy in a tuxedo would follow her in with her coat over his arm, but it didn’t happen. She appeared to be alone. I wanted to jump up out of my contentment and talk to her immediately, but it seemed inconceivable that a woman like that would be unaccompanied. I decided to wait and see who would meet her.

        To my surprise, it wasn’t an equally glamorous man that met the transfixing woman. Her partner was a rather plain-looking brunette in her thirties with a crooked smile. They greeted each other and sat down at one of the last empty tables. There seemed to be no male acquaintance in sight, so I started giving the glamorous one a bit of a look. I wanted to get her attention and see her reaction. I kind of just gave her this cool, knowing look. Real casual-like ’cos I didn’t want to scare her off. You have to stay cool with women like that or your desperation scares them off. Women like that are sick of desperate guys. They are practically drowning in them.

        When I finally caught her eye she did something kinda girly. I didn’t expect a woman like that to react in that way. What she did was, she kind of smiled and then looked down all shy and embarrassed. I expected her not to even register my look, but this was something else. When she looked back up I figured I had a chance. It might have been naive or perhaps the little bit of alcohol kicking in, but I suddenly felt really confident.

        I got up, strolled over and said, "I’m alone here tonight and would love to do a little dancing. Would you care to oblige?" I thought that was polite as hell - ’oblige’, I said. I wasn’t even exactly sure what the word meant but it sounded good and I was pretty sure I had heard it used in that context before. You should have seen the face on the brunette, though. She god-damn nearly rolled her eyes. I guess she got pretty used to guys giving her friend a lot of attention. I bet she got pretty sick of it after a while. I can’t blame her. I think I’d get pretty sick of it, too, after a while.

        The blonde didn’t say anything, but got this real big smile on her face. "Just one dance", I said. "If you’d be so obliged." There it was again.

        Finally she got up without saying anything and I gave her my hand. She was looking back at the brunette the whole time I lead her out to the floor with this really strange look. I couldn’t really place it. It was just a little weird, like she wanted to apologize or something. I guess she gets a little embarrassed for her friend, too - ’cos she gets so much attention and her friend probably doesn’t. It was a kind of ’I can’t help it’ look.

        The band kicked into a nice, tasty number and we started dancing. She was pretty good. Not great but pretty decent. Although I wasn’t concentrating too much on the dancing - I was more into the girl herself. She had a fantastic body that felt so tight and supple under my hands and she smelled great. I got a charge just being next to her with her warmth and hair brushing up against me.

        "Do you like the band? “ I asked.

        "I dunno, I guess." She said. She was kind of nervously glancing at the brunette as we circled the floor.

        "The music, do you like it?"

        "I don’t know. Who is it?"

        "The music or the band?" I didn’t know if she was asking who the band was or who the composer of the song was. It was a Louis Prima, by the way.

        "Aren’t they the same?" She said with a puzzled look. Man, she was gorgeous but didn’t know too much about music.

        "The band’s the house band, The Prowling Cats. They’re playing a Louis Prima piece."

        "Oh, the Jump, Jive and Wail guy?"

        "Well, yeah that’s one of his." Everybody knew that song. I hated songs that everybody knew. The band was playing well and I was enjoying myself in spite of the conversation. The alto sax player took a solo and was really blowing some cool stuff. It was pretty bop. Pretty out there for a house band. It wasn’t free-jazz or anything like that, but about as far out as a house band soloist could get without clearing out the place. He probably got in trouble with afterwards ’cos you could see he was throwing some of the old dancers off. "That sax player can really blow", I said. It was a really great solo.

        "My uncle plays the clarinet." She said. "Nobody else in my family is musical, though."

        "That’s too bad." I said matter of factedly. There was a bit of an awkward silence after I said that, so I tried to keep the conversation going. "So is that your sister or something?" I asked inquiring about the brunette.

        "Erm, not exactly", she strung out the word ’exactly’ real long. I noticed she had this strange look on her face again. It seemed like she might be a little embarrassed.

        "You’re not related?"

        "No."

        "So, you’re just friends?"

        "Yeah, something like that..."The music ended as she trailed off and Stitchey announced the band were taking a little break. I followed her back to the table. I wasn’t invited but I figured I’d impose. I thought I was obliged to do so. I had nothing to lose.

        "So, where are you from?" I asked, pulling up a seat. The brunette had the God-damn eye-rolling look again. I could tell she didn’t like me too much.

        "Los Angeles." Said my dance partner. Shit, I bet she was from Hollywood.

        "You’re a good dancer", I told her, "That was real nice".

        "Thanks."

        Suddenly I wasn’t sure if I had already said that or not.

        "Would you both like a drink? I’m gonna have another. Better order now or we might die of thirst in this place." I don’t know why I said that. The service at the bar was pretty good. I guess I was trying to be funny. It’s annoying how you always come up with these clichéd jokes whenever you’re trying to be funny in front of beautiful women,

        "No, thank you. I don’t drink." She said. "Are you old enough?" That made me a little angry. First of all, why do you come to a place like this if you don’t drink? Apart from dancing that’s pretty much all there is to do at The Silver Dollar. I mean the place is practically a speakeasy. And second of all I hate it when people who don’t drink always have to tell you they don’t drink. It’s not enough just to refuse a drink. It’s like they are always waiting to be asked for a drink just so they can refuse it and tell the person they don’t drink. They probably don’t drink solely for the pleasure of telling people they don’t drink when they are offered drinks. And thirdly, I hate it when people question my age. If there’s one thing I hate it is when people question my age. It’s worse than when people who don’t drink have to go and freakin’ tell you they don’t drink.

        "I’m old enough to be in here", I said. I really didn’t want to get into a discussion about my age.

        "They can shut places like this down for serving children." The brunette impolitely chimed in. She gave me this accusing glare when she said the word ’children’. I decided that I didn’t like her either. There, it was mutual. I flagged the waiter down and ordered another brandy alexander.

        "So, what’s your name?" I asked the blonde. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t asked it yet.

        "Diane, and this here is Jane." She motioned with a supple hand towards the brunette, who gave me a disapproving sneer.

        "My name’s Richard", I said, "most people call me Ritchie." I regretted saying that immediately after I said it. I was trying to portray an air or maturity and Ritchie just sounded so juvenile.

        "So, why are you girls up here in San Francisco?" I asked. I was trying to keep some sort of conversation going but with the brunette there, leering at me the whole time, it was difficult. She kept eyeing me with contempt as I spoke.

        "I’m doing a photo-shoot over at the Winter Gardens." So she was a model. I figured she was some type of celebrity or actress or something. She was far too beautiful and glamorous to be a normal person.

        "Do you do films, as well?" I asked. I wanted to know if she had been in any movies. Perhaps I could go and see one and watch the girl I had danced with.

        "Well, no. I’m exclusively a still photographer, but directing films is the dream one anyone who wields a camera." I didn’t understand what she was saying at first. She was a photographer. Behind the camera. I couldn’t believe it.

        "You take pictures?" I asked.

        "Well, that’s what photographers do, isn’t it?" The brunette piped in again with another of her acrid interjections. The blonde let out a little chuckle at the statement. Wow, a photographer. I wouldn’t have guessed that she was a photographer.

        "I wouldn’t have guessed that you were a photographer." I said.

        "Why not? You think that girls can’t do that kind of a job?"

        "Jane!" The blonde cooled the brunette’s accusing remark.

        "No, of course not." I replied. „I mean, of course I didn’t think that. I just thought you looked, well, a bit too glamorous for something like that. Honestly, I thought you’d be at home in front of the camera." It was flattering but it was the truth.

        "So, an attractive women most likely earns her way in society by being the object of men’s desires rather than contributing something artistic herself, then?" Jane was in a confrontational mood it seemed.

        "No, I didn’t say that."

        "But you thought it."

        "No, I didn’t!" I was getting defensive.

        "Your presumptions betray your thoughts Ritchie." The brunette pronounced my name ’reechee’.

        "I wasn’t being presumptuous at all!" I shot back.

        "As soon as you see a beautiful women in a club, you presume", she said the words slowly and drew it out, "that she makes a living lying in front of a camera, showing off her body so that men can gawk at her and buy whatever is strewn around or dangling off of her or whatever." I was speechless. I didn’t know what to say or why, all of a sudden, Jane had decided to lay into me. Wow, this girl was really jealous of her better looking friend who wasn’t even a model. All of a sudden I wished I hadn’t sat down at the table after all. I wanted to take my brandy alexander and sit down in a dark corner somewhere.

        "I think the boy was just trying to be polite, Janey." Diane finally said. It made me embarrassed as hell that she referred to me as ’the boy’ though. I really felt like a kid all of a sudden.

        The rest of the time at the table we spent mostly in awkward silence. Diane and I exchanged pleasant Smalltalk - where I went to school, how she got into photography etc. More to diffuse the tension it seemed than anything else. All the while Jane looked on with a disapproving stare. It was quite uncomfortable, really. I was kind of glad when Diane finally said that they had to go and got up from the table. It was sad to see such a beautiful dance partner leave, but I couldn’t get away from Jane quick enough. That woman looked like she might devour me. The worst part was, I was no match for her intellectually or physically. She really made me feel like a kid.

        After they left I went back to my table and had a few more brandy alexanders. The band came back on so I just kind of sat there checking them out. It was a shame they had to stick with that poppy repertoire because they could really play. I’d like to hear them playing what they would like to play if they had the chance to play something that they like to play. It’s a shame people want to hear such crap all the time. Boy, those old people were really eating it up, though.

        I paid for my drinks and decided to leave and see what was going on somewhere else. It was around ten o’clock when I got back out onto the street. It was getting damper and colder and the heavy night air seemed to envelope everything in a dark mist. Huddled shapes shambled down the sidewalk, their shoulders hunched against the cold. It seemed that nobody wanted to be outside this evening.

        For some reason, as I was walking down the damp sidewalk, I got Jane Althorpe in my head again. Maybe it was the Jane from The Silver Dollar or maybe it was because I was a bit depressed at my luck with women; but I really couldn’t stop thinking about her. I remembered the first time we got together, it was on account of my best-friend’s cousin. She was friends with old Jane and brought her over one night when we were having a BBQ. Tommy’s parent’s, that was my best friend at the time, Tommy; well his parents were out and I had this bottle of red wine that I was drinking. Jane came out and sat next to me and asked if she could have a sip of wine and then we just started talking. We talked all night lying on the grass. It took ages before we kissed. I remember our heads being close together and I felt like she really wanted to kiss me. There was this strange magnetic force bringing our faces closer together but an apprehension that kept us ultimately apart. I was pretty nervous the whole time but when it happened it happened quite naturally. It was nice. I remember it being like jumping over a hurdle. Once we got that first kiss out of the way, it happened all the time. That first kiss was like a licence to be intimate. I felt so relaxed around her after that. In the next few months we got to know each other really well. I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody that well before. It’s strange when you get to know somebody that well - almost a bit frightening. It’s nice, though, knowing somebody that well. I hope I can get to know somebody that well again. It takes a lot of work, though, to get to know somebody that well and I’m a pretty lazy person really.

        The street was so desolate once you got a bit further away from The Silver Dollar. I barely saw anybody. Once in a while I’d see a couple racing to hail a cab or disappear into a club somewhere. San Francisco can be really bitter at night when it’s so dark and wet. It cuts into you and chills you to the bone. It makes you feel real lonely. I started to wish I hadn’t left school and was lying in my warm bed with all the other students snoring around me. Eventually, though, I got further downtown and the lights began to sparkle again. There were a few more people around and I started to feel a bit less lonely. I started to slowly get old Jane out of my head, too. I didn’t really want to get her off my mind but in a way I did. It’s nice to think about stuff like that, stuff in your past, but it kind of hurts too. You can only do it for a little while and then it starts to depress the hell out of you. If you keep thinking about it you get obsessive and that can ruin your night pretty quickly.

        "Hey, buddy, you got a cigarette?" A grey shape on the corner called over to me. I went a little closer to see who it was and saw a strange looking little guy in a flat cap and grey trench coat. He looked like a dock-worker or something.

        "I’ll be your best friend for life if you can spare me a cigarette." The guy said as I came closer. He had a scar over his right eye and a bit of a beard that made him look tough. His voice had an accent to it. Irish or something. I couldn’t really tell, though, because I’m lousy at accents. I can tell when someone has one, but I never know where they are from.

        "Here you go." I said as I handed him a smoke. He took it and I struck a match to light a smoke for myself and the stranger. The match glowed like a dying ember in the damp, black air.

        The guy and I kind of struck up a conversation as we stood there smoking on that cold, black corner. His name was Patrick, "call me Paddy", he said. Paddy was a labourer that loaded the boats that went across the Pacific with all kinds of goods. It sounded like a pretty boring job. I get really sad when I hear about people who have to work pointless jobs. It’s so unnatural for a human being to have to do something like that, when you have all this life inside you. To just toil away every day at something completely pointless when there’s a whole entire unknown World out there. Perhaps the thought that I might be trapped like that one day scared me; the thought that fate might catch up and swallow me. Hopefully, I thought, I can keep running.

        "Hey Paddy", I said. "D’you think identical cousins can exist?"

        "What?"

        "Identical cousins. You know, like twins but cousins rather than being brother or sister."

        "But twins are born at the same time."

        "Well, ok, not like twins but identical like they look exactly the same."

        "Yeah, I know what identical means."

        "Do you think it can happen?"

        Paddy blew a cloud of smoke that immediately disappeared into the cold, dark air like an evanescent phantom, then looked up from the graying atmosphere and fixed me with a stare that made me feel like I was an idiot or something. He was a pretty gruff, intense guy. I liked him though, he was ok in a sinister sort of way.

        "Of course it can’t happen." He said, "That’s totally impossible."

        "Why not?"

        "’’Cos identical twins come from the same egg that splits in the woman’s womb. It’d be pretty amazing if the egg split and migrated to another woman entirely." I was amazed at his knowledge. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who would know that sort of thing.

        I felt kind of stupid after he explained everything in such sensible terms. I felt kind of depressed, too. It was as if his superior knowledge to mine was evidence of my eventual condemnation to a job loading boats somewhere - or worse, probably. I didn’t really feel like talking anymore, but Paddy pressed on. "Of course, if you somehow removed one of the eggs and put it in another woman then they’d be twins from different mothers, but technically they’d still be conceived by the same parents so they’d still be siblings, not cousins."        

        "But maybe if two cousins looked really alike. So alike you couldn’t really tell them apart-"

        "Couldn’t happen." Paddy immediately dismissed me.

        "Well, if they were different but so close you couldn’t tell. I mean I have a friend who looks exactly like Cary Grant."

        "It still couldn’t happen."

        "No, but he really looks like Cary Grant. Girls always come up to him..."

        "Look, I don’t care about your friend or whatever, it’s a stupid idea." Paddy was getting a bit irritated. "Where the hell did you come up with the idea anyway?"

        I didn’t want to answer him. I was feeling a bit stupid after having brought it up. Finally I said "all I know is people can look pretty damn similar who aren’t related, so people who are related-", Paddy flicked his cigarette away.

        "It’s a dumb thought, kid", he said to me, obviously resolved to my obstinacy, "why can’t you just let it go?"

        "I’m not the one pressing it."

        "You brought it up! It’s your dumb question!" He was getting a bit worked up. I was afraid he was going to have a heart attack or something as his face started to get redder. "Asking me dumb questions then saying you aren’t pressing it."

        "I was happy to let it go after the first explanation."

        "Then what was all that Clark Gable crap? Clark Gable for Chrissakes!" He was throwing his hands in the air. And it was Carey Grant, not Clark Gable. I hate it when people don’t listen properly.

        "Don’t worry about it", I said. I really didn’t want him to worry about it. It was stupid to get worked up over. I didn’t even mention the Clark Gable thing ’cos I didn’t want to upset him anymore. I was happy to let the Clark Gable thing go, although I had said Cary Grant. I really was. I mean, I wasn’t happy that he didn’t realize I had said Carey Grant and not Clark Gable but I was happy to just let it go. That I was happy about - not the Clark Gable thing in itself. But he wasn’t happy at all about the whole Clark Gable / Carey Grant thing. He was such an anxious guy I was expecting him to blow up at any minute. "What are you doing tonight, Paddy?" I asked. I was trying to get off of the subject and calm him down a bit. I still did kinda like the guy, too; despite all his anxiety. He had a good spirit.

        "I gotta go home to the wife, buddy. She’d kill me if I came home after midnight."

        "Well, it’s only ten." I said. Paddy shrugged his shoulders in that dismissing way that gruff, old guys do when they don’t want to be bothered. I could tell he wanted to get home. "Ok, it’s been a pleasure Paddy. Thanks for the enlightening conversation."

        "Don’t mention it. Clark Gable for Christ’s sake!"

        "Cary Grant. He looks just like him. If I had a picture..." Paddy was already dashing across the street. His ghostly silhouette disappeared into the damp, cold air and he was suddenly gone before I could even finish my thought. Goddamn Clark Gable.

        I was now pretty close to a bar called the Mercury Lounge where some pretty decent musicians used to play and poets sometimes rapped. I decided to go in and check it out but almost regretted it immediately. The place was totally packed. You could barely get down the corridor that lead to the back room. There were couples everywhere with their arms around each other, talking loudly in each other’s ears. They were probably making each other deaf. It’s really easy to damage your hearing in an atmosphere like that. Easier than most people think. All you have to do is yell loudly into someone’s ear canal and they will go deaf. It happens all the time in loud clubs full of couples. There must be couples all over the place that barely understand each other anymore because they are deaf from yelling in each other’s ears at a packed, loud club.

        I managed to make my way through the packed crowd and across the front room. There was a guy on the stage in the back rapping about something profound. He had on a Goddamn tweed suit and a panama hat. Looked like a real asshole. The people in front were whooping it up and getting really into it - like they even knew what he was talking about. The guy had a big damn notepad in his hand that he was reading from. You could see how much he was into himself. I don’t know what his poem was about but I couldn’t get into it either way. He was making all these faces and pausing all the way through. It was a real pain in the ass. Man, you could just see how much he loved himself. The crowd was going wild, though. They really seemed to love him, too. I just didn`t get it. I didn`t get the crowd more than anything. They were lapping it up because they thought it was intellectual, they thought it made them intelligent and bohemian to get it. They had probably been told by some trendy magazine that this guy was great. Otherwise, they wouldn`t have cared. That`s the way it always works - anytime someone is whooping up a stupid, clueless crowd of couples clinging to each other like they were gonna get lost otherwise, all the time screaming in each other`s ears and making themselves deaf, it`s because some trendy magazine or critic said they were great. They probably had no better idea than I what it was all about.

        I always hate how those guys have to show off. Why can`t you just be honest and try and get your point across without all the showy stuff. I mean, if you have to shout and make faces to do that, then ok. But you can really tell when someone’s being superfluous in their actions, and this guy sure as hell was. I didn’t buy any of it. The crowd sure did, though. You should have heard them clapping their stupid hands off when he was done. It made me really depressed. I mean, when people react like that to a show-offy guy, no wonder the whole world is just a pretentious facade. It’s the fault of the audience, really.

        After the guy got off of stage I made my way over to the front, hoping things would get better. I kept stepping on people’s feet and tripping over the backs of chairs. Everyone was getting angry like it was my damn fault; just because the place was packed with idiots. I finally ordered a scotch and water and again wasn’t bothered at all. I tell you, anyone could get served in a packed place. Take a quiet place and they ask you for a goddamn passport and blood sample, but as soon as it fills up a twelve year old could get a single malt. That’s the priorities of the drinking establishment for you.

        There was a couple right next to me and, in the lull between performers, I could hear them talking. He was a really boring financial type, an accountant or something. He kept telling the girl about accounts he audited or something, and how much money moved around in these companies he worked for. God he was boring. The girl kept saying "uh-huh" and "really?" like she was interested, but you could tell she was practically dying of boredom. She was pretty good-looking, too. I kind of wanted to go over and rescue her from the guy, but she was probably as boring as him once you got to know her. That’s the thing with bores - they tend to congregate together, you can’t really rescue a pretty girl from a bore because the very fact that she’s with him probably makes her boring despite her looks. She’d probably drain the life out of you in about two minutes. Two minutes being the amount of time it would take before just looking at her isn’t interesting anymore. I tell you, sometimes there is no connection between attractiveness and personality.

        I turned away from the bores before they sucked the soul right from my body and caught the sight of a real snobbish-looking college type holding court over his buddies. Man, he looked like an asshole. You know those people you can just pick out by their smug expression and stupid face as assholes? This guy was definitely one of those. He kept yelling something to his drunken buddies and then bursting out laughing like he had just said the God-damn funniest thing in the world. He reminded me of Tommy Weatherly. It was probably Tommy’s older brother or something like that. I really wouldn’t be surprised. He kept making stupid toasts, too. Holding up his glass and yelling out something imbecilic so his friends could all guzzle their beers in approval. He was the exact caricature of the kind of guy I hate so much.

        I was starting to feel uncomfortable just standing there by myself surrounded by idiots. Luckily, I could distract myself by drinking and smoking. I tell you, if a guy had to stand in a club like that without a drink or a smoke, he’d go insane. No wonder everyone gets so sloshed and smokes so much, it’s the only way they can tolerate each other.

        All of a sudden I heard an enthusiastic voice booming out from behind me, "Ritchie! What the hell are you doing here?" It was Robert Watson, a guy from my High school class. A bit of a crazy nut back then. I wondered if he had changed. He looked like he hadn’t.

        "Hi Robby", I said. He had some broad with him who looked disinterested in everything.

        "School out already?" He asked. Robby didn’t continue after High school. I guess he got a job or something. "How’s Jane? You talk to her?" Oh yes, Robby always had a thing for Jane.

        "I dunno, I don’t talk to her much anymore. She’s at Stanford."

        "Shit! Stanford - I knew that girl was smart."

        "Yeah, I guess she always applied herself." I kind of wished he hadn’t bumped into me. I didn’t feel like talking about Jane. You could tell it was a big thing to him, though. He couldn’t really comprehend going to Stanford. Anybody who did was a God-damn genius in Robert’s eyes.

        "She’s a God-damn genius in my eyes, Ritchie. Mark my words, she’ll cure cancer or become president or develop a vaccine for Polio one day! Mark my words." I marked his words, even though I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant.

        "They already have a vaccine for Polio, Robbie."

        "Well, then she’ll make a better one."

        "Who’s your friend?" I nodded at his companion. I wanted to change the subject. I had had enough of thinking about Jane for one evening. He introduced me with the usual "I’m sorry, I forgot" line which didn’t seem to alleviate the girl’s attitude problem. Her name turned out to be Daisy or something. One of those names that you never actually believe any parents ever call their children and that you never remember. She was one of those people who is perpetually bored-looking no matter what is going on around them. You could tell that she was trying to portray the image that she desperately wanted to be somewhere else. The thing was that she probably looked like that everywhere she went. The place she’d rather be probably didn’t exist. It was just a look. She carried that look everywhere, betraying her emotions. I actually began to wonder if she had any. What could she be thinking at that moment? I kind of got the impression that Robert didn’t really like her all that much. I definitely didn’t like her all that much. It was hard to imagine anybody really liking her all that much. Even her stupid parents who gave her that ridiculous name that nobody ever really gives their kids and can remember. I bet she went through her whole life not being liked very much and never remembered but she never knew it because people just acted polite. They’d say "hello" and "nice to meet you" then as soon as she’d left they’d tell their friends about how they didn’t like that girl much and then ask each other what her name was again. It was a really horrible thought when you think about it. I guess she has no one to blame but herself, though.

        "You here with a girl?" Robert asked me. My drink was empty now and I was half ignoring him, trying to get the attention of a waiter. "Ritchie never had much luck with women", he was saying to Dora or Daisy or whatever her name was.

        "I had more luck with Jane than you", I thought. I knew he was always jealous of me for that.

        "Why don’t you join us for a drink? “He said. "It looks as though you need a re-fill". I wasn’t too thrilled at the idea of spending the night with Robert and the charismatic Dinah.

        "Well, actually, I was just about to leave." I wasn’t, of course. "I’ve already seen the guy I came here to see." I flashed back to the obnoxious poet. I almost winced at the line.

        "Well, ok. Tell Jane I say hello if you talk to her." Then he and Daisy disappeared back into the crowd. To tell the truth, I was pretty glad to see him and Daisy leave. Especially Daisy. Man, she was so depressing. I couldn’t even bring myself to say ’nice to meet you’ or something like that ’cos it would have been such a lie. It really wasn’t at all nice to meet her.

        I was kind of glad I had told them I was leaving. I didn’t really want to stay anyway. The place was kind of giving me a pain in the neck. I hate it when places give you a pain in the neck but you stay anyway. I think you just do it in the hope that things will get better. It barely ever does. If you don’t like a place after a few minutes you should just leave. It barely ever gets better. It’s just the same people being the same. It’s a wonder why anybody ever believes that things will get better. Logic says it won’t. I was glad old Robert had made my mind up to leave.

        I got outside and decided to walk all the way down to Union square. I had had my fill of being in clubs and wanted to go somewhere else. The funny thing was, I didn’t really want to go to Union square, but I had no other idea of where to go. Sometimes you do things not because you want to but because you don’t want to do anything else. It’s a process of elimination whereby you eliminate everything except one thing and even that could be eliminated really.

        It was pretty damp and cold out and I was beginning to wish I had my cream woollen turtleneck on. That thing really kept the cold and damp out. I guess on account of it being woollen. It made me believe that sheep must be the cosiest animals on the planet. They sure look like the cosiest animals on the planet, bundled up in all that fluffy wool; that is, when they haven’t been sheared by some cruel bastard who wants to make money selling cream woollen turtlenecks.

        After I stopped thinking about the sheep and their cosey coats, I began to think again about where my horn could be. And my case. The guys who stole it were probably wondering where they could get rid of it easiest. I started to think about all the pawn shops downtown. There were thousands. That would be the logical place to start but the trouble was, it was such a daunting task to check all those places that I just became despondent. I’m a very lazy person, really. I mean, I could easily mount a search of all the second hand shops tomorrow and it might even help, but I’d never do it because of the effort involved. I would try to change my ways but the problem is that changing takes so much effort that if the thing you are trying to change from is being a lazy person it, obviously, never happens. It would be much easier the other way around. Motivated people are so motivated they would have no trouble changing into lazy people. Changing your ways is actually quite easy but it’s changing for good that is the difficult part. I mean, I could always turn over a new leaf for a couple of days but it would never last. It’s so hard to make anything last. I’ve come to the conclusion that you just have to live with the way you are and for me that means living as a lazy bum.

        That’s what I was thinking about walking down the street - what a lazy bum I was. It’s not very encouraging to realize how lazy you are when you’re as lazy as me. Although in ways I’m not really all that lazy. It depends what I’m doing, I suppose. Sometimes it’s just the fact that I don’t give a damn about what I’m supposed to be doing. Like I couldn’t give a damn about searching those pawn shops. Perhaps because, somehow, I knew it would come to nothing. If I know something is going to come to nothing, then I usually don’t want to do it. It just seems pointless. The problem is sometimes you never know and then you do something that you think is gonna come to nothing and it comes to something. That’s my problem - I don’t do enough stuff. At least not enough stuff that I think is gonna come to nothing and ends up coming to something.

        The more I thought about how lazy I was, the more depressed I got. I started thinking about school and how I might have done all those pointless exercises they gave us if I wasn’t so averse to doing stuff that I thought was pointless. Perhaps after a while I’d like it. Perhaps it would actually have a point somewhere down the line. Maybe you just had to get used to that sort of thing. It still depressed the hell out of me, though. In fact, thinking you had to get used to something like that, that life was all a series of pointless events, was the most depressing thought I’d had all week. Not the least because it seemed to be true of most people I know.

        By the time I had finished thinking about all that stuff, I had walked about fifty God-damned miles in the cold without my cream woollen turtleneck. When I looked up I noticed that I was at the corner of my hotel. It was pretty deserted at this time of night - not the best neighbourhood to be in after dark. Suddenly, I was gripped with the urge to get back to my room and call it a day. I quickened my pace across the street and shoved my hands into my jacket pockets, hoping to look inconspicuous. I had almost completely inconspicuously made my way into the hotel, when I was startled by a face emerging from the darkness of an alleyway running alongside the grey block that was my hotel.

        "Hey Mac! Interested in a good time? “A voice hissed.

        "What are you talking about?" I said. I didn’t know what he was talking about.

        "Whatever floats your boat. You wanna have a good time out here don’t you?"

        "No, thanks." I said. The thought of the phone call with Lorraine and the encounter with the icy woman in the very lobby I was about to enter flashed into my mind.

        "C’mon, you don’t want to call it a night already do ya?" I did want to call it a night already. In fact, I already had called it a night just a few seconds ago across the street. "C’mon, live a little will ya?" Suddenly his words touched a nerve. Everything I had been thinking about pointed towards living a little more. This was my opportunity. I didn’t want to remain on the train of pointless events. I didn’t want to call it a night just yet.

        "Okay", I said. "Whaddya got in mind?"

        "I’ve got a girl’ll blow your mind. Do things you didn’t think were possible. Only ten bucks an hour, fifty for the whole night."

        "No", I said, "no girls." I really wasn’t in the mood after my experiences of the night; and, besides, I couldn’t get the face of Jane out of my head."

        "Alright, alright then... something more relaxing and less exciting. Something for a loner like yourself? To help you bliss out."

        "I dunno. What are you talking about?"

        "Shit, really? What the hell is a kid like you doing out here, then?"

        "Just trying to live a little. Break out of my boring life."

         "You’ll love what I’ve got, then." I realized now what he was talking about. I was a little embarrassed at myself as to how obvious it was and I was so ignorant. The truth in that moment was that I was pretty nervous at the idea of taking drugs but being depressed as I was, I just wanted to do something reckless for the sake of it. Perhaps it would change something. Perhaps not. Sometimes when you think about things as much as I had been you end up not thinking properly anymore.

        "Okay, how much?" I asked.

        "How much you want?"

        "Err... I dunno. How much do I need?"

        "You got ten bucks? I’ll get you a dime-bag."

        "Yeah, here," I handed him a ten dollar bill.

        "Okay, Mac, you wait here and I’ll be back in five minutes." I wasn’t too thrilled about standing around on the corner that long at this time of night.

        "Can’t I meet you inside?" I said, nodding towards the entrance of the hotel.

        "You staying in this dump?" The guy asked with a disapproving scowl.

        "Yeah."

        "Okay, what room number?"

        "What?"

        "What’s your room number? I’ll give you room service." I rummaged about in my pocket for my key and pulled out a green plastic thing with the hotel name on it.

        "Two Twenty Two." I said. Suddenly I felt sorry that I’d given this guy my room number.

        "Okay, then, you go on up. I’ll meet you in ten minutes."

        "I thought you said five." I answered.

        "I gotta climb the stairs." He said with a sarcastic tone. Then I went inside and up to my room. In my room the realization of what I was about to do kind of dawned on me. I got really nervous and began to pace up and down, half hoping the guy wouldn’t come back. Perhaps he’d forget, or decide it was all too much effort or something like that. I went into the bathroom and ran some water over my face. I was pretty excited. The truth was, I’d never done drugs before at all. I’d seen tons of reefer at gigs and around nightclubs but I’d never partaken myself. The time was just never right. But here I was now, alone and as green as could be and about to sample something that a complete stranger was going to deliver to my hotel room. I’d really no idea what it was supposed to be like - I knew a lot of the professional cats used the stuff but I had no idea why. It must be good, I thought.

        After thinking about it for a while, I started to get really worried and ran all the bad things that could happen through my mind. That’s the problem when you start thinking about things too much, you always run the bad things through your mind sooner or later and then you start to worry about everything. What if I overdosed? Imagine my parents having to come and identify some twisted, purple remnant of their son found in a seedy downtown hotel. They wouldn’t believe it. You could imagine them going over everything in their heads, trying to figure out where it all went wrong. Or what if I somehow fried my brain and was doomed to roam the streets aimlessly like those lost souls that inhabit park benches and abandoned bus shelters? I had a vision of myself towing a cardboard box from place to place looking for a quiet alleyway or slow corner; myself lining up at a soup kitchen on Christmas Eve waiting for my share of the turkey broth being dished out by an unforgiving ladle. It was so horrible I just had to stop thinking about it.

        I crashed onto my bed and started staring up at the ceiling. I was pretty restless. I was trying to get the negative thoughts out of my head but I was so excited I couldn’t really focus on anything. I turned to my right and then to my left but I couldn’t seem to relax. I really wished there was someone else there with me to talk to or something. Sometimes being by yourself when you are all worked up and excited is the worst thing of all. It gives your brain free rein. Sometimes that’s not a good thing, free rein for the brain. Especially with me.

        I stared at the ceiling a while longer, then I turned my head to my right and started staring at the night table beside my bed. It was then that I remembered those Gideon’s people and all the Bibles they hide around the country. I figured reading was the next best thing to talking to get your mind off of something, so I pulled open the drawer of the night table and took out the little blue-bound book that said "New Testament" on the front. It was a pretty small book. You’d find it hard to believe that so many people get so worked up about such a small, little book.

        I opened it to the first page and started reading. The pages were really thin and papery, almost transparent-looking. The book seemed so frail in its construction; so light and weightless. It was as if a light breeze could do away with it. I remembered I tried to read the Bible once before, I think we had to in school, but I found the beginning of the book really tedious. That, of course, was the Old Testament ’cos that’s where the book really begins, in the beginning and all that. It was hard reading, though, that Old Testament - all those fathers and sons listed in a mind-boggling column down the page. I wondered how anybody remembered any of that stuff, especially with names like ’Rehoboam’ and ’Zerubbabel’. Forty-two generations. That’s going back a while. I used to wonder what my great-times-forty-two-grandfather would have done and where he would have lived. Although I guess I would have quite a few of them. In fact, I once calculated that I would have 240 of them. This was based on having 1 father, 2 grandfathers, 4 great-grandfathers, 8 great-great-grandfathers and so on. Somehow I couldn’t help but think that was more than the population of the world since humanity began. I am pretty sure 240 is a really big number, although I’m not the best at mathematics.

        So I began reading "The New Testament" from the Gideon people and I immediately found it was much better than that old book. I read all about the birth of Jesus, John the Baptist - that crazy cat from the desert. Then all about the things Jesus did like feeding the five thousand, curing lepers and casting demons into pigs. I kind of liked Jesus; he was a likeable person, really. He went on about God a bit too much but he seemed infinitely more decent than most of the people I run into these days. You’d sure as hell never see Jesus applauding some phoney poet that he didn’t really understand. I bet Jesus would never steal a guy’s horn, either.

          At the beginning there was a lot of references to the Old Testament that made me remember how boring that all was. That genealogy stuff again tracing Jesus all the way through King David to Abraham. You could really tell that old Matthew’s Gospel was trying to convince the Jews that Jesus was the promised Messiah that was supposed to be coming back to save everyone. He was pretty hot on that:

        “She shall bring forth a son and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins”. That was Matthew Chapter 1, Verse 21.

        “Love thy enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you”. That was some pretty darn good advice from Matthew Chapter 5, Verse 44 but I couldn’t help but think you might be a bit of a pushover if you did that. It did make me think about forgiving whoever stole my horn if I ever found them, though. There really was some decent advice in Matthew and he introduces the character of John the Baptist, that crazy old desert Hippie. I liked him a lot. I think I would have got along well with old Johnny B:

        “John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey.”

        What a far-out cat! I bet he would have got along well with Sun Ra. I could just imagine the two of them playing mini-moogs on Saturn. That would be something!

        However, as I moved through the Gospels I began to get a little bit bored with all the repetition. Mark was the shortest of all the books but had the big quotes that we all know: “suffer the little children” and the “camel through the eye of a needle” ones and all that. I kind of saw Mark as the pop star of the Gospel writers. Writing all those hits but not as much substance as the others.  Luke kind of confused me. I mean, who is this Theophilus guy he is writing to? And all that genealogy stuff in the beginning again, this time going all the way back to Adam. That’s probably even more than 240 people when you do the grandad math thing. Everyone seemed related to each other, too. I could never keep straight who was a cousin of whom and who’s sister was married to who’s brother. I needed a quick reference chart or something. They should provide a foldout family guide in the back of the book if you ask me.

        John was pretty heavy in the beginning with all that word stuff. I liked that his dad’s name was Zebedee. It reminded me of this crazy English show we had seen when on holiday in London called, “The Magic Roundabout” – Zebedee was a jack-in-the-box fire wizard with magical powers, that just appeared from wherever and everyone always asked for help. “Magic Roundabout” was far-out. I thought on account of Zebedee, John was gonna be a little bit more abstract but then it proved to be pretty much the same as the other three. By the time I got to Acts of the Apostles, I realized my purveyor of sin wasn’t coming back and I had lost my ten bucks. I guess it was pretty foolish to have trusted him in the first place, but in a way I kind of felt relieved. I was alone and relaxed again and rather enjoying my foray into the life of Jesus Christ and his Jesus crew.

        One of the things I found really confusing about the book I was now engrossed in was how a lot of the characters had names but were called by different names. Simon who is called Peter and stuff like that. I decided that, in the same vein, I was going to be known as Ritchie called Simon. That would be my apostolic name. From now on I would introduce myself as "Ritchie... who is called Simon."

        I skipped over a lot of the letters - I couldn’t figure out who they were from and to whom they were supposed to be and that kind of frustrated me. It was getting pretty late, anyway, and my eyes were beginning to get tired. I put the book aside for a bit, then got up to stretch and pace around the room a little. I really had been lying there for quite a while and my neck was getting stiff. I decided to have a quick cigarette and sat up on the bed smoking in the quiet before morning. I’ve always liked the stillness of the early morning hours. It’s the time when your mind is at its clearest. I started to decide that I’d make a habit of getting up or staying up so I could live more in the early hours.

        I got back to the book and started reading the last section, Revelations. This part was pretty heavy and a lot more poetic than the previous sections. I liked it even though it seemed a bit wacky. That old bastard John must have really had some crazy stuff going on. I mean, those six-winged angels and the seven-headed dragon; not to mention those crazy seals that cause pandemonium every time that that lamb opens one. War, famine, dragons, Satan - it was quite a crazy journey through the last pages; by the time I had finished reading, it was starting to get light outside. I decided to have one last cigarette and stood motionless at the window, watching the sky transition from deep purple to all kinds of progressively lighter blues. It was nice. I couldn’t remember the last time I watched the dawn. I didn’t really see the sun come up - you couldn’t in the city with all the buildings around; but just watching the sky turn from black to light blue was interesting enough. You could feel the stillness of the night melt away and sense the life coming back to the air. I stood there and watched the day creep up for ages. I stood there just watching. And then I went to bed.

        I couldn’t sleep much because it was the daytime. I can never really sleep well in the daytime no matter how tired I am. It’s something about the internal programming of my brain. It wakes up at specific times regardless of how little I’ve slept the night before. It ends up making you feel rotten. Boy, did I feel rotten. I could taste the last cigarette I had before bed and quickly regretted the decision. I’m always regretting having cigarettes after I’ve had them. I should just quit. It would be the intelligent thing to do.

        Anyway, so I got up around nine o’clock having probably slept about two or three hours in total. I was still tired but too anxious to get anymore sleep. I ended up just getting out of bed, putting my clothes on and smoking a cigarette. I hate smoking in the morning but sometimes I just can’t avoid it. I took a long look out of the window to the corner below to see if the guy who took my ten bucks was hanging around again, but of course he wasn’t. It was kind of stupid to think that he might still be there, but that didn’t stop me thinking it and looking down to the corner, though. Then I went down the stairs and out through the reception. There was a different receptionist sitting there than the one who was on the night before. He didn’t say good morning.

        I hailed a taxi outside of the hotel, even though I had no idea where I wanted to go. I was feeling pretty wasted but wanted to get out in the fresh air. It was Saturday morning and not much was going on, so I opted for the park. Not the park I got mugged in, though. I didn’t really want to go back there. I told the driver to take me to a different park, Lafayette Park, which is quite small but is closer to the downtown area. It was close to Pacific Avenue, a real swanky pedestrian area near a good breakfast place I used to go to with Jane sometimes and I figured I’d get some breakfast there, drink a bit of coffee and then head on over to the park to clear my head.        

        While I was in the taxi I started running things through my head that I thought I could do tonight. I didn’t want a repeat of the boring, pointless night I had just experienced. I’m really bad at planning things, though. Every time I think of something exciting to do I imagine it to death until the very idea of it becomes boring. I decided in the end that planning anything was boring and I’d just see what happened. Perhaps I’d have another pointless night but, then again, perhaps I’d have a wonderful, spontaneous adventure. It seemed the only way to go. I’d let fate decide my night for me.

        I got to the park, paid the cabby and then made my way across to the diner I had in mind. I could never remember the name of it, I just know what it looked like and that it was on the corner of Laguna and Sacramento, but looking across the street now I saw it was called the "Lakeview Diner". It was a strange name, seeing as there was no lake around to view; there was a pond in the park but that was hardly a lake and you could barely see it from the front window of the diner. I thought that perhaps there used to be a lake here and it got filled in for the park or some high-rise building or something. I mean, the street it was on was called “Laguna” which I think is Italian for lake or something like that and it was a pretty old diner, so I suppose it could have been around before any modern developments when lakes were more prevalent.

        I had quite a big breakfast in the diner. I hadn’t eaten anything since the sandwiches at Clancy’s, so I was pretty hungry. I really like breakfast. I think it’s my favourite meal of the day. It’s the most relaxing meal, that’s for sure. If you’ve got nothing to do, which I hadn’t, breakfast is a great time to just relax and think about the day. I think too many people rush breakfast. They’re always rushing off to work and don’t spend any time to think about the day that lies before them. There’s something about eggs that’s very cerebral. I heard that most scientific breakthroughs are made during breakfast. Really, I heard that. I think that’s why scientists are often called egg-heads.

        While I was eating my eggs, this guy came in and sat next to me at the counter. He was wearing a grey suit and carried a brown Gladstone that he tucked under the stool in front of his feet. The worst part about the whole thing was that the guy had this disgusting black hair that came out of his ears. I mean it was really disgusting. It wasn’t just a little bit of hair here and there, it was really sticking out like some sort of bush. It was so damn disgusting that you couldn’t even ignore it when you looked away. It was always there in the corner of your eye. It put me off my eggs - I mean, I might have had some sort of profound enlightening moment that could have changed mankind if it wasn’t for this guy and his disgusting ear hair sitting next to me and putting me off my eggs. If there’s one thing I hate it’s when someone with disgusting ear hair sits right next to you when you’re trying to have a nice, relaxing breakfast and eat your eggs while in the process possibly coming up with some ground-breaking discovery that changes the course of humanity and disturbs you. I just don’t get people like that; I mean, he must know about the hair. How could he not see it every time he looked in a mirror? It would be easy enough to trim, too. It’s not like it’s a God-damn chore to trim your ear hair once in a while. I tell you some people are so God-damn antisocial.

        You can really get to hate people that don’t trim their ear hair. I mean, you take someone with black ear hair sticking out of their ears when you’re trying to eat you eggs and have a nice, relaxing breakfast and after about 1 second you just can’t stand the sight of them. In reality he could be a really nice person. But probably not. Anyone who doesn’t trim their God-damn ear hair is most likely an asshole. There used to be this kid on my block called Rob Scarhill who used to have the worst personal habits. He never brushed his teeth and always wore the same stinking T-shirt for a hundred years before changing it. People like that don’t realize that personal habits aren’t personal, they’re social. They affect everybody you come into contact with. They should be called social habits, or at least "socio-personal habits". Stinky Scarhill was so unpleasant to be around. It was so uncomfortable to see him talk with those slimy teeth and that rotten breath. He was an asshole, too. That I can say definitively. He had no concern for how anyone else felt. You take a person like that, with a crummy hundred-year-old T-shirt and rotten breath and I guarantee you they almost always don’t care about how anyone else feels.

        Anyway, the guy sitting next to me started up a conversation with the waitress at the bar. You could tell she wasn’t too crazy about it. She was a pretty nice-looking young girl, probably around my age.  She had on one of those typical diner outfits; you see them all the time in these kinds of places. It’s pretty much a uniform. She was wearing a pink dress with a white apron and one of those hats that are supposed to be a hair cover or something. Anyway, the guy was going on about something and the girl was nodding and saying "uh huh" while she tried to make herself busy with the coffee machine or the dirty glasses. You could tell that she didn’t want to look at him - probably because of the ear hair. That didn’t stop the guy from going on and on about something boring though. Wow, he was a real asshole.

        As the guy was droning on about the attitude of city employees or something, I noticed the girl glance up at me quickly. She had a really pretty face. Her forehead looked a bit big but that was probably on account of her pulling her hair back to tuck it under the hat thing. Her eyes were beautiful, though, and she had this really cute little nose. She smiled at me as I caught her look and her lips made this crooked shape that was somehow really pleasing.

        "Could I get some more coffee, please, miss?" I said, completely interrupting the hairy-eared bastard who was still rambling on.

        "Of course." She replied with a girlish voice. I think she was pretty happy to have ear hair off her back. He didn’t look too happy, though. He kind of huffed like he couldn’t believe the impoliteness of some people then pulled out a little black book and began to read it. I didn’t care, though. He could be sucked up into his little black book for all I cared. Maybe someone in there would shave his ear hair.

        "Here you go." The girl said in her little voice as she passed me a fresh cup, steaming from the liquid within. Her voice wasn’t annoying like most girly-sounding voices. It was kind of cute. Most girly-sounding voices are pretty annoying. They usually make the girl sound pretty stupid. You could have the most intelligent girl in the world, the girl who discovered oxygen or something and if she had a girly-voice you would think she was pretty stupid. That’s the way it normally is with girly-sounding voices, but hers was different. It actually kind of suited her. It didn’t make her seem stupid at all. In fact, I got the impression she was quite intelligent. I think it was her eyes. They were alive and sparkled with an inquiring look that you often find in intelligent people. Even with that little girly-sounding voice she came across as being pretty smart.

        "You look like you had quite a night last night." She said. She must have been referring to the fact that I looked like I had had three hours sleep – or possibly two - which, of course, I had had. Having had three hours of sleep – or maybe two - you usually have an appearance that has the look of someone who has had three hours of sleep, or possibly even two hours.

        "I was reading." I replied.

        "Must have been quite a book."

        "It was."

        "D’you finish it?"

        "Yeah."

        "How’d it end?"

        "I don’t wanna give it away", she had picked up a towel and was wiping the counter down as she talked.

        "Was it a happy ending?"

        "Not really. I guess it depends who you are."

        "I don’t read too much." She said while folding the towel.

        "That’s too bad, reading’s important." I was cautiously cupping my coffee cup with both hands.

        „I never seem to have time."

        "Don’t you read in school?"

        "I did."

        "You did? What did they remove reading from the curriculum now or something?" I felt a little embarrassed by my own sarcasm. I hoped she didn’t take it as offensive.

        "Awww... I’m not in school anymore. You think I’d be spending my weekends here if I was still in school?"

        "I dunno. I thought perhaps you were just making some extra cash. How old are you anyway?"

        "Eighteen... and you know it’s not polite to ask a girl her age before her name. Didn’t you read that in a book? Or don’t they teach you that in school?" she was being playful. I was glad she wasn’t offended by my sarcasm. God she had a cute smile.

        "I guess not." I replied.

        "Well, then, what good is it?"

        "That’s what I’ve been asking myself all year. In fact, do you know I just quit yesterday?" I proudly stated as I slid a cigarette from its silvery pack.

        "Didn’t quit for long, did you?" The girl replied with a nod at the pack of cigarettes in my hand.

        "No, not smoking. I quit school."

        "Now why would you go and do a stupid thing like that?"

        "I thought it was no good?" I replied a little confused at her U-turn.

        "If you quit school you’ll end up working in a dump like this." She looked around herself with a cute shrug of the shoulders.

        "Speaking of which", I said, "When do you get off? You can’t work all weekend."

        "Why? You got plans?"

        "I’d like to take you out sometime. Perhaps I could introduce you to some literature." As soon as I said that I felt like a pompous ass. I lit my cigarette and tried to shy away from the comment. She didn’t seem to take offense, though. She just stopped and gazed at me with this contemplative look. Then she answered, "Ok, sounds like fun. I get off at two."

        "Great", I said. I was generally surprised at getting a date. "I’ll meet you right here at two, then."

        "Aren’t you forgetting something?" She glared at me with an accusing look. I looked around searching myself and the room clueless, expecting to see my bag or scarf or something lying around. Then it dawned on me in a moment of embarrassing realization. Man, was I an ass sometimes.

        It turned out the girl’s name was Marcey; she was eighteen and lived uptown near Russian Hill. I learned all of this over the cup of coffee I decided to stay for before I left the place. We arranged to meet in front of the diner at 2pm and then I left to go for a walk. It was only around eleven when I finished breakfast, so I had about three hours to kill. As I was walking, I couldn’t help but think about old Shawn Linklater again. I kept thinking about this old vinyl record he kept around with him. I was amazed it never broke. He had it at school in his locker and again in his bookcase at home. If I didn’t know any better I’d have thought he kept about a hundred God-damn copies of that record stashed around. But I knew it was the exact same record that he used to carry from place to place. He loved that record. It was W.C. Handy’s "St. Louis Blues" played by Benny Goodman. I always remember that Dog with the Phonograph on the label, listening to His Masters Voice – HMV, the record label that brought it out. I think it was 1936 or something like that. It was really old, anyway. I never thought it was such a great record, actually. I mean, it was ok; but you should have seen Shawn’s face when he listened to it. He’d get this real intense look like he was trying to imagine the band playing all the parts or something and freeze like that for the whole time. It was pretty funny. Boy, old Shawn really loved that W.C. Handy.

On Sacramento Street just across from Lafayette Park where I wanted to hang out for a bit, there was a monument to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Apparently he occupied a house there once. At least that’s what the brass plaque outside said:

           2151

 SACRAMENTO STREET

         This house, built

         in 1881, was once

             occupied by

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

I actually quite doubted if he had occupied the house at all and, if so, probably not for long. That was the thing with all those plaques and monuments – you never really knew if they were true or not. They could claim anything and most people would believe it just because it said it on a nice polished brass plaque that looked all official. I mean, maybe he did occupy the house. But what the hell does that mean? It sounds like he was squatting there or something. It was curious that they used the term “occupy”. Why didn’t they just say he lived there if he did actually live there? It was all pretty suspect to me. I bet he just visited a friend for a coffee or something or maybe even just ducked in to use the toilet. That’s the thing when you are famous and writes some books about a detective that get popular, every place you ever took a shit will have a memorial plaque on it!

I started walking down towards Market Street because I was put off hanging out in Lafayette Park due to the hoaxes all around that place. Besides, I wanted to find a record store that was open. I was thinking of trying to pick up a copy of "St. Louis Blues" for myself. It was a pretty hard record to find, but I knew a guy who ran a place on Leavenworth Street that always had stuff like that. It was not far from The Great American Music Hall, a new place that had just opened in the old Blanco’s building that was a Swing and Jazz mecca either side of the Great Depression. Tommy’s Joint was just down the road, too. That was an old diner that the cats from Blanco’s used to frequent after they were done playing. Hell, I think everyone used to frequent Tommy’s; in fact, they still do. Anyway, this guy I knew, his place always had hard-to-get and old rare stuff. W.C. Handy was exactly the kind of stuff they always had.

        I walked down Gough Street, then crossed over to Sutter. It was here, in front of the Regency II Cinema, which had recently been the Avalon Ballroom that I noticed a lady in a pink dress that got me thinking about old Shawn’s mom, Mrs. Linklater. She was one of the nicest God-damn people I ever met; just like Shawn. She always treated all of Shawn’s friends really well. She’d bake for you and give you any kind of fruit juice you wanted. It could be some really expensive natural juice, but she’d still give you a big, cold glass of it. She’d never serve that sugar-filled crap that you get at most people’s houses when you visit, she’d give you the fresh kind. She probably squeezed the God-damn fruit herself, she was that kind of a lady. If you want to know what kind of a lady she was, I can tell you this: she used to write stories for Shawn when he was real young. Not just some half-hearted crap about princes that most parents dream up at bedtime, but real proper stories. She’d actually write it all down in her neat motherly handwriting so that Shawn could read the stories over and over again. The main character was always this kid called Johnny Ficklebranch, he was one of those rough-and-tumble types with a good heart who I always suspected was based on Huckleberry Finn or someone like that. He lived in a railway station and was always coming up with ingenious ways to make lemonade. I remember once he carted a load of lemons and sugar into a mine that was slated for demolition and ran a tube down into the shaft. When they collapsed the mine the whole town was refreshed with old Ficklebranch’s brand of mineshaft lemonade. In her own way, old Mrs. Linklater was pretty smart. She dreamed up hundreds of stories in which old Johnny would save the town and embarrass the Mayor. The Mayor was always after Johnny ’cos he was a bit of a troublemaker, but it was always Johnny who got the last laugh. Man, they were pretty good stories. I bet old Mrs. Linklater misses Shawn a hell of a lot. I bet she doesn’t write stories anymore.

        The day wasn’t as foggy as the night before, but it was pretty cold. Maybe it was cold because it wasn’t as foggy - that was the thing with fog, sometimes it took away the cold. I guess it’s a bit of a compromise between crappy weather and cold weather; although, a lot of the time in San Francisco it was damn cold and foggy. Nevertheless, there were quite a few people out despite the weather. Most people were rushing around looking to buy things or get somewhere they just had to be, but amidst all that ridiculous show of perceived importance I noticed this one couple moving slower than the rest. You could tell they were a pretty old couple from the way they shuffled along. I bet they were both around eighty years old. They had probably just come from a church or a library or something. The old guy had on this tweed jacket that was probably from the 19th century, or earlier. The two of them were just walking real slow, completely oblivious to everyone else. Cars were screaming by, people were shouting at each other and those two just kept shuffling along arm in arm. As I got closer I could see that the old guy was shaking quite a bit and having a real hard time getting along. The woman was practically holding him up and helping him walk. She looked so old you wished someone would help her, but here she was practically carrying the weight of her and her partner through the busy streets. She was so careful in the way she held the old guy and moved him along, you could just see that he was the most fragile and important thing in her world. Nothing else mattered to her - not the cars, not the screaming people - there were no distractions. Her attention and thoughts were completely on helping her partner shuffle his way through the last steps of his life with her. She was totally devoted to guiding the poor, old guy along. It probably took every ounce of her strength to keep from collapsing right there, but she kept on going with her man in her arms. It was like there was no one else in the world for her and she was holding onto the last moments they would spend together with everything she had. It was the God-damn saddest and most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The two of them were just so frail, yet defiant. So frail and perfect. Perfect together.

      Leavenworth Street was packed with people when I got down there. It was about 12 pm now and everyone seemed to be frantically going nowhere. It made you wonder how anybody actually got anything done on a weekend. I started to get the idea that, on weekends, people just went out and walked around downtown randomly. That’s what it looked like - and nobody looked relaxed like you’re supposed to be on a Saturday morning. I guess all the relaxed people were out of the city or in the park or smoking a pipe at home or something. They definitely weren’t here downtown. I got a little amused at the thought of being part of it all, although I couldn’t even stand to look at all the people - the men in their suits, the women in dresses bought especially for walking around randomly on a Saturday morning. I mean, it’s bad enough when people buy clothes to try and get noticed and look all fancy at a club or something, but when they buy clothes just to walk around randomly on a Saturday morning downtown so they can be seen being busy and important - well, that just drives me crazy. It’s not good enough to be working like a madman in a pointless job all week - you have to be seen busying up yourself on a Saturday morning, too, otherwise people will get the impression your life is not important or some crap like that. You definitely want to give people the impression that you are so important buzzing around on a Saturday morning that if you went to take a dump in a house somewhere down here they would erect and goddamn brass plaque in your honour.  Boy, I tell you I couldn’t get off Leavenworth Street fast enough.

     I found the record store I was looking for and went inside as fast as I could. It was a nice place. They always had something decent playing on a Victrola and there was always a tinge of Cherrywood tobacco in the air from the owner’s pipe. It was a very distinctive place that had personality, it had character. I loved that about little stores like this one. The records were stacked in these boxes around the outside of the room so you could just kind of browse as you made your way through. Often, I’d come in looking for one thing and end up leaving with something completely different. They had the most obscure collection of records I had ever seen from some great old cats - Art Farmer, one half of a pair of identical twins who played "flumpet"; Gerry Mulligan and his piano-less quartet; Don Ellis’s "Live In 3 and 2/3 Over 4 Time" - just to name a few. I bought a 1930 Paramount recording of Willie Brown’s "Grandma Blues" / "Sorry Blues" here that was probably my favourite single record of all time. The record is still sitting on my bedside table - I never put it anywhere else in case it got lost or broken or my mom threw it out or something. Man, I loved that record. I didn’t love it quite as much as old Shawn loved that W.C. Handy, but almost. I wasn’t far off carrying it around with me everywhere.

        The owner was a great old guy named Sykes. I never knew his first name and had no idea how I even learned to call him Sykes, but that was what he was called. He managed to find the W.C. Handy "St. Louis Blues" and charged me five bucks for it ’cos it was a pretty rare record. I didn’t care how much it cost, though. It was just nice to have that record after thinking about Shawn. I guess I had a partial replacement for my case.

        After leaving the record store I made my way down the street to a book store called Wilson’s. I figured I’d pick up a few books for Marcey so that I’d have something to give her and we’d have something to talk about when we met later. They had a pretty good selection at Wilson’s and I ended up coming out with "The Great Gatsby", "King Lear" and a book of poetry by Pablo Neruda. I figured that was a pretty good mix of things to read. I could’ve maybe got something a bit more pulpy, but I really hate that crap. It would be pretty phoney of me to buy crap like that when I really hated it. Marcey might not like the selections I bought for her, but then she might not like me either. It was the same thing in a way. The books told a lot about who I was in their selection, just like everything we do says a lot about us. I couldn’t pretend to be somebody else and buy some trashy pulp fiction.

        I had a bit more time to kill when I was done at the book store, so I bought a paper from one of those guys on the street outside of the Civic Auditorium and took it to Jefferson Square Park. It was pretty busy in the park. Kids were being dragged around on the ends of their parent’s hands, while pointing at stuff or trying to chase dogs. There was a little playground on the other side of Turk Street where they were all headed so I found a bench in a more quiet area and took a glance at the front page of the paper. It didn’t seem like much was going on, so I skipped right to the culture and arts section to read some reviews of recently released records and see who was playing in town tonight. There was a pretty good review of the new Carla Bley record, "Escalator Over The Hill ". It was a triple record because it was over 90 minutes long that had just been released after years of recording it. The reviewer said the music was „bold and dangerous", that it "weaved an intricate web of melodic counterpoint punctuated by explosive dynamics." He concluded by stating “Like an electric transformer, Escalator Over the Hill synthesizes and draws on an enormous range of musical materials – raga, jazz, rock, ring modulated piano sounds, all brought together through Carla Bley’s extraordinary formal sense and ability to unify individual but diverse musical sections by means of the editing of the record medium...” It really made me want to buy the record. I kind of wished I had picked up the paper before I went to Syke’s place. I always do things in the wrong order. My whole life is a storyboard that has been spliced apart and glued back together at random. Mismatched vignettes. Why would I go to a record shop and then pick up a paper to read the new record reviews? Sometimes the things I do make no chronological sense at all. I guess I could always go back to Syke’s place today if need be.

        After I was done reading the reviews I checked the gigs listings to see if there’d be anything interesting to see tonight. Lexy Wilson was playing at the Shazz, Mithchell Greenbaum and his Quintet at the Folk’s Room and Parney Barnell at the Starclub. There was some other stuff, too, but those were the only three acts that I’d really consider seeing. All the other stuff was popular crap. Mostly singers backed by schlocky bands. People love that stuff. They are mad for schlock. The schlockier the better. They love to see a name they’ve actually heard of up on stage. It gives them a thrill. Not me, though. I don’t like any singers very much. There are a few that are alright, but the majority of them are just personalities. God, I hate that whole personality sham. People get so worked up about a Goddamn name. They don’t even know if they’re a good singer or not - and most singers are always so fake and obnoxious. They never act like real people - they always act they are desperately trying to fulfill the myth of their personality. Like they are striving for that brass plaque. It always spoils the performance for me. Usually their heads are too big for the stage. I mean, they should just shut up and sing. You take a good horn player or something - they never have time or bother for all that personality crap on stage. They’re concentrating on the music and the interpretation of what the composer wanted to say. I mean, they’re really into it, but they’re not really there. They’re not aware of the audience or the stage or sometimes even themselves. That’s when you can really feel it. When the music destroys the ego. That’s when it’s real.

        My dad took Shawn and me to see Dizzy Gillespie a few years ago. He’s seen him a bunch of times but he figured it was time for us to check him out. The two of us were pretty excited to see him. It was our first major gig; I think I was about 13 or something. I could hardly wait as we were driving to the theatre. He was playing with the Quintet that had recorded a live record that same year at the Newport Jazz Festival. It was a weird experience that whole gig - the band was so good but I think at that age I didn’t really get that at all. What did get me, though, was the energy. I think the atmosphere was so primal and charged that it appealed to someone of my age without much formal idea of what was going on. A kid could really relate to it - not cerebrally but viscerally. The way Gillespie commanded the stage and generated the atmosphere by leading the band was amazing. He has those crazy inflated cheeks of his and he gets really expressive in the face when he starts to go off. You almost want to jump out of your seat when he really gets going. I guess that’s the kind of personality that is ok ’cos it’s still real although there’s all this star crap going on. All that crap can really work people up, though, I tell you. Shawn and I were really worked up about it, I remember. We kept looking at each other with these "can you believe this?" looks. It’s not often that I get excited like that anymore. Everything’s too predictable these days. As you get older you start to lose enthusiasm for stuff like that. I wish I could just go back to being 13 again, not knowing anything and shooting these crazy looks at old Shawn Linklater when Dizzy does something wild or Rudy Collins laid down a groove. The trouble is, you can’t go back. You can’t unlearn and forget the things that make you less enthusiastic and not throw these crazy looks all the time. You know, sometimes getting older really sucks.

        After I checked out who was playing, I decided to go for a stroll. I tucked the paper under my arm and set off for Buena Vista Park over on Haight just west of Castro. It was about a mile away and I figured I could get there and back easily in time to meet Marcey at 2pm. Besides, I was starting to get a bit sleepy and wanted to get off the bench before I drifted off and some bastard stole my W.C. Handy. That would be typical.

        I made my way along south down Laguna Street then took a right into the Haight. I was quicker than I thought, maybe on account of the brisk weather urging me to walk faster to keep warm, so when I got to Buena Vista I decided to keep walking past Ashbury Street all the way down to the East end of Golden Gate Park. There was a little duck pond there. I think it is officially called Alvord Lake. I have no idea who Alvord was and why this little pond was named a lake but there was a nice little fountain there an sometimes you could feed the swans and ducks that hung out there.  

        The area around the pond was pretty packed. Everyone was there tossing pieces of bread to the fat, overfed ducks that cruised around on the water like bits of abandoned wood. It made me kind of depressed seeing all those people overfeeding the ducks like it was some kind of sport. It didn’t seem at all like Saturday afternoon. It didn’t really seem like anything. But I stood there near the pond anyway with my bag of books and my paper and my W.C. Handy because I couldn’t really think of anywhere else to be. It’s funny - there’s so many places in the world but sometimes you can’t think of a single place you’d like to be. I can always think of hundreds of places I’d like not to be; like school, home or at the duck pond in the park - but not too many; well, none, that I would like to be. Maybe that’s some kind of Psycho-geographical thing.

        As I was standing there at the pond, not wanting to, a group of kids came by. They must have been on some sort of school or church outing ’cos they were all wearing these crazy uniforms. They looked like some sort of child army marching around the duck pond. A couple of them were fighting over a ball or something and a few of the girls were making wrist-bands out of daisies they had picked. There was a middle-aged woman leading them around, probably a teacher or something. She looked pretty stressed out. I think I would be stressed out, too, with a group of ten-year olds in the park. As they came by one of the girls tugged on my shirt. "Hey mister", she said.

        "Hey kid", I replied. I had no idea what she wanted.

        "Do you live in the park?" It was a strange question. Perhaps I was so rough-looking after my night of near no-sleep I could have been mistaken for a bum.

        "No, I don’t live in the park."

        "Oh", she replied sounding somewhat disappointed. "Do you know why ducks like bread so much?"

        "No, not really. Perhaps because it’s so soft."

        "Why soft?"

        "Well, ducks don’t have any teeth so they probably like soft food."

        "Like my grandpa." The kid was pretty funny, although I don’t think she meant to be.

        "Yeah, that’s it. Exactly"

        "My grandpa has to eat mashed potatoes because he has no teeth. I think he lost them in the war", she said. The kid really was pretty funny.

Suddenly, there was a shout from across the pond, "Christina! “ It was the stressed chaperone. The woman came racing over, probably terrified that the little girl was befriending a pervert.

        "What did I tell you about sticking together and not talking to strangers?" She glanced in my direction. "I’m sorry sir, we didn’t mean to bother you".

        "Oh no, it’s alright." I said.

        "No, it’s not", said the woman, "she shouldn’t be talking to strangers." Boy, was she stressed. I was starting to get annoyed at her being there.

        "But I just wanted to know if the ducks..."

        "If you want to know something, you ask me, young lady." The woman was being a real pain in the ass.

        "But you don’t live in the park!"

        "What are you talking about, Miss Gill?"

        "Only someone who lives in the park would know all about the ducks." The chaperone gave me a nasty look.

        "I don’t live in the park." I responded, shrugging my shoulders.

        "What have you been telling this impressionable, young child?" The woman snapped back.

        "I told her I don’t live in the park."

        "Do you make a habit of engaging young girls in conversation?" The woman was getting out of line and really starting to piss me off now; and right in front of the funny little kid. I wasn’t sure if she was accusing me of something or not but I didn’t like her line of questioning. It was redolent. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being accused of something through a redolent line of questioning. Especially if she was accusing me of being some kind of pervert. The crack earlier about perverts was really just a joke. I mean, who would accuse an 18 year old kid of being a pervert? Most perverts were three times my age, for Chrissakes!

        "The only thing I make a habit of is smoking." I replied, somewhat smugly I must admit.

        "Now you don’t have to start with an attitude with me, mister. I know your type." For Chrissakes she must have been a teacher. Why I quit school suddenly came rushing back to me. The whole place was overrun with people exactly like her, just trying to suck out every ounce of life you had left in your body. It was death by slow annoyance and subsequent corrosion of the soul. Redolent questioning and groundless accusation. People like her should have a corrosive warning on them like they have on batteries - instead of "avoid contact with eyes and skin" they should have "avoid contact with ambition and free-spirit".

        "Well, if you know my type then what’s with all the questions?"

        "No manners! That’s the problem with young people these days - you have no respect!" The woman was really getting on my nerves. I’d have really let her have it if it wasn’t for the kid. That’s the problem with kids - they get influenced by everything they see, so you can’t let somebody really have it when they’re around.

        "I’m not the one accusing strangers of things they are completely innocent of." I said.

        "No, but you are the one telling strange things to lost little girls."

        "I’m not lost Miss Eckstein..."

        "Shut up, Christina. Come along, now -we’re leaving."

        "It’s not a crime to be nice, you know." I yelled after the woman as she skirted away. Some people are just born mean, I decided.

     The encounter with the chaperone really put me in a bad mood. I didn’t have any idea what to do for the last couple of hours I had to kill, but I sure didn’t want to stay in that park any longer. You take an encounter like that; with a mean, impolite person and suddenly being in the park is no fun anymore. You just have to get out. It can really ruin your day. One person behaving badly can really ruin your whole God-damn day. And a Saturday in the park at that. Besides, I was starting to get a little bit sick of parks at this point.

     I got this idea that I wanted to go someplace quiet and be alone so I walked all the way over to the Presidio Branch Library. It was on Sacramento on the way back to the Lakeview Diner and I knew that it was the only place I could get some God-damn peace.  I knew that was the only place some asshole wouldn’t bother the hell out of me. I used to go to the library all the time when I was a kid. My mom used to take me there nearly every other Saturday for these readings. Sometimes the stories would be pretty good, but sometimes they would be awful. They were given by volunteers or library employees. I think some of the volunteers were reading their own stuff. Those were probably the times when it was really bad. It’s a nice memory though, those days in the library as a kid. Even the awful stories were kind of nice to hear during a rainy Saturday. I remember one lady telling a story about a spider that decided to let a fly go from his web after having a conversation with him. It was all about mercy and forgiveness and doing the right thing and stuff like that. I think it was probably one of those Christian stories that have some sort of biblical basis. What I couldn’t stop thinking, though, was what the spider was going to eat if he kept letting all the flies go? Or was he going to just starve? Voluntarily starve due to being nice. Perhaps that was part of the biblical undertone - like the spider was going to die so that all the flies could live: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only pet spider, that flies who believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. God did not send His pet spider into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him…” “I am the way, I am the light, I am the spider - come into my web." I dunno. Most of the kids never gave much of a damn about the stories anyway. It was just a chance to get out of the house if it was raining and they usually had some sort of cake or cookies around. Coffee for the adults and cookies for the kids. I liked it a lot better when it did rain during those readings. You always felt like you were in the driest place in the world with all those books and paper around as it was hammering it down outside, making the windows rattle. I really did love those days in the library when I think back to them. I remember we all sat on the floor around this big chair waiting for the story to begin. You had to be really quiet, too. All the kids would be whispering before the story began, each one of them certain that no one could hear except the guy next to them. It was a big sea of restrained whispers washing around the dry, papery leaves of books. You’d almost always sit next to the same person every week, too. I always sat next to this girl, Doreen Millhouse. I always remember thinking that Doreen sounded like an old person’s name. Old Doreen was the keenest whisperer you ever heard. She could whisper to you a mile away. The librarians were always asking her to keep it down even though she was always whispering. Her voice would bounce all over the place like she was shouting, but she wasn’t. It was a loud, whispery timbre. I bet old Doreen would have made one hell of a ventriloquist.

        That library was the most amazing place. All that information and all those stories condensed into a few shelves and book cases. You could learn the history of the world, how a star is created, how to fix your motorcycle and read the stories of a million people, real or imaginary, just by browsing through bits of paper bound together with glue. In the pages contained on those shelves wars were won and lost, people travelled through space and the love of a lifetime was found more than once. It was amazing to think of all the worlds you could enter just by picking up a few books and looking at the funny symbols squiggled together on the page. I used to spend a lot of time in the science section looking at books on astronomy. That used to really fascinate me. I can remember the aisle exactly and where all the books were placed. There was a really good astronomy textbook with Van Gogh’s "Starry Night" on the cover in the middle of the third row from the bottom, and a book about stars on the left hand side of the second row. It was yellow. I can remember always thinking about the "yellow book". It became so familiar. The first page had a big, bright picture of a sun on it which I think was supposed to surprise you. You were supposed to be surprised at the realization that the Sun is a star. I can’t remember if I was surprised or not as a kid, but I sure liked that picture. It was so fiery and bright. There were other books, too; but my favourites were always the yellow book and starry night. Those were the two I always used to sign out. Half of the return date stamps in the front of those books were from me. I bet I could go back to that library and pick out all the times I took out those books from the return date stamps. There were loads of books in that library with my return date stamps on them.

        When I thought about all the stories and past relationships in that library I get the strongest feeling. I mean, there were thousands of fictional characters living in there. Thousands of lives and histories that never happened and it made me sad. It was kind of like when you learn as a kid that someone doesn’t exist. There is no Santa Claus. Frodo Baggins is made up. Alice never went down that rabbit hole and Captain Ahab never hunted any whales. It is enough to kill you when you think of all the wonderful places and people you’ve come to learn that aren’t really anywhere. That’s one of the worst things about growing up - you can’t suspend disbelief anymore. All the wonders and possibilities of childhood melt away. I pictured myself as a kid in those aisles, so happy to be making friends with talking rabbits and the acquaintance of elves and it made me so Goddamn depressed. I never feel that way anymore, never free and happy and in wonderment of something. I started to miss myself as a kid.

        The memories of me in that library got me so down that I decided not to go at all anymore. I don’t think I could stand to see that yellow book and "starry night" and the place where I used to sit with old Doreen Millhouse and realize that none of it had changed, but I had. Instead, I decided to head back to the diner and see if Marcy was almost finished her shift. Maybe I could sit there and drink coffee or something. It was cold and damp outside now and I was being haunted by memories. I kind of just wanted to get somewhere where I could stop thinking. I didn’t really want to show up early at the diner and look all over-eager, but I sure as hell didn’t want to walk back into that library with all its ghosts.

        It was still pretty early when I got back to the diner, so I just decided to stand on the corner outside and waste some time. There were millions of cars driving by on the street in a procession of colours. Blue sedans, red hot-rods, green British sports cars. I’ve never really been that much into cars, but it was really interesting just watching all those machines go by. I kept wondering about the people driving them and where they were going. The vain, middle-aged man in the speedster going to meet his much younger mistress. The worried schoolteacher in the white sedan dreading Monday morning and another classroom full of animals. I figured most of the people were pretty normal people just going shopping or visiting a friend or something. Pretty boring stuff, really. But maybe there was one car speeding by with a body in the trunk or a hundred pounds of opium or something. Who could say what was going on right in front of you? I mean, you can never really say for sure what the people around you are really into. When I was younger there was this neighbour we had, Mr. McLaughlin. He was really polite but a bit on the creepy side. He had this white hair and pale, almost translucent skin that kind of made him look like a ghost. He barely ever talked to you when you met him but he had these piercing blue eyes that he’d just stare at you with. But he was really polite. He’d always open a door for you at the convenience store or wait half the afternoon to pull his car into the street if you were walking in front of his driveway. It was just the fact that he was quiet that people found him creepy. It’s weird the way language works like that. You take a boisterous, pretentious jerk that only cares about himself and spouts his mouth off all the time and I bet half the goddamn world would love him; but a nice, quiet, polite old man that waits half the goddamn afternoon to let you cross his driveway is some kind of creepy loner. He was almost too polite, though. And tidy. He’d always be cleaning out his garage or mowing his lawn or something. He was a terrific gardener. He could take some exotic plant that was supposed to die in about 2 seconds when exposed to the cold, damp air we have around here and get it to bloom like it was on a sunny hillside in Mexico or somewhere. That was just amazing. He should have been given a recommendation from the National Horticultural Society or something. Of course, we kids never really paid much attention to his garden. Kids don’t really care too much for stuff like that. You never get kids saying things like, "Did you see old man McLaughlin’s hibiscus? Boy, are they swell!" They just don’t do it. But it was nice to look at his garden from your window or as you were passing by on the way to the bus stop. What we kids did talk about were all these ridiculous stories concerning old man McLaughlin’s past. He was a single man, and quite old, so there were crazy stories going around about how he kept his wife tied to a chair in the basement of the house and fed her gruel with a spoon. Or how he murdered his family in another town and then moved here with the bodies, using the decomposing corpses as fertilizer for his flowers - I guess in a way we did notice his garden on some level. There were hundreds of crazy stories about old Mr. McLaughlin, all because he was neat, tidy, single, polite and looked like a ghost. The thing was, perhaps one of them was true. I mean, these things do happen. In some cases they are true. Like I said, you just never really know.

        I looked at my watch and decided it was close enough to two to go back into the diner and not look too bored or eager. Marcy was just finishing up her shift and heading in the back to change when I got there. After a few minutes she emerged out of the corridor that ran alongside the kitchen. She looked really good. She had on a stylish red hat - almost like a fedora, a man’s hat - that strangely suited her. Most girls couldn’t wear a hat like that, but Marcy looked really good in it. Her quirky, cute smile appeared under the hat when she spotted me and it made me feel really good. It’s crazy how a strange girl smiling at you can make you feel really good. It doesn’t take much sometimes, it really doesn’t.

         "Ritchie", she said, "you’re perfectly on time." I was wondering if she knew that I had been standing outside for half an hour. I was feeling like a bit of a creep, a bit of a stalker to have been standing outside for half an hour.

        "Hey, nice hat." I said. I really meant it. She looked really good in that damn fedora. "How was the last couple of hours of work?"

        "Boring as hell, like always." It always makes me sad when someone says their work is boring. I mean, that must be the most tragic thing in the world - having to give all your free time, your life, to something that’s boring and that you hate. It must be just like prison. I remember old Adorno writing something about that in that book I was talking about. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much. I made a promise right then and there never to do a job that was boring. If I had to move to Alaska and work on an oil-rig or become a cowboy or something I’d do it, as long as it wasn’t boring. Working at a boring job everyday would be like dying before you’re dead. What a waste.

        "What are we going to do?" Marcey asked as we left the diner.

        "I don’t know. See a movie at the Regency, get something to eat? I bought you a couple of books, maybe we could take a look at them and talk a bit. Just get to know each other." I was pretty nervous all of a sudden.

        "Sounds nice. So whaddya wanna do first?" She was almost bouncing up and down - she had a lot of energy.

        We decided first to go and see a matinee at the Coliseum theatre down on Clement Street instead of the Regency. I hailed a cab ’cos I didn’t want us to have to take a streetcar with those goddamn miserable drivers. We talked quite a bit in the cab on the way over to the theatre. She told me all about her family life, which sounded pretty lousy, and stuff like that. She lived with her mom because her dad left them when she was little. She didn’t get along too well with her mother now that she was getting older and wanted to move out. That’s why she was working so much - so that eventually she’d have the money to get a place of her own. It seemed like a pretty lousy situation, to tell you the truth. I started feeling sorry as hell for her. I always seem to be really attracted to girls I feel sorry for. It makes me feel like I can take care of them or something. It makes me feel all emotional about them, even if I’ve just met them at a diner somewhere. Right at the end of her sad story, she comes out and says. "Do you have a cigarette?"

        We got to the theatre in time for the 3 pm matinee. The movie was the typical "love-story-across-the-decades" crap where these two kids fall in love then the boy has to go to war, get stuck in France or someplace like that and marries a French broad. Eventually, the French broad dies and the boy, who is now an old man, ends up coming back to America and finding his long-lost love. I had to make up the end part because we didn’t stay all the way through on account of it being so boring. I was glad Marcey didn’t like it - normally girls like that kind of crap. I couldn’t get interested at all in it. It was the same thing you see at every goddamn movie. And the same actors, too. The lead guy I had seen in half a dozen other crappy movies with almost exactly the same plot. The plot was the same but the setting and scenery was different - once that lead guy was a cowboy, then he was a detective and today he was fighting wars and marrying French babes. But he was exactly the same as when he was a cowboy or a detective. He didn’t really act at all. You could tell he knew he was a celebrity and people came to see him and not his character. That really ruined everything. That was the worst part of the film, perhaps next to the formula of a script. It was exactly like those singers that do all that stupid stuff on stage. But it was worse because of all the goddamn camera-work making him look like a goddamn hero - zooming in on his phony smile or wavy hair, panning up when he was gazing triumphantly off into the distance. It was enough to make you want to pull your hair out. I mean, you were supposed to love the goddamn main character and after about ten seconds I wanted to strangle him to death.

        I was really glad when Marcey leaned over and asked if I wanted to go out for a cigarette. What a saviour she was. I tell you, though, you never heard so many annoying people as when you get up to leave a movie before the end. You’d think you were interrupting someone’s funeral or something. It was as if it was a really good movie! But I bet most of the people in there thought it really was a good movie or something. That’s the thing with people - they can’t recognize crap when they see it. You take a really boring, formulaic movie with a self-absorbed, annoying lead actor and most people would say it was great. I just don’t get most people.

        Marcey and I decided to go outside and have a cigarette on the sidewalk because there were so many people lining up for the next movie in the lobby, all going on about how great old cowboy, soldier-boy was. Boy, she could really smoke well. She looked seductive as hell sucking on that cigarette and casually blowing the smoke out of the side of her mouth. All the time wearing that red fedora, too. It was really arousing watching her. I could barely concentrate on what we were talking about. That’s the problem sometimes with seductive girls - you take a girl who’s all seductive as hell and you can barely talk to her when she smokes. Sometimes you wish she wouldn’t be quite so seductive so that you could concentrate and not act like an idiot. I bet really seductive girls think that all men are idiots because they can’t concentrate when they are around them.

        We talked about the movie for a while and how corny the lead guy was. I was glad that we agreed on that. Most girls would be panting for that jerk with his wavy hair and phony smile in close-up. Sometimes I don’t get what girls see in a lot of guys. A guy can be the world champion jerk and he could still get loads of girls. It makes you wonder if girls are really all that smart. I mean, not in general, but when it comes to guys. I guess they just don’t know guys as well as I do. Girls are always liking guys in phoney V-neck sweaters that play tennis, or guys who say "for sure" when agreeing on something, or guys who drive two-seater cars - mean guys, rich guys, fake intellectual guys, guys at big prestigious schools, guys who listen to Sinatra, guys who summer in Maine, guys who are complete bastards, all the worst possible types. It drives me goddamn crazy sometimes.

        I was sort of hating all the guys I could think of by the time we got done talking about the movie. Including myself. I couldn’t think properly with all those guys in my head and old Marcey smoking seductively as hell and the plot of the movie annoying me. I had wanted to go and see the new film Zappa had made called “200 Motels” but wasn’t sure if it was even playing anywhere in San Francisco. I started to sputter out something about surrealist musical film, but was kind of glad when Marcey abruptly changed the subject.

        "So, what books did you bring me?" She was still quite bouncy when she talked.

        "A few different things." I said. I had the books in the Wilson’s paper bag that they gave me at the store.

        "I have an idea." She said. "Do you know anywhere quiet we could go and maybe look at these books together?"

        "I’m staying at a shabby Hotel downtown. I have a room for myself for a couple of days."

        "Great!" She exclaimed with a little hop and a quirky smile. "Let’s just go and hang out there for a while, Ok? Get away from this horrible movie." It was a great idea, I must admit.

        "You mean right now?"

        "Yeah, right now. You can read to me and we can eat chocolate."

        "I don’t have any chocolate."

        "Well, then, we’ll have to pick some up on the way."

        "Yeah, I guess..."

        "If you don’t want to -"

        "No, no. I definitely want to", I said “that sounds like fun. Just the two of us."

        So we jumped into another cab and headed back downtown to my hotel, with a quick stop along the way to pick up some chocolate.

        I felt kind of proud of myself coming into the lobby of the hotel with Marcey. It was pretty stupid to feel like that, I know; but she did look damn good in that red fedora. I think the receptionist thought I was some sort of loser or something, so it was nice to have him see me with someone like Marcey coming into the hotel. We went directly up the stairs to my room and I was gripped with a strange feeling of anticipation. I think it was the experience of leading a strange girl to my room. I kind of fumbled with my keys and felt like a bit of an ass trying to open the door. My nerves were pretty shaky all of a sudden. It was exciting as hell to be leading Marcey, in that crazy red fedora, into my cheap hotel room.

        We both instinctively walked over and flopped onto the bed. There was a chair in the room, but it was the only chair and it wasn’t very comfortable either. As soon as we sat down, old Marcey took off her fedora and flung it over to the chair. It kind of floated like a Frisbee and then landed perfectly in the chair seat. I gave her a cigarette and we both began to just smoke there on the bed for a while, me looking up at the ceiling, nervous as hell. I started blowing smoke rings; that’s something I do once in a while. Sometimes when I’m nervous. It helps me concentrate.

        "So, let’s take a look at these books then." Marcey said out of the blue. I reached over and picked up the paper Wilson’s bag I had been carrying and pulled out the three books.

        "The first one’s kind of a classic American novel." I said. "It’s about this rich guy that’s bored and throws lots of parties." I passed her the paperback copy of "The Great Gatsby" that I had bought her.

        "Sounds interesting", she said. "Are the parties any good?"

        "Yeah, they get pretty wild and it’s set in the twenties, which is kind of neat."

        "Why is that neat?"

        "I dunno. It makes the people more eccentric. They wear these crazy clothes and drive these ridiculous old cars that go about one mile per hour. And they drink a lot."

        "Hmmm, it’s be great if we had something to drink, don’tcha think?" Marcey’s quirky smile practically leaped off of her face.

        "Yeah. I could try and get the receptionist to send something up." I knew he probably wouldn’t.

        "The next book isn’t really a book. Well, it’s a book, but it’s not a novel. It’s a play. It’s by Shakespeare."

        "Oh my god!" Marcey exclaimed. "Isn’t he supposed to be the world’s greatest bore?" I was a little bit surprised and disappointed at her ignorance. "No, on the contrary", I said. "He’s one of the world’s greatest writers." I mean, he really is isn’t he?

        "Yeah, maybe, but who can understand it all? I mean, it’s practically another language isn’t it? Old English or something like that?"

        "It can be a bit complicated and some of the words are not in use anymore but you can learn how to appreciate it. I can help you understand the prose if you want."

        "The what?"

        "The language, the way it’s written". We were almost finished our cigarettes, so I paused a little to let it all sink in before unveiling old Pablo Neruda.

        "Do you ever get really scared?" Marcey asked all of a sudden.

        "What do you mean? “ I replied.

        "Do you ever get really scared that you’re just going to have this awful, unfulfilling life and then just die and - " she paused for a moment, "...and then that’s just it?" She had rolled over on to her back and was staring at the ceiling now.

        "Sure I do", I said. "I think about it all the time. It’s probably my biggest fear."

        "I feel haunted", she went on, "haunted by the lives of people who aren’t there."

        "Do you miss your Dad?" I cautiously asked.

        "No", she replied. "That’s not what I mean. What I’m really haunted by are the spaces left by people who don’t exist."

        "I don’t understand", I was a little confused.

        "I mean lives that never happened but could have. Futures that become ghosts. They’re the ghosts that haunt me. I mean, take a little girl that wants to be a ballerina or something. At some point she’ll probably give up for some stupid reason and spend the rest of her life in a diner. At forty she’ll be tired and bitter with three kids and an asshole for a husband. Now if she had just made the decision to keep being a ballerina, she might be living in Paris with a painter for a husband and the two of them might be travelling all over the world to exotic places. That ballerina is a ghost and she haunts me, just like all the other spaces at the end of people’s lives."

        "That’s sad," I said. I meant it too. It was a really tragically sad idea.

        "What haunts you?"

        "Everything - school, guys who are a pain in the ass, cars, girls who are a pain in the ass, receptionists, grumpy street car drivers, guys who steal your horn in the park, my dad, film actors, my mum, poetry readers, singers, lying brass plaques, the way people run around like their lives are so important.

        "No, no, - I don’t mean what pisses you off, I mean what haunts you? What do you think about when you’re alone and can’t sleep at night? What frightens you?" I thought about it for a while. It was a good question. A lot of things bothered me. Nothing really frightened me, though. I could feel my heart beat as we lay there in silence, starring at the ceiling, smoke hazily drifting around the room making patterns in the dying sunlight. Then I answered.

        "Shawn."

        "What?"

        "That’s what haunts me."

        "Who’s Shawn?"

        "An old friend of mine. He’s dead now. He died a couple of years ago."

        "Death frightens you? You’re afraid to die?" I was thinking about Shawn when she asked the question, but I considered it anyway. It wasn’t death, though. I wasn’t really afraid to die because I couldn’t comprehend it. I thought about my case. I imagined it slipping out of my fingers. I tried to remember Shawn - his face, the way he played. It was hard. I wasn’t sure if I remembered it all properly.         

        "I’m afraid of forgetting," I said. "I’m afraid I’ll forget what it was like to be with my friend. I’m afraid he’ll be forgotten." I was getting sad as hell thinking about it. "But it’s more than that," I went on. I was starting to get angry as I thought about it. "I’m afraid I’ve missed out on what Shawn could have been and what we could have done together. He was really great, you know..."

        "You’re haunted by the spaces people leave behind. The spaces at the end of people’s lives." There was a strange quiet following her words. I don’t mean that the context or the placement of the silence was strange, but the silence itself. It felt kind of hollow. Like if you could catch wind in a box. It was an emptier silence than any silence I had heard before. It was if the silence could echo and increase its affect three-fold or more. Then suddenly, the silence was filled. Not by sound, but by something else - a kiss. To my surprise, Marcey rolled over onto me and placed her warm, soft lips against mine. It’s a curious thing when a strange girl kisses you. There’s that feeling of excitement and electricity, but also a calming sense of relief. Relief that the ice has been broken and you’ve now been allowed access to a more wonderful, pleasant world. No more awkwardly trying to impress and wondering if you are having the right effect and what’s going to happen - you’re just there. Right at that moment you always fantasize about.

        Marcey’s lips tugged at mine as my hands fumbled around with her body. She sighed as her tongue parted my lips and my mouth was filled with her warm, moist breath. We kissed and fondled for a while on the bed, my head swimming with thoughts of girls past and blown opportunities. I was starting to feel really horny, Marcey’s warm, soft body pressing against mine as we rolled about. I was wondering what I did or said to deserve this, but then quickly put the thought out of my mind. Before I could consider anything else, Marcey began running her hands under my shirt and caressing my chest. I could feel my heart beating faster and faster and wondered whether Marcey’s fingertips could feel it too. Clumsily, she sat up and began undoing the buttons on my shirt, glaring down at me all the while with that quirky smile and a mischievous look in her eye.

        Before I knew it, my shirt was gone and I was naked from the waist up. Not wanting to be left out, I suppose, Marcey reached to her hips and in one smooth, seemingly well-practised motion slipped her sweater off over her head. She was wearing a pretty sexy black bra underneath her top which turned me on even more. Just the sight of that intimate piece of most female clothing made my heart race and my senses heighten. I could really feel the blood pumping through my veins now and the heat building rapidly in my body. I began to sweat a little and felt droplets of anticipation form on my brow. Marcey responded by reaching behind her and unbuttoning her bra. Snaking her curvaceous form like a contortionist as she stretched to unsnap the clasp that held her womanly form from my sight. She let out a seductive little laugh as she caressed her arms in front of her as if to cradle her now loosely hanging brazier. God, it all looked so damn sexy. Like a performance from an expert burlesque dancer. Rehearsed, yet exciting. Poised, yet unbridled. She was a real temptress. She really was. I was half going mad with desire at that point. With another sexy grin and a devious little laugh, Marcey let her arms drop and with it, her bra. I was confronted with one of the most beautiful sights I had, up to that point in my adolescence, ever seen. To be honest, it was the first real bosom I ever saw. I had seen breasts in men’s magazines and stuff like that but I had never seen real, live girl breasts heaving right in front of me. They looked so soft and curvy and full and, well - feminine. Some primal, childhood instinct took over me and before I had even caressed the smooth, porcelain skin on display before me, I couldn’t help but stop myself from clasping my lips over one of those perfectly pink, erect nipples and sucking it deeply into my mouth. Marcey cradled my head as I did so and pulled me closer to her warm, naked skin. She began to moan softly as my mouth played with her engorged nipple and my hands caressed the firmness of her silken back. It was incredible. I could feel the heat of her body rise as I pressed against her, my own temperature increasing in tandem. Our embrace was fiery, our passion consuming. Suddenly, she pushed me backwards and I fell onto the bed with a grunt. Her body crashed down onto mine and once again our lips met and began a lurid dance as we explored each other. I breathed in her warm, fragrant scent as we kissed and let myself succumb to the power of her muliebrity. Our hands moved with uncontrolled intent and searched out the remaining scraps of our clothing. In a flurry of passion, I felt my belt being removed and my trousers leaving my legs in a rapid downward movement. It was a little discerning being a single pair of underpants away from being, for the first time, completely exposed to a person I had met just a few hours previously but my lust easily overrode any sense of embarrassment. Apparently, Marcey had fewer reservations about de-clothing as she swiftly removed the rest of her garments while her hands and lips continued to explore my now revealed body. In just a few moments we were both completely naked. I was hoping some sort of instinct or divine inspiration would direct me as to how to behave in this situation, but it unfortunately didn’t happen. I just froze like some sort of scared animal. Luckily, Marcey seemed to be a lot more relaxed and experienced than I and took over the rest of the proceedings. I felt her soft, silky thighs slip down to the sides of mine as she straddled me, her gorgeous female form hovering above. There was no spoken dialogue as to how things would transpire, no words, no awkward attempts to coordinate our movements. From that point on, with Marcey’s encouraging direction, everything became automatic. Marcey let her body slowly, almost agonizingly, sink lower towards me and I could sense the heat and wetness between her thighs as she inched achingly closer. The next few moments were a heady blur of excitement and fear. I felt our two bodies connect as Marcey landed on top of me, her weight pushing down as she relaxed her legs. I didn’t expect there to be the difficulty going forward that there was in that moment. I felt myself instinctively push against Marcey, her heat was burning into me, but I hit some sort of wall. It was a bit uncomfortable for a few seconds as we were stuck there in a pre-sexual limbo. Then, all of a sudden, I felt something slip and was engulfed in a magically delightful, hot and sticky wetness. I slid inside Marcey and felt a silky smoothness that I had never imagined possible. She ground her pubic bone against mine and I filled her completely as we united as one undulating, sweating mass of humanity. For the very first time I knew a woman intimately. It was incredible. Marcey began to gyrate her hips and push against me and her groans grew in volume. Her insides felt like a warm wave of silk as she slid up and down on me, tides of pleasure washing over my body like a calming ocean. My mind was racing, the sensations in my body threatening to push me over the ecstatic edge of control. I could feel the serotonin exploding in my brain and it was pulsing like drones of overwhelming pleasure. I had never experienced anything like this before. It was magical. The tension building in my body was almost unbearable and all I could think about was release. Releasing the anxiety and frustration that I had been carrying all this time. Releasing the knots that I had been tying in my soul since birth. Releasing inside Marcey. It was like a spark that ignites a violent fire when it happened. I twitched, then released and my body shook violently as I unloaded deep inside the gorgeous creature above me. Marcey let out a loud groan and then went stiff, I could feel her legs tense up and become hard on either side of me, her hands squeezing my arms rhythmically as waves of orgasm pulsed throughout her shivering body. After a few seconds, she slumped down on top of me and without saying a word the two of us drifted off into a deep, satisfying sleep. I had never felt so content in my entire life.

        When I woke up, Marcey was sitting in the armchair smoking a cigarette. She was dressed and looked pretty damn good in her outfit. It’s crazy how good a girl can look in her clothes after you’ve seen her without them.

        "I didn’t hear you get up", I said.

        "You were sleeping pretty soundly. You must have been drained." God that smile was devious.

        "Are you gonna stay a while? We could get something to eat."

        "No, I’d better go. My Mom’ll go crazy if I’m not home before its dark."

        "Not even just for a few more minutes? So we can talk about the books or something?" I was missing her already and she was sitting right in front of me.

        "Maybe I should read the books first, then it would make more sense when we talk about them." She was slowly getting up now and readying herself to leave. I made an attempt to get up but Marcey just gently pushed me back down as she sat on the bed.

        "It’s ok", she said. "Don’t rouse yourself for me." With that, she gave me a light kiss and got up off the bed.

        "When can we get together again? What are you doing later tonight?" I was anxious to see her later.

        "I left my number on the nightstand. Give me a call later and we will see." I made an attempt to get up but Marcey was gone with a wink and a tip of the red fedora before I could rise to see her out. I just let myself flop back down and stare at the ceiling, feeling for the first time the hold someone could have on your emotions. I was missing her like hell already. Tumbled down from my cloud of euphoria.

        When I finally got up I was feeling kind of hungry, so I got dressed and made my way down to Clancey’s for another sandwich. The funny thing was, as soon as I got close to the place I starting feeling all superstitious. I remembered the mugging incident in the park from the night before, just after I had eaten at the very same place and started to convince myself that eating there was a bad idea. I’m really crazy like that sometimes. Sometimes I can convince myself of anything. It’s really neurotic. It really is. Sometimes I imagine that if I eat a certain food or take a certain taxi cab, I’ll die - or someone I know will. It’s so crazy. Sometimes I think I should be committed, I really do.

        Anyway, so I walked away from Clancey’s not wanting to push my luck with muggings or streetcar accidents or something like that and ate at another place further uptown. It wasn’t as good as Clancey’s but at least I could eat with a clear conscience. The strangest thing about sitting in that place eating was that although I was thinking about Marcey and the last few hours, I couldn’t help but get the urge to give Jane a call. I guess I was feeling guilty or something all of a sudden. I mean, we weren’t together anymore but I had a lingering feeling that I had betrayed her in some way by sleeping with Marcey. It was crazy, I know; but I was getting so afraid that she’d find out about what happened and hate me forever. It was stupid because she was probably dating somebody right now and in all likelihood doing the exact same things Marcey and I had been doing only a few hours previously. She had dated guys when we were just friends and it had driven me crazy. I never told her, though. I told her what I thought about her boyfriends but I never told her how crazy it made me. She always dated such terrible guys. Guys who had to show off all the time. There was this one guy, Jason Brown, who was some sort of hot-shot tennis player or something. He would always arrange double dates with Jane and some couple where they would always end up playing tennis. It was so obvious. They’d beat the pants off the other couple every time and it would make old Jason look superior to the other guy. Just ’cos he could play tennis. I think he did it to keep other guys away from Jane. He was so insecure in a way even though he was some sort of hot-shot tennis player. These hot-shot tennis playing types are always the most insecure ones. I can’t understand why. If I was a hot-shot tennis player, I wouldn’t be any more insecure than I am now. I think I’d probably be more confident on account of my tennis skills.  At least about my tennis game. I sure as hell wouldn’t have to invite and then beat every goddamn guy in the world at tennis just to keep them away from my girlfriend. That’s what old Jason Brown had to do, though. Didn’t help him much in the end, however. Jane broke up with him. Maybe he ended up losing one of those doubles matches.

        Anyway, I really felt like I had to call Jane and make sure everything was ok. I wasn’t going to confess to her or anything, but not talking to her after what had just happened was driving me crazy. For some reason I just really needed to hear her voice. I left the sandwich place and found a phone booth down the street. I knew Jane’s number by heart, so I dialled it up but nobody answered. That made me really depressed. I started to get anxious and wondered who else I could call to take my mind off of things. The problem was, apart from Jane’s, I am not very good at remembering numbers and my address book was back in my room at school. The only number I could remember was this guy’s from high school called Dave Grecko. The reason I could remember Dave’s number was that the last four digits spelled "COLT" on the telephone number pad with the letters on each number. We used to make a joke about it - "just call colt!" He’d say. So that’s who I called. Just because of that number. Old Dave Grecko. He was a pretty crazy guy - a heavy drinker who used to steal his dad’s liquor. He’d always be really smashed at parties and end up doing something stupid like jumping in someone’s swimming pool with all his clothes on or letting their dogs loose and then throwing steaks he had stolen from the fridge down the street and onto other people’s lawns. I wasn’t that crazy about calling him but I couldn’t remember any other numbers except for that damn "COLT" number and I had to get Jane and Marcey off of my mind somehow. I thought maybe he’d be up for getting a drink somewhere or perhaps he could get me some liquor or something from his dad.

        When I got him on the phone he sounded pretty different than I remembered. A lot more serious. He said he didn’t want to get a drink but he’d like to get together and see me again. Perhaps we could eat something. I had just eaten at the sandwich place and wasn’t at all hungry but I said "sure" all the same. Just because I felt like having company and hopefully a conversation that would preoccupy me and keep my thoughts off of Marcey’s intoxicating body and Janes perceived disapproval of my intoxication. We arranged to meet in an hour at the Gladstone Hotel.

        I got to the Gladstone at around seven o’clock. It was dinner time but wasn’t too busy yet. The waiters were all lined up in the way they do when it is slow and they are bored, with their smart little shirts and vests and that towel inexplicably draped over one arm. The typical, no – stereotypical, waiter pose. I always wondered why that towel was always draped over one arm.

        Some guy came in with his wife just after I arrived and made a beeline for the centre table. You should have seen the huge, dumb grins on their faces when the waiters swarmed them, bowing and taking their coats. You could tell they loved it. I can’t stand people who love being made a fuss of like they are goddamn royalty or something. It is totally unnecessary; I mean, nobody needs to be made a fuss of like that by a bunch of bored waiters. It’s completely useless to our society, this fuss making bullshit. It doesn’t actually achieve anything. The waiters could have made a little less fuss and that would have been fine. I wish people like bored waiters would make a little less fuss more often and treat people just like the normal people they are. That would make me less angry when I came to places like the Gladstone Hotel.

        I stood there for a while as the waiters fussed about the couple at the centre table, wondering where I should sit so that Dave Grecko could see me easily. After about thirty seconds this creepy usher guy in a tuxedo with a cheesy mustache came up to me and starting asking if I had a reservation and all that. You didn’t really need a reservation for the Gladstone Hotel, especially if you got there early, but they asked you all the same. Like they were busy or something. I guess it gave a better impression of the place if some goddamned creepy guy in a tuxedo came up to you and asked you if you had a reservation; then waiters with ridiculous, inexplicable towels draped over their arms made a hell of a fuss of you. I guess it was supposed to do that but; quite frankly, it just pissed me off. I kind of wished I had decided to meet Dave somewhere else. I remember I came here once with my parents and my mother kept saying how quaint everything was and how good the service was. Probably just because they were making such a goddamn fuss about her. I said that I’d rather get a deli sandwich at Clancey’s than be fussed over by all those creepy, towel wielding, mustached idiots. My mom said I had no taste. Maybe I don’t, but I really love those deli sandwiches. I can’t deny it. I can’t lie and say that the crepe whatever or the shrimp fancy-pants casserole taste "divine". They just don’t. Nothing satisfies me more than that smoked ham on rye bread with lots of mustard. That’s the truth. It’s just honesty that makes me hate these kinds of places. I’ve been eating those Clancey’s sandwiches since I was about ten years old. Old Shawn and I would save our pocket money just to go down there and get a sandwich and a chocolate milk. It was the best meal you could have. You’d never need a reservation, never wait more than ten minutes and never be accosted by some creepy guy with a mustache asking if you had a reservation. Then when you got your sandwich it tasted just perfect, the way you always remember. You don’t have to lie and say it tastes good just ’cos it’s expensive or has a French name or something. It’s cheap and it tastes great and it’s just called a deli sandwich. One time - after my birthday - old Shawn and I went down there and ordered four sandwiches each. We ended up taking two of them home each, but the great thing about sandwiches is that you can save them and eat them the next day and they still taste great. They travel well, too - are easy to pack and don’t spill when you ride your bike or walk fast. Try that with the salmon crepe de whatever.

        The creepy host guy led me to a table across from the couple that came in just after me. I sat there waiting for Dave Grecko, watching the two annoying people in front of me. I couldn’t help but notice that the woman had one of those terrible romance novels on the table with her. The cover itself was enough to make you want to vomit. There was a picture of some chiselled, long haired guy in a stupid pirates costume holding a woman about one quarter of his size. She looked like a little child falling into his arms. The guys in those novels were always pirates or cowboys or something. Jane read one once and told me all about it. We used to laugh at how ridiculous it was and she would mockingly read passages out loud to me, making a hell of fun of it. The story was of a doctor who invents some sort of serum that made him superhuman. The serum also makes him have these fits of rage, too, and he ends up smashing pretty much everything he owns including his laboratory. He decides to run away to a remote cabin in the forest so that he can’t harm anybody. Apparently, the log cabin was smash proof because he never damaged it. One day in winter he comes across this overturned car wreck with a beautiful woman unconscious in the driver seat and trapped inside. He lifts the car with his superhuman strength and carries her back to his log cabin hideout where he nurses her back to health (he is, of course, a doctor). She ends up being some kind of scientist, too. It was ridiculous. Anyway, they fall madly in love on account of them both being incredibly intelligent and stunningly beautiful scientists and have lots of slow, time-consuming sex. The woman confesses at some point that she is married but was running away from her abusive husband when she crashed. There is always a bad guy that the woman needs to be saved from. Apparently, her husband is a boozer and gets violent a lot. This makes the superhuman doctor confess his secret which makes them both worried that he will get angry when one of his fits comes on and be violent to her as well. There is this „I love you but I can’t be together with you on account of my dangerous condition" speech and the two break up. The girl goes back to her husband and starts doing research on the serum that the doctor formulated. Everyone in the book is a goddamn beautiful genius. She tries to develop an anti-serum so that she can finally be together with the man she has hopelessly fallen in love with. There is this horrible scene in which the husband turns up and starts yelling at the woman in her lab, saying she spends too much time at work and not enough time taking care of him. He gets all angry and starts attacking her. Of course, right in the middle of the argument, old doctor superman shows up and saves her. He makes short work of the husband and the two follow it all up with more slow, drawn-out intercourse. There was a bunch more crap in there, too, but it pretty much ends up with the only option being that the woman takes the serum as well so that she can restrain the doctor when he gets into fits and vice-versa. Of course, the serum causes them both to have perfect bodies that are optimized for slow, drawn out sexual intercourse with multiple mind-shattering orgasms for both parties. They have to spend the rest of their lives together in seclusion but it’s ok because love has saved them both and besides, there is always going to be lots of slow, drawn out sex to whittle away the lonely nights in that shatter-proof log cabin. I guess they end up having goddamn superhuman kids or something and everyone’s a genius and devastatingly good-looking. It was the biggest pile of bullshit you ever heard.

        The worst thing was, that lady probably believed that men like that existed and people had those kinds of romances. You just know the more pathetic the story was the more she would love it. You’d think she’d believe that crap because she was an optimistic romantic, but sitting there looking at her husband you could tell it was because she was incredibly lonely inside and needed to believe in something. The guy seemed to be interested in everything but his wife. It was as if he was trying to consciously ignore her. Even the goddamn waiters with their towels were more interesting. He kept calling them over for some reason or another, half the time interrupting his wife in mid-sentence. You could tell the woman felt unappreciated and lonely. It’s sad as hell when you think about it.

        I started to think about romantic relationships and those books and what Jane and I used to say about them. I don’t think I could ever have a relationship like that. I really couldn’t. I really don’t think those swept-away romances are real. To have a real relationship you have to get to know someone and argue with them and get annoyed by their bad habits and all that stuff. That’s the trouble. It can’t be all that idealistic perfection crap. When Jane and I were together we used to argue all the time - about me being lazy or her being bossy, about where to go dancing, about her past choice of boyfriends with their staged doubles tennis matches; loads of stuff. Sometimes I hated being in a relationship with her. Sometimes I’d come home after arguing with her and just lie on my bed running the whole dialogue through my head - what I wanted to say to her and what she would say back. It would drive me half crazy. Later, when we would see each other again I’d never say any of the stuff I had wanted to and it always made me feel angry. All I’d do is apologize and we’d be all friendly again. It was pretty frustrating sometimes. If I had to tell her exactly how I felt I wouldn’t even know what to say. It would probably come out wrong anyway and that would lead to a whole new argument. It was confusing and kind of awkward. I sure as hell wasn’t a gorgeous, superhuman doctor giving it to Jane at every chance, her only concern between the slow, drawn-out sex finding an anti-serum.

        I remember once feeling helpless and confused about some situation between Jane and myself. I was lying on my bed thinking it all over when she came in and dropped off a book of poetry. It was Yeats or something. Some Irish guy, anyway. I started reading that book right away and got really into it. Sorrow of Love and all that. I think I must have lain there for about fifty hours and didn’t stop reading until I was finished. It was the perfect companion to my aching heart. I had found an explanation, a kindred spirit in those words. If nothing else, the poetry affirmed my belonging to some sort of collective. It described the way I suppose we all feel at some point. I know what the right words were, I just couldn’t conjure them up in my own head. It was comforting to have them spelled out for me, but at the same time I felt frustrated that I couldn’t attain that level of expression. The emotions in me were like ghosts that floated around a deserted cemetery - desperate to be noticed by their loved ones but impossibly transparent.

        Man, I tell you, I wish I hadn’t picked that spot to meet old Dave. Just sitting there looking around the place made me want to get up and run out. The Gladstone is one of those places that is supposed to be real fashionable and tasteful, but you can tell how insecure everybody there is. They’re always changing the look of the place, decorating it in the style of the season or some crap like that. They treat the walls like they were clothing that you can change almost every day. I’m sure there’s a million coats of paint on those walls in every colour detectable to the human eye. I bet the place was about sixteen times bigger before they started with all the paint. And the furniture, too! Boy that was like a game of musical chairs, they pulled things out of there so fast. Louis XVI, Art Deco, Chippendale, some sort of modern crap. It was all changing so fast that you could barely keep up with the names. All that just to stay trendy. What a waste! Why can’t places just find something nice and pleasant and stick with it? That would be more genuine than all this changing over of everything. I half imagined one day to walk in there and land right in the middle of an African safari or something like that. But the worst part of it all was how people responded to it. They were always saying things like "Oh, how lovely! Green really is in this fall..." or "I do love these carved wooden columns - they just have so much style". Style my ass.

        Dave Grecko. I can’t believe I was sitting there in the pathetic Gladstone Hotel waiting for Dave „colt" Grecko. He was probably the craziest bastard I ever knew. The only time he was ever sober was during classes at school and even then it was rare. He could drink a lot and always did, too. He’d always get drunk and tell you these crazy stories about teachers having affairs. It was always the teachers doing it in the goddamn broom closet or something. And there’d inevitably be students involved, too. Old Dave would get plastered and then start saying things like "you know Sara Lee? She gives it to Mr. Burnley every Thursday after swimming practice." You’d always say, "Come on, Grecko, that’s a pile of bullshit" but he’d start slurring a reply.

        "It’s true. Right in the change room. She just kicks off that swim costume and he gives it to her right there in the showers. Boom! Boom! She still smells of chlorine, that turns him on, that chlorine girl smell." He would always say boom, boom after he described someone having sex. It was so juvenile, but sometimes made you laugh. Especially when he slurred boom, boom so it came out more like bam, bam or something similar. Sometimes when he was really drunk he had female classmates of ours having orgies with the entire teaching staff. He really had an active imagination. It made you wonder what he thought about while sitting in Madame Durand’s French class.

        When old Dave Grecko came through the door, I barely recognized him. He had gained about a hundred pounds and was wearing a really conservative suit. He looked like some sort of struggling insurance salesman or something. He came over and sat down, his bulk straining the chair. I asked him if he wanted a drink but he waved it off with a bit of an annoyed look. It really wasn’t like the old Dave Grecko I knew.

        "Don’t you wanna try one of those things we used to call milkshakes? You know the brandy thing-a-ma-jigs?" I asked him. "You know those drinks we used to mix at your dad’s place with the nutmeg and all. They are pretty good here..."

        "Save it, Ritchie. I don’t drink anymore." That was a real shock. It really was.

        "No shit!" I said. "You’re the last person I thought I’d hear say that."

        "I don’t like cursing, either, Ritchie."

        "No shit!"

        "I’m serious." He really was. I could tell.

        "You want a cigarette, then?"

        "No, not at all. Just an orange juice or something." A goddamn orange juice! This wasn’t going to be fun. I started to regret inviting him. I wondered why I always regret the things I do. Just once I would like to not regret one of the ideas I have. I think Dave wasn’t too thrilled about meeting me, either.

        "So you don’t drink anymore and you won’t smoke? What do you do for fun, man? I hope you are at least getting laid. Some hot thing from school. Remember Sara-Lee?"

        "Do you have to be so vulgar, Ritchie?" He said.

        "Could we talk about something more meaningful?"

        "Like what?"

        "Ritchie, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and saviour?"

        "Oh for fuck’s sake!"

        "I told you about cursing!" Suddenly it all made sense. Grecko was a goddamn born again.  I couldn’t believe it.

        "Well, I read the Bible last night." I said. It wasn’t even a lie, either. I really did. Well, the second part at least.

        "That’s great Ritchie, that really is; and what did you think of it all?"

        "I dunno", I said. "I like Jesus and all but a lot of it doesn’t make any sense." At that remark old Dave seemed to get a bit flustered. His chubby face flushed red and he began to squirm in his chair.

        "Doesn’t make sense?" He said. "How could you possibly say that? It is the handbook for our existence. It makes perfect sense. Perfect."

        "Well, for example" I replied, "remember that part where everyone is selling their fields or whatever and giving their money to the apostles?"

        "Yes, of course, Ritchie. You are talking about Acts of the Apostles."

        "Well, there was one guy who sold his field but only gave a part of the money and saved the rest. He ended up being struck dead and his wife, too."

        "Yes, so what’s your question?"

        "Well... why?"

        "Because he was trying to deceive God."

        "Yeah, but I mean, he did give something. A lot of people gave nothing at all and they and their wives didn’t get struck down dead. I mean, he did sell his field and all."

        "But it was his intentions that were evil and God can see into the hearts of all men and read their true intentions. He did it with self-glorification in his mind. He was a sinner." You could see that old Dave was getting excited that someone actually wanted to talk about the Bible with him.

        "Ok, ok. But then take that Saul of Tarsus guy..."

        "St. Paul."

        "Yeah, well he was trying to bring down the Apostles and the church - wrecking their work every chance he got. He was a real pain in the ass but then God chose him to be a messenger or something."

        "So, what is your problem?"

        "I just don’t get why the guy who keeps some money from the sale of his very own land is struck dead along with his wife and Saul gets turned into a goddamn Saint!"
        "Please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain." He was pretty sore about that - you could tell.

        "Ok, sorry, but how do you explain that? I mean the poor guy gave something. He helped out."

        "Like I said, it’s got to do with intention." He was starting to get all self-important, like he was a goddamn authority on this stuff. Last time I saw him he was pissing on a cactus for Christ’s sake! "Saul was at least honest. He had an honest heart. He wasn’t trying to deceive the Lord."

        "But he was trying to discredit him."

        "Jesus himself said that he surrounded himself with sinners because they were the ones who needed to be saved."

        "But the guy with the field was a sinner, too. Why couldn’t he be saved? Or at least his poor wife that didn’t do anything."

        "He was unrepentant and his wife revealed her deception to Peter when he asked without asking for forgiveness. Only those willing to ask forgiveness for their sins are worthy of the kingdom of God."

        "How do you know? How do you know he wouldn’t repent? They fell down and expired pretty quickly without having a chance to explain. Maybe they kept some of the money because their kids were hungry and they were planning on buying some food. I mean, you have to give them a chance to explain."

        "Oh, Ritchie. There’s so much you don’t understand. Perhaps you should come by the church sometime and you can have all your questions answered." That’s the trouble with these born-again types, they never want to discuss anything really serious with you and they always deny there’s anything contradictory or unjust in the Bible. It’s all perfect and they will always twist things around to make it perfect if it doesn’t seem perfect. Sometimes it’s a real pain in the ass. That poor guy and his wife - selling land and generously giving some of the proceeds to the church just to be struck down dead. What a load of crap! Everybody selling land nowadays is keeping all of the profits and not being instantly struck down dead. You don’t see any lightning bolts near that Getty fella.

        I decided to try and change the subject. That’s pretty hard with these born-again types when they get going but you can do it. You really can. You just have to keep at it. Be persistent. He was starting to annoy me anyway, so I figured I’d have a little fun.

        "I dunno", I said. "I’m kind of a busy guy these days."

        "Nothing is more important than your soul, Ritchie. What could possibly be more important than eternal life? You will have all the time in the world when you are in the kingdom of God eternally."

        "Well...“ I paused looking all thoughtful and intellectual-like. "French babes."

        "Excuse me?"

        "Getting laid. You getting any these days, Davey? I’m in to Europeans at the moment." I figured I’d really have a little fun trying to resurrect old boom-boom Dave.

        "Listen, Ritchie - if you’re going to be vulgar and offensive I can leave right now."

        "All right, all right." I said. "No Problem." You could tell he was getting pretty upset with me. "I met a girl today. I think I really like her."

        "You’re not obsessed with Jane Gallagher anymore, then?" His question kind of bothered me. I never really was obsessed with Jane. I mean, she was my girlfriend and all but I never really was obsessed with her.

        "I never really was obsessed with Jane", I said. „I mean she was my girlfriend and all, but..."

        "You were pretty obsessed. Always jealous of those guys she would be with. Who was that tennis pro? Johnny Brown?"

        "Jason. He was a hot-shot amateur. Never went professional. Was a professional asshole, though".

        "I told you about cursing."

        "Sorry, but he was."

        "Everybody thought you were obsessed with her. It was kind of creepy sometimes. How you used to read poetry to her and stuff." Man, old Grecko was beginning to become a real pain in the ass.

        "That’s not true, Dave. You know it. I think you are just jealous."

        "Oh come on! Me jealous of you? I feel sorry for you, Ritchie. You are a lost sheep." Man, those born-agains could be annoying. I didn’t say anything for a while after that. I was afraid he would start in on that Jesus stuff again and I would really get annoyed. Of course he would, anyway. I began to realize it was the only reason he agreed to meet me. I was starting to regret calling him. That goddamn number - "COLT"; 2658 - what a stupid number. I was hoping that if I just stayed quiet for a while he would drop the whole Jane conversation. It was really bothering the hell out of me, especially seeing as the whole reason I called him was to get her off my mind.

        I ordered another drink from the waiter and playfully teased Dave about having one - "just for old time’s sake", which he didn’t find too funny. It seemed like he didn’t find anything funny anymore. I couldn’t believe it, this was the guy who found lighting his pubic hair on fire funny. As I sat there drinking, he kept going on about how I was on a path to self-destruction and I needed to see the light - all that crap. That’s a thing, too, about these born-again types. They are always people who used to get plastered and piss on cactuses and light their pubes on fire and stuff like that and assume that you are as bad as they were. Everybody is a godddamn reject. I mean, Dave was a drunken madman before he found "the way" and now assumes that everybody is foaming at the mouth like he was only a year or so before. I’m nowhere near as mad as he was. It’s enough to drive you goddamn crazy.

        "You know what’s on my mind, right now? What’s really important to me at this point in my life?" I interrupted him in one of his speeches.

        "What?" He sighed reluctantly.

        "French babes!"

        "Oh, I don’t believe this." He groaned.

        "Remember our French teacher, Madame Durand?" I pressed on.

        "Where is this going, Ritchie?"

        "Remember that you used to say that French women were the most oversexed girls on the planet?" I was being a bit confrontational, hoping to stir some memories of the old Dave, trying to irritate him as much as he was irritating me with his born-again crap. Back in school he always used to go on about how French women had the strongest sex drives in the world and that Madame Durand probably gave it to practically every guy and half the girls in the school.

        "I used to say a lot of stupid things, Ritchie. My faith has revealed that to me. Revealed my former sins."

        "Yeah, ok, but did you ever give it to her?"

        "Who?"

        "Madame Durand."

        "Of course not. Don’t be stupid. You know, I’m finding this conversation quite offensive."

        "Boy, I would have sure liked to have given it to her. She was damn sexy. Remember she always used to wear those leather mini-skirts and stockings. That was damn hot. I bet she smelled of chlorine after being in the swimming pool, too." I wasn’t going to stop with my juvenile conversation.

        "Please, can we stop with this juvenile conversation?"

        "What? I find it quite interesting. Old Madame Durand. Remember you said once that you heard she pissed on Jenny Styles in the showers after gym class then made her do oral sex on her, all the time still wearing one of those sexy leather mini-skirts? Was that true, by the way?"

        "Look, I think I should get going."

        "It could be true. I read somewhere French girls were into urinating on each other. It is totally normal in Europe. I think it was in a magazine my brother had..." Boy, with that I thought his head was going to explode he was so irritated. He didn’t even want to counter with some Jesus / sinner stuff. I guess he thought I was a lost cause. It was probably the lesbian piss fantasy. That will do it every time. If there’s one thing that will do it every time with these born-agains it’s a lesbian piss fantasy.

        "Ok, ok." I said. „No more sex-talk and no more profanities" I wanted him to stay until I had at least finished my drink. There was another long silence as both of us couldn’t think of anything to say. It was pretty uncomfortable. Finally, I spoke up.

        "You know what drives me crazy?" I said.

        "I couldn’t possibly imagine.

        "Photography."

        "How does photography possibly drive you crazy?" I could tell he was really disinterested in the sarcastic way he feigned interest. He had a really bored tone in his voice. I don’t think he really wanted to know how or why photography drove me crazy but I was going to tell him anyway, regardless.

        "Well, you go out these days and it seems that everybody has a camera thanks to these goddamn brownies or whatever they are called. They’re everywhere now. Everyone is a goddamn professional photographer."

        "Hey, I warned you about language like that."

        "Sorry, sorry - force of habit. What I was saying was, that everyone walks around with a camera glued to their face whenever they are at some famous sight."

        "So?"

        "Well, it’s like they never see the place except through a lens. They couldn’t care less about the place as long as they get a picture to take with them."

        "So, what’s so bad about that? People like to have pictures, mementos."

        "Well, they don’t ever really experience the place. They don’t stop to take it all in and absorb the atmosphere. They miss out on it because all they care about is getting the right snapshot so that they can say they’ve been there and take the proof home."

        "I don’t think it’s all that bad..."

        "It is! It is, though. It’s an extension of this whole goddamn stinking society where everything has to be reified and material and owned..."

        "Now, Ritchie..." Old Grecko was getting upset. I was getting pretty excited, too. Truth was, I was starting to get a bit drunk and was getting on a roll. You could tell it was making Dave a bit uncomfortable, my drunkenness and all.

        "People have to own everything these days. Everything has to be a commodity. It’s not enough to go to a place and have a nice time and take away some good memories; no, you have to freeze it in a picture so that you have something to show people, to own. Ownership of property is everything! Everything has to be made into a physical entity that can be fetishized otherwise it doesn’t have any worth. You should see how angry some people get when they can’t take a picture. It’s like it wasn’t even worth going to the place they are visiting. It just makes me crazy." I was really on a drunken roll. I hadn’t realized how much whiskey I had been quietly sipping as we talked. My voice was getting louder and people were beginning to notice.

        "I think you worry too much about other people, Ritchie. You need to relax and concern yourself with your own problems. Remember ’Romans, Chapter 14’: Therefore, let us stop passing judgement on one another." I knew it wouldn’t be long before it all came back to Jesus.

        "I just hate it when my experience of a place gets all ruined by a bunch of camera-toting tourists - ’you’re in my shot!’, ’could you move, please’, ’I need a minute, stand over there’ - all that crap. You can’t go anywhere without some David Bailey wannabe ruining your day."

        "I don’t think it’s that bad. I mean, take even the Golden Gate bridge..."

        "It is! It is that bad! It’s an example of what this country’s come to. Even our memories have to be packaged up and put on display like some goddamn souvenir. Nothing is safe from commoditization!"

        "I don’t even know if that’s a word, Ritchie."

        "It is! Well, it is now! A goddamn important one, too; you’ll see. Everything’s gonna be washing powder or a sport’s shoe for Christ’s sake..." Boy, I was really ranting.

        "Ok, that’s it Ritchie. I told you about language like that. I don’t mind sitting here having a nice conversation but when you start taking the Lord’s name in vain; well, I just can’t accept that.

        "Awww, I’m sorry Davey." I was starting to slur a bit.

        "I think I’d better go."

        "No, come on - I’ll be good. Just stay a little bit longer."

        "I have some stuff to do." He got up deliberately. He sounded pretty serious. "Here, I want to give you this", he said, pulling a small book out of his pocket. "Normally it costs twenty cents but I’ll give you this one for free. I think you might need it." He handed me a glossy paperback with a picture of some clouds on the front and the title, "The Light and the Way" and then he left, just like that.

        I stared at the cover of the book. Only twenty cents. They even sell religion in handy travel sizes now. "Well", I thought, "at least the packaging is nice."

        After old Dave Grecko left I kept sitting there ordering drinks. I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with the rest of the evening, but getting drunk seemed to be an important part of the plan. Later on more and more people started coming in to have dinner and drinks. This one real good-looking brunette came in and sat down at the table beside mine. I was pretty drunk at that point and started making eyes at her. I always do crazy stuff like that when I get pretty drunk. She ended up changing tables and sitting far away so that I couldn’t see her anymore. I don’t really know if it was on account of me that she moved but it probably was. I would have probably moved as well if I had been giving me the eye, all drunk as I was.

        I must have sat at the Gladstone for a good two more hours ordering drinks and getting properly inebriated after Dave left. I could barely stand up when I finally wanted to. I was pretty smart, though. I sat there quietly enjoying my drinks without bringing too much attention to myself. They’ll throw you out of the Gladstone if they think you are too drunk. Especially if you look pretty young. They really will. I’m not kidding.

        Finally, I decided it was getting too late to sit around by myself in that awful place anymore so I paid my check and got up to leave. I was getting pretty depressed on account of the alcohol and the loneliness and all, so I wanted to go somewhere a bit more lively. Somewhere where I might get to interact with other human beings. I was gonna head out to the mission to a jazz club or something, but on the way I decided to stop off at a phone booth and give someone a call. I really felt like talking, even though the call to Dave Grecko earlier hadn’t brought much pleasure to my evening, but it was only on account of his COLT telephone number that I even gave him a thought in the first place. Sometimes I get in the mood where I just want to talk someone’s head off and that’s what I felt like right now. Usually I felt like that when I was really drunk. And if I’m feeling that way and the only number I can remember is old Dave’s number on account of that COLT thing, then I would end up having conversations like the one I just had.

        I got inside a phone booth and started looking for change. I couldn’t seem to navigate my pockets well enough to come up with the correct amount and started getting frustrated. I must have looked like a real crazy bastard cursing away in that booth whilst rummaging through my pockets. I wasn’t too stable on my feet, either. I kept losing my balance and falling against the inside of the booth. Luckily, it was small enough that it kept me standing.

        I finally found my change and managed to get it into the machine somehow. I really didn’t know who to call at first and I had no number other than "COLT" saved in my head, causing me to stand there so long that the machine spit the change back out. It fell onto the ground which made it extremely difficult to retrieve in my condition. I knelt down, wavering in my stupor, and managed to focus my blurry eyes onto the coins lying there in the dampness. My fingers fumbled around trying to pick up the thin, flat discs as my head spun in its drunkenness. When I finally surfaced with my change I thought it best to figure out who I was going to call before I went through the same process all over again.

        I couldn’t remember any numbers off the top of my head, so I had to resort to fishing out the number of the girl the taxi driver had given me the day before. I wasn’t too crazy about calling her but there really was no one else. So I pulled the crumpled piece of paper out of my wallet and started dialling.

        "Hello, is Lorraine there?" I said once the phone picked up. I was having trouble gauging the volume of my own voice. I hoped she wouldn’t recognize me from the day before.

        "Who is this?" A snappy voice answered back on the other end.

        "This is Richard. My friends call me Ritchie. What are you up to right now?"

        "Who is this?"

        “I got your number from Tony. Tony told me to call you.”

        “Yeah, I gathered that. Doesn’t tell me who you are though.”

        "Richard. Ritchie. I was just at the Gladstone."

        "Are you drunk?"

        "No, I’m not drunk."

        "You sound drunk. You’re slurring your words."

        "I’m recovering from a stroke. Listen, you wanna go out later?"

        "Stop shouting. You know, you really sound pretty drunk. I don’t go out with drunkards."

        "I told you I had a stroke. So, whaddya say? Wanna go out dancing?"
        "Listen, that’s not funny. I don’t like that kind of humour and I don’t like drunkards. Always so violent and sloppy.” Boy, did this girl and I really have a communication problem.

        "Hey, do you own a camera?"

        "I’m not into funny stuff like that, so you can cut it out right now."

        "No, no, I didn’t mean it like that. I just wondered if you owned a camera. If you were into the commodit.. commo.. commod.. itiza... tion of experience. God, I hate cameras."

        "Huh, the what?"

        “Comedy… Comedy...ization. Commoditization”

        “Is that even a word?”

        "No, I don’t think so. Never mind."

        "Look, maybe you should just go to bed and get some sleep."

        "It’s early. We should go out dancing. You like to dance?"

        "Yeah, I like to dance. But not with drunkards, ok?"

        "Where are you? I can pick you up. We can go out dancing."

        "I dunno. You better sober up a bit if we are gonna go out."

        "Great. We’re gonna go out, then. Go dancing. I know a great place with a really hot band."

        "I didn’t agree yet. Listen, you better not show up here drunk."

        "I’m sober as a priest, really."

        "Yeah - an Irish catholic priest."

        "Hey, that’s prejudiced. Listen, you ever think about ghosts?"

        "What?"

        "Never mind. So you really wanna go out dancing with me?"

        "Hmmm, yeah, ok. I don’t have any other work tonight. Why don’t you come by in about two hours? I’ll be ready then. And a night of dancing with me is gonna cost you fifty bucks. I dunno if Tony told you that."

        "Fifty bucks? Ok, alright I can handle that. What’s your address?"

        "222 Ellis Street. That’s at Mason. Don’t be late and don’t be drunk."

        “Ok, great 22222 Elvis Street. Hey, is Lorraine a French name?”

        “It’s 222 Ellis and, yeah, Lorraine is a French name.”

        “Are you French? Do you know Madame Durant? Is it true about her and Jenny Styles?”

        “Do I sound French? Look, you better sober up and have fifty bucks or I’m sending you straight back home to your parents.”

        “Ok, ok. Fifty Bucks. See you in two hours.”

        Then she hung up on me and like that I had a date for the evening. I wasn’t really sure what had just happened and I wasn’t honestly feeling so crazy about meeting old Lorraine, but I guess that is what was going to happen, regardless. I still couldn’t get a goddamn conversation out of anybody. That’s the problem when you’re drunk - you want to talk with everybody but no one wants to talk with you except for other drunks. Perhaps I need to go to a real drinker’s bar or something. Somewhere where I could find some kindred spirits. “Spirits” being the most important part of the kindredness.

        I headed back into the Gladstone because I really didn’t know what else to do. I was pretty drunk, so I was lucky they didn’t throw me out right away. I was staggering around like a boxer out on his feet. I managed to sit back down at the table I was at with old Dave before I left to call Lorraine. The seat still seemed pretty warm. It felt pretty comfortable after the dampness of the telephone box floor. I sat there for a while, waiting for a waiter to come by but they all seemed to be too busy now to bother about me. I guess the tables of googley-eyed couples and obnoxiously boisterous businessmen were too important. It had really taken off there in the Gladstone in the last hour or so. The waiters weren’t standing around bored anymore with those ridiculous towels draped over their arms. They weren’t waiting for anyone anymore, they were waiting on. I suppose that’s why they are called waiters - because they are waiting all the time, either for or on. Your level of boredom as a waiter depends on your preposition. After a few more minutes of waiting to be waited on by a waiter I decided not to wait anymore and went to get a drink directly from the bar. It seemed like the only way I was gonna get served in this packed place.

        Getting to the bar turned out to be a bigger ordeal than I had imagined. The crowds of people and inconveniently placed tables coupled with my current level of intoxication proved to be quite a challenge. It was like a military obstacle course or a sea strewn with all manner of debris that I was trying to swim through whilst my head was itself swimming in an intoxicated haze. The buzzing background of the Gladstone patronage also had a disorienting effect on my senses and I felt like I was hovering through a maze of clinks, chuckles and cheers. One foot in front of the other is all I could keep saying to myself as I traversed the gastronomic battlefield. I bumped my right hip into a table and the sharp and angry, "hey, buddy, watch it!" that shot out from over my shoulder, evinced that I had probably spilled a drink or two. That strange delayed pain that you always seem to get when you bump a boney part of your body into something hard began to radiate from my hip down my leg, all the more slower, probably, because of the dulling effects of the alcohol now fairly saturated in my bloodstream.

        Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. I was a little surprised because I was so focused on trying to navigate the crowd of people and was concentrating more on the radiating pain coming from my hip bone. It was one of those jolt experiences you have when some phantom that you haven`t noticed suddenly looms out of nowhere and grabs you physically. I turned to see who it was and was greeted by the patronizing, pencil mustache of a waiter who apparently wasn`t waiting on or for anything, except perhaps that I remove myself from the premises.

        "Hey, buddy, I think you have had enough for tonight. How about you get home?" He seemed at least to be polite about it.

        "I’m okright" I hated it when synonyms sprang into my head at the same time.

        "Let’s go outside and hail you a cab. I think that will be best for everybody, ok?"

        "A cab? How late is it? I gotta kill two hours"

        "Well, you can kill those two hours somewhere else. Come on, let’s go" With that the waiter started pushing me through the crowd towards the door. I protested, of course, the whole time - but it was fairly weak and entirely futile. I didn’t want to get angry. I hated angry drunks. I was at least a compliant drunk. The worst part of the whole ordeal were the faces of the people as I went by and the comments of "...some people and their drink..." "...it’s so early, really, already..." "...look at the state of the young people today..." and the like. I didn’t know whether to be embarrassed or pissed off at them; but, like I said, I wasn’t going to slip into angry drunk mode. That would be really embarrassing.

        We got to the door and the waiter asked me if I had a jacket with me when I came. I told him I did and he politely asked the coat-check for me and managed to get my coat on me in my now fairly sloppily intoxicated state. He walked me to the curb and hailed a cab with one of those cab-hailing gestures that only doormen or, perhaps waiters, can do.

        "Get this guy home, he’ll let you know where." I heard him say before bundling me headfirst into the cab like you see police do with criminals in those detective films. I was suddenly sitting up in the back of a leather-smelling taxi. It was apparently quite new, or at least the leather seats were. I started to feel the smooth, cold material with the palms of my hands. Suddenly I began to think of Madame Durant and her miniskirts.

        "So, where are we going?" Asked the voice in front of me, separated by the ubiquitous front-seat headrest and a bit of plexi-glass.

        "Errr, I dunno" I really didn’t. It had all happened too quickly.

        "Well, I gotta know where to drive ya. I can’t be sitting here all night. This is a no-park zone."

        "Hmmm, ok" I said and then took one of those deep breaths that only the pitifully drunk can take. A kind of accordion breath - in slow, out fast, wheezing like an old whisky pipe. I tried to remember the address that Lorraine had given me over the phone. I really should have written it down but I think in my current state that would have been too much of a task. Even finding a pen would have been too much.

        "Ok, wait, wait, I know... Ellis St. erm, I think, near Mason. 222?"

        "You asking me, or are you telling me?"

        "Telling, telling, definitely telling. Yep. 222 Ellis St. on the corner of Mason. That’s it my good man. Take me to Lorraine! Convey me to my French mistress!"

        "Ok, you got it. 222 Ellis St. to Lorraine I’m sure she is gonna be thrilled." He sarcastically fired back before pulling out and speeding off down the road.

        San Francisco’s streets in the back of an over-enthusiastic taxi when one is more than a little drunk are something I cannot recommend. The lights, hills and traffic combined to make an urban rollercoaster that took my stomach on a ride along my esophagus and had me more than a few times reaching for the door handle. I wasn’t sure how long I was going to make it. The taxi ride was becoming a form of torture, every second feeling as though I was on the edge of losing everything I had been imbibing the whole evening up to that point over the cold, new leather. I kind of wished old Pierre the waiter / bouncer had just thrown me out onto the street and let me walk my own comfortable, un-queasy way across the city. Why did he have to be so goddamn responsible and try and get me somewhere safe? Sometimes I hate it when people try and be all goddman responsible and get you somewhere safe, especially when you’re drunk and not up to a hellish taxi ride across some of the steepest, windiest streets in America. I suppose that’s his job, though. That and waiting on or for someone.

        After a few more minutes I couldn’t take it anymore, so I asked the taxi driver to pull over.

        "Hey, I don’t feel too good. Could you pull over and let me out here?"

        "What, here?"

        "Yes, here?"

        "In this neighbourhood? But what about 222 Ellis Street and Lorraine?"

        "I don’t care about 222 Ellis Street. I don’t care about Lorraine. I feel sick, let me out."

        "You feel sick? Like you’re going to throw up or somethin’? Not on this leather, buddy. These seats are new." I knew it. New!

        "Yeah, like throwing up. The seats are nice. Quality leather."

        "I know, I picked out the leather myself. Not cheap, though."

        "I bet - that’s why you should let me out. I don’t know how long I can hold out.

        "Ok, ok, just let me find a place I can pull over."

        "Ok, but quick." I could feel the bile and the vileness of the whiskies I had been tipping down all night trying to exit my body. My head began to spin as I tried to fight against the urge to purge my body of the excesses of the previous few hours. Just in that moment, the taxi pulled to a halt and the driver turned around, peering over the head-rest wall to let me know that I could get out.

        "Hey, but first I need my fare." I reached into my pockets and handed the man somewhere around the right amount of money that glared from the meter and then headed out of the taxi like I was being chased by wild animals. It was damp outside and the pavement was a bit slippery - not helping my orientation at all. Through the glimmering headlights of the passing cars that seemed to diffuse light through the cold, misty air I managed to spot an alleyway with a pair of large dumpsters at the entrance. I made as quick of a dash as I could for the giant green containers, weaving my way through unsuspecting passers-by as I did. In a demonstration of perfect timing I arrived behind the first dumpster just as my stomach decided to jettison the remaining alcohol that was slowly being absorbed into and poisoning my body. I was so glad in that moment that I had made it out of that taxi and off of those new, leather seats. They were really nice.

        It was a violent purge; but short, and immediately I began to feel better and the dizziness began to subside. I almost felt positively resilient. My thoughts of "Why did I drink so much and so fast? Oh, I’m going to regret this..." were slowly metamorphasizing into a braggadocio of "Where can I get another drink and perhaps a little adventure whilst I try and kill off two hours?" As I wiped my mouth and looked up across the street, my question was answered. Lo and behold I was standing right across from the dilapidated, yet homely facade of Vic’s Place.

        I made my way unsteadily, yet confidently across the street to the wooden green door leading into the very establishment where I had only very recently had my nose adjusted and began my drinking for the weekend. I tried the doorknob and the smooth, cold metal turned in my hand like a corner-man’s piece of steel that he used to bring down swelling. Inside it was quiet, but I still almost slipped in unnoticed. Almost.

        "Hey kid, we don’t... Jesus Christ! If it isn’t Rocky Graziano himself come to get his nose re-adjusted!" Vic beamed a big smile as he realized that I wasn’t just some college kid trying to find a place to get a cheap drink.

        "How’s it healing? You able to breathe properly yet?" I hadn’t really given it much thought but now that Vic mentioned it I had been breathing through my mouth the whole time. Perhaps that’s why it was always dry and I had to drink so much. Well, now it could be an excuse seeing as I thought of it.

        "No, I’ve been breathing through my mouth the whole time. Sure does make your mouth dry and gives you a raging thirst." I joked as I came towards the bar.

        "From the look of you, you haven’t been going thirsty. Where the hell have you been? Come, take a seat here at the bar. Milton’s in the back, he’ll be out soon." The thought of Milton made me think about my lost horn again; or, more specifically, my case. The one with all the signatures on it and that poem from Shawn.

        “I was at the Gladstone for a few drinks with some old friends from school."

        "The Gladstone? Why the hell you wanna go there? The drinks are watered down and the waiters stand there the whole goddamn night eyeballing you. No idea what they are waiting for."

        "Or perhaps on..."

        "What?"

        "Waiting on. Oh, never mind. How have you been? Say, could I get a drink?"

        "I dunno. Don’t you think you’ve had enough already?"

        "Oh give the boy a goddamn drink, Vic. He’s been through enough already and besides it helps the bloodstream and the healing process." I heard the unmistakable low, gravelly voice of Milton chime in from behind me. "And while you’re at it..."

        "Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll pour you a double"

        Vic set up two glasses in a way that only retired boxing-trainer-bartenders can do and poured in a sweet-smelling bourbon as Milton sidled up to me at the bar.

        "Guess you didn’t find your horn yet, did you?" The old man asked me with a concerned look.

        "No, I haven’t really been looking. Been up to other stuff." The truth was I hadn’t really thought too much about looking for my horn. I guess I was somehow subconsciously reserved to the fact that it was gone. Perhaps that’s why I was consciously missing Shawn so much.

        "What you been up to that is more important than that horn?" The question surprised me a little.

        "Lots of stuff. I met a girl. Was at the Gladstone..."

        "The Gladstone!"

         "Yeah, I already told him Milt." Vic interjected.

        "Well, I was just there to meet some friends and have a few drinks. I’m supposed to be meeting a girl in about an hour or so."

        "Oh really? Look here, Milt, old Rocky Graziano isn’t letting that nose stop him."

        "Where you s’posed to be meeting her then?" Milton asked me in a much queried way.

        "Ellis Street. She lives down there."

        "That’s not too far from here. What you doin’ later then?" I was surprised at the old man’s line of questioning, curious as to where he was going.

        "Not sure, why?"

        "There’s a session at a place I sometimes like to frequent that also isn’t too far from here. A nice circle of people. Good musicians. Perhaps you’d like to show me what you could have done with that horn if those two guys hadn’t have made off with it..."

        "I thought it was three guys?" I was pretty sure he had told me earlier in this very same bar that it was three guys that made off with my horn.

        "Two, three, I don’t remember. Fact of the matter is someone stole your horn and you gonna need a new one if you wanna sit in tonight."

        "Yeah, that’s my problem."

        "It ain’t a problem if you tell me you’re coming. I can see to that." It was an intriguing offer. I’d love to play with some guys to tell the truth and I was interested in finding out more about Milton and the kind of cats he played with. I was getting excited.

        "What time do you start?"

        "After midnight."

        "That’s late."

        "Does anything worthwhile start early?"

        "I dunno. But it doesn’t even start before midnight?"

        "People start showing up after midnight. When it starts can be anybody’s guess. Most of these guys play in famous bands and orchestras and come by to make serious music after their paying jobs are over. After the concert halls empty out." Wow this sounded really cool. I couldn’t believe that Milton was inviting me to play at a session like this without ever seeing me perform. He had only ever seen a horn in a case. It was an impressive horn.

        "An impressive case, too..." The words of the old man sent shivers down my spine. Did he just read my thoughts?

        "What?" I asked Milton, stunned.

        "What, what?" He calmly replied.

        "What did you just say?"

        "These cats come after they’ve played their concert hall and radio gigs"

        "No, after that - just now."

        "What?"

        "What did you just say, after that about the concert halls emptying out?"

        "Nothing. Did I say something, Vic?"
        "No, Milt. Nothing."

        "What, but... I...” I was confused. Did I dream a phantom voice? I was pretty drunk and hadn’t slept in ages. I suppose I could have kind of daydreamed it, but I was sure I heard he said it. Even sure of the way he said it. A bit sinister-like.

        "So you coming along, then?"

        "Err, yeah. Yes I am. Looking forward to it."

        "Good. Now let’s finish our drinks." And with that there was nothing more said of the incident.

        I managed to kill off the rest of the time I had before I was to meet Lorraine quite easily in Vic’s place. Vic was pretty lackadaisical about serving me and I must have had three or four more bourbons before I finally bid the two old men goodbye with a promise to Milton to see him later. There was something really curious about that guy. I couldn’t really pin it down. It was like he knew way too much and like he was watching me when I was looking away, but every time I turned to him he was just sat there, either peering into his drink or lecturing Vic on something or another. He had a strange, mystical quality to him. It wasn’t a sinister or dark quality but it wasn’t positive either. Just some sort of entirely neutral strangeness. An aura of peculiarity.

        Before I left, Vic gave me directions to 222 Ellis Street and assured me that it wasn’t more than ten minutes on foot. Of course, I was assuming that he meant ten minutes on a sober foot, so I left a bit more time in lieu of my current condition. As drunk as I was; however, I was feeling still much better than I was in the taxi with the new leather seats. I was getting pretty excited about meeting Lorraine, too. The alcohol had given me a bit of courage and I was getting more and more curious as to what she looked like.

        I made my way East along Turk street crossing over Van Ness Avenue. There was a crowd stopped at the intersection waiting for the lights to change. Red, bleeding lamps spewed their exposing glare onto the lingering, fragile faces that frowned cold behind the warm glow of fire-blazen eyes. The waiting was like a silent scream into the cold, damp air – a pleading call to the sentinels of flux. Eyebrows raised like bone fragments reaching into the sky; stretching taut, porcelain skin that played in the twilight. It was a mass of waiting pretension. Frozen, reified in a solid moment; clumping in the viscous pout of a disapproving frown. Those eyebrows – casting their gaze across the horizon of the pulsing street. A geometric grimace of lines gurning the blaring, taxi screams in a sympathetic noise-wave. Overtones etched into faces that charge against the wind.

        The light turned a hopeful green and the mass shambled across the street with myself in tow. Huddled, I passed by a gleaming red sign, my woolen coat prickling against the moist, cold air. The fibres erect like the searching ears of a faithful bloodhound deep in the hunt. Slumped over my ever-slumping shoulders like a hilltop, grey under the sadness of a churning winter cloud. Black and ominous. The damp, glistening of the street snaked its way under me like an ebony river. The dark, hard surface a mirror to the pulsing light of the crackling night air hovering above my feet. The avenue slid almost silently along the banks of this great, noisy estuary. Boat-cars shipping their human cargo along the thoroughfare, desperately hoping to reach their waiting destination on time. We can’t keep her waiting. Cocktail dress and sapphire gleaming armlet behind fleeting glass, passing by like a museum artefact at a school trip. Sitting behind a door in ever-jumping anticipation. Blonde, tussling curls framing that angelic face that can twist so devilishly when forsaken. Speeding along the arteries of this cholesterol clogged cityscape. Rumbling tires burning a smoking path in the damp, wretched night. She’s behind the door waiting with that red cocktail dress on. Theriac for all that gets you down. That gleaming sapphire armlet whispering so silently – did you buy it for her?

        The backs of the cars sped off and disappeared into the night; into soft stories of winding, meandering lives filled with ghosts in cocktail dresses. The air was buzzing with a tranquil energy. It felt as though the night was caressing my cheek, the moon smiling down on me with a gentle glimmer. I closed my eyes and raised my head up to the sky. I could feel the tingling behind my eyelids. I inhaled the cool air slowly through my nose and noticed how my lungs expanded with the energy that buzzed around me. I was a part of something much bigger than myself. The city-beat was pulsing in my ears and beseeching me to explore the unfolding night.

        I turned the corner of Mason Street and Market and headed north. The green signs hanging above the streets beckoned me like an old friend. In that moment I experienced a flashing sense of Déjà Vu. That sign. This moist, dense tarmac beneath my feet that somehow silently urged me on like an unseen spectre. It was all so familiar, this boulevard that reared up in front of me, whispering directions mutely into my fervent ear. The experience of being drawn by something, an invisible force, consumed my entire body. I suddenly became extremely curious as to where I was and how I got here, the last few minutes of urban abstraction bewildering my senses.

        My curiosity was about to be satisfied. There I was standing in front of the grey, unremarkable door with the number 222 in concrete above the frame.

        I could feel the vibrations coming from the door as we approached the club. It was a green door and seemed to glow lightly with a type of bioluminescence. A state probably generated by the muffled sounds of elation seeping through the paint-cracked wood that contained the celebrations within. The air had a strange electric feel that comes from pure anticipation - still, yet unsettled, like a giant reservoir of undulating potential energy. The damp pavement beneath my feet struck me as a benign conductor between my body and all the energy I was feeling bouncing around me. It was like waiting for a ceremony to begin. The preparation before the ritual itself. I took as step across the damp concrete below my feet and followed Milton to the threshold of the club. The threshold of the future.

        It was the simple turn of the hand of an old man, a pull and then a familiar creak that introduced me to the world that I had been waiting for all these years. A world that I somehow subconsciously knew existed although my own existence was so far removed from it. As soon as the door opened and the cavernous space beyond it was revealed, pulsating before me, I realized I was home. I could feel that this place was different. Different from all the other concert halls and bars and clubs I had ever been. The energy was honest; reserved yet massive in its power. A kind of supreme energy that knows its might but doesn’t need to either display or contain it. A natural energy. The energy of existence.

        The club was pretty full. I could mostly see just the backs of people’s heads, but the few faces that were turned towards me seemed relaxed and happy. Serene. As if they had no other place to be and didn’t care either way if they did. There was an ardor in the room that was unbridled yet sophisticated. Everyone seemed to understand the music. Oh, and that music! It reeled, it swirled and snaked about the room like a living entity, breathing and pumping with a rhythm that was purely primal. It was alive. Alive and prowling the space. A magical beast that lived in the room, filling the entire club with an enchanting presence.

        Like water flowing into a container, the music just washed over everything. It took on the shape of the entire space and reverberated off the walls. It was as if the molecules of all the matter in the room were humming to the groove of the band. And, of course, that was exactly what was happening. The oscillation of our atoms and the paths of their orbital electrons were being tuned by vibrating metal and pulsating strings; the wailing horns and thumping bass-beat of the contrabass and drums. Air being manipulated and sculpted into a powerful driving force; beguiled like light being seduced by an illusionist through prisms and mirrors. Like a magician harnessing the powers of the universe. Magic. That was it – it was magic, magic in its purest form and I was enchanted.

        We made our way through the bar like two explorers wading through a primordial swamp. All the while people were greeting Milton with smiles and handshakes and pats on the back.

        “Great to see you!”

        “So glad you came!”

        “I was hoping you’d be here!”

        The salutations were frequent and spirituous. It made me think to myself, “who is this guy?” It was a mystery to me. This club was a mystery to me. I thought I knew every place in the city. I thought I knew every face in the city. I thought I knew so much. What I didn’t know was how naiive and young I had been. How much I didn’t know. I then realized there is so much in the world that lives hidden, hidden from us perhaps for an entire lifetime. Like ghosts, ghosts that we never knew…

        As we neared the stage, a couple sitting at a table near the band got up and offered Milton and me their seats. They were so enthusiastic to see Milton and happy to give up their seats to him. I protested at first when the guy stood up and beckoned me to take his seat but Milton gave me one of those “shut up and be thankful” looks and the couple explained that they were leaving anyway soon. As they took their jackets from the backs of their chairs and slid them on before disappearing into the cold, still night outside, Milton and I sat at the table to soak up more of the magic that was jumping from the stage.

        The band was a classic quintet – Drums, Bass, Piano, Tenor Sax and Trumpet. They were playing hard bop with a groove that was out of this world. The music seemed to pop and crackle like a fire, it was so alive. The changes they were playing were an alchemical mix of modal jazz and standard progressions that had been morphed into something otherworldly. I sat there in awe next to Milton as each player took solos that subsequently and repeatedly blew my mind. I couldn’t begin to come to terms with the fact that I had previously no idea that these guys existed. How could all this have passed me by?

        “There’s so much beauty in this world that we can’t possible see it all. We can’t possibly even see a tiny trace of it.” Milton piped in, seemingly channeling my thoughts once again. “Most people look in the wrong places or don’t even open their eyes at all.” Had I been looking in the wrong places my whole life? Had my eyes been closed all this time? Evidently.

        The band took a break shortly after we sat down, much to my great disappointment. Milton ordered us two whiskeys as an eager-faced waiter came by and then we fell into a contented silence. I took the break in conversation and music to look around the room and check out the people there. It was a pretty well-mixed group. There were a lot of older guys hanging out who seemed to have an aura of cool wisdom about them. Members of Milton’s tribe, I supposed. There were also a lot of couples, too, and quite a few young people – all polo necks and shaggy hair, blinking positively bohemian into the space in front of them. I wondered how such a disparate mix of people found this place. I wondered how I had not managed to find this place. It irked me to think it had existed all this time without my knowledge.

        “Hey, what do you say we go and talk to the boys?” Milton’s rasping voice broke my train of thought.         

        “Sorry, I was daydreaming. What did you say?”

        “What do you say we go backstage and have a word with the boys?”

        “The band?”

        “Yeah, the band. Who else would I be talking about?”

        “I dunno”

        “You don’t know if you want to go backstage and talk to the band or you don’t know who the hell else I would be talking about?”

        “No. Yes. I mean, yes, of course. I’d love to go and chat with the band.”

        “Ok, so let’s not hang about. They only got about fifteen minutes before they have to go back up there.”

        Milton stood up and I followed him. It never really crossed my mind that we hadn’t yet received the drinks we had ordered. Through the crowd, I followed Milton until we got to the bar and, with a nod from Milton, we were ushered into a room directly behind the shelves of drinks. The room was small and seemed to serve as a storage room with laundered towels and empty cases of beer lying about. It must have previously been a kitchen, or someone had started to build a kitchen and decided to give up because there was a giant ventilator hood in the back of the room and a steel prep table standing in the middle. On the right was a couch which half of the band were squeezed onto, the rest were standing around with open bottles of beer in their hands.

        “Hey! Uncle Milty!” Exclaimed one of the musicians – the one I ascertained as the band leader. “Welcome to the lair of the misfits!” The smiling band leader strolled forward and gave Milton a warm hug.

        “Hello Carlton. You guys sound good tonight. Victor’s a little weak on the four and Tommy’s snare is a little too laid back for my taste but the groove is popping.”

        “You hear that fellas?” Carlton turned to the guys on the couch with a warm smile. “The guru has spoken. So, who have you brought along with you tonight, Milton?”

        Milton paused and gave me a “raised eyebrow” look. “This here, fellas, is gonna be one of the greats. Mark my words.”

        “Oh really? Well then, he better show us what he got.”

        “Oh he will. You boys better have something for him. There’s something in that troubled soul of his that is just dying to get out.”

        “Oh, I see. It’s like that. Well, we got something for him to speak with, don’t you worry about that!” I was astonished at the conversation that I had just witnessed. I was about to be even more astonished at what was to transpire.

        The drummer, whom I had just learned was called Tommy reached behind the couch and pulled out a long, black rectangular object. It was a horn case. Tommy reached over and took it from him and presented it to me. It was my horn case. My lost horn case. I was dumbstruck. I was having trouble comprehending what had just happened. I was having trouble comprehending the entire situation, actually. Milton had just brought me into a club where the best band I had ever heard but never heard of were playing, then I was ushered backstage behind the bar into a storage room where Milton, this strange guy I just met yesterday was telling the best musicians I had ever heard that I was going to “be one of the greats” and now, to top it all off, my lost case had miraculously appeared and I was to take the stage and play with these guys with my own horn. I was flabbergasted, to say the least.

        “Found it up on 6th Street at Ollie’s Pawn Shop. You were right about those vibes, Milton; couldn’t miss it.” I wasn’t really listening to the conversation anymore, I was left just staring blankly trying to comprehend what was happening.

        “Well, go on. Open it up. You’re gonna need a horn if you wanna sit in.” I looked up with a shocked expression on my face.

        “Sit in?” I asked, “Sit in where? Here?”

        “Yes, here. With Carlton and the boys. Or would you rather sit in somewhere else?” Milton replied.

        “But… But…” It was all moving too fast for me.

        “You sure about this guy, Milton?” Carlton asked the old man with a smile on his face.

        “I’m beginning to question my intuition myself.” Answered Milton.

        “Well, you better be right. That audience out there know their music. They definitely know…” Carlton trailed off seemingly lost in thought, then he clapped his hands, turned to the others and said: “It’s showtime!”

        I was nervous as I marched through the anticipation of the crowd. I could hear the low buzz of numerous conversations bouncing around the tables. The air was thick and hung with smoke that seemed to float like wispy ballerinas, undulating and disappearing like dancing ghosts. From the stage, I could see a collage of faces expectantly awaiting our arrival. I thought again about what Milton had said to Carlton, that I was going to be one of the greats. What did he mean by that? How could he know what lay in store for me? I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was in some kind of eerie fairytale where unknown jazz legends brought kids to play in a club with the best band of all time and I happened to be that kid.

        Before I knew it; however, I was holding my horn and prepping my lips to play. It was a familiar feeling and helped to calm my nerves and comfort me like an intimate ritual. As I was adjusting my mouth piece and making sure all the valves still worked and didn’t stick, Carlton leaned over my shoulder and whispered into my ear, “don’t worry about all this. It’ll make sense one day. We’re gonna play some fast, hard bop over standard changes with a few interesting substitutions. You’ll know what to do. How’s Honeysuckle Rose sound? Bird played Scrapple from the Apple over those changes. You cool with that?”

        “Yeah, that’s cool. Which key?”

        “F Major like the original, but we’re gonna cycle through the fifths.”

        “Got you.”

        “I hope so, man. I hope so.” Carlton’s eyes gleamed as he receded from me to take his place at the front of the stage.

        “Ladies and gentlemen!” Boomed Carlton in a surprisingly deep baritone voice. “Welcome back to our second set. Now, as all of you know, in the second set we always have a guest sitting in. Tonight’s guest is very special, very special indeed…” Carlton glanced over to Milton, now sitting in the front row. Milton proceeded to nod very slowly with a sly smile on his face. “So, without further ado… Tommy, would you please do the honours?” And with that the drummer counted the band in and a fast, bopping groove racing along at about two hundred beats a minute jumped from the stage.

        I began by playing along in the section, playing the theme with the sax player as the bassist and the pianist sculpted out the harmonic texture. After the first 32 bars the sax player took a solo and we all lay back instinctively to let him go. The first solo in “Scrapple” is short, so we came quickly back in with the theme. Then the sax player took a longer solo, followed by Carlton on his trumpet. Man, was he good. I was feeling pretty intimidated by his playing but tried to just enjoy what he was doing without thinking too much. My mind was racing with those two hundred beats a minute and I could feel the palms of my hands beginning to sweat.

        Carlton finished his solo to enthusiastic applause and then, after a small drum fill, it was time for the pianist, followed by a lovely, elastic bass solo that seemed to snap the midnight air with shots of from the drumkit in the background, emphasizing the downbeat. I knew it wouldn’t be long before I was up. I tried to relax and feel the pulse as we weaved our way back into the main theme of the head. It was a meditative trick I had learned from playing dozens of gigs as a teenager, completely nervous and anxious. The pulse centered you and calmed your thoughts as you focussed on the theme like a yogic mantra. It was like a heartbeat, like the rising and falling of a heaving chest breathing deeply. You had to focus on the centre, on that one pumping mass of air that unified your energy.

        The bars were counting down at a rapid pace. It was like falling from the sky and seeing the ground come up towards you. It was now only a matter of seconds before the theme would be over and I would be thrust into the limelight and have to show the crowd and these amazing musicians what I’d got, who I was. My hands began to sweat even more and I could feel the blood in my temples pulsing faster. I had to focus, focus on the pulse, on the beat. Find the pocket, get into the groove. There was only the rhythm remaining, that primeval throb of reverberating air that blistered through the room and united us all in a metronomic tempo. A heartbeat. A collective heartbeat. It was like the entire room and all those in it were one organism, swaying to the same pulse.

The sweat was now pouring from me. The time had come. It was my solo. I could feel the heat like a wave pulsing and pushing to the rhythm. The bodies in front of me were undulating like a giant sea. A sea of voices. Calling. Calling for redemption. Calling for freedom, begging to be set free. I blew and blew and the sea rose, the voices grew like deafening surf. Everything got bigger around me. I felt like I was floating. There was no stage, no light, just space. Space and energy. I was taking us away. I was the shaman floating above all the dimensions of existence, melding time with space. I was searching, swaying in blackness - searching for the last phrase. That phrase that would complete the night. Swaying, pulsing, searching, everything in front of me. I blew further, deeper into the abyss, into that space where thoughts and ideas reside, searching for the perfect moment - that phrase, the last piece of the puzzle. That meaning that would ignite the air and send us all over the top. That phrase that would make the room explode in a wave of orgasms and fracture the very earth we stood on. That Phrase. That phrase that would channel the darkness. Empty the nothingness. That Phrase. That phrase that would peel back the skin of time and cleanse us of all our fears. That phrase that would unleash the inferno and burn away all thought. That phrase that would end the search and lower us onto the shores of ecstasy. I blew and blew - faster, louder, stronger. Searching. That phrase was in my head, tumbling like a fallen idol. That phrase was there, on the top of my lungs, at the tip of my tongue, tempting my lips. Dancing like a seductress. A sultry idea. I blew and blew. That phrase. It was close, nearly complete. Buzzing on my lips. Achingly close to the cold metal of my vibrating horn, twisting in despair. But I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t quite find it. Searching. Playing. Playing in the dark. The crowd swaying, calling. Ghosts dancing in the fractured night. I couldn’t get there. They teased me. Coaxed me. So close. So near. It’s here. That phrase. Play it. I searched my past. I searched with Miles and Coltrane. They must have that phrase. Play it. Goddamn it - play it! Bring down the kingdom. Play it. Faster. Hotter. The night burned like an exploding sun. The sea churned and boiled. The voices grew and grew. Hysterical. It’s here, it’s here. Play it. Play it. Play it.

        Suddenly my eyes popped open and I blew from the bottom of my soul... The phrase... The phrase... I looked out into the night with the wide eyed mania of a possessed lunatic and it all became clear - I blew and blew and blew exactly what I wanted to say. It came out all in one magnificent, exploding wall of sound, shattering the air and pouring onto the sweating, churning mass waiting below with shining eyes: "Blurry eyes, empty skies. Here’s to the faces in the front row and the ghosts we’ll never know."

Part 2: Second Ending - The Man

      He was a curious man - long grey beard, a long trench coat that looked like the kind those perverts always wore in comedy clips where they flashed all manner of people in the park. He had a flat cap on that reminded me of one my grandfather used to wear and his strangely translucent eyes gave him a kind of wise look, like he could be some sort of oracle. The oracle of Golden Gate Park perhaps. He really was quite intriguing despite all his shabbiness. That’s one thing I’ve found - that when you really look at someone and try and take in their appearance on a more than glancing level, you often find that they look really interesting. There’s usually decades of stories that caused them to look exactly the way that they do regardless of what that look is.

     I was in the park reeling after that incredible experience with Milton and the boys the night before. I hadn’t slept a wink - couldn’t sleep. Everything was just buzzing and alive, not only in me but all around me. There was an energy that had been channeled and seemed to remain, or perhaps I just noticed this universal energy for the first time. My mind had been opened up and I was channeling. I was exhausted but vibrant and looking forward to anything that would happen in the future. The future just seemed to be a magical place now, a place with no boundaries and limits. I had checked out of the hotel and just left everything there, oblivious to the material worth of most of my possessions. All I had with me was my horn in the case and that Carla Bley album under my arm, which I was planning on listening to somewhere at some time.

     The old guy noticed me looking at him, threw a glance in my direction and then suddenly opened his grey, bearded mouth. "Carla Bey, huh? That’s some pretty heavy art you’ve got under your arm there son." I was astonished at first, not only at the eloquent manner of his speech, but also that he knew of the record that I was carrying. Barely anybody outside of the Jazz world knew about that record.

        "You know this record?" I replied somewhat curiously but also with a taint of embarrassment at the fact that it was obvious he knew the record.

        "Isn’t it obvious I know that record, son? Come on, now, you’ve got to have better questions than that in you. What would you like to ask the old ’Oracle of Golden Gate Park’?" I was dumbstruck by the statement - had he read my thoughts? What was going on? I couldn’t really understand it; perhaps I hadn’t thought of that name, perhaps he mentioned it first and I thought I had thought of it - like Deja-vu or something.

        "Take a seat if you like. I’m sure a kid with ’Elevator’ under his arm has more to say than most of the drugged-up young people that prance about this place like idiots." His use of the word idiot was more sensitive and compassionate than you could imagine you could use the word. It was imbued with a certain amount of pity and less contempt. There was a warmth to him that seemed to radiate out from that shabby figure - a kind of comfort that only exists in the memory of your grandparents.

        I sat down on the bench and put my record on my lap. I didn’t know where to begin. I had this strange feeling of wanting to ask him everything but at the same time realizing that he knew already what I wanted to ask, negating the necessity to ask him. I just sat there for a bit staring at the trees directly across from us.

        "Ok, I’ll start then." The man broke the silence with his soft, yet authoritative voice. "You even heard that record all the way through yet?" His question exposed me. I felt a bit like a phony - not having yet listened to the record, yet carrying it so openly through the park.

        "I haven’t had the chance yet, sir." I really hadn’t. Well, maybe, but not really.

        "You didn’t take the chance, you mean? Opportunity is always there, we just have to arrange our priorities."

        "Yeah, I suppose. I was doing other stuff. But I will listen to it as soon as I get the..." I broke the words off as the translucent blue eyes gave me a twinkling smile framed by years of wrinkled experience.         

        "Well, you should hear it. That stuff should be the soundtrack to the revolution...“he sighed heavily, „but it never will be. No... Revolutionary types always go for the most commodified and conformist music. Slogans I tell you - slogans with a beat. It’s a shame really, but I suppose you can’t really rally around a half diminished 13th chord. Although I always like the idea... man that is dissonance made beautiful: 2 minor chords a half step away from each other played in different octaves and a tonic swimming a minor third under it all, the flat 5 and the 11 fighting it out and just above them the 13 and flat 7 doing the same - just like a revolution!" Whoah! Wait a minute - this guy was a musician! How could he know that if he wasn’t a player? Suddenly he became even more curious. "The music these so called ’political activists’ listen to should actually symbolize everything they are against, but they eat it up like sweet candy, rotting the teeth they are so threateningly bearing in the process. Shame, really."  He took a bar of chocolate out of his trench coat pocket and, hesitating before he snapped off a piece, asked me if I wanted some. I declined and we sat there for a few moments in silence, save for the calculated munching of his confection.

        "This is good chocolate - you want some? You should never miss the opportunity to buy good chocolate. It’s a pleasure you can share with someone over a conversation or a book or a record..."

        "I don’t think the majority could understand music like this, that’s the problem." I interjected.

        "Huh, bullshit." His sudden crassness surprised me. "That music is primal - it speaks to the soul, you don’t need to be taught to understand it; on the contrary, you need to be programmed not to react to it. That music transcends cultures. Understanding music like that is more natural than understanding your mother-tongue." He went on in a calm, authoritative manner, "Our lives are constant lessons in forgetting and covering-up. Every African kid understands a complex clave rhythm that in our society most trained musicians can’t execute well. It’s natural - a part of physics, a part of the universe. The overtone series is one of the most fundamental phenomena of nature. What’s unnatural is not understanding it." His words were interesting but in some way made me feel a little offended in the sense that he was belittling the abilities I had been learning and honing since childhood. Could it really be that I had just forgotten less than most people?

        "People forgetting nature and natural processes is the root of all evil in our society."

        "I thought that was money," I joked and then felt the embarrassment of my statements once again.

        "It is! Money is the most unnatural thing in the world!" He exclaimed with fervour. "The very epitome of humans forgetting the basic laws of physics. Money is anti-existentialism." I was getting the feeling I would lose him pretty soon.

        "I don’t understand." I admitted, somewhat feebly.

        "What did you buy that record for?" He asked me.

        "Three dollars."

        "Three dollars that don’t exist." He scoffed.

        "But I handed over the bills - it existed." I protested.

        "Yeah, but the silver that that bill is supposed to represent doesn’t exist does it? So it follows that those three dollars don’t exist either."

        "But it’s just a means of exchange, I mean we can’t all go around carrying silver."

        "Yes, but the banks can hold enough silver in their vaults to guarantee those certificates of receipt or at least not write anymore if the silver isn’t there."

        "What’s this all got to do with silver? I don’t want a bag of silver anyway."

        "It’s got to do with the fact that money has to represent something. When it doesn’t but you conduct your business like it does - well that’s not natural."

        "I’m not much of a financial guy." I replied. "I don’t get all this market stuff." I admitted.

        "You don’t have to, it’s damn easy. But like they do to old Carla there, they deprogram us until we start to accept the unnatural as natural and keep common-sense out of our equations." I was staring a bit blankly at him.

        "Money, governments, treasury bills, equity secured loans - all just imaginary concepts that we’ve all bought and so they exist, but they don’t exist. We only agree that they exist and that is ok for us all; that is until the point that nature bluntly shows us that these things don’t exist. That will be a wake-up call for all of us, I tell you."

        "But they are just systems and the systems exist. So they are tangible, are they not?"

        "Listen, son. If you and I agree that a woolly mammoth is standing over there in the trees we can live with the fact that there is a woolly mammoth in Golden Gate Park. You and I believe it and we conduct our business accordingly - perhaps avoiding that little patch of trees over there where we believe the mammoth exists - and all is good. For all purposes woolly mammoths are alive and well in San Francisco. But what happens when we get hungry and try to eat the woolly mammoth? Or what if you decide you are going to ride him home? Hmmmm? What happens then? And what happens to any money you’ve invested in that woolly mammoth? If you had bought him or such?"

        I was becoming a little confused at his abstract analogy of the woolly mammoth. I mean, I kind of got the idea he was trying to convey that credit and all that is just imaginary money that we create out of nowhere, people knew that anyway, but I wasn’t sure if you could really relate a system like that to something like a living animal.

        "Of course you can", piped in the man once again. "Those systems of credit are interchangeable with tangible things in this world. They are monetarily equal so of course we have to consider all things as being an extension of those systems, or at least a part of it when exchange is considered." His ability to kind of read my thoughts was uncanny and unnerving. He really reminded me of Milton in more ways than I’d like to admit.

        "Don’t be afraid. I’m just here to help you along." He was doing it again. "You know we’ve come a long way in a short time but it’s been a shaky path and I don’t know if we can stay it"

        "Who do you mean by we?" I asked, not entirely paying attention to the statement.

        "People, us, the human race. 70,000 years we’ve been hoboing around this spinning planet, writing history and sometimes even doing something good like old Carla there." He smiled a bright-eyed, wrinkled smile as he nodded at my record. "Seventy-thousand goddamn years. That’s about 3000 generations, maybe a bit less. The entire direct line of your and my ancestors from the beginning of the human race, homo sapiens, from father to grandfather and onwards would fit comfortably in this park. I got about two to three thousand grandfathers and that’s it. You get more people in attendance at a college volleyball game." It was hard to believe it but I guess if he was talking about direct paternal ancestors he was right. Three thousand generations or so. Of course the indirect ancestors, cousins and uncles and all that numbered in the millions, I supposed.

        "We was the first animals on this rock to start thinkin’ all those years ago. And that’s where it begins doesn’t it, Richie? With thinkin’. That’s when all these great and terrible things start to happen and we start melding our universe to our desires. That’s when the real problems begin. But it’s also when real discovery and understanding begin. That’s what you were searching for."

        "I was searching for something? Well, I guess I was searching for my horn. You see, I lost my horn; well, it was stolen and..."

        "I know about your horn, Don’t tell me about that - 242 Moore St. in a rundown pawn shop that’ll deal with any old crook - but, besides that, that wasn’t what you were really looking for, was it?" Did he know where my horn was? How? Did he have something to do with it getting stolen? Had he been watching me? I started to feel very uncomfortable all of a sudden.

        "Of course I’ve been watching you, Ritchie. I’ve been watching all of you. But I didn’t have anything to do with your horn. Neither did Milton. He’s a good man, known him for years. It was just bad luck and a few run-down junkies with no money left. Sometimes things like that just happen."

        I was frightened but intrigued at his knowledge. I really wanted to know who this guy was but at the same time was content just to ask him questions. Like an Oracle.

        "Why didn’t we start thinking earlier, then? Why did it take billions of years?"

        "Why didn’t you start thinking earlier? Why did it take you 18 years and that school to get you on the path?"

        "I’m on the path?"

        "You’re on a path. We all are. You changed yours drastically recently and I’m glad you did. About time, Ritchie. Thought you might never break those chains." I felt excited and at the same time comforted that he verified my plans to run away. It felt good to me as well. I felt free.

        "Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose", he chimed in with a big, toothy grin.

        "So about this path... what was it again?"

        "Yes, indeed, what was it? Or was it it at all? Did I say that? Or did you? Might be there, might not. Your path might not even exist. I might just be a crazy old man." His words were confusing and I felt a little like he really was a crazy old man who didn’t know what he was talking about; but, something told me that he did indeed know what he was talking about.

        "Do you think our ancestors who were running around eating berries and nuts ever thought that one day we would put a man up there to walk on the moon? Do you think they even bothered thinking about walking on the moon? Time is a funny thing. It enables just about anything to happen. You don’t even need to believe it." He posed the question quite rhetorically and I was sure he wasn’t looking for a response from me, but I answered anyway.

        "I’m sure they were conscious of the moon and maybe they didn’t have any idea of how far away it is. Maybe they thought they could one day walk there or that spirits would ascend to the moon or something. I don’t think they were completely oblivious to it."

        I never got the old man’s name. It just seemed redundant in the whole scheme of things. I couldn’t tell you where he was from or how old he was but I spoke with him for hours; or, better said he lectured me for hours and I just kind of asked questions. Everything just seemed to spin like a wheel, one spoke revolving to the next like a stilt propping up an idea for a moment then collapsing into the next blitzing thought. I began thinking faster as he spoke, ideas and thoughts spinning out like a dew-covered web, dripping with the smooth pearls of adolescent ignorance. Naiveté fueling the process. Sometimes our dialogue was like a rapid-fire Gatling gun and I could barely keep up, confusion as well as excitement pulsing through my temples as I tried to formulate the next question. My enveloped brain was functioning like a picture book, scenes popping out like cardboard cut-out pages blurring into a heady child-song of inquiry. The feeling was seeping back. The characters were returning. I was on fire and it didn’t seem as if the free-association of knowledge snippets could end. It was a maze-retreat of pastured memories. Or ideas. Or something that was hiding under the surface, under all that skepticism and cynicism that was as judgemental as the target of my vitriol was ridiculous in its futility. There was no right way. There was only a way. And perhaps there wasn’t even a way. Perhaps there was just a static existence that couldn’t be changed. No transcendence. Everything is a wheel and returns to its starting point. The journey incinerated in the dying embers of the start/end nature of the circle. Wiederholung. Wieder. Again. It will all happen again.

        These thoughts that bombarded me, coaxed out of my adolescent brain by the constant questioning and pontificating of the old man both comforted and disturbed me. Especially the idea that we are doomed to repeat everything infinitely. I mean, it was a nice thought in that there is no absolute end and that, for instance, I would get to see old Shawn again and get to shoot those looks at that Gillespie concert again and that we would get to laugh together again and read Johnny Ficklebranch again and all that. But the idea that I have already done it all an infinite number of times and will forever do the same thing gave me the same damn depressed feeling that I had when I thought about people doing jobs that they hated for their entire lives, day in and day out. It was the negation of free-will. It was all pointless, everything we did - if nothing we did could change our fate. It felt like death. Almost worse than death ’cos I knew that death couldn’t end it. There was no death. Only the wheel. The relentless march of the universe that had no beginning, no end and no compassion. A race that never stopped and had no start line. I started to get dizzy at the thought.

        A light rain began to fall as I sat there on that moist park bench considering the reason I was sitting there in the rain on that park bench. You could hear a faint hum from some sort of insect or animal or something. I thought briefly how strange it was to hear this characteristically summer-night sound lulling over the pitter-patter of the soft rain on a cold, damp night. It was like a droning monologue from a defiant speakers-corner orator, the sound lost in a background of nuisance. It was almost meditative, annoyingly soothing in its monotone blur. I felt as if I could easily drift off to sleep, lulling silently to this orchestra of the disentranced.

        My thoughts began to slowly and randomly wander. The relentless pitter-patter softly stepping into my daydreams. In my mind I suddenly drifted off to a grass covered cemetery. The well-manicured lawn sprawling forth like an emerald carpet studded with heavy shards of granite. Flowers dying slowly at the foot of forgotten tributes. The petals - red, gold, blue and white falling softly to the moist, rain-fed ground. Fertile green covered in smooth withered fingertips stroking the rich, indifferent earth. Receiving the children that sprang forth years earlier, some many years ago but some so recent. A return from the mother-lawn that bred them, that fell to their knees as they walked the pale, smoking ground that came after the dawn. Lives etched into biographical granite - condensed, brief. Squashing a man into a 55 by 29 inch slab of granite. Who are you? Who are you, at all? 1915-1957, probably a baker from what is etched into your epitaph. Not old. How did it end? Was it all worth it? Is she sad? Are they sad, the ones that line in darkest droves on that day of valediction? Were you a good man, a good father, a good son? Did they speak well of you before your dying day? I’m not so sure about myself. What is a good man? So young, it is hard to tell. A good father, a good husband, an upstanding member of the community - all things that come with age. Adolescence substantiates none of this, it is a vacuum of character. A lost place in which all is possible and nothing is demanded. My face bears no lines of character, I’m still unscarred, untouched. The youthful glow of innocence and indecision adorning my worriless semblance. The evidence that I haven’t really done anything of note, the pale ignorance of my comforted upbringing.

        I’m following you. I’m following you in this procession, years before. The heavy footprints in the churning mud that the relentless rain gently softens. Am I even allowed here in this sacred garden? Falling back to a time when you were still remembered, when you were a spark that had just gone out, leaving all that grief and despair in a bubbling wake of a wake. Your shoes were polished black like coal in the starry night. A blood red tie knotted around your heavy, slumping neck. That suit was expensive, too expensive not to be worn. You always need an occasion for these things. I’m glad, at the very least, there is this to justify the cool, shimmering mohair sleeve and Italian cut. It would be a shame to never wear that fine piece of tailoring. Two birds perch on your cold, stony legacy. Where they the two lovers in the mournful night that fluttered their porcelain wings, cold and pale as your frozen fingers? There was so much you could have done, so much you did do with those skillful hands that went unnoticed. It’s almost a crime. It’s almost a pitiful loss for the ones that felt those hours of dedication, soft upon their cheekbones. She always smiled when you stroked her there. Her eyebrows, her golden, falling eyebrows. No one knew that look when you stroked her there. No one ever will. 1957 and that look also died, cold fingertips no longer able to smooth the silky fur above her eyes. She loved it when you did that, no one knew but her, no one will ever know. How could they? We never told them. Couldn’t fit it into the 55 by 29 inch space allotted for your life. It’s those little things she’ll miss. It’s those little things we’ll miss. But, then again, we never knew.

        My head is full with all those moments I couldn’t possibly remember. All those little things, all those insignificant little things. No, nothing is insignificant. I’ve got sixty-thousand stories in my mind, all breaking out at once and every detail is there. No, it can’t be. Who could remember all that? Can somebody tell me which river flows through Vienna? Why does it matter and how could I know? I’ve barely left this city, this golden drenched bay and its surroundings. There are children in the park, kids that know exactly which way the leaves fall in the autumn. They’ve seen it a thousand times, though they’re all just kids. It makes me crazy when I think of that blazing candle of sun that burns in our minds. How could I possibly know all that stuff? A lifetime is too short. 1915-1957. When was I born? The cycle continues or perhaps it never stops, overlapping in an instant. Birth. Death. Your new mohair suit, so well cut and so well fitting. Have you lost an ounce before you first had it on? Twenty one grams, they say. How much is that in ounces?

        It was only a few years ago that Jessica died. That was a cousin of mine - second cousin or cousin of the daughter of my mother’s cousin or something. She was a promising young girl they said. Those things they always say, though, don’t they? I’m sure no one will remember her when the generation above her is gone. Not her ancestors that follow her in a line of promising forgetting. Maybe her sister will become president and lift her out of obscurity in the history books. An insignificant entry in a ripped up encyclopedia. Not much to read about really, all those years and not a story to show for it. "Sister of president McCahalan who died in her youth..." about the best she could hope for now.

        The rain kept falling softly on the waxing darkness. You could feel the cold embrace of the clammy fog clinging to the incessant pitter-patter. Blanket mist and all-encompassing. It felt like the earth. Felt like the moist, green grass above you. It felt like death. The stars had disappeared in this murky twilight. Corpusculent soup covering the twinkle-twinkle of a heavenly body. Did he find love? Did he have a warm body to hold onto every night before descending into this eternal cold? Did he have a pleasing smile and waiting mouth to lull him off to sleep after a golden moment of ecstasy? That would be worth it, at least. That would be something that could transcend his 55 by 29 inch Lebensgeschichte. That would be something we couldn’t possibly know.

        I don’t care about all those stories in my head anymore. About all those details. I’m giving up worrying about it because it doesn’t matter anyway. Even if I did care about it, it would be unimportant. Unimportant for me and everybody else in the whole goddamn world. Shawn always said that we should mind our own business when it came to other people. He never cared about that kind of thing. He cared about people - the important ones, the ones close to him. He really cared about them, I tell you. He was so goddamn caring, actually. But he didn’t care about the insignificant details. The stuff that drives me crazy on a daily basis. He just let it all go. I have to learn to let some things go. I think we all need to learn to let some things go - to not think too much; or, maybe we need to un-learn thinking too much. Is it natural to be so involved with insignificance? The natives of Polynesia never get jealous, it is said. They just don’t feel that emotion that is so familiar to us. They don’t have time for it. They don’t waste their energy on something like that. It’s all just choices, I suppose. Oh, Jessica - so young and so promising. You used to read Shakespeare. Hamlet in his questioning plight. Existential anger and fear. It’ll drive you crazy, thinking like him.

        Why should we walk into the darkest night? Our teeth are bare and angels show the way. Defy those fires that beckon from the sky. And grasp with fleeting hands the gentle dawn. A golden greeting falls on withered smiles. Its warming glow soon breaks the subtle night. Jerusalem upon these green, tight fields. A vast and fertile break from other lands. I know not who shall inherit this place. But place him on his petrified fury. In time he’ll see the hills beyond the veil. Not once, not twice but varied in his sight. And when that time is a cold, emptied cup; pour from him the life that shudders ’til dawn. With vengeance’ eyes we break and stake the night. Search and feel, for all is wanton down there. Cover and hide the gentle, glowing moon. Before long, she’ll show the way for nothing. I’m lost but my spirit rides the soft rain. Pitter-patter and let the jury out.

        I don’t mind these little, red candle holders whispering away to themselves in the damp, wick-prickling air; but I can’t stand the plastic Marias and semi-fake Jesuses with their blue eyes and blonde hair popping up all over the place. Fact is, they probably weren’t even religious before they got here. Family probably not, either. It’s only on those occasions - marriage, death that the chanting blue light comes out from behind the curtain. Aren’t the stars enough for you? And the wind? And this ancient oak tree bending and twisting since before any of the dates swimming in this decaying pool? A blonde Jesus! I suppose if he is the son of God he can look however he wants, but that would be very conspicuous in Judea. Did Mary really always wear that blue shawl? How do you know, Jessica? Are you really that smart? It’s a shame if you were. So young with so much promise - she used to read Shakespeare, you know.

        Jessica died in summer somewhere in upstate New York. I can’t picture what she looked like anymore. In my mind her eyes are very dark and her skin is smooth as an eagle’s talon. She had long, corn-golden hair that wrapped around her shoulders. I think she drowned. At least that’s what the doctor said to them. Found her there, all blue and cold lying on the beach in front of a summer house. She probably got washed up just like those wale carcasses do sometimes in Nantucket.  Condolences to my aunt, or second cousin or whatever she is. I’m curious to see if anyone would remember her. If anyone could remember what she looked like. If she had long, corn-golden hair that wrapped around her shoulders. That has nothing to do with you, though, does it 1915-1957? A picture can tell a thousand words, but how many words fit into a 55 by 29 inch space? Just a name and a date and a couple of poetic lines. Write a book, throw it in the casket. Let the words grow out of the moist, fertile emerald carpet like flowers losing their withered petals.

        I had a pretty good reputation as a dreamer when I was in school. Not one of those "never there" types, but the kind that actually thinks about stuff over the daytime and can relay it back to someone later on. I really had pictures in my head, or even films if you will. Most of the time we don’t think about anything over the daytime, we are just too busy doing over-the-daytime stuff. I can’t tell you why or how I do it and even if I could I probably wouldn’t because it’s such a personal thing and I kind of like the fact that I am known as being a dreamer. A dreamer. Pictures in my head. Constant, vivid pictures boring through the boredom. Shattering the alltag. Lascivious, drooling pictures. Jessica, I have to confess something to you - I think I daydreamed once about fucking you. I know that’s horrible to say after all that has happened and especially since we are related in some way, some small way (so it’s not so bad); but I felt I needed to confess. I’m not sure how I felt about it then and how I felt about it after. I didn’t masturbate or anything like that. At least I don’t remember masturbating or anything like that. It was probably the corn-golden hair that wrapped around your shoulders that made me think of fucking you. Or your hips, or your small but adequately developing breasts but I don’t remember how you looked, so I can’t say for sure. They always said you were so smart and had so much potential. They never said you were pretty.

        The natives of Polynesia first came into contact with Europeans in the 17th century or something like that. It is said that they had canoes that could traverse the ocean - the natives, that is, not the Europeans. The Europeans had big, European ships built in Rotterdam and Southampton. Their first few meetings were fairly antagonistic. They fought and there were several massacres. I think, perhaps, the Europeans were jealous of the native Polynesians because they were so happy. They never got jealous, though, those natives. It doesn’t exist in their culture - they are too content to feel emotions like jealousy.  That’s what it’s all about, though, really isn’t it? Just being happy in the time you are here? That’s something you can fit in a 55 by 29 inch space - "he was happy..."

        I also heard that in the language of the native Polynesians there is no word for the English word "corpse". They just refer to the person by their name, even after they are dead and if they don’t know their name it is just "that person". In order to distinguish a dead person from a live person in the native Polynesian language, you have to use an adjective. Thus, they have live people and dead people but no corpse. When dealing with a corpse in the native Polynesian world, you have to refer to the body, the same way as you would when the person was still alive. This makes perfect sense to me and I’m not really sure what the advantage is, if there indeed is one, to having a special word for a body that is no longer imbued with life. I also find the word "corpse" somehow vulgar and disturbing. Let’s just say body - they found the body on the beach...

        I wish I could have saved you, Jessica. Wish I was there to dive into those grey, undulating waves and fish you out of that cool, turquoise quagmire. I wish I could have saved a lot of people. To be a saviour, like Jesus himself. The old messiah. To extend all those stories a few pages longer and make that 55 x 29 inch space all the more insufficient. You were so promising, so young. Why couldn’t I have been there? Yes, a saviour I could have been. A saviour I could still be. See, even I have lofty ambitions. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there. I can’t be everywhere with my eyes peeled, fishing people out of bottomless lakes when need be. Otherwise I could have seen how you would grow up, what stories you would write and if you would fulfill all that promise or if those breasts adequately developed. But, then again, I don’t have the motivation to spend my whole life running around trying to save people. A light I am not, the way is not peppered by my footprints. Don’t follow - the silvery paths of my opaque promises lead you nowhere. There is no kingdom in my wake, no secret garden at the end of my tether. Just try and find your own peace and if it ends up being here, being rained on by wilting petals in the company of a blonde, blue eyed Jesus, then so be it!

        Shawn once said to me, "If you see it in your heart, you know it is the truth. “ I had no idea what that meant. Still don’t. How do you see into your heart? Was he talking about a feeling towards something? Old Mrs. Kane from across the street used to ride in a carriage, she said; when she was younger and had to travel far to work. That’s how old she was. Ancient. What kind of feelings did she have in the end? She obviously loved that carriage. Perhaps they should have driven her urn in it to the mountainside where they cast her to the wind. Better than that limousine. She probably was never once in a limousine in her whole goddamn life. What did she dream of? That carriage? Was it in her heart, so strangely embedded that she always told us kids about it? Scuttling off down the playground. Hard, grey concrete streets and Gatling feet. Like a bunch of rats - what did she say, again? Something about a carriage. Who fed the horse? Does that even concern us, Jessica?

        I’m thinking suddenly and seriously about building a coach. One of those western stage-coaches. I bet your husband has long forgotten how that is done. Old Mr. Kane and his stable wagon. The Oregon Trail would have tested his arbour. But who cares anymore about building a regal coach when on every corner in every goddamn city in the country a blinking, canary gold taxi is waiting for a fare?

        Love resides in the heart - I believe that. And love is truth; well, at least true love is. That I can imagine, Shawn. But how do we know? Is anything really true? Is there any love in these plastic cloak-folds of the revered Madonna? Or how about in those fake, blue Jesus eyes? Where did your love go? Extinguished as the pumping of the heart ceased? I think so. That is the truth. That’s what you can write in that 55 by 29 inch space. Love don’t live here anymore. Abandoned heart and shamed decoration of the resting palace. I could have saved you, or maybe not.

        If I really, really wanted to change something, I suppose I would. If I could. But you always can, I suppose. At least you can change yourself and your world. That you can always do, but would it all be for the better? Who knows? Who can tell if anything is better in the whole eternally revolving scheme of things? Did you see it in your heart? Was it true? Shawn rarely wanted to change things. He always seemed so content with the way things were. Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps that’s the way it is supposed to work. Sometimes I think when people realize how it’s all supposed to work, they just check out. Or perhaps it is God who takes them - afraid they are going to let on. I suppose the churchgoers know this already, they’re versed in the ways of the Lord. Perhaps that’s why they are always so miserable, not wanting to be plucked from the herd on account of their contentment. Don’t relax or the good Lord will smite you! Look here, Jessica, you were happy and full of promise. You were convinced that the world was good and full of subtle secrets. Which song did they play to say goodbye? I hope it was one of your favourites. They should know that; at least someone should have made a note of it. Someone should notice these things when you are so promising and talented. Did you even listen to music? Did the blaring chills of a screaming soul reach your waiting, magic ears? Like a shaman’s dance, jerking in the moonlight. I heard you liked to sing. You were so young, so full of promise. Could you be holy in your innocence? Canonized through lack of temptation. No time to sin, no thoughts of malice - too much promise. Full steam ahead. I hope that hair is still corn-golden and long; perhaps even wrapped eternally around your shoulders the way I remember. I hope that they style my hair in a way that I would have liked. I hope I still have hair on that day.

        If I had an out-of-body experience, I’d still probably think about sex all the time. How ironic is that? Carnal thoughts persisting in a wholly spiritual form. I have no cock, but I can’t stop thinking with it. Is there sex in the afterlife? Who needs it there? What function does it perform in a heaven full of ethereal non-bodies? It’s pointless from a biological standpoint when everyone is already dead, but would it be heaven without the joy of orgasm? They say good Muslims are gifted seventy two virgins to fuck around with in the afterlife, but how does sex even work when the physical body is decomposing in the ground? Aren’t we above lust at that point, anyway? Released from all our worldly needs? Hunger, sexual desire, flapping of the lungs for the sweet stuff that keeps us alive. We don’t need it all in the kingdom of God. But what if we want it? How does that work? Fucking with a spiritual penis, a divine vagina.  All those virgins - such a waste.

        The native Polynesians have a fairly liberal attitude towards sex. The first Europeans that came into contact with them were shocked by some of their traditions. I read a story in a magazine; I think it was one that my brother gave me, maybe a National Geographic or something, which described a ritual in which a boy who had just come of age would be taken by one of the older tribal women and versed in the ways of lovemaking. Now that is what I call sex education! None of this sitting in a stuffy old schoolroom with your gym teacher looking at ancient textbooks with badly drawn pictures of fallopian tubes. Scaring the crap out of you with stories of disease and unwanted pregnancies. Imagine if driver’s education was anything like sex education in school. All you would ever do is look at pictures of an engine then talk about road accidents. You wouldn’t ever set foot inside a car. No, the way those old native Polynesians do it is way better. Imagine that - some sexy old broad taking you to her straw hut then guiding you along an erotic journey! Telling you exactly where to touch and kiss and how hard, how slow or fast. What to do with your hands and what to say to her in the throes of passion. Where to trace your hot breath and how much pressure with those fingertips. You could save yourself years of fumbling around in a car somewhere with the gym teacher’s chubby daughter... Sexual education. That is such a joke. I bet they have no cars in Polynesia.

        Sometimes I’m afraid that my body won’t work in some situations. I think like during sex, which is probably a direct side-effect of my comprehensive sex-education. What if I just don’t respond? Will I even be able to get aroused enough or will I be too aroused. Thinking about stuff like that drives you nuts. I used to have dreams that I would get in a fight but I couldn’t punch anybody. At least not with any force that would do anything. I would just be so weak and pathetic. I’d wind up for a big, roundhouse punch and it would feel like I was underwater. Like I was encased in a thick layer of honey and my movements looked like a sloths. Of course, my punch would have no effect whatsoever and I’d then be angry at myself that I even got aggressive in the first place. Impotent. Withered. I sometimes am afraid that if I ever got into a real fight that is what would actually happen. How could I defend myself if I was so weak and slow? Would my body respond to the adrenalin pumping surely through my veins or would I be frozen to the spot like a glimmering deer? These things are of a concern for me. Fighting and fucking - perhaps I am terrible at both. I wouldn’t really know. I could be a victim of my own ignorance. Fucking sex education! What a joke!

        I suppose we are all victims in some way, however. Victimized by ourselves and our surroundings. Only those who are truly alone can’t be victims of somebody else and even they are perhaps victims of circumstance or their past. A victim or a sacrifice or a victim of a sacrifice. Self-sacrificing martyrs that find peace in the afterlife. What was with those seventy two virgins, anyway? Do I get to fuck them with my spiritual penis or is it all just a sham? It would be a shame to sacrifice yourself for that only to find out that your lack of a physical body inhibited your pursuit of carnal pleasure. That would be victimization in full-order. Spiritual victimization. Lied to by your beliefs. I suppose it happens all too often. Gotta be careful what you believe in these days, especially if you want to be a martyr. Get it right the first time, they say; otherwise it’s gonna be eternal frustration for you, my devout friend.

        When I lived with my parents I always arrived home before midnight. A victim of their rules. I can’t remember a single time that I was out later. Perhaps on New Year’s Eve; but, no then again I was always with my parents on New Year’s Eve, so I was either already at home or at some relative’s place or something. Once we were on holiday during New Year’s Eve in a hotel in Portland and even then I was with my parents before midnight. They had some sort of gala or something and all of us drank champagne - even the kids, we were allowed to on account of it being New Year’s Eve and all that. Strange custom, New Year’s Eve - everybody is so happy that the year is over although actually it’s just another day like any other day and the sun will come up tomorrow like it always does. The crazy thing is, it’s not even technically a new year when you think about the sun coming up. I mean the New Year would start on one of the solstices, when the earth is furthest away from the sun. I guess that would be the winter solstice, wouldn’t it? I believe New Year’s Eve is actually the birth of some Pope or someone. They wanted a big party but if they officially called it Pope Sylvester’s birthday, then all the protestants would stay at home, so they duped them into whooping it up by calling it New Year’s Eve and everyone bought it. Even the Pagans who know about the Solstice, they bought it, too. It’s a bit like promising someone a party with seventy two virgins after you martyr yourself. A big spiritual ruse. It is kind of nice, though, that people are happy and kind of love each other on that day. I wish they could be like that the rest of the year. Why can’t religion dupe people into being nice for the rest of the year like they do on New Year’s Eve? Then I suppose I would find religion quite useful and would probably sign up with old Josh and his army of born-agains to bang the Bible every chance I get, just hoping that it will make people love each other and be nice to each other for the rest of the year as well.

        Apart from coming home always before midnight when I lived with my parents I used to do things like write notes to them. Thoughts I had and stuff like that, or even discussions I wanted to have with them but didn’t want to bother hearing their side in - I suppose they were less dialogues and more monologues, no discussions at all, rather monoscussions. Quite juvenile when you think of it. I was their victim and all my victimizations were to be written down like a list of prisoner demands during a hunger strike. My life at that time was as boring as a life could be. Comfortable - the absolute worst thing in the whole world. Well, ok, I guess I could have grown up in some war-torn country somewhere where they use children as soldiers or put them in a literal jail where they wouldn’t be able to write demands even if they did go on hunger strike. Or I could have grown up in a place where the fact that one could even choose to be on a hunger strike would be a privilege. But I am not talking about extremes. Like a well selected sample the extremes here will be sheared off from the ends in case they skewer the average results. Average was what my whole life at home was. Gruesomely average. Really, without those extremes that have been shaved off the ends of existence, it is the worst thing of all. A bit of struggle would be great - character building at the very least and all that. But I didn’t have any of that. I just spent my over-privileged time writing stupid notes to my parents, thinking somehow that I was being victimized and that my life was miserable because of it. The truth is that most parents probably don’t have the faintest idea how to bring up kids and make them happy and developed and challenge them and all that. I know I wouldn’t. I haven’t got a clue. I do know that all people, even young people need experiences, good and bad and that the experience itself is worth it. It’s a hell of a lot better than no experience. Where would we be with no experience in the big, open world? Like most of us I guess - scared, lonely and more than a little bored. Parents should challenge their kids and make life a bit hard for them every now and then, or at least a bit more exciting and I am not talking about Disney Land and crap like that. Man, I do really envy those native Polynesians - how I would have loved to have been able to make love to a middle-aged woman when I was thirteen. It sure as hell beats our stupid coming-of-age celebrations. Sex would be a hell of a lot better than confirmation. I’d take a nice, long, skilled blow-job over dry bread and fake wine any day. I can tell you that any teenage boy would. Any!

        I tried to remember some of those notes and letters that I wrote to my parents in those bursts of adolescent contemptuousness. One in particular was particularly brazen and motivated by anger. I can picture exactly in my mind how I sat there under my desk interrogation lamp in my stuffy room pouring out my concerns into a seven point, half-page manifesto of the oppressed. I was working on a masterpiece of brevity and spite. It began something like this:

Proposed New Order of House Hazleton in response to blatant ageism

1. Age should not be seen as a sort of rank with which to influence decisions in house matters. All men are created equal at the time of their creation and remain equal in spite of how long or how little time they have spent on this earth.

2. Financial advantages of some members of the above mentioned house shall not dictate the decision making of the entire house collective when it comes to holiday, leisure activities and food.

3. People have different sleeping cycles. Just because you are older and can get up earlier doesn’t mean everyone else has to. Special attention should be given to this point on weekends.

4. Adhering to the absurd rule that all members of the above named house should be present in the house at all times between 11pm and 7 am is a form of incarceration. Unjust imprisonment is a violation of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights...

        It kept going on like that. My life had become somehow gloomier than normal on that day and the cold, skulking clouds out my window shot across the glass like taunting spectres. I can see it exactly in my mind right now - there I was scribbling away, furious about something that my father had said or something that my mother had confiscated. Writing this ridiculous, adolescent "manifesto" that I was sure was a document of emancipation for teenagers the world over.... Then suddenly the door opened and a calming, warming presence disarmed my anger. A beaming smile pierced the brooding

Air, luminescent red hair shining with the back light of the hall before my door. Eyes, those beautiful eyes that dissolved any sense of frustration or anger and cast all my knotted anxiety into a burning, disintegrating light. There she stood, so care-free and happy, oblivious to the manifesto of the oppressed children. Jane. Beautiful, sweet, tender Jane. It’s amazing how a woman or, in this case a girl, can just stop the rain and dry up all the dark clouds floating around in your head with a single crooked smile. It’s too bad that you can’t somehow store and shelf love or infatuation or whatever that was that I was feeling at that moment when I was remembering in that instance.  It could solve all your problems - at least all your emotional problems. Nobody would ever be upset, sad or depressed if they could just take a shot of that feeling of being in love for the first time every time things got difficult. I suppose in a way that is what the function of drugs is. To give you that rush, that feeling of beauty that you crave if you are a human. That’s probably why love and drugs are the two most devastating things in the world. Whenever I hear about someone hitting rock-bottom and really bailing out on life it is usually because they have got mixed up in drugs or love.

        But there was that image; that glorious, treasured image of when Jane just walked into my room unannounced with her gorgeous, long red hair and her sparkling eyes and that aura that women have that is somewhere between a scent and a glowing light. That thing that makes you turn your head and feel good when you notice it. Magnetism. With my eyes still closed I drifted pleasantly back to that moment when she walked further into my room and the light just seemed to dance off of her hair and her face and she swayed beautifully in that way that only women can sway. Like a boat just lilting on a giant ocean, passing the waves under her, mirroring the lazy tides. It pulls you in, makes you sea-sick, nauseous with the desire to share those wonderful motions, to feel those soft, undulating curves. I could be shipwrecked forever on this island and stare off into her distance for an eternity. I really could.

        I remember her sitting down next to me and asking me what I was doing. I was so embarrassed at that moment, embarrassed at the manifesto and all its childish, brattish ideas. I remember just wanting to fall deeply backwards and have Jane fall with me, the two of us toppling in an endless cacophony through the floor and to the other side of the world, where no one could bother us, where no one even knew us. She could take me there; they all can, these wondrous creatures we call woman. Daughter of the moon, mother of the earth. Artemis hunting us in our childish, boyish cloaks. Wrapped up in a dizzying blanket of lust, she entraps us, loves us and holds us to her breast. Life drains away without her, life is meaningless without them. Oh Shawn, if you only knew. If you only knew that there are red-headed, shimmering beauties waiting to save us. Smooth, curving shoulders naked in the pale, blue moonlight when we are there lying awake in doubt. If you only knew how wonderful it can be to be saved.

        Oh Jane, you saved me in those dark days afterwards as well. We were only friends then, just two innocent kids that hadn’t a clue what the fleeting glances that our eyes shared meant. You always used to put your tender arm around me and your glorious red hair would fall into my face, your scent intoxicating my daydreams. You could take me away from that moment. Softly squeeze the anger and anguish from my lungs with your fragile hugs. We sobbed together, your breasts heaving as our grief exploded down our cheeks. 55 x 29 and I say fuck you! I could write a book, a whole fucking tome about a life and you give us 55 x 29 inches and a plastic-cloaked Madonna and that ridiculous blue-eyed Jesus with his Saxon blonde hair. Hold me Jane. It makes me so fucking mad. I can feel the sharp, cold steel. The thin, red lines. Oh God! It must have been quick. Please, Jane, tell me it was quick. Tell me that the cold didn’t linger. So cold. So very fucking cold. Press your warmth into me. I want to forget that eternal cold.

        Jane, Shawn is here and he’s going to spend the night. We are having a sleepover. No, it’s ok, my parents are totally cool with it. We’re going to jam a bit and then probably listen to a bunch of records. I’m looking really forward to it, although I’m sure old Shawn will play that W.C. Handy at least one hundred times. One day he’s going to wear that record out and I’ll have to buy him another one. I have no idea what time we fell asleep again but the record player was making that click-scratch-click it makes when the needle has come to the end when I woke up. Probably went around about thirty thousand times. It was dark and the moon was lighting up the curtains in the front room. I suppose my parents had decided to just let us slumber. They could have turned the record-player off, though. I always wonder why they didn’t do that when I think of that night. They turned the light out but left the record player on, such a strange thing. But, then again, when I think of it - it could have been Shawn that turned the light out. I mean, he did go to the bathroom at some point. That we know now, don’t we Jane?

        It must have been around 2am or so when we woke up and Shawn confessed to me, or tried to, what had happened to him, or what he thought had happened to him, or at least what he had nightmares about that could have been memories of what happened to him. Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy, dark footsteps. The pale blue light on those curtains. Man, it was late - when did we fall asleep? Click-scratch-click. I just don’t understand? How could someone do that? Just turn off the lights and leave a record player going? Unbelievable! There was also left-over pizza there on the old, mahogany table. Just sitting there in the pale-curtain moonlight. We had ordered the same thing, Shawn and I. We always did. We were so alike. But, then again, no we weren’t. He was so different. So much we never knew, did we Jane? So many terrible secrets.  As I burned my mouth on cheese and Shawn licked the tomato sauce off of his fingers, all of that was there, behind his eyes. Hidden away from me at that moment. Hidden but never gone. 55 x 29. What can you say at that point? Ghosts that we never knew.

        There were a lot of nights that began like that one. Old Shawn and I playing some music and eating pizza or hot-dogs or some other inexcusably American food that was actually an import from Europe or at least a variation of something that they had over there. That`s one of the things I like about Jazz, it`s just so inherently American. It really is American classical music. Those old Europeans, that Brahms and the wonderful Beethoven are pretty great, but they could never really match the energy and explorative danger of jazz for me. Those Europeans can`t do it as good as we can today, either. I hear a lot of European Jazz, old Shawn and I used to precede the click-scratch-click end of a good night with quite a few German or English or Italian bands and composers but they never had the heart of a Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. Not-so-giant steps for me in their case. I suppose it had a lot to do with the merging of cultures in America. Merging always seems to be a good way to create something with energy that intrigues. I think mixing is a great thing. Thoroughbreds are for the bores. Mix it up, I say. On with the new. New horizons and all that. Progress. I`m progressive, a seeking, soaring swell of a boy.

        But then like those Frankfurter hotdogs and Italian spaghetti and Fries from France, even in the countries or places where they got their fame they are still imports. Bastardizations of something that came from somewhere on a battered, scurvy ship returning from the west, or the far east or somewhere that at one point was like the moon to those pre-historic peoples, a place we thought we’d never walk. Marco Polo and his Chinese noodles that abound in every tomato sauce. Spaghetti and tomato sauce, just so simple, so generic and every kid loves it. Loves the simplicity. It’s primal food. Tomatoes on noodles or some round baked bread. Why did it take so long to discover something like that? Why did old Marco have to travel to the moon and back to bring us Shawn’s favourite food? I always wondered what the ancient Polynesians ate on their secluded, isolated islands.

        I was disoriented when I woke up again. Click-scratch-click. The end of the record just spinning in an eternal coil. The light was so blue and pale, so soft yet cold. Why did he never tell us, Jane? Why did he never reach out and let us hold him in our arms and make sure that nothing bad would ever happen to him again? I was his friend, I loved him. I would have done anything for him, done anything to keep him with me if I knew. That smile was so deceiving. I never thought he could, or would deceive us. So lost and fragile. So damaged.

        I remember rubbing my eyes and stumbling as I got up and walked like a somnambulist through the room, past the pizza, past the eternally spinning W.C. Handy, past the confessions that lingered like spectres in the receding night. Secrets that ate from within. Secrets that I would soon realize were lethal in their consequence. Words that fell from damaged lips and clapped like thunder in the bristling air. Oh Jane, those steps towards a horrible fate. Those steps I was retracing unknowingly, oblivious to the infinity that I was about to discover. If I knew I would have walked so slowly it would have taken me a thousand years to reach that bathroom. Oblivion. Blind to the spectacle that would soon tear out my heart and eradicate joy from all our lives.

        The hallway was so still. So deathly still and frozen. The silence was