You are haunting me, you bastard.

…

 Sometimes, I just stare at myself in the bathroom mirror as the hours pass by.  I stare into the crevices around my eyes, the newly formed crow’s feet, the fading laugh lines around my mouth, the dusty fading amber color of my eyes with the flecks of the orange and green and gold. 

            His name is Virgil Pumice.  It’s always with me.  His name.  The echo of his voice in my ears.  A laugh.  A slight smile, his left dimple beaming.  All those damn goodbyes. 

                She walked down the road, heaving.

            November.

            She pulled her thin, mauve sweater around her, the daylight ebbing.  Her breath stopping in her throat.

            She stopped in the front yard.  Thirty feet from the house.  Thirty feet from a memory.  She picked up a stone, a large chunk of crumbling concrete and sent it sailing through the front window.

            It shattered.

            She smiled.

            The grey-green patio light flickered.

            “What the…”  He stopped.  “Well I’ll be God-damned.”  The words accentuated his face, the swarthy, irritable beard which was unkept and obscured his mouth.  The rest, leather.  He stood in bare feet and jeans.  A plaid red shirt which was fraying on the edges hung open, exposing the curl of hair.  His face scowled morphing into a perplexed tick.  He lit up.  His free hand ran through his long hair.  He winced as the snarls he frequently hit.

            She wrung her hands trying to warm them.  A watch jingled loosely on her wrist.  She stood just out of reach, just beyond the house, with its wooden-covered porch and its grey-green light.  He moved into the doorway.  He went dark.  Only the red-black burning of his Camel for company.

            They waited.

            “I can’t come out to you.”

            “No, you can’t.”

            He stared at her but did not move.  No one moved.  Nothing moved.  She bit her lip.  Her throat was dry.  She took a step forward and her face was flooded with a belligerent light.  Her hair was tousled and wild in the absent wind.

            The band was still worn, still gold, upon his left hand.

            She sat down on the pavement, falling on to the pavement, hard, crashing, crashing, crashing, her butt later bruised and pained by that fall, that backwards tumble into the realness of the moment, into the knowing that she would always be too late.

            “You married her.”

            “Goddamn it, Margaret, what did you expect?”

            That you wouldn’t, Virgil.

            She let the darkness take her, as the rain fell, November rain like ice.  His daughter in intensive care, ingesting her father’s warm blood.  Amanda in the burn ward, nursing a festering mass of flesh that had once held beauty, reduced to a weeping wound, a blackened ruinous eyesore.

            “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this!”  She was screaming.

            “You should come out of the rain.  It’s cold.”  The words danced around her.  She heard nothing but voiceless twists of uttering, of conjoiled static.  She shivered.

            “I don’t think your wife would like that.”

            She lit a cigarette, her hands shaking, without turning to meet his eyes.

            “Things change.”

            She agreed.

            “Things change.”  She laughed as the sky began to unwind itself.  Too warm to snow, the water clung to her body like a wet tongue to crêpe paper.

…

Amanda saw it glow, an umber burning.  Her chair cocked, lips pursed, pulsing life trapped inside an egg-shelled space.  Her white coat, spotless.  Porcelain-polished.  She gleamed.  Glowed.  Air ducts humming.  Her breath, shallow.

            Because he was leaving, is leaving, has left.

            And the breaking started, the crunch of glass, beakers toppled, chipped, discarded.  An unusable thing, she thought, raising her eyebrow, looking away, the left side smiling, nodding to Cherise out smoking, away from the acetal, the chlorobenzene, the dibutyl phthalate.

            “Natasha in Slovenia took it.  She took it and she liked it, fucking shrew.”

            He laughed a wicked snarl as she set the receiver down.  She opened her mouth and swallowed air like chocolate, bloodied fingers covering the breathless gap, fingering fine smoky containers filled with forgetting.

            These little blue ones.  Shake.  Shake.  They must be working.

            She stood up, a rusted pinball banging, teasing her way to the EXIT, the locked door, fumbling the access card, de-access card, dropping it, desperate with thirst for anything but air.  Aching for it.

            A toxic deliverance.

            The door opened, her fingertips smearing juicy patterns, polka-dotting the white flat finish of steel.  Tripping, falling forward, she picked it up, the skin pulsed, still living, breathing, rushing, racing towards the end, the brown salmon-suckled tip, lip-lines exposed, pressed, murdered by breath and spit.  She hit it, knocking her head against the grey concrete.  She exhaled, coughing.  She clutched the door handle, dragging air in, dragging it inside of her corpuscular.  Lungs, heaving.  Her nipples hard in the cold, salved, unable to heal, the pasties were for him, I was trying, and when he came, beating her, thrusting himself, ridding the moment, the crack of it, his rising heat burning her, she leaned over the edge of the table and vomited sticky bile and bread and carrots from her salad.  Chardonnay and toothpaste she had swallowed only moments before. 

            He grinned, walking bare across the brown linoleum floor, leaking.  He laughed and lit up, dragging deep and slow.

            “A little something to remember me by, darlin’.  I’ll be in the Red Country until the snow melts.”

            And it was melting.

            Her eyes blank sockets of coal, ashen, unblue, unbeautiful, remembered the scale and the pre-measured powder not yet fit for women’s purses.

            She could fix that.

            She could fix anything.

            They called to her, glass bottles reflecting clear solvents, sanitizers, solutions for every dilemma, a quinine-confection for every wrinkle of imperfect life.  The sun was going dark, the wind must have blown it out, she thought.  The little blue pills were laughing.  Everyone had gone.  Cherise was gone.  She pulled herself up, cupping, cradling, loving the sienna-crusted jewel, not feeling the burning of her skin, the rot of it, evanescent tendrils tainted proof of her divinity.

            So what, everything ends.

            With a flick, she was burning.  She could hear the sirens wailing, their song a deliberate and perfect bravura, escalating into ochre-tipped beads, saturating her with blackness.

…

 “It isn’t a dream. I hear singing. She is singing.”

“Who, who is singing?” He often gazes out of his high office window when she gets like this.

“Amanda.”

“We’ve talked about this.  Amanda has moved on.”

Margaret shakes her head haphazardly, erratically.

“She is singing.”

“You live alone, Margaret. Is that still the case?”

Margaret does not answer. She stares at her hands, wringing them diligently in her lap.

“It is very common for someone who has been … changed… by a terrible event to have nightmares…”

Margaret stood up and held to herself. She was waif thin and clammy and unbathed.  Her long hair fell over her eyes, obscuring the doctor’s full view.

“She is singing.” A whisper, choked, dark.  Unbearable.

He humors her.  “What, what is she singing?”

“I am coming for you.”

…

Virgil lost his balance, as was his habit, in front of the Clarkston School for Girls in Roadupton.  Now, Virgil wasn’t the sort of boy to draw attention to himself; however, he had a penchant for staring into the open spaces of the silver chain link fence where puddles of girls splashed into each other.

            Virgil went to great lengths to disguise this fascination.  He would stare straight ahead and watch the girls out of the farthest corner of his left eye.  This often resulted in unfortunate consequences for Virgil.  This time, he fell face-first onto the uneven sidewalk that led to the public school here he attended fifth grade. Virgil crawled around, crumpling math formulas and spelling words as he tackled them, shoving the papers into the front pocket of a broken three ring binder with a mish-mashed fury.

            These things happen.

            Virgil struggled.  He struggled against the soft warm breeze.  Against the weight of his lanky body balancing on his knees as he tied his shoes, again.  Against the jagged cement as he ripped a whole in the good leg of his only jeans.  He slinked about on the sidewalk, making himself as small as he could, trying to pry the eyes of the gathering crowd off of him.  Those young ladies with their regulation skirts.  He longed to touch them as his heart raced faster and faster and faster.  They had gathered at the edge of the chain link fence to participate in his assured mortification.

            “What happened?” It was the pretty girl with the blond hair.  He could tell from the voice.

            “What a loser!” The brunette laughed, loudly.

            “It went everywhere!” The end of a painted fingernail shouted.

            The girls were giddy with delight at seeing him fail.  Blood rose into his chest, to his neck, pooled around his ears and rested along the tips of this cheeks.  Virgil’s head spun.  The girls’ laughter went in and out like radio waves improperly tuned.  There was no time to adjust the dials; Virgil was busy.  He dared not blink.  The tears clung to the lip of his eyelid, advancing and receding.  Advancing and receding.  In the end, he did cry and the girls went away.  His awkwardness had bored him.  His tears disgusted them.  Virgil stood up and clutched his broken binder to his chest.  He saw the last of his homework blow under the tire of a light blue tow truck and disappear.  He saw the backs of beautiful young calves girls’ calves as they walked up the hill, their hard heels clicking on the pavement.

            The last thing Virgil’s mother, Mary, had taught Virgil before she left his father and vanished from their home forever, was the word “run”.  His mother was a fickle woman who tended to love grass as much as she loved him.  She liked to run along the road and in shorts early in the morning.  She told Virgil to run like there was life in him.

            “Run like God made you.”

            Run and the world runs with you.

            Virgil’s mother had hair that trailed in the wind.  Auburn ringlets that bounced.  They swayed and twisted and matched her eyes.  When Virgil was young, his mother would dress him in warm blankets and package him neatly into a carriage that she pushed while she ran.  He loved her gait, full of pepper and ginger.  She was a spring, eternally bounding. 

            When Virgil got older, his mother would wake him early, when the sunlight barely poked its fingers out into the world.  Stars mingled with darkness as dawn gave them chase for another day.  They would dress quickly.  Virgil loved the smack of the morning air.

            “Run Virgil!” She beamed.  Her smile rivaled that of the sun itself.

            Virgil would trail behind.  Fall behind.  His lanky frame was awkward in his shoes which were too small for his big-toed feet.

            Virgil would just plain fall.

Two weeks after Virgil kissed the sidewalk in Roadupton, he awoke in the cold dark of his room.  There was a film of ice on his window and a small white envelope on his bed.

A man’s sole can take him anywhere, Virgil, you just remember that.

            His father came in and kicked him with the steel-toed boots of a line worker.

            “Get outta bed you little bastard.  That hoar left me.  Fix me some Goddamn breakfast and get to school.”

            Virgil’s mother was gone.

            “You gonna be a little pussy boy, eh?  Gonna cry cause your mommy left you?”  He kicked Virgil again.  This time, he hit his head on the widow sill and split his lip.  He held his breath.  He turned a lovely shade of chartreuse which highlighted the white of his unblinking eyes.  He wondered what a hoar was.  He knew what a bastard was. 

            “Now!”

            Virgil got up and ran past the grasp of his father, his bare feet slapping the cold wooden floor.  He made it to the kitchen, tripping over the metal that separated the shag orange carpet from the red and blue flowered tile.  He braced for the fist.  Nothing.  Instead, he heard the sound of the bathroom door locking.

            If his mother was spring, then his father was stone.  Hard and flat and incapable.

            It seemed, to Virgil, that he was incapable too.

            Coming home from school, Virgil saw Amanda McKay for the first time over the gate to the Griffin’s yard.  She was playing tag with Gina and Tammy.  In an instant, she told him that beauty is memory and fraction.  Running was living the real.

            He watched her play through the bushes that separated the two spaces.  He hid in the shadow of his house, his stomach knotting as the girls ran in the filtered sunlight.

            “Who is that?”  Virgil asked Tammy.  When Gina wasn’t around she would smile at him through the fence, shly.  Virgil had seen Gina and the blonde haired girl go into the house. 

            “That’s Amanda.”

            “Oh.” Virgil blushed.

            “She goes to a school with just girls.”

            “In Roadupton?”

            “How do you know that?”  Tammy put her hands on her hips, dramatically.  Virgil stood still and silent.

            “Well she used to.  She is transferring.”

            “What does that mean?”

            “You don’t know what trasnsferring is?  You should.”

            “Why should I?”

            “Because of your mom.”

            Virgil stared at Tammy.  Girls knew things.  Maybe she knew why his mother had left. 

            “She got a job far away.  I heard your dad tell my dad yesterday.”

            “Yah, I knew that.”

            “Yah, you did.”  Tammy rolled her eyes into the back of her head and let her jaw slack.

            “What is wrong with you Virgil, don’t you know anything?”

            “How do you know her?”

            “Who?”

            “That girl.  The one with Gina.”  The Griffin’s door opened.  Gina and Amanda were coming.

            “Not like it’s any of your business,” Tammy sneered emphatically, “but we know her from church.”  She ran back to the girls.  He watched as they pointed to him and whispered in their secret girl way.

            Just then, Virgil’s dad came up the walk.  He was home from work. 

 “Don’t just stand there like a fool, boy, go get the Goddamn mail!”  He flicked his Camel nub into the bushes and pushed Virgil out of the way. “I’m waiting on something from Lima so don’t fuck around.”

            Virgil ran.

            The first time Amanda McKay ever spoke to Virgil, she scuffed the tip of her right patent leather shoe tripping over him.

            “Virgil Pumice, you’re just plain no good.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            “What’s your problem?  Can’t make a knot?’

            “Can so.”  Virgil’s fingers bumbled about.

            “Move.”

            She kicked him hard.

            “You’re hurting me.” He whined.

            “I know.”  She kicked him again.

            “Why don’t you just give up?  You’ll never get it.”  She bent down.

            “Hah.  It’s done.”  The knot fell apart in his hands.

            Amanda laughed, “Maybe you should get buckles.”  She pointed to her feet.  Virgil kept knotting and failing, knotting and failing.

            “Buckles, Virgil.  That’s all you’ll ever be.”

            And, kicking him with her other foot she was satisfied and walked away.

            Virgil was in love with Amanda McKay.  Every kick was another heartbeat and there were many kicks and many heartbeats.  Virgil was alive.  Amanda did not like to run anywhere.  She sauntered.  She sashayed.  She strutted.  She was nothing like his mother.  His mother was in Lima.  These things happen.

            He wanted to know about the buckles.  Amanda loved them.  Every shoe she wore was adorned with them.  They had dainty clasps with leather straps.  Some had elastic or plastic with glitter inside.  One pair was completely invisible.  He could see her pale skin through them, showcasing her toenails which were painted in blue silver sparkles.  He told her they were pretty blue nails.

            “It’s called Azure Moon.  Don’t you know anything?”

            He had seen his mother once in a pair or light green heels, thin straps around her tiny ankles.  Her toes were unpainted and neat, barely peeking out from underneath the new leather.  She was happy then, smiling at his father in their Easter picture.  She had twirled him around and around and around, his small body laughing.

            Virgil’s father burned those shoes.

            His mother was in Lima.

            These things happen. 

Virgil often remembered fifth grade as it was coming to an end.  The classes were lined up according to height on the unused stage in the cafeteria.  Amanda McKay was as tall as Virgil.  He was holding her spot, an Amanda chimera, while she did what girls do in the ladies room.  When she came back, she smiled down at him. She had grown two inches!  Virgil’s mouth hung open, his brown eyes blinked continuously as he rubbed them, his fair skin blotching redder and redder and redder.

            Mrs. Landry came running over, “This will not do!”  Mrs. Landry moved Amanda McKay to the other side of the picture, towards the middle, next to Johnny Bigg.  Virgil was no Johnny Bigg and he knew it.  Amanda looked up at Johnny and smiled.  Then she looked over at Virgil and stuck out her tongue. 

            “Wicked…” was all Virgil could say.  Whisper.  Think.

            That summer was long and hot.  Virgil went barefoot most of the time.  His father’s fists could catch him quicker.  It was easier on everyone.  Angela McKay was on Virgil’s mind.  She beat him once, with the heel of her black patent leather shoe, the silver notched buckle gilding his eye with a purple metallic welt.  Then, she kissed him on the mouth, her warm lips sucking.  It was magical time.

            One day while waiting for Amanda to pass him by, he had written his mother a letter.  He asked her about the buckles.  He asked her when she was coming home.  He sent it to Lima on the cheapest stamp possible with the money he found in between the couch cushions.  She never told him about the buckles.  She, in fact, never told him anything at all.

            Virgil bent to tie his shoelaces in front of Freemont High School.  He stood by the tanned brick hoping no one would notice that his shoes were not new.  Virgil waited for Amanda even after the tardy bell rang, holding his hand over his eyes scanning faces, straining to see her father’s Buick.  Virgil did not know that Amanda McKay was already inside, legs crossed, proper-like.  A Lady in white.  The Temptress of Math 101.

            What Virgil got, for all of this waiting, was detention after which his father beat him, deservedly.

            Virgil was late and untidy, as was his habit, as he was done waiting for anything.  It was a regular day at Freemont High until Margaret Jean Redding tripped and fell over him as he bent to tie his shoes between second and third period.

            “Jesus, you gotta stop in the middle of everybody’s business?” She was looking for her notebook, which had been airborne only moments before.

            Virgil said nothing.

            “Hello? You deaf?”  She smiled at him.  It was a nice smile.

            “No.”

            “I like your shoes, but the laces are too long.”

            “I know.”

            “Why don’t you cut ‘em?”

            “Because he’s a moron and a moron would rather trip.”  It was Amanda McKay.  His heart on his tongue, his mouth dry, Virgil was easy prey.  His body raw and growing, began to sweat.  The hallway began to spin.  He turned around and saw her dainty feet encased in brilliant white heels, opened-toed.  Strapless.

            “See ya.”  Amanda McKay walked over Virgil.  He could see up her skirt but he shut his eyes.  That was just his way.

            Virgil sat on the dirty white tile.  The hallway was empty.  He scrambled to knot his shoes but the laces flopped and dangled in large loops.  They spilled over the sides of his shoes and pooled on the ground underneath his sole.  Wiping back tears, he took the loops and shoved them into the sides of his shoes, next to his socks.  The laces no longer dangled when he stood.  He raised his head, nodded the hair out of his eyes, and took a step.

            Failure.

            The laces drooled out of place.  He kicked a locker.  He kicked he left foot.

            “Hey…”

            Virgil swung around.  He was alone in the hallway.
            “Over here!”  It was coming from the alcove.  He moved towards the whisper.  It was Margaret Jean.  She bent down in front of him. 

            “Here, let me.”  She grabbed ahold of Virgil’s laces and pulled them hard.  She started at his toes and worked her way up to the top of the tongue.

            “You’ve got to do that, or they are just too loose.  And watch.”  She made a knot, then, she took the loops and made another knot.  The loops were short and curt.  They were firm and proper.  They were done up right.

            “Now do the other one.”

            Virgil lowered his eyes, “I don’t know how.”

            “Bend down, hurry.  It’s like this.”  Their fingers entangled as the laces came together.

            “Where did you learn to do that?” Virgil kept his eyes down because it was his habit.  Habit because he was shy.  Shy because he was invisible. 

            “My mom taught me.”  He could hear her smiling.

            “See?”  She stuck her foot out.  He looked at the laces, back and forth, from his shoes to her shoes and back again.

            “Yours were too long too?”

            “Always.  I fell down all the time as a kid.  Then my mom taught me this.”

            “Can you run like that?”  Virgil pointed to her feet.

            “Can I ever.”  Virgil caught the tail end of one blue eye winking at him.  Her smile was soft and her hair was black and straight like the mane of a beautiful horse.

“Come on, we better get to class.  Mr. Johnson, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“I sit right next to you.  You didn’t notice?”

“No.” Virgil looked down again, scuffing his shoes on the tile.  He waited for the kick.

“Well, now you do.”  She began to run down the hall.  Virgil watched her with wide eyes.

“Are you coming?” She laughed and slowed for him to catch up.

Virgil began to run, slowly at first, then faster and faster until they were running together in tandem and Virgil had no problem keeping up.

…

And then the visions came, when the needle poked and she thrashed and she thrashed but the dreaming started and the tying came and the bed was hard and she fell, she fell, she fell.

She fell.

There was a time when she had raised each painted, prim finger robotically.

            Trained.

            “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah, I’m alright.”

            “You’re bleeding.”

            “What?”

            “Bleeding.  See?” His fingers cupped my wrist, gently twisting.

            She makes a mistake, spells “rigorously” wrong, knows it, instinctively her fingers seem out of place, they made the wrong movements.  Registering the complication, the fingers send a message to brain, finding error, sends signal to the frontal lobe:

            Look, something is amiss.

            She stops.

            Looking at the screen, a small fifteen inch screen with glare from continuous overhead florescent bulbs, she scans the memo – which thing is out of place, which something has stopped this automatonic moment from continuing?  Seizing the American Heritage Dictionary from overhead she is an abecedarian in play.

            We shared the stoop of Miller’s Books, a floundering used bookstore with yellowing dog-earred books.  He held me tight to him, pointing me towards the building, his back to the rain, shielding me, resting his neck on my right shoulder as he braced himself with his left arm against the door jamb.

            Young.

            I could feel his heart pounding.

            Perfecting.

            It made her think of her mother, the one who soothed her when she woke up in the night, barely able to peek over the bed and into her mother’s deeply lined face, the lightening cracking outside of her window.  The Good Mother.  Not the Replacement Mother.  The Addict.  The one who stole and beat her own child in her stupor.

            Wasn’t it only yesterday that she graduated, top of her class, so much hope, so much living energy dancing?  Holding swift to the daydream, she rebuts the reality of the five years in this four-foot-three by six-foot-two space, two levels removed from earth. 

            This hovering container.

            Five years of her fingers twisted, coiled stamping machines reaching beyond themselves, stabbing blindly with force and intent on uncushioned molded plastic boards of grey tedium.  The walls, an absorption of color, a demure eggshell gray, monochromatic mausoleum of ceaseless sterility, a constant morose hum of lighting for company.

            “It’s nine o’clock.  Are you finished yet?”  The banter is ceaseless and unavoidable.  Stuart Wigley.  Obtuse.  Without remorse, without fortuitous thought; a boss with too many fists of coffee, Jamaican or French Roast, spilled, slopped in white foam cups of tasteless similarity. 

            He has a cold, a rhinovirus.  An allergic modesty.  Stuart holds a thin handkerchief over his mouth and nose.  Speaking through it, his saliva moistening the spot where words meet cotton fibers, where sound quivers, bounces through spaces, crashes into Margaret, delicate pieces of sharp glass.  He intends on making her squirm.

            “The memorandum is due to the Advisory Council by ten o’clock.”

            He has called the meeting.  He is the top cheese.  He is the important dollar in this town.  It is not untrue.  He inherited the position.  His father, a hero in Haverknaut.  His father, a prominent gentle man, with virtues not passed on to his offspring of one lonely and beguiling child, this forever timid and disgusting man.

            “Five more minutes Mr. Wigley.”

            She manages.  Stammers it out politely.

            Margaret is still searching.

            “I think you scraped your arm up.”  I had.  Gashed my elbow on the gritty limestone façade. 

            He pulled me, staggering, crying, to the curb where the water was pooled deep and cold.  “Lean down and I’ll wash it off you.”  He cupped his hands full of water and sloshed it down my elbow, droplets of pink dripping from my fingertips.  The red gathered around my ankles, bespeckling my muddied socks.

            Fingers washing pages, eyes scanning.  A distraction.

            “Hey, aren’t you in old man Tannen’s Chem 100 on Tuesday’s?”

            Sniffling, I nodded.

            “Your name’s Mary, right?”

            “Sure.”

            Sure.

            The sky was clear and clean now, all the water was on the ground and the moon was full and rich like butter.  His eyes had a twinkle in them.  Flecks of delicious peridot and citrine sunsets and a clandestine impishness that matched his flustered smirk precisely.

            “I gotta go.”

            “Wait!”  He called out.  “Hey, Mary, wait…”

            I ran without looking back.

            How that would haunt me, even now.

            She abhors him.  She can feel his heated stare at the back of her thin blouse.  Too tired to wash her mauve sweater yesterday.  She can feel eyes caress the tip of her lace brazier, the thin wire eyehooks holding it firm, steady, still on her small, peeked chest.  Cups barely full of uneven bosoms.  They are hidden from men.  Their conspicuous gaze, their lustful gaiety of prodding fingers, the unequivocal show of disrobement.  She keeps the girls tied up, precisely. 

            Predictably, he chokes.  Huge gasps of undigested phlegm sitting stagnate in his throat begin to move.  He turns red, coughing.  She notices nothing, back to him, not paying attention, not wanting to see the spittle on his beefy chin, not wanting to eat lunch remembering.

            Momentarily, there is an enormous intake of oxygen.  Stanley catches the reassuring taste of breeze and gulps generously, taking in a heavy fill.  His gasp is unending.  It fills the room.  It dislodges Margaret’s fingers from their quasi-perplexed state.  It commands attention, this gasp, rising, rising, rising up, climaxing into an expanse of chest which in one moment removed, will expel, chortle capricious guffs of bodily fluid around Margaret’s office.

            She cannot stop it.

            Does she grab a tissue to shield herself?

            Can she?

            A hand raises.  She bends her head –

            It’s all over.

            So quck.

            It’s horrifying.

            I should have kept running.

            “Sorry about that.”

            Stanley wipes his nose, an amphourous flow of green mucus pooling in his well-worn kerchief.

            “I’ll be in my office.  And Mary…”

            He could never remember the name, only the M, sometimes it was Mary, sometimes it was Magdalynn, who could remember these things?

            “…leave the door open.  I might have some last minute adjustments.”

She fell into darkness.

...

Sigh.

Silence.

“I know that sigh.  And it’s trouble, Margaret.”           

“It’s just that I’ve been doing some thinking.”

            “Well, stop it.”

            “Do you remember that one time …”

            “Please…, don’t do this.”

            But she couldn’t help herself.

…

 I remember.

I had never seen flakes of snow that big.  I was new to snow.  I loved it.  The chill of a window on my nose was thrilling as I stared out into the courtyard looking down at the kids in their expensive fleeced parkas, pretending that they weren’t cold.

Kathryn and Liz and I shared a room.  It was on the third floor of Dumner Hall.  If you looked out our window to the west you could see clear to the pier on a nice day.  We had decorated the room with strands of white Christmas lights.  Cheap atmosphere for college kids with no cash.  Did I mention our room was a corner room?”

“No.”

“Well, it was.  Corner of Berkley Avenue and 8^th Street.”

She bit her lip.  She rolled the cigarette between her fingers, aimlessly.

“And then?”

“It started snowing about eight-thirty that night.”

“Put down the books, girls.  We are going outside!”

It was Kathryn.  She stormed in the front door, ice covered shoes, her scarf decorated with disappearing works of Mother Nature’s art.

“It’s snowing like a bitch.  We gotta go out and play in this!”

“I can’t.  I have a test tomorrow.”

“Oh, screw your test.  When was the last time you were in a snowstorm?”

“Um, never?”

“Mm hmm.”

“And, when was the last time you failed at anything?”

“Um…”

“Never.”

Kitty was racing around the room, tearing out fresh jeans, long underwear, a wool sweater, her blue and yellow polka-dotted hat.

“Jesus, it’ really coming down.”  Liz was looking out of the window, towards Berkley.  “Hey, there’s about fifty people out there running around.”

“I know.  I told you two.  We gotta get out there.”

I picked up my chemistry book and kept reading.

“Hey, girly!  I said let’s go!”  A pink fuzzy slipper hit me in the head.

“Come on Kitty, I can’t…”

She leaned back on the bed, ripping off her wet jeans and socks.  She started putting on fresh, dry clothes.

“Okay, but Virgil’s out.”

“Yep, I see him too -”

“What, where?”  I rushed to the window, knocking Liz out of the way before she could finish her sentence.

“I thought that might pique your interest.”

“Yah, well, what am I supposed to tell my mother when I flunk out of college?”  I was already throwing on my coat.

“Tell her that you had one hell of a good time!  Now, finish putting that stuff on and let’s go!”

…

She left Dr. Rhetter’s office.

Stepping outside, she looked up.  Tiny pieces of sky were floating, all floating down and kissing her eyelashes.  The snow was already two inches deep.  A thick blanket, hushing.  A monochromatic dance of light and shadow.  Standing there, watching it fall into the street, no cars moving, an unbroken canvas of crystals, the effervescent glow of street lamps spotlighting their descent like delicate ballerinas swirling for one perfect moment of glory.

She flicked her lighter twice to catch a hit.  She pulled her sweater around her, exhaling ash and memory, light and dying.  Breath and being.  She raised her eyebrow and stared at nothing at all.

…

“Come on!”

The girls called her to catch up with them.  She could hear the snow fight going on up ahead.  But, it was like a spell.  A dreamy, floating instant and she didn’t want it to end. 

“I’m coming.”

And then he hit her with a snowball.  It splattered, a chunky icicle against the back of her neck and dribbled between her coat and sweatshirt.

“Hey beautiful.”

“You crazy son of a bitch, you’d better run, ‘cause this is war!”

He smiled.

His eyes shone like diamonds.

She chased him around the courtyard, throwing snow.  Their breath hung in the air like milky smoke.  Like mist.

“You can’t even hit me!”

“You’re right, I am but a lowly woman.”  She got down on her knees and bowed.  She prostrated herself before him in the snow.  Waiting.  Waiting…

He barraged her with fistfuls of snow, creeping closer, closer, closer.

She didn’t move. 

Didn’t breathe.

“Margaret?”

She turned over, grabbed him and shlumped him down on top of her chest.

“You’re insane.”

“Never try to outwit a woman.”

They rolled around in the snow, shoving it in each other’s faces.

They were laughing , soaking wet, and freezing.  They sat up, untangling themselves.  He took off a glove, lightly brushed the hair from her face, the snow from her eyelashes, the tears from her cheeks.

“Hey.”

“I’m cold.”

“Me too.”

            “My hands are freezing.”

            “Here.”  He started to rub them gently.  He blew on them with his warm, moist breath. 

            “Is that better?”  He lightly kissed the underside of her left wrist.  She nodded.  He leaned into her.  She closed her eyes as he put his forehead to hers, thumbs running along her cheeckbones.

            They sat like that for a long time.

…

She drew in a long breath, held it, cast it out into the night like a spell.

“It’s like a trainwreck, this love.”

To no one in particular.  To everyone all at once.  To him, wherever he was.

She laughed.

“A meteor burning hot and bright for a moment.  Searing, brilliant, awe-full and awful.  You latch onto that moment.  To that first feeling you have, that first magical tingling, that first time the breath catches in your throat and you hover in the air like dew.” 

She was a thespian, after all.

But it doesn’t last.

And sometimes, we reach too far.

And we pay for it.

…

 It was something to pass the Time.

“How was work?”

She nods, smiles, shrugs.

Dan is standing in the kitchen eating a bowl of shredded wheat in his underwear.  He’s a briefs kind of man.  Tighty-whities.  Hung, but secure.  His hair is sticking up in the back and he has pillow lines creased into his left cheek.

“Hey beautiful.”

A subtle tension arise in her neck. A hint of disdain.  A hard swallow with a smile.  She turns to him.

“How was your nap, baby?”

“Good, I was damn tired.  Just finished the Baltimore route.  I was beat.”

Baltimore.

She smiles.

“I can tell.” 

She begins peeling off layers, the brown calf-high, leather boots, the eggplant blazer, the silk organza blouse with the sexy neckline, the wool skirt, the pantyhose, the camisole, the bra.  She dropped each piece down as she flitted to their bedroom.

            He watched her intently.  She can feel his eyes on her shoulders, the dip of her back, caressing the curve of her cheeky butt.

            “This day was shit.”

            She turned and faced him, completely naked.

            “Think you could help me with that?”

            They made love for hours.

            Fierce.

            Hungry.

            Desperate.

…

            “You wanna know what my problem is?”  She lit her cigarette.  She exhaled, the smoke a tendril from the corner of her mouth.

            “I wanted my life to be majestic.”

            “And?”

            “And…” she grimaced, pointed to the group, shrugged.  She shook the glass in her hand, the ice cubes clinking and clanging against the dry plastic.

            “And it isn’t.”

            “Hardly.”

            “But that doesn’t tell us how you got here…why you came here tonight.”

            “So you want all the shit, the whole shit, and nothing but the shit.”  She laughed.

            “Something like that.”

            “I know how this works.”

            “Do you?”

            She exhaled slowly, readjusted herself on the pine log, her butt cheeks falling asleep, tingling in the cold.  Her back cracking as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.  Her face was close to the bonfire and her eyes reflected the flicker of embers burning hot and long.

            “I didn’t want to share him with anyone.”

            She paused.  The light licked her dramatically.  Her face was hard.  She had wanted her life to be majestic.  The sort of life people applauded and clinked their glasses for and gave magnanimous speeches about.  She had always believed that she was meant for some true greatness.

            But look at me.

She knocked back her glass, tipping the tiny droplets of melted ice into the back of her throat.  The logs within the bonfire made a phenomenal hum.  They snapped and crackled as light traced her palm through the bottom of the glass.  All of her life was a stage there.  Bitterly empty, a bottom, an immovable unpenetratable window of what if and what might have been.

            “What do you think I have to gain, sitting here, recanting tall tales from Margaret’s big bag of fuckedupedness?  Our bitterness turned towards the glow of a fire, but our backs, cold, always cold, turned to the dark.”

            A man cleared his throat, spat, spoke.

            “When were you going to tell me?”

            Without missing a beat, “I wasn’t.”

            “Why?”

            “Why not.”

            “Fuck you, fuck you straight to hell you crazy bitch.”

            She inhaled.  The cool night air smelled like must.  An atiquitarian wind.  An ancient breath, the mystics whispering, all things rare and beautiful.  The oak trees swishing in gigantic gasps as up the shoreline, waves of leaves upon leaves upon leaves danced.

            “The wind’s picked up.  Feels good.”

            She exhaled, starring at him unrelenting.

            “Does anyone else have something to share?” She looked around, her eyes red and blazing with fierceness with dare.  Daring.  Waiting.

            “No?”

           She settled back on her seat, swirling ice, clinking her class against her too big rings on her bone thin fingers.  “Well, I do.  I don’t self-heal anymore.  I have all these fissures.  I rupture and burst and bubble and surge.  The only thing I seem to learn is that you can’t shut it off like a tap, twist hard and the drip dries or disappears.  Love broke me down like a box.  A discardable valentine.  It held me with little more reverence than a squashed bug.”

            She lit another cigarette, inhaled deeply, her eyes looking out over dark water.

            “I’m a no good used up junkie with a broken heart, how’s that for fucking majestic?”

…

            Margaret is alone now, save for the dying embers and the lapping waves.  She hasn’t had a shower or eaten a decent meal in days.  Why is she here?  What is she doing? 

            The intervention.

            The intervention had failed.

            It is cold.  Cold and she doesn’t have a coat.  She is still wearing heels.  She takes them off to walk across the sand, trying to avoid the weedy plants that infiltrate the land this time of year.  She walks barefoot on the blacktop road, she walks, walks, walks blindly, right out of the park.  Up ahead there is a small café.  She needs to warm up.  To eat.  Something soft to sit on.  She walks in and fails to fill up the emptiness inside.  She sits alone among rows of brightly colored faux leather cushions and mottled table tops.  She orders coffee and toast.  She feel sick.

 &