Innocent Bastards (an excerpt)

(titled years before the film Inglorious Basterds)

Father O’Neill awoke under a layer of sweat.  The room was cold.  His feet were colder.  The crucifix on the wall glistened as though it had been dipped in freezing black oil.  The stillness of his room penetrated the layers of cloth meant to barricade his hands from his shame.  His tomb.  He quickly brought the towel from his bedside table up to his mouth, leaving his Bible to sit loudly alone.  The passages within, those treating fornication, had surrendered their darker shades of ink over the years.  The thick smell of a woman’s immutable desire knew what haunted him.  His gaze when cast upon his naked shame, an innocent mirror in the right place at the wrong time, both knew what haunted him.  He raised himself by the elbows, sat upright on the bed, crossed himself, and finished mopping his face.  He looked back apologetically to the watermark formed in the bare wood of his bedside table, his ragged hand lingered over his mouth as he blessed himself.  Haunting, how his penitence never fully absolved him before taking his place at the pulpit.  The eucharist was only an hour away.  Seventy hail-mary’s couldn’t pull the furrow from his brow in that time.

He rose from the modest bed, rejoined cloth and table, and though it was not nearly a biting enough wind to be faced this morning, he wore his winter undergarments for indeed it was not the biting wind he wished to silence.  These little efforts were all he had to quiet the army surrounding him.  Bathrooms mocked him.  Mildly bumpy car rides scandalized him.  Acrylic cherubs, saints of old, and the colorful mosaics of stained-glass light that made sleeping children blush or jaundiced the elderly, they all knew.

He admitted himself a deep, cleansing breath, before alighting like a ghost down the back stairs that led to the preparation room.  Rounding the worn corners of the stairwell he caught the smell of incense embalming his tardiness.  His still-damp hands squeaked as they guided him down through the patches of morning light which were stabbing into the house like blinding shunts of omniscience.  Only the few truly faithful would notice he was late, if he could appear before the final movement of the organist’s beckoning.  In the preparation room he was surprised to find his stoles already in place.  He didn’t recall putting them on.  As he shrugged off the confusion he kissed his fingers, and touching them to his chasuble he stepped purposefully towards the growing sound of the cathedral organ.  My God, my Father, guide me with your loving light in my time of darkness.  Let me not betray your precious children whom you have named and loved in your infinite wisdom.  I seek your spirit alone in humility and grace.  Blessed Mary, hear my prayer.  Holy Spirit, hear my prayer.  Father of light- The organ blasted as he hurried through the door -hear my prayer.  Though he kept his head straight and hid his eyes by walking in a stoop, assessing the size of his fold was ingrained.  He estimated fifty in attendance.  Could be worse.  Today’s sermon was aimed at the well-to-do, which made up roughly a third of the core congregation.  Saint Agnes needed money, badly.  Her plumbing would need to be redone before the dense tuft of winter pressed through the many wounds in her depressed beam roof.  Her roof would need to be redone.  He paused and let his priestly face through.

“Who among us is satisfied?”  His strong, warm voice echoed off the back wall and he thought he noticed his pulse slow, the tension in his forehead relax.  He fell into his role with ease.  “Is it you, the simple working folk, untroubled by vanity?”  He noticed some shoulders shift.  ”Is it you, the owner of material wealth?”  Still more.  ”Or could it be me, the decorated servant of the Almighty?”  He let his fingers splay out across his robes.  His eyes scanned faces with practiced efficiency.  They were listening.

Though his head was spinning from having to manage so much, he focused hard winning this small battle.  ”I,” there was a cough from a woman in front, “I would like to believe all of us here- the faithful, peaceful, united followers of Christ’s love- to believe all present are satisfied.  Yet, this cannot be.  Here, in the house of God, we learn how to let go, but I know that some of us leave the church, returning to our every-day realities, and continue to hold on to false comforts.  To seek satisfaction of the flesh and ego.  Dramatic pause. If this church was destroyed, who would raise it back up for His glory?”  Shoulders up, down with a sigh. “Who would strain their back to hoist the sign of the cross for the edification of this town?  Are we so secure in our faith that we have begun to allow certain leniencies?  I know I am not the only one who noticed the brand new luxury car in the parking lot.”  There was muffled, but widespread laughter at this. “I’m sure without knowing the owner, I could pick them out right now.  How?”  He wrapped his thumb and forefinger with a wrenching motion around his wrist.  ”They likely own a fancy watch, too.”  He smiled wide at the attentive heads, all pointing their noses at him.  ”Of course, there is nothing innately wrong with fine things.  Consider the great Cathedrals, erected to evoke the transcendent glory of God.”  He moved to the side of the pulpit, feigned difficulty in walking for effect, and stopped, just short of the front railing.  A glimmer of blue caught the father’s eye, and he looked out into the graveyard, spotted a young man.  Stammering for just a second, he recalled his anecdote and felt composure return, joined by a bead of sweat he expertly detoured with a gesture towards heaven.

“Years ago,” he peered straight into the audience, “before coming here to St. Agnes, I mentored a young priest.”  He looked around at his congregation, front to side, side to back.  ”This priest was, we’ll say, stuck: on wondering what his parish thought of him, the man.”  He turned back towards the altar, catching another glimpse of blue through the window.

Outside, the young man, whom the Father did not recognize, was slowly heading in a direction that filled him with panic.  There was a particular grave in that row, a grave he hoped nobody would stop at.  A grave he tended in secret.

“You see,” he cleared his throat, and grasped the rail with his right hand, leaning, “He was eager to please, or be seen as good.  Same thing really, and he tended to go easy on his flock for fear of turning anyone away.”

The worst had happened.  The young man was now caressing the lettering of the headstone.  HER headstone.

“His parish,” his now wobbling voice continued, “was one made up of seldom tried and rarely true, thin-skinned believers who had to be nearly tricked out of their money.  He had lost sight of the service of God and had given in to the temptation to entertain.”  Now the Father’s eyes narrowed.  Time to bring it home.

“However, I’m afraid that the lack of real guidance, in the end, proved a much greater curse than that of unpopularity; the parish divided and eventually closed its doors, and so I hope to prevent this mistake for all of us here at St. Agnes.”

The unwelcome man in the cemetery sat a bunch of white flowers upright against the grey marble.  And, it couldn’t be ignored: made no cross, did not bow his head.

“My vision… and I hope you share it, is that St. Agnes would be a comfort, a refuge to those who are needy, in any way.  That her walls would stand strong, and her faithful, here now, even stronger.  We cannot pretend to chase after these virtues if we are not willing to serve.”

The Father released his grasp on the railing, turned towards the altar, cutting his service short by more than half an hour, and prayed, spontaneously-

“Most Holy Father in heaven, hear our prayer…  blessed Mary, hear our prayer…  Holy Spirit, descend upon us and bestow now your mercy and healing.”  All faces pointed to the ground in penance.  ”Lord we come to you today, in humility, and ask, how can we be satisfied who have not material comfort?  How can we be satisfied who come to this place of worship and, despite our wealth, feel no repose?  Lord, in your wisdom and grace, guide us now, and evermore toward your service, and may we all, rich or poor, with family or chaste, well labored or under skilled, find that pure and wonderful satisfaction of bringing your glory here to earth by our good works and service.  Amen.”

The elders of the congregation sat in confused hesitation.  The younger of the flock, eager to adjourn, lined up quickly as the organist made haste to her bench and launched a full battalion of organ pipes at the congregation, causing some to lean away as though a windstorm had blown in.

As he turned and received the sacraments from the altar boys, he glanced out again through the window, but the graveyard was empty of young men in blue coats.  He sighed without letting his shoulders sink or stomach retract.  Another in a series of mastered illusions.  Pleading to God for an emergency of any kind to empty the church, he turned back again, towards the crowded railing, and, vexed to near intolerability, pinched a wafer between the very ends of his thumb and forefinger.  He looked down upon the first in line and saw her mouth already open in anxious obedience.  It made his stomach not only turn, but lurch.  Her mouth agape, he could count her fillings.  Saw she was a smoker.  Tried not to gawk or gag at the tongue hanging white-striped out of her mouth.

He gave a slight tremble.  The woman kneeling in front of him lifted her eyes out of self consciousness, wondering what was wrong.  Father O’Neill nervously, almost as slight-of-hand, placed the wafer on her tongue.

He wanted to vomit right into their mouths.  He wanted to urinate himself within inches of their noses as he held out the next wafer after another.  He wanted to shave the altar boys’ heads and slip Beatles songs into the hymnals.  He wanted.

As his guts tumbled inward on themselves, the clouds outside broke, and a sunlit Christ beamed down upon Father O’Neill in a wondrous rushing wave of stained-glass glory.  His eyes transfixed on the words under Christ’s feet:  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not…

The good father regained himself and delivered the next blessing.

As he hurried, robes clenched in his hands up the stairs past the kitchen and the unnaturally scuff-free walls of the hallways, he puzzled over the graveyard visitor.  Why her grave?  Was there someone he did not know about?  Could it really be him?  He considered that it might have been a distant relative.  It would explain why they came a day early, on a Sunday.

“Father O’Neill.”  He almost knocked her straight over.  She half curtsied, the brim of her habit barely swiped his chin in the narrow stairwell.

“Sister Josephine.”  He nodded.  She was pale and looked tired, but peaceful nonetheless.  He saw that they both shared in their perspiring and he feigned illness in his voice when he replied to her tilted head.

“Oh, bless me,” he coughed, “I’m feeling a bit under the weather and,” sniffled, “I wonder if you couldn’t bring tea to my room?  I shall be turning in early, don’t set a place for me.”

She more than half curtsied and returned to the kitchen bowing deep enough to hide her rolling eyes, facing him until the door swung shut between them.  Finishing the last flight of stairs, the father paused, and smiled.  St. Joseph, in his sanctified and disinterested wisdom, gently smiled back upon him.  He kissed his own fingers and placed them upon the wooden saint, hanging there guarding the border between his sleep and death’s reach.  ”Bless you” said Father O’Neill, and made for his room.

tailbreath

“let’s git”  He said, flashing his missing chess pieces.

“You’re balding faster lately.”  Was her reply.

Missing teeth aside, he was a wreck.  One tornado short of a storm, so to speak.  He glared at her, ready to display his animalism, but likewise unsure of the aggression.  She studied his face as it turned from purple to rose red.  His cheeks swelled.

The elephants roared their terrible shrieks and all in attendance leaned away from the center ring in doubt.  Doubt of the entertainers to control the very experience they had bought.  Sixpence for the show, but anticipating the show…. how many pence?  She held back with her parents in tow.  They displayed fashions that photographers’ lens’s would be loath to refract.  Years of circus life only educated the poor idiot.  Common sense became his jihad.  Pet peeves corroded into declarations of war.  He called for her, but she was nowhere to be found.

“The treasury is empty, your majesty.”  Spake tailbreath.

“I will eat what is not expended.”  Said I.

you are the head

The under side of my left foot itches, and my name is George Walker.  I’m not quite sure who I am yet, but then, neither are you.  I’m not exactly what you’d call alive though I am certainly human.  My face is flesh and bone, imperfect yet not unattractive.  My blood circulates and I must eat; I must sleep and make waste like any other.  I suppose the only major difference between you and I is that, while you exist right now, I only existed a second ago.  By the time you can hear me speak I am gone, yet I can only tell you what you would mean to say, if you could.

There is a reason you and I are together as we are now.  You are aware that something is dreadfully wrong, so was I.  You are sensitive to injustice but also struggling simply to maintain the role into which you were born.  You do what you can, within reason.  You are not blind to the needy but you haven’t logged many volunteer hours, if any.  Like I did, you look to the bureaucratic social systems and the corruptions that grow them over like vines up a brick wall.  You look to the head and cry out that the feet are bleeding and poorly clothed.  You do this because you believe, like I did, that the head can fix things if it can be convinced.

But hear me now, and think well on this one truth I will tell you and then attempt to explain:

You ARE the head.

You, reader.  You are the head that needs convincing.  Until you replace your own notions of the Mysterious Other that acts around, within, behind and through all things with the real notion that it is you, just the very person reading right this very moment, you will be doomed to cynicism or religion.  Cynicism because objectifying yourself causes one to feel that all is lost; religion because subjectifying yourself causes one to feel that all is found.  Isolated, each operates at a loss.  You’ve seen this before in the hypocrisies of both church and state.  There are good and bad people on every team.  In every identifiable group there are  the great, the petty, and as numbers comprising the group grow so does the ratio of extremes to those of a more spectral value.  Which leads me to a premature delivery of my main point: the mistake we are making is continuing to define people in binary intervals when our character and creativity are fluid processes wholly dependent on all that can be perceived.

virus or yeast

Edmond stared out the window, watching the unhunted foul feed.  A hint of rain clouded his view just enough.  Inspiration eluded him like a nomadic rash.  He scratched, the itch moved.  Sitting at a hotel desk, Edmond spoke aloud, the stone walls helpless to answer.  Why am I here?  Furthermore, if I wonder why I am here, am I necessarily HERE.   …   ?

“Edmond, will you be going on like this all night?”  Her voice beckoned from the freshly made bed.  Wrapped in silk suggestiveness and comely contrasts of low and high, her black-laced thighs promised freedom from worry.  He nearly fell to the peril.

“All night, woman?  All night?”  His was the voice of accidental antagonism.  ”I will go on like this until the VERY night.”  He neither huffed, nor puffed.

He lurched his mass across the wooden floor, the solid uncreaking wooden floor, until his velocity cooled with subsonic severity in front of the record player.

“We will listen to this bliss or be resigned to God’s bowels.”  Edmond instructed.

“It will be bliss if it is not spoken first and felt afterward.”  She quipped.

Edmond glanced quickly at her sinister mocking lip.  How it curled in such a disgusting taunt.  Like panties on the playground.

“It will be bliss if uttered or not.”  He criticized.

At this she shrunk.  What had been her perfect nubile posture turned to that of a common shrimp.  Eros coughed, sighed, and curtailed from the hotel bed.

Edmond brought in one great breath, and with no repercussion in mind offered: “My dear.  Of this world may you be or not.  Of my mind, you are a disease, though I know not if you are virus or yeast.”

piss your brain right out

Cacti shriveled that time of year.  You couldn’t tell if it was glass or sand you were walking on.  Sandals and boots smoldered and gasped under the steps of the village men, marching stern-faced in lines.

“Where are they going?” Pedro asked his grandfather.

“They are going to the edge of the world.”  Abuelo answered.

Not less than three years ago his father would have fielded these same questions, but he died of thirst.  It wasn’t long after alcohol arrived in the village that men became worthless and children sprang from nameless virgin wells.  So many diapers unchanged.  So many shots fired vaguely at hostile hallucinations.

The scorching, pollen-yellow sun dried his grandfather’s mouth to where he could no longer pronounce words correctly.  His swollen, dry tongue stumbled over itself.  He told his grandson to take note of the mistakes he made.

At the age of eleven, he remembered, they traveled from the desert to the coast, on a bus that took the perseverance of a saint to ride.  Stray dogs fumed and drooled on every part of you no stranger would dare touch.  Dust flew into the windows faster than it escaped; infants wailed.  He sat on his grandfather’s knee and stared at his creviced face, admiring the earthy brown tone of his leathery skin.  As they passed the town square he observed from the dusty window a squadron of soldiers dehydrating in the sun on the patio of the beer garden.  Looking at them you wouldn’t have thought they were heros.  From the bus, in this glaring hot sun, they looked like melting wax effigies, each demarcating the loss of the prior.

And through it all the child couldn’t help but hurt.  Can’t heros come home?  Have we asked too much of these poor uneducated sons of liberty?  He looked to the stern, caramel face of his grandfather and hardly had to ask-

“My grandson… chemically speaking, you drink too much, and think too hard… you’ll piss your brain right out.”

freewrite 23 January 2010

Present Tense

Opens in a Garden

Owner of garden does not know who the narrator is

Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty.  The bills in my hand stacked; each a respite from the desolation of my labor.  I had toiled, slaved, rejoiced: each in accordance with my mood.  Whether or not she knew the bloom of her robust tomatoes was my art, the tomatoes would be eaten.  The presumed joy of their consumption satisfied me.

Ten. Twenty. Thirty. Forty.  It’s hard to make a living feeding people with real food.  I should know.  I tried for years to find an apprenticeship online.  I searched by every funky keyword you could imagine.  My mother criticized my efforts saying, “What about x; what about z; y could put a hole in your r.”

I fiddled for my jacknife –freshly sharpened as it was– and cut the tips of her cauliflower clean off.  Not a sound.  I breathed in my own relief and smelled the fresh vegetable’s promise of healing.

NOW! I shouted to myself.  I darted out past the celery patches and through the rows of raspberries, always watching her, until I hit an oak stout with my nose.

As I awoke from the daze, I remembered the sun setting just beyond a strange silhouette.  There was an omnipotent lord of all, but I feasted to my own indulgence, based on my own will.  A benevolent landlord she, and I the faithful steward of sweat and grime; forever abandoned to my toil.  I rose to my feet, blew my nose, and torched the blissful wings that held fast the shut door: MY FLAME!

alison

Alison Longfellow of the bog.  She stated half heartedly that her hair had grown unmanageably long for this time of year .  I sighed with calculated ambiguity and placed the salt shaker nearer her plate.  Without a glance her hand swept the small glass dispenser up and over each aggregate of her breakfast.  She salted the salty hashbrowns, the salty bacon, and even made a small pile of the nonsense at the edge of it all for later reinforcement.  She would salt the fried legs of frogs.  Spurned that she were not born a doe in the Northwoods.

The food was good, though, and the bog stench was light today thanks to an ascending fog that was nearly clear now.  Days were generally dreary like this.  There were frogs and rotting logs.  Too moist, however, for pogs.  The children instead chased dogs and and sat by the fire with lincoln logs.  Hogs.  Blogs, cogs, smogs, clogs, flogs, progs.  Though her hair was unmanageable it still framed her sullen face quite beautifully.

“How’s the hen from your bog life?”  I asked without speaking.  She took the bait and caved in around four or five geese.  They died.  Our heads slumped in death.  Why these geese?    Her bog was three miles south.  We headed there straight away.  The hills were slippery wet from a lack of sun to dry them.  The edge of town was conveniently at the edge of the hill we were on, and making our way down into the wetlands was easy going if not messy.  The cold was annoying, but not so bad to hurt.

“I forgot the point of this all.”  She finally said.  Her wet-down hair looking more artistically wrought now than ever.  ”I feel like yesterday we were eating breakfast, and today we’re running down this hill,” she paused and looked far into my head; beads of rain getting bombed from her face by falling drops caught my attention until I saw her lips moving in the background, “… as though there was no connection between now and then, you know?”  She took in a deep breath and scowled. “Hey, are you even here?  Have you heard a word of this?”

I stood motionless on the steep hillside fearing I might slip.  The terrain below me was nothing to shrug off, with bits of jagged rock protruding from the muddy earth, promising to ruin whatever part of you struck them.

“Let’s just go back.”  I offered.

“For what sake, Paul?

“For fuck’s sake!”  I wailed.  She handed me my ass with a scowl.  I paused, assessing whether or not I had gotten unreasonably excited.  ”I don’t know who you are.”  True.  It felt strange to realize it.  ”All I know is that we were in a cafe and now we’re headed to a bog.  I think it makes sense to go back to the cafe in case someone knows what we do.”

“Paul, we go to the cafe and then the bog, and afterwards maybe back to the cafe; but not before the bog.”   She had run out of breath.  I couldn’t really argue her point, lacking a premise or any other reasonable axiom to work with makes it difficult to defend your notions.  Aha!  That’s why they’re called notions.  ”Well…” the world was silent, “are you comin’?”

We headed down the rest of the hill with only the sounds of our slipping boots splatting and scraping in the mud and rock.  If I had to be in mud, I was glad it was this very mud.  The consistency was ideally gritty while remaining mostly fluid and splashed wonderful designs onto surrounding rocks and low trunks of trees.  The shade of brown was a dark mocha.  Indeed, it was like walking through sopping espresso grounds.   If it hit a broad leaf, the color contrast struck with a subdued poignancy.  Not a severe or provocative contrast, no: green and brown are aged mates that evoke nature’s unrelent.

“What do you think this mud tastes like?”  Alison asked.  Her tone was now lighthearted, and suggested we were no longer in debate but simply wandering together.  I laughed aloud at the coincidence.

“You noticed too, huh?”

“Yeah, it looks like really good chocolate fondue.”  She smiled at this memory.  Fondues were the last thing I’d forgotten.  As I remembered mastering home fondues, I gradually lost the hold on my thoughts to wonder on why it was Alison was Alison-from-the-bog.   Why was it we were heading to a bog?  It’s one thing to cradle known investment fraud, but an altogether different thing to be from a bog or go to a bog for an implied reason.  A cat, and a lemonade knife.  Will the cat lap up the lemonade?  Will the blade be firm enough to defend itself?  No, the cat will lap as the blade cuts, like that fucking eskimo story about killing wolves by freezing blood onto the blade of a knife and sticking it blade-up in the snow.   I couldn’t remember past my own questioning.  Maybe hers was coming back, I was loath to think we were stuck.  To the bog, body! I commanded under threat of mutiny.

One failed birth at a time, our non-existent opposites fluxed in and out of consciousness.  Random flashes of intuition kept steering us both right.  If we hadn’t turned east at the bottom of the first hill we would have hit an impassible ravine and wasted half a day getting around it.  Additionally, there was a very dense wood around the east of that second hill that struck us both as familiar.  So far so good it was at least linear.  Alison had gotten a ways ahead of me as I stopped to evaluate our route.  The sun was low over the hills to our right, so it was evening… approximately sixthirty.  And there were no hill tops peeking over the most immediate ones, so the terrain appeared to be dropping in elevation in the direction we were headed, which to me suggested bog.

“I hope there is a lot of leatherleaf.”  She shouted back at me.  I could see her frosted breath from fifty feet away.  I agreed with a casual nod.  We boiled the leaves and… damned to hell if I didn’t forget again.   I hurried to catch up with Alison, and as I approached her, the expanding view in front of me confirmed it, we had found the bog.  The smell.  Her smell.  The aroma was a tricky one to place.  On the one hand the air was somewhat heavy, like over cooked broccoli, or rotting wheat.   Yet, there was an acidity too, that seemed to lighten the scent like a zesty vinaigrette.

“What did we boil the leatherleaf for?”  I asked as soon as we were side by side again.

“I was wondering the same thing..”  She glanced over at me, but dropped her gaze after the half smile faded from her flushed face.

freewrite 2 February 2010

Hairbrush

Fatal Illness

Opens with an ex-trapeze act.

My mother, as skilled as she once was, flicked the pepper dispenser at my face.

“The fuck!” I cried.

She looked at me like an ill-trained dog.

I was foaming at the mouth, and taunting.

She coaxed: let me brush your hair.

There was no chance.  She lunged towards me but I rolled back on myself and flung her seventeen feet over my head.

“There is no cure for this shit!”  She wailed.

“Good godamned job getting pregnant then.”  I vomited.

The brush, pulling my skull towards her hand, reached a rhythm of untimed harmony.  I released all tension to her bond.  She coddled me.

while great we are

“…that and the fact that he could hardly keep it up, I’d say.”  Edmond jabbed.  It pleased him that even Peter snickered, but he quickly returned his face to neutral.  The library was in all its splendor tonight.  The fire burned bright and cast a warm, flickering glow over the sofa and chairs arranged about the coffee table.  The elegant, deep reds and browns, sophisticated wood trim and quality builds of the upholstered furniture matched perfectly with the smells of firewood, brandy, and leather bound books -danced keenly with the crackling logs and low whoosh of the flames.

Edmond, rounding the oversized pool table to line up his victory shot, set his pipe down and added, “You know, Peter, that it’s largely your fault.”  And delivered James a crushing defeat by sinking the 9 with the 4 on a corner bank shot.  James scoffed, “Are there any games you don’t beat me at?”  But Edmond paid no mind, and instead anticipated Peter’s reply.

“Don’t be daft Edmond.”  Peter coolly countered.  ”It’s performance anxiety, that’s your territory.  And Jame’s can take some credit too, for the excess of alcohol in his blood.”

I sat up in bed, confused.  There was evidence of sex crusted on my skin.  The bedroom was dark, and quiet.  I felt around on the floor near the bed for clothing that felt like mine.  Overworn jeans.  Greasy hoodie, heavy with months of poor hygiene.  When did I get so disgusting? I wondered.  I gathered up my clothes and, wrapped in a towel, stumbled down the stairs to the bathroom.  Flipped the switch.  The light was piercing bright.  I stepped in front of my pale reflection.  I looked like I did meth.  Bad teeth, complexion of a baked potato with sour cream and bacon bits; and sunken, dark eyes.  I didn’t want to look this way unless I was doing meth, and I made a brief, silent vow to curb the drinking, conveniently ignoring, in that moment of zealous inspiration, the causes of my drinking.  I thought I may like to vomit, but I felt more stupid than nauseated and resigned myself instead to drinking tea and listening to Chopin in an effort to tire nondebaucherously.

“How long do you expect he’ll stick with tea before realizing it’s too late to sober up?”  Edmond teased.

The fire was nearly half burned down and the library had taken on a somberness.  The conversations had turned from philosophy to mortality.  James, who had stopped challenging the other two to nine-ball championships, given his losing streak, was now sitting in the mammoth chair nearest the bar, a half empty bottle of brandy sat hesitantly on the edge of the bar above his right arm; the fire on his left cast a devilish shadow across his brooding face.  His black snout glimmered.

“I don’t know Edmond,” James snarked, “If you keep talking he may resort to a beer any second.”

Edmond winked at Peter but only a frown was reciprocated.  He lifted his large frame out of his chair and wobbled over to James, grabbed the brandy bottle from the bar -which disappeared in his paw but for the lip of the opening- and emptied it into his snifter.  He lingered uncomfortably long over James’ head, swaying just slightly.

“Feeling smart tonight?”  Edmond taunted.  ”Because last I checked, I am the only one who is ultimately indispensable.  I am the one feeding his most intimate desires.  It is my strategy, my intuition and my will that keeps you two here.”

James cowered.  His pathetic face wilted into that of an abused baby beagle.  Peter stepped in-

“Edmond, enough.  You’re tanked and belligerent.”  Peter kept his guard and continued, “If you keep bullying James, or me for that matter, I’m going to tell him.”

I had lost track of time.  Chopin had hammered well into the latter half of my collection of Nocturnes, which I knew meant I was a miserable failure.  I felt half sober, and too awake to simply adjourn to sleep.  I drug my bare feet across the living room towards the kitchen.  The refrigerator light illuminated the towel around my waist and made the whole fridge glow lime green.  It was then I remembered why I was downstairs in the first place.  I walked to the bathroom and put on my clothing, cracked open the top of my beer can, and slugged.

I wasn’t tired.  ”Fuck.” I shouted in a whisper.  Normally this would just be another night, but I had made promises.  There were goals now, and agreements to work towards them.  My prescribed sleep aid had been a total jinx, she knew that, so I was off the hook at least for another week in regards to the booze, but it was three in the morning.  Bad, bad bad. I thought.  Have fun at work tomorrow, assface. I scorned, and grabbing three unopened beers, headed to the porch.  I drank two in the course of one cigarette, and decided to forgo the third, but then consumed a bulk of it during my second cigarette.  My throat ached and my head was finally swimming.  If I couldn’t lull my mind to sleep, I had found that, I could make it sick enough to.

By the force of habit I locked the porch door, shut off the lights, and plundered up the stairs to bed.

“Well that settles it,” Edmond yawned, “I can hardly think anymore.  I think I’ll pass out right here.”

James stirred at the sound of Edmond’s voice.  Yet, he couldn’t move but to slump his arm over his snout and turn his face from the waning fire.  Peter simply stood in judgment, hiding his own drunkenness.  He would wait for the others to pass out and then clean up the mess.  He made his way in the faint glow of the fire’s embers towards the empty brandy bottles on and around the bar.  The creaking of the wood floor made Edmond stir.  His great mass shifted and Edmond mumbled-

“We are neither the seeds nor the fruit of our labor.  Farmers, tenders of garden all, we toil for greatness while great we are,” and he smacked his lips, his arm lifted his paw up nearer his eye, and he returned to slumber.

It was my alarm, or hers.  I must have still been a bit tipsy as they sounded nothing alike.  It was bad.  I would be drunk at work until lunch, then I would get sick, but not enough to leave early.  A pattern I knew all too well by now.  I got up and grabbed my phone.  It was hers.  I nudged her on the shoulder and she woke, annoyed.

“I’ll shut if off,” she scowled.

I rolled back onto my pillow and tempted myself to go back to bed.  Nuh uh! I scolded.  My attendance had been noticed, it was trouble.  I told myself to get up and on with it, and did.  She had scrambled down to the shower first, I would skip mine again.  I checked my email and facebook.  The fake floral smell of her shampoo filled the air as she passed me on her way to the closet.

“You have your bus pass?”  Her voice was hurried and irritated.

“Mhm.”  I barely push out.  I was dressed before her, but moving slow in my residual drunkenness.  Before I knew it, she had gotten ahead of me in the process.

She was headed down to the front door, her pace and volume warned me not to cross her.  I grabbed my keys, smelled under my shirt -passable, I thought- and rushed out into the overwhelm of drenching reality, towards the bus bearing down on my stop.  I fumbled with my embarrassingly simple key array.  By the time I had the deadbolt locked it was too late.  The bus’ breaks squealed to a halt, and popped with a hiss.  I had barely caught her disapproving face before the bus rolled right between us, declaring my loss.  I could just hear her, upon me bringing up getting beer tonight: “I don’t want any.”  She would say this and we would both know what she really meant: “You want to drink again tonight, after last night?”

I won’t have the courage to fight back, or a good reason to, for that matter; except that an unhinged and desperate life makes for great artistic inspiration.

“That and the fact that she is easily ‘enabled’,” Edmond interjected.  I shook him off, lit a cigarette and waited for the next bus to come.

With me at work and out of the way, Peter set about getting the mansion in order.  He had put on coffee hoping the smell would make the other two come out for breakfast.  The coffee, however, had finished brewing before he dusted the library an hour ago.  He worked diligently sorting the bills, planning meals, balancing upcoming obligations against potential free time and social needs.  He was hard at work keeping schedules in sync, always forgetting what the string tied around his finger was about.

“Oi!  Is it morning?”  James coughed and rolled off the sofa onto the floor with a-

THUD!

“Fucking hell James!”  I yelled, aimed towards the stairs to the library.  Though, as I did this I was overcome with worry.  There were no stairs near me.  My cubicle was on the top floor of an office building, but the loud sound I had heard came from above me.  I’ve imagined it, I thought.  Still, my face remained scrunched in puzzlement, why had I immediately blamed James?

Edmond stirred in his chair.  He was lazily slumped on his favorite brown leather club and had most of the crossword licked.  His expanse of brown fur caused him to appear as though someone had tossed a bearskin rug over the chair, were it not for his thick-framed glasses and pipe, which he puffed back to life before turning to Peter.

“Is there coffee?”  He asked without lifting his gaze from the paper crumpled in his large paw.

“Do you normally smell coffee when there isn’t any?” Peter joked and placed the unused portion of the newspaper in the basket that had been set out for it.

“Don’t be a minger,” Edmond offered, “and grab me a spot eh?”  He scratched an L into 31 down (Could be mental: _ _ _ P _ _ _ L) and looked up to meet Peter’s unamused gaze.

I got up from my desk and headed for the coffee room.  She was already there filling up.  I stepped quietly over to the sink and rinsed my mug of the leftover sludge from yesterday.  I asked her how she slept but got a shrug in response.  She stared at me as if there was only one sentence I could say that warranted a conversation.  I could have taken a guess as to what that sentence was, but I was usually wrong, and decided instead to play awkward and headed back to my desk, leaving the ball in her court.

I sat down to my stacks of files and began notating claim details in the database.  ”Customer did not sign letter / Loan company provided proof of application / Claim not covered under regulation”  My nearest coworker belched.

“Oooh!  I am so sorry.  That was not lady like!”  She squawked.  But I was distracted by the blinking message box on my computer screen.

ARE YOU NOT EVEN THE LEAST BIT SORRY FOR WHAT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT?

Read my chat window.  People typed in capslock a lot around here.  Now and then I’d get an email from her chastising me for a wonderful meal, so I knew not to freak out too bad, but still, what had I done?

“Edmond, this one’s for you!”  Called Peter.

“What, hehe, did I say some shit last night in the library?”  Edmond smirked.  One of his favorite news categories was “Scandals Caused by Local English-Speaking, Oxford-Educated Brown Bear.”  Peter played difficult and, lifting his eyebrows in non-assumption, said, “Maybe this time it was something you made him say,” and returned back through the door into the hall to vacuum, shouting after himself, “Don’t forget to apologize or you’re done for!”

“Don’t be simple,” Edmond corrected, “I’m not synaptic, I’m a conceptual function: an influence.  Not a cause.”

Peter poked his head back in the door, “Then boo to him when he blames you later, eh?”  He said smiling.

I didn’t have the strength to ask what I had done now via chat, in my cubicle at work.  I responded that the topic was best saved for lunch and that I would have to be reminded of what I was sorry for.  I winced the whole time I read her next reply:

gretchen83: your drinking is reminding me of Chris, I ultimately left him over it, and I can’t have that same struggle now with you

James came out wide again on the side-pocket, bounced off and scratched the cue ball in the opposite corner.

“Son of a!” He lamented.  Edmond ignored him, engrossed in a documentary about John Adams.

“Is it my shot?”  He asked the TV screen.

“No, it’s your game.”  James spat.  Upset at his tenth straight loss to a dispassionate intellectual.  ”Aren’t you even going to gloat?”  He prodded.

Edmond set down his cue and shut off the TV.  He looked at James, at his pudgy frame and mangy fur, in pity, and, taking off his glasses, standing calm and firm, spoke: “I’ll have him abandon everything.”

James reeled back at this, landed on his left haunch, stretched his neck as if he hadn’t heard quite right, and spoke in a rage, “What was all of that about not being synaptic, just a conceptual function, yadda yadda?”  James sneered and locked into Edmond’s gaze, snout to snout.

“If I recall, Edmond, you are just an influence, and are immediately absolved of all evil once he makes a decision, is that right?”  James inhaled sharply, and gulped, but kept his gaze.  Edmond raised a brow, parted his long jaw to speak, but then lowered his brow again.  He sighed.

“Peter!” he called.  Not a minute later Peter arrived holding a can of dusting spray.

“Yes, Edmond?”  he dangled half his body through the door.

“Of all three of us, Peter, who do you think could most easily take over?”

“You Edmond,” he knocked his can like a gavel in the air, “You happy?  I’ve got a really menacing workload today… if you wouldn’t mind, James?” Peter’s eyes pleaded.

Edmond looked upon James in vindication.  Edmond’s slit eyes and smug little half-moon smile grated right down to the core of him, so that James trembled, more out of frustration than fear.

“GODDAMNIT!” I screamed into my hands, as quietly as possible.  Nobody seemed to notice.  But my  coworker in the cubicle to my right often pretended not to notice my eccentricities.  Her priorities were elsewhere.  I looked around the office for my boss.  She wasn’t gossiping with Booth, scolding Ishmael, or confusing Josiah so I looked toward the copier.  She wasn’t there either.  I needed a smoke.  I grabbed my pack and lighter from my coat pocket and stuffed them into my jeans.

I snuck out to the elevator bank unnoticed and the elevator ride itself turned out to be safe.  Outside I paced furiously.  I kicked the sand from the torn-up city streets with my worn-down light brown shoes.  The grating scuffle was a sound therapeutic.  I rubbed my hands raw and drew in the sweet poison of my cigarette though it were an as-seen-on-TV cure for what ails.  What could I have said?  Done?  I recalled as my pacing caused visible tracks in the dirt and dust, my past offenses that had turned out to be laughable.  Once I had slashed my neighbor’s tires for leaving his trash in giant piles behind his garage.  Once other I had broken my knuckle on the brick wall of my mother’s house in excitement over an argument Gretchen and I had had regarding the propriety of keeping memories of past lovers.  Oh, and there was of course the bag of wine and shoe that I launched at her office door when I got offended that in the midst of our hanging out she wanted to be alone on the internet.  Of course, I was very drunk, and I’m sure she closed the door because of me and not from an initial need for privacy.

“Why do I think this way?”  I cried aloud.  A woman, at the bus shelter that shared the sidewalk with me, looked on in concern.  I leaned back on my dress clothes and quick re-composure to normalize the situation.  Then I drew hard again on my cigarette.  If this is petty, it will all be ok and we can just drink again tonight.  But, I worried, something sexual happened last night and I’m not sure… I don’t remember what as going on.

“Face it Peter,” Edmond pitched, “He’s a terrible partner and is better off alone, with us.”

“I think you’re afraid that he’s better off without us.”  Peter suggested.

Not one second after 12:03 did she come out for her pre-lunch smoke.  I was already waiting, worked up with anxiety over what I would learn of my own behaviour.  She was not wearing a scowl, or any other expression I would immediately take as combative, so I took a quick and tentative moment of repose.  Maybe I’ll get away with hijacking the conversation toward where we’ll eat, I hoped.

With her cigarette lit she approached me and stood close like a lover.  Yet, she kept her eyes distant and did not speak.  We puffed in silence, each taking turns pretending we weren’t trying to get the other to look at us.  This game went on until she had had enough and complained, “Are you not going to say anything?”

I looked back at her with disdain and reminded her that I still didn’t know what it was we were supposed to talk about.  She was annoyed by this, and I tried to sound humiliated, but I still hoped it was something silly, like duct-taping her infant niece to the dryer to stop her crying.

Peter walked over to Edmond with his head bent down to the floor, and placed his arm around him.

“Let’s take a walk, Edmond.”  He softly commanded.

They headed up the street towards the crack-stacks, a route he knew and had taken often.  He followed close behind, straining to hear over the fall breeze, which was sending leaves gliding all about, skittering and crinkling, crunching loudly under their ursine weight.

“You’ve forgotten how to love, Edmond.”  He heard Peter say, gently.

“Thanks, dad.”  Edmond snarked, and produced his pipe.  With his prominent claw he ground up the loose Virginia flake and deftly packed his Meerschaum.  Then, offered his free paw to Peter.  Petere placed his corn cob pipe in Edmond’s paw and thanked him.  They crossed the street and turned towards the railroad.

“Peter,” Edmond paused, dropping strings of dark, moist tobacco into Peter’s pipe, “I’ve never learned.”  With this he handed Peter’s freshly packed pipe back to him, and lit a match.  Peter puffed six times and then nodded.

“For me it’s just simple strategy.” Edmond stopped, and looked to see that Peter was listening.  Satisfied, “He has real potential, and if I have one purpose, it’s to make sure that he can realize it.”  Peter considered this and puffed two or three more times on his corn cob.

“Bottom line,”  Edmond insisted, “Is that you and James agree that his output is paramount to our existence.”  He brought the Meerschaum to his lips, and with full regality caused a swirl of aromatic smoke to climb around the both of them.

“Do you remember when Sara left last night?”  She asked with either doubt or shame on her face.  Regardless of expression she looked like a porcelain angel, but this made the extremes of sadness and joy even more devastating to witness.  Her beauty was below none.  I saw her lower lip threaten to quiver and quickly said-

“No, I don’t.”

“Need to hear more?”  Peter turned and faced Edmond.

“Yes, apparently I do, Peter.”  But his gaze blurred over, there was a thumping madness coming after them, and he turned his head ’round to check their path.  James was running up behind them.

“Guys!” He wheezed.  ”We had sex with her best friend last night!”  James’ face spoke horror of horrors.

“What do you mean ‘had sex’ James?”  Edmond demanded. “Where was Gretchen when this happened?”

“I mean that,” he panted and lowered one hand to rest on his knee, “Gretchen was on the porch, you two were still inside. Things got out of control… she wanted to, you wanted to.” he was looking at Edmond, “of course,” he lowered his snout, “I wanted to,” and with this admission James wet his cheeks a bit.  ”We’ve betrayed her.” He sniffed, looking to Peter, head down in mournful penance.

I ran up the stairs, so fast I didn’t notice the carpet transition to stone, or the sunlight turn to torchlight.  The moment of indiscretion hit me square in the stomach as I flashed back to things said not worth repeating.  I burst through the heavy door-

“Stop!”  I shouted to all three of them.  ”I have to do this alone!”  I begged.

Edmond was still, silent.

James was still, silent.  The fur on his chest rose and sank, he was still panting.

Peter looked at me like a grandfather who watches as his grandson falls for a marketing scam, thinking that’s how lessons are learned.  I shot daggers at him and turned back down the stairs, then said, “Come with me, guys, support me.  Please.”

She searched my face for a sign of understanding.  I stared at her in bemusement, waiting for rain to pour down upon us, to wash us all.  I didn’t know what to say.  Suddenly the sound of a woman moaning flashed in my mind, but it wasn’t hers.  Suddenly a face appeared above my naked body, but it was not hers.  A voice told me not to worry, that she had an IUD.  It was not her voice, and it wasn’t a dream.  Then it all came back to me in a flood.

“I,” I was stammering, “I mean.  I have almost no memory of it, I was mostly blacked out.”  I knew this wasn’t an impressive apology, but it fit my m.o., and I struggled to rend a scapegoat from the tornado of excuses flailing about within me.  Peter was standing at the ready, willing to go down for all of us, but we all knew he was innocent.  Edmond, behind me on the right, whispered that we were better off fighting for our right to do it again than lying prostrate and wretched, begging to a woman.  James simply shook in nervous fear.  He loved her most.  I could feel him twitching as though he were going to push past me, but I held him back.

Cloaked in shame and confusion, fogged by misgivings and blurred flashes of devious pleasure, I struggled against the gusting winds of fate and lashing rains of purity to break the front doors off the Mansion, to loose my self all at once.  Her face grew impatient and I could tell that if I didn’t speak within the second, she was going to pound me into the ground.

“I’m sorry, I really fucked up!”  I blurted, and was surprised to find the Mansion door hanging on one hinge, the bears were nowhere in sight.  The freedom of that honesty warmed and dried me, and I promised her with my eyes locked hard on hers, that I would not be going back.  We both knew I would, but it would be less, and possibly tolerable.

“Let’s get subs today,” was here only reply.

Tselia

At the library he saw beautiful eyes darting.  Welling organs and crystal glasses hummed for him, for her.  The bit of tooth that showed just at the lip of many of the others there brought his thoughts always to Tselia and, there he was safe to mourn.

So many dis and re mounted conceptions of “I.”  A piecemeal wardrobe, careerless.   At wits end was the only place left to think.  He stood from his chair in the far corner and walked over to a woman in her early thirties  who displayed povertous cotton clothing acclimated to street life.  She was staring at one of the computers in a solo kiosk.

“You can’t read that shit.”  He said.  She looked up startled, suspicious.  He saw that her face could be beautiful given a switch from speed to food.  She was sickly pale… waxy.  Indeed.  She appeared to have a layer of sweat that neither beaded nor dried.  Her high cheek bones rose like the crests of sand dunes, dulled by high winds, that descended into great, dark valleys.  When she didn’t tell him to fuck off, he offered, “How long has it been since you’ve had an actual meal?”

She took him in, relaxing her eyebrows.  She told him truthfully that she had no idea what day it was but was hungry.  He reached over and took the mouse from her spindly hand, closed the browser still asking for login information and grabbed her jacket.  When she stood he saw that her light pink sweatpants were badly worn.  Upstairs and outside the glaring sunlight reflected off tin restaurant facades, she was nearly invisible now.  They took to the burrito store on the corner and ordered up what would normally be a wasteful amount of food but she did him proud.  While she furiously polished off the remaining chips and fallen bits of chicken, he explained to her that he suspected she was a speed addict and did not want sex or have drugs.  She was not offended but it was clear that she now had no idea what to do.  The food eaten, she began emptying her glass of ice, cringing at the cold but grabbing the next cube just as fast.

“You live around here-

“What the fuck do you want from me?”  Her face wasn’t armed, he figured she just talked like that.  He didn’t know what he wanted from her.  The library made him unpredictable.  He stared at her face now flush with breathing blood.  Too many seconds of silence later she glanced out the large windows overlooking Hennepin Avenue, her shaking had subsided but her eyes still darted like birds’.

“Nothing, I suppose.  A thank you… wouldn’t be out of order, but we don’t know each other either so…”

“My name is Tselia.”