::::::::::::::::::::
Yeah, he said, I know her. She has dark eyes and raven hair? I met her at a party a year or so ago, outside. She was a little drunk. Her boyfriend was in the other room. We talked for a while about Pythagoras and breaking clouds- no, not really, we talked about airplane bathrooms and clubhouses outside the Aegean Sea. I couldn’t stop staring at her shoulder. We drank a gallon of water together. Her boyfriend never left the other room. She’d acted in a movie, once, she told me, and she could almost play guitar. We kissed a few times. I’m sure I had bad breath. For some reason we never left the table. Her jeans were torn at the knee, and I kept staring at that too. When I told her a story about my mom it made her laugh. She’d never been out of the country before.
::::::::::::::::::::
I found Jacob in his spot again. The dregs were his den of confinement, and the skeletons made room for him there. He wouldn't look me in the face anymore, focusing once on his toes, then memorizing the wall. He sat with his back against the dumpster, leaning, and his head against it too, greased around the edges, a generation of waste. Maybe there were spiders, but there are worse things than venom.
"What do you come here for?" I asked, though I didn’t want an answer. I should ask why I came. This wasn’t my place, I didn’t belong here either. Stains leaked in fear. Puddles did the unmentionable.
He didn’t answer, just shrugged, and stuck one hand in his pocket. His sweater was gray. There were holes in it. Why did he come here, and why did he lay, to sit so silent in the aftermath, alleys, virulent corners? The embers didn’t fire. No one wept for him. Maybe he told himself they wept, but I’m sure somewhere he knew better.
He dropped his cigarette. "I know what you’re thinking," he said. "I know, and if you’re going to be that way then get away. Just go."
I said I was sorry, but I stayed.
"If you’re going to be that way," he struggled, the cobwebs shook. He was a den of spiders, of nesting. "Then just go away," he struggled. And when I didn’t he flung his bottle at me, missing. It shattered to shards, fragments and stars, a way of life, a cyanide knowing. He cried, face in cuffs, mittens and holes. I stood until the sobs went away.
When it was done he said I never should have helped him.
I said I already knew.
::::::::::::::::::::
Markus’s mother watched lots of TV. All her life she’d been addicted to game shows and the scintillating chorus, commercials, infomercials, drama and sitcoms. She only left the television to vacuum. She vacuumed once a day. It made her feel like she had a purpose, Markus said. If she vacuumed then the world had a use for her, one personalized voice, so she could make a difference by keeping the world clean. But it didn’t do any good. She hadn’t lived in the real world for a long, long time.
::::::::::::::::::::
I went to a concert to help myself feel real. It was dark where they were. Loud. I screamed even though no one would hear me, just like they did. Together we were a roaring of voice, absolutely depersonalized, entirely without speech. The light roared too. The spectrum gloried, some meager transcendence. I screamed. They played louder. I couldn't even hear my own voice.
::::::::::::::::::::
James quit throwing rocks. He still hadn’t hit any cars. He had his hat turned around his head for leverage, and he looked like a child of the ghetto. He could have been anyone, everyone, together. Cigarettes fell in piles by his feet, one still steaming, a nicotine graveyard, taste and tar brought together for one momentous union.
"What are you doing this for?" I asked.
He spat once. He missed again. "I’m sure you already know."
"I just want to hear you say it."
"What if I won’t?"
"Then I’ll ask again."
"What if I lie?"
"I’ll know."
He laughed. "You won’t know."
"Yeah," I said, "I won’t."
::::::::::::::::::::
"Have you ever heard of the center?" James threw another rock.
I said maybe. Markus had, but he wanted to let James tell the story. I might have known, but the longer this goes on, the more I lose, and the more the world becomes an onslaught of voices, catastrophic, that meld and stipulate,
rescind, cacophonous,
still roaring, like a falling of the stars,
white and streaking, to make a waterfall of the heavens, in latitudinous
descent.
"Well it’s not a microcosm—"
"Kay."
"— But it’s like a microcosm. A focal point, or something, though not really." James stuck his hand in his pocket, and spat again. "It’s like the Holy Grail," he said, "but at the same time, it isn’t. And it’s like Pandora’s box, but that’s not it either." Thinking. "It’s like a reflection of the universe scaled down, that you can hold in the palm of your hand, though really that’s just something else it isn’t."
"Why is it called the center?" I asked. "It’s not even in capital letters." "Why’s anything called anything?" James shrugged. "It just is."
"But that isn’t right," I said. "Things shouldn’t just be. It doesn’t work that way.
Not really."
"I guess it’s like all names," James said. "They’re all we have."
I said that was cool, even though it wasn’t.
A few minutes later we left.
::::::::::::::::::::
I found Travis playing basketball again. It was hotter than yesterday. Sweat ran down him, a languid perspiration. He wore a jersey (like always), and he had a sweatband on one arm, by the elbow, because he thought it made him look authentic.
He missed.
Occasionally some good form might show through, but it never got past imitation. He dreamed too much of the showboat’s squander, heaving crowds, cheering, both hands in the air. They loved him. They would talk about him later, after the game, to drink in his name. He never lost. He was the epicenter of his own universe, upwelling, a granulose swarming, they loved him.
We played for a while. I thought about letting him win. He overshot, thrust underhand, spun the ball behind, lost it, made whirlwind shots that missed completely. He was never, had never, and would never be any good. Sometimes I thought he might know that, though I hope he didn’t.
I beat him.
Every time we play I think of letting him win, but I never have. I guess it’s my duty to be in tune with the world, and (sometimes) I wondered if it was even possible for him to win. Travis was a statistic in consistency. He had always lost, and he would continue to lose, until the sky split open, and the rain came flaming, a furnace, of ice and fire, the elements desisting. He was incapable of victory; no life superceded by dreams, not here in the actual, the factual, the genuine.
He asked to play again, and I beat him twice.
::::::::::::::::::::
— Do you hear them? I asked.
— Yeah, Markus said. They never go away.
Here
we were
making sandwiches while the TV droned in the next room. You can’t
hear them
because they never go away.
::::::::::::::::::::
Yeah, he said, I met her at a party a few years ago. She has darkish hair, longish/shortish that burns red for a second when the light passes over? When I met her I guess she was fighting with her boyfriend. She came to me and she wasn’t crying. Her makeup looked right and her hair looked right too. She wasn’t crying.