"If you want," I said, "I could help you."
"You’ve done enough."
"Maybe I have." I turned my back on him. He was hideous, disgusting and vile.
He smelled of old flesh, fermentation, mucus, filmy. The insects had not been kind to him. They were parasites of the very worst, burrowing, pecking his pieces. I turned around.
"If you want," I said, "I could still help you." Though I didn’t want to, and I didn’t think I could. There was no leaving this place, no forgetting awful transformation. He took a croaking, groaning breath and spat yellow, wormy phlegm. It had roaches in it. He didn’t move. Slime stuck him to the wall behind. I couldn’t bare to see.
"I know what you’re thinking," he said.
"What’s that?"
"You’re thinking about what it means to approach geometric patterns as though
they were art." He coughed. "And how difficult it is to tell red from dark red, red orange from something in the middle. That is," his voice broke, and he didn't sound like him anymore. "That is what you’re thinking about, isn’t it?"
"It was."
"And you’re thinking you never should have helped me."
"Maybe."
"Get out of here," one last time. "If you’re going to be that way. I don’t want
you here, and I don’t want you seeing me like this." He was crying, yeah if he could cry, acid, venomous tears.
"I can’t go yet," I said.
"You can," he said. "Yes you fucking can." Groaning.
You did
this to me. I shook my head.
"You did this to yourself," I said, "and you know
that too." "Just get out," he said.
I
went.
::::::::::::::::::::
Markus’s mother was a prophet of cereal box wisdom, new prescriptions and popular opinion. She preached to us. We learned very little. She knew her images, her falsehoods and prejudices. On occasions she got very passionate. Just as frequently I tended to walk out. Somewhere inside, I hope she understood why.
::::::::::::::::::::
The next time Travis asked me to play, I decided to let him win. He tried very hard. He went half an hour without making one shot. It got to the point he couldn’t even dribble. The ball flew from him at unrealistic angles, warping physics, deflected oddly, playing strange directional games. Half an hour later we were still zero to zero. He gave up, congratulating me on a game well dominated, leaving to go home.
It feels good to be right.
::::::::::::::::::::
I finally talked to that prostitute after years of seeing her there.
When I was young, I think I might have been in love with her, but I’m not sure. I’d seen her one day, when I was walking to school, and dreamed about her later. I didn’t know what it meant to like a woman; she was just a mysterious thing, pretty, wild and pretty, with her dark hair, her crazy angles.
She's almost thirty now, but still pretty. I’m not sure what I saw in her, but she was a multitude of things, spanning an individualized past, unfathomable.
We went into an alley. She stuck her hand down my pants. When I said I didn’t want sex she looked at me strangely. What was I there for, she asked, if I didn’t want sex? I said I wanted to meet her, vulnerable in her absence of self, respect and center. If I paid her, she would let me do anything. I didn’t want her to be an object. She said it was all she knew how to be.
"I just want you to talk to me," I said.
"That’s the thing," she said. "I don’t know how."
::::::::::::::::::::
"Can you hear them now?" I asked.
"You sound like a commercial."
"It doesn’t matter," I said. "We all sound like commercials."
"I suppose that’s true."
I wondered if there should be a question mark there.
There I was, being imperative, being interrogative: man and creature, stealer of
souls. No, that’s not true. If we had souls the world must have had them already, swirling, a glorious brocade of screaming, screaming voices, onto a brutal, impious sense of the grand, the great, the final.
Markus waited. He said he couldn’t hear, though he might have been lying. "What about you?" he asked.
Maybe.
We walked. Cars passed, a convalescence of faces, grilles and glowing eyes, not
living. We’d been here before, to find the center, making war on whispers. We left behind a trail of paper cups, gum wrappers and footprints. They. we left behind. Tw.igs. leave.s. the breaking. Times.
"Why won’t you ever give me an answer?" Markus asked.
"Because I’m an enigma."
"That’s bullshit."
"I know."
We kept going. Behind, the road snaked to the fading point, crooked, a
stretched, broken finger, asphalt and distance, driven. We weren’t vehicles, not waiting anymore.
"Yeah," I said, "I hear them."
"You could just talk to her, you know."
Markus shook his head, cringing. I knew somewhere inside he wanted to, but he never would, and I knew that too. He was afraid, and he had always been afraid. Most likely he would never be within a few feet of her again. I wasn’t nice enough to tell him the hard way, but at least this way I looked like a friend.
.
.
.
I didn’t
feel like walking anywhere.::::::::::::::::::::
Yeah, he said, I know her. I can’t describe her anymore than anyone else can, but I know her. I met her at a party a few months ago, in the back room, and we talked for a long time. She had interesting things to say. I haven’t met an interesting girl since, and most likely, I’d never met one before either. She didn’t say anything about a boyfriend, but I was too scared to ask.
It’s not true, you know, what they say about her. They tell stories because no matter what she’ll always be there, but the stories they tell aren’t true. About bedrooms at midnight, about hallways? She told me none of them were true, and I believe her. If I didn’t believe her, she said, no one ever would.
We talked for a long time. We sat on a table, kicking things. I gave her my drink. Halfway through I told her I loved her, though she wouldn’t say anything back. We were silent for a few minutes. She was a bringer of silence, a prophet of radiance. People don’t understand the light she gives off. If the world could circle her, then it would. And there’s a chance it does already.
When we finished, I realized the party was already over. I stepped on a few people on the way out. I got her another drink. She said she didn’t need a ride home. If she had, I would have given it to her. She said thanks, and it was the first time I’ve ever cared for gratitude. Before she left, she gave me a hug. I’d never cared for hugs before either.
James threw harder this time. He threw hard and I already knew. It cut an arch through the sky, air-shaped, that undid ancient theories of propulsion. It flew, I’d already known. Author of meanings, bringer of prophesy. Molecules wavered, making room, and boundaries shattered like cracking glass.
The car swerved off the side of the road. It fell in a ditch. The rock scratched a crevice over the windshield, stark white on cleanliness. The car spat black smoke, an emblem of damage.