Several days ago in Buenos Aires, he had sought out a famed enchantress. Beneath the city he found her, a recondite sylph of undetermined age, bedizened in twining folds of diaphanous black silk.

“What do you seek?” She spoke like a prophet and fired the dark with vermilion eyes.

“I want you to tell me my future.”

“Your future is what you will it to be.”

“I want adventure.”

“You want the dream of adventure. You wake from dreams. It is much more difficult to wake from reality.”

He pointed at the cross around her neck. “Reality for me has been a belief in others’ uninteresting dreams. I have said what I said, and it would be nice to get what I paid for.”

“You are rash.” She handed him a coin. “Cross the river and follow the coin. Adventure will find you.”

Standing there after disembarking the ferry, he remembered the pity on her face when he was leaving. “Be weary of wishes that bloom,” she had said. Sing lowered his sunglasses and started across the immense concrete plate.

“Hello!” A voice snapped out of the heat. A security guard sat behind a tall piece of glass.

“Hello,” he repeated, with a smile. “Where are you from?”

“St. Louis.”

The man maintained his smile, but tilted his head slightly, like a retriever.

“It’s near Chicago.”

“Oh, yes. I know it. I know it. You speak Spanish well. Very good! How are you?”

“I’m all right,” said Sing. “Can I help you?”

“No,” replied the guard. “I want to know only if I can help you. Where do you go?”

Sing pulled a map from his back pocket, “I’m looking for the Old City, Uncle.” A cannon was stamped on one side of the coin, and the Old City seemed like a good place to find a cannon. It seemed like a reasonable first step.

The guard took the map under the window and studied it for a moment. He uncapped a red pen and drew some circles with lines connecting them. He pressed the map up against the glass.

“Here are we, and you can go here. This space is where starts the Old City. This is the restaurant of my brother. The food is very good and typical Urugayan food. Understand?”

Sing nodded and the man doubled the map and slid it beneath the glass. His hand tarried, palm up. He coughed.

“Gracias,” said Sing, placing a small bill in the open hand, which snapped shut like a flytrap. He set out.

Sing arrived to the small restaurant belonging to the cousin of the security guard. He took a seat and ordered a bowl of fish soup. An old cathedral stood across the plaza, its twin bell towers rising like blunted horns into the cloudless welkin. Sing paid the bill and finished his beer.

Cool air from the floor stones crawled around the pews. The structure was empty save for a pair of tourists photographing the relic. Beneath the barren pendentives and small dome, their heavy feet moved loudly around the sacred space. Mary stood against the wall, still, watching them with a sad look on her face. Jesus looked the other way.

Sing asked the vicar about the coin. The man shook his head. He moved over to the basin, fluttered his fingers along the cool marble and then lowered himself at a pew.

The hardwood kneeler met his bones with the familiar sting of penitence and the stony light invaded like a memorial mist. He remembered belief, when everything had order and accorded itself to a plan. Years of trust in what now amounted to other people’s God. It was time not wasted, yet it was a period when things were already determined and there was nothing to do but follow with equanimity. It was a dreary and certain type of idea that still made Sing weary. He stood and walked out.

The light was softer now and there was a light breeze. Along the narrowing street, away from the cathedral he met a high stone wall.

Little of the original masonry remained, and only one cannon could be found jutting through the embankment. Sing walked up and placed his hand on the rear of the iron weapon. It was large, but not massive–maybe six feet long. Sing thought that it would not have been a very effective weapon against a naval bombardment.

He found a park worker and asked about the coin, but the lady turned her head back and forth. No, the coin meant nothing there. She mentioned that the wall had been worked on twenty years ago. Maybe something had been destroyed. She suggested that Sing take a tour of the lighthouse, but he said no.

“There is nothing with coins here,” said a man. He had been standing behind Sing. The woman left. “That is an old Brasilian coin, from the founding days of Uruguay.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I have many of them. I will tell you all about them.”

The river breeze blew up into the evening air. It was starting to get dark.

“I need to find a hostel. Can we talk tomorrow?”

“Do not look for a hostel, please. I have a farm outside of the city seventy kilometers from here. Come and stay with my father and I tonight. You can see more of the country than the Old Town. There is no place more beautiful. We will talk about coins and drink beer on the beach.”

Above his shirt collar, there was a round and weathered tattoo of a coin.

“Why not?” he said as he reached his hand out to the man. “Sing.”

“Manny.”

“Lead on. I’m following you.”

Manny described Uruguay’s unrestrained horses and mythic gauchos. “They live separate from this world, my son. They ride horses as easily as I wear alpargatas. I tell you it is a thing to see. And they drink and love and fight wildly, but only as a coyote does according to nature.” The ayudante gave each man an alfajor and a small cup of coffee. “But they are old and dying now.”

The tires hummed and Sing looked out the window at the country sliding beneath the bus. Pastures spread a robust green carpet across the landscape, which prickled with birch and angico trees. Cows freckled the land, sometimes like mushrooms beneath trees, sometimes like stout little islands socializing in the middle of the fields. A few horses were grazing to the East. “There is no better luck than to see a wild horse running,” said Manny. But they stood and paid the bus no mind, contentedly snipping grass.

The long and rich afternoon light was making redder the browns and the blacker the greens. Trees were losing their leaves to the night, swallowed darkly by the magic of shadows. Sing looked again to the East, but the horses were gone. The brakes squealed and the tires yawned loudly.

“My cousin lives here at this stop. He is taking fish today and I will go to get them.” Manny walked down the aisle and sprung out of the still moving bus. He ran behind the bus and out of sight.

The vehicle slowed to a halt and six or seven people climbed aboard. The other passengers found their seats, and Sing glanced for Manny through the windows. The bus hissed and began to roll forward.

Sing jogged toward the driver. The ayudante stood and stopped him.  “Young man, where is the problem?”

“We left my friend.”

Sing pointed toward the empty bench to the rear of the bus. The ayudante slowly followed his gesture, and then turned back to Sing.

“I’m sorry,” he said and sat down.

Sing looked blankly at him. He grabbed his bag and got out at the next stop.

There were a shuttered gas station and a bar surrounded by a rich emptiness. Sing checked his watch. Five-twenty. He pulled the bus schedule from his backpack.

Damn, he thought.

The next bus would in forty-five minutes.

“Well. Damn.” Sing looked again at the bar. Several cars were parked out front next to a hitching post.

Two tables held five men and one more sat the bar. The bartender waved Sing forward. “Come.”

The chairs of the men in the bar creaked perspicaciously.

“What will it be?” asked the man behind the counter.

“Do you have Fernet?”

The man laughed. “Is that a question?”

“I’ll take it straight.”

“Fuah. Twenty pesos.” He handed Sing the tumbler of brown liquid. When he saw how Sing reacted, he said: “You look like you can use a drink, not a robbery.”

Sing tipped the glass. He handed the man five extra pesos. “Thanks.”

The bartender opened a beer and placed it in front of the quiet man hunched over at the bar. He eyed Sing. “Why are you here, young man?” he said. He did not look threatening, but his look had a canny edge to it.

“Perhaps you can tell me, Uncle.”

“You’re a stranger, yes. Traveling, yes. But you are looking for something. What are you looking for?”

Sing acknowledged him with a few raised fingers. “Do you know where I can find a tall man called Manny with a tattoo on his neck?”

The bartender shrugged.

Sing set his glass on the counter. “Then for the moment that is what I am looking for.”

“You came to Uruguay to find a tattooed man?”

“I came to Uruguay because an enchantress said I would find adventure.”

The bartender puckered a low whistle. “Take care with an enchantress, and take care with Uruguay. Adventure is unsettling when encountered. It is unwise to wish for such things here, because here they will find you, even if you do not find them. Why do you want adventure?”

“I want to feel alive.”

“Uruguay has a way of making the alive the dead. It is an ancient thing connected to a cycle beyond our knowledge. You are young: is your soul prepared if this comes?”

“My soul is stories. It is safe for as long as I am told of in tales.”

“Who said this to you?”

“An old man.”

“What more did he say?”

“He said to be weary of all people, for even smiling angels have dreams of sin.”

“And demons like our fathers bore angels for sons.”

“You have heard it, too?”

“Perhaps I have not heard it, but I know it. It is true, I believe, that everything is connected. Good and bad are only as different as air from air. But what I tell you is that you do not wish to find that distinction here. Here it is wild.” He paused to scratch something from the bartop. “You trusted an old man and the enchantress. Do you trust me?”

“I did not trust them,” he took another sip, “I listened to them and made my own decisions. I don’t think I’ll know you well enough to trust you. I’m looking for answers now, not trust.” Sing removed the coin from his pocket, placing it on the counter. “My soul is safe, Uncle. What do you know of mammon?”

The bartender laughed at Sing’s perilous insouciance. “Ok. The enchantress said to follow a coin. It brought you here. What more can I know?”

Sing smiled. “What more can anyone know?” He set the glass down and ordered another. The man poured Sing more drinks and they talked for some time of many things, but not again of adventure and good and evil.

The door swung wide open. In it stood a small man packed tightly beneath a beret, insinuations of his muscles tracing the lines of his shirt. Bolewide legs grew sturdily to the floor. Low shadowcalls from the back drew him through the room. His footfalls were light as a bulldog moving across the floor. The latch of the door threw loudly shut.

Sing exhaled loudly. He did not know for how long he had been holding his breath. He turned back to the bar and emptied his glass.

“Holy shit,” he whispered loudly to the bartender, “who’s that?” The bartender tipped his face downward slowly. “Your wish, my son.”

Sing’s face was light and a rush of heat burned up from his stomach into his throat. He chuckled. “Ok.” In front of him a chair drifted in the air, its legs shining icily in his bleary eyes.

It landed with a strange pop in the middle of the floor. A guttural tangle of words tore the calm of the room.

A tall campesino stood with his back to Sing. He slowly wrapped his poncho around one arm, twisting vines of color into a rope shield. The man to his side cried desperately for him to stop. Across from him stood the small gaucho with both hands on the table. His eyes quivered like black river stones in a fire. The air cut around his tightly set jaw and burned off his red face. The tall man exhausted obscenities in vulgar and bestial tones. The free hand went to the insidious dirk hanging at his back.

Silence hovered for a moment like shredded gossamer.

“No.”

Steel rasped from the sheath. The table crashed into the wall. Metal flashed a fast arc downward and deeply into the unguarded forearm of the gaucho. His arm pitched to the side and he sprung into the chest of the campesino, the impact forcing a wheeze of air that propelled their bodies to the floor. They landed in a compound thud.

Dust rose around the smoldering figures. The small gaucho rose to his feet and pulled his own dagger from the belly of the campesino, who did not moan from the pain. Neither of the men moved for a number of seconds. The gaucho appraised the supine figure, but there was no hardness left in his eyes. The man on the ground breathed like a stone skipping across a lake.

The gaucho retrieved the fallen man’s hat, a dagger still extending at a right angle through his forearm. He straightened the brim and neatly dusted the crown before placing it over the campesino’s face. A surgical grating of metal on bone anticipated the jerk of the man’s legs. There was a quick red spurt as the gaucho’s dagger withdrew from the dead man’s throat.

He straightened himself once more and rocked at the knife in his arm. Blood came from the limb like water through a broken dam. The blade clattered to the floor.

Unhurried footsteps carried him to the door, which he opened with his damaged arm. A trail wet and sapphiritic followed him loyally outside to his criollo horse. He gripped the mane and the cantle with pulled himself into the saddle.

Sing stared at the corpse lying on the floor, blood pumping warmly and gently from the punctured throat, making an island of the muted dagger. The man’s belly bloomed the scarlet amapola of the South American poets who are known to love beauty and eschew violence. The chair lay still where its back had been violently broken.

The bartender had disappeared and the two remaining men in the corner had seated themselves dumbly. Though he remained facing forward and had scarcely moved, the man hunched over at the bar had a single hand gripping tightly the hilt of the dagger strapped behind his back.

Sing saw through the window the gaucho sitting erectly on his mount. The sky was split open and bleeding its last pulses of cerise and maroon all around him and he looked like a Sufi waiting righteously to be consumed by the smoldering orange sun. He laid in the reins his tangled hands and in the stirrups his tall, polished boots.

Two police cars flashing blue and white lights pulled slowly into the parking lot. The officers did not draw their weapons as they approached the gaucho. He took the officer’s hand and climbed down from his horse, trailing a hand on the animal’s withers. They pulled away in a thin gasp of dust.

The animal was not spooked by Sing’s approach. A narrow curtain of blood stretched from the base of the mane to behind the saddle. Sing touched where the gaucho had smeared his hand one last time. The blood was sticky like wax and dark as oil in the thickening night. Somewhere nearby horses whickered and pawed their feet at the grass, anonymous from the set sun. Sing stood with the gibbous moon in the pool of the horse’s eye and he thought this is what is meant to live like a coyote in the bare energy of it all. The beast blinked and whinnied.

He lifted off the saddle and pad and unlatched the bosal from the horse. One hand he placed on the strong neck as it walked toward the shaded animals, its companions in the next life.

In the fog of his every enervated thought, Sing realized that something had been done that was beyond his comprehension. The bartender said that ancient forces course through the blood and soil of life on earth. He had said there was a rhythm that husbanded all things. Sing considered askance the idea, and teetered uncomfortably on it. He had fought hard to disqualify anything but reason from his life. But how reasonable was it to seek fate over faith?

He thought about the words of the enchantress, and how in all things there is an unspoken mercy in failure that comes to words only in success. That much was clear and had happened clearly. He leaned down and balanced the coin on the pommel of the saddle, his wish granted.

The girl next to me raised her hand and put another round of drinks on my tab. She winked at me and touched my wrist. The light fixtures were harsh and oddly colored–they made my skin look like yellowed porcelain.

“Can you give me anything else?” asked the other girl to Paul. Jenine Arafat, from Birzeit, interning with UNESCO for the summer, I recalled.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the girl on my side of the table smiling. What was her name? Hala? Hana? Was she a local? Not muhajiba, but that didn’t mean much around here. Nor did it surprise me that she was drinking.

“Alright, alright–but I can’t give you too much. The prints belonged to the husband. But that’s all you get.” He held up his pointer finger. One for the husband–simple math. She asked for a second to think.

By now someone should have brought up the Palestinian struggle, and then more generally, the topic of nationalism and identity. The evening would proceed like all the others, with the same political discourse and an ending like a shadow, weightless and comfortably behind us.

But tonight wasn’t on-track, adding yet another uncontrolled element to my life. I felt off balance in a rising tide, trying to shake an undertow that had been increasingly snatching at my heels. Jenine smiled back at my girl, surrendering. What was her name? Hana? Deep breath, I told myself.

“Hana,” I said. She turned to me.

“What if we’re really just talking technicalities?”

“Then we’re talking about murder in my book.”

Bright girl. Paul slapped the table.

“Another round on Wild Bill!”

“There’s one coming, already,” I said.

“Well,” he said, looking around, “where are they? Because I’m getting dry, buddy.”

“I don’t get it,” Jenine interjected, her English clipping each word. “He said it wasn’t murder.”

Hana tore the foil from a pack of Lucky Strikes, and distributed one to each of us. I wondered why Jenine hadn’t caught on. Maybe she’s wasn’t born here; most likely she was from Detroit or New York, then.

“Well,” began Hana, circulating among us the cigarette lighter, “the woman was found dead a village outside Irbid, which is quite the location, as we know.  She was shot with a large calibre pistol in the throat. Webley, probably.”

Paul nodded, impressed. She cocked her head, exhaled a rivulet of pale grey smoke and continued.

“Exit wound in the front. Really nasty stuff, I’m sure. It wasn’t suicide and it wasn’t murder, he says. But according to whom? I bet we’re playing by Village rules. And in the Village, the men and the Mosques make the rules. I’ll bet that the bastard shot his wife at point-blank range. Bang. Blamed it on something or someone else and dressed it in religious feathers. So, no, it wasn’t murder to them, but by the measure of the OHCHR–it’s murder. It’s a crime.”

Ash from her cigarette fell and shattered in the tray like a small sandcastle, sending tiny satellites of destroyed paper and tobacco broke lofting into the air.

“The worst part about it is that she probably thought it was the right thing to do. What did she do? Remove her hijab in the presence of her sons? She must have unraveled from the inside out–practically asked for it. The score?” She held up her hand in the shape of a circle. “This place–fuck all.”

“Bravo,” Paul said. “You’re doing my work for me.”

My head was in full spin now. I finished my beer, but still couldn’t gain control. Around the table faces were creaking plastic masks grotesquely maneuvering their features. Hana’s lips were torqued slightly in contempt. My heart slammed like a maul against my lungs.

“I need get some air.”

Paul put up his hand, gripping my wrist.

“Wait, wait, wait. Listen to this: what the husband told the police,” Paul continued, “was that she was full of jinni, and that he was trying to scare them away, and the gun misfired.”

He turned to Hana.

“You’re right, though, there didn’t seem to be any struggle, and she was seated against the wall, so he couldn’t have snuck up from behind her. She must have thought the idea was worth a shot.”

“God, Paul.” I tasted the words peel dryly from my tongue. The barrage of lights, smells, and noises knit around my face in a heavy, wet blanket.

“Sorry, I couldn’t help it, ” he chuckled. “Hey, is everything ok, mate?”

I was already walking away, Paul’s words falling dully after my retreating steps. A column reached out to grab my shoulder, steadying me for a moment while I watched the room stagger. Get out, I thought. Get out. Go.

The dining room passed quickly by me, and soon I was surrounded by the cavernous foyer. A couple at the automatic doors ushered in a shock of fresh, evening air. The injection of night into the room swept deeply into my lungs. The familiar smell of warm fig trees and exhaust replaced the sterile, echoing blankness of the Meridien. Something touched me in between my shoulder blades.

“What the hell was that?” Paul asked. “Are you okay, man? You really don’t look good. I thought you were going to collapse there for a second.”

I shook my head.

“I’m fine. I just…I don’t know. I just need to get some air.”

He eyed me suspiciously. Paul was the first person outside of the media that I had met when I got to Jordan, and he had always been there for me. There was genuine concern in those Iowa City eyes. I put my hand on his shoulder.

“Want to cigarette?” I asked.

“I knew it. You can hide your bullshit, but I’ll always smell it, Buffalo. And yes. Just give me one quick second. The girls took off, and I should le pay before they say we can never le come back to Le Meridien.”

He walked away, waving his hand at the ceiling and talking to himself. A pair of lean black Mercedes-Benz CLKs with blue license plates glided past the entry door. UN. Must be our girls on the way to some other hotel or club. But then again, that’s where we were going, wasn’t it?

“You got the cigarettes?” Paul handed me my jacket.

“Thanks. Yeah, but I’m going to wait. You want one?”

“Not if you don’t. What’re we doing?”

“Let’s go to Le Royal.”

“Works for me.” He threw up his arm to one of the taxis parked outside the security barricade.

We got out at Second Circle to get some shawarma. For as late as it was, it surprised me that Reem was still open. But, as usual, there was a crowd of men crammed around the small stand, leaning on their cars or standing near them. The concrete walkway was decorated with dirty butcher paper and empty cans of Pepsi and Fanta. Paul shoved his way into the fray, emerging a few minutes later holding four greasy sandwiches.

“I didn’t get us anything to drink, is that okay?”

I took a bite. Chewing felt good.

“I thought we could grab something when we get there,” I replied.

The circle behind us erupted in a cacophony of car horns. Four or five cars were pacing each other, rounding the center over and over, each with at least one young man hanging out of a window. My Arabic wasn’t good enough to understand what they were shouting, but several were holding an Algerian flag. They appeared happy about something.

“Tawjihi?” I asked.

Paul was on edge. He was carefully monitoring the activity.

“Is it the tawjihi?”

He shrugged.

“No. No, that happened a few months ago. I don’t know what this is about. Let’s keep walking.”

“They look pretty happy to me.”

“They might be,” he said, “but the guys at Reem’s might not like what they have to say. Better to keep moving.”

Large cracks shivered along the sidewalk and road. A deep blue curtain hung behind the waxing moon, which sliced enough light into the darkness for us to walk without stumbling. Clouds hung calmly at edges of the sky in clots, not affected by the light wind sweeping up dust far below. Cicadas and locusts beat their wings from stolen hiding places, drowning out each other in the night. The sudden reawakening of nature to my senses made me want to stomp my feet and scream to them good for you for singing in public, for doing something at all.

I raised my collar and angled my face down and away from the wind. We moved quietly through the midnight shade of a squat pine tree overhanging a cement wall. In front of me Paul carried a slight limp that I had never before noticed.

“The girls thought you were cute,” he called back.

“What happened to your foot?” I asked softly.

He stopped.

“Bill, I’m just going to say it: is something up with you? You’ve been acting strangely today.”

A car flashed its high beams, pressing my shadow over Paul’s face. His eyes rested on me patiently as the car passed. Four hands reached through the vehicle’s open windows, gripping tightly the corners of a tattered flag that danced like a magic carpet.

One more time. Just another time. I wanted badly for her fingers to touch my neck again.  Outside the window, green-brown boughs curved sharply up and away from the trunk of the pear tree. A mother Chickadee kneeled beside her empty nest, waiting for her chicks to return to roost. Her button-top head swiveled nervously as she struggled to forget what it was like to sprout wings and fly for the first time.

Toenails sticky with polish pushed against my calf. When we were shopping I asked her what it was, and she laughed. “It’s toenail polish,” she had said. “You’re toes are beautiful the way they are.” “I know,” she replied shyly, “this is my gift to let them know how beautiful I think they are.” She applied the polish so carefully, the brush spreading out like the foot of a duck on a pond, trailing dark blue and smooth rivers.

A deep breath spread her lungs.

“You fell asleep.”

“No, I didn’t. I would never dream of it.”

“What about that kick?”

“Hmmm, I was testing you.”

Heavy lids drowsily freed her light brown eyes, the sun catching in them a sequined reflection of my face. Her pupils narrowed to focus, her mouth curved to a smile. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. My arm around her back pressed our bodies into a continuous line from shoulder to toe.

“Hey, stay awake.”

“I am awake.”

“Okay.”

Her breathing softened into a slow rhythm and the tension in her arms and neck fainted away. I loved the way the air caught something in her throat when she breathed, making a sort of faint rustling sound. She’d bump me or roll and I’d wake up and listen to life sounding in her beating heart and groaning joints.  But, God, I’d wake up anyway, just to listen her breathe. In bed, looking out the window or up at the ceiling, my mind would take the noises and put them into silly little pictures. Once I’d imagined there lived a small community of people at the base of her esophagus that sent up little kites whenever she slept. They were beautiful, the kites: there were fleets of bright red rectangles with narrow and stringy tails, delicate rice-paper flyers of all colors, and a number of plastic ones shaped like animals. Each time she’d breath the kites would rise in the warm air and zip and tuck and turn and swirl.

She thought it was weird that the noise of her bad knee or cracking knuckles wrote fairy tales in my mind. But she also loved the stories. She straddled me, sitting up straight for a moment before leaning down to kiss my lips. Nothing short of perfect, I thought. “Nobody has an imagination like yours,” she said.

At the time we had been together for only a few months, but anxiety about the coming year prevented us from being truly happy. She was graduating, whereas I still had two full terms left. Cecilia said that she would stay with me and–even though I told her that she should do what’s best for her–I wanted her to be there with me more than ever. We never really talked about what our love might cost (who does?), but I could tell she thought about it, too. Of course it’s natural to talk about the wholeness of staying together, but our love, like most others, was cradled in the arms of a dying tree that needed more care than we were willing to give.  So we held tightly and balanced on the creaking limbs getting dryer with each passing day.

Still, we wanted it to work. So it was difficult when the Middle East Bureau Chief for The Atlantic called and told me that he wanted to fly me to DC for an interview. The position had been a long shot, and I never gave any serious consideration to being selected, but the salary was good and I wanted to go overseas someday, so I applied.  My cover letter was impeccable, the man on the phone told me, as was my reportage and photography portfolio. Just the applicant he was looking for. The man’s voice sounded like charcoal crumbling, and I imagined him to be among the old guard reporters who lived through wars and wore hats to the office. I could almost smell the cigar smoke snaking through the receiver after he hung up. There wasn’t a stipend for dependents.

“Six months isn’t that long,” Cecelia told me.

“I guess. I’m really worried about…us, you know? We could do it together someday.”

She looked at me, arranging her words carefully.

“I want you to know that this is the perfect experience for you. It’s what you want. Really. For you, Will, this is the right thing.”

Something in the way those pauses hung around my name in that last sentence dried my mouth. I began to respond, but she held up a hand.

“Hang on. You have always wanted to get out of here. This city isn’t meant to keep you forever, and you know that. Advocating for the Somali refugee communities around here makes you happy, Will, but I can tell it’s becoming stale. ‘Born to change, change to be reborn’, right? Maybe it’s time to take your words seriously and embrace this change.”

Months later, the birdsongs caught me back to the present. The mother Chickadee looked at me. Was she happier with her little ones gone? Had she known they wouldn’t come back? Were they pushed? She cheeped and fluffed up her chest feathers. Why was I afraid to fly? Cecilia stirred.

“I don’t want to go.”

“You’re going, babe. You have your ticket and you’re going to love it. I’ll be fine…we’ll be fine,” she said sleepily.

“Yeah,” I sighed, and smiled at the thought, “it will be good to do some real good.”

“It won’t be good,” she said, “it will be great.”

My hand tucked into her fist and we slept.

At Le Royale, the elevators were shut down because of an accident earlier in the week. The concierge informed us that we would have to take the stairs if we wished to dine at the bar on the ninth floor.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Can we take the service elevator?” Paul interjected, still out of breath from our short walk.

“All of the elevator’s have been closed, sirs. I’m afraid that the details of the closure cannot be shared.”

The man looked apprehensive about our asking follow up questions, though neither Paul nor I wanted the details; this was one of our favorite haunts in Jordan, and here it is often better not to ask question in order to leave some things unspoiled. A question not sought is a lie not found.

“Christ,” said Paul. “Wild Bill, buddy–the ninth floor is nine stories up. And these ceilings are twenty feet. We’ll be climbing forever.”

I nodded and gave him a smile.

“I want that cigarette. Why do you think you call me Wild Bill? I’m just that crazy.” I turned into the stairwell. “And I think it might only be eight stories up! They have a zero floor here!”

“Shit, Bill. Shit!”

His boots clomped loudly after me, grudgingly striking the marble landings.

When I first arrived to the country, the magazine put me in touch with some American interpreters that worked as fixers. They were to help me find a place to live, show me the best places to eat, tour guide me for a few days, and keep me out of trouble. All that. With their help, I moved smoothly and unknowingly me the conventional expatriate channels. I was handed a list of neighborhoods to avoid at all costs, as well as a well-guarded set of names. “In case you need a story from any of those places,” they said. Other important information came in gradually: because of the high security, the best and safest bars were always attached to clubs and hotels; do what you can to stay off all public busses; only call the phone numbers of our trusted taxi drivers; etc–the list expanded weekly. Trips to the Palestinian camps were easily secured through UNHCR or a couple of other NGOs, but they were restricted to a set number of houses and streets, and played out like field trips for journalists and VIPs. There were a few sleepy old neighborhoods that attracted the foreign high society, but for the most part, our movements were limited to a handful of gentrified areas of the city. I never needed to use the language, so my already wan, elementary Arabic suffered further malnourishment.

A few months after running my time like this, a bomb detonated in a popular market a short walk from my apartment. My television muffled the sound of the blast, but the concussion punched at the windows and flipped my eardrums inwards. Through a cracked pane in the kitchen a charcoal tail could be seen winding up from Aabdali. My phone rang constantly for the next several hours, and all I could say was “I don’t know…I don’t know what happened”. I wanted to run down there and see if I could help–it’s so close, so close, I told myself–but I couldn’t get my legs to work. There weren’t any neighbors I could talk to–I didn’t know any of them. Eternally rising was that oily cloud. I was without a place; it was the disaster and the community responding together, and there was me.  The dark plume spilled further upward, shackling me to my home from the fear of my complete isolation. It struck me then that I had only been downtown behind the confines of a Peugeot’s tinted windows.

The next day I sat with my editor. I needed a change. I wanted somehow to wade out of the sea into which I had so easily jumped.

“Things aren’t like they used to be, kid. You could get your head chopped off these days. Danny Pearl was a young man just like you.”

“I know…but this is Jordan, not Iraq.”

He rocked back in his chair, pressed by his thoughts. “I just want to see some of the good things the city has to offer,” I told him. “My exposure here is pretty fucked up, I think. I mean, god, it would feel good just to meet someone that doesn’t live in an apartment with an armed guard.”

“You might be careful how you throw around that word ‘good’, Bill. Nobody in this part of the world wears a clean shirt–especially immigrants like us.”

“I think I can spot the dirty laundry, now. I’ve been wearing it long enough to know the difference. Do you know anybody who’s not CIA that can take me deeper?”

Reluctantly he jotted a name on a sheet of paper, which he considered for a moment before handing to me. “Paul, ‘The Undertaker’. But, suit yourself–he can be wild. It’s not going to mess with your insurance or anything, just be careful. You seem really, I don’t know, innocent, so just take it easy.”

Paul was a forensic analyst working as a consultant for a Jordanian Ministry of Forensic Investigation. When I first met him, he was shouting something in Arabic at the top of his lungs. A group of men had circled around his table in the small coffee shop in Jabal Hussein. Paul was waving a fistful of dinaanir in the air like an old man menacing a child from his yard. The man opposite him was clutching a backgammon board, screaming back at him, his eyes rolled back to pure white. The fantastic scene ended abruptly when Paul slammed down the money on the table and coolly walked through the crowd and directly to me.

“You’ve been staring at me, son,” said the man, wiping sweat from his face with a shirtsleeve. “What can I do for you?”

I was still recovering from the scene.

“What were you shouting about?” I managed.

“I’m not really sure: the guy’s Iranian, and I don’t speak Farsi, so we just ended up yelling at each other for a few minutes. I thought I’d won the game, and I think he thought I cheated.” He laughed. “Fucking Middle East, right? Fight to the death for a few JD.”

“How much did you lose?”

“About four bucks. Four fifty.” He sniffed. “Bastard. Oh well. Paul Murritz, nice to meet you.” I gripped his extended hand and we were off.

We traveled throughout the city, without guards or escorts, exploring markets, black-markets, local favorite dining spots, the best place to get Iraqi fish, everything. He explained to me that he was brought in to try and take some of the superstition out of the forensic investigations in the country. There is such a strong belief in demons, Paul explained, particularly outside of the capital.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” he said one night, “the things that are symbolic here. Animals. Rocks. Body Parts. In a way, it’s really beautiful most of the time, but I’m here to get the police to make arrests rather than letting people get away with crimes by blaming it on demons or some shit.”

“You’ve been here for nine years.”

He shrugged.

“It’s a process.”

As time went on, we spent less time in the ballad and more time in the Mövenpick and Intercon. I was again going to embassy and private parties in Schmeisani, though now I went with Paul, who had been there all along. My boss offered to hire me on full-time if I earned it. “But you have to be the one to do it,” he told me. Which meant more parties and ceremonies to arrange interviews with directors and dignitaries for my articles. The oil slick of diplomats in luxury cars blurred together with the endless stream of the development firms’ own envoy of German and Swedish sedans.

Cecilia told me she was happy about the job offer, her voice steady and kind, lilting gently as it passed into my ear. There didn’t seem to be any trace of disappointment in what she said or how she said it. At the end of the conversation, she asked about Paul. I wanted to tell her that he was just an old mirror I carried around, but instead I told her that he was dragging me along on a double date in Schmeisani. Don’t get into too much trouble, she told me. I broke down and hung up the phone, choking back little sobs.

“She’s playing you,” Paul said. He swirled his glass of wine. “The woman you want is an article of a faltering past. Sorry to say it, but it sounded like she was too happy for you. Let me get that.”

In a single motion, the cap of his Zippo snapped back and a flame bloomed. I straightened and aggressively tugged the smoke into the corners of my lungs, then exhaled until they were mashed flat.

All that remained of my vodka and soda was a chunk of congealed ice, which performed a synchronous turn when I raised the glass. The cigarette–my seventh–was already down to the filter. Paul looked over the balcony at the lights of the city, all of them rocking like an ocean over hills and down valleys. Somewhere near the fringe of the city, fireworks flowered above the dust and sand.

“Someone is getting married,” the waiter said, placing two waters on the table. “A new life.”

We ordered more drinks and ate olives and cashews from the pounded brass tray on the table.

“I think it’s great that there is love in the world. Seems to me that just about the best thing you can do for someone is love them,” said Paul.

Another firework exploded, exposing the wraith of smoke from the previous blast. They looked like a pair of trees; one was floating through the grey winter behind the other in the bright rhapsodies of autumn.

“Why’d we stop going to the real parts of the city, Paul? What happened to all this?” I jammed the burnt finger of the Camel into the ashtray. “It just hit me tonight, how defeating this little world is. Like those girls laughing at your story. They fucking laughed at that poor woman. Where’s the sympathy? Any shred of it? Everything is too complicated for us to be living like this.

“We just say the right things and know the right histories–no life saving here, you know? Just a bigger fleet of cars. More status. I mean, here we are again.” I swept my hand over the shimmering landscape. “Everyone wants to be a dove, but I feel like one of the ravens; unable to find its way back, caught in the wind, it’s got no place to land. Neither here nor there.”

Paul emptied his wine glass and poured himself another. He clenched his jaw.

“First, that’s all bullshit,” he seethed, poking a finger at me, “that ‘real parts of the city’ thing, and you god damn well know it, too. We’re different, habeeb. After a while, we just have to deal with that. I asked myself long ago why I should feel bad about going to Thanksgiving and Halloween parties instead of spending more time with the locals at Jafra. I like going to the local joints every now and then, but I shouldn’t have to feel bad about anything.

“I like going where the gambling is good, but I don’t like chai…really, I can’t stand the stuff. I live in fucking Amman, Jordan, the home of the largest population of tea-drinkers on the planet. I don’t like the coffee here either. You want me to force myself out of that? No, thank you. I’ll just relate to my world in my own way and get through the day. That’s just as fair to them as it is to me.”

Paul breathed deeply and relaxed into the chair back. “I like the wine and the penthouse views, and my friend Abdul likes his life with his family in East Amman. It’s how it is.” He drained the glass of wine and opened his hand. I fished into my jacket pocket for the cigarettes.

“So you’re my tour guide.”

“Fuck you,” he said through a mouth filled with smoke, “but yes. For guys like you I’ve been doing this for years and I’ll do it again.”

“I know.” I didn’t want to know–I wanted to see Paul like I had seen him. But he stood in the shadows along with the rest of us. “I know. I ‘m just trying to make sense of it. I’m not really sure anymore if I know how to be a good person at all.” I spun the box on the table. “I want to help these people, but when shit happens, I can’t even leave my front door.”

With a hard voice he turned and addressed me.

“You know what I wanted to do, kid? I wanted to change the whole way that crimes were investigated around the world; I wanted to tighten regulations so that not so many rapists and murderers slip through the cracks like they do around here. I wanted to solve every problem, too. Didn’t really turn out that way.

“I got a good job at the coroner’s office, but only because I like it. I might not be putting away millions of criminals, but I’m doing whatever I’m doing in a right heart. Are you going to tell me not to enjoy a good glass of wine? Shit, you’re sitting right next to me. You’ve got to be comfortable in your place, Bill. I don’t think anywhere is better than anywhere else, really. But I’m starting to think yours isn’t here.”

His anger deflated and his flint knapped tone crumpled away.

“I remember sitting in front of my uncle’s TV, watching a formation of Hueys swooping into the jungle to pick up the dead and wounded. The screen showed a young black guy on a stretcher getting loaded into the belly of one of those choppers. His arm was gone, his face was melted, and his shirt was burnt and blowing away in the wind. They were birds swallowing up carrion.  You’re too young to remember that.”

He dragged a cigarette to death.

“The world is burning, buddy. I came to know as a child that I can’t put out all the fires. When you learn that, you’ll be better off. Just try to do what you got to do out of a good soul. And I’m sorry about tonight–I guess I’m not totally savory, either. I don’t think there’s really any way through this life without picking up some glass in your tread. Now give me another one of those things.”

He took the cigarette and flipped it over.

“The goddamn thing is backwards, habeebi. That’s another thing you should learn to be better off.” Paul chuckled. “Oh, boy. Boy, oh, boy. Good night, though, isn’t it?”

Sulfur faintly carried on a breeze, from the rings of couples sending their love bursting into the night sky.

“So what’s next for you?” He said.

I sat there for a moment before letting go an uncontrolled and abbreviated laugh.

“As soon as I get back to my place,” I said, watching a firework bloom, “I was thinking maybe I should give Hana a call. She seemed sharp, and having a girl around might help with meeting the neighbors.”

Paul absently watched the burning parabolas drifting like jellyfish.

“Hell yeah. Maybe that will be good for you, Bill. It’s been a tough year, I think.”

come and love me
his eyes say as a question
lo que me estan pidiendo

quivering their search
around my face
glass marbles
one chipped
tapping out
thoughts from behind
his mind
an earthquake
never starting never stopping

a stirrup of flesh guards the tongue
that drops to explain how
Reba McEntire is the queen of country
then rises to plug the hole
of where there are no longer teeth
a lifetime below
those trembling stained glass windows
light pours through
cracks caused by life’s worrying body

i ride the busses all day
words balanced for me
i love riding busses, too
i say, and i do
the eyes shine a smile
bus 69 is my favorite

did 69 take me to Palermo
back to her
my favorite part is how smooth they are
la cual alcanza el barrio
you can just ride all the time
donde me esperaba
those eyes trembling faucets pouring heart strings
donde me besó debajo del cielo
its like they’re never starting never stopping

It had only been moving for forty minutes before the train slowed to a halt. This was unusual not because of the reputation of trains, but because over the past three years Noel had regularly taken the train between St. Louis and Kansas City, and had never encountered a delay so early in the trip. Normally, if the train stopped before a station it was because there was a slower train in front of them. The conductor would announce that they had come up behind a freight train carrying coal or silica, and that everyone would have to wait until it got out of the way. Noel was amused by the conductor’s choice of words, as if the freight train could easily be coerced and shuffle off to the side. It made him smile to think that this was a conductor daydreaming of a conductor’s life one-hundred years earlier: a cow on the tracks sent away with the  sybilant cry of the steam whistle.

Over the past three years, Noel had only been in the AMTRAK four times when it had made a complete stop. He had taken this route over thirty times, and though it often slowed to a crawl, the train rarely stopped completely. At the moment, car seven was stalled just in front of a cluster of Sugar Maple trees with thin bodies and thinner branches that reached tirelessly for the passing trains. Noel had been focused on the promontory of one leaf that was bent slightly from touching the glass. He wondered if the branch or leaf had grown at all during the time they had been sitting there. The leaf moved slightly from a breeze, its sharp point edging away a small squiggle of dust from the glass.

Noel glanced down at his wristwatch. Almost a half past three. They had already been stopped for an hour. A woman opened the front door of the car and cleared her throat. She was wearing a navy blue short-sleeved uniform that tightened at the cuff every time she made a gesture with her large arms. Her hat was tipped up on her head so that she could pull her dark brown ponytail through the back opening. Her nametag said just D.

D announced that the PA system in the train was not functioning, and the conductor had preferred that all the tickets be checked before taking the time to notify the passengers of all the details of the current situation. It was a big mess, she said. We didn’t have all the details until just a few minutes ago. There was a freight train loaded with coal that had stopped because there was a report of a car stuck on the tracks. The report was false—thank god, she added—but it meant that everything today had slowed down. Freight trains don’t just get up and run, she said. We should be heading out in just a few minutes.

Three years earlier, Noel was standing on the platform waiting for the train to Kansas City. He had a leather satchel strung in between his shoulders and a black leather duffle bag he had claimed from the dumpster behind his office. It sat half-deflated at his feet because he hadn’t packed very much, though he still felt that there was too much for three days—eight hours of which would be spent sitting on a train. But he wanted to be prepared.

It was almost autumn, so the leaves were still strong and confident and verdent and unaware of the cold snap that was likely to happen over the weekend. Noel had asked Margot what to bring, and she had said, Oh, nothing heavy, it should be nice this weekend. After she ended the phone call, he called the time and temperature number, waited two minutes for the banking advertisement to pass, checked his watch against the time, and then listened to the forecast. Friday and Saturday looked to be nice, but Sunday was probably going to dip into the low of forties. So in addition what hee was wearing, Noel stuffed into the bag a pair of shoes, a pair of wool socks, a pair of cotton socks, a light jacket, and another pair of underwear.

I might have gone overboard with the wool socks, he thought as the train was pulling up next to him. He shouldered his duffle bag and withdrew the ticket from his pocket. He moved into the nearest line, behind two women with large matching hard shell suitcases. He held out the ticket as he approached the door, but the man in the uniform just smiled and spoke curtly through his grey handlebar mustache and signaled Noel to climb the grated metal stairs.

—-You’ll have a chance to use that in just a few minutes, son. The man said.

Noel kept his ticket out. There was no seat assigment, so he walked down the aisle and picked an open row of seats toward the rear of the car. He placed his duffle bag in the overhead storage, and laid his messenger bag down in the window seat. He sat in the aisle seat and removed from the front pocket of his bag his iPod. He selected Emotionalism, by The Avett Brothers. He had first heard the album in Beaverton, Oregon the previous summer, and every subsequent time he listened to it he smiled and was caught up for a moment in her.

He was in Oregon only for two more days, and then he would fly back to St. Louis for school. His childhood friend Arjuna wanted to show Noel the climbing gym and introduce him to Marta, because he was hoping to see if Noel could tell if she liked him. Noel and Marta started talking about music and hit it off immediately, and Arjuna honorably slipped away as the two of them flirted and laughed. Marta rifled through her gear back and handed Noel her copy of Emotionalism. Listen to it, she said, and then you should go to the concert with me next week. Noel said that he was leaving the day after next, and she just closed her eyes slightly and grinned. On the other hand, more perfect, she said. Noel glanced away from her and felt the blood run hotter in his veins.

Noel came quickly and was embarrased. Marta was his first, and afterward he thought about one morning when twelve year-old Arjuna bragged that he’d just finished screwing their friend Dylan for an hour straight. But he tried not to remember that detail, instead packaging up the whole romance into one ethereal event. The day and night blending together in her eyes. The smiles and touches and light playing on her bedroom curtains. And so whenever he listened to the album, the whole memory swelled in him like a deep breath.

After the third song, his mind drifted back to the train, and he looked around to see if anyone else had their tickets out. Across from him there was an old woman with short grey hair. She was leaned against the window, sleeping with her mouth dropped open. Everyone else was seated toward the front of the car, and he could not see what they were doing. He noticed a knot of chestnut coloured dreadlocks tied above an olive skinned shoulder. The music pumped steadily again into his ears, and there in his mind was Margot. Initially, he felt guilty that he had gone behind her back and slept with Marta before even sleeping with Margot, but after a few months, his secret settled peacefully like most regrets. He pulled from his bag two envelopes and a black notebook. He took a picture out of the notebook.

The day he returned from his study abroad in Geneva, Margot had been waiting for him at the airport baggage claim dressed like nurse from the Forties. Her friend was waiting with a camera, and Noel knew immediately what was his role in the scenario. He dropped his luggage, and—running—caught Margot around the waist with one arm, dipped her, and kissed her. He loved her in that moment. The picture didn’t turn out, but it was clearly enough a recreation of the famous “Victory Japan Day” photo. That night was the first time they fought. She was joking when she called him a bastard because he didn’t call her enough when he was in Switzerland. He didn’t think it was funny and she told him to ease up, but he said he’s probably just jet lagged and he took her hand out of his hair and stood up from the sofa. She started yelling for him to chill the fuck out, and then he yelled back that he was just fucking tired, ok? I think I hear my parents. She went to to his room and got drunk on some Johnnie Blue Label, came back twenty minutes later and slapped him.

He looked at the picture once more and then set it on the seat next to him. Now he was graduated and working in St. Louis for a men’s fashion boutique. He fitted suits and recommended high priced ties to go with certain styles and cuts and he made a nice living. He was good at what he did, and he enjoyed how simple the job was. Margot had just started at a demanding medical school program, and they would be living four hours apart by train for the next five years. She said she would be waiting for him at the train station. Wearing what, this time? He thought.

From one of the envelopes he took a piece of paper, finely embossed with an Arabesque pattern along the edge. There were occasional narrow flecks of something that looked like eyelashes and reminded him of the fibers on the dollar bill. He uncapped the fountain pen that he had stolen from Arjuna. Because buying replacement ink cartridges would probably be expensive, he tried not to think about what he would do when the pen ran out of ink. He closed his eyes, let the music clear away his thoughts, opened them again, and looked at the picture. For the first letter, he held the pen tip to the paper for just a moment to let it suck out a small point of ink, and then he dragged the pen forward and began to write. There was a soft thud at his feet.

He looked up to see the girl with dreadlocks bending over in the aisle, picking up something that had fallen next to his seat. He leaned over to look for what it was she dropped, when she snapped upright. She held an iPod in her hand and said something and then smiled.

—Sorry. Noel said, popping his earphones off. What? I didn’t catch that. He noticed she had a brass nose ring. The suggestions of two more rings pressed through her t-shirt. He liked the way she looked.

—It’s good. The girl repeated, once again with a smile. She extended her hand. I’m Clara.

He paused.

—I’m Noel. Nice to meet you. He hesitated, but then through a flutter of uncertainty spoke smoothly.

—Would you like to sit down?

—So formal. She answered with a mock Southern accent. Why, yes, yes I would.

She waited for Noel to cap his pen and move his bag before stepping over him and taking a seat next to the window. He watched her pass over him and wondered if she had been a ballerina, her movements were so graceful.

—So, where are you headed? He asked. I mean, where in Kansas City? For what, really?

That was stupid, he thought.

Clara was going to visit her mother. She was quick to say that her mother didn’t actually live in the city itself, but rather with her boyfriend in a suburb a few miles away. Her father lived in St. Louis, in Dog Town, in an apartment above a Pakistani family. Clara shared an apartment with a friend in Webster Groves. She explained that because her parents had divorced when she was already living on her own, it shouldn’t have fucked up her life very much. But her mother had been really hurt by the separation and decided that she needed to make a new life in a new city. Clara laughed.

—So instead of going somewhere interesting for me to visit, she moved four hours across the state to Kansas City. it’s just like St. Louis, but with less soul and more barbeque. She put on the look of spoiled child’s exasperation.

—I live near my dad, but don’t see him because we both have our own lives now. We’ve had our own lives, you know? But I just have to say it sometimes to hear it out loud. I see my mom every few months, mainly because I don’t have the money to visit her more. I love them both, but I’m getting too old for this shit.

Noel laughed. What do you do, he asked. She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes upward as if to study the light on the ceiling. Her eyes were the most common color of brown, but they were bright and alive with thought. She said that she really didn’t do all that much. She had graduated from Webster University three years earlier, but had not really looked very hard for a job immediately after. Before long she was forced to take a part-time job as a waitress to pay her bills. She soon moved from waiting tables to taking orders for coffee.

—Yeah? Noel asked. Where at?

—Kaldis. She said. You know it?

He chuckled and she liked how he smiled with his eyes.

—Yeah, I do. I never went there much, but I’ve been there a few times.

She said, yeah? then we must have seen each other before. We might have even met before! She acted amazed. Crazy, he said, that’s crazy. Yeah, I’ll be honest, I don’t remember you, but I’ll bet we’ve met before.

She balanced on his words before speaking again.

—Actually, she turned her body now to face him.

She exhaled.

—I remember you. I’ve seen you come into my shop a few times. When you got on the train you walked past me and I saw you, but you didn’t see me. I’ve been waiting the last few minutes to build up the nerve to come back here and talk to you.

She had exposed the words suddenly, and they threaded from her mouth like a magician’s scarf. He looked at her and their eyes searched each other. He looked away at the chairback next to her head and then back at her. He smiled and squeezed shut one eye. She dipped her chin and tried to read the changing lines in his face.

—That’s really sweet. He said finally. I’m flattered, but I can’t.

The words were spoken almost as a whisper, but he could see to her they shattered sound barriers. Her eyes betrayed distress, so she snatched them away from him. She turned quickly to the window.

—Yeah, sorry. I didn’t mean anything. She spoke into the window pane. Just messin’ around, you know?

—Yeah, of course. He said too quickly. No, really, it’s nice.

Just bury yourself even further, he thought. What are you doing?

—You never told me what you studied. He offered.

—You never asked. She said, facing him with a thin smile. She gestured with her pointer finger to the pen he was still holding.

—What are you writing?

He looked down at he pen, and bit his lower lip.

—A letter to my girlfriend.

Clara said nothing.

—I’m having a hard time thinking of what to write. At the moment, I just don’t have anything good to say to her.

—What do you mean? She asked flatly.

He couldn’t read anything in the question. He shrugged and cracked his knuckles.

—It’s just that, as soon as I got on this train, I started to think of all the things that are so wrong about us.

—You should write that, then.

Again flat. He looked up at her and she was looking into his face. There was care in her eyes.

—I don’t know. Letters are so permanent. I think she’d probably take it the wrong way and I’d have to backtrack.

—Maybe, she said, but you should at least write it down. Don’t mail it if you don’t want to, but it will be good to get those feelings  out of your head, at least.

Her eyes flicked over his shoulder, and Noel turned around to see the man in the uniform standing next to him. He asked for their names, and Clara quickly held up her hand and said that she was actually sitting in the first row. The man began to protest, saying that there was no assigned seating, but she stopped him and stood up. She said that all of her belongings were in that seat anyway, so no big deal. She stepped over Noel and told him that it was good to meet him, and then excused herself as she passed the man and moved forward to her seat. Noel hadn’t said a word. He peered out and saw her walking, and she did not turn around. The man in the uniform looked at him knowingly.

—What’s your name, son?

For three years, each time he rode the train Noel had looked for her. He did not know what he would do if he ever saw her, but he always looked. Like that girl at the party, he had once told himself, the one you never ask out figuring you’ll see her around, but she’s never there.

He turned from his window and looked at the old woman across from him. She was still asleep, but she was more hunched over than before. It looked like she was trying to curl into ball while she slept. The thought to find her a blanket crossed his mind, but then he lost hold of it and looked down at his hands. The sun had chased onto them a shadow of some leaves.

Noel took out of his bag a small stack of sealed envelopes. All the thoughts he could never mail. He fingered through them, and—satisfied that they were in chronological order with the oldest on top—lightly tied them together with a black ribbon. He replaced the package in his messenger bag. There was a bump and low metallic pang, and then the train started to roll forward once again.

Dedicated to my Grandfather

Including me, there are eight men seated around the two tables pushed together into one long rectangle. I cannot remember the names for three of them, but that could be because they are quiet, or maybe because they are not very interesting. So for now their names remain their property. It’s the four men that speak and move their hands and bob their heads like owls that capture my attention. These men are named Örn, Willard, Bob, and Ron.

The cafeteria is almost empty except for us. Örn is telling a story about purchasing his new car, frantically moving his hands in circles above the table. One circles clockwise, one circles counterclockwise. I try to follow the story as best as I can, but I lose the trail in the occasional bramble of antique phrases.

“You bet it is.” Örn says with finality. He sets his hands down on the table.

He turns to Bob, who looks at him blankly..

“You bet it is.” He says after a moment.

And now each man engages some collection of thoughts, watching them gather a thousand yards away. The anonymous man sitting to the right of Örn checks his watch rudely. None of the men pay him notice.

Spread on the table is a carnage of napkins and white cups, some empty and some still heavy with coffee. No one had adds either cream or sugar. The anonymous man picks up his empty coffee cup, glances into it, and sets it back onto the table.

Two days earlier, the passenger jet carrying me from Costa Rica to Minneapolis landed uneventfully.

Walking toward the baggage claim, I spotted two figures holding hands sitting near the rotating luggage. They looked smaller than I remembered them being. The same brown flannel shirt and baseball cap with a flat brim, I thought. Same cream shoes on her and brown shoes on him. The man looked up, and fixed his eyes on me as if I was coming into focus slowly.

“Hey you two.” I said with a grin, stopping in front of them.

“Oh, Britt!” my grandmother said, looking up from her magazine. I saw my father for a brief moment hiding in her smile.

“Why hello there young man!” Grandpa said, bracing himself on the armrests as he rose. “Welcome home!”

The old man and the young man embraced. The familiar touch of the wool shirt and suspenders pressing against my bare forearms felt good. It was a strong and good hug. I turned and leaned over to hug his Grandma.

“Oh my,” she chuckled, “you’ll have to come all the way down here to reach me.”

Her arms crossed behind my back, and I crossed mine behind her shoulders. She was slightly hunched, as she always had been, but she seemed to him to be thinner and lighter. I suddenly felt very happy to be there.

“It feels good to be back.” I said, “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

“Why,” Grandpa said, “of course. We got here early because we normally go to the other airport, you know. So we picked a nice parking spot in the garage.”

He looked at me for a second, then his face split into a smile.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, Cathy, this boy just keeps growing. Next thing you know he’ll be trying out for the Timberwolves.”

“Bruce would like that.”

“Yeah, he’d get a kick out of that.”

“Not planning any moves to the big leagues just yet.” I said, “Or, really, basketball at all.”

We all stood there above the shiny tile floor, my grandparents searching my face, me feeling both younger and older.

“I’m going to beat you to the punch,” I said, breaking the silence, “I’m planning on cutting my hair sooner than later. Before you know it I’ll have a haircut that you can set your watch to.”

Grandpa laughed. Grandma looked at me and smiled.

“Oh, we don’t care about that.” She said. “We know it’s the style these days. Robert used to wear his hair much longer than that. And Andy and Kira and their kids, well, they really don’t cut their hair much.”

After a few minutes my luggage came, and we walked to the car parked in the garage, talking about my summer until we arrived.

The sun powered the soft glow of the fading dusk. The car traveled swiftly down the interstate, changing lanes, curving down exit ramps, merging onto smaller veins of traffic that carried the blood supply of Minneapolis back to their homes. Grandma sat in the back seat, and I road up front with Grandpa.

“The car rides nice.” I said, glancing at the speedometer and then the eyes of my grandfather. They were lighted with an awareness that was comforting. Grandpa changed lanes, checking his mirror first.

“Oh yeah.” Grandpa replied.

“Not quite like the Buick.”

“Oh, no. But this new one gets 35 miles to the gallon of gasoline. And it’s really all Cathy and I need for getting around town.”

Grandpa entered into a recap of his most recent history of trading cars. He sold the Buick not long ago, for a good price, although nobody is interested in a car that size anymore. This current car had been purchased at the same time as his friend Örn—do you remember Örn? Grandpa asked me.  No, I said, I don’t remember him—and Örn’s wife had been reminding Grandpa ever since that he was no longer allowed to take Örn shopping with him.

Grandma’s voice could be heard coming from the back seat, softly humming hymns. She asked me if I had been following everything with the President. I wasn’t sure, it depended on what she was referencing.

“The President is trying to give all of the land in America back to the Blacks.” she said.

“He’s a Muslim, you know.” Grandpa added.

“It’s part of his liberation theology.” Grandma continued.

“I thought liberation theology was Christian.” I said.

I could hear the tires thrumming in Grandpa’s hearing aid.

“Oh, well,” she said, “I don’t know about all that. It’s all just wrong.”

Dinner was beef stroganoff and white toast with butter and honey. Dessert was a bowl of freshly picked raspberries from Grandma’s garden. The overhead cluster of bulbs spilled yellow light into the kitchen. On the wall hung a Norman Rockwell painting and a washboard. What was not yet an antique was antiquing, like the Zip-loc bags hiding in an old cupboard and the refrigerator wearing scales of family photos and newspaper clippings to make itself look older.

Grandpa was going to meet with his friends in the morning, and I was invited. I said that I would love to go. Grandma served me coffee and then Grandpa, adding water to dilute it.

“Oh, Bill.” Grandma said, returning the water pitcher to the refrigerator, “I forgot to bring out the whipped cream for the berries.”

The old man looked at his wife hunching over the sink, already washing dishes, and then smiled at me.

The morning broke through my dreamless sleep. I went downstairs and ate breakfast with Grandma. Grandpa was in the garage, tinkering with a lawnmower engine. She served me one of the only meals I could remember ever eating at that table: corn flakes, fresh raspberries and bananas, and a mixture of skim milk and half-and-half. White bread, butter, and honey were served on the side. Grandpa came in and announced that we would leave when I was ready.

The car eased backward onto the street, beyond the tall pine tree, the oak, and the yard now green with grass. There used to be raspberry bushes and a fence there, I thought. How long had they been gone? For years, probably. Like all memories of this place, there were no fixed dates. There was only closing my eyes and meandering past the murky tanks of faces, places, and events swimming in a past untethered by time.

Grandpa put the car in drive and started toward Ron’s house. He’s blind, Grandpa had said the night before. We’ll have to give him a ride. I breathed deeply the smells of my grandfather seated beside me. Something like mothballs and dried wood, my brother and I had decided. The same smell as the house. When you live in a house for so many decades, the house starts to inhabit your skin and hair, the clothes you wear, and the cars you drive.

The previous afternoon I sat on the couch reading an issue of World War II magazine when my grandmother entered the room. She carried with her a blanket and sat in the rocking chair opposite me. The house accommodated well her movements; she belonged there and she was like water moving through water.  The air was heavy with old dust and smelled as it should have.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Oh, fine.” she said. “But don’t worry about me, I’m going to just rest a bit.

“Ah, okay.”

She sat in the chair and lightly spread the blanket over her chair, flicking at the corners to make them drape beyond her legs. She removed her eyeglasses, and placed them on the lamp stand beside her.

Her body was so small and fragile, like a bird. My grandfather was—in contrast—an image of durability. Just a few years earlier, he was cleaning the rain gutters and had fallen off of the roof of the house, landing in between two tomato plant stakes, narrowly escaping impalement. Grandpa—in his eighties—stood up, brushed himself off, and went to the doctor to make sure there was no serious damage. Except for some bumps and bruises, the only thing that had changed was his height: somehow the fall had made him an inch shorter. I thought about this while I was looking at my grandmother, thinking about the end of her life and how much time I had left with her. I started to miss my parents, but they would be coming in two days.

That happened yesterday before dinner. Now, Grandpa is pulling the car into the parking lot of the Fresh Seasons grocery store.

“I thought you met at McDonalds?” I asked, remembering the last time I sat around the table with his friends.

“You can get a cup here for fifty cents here. Sixty-five at McDonalds. It’s alright, also.”

Grandpa and I follow Ron through the automatic door and into the small cafe attached to the grocery store. The tall, half dome ceiling is vaulted and painted black. The side with the sliding doors is almost all panes of ten-foot tall glass. On the walls cling reprints of posters advertising one thing or another. There are three with Italian words like Presto and Il Gusto, and one has a man in white face paint and one other has a small cup nested in a saucer, venting grey steam from its black, black espresso. Then there is a poster of Casablanca, the one with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman standing and looking at each other while there is a war on. Behind them, a plane sits impatiently on the runway.

I stand off to the side of the table and watched Grandpa make his way around the table, greeting the men. His gestures are the same as those of me and my father: two hands gave a gentle squeeze on the shoulders; a hearty, single-pump hand shake; the open palm of each hand on the upper back of two people at once.

“Is this your grandson?” The man nearest to me asks, extending his hand. “Örn.”

“Britt” I replied, giving the hand a firm squeeze and a single shake.

“Yep.” Grandpa says, seating himself across the table from Ron. “He’s been traveling all around the world and seeing what you wouldn’t believe. He was poisoned in…where was it? Panama?”

“Is that right?” One man says

“Was it the Batistas?” says another.

“Well he looks all right to me.” Örn says quickly.

I stand there for a moment, looking at each man.

“Uh, actually,” I begin, lowering myself into the chair left for me at the head of the table, “it was in Costa Rica. I just ate some bad fish. The funny part is that the doctor in the town I was in didn’t even know the name of the poison, even though he saw a few cases of it each week. Not really that big of a deal.”

“Bill said you met some pirates or some other foolishness?” Ron asked.

I sit there fielding questions, wondering how much of my life Grandpa has been following. I suspect that my father has communicated with Grandpa over the phone, and that—with Grandma attached to another receiver somewhere else in the house—the two of them receive a filtered account of my most recent travels. I glance to Grandpa who was quietly listening to my answers. The man cares enough about my life to tell his friends.

Conversation turns to other grandchildren, and then to the children and grandchildren of other men. Accomplishments. Deaths. Births. Marriages. He’s in Fargo now, one man says, remarking about his grandson. Most men do not acknowledge, being old enough to cede pride to silence: they do not know or remember these people suddenly pulled from old photo albums into the bright morning conversation. Their value is that they are fresh colors on the fading palette.

I look at Bob, who does not mention a person who has accomplished anything, or died, or bought a new home. His grey hair is styled in a way that matches his sweater and shirt. He had been a father in the seventies, and so he had let his hair grow just longer than what the armed service had required, but still short enough to be a stark contrast to the hippies. Does he still fix pianos? I wonder. He used to tune them, I know that. Must do other work on them, too. Grandpa once told me that Bob worked with Liberace once. The image of Liberace in his sequined capes and gemstoned pinky rings paying Bob flashes through his mind. The stunned face of a man staring first at the cape and then at the face painted in make up. But instead of ignoring it, Bob would have remained part of his generation, and taken what had been offered as payment—hoping that it was in someway valuable. Worlds colliding for men of that age must be very different than worlds colliding in my life, I think.

“I’m getting some coffee. Get you some?” I turn to my grandfather.

“Oh, no. I’ll be all right. It’s good coffee here, though.”

I push out my chair, and get myself a cup of coffee  one of the tall, lean metal silos. The one with the orange handle burned an orange light. That’s fine, I don’t want decaf, I think, drawing a small styrofoam cup from its nested family. The plastic packaging settles lightly around the cups like a snakeskin ready to be discarded. The coffee is black and hot and it breathes a chimney of steam with a metallic odor familiar to people who haunt truck stops. I return and set the cup on the table and pull up the chair so that I can comfortably fold my elbows on the surface.

Now they speak of jobs and days that have passed away. The men are not the same age. Some appear to be younger than 80, some older, but none younger than 70. They might not have shared every experience, but they share the idea of a generation.

“I drove that truck for so many years. It got cold in North Dakota in those days, like you wouldn’t believe. We didn’t have to worry about so many things, though. Just get the shipment in on time.”

“Before the Volvo engine, I suspect?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Did any of you have crank start cars?” I ask.

Every man nods.

“Yes sir.”

“Certainly did.”

“My father had a steam coach.”

“I had the first production piece!”

“I’ll tell you what,” Grandpa says “when it was cold and you wanted to get that thing going, you turned it and got the heck out. That thing would snap around so fast, oh boy, you’d catch it right in the chin. But when it turned, it ran to beat the dickens.”

The men again nod. A common understanding is affirmed.

“But not Chevies. Chevies were no good for starting in the cold.”

“Oh no,” one man says, “but those came years later.”

“Sure enough.” The dissent passes like breeze over an empty field.

“My dad only bought Fords, because of the cold.”

“Was he a mailman?” Grandpa asks.

“Yep.”

Everyone laughs.

One man drove trucks. Another tuned Pianos. Another became involved in real estate with the help of the GI Bill. Some are clearly financially well off. Others wear jackets releasing stray threads and shirts with faded cuffs and cracked buttons. Nobody talks about war.

I have spoken to Grandpa many times about war. About his friends that had died, about flying in planes, about his life after the war. My grandfather built a house by hand, never asked much from anyone, loved his family and his country, and twice fought in wars for all of it.

On many issues, these men can be considered bigoted, narrow-minded, and racist. Sitting at that table with them, I feel differently about what they say because of who they are together.

I try to consider how much these men fought for and invested in the United States of America. Communism to many of them was real in a way that had tanks and fighter jets in the USSR and Korea. Socialism was Nazi and Fascist soldiers, and it killed their friends just as they had killed many of its’ young faces. For these men, enemies were real. They had already defeated these enemies once. I can see how my grandfather and his friends struggle with the subtleties of Communism and Socialism in their current iterations. After giving so much, who would want to risk losing their country and economy to something they’d already vanquished. It seems that they worry much more than they hate, maybe because worrying is the only way that’s left to defend things. Was life simpler back then? Not everything was, but some things certainly seemed like it to them. Good was good and bad was bad. That’s what they knew once and that’s what they knew now.

“What do you like about it? What makes it so special?” Her voice hung in the receiver. “Pull me into it.”

“It’s only comparable to itself. The mountains are behind and beneath everything. A purple and blue and white spine whose cold and violent beauty overthrow age and gravity, stretching on endlessly and pushing upward forever.

“Hills roll into steep cliffs and flatten into plains. In one space there are a thousand trees of all varieties, densely gathered like bison and fanning out just so on the periphery. Then, a lone pine in the middle of hectares of stale, brushy emptiness. A line of willows are straight as a well drawn line. All are weeping.

“The poplars sprout from the ground like towering and tapering paintbrushes. The wind bends their branches like a cat’s tail, turning over the leaves to show the sky their dusty, silvery bellies. Aquamarine and turquoise rivers fold and unfold in liquid sheets, always flatly churning life through their cool veins.

“The colours are whole and real, but not consistent; yet, it’s their inconsistency that is perfect. Electric green, wet and dessicated browns, dusty pastel pinks and blues, somber violet, sharp reds.

“In the distance a sudden approach of stoney towers and buttes and obelisks gather and diffuse. They hold mystery as deftly as they trap the wild fox and the warmth of the sun. High above and all around. They are wilder than love, and dangerous to seduce with their natural and unlevel features.

“Smaller warty growths spatter the lateral and dorsal flanks of soily mounds. And then they are gone. Into the earth to hide or wait until they are mountains, too.

“There is a cedar—alone—on the edge of a precipice, roots dangling over the edge like a noose.

“Plateaus of history are cut with lines of colour and texture, displaying their legacy with cocquetteish bravado.

“Below billowing clouds, white and grey dust devils also whirl. These spindly bodies of the breeze give the sea algunos roces, sweeping it with a sensual touches.

“And everything beneath a sky so blue you could drink it.

“The whole thing is this crazy-beautiful enterprise. It’s amazing.”

]]> http://sojournerdiary.com/travel/la-patagonia.php/feed 0 http://sojournerdiary.com/nonfictionfictionandpoetry/they-so-many-so-strong.php http://sojournerdiary.com/nonfictionfictionandpoetry/they-so-many-so-strong.php#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:38:04 +0000 Britt http://sojournerdiary.com/?p=360 The stones burrowed into the hillside for shelter from the snow. A light powder had fallen at this altitude, but it was not yet cold enough in the valley to dust the groves of hibernating olive trees and the dark red grapes clinging to the vines.

Dennon stepped on a small bump in the trail, but there was no rock and only snow, and his foot slipped out from under him, smearing his knee with white snow and brown mud. He raised himself tenderly, examining his right hand, and brushed easily the still frozen dirt and snow from his pants.

—It’s impossible to move up this thing, he said.

—No, the man in front called back to him, it’s just that you’re not quite the mountain sprite that we are. Watch out so you don’t take out your sister.

—Yeah, said the girl from a few paces behind Dennon, maybe I should go in front of you.

Dennon laughed.

—No, I’ll be fine. Sorry, Al. I’ll be more careful. I’m just not wearing the right shoes; these don’t have any tread left.

—It’s fine, said the man up front, we’re almost there anyway.

—As I was saying, Alice said, passing Dennon with a smile, I think he used it twice. Once in Travels, and once in Grapes of Wrath.

—No, Al: I wasn’t disagreeing with you. He used it twice, I think, but it wasn’t sure what the two books were. It’s definitely in Grapes of Wrath, toward the beginning when the guy is singing that really racist song. But I’m pretty sure the second time he uses it is in Red Pony. Somewhere. Am I right, Hugh?

—I have no idea what you’re talking about, Hugh said, halting once again. What are you talking about? What are we talking about?

—It’s nothing. Really. Sorry, I was joking. Dennon said, sniffling. We brought, like, 6 Steinbeck books with us, and we just finished reading them all. Alice just told me that she realized Steinbeck had twice used the word “languorous”.

—I agree with her, he continued, staring at her and emphasizing his words with an inflection and slight nod of the head, …but I think the two books are Grapes and Red Pony. It’s weird. Well, not weird that the word appears twice, just that we noticed it. And that’s we are talking about it.

—Yeah it doesn’t matter, she said.

—Well, Hugh said, leaning on his walking stick, I definitely don’t know. I have read the Grapes of Wrath, but I was, like, 15. Or something. The sad peril of the Jones Family.

—Joad, the two said together.

Hugh laughed.

—Thank you. Is it possible the word appears more than twice? He thought for a second, and then continued without letting them answer. Never mind. Don’t answer that. Let’s keep going.

The three of them took another breath of the air stretched thin by altitude, and pushed forward.

—And focus on walking, not your book club! Hugh called back.

—Yeah, Alice said, cheerfulness in her words, Dennon just doesn’t give up on the pretentious shit. He’s all for talking it to death.

—Are you kidding me? He stopped walking. You! You Whore of Babylon! Swaggering in front of me, riding on your purple dragon of lies. I can’t believe it.

Neither Hugh nor Alice stopped walking, but his sister extended a mittened hand at a right angle over her shoulder, waving it slightly.

—You’re wearing mittens, sweetheart. Dennon said.

—Damn it! She laughed, taking off the glove, and erecting her middle finger. There. This means I win.

—No, Dennon said raising a wool-wrapped middle finger, this means I win. Articulated fingers.

She pointed her other hand, still shapeless with a mitten, at her naked middle finger. She turned on her heals, and scrambled forward.

Dennon followed, looking up at his big sister as she deftly maneuvered the parched-white mountain trail. He had always won, but only because she let him. That’s how it was now, and that’s how it will be, he thought. She stumbled slightly, extending her arm in front of her to catch her fall. She shot a glance backward, but Dennon only held his hands in front of him. She raised her sunglasses, narrowed her eyes in mock aggression, and then—opening them— flashed a wide smile. For a brief moment, the sun struck the gold flecks in her pale-blue eyes. I pity the man that goes panning for anything in those eyes, he thought. She turned and continued to climb again, keeping a brisk pace.

So strong. So confident and persistent. Dennon thought. She has taken a hell of a beating, but just keeps going. The transplants and the hospital visits and all the doctors. Him. And she was back to playing water polo, what, 7 months after the first operation? Goddamn.

Alice passed over the crest, disappearing for a moment. Dennon heard her laughing, and hurried himself.

He, broke the ridgeline, stuttered for a moment to take in the sight, and stood beside Alice, taking her arm. Oh my god, this is perfect, he thought.

—Do it again, she called to Hugh, perched atop a large flat rock.

Hugh dutifully obeyed. He removed his conductor’s hat and began dancing. His shoes pattered softly, shuffling snow off the rock in powdery bursts. His arms were extended like a crucifix, and his torso was still as a statue, despite his legs below him hinging loosely at every angle like a puppet. He ended with a flourish, and tossed the hat up to his head. It flipped once, and landed on the back on his head, dropping to the ground.

They shouted triumphantly, sending him wool-muffled claps.

—Impressive! Dennon said loudly, then turned to Alice and said, oh, he’s just irresistible. Infectious.

—I know, but not now, okay? She smiled, squeezing his hand.

Yeah, I know, he thought. Hugh had climbed atop a wall just in front of them.

—So what do you guys think of the view? Isn’t it great? I used to come up here all the time when I was a kid. When I was here, I mean.

Dennon couldn’t remember much about Hugh. He knew that he was right about the view. It really was spectacular. A fortress on top of a mountain, buried deeply within the quiet countryside of southern France.

—This thing is really big, Hugh said, pointing from one side to the other. You can already see that it’s pretty wide, but what you probably didn’t see through these trees is that it keeps going. A few hundred feet more, that a-way.

Dennon noted the way he mimicked the Little Rascals. Lis had told him that Hugh was from the West coast, but also that part of his family was European. He had gone to college in New York, Dennon knew that. He must have been raised in the States, too, because he didn’t have any accent.

They brushed through some of the low hanging branches and climbed higher, into more of the crumbling fortress. Alice moved in front of her brother when he stopped to pluck a pebble out of his shoe. She and Hugh began speaking a little in French.

Dennon wondered how much time he spent out here. Lis said when the two of them were dating they had gone to his house in these mountains.  Must have been magical, he thought. The views, the wines.  But she hadn’t wanted to talk about it much.

Don’t mention me, Lis had told Dennon. When you meet him, don’t mention me. He’ll be happy to help show you and your sister a little of the south, but it’s probably better to avoid conversation about me. Why not? Dennon pressed. Because we ended badly and it would make things weird for you—for us, she had replied.

They reached the top of the high precipice of the fortress and Dennon looked around.

—God. Lovely. He said.

Each stood spending puffs of warm air into the cold. Hugh stood above Dennon and Alice was on a wall above Hugh. The shadow of her coat obscured the sun from half of Dennon’s face.

—Yeah, Alice said after a moment, it’s really beautiful.

Hugh smiled and took out from his backpack baguettes, cheese, and a bottle of wine.

—Who is ready for lunch? We should eat soon, because I guarantee when we get back, my neighbors will be making food for dinner.

They arrived back to the small house just before sundown. The night wind was beginning its crescendo from a whisper to a howl. It moved around the hikers and through the mountain passes, sweeping down the isles of sleeping trees and vines, tearing at their leaves, and snatching up the cold and brittle dead.

Hugh’s neighbors were already in the kitchen preparing dinner.  They opened the front door and a wave of heat crashed around the hikers, clouding the eyeglasses of both Hugh and Dennon.

—C’est Génial! The neighbors said in unison, laughing.

—Bonsoir, oncle et tante LeFavre. Hugh started, cradling his lenses in his scarf to warm them. Je vous présente a mes amis, Alice et Dennon.

Alice and Dennon stood behind Hugh, Dennon puffing on his glasses. Each spoke with chilled lips.

—Hi.

—Bonsoir.

—Welcome, said the woman, we were just fixing supper. Please warm yourself by the fire.

—Provençal Lamb Stew, the man said, offering each a glass of rosé. Dennon sipped from the rim, emitting a small bubbling noise.

—Thank you, he said, admiring the thin, light stem of the glass. You speak English?

The man turned back to the woman and Kevin and said something in French. All three burst out laughing. He returned his attention to the brother and sister just seating themselves at the table.

—I speak a little English, he said in a thick accent, but it is still better than my French. He said and moved back behind the island to stir something in the frying pan.

—He speaks just fine, Hugh said, sitting at the table next to Alice, across from Dennon. He pretty much taught me French using English.

—Do you remember when my family first bought this place? Hugh asked to the backs of the couple. Oui Oui, they said, smiles floating from their words.

—Paul-Henri and Odette lived—still live, actually—in the house just next to ours, the one just out the door to the left. When my dad bought this place back in the Seventies, he thought he was going to use it as a getaway from filming in New York, maybe keep it for a few seasons. Probably a getaway from the family, too. But, after an evening with the famed LeFavres, Hugh gestured an open palm to the couple cooking, he knew he would keep it for a while. After a week here, he went back to the States. Hugh laughed.

—He came back at least three times a year, but when he and my mom started having kids, he sort of treated the place like an escape from family again, but in a different way. He took us out here during the summers and holiday vacations, but he’d leave us here with the LeFavres. That’s why we call them Uncle and Aunt.

—I think I’ve spent 6 whole summers here. That, and countless breaks during the middle of the school year. In retrospect, I’m not exactly sure how that whole thing worked out. I don’t know, I guess I passed classes somehow; I was pretty young, so I don’t remember that much about school. And since I was 19 I haven’t been back until this year. Now.

He was stared absently through his wine. Dennon and Alice sat with their empty glasses, quietly watching him. Hugh flicked his eyes away from his glass and smiled. He tipped his glass to them in a toast and finished its lacy pink alcohol a swallow.

—Anyway. He said. Anyway.

Odette and Paul-Henri moved from behind the island, each carrying two plates of food. They placed them first before the brother and sister (thank you, they said), then before Hugh (merci, he said), and finally Paul-Henri laid a dish for his wife. Odette went back to retrieve food for Paul-Henri, while he removed the cork from a bottle of Pinot Noir. Five glasses were at once full and shining pale red with aged depth. The fireplace crackles mingled with the creaking and scuffling of wooden chairs as the couple sat down. Paul-Henri cleared his throat.

—Dine to civility. He said raising his glass and drawing with it four more as if on threads. And tonight we drink to living well. Bon appétit.

Five pairs of eyes met and five rims of glass tinged gently. They ate and drank   slowly    spending time liberally. The evening moved easily forward like a current, slipping peacefully beneath the bridges of conversation. The firelight dimmed and left in its retreat a plague of shadows.

The meal was over and Hugh was cleaning the dishes because he had insisted. The French couple exchanged glances and put their hands on their uncrossed knees and said that it was time for them to go, but that the pleasure had been all theirs. Truly, they repeated, all theirs. Goodbye, bonne nuit, they said, goodnight. They kissed on the cheeks and were kissed. They opened the door, ducked into the cold and were shut out with the rotary snap of the door handle.

—Ok, I think I’m going to head off to bed, too. Alice said. Dennon yawned and said, uh-huh, good idea, but I think I’ll read a while. Hugh clinked and clattered cutlery in the sink.

Dennon drew a book from the nearby shelf, using his pointer finger on the top of the binding to edge it out of the collection.

—Ah, the man of great detail. Hugh said, walking up and drying his hands on a towel.

Dennon looked up and cocked head.

—Who, me or Nabokov?

—Could be both, Hugh offered. He gave the towel an underhand toss to the sink, freezing his movement finally in a bowler’s pose.

—Strike! Strike? No, it fell on the floor. Hmm. He said, relieving himself of the pose and taking a seat in front of Dennon.

—What were you telling me this morning about the generals in Uganda? Dennon asked. You never finished that thought. We were talking about the Book of Joshua.

—The generals told everyone that God was a physical man fighting on their side of the war. But they also said that he was thirsty for blood and that they had better fight well, or he would turn against them. He had to get his blood somewhere, so if not from the enemy, he would take if from the cowardly fighters. Like Joshua did for the Jews and Christians, it really made people obsess about the idea of God fighting wars. God becomes someone that chooses sides like a person would, when really, if there is a God–he’d just run from both sides.

—Actually, wait, hold that thought, we need more wine. Hugh said, giving his chair two hops backwards, and stepping quickly behind the bar.

Dennon turned around, amusement and confusion controlling his features. Ok, he thought. Wine-not?

—Ok, wine-not? He said.

A liar’s laugh echoed from under the sink.

—And don’t ever do that again. Hugh said, standing.

—I won’t. Dennon said. I probably won’t.

—That’s good. Hugh said, setting down on the table two bottles and two fresh glasses.

—And that is a big bottle. Dennon said, pointing to the green-glass bottle.

—That’s a Jeroboam. It’s got the same wine as the other two, but just four times as much. Actually, they are all different; same grape, same vineyard, but different years. He held one bottle by the neck. This is the basic. The good, the bad, and the Merlot. I don’t actually know where this stuff came from, but it’s supposed to be quite good.

He handed the smaller bottle to Dennon, who held it up to the light overhanging the table. Hugh picked up a long, narrow wooden box from the top of the bookshelf.

—Now this is cool, he said, taking from the box a giant syringe. Have you seen one of these before? Dennon nodded no, his eyes moving from Hugh’s face to the needle and back to his face.

—Ok, great. Hold the bottle, Hugh ordered softly. Dennon obeyed.

—Move it a little lower, Hugh said, placing his hand on top of Dennon’s, pushing it downward.

—Good. Like that. He winked.

Slowly the needle pushed deeply down and through the flesh of the cork until the entire stem was hidden. With one hand wrapped around the cylinder, Hugh used his free hand to grasp the plunger, driving it slowly up and down and up and down. 4 cycles until a hissing and a pop.

—The key, Hugh said pulling the cork from the needle, is to not pump too fast. If you do, you’ll blow the thing out too quickly and you have to fight with it.

—Very cool, Dennon said, focusing on the light grey tail of aerosol unraveling itself from the bottle.

—Ok, now to pour and sit on it for a while. Hugh said, holding the bottle and pouring two glasses. He returned to his seat opposite Dennon.

—Thanks. So I’ve wanted to ask how you do all this? I mean, how do you spend so much time here? This place is so great.

—Well, I don’t work, first of all. And before you ask, it’s not necessarily because my family has money; they do, but I don’t really use it. I paint for communities and hope that they take care of me. It’s close to work because sometimes it makes me suffer, but that’s about where it ends. I enjoy it most of the time. Hugh paused, swirled the wine in the glass before continuing.

—We have this idea that you have to work. That you have to be engaged somehow in a capitalist infrastructure in order to provide for your family. I think that’s just bullshit most of the time. Maybe, I don’t know. But, I don’t have a family. The communities provide for me, and I provide for them something beautiful. So I can move from place to place without being weighed down.

—And family-to-family, Dennon added.

—In a way, yeah.

—Well, yes. And I’m not trying to argue, but along with hopping from family-to-family, you’re hopping from weight-to-weight. Everyone weighs something; you can’t just do this without feeling responsible for someone all the time, right? Dennon flicked the stem of the wine glass with his little finger.

—I think the wine is good now. Hugh said raising his glass. To doing the right thing and finding other people who like doing it too.

—Salud. Dennon said, meeting eyes and glasses with Hugh. They drank first and then set the glasses on the tabletop.

—Really good. Dennon said as he squinted at the glass held in front of his eyes.

—Yeah, Hugh said, tasting nice.

The two men sat there for a moment, the saffron hue from the overhead light pressed through the wineglasses below it, blossoming rusty shadows.

—I ask because I’m trying to figure it out. Dennon said, taking a large drink. Your individual pieces of art are for people, but they are separated by time spent traveling and staying here, and whatever else you do. That, maybe, is what I can’t seem to get. My whole life has always been a leash of people and responsibilities that I can’t disconnect myself from.

They drank and Hugh watched Dennon as he continued.

—It’s like…ok: not often, but bears in Alaska kill people. It is almost always because people encroach on their territory and leave their trash out. But it happens, regardless of why. The conservation people and police departments across the state tried catching the bears and transporting them long distances across the state to release them. But they’d come back. Then the cops started euthanizing some of them, which got animal rights all over them. So someone came up with the idea of putting these killer bears on a small island off the coast. And for a while it worked. So people stopped worrying about killer bears, right? They were on the island, out of sight and out of mind.

—But after a while, some of the bears started trying to swim back. These aren’t Polar bears, though. They just don’t swim currents and distances very well. So most of them drowned—they still drown. Every now and then I’ll read about another bear that drowned trying to swim back to the mainland. That’s where we are today. And that’s where I am and I feel most people are.

Hugh quietly emptied the last few drops of the first bottle into each glass, glancing up at Dennon while he poured. He exchanged the empty bottle for the Jeroboam. He winced as the bottle relinquished its cork with a gentle pop.

—What do you mean? Hugh asked softly. I’m not following.

—Most people are able to put the things that worry and preoccupy them on that island. They can put them in a “somewhere else” type of place. So that the only time they really worry about them or even think about them is when one of the problems breaks free from that island and tries to come back into everyday life, you know? I mean, I can’t do that. Unlike most people—like, everyone—that island moves with me. Everyday I look off the coast and see it, even when I’m not in Alaska. I know where I got all of these things, and I know why I should be able to let them be apart from me, but it doesn’t work.  I know that my responsibilities and preoccupations are out there. My ghosts.

—Your demons, Hugh whispered, following Dennon to empty his glass. Dennon’s eyes were unsteady but not yet unclear from the wine. He smiled thinly.

—Demons? No, not really. Ghosts. Good and bad. I know it’s at a distance, but I can always see that island floating out there in the haze. So it just weighs me down when I see them trying to follow me to shore, because it seems like I’ve already been carrying them with me. And it’s like they get a rest and I never do, and they just keep pushing in despite that.

—They come over sometimes in swarms. I wish I could be like the animal rights groups and just welcome them with open arms, but when I do that, there’s no escape and I get devoured.

—Otherwise, most people only notice them when they come over, and usually they poke them away, or paddle out and drown them. Sometimes I wish I could do that. I can’t do that. I don’t know how to do that.

Dennon sniffed a string of smoke from the dying fire, took two drinks of wine and placed his chin in his palms, cantilevering his arms on his knees.

—Like what kind of things? Hugh said, ducking his head to catch Dennon’s eyes.

Dennon’s thoughts moved to the way things were turning out with Lis. Being here reminded him so much of her. And everything with his sister. Her fucking husband that destroyed her life even before he cheated on her, rendering her so vulnerable and broken. But like everyone else, she was strong.  His nose flared slightly as he smiled. Even her problems became his problems. Like when she had been sick, she wouldn’t let him go. Not one minute. He’d wanted to be there always, but not every second. She call and talk him into coming to the hospital even when he had important things to do and he’d already visited that day. She just kept coming back. She’d always been a good swimmer.

—Like my friend Cole. Dennon said after a while. He went into the attic when he was 14, took out his dad’s revolver and shot a bullet through the roof of his mouth. My friend Alan found him. And it was a big gun so there was blood and hair. It was a goddamn mess.

They both drank. Dennon shifted his weight and continued.

—And it ruined him. He just became different. Darker. He dropped out of school and seemed to think that there was nothing else. I mean, I get it, but I wish I could snap him out of it. So, I can’t get away from worrying about Alan and thinking about Cole. That’s just one thing. It’s not even my life, you know? I just can’t stop thinking about what I could have done. What I can do.

—You just need to let it go; it was his choice. Hugh said steadily, slowly reaching forward his hand, touching two of Dennon’s fingers.

His body tensed. Dennon looked up at his hands. The room was lighted now only by the overhead fixture, and there were shadows from Hugh’s hand drifting over Dennon’s fingers. Dennon breathed deeply and felt the blood pumping quickly and through his body and the sensations from his hand swarming to clear his head. He felt Hugh watching him, but he couldn’t see him.

He stayed still and then sniffed and exhaled again the smoke. Taking Hugh’s hand in his, he sat up smoothly, the kitchen chair creaking with his movement. Without meeting eyes, he placed Hugh’s hand down on the table. He took his glass of wine, drank, and leaned back in his chair, out of the direct light cast by the bulb.

—I’m sorry, Hugh said almost inaudibly.

—No; it’s fine. Dennon said quickly, facing Hugh. Don’t worry about it.

Hugh emptied his glass.

—Here, here, I got it. Dennon said, leaning forward to take the big bottle. He poured both glasses and filled the silence with the gulping sound of air trying to fill the container.

—But, it’s like, this place. Dennon said, setting the bottle on the table. This place is different. This place. This house. This little town. The mountains. The fortresses. Everything. Life is simple. People wake up, drink their espresso with their croissants and go to work. They have fresh bread and cheese and wine for lunch. Everyone is so old and calm. The mountains guard the olive groves and vineyards. It’s special, you know? This house, too. Nobody is worried about anything.

—When everything is going wrong everywhere else, people here just live without answering to it. Nobody weighs anything, and neither do other people’s problems. This is the only place on earth to run to. When everyone in the world is fighting and running from their ghosts, this place is peaceful; this is where God goes to hide during the wars.

Hugh still sat unmoving, his hand where Dennon left it.

—We have a long way to go on this bottle, Hugh said with a soft laugh.

Dennon looked with older eyes over at the green glass bottle.

—No, I don’t think I can help with that. I should really go to sleep. We have to get up early tomorrow to plan our time in Paris.

Rosario had married young, raised four children, passed through her 50th wedding anniversary, and watched her husband die—she wanted her spouse to die first, because to burden someone else with the pain of such a loss approached sinfulness. She died in her home surrounded by her surviving loved ones. It was a Sunday and the breeze carried in it a light fragrence of wildflowers.

Mary had never been married, had slept with many men and women and things in many countries and provinces, and at times had sinned beyond the measure of meaningful words. She died in a Great White Shark feeding frenzy off of the coast of South Africa. In following with the “Shark Attack” clause of her last will and testament, what was found of her body was stitched together with jute twine from Persia and donated to the Institute for Higher Discovery—to be used as bait in their neverending hunt for the Plesiosaur.

It can be said that both women died happily.

Rosario gathered her children and grand children and great grandchildren and nephews and nieces together one week before she died and told to each of them one way in which he or she had enriched Rosario’s life. Finally, she said, I would just like to tell you that I am very happy and I will die happy knowing that I have your love.

Before departing from her small apartment in the West Village on her way to Johannasburg, Mary called her favourite male escort service and left a message. We’ve been together for many years, she said, and I just wanted to thank you for sticking with me in my old age. There is no such thing as mercy for the body of a woman, and I am no exception; because of this, I have had to become very creative and get really weird with it. I’m happy knowing that you are always there for me when wheels touch back down in JFK. Sorry about the ginger’s ear—I didn’t know my body could do that, and I definitely wasn’t expecting that to happen to his ear. Of all things.

Both of these women lived their lives in completely different manners of conduct. What they had in common was their shared belief in believing. Rosario believed in God and her family and love and committment. Mary believed there was no God and that family was the biggest curse he gave to mankind. She also believed in experiencing a life without contentment, without boundaries, and without regrets.

Both lives were rich. Both lives contributed. One life may yet capture a Plesiosaur.