Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Glowing ❯ A Portion, Forever, in Anything that is Done Under the Sun ( Chapter 16 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

York is gray. Even with the sun shining, it has the air of perpetual fog, as if the light filters itself down through dust, and worse, that the light stirs up more dust as it dares to touch the murky sidewalks of this unnatural bloom of buildings. Every moment you are undeniably aware of the city that surrounds you, that breathes itself into you with each glittering window picking up your reflection, with each tense shoulder knocking into you, with each blaring horn or rattling subway grate making you aware not only of what is all around you, but that it is around you. That you are what you are-- in this setting to be stripped down and shown in totality and then, thankfully, ignored by the buildings and hordes of people alike, each one of them equally indifferent to you as you are to the burning air.
My suitcase is an unwelcome weight in my hand, smacking into my thigh with every step. Neither I nor it bother to avoid people, knocking into them and earning shouts and sullen glares as I walk aimlessly, ignoring them.
A few hours ago I was certain that life would end as soon as I stepped off the plane. Had counted on it. That, and this was the most certain, the most important assurance of that trip: I would never have to begin again.
But regardless, my veins pulse with blood, my stomach aches with its own emptiness, and my hand stiffens around the hard handle of my bag.
Carefully steeling my mind against thought, I keep walking and do not stop until I have reached a hotel. Do not stop until I am inside the unassuming brick building, beneath its wide sign with carved blue letters and through the lobby with its faded gilt chairs and bleached wallpaper. Do not stop until I’ve been handed a key by an inattentive clerk with cysts on his cheek and his eyes glued to a t.v. set half-visible behind the counter. Do not stop until I have opened the door to a small room with a low rickety table and a bed made up with a garish blanket, orange with yellow age-stains at the bottom edge.
Do not stop until I have put everything I brought with me into the small dresser and shove the drawers shut, hard enough that the furniture rears back and strikes the wall with a loud echoing bang and the person in the room next door raps on the wall in disapproval. Do not stop until the bag is hidden away under the bed, carefully positioned so it covers a brownish splotch on the carpet that was probably once blood.
And then, with nothing else to do, I sit on the bed, wincing as it creaks under my weight, and settle my hands on my lap. They stare up at me, limp and colorless in the stark fluorescent light streaming from the lamp on the table.
Sitting there, my coat still buttoned around me, I stare blankly across the room, as if it holds some answer to this new emptiness. With no preparations to make, no revenge to seek, no passions to hold on to, all I have left is time.
I turn my hands over in my lap, glancing over the rough calloused skin of my palm, of scars worn into the backs and knuckles, red shiny lines that run down my fingers in irregular bumps.
Looking at them, in the flickering light of the dismal room, in the echoing isolation of a crowded metropolis on the edge of a strange country and a strange ocean, it feels as though I am waiting for something.
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Nothing comes, and I don’t expect anything. I am waiting for nothing at all, simply on edge before a great change I do not desire.
It is that sense of waiting, however, that forces me to eat, driving me down to the lobby for dry toast and weak coffee among the other ‘guests’ at this hotel. The people at those breakfasts are silent, shoveling food into their mouths with an untouchable desperation that belongs only to those that have starved. The creases of their body, and their clothes, are filled with dirt, and their eyes flit around the room, careful not to settle too long on any single surface.
At night I venture out, rounding the corner to a hole-in-the-wall Chinese place with flickering red lights and a neon sign that gives off a reek of ozone. The food is greasy, thick noodles drowned in sticky sauces and pale, wrinkled shapes that could be either meat or vegetables-- one can’t tell from the bland, rubbery taste. It leaves a residue down your throat as you swallow, a slimy coating that prevents speech and shortens the breath.
The place is cheap though, and so far is enough to survive on.
Between meals I sit in my room and stare out the window, doing my best to avoid sleep. Sometimes, when I can drum up the urge, I do exercises on the floor, or practice half-balanced katas with the bar that holds up the shower curtain. Anyhow, I can feel my body weakening in my lethargy, the once honed muscles becoming stringy and thin, cleaving close to the bone. My cheekbones are sharp when I run my hands over my face, and my ribs too prominent under my clothes. The other guests assume I’m some sort of addict and shy away from me. It’s a welcome label, and one that is easily understood. One that easily explains everything without me saying a single word.
After two weeks, the accusation is no longer unfamiliar.
“There goes the junky.”
A plump, aging woman in bright clothes mutters to the night clerk as I go out for my evening meal to the restaurant where I am, by now, a welcome and recognized regular. I don’t hear any of the assumptions there, an addict of the sort I am presumed to be does not eat the way I force myself to.
The clerk, different from the one that was here the first day, an obese middle-aged man with lank, greasy hair plastered to his forehead and a nose that seems to be composed entirely of burst blood vessels, shrugs back at her.
“Eh. Probably just running out to pick up his fix. Don’t bother about Red there. He‘s fine”
By the time I’m at the Chinese place, with the chalky tea steaming in front of me, I’ve already forgotten that I heard them say anything and let myself settle back into the careful numbness of my newfound apathy.
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After the first cup, the tea becomes unbearable. It’s a sickening mess of brownish water and dust that clings to my tongue as I swallow. Gagging, I glance over at the thin menu and pick it up, scanning for something more tolerable.
The food is negligible: half-hearted offerings of greasy noodles in indiscriminate sauces. As far as I can tell, all the dishes are the same.
Reluctantly, I glance over at the list of alcohol. Unsurprisingly, it’s longer than the list of meals and consists mostly of American beer. Near the bottom are a few varieties of wine and some selections of hard liquor.
No sake. Since it’s a Chinese place I suppose I shouldn’t have expected it.
Tensely I wave the waiter over, suddenly impatient to order and leave.
“Yes? What can I get for you?”
It’s the same man that’s been working every night since I arrived. He greets everyone with a smile, serving them with a courtesy better suited to an upscale café than this hole-in-the-wall. The cook has a tendency to glare at him as he passes the food out from the kitchen. He’s the only waiter that wears a name tag, the other two being skinny Asian women that speak stilted English and giggle to the male customers. The first night I came here I spent fending off the both of them as they spouted half-coherent Mandarin at me. Since, they’ve pointedly avoided me. The waiter himself is almost insinuatingly friendly and polite to the point of obnoxiousness.
When I don’t answer he prods at my shoulder, shrugging off the reactive glare.
“You’re ready to order right?”
Shrugging I point at a random dish, watching listlessly as he jots it down. He pauses after he’s written it, waiting for something else. He doesn’t bother to ask.
I shove the teapot at him.
“Do you need some more?”
His voice is inscrutably curious. His nametag screams at me over the dome of the cheap metal pot.
“No.”
“Anything?”
Hunching my shoulders, I drive my gaze down into the dirty tablecloth. My head reels with a sort of lethargy that somehow mirrors itself in the smears and patterns of the stains.
The waiter turning away is very nearly an audible sensation.
“Jack Daniels.”
The words sound strange, blocky, as if I can’t fit them through my lips. They’re words that don’t belong to me, words that I’m only meant to be hearing.
There is no point to preoccupation. I break apart my chopsticks, grimacing at the feel of the splintering wood in my hands.
The drink is brought quickly and the waiter shoots me a worried look as he sets the glass down on the table. He lingers at the side of the table, apparently unsure of whether he should say anything. The sight of the drink is strangely repulsive, and compulsively I look away, settling instead for narrowing my eyes at the waiter.
“Sir- are you alright?”
His voice is childish and for a moment my throat constricts, letting his shaggy blond hair distort into something else and his face round about suddenly enormous eyes.
“Just-- be careful.”
Hair darkened and thinned back with gel hovering over a tense face narrowed by a forced stoicism. My mouth tightens, tight with the effort to ignore the faint buzz of the phone in my ear and its phantom pressure.
Spitefully, the phone at the bar rings, driving the memory back into my senses. As my hand pushes out towards the phone next to the bed the waiter rushes off.
“Hello, Dragon Palace.”
“Hello? Aya?”
The voice is thin, wavering over the words.
He doesn’t bother to wait for silence, instead speaking rapidly, as if he’d thought I’d hang up if he took a moment to breathe.
“Are you alright? Do you realize it took me over a month to find you? What are you doing in New York? “
His voice shifts erratically between the smoothly cold voice of Persia and the needy whine of a child.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing! But you’re nearly out of money.”
I don’t question it. Trust Omi to keep track.
“Come home. It’ll be better. Maybe you could convince Ken to leave--”
“No.”
I close my eyes with the word.
He sighs loudly, a gush of air in my ear that’s almost hot.
“Then, how would you feel about a job there?”
The idea repulses me- my fingers clench around the phone as I go to hang up.
“I know it’s got to be har-”
The last word is cut off by the plastic slam of the phone into the receiver.
Jerking my head back towards the table, my eyes is caught by a metallic glint of something.
“I’m fine.”
I mutter it, half answering the waiter as he chatters loudly at the bar, and force my eyes on the glass of whiskey. It’s cheap shit, greasy liquid that slimes its way around the sides of the mug and sticks to the table. The thin brown color catches the light in mottles of yellow, and silver against the clear glass.
A prone body, a face stripped in fluorescent light and thinly lined with the harsh, faded remnants of brittle laughter. I grasp the glass, it feels clammy, like the skin of someone sick or terrified. Refusing the image, I lift the glass and pour as much of its contents as I can down my throat.
It burns, sending me into sputtering convulsions. My eyes slam shut of their own accord as my ribcage threatens to rip out of my chest and land on the table. Water trickles down my cheek, smarting and salty and irrevocably caught up in a wide Cheshire-like smirk that unfolds on the back of my eyelids, and green eyes that unfold from the air; descending wit two abrupt smacks on the center of my back.
“Shit! Are you gonna be okay? Don’t choke don’t choke don’t choke.”
My throat aches as I settle back into the chair, grimacing slightly as my spine hits the unforgiving wood. Panting I glance up at the panicked waiter as he hurriedly removes the glass of whiskey.
Seeing me open my eyes, he smiles faintly, green eyes sparkling under the dim, flickering light of the place.
“No wonder you usually order the tea.”
Digging in my pocket, I fish out a few crumpled bills and drop them on the table.
“Is that enough?”
He counts quickly, nodding confusedly.
“That’s enough for the whiskey but your food’s nearly read-”
He continues speaking as I rise and stumble towards the entrance with a pseudo-intoxication. As soon as I step out onto the sidewalk and the full reek of the exhaust fumes assault me I begin to cough again, wrapping my arms around my stomach. A cab pauses at the edge of the sidewalk in front of me.
“Where d’you want to go?”Shaking my head, I turn and bolt; becoming a ridiculous picture of flailing arms and skinny legs blurred by speed. My face burns with the polluted air and lungs heave with a taste of bile. My features tighten. The only sound is the dense pounding of my feet into the sidewalk, and each step throws me back, so that I have to hurl myself forward all the harder with the next one.
My legs throb with concrete, shaking together and making me clumsy. My foot catches itself on the edge of a mailbox and I collapse on the ground to stare vacantly at my aching foot. There’s no blood, so I shift myself back against the cold metal of the postbox.
There is a certain pleasure in the way the metallic shill seeps into my skin, in the pathetic protection my thin shirt provides against the mild wind, in the ragged panting that rushes up through my throat and out my mouth in loud viscera shaking gasps. I hug my knees to my chest, marveling at their sudden and unfamiliar thinness.
It is a long while I could wait thoughtlessly here. To wait here is free.
A set of neon signs buzz over my head, catching my limbs in a garish light that seems to chip away at the skin.
It draws me away from my nausea, lulling me into a heady sort of calm that has me resting my head on my arms and nearly drifting off into nothing.
“Tell me, why do we have to suffer so much?”
The words, even in this state, even remembered, are repugnant: loud harsh entities that settle into my skin like an opiate.
This isn’t even suffering. My mind gropes for the face that said it, the exact shape of his mouth, the anger in his eyes, as it spewed out. It’s somehow inaccessible, replaced by the incongruous image of long hair glittering in the sun, a long lean sleeping body calm in its nudity and a tiny grin.
If you look closely, there’s a fading bruise under his ribcage and a thin scratch on the glowing cheek. A perfect picture of morning repose.
It is strangely unjarring when it is interrupted, almost expected.
You are at rest, you are forced awake.
‘Excuse me, are you alright? You’re shivering.”
A hand taps at my shoulder hesitantly, with light nervous touches.
The image burns away with his voice and I open my eyes.
The face is lean, angular, and just beginning to show traces of crow’s feet in the corners of the eyes. The edges of the mouth are similarly creased around a cautious smile. The man’s suit is immaculate, gray with light pinstripes and a white tie. It’s classy without being elegant. Oddly, it reminds me of something Schwarz’s Oracle would have worn and I suppress an offhand laugh. Interpreting the resultant smile as meant for him, the man allows his own grin to widen. It’s a nice smile, making him suddenly younger-- an obvious contrast to the edges of gray at his temples that dye has not yet hidden. You can tell by the slight sheen of the hairs. The rest of it is a ruddy brown that brushes the nape of his neck. The style seems almost too young for him.
“It’s cold. You want my jacket?”He points to a black coat folded over his arm, I shrug and he drops it onto my lap, watching with an odd sort of anticipation as I drag it over my arms. It fits loosely, bunching beneath me on the sidewalk.
As I continue to stare up at him, confused by his continued presence, the grin begins to drop, replaced with a nervous smile.
“I’m Tim.”
I pause, unsure of how to introduce myself.
“I’m……I’m”
Incredulous. Of all things, I can’t believe he expects me to give him a name. There’s none for me to give here.
Idly, I remember what I overheard the clerk say on my way out.
“Red”
He grins.
“I can see why.”
Glancing around himself, he begins to stutter again.
“So, um, I’ve got a place up in Soho…I mean, if you’re cold. We could go and-”
Nodding abruptly, I stand. He’s at least four or five inches shorter than me.
He smiles and begins to walk quickly towards a black sedan parked by the sidewalk.
I follow silently, cold inside his coat.
From white to Red, how many colors can be smeared over my skin?
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The ride to his apartment is silent. He lives in a narrow brownstone, dappled with lighted windows. I stare at the carpet as we enter the empty lobby and cross over to the elevator.
The apartment is wide, airy and decorated with super modern furniture, most of which looks like a distorted block of metal. I take the coat off and hand it to him, going to sit on what proves to be a painfully hard couch.
Hurriedly, Tim throws it into a closet and joins me, his breath becoming oppressively audible.
“So, are you from New York?”
His face begins to flush as he speaks.
“No. Tokyo.”
He shrugs.
“You don’t look Japanese…..”
His voice trails off. When I don’t respond he jerks his head back towards me.
“How much?”
I tense involuntarily. I’d expected it, it’s why I got in the car.
If I don’t kill, something feels intact within me, some abandoned promise that hardens my resolve.
Even so, I stare at my hands as I mumble.
“A hundred. And I want it upfront.”
Nodding, he pulls a wallet from his pocket and crumples several bills into my hand. I stuff them into my pants without counting.
Mechanically, I stretch my hand out and trace it over his shoulders, up his neck and cheekbones. He flushes dark as I lean in, pressing my lips against his in an efficient brush of flesh, dipping my tongue into his mouth with a force that surprises me and causes him to clamp his arms around my waist.
There’s a sudden rush of cool air as he yanks my shirt off, managing to tear the collar as he does. I shift just enough that I can unbutton his shirt and yank his tie off.
His hands prod at my sides, a groping desperate brush of clammy skin. I can smell the sweat on him.
His grip steadily tightens until I’m pulled into his lap, trying to avoid settling on the growing prick under me. His tongue is thick and clumsy in my mouth, he tastes of beer and tobacco.
The taste is enough for me to not stiffen immediately as he grabs my hips and begins to rub against me. Hearing his breath begin to hitch, I pull off of him and settle between his legs on the floor. As I unzip him, I glance up at his red face, his slack panting mouth and the eyes rolled back into his skull. His cock bobs out, covered in white cotton. I jerk the briefs down, ignoring his sharp intake of breath and lower my mouth over him without looking.
He’s wide, but small. Even so, the sudden pressure causes him to jerk his hips up, hitting me in the chin with his pelvis.
I cough, my jaw knocking against his dick, teeth scraping over skin as the tip suddenly presses unwelcome down my throat. I gag, feeling my stomach begin to twist and burn.
His fingers coil into my hair to hold me still as he starts thrusting. He tastes sweaty, and his pubic hair is itchy against my nose.
When he finally comes, it is with a loud heaving groan that presses my forehead to his stomach. His semen is sourly sticky and leaves a quickly drying crust on my chin.
He lets me rest in his lap as he recovers, smiling curiously down at me as his breath evens out.
“So……shall we?”
Silently, I let him drag me up and guide me down a short hallway into a dark bedroom. The bed proves to be soft enough, and as he cautiously spreads my thighs, I lean back and count the tiles on the ceiling, careful enough to avoid any sense of memory.
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The sky is a bitter orange when I wake up, gleaming through the dripping lines of rain on the window. Tim is pressed to my back, one arm slung over my waist. Asleep his face is utterly blank.
Carefully, I try to slide from beneath his arm. He jerks at the movement, shifting until I’m held more firmly against him. A glance at the clock proves with some relief that its only five a.m. Checking first if the limb is free, I drop my right leg to the floor, feeling around with a bare foot until I find my jeans from the night before. Oddly reassured, I lean as far away from the other man as I can and try to settle back into a few hours of sleep.
I’ve come to value sleep, even as I despise myself for wanting a reprieve from the dragging on of my days as they fade into each other. No new thoughts rise, no new emotions are felt or drawn out. Nothing but the dull tirade of impossible images trickling through my skull, all the more terrible because I can neither act on nor for them.
“Come home. It’ll be better.”
It’s a stupid thought, a presumption. Home. What home I had was broken and avenged and close to forgotten, emotions being more easily remembered their summons.
Purposefully facetious, I wonder if Mamoru understood some of it, or if he’s finally had a taste of guilt himself.
I ball my hands in the blankets. If I take that work up again, what good was leaving? What purpose did leaving have if not to leave everything?
To accept something like that….it would be unforgivable. A mockery of what I gave to him, of what I could give with no promises left between us.
The words pulse back at me in the beating of the rain, in the snoring of the man next to me, the creaking of the mattress under my restless shifting.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
It is as if the ceiling has opened in a wide gaping maw, throwing back at me these same sickening words, this terrible repetition of a sentence I’ve nothing left but to follow.
If one leaves, than both must. It’s an absurd conclusion.
I refuse, as I lay there, to let his name rise up in my mind. It’s a pointless aversion, or perhaps homage, that I’ve not broken in the month I’ve been here. His name holds no place in this city of tombstones, a vast cemetery grotesque with the life that manages to survive in it. Only parasites can live off of tombs, and desecrators of the dead.
And if I must be a parasite on a past I am too weak to relinquish, at least I have not yet profaned its principles by trying to recapture it.
Lying here, warmed by the body heat of a stranger, knotted in thick sweaty sheets, in an apartment an entire ocean away from everything I understood; I wonder faintly why I do not take that last motion away, and rip up the solemnity of my reverence for such dead and ruined things.
Will I fall completely without such a crutch? Go blind without it to look back on?
No. I won’t. I’ll move on in the restless haze that comes of having neither purpose nor desires. My eyes will wander, having nothing precious to rest on, to seek out or avoid, in order not to waste its beauty in one glance and determine the path of my vision that way.
Would I then cease to be as I am, or as I was and despise myself for what I gave up willingly?
That would be ridiculous. For grief and guilt have rendered me increasingly unrecognizable as that which I once wanted to be, affirmed to be over a continual uncertainty. Now, if I’m left alone to the uncertainty, perhaps I’m finally honest, no matter that I’ve never felt to be a liar.
If I will not fall apart and will not fade away, why not say the name? Why not hold on to one tangible reminder, one resistance against an inevitable change of being? The change is only noticeable if it is unwanted.
I will notice it and I will not apologize for what I tear down while groping in a unfamiliar blindness.
Resolving this, a thick weight settles across my chest, as if someone was laying on top of me. Tim shifts over, his arm loosening and falling til it rests on my hip.
In the pale wet light that breaks from the window, in the blur of the dawn, I let my eyes unfocus and in the resulting fog imagined a fall of gold spread across my chin. I lifted my hands to touch it hesitantly, fully aware of the pointlessness of such an indulgence in hope.
The skin of my chest is cold with last night’s sweat.
Biting my lip, I push myself against the slightly hairy chest of the other man, and without reason or desire, drift back into a thankfully numb sleep with unadmitted tears stinging my eyes.
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I am woken again by the sound of the shower. Screwing my eyes shut, I try to hold on to sleep, try to sink back into the forgiving darkness.
The beating water continues and I’m forced back into an awareness of sheets damp with sweat and clinging to my thighs and an itch along my skin. It’s a sensation of a continual spasm that cannot be located, of adrenaline and exhaustion all at once. I want to sleep, and cannot and cannot want to.
It feels as if while I slept, something settled over my skin, a film that cannot be broken or fully estimated yet. Compulsively, I glance at my hands, searching them for evidence of some change. Blank skin answers me, responding only with a set of scars that I’m already familiar with.
I don’t bother to glance at the clock, time now is not important, and crawl carefully out of the bed. I pull my clothes on with a frenzy that manages to tear a hole in a sleeve and leave me with the same twitchy feeling I’d hoped to cover with my urgency. Feeling in my pocket I pull out the fold of money. Five twenty dollar bills stare at me blankly. There is nothing relieving about holding the green paper.
Shoving the wad back into the pocket I turn to leave, walking as swiftly and as quietly as I can.
“Everything alright, Red?”
I’m not sure when the shower turned off. I glance over my shoulder to see Tim sitting on the bed with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“You slept pretty restlessly last night, you know.”
I shrug, confused at the sudden concern in his voice.
“I’m fine.”
“Well, why don’t you hang around for a bit then? I’ll get you a cab before I go to work.”
He smiles as he puts up the offer, a wide easy grin that makes me resent such kindness. What right does he have to offer me anything? I’ve given him what he paid me for.
“Unless of course, you’ve got someplace else to be?”
Silently I turn around and walk back into the bedroom. I don’t have anywhere else I have to be. That’s somewhat unsettling.
While he dresses, the man tries continuously to draw me into conversation. I’m not sure why. Our arrangement ended when we both woke up, the way I interpret it; him not having made me leave last night.
“So Red, what do you think of kids? I’ve always wondered why I never got around-”
There’s a naïve sort of foolishness in the open manner with which he speaks, dropping small facts of family and business.
“And sure, maybe criminal law isn’t the easiest of professions, but at least I can say I’m doing something, that I’m not just whiling time away while I do nothing, or wait for something to come along for me.”
I tense with the words, repressing any verbal or emotional response to the statement.
When he’s finally dressed he turns around with a grin.
“Ready to go?”He checks the mirror one more time as we leave and I notice there’s something vain in the conscious grace of his movements. I drop my eyes to the ground ahead of me, letting his shoes guide me into the elevator and outside. His arm lifts to hail me a cab. It is early enough still that one comes quickly enough and there are no other potential passengers to fight for it.
As he grins, innocuously holding the door open for me to get in, I am gripped by a sudden and wordless terror, a sick convulsion that rips through my skin. I turn and run down the sidewalk, shoving my way past people as they streak past me in lengths of color. The buildings bear down overhead, cutting off air with the sky and I breath heavily, aware not of breath, but only of the sharp pounding of my feet against the sidewalk as I run without aim through the awakening city.
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When I finally stop, I do not allow myself to question why I ran. Even so, even without wondering, his grin haunts my steps, shifting and reforming in a series of unwelcome smiles in the expressions of those around me.
I keep my eyes wide open, focusing on everything in my surroundings and nothing at all.
A sales window declares in bright red letters a fifteen percent discount on all c.d.s. The awning of a hotel is taken down and cleaned by two men in green uniforms, leaving only a wiry skeleton. The clouds merge overhead, a sold gray mass that somehow still manages to be blinding. It is somehow too bright, even as it begins to rain.
The sidewalks after a while thin out. The noises of traffic do not seem to.
By the time I am standing again in front of the bland bricks and blue lettered sign of my hotel the rain has stopped and started again twice, and the crowd of the sidewalks has thickened out. The daily breakfast is over. It must be noon as I stumble into my room and collapse on the bed, shuddering with something not quite cold and not quite exhaustion.
Even so, I sleep.
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I run, feet pounding inexorably against the ground with a crisp hard sound, a jagged pain making its way up each leg as I propel myself forward through the complex, taking in the distant sounds of yelling and bodies slapping to the ground, the reek of smoke as I make my way deeper through the halls, towards the center of the building. My mind is gripped with anticipation, a wild adrenaline pushing its way through me with a feeling of almost eagerness, of excitement.“I’m going to live.”The words scorch through me, lifting my foot up again, tightening my grip on the hilt of my sword. My skin sings, tingling with a strange relentless hope as I run. Hope, of all things. It feels ridiculous, warping its way through me in a smile, an unfamiliar feeling of levity, of ease in movement that is not mechanical. As if the air opened itself up before me. I try and shake the feeling off, running faster, as if I could drop it from me, brush it away like dust on my coat. I don’t dare to question it now, heavily in its throes- a thrill of anxious joy spreading over me, quickening every step, every intake of breath with its foreign weight. I rush even more on account of it, itching to reach the principal’s office, throwing my entire body forward with unanticipated impatience. To kill. I am suddenly eager to dig my blade through her, force her corpse to the ground- end all of this.
My breath quickens as I turn down the right hallway, inching cautiously towards the open door. My hands twitch around the hilt of my sword, shaking in an inexplicable excitement. The light coming from the room is glaring, I pause on the threshold, staring in.
Sena is whispering to himself, his back turned to the door. I step inside to join him and stop, choking suddenly as wire coils around my neck, jerking me backwards with a sharp bite.
I stiffen, trying to keep to wire as slack as possible. Its wielder jerks it, and a shot rings out. Sena collapses, crumpling into an unrecognizable form, limbs lengthening and hair growing lighter-- I begin to form a name, parting my lips to breathe in.
Whoever is holding the wire senses it, and pulls it back again, dropping me unconscious to the ground.
I wake up chilled, the sheets thrown off of me. Sena’s voice echoes in my head wordlessly, with a vague sense of a question. Without thinking, I reach up and feel around my neck, surprised at the smooth skin I find and fingers that come away clean. There should be-- there was……
The nightstand is empty, missing its usually placed ‘emergency pack’. I glance at the balcony door--
I stop, sitting up in the bed and staring outside. Skyscrapers and hordes of pedestrians greet me. Neon signs testify to the late hour. It could be no different, except for the cold. The only smoke I can see comes from the tailpipes of cars, distant factories, and the industrial part of the pier. It doesn’t curl, flattening itself into a cloud of smog thick enough to block the stars from view. The concrete glints at me, dry and littered with garbage. It’s easy to look at, and I sit staring for a few minutes, waiting for a confirmation of something I can’t voice.
I’m not sleeping anymore tonight.
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Outside it is very clear where I am. English spews out of bars, the muck of an American city greets me with a welcomingly squalid sort of vitality. A newspaper clings to my legs, the ink already having run from the recent rain. It is easy not to think here, with quick moving people shoving past you, the constant roar of traffic, the nauseating stench of pollution that sticks and squelches along your tepid skin, or mine. The question of identity falls to something like semantics.
I could almost be very happy. I enjoy the lucidity.
It doesn’t matter how long I walk, the footsteps blur, my legs ache with minute effort, the swirling haze of minutes and martyrs that decorate the buildings: the frieze adorning the edge of a baroque skyscraper; the girl that leans her thighs against the hot flat metal of a Chevy’s hood for warmth, her black hair decorating her faze like a veil, all gauze and thin strands; the innocuous reflection of strangers in darkened store windows, my face superimposed on an armless mannequin-- no Venus I-- and the slight smirk that distorts from my lips in the glass. There is a perverse desire to touch it.
Shrugging at the banally beaconing reflection, I move on, swept up by strange feet, jostling shoulders. I’m brushed by strange varieties of leather, clinging pants, lurid fabrics miraculously untainted by the city’s fog, testimonies of delirium and wild faces, preening at some approximation of wickedness. I let myself be ushered and shoved into a segregated portion of the sidewalk, my listlessness passing for a sort of intoxication, or tense excitement. I wouldn’t want to assume.
The air traded in the crowd is warmed than the night breeze. It’s nice as it bounces off the dark brick, echoes in shouts and gyrations from inside the open door the crowd threads into, manned by a large woman in red. The pair of men in front of me-- one with huge sunglasses, regardless of the hour; the other sporting a dark suit embellished with green pinstripes and scowling-- jeer at her rejected persons as they sort their way to the back of our line, grouping warm flesh behind me, or further down the street, where neon lights seem to pile on each other in a haze. It’s a nice drone to doze off to.
It dissipates or disappears under the riot of noise that greets us as our group-- an undistinguished and largely unaffiliated group of sweaty gyrators-- is blankly nodded inside. We scatter into the crowd inside, carelessly spreading so as to blend completely into the thrall and thrill of it all. I’ve never understood the appeal of such places. My shoes stick to the glossy floor in an unsettling way as I walk, shouldering my way to the bar.
The music is loud enough, here, to recede into a throbbing buzz about our ears, a half-pleasant echo behind drink orders. Its questionable what I order, because I mimicked the noise of the customer before me, and I’d be less than surprised if that came out garbled as something different entirely. What I receive is a nondescript brown liquor, with large blocks of ice and a citric taste. I like it so much I down four of them, the glasses clinking together on the edge of the bar and my tongue mysteriously numbed. The strobes glare prettily on the edge of the glasses, and I look and out into the club. A woman saunters around the bar, brushing my arm. She slurs quietly and smoothly into my ear.
“Aw, you can’t refuse me all night. Just a moment.”
Not recognizing her, I let her usher me onto the dance floor, wondering faintly if I have, in fact, been refusing her all night. Her cattish face sneers drunkenly at me, some loose approximation of a smile, as she thrusts her hips in time to the music. I bring myself, out of some appropriately moving curiosity, to touch her shock of blonde hair. Its dry and brittle, some strands cracking of in my hand. Oh well. I stumble away from her, tripping over several incidental couples and into a group of young women dancing together in a small circle.
“Are you alright?”
A few hands move to steady me, accompanied by loose giggling and other female noise. I’m pulled up to face a slight girl, with thick hair pulled into a loose bun and waved tendrils circling her thin face. I tense, digging my nails into her palms, taking in her slight wince. My stomach throbs and I’m on my knees, shuddering and clutching around my abdomen. Never did like to drink.
The girls begin to murmur among themselves, one bursts out in a sudden shock of laughter. I glare at her, trying to steady myself. The one I’d already latched on to carefully lifts my arm over her shoulder, and shoots something back to her friends.
“Careful. You need a ride somewhere? You’re not looking very well.”
I shrug, nodding vaguely towards the exit.
Once we’re outside I can breathe again, and I wait by the curb as the girl pulls around in her car. She motions me in, and without the lights flashing in my eyes I can make out her face much clearer. She has narrow eyes that pick up hints of the streetlights with indiscernibly dark color, and high thin cheekbones.
She laughs, flipping her purpled hair,” Please say something, I’ve been waiting for directions you know. We can’t sit in front of the club all night.”
Despite the irritated tone, her lips quirk up in a smile.
“I’m Jessica, by the by, and be careful. If you’re sick in my car, I’ll just wait until you’re good and hungover and make you clean it.”
I garble an introduction and vague directions before sinking gratefully into the upholstery.
Taking my nauseous smile as interest, she starts to babble on.
“You should really be careful about that. Just think, next time you could end up sick on the street with no nice person to take you home.”
I smirk at that, warming to the faintly familiar tone. I can’t quite place the chiding.
“It wouldn’t be so bad.”
She snorts
“Sure, a pretty guy like you could weasel any invitation home he liked. I pity those poor people, who end up with a sick man recuperating on their hands. Bit misleading, that.”
“You seem to be enjoying yourself.”
“Well, I’m not taking you back to my place, am I?”
She smirks, a little quirk of the lips that bares just a hint of white teeth and pale gum, her plump lip curving into half its normal thickness. It’s just a little intoxicating, or perhaps the unknown alcohol is starting to settle.
The conversation lulls into silence, likely due to her acute awareness of my nausea. I hardly notice the city go by.
“Oh damn, you’re in a hotel. Where are you from?”
I garble slightly,
“You wouldn’t like it. Not a nice place.”
Bemused, she stares at me, one eyebrow lifted.
“Well, what room is it?”“3- something or other. I’ll show you.”
Shrugging, she follows, half-drug and half-supporting, me into the elevator and down the hall. I recognize the door and after only two attempts, manage to dig out the correct key. With a sharp burst of laughter she lets me usher her inside, smirking at my impatiently waving arm, and the sudden soft hand on her shoulder.
The door clicks, sticking on the hinges. The skin of her belly is pale, supply tanned along its muscles, clenching about my fingers, glistening with sweat; a regular gem. The room’s half-circulated stagnating air is clammy on my shoulder blades, wavering in and out of our skin. The taste of her lip is strange, stiff on the tongue, and violently familiar, salt and sea and the rough grip of smoke along the throat, tempting my lungs to heave. Her neck possesses a velvety patina, gleaming with an absent, hotter, more unbearably tropical sun. Its storms rage in the undulations of her nighttime flesh, her drunken baited breath.
We sigh frequently, and quick enough, are folded together, collapsed in the tangled furor of the bed.
_____________________________

“Well, are you finally coming?”
She sighs impatiently, flicking her hair so it catches the sun, preening like some small nymphet, a precarious tyrant perched in the sand.
“I guess. Aren’t you afraid we’ll get burned?”
She shrugs, majestically letting her shoulders sink into their joints, limply, languidly, smooth as the sun.
“You’re already burnt. What’s it matter?”
She smiles gently, tapping at my arm to see the skin flare whites and yellows before settling back into that painful red.
“Don’t do that.”
“Than come on,” quirking her lip with a subtle mockery,” I’ve been waiting all morning.”
“You don’t have to wait for me to go in.”
She shrugs again, jerking this time.
“I’m happier to.”
Grasping my hand she tugs me towards the sparkling cold water, immersing my body in stages of one chilling shock. My hairs stand on edge, stiff as she gambols in the water, too flexible, her dark hair purple-bright in the wavering sun, the dappling frozen waves.
“It’s better the deeper you go Ran.”
I let myself be dragged and drifted, splashed and splattered and leaned upon, until, finally, shivering and coughing up salt, she lulls us back to shore.
My head grates against the fluorescent light, pounding in rhythm with the waves, tandem with the beating gyrations of foreign bodies, the flickering neon, the sloshing liquor. What little respite there is in the bed’s comfort is clouded by the furrowing of my brow, the clammy clenching of my hands as they roam, by instinct and jangled nerves, along the sheets, up wrinkles and curves, to settle in a mass of thick hair.
The girl’s mouth drifts open, gaping in sleep, smiling absently, unknowingly. Her arms fold languidly over her chest, pressing the white sheets over her, catching the soft edges of her hair. It’d pull if she turned, but she looks still enough and breathes deep enough that one can imagine her in this position forever. There’s a haunting shadow under her eye, revealing a youth obscured by dark smears of makeup. A series of bruises roughen her neck.
My nausea reemerges, reforming itself around her familiar image. I turn my back, so if she wakes she won’t recognize me. A compulsive notion, unfounded, but I don’t want to see how the shade of her eyes compares to my memory.
Her fingers are too warm, pressing into long-healed burns on my back.
“Feeling better?”
The lilt to her voice is just haughty enough, and too poised to relate to that sober sympathy and joyful innocence that claimed happiness from a store window and into an emptying phone booth.
I shrug, not knowing how to answer without coldly ordering her out.
“Anything I can do?”
The answer is too cheerful, too comforting to do anything but twist my nausea to a higher insistence, nagging in my throat. The sickness of memory, eh?
“I think I just need to sleep.”
I can feel her nod, the air parting and resettling on the back of my neck. I don’t look as she shimmies back into her clothes, and don’t answer her half-heartedly disappointed goodbye, don’t watch her lingering in the door, her furtive glance back, her worried nervous grin, her fingering twitching her hair into two identically disconcerting braids. I don’t make a move to close the door where she leaves it half-open, bouncing against the jam, and I don’t strain to remember her name, mouthing silently the two syllables she so awfully recalled, staining yet again the stupid vengeances I took up.
I flop back into the bed, aching and groaning, the taste of alcohol hot and stale in my mouth, seeping up through exhausted joints, leaking from foolish pores.
The resemblance is minimal, magnified by drunkenness, or so I tell myself, drifting off into sleep, back into the pounding waves of my glitteringly idyllic ocean.
_____________________________

Reawakening I find myself bound by my skin, slick with sweat and a shiveringly heavy lonely mass tightening around my joints as I shift and groan into the damp sheets and their faint odorous must. Streetlights are glaring off my damp flesh, the horns of late-night traffic screech through ringing ears, nestle in an aching, twisting stomach. Hard knees dig sharply into the flesh beneath my chin, my arms shake around them, stiff with cold. Slowly, I float up into a sort of awareness, leaving the comatose blackness of relieving sleep to become quivering flesh, icy joints, tense muscles, pained head.
Lethargically, I extract myself from my fetal position, cautiously setting my feet on the floor and rising to a stand.
Almost instantly my carefully positioned legs buckle, I’m thrown to my knees, to balance on bony elbows, heaving for air, desperately seeking it in lungs that throw up a stinging bile instead. Precariously poised, I choke out a seemingly endless stream of stomach acid. It leaves a reddish stain on the floor, a sharp taste in my throat.
The sickness itself is unnerving. I refuse to think.
Snaking my hand out, I tug the phone off of the nightstand by its cord. The receiver lands conveniently in the puddle of vomit. The smell is terrible, rich and citric all at once, setting my stomach churning. I wonder idly if it could eat away at the plastic of the telephone.
A car alarm goes off somewhere outside, the shriek of artificial bells and sirens crashing into walls, doors, windows, the fleshy insides of my ears, revolted glands, circular feelings. My fingers twitch in rhythm to it. With a jerk of my wrist I pull the phone over to me, punching in a series of numbers. It feels like a fit, the numbers float seemingly out of my fingers, dozens of them, without rhyme or reason except the push of buttons.
“Hello?”
An irritated voice oozes from the phone, barely audible over the alarm. With faint distaste I press the receiver to my ear, careful to avoid the smears of vomit.
“Hello? If you want anything you’d better make it fast. I hope you understand that Mr. Takatori is an exceptionally busy man and no matter who you are you just can’t call like this and expect to take up all his time. You need an appointment for that-”My fingers clench at the familiarly condescending tone. The smell of the vomit is enough to drive the annoyance from my mind, returning me to a daze.
“Abyssinian is reporting in.”
The click of the phone as I set it back into its base is incredibly satisfying.
With the car alarm still screaming outside my window, I settle back onto the bed, closing my eyes, and swallowing the hot seemingly omnipresent bile threatening to flood across my tongue.
______________________________________

I awake, fully, finally, to a filled bank account and a calmed stomach. To a room with no trace of sickness, despite that no cleaning staff has bothered to enter in all the weeks I’ve been here. To the burden of a name formerly renounced, to a sense of surrender and regression, and of an unplanned betrayal of principles I no longer claim to hold.
There is no reason and no recompense for such a feeling. I stare blearily at the clean room, the window opened to a warm breeze and the faint bleating of traffic.
Should I be sickened for seeking the same refuge as before? Having failed to preserve myself, I turn to a seduction of old accusations and stale curses.
Having failed to protect my family, I turn quietly to the systematic destruction of all the values they upheld, and any semblance of the innocence demanded to maintain the rigor of virtue.
The room wavers in my vision, bleeding out to more faded walls, a more humid air lined with sheets of metal that serve only to intensify the heat and the burning light of the sun, reflecting it over and around your skin at once. I demanded the best weapon I could buy for the money left in my pocket: a lump sum pocketed blindly after redeeming what little of our back accounts had not been seized and selling the few valuable items not burnt past recognition. These last were very little; a string of pearls, a porcelain vase that had stood by the door and whose handle has snapped off, a newly deformed silver teapot that could be melted down for scrap, along with similarly warped metal jewelry fused together in one glittering, precious chunk.
The merchant, a short man slimy with sweat, with a ruddily congenial face draws down an undecorated blade. In his hands, it stretched on forever, devouring the light around it, its simple handle surprisingly cushioned.
In mine, it dropped to the floor with a clatter, stirring up dust. The man smiled indulgently, no doubt taking me for some frivolous youth, or bored student. My shoulders burnt with the sudden weight, hands seeming to blister around the grip.
Mounting a deep breath, I laid the thing back on the counter, shoving the money at him with an embarrassed glare. My ignorance of the weapon didn’t matter, it was the sharp integrity of its blade that did, and desperately.
Still smiling, the man handed me a sheath from a pile behind the counter. I left too quickly for him to reconsider.
There was a sudden certainty, as I held it first in my hands, that it would be wrenched away from me. I waited, and stared blankly at it, as if its skill needed no more urging than my vehement emotions and strange new certainty in justice.
Was it this banal? The handling of a sword by someone eminently unqualified? Impotence? Confusion?
I’d wanted inevitability, a fatalistically decisive moment of revenge, followed by peace. Staring at that length of metal, I found myself thoroughly shaken. There was no glory here, only grueling effort and endurance.
Aware of the eyes still centered on my back, of the smile of the old merchant still focused on me, I ran, letting the weight of the sword tear at my arms.
And as the heat of the sun cut through my limbs, and the buildings swept past me, I clutched the sword, letting the leather sheath cut imprints into my palms, let muscles groan and stretch, let thoughts of justice dissipate into a cold focus on the blade and its effort. I could enact what hopes I wanted on it later.
My stomach settled. The half-heard farewell of the shopkeeper floated in the air behind me:
“Sir, I hope it makes you happy.”
_____________________________________

The sweltering Japanese summer twists into the strange confines of buildings, and an eerie wind that seems to crackle through alleyways and the tires of parked cars. My hands are overly light, it is only by gritting my teeth that I am able to keep them from floating over my head. Carefully, I scan the windows of stores as I pass, taking in countless displays of impractical clothing slung haphazardly over leery mannequins, pyramids of shoes, books, cans, and endless window boxes of hopeless art.
It is a more perfunctory act than I remember, searching for a weapon. Perhaps its because I have less of a purpose for it now, less meaning to ascribe to it, less skill to ask of it.
I step inside the first shop that displays knives in the window, large flat cutting knives set against a wooden board. It proves to be some sort of gourmet cooking store. I pass aisles of ridiculously unnecessary tools, odd ends of frying pans, ludicrously shaped polyester gloves, elaborate spatulas, and an endless array of cookbooks, before I find the knives.
I finger the handles, finding wood, cheaper plastic, an occasional metal or ceramic edge. All are possessed of a flat single edged blade. All are supremely useless.
Not having found what I needed, I begin to stalk towards the exit, eager to leave the inherently decorative utensils behind for more practical things.
A plump woman in a vest and nametag stops me at the door.
“Sir, did you find everything you were looking for?”
It’s faintly amusing, or might have been, the concern written in her features. I’m anxious to leave, feeling suddenly compressed by walls and people.
“Double-edged knives?”There is something terribly obligated in this searching for a weapon, and sickening.
“Oh no, we don’t carry those. You know though, you might try the sporting goods store down the block. I think they have a hunting section--”Nodding a quick thanks I shove past her, disappearing quickly into the crowd of mid-day pedestrians and down the road, self-consciously fingering the money so heavily unobtrusive in my pocket and pointedly ignoring the banal irony far too easy to assume in her phrase.
________________________________

They total eight in all when laid out on the bed. Five gleaming stilettos, ranging enough in length and thickness to be almost infallibly useful; and three short throwing knives with mercury balances inside the blade that can be easily secreted in even the lightest of outfits. Eight knives, the steel from which, if melted, wouldn’t be enough to form one half of the blade of my old katana.
I have not looked at them since I tested their balance in the shop, nearly two weeks ago.
They make a far more interesting contrast to the unopened brown envelope lying next to them, than the velvet stands of the display case I picked them out of.
And staring at those knives, at that lurid bedspread, at the yet-intact envelope delivered by a clerk in a rumpled shirt; I don’t feel any sense of promise. No certainty that anything will come of this and no insistent hope in redemption of any kind.
But I’ve become tired enough of those pretending at innocence, to stare at blankly, to blankly accept the loops of secretarial handwriting on the envelope and my own immobility.
The most innocent are those who will never be aware of how incidental their luck is, and walk undisturbed and believing in lucklessness. I could never be innocent, too acutely aware of my losses.
_________________________________

The balancing proves itself, again and again, and plays along so gamely, so gracefully; as I draw the knife from the back of the man’s neck, wiping the thin blade on the cream folded collar of his suit. I do not care what he has done, and did not even as he cursed me, spewing a type of tender vulgarity, a of sleazy sanctimonial-- the sort, rather, you‘d head in a schoolyard, or erstwhilely fashionable salon. He was innocent, he believed there was some meaning or reason for this act of mine today. The sun settles placidly on his golden hair. There is nothing to feel but the enmity forced between us by tension. It flickers through the curling strands, loosely clinging to the hole forced into his bleeding spine. Artfulness and pride both lie in ignoring it, and shame as well; for in nothing can we spend ourselves as powerfully as we can here, and in nothing else will we ever feel the same urgency of regret.
And if I am already damned, why must I remember anything at all? I would take my pain in silence and not question its absent source.
I pluck a few errant strands of the man’s blonde hair off my knife, wiping them onto the sticky film of his suit collar. Absently, I collect the folder I was sent for-- no details, but then, it doesn’t change the act to know what’s gained inside-- and tuck it into a pocket inside my coat. Listlessly, I rifle through the desk drawers, tossing papers about to better mask exactly what I’ve taken with me, to cover up the nature of my souvenir, so to speak. Carelessly, I swipe my hand across some documents, earning a paper cut in the process.
A few scars decorate my knuckles, a large one slit red and raw and pearling with blood along my index finger, white thin lines that range in months for age, blurring together into one massive rent in my skin that catches the light in a stretch of overly taut skin as I take the street again. Products of learning. It always amazed me how blemishless Yohji’s hands were, given his weapon.
Fumbling through the top drawer I drag out some interestingly irrelevant items: a set of photographs, an assortment of colored pens, a brush dirty and cluttered with bright hair, a watch that must be an expensive spare, a thin-rimmed set of sunglasses, with yet another yellow strand clamped in the hinge. I finger the stems, taking in the slick feel of wiry metal, the glare of the tinted lens and drop the hair on his chest. They’re the type of impractical thing fools wear at night, or that mask the reddened eyes of a hangover; the stylish sort of piece chosen more for aesthetics than utility. I slip them on, compulsively straining my senses for a hint of familiar smell, the exact color that he would have, that he always had, seen through. They smell metallic and too-new in a way that settles over my tongue. I press a finger to the bridge to keep them from slipping off, glancing suddenly, guiltily at the dead man. Did you see the way he sees? A terrible suspicion of forced presence, an especially despicable form of denial. It’s forgery. The sun glints in the corner. Smoke curls up, half-atmospherically, from a distant smokestack, narrow enough to seem close at hand. The body groans in its chair, releasing a strange shifting stiffening sound of evasion; half-laughing. I’d swear it was smirking into the desk, its mouth slipping open. I feel sick.
My temples tighten under the pressing stems, screwed with an internal vice around thoughts that fall silent of their own accord, melting into shimmering asphalt and neon hallucinations of the murky night. I refuse to pause. Refuse to allow a limp in my step, a hesitation or a furtive glance. Refuse the comfort of old images and take in ignorance what peace would not otherwise allow. Its reason enough to keep moving.
But legs do not reason, and as exhaust fills my nostrils, I find myself bolting, fleeing towards nothing and with no reason but the sound of heavy boots pounding into the sidewalk and the jolt of pain each time I slam my leg down too hard.
I remember nothing, the hints of image-- the barest trace of a familiar smile, the glinting of green off cars in traffic, the mocking tone of old reassurances tossed carelessly from one stranger‘s face to another‘s-- flicker by, drowned in the stabbing pain of my roughened breathing. The knives strapped under my coat beat into my sides, strangely reminiscent of pressing hands, wrapping arms, and a warmth of skin that is alien to the chilling breeze of this distant city.
Finally, breathing hard, shuddering under a film of sweat, I have to stop. I tear the damned things off my face and, squinting, toss them and all their possessors-- from salesman to sinner-- into the street, to be crunched and crushed by passing traffic, whipping colorfully past my blinded eye. My whole body trembles with it, the jostled metal, the impacted glass, colors blotting before my eyes. I sink to the ground, settling myself haphazardly on some concrete steps and close my eyes. It’s a very tremulous feeling, one of suspension, this heaving of breath, this hollowness of being. I glance behind me. The doors of the building are open despite the cold. I would move closer, but that feels impossible.
I am still close enough that I can hear what is taking place inside. The words press around me, momentarily interrupting both thought and sensation.
“’For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.’”
And we may imagine that they are the freer for it. I shift on the concrete, leaning back until a higher step digs into my spine.
I sigh and let the cement tear at my back, and listen, for a few idle moments to the strong, lilting voice streaming out the doors, and the murmuring of an inattentive audience. They make a strange complement to the heavy traffic, the snatches of distant conversation heard from the street.
“Well, you know he couldn’t mean that…”
“Would you get a load of what that woman’s wearing! Can you believe anyone would leave the house looking like that?”
“See, the whole end of the matter is…”
“…I’d have to hear her side of the story before I could believe something that strange.”
“It’s so peaceful”
“And the doctor said…”“I wish it could last forever.”Clasped hands and assorted coughing. In New York, one must constantly imagine a million diseases consorting in the air.
“…..we die. And then are we still forever…”
“Hey!”
“Sorry.”
If you listen, its easy to understand a brief moment of everything.
“Will you come too?”
“May you go in peace.”The homily ends, and parishioners slowly descend from the church in pairs and small groups, murmuring to themselves. A few spare me a quick glance as they stumble down the stairs, and most are careful enough to avoid tripping over some part of me. One elderly women in aged cardigan and withering smile, drops a quarter by my foot and hurries on, without making eye contact.