High School Football

Took the young son to a local high school football game last night. On the drive over we saw a ring of white illumination far across the waterway -- the famed Friday night lights. It was after halftime when we arrived, and the ticket booths were already closed, so we walked right in. The concrete bleachers were a little daunting for the young son, and he asked daddy to carry him up. We sat halfway up the bleachers, just next to the band section, which, as it was after halftime and the band was taking a break, was empty. The field itself sat inside a large cinder track, and the blaze of the lights made a thick black curtain of the sky surrounding the field. Little man wanted to know about everything. Who were the cheerleaders? What were they doing? Who were the dancers? Why were people yelling? Where was the ball? Who was wonning?

My wife and I answered the questions as well as we could; little man sat on my wife's lap. A large African-American woman sat in front of us, cheering on her son. When she shifted in hers seat she emitted a rather nauseating stench. Behind us a trio of high-school girls, big, and rubbery, and outrageously awkward, were fighting over a paper basket of French fries. The game was 26-0 in favor of the home team, so naturally I began to root for the visitors, who could not advance the ball on offense to save their lives. The only play which worked for them was a draw or trap to the fullback, a powerful brute who shed would-be tacklers with a twitch of his shoulders -- but alas, he was not fast enough to evade the fleet defensive backs who dove at his feet, and tripped him up. He went down under a pile of yellow jerseys. When the visitors were on defense, they had a cornerback with skills -- he had one interception, and another near-pick. Other than that, the home team dominated to such a degree that eve the fans around us seemed bored.

Perhaps were were all taking our cue from the cheerleaders, who showed little interest in pep, or rallying. They talked amongst themselves, or did impromptu dances. When a player was slow getting up, they sat down and crossed their fingers to indicate their good wishes but then they were screened from the field by the backs of the football team, and they often remained sitting on the track long after the injured player had gone back to the sideline. The few cheers they did crank out were ragged, and uninspiring. The dancing girls in their black leotards were not much better. They repeated a rump-shaker routine which involved one hand behind the head and the hips thrusting outward. They spent long stretches socializing with each other, and with the boys who packed the front rows of the bleachers. Only when the band came back did the game take on a real football atmosphere. The drummers were vigorous, and enthusiastic, and the horns blared, and the people in the crowd swayed or clapped along. Even the cheerleaders and dancers were roused from their listlessness, and began to move crisply. A large dark girl whose body was perfectly square, like a Lego character, did a tumbling routine down the track and finished by pointing at the band, as if to direct the crowd's adulation to the proper object.

My wife gave out son a ring pop. He wriggled his little finger into the plastic hoop, and popped the blue candy diamond into his mouth. The stream of questions was interrupted while he got his sucker warmed up. The woman next to us pointed out her son, a defensive end on the home team. I watched him rush the passer and get turned away by a massive tackle from the visitors. He was too slight to play defensive end.

Finally, in the fourth quarter, the visiting team kicked a field goal, and so avoided a shutout. We left soon after to avoid the traffic. I could see that ring of light sinking below the trees in my rearview mirror. My son, when asked what he liked about the football game, said, "I liked all of it about it."

Within My Heart

You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.

Yes, it's true. He's in there. It's rather unpleasant, actually, and was quite a shock the first time the x-rays indicated some guppy-like presence within my chambers, swimming about. An ultrasound made visible a robe and a staff, and a long dirty beard, and showed this tiny creature gesturing as if in the middle of a sermon.

Nobody is sure what to do. Surgery has been suggested but the risks are too great. He apparently draws nourishment from my blood through some gill-like system, so any attempts to starve him out, or to poison him, might prove fatal for the host.

Within My Heart

You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart.

Yes, it's true. He's in there. It's rather unpleasant, actually, and was quite a shock the first time the x-rays indicated some guppy-like presence within my chambers, swimming about. An ultrasound made visible a robe and a staff, and a long dirty beard, and showed this tiny creature gesturing as if in the middle of a sermon.

Nobody is sure what to do. Surgery has been suggested but the risks are too great. He apparently draws nourishment from my blood through some gill-like system, so any attempts to starve him out, or to poison him, might prove fatal for the host (that's me).

King of the Waves

At Terra Marr, a left breaking off a small point, a reef left so you know it was consistent, and steady and consequently drew a crowd, which on this rather gray and blustery day included a fellow on a stand-up board who perambulated the far outside like a seagull flapping and hovering over some choice rubbish bin, waiting for a tasty morsel.

He was easily three hundred pounds, and wore a regal purple rashguard over his large, firm belly. He had a head of dirty gray curls, and a large white mustache which, due to the length of his upper lip, was exceptionally wide and thick, and was tinged at the tips with a dull yellow. When the set waves came, he dropped in far outside of every other surfer, and came barelling down the line, shouting everyone else off his wave with curses and insults. He pumped the wave like a madman, with godlike wrath and lust, as if slaking himself on some helpless concubine, and if some unfortunate outpaddling surfer did not clear his path soon enough he would drive right for them on his massive board. Isolated as he was by the overhang of the wave, he seemed like a creature from a fresco, a god some minor mythology; and as he came hurtling along, the sound in my mind a heavy growling, like a bowling ball hurtling toward a clutch of hapless pins.

Malibu

Last night, after a day's worth of meetings, we all went to Malibu for dinner at some restaurant on the pier. To get to Malibu we had to drive through the mountains. Quite a breathtaking drive, that. Vertical and horizontal folds of earth, green distant valleys shimmering in the sunset while the car plunged through shadow, little hillsides furrowed with rows of grape vines, which made one think of a child's head done with cornrows, which of course turned everything back on itself, as sights such as this inspired the term "cornrows" in the first place. There were some long tunnels too, with tiled, arched walls, and hung with round lamps at even intervals. Then the ocean came into view for the first time, its silver expanse backlit by a band of rose-colored light that stretched along the horizon. Quite nice. There was a rundown hotel right on the beach, and then Pepperdine University, and finally the pier. In the distance, to the south, you could see the ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier spinning like a tiny spark just above the water, and the planes at LAX lined up and slowly ascending with their lights flickering in the fog.
The restaurant was fine. The food was adequate. The conversation was typical of businessmen after a long day -- reminiscences, commentary on the state of local and national politics, a few bon mots thrown out by someone whose intellectual curiosity, and whose desire to have a really meaningful conversation, was duly ignored. While we were waiting for the entrée I excused myself and went outside to call my wife. I walked to the edge of the pier as I was talking, and happened to look down at the beach below. A couple of leather-clad cyclists, a man and his girlfriend, were crouched on their helmets, looking out at the water, and having a smoke. I could hear the flick of his lighter; she pulled her head back and, pointing the cigarette skyward, took a long drag. Then, holding the cigarette away, she lowered her head, and exhaled.
The beauty of the mountains and the ocean made the whole experience well worthwhile. I can't imagine how Sean Penn could live here and still be angry enough to punch out all those photographers.

Monday Agoura

Here in Augoura Hills now. It is very dry and bright. The hills are craggy, dark green, and lost in haze or shadow most of the time. My new colleagues seem to like Glen Beck a lot, but they are nice, nonetheless. There will be little opportunity for cultural discussions, perhaps, but that's okay. If the work is fun, and the pay is good, then I can be happy with that.

The restaurants are restaurants, the hotels are hotels, the executives are the same, and the conversation stays within certain carefully defined boundaries. And everything runs smoothly. Busy day tomorrow.

Final San Diego County

Saw my friend JR last night. Hair is a little longer, has a bit of a beard, but with him it remains uncertain whether this is a matter of personal style or neglect. We ate at a fish place with JR and his wife and their adorable 1 year-old daughter. Since I've had a child of my own every baby is adorable, and I want to hold every baby. They all recoil from me however, and cling more tightly to the parental neck. Thank goodness my own son is more accommodating.

In the morning we did a DP. It was gray and cold, and the waves were holding up a bit in the high tide, but even so it soon became crowded. Caught some nice waves. Said a mental goodbye to the SoCal vibes and the consistent swells. Went back to the room, showered, dressed, and then drove 2.5 hours to Agoura Hills, where my meetings will be this week. Through LA, past the sign, past the famous boulevards. Even I, who would probably argue intensely and sardonically (or rather I would attempt the latter) against a culture of celebrity, even I had a creepy sense of deja vu seeing all these landmarks in person and I began to hate myself a little as I imagined the patient, weary glance of a Tom Hanks or a Brad Pitt or a Larry David sweeping past my insignificant form.

Further SoCal

So, some observations from SoCal so far.

1. AB tending to exaggerate the menace of the local inhabitants: First we were driving through Oceanside, and he said that it was a very dangerous place, full of thugs. To illustrate his point, he directed my attention to a fellow crossing the street in front of us.
"Look at that thug!" he said. "Long hair, bulldog."
It was true, the fellow had long hair, but it was elaborately coiffed and colored, and it was true he was wearing a flannel shirt but it was a soft, intricate pattern. It was true the fellow had a bulldog, but it was an old, swaybacked, kindly-looking bulldog who scuttled timidly forward when a car nearby honked its horn.
Later, as we were turning a corner, AB pointed to a parking lot and said, "Look at that homeless guy, what's he doing?"
So I looked. The homeless guy was gaunt, with stringy gray hair, and a pile of blankets and bags around his feet. He was busy nodding encouragingly to a passing car and giving it the aloha sign.
I just didn't think it was so dangerous.

2. The immense variety of vegetation. There are towering palms, huge linden or eucalyptus trees, cabbages, pine trees, fruit trees, avocado trees, all kinds of grasses, all sorts of flowers.

3. Cyclists. Of all ages, all in silks, forming peletons up and down the road. Most of them are older, and riding extremely expensive bikes. At a stoplight a gentleman with freckled, shaved legs and gray hair stopped to take a sip of water. The wheels on his bike alone cost 4k apiece (as AB was quick to point out)

4. Runners. Everywhere.
5. Kayakers. So many cars, mostly station wagons, with kayaks on top, and kayakers in the waves, dropping in on the surfers.
6. Houses along the coast. From the waves, looking back at the houses on the cliffs, most of them with huge, multistory windows looking out at the ocean, a whole variety of architectures, from Spanish to modern to Mediterranean villas even what looked like a modified Victorian.
7. Gray. It's been gray all the time. The fog over the coast seems permanent. At the break we surfed this morning, the old longboarder men were discussing how summer never really came this year. One old man complained that his friends inland all had healthy tans, but he was pale because he lived on the coast. He had skin the color of an old penny -- I can't imagine what his "tan" friends must have looked like.
8. Yoga. It's everywhere out here, in all varieties. Studios on every block, people walking along with rolled up mats slung over their shoulders.
9. Meditation chapel. Found a meditation chapel in Encinitas, overlooking the ocean. I did not meditate but I enjoyed looking at the waves below, while imagining that from the chapel behind me the enlightened beings were radiating waves of well-being which would somehow soak in.

CA Day One

Hi There. I don't always do so well, talking on the phone, but the last I can do is try to tell you some of the things that I missed saying, and probably will never say, if I don't write them down.

So, the flight out from Houston to LAX. One thing really stands out: I was sitting in my aisle seat, watching all the late arrivals go through their dance of trying to find space in the overhead bins, and here game a very large, very old Mexican woman in a mu-mu, followed by a Mexican fellow in a cowboy hat, holding the hand of a small child. As the woman drew abreast of me, she turned to try to shove something in the overhead bin, and in the process she stuck out her hindquarters, and enveloped my shoulder and arm with her buttocks and legs. It as extremely warm, soft to the point of a gooey texture, and my shoulder was wedged so firmly in between her buttocks, which were draped over it like a large hot-water bottle, that I sensed the outline of another cleft, if you get my meaning, much further in than the first, and my horrified imagination told me that a certain moisture was being transmitted from that dark place to my poor shoulder. Then it was over; the woman had secured her bag, and was lumbering rearward. I reflected later that my experience really was the precise opposite of a man groping a woman. Instead, I had been groped by a woman's private parts -- and while I can't speak for the female perspective in a typical groping scenario, let me just say, I did feel violated.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and the drive along the 405 and the 5 was remarkable only for the fact that the traffic was stop-and-go even at nine on a Friday night. The hotel room was clean, and the grocery store where I purchased some water and some wheat thins was practically deserted.

In the morning AB picked me up and, in typical AB fashion, we had to drive to a spot, check it out, decide that it wasn't the right call, go back to his house to score a longboard, and then drive to a new spot, where we finally managed to park and paddle out. Del Marr, just south of the beach entrance. The weather was cloudy and cool, and the waves were chest high on the early sets, dropping to waist high on the later sets. AB let me use his longboard, and he rode RB's Island Girl, a board that is painted with flowers and has a particularly feminine shape -- AB hates the board, but derives a perverse pleasure from making it work for him. AB complimented my surfing -- of course it's easy to look good on a longboard, but it was still nice to hear him say that I was styling and dialing. Of course AB got into a conversation with a another fellow nearly as garrulous as him, and before long AB was telling his new friend all about his Hawaiian youth and his motocross adventures. Meanwhile I was sitting about 50 yards down picking off the lefts. Eventually it got too flat to surf any more, and we went to eat.

AB picked Swami's, a little SoCal/Mex joint just across the PCH from a famous break named after a meditation center. We sat outside and ate egg burritos, and AB drank coffee and ruminated on the state of his career, and on what he'd do once he made it out of the Coast Guard. After we were done we went to check another break from a cliff overlooking the water, and AB enjoyed critiquing the surfers below, but he felt that having his coffee tumbler in his hand would make the whole experience more relaxing and enjoyable, and he worried for a while about going to fetch his coffee tumbler, but in the end decided that we could just go.

I came back to the hotel and studied. Nothing interesting to report there. The room has two double beds, a rattling window unit for hot and cold air, and a tiny bathroom with a tiny, perfectly circular toilet. You can hear the traffic from the 5 rushing past at all hours.

After the studying, AB and I went to fetch another longboard for our afternoon session. While AB had enjoyed surfing Island Girl in a certain perverse way, the same way that men must enjoy making stubborn animals bend to their will, he was not willing to do a second IG session. We drove east, into the hills. The mountains rolled off, purple, in the background. There were moments when you came around a bend and saw a mountains side laid before you, with grids of agriculture and clumps of shingled houses, and large brown bald spots, furrowed as if in consternation, as if the mountain was trying to make up its mind if it should shrug its shoulders and dislodge all these bothersome creatures, or if it should continue to lie there, half-asleep. AB's friend lived in a little community about five miles from the beach, in stucco house with a pool and a vaulted ceiling. AB's friend and his wife are of Latin-American descent, and the living room was incongruously crowded with an extended family, including teenage girls and grandparents who were stuffed together on a small sofa, staring intently at the television.

After we got the board we drove to look at a few spots, and finally paddled out at Terra Marr, where we found a left hand peak. As we were pulling on our wetsuits only a single surfer was out working the peak, but by the time we'd gotten into our wetsuits and climbed down the brown cliffs to the beach, there were three surfers on the peak and eight more beginning to paddle out. They had seen the same thing, the were thinking the same thing and by the time we got out there, the peak was crowded. AB got frustrated with a few of the surfers, and made some comments, but nobody respond in kind, and once AB caught a set wave, he calmed down. The sets were easily overhead, and broke left for a long, long time. An enormous fellow, in a spring suit, riding a 30 inch wide, 10 foot longboard, caught one of the sets and came barelling left. It was quite a sight, to see this enormously fat, mustachioed, aggressive, hardcore dude on a massive longboard, just owning that wave, just claiming it and pumping it like a king. I was paddling out, and as I looked to right right and saw this fellow coming I kept thinking that I could almost hear the sound that a bowling ball makes when it grinds away on the alley, looking for some pins to bash into.

The left were fun. I had fun connecting sections, going to the top and bottom of the wave, and walking the board a little. AB was hungry, and went into the beach, and so I followed him in on my next wave. Then we ate at this Mexican restaurant nearby called "Norte." Out the window I could see a procession of luxury or antique cars, and it occurred to me that lots of people who live in SoCal don't have to work. They live on investments, or on royalties, or on some monies that the rest of us don't have, and can't even imagine, all sources of monies such as writing on balloons, or internet widgets, or grandfather's oil, or fast food, or god knows what. It seemed to me then that SoCal must be the place where you come when your primary aim is to enjoy yourself.

When the food came, AB and I ate like I think men often do: swiftly and silently. In a matter of minute the table was cleaned, and we were staggering out past the clatter of dishes and the buzz of conversation, out into the blue night.

Everett

It was three hours to Valdosta and three back, and so despite the recent improvements in his digestion, Everett began fasting as soon as he opened negotiations with Bobby. The hunger made him lightheaded, and he could not understand Bobby’s croaking voice on the phone, and so there was a great deal of confusion regarding the purpose of his visit – he wanted it understood that he was coming to do an evaluation of Bobby’s wife, but was prevented from entering a sober negotiation of the ground rules by Bobby’s crackling ruminations on what they might have for lunch, and after several calls which ended with a mystified Everett shaking his head and muttering, he grew frustrated, and during the last call he held the speaker close to his mouth and repeated three times, in his loudest voice, “Don’t want no food. Got a tricky gut.” When he brought the phone back to his ear Bobby was saying something about his cancer. Everett wanted to know what this had to do with luncheon. When Bobby’s wife picked up on the extension to sort things out, her accent was so thick that Everett could not understand her, either.
Despite his anxiety, Everett was determined to go. It was important to follow through. He packed a cooler with some cold water and set out for Valdosta, eschewing the expressway for the country roads. His truck, the color and texture of a robin’s egg, rolled past double-wide trailers and emaciated silos, and lonely clumps of pine trees, and shrinking shadows. Everett sat erect in the cab with the white bristles of his chin pointing at the horizon.
Bobby lived close to the expressway, on a renovated army base where hoses wound through patchy lawns, and children were taking advantage of the sunny day to form packs of wobbling bicycles or to squat over chalk drawings on the sidewalks. Bobby’s house was green, with the trim painted the same color green, giving it a camouflaged appearance. Bobby and his wife sat in the watery light beneath the carport, and as Everett’s truck passed, and then reversed back to the house, Bobby’s head swiveled to follow its progress.
The sound of traffic twisted down from the tight sky, and Everett crouched in the shadow of his truck until he could orient himself; he was so engaged in this process that he missed Bobby’s initial nod of greeting, which prompted Bobby to raise his eyebrows to his wife in a silent continuation of their debate on Everett’s mental fitness. Bobby rose. One of his shoulders drooped like a broken wing. His head with its bright pink complexion wobbled atop his neck, which had been carved away on the left side so that when Everett thought about it later he was sure that from the front one could see the outline of vertebrae behind the rings of the esophagus. Bobby shuffled forward, and, swinging out an underhand grip, caught Everett’s hand in his.
“This time he acknowledges me. Good. Good ta see ya. Bobby James,” he croaked, thumping his chest. Then, indicating with his hand the Vietnamese, who had remained in her chair, he said, “This is my wife, Jennifer.”
Everett glanced quickly at the wife. The image in his mind did not make him hysterical, and so he worked up the courage to look again. She was short and dark. She had a vaguely popeyed expression, which did not correspond with his memories of Vietnamese women, and he wondered what sort of foreign strains might be present in her heritage; he now realized that he’d been hoping for a purebred Vietnamese, although he considered that with women, like animals, a cross-breed might be healthier and more even-tempered. She smiled, and nodded demurely, and pumped his hand with a small dry hand. She wore plastic sandals and a pressed white top. Everett could make out the line of two well-proportioned thighs below a linen skirt of acceptable length. There were only two folding chairs, and so, laughing silently, Bobby beckoned him inside. Bobby touched his neck often; a gauze pad covered a hole through which air whistled on every exhalation, and his speech was a crackling whisper which Everett could only make out by putting his good ear uncomfortably close to Bobby’s mouth. Jennifer seemed to understand him quite well, or not to care what he said; she sat on the other side of the living room in an overstuffed yellow chair, smiling and nodding. All the furniture was new; the coffee table was glass and chrome, and Bobby, who wore khaki pants, slid constantly into the crease of a leather sofa, and then worked his way back to the edge. To have any chance at understanding him, Everett had to pull a kitchen chair very close. He scrutinized the art on the walls: pictures of the jungle! He moved quickly to the next picture of a brown sun above yellow mountains, then to a sulky leopard. The cushions were vividly striped and shaped like peppermints. The house had been recently updated, which was disappointing, because he wanted to assess the Vietnamese’s grasp of home economy; how well could she clean? How did she work? He wanted to see her in action with some dishes or carpets.
“Much obliged for the hospitality,” he said.
“Thank you. My wife did all this.” Bobby croaked, waving his hand. “So you’re a lonely old prick, looking for a wife? Today is your lucky day, because I already did the hard work for you.” He launched into an account of his courtship; the phone calls and letters, and the visit to Tam Ky where they’d treated him like a king, and where one of his disability checks had been sufficient to purchase a new house for the family, after which they had literally carried him about the streets.
“I’m a hero in that village, I can get anything you want,” Bobby said. “Big change from the last time I was there. But you know what it was like.”
“Sure,” Everett said, uncertain what “it” meant, then understanding too late that Bobby meant the Vietnam War.
“I ain’t going to make you talk about it, don’t worry. Want something to drink?” He croaked for Jennifer to get them two beers and then, as his wife exited, he caught Everett staring intently at the slosh of her rump, and hit him on the arm. “That’s my wife, fella,” he said.
“I didn’t mean no harm, I’m just trying to see how good she walked, how her legs worked and such.”
“What are you looking for, a horse?” He made a drinking motion with his hand. “Relax, have a beer.”
“I don’t drink much,” Everett said. “At least I ain’t in some time.”
“That’s all right. I don’t either. It would run right out this hole.” Bobby shrugged, then backhanded Everett’s shoulder. “Her sister. Even younger. Real nice. Make you feel young again. Sweet as sugar.” Bobby narrowed his eyes, which were a bright minty green, and fringed with long lashes. “She says she wants a young man, but I think she’d do good with an older man, myself.”
“I need a woman who ain’t afraid to work a little bit, ” Everett said. “Someone who knows how to be happy in work.”
“They’re only girls.” Bobby leaned back and shrugged. “But I guess you remember how they work.”
Jennifer placed the beers on the glass table. Beads of moisture inched down the cans, each carrying a faint replica of the dark girl, the crippled man, and the bearded cowboy. The sun blazed, and Bobby’s eyes began to water profusely. Jennifer drew a pair of heavy curtains across the window. The girl was thinner than he’d first imagined. Thinner and shapelier, with hints of an elegance that might continue into her forties. Everett noticed a smell of medicine creeping from the hallway, astringent and sweet.
Bobby smiled at his wife. “Thanks,” he croaked.
Now why would you spoil her with all that thanking? Everett glanced sharply at Bobby, then back at the wife.
Jennifer murmured something into Bobby’s ear, and he nodded, and turned to Everett. “You plan to stay around here, right? No plans to move?”
“None I can think of,” Everett said.
“Good, because, you know, the sisters will want to be close. Raise their babies together, that kind of thing.”
“I think you and me should speak alone sir.” Everett delivered his salutations in the old country way, tacked on to a word like a diminutive: alonesir.
Bobby laughed soundlessly, wagging his head to indicate the extent of his mirth. “He’s ready for the altar, look at him. You haven’t even seen a picture,” he croaked.
Bobby glanced at his wife. She sprang up, catching at her lower lip to stifle a triumphant smile, and returned a moment later with a picture in a silver frame. Floating above the blue background that is the default choice of photo studios the world over was a young woman who looked very much like Jennifer, only with a longer nose and her bangs cut short. She was thin. Everett scrutinized her face, looking for traces of impudence or deceit. He could keep her away from television and other corrupting influences. He could still chop wood for her, he could work side-by-side with her. They’d grow happy without the need for conversation, because from conversation came lies. He had some old pictures of himself standing nearly naked beside the upended carcass of an alligator, with his skin blue-white and his hair flaming atop his head. He would show these to her so that when they made love she could sense the young man inside him, and she would not feel cheated.
“Pretty huh? Pretty? Come on.” Bobby hit his shoulder. “Prettier than you thought.”
“Let’s have us a little talk,” Everett said.
“Is it cold in here?” Bobby made a face and turned to his wife. “You cold?”
“I ain’t cold,” Everett said. “Let’s talk a little.”
Bobby nodded. “Let’s go to my office.”
This arrangement troubled Everett, as it should be the woman who left the room, but he let himself be led down a hallway so short and so filled with doorways and thermostats that there was no place to hang a picture. Bobby’s office was a shrine to his military career; there was a folded flag in a glass case on the wall, and a jumble of photographs behind the desk, within which sweaty men leaned on one another, or helicopters drooped amid menacing verdure. On the far wall was a photo of a swarthy tough with dog tags resting in the cleft of his pectorals. Everett reached out to steady himself, then shut his eyes tightly as the sweat poured out of his hairline. He had learned that if he could count to thirty, the worst would be past.
“I was a mothafuckin’ killer then. Afraid of nothing,” Bobby croaked, jerking a thumb at this photograph. “In the Mekong long enough to get a good dose of the orange, blue, pink, green, purple, you name it. What about you? Air Force? Navy? I know you weren’t getting juiced like me. Too healthy.”
“Now listen, does she talk back to you?”
“We’d see the planes overhead, lined up in formation. We’d cheer. What did we know? You could hear the chemicals fizzing on the leaves, like snow. Ever hear snow falling?”
“Is your wife a helpmeet, or does she give you attitude? I don’t stand for attitude. I can’t take no attitude.”
Bobby opened wide the purring, sooty eyes of an old womanizer, and shrugged. “She has moods sometimes. Don’t you?” He leaned in, working himself up to another statement. “We didn’t get it as bad as the Vietnamese. We just got trace amounts. Them, we really fucked up. Gutted ‘em and burned their villages, and if they got away from all that, we gave ‘em cancer. What a mess, huh?”
“Did you meet the sister?”
Bobby shook his head. “She was working at a farm when I went over. But listen now, she’s a good girl. A good, good, girl. Got me? All you got to is love her and you’ll be fine. Forget everything else.”
“And I guess your wife gives you sex whenever you want it, I guess there ain’t none of that sitting on the pussy like women here try to do.”
Bobby frowned and punched the metal desk. The other hand slowly wiped his face, which was suffused with pink tints. “God dammit, this is my wife here. This is the woman I love.”
“What do you want me to do, bubba? Just take this girl off your hands sight unseen? That don’t make no sense.” God damn, why did these things have to be so hard? It was a mistake, this whole crazy idea to have a Vietnamese wife. He’d never survive it, and to top it off this romancer would be his brother-in-law, and he’d have to hear about love and the war every time they visited. Everett’s stomach turned over heavily, and, fearing some explosion, he asked the way to the bathroom.
He found a sprawl of creams and prescription bottles atop the carpeted lid of the toilet tank; a line of grease ringed the bathtub, and hanging from the shower rod were IV bags which fluttered like bats in the gush of hot air from the vent. His dribbles of urine fell, and his stomach turned over violently, but held itself in check. He was grateful now that he’d fasted, but he was weak; he saw black spots in front of his eyes. On the way back he took a wrong turn and found himself in a kitchen among the disdainful company of sleek black appliances. Three trays were laid out, with slices of pork and clusters of gravy-covered beans on white plates. When Jennifer got him back to the living room he turned toward the area near Bobby’s crackling voice and declined forcefully the offer of lunch
“Seems like since you got here, you’ve had a problem,” Bobby said. “My wife worked hard on this meal.”
“I told you on the phone, bubba, I got a bad gut, and I can’t eat nothing. Now, I told you that.”
“She doesn’t use much spice, hardly any grease. You would never believe by the way it tastes that it’s good for you. You could at least taste it.”
“But I can’t eat it. That’s what I’m telling you, I can’t eat it.”
“You came back able-bodied, but you got something wrong in your head, is that it? You think someone would have an emotional problem it would be me. You know how many times I’ve been operated on? Twenty three times. Twenty three. Here I am beating cancer, and you don’t see me complaining. You don’t see me turning down a meal. You came back without a scratch, and you have emotional problems, is that it?”
“It’s an ulcer, bubba. An ulcer ain’t in your head, it’s in your gut.” Everett’s fists were clenched, and his chin was outthrust, and his glasses danced on his twitching temples.
Bobby waved his hand. “You worry too much. Look at you. What are you going to do, if you marry her sister? You won’t let her cook for you?”
“I tell you what I think.”
“Go on,” Bobby croaked. “Tell me.”
“You’re turning her head, bubba. It’s going to end bad for you, letting her play house. A woman will spoil quicker than milk, and then you’ll be in trouble. I guess if you think I’m going to do the sister this way, you got me all wrong, bubba. That ain’t for me, bubba.”
“And let me tell you something,” Bobby said. “I bet your wife left you, yeah? Your wife left because you were crazy, yeah? And you were hoping to pick up one of these Vietnamese gals because you wanted to fix the war? You figured they’d be grateful you could forgive yourself?” Bobby thumped his temple with a forefinger. “But you’re crazy. It’s in your head, and nothing can help you, there. And guess what else, friend? You were crazy before you went to ‘Nam, and there ain’t nobody to blame it on except yourself. I’ll bet you talk about flashbacks and shit. I know your kind. I been to the groups. Flesh cooking in the jungle. Heads rolling down muddy rivers, all that shit. You talk that, doncha?”
“Boy, you got no idea what you’re getting into.”
“You think I’m scared of you?” Bobby’s face was the color of old wine, his fists too were balled, and he lurched to his feet. “You insult my wife, you think I’m afraid of you?”
The leave-taking was brief. Everett said if there wasn’t ladies present he’d pop Bobby’s head clean off. On the sidewalk Everett turned and leered openly at Jennifer, letting his eyes linger on each usable part. When Bobby shuffled toward the house, presumably to get a weapon, Everett climbed into his truck, afraid for a moment that his back would lock up and prevent him from bringing his legs into the cab, but then he was in, and driving away. In his rear-view mirror he could see Bobby holding something in his hands while his head swung back and forth on that reedy neck.
He had difficulty focusing on the drive. The truck felt too large, the day remote, his body fluttered and flapped like a sail loose from its rigging. Bobby was letting his wife make a fool of him and it would end real bad. Everett had already been down that road. Not again, no sir. So many went down that road. An orange car flashed past; as it flickered over the asphalt a memory of fire, of green foliage writhing in flames as tall and broad as houses, returned to him, and despite his shame that his mind worked exactly as Bobby had surmised, he could not stop the damned memories, and with that memory came the sense of all he’d lost since then, including his wife and his daughter who was lost to him as as if she were dead, even more profoundly lost, because the dead can’t stop you from visiting them, and now he was out fooling around with these mail-order brides, anything to keep from being alone. Everett’s stomach produced a lower, sharper sequel to the squeeze he’d felt in Bobby’s office. Afraid to deny his bowels, he jerked the truck into a gas station. He shouldered into the bathroom and latched the stall and waited for the familiar issue of stinging mash. On the door was a poem which he’d read a thousand times before:
Here I sit with trembling bliss
Listening to the thundering piss
Now and then a fart is heard
Blended with a dropping turd
Everett’s bowels unknit. To his amazement, the production was solid. Then the urine started, warm and steady, Everett felt the sudden rush of clarity that comes with a satisfactory bowel movement, and with this new acuity of thought he observed that this poem was incorrect because one always shat and then pissed, that was the way of the body. Fishing his keys carefully from his pocket, he scratched “bullshit” in the khaki-colored metal, and put an arrow to the poem. He felt a plume of pride rise in his chest, intermingled with the triumphant spoor of the brown zeppelin circling in the bowl below. In this moment of clarity it occurred to him that Bobby was right, that he was trying to fix what could never be fixed. He was trying to fix the past, and fix the tragic things which had befallen him, in which he had participated, but all of that was remote and untouchable, beyond human influence. He’d been terrified to be alone with his demons, but when he really considered the facts, it was true that he was sleeping more, and fishing more, and that he’d even read a book recently, granted it was a Readers Digest abridged version, but he’d read it from start to finish. And with Sunny gone, there was no urgency to get better. Without Sunny to worry and shame him he might build something of his own. He could stay as sick as he was now, as long as he could tolerate himself, that was all that mattered. If he woke in the middle of the night with the urge to kill, if he took valiums and watched the pond all day, there was nobody around to be horrified and disappointed, nobody to urge him into VA programs and church prayer groups. So he had flashbacks. So he had paranoia. So what? At least he wasn’t like Bobby, setting up some woman to dominate and madden him. It hadn’t worked out the way he’d hoped with Bobby but maybe that was for the best. He’d survived those pictures of the jungle, those pictures which were as familiar and alien as a picture of one’s own entrails, he’d survived seeing a woman up close whose mother or whose uncle he might have killed in any number of ways, he was still alive. Alive and, by god, producing clean stools. That was a victory. Upon this turd he might raise up a tolerable life.
Two anarchy symbols etched in the steel mirror fit over his eyes like a pair of glasses. He felt weak, and he was a long time soaping his hands. When re-entered the afternoon, purple blotches rested like thistledown on the fields. He felt a powerful hunger.
He would stop and get some ice cream. He could do this, that he could spend hours on the toilet if need be, if he wanted the taste of ice cream all that bad. If Bobby wanted to make his woman fat and bitchy that was his business. Women were women. No matter where she came from she would know how to take a man’s happiness and squeeze it to death between her thighs. He would eat ice cream! The day was obscenely bright. Everett brushed at the sunlight behind his glasses and wished he could search in his glove box for a pair of tinted overlays, but his relaxation was so profound that it was all he could do to steer the truck. In the BiLo parking lot he sat and watched a mother and her three chunky children waddle into the store. Then he followed. He took four half gallons -- one vanilla, one chocolate, one mint chip, and one butter pecan – along with a bottle of ginger ale, these choices representing his traditional ideas about floats along with some of the more dangerous combinations with which he’d never allowed himself to experiment.
On the drive back to his house he clicked on the radio and listened to a news report about a plane that had exploded midair, hurtling a flight attendant 40,000 feet into the ocean. When they found her bobbing in the waves, gray with cold, she asked them for a cigarette. Everett laughed and, guarding his buoyant mood, clicked the radio back off. The spots in front of his eyes had grown more pronounced. Bobby’s wife was a dark-ass thing, and awfully cute, no question, and it would be hard to give up a woman as a goal, as a sexual and romantic destination, as a reason to live, as a bulwark against your panic and self-loathing, but it was probably for the best– he’d only hurt them and god knows how they hurt him.
The house came into view, molting in the sunlight, then the old oak tree, and the corn crib, and the trees peering at their reflections in the pond. He entered the back porch. In the kitchen window he saw an orange and black shape move noiselessly into the shadows. He was pulling his keys out of his pocket, wondering idly what sort of bird would cause that reflection, when the door swung back, and the smell of lemon soap drifted out, and he saw Sunny moving around in the gloom, using a towel to pat her hands.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “Oh, honey, I had to come back. Look at you. Just look at this place.”
“How’d you get here?” Everett said, dumbfounded.
“Buford brought me. Oh, honey.” She moved forward to embrace him, and in those few seconds his mental picture, his hagiograph, underwent a series of rapid alterations to conform to reality; pockets of jowl were hung from the jaw, wrinkles etched about the mouth, the hair coarsened, the body broadened; then she had him in her embrace, her teats pressing into his abdomen. When she pulled back she saw the look on his face and, misinterpreting the entreaty she found there, patted his bearded cheek. The rustle of the grocery bag caught her ear, and she reached down to pull the handles apart. She shook her head and clicked her tongue.
“What are you trying to do, kill yourself? Don’t worry, you sit there on the porch, and I’ll get you something easy on your stomach. Go on, go on and sit. “

Wrestley

Young son has an alter ego named "Wrestley", a coy, quiet little boy who likes to stand in the shadows of trees, or to roll silently up to you on his bicycle, or to sit by the side of the pool, where he waits patiently for someone to notice him. This is where I come in. I have strict instructions to notice him, and to recoil in surprise, and to go through through this dialog (or a close variant) with him:

"Little boy, what is your name?"
"Wrestley."
"Wrestley, do you know how to swim/ride a bike/play baseball?"
"Yes."
"Wrestley I have been looking all my life for a little boy to swim/ride bikes/play baseball with me! Would you like to play with me?"
"Yes."
"And will you come home with me, Wrestley, and live with me forever?"
"Yes."

When this dialog is over we rarely proceed to the aforementioned activity. We might get started with something, but before we can get very far, the son can't resist a reprisal of our little drama and so we re-enact the moment of Wrestley's discovery in an ever-expanding collection of scenarios.

Character: Man in Gym

He's got an elongated head, bald on the top, fringed with gray hair, which reminds you of the monastic and maniacal vultures that were featured in the early Disney animations. He favors tight undershirts of the Brando variety,out of which protrude a pair of bony shoulders covered all over in rambles of gray hair. He visits the bathroom often, and when he returns he is often sniffing his fingers with canine absorption, as if decoding some olfactory puzzle. He likes to warm up on a treadmill, which he sets at an angle so severe that he must hold onto the handrail in order to stay aboard. While he warms up he ogles nearby women with the most spectacular, enthusiastic, and shameless leer. His features light up, his head stays turned at a severe angle on his neck and his eyes grope up and down the anatomy of his unfortunate desire with impunity. In this, too, there is something cartoonish -- the glee and lust of a villain just before the dynamite is detonated.

Heights

I sat on a stone bench in the courtyard behind our house and watched our robust koi swim about; the randomness of their movements soothed me, and on this sullen Saturday I was eager to unclench my mind and allow a few pebbles of inspiration to fall into my consciousness, because I needed a breakthrough, because for a month now Tai Ping had beaten me to every punch, and there were mutterings – in reality there were no mutterings, only the taut sound of a truth ripening in the collective awareness – that Tai Ping had surpassed his mentor. I was sitting quietly, hands on my knees, head heavy with thought, when Percy wobbled across the gravel and laid one of her warm hands on the back of my neck, and asked me if I was still afraid of heights, and her impudent tone clashed so violently with my anxious cerebrations that I became angry, and told Percy that a truly intelligent man has access to his entire consciousness, and nothing inside him is beyond remediation.
Her neat trick was making it a matter of honor. My objections to her salesperson colleagues, who bounced around boardrooms and ballrooms like fragrant, overstuffed children, gabbing for hours on end about golf and wines, were met with, “Well, if you’re afraid, we can cancel.”
Percy referred to the Colorado trip as a time of transformation and renewal, of fresh perspectives and sweeping change; as it was a gift from her company, I could not scuttle it on financial grounds. I tried to explain that a crisis at work precluded my attendance, but she only pressed her berry-bright lips together and shook that great head slowly from side to side, and told me that a rest would do me good. Perhaps I began to believe her! Perhaps I began to hope that on some hygienic mountaintop I would be struck by the inspiration that my faithful koi had lately withheld, and would descend with my eyes aflame, clutching algorithmic thunderbolts, a visage so stern and terrifying that even Tai Ping’s narrow eyes would widen in awe.

The phobia struck as I inched down the gangplank, in the shadow of Percy’s fragrant bulk. As we took out seats, the fuselage seemed to hiccup and undulate like some enormous throat; giddy blue seats shoved one another so that I found it nearly impossible to squeeze into my row. The pilot blurted muzzy syllables in an aftershave baritone. Nobody seemed to know or care what he’d said. The passengers shuffled in, glassy-eyed and abstracted, like cattle cramming into the slaughterhouse car. In order to quash the bubble of panic in my throat, I told myself I’d solve my work problem before we touched down in Colorado. Yes, that was better. I buckled up and attempted to slip into the world of pure thought, but a man with a chin like a bubble threw himself back in his seat, jamming his headrest into my nose. His cowlick hovered before my watering eyes like a vortex of stupidity. The flight attendant neglected to make him sit back up before takeoff. I hated Percy already for dragging me to this ridiculous boondoggle. The plane rattled down the runway, screamed, and yanked its feet from the ground.
I turned resolutely to my problem. Tai Ping was in the office this very moment, working in his frictionless, noiseless, heatless way, a model of intellectual and physical efficiency, to trump me. As the space allotted to my lap was insufficient for my computer, I made several sketches of the problem (so complex that the first order of business was to frame it in some comprehensible way) on the cocktail napkins, but then Percy had a sinus attack from a sudden change in cabin pressure and, resourceful girl, she pressed my napkins to her nose a split second before she was convulsed.
When Percy removed the napkins I saw my prim UML objects drowning in a mass of translucent goop. I considered asking her to open the second napkin for a moment so I could fix the notations in my memory, but I knew she’d guffaw something about my nerdiness, so I desisted.

As the plane descended, it groaned like a bully forced to release a limp wimp. Percy leaned across me and snapped open the shade. “Look at the Rockies, my dear, they’re magnificent.”
A bubble had formed in my right-hand Eustachian tube; no matter how I swallowed or chewed the air, the pressure only grew more intense. Then, with a hideous creaking sound, the bubble squeezed itself into some dark cranny. The more I frowned and pounded my head, the more difficult it became to feel its presence. I thought of the Ceti eel slithering into Chekov’s brain while Khan, pectorals a-bulge, looked on; Percy shared with Khan a vigorous air and an affection for leather and wool, and I allowed myself to briefly hate her for the campaign she waged, by means overt and covert, against my peace of mind.
Percy turned to the man in the aisle seat. “Going on a little corporate retreat,” she said, in her best woman-of-the-world tones. “My company is picking up everything, don’t you love it, not to worry a bit about money?”
The man muttered something indistinct.
“My husband, can you believe it, has never been higher than sea level in his entire life? And he was at MIT. It’s absurd, someone with his intellect, so afraid.” Guffaw trailing into bemused hum.
The man muttered something else.
I opened my eyes. Ribbons of beige light trailed from the oblong windows, mixing with the antiseptic blue. I did not look out. It was bad enough to feel the plane shifting, to get the sensation from the deepening hue in the fuselage that we were banking ground ward. I still had the two days in Colorado. I could solve the problem. Stay up nights. Sandbag the clever Tai Ping with meaningless tasks. And if I couldn’t solve it? Well, that wasn’t worth considering. The pilot gargled into the microphone. A gong sounded; passengers surged madly into the aisle. Percy shouldered a red-faced man backward and motioned with her hand for me to join her, join her.

Our room looked out on the granite jumble of the Rockies receding into the distance like some impassable, Olympian barrier. Percy was in raptures. Immediately upon arrival she struggled out of her blue jeans and donned a capacious pantsuit, the slacks fitting high over her stomach. While she hung up her clothes she babbled about the good time we were going to have, the drinks we’d quaff, the meals we’d maw.
“I have some kind of pain.” I grimaced. “Something terrible in my right ear.”
“From the flight?” Flash of pursed lips.
“It’s simply agonizing.”
“Chew some gum, silly. It’s air pressure.”
But after she’d emptied her purse on the bed we discovered there was no more gum. In my annoyance I stalked to the window where I watched geese bob in Crayola-blue water.
Strolling to dinner: I was panicked over my mind’s inability to function. That pocket of ache had spread across the right side of my brain. I involuntarily recalled a medical film of an epileptic whose hemispheres been surgically disconnected; after the operation two distinct personalities emerged and the patient had carried on a conversation with herself, the face below the bandaged skull twisting this way and that. The mosaics on the arched ceilings depicted various alpine scenes. From the center of these tiled cups there hung crystalline chandeliers, drizzling glitter into my eyes.
“Oh, it’s gorgeous,” Percy said, adjusting her tomato-colored shawl.
The burnished doors of the elevator bonged open and we entered, rode upward (while Percy kissed at her reflection and made definitive marks along her upper lip with a pencil) and emerged on a stone terrace with misty clouds roiling only a few feet overhead. Percy snatched a flute of champagne and took three quarters of it in a drought, handed it to me, turned to a little man with a red beard and tiny eyes aglitter with avarice: “I can hand him anything alcoholic and I always know it’s safe. He doesn’t drink. Paul Zamm, meet my husband.”
Zamm trapped my hand in his broiling paw as he looked me up and down. “Meet my wife, Joan.” He never took his eyes off mine or indicated which of the women nearby was his wife. “You in sales, too?”
Percy rolled her eyes. “You kidding? Oh god no. He designs software. A genius.” she chortled.
“I won’t ask. You’ll talk all night, I know your type!” Zamm’s off hand palpated the vertebrae of a white-haired woman.
“And how are you?” The woman’s face was still shiny from a recent peel; as I cocked my head to pound again at my bubble, her implants made a wry smile in her plunged neckline.
“When did you get in?”
The woman nodded. “This morning. Paul wanted to do the train to the top of Pike’s Peak.”
“Oh, how was it?”
“I lost consciousness from the altitude,” Zamm said, giggling. “Sounds better than admitting that I had been drinking all day, and fell asleep.”
“Lush.”
“Do you know, the driver told us, anyone who ventures above 5,000 feet develops brain damage?” Zamm’s wife said. “Something about the oxygenation of the tissue, right? I told Paul that explains all those crazy mountain men.”
“How high are we now?” I said.
Zamm frowned and punched a query into his phone. “Too late!” He cackled. “We can’t be saved!”
“Get your picture taken yet?” Zamm’s wife said.
“Oh, god!” Percy seized my hand. “Catch up later?”
“Wait,” cried Zamm, rubbing the side of his nose. “How’d you do with virtualization?”
The photographer, an earnest- looking Asian with square trifocal lenses hovering before his sleepy eyes, put us against the stone railing and asked me several times (raising his hand as if pulling the strings on a marionette) to stand up straight. I resented him instantly. He reminded me of Tai Ping. I had once showed Tai Ping some sequences from the Pink Panther movies, a collection of those priceless battle scenes between Clouseau and Kato. Naturally I wept with mirth and expected Tai Ping, even if he missed Sellers’s subtle genius (twitching eyebrows, writhing mustache, lips puckering around some murdered syllable) to appreciate the slapstick combat; two men awash in feathers, shattering wooden screens.
“He said, ‘little yellow skin.’.” This from Tai Ping after the prolapse of an expressionless five minutes.
“Well, yes, but he’s a buffoon, you see.” I honked into my handkerchief, my cheeks a-quiver with suppressed guffaws.
“I find that offensive.” He stood and made for the door, his little back stiff with disapprobation.
The photographer asked me again to stand up straight.
“I am, damn you,” I said.
“He has a spinal condition,” Percy said.
“So sorry.”
“When did it get cloudy?” Percy said, through her fixed smile.
“Clouds roll down from the mountain.” The photographer adjusted us the way photographers always had, Percy at an angle and I facing the camera head on, my body positioned to make me look as wide as possible.
The photographer nodded with gratitude when Percy handed him a ticket from her purse. I dug in my ear, ground my thumb into the hinge of my jaw; was it possible that I was carrying around inside my head a small pocket of low pressure, stretching and deflating some crucial whorl of brain? Then there was a loud pinging sound which was picked up and repeated on the crowded balcony -- jewelry against champagne flutes.
“Dinner time!” Percy cried. “I’ll get us a seat. Refill my wine.” With this she took my face in her hand, compressed my cheeks, bussed me, and swung away through the crowd with ursine grace.

The reception dinner was one of those crowded affairs where conversation is made amid claustrophobic clusters of glassware; wine goblets, champagne flutes, the stolid water glasses with their dwindling pats of ice, the carafes of wine which constantly crowd one’s elbow. They brought out the courses as the band punched and tinkled through a series of muzak standards. Percy was already warmed up with her third wine and, casting out her stentorous net, raked in four people to her left with an amusing story about my fear of heights. I turned deliberately to my right. The woman there asked me a number of questions which, due to the noise, I failed to interpret correctly and before I knew it I was inveigled into a discussion about the chemical breakdown of lactose in the intestines. I could hardly hear my interlocutor (whom I will not bother describing except to say that her hair fell about her face like a potted vine), what with my damaged right ear and Percy’s nonsensical bleating in my left. Not that it mattered. People shouted. Bosoms heaved in glittering dresses. After a few cursory attempts everyone talked about whatever they liked. It was no more or less edifying than dining with a group of chimpanzees.
A small Frenchman sat on the other side of Percy, one of those Gallic bantams whose every expression conveyed resignation to his own desires and absolute intolerance of the world’s attempts to thwart him. His wife had coarse tresses and an aristocratic brow that lay across her nose at a perfect right angle, like a capital “T”. Francois and Anne-Marie. He wore a gray suit and a checkered shirt open two buttons at the neck, revealing a clipped carpet of chest hair. When he took a sip of his vodka-tonic he invariably shot his cuff to look at his Rolex. Percy found him charming and kept telling him so. Several times he reduced her to helpless fits of laughter during which she palmed her mouth, holding held her thumb and forefinger in readiness to pinch shut her nostrils, presumably to prevent a sudden egress of wine, as she was nearly always in mid-swallow when Francois delivered one of his bellicose punch lines. All this was agony to me; cooped up with these fluttering, flightless brains while what I needed was quiet, the gathering thunderbolt, the feverish solution!
But was I capable of logical thought? I could not stop worrying about the idea of tissue damage at altitude. Had my delicate mental ecosystem been dealt the kill shot on that airplane? I had to get back to that hotel room! God knows what Tai Ping had accomplished already.

Percy begged me to take a quick nightcap with the Emmanuels. We sat at a wooden table next to a pulsating brazier. The mountains crowded around like unwanted guests trying to hear the punch line of some joke. Percy chided me for my poor sportsmanship, for not participating in the festivities. She was drunk enough that her left eyelid had begun to droop; I’d have to take her home soon. I imagined her staggering and babbling, imagined letting her fall with a turgid splash into the pond.
I was angry. It was high time I started respecting my own genius; by god, who knew what Tai Ping had already uploaded into the source control system? Yes. I had to go. So, with a limp hand extended to Francois I took my leave, I dragged my long feet over the bridge and down and one of those endless carpeted hallways seen in horror-movie hotels. And then? An email with good news! Tai Ping had suffered a bout of food poisoning and would be out tomorrow. And then? I opened my laptop and began to code. After three breathless hours pursuing the scent of a solution through thickets of data, through shifting swamps of refactoring, I stood up abruptly. Time to take a break. I sloshed some water into a rocks glass, and went to the window. I threw back the curtain to espy Percy on a chaise lounge below me, in the relaxed posture that women assume when they are getting a spa service, only Percy was being serviced by the Frenchman, who was pressing his tidy buns forward, squeezing himself into her overgrown womanhood. I recognized in the comedic mismatch of their physical proportions my own ridiculousness all these years, the nerdy ectomorph rebounding like a ninepin from his Reubenesque wife in his frenetic attempts to bring her to pleasure, and, judging from the horrified and enthralled expression which had overspread Percy’s face, the little Frenchman was experiencing the success which had always eluded me.
No. I delivered a slap to my hollow cheek. It wasn’t real. I looked again. My god, he was rather energetic, he had the stamina of a true sex maniac. I must think. Not get emotional. I must not let this cloud my thinking. It was all too convenient. Why did they choose just this spot, directly below the window, to enact their grotesque sideshow? What did this mean? Was she trying to make me jealous, to distract me from my work? Did she believe, with an arrogance typically female, that my only chance at happiness lay in servicing her emotional needs? Was this how she’d bring me back to her, make herself relevant again?
I went to the laptop. I didn’t think of Percy and the Frenchman immediately, but as I stared at the screen my finger crept to my inflamed ear and my heart began to race. I was unable to make heads or tails of algorithms that I had written only minutes earlier. My mind slipped back to what I’d seen. I jumped up and drew the curtain. They were smoking cigarettes, their exhalations hanging like twisted paper above their heads. Perhaps it was only a hallucination. Perhaps the stress of the trip, perhaps that bubble in the brain, perhaps some change in routine, had rendered me temporarily insane. Had she loved him long? Had she brought me here to get rid of me? Were there drugs involved? Potions and powders slipped from sleeves? I frowned and sniffed at my water glass.

I woke in the morning a free man. I’d gone to bed with visions of righteous freedom burning in my mind and this idea of burning emerged from the changing room of my dreams as a line of fiery sunshine that flickered along the ceiling. And then as I watched the slurping tongue of fire and tried to establish (as a warm-up to tackling my code) the meteorological and floral conditions that allowed it to make those uncanny thrusts along the ceiling, I had an attack. Old Pan came whirling through the door, jaunty and evil as ever, doffing his ridiculous straw hat, his timeless eyes staring into mine, and I was gasping on the bathroom floor while Percy bellowed, through a cloud of wine fumes, something about my breathing into the plastic sack with which she was trying to asphyxiate me.
“You’re doing this to me,” I gasped. “I’m wise to your game.”
“Try to relax and breathe,” Percy said.

At breakfast I was forbidden to touch the coffee. Percy buttered her first roll, and then used the knife to punctuate a lecture on stress. I needed to take better care of myself, etcetera. She looked splendid; her dark complexion glowed with rosy tints. Her eyes sparkled with a child’s luminescence. My ear still hurt. I felt my mind caving in upon itself like a black hole.
When Francois came into the ballroom, his boots scuffing the garish carpet, Percy gave him a perfectly modulated smile and asked him to sit down, please. No, he couldn’t stay, he and Anne-Marie were going hiking. And we?
“Oh, wonderful! We’re going on a hike, too. Who knew we’d choose the same activity?”
“Funny we never discussed that last night,” Francois said, looking visibly uncomfortable. “But we were too busy doing this.” He tilted an imaginary glass of wine.
“Doing what, exactly?” I said.
“Oh, do you feel poorly?” Percy said to Francois.
“You don’t?”
“I feel wonderful,” Percy said.
“And you must feel fine too,” Francois said to me. “Mister non-drinker.”
I tried to stare him down, but he was standing in a blaze of sunshine, and my eyes began to water uncontrollably, and when I raised my trembling coffee cup, he averted his gaze and made some joke about the tendency of the French to avoid pointless exertion.

The van took us across a craggy red ridge; we descended into an amphitheater of rock, and parked in an deserted parking lot. We disembarked.
“And who is afraid of heights?” The tour guide said, raising her weathered hand.
Percy pointed at me.
“Okay, we got one?”
“I’m not afraid,” I said. “I am a vigorous man in the prime of life. Let’s go.”
I felt all my troubles stemmed from an inability act courageously, to wrest control from fate’s cold grasp. Would I just stand by while my wife boffed another man? Would I allow Tai Ping to chisel away at my feet of clay? I was devastated one moment, giddy the next. I felt capable of deeds heretofore reserved for fantasies; I began to picture a quick shove and a long, silent fall.
“Big talker,” Percy said.
“It is okay if I take pictures?” Francois had a camera slung around his neck, featuring a telephoto that must’ve been eight inches long. I wondered if Percy’s mind, as she admired the lens (“I’ll bet you could shoot just anything with that”), was calculating the diameter and length of the clammy tool in his shorts.
“Of course,” the guide said. “You should see the Japanese.”
“A bit of a stereotype,” Anne-Marie whispered, and I gave her a severe nod. I could revenge myself by seducing Anne-Marie. Ah, but she had no weakness for genius; look at Francois. I contemplated a rape and decided against it. I would avoid prison if possible. Had to keep a level head. Must not go giggling or barking mad, must go mad only on the inside. My revenge must be as elegant and cool as Percy’s provocation was obscene.
We went up a graded path, past several large outcroppings of rock against which the nimble Francois leaned Anne-Marie, taking pictures from all sorts of absurd angles. I tried not to ask about our elevation. Everyone else seemed fine. Percy, thick legs bursting from a pair of hiking shorts, pulverized the dirt with each step, panting like a locomotive as she made steady progress upward. The guide pointed out ponderosa pines, she pointed out lamb’s ear, aspen trees, and then, after a sudden turn, we came into view of a strange canyon. Spreading out below us at various distances were impossible vertical dimensions. A tiny pond closed its sightless eye as a cloud slid over the sun. The figure of a man, his arms and legs swinging, disappeared behind a low building. Even further away a man in climbing gear spidered up a wrinkled cliff. I felt my stomach turn and, before I could stop myself, I was pressed against the rocks behind us.
“Oh, his heights,” Percy said, twisting lips the color of old blood.
“Are you all right, sir?”
I couldn’t speak. My throat had been cemented over. The sunlight reached down and tickled me with thin fingers; my face was creased with a pleading smile.
“He’s had a bad time already,” Percy said. “He’s been working too hard.”
“We could connect with a tamer trail,” The guide said. “Why don’t we do that. This way, sir.”
Perhaps to reassure me, perhaps to distract me, the guide opened her map and pointed out with a calloused finger where we’d soon intersect a trail that ran, she said, “alongside a creek. Nice for everyone.”
I heard Francois, twenty paces ahead, groan and mumble something to his wife. She continued to ascend various rocks, she vamped from vertiginous perches for his massive camera. Francois spun his lens, he squatted and leapt upward, he ducked and dodged, he exclaimed, squinted at the sun, wiped his brow with a chamois which he kept in the breast pocket of his camp shirt. I staggered along the trail, as far from the edge as I could get, while the guide cupped my elbow. A fine position, this. Was I finished? Had Percy succeeded, like a modern-day Delilah, in robbing me of my powers? I tried to transform the clouds into software objects, I tried to imagine my way into a digital world where my problems could be solved, I beseeched my mind for some sign of its former splendor but got back only a dull ache and the sensation of oily smoke rising in my skull; I could not escape this oppressive reality.
We came back below the tree line. The shifting green light seemed to push the dirt around below my feet. Perhaps all I had left, like Samson, was a final press of the temple pillars. Only one chance, that was all I asked of life. Like a cloying melody, that vision of Francois and Percy recurred, it wove itself around my thoughts, Francois with his hips in motion and Percy with those legs thrust star-ward like twin telescopes; and now I pounded at my head for a different reason, and was told by Percy to let the bubble make a natural exit, but what I had in me now could only be blasted out, could only be shaken loose by some violent shock.
We came to a small clearing where the path forked. Both trails, the guide said, ran along the river – this one, as she’d promised (finger tracing the map again) went down while the other went upward a “few more thousand feet, to the waterfalls.”
“Is the upward trail difficult?” I said.
The guide shrugged. Her lower lip protruded. “Nah. I mean, not really, but if you have heights issues.”
“I’d like to take the upward trail,” I said.
“Now come on,” Percy said.
“Are you afraid?” I grinned. My face hurt.
“We can go that way if you want,” the guide shrugged and scuffed her feet.
“I don’t care,” Anne-Marie said.
Decision time: Francois or Percy? It was Percy’s fault, certainly, for dragging me on this trip and, by exposing me to these ruinous altitudes, turning my mind, my cornucopia of cognition, into a dry husk; her fault for the evil bubble in my ear, for the searing image of the chaise-boff which appeared ceaselessly before me. But still, she was my wife, after all – I was not one of those Hitchcockian monsters who calls his wife down to the basement so she can admire the grave he’s dug for her. No, I wanted to spare Percy, but she must be made to see, I must tell her in the silent language of horror, that I was not to be trifled with again.
“Some fine pictures up there, Francois.” As I let my eyes cycle through the granola guide, the severe Anne-Marie, the toady Francois; I could use his lust for the picturesque to get him alone.
“That may be,” Francois said, mopping his brow. “No offense intended but you are not much fun in this nature.”
“Let’s meet back in one hour,” I said. “Francois and I will go on up. Some lovely pictures there, I would imagine.”
“Are you sure?” Percy said.
“I can’t do that,” the guide said. “I’m responsible.”
“We’re in a public park. We can go where we like. Give me the map, please.” I snatched it from her hand. “One hour. We’ll go up for half an hour, then come back.”
“It’s fine.” Francois waved his hand, flipping his fingers upward like the bristles on a paintbrush. “I will take pictures, and he has something to prove, this man, I think.”
“I don’t mind going,” Percy said.
“You should keep Anne-Marie company.” I wanted to tell her she should be grateful I was sparing her bovine life, that she should be happy that I’d led her out to pasture instead of the slaughterhouse, but I desisted. I smiled. “I am excited to conquer one of my fears. Just the guys, hey?”

The map showed an unassuming black line that stretched through penciled trees, next to the gray band of a river. When we entered the trailhead there was very little dissonance between representation and inspiration. The trail was wide and the grade almost imperceptible. A small alpine stream babbled over the rocks. We stopped and splashed the cold water on our faces and then kept on. Gradually we came into regions more remote; the canopy overhead shut out the sky. The brook crept muttering away into the undergrowth. The grade grew more severe and our conversation (I was being as pleasant as possible), once fluid, now came in disconnected splashes. Francois, his pert buttocks pumping in green shorts, puffed his bearded cheeks and fell silent. There were switchbacks, and suddenly we were at the base of a massive frowning cliff whose fir trees jutted out like underbiting fangs.
“This is lovely,” Francois said. “I will take a few pictures.”
“Did you know, Francois that my wife planned your exhibition as a blow to my mental acuity?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Francois said, peering into his camera. The snaps of his remonstrating shutter hung in the air.
“Oh, I think you do,” I said.
He pressed on. I followed, a tuneless song whistling in and out of my lungs. The reduction in air pressure eased the pain in my ear and loosened the channels of my mind. I felt more comfortable. I attempted again to make Francois understand.
“Have you ever wondered, my friend Francois,” I panted, “The Faustus myth was never about the Satan, Il Duce, some divinity with a craving for souls, no, it’s about the willingness to make one’s bargains with the world. Like a bogeyman it guards, with its tale of a lost soul, the secret of personal power.”
“I am not a reader,” Francois’s voice brushed my face like a fog. “I am not liking all this talk by you. I may tell you frankly I find you unpleasant.”
I laughed. “Of course you do, my friend Francois.”
Through more switchbacks, along aspen-crowded tunnels, panting up a series of small hills (Francois’s little arms swinging from his narrow shoulders, his dainty feet crunching the dust. Oh, how I hated him). Then we turned and everything to our left fell away as if wiped clean by a giant hand. The plummeting space yawned below me, the air tugged at my pantleg. And there, perhaps a hundred yards distant or perhaps half a mile (it was impossible to judge the distance accurately), was another vertical face, the older brother of the first, orders of magnitude larger, menacing, richly forested with those vertical trees, each of the thousands my vision waving and undulating in the breeze. The effect was mesmeric, like the glittering scales of a serpent. I felt the remnants of sanity drain out the soles of my shoes, sucked up by the greedy mountain dirt. My papery heart crackled with each painful spasm. Still, I could not stop looking. To continue upward was impossible but to go back down was equally impossible. Something must change before we could go on. Time sloshed in its basin, hours splashed, minutes trickled. Had I already killed him? I began to pant; I pushed myself back against the rock. Carefully. Carefully. I opened my bottle of water and took a drink. And there was Francois, sitting on a rock nearby, framing that horrible sight with an eyepiece attached to his neck by a silver chain.
“Magnificent, I think, is the word?” he said. “You are not afraid?”
“Did you enjoy last night,” I said, my voice floating up from my belt. “Did you enjoy my wife?”
He did not lower the eyepiece. “Don’t be a fool.”
“It was grotesque,” I said. “But give her this. She did get my attention.”
“We were drinking a nightcap, nothing more.” He frowned and lowered the eyepiece. His puffy, ovoid eyes stayed fixed on my face.
“You drank your fill, from what I could see,” I panted.
“Perhaps you should see a doctor for your head.”
“And you must pay, Francois. You must pay.”
“I’m going back.” Francois grunted himself upright, fluffed his hair, which was like a puff of smoke in the slanting sunlight, and turned on the narrow pass. “I think that you are a little crazy.”
“Something must be done, Francois.”
“Look, what do you want me to say?” he half-turned, spread his hands. “Your wife is your business. She is nice enough, but too much for me. I would not know what to do with so much woman.”
He made as if to pass me, and I was filled with manic glee at the realization that he was in my power, the time was at hand. The time was at hand. I imagined my rigid fingers dive-bombing his little ribs, the electric stiffening of his body, the helpless giggles, his feet losing their grasp as I shoved him into space. I found myself sneaking behind him, my toes twinkling in my shoes, my arms above my head, fingers wiggling like worms. I suppose I looked at that moment exactly like Sylvester the Cat stalking poor Tweety Bird, and just as in those madcap cartoons, it was a chance movement that turned the tables; as I was preparing to pounce, to deliver him into the hands of green gravity, Francois spun to interject some axiomatic comment on the nature of women. His mouth was a pink hole in his beard. We collided. I rebounded. The lichen-covered rock slipped away from my feet. I pivoted backward and saw, in its upside-down splendor, the whispering mountainside, the wavering firs.
I expected to be dead in a matter of seconds. I even had a moment, god help me, where I thought of my life as one long joke culminating in this absurd punch line (the man afraid of heights goes off a cliff). Then I impacted the mountainside for the first time and I realized that Percy, clever clever girl, had won, had defeated me utterly. Then came the fast-whipping vegetation, my screams, my hopeless clutches, my somersaults suddenly and brutally arrested by the same trail some two hundred feet down the mountain. I did not even have the good fortune to black out. I stayed conscious while Francois explained over and over (to Percy, the guide, the medics) that I had tried to tickle him on the trail.
“Altitude madness,” someone said.
As they shut the doors on the ambulance I slipped into a daze; I saw myself in the hospital, hunched over my laptop where in a single incendiary session, lasting fourteen morphine-glazed hours, I would write over two thousand lines of code, and vanquish Tai Ping. Someone was clutching my hand. I squinted to make out the face, saw that familiar forehead, those soft jowls, covered with a black down that shimmered in the green light from the ambulance window. Her mouth was moving, and although I could not make out the words, I gave her a smile. If my arms were no longer functional she might have to serve as my amanuensis, because I could feel the ideas coming, really coming this time, marching across the darkness of my mind with the synchronized stride of soldiers on parade.

Music Board

I listen to an online radio station pretty regularly; it is my "favorite" station, I suppose, and I like that I can go onto the message boards and see what people are saying about the song. Today I happened to go to the message board for a certain song, and I found that the artist had signed in, and thanked the station for playing his song. Now, that takes balls, to go in and read what other people are saying about you nearly in real time.

Joe Cromwell

Today a recruiter sent me some resumes to look over, in preparation for an interview process starting Monday. The recruiter's first name was "Joe" and, while I noted the commonness of the name, for some reason it stuck with me. Tonight I was driving the family home from dinner at Mexican restaurant (with a baja flavor, walls decorated with surf posters, administered by a couple of hardy waitresses, one of whom was dressed in a taco suit) and I suddenly recalled another Joe -- Joe Cromwell, a friend of my brother and me from high school. We worked together on a construction crew for two summers. Our job was to go to the empty shell of a house and spread a massive pile of sand with our shovels. A menial, backbreaking labor, the end of which receded before you like a mirage. We were the lowest of the low on the totem pole, and were rudely ignored and insulted by the carpenters and cement men; we had a little radio we listened to, and at lunchtime we would throw down our shovels and head to a nearby convenience store to load up on fountain sodas and junk food, and to forget for a few minutes the long afternoon still to come.
Someone told Joe he looked like Richard Marx and so, as Joe was keen to increase his odds with the fair sex (and in high school nothing trumps a resemblance to a movie or rock star), he began to work on a Marxist lid. Over the course of two years Joe grew himself a magnificent mane which first equaled, then overtook, then completely dominated the hairdo which had served as its initial inspiration. Joe's hair was like an entity unto itself, with brassy sausage curls spilling down the back, to his shoulders, and ellipses of bleached bang falling rakishly over an eyebrow; that second summer Joe employed the 'do in a number of easy seductions at a nearby 7-11, which was staffed almost entirely by the cheerleading squad of a local high school. All those nights of lovemaking took their toll; Joe's eyes receded into the shadows of his bangs, and his face grew lean. After one of these sportive nights he would be found leaning against his shovel, staring into space, or snoozing in the shade of our giant sand pile. My brother and I felt it was our duty to support Joe's run; it was accepted as a universal truth that the pursuit of trim trumped all other concerns, so we let Joe sleep while we did our work and his, too. At lunch he related in painstaking detail every move, every word, every sensation with a crooked, incredulous smile. The carpenters and masons nicknamed him "loverboy." Joe did not lord his talent over us; he was always keen to find out if his latest girl had any friends. Alas, our short mousy locks, our tonsorial timidity, were disappointing to the wide-eyed cheerleaders, but there were occasions, in that second summer, when the three of us were all tired on the same morning and then we said very little, and just worked, and stayed lost in our private reveries.

So Long

It's been so long since I've posted here with any regularity, and I don't have much to say at the moment except that the passage of time is such a strange thing -- the way it jerks you out of those valleys full of overgrown shadows, which you had stopped hoping to ever escape, and the way it tricks you into stepping off of those sunny mountaintops, giggling to yourself like Mr. Magoo. The projector whirs, the images flicker, and sometimes you are ready to assent once and for all to the wisdom of the nursery rhymes, and the big shivery nights of childhood seem as if they are just around the corner again.

The Story

Thinking now, thinking now...fiction is so strange. For me, the tighter I grasp it, the more it eludes me. The harder I try to find the core of some character, to line up all the events and themes in a story, the more I find the characters splintering, fragmenting, opening themselves to endless combinations and possibilities.

I wrote a story about a man who is interested in UFOs. I am on my 10th version now, and only now am I pretty certain what I want him to do. The first drafts were all a bit pushy. There was no sense of ease or celebration. It hurt me, this story. I even tried (desperately, anxiously) a post-modern approach which involved the author himself making an appearance as the victim of the main character. It was all right, but of course the story hadn't been set up to support this twist, and I felt no inclination to do the work required to make it all line up.

So now I'm back to another idea. This is how it goes.