Chapter 1 - Parallax

Chapter 1

Parallax

Demming New Mexico, 1985 

 

I learned to properly worship Satan from a guy named Cole, in the mid-eighties, in a hotel room, in Demming New Mexico.  It was also the first time I paid for sex, and the first time I shot a man.  Some generational wind had blown his great grandparents across the whole of the US after blowing them over an ocean, between here and Wales, or Ireland and all the way up to a damned barbed wire fence in the southern New Mexican dessert, which is already rare on barbed wire.  There they stayed until the Welsh washed off and three generations worth came, bloomed, hungered and went down into red dirt, until poverty, and powerlessness was all that was left, that and Cole.  His lineage survived the Romans but was beaten by the welfare state, and now he barely shared a trailer with his ex-sister-n-law and her progeny and just didn't fucking eat in favor of cigarettes and whisky.  We mostly stayed in my room at the Baker or down the street at the Old Mission Cafe, where for hours, we would sit at the table next to the Bussers door and say words that would have damned us if anyone listened.  He used to tilt the world like he was trying to peer around inside of a comic book pane, and if he could just trick the physics, just snag it on the edge of the frame with his shaking fingers, he could see through that window what was not written into existence yet, as unborn as it were unreal and whatever it could be, I think Cole thought he could be it too.  And maybe that was escape, but escape was my word, not his.  Cole was always returning. 

 

On the many journeys we would take at those Formica tables in the Cafe or the heavy wooden one in my room at the Baker, we would come to bridges made of syntax in poor reflection and he would steady an idea of himself against the nicotine and alcohol, making a slow knife of his left hand through the air.  Short.  Dispassionate, as we would sit and argue navigable routes of universes and futures using a trojan horse of ideas built solely from fear, uncertainty and loneliness and pushed through the universe with sails that caught only upon our words. 

 

"I am left hand path, man.  I am left hand path."  he would shake his head not looking directly at his hand.  "not all that shit over there" he would indicate with his right hand in a half hail, half halt gesture, also, not looking. pointing in his way at he things wrong with the world, for him this could be summed up as a taxonomy of lies.  for me, lies were the only thing that truly mattered. 

 

And there in that internal brazier that lit his eyes, the babies, all of those babies that were him, would be thrown to a brass Moloch, and from that smoke of self incineration that I worshiped about him, there rose only the loss of their part in a long and un-broken song.  He shook his head no to that story, and a tear formed.  He shook his head no and wiped his hands on his dirty pants, like he was left here, stranded by a purpose that forgot to check the ships manifest and didn't notice that they were missing one of their own, that he was there in front of them, waiting, his human camouflage so convincing that they marked him absent while he screamed, waved and leaped the chain-link fence, and ran through the jet wash and watched the Time he should have been in, move away, then move farther away, and then become reachable only through pain and sorcery.  In the booth he looked around, and through the glass and glow of his eyes he saw that moment, and I could see the trees moving, as the moment came and went again.  He was there, is there now, where the world turned right.  This is about the farthest coffee could take us.  We arrived early and late, but we always arrived here.  Alcohol was next, it opened a large door but only briefly, then, only blood could keep it open.  We killed rarely, very rarely, but bloodshed threw open what the crowbar of drugs could only let us glimpse.  Bloodshed could draw a smile from both of us, wash us in relief, and make plane that which reason and thought could not make known.     

 

I think about him often, and now, as I sit at a worse table, and without good company, as someone who found passage on a similar ship, I look out my porthole and the man in the desert below, destined to be left in time, a good answer to a question that may not be asked again, an actual satanist, though I always saw him as a stoic with an ironic hobby, wounded, brilliant, tragic but a man, shakes his fist at the rest of us, as we turn to the inflight movie, and he drowns in a dessert, marooned in time, and would damn us if we returned, would damn us all if he could have his way.  Please God, someone give him his way.   

 

Decades later now, sitting at an upity coffee shop in Kalispell, I tear the add out of The Review that was almost certainly a Hail Mary of Dark Energy released through time to my own subconscious and extruded in ink and wood pulp into a color photo of Lescombes Winery, and what could only be a Black Muscato advertising same, in lovely downtown Demming NM.  My God.  My good old friend whom I have left, is still alive, still drowning.  How long can you swim?  And why will none of us save you.  And is wine all that is left of the blood? 

 

I Feel it of course.  ripples through time.  magic is real if i believe it.  a rubes knee kick to god that never misses.  the hippies said perception is reality, but lies barely even get a sniff test anymore, they are seen for what they are, grabbed up like a aby saved from traffic and held high, celebrated, a war bond or a golden AK, waved like it could ever mean something like it did once before, in its own world, where it just was, where it worked, stumbled and was overlooked.   

 

He tries to come here.  Demming is not a distance.  were i not careful, i may turn the door knob to a bedroom the wrong way and find myself there, inexcusably guilty. there are times if i do not hold the door, though it be glass and i see though it to the person flummoxed, disbelieving almost, that i would bar them from leaving, hold tight against their exit, a prank, a joke, a madman?  but can feel his hand on the other side of the knob, cold, smoke stained, dirty from the long road, the low road, the road of the worker, the serf, the layoff, the last one out.  and then.  and then it goes, where ever he is, he has walked a away from a hunch, an intuition, left a doorway of rain for one less wet ten paces down. 

 

But i am no longer 30 and this is not Deming.  

 

I rise to stand, and stare at the door to get a feel.  Cole has stopped hiding under a miniature folded paper near the leg of the table and has gone.  I fold my own paper and slide it into the oversized pocket of my coat and look longer at the bathroom door.  i look for traps.  i sniff, the air, but i am just crazy, thats it.  nothing to see here anymore.   

 

At the door, it looks like I am stretching, going to the sole unisex bathroom in an eatery designed around 4 cubic feet per seat.  I aim to take a shit.  An old man like me, a bathroom trip is a nuisance, to others, a sign of failure of poor planning.  Before the door, a wave of paranoia or a hail mary premonition lands upon my face and srews it sideways, drains the blood and makes my heart hit its own rumble strips. before I reach, I know, If I turn the knob to the left, I will exit the bussboy door in the Old Mission Cafe, in the ruins of the past, a place not yet destroyed by the fire i lit 30 years ago, and I will emerge onto the streets of Deming only to see him, Cole, my brother, casting his gaze askance, in my direction, at me, having known as I know now, that I can open that door, go there.  But the archetype is strong today, it saves my life like an olive from the can about to roll to the floor, it pulls me back by the elbow, or does it..  youokaycan wecall someoneheyshould wecallsomeone sirdoyouwantusto call some one...   

 

"No, I'm fine, I'm just old".  I say to a bustle of interest.  I must be swaying, i may even be pre heart attack, hy hand is reaching fro a door knob quivering, correcting like a drunk.  I push, i push forward to reach the door, to trun right, to get in, to hide.  I open the door and go into the bathroom and sit on the toilet in my pants, but everythign is wrong.  I am followed by a few well meaning 30 somethings that are really just processing something about their own old parents, and while I am sure someone calls an ambulance, i convince them i cannot shit with the door open, which they will not let me shut completely, isheokay, idontknow, nohes talkingyes..  I repeat the motion with my right hand.  my elbows are on the toilet i am tryign to sit on, how could i fuck up sitting down?  I twist my hand to the right, i grab at the air tryign to connect with somethign and twist it to the right but its jsut the spave in front of the sink, there is no door anymore and I am either having an lsd flashback or there is like five peopel in the bathroom with me.  I must turn right.  I must always turn right.   

 

1000 miles away and both now and 30 years ago, Cole walks past the ruins where we once sat for many hours of our lives, and feels it.  That fucking guy is gonna stop drinking and smoking someday, and save up for a car and then, I, and we, will all be well and truly fucked. 

 

  "Fuckit.  Is my Cinnamon roll ready? Just gimme the cinnamon roll and the coffee.  I can eat in here?" like it's possible I am thinking that it might be, i look around.  I could.  To them its a question?  Thers back back to me; "Can you stand up?, no? its okay, someone's on the way.  Just relax, your gonna be fine."  i can't find anythign in the world to pin myslef upon.  there are faces but there is no focus.  I think I may have fucked up. 

 

Jesus Christ.  What must I look like, that she said that?  Oh Holy shit, am I bleeding?  I'm bleeding..  I feel for my teeth to s... "Nope, don't do that.  Here, Nope, no." she says as she keeps grabbing my hand keeping me from touching my mouth to count teeth.  Oh fuck.  I can't even see blood?  What have I done.  A real Fisher King. 

 

Outside, the bathroom, the jostle and commotion has ebbed.  Truly a shocking amount of concern for a stranger.  mostly from a mothering barista too young and without motherly instincts for mothering. I need to get out of this bathroom, or at least get my coffee and cinnamon roll. I need to get out of the bathroom.   

 

"Jesus Dan is that you, what the hell happend? Oh Shit.." my Ex, Matty exclaims.  Is she my ex?  I bet we would not agree that we dated.  God, I bet she does not think we dated.  I wonder how she describes it, if she ever does, Friends, We saw each other for a while, It was just a thing?  "What, wait, hold still, hold on, 'HEY' (directed outside the bathroom where so much is going on now) "someone's gonna half to..." and then I sleep.  the noise stops.  all i hear is dripping water.  the echoeness of a small place, then poof.   

 

I do not wake to a beeping in a hospital bed.  I do not wake in a hospital bed.  I am in the back of the ambulance looking out the back door from the floor of said ambulance at the frosting covered peaks of the mountains in the east.  and I am certain I, we just had sex.  My dick is still cum covered and she is standing outside the ambulance door, having just hopped down, and is pulling her pants up over her perfect ass. "Do I seem okay to you?" I ask her, and she laughs so hard she almost falls down.  Matyy has stitched me up, Lidocained me, and drove up to the overlook past the trail head above Whitefish.  I sit up and put my dick away. I wanted to be thirstier, than i was, then i remembered the IV.  "where's a fucking mirror in this thing?" but the question is more to myself. i am in the back of an ambulance again...  my head hurts.  I am certainly crazy.  and now, now I have missing time. 

 

I close my eyes and breathe.  I am here.  I am returned again.  Matty thinks they are episodic seizures and that i am racking up brain damage.  to me its credit card debt while i have a terminal illness.  Matty has saved me again.   

 

"I am so old" I say to my polished stainless steel reflection. "Your not old" she says dismissively. "I am so old." I tell her. and we are close again, a break up washed away with some pelvic grinding and the memory of love or affection or whatever reflection could still swim to the surface of us from the mud stirred waters of loves diminishing returns. 

 

"Your not old and your not ugly, stop it." she says.   

 

Time has always been a lake shore to me, never a river.  Drown me in time.  Walk me out with incumbant fear and at first careful steps.  Drown me in her.  Forget my shore.  "I could stay here forever" i say, and she looks back at me, light like gods candy thrown through her hair and in that second, perfection, painlessness, purity.  Her smile and everything it means, all that time now a lake like an ocean, never a river. "It was never a river Amy" I say.  "Who the fuck is Amy?" Matty yells back genuinely pissed off.   

 

That was quick. "You know what asshole" she determines, "you can walk, get the fuck out of my car!" she says and i do.  "Ah fuck I am sorry" but she cannot hear me.  yep that's where the stiches are, on my scalp.  and as she leaves me in dust, the dust clears.  I walk down to the trail head, not far and then stay on the wrong side of 93 and head back into town. 

 

It's not excruciating, it's not even awkward.  Its flipping through channels while someone is talking to you, it's on and off a bus with tourists for only a stop as you hustle between comfort and home while they see every moment too brightly, to adoringly to ever enter it, and so wander in dolor, snowblind but herded, and never able to really get off the bus, not really.  God save the Archetypes.     

 

Feeding the Archetype is easy.  The Archetype is hungry.  the Archetype is always hungry.  someone would call it a lie, but to me, we auto sort through the ever shrinking lenses of realities seive, into a bucket that just at some point stops trying to figure out the final truth about us.  for me that bucket is "asshole" mostly, though i can still find pimples on my skin and have what you might call memories or hallucinations, Human Richness, i really only amount to an Asshole in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Its a long walk to the paper, because i hate walking.  at work, at The Review, lowercase kate tries to take my coat as i walk in the door, then spends a few moments wiping cinamon roll icing off my back.  No cum jokes.  I psst her away and she wrinkles at me undefensively and goes back behind the counter at reception, sitting with way too much sexual energy, and points at me and makes a growl face, and I make a retard face back at her, and go to my desk and sit, and can someone on this planet make me a fucking chair please?   

 

there are Sticky notes from lower case kate, one says "coffee?" with a question mark on it, a package in brown paper with twine string, the August edition of Locus, the Billings Gazette, the Standard and the Daily all wet, 6 letters, a bobble head of someone supposed to look like me found presumably in a trash can not located in this building, a ream of paper from the mailroom, a shoe, Is that my shoe?  I check my feet.  A one dollar bill with a fist flipping me off in sharpie written over crazy George's face. 

 

The package probably has a head in it, even though its small.  It's probably a shrunken head.  It's definitely a head, who puts this kind of time into a package.  Holy shit, this is what is meant by Bespoke!   

 

"Billy wants the mail room to open that" comes Cathy's voice. 

 

"Billy fucks his dog." I reply.  I can see her shift peripherally, but I don't care and didn't want to see it.  Cathy is Billy's ExecSec and sits against one of his glass walls on a couple different levels.  Billy's blinds are always opening and closing for dramatic effect.  I shake the box to see if it makes head flopping around noises, but its definitely a book.    

 

I turn and look into Cathy's face until she physically becomes a hiccup and looks away.  "You don't care?" I prompt her, but she head wobbles, asks what, says she cares, asks, "care about what?" and then says shell call the mail room to come up, and dials Ruth's old line, Jimmy picks up with his outdoor voice, and I can hear him downstairs and on the receiver at the same time., and Billy starts fucking with his blinds, and I drop all the letters into my trash can from which I am sure at least two of those letters were pulled from and put back onto my desk, and take my scissors up and all without breaking eye contact with Cathy, "that he fucks his own dog Cathy, I've seen it." and I start counting coup on the package, which she is physically reacting to.  Billy raps on the glass of his office wall from within his office with a knuckle, a real 'Hey You', and a good knock, then again, for my attention which he cannot purchase with a knuckle no matter how well he raps, then Jimmy from the stairwell is up here popping gum, and that's it, I flip the scissors around in my hand and the mood goes from testing to suicide by cop and Cathy is talking over the crescendo in my head and Billys door has opened and "Let Jimmy take that" and "Ricin" and "Put the Scissors Down" are like song titles in a greatest hits commercial, and knowing it's a book that is in the box having jostled it enough, I drive the scissors into it three times really hard and shout "Ohh, OOHHH!"  and Cathy might have shit, and she skirt-walk-runs from behind her desk past Billy and into his office, and a "what the fuck is a matter with you" shoots out of Billy's head,  and in Jimmy's loudspeaker voice a "whoa, is it dead yet" and lowercase kate is chewing her lower lip looking at me while she leans back, legs crossed, bested somehow, pissed about something simple and yet unimaginably complex, and a "hey, get the fuck in my office now" and then he follows it with a "Cathy, get out of my office" and here she comes again, same skirt-walk but more of a jog and less of a run, and I turn and look at jimmy and say "Ill see that package burned alive in this office before I ever give it to you Jimmy", and then a "Now I said" from Billy, and a "Fine" from me, and I put the box on my desk with the scissors sticking out of the top while looking at Jimmy and I shake my head 'no' to him and back away, then turn into Billys office and shut the door behind me and sit in the only good chair at this fucking paper. 

 

"what's that old lawyers name" but Billy just sits down and genuinely looks at me.  "the one that did that great plein air, it was down in that lady's coffee shop in Kalispell."  and he looks.  Billy has always been in control of his voice.  I used to call it being stupid.  "Verne, or some old guy name like that, he was 60 like 20 years ago.  the old lawyer guy", but, Billy frowns indicating he does not know.  "Val, Alvine, fuck, I am gonna be stuck here, not Lou, not ROY!  Fucking ROY!"  Billy nods, "Roy.  I really think if Cathy retained Roy, they could get me on assault for what just happened out there." and Billy smiles about as wide as he can and then starts wheezing.  "I swear to god, I thought she was gonna cum or just seize up right there," and Billy through the wheezes "You gotta fucking, you can't" and then more wheezing, and I say "Fucking Roy." lean back and smile. 

 

"You know, you gotta quit farting in here, your gonna make a terrible impression on Cathy" I tell him, "We can all hear it" but he is still wheezing, "Youve really put her through a lot", but now I am laughing, and though Billy will be dead soon enough, the pain is worth the laugh at least as far as I am concerned, and then we are spent and might as well have been fucking for the release of a good laugh like that offers a soul.  It may have even pushed the cancer back a few weeks, but his treatment is just sweeping water.  

 

"They found another one." he says to me, once the room had stilled and our fates had each rodeo wrapped our attention on distances and destinies manifest here only in the subconscious with color and urge, and his words put us back in our shoes.  He was a paper man, a good man turned leader, He ran the Whitefish Review, and I was an asshole, not even a gumshoe and no reporter.  I was and am a bad man, cleaned up and pointed at, at something.  

 

"A guy or a girl" 

"A girl" 

"A Woman or a girl?  a Kid?" 

"A woman", he nodded with a silent calm down. 

"How bad" 

He shrugged.  "She's at Logan" 

"ICU?" 

"No, she's post op, fuckin all cut to hell.  Post Op Med-surge 402" 

 

I lean back and think about carrying this chair out of the office with me, and look up at the ceiling.  "Your friend from back in the day, at Malmstrom, he ever get back to you?"  

"He's AWOL.  AFSF was here this morning.  Traced my call back." and he tosses me a card.  Lt. Billings.  I sit up, stand, walk out of his office and go straight to my desk, pick up my phone and dial Billings.   

 

"Jesus.  head on?" he calls after me. "get him, get the phone" he directs someone else to intercede, to stop me from dialing. 

 

I have a hand on my arm, and Cathy is trying to hang up my phone but I pick up the phone and hold it away from her, politely navigating Airforce Staff until I hear "Billings" on the other end.  Its a dance of minutes for everyone else.  At one point i am standing on Cathy's desk.   

 

"What did you do?" me shouting, scream spitting, almost eating the phone. 

"Excuse me?  Who is this?" from Billings on the other end, and lots of jostling on my end.  How many people are pushing me around in here?  Did he just break glass or was that on my end too?  This is the bathroom all over again, fuck.  "What the fuck did you do over there?" from me, and I am on one leg now, imbalanced but part of a living pile of people at loggerheads, but standing, is that what we are doing, is this a scrum?  "You need to be real careful now and.." from Billings, and the phone chord is being yanked so hard it has turned into steel cable.  more shouting, almost can't hear.  one of us was separated from their wig.   "Motherfucker, you think (wrestling) you can come into my house, (for just a moment I cannot see at all) fuck with my people?  I am (receiver still in hand but away from face now) cover you in your (Jimmy arms, I am in a headlock.  they should call it a throat lock, or a throat something, blacking out) mess.. public.. Fucking New York Times (Someone fell over a desk, did I fall) kill yourself!" (hands all over me, desk above, book in my back, presence of mind to be concerned about the scissors, clothing in my face, clothing in my mouth, rug burn, hot ear, one word shouts, lots of em, commands, darker, darker, and then I am just swimming in the black)...  

 

..and thats twice in one day. 

 

Puharick’s words fold in my hand as I stuff it into the outer pocket of my jacket.  As the rain hits me, the door on my van closes and I begin the push to the door of the Daylight Donuts on 3rd.  Rain has never been what I wanted it to be.   Too unapologetic.  Too self-centered.  It mobs me as I fight myself to show no interest.  It fucks my ankles, my neck, my hands and Puharic’s deeper meanings, now bleeding at first contact, or not bleeding but translucent, pretending unaffectedness.  I walk an extra ten feet to avoid hopping onto a slimy curb, and right about when I want to start swinging at the rain, I make it to an eve.  The door is off, a lot of things are changing, but too soon, too fast, too much change, Jesus, “pull” and it doesn’t even need to say it out loud.  Its destiny is distracted by a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader and a Bud Light Sticker from the 80’s and so much small Stickerage and Signage, and words, I could complete a Junior College degree just doing a work up on this fucking donut shop door alone.  How have I not noticed this before?  In fact, when did the old man get so many fucking stickers!  If this was the fucking seven eleven down the street I would kno… , it’s the fucking Seven Eleven.  God damnit!, I wheel and am back off the curb, right in the half foot of re-gurge in the gutter, from what ever is saying no to the rain in the sewers, and both feet are wet now and I am back in the van, and I am made meaningless again by the rain. 

I have to go home again, I have to go home, I don’t care, I am not slogging around all day with wet socks, I do not fucking care.  I would smoke if I did, and I think about it, and instead pop a dick pill, buckle up, get the van heater going again, and then wait too long for a break in the cars to pull out, and then I am back again, on the river, rolling through, passing it all in my time capsule, my space ship my van.  Maybe driving will turn into something more like what it is way deep down, maybe city driving will.  Maybee we will be able to hide completely and never have to step out of our cars, hovering 200 feet above the real street, the poor mans street, the actual fucking ground, as we hover and our apartment windows are like our car windows, and the air is the sea, only a sea with water we can breath, and maybe that will be it, maybe driving will be home.  Maybe driving will become what it really is someday. 

I pull over behind a grocery store and go into the back of my van and dig out my sandals, then I scrape off my shoes, and socks and slide back up front dropping into the cockpit, feeling a bit freer and thinking about going full-day-off with shorts, but that is not today.  Today, a scab comes off.  Today a door opens or a window gets broken.  Today I get a connection or they get a cast.  At my real office (the donut shop on 3rd), I sit in the old chesterfield and read the daily paper.  My coffee comes out to me in the mug the old guy keeps above the coffee maker, on the coffee maker to keep it hot, convenient. 

“you rain uh” 

“Fucking rain” I tell him. 

“Uh fucking a rain” he says, I nod and reach for my wallet and he subtly waves off payment like an old Italian.  The fuck he doesn’t speak English.  I don’t know how the chair got in this place, the old man never sits.  He doesn’t even lean when he smokes out back after taking the last trash bag out.  I only ever caught one other person in what I really feel like is my chair, once, it was a kid, and when I walked in his fat mom called her son out of it like he was wandering off or doing some other shit that took her right to the edge of beating him in public.  That’s right you little rat, your not even a rat yet.  Your not broken enough to sit in that chair.  You haven’t lost.  You have too much of your self to even know what to do in a chair like this.  My god, your just a fucking kid, oh my god, and it hits me how much pain that little turd gets to drink if he’s lucky.  But it's not my chair, and I am the only one who sits in this place anyway, though I saw a Mexican once, in a reflector vest, sit one time, hung over, waiting for the rest of the crew to get those damn ham and cheese microwaved cresents, those always a disappointment sandwiches you know are a lie, and yet you drop $4.00 because of course you do, we all do.  His back never touched the back of the chair. 

The paper is mostly noise.  I look for the signal, I really scan and look for any kind of pattern, even the help wanted adds, the real estate the colums are pure shit, then I see the funnies and the horoscope, they are tied together, Charlie brown looks down, he found the lead that broke him, he can see the fisa form, the word majestic, a date, the start of a department and so much ash.  The proof was there, Lucy tells him he can get killed for even looking at the ash, she stands over him, I think some one is dead, I think it was his friend.  Here they come, stand up, play, dip shits are coming, stand up Charlie Brown, STAND UP! 

I look around, my body is literally electrified, I feel both crazy and drugged, no it’s a heart attack, I wait, but the heart keeps working, I am quiet, I gulp it down, I fuck with my hat. I sit up, I adjust, I look around, outside.  Someone's here right?  Someone has to be here? 

the door opens with a bell and the sound of rain.  In walk the brass.  I am simultaneously unrecognized and unmissable in the chesterfield off the counter area at the Daylight Donuts.  I put my shoe back on.  I get a nod for one of the servicemen.  They actually came her for donuts.  Stan is a first name and so is Roder.  Stand up Charlie Brown. 

I cut out the comic.  This will have to do for now. I keep trying to hold it different to see past the window of the comic strip and down at Charlie Browns knees where conveniently out of the frame of the comic the burn bag lay and the remains of what they stole, what the hid, what they have been doing to us sits, found too late, found like a fuck you, try, I dare you try.  But his world is stuck, and the window is a 2d comic book strip box, and those physics can’t be fucked.  I am too big to fit in the hole, and I do not want to scrape off who I am to fit through even if I could, to sit next to him and say, I am gonna get these fuckers, but, I am just as helpless as you are.  I want to put my hand on Charlie Browns shoulder and say, I know.  I know.  And I do. 

The horoscope is Silver.  I see it and I know I can swing by Jani’s place, that she’s sleeping but will let me fuck her, that she’s thinking about it.  “The pen will not fall down from rain, but you will need to shake all four legs to get out” something about making a fist, and recycling..  the key is there, the door unlocks, she is laying where I know she will be, face down, there's a smile but she won't open her eyes. 

I am certain I am both crazy and right.  I can still reach down to the people here that we are all calling my friends, and speak to them with the added benefit of them hearing me, maybe not all of it, but most of it, so I am here, I am here right?  I have to be here? 

 

A perfectly small bell rings on the door as it opens and i realize that though i have been sitting directly in front of full, floor to ceiling glass windows without obstruction that wrap a good half of the entire building on three sides, I never saw them approach.  It is just a boy.  well, a teenager, fat, wants a fucking donut.  might be me, might be me for real, as I sit, old, skinny, tired, not eating a donut in a place that will save him from a stepfathers resentment, a mothers obliviousness and expertly grown obtuseness, from the pain only beautiful women can cause, the hoplessness of directionlessness.  From the empty hand pulled back from the universe when it said 'what do you want little boy', and i said, treasure, love, home.  and its said, 'get the fuck out of here I wasn't talking to you'. 

 

Maybe the kid is a part of something.  Maybe its just a kid that wants a donut.  you can turn a cat evil, but you have to work at it over time.  maybe its just a kid.  And I guess that's that.  Hitler was Hitler, and, when he was seven, he was just a kid.  the lesson as a ruler on the knuckles, one ive been unable to learn since i knew it was one, that we are more than one thing, and that our phenotype extends through time as though, identity is a simile of evolution.   

 

I make it to Jani's eventually, like a lef being pulled down through whirl pool, or piss foam into the sewer by way of the toilet.  And when I leave Jani's house I have been repaired in a way that masturbation can't.  Whatever probability spikes have been emanating off of me and flinging right up into the proverbial ass holes of the Archons, has withered into KOFI with lite static.  just life now, just back pain, and hunger that never leads to fullness, and the journey to connections never made, not really, not completely, not like love, at least not anymore. 

 

I skip the office and two blocks later I am at the Bank talking with Soderson in his office.   

"It's hers" I permit him. 

"At some point, when do you just give this all to the police, the detectives?" 

"Miles?" I return.  Soderson looks like he has been brought in to solve a giant puzzle in a kids room where the kid has eaten a piece, lost a few and one definitely has been pushed up its ass then returned to the pile, a trick against himself.  "Bill, I am not looking to be done with this." I clarify, but all that is offered from the Bank Manager is a worried expression.  "47 stab wounds." I leave out the part that her body is radio active and that her debit card which I am trying to get him to tell me where it has been most recently used, is like a glove warmer in my pocket.  "Point me at an address, someplace that may have or been near a Camera with a DVR." still nothing.  "She has no family Bill.  No one to fight for her, or cover her body.  No one to put a blanket over her.  No one came.  She has an apartment over in Black Eagle.  Someone took her from there to the Firewatch tower below Holland Peak, before, while or after they stabbed her 47 times.  I am playing tag and some motherfucker is laugh-walking away from what he did." 

"Your not the FBI Dan, your a columnist." 

"fuuck," I surrender.  "You don't even have booze in here man."  He says 'he doesn't know what I want him to do about it', with a gesture.  How about Lift the world maybe?  Lift a car off her, help me lift her off the metal table in the Lab at Conkelly, where her body was taken after the Autopsy was stopped by spooks and what was a living human being with cloths and a car and some connection to this world, is being studied or worse.  "Alright" I say and stand.  "I get it." on the way out I try to appreciate the stere formality of the bank.  I try to drag some of the order with me out through the windows but it dissipates in the open air and may never have been needed at all.   

     

Behind the Speedway in apartment C, where I get hand jobs from a girl named Elle, I give her boyfriend the debit card for 10 Percocet and tell him the pin code is 0901 0191.  "Who's Nancy Hoffman" he laughs.  "Dumb rich Lady" I answer and that was it.  The first time I heard her name out loud.  I nod and leave, enter my van and across the highway and wait.  Five minutes later Elle's boyfriend walks around the side of the Speedway and goes inside.  2 minutes later he comes out, walking fast, swinging arms and then heads back to the apartment I cum in twice a week.  about 10 minutes later a late 80's sedan, a Lincoln, pulls in.  The Two brass from the donut shop are inside, shades and serious on their faces. 

What would killing them right now get me?  Are they close enough to this to die by my hand?  Retributed, stuffed in a grave by vengeance.  No one notices me because I am old, have gray facial hair, am unkempt, sloppy, slow-ish.  They are inside for less than a minute when state police show up.  I have been inside there more than enough times to know it has trouble with five people at once.  The open sign is turned around by a suited arm with a silver watch and heavy gold ring with a large black stone in the center.  I pull the slide back on my 40 cal and do the quick math of Heaven and Hell.  Of leaving the planet right now, of Shooting until I do not exist anymore.  This could reach the finish line.  It will be quick, messy, maybe even half wrong but I could catch some evil, send it back downstairs, nail the cellar shut with bullets and slip-ons. I put my hand on the lever that will open my car door and send a fountain of light into heaven like I have never been a part of, or witnessed or even heard of.  My passenger side door opens.  Miles climbs in and sits next to me.  I look over at him gun in my hand.  He sees and says nothing, then offers "Feds?".  "Brass" I say.  "Malmstrom?" he returns.  "Probably.  Mt Hood maybe." I clarify.  He nods.  "You don't look like a speed shooter and I have cake at home."  I turn back to the Door and get ready for my final run.  "Wait" he shouts. "I have real cake at home fucker" as he pulls his snub nose out and spins the barrel, half cocking it, then we both exit the Van and head across the street with guns outstretched old school shootout style. 

 

As I enter the center of the highway, gun in left hand, arm fully outstretched, not looking for cars, ignoring the scream of hot tires dragged across pavement and horns blaring and one maybe two screams, the door to the Speedway opens and half backing out is Ronson or Rongdon, the tan kid, the Brass Spook from the Donut shop that most certainly is here tidying up their murder of the girl Nancy.  I think of Screaming, of asking what they did to her, where was she, or incriminating them, a statie exits and instantly, as the moment his eye is capable of seeing me, see's me and as though still, he comes from fast time where this world moves slow as a river, he begins without recognition, the pulling of his service weapon, and that is when the glass of the door they are exiting and the glass of the full pane convenience store windows all shatter from bullets leaping from my gun and Mile's revolver.  I keep advancing, and as my gun empties, i go for the mag I keep in my pocket as the first bullet hits my arm and the second my chest and the third maybe also my chest, and i am seeing more sky then I should.  and why are my hands on the pavement, i need that clip, and I look up and miles made it a good 10 feet further than me, and his face down with arms wide, no gun in his hands and his coat spread out perfectly like he was arranged.  How the fuck did he make it farther than me?  This isn't even his thing.