52 Pick-Up by Michael Brown

Near the end of 2009, I gathered together what I thought were my 52 best pieces and put them in a book I titled 6:52. The pieces here are those I did not include in that book, followed by others I have posted on Six Sentences Social Network since then.

Michael D. Brown is from New York City and is now teaching in Mexico where he blogs short, short pieces at Six Sentences and thinkingTen, longer short pieces at Outside-In., and work by some very talented friends at MuDJoB.

CONTENTS FANBOYS ............................................................................... 6 Some Men Think Talking Is Sexy ............................................. 7 October Étude ........................................................................... 8 November in November ............................................................ 8 Thanks for the Mephitis ............................................................ 9 The Hot Shot .......................................................................... 10 Distraction .............................................................................. 10 Settings in Legends ................................................................. 11 Oulipo a la Queneau................................................................ 12 Smile ...................................................................................... 13 Why I Read What I Read ........................................................ 14 Pennies for My Thoughts ........................................................ 15 It Is Murder ............................................................................. 16 Three Writing Friends ............................................................. 18 Sobering Thought, a Long Time Coming ................................ 19 Only Waving .......................................................................... 20 After the Flood ....................................................................... 21 There Once Were Lights and Music ........................................ 22 An Apology ............................................................................ 23 Six to One ............................................................................... 24 Road Maps.............................................................................. 25 Lab Report .............................................................................. 26 That‟s Miss Andry to you… .................................................... 27 Smiling Not Only in Photographs ............................................ 28 Ka-ching!................................................................................ 29 Why Not? ............................................................................... 30 The Week Ending ................................................................... 32 Bugged ................................................................................... 33 That One Percent Reality ........................................................ 34 One More Factoid in the Life of Lit ......................................... 35 Whatever! ............................................................................... 36

Will You Take the Time to Read This? ................................... 37 The Elusive Pieces .................................................................. 38 Grazing ................................................................................... 39 The Boy in the Photo .............................................................. 40 Beep Beep, You Take the Replacement Parts .......................... 41 A Walk Along the Beach ........................................................ 42 Sparsely Furnished Dream ...................................................... 43 Pick-Me-Up ............................................................................ 44 Three Writing Friends Revisited.............................................. 46 Where I Live Now…Chiapas .................................................. 48 La Turista ............................................................................... 49 Stopping to Smell Unnoticed Roses......................................... 50 …and it was all yellow ............................................................ 51 I Can‟t Remember ................................................................... 52 I Wish I‟d Had My Camera ..................................................... 53 Coming In to Hamburg ........................................................... 54 All Yellow in New Orleans ..................................................... 55 Help Me With This One? ........................................................ 56 I Know Why You Write .......................................................... 57 As Night and Day ................................................................... 58 52 Pick-Up.............................................................................. 59

FANBOYS In six sentences I can say enough to tell a serious, humorous, romantic, or fantastic story, for I‟ve learned to make use of coordinating conjunctions. I can start out with an emotionally-charged concept, and I can bring in characters, not exactly based on my loved ones, of course, and make them suffer for art. I hardly ever kill them off, nor do I forget them after I‟ve abused them soundly. They‟re only actors in my little plays, but I try to coax the best performances from them, or have them do or say something that will resonate with my readers, who at this point are mostly other writers guilty of the same abuses. We all love sharing our compressed work, which is easier to produce for some than for others, with each other, yet I don‟t think any of us would turn down the opportunity to reach a wider audience. I‟m no genius at this; I‟m one of those for whom the process definitely is harder, so I‟m glad I learned from my excellent peers how to turn twelve or thirteen clauses into six sentences.

Some Men Think Talking Is Sexy Global Language Monitor tells us the language gains approximately 15 new words a day, and so we passed the one millionth threshold with “web2.0” at 10:22 on a morning in early June. Did you notice the dictionaries growing tumescent in preparatory arousal? Imagine all those words could be compressed into micro-miniature granules and delivered in a pill that could be swallowed like an aphrodisiac, and suddenly everyone could have all of that language at their command. Well, maybe...maybe not. Don't forget Ammon Shea, who said reading the 20 volume, 21,000 page Oxford English Dictionary over the course of a year wasn't good for his brain because when called upon to make polite conversation, he couldn't recall the simplest words. I think it was he who was quoted as saying, “Words can't express how I cop a feel,” or “There's a year of my life I'll never bring back from a rude or undeveloped state,” or some such nonsense.

October Ă&#x2030;tude Planning a party to celebrate my dead. They will come for me earlier than expected. Alternatives have flown, and I am flawed. There is little more to attain; I know. In an easy morning hour, from beyond the slatted window, the song of a cricket kept calling an invitation to life, until the shadow of a cat's paw caused it to cease momentarily. Another swipe, and the invitation was recalled into indelible silence.

November in November

NOV E M B E R

EMBER leaves go to glory, Frost says in celebration of a chilly fix. veryman occupies his role without being a hero, and dons a coat to brave the cold. oments ease into hours; clocks get lazy, and everything sticks. are November days before the snow comes, the sun loosens its hold. vening arrives at four o'clock, and night nestles in by six. ight about now seems a good time to settle down with tea and a tale well told.

Thanks for the Mephitis (but No Thanks) If you don't want to play the game adhering to the rules, you can't expect to reap the rewards that usually come to winners. People admire iconoclasts as long as they have shown adaptation before veering off into uncharted territory. No amount of explication earns credibility when creativity is displayed fully blown on unproven ground. If Picasso had not begun his career drawing anatomically correct women, it is doubtful viewers would understand what he was saying with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Now, to the artist who smears feces on someone else's statue of the madonna, or a poster of Madonna, for that matter, coming after sketches of torsos, rounded or cubed, I know you're saying something. If this is to be considered neopost-whatever-Modern Art, I say it stinks, and wonder, do you smell otherwise?

The Hot Shot “So you already know you‟re going to hell when you die, no matter how you live the rest of your life?” “That‟s about it,” he said, “I get the fame, fortune, success, and first dibs on all the girls with big boobs now, and Satan gets my soul later, and it‟s guaranteed.” “You can't make a deal with the devil, Sam," she said, "and expect to come out on top." “It works for me,” he said, “I can have everything I want in this life, you know, I could even have you if I wanted, and you wouldn‟t be able to resist giving in.” “I didn‟t sign any agreements with the devil,” she said hotly, “So you can go to hell.”

Distraction I understand now why the editor (and owner) no longer wants to feature my stories. I don't have the facility to capture thousand-word pictures in a snapshot. I always get distracted when I zoom in on the telling detail. That reminds me, did I tell you how Rebecca found the site and read my work, and discovered every piece contained some not so cleverly disguised allusion to our time together? I wouldn't call it a relationship because that would mean that I thought I meant more to her than she apparently wants me to think I did. If you're reading this, bitch, know that I did.

Settings in Legends When I was growing up in Brooklyn in the 50s, the Bronx, to me, was a foreign country, but I imagined it looked much like my neighborhoods of frequency, South Brooklyn near Redhook, Bay Ridge, and sometimes Flatbush, where my wealthier relatives, the ones who disdained us, lived. It wasn't until, as a teenager, one day with my girlfriend Laura, I rode through the Bronx on a train, that I saw whole neighborhoods had been deserted and it looked like bombed-out Dresden after the War. We were amazed at how much had been lost. She told me her parents had lived there when they first married, that she had been born there, and the family joined the exodus and settled in Brooklyn where she grew up. Later, she showed me pictures of her parents when they were young, and I couldn't believe they'd lived in the same place we had passed through. These places (in those times) are now like settings in legends

Oulipo a la Queneau (or Concert for a Sunday) What Iâ&#x20AC;&#x;m about to permeate is no mere burglary but a demise of sheer arrowroot!!! What you will believe presently is Lâ&#x20AC;&#x;ART in five lesions including the apology, for well you labor that five-letter woodsheds are undoubtedly superior to, on the one hamlet, the four-letter woodsheds which impugn the noble florist of the national tomorrow with so much filming, and on the other hamlet, the three-letter woodsheds which are no less vile. There are only two of us sitting in the subway car, myself, wearily traveling home from visiting my mother, dying in a hospital, and a woman of a certain age, sedately dressed, and reading a book at the other end of the car, when the connecting door slides back and a woman, younger than both of us, with purple hair and a pin through her cheek, strides in and plops down heavily in the seat across from the reader, who casually glances up before returning to her book. As I readjust the concerto of my discontent, it remedies for me to convalesce my deep heartfelt grass and appointment for the rousing outskirts you will gleam in my honeymoon and for my eternal glob. In an unwarranted volume, purple-hair says to the sedate one, "what the fuck are you staring at?" and "haven't you ever seen the punk esthetic before?" before turning in my direction and shouting out a similar, "what the fuck are all of you looking at?" and it comes to me we are all involved in the business of dying, inside subway cars and elsewhere. Thank you! In advance, I theorize you! Once again, I scam thank you!!!

Smile Tuesday, December 22nd (47 days!), Eric, the guy in Apartment 1605 had a box bomb, which he placed slowly and carefully on a table. He was outwardly tired, but excited that the troubles would finally end, so he took one more amphetamine, just to remain alert. He was playing a videogame on his phone to keep occupied until it was time, and he pulled his bomb closer in a possessive manner, running his free hand over the surface of the box which was so smooth and looked flawless. Eric thought about how he never won at phone Tetris, and how just this once, before everything ended, he was going to win. He wondered if his elation were due to scoring high or being high. As he caught himself smiling, he pictured his smile alone, floating like that of the Cheshire Cat, above the debris and ruins occasioned by the surprising, even if it was a bit late, solution soon to occur.

Why I Read What I Read My mother, always a large woman, was a voracious reader of paperbacks with lurid covers, and once, shortly after my father had skipped out on us, when I was seven, she found me leafing through a mystery with an illustration of a hand with splayed fingers, two darts in spaces between, and one stuck in the palm, producing a trickle of blood. "What's that you're reading?" she asked, tut-tutting, and she took it from my hands and replaced it with a volume of Reader's Digest Condensed Books, so I could read My Cousin Rachel instead, adding, "This is much more suitable." On another afternoon, several years later, visiting my Aunt Pat, her sister, and looking over a book Aunt Pat had been reading, I heard her say, "Oh, I thought you said it was called The Topic Is Cancer," before sending me to the pharmacy on the corner to pick up a copy for her. I took the money from her hands with trepidation, fearing she would also ask me to buy a box of the dreaded Kotex Super. I remember when I was about fifteen, and she and her friend Max sent me off to see the movie Devil Doll at the Avon, I came home to find her alone reading Terry Southern's Candy, and after I had told her I hadn't enjoyed that one so much, and she just waved an indication to let me know she was engrossed in the book, nonetheless, she said, "Go look in the refrigerator, and see what I made especially for you." I found the remains of chocolate fudge cake, of which I was fairly certain Max had eaten the other half, after being told something similar.

Pennies for My Thoughts Once for a couple of weeks when I was eight or nine and living in Brooklyn, I was into swallowing pennies, but only bright shiny almost-pink-colored pennies. They would have said 1962 on them if I remember correctly, although it now seems like a hundred years ago. Here, now, in Chiapas, it's a big deal to avoid eating tacos made by the street vendors who also handle money without putting their hand in a fresh plastic bag to take it from you. That's why all the good vendors, the ones whose cooking you can trust, have two people working the cart. In the cantinas, where you can't see who's handling what in the kitchen, you sort of trust the tequila to burn away anything that might have contaminated your botana in any way. I prefer carne molida or cochito, or even quesillo, but sometimes, when I chance a taste from a little plate of metallic-tasting chopped liver, I feel almost like a nineyear-old and reminisce about the days before JFK was killed or The Beatles came to America, and I savor the taste for a few moments before washing away memories with a shot of Cien A単os followed quickly by a sip of blood-red sangrita.

It Is Murder Hawkins figured he had found a way to redeem himself in Reece‟s eyes by using his palm pc. After feeding a search engine some of what he saw as key words on the back of the photographs, he was surprised to find they referred to titles by the poet Sylvia Chidi, born in Germany, educated in Nigeria, and currently living in England. One poem that practically jumped off the screen, and would not let go its hold on him was called It Is Murder. When presented with Hawkins‟s findings, the inspector rubbed his stubbled chin and said, “so, it would appear the victim related events in her own life to Ms. Chidi‟s poetry, and where does that take us in the investigation?” At the same time, he was wondering who the woman, looking as plain as paper and yet interested in the proceedings, was and why she appeared so expressionless when, after all, the dead woman was a stunner, and had had an effect even on Hawkins. “I think we need to go through those poems and these photos and see what was going through this poor gal‟s mind before she wound up like this, and, er, by the way, Hawkins, your flys are open.”

Three Writing Friends Evan told stories that moved some readers; stories rich in details, with vivid settings, flawed characters in search of absolution, and alive with sensory perception, but he often suffered through blocks. Shawna wrote prose poems incessantly with which she filled up several blogs; wild fantasy pieces full of love and derring-do, and fragments that showed maidens and dragon-slaying knights, who every now and then stopped to contemplate cleansing rain and purifying sunshine, all in the purplest of lyrics. Jack was into noir of the darkest and most brutal description, but he only had one story to tell, and told it over and over, changing names and locations, but essentially always reexamining the same four minutes from either the perspective of his self-aware tough-veneered gunsel, or that of his drug-addicted, yet ravishingly beautiful though self-destructive girlfriend. They often wondered what they had in common, for their differences were glaring. Evan came from a home run by two parents, which he shared with a brother and sister, while Shawna, who also had both parents was an unspoiled only child, and Jack came from a broken home where he was raised along with a sickly brother by a drinking mother who supplied them with many stand-ins for the father who went on a sales trip from which he never returned. After maintaining a vigorous trading of emails for approximately three years, Evan got a job in an advertising firm, and Shawna became an English teacher at an inner-city school, both being too busy to write much anymore, while Jack wound up in prison, where he continued writing his one story, and that it was neverchanging, did not seem to matter so much as he was now the only person interested in reading it.

Sobering Thought, a Long Time Coming The last time I came home drunk, you left after telling me I would never see you again, but I did today at the food court, where that young man who so strongly resembles his forbearers, from his thin head to his straight, thick nose, exchanges clean garbage pails for filled ones, and the bulbous-screened TVs suspended overhead show American comedies, which have been dubbed, as if that mattered where nobody can hear the dialog over the thumping beat behind Madonna singing Forbidden Love. The woman who operates the Kao Chi franchise leans on her counter and looks out at empty tables because although it sometimes seems everybody shopping in the mall stops to lunch on the authentic comida china, lately not a soul partakes of her chow mein. I just came from Chedraui where a man with only one hand tallied up the cost of my muesli, instant noodle soups, and soap, and counted out the change super quickly, and here‟s a man with only one arm passing my table, looking for a handout, but I have none of that change left to give him. I notice a lot of things lately, now that I‟m no longer drinking. For instance, even though you were sitting at the other end of the court, and probably didn‟t know I was watching when your friend brought a trayful of tacos and sopes back to your table, you turned partly in my direction, and I noted you have put on quite a bit of weight, and you weren‟t wearing all that makeup you used to. You smiled then, and I couldn‟t remember the last time you smiled so broadly, clearly enjoying yourself.

Only Waving Día de los Muertos, November 2nd, is not a bank holiday in Mexico, but kids here, as anywhere else, use any excuse to avoid attending classes. Surprisingly, my English 3 students did not want to leave at the end of the hour because they enjoyed the film I had substituted for a day‟s lesson, but as expected, Advanced 5 was halved in attendance, and thus halved in length. Afterwards, in the silent room a dung beetle lay on its back with five legs waving about. Ordinarily, I would take advantage of its incapacity and step on it, with the justification of putting it out of its misery, but instead, I nudged it with my foot until it was set right. For a moment it was still, but then it took a step and fell over again on its back, so I left it alive, “not drowning, but waving,” and proceeded to my next class. I anticipated few of the happy, smiling students who greeted me on my trek across the central plaza would follow me into our classroom.

After the Flood You‟re in a situation which is stifling. You‟ve been led here by what had, at first, seemed liberating, but you have come to realize the reverse is true, though for a long time you‟ve taken no steps to change anything. You‟ve made do with little, and you‟ve survived. When the river overflows and prompts a sense of high adventure, your smiling reaction to disaster, the scenario provides momentum. You assess the situation when you come down from your momentary high. You pack up your few belongings in a bag and flee, back to the day before yesterday. Your chances to start fresh have not yet vanished.

There Once Were Lights and Music Most days are just like all the others in a rest home, and when you can‟t see, it doesn‟t matter anyway; sounds are all you have to go by now. The boy halts in the middle of a game, his mates looking quizzical, but he becomes transfixed by the colors of the horses on a merry-go-round. James, sitting in the park area on what a friend has told him is a dreary Tuesday, hears the sound of a calliope and envisions a summer day when a fair came to Valhalla, and in his mind he drinks up the rainbow-hued atmosphere; dreary Tuesday be damned. “You‟re no fun anymore,” shouts a nine-year old playmate, taunting the boy, “all you wanna do now is sit and stare at posters and lights, when you used to be the one getting us to do things.” James calls up all his powers of recollection to bring back the sights and sounds, colors and music of his youth in an effort to see—an activity he had long ago stopped pursuing. The boy, alone, and absorbed in absorbing, doesn‟t hear the final giving way of a rotted tree limb, then suddenly all blackens as colors dance away in silence, farther, farther away, and when he awakens, still his world is blackness, and his mother‟s voice is keening, “my poor little darling, my poor Jimmy…”

An Apology I was wrong because I let my emotions get the better of me, because I let my pride bring me to a place I had vowed I would never be, because I tried to express myself in words that were beyond my ken. I did not like the words you used; thought there were more esthetically pleasing ways to paint your pictures, and I allowed my displeasure to limn my perception of what you were saying, although I knew it to be otherwise. You advised our friends of the stance you took in such a way that I felt my livelihood was an exercise in futility, and it hurt me too much to admit to myself that you may have made a righteous allowance, to which I closed my mind. In a high dudgeon, I responded without carefully weighing the several ways my words might be taken, and regretfully you saw them being flung at you in all their negative connotations, which in honesty, I must admit they most likely were meant. It was a heated moment of the type that can become indelible, if allowed, and though I attempted a retraction, it was too little, too late because I had already angered myself. I apologize for allowing my emotions, my pride, and irresponsibility to define me in a momentary sweep.

Six to One “I can‟t pay for the food,” she said, “but I didn‟t eat a lot of it.” The little blond girl with Keane-like large sad eyes had sat by herself in front of a half-eaten plate of spaghetti Bolognese and stared at the cup of black coffee on the other side of the table for nearly ninety minutes before slipping out of the booth and ambling over to the waitress behind the counter. She watched her mother leaving by the side exit, walking across the parking lot, and boarding the big silver bus. When her mother twisted the cup around on the saucer twice then said she had to go to the ladies‟ room, and would be back in a jiff, Laurie knew she was about to be deserted, but this third time, she was not afraid, as she had been what seemed like a year ago in Laredo. As she entered the Sip ‘n’ Sup diner that looked just like a trailer home, while holding her mother‟s hand, Laurie thought of the long walk alone back into town, and how they would soon have enough money to be traveling again. The little girl knew they were broke when the woman she had taken to calling Mama said, “Let‟s go get something to eat at that nice place we saw a couple of weeks ago when we got off the bus.”

Road Maps You need money to get around. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x;s a lot to see; much of it free, but if you want to partake, you need hard cash, or plastic based on a promise. This is what I know. Road maps are helpful, too. The world is so full of a number of scenes; embittered old men and jaded queens, big-ass mamas and porno stars, and the people who frequent singles bars, movers and shakers and naive dolts, and those who cannot deal with shocks and jolts, aggressors, assailants and alleged perpetrators, exhibitionists and masturbators: verbal and literal, voyeurs who are thrilled vicariously by the same situations variously, people who drive by the charts in their hands, and some who roam freely through foreign lands. Road maps are not needed, but do serve to guide, and to point out the start and the end of the ride.

Lab Report Elena was again my student, comely, shapely, young but not a girl, and I was fairly sure she had been flirting with me during the first weeks of classes, for though I was conscious she was already aware of much of the material we were covering in preparation for another final exam, nevertheless, her eyes seemed to focus on the words spilling from my lips. No one has to tell me chemistry is a dry subject and her apparently new found interest aroused a long-dormant, determinedly dormant in my widowhood, desire. At the finish of class one Friday, five weeks into the term, as I began to say, "On Monday, we'll cover…," she interrupted with, "I have to tell you, I can't come here anymore." "Y-you can't," I stammered, “w-why?” "I just can‟t," she said, dropping and retrieving a pen, her eyes traveling from my wingtips up to my tie. Several students, who were also repeating this chemistry course, appeared to be awaiting a response, and it felt like a set-up; as Elena had supplied no reason, only a catalyst, yet a reaction was expected in any case.

That’s Miss Andry to you… Okay, so there is this girl I know, who is…well, she would get all fired up if she knew I thought of her as a girl, only she is so very much younger than I am, and I find it difficult to think of her as a woman, a contemporary, I mean. Anyway, there is this woman, who is…I don‟t know quite how to say it, I mean she finds fault with practically everything that comes out of my mouth, or my mind; although she seems to be that way with all the guys she knows, and she will probably read this. Well, I‟ve been acquainted with her for some time now , and I always…I know what you‟re thinking—why do you keep associating with her if she‟s so difficult to get along with? It‟s just that when I stop and think about it, I…I mean, I don‟t want you all to think of me as the wussy type, but I find that…and she did tell me she felt I don‟t edit so well as I think, and here I wasn‟t sure if she meant to tell me, I think well, but don‟t edit well, or that I don‟t edit so well as I think I edit. It‟s usually that way with Andry because, truth to tell, she…well, I‟d rather not say anything I might later regret, but frequently when we communicate, or attempt to communicate, we…I mean, I don‟t know why, but she often…well, perhaps it‟s better not to put my foot in it. In any case, this young woman I know named Andry is…how should I say? Oh hell, I‟ve forgotten what I started to tell you.

Smiling Not Only in Photographs We look at early photos together and we both laugh, and she says, who are these people, and I, casting a sidelong glance, wonder in silence, who are these? She had dark hair then and smiled all the time, while I was trim and mostly dour. Now sheâ&#x20AC;&#x;s what I like to consider blond, and our kids have grown up enough to manage some of their time on their own, and when Kitten smiles these days, acquaintances believe she really means it because she has become that good at it. Me, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x;m not so trim anymore, but certainly a lot less scowling is going on around this house which seems to grow smaller every year. There are photos all over, in frames fronting potted plants on tables, encased in wood and glass on walls, and many traveling from shelf to shelf in leatherette-bound albumsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more than enough to remind the current residents from whence they derive, but not a single one I think pinpoints the moment when discretionary tactics were kited, and smiles became the most effective mode of commerce between two people who have so little in common with the couple in the photographs. I could probably be that man again if I dieted went in for hair plugs, and started running again, but unfortunately, since the accident I think we both know Kitten can never again be the cat she once was.

Ka-ching! I carry them in by the armload and place them in neat rows for later insertion in the available slots, mostly keeping my thoughts to myself. “How‟re you doing,” Sam asks, “almost ready for a break?” “Almost,” I say, wiping sweat off my forehead, after depositing a particularly heavy batch, “but I‟m guessing there are a couple hundred more out there.” I would like to feel I‟ve made some headway before stopping for the night, so I suggest holding off on a break for at least another thirty minutes or thereabout, and I count, “…97, 98, 99…” “Well, they say strong hands make light work; I guess I could pitch in and make it happen that much faster,” Sam says. I appreciate the offer, but I know when it‟s all finished, I‟m going to feel disappointed for not having completed the job myself, and with me that‟s a feeling that will never go away.

Why Not? Because it‟s not allowed, and it‟s not good for you, or because your eyes will stay that way, and besides, we didn‟t have that luxury in my day. Because it isn‟t fair to the rest, and no one‟s ever done it; or because it‟s too hard or too easy, and once you do it you won‟t want to stop. Maybe because in all likelihood you‟ll find it isn‟t what you‟d imagined it to be, but by then it will be too late to undo it, or because it‟s uncouth or uncool or it shows bad breeding, or too much in-breeding, or it‟s not being clever, and in any case, it‟s just not done. If you ask your mother, she will tell you “because „Y‟ is a crooked letter,” or conversely, if you ask your father, he will tell you, “you‟ll understand when you‟re older;” or “because you‟re not a kid anymore,” but if either one says it‟s all right, then it‟s all right with me. You just shouldn‟t, but then again, perhaps you should, because after all, I don‟t really see why not.

The Week Ending I had been feeling guilty for not seeing my Mom so often as I would have liked, and so took the train into Brooklyn one Friday after work, and sat and watched television with her for a while. The hang dog expression she wore disappointed, but not quite as much as what I took to be her pretending to be zoning out. She had survived the loss of a leg to diabetes, some kidney function, and the recent loss of her partner of over twenty years, whom I had finally started calling Pop because he was no longer around to hear me, and because she told me that pleased her; not that he would have been aware of much during his last eighteen months. Anyway, to get us out of that stifling apartment, I wheeled her down the three blocks to her favorite coffee-shop, where over lime rickies, she grew more animated and talked about old times, happy times, but she also reminded me how embarrassed she was, and how glad I was there to help her, the day we took Pop for a haircut, and he defecated in his pants, right there in the barberâ&#x20AC;&#x;s chair, when poor old Tony had only just begun snipping away, and had to bear the obnoxious odor for the twenty minutes it took him to finish the cut. She told me Patty the homecare attendant would be coming for the night at about eight-thirty, and that Patty was not bringing back the correct change when she was sent to the market, but when I took her back to her apartment, Mom introduced me to Mrs. Gallagher, the widow who lived across the hall, and who she said was watching out for her so Patty couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t get away with too much. It was Mrs. Gallagher who called me the next afternoon and asked me to come into Brooklyn as

soon as possible because the ambulance driver had told her my mother had had a heart attack and passed away during the return ride from her dialysis, before he left her sitting in her wheel chair in her apartment, which was where I found her, looking for all the world as if she were just daydreaming of past times.

Bugged He loved her quietly for how she made him feel about what he said. She soon gave evidence, however, that her love and admiration were wider ranging. He noticed others, one especially, who had taken to calling her by an endearment of unknown origin, began to see her value and were well equipped to hold and impress. He felt a pain behind his eyes that burned white hot, like one of those bugs whose heat, on landing, penetrates deeply. “It‟s all good,” he told himself, “it‟s all good.” It did not feel good, though, and the fire burned, unquenchable.

That One Percent Reality He lay completely still until his nose itched, but he could not scratch it, nor move a muscle as the yoga exercise book explained; this was the way to dream without sleeping, and would leave one feeling totally relaxed, refreshed, and there were other benefits. He projected familiar men in bowlers and women in billowing skirts on the darkness of his eyelids, so very soon, he was walking among them again; one hundred years gone in a moment, and there was Mr. Weed churning his camera. These simple folk were parading for posterity; Agatha, wanting so much to be in burlesque, had traipsed up from the Bowery knowing the man from Biograph would be taking pictures that afternoon, doing her plain best to flirt with the cameraman, and there, the young Michael Malloy, blissfully unaware of the cruel finish fate, and the Murder Trust, held in store for him thirty years hence, was holding his hat against the wind whipping around the year-old Flatiron Building as it lifted Agathaâ&#x20AC;&#x;s skirts, and looking to see if she was blushing, he realized this was just a dream visit, for there was no color in her gray face. He woke then, thinking he would never be able truly to go home; he had adapted to this modern world, had learned many things he could not bring back with him, had moved to Mexico and taken a job and now had obligations in this time. Besides, who would choose to be ignominiously gassed to death after years of reprobation if presented with any other options?

He wondered, had Agatha perceived even the slightest shift in the atmosphere, or had she been completely preoccupied by her own ambitions?

One More Factoid in the Life of Lit “Look at this edging,” Lit said, “doesn‟t the crenellation on this plate seem delicate and rich at the same time, fine and yet with a certain power?” At the moment of passing the said object, the earth, his earth, trembled, and the plate was dropped, and it shattered. Of course, the other was made to blame, but had not to worry because though it was an heirloom, Lit would absorb the loss. He was the first in his family to accomplish many things, making him also the most expansively forgiving of transgressions, and he had been the first to actually remove the plate from its protective casing and handle it. Who knew his earth would choose to tremble? As he tweeted to an international fandom, the most far flung interested parties knew Lit‟s family finances had fluttered just a fraction, and they knew it instantaneously.

Whatever! I‟ve come to the conclusion that my friend Regan is a ditz „cause like we went to the mall the other day to shop for shoes, and all the way there in her car, of course, because she‟s been claiming I‟m a bit reckless behind the wheel since the day I swerved to avoid hitting a dog and she smeared lipstick all over her face, anyway, all the way there, she‟s complaining about how Dita Wellsworth was passing unflattering remarks about Janna Morgan, who Regan says she really likes, even though she won‟t let her drive us anywhere either. Seems Dita was implying that Janna was a snob while we were all at Applebee‟s for drinks after work the other night, but I didn‟t hear any of those remarks because she must have said them while I was in the ladies‟ or otherwise engaged. “You always miss the good stuff,” Regan says, and she‟s said that to me before, too, as if I had no head for the really important details; well, I guess when you‟re friends with someone from high school days, you learn to overlook a lot of their little quirks, like putting you down for not paying attention to someone else‟s put downs. Anyway, we‟re in Nine West because Regan feels Dolce & Gabanna and Prada are so overdone these days, and she tries on this hideous pair of backless low heels which were too small for her, and her feet were absolutely hanging over the sides, and when she asks me how they look, I have to be honest because I don‟t want her to waste money on something she‟s never going to feel comfortable in, but she took it all the wrong way, and accused me of telling her I thought she was too fat. So now we‟re not talking, not going to the mall, not doing anything together anymore, and you know what, for the first time in ages I feel as free as a bird; free to do anything I want without someone breathing down my neck because Regan is a ditz anyway, and I don‟t care if we ever make it up between us.

Will You Take the Time to Read This? I‟m going to write this piece if it kills me, and, of course, it won‟t kill me, although it might agitate you a smidgen. I mean, it will have to be more than a paragraph that will do either of us in, but what I‟m trying to relate here, is the lack of anything fresh to offer at the moment. Read an interesting piece in the New York Times the other day which says nobody has the time these days to read a whole magazine article or watch an entire news program because with innumerable messages zooming through the ether everybody wants digests and sound bytes so they can say they know what‟s going on without having to wade through the morass of nuance presented in the greater context. Yes, and the whole deplorable situation was summed up for us in four pages, which the Times On-Line allows you to compress into one long printable screen to read at your leisure, if you can ever find any. This got me thinking about my commitment to write, write, write at least six sentences every day without fail, so I can add to the information/entertainment overload with my own take on the effluvia of our modern disjointed but in all ways connected world. Please consider this an over-sized tweet, from which it is hoped you can glean something though it may contain little pertinence to your worldview.

The Elusive Pieces Analise was a brilliant jigsaw puzzle that Seth solved perhaps forty times or more in their twenty some odd years together, but at every conclusion a necessarily four-colored piece was missing, and it was never the same piece, which vexed him thoroughly. Seth was a Times of London cryptogram-crossword, the clues to which, for the most part, Analise could easily decipher, except for the fourletter answer that always seemed integral to completing the matrix. They had met late in life, decided to share an apartment, and much was copacetic between the couple, but the two of them just thought about things too much. When they grew too old to care for themselves, their respective families secured them places in the same luxurious nursing home so they could spend their remaining days in each others company. Together, over a four-month period, they built a sizable model of the Louvre, complete to the smallest details, out of Lego sets on a table in the recreation room, and after marveling at their handiwork for a couple of weeks, for old timesâ&#x20AC;&#x; sake, Seth began removing and hiding a different block from the model every day, wondering if his lady love ever noticed. He was a little dotty by then, so he remained unaware that Analise was doing the same just to keep things on par, until one day there was really nothing left of the beautiful little palace they had built.

Grazing I had just asked her, “What‟s happening lately with your cousin Andrea?” as Sandra, sitting alone on a three-cushion sofa, crossed her legs and dangled her hand to just below her kneecap, lightly grazing the upper part of her shin. Andrea/Sandra—it made little difference to me, but it may have been a big deal to her. I pretended to think she might have been trying to seduce me or secretly pleasuring herself, but deep down I knew the grazing was her assessment of my misstep and due to an inner conviction on her part that it was wrong to ask an attractive woman about a cousin, and that she knew how attractive she was. Crossing the line meant little to me, I think, because I had few expectations of actually scoring with either of them. Both had been playing the sophistication game for much longer than I was even aware that it was a thing, and when I did learn how it worked, I was sure I had entered the game too late, and appeared to be a dork to the entire distaff team. I wondered if I should mention it looked like one of her fake nails was about to fall off, or just let her discover that for herself after I moved on to even less promising grounds where my dork factor would do me in entirely, thereby allowing her to preserve her equanimity.

The Boy in the Photo There‟s a grayed out black and white photograph under glass in a simple frame on the back of the bureau behind a pile of crumpled sweaters and over-sized blouses, empty cologne bottles, and various artifacts of facial make-up. It was a day at the beach, but it looks as if it might have been too cool for swimming, and had this been taken in color, the participants‟ paleness might belie the setting, which appears to be Coney Island not in the proximity of the boardwalk, nor the shoreline. Many anonymous people were in attendance, but two face the camera. The little boy in the photo is scowling, obviously wearing a diaper under swim trunks though he must be at least two-and-a-half to three years old. His sour look must be due to being refused an ice cream cone or some other treat while being made to pose for posterity, and couldn‟t have anything to do with a prescience of this moment, this day when he must clean out his mother‟s apartment so the landlord can arrange for prospective tenants to come, for the man has already waited a respectable two weeks. The woman in the photo is my mother, who is smiling, but with an edge that conveys she does see many things in her future because she remembers many things in her past.

Beep Beep, You Take the Replacement Parts I was trying to get to sleep when I heard one of my roommates fiddling with the key in the door, and I felt not at all like getting up to let in whichever one it was because I was fairly certain the three of them had already drunk as much as I had at Spivak‟s party when I told them I was going home to crap out. All of them, Jake, Andy, and Ivan were certain they were going to score if they just hung out a little longer, but I figured they just couldn‟t say no to free booze, and their decision had little or nothing to do with the few ladies who did not afford any of us more than a nod of recognition during the four hours we were all there together. Anyway, after trudging to the door, and opening it to find Jake and Ivan standing there glassy-eyed with their arms around two exotic looking beauties I‟d never seen before, I asked where Andy was, and Ivan tells me, “Oh, he just disappeared somewhere, but look who we found,” and he tips his head at their new friends. “And who might you be?” I asked, but on being met with a silent non-comprehending glare, I look at Jake, and he says, “Oh, they don‟t speak much; cuz we met them on the way home, and I think they‟re not from around here.” With that, the two females shape-shifted into something far less attractive, turned with clicking motions to face each other, and without moving their lips(?) their beep-language thoughts were translated for me, and I understood them to be saying something like, “Three specimens in one field trip means we won‟t have to come back to this godforsaken planet for a while, but it‟s too bad the other one was eaten by the wendigo.”

A Walk Along the Beach

Sparsely Furnished Dream When the light roused Tess from her reverie, she was sitting half-naked in a squarely upholstered chair in a sun-shaft streaming through a paneless window, the rest of the sparsely furnished room being cast in deep gray shadow, and it took less time than a secretaryâ&#x20AC;&#x;s dream to realize that she was now residing in one of Edward Hopperâ&#x20AC;&#x;s lesser known paintings. Her own Edward must have come to in the middle of a passenger bridge and because he could not make out any of the village around him but a lake which appeared to be on fire under a searing orange sky, put his hands to his face and screamed in confusion. Tess, who had always been quick on the uptake, heard the agonized screaming in the distance, and having already adapted to a barren cityscape, glided to the conclusion that Edward, had likewise been subsumed into a piece of art, knowing beyond doubt the scenario in which he was now taking part. Served him right, the philistine, for it was he who had brought home the seven DVD collection of The History of Art, and laughed through three discs while she wept silently for Christina in her field so far from the Olson house. Tess knew if she could only work her way out of ennui, she would be witness to melting clocks, lines of men with appled faces and wearing bowlers falling like sheeting rain, soup cans and multiples of celebrities minor and major, but icons all, yet she was as well and truly fixed in her Hopper home as she might have been in the Wyeth, so ensconced that she could never dream of waking, nor walking. In this moment, crying without tears felt absolutely right, as she put the screams of Edward out of her mind, and heard naught but the sound of closing doors.

Pick-Me-Up Any of the best who deign to give advice tell you to start just before the crisis, and when you only have a brief space to relate your tragedy, that probably is the best place to begin. As solidly hard-boiled as the world seemed at the top, there was only one moment of consciousness of what had occurred after landing, the unbearable pain blotting out all else in the scrambled situation that obtained. If I spoke German, in the hospital I‟d have accused you of schadenfreude, but you would have considered me pretentious, and it would have added to your amusement, so instead I asked you what you found so goddamn funny in another‟s misfortune, and meanness came into your eyes. I‟ll tell you, that was the moment; that was what put the schism in our relationship. It‟s only funny when it‟s meant to be and only when you hear of it happening to someone else like good gossip on a boring Sunday. Afterward, it seemed like no way in hell, either of us could pick up the pieces and put them together again.

Three Writing Friends Revisited When Jack got out of prison, he carried with him the manuscripts of three very publishable crime novels filled with dark passion about living the life, steamy sex scenes, heists gone wrong, and unsentimental vengeance, and the hook was the three formed a trilogy if one connected the random clues interspersed throughout. After a few years of writing assignments handed out with the highest of expectations to group after group of disinterested students, Shawna, with visions of being the next J.K. Rowling, eventually took up her pen again, deciding it could be better used to concoct her own visionary tales than to grade unimaginative retreads of the latest horror films, and she produced a little book of fables in which an editor at Knopf showed great interest. Evan, having jotted myriad post-it notes of the foibles of his coworkers, wrote a novel about the vagaries of working in advertising, that he broke into segments, and sent out as short stories to various literary magazines, of which he learned there were too few making a profit, and one, spotted by an enthusiastic editor, netted him a moderately generous book deal and a minor degree of celebrity. Came a reunion, of sorts, when one evening the summer before last, Evan was giving a reading at The Manhattan Arts Club, with Shawna and Jack in attendance, purely through coincidence, and after meeting and greeting, they wondered again what they had in common as still their differences were glaring. Dinner and drinks at the Metropolitan CafĂŠ followed, and in the weeks afterward, Shawna and Jack began dating, much to Evanâ&#x20AC;&#x;s consternation because now he wanted what he couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t

have, but what he did not see was that Shawna and Jack were working toward their success together while he had always chosen to work alone. This September, the first part of Jack‟s trilogy came out to great acclaim, and Shawna‟s Little Blue Book of Fables, which sold over 40,000 copies through Borders alone, promises to become a perennial favorite in children‟s bookstores, while Evan‟s We Took the World By Storm can now be had for half-price at The Strand, and you won‟t find it in too many other places.

Where I Live Now…Chiapas I have made a life for myself in southern Mexico in the capital city of Chiapas, and life is good here. During my last week in Manhattan, after I had made all my arrangements for leaving, and having planned to give it a year or so, to see how things might work out, I went for one last visit to my regular barber, a transplanted Cuban, who liked to sing along with his old cassette tapes, interpolating nasty words in Spanish into his version of the lyrics. He said, while laboriously trimming my thinning hair, “Chiapas, isn‟t that where they‟re having all the troubles?” He was obviously still thinking of 1994, but this was 2001, and I remarked that I hadn‟t seen anything of the troubles in my visits; Tuxtla Gutiérrez, at that time was, and even more so now is, nothing if not like a Mexican flavored version of Queens or Brooklyn, New York. There is nothing much of a nightlife here beyond two a.m., and that is something I miss, being able to get, say Chinese or great Italian food at any time of the day or night, but I can have spring rolls or spaghetti at one of the malls in the afternoon or early evening, and nothing beats the camaraderie at the cantinas even if they do close their doors at six p.m. I have a new barber now, who laughs a little each time she combs through my baby-fine brown hair, which is so unlike that of her other regular customers, and she never sings along with the pop music softly emanating from her radio. The only thing is I have to get to her place at just the right time so as not to wind up under the scissors of her assistant-in-training, who unfortunately has done more than one hatchet-job on my head.

La Turista We thought she was beautiful until she decided it was fashionable to sport an eyepatch and listen only to the echoes of yesterday's hot items. She was born in the sixties, and wasn't old enough to take part in the revolution, but she blasphemed like a trooper, took up lost causes, and sided with the opposition whenever and wherever she possibly could, including vacation resorts and cruise ships, which led to people avoiding her at the dinner table. Oh, not everyone, of course, mainly it was those who were old enough to have actually lived through the times and had lost interest in rehashing tired plans, or those much younger than she, who were all connected, and had become whizzes at multitasking at such an early age that the great moments of history only held small spaces in their vast databases. She sought her peers as a ready, willing audience, when she was in the mood, and the remnants of her glamor shone through the dimming of her hopes, but there were moments even then when she must have felt loneliness and age creeping in, trailing boredom behind them like the long tail. That was when the eyepatch seemed to be needed most, as disguise, as bait, who can really say? Occasionally, you might find her alone at the bar in the evening, sans patch, and that one twitching eye appeared to focus on nothing so much as lost opportunity, while the other twinkled like that of a lover at the beginning of an affair.

Stopping to Smell Unnoticed Roses There‟s a fellow who had something published a while back, which experience he claims freaked him out for a long time, and another fellow who likes to write about personal experiences though he claims the memory keeps slipping, and I would like to thank both of them. There are a few women, one who wrote and wrote, and wrote some more, finally deciding to send out these little gems from her home shaped like a shoe, impressing the hell out of a flock of admirers, especially me, and another creative type who lives in a small, quiet home, cultivates a lovely garden and is worshiped by her dogs, and yet another from across the pond who‟s an artist, print-maker and writer with an interest in family, social and cultural history, and I thank these three phenomenal women. There‟s a couple, he a magazine editor by day; artist by night, and she, a lifetime journalist, who once won a prize of Olympian magnitude, and I extend my gratitude to them for their kindnesses and attention. Most of all, I want to say thank you to a fellow who is currently soaking up the sun in my neighboring state, and though he talks about himself in a way that sounds as if he is the most inconsequential of beings, one can catch in his words and definitive missives hints at a lifetime of fascinating experiences, which I hope he never stops sharing. I heartily thank this group of people for sending something my way, which in my busy-ness of being busy went unnoticed until fourteen days after the fact; two weeks of not seeing the forest of well-wishers for the trees of talent profusely sliding down the boards! God, I‟m so glad I found this place, and have become acquainted with its inhabitants, and I wish my head was on straight.

â&#x20AC;Śand it was all yellow My brother lent me a shirt to wear down to the White Horse, a yellow dress shirt, which he insisted needed ironing, but which I declined to do. I had flown up from Mexico for the day, the Byronic hero, to meet other writers and share war stories, at the landmark where Dylan Thomas was said to have drunk himself to death. I was especially looking forward to meeting Quin in person and Rob, to tell him how much I enjoyed being part of his site, how the experience had helped me lose some of my solipsist leanings while broadening my perspective, and I wanted him to take a look at the manuscript Nic and I had put together. Walking down 11th street, in a borrowed shirt, I felt like one of the kings of New York, even though the trip was meant to be so brief, for I was after all on my home turf. At the bar, a nice group of writers from places around the States came together to talk for a couple of hours, and be testily served by surly wait people, and Quin and I traipsed outside several times to smoke half a dozen cigarettes at the curb. Rob was texted a couple of times, but he replied that he had gotten stuck in traffic, so none of us were able that night to tell him how much we appreciated his sponsorship, and I was thinking my shirt didnâ&#x20AC;&#x;t look too bad.

I Can’t Remember I can‟t remember the sound of my mother‟s voice except when I watch videotapes or when she occasionally appears in my dreams, but then I‟m often concentrating on other aspects of the dreams, and I don‟t even have a machine anymore to play the tapes. I can‟t remember birthdays; though others often remember mine and I feel guilty accepting celebratory wishes, especially when I haven‟t accomplished anything extraordinary during the year. I can‟t remember to pay bills on time, so I often pay them in advance as it helps beat the interest charges, but frequently I pay for the same period twice. I can‟t remember how to do more than simple math without a calculator because I guess, like so many others, I've grown too dependent on machines. I can‟t remember if I have locked the door at night; although where I live, it's not really necessary to slide the dead bolt, I must check that at least three time before feeling comfortable enough to fall asleep. I don‟t remember if I‟ve told you these things before, for I hear myself repeating my thoughts quite a bit these days as my mother did in that last year before she died on my birthday leaving all her debts to me, debts which I discovered after her apartment was robbed.

I Wish I’d Had My Camera I took an early week off, so I could relax, see London again, recharge my batteries. It meant disconnecting from all my regular activities including researching methodology, gathering material, and posting fiction, for I‟d had to book everything on a teacher‟s budget, and the hotel near Gatwick charged too much for daily use of the Internet. Mostly I walked, took photos, and observed, and made notes in my little black notebook for later use in real work. When I returned to my cubicle yesterday, the students‟ teacher evaluations were already compiled, and I was made aware that I had not impressed all of my 110 charges so thoroughly as wished for in the preceding semester though several professed their gratitude for having learned a little more English, and a couple of the girls said they loved me. After a boring day of getting ready for summer classes, I was walking the kilometer up to the boulevard when I noted some local teenagers using a palm frond to move a tarantula from their front yard to deposit the hairy eight-legger in the middle of the road. A second or two later, teacher Mauro drove past in his red VW, leaving spider pancake on the tarmac, and I heard one of the Mexican kids say, without trace of an accent, “oh, I feel so bad.”

Coming In to Hamburg The six-year-old in the seat in front of mine says, "You like to make me angry, and so that's what I'll do; do you know my dreams are going up to the sky, but I can't believe in your dreams? "Okay, Mommy, let me make you angry, and let me see, and I put my hands up if I don't agree." The plane bumps into its landing, bump, bump, bump, and the kid says, "I show you I'm not going to do that again." The flight attendant makes her announcement in German, and the little girl says, "Why does she have to say that?" We all jump up to retrieve our overheads, even though we've been asked to remain seated and belted, and Dad laughs and says, "She doesn't know what she's saying." Mom, without the stirrings of a smile, says, "I know exactly what she's saying, and it's way past her bedtime."

All Yellow in New Orleans Here is what I hope you don‟t discover, that I‟ve been away from it for so long, I‟m not even sure I know anymore what it is, or that I‟m not that good at handling a good time, or at least at managing the after effects. I don‟t look at newspapers much, but I get some information from passing glances at over-made-up readers on television, when it‟s on, which is rarely these days. I did try to do the Times puzzle on the return flight from England, and was surprised at how many references were beyond my ken, but I think I was so overwhelmed by the chance to sneak away for a few days that my vacuity didn‟t ring any alarms at that moment. It just hit me after preparing a soothing cup of café au lait and settling down this evening to peruse the latest endeavors of artists I claim as good friends, how they were throwing names of public figures around and no one else had to ask to whom they were referring while I sat in the dark wondering how I could call myself an artist. I sure hope none of you realize it‟s not only the emperor who‟s wearing nothing over his union suit when I walk through that lobby, nor that just this once I mentioned I‟ve been made aware that I talk in my sleep.

Help Me With This One? So I‟m with this friend who tells me he can‟t go check out a movie this afternoon because he‟s got to go have a meal with his family to celebrate Father‟s Day, and I realize I never spent one with my father, not one. Well, his name was Ernest, and he died when I was twelve, see, and before that he‟d been separated from my mom for ten years. I saw him whenever I stayed with my grandmother in her Coney Island bungalow, but I don‟t remember anyone marking his special day in June; his birthday was in May, and nothing much was made of that either. Mostly, he‟d come around when he was low on cash, borrow some from his mother, and then take me out for an ice cream before taking off to spend the rest of an afternoon with his cronies at White‟s Tavern by the boardwalk. He lived with his girlfriend, Ginny, a woman my mom denigrated, and whom I never met, but she must have been a patient sort as one would have to be with my dad. I decided to forgo the flick and sit here to contemplate what life might have been like had he lived longer, and I‟d like you all to join me in wishing my dad a Happy Father‟s Day wherever his soul may be.

I Know Why You Write Maybe it‟s just me because you tell me things that remind me of lines I‟ve read in greeting cards, and there isn‟t much in those couplets that I can use. You offer advice in homilies you must have heard as a child and misinterpreted because your incomplete sentences are brimming with mismatched simple words that are rarely collocated by logical thinking speakers. I must intimidate because you sometimes take agonizing minutes to phrase your language oh so correctly, forgetting that all expressions of substance carry connotations, and it often feels as if you‟ve lost your train of thought, and cooked up a word stew. Then, there are times when you seem to interpret my blank look as boredom and your eyes speak voluminously in a way only friends are capable of doing with each other. Believe me, when you say, I know, I know, I believe you. As I silently read your letters, articles, and stories, however, true magic occurs, and that‟s when I say to myself, ah, now we’re communicating.

As Night and Day Laurie had been clean for six months when she decided she would try to find the woman she knew as Mama, for although she had recurring dreams of Tess waking in madness, imagining she was trapped in a painting, in her gut, Laurie believed somehow, somewhere Tess still managed to survive, living off the kindness of strangers. Abandoned repeatedly in diners and coffee-shops throughout seven states, Laurie continually found her way back to her mother, nursing her into something resembling health, which might last anywhere from three weeks to eighteen months. When she was sitting alone in a greasy spoon called Chippyâ&#x20AC;&#x;s on Route 40, twelve days after her fifteenth birthday, Laurie did her numbers, and calculated there was no longer any percentage in attaching herself to a sporadically happy home, and hitchhiked her way to Los Angeles to see how she could fare on her own. Only twice along the way, did she suffer doubts about her decision, then reveled in her new found freedom for five months before succumbing to what seemed inevitable on the short list of opportunities for homeless, under-educated, attractive young women. She developed an expensive coke habit to take her mind off what she was doing for a living, but still managed to save up some money for the time she would quit working nights, locate her peripatetic mother, and the two of them could move to Florida because she knew the old girl had to give up the life one day. As she placed the magazine cutting of Edward Hopperâ&#x20AC;&#x;s Nighthawks on top of her meager belongings in her small gray suitcase, she smiled, thinking she had a pretty good idea where to start looking.

52 Pick-Up “She used the whole damn thing, every last bit of it,” Matt said, “including the Suicide Kings and the Bedknob Queen, even laying out the possibilities of putting it into four sections of thirteen chapters each. It was exactly where I was going with my second collection. I feel so cheated. Of course, she‟s from England, a brilliant writer, and I just have to admit she got there first, but I spent all that time researching, surfing the „Net, and working out themes for the last few pieces. What am I going to do with all that now?” Alejandro, who had written a children‟s adventure novel for a contest, that he didn‟t win, and now couldn‟t find a publisher for the project in which he had invested two years, stood facing Matt with a deck of cards arced between his fingers and thumb aimed at the space between them, and said, “You wanna play a game?”