& who knew you could sing so loud

& who knew you could sing so loud until
the house was deserted and the will
power was in, power was out?

crack the window just to feel
daring but tone it down a
thousand notches when a couple walks by.
crack the other window &
sing along to the ipod playing really loud &
spin on the chair until you are dizzier than
tuesday night and sink to the ground & be unsure
if you are seeing the light spinning or not because it is so dark
& bump against the guitar on your bed & hear it greet you
& then get up and jump to the drum beat of the song
because nobody is on the floor below.

yes. yes. yes.

Penny

There is a dirty copper penny inside my mouth
hovering in my upper lip &
clinking when it hits that part of my
tooth that juts out, sharp, always braceless :
there is a penny there large & round & I
trace Lincoln's face with my tongue, I
lick Lincoln's face.

Darklands

Rats stampede-- buffalo wild-- rampage
in pipes tar black and right-- angling as
venomous basilisks-- reverse spawn of Lucifer--
evening's child heralding the dark-- the
rats scurry in this night.

ooze, sludge, ooze down nowhere holes
fill the nooks put out the coals and

don't tell me that
I look sick cause you look
sicker, honey, and the kind of bees that
eat this muck are only queens, and the
ants are crushed by pools of
solid waste, is this place a hell under the earth, or is it an
Eden for Hell?

Tiger

Tiger's eyes unfold as he wakes up. Tiger rolls his muscles. Tiger practically purrs.

But not quite. It is a sunny morning and Tiger is ready for some ack-shunnn.

Tiger is ready for some prime time exercise.

Tiger walks out to the course. Tiger's muscles roll when he walks. Tiger feels good in the sun. He feels ready to do some pouncing.

Tiger's back is heavy with weaponry.

The prey scatter in front of Tiger, obvious white on soft green grass. They roll slowly in the grass and it is easy for Tiger to catch them.

He whacks one. Whacks another. Watches them fly. And he grins.

Tiger kills for sport.

DUGONG

I.
A sea-parrot has skin
instead of feathers.
A sea-parrot chews on coral
when it is teething.
A sea-parrot does not
lay eggs.

II.
The pirates with mouthfuls of
jaw fill the sea with your
blood sacrifices to their
unholy pagan gods.
Black and white they do not
see things in shades of grey.

III.
And is your milk as
worthy as a maid's or a
long lashed heifer's?

Do your babies learn to sing
when they are weaned
so that you know always where they are?

.

thoughts approaching valentine's day.

In the tenth grade I had so much energy.

I had so much energy for trying for relationships.

I felt like I was in love.

I felt unconditionally.

I tried so hard.

I would call him a lot.

I would try and hug him a lot.

I would make a huge effort to talk to him at school.

It's hard for me to believe now the amount of energy I had for things like that less than a year ago.

Nowadays if I am interested in somebody I will be cautious.

Maybe I will flirt with him.

But I will not call him on the phone a lot.

I will not try and get his attention all the time.

Maybe it is because I am not hugely interested in anybody at the moment.

Maybe it is because it didn't quite work the first time.

I am a little bit interested in a few people.

But not very interested in one in particular.

I have not had dreams about boys I know in a while.

There is no boy's number on my phone that I linger over.

I no longer have the rash self confidence to talk to somebody who isn't part of my group and think maybe he will give me a chance.

I'm starting to take the passive side.

I admire my self from last year.

In a way.

But I feel content about my current approach too.

It would take a lot for me to go through that again.

(Whether you are in love or not you should check out this poem: http://youtube.com/watch?v=c5WgmbMW7Ek&feature=related.

It is adorable.)

Night Owl

(This is a rewrite of a story by a guy named Brandon. You can find links to all the versions on the left of the page here: http://www.brandon-alien-fine.blogspot.com/. I read them all and then took about half an hour to forty minutes and wrote my own version.)

Night Owl

It was Friday night. I was laying in my bed with my laptop in my lap. I was watching a music video. The gmail window was open and as I was rating the music video four stars I saw the tab change from Gmail - Inbox to Gmail - Inbox (1). I clicked the tab. The new email was from a guy I had had a crush on once. It was a link to a youtube video.

I finished watching the music video and then I clicked his link. I closed the other youtube window. I watched the video he had linked me to. It was some kind of British comedy thing, skits with one dark haired fat British man and one weaselly looking British man, but it wasn't the one with Hugh Laurie. I thought about how much I liked Dr. House.

My housemate came in. I paused the video the second that I heard the door open. I always felt nervous watching things around people. She peered at the screen and was looking at the square that was the paused video.

"What are you watching," she said.

"Some kind of British comedy thing," I said. The title of the show was in bold print right above the video square but I didn't read it aloud to her.

"Do you want some wine," she said. She gave me a glass before I could say yes. I looked at the wineglass and thought how classy we were to have wineglasses. It was a little too full to look classy so I had to drink some of it. I brought down the amount of wine to the correct level. It was cheap white wine but I pretended I was Jackie O anyway.

The clock on my laptop said it was 10:26. The laptop was really warm on my legs and I imagined my legs charring under it even though the blanket was a barrier between us. I checked my emails one last time. I wrote a one-sentence response to the guy I had once had a crush on. I felt like I was telling him I didn't care anymore because I didn't use any capital letters. I closed the lid of the laptop and lay it beside my bed. I got out of bed and put on some pants that were lying on the floor. They were jeans that rode up a little too high. I wanted to put on a long gray sweater I had had for years that always made me feel classy. I looked around my room for the sweater but I couldn't find it.

I went downstairs and found the sweater hanging off of one of the chairs. My housemate was sitting at the table doing the crossword puzzle. She could even do Friday puzzles. I put my sweater on and stuck my hand in the pocket. My wallet was in there. I knew I had at least fifteen dollars. "I'm going out," I said.

"Where are you going."

"Like a party or something."

"Okay," said my housemate. She didn't care that it was Friday night.

"Bye," I said. Then I put on my shoes. It took an awkwardly long time to put on my shoes and I had already said goodbye to her. I hurried out with my shoes partially on and got into my car and tied my shoes in the car. I turned the car on and listened to the Cure on the radio. I felt lonely. It was dark and chilly and I felt a little excited in my bubble of car.

I drove over a bridge to a club I had only been to once. There was plenty of free parking space around the club and I started feeling nervous that nobody was there. I parked half a block away and texted someone in one of my classes. "Are you going to the thing tonight on River." She didn't respond and I got out of the car clutching my wallet in my pocket and walked to the doors of the club.

The lights were on inside. It didn't seem very loud. There was a man at the door wearing a sleeveless shirt. "Seven bucks," he said. I got out my wallet. I had a ten but I wanted to keep the ten. I had a twenty. I gave him the twenty and he sighed and looked for change. He found change. "Stamp her," he said. "Go over there," he said to me and moved his head. I followed the movement and found a girl on a stool with long dark hair. She was Asian. I held out my hand and she held it professionally and stamped the back of my hand. I looked at the stamp. It said "INSECURE." I was confused by the stamp. I felt branded. "So can I go out and come back in," I said.

"Yeah," she said, "just show us the stamp."

"Okay."

I went inside. There weren't a lot of people there. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and looked at it. My classmate had texted me back. "Maybe," it said. I felt dissatisfied. I went over to the bar. The bartender looked familiar but I couldn't quite place him. He narrowed his eyes at me unpersonally. "Can I see some ID," he said. I blushed and took out my wallet and gave him my driver's license. People still thought I was underage. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. He nodded and slid it back and said, "Thanks. Can I help you."

"I'll take some white wine," I said. It was the first drink I could think of. Immediately I regretted saying that and wished I had asked for a pina colada instead. A pina colada was a real party drink. "Actually can I have a pina colada," I said but I said it very quietly and he didn't hear me. He was doing something with his hands below the counter, I couldn't really see. I felt like I was blindly trusting him for no reason. He brought me a glass of white wine that was a lot too full. I didn't want to have to correct him. "Five dollars," he said. I gave him five ones that the man at the door had given me. I sat on a stool and drank the wine quickly. I felt a little bit sick. I texted my classmate. "You should come," I said. Then I texted her again, "It kind of sucks but I feel lonely." I am basically the only girl here, I thought. I almost texted that to my classmate but I didn't. There were a couple of girls dancing and they looked like sluts. I felt too un-slutty and thought about going home and putting on my housemate's clothes and coming back. But I was too fat to be a successful slut.

A guy sat down next to me. "Hi," he said. He was stubbly and looked like that actor from Sideways and Spider-Man 3. I looked away. "Hi," I said very quietly in case he wasn't talking to me. He downed a foamy beer and tried to make conversation. I spoke a little bit. My hand was on my wallet in case somebody would try and steal it or it would fall out of my pocket. He gave up and went over and started to dance. That was unsuccessful, I thought. I watched the dancers. The music started to skip and the DJ had to go up and put on a different song. I wondered if anyone in the club knew the Soulja Boy dance. If they played Soulja Boy would anybody know the dance? I thought about how I had looked up the meanings of the slang on urban dictionary and how disgusting the lyrics were. I wondered if any of the sluts in the club had ever been "supermanned." I had drunk my entire glass of wine without noticing. The bartender came over. "Can I have," I said. I hesitated. I wasn't sure what to ask for.

"You don't look like you need any more," he said gently. "Why don't you go dance."

I felt embarrassed and went to the dance floor and pretended to dance for two minutes. Then I left the club. I looked at the INSECURE stamp on my hand and felt outed.

I went to my car and drove to Safeway near my house. It was a big Safeway and they had a sandwich making stand that was still open even though it was like one or two AM by now. I went to the sandwich stand. "Can I get a vegetarian sandwich," I asked.

"Do you want this," said the server. He was small and dark. He pointed to rye.

"Yes," I said. He picked it up and I thought about sourdough and didn't bother saying anything. I didn't want to correct him.

"Do you want this," he said. He pointed to mayo.

"No," I said.

"Do you want this," he said. He pointed to mustard.

"Okay," I said.

I paid three fifty for the sandwich and then I took a basket and looked along the shelves. I bought Ritz crackers and shampoo. I looked at the makeup and acne medication and decided not to buy any because I didn't want to be the kind of person who actually bought that stuff. I didn't want to be caught with it even though I felt like I was breaking out. I bought a 7-Up. I saw an opened thing of bread and I took out the end piece and ate it right there in the store. I felt a rush of adrenaline. A fucked looking blond man walked by and I turned away. I didn't want to get caught. I felt fucked under the flourescent lights.

I went to the place where you pay for things and put my things on the black belt and put an orange separator thing after I was done putting my things on there even though there was nobody behind me. I paid for them and took the bag and went back to my car. I didn't feel drunk. My mouth was dry from the illicit piece of bread.

I put my key in the car door and drove home. I parked badly outside my house and went inside with everything.

When I woke up the bag of things was lying beside my bed. I couldn't remember coming to bed but I was in bed. I was still wearing my sweater. My phone had died and I stuck it into the charger. The sandwich was still in the bag. I had never eaten it. I remembered dreaming about how the weaselly looking British man in the comedy had been operating under the impression that he was Hugh Laurie and I had had the responsibility of telling him the truth. I had had to "let him down easy."

Super Tuesday

Unresolved tensions buzz out their slogans.
(15 promised hours & I still repent.)
A dog barks lonely in the night. he don't
know who he stand for. &

I sing the Kennedy name in my sleep
I sing the Kennedy curl in my heart
I sing a Kennedy endorsement in my
........young-old idealist soul;

-- & maybe an abstract campaign trumps one
of crocodile tears and desperate lovers
-- & maybe the world will bring back the dollar when
it sees us thinking clear
-- & maybe 100 years in an abstracter war isn't
the quagmire I'm looking for
(-- & maybe those young doomed transplants sink in
the quagmire you're looking for)
-- & he's someone I'll refuse
to regret electing if we don't
neglect electing him.

Now You Know Where I Stand. & Take Your Pick.
Democracy's a fruit I can't quite taste
But you know your ballot could be the drop
That carves the weakened cliff of expectation.

Salt lick quartz

Salt lick quartz, a long translucent sip of mountain, I am
speechless in your crags. A mile away I
know the sea is roaring. The rain
attacks me even here.

Little hails of ice melt into your peaks and
shimmy down your slides. My mouth
tastes of oranges and strange white
powders. Too many teeth in
one crushed mouth.

The shine in you imagines some
petrified fairy, preserved in you like preformed amber,
pointed toes poised pointed wings flick'ring.
And who's to say impossible in a
once-world where metals melted and
crystals were unformed crystal?

Sometimes

Sometimes work will exist.

(Being in high school is hard work, thought the cactus.)

(It looked out the window at the street and saw the cars honking by. It concentrated very hard on its spines and tried to gain sensation in them. The cactus had a primitive but persistent belief that if it could gain more sensation in its spines it would be able to move around.)

(The cactus sneezed. Bug, thought the cactus.)

(I am sick from all the hard work I am doing to fit in in high school, thought the cactus. I wish I could just be in college already. I am sick because I am trying to maintain a set of difficult friends while still acheiving enough to get accepted into Johns Hopkins University.)

(The cactus had a dream, a goal. The dream, the goal was to go to Johns Hopkins University and study astrophysics with a minor in mechanical engineering. The cactus loved to gaze at the stars alone at night.)

(It watched the sun set. There were beautiful fragile tinted clouds in the sky. The cactus watched for stars emerging in the atmosphere. An ambulance honked by and the lights from the ambulance disrupted the pretty scene a little. The cactus felt disappointed in its community.)

Sometimes a community will exist.

in the dark

.twist the sssss
pine. .sus
pense. ?yeah? .i
think so.
.twissss
t.

.bug-eyes of abaddon lumi
nescent in half cloned dark.
.wiggle hairs.
.cloven a
scent.

.yer teeth sharp in the
back of yer mouth. ?yeah? .i
think so.
.ssnip.

(step)
((step))
(((step in the dark)))
((((in the dark))))

in the dark

!!pungent crack of
yellow marrow!!

Throw Down Yer Books And Run
Give Up Yer Guns

saul bellow

i am struggling through a novel by saul bellow

the novel is thick

it weaves abstraction through realism

the dialogue serves to further the plot

the main character is an asshole

an abstract asshole

the only thing i like about the novel is when adjectives are listed without commas

are all saul bellow novels like this

please tell me

thank you

The Eternal Stranger

Dawn-bringer, bearer-of-morning-light, his
Cytherean masculinity thirty million miles away
is echoed here
in the undercurrent of doubt,
in the questioning of love,
in what distances you from me...

And this poem could never get nowhere
because neither of us really believe
in that neverending quarrel between good and evil.

Dawn-bringer.
Maybe after all
both sides are bright.

In different light.

hair

Underneath my bed I have hidden a chest.

The chest is filled with the curls of my relatives.

There are the curls of my sons.

There are the curls of my nephews.

There are the curls of my cousins.

There are the curls of my granddaughter.

They are carefully clipped curls and they are all almost a uniform color of brown.

Dark brown like the wood of the chest.

I cannot tell the different curls apart sometimes.

They all lie together entangled in some intimate embrace of hair.

They smell clean.

I clip them from my relatives after washing their hair.

I am good at cutting the hair of my relatives.

Their locks close cut hug their round heads.

Their doe brown eyes framed with long lashes.

Their eyes are wise.

But their eyes grow duller with age.

The brilliance of childhood is lost with age.

I have preserved their curls from babyhood.

Those hairs contain wisdom.

When I die I would like to be burned in a pyre made of the curls of my relatives.

I would like to burn in an implosion of that wisdom.

The stink will hover miles.

poem on a shiny silver gum wrapper

gray desolate days the
clock running slower than
swirls of lazy sweet potato water in your plastic stained
bowl your red handled
paintbrush is sodden with
the wetness echoes of
color

somber tinted air with
out perfume sprays
the long eyelashes of ex
haustion our
symptoms

december, month of
dulled attempts at
summer's cheer, Xmas
Xmas is almost here, but
our cars are dusty with
winter.

sunset indoors

His mouth is sicky red, cheeks flushed and riding high, skinny nipples twice dotting his chest. Sweaty curls crest his forehead above the fine fragile brow. He has fever.

I look at him detached. He was never my lover. There is a long ugly scar along his goosebumped hip from some internal external war now encased in past. There are streaks of pen on my hands from writing letters that do not mention his name. Outside the sun is gorgeous setting, colors I have no name for, fire-golden linings. I am in this chipped room with a stranger.

Burroughs's junkies were less than human. Is he? His veins punctured, teeth gritted against that overwhelming morphine need. Pale lines on his fingers where heavy rings once nestled. He'd punch the Man in the jaw with them, break teeth, until their opium worth trumped revolution. The family crest pawned.

One of his toes is a stump of infection, nailless and blind. Even his feet pitted with injection welts. I cat's-cradle my hands and look at the gray blanket he lumped off. I keep my eyes off his shoulder skin pulled tight.

Some tall innocent puts his tan hand on my back and I shudder. "You don't need to stay," he says, surfer-white teeth and gleaming generous muscles in his neck, the scent of outside gloam on his tailored wool coat. "You don't owe him anything."

I nod, not sure what I mean. We all owe him everything, this dying man-boy boy-man propelled and floating through delusion, his blood running fast to catch up, his heartbeat thrumming like a mouse's. A bubble stretching and popping in the corner of the thin red mouth.

"It's nothing to do with you," says the pumpkin-grinning outdoorsman.

I twist my fingers. I stand my ground.

the weather

It is late.

I cannot sleep.

I am thinking of my friends and the wildfires.

I am thinking of my friends in Southern California and the rage-roaring wildfires subsuming and exhuming their homes, the anti-flood, no salvation on a rooftop no more.

I am thinking of my friends' clocks and calendars and yellow high heels melting in blaze.

I am thinking of their acrylics and temperas and long handwritten pages sparking in puddles of oil and sprinkle-crumbs of char.

I am thinking of fleeing in a hot bright night gunning up the car quick and running.

I do not know fire.

I know the forgiving fog and blue everchanging water of the bay, but I do not know fire.

I do not know the right way to imagine it.

I imagine my fire like the fire in film, car explosions and Gone With the Wind.

I live by the bay but the air is hot and stagnant with eight-minute sun.

I live by the bay but today the air was hot and stagnant with eight-minute sun.

The smoke drifts up a little.

The sun through the magnifying glass that is our ozone layer.

In late October.

Winter can't make up its mind anymore.

Seasons are crossdressing and giggling in poison lipstick.

Cigarettes in the Refrigerator

My eyes are crusty. I close them. I open them. They are crusty and everything is a little freckled. My bare skin is freckled through my eyes. I am naked sitting on my couch and the maroon lines of the couch are pressing into my skin and the downy hairs on my skin. There is a line of dark stubbly hair traveling from my navel to my crotch. My navel is chafed. I look at my navel and at my hollowing stomach. I have not eaten in several days. I look at my legs. My thighs are covered in dark hairs that stand out against my pale skin.

There is stubble on my face and my jaw. I lick my lips and I extend my tongue to feel the sharp dark hairs cultivating on my upper lip. There is similar hair all down my jaw. I get up and walk and shake a little. Light shines. It is between morning and afternoon. I stand in front of my refrigerator and stare at my refrigerator. My refrigerator is not magnetic. It is a shitty kind of refrigerator that is not magnetic, and whenever I look at it a childhood memory is stabbed in the ass cheek. I am saving up for a magnetic refrigerator but I keep forgetting to save up. I accidentally spend my allowances on rent, recreation, and food.

Out of habit, I swing open the door of my non-magnetic refrigerator. I have been doing this every thirty minutes or so for the past few days. There is no food inside my refrigerator. There is a mostly-full bottle of mustard and there is a mostly-full jar of mayonnaise and there is an unbranded packet of cigarettes. They aren't mine. Ted smokes when he wants to get drunk. He thinks there is nothing classier than an alcoholic who smokes. Ted wants badly to be good at mixing drinks, but he is shitty at it.

I look at the mustard, mayonnaise, and cigarettes. I let the cold air blow onto my face and nipples. The refrigerator hums loudly. It sort of buzzes. My body is cold. I think about eating but that makes me want to throw up. I shut the bare refrigerator door. I open it again and take out the packet of cigarettes. I shake out one cigarette and put the rest back in the refrigerator and shut the refrigerator door again.

I look at the cigarette. I am dizzy and lethargic. I leave the cigarette on the counter and go to the pantry and get out a bottle of wine. It takes me a few tries to open it and I almost give up but I get it in time. I take a swig and the bottle is very heavy and I almost drop it but I don't. The taste of the white wine goes to my head immediately. I feel like a sheet of paper. I run my hand along my upper arm and my upper arm is the temperature of marble. My skin is soft and goose-pimply and covered with fine down. Ted's arms are covered with wiry rusty hair and he has a raspy rusty beard. He secretly thinks it makes him seem more manly. Ted goes through phases of trying to hide his homosexuality. Right now he is convinced he is bisexual. He has gone on a cruise to meet women. Ted is secretly less aroused by women than I am. He thinks he can hide it, but he is wrong.

Thinking about Ted makes me feel feverish and I want to throw up again. Teaspoons of acrid bile slosh in my stomach. I feel like the bile is going to burn thruogh my stomach lining and up my esophagus and burn out my larynx and down into my lungs. The bile will explode in my lungs and splatter my lungs with acid and quickly burn through them. I need to soak up the bile in my stomach with white bread, but I have no white bread. I go to the drawer and get out a spoon and open the refrigerator door. I hold the jar of mayonnaise and unscrew the cap of the jar of mayonnaise and I scoop a spoonful of mayonnaise. I close the refrigerator door and then I eat the mayonnaise. The mustard is too acrid to eat.

Eating a spoonful of mayonnaise is like eating a liquefied tumor. The raw calories go to my head immediately and I feel them settle on top of the layer of white wine in my stomach. Jesus Christ. It is an infernal swamp in there. I lurch and hit my knee against a chair and my knee throbs but does not bruise. I want white bread badly. I lurch to the bedroom where the telephone used to be. I know my cellular phone is somewhere but I don't know where it is. I sit on the stained mattress and I pull at the fine dark hairs on my legs.

Enemy combatants

Give me your tired, your poor and I'll grind them
under my toes. their hair blacker with blood, an
anointment. if they're beaten e-
nough they'll succumb to truth, that
terrorist trash they'll take my shit
and keep their mouths shut they'll
never tell 'cause they know no one cares no one pays
attention I'll make them talk I'll
make them fucking scream for mercy if I want,
over and over and over til the records

break, they're naked with their faith,
and bareness is now. let me humiliate
your boys and my boys. let me take.

he's in movies

There was a man all in black. Ageless, blond, nose red with cold, hat cocked. The folds in his pants were crisp. He walked long and tall and lit upon a bench. He didn't look at the ocean, though it was sunset-blue and ripply gorgeous, a gift of ever-changing lights and motions. He didn't count the flaps of pelican wings, exhausting communication of flight, breathing only during the brief respites of gliding. He looked at his wrist.

He waited.

If he waited long enough George Clooney in a moustache would come up behind him and give him a mission. He was dressed like the kind of man that George Clooney would come up to. It was going to happen, it was fate. I trembled with wanting to go over and talk to him. I had goosebumps. I was wearing a long pink hippie jacket and I knew he would not take me seriously. I was not George Clooney in disguise. I was the opposite of what he was.

I looked at the pelicans and thought, "fuck, I already forgot my poem." I looked at the man again. He attracted me. Mystery.

I looked away again, at the contained self-reliance that was the sea, and then I looked at the clouds, golden spun. Eddies of angel motions, I thought with a feeling of epiphany. The breeze felt nice but smelled like rotten fish. I moved farther from the sea, and soon it shifted and began to smell like figs instead.

I looked back at the man. While I wasn't looking he had folded. His head in the hat slumped between his knees. "Shit," I thought. "Don't give up. George Clooney will still come for you." He was edging close to giving up. Or maybe just wanted to look like it. (In these situations George Clooney likes to wait until you get desperate and do something stupid before he saunters over. "Sorry, I was hijacked on the way, terrorists." "Some preteens wanted my autograph." George Clooney is full of excuses.) If the man had thought of this, he was probably playing it pretty clever. A master's hand. Black bishop. The man was still.

I was in sandals and pants that were too long. The hems of my pant legs were getting grimy. I looked at the man, all alone on the bench. I had been sitting on that same bench a while beforehand. I had picked up a rounded piece of yellow old insulation that had been on the ground and placed it onto the seat of the bench. I wondered what the man in black thought of the insulation. It looked a little bit like petrified wood, but it was soft and smelled strange, artificially clean. I wondered what the man would do if I went and sat next to him. Or stood behind him, George Clooney in disguise after all. "This is your mission." "Can I ask you a personal question-- why are you here in a black hat?" I couldn't remember the name of that actor from the old time movies who wore that kind of hat. It began with an H. Humphrey Bogart, that was who it was. "Why are you here in a Humphrey Bogart hat? Why are your creases so nice?" It could be that he had been expecting a date of less professional status, maybe some girl had stood him up, but I did not think that a girl would stand him up. The back of his neck, where the yellow-blond hair almost the color of the insulation met the paleness of his skin, looked very benign. I did not think he had a gun inside his black collared coat. He was probably not a mercenary. Probably he was the kind of man who worked with papers to find out who the moles were and which Russians could be trusted. Then again, if that were so why would he be sitting by the beach?

Figs in the air, wet ashes in my mouth. My ears were cold and I tried to pull up my collar. Wishing I had brought a scarf after all. Briefly I entertained the idea that the man was a sorcerer from another world, had conjured his way here for an important meeting and found himself the victim of a mix-up. Tragedy. I let this run through me only because I loved the word "sorcerer." (Though I would love it better were it spelled with two o's.) But the fancy of that theory spouted away without taking its time. I wondered how contrived it would seem if I went and sat beside him. There were two other benches, empty. Could I sit at another and still talk to him? I got the impression it was only George Clooney he wanted to hear from.

I stood shivering and watched him. He was like an origami swan. He was so uniform. "Next time, maybe," I told myself. "Maybe every day we'll be silent together like this. Until someday when he will tell me all of it."

He never seemed to see me. Looking in the wrong direction.