FICTION

The same young woman still lifeguards the evenings. She calls out, "Welcome back. Long time." Echo on chlorine and blue. The old man who comes for his six laps every night at 6:30 is here, eighth lane. The thin blond is in the sixth. She'll swim her laps without ever stopping and then leave without ever talking. Three other regulars are in their usual places.

Nothing has changed in here since I've been away, though outside everything has moved on: flowers to seed, leaves to gold and red, the grass to brown and the night air cold. The only difference in here is that where before it was light out those big windows: sun and grass and trees, now it's my reflection that shows. Red Speedo one-piece, straight cut brown hair just below my ears, the V of my shoulders a little softer for these months away. I take the third lane, my usual. The fourth is empty.

Dive
Like I was never away, like I was never a toe-dipper. He took me past that. Told me, "You have to go in fast because it will start you off with power. Carry you on." His hand flat on my back, the place where muscle curves into spine. "Go." His lips so close to my shoulder that maybe they touched, maybe. That's what made me reach and stretch for the water. The force of that first rush. The chill maybe from that touch or from the water or the way the dive stretched me long, even my toes and fingers stretched, the water shushing and bubbling, me full-out reaching.

After that lap, at the edge, he squatted down. "You have a perfect dive." He touched a bead of water on my arm. "You should always dive." He stepped over and stretched out, dove into the fourth lane.

Breast Stroke
His first night at the pool, he was already in the water when I came in. Me slipping in, feet first, no splash, tucking my hair behind my ears. I started: hands forward and then wide and then in prayer, legs frogged and then wide and then together. Used the glide, face down, to move forward. Face out of the water long enough to see there's someone new in the next lane. Someone who knows how to swim.

At first it's just a body moving. Then a man: round muscled shoulders, dark hair shaved close, those dark eyebrows a heavy line each time he turns for breath, mouth fishing for air. Nothing really. Just a man, one lane over.

We finished at the same time. Rested at the end of the pool, goggles hanging on our necks, breath raising and lowering our chests. I pushed myself up and out of the pool. Water, trying to stay behind, rushed off me. His eyes on me the whole time, nothing hidden about it.

Butterfly
A week of nodding at each other. Five nights of saying hello and goodbye, always our eyes holding just a little longer. That place between my chest and my stomach: flutter kick and small breath. Two nights of talking in the pool after our laps, him saying he liked the force of the stroke, the way it looked violent for someone watching, but for the swimmer it was a way to use your whole body. Something you had to work at to learn. "But once you know it, there you are. Gliding and smooth. A butterfly, no matter how it looks." And then this: "Why don't you dive?"

One night of talking outside by our cars. Him: divorced six months. "But we've been apart longer than that." Me: work. "You know, if you have your own business, you get a little lost in it."

The next night he helps me remember how to dive. "You can't think about it, or you'll never go." And later, by our cars, he asks me to coffee. "I'll drive." He touches a button on his key and the interior lights go on. "I'll bring you back after."

We never make it to coffee. We never make it out of the parking lot. Just to a dark corner. In that corner, in the car, we rush to each other, arms spread at first, then holding on. The force of the time in between that first nod and now, exploding in the way we pull at clothes. Our hair still wet, our skin still water cool but hot underneath from the swim.

Sidestroke
The way it's not competitive, you think you could do it forever. Just switch sides now and then, though one side always feels more right than the other. We swam every night that first month. Got there at the same time and even though he was stronger, I could go just as long. And after the swim, still we could barely make it beyond his car. But we did. To his place, a new apartment not far away. Everything new, nothing of a married life. Leather couch, glass coffee table, silver and black bar stools, that bed that held all the space in the world. King size. We used it all.

No way to know if we were hungry for food or for more of each other, or from the swim or what we did together. We stopped and ate and then had more.

Corkscrew
No reason other than to show off. Front to back, turning like that and still moving forward. But he said it was for balance, for the way your body needed to have work doled out evenly. "And it will keep it fun." He showed me how and after I learned to keep moving straight ahead, I always did one lap like that.

At the edge of the pool, in his lane, him holding me there, the cup of my body in the cup of his, a few swimmers still swimming. Lifeguard not guarding, because we're all grown up and there's no one alone in the pool. Us together, so quiet, so slow, it would look like he was just holding me. Just resting. The lines that marked the lanes wavered under the water. Until I closed my eyes. Until my small cry and his deep breath were the noise we made together. Maybe covered by the splash and lap of the water. But still, there was the echo. The thin blond in the sixth lane, the old man in the eighth, kept swimming.

Immersion
Exhale and inhale twice. Completely. Push off hard. Make your body one long smooth line. Streamline. Stay under. Bring your knees to your chest, your hands to your chest. Pull them out and away, back to that smooth line. Glide. Go as far as you can on just that. Stay under. Don't panic, don't think about time passing.

Weeks of the world going away. All the things I watch, unwatched: sleep, food, doctor, group, work. Nights with him, in the water and out of the water.

Late in the third week, we circle swam in his lane because someone had mine and all the others were full. We swam immersed, to see who could stay under longer. I went first. He caught up. He tapped my foot to pass, but didn't. His hands ringed my ankles and let go so quick there was no sinking, no choking, no need to kick at him. But it's what could have happened.

He swam around me, went fast enough to get ahead so that we swam exactly opposite. Me up the lane, him down the lane; me down the lane, him up the lane. Each time we passed, he stopped his stroke, one hand held out to run the length of my body. Each time he passed, my body stalled and floated, mid-stroke, mid-kick, waiting to be pulled under. It's what could have happened.

Backstroke
I helped him with it, early in the fourth week. "You're not as efficient as you could be." Showed him how to do it without hurting a shoulder, the way to keep his face just above the water. How to breathe. Said, "If you do it right, it's a way to relax, but still get a workout." Held him by the round of his shoulder, shaped the cup of his hand. Hoped my touch would cover the jag in my voice, the clench in my jaw, the waves inside, the sinking. Something had changed.

That was the first night we didn't leave together. I had my blue suit on, the one with the low back, the one he liked. "It shows off your muscles." He couldn't see my back though, where I was in the water, looking up to him squatted down at the pool edge, third lane.

Him: "I need to make it an early night."

All the signs were there, the slipping, the edge so close.

I lift my goggles. Me: "Oh. Okay. I guess I'll stay awhile longer."

I bob up for his kiss but his lips land just above my mouth. Both of us: "Sorry."

I push off, onto my back. Glide then float, then the legs, the arms. My eyes leave him and go to the ceiling. I do this better than him.

That night, alone, I sleep all the way through. The first time in weeks. A sleep like the clear of the pool, before that first body dives in. Just small waves from filters below. It's why I started swimming. Because the doctor said it would help. With the sleep, with the moods.

That's when I should have stopped him. Before he stopped me.

Crawl
The one you use most. Stroke, stroke, stroke, breath. The flutter kick no deeper than the depth of your body.

The last night. His ending. The way I might beg and how that beg would pull me under. And that old man, the thin blond woman, the young life guard, would see. That's what takes me up, out of the pool, into my clothes, out of the building and to my car, next to his, where my key makes a long grey line in his black paint.

That's what takes me away from the pool for long enough.

For months after that night: Sink away, go under. Just barely come up for breath.

For weeks after those months: In my car, outside his apartment. Until enough dark nights go by that I go to the window. Drapes open, apartment empty.

For days, after those weeks: Wait outside the pool in my car to make sure he's gone.

For seconds, after I come into the pool: By the edge, waiting to dive, waiting for his touch on my back. But no. Go. Remember how to swim. Pace myself to the thin blond woman in the sixth lane who swims without ever stopping, leaves without ever talking.

Allen reads cards for the next set of commercials, but his heart isn't in it. He can't stop thinking about her.

"After the break we'll be taking more of your calls on Love Line, but first, are you bothered by back pain when you wake up? I was. But I switched to Air Pedic and I'm sleeping like a baby."

He signals his engineer he's off and he reclines for a moment. He sips the vodka he keeps in an Aquafina bottle and rubs his eyes and glances at the monitor on his console. He can't read it when he leans back.

The engineer signals two minutes.

He usually calls home during this break, but it would feel funny tonight. He's wasted a minute and it's probably too late now. He looks at the monitor again, to see if it looks like it changed. Can't tell. He starts to feel like he should call anyway--like he can’t not call. He looks at the clock.

One minute.

He reaches for the phone and dials. One ring. Two rings.

"Hello?"

"Hi, I got tied up for a minute. Sorry."

"That's okay. I've told you, you don't have to call."

"I know. Kids in bed?"

"Yeah, a while ago."

"You listening to the show?"

"No. I can't stand it. Same thing every night."

"I know, 'pathetic schlubs,' but it's a living."

"Yeah."

"I have to get back. See you in a couple of hours."

"I'll be asleep."

"I know. Love you."

He hangs up and goes back to the console. He sorts the sponsor cards and adjusts the mic before looking.

The screen is full of names and 'vitals,' as he calls them. People call in and talk about themselves and then other people call in to connect, all in hopes of meeting someone. Allen feels sorry for these people. They've struck out in every other venue and this is probably their last resort. He feels lucky he found Katherine the regular way, as he calls it.

He also feels a little envious.

He scans the names. Some are familiar; most are not. The one he is looking for is not there. He grimaces and lets out a sigh. The engineer signals, and he's back on air.

"Welcome back to Love Line. I'm your host, Allen Pullman, and we're taking your calls until midnight. Our next caller is Pete, from Euclid. Pete?"

"Yeah, Allen, first time caller. Thanks for having me on."

"Well, Pete, It's my job." Pause. "That's a joke Pete, it's my pleasure. Tell everyone listening out there about yourself."

Allen has one ear on the caller and one listening to his conscience. He stares at the monitor, almost willing her to call. Pete drones on and Allen waits for a pause that means he has to say something.

"Okay, Pete, bird watching. That sounds interesting. You know ladies. I really mean it. He likes to take walks on the beach, and he's not using his binoculars to scope out the bikinis. Call in for Pete from Euclid and we'll connect you. 555-3546."

Allen starts to switch to another call when he see it. Her name. He holds his finger over her button, pausing, pausing, knowing there's dead air, and the engineer gives him a look, and starts to wave, and Allen pushes, skipping all the callers who have been holding forever.

"Our next caller is Wanda from Lakewood. This isn't your first time, is it Wanda?"

"No, Allen."

"So what happened with the last guy we hooked you up with?" He was working hard to keep his announcer's voice going.

"I never met him."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, when we talked off the air, we just didn't connect, you know?" Her voice is silky smooth.

"Yeah, I know. So, Wanda," he says, and his voice is softer now, smoother, more like his real voice, "tell us again what you're looking for." He listens with both ears.

"Well, I like a strong voice."

"Yeah."

"And a sense of humor."

"Mm, hmm."

"And he has to have a good job. And be able to tell me things I want to hear."

Allen compares these to his personal inventory. "This sounds an awful lot like me," he says before he can stop. The engineer's eyes grow wide.

"I suppose it does, Allen." Her voice grows huskier, softer. "You know, I've seen pictures of you."

He shifts in his chair.

"Did you see the pictures of me I sent?"

"No," he lies. "Those don't get to me, I'm afraid. Not allowed."

"Oh, it's a shame. I'm very pretty."

He nods. Her phone number is part of the vitals on the monitor. He has always avoided that.

"So, Allen, can you connect me tonight?"

"Well, Wanda, we'll see what happens."

"I'm patient, Allen."

A trickle of sweat runs down his cheek. He blinks and forces himself into the radio voice. "Okay, Wanda, we'll see what we can do. Callers, if you want to speak with Wanda, call now."

The engineer signals for a station identification, which is about fifteen seconds of down time. Allen swigs from the Aquafina bottle and wipes his brow. He glances at the monitor, then away, then back. He can feel the seconds ticking. He grabs a pencil and jots her number from the monitor.

Back on the air he takes more calls and listens, but now it's with one ear on his libido, and one on his heart, counting down the minutes until the next break.

M and K meet in a bar. M says he is glad to see his old friend again, after all these years. He asks how K is, and the answer is, Not bad. Living alone now, getting used to it. Preferring it, really. Kids in college. That's expensive, but K picks up a little extra money here and there. He's getting by.

—And you?

M opens his mouth to speak, closes it. Looks at K. He considers. Then, what the hell, M tells K the truth, holding back nothing. His life is great. He and his wife have rediscovered one another, as lovers, as best friends. He loves his work, looks forward to it every day, relishes the challenges and the recognition. He doesn't know if he'll ever retire. Everything has fallen into place for him, and he's young enough still to appreciate and enjoy it all. He's happy.

—Really? says K. Even with everything that's going on in the world?

—Really.

—You don't watch the news and worry? says K. You aren't the slightest bit unhappy, dissatisfied?

It's not that M wouldn't change the world if he could. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. He gives money, does his part, and is grateful for the opportunity to share his good fortune. But the world's sorrows don't weigh on him. He is thoroughly and persistently happy.

—Thoroughly and persistently? says K, taking a small notebook from his pocket. And you're not afraid?

M doesn't know what to make of the notebook, but he says that it's a funny question to ask. He doesn't know what there is to be afraid of. Sure, bad things happen. But the chance of any particular bad thing happening to him is vanishingly small. Why worry?

K checks his watch, then writes something in the notebook.

—What's that? says M.

—Nothing, says K.

—No, really. I'm curious.

—Well, says K. He smiles. I told you I have some other jobs. This is one of them. One of the things I do for a little extra money, you know? But forget it. See, I'm not actually supposed to take notes. But you know how it is. Memory. Not what it used to be.

—Notes about what?

—Forget it.

—But I got the feeling that... Were you writing about me?

—I'm telling you, it's nothing.

—But what did you write?

—Just the time, date, your name, and that you are, like you said, thoroughly and persistently happy. That you aren't worried. It's the kind of information they pay me for.

—They? They, who?

—My employers. But don't get worked up about it. It's nothing.

—It's nothing? You're taking notes about what I say in private conversation and passing them on to someone?

—Like I said, I'm not really supposed to take notes.

—The notes aren't the half of it. You're spying on people!

K winces. Looks around the room.

—Who are they? says M. What do they do with this information?

—Keep your voice down. I don't know what they do. I call a phone number, I make a report. I get a check. As far as I can tell, they just make some sort of record.

—Record of what? says M. What happens to the people you report?

—Nothing! If bad things were happening... What are you thinking? I wouldn't do this if anything really bad happened!

—How can you do this?

—Where's the harm? It's not like you have anything to worry about from them.

—Oh, yeah? How do you know?

—Trust me on this.

—You don't know who they are!

—Relax! I'm telling you it's nothing.

—Bullshit!

—Don't worry.

—Says you. A thing like this does worry me. To tell the truth, it worries me a great deal.

—Really? says K. He takes out the notebook again. He marks the page somehow, then puts the notebook away and gets up from the table. He says, They'll be happy to hear that.

We are almost there.

We have been on the road for almost five hours. Two hundred and ten miles behind us is where I live, and I've never been here before. Usually I like visiting new places, meeting new people, but I guess that all depends on the circumstances.

I am in the back seat of my dad's uncle's car. What is that anyway? Great uncle? Second uncle? Uncle once removed? I don't know. Maybe nothing at all. All I do know is that the last time I saw him was almost four years ago when my grandma passed on. I remember seeing him at the graveside, a tear in his eye, just as we all had. He had a bit more hair then, and a little more life in his cheeks.

His name is George, but I've called him Uncle Womble for as long as I can remember. You know, after that kids' show from way back when. I don't really know why, but it seems to fit — even though he isn't my uncle, and he doesn't look much like a Womble either. It used to make him smile, but not today I guess. Today I may just stick with plain old George.

He isn't saying much. None of us are really, to be honest. There's not a great deal you can say at a time like this without it sounding false or forced or both, so conversation is limited somewhat to discussing the weather or last night's performance by the local football team. Beyond that and maybe asking when the next toilet break is, I just want it to be over.

Bereavements.

That's when you really get the measure of how big your family actually is, because a lot of the peripheral relatives only checked in when one of their kin was checking out. Cousins were the worst for that kind of thing. I've been to three family funerals — this will be my fourth — and every time I meet at least one or two new ones. I wonder how many there are going to be this time.

Squeezed into the car on my left is my dad's older sister — Aunt Ruth. She has been holding up quite well since the news, although there is always that wet film across her eyes, as if she could break down at any moment if something sets her off.

I know for a fact that if Nicola died — my younger sister; she's twenty-two — I would be devastated. Christ, I think I'm about to cry just thinking about it! But Ruth is a 'real trooper' and takes it all in her stride. Maybe she is trying to be strong for me, but there is really no need. It has been a long time since I had any real relationship with my father.

They said he died suddenly — that it was a freak accident. Well of course it was sudden. People don't fall from the top of a cliff in slow motion, do they? It was about three hundred feet, so that was what — five seconds, maybe six? I don't know. Quick though. Not 'hit-by-a-train' quick, but pretty fast.

It's a funny way to go, don't you think? Maybe Jerry Seinfeld will write it into his next routine:

So I knew this guy once; he was a friend of mine. He was out walking one day, enjoying the summer. Next thing I know he fell off a cliff, all the way to the bottom, tumbling over and over. . .

Cue laughter. And I'd probably laugh right along with the rest.

But I guess it isn't so much the fact that he died suddenly or accidentally — but more the fact that he died at all. Death comes to us all, I know, but it can be like a finger-snap. As quickly as that. I thought I'd be an old man myself — walking stick and false teeth — before I had to see my father off. He just seemed that type.

I always thought cancer would take him, or maybe a heart attack, when I did give thought to such morbidity. Tumour for an outside bet. You see, he was a heavy smoker. He got through two lighters a day. That was the joke anyway. His doctor never laughed though — told him if he didn't quit now he would be dead within two years. That was this past June.

I guess even when you're wrong, sometimes you're still right.

My grandma — my dad's mother — is sitting to the right of me, constantly trying to find another inch or two of seat that just isn't there. If I move over any more I'll be sitting in my aunt's lap. I'm the meat in a not particularly tasty sandwich. Forget the toilet break: if I don't get to stand up soon I may lose all feeling below my waist.

She has been crying for most of the journey, usually into her handkerchief, but occasionally the pain catches her off guard and she lets out these loud, wracking sobs. Nobody asks her if she's all right or tries to console her. What would be the point? Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. It's difficult to see someone you care about hurting like that. I must admit, once I almost cried myself. Even if you don't feel anything yourself, sadness can be contagious.

My dad just turned fifty-one a few weeks ago. Nobody died in their fifties, not these days, unless you lived in Afghanistan or somewhere like that. He was a young looking fifty-one as well: more like forty-two or forty-three. People always say I look just like him, although I think I'm more like my mother. Same features, you see. Maybe I associate looking like him with being like him, and maybe that's why I can't see it, or don't want to. I don't know for sure.

Every now and then I catch George looking in the rear view mirror. I smile thinly and I usually get one in return.

Fell off a cliff. Bloody hell. My dad didn't do things half-assed, I'll give him that much. He certainly made sure he wasn't coming back. I may go and have a look at the place where he bought it. I probably will. Naturally, I'm curious. Don't worry, I won't stray too close to the edge. Like father, like son, huh?

My granddad — dad's father — is talking to me from the passenger seat but I'm not really listening. Still, I'm able to wing it. That happens a lot in families. Well, my family anyway. I spend a lot of time in auto-pilot. I'm not missing much, I promise. He's on his way to bury his son: I doubt he has anything else on his mind. Anything he says is most likely just so he doesn't have to think about it for five seconds. I should really indulge him. I may not have figured out my own feelings yet, but I'm bloody sure my granddad is hurting like hell.

I'm twenty-seven years old. I don't have any kids — not yet — but I hope and pray that when I do I won't have to watch them go before me. No parent should outlive their children. It's just wrong.

While I'm thinking of these things, I don't think it will be a burial. He didn't like the idea of being trapped in a coffin. He always wanted to be cremated — or toasted, as he called it — because, of course, that was infinitely less grisly. Eternity is forever, whether you spend it in a wooden box or a porcelain jug. That's my two pence on the subject anyway. Maybe he will get stuffed (because my mum often said he should) and have himself mounted in our living room like some prize buck. I'd laugh if I didn't think it was just like my dad to do something like that.

Nicola isn't allowed to come to dad's funeral. Our dad's funeral. She's my sister, I think I told you. That's why she's not here. She had an argument with dad about ten years ago and she has been scratched off his Christmas card list ever since. She was just a kid, for Christ's sake! I don't even remember what it was about, now that I'm on the spot, and I reckon she probably doesn't either. Something stupid though, that's for sure; family disputes usually are. It's never about eradicating the national debt or feeding the Third World. Families fall apart over trivia.

My dad spent most of his life getting drunk — or so it seemed — and the rest of it sleeping on the sofa: feet up, pyjamas on, the kind with the string to pull them closed. You know the ones I mean. Not the easiest on the eyes, but he didn't go in much for appearances. He was strictly 'what you see is what you get.' No airs and graces. He cared little about what people said, and even less about what they thought. I admired him for that, and that is the crushing irony.

I don't think he ever worked an honest day in his life. Any job he did have was off the books, cash-in-hand stuff, and came by way of one of the shady characters he was always talking to and accepting drinks from — drinks he probably never paid back, I should add — down at the local bar. Like I said, never an honest day's work.

I wonder if he jumped. It's a thought which has crossed my mind a few times in the week since I learned of his death, and every time it has I have dismissed it just as quickly. My dad was a lot of things in this world — lazy, arrogant, and downright selfish at times — but he was no coward. Life didn't get to him that much. The struggle didn't bother him, in fact, he probably enjoyed it. If he owed people money, he owed people money. No problem. He wasn't about to lose any sleep over it, much less his life.

Maybe he was pushed. That's another option. He gets into a discussion with some guy. Something little; maybe nothing at all. Soon a bit of friendly chitchat heats up. Voices are raised and before you know it punches are thrown. It happens, you know. It's not beyond the realm of possibility.

But no, it didn't happen that way. Those ideas are handy little diversions, but sometimes things are just as they seem. No secrets. No conspiracy. No second shooter behind the grassy knoll.

Death by stupidity. That's what it will say on the pathology report. I'm loath to admit it, but my dad died because he was silly. What the hell was he doing up there anyway? Not for the first time in his life he walked a little too close to the edge; only this time he didn't get away with it.

I'm wearing this chain he gave me for my twenty-first birthday, though I never wore it then. It's a St. Christopher. You know, the guy who's supposed to look after you when you're travelling. It's not expensive — I saw it downtown for twenty-four ninety-nine — and it's not even all that nice, but there's an inscription on the back. Something about love. I can't remember. I put it on this morning. I'll probably take it off again tomorrow after the service —

— if I go, that is. I don't know if I will. When we get there I may just see if I can flag a bus home. One of those long distance jobs. Yeah, that's probably what I'll do. It's silly, I know, but it's not like I particularly liked the guy. Can you love someone without even liking them? I don't know, but I've spent the last five hours trying to decide.

What business do I have at his funeral? Funerals are for people who care, people who give a shit. More to the point, what business does he have expecting me to go? If my sister can't be there I don't think I want to be there either.

Maybe I'll just stay in my hotel room and wait for the others to get back from the service tomorrow. Nobody will miss me if I'm not there. It's not like I'm the guest of honour. I doubt anyone will even notice until after the reverend has said his bit and someone turns to me with a tissue and a hug — not that I would need either of those things anyway.

I could do with a cigarette right now, and I don't even smoke. Maybe part of my dad is in me after all.

It probably sounds unfair — to disparage the dead — and it definitely sounds cold, I know that, but at the end of the day, he wasn't a great guy. Not everyone is. He was an all right guy some of the time, even a good guy some of the time, but most of the time he was neither. Most of the time my dad was a son of a bitch — and I shouldn't have to apologise for that. It was his failing, not mine.

Saying that, I'll regret it if I don't go. I know I will. The Americans call it closure, I think, and although I don't usually go in for all that Stateside self-help sentimentalism, there may be some truth to that little nugget. Feelings aside, I should probably be there, for my sister as well. Goodbye is not something you can say five or ten years down the line.

My aunt rolls the window down all the way, sticks her head out like a dog in the summer, and asks George to pull over at the next available opportunity. She is feeling sick and is probably going to throw up. He says we are almost there, can't she hold it in? I don't know. She looks a little peaky to me. This is my favourite T-shirt, and I don't want Ruth's toast and marmalade from this morning to decorate it.

I'm trying to shift a little closer to my grandma, but it isn't going to make too much of a difference. If Ruth blows, then this car isn't big enough for me to hide.

Looking out of the window I can see the signs. Our turn off is the third opening on the left. Then we will be there. Not long now. I see George again in the rear view mirror, forcing that smile on me. Strangely, in that second or two, he does look like a Womble, and I smile back.

For all his faults — and he had more than his fair share — I suppose I loved my dad just the same. There's no getting away from that. Whether that love is twenty years old, like mine, or fresh out of the blocks, it's still a pretty powerful thing. It can pull you back in when you least expect it because, Adolf Hitler or Saint Peter, it's hard to put a price on family.

Maybe being my father is enough.

Maybe being my father is everything.

Mohini waits in a house overwhelmed by light. Light pours in through windows and collects in a pool on the floor. She lies in the center of the light-pool with her arms above her head and her toes pointed inward, as silhouettes of dragonflies outside play over her. She feels loose, unattached, her body adrift on liquid beams.

Her mother, trusting her daughter to stay safely at home — her daughter, at thirteen, has no friends, so where will she go? — has gone to the store saying she'll soon be back. Her father is at work, and so Mohini finds herself, as she often does, alone. Alone and drenched in white.

*

"Have you not yet made any friends here, darling?" her mother asked the other day when Mohini came home from school. Mohini turned away from the scent of jamuns as her mother stirred the sweet, fried, milk-powder balls swimming in rose water. Resting her spatula on the rim of the pan, her mother wiped her forehead with the palu of her sari. The sky-blue sari glimmered with white swirls shaped like clouds.

Mohini shook her head at her mother's question, turning away from the rose-milk smell. She ignored the sounds of her stomach — the rumbling meant to remind her how she used to love jamuns, how the sugar-water used to coat her hands and face. Here, in America, she decided to crave chocolate-chip cookies instead.

She wished her mother would stop wearing saris all the time and would try on a pair of jeans, or even a simple white dress covered with a bright cherry print, like the neighbor women always wore.

"Don't worry," her mother said, pinching Mohini's chin lightly. "It will come. It's a new country, after all. Soon you will have a circle of girls to chat with and invite over for tea."

Mohini knew it would never be true. It might have been — she might have been well-liked at school, had she not been the only new student amongst kids who had played together since birth. She might have made friends had she not hid behind the teacher on her first day last fall, and then slinked into her seat, narrow shoulders hunched forward, with her hair covering her face so no one could see her.

Or perhaps if she hadn't automatically stood up when a teacher entered the room, like students did in India, while everyone else remained seated. Or if she had worn shorts and a tube top instead of homemade frocks stitched by her mother. Or maybe if the scent of curry leaves had not lingered in her long hair braided into two ropes that reached to her waist. When she wasn't looking, the boys at school loved to sneak up and yank on those shiny black ropes.

Perhaps if she had talked to the other kids, if she had known their lingo and understood their jokes, instead of remaining silent, they wouldn't have made fun of her. Perhaps if she did not carry yogurt and rice to school in a tin tiffin box. Maybe if she had not hit puberty well before many of the girls in the class, they would not have whispered about her.

Mohini didn't know what made her the source of their jokes, but she was sure it was her fault somehow. It must be their skin that made them better, she thought. Maybe that's why her parents too had no American friends — they didn't possess the right type of skin.

*

Once, as she held a fashion magazine and posed in front of her mirror, Mohini caught her mother staring at her. Magazines were propped up against the walls of her bedroom and strewn about the bed, each open to pictures of blond girls in skin-tight jeans and pale candy-pink lipstick, their frosted blue eyelids half closed over coquettish eyes. Mohini had pinned her braids to the top of her head with the loose ends hanging over her forehead so they looked like bangs. She wore one of her father's old sleeveless undershirts and a pair of her father's shorts that sagged about her waist. Glittery pink lipstick and aqua eye shadow turned her face clownish, absurd.

"What are you doing, Mo? You look quite silly, you know. And where did you get all these magazines and cosmetics? You know you aren't to wear face paint at so young an age."

Mohini looked at her mother's reflection in the mirror. "I took money from your purse and bought the things at the drugstore."

"But why is your hair like that? And look at what you are wearing! What would your father say?" She reached out and fingered the undershirt. "A young woman should be well covered and not flaunt herself about. You should behave properly." Her mother picked up one of the magazines and thumbed through it.

"These foreign girls dress so provocatively. It's positively indecent," she murmured, more to herself than to Mohini. "All this sex talk and sex dressing. It is even spreading to India now."

She slapped shut the magazine and faced her daughter. "And why have you applied such terrible colors to your face? They don't match the shades of your skin, dear. How can you wear colors made for fair-skinned faces when you are dark?"

"I hate being dark. I hate it. I hate my hair and my face and my clothes," Mohini said, spinning around to face her mother and twisting the magazine she held.

"Mohini, what are you talking about? Don't you know the meaning of your own name? Mohini: Beautiful. We named you that because that's what you are."

"If I'm so beautiful then why do the boys here call me ugly and pull on my hair?"

"Do they? I should speak with the teachers or with their parents and put a stop to this. Why have you never told me?"

"No, no, no. I'll die if you do that!"

"Such words! It is not proper. Just ignore those children. What do they know? Who are they to say things to you?"

"They are everything," Mohini said, running past her bewildered mother to lock herself in the bathroom.

*

Since then, Mohini's mother hasn't mentioned the school children again and treats Mohini like a fragile egg, stepping lightly about her and constantly asking if she's okay. Today is the first day she has left Mohini home alone in a house lit by the noon-time sun.

Mohini wanders from the family room to the adjacent living room where the windows frame the light into boxes. She stretches out within one of the boxes, the shadows of the window beams like bars crisscrossing her body.

The house is as silent as it is bright, and though she is accustomed to the ringing in her ears, today she is restless. Her hands twitch in the squares of light and shade, and she feels her fingers and toes beginning to throb. She places her hand on her wrist to feel her pulse and imagines the blood rushing through her limbs in a rising flood.

Mohini rubs her palms against the rough strands of the worn-out carpet beneath her and she curls her toes over the strands, tugging on them. Her hands move to her legs, where strands of hair have suddenly begun to grow, making her legs shadowy and mysterious. Unlike the golden glowing strands sprouting from the legs and arms of her classmates at school, Mohini's hair is black, marking her as different, embarrassing.

She sits up and wraps her arms around her shins, rocking back and forth though her mother has told her it is not becoming for her to sway like an elephant. "A woman must learn to be still, to not toss her body about so," her mother often says when Mohini shifts her weight from side to side.

Mohini has seen, in India, the graceful dance of wild elephants swirling grass with sinuous trunks, moving their bulky forms to the rhythm of waves that lap against their legs, and she remembers them as beautiful. She cannot imagine why she too cannot sway like that. But her movements are rarely joyful, and she wonders if this is why her rocking is unbecoming. She sits still, locked in sunshine on the faded carpet.

Eventually, Mohini rises and walks upstairs. She enters her parents' bedroom, its dusky blue carpet aglow, and crosses to the far window. She sits on the wide ledge where the paint flakes up from the prickly dark wood.

She tilts her head and listens to the sounds of her classmates playing in a neighbor's yard some distance away. Their faraway screams and laughter seem magnified in the quiet of the room, in the buzzing of her ears. With her forehead pressed hard against the glass, she folds her body so that her knees jut out and her crossed ankles hurt from being jammed into the windowsill.

She glances down at her bare brown arms and legs. The sun casts shadows into the minute cracks of her skin, making it look like scales, and she thinks of lizards darting on the walls back home in India. A family of three lizards had lived in her bedroom and would often creep up, blinking at her inches from her nose, while she stopped breathing so as not to scare them.

Here, there are no friendly lizards for her to chase and she finds only dead bugs, belly up, trapped in the windowsill. She fingers a bug and wishes she too could be so still, free from the noiseless house and from her dark lizard-skin.

Mohini lifts open the window glass just enough for a slight breeze to make her skin tingle. She looks outside and hears more clearly the laughter of the children and the lilt of their voices that lift up to her with the breeze, letting her hear bits of their speech.

"...not on the plate!" screams one boy.

"Am too!" The girl grinds her left foot into the dirt-stained pad beneath her. Boy and girl face each other, fists clenched. The girl wipes her hands on shorts that barely reach the tops of her thighs.

"Shut up!" the boy yells, arms swinging.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!” The children clap their hands, chanting.

The girl's foot rises into the air, level with the boy's chest, as he grabs her and twists her leg. She stumbles and falls. He lunges on top of her, pinning her to the ground with his body. The other children jump up and down, their arms pumping air like little windmills. "Kiss her! Kiss! Kiss!" The girl shakes her head from side to side, evading the boy's wet mouth.

Mohini listens to the rhythms of their words that spin like a mini-tornado, wrecking everything in their path. She doesn't understand most of what they say and their still-unfamiliar accents, but she hears how their words join from disparate wafts of air into a single, powerful gust that will blow her away if she tries to stand up against it.

She watches their pale, skinny legs flash, their scratched and scabbed arms stretch, as they grab for each other's flesh with their sun-lit hair flying into tanned and freckled faces. Mohini's body tenses and her hands become tight rocks wedged into her stomach as she stares at the boys and girls playing baseball. They run into and away from each other. Oblivious to her, they continue to fight and play.

They can't see her, she knows that; she is too far and blocked from view anyway by the window that contains and outlines her body. But even if they could see her, she knows they would not look. They care nothing, say nothing, except to whisper behind her on the school bus each morning that she smells funny.

Mohini's body begins to swelter in the glare of the sun and a clammy sweat coats her skin.

I want them to look at me, she thinks. I want them to look at me. I want. Them. Look at me. LOOK AT ME.

She wills them to turn from each other, from their circling, storming words and their frenzied dance, and look up at her face framed by glass. Mohini's breasts begin to ache as she imagines them watching her. Her tongue feels bloated and dry. She tries to gather spit from her throat to wet her tongue, but she can generate no moisture.

The children continue to chase each other. A boy reaches out and yanks a girl's yellow ponytail, side-stepping her returning slap. Mohini longs to feel his slim fingers in her own hair, and longs to run her hands through the girl's sunshine-locks. She pictures the smoothness of their skins with the soft blonde hairs. Would touching them be different from touching herself? Is white skin softer than brown, pure like mountain water, sweet like grains of crystal-white sugar? She wants to lick the backs of their necks and find out, to wet her thirsty tongue with their fresh, clean sweat. Maybe if she drinks from them, consumes them, she will become them, and her skin will transform into white light.

*

Mohini slowly rises on the windowsill. Her breathing grows loud, filling the silence, as she does what she has never done before. She slides her hands to the edge of her handmade, modest, Indian frock. A dress that looks nothing like the shorts and hot pink tank tops worn by other girls at school, a dress that makes girls giggle and point. The purple dress stops just above her ashy gray knees. She pulls up the hem to her thigh, watching the children who watch only themselves.

She drags the hem of her dress farther up until it rests just below the leg holes of her baggy cotton underwear.

She holds her breath and waits to hear the children's horrified screeches at seeing her exposed. Her eyes scan the surrounding backyards — perfect green squares laced with flowers. No one sees her. Slowly, she pulls her dress hem up to her waist and keeps the folds of material above in place with her chin.

She grabs the waistline of her underwear between her fingers and thumbs. She lowers the loose elastic slowly, her bellybutton gaping like a small black void in her shimmering mahogany skin.

She continues to lower the waistband until newly grown wisps of black hair appear. With a final shove, she pushes down the underwear so that the cloth drapes her ankles. She steps out of it and tugs her dress up all the way until her small, new breasts flatten against the glass.

With her eyes fixed upon the frolicking children, she drops her hands lower, sliding her fingers into the thin crack, gasping as they enter. Her fingers slide and play in the loam-soft warmth within her as she sways but remains standing. She plays inside herself until finally her eyes close, blocking out the vision of her schoolmates. She collapses upon the windowsill, covered now by the fallen tent of her dress, her fingers still moist and bent within her, as shame wells inside.

No one outside notices the girl who, swollen with envy, has lusted after their brilliant whiteness, to end up sunken within her own brown skin.

Every Sunday afternoon my roommate ascends the crumbly stairs to our rooms, her overnight bag filled with misgivings, dirty underwear and papayas. The misgivings are for what she has done over the weekend. The papayas are for dissolving her eggs.

"Why don't you just use a condom?" I ask, as she hacks the fruit into large uneven pieces that will not fit into her mouth.

"We didn't have one."

Hack hack.

"We never have one."

Sunday afternoons remind her that before there was Population Control and social workers with bulging bags of contraceptives, there was the papaya. If she eats too many she ends up with a bad stomach or heat boils. Sometimes she ends up with both.

***

James the Office Genius is a man with no earlobes and long, pale fingers like church candles. He wears an army vest with four pockets because he doesn't use the pockets in his pants.

"A mouse?" I ask.

"Yes. You want to see it?"

"Does it have two heads?"

"No."

"Then I don't want to see it."

James takes the mouse out anyway.

"Found it a week ago on my way home—totally dead but it hasn't decayed or anything. Cool, nah? Named him Miraculous."

James gently touches its tiny pink nose before putting it back in his pocket.

"I don't get it," I say. "How come you never use the pockets in your pants?"

***

Once upon a time on a Sunday afternoon my roommate moved in with three black suitcases. She lined her cupboards with newspaper and arranged her clothes in uneven piles, strewing naphthalene pellets around them to keep away the bugs. She had a bowl of cut papaya beside her, which she periodically dipped into.

"Best fruit—clears your skin, pumps you up with vitamins. This is a good one, sweet. You want?"

"No, I don't like the smell."

"You just take if you want. So what you do again?" she asked.

"Nothing much."

"You're working, right?"

"Right."

"Me too. So is it like tight work or you get like some time for yourself?"

"Yes."

"Cool—I probably won't be here on the weekends, that's when I meet my boyfriend, only time we're both free. What you do on the weekends?"

"Nothing ... much."

"Oh, hey, there's some extra papaya in the kitchen also, you can have if you want. Or just take from here, there's lots."

She was the Queen of Papayas and I was the Queen of Nothing Much.

***

One day Miraculous the mouse falls under the table and lands beside a five-rupee coin. The five-rupee coin buys James one watery tea and one samosa, which contains an oily cockroach. The tea stall owner apologizes and offers to give James a free tea and samosa every day if he promises not to tell anyone.

"Miraculous," says James, as he shoves the mouse into my palm. I hold it too tightly, feeling its skin and muscle slip between my fingers. It is neither cold nor warm. There is no electric shiver, no desire to break out into song. It feels exactly like a mouse, filled with bones that mysteriously click and slide. I feel the weight of my own bones push onto my lungs, making my shoulders stoop and curl.

"Isn't he amazing?" asks James.

"No," I say, and hand it back.

***

My roommate licks her butter–chicken-stained fingers and contemplates her empty plate.

"He's lying," she says.

"He's not lying, I saw it."

"Then it's not real—probably a fake mouse."

"It wasn't fake, I held it. It's real."

"Then it's not dead."

"It's dead, it's just not decaying."

"What rubbish, how can it not decay? I remember once a lizard got caught in the hinges of my cupboard, couldn't have been more than an hour, fucker started stinking up the whole room. Small fucker, such a bad smell you wouldn't believe. Everything decays in Chennai, even if it isn't dead."

"Exactly."

"Mm."

And she begins to crack the sopping chicken bones between her teeth.

***

With the arrival of a new cigarette case and a tin of caustic foreign mints, there is less room in James's pockets for the mouse. He starts to leave it on his table like a paperweight—it is no longer referred to as Miraculous. I stuff it into my pocket and James doesn't notice it is gone until the end of the day.

"Oh well." He shrugs. "Hey, there's this new guy down the street, he's got chili beef. Ten rupees."

The thought of the chili beef makes James's fingers stretch and snap like pale, hungry birds.

"What about your mouse?" I ask. James shrugs and wiggles his fingers as he disappears through the door.

***

In the evening I watch my roommate pack her overnight bag—I don't tell her about Miraculous because weekends make her fluttery and she can't hear anything when she is fluttery. She disappears like a moth into the smoky, sulphurous Saturday night. I place Miraculous on the table and wait for him to say something.

"Were you sent by Someone?" I ask. "Are you the apocalypse or are you just sleeping?"

The mouse remains silent. My hands begin to feel heavy and useless, as if they have begun to rust.

***

My roommate returns on Sunday morning with a deflated overnight bag and no papayas.

"You are looking at the stupidest girl in the world," she says and locks herself in her bathroom. She flushes the toilet from time to time to let me know she is still alive.

"He dumped me," she says, from inside the bathroom. "Just like that. You know why?"

"No."

"He's getting married. Do you know who he's marrying?"

"No."

"Some chick from Mysore. His Papa picked her out for him and he said yes. I hope his balls fall off."

I pick up Miraculous and a chunk of his skin comes away in my fingers. My roommate bangs on her side of the bathroom door.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"Nothing."

"Don't lie."

"It's the mouse..."

"What mouse? You brought a mouse inside? Are you mad?"

"It's that one I told you about, the one—"

"Don't sit in my room if you're holding a mouse, are you holding it?"

"Yes."

"Well go outside and hold it, then."

***

I sit on the crumbly stairs and watch as a large patch of skin falls away from the mouse's back, revealing a tiny backbone—it is the saddest backbone I have ever seen.

I should glue him back together.

I should hold a funeral service.

The tail and paws begin to shrivel into thin, grey flakes that slither along my fingers and disappear. Something falls away from the ribcage, crumbling into dust. I think of how heavy my bones are, how they bend and pull from the inside as if they are moist with decay. I wonder if they will burn completely on my funeral pyre or whether they will simply blacken as a token gesture.

Soon all that is left of Miraculous is a skeleton that looks like a lizard, poised and ready to run. I dig my hand into the soil of a nearby neem tree, feeling sand and pebbles surge under my fingernails. Before placing it in I snap off one of the paws—it looks like a tiny white glove. I will probably lose it by the end of the week. My roommate appears at the door and yawns.

"I'm going to make coffee, you want?"

My roommate is yellow and beautiful with the afternoon sun on her face.

She looks just like a papaya.

The morning after Stephen and I slept together for the first time, he said, "It's burning up in here," and pushed the covers off us.

"When I was a little boy," he told me, "I once had a fever of 105 and my mother brought it down by putting cold washcloths on my forehead."

I'd seen a picture on the coffee table the night before, a small woman with curly hair, her arm around Stephen. She had wrinkles around her eyes.

"My mom looks just like Sally Field," he said. He told me he cried every time he watched Forrest Gump because whenever he saw Sally Field dying it was like watching his own mother die.

"I want a big breakfast," I told him. "Hash browns and eggs and sausage. Is there an IHOP?"

"Wouldn't you rather just lie here?" he said. "Let's talk."

I noticed then how his lips were an odd color. Purplish.

"Did I tell you I'm divorced?" he asked. "We were twenty-one, married less than nine months. She had cancer when we met. She was bald and in a wheelchair. She told me that first day that she'd probably be gone by Christmas, and I felt rushed falling in love with her."

The whole time he was saying this, I was looking out the window at a bee.

"But she didn’t die," Stephen said. "She got better, and her tumor shrank, and then it was gone. And she could walk again, and I don't know, she became like a regular person and not a cancer patient. It was a miracle, I guess, but things felt worse. She looked different with hair. She told me about drugs she'd done in high school and how she was a bulimic, and then she started sleeping with some other guy, and she called me one night and told me she was moving—"

I put my fingers on his lips.

"Shhh," I said. "You don't need to tell me all that."

I put my hand on his rib cage. He was thin and I could feel the bones as if there was barely any skin covering them. He kissed me and pulled me to him. His skin was hot. I could feel his pelvis digging into me. When my eyes closed, I could picture him as a fevered little boy with a wet washcloth on his forehead, blue eyes and flushed skin. I saw him as a twenty-one year old groom pushing his bride in a wheelchair.

I figured I wouldn't see Stephen again once I got dressed and got in my car. I really did like him and I'd think about him, I knew, but I probably wouldn't return his phone calls. I thought, though, that I might take the photo of him and his mother off the coffee table before I left his apartment. It was the kind of thing I'd like to have.

And Stroke It
The office out back of the greengrocer has a large poster of two women licking between the legs of a third. The grocer is fossicking in the coolroom; cardboard boxes scrape and she hears him swear. She was looking forward to going to the hairdresser, reading a Cosmo or a New Idea, chatting about nothing in particular. But in here, faced with the pudenda, framed by rusty pipes going up to the ceiling, she loses herself and becomes merely the wife of Spiros, for whom she's a gofer. Normally, her husband picks up the order but he's doing the taxes before they get fined. "No celery," the greengrocer says. He looks bloodless in his lime-green Hawaiian shirt. Friday night drinking? He wheels the trolley away from the wall poster. A semi-trailer has blocked her van. She does not want to ask for his help but there's no choice. He grates the gears. "Where d'yu get yar license luv?" he says. When she gets to loading dock, she checks the salad mixes and finds them limp; puts on her specs to read the use-by. Sighs. On the footpath, the garbos have been in a hurry and a bag of tissues has fallen out, torn scraps decorating the hedge.

Feet of Clay
The waterfront was full of shoppers and I chased about on my bicycle, looking for the man who'd stolen my heart, and the sea came in and splashed over my legs. That felt weird, all that water. I lost control. A purple car with fins was parked on the footpath, and the owner was on the other side of the parking lot, a bearded guy with an eye-patch glaring out his good side at my lover. They were arguing about a best price. When I intervened, my lover threw a punch, called me a girl. I heard a weird noise, like machinery breathing. I went cold then hot.

I waited till the bearded man looked the other way, got in the car, and drove home with the windows down. My foreman had just pulled into the driveway to drop off a palette of calico and she lingered to tell me that her family was going broke. We discussed farming techniques. The sun made the back of my neck warm and I mistook that for happiness, momentarily.

All my workers had gone home — they did not want to make any more garments. My grandfather was the tailor for the Governor General and after some wheedling, I found that he had slapped the new girl. A scar went over his right cheek and down the front of his neck, the seam of the wound flaring in his agitation. He was the only one in the family who had not made it out of Germany during the war. "You men are too much!" I exclaimed. "Don't make a brouhaha over nothing!" He handed me a soup made of chillies which I emptied into the sink. The tax office had made him grumpy, he said by way of explanation. "Didn't believe my stories." Grandfather shrugged his shoulders.

The garage had been modified into a store room and when I went to fetch bolts of cloth, I saw the car change into a flower; nectar dribbled out my mouth. The telephone rang again — a friend invited me to a course on miracles. Had I found the man who had stolen my heart? I had forgotten. She said that I was shallow. I told her that I could not be anything else. I got one of Grandfather's cigars out of his hiding spot and sat in the garden and when he came out with his terrifying face, I grabbed the garden spade.

Last night, as I was doing my laundry, splashing soapy water over my dress, a French painter whose name I couldn’t remember opened my unlocked door and came in. We, the people from Tamara 27, don’t lock our doors. At times we leave them wide open. When a neighbor visits another neighbor, we never announce ourselves. We simply walk in, in honor of the building’s good-neighbor principle.

During our last year’s meeting, a lady wearing high-heeled shoes, who, so I learned, lived on the floor above mine, introduced herself as a nurse from Albert Einstein hospital.

We hailed her honorable job.

"You must let life flow uninterrupted or you’ll be stressed to death. Closed doors and programmed lives are worse for you than cancer," she said.

Ever since, I haven't stopped the flow of uncalled visitors, but I took up smoking.

The French painter, however, visited me for the first time. He dug a brush out of his jacket and painted my eyebrows yellow. His thick stash of black hair brushed against my forehead as he turned to the sink, spattering the white porcelain with a feathery red paint.

I touched my yellow eyebrows and started toward my bathroom, where I keep a mirror, a cracked crystal, shaped like the oval form of my face.

"Wait, please," he said, in a French accent as round as a kiss.

I took his hand and gently pulled him to the bathroom.

He hummed as he drew me on the bathroom’s wall, my face gleaming like a pearl within a seashell, my wine-petal lips opening in question, my hair flaring in fiery waves.

I tried to locate his spot, place and time, in the history of the world. An impressionist, perhaps.

In his picture, my eyebrows shone like sunrays, while my reflection in the mirror spread soft moonlight.

He stood behind me, between the mirror and his painting. His old black jacket spread a scent of turpentine, paint and wine.

My gaze stopped on the drawing. My bodylines and curves streamed in synchrony into themselves, in and out of the picture. I hoped that he saw it, too.

I wondered whether I was changing. Earlier that year, I had caught a glimpse of myself cut between the edges of the glass wall of Lloyd’s Bank. I could not capture the full picture.

"Can I offer you anything?" I asked.

"You can." He took my hand.

We sat against the wall, the loose fabric of his black pants calling upon my white georgette dress like an unannounced yet desired visitor.

I touched two legs: his and the table's. A cigarette rolled down the table to the floor and grew a sunflower on top.

"Nothing lasts," he said, by way of justification.

The high heels stamping on the top floor click-clacked.

We drank wine from the bottle, so my lips tasted his sips. I raised his paint-stained hand, covered my face with his palm and licked eternity.

We Got Reservations
My friend Cindy had her parents' old blue junker, and my mom said it was okay, so I went with my three friends and we got reservations at Motel 6.

Cindy drove — her parents were always away and she had a big house with parties.

After we checked into the hotel, we got back into the junker and Cindy beeped the horn for fun. My friend Krissy said, hey, you shouldn't do that, and Cindy said, whatever.

I thought it was the best thing in the world, to be away, in somebody's fast car, going wherever you wanted. Krissy and I sat in back, and Cindy and Jenni were in front and all four of us were supposed to be together.

We sat there on our blankets, saying yum, waiting for Bon Jovi. Bon mister-fucking Jovi grunted out on stage and he wasn't all that. People cheered and a gust of wind came in.

Krissy and I fought with Cindy and Jenni the whole way home. Them in front and us in back. I don't remember what for.

The next week, Krissy and I decided there was nothing else. We settled for the Air Force. Cindy and Jenni had parents to put them in college. K and I shrugged and chugged. We made a pact. We were embarrassed. We didn't know much.

At graduation, Cindy and Jenni talked about their dorms. Krissy and I said that's great. We left, taking off our gowns. I asked, do we know how to march?

Pole
I'd been hanging upside down that day from the clothesline pole, which I did every day, only on that day I remember waking from a dream, and I was with my mother in her bedroom, she was holding me, her dry hands smothering my forehead. I asked her what had happened, and I remembered landing on my back, that I had fallen.

My father didn't like crying, so he yelled at me to stop. I was good at shutting up, and then my mother started crying. She told me to go, so I got up on my feet and went up to the room I shared with my sister. She seemed surprised to see me.

I went to bed, and after I woke up, I walked past the living room, where my father watched a bowling tournament on his TV. Outside the fireflies were hyper, so I tried chasing them. I was very dizzy. I pretended I was them, all full of light and free and drunk and shining.