Because everything connects in the end, or only seems to, or seems to only because it does.

- Don DeLillo

Welcome to the Future.

The inside was a visual instruction manual for the world of your traditional American minimalist, the floors uncarpeted hardwood, walls an antiseptic white (more of that…) a chair here, a couch there, nothing that didn’t need by necessity to be there, no television, stereo, portraits, wall hangings, lamps, plants, doodads, just plain-Jane next-to-nothing but not unwelcoming, not unwarm, comfort here in all the non-present modes of comfort. E. asks her to remove her shoes, which she does, funny, because he leaves his on, asking her to take off her coat while remaining in his, things which she feels no need to question for after all this is his house and regardless of whether or not the rules make sense they are his and must be held in the highest respect because, well, we want much from this experience, too much to risk it all on superfluous rudeness, right? Right. She wonders what it would feel like to lie naked on her back against this stiff, unyielding floor while he fucks her, his sweat dripping down off his chin onto her collar bones, her nipples, the planks of wood digging into the meat of her ass while his meat digs into the meat of her… wonders if discomfort is an acceptable trade off for a long-awaited show of affection, making up her mind that yes, yes it is. Minimalist or not the man’s got to at least own a mattress, not an animal, though she’d settle for a sleeping bag, a pile of hay, being bent over a kitchen counter… she’d settle for just about anything…

He leads her through an untouched corridor, not by any physical guidance but by telepathical pull, the sunk-hook doing all the real work and as she heeds these mind-commands that oh-so fragile mind of hers goes a-wandering and the things she could do with a place like this! A woman’s touch, really, is all that was lacking. She could be just as much of a minimalist as her beloved E. here but that didn’t mean there’d have to be this much sacrifice in the name of taste. Plus she’d have the children to worry about. Then again, you don’t really have to baby-proof what isn’t there to project harm… This room off to the right would make an ideal dining room with one of those exorbitantly long-lacquered mahogany tables set about with wing-backed chairs, maybe paint the walls a lush burgundy, some wine color, some darkwood paneling perhaps… oh! and over here to the left, what an amazing sitting room we could have with ceiling-high book shelves loaded with Shakespeare and other poignant potables… the kitchen is, well, huge, huge in the way of often-glimpsed-but-never-seen four star restaurant cookeries with a mammoth center island positioned beneath a serpentine tin exhaust vent, the stove, sink, dishwasher, all an opaque, untarnished silver, countertops roughed-hued marble, floor an eerily familiar off-white tile… but infinitely more impressive than the kitchenette she squeezes through at home. She sees herself in a fifties-film-era vignette, black and smudgy around the picture’s edge, done up in a neat apron, hair back in a tight bun and leaning over the stove there covered with quietly bubbling pots, bringing a wooden cooking spoon dripping with home-made marinara to her lips, the children running about and tugging on the hem of her polka-dotted house dress, husband/father E. coming in, alligator-skin briefcase (though hard to distinguish in black-and-white) clutched in that once-umbrella hand, the other lifting off his fedora to lean in and kiss the missus picturesquely on the cheek…

“What would you like?” E. has turned to face her, his frame eclipsing Cleaver Land and bringing her back to the now of things. He’s smiling again in that off sorta way, eyes a little too focused but she hardly notices. My, how perfect a match we are. All I need to do is ease up eversoslightly on tippy-toes for our lips to meet, lock, love… she mistakes the gleam in his eyes for lust.

“Oh… whatever you’re having is fine…” dreamy, ready-for-sleep pre-dream cuteness, those visions not-yet-a-dream that come just ahead of the Sandman to distract you while he does his work, putting you under and you don’t even realize he was there. She leans toward him but he holds her back, gently, with one erect finger.

“No,” the smile continues. “This is your day, Corrin. It’s your day and you can have whatever you want.”

“Anything…?”

“Anything.”

Well now, that was something she hadn’t expected. When was the last time she’d sat down and actually thought about what she wanted to eat? Sometime in that never-really-real time before Charles. After that (him) it had been the same, same, same. The same lunch every day. Why? Because those were the meals that Charles had prepared for her. A man of routine, that old Husband of hers. He’d be up at the crack of dawn (cracking like a whip and not sure why he got up so early, just that sort of person I guess) making her sandwiches for her, father owned a butcher shop somewhere down around Long Beach (wow, when was the last time I thought of that?), always with this gross excess of salami, some incongruency between salami and the citizens of Long Beach, another “just one of those things” kind of things, sending it up to the house on Sunday afternoons in string-tied wax paper packages, a whole week’s supply of salami, a whole week’s worth of lunches, and Charles in the kitchen peeling off three thin-cut layers of speckled meat skin with those too-delicate-for-butchering fingertips. The old man’d died so long ago now it defied memory, before Charles’ accident with fate, back in the only really real time, but a man of routine and when the father was in the ground, when the shop windows were plastered over with red-on-white COMING SOON! posters, when that now uneventful Sunday afternoon hour rolled around with no delivery to be made he put on his shoes and walked out to buy his own, decidedly insuring that the routine would continue and though he never came out and said it, though she never asked out of love for him, she knew it was because Charles needed, even in this small way, to keep the memory of his father alive, that as long as their sandwiches were set out in their brown paper bags every morning he could pretend Death had never reared it’s ugly head, that nothing had changed, and when he joined the father in the fresh-tilled earth of the family plot she started putting on her shoes and the memory remained. Two lives, two generations living on through, of all things, a salami sandwich.

And now she can’t remember the date, that far-off fantasy morning when she’d woken up to find the bed next to her unslept in, the early-dawn light redder than blood oozing through the slats of the Venetian blinds like thin slivers of Hell’s fire, knowing at once that something was wrong, that same knowing attributed to dogs, to people with ESP and their sixth- and seventh-senses, knowing without being able to understand “how,” only that it was unquestionably true, the chain of routine broken, getting up unhurriedly, not because she didn’t care, wasn’t worried, but because the longer it took to find out the “what” the longer until it had to be true. She made the bed, taking great care in choosing her clothing for the day, laying it out across the bed spread in a form eerily similar to a chalk outline, these subtle hints of not-quite-rightness, taking a twenty minute shower, shampooing and conditioning with designer products, soon to drop several pegs on the hierarchical ladder to the more affordable rung of “thrift,” painting her nails, both finger- and toe-, doing her hair the way Charles had liked it best, up in a loose ponytail with one seductive lock haphazardly dangling over her right eye, sitting down at the vanity for a half-hour of make-up application, the last time, what remnants of that kit stuffed in an unmarked box in a storage unit outside of town. Everything had to be just right, had to be perfect, subconsciously working to balance a not-quite-right counterweight. Once ready she went downstairs, again slow and methodical in movement, sitting in the Lazy-Boy recliner next to the phone and waited, her mind a blank canvas, not wondering, not deciding, but waiting, endlessly waiting for some Rembrandt to call and show her the hidden art of the unknown and when the call came she did not loser her composure, did not cry, scream, ask God “why,” but took those details fed to her, fed to her by a voice both distant and robotic in its platitudes and condolences, as a student in class, jotting it down line-by-line in her mental notebook to be studied and understood at a later time, some future she’d never expected to actualize, materialize by whatever version of herself would exist in that “when.” It was hard to see what Corrin that would be, the one she had always been already gone, stopped being the moment she aw those unruffled sheets and “knew,” never to return and really, how could she? She’d existed as a specific being specifically existing in the specific world she shared with Charles and now he was gone and that world, that existence had left with him, a new world now, a new experience and a new Corrin wearing herself like an unfamiliar suite to wade through it one unfamiliar step at a time.

Seven. Seven years ago that had happened and she’d been floating, floating ever since.

“Here you go.”

E. Tromal slid the plate across the countertop toward her, looking down at the perfectly made salami-and-rye she only vaguely remembered asking for, the one thing in this world, oddly enough, that she desired, not necessarily for the routine but because it had felt appropriate, had felt right, as if by eating it (for what she already peripherally felt to be the last time) Charles could finally be put to rest. When the thought occurred to her, her first mental-response was to break down in all the ways she hadn’t since Then, to cry, scream, pull at her hair, collapse and the way E. Tromal was looking at her she knew it would be okay, that in some weird way he was conscientiously doing all of these things so that she could have closure, somehow he knew. But the reaction passed without passing, instead an uncharacteristic veil of ease drifted down and around her, light, gossamer fabric, like angels’ wings or what she imagined angels’ wings would feel like, brushing her, soothing her, taking the cradle of bread between her fingertips, carefully, as if holding aloft some delicate and irreplaceable ancient artifact, the barely-noticeable, slightly sour hint of rye tweaking her nostrils, smooth undercurrents of the meat that had manifested itself as the single most constant rock in her life, wrapping first lips then teeth on and into it, tasting memory, licking the past, chewing and swallowing all that had come before, feeling an inner warmth as everything, bit by edible bit, was transformed into the insignificant trivialities of “was” and “had been” via esophagus and guttural tract, turned to waste, returned to dust, moving onward because we must.

“How did he die?”

As far as appropriateness goes when it is thusly propelled into motion this would have been the point, under traditional circumstantial controls, where Corrin, or anyone else in a similar situation, would have chocked on their sandwich and not only because of a complete lack of what is commonly deemed “appropriate” on his part but also because there was no reason for him to have any knowledge whatsoever concerning Charles or any other once in her life but not longer. Yet there was nothing odd about it for her, continuing to chew while formulating an answer as if he’d offered some banality in reference to the weather or politics and after she’d swallowed speaking in the most casual of tones:

“He was out… (throat clear)… sorry. He was out, on his way home from work. He was a financial consultant, working off of La Brea, a lot of late nights. It was tax season so he usually didn’t come home until after I was asleep. I guess that’s why I didn’t think anything was wrong until the morning… (bite, chew, swallow)… They found him the next morning in a parking deck about a mile from his office. Charles… (smile)… he was conscientious about his weight. His father was a really big man, almost three-hundred pounds, a butcher down in Long Beach, so he tried to walk, Charles I mean, my husband, as much as he could. He’d park a mile from work just to force himself to do it… (bite, chew, swallow)… He was lying next to his car. Someone, they never found out who, had stabbed him, just once, in the chest. They said by the look on his face that he’d gone quietly, no pain, which I guess is kind of odd for being stabbed in the heart… (shrug)… They said he looked so calm, so at peace… like he’d known it was his time, was ready for it, natural… (bite, chew, swallow)… At first they thought it was a symbolic murder, by the way he was lying, on his back, feet together, arms spread apart, like Jesus. Funny… (throat clear, smile but smaller)… he wasn’t even that religious. I used to have to twist his arm to get him to go to church with me, even on Christmas Eve…”

“It was a robbery then?”

Corrin shrugged. “No, not really. The only thing missing was his wedding ring…” Four fingers lightly fondled her right hip pocket, raised fabric leaving clues. “I never bothered asking questions. Didn’t get any answers anyway.”

There was one bite of sandwich left. Just one. Her eyes focused on it, half a mouthful at most yet larger than all the world, all past histories and the vast expanse of universal memory, one bite safe-guarding the future, so close to being free, finally free, to being pulled in one quick flick of the wrist to the humming tune of reeling fish line (one hundred thirty-eight pound test) into a new world, a new life… She popped it in her mouth, savoring with every last bud on her tongue, feeling it disintegrate under the caressing currents of saliva, swallowing that one last swallow and feeling the long black veil fall from her shoulders to the floor, through the floor, into the past alone with everything else.

A river trout, rainbow flanked, bursts forth from the once calm, clear reflective surface of icy-cool water into the warm-orange light of lingering day, scales shimmering like a shawl comprised of millions of glowing, self-sustaining stars and with a quick flick of tale and a darting dance of expelled liquid drops lands safe and willingly into the mighty fisherman’s waiting palms.

“There.”

There was a hint of smile hanging at the corner of E. Tromal’s mouth, those cobalt-blue eyes soft and knowing in ways only Buddha himself could have understood, leaning against the opposite edge of the center-island countertop, looking down upon the relaxed shoulders of the liberated and her up at him, this might-be-savior with thoughts returning in full force, her naked back arched off of some white downy mattress cover conforming to contrasted shoulder blade ridges below the weight and thrust of a love too long coming…

“Who are you?” She asked, a dream voice void of distorting cone.

“All things in time.”

Something was happening to the air between their intertwined gaze, no longer static, a connection being made, the almost-understanding of intent, desire, perhaps even a bit of truth, on one hand the knowing of what was to come, prior recognition, second sight, fact lacking any reasonable basis of justifiable logic while the other a growing sense of belief, of a distant spot of light, glimpsed, a possibility, lost in the translation of ebbing and flowing molecules and wishful lines of ciphered dendrite code like churning ribbons of oil and water molding in-and-about in psychedelic swirls designed to trick the mind and betray reason, allowing enough time for nature to run its course before the undefiable cogs of Order.

Fresh light had been streaming in through window panes for some time now, Corrin noticing for the first time, the November kitchen turned liar, sewing serpentine seeds of spring, lifting her that last rung into unfamiliar realms of calm and ease, putting her at last wholly off her guard, committed now to the lyrical lines of misinterpreted poetry flitting across blue-steal corneas. Birdsong drifted in from the foreign shores of vast oceans, gulls transformed to sparrows, larks, each with their melodic tweets and chirps of fairy-tale ever-afters. Thoughts returned to love, sitting on a throne of thornless rose in a grand, bright-bannered court of kings, back to Beaver and family, to home-cooked meals and work-weary-over-affections of a clean-suited husband, licking tissue and towel corners with a mother’s spit, the universal cleanser, applying cloth to soiled cheeks and grass-stained knees, rocking baby to sleep, humming in tune to jewlerybox lullabies and the soft infant cooings of love before language, multitudinous pieces of a puzzle portrait in constant disorder falling after all these years snuggly into place.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

Without shifting eyeline, without the slightest deviation of a single blink, E. motioned with his head. “End of the hall…” words spoken in sage-like rhythm “…on the left.”

“Thanks…”

She felt the target of his eyes as she walked away, looking over her shoulder before passing under the trimmed arch of the hallway to see him still watching, still half smiling, tucking her hair back behind an ear in that distinctly feminine way characteristic of most at the chance for love and then nipping out of sight.

E. Tromal opened a drawer.

In the staff room Corrin took a minute to collect herself, brushing away the metaphysical cobwebs of her recent foggy existence with wide-arching arm sweeps, re-admitting herself to the ward of the “rest of the world” and hoping as she punched-out her time card, grabbed her plaid-patterned jacket, and headed back out that Purgatory would remain somewhere behind her, imagining it as a physical, tangible place, forcing the nerve endings on the flesh of her back-half to feel a separation, a distancing, freeing her to her phantom romance.

He was standing right where she’d left him only turned now to face her. The illusionist hand of the hanging light fixtures had tired of its routine and moved on to new audiences and in the split second before all of his shadow-features revealed themselves she was fist-slammed in the sternum with an unreasonable fear. What if that lack of light had been the hot sun-core of her desire? What if, gone, these now-seen features didn’t hold up to her imaginings, climax reached long before the act played itself to conclusion and the resulting disappointment too great to allow her to continue? She had her jacket on, all set, ready to go, there was no excuse to justify a change of heart to this stranger if she couldn’t go with him into their future, not to mention the dousing of the excited flame, whose warmth and glow she had not felt for so long, she had so quickly let consume her… all of this in a nano-second, making her head spin…

…And then she saw E. Tromal for the first time, head round but chiseled, hewn from the living rock of the earth in an Eastern-European way, black hair strategically gelled upward in tiny punji-sticks, milk-smooth brow ending in neatly trimmed eye-brow windowpanes over icy blue eyes, not frightening, but holding in their two micro-orbits more mystery than she’d heretofore encountered. He was well built under a black turtleneck sweater, bright blue jeans and penny-loafers – odd footwear for rainstorm weather – not bulky in the way of Olympians but bigger than a marathon runner’s iron-chiseled wire, his low-hanging wool coat reaching to his knees, blanking out the peripheral muscle masses, right hand clutching the heal of that long, black umbrella. He smiled as she rounded the end of Tellers Row, something off there, hard to label. She let it slide, all of her pre-feature fears melting away, flowing back to join abandoned Purgatory in the past, because, let’s face it, the man was handsome.

He held out the elbow-crook of his left arm in which she snuggly fit her own. They walked across the white-hot lobby, his loafers and her sneakers scuffling along in tandem, neither saying a world due to some subconscious notion that it wasn’t necessary to speak, only to be, as they were, and nothing more. The revolving doors separated them for a moment, arms rejoining of their own accord underneath the dripping brim of the marbled overhang, still crowded there but thinning out with the dissipating rain, now reduced to a steady pour not uncommon this time of year, the Biblical finality of the storm gone just as he said it would. With a smooth flick of the wrist the newly-acquired umbrella elongated and snapped wide, coming to rest over their two heads like a great puff of Cumulus crossing the sun.

Now that the world had become traversable again new crowds had formed as refugees learning the coast was clear, a great exile toward destinations once prohibited open and waiting to be gained once more. They parted around them, no one looking up, conscientiously side-stepping as with the passing of royalty, no one looking at all, as if neither of them existed in this world, phantom specters roaming about some parallel realm, felt but not seen, something maybe in the air around them, static, that hewed through the jungle foliage of pedestrians, clearing the way. Corrin didn’t comment on this, self-doubt as always the conductor behind the oiled and rusted steering apparatus, sure as sure could be that it was all in her head and to vocalize it would be to prove once and for all the fragility of her mind and scare this (her last chance?) opportunity away, an idea she couldn’t handle, not the thought of his face, that perfect Slavic face slackening and fading into the crowds, that lonely walk back to the bank and the cold salami and rye she’d made every morning in her empty kitchen for the last seven years, the endless hours waiting for another chance that would never come, the eternal bus ride home, lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling and crying herself to sleep, the long-trek into oblivion still on course, all the while cursing, cursing, cursing, all her fault, every last miserable lonely moment for all the years past and all those yet to come. So quick, Corrin, change the subject, get someone else behind the wheel, someone as interested in solving this puzzle next to you, this situation, this circumstance so out of place in your sad history, unravel the mystery, find love? Find something, even if it is just lunch, maybe a good fuck, and then so what if sex was all he was after, he still chose you didn’t he? You were still the one he took back, undressed, licked, kissed, entered, out of everyone, all those other girls He. Chose. You. But maybe more than sex. Who knows, maybe this one is the one, the one to come and rescue you, finally, from the ghost of Charles, to move you onward, forward, away to new places and new things, a new life, a new marriage, there’d be children this time, three of them, two boys and a girl, in that order, must name one of them after the father so first you need to find out what that E stands for, raising kids, happily ever after, even if he dies first you’ll still have lived, will still have those kids so you won’t have to die alone… but you’re getting ahead of yourself. I know you can’t help it, all these years since Charles, all this time alone, so easy to live out those fantasies now that you have a face to fill in the picture. Be here though. Be now. Don’t get so lost, so lost you miss it. It is actually happening! Ssshhh! Be calm, calm, calm. He hasn’t noticed the crazy, not yet, maybe never will, or he has and doesn’t care, either way, either… how about you focus on lunch. Find out where he’s taking you, what you’re doing, having, oh he can have me… please, please, Corrin! Oh…!

“Where are we going?” She sounded nervous. Did she sound nervous? What did nervous sound like? It sounded like this. Damnit. I knew it. You’re rushing, letting the mask go already. I knew you would screw this up…

“Actually, I was thinking we could go to my place. It’s close to here. I could cook us something.”

Under any other circumstance any other woman would have hesitated, maybe not have heard any direct alarms, but the caution flags would certainly have ruffled in the breeze, signs of an indistinguishable something looming ahead, but not Corrin. For her it was a re-affirmation of everything lapping about her thoughts because this was exactly what she’d been fantasizing about behind her glass barricade, this dark and mysterious stranger come to liberate her from her prison cell, thinking again that even if it was just sex, to take advantage of her, use her, that it still meant she was desirable, enough for one man meant enough for another, fueling the hope that had come in conjunction with dreadful desperation to define her.

“Okay…”

The arm she’s been holding onto, at first a hand-hold, the rung of some enigmatic ladder to grace, has taken on a new identity, transforming into a black-clad fishhook, one to which she has nibbled curiously for long enough to surmise a state of no-threat, chomping down hungrily and though this fantom fisherman has not given the farewell tug, hasn’t sunk the barbed end through her gills to reel her in for the kill she is no longer free to roam wherever the currents may take her, that a limitation of mobility has been attached, physically, but more so to psyche, a dream cage where illusion reigns, truth an idle jester to which no great importance has been ascribed.

The rain is gone, the clouds morphing into great cathedral skylights, the pedestrians shedding their work week skin for King’s Kourt garb, lace and stocking, frills and ancient jewels, bowing as the two pass, the stolen black umbrella now a dove-feather parasol lolling back on her King’s Royal Shoulder. She adjusts her crown, placing her free hand on the bend in that almighty hook, the waist-low tail of her plaid-jacket billowing in the soft breeze created by the awed cooings of the parted masses in a wide-sweeping train of silk mottled with white swan plumage. In the marbled lofts flag-hung brass horns take up the call. There are faces here that she recognizes, or at least believes she recognizes, faces she hasn’t seen or thought about in years. There’s a middle-aged man standing to the left, his gray-peppered hair thick and wooly, smiling a wide-toothed grin, the crows feet at the corners of his eyes shaping a print of unending merriment, her father, died almost fifteen years ago, aneurism in the bath, always happens in the bath, and there propped on his shoulders a young girl of maybe five or six, snuggly fit in a mother-of-pearl Communion dress, hair done up in pigtails dappled with freshly plucked blossom, smelling of late spring and new growth, eyes sparkling the innocent sparkles of youth, heavenly flower girl, her on the day of her father’s second marriage, the one that had promised a forever of beginnings without end and only lasting three years, the hag nowhere to be seen, thank God for that, and the pair fading back into the crowd as Royalty doth pass, almost gone as she turns to face them, hanging back long enough, wisps of ethereal smoke, for him to give her that old reassuring wink. There are others here too, school teachers clapping with beaming pride, Corrin turning out as beautifully as they’d always said she would, her maternal grandparents abandoning their wheelchairs to stand and applaud, her happiness healing away all ailments. Someone, a college lover she thinks, steps forward and with graceful bow hands her a lavish bouquet, lilies, orchids, roses of every size and color-combination, bunched up and around each other, large as a Volkswagen but she has no trouble holding on, holding high. Next to her E smiles vacantly, taken by the moment, showing the world his new queen for the very first time. The sun is shining to the tenth power, the world as gold, liquid in the shifting rays reaching down to touch every last awe-struck cheek, wings sprouting from beggars’ backs, taking to the air to rain white petals down on the road ahead… And here’s Charles standing at the end of the row in a polished black tuxedo with that knowing grin. She feels a tear ripple and fall from the corner of her eye, seeing that handsome face, the face of the Past come to bid her final farewell, to usher her onward into the future…

Thunder borborygmies in the distance, the cold-steal sky a well wrung sponge dripping its last few drops. It’s a harsh contrast snapping back from Technicolor to a landscape existing in the opposite, the rain bleaching everything it’s touched, a water-color streaming southward. E. hasn’t noticed her absence or if he has doesn’t show it, walking in erect silence through the thinning crowd, umbrella still up, a superfluity in post-Rain-dom. Gulls are flying inland in the wake of Hell’s fury, cawing and swiping at each other in air deemed “safe,” arguments coming to them in staccato, bent fenders and blame to be placed. Those non-English speaking immigrant owners stand in cleared store-front entryways with hands on hips or leaning on broom handles, breathing deeply and mumbling either curses or prayers in foreign tongues, it’s difficult to tell which.

Charles is the only dream not to leave her, hovering somewhere behind and to the left, an odd thing, she muses, that the past always seems to exist in that direction, and he isn’t judging or scowling or being anything negative, just watching, keeping an eye on things, more of that “ushering” we talked about earlier. Occasionally she is able to unglue her eyes long enough from her dark escort to cast them his way but he’s a crafty ghost, dropping into blind spots, remaining a constant thought but nothing more. E. smiles down and she returns the favor.

They leave the main strip, heading East, the X on the treasure map an Eden not far off, someone, she’s not sure who, perched up there in the crow’s nest beginning to hop, one salt-encrusted hand clutching his hat to his head against wind and excitement, pointing and hooting, a strange Dodo, at the first mirage-hint of land on the crystal-blue horizon. She throws an absent-minded glance to her watch, the wrist on which it sits resting in that fish-hook crook of arm, reading it up-side-down, oh, inverted world.

“How much time do you have?”

“Oh? Hmm… What?”

“For your lunch break. How much time do you have?”

“Oh! Oh, don’t worry about that…”

So he didn’t. They rounded another corner. She’d lost track of direction (a certain old man’s hair would have come in handy here). They could have been anywhere in this great-city-maze, but, my darling, my dear, darling, darling, you can take me anywhere you want, it doesn’t matter where we are or where we’ve been, not where we’re going only as long as it’s together, always and forever together, my dear…

“It won’t be long now.” Won’t be long now but no longer will it be ‘won’t belong now.’ Do you see Charles? Do you see, Charles? You didn’t leave me to live and die alone. It was temporary. I wouldn’t have believed it, believed that you’d condemn me, not in your nature, that nature not yours nor in you, to be so cruel, no, too kind for that, always were so kind, and don’t think that my dear, darling E. here (E. E. must define the E.) is meant to be a replacement because you who are not so easily replaced should know better, jealousy does not become you, green makes you look pale, sickly, Red works though, Red for Love, Red for Romance, Red for the dawn signaling the beginning of a new beginning and would. you. just. look. at. this. house!

They’d rounded the last roundable corner prior to destination’s realization and here it was, our crow’s nest lookout grabbing that hat with two hands now, jumping madly, “There she be! Hard to port! Hard to stern! We’re comin’ up fast! Ho!” It’s an old Victorian style construction with what appears to be three stories though it’s hard to tell with the different levels staggered about like they are, a serpentine wrap-around porch with silken support columns, chimney to rival Three Mile Island done up in fine-mortared red brick, tiered slate-shingled roofs tilted and pitched in perfect heavenly triangulation, stucco siding, cream trim, the hint of a gazebo out back, horse chestnuts hemming in the immaculately close-cut front lawn, breaking up the Hollywood palms roaming up and down adjacent side-streets. In all the identityless surroundings this Haven shown as a bright and illustrious Rose (forget kindling, this was pure gasoline for her fire-desire dream world), lifting her heart, if you can believe it, higher than it’s already ready been lifted before. E. didn’t break stride at the cross street (tactfully ignoring the dark-blue sedan parked half a block East, the two shadowed forms coming to attention behind the disfiguring light-refracted windshield important, but not now… a funny thing, time) so when Corrin stopped to open-mouth gape at the house before her the barbed end of that fishhook got its good, gill-sinking hold, tugging the fisherman back a step which brought a laugh out of her, one of those hearty-chuckles that he joined in with, my how those eyes do Blue, smiling with his whole face, so beautiful. They crossed together, lunch the farthest thing from either of their minds.

The scent of the yard (which weighed approximately seven hundred and sixty nanograms) was sweet with dew and fresh cut grass, mixing somewhere behind the scenes with the blood-metallic ozone after taste of a good, hard, rain, their soft-soled shoes scraping on the sement walk, porch-steps and porch-boards creaking in an old country way, E. fishing out his keys, releasing her arm for a torturous moment to unlock the plate-glass front door, Corrin smiled anyway, the cause a hand-carved St. Peter lawn gnome guarding just to the left, a foot-and-a-half tall and grinning up at her. She caught a last look at Charles and the door swung shut behind them.

“I don’t even know your name…” those words not hers in the same sense that music does not belong to the instrument from which it is played, rather the result of soft strumming, strategically plucked strings somewhere inside her, the minstrel (this man here? was he the one playing her?) in command, humming a piper tune you couldn’t help but follow.

“It’s there…” that God-voice said from out of the black hallows of light’s absence. “On my check.”

The minstrel bent Corrin’s head down, focusing her eyes on the small, cerulean blue line, the thick, inky curls of a practiced hand spelling out what she already should have known.

“E. Tromal? What does the E stand for?”

“Why does it have to stand for anything?”

She squinted hard through the protective glass, seeing for the first time the thousands of tiny scrapes and scratches, finger smudges and greasy smears collected over a time span all could guess at but none could know for sure, all of it working in conjunction with the light, for the light to further obscure those hidden features. Shouldn’t there have been a reflection? The light shining back off this glass, illuminating something? Almost as if he…

“Oh, damnit it all to hell!”

The high-pitched squeal took her off guard, leaning to see an old owl of a woman, all jowl, jewelry, and thick crochet flashing about at the next window and the Teller there, Candice(?), trying to catch a glimpse of the floor being addressed, failing, with her hair and nose smushed up against the glass and the thought surely had crossed her mind to blow a good, hard raspberry because with the way things had been going this morning a screaming old hag was the last thing anyone needed.

“Everything alright, ma’am?” Candice(?) asked, not really caring and doing nothing to hide it.

“No, as a matter of fact everything is not alright. I left it right here. Here…” kicking a rubber-booted toe against the wood partition, eyes wide, thinking that some omnipotent evil was at work in this white-hall feigning haven, cosmic forces conspiring in their dark corners of the night to strand her in this tomb with God’s flood transforming land to ocean around her and now left without even the most common of guards.

“What did you…?”

“My umbrella!” Parchment cheeks flushed with the rosy red of morning, perhaps making up for what the storm took away. “It’s pouring like the plague out there and somebody’s stolen my umbrella!”

“Well, maybe you…”

“This is not my fault! Someone has stolen it, stolen it from a poor old woman…” she caught a glimpse of something propped under a hand, something that could be… “You!” Corrin flinched as the woman rounded on her shadow gentleman, who casually tilted his chin left and downward to meet the accusation, the side of his face now visible lost across the black mountain ridge of his profile, revealing something to everyone but her. It was the strangest thing, the moment their eyes locked, the finger-pointer and her prey, the world went silent, the quiet squeaks of shoe-soles on slick tile halted in the sudden commotion, heads turned to see a battle never to be fought, the old woman’s jaw hanging off of broken hinges, a great gummy cave from which no sound could be heard, those conspiring lesser-demons taking speech from her as well, as if what they had already done hadn’t been enough.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said.

The almost-incident was over quicker than it began, the old owl, forever remaining nameless in the land of the named, slackened as a windless sail on the dead calm of the high seas, withdrew, was gone, fading into the light, sucked back out into the Apocalyptic rain like a golf ball through a hose, succumbing to demonic design through no will of her own, gone before she even realized what that meant, the PLAY button pushed, allowing onlookers to spring back to states of animation, the scene forgotten to everyone save Corrin who, half enshrouded in her fog-world, was gaping in amazement at an event that was anything but amazing.

“That was amazing…”

He could have smiled. Maybe he did. The shadow leaned forward, only a degree or two but somehow such a small gesture managed to transcend the boundaries of appropriate response. A dizziness enshrouded her, ears popping as if she’d dropped altitude too quickly, feeling her lungs stop, her heart beat a few fast-paced thump-thump-thumps and halt, could feel her eyes dilating, convinced for a single moment that…

“Not yet,” the man said and you could hear the smile now, no hiding that and no faking it either. All problems vanished, out of the nowhere they had sprung from and Corrin breathed deeply, the fog around her a bit thicker though her senses had sharpened somewhat, awash with confusion. What the hell had just happened?

“Not yet?” she asked, her inverted megaphone voice, placing a hand to her temple to steady the vibrations there.

“You looked like you were going to faint. If you’re thinking about doing something like that you should wait until I’m in a position to catch you.”

Perfectly plausible. Where had the faintness come from? Should she see a doctor? Hadn’t Uncle What’s-his-name dropped dead from something like that, some sudden onset of, well, death? Mysterious, the figurative bus roaring out of nowhere. She hadn’t eaten anything yet, maybe that was it, not a bite all day and unless the digital clock face next to her monitor was a fibber it was definitely time. Corrin thought of puppet strings. Puppet strings and a good, tender steak.

“Sorry,” she said, trying not to look too crazy while running a hand through her hair in a distinctly crazy way. “It’s been a weird day.”

“The rain will do that. Does that mean you won’t have lunch with me?”

Such an enigmatic tone, hinting at a million different possibilities, all of them equally enticing, luring her heart out through the money slot long before her mind convinced her mouth to speak. When it did it was as if it realized the unnatural length of the pause and needed to make up for lost time.

“Oh no I’m sorry sure of course yes I’d love some lunch.” She bit her lip, wondering if the damage had already been done. He could be smiling…

And he was. He knew what her answer was going to be long before he had started coming here, wouldn’t have bothered with any of this if he had believed otherwise. He brought up his Promethian hand, the long black umbrella clutched there, and shook it gently. “Well, as luck would have it, I happen to have here with me what seams to be a finely crafted umbrella…”

“Good!” She half-yelled it, excitement brimming in her, much more than the moment warranted, a grade-school child at kickball, jumping jacks of the victorious. What was wrong with her? She didn’t behave this way, accepting lunch dates from complete strangers, any strangers, not even mild acquaintances, let alone people whose faces she hadn’t even seen, let alone with such inexplicable, rabid desire. “You know, um, because it’s raining… raining pretty hard… out there.” Shit. Stupid. Don’t let him know you’re desperate, don’t give him cause for concern. You are a normal, well-adjusted, content, middle-aged woman (middle-aged? Really? Already? Ohmygod, where did the time go? Is that what I am now? I must be if that’s how I think of myself. Is that what I thought? Yes. My first thought. Good lord, this is worse that I thought) who has a bit of a dangerous streak, bit of the old rebel, that’s all. Nope. No crazy here!

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he talk-smiled.

What? He knew! How did he know? Telepathy, right? ESP? Oh God…

“The rain,” he said, not unkind. “I wouldn’t worry about the rain. It won’t last much longer.”

“Really? How do you know?” Keep him talking, can’t focus on too many things at once, more important what he’s saying than seeing the signs of what you’re thinking, no crazy, not crazy, no crazy, not crazy.

The silhouette shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”

“It’s a hunch!”

…

Oh God he didn’t think that was funny what the fuck is the matter with you? Do you want to be single forever? Die alone? Is that what you want? Really? Because you sure as hell fooled me, acting like this. Are you trying to scare him away?

“Let me…um,” she was fidgeting, hands alternately tucking and re-tucking hair locks behind her ears whether they moved from where she put them or not. “Um… yea, just, uh, let me… let me get my coat!”

“I’ll be right here.”

A line had formed behind the talking shadow, a long one, one she hadn’t noticed, the fog that had managed to part had only allowed this one figure to enter, all others still ghosts in the distance, spectral forms scurrying through the ether, and as she darted away, after flipping over the THIS WINDOW CLOSED sign, their came from those not-seen ghouls a unifying moan of disappointment, of disbelief, each entity in that mist reaching the same pitch, same starting point, same duration, decibel swell, same concluding gasp for oxygen, such an odd phenomenon, so much so that all of them (the final tally was to be seven), became instant friends and the following week instituted “poker night.”

Last night I dreamt I was walking along a high, dirt road
Running along the rim of a forgotten cliff
Overlooking an old western town
As I stopped to ponder the multiple horizons
A man I have never met appeared
And walked to the edge
He stood there for some time, contemplating a world within a world
And then with a knowing look
He glanced over his shoulder at me
And jumped

I ran to save him
But I was too late
I returned to the side of the road, sitting with my head in my hands
And wept for the both of us

When I looked up there were two men at the edge
Whom I had never seen before
The flame of panic ignited in my gut
I ran out of instinct, out of fear
But before I could reach them their eyes met mine
And they disappeared over the rim
I collapsed
And the world blurred

And more came, a line that ran down the road
To the valley below
The whole town, it seemed, had come
Like lemmings
To die before my eyes
I tried to reach them, to grab hold of shirt tails and dress hems
But it was no use
One by one they looked at me and leapt
There was nothing I could do

I imagined the ground at the base of the cliff
And the pile of bodies forming there
A mountain of flesh I wasn't able to save
Their dead-staring eyes blaming me
With their blindness
But I would not look
Even after the last man dropped away
His butcher's apron billowing out around him
I remained in the dirt, immobile

I thought of you and the world I left you to
The protection you needed
The guidance you craved
When I thought of the hundreds of miles between us
My paralysis became complete

I stared out over the edge at the mountains
And mesas beyond
And watched as the sun made watercolors
Of them all