Have Me For Dinner

An experimental writing piece consisting solely of dialogue. Enjoy!


Have Me For Dinner


-Happy Thanksgiving!
-Welcome, come in, so glad you could join us.
-I guess that makes everyone.
-Smells delicious.
-It’s quite a spread.
-Sure is.
-Looks like you’ve outdone yourselves again.
-I wouldn’t have believed it could be done.
-Oh, stop.
-No really, there’s something for everyone here.
-And then some.
-Let’s gather around, please.
-Everyone!
-Stop it you two!
-We’re going to say grace.
-Would you do the honors?
-Certainly. We are gathered here as friends and family to share in one another’s thanksgiving for the great things that God has provided us with, for our friends and families our health and the feast prepared by loving hands. May God’s grace comfort those less fortunate. Amen.
-Amen.
-Dig in!
-There’s turkey, venison, that there is a rabbit stew.
-Rabbit?
-Ewww….
-Hush.
-There’s plenty of potatoes, scalloped, mashed, semi-mashed and baked.
-We brought a salad.
-Dressings are in the fridge.
-There’s also a roast just about done from the bull we slaughtered this fall.
-What is this dish?
-That?
-Yeah, it smells great.
-You know, I’m not too sure what that is.
-Let me try a piece.
-Not that. That’s tongue.
-Cow tongue?
-No, it’s a little sweeter than cow. The first time I had it, it was glazed with wine, and to be honest it kind of took me by surprise. I got used to it eventually though, then I just lost the taste for it. You’re welcome to try it. I’ve had enough. It’s a little old though. It’s probably too tough. I think you should just leave it be.
-What’s that you have?
-This?
-It looks pretty good.
-It’s heart. It’s kind of gamy.
-Heart?
-Of a deer?
-Something like that.
-I’ve never seen a heart prepared like that before.
-It’s not an easy procedure.
-How was it done.
-To be honest, it takes years to get it just so.
-Years?
-Yep. You need to soften it up for a while first, at least a few months, any less and you may not get full saturation. You’ll know it’s ready when it feels like putty in your hands. Anyhow, that’s when the real care begins. You need to first spend a few weeks molding it into something manageable.
-I bet that’s time consuming.
-Among other things. Anyway, after you’ve shaped it into the desired mold you need to tenderize it a little.
-Tenderize?
-Yeah, you know, beat it up a little. You want it to maintain freshness.
-I see, otherwise it might get stale.
-It should be bleeding a little by the time you’re done. That’s how you know it’s ready.
-Ready for what?
-The next step.
-Which is?
-You need to play with it.
-Play with it?
-Play with it…
-Yep. Play with it.
-No, no, you’re never supposed to play with your food.
-That’s true, but it isn’t food yet - it’s still in preparation.
-Oh, I see.
-I guess that makes sense.
-This can be a very tedious process. Some hearts take years of toying around before you can stop.
-How will you know you can stop?
-That’s the easy part. They start to blow up. Like a balloon. And you want to stop just shy of bursting it.
-Oh.
-Now some hearts take longer than others. This one took five years to go through all of the required stages.
-There’s more?
-Oh, sure. Once the heart balloons it’s almost ready to be harvested. You have to make sure everything else is in order at this time because there’s little to no shelf life once it’s picked before it goes bad. So now you have to handle it very gently because it’s almost ready to pop on it’s own and it has to be done all at once. If it’s properly prepared up to now you should be able to stab it with a sharp knife without popping it.
-How is that?
-That’s the pre-saturation.
-Exactly. The knife goes in and you begin the delicate task of carving it up. Where you go from here is really up to your imagination.
-How was this one done?
-This was a gem. It soaked up so much that it was like a one of those thick gushing sponges. I cut this one once all the way through, but because I was preparing it for an occasion I wanted to do something different. So once I took both halves, I hollowed one out, and stuffed it with the other half and ground the innards of the first to sprinkle over the whole as a sort of garnish.
-You mean the half.
-That’s clever, I didn’t even notice that. Yes, I guess I do. Anyhow, I ground the one half by hand, just by turning it over and over and bit by bit it flaked away, and then added a lot of seasoning to it in order to try and draw out and complement all the natural flavorings.
-It’s truly divine.
-I’m so glad you like it. For my part, I prefer that dish there.
-Oh and what is this?
-You’ll have to trust me on this one, because I know you wouldn’t touch it if I told you.
-It must be something exotic.
-It’s definitely an import.
-I love the sauce.
-It’s really more of a glaze.
-Now what’s the difference?
-A glaze is baked on.
-I see. So what’s the secret?
-I guess I can tell you that I left the skin on.
-Is that why it looks so tanned?
-Precisely not!
-Oh! You got me.
-It’s very lean.
-Oh yes, this dish is. And sun dried to some degree.
-No kidding? I usually don’t go for sun dried.
-Nor I, but this was just too perfect to pass up.
-I agree. Oh, no wait, I got a hair.
-Oh my, how embarrassing!
-Now don’t fret. I see no sense in making a scene. It happens to the best of us.
-I was sure I got them all.
-These little ones are hard to spot.
-Now what about these little kabobs?
-To be honest, they are probably the fattiest finger foods you could find.
-Mmmmm. Magnificent. Here, hon. Try this.
-Wow, these are good. They’re so…
-Yes, what’s the word?
-Soft.
-Exactly! How’d you do that?
-Easy enough, I just left them alone. I let them ripen on the vine so to speak.
-Well it worked.
-Not really.
-What was that?
-Nothing, nothing. I’m glad you enjoy them, I never cared much for them myself, but they’re good with kids.
-Are they beer battered?
-The alcohol cooks out.
-You’ll have to get the recipe.
-I’m working on it love. By the way, where’s that young man who used to come around so often, what was his name?
-I’m sure I don’t know who you mean.
-Sure you do, tall fellow, quite handsome, you two were the best of friends.
-It’s not ringing a bell, but have you met my fiancé?

Five Days in the Life of a Samaritan

A Short Story

For an old man, a young boy, and a good friend.


Five Days in the Life of a Samaritan


I'm not feeling wholly well today. For some that's normal, but it's a departure for me. I walk up the subway stairs on my way to work and walk past the cripple on the landing which means I'm almost to the street. It seems to sap me today, the brief climb up the stairs, and there's still the hill to conquer to get to work; I probably should have skipped the gym. I'm wondering if it was last night's meal, or the three mocha's I had through the course of yesterday instead of viable sustenance that I'm paying for now.

By the end of the day the initial feeling of being somewhat sub-par vanishes in the wake of work. I walk up the building's stairs, through the halls of closed doors, and into the sweltering humidity of the 28-degree centigrade apartment that I'm calling home for the year, vaguely wondering if I'll be able to continue this plan of trying to live a cost-effective lifestyle until I've overcome the North American debt-culture of living that has been my mainstay the majority of my life. I take another cold shower, the second today, my make-shift air-conditioning alternative, sit down at the computer and play a couple hours of poker while downloading a new movie hoping the pirate kept his (or her) camera still, well-framed, and that the theater stays quiet in rapt appreciation of all the hard work and expense that went into the production of the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

I check my email and discover that I'm well on the way to accomplishing my goal of getting out of debt, for the second (and I swear the last) time in my life. I was debt-free before I went to Africa, albeit barely, and still far from living the requisite lifestyle to stay that way, but that four-month milestone proved life-changing in more ways than one. While it succeeding it plunging me back into substantial credit-card debt, primarily due to poor planning on my part, it simultaneously led me to the realization that the privilege to owe, that is the staple of the North American economy, is a wide open door that we're beckoned into by the lure of unnecessary creature comforts before it slams shut with the metallic (silver, gold, platinum if you're lucky) clang of a prison cell.


My alarm wakes me up and I'm feeling better today. I have my cereal for breakfast and head to the gym. I work out for the better part of an hour before heading back to get ready for work. There is a different beggar on the stairs leading from the the subway today, this man bowing, motionlessly prostrate, with a cardboard box in front of him littered with a few coins and I'm vaguely thankful that I don't have any money on me. He's still there in the same position six hours later after a shortened work day and I'm reminded that I need to go to the bank in order to pick up some groceries, just the staples: a couple of cartons of milk, some yogurt, and another box of cereal for the week. Maybe a dozen eggs if the guy on the corner is there.


On payday I send another thousand dollars (USD) home to continue making payments on my credit card debts. Probably three or four months left until I'm free and clear. Soon I'll have to confront my plans for the next stage of life; I'm six months into my year long contract. With a return tour I'll be able to save some money, build up a bank account, maintain a balance, and perhaps be able to afford to do some traveling besides. It's the cripple on the landing today. He's sitting with has back against the wall, one leg, his left, jutting out before him with an odd deformity misshaping the lower part which abruptly ends where it should continue with ankle foot and toes. His left hand is curled, not quite into a fist, more like a claw or a talon, since there are appendages missing that would give it a more human appearance. He's slumped over with wretched posture and as I hurry past him, half-way up the last segment of stairs I'm struck still in my tracks by the thought, the picture, of a little boy's face. I remember that I have some money in my pocket. I turn around and put one of the small denomination bills in front of the man before turning silently, quickly around, and continuing on to work.


The sermon on Sunday touched on the story of the Good Samaritan, in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10, verses 25 through 37. I spend most of the capitulation of that well-known parable thinking. I think about New York City's homeless, I think about Africa, the pastor interrupts my thoughts dropping a statistic that there are an estimated one billion people who go hungry every day, that's about one sixth of the planet's human populace. I think about the old crippled man sitting at the subway on my way to work. I think about the boy. I think about the movie Schindler's List, about the ring he laments owning at the end. I question my motives, briefly struggling with whether or not I should be focused on my bank account at all once I get out of debt, and decide that the debate is one for a long dark night of the soul in the not too distant future. I feel guilty about the previous download so I go to the theater and pay for a repeat performance of a movie I've already (sort of) seen.


I'm listening to the I-pod a friend of mine gave me at the airport when I was on my way here to teach for the year. I'm listening to songs I like about love and loss and thinking about a young woman I used to know. A Rascal Flatts song comes on the shuffled thousand plus tracks, a new one I downloaded just recently, long after the life-defining separation I suffered some years ago now, but that still seems so relevant today for where I am and how I got here, called "Things that Matter". I think about the little boy again.

I'm sitting in a travel agency in Bujumbura, Burundi trying to arrange a flight home from Entebbe, Uganda to Johannesburg, South Africa and then finally to Washington D.C. where I can get a bus to New York. I'm sitting in a chair in front of the travel agent, an attractive young woman whom statistics would say has contracted some manner of STD, who is helping me in broken English because my attempts at some meager communications in my more fractured French proved futile, when I feel a light touch on my leg. It's a boy I passed on the street who has followed me into the agency. He's a cute kid, which is why he held my gaze for longer than I knew he should have in passing, and why I offered up a silent prayer on his behalf while briskly walking past him in the busy bustle of the Bujumbura streets. He has a round head, completely shorn, marked with a few small sores, but his perfectly symmetrical youthful face is mostly unmarred, except for a small scratch on his nose, and with big brown pleading eyes, his pouting mouth is pushing forth whimpering cries of "please mister, please" punctuated by the continual pawing on my leg, of a stump, sealed and scarred, cut short, just below his elbow, one of four, as all his limbs are incongruently missing, making his every movement a sort of writhing hobble, and he's still pawing at my leg and pleading with me but I have nothing to offer him, the crumpled bills in my pocket already part of the vacuum I owe to others, and even if I were to give him money, I know that he is a being manipulated as a tool for another, far more capable, and more hardened man than I, for I'm already on the verge of breaking, who will take what is given to the boy for his own gain. The woman travel agent is coming around the desk. She began by talking, progressed to almost yelling, and is now in the midst of physically removing the child, whose already fallen from being shoved away from me as I sit in numb, disbelieving, discomfort, a sullen, defeated Thinker on a swivel chair, dressed and healthy and whole, but now forever changed by the touch of a child who could have already perished in the filthy streets of a foreign city because I just sat there. But what could I have done?

I stop at the old man on the stairs. I cannot speak his language. I don't know how best to help him. I put the largest denomination of bill I can in front of him, which still isn't all that much, and walk away, not feeling good at all, just feeling like a stranger in this land.

June 16th (In memorium)

June 16.

“Sideways?”
And then I start crying again and the line of communication shorts out.

It started off such a beautiful day. I was still technically scheduled to work at three but I was hoping that Sam was going to call me and take the shift. It was a three to eleven desk shift. I hate desk shifts. I spent the morning deleting spam from my e-mail, hovering longer than my conscience would care to admit over the free cyber escorts before clicking them into the trash in a fit of righteous anger. Love doesn’t do such things. And I was in love. I managed to spare the story in my inbox though. Sam calls. My cell phone is in my room and I don’t hear the Nokia rendition of Fur Elise before its too late. He leaves a message though. It was a message of him hanging up. I recall that I should really change my answering machine intro of “Hello? Hello? Oh hey… um, look, I’m gonna have to call you back… I’m in a rough spot… leave a message” BEEP. For some it’s clever… the first time. I can understand why I get so few calls from friends. I wait for the phone to ring again but it doesn’t, and it’s about twelve thirty and I’ve been cooped up in this house too long already; if I don’t get out and into the sunshine it’ll be the death of me. He calls again while I’m shaving. I’m shaving because I don’t yet know that Sam will take the shift. This time he leaves a message. It begins, “You jerk” as most do when the caller realizes that after so many rings the answer is identical. He says he’ll take the shift though. So far so good.
I head into town planning to make good of my gift, this beautiful sunny day free to enjoy, and not just in my own selfish pursuits; there are stories I need to read for class, a summer class, a good class, but still. I head to campus where I can utilize free printing. I secure my reading from cyberspace, bringing it to planet earth. I stuff it into my bag with the two others and head out to the midday sun, the basketball courts, to play when I should have been working.
The first half hour I’m alone. I don’t really mind. The sun is beating on my back as I dribble and toss the ball around. The net is short. I’m sinking more than I usually would. I hear a couple of girls laughing and giggling on a swing set. I smile to myself hearing their laughter. I like her laugh. I toss up another and another and before too long I’m sharing the court with some nationhood kids. I stop now after every few shots and watch the three of them playing on the other net. They speak the language, albeit a slightly more elementary dialect. One calls for a pass, the other fouls and the ball goes out. It’s two on one and they’re playing make it take it. A car pulls up and some slightly older guys step out with a ball. There are the three children, the eldest no older than thirteen or so, on the one net, and me on the other. They shoot on mine and we share. One offers a game of twenty-one. I’m in a fairly sociable mood so I go along. I ask for their rules. The basic game is fairly universal, he offers taps, no outs and two point scoring. I agree and inquire to clearing. Off rim. The game begins. I don’t win. At the end, introductions are made and the two drive off as three more drive up. They too join me to start but eventually go to muscle the children off the court. I want to offer the kids a game but they go off in another direction. Across the field two curly-haired brunettes appear. The older is a woman. The younger is her son. She approaches me and asks if I’d play a game with them. Sure I would. She asks me if I am any good. I reply as my experience leads me to believe, having just got whooped on by a coworker yesterday who stands a good six inches shorter than I do, that I am not. My first shot rebounded right into the woman’s eye, contorting an arm on her glasses. I let them win. By the time we’re finished the other side of the court has grown to five. I respectfully decline another game with the woman and her son and as soon as I step off the court the other side explodes over the half court to claim the whole. The son and mother walk away. I am asked to join for a full court three on three. I say I’ll just need a few. I take a drink and rest. Introductions are made first. We play. I am on the winning team this time. I thank them all for the game and I leave with my ball and bag. I stop at the fountain to get the taste of sweat out of my mouth. It’s almost four.
I get no answer when I call so I leave a message.
“I know you probably have plans tonight, but I was just wondering if I could give you a hand at work or if you were going to be around later, or what. I’m essentially just trying to see what you’re up to… to see what I’m up to. Let me know.”
I go to Starbucks and forgo my usual extra-strong Chai Latte, for a venti cold blended citrus something-or-other. It’s good. I cross the street and get a couple of BLTs at the deli before returning to Starbucks and parking myself in the shade of one of their patio umbrellas. A woman meets a friend and they have a conversation about something three feet away from me. I spend most of the time watching the woman’s daughter who clings to her mother’s leg until she is lifted into her mother’s arms to play with her mother’s wallet and keys before being returned to the ground to cling once again to her mother’s leg. She looks at me and smiles, the little girl. I smile and wave with four pistoning fingers and she hides her face in her mother’s shorts and doesn’t look at me again.
Across the street a blonde pulls into a meter spot with a shiny silver CLK. I wouldn’t have known or cared what a CLK Benz was or how it differed from any other Mercedes, or high end luxury coupe for that matter, a couple years ago, but I’ve been working at a hotel resort as a valet since then. It was the car that first caught my eye. Although, whenever I see blonde hair I find myself hoping it’s her. It isn’t though. This young lady is decked out in some tight sporty outfit to go comfortably with her tight sporty car. I finish my meal and go to my own car. I turn up the main street, geographically anyhow, since it slopes upward almost all through town, and I stop at the Citgo to gas up. Citgo has the cheapest gas. From there I go to Shop Rite recalling some essentials I need to get: deodorant, some other impotent acne-fighting face wash scam pads, and toothpaste. While I’m there I pick up some cereal and Soy milk too, since Dad and the Mrs. are on vacation with their kids and I have to fend for myself food wise.
After that I head back down through town. I turn north at the crossroad, heading towards her place. I turn off of the road to open the lines of communication. My car stalls at Boces and I send her a text message.
“Are my assumptions accurate?”
After a couple of songs of no response, I rummage through a few CD cases to find the country music compilation of 186 MP3s. I remove the R&B, Hip Hop, Rap CD and put the former in. She is the one who opened my ears to country music. She still hasn’t answered my call after Travis Tritt’s “Best of Intentions” and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just go home and do some reading and writing. I decide to give her a call.
“Hello?”
I love hearing her “Hello?”s.
“Sorry to pester you…”
“You’re not pestering me. I haven’t even gotten any messages from you.”
“Then you have two. One voice. One text.”
“You better hurry up, my phone’s going to go dead.”
“I was just wondering what you were up to tonight, if you needed a hand at work before your evening plans.”
“How did you know I was going to work?”
“You said something about cleaning last night.”
“Well there was too much to do for one night so I’m home now. And I may have plans at eight.”
It was almost six. That gave me two hours. It wasn’t really much of a choice but I sat in silence for a minute in anticipation anyhow.
“Hello?”
There it was.
“I’ll see you soon then.”
Up the road, colloquially this time, headed north, since north is still a horizontal plane and I wasn’t literally flying, just cruising a few miles over the posted 55, until her turnoff. I passed the old covered bridge spanning the river, or is it still the straight this far north? Anyhow, I was thinking that maybe two hours is enough to take a walk over the bridge to the power lines, something I’ve heard about and been wanting to do with her for some time but we’ve never quite gotten around to yet. I pulled into her driveway and my car stalled again. She hates my car. It’s a 1990 Lincoln Town Car that I picked up for two grand. It had less then 50 thousand miles on it. It has been nothing but trouble and it’s a cluttered mess full of my uniforms and schoolwork. I’m the only one who rides in the thing anyway, so I figure I’m excused.
I go to the front door and tap gently. It’s open. I enter. I take off my shoes and whisper around but there is nobody home. I leave. I look around outside, but the gardens are void of human population, as are the garage and the backyard. I go to my car to get some reading material. I hear voices. I wander down to her brother and sister-in-law’s home, a trailer where I’d spent a number of nights before the newly arrived addition, a hundred yards or so down the street, again geometrically, as this street too descends rather steeply.
They are all there congregated on the porch. The first words out of her mouth are…
“Is it black history month?”
This is because I’m wearing a comfortable button down collared t-shirt that is black and tan, and wonderfully cool in the summer time, thin enough to breath and able to open up in a breeze, which she somehow associates with African American-ness. I’ve never really understood it and I vocalize such.
“No, actually. Black history month is February. This is just a comfortable shirt that has nothing to do with racial associations of any kind.”
There was some more chatter about my attire before she walked back up to her house. I stayed and engaged in some small talk with her brother and sister in law. I feel guilty whenever I’m around them now. I used to frequent their house almost daily. They provided me with an escape from my own, and although I’m still in need of such a haven, ever since I started abandoning their hospitality and friendship for hers, and their having a beautiful newborn child to raise, I’ve felt like a terrible imposition on them both. Albeit my PS2 is still there as a relic of friendlier times. I mention that I may stop back later in the evening to pick it up so I could have a means of amusement while Dad is away with his family. A friend of theirs pulls up as I am about to depart which results in my lingering longer to admire the friend’s new Ram 2500 V8 short bed pickup. It was a nice piece of machinery. I can only vaguely appreciate and entertain such things so I stayed for as long as my sense of politeness dictated and sauntered up to see her.
I tapped on the door again and entered. She threw an orange at me. She misses and repeats the procedure several times, with the same orange, the only orange, while I’m untying my shoes again and anticipating a bloody nose or something until she lands it on my back with a dull thud. She picks it up again.
“I hope you’re going to eat that.”
“Eww. Are you kidding? It’s been rolling around on the floor, by the shoes, and by you… I’m not going to eat it. That’s disgusting.”
She put it back on the counter. I took it and began the arduous task of peeling it. It was one of those oranges you have to peel at least twice over, first picking the rind off one piece at a time, then the white sub-dermal layer just so you can peel the slices properly.
“The highest concentration of C is in the white stuff.”
I flick another peeling into the compost bucket, the forward left.
“I know.”
“Of course you do. Heaven forbid I tell you something you don’t already know!”
Of course, I have learned countless lessons from her, vocal and otherwise, but she’s rather antagonistic tonight. I let her know I think so.
“Me? You’ve done nothing but verbally assault me since you opened your mouth today!”
“What?”
“The shirt.”
“It’s not a black shirt. I’m sorry if I don’t agree with your racial discrimination.”
“I wasn’t discriminating.”
“What would you call it then?”
“I associate that type of shirt with Anthony, ok? Anthony is black. Therefore…”
“It’s a black shirt? Whatever.”
I shouldn’t have said that. She hates “Whatever”. She gets frustrated and opens the fridge. She starts pulling out the perishables looted from the estate she cleans up, and out, among other things.
“I’m a Robin Hood of the fridge. What’s a knish?”
“I don’t know.”
She holds out a pastry.
“It has apple and something in it.”
I keep struggling with my orange. It wasn’t very big to begin with and it keeps getting smaller as the layers are shorn away by my picking fingernails.
“Do you like pesto?”
“I don’t know. What is it.”
“It’s green stuff. It has garlic and… I don’t know. Just try some.”
“No, thank you.”
I look at the container: Buddhapesto.
“As in Buddha?”
“As in Budapest.”
“It has a picture of Buddha and it’s from Woodstock NY.”
“Well I’m having this and pasta. Do you want some?”
I think about it for a second and realize that this is the simplest question I have yet been asked and that nothing I have said so far has been well received. I say something about pasta but I say “pasta” wrong and we digress into a linguistic lesson. I give her the first of my orange slices, then the second. She declines anything further.
I go into the adjacent room and start reading. She follows me in and turns on the TV. Will and Grace. Her phone rings. A few minutes pass before she returns to her chair. I go back to the kitchen to check the water.
“How much would you like? A cup?”
“I don’t know. I’ll do it.”
She turns off the TV. I go back to reading. She appears beside me.
“Is that stapled?”
I clutch the loose papers tighter.
“No. It isn’t.”
She grabs them herself. The top sheet is crinkling as we both hold the pages in static potential.
“Just let me throw them across the room and I’ll leave you alone.”
She’s smiling at the possibility of having me do anything but read. Which I can’t understand because I wouldn’t be reading if she weren’t preoccupied with TV or boiling water or phone conversations. Nor do I grasp the antithesis to my appreciation for reading. One of the first intimacies I shared with her was reading aloud The Princess Bride when she wasn’t feeling well, which continued well beyond recovery. I started The Hobbit too, but she finished that and most of The Lord of the Rings trilogy herself.
“It isn’t mine. I have to return it to the author critiqued. If you don’t mind.”
She releases the story and returns to the kitchen. I emerge out of guilt and curiosity and she is draining the noodles in the sink. Steam rushes up as she pulls as far away as she can, her arms, holding the pot, adjoined at her shoulders. I wish we were as close as we used to be.
I go to the bathroom and when I return she is stirring green tinged noodles.
“Did you use the whole thing?”
“No. And what kind of way is that to ask?”
My tone was presumptuous and I apologized. She said I wasn’t sorry. She may have been right. She picks up a scoop and lets it slide off the spoon back into the pot. She looks disgusted.
“I don’t think I want any. Help yourself.”
I take a bowl and a fork and two scoops then return to the TV room, sitting on the bed. It used to be her grandfather’s room. I still can’t feel comfortable sitting on the bed. He hasn’t been gone long enough and I can still smell him in the room, especially on the bed. I sit there facing the TV out of habit. We used to sit together. She comes in with a bowl of her own and illuminates the TV with the push of a button.
“Friends is on.”
It’s the one where Joey and Ross talk dirty to each other. I eat, then I try to read.
“Thank you. For dinner.”
“It’s too greasy.”
“Well, I didn’t mind it. And I appreciate it. So, thank you.”
“Help yourself to more.”
“No thank you.”
I go to put my dish in the sink and hers as well. She says she may have more so only mine ends up in the sink. I leave hers on the counter. I drink some water, and then return to my position reading on the bed.
I think of how far we’ve digressed. And how I’ve come so close to giving up, especially since I’m holding on to nothing more than dreams and ideals that I’ve fabricated from the threads of my own past.
She turns the TV off before Friends is over and I know something is wrong. I put down the story I wasn’t reading and look at her. Her blond hair is glowing from the light running through it, courtesy of the sun, low in the sky, shining through the window behind her. I look at her, glowing from the radiance of the sun and I smile. Remembering all of the things that I use to stoke the hope smoldering inside me that she may love me one day. I lie back on the bed and bask in her shadow.
“I am going out at eight.”
“I figured.”
Silence. I brood in her shadow. It’s often that delicate, my state of being, that the news of my denial, or someone else’s privilege, is enough to douse my hope and cause steam to rise.
“I can’t believe we have nothing to talk about. I have nothing to say to you.”
“I could say a lot of things.”
“Say them.”
“I wouldn’t want to keep you.”
“Always an excuse. There’s no time, it’s too late, not on the phone…”
“I haven’t used too late in a while.
“True. Still.”
“It wouldn’t be anything new, anyway.”
She gets up and begins to walk away, I presume to the shower.
“Have a good night.”
“You too.”
“I doubt it.”
It was stupid to say, but she freed me a long time ago from most of my defensive inhibitions, which led to the honesty that seems to get me into so much trouble these days. That’s what happens when your best friend, the one you confide in, your source for comfort, is simultaneously the one you love, thus your inspiration and joy, and thereby the cause of all the frustrations and hurts that come with the preliminaries of any relationship, even one-sided ones, and all this is articulated as best you can in late-night/early morning bed-side conversations, resulting in similar frustrations, joys, and pains suffered by the beloved best friend at learning the heart and mind of a friend she doesn’t love, at least not in that way.
She sighs and leaves. I hear water running and I get up. She’s standing at the sink doing the dishes. “I was going to do my dishes while you were in the shower.”
“There was only one.”
She was referring to “my dishes” as the one that I used to eat. I was referring to “my dishes” as my stake in the claim on the chore as a whole. Communication with me is seldom bridged.
I refilled the water bottle in my bag from her Brita. She was headed towards the bathroom now and I watched her go. But she didn’t go. She stopped at the doorway.
“Maybe we should just stop seeing each other.”
She was looking for a response from me. I thought my lack of response was response enough.
“What do you want me to say to that? Sure?”
“I can’t deal with this tension every time I see you. Like you having a bad night just because I’m going out. I don’t want to be responsible for your misery.”
“You’re not. I am.”
“I am too if I’m the cause of your brooding.”
“I am the cause of my brooding. And it’s only because you’re the best part of my day that your absence makes me miserable.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to be responsible for this.”
“I’m telling you you’re not. I’ll get over it. I’ll get over you.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. When I have to. When you make a decision. When you go and start dating other people I think I may truly absorb the fact that there’s no chance for me, for us.”
“So you’re just going to wait? Like this? Sulking whenever I’m out with a friend?”
“You’re worth waiting for. And I don’t want to force you into making a decision. Especially one we’ll both regret.”
“No.”
“No what?”
“No is my decision.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there is no chance for us. Not like this. No.”
“So that’s it then.”
“I guess so.”
“Well that was anti-climactic.”
After about a minute of sinking in, it was too much for me. My eyes welled up and released the abundance. First down the right cheek, then the left.
“I guess it could have been worse; I could have bought you a ring.”
I went to the bathroom and got some TP to soak up the fluid collecting on my lips. I thought of how similar sweat tasted playing ball. Since she’s always pointing out how much of a pansy I am anyway, I decide to do most of my crying in the other room, perched up on her grandfather’s bed. When I’ve gathered control of myself, enough to conceivably leave without need of being mopped up after, I pass back through the kitchen to the front door. She’s sitting at the kitchen table. She too is upset. That’s the worst part about the whole ordeal now, I hurt her, and there’s nothing I can do to comfort her except leave.
“You have a good night then.”
I close the door gently behind me. I walk to my car, and decide against going right away. I was always told not to drive emotionally impaired. I went into the loft of the barn that I had been in the throes of transforming into a summer hothouse gym. It already had a weight bench with some free weights and an eighty-pound punching bag. It was easy to stop crying while I was slugging at the vinyl covered sand mass, but when it collapsed from its mount onto the floor with considerable ruckus, I had to take another minute to breathe and cry.
I went down to her brother’s place to see he, his wife, and his newborn daughter having dinner outside.
I managed to rush out an explanation of the cacophony I caused, and say that I was going to grab my PS2 for a few days. I went into their trailer just in time to choke back some emotional outburst and look at the tangled mess of wires behind the TV, stereo, VCR, AM/FM receiver, PS2, speakers setup, and decided on just carting home a few DVDs instead.
“Just decided on some movies, I have enough DVD players at home.”
I assume my red puffy eyes spoke enough evidence of my trauma for them not to inquire, or I was that good at masking injury, either way, they were most pleasant about me rushing in, out, and away.
They called after me not to be such a stranger and I almost laughed. I managed a wave and a nod instead as I headed back up to my car.
In the car a new wave hit me, silent this time, the steady quiet stream down the windows when the thunder has subsided. It was now almost eight. Perfect timing I thought. She’s probably half way to her rendezvous. I started up the car and headed home. Back on 213 I cut left to park across the street from the covered wooden bridge. I made it to the commemorative plaque and saw the hearts engraved in the boards full of dates and initials before I decided to turn back. Crossing the street a yellow pickup came cruising towards me and I thought of how easy it would be to commit vehicular suicide. That was a recurring daydream all the way home, at least until I passed the Ice Cream shack on route to my father’s house and caught a glimpse of the sun setting over the ridge. I scrolled through my outgoing text messages for one of my memories.
“It is a beautiful sunset… especially sideways.”
I use it often when I want to share a sunset without her, either because I’m at work, or otherwise separated. I figure it’s a big sky and wherever we are, it’s something we can share. Besides, I’ve never received a negating response. It goes back to Long Beach Island, the Jersey shore, almost nine months ago now. The day before her family was supposed to leave was the day Gramps died. When they went to the shore after the funeral, it was a sobering ordeal, much quieter than previous holidays. I remember sitting with her watching the sunset, facing the bay. We were sitting on a wooden bench, smacking mosquitoes. She had her head on my shoulder. I broke the silence:
“It’s a beautiful sunset.”
“Especially sideways.”
I tilted my head to the side as well.
“You’re not kidding.”
“No, I know.”
Shortly afterwards we went inside. The few short days while I was there we went for walks along the beach, woke up early to watch the sun rise from the ocean’s depths, collected shells and sea glass, and held each other in the surf. I think I was far too happy in mourning, in spite of the other friend of hers hanging around, an ex boyfriend, who stayed with her longer than I did.
Driving along I refused to tilt my head. So I erased the message beyond the ellipses (…) and pushed send. It was a beautiful sunset after all.
Her response came almost instantly. When I got home I went through my text message inbox, reading the ones I saved for whatever meaning I had imbued them with.
“I miss you already.” Nov. 11. 23:51. I was just driving home from spending a day with her.
“Can I have 1 more kiss?” Nov. 14. 23:28. I had just gotten to my car. I went back to her room, happy to oblige. A substantial break occurs, both in our relationship and our text messaging, and I probably erased some more sentimental ones in my despair.
“I still miss you” March 18. 02:40. I was in Canada, visiting my mother. I still think I missed her more. I’m sure I texted so.
“I came across a kiss here with you name on it. I’ll try to save it for you.” April 1, 2003. 12:10. I was in French class.
“Could you invest it in an interest bearing account?” I wrote back. That was the night of the Tim McGraw concert. I didn’t go. She went with the same ex and another couple. She came home drunk wearing his baseball cap. I know that her and I never kissed again after that. Another month of absence and miscommunication, intended by her to give me some time, without letting me know, leads to a larger rift between us. It’s at the edge of this chasm where I stood today when the earth shook and I fell into the void.
“You can always make me smile… :-)” June 10. 16:59. Less than one week ago… I can’t remember what joke I made to deserve it, but I wish it were true now.
As much as I want to let everything that has welled up inside go, now that I’m in an empty house, I’m bound by the fact that I’m less comfortable here, than at her home, where I felt more at home than any place since my parents’ divorce. It’s gone now. I should have went to work. I’ve broken another home. And now there’s nothing I can do. I grab my shirt sleeves and stretch the garment tight across my back and the seams split. I gather the seams in my hand and I pull the shirt across my back again until the fibers are rent apart, sundered. Then I turn on my computer and cry letters and words while they’re still fresh, since tears won’t do. Should I ever give her this to read, I’ll bind it for her in that shirt.
My phone beeps beside me.

“Sideways?”
This is the second time her textual inquiry has come.
I look outside and night has fallen. I still don’t tilt my head.
“The sun has set.”

Church Hill Sonnets (VII of VII)

Sonnet LII (Church Hill VII)

Walking back beneath the bowed boughs above,

Climbing the hill I descended amazed,

Trying to escape the beauty I razed,

Hands torn from wielding this axe with no glove,

Seeking no leaf, nor return of my dove,

And finding no sign of God to be praised,

My mechanized body has become crazed,

Tired and defeated with no faith in love.

I drop the instrument guilty of death

That I swung to fell the tree of my life

That I climbed in search of my love, my wife,

For the axe is dull and I’m out of breath.

I can no longer tread this steep incline;

Whose are these steps that are making mine?

Church Hill Sonnets (VI of VII)

Sonnet LI (Church Hill VI)

I gather my dreams from where they are strewn.

I tidy the mess I made in my haste,

Take one last look in the light of the moon,

And turn to return to my life of waste.

The portal swings open of your accord.

You pass with a smile, your family trailing,

You all are now home and I feel abhorred

Found in the branches I have been scaling

And snapped budding twigs to blossom no more;

There will be a poorer harvest this year

Unless someone tends to the limbs I tore.

I’m ashamed to have become what I fear.

Sap runs down the hilt of the axe I hold

And sticks to my hands out here in the cold.

Church Hill Sonnets (V of VII)

Sonnet L (Church Hill V)

My journey ends in your room on your bed.

To no other end but rest from my mind.

I lie, covered by the claims that I’ve said.

I sleep, toss and turn; your flannel sheets bind.

From this cocoon I will stir and awake,

Slice a current in the sea I'm swimming,

I will carve in this deception I make

A hollow to collect limbs I'm trimming.

I hear the scratching peeling paint away,

The bark, from Woofy, pawing at your door,

He whines and cries until he gets his way,

Then looking at me, falls onto the floor.

I don’t want to hold the axe in my hand

That will fell the tree of this precious land.

Church Hill Sonnets (IV of VII)

Sonnet XLIX (Church Hill IV)

I walk through the kitchen on creaking planks,

Away from the entrance and my entrance

Induced by the shrine of so many thanks,

Each step heralding my cautious advance,

Past the old stove with the pilot light lit,

That eternal flame ever set to spark,

Just turn up the gas and stand back a bit,

Make circles that burn bright blue in the dark,

To the upright piano where I pause.

The yellowed ivory, faded ebony,

Disobedient to musical laws,

Without you here to bring your harmony,

Still rings with memories of string and song.

I continue hoping you won’t be long.

Church Hill Sonnets (III of VII)

Sonnet XLVIII (Church Hill III)

There’s something sacred about this table,

Oak, like the door, rooted in love and time;

Like a lesson from some ancient fable;

The beauty of nature is made sublime.

It frightens me, this comfortable peace,

The fabric of tears, happiness and joy,

Encompassing me like the softest fleece

Making me feel like a lost little boy

Who is finally home... and yet, not so,

For though I am welcomed with open arms,

As often as I arrive I must go

Face this world alone and endure its harms.

I don’t understand why your family bloomed

When mine died long ago; I still feel doomed.

Phil's Story, Final Chapter

The Truth.

I thought I was doing the right thing when I threw Phillip off of his ninth floor balcony. Phillip had to die. I didn’t understand him. He scared me. I was convinced that there was no good outside of God, and I still believe it, but there was good in Phil and there is bad in me. What would Hyde have been if Jekyll were more flawed in his fundamental character? Who am I without my conflicting inhibitions? What is there of value in me? God’s image… what else is it that intrinsically imbues this world and it’s fallen, fallible, occupants with the ability to seek this evasive love that not one has the means to give…

I thought that if Phil was out of my life I would be free and able to pursue and discover real love without the hindrance of the knowledge that there was one so akin and yet so unlike me living in this world. Phil posed the threat of discrediting my need for God. I needed God. I still do. There is no justification for the taking of another human’s life, nothing that could be said that would make such an act excusable, nor can we end our own existence without eternal consequences, but I thought I could dispose of Phil… I thought that that part of me was expendable, even detrimental, and so I could dispose of it without repercussions. I tried to do it subtly. I tried to reason with him, I tried to frighten him away, I tried to overpower him, I tried to kill him. I was wrong.

It took some time to realize the effects of denying an identity that was so influential for so long. There are aspects of all of us we’d rather do without. Inaction can be just as deliberate and purposeful as action. Phil’s presence was my suffering… vice versa, no doubt. His passion and his imaginings, his emotions, his doubt, and his reason, all of who he was suffocated my understanding and perception and my belief. His unconscious unwillingness to proceed was my deliberate influence, and my insatiable desire for companionship and rest in the arms of another, is his legacy. Phil is alive in spite of my best efforts to quell his cumbersome existence. If I could be content to seek higher eternal principals alone I would be free. My humanity, my longing of longing, my desire of desire, my pursuit of pursuit, my love of love… all have their origins in the human emptiness we all seek to fill. I keep trying to convince myself that the next rejection will be the last. After all, the standard can’t be perpetually raised, but the measure isn’t linear and so there will always emerge someone whom I will believe is the potential one. I’ve come to learn through Phil’s death the value that is Phil’s life. It’s good to be in love in Love. I’ve become convinced just now, that in some non-heretic sense (if it could be articulated) that the human need for companionship and the spiritual need for God can be sated through one person… the person. If there is evidence of God in others, there is the fulfillment of that love available in and through tangible relationships. If there is no evidence of God in humanity, there is no God. My solitary conviction is that once I’m with the definitive one, all other potential ones will be revoked. I am of the persuasion that God is in love and life and everything and anything worth anything… God is.

I wonder if anyone can relate to this struggle… if anyone, having come this far, will be able to sift through these crystalline grains and find anything worth keeping in me.

There are so many decisions in life. So few are important. So few of those that are important are decided upon.

I’m so confused.

If it were you, if you knew that I loved you, what would you do? If any one of us knew the end before the beginning, would we continue? Love and pain are symbiotic, so are hope and despair, care and indifference, depth and superficiality, reality and appearances… the list goes on; all dichotomies require pairing antonyms. All we can do is risk and wait, living by habit and intuition according to any given situation at any given time in any given manner as our character deems the circumstances’ necessity. How depressingly inconclusive. At least there’s love to look forward to.

The divisive internal monologue so long rampant due to my unwillingness to interrupt his musings was finally taken off guard by an external distraction… a whisper in my ear:

“How could you…”

I exhaled, opened my eyes, and the response came, just as before, without any advance directive, of its own accord:

“How could anyone not love you?”

And there she stood before me, my Hope, Angelica. I can’t deny that I was hurt. The episode of living in constant intellectual stagnation, the promise it proposed of a bleak, lifeless, future, had almost succeeded in driving me from this temporal structured embodiment and my pain redoubled, started all over again, if it had even yet occurred … nor could I deny that I had hurt her. She must have her issues too; we had some things in common. Of course, to any degree that two lives are infused, their separation is bound to leave scars. It was apparent that my bounding confession had left her somewhere behind me in the dance we danced. We had connected, but now it would seem that Hope had cut in with me and Fear, or Phil, or some unnamed creature, had cut in with her. She stood in my doorway, shocked and appalled that I could say such a thing. My finger on her lips, my attempt to silence her protest, seemed to hurt her all the more. This time… being the first genuine time, my decision to kiss her was based solely on the belief that I would never have another chance to do so. She slapped me. She left. Three days later, failed attempt after failed attempt to know why, I stood outside on the balcony, dusk settling in for another night to be passed in despair. It would be too much. I looked over the inviting edge below and wondered what anyone would miss. No answer came soon enough so I straddled the barrier. I couldn’t believe how acutely I had perceived all of what was happening. Except I had no one to write my story to. Both Phil and Foster were over the edge. I was teetering, filling my lungs, leaning forward, and letting go. All of a sudden I was gripped. It wasn’t about a girl. It was about what she embodied. Not her body, but the potential of what it could contain. It’s about Love, Truth, Freedom, Joy, all the capital letter virtues. It’s about God, and God’s willingness, not just willingness but preference, to dwell within these temporal flawed (some more than others and all subjectively) broken vessels. I had opened up… something… something that wasn’t pretty, within the one I loved, and in myself. I had found room… room for more God… I was about to make a lot more too, for myself, because I was out of control now and pavement had a tendency to breach a number of physical enclosures. My momentum was being manipulated by gravity. I was falling. That’s when he caught me. He caught my hand and effortlessly lifted me up and set my feet back upon the concrete floor of my ninth story balcony. I had yet to see my savior, but I felt his hand on my shoulder, firm and engrossing. And I fell… this time to my knees, and I prayed to God; I don’t yet know what that means, but I did it. I communicated. No more games with time. I just closed my eyes and an all-consuming peace, which confirmed that this was neither the beginning nor the end, came to dwell inside me and reunited my broken heart with my hemorrhaging mind… I felt more myself than I had felt in a long time. I embraced my friend, glad to be together again… glad to be whole.

I heard the phone ring. I didn’t know what had transpired. I was sitting on a chair on the balcony. The sun was setting. The phone was ringing. The sirens passed along the nearby roadway. People were about below; invisible voices were sharing their stories. A plane flew somewhere above. The phone was ringing. It was beautiful… For the first time in the long moment-years of the past day-hours spent in introverted extroversion, spanning two lives, two loves, a death, and countless manipulated amalgamated musings of terror-bliss, I was honestly happy to be alive. The phone was ringing. How long had the phone been ringing? Without anxiety, without fear, and with a new placid confidence, I answered the call:

“Hello.”

Nothing. Then a dial tone. Oh well. I went to go and dig up a Bible but it rang again… the phone. This time I caught it pretty quickly.

“Hello?”

Still nothing… which was good. No dial tone, no click, no defaming remarks… just silence.

“Angelica?”

I figured that whoever it was remaining on the line was either sick or she… I took my chances and voiced, with as much tact as I could muster, my thoughts and feelings towards my Hope…

“I do love you. I was right. And I still love you, Angelica. And do you know what it is that I love the most about you? The possibility you represent. I love our shared potential… I love the prospect of us… I love the Hope… I love all of that right now… and I believe that I could grow to love you even more, with every passing day I spend with you, especially since I have come to love you increasingly every time I’ve been with you… and I sense a pattern developing. I want to know you Angelica… I want you to know me. I think you need to know that. At the same time, I don’t want to put anything on you that will cause you any grief. As it stands, I can’t help but choose you… and I’ll continue to do so even if I have to wait for you. Because I value my decision to love you. I’ll wait if there’s so much as a chance that you could love me too… but, if you know now that there is no place in your heart, nor will there ever be, where I may come to reside, just speak the word and I’ll bear my sorrow, and I’ll be ok… but whatever you think of me, know that I’ll always be available should you need a friend; the rest is a limited time offer.”

I couldn’t help but grimace at that last line… but I think my point was made.

It seemed like I was left holding the receiver for some time. But I was still. Not a single dialog was being recorded in my mind. I was only aware of a gentle breeze, the door to the balcony having been left ajar, but it didn’t smell like the city. It smelled like a rose. Then came the response.

“Phillip … We need to talk.”

A still, small voice… but her voice. Definitely, decidedly hers.

Still, God was God… is God, working things out for good. In full knowledge of my heart’s desires, on the brink of realizing one, I expressed my mustard seed of faith and lo and behold a mountain moved. I had no idea what would come of it, but I was believing that God was in her, that God was in me, and that the possibilities were endless.

“How about a chai?”

Phil's Story, Chapters 20 & 21

To Hope.

I didn’t think that there could ever be any sort of good birthed from the despair that was spawned by the disintegration of my parents’ marriage. Then I met you. This is my proposal: I want to try and live up to what I think you deserve. I want to believe that I can be the best for you. I want to trust myself to trust you. I want to invest the time, however much is necessary, into whatever it is we have, to nurture it into more.

It’s funny where a journey ends. A train of thought that boarded at death has led me here. Sometimes it’s good to lose your baggage on a trip. I’ll never forget the first train ride after I met you. I can’t recall a single face or scene that reflected or passed through the pane, but I still have the sketches, poems, lines and prayers that were penned those hours. Some have been worked into this story, others will surface in future havens, but all have their source in you and your source. I’m learning ever so slowly that there is so much more to you and me and life and love than I can record on discs or drives or print on paper.

I know that this was an odd way to come to terms with something of this nature, but I’m a little odd by my own admission. If you are my Hope, I pray that you might come to know me. There is more to me than is bound in these pages. Many of these pages can probably be cut away in due time too.

As much as I want you to know me, I want to know you. I want to read your story. I want you to read it to me. I know it may take a while, but I can’t think of time better spent. If you are to remain Hope, then I want you to know that I have no desire to create for you an identity of someone you’re not, such as Love, which leaves but two more things to say.

If this scares you, or leaves you wondering why you’re such a rotten judge of character, or why you always attract the wrong element, please, just tell me, that I might seek the Hope that will become my Love.

If this leaves you wondering, give me a chance to wonder with you, seeking out together what ever comes next.

If you’re reading this and you are the Hope of another… take whatever you can apply as my gift to you. But don’t you dare allow what possibilities may exist to stagnate or rot or even ferment. Tell whoever it is now, while the idea is fresh and true and pure, while there is still Hope; I may already be too late.

To Love.

Nothing scares me more than these evasive ideas; what is love, and who is Love; these two realizations are presently beyond my understanding; I think I know why. I can’t have this aspiration before me and the secret I’ve been harboring behind me; secrets are too quick, they are always before us, and they’re too big, insurmountable, and so before so much as the prospect begins, I have a confession to make…

There is something that you need to know…

Phil's Story, Chapter 19

To Phil.

Phil, I tried my best. I’m not going to accept that ‘too much’ or ‘too little’, but in the months that have elapsed, and in all the years to come, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to explain why you did what you did, but I keep forgetting that wasn’t my commission. Still, I’m not going to make excuses for you. I’m not going to try and say that because of who you are, or what you went through, your final action was in any way justified. When you left I think you took a piece of me with you. Perhaps you were the one to separate the wheat from the chaff in my life… and it took the reaper’s blade to find something of worth in me. I’m sorry if there was more I could have said or done.

For what it’s worth I learned a lot from you. You taught me a lot through your life and your untimely death. I learned a lot about myself from spending time with you; so many times it was like seeing myself through a kaleidoscope. If I’m ever on the verge hereafter of following your footsteps, I’ll at least have this manuscript to look back upon, and I’m sure I’ll be able to re-evaluate things to a different end. I am going to write you into a world or two of my own, wherever I think you’d fit. I can’t promise you eternity, but I’ll try my best to provide you with a little bit of heaven.

As for your postscript regarding Angelica, that is the one request I refuse to fulfill. For two reasons: primarily because I haven’t seen her and I’m not looking. Secondly, I don’t think your intentions, restricted to the confines of that final goodbye, are as honorable as they appear. This is a perfect example of my unwillingness to look beyond humanity’s fallen state and see the good in people’s motives, but my giving Angelica any message would be futile at best, if not utterly destructive. I think she knows as much as she needs to, and that you’ve laden her with enough therapy bills (in due time), and that your final aside was more than likely the last tirade of your incarnate malice before he carried you with him to the grave.

I miss you sometimes. I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I’ll be over it, I hope there won’t. I have a lot of memories. Camping with the boys at the bay. All night road trips during god-forsaken storms. The improv club in college. The summers filled with basketball, biking, swimming, and the few parties we could muster. The time you shot me with the pellet gun. And of course there are the late night discussions when we solved all the problems of the world, and each other, over a hot cup of coffee (only to forget about our solutions by morning). There are always the cliffs. The risks, and the freedom that comes with them. If I find the spot from your dream, rest assured, I’ll jump. If I don’t… rest assured anyway. Rest in peace.

Church Hill Sonnets (II of VII)

Sonnet XLVII (Church Hill II)

I walk through the heavy, unlocked, oak door

Tapping a rhythm in case you are home.

I tiptoe past Woofy strewn on the floor,

Turn on the light and thereby cease to roam.

I breathe in the air thick with years gone by,

Taste lives past and smell who is yet to be.

I'm perched up on a limb, towering high,

Where generations have sat and dined free.

I remember faces of old and young

Embraced in communion; many made one.

With children instructed to hold their tongue

While Gramps told his stories of World War One.

All this remains a mystery to me,

The stranger who has climbed your family tree.

Phil's Story, Chapter 18

The Ticket.

Remember that speeding ticket the officer gave me in response to Phil’s… outspokenness? I pondered that ticket for a long time. The rest of that night was a write-off, even coffee. I kept looking at the ticket. I’d fold it up and stash it in my wallet only to pull it out five minutes later. I kept it at hand for weeks afterward. I still have it. Now it’s secured with other mementos from the past. From time to time I take it out and read it again. Simple advice that may seem cliché to some, but it sentenced me to life.

“Don’t fall into love. Let Love lift you. If truth sets us free how much more should true Love? It’s the look you had in your eyes that paid for this ticket. I understand your hurry; I’ve been married twenty-one years to the love of my life and no law could have kept me from her. It didn’t have to. The law could not keep us apart (1 Cor. 13). The sooner you tell her what you have to say, the sooner you’ll be less inclined to be in such a hurry, and more apt to squeeze every moment from every second she’s beside you and, consequently, the more you’ll see the sense in the good that presently seems obtrusive. This is your ticket of proof of Love’s redeeming nature. Hurry up and slow it down.”

I personally feel safer with officers like him patrolling the streets. Not because he let me off the fine and points… ok, maybe that plays an insignificant bonus in the story, but because I know what he fights for and I can believe in the law he upholds and the principle that is its foundation.

If it gives you a sense of justice or retribution I have been the recipient of speeding tickets since and have never tried to use love as an excuse. I don’t think of love as an excuse. I don’t think there are excuses in love. You can’t assign blame for an action motivated by love, because real Love is a God-given grace, undeserving and largely inexpressible… it upholds the highest, purest standards; no evil can be spawned by a truly loving design. On the flip side however, wherever the capacity to love exists, a choice has been extended, thus it is only through the choice available in the execution of love that evil is possible.

It all goes back to Eden. Regardless of your take of the validity of the story, the insight into human nature is so beautifully woven into the illustration of humanity’s struggle with will, that I can’t help but bring it up. But that last coffee with Frosty, I didn’t even have to bring it up. He read the ticket and his first words required no explanation; we’d been through this before.

“We were set up.”

Phil couldn’t get beyond this idea that the Creator of this depiction was a sadistic domino mastermind who after setting up his pieces, waited for the inevitable bumping of the table that would send them toppling over, and was thereby the cause of all the crap in the world… and why serve such a being?

“Without the facet of choice, love is impossible; God is love, so the ability to choose was a necessary aspect of God’s perfect creation.”

“That’s a cop out so you’ll be justified in your miserable life of constraint and moderation… I know, I grew up in it, I’m affected too.”

“I think it would be more comforting to dismiss it all as nonsense and live without the burden of consequence, either by a lack of authority, or the one I create for myself…”

“There aren’t any absolutes, Fost. No capital T truth.”

“Is that an absolute?”

“Shut up.”

I think we usually ended in stalemates, one telling the other to shut up.

“Not this time Phil, this is important. This is love and death… this is the essence of life… the gift of will and the grace to exercise it and choose between right and wrong. This is what makes it all worthwhile, the pain, because it opens the door to the possibilities of acquiring real joy and peace and comfort.”

He let that sink in.

“How.”

“It gives every decision we make power through our intrinsic worth as humans being.”

“Human beings.”

“No, humans being. We’re actively responsible in our fates through our being, whatever we may be.”

He looked at me and tried to quell whatever it was that I stirred up in him. He failed; it boiled over. I probably looked too smug to let it slide.

“That’s too much.”

“Too much what?”

“Too much hypocrisy from a guy who’ll sit through the movies you sit through and listen to the music you listen to and worst of all sit idly by musing over a stupid ticket while the girl of his dreams is off doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who God-knows-where by whatever grace God has bestowed upon this God-forsaken world with this so-called gift of choice. It’s too much.”

Ouch.

“Shut up.”

We passed some minutes in silence before he asked me that question that incessantly echoes throughout my mind as the big one where I dropped the ball.

“What would you die for, Foster?”

Sometimes I feel like a question asked is a trigger pulled. Words have power. I don’t know how much and that’s why I’m so wary of what I communicate vocally. I always made it a point to watch my mouth and speak as honestly as I can. There are degrees of honesty and I have no difficulty in telling people what I think, it’s sharing what I feel that kills me. I lied when I spouted off all of that rhetoric garbage about abstractions and their worth only because it was a plausible emotional deception. I should have just said what I felt like saying. I find myself in that predicament far too often.

Phil's Story, Chapter 17

Love.

As I write this, shrouded in a fragrant cluster of lilacs, in May, almost a year after Phil’s death, in Hope’s backyard, I have a familiar thought progression prompting me to write; it always begins with Hope. I’ve just spent thirty six consecutive hours with her. I came over last night with a chai, and we began talking. It was almost like having a cup of coffee with Phil… it was almost better… it was different though, not quite comparable. Anyway, we were up all night. Whispering when we could help it, trying to when we could not. She has left for work, and she’ll be tired, but that’s something she’s used to. I was recapping all of the open memories stored away, bottled up, still bubbling over from the conversations that jarred them, disturbed them, spilled them onto the table. I was thinking of how I’ve once again approached a place in a relationship where a choice is inevitably on the horizon. It’s a choice that has previously been answered for me by my neglecting to acknowledge it. It’s a frightening concept… it is the epitaph of hope… it is Love.

1 Corinthians 13 is merely a definition and definitions have little application in life circumstance. Definitions are absolutes. Absolutes, and justification in Scrabble or semantic arguments. Love is a very subjective term these days at any rate, thus hard to define. It's usually thought to be a feeling, and feelings are, by my own definition, largely indefinable. I think love is too often confused with passion, or lust, or sex. Things that the books and the words are inadequate in expressing. ‘Love’ is too, which is probably why it’s so readily confused with those lesser sentiments, but I think however you write it, say it, or other wise try to interpret it, apart from living it out everyday of your life, love is just too broad to be defined. God is Love. God is boundless in everything that is good. I think the same holds true for love… at least, capital ‘L’ Love.

Perhaps I’ve been too influenced by books and movies and songs. Maybe I am naïve to believe that such a thing exists, being God or Love, but I think some beliefs are to die for. I lose no great privilege should I be mistaken, but I forfeit all I hold dear if I’m right and I take a big enough step in the wrong direction… like off of a balcony.

I think the evidence for love lies in the ability to choose. Without choice, love can’t exist. Therefore love is in both act and intent; it requires both to be effectively demonstrated, even though it is often impossible for us to know what designs an action is built upon. It’s easy to discredit motives too; it’s easy to assume the lowest common denominator. I’m so skeptical that I can’t even believe I’m capable of believing that my motivations are what I wish they were. I want to be doing things for others. I want to die to myself and live a selfless existence and prove that it can be done and done well. I want to illustrate that happiness comes foremost in making others happy. I want to be set apart and different. I want to love the way I want to be loved. I want to give. I want to offer. I want to sacrifice. In so doing, I don’t want to expect a return. I want to be perfect… I want to follow the example. It’s so inconsistent a philosophy, so full of circular perplexities and so lacking proof I can’t help but get discouraged… it seems like even questioning it is to fail it… and I question everything. And yet, it’s so simple, so easy, when it’s approached one deed at a time, one person at a time.

I can choose.

Correction: I do choose. The only thing there is no choice in doing is choosing.

Unfortunately, I usually choose to oppose my lofty standards.

The truth is I have a lot to confess, especially if I’m going to see these daunting hopes in a less consuming light, but it’s not an easy thing to do or come to terms with. Sin is such a taboo subject… if it’s even thought to exist, but if choice exists, then sin does too. I’m a sinner, that goes without saying… and if I were really convinced of my own convictions, I’d probably have more resolve to change. We’re creatures of comfort and habit. We should be creatures of risk and spontaneity if we’re going to come close to realizing the potential life has to offer. I’d rather die young and in love than old and knowing that all my hopes are well beyond my anemic grasp; ideally though, to be old and in love, having loved every passing day so far as my strength would allow.

Presently I live in a claustrophobic terror... a long way from where I’d like to take up residence. For years now my greatest fear has been that I’m cursed to sow my judgments: all my relationships doomed to failure for those I’ve criticized, unable to escape the phantom of divorce that travels back through my family tree and rots it from root to bud, that pride will drag me down in all of its various forms, even that I’ll take my life because I can’t forgive my friend for taking his… it’s not even my wrong to forgive. There are days that I believe all of that, and days when I’ll only take on the latter. I think the time has come to put all such fears aside. We take upon ourselves so much weight, as though our own sins aren’t enough. It’s about time I come to admit that I can’t do everything myself. I need someone to help me sort through all of this garbage before I trip on it… and land too hard or too far to get back up. I need more than a Hope… I need a Love, because I can’t promise a just return… I can only promise all that I am and all that I’ll ever be.

Phil's Story, Chapter 16

Life.

Some people would say I haven’t lived. In many respects they’d be pretty accurate. There are a number of venues in life I have yet to experience and many I refuse to experience. Want a list?

I’ve never done drugs (with the exception of caffeine of course).

I’ve never smoked a cigarette.

I’ve never been drunk.

I’ve never broken a bone.

Here’s the kicker, for all my ideas of love and romance, for all the words, poetry and prose I read and write, for all the hopes, I’m ignorant… ignorant, naïve, inexperienced, unaccustomed, and absolutely and totally oblivious to any forms of intimacy. I have never so much as kissed someone in intimacy… yet. Then again, there’s more to intimacy than that.

Still, I don’t think that disqualifies me from the subject of life or love. I think that the honest approach of inexperience is capable of identifying profound truths. A number of philosophers throughout the ages would take issue with that I’m sure, but I’m not writing an essay, I’m writing an opinion. I’m writing an opinion compromised by biases and prejudices and pain and pleasure and a ton of experiences of varying magnitudes of which inexperience is a valid part; in fact, I'd go so far as to say there is no such thing as inexperience, as there is no such thing as darkness. Each only exists as an absence of something else, and in the case of experiences, their absence is often far more beneficial and constructive than their presence. Still, I’m writing the insignificant beliefs, ideas, standards, ‘whatevers' of a twenty-one year old university drop out. Actually, I have plans to drop back in, so that last statement might need amending. Nevertheless, I’m just one person, like everyone else who can still be reached in a one on one context. That isn’t everyone. Ideologies, ‘ism’s, factions, sects, dogmas, I can’t reach those… so that excludes some people who have succumbed to be the embodiment of such generalities.

I’m not knocking sensation, I’m not demeaning reason, I wish I could wed the two.

“Life isn’t all about experiences. There’s a higher purpose and it’s not fortune, it’s not fame, it’s not pleasure, it’s not highs, it’s not lows, it’s certainly not me… it’s you… and it‘s who lives within you.”

That’s what I want to be able to tell Hope. More so, I want to say it honestly. I want to live it. My life could end up being someone's story one day, but I’ll be the first to tell it, but not on paper. The first telling is living. If I speak too soon I’ll only draw a conclusion of hypocrisy.

I’ve sat up with Hope for hours talking about ideas; Life after death, human nature, free will versus determinism, pleasure or pain, nurture or nature, past present and future, I’ve treasured these discussions (arguments), for all that I’ve learned, and all I’ve reasoned, but more than them, I’ll covet the smells, the touches, the glimpses, the tastes, the sounds and the associations I’ve made that lead certain sensations to ignite specific thoughts and evoke particular feelings. I’ve woven a web I love to get tangled in… that I may weave it all again.

I don’t think life should be as complex as we make it. Standards exist, internal and external, and we have to live up to the set we acknowledge. The problem comes in meeting those people that make your present set seem inadequate.

I remember Phil telling me bits of pieces of his childhood, that which he remembered and that which his mother relayed to him, sometimes in a drunken stupor, so the fractured history is hardly gospel truth. He told me stories of men. His mother’s suitors that would call at all hours, show up with flowers and chocolate, and take his mother away… sometimes for days. He grew up feeling like a burden… an inconvenient load that, as a result, was often left behind. I know some people who would say that it was Dungeons and Dragons, or other role playing games that Phil got into during those absences, that killed him. Some would blame the one instance that one of his mom’s beau’s got violent… which is fact, the police have records of the assault that was spawned from ‘too much whining’, first four year old Phil’s and then his mom’s, not the ‘wining’ of the accountant. Phil grew to detest inconsistencies. He hated complications and factors and fractions and numbers and he loved the converging and merging and uniting and bringing together. Phil saw a movie once and had an epiphany… there was this line in it: “Just one thing…”. He took it literally and ever since he worshiped the idea of wholeness. He was active in his worship too.

When Phil met Angelica a whole new set of standards was birthed in him. I’m convinced that when Angelica met Phil she was faced with standards she never knew existed, and when she found out that she was the source of those standards, she was made to feel unworthy to the extent that she hated his purity and devotion towards her. I can imagine that being confronted with love is difficult, especially for those unaccustomed to what love really is. Phil’s last written words to me were ones that have haunted me ever since I’ve managed to put them into an applicable context…

“It’s too much.”

Church Hill Sonnets (I of VII)

Sonnet XXXVI (Church Hill I)

The decent down Church Hill is lined with trees

With their limbs stretched up to heaven in praise

They form a cathedral roof with a maze

Of boughs intertwined to catch the disease

That falls from the firmament to appease

The lusts of earthly thirsting hearts ablaze

As though this balm of rain would aptly raze

This passion that would incinerate seas.

Yet do I love without reason or rhyme;

In fact, all stands against this fire to try

To extinguish it with tears and a sigh

Before all is engulfed in fueling time.

The road I tread is dark. Too dark to see.

Maybe I’m wrong and there’s no fire in me.

Phil's Story, Chapter 15

Death.

My twelfth Christmas… it was actually the day after: Boxing Day; we were visiting my father’s side of the family. We pulled into the visitor’s parking lot at my relation’s apartment building. A police officer stood in the frigid outdoors guarding a blanketed bundle beside him. Throughout the day, between gifts and hugs and visiting, I sneaked peeks at the hustle and bustle of the different emergency personnel that had been converging in the lot while we celebrated. There was something that kept drawing me out to the balcony and kept pulling my gaze to the ground… it wasn’t gravity either, it was a far more powerful a force. And for a brief moment that morbid curiosity was satisfied. Some inspector must have arrived on the scene and the blankets were pulled away…

I heard later that the man who fell that day had slipped while trying to affix something back on the balcony above him. He had fallen some seventeen stories, nearly double Phil’s fatal decent, but it’s still his twisted corpse I visualize when I think of how Phil died. Unnaturally bent and twisted with a graphic display around him that I dare not try to capture in print. That remains the closest I’ve come to fatality… coffins are too far removed.

There are some things I need to come to terms with. There are also some terms I need to define. Ambiguity will ruin me. This is the epitaph of hope. Frosty died when he ceased to hope. I’ll die if I don’t cease to hope. Hope for me has always revolved around a person, rather, a relationship with a person. I named that person ‘Hope’ in order to protect myself. I can deny an identity if it remains anonymous. I can pretend that it won’t hurt should Hope read this and hate me for it, or laugh at it, or do anything but see the truth I’ve poured into it. Then I could pretend that she was not Hope at all…

All I really want is to be the me I am inside.

We, people in general, are a selfish lot. This is one vast generalization I’ll adhere to. There are no exceptions to selfishness, especially if Christ worshipped God and was who he said he was. Children don’t lose any time in learning what it means to possess. Maybe it’s not so bad, but I’ve seen too many smiles and tears evoked from the presence and absence of things. I think if we could learn to become selfless in our actions we would live in a perfect world. I’m an idealist, though. I aspire to absolutes, or my own understanding of objectivity, so I guess my Idealism may as well be selfishness. So might everything. That must be why it’s better to love than to deceive ourselves that selflessness is even possible of being a virtue worth practicing.

I moved a few months after Phil died. I was living at residence in school but the institution had administrative problems that led me discontinue my enrollment prematurely. I had lived with my mother for a few years and was planning to move in with my father after the school year. I ended up making the transition sooner than I had expected to.

I had lived in the same city for twenty years. I knew that place like the back of my hand. In my lifetime the population had probably doubled and the boundaries too. I lived in six different houses, three apartments, attended eight educational facilities, and probably as many religious ones in those twenty short years spanning my life thus far. Everyone I knew, everyone who knew me, my old workplaces, old hangouts, old everything, was left behind. When I left my mother on the porch she wept. I left all of my personal history without a second thought. It’s only hard to leave when you feel like you have a home. After Phil’s death a sense of urgency struck me. Not that Phil’s death drove me away or opened any doors, but it unearthed a sense of desperation that was in the process of surfacing for a long time. For years I’d felt like I didn’t belong. I tried to look ahead and remain occupied in studies or employment but everything just seemed so temporal and trivial. I graduated high school without any resounding milestones to mark my way, and proceeded to university as though it were just one of the innumerable roads to drudgery. My dime a dozen dreams of fortune and fame were being crushed under the burden of so-called reality. I was stuck in the mundane morose ‘real world’ and I knew that greater things existed elsewhere. I was lost in a labyrinth of directionless choices and futile opportunities and I knew that my only hope was to get away. Besides, Hope had my heart for months already, and if home is where your heart is, mine was nowhere near my place of residence. I risked my comfort for two reasons, hope and Hope.

I buried a lot with the handful of dirt I dropped on Phil’s coffin. I buried dreams and ideas, some of them have been resurrected to new life, some have been resurrected to new death, some have remained buried and some have yet to be buried. Sometimes we don’t realize the magnitude of an instant until we distance ourselves from it; time is a necessary spacer. Phil’s funeral was fairly quiet. No trumpets, bagpipes, or twenty-one gun salutes, no nationwide moment of silence, just bereaved relations, a few inconsolable classmates and a few like myself who stood in an eerie pensive confusion. It rained; even if it was only misty drizzle in the cemetery, there was a torrent in my head. It wasn’t fair. The world would never know him. The world would miss out on an incredible human being because it rained one day in May. Phil would have liked that. He would have come up with some diminishing perspective and reduced the whole fatal chain of events to the first drop of water that hit him on his way to work when ‘it was really coming down’. Phil loved the simplicity of confusion. He loved to pass over the grandest obstacles and lose himself in details. There is so much missing from his story. So much remains a mystery, to die with him. I didn’t even know whom to hate at the funeral; the only thing I knew about Angelica’s appearance was the color of her eyes. They were green. I looked around for the enchantress that bewitched my friend. I scanned in bitter frustration for the green-eyed monster that consumed this human sacrifice. She wasn’t there. I didn’t know many there, there weren’t many in the first place, but none of those who made an appearance was the siren Angelica.

When I thought about it I was astounded by how few people cared for the passing of a twenty-year-old out of this existence. The minister’s eulogy, taken from some manual for all occasions, book-marked and highlighted for service time-allotment, scripted between weddings and christenings, was an empty monotone oration. The songs, decided upon by Phil’s grandmother, were mumbled out of dusty hymnals, few knew the tunes. The people, faced with their own mortality and the ultimate illustration of the consequences of choice, were consumed with their loss and how this tragedy would affect their lives. Phil used to go on about how the system teaches us that the standard of worth in society is contribution. How our education equates worth with notoriety. That is such an inaccurate and unattainable standard for the majority of people who will live malcontented because they’ll torture themselves with overwhelming feelings of inadequacy for never being more. Still, I could almost picture Phil rising from the dead, by the hand of God, in answer to the prayer of some charismatic zealot, only to see his funeral and jump again.

“Popularity is no measure of worth, Phil.”

“Life is relationships.”

“Quality not quantity.”

“If someone couldn’t write a book about your life, it was wasted. I want people to know my story. I want there to be a story to tell.”

“There are only two people who will know my story: God, because I can’t help his reading it, and my wife, whoever she turns out to be, because she will be the only one to turn certain pages.”

“It’s funny… in this day and age you’re lucky if you get a moment of silence for your labors in life. I won’t be happy with less than a holiday… at the least nationwide news coverage.”

He said this with a cynical smile as if he knew he’d pass with less notice than the dying flame of a match. It’s only if you’re holding the match that you pay attention to the flame… and it’s usually the one holding the match that extinguishes it too… before they’re burnt. I’m sorry buddy, but it was a quiet event, open invitation, where few showed up. And you left your story in bad hands… I’m not worthy of articulating a life, let alone a life like yours… I can’t even live my own.

“If you’re not living you’re dying.”

Too many times we vowed to get busy living. Usually proceeding a bad movie or an evening spent witnessing an acquaintance’s binge at an excuse for alcohol consumption labeled a ‘party’. The problem was we couldn’t escape the parameters of living laid out for us… and we wanted to on several occasions; the parameters aren’t made with everyone in mind, regardless of how often we’re made to believe they are.

I think that the first step towards living is ridding ourselves of everyone else’s preconceptions of us, being those useless anxieties of expectation that lead us to examine our sorry selves in the mirror in search of our shortcomings; if we could free ourselves of those impositions then we might find our own worthwhile pursuits. I don’t know what dreams I’ll have tonight, or what they’ll birth tomorrow, but I won’t be defined in a day. I may never know who I am or all I’ll come to be; I think those questions may only be answered in how I’m remembered by the one who knows me, or in a compilation of all who knew me, but it is my sole ambition that one person will be able to answer that question by saying that I was her one and only truest love. That is the contribution I want to have on one solitary individual; I want to be the love of my love, the hope of Hope, the dream of my dream. That is the only thing that keeps the shell of faith and desire from cracking, under the pressures that the world brings, and spilling all I’ve held dear all over; the hope that my beloved is awaiting me with the same fervor I wait with.

It is my desire to know hope that I might discover love. It is a fear of mine that I’ll content myself with hope, and never pursue love, because of the inadequacies I see when I look at that image in the mirror. To be as honest as I’m capable of being, I don’t think I’m able to love myself until someone else sees something worth loving in me. I have yet to find it and I look. Every time I look in the mirror I scrutinize myself, inside and out, for the blemish or flaw that makes it impossible for me to accept admiration or encouragement or the intimacy of love that is my heart’s desire. I have difficulty accepting that someone else could love what I could not. Phil summed it up once while I was driving…

“Sometimes I think you’re naïve to believe in this reclusive Love, especially to the point of torturing, sorry, 'saving' yourself, for someone yet unknown…”

He was talking to me but I was pretending not to listen. He was looking at the speedometer while I lowered the window.

“Then I remember that you think speed limits are naïve, unjust, presuppositions enforced by pseudo authority figures and that that thought reassures you of some notion of a greater absolute and principles and truth and perfection and eternity, which in turn leads to the contemplation of the other virtues of peace and comfort and joy which all eventually leads back to God, and I know that you know that love must exist somewhere out there for those who believe in it and it’s that thought that sustains your will for another day without that which you so strongly desire.”

I just looked at him while he looked out of my window, to the officer, whom had just ambled into view and was now shining his flashlight throughout the interior of my car. I had been pulled over doing one hundred in a sixty. I put my head on the steering wheel. The cop looked at Phil and I in turn. Phil said afterward that his face looked like it was chiseled out of granite, I couldn’t say, I couldn’t look at him.

“Do you know how fast you were going?”

“Sir, the speed of thought cannot be measured.”

“I’m addressing the driver, son.”

“Sir, the one driving this car can only be reached through devoted prayer. My friend here was in communion with higher purposes.”

“Have you boys been drinking?”

“No, officer.”

I took the liberty of professing this much… I didn’t think Phil could keep my account balanced much longer.

“He’s lying, sir.”

I looked at Phil. In an instantaneous intoxicating fury, I yelled at him.

“What the hell are you doing!”

“You see, sir? He’s totally out of control, he’s gone, he’s wasted, he may as well have been drinking all night. He’s a wreck officer… he’s in love.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s in love, sir.”

“Let me get this straight, you were doing a hundred and three in a sixty zone because you’re in love?”

I looked at Phil. I swallowed, hard, and looked at the officer. Phil’s description was rather accurate; I was looking at the tombstone marking my open grave… and I jumped right in.

“If you knew her, officer… you’d know my hurry.”

He actually smiled. He checked himself and looked sternly again at both of us. Then he addressed me, all business.

“License and registration.”

The time for talk had passed, even Phil could sense as much. I handed the articles requested to the officer.

“Now don’t go anywhere…”

He said it almost playfully, like we were the toys. He turned around and started back to his cruiser. He was there for a good ten minutes before his flashlight bobbed back to my open window. Neither Phil nor myself had ventured anything but breathing for those ten minutes, only mine was considerably more irregular than Frosty’s. The cop handed back my license, intact, and registration, and a ticket, all in a neatly folded little package.

“Slow it down, boys, you’ll get where you want to go quicker if you get there alive.”

He drove away.

We stayed parked in the dark on the shoulder of the street in silence for another good fifteen minutes, expecting the cavalry.

“I think he bought it, Fost … you can go now.”

“I bought it, Phil… and I pray to God I can.”