(alley)

XIV.

         Just around the nighttime bend there is an alley between two generic, modern, colorless brick buildings. The alley is dark, and clean; the perfect blacktop pavement is wet and shoddily refracts sourceless white light.

         On the street before the backstreet before the alley, I can hear tires nebulize puddles, I can see small rain that swirls around on currents of air, floats like dust, slow like humid smoke; I can see it as it rides across the shaft of one whitish yellow headlight. It's too heavy for mist, too light for rain, too wet for air and too much to breathe. Too warm in my lungs, too clammy on my cheeks and hands and shins. It must look like that all around, the way it feels, but it's invisible without the tirelessly straight white conical beam or the bright, and surely hot, white bulbs embedded on the bellyside of the marquee. Those tiny bright bulbs are bright, but they do not emanate, oddly; they have little glare but leave tiny burning afterimages in my eyes.

         The car with one headlight picks up a lady; I cannot look at the car, I do not look at the lady. My feet sport black ballet flats, the inside walls of which lean far over the insoles, shaped by six thousand pounds of size eight flat-footed wear. They are wet. Clearly I have been trouncing through street puddles; there are a few muddy bits, wet debris clinging to the yellowish white flesh of my feet, from halfway up the shin and down.

         The nobody driver puts the car in drive and glides forward, past me, to my backward and away forever. I am walking on perfect gray sidewalk, perfect square-looking rectangles one after another, doormatting formal romance and expensive sophistication and whitish lights. The curb is flawless, without a chip, without the evidence of the ice pick of the forgotten angry corner of the city's busy mind. There are two small holes in the back of my black legging, half way down my right hamstring. One tiny hole a thread away from its older brother, above the hem, where the weight of the city's lungs leaks in, licks my clammy skin. The center of a mysteriously radial wet spot on the fabric, where water makes a black blacker than black.

         I round the bend, walk up a slanting backstreet. I'm with a group of people, the Harlequin kid included every other time I look. We're walking to somebody's apartment, and the dark is perfect for a camera---it's clearly night but every part of every one, every detail is illuminated for the camera. Like in movies, when a nighttime scene on a street always shows the pavement to be wet, even if it had not rained. It registers better that way.

         There is a piece of plain, thick-crusted cheese pizza in my hand and I am doubled. I stop. I'm no longer holding the oil-stained pizza box. Was I ever holding one? The group continues to walk. There's no longer a bite of pizza in my mouth. Did I swallow it? Was I ever chewing?

         The slice of pizza is still in my hand. The kids are still walking, they're still walking to someone's apartment but they're still in a group surrounding me. As if they're walking impossibly slowly, but I can't tell. I look to the right, I'm facing the right so now it is my forward, and I am standing there, the kids still frozen behind me, the pizza still in my hand. In front of me is an alley, dark and clean. It's perfect, it's striking; there's no place for the mice to hide or the cats to sleep or the trash to live or the smelly dark spots to spawn and prosper. It's devoid of anything, except remarkable blacktop pavement and a mist of shoddy whitish light. And it's encased on three sides: two colorless brick buildings forming the alley, and one clean, glass wall for me to look through. It reminds me of the penguin pen at the zoo, how most of it is fence for one to observe from, but there's one eight or ten foot span of glass so you can see them underwater, too.

         This glass wall is admirable. Even the three thumb-sized fingerprints spread upon it. It leaves one struck with a quarter inch impression. I cannot figure it, I cannot figure if this slick spotless alley through the glass is more mysterious than a filthy alley with no details, where no light reflects and so much is hidden and generally one wouldn't want to see.

         And just like that I am walking again, the wondering ceased and my attention traveling elsewhere. The pizza is no longer in my hand.

         I have turned to the Harlequin kid. He is mute, but we discuss finding sharpies. We speculate about when to get them, and how we will pay for them, and I can tell that the Kid is thinking that he'll keep them, that even though we are talking about obtaining them together, he's really just enlisting my help for something that maybe he'll let me use before he parts ways and goes home. He doesn't live with me any more, but all the more reason he'd leap at the chance to get some markers if I pleaded for my parents to sponsor me, me whom he would in turn plead with to sponsor him. More vexingly, when I point this out, he gestures abstractly, such that I experience him to mean that I "can never think to remember that I wouldn't understand." It always works, see.

         The discussion ends abruptly and we retreat to our proper minds. I muse on the idea of pleading with my parents to sponsor a new pillow. I peel the 100-thread count lavender pillowcase off of the pillow in question. I want to show my mother the mold growing there, but I know she'll just see it as a stain of drool. We are tight on money and a new pillow would be superfluous.

         I have arrived at the apartment gathering. I sit down next to two others on the left side of a denim couch such that I am center-most with the kid sitting down next to two others on the right side of a couch to my left. We are in front of a large square late 90's TV. The long lost terrifying Lolita friend of mine capers across the oatmeal-colored carpet with a bowl of blue corn chips. She introduces a friend of hers whose terrifying face I cannot look at and cannot look away from. She's a young Asian woman with non-shelled purple snails for eyes, she's a monster that would eat you, she's a ghost that would ravish you. And I'm oddly okay with her. She's DJ-ing tonight, and after shaking her hand, I hop over the turntable, scratching the vinyl at a gradual angle obtuse to the grooves as I go. I run over to the stairs, looking back at the snail-eyed girl. With one last gaze cast like a net over the room, over the ocean, over to the monster, I cast away, leave to go upstairs. I bend over on the stairs and plant my hands two steps above my feet. I ascend on all fours. But by the time I’ve gotten three quarters of the way to the top, I’ve lost my mission, I’ve forgotten my purpose. So I swing one leg over the banister and slide down till my butt hits the post, and then I clamber off to the floor. I traverse the worn wooden floor to the mail bin where I discover a tampon for the first time again and naïvely conjecture its possibilities. Icy wet spots percolate through my socks; the grown-ups track snow in from outside and forget to take their boots off until after they've reached the kitchen.

(closet)

XI.

         I steward the home for questions. I live in a space I call my room, but really it isn't mine. It belongs to No One. But I call it my room just the same.

         The closet in my room is the place for death. As we sit in the closet, which is also a basement, and a costume shop, and a jungle in Australia, I tell Laura how I used to be scared of it, how I associated it with the murderous clown of my childhood---the one who left the oversized cake-carving knife in the fish tank, who stabbed family friends and spattered their ketchup across tabletops. I tell her how the cat died in here, and as I do so I dare to glance at the litter-box residing some distance away; it's full of grayish kitty litter but devoid of kitty. She politely points out the circles of oxidized blood on the walls, coughed up by a boy who perpetually forgot to cover his mouth. I guess it's understandable: forgetting real world faux pas like that during the process of dying.

We are sitting on piled up laundry baskets and light blue plastic bins, we are slouching because writers always slouch in decidedly relaxed spaces. There are campers wandering in and out, in and out, new campers and old campers. New new ones, new old ones searching for costumes. Suddenly I want to give her the nine-tenths-of-the-way empty book that I bound, the book with the plastic clock glued to the cover. But it's in a plastic laundry bin past the clothes rack, and I know for a fact that there's a boy hanging up on the clothes rack. A few minutes before Laura came down to the basement, that very same boy with the beautiful chestnut skin was guiding me through the Australian jungle with his brother. We were crossing a river, and his brother had to split up with us Just In Case. There were dangerous sneaks hiding in the brush with blow darts, and the boy and his brother communicated through a series of abstract gestures to avoid being heard. As we crossed, his open hand kept circling in front of his face, palm to face="talk them through.” He continued to signal to his unseen brother as we dashed safely into an outgrove of clothes rack, when a huge blow dart flew into his chest. He looked down at it as though he'd been expecting it, as though it made sense that it was there, and as he fell back dying, his open hand circled his face once more before he tumbled into the folds of my navy haori. He died with his arms stuck through each sleeve. He became the boy in the haori who dangles from a hanger on the rack, the Boy Hanging Up, and the clothes pushed around him so he was lost to everyone but me, so he was waiting to be found by Anyone browsing for clothes.

I realize that the clockbook is falling apart after I shove it into Laura's hands. It's her birthday and we're sitting in the threshold between the gala and the promenade. The gala is happening outside the closet door behind me to the left, and the promenade is up the basement stairs behind Laura to the right. It's Summer Camp on a Field Trip to Australia, and outside the closet door and up the basement stairs the campers and counselors are celebrating safety with the most decadent gluten-free casein-free peanut-free cupcakes. Laura informs me that she has a gift for me, and I fluster because it's her birthday, and I don't have anything to give her. She holds up an avocado pit between her thumb and index finger. It's bright and strange and gleaming darkly like a gem. It's blackish green and dark brown and glassy bright in the center, and it's caked with overripe avocado flesh. One look and I know it'll grow into a tree. I make a discovery as Laura is summoned to the promenade for some staff-related purpose; there is a plastic baggy full of slides on top of the stack of bins at the foot of the stairs. I hold each glassy slide up to the ceiling light, between my thumb and index finger, and I see brightly colored pictures of the avocado seed, of its growth into a tree.

I look at the stairs where Laura's gone. The traffic of campers in the closet is increasing, so I move to one side and wait for an opportunity to exit via the closet door. I seize the moment at the first opportunity one arrives. Past the door, Camp is simultaneously dressing up for and throwing a soirée à la 1940's. The girls from my dorm scurry about beneath strings of ecru lanterns, tossing mules and classy dresses as they go. The space is semi-outdoors; where the walls would be, the black air gushes in with offshoots of the night, over long, wide benches. I sit down on a tuffet of empire waists and slide my feet into a pair of sandals with wedge heels. My feet are scratchy and calloused; they don't slide in well because the skin catches on the suede. The straps are the inflexible leather of an unbroken-in birkenstock. I have to stand up and kick the toe of each heel against the ground for it to fit, and it comes to my attention that the heels are two full inches of cork. "Elegant birkenstocks, aren't they," I notify a nearby dorm-mate. She's hurried-looking with at least three armfuls of shoes. They're escaping her arms rapidly, and when she looks up at me I look down at the silk skirt I'm trampling. I'm slipping in it, my sandaled feet are twisting into it, so I plunk back down into the nest of dresses. The nearby dorm-mate releases the shoes in a waterfall somewhere in my periphery. Then she is at my feet, urging my sandaled feet into a pair of light blue vinyl sneakers, and I try but it Just Doesn't Float. Then I am hit with another realization: this is the third if not fourth time tonight that I've put these sandals on. I keep putting them on, but I don't have the slightest memory of taking them off. They just keep leaving as soon as I forget them; I don't notice until after I put them on again.

I think about the brother of the Boy Hanging Up in my closet. Maybe he's a lost boy now, too. The Boy Hanging Up was a lost boy all along. He died without a question. He was ready for death, he was so free of right and wrong that he was already living death when it came, that living death is just as natural as living life. That's why it's fine that my bed is next to the closet. Death every bit as natural as life: I'm close to it, and all my life I've been Very Far Away from it, running from it like I run from centipedes. If it was near me, I couldn't be okay until I got away from it. Now, so close to the closet the truth is that I own nothing, nothing to keep nothing to lose. So close to the closet, I only am because there is only living, and that includes living death when it is near because I don't own or keep or hold a life such that I can lose it. Living so close to the closet is a freedom, ultimate, and in the freedom there's a trust so great that problems aren't problems and everything makes sense as you live it, a trust so great that it’s free, ultimate, and in your freedom you are living. Living is a strange loop, living is a snail shell.

         Laura has the clockbook whose spine is cracked inwards so that the pages stick out at uneven lengths between the covers. The cloth strip mounted on the binding is lost, the Duck tape I used to bind it is exposed, the washi's deteriorating so the binder's board is poking out at the corners. I suppose it's been in that closet for one point two million years. Laura has it, but I desperately want to show her that it's only nine-tenths-of-the-way empty. My sister is outside the soirée on the prim lawn around the promenade. She's with my mom, showing my mom how to use mom’s new twenty-inch laptop to view a picture Laura sent for her birthday. She sent me a picture too, and for a moment it's everyone's birthday. My mom can't get the picture. My sister and I look into the laptop. We get it to work, when it loads it's a picture of my brother and his wife. It's a movie, and when my sister wants to know who Laura is we are through all twenty inches of the portal, in tall brush, looking up at Laura.

         Her back is turned, and she is dancing away from us. The encounter ends, my sister and I agree that so far, the only lasting impression is that Laura Has a Long Denim Skirt, with denim frill at the very bottom, the kind one can accidentally trot on at any time. But Laura sweeps skillfully away, sweeps away to where my brother and his wife are standing; she pretends to snip them apart with twenty-inch ceremonial scissors. The scissors of movies that a mayor or benefactor uses to slice a giant ribbon, to free-open a brand new facility to the public. She's pretending, and my brother's wife is pretending too, and when I sprint towards them they trot away chatting, all the while Laura's back is still turned, so my sister doesn't get to see who she is. Only her long denim skirt. But I want to get to Laura and the clockbook and the avocado pit, which she must still have. So I run after them, across the soirée lawn, but I'm holding the twenty-inch ceremonial scissors so I slow down. Then I know I'm being chased down, because it's hazardous to run with scissors and it’s Camp. I look over my left shoulder expecting to see the angry directors, or harried counselor, but my pursuer is my neighbor. Blair, Blair, Jogging in His Underwear. He is very old, but very fast, and he's after me because I'm Reeking Havoc and I'm a general concern to the public. I have to turn my eyes back to the lawn ahead of me, and the scissors, but I don't fail to notice that we just passed a fountain with a pool that looked like a reflecting pool. It looked like my closet was at the end of it. It looked like Orion’s belt is at the end of it. I don’t get a second look as I need to focus on my feet, I need to sprint because Blair's gaining on me. After a couple seconds sprinting, though, we both agree that it's best not to get reckless when carrying such large scissors, and he slows down so that I can slow down, so that we are jogging. But he's still a fast jogger, so I sprint again, and we shift between slowing and speeding until we approach the hill that I've decided not to climb.

I give Blair the scissors while we're still running, he's still running. I cast my eyes back at the promenade and there are people scattered along it, chatting and mingling in gowns and tailored suits, holding beaded masks and crystal cocktails and sandalwood folding fans. The masks have light blue pearls glued to them, the fans are sweetly scented like my grandmother's hand-me-downs, like the prayer mala that lives on the mouflon whose feet touch the floor of my room.

         I touch the room. I'm awake and I'm sleeping next to the closet. My feet find the floor, I think the smell of the mala, find half the smell in my head. I lose it, I lose nothing and the gain of living, and I lapse driftless into neither-either-loss-nor-gain. I drift out of that, into a memory; I linger in its feeling alone, I’m feeling what I’ve Found and I am fixed, unintently. Lapsing like that for an eternity. For a moment, before I get lost there. Lost in the memory of my hand with a pencil, with the pressure of life; my hand shading a map of Australia for life, with graphite. With knowledge like a well gushing up from its insidemost pressure, pressure from the center of Inside, the pressure of saving a life. The life of a lost boy who dies. The pressure of keeping his birth at bay and his death from living. Of running from the question and running from the answer, of running from the opportunity a moment arises.