Zeppelin

Francis stared at a black smudge on the bedroom wall after a three-day hangover. The smudge became his best friend before he fell asleep and he awoke the next morning to a loud, electric beeping. He assumed it was merely his alarm clock because it was 5:12 in the morning, dawn, but he did not have to be at work until 7:30. He heard the noise again and it was cruel to his senses. Francis threw on the old bathrobe that he wore when his child was born. The bathrobe still boasts stains of the coffee he drank and the powdered donuts he ate selfishly while his wife was birthing. The old robe still smelled like oatmeal, coffee grounds and cigarettes. He went to the kitchen to put on a pot of Columbian roast and noticed that that his left foot was numb. Why is anybody alive this earlier in the morning, Francis thought, nobody should be awake right now. The kitchen was still dark at 5:12 because the rising sun had yet to seep through the cracks in the blinds. That’s the worst picture in this house, Francis thought, after seeing the black-framed picture on the shelf. The picture was of Francis, age 12; standing inside some museum shop holding up a poster of the Hindenburg Disaster. The poster was a present from his mother, as was the black-framed picture. She always sent mementos of his childhood and their happy life together so he could remember them in his child rearing. It’s been the New Year for two months and nothing has changed, Francis thought, this year is going to be real fucking swell. His wife was still asleep, as was the baby and probably her uncle.

He hoped the kid wouldn’t start crying, if it starts up with that crying he was going to go shake it. For Christ’s sake, a kid was all they needed: money for diapers, money for doctors, money for another mouth to feed. The stock market might crash and the poor might riot and Khomeini might bomb the hell out of this place with the push of a damn button or the clap of some sacred rocks and he has a wife and kid to support. Then there was that uncle of hers living with them, another open, useless mouth waiting to be fed. But it’s not the baby’s fault, Francis thought, the kid didn’t do anything wrong. The blame was hers and his for not being more responsible. There was another loud, electronic beep, interrupting his morning rant.

The coffee was ready so he went into the cupboard and got a decent sized mug that said Orlando in flaming orange print. Sunlight was coming through the cracks in the blinds so he sat down at the little table, which they would eventually need to trade in for a four-person table. At least he had a job, he told himself this for reassurance. The job was at her father’s office and the money sustained them for the time being. Her father owned a map-making company, where Francis worked a management job in the corporate office. He used his time putting into a cup on the little office green or reading a Hare Krishna pamphlet he got at the airport. It was the type of job a degree in communications got and it was the type of job most people end up at since they don’t strive hard enough to work at a job they truly enjoy. They don’t strive for bad air conditioning that smells like death and obese co-workers who equally smell like death. They certainly don’t strive for keeping a bottle of gin in their desk for those days corporate wants a meeting on scheduling and return-report systems.

There was a loud, electronic beeping.

“I need a vacation,” Francis said out loud. No one was listening, and certainly no one cared but it felt good anyways. “Get out of that cube for a week. Hit the slopes in Colorado.”

The black coffee in the mug steamed and the steam rose slow, almost iridescent in the air and vanished. He stared at the cup, pouring his soul into the black puddle that was the coffee and desperately tried to see his reflection but all he could think about was gin. Francis wanted to pour gin into the coffee and go scream at his uncle-in-law for living in the guest room and then kick down the door to the master bedroom and make love to his wife. He rose from the table like a geriatric with a bad knee and cracked his knuckles then swung his arms in a counter-clockwise motion. His wife’s uncle was up already. The old man was fumbling around in his room, probably looking for his rum or the empty pistol he kept in a worn cigar box. Francis saw him staring at that gun once or twice but figured the old man was probably too much of a coward to do it. The sun had made a path into the sky and morning was upon the neighborhood.

There is going to be rain today, Francis thought as he reached for the knob. The sound of machinery became louder and more frequent. When he opened the door the electrical beeping and churning gears burst in his eardrums. As he walked out onto the lawn men with hard hats and medical personnel walking about the neighbor’s lawn greeted him. This was the neighbor he never saw, who never mowed their lawn or went to church, rarely had a guest, never went outside, was dead, a hermit, or possibly a pederast. The neighbor’s yard was pulsating with a constant stream of men in orange vests, other men and women in scrubs, beeping medical equipment and the sound of old steel machines; this is what war probably used to look like. On the lawn was a crane, a giant awful crane that made the horrible noise when it moved, with steel components rumbling and clicking and crying for the whole neighborhood to hear. The workers had knocked down the wall of the neighbor’s house in order to bring out the neighbor, a morbidly obese man who could not use the door. When the huge man came out of the hole in the sidewall with squinted eyes and a ratty ponytail draped over one shoulder Francis thought of birth. The neighbor was bulbous, fleshy and seemed to be covered in a film of grease or some such bodily fluid. Francis could hear the neighbors strained breathing over the noise of the machine and drank from his coffee with a smile. The gigantic mass of flesh walking through the hole in the sidewall was swarmed upon by people in medical scrubs who came at him like ants on a dead carcass. They surrounded the man and engulfed him in a sea of light blue shirts and white lab coats, waving their arms in frenzy.

Francis took another long, slow drink of his coffee, then picked up the newspaper and walked over to his sedan. He looked at his reflection in the sleek, coated paint. One of the workers, a Latino man wearing a hardhat, a mustache and a Wrestlemania shirt with a jelly stain walked by him and stopped to converse.

“That’s crazy, huh?” the worker said.

“Yeah it is,” Francis said. “What the hell is going on?”

“We had to knock out that wall so this guy can get out.”

“Is this something you normally do?” Francis said.

“I’ve been with this company 17 years and I never had to use my crane for nothing like this,” the worker said. “I heard he’s going to Geraldo or something. Crazy.”

“Yeah,” Francis said. “Real crazy,”

“I heard the medical people saying he wants to get in touch with his kids and get his life together.”

“That person has kids?” Francis said.

“I guess so,” the worker said. “I have to get back to work, I think that crane is going to give out soon.”

The worker wiped his mustache with his free hand and continued toward his truck. The drone of men and machine drifted away from Francis’s thoughts as he gazed upon his Volvo. They say these cars are the safest on the road so mornings like this he wanted to test that theory and drive into the nicest car he saw. As his trashy robe flapped in the wind like a noble cape and he stood in the dawn of the New Year he thought how swell the year would be. He finished his coffee and went inside to change for work.

Later that morning, he sat in the driveway inside his parked car watching the crane move majestically around in the distance. He hoped for a slight malfunction. A single pin could break and a towering dragon of steel and rust would collapse and end them all; him, her and the kid and maybe even that granola-sucking playwright brother of her father leeching off his good nature. He saw a young man pulling up in a van, hitting the curb. Francis spied on the young man through his rear view mirror. The young man had long hair and an optimism that had not been jaded by the first two months of the New Year so Francis assumed he was the journalist interviewing her uncle. Francis had heard something about the interview over dinner some nights back. That damned uncle refused to go down to the college and demanded an interviewer came to him since he was supposedly a great playwright and critic from a decade that Francis could care less about. Her uncle was apparently the poet laureate of his scene and he stomped through Berkley, Eugene, Vancouver and the east coast, making the world a more disturbed place. Francis would hear the old man going on over the phone about the experimental theater troupe, electric ladies and other borderline socialism and he suspected no one was ever on the other line but he worried the old man was running up the bill. Her uncle would rarely talk to Francis, and when he did they were stories about this girl he once dated who was a teenager and other fables composed in his mind after long days with lysergic acid diethylamide. The young man approached the house with a clipboard and knapsack ready to gloat over that hermit relative of hers decomposing in the guest bedroom. That decrepit bohemian will probably expire in the guest bedroom and Francis thought he would have a decent priced man of the cloth bless the walls when that happens.

“Hey, take a look at that,” Francis said to the student as he passed the car, pointing to the neighbor’s lawn.

“That’s superbly bizarre,” the student said. “After a two hour drive, that was the last thing I was expecting to see.”

“My relative told me you were coming today,” Francis said. “The front door is open. I’ll call him and tell him to go out to the living room.”

He dialed the house on his car phone and the old man answered.

“That college kid is here to interview you,” Francis said to her uncle.

“Sure, sure,” the uncle said. “Send him in, I’m having a drink”.

Francis pointed the student to the front door and watched him walk into the house. The sound of the crane diminished as he drove to work and the orange vested men and nurses became spots in the rearview mirror.

At work, Francis became bored and anxious as he did paper work and occasionally walked over to the cooler. He would go to the tall, gawky woman who worked in human resources or the other lower management worker whose name he could not recall and engage in meaningless conversation with the two. After useless talks that where full of unnecessary whispering and breathy voices he would walk back to his desk, justified and do crossword puzzles. That student better be gone along with that old man, Francis thought. He often looked at the screen of his computer, which was black and void and he would listen for the static hum the wires made. In the afternoon he came home from work for his lunch break. He hoped to pick up some take-out leftovers which he was hoping hadn’t rot like so many other things. The van the student drove was still parked in front of the house. He went through the side gate into the back yard and entered the house using the sliding glass door connecting to the master bedroom. His wife was not in the bedroom so he went down the hallway to his kid’s room, which also empty. As he looked over the toys and playthings he stood in Christmas lines for he heard her uncle in the living room.

“That was around the same time I started smoking hash,” the uncle said. “When we were kids we thought ourselves as young gods, we all did drugs. We would smoke until our feet went numb, our lungs produced fire and the words spewing out of mouths we’re pure gold.”

Her uncle was probably drunk by now and the student was probably eating up his stories so Francis sat down on the floor of his child’s room and listened to them talk.

“It was roughly around four in the morning, I’m sure of it. We had been up for close to three days straight. The loft we shared was filled with papers, we would do dope then write, write on papers and napkins, cardboard boxes, empty spaces, on our arms and hands. But it was around four in the morning, we had decided to leave and somehow I ended up behind the wheel.”

“Where were you going?” the student said.

“We we’re going to score another brick of hashish,” her uncle said. “When you get on these long benders you tend to push reality into the back of your head and ignore it. Myself, Sancen and Ricky we’re with this young kid Ricky knew. He was from some suburb in the West Midlands, Birmingham or Coventry, one of those rained in places. He was studying eastern philosophy and had some sort of degree in pre-roman history, all bullshit if you ask me.”

“Do you remember his name?” the student said.

“No,” said the old man. “My mind is starting to betray me, but we we’re going to pick up hashish from some friend of this Brit and I ended up behind the wheel of his Belvedere, Sancen had been snapping pictures of us the whole time, it was his deal I suppose. I hadn’t remembered the drive until he had developed the pictures. Seeing yourself in a picture you have no memory of is an experience in itself, when you get older it tends to occur more and more.”

The old man seldom went into monologues and he never spoke to anyone this long. This was the most Francis had ever heard his voice. He remember a time when they talked outside having a cigarette and the old man only spoke of his first love. Francis stared at the old man’s bare head and thought it encompassed all that was death in the modern era. The wispy hairs that clung to his wrinkled scalp blew in the wind and the horrid, stringy things looked like cobwebs. Francis could never take the old man seriously and chose to ignore him from then on. He listened to her uncle and the student talk with great disgust and curiosity. He wanted to run out of his kid’s room and tell the old man to leave, the student to leave and then run outside to tell the obese neighbor that nothing would ever change. He didn’t do any of those things; instead he crawled on the floor of his child’s room closer to the door so he could hear the old man’s blathering.

“Am I?” said the old man “Not at all, realistically though, I could have cared less about what happened. Back at the house we kept drinking and smoking until nine in the morning. Our livers hated us that night, but we were gods and had the world at our knees. That night was like a marathon, who get be more excessive, and who would do it first."


"Oh really,” the student said. “And did you win?”

“Me?” said the old man. “No, we all died a small bit that night but my memory is starting to get clipped about those times in my life.”

"Do you have any regrets?"


"No,” the old man said. ”None at all."


"Thank you sir,” said the student. “I appreciate the interview.”


" Don't make me look too bad, you hear?” said the old man. “You’re alright.”

Francis peered down the hallway, watching the student leave and he heard the old man sat in his chair humming old show tunes, stopping on occasion to take a drink or cough. Francis sat in the darkness of the room looking at the cartoon figures on the walls and the gaudy plastic action figurines strewn around. He lay in silence wondering about his kid and his wife and even that old man humming off tempo in living room. Francis wondered if he would be worth an interview one day but decided that no one cares about management types at map-making companies. He ran his hand through his hair, his hair that would soon turn gray and possibly fall out. The hair that was his pride, his most precious crown when he was in college and would soon betray his looks. He would be bald and tossed aside like her uncle in the living room. He thought of how nothing had changed this year and how the gin in his desk was half empty. He thought of the obese neighbor being pulled from his house like some freak shows gone awry. Perhaps Francis would end up like the neighbor after he lost his hair.

Francis lay on the floor of the room and thought, stern and deep, until he lost interest thinking and decided to go back to work. When he reached the master bedroom the phone rang. He answered to his wife at the other end and her voice was soft, quivering like she had been screaming too much or crying too hard. They talked about the kid and about the doctor visit. She told him things were all right and things could get better and not to worry but how the hell couldn’t he worry, it’s a new year for the love of God, a new start and nothing has changed. There was a loud, electronic beeping so he dropped the phone and ran for the door past the old bastard sitting in the worn leather chair. The same old bastard who was watching him with a hardened sneer and whom Francis hated more than anything in his life. Francis pulled at the door and it would not budge so he throttled the handle and kicked the crown moldings until something cracked or moved just right. Her uncle began to speak but when he did Francis screamed wordless noise to drown him out and kept pulling at the door until it gave. He burst into the yard and saw the crane, the leviathan of iron and steel, a soulless mechanical beast and it was like seeing the black monolith, shining in the sun through the clouds and giving off an appalling glare that crushed his soul. Francis dropped to his knees and wept as he stared at the giant machine. There was rain that day and the water washed over him, over the crane, over them all. The skies poured rain two months into a New Year and nothing would change.

while on subject of driving

i forgot how beautiful the crossing was. through the wasted suburbs and empty freeways, sitting under smokey starless nights. over, under pass stretch miles by the wayside, speckled with machines and skeletons of gutted stolen cars. on the way, always moving and wheels rolling, the dust is always kicked up.

don't cough to hard at night. you might crash.

driving nowhere, hastily

as i was driving on e street i felt the touch of god in form a police search light.

i turned off the freeway since they had shut down two lanes again tonight. california transit authority must be standing on the side of the road, laughing in their orange vests at my misfortune. when i reached the exit i saw the glimpse of a foreign glow shining in irrational patterns just above the throughway. i passed a gun shop across from a liquor store.

i heard the blades slicing through the aural dissonance of the san bernardino night sky. i passed quietly through a stop sign with the ease of a thief, but i was caught in the sights of a helicopter. the search light passed over my car auspiciously, as though i had done something right in my law breaking. often it swayed about, scanning the road. i thought, perhaps a drunk might have been manning this light. i thought many things as i drove, listening to the helicopters engine hum in my ear. i noticed the store fronts to my left and right, they sat empty and useless under broken marquees. the police light shone into the window quickly; carelessly exposing the empty innards of the swollen display floors. perhaps i should stop, was a thought that drifted through my head. no, was another thought. the light was soon gone, just as quickly as it had graced me it raptured itself away off to bless other scofflaws with it's presence. i pulled over to watch the iridescent glow of the helicopter's tail disappear into the starless atmosphere.

another beautiful in the concrete wasteland; san bernardino, babylon.

Grand Nothingness

As Lawrence pulled on his ripped work socks, the upstairs neighbor hit his girlfriend. Their feet moved loudly across the ceiling, a cascade of reckless and livid stomps pounding above his head like a brewing storm. They screamed at one another and circled around like boxers. The upstairs door was slammed and a spark of salmon colored dust fell from the ceiling, settling on the lip of his canned beer. The neighbor’s girlfriend screamed at the building as she got into her car and hit another vehicle as she drove away. Lawrence watched her drive toward the end of the street where the sun was slowly peaking over the buildings and thought he should do something about it. He drank his lukewarm beer. He pulled on his work shoes.

That guy is an animal, thought Lawrence. He finished the over under loop of his shoelace and drank the last of his beer. The tenants filed out of their respect apartments, talking loudly, smoking cigarettes, applying lipstick and starting their morning. A fat, glowing tenant cried out while running his fingers over the fresh dents in his bumper. Lawrence walked down the corroded metal steps of his building and out to the crispness of the open street. The neighborhood shakes itself alive. He heard the moaning of an engine, the noise came from around the corner but Lawrence knew the car at initial sound. We’ll die going to work in that car, thought Lawrence. Julio drove this decrepit beast of a car through a stoplight, around some dead rodent and up the curb in front Lawrence.

“Get in,” he said.

“You’re late,” said Lawrence.

“We’re all going to be late if you don’t get in the car,” said Julio.

“Jesus, lower your voice,” Lawrence said. “You sound like my neighbor.”

“Just get in the car.”

Lawrence tugged open the rusted door and cursed when the latch gave him trouble. A foot belonging to his co-worker pressed against the back window. Tobin lay asleep in the backseat amongst food wrappings, receipts and empty cigarette boxes. He snored lightly and his longish, greasy blonde hair smeared against the window.

“You need to clean out this car,” Lawrence said.

“Why don’t you clean it out?”

“Look at Tobin,” said Lawrence, “he’s going to get rabies sleeping back there.”

“Hey, wake up you jerk.”

“Jesus,” said Lawrence. “Let him sleep, we’re going to be standing all day.”

Tobin stirred and wiped food miscellany off his mouth. Lawrence watched him in the rearview mirror and envied his sleep. Smoke plumed out of the haggard muffler, the grey wisps hung above the asphalt. Lawrence saw a woman that resembled the upstairs neighbor’s girlfriend; he started to yell but ended up coughing, he decided that it was not her and turned away. Tobin spoke in his sleep.

“I’m going to kill him,” said Lawrence to whoever listened.

“We’re almost there,” said Julio, “can’t you wait?”

“You didn’t even hear what I said,” said Lawrence. “Forget it.”

“It’s not my fault you’re muttering,” said Julio, “whispering away like some kind of crazy. What are you tired or something?”

“Forget it.”

“Tell me what you said if it’s so important.”

“I’m going to kill the upstairs neighbor one of these days.”

Lawrence’s hands were soft; they looked almost pink in the morning sunlight. He did not have killer’s hands; he had bakers’ hands. His fingers were these swollen, delicate intricacies that smelled of dough and would not ever sow a day’s hard toil. He rolled his knuckles in his palm, kneading toward the center of his hand as if he could leave a permanent indent.

“I’m going to kill him.”

“Yeah,” said Lawrence. “I heard you the first time. I thought you and Anya called the police last time?”

Tobin’s head hit the clouded window as they turned onto the main drag. He sat up rigid and rubbed his eyes until they resembled open sores, he spoke something to himself and slumped into a fetal posture.

“The police never came,” said Lawrence. “Anya left. She couldn’t take it.”

“That’s a shame.”

“I suppose,” said Lawrence. “She can have her space.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I really don’t know.”

The tires crawled and the car shuddered when it stopped in the café parking lot; the engine turned over, sputtered, and then died. The emergency car brake jerked to a secure point and they exited the car in silence, as ritual, carrying their aprons and other personals. Lawrence opened the door to a gaunt Tobin with gaping mouth, sagging eyelids and veins eschew on his craned neck. Tobin fell before Lawrence in silence; he trudged by Julio’s slit eyes and stopped in an empty parking space.

“Look,” said Julio. “I think Tobin is dying or something.”

Tobin hunched over a dull concrete parking block. He swayed forward with a vague importance and back violently then rubbed his eyes until they were raw and nearly bleeding. Customers inside the café watched from the comfort of their seats with wide, gawking mouths as Tobin seized and spit with indiscretion, his crimson eyes pulsating with spectacular disarray. He coughed, gagged then spit out a discoloration.

“Go throw up behind the café,” said Julio. “What are you, an idiot?”

“Leave him alone,” said Lawrence, resting his hand on Tobin’s pointed shoulder.

“Don’t baby him,” said Julio. “He needs to go behind the café.”

“Rough night Tobin?” said Lawrence.

“Hey Lawrence,” Tobin said. “And yes. I just need water, coffee, something.”

Across the street at the pharmacy owned by the kind Vietnamese couple, Lawrence saw the car that the upstairs neighbor’s girlfriend drove. The car had the same dent that was made in the morning. Lawrence walked from the café parking lot to the sidewalk leaving Tobin to the mercy of Julio.

“Hey,” said Julio. “We’ve got ciabatta to bake today. What are you doing?”

Lawrence walked through a red light to the middle of the street, he watched for the woman to come in sight. Tobin released whatever rotten fluid held inside onto the flat asphalt, a car hummed as it passed, the gutters gave off a stagnant air and Julio yelled from the parking lot but everything faded when Lawrence saw the upstairs neighbor’s girlfriend at the counter. Her eye was powdered reddish purple with bruising and her lip swollen. Lawrence approached the store and grabbed the door handle. As she exchanged money with the quivering old woman at the counter a young, pretty girl stopped behind her in line. The girl’s face was flush, customary and unambiguous with a naïve smile and eyes not yet pained like the battered girlfriend. I think that’s Anya behind her, thought Lawrence, then he released the handle and walked back to the café. He picked up his apron, Tobin’s apron and crossed the doorway into the café without meeting eyes of the clientele or coworkers.

In the bakery Lawrence spread baking flour across the sheet, he slapped the fleshy dough, tossing it from hand to hand and then he threw the dough at the faded wall. He snatched it up and felt the skin, oily and foreign seep through his fingers as he squeezed the dough and cursed in silence. Tobin watched him from the doorway.

“What’s the matter?” said Tobin, “Your face is burning, it looks tensed up I guess.”

“No matter,” said Lawrence. He wiped the salted sweat from his eyes.

“You’re throwing that dough around like it did something,” said Tobin. “I know something’s going on. Was it Julio?”

“Everything’s fine,” said Lawrence. “Can you stop by after work? I might need you to help me lift something.”

“Sure,” said Tobin. “I’ve got nothing else going on. What are you moving?”

“Something-,” said Lawrence. “Something heavy, it’s Anya’s stuff. We’ll figure it out after work.”

“You sure you’re alright?”

“I’ll live.”

They drove home from work in silence. They drank while they enjoyed cigarettes unashamed, blowing smoke into the cloudless sky and throwing their brown paper beer bags at people who dared walk in their sight. Lawrence tossed his used butt out the window and looked at his as he went for another drink. He balled his fist and released an open palm only to find the flour had not left his knuckles, but coated his damp hands like boxing tape.

“This is you Lawrence,” said Julio, pulling up to the painted curb.

“Yeah,” he said getting out of the car. “I’ll see you later Tobin?”

“Sure thing man.”

“You having a party without me,” said Julio, “after I picked you up?”

“No,” said Lawrence. “I’ll have one tomorrow maybe.”

“You better,” said Julio, his laugh drunk and unfastened.

Lawrence wandered around his apartment, he felt dumb and trivial. He put his head outside the window and listened for the upstairs neighbor but pulled away when any noise, regardless of scope was made. He paced around holding his warm beer. He saw a sweater that was Anya’s; he picked up the garment and ran his fingers over the tangled wool. He folded the sweater and placed it in a drawer away from sight as if it would judge him or tell his secrets. He walked through the kitchen aloof and found a cleaver; he examined the blade and ran his pudgy finger across the sharp. His phone rang so he put down the utensil and picked up the receiver.

“Hello,” he said.

“I saw you today,” said a soft voice.

“Did you?” he said. He walked in circles letting the off-white cord wrap nimbly around his torso.

“You were walking in the middle of the street by your work,” said the voice.

“How-,” he said, “How are you?”

“You know I’m fine,” said the voice. “I want to come see you.”

“Don’t worry about me,” said Lawrence. “Come by tomorrow I guess, I have something to do tonight.” He picked up the rotary and brought it to the window. The sun was setting.

“Are you sure you’re fine?”

“I’m sure Anya,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

Her voice trailed off when he hung up the receiver. He put down the phone and went back to the kitchen. Lawrence walked a circle, took a beer from the refrigerator and then went to the living room.

A heavy object fell on the floor of the upstairs apartment. The brusque noise made his hands quake; he worked over the knuckles on his right hand, kneading with the thumb of his left. Their voices cascaded through the open window of his living room. The man’s voice deep, unassured and reckless. Their feet stormed over Lawrence’s head, a trail of dust fell from the ceiling. The sound of flesh striking flesh rung in Lawrence’s ear like a 21 gun salute, he ran to his kitchen and found a rolling pin. He clutched the instrument and gritted his teeth. The upstairs apartment door was slammed; feet plundered the quiet staircase and outside an engine started then tires screamed across the pavement. Lawrence stood by the far wall of his apartment; he was frozen, terrified and furious. Do it now, he thought, do something. He stared at the pinhole in the door and tried to make out the hallway. The flow of air from the crack between the wood floor and caulk sill came to a halt. Someone knocked at his door and he raised his rolling pin. Tobin, he thought, Tobin’s here, we’ll get this guy. Lawrence opened the door and Anya stood before him. He saw poise and reassurance in her soft emerald eyes.

“Lawrence” she said, “why do you have that rolling pin?”

“Go inside,” he said. “I need to go deal with something.”

“But-“

“No,” he said. “Don’t worry, just go inside.”

Lawrence gripped his rolling pin and walked through the hallway to the iron stairwell. He imagined that Jesus Christ, John Wayne and all the rest of his heroes were cheering for him as he climbed the stairs; he heard their clapping and hosannas with each step upwards. The door of the apartment hung partially open, the latch was long since rusted over. Lawrence pushed through the entrance with his wooden rolling pin and baking flour peppered across the splintered wood of the haggard door.

“Come on,” said Lawrence. “Come on out you bastard.”

Lawrence waved the rolling pin through the thick air of the apartment, breaking the listless ambiance. Someone sobbed and he ran to the kitchen gritting his teeth. Before him sat a young women crying. The upstairs neighbor’s girlfriend was petit, like Anya, she had piercing green eyes bordered by pale purple contusions. She sat among silver dining spoons, bits of food and small puddles of water. Her sundress is torn at the shoulder.

“Where is he?” said Lawrence. “Where is he, I’ll kill that bastard, where is he? I’ve heard him do it before but this is the last time. You don’t need to worry; I’ll kill him so bad. He’s dead, he’s fucking dead.”

He flailed around expecting to greet the man with a swift strike to the temple, the teeth or some such body part but there was no one. He looked back to the girl and she was still crying, watching him thrash about hysterically showering white flour across the kitchen and unto her open hands.

“Tell me,” he said. “What’s the matter? What is it? I can help you.”

“I think I love my boyfriend more than he loves me.”

Lawrence looked around the small kitchen, the flour, and the crying girl. His eyebrow twitched in an off tempo matter.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he said. “That guy hits you.”

“But my boyfriend is just angry,” said the girl between sobs, “I think I love-“

Lawrence did not hear the girl finish her statement; he did not listen as he walked away. He went through the spoiled, vast apartment and stepped out leaving the door ajar. Walking down each metal step he stopped and looked at his feet and saw a trail of baking floor leading to his apartment door. He went inside and found Anya on the couch; she fidgeted as he sat next to her.

“What happened,” she said. “What’s going on?”

“It’s nothing to speak of.”

“Tobin and Julio came by,” said Anya. “They looked worried and were talking about getting some guy and moving something or something like that.”

“They left?”

“I sent them away,” she said. “I said you needed sleep. You look pale.”

“And you look comforting.”

Lawrence tossed the rolling pin into the kitchen; it struck the plastic trashcan with a dull noise and fell to the linoleum. Anya’s eyes bulged.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing any more,” said Lawrence. “Nobody can help anybody and that’s not something to worry about.”

“Baker boy,” said Anya. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

Lawrence did not answer; he brushed speckled remnants of baking flour off his dungarees and then massaged his knuckles deep with purpose. Outside his apartment, beyond the upstairs and down, the world raged, collapsed and rose again and he decided he would not do a thing about it.

in heaven everything is fine

fingers stained with chain grease; stained knuckles and stained teeth.

in the meatpacking district we got picked up by an african cabbie. he was sweating and had yellow eyes. i saw a policeman in a yamacha hassling a cross dresser with a crucifix necklace. they had buildings upon buildings lining steel canyons with garbage piling from the gutters and steam rising from metal grates in the sidewalk. i'll go back one day. not soon, but eventually.

i've been here for a month. we flew back into california on fire. a real welcome home treat. it should be a marquee event, a season opener. "come see the lush state of california burn from the bottom up." limited time offer. wildfires like the traveling circus. 30 days of summer heat in the autumn months.

he really was.