So I took my keys and I waited outside and I was looking up the number for your shrink when she’s abroad with my phone on a neighbor’s wi-fi, and I texted it to you and I watched as you talked and I saw how your pacing eased and calmed as you did. And then I drunk the second beer, the third, the fifth, the last.

I thought of that night and it was a familiar country in my head, and maybe if the cold was less biting just then, it would have been enough, but I was still uneasy, and I got out of the car and I jumped up and down a little, trying to keep quiet and looking at your window. But that didn’t work, and so I got up to your place and broke in, quietly, and sat like a thief in my armchair in your dark living room.

I sat there, staring, betrayed, at your new drapes, twitching my legs and wanting to smoke. I took off my shoes, taking care to leave them by the chair in an orderly fashion, and I went to your bedroom door and I almost sighed out loud with relief when I saw you were sleeping alone. I don’t know what I would have done that night if I saw you there with somebody. I sat there on the bed next to you, watching you breathe, and breathing with you, and then I lay down, and then I curled into a ball and watched you like this all night, matching a breath for a breath. And when the sun came up sufficiently I got up gently and closed your bedroom door and I made you breakfast. Quietly as I could, and nothing too fancy so the smells won’t wake you. One piece of bread, very lightly toasted, one piece of bread toasted almost black, with the edges cut off, on the edges of the plate, and a simple salad — lettuce I ripped by hand because I couldn’t find the knife, and some cheese — tried to arrange them all nicely on the plate, and I put my shoes on and I closed the door behind me. I often think of it, and about many things like that, and of what you might be thinking to yourself as you’re eating those breakfasts.

He’s got keen eyes, twinkling. He’s holding a typewriter to his chest between both hands. Not hugging. His fingers dance on the keyboard. He’s playing the typewriter as he would play the accordion. He’s good. In my head his music sounds good. Other people in the piazza seem to agree: some woman says somewhere, “He’s a poet!” He’s got a hat laid out on the sidewalk, but facing down. In this strange, good music, it seems reasonable to assume the hat is being worn by someone who just finished drowning himself in the piazza. He’s got a cardboard sign next to the hat. It says “Remember to use punctuation!” Like that, with the exclamation. More and more people gather to hear the poet. He’s probably Charles Bukowski. His fingers glide effortlessly over his instrument. I’m trying to catch his gaze but his eyes glide too, like his fingers, over me, over each man and woman in the crowd. Now there’s a real crowd, yeah, and they push me back, now I have to stand on tip toe to try and catch a glimpse of these gleaming eyes. The music changes.

You’ll never got out of the piazza, I’m thinking.

Cause of Mac’s death? Well, he did have Sarcoidosis. But he died of pneumonia.

So as our memory circuits rust, our imagination stays limp. It’s an old truth that questions always arise and always must be answered, and as old a truth that when hard data doesn’t present itself, fictional data appears like an understudy. Why did lightning strike that hill? Why, it was the lord of such things from his dwelling place high in the sky. What is his name? Well, it is Yeush, the master of despair. Where is his dwelling place? Oh, it is a palace on top of the highest mountain, where his sits upon his gilded chair, waited upon by his beautiful, pregnant concubine Hara. Lightning used to mother pantheons; now it begets a Wikipedia page the content of which there’s no need to remember.

It wasn’t always like that. Even though the television people called it the Information Superhighway, it used to have much less information, and the road was narrow, and the ride was really very bumpy. Information was scattered, prosaic and hard to get to. Searches were hard and long, not Google-fast, when you were stumbling through Lycos to get at pages written by Geocities citizens. While searching you had time to wonder, you’d have time to invent. You’d have time to work on your memory. Who was that actor in the movie? Wasn’t he that guy who’s that son of that other guy? From the movie? What was that movie called? We must really watch it together sometime.

It may very well be, and our perspective being what it is we may never be able to find out. This shabby room, its peeling paint, the curtains tattered and gray with dust — it may be happily sheltering us from a dark storm raging outside, but we can’t tell; the yellowing blinds are drawn.

Our friends may love us, we don’t know; all we know is that we hate them.

There may be hope for everything: are dreams might be still intact. We see the crack that runs through them. There’s no way of telling how deep it goes.

And love might just be lurking happily around that corner, but what face will it assume once get there? How will we know, with all the faces staring blankly just around each corner of each city, which of them was sent for us? And if it is indeed the right corner? We are all like packages sent for each other, but all our post labels fell; now we wander aimlessly, bump like atoms, and we can’t even ask: excuse me, am I for you? Are you for me?

Now I heard you went with a man from the top floors, and I am glad; for suffering things no honest woman should ever suffer, you are now better than honest men. We’ll meet some day, maybe waiting for the elevator. I’ll be the man looking down and trying not to cast a shadow.

2. There’s no place for you to rest your head. You can test this anytime: close your eyes and wait.

3. The road gets ever steeper: no step will be easier than the last.

4. There’s glass on the floor and you can’t help being barefoot; and broken hearts never heal.

5. These rules won’t help you.

A dog, horribly skinny, was tied with rope to the carriage beside me. He was barking murder, mad with the smoke thickenning and enclosing us. Billows of smoke. What do you think of that? Dreaming that dream almost every night since? Why would I dream of the Astoria burning?
The dream won’t recede, won’t fade. I carry it with me to the shower, to the bus station, to work. Not just because this unnatural repetition makes it more vivid; it’s that word I keep hearing, billows. Billows of smoke, billows of smoke. Ever since that day I try to avoid words that sound like your name. They cut. Billows. Bill. Billiards. Building. Thick Billows Bellowed as the Building Burnt. Bill me for that Billiards Ball, Bill.

In real life the Astoria never burnt, I checked that out. Am I thinking of that plane that took down the Empire State Building that September 13th? I must be. That’s where I’m taking this picture of men jumping from windows. Jumping into their deaths. Thick Billows Bellowed as the Building Burnt.

Outside there were pretty women but you took no pleasure in looking at them. You were looking nonetheless — hunting them with your eyes. You forgot to take your sunglasses with you. You looked, very aware of their fashionable clothes and the way their breasts moved within their shirts as they walked. What do you want? Nothing stirred in you, seeing these women, no low rumble in the pit of your stomach, in your dick, just a sense of regret. And more pressure in the chest.

Your neck hurts. You sit by the typewriter you bought in the market, then found a special shop that still repairs those and took by bus to be repaired in. And then back by bus, and here it is, what do you want? You move your fingers on the old keyboard but nothing stamps itself on the page. The part of you that should be swollen and heavy with words feels empty and aching. Looking at the blank paper you feel the same sense of regret as outside. You write, then, just so the page won’t be empty. It’s awful and it’s strained and you take the sheet of paper to your computer and you type it and you post it online.