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It's Tuesday morning. You're putting stock away between cups of coffee and casually avoiding the boss. Everything looks routine and unspecific; everything looks thoroughly stunned yet ardently florescent. But then something drifts slowly toward the back of your head:   you notice that you've missed a very strong beginning in a girl found browsing in the bookstore. She is a plain girl full of haphazards, starts, that in a curious way afford you no conjurements for her acne, her source, or a sex for her organs. So once again you must stop and review your life as a random series of coextensive lines broken only by bed slats, bank queues, table knives—which you could accept as a small achievement.

But she speaks to you:   a short query for a Rostand play and you bite back the image until the pen bleeds down your chin. It is an autumn Saturday at dusk. The scene presents itself as if it expects your participation. You are walking down a street on the lower eastside when you brush shoulders with another man. Intrigued, you stop—hoping to question him about his ancestry. But he continues on, offering spirited quips to some rather indecent-looking women who are leaning against a storefront.

It was a hard choice to explain. It was hard at the time to realize what the choices were.

After my wife left I could have gone to Janet. I could have gone and I know it would have been easy. But since our children were grown and already muddying the waters of their lives, and my career was solid—proudly solvent— and steadfastly racing toward the pasture of retirement, I took a taxi to the airport.

I caught a plane to the Rockies and checked into a small hotel. I walked the pleasant streets, capricious at first, enjoying this new conundrum for several weeks—always clean-shaven, always ready to tip my hat. And the chambermaid, who spoke to me of her youth in Montreal, brought my breakfast to bed, often staying for coffee and a bite of sweet roll. It was simple and replete. There was nothing in general. There was no need for apologies or retractions for a misuse of speech. Only the one day at the station:   I had learned to feed the pigeons and wait trains like an old man. I even carried a cane which I propped against the bench. But a boy in a tuba tripped over it—a boy in a tuba. I began to notice the crowd gathering on platform 5. The barber, the bartender, the mayor in his ribbonsache and tails. So I watched as the high school band played badly; they were generally less interesting than the fringe on their epaulets. But when the sound swelled and she stepped from the trainstair, I too felt the hardrock behind her standstone cheeks.

It was Mother Snow. And I needed to walk a mile down the road.

A photograph album seems always a maddening affair of irregular prints and messy clippings. If well concealed or kept spotless as the coffee table, ages quietly double in them; they yellow. The material to which the images adhere is not immune to simple deterioration. Nor does it seem to care. The colors fade. The corners dogear—leaving dates a mere remembrance of the succession of local finishes. Progressions of faces move in and out, or appear in untenable sequence. And by doing so make some members original like dishes. Yet smile as I do, I find the volume thin, meager in terms of time spent—the money.

But there is one in particular:   on the back porch with me by my Kenmore. I have my arms around Frank and he's got that smile on I married him for. It was a holiday. A summer holiday, or maybe my thirtieth birthday—I can't remember. But my mother must have been there since she was a willing photographer. The boys were too young.

It was nice then. My body still fit well around me.

When Glen first talked about twenty-six acres of orange groves it took a little getting used to such a sudden change in our lives. It was such an odd idea, and at the time I had no real notion of what it would be like.

But I admit to being happy when he bought them. I knew he was frustrated working downtown. I knew that wasn't what he wanted and it was such a long drive from the suburbs. And so many men made that drive. In the beginning I wanted this for Glen.

There was a large Spanish house on the property, set back from the road and secluded by palms and orange trees. It was a beautiful house with thick walls and a red tiled roof. It had a portico. It had much more charm than I expected.

I have been in only one other house where I admired the master bedroom more. With our porch, and the fireplace, and the fragrance of orange blossoms in April, there were times when I really wouldn't have wanted anything more than love-making or a glass of sherry. And there were clear, warm mornings that simply presented themselves. I would brush my hair in front of the vanity. And the mountains stood still all day.

I learned to care about oranges. Given a little time, I knew something about them. It seemed Glen loved them from the start and when a frost came without warning I'd always wake to find him missing from bed. How he knew....

But I've never adjusted to the eucalyptus dwarfing the groves. They look so old, and their trunks are so forlorn, and the way they divide the groves and the ranches makes me feel like secrets are impossible. Everything is protected but poorly hidden. Even when a ranch hand runs a pickup off the road on a black Saturday night, it doesn't show. But everyone knows the tree and the death lingers for a long time.

And yet the orange trees are much larger than me, although you wouldn't think so standing on the portico. It's a misleading view. And the seedlings grow faster than my children and they bear fruit so quickly and so quietly that I lie awake sometimes at night and think about them growing. There is something about it that is not right, that brings days when I feel like the wife of a caretaker. The oranges are what is important.

The oranges. If you pick them at the right time, the juice is like nothing you can get in town.

It has not been easy for him. It has not been without innuendo and incident, irresolute details, irksome, small distractions. Each day he must see his way clearly to profitable manipulation of properties and stock. The necessity of arrangements, of agreements, of luncheons, of clients who only need to talk, all have their sums—their depressable key as a means to their drawer. So it troubles him. Sometimes it incenses him. It supports the cognac that settles his coffee.

But he's settling all of his regional accounts with a terse, yet lenient smile—and on no account of mine I can assure you, even his Boston affair. Since his salutary allowance was granted by the board I hear nothing of mergers or new negotiations—only nights of broken sleep, days with no end, no wish for solace from the spouse. Although, his eyes have the strangest tale in them now:   a warm night on a Mexican plain. They have a salient reflection:   his horse has thrown a shoe so he walks into this squat, clay town. And his cheeks are more full, hard but not rosy:   he buys a drink and a girl for the price of his hat. And even as she leads him down some stump of a hall to the room where her brothers wait, he still has the same enigmatic twitch that I would fall for again.

His back arched; the muscles rising in his neck.

The one-armed cook cracked a brown egg spreading it thinly across the griddle, took a check down from the spinwheel and slid it under a plate, lifted the weight off the bacon and pressed it down on the hash browns. It is suspect he intrigued you—his keeping one hand free to adjust the knob on his radio. "Like nobody's business," he would complain when the station drifted or got staticky in the middle of a BeBop tune.

Even so, you were casually the all-night waitress at Shirley's 66 Cafe and left it at that. It was no surprise. It was eggs and bacon. All the truckers agreed you had the best legs on the route. But you didn't see it that way. They were just men.

      In Arizona, in the first heat of spring in 1954 the Wyman B. Glaser Memorial Library housed eighteen thousand five hundred and fifty-two volumes with no two being the same. And it was on the way home. It was always cool inside with the dust lying undisturbed. There was a cheeky librarian in horn rims forever ready to show you his books, his Abrams from New York City. You often would stop and sit for a while, listen to his quiet chatter—new pages turning.

It was easy to see how a horse could be orange, the dog red.

I have been a favored sleeper by nature and not by choice as some would suspect—who on occasion feel it necessary to verbally ascertain. I am elect in a prizeless manner; it is temper and not an accumulation of habit. Mostly a working project to a facet of my personality acting as a process of sorts, internal keypunch:   a response. I admit that few disruptions alarm me; it is easy to say so. Other than grisly dreams or errant clocks only the W. Hollywood sun can rouse me, the building whiteness in my room; a woman.

Yet these are not an administration of my wants. Feeling that it often finds me caught without reasons, without plausible needs, without the quick tongue of excusing grace, it makes great play for conflicts—and accusations begging silence or defense.

So it is a subjective remark to say that Mrs. Logan never learned the needs of men. It seems always subjective to remark. I feel it so. And is such with her except that she would not submit to something in that way. Our quarrels are in the syntax of events, never concerning objects. Which is just as well, and part of the charm to her house.

...for that reason, four is the oddest hour to me. It is rare to feel so close to stillness, so close to a city in a city of this size. To be able to see it and notice that it is only a stabilization of lack. One gets wary, or goes back to bed.

I spent four or five clauseless minutes wondering why I had awakened, marveling, making out the outlines of windows, furniture, figurines before my attention gathered on Mrs. Logan.

She was crying not weeping. Then sobbing to Santos who was trying to calm her down with his deep voice. Her breathing was short, audible in that way which normally continues for some time. I pulled on my pants to go down.

Bottnick had been drunk again. He was not a usual drunk, but extraordinary in versatility and surprise—a tram conductor who resided in moderate attacks of melancholy, of ensuing combustible demeanor.

He had come and gone—for the night lock we all have a key—but not before snapping the hands and feet off of Mr. Service. She heard Bottnick dancing on his way out and Service trying to get off the linoleum, his warning lights strobing the kitchen—Bottnick using the parts for castanets.

We sensed she would not quiet until his return, until she played it out; it was apparent there was little to do. Santos had to work in the morning but knew she would want him to lock Bottnick's things in her room. I realized he would agree, and that there would be no more figs on the breakfast menu. Other routines would change, the shower schedule too.

Turning, I could see his upper torso down the hall in his room. Service on the bed he never slept on. I wanted to know what went on in his machine head and his machine gut. What color the eyes saw now. What circuits felt malfunction in an insistent way.

Back upstairs I had a smoke in bed. Leaving the light on I spread a newspaper on my lap but the print felt dirty against my skin. I started thinking about this city of people, the nine million bedrooms with radio waves flush to the walls. I assumed some of them sleeping and some not asleep.

The walk up the side street leading to the boulevard was a still-life of leafy sycamores, wet lawns and neat hedges, with rose beds along the drives, air ferns, Tudor windows and leaded-glass—the late afternoon sun pulling the color out of the pale stucco, out of the roses and the leaded-glass. As we passed, a cat sat in a driveway; the evening news waited on the red cement steps. The apartments across the street with their backs warming in the sun very slowly darkened.

Passing the alley then reaching the corner, the boulevard broke on us like a fever. Light ran into our eyes. Halos hung about them. And palm fronds swayed to the slow indolence of an arid wind. The sky turned geranium orange and dissolved into a soft pastel on the blue and black glass of the high-rise offices. The signal changed from green to red, from walk to don't walk.

There were cars.

There were no trucks.

There were buses.

Palm trees swayed.

The buildings remained erect.

It was momentarily existing by means of colors and shapes. It was momentarily divulging that amidst the habitual animation. Little dramas were forced upon us as we tried not to pay such close attention to such little dramas. But, turning the corner as we reached the end of the block, the boulevard broke upon us like a fever we might have caught just a few minutes ago in the car.

When we left the interstate in Baker to buy gas at a Shell station—incidentally owned and operated by a man called Failing Heron—no thoughts occurred except for a feeling that the consequences of my life would be splendid, often raw with an obvious flippancy of divine excellence, and occasionally impaired to the point of having no consequence in my search for a daily contentment. It was not something to think about. I was more engrossed with being two blocks away from the turn-off to Death Valley, and in trying to imagine the ambiance of that highway known as the 127. But the real issue, the pressing cause or motive, was what we suspected we desired—that internal allurement which would inevitably lead us on.

I took it for granted that we were a different sort of pilgrim. Obviously not Conestoga, yet exactly what sort I took for granted we weren't to know—surmise, maybe. It was winter and the desert was all the more beautiful, seeming confused in its own seasons.

Two hours later I was feeling more fragile than I normally do. Sitting in the back seat of a patrol car, unable to realize a comfortable position, I was thinking about deadlines and the little bag of buds we got busted with. On the outskirts of Victorville, a river and aqueduct nearby, taunted by the arms of Joshua trees in the landscape we were suddenly cast as partners in crime—as if somewhere or someplace we had somehow tripped that invisible line.

But I found a way, an open space—my charge and protectorate—sentimental fool that I am. What kind of women could inhabit the jails around here. What could they do and be so deserving. What astral strangeness could be so elemental in their fate? I, of course, would much rather face the men—even for a few timid hours. Unequivocally, separation was at hand.

So I felt the need to look at you, and caught a relaxed profile with your back against the seat—glassy-eyed, a soft blush of rouge defining the bone beneath your cheek. How beautiful you were.

And the San Bernardino Mountains.

My admiration for cacti goes beyond where most men would like to see it go. An unfortunate situation in light of so many—so many other, more prestigious situations. And I recognize this as a relative flaw in my character; its meaning roughly equivalent to the supposition that I would be feared as a dictator—an odd but nonetheless maddening thought. One fears bad press, estrangement, the discovery of unorthodox habits in the domestic arena—the deciding, but frail questions of taste.

It is the same reasoning that makes men such poor lovers. Watch them on the boulevards and the neat tract avenues where the saplings are too young for shade. Appalling, ornamental innocence. My rule would be as gracious as the Sun King's:   garnets, sapphires and lace, primitive cognac. I would bring back the Pullman with its meander of time.

But even now it happens quite inadvertently in darkly paneled rooms. Under the illumined circles of brass lamps, laws are being solidly written to stymie my coups and juntas.

Yet like the rest of us, I too am captured, tantalized by the ethereal light we produce ourselves. A television in a dark room, a summer night on a vacant parking lot, the dim glowing of receivers, headlights keep me wrapped-up in personal missions. I am so often the impossible man in the street, caged by the reporter's arm and his smile. A microphone aimed in my direction causes no alarm. I can talk to a man and a man holding a camera. I can address the intangible you.

Those few who will be uncomfortable when I appear in pajamas with braided hair and lounging among Afghans, will be favorably decided by my prime minister—a man with a nose much like a shark's. Only such a man could possess such insufferable dignity, so visual and pure, that the earth will respect whatever he deems as a protocol.

We will bring a new vision to the phenomenon known as prime time.

Together we will deal with the Arabs and the Jews.

We will build a grand capital in the desert and in that way hope to keep the population down. The buildings brightly tiled and the tiles brightly painted. The terra cotta imported from Mexico—cereus and pachycereus blooming in the night for the evening lapel. Wet and dry fountains.

As a nation we will suffer all the ecstasies, and meet those grave commissions of living with a sense of duty. We will starve the poor and pamper the rich. Simply, we will meet it head-on.

So take me assassin. Leap with me. ¡Nuestro rey tiene un palacio en la ciudad!

In the turn of events—it was by that process that I happened on the cardboard sign on the porch of Mrs. Logan's boarding house on the afternoon of the Sunday before Christmas, me and a suitcase in the W. Hollywood sun. There was something about that sun, the slant on the pale stucco, the rainbow in the sprinklers, the outline of a dozen poinsettias. It built a shadow I had never been inside—cool, the walk paved and well-kept. I knocked on the screen door to walk inside.

Mrs. Logan was on the porch with a fan and a glass of lemonade. It was 84 that day. She mentioned the heat as I started in the door. And before I had caught the conversation she told me to sit down and loosen my tie, how silly I was to be dressed for a wedding; did I know someone down the hall? I accepted her offer of lemonade and sat down to regain my sense of circumstance.

She never mentioned the rates. The house rules were understood. I would have opened all the buttons on my shirt if my chest hadn't been blushing and bare. But I was playing the angles straight. I was too young to be another veteran of loneliness. This was something I was willing to take on.

We had gone to dinner at the China Pig. Jim was upset, but quiet. I remember. I'd worn a black crepe gown and he knocked a drink over. I went to the ladies to rinse it out and as I was coming back, Enos walked in haughty and windblown as a beachball. He saw Jim and slung a drunken arm round, waved a leering cackle in his face, spun his nose out like a jetty. Jim boxed, asked him to go away. But Enos remained sandfilled and ready to clown, so old love that I could feel the masculine vexation; I could see the reasons—my husbands rolling with the floor.

Bone white russets in an enamel, red bowl. Steaming, quartered and peeled with parsley and the scent of tarragon nearby. Pa in his undershirt pulling Jake's scruff, prying open his jaw to examine incisors and gum—calling for bone.

And Mama'd bring her roast in on a large, porcelain platter. Pa'd slice it so it'd show a layered heart. Brown, pink, to red—the broken veins sprawling, distinct, dark—his clean-shaven and rosy cheek. Pa'd knife and fork the slices, one or two to each plate, till I'd see the brown brick church, all the edge of flowers long since carved away.

Through the French doors of the drawing room one finds a low and very solid balcony with a magnificent view of the grounds. From the tiled steps at the foot of the balustrade a gravel walk leads away, toward the distant statuary, between the verdure and seriousness of the vast, manicured lawns. And looking back at the trained hedges and the flower beds, the fountain and the reflecting pools, at the presence of the estate—even on so slight a rise—makes one wish to move inside.

Immediately you feel the coolant of thick shrubbery, exotic trees, the pure, bright marble of Leda and her swan. So you move closer only to find a white paper bag, open and sitting upright before the figure; a young boy seen moving under an old, trellised bougainvillea; one long enchilada slapped firmly against her paunch. And at that, the beginnings of sorrow can be seen in the navel, leveled by cheese. A hatred occurs with the sauce running to meet these legs; the burst shell begins to slide.

Nearby, a gardener whets his shears, whistling an old standard.

It is Sunday.

Our boxer enters the studio with the crack on his lip still not dry, but open and accessible. He finds the photographer confidently withdrawn, repositioning the tarnished bed he is to sprawl on, and once again introduces himself nervously. Distracted, the photographer nods, again rumples the sheets, then directs him to the dressing room where he will find hangers and a robe—magazines if he should need. But it is too cold and each wall cracks with the memory of bare and beautiful women. The silk clings; about us a dew of misused powder.

There is our erection, quick and buoyant, with a curious hand unsteady outside of darkness.

It is a story that has stayed with me, that has gone through forty years and remained what it originally was—an incident in my life, and then a curious repetition, me being a happenstance observer, a listless character in a nearby seat neither fortunate nor distressed for having to witness or be witnessed. I can distinctly recall its every detail, at any moment and from any part, without interest or disdain. I have had what seems like an endless conversation that has cued it to mind. The faces change. The trains change. The games change. It has become a child's book to me. The kind where each page has three pieces and can be turned so any page will suit the child's mood. Yet I rarely speak of it, being no likely consort with destiny.

I was on the 7:20 to St. Louis, reading the Tribune and scratching the growth on my jowls. There I would make a grain deal that would put me in a position to make an intimidating amount of money (although some years later). My father called it a daring chance and was harsh about my leaving Chicago, but for myself I was hoping for a decent sum to settle down and marry. Yet that is not part of the story, only the setting. What seemed out of context was my attraction to the three children in the seats opposite me. Apparently my interest was obvious to them and after setting up the game board they asked if I should like to play. I declined and reshuffled my paper. Still, it was evident that the older boy had chosen the cannon for his marker, the girl took the thimble and the youngest settled for the speedster. All were place on GO and they tossed the dice to see who should move first; the older boy rolling nine, the girl five, and the young lad proceeded to roll eight in doubles, then ten in doubles, then eight again, then twelve, then four, then ten and ten again, then eight again, and ended by rolling eleven. A sum total of eighty-one which I could scarcely accept. Yet the two other children conceded without protest or even chagrin on their faces.

Meanwhile, as all this took place, still another child looked on to the game from the seat behind them. His eyes staying always above the back of the seat while his mouth bobbed up, and then down out of sight, coming up again with crumbs at the edges and looking meekly in need of milk. His mother, a rather stern-seeming woman, from time to time chanting—"Sit down, Thomas. You must not be rude."

I am sleeping in the Barclay Hotel—$3 a night as the sign outside reads, and a hot shower down the hall. Carpet, in places:   there are two, cheap reproductions of a south sea isle and one of a lady at a charity ball clashing with the wallpaper, as does the tool company calendar with the blonde in the bathing suit—certain dates circled by previous occupants. The furnishings are prime for their period and worn by the years—the headlines bold and remembered. Even the light that finds its way in is exquisite in effect—marbled and drably sinister. And if I should rise from the bed to look from the window, other multi-story buildings lead down to the street where a few coupes wait adjacently for use. The sidewalks are empty, only sole-scuffed papers blow in and out of doorways, around corners. This may be war-time Chicago, or Duluth at the selfsame hour.

Except that now I can hear the cadence song of the witch's men non-directionally away. The staccato, in-step formation finds no hindrance in the corner of the block, only an opportunity for sidesteps, present arms, and tails in full twirl—then passes beneath my window vividly discolored by a neon sign.

It is surely a pageant for badges, a confirmation to keep the conquered eyes in awe. Docile, and in my pinwhale suit, I will lay my arms down.

It is new to me to realize that I can look back on my life and ponder its turns and successes. The decisions I made and the time I spent making them, the women I met, the luck I went without, all are becoming clearer to me, making it easier to decipher the faults and aspects to their unaligned precision—the sort of tuning they possessed:   the astral caress. And still it is odd to have reached this point, albeit early, and know very well that I don't have the answers, that they didn't arrive like I believed they would; and that I will likely continue on without them, sensing an equal and ignorant footing with the rest. I chose a safety in numbers because any real question would have been embarrassing to ask. And who to question?

But I'll admit to being still a young man and perhaps not set in my bearing (although I find it less and less a fault of my own doing). And yet it seems, even to me, that what young men are accused of is often the first indication of their guilt. We serve broken windows and broken hearts. But that is all the more pressing now. It is taut. It makes some of what I tell that much more reliable.

I can afford no cover or front, for any length of time. And the real me is beset by the numerous tunnels of stimulus and response: I am as easily aroused or depressed as the canine next door.

How else can I prove to you that there have been odd, uncharitable times in damp rooms where I've left a woman on a bed, where I've walked out yelling "I've had enough!" and had a cigarette in the street; where I've stepped out satisfied and sure only to be caught by the sirens and forced to shelter in the tube—to become nameless in the raid.

The highway is a crusty pavement rolling over and down the hill. The house is big and white, a catching contrast for the lawn and hedges' green—the hay making a neutral field. You are sitting under the shade of the far pine in your white Sunday dress, selling biscuit cakes and lemonade for two cents a glass. The ice you kept fresh, so the gingham apron.

You accepted it for always:   this way—the few unfamiliar faces with, even then, a purchasing intent; and the pump boy from the garage across the road who kept a garden snake for a pet.

It was all very seasonal. The same.

It was Trumball County Ohio, 1943. The papers were showing newsprint photos of sleek warships under German flag, baying in the harbor at Montevideo. But as the cars were then to suggest, everything was far away.

A very light wind revealed a landscape (in which the grass was robust and articulate yet the trees were still leafless and the sky clouded with grays) as the background of a scene that included a middle school and playground with a few boys shooting baskets and a collection of little league teams at practice. With young fathers for coaches, their sons were still too small to be much at the game or even catch the ball when it came in their direction—all this exhibited in such a way that it was difficult not to somehow aggrandize the collected penises and how they tangled their lives and spread for decades into the minutely webbed future. It kept them from getting what they worked for and from what they dreamed of and desired so dearly, and also continually at bay with that consenting moment which could be the climax of their hunt—so much so that they were altogether indifferent to the run of low hills behind them which seemed pleasantly in consort and to promise them so much.

What more was there to do other than sit in the car and listen to the radio. The key was in the ignition. The windshield had been cleaned at the service station.

Shoppers left the drug store clutching their purchases in brown paper bags with the drug store logo printed on the bags in red. Liquor or cigarettes, sundries, gardening equipment, the sale items, the prescriptions they had asked to be filled at the pharmacy, I could not be certain of what was in the bags unless they were filled to the top; then it was easy to look at the items and the face behind the bag and realize something about that person.

They did not hurry or loiter once outside. They were careful of the cars leaving the parking lot. They moved with an easy-going sense of purpose. A few of them waited for friends or relatives who were in the supermarket. A few waited in their cars. Some of them put on their sunglasses as they exited out of the motor-driven, self-opening doors.

Through the plate-glass windows of the imposing supermarket I could see the checkers at the registers. I could see the flashing light over the express line where one could pass through with nine items or less. I could see the people waiting in line to pay for their goods, and the aisles of shelves stocked with foodstuffs and household products behind them. I could see the long rows of florescent lights clinging to the ceiling; I could see the sale banners drifting above them all.

The sun blazed down on the parking lot. There were many cars of all makes and colors. The sun made them shine. It made the paint and the chrome sparkle. It made the legs of my jeans warm. It was a warm day.

I recognized the opening bars of a favorite song so I turned up the radio. I rolled down the window and searched in the glove compartment for my sunglasses. What a beautiful day it was. What a beautiful scene, this brightness glimmering in the parking lot before me. And the mountains were very pretty, in the near distance above the drug store and the supermarket. See how the pines have erected themselves on the grassy slopes. See the ranch and its fences.

As a child I developed a fixation on that nebulous area I knew as my back. Not on it, it was a conceptional problem. I lacked the means to conjure a vision of what it was. I had only the normal sensory messages to surmise an outline. And it was a pure search, as yet neither fear nor apprehension was its motivating essence.

But soon (and it seems typical now) I began to wonder how it appeared to others. What did they see in it? Did I really possess a normal fluidity in movement? It wasn't just a case where, as a nine-year-old, I could practice my bending or improvise on my gait. It was a question of its relative importance to me, and to it what importance my peers were willing to leek--my backward identity, its nature. Naturally, my eyesight annoyed me. It seemed very unsuited to my need. I spent a great deal of time with my back to the bathroom mirror, a mirror in hand. I studied the effects of hairstyles, tightness in pants, how patterns, colors and materials played a role.

In the end, it was too much for someone my age to be asked to consider. In answer I fled toward docile tendencies in darkened rooms.

Yet as time developed I developed a memory. It was bothersome to realize I had a growing past. And in my opinion it was an odd faculty to possess, feeling that it, in turn, required a monitor.

The pursuit of its function and its obvious lack of objectivity puzzled me for months, for something short of reason until I simply stumbled around it. My guess became that it was a delicate dictator—that, in truth, something was shredding the lesser facts.

I could construct models that proved the loss of large expanses of time. Losses in small units, yes, but when grouped together, increasing with the roll of months to the sum of months. Time spent for which I had no self-contained records. Time spent and discarded. Let us look at the calendar.

Between 1959 and 1962 a prime memory is Swedish Meatballs. A very visual memory and easy to recall. I loved them; besides the taste I enjoyed the use of a toothpick instead of a fork. They were a popular buffet item at the time and I remember that a simple appliance had been introduced onto the market specifically for the purpose of serving them.

We were on the P.T.A. circuit at the time. The meetings were held in the school auditorium and in private homes--the private home holding a slightly higher probability for the occurrence of meatballs. My mother, my brother, and I usually attended. But for all that attendance, the symbol of referral has become Swedish Meatballs with a votive candle underneath.

As soon as the arm recoiled on the slot machine, a cocktail waitress asked if the gentleman would like another drink—while nickels spattered into the coin trough and prayers rose all about them.

Oh the precious metals that began to fall, to come out of hiding—and the lovely noise that rushed into our ears and made our hearts beat. Oh the thrilling moments!

In the casino at the Stardust, cameras were made ready, and microphones taped to gaffs—their cords tangling like reptiles among the ashtrays, advertisements, and the ankles of ample women. Then a crowd, sensing celebrity, gathered around a great, black boxer as he chided the newsmen before speaking in front of America.

Adrenalin flowed:   at the Frontier, at the Sands, at Caesar's Palace, and in cheap motel rooms where the prints above the bed—gaudy desert landscapes—illumined in the color television's glow. As hope grew and expectation hovered, adrenalin flowed—and the lady drank White Russians!

Aces were split; bets doubled. Long white legs wrapped down and around rising bar stools.

Under the marque of the Golden Nugget, beneath the hundreds of conventional bulbs, she feels the whir of the turbines holding back Lake Mead. And marvels. It is always three o'clock in the afternoon and ninety-eight degrees. She could press neon to her skin and feel the cool.

A door bangs across the hall from room 319, and from the swimming pool a child waves his arms and is understood by mothers smiling from air-conditioned rooms everywhere.

Madame *** changed her name back to Lois and took a job in a coffee shop where only locals ate, and spent her tips on piano lessons for her son. A dentist, above the extravagance downtown, reamed the decay from a lingual pit and filled it with precious metal, charging the woman for Novocain and the Novocain his assistant spilt.

Caravans set out from Los Angeles. From Orange and Fresno. And the Grand Hotel was admired by students of architecture everywhere.

Billboard lights repeat their patterns without end; and neon continues to glow while the seasons never change inside the casinos. The moon howled across the desert and quickly left town as the next shift of dealers clocked in. At times, which one might consider indifferent, the sun came and went—at times, the blind man grumbling on an accordion cooled his eyes with silver dollars.

Lunge, dice—roll, carom off the felt walls and the spilling chips—black cuffs, white fists and ambling fingers—animations and sorrows, exhilaration and despair—again, rise and roll.

Because when they rolled away—on come, the hard way, on pass line or don't pass and sent us out into the bright evening heat. Or left us reeling at the table—a line of chips between our hands pulsing like a heartbeat. Or heading into elevators and the grayness of multi-story parking lots. Empty pockets, emptied of emotion, stunned by adrenalin—still longing for the right moment, and knowing it is not enough. Still wanting for that thing we only suspect, but do not know.

A large waitress in yellow stretch pants navigates along the worn carpet trail in front of the bar rail and incidentally brushes dad's beer bottle into the ball return. Patty saw this happen and might have been able to save it if the waitress had been less impassable. Dad, with his longtime preference for the other hand, now somewhere near mid-life, beaten, and currently somewhere near perfect concentration, addressed the gathered pins in a way that was nothing less than sexual. Patty, much like a pin herself, waited for dad to realize the tragedy of a lost beer—and yet, still noticed the odd feeling in her stomach when he momentarily stood mid-lane, that big, black ball drooping Cro Magnon-like from his left hand, and those rented, red bowling shoes with the numeral 10 on the heel; coincidentally, the same pin he leaves standing.

I was leaving the house for work one morning when it occurred to me that I always left by the front door. And the thought remained with me all day, nagging like a popular tune. But there were other modes of exit—equally easy was the back door which gave me an awkwardness in character that seemed to dull the afternoon. And the sliding glass door to the patio left me docile and prone to lounge, lingering over lunch with a typist I could trust.

So all week I concentrated on the effects of each variance of departure—like Thursday when I knotted the sheets and slid out the bedroom window. You were in your backyard in a pondersome mood, watering the hydrangea. We nodded in passing.

It was cold. The storm passed and already the pavement had started to dry. I saw you standing on the cement walk beside the gas station restroom—in a flurry of light. You were wearing a big coat. You were searching in your purse for something I did not think you would find. As I drove by with the take-out pizza, the gas gauge near empty.

It was not unusual for me to visit the park at that time of day. I did this often. It was not far from my house and my house was my studio. At the park I would inhale the fragrance of the flowers and the shrubbery, the pine and the eucalyptus trees, and routinely think it was pleasant to be outside. It was good to get outside of the house and the studio. The park was convenient.

I would sit on the grass on a rolling bank by the dry creek. The creek was dry throughout most of the year although it was not ornamental. There were footbridges in three locations where paths crossed the creek. During the rainy season it would carry what rain fell on the park. There was very little run-off that collected from the canyon. The creek would partially fill. But few people went to the park in the rain.

It was a park where people would come to walk their dogs or to exercise. There were many types of dogs in the area, most of them small. It was a park where widows came to walk their dogs and talk to other widows (you could say that about the park). They might watch the young men tossing Frisbees. Or they might talk with a widower.

The joggers wore brightly-colored outfits and ran along the gravel path that followed the boundaries of the park. The park meant something different to them. I thought it fascinating to watch them, or to unfocus my vision until I saw only the moving color of their suits. Sometimes a dog would chase them from a short distance. They would grow more aloof. They were brighter than the cars waiting in the parking lot. Pain and concentration showed on their faces as they passed. A sweat formed and they would glow in the sun.

A woman came and sat down on the bank rather close to me. She did not introduce herself. She neglected my presence entirely--instead she gazed at the empty creek bed and then, as if bored, she picked up a dried sycamore leaf and studied its markings.

Her closeness annoyed me. I felt her lack of respect for my personal space. I had to doubt her intentions, whatever they were.

She was older than myself. She was well-dressed and the style indicated that she had taste and, most likely, money. It was a puzzling situation. I couldn't stay and remain undistracted. I couldn't leave. I wouldn't feel at ease until the incident fulfilled what it had clearly began. So I wondered if the grass would stain her skirt. I wondered if she would allow it to do so.

Waiting for the answer, I watched the sun play on the lines of her blouse. I looked at her legs, her shoes, her purse. Her eyes were stunning. Her lips were large and deep red.

She showed no interest in the joggers or the dogs or the widows. Or in the young men with the Frisbee or in the flowers. "Your shirt is frayed," she said to me and smiled.

I felt quite silly as I glanced down at my shirt. I conceded to her the first move. A long, white thread hung from the lining. It looked anything but natty. I glanced back at her eyes and we smiled at each other, a polite smile. It lasted too long and the scene locked. The sun caught the rouge on her cheeks, the shine of the cars and the joggers and the dogs' coats, the widows, the Frisbees. I caught a tiny glint of sunlight from a tiny pair of scissors as she pulled them from her purse. I felt a dampness creep into my trousers.

On a good sound system there are a few tense seconds after the needle arm lands until it reaches the first cut. Silence (except for the vibrating of the room). Then, one learns to appreciate the peal of volume.

Mom always thought it was the backdoor slamming. It became a ritual everyday after school. She never caught on.

My room was above the kitchen. My sound system was 60 amps per channel I'd paid for by working weekends at Grinley's Hardware. She hated old Grinley for that, just like she hated walking up those steps to my room. It was the noise.

You see, she had this emotional condition—a by-product of too many afternoon soap operas. She was often jumpy. She was often close to tears. And that look on her face every time she blew in:   "Why does it have to be so loud?" She'd stride into that classic pose I'd seen in a dozen old movies—hands on the hips, one foot pointed out:   "Can't you listen like other people your age?"

I wanted to know who these people were. Where they lived. I wanted to know what it was that had brought them to submission so young. But she could never tell me that. She could never offer up the proof. So after a while I gave up. I just kept dancing when she came in the room.

I loved to repeat her phrases: "What do I think I'm doing?" She was a temptress begging for rude behavior:   "It's just a new variation on the Hoochie-Koo, Ma."

She could never learn where the volume knob was.

For a long time I had the impression that I'd really found something. It was so customary and assuring, yet I knew the laws and the ludicrous tales of the fate awaiting a boy like me. But the power had been captured and remained enormous. It felt good.

For weeks you have lain idly on your bed, mentally dressing for this disclosure of love—what shoes to wear, a proper lapel, the obvious clash of a tie. And you can picture her clearer than any banknote, her window as a frame. That initial glance of her eyes, the salutation and quick smile, then you push her your check which comes back in bills laid crisp and flat, snapped like bed sheets.

But the preparations have all been made. Each motion rehearsed before a judging mirror. Tomorrow will find you in a teller's queue studying the lines on a fat woman's nape. Each step insisting that an arm is already pulling you back. Each breath nervous and borrowed as on the confessional floor. But it is your turn now and somewhat alien is the release of your zipper's buzz.

You wait for her face to click—the swallowed scream, quick shower of coats, cold satin lining.

I did not want to leave my city. I did not feel it necessary or even correct to flee any of the accommodations, trials, dilemmas I had inherited at birth. Murky business, or love—I hoped to see no difference. I was caught in that thing that contained me and saw no reason to become a refugee on a country lane. Besides, it seemed more appropriate that I should be one among seven million. Among seven million. It was an obvious sanctuary.

So I read various books. I practiced various practices. In groups, at private homes, in numerous houses of worship, hotel rooms, rented halls, in plushly furnished offices at sixty dollars an hour I spoke with men, authorized men, who sometimes chatted, sometimes chanted, sometimes praised certain ways of devotion—arts and sciences.

Possessing wisdom in the most intricate of manners, they assured me. I could achieve this; I could discontinue that. I could transcend and become nothing, or everything. I was fortunate to have the time, inclination, and money to be promised anything, offered anything. It was all very agreeable and serious, in some cases documented, for which I thanked them in earnest.

The culmination of what I attempted to learn is this: what I thought I wanted, what I thought I needed, what I felt was merely the most appropriate routine to be asked of me was simply the accomplishment of a raptureless abandon. A tensile yet established energy, organized and sensible as a magnet. I wanted to blanket the situation, volatile or not. I wanted to act, respond, and react in just refusals, just acceptance, just accomplice.

But I don't sleep well, or I don't sleep at all unless it's in her arms and she's still awake. I can close the curtains and the city lights shoot right through the curtains. I can see my own privacy and move back from the window to where it begins. I've begun to think of it as a different geometry—cubic, with its own walleyed assumptions, corrective equations.

Or I can stand in the living room, pressing against the plate-glass where there are no curtains, and watch the traffic stalled on the freeway below. Headlights and taillights. Incoming and outgoing. Mad-purpose or unsuspecting. Dream-target or itinerant. Adjective and antonym.

I can face that freeway and understand it has a multitude of faces with eyes locked on dreams, destinations, road signs, with eyes that have the glow of resolve, of design or desire or purpose—the mind in transit. And perhaps one of those faces is facing up to me, as I pour another glass of California wine and realize that face may not be on the freeway. So I think about the grapes someone is pressing for me. The random wait. The casual possession.

I shall be a casualty of nervous wear and tear. Although it will earn another name, I shall move toward obsolescence. I will suffer from chronic and often joyous over-consumption. I will drive and get tickets, tickets to game shows. I will crave transit and the off-chance and the right place at the wrong time. I too am a contestant—tempted, disdaining and frayed, willing as often as not.

So I return to reading Ionesco in braille—my eyes are rarely impressed, too dazed or bloodshot from juggling ecstasy and dirt. My fingers push along the impressions, tips calloused from guitar strings—my mascara shiny in the heat.