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One Day in Sherman OaksIt was hot and we weren’t allowed to wear a hat or sunglasses. It was hard to approach people if they couldn’t see your face. I didn’t feel like doing warm-ups that morning because I hadn’t had a good week. But Cliff picked me for a practice round while we stood in our circle."Andrew, let’s try one.""Okay. Hi, would you like to help get rid of George Bush?""I don’t have time for that.""Oh, well, it’ll just take one minute. It’s really easy.""Well, how can you help me get rid of George Bush?""Because I work for the Democratic National Committee and we’re raising money to support the candidate in the fall…""Alright, I don’t have time for this, where do I sign?""Oh, we’re actually asking for contributions.""Okay , here’s a dollar…""We’re asking for a minimum of twenty dollars.""Oh my God, are you trying to eat me out of house and home??""It really helps.""Okay, here you go.""Thank you so much.""Good job, Andrew."I got a round of applause from the group."Always get their name and address," Cliff reminded us. "And remember what Andrew did. Don’t just take one dollar - up-sell them. Get as much as you possibly can from these people."On the way to our location David, the Jewish kid from Cleveland, wanted to do some role-playing. He was our field leader. He was a little ambitious, and I could see him being the next George Stephanopoulos. But nobody wanted to play. One girl was a punk-rock chick with a nose ring and one guy was in his late thirties, going through a bad patch and in need of money. He must not have had any job skills. None of us felt like practicing what we would be doing for six hours in the sun. But David was relentless."Guys, this election is really important. I don’t need to tell you that. And every dollar counts. Wait, hold on a sec, am I going the right way?"Thank God. Since he didn’t live in Los Angeles we could take up the rest of the time giving him directions."Get off the freeway here," said the punk girl with more than a little boredom. We were on our way to Sherman Oaks, to stand along Ventura Boulevard and ask for money. We got to the area without any warm-ups and David posted me in front of the Galleria by a fountain. For the first hour hardly anyone walked by. Just a few fat office women on their coffee breaks. It was already in the high eighties and I was squinting and sweating in the sun. A few office men walked by. I hated asking them because I knew they would have their smart-ass remarks. And a lot of them were Republicans. But I had to. It was my job."Would you like to help get rid of George Bush?""No," one of them said. The others laughed."Why aren’t you mentioning John Kerry?""He’s not the nominee yet. I’m just raising money for the Democratic National Committee.""Google Swift Boat Veterans," said one of them. "Your John Kerry is gonna fold in the fall."They walked on, laughing, making fun of me. I hated Republicans. Especially Republicans that wore suits everyday. I supposed the middle-American, farming Republicans weren’t so bad. Salt of the earth types. Even Bible thumpers had an earnestness I admired with a touch of nostalgia. But these ones were the worst. They were sales managers, lawyers, regional managing partners, whatever they were…they had money. Republicans with money were worse than liberals with money. I loved Santa Monica. Whenever I went there I got money, if not sympathetic nods from every passing soccer mom and granola type. "Fight the good fight," they would say to me if they didn’t donate. "Keep it up." But there was nothing like the smugness of the winners, the smugness of the young and wealthy Republicans.Here was an old lady. Why not?"Would you like to help get rid of George Bush?"She looked at me with horror."He is our Commander in Chief!""I work for the Democratic National Committee.""You Democrats don’t care about America, and you don’t care about Vietnam, and you don’t care about anything!!""But George Bush is a fascist."She came right up to me."We are at war, son.""I am aware.""My husband fought in Vietnam!""John Kerry fought in Vietnam.""John Kerry is an asshole!"It took every ounce of strength in her to get that out."We’re asking for a minimum of twenty dollars," I said, holding my clipboard out towards her. She slapped the clipboard in rage."I would NEVER give you money!"She left."Have a great day! Try to stay cool! Don’t get too angry!"She turned around and shook her fist."Damn you! Damn you!"Wow. That was rare. You didn’t see angry old women too often. I turned around and saw a suit huffing and puffing towards me, sucking on a cigarette, cheeks red with heat. Chubby, overstuffed guy sweating like crazy. I didn’t have time to think. I pounced."Would you like to get rid of George Bush?"He stopped and took his cigarette out."If one more piss-ant little college kid asks me that question, he’s getting my fist in his face. If you kids are so confident, why aren’t you asking me to help elect John Kerry?""He’s not the official nominee yet. We’re raising money for the Democratic National Committee." "That s bullshit. You know he doesn’t have a chance in goddamn hell of getting elected, and you’re asking us to vote against George Bush? Get out of my face, you twerp. I’m gonna smack the next one of you that asks me that."He threw his cigarette at me and crossed the street. David was over there talking to some women. I saw them giving him money. How did he have such good luck at this? Was he more persuasive? Maybe he cared more. The fat cigarette smoker approached him as he turned around. I saw David ask the question, eagerly, with a bright college kid’s idealism. I couldn’t hear anything above the traffic but I saw the man yelling. He pointed at me and gestured maniacally, pointing a fat finger at David as he yelled. David spoke briefly to the man, then turned around, looking for his next possible donor. We weren’t supposed to engage people who wanted to argue politics. Don’t spend more than five seconds with people who had no intention of donating. David was a much better salesman than me. He brushed off the crazies, the old women, the angry businessmen, the snarky young Republicans…I needed a frappucino.I walked off to look for a Starbucks. It was so damn hot. I couldn’t raise money in this weather. Maybe if it was in the low seventies, with a nice ocean breeze blowing. After a few blocks I found the wonderful Starbucks and sat in the air-conditioned room drinking my four dollar iced beverage. Then my friend Matt called. He was on his break from Starbucks, where he worked downtown."Are you guys hiring?""Dude," he said, pausing, "you…do NOT want to think about that. I work here, and it’s fine, but I am warning you – do not enter this world. I got up at four this morning, and I was at work at five o’clock. I’m not complaining. I’m not a victim. But it’s not a life you want to live. How’s fundraising?""Bad. Just bad. I don’t know what’s more depressing– the direction this country is going or the direction my life is going."I sat in the Starbucks for about an hour, then went back to the corner. I got ten bucks from some high school kids, which I wasn’t supposed to do because they were under eighteen. Then I went to lunch. The afternoon was better. One soccer mom gave me fifty bucks, which was a major jackpot. I wouldn’t get commission unless I got over two hundred, but I would still get my regular paycheck.On the way back to the office in Westwood we didn’t talk much. It hadn’t been a good day for anyone. The valley was not a good place to raise money. Even David had only made seventy bucks, and that was small for him."Remind me to tell the other field leaders that Sherman Oaks was a bust," he said. "All together we only made two hundred. The home office won’t like that. We should just keep going to Santa Monica.""Yeah," I said with a laugh. "If only the whole country was Santa Monica." The more I thought about it, the more I laughed. "If only the whole country was like Santa Monica! What a world we'd live in! We'd all have organic granola for breakfast. And instead of gas, we'd use vegetable oil in our cars! Ha ha! And we wouldn't fight any more wars!"I guess I had a mild form of heat stroke, because no one else thought it was funny. What a bunch of sour grapes. Couldn't they laugh at defeat? The whole country, aside from the coasts, was red - a sea of Republicans and a few islands of people like us. We were hopelessly outnumbered. So why try to change things?I stared out the window, not talking, the rest of the way to the office. After awhile it didn't seem very funny anymore.The NetworkWhen I landed I saw the Whistler in his office. He was in bad shape alright, hunched over his desk, coughing. He was lucky I got there in time. Once I got the oxygen tank on him he relaxed and started to talk. “We gotta get off this planet. We gotta leave, let’s go.” “You know I didn’t come all the way from the head ship to take you like this. They want answers, Whistler.” “Oh God, this whole thing was a waste…” “What happened here?” “Ohh… He grabbed his stomach. “Where are the thousand employees, why are the mines abandoned? You know how much money they’re losing on this whole thing. Now you radioed the ship and said to send someone quick, the whole operation was done for.” “They’re all done for, they’re done…leave them.” “Where are they, Whistler?” He was hungry and homesick but I told him we weren’t going anywhere until I got some answers. Jesus, he looked like he’d aged ten years in the six months since I saw him. This mine was supposed to be open by now, sending huge uranium and plutonium cargoes back to the ship. We walked slowly down the hill towards the mines. He was limping like an old man. “They found something…it’s like a network.” “What the hell are you talking about? Are they alive?” “Barely. No. Well, yes, I suppose.” “Jesu s, man! Answers!” “Okay …I’ll show you…” He started limping down towards the lower mine, where I’d parked my craft. “You know what kind of shit I’ll be in if I go back there with nothing but a crazy old man?” He wasn’t listening but I went on anyway. “They lost millions developing this place and they’re pissed. Okay? And you’re raving about some goddamn network. What am I doing here? Why did I get this assignment? This is two weeks out of my schedule that I’ll have to make up for back on the ship. I’m following some lunatic around…” When we got to the mine there was a glowing red light emanating from deep within. “It must’ve been left here from whoever lived on this planet before,” he said, hobbling down the steep incline. “It’s not like anything I’ve seen before. Hold on.” I held on to the railing as we descended on steps deeper into the crimson. After a few flights of stairs, he stopped, panting, on a walkway. “There. It’s down there.” It was a sea of little pods, or vessels, of little wombs, almost. Thousands of them, on the ground floor. Inside of the greenish cells the miners were all entombed, moving slightly. Little electric flashes criss-crossed and zig-zagged between the countless cells, as if exchanging information. “It’s some communication network,” he said. “But they’ve stopped eating, they’ve stopped working, they won’t come out. I took a few of them out but they were all glazed over. Brain-dead. I looked down in the other mine and there were the same things, but some other creatures were inside. They’re not alive. Whatever this network is killed the last species.” “Or they killed themselves.” “Yes. Let’s get out of here.” “How the hell am I supposed to explain this to the head ship?” “Just tell them what it is.” “But what is it? What are they communicating with?” “Each other.” “That’s all?” “It’s a complex system of communication and information exchange – it’s highly addictive. That’s all I know.” I stared at the cells, and the electric charges zapping between them. What a waste. I got Whistler back to the ship right before he collapsed. “The air is no good on this planet,” he said, coughing. “The environment is not good for life.” “Who used to live here?” “I don’t know, some of the guys thought it was Earth.” “Earth? Come on. That’s where humans live. I can’t believe that. All the broadcasts from Earth show a planet with rivers and oceans and forests.” “Those reports could be millions of years old. We don’t even know where Earth is.” “But all the stories I heard about Earth growing up make it seem like a paradise.” “Well, I don’t know, that’s just what some of the rumors were. You know how the guys like to talk.” And then he passed out. I lifted off and soon we were rising through space, headed back to the home ship. They would not be happy about this. Mrs. KnutsenGeoffrey was only at my house for a couple of minutes before I asked him if he wanted to go to Mrs. Knutsen’s."Okay. I have some money," he said, jingling some change in his pocket.Geoffrey and I went into my mom’s room where she was typing furiously at the typewriter. She was lost in another world."We’re going to Mrs. Knutsen’s."She gave me some money and we went out to get our bikes. As we rode down my long driveway we looked over and saw my dad chopping wood. He held a large axe in his hand and his face was sweaty and grimy. He regarded us stoically as he wiped beads of sweat off his brow."We’re going to Mrs. Knutsen’s," I said, trying to convince Geoffrey that my dad was a normal, talkative kind of guy."Be careful," he thundered ominously, and swung his axe into a log, cleaving it viciously in two. Geoffrey and I kept riding. We were quiet for awhile."Um, your dad is a little scary," he said."Yeah. Elliot also said that.""Well, it’s just that every time I see him he’s carrying an axe.""Yeah. He has to make firewood for the winter.""And he doesn’t talk much. Do you think he’s ever killed anyone? He could hide the body in the woods and no one would know.""Whoa. I should ask him. That’s a good question."Pretty soon we rode past Mrs. Olsen’s place, the old hermit lady with the dogs. Pretty soon, as always, her two dogs ran out to the fence and began to bark loudly and stupidly at us."I hate these dogs," Geoffrey said, throwing a rock at them."I saw that!" screamed a voice from the trees. Mrs. Olsen came out of the woods pointing a shaky finger at me."You’re Andrew Culver, aren’t you?""Yeah.""I know your mother. I’m calling her right now. I’m telling her what you’re doing to my dogs.""We weren’t doing anything," Geoffrey said. "They were barking at us."She got right up to the fence and glared at us."I have been watching you," she hissed. "I know all the things you do. Spying on the neighbors. You’re a nuisance and everyone knows it.""Oh Jeez," Geoffrey said. "Let’s go."We rode on as Mrs. Olsen shouted. We got to the top of Ware Road and rode our bikes along Skyline Boulevard through the Redwood path."This is where Jenny Gwartney lives," I said as we passed a house with several broken-down vehicles in the front yard."This is her house?" he said. "Let’s see if she wants to go to Mrs. Knutsen’s with us.""No, I don’t think so. Her dad is really mean.""Oh. Okay."As we passed by I heard a man yelling and some dishes crashing. Jenny always looked a little weird at school. She was a nice girl but I think her mom had left and her brother was a delinquent. He had stolen some stuff from school and gotten in a lot of trouble.Finally we got to the two-story house of Mrs. Knutsen, in a clearing on Skyline across from the firehouse. We knocked on the door and waited. It always took her a long time because she was very old."Is your mom working on any books now?" Geoffrey asked."Yeah, she has one about a ranch and a cowboy or something.""Have you ever read your mom’s books?""No." I was tired of people asking me that question. "They’re romance novels, Geoffrey. I would rather read Calvin and Hobbes.""She should write some stuff about Batman.""I know. Then I’d read it."The door opened slowly and Mrs. Knutsen poked her head out. She had a wrinkled old face with curly white hair and a kind old lady’s smile."Oh, I think I know what you’re here for." She smiled and turned on the lights. My heart pounded with excitement as the room was illuminated. On the walls were shelves and shelves of candy. Gobstoppers, Sour Jacks, Jawbreakers, Big League Chew, Lemonheads…Geoffre y got out his change and held out to her as an offering."Can I have a Milky Way?""Of course you can."She walked away and about three minutes later came back with the Milky Way. Geoffrey gave her his fifty cents and she turned to me."Um, let me see…" I stammered. I couldn’t make up my mind. "Do you have Dots?""Of course I do. Let me get them."She walked into the pantry and scrounged around for the Dots, then returned and handed them to me."Fifty cents."I gave it to her and we were about to leave."Did you know there are ghosts in my house?""I think you told me that before," Geoffrey said."They talk to me.""What do they say?" I asked."Oh, they tell me stories. I’ve written some of them down. One of them was a lumberjack who lived on this mountain a hundred years ago. His wife died, you know, and he was here all alone. So he talks to me through the walls. Would you like to see the stories?""That’s okay, Mrs. Knutsen," Geoffrey said, getting on his bike. He was clearly freaked out. "We’ll do it some other day." He started riding away so I got on my bike and followed him.We went up to the Firehouse and sat on a log eating our candy."Do you believe in ghosts?" I asked Geoffrey."No.""Reall y?""No.""Okay.""She just freaks me out sometimes.""Well, she’s the only place to get candy around here, so…""I just don’t want to hear her stories."We stayed there for awhile. Then it was getting late so Geoffrey went home and I rode my bike back to my house. By then it was almost dark and Jenny's house was quiet. Mrs. Olsen had gone inside and my dad was done with his wood-chopping. The mountain was silent, except for a few dogs howling in the canyon.Fourth of JulyEdwards sat on his balcony waiting for the fireworks to start. He had a bottle of Jameson from the liquor store. He had no company to celebrate with. They had all died on the space station. The bomb- terrorism, they were calling it. Edwards didn’t care – all he knew was Milton was dead, Stevens was dead, and Bradley, the smartest engineer NASA had ever produced, he was dead as well.Edwards had testified in the Senate about the attack but he knew he wouldn’t be of any help. He remembered almost nothing besides the bright fire of the blast and the deafening roar of the ship cracking apart.He remembered sitting in the chief’s office after getting back to earth, numbly listening to the news – we’re sorry, but the program has been cancelled. The administration can’t afford to rebuild the ship. We’d love to keep you on in some capacity – maybe you can do some lectures? Tour some colleges, talk about life as a NASA engineer?Edwards knew the country’s future in space, at least in a scientific capacity, was a distant dream now. The program was over. Funds were no longer available.At about nine the fourth of July fireworks started, and he could see them downtown as he sat on his porch. They rose beautifully in the night above the skyscrapers and split apart in startling cascades of red, white and blue. The sound and the light reminded him of the bomb, floating in his engineering capsule and watching as explosives ripped his ship apart.Someone on the street below started playing "America the Beautiful" on a saxophone. Whoever it was, someone in an alley, was playing it slowly and mournfully, almost like a funeral dirge. Edwards sat and stared at the fireworks raining down on the city. They didn’t seem like a celebration but a commemoration of something great that had passed. It seemed like the fireworks meant something different every year he saw them.CamilleThe day I arrived at Jackson and Wallace I was a temp. I didn’t even know what the place was, I just showed up at the address the agency told me. The lady at First Call Employment Agency said they needed some help making copies and it was a temp-to-hire position. I said okay, thank God I have a job. I was desperate. So I mapquested the address and it was in Sherman Oaks. I lived in Echo Park, I had no idea where Sherman Oaks was. The valley might as well have been Arizona. I didn’t go up there. So I took the elevator up to Suite 1210 and walked in. This young Asian girl was sitting at the front desk and behind her was a conference room with a full view of the valley spread out below us. I told her I was here to see David, the contact name the agency gave me. It was always like this the first day at these random places. You went in and you knew everyone else had worked together for years and you were just some temp. They didn’t even bother to remember your name because they knew the chances were you’d be out of there in a couple weeks. “Oh, are you here for Camille?” asked an Asian girl at the front desk. “Uh, I think David was the name…” “Who dat?” came a voice from the next room. It was a black voice. It belonged to a woman. A second later she appeared. She was black alright. Very black. About thirty years old. Her big eyes quickly looked me up and down. “You Andrew?” “Yeah.” “Oh thank God you here,” she said in a thick southern drawl. “The last man didn’t even show up yesterday. Alright, I’ll show you what you got to do,” she said, walking into her office. I followed. There were four people crammed into a little office meant for two. Desks were in corners and places they were never meant to be. Everyone looked up and stopped what they were doing. “Alright y’all, this Andrew, he gonna be my new temp.” Everyone grumbled their greetings as Camille sat down at her desk. “Is this a law firm?” I asked. “Yeah,” she drawled. “Who’s this?” came a voice from behind me. I looked around and a short, dumpy girl walked past me into the room. Her hair was long and curly and she looked like the most bored human being I’d ever seen. “This my new temp,” said Camille. “He’s cute,” said the girl as she looked me up and down. “Ani, don’t you start. You gonna scare him off befo’ he even starts, I’m for real!” Camille let out a big black southern belly laugh. “He’s cute, Camille, we should keep him.” Ani walked out and Camille looked at me again. “Don’t listen to Ani, she a freak. She a total pervert. Just don’t pay no attention to her.”Then she stopped and took a good hard look at me. A big smile crossed her face. “You remind me of Napoleon Dynamite,” she said. “I’m gonna call you Napoleon. Is that okay Napoleon?” “Sure,” I said. She laughed out loud, a huge rhythmic sound that came from deep inside her stomach. It was the blackest laugh I had ever heard. Her eyes lit up with amusement. “You just like Napoleon Dynamite!!!!”“Ca mille!” said a fat girl sitting at a desk in the corner. “Why you want to embarrass him on his first day?” “Ryann, tell me he don’t act just like that boy from Napoleon Dynamite.” “Maybe he doesn’t want to be called Napoleon.” “Napoleon, do you like yo new name?” “It’s okay, I don’t mind.” “See? He don’t care! If you don’t like it you tell me, okay, Napoleon?” I could see it was no use to fight it. It was already my name. “No, I don’t care.” She just looked at me, her face full of laughter. “I think I like you, Napoleon. You gonna work out just fine.” I liked Camille already. She was a character. I didn’t care what she called me. The first day went pretty well. It was easy enough. I would open the mail, then Camille would sort through it and make little marks on it to let me know who should get a copy of it. The whole time she would complain about stuff. “Dis place is a mess Napoleon. A hot mess. You gonna meet Mark soon enough.”“Mark is an asshole,” Ryann said. “Sho is. That little leprechaun gonna make me quit dis place,” Camille said.“What’s wrong with him?” “He just an asshole. Like, he tell you one thing and then tell you something else the next day. He the managing partner. He don’t know shit about what happens round here cause he never come into the office. And then he want to come and tell me how to run shit? He got me fucked up. He know I’m gonna tell him to his face he an asshole, dat’s why he don’t fuck wit me. He KNOW that Camille don’t fuck around.”“He has the biggest ego, Napoleon. Just picture someone who thinks everyone loves them.”“But really everybody think he a big turd.” “When is he gonna be here?”“Probably never. But don’t worry Napoleon, if he fuck witchou lemme know. I ain’t afraid to click on him. He ain’t nobody.” “Okay.” “I’m from Arkansas, I don’t give a fuck. I’ll bring the streets up in here, you think I give a fuck? Let them fire me. I ain’t gonna take no shit, these people round here got me fucked up.” “Yeah.” “Camille, behave yourself!” Ryann said. “You’re gonna scare away the new kid.” “I ain’t gonna scare you away, am I Napoleon? I like you. I ain’t gonna click on you. You my boy, long as you do yo’ work and you don’t fuck wit nobody. You like it here?” “Yeah,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere.” Thank God, I thought. At last I got an office where something is happening.Then Camille’s phone rang. “Goddamn it, what does Calvin want?” she said, picking up the phone. “Calvin. I’m gonna cut yo throat if you call me agin. Where you at? Ralphs? You gonna get the chicken there? I don’t know, Calvin, they chicken always seem rubbery. How you gonna cook it? You just gonna put the whole thing in the oven? That seem kinda boring. Why don’t you make hot wings? Yeah, and then get some potatoes or something. Where the kids? They at home? Raven had who over? Jessie? I hope her fat ass leave by the time I get home. She always talkin’ about something. In that annoying voice, it sound like she got something stuck in her throat. She always like ‘Raven, let’s do this, let’s do that.’ Do you think she stuck up? I think she kinda stuck up. Damn, white people drive me crazy sometimes. Alright Calvin, I’m through talking to you. Bye.” She slammed down the phone. “Goddamn, my husband always want to talk about a million things. I ain’t got time to talk all damn day, I got shit to do.”“Why don’t you like that Jessie girl?”“I don’t know, she always want to play tag or something with Raven. I’m like, ain’t you fifteen years old? You a little old being playing that game.” “Do you live around here?”“No, I live up in Santa Clarita.” “What? Really?” Santa Clarita was the last place I could picture Camille. It was on the northern outskirts of the valley, barely connected to Los Angeles, right next to the Six Flags amusement park. “You must be the only black people up there.” “We are. I don’t like black people. They always fightin’ and acting stupid about something.” “I can’t believe you live all the way up there,” Ryann said.“Where I’m supposed to live? Compton? I ain’t goin’ down there with them ghetto-ass niggas. It’s like this. This one time me and Calvin and the kids went down to Target down there in Inglewood and all them black people look at me crazy. Like I’m too uppity or something to go down there. Like I ain’t ghetto enough. Just because I like to wear good clothes. Just ‘cause I shop at Banana and Gap and like to look nice. It’s like, what the fuck? I got to look like shit just ‘cause I’m black? These ghetto black people act like you got to be poor and shit your whole life. You know what? These niggers down here have this whole city to find a job. They have opportunities, they have colleges and places to educate theyself. Back in Arkansas, you grow up and you don’t have jobs and shit. You don’t get an education. Plus you got cracker ass white people treating you like shit. Racism is for real down south. They don’t even try to hide it, Napoleon.”“Reall y?”“Yeah. It’s like, when I was back there for my cousin’s funeral two months ago, me and my mama went into the bank and the lady behind the counter, she was white, you know, this fat ass white bitch, she just throw the money down on the counter. And she don’t even look at me, you know what I’m saying? It’s obvious. And I was getting mad and I was about to say something, like why cain’t you treat me with respect? It’s just a simple respect! I was HOT, Napoleon. But my mom just like ‘Oh, don’t say nothin’ Camille, you gonna get us lynched.’ And I’m like what the fuck. You know? And these black folks out here, it’s like they ain’t even black. They don’t got to put up with none of that shit. They don’t know what it’s like to struggle and overcome that shit. I’m proud of being from the south. I think it make you stronger. They ain’t even connected to they history.”She looked at her computer screen. “Oh shit. Mark sent me another one of his emails. Goddamn.” She looked at the email and muttered. “This little munchkin motherfucker…” “What’s wrong?” “He think I’m his personal muthafuckin’ assistant. He want red and blue markers. And he also need poster-size paper. SHIT.” “What does he need it for?”“For trial. He always need shit at the last minute. You want to go to Office Depot with me, Napoleon?”“Sure. ” I would sit and wait for the mail to come. But the UPS didn’t get there until about 10:30, and that meant I had to sit around and look busy for an hour and a half. Sometimes Mark would walk by, this short little guy who walked around as if he owned the place. “Napoleon! Why you ain’t got nothin’ on yo desk? Put some papers up there so it look like you doin’ something.” I would put papers on my desk but how are you supposed to make it look like you’re doing something with a stack of papers? I just couldn’t get past that. I had to actually be doing something. So I would go into the file room. In the file room were Ani and this guy Chuck, who was black and just sat there checking his email and surfing the internet. They were both about twenty or twenty-one. Ani, who was obviously Armenian and probably from Hollywood, just sat there text-messaging her friends. “Do you guys have any filing I could do?” I stood at the door as they looked at me. “Uhh….yeah…. Chuck nodded at a pile of papers on the crowded table in the middle of the room. “You can file that stuff.” I went through the papers and filed the documents by case name. “How’s your girl?” Chuck said. “She’s being a bitch,” Ani said. “She had this attitude with me last night.”“When are you gonna get rid of her? How long has this been going on?” “She was hanging out with my brother all night long. They went into his room for like an hour and wouldn’t come out. I was like what the fuck.” ‘Dude, Ani…seriously….y ou need to move the hell on.”“I need a good man like you, Chuckie. You could give it to me good!” “Uh, yeah,” he laughed. “My girlfriend would really like that.” “I don’t know what my problem is,” Ani said, staring at some text message on her phone. “You shouldn’t date me, Chuck. No one should date me. I need to be with Angelina.” She gazed at a picture of Angelina Jolie on the wall. “I don’t know,” Chuck said. “She’s just not that hot.” “You’re crazy, Chuckie. She’s gorgeous. Look at her! Oh my GOD. Do you think she’s cute, Napoleon?” “Uh, I don’t know. Not my type.”“You guys are both gay. She’s beautiful.” “NAPOLEON!!!” Camille’s yell came through the walls. “Where you at?”“He’s in here,” Ani said. Camille showed up in the door. “Ani, you stealing my boy?” “Yeah, Camille. We’re stealing Napoleon from you. He’s cute. I’m gonna corrupt him.” Camille looked at me with disapproval. “NAPOLEON. You belong to me, you get it? I don’t want to come find you. The UPS is here. Ani, don’t take my boy from me.” “Whatever, nigga. Relax, niggaaaa. It’s coooool.” “Ani, you better be glad you my friend, otherwise I wouldn’t let you call me that.” “We’re homies, Camille. You know I’m black like you.” “Well, you ghetto enough to be black. Come on Napoleon.” So I went to open the UPS. I sat and went through packages of letters, sorting them and date-stamping them. “Yeah, Napoleon. Don’t let me catch you being nobody else’s assistant, you understand? You belong to me. If you ain’t got somethin’ to do you get a stack of papers and put that shit on yo desk so you look busy.”“Okay.” ’Cause these people round here be taking advantage of you.” We went back to our office. Camille looked over at me and gave a dissatisfied look. “Napoleon, yo clothes is wrinkled as hell. You got an iron at home?”“Uh, I don’t think so.” “Damn, you a mess. Look at yoself.” I looked at my clothes and realized they were old and wrinkled. I was a mess. “I’m gonna git you some clothes. Okay?” About a week later she came to work with a bag full of clothes. She set them down by my desk. “Here you go, Napoleon, here yo clothes.” I looked through the bag. There were brand new pants and dress shirts, and even boxers and socks. “Whoa… thanks, Camille. What do I owe you?” “Nothin’. You my friend, Napoleon. I had to give you some good clothes.” I was overwhelmed. It wasn’t the clothes that did it. It was just the simple fact that no one had been this nice to me for the longest time. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had shown generosity to me. I guess I had gotten used to people not caring in this big city. For someone to go out of their way to take care of me was unbelievable. “You got to try on yo clothes!” she said, so I went and put on the pants and the shirt she’d gotten. I looked myself in the mirror. I was wearing nice new clothes that proved someone cared about me. For the first time I thought that there was kindness in Los Angeles. Maybe there was some humanity out here, where no one was supposed to live in the first place. I felt like I had just discovered an oasis in the middle of the desert. I got back to the office and Camille looked at me. She looked like a proud mother. “Napoleon, you look so handsome in yo new clothes.”“Camill e, you’re a married woman,” Ryann said. “Why are you buying clothes for this boy?” “Ryann, you know it ain’t like dat. I ain’t got a crush on Napoleon’s goofy ass. It’s just that there’s something about you, Napoleon. I was trying to tell Calvin last night. I was like, ‘Calvin there’s this goofy white boy at work. But he don’t seem white to me.’ And it ain’t like you a man or woman neither. You just Napoleon. And you ain’t even white or black. I can’t explain it. You just a person! Underneath all that wrinkleness and goofiness you really complex and serious. I can tell, Napoleon. Trust me. I know people.” Wednesday, June 24, 1992 This morning Grandpa went and saw Grandma. When he got back at ten. we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. It took us an hour to get there, and an hour to see everything. It was 12:00 when we left. We had lunch at Steak ‘n Shake, and after that we went to the hospital that Grandma was in. My sister and I waited in the lobby until Grandpa and mom were through. Then we went home. Later in the day a man from the hospital called and said that Grandma probably won’t make it through the pneumonia she has and might die either tonight or within the next few days. Mom and my sister and I played tennis after we got home. MalikI walked back down Adams with the Ralphs bag in my hand. I had two forty ounce bottles of Old English and a giant frozen pizza. I had found the pizza on sale for five dollars. The day was another hot and musty one. There was no breeze and the palm trees stood motionless, towering above me in rows. This was the smoggiest part of the city. Right at the middle of the basin where it collected. I couldn’t wait for nightfall so the heat would die down. On my left I passed the haunted house, as I called it. It was a giant Victorian with three stories hidden behind a tall row of hedges. It was always dark except for purple lights shining through the windows at night. I swear there was a belfry full of bats in that house. I had seen strange old people going in and out. Relics from a time before the freeways. Traffic breathed around me, in and out with a constant roar. On my right was a huge ugly apartment building. It was a two story block with about thirty units crammed with Mexicans. In front was an atrocious cement parking lot.. Today some of the Mexican families were having a barbecue and the kids played with a bouncy ball on the pavement. An old black man was sitting and watching everything. A group of Mexican women looked at me as I passed. For a moment our eyes met. They didn’t recognize me and I didn’t recognize them.I turned the corner onto Ellendale Place. It was a very wide street, full of two-story apartment buildings from the sixties and seventies. Sometimes I could swear there was no way of telling what decade it was. Los Angeles was full of neighborhoods like that, that took you out of reality. That’s what I liked about Ellendale. I passed a quiet little Korean church and got to my apartment. It was a two-story place with four apartments. Ours was on the ground floor. Malik was still on the couch on the porch. He was a black guy I knew who would stop by sometimes. He was about six foot ten and extremely mellow. I didn’t know much about him. He had fallen asleep. “Hey,” I said, holding up the forty I’d gotten him. He awoke. “Ohhh…shit. I fell asleep.”“Here’ s yours,” I said, and gave him the Old English. I went inside to put the pizza in the freezer. Then I came back outside and we sat together on the couch. It was a pretty nice day if you were under a canopy. The college baseball team lived above us on the second floor, and some of them had just started drinking for the day. As we sat, beer cans flew down on the grass. A pizza box sat in the hedge. Yes, the world was a mess. But I was fine drinking my forty. I wasn’t hurting anybody. “Are you still doing security?” I asked Malik. “Yeah, but…my boss is being a little difficult.” “What’s his problem?” “Well, I have to take the bus all the way from my parents’ place to the club in West Hollywood. And that’s pretty far, you know? And he gets mad when I’m late. I’m late a lot though.” “That sucks.” He started to roll a blunt with a cheap cigar he’d bought at the store. With the skill of a surgeon he methodically cut the cigar, emptied it on the ground, then filled it with weed from a little baggy. “This is the chronic,” he said. We sat and watched cars fly by and old Korean ladies walk past with groceries. “You know what happened last night?” Malik said. “I was chilling with the homies from SOA in Hollywood, and my friend Stress was pretty drunk and for some reason he started kicking my bike.” “What’s his problem?” “I don’t know! He kicked it so hard that the wheel got all bent. So I couldn’t ride it.” “How did you get home?” “On the bus. But it was really late, and I was drunk. I was really drunk, because I drank a bunch of vodka. It was like two in the morning and I took the bus home. But I fell asleep on the bus, dude.” “When did you wake up?” “I was at eightieth street. So I had to walk back home, like forty blocks.” “With your bike?” “Yeah. I had to carry it.” Something about the story struck me as hilarious and I laughed out loud. “Damn dude,” he said. “I went on a mission last night.” I was feeling pretty good. The sun would be setting in about forty minutes and the heat was fading away. Our neighbors were playing old Mexican love ballads. In the dimming daylight all the elements of the city started congealing into one vast, moving panorama. A helicopter flew lazily overhead on its way to somewhere we would never know. There were many mysteries around us. “I bought a pizza,” I said. “Should I cook it?” “I was getting hungry actually.” Malik never had enough money so I tried to make some food every time he came over. He always ate and was always grateful. I went to pop the pizza in the oven. As it cooked the sun went down and inky blue of nighttime stole across the sky. The skyscrapers downtown still had a tinge of rosy pink at their tops from the sun, and pretty soon that was gone. The neighborhood got pretty quiet. When the pizza was done we both got plates and sat on the couch, eating. “This is good,” Malik said. “Thanks man.” “No problem. You know, Epicurus said that you should never eat alone.” He thought. “Yeah. I could see that. I’m an herbalist and I believe you should never blaze alone.” After awhile we were done and he got up. “I gotta be going.” “Where are you off to?” “Work.” “Thanks for the blunt.” “Alright.” “Are you gonna be late?” He thought about it, then looked at his watch. “Yeah, probably.” “Sorry dude.” “It’s not your fault.” Then he was off, down the street and into the night. I never knew when I would see Malik again. He was kind of mysterious. At the end of the day you could never know him completely. He just came, drank a forty, and left. I stood on the porch, thinking that everything was pretty okay with the world. My other roommate Jason would be home soon, but for now I was alone. Alone at last. A Childhood Reminiscence Inspired by CherI was sitting in my apartment watching a biography of Cher on A & E. It had gotten up to the nineties portion of her career, past the Sonny and Cher days and the eighties big hair days. When they started talking about Sonny Bono's death it showed a clip from Cher's eulogy, which had aired live on CNN without her knowledge. She had given the eulogy even though they had been divorced for over twenty years and he had a new wife and kids. I watched, half amused, as Cher delivered her speech."People think I was the strong one because Sonny was always the butt of the jokes. But what people don't know is that Sonny came up with the jokes. He had all the ideas. He was the pillar..."Here she started to weep."This is probably the most important thing I've ever done," she said, and went on to describe the early days when she had just come to Hollywood as a sixteen year old girl and Sonny took her in, teaching her about show business. Three years later they had a hit song together and were famous. As she went on I saw that Cher had probably never completely fallen out of love with Sonny. The eulogy was strangely moving.I walked out onto the patio outside of my place. I started thinking about Neil, my friend whose mom was a big Cher fan. She had three Cher posters on the wall. They were scary, massive pictures that made Cher look like Medusa or someone who lived on Mount Olympus. Neil lived on the mountain where I grew up. He smelled and no one at school liked him. But he lived right up the street and we had a similar sense of humor. He had a Nintendo system and cable, which I never had, so that was a major draw. And in my neighborhood there was so little to do that I would spend every day of my summer at his house playing Super Mario Brothers and Mortal Kombat or spying on our neighbors.But then he would start to imitate animals or he would attack me physically and I would have to leave. One time he perched himself on the couch and raised his arms, going "Kawww!!! Kawww!!! Kawww!" Every day I asked myself why I spent so much time with him.There were so many reasons that my parents shouldn't have let me spend time at his house. He lived with his mom, who was never home. And when she was home she listened to Cher and drank beer with her boyfriend. She was young, about thirty. When she was at work there was absolutely no supervision except their landlord Lee, who was single, drove a big black cadillac and had a big stack of Playboys.One day Neil and I were bored and decided to antagonize Lee. He never went outside, so Neil and I hardly ever saw him. Lord knows what he was doing, probably watching the Spice channel. In the past Neil and I usually sneaked into his house to steal his Playboys. But since we couldn't do that, we decided on something better. We took pieces of binder paper and wrote a series of threatening messages on them; "We're going to kill you."; "We know where you live."; "You're gonna die." One just said "Leeeeeeeeeeeee" in scary red twelve-year-old handwriting, with devil flames rising behind it. We thought we were going to terrify him out of his wits. So we knocked on his door and dropped the first paper, then ran off into the trees and hid for a half an hour."Let's go back now.""No, he's gonna be there.""Come on!""Well I'm going.""Wait!"So we dropped the second paper, gave a knock then ran like the devil. We kept going back and seeing that the papers were gone. As our confidence grew we went back more frequently. We were getting pretty obnoxious. We set one of the papers on fire in front of his door and ran. Finally we ran out of paper, so we went back and just shouted insults at him from outside."Lee, you piece of shit!" Neil yelled. "Lee, you suck!"Then we ran and hid behind some bushes."Nothing's gonna happen.""He's probably not even home.""No, I saw him, he's there.""He's probably so scared.""Let's just go, this is boring."Then we heard a rustling of the bushes next to us. I looked up and saw the huge pot-bellied, bearded figure of Lee standing above. He was holding a giant shotgun, pointing it down at us. I turned to tell Neil to run and he wasn't even by my side anymore. I got up as Lee started firing into the air. I ran as far as my legs could take me as the BANG BANG of his gun sounded.I finally found Neil sitting on a tree-stump. "Please don't tell my mom," he said. "She'll kill me." We stayed away from the house for the rest of the day.That night after Neil's mom got home Lee came over to talk with her. Neil and I hid in his room and heard Lee's muffled yelling and his mom weeping softly."Lee, please, they were just playing a joke.""Bullshit, Debra!""You can't do this to us, Lee. We don't have anywhere to go.""Do you know what a pain in the ass those kids are? I can't deal with this any more, Debra."Neil and I sat in his room, the room that smelled like cinnamon air freshener and dirty old carpets, and listened to the argument. Neil sat on his bed curled in a ball. They were clearly in danger of losing their house.Pretty soon after that, Debra decided that Neil was too much trouble to raise so she sent him to Louisiana to live with his grandparents. He sent me some letters but after awhile I lost touch with him. He moved back to the Bay Area but I didn't see him much after that.And then, since I was reflecting on the past, I started thinking about our family's black lab, Josh. He was a perfect dog. He had fantastic manners. He wouldn't eat if anyone was watching and he would wait to be invited in the house before he came in. He wouldn't speak unless spoken to. He was like a British aristocrat in the body of a labrador retriever.But one day during an Indian summer he just disappeared. My dad went all over the mountain looking for him in the heat. He never turned up, and my sister cried every day for a month. I shed no tears because I felt almost no emotions at that point of my life. So a few months later when my thirteenth birthday rolled around I planned the usual party- all my friends at our house for a hike.So my friends arrived on October 9th at about eleven in the morning. I opened all my presents. I got a bunch of GI Joe guys that were awesome, a Super Soaker, which was the king of all squirt guns. It would get your enemy soaking wet after one squirt. Then came lunch, hot dogs and cake. My standard meal back then. After lunch my dad announced it was time for the hike.So my dad, the leader, led us down into the canyon. We went down a little logging road through redwood trees in a remote, dark part of the forest. We were all running and laughing and chasing after each other."Who do you think would win in a fight to the death, Batman or Spiderman?""I think Neil's mom would win.""Spiderman would win.""Hey guys, what's that?"In a clearing there was a big black pile of hair.It looked like an animal."Look, it's Neil's mom." Everyone laughed.But I knew what it really was."That's Josh," I said.We stood in a circle, looking down at my dog."Oh, I'm sorry Andrew, that's really sad.""Yeah, that is sad. I'm really sorry."My dad wasn't affected like the rest of us."Oh, so that's where he's been all this time."I looked at my pet. I could see his head and his jaw. He used to bark out of that jaw. I could see his tail. It was twisted where he had been hit by a car when I was ten. He was just laying there, a pile of black nothingness, his eye sockets were empty. Is that going to happen to me when I die?I was tired of reminiscing so I went back in the apartment. They had moved on to Cher's relationship with her daughter Chastity, a lesbian. Cher had become a gay rights activist because of this. I liked that better. I didn't like all this talk of death on the TV.Leaving SaturnI walked out towards Landing Platform B. Technicians walked all around me as spaceships cruised into the port. On the opposite side was the part of the space station we called downtown, a huge indoor expanse of gravity-controlled lounges, bars and places of ill repute. On the station laws had not yet taken effect, so you could get anything you wanted. Any service you wanted was provided. That was what brought most people here. It was only half of what brought me. I walked under the huge glass canopy of downtown. Neon lights flashed brightly around me. Monkeys ran through the street, if you could call it a street. Someone had brought about a hundred monkeys on the station and now they annoyed everyone by stealing things, attacking people and making the whole station filthy. Drunk people walked around aimlessly like it was Bourbon street, bumping into me as they weaved through the crowd. I didn’t notice them. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Just a small bar where I could drink until I forgot everything. Up through the glass the darkness of space smothered the station as we hurtled through the void. Saturn was glowing above us, only about a thousand miles away. I don’t know what brought everyone to Station 32. It wasn’t my concern that night as I walked into Ed’s. It was an old-fashioned bar with comfortable stools and an old man serving drinks who reminded me of earth. It was like some bar you’d see in Ketchum, Ohio or Ashland, Oregon. A place you never wanted to leave. When I sat down an old Tammy Wynette song started playing. I missed earth so bad but I couldn’t go back. Once you got out here it was too expensive and too far to go back to earth. And there were so many reasons I left, the war being the least of them. After the major cities got bombed I left but I could’ve lived there with the war. I didn’t mind. It was just the final straw I guess, after what happened with my wife and our kid. It wasn’t something I talked about and I didn’t dwell on it. It was just bad luck - end of story. Then she sat next to me. The girl was half-human, half Gentian. They were some alien group that had boarded the station about twenty years ago. They were from some galaxy twenty light-years away and their women were gorgeous. Her face was human, and her hair was dark. But it was the skin – dark and scaly, and her tail, falling two feet below her. Those were the Gentian things that got the earth guys hot. I guess they thought it was kinky to make it with a chick that had a tail. “You from earth?” “Yeah. Where else?” “You don’t seem like you’re from there.” “Where do you think I’m from?” “I don’t know, I’m sorry.” “What are you, Gentian?” “Only half.” “My apologies.” “It’s okay. Listen – are you attached?” “No.” “Do you want to make some quick money?” “What kind of work?” She leaned up close to me. “Have you ever killed someone?” “Back on earth….but I don’t think I want to do that kind of thing anymore.” “I can give you a lot of money.” “Jesu s….” “Could you?” “Who is it?” “My husband.” “What’s he done that’s so bad?” She paused. A look got on her face like she was going to cry. “He…he’s a very violent man…he…he killed my brother.” “I’ m sorry. Who’s your brother?” “You ever been to the Golden Eagle?” “Yeah, that’s down by sector seven. I know that place.” “The owner…that was my brother.” “You’re kidding me.” “No.” Borsov? That was your brother?” He had given me a lot of work that let me have some money and a decent life when I first got here. He was a good guy, but he got into drugs and got killed in his bar one night. No one knew who did it. “How do you know it was your husband?” “He was into opium, he used to sell it to Borsov a lot. He was always hanging around that bar.” “A big Gentian guy?” “Yeah, you probably saw him. He killed my brother and I know because one of his thugs told me. I pretended like I didn’t know.” “Well, how much does it pay?” “I have ten thousand. I stole it from my husband. He’ll probably find out soon. You have to do it soon. I have a gun you can use.” “No, that’s fine. I have my own. Trust me, it’ll do the job.” “Can you do it today?” “When?” “He gets home at seven. I was thinking you could hide in my closet and then when he comes home you can come out and shoot him.” “We have a couple of hours. I’ll go home and get my gun. Where should we meet up?” “Bozo’s,” she said. “Okay.” I knew the clown bar well. It was a freak dive, all the waiters were dressed as clowns and were hopped up on space pills and opium the whole time. I left her and walked back to my place. Finally I had a job, to make some money. I didn’t know if I would be able to kill the guy. I guess I’d see when the time came. Back at my room I got my gun out and loaded it. I held the smooth steel against my palm and looked out at Saturn glowing in the dark of space. It shown in like a beacon. It was weird being away from earth. It was like there was nothing keeping us human anymore, out here in zero gravity. She was at the place all right. She was on a stool at the bar. I walked in and tried to ignore the clowns all around me, shouting and singing their insane drugged out songs. I felt nauseous. I sat next to her. “You have the gun?” I nodded. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” She took my hand and led me out of the bar. Her hand was smooth and warm. I hadn’t been with an alien, let alone a human woman in a long time. I started to like the feel of being with a woman again. We walked down the platform past the other drunk space idiots, passed out and fighting everywhere. All anyone did up here was fight, drink and screw. We walked through corridors deep into the interior of the ship and got to her place. It was in Section H, which was pretty deep inside. She unlocked the door and we practically fell into the apartment. It was dark but we found our way to the bed. Pretty soon our clothes were off. I had never made love with an alien but all the pieces were in the same places. Afterwards we lay there. She got up and turned on the light. The place was small and bare. “He’s going to be here soon.” “Alright.” I got up and put my clothes on. “Oh, before I forget.” She went to her cabinet and took out a wad of cash from a clothes drawer. “You can count it if you want.” “I trust you.” I took the money, then got in the closet and held my gun ready to shoot. She gave me a warm, wet kiss before she closed the closet. I made sure I could see out of a crack in the doorway. Then she walked over to the bed and lay down, reading some Gentian book. Time stretched on and I was about to fall asleep when the door slammed open. The creature who walked in was the ugliest Gentian I ever saw. He must’ve been six foot seven, with the huge hooked nose and horns on his head. His scales were huge and bright, and his muscles bulged. He spoke in Gentian. “Glosh. Bogosh chaloogalosh. Vrozgalosh!!!!!”Th ey started arguing. Then he hit her smack on the face. She fell on the bed crying. He stood above her heaving and sweating. This was how all the Gentian guys acted around their women. His back was to me so I figured the time was right. I slipped my gun through the crack, aimed at his head and fired. His head split open so quickly he probably didn’t hear the gunshot. Blood spilled in a stream all over the bed as his body stood for a second, in shock. Then it fell with a thud. I came out of the closet. She was staring at the body and didn’t say a word. “Well, what are we gonna do with this thing?” She moved her mouth but didn’t say a word. “Trash. Trash.” “Good idea. You gonna help me move it?” I went to grab the body to bring it to the trash chute. They had them in every apartment on the station and it sucked everything out to space. The body would never be found by mankind. It would probably fall apart in the atmosphere. She came and picked up his legs. I got his arms and we lifted him up to the chute. The door was barely wide enough to fit him, but we squeezed his body into the narrow compartment. Then we closed the door and hit the flush button. For a second a sickening wheeze filtered through the pipe as the air struggled to suck the giant corpse out into space. We looked at each other with terror. If it didn’t work we’d have to call maintenance to come unplug it. Then his body started to dislodge, with a rumble. Slowly it squeezed down the tube. Then with a screech I heard the body fly down the tube, suctioned into outer space. It was gone for eternity. “You’d better go,” she said and pushed me towards the door. “You need to clean this up. You have a mess here.” “I’ll take care of it.” Her eyes were absent as she pushed me out the door. “Hey- will I see you again?” “Maybe.” She closed the door. For a second I stood there. Then I walked back up to the platform by the surface. The parties hadn’t stopped. The noise was louder and the people were crowded thicker into the walkway. All the bars and space lounges were packed. I felt nauseous again. I walked through the downtown until I got to the landing platform, past the lights and stench of people. The windows were huge. Space expanded around me. Saturn was fading into the distance as we pulled away from it towards our next stop, probably one of the moon colonies. I just stared at the giant, glowing planet as it got smaller. There was a strange empty feeling as it got further and further away. I felt like I’d done a good thing. He was no good, he deserved to be punished. But somehow I didn’t feel as human anymore. I couldn’t even tell you what a human was if you’d asked me. After awhile Saturn was too small to see. It disappeared and we floated in the dark. Dog in a YardThat night his girlfriend came over and he made dinner for the two of them, a pasta dish he had grown quite good at. He had a special secret that included a touch of balsamic vinegar, garlic, and butter. She loved it when he cooked and she always requested the dish when she came over.She had been exhausted from work and fell asleep early on the couch with her head on his lap. He carried her to his bed and she slept with a light smile on her face. Sometimes she talked in her sleep, saying mostly gibberish that made him laugh. She always seemed to be actually smiling while she slept, and it was better than watching TV in many ways.For a long time he watched her sleeping form, serene and saint-like. Then he went to the window and watched the street. A bus flew by, well-lit and empty save for a few separate souls asleep or reading newspapers. He put the TV on mute and the flashing blue and yellow images lit up the bare white walls of his apartment. The street was devoid of traffic and a few orange streetlights shined on the empty sidewalks.On nights like these, strange memories from his childhood would come to mind, unsought and unsummoned. There was the time his neighbors were going on vacation and he had been walking by as they left. He waved at the family in their car, packed with camping supplies. Then he noticed their dog, a golden retriever, barking insanely in the yard, his nose poking through the fence, barking, barking, barking. After awhile the dog stopped barking and stared quizzically at the road where his family had gone.Poor dumb dog, he thought. He probably thinks he’s been abandoned forever. If only he knew that they were coming back in a week. He wished he could somehow tell this to the heartbroken beast.He stared at the empty street for awhile, sorting through memories like these, and then went to look at his girlfriend. She was beautifully indifferent, sleeping away her long day. He kind of wished she was awake so he could tell her this funny story, but he knew she was tired. He wasn’t sleepy so he went back and looked at the TV for awhile. There wasn’t much on.
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