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It begins as a low rumble in the distance, as darkness beds down for night. The clouds infiltrate the purple sky in shredded silver columns, preceding the massing bulkhead. The clapboard house across the street lights up in the flash of God’s Instamatic. ”One one thousand, two one…” My count is interrupted by thunder like fireworks exploding in the upstairs room. Then sirens, first a fire engine, then an ambulance. Cop cars and taxi cabs are all that I can see drive past.
Another flash. ”One one thousand, two…” Another round of fireworks, just a little louder than the last, and I feel the first droplet, on my right ankle, exposed as it’s crossed over my left thigh. I look down at the suicidal raindrop on my ankle and a second droplet shatters on my nape. I drag on my cigarette. I exhale a cloud just thinner than the approaching thunderhead and toss the butt into the street. I stand up. I pick up my aluminum and nylon lawn chair and fold it up. I put the folded chair under my arm, and walk up the steps. I knock on the heavy steel screen door and look up into the mirror above the door. I hear a loud buzz and the door comes open with a thud, like dropping an aluminum baseball bat on a linoleum floor. I open the unlocked wooden door behind the screen. I bring myself and my chair inside, and close the wooden door behind me. I lean my chair just to the right of the door jamb and sit on the sofa under the stairs. I hear the heavy steel screen door thud shut and lock again.
I lay across the couch, my head on the armrest farthest from the door, my knees hooked over the other armrest, feet hanging over the side. I interlock the fingers of my hands and put them behind my head. I swing my feet in gentle alternating rhythm against the couch’s vinyl upholstery. I drum the pads of my interlocked fingers against the knuckles opposite. The couch is too short for my whole torso, so I’m bent at the waist and the hammer of my pistol is poking into my gut. I take the gun out of my waistband and set it on my belly, on top of my shirt. Another roar of thunder, the sound of God hitting a broken bat home run. It sounds so much farther away through the heavy wooden door. The cold seems so much farther away. The storm is here but I am warm and dry. My eyelids weigh a kilo each. I close my eyes.
I dream I’m in the home dugout of my high school baseball field. There’s a game going on, but I’m in the dugout. Coach has me by the lapels of my blue and silver varsity jacket. He’s yelling at me. He’s throwing me onto the field. I’m taking off my jacket and grabbing my glove and I’m running out to right field. The grass is dried yellow green and the sky is cloudless white gray. The batter seems a mile away. The pitcher winds up and delivers. The tiny batter swings, and connects, and the ball is flying towards me, its creamy white leather invisible as it rises against the milky sky. The crack of the bat reaches my ears.
I’m awake and the heavy wood door is splinters flying at me. I cover my face with my forearms and roll into the back of the couch. The gun slips from my belly and is pinned against the sofa. I turn my head and see black helmets and black machine guns and black gloves and black boots and black flack jackets. I’m torn from the sofa, my pistol falls to the floor. I see shag carpeting and feel those heavy boots on my back, on my arms: pinned behind my back. I feel cold metal around my wrists and the hot friction of the marbled brown shag against my face. Upstairs, another crack of the bat, and another and another, closer and smaller than the thunder, sharper, like m80s, like gunshots. I close my eyes.
January 11, 2009
i sit in the cold of new night. an older couple walks briskly by and i nod to them, unrequited. the darkened side street is quiet. there is a small aluminum floodlight in a cabinet inside. i am supposed to attach it to the top of the one of the double doors that is closest to the outlet above the cabinet. there is a rubber-coated clamp welded to the aluminum floodlight for this purpose. i am supposed to attach the floodlight to the top of the door, thread its cord over the door’s top hinge, through the gap between the open door and the jamb, and plug it into the outlet above the cabinet.
i am supposed to make sure the conical flood of light it emits falls on the cardboard cut-out of a six-scoop waffle cone as tall as i am. the light is supposed to make it easier for people to see the sign. seeing the sign is supposed to make people want to eat ice cream, which we sell inside. if passers by succumb to the sign, i’m supposed to scoop the flavors they choose, into the vessel they choose, and give them that vessel. they, in turn, are supposed to give me money, in an amount corresponding to the vessel they have chosen, which i am supposed to place orderly, according to denomination, in the cash register.
i’m not going to plug in the floodlight. i don’t want to sell any more ice cream tonight. not that the floodlight works that well, not when its cold like this. i smoke a cigarette and my stomach agitates at the settling darkness. a group of arab men passes in tight formation, tersely debating the youngest war as they go. a sliver of the conversation lingers after them and finds my ear: “what peace…” the way they’re dressed reminds me of the secular muslims who smoked cigars at the Café Bassam, when it was still downtown, when one could still smoke inside. when i worked as a valet. when i was supposed to park people’s cars.
