Hospital

Stitched, bandaged, pampered in a way. Interrogated, counseled, consoled. Now alone in her bed, hospital remote in hand. Buttons for the television, for the nurse, for the bed, for the lights. She turns everything off but keeps the bed back elevated. She closes her eyes, wants to sleep but knows sleep won't come. It's quiet, still. She's tired but still too full of ideas, questions, confusion. She tries to concentrate, to focus on one thing at a time, but they all seem layered, related, cross pollenated.
If her mind were a room, her thoughts would be a floor full of clutter piled in places from floor to ceiling. But back in the far corner, something is drawing her, compelling her, beckoning her towards itself with a subtle kind of warmth. It's the one still thing in the shifting mess. She pushes aside the tangle of thoughts towards this warmth but before she's two steps in its direction, she recoils and then freezes in her tracks when she recognizes its source.
The chaos in the room presses in upon her once again but the clutter is cold and the corner is warm. And so despite all the advice against it, she leans over the side of her bed, picks up the phone and calls home.
He picks up on the third ring. "Hello?" His voice sounds so small as he says it, as if he's been hollowed out.
"Hi, baby." She hadn't intended to use a term of endearment, it just slipped out as if by accident or by reflex habit.
"Janet, I. . ." He's caught off guard. He wants to say he's sorry but the word sounds so pathetic, so inadequate, so ridiculously cliched.
Hearing his voice, she's reminded of the home, the life they've built, the comfort and the safety. Despite all that's happened tonight, despite all that's been lost, she still longs for the comfort of home.

Bathroom Floor

On the bathroom floor, Laura is shaking, holding a baby blue towel to her nose, blood slowly turning it purple. A million thoughts swirl like the stars that circle her head. She's seen them before, these stars. She remembers a time when she thought stars circling one's head was just a silly cartoon convention. But then there was that night four years ago, the first time he hit her, that time between her jaw and her cheekbone. The world faded to black as her vision spun around along with her head. It was a slow dissolve, she saw the floor rising to meet her before things went entirely dark. She couldn't have been out for long because he was still standing where he had been that painful instant ago. The thought of what had happened had not settled upon her yet. Her ears were ringing and she shook her head to get her senses back. And then she saw them, little points of light, bright white centers with fiery orange edges. They orbited around her like tiny neon carousel horses.
And now here they were again doing the same mad laps around her head they did all those years ago. They flare and disappear, fewer and dimmer each time. But thoughts remain, all of them vying for equal time and attention. The thoughts take the form of fearsome questions – why did he, how could he, what did I, stay or go, where could I go, is my nose broken, how will I hide or explain the bruise. And on and on and around again, amplified with each recurrence. They cycle faster than she can think about, let alone answer, them. They pass through her almost viscerally, causing her to tremble.
She can feel her grip on the present moment loosening. A crack appears in the floor, a space large enough to get her fingers between the edges. She prys the hole open and finds that it expands effortlessly. There is darkness beyond, a kind of oblivion. It calls to her, beckons her forth, offering her the blissful tranquility of a mind unhinged - the luxury of soft thoughts, blurry edges, and kaleidoscope ideas. She eyes the opening, head cocked to the side like a puppy issued an unfamiliar command. The crack is widening on its own now, she retreats away from the inching edge. She scampers to the far bathroom wall. She is afforded a margin of safety but despite its sloth-like pace, the creep draws towards her.
She looks around for anything that would serve as a kind of defense. She gathers what ammunition she can and hurls it at the void - shampoo, conditioner, skin cream, and shavers. They are all swallowed, slowly as if dissolving into tar - held, in mid-air, aloft on the viscous surface of the widening maw. Its appetite is relentless, patient, endless.

Outside the door, he hears the clatter. Still unsure of himself, he hesitates then runs to the door. He knocks softly then calls her name. More items hit the floor and he hears something shatter. He knocks louder now, calls her name again, asks what's going on, pleads for some sort of response.

She is fixated on the hole in the floor, still carrying the items she's thrown at it. A kind of terror mutes her, as if cotton balls have been stuffed into her mouth. She wants to scream the void away but she makes no sound. From somewhere beyond the black mass she hears a sound, muted and indistinct. And yet, familiar. She cocks her ear towards the sound to get a better listen. She grabs the crystal vase that sometimes holds flowers, empty today, and launches it at the void. It too is caught, stuck, it hangs in the air like an unresolved chord.
And then that sound again, louder this time. The sound becomes a voice. She tries to divide her attention between the hole and that sound but it is nearly upon her. She can reach up and grab back the things she's thrown at it. But she does not. She cowers closer into the corner and shuts her eyes tight. Now, with her eyes closed, she listens again for the sound. It's him, he's calling to her. Fear of falling into the thick of the black hole replaces her fear of his violence. She whimpers his name and asks for help. The hole, as if in retaliation, presses in upon her faster now. She calls his name again, this time with full voice.
Over the surface of the ooze, she sees the door open. His face parts the darkness like the red sea. The items held aloft come crashing to the ground. She bolts through the center of it and rushes at him. She wraps her arms around him. The unexpected impact catches him off guard and he takes a step back to absorb the inertia. He is bewildered but decides to make the best of it. He wraps his arms around her in return.

And then like a SWAT team Flash-Bang canister, like a fast-ball into a catcher's mitt, reality snaps back into place and she remembers it all - his fist, the pain, the blood. She recoils away from him, pushing him away again with a mixture of horror and revulsion. She looks back and sees the mess she's made, the broken vase. And something entirely unfamiliar, red pools of blood that she does not recognize - she bled from her nose on to her dress and into the towel but not on the floor. An awareness of a new pain comes upon her, not from her nose but from her feet. It shoots up her leg now and she crumbles. She pulls her foot around and sees three, maybe four tiny but not insignificant glass shards gleaming ruby, bloody red.

She closes her eyes and cries. She buries her face in her hands but her nose explodes with pain. She releases a yelp then returns to the business of her tears, hands at her side, palms up, resting on the floor.

"I'll call for help," he says and runs for a phone. More lost than ever, he is glad, in a way, to have this task - in the mad confusion of the last few minutes, calling for help is the only ordered thing he's been able to do. He wants to think - of her, of what to say next, of what to do, of what she was going through in there, of what's become of her, of what's become of them - but he forces himself to concentrate on these orderly steps: get the phone, call for help, get the phone, call for help. Over and over again until it's done.
He picks up the phone, looks at the dial pad, and tries to remember the number for an emergency. Get the phone, call for help. Step by step, one thing at a time. He presses the numbers: nine, one, one. He focuses on necessary details only. He stays on the line with the operator until help arrives. A fire truck, an ambulance - first responders. And then a police car. Questions are asked, reports are made, she is taken to the hospital, he is instructed to stay away the mandatory twenty-four hours following any incident of domestic violence. He does not argue with the authorities.
After everyone is gone he surveys the apartment. For all that's happened, so little has changed as far as appearances go. That seems wrong somehow, incongruous. He returns to the one place where evidence of what has transpired still remains. The blood on the bathroom floor has coagulated and dried. It looks nearly black now. He thinks to clean but then his cell phone rings. He answers it where he stands, "hello?" His manager asks him about the report due in tomorrow. He does not answer. He just keeps looking at the mess on the bathroom floor.

Duffel Bag

She turns her attention from the man knocking his head against the window to her duffel bag in her lap, to the task at hand. As she understands it, there are two kinds of pivotal moments in life. There are the ones that are thrust upon you, like the day a child gets killed by a drunk driver, the day a tornado splinters your house, the day the plane you're flying slams into the North Tower. And then there are the ones you thrust upon the world. Hers will be of the second sort, and what a thrust this shall be.
She runs the checklist through in her head. She opens the zipper just so, reaches in and inventories the items one by one by touch. Under normal circumstances, the whole scenario would be an impossible thing to attempt but for her, it's as natural as Darwinian evolution.
It's bitter fruit, it took time to grow, it was nurtured by good intentions gone wrong, principles imposed upon her as prison, guidelines enforced as law, opportunities to volunteer unmasked as obligations to serve. The church where she worshiped was ripe with promises - promises with a price. A lesson in service became a commitment to help out in what they called, Children's Church - a place where elementary school kids could go to learn about Jesus away from the more mature service that their parents attended. This service, she was told, would be seen by God as a seed that would reap a harvest of blessings - financial, social, spiritual, you name it. The transactional nature of the promised exchange was not spelled out in so many words but stripped to its essence, that's what it boiled down to.
And so she served in this ministry for which she had no passion, no aptitude, no experience. It was frustrating and stressful and when she made mention of leaving it became an exercise in guilt management, an exercise she was not able to win. And so she served. In the end she was only able to break free by simply not showing up. And so one Sunday morning she made the right turn to the mall instead of the left turn to the church. She turned off her cell phone and went from sale to sale and to stores whose wares were not on sale.
At home that night, there were five messages on her answering machine, thirteen on her cell phone. She deleted them all. When she finally got the call, she was not polite, she did not waste her time, she simply told them she was done, this was not a break, this was her telling them she wasn't coming back.
It wasn't like her to be so curt, but she was done placating them.
And the blessings never came. All the time, energy, and frustrations she had sowed, all the ink marks that wouldn't come out of her dress, the bruises from falling over misplaced toys, all the crow she had to swallow from parents with unreasonable demands. From all of that, she did not reap a harvest of blessings. Instead, she found she had grown a bitter tree. It reeked of disdain and scorn for the church. It was gnarled - it's limbs twisted in some awful macabre pose. There were no leaves, no flowers, no fruit save for one bright red bulb clinging to the topmost branch. She took and ate of it and the poison birthed the plans she was now carrying out. Step by step, note by note, wrong by wrong.

Prayer

At home now, Chad goes straight to his bed. He falls into the center of it, belly down, face planted in feather down pillow. Back from church, he feels as empty as ever. And he wonders what the point is. All this talk of hearing from God, all this talk about the love of Jesus, all this talk about God as a father figure. It's all theory and talk to him. It's not that the doesn't believe, even this anguish cannot separate him from his belief. But he's tired of belief. He's hungry for experience and that is what all these churches are failing to provide.
He knows better than to approach the pastor or one of the staff persons with his problems. He knows all too well that they will invite him to get more involved, to immerse himself into their "community." And it sounds appealing but without fail, an invitation to community turns out to be the first step into turning him into a cog to run the industry of the church. "Get involved," they say. "Be a part of something larger than yourself." And it sounds like something meaningful but it's a fishing expedition. They want to know what you can do and how they can use your talents to oil the machinery of the church.
As a scientist, geekery is part of his DNA and so he ends up behind some computer screen running a PowerPoint presentation of the sermon or editing ministry summary videos or worst of all, running the sound system. And it kills him because so often, he volunteered himself. He wanted to help, he wanted to be a part. He believed that this was a way to be a part of the Body of Christ as written about in the Bible. He thought this was living out the command to put others before yourself, to serve rather than be served. And he's not sure, maybe those acts did garner for him some treasure awaiting him in heaven, but he's come to understand that the Gospel is not just about good news in the life to come, it's about good news for the here and now - on earth as it is in heaven.
And it's there where he cannot reconcile surface to soul. He can understand the new life to come in the then and there but as for what to make of the here and now, he has no idea and the church is not offering any useful clues. It's frustrating because he can see the whole of it but it's the particulars that are hard to grasp. Christianity as he understands it is about ordering the world around the design that God made for it. This does not mean killing abortionists or banishing gays from our midst. It means learning how to love one another. It means understanding that no one, not one of us is any better than anybody else. We are all capable of unspeakable acts of depravity and wrath. It's the threat of consequences that haunts us, that corrals us, that makes society safe. But this is a thin veneer. We get away with what we can and test the limits. Christianity for him is about leveling the playing field, seeing everyone as one's brother and sister - a grand family living under the starry roof of the sky. It's utopian and idealistic, he knows, but he believes it's possible and true. It's easy enough to know that things are not as they should be. It's much harder to go past what shouldn't be and dare to envision things as they could.
This is the grand vision that enlivens him. As he understands it, Christians should be agents ushering in this ideal. He believes that the vision in the Bible of separating wheat from chaff is not a process of delineating between saved and unsaved (as the church is all too apt to do) but about gleaning the useful from the useless - and the standard is not a utilitarian one, it is about community and harmony and justice - the order of God's design. Put that way, he realizes he sounds like a hippy on good weed, but he doesn't care. He would rather believe that this is the aim of the Christian church than the thought that it's about getting people to pray some magical prayer, a list of words staring with sinner and ending with Jesus' name. He's seen it far too many times - Christians who will orchestrate the "salvation" of a friend, cajoling them into praying some prayer imprinted into the back of a tract, wearing them down until they capitulate and pray this thing called the sinner's prayer. Once they pull this off, they go about guilting him into getting his friends to pray this prayer. This is nothing but bullshit voodoo Christianity and he refuses to have any part of it.
But he also believes that this grossly misled church is God's agent of change - this broken, misled, institution is supposed to be the beacon, the light, the example. Instead, it's the wedge, the dividing line, the fortress that keeps the evil out in hopes of offering safety within. But it's a lie. Statistics show that life within the walls is no safer, no better, no happier than life without.
And so here, on this bed, he feels small, disconnected, misunderstood. The very church where he should find allies has become the den of thieves that Christ threw out of the temple two thousand years ago. It is so missing the point. It is blissfully, arrogantly, self-righteously passing judgment on the rest of society. What should be the source of solution has become a troubling problem. It confuses comfort with conformity and as such longs for control.
All these grand accusations. He's not above turning the mirror back on himself. He knows that he is just as much a part of the problem for not speaking up. What is he doing with his money, his talent, his resources that's so different from what the church does with theirs? He likes to believe that if he were to find a church with right vision, right heart, right understand of it's mission that he would sign on and join in the struggle, but the fact is that absence is no excuse for inaction. He sees the homeless on the street, at the intersections, on park benches. He passes them by with the same excuses, the same justifications. He sees the plight of suffering overseas but he turns the page and works on the crossword or sudoku puzzle instead.
It's an endless cycle of self-loathing. He hates the church, he hates himself. Everywhere he looks, it's all so wrong, so broken, so basically fucked up. Top to bottom, east to west. Where does one even begin. On his bed, he turns onto his back, looks at the ceiling for a second then closes his eyes. He prays for comfort, for understanding. He prays that he would know that God is there behind it all, that God is hearing him, that he is indeed loved as the Bible tells him so. He asks and he asks and he asks until they blur together, until sleep descends upon him.

In the corner of the room, the angel sits weeping into her wings. He gets it, he understands, he sees things as they should be and he feels so powerless. She wishes she could rouse him, reveal to him the potential, the power, the possibilities available to him. She weeps because she cannot, not yet, not without command. She so longs to burst the tiny bubble of love he's buried deep within his heart, buried, locked, walled, encased away. He's known so much heartache, so much disappointment, so much deception, so much misunderstanding peddled to him as truth, so much guilt heaped upon him in unwanted servings. She weeps for him. She gathers his prayers, picks them like flower petals up off the floor. And when she is sure that he is is asleep, she packs them away in the folds of her tunic. She walks out of the corner, unfurls her wings and with a rush of something like wind, something like fire, she ascends. In an instant she is gone.
He stirs for an instant, opens his eyes and sees something wispy, like the light grey smoke strands off of incense sticks. But before he can focus, before his mind can catalog the effect assigning it to meaning, it is gone. Maybe it wasn't there, maybe it was just the murk of sleep. He closes his eyes again and turns on his side. He pulls the covers up over himself with his free hand.

Domestic

He can't believe he's done it again. After all this time, after all these years without incident, after he finally came to understand that apologies no longer needed to be made. After all that, here he is again - his love in the bathroom, bleeding into a towel, bleeding from her nose which he broke with his hand, curled into a fist. After all this time. After all the trust had been pieced back together, bit by tiny bit, each bit pasted to the next by the glue of time and experience - words are not enough to hold these things together.
Rebuilding trust. It's like building a tower of cards with mittens on. The world changes. What was once a peaceful landscape becomes foreign soil with land-mines lurking beneath the surface. You want so much for things to be as they were but they never will be again. The best you can do is to remake the relationship in this newly reconfigured land.
It was hard work but he had done it. More accurately, they had done it together for this is not a work that can be done alone. Life had returned to routine, in a good way.
And then it happened. A conspiracy of unfortunate coincidences. First there was the deadline at work. He had written it down wrong and what he thought was due next week was due tomorrow and he didn't know how he would make up for all that lost time. And then there was the flat tire on the way home, the second one this month. Right in the heart of rush hour, right in the middle of the freeway - all those horns and the middle fingers and the "get-the-fuck-off-the-roads." He made it to the side of the freeway without damaging his rim but there was no median and so the cars behind him had to make their way around. As he was changing his tire he could seek the pile-up he was causing but what could he do? Just as he was lowering the car back down to the road, someone in a passing vehicle flung a cup of soda at him, hitting him in the back above his right shoulder. The cup exploded and the cold soaked him down to his shoes. He turned to find the culprit but all he found was a sea of pointing fingers and laughing faces.
Finally home, finally safe or so he thought. Two steps into the front door and all he wants is to change out of his clothes and get back down to his car to try and dry the seat off. Three steps into the door and his wife rounds the corner talking on the cordless. She almost knocks him over and before he can even say hello, she peppers him with complaints and unjust accusations - "you're wet, I was going to wear this dress our for our dinner tonight, what do you mean you can't go, what deadline, you're dripping on the carpet, this stain will never come out, I just bought this dress, why are you so late, when can we get the tire fixed, open your eyes, are you listening. . ."
At her request, he opened his eyes and it was as if his apartment had become a darkroom lit by red safe lights. The edges of his peripheral vision were blurry. In front of him was his wife's face, distorted, turned inside out, yelling at him through a blob of a black hole. He did not see his wife, he saw this warped face. A signal in his brain went out hurling towards a fork between two neurons, one for flight, one for fight. A tiny electrical impulse hung for an instant in the synapse space between the two. He blinked, the signal chose a course and a fist came circling round. It arced through the air, it gathered speed, force, inertia, intent. And just before it made contact her face snapped into focus, the world returned to normal, he became aware of himself and of her self and his fist but it was too late.
He remembers the sound, a squishy thud, nothing like the concussive sound foley artists made for movie fight scenes. He remembers the surprise and then the shock in her eyes. He remembers how plastic, clay-like the side of her face felt as his fist poured into her flesh. He remembers the bones in his hand compressing, the newtonian exchange of forces. He remembers the follow through and the recoil as her head turned back towards him. And then there was the sound of her scream, short, sharp, piercing him, slicing straight through the center of him. And then the blood. And then the absurd realization of what he had just done.
Fear in her eyes, fear that he had planted there. The act was over, he was back in the present - his mind clear, lucid, plain. But the train of consequences had already left the station, there was no stopping it now. She turned and ran. He followed after her wanting only to apologize, to take back what had already been delivered. She ran from him thinking that he was chasing after her to strike again. She screamed for him to stop, to leave her alone, to go away. He pursued her, wanting to hold her, to explain what could not be excused. He saw his love fleeing from him and for a moment he was close enough to grab her shoulder, to stop her from escaping. He reached for her but then let her go. He had no right to ever touch her again, he understood that much, and so he let her go.
She ran into the bathroom and he fell down on his knees, bewildered, lost, powerless, empty. His face contorted into a shape it had never held before, as if all the muscles in his face conspired against one another, twisting themselves in opposite directions. He let out a scream that was primitive, animal, unnatural. It rose from his bowels, tore through his torso and spewed forth. For a second he thought he had vomited, but only sound had exited past his lips. He buried his face in his hands and screamed again. And then there was silence. And then through the silence he heard her weeping behind the bathroom door.

Agents

David remembers the hardest lesson he had to learn about generosity. He remembers Leonard, the kid genius with the mind and the manners of a machine. It's started innocently enough.He was at the helm - his pet term for his office desk. It's a modest office in the corner of his four bedroom home - one of the first things he bought with his lottery money. In front of him is a bank of three flat-screen LCD monitors. This is where he keeps track of the people he's trying to help. He'd been looking for a new prospect, something bigger, something bold and ambitious. He really wanted to turn someone's world inside out in the best way possible, but he's not sure how or with whom. And so he scrolls down the list of pending candidates.

At first, he would find his subjects himself. He would peruse various venture capital message boards or attend invention conventions and trade shows - anywhere he could think to find untapped talent, he'd be there. He always had his finger in the wind, but what he wanted was to go after people under the radar - people who had a great idea or a great talent but for reasons financial or psychological, felt that they didn't have what it took to get to the next level.

With this in mind, he went about assembling a team of researchers - people in various fields who were in a position to keep their ear to the ground, people who would beat the grass trying to ferret out undiscovered talent. These people would attend small, community art shows in search of potential genius. They worked in publishing houses and flagged authors who showed promise. He had former patent and intellectual property lawyers who made note of novel, potentially breakthrough ideas. He'd managed to assemble quite a menagerie of agents, all signed on to the task, all passionate about what they did.

He called them all together for a meeting. He wanted to get their input on his grand new pursuit and they caught the vision like a baby catches cold, like a forest catches fire. They put their feelers out, scoured their area of expertise. They were exhaustive about their search, but subtle at the same time - they didn't want it to get out that the anonymous benefactor (who was quickly going from rumor to myth, legend) was on the prowl for a new needy genius.

Every other week they'd meet in David's conference room and pass potential candidates around. The air in those meetings was delicious, electric, even volatile at times. They knew the person they chose would be granted resources beyond his or her wildest dreams. The world would open up to them and nothing would be out of reach. They were in the business of launching unknown talent into the stratosphere.

They went about the hard work of whittling down the choices. There was the man from Iowa who was had some novel ideas about a hybrid form of ethanol which had the potential to render our dependance on fossil fuels irrelevant. He had synthesized small supplies of his new fuel (code named bethanol, after his girlfriend) but it was unrefined and would clog intake valves and fuel pumps. The hope was that with the correct filtering process, the energy yield could potentially be comparable to that of gasoline. And then there was the problem of production. Lacking proper resources, the process was as much art as science and it took months to synthesize just a liter of the stuff.

There was the woman in the planes of Nebraska who'd created a brave new instrument, part bowed string, part resonating brass. The sounds was striking, part cello, part French horn. Her prototype was fragile, clumsy, awkward to play. Currently it was a single stringed instrument but she had ideas for a multi-stringed version in mind. Parts would have to be machined and the brass would have to be drawn and hammered to specific specifications. More than that, she needed a composer who could wrap this strangely beautiful new sound around compositions that would test its limits and explore its round, handsome, burnished voice.

There was the clock maker who wanted to resurrect the bell tower design. In his mind, the modern world revolved around time and as such, timepieces should be the centerpiece of any town square. Clocks should be celebrated and as such, he had designs that completely exploded the ubiquitous round face, minute and hour hand design. His clocks were marvels of function packed into entirely new forms. Though unfamiliar, they were easy to understand. Blocks, colors, contours were the new symbols of time, but this was not merely some abstraction that required one to relearn the language of time. Rather, it's central design motif was seen as a kind of map of the fourth dimension. He got the idea from Einstein who recognized that time could be seen as a spatial as well as a temporal quantity. The designs were simple, but their large scale was integral to it's success.

Yellow Car

The rain is falling as he makes his way through the parking lot. He is still lost, bewildered, yet calm. There's a strange sensation trying to break through to consciousness. It's as a part of his mind remembers, as if his life is just beneath the surface trying to make itself known, to be reunited with their host. But it's still vague, far away, something like deja vu but not as strong.
And so he keeps walking. It's a slow, light rain and it seems to be clearing up. The parking lot is full and he runs his fingers along auto body lines. He makes a point to scan a variety of vehicles hoping that some sense of recognition will snap him out of his stupor. Sports cars, SUVs, compacts, mini-vans. Not only do none of them appear familiar, he's not even sure what kind of car he'd like to drive if given the choice. He wonders if, behind the wheel, he'd remember how to drive at all.
The stadium parking lot is fenced off from the city. He circles the lot following arrows painted into the concrete. He continues scanning the mass of automobiles. He sees the exit now and is making his way there but something shifts, almost imperceptably. He stops and turns his head towards the sensation. More cars, but. . . He's not sure why, but he turns from the exit and starts in this new direction. The sensation is gone now, but he goes with his gut. He approaches a long line of cars. A glint of light off a chrome bumper catches his eye.
A muscle car with a custom paint job - a deep sparkle blue with a white racing stripe across the top. He looks it over but nothing seems familiar. There are no decals or markings anywhere to identify make or model. He wonders if his old self was a car buff who would know intimate details of this automobile by silhouette alone.
Fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. A click, almost audible. He furrows his brow and stares at the dice. There are hints here, this car, these dice - they are hints, pointing him towards some sort of recognition but the pieces are indistinct. It's like being spun around, blindfolded, trying to hit a party pinata.
Then, above the dice in the rear view mirror he sees a yellow Corolla. He spins around and the recognition hits him between the eyes like a wrecking ball. He swaggers a bit and steadies himself with a hand on the trunk of the muscle car. He hears the warning chirp of it's car alarm. He looks around to see if anyone noticed, but save for the cars, this lot is desolate.
He approaches the yellow Corolla. He pulls the keys out of his pocket, fingers through to the one that looks like a car key. He goes around to the passenger side first and looks in the window to see if anything else seems familiar. It's pretty clean inside although the upholstery shows signs of wear. The back seat has a large Brooks & Dunn beach towel draped across it. He doesn't remember liking Country music. He can't remember any Brooks & Dunn songs.
He circles around the back. There are no bumper stickers. The license plate is standard issue. At the passenger door now, he inserts the key into the lock. It slides past a few tumblers then gets stuck. This isn't the key for this car.
The tiny seed of frustration grows a bit more. It spears a tiny root into the soggy grey surface. He winces. Though he doesn't know it, a race has been set in motion. This seed, once full grown and fruit bearing will send him to a fit of blind rage. All constraints will be cast aside and he will hurl himself at the world, caution to the wind. He will break, destroy, kill all he can set his hands on until acted upon by some outside force, most likely a hero's knife or police officer's hollow tip bullet.
Set against this seed is a maze, a puzzle, a riddle who's solution is nothing less than the whole of his self. If he can remember who he is, the seed will disengage, disarm, dismantle, and he'll go back to the life he's recollected.

The Scientific Method of Love

(note to self: I'm switching around the situation in the story titled, "Code." Now the female lead of that thread (now named, Laura) is in love with one of the geeks (let's call him Kevin) and instead of being in love with the privileged, rich grunt (now named, Chad), Chad is in love with Laura.

This is Laura's dilemma. She loves Kevin but Kevin does not love her. Chad is in love with Laura but she is not in love with him. But she is a scientist after all and she attempts to use the scientific method to sort the whole thing out.
The scientific method proceeds thus: observation, hypothesis, testing of the hypotheses through experiments. But this problem includes people and in any theory involving people, there will be wiggle room. This study will be one of soft, rather than hard, science. But the work must be done if understanding is to be had.
Observations have already been done. She's seen the way that Chad looks at her, how he manages to make himself a part of any study group that she is a part of, how he is always ready with a quick compliment. He has yet to ask her out but she knows he's likely to jump on the tiniest hint of affection thrown his way and so she is careful to appear aloof. If she understands Chad's pursuits, it's because she does the same for Kevin. And she knows Kevin does not feel the same way towards her because she recognizes her rejection of Chad in Kevin's actions.
Unfortunately, for the most part, these are all conjectures (more or less unprovable short of coming right out and asking the players involved what their thoughts and intentions are). But the signs seems clear enough. And so working with these assumptions, she limits the scope of her study to two related but very different questions. Why Kevin and why not Chad?
First off, why Kevin. This is the easier of the two and so she starts here. Easy because evidence is easy to find. She is attracted to Kevin first and foremost because of his intellect and his imagination (not that she separates the two, the one complements and strengthens the other). He leads almost any study group or project that the lab takes on. He often has the most insight into the problems they face and comes up with the most novel (and successful, an important distinction) solutions. She loves the clarity of his reasoning, how his thoughts are constructed like cathedrals - high and mighty, buttressed by evidence and example. He takes a mass of information, weeds out the chaff and pieces the useful bits together, layering ideas one by one, finding connections in seemingly disparate directions, building them all to a spire atop which lies a single, beautiful, transcendent conclusion.
But it's not just that. She is a grunt by degree (or lack thereof) but she knows she has what it takes to reach geekdom. What thrills her about Kevin is how they seem to share the same methodologies when taking on a problem. They understand one another's metaphors and analogies, even when obscure. When trying to illustrate the problems caused by a particle's ill defined wave function and the ramifications that causes for the work at hand, she knows exactly what he means when he says, "it's like fishing for olives."
And lest she seem the puritan, she will readily admit her physical attraction to him. While her other female friends don't quite understand it, she points out the details she is drawn to - the creases at the corner of his eyes and how they lengthen when he laughs. His weak, skinny elbows and his long, strong fingers. The mess of his hair that she sees as a sure sign of complete devotion to his work, which her friends see as complete disregard for grooming. She could go on and on with reason after reason, and she often does, much to the dismay of her friends.
But her inquiry is incomplete. She turns her attention to the question, "why not Chad?" The easiest answer is simply, not Chad because Kevin. In other words, perhaps in some parallel universe where Kevin didn't work in this lab, she would reciprocate Chad's affections, but because quantum tunneling to that world is prevented by the limitations of today's technology, this is a moot point.
Put bluntly, Chad is not as smart as Kevin and never will be. Chad's reasoning is lumpy. Give him a suggestion that points to a solution and he only sees two steps into the problem. Science at this level is about having an intuitive idea into all the steps needed to solve a problem - one needs to have an idea where the summit is lest they start climbing the wrong mountain. It's like chess. She might not know exactly how pushing a pawn up one square seven moves into the game will help her endgame, but sure enough after push has led to shove, it's that one pawn that leads to mate. Chad plays his pieces one move at a time both on the chess board and in his studies.
Her friends chide her because Chad is cute, much more so than Kevin. And on paper, he's a great catch. In addition to his good looks, he comes from a monied family. Everyone agrees he's a nice guy and even his former girlfriends speak kindly of him (Laura's friends have researched this guy). What's not to love?
Even Laura is a bit perplexed on this matter. It's not as if she harbors no feelings towards him at all. The mere fact of his attention is enough to flatter her heart to attention. There is something electric and edifying about knowing someone is pining after you. And she agrees with her friends in that he is attractive. Which brings her face to face with the brain/body formula.
It goes like this. Laura finds a big brain more important to her than a hot body. However, there is a limit. If Einstein looked like the Elephant Man, it would be a no go. Likewise, she wouldn't even consider dating someone who never progressed past Freshman math or read anything surpassing a fifth grade reading level, even if this person happened to be Brad Pitt's identical stunt double twin. Within these extremes though, there was room to play with the ratios.
Take Kevin, for example. For all the charm that Laura has found, he is by all accounts a rather plain looking individual, and that's on his best days. But that doesn't matter to her because his brain and the way they think alike more than makes up for the difference between her aesthetic ideal and his reality. Thus, she's head over heels for the guy.
On the other hand, Chad is cute even on his woke-up-late-and-came-to-class-without-showering days. At the few social events the department throws, he can look quite dashing. He is, in fact, so good looking that Laura sincerely wishes that looks were enough for her because then she wouldn't be twisting herself into knots over this situation. And why isn't physical attraction enough for her? Why continue longing for someone who seems to be inaccessible when there's a more than eligible suitor eagerly waiting for the smallest encouragement on her part?
Again, with a mind that tends to look towards the endgame, she reasons this way. If she is more attracted to what and how a person thinks than she is how a person looks, then even if she were happy on every other level with Chad, she can foresee a time in the future when she might find someone like Kevin who will respond to her, and if that happens will she just up and leave Chad? On the other hand, if Kevin (or another brainiac like him) would have her, she can not ever see herself leaving him for someone else, regardless of how physically attracted she was to him.
And the mind ages far more slowly than the body. In the long term, who's to say what time will do to the physical attributes that make Chad appealing? Age is not kind to all faces. But the mind, for the most part the mind stays vital, robust, as agile in old age as in youth. In this way, she would much rather bet on the brain over the body.

Church

Chad sits at the edges of the church service. He can't remember the last time he really felt any kind of encounter with anything remotely spiritual or transcendent. But he believes. He understands that God is real, the same way he understands that black holes are real, even if no one can ever see one directly, there is indirect evidence strong enough to serve well enough as proof.
And so he goes. There was a time when the service would transport him, not in a physical way, but it really felt as if a part of him (not a physical part, but a part of him that encompassed his whole being just below the surface, just above the skin) was connecting, interacting, experiencing something beautiful and enormous and true. It was a kind of rapture, a kind of ecstasy that he's never experienced anywhere else. It was like sex minus the sticky, sweaty details.
It wasn't just in church where he felt this. At home in the early morning with his Bible. At night with his prayer journal. Even at these times at home, he sometimes felt this metaphysical connection. And it sustained his, drew his through all those late, lonely nights, all his mundane graduate studies, through the death of his mother and the awful drug abuse of his brother. It was his salvation - a salvation to heaven, he was sure, but also a salvation that extended to the here and now.
But no more. he can't remember the last time he felt even an echo of anything approaching worship. Now, it's all motion and ritual. It's muscle memory and habit. It's stale, dead, ineffectual.
It's taken a while but he's beginning to understand why. More and more it seems as if church (this church, but also the other one's he's visited and one's he listens to on the radio) is the object that one is driven to serve. There's always rhetoric about bringing people to church, about giving to your church, about giving up an afternoon or a Sunday morning to serve the church. And from the lay persons around his, they're always talking about how much they love their church, how they say that their church is better than the one across town because of x, y, and z.
He used to buy into this kind of talk. he used to shop around for a church to attend. he would listen to the sermons to see if they appealed to his, he would see what kind of support groups they had, he would listen to the style of music they used, he would even critique the bulletins they would pass out.
From his friends who served as deacons or worked on staff, he learned about how they would use business books by people like Covey, Buckingham, and Collins as examples for how they should structure their church to make them successful. At first, he thought that this was a good idea because he thought that spreading the news about Jesus was essentially a marketing problem to be solved, and why not use business strategies to maximize the effectiveness of the church staff?
But there was always something in the back of his mind that caused his to question that methodology. At first it was murky, vague, just a nagging suspicion but through the years it's become clearer to his. For one thing, he's come to understand that churches exist not to be self-perpetuating, they exist to help people worship God. Their aim is not become successful, by drawing larger numbers, their aim is to take a message of healing and hope into a world of hurt and angst. It's the difference between taking immunizations into disease ravaged nations and building nice hospitals, hoping the sick will be drawn to their flashy doctors.
He's come to the conclusion that God isn't dead, the church is dead. Or if God is dead, it's because the church has killed him.
And so he sits at the edges of the church service, trying to glean some meaning out of what he sees as a meaningless sermon. he looks out over the congregation and there are so many with earnest attention. The pastor is telling some good stories and making some seemingly interesting points but for better or for worse, he sees them for what they are - marketing ploys, entertainment, propaganda. He is selling church, not inviting people to experience God.
So he turns to look the other way, out the window. But that only heightens his frustration. This is a church on the side of a hill and so he can look out over the cityscape below. And he wonders why they're so far away. He thinks of all the injustices in the world and he thinks of how the church just sits idly by, afraid to offend, afraid to take a stand. AIDS is ravaging Africa, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, the homeless. All that hurt, all that need. And yet there he sits in a plush pew in an air conditioned auditorium, so far away from the messiness of it all.

First Contact

From the back of the bus, she sees one man knocking his head into the glass - slowly, but steadily. His shoulders are taut, bunched into his neck, stressed. Something catches his attention, or perhaps he's thought of something. He turns suddenly and looks out the window as if searching for something in the distance. She sees his reflection in the window. His brow is furled, lips pursed. He leans his forehead into the glass. He closes his eyes and when he does, a tear gets squeezed out.
A question asked of herself and then an idea. She pulls out her journal and starts writing.
What is it that we look for? What is it that drives us past madness, past despair, towards hope? And what of those who've lost their way?
And then a bump on the freeway and she looses her train of thought. She looks over the questions she started with and tries to remember where she was going with them, tries to remember if she had answers or just more questions. She holds her pen, poised over paper, but nothing comes. Just like that they're gone, all those words, forgotten or lost or misplaced on sheets of notepad lost to the wind. Where do all those words go? Perhaps they dissolve back into the collective unconscious like salt water to the sky.
They are off the freeway now, back on city streets. The bus stops more frequently now and steadily, more passengers get on. The seats fill up fast and soon the aisles are crowded with suits and skirts, arms raised, clinging to the railing. Sardines. She watches them sway with the momentum of the bus like some strange kelp forest ballet. All this intimacy coupled with all this anonymity. What a strange place this world has become.
And they all look forward, they all avoid eye contact. But she does the opposite. She looks at them all, one by one. She follows their gaze, guesses at what they are looking at, what they might be looking for, what they might be thinking of. Blank stares, all around. What is it that we look for? She looks for him - the one she had seen earlier and he is still squeezed up next to the window. Pressed upon by an older lady reading the paper.
His gaze is different from that of the others. While most have vacant stares, hypnotized wall eyes, he seems to have focus. It's hard to pinpoint the physical characteristic that makes up the difference between the two - it's not something tangible, not something that fits into words easily. It's not something one can point out, but it's obvious nevertheless.
The lady next to him turns the page and accidentally elbows him. Without even turning towards him she whispers an apology and reads on. He hardly seems to have noticed but then he starts banging his head again, slower this time.
She can't understand it but she feels a strange affinity with this man, as if they share something. She knows it's irrational, strange, careless, even dangerous, but she continues to stare at him as if looking long enough into the strands and the part of his hair will reveal his secrets to her. She tries not to stereotype but she believes that everyone's appearance is a kind of code. The way she sees it, everyone chooses to dress and to look a certain way and that choice, however casual or unconscious, says something about that person. It's not something as simple or concrete as suit equals power or shirt equals slacker. A suit with a tie that's too bold, too powerful for the wearer implies a kind of compensation, a kind of insecurity while a worn shirt with the right print can suggest a creative mind, an independent spirit, but at the same time a shirt with one of those anti-social phrases like, "I'm so glad I'm not in your shoes," speaks of a cheap kind of rebellion, someone who wants to rage against the world not to change things, but because being against something is easier than being for something in a world where people think faith is one step away from madness.
This one, this guy. She tries to read him but it's difficult. He wears a black, long sleeve shirt with a blue, striped tie. It's hard to tell from here but the edges of this collar seem frayed.

Poverty

He knows the quicksand grip of poverty - how every moves seems to dig his and those near him deeper into its grip. He remembers the acid taste of hunger. He knows a world where food is everywhere but out of reach, the impossible distance between zero and a ninety-nine cent value hamburger. He knows sickness and medicines that may as well be magic. He knows the temptation to take, how his empty pockets called to him as he walked down aisle after endless aisle of food, of soups, of packages, of cereals, of juice, of milk, of sugars and cream. He remembers the injustice of EBT cards, the glares of those who had no idea, who assumed his irresponsibility. He remembers his rage at those he knew who truly were irresponsible with their welfare. He remember the futility of reasoning with those who had long ago traded aspiration for desperation and desperation for apathy. And how can you convince someone languishing in the blissful impotence of negligence to try again?
He remembers how it began.
Tiny debts, layer by innocent layer. A shirt, a CD, a meal above his means, a television, a car. Each purchase, all too easy to justify and rationalize. And the credit offers kept coming in the mail, each one better than the last. He bought into the deception that being offered credit meant he had good credit which meant he was worthy of all the charges. If he wasn't able to pay on them, they wouldn't have approved the credit in the first place - that was his reasoning.
And then at the end of a particularly careless month, he noticed how little was left after all the minimum payments were made. And then he didn't have enough left over to pay for things like batteries, gas, food, water. And then he realized that he didn't take his rent into account. And then what seemed so easy, so justified, became something dark, dangerous, nearly out of control. But he had a handle on it all. He understood his resources, even if he had brought himself to their limits. It was a delicate balance but with a bit of careful spending and the decision to pay cash for things from here on out, everything was manageable.
But there were birthdays he forgot to plan for, shoes that wore out too soon, pieces of his car that needed to be fixed. And then the floor fell out from beneath him - he lost his job to corporate down-sizing. Then two things. First, the unexpectedly generous severance package dulled the depth of his true financial situation so he dragged his feet looking for a new job. Second, weeks turned into months with careful living (and a steady stream of deductions from his savings account), and when he finally put his job search into overdrive, he was surprised to find that two months away from work was a huge liability in a saturated job market.
Zero to six thousand took a long time to accumulate. Six thousand to zero took no time at all. And then he sees his world transform. It hits him the first time the electricity is cut off. He woke and half the morning was gone. It was one of those jarring awakenings. There was far too much sun in a room that should be dark. He throws the covers off and turns to the clock next to his bed and it tells his it's still two AM but the sun says othiswise. And so he fumbles for his cell phone and it too is off - no charge. His wristwatch then, and finally the truth - it's ten fifteen. He had a promising interview at nine thirty.
He wants to fly into a rage but like the coil of a constrictor, terror is squeezing in on him. He knew to expect this because of the letter from the power company. He had hoped that the grace period would be longer, or that they might forget - an unreasonable hope, but he's found that hope is the only currency he has left and so he manufactures hope out of impossibilities because the truth of the matter is just too unbearable.
He knows that the gas will soon follow. And then his cell phone (which doesn't really matter since he can't charge the thing). And then the landlord. And the coil tightens.
He thinks to call the office where he had the interview to explain, to make up some excuse, to beg for another chance but he has no phone. He wracks his brain trying to think of the nearest pay phone but when he thinks of one, he realizes that it's twenty minutes away by foot, five minutes by bus but he just missed the last one.
All these tiny tragedies, otherwise small and insignificant but without money, without a job, they are monumental feats. And so he clings to what small hopes he can find. And so he showers, dresses for the interview, waits for the next bus and he prays that it doesn't rain.
When the bus comes he finds his bus pass has expired. He needs two dollars but only has a five and the bus driver does not carry change. He turns to the passengers onboard and asks if any of them have change but most ignore his and those that do respond only shake their head. The bus is already in motion. He slides the five into the money slot and takes the first empty seat he can find. He looks out the window and tries not to punch his fist through it, tries not to cry.
He takes a moment to look himself over. The edges of his sleeves are fraying and his leather belt is starting to crack. But these are small things, unnoticeable, he hopes, from afar. The style is unfortunate as well. Rather than opting for the safety of more conservative styles, he was always one to opt for clothes that were a bit more of the season. He regrets this now because a more generic shirt and tie would have withstood the test of time. Now he looks like someone who buys his outfits at thrift stores - which would be true if he had money to buy clothes.
Despite it all, he steels himself. He hopes that a practiced kind of confidence will help his perspective employer to see beyond the frayed hems and the dated tie. He hopes he can sell himself, explain away the missed appointment, and land himself a job.

Angel

Over the city, like an airborne beat cop, she adjusts her wings and hovers on an updraft. She gazes down upon her subjects. Like glowing embers she can see those she is responsible for. As a relatively new recruit, she has a case load with somewhere around thirty subjects, none of them terribly difficult as far as the grand scheme of it all goes. She likes the level she's reached and she loves her cases. She is happy with her lot and she is grateful for that, there's not more a novice angel can ask for.
A twitch of a wing and she descends hawk-like to the streets below. All of these people with so much to live for, yet living for so little. It's something she has never come to understand. All the capacity they contain for creativity, for love, for joy - and they squander it all on vain pursuits that have no purpose. They are on this earth for such a short time, yet they risk so little. The world God's created for them is vast and wondrous, wild and full of fancy but they content themselves with their small jobs and their small choices and their small desires.
But she understands that they lack her perspective - they see so little, stuck to the ground, bound to time. She wishes she could make them see as she sees. Then maybe they'd change, maybe then they'd know, maybe then they'd truly be able to worship. And thought this desire burns deep within her heart she knows the rules, she knows her place, she knows her limits and the scope of her responsibilities. Most of all, she knows the consequences of disobedience. She has seen what happens to the fallen, the eternal change of status and their swift descent into depravity despite the best of original intent.
And so she does the best she can within what she can. And she does well at that. Despite all her training, all her gifts of insight and empathy, there is one mystery that beguiles her, two things that mystify her - love and hate and how the one can so easily change into the other. She understands the theory of love, it's concept as an intellectual object - her training has taught her that much, but to see it in motion, to see these humans caught up in the rapture of it, the lengths they'll go to, the pains they'll endure, the careless damage they'll do to those around them in mad pursuit of it - it's one thing to know the power of a black hole, but to stand at the event horizon and see it's endless, gaping appetite is another thing indeed. And in those times when she is the most confused, she goes back (as angels can) to Eden and that day when Eve's foot first touched ground, and the look on the face of Adam as he spoke her name. She views the joy of that unspoiled union and the perfection of it all and she understands a little more every time.
As little as she knows about love and hate, as much as these humans know and experience it, there is one thing she knows as well - death. And that is a degree of leverage she has against them, an advantage they will never be able to overcome. Death is within the scope of her tasks, it's one of the things she can be called upon to do. It's something she's done. And despite the way these humans see it, it is as simple and natural to her as unfurling these wings and taking to the air - something else humans can't do, but the death thing is of greater consequence.

Kindness

The calculus of altruism is bewildering. A forty million dollar lottery winner at forty two, he left his job as an insurance adjustor and began a mad quest to give away ninety percent of his take after taxes, a sum that came out to somewhere around eighteen million. Like any good quest, there were rules to follow. A work in progress, the rules were more like guidelines. Here are the ones he held so far:

1. Demand no recompense. That's not to say that he wouldn't accept any measure of thanks the recipient chose to return to him - he learned quickly that gratitude can help the donee to deal with the unexpected provision. He would not turn thanks away, but it would not be expected or sought or implied.
2. Gifts would be personal. He did not want to write checks to large charitable organizations. He wanted to help real, tangible people, not an anonymous target group.
3. Aid in the form of currency (cash or check) would be given only as a last resort. Instead, he would buy or build whatever the recipient needed. Some accused him of being selfish on this point, telling him that he was saying that he knew better than the people he was helping, that the people would rather decide for themselves what they needed. He disagreed with these people and as far as he was concerned, it was his money and his generosity and he could distribute it as he saw fit.
4. He would find people to help. He would not wait for people to come to him - not that he had to. The minute the news got out, his phone was ringing off the hook with long lost relatives and friends, not to mention the non-profits and the alumni associations.

He has been helping people under these guidelines for seven years. It has taught him one thing: the calculus of altruism is bewildering - confusing and full of complications. He learned how quickly gratitude can morph into greed - how some people bite the hand that feeds them so they can steal the rings off the fingers. He has made as many enemies as friends.

Life Goes On

And so it goes -
over and over again
we lash out
at the walls
between us
and what we desire.

We bruise
and we burn
and the walls
mock us,
taunt us, ultimately
disregard us.

But life goes on,
and on,
and on. . .

And so on.

Code

The final bits of code have been debugged and compiled. Everything seems to be working as designed. Three years in the making, and finally everything is in place.
The lab is a squat, 20,000 square foot building. The walls are three feet thick in places and lined with lead in critical areas. Everything is grey - the walls, the ceiling, the floors. Everything but the personalities - they are as colorful and unpredictable as the particles they study.
There are two general classes of techs here - the geeks and the grunts. The geeks are the ones at the computer screens and the white boards. They are the ones with for whom verbal communication is a second language. Their first language is mathematics, preferably binary or hexadecimal.
Despite the derogatory title, the grunts are not intellectual slouches. Most of them are fulfilling the work aspect of their scholarships and are at the top of their class. They are here to serve the geeks - a position they worked hard to get and work even harder to keep. And so they put up with the jokes and jests of the geeks.
It's an unstated understanding. Despite their crushing intellectual power, they have no social standing in the real world. In the cereal aisle of the grocery store, they are indistinguishable from a RadioShack employee or a video game junkie. As children, many of them were the target of adolescent bullying and some put upon the grunts as a way to assert the first position of power they've ever had.
The geek/grunt stratification is strict, delineated by diploma and degree. But there is one who floats between states. An anomaly in every way - female in a male saturated environment, a social butterfly in field of wall flowers, smarter than the grunts but not (yet) conversant at the level of the geeks.
She leverages her gender in every way possible, although no one at the lab will argue that gender is what got her the job. As an object of nearly everyone's affection, she is exempt from the taunts of the geeks. And she's not above trading dates for time on the campus supercomputer - as good as gold. Although she hates the word, she is most often described as cute when not described as a genius.
She loves her place here, among men who appreciate, rather than reject, her for her intellect but she secretly longs for a relationship that rises above the platonic. She can explain how the random, chaotic dance of subatomic particles contributes to the evaporation of black holes and how those emissions can and have been used to detect the presence of super-massive black holes. Start her talking about her work at the lab and you'll be treated to an introduction to the concept of the desk-top super-colider - how they are attempting to surf atoms on waves of photons, launching them at near-light velocities with the aim of smashing them into other atoms to study the subatomic debris. Ask her about the possibilities and her face lights up as she describes superstrings vibrating in eleven dimensional space and how the theories they are testing can potentially unite all of the hard sciences under one umbrella idea - a theory of everything. Once she starts, try to stop her and you will fail. Tell her you don't understand and she'll construct an analogy out of whatever experiences you give her. But ask her how to find a good man, someone she can love. She will tell you she has no idea, not a clue.
At home, at night, after she's put her numbers to bed - on legal pads, on spare scraps of paper - she lies in her empty room on her empty couch watching empty programming on TV. She does her best to avoid romantic sitcoms or romantic dramas or thrillers with romantic subplots. But what's left after all this whittling away but cooking shows and infomercials?
Of all the men among her peers, apart from the two other women in a lab of thirty-five and a department of seventy-two, there is only one who holds her attention. He is one of the new interns and he is in danger of being cut from the program. Perhaps it was his good looks which got him this far (unlikely in a discipline saturated with males), perhaps his charm (even more unlikely), perhaps his wealthy and credentialed parents (bingo). Whatever it was, it was on the verge of running out.
And she wants to save him - to tutor him on the particulars of point particles, to lend speed to his calculations, but most of all to run her fingers through the tangles in his hair. She so longs to draw up a formula of seduction but there are no numbers, no formulas, no tensors or matrices for such things.

Back of the Bus

She is sitting at the back of the bus. She lives far from the heart of the city so she has the luxury of picking her seat from the empty rows. And she always sits in the center seat at the back of the bus.
She likes watching the commuters enter, the sleep still clinging to their eyes. She likes watching the back their heads, secretly cataloging the different way they pass the time between stops.
But today is different. They are on the freeway now and for the next fifteen minutes or so (depending on traffic) there will be no new passengers, no one will exit.
She loosens the clasps on her bag. She opens the top but then hesitates. She needs to decide between book and journal. The bus sways into a turn and she pulls out the novel she's been nibbling at for the last few weeks - a thriller, but a boring one. The author has lost his way in the second act, she thinks, but the premise was promising so she wades through the muck, hoping a surprising resolution will spring out of left field, perhaps out of one of the forgotten subplots.
Halfway down the page, she closes the book. She's read the same paragraph three times but it only rattles around her mind, disconnected, random, refusing to coalesce into meaning. Today is different from any other and no attempt at distraction will keep the vague anxiety at bay. She thinks about trading the novel for her journal, but she knows the results will be the same.
And so she stares down the center aisle, past the seat backs, through the window and on to the horizon. The sun is coming up but hasn't broken through. Soon though, it tints the high clouds orange. The city grows taller, closer. The cars condense ahead. Soon they will be caught up in the thick of it.
It's strange. She is anxious to get to the point of her day. She knows she will come upon it in due time but the mind plays strange games with the fabric of chronology. She is surprised that the bus has come this far this fast, but is frustrated at how far it has yet to go. Anxiety has been the cause of both conclusions.

Stadium Exit

He made his way through the crowd. He couldn't remember how he had gotten here or even where here was. From the looks of it he was at a sporting event, but he has no interest in sport so he looks for the nearest exit.
Awareness of his surroundings came to him in an instant. It was as if he opened his eyes and he was here, moving through this crowd. He had no context - no past, no motive, no thoughts of the future. He was simply here in this throng of people, trying to find an exit.
And then he sees the sign. The crowd is thick and though he is moving with the flow, the exit is on the opposite end of the walkway. Through the push and nudge, it is no simple task to move laterally, but bit by bit he edges over through upset glances and rude, whispered expletives.
Finally there, the exit points down a short hallway. It is empty. He is grateful for the space around him. He smoothes the wrinkles in his shirt and makes his way to the double-doors. Making his way there, the thought occurs to him that it might be locked but they open with ease.
Now, outside, he looks back and surveys the stadium. From deep within, he hears the tidal roar of the crowd, followed immediately by groans, hisses, and boos. For a moment, everything quiets down.
Free from the push and press of the crowd he tries to understand. Where am I? How did I get here? Where do I go now?
And then the question that really throws him, who am I?
He looks down at his button down shirt - conservative vertical stripes. He is wearing stone-washed jeans. A thought occurs to him and he reaches into his back pocket and finds a wallet. He opens it and on a fold-out flap he finds a driver's license. The name on the card is Howard, but the face is not his own. He also finds forty seven dollars. There are no pictures of women, or of children. There are no credit cards. The parking lot is full of cars but empty of people. He pats his front pocket and finds a set of keys but no remote for an alarm. Three keys. The double edged auto key is a duplicate. He can't even tell what make of car it belongs to. In the opposite pocket he finds nothing but spare change.
In the back of his mind, a tiny seed is germinating, growing, breaking free of its shell and searching for nutrients in the surrounding grey-matter soil. It's a lethal plant whose fruits will ripen into frustration and rage but for now it is merely a seedling. And so it takes its time, as plant life always will.