Jack and I worked together. What we did at work is left as an exercise for the reader. Suffice it to say that this fishing trip was one we had been on plenty of times before. Of course, on previous trips, more fish had been caught. On previous trips Jack had seemed happy.

“What’s on your mind Jack?”

“Nothing.” He spit into the water.

“Nothing?”

“Well, there’s all this blue water around.”

“Sure enough.”

“And I just have to wonder, there’s so much blue water in the world. Why isn’t it the whole world? What purpose do we serve?”

“Purpose?”

“Yeah. I guess I’m asking, why the fuck are we even here.”

“That’s not easy to answer Jack. You like Press Play?”

“They’re good enough.”

I turned the iPod on to ‘Strawberry’.

“You like this song?” I took a worm and hooked it.

“It’s good enough.”

“Don’t you get it Jack? We’re here to appreciate these things. The song. The fishing line going south. The journey.”

“Sometimes the journey seems painful and silly.”

“But that’s the beauty. Did you like Nirvana?”

“The band?”

“Yeah.”

“I liked ‘Come as you are.’”

“Great song. Here’s the thing. In order to write it Kurt, he was the main songwriter, had to be in a lot of pain.”

“Yeah?”

“But beauty came out of it nonetheless. No?”

There was a broken down Camel Filters dispenser waiting on the table when Mark arrived at Mary Ann’s place. She had offered Mark something to drink then retreated to the kitchen. He sat in her living room, looking at the pack of Camel Filters, looking at, what I guess you would call the wings of the top flap, rest against the table. He took his own cigarette out, knowing how socially wrong it was nowadays, but also knowing that Mary Ann would understand, and lighting it.

“There really isn’t any lime in these,” Mary Ann set the drinks on the table. “I mean, I had an old lime, and I squeezed the fuck out of it, but that’s all that’s in there. Some old lime and that’s it.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Mark said.

They clinked glasses and took a sip a piece. Mark’s cigarette was close to his fingers. He put it out.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m in a short story, about to be over at any second.”

“No structure?” She sipped her drink hungrily.

“None at all.” He took her hand from the coffee table and held it in his. He kissed every finger on her hand, waiting for her to say something.

“You’ll always be alive Mark, I know it.” She blew a kiss in his direction.

He caught it.

Well clouds part, and I see sadness in their smile. Winds blow east before they blow best, but in the middle you can take a rest.

She looked me over a half eaten plate. Grounded herself in steel, said goodbye and hello to a broken heart.

With the shock of forget, I walked down the dirty road. If I had a memory of each one, I’d have mapped the atlantic from the start.

But now days turn into lonesome nights, fraught with love as the sun transforms them into the lives of everyone. I dress myself each day as well as I can, but always miss a button on my way to the top.

We meet in the park, dance in the gazebo, so close I can hardly stand. My hand on her shoulder, my mouth next to her ear, I tell her I’ll always be here.

The Gazebo’s a closing, the lights coming off, we walk down the stairs, stare at each other one last time, cause that’s all that’s bright. She takes my hand in hers, rests it on the rail; says that light may reflect, but she’s standing right here.

My minds a racing, chasing down the last shining mine. She’s walking past me now, into the nighttime that’s gone bright.

Me, I stand by the Gazebo, looking after that sterling sunshine. Looking at the trees touching heaven, looking at the moon blessing everything, looking down at myself, and moving.

“Wait a second here!” Holden was obviously the drunkest guy in the room. He swaggered over to the stool where Papa was asking Bukowski for a rematch. “Give me a chance at the champ! I can take ‘em.”

“Why don’t you want to fight me no more?” Hemingway looked at Holden square in the crossed eyes.

Holden studied the lines on Hemingway’s face. He was wearing a Gatsby cap, tweed jacket, and had a red handkerchief he could have used to lure a bull. “Too much respect… But, I think that cap belongs to a friend of mine.” Holden snatched the cap. “I’ve got a phone call to make, anyhow.” He ran over to a phone booth and started crying into the phone about Christmas trees.

Carver absorbed the scene from a table. He was sitting alone, coming up with extended soliloquies. He wrote them on napkins, then crossed half the words out.

Plath walked up to the table. “Buy me a drink?”

“Bankt-e-rupt. How bout you buy me one.”

Plath gave her warm smile. “Love too.”

Waits sat at the door, collecting the cover charge in his hat. He was having his best thirtieth birthday ever. A Hollywood type walked in with Zooey, script under his hand. Waits waved them in.

They sat at the bar. “This is _your_ project Zooey.”

“Who’s that guy in the phone booth?”

Don’t address me in the second,
when you mean the first,
And when Mozart on the radio takes a pause,
feel free to say
just because.

But there’s no movement
coming to classical music at his moment
and there’s no string section
looking down on us and tuning violins.

Most likely, Mozart himself,
never drove past sanctuaries of hope
and there was nothing in his life
but lots of waiting
and wading
in the music he wrote.

Most likely Mozart was an ass,
and I don’t say this with any semblance of class,
but just looking at the odds
that half of the population is more of an ass
than the other
and flipping a coin.

Maybe Mozart, through his music,
flew over any such calculations,
that would leave the rest of us,
scratching our heads.

Maybe he was great, and blessed us with the tunes,
he chose to create.
Maybe that’s a damn good reason to let him go on on the radio,
Instead of speeding through the classical channel.

But maybe not.

Maybe, it’s time to listen critically once again.
Do a blind taste test of music as it were
and let Mr. Mozart, fall or rise
wherever he’d like.

Maybe all the greats,
should take a test ride
just to see what it’s like
looking from the outside,
in on a world of hope.

Maybe it doesn’t like to perform on command. Maybe it has higher standards than calling on those asking for it. Maybe a lot of things. I rose from that stall, went to the mirror, re-applied my eye-liner and walked into the restaurant.

“Are you ok?” Shane looked at my blouse.

“Me?” I smiled. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“I was worried about you for a second. I ordered you another drink.”

“Thanks.” I smiled again. Tears started in my eyes, but I kept them safe in their bays.

“Are you sure everything’s alright?”

“Yes. Really.” I felt like calling him on the ‘for a second’ remark, but I decided it was unfair.
I looked down. I had been fingering the tablecloth since I got back. There were black eyeliner marks throughout. They looked like rivers in the middle of a white desert. I pushed the cloth over my knees.

“I’m just not feeling myself lately.” A third smile.

“That’s fine. I want your opinion on these.” He pulled out a color swatch.

“What are they?”

“Right now just colors. Soon, they can color in the apartment.”

“Oh, these are absolutely wonderful.” I pulled my tablecloth back out, tracing out each river, quietly.

Just like on cue, the title song played with just enough time to finish before I arrived. I needed the boost. I had no business with Gina. She was 4 years older and had a list of broken hearts longer than most bus lines.

I pulled up in front of her house, got so close to the curb that I scraped my hubcaps, but I didn’t care. I started up the steps but she started out the door.

“Hi Bobby.” She was smiling red and wide and dear and with a hint of something else.

“Gina! Movie? Burger? I mean, would you like to catch the 7 o’clock show?”

“Let’s.” I reached up, she offered her hand, I walked her down the steps and into the car.

“Hungry?”

“How’d you know? I’m famished.”

Her red hair was all curves and rested against the seat of my car in a way I would have loved to orchestrate.

We got to the drive-in, I paid the man in the booth, and we parked. I looked at her, the light from the movie making hidden shadows on her face. I couldn’t find my voice.

Finally, “Gina, I think I’m in love with you.”

“Bobby, quit being silly, I’m starved.”

I smiled, opened and closed the door, walked to the concession stand, happy.

“Hank? You awake?” she said in a whisper.

There was no response from Hank, outside of the low murmur of snoring she had been listening to all night. She stayed studying the lines on his face until it twitched and he turned on his side.

She looked at the clock. It read 6:36 a.m. She rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom without turning on the light.

In the mirror she studied her face in the trickle of light. She looked closely at herself, ran five fingers through each side of her hair, tore sleep out of each eye, and then looked steadily forward. With the light coming in, she could see her iris’s wider than she had ever imagined them. As she moved closer to her eyes, she saw them narrow. She invented a game there, moving back and forth, looking at the changes in them. Large and small they responded to her steps to and from the mirror.

“So much effort, just for light.” She murmured.

She reached over and flipped the switch. Her iris’s narrowed. She heard Hank make a sound from the next room. She turned, momentarily. She looked into her own eyes, brushed her teeth, quietly.

I kept quiet. I never really did believe Michael, but he was so sure of himself that you couldn’t help but fall a little in love with each word he said so confidently.

“Do you think that one has a fireplace?” He asked while pointing. I felt horrible. I could tell the chimney was all wrong for a fireplace but I didn’t have the heart to tell him.

“Maybe? I don’t know Mike.” I squeezed his scratchy hand.

“I bet it does. I bet it has the best damn fireplace in a 2 mile radius. And that’s the one I’m going to buy for us.” A streetlamp highlighted him.

“Really?” I batted my eyelashes. “That one?”

“That one. It’s perfect.”

“What if they don’t want to sell?”

“What?”

“What if the people that live there don’t want to leave their perfect home?”

“Damn it, Mildee, we’ll just offer them more money.” He kissed me jubilantly at finding the answer. We walked back to his car and he held my hand, soft, but only twice, on the way. He stopped outside of my house and put the lever in park.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Goodbye, Michael.”

Then a light flashed, like the light of last call, but more intense, and I wondered if it was a nuclear explosion, (and how horrible it would be to pass the nuclear holocaust in a bar, but how great at the same time), but then it was just the TV, but I had already started to think about Magdalene and her date that may never arrive. And I took Magdalene’s hand and I told her that no matter what it would be alright, and that I would be by her side.

But I could feel her kind of pulling back. Not obviously, but just a little tug. And she looked a little uneasy. And that’s when I saw who must be Greg approach and apologize and the look on Magdalene’s face would have been priceless if it wasn’t directed at me, and then I excused myself to the ladies room, to write this on the wall in poor handwriting.