He sat in his chair feeling his chest dissolve into the slick vinyl fabric. He sobbed. His pelvis softened in the seat and collapsed into the wooden frame and metal springs of the chair. In the gathering darkness a little while later his eyes stared sadly out of the ball of dust that had become his head, and then imploded and blew away with his skull. It was “after work hour.” The streets were haunted now with people trying to have a “kick-ass Friday night.” They migrated to the bars like angry moths. In the dark booths at the strip clubs men talked too loudly and women painted themselves too thickly with the colors of war between the sexes. Urine misted off walls in alleys. Dumpsters echoed the stomach churning growl of dry heaves. At restaurants secretaries argued the drama of that week snitching on each other as if it mattered to anyone but them. A man somewhere tried to touch his Girl Friday’s shoulder explaining that he couldn’t divorce his wife of 15 years just yet. Be patient baby. She shrunk from his fingers. Days ago she threw herself at him with a kind of abandon she hadn’t felt since high school. All that didn’t matter now. She had become a thing, like the stapler or the letter opener. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. She stared at the gathering night sky and the bright, burning stars blossoming on an inky blue atmospheric dome. Her eyes ached with a pain that gripped her lungs and made it hard to take a breath. It was lousy to be a thing. The workplace was like a Petri dish, the relationships evolving like bacteria. It felt like slavery, and yet everyone had their own radio, CD players, wide-screen TV’s and SUV’s. They had all become affluent slaves. But they still kept burning themselves on that bug light, the one that entices them to be scorched by their pain even though they should know better than to keep going there. The streets settled into the deepest part of the night bordering on the onset of morning. Time passed like the inner spindly intricacies of a spider building a web. Somewhere someone was murdered and disposed of in a cold river. Somewhere else someone had fevered sex on cool, clean bed sheets. A baby cried in a crib. A dog whimpered in its dreams. Buses and trains moved to and fro across the great, pulsing network of life that feeds and nurtures every city. And yet what had to be the fate of human beings that tried to live in accordance with the rules of steel, concrete, Xerox and fax machines? What did exposure to all this finally make them become? The TV announcer on Albert’s Television said there was no relief in sight for the gas price disaster bringing this nation to its knees. Next door the music of an all night party thumped and shouted against the adjoining walls to Albert’s apartment. A woman whooped wildly somewhere, a live rock band played in a garage several blocks away, until police showed up. The World staggered on its own great feet into another relentless cycle of day and night around Albert’s dry little apartment in the middle of Everything, Everywhere. The wind blew softly through the screen of the kitchen window. In the early morning darkness the TV cast the living room in a blue glow. Cats moved along the wood fence outside, their shadows creeping across the theMeadow 39
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