I Heard Something Day!

A rustle. Say it was a rustle. In the bushes. When he goes outside in his slippers to check on the noise, do your cocaine.

Outside, he'll find nothing, no one, nowhere. He'll walk around the house. He'll shine a flashlight around the back of the shed. He'll say, "Anyone there?" Then he'll realize that you only sent him outside so you could do your cocaine.

He'll fall to a seat on the top-step of the rear porch and light a cigarette he fishes from his robe pocket. He keeps a pack there, since you keep on sending him outside late at night so you can do your cocaine.

"Why does she have to keep on doing her cocaine?" he'll ask the honeysuckle bush. "She says she won't ever do it again, every single day she says, 'Honey, never again. No more will you find the grains of that cursed powder spilling over the edge of our night-table. I've just been so sad now that I don't have my teaching.' And the very next night, here I am. Pretending to go and look for imaginary intruders because I'm too exhausted to go inside and slap that mirror away from under her nose. There's all the shaking of the shoulders. The grabbing at the shoulders and the shaking and the screaming, 'Goddammit how many times are you gonna give in? Is it worth it? Is our marriage worth it?'"

Inside, you'll be doing your cocaine, trying do it all as fast as you can, unaware that you're fooling no one. He's just waiting for you to finish up and get into your chair to start reading with that mini-book light he bought you last Christmas after he realized how much you like to stay up and read after doing your cocaine.

Outside, a man will come walking down the middle of the street. He'll stop when he sees your husband coming around from the back of the house in his bathrobe. He'll say, "Friend?"

Your husband will stop and shine his flashlight on the man. A couple of flannels and some workpants. Clearly a vagrant.

"Friend, have you something to eat? Or do you know where an able-bodied man such as myself might find a decent day's work for a decent day's pay?"

Your husband won't be able to swallow his smile. I found her intruder, he'll think.

"Do something for me," your husband will say. "I'll give you fifty bucks."

Inside, you'll be packing away your mirror and you'll get up to wipe your nose in the bathroom and marvel at the Grecian magnificence of your physical presence in the bathroom vanity. You'll hear your husband shout.

"But I made it all up," you'll think. "Or by making it up, did I will a murderous intruder into being, sending my husband out to a doom of my making? Motherfucking cocaine." You'll say that last part out loud to the drawer of the night-table. Then you'll hear your husband shout again. This time he'll shout your name.

You'll run out to the front step and you'll find your husband on the lawn, bleeding from the forehead. You'll see a silhouette running off down the street.

"Oh honey, oh my baby I'm sorry." You'll cradle his wounded head in your lap on the lawn.

"Call the police," your husband will whimper.

You'll suck in some air and try to curb the rocking in your cocaine-charged knees.

"Go on," he'll say. "He's getting away. Call the police."

"He's already gone," you'll say. "In fact, he was never there." Now you'll start crying.

Your husband won't let his face show how pleased he is with his ingenuity. He'll clench his features up in feigned agony. "What are you saying?"

"That man who hurt you," you'll sob. "I brought him to our house. When I sent you out here, I had heard nothing. I just wanted to do my cocaine."

"You were doing your cocaine?" your husband will shout, with a little too much shock.

"Yes, and that man that hurt you. He was just a manifestation of my addiction. A physicalization of the hurt I'm bringing upon those I love by doing my cocaine. He wasn't real. Or at least, he was as real as the wedge I'm driving between us. Oh honey, I promise, I'll never do my cocaine again."

"Shake on it?" your husband will say from your lap.

He'll hold his hand up to you. You'll hesitate for a second, but you'll take his hand in yours and you'll shake. Therefore, you'll never do your cocaine again.

Happy I Heard Something Day!

Cutoff Denim Shorts To Be Unbuttoned By Another Day!

Young lady, you dress with an agenda. Those pale little low-fat thighs are packed into your shorts with the same meticulous precision you employed to fasten the jam jar into the southwest corner of your picnic basket.

history: lee jeans purchased second-hand from a stoop sale in carroll gardens, brooklyn, autumn 1998, $2.00. two washes later, an autumn favorite. notable wears: summer, 1999, outdoor waterfront jets to brazil concert, dumbo, met lauren ("you could be my new best friend" when lauren gave you a third from her six); winter, 2001, metroliner ride to philadelphia funeral following younger sister's successful suicide attempt, breathed twelve times over 80 minutes; spring, 2002, sat alone in central park on a hill, felt okay. a gap in the knee made itself known, autumn of 2002. the lee jeans were retrieved from the closet and chopped two inches into the thigh in june, 2003. went to the top of the summer a-list with a bullet.

The white ones with the little blue whatchamathings polka'd all over them, perfect for popping into the evening light at the release of three stops on the button-fly. Will he use one hand or two? Will he be able to keep on kissing you, or will he have to look back and forth between the horizon of your torso and the dimple of your smile? The blue of the whatchamathings echoes the blue of your picnic blanket, a faded blue. The white's gonna scream out loud, the white's gonna laugh out loud, the white's gonna be quiet as a mouse. Don't tell us what's gonna happen next. Just tell us his hair color and whether he gets your jokes.

Happy Cutoff Denim Shorts To Be Unbuttoned By Another Day!

King June Day!

Today a rapper named King June will ask you out on a date. He is the rapper who writes raps about wildflowers in bloom, love, and tasteful weddings.

Daisies in your hair
Love is in the air
Brotha groom waitin' with a smile
Go on Gina, wreck tha aisle

-excerpt from "Gina Goin Down Tha Aisle"
King June, copyright 2002

Unfortunately, you're seeing someone. King June's shoulders will fall and he'll ask, "Are you in love?"

"I think so," you'll say.

"But you ain't tol' him so yet?"

"No," you'll say. "But this one feels like the real deal."

King June will shake his head in sorrow. "Man it seem like a century since I been up in that kinda shit." You'll rub King June's shoulder. He'll smile and wish you luck.

Happy King June Day!

Why You're Gonna Vomit Day!

You're gonna put on an old sweatshirt you'll pull three years deep from the bottom of your closet and you'll pull it over your head and there'll be the scent of Joe, who wore it whenever he'd step out on your fire escape to smoke a cigarette and that scent of burnt tobacco paper and Joe's neck will send grey lilly pads drifting over your line of vision and you'll tip back onto your bed so you can try to stretch your frame of bones out just enough to breath again. Breath the air up above your bed. That's fresh. But Joe'll be in your nostrils and so you'll have no choice but to send the acid three hours deep at the bottom of your belly up and out through your nostrils to burn through a layer or two from your nasal passages. You'll allow a near-digested chunk of today's General Tso's to sit just at the back of your throat to fight off any Joe sense-memories that try to resurface. Eventually, the chicken will slide down your throat and you'll be defenseless so you'll throw up once or twice more before you manage to sleep and dream horrible dreams about car crash Dads and Moms.

Happy Why You're Gonna Vomit Day!

Heart To Heart Day!

She'll tell you she doesn't think she can go on with having so little money for much longer, that she's not as young as she used to be and she's going to need to get some comfort pretty soon.

"I'm just so very tired."

She'll tell you she's always cold, that every night she hugs the empty space in bed beside her and it's like clutching onto a block of ice or something long dead.

"A giant shiny bullet. And I hug its perfect curves to my belly and my chest and I wrap my legs around its trunk and I go stiff. I fall asleep like that, stone stiff."

Like the blood in her veins just stopped right where it was with a squeal of the brakes, she'll say. She'll tell you she hasn't cried in a year. That she's always aware of when she's smiling. That when she's at a party, standing with a group of three or more people, trying to appear like she's listening, she sometimes yelps.

"I'm losing control."

An oil painting will fall from the wall of the café smack down on the top of your head. The 5 by 4 foot canvas will rip and your head will poke through the gap. The painting will rest balanced on your shoulders, the shards of canvas climbing up your neck like a jester's collar. The frame will be heavy and you won't be able to breathe that well.

She'll laugh. You'll smile and struggle to pull the painting up over your head. Her laughter will turn to a wail. Not quite a howl. Not quite a scream. Just a deep AAAAAAAAAAAAGH flying out of that little black haired head. But she'll be smiling while she lets it fly. You won't ask if she's aware that she's smiling, the poor thing.

Happy Heart To Heart Day!

This Cabride Day!

"Now what?"

"Fuck if I know," she says.

Ten blocks pass. Uptown. Everything's just lights and concrete trying to smash through nighttime. The right passenger side window is open by your head. Hers is closed shut. It's quiet on her side.

"Where we headed kids?"

You say, "No stops."

The cabdriver wants that repeated, but he keeps quiet. He got a look at her in the rearview mirror.

Ten blocks pass before the cabdriver turns east at the top of the park. You're going to head into downtown on the east side tonight. It's going to be colder on the east side, it always is. But you won't roll up your window.

"I don't need you, you know."

"I know it," you say.

"You could leave tonight and never come back and I'd be just fine."

"I believe it," you say.

"Wouldn't miss a beat. I'd be a lot better off. Everybody says so."

"I'm gonna need twenty bucks."

You raise your eyebrows in the rear view mirror.

"I got no problem being a part of this. But the meter's already at 15. I'm gonna need twenty bucks up front to keep going."

You slide two twenties into the cabdriver's hand through the partition. Like you paid to be rid of it, 50 blocks of East Side are obliterated in one grey blur. No words until downtown. "I'm not holding a gun in my hand on Sundays."

She says, "It's a flaw that keeps me in your bed on Sundays. It's something that's wrong with me that I wish I could correct. I'm not happy there."

"Take us over the Williamsburg Bridge."

"You think I'm happy there? You think a drunk is happy when he gets his drink? He's not happy. He just gets his drink."

In the middle of the bridge you think about how boring it would be to jump. As boring as it is to stay alive, to stay in this cab. No more, no less. You tell her, "I think we're the best there is."

"Take us to Queens now," she says when the cab hits Williamsburg. "Take surface streets only. When you get to Queens, head back into Manhattan. Surface streets only. Do you need more money?" That's all she says because, though it was harsh, she knows you're right. You're the best there is.

"Not just yet," the cabdriver says. "My wife was a cagey one for a long, long time."

"What was she afraid of?" she asks.

"Me. The last word I spoke. Whatever I was about to say."

On Williamsburg streets newspapers fly everywhere. You're almost through it.

"What made her come around?" you ask.

He shrugs, "No choice I guess."

"Maybe she just settled for you," she says.

The cabdriver says, "We're not gonna live that long. Gotta settle for somethin'," because cabdrivers are wise.

Queens windows are dark and people on the streets are alert, alone, and walk with a purpose, even at 2 AM. You always thought Queens would've been a great place to go to elementary school.

"Hey," she says, banging on the partition. "Hey." You forgot how drunk she was when you got her to leave the bar.

"Hey what? Quit bangin'."

"What'd you settle for then?"

"You ain't got enough twenties darlin'."

She leans back into her seat.

"I ain't gotta make a left turn you know. I can keep going, take you right to Kennedy and you can get yourself on a plane back to Michigan or wherever you came from."

You say, "She grew up in Maryland."

"Nice down there."

She's looking out the window and shaking her head. You're looking at her thighs poking out from her skirt. You want your hands on her thighs, pressing hard like you're trying to rub the blood out of her veins. She'd just let you go ahead, like she does. You'd slide both hands up under her panties and let your fingers clasp in her bush. You'd open up her pussy with a thumb. She'd lift her arms up and put her hands on the rear window like she does. You'd kiss her breast through her blouse, then slide her collar down with your chin and stretch your tongue down underneath her bra cup to wet a nipple. You'd kiss her neck then. Then her mouth. Her white neck. Then her mouth. Then you'd be home.

"That's the first red light I hit all night."

It's an intersection and it's three cars deep at every end. People cross the street in drunken bunches. Teens slap at the hood of the cab in front of yours. There's a cop car on your right with two bored policemen inside.

"What about you?"

You look away from the policeman who just looked over at you. You meet her eyes.

"What are you settling for?"

She wants to draw you into battle. You open your mouth to speak and say nothing. She shakes her head to the street outside the window again. It's like pointing a rifle at a kitten that just sniffs around the barrel.

The light turns green and you head for Manhattan. In the middle of the East River, the cabdriver says, "I need some more money." You give him ten more dollars and your address.

She doesn't object. It's already Sunday. She moves across the seat and leans into you, giving the top of her head to your mouth. She hasn't softened, she just got sleepy. You kiss the part of her hair a hundred times.

At the curb, you owe ten more dollars for a tip. "This is the stop?"

"Yes."

"Roll up the windows for me. I'm gonna close shop for a while."

"No more fares?" you ask. You're leaning inside the doorframe. She's waiting on the curb.

"Not like you two. The game's coming on again in a little while. Don't get freaked out if you look out your window and see me here because I'm just gonna park here and listen to the game."

You say okay. Upstairs, when you're waiting for her to get out of the bathroom and come to bed, you look out the window and discover that your windows face out of the wrong side of the building. You can't see the cab from there.

Happy This Cabride Day!

Dry Clean Only Day!

Give chase when you spot the masked gunmen tossing the girl from the Dry Cleaners into the back of their van before taking off down the road. They either took her because they wanted a hostage with which to bargain, or perhaps they were as charmed with her as you are. Your Five-Year Plan has you marrying that girl by October of year three (you learn her name this coming July). And you'll be damned if a couple thugs with handguns are going to make you boot up Powerpoint and edit your Five-Year Plan presentation again.

Don't call the police. They'll only get in the way. Just follow the thugs to the abandoned warehouse they use as a hideout. Once they're inside, drive around the building and make note of all potential exits. Then go and buy weapons. You're going to need forty-six hundred dollars.

Spend the next few days outside the warehouse eating sandwiches and noting when the thugs come and go. If they ever let the girl from the Dry Cleaners out for some exercise, note that as well. It's important. If you have to go to the bathroom, use a public place nearby, maybe a library, and don't take too long. Though you should only be away from the warehouse for as little time as possible, you shouldn't hold it in because the discomfort will wear on your concentration.

"They're probably raping her in there," you're going to think. Don't. The rage will make you burst in and kill everybody before the time is right. Listen to radio stations.

Once you think you have their schedule of comings and goings down pat, calculate when you think they're the drowsiest. 3:30 PM? Thought so.

At 3:30 PM, burst into the warehouse through one of the exits and use your weapons to kill everyone except the girl from the Dry Cleaners. She'll be afraid of you at first because she just watched you murder many men. Hold out your hand to her, palm first, like you're summoning a kitty. She'll come.

Walk her out to the car, repeating to her, "You're safe now. It's okay. No one's gonna hurtcha." Drive her back to the Dry Cleaners, where her father will be waiting on the sidewalk wringing his hands. Because the girl and her parents are ethnic, they will invite you to their home and feed you lots of food. If it won't screw up your five-year plan too much, you can try and find out the name of the girl from the Dry Cleaners over the course of one of these meals. You can also ask her father if it'd be okay if you married her. He'll probably go for it, because not long after people meet you they come to the conclusion that you are a wonderful man.

Happy Dry Clean Only Day!

Eighteen Hours Day!

Her husband flew out last night. She's tying up the loose ends and flying out tonight. It's 6 AM. She has to be on her way to the airport at midnight. The speed limits don't go above 35 MPH in her little suburb. She's doing 57 so that she can get inside a house across town with as little of the remaining 18 hours wasted on travel time as she can manage.

He lives almost dead smack en route to the airport. All those times in the past, when she said never again, when she panicked, thinking her husband knew, she never imagined her very last visit would be a pit stop on the way to leaving town forever. She never noticed that he would be right there on the way. She hasn't been back for months. She only just contacted him to tell him goodbye, and he said once more please let me kiss you. When she looked at the map, the convenience of stopping by washed away all guilt. So convenient it belongs on her to-do list. She's delirious, yes, made evident by the fact that she feels she could tell her husband about the stop when she sees him tomorrow and begins to laundry list everything she got done.

Cancelled the paper. Turned off the electric. Dropped off the spare sets of keys to the realtor. Grabbed Kevin by the naked clavicle and didn't let him go for 18 hours straight. Boarded Rex…

She has nine more minutes drive time. She's driven there enough to know it. It's 6:08. She'll find him smoking on his step at 6:17. By no later than 6:18, he'll hold her. That leaves her only 17 hours and forty two minutes. Strange to know for certain that such a brief window of time opens out on the rest of your life.

Happy Eighteen Hours Day!

Your Suspenders, They're Scandalous Day!

Dangling down and flanking your barstool are two blue-then-red-then-blue-again suspenders that belong much more gentlemanly up atop your 38 year old shoulders. They fell when you stepped from the hotel bed to disrobe before mounting your volunteer coordinator again, just like you promised yourself you'd never do again.

She has photos and you have seventy dollars left of your change of a hundred sitting on the bartop. She threatened to send them to your wife and your opponent's campaign manager when she pulled them from the envelope three weeks ago. One hundred thousand dollars is all she's asking, a small price to pay to hang onto your marriage and your shot at a seat on the Dayton City Council.

You have it. You're going to pay it. You're still sleeping with her. Today was the second time since the photos were revealed.

Young men look at horrible men and wonder, is there a moment in time when such a man looks ahead and accepts that the beautiful man he'd hoped to become is nowhere on the horizon? Does he then decide his ideals have been for naught? Is he aware that he is the man he used to look at and wonder about?

All you know is you have seventy dollars worth of drinking to do before you gather the hundred thousand and sleep with your volunteer coordinator again.

Happy Your Suspenders, They're Scandalous Day!

Clue The Game Night Day!

You don't know who did it in what room. You don't know what was used as a weapon. You're preoccupied. Claire attempted suicide this morning and you've been in the hospital all day long. They let her out, trusted her to your supervision. But Claire didn't want to see your face. She claims you are the reason she wants to die, the tone of voice you've chosen to adopt when you've spoken to her over the past nine years. Her disgust with you turned to a fury when you foiled her effort to die. She demanded that you get out and that you never come back. Tonight was Clue The Game night at Charles', which you'd assumed you would skip when you found Claire hanging from the exposed pipe in the study (her flailing legs kicked over the computer monitor). But here you are, and Claire is at home, probably dead already, unless she got lost in one of her fits. Had the hospital not trusted you to supervise, they would have kept her there, kept her from hurting herself. And you would have been free to attend Clue The Game night and compete with your opponents to the fullest of your capacities for strategy and cunning. But your mind can only conjure images of what sort of tableau you'll find when you open your front door a half hour after Clue The Game night comes to a close. Your money is on Claire, in the living room, with the pills.

Happy Clue The Game Night Day!

Cruelty Day!

Lie to him. When you lay with him, tell him a lie. Tell him you had Chinese for lunch, when truthfully, you had a pizza.

Steal from him. A postage stamp. One first class stamp. Steal it from his day planner whilst he showers.

Humiliate him. Secure a plastic bucket of confetti above the front door so that when he walks in, the confetti showers over his head and his shirt. When he's standing there with little pieces of paper all over his body, point at him and laugh and say, "You look like such an asshole."

Make him shit when he doesn't want to. Fix him a sundae full of chopped up laxatives right before he leaves for choir practice. He'll sing off key and his fellow choir singers will find him disgusting and shun him. He will be too embarrassed to explain that it was only because he had to take such a mean shit. He'll drive home crying. He'll drive home crying.

Make him believe he lost something irreplaceable. You. Call him with a disguised voice and say, "I'm sorry to tell you that there's been an accident. She's dead. We can't find her body, but we know she's dead. There were hair fibers, all dead." Don't come home for eleven weeks.

Move him around while he's sleeping. If he's on the bed, put him on the couch. Don't leave a note.

Frustrate him. The next time he approaches you, say "Do we know each other?" He'll spend days trying to convince you that he is the man you've loved for three years now. Don't let on that you know. Just keep saying, "Um, I think I'd remember something like that. I'm calling the fuzz."

Blindfold him and spin him around and swing a bat at his face. This will kill him.

Order him to switch religions. Tell him, "It's splitsville unless you join me in the light of Lutheranism."

Cover him in ants. You'll need a lot of ants and he'll probably need to be tied up or drugged asleep to give you enough time to get each of those ants on him.

Hold him down on the bed and fart in his mouth.

Get fat. He'll be so disappointed. He hates fat women. Put on like 40 pounds and act like you don't think you're gross looking. He won't be able to tell you you are.

Kill yourself. He'll be so sad. He'll say, why? He'll wonder if there's anything he could have done. For the rest of his life, he'll wonder.

Happy Cruelty Day!

Letter To A Lost Friend Day!

(Found ripped to little pieces in Denver)

Frank,

You belong here in love with your wife and children. They forgive you and only want you to come home. Love is yours for the taking, Frank. And your job at the refrigerator store is waiting for you too. I asked Matt.

Lou's dead Frank. Ain't nothing gonna bring him back. I know you blame yourself and that's why you took off. But there ain't nobody to blame but Lou. That guy's been shooting his mouth off for too many years. Everyone knew it would one day catch up with him, just a matter of when and what he'd say. Lou's death wasn't your fault Frank. He got skin cancer fair and square.

Frank, I got a broken heart. My friend's gone and my heart's all broke up into three and four pieces. I'm trying to glue it back together, stitch it up, maybe some twine or hold it over a candle so the pieces melt back together, spirit gum, but it ain't helping. I got a broken heart and it ain't gonna get put back together until my friend cools off and comes home to be my friend again. I miss you Frank. My heart's broke.

Nick's Chicken, Frank. They finally finished remodeling and their doors are open. Same old Nick, same old five dollar pitchers. They sell rotisserie chickens too now, but they're not that good. Lorraine always wants me to bring one home to her though.

It's snowing right now here Frank. It's so beautiful. I wonder what the weather's like where you are. I just realized, when I finish writing this I have no idea how to address it. Maybe I'll just write:

To: Frank
Follow The Streak Of Gold
America.

Jesus I miss you Frank. I took in Bartleby. I didn't trust your kids to take good care and Denise sure as hell didn't wanna go out walking your dog every night. So I got him here in the house. He's doing all right, but he's a bit thin. I think me and Bartleby are both too sick to eat with you gone. Aw Jesus my heart's broke Frank.

That's all I got. I'm beggin' you to come home. Can't do nothing else. Now I'll be waiting for you to come walking up the middle of the street some sunset. Hope it's tomorrow, but I'll be lookin' for you the next day too. Take care of yourself. Lemme see you one more time Frank.

Love,


Kelly

Happy Letter To A Lost Friend Day!

Lemme Swing Out With You Day!

Lynn's skinnydipping with coworkers and she's scared of the rope swing. She's scared of getting unsightly burns on her thighs. She's scared of losing her grip before she gets out over the rocks. She's scared of looking like a fool in front of everyone from the office.

Janine, her supervisor, just swung into the water with a big splash. When she came back up to the surface of the lake, everyone was applauding. Lynn watched closely to see how Janine pulled away from the rope to avoid any burns. She watched to find out when to let go. But Janine's breasts are much smaller than Lynn's. Nothing to catch. What if Lynn lets go of the rope swing and the rope comes tearing up between her cleavage? For the rest of the day everyone will point at the red streak of rope burn searing up between her breasts and wonder if she has a skin condition. Everyone including the very adorable Daniel from Accounts Payable.

And what if there's blood? No. Absolutely not. Lynn hasn't even said hello to Daniel yet. And she absolutely refuses to greet him with blood streaking out over her bared breasts.

But she's afraid to step out of line. It's her department's turn at the swing. If she steps out of line she'll be letting everyone in Data Management down. She has to go through with it.

She's distracted by the guys from Legal playing volleyball. It's amazing, the way their cocks change shape. When she first saw Amrit get out of the water he had practically pulled up all the way within himself. And now he has five full flaccid inches flapping around with every set and spike. Lynn hears a splash, then applause.

It's Debra, the supplies coordinator. The applause is for her handstand. After her splash, she swam back to a shallower level to raise above the water only two legs and a glistening, untended black bush. Like a chopped down tree her legs slowly tip over into the water for one last splash. Then she jumps up from the water for a bow, drawing the biggest applause of all. In her bow, Debra shakes the water from her hair with a whip of her head, causing her very full breasts to reverberate with a ripple.

Debra's breasts are much larger than Lynn's and she came out without any damage. But there's still those rocks. And there are only two in line ahead of her.

"Hey Lynn." It's Daniel from Accounts Payable.

"Daniel. Hey."

They both have their hands on their hips. That happens when two people who are nervous around each other talk while completely naked. At the office, they have pockets to which they can retreat. Lynn tries folding her arms, but she's afraid Daniel will think she doesn't want him to see her naked breasts. So she keeps them on her hips.

"Hittin' the rope swing huh?"

A splash startles Lynn. Applause follows.

"Oh. Yeah, I'm a little scared."

"Oh come on," Daniel says. "There's nothing to it."

Daniel moves his hands up behind his head, then back to his hips. Lynn's eyes follow his hands, and when they drop back to his hips she's able to steal a glance at his genitals. She thinks he might be just a little erect.

"Those rocks though."

"You just have to keep from letting go too soon." Daniel looks out at the rocks, then leans in to Lynn. "Tell you what," he says. "Lemme swing out with you."

To do that, they'll have to wrap up their naked bodies around a rope. Lynn doesn't let the big loud Yes roiling in her belly escape. "Is that allowed?" she asks. "I mean, it's Data Management's turn."

Splash. The rope swings back and Daniel grabs it and holds it out to Lynn. "Hop on," he says.

Lynn wraps her right hand around the rope, her left around Daniel's back.

From the picnic area there are shouts of, "Hey Daniel, Accounts Payable already swung." And, "Get a room you two!"

"Push off with your left foot," he says. He puts his left arm around her waist and pulls her to him. She tries not to arch away when her breasts kiss his pectoral muscles.

"On three," he says. "Let go when I say now."

Daniel begins the count. On one, she wraps her right leg around his left calf. He's more than a little erect against her pelvis. On two they look at each other and smile.

On three Lynn is in Daniel's arms flying out over the surface of a lake. Accounts Payable and Data Management, floating in a naked embrace. When he tells her to, she falls with him.

With the splash, Lynn swallows a big gulp of water. When she breaks the surface, she can hear hoots and hollers behind her coughing. And she can hear Daniel asking her if she's okay.

She manages a smile in between her gasps. His hands are on her shoulders. When she can breathe again, his hands hold the sides of her head. He asks if she's okay again and she nods with a few more coughs. He pulls some hair from over her eyes, which are trained on his. He looks back at the picnic area where the cheering has died down. Then he whips about and puts his lake wet lips to hers. Data Management is pulled to Accounts Payable's naked body and the cheering from the picnic area explodes.

Lynn is nothing but a smile when they pull away and walk back to shore, holding hands underneath the water. People on the beach are singing, "Daniel and Lynn, swingin' from a tree," but stop after not too long because that makes it sound like they were hanged.

Happy Lemme Swing Out With You Day!

New Boys Day!

Four important new boys will enter your life before April 12, 2005. One will be violent.

Jacob. He'll work at a bookstore for God's sake. You're gonna meet him December 9th, 2004 at around one PM. He'll only be 25. Jacob will be a "kind of artist." He'll take you to a performance night that an acquaintance of his will have put together in a giant loft with no furniture in it. You'll wander alone through all the various "exhibits" for hours and hours. You'll only be by Jacob's side for ten minutes while at the show. Eight when you arrive. Two before you go home and sleep with him. You'll see Jacob a few times over the course of the following month (not on New Year's). You'll never go on a date again. You'll just go to his apartment and spend the night when you find yourself in his neighborhood. When he stops answering his phone, you'll decide to never set foot in Plan B Books again.

Tim. Tim will be rich. You won't be able to recoil quickly enough from the thought of what it would be like to marry someone rich. But you're not a bad person. Tim will be the violent one. On June 12, 2004, after dating for two months, you'll be at a summer home of a friend of Tim's. You'll get tired and decide to turn in before Tim is ready and you'll start to fight a bit. The fight will expand to cover a whole bunch of other crap, both of you just laundry listing what's not right. All of a sudden, wordlessly, Tim will grab you by the shoulders and shake you until your vision goes black. Then he'll shove your chest hard enough to drop you to the sand. You'll sleep on a couch in Tim's friend's house that night. The next day, you and Tim will drive home. He won't say a word. Neither will you. You'll get out at your apartment and if you look back, that will be the last time you ever see Tim before you die on September 9, 2023.

Maurice. He will insist that he hates the name Maurice but he won't answer to any sort of nickname. Maurice will have been close with your ex-husband after he left town. Your ex will have given Maurice your number so he can look you up and you can show Maurice around. The thought of romance with Maurice will enter your mind, of course, because Maurice will not be unsightly. And it will be exciting to think about having been set up for an affair by your ex-husband. But that won't be in the cards. Maurice will be a very funny and intelligent friend, but he will loathe himself. You and Maurice will spend every night for about two weeks together (May 11, 2004-May 24, 2004) before Maurice takes a job. After that, you'll ease into a comfortable, lifelong friendship. Maurice will be your "Bride's Maid" at your second wedding (August 1, 2010).

Neil. This is the one. Neil will be a writer who has always traveled on the outskirts of your circle of friends. One night, February 20, 2005, Neil will sit at a table at a bar and all of a sudden he'll just say "Hi, I'm Neil." For the rest of your life (September 9, 2023) not a day will go by that you don't take a moment to stop in your tracks and marvel at how so brief and bland a phrase could announce so vicious a twisting of your insides. Blonde, broke, drunk, Neil will talk to you until three AM on February 20, 2005. You'll go home with him. You'll stay in his home until February 24, 2005, and then you'll only leave to get some things out of your place. Your first year with Neil will be heaven. The clearest and plainest love you've ever felt. The days between April 16, 2006 and December 25, 2007 will be the worst of your entire life (September 9, 2023). After that, things will get a little better with Neil. But you'll split up early 2009. This is the one, though. You'll love again, but not like with Neil. Neil's gonna take you captive. It'll be hostile, even though you'll have surrendered.

Happy New Boys Day!

Ice Skates Day!

Girls in ice skates are for falling in love with. Girls who just took off their ice skates and are plodding their stockinged feet up to the counter to return them are to be chased after and begged back. Girls with ice skates hanging from a hook in the corner of a bedroom are to be broken up with. Girls who don't know how to ice skate put out. Girls who are presently ice skating should be smacked in the backside (but not so hard that they fall and scrape their faces). Drunk girls ice skating failed 7th grade. Girls who go ice skating and complain about the cold failed 7th grade and 3rd grade. Girls who hold a boy's hand while ice skating won't amount to much in life. Girls who bought some ice skates from a garage sale but never used them even though they've kept them for fourteen years and three apartments (two cities) are the most beautiful, intelligent, and attractive girls in the world and you should not be afraid to let them control your every thought, word and choice (you're stupid). Girls who lick the blade of an ice skate at the end of the night are pretty motherfucking awesome (check out Lauren ya'll). Girls who always get two left shoes when they rent ice skates are pretty cute and absolutely amazing in bed but they come off as kind of the "she'll do, I guess" variety. Girls who not only do not want to ice skate but are actually kind of phobic of it will steal your heart for several years before you realize they're only as interesting as their neuroses (terrible in bed too). Girls who buy drugs at an ice skating rink are pregnant again. All the other girls, lift up your pretty faces.

Happy Ice Skates Day!

Two New Kittens Day!

Name the black one Crunchtime, and the orange one Everlasting Love.

Watch Crunchtime and Everlasting Love scamper.

Watch Everlasting Love welcome Crunchtime to sleep in the warm crook of his curled out belly.

Roll a ball. Crunchtime and Everlasting Love will race to capture it. Everlasting Love will get the ball and sit with it. Crunchtime will sit not a few feet away, looking into Everlasting Love's eyes.

At night, Crunchtime and Everlasting Love will sleep in between your legs. In the day, they'll walk around digging you.

One last thing.

Crunchtime and Everlasting Love need you to know they are there to add something to your life. Not to save it. Crunchtime and Everlasting Love know you, and they know you're on the right track. They're happy to be with you, in your home. Everything, tonight, tomorrow, all this year, everything is going to be just beautiful. You have nothing to worry about. Sleep well, beautiful.

Love,

Prettygirl

Happy Two New Kittens Day!

This Is Pussy Dust Day!

It improves. Sprinkle a little bit of it on your chest and you'll breathe a little better. Place a pinch in your palm and blow the cloud poof through your bedroom and you'll dream about an autumn walk you took in a park once. Scatter it over your desk and shuffle your files about and before you know it, your boss' hand is on your shoulder and he's telling you you're an indispensable cog in the Kraynetech Global Innovations and Technologies Machine. Drop some into your cornflakes in the morning and, ironically, your corn flakes won't go soggy (and they'll taste like pussy). Fling it into the eyes of an assassin and he'll turn all springtime, the murder in his eyes giving way to a boyish twinkle. Stuff it into an envelope addressed to a television news anchor and you'll receive a letter three days later that reads, "Top story tonight: Thanks For The Pussy Dust!"

All this and more, guaranteed. Keep away from cock and balls.

Happy This Is Pussy Dust Day!

Crewcut Lee Day!

Lee Gerosopolous could not be described as, "A Person You'd Recall Having Met Several Times Before." While Lee Gerosopolous might remember word-for-word a twelve minute conversation he had with you at a party, he'll still introduce himself to you the next time he sees you because he'll assume that you haven't the faintest memory of ever having seen him before in your entire life. And he'll be right.

Lee Gerosopolous once saved a woman from choking on an olive pit. He used the Heimlich maneuver on her, stabbed his thumb up underneath her breast and jerked her insides up out of her throat. Then she turned around and cried in his arms, thanking him over and over. Three days later they stood on line together at a bank, Lee directly in front of her. He turned around and said hello and the blank look in her eyes told Lee that he was about to do some explaining until she finally nods and says "Oh right that was you wasn't it," her tone indicating that she is recognizing him solely based on the fact that he knows things only the man who gave her the Heimlich maneuver three nights ago could know.

This story should end up with Lee falling in love with a girl who remembers meeting him, but whom Lee cannot remember meeting. That'd be adorable.

Anyway, Lee's gonna get a crewcut today. He's never had one. After he gets the crewcut, everyone's going to know him as Crewcut Lee. Literally, everyone. It'll start with the barber, who'll flip the smock from atop Lee's big belly and say, "There you go, Crewcut Lee. Upsie-daisy" But Lee will have never been to this barber before, and won't remember telling the Barber his name, or speaking at all in fact. Which is why Lee will wonder what made this barber take it upon himself to give Lee a crewcut, when he clearly walked in with a head full of just-part-it-on-the-side.

When Lee steps out of the Barbershop, a man he's never seen before will stop in his tracks and say to Lee, "Hey, Crewcut Lee. Wanna see my new car?"

Lee will step out of the doorway to allow whomever this man is addressing to step out and follow him to his new car. But no one will be there. So Lee will shrug and follow the man half a block down to where he parked his new Accord.

"Like it?" The man will ask. Lee will nod.

"Good." With that the man will get into his car and drive away.

Before Lee has the chance to ponder what just happened, he'll see a couple he's never seen before waving from across the street. They'll both be shouting, "Crewcut Lee! Crewcut Lee!"

Lee will wave back.

"We did it! She'd due in June!" the man will shout. Then he'll point to the woman's stomach. Lee will decide on a thumbs up. The couple will wave once more and walk on.

Lee will rub his fuzzy skull and glance down the avenue at three large men running towards him. "Things have only been odd for a few minutes," Lee will think. "But it's a safe bet those three guys are comin' for me." Lee will run.

But he won't run fast enough. The three large men will catch up to him after a block and a half. Panting, they'll surround Lee. The shortest one (5' 8", 300+ lbs) will say, "Crewcut Lee, did you see a little white kid run past here? Holding a cash drawer?"

Lee will shake his head no.

"Awright, good lookin' out Crewcut Lee." The three large men will race off around the corner.

Lee will stand where he was stopped, searching the intersection, wondering which of the strangers going about their business will be the next to address him as an old friend.

"Must be something to do with this haircut," he'll say out loud. "Crewcut." He'll face a shop window and take himself in, whisper, "Crewcut Lee."

"Crewcut Lee!"

Lee will turn around to find a green Dodge Neon idling at the curb, the man who just shouted to him smiling behind the driver's seat.

"What you up to?"

Lee will think for a second, look around at nobody. He'll say, "Not a lot. You?"

"I'm gettin' outta this town baby. I ain't comin' back neither. Wanna come?"

Lee will blink three times before getting into the passenger seat. 8 mos. later, no body will have been found, but Crewcut Lee will be assumed dead. A memorial service will attract thousands.

Happy Crewcut Lee Day!

Jessica Goodbye Day!

It woulda been awesome:

The Small Time Cross-Country Bandit Lovers On The Run who perform oral sex on each other across the front seat of a moving convertible zipping down the highway. Occasionally, money flitters out from the paper bag the last small town shopkeeper used to empty his register drawer while averting his eyes from the barrel of your pretty baby's handgun. A hundred or two you can bear to lose. It's tribute to the wind. You break up when Jessica gets shot dead and you veer out shooting from behind the train car, drawing fire from the waiting police barricade.

The Hospital Lovers who get married on the oncology floor. You were lucky because you booked the Justice of the Peace in advance and it turned out that Jessica wasn't quite so weak that day. She spoke her vows from bed, you stood beside her, your hand in hers. Your parents were there (hers are dead). When you kissed her, her breath was wrong as black licorice. Jessica dies. You move on.

Lawyers who met as prosecution and defense in a well-publicized murder trial. Jessica got your client the chair. You asked Jessica to dinner. Seven years (three married) later, Jessica dies. Someone got a gun into a courtroom.

The Telekinetic And The Girl Who's Trying To Be Supportive but when word gets out to the press, your previously quiet little love affair is suddenly put under a microscope for all of America to dissect with prejudice. Jessica can't take it and moves back to Santa Clara. But when you're abducted by the government so that they can exploit your powers for military might, Jessica returns to fight for your release. She promises to fight until you come home to her and start floating shit around the house again. You're freed when World Peace happens, and you and Jessica are happy for a while. But when a roof is about to collapse on a school, you use your mind to lift the roof off the building and you save the children, but you accidentally fling the roof onto Jessica. She doesn't die right away. You get to hover over her for a minute or two while she says she loves you and asks if the children are safe. Even though she got hit by the roof of a school, the only visible blemish to her beauty is a small trickle of blood connecting her nostril to her upper lip.

The Widow Who Marries The Guy Who Killed Her Husband but doesn't know it. Or does she? Twenty two years in, postcards arrive at the house. They cryptically intimate the truth. Jessica asks about them. You say, "Beats me." She goes stiff for a few years, then warms to you again. Jessica dies first, at the age of 83, in her sleep. You wake up beside her corpse and think, "Holy shit, this is what it's like to be an old man whose wife just died."

It's not:

The Girl In The Coat Who's Standing Between Two Packed Suitcases Waiting For The Guy In The Kitchen Chair To Say Anything. Anything At All. Even A Sneeze Might Make Her Stay. Anything. Anything. Anything At All. Anything. Jessica leaves.

Happy Jessica Goodbye Day!

She Done Gone And Fainted Day!

Father Clean is holding a wet towel to Cicely's forehead and repeating, "Breathe my child." Her mother, Mrs. Loom, has unbuttoned the top button from Cicely 's sweater. Her father, Mr. Loom, is trying to peer over Father Clean's shoulder, trying to see if his little girl is gonna be okay. Cicely's brother Hinkley is glaring at you, his fists clenching and relaxing, clenching and relaxing.

"What'd you tell her?" Hinkley barks.

Say, "A secret."

"What the fuck'd you tell her?"

Say, "I told her what made the moon. Why the stars make her happy. I told her if I was handed a machine gun and a fly swatter and forced to choose between opening fire on an elementary school playground or exacting one light slap of the fly swatter upon the back of her hand, I would ask her what she thought I should do. I told her I'm learning to fast-dance so that I won't embarrass her at the many weddings we will be attending together over the next forty some years. I told her how bugs fuck, even gnats. I told her after I first saw her face I didn't sleep for four days, for fear of dying in my sleep without ever seeing her face again. I told her every decision I ever make will be decided based on the answer to one simple question: Will this make Cicely happy?"

"Is that it? That's kind of nice."

Say, "I also might have mentioned that I think I might be queer."

Hinkley will look down at his sister, who is now awake, looking up at you. Only 18 hours before the ceremony. If you don't say anything else, she'll go through with the wedding.

Happy She Done Gone And Fainted Day!

Looks Like Jeff's Dead Day!

When she comes home, make sure you're sitting on the kitchen counter fanning yourself with the postcard. She'll stop in the doorway and she won't put down the groceries. She'll know something exciting is about to happen.

"Looks like Jeff's dead," say.

"Prove it."

Hold up the postcard from Sally. The one you're using to fan yourself. Let her see the photo of Yellowstone and she'll put down the groceries.

Looks like Jeff's Dead. Bears.
Need $800 to get back to New Jersey. Western Union.
I'll call.

"My daughter's coming home," your Mom will smile.

"I told you not to worry."

Admit it though, you were the one who was worried. You never liked your sister's boyfriends, and you thought Jeff was going to be the one to take her away from you forever.

Happy Looks Like Jeff's Dead Day!

She's In Blue Day!

Three desks away from you there's a vision of heaven with hell in her eyes. Cheating on her math test by peeking at some formulas scribbled on a crib sheet isn't helping. She's lost. She's gonna fail the class. She's in blue jeans and a big green sweater with a hole in the shoulder revealing a bra strap.

A bra strap. A pitch-black bra strap shrieking at her winter white skin.

"Girls take off their clothes. Girls take off their clothes. Girls take off their clothes. At night before bed. In the morning before they take a shower. In the locker room, twice, before and after gym class. Sometimes girls take off all their clothes, even their underwear and their beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful bra straps. Other times, girls just take off their shirts and pants to put on other shirts and pants but they don't take off their underwear and their yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee bra straps. Sometimes they take off their clothes just because they're home from school and…"

"Rodney."

"Yes?"

"Why all the chatter?"

"I was just whispering a little song to myself Mrs. Chenoweth."

"Well perhaps you'd like to get up in front of the class so that we can all enjoy your little song."

"You got it baby."

Slip out of your shoes and socks and take your mark in front of Mrs. Chenoweth's desk. Sing Milkshake.

Happy She's In Blue Day!

Drunk In Philadelphia Day!

Your rock band broke up two months ago so now you're hanging around with your best friend's rock band and they want you to be their singer. You've been drinking where you sleep, on the floor of an apartment in South Philadelphia, for sixteen days now. You haven't sung a note. You haven't written a lyric. You haven't kissed a lip. Not for sixteen days now.

There's always lots of people circling around you. The door opens, you wake up, you're introduced to at least three people you've never seen before, someone hands you a beer and tells you they're about to order dinner and asks if you want in. Then you sit on the borrowed comforter that comes between you and the floorboards and drink and talk for seven hours. Everyone else is scattered about on chairs and couch cushions, they're all up above. They're telling you they saw your old band play seven months ago and you're great. They're wearing shoes and socks but you're only wearing socks.

Things are good. When you're alone you're asleep. When you're awake you're drunk and you're craning your neck to look up at people who admire you. You eat when someone else does. You drink what's given to you.

You own nothing. You acquire nothing of your own volition. You attain consciousness only when someone pulls you from sleep. Your life is on the floor of someone else's life. One day soon, you're gonna write a new song.

Happy Drunk In Philadelphia Day!

Army Men Day!

You've been seeing a lot more army men walking through the main square of your town in full fatigues, armed to the hilt and looking at everything with that Thousand-Yard Stare™ stuff. Sometimes they'll just be waiting in line at the Dairy Queen to get a canteen filled up with water. Other times, they'll be lying flat on their bellies in the middle of the sidewalk, making bird noises at each other. And still other times, they open fire on anything that moves.

The next time you see one who doesn't appear to be too involved in any sort of skirmish, go up to him and tug on the ammo belt he wears around his shoulder. When he looks down at you, ask "Are you all ghosts?"

Happy Army Men Day!

Whole Body Day 3 And Final!

The TV is still sitting on the floor in the spot where it tumbled from the stand. There's a crack running diagonal across the screen. He has to walk around it to get in and out of the bathroom. Pete will carry it out to the curb eventually, when everything's finished.

Last night she said, "I love you my Pete." Her first full sentence in six days. It was after her bowl of cornflakes and fingernails. They'd made it to fingernails. Tomorrow, it would be hair. They were ahead of schedule.

Pete's in the bathroom, pouring alcohol where the meat was shorn and wrapping fresh gauze over the red plains of thigh and buttocks. He is calculating the costs of the impending purchases. New set of towels. Replace the broken window. Throw out the clamshell chair and maybe finally spring for a couch. New TV, that could wait. The shelving that fell he might be able to reattach to the wall. Though most of the picture frames and knick-knacks had shattered so they might not need any shelves for a while.

"Want the Pete! All the Pete!"

"Just a minute baby." He's just about got the bandage wrapped and fastened around his right thigh. That's the scrape that stings the most. He went too deep there. But the way she was at first, he didn't think he'd ever be able to give her enough.

He was already at the thighs on Day One. Not long after he got her tied to the clamshell chair, he grabbed the citrus knife and shaved a hunk from his left buttock and dangled it naked into her mouth from his lacrosse gloved hand. She took it into her throat without a single bite and her hunger turned furious. She was getting what she wanted, finally.

So he hit the right buttock and fed her again right away. She chewed that piece and calmed a bit. But it wouldn't last long if he didn't give her some more.

He had to distract her in order to stop at the thigh that night. So he first tacked the strip of skin and tissue to the wall behind her chair, making her crane her head back and snap her jaws up at the meat. She fought at the restraints but never took her eyes off the dangling slab while Pete, already naked from the waist down, climbed into the chair and slid inside her.

It turned her snapping and snarling to a steady growl, but she never took her eyes off the meat. With each thrust, her focus on the meat grew more studied. When he was ready to come, and when he thought she was ready for whatever could be interpreted as an orgasm in her state, Pete yanked the meat from the wall with his hand in the lacrosse glove and stuffed it into her mouth. She howled from behind the mouthful of flesh, let her head weave round and round on her neck, swallowed, and fell asleep with Pete in her pussy and her belly.

Before he leaves the bathroom, Pete takes a look in the mirror. He stares into in his own eyes to try to dull the throbbing in his head from all the alcohol. He has to be drunk to start cutting into himself. On that first day, there was only a quarter liter of vodka left in the freezer but he couldn't leave her alone long enough to go out for more. On the second day, during one of her sleeps, he ran out and spent forty bucks on whiskey and wine and for the past five days he's been drunk as New Year's. The hangovers are bleeding into the drunks, so he's cutting back today.

The stench doesn't help his head either. The pile of soiled bathtowels under the window has turned the room septic. She's sitting on their last towel and he's afraid to go in and find out if she's through with it. This is love unmitigated, set free of the bounds of continence.

"Moooore Pete. Love my Pete."

The second day took the limit of his buttocks and nearly half of his left under-thigh. But by nightfall she was willing to eat half a roll he'd pressed up against a wound and bloodied. Day three required a lot of sex. And he did thirty minutes on their exercycle then let her suck on the sweaty tee shirt. Dinner that night was a hamburger wrapped in the skin of his shoulder and thigh, fried. Days four and five weaned her from slabs of flesh onto real food with bits of Pete as a garnish (foot calluses and one earlobe, toasted). By the night of day five, last night, Pete was able to hug Jenna (still in restraints) without her snapping out at his neck or cheek.

They went home together the night they met. They had sex quickly and then stayed up all night, letting their hands graze along each other's inclines and crevices. She'd dance her fingers along the peak of his hip and she'd say I love this. She'd slide her fingers into the thick of his pubis and she'd say I love this. She place her palm flat on his cheek, bent crooked over his mouth, stiff over his eyes, each time she said I love this.

"Love it all," he said. "Take it all."

When Pete met Jenna, he had no use for himself anymore. He wanted to surrender to her all rights to his self. He told her that very first night. "From now on, I am not Pete. I am Jenna's."

That first night, had she asked that he chop himself apart and feed himself to her, he would have consented readily. But she didn't ask. She didn't want to rush things. And as time wore on, Pete's love for her and willingness to give of himself to her never faded. But it was forced to battle distraction. Obligations to his employer, his family and friends, the child to whom he'd volunteered to be a Big Brother, and to Jenna. Long released from the dizzy swirl of newfound love, Pete has his wits about him enough to know that he must keep himself in one piece in order to continue to love and care for Jenna.

But Jenna's need only grew stronger. She's less practical than Pete. She's less considerate of long-term consequences. He has to remind her that if she chops him into pieces and eats him up, when her plate's clean he'll be all gone.

"Pete?" She calls his name the way a human would. The way the people at the office do.

"Pete?"

Pete walks out of the bathroom and Jenna is looking in his eyes. Not like a predator. The need isn't gustatory. It's that need that no one can comprehend. The one that can hurt so much more than a hunk of flesh being shaved from the bone. It’s what he saw in her eyes the first night they lay in bed together.

He takes a step towards her, then remembers to put on his lacrosse gloves. She growls just a bit in the delay. The he climbs into the clamshell chair, settles himself in her spread open lap, and wraps his arms around her neck, taking care to brace his jaw against hers to keep her from whipping about and snapping into his ear.

But he feels no struggle in her jaw. Only the warmth of her cheek as it caresses his. The struggle is in her bound hands. He shouldn't, but he sets her arms free, keeping her torso fastened firmly to the chair frame.

Pete's frightened when her arms rattle around his back and pull him into a tight clench. But she doesn't grab him or twist him towards her mouth. She just holds him.

"Whole body," she whispers. "Whole body."

Her nails dig into his back a bit.

"Whole body," getting louder.

"You have it."

The nails recede.

"Whole body."

Pete whispers into Jenna's ear. "You have it."

They stay still there in the chair for a few hours, then have sex again. Tomorrow he will feed her his hair. He really liked his haircut, but her breathing is still erratic. She still needs a little more of him. Perhaps as early as tomorrow night, she'll want some ice cream.

Happy Whole Body Day 3 And Final!

Whole Body Day 2!

At the apartment she shares with Pete, Jenna is completely naked in a clamshell chair. Using her index fingernail she taps out a tense rhythm on the wood frame of the chair. She moved the clamshell chair to face the front door, the recline of it providing a sort of launch pad. She swallows three times a minute to contain the rapid flow of saliva into her mouth. Jenna's ready to pounce.

Pete's late. Jenna has to pee. She considers whether she can just let it out, right there in the clamshell chair. The place is going to be pretty messy not long after Pete gets home anyhow. But she decides against it and goes into the bathroom.

It's hard for Jenna to pee because she keeps having to lean forward and fondle Pete's toiletries. His shampoo slash conditioner for dry to normal hair. His Mach 3. His nose-hair clippers and toothbrush. By the time she starts to pee she has all of his things resting in the crevice where her thighs almost touch. His toothbrush is in her mouth.

Back in the clamshell chair, his toothbrush still in her mouth, she's got her legs bundled up with her in the belly of the chair and she's bouncing a little, just letting her head jut out from her neck to the pulse of an old car motor. She whispers out a pant of "PETE PETE PETE PETE PETE PETE PETE," until she hears Pete.

The key goes into the lock, Jenna flies from the clamshell chair. The door opens and Pete and Jenna tumble into the hallway. Jenna's teeth hit Pete on the cheek and break the skin.

"The OW!"

A grocery bag that Pete was holding somehow ends up underneath his back. A box of angel hair pasta is crushed open and the pasta splays out onto the dirty tiled hallway like a fan.

Pete tosses Jenna off him and back inside, forcing her into a clumsy backward roll. Before he can get off of his back, her naked weight is atop him again. She gets his entire left ear in her maw. He yanks his head away before she can bite down. This time he throws her off him with enough force to send her to her feet running backwards into the apartment.

"Jesus, Jenna. You're—"

Naked, she growls. She runs. Pete pulls the door shut and she slams into it with a wet thud. He gets up and holds onto the knob she's now trying to wrench open to the beat of her dotted breaths.

With one hand on the knob, Pete tries to collect the groceries into his shopping bag with the other hand. He hasn't seen her like this since the first month after they moved in together.

"You should see her," Pete told his Dad (divorced, focusing on career) at one of their Wednesday lunches. "Always naked. Always running."

"Your mother."

Pete picked up a ketchup bottle and a pepper shaker to conduct an unnecessary demonstration. He bounced the ketchup bottle a casual few steps across the table. Then he bounced the pepper shaker bang bang bang straight at it, slamming into the ketchup bottle and knocking it onto its side.

"I like that girl. She loves my boy."

"She's biting me."

Pete's Dad whistled.

"Hard."

"I really like that girl."

"Aren't things supposed to get dull when you move in together?"

"Not at first. More than enough time for that," his Dad laughed. "For the first year or two your mother and I…"

"Seriously, go on."

Pete's father shook an incredulous smile onto his face. "We'd…every day and night it was…When we were just dating it was like we were looking through the fence at this fantastic playground. And when we moved in together, we hopped the fence and the playground was ours."

Pete smiled. It had been two years since his Dad moved out and he was just starting to talk about his Mom with some affection in his tone again.

"This doesn't feel like a playground. It's like she thinks time's running out."

"It always is." Pete's Dad likes to invoke defeat.

"But what kind of love is that?" Pete asked.

"The girl you love wants all of you and fast. Men have suffered crueler fates."

This left Pete quiet with a smile for a bit. Then he started talking again.

"My favorite part…"

"Seriously, go on."

Pete had to look down at the table while he said it. "Jenna's…Her pussy's real big."

Pete looked up at his Dad to find his face stone frozen into that of a man who is hearing something he never imagined he'd ever hear in his entire life. Pete looked back down at the table.

"I mean her…her labia. It's fat," Pete says. "When she runs at me like that, naked like that, panting at me like an animal. I imagine the panting's coming out of her pussy. Like she's breathing out of it. It growls and it's got teeth. And it's like 500 pounds."

After that, Pete and his Dad mustered up a strained laugh before either of them could get the chance to say anything else.

That lunch was over a year ago, two weeks after Pete moved in with Jenna. And three weeks after that was when Jenna lost all control. When Pete started having to yell and hold her back. When she started breaking the skin.

With his hand on the doorknob, and Jenna's 120 pounds thudding against the other side of the door, Pete tries to figure out what's triggered it all again. Things had been good of late. But if he had to put their relationship into a word, he'd choose "comfortable." Certainly not "primal." He might never know what sets her off. But he knows how to get her under control.

As he turns the knob and shoves through the door Pete thinks, "Maybe it's my new haircut."

Tomorrow...Whole Body: The Stupid Ending

Happy Whole Body Day 2!

Whole Body Day 1!

Jenna's gonna eat her boyfriend.

Pete, her boyfriend, likes to shout "That tickles hey!" whenever Jenna wraps her teeth around his big toe. He's real ticklish. But she can't help it. She's never had a boy like this before. A boy so very tasty.

"Every goddamn night there's this giant slab of the most beautiful flesh lying right next to me it's driving me crazy wanna bite it!" Jenna tells her Mom (divorced, dating).

"Your father."

Jenna waggles her head involuntarily. "I think about his belly and my lips rise to my gums. Feel my forearm muscles."

"Tense as a jungle cat, yes. Haven't we been through this? It ended badly." Jenna's Mom lets go of Jenna's forearm to light another cigarette. She lights one for Jenna. The only good thing that came out of her divorce was that she gets to spend these afternoons with her daughter Jenna.

While Jenna is with her Mom, Pete is sitting behind a receptionist's desk. He's on a three-month temp assignment at a firm that does marketing for non-profits. The reception area is a quietly lit burgundy. Perfect only for napping and letting your mind drift. Jenna's seen it.

"When can I see where you work?" Jenna pants every time Pete starts a new assignment. "I'll be thinking about you, and I want to get everything right. Can I sneak up tomorrow?"

When Jenna's Mom starts to tell a story, Jenna places Pete behind his desk, reading whatever novel she saw him stuff into his bag that morning, and her mind's eye flies all about him, up top taking in the cowlick of his hair, little lower to the bulk of his neck, down around that round sweet belly, legs she skips, arms with the shirtcuffs rolled up to reveal his forearms and his oh god—

"ARM HAIR!"

"Christ."

Jenna folds her arms on the kitchen counter and grinds her eyes into her skin.

"You scared me half to death."

"Soooooorrrrry." She shoves her face into the join of her arms with all her weight, trying to bust through.

"Jesus, you got it bad. Go home and eat him."

Jenna snaps up her bag and runs out the door.

To be continued...

Happy Whole Body Day 1!

Dan The Wastrel Day!

Dan The Wastrel has just been cast out of his own brother's wedding rehearsal dinner. "Your presence chips away at the value inherent in my union. Get someplace where I can't see your face," said Dan the Wastrel's brother.

Dan goes to the muddy beach of the creek running through the golf course. Luckily, he doesn't run into any teenagers getting drunk there. Teenagers often beat him up.

Dan climbs down the beach of the creek to a sewer drain. Secured with a rock against a dry wall of the drain is a book called, "Princess Van Salt And Her 12 Magical Unicorns." Dan grabs the book and begins to read, just as he's done so many other nights after being asked to go away.

"Take me away to your beautiful world, Lon Gloucester," Dan says out loud. Lon Gloucester is the guy who wrote "Princess Van Salt And Her 12 Magical Unicorns." Back in the fifties.

Happy Dan The Wastrel Day!

At The Whorehouse Day!

The girls at the whorehouse sit Indian style in a circle on the Persian carpet in the parlor. All the customers have left for the night, save one. Zach Baxter.

Zach's been a customer of Lila's for twenty one years now. Looking around the circle, he sees so many faces that have given him such sweet comfort.

There's Nina, who spent three whole days with him when he showed up one night with a pile of divorce papers bearing his signature. Nina waited hours at a time for Zach to finish crying. And when he ran out of tears, Nina cried for him.

There's Melanie. Melanie was Zach's favorite while he was drinking. She'd do the only thing Zach wanted out of a girl back then. She'd finish his bottles. When Zach put the bottle down, Melanie kissed him on the forehead and put herself back on the shelf.

And of course, there's Lila herself. Zach's first. His father brought him to Lila when Zach was fifteen. "He's having a tough time of it Lila. Thought you might be able to set him on the right track," Mr. Baxter had said before shoving Zach through a beaded curtain. Years later, Zach came to Lila when he thought his erection was gone. "You made me a man once," Zach had said. "Beautiful Lila, make me a man again." Lila shook her head. "I'm not the one you want," she said. "But I'll bring her to you."

And Lila introduced Zach Baxter to sweet Frida. Tiny, patient, with naïve eyes, Frida didn't just inspire arousal, she was the blood of the erection itself. There she is at the north end of the circle. A little older now and still most desirable, though not quite the force of nature that Zach remembers from that fateful night. But that sort of bloom doesn't last very long.

If he tried every minute until the day that he dies, Zach Baxter could never thank these women enough. And tonight, they've asked him for a favor.

"People respect you Mr. Baxter," Lila says. "You throw your hat in the ring and ain't nobody gonna put their money on anybody else."

"And you don't even have to win," offers Tatiana, a recent hire at Lila's. "Just put the issue on the table and it'll be struck before election day." Tatiana has had Zach wrapped around her finger these past few weeks. She knows she's got his ear, by way of his heart.

But Zach doesn't need to be manipulated. His answer was yes before he heard the question. "I'll do it. Of course I will," he tells the circle.

Lila rises and kisses Zach Baxter on the cheek. He will run for mayor in an effort to battle the incumbent's plans to level Lila's house and the surrounding twenty blocks to make room for a new sports arena.

Happy At The Whorehouse Day!

With A Snap Of Your Fingers You Can Make A Girl Cry Day!

That shouldn't be read figuratively. No one's saying you always say the wrong thing or you're always toying with girls' emotions. The deal is this: The man you think is your father is actually not your father. Your mother had an affair with a cold, dark entity that took the form of her continuing education calligraphy instructor. Thankfully, your mother was a good woman and her spirit combated most of the evil that stirred inside her womb. But you did inherit some of your father's qualities. His good looks for one. His swagger. His drive to conquer, that's starting to show in your archery. And of course, his ability to make a girl cry simply by snapping his fingers.

Try it out and you'll see. Start at Rite Aid. When the girl behind the counter speaks to you in an absent, sleepy murmur, snap your fingers and watch her crumple into a sob. Next, do it to your mom. Call her on her cell and say things like, "Mom, I love you and I hope I'm making you proud. That's all I've ever wanted to do." Your mom'll assume you're drunk and will probably crack a joke about you being a sloppy little homo. That's when you snap your fingers and listen to her breath get choppy with tears. She'll say, "I'm sorry, I don't know what's come over me." You can tell her that she must have been overcome with emotion after hearing you speak so sincerely. She'll try to deny it, but you can just say, "Then why you cryin'?" She won't have an answer.

Next, do it to your girlfriend. Right after you beat her at thumb wrestling. Snap your fingers and watch her palms fly up to cup her face. Accuse her of being a sore loser. "And if there's one type of girl I never wanna go steady with, it's a sore loser!" say. She'll beg you not to go so don't.

Next, the ball's in your court. There's 18 million women on the planet. Which one do you wanna see turn into a blubbering mess? If the answer is no one, you're either a liar or a kind person.

Happy With A Snap Of Your Fingers You Can Make A Girl Cry Day!

Scissor Points Day!

People fall in love, hold each other waiting for train arrivals, buy ice cream for each other, smile at work, choose apartments together, fuck on couches, marry, keep scissors in the house.

People rent videotapes, pay utility bills, put gasoline in automobiles, worry over finances, recline into easy chairs and discuss making babies, gather up the hem of the warm blanket of domesticity, entertain offers of quick money to take out local dollar store shopkeepers' burgeoning competition, consider providing for babies and becoming men who can give their wives anything they request.

People pull away a bit, build themselves into a place alone to protect the ones they love from the acts they're about to commit. People plan and keep mum, stake out till all hours making notations and taking caffeine. People lay down late, wake up early, shout when asked to take out the garbage. People who are about to take a life resemble people unhappy with the life they've chosen.

People get suspicious, assume the worst, or at least the worst within a certain frame of reference. People know when they've been told a lie, when they're playing the fool, when everything wonderful is about come tumbling down through no fault of their own. People demand explanations and get no specifics. People decide all is lost and want vengeance.

People get on the same train as a dollar shore shopkeeper with a pocket full of money. People sit at the other end of the car. People pretend to read their newspapers, spying out the corners of their eyes, rise with rehearsed sighs to get off at the number of the stop that's circled in their notebooks.

People follow a dollar store shopkeeper from across the street, from half a block away. People approach the turn down a mostly industrial street at 3 AM. People run ten steps causing a dollar store shopkeeper to stop in his tracks. People pull a gun that's never been fired out of their pockets and people send three bullets through a dollar store shopkeeper's round left pectoral. People make it look like a robbery, take the cash from a dollar store shopkeeper's pants pocket, mentally attaching the amount to the number 10,000 to be supplied by a well-established dollar store shop keeper who doesn't tolerate his business being taken away.

People no longer wonder why a husband might come home at 5 AM without any explanation. People know where he's been, know that the absence of a scent of perfume only indicates the thoroughness of the betrayal. People pretend to sleep soundly, having made their decision. People wait for snoring, go to the sewing drawer, return to the bed and drive scissor points into the space just behind a voicebox. Done, people open the scissors, close them once, they're scissors after all. People wonder what just got cut in two.

Happy Scissor Points Day!

Jeff The Cripple Day!

Jeff the cripple can't walk and he's getting used to it.

"I have to admit, at first I was kind of jealous of the majority of my fellow man," says Jeff. "But then I remembered that I have a lot more money than a lot people."

Jeff's rich.

"I have thirty seven million dollars."

Jeff can't fuck.

"Oh yeah," says Jeff. "Yeah, that still kinda irks me. It makes me feel kind of…um…"

Jeff feels inadequate. A sad excuse for a man.

"Hey!" says Jeff.

Jeff likes to keep magicians around the house.

"I've always been a huge fan of magic. Houdini. Henning."

Jeff spent most of his life trying to earn enough money to destroy his father, a world-renowned financier who abandoned Jeff and his mother when Jeff was five.

"This accident was a big setback in my efforts to dismantle my father's empire and smile while I'm doing it," says Jeff. "Not that I need to walk to continue to amass wealth. But not being able to walk and…everything else…it just left me kind of depressed for a long time. I had to take a break to reevaluate things. Try to remember what's really important. In the end, I concluded that nothing is more important than taking my father down."

Jeff gets sad.

"I'd just like to be left alone for a while, if you don't mind."

Happy Jeff The Cripple Day!

About Norman Day!

We need to talk about Norman. He's stuck.

Norman was down the basement putting some laundry in the washing machine. He was emptying pants pockets of change and a quarter dropped to the ground and rolled out of sight into a nook underneath the stairs behind the beer fridge. So Norman slid the beer fridge out of the way, got on his knees and stretched his arm way back in between the pole supports holding up the stairs. He slapped his hand all over that dark dusty floor but couldn't find the quarter. So Norman decided he wasn't reaching far enough, so he twisted his shoulders up and shoved his whole head and torso up to the biceps in between those pole supports and started flapping his arm around like it was an amputated stump, one of those flipper arms. In that position, he was as far away from grabbing that quarter as he could ever be, so he tried to shift his position to get his palm to the ground. That's when he twisted his right pectoral onto the point of a rusty nail.

The steel ran deep. It's got to be close to an inch under his skin. And he's so twisted up in between the pole supports that he's not sure how to shift his weight to keep the nail from going in deeper. And he's not sure how deep the nail can go. All he can do is stay there arched over on his knees and try to hold himself up by the strength of his hips, which is just about physically impossible. He has to rest every minute or so, but that means letting himself just sink deeper down the nail.

Norman thinks he's going to die. And he's starting to say things. He's telling me secrets he's kept from me, some that he didn't know I already knew about. And then a whole lot of other things that I didn't know about. Disturbing things. He's trying to clean the slate but all he's doing is scaring me. No matter how many times I tell him he's not going to die, he just keeps on talking. And I'm afraid he's going to reveal something that'll leave him as good as dead as far as I'll be concerned. He's already come pretty close. Did you know about the "Gentleboys' Parties?"

I just need to get out of here for a while. I want to call 911 to have some firemen sent over or something. But honestly, when he gets set free I'm going to have to deal with all this information in some way and…I just need to walk it off a little I think. Can you go down there with him? Call 911 if you want. Just give me a headstart so I can walk it off a little. Thanks.

Happy About Norman Day!

Name The Baby Day!

Suggest Ray.

"Ray?" she'll say.

"As in Raymond. Like it?"

She'll get up and go to the window and start to cry. And she'll hold her palms to her big fat belly while she does it. Ask her what's wrong.

"Nothing," she'll say.

Tell her she can tell you anything. Even if it's about a love from her past that was so strong it nearly took her life. Even if it's about a boy who brought her halfway across the country with promises of opening up a little store in a little town that they'd run together, waking up together every morning to put out the newspapers and pour coffee for the men who wear orange vests to work. Even if it's about the apartment above the store that they were supposed to fill up with a daughter and a son and enough love to scare an enemy army.

Even if it's about a boy named Ray who took to drinking more than saving, took to shouting more than singing, took to lying more than not. A boy named Ray who could just as well have dropped her off by the side of an interstate for how quickly he abandoned her to her side of the bed. A boy named Ray who never got them out of the Salt Lake City boarding house they pulled up to when they finally hit the dot on the map.

A boy named Ray who never found that storefront to rent. Who filled their rented room with defeat and black words. A boy named Ray who left her four hundred dollars and no note goodbye the morning after he found out she was pregnant with a boy she wanted to name Ray.

She'll ask, "How'd you know all that?"

Say, "I didn't. Girls Are Pretty did."

"Girls Are Pretty?"

"Right over there. See?"

Then point to the empty doorway, where Girls Are Pretty was standing just a second ago, holding a hammer and some nails.

"Wait a minute," say. "I could swear I…"

She'll come and sit by your side. She'll put her hands on your shivering shoulders. And she'll whisper in your ear, "Shhh. Shhh."

That same beautiful sound is going to be floating through your newborn son's ears in just a few more months. With her whispering lips just an inch from your ear, you'll be so overcome with love for your wife you're going to have to sob just to get some air in your lungs.

"I believe you," she'll say. "Until the day that I die, even when you lie, I'm going to believe every word you say."

Happy Name The Baby Day!

Martin Is So "It" Day!

Martin and Elise are gonna fall in love. They don't know it yet because there are presently a great many distractions afoot. For example, there's the barback lying unconscious and bloody by the curb outside. Martin and Elise have a table by the window, so it's hard to keep the conversation lively when all eyes are watching to see if the barback comes to. The barback just got hit by a car.

"I have one of those jobs where people hear what I do and they say, Wow, I always wondered who does that!"

Elise says, "What? I'm sorry. His left hand is twitching."

Martin and Elise watch in silence as the barback's left hand tries to jump from the wrist.

"Wow. So anyway?"

"Right," says Elise. "Your job. I'm sorry. What do you do?"

"I change the light bulbs in street lamps."

Martin waits. Elise lets her head nod forward. Elise lets her brow furrow. Elise lets her mouth smile. Elise doesn't let herself look at the barback bleeding on the street.

"Betcha always wondered who does that didn't ya?" Martin gloats.

"No," says Elise. "I never did. But ya know, now that I hear it, I'm thinking Gee, why didn't I ever wonder who does that?"

Martin's heart flutters. His eyelids sigh shut just a bit, then again open wide and smiling on Elise. "You're not like the other girls."

Elise's smile is coy. She wants to look at the barback in the street, but she knows that Martin wants to know the date is going as well as he thinks. To turn her attention from Martin might break his spirit. So she lays her hand over his and warms her smile. Martin's eyes rejoice. Elise's eyes scurry to the barback in the street.

"I think he's dead," says Martin.

"No he isn't. See? You can see his chest rising sometimes."

They watch the barback's chest fill up with air then deflate again. Once every eight to fifteen seconds.

Martin's looking at the barback when he says, "My brother's in prison for manslaughter."

Elise looks at Martin. He glances at her, then back to the barback. Elise squeezes his hand tight. Martin elaborates.

"Got drunk one night and went to his ex-wife's house to raise hell. Her brother was staying there with her. He tried to keep my brother from getting in. They kinda locked in a hold on the front steps and tumbled down. Her brother's neck broke. My brother got ten years."

At the end of the story, Martin looks to Elise to see how it went over. Elise puts sympathy on her face. Martin nods.

"Every family's got shit like that, right? Who needs a margarita?"

Elise smiles. They both turn to the waitress, who is just a few steps away from their table, staring past them at the barback. There are EMT workers in orange jackets hovering over him now. The waitress has her hands cupped over her nose and stale tears fogging her eyes.

"Could we uh??" Martin motions to their empty glasses. The waitress nods and goes to the bar.

Elise is glad she likes Martin. When a date is surrounded by wild circumstances like these, she knows it at least guarantees a second date. And more often than not, it's the start of something huge. Watching Martin swivel his straw around in the ice of his empty margarita, Elise lets herself imagine how she and Martin might inhabit something huge.

The fresh Margaritas arrive and Elise asks the waitress, "He worked here?"

The waitress blanches.

"I'm sorry. He? I'm sorry."

The waitress inhales, and when she exhales she coughs out a little sob. "He's our barback." She's staring at him. The EMT workers are guiding a brace underneath the barback's neck. "His name's Martin."

Martin says to Elise, "Same name as me." Elise wishes he hadn't said that, but she knew he was going to.

The waitress says, "Every night when we're setting up, he runs out to get everybody's cigarettes. Everyone here smokes, and some nights he heads out there with fifty bucks if we're all empty. Tonight he and I were the only ones who needed a pack. He went out for his Marlboro Lights and my Parliaments. And crossing the street that car just veered around the corner and God."

"Did you guys ever go out?" Elise asks.

Martin is taken aback, but the waitress answers without hesitating. "Early on. Not really. But some nights early on after I started here we'd end up going home. But not really."

The waitress goes to the bar and puts her arm around the shoulders of the hostess.

Elise and Martin watch the EMT workers lift Martin the barback on a stretcher and load him into the back of the ambulance. They sip their margaritas.

Elise says to Martin, "I took care of my mother for the eight months before she died. She had lung cancer. I didn't really take care of her. I mean, she had hospice care. But I left college and moved into the house and behaved as if it was my job to look after her. When really I could have stayed in school, and visited her every single day."

Martin asks, "Were you looking for a reason to quit?"

"No," says Elise. "I don't think I was at all. I started again two months after my mother passed. But while she was dying, in my head I just decided I have no choice but to devote all my time to her. When most of the time I was just sitting around waiting for her to come out of her sleep."

Martin nods. "You know, when my brother was on trial, I really let it eat up my whole life. It was a big deal for me, no question. But with the way it occupied my thoughts, I think I wanted to get caught up in something way bigger than me."

Elise is very glad she likes Martin on the day Martin the barback got hit by a car.

Happy Martin Is So "It" Day!

Waiting For A Policeman Day!

Mrs. Elizabeth Roundtree sits beside her husband on the front porch of his newly rented Los Angeles home at 2:45 in the morning. There’s a cigarette between her fingertips. Her husband’s fingertips are empty.

"I shouldn’t take this as a sign right?" she asks her husband.

The street is the emptiest they’ve ever seen it. Car lights travel towards them once every million years, driving slowly. Letting them hope for far too long that this is it, the police are finally here. They’ll take our statements. They’ll crack wise about there being no chance in hell of ever finding the guys who did this. They’ll get a call on their radio about "a 327 in progress" or some other number that stands for a far more exciting crime than a burglary. And they’ll rush off pining for gunplay.

"It's kind of lucky," says Daniel Prekop, Mrs. Elizabeth Roundtree's husband. "We needed something to talk about."

Elizabeth says that she feels "violated." Daniel says that his "whole life was on that computer." Elizabeth says that she's "surprised they didn't take the VCR." Daniel says that they must have been able to tell it was a "piece of crap." Elizabeth and Daniel laugh loud enough to drown out the word that's screaming through both of their heads. "Suitcases."

"Good thing we shipped your books ahead," says Daniel.

"'DOS For Dummies' is waiting safe and sound for me to arrive," says Elizabeth. "I wanna go inside for a second but I don't wanna put out my cigarette. Cool?"

She's already standing, ready to go in. Daniel smiles up at her; smoke where you wanna. Tonight is all about lawlessness. The hem of her dress is at his mouth. She always had real long legs.

They haven't had sex. Not since she moved in. But she walks around in her underwear and a tee shirt and his dick gets hard every ten seconds. He's been masturbating into the toilet twice, sometimes three times a day so they can continue to lay in bed together without him sliding his legs around on the sheets.

The day she moved in, Daniel put a folded bed sheet on the couch. It's still there, still folded. Even the burglars didn't disturb it. They want to share the bed. They want to fall asleep together and wake up together and they don't want to have to talk about it. It would be the saddest thing in the world to enter her these days.

Inside Elizabeth's kicked some picture frames and broken glass to make a clean circle on the rug where she can sit Indian style. She wishes it were messier. The way a house looks when someone's searching for stolen diamonds or microchips. Torn up chair cushions. Smashed open grandfather clocks.

Here, all she gets is some wires dangling where electronics were attached. Some tumbled knick-knacks. Muddy footprints and the aforementioned broken glass. A drinking glass that got knocked from the mantle. Just an accident. Sorry 'bout that. Love, The Burglars.

This stuff is all his so she can't break it. Two months ago it was still in their apartment. It was theirs. But now it's his, it's what he took. She can't sweep everything from atop the folding table, lift the table by two of its legs and swing it against the wall, toss it through the picture window. Even though they used to use it as a breakfast table. Now it's his desk.

She has to settle for this mess. It's good enough. It's comforting to sit amidst disarray. The air is good. It would be better if the burglars had been kind enough to piss on something. But she's breathing better tonight. She might even sleep without taking a pill.

"Bless this mess," she says out loud. She leans her head out beyond her calves and lets a wad of spit dribble from her lips into a little dark puddle on the carpet.

"Honey," Daniel calls. The policeman is here.

Daniel's on the lawn talking to him when she comes to the door. The policeman's black. Daniel's white. The policeman has a notepad in his hand. Daniel has Elizabeth's pack of cigarettes in his. She wants one.

"My computer. Um, the TV. My printer too. Two suitcases."

"Suitcases?"

Elizabeth takes the cigarettes from Daniel's hand and decides to enjoy herself. "I'm going to New York in the morning."

"In the suitcases? Just clothes?"

The smile Daniel gives his wife asks her what game she's going to play. He tells the policeman, "And three thousand dollars cash."

Elizabeth lets fly a belly laugh.

"Three thousand."

"I didn't want to forget it," says Elizabeth, taking a deep breath. "So I rolled it up and put it in the suitcase. There was also a um…" She lights a cigarette and drags deeply, Daniel knows, to keep from laughing in the policeman's face. "There was also a hair dryer. In the other suitcase."

"What time'd you get home?"

"Around 12:30," says Daniel.

"Where were you?"

"Dinner. At Mao Palace in the Valley."

"It was a special occasion," Elizabeth says, dragging from the cigarette.

"What's the occasion?"

Daniel's eyes beg her to stop. "Her um…Her New York trip. Tomorrow."

"Your name ma'am?" The policeman has by now decided to spend as little time as he can with these two people.

Daniel can see Elizabeth is holding back gale force laughter. Standing side-by-side with Daniel and talking to people has been troublesome for Elizabeth of late. "Mrs. Elizabeth Roundtree," she says.

"Mr. Roundtree, has your house been burglarized before?"

Elizabeth takes five steps away from Daniel and stands facing a bush. Daniel now has a very big grin on his face. "My name isn't Roundtree. It's Daniel Prekop."

"Your wife kept her name?"

"Yes," Daniel says. Tonight might be the last night he can see her laugh. "And she'll keep on keeping it too."

Elizabeth laughs so hard she's doubled over, coughing into the bush. Daniel watches her, smiling at her, keeping his eyes away from the policeman who has placed his hand on his nightstick.

"Go in the house. Drink some water," Daniel shouts at his wife. She runs inside.

The policeman waits. "Sorry," says Daniel. "We're getting divorced. She's moving to New York."

The policeman lowers his eyes to his notepad and writes something. Daniel peers over the pad to see what he's writing, but he can't make it out. When the policeman stops writing, he gives Daniel a card with a number to call and then drives away.

Inside Elizabeth lay in bed with a lit cigarette in her hand, resting on her forehead. She's done laughing. Daniel gets in bed beside her. He won't need to masturbate tonight. He's not going to get hard. Tonight's a special occasion.

"My money," Elizabeth says.

"I can take out five hundred tomorrow. I'll write you a check for more."

"But that's your money."

Daniel's hands are on his belly. "I don't need it. Pay me back if you want."

She puts her cigarette out in a beer bottle by the bed. She rolls over to face him, folding her hands in the space between them. "I will. I think I'm supposed to."

The light's still on. They're going to stay up. Only five hours left before they leave for the airport.

Happy Waiting For A Policeman Day!