Since I was talking about him, how I met him through his girlfriend, going to their apartment to collect her things, how young we were! I noticed the decorations on the walls, a bear trap, a sickle, a childish mask by a man who studied to be a priest, a father who allowed the cancer to spread in his little wife as he buttoned up his suit for the office, or sharpened knives, a man taken for a thief, wearing his long green leather jacket soaked in the rain, nearing the accident, the police officer shouting at him to get away.

I was new to the infused scene, really just working away when there wasn't all this foreign banter, when he asked me to film in a hotel room as he flicked through the bundle of paper with an air oscillating between triumph and absolute fear. What would it have been? Twenty years? As I tossed him the key and took off. I was never going to come back. No, that came later, after the overdose, my two cats crystalline, each a sphinx guarding my body from the whirling spirits, my head against the plaster of the wall, against which had rested all the old residents of this cold yet ornate house in the heart of winter. Each room was a corner of a dream, and where I hid the magazine an animal grew. What I can't say with certitude is the intent. Was it malicious? A kind of man that sucks people's misery (I saw him operate) for an internal chuckle that we ought to live by our own, what, kind? Desire for oblivion? I know I'm being vague, and I apologize, but every bit is true.

He dressed in PJs and rode an old bike. He was handsome except for his smile. His hair was trimmed short and his hand rested on the shoulder of a pretty girl. He drank from a paper cup on our steps while not doing anything at all. He once worked a brown envelop soft for a bum.

jam17