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+Trust bed -- eponymous arrivals -- perishables -- wild honey -- summer's by the sea -- here comes the argument -- geography's ants -- implications -- dissemination -- the grid -- through which -- an ideal world gains -- increasing the frequency -- clear endless borders -- the sound has so much body -- dum dee dee der der dee -- becoming -- oom duh oomp -- unbecoming -- click de clack de clack de click de clack oom dee oom dee oomp -- 
+
+The hum the hum the fingers the beat the whining dance the drip drip drip tick tick tick here they come spilling out the sand the pills the time the mold on the tortillas the notes dripping down the speaker cones treble to middle to bass the electric whirl of fans exhaust turbines the spin of molecules the carefully calibrated smoothness of glass the sterility of architecture the depression of low -- lit mornings walloping the darkness into submission the glare the piercing of sun on distracted fingernails doing something doing something not right now doing something.
+
+It has been some time.
+
+But the pounding remains.
+
+And the letters keep on following me.
+
+Perhaps they are building something.
+
+And the clicking.
+
+And the far away fingers clicking.
+
+That could well be the finish work.
+
+Molding. Rain gutters. Lightening rods.
+
+Click click click amplified butterfly wing strokes slowed down, sine waves elongated for closer study zoom in zoom in zoom in zigzagging diggy diggy da momenoff. Chaos is not you see. There are patterns repetitions, beats underlying beats, polyrhythms diving in and out over and under the more obvious backbeats. This is not in time, not in time as we are accustomed to it, out of time, very nearly out of time, but the pattern repeats, waves join and harmonize the tick tick tick blends to the drip drip drip, one wonders if they weren't always the same thing.... Have you not noticed the shplocks? The shplooks? The dings? The clacks? The toings? The tongs? The sprongs? Sounds that work by committee? Sounds that need umlauts...? Diphthongs...? Tildes...?
+
+Things are always as they have ever been but somehow incredibly difficult -- what seemed simple in the end, to get their, to get where? Oh yes the molding. The finishing touches that soften the architectural foxfires. Stamps of individuality hiding the corners, ramps for the windup toys -- fate death dream decay. The decay. The little green growths on the end of the day, the shower a blacker shade mixed with red, different sorts you see... more molds than people when you come down to it. Spawning spreading, eschewing organization, a kind of atonal repetition of function without regard to form. This means something right? It all means something right? This turning on, turning off, repetition of the beat, the caged smoke crawling up the walls from cigarettes and the ashtray says you been up all night like the man on the radio said it would say? Slaves to the pattern, to the beat, the rhythm of blood and circuitry now inexplicably mixed and unable to synchronize without each other. The simultaneous march of time and faucets and showerheads -- this will be good come winter you know -- clicking their way through time the variable, the frequency modulation of life. 
+
+Outside is. Haven't been there lately.
+
+Mainly it's the hum. The whine. The sound of speed. Spinning. The hunch of my back seen from afar trying to get the fucking mold off the fucking tortillas and the hum that won't stop and I love it I want to crawl up in and become it I want the murmur of lips going mmm mmm mmm do do do da da da hmm. Hmm. Tick tick tick all over the table again. Blue and white and pink. Boys and girls and indeterminacies all playing together between the ketchup and syrup and butter and mustard and half full glasses of water with dust and strange protozoa floating on the surface, some so large you can see them with a magnifying glass, which is right there by the bills that haven't been paid, sticking out from under the magazines I haven't read and held down by the mustard as evidence of last night's hamburger.
+
+Oh yes. Last night -- they were red and pink and blue and subversive and locked up. But we freed them, we did, Jimmy with the double helix reflection of throbbing candles in his eyes, spilling them everywhere. The last of them. Chloe in her silk pajama bottoms, legs tucked up under, and the walls leaning in and the windows gone convex to get a better view, everybody wants to see this, everybody is down for the spill, the collision of chemical surfaces, the cohesion of colors not found in your more academic theories... The backbeat is the thing, the tick tick tick. That's the approaching point, the coming nonesuch... The room had organ tones, the kind of fullness that only an organ can convey, we're sitting on the inside of an organ, stops and levers heaving and sighing, the rush of air, sucking in the windows, chairs and couches bent forward, leaning over on their knees and then the low exhale, the groan, but here it's something difficult, something in B flat, but still upbeat, punctuated by a muffled, distorted snare beat, a bass drum with a fresh head on it, flat and claustrophobic, swallowing the echo before it gets a chance to breathe and then the sucking in again, the stops pulled out for a c -- chord, the upper arch, the melody note of an atonal progression.
+
+It was after the enchiladas. 
+
+I like mold. In small qualities. When baked it always has the potential to form some mind -- altering substance, which is not something I want, but it would be interesting you understand... Food should be an adventure fraught with peril lest it become routine, shoveling coal into a furnace. And neither of them mentioned a moldy taste, though I noticed it a little here and there, gave everything a more organic, perhaps whole -- grain, sort of flavor. Dean would have lost it, gone on a hippie exterminating rampage, but he remains up there, sends long metalic letters, whole grain remains unmolested.
+
+The mold was eclipsed by the beat. By the melody. By the claustrophobia. By the tick tick tick. Hold up. Slow that moment down a touch. Maybe to a tock tock tock or even plong   plong   plong   like a cue ball in slow motion striking the two ball with a crack slowed down to an explosion, and then reaching in to grab them, but here Chloe seems to be moving in reverse as if the film just reached the end of the reel and some lazy attendant -- James didn't you work the projectors for a while? -- has just hit reverse rather than rethread for a rewind. Yes Chloe is not picking them up, she is re -- putting them in her mouth, they have always been in her mouth. They came out to have their moment to let the windows and wall bend and breathe in jealous gasps and then back in they go where they have always been. Everything woozing back into Chloe, gulping air, drinking in the claustrophobic air returning to where it always was. And the windows draw back in horror as if to say I can't believe you've played the tease, we always knew you had it in you, but here? Now? Like this? To give. And then take away. So cold so inhuman so... wait when is your birthday? We know chart people, we have suspicions about you.... September is it...? Yes, thinking you have it all in balance, eh? Well have you ever noticed that the scales are tipping? Yes seems that they aren't quite balanced when their in your hands eh? Not quite balanced...
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+From: Dean O'Leary <do@morpheus.net>
+To: sil@kali.org
+Subject: 
+
+Dean junior can be lured to the surface for food. But otherwise he remains alternating between castle and treasure. I found out from Melissa that he would not last long at all in the ocean. He is a fresh water fish. I had a glass yesterday. It was a little stale, but definitely not salt water. Melissa says not to drink it anymore as it has strange chemicals in it. But this morning I had another glass. It was almost fishy.
+
+
+
+
+
+I have the hiccups and my leg is ringing but otherwise it's a statuesque day. Today I think we should all play harmonicas and live in sun -- faded slate -- gray shacks without indoor plumbing. Everything leaving all at once in all directions. Would your life seem more meaningful in duotone? A kind of warm brown wash to color your eyelids like the thunderstorms, flash flooding down the Rialto, right by that house on the sharpest bend of River Road, that one with the mailbox perpetually down, victim to countless corrosive glasses of gin? My mailbox has been down for some time. On the edge of autumn where the last fireflies still tango in time changes and the hush that comes after the last beat drops and you stumble it down the line to the head -- hanging hour at which all regrets are cashed for last minute glimpses in cruel reflective toilet water, here we --  and the beat is dropping into slate -- gray outhouses where we sit waiting for the paper, the news the leaves of grass that we used to use.
+
+Eventually I will answer my leg. It will be Maya. We will talk amongst ourselves. Try to batten down the hatches of our hopes and fears, but it won't work for either of us. She will hang up and go for a walk around the east village, stop in St. Marks and read a few more pages from a Rilke biography and then down Delancy for a couple of drinks at sakdlfjkj where the hipsters will shoot pool and drink Brooklyn Lager because that's what hipsters do, and Maya will push the ice around in an empty glass of Vox and stare out the window at the people that aren't walking by and dream of couples huddled close against the cold, but it's August and it isn't cold. Then on the way home she will stop in at Rice and have some of that curious black grains with stir -- fried vegetables and maybe a gelato from the place next door for the long walk back to the Village. And I will eat the last of Jimmy's pills and feel pretty good until dinner time at which point I will go for walk and end up at Scratch's house where he will serve me some strange couscous and tofu dish because he considers tofu the last culinary challenge of his nearly complete culinary career, after which he will swear that as soon as he masters the art of tofu, invents his one perfect dish, he is closing up shop and heading to Costa Rica. He will mock my posture, but in a good -- humored way. Jimmy will stop by and hatch a plan. It will be a grand plan. It might even involve motorcycles and bandits. Chloe will be suspiciously absent. 
+
+Later I will find myself at home. I will smoke idle cigarettes and pour myself a glass or two of brown liquor and dream of someplace I could go and be surly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+From: Dean O'Leary <do@morpheus.net>
+To: sil@kali.org
+Subject:
+
+Melissa is at work. I think she is beginning to tire of me. I am a drain to her. But with her working all day, who is going to look after Dean Jr.? I feed him every morning and evening. Just after she leaves and just before she gets home. I didn't plan it that way. At first I just noticed that my days began and ended with feeding Dean Jr. 
+
+Every morning while I am asleep she opens all the curtains and draws the blinds in the bedroom. I think she is sending me a message, but I don't understand a word of it. All I know is that every morning I have to let down the blinds again, draw the curtains and drop a few little gray -- green pellets in Dean Jr.'s tank. It takes a while for the food to be consumed or to settle to the bottom, between the florescent pebbles -- why are his pebbles florescent? Are there florescent peddles in streams? Are there actually florescent rocks out there, and I have just been too blinded to see them? It's usually well into the afternoon before I can have my first taste. 
+
+The water is getting musty. I suspect it's fish shit, but I don't like to think about that. I prefer to taste it as the essence of fish. I have acquired a taste for it. Tap water no longer excites me like it used to. I get no thrill out of turning the knobs anymore. I went across the street to a flea market yesterday and bought a ladle. I keep it hidden under the bed so Melissa won't find it. I have taken to covering the tank with an old black shirt. The water level hasn't dropped noticeably yet, but I want to establish a pattern before she gets suspicious. If she finds the ladle I plan to tell her it's a sexual thing. I think I'll tell her I like to have my balls ladled while getting head. She can't find out. If she finds out she'll kick me out.
+
+I wish you could see him Sil. The way he stops moving entirely. He rotates one of his swivelly eyes upward and watches me as I dip and ladle in and draw it up to my mouth. He knows. He understands. We have moments during the day. He will catch me doing silly things and laugh his mouthy little laugh. Or I will lie down on the floor and crawl over so that he can't see me and sneak up around the side of the tank, wedge my head between the tank and T.V. and pop up suddenly to surprise him. It startles him a little, but I think he's come to expect it a little now. I'll have to think of something new. I don't want him to get bored with the routine.
+
+
+
+
+
+From: Dean O'Leary <do@morpheus.net>
+To: sil@kali.org
+Subject:
+
+
+
+I don't think you should worry about me Sil. Things are winding down here. I'll be coming down soon; I just have to stick this thing out with Dean Jr. I have to see it through. Melissa is suspicious definitely. And I did check. The only fish to human transference I could find was from eating the fish -- worms and stuff like that. I'm not really in a bad way. It's just the process of ending that intrigues me. I always have to stay to the bitter end just to see if everything wraps up the way I thought or if there is that last minute twist we all love, that unexpected moment. 
+
+This weekend was fun. Melissa had to go to a conference in Atlantic City. Of course I brought Dean Jr. I put him in a tupperware bowl for the train ride (I had a hard time trying to think of reason to bring my bag to the bathroom so I could open the tupperware and give him a fresh dose of oxygen -- water gets stale -- he can use up all the oxygen in the water -- did you know that? I didn't, but the girl at the pet store told me that. She gave me her number too, but I think I threw it out. Luckily I hadn't shaved, so on the train I told Melissa I was going to shave and I brought my bag and gave Dean Jr. some air. Maybe he could have made it all the way, but I didn't want to risk it. Anyway I came back unshaven and forgot that shaving was my excuse, and Melissa stared me down real ugly and then it hit me and all I could think of to say was that there was no hot water. I know she went later and checked and of course there probably was hot water.) 
+
+I lost fifty dollars at the blackjack table.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+"So he's coming down again?" Chloe is cleaning up the back of my neck with the clippers. Already I feel slightly cooler, but this is a feeling that will pass shortly. 
+
+"Seems that way."
+
+"Did he say when?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Huh. You know Sil, I still don't understand what you're doing here. And I understand even less why Dean is coming down again. You know I'm still trying to get out of here..."
+
+"Yes, but you were born here. Everyone is trying to get out of where they were born. But to tell the truth, I'm not entirely sure why Dean is coming down." I consider mentioning the aquarium drinking, but decide against it since he and Chloe have had only the briefest of encounters in the past, and it might, well, color her opinion of him some unsavory shade of disgust. "I think maybe he's coming to get out of the living situation he's been in with his girlfriend and such, but knowing Dean there is probably a good deal more to it than that." Chloe is staring at my head in a distracted, unsettling way. "What?" I turn slightly to look her square in the eyes.
+
+"Um, I think your ears are a little lopsided."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Well at first I thought I was messing up the back of your neck, but it's clearly straight and yet, when compared to your ears, it still looks slightly lopsided, so I think maybe your ears aren't quite even." She smiles. "Sorry."
+
+"But the hairline on the neck looks okay?"
+
+"Oh yeah it's fine."
+
+"Well that's all I care about."
+
+"Okay. Well then you're done." She switches off the clippers and brushes off my neck with an old t -- shirt. I run my fingers over the remaining eighth inch of hair on my scalp and come away with an unsettling mixture of sweat and hair clippings.
+
+"You might want to take a shower before you go out."
+
+"Yeah I plan to."
+
+"Are you going out tonight?"
+
+"Maybe. What are you doing?"
+
+Chloe's face grows slightly flushed as she sits down beside me on the porch steps. "I have a date."
+
+"Bicycle Man?"
+
+"Lord no." She turns her head, "why? Do I look that hard up?"
+
+"No. He's just my favorite."
+
+"Really? I would think he might be slightly intimidating... at least Jimmy seems slightly intimidated, or defensive of me, or something when he's around."
+
+"Why? Because he could snap Jimmy and me in half like a toothpick?" She chuckles slightly. "No I like him because he is totally non -- threatening. There is no chance in hell you would ever want anything more out of him than sex. He represents no threat to our friendship so for me he's the least threatening. But that's not why I like him. I like him because he doesn't mind being called Bicycle Man. Anthropology Man just never seemed to really accept the name, every time we called him that he would get this mortified look on his face and remind us of his name, like we were calling him that because we had forgotten his real name. What was his real name?"
+
+"Robert."
+
+"Oh yeah, Bob, see I knew there was a reason we called him Anthropology Man..."
+
+"Scratch dubbed him that because Bob told him some long story about being in Costa Rica and going to all the Indian ruins or whatever."
+
+"Really? I always thought he was an Anthropology professor or something?"
+
+"No. He owns a construction company. Or landscaping company... I forget exactly."
+
+"But you're not going out with him either huh?"
+
+"No. He's engaged now. I'm going out with The Professor."
+
+"Oh god Chloe. Again?" The Professor is, naturally, a professor, though his diminutive statue and total lack of problem -- solving skills set him apart from the more familiar Gilligan's Island variety. We took to calling him the professor because none of us can ever remember his name. And because he's well, such a professor. He tries hard to be cool, you can see it in his eyes, he wants to scream, but he can't, or if he does, it comes out a murmur, a stumbling awkward line that usually only reveals him for the overeducated mousish man that he is. He seems genuinely concerned with things like literature and poetry, but only because he is involved in them, he is good at them, he lacks the natural enthusiasm of Jimmy or Scratch. He would have written the poem, but never dared to touch the plums. Unlike the famous professor on that deserted isle, he can't seem to make a radio out of coconuts to broadcast distress signals with. I don't even think he could crack a coconut open, much less transform it into something usable. He's New England. Coconuts are obtained in cans at specialty Asian Markets which always share a wall with some sort of adult video establishment because the Asian community understands the needs of white New Englanders. He has pasty skin, anemic eyes, and a disgusting habit of carefully evaluating risk before proceeding. He's more or less dead, and frankly, he scares me to death. He's so far gone he's never coming back, and he's only a year or two older than me. Chloe seems genuinely smitten with him. But then again he is the first person Chloe has dated, at least in the time I've known her, that has a functioning mind. He has a certain depth, however bookish and ill -- formed it may be, that Chloe needs, but is afraid of being attached to, of becoming dependant upon, of needing. In his twisted way he does have an element of danger to him that Chloe no doubt finds irresistible -- he's married.
+
+"I know it's horrible, I know I'm doomed to live through some horrible karmic payback for all of this, but really I think I'm in love with his mind," She claps her hands on her knees. "It's the first time there's something more than just attraction. I'm not even really attracted to his body. I mean he isn't bad looking you know, but he's kind of...well... he's short. But I'm not going to swallow a moth for him, already promised myself that. There will be no moth eating."
+
+"It must be wonderful for him to live out the fucking the babysitter fantasy
+
+"Stop Sil. There will be no mocking in my presence. And that isn't how it started. We met because his younger daughter is in my class..."
+
+"Fucking the third grade teacher fantasy... see this goes way back...."
+
+"That's enough Sil." She brandishes a cigarette and threatens to burn my arm. "It wasn't until we were already friends and he had moved out of the house, that his wife asked if I would watch the girls."
+
+"He actually moved out?" This surprises me, but somehow endears the man to me. "Wow. I wouldn't have thought he had it in him."
+
+"He caught his wife with her personal trainer or something cliché like that. He had to move out. But it made me more comfortable knowing that he didn't do it for me or because of me... it didn't have anything to do with me. I wouldn't want him to do it for me. But won't say that I'm not glad it happened -- is that selfish of me?"
+
+"Selfish? No I don't think so. But you are walking into a minefield Chloe." I run my hands over my head in a manner reminiscent of Scratch. "You Chloe, who professes to detest entanglements... I mean... you couldn't find someone more entangled if you tried."
+
+"I know, I know." Her head slumps dejectedly. "But it's important to me Sil that you understand I didn't plan this. I didn't go into it like a naïve little girl, but I certainly didn't want to split up his family and so far I haven't. And part of me even hopes that he and his wife will get back together..." She lets out a long sigh. "Even if that will be the end of my relationship with him."
+
+"She has no idea? I mean she must not if she asked you to baby -- sit."
+
+"I can't tell. Maybe she does, but it's not like he and I have even had sex... we just talk. We talk kind of like you and I talk, and we care about each other... and we've had plenty of opportunities to have sex now that he's living at The Downtowner."
+
+"He's staying in a motel?"
+
+"Yeah. See, I don't even think he wanted to move out. He's been in the hotel for two weeks now and not only have we never had sex, but he hasn't even picked up a rental listing or anything. Besides, I love their daughters and I have to provide them with some modicum of female sanity lest they turn out to be like their mother... She actually drives all the way to Atlanta to buy organic vegetables... I mean, do you see the... never mind... it just disgusts me."
+
+"Yup. I mean never mind the hypocrisy, we're all hypocrites, but some of us are at least aware of our hypocrisy..."
+
+"I know. That's what I'm saying. This woman is insane. I mean she was fucking the personal trainer or something and into organics and asks me to baby -- sit three days a week so she can go to yoga, meanwhile her family is disintegrating around her, her daughters are closer to me than her and she seems to think its just a phase in her marriage or something. And the worst part is she's a black belt in jiu -- jitsu or shuiru or some horribly obscure form of martial arts and could probably kill me in less time than it would take to form the idea of killing me." Chloe shivers and leans her head on my shoulder.
+
+"And you're fucking around with her husband..."
+
+"And I'm fucking around with her husband..."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+From: Dean O'Leary <do@morpheus.net>
+To: sil@kali.org
+Subject:
+
+I don't know why Sil. I know it's disgusting. I don't even like doing it, but I have acquired a taste for it. I can't stop now, it bookends the days. Melissa has been yelling an awful lot lately. I'm not sure what she yells about exactly because I don't hear it. It's over. I gather that much. Presumably she wants me out of here. I do try to stay tuned enough to distinguish a date or something equally real, but usually she stops yelling after a while and we fuck like angry teenagers. She found the ladle yesterday. She didn't even ask what it was for. She was already yelling and picking up my clothes and throwing them in the hamper, and she reached under the bed and pulled out the ladle and just set it on the nightstand. After the yelling we were having sex, and she asked me to slap her ass with the ladle, so I did. I got tired after a while and couldn't have sex and operate the ladle at the same time and so I just sat on the side of the bed, and whacked her ass until she came. Or I think she came. This morning her ass was black and blue, but she acted like it never happened.
+
+Dean Jr. is running out of water. He seems to know what is happening. I vomited twice yesterday from the drinking. I don't know for sure if I can finish. I went outside today for the first time since Atlantic City. It's very hot out, Sil. Is it hot there as well? I'm disappointed in myself. I can't seem to finish. And just this afternoon while I was out I bought a bottle of water. I cheated Sil. It was so clean and pure and tasteless. Not the slightest odor of fish. How do they get all the fish taste out of the water? Think how many fish are in streams... even weird blind fish that live way underground in caves and water tables... so many fish and yet when we get a bottle of water from the store we never taste them. But they're there. It's their water. We just borrow it. We take it, we filter it, we use it, we piss it out, we flush the toilet, we filter it again and then we send it back to the fish. We never even thank them. At least I don't know of anyone thanking them.
+
+
+
+
+
+From: Dean O'Leary <do@morpheus.net>
+To: sil@kali.org
+Subject:
+
+
+
+It's over thank god. I drank the last inch this morning by sticking my head in and sucking it up with a straw. Dean Jr. flopped around on the florescent gravel for about an hour or so. And then he was dead. I gathered up my clothes and put them in the suitcase. It took me most of the afternoon to find my car. I'll see you soon. 
+
+
+
+
+
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+
+
+"It's not bad." Jimmy sounds surprised. "I don't know that it's all that good, but it isn't bad."
+
+"Yeah. It's not the best I've made, but it's not the worst either." In a display of startlingly bad posture, Scratch is slouched down on the couch, cradling a ceramic mug on his stomach. He groans, props his bad leg up on the arm of the chair. "Fall is coming. This Indian Summer thing is always the first sign, and lucky me, I get to feel it in my bones." His lips curl sarcastically, and he takes another sip of mead. "The humidity's dropped anyway."
+
+Jimmy lights a cigarette and exhales in the too -- fast manner of people who don't actually smoke. I stretch my legs out and lie back prone on the floor, staring up at the tapestry ceiling. "Where's Chloe?"
+
+"Out to dinner with the professor..." Jimmy exhales too hard again.
+
+"She's been here what? Ten years?" Scratch shifts himself and lies down now occupying the entire length of the couch. "She knows how small this town is, how long does she think she can keep this on the down tip when they go out all the time?"
+
+"I think she believes that as long as they don't have sex they aren't doing anything that needs to be hidden. Or at least that was the impression I got."
+
+"He's obviously still in love with his wife. Guys like that are always going to stay in love with their wives because they don't have the imagination to move beyond it -- not saying that's a bad thing mind you -- just that he's going to go back to her, and Chloe is going to be left holding on to something that was never there." Scratch sits up and rummages around in his pockets to produce a small bag of weed and some rolling papers. He tosses them at Jimmy and lies back down. "You've met him haven't you Sil? Am I right?"
+
+"Probably. But then I didn't think he'd move out."
+
+"He had to move out. He didn't want to move out, but the script dictated that he had to move out. Wwhen you walk in on her, you have to move out. You don't even want to usually. Everything right then becomes very surreal, but your options at that point are pretty much murder or move out. I think he did the right thing. I mean, it was the personal trainer right...?" Scratch laughs heartily for a minute and it's not until I see the smile spread over Jimmy's face that I remember Scratch was a personal trainer for a while. "Yeah it's never anything more than sex with the personal trainer."
+
+"Did you ever..."
+
+"No. Never did. I've always figured that there are so many wonderful single women in the world there is  no reason to get involved in that sort of situation. Not every guy chooses to move out you know.... Not that it wasn't offered.... I guess, and maybe this is just me inventing excuses for Chloe because she is our friend, but I guess for women there are less ideal single men. In this town anyway." Scratch accepts the joint from Jimmy. "I still think it's a bad idea."
+
+We lapse into silence as they pass the joint back and forth. There is the sound of tires on gravel and the slamming of car doors.
+
+"Oh, by the way, Dean is coming down." I sit up again. They don't response to this news. I follow their eyes out the window where the last glow of sunset silhouettes what appears to be Chloe and The Professor walking down the path toward my front door. There is a knock at the front door. A sound so rare it takes me a minute to grasp what it is, but Scratch is already yelling come in.
+
+Chloe opens the door and walks in with a faint ducking motion that is immediately nervous and timid, two things Chloe rarely seems to experience. She seems to be, rather than just nervous, nervous about being nervous. Scratch bounds off the couch and is shaking hands with The Professor and hugging Chloe before I can even move. Jimmy is hurriedly crushing out the joint and steps over me to shake hands with The Professor. When the daze finally lifts I here Chloe saying, "...and you remember Sil."
+
+"Yes. Yes I do. How are you Sil? Nice place you have here, like camping kind of..."
+
+"Yeah thanks." I stand up finally. "Come on in, have a seat."
+
+"Is that pot I smell?" The Professor sniffs suspiciously as he and Chloe sit down on the couch next to Scratch. Chloe is in between them, and The Professor places his hand on her leg and she puts hers over it. "Man. It's been years since I smoked pot."
+
+"Well here you are Professor..." Scratch extends the half smoked joint to him, and Chloe turns roughly the color of a Cardinal at the mention of the word professor.
+
+"Oh no. That's okay I don't think I should..."
+
+Scratch's hand snaps back, and he cocks his head to the side. He shrugs, thrusts the joint between his lips and fumbles with my Zippo for a minute before producing a flame so large it nearly takes off his eyebrows. He chuckles and leans back on the couch. "Well the least you can do is indulge in some of my homebrewed mead here." He picks up the bottle and pours a little in his ceramic mug and passes it over to The Professor who takes a sip and proclaims it, "a little on the sweet side, but good."
+
+"Wait, did you call me professor? Please don't do that, only my students call me professor..."
+
+"Well you are a professor aren't you?" Scratch screws his face up into his potatohead stuck on smile look.
+
+"Yeah I am, but..."
+
+"Well that settles it, Professor." Scratch grabs the bottle and takes a long pull. "Can you make a radio out of coconuts?"
+
+"Excuse me? Oh yeah. Uh... I don't know, I've never tried."
+
+"Sil do you have any coconuts?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Damn." There is laughter and merriment, and everyone seems to think The Professor is being a good sport and a likeable guy and I keep staring at his hand which is resting on her knee, no, actually it's a little bit back from her actual kneecap, it's at the end of her thigh, it's right about where muscle gives way to tendon, the last extension of conscious control, he's right there at the edge and he's laughing and now he's taking the joint from Scratch, now he thinks he's one of the gang so why not and he's inhaling and laughing and everybody is having such a good fucking time and we're all in on this aren't we? We're all friends aren't we? We all fucking fit together don't we?
+
+"So how's this thing with your wife?" An ugly pallor of silence casts itself across the room. The Professor seems unable to speak. He stutters and mumbles something about not wanting to talk about it. Jimmy is curled into a ball in the chair trying not to burst out laughing, and Chloe is staring at me with visions of disembowelment and meat -- cleavered penises dancing across her pupils. Scratch takes a long drag and holds it. 
+
+"Never mind Sil," Scratch begins talking as he slowly exhales "he's had a few to many nips of the mead." Scratch rubs Chloe's back. She gets up to leave and The Professor follows mumbling things about nice to meet you and you...
+
+The door closes behind them, and we listen to footsteps disappear into the night. No one says anything until we hear the sound of car doors. "I think that went well." Scratch grins.
+
+"That was fucking amazing." Jimmy lets loose his pent -- up laughter, pent so far that he seem to be spitting a bit in the midst of it. "I've never seen someone stop having a good time in that short... damn Sil. That really was brilliant."
+
+"Of course you know Sil," Scratch eyes me thoughtfully, "tonight's the night they actually have sex... you've driven her into his arms, you know that, right?"
+
+I shrug. "It's what they wanted isn't it."
+
+ 
+
+
+