307

It was the day after he died that I went for the first time by myself to a live concert.  I had never heard of the bands, nor had I ever gone to a club like this.  I wasn't even sure what kind of music it would be, I just went.  The only assurance I had was that it would be loud and crowded, which was perfect for forgetting.

I didn't remember dressing for it, but I still have the t-shirt, crunchy with sweat and spilled beer and a splash of blood, not mine.  I should have felt out of place, being one of the only females, and the only one not in the band who was over forty.  The guy at the door asked if I was looking for somebody.  It was nice he was willing to let me in to find my kids, but I have no kids.  "No.  Just one admission, please."  I must have had some look on my face because he didn't say any more, but his eyes lingered.  The floor was sticky and it smelled like spilled beer and piss even before people started spilling and pissing.  When the first band took the stage, I fought my way into the middle and jumped with the crowd, letting the driving bass and thumping drums and screaming vocals take me.  That first night, the day after he died, I screamed and cried in the crowd, pushing and shoving against the bodies of the young.

306

How creepy is it to have the heart you were born with thrown out and some dead person's slopping around in its place, waiting to be rejected by your ungrateful body?  Super freaking creepy, is what.  A stranger's heart is hiding in my chest, and I know it doesn't want to be there.  It wants to be back in its owner, a stupid twenty-three year old college kid with a motorcycle and a need for speed, but it can't go back because he smeared himself down a highway.  Luckily for me, they say, the road rash didn't go all the way through his body to damage his heart, which still beats ferociously, wishing to find the adrenaline thrill of a street race again.  Unfortunately, it's in my chest.  My stupid body wants my old heart back.  I want my old heart back.  I wasn't meant to be parted from it.  I was born with it, and I should have died with it, but since I'm only a few years older than that stupid dead motorcyclist hot rod, I'm alive and waiting.  I hate the sound of this heart which beats, traitor...traitor...traitor...  I'm a traitor to myself and I know I will pay when my body finally says, ENOUGH! and rejects this adrenaline-junkie's meat.

305

They say you can never go home again, and I never believed them.  I thought you couldn't go home only when the place had been plowed under, like my place eventually was, but I couldn't go home a long time before that.  Home had changed.  Okay, I suppose I had, too, but not as much as home had.  I wanted the avocado green carpets.  I wanted the harvest gold appliances.  I wanted the nubby black sofa with the square arms and the squashy throw pillows.  I wanted it to smell like dog.  I wanted the rotary phone to ring and ring and ring.  I wanted it to be the home I remembered, but it wasn't.  It changed, but I wanted it to be the same.

304

Meanwhile, in the Seventh Circle of Hell, Drachmach was rolling grit into his fingernails when he felt the sudden and irresistible urge to stand, which he did, and turn in a circle three times, which he also did.  When he was done, Drachmach was no longer in Hell, the Seventh Circle, Molten Quarter, Drachmach's scrape-hole, but rather he stood in a cavernous room, the stone floor smooth, cold, and covered with chalk scratchings.  Torches flickered on the far away walls, and coals burned dimly in a portable fire nearby.  A man, a human, knelt outside the chalk scratchings, making noises and raising and lowering his hands.  It took Drachmach a few moments to work through his disorientation to realize what had happened: a human sorcerer had abducted him.

303

Escobar leaned back, the white leather of the couch creaking with his weight.  Sammy shifted from foot to foot, dabbing a handkerchief on his forehead.  "Jose," Escobar addressed one of his bodyguards without taking his eyes off Sammy, "what do you think we should do with this one?"  Jose smiled behind his mirrored sunglasses.  "What do you think?"  Esocobar and Jose laughed while Sammy's brain swirled for a way out.  Any way out.

302

My upstairs neighbor whispers into his floor vents.  I don't think he knows that anyone can hear him, but he does it every day and when I'm home, I sit and listen to his secrets.

His name is Jerome Stahl, which I got from the mailboxes in the lobby, but the rest of his life I've been getting from him.  When Jerome feels bad, he describes why and wishes for help to feel better.  When Jerome feels guilty, he agonizes over his failure and begs forgiveness.  When Jerome feels overwhelmed, he lists his undone to-dos and pleads for strength.  When Jerome wallows in self-pity, when people are rude to him, when he was embarrassed, I hear it all, whispered into the vent that opens into my living room.  When Jerome has naughty thoughts, I get those, too, but I try not to listen, even though he uses euphemisms a seven year old might use.  Recently, I've been getting worried for him.

301

My grandmother told me they used to laugh at people in Asian countries for wearing surgical masks in public.  I asked why, and she explained about the newness of an ever-changing and ever-more-potent flu season and about the recognition of carbon pollution, but what I meant was why did they laugh?  Later, when I got to think about it, I guess it was because only people in Asian countries wore them.  I never really thought about it much, since only uncivilized people don't wear masks.

I was always Grandma Briella's favorite because I would unplug just for her.  I feel guilty about it now because sometimes I didn't; I only said I unplugged, but I never thought she'd notice.  Thinking back, I'm sure she noticed.  Grandma Briella noticed a lot, even when she didn't always call me by the right name.

300

Chara and Boyd basked in the glory of northern summer as they hiked the nearly hidden paths of the Great North Woods.  They had been traveling together for nearly ten years, though the first two were simply as friends in a Gathering.  That particular Gathering had many problems, and Chara in particular had been feeling increasingly troubled.

Gatherings were meant to keep people safe, and there were many that shifted and morphed and quite often disappeared.  There were some that had been around for so many years that they had come up with rules and titles within their Gatherings and often became exclusive, self-important, and sometimes downright dangerous.  Chara was sensing that from the Rhee Gathering, of which she had been a member for a decade before Boyd joined.

Boyd was in his own, very small Gathering, but it was not affording the kind of protection or quality that he needed, so he left for the much larger Rhee.  Chara and Boyd found each other there and formed a quick bond sensed by the leader of the Rhee who was, unfortunately, Chara's betrothed.

Now, Chara and Boyd travelled alone.  Dangerous, but undeniably their best decision yet.

299

Jesse had a thousand dollars in cash in a small fabric purse tied around her neck and tucked into her camisole under her shirt, under her sweater, under her jacket.  She knew she shouldn't keep touching it, announcing to every thief where she had her valuables, but it was almost all the cash she had in the world and she had to keep reassuring herself it was there.

She walked to the convention center from the parking ramp and recognized that most of the people on the street this early in the morning must be going to or coming from the same housing auction.  Nearly all men and nearly all dressed like contractors.  They talked in groups and laughed and stole looks at Jesse as she hurried by.  Jesse imagined all the cash that these people must be holding.  Every person at the auction, pockets stuffed with cash.  More money than she had ever had, carried in fat leather wallets.

The auction was crowded, and the men gathered at the list on the wall, comparing their notes with the properties still remaining.  Jesse only had one house on her list, and she hoped it was enough.  Of all the thousands of homes and properties up for auction, Jesse had painstakingly narrowed it down to this one.  Not idea, certainly, but so much better than where she was.

298

Though the aisles were wide enough for the forklift, the metal and wood shelves loaded with merchandise still loomed overhead.  Long corridors of high-priced kitchen accessories filled the warehouse.  The cement floors were smooth and cold.

Orders came from fancy catalogs and, of course, from SkyMall.  People who flew on business trips or, perhaps, to exotic places, and just couldn't wait to land before shopping ordered $80 cutting boards and $250 toaster ovens.  Warehouse pickers took list after list of purchases and plucked them from the mighty shelves to pile onto conveyor belts that rolled to the packers who boxed up the hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise for a far away customer who had already forgotten what he ordered the last time he flew back from Tokyo.

297

There was no warning.  The front door exploded inside with the force of the battering ram held by the two police officers on the front stoop.  A stream of black-clad officers flowed into the house, spilling into every room.  Amber had been drawing upstairs when she heard the splintering boom and felt the house shake.  As the men were shouting directions and updates to one another, Amber scrambled into her closet, pushing aside clothes and climbing the shelves like a monkey.  She shimmed up the last bit, bare feet pressing one side of the closet, her back bracing on the other, as she shoved the attic hatch open with her head and fingertips.  Amber climbed inside and slid the wood square back into place.  Wasting no time, she scuttled on her hands and knees across the loose plywood over the floor joists, past the tubs of Christmas decorations, the boxes of old tax documents, and the black plastic bags with baby clothes and forgotten linens.  She could hear the men shouting on the second floor now, and she kept pushing further back to the far corner where she knew there was a hidden door behind more boxes, even older than the rest.

296

Of all the lies movies have taught me over the years, I think the worst is that I believed that I could do anything in a reasonable amount of time.  I didn't think that I could do it within the space of a movie--that's ridiculous--but I did believe the movie time suggestion that within my lifetime I could accomplish goals.  Lies.  Dirty, rotten lies.

My days are spent on a treadmill.  My brain, on the shortest treadmill of them all.  Repetition, repetition, repetition.  Nothing accomplished.  Dishes pile up again and again.  Laundry.  Mail.  Shower.  Eat.  Sleep.  Dentist and doctor and optometrist appointments.  Repeat.  Holidays.  Repeat.  The things I dreamed of doing remained out of my grasp for the daily repetition.  My brain rehashed what it wanted and wondered why the hell wasn't I making progress?  I should have accomplished by now!  Where had the time gone?  Why couldn't I get motivated?  Why couldn't I get out of welding to accomplish my dream of being a professional dancer?  What happened to making the band and winning the hearts of millions?  Shouldn't I be able to save Christmas, or teach the town to dance or preserve the human race?  Goddamn movies.  Lies.

295

After rolling over and flipping her pillow for the fourth time, Sara gave it up as a bad job and got out of bed.  She had the feeling that important life was happening without her.  Spending wakeful hours in bed only made her retread the same worn paths to frustration, so she wrapped herself in her comforter and went to her window.

It was unlikely that there would be any activity out on her street.  Sara lived in a quiet suburb, and the sidewalks were rolled up by 9:00 pm, but she couldn't shake that feeling that there was some spark of life just outside her sphere.  Her dresser sat under the window, and if she pushed it back slightly, she could sit, her feet on the baseboard heat, and lean her elbows on the windowsill to look outside.  Despite the cold November night air, she cranked open one casement window and arranged her comforter over her head.  The baseboard heat rose and filled her cocoon while the night chilled her nose and cheeks.

The street was predictably dark and no lights on in the three houses she could see; it was, after all, after two in the morning.  Sara sat and dreamed with her eyes open of adventure.

294

The city streets were quieter than anyone could ever remember hearing them.  It was impossible to tell how many people were in their homes this evening because the lights were out and all the curtains drawn.  Lights normally powered by the city hadn't been on in more than a year, but when the sun went down, no one else put their lights on, either; it was easier this way.  There had been warnings, first on television, then announced in the streets, then with the short-lived sirens, to turn off lights.  People obeyed once a quarter of their city had been bombed into oblivion.  The sirens stopped working after just a week, but by then everyone knew not to light the dark.  Lights became targets.  Targets became rubble.

293

Their teacher's biggest secret was that she hated people.  She hated having to teach because she had to interact with people.  She hated smiling at people.  She hated thinking of other people.  She hating having to worry about other people.  Miss Declan hated people, but her students never knew it.  Even when she told them, they didn't believe her because she'd smile and help them get their work done, and they improved over the semester.  They would write her good reviews and say how much she cared for them, but secretly: she hated people.

Miss Declan wished for nothing more than to go home and be quiet.  Talking all day made her hate the sound of her own voice.  She worried about her students all the time, and it made her ill.  She hated her own brain for making her think of them.  What Miss Declan wanted was a job where she didn't have to talk to, or plan for, or care about other people.

292

She yearned to go dancing.  Not the kind of dancing most men would think, but the kind of dancing where you mostly get to jump and fling your hair and scream.  The kind of dancing where you shove your fellow dancers and bond by bruising your shoulders.  The kind of dancing where you're sweaty and your clothes come loose and your makeup runs and you need to drink, but you don't notice because you're freaking dancing.

Dee couldn't think of a way to tell him, and her insides did a slow burn that dimmed and dimmed, but never quite went out.

291

Not for the first time and not for the last time, Della looked at the back of Jeral's head, grey curls bobbing as he loped along the forest path ahead of her, and wondered what he was thinking.  It was getting on toward dusk, and the last light was draining the colors away.  The stars would wink on in the sky and the black would spread until she felt blindfolded by the dark.  Della hoped Jeral had a plan, and not asking him about it meant she could at least pretend he did.

290

Working in the cube farm fielding customer service calls made Mark feel like a rat.  Grey, carpeted cube walls looked like a rat maze in some mad laboratory where the experiment was how much boredom the rats could take before killing themselves.  Everyone lived for breaks, official or stolen.  Minutes without a call were precious.  Bathroom breaks were extended as long as was possible without looking suspicious.  Breaks were the call agents' cheese.

Mark shuffled towards his cubicle, inside right, third in, fourth from the end.  There were no decorations allowed and the grey was unrelenting.  The panels were supposed to block sound, but they didn't fully function, quite like the customer service agents.  Mark's work clothes were wrinkled, grey and ill-fitting.  He had ironed them for his first week before realizing the futility of the effort.  Nobody cared, least of all Mark.

If anyone had looked up from their own cubes, they could have seen Mark's head and shoulders bobbing past.  His hair was mostly dark though streaked with grey on the sides.  It was always too long.  Whenever he got it cut, he looked uncomfortable until it grew shaggy again.  The longer it got, the curlier it became and the tips poked his eyes giving him a twitch when he shook it away.  There was only one shirt he owned that wasn't stained, but it was lost in his apartment, and he had forgotten about it.

289

Dry, multi-colored leaves swirled on the wind, like an invisible hand had tossed the entire pile into the air.  Overhead, also in formation, was a cloud of black birds, swooping and turning, its edges swelling and compressing.  The whole world seemed to be in movement, unlike Jon, who stood as still as possible, arms extended, pretending he was the one orchestrating the leaves and the birds and the wind itself.

288

A voice coming from the bottom of a well is not a voice to be ignored.  If it's an actual person trapped, he or she will need help getting out.  Rarely is a person trapped in a well, however.  Voices from wells tend to be more sinister.