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.