Still, it was not her house and she wondered how that had happened.

Turning away from the mirror to look at the room directly, she found she was, in fact, in her own house. Scrunching her face in a puzzled expression, she turned back to the mirror.

There it was again. The wrong house. Yet it was herself she saw reflecting back, just in the wrong place. It made no sense. Actually, it made her a bit queasy because it was so unsettling. And unfathomable.

She turned back to her room, her house. She shook her head as if that would somehow dispel the peculiarity. Walking over to sit down on the bed she saw, from the corner of her eye, herself again: Moving toward the bed but the wrong bed, in the wrong house.

She also saw something else.

And then she heard something. Someone.

“It’s you,” a voice said. “Isn’t it?”

She quickly turned to look directly at the mirror. There, in the reflection, she saw an impeccably dressed man step out from behind the beautiful drapes that hung over the French doors (which her own bedroom did not have). Quickly looking behind, at her room, she saw no one. But a man, a man with the very self-possessed manner and aura of someone with exquisite taste, stood smiling before her as she turned back to the mirror.

“Well?” he asked. “Is it you or not?” His smile widened. A bit conspiratorially, he leaned forward and added softly, “I think it is. Mm?”

“Me? Who me? What me?” she sputtered, baffled. “What do you mean?”

“The room, of course.” He spread his arms apart as if to take in the entire space, his space, the one in the mirror’s reflection, which was not her house but someone else’s, yet somehow her’s too.

“Uuh …,” she began, knowing she sounded mentally unhinged and perhaps a bit dull-witted, “I guess. Listen! Who are you? And what the hell’s going on?”

She sounded cross because she was cross. It made her mad that she was sounding dim.

Again, the man smiled. “Of course, I understand your confusion. We get this all the time. No need to worry. My name is Gilles. Monsieur Gilles Parent and I represent Reflections – locations on five continents! We specialize in home décor. I do interior design and I’ve prepared all this …,”

He again opened his arms to take in the room. “I’ve prepared all this …,” he repeated, “Because I feel very strongly it’s you.”

Confused, but surrendering to the absurdity, she nodded toward the room in the mirror. “Yes, it’s very nice.”

“You see,” M. Parent began, more to the room than to her, “We’ve developed a very new, very innovative technique. We’re revolutionizing the world of fashion and design. Be it for clothing, interior design, landscaping … wherever design has a place, we can help find the exact look to match the yearnings of your soul.”

He stopped and looked at her with a questioning frown. “That was a little over the top, wasn’t it?” For a moment, his Parisian accent disappeared. It had been replaced by one she vaguely recognized as belonging in the southern American states. “’The yearnings of your soul’ … What was I thinking? I always get carried away.

“Oh well, the point is …” He stopped and cleared his throat. When he continued, the French accent was back. “The point is we can provide a perfect look for you. The word ‘look’ is very important. It’s suggestive of our technique. Essentially, over a period of time – the length is determined by the personality of the client and can vary widely – we observe, from here.” He indicated the side of the mirror he was on.

“We see you at your best and at your worst. We see you in your intimate moments, alone only with yourself, and we can see and sense the inner person. The true you. Through our expert observational techniques we come to an understanding of what moves you, what you need for your perfect world. And then we provide it, such as I have here.”

The smile returned as he waved his arm in a “Voila!” fashion, indicating his side of the mirror.

The room filled with silence as he waited for a response and she stared back at him blankly. Finally, she said, “That’s the craziest damn thing I’ve ever heard.”

He blinked. “Of course it is,” he replied.

She returned his blink. “I have always wanted French doors in here.”

“Yes,” he answered. “I know. Shall we talk contract?”

No fool, she shot back, “Shall we talk price?”

He sighed, “If we must …”

“And I have a few questions. For instance, just how do you get what’s over there on your side of the mirror to this side, where I am?”

Briefly, M. Parent’s self-possession left him as he smiled awkwardly. “Yes, well we are a very new company. Very new. And as may be expected, there are a few minor difficulties we are working on. How do the computer people put it? ‘Beta’, I believe …”

What is the purpose of this blog? Well, some time ago I started posting very short stories here. (And some of them were stories only in the loosest sense of the word.) Most were written on Sunday mornings as part of a writing exercise - keep the writing muscles in shape, in a manner of speaking. Thus, I called the blog Sunday Stories. I’ve kept the name for this current manifestation of the blog even though I am not restricting it to things I write on Sundays. And the URL is:

sundaystories.ca

Actually, the real URL is http://sundaystories.writelife.net/ because this blog is part of Writelife. But I have the Canadian domain (.ca) and therefore forward it. It seems to me that sundaystories.ca is easier to remember and I like things that are simple.

“Remember? How could I forget? I recall it specifically because the … the … the thing!”

No. I had no idea what the thing was. I didn’t remember. My memory isn’t like that. My brain has it’s own way. It recalls that Captain Picard, at the end of the episode called Darmok, was reading the Homeric Hymns.

It does not recall whatever it was she was thinking I should remember.

“What “thing” are you talking about?” she asked.

“The … the … thing!” I bellowed back, scrambling.

I was in deep shit. I knew it. She knew it. We both knew I had forgotten. The difference was, I had no idea what it was I had forgotten. She, on the other hand, knew exactly. And we both knew that. So we both knew who was in a position of strength and who was weak.

But neither of us was saying so. No, we would play this out. For my part, as long as it remained unadmitted, I had a chance.

But then she said, “Oh God … I just don’t care. Whatever.”

Whatever. What does that mean? What does it mean when she says, “Whatever?”

I didn’t know. So now I didn’t know two things. I didn’t know what I’d forgotten and I didn’t know why she was saying, “Whatever.”

And I could feel myself becoming angry. I know why I was getting angry – because I didn’t know. Apparently I didn’t know anything. I’d forgotten the one thing and I was clueless on “whatever.”

So now I was pissed.

I told her, very clearly, “I remembered the thing.”

I used my pissed voice.

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she said again.

And then I wasn’t pissed anymore. I was only scared. Because I had forgotten. And there was no thing. And even if there were and even if I had remembered, it would all be the same.

And we both knew that. And I knew that was what “Whatever” meant and I knew that was why I had forgotten.

It no longer mattered. Not for us.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #26. Influenced by the mood of the movie I saw tonight.)

“Hey, dear? What’s up?”

She turned her eyes to me slowly and gave me the suggestion of a shrug.

“You’re not usually this quiet,” I went on. “Something must be up.”

“Nothing,” she murmured.

I began to worry. Something must be seriously bothering her. She simply wasn’t Mary-Ellen being this quiet. Were it me, it wouldn’t be remarkable. I’m moody. But Mary-Ellen?

No, something was not right in the universe.

I decided to prod.

“Come on, something must be bothering you. You’re never like this. You’re always flitting around the house in a stream of giggles. This morose lethargy is not like you.”

An irritated expression passed over her face. “‘Morose lethargy’? Quit writing what you say.”

“I’m a writer. It’s what I do.”

“Yeah, but no one talks like that.”

This was even more unusual than I had thought. While others often complain about my conversations being halting and deliberate, that I was writing and editing what I said rather than just talking, Mary-Ellen never did. Actually, she was my greatest supporter. Not only was she proud of my being a writer, she thought I was the greatest writer alive – even if the money I rarely saw contradicted that belief.

At least, she use to feel that way. Had something changed?

Menopause? I had heard about that but wasn’t sure when it kicked in. Mary-Ellen was 42, four years younger than me. Was this the “change of life,” as my mother had referred to her own period of hot flashes?

I made a mental note to google menopause.

“Come on, Mary-Ellen. I can tell something’s wrong. Why not just tell me what’s up? It’s probably nothing. You know, people make things bigger in their heads than they are in reality. Tell me what it is.”

The normally shiny, cheerful Mary-Ellen looked at me a long moment without any expression in her face. Then a slow, joyless smile stretched across her face. “Don’t ask,” she said. “You shouldn’t ask.”

Unfortunately, saying to me, “Don’t ask,” was a way to ensure I would ask, and keep asking until I got an answer. After twelve years of marriage, she knew that. But maybe she hadn’t considered that. I can’t be sure.

Did she say that because she wanted me to? So that it would come out, finally, and she could say later it was because I had insisted?

It’s difficult for me to ascribe that kind of thinking to Mary-Ellen. It wasn’t her character. But then, this sobered, serious Mary-Ellen was out of character too.

“I’m asking,” I prodded. “Tell me. I want to know. Hey, I want to help. Tell me.”

“No … ,” she muttered, turning away.

“Come on,” I insisted. “You can’t just suddenly become a different person without any explanation. Something’s bothering you. What is it?”

She looked back at me and her eyes widened slightly as if she had just realized something.

“You’re wrong,” she said. “People can become different. A person can change without explanation. No reason. Just – done. I know.”

“Now you’re being cryptic. How do you know?”

“It happened to me. I changed. I didn’t ask to. I wasn’t expecting it. But I did. I’m just not sure when it happened.” She began speaking as if to herself, not to me. “When did it happen? Had I already changed and it was only last night I realized it? Or was it then, in that moment, that I changed?”

I was getting frustrated now. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Listen, what changed? What are you talking about? Forget about the when, tell me the what.”

“Love,” she said, talking to me again. “Love changed.”

“Love? What changed about love? Is the Oxford Dictionary now spelling it l-u-v?”

She sighed, then told me. “It was last night, just after we went to bed. I was lying there staring at the ceiling and the way the starlight from outside makes small glowing lines as it comes through the curtains.

“I suddenly knew I didn’t love you. Not anymore. But I didn’t know if it happened in that moment or whether I had only just realized something that had been true for a while. And I thought maybe it was just a strange night feeling that would be gone in the morning. But when I woke up today it was the same. Love was gone.”

Tears began to glisten her eyes. “It’s gone and there’s nothing in its place but questions. Was it ever there? I thought so. Once. But I don’t know now. And if it wasn’t ever there, what was it that had been there? Anything?”

I’ll give Mary-Ellen this – she can be articulate when she wants to be. Too much so, I think. Well, she had certainly answered my question. She had definitely explained why she was so different that morning.

But as with certain kinds of questions, its answer just created more questions.

The chatty Mary-Ellen, the bright Mary-Ellen, the laughing Mary-Ellen … who had that been? If not a Mary-Ellen in love, was that simply a show for me, or perhaps for herself, so the truth would stay in the street outside?

Did I love Mary-Ellen? Or had I merely loved the idea of a woman in love with me?

What was true?

And what would happen to us now?

The mourners arrived just in time dressed as clowns. Trent scratched his head, sighed and said, “That’s all they could get? Clowns?”

Flo shrugged. “You’ve got to remember,” she said. “You’re not dead.”

“They don’t know that!” Trent sounded peevish.

“Listen, paperwork’s the only reason they’re doing this. They don’t know whether you’re dead or not. They don’t know you. No one does. Anyone who ever did forgot about you. And so …”

She made a presentation kind of gesture in Trent’s direction and said, “Ta-da! The ghost that ain’t actually dead.”

With a gloomy voice, Trent added, “The dead man who isn’t dead but might as well be.”

With a reassuring smile, Flo said, “Ah, you’re not the first. I doubt you’ll be the last. Anyway, the point is they wouldn’t even be doing this if that woman hadn’t been so finicky with her paperwork.”

A wispy Mr. Franks stepped up behind them, seemingly from nowhere.

“Strange business, that. Reminds me of my wife. Sort of thing she’d do. She was always very fussy. Very particular. What I don’t get is the secretary.”

“Yeah. That is weird,” Trent agreed. “She didn’t know me. No one knew me.”

Flo just rolled her eyes. “It’s not that hard to understand. She’s just a nice girl who wanted to do something nice for someone. Besides, it makes her paperwork look a bit more … oh, I don’t know. Legitimate, I guess. I use to work in an office. I know about these things.”

“She may get into trouble though,” Mr Franks speculated. “Using city funds.

“Good God, look at those clowns. The rain’s making their make-up run. Geez … now that’s depressing. Speaking of which … Trent. Have you noticed anything different in the last day or two? Felt anything?”

Trent frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you seem different to me. Flo?”

“Yes, he’s a bit more … more … oh my! I know what it is!”

Confused, Trent asked, “What?”

“Solid,” Flo said.

“Solid?”

“Solid,” Mr. Franks said.

The clowns began moving away. The brief, somewhat formal ceremony, had ended. There was a sense of haste to their movements.

The rain was still falling.

“How could I be getting more solid? That makes no sense.”

“Fading out of the world without actually dying … that makes sense?” Flo asked, sensibly.

“Yeah, but how? How’s this happening?” Trent was flustered. It had taken him three weeks to get use to being dead without actually being dead. To be possibly coming back to the living, something neither desired nor undesired but rather something he had not really considered, was confounding.

Mr. Franks tried to explain. “It’s all guesswork, Trent. But I’d say someone, maybe that secretary who set this up … maybe the little awareness she has of you is enough to start bringing you back.

“I mean, we’re just guessing here, but weren’t we assuming that’s how all this happened? You’d been living alone for so long, hadn’t been in touch with anyone for years, life forgot you existed. And so you didn’t.”

My worry was that police and lawyers and courts would, like Annette, not see it this way.

But it was the wind, the bloody-minded wind.

The jet stream had arched up over Alberta, an infrequent thing, and only drooped back down when it reached the eastern edges of Saskatchewan. Thus the Arctic high November would normally invite into this prairie province was denied entry. In it’s place a high from the south, a trundling traveller from the Pacific, was shown in. It accepted and came from the west, leaping up and over the mountains like a gymnast, blowing strongly and warmly and disruptively.

It was a chinook and it put me in a rage.

Almost from the moment it began to blow I fumed, aimlessly, pointlessly, fatally.

“Why do we have to go to your mother’s?” I had asked earlier in the day, using my cranky voice.

“Because we have to,” Annette said dogmatically, the chinook a bellows to her own restless anger.

“I don’t want to. I’m not going.”

“Yes you are.” Although I could hear her voice becoming quiet, her words fewer (certain signs she was approaching the point of exploding in a rage) the winds were acting on me and I prodded.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m …”

The plate crashed against the wall beside my head. A shard flew off and scratched my temple. Though it bled, it was a flesh wound only.

“Fuck!” I bellowed stupidly.

“Fuck!” Annette cried back. “Look what you’ve done now! That was one of the good plates!”

“I did? I’m not the one who threw it!”

“You might as well have!”

And so we fought and fumed and fought some more until we eventually went to her mother’s, where we battled on raging, raging.

Outside the chinook’s winds continued to breathe disorder and disaster. Like Spain’s tramontanas or California’s Santa Anas, they streamed over us like flame and we were firecrackers, our wicks exposed and ready to ignite.

Annette’s mother, too, was in a mood. For spite and contrariness she had planned a dinner of liver and onions, though she knew I despised this.

“I can’t eat that!” I insisted.

“Try.”

“Yes, try,” Annette added as a warning.

“I won’t!” I shouted.

“You’ll eat what you’re given and be thankful!” her mother yelled back.

“Eat this, bitch!” I exploded. “Be thankful for this!”

I hit her. It hardly seems possible now, yet I did.

Her jaw swung right but, strangely, the rest of her head more or less remained in place. She was like a puppet. Her eyes widened in wonder. I don’t imagine anyone had ever socked her before.

In the street beyond the house, the trees’ thrashing increased in violence as the winds grew, howling like drunken revelers rushing past.

And then Annette’s mother, in a rigid weave like a dropping bowling pin, tilted left, then right, forward, and back. Finally, she fell, cracking the back of her head on the kitchen counter.

She lay on the floor like an abandoned doll, blood pooling around her.

“Oh god,” Annette whispered. “What have you done?”

“It wasn’t me,” I said quietly. “The wind …”

“The wind?” she said, turning to look at me. “The wind? Did the wind hit my mother in the face? Did the fucking wind fucking crack her fucking head open?”

Annette’s anger had it’s second steam. Beyond the house, the winds still blew though it seemed to me they were somehow different.

“I don’t mean that …” I tried to say.

“Well what the hell do you mean?”

“I mean … oh shit. Shouldn’t we do something? She’s bleeding.”

“Should we do something? ‘Should we do something’ he asks. Of course we should do something. So fucking do something!”

“What?”

“I’m a nurse now? How do I know!”

I had my cell phone. I called 911 although I knew there was a strong likelihood of unfortunate consequences for myself.

“Help,” I said.

“Can I get your address, sir?”

Thus the call was made. Not long afterwards police and paramedics arrived. The scene unfolded just as it does on local TV news, only without the editing or banal narrative. I saw a neighbour of Annette’s mom with a cell phone taking pictures. Another appeared to have a video camera. Both were buoyant with the tools of happy technology. Disaster was like going to Disneyland.

I had to recount my story several times to the police. I remember saying, “So anyway, my girlfriend was pissed about the whole thing. The whole thing being me because I was pissed. We were all pissed. It’s the winds, you know. The chinook? …”

Later, we would all be on the news – with editing and banal narration.

In all the collecting of details, the pronouncement of a death, the stern expressions of the police and earnest looks of the paramedics, I believe it was only I who noticed that, as I had suspected earlier, the wind had changed. It lacked commitment now. It had acquired an austerity and Zen-like ambivalence.

And it was now not so much from the west as from the north. It was no longer warm either. It carried a retributive coolness in it.

And my anger was spent. As was Annette’s.

The chinook was over.

(Originally published on Crazy Ass Planet, Saturday November 19, 2005.)

I tried to speak but my words slid, one into another, in an unintended stream of verbal sound.

“Uuuhthinkuuuuhhhhshouldsitdown …”

I was not as articulate as I had hoped. Someone else said:

“Maybe you should sit down …”

“Uhseddthat…”

I dropped like a sack to the ground. Strangely, my ass felt no pain.

Buddha-like, I remained there in a contemplative pose. My mind was utterly empty of thought except for a sense of perplexity. I could not understand why the world was tilting as if the planet itself was one of those Hollywood gimbal machines they use for rollicking special effects films.

My state of tilt-a-whirl peace then vanished as a new sensation swept up through me, along with much of the alcohol I had drunk and the evening’s Japanese cuisine.

“Ah geez …,” I heard a voice cry. “Well he’s sure as hell not getting in my car now.”

“We’ll have to hose him down.”

“Who was the genius who ordered sake anyway?”

I began to raise my hand as a way of indicating that it was I who had ordered the sake but as I did the world, in almost cinematic fashion, faded to black and I fell into the deep, dark and lifeless slumber of the man who will wake, many hours later, to the agonies of the hangover and other consequences.

No, it was not the best way to introduce myself to my future Japanese in-laws. But then it was Utako’s idea that we should meet this way. Surely it was her fault, not mine?

I’ll convince myself of this eventually.

(Originally published on Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday October 30, 2005.)

He got the idea from a news story - the newspaper, a television newscast, whatever. It was immediately picked up by every news outlet in the world. It was offbeat. Good filler. Some news hound had either found or made up a story about trepanation which is the business of putting a hole in your head to achieve a kind of wisdom. Or at least provides a distraction on a dull weekend.

This man I knew, Albert Holloway, latched on to it. Albert was one of those people who was easily swept up in things. Fads. Enthusiasms. Ad campaigns. He was the perfect consumer in that way. But he wasn’t very good at thinking things through. (This got worse once he vented his skull.)

What Albert failed to understand is that no one lives well, and certainly not for very long, with a hole in the head. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Zen master, a rising bishop, or the CEO of some absurdly large corporation with its sights set on owning the world, excluding northern Manitoba. If you gain wisdom, it’s only for a while. Hence the deprecating remark, “Have you got a hole in your head?” which is generally directed at people guilty of doing breathtakingly stupid things.

But Albert wanted enlightenment. Lord knows, he had the time to look for it. It wasn’t as if he was getting sex. My guess is he hadn’t been laid since Trudeau was Prime Minister.

He did poorly with women. He might have considered a sexual reorientation but I suspect men would have been equally disinterested. Say what you will about bodies hardened by weights and endless exercise in sweat stinky gyms, a feeble mind is a powerful disincentive to sex no matter how great a body you have. It’s erotic in the way donuts are. Albert, by the way, did not have a hardened body. It was more pillowy than firm. Imagine that. A mushy body and a mind that was softer. I don’t know whether the fact he had had sex at all says more about his tenacity or the desperate state of relationships today.

But I’m off track. This story is not about Albert’s luckless love life but about how he put a hole in his own head and what happened after. It is about humanity’s staggering capacity for imbecility. We’re dumb as dirt. That’s my story.

***

If you had seen him, you wouldn’t have known he had a hole in his head. You would have thought he had a bad gash, maybe from an auto accident. The head was bandaged up like a neck following a tracheotomy. You found out he had a hole in his head by asking him.

“What happened to you?”

“I’ve got a hole in my head.”

“Jesus! How’d that happened?”

“I put it there.”

“You put it there?”

“Yeah. I’m smarter now.”

“I’ll bet. Now you know not to put a hole in your head.”

Albert was smarter with a hole in his head, poor bastard. But he was as fucked up as ever. And maybe I’m smarter now. Having seen Albert. Having learned something about him. If nothing else, a hole in the head ventilates and stuff gets out. There must be a factory full of words in people’s heads that never get spoken. A hole in the head flushes them like ducks fleeing for their lives.

***

You’ve got to wonder why Albert was so down on himself for not being smart enough. What was it in his life that was so unsatisfying that he would want to drill his head to “relieve the pressure of the brain blood” (as he somewhat inaccurately put it)?

To answer succinctly, Albert was the guy no one liked.

Don’t confuse this with dislike. And please don’t think anyone hated him, especially me. It wasn’t like that at all. It’s just that there are some people (and I know you’ve known at least one of them in your life) we simply don’t want to be around. I think it has something to do with need. Or what these people think they need. From you, or whoever they’ve zeroed in on.

Maybe Albert, and people like him, are best explained by the cliche about playing hard to get. When you think of the people you’re attracted to, and think as well about those you’re not attracted to, the ones we seem to focus on are the ones who remain aloof from us. Not in a snobbish way. But somehow apart and disinclined to take us into their life. They’re simply not interested in us, and the more disinterest they show the more obsessed we are with them. This isn’t restricted to romance either. The cliques at school and work we most want to be part of are those that don’t want us. We may snipe about them behind their backs, gossip in whispers about them, and pretend an aloofness of our own, but the truth is we’re fascinated by them and desperately want to be one of their number.

This was Albert. There was a difference, however: the rest of us usually have some friends, even if they’re not the ones we wish we had. Albert, on the other hand, had no one. Literally, nobody like him. Literally, he was entirely on his own.

I remember when I first met him. We worked for the same company in the East end. Albert had been there a year and a half by the time I started. (God knows how he ever kept a job, though. Albert really was a bonehead and seldom did anything right. The few times he did it was always preceded by countless attempts that went wrong.)

At lunch, that first day, I was at my desk. I had brown-bagged it and was using the time to orient myself with the company, my office, and so on. Albert came up to me, his pleading smile stretched across his face as if mashed by plastic wrap.

“I’m Albert,” he said, extending his hand.

I took it. His palms and fingers were damp with sweat; his blood-warm grip, light and lame.

He was off-putting, so I nodded without saying anything.

“Holloway,” he then said.

My wariness must have been plain, even to Albert, because he began to explain himself hoping, I suppose, to dispel any misgivings I might have about liking him.

“Albert Holloway. It’s my name. Not Al though. I don’t get called Al. I wish people would though. If you want to, you can call me Al. Did you know there was a song about that? About calling someone Al? If you don’t, I could sing it …”

I sensed trouble so I quickly spoke.

“No! No, no need. I’m just … well, I’m just settling in here.”

“You’re going to like it. I know. I do. People are swell.”

Did he really say that? I believe he did. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone actually say, without a tongue in their cheek, “swell.” But Albert said it. He thought I was swell too.

Retreat and regroup, I thought. Reassess the landscape and the situation. I said, “You know Albert, I’m kind of tied up here. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. You know, get up to speed? But it’s been great meeting you. I’ll probably see you around the office.”

“Sure you will,” he said. “We’ll see each other every day. We’ll be friends.”

It seemed impossible, but his smile got wider.

“Yes. Sure.”

I smiled back and waited. It was one of those moments generally reserved for calamities. You know, speeding down the highway, something in the middle of the road. You brake and … nothing happens. It’s like the ground falling out from under you.

That’s what this felt like. Albert simply didn’t move. He just stood there, smiling, as if he was waiting for something. But God knew what. I had made it plain I wanted to be alone. As diplomatically as possible, I had asked him to leave. Anyone else would have gone. Some might have been offended; most would have understood, even welcomed the opportunity to leave, having fulfilled the social obligation of introducing themselves.

But Albert just fucking stood there. Smiling. Over his shoulder, in the background, I saw two of my new coworkers passing by. They were smiling and talking in low voices as they looked at me with Albert. And I knew what they were saying without hearing them: “Albert’s got the new guy. Poor bastard.”

That’s how it was with Albert. You could kick him, hit him, spit in his face, defecate on his head and still, despite every offense, he would come back with his desperate smile, the one that said, “Please. Please be my friend.” He was the worst sort of stalker - kind and nice and vulnerable as a puppy. And just as stupid.

***

The hurdle Albert was never able to leap, because he was utterly unaware it existed, was his inability to bring anything to the table (if you’ll forgive the boardroom expression). There was simply no reason to get to know him. No reason to like him. His need to find a friend and companion completed occluded any sort of personality. Need was the whole of him. He had no aspect beyond his craving. He had no discernable interests, no opinions, no passions (beyond wanting). Thus, on his good days, he bored the life out of you. On his bad days, he pissed you off. In terms of character, he was atrophied. Was he stupid, as he eventually came to believe? As far as intelligence goes, possibly. But I think the perception of idiocy was due less to an absence of smarts than the vacuum where a personality should have been.

When it comes to love, this is barren ground. Poor Sherrie.

Sherrie made the mistake many women make when it comes to men. She had no romantic interest. She had no interest in establishing a friendship with Albert beyond a cordial camaraderie with a fellow worker (which was more than any of the rest of us wanted).

But she showed kindness and to a man who had lived his life excluded from even the flimsiest of human bonds, who had lived outside the human circle from the day he was born, and who had watched the world from beyond meshed fences, seeing but never part of the interplay of people, it was a clear declaration of love.

I mean, think of it. How can anyone who never experiences love know what it is? It’s easy to get it wrong. As Albert did.

The phone calls began in the spring, early March I think. While I never actually heard them, I can easily imagine how they went.

“Hello?”

“Sherrie?”

“Yes?”

“Sherrie.”

“Who is this?”

“Albert.”

A frown creases her brow; she looks left and right as if something she might see will identify the voice. Who’s Albert?

“Albert?”

“Yes. You can call me Al though. I wish you would. No one else does. But you can. Did you know there was a song about calling someone Al?”

Tumblers click into place; archived material rises into upper memory.

“Albert! From work, right?”

“Yes!” An excited affirmation. The thrill of acknowledgement.

“Why are you calling?”

“Just to talk. To see how you are. Are you okay?”

The first inkling of something not quite right. Of something askew, like a floor with a scarcely perceptible incline.

“I’m fine.” The voice hesitant. Wariness. “How are you?” A mistake recognized even as it’s spoken.

“Swell! I’m just swell. I’m watching Jeopardy. You know, you can learn from watching. Did you know that Tokyo wasn’t the first capital of Japan? It was Koto … Koyoto …”

“Kyoto?”

“Yeah! That’s it! Wow! You knew that? I never knew that.”

“Listen. Albert?”

“Yes?”

“I’ve got to go. Someone’s coming over …”

“Who?”

“A friend.”

“Is she smart too?”

“Listen, Albert … I have to say goodbye …”

It continues like this a few more moments. Finally, she simply says, “Bye,” and hangs up, bothered by the abruptness, which she feels is cold and discourteous. But Albert doesn’t notice. It is simply how people behave, when you’re Albert.

***

Albert wasn’t targeted on Sherrie exclusively. As far as romance was concerned, he was, but Albert wanted a complete life: lovers and friends, family and happy acquaintances. His ambition was to have the life we are living now, as I write and you read. So while his calls to Sherrie became more frequent and her fears became more defined, he was also cornering me in hallways at work or, as with Sherrie, calling me at home, as I suspect he called others.

“I’ve been watching Jeopardy. And the Learning Channel too. Did you know a polar bear mother is the only bear that really hibernates? And they swim so good too. I saw that. It was swell.”

“Albert,” I said, on one of the innumerable occasions he called me at home and I foolishly answered (before I got call display), “What’s with the Jeopardy and all these other shows you watch?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like … Well, the Learning Channel. Or that documentary you were telling me about. Why do watch those shows?”

“To be smarter.”

“Why not just go to school?” It suddenly occurred to me that if I convinced him education was the way to go he would leave work and maybe my life. (It was a shot in the dark, I know.)

“I didn’t like school when I went before. I don’t think people liked me very much.” (He wasn’t utterly obtuse. Some hints of the truth had gotten through.)

“But what’s the big thing about being smarter? I’m happy the way I am.”

“But you’re bright. That’s what my mother called it. Bright. Some people are, and some people aren’t. You aren’t, Albert, she said. She was right, too. I’m not. But everyone likes smart people. So if I make myself smarter maybe more people will like me.”

I thought about a woman I had been seeing and how I had recently been catching a look in her eyes, a hesitancy in her manner, and knew from these things we were ending, and I wanted to tell Albert being bright wasn’t always such a good thing. I wanted to tell him how knowing things can hurt. How awareness can keep you awake at night. But I knew telling it to Albert would be a waste of breath. He wouldn’t hear. It was a thing you had to come to know the hard way.

***

Even when we’re dull-witted, truth batters at our doors until it eventually gets in. With Albert, it wasn’t so much a battering as a firm, solid knock. Authoritative. Unequivocal. The police paid him a visit one night.

“Do you know a Sherrie Wolfe?”

“Yes. She’s my friend.”

“Have you been phoning her?”

It was a series of questions to which they already knew the answers. The essence of the visit was simple. A court order. The threat of arrest. The message, unmistakable even for Albert: get lost. Fuck off. Go away.

Albert, without intending to, had transformed Sherrie’s kindness to anger. And loads of fear. To her, and frankly to anyone, Albert was whacko. But if he was, it wasn’t his choosing. Born into a world with imperatives to join, to belong, to be welcomed, Albert found every back turned against him. And to make it worse, though I’m not sure he clued into this, it was not out of malice. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, Albert had no utility. He was want without give. Or rather, want without anything apparent to give. His pathetic craving utterly obscured everything else about him, like a sky overwhelmed by cloud. Need denied him the thing needed.

***

He lost his job, of course. This made going to work something to look forward to. No more awkward encounters in the halls. No more smile stretched like gum across his face. And for Sherrie, no more calls - at work or at home.

There was an uneasiness to the calm, though. Maybe it was our conditioning from media: movies and newscasts, gossip and seminars. A stalker (which we had labelled him) doesn’t exit that readily. They’re cunning. Devious. Ingeniously inventive.

But, of course, that wasn’t Albert. He was dull. Slow. A one trick pony who performed the one trick badly.

For over a month there was silence. Then he called, which he had to. Companionship, as always, was beyond his grasp. But now its possibility was even beyond his sight. He was alone in whatever box he called a home and saw no one. So he had to call. If only to hear a voice. To be reminded there was a world of limbs and touch and even tenderness from which he was barred, but of which he could fantasize being included.

“Hello?”

“It’s Albert.”

“Albert? How are you?”

“Swell. Really swell.”

A confusion of feeling: the anxiety of reestablishing a connection with him; the guilt over what had happened.

“That’s good Albert. What’s new? What have you been up to?”

“Jeopardy. The Learning Channel. ‘States for three hundred.’ ‘This President was born in Hardin County.’ ‘What is Kentucky, Alex.’”

“Great. Anything else?”

“I know something now. Something important. And I can fix it.”

“Fix what, Albert?”

“Me.”

“Fix you? What do you mean?”

“I’m not bright. But I can fix it. I heard about it and went to the library. They’ve got computers, just like at work, and I used them and found out. I can fix it so I’m smarter. It’s called trepidation.”

“Trepidation?”

“No. Wait. I wrote it. It’s … it’s called tre-pan-ation. Trepanation.”

“What the hell is that?”

“You’ll see. When I’m bright I’ll tell you all about it. Sherrie’s going to like me then.”

Oh God. Sherrie again. Hearing her name, I felt a tingling move up my body. A sense of bad things in the offing; trouble riding a streetcar to a particular destination. Should I call her? The police? Warn someone? He hadn’t said he was going to do anything. He hadn’t done anything more than harass.

So far. The kicker is always, “so far.”

***

I spent two days, a weekend, worrying over what to do. I had decided to casually speak to Sherrie on Monday and tell her about my call from Albert and what he had said. It would be a roundabout warning. It would put the ball in her court. She could decide what, if anything, there was to do.

Monday morning came but before I had a chance to even speak to Sherrie (she was in meetings till 11), I got a call. The hospital. They had a patient. The only names they found in his belongings were my own and a Sherrie Wolfe. They had no number for her, but there was a number for me. So they had called.

The patient was Albert. All they said was he had a head injury.

I went to the hospital. I had no idea what I could do, or what responsibilities I had, or what they expected of me. But I went.

At the hospital, no one said anything until I met the doctor. He was with someone from the police and my uneasy feeling deepened and darkened. I knew something bad was coming.

They were disconcerted at first. I wasn’t the person they were hoping for. I had no legal connection to Albert. In their eyes, I was simply a friend - had they only known! Albert had no friends. I was just a guy he had glommed onto.

But there were no family members they were aware of. Or anyone else was aware of. And I think they would have been closed lipped about the whole thing but for the nature of the situation. Professionals though they were, people who had seen pretty much every form of human discombobulation possible, Albert had rattled them.

They didn’t actually come out and tell me what had happened. It was Albert who told me. They simply muttered words and phrases that hinted and expressed disbelief and shock.

“Himself …”

“His own hand …”

“We can’t imagine the reason …”

“Maybe you could …”

Strictly speaking, it was against the rules to allow me to see him. I wasn’t family. Nor was I a friend (though they didn’t know this). Hoping I might be able to gain some insight into the particulars of the ‘why,’ they allowed me in.

Albert had been found at around midnight. It was now approaching noon. The hospital hadn’t phoned me till 10:30 because it simply took them that long to get around to it. They had been unable to decide whom to call in the absence of any family (which had taken them some time to determine was nonexistent).

So I went in and saw Albert, which is roughly where I began this story. He was awake, in a groggy way, but perked up when he saw me.

“What happened to you?”

“I’ve got a hole in my head.”

“Jesus! How’d that happened?”

“I put it there.”

“You put it there?”

“Yeah. I’m smarter now.”

“I’ll bet. Now you know not to put a hole in your head.”

The sad thing is, Albert was smarter. He knew more, which is why what happened later happened.

He was eventually released from the hospital. He had more prescriptions than a Hollywood producer. He had a hole in his head, just below his brow, dead centre. The real horror of it all? The thing that really makes you gasp and wonder … how? He had used no anaesthetic of any kind. He had simply bored into the bone as if it were a wall and he were hanging a picture.

He must have felt pain. How could a person not? But his conviction was so strong, his belief that he would be smarter and his life would improve was so powerful, it overcame everything, even the pain. What he did not overcome was the awareness that came in the operation’s wake.

Some six months later I received a phone call. It was Albert, and I was caught off guard. It had been so long since he had called like this, so long since I had last seen him (which was that day in the hospital), I had forgotten about this part of him - the man who called and called in search of an ear that would listen.

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

“Who is this?”

The voice on the other end: low and guarded. Almost a whisper.

“Albert. I know.”

“Albert? Albert, how are you?”

“I know.”

“Know what?”

“I shouldn’t have done it. I wish I hadn’t.”

“I don’t understand you Albert. What do you know?”

“I’m smarter now. So I know.”

“What do you know?”

A pause. Pacing disrupted. A strip of film to be removed in the editing room.

“No one likes me. I know.”

***

The line went dead. He had hung up. I’m ashamed to say it, but I didn’t call back, though I could have. He had certainly given me his number enough times. But it didn’t even occur to me. I puzzled over the call a few minutes then, as I always did, I forgot about him.

I can tell you, though, what happened after. I heard about it from others, saw it on the news (so many times I stopped watching TV for two months).

It was around two in the afternoon. Outside the three story walk-up where Albert lived, beside a major junction of city roads, traffic swished by as usual. Cyclists pedalled to their various destinations: the store, their homes, a better physique, a better cardiovascular system. People waited for buses; pedestrians walked with determination in their strides.

A man stumbled into the streets, bleeding from the head. He held a drill in a hand that swung limply from his left arm. His right hand cupped a wound on the side of his skull above the ear. He moved drunkenly, eyes skyward, his face etched with a pain that may not have come from the physical wound.

People stared at him, horrified. They backed away; they didn’t like him. He needed help but the need, the wound, his condition were so extreme no one wanted to try. He frightened them.

Then he began crying and yelling at a sky that was so clear and placid and unabashedly confident in its lack of need for anyone or anything it was as if it were a bowl made of the finest china and indifferent, as fine things are, to anything superfluous to it, like Albert. You imagined the sky feeling as you did, simply wanting the man to shut up and go away.

But he was Albert so he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Need drove him.

He staggered across the sidewalk, into the road, staining the day with his blood and his words which, finally, had found a vent.

“I know!” he screamed. “I don’t want to know but I know! Please make it stop. Make it go away! I don’t want to know anymore!”

What did he know? That he wasn’t liked? That his need scared hell out of all of us? That we didn’t want someone who needs more than we do?

It was the worst sort of revelation. He was the woman who finally understands the man she loves also loves her, but it was need that came with equivocations. He was the man who sees the woman in his life loves him, but needs the man she expects him to become more. It was the stick’s short end, and Albert finally saw it was he who was holding it. No one would ever need him, love him, as he needed and craved to love them.

So he sobbed like a baby. And it was too much. Didn’t he know that? Didn’t he know that we were overwhelmed by him? We lacked the capacity? Didn’t he know we didn’t like him because he was a bruise on perfect flesh that will not go away, a flaw that reflected others?

He was a man with a hole in his head. Two holes now. The second to stop what the first had begun. But everything was coming out, and not just from him. I felt it too. From my ears. Nose. Christ, I think I was farting it. Whatever “it” was. Something from skin too long apart from other, welcoming skin. The fear of knowing a need in ourselves and denying someone who needs more.

I once knew a man with a hole in his head. I wish I hadn’t. As Albert showed, a hole in the head only lets out things we would rather contain.

(Originally written … somewhere in the ’90s? Published online, on Crazy Ass Planet, October 17, 2005.)

I can’t help but think there is a connection.

Roger, in his early fifties and with a “paunch,” meaning he’s considerably overweight and very out of shape, stands raging. He wears nothing but an ill-considered thong. I am reminded of the week we spent on a beach in France.

Not very convincingly, I argue that it is just youthful hi-jinks. “Mischief,” as my own mother use to say.

Roger is having none of that. He is already out the door, on the front lawn, his head jerking wildly from left to right as he scans the street in both directions bellowing into his cell phone at some poor unfortunate who fields calls for the police.

Yes, Roger is a bit of an ass. This is probably why my children dislike him so much. Why they are so determined that, contrary to Roger’s ambitions, they feel he and I should be parted as soon as possible.

But what do children know of need and loneliness? Roger … well, he’s better than bloody Celine Dion songs and Chilean red wine by yourself on a Saturday night.

Still, the kids argue that I should be stronger than this. And I can’t help but agree with them.

But being alone is … alone.

Still, Roger in a thong on the front lawn screaming into a cell phone … maybe alone is not so bad?

My kids think so. That’s why they took his pants. I can picture the looks of wicked glee on their faces as they decided to do it.

Taking the wallet? I know Angela and Dez too well (they are my children after all). That was just an added touch. A last minute, “Hey, why not …”

For Roger, of course, the wallet is the whole thing. Nice touch, Dez. (He’s the one who thought of that - I’m sure of it. But Angie, she would have been in like Flynn.)

Though Roger would be focused on the wallet, I know it was all about the pants and the thong we are all too familiar with.

Certain older men have this mistaken notion that the suggestion of exposed genitalia is sexually arousing, hence things like thongs. But really, it is just another argument for youth. You only want those suggestions when there is a reasonable expectation of … well, a degree of fitness.

But it’s funny, you know. As I see Roger, ridiculous on the lawn, thundering madly in his thong, taking impotent swings at the inexorable progress of time, I can’t help but wonder if he is any more comical than me with my sad love songs and wine.

My children, love them though I do, and as much fun and laughter as they bring into my life, don’t get this. And they won’t, not for many years.

Inarticulate though he is, uncomprehending as he may be, it is Roger who, if he doesn’t understand me, at least feels what I feel even if he can’t put it into words (and thus expresses it through ill-fitting underwear and tantrums on the lawn).

But, oh, if he could!

As it is, when Angie and Dez return (giggling, no doubt), we’ll have yet another of our family talks – with me trying my damnedest to keep a straight face.

(Originally published on Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday Octobe6 16, 2005.)

“It doesn’t go there,” I said

“Oh.”

“Put it there. With that.”

We were cleaning up my mess. Trying to make sense of things. Or at least put them someplace where I wouldn’t keep tripping over my crap.

I was trying to put everything in a box, an individual, isolated place separate from the anarchy of collected things, which was what I spread had out over the floor.

So why, Russ wondered (I could tell) did I put a blue crayon in a box that had balloons? (And I had a lot of balloons – bags and bags of them.) Why did I put every other crayon in another box that, as anyone could see, was for crayons?

It was, of course, a memory box. Blue crayons and balloons. But Russ had no way of knowing this.

“Why did you put that there? That crayon with the balloons?”

I considered the question, then said, “Her name was Sherrie. When I met her the first time she was with her daughter. Her daughter’s name was Erin.”

“No one’s named Sherrie now.”

“No. You just don’t meet them anymore. I wonder what happened to all the Sherries?”

“I don’t know. I guess people got tired of them.”

“I never did,” I said.

It is peculiar, you know, the way names come and go. For a while it seems there are oodles of people with certain names. And then they’re gone and you can’t find anyone named that anymore. I wonder why that is?

“Sherrie use to say if you see something in blue or with a blue background, like sky or water, then it was like, whatever it was, it was okay. Because there was blue and you can’t be sad or angry or frustrated or anything except kinda happy when you had some blue.”

Russ looked at me in sort of a funny way, like he wasn’t convinced but would go along with it just to be agreeable.

“I guess that explains your place,” he said.

He was talking about my house. There’s a lot of blue. Russ even called it my Little Blue House. Walls, couch, towels – all shades of blue. I like to have a lot of it around.

Who doesn’t want to be happy?

Sherrie explained it when I saw her that day with Erin and they were colouring. Both were kneeling over, colouring. Erin had a bunch of balloons floating up behind her, bouncing lazily together, all on a string that was tied about her waist. When I asked why all the blue Sherrie said, “Because blue is our happy colour. Right Erin?”

Erin kept colouring, very intently, but I saw her head nod. The balloons waved in the air above her with the movement.

“Some people think blue is sad,” Sherrie said. “But it’s not. I suppose it can be but I can’t see how. I mean, if you’re singing the blues, the blues aren’t really blue. Not if you sing them right. If you do you probably feel pretty good because … well, you’re singing the blues. But blues, as in something sad, aren’t blue. They’re black.”

It sounded convoluted enough to be true.

I had met them at a folk festival. They were having a fine time colouring under a tree while someone up on the stage, I don’t remember who, was singing about a tragic love that involved liquor and knives and a woman named Betty who had loved “too well, too long.”

Erin and Sherrie weren’t listening. They were drawing and colouring. And all their crayons were blue.

So I asked why and that’s when Sherrie told me about blue and afterwards I told her my name and after that, well, things progressed.

Later, things kind of went to pieces. I’m not really sure why or how.

* * *

There was a knock at the door. I opened it and saw a young woman standing there. She was dishevelled in a fashionable way.

We shared what the novels would call a pregnant pause, then she said, “I’m Erin.”

“I know,” I said.

And I did know. I would have recognized her anywhere even though I hadn’t seen her in roughly twelve years. She was a budding young woman now with a keen, if wary, intelligence behind her eyes.

There was another long pause during which she looked past me into the house. From a distance, she was studying it. Learning it. Finally, she said, “That’s a lotta blue.”

“Yup,” I agreed. “I like it. Blue that is.”

She turned to me and looked directly in my eyes in the challenging way some young people can have.

“It wasn’t the blue, you know. It was Mom.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know. But blue is all I have.”

She nodded. “Crayons. For me it was crayons.”

Reaching into her pocket she pulled out a handful of them. They were all blue.

(Originally publishd in Crazy Ass Planet, Sunday October 2, 2005.)