When I come back it’s gone. Someone stole my life; that someone is going to get their knuckles liquidated. But maybe I shouldn’t jump to conclusions—after all, I don’t think anyone has the buffalo balls required to come into my office and pilfer my phone. I left it on the charger out in the open—because this is my office. “Wren’s Office” is even painted on the door in sparkly harlequin green. The room is cluttered with scripts, stage plots and rehearsal schedules spilling off the one pseudo-wood desk onto the paint speckled floor. My mother would not approve of such negligence regarding the phone and the work space.
          No phone there—but it seems my prey shattered the rose-poppy candle. Glass shards scream under my knock-off Jimmy Choo checkered heels and, thank God on high, the thief’s demolition gives me a time stamp to work with. I’m not an expert on breaking things per se, but I’m sure I would have heard the scent blocker that keeps the smell of sawdust and copper at bay burst. The Laton Community Theatre is a unique building where none of the walls reach the ceiling; the sound in here carries better than a baby’s ear-popping song on an airplane. Mom would hate it; she doesn’t feel secure unless she’s trapped in four walls. She’s low-key an agoraphobe—just missing that doctor authentication. Nausea claws at my lungs and throat when I think of my mom. I can usually keep thoughts of her buried under reruns of Scrubs or Bones, but today she keeps coming to the forefront.
          Earlier, a group of middle schoolers took a tour and I bebopped outside to spray paint some set pieces to avoid the parade. At this time of year we get tours spilling in at least once a week; our Interim Managing Director seems to think if kiddos see us in action, they’ll be more willing to volunteer their time here on the upcoming school breaks. I can take on a few locker loafers at a time, but when they travel in a pack, I find they’re completely useless and too focused on the group and not themselves. One of those nasty cretins must have busted into my office. That was about 20ish minutes ago, so they’re probably still on the property.
          I stalk out of my office and stride through the workshop. The sawdust and copper stink assaults my nose and eyes. I snag a cordless Bosch power drill off the Technical Director’s tool wall. He’ll totally mind that I’m borrowing this to intimidate mini-teenagers, but I think it’s a fair trade because I got so much of his set painted while I was hiding out. An eye for an eye and all that blah blah.
          I reach the front office of the building to cut off the group. I feel my heart lash against my ribcage to a rhythm reminiscent of my favorite night club in the city—the only one where I can dance and not feel my flesh bubble off my bones if people stare or look in my direction too long. The drill makes a splish sound as it slips from my sweaty palms. I’m going to shave a decade off a bandit’s life, and then go back to bitching about the rehearsal schedule. No one gets to violate me.
          When I look out the glass double-doors by the main office, I see a mirage. It looks like the fugly yellow bus is all the way down the street and making a left out of sight. Delaney, our Interim Managing Director, is strolling back towards me from where I assume the heathens boarded and departed. All moisture leaves my mouth and a surge of invincibility rampages in my blood-stream. I was pissed before and now I’m livid. He took what doesn’t belong to him.
The straps of my shoes dig into the flesh along the top of my feet as I break out into a run—my upper arm and shoulder take the brunt of bursting through the door and my knee protests as it rolls against the Kinesio tape keeping it in place. He took what doesn’t belong to him. Blades of damp grass stick to my calves as I speed stumble my way towards the only thing that keeps me tethered to the present. My present.
          Delaney slams half of her body into my side and the force makes me stumble back. If she weren’t an itty-bitty, I would be flat on my ass. If we stood on each other’s shoulders, we wouldn’t be able to touch 11 feet.
          “I haven’t known you long, but I have a suspicion that letting you run around with a drill isn’t in anyone’s best interest,” she says, her off-coral lips quirking at the corners. Isolated, all her features are gorgeous: droopy, ultramarine blue eyes, a bow top upper lip with a larger lower one that cushions etc. However, for some reason, putting all those striking qualities together on one face makes her look outlandish. Even her buttermilk hair frames her face in such a way that makes her mouth seem too wide and her nose too far up her face.
          “Way to go, you just let a thief get away.” Oh God Lord, I think my voice cracked.
          Delaney peers down the street where the bus disappeared. She looks back at me and I can tell there are questions brewing beneath her too light eyebrows. I ramble and explain how some prick came in and filched me—and that prick had to be a middle school mashugana. Delaney tries to tell me that she was with the kids the whole time—that there was no opportunity.
          “Hell, it might be underneath some of that jumble in your office.” She trails off and seems like she might go look for the phone herself. No one would notice if I drilled straight through the backside of her head; she’s already lopsided. I’ve never lost or broken my phone. If she notices where my thoughts are focused, she seems unimpressed. Rather, Delaney gives me the up and down. I know exactly what she sees—she sees a girl about to lose her cool and go street justice on some fool. My blood isn’t boiling; it’s flash frozen and I don’t want to see what will happen when it thaws.
          She pries the drill from my hand, muttering about some rigor mortis grip. Now my weight is off. There’s nothing anchoring me at all-something’s missing. I reach down to check my pocket for my phone. Inches away from the denim I remember it’s not there. He took what doesn’t belong to him. I keep my phone on me at all times—everyone knows it; Delaney has scolded me several times for setting a bad example on volunteer work days. Apparently people get scared when I operate a table saw with a phone between my teeth. But that gave me great jaw muscles—so great I’m pretty sure I can taste tooth dust along my gums. The one day I decide to leave set it down this happens, way to go, whore. I try to loosen up, but that only makes me more aware of how taut my body is.
          “I’m going to go by the school and talk to the teacher.” Delaney points my—the drill in the direction of the school. “You, go sit in my office and calm your tits,” she finishes. She pushes the on button and motions to the Theatre, adding emphasis. O—kay. She also refuses to make a move toward her car until I’m safely behind the glass in the building, so I skulk back inside.
          Delaney’s office smells like laundry detergent and early 20th century love letters exchanged across enemy lines: burnt parchment and a little spice that I think gunpowder from the olden days would smell like. There’s no set theme to the room; none of the furniture matches and all her clutter is concentrated and sorted in designated areas so it’s really not clutter at all. How she finds anything in here, I’ll never know. She’d better find my damned phone or I’ll do it.
          The novelty Barbie in the Nutcracker phone on the corner of the desk temps me. Fuck it. I clutch the phone as close as the cord will allow and dial my number. It goes straight to voicemail; the little bastard turned it off. I will rip open his chest and bite his heart while he watches. The sound of the cheap plastic concaving reminds me to loosen my grip. I do have rigor mortis hold. The beep prompts me to leave a voicemail and I’m talking before I can think better of threatening a kid.
          “Listen here you little brace-faced freak, there is a special place in hell for people that take what’s mine. I’ll peel your fingernails off and shove them in your eyes.” I disconnect. There’re some droplets along the receiver.
          What time is it? I’ve never been good at waiting. I don’t belong here right now. On impulse I snatch the phone again and dial my boyfriend’s cell. I have to tell him what happened, that he took what didn’t belong to him. The call is directed straight to voicemail and I intend to tell him what happened, but instead the noise that slips over my teeth sounds like a strangled whine. Jesus Christ. Slumping into the gaudy yellow cushions of the love-seat, I concentrate on how the crisscrossing fabric abrades my flesh. Physical sensation is good; it’s grounding in the present. My fingers reach for the now charming Barbie set to call my therapist. But I stop myself. It’s a mid-morning on a Tuesday—she’s busy with people that aren’t me. And this is stupid and I’m overreacting. For the briefest moment I have the urge to call my mother, but I quash it. I haven’t spoken to her in over 60 days—we aren’t estranged or anything, but it’s complicated. Even if I wanted to contact her, I couldn’t. I don’t have her number memorized—it’s in the phone. Hell, my only pictures of/with her are in that phone.
          What time is it? Balls—I need an alarm clock. And a calendar and a watch. I have nothing. Ignoring the Tech Director as he tries to ask me something—probably if I’ve seen his drill—I run back and grab my keys from my office. I tell him that he’ll get his when I get mine when I exit through the back door in his shop. He doesn’t comment, or if he does I can’t hear it over the thumping of the metal door behind me.
          A few steps into the parking lot shifts everything. For the first time in months I feel alone. Truly alone. No one can contact me or know where I am. If I climb into my car and drive for days no one would know. Or care. He took what doesn’t belong to him. Clambering into my 2015 Honda Fit that I can’t afford, I grip the steering wheel so hard I have to check for frost bite. Everything is so numb. It’s like my whole lower half bottomed out.
          I drive to Walmart and go in; I can count on both hands the number of people I see—not unexpected for a Tuesday morning. Or is it afternoon? My fellow customers seem to stare at me as I venture further into the store to the electronics section. The skin on my thighs prickles and I feel ashamed under the harsh, platinum lights. My cheeks itch.
          I find the clocks and there are too many. Too fucking many with a range of different prices. Nothing has intrinsic value—we place value on things so why is one clock $8.78 and another one $40? The $8.78 is just as good and just as capable. The slick, glossed cardboard of the cheaper clock warms my clammy hands. Do our bodies have intrinsic value? I wonder what mine is worth. Droplets of sweat singe the roots at the base of my skull. My throat itches.
Come here and lay your head on my lap. You can open your mouth wider. Your best part? It’s between your thighs. He took something that doesn’t belong to him. His rough voice swims in my head, burning my ears. Phantom hands with apparition nails scrape the line of my back and I fight to keep my lungs expanding.
Fuck that nonsense. Bile rises in my throat and I try to focus on the smell of scuff and charred rubber that seems to be prevalent in every Walmart across the U.S.A. Something jabs the fleshy part of my palm and I glance down at the clock. Rigor mortis grip strikes again.
          The once crisp edges are crumpled in my hands. The damage isn’t very noticeable, but I see it. I’ll always see it. I broke my mamma a few months after my 14th birthday; after confessing to her what he was doing to me she could only say, “He took what doesn’t belong to him.” She said that at the hospital, the police station, to our relatives that following Christmas, and I’m told she said it at his casket viewing/wake during the eulogy. After her brother’s funeral, she never left the house and hid little shot bottles of Jack under furniture, in dresser drawers and along shelves. She called them her special syrup sips.
          “Excuse me, ma’am—” someone behind me says. I turn to face a Sale’s Associate who looks to be a few years older than me; his name tag reads “Alex.” He smells like wood that’s been outside in the summer. Alex has a bundle of paper towels under one arm and his other hand is motioning towards the somewhat damaged-quirky clock.
          “Oh, geez,” I say and try to giggle. That seems to make Alex more uncomfortable. “I’m going to pay for this. This is the one I am buying today on this wonderful Tuesday morn-aft-noon. You see I’m not sure what time it is—hence the clock.” Fucking rambling again.
          Alex rips off a few paper towels and holds them out straight arm style, as if he’s scared of getting to close to me. The hair on his arms almost seem like mini-bushes it’s so dark and weed-ish. Very wolf man. I accept the gifts, unsure as to why I’m getting them. I raise a hand to move some split-ended hair out of my face and I’m surprised to find it moist. Oh. This is embarrassing.
          “Yeah, whoop, these allergies am I right? Makes my eyes swell up good—” I trail off. I can control myself dammit. I’m here to buy a clock and that’s it. Just buy a clock and—my wallet is in my office. Frick. I ask if Alex will hold this for me. Just for 20ish minutes. I swear on Elvis’ grave I will be back to reclaim what’s mine. He appears to be skeptical at first, but he says he’ll put it behind the electronics counter for a little while. I’m so happy I could kiss him—or I would if I didn’t find kissing abhorrent.
          I speed walk back to my car with a purpose and a focus. Get the wallet; get the clock. I don’t even remember what the device looked like, but it’s my new tether. If you keep moving and face forward you don’t have to look in your rearview window or around the sides. Just the way I like it. My motto had been conceal, don’t feel until a Disney princess put a copyright on it. Even now there’s a burning in my stomach that resembles hunger pangs. But I know what it really is.
          When I pull into the Laton Community Theatre parking lot, Delaney is leaning against her borrowed 2001 Toyota Tundra, drill in hand. That burning in my stomach plummets further down. I don’t see my phone. She waits for me to climb out of the car and the sunlight hits her hair in a way that highlights streaks of gold and platinum in her hair that I hadn’t noticed before. She looks almost pretty. I resist the urge to tell her so.
“So, um, thanks for looking.” Lame. She doesn’t say anything—just has that smug twerk of her lips primed. I head back towards the building and I feel a familiar weight get shoved into my back pocket. I can’t hope—frankly hope isn’t for me, but for a split second I think I did hope.
          “Nice voicemail,” she says and saunters past me. “Let’s have a drink sometime while we discuss your psychotic tendencies, weirdo.” I do not have psychotic tendencies—more like sociopathic inclinations. I fumble with the mass and when I bring it in front of my face, I can confirm that this is my phone. But I’m not as elated as I thought I would be. Actually, I think I’m upset—which makes no sense. I don’t even care where it was or who took it. Correction, I don’t want to know—I don’t want to put another face or voice in my head. Must be me, being strange again. I go inside to grab my wallet and feel compelled to not make eye contact with Delaney because I have this gross feeling that we’ve started a friendship and that’s okay because I don’t think I’ve rubbed her the wrong way too badly yet. She tries to start a conversation with me when I’m leaving again, but I tell her I have to go get a tether. She seems confused and I wish I could explain. I hope I can explain—eventually. To someone. I don’t know. 

Larghetto Affettuoso.
            Henry inhaled. His breath echoed the rhythm in his head as he made his entrance. He felt the metal string slide under his fingertips and pressed down to produce the correct notes. He made his bow stroke light and fast. A cry, like wind through a tunnel, spoke from the strings, always a favorite on the streets of Chicago. He let his fingers slide down the string and pressed them harder into the fingerboard. At the same time, he leaned into his bow. Thunder resounded from deep within the violin to cut through the wind’s cry. He imagined the sound of the orchestra playing underneath his melody. He heard the violins filling space with sixteenth note arpeggios, the cellos and basses adding depth with long tones, and the wind instruments providing spots of color. Henry’s fingers struck the fingerboard like rain drops striking a body of water.
            Henry let the last note ring in the air for a few second before he let out the breath he had been holding and lowered his violin. He heard scattered applause from the crowd of shoppers that had stopped to listen to him. His lips twitched, but he tried not to smile because he always thought he had the grin of a gargoyle. Most members of the crowd walked away, but a few approached him and placed money in the case at his feet. A robust woman leaned in and asked Henry where he learned to play the violin.
“Chicago’s very own DePaul School of Music,” he replied. She looked doubtful, despite the honesty of his words. Admittedly, he did neglect to inform her that he never graduated. He had studied at the college for four semesters, and he would have graduated if he hadn’t been called away by the music Chicago’s streets. The woman pressed him further and asked him what he was playing.
            “Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor,” he replied. “It’s one of the few I still have memorized. Time has stolen most of my repertoire.”
            “Well here,” she said, placing a $10 bill in his case. “Use this to buy some new sheet music.”
            Henry thanked her profusely. During the day, most people only gave him one dollar, two if he was lucky. He usually had to play all day to get enough money to buy dinner from a street vendor and pay his rent.
Henry didn’t live in a typical motel. It had only one truly livable room, which was rented out by rich gentlemen who needed a discreet place to spend the night with their mistresses. The owner of the motel, John, didn’t have enough guests to keep up with the costs, so he allowed Henry to live in one of the uninhabitable rooms and Henry paid what he could and repaired anything that stopped working in the building.
            In all honesty, Henry knew he should give the ten dollars to John, but the woman had given it to him on the condition that he bought sheet music with it. And besides, this was an investment-- he would get new music to perform on the street, which would bring in more money. Conscience justified, he packed up his violin and began walking towards the music shop.
 
            Henry approached the building that had been taunting him for the past seven years, ever since he found himself on the streets. The stone pillars climbed into the sky, etched with intricate designs. The arch of each spire came to a point. At first, the mahogany front door resisted his efforts, but he pulled harder and managed to create a wide enough gap to slip inside. He walked past an elevator that would not have been out of place in a Marx Brothers movie, complete with sliding metal grate door and operator. Henry decided to take the stairs.
            As he climbed the last step, he saw the doors to the music shop. Someone had handpainted “Chicago Strings: Luthier and Music Shop” over the door in cursive. Grime coated the glass door and a layer of dust stood on the red trim.
            Henry gripped the handle, shaped like a scroll, and began to second guess himself. He should give the money to John, or at least spend it on food, he thought. But he steeled himself-- he would only get the least expensive sheet music.
            He pushed the door open and heard a tinkling that sounded like the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The music emboldened him and he stepped inside. The sound of footsteps forewarned him of the shopkeepers approach. A crooked old man stepped into the front room and beamed at Henry.
            “I knew I heard someone enter! Bum-bum-bum- BUUMM! Beethoven Five, yes? Welcome, dear sir.” The exuberant salutation took Henry by surprise and he immediately felt inclined to leave, but before he could step back the man rushed forward and shook his hand vigorously. “My name is Robert Wesley, I am the owner of Chicago Strings: Luthier and Music Shop! How can I help you?”
            Henry, worried he’d made a terrible mistake, tried to explain to Robert that he only wanted new sheet music. Robert, still gleeful as ever, guided Henry to the music room in the back of the shop. To get there, they had to walk through the instrument room. Instruments at every stage of creation covered each surface in the room. Violin bodies that still needed to be carved out were strewn across the countertops, cellos waiting for fingerboards stood sentinel, and a double bass which only lacked varnish lurked in the corner. Completed instruments lined the walls, all skillfully made by hand. Henry had to drag himself away from the line of violins.
            Once among the piles of music, the man asked Henry what he wanted more specifically. Henry had planned on looking through the music himself, but this room was clearly not conducive for browsing. Henry decided to be straightforward and asked for the cheapest thing Robert had.  Robert pondered this and inquired as to Henry’s skill level. Henry figured he might as well be completely honest. He told Robert the same thing he had told the woman on the street.
            Robert seemed eager to conquer the feat: something cheap that would challenge a skilled performer, yet also entertain the Chicago masses. He spent several minutes sitting with his head in his hands, mumbling compositions to himself while Henry stood uncomfortably in the doorway. Robert jumped up and ran to a stack of music in the corner. He brushed his fingers down the stack and stopped near the bottom. With the skill of a practiced hand, he pulled a single booklet from the stack. He walked towards Henry and handed him the sheet music to Sonata in G minor by Tartini.
According to Robert, the sonata became known as the Devil’s Trill after a story came out from the composer, Tartini. Tartini had dreamt that he made a pact with the devil. In exchange for Tartini’s soul, the devil played violin for him. The sonata the Devil played for him was so darkly beautiful that he forgot to breathe. He woke up gasping and composed his best interpretation of the song he had dreamt, which he secretly called the Devil’s Sonata.
            Henry inquired as to the price, worried that Tartini’s sonata would still be too expensive, but the man smiled and said, “Today, it is free. After you’ve mastered the music, come back and play it for me and you can trade it out for a new piece. I make enough money selling instruments to schools and to the Chicago symphony players.” The man waved away Henry’s thanks and shooed him out of the shop, telling him to get to work on that sonata.
Before Henry allowed himself to return to the motel to play the Sonata, he forced himself to work the streets a bit more. The after dinner hour was always the most profitable. Henry walked among his favorite spots until he found a vacated one. Henry had been playing for around ten minutes when he saw a young couple approaching. They looked young enough to still be in college. Henry immediately began playing up the romanticism of the piece he played. He used wide vibrato and slid into notes so they whined in a melodramatic way. As the couple got closer and eventually stood just in front of Henry, he made sure to bring his eyes to meet the girl’s more often than not. She smiled through a blush and looked down, her mouse brown hair falling all around her face. Her date glared at Henry, looking as though he were trying to communicate telepathically. In a way, he was. Henry simply smiled and looked around at the rest of the crowd, feigning innocence. After Henry finished the song, the girl and her date approached Henry. The boy, still glaring, dropped a ten dollar note into Henry's violin case, and his girlfriend turned her adoring eyes away from Henry to land on her date. The boy pulled her away, and Henry packed up for the evening.
While he walked, Henry considered how the girl seemed to value adoration of art through large sums of money more than the actual art. Initially this troubled Henry, but he decided it was fine by him so long as he kept the money and the art. Caught up in his thoughts, he didn’t realize how far he had walked until he arrived in the lobby.
            John sat behind the front desk, staring at spider on his desk. The spider lacked a leg and limped in an attempt to move forward. John seemed too focused on the spider to pay any attention to Henry’s greeting until Henry held out his earnings for the day.
             John snatched the money out of his hand and counted it with a smirk. He didn’t say a word to Henry, who walked back to his room. There, he rinsed the city grime off his hands and face, not that it much improved his complexion. He wondered how he appeared to Robert. Unable to resist, Henry studied his face in the mirror. A layer of white residue covered the mirror, but he could still see more of his reflection than he preferred. His skin was rough and discolored, seemingly stained the same grayish color as the Chicago streetscape. The lower half of his face covered in sporadic patches of hair that his two-year-old disposable razor couldn’t seem to cut. His hair was disheveled and had been cut unevenly with a piece of a broken beer bottle. His hazel eyes looked prematurely aged, the way they sagged down at the corners; his lips were the same. Henry turned away from the mirror, feeling much less composed than when he had entered the room. He looked for a place to set his music.
            It had been ages since he’d read from sheet music. He didn’t have a stand to place the music on, nor anything to stick it to the wall, save a piece of chewed gum, once pink but aged into a grayish purple. He resolved to just lay it atop the wobbly dresser of missing drawers. He would have to arch his back uncomfortably in order to read the notes.
            Henry removed the bow from his case and coated it with rosin. He drew the bow across the chunk of hard, amber rosin, which he had from his days at the university. He knew despite the disheveled hair of the bow and the warped rosin, he could make his instrument sing; but without rosin, there was no hope. He unpacked his violin and brushed his hand over the back of the instrument. After seeing the newly made instruments, Henry wanted to inspect his violin. He stroked the perfect, natural curves on the scroll and the shoulders of the instrument. He traced the f-holes on either side of the bridge, which somehow managed to support the tension in the strings, despite its brittle frailty.  He ran his fingers over strings that were starting to unravel. The imperfection didn’t take away from the beauty. He felt his violin’s injuries, the places the wood had been chipped. He brushed his fingers across the areas where the varnish had worn away into dark roses on the wood.
Henry cradled the violin between his shoulder and chin. He drew his bow across the strings and heard it sing, the mirror of a voice. He turned the tight pegs until the pitch in the air matched the one in his head. He hunched over his music and played the first notes of Tartini’s sonata.
Allegro
            The first movement sounded sedate. He played each note with a long bow stroke and moved his hand back and forth with wide vibrato. Carried away with the romanticism of the piece, he slid into the notes as he shifted to the upper register of his instrument. He felt the string under his rough, calloused fingertip and strained to make the sound more prominent. The more he played, the more he felt the raw emotion in the piece. Each note pleading with growing intensity and fading away in tragic relief.
            The second movement brought an attack, completely different than the first. The smooth, legato notes of the previous movement gave way to sharp, accented bow strokes. He went from the tinny E string down to the heavy G string and his right hand grew heavier to match the intensity of the notes.
            After he played the last note, he became aware of a loud thumping outside his door. “Damn it Henry, it’s been hours! It’s three in the morning, for God’s sake. Keep it down!” John yelled from the hallway.
            Henry called out an apology, but John had already stomped out of earshot. Henry reluctantly put his violin away. He knew he should go to sleep himself, he would have to be well rested if he wanted to give a good performance the next day, and he had a hard enough time getting money on his best days. But he couldn’t make his mind stop spiraling. He lay with his eyes closed and replayed the sonata in his head, desperate to know what the rest sounded like. He rose out of the worn bed to consult the sheet music several times until he remembered enough to satisfy him. A few hours later, he fell into a restless sleep.
***
          Henry woke up early the next morning, but he didn’t get out of bed. He tried to ignore the lumps and dents in the mattress as he stared at the white popcorn textured ceiling. The paint had glitter mixed into it-- a cheap imitation of the night sky. His thoughts meandered around the room. He should get up. He should go out on the street-- he needed the money. But Tartini’s created his greatest composition in bed, surely that meant something. Henry could lie there for a few more moments, maybe something great would come of it. The sunbeams from his window grew longer and brighter, illuminating the heavy dust motes in the air. The sight made Henry cough. 
          At midday, he rose at last. After rinsing the sleep from his face in the bathroom sink, he picked up his violin and left the room. As he walked out of the motel, he saw an embarrassed looking man in a suit and a beautiful woman in a green dress with sad eyes exiting the motel. When they reached the street, they went in opposite directions. Henry, not wanting to accompany either of them, crossed the street and made his way in a third direction.
          He planted himself next to a gothic bridge and began playing the Sibelius that had brought him so much fortune the previous day. From a technical point of view, Henry played better today than he had before, but the music felt wrong. He played mechanically and he found the melodies cold and dull.
          He played the final notes of the concerto and bowed stiffly to the scattered applause. Some dropped a couple bucks in his open case, but the majority turned and started walking away. People often stopped to listen without paying, but today, with his hollow stomach and bored fingers, he got angry.
          “That’s it?” Henry yelled, surprising himself. “Do you even know what I just played?” He continued yelling in his head, You should pay fifty dollars for that kind of performance, and you can’t spare a couple bucks? I’m the best Goddamn violinist on the streets of Chicago!
          Not surprisingly, the crowd didn’t come back to pay, but rather rushed away more quickly. Out of the corner of his eye, Henry saw a uniformed officer making his way towards the disturbance. Henry immediately put his instrument away and sprinted off through the mass of people; he didn’t have a permit to play on the streets. Most officers overlooked this for talented musicians, but once he became a nuisance, he couldn’t be overlooked.
          Luckily, Henry had made a bit of money before the incident. He made his way to the nearest street vendor and bought a hotdog with everything on it. He ate the entire thing in three bites, but the food did nothing to sate his hunger. He approached the vendor again and bought two more. He hesitated for a moment, remembering his debt to John, but Henry’s hunger grew stronger than his conviction. Before long, he ate both hot dogs in a few bites and wanted more. The vendor looked confused as he returned for a third time, and his confusion turned to irritation when Henry revealed his lack of money. The vender turned him away, not even listening to his pleading or his offers to pay more later. Once he realized he wouldn’t get any more food from the man, Henry yelled an insult at the vender and returned to the motel to work on the sonata.
Grave.
          “You call that music-- I’m surprised you make any money with that God awful sound! Save it for the streets. If I hear one more note, you’re gone,” John said. He slammed the door and a crack in the wood splintered a bit farther.
          Henry couldn’t help but agree with the harsh words. He had been playing the cadenza, the hardest part of the sonata, for hours, and still, the Devil’s Trill eluded him. He only managed a grotesque combination of notes with out of tune double stops. The trill only worsened the effect, like using a bit of lace to cover up a blood stain.
          Henry carefully packed up his violin, more out of habit than anything else, and stared at his case. At first he sat on his bed, but the sight of his music on the wobbly dresser mocked him, so he walked out into the motel lobby and sat on a ratty floral couch with questionable stains. He didn’t know what to do. He had given his entire life to music. He never asked for more. He worked at his craft everyday, improving bit by bit. Even when he ran out of money and took up residence in the sketchy motel, he continued working, continued playing his instrument. He’d lived his entire life with one mindset, one reason for living, and all of a sudden he discovered he wasn’t enough; what did that make him?
          Several minutes passed before he noticed a woman sitting next to him, the same woman he had seen leaving the motel that morning, the woman in a green dress with sad eyes. He noticed the delicate black lines that drew a pattern over her silk dress. She had short blond hair which curled at the tips, and scarlet lipstick which clung to her lips. She seemed to notice Henry staring, and he looked away.
          “I saw you this morning,” she said in a light, airy voice.
          “Yeah, I saw you too,” he replied. They sat in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes. “What brings you here this evening?”
          Henry regretted the words as soon as they left his lips. She declined to reply and began inspecting her fingernails. He too, looked at her fingernails. His eyes traveled up her arm. He noticed her bare shoulder, curved slightly to the front. Her neck, long and thin, extended forward. Her dress clung to her breasts and gathered beneath them. The silk material fell above her knee, but as she sat with her legs crossed, the dress slid up her leg with every shift of her body. She noticed him staring, scoffed, and turned away. He knew he should look away, but with her backless dress he noticed the curve of her back, so similar to that of a violin. In his mind, he drew the f-holes around her spine and imagined guiding his hand across her skin, feeling for worn off varnish or chips in the wood. His gaze reached up her spine to where her neck met her hair. Her curls imitated the exact shape of a scroll.
          In the next instant, man in a suit strode into the room and stood before them. Henry looked away from the girl, but not before the man noticed the subject of his gaze. His eyes clearly warned Henry to clear off, but before he could move the woman rose and began walking towards their room. After a few moments of his scathing glare, the man followed his mistress.
          Henry leaned back into the couch and gazed unseeing at the wall. His mind emptied and a certain buzzing filled his ears. He didn’t want to move anymore. He didn’t move, he didn’t see, he didn’t think, he barely breathed. He remained slumped and still against the couch.
          He began to see the object of his stare. He saw the off-white wall with grime sticking to the rough texture. He saw his feet in the same brown tennis shoes he had first walked off the college campus in. He observed his hands-- the hands that had played violin for so many hours. He examined his fingertips: the tips of all four fingers on his left hand were calloused from the extended amount of time in contact with the metal strings; the tip of his thumb and the side of his index finger on his right hand were rough from the hours guiding horsehair across the strings. Henry didn’t want these fingers, primed for violin, to go to waste. He didn’t want to lose the music that went from his head to his fingers. He didn’t want to stop playing. But at the moment, he couldn’t make the effort to rise from the couch.
Cadenza
            “What are you doing out here?” John yelled, probably angry that Henry was in view for the real guests of the motel.
            Henry woke up gasping with his heart beating wildly in his chest. He could still see his dream--the woman in a green dress sitting next to him, playing his sonata. Her sad eyes gazing into him, into the darkest corners of his mind, as she played perfectly. Henry looked out the window. The sky was still dark. He shook his head slightly and felt the last few notes of the cadenza fall away. He stood and walked away, barely hearing the angry exclamations from John behind him.
            Henry threw open the door to his room and it slammed against the wall. He ignored the resounding thud and the sound of the crack widening. He knelt down on the floor and undid the latch on his case. He quickly attached the shoulder rest and turned the screw to tighten his bow. He stepped up to the wobbly dresser holding the sheet music and placed the bow halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge.
The sound poured out of him in a frenzied passion. He drew his bow recklessly across the strings. Hairs tore and split, they became wisps of smoke still attached to his bow. He placed his fingers haphazardly across the strings. The notes were technically flawed, but with raw emotion filling his ears, Henry heard only perfection.
          He thought of the crowd in front of the bridge. He felt his wrath towards them as if they had just walked away from him. He thought scathingly of the successful musicians with half his talent, half his passion. He lusted over the memory of the green dress sliding up the woman’s leg. He remembered the leaden feeling in his limbs and feeling unable to move or breathe. He gorged himself with the deep sound of the low notes as he pushed still harder into the string. A popping sound interrupted the flow and a whiplike, metal string slashed across Henry’s face. He halted his playing when he saw the droplet of red blood strike the black and white page of his music. Shock caused Henry’s hands to loosen and his violin fell to the ground, scroll first. The neck snapped in two and imitated the sound of the crack in the door.
          “What the Hell--” John began to say, standing in the open doorway.
          Henry roared in frustration and, without hesitation, he ripped the sheet music from the dresser with one hand and stole the rosin with the other. Then he rushed from the room as John stepped aside, looking fearful. As Henry tore down the hall, a doorway opened, revealing the half dressed man and woman in the lover’s suite. The man poked his head out, presumably to find the source of the commotion. But he, like John, reared back to get out of Henry’s way.
          A few moments later, Henry had forgotten them entirely. He sprinted down the dark street. The cold wind bit into his face and tried to steal the music from his hand, but Henry held the flimsy paper tighter and embraced the pain. He hardly knew where he went until he saw the spires and the arches that came to a point.
          The combination of the force of his speed and the wind, which had shifted to push him from behind, helped him open the heavy mahogany doors. He passed the old elevator and bounded up the stairs, tripping often and using his hands to push himself up so that he imagined looking like some great beast who couldn’t walk on two legs.
            Henry finally stopped sprinting and gripped the rosin tighter in his hand. He pulled his arm back and flung the cake of rosin as hard as he could towards the glass door. They both shattered simultaneously into a thousand pieces, the transparent glass pieces combined with the shards of burnt orange rosin in the air.
            Before the glass hit the ground, Henry sprinted through the doorway and received a deep cut from a shard of glass still protruding from the frame. He ignored the added droplets of blood as they dripped onto his music, and he headed straight towards the violins. He picked up the master piece, the violin which had been finished only a few hours earlier.
            Then he began the sonata again from the very beginning. He forced his fingers to be calm for the Larghetto Affettuoso, but their tone revealed that he held back a certain violence, some of which he released in the Allegro. He pulled his bow across the strings angrily, impatiently, and he planted his left hand fingers with enough force to make them speak without the bow. He had to pull back for the Grave. He held his breath and let the sorrow of defeat fill his mind, the sound of hidden violence yet more intense. He let the last note ring in the air for tense seconds. Then, with a sharp retake of his bow, he attacked the Cadenza. His fingers flew across the strings bringing forth more notes than could be possible for one violin. An entire orchestra spilled forth from his instrument. He bowed with more force, trilled with more fury, and his string crossings became more hectic. The feeling of running at a dead sprint, the feeling of screaming. He felt every instrument in the room, the orchestra, enter with him for the Adagio. He reached the final notes of the piece and played with longer, heavier bows than physics would allow. Upon the release, Henry heard the strings of the other instruments in the shop still reverberating with sympathetic vibrations. It was over in an instant, and the silence sounded broken in Henry’s ears. 

          The nosey bitch next door has eyed the green plaid boxers swinging from my laundry line at least six times while successfully keeping her arms buried in her flowerbed. The wind was strong and caught the thin fabric every few seconds, waving the boxers like a flag of indiscretion. I kept peeking through the mini blinds hanging from my trailer’s kitchen window to see her eyes flick up to the line. She shook her head and her lips moved; she was probably cursing me. One time, I’d caught her talking to Delores down the road from us, saying I was probably some sort of prostitute or stripper taking boxers from my customers and hanging them on the line. She’d made a Scarlet Letter reference, too; “maybe her parents should have named her Hester,” she’d said. I swear that old woman has hated me since the day I drove my 1997 Silver Bullet Airstream trailer to this RV Park in Independence, Kansas.
          Permanently parking my trailer here was not the original plan. My savings dried up while I was traveling the United States and, unfortunately, I’d had to sell my dingy old truck to pay for food. If I’d  purchased a real RV that came equipped with its own engine, I wouldn’t have even run into this problem. However, Silver Bullets must be pulled. And where was my puller? On a sturdy pair of cinderblocks in the Independence, Kansas junkyard. So, now, I lived in the slightly less junky junkyard in Independence, Kansas called The Corn Husk RV Park.
          “Like the boxers, Mrs. McCall? You can have ‘em if you want. I’m sure Random Man number seven won’t mind.” I opened the squeaky front door and leaned outside. Mrs. McCall looked up from her browning tulip bulbs and stared at me like she had no idea what I was referring to. That woman must be killer at the poker table. She stripped her dirty gloves off and threw them to the ground in a huff.
          The gnarled wooden fence separating our homes was the only thing keeping Mrs. McCall from wrapping her veiny hands around my neck.
“I wasn’t lookin’ at no boxers, Miss Lawrence. Just admirin’ the birds on such a lovely day,” she said, pushing her gray bangs back from her sweaty face. She smiled like she had a secret I didn’t know. If it was an hour later on a Wednesday and Delores had been over for tea and their weekly Wheel of Fortune date, they probably would have smirked at each other.
          Man, I had a bird she could admire. My feet stayed on the rusty steps of my trailer. The sun reflected off the metal and onto my face. I could feel my cheeks heating up. They probably looked like I’d forgotten my sunscreen again.
“Alrighty then. Just makin’ sure you aren’t in need of any plaid boxers. I have a few pairs if you ever do,” I said. Her mouth formed a tight line and she turned away from me, going back to her own trailer and shutting the door too loud. She was probably going to call Delores and tell her about the deplorable twenty-five year old harlot next door.
          I blew my hair out of my face and turned around to go back inside when the bells at the office chimed the hour. They had been stuck on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer for at least nine months. The song didn’t even seem festive at Christmastime now. I hated that damn reindeer. I probably would’ve left him out of my reindeer games, too.
          A car pulled up next to my trailer, displacing the dust surrounding it and creating a cappuccino colored cloud. The window rolled down and I saw the silhouette of a woman through the dust. Her hair was tied up into a high ponytail but still managed to easily brush the tops of her shoulders. When the dust settled, she stuck her hand out the window to wave me over to her.
           “Coming to work today, Bea?” she asked as if I had a choice. The sunglasses she’d picked out today were bigger than her face and dwarfed her features. The lenses were still pretty light and I could see that she was still squinting through the sun. I didn’t know what the point of light colored sunglass lenses was, but I decided not to ask.
           “Yeah, just give me a sec, Carly,” I said. Carly said nothing and went back to fiddling with the radio’s volume. It produced a fuzzy Rolling Stones song. The dial on her radio had fallen off a few months ago and now it was stuck on some classic rock station.
          I turned around and went back inside to grab my uniform and nametag for work. My trailer was full of artwork, acrylic scenery spread to the well-rounded edges of cloth canvases. I was careless with my paintbrushes and left them strewn over my kitchen counter. A few of them had fallen into the sink full of used coffee cups and crumb-coated plates. I ran my fingers over the raised dollops of paint that made up an azalea bush before Carly honked her horn and I nearly flung it into the dirty sink. I put the canvas to the side and picked up my apron. The loose change inside the pockets clanked together, almost as annoying as the Christmas bells.
          The restaurant Carly and I worked at sat in the center of town. Grease dripped down the windows, the air smelled like Crisco, and I always left with clogged pores, but at least I made enough there to buy groceries.
          “How long is your shift today?” Carly asked as we walked in. I tied my apron around my waist and fished the few pens I had left out of the deep pockets. Regulars had already claimed their spots at the counter and taken up booths too big for just one person. The grill sizzled from behind the open window at the back of the restaurant. Charlie, the head cook, always got an early start.
           “Seven hours. Charlie better make me some cheese sticks halfway through or I may collapse,” I said, picking up a guest check book and shoving it into my apron. Sweat slid down my face and round the edges of my chin. I hated opening shifts.
          “That’s rough,” Carly said. She picked up a tray and began setting up a coffee platter for the old man sitting nearest the door. The last time Carly had forgotten to bring his coffee in a timely manner, he’d waved a $20 bill in her face, torn it up, and thrown it at her. She hadn’t forgotten his coffee since. The one time I’d waited on him, he’d said his eggs were undercooked and dumped them on the table in front of me. All in all, he was not a nice man.
         The door to the restaurant opened and I turned to greet whoever had just come in. The clock above the kitchen window said it was 9:07, which meant it was probably Mr. Thornbrugh. He lived in my RV park and came in everyday at the same time for an extra large bowl of grits, a glass of orange juice, and three burnt bacon strips.
        “Hey, Mr. Thornbrugh. We have your bacon cooking up right now, so you can take your normal booth and it’ll be out soon.”
         “I’m gonna need a menu today, Beatrice. My grandson just arrived in town and doesn’t know how good Charlie’s cooking is, so he needs to browse a bit,” Mr. Thornbrugh said. I turned to the door and saw the sixty-year old man looking at me, the crow’s feet by his eyes crinkling into a smile. Behind him stood a very bored looking twenty-something. His top lip twitched into a sneer when he looked back at the greasy windows. Even through his grimace he was an attractive dude.
          I handed Mr. Thornbrugh a menu and the two walked to his usual booth. His grandson wore a pair of tight fit khaki pants and a blue plaid button up with the sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the cuffs wrinkled and haphazard. He either didn’t care at all or was too cool to use an iron, I decided.
          After a few minutes, I approached their table.
“Have we decided on something, grandson?” I asked.
          Grandson looked up at me. His eyes were the color of the salt lamp my younger brother kept on his desk, a scary sort of glowing amber. I half expected him to turn into a werewolf and lunge at me.
“My name is Henry,” he said. His lips were a sickly mauve color and barely moved when he spoke. The skin flaked off of them like the layers of a buttermilk biscuit. Ever heard of Chapstick, Henry?
         “Well, Henry,” I said, clicking my pen. “Have we decided on something?”
           Henry looked at the menu, up to me, and back down to the menu again.
“I’ll just have a glass of orange juice. Everything looks too greasy,” he said finally. He slid the menu to the edge of the table and looked at me like he expected a response to his unwarranted comment.
       “OJ: hold the grease. Got it. Mr. Thornbrugh, your grits and bacon will be out in just a sec. Sound alright?” I asked, not bothering to write down Henry’s snooty juice order.
         Mr. Thornbrugh nodded and the bell by the kitchen rang. A soup bowl of steaming grits sat next to a plate of shriveled, black bacon at the window and I went to get them and two glasses of juice. I hated grits and never understood their appeal, but Mr. Thornbrugh practically lived off of them. He, from what I could see, had strong teeth, so there was no need to eat mush for every meal. Liking the flavor was beyond me; perhaps he was used to eating them now.
“Henry here is going into his last year of college, Beatrice,” Mr. Thornbrugh said. His breakfast was still steaming and the restaurant was practically empty, so a bit of conversation with the guy wouldn’t hurt much.
          “Oh, really? That’s exciting,” I said, turning around to grab a few napkins for their table.
“It’ll be his sixth year. He got in some trouble, so his mom sent him to live with Grandpa for the summer. We’ll all be happy to have him in the Corn Husk. Right, Beatrice?” Mr. Thornbrugh picked up a spoon and stirred his grits. They didn’t produce a smell at all.
          Henry finally looked up from his cloudy orange juice. “You live in that RV park?” he asked, almost like he was shocked.
          I nodded. “I live about nine trailers down from your grandpa in a Silver Bullet.”
          Mr. Thornbrugh had checked out of the conversation and checked into his breakfast, but Henry seemed to be interested in talking to me for the first time since they had arrived.
          “Aren’t you a little young to live in a trailer park?” he asked. One side of his mouth curved up, like he thought he was clever. What a prick.
          “I wasn’t aware there was an age limit, but thank you for letting me know there is one,” I said with my best waitress smile. The one thing I despised about waiting tables was that I always had to be friendly, or at least sound pleasant. That “customer is always right” bullshit really got on my nerves. One time, some fifty-year old woman came in and swore to me that, two months ago, we’d had biscuits and gravy on the menu. Her party of fifteen took up four tables and were buttoned up in starchy church clothes. The pearls around the woman’s neck looked fake, but I was sure she told everyone they were a family heirloom. She just seemed like that kind of person. I tried to explain that she must have our restaurant confused with another, but then she yelled so loud that Charlie made her a plate of biscuits and gravy just so she’d shut up. Then she’d turned to me and said, “I told you so. Your inability to remember things explains why you’re a waitress.”
          I went to print Mr. Thornbrugh and Henry’s check and gave them a few minutes to talk alone. Henry didn’t seem to be all that interested in what his grandfather had to say, but Mr. Thornbrugh had never really cared if people were interested in what he had to say. He still said it.
          “Beatrice,” he said, waving me over. His bowl was empty now.
          “Yes?” I asked, setting his meager check down and wiping my hands on my apron. If you were in the restaurant long enough, your hands became greasy without having to touch anything.
          “Are you working your usual shift today? Until around 4 o’clock?” he asked, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. A burnt bacon crumb had taken up home in his wiry mustache, but I waited to tell him until he was finished asking me his question.
          “Yes, sir. Off at four and back to the comfort of my trailer. Why do you ask? Also, you’ve got a bit of bacon just there.” I gestured to the right side of his mustache and he wiped it quickly, the crumb disappearing.
          Mr. Thornbrugh stood up and threw a crumpled $10 bill on the table to cover his tab. “Would you mind keeping Henry company? I have a few errands to run and he’d be bored out of his mind tagging along,” he said. He brushed his hands off on his greige suit pants, leaving behind a few discolored grease marks.
I did not want to keep Henry company. Henry looked like he did not want me to keep him company. He struck me as a spoiled kid who fucked around at college and ended up having to stay for more than his allotted time. While I knew there were degrees that required more than a traditional four years nowadays, Henry didn’t strike me as someone who would try for one of them. Some sort of low business degree was probably as challenging as he would go.
          I stood there in uncomfortable silence, trying to think of the best way to turn him down when Mr. Thornbrugh pulled a $100 bill from his wallet and said, “I’ll make it worth your while! Just a couple of hours, I promise.”
          Refuse $100? Moi? Absolutely not. Math had never been my forté, but I knew that at fifteen cents a pop, $100 could buy me quite a few packets of chicken ramen noodles and maybe even a pint of Great Value chocolate ice cream.
          “Yeah, sure. I’ll be there at four,” I said, taking the bill from his hand and putting it in my apron. They left and the jingle bells attached to the handle clinked together. I don’t know why annoying, out of tune bells seemed to immediately precede or follow shitty moments in my life, but it was beginning to strike me as some sort of eerie premonition.
          Or maybe this town was obsessed with semi-broken bells. Though that seemed a bit more likely, I still enjoyed the idea that revolved around me better.
***
          The stupid fucking bells were going off in the RV park when I got home even though it was past 4 o’clock. I dropped my stuff off at my trailer before going over to Mr. Thornbrugh’s like I’d promised.
          Henry and Mr. Thornbrugh were sitting on his makeshift detached porch, legs crossed in the same way. Mr. Thornbrugh had the nicest detached porch in the entire RV park. It was stained a dark, black cherry brown and polished to perfection; he had spent so much time making it. Fluffy rose bushes surrounded the three tiny stairs leading to the main deck. Mr. Thornbrugh prided himself on the beautiful roses he grew every year and pruned them himself. I often found one stuck through my door handle every Sunday morning in spring.
           “Right on time!” Mr. Thornbrugh stood up from his blue and white striped lawn chair and grabbed the keys sitting on the small plexiglass table next to Henry. “I’ll be back in a while. Have fun, you two,” he said, hustling down his porch steps and down the dust road to the Husk’s communal parking lot.
          I sat in the flimsy chair he’d left behind. Henry was quiet and had covered his eyes with a pair of sunglasses I probably couldn’t even afford with the $100 tip I’d gotten from his grandfather. The bells were beginning to fade. I pulled out my cracked phone to check the time: 4:23. Thirty-seven minutes until the next round of hell was supposed to begin.
         “So do you all think it’s Christmastime right now or something? Why do those bells keep singing about that fucking reindeer?” Henry asked. His attempt at having a conversation, I suppose.
        I picked at my fingernails, specks of glitter punctuating the worn threads of my jeans.
         “I have no idea why they play that song. They used to play different stuff. It was still annoying, but at least it didn’t make me homicidal,” I said.
        That got a stifled chuckle out of Mr. College Boy.
“I’ve been here for a day and I’ve already had a dream about shooting Santa Claus out of the sky this December,” he said.
        “At least you only have to be here for the summer,” I said. This conversation was so uncomfortable it was going to give me a rash if it went on too much longer. When did Mr. Thornbrugh say he would be back? How long was “a while” when you were in your sixties? The air between us went still and even the birds seemed to stop chirping. The clouds looked heavy and sad, like it was going to rain later. The air always felt heavier—palpable, almost—when it was going to rain.
          We sat in silence for a while until Henry looked over at me and said, “So why aren’t you in school or something? If you’d get a degree or something, you probably wouldn’t have to work at that shitty diner.”
          Ah, here we go: the whole, “why don’t you just get a better job” argument. My parents had eventually given up calling and telling me what a mistake I’d made by choosing not to go to college. Even art school would have been better than nothing, they always said.
          “Just not my thing, I guess.”
          “Is it anyone’s thing?” Henry asked.
           I looked over at him.
          “Well, it seems to be yours considering you’re going into your sixth year,” I said.
          “That’s not really fair of you to say. At least I tried,” he said.
           This guy was not going to give up, was he?
           “Doesn’t seem like you’re trying too hard,” I said. I heard Henry’s breathing begin to pick up and become ragged, like he was going to lose his temper soon. “What’s your major anyway?”
           Henry mumbled something and I leaned in a little closer.
           “What was that? Do you mumble like that when your professors ask you questions, too? That may be why you’re going into your sixth year, bud,” I said.
           “Business. I’m a business major,” Henry said.
           “I knew it. That’s typically about a four-year degree plan, yeah?” I asked.
           Henry’s face soured and he shifted in his chair. He uncrossed his legs and re-crossed them in the opposite way. His shoe was halfway off his foot, hanging on his toes like an unanchored rock climber.
         “Typically,” he said, grinding his teeth.
           I loved being able to mess with someone under the age of fifty-five. “So that’s not going too well, then?” I asked.
         “Jesus, fuck off already. Not everyone finishes in four years. Most people don’t, actually. At least I attempted to go at all. That’s more than you can say, trailer trash,” he said.
          Oh.
          Oh, he did not just call me “trailer trash.”
           I tried to keep a level head but I was on my feet before I even realized what was happening.
          “I don’t need lip from a spoiled business major who will probably live with his parents until he’s in his thirties drinking lukewarm Code Red Mountain Dew while he screams at thirteen year olds on Xbox Live,” I said. I wished I could’ve said that sitting down in my seat like a calm, rational adult, but all rationality went out the window when someone called me trailer trash. I stomped down the porch steps and headed back toward my trailer, the sun starting to settle behind the dark clouds.
          “You’re not supposed to leave me here alone. My grandfather paid you to stay with me,” Henry said. He stood up out of his chair and finally took his sunglasses off. He clipped them at the neck of his shirt like an elderly man who had yet to upgrade to one of those silly eyewear retainers.
           “You’re twenty-two years old. I think you can manage,” I said, not stopping my angry walk to look back at him. The bells began to ring again, three minutes early.
***
            The clouds had opened up around 10:30 that night and hadn’t stopped for the past hour and a half. I rolled the blinds up in my bedroom and watched the raindrops race each other to the bottom of the foggy windowpane. My clunky laptop was set on the pullout bedside table droning How I Met Your Mother reruns from Netflix. The wifi slowed to a crawl every few moments and the show kept buffering, cutting jokes in half and making them significantly less funny. I appreciated the noise all the same.
            Flashing green numbers on the clock by my bed told me it was 11:57PM, but the Christmas bells disagreed. They began to cut through the thunderstorm outside like a freshly sharpened kitchen knife, out of tune and out of season. I put my pillow over my head in an attempt to muffle the song but it still managed to permeate the synthetic feathers.
            Then, I heard a rapid pounding at my door. Normally I’d chalk any weird banging up to a hailstorm, but this was concentrated at the door and it was hard to miss hail when you lived in a giant metal tube. I dragged myself out of bed and, fuzzy blanket wrapped around my shoulders, went to answer whoever was knocking at my door in the middle of a storm.
             Standing on the tiny top step of my trailer was a drenched version of Henry, shivering and holding onto a hammer so tight that his knuckles turned white. His curly brown hair lay in soppy tentacles on his forehead and little water droplets clung to his eyelashes like spiders. I was still furious with him but he looked like a little wet dog and it was almost adorable.  
             “Want to come break the bells with me?”
              Without missing a beat, I said, “Yes, definitely yes.”
         After getting my raincoat and finding a pair of water resistant shoes, I followed Henry out into the downpour and over toward the dimly lit office. They claimed to be open twenty-four hours a day, but that was a complete lie that they put on the website to make the park seem friendlier.
Next to the office was a small, one story chapel with a bell tower. It was old and the white paint was chipping off the cheap wood. The office built it in a matter of weeks so that people who couldn’t get out of the park to attend church could still go to a service. That worked for a while, but now it was mainly used for hide and seek purposes and the occasional shotgun wedding. The roof was leaking and puddles soaked into the already warped wooden floors. They felt bulbous under my boots.
          “So how are we doing this?” I asked. “I can’t help but notice all you have is a hammer and I don’t know if they teach you this in college, but if you hit them, they ring. That’s all that happens.”
          Henry found the door at the back of the chapel that led to the small staircase that would take us to the bell tower. I followed as he ascended the stairs.
          “Well, they’re probably anchored to some sort of wooden beam. Judging by the floors in this place, we may be able to bring the beam down with a few good swings. The wood is probably rotten,” he said. That seemed reasonable, so I kept climbing the stairs after him to follow out his plan.
          There were three bells in total. They were arranged in a grapelike cluster and looked a lot older than they were, probably in part to wear and tear. Maybe they were also tired of playing the same song over and over again.
           “They don’t even look metal,” I said, watching as Henry approached with hammer in hand. The poorly carved arches in the walls allowed rain to blow in and continuously pelt me like BB gun pellets.
          Henry ran his fingers over the bells. “That’s because they aren’t. They’re porcelain. That makes smashing them a lot easier,” he said, raising his hammer and swinging at a bell with all the grace of a little league player at his first practice.
The porcelain cried out as the first bell was hit, pieces of it falling to the worn floor like glass teardrops. The entire bell didn’t break—that was some strong porcelain—but Henry did enough damage with one swing to ensure that bell would never sing again.
          He hit it a few more times, perfectly timing each to a loud thunderclap outside. I ruined the next bell and we took turns with the third. When we were finished, all that remained were the fractured skulls of the bells, hanging onto their support beam with all the strength they had left. The clappers on each hung sadly, their porcelain shelters destroyed.
       We stood as intruders in the former home of the bells, the carnage of their broken bodies surrounding us on the gnarled wooden floors. Some smaller shards had found their way in between the cracks of the planks, taking up permanent residence so nobody would ever forget the murderous act we’d committed that night. Nobody swept up here. I wouldn’t be surprised if nobody had come up here in years. It’s probably why the bells were so broken.
“Is that it? No more Rudolph?” Henry asked, holding the hammer with both of his hands. His handsome face was contorted in a strange expression, almost as if he felt guilty about what we’d done.
       I didn’t know how to answer. Obviously this was it. Unless the Corn Husk decided to invest in a giant pair of speakers and bell only instrumentals of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we were free from the song that had haunted us for so long. I felt conflicted. I had waited so long for that stupid song to stop playing but the Husk felt different without it, almost like I’d taken a plane to some distant place where music wasn’t allowed. I think the trees outside were singing it. I could still hear it in the back of my head.
      “No more Rudolph,” I said. The wind howled outside like a wolf without its pack and it made my heart heavy. Henry held the hammer close to him like an old teddy bear and we stood in silence for a moment before finally leaving the skeletal chapel.  
       “So, what do you do anyway? Other than work at that diner,” Henry asked when we were walking back to his grandfather’s. The ground was soggy but the rain was beginning to let up.
        “Oh, now you want to talk to the trailer trash politely?” I asked.
        “Look, I’m sorry about calling you trailer trash, okay? Now what do you do around here?” he asked, agitation edging into his voice.
        That sounded like a fake apology, but I decided to humor him.
“I paint a lot,” I said, sticking my hands in the pockets of my raincoat. My fingers brushed wrappers and old receipts and I made a mental note to throw them away later. I’d probably forget.
        “Paint? Why didn’t you go to art school, then?” he asked, stopping in front of Mr. Thornbrugh’s trailer and sitting down on the deck. I almost warned him that it would be wet but kept my mouth shut. He knew it’d be wet. He was already soaked through from walking around in a thunderstorm anyway.
       “Just didn’t feel right. I like the way I paint and I don’t want to be graded on it. Art’s not really something you can be graded on, I don’t think. Everyone is different, so who’s some stuffy old lady to tell me that I drew something wrong?” I said, looking back to the bell tower. The clouds loomed over it, like they were having a funeral. They sent their sympathies in bright flashes of lightning.
         Henry sat still for a minute before getting up and turning to go inside.
“I guess that makes sense. You should at least try to sell it or something. That diner fucking sucks,” he said, reaching for the handle.
         I laughed. He was right; that diner did fucking suck.
        “Hey, you want to do me a favor?” I asked, shifting my feet a bit so I didn’t sink too far into the wet sod.
         Henry turned around, a blank look on his face. Had he looked any other way since I’d met him? “Depends on the favor,” he said.
         “You wanna give me a pair of your underwear to hang on my clothesline? I like messing with my neighbor. She thinks I’m some sort of prostitute stripper and I have yet to confirm or deny that,” I said.
         He studied my face in the dark, really scrutinizing my features. His glowing eyes squinted at me and his tongue flicked out over his lips, reptilian like. He had his brief moments of attractiveness, but this was not one of them.
        “That’s fuckin’ weird,” he said.
          I nodded. “Yeah, well, I’m a little fuckin’ weird. I live in an RV Park called the Corn Husk for God’s sake.”
          Feeling like I was under a microscope as Henry continued to stare at me, I stayed planted in my spot until he opened his dry lips and said, “No, I don’t think we’ve reached that point in our relationship yet.”
          That was not the response I expected, but I accepted it nonetheless. What was I supposed to do? Dart past him and steal a pair myself? That would mean risking accidentally picking up a pair of Mr. Thornbrugh’s underwear and that was not a risk I was willing to take.
         “Alright. Well, let me know if you ever change your mind about that. I promise she’s really fun to mess with,” I said, turning to leave the soaked college boy on the handcrafted porch.
        “Probably won’t change my mind on that, but you’ll be the first one I tell if I decide to give any underwear away,” he said.
         As I turned my back to him, I half expected Henry to try to give me some after school special lecture about how I needed to sell my artwork and get out of Independence, but all I heard was the click of Mr. Thornbrugh’s pressurized trailer door and the squelch of my boots in the mud.
          I pulled my phone out of my pocket and looked at the time: 2:59AM. I watched as the numbers rolled over to a round 3:00AM and waited. I could imagine the bells sitting up in their tower, their strangled gasps of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer going unheard as their clappers swung back and forth, hitting only the heavy air around them. I took in every sound around me: the wind in the poorly maintained trees, the muffled sounds of TVs through thin trailer walls, and the pattering of raindrops on my shiny tin roof.
          None of the noises around me were being overshadowed by poorly timed Christmas music tonight. I watched the boxers on my laundry line as the wind caught them. If I’d had any rhythm at all, I would’ve joined them.

          I refuse to delete the pictures of my ex-boyfriend I’ve got saved on my phone. I saved every picture I took of Daniel: some with him smiling, some with him frowning, some with him making that stupid, pseudo-artistic pout he thinks makes him look like a model. It doesn’t matter. He’s gorgeous in every one. Looks exactly like a trust-fund bitch--because he is one--but still gorgeous. Solid ten, trust me. I don’t even usually go for other guys, but still. The crazy ones are always hot. Usually I only look at pictures of him when I’m alone in my room.
          I broke up with Daniel six months ago and now I live with my only friend Karl, in this little shit-box apartment down by the strip where all the bars are. All I do is stay in my room on weekends and write code. Lately in Malbolge, because I can.
          I squint at my screen. Even with the brightness at minimum, it’s still the brightest thing in my room.
          The fucking pictures. There’s so many of them. Pictures he took himself, which always just remind me of when he’d go out of his way to find a good light source, even when doing so defied convenience or even logic. Pictures with his hair freshly dyed, the same sadboy problem-child purple he always colored it. Pictures with his dark brown roots showing, which he constantly said he hated, even though you’d have to be an idiot to think his hair was naturally bright purple. Pictures of him laughing. Pictures of him naked. You name it.
          My favorite ones are of him sleeping. He knew I took them, it wasn’t weird or anything. I’m not a photographer, but sometimes I’d wake up first and see him drooling on my pillow, his hair frizzy and sticking up everywhere because of all the stuff he puts in it, and I’d just have to grab my phone off the nightstand and take a picture. He always looked so undignified, which was very unlike him, which was why I cared. Sometimes I stop coding altogether if I remember them. There’s a whole folder on my phone, even. Twenty-two pictures, which I think is a good number.
          But I should delete them. I know. Every time I open my phone, it’s icicle-through-my-heart depressing. Freezing fucking cold. One minute I’m minding my own business, the next I’m looking at some picture of him in front of the Ferris wheel at Coney Island, or reading The Prince in his bedroom, or smoking a bowl at Risa’s place. Before I know it, I’ve scrolled through all the pictures and I arrive at the most depressing one of all: our first date. He insisted I take it, grabbed my phone out of my hand and smushed his face against mine before pressing the button to take the picture. You can see it too, if you look at the picture. He’s got this big sharky smile with all his teeth showing, and I’m next to him grimacing. I hate that picture the most, probably because after that there’s nothing else, I have to move on to whatever I was trying to do before.
          Trying to move on—man, that’s what gets me.
  
           I think Karl knows I’ve kept pictures. I have no clue how. It’s anyone’s guess. He keeps asking me if I’m “OK”, even though it’s been months and he should know better. That’s always the word he uses, too: “OK”. As if feeling “OK” is any big accomplishment. Talk about a participation ribbon. Congratulations. I am OK. That’s what I’d say if I were.
          The thing about Karl is that he’s a hypocrite. He’s the kind of guy who always talks about how he wants to fight. I’m gonna fuck you up, he always says, in this real serious tone of voice. Listen, Karl, you’re like five feet tall; what are you going to do, run and get a stepladder? Please. He means well, I guess. He wants to help people. Not his fault that every time he tries, he eats shit. It’s the same with relationships: he talks this big game about the importance of being emotionally intelligent. Communication is key, he says. Yeah, right. Like I’m gonna take advice on communication from a man who has to ask through sticky note if I plan to do the dishes. Pass.
          We went to high school together. That’s where I met Karl. God, I hated high school. Anyone smart does. As far as society is concerned, you can stew in your own misery for as long as you want, but the second you try to hang yourself? It’s a big damn deal. I think it came from back in medieval times, where if you tried to kill yourself the town would be missing its baker or blacksmith or whatever. Plus your body would just lie in the sun and stink. Anyway, killing yourself is bad and you should never do it, unless your life is an endless treadmill of apathetic schoolteachers and disgusting classmates, in which case you get a pass from me because I tried to do the same thing. Except if you do want to kill yourself, don’t make a show of telling your best friend Karl goodbye in fourth period, because he will freak out and follow you home from school and find you trying to hang yourself in your closet, because you are a sentimental idiot who should have just kept his mouth shut.
          Karl does care about things. You have to give him that. Just recently he knocked on my door three times, knock knock knock, which fucking annoyed me but I told him to come in anyway. He leaned against my doorframe, wearing a too-small hoodie and smelling like outside. He always smells like outside, he’s always doing things. I probably smell like the canned air you use to clean keyboards. Or energy drink spit. Or something. I don’t know.
          “Hey, Saul,” he asked. “You’re not doing anything, are you?” I put my phone down in an instant. I’d been looking at Daniel pictures, of course. Karl looked at my phone as I set it down, but it’s not like he could do anything about it.
          “I’m doing homework,” I said. I wasn’t, but I thought he wouldn’t argue. Instead, he invited himself into my room and looked over my shoulder at my laptop screen.
          “Saul, don’t insult me,” Karl said. “It looks like you took out your dick and rubbed it on your keyboard.”
          I grinned at him, just for a second. I know why he got confused. Malebolge is a programming language intentionally made to be obfuscating. You think Java’s bad? Java is nothing. Malebolge is pure, liquid shit. It looks like shit: it’s barely a language, just brackets and at-signs and colons. “Hello, world!” looks like your computer had a stroke. Oh, and it runs like shit, too: it runs on trinary and doesn’t self-regulate. And it fucking skips newlines. But here’s the thing: I love it. Sure, coding with it gives me a migraine and almost any other language is more efficient. But it’s also a challenge, a real test of my skill. Maybe I’m a masochist, but I can deal with that.
          “That’s just the language,” I told him. “Look it up sometime. It’s esoteric. It’s meant to suck shit.” I’d hoped this would be enough to convince him to leave, but no, of course not.
          “Risa and I are going to the movies,” he said. “You should come, too.” Risa is this blonde, smart little hipster fuck Karl can’t keep his hands off of lately. Every sentence out of her mouth is calculated to sound intelligent and artsy. She’s kind of like Daniel in that way. In fact, I originally met Risa through one of Karl’s disastrous attempts to get me back in the dating scene. He tried to set us up, until he decided he wanted Risa to himself. Every so often I can hear them screwing a few rooms over. It makes me gag on my Red Bull.
          “Dude, I’m not third-wheeling on your date night. Go have fun. Don’t worry about me.” Some people don’t mean that when they say it—sure, they say not to worry, but what they really want is a big blown out scene where you trip over yourself trying to show how much you care. Daniel did that. When he started moping you could ask him twenty times what was wrong and he’d insist he was fine—then next thing you know, he’s cutting himself with a BIC razor in the fucking bathroom. But when I say it, I really mean it, especially with Karl. I never want Karl to worry about me. Mostly because it means he won’t leave me the fuck alone.
          “Fine,” Karl said. “You just have to promise me one thing.” He gave me this big, earnest look. I hate that look. It makes me feel like I’ve been neutered. At any moment Karl looks like he’ll tear up if you forsake him, and he’ll do it, too. He looked from me to my phone and back at me again.
          “Don’t call Daniel.” I was genuinely surprised; since when do I call people? But I could tell from the look on his face that he thought I was really at-risk of diving back into sticking my dick in crazy, so I made eye contact and nodded.
          “You got it. No calling Danny.” That was back when I still used the nickname. I’ve been weaning myself off it. No big loss. He hated it anyway.
          “I mean it, Saul. He’s got enough problems. More than you want to know about. So help me God if you call him.” Something about Karl: he is earnest about everything. I swear I could hear him capitalize the “G” in “God” when he spoke. Like I said, he cares a hell of a lot.
          “I’m trying to program a version of Malebolge that works in binary. I don’t have room in my schedule for Danny. Besides, I’m over him.” I wasn’t, but I thought Karl would want to hear me say I was. Besides, how many problems could Daniel have? Young, hot, and vibrant. That’s all he ever was.
          “Alright. Since you’re sure, I’m going to head out.” In that moment, he paused, and I wondered if I was going to escape his verbal, maternal embrace.
          “Will you be OK?” Damn it.
          I didn’t answer, though. You stop seeing the point after a while.
  
           So, I’m totally going to call him. It’s not like it’ll hurt anything. I just want to know how he’s doing.
          Actually, I’ve given it a lot of thought—which is ironic, since I never would have dreamed of trying to reach him if it hadn’t been for Karl trying to de-program me. Sometimes if I’m feeling cynical I think he intervenes because he’s tired of me. God knows I would be.
          I’ve reached a point where I’m starting to wonder if the bipolar diagnosis is bunk, that’s how long I’ve been depressed. I know that sort of thing is normal after you end a relationship, but still. All I do is eat, sleep, shit, and program. The daily grind. There’s Sims out there with more point to their lives than me. Actually, fuck it, I wish I were a Sim. At least then someone could build a little gray box around me and set me on fire. I’d run around and piss myself for a while, but if you want to know the truth, that’s not a hell of a lot worse than what I’ve got going on right now.
          Daniel is probably the only person who really “got” my depression. I think he’s always been depressed—even when he’d smile, something about him still seemed dead. Our first date was like that. We went to the aquarium downtown. He was trying too hard to be cutesy, reading all the plaques out loud and naming the fish.
          “One of the manta ray’s natural predators is the whale shark,” Daniel finished. There were lots of manta rays in this tank. They didn't swim; they floated. Daniel seemed most interested in them, for some reason.
          I pointed to one manta ray that wasn't moving or anything--it just hid in this little cave thing. It would dart out every few minutes, and then dart back in. There was this big chunk missing from its side. Fucked up little fish.
          "Look at that one," I said. "It kinda looks scared.”
          For a while Daniel didn't say anything out loud. He just kept nodding. I wondered if he didn't know what to say, if he was just nervous or something. Finally, he spoke.
          “That’s me,” he said, pressing his finger to the glass like you’re not supposed to. “What?” I said, not sure I heard him right. “What do you mean, it’s you?” He looked irritated for a second. Mostly perturbed.
           “Nothing,” he said. “I just said, it’s...Mimi. That’s its name. Like the chick from Rent.” I definitely didn’t believe him, but it was a first date and I wanted to impress him. I still never forgot, though. How wide his eyes seemed, when he looked between the fish and me. We kept walking after that, though I couldn’t help noticing that he seemed a little more withdrawn. And that’s how it would be for the rest of our relationship. Withdrawn.
          Now I feel that more than ever. Not that I think it’s a good idea to call your ex because you’re feeling shitty. That’s not what I think. What I think is that I’m curious to know if he’s feeling worse. Even though statistically speaking, he probably is…I have to know.
          I look at my phone. My background, thank you very much, is not a picture of him. It’s the Apple default. I type in my password— 01100001 01110011 01110011. Binary passwords are usually fairly secure, despite not including letters. Having the spaces helps. People don’t guess spaces. Most people can’t read binary either, but even the ones who can don’t usually guess it for passwords.
          When I broke up with Danny—Daniel, I mean—Karl made me delete his cell phone number in front of him. I have no idea why he thought a computer programmer wouldn’t be able to memorize a ten-digit string. Anyone’s guess.
          I type in his number.
          He picks up on the second ring, which is unusually charitable of him. He used to keep me waiting until the very last ring when he was pissed off at me. I guess it’s a good sign—that he’s not pissed off, I mean. Either that, or I’ve fallen completely off his radar.
          “Hello?” I ask. For about thirty seconds I just hear rustling, and I wonder if he just sat on his phone or something. I’m about to hang up when I hear a voice.
          “Saul?” The voice is incredulous. The voice is indignant. The voice is actually a little hushed, which makes me wonder where the hell he is. But by god. The voice is Daniel’s. Of course it is. Not that I really expected anyone else to pick up. But still. It’s weird hearing him talk. All this time I’d been acting like he died.
          “Uh.” I’m not great with words. “I have to admit, I didn’t expect you to pick up.”
           “It’s almost ten o’clock,” he says. “What the hell do you want?” He sounds defensive and I realize he probably thinks I’m trying to booty call him.
          “Not sex,” I say. Fuck.
          “Thanks for clarifying,” he says. “Seriously, what the hell do you want?” I can hear him rolling his eyes over the phone. This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. Maybe this is why Karl didn’t want me to call. He knew I’d be about as eloquent as a clown passed out in a pool of its own vomit. I kind of want to die. On the plus side, I might get around to deleting those pictures.
          “Actually, I wanted to know if you’d be down for dinner. As friends,” I add quickly. I am embarrassing myself. I want to clip through the floor like a bad glitch.
          “Really?” He sounds surprised, not angry, which is a plus. “That’s. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I can do dinner. I think so.”
          I’m about to lose my fucking mind here. My ex, who I’m not over, is actually agreeing to see me even after I put both feet and probably some ankle in my mouth.
          “Holy shit. Okay. Great. We can go to the Thai place downtown—wait, no, not there. Uh. I’ll text you the details,” I say. The Thai place had a roach outbreak. I am so unprepared for this.
          I hadn’t expected him to pick up the phone, let alone agree to meet me anywhere. I have to cross-reference all the restaurants in the city limits to see which one has the most stars/least recorded murders. I can actually feel my heart pounding, like a rusty car engine that hasn’t worked since the forties.
          “Definitely not downtown,” he says. “And actually, lunch’ll probably work better than dinner. But yeah, you can text me. Listen, I gotta go.” I hear more shuffling, and now that I think of it, his voice sounds kind of echo-y. I wonder if he’s in the process of sneaking out of someone’s bedroom, sitcom one night stand style. Probably not, although with Daniel anything’s possible. He gets incredibly desperate at times.
          “Fine, whatever,” I say. I’m way past caring—I wouldn’t care if he wanted to meet me at the Butthole Bistro. I hang up and spend a good two minutes silently celebrating what I consider to be a rare Saul Callister victory in a long, long line of Saul Callister losses. When Danny gets mad, he holds a fucking grudge—but he agreed anyway, which means he’s either being held hostage, or he still has a thing for me. Yesssss.
          As a reward, I treat myself to some nice, smooth Java.
  
           Danny still has a thing for me. There’s no way he doesn’t.
          The reason I know this is because he’s clingy as shit. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t think about that sooner. His whole life is lonely; his dad died when he was little, and his mom remarried some asshole when he was 16. No siblings, except his mom’s new husband did have a son a few years older. I learned even that the same way I learned everything about him: careful couching of my words. Because for all of Daniel’s dramatics, he never really cared to talk about anything from his past. He was moody like that.
          “My brother just called,” I said, even though he hadn’t. My brother doesn’t call anyone, although he does spend a lot of time making incoherent Facebook posts about wanting to rail his girlfriend. I made up the story anyway because I wanted an excuse to try and figure out what the hell Danny’s deal was. You start to wonder that kind of thing when you see your boyfriend ignore every call he gets from a certain area code.
          “Is that where you were?” Daniel asked. He was sitting on the couch, curled up in a blanket, watching the game show network. “Geez, that took forever. He must like to talk.”
          In actuality, I’d been amusing myself by trying to make an AI bot that would act kind of like a word filter, only instead of functioning in a Web browser, it would work on IM programs like Discord and Skype. Not that Danny needed to know I’d ditched him for programming work. Historically speaking, he’s never liked that.
          “Sorry, I just couldn’t get out of it.” No, I did not feel even a little bit bad. Instead, I sat down next to him and lifted part of the blanket onto my legs. “You know how it is with family.”
          “I guess,” he said. “I don’t know.” I gave him a Look and he kept talking. “I mean, my mom doesn’t use the phone ever, and I don’t have siblings to call. Besides a step-brother, which isn’t the same.”
          “I’d say that counts.” Danny overreacts to everything, and I didn’t want him to think I was implying his weird blended family didn’t count for anything. Instead he seemed annoyed I’d talked at all.
          “No, it doesn’t,” he said quickly. He sounded on the brink of “fuck you, now I’m pissed”, so I deflected
          “Gotcha,” I said. “It’s cool, you’re not close. I’ve been there.” I hate my brother sometimes too—I assumed it was something normal like that, you know? But Danny just laughed at me, this little barking noise. I remember it made me feel funny, though I couldn’t place why.
          “Oh, we’re close,” he said. He made that barking-laughter noise again and hugged his knees on the couch. “Couldn’t be closer.”
          Of course I could tell he was just being ironic, but what do you say to something like that? The answer is, you don’t say anything, you just turn on the television and watch Food Network until he falls asleep on your shoulder, and for once he finally looks calm.
 
           I decide on this tiny cafe that opened up a block from the apartment called Cherry Pie.
           It’s new, so who knows if it’s any good, but Danny is a primo-hipster and I figure he’ll appreciate the change in scenery. Not just the name here is “cherry”, I’m talking cherry everything; red walls, red counters, and the type of smooth, shiny vinyl you’d expect to see in a fake-fifties diner. It’s trying too hard. But so am I.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen him that I start looking at strangers wondering if they could be him. Redhead with the killer tits probably isn’t; Danny is feminine, but not that feminine. Scrawny emo kid who looks too young to be smoking cigs probably isn’t either. I wonder if I’ll even recognize him.
         But I do--somehow. Even though he looks more different than I could have imagined. He’s got more red flags than a matador, written all over his face (red eyes, gaunt cheeks), his body (hyperskinny, draped in uncharacteristic grey hoodie), even his hands (chewed, bloody nails). But the most appalling thing is his hair. Danny told me when we were dating that his hair was a lot of colors in high school, mostly unnaturals with stupid indie names. And I could have dealt with Icky Lizard green or Beached Beluga blue.
          But it’s brown--mousy brown, like the carpet in a GameStop. I can’t for a second believe that’s his natural hair color, except that it matches his eyebrows. And honestly? He looks like shit. He sits down across from me looking the way he did when we’d get in arguments: cold.
          “Uh,” I say, not because I’m nervous, but because I’m stunned. “Hi.”
           “Saul,” he says. He sounds polite, if slightly distant. “I didn’t think you’d call me.”
          “Neither did I,” I say. “Promised Karl I wouldn’t, but you know how he is.”
          “He’s a meddler,” Danny says. “He was always stickin’ his nose where it didn’t belong. You still live with him?” It’s probably the most interested in Karl he’s been in his whole life.
          “For now,” I say. “I mean, I’m looking at other places, but I probably won’t move out anytime soon. Even though he got a girlfriend, which is kind of ruining my life. Does that sound selfish?” I know it sounds selfish, but I want him to say so, like he would have before. Danny’s personal hobby used to be calling people on their shit. Now he just stares at me, his shoulders slumped.
          “Probably,” he says. “You mean Risa, right? We’ve met, you know.”
          “No, I didn’t,” I say. “I kind of thought when we broke up, you’d stop-”
           “Stop what? Talking to your friends?” Although there’s a little bit of color in his face, I somehow don’t feel better. I’m reminded of when we used to get in fights and he’d clear off the dresser so we could fuck on top of it. I always thought it turned him on a little, the yelling and drama of it all. He doesn’t look like that now, though. If I had to pick a word, I would pick “sullen”. He doesn’t look like he’s been having sex with anybody.
          “I mean, kind of,” I say. Since I’m the one who dumped him, I’m not sure if I have a right to feel that way. Still, the idea of him talking about me to Karl makes my head feel heavy and my heart jump in my chest.
           “Yeah, well, they’re my friends too,” he says. I realize that neither of us have ordered anything, so we probably look like ungrateful, non-coffee buying jerks. No one around seems to be listening, which means they probably are, since Daniel is being loud. I’m remembering why we fought so much. I’m thinking this was a bad idea.
          “I don’t want to do this,” I say, because I don’t. I should have known he’d act like this. At least I can finally get over him. I stand up, tuck my chair into the table. “You’re making a scene.”
           “Oh, that is too funny,” Daniel says. He puts his hands on the table like he’s going to stand up and leave too, but he doesn’t, he just keeps them planted there. “You know something, Saul? I thought you asked to see me because you really cared how I was doing after what happened. Now, maybe that was stupid of me, but--”
          “After what happened? After I dumped you? Because look, I had the right to end the relationship. You acted like a fucking bitch all the time. You started fights for no reason. Just like now.” I’m about to walk out when I hear him call my name. I turn around.
          “What?” I ask. I look at Daniel in the cafe shop chair and feel something tear inside. His eyes are rimmed red at the edges, and his hands shake on the table. I wonder if the break-up hurt him more than I realized. I mean, I was keeping pictures of him on my phone. What was he doing?
          “Karl didn’t tell you?” he asks. He looks relieved and depressed at the same time with this wry little smile on his face. It’s a familiar expression. One time we went to the drug store and he saw a bunch of those cheapo bathroom razors in a pack for six dollars. He looked at me and said, smiling slightly:
          “You can’t afford not to cut yourself!” he said, as if he were talking about a really great deal. Then he sighed like he was in love. “It’s meant to be.”
          “Karl hasn’t told me anything,” I say. “Except that you had a lot going on, or something. He told me not to call you, but I broke that rule. Sorry.”
          “No, I’m sorry,” Daniel says. “I thought he would. Thought for sure he would. I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
          God help me, I want to tell him he’s right. But I shouldn’t do that. I’ll sound like a smug asshole. Especially since I don’t know what apparently happened.
          “You’re right, you shouldn’t have,” I say. God damn it.
          I do sit back down, though. My stomach feels like it’s digesting itself as I realize I’m still oblivious to what’s going on. Did someone die? God, I hope no one died.
          “So what happened?” I ask. “Really. I do want to know.” Danny traces a spiral into the table with his finger.
          “I don’t know if you care, or if you’re just curious,” Danny says. “But I did kind of blow you off near the end of things. I should have told you what was going on.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a pack of cigarettes, but he doesn’t take any out of the carton. “First of all, Mom and Thaddeus are getting divorced.”
          “Oh, shit,” I say. I wait for him to elaborate because I know for a fact he hated his step-father. Hell, he probably celebrated when they finalized the divorce, as mean as that sounds.
          “They weren’t getting along anymore,” Daniel says, “although that’s not why they’re splitting. My step-brother got arrested,” he says. I don’t know anything about his step-brother except his name, so that’s what I say.
          “Mark?” I ask. Daniel takes a cigarette out of the pack and holds it in his hands. Doesn’t light it, just looks at it.
          “Yeah, Mark.” He laughs. “Did you know I was pretty old when we met? Him, too. I was fourteen, already in high school.”
          “I don’t know, I mean.” I don’t really want to contradict him, but fourteen is pretty young to me. I got my first laptop at fourteen, and probably my first zit or something. It’s not even old enough to drive, but I don’t say anything, I just let him talk.
          “Anyway, he got arrested. At first I thought, for shoplifting. ‘Cause he did that a lot.” Daniel’s family is rolling in cash, so the idea of poor little rich kid Mark stealing from corner stores makes me more than a little annoyed. I still don’t say so. Daniel looks faraway, almost dreamy, only the cigarette between his fingers grounding him. He lowers his voice.
          “But no. Not shoplifting.” He feels around his pockets like he’s looking for something--probably a lighter--but gives up. “Some fifteen year old. He said she looked older, but who knows.”
          “Wait, what? Fifteen? What the fuck?” My voice is lowered too. I feel like I’m going to go to jail just talking about this guy.
          “Yeah, it shook all of us up. Me most of all. I loved him, you know. Nobody thinks I mean it when I say that. But I do.” He lifts the cigarette to his lips but then, just as suddenly, puts it away completely. “God, I really do. I even miss him sometimes. Can you believe that? I don’t want to. I really don’t. But I do.”
          I hate myself for thinking this, but I wonder: what did Daniel mean when he said they were close? God, I don’t want to know. I hate to say this, but Karl was right. I really shouldn’t have called.
          “He’s a criminal,” I say. “Daniel. There’s a name for that, you know. It’s statutory rape.” I’m almost whispering at this point.
          “I know that,” Daniel hisses. “God, don’t you think I know that? I never said he was nice.
           I just wish none of it had happened, that’s all. Does that make me bad? Tell me I’m not a bad person. Please,” he says, and his eyes are wet, “tell me I’m not a bad person.”
          I stand up again.
          “I’m sorry,” I say. That’s all I can manage. I walk away with him still repeating that, still begging me to confirm whether or not he’s a victim.
          Once I get to my Camry, I open my phone and look at the album one last time. Danny’s beautiful face smiles back at me, promising we can be a normal couple, promising we’ll be together forever. Fucked up little fish, I think. Just like at the aquarium. I understand him better now, although I wish I didn’t. Like Danny, I wish none of it had happened.
          I press delete. Just like that.