I don’t know you anymore, and I will never know your last name. I don’t know where you are, you don’t work at Paint It! anymore. So I am going to write this, and print it out a few times. Maybe staple some together and put them on park benches and under windshield wipers so at least other people can know how you factored into my life. They will read it, but it’s not for them. You won’t read it, but it’s for you.
       Sometimes that summer when you and I knew one another, I sat in my room for hours and refused to think. Sometimes I felt pathetic sadness incapacitate me. Once it was triggered by an offer on a Popsicle box that said you could get a “free mp3 download” if you went online and entered a code. This offer was presented in a neon green starburst. Another time was when my mom got my brother Angry Birds pencil toppers for his birthday and he screamed. Screaming happened every time my brother experienced a gift-giving holiday.
       “I don’t like Angry Birds!” was what he yelled this time.
       “I thought everyone liked Angry Birds,” said my mom.
       “It’s only for iPhones. I might play it if you gave me an iPhone.” My mom tried to hide her sadness and frustration. The rubber pencil toppers are in the one drawer in my kitchen that nobody opens. I might throw them away sometime.
       I’d like to think you’d understand if I ever told you these kinds of things.
 
Mitsuko had been my best friend since 9th grade. You might have seen her paint mugs with me at Paint It! a few times. She wore cat eye makeup and bought the shortest tank tops with the thinnest fabric she could find. She was intensely jealous of her twin Haruko and her boyfriend Mikey, since the two were super in love. Haruko was the one who looked like Mitsuko but wore more neon rave gear. Mikey was the tall one with a flowing head of red hair and a lot of moles. The two were always graphically making out in public. Once he shot an off-duty police officer with a BB gun in a park, then sped off on a bicycle. Whether the bike was stolen or not, the details are lost to time. He got convicted of a felony and spent a few months in juvie where phone calls were $15 a minute. Haruko spent the money and waited patiently, then reunited with Mikey despite the restraining order that the mom filed. Now he’s somehow on this reality show about people in 12-step programs. I watched it once. They bleep out half the things anyone says while royalty free g-funk backing tracks play in the background.
       Mitsuko, Haruko, and Mikey always came out of a store carrying something they had stolen. Mitsuko would fish out a candy bar from her pocket as we walked down Cross Avenue, nibbling the chocolate inside. I tried to let it go. I even tried to support them to cool down my built-in hatred of shoplifting. I would say “It’s a dog eat dog world” or some other halfhearted cliché.
       Fun fact: I am one of the only people in the world who can tell Mitsuko and Haruko apart. They’re fraternal twins, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the rest of the world.
 
I was working at Pier 1 Imports around that time, often mopping the floor after closing. Mitsuko never visited me there, despite my reminders. One song that played on the system had a bumpin’ swing beat and the synths sounded purple. It stopped in the middle so I could take a deep breath and hear nothing but the wet mop dragging across the floor.
       Googling the lyrics and Shazam proved useless in finding this song. Theory: it was made by a guy who wanted to get his song out in the world and he knew someone who worked for Pier 1. And that’s the only place it was ever played.
       “A part of me I never knew/until the day that I met you.”
       Sue me. Someone sue me so I can find out what song that is.
       Deborah, another sales associate, said that I couldn’t put my own CDs into the Pier 1 sound system. She had tried one morning before opening with a Linda Ronstadt. Didn’t play. One quarter when a new Pier 1 CD arrived, she tried to put last quarter’s disc in her car player. It didn’t work. Pier 1 Imports has its own exclusive CD-stereo family, just like North Korea has its own internet.
       “Pier 1!” you said when I told you I worked there. “My mom always used to take me there. They had these beautiful handmade wooden toys.” You loved toys. You said all your old photography projects featured toys. And that sometimes you sold the toys for money, biking to weird places in San Diego with a garbage bag full of dinosaur action figures.
       The person who brought me to Paint It! in the first place was someone named Julian. I prayed you wouldn’t remember him.
       You told me you were 29, and only getting older.
 
Haruko’s favorite place to shoplift was the H&M jewelry section. The easiest place to steal from, she said, was Abercrombie and Fitch. She could run out of the store and the buzzer would sound, but the dance music would be so loud that the buzzer couldn’t drown it. I imagined a book called “A Smart Girl’s Guide to Shoplifting,” designed with all the pink-bordered fervor of an American Girl book. It would ride on the simple excuse that “this economy doesn’t always let you get what you want these days. Take the frugal route! You go gal!” I figured it could be sold in Urban Outfitters.
 
I had it bad for someone named Kourosh ever since my senior year of high school. He never talked but always hung around my group in ROP Animation, saying something wildly funny in his monotone every 30-70 minutes. I became a little fascinated when I found his Tumblr dedicated to stupid bumper stickers. I grabbed his iPod once and he had bands I had never heard of that he said were a genre of music called “C86.”
       I forget what ROP stands for.
       For about six months, the only things I consistently looked forward to were sleeping and seeing Kourosh every day. I went to two weddings in other states, and I yelled his name off several different balconies. A few days after graduating, I was in the shower when I realized I could just message him on Facebook and try to be friends. There was nothing stopping me. NOTHING. So I messaged him and he was receptive. So we typed long messages for a year and never hung out. We were those kinds of friends. After Julian and I broke up, I asked him to hang out for real since I was in a post-breakup life change phase. I took photos of him because that’s the ultimate social lubricant. And when I sent them his way, the colorful shots where he laid on a bed of pine needles with a red zip-up jacket, he thanked me. He loved them and he thanked me warmly. And he asked me to spend time with him.
       So I was working the typical social air hockey game: I asked him. Then he asked me. Then I was planning to ask him again. And then he surprised me, threw off my whole course of action. He wanted to kick it, and with Mitsuko too. (He knew Mitsuko not because of me, but because Mikey had sold cocaine to him. You know, the usual.)
       Maybe the three of us could be special friends, I thought. Maybe this was “the good summer.”
       We went to Mira Mesa because they wanted to loiter. Mira Mesa is this inland neighborhood where San Diego stops pretending to be California Dreamin’. We hung out at this big shopping center with everything you could ever want and the mountains. Barnes and Noble, IMAX, Petco, Target. A place where you could hide in the big safe wonders of commercialism.
       We ate at Panda Express. Or was it Pick Up Stix? Both are amazing. Salty, gooey orange chicken and noodles. That word still makes me fall over. Noodles. Ditto with “orange sauce.” Then we traversed the oceanic parking lot to Barnes and Noble, the most comforting place I can think of. I know everyone likes tiny “charming” used bookstores, but there’s nothing like a two story Barnes and Noble, escalators and all.
       Mitsuko: The Nook is just everywhere here.
       Me: They NEED you to have a Nook.
       Mitsuko: What if a robot arm like, secretly snuck a Nook into your shopping pile before you were about to check out?
       Me: Shopping carts would have a secret Nook hidden in them that would release itself into the pile once other books were put on top of it.
       Mitsuko: But how good is that, really? Look, we don’t even have any carts. We’ll never get Nooks now.
       Me: Yeah, how are we supposed to have Nooks? This is something the marketing team needs to consider.
       Kourosh: That guy from the cardboard cutout would probably “approach” you in the bathroom.
       Me: Then you’d say no. You’d go out to your car and fumble for your keys and you couldn’t find them.
       Kourosh: The guy would pop up from behind the other side of your car dangling your keys. He would be like, “Looking for these?”
       We stood in my bathroom and poured vodka into empty plastic water bottles. It was my first real drink and I sucked it straight to impress them. They were impressed. We went in my living room and put on Kiki’s Delivery Service which was just a prop so we could drink more. We all huddled together on my couch in front of the big plasma TV and in our three-way body tangle, Kourosh’s head found his way to mine and his lips sought mine. I pushed him off, whispering we could kiss when we were alone. But I felt as if I were in an ethereal heaven. It was finally happening. I wasn’t thinking about the future in that moment. There was no future. Just a dream where I would feel the love of Kourosh, it would fulfill me in every corner of my being, and then I would die.
       Mitsuko disappeared down the hall to the bathroom, Kourosh finally pounced on me in the dark and we kissed, his mouth tasted like vodka. We heard her coming back, Kourosh and I peeled ourselves apart, and we all watched Kiki as if nothing had happened. My dream was coming true, I could deal with pretending everything was normal for a little bit. I went upstairs to get my laptop so we could all look at /r/cringepics (I don’t read that anymore, I promise). I came down to find his mouth on hers. Plain as day, like a big joke. It made too much sense for me to be angry. I picked up the remote and shut off the TV. “Get out,” I said. “GET OUT.”
       I sat on the guest bed in the dark and wrote an email draft with the subject line “I’m drunk.” I blamed myself for feeling bad, it was my fault for expecting him to kiss only me. What a dumb expectation, huh?
       I sent the email to nobody. The next morning I was hung over. My first hangover. I always thought they would make my head hurt, but this one just made me feel feverish. I threw up in the shower.
       It’s a known rule of society, maybe the universe: bookstores are supposed to be safe. Books are established symbols of comfort and solitude, and when thousands of them are around you, there’s no way you’re not in a sacred place. Kourosh could have kissed Mitsuko any other day. He could have even just waited until after midnight. You don’t two-time someone just after being in a bookstore.
YOU JUST DON’T.
For a while I wanted to steal Kourosh back, or at least get a few more kisses. This was until Mitsuko and I sat in the iron chairs in her small, weedy backyard. Nearby was an unused grill covered by a cobwebby blue tarp. I realized that she wanted him too, and I didn’t want to put up a fight. So I suggested we both avoid him, that kisses would only cause drama.
       Mitsuko’s lips froze up, and then she dated him anyway. She whined about his clinginess and how he consistently took an hour to jizz. I still ached for these things. I thought I would love and care for Kourosh just the way he was.
       But as the summer dragged on, I slowly realized that I didn’t love the way he was. Anyone I loved who could love Mitsuko was not who I thought they were.
 
I couldn’t help but returning to a couch. A couch in a corner of the Taos Room, floors black and linoleum with scuff marks everywhere. Julian and I stumbled around and then I noticed its holy grail as other disenchanted people with nonconformist hairstyles rolled off. The couch was three cushions across and suede and purple, the color and texture matted out by grease and spotted by dark stains that could have been gum, cigarette burns, spilled drinks. But the purpleness of the couch was unfettered in the end, shining through all the wear. Purple has a way of staying purple in its essence.
       The couch was floppy from thousands of people sprawling their weight on it. We sat down and pet each other’s chests and he guided me down until we were lying. I felt the excitement of a totally new body that tremored in different ways and emitted different temperatures than all the other ones I had touched. We kissed and these new feelings made me shake. They mixed like bleeding colors, potent as the music blared through the fuzzy big speakers, lacking all the precision of headphones. Someone threw a rolled up ball of paper at us, maybe a McDonald’s wrapper. Felt judged but focused on his face to get them away. Same when someone said “get a room.” Soon the onlookers meant nothing to me, the affection and the criticism surrounding it were just two facets of this mecca of counterculture that concerts welcome. I kissed his face in this loud darkness, and the liquor in my blood that he bought me (I wore my fingerless gloves so nobody saw my Xs) gave me a warm and stupid feeling.
       He and I used to play games where we pretended to be a cute old couple. He lost his marbles one day and I ran down the stairs of his apartment complex crying, leaving all our playtimes choking to death in the sunlight. A carefully built fantasy world vaporized in less than the time it would take you to say “Fuck my stupid fucking life.”
       What was that year-long relationship for anyway? I wanted to give it a shot. I thought it would be a logical growth, from tonguing around to a deep adult connection. It ended up being for nothing. I might have learned some lessons about what kind of people to avoid, but afterward I spent all my free time feeling shitty. Sometimes I made myself leave my house so I could feel like I’d done something. Anything. Sometimes I went and did a tile at Paint It! just to chat you up, and sometimes I ended up people watching for hours, in the bars I wandered with my fake ID. I wanted to run up to those masculine beer-stenched idiots with pool cues and scream,
       “Don’t you know that all your woman-searching is all for making embryos? That you are all FROM embryos, and soon you will be worm food?”
 
Here is a list of other things I did that summer:
       - Joined MeetUp under a fake name, then never did anything on it.
       - Spent hours choosing specials to record on the DVR. Topics like gazelles, the history of bread, Alcatraz. Didn’t get more than ten minutes into any of them. My hobbies include planning to watch TV, I should put on my OKCupid profile.
       - Tried to get the contact info of a barista at a Peet’s at Heritage Mall. I was stalking him because once he wrote some names of classical musicians for me on a napkin. Now that Julian was out of the picture, I rushed back, buying a lot of iced tea and taking notes on what days of the week he worked. Paulo. He gave me his name on a coffee cup and told me to add him on Facebook. I tried to show him to Mitsuko on her laptop and he didn’t come up. I became fearful that he had dead-ended me, and she gave me a worried look, agreeing with her eyes. After watching Waking Life with her for the five thousandth time while secretly thinking of Paulo, I ripped off the metaphorical band-aid and walked home. My stomach was in knots the whole way. I helped a guy climb over the Jehovah’s Witness church parking lot fence and he told me about how he loved God. I found an olive green beanie on the ground that I later washed and wore repeatedly. At home, as the sun set, I searched so hard and desperately online that I began to feel like an idiot. No dice. So I formulated detailed plans to go to the cafe at irregular intervals. I started to learn the appearances and work times of other people who worked in the café and I gave them nicknames. Gondola. Hammer. Uranium. They weren’t supposed to make sense. One day after giving up, I went to the coffee shop after buying a new septum ring at Claire’s (I know that store is gross, but I didn’t want to give Hot Topic my money). I really, genuinely needed an iced tea that evening. Paulo was there, alone, with food machines quietly whirring behind him. I told him I couldn’t find him on Facebook and he gave me his email. I sent him a friendly hello, knowing nothing would come of it. So I deleted the email from my sent box, and then from my email trash. Can you guess what happened next? You’re right. Nothing. If he had just given me a clearer answer the first time, I wouldn’t have had to go back in the first place. Thanks a lot, Paulo.
       - Found a hike on Yelp that was 35 miles away. I hiked it and talked to some rock climbers. It was okay. I drove back.
       - Followed Mitsuko and Kourosh on their regular trips to Letourneau Street. Mitsuko had no working air conditioner in her car because Mikey crashed it once. I could never see the stars on that street, Letourneau. I could see the street lamps but I kept my gaze on the neon and the smoke. There were so many restaurants—three sushi bars, Indian, Thai, Peruvian. Multiple places that definitely had Taco Tuesday, along with heat lamp decks and liter margaritas. One night Mitsuko, Haruko, and their boyfriends went for Chipotle despite the world of cuisine in front of them and I obliged, again. Mitsuko and Haruko were passionate about Chipotle. They drew from their go-to combinations while ordering. Haruko had hers memorized, and Mitsuko had hers written down in her phone. After all the rice and beans we resumed the walk along Letourneau again. The most sacred rite of our teen and young adult years, second to burning through bowls in rooms filled with candles. Mikey went in a tattoo shop titled “Tattoo” in easily recognizable “tattoo” font. The lobby had red vinyl booths and pine floors. He looked at the sample book (which revealed the shop had a name longer than “Tattoo”), considered a Hindu symbol design, said thank you, and left. We wandered in a sex shop and how in the world could a sex shop be so dull, I wondered. There was lights-out spa with tubes in the windows filled with water, flowers floating inside like babies in a womb. There was a shuttered-up florist stand on the corner, closed for the night. We went in a bong shop. “These are gorgeous bongs,” I mumbled to myself. The bearded clerk in a black collared shirt said, “No, they’re called WATER PIPES.” I took a photo of them and the clerk told me to delete it. I flipped my camera over and showed him that blackness, the absence of a screen. I remembered when my uncle first gave me that film camera and I marveled at the nothingness on the back. That mere wrist flip, that showing the clerk the back of my camera was as good as spitting in his face.
       - Occupied my mom’s room with my fat ass and watched Breaking Bad on her huge TV, lying on the bed and eating bags of “healthy” unbuttered popcorn. When I finished the series, I just watched it again. The episode “Fly” is so wonderfully better the second time.
       - Told Mitsuko and Kourosh to drive to me while they were on LSD. I was hoping they would crash. I’m an attempted murderer. I confess.
 
They threw a party called Ushibafest. That was their last name, Ushiba. The dad was white, the mom Japanese, and the dad had taken off before his last name could be etched on the birth certificates. The mom was working the ER that night. She was a nurse. I went to the party early because I had nothing else to do. Mikey had a bar set up at the counter with a whiteboard hanging overhead, detailing all the liquor stashed under the sink. Kind of appropriate because I always thought liquor tasted like drain cleaner. The whiteboard read:
       Vodka! Pinnacle (cotton candy). Skyy (dragonfruit). Smirnoff (green apple). Smirnoff (raspberry). Smirnoff (marshmallow). UV (blue!!!).
       Rum! Malibu. Malibu (mango). King’s Bay. Caliche.
       Other! Jagermeister. Baileys. MD (20/20).
       Wine! Gabbiano.
       Beer… Great White. Julian (Hard cider).
       Other drinks ---> Coffee. Water. Lemonade. Juice.
       Gabbiano is one of the most annoying words/names I have ever heard. Plus I think their bottles are about $6, anyway.
       Smirnoff was the kind of vodka we drank when Kourosh two-timed me. Now Mikey poured it for the early evening crowd and worked them like nobody’s business. He even poured the liquor into solo cups balancing on his head.
       Mitsuko, Kourosh, Haruko and Mikey sat on the floor in a diamond formation and did helium balloons. They inhaled and talked like chipmunks for one breath. This was real, I learned for the first time that day. I always thought it was some kind of cartoon thing. I retreated to Mitsuko’s room to check my email, and then Mitsuko came in and sat on the starry pink bedsheets with me.
       “I think you should leave.”
       “Why?” I said. Here it was. I was doomed. I’ve always been doomed to hinge onto shit people instead of blocking their phone numbers and fizzling into the darkness. Now the consequences were descending upon me.
       “Kourosh took Molly. It’s his first time and he doesn’t want you here ruining it for him.”
       “But why would I ruin it for him? Doesn’t ecstasy just make you in love with everything?”
       “You’ve been giving him bad vibes.”
       “Since when?”
       “Since we got together.” She was having a hard time saying this. Her presence was thin. But it was her party, she could turn around and shove it on me any second.
       “What? Are you kidding me?” I was trying not to cry now.
       “Look, I think it’s best if you just leave.”
       I told her I was mortified, and that I couldn’t get out of bed. I kept saying I wouldn’t. I sounded like I was a cinderblock. Human cinderblock. She went out and came back in.
       “Please leave,” she said.
       The hatred formed a lump in my throat, and I said this through clenched teeth: “I’ve never wanted to punch someone so much in my entire life.” She left.
 
Sometimes I wonder about what your last name is. It could be literally anything European. Long and Russian, French and hard to pronounce, maybe even some Spanish name with heritage diluted through a few generations of whitewashing. Maybe your parents are Chinese, you’re adopted, and your last name is Yang. It could even be Smith. Statistically, it’s most likely “Smith.”
       You are a corrupted file in my mind. A glaring and bright memory, but I don’t know your middle and last name, birthday, contact info, what city you live in. Nothing. I forget your eye color, too. These things don’t keep me up at night anymore, but here I am, wondering them on paper, maybe for the last time.
 
After I threatened to punch Mitsuko, which I admit was a total dick thing to do that I never actually would have done, random other girls came in her room for some reason. They asked me why I was curling on the bed and tearing up. “It’s nothing,” I said.
       “Didn’t you tell Mitsuko you wanted to give her a black eye or something?” said one. I thought that this would be such a wonderful chance to stop time. I’ve had a fantasy since I was a kid that I could stop time for two collective hours per month. If this were real, I would have used it then. I would have run out the door past all the unmoving people. But there I stayed and I fantasized about running out the door in Ms. Ushiba’s bedroom. I knew that door wouldn’t work since it had been stuck on its track going on three years. The only way out of the house was through the front door, through the storm of people.
       “Come on,” said Selina. She was fat with long pink hair and bangs. She had perfectly applied cat eyeliner and matte wine lips. “They told me to get you out of here.” She didn’t mean like a guardian angel. Her hands were on her hips, after all.
       “Leave me alone,” I said. I wanted to disappear and avoid the pain of logistics. I imagined hiding behind the bed and sleeping until I could sneak out, everyone too drunk to notice me. I imagined crawling through ceiling vents. I glanced at the window but there was a screen on it.
       “What’s going on?” said someone else in the room.
       “She’s threatening to beat Mitsuko up,” said Selina.
       Someone else, who was blonde and the younger sister of a heroin addict in my high school graduating class looked at me and said, “Leave the party, you fucking bitch. It’s not your party. Stop acting like it’s your party.”
       “Come on,” said Selina, on the opposite side of the doorframe now.
       “Shut the fuck up, Paul Blart,” I said.
       The blonde heroin relative girl spoke to me from behind as she sat on the bed. “Don’t criticize someone for being overweight when you’re overweight yourself.”
       I couldn’t say anything back. She could tell I was hurt. But I still held onto a tiny stone in the back of my mind that kept me feeling justified. Mitsuko and Kourosh had been awful to me. People had wronged me enough so that I had some transcendent righteous status. I could never have been wrong. Maybe some other time, in a different situation, but definitely not now.
       I followed Selina out the door, and then she waited for me to pass her so she could walk behind me and act more like a guard than a tour guide. And then it came. I walked out of the hallway into the living room. I saw people in my peripheral vision, but I walked right ahead with a strange newfound confidence that rode off of discomfort. I bet they could tell I didn’t belong, that I was being kicked out with Selina pushing me forward. I tried not to look at them. Realistically, there was no opportunity to be graceful here. I went for a glimpse of Kourosh, wanting to see him in the rapture of ecstasy. Didn’t see him. Selina slammed the door behind me and I heard a lock barrel into place as fast as it could go. I was on the patio in front of the house by the dusty potted plant and it was all over.
 
I crossed the street to my car, hoping I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. I was so out in the open, anyone could have seen my stiff walk, me trying to hold it together. I got in my car, I pulled the door shut, I was safe now. Now to drive off to where nobody could see me. I drove a few blocks away to a place close but good as secluded: the Jehovah’s Witness church parking lot nestled into a hill. I parked, and only then did I burst into tears.
       I scrolled through my contacts, needing someone to sink my teeth into. I considered my therapist. But I knew it would just be the same old, same old, she would numb me and tell me to keep my head up, but she wouldn’t revitalize me. My friends were gone, all of them, and right now I could feel the hatred tear through my body at full force. Nobody could ever care if I was kicked out of a party, or if some older guy preyed on me at a concert and funneled me into a long terrible relationship.
       At some point it occurred to me that Paint It! was there. I liked to go there and ask you nosy questions. Now I really needed it. I drove for 45 minutes, but I knew you were there. Did you know I always drove 45 minutes to chat you up? I always tried to conceal my location. But once when I said I was a short trip to Legoland, I knew I had given myself away.
       You know what they say about Letourneau. Five points for every street toward the ocean you park, starting from Sweetwater, that is. Parking in the beach lot is a bonus ten, plus immortality. I scored fifteen that night. I walked past the neon shops that sold tie-dyed shirts, bongs, and hemp necklaces with knitted trees on the end. A crowd of homeless people next to Addie’s Diner blew smoke on me, guys with shopping carts and grey beards. The hostel with a big mosaic peace sign on the roof towered over me, and the boarded up stores gave me a melancholy in the pit of my stomach. The air was sweet like candy with the taste of a vape pen, the ocean on my tongue. The nightlife. I walked past it all, breezing along, headed for you. Then it came—the vertical wooden sign leaning up next to the door—Paint It!. The studio was narrow and long; iron chairs and a few women with wine glasses painting big plates in the corner. I conducted that motion I knew so well, walking under the doorframe painted with little flowers and looking to my right to see if you were there. You always were, because I had memorized your schedule. You came into my vision each time I went in there, becoming a mantra, your face becoming synonymous with everything behind you. You said my name tiredly, like you were waking up from a coma, but sweetly. “Hannah.” That’s my name. Always hated it, but you made me want to own it.
       “I have your latest masterpiece ready,” you said. You ran to the back, behind the curtain, and came walking out with a wrapped tile. I took the time undoing the paper with a smile on my face and there it was, another little piece of art. One of billions upon billions of art attempts on this planet, forever doomed to be unrecognized. With this one I had tried to paint a forest landscape, inspired by photos I had seen of Washington. Now it was all glazed with a reflective pool of darkness.
       I said nothing about Ushibafest. I walked away from you and picked another tile from the unfired ceramics display. My box at home was filled with dozens of fired tiles. Mitsuko always painted mugs and little dog sculptures, and they were slowly crowding her room. I got my colors and sponges and waited patiently at the table, because I knew what was coming. I heard an iron chair pull out next to me along the concrete floor, I looked to my left, and there you were. The music on the speakers was not the usual faux indie pop radio, because for the past few months you had been plugging your laptop into the AUX instead. Only while we were there alone. Highly illegal according to the Paint It! manager. It made me feel special, like you were creating a little audio shield for us. We had been talking a lot about ‘70s German electronic. A couple of people have given me weird looks like, why are you listening to something from so far away, from so long ago? But they just don’t get it. It’s a love of hide and seek. You search and search through countless forgotten things, until you find something so potent that it depresses you that people have forgotten this. And it’s all yours. I remember that night B. Aldrian by Harald Grosskopf came on. We talked about how that song is some kind of special club for people who can feel emotions deeper than anyone else. Then I painted, and you sat in silence until the song was over.
       You and I talked for a couple of hours as I painted the little tile with sponge dabs and careful swirls. I was feeling abstract that night, inspired by coral reefs. Occasionally you handed me a detail of your life. You only photographed with film. You used to skate as a teenager. You frequented a cheesy Hawaii-themed restaurant called Bali Hai. But you never gave me the whole picture. I knew a lot about you, but I didn’t know you.
       I gave you the finished product and we said goodbye with big quivering smiles. I walked to my car as you closed up. Hot and tropical air coated my skin. Gum dotted all along the sidewalk, graffiti was my backdrop, couples walked by me with tattoos coating their arms. I could smell the ocean so well, salt going up my nose. And I felt calmness simmering in every part of my consciousness. I don’t know your last name and I probably never will, but I think you saved my life on August 29th, 2013.
 
It’s been five years (well, four and a half) and I think about you too often. There are at least six other letters like this one. The first one’s in a journal, one I burned in a frying pan, another I threw away in a public bathroom. I think there are some others in desks and drawers, maybe sock drawers of people that I’ve roomed with.
       I know you didn’t really save my life. I probably could have gone home and screamed into my pillow instead of going to Paint It!, and I’d be just as alive as I am today. But I adored you. I adored you so much that I wanted to assign sainthood to you. And for what it’s worth, you must have changed something, anything. You might have prevented me from smashing a bottle against a stranger’s car window or maybe actually giving someone a black eye. And that’s enough that you’re the only person who gets my parting thought. I’m not dying. I’m moving to Virginia. I’m not some idiot who’s going to get on a bus and see where it goes, I have a job and an apartment set up and the whole nine yards. And I want the clean feeling of saying goodbye to no one. Not my family, not Mitsuko, and not my succession of friends that fill her shoes and do it no better. You’re the only one who I’m telling, and you won’t even get to know.

cw: suicide

Afternoon daylight sifts in through the rental’s window blinds, the sun sunken low enough now in the western sky that it’s just beginning to burn orange. Grant’s skin is clammy with the dampness of his own sweat and a waking flash of anger overcomes him before his vision even blurs into focus. He fights and kicks the single sheet down the bed until it rucks up in a wad around his ankles, heat rolling off his body like an engine doused in water. All the surrounding air is laid on thick and stifling and other than the faint banter of songbirds outside four walls, the rest of the world rings silent.

He’d stripped off his coveralls and left them on the kitchen floor when he’d stumbled in after daybreak, but his undershirt still smells a little like fish guts and sea grime, briny and faintly rotten. Grant hadn’t bothered to shower after work, only peeled off his boots and socks beside the mattress and fallen headfirst into his pillow.

The air conditioner must have turned itself off or overheated while he was sleeping, but he doesn’t make any move to go check it when he sits up in bed. His phone tells him it’s half past six and he pulls his shirt over his head but keeps it bunched in one fist while he stares at the closet door, standing half-open and draped with a drying towel across the room.

The glint of red metal shines like a beacon on the closet’s top shelf in an otherwise colorless space.  Grant’s old lockbox—once full of tumbled stones and borrowed skin mags and an old prescription bottle full of collected shark teeth—, though it doesn’t hold anything but some loose papers and a pawn shop handgun, now.  The only crack of light seeping through a part in the plastic blinds has come to rest on it and nothing else. Like a golden arrow spun due north, pointing the way.

Grant stands to pad across the carpet on bare feet and takes the lockbox down from the shelf. Loose bullets roll and clink around on the interior like lead beetles while he carries it down the short hallway and into the kitchenette, stepping over his forgotten coveralls to settle it on the counter.

The combination hasn’t been set or locked in the seven months since he left Raleigh, and the lid comes open with a creak in the stagnant air. Grant picks up the gun and hefts its strange weight in his palm, as cold and solid as he remembers, and then checks the chamber. It’s empty. Still, he stands there at the counter next to an open box of Cheerios and presses the muzzle first to his right temple, and then lower against the soft spot tucked underneath his chin.

He stands motionless, only blinking and gently breathing before turning the gun around and guiding it up to his mouth in a mechanical sort of afterthought. The barrel tastes weakly bitter, the flavor of dirty rag soaked in gun oil, and clinks against his two front teeth when he wraps his lips around it. Like licking a spoon clean. A bead of sweat gathers between his shoulder blades and slides down his back with the weight of a cold fingertip.

Grant doesn’t touch the trigger, but he pulls the gun from his mouth and leaves his spit shining on the barrel. He loads the magazine with a full round and then sets the gun down next to the cereal box. There is an overflowing pile of junk mail on the countertop and he rifles through it until he finds his checkbook hidden beneath, the top page dog-eared at one corner. It takes the better part of five minutes to dig up a drying ink pen lost in the back of one of the kitchen’s otherwise empty drawers.

Rent isn’t due for another three weeks but he writes out Marlon’s name and signs and dates the slip for the last full figure he remembers seeing in his checking account. Tears it out and leaves it on the counter under a beer bottle with two swigs of stale brew left at the bottom, and then goes over to his coveralls to look for his cigarettes.

The paper carton crumples flat in his hand, empty save for his cheap plastic lighter. Another pang of petty annoyance surges up in Grant’s body, building like a wave before rushing out again, and its dwindling momentum steers him back into the bedroom to pull on a t-shirt and jeans from the basket sitting at the foot of his mattress. He steps back into his boots and does them up one at a time, careful not to knot the laces too tightly. Takes a quick piss in the toilet but won’t meet his own eye in the mirror while he rinses his hands at the sink and drinks a cupped handful of flat tap water.

He pockets his wallet and doesn’t bother locking up the apartment behind him when he steps out into the afternoon heat, key ring and phone still left on the counter inside. The Florida humidity stings like a hard slap and he pushes his fingers through his sweaty hair, letting out a deep breath where he stands on the small wooden deck overlooking the rest of Marlon’s property.

The man himself is out in his blooming jungle of a yard in the last hour before twilight, broad frame folded and hunched into one of his wooden dove coops. Grant can see him through the chicken wire with the softly cooing birds, cleaning off their perching rails and filling up a shallow trough with fresh drinking water. Even here from the apartment built above the garage the gentle timbre of Marlon’s voice carries across the yard and reaches Grant’s ears. He murmurs conversationally to his birds, telltale but indistinct, something like that first whiff of orange blossom on the air come spring when the wind shivers just right.

The Dove Man, the other boys on the gutting line called him. None of them knew his first name or cared to learn it, but they baptized him with rumor and any number of other crude things that Grant didn’t know for truth or hearsay beyond the fact that the man raised birds. Dove Man aside, Marlon had given him a fair price on the room above the garage and had been kind enough to help him haul his bare mattress and the two suitcases holding his worldly possessions up the stairs and into the bedroom. Left his phone number on a piece of paper and pressed that and the apartment key into Grant’s hand with all the frankness of an old friend, and that had been that.

Marlon is good people as far as Grant can tell, whether the things the other guys said had any truth shining on them or not—a decent man who didn’t need to get his hands dirtied by anything outside his circle of doing. Grant looks around the yard and thinks of the shady patch of grass overlooking the woods behind the garage, where honeysuckle climbs up the gnarled body of a dead oak outside his bedroom window. About as peaceful as anything he’s seen since he crossed the state line, quiet and modest in its slow but steady returning crawl toward wilderness.

He’ll go out there and have one last cigarette. The single shot will spook the birds, but Marlon will think it was one of the neighbors going after squirrels or an armadillo again and be none the wiser for a few good days at least. Grant doesn’t think about it much beyond that.

There’s a long gravel lane that butts up to the front road, just two dirt tire tracks set into the yard leading to a hinged gate strung with an old bell. Grant passes the dove coop on foot as he makes his way up to the paved asphalt, drawing the indifferent stare of the resident golden-eyed calico where she sits vigil beneath the shade of a thorny lemon tree, but Marlon doesn’t hear him come or go until the gate swings open and his head whips up at the familiar sound.

“Afternoon there, Grant,” he says by way of greeting, nodding a little bit. He’s holding a peaches-and-cream colored bird between two hands, the creature gone still and docile. “You off to the docks this early? On the day before Easter proper, good Lord.”
Grant swallows in the thick drape of afternoon heat but makes his slack mouth form a smile that feels like it was cut and pasted onto his face. “Was just heading up to the corner store before it gets dark,” he says, closing the gate behind him. The bell sounds too-loud in his ears, the tinkling harsher than it has any right to be. “I’ll be back after while.”

“On foot?” Marlon asks, standing up a little straighter. “I mean, I’d be more than happy to give you a lift if you’ll wait long enough for me to put this damn bird down and wash my hands off real quick.”

Grant can feel the other man’s eyes, curious but lacking the shaming burn of any judgement. He can’t bring himself to meet them in full, afraid he’ll somehow give it all away.

“Nah, think I’m all set,” he says, holding up a hand in a parting half-wave. Marlon’s face changes a little but doesn’t darken, still watching him with a thoughtful sort of expression. “You have a good night if I—” Grant starts, and wavers for only half a second before finding the fumbled fuse of his voice. “If I don’t see you again.”

“Take care,” is all Marlon says with a smile that causes crow’s feet gather at the corners of his eyes, and then opens his hands to watch the peachy dove flutter its wings and fly higher to join its kin on their roost.

#

There’s an old corner station down the way about two miles or so, tucked in the dusty armpit between paved street and an old clay road leading back deeper into where the orange groves start to sprawl. No car ever seems to stop there for gas or the advertised window-wash but the open sign is always facing out, hanging crooked on a piece of twine in the glass door.

Grant spots the ugly little runt of a rundown building from about a quarter-mile away and vaguely wonders what it might’ve been before the gas pumps were brought in and set in concrete. There’s a ghost of a mural painted on the western side, flaking off and baked by too many years under the beating sun, but it hints at a bygone and wilder time in Florida’s past. He thinks he can see mangroves and swampland, brown-skinned Seminoles and white folks on horseback driving their cattle out to scrubby pastureland.

He wasn’t born here, raised up on the coast of North Carolina a few more skips of a stone further than anybody else around these parts, but Florida had snared him in like it did any of the other foreigners who found themselves sucked into the state’s orbit by more chance than choosing. Flat and ugly and plowed over by asphalt and big ticket tourism, but stippled with a southern-fried sort of charm if you veered off the beaten path and got a closer look at what was tucked away in the land’s nooks and crannies. Grant had only ever stepped far enough to find fish guts and shrimp broilers and the potholes in the road between Marlon’s property and a strip of bars on the dockside marina, but he couldn’t deny what was there beyond his line of sight. He just hadn’t found any reason left to go and see it for himself.

Rust-colored dust starts kicking up around Grant’s boots, powdering the toes with a fine layer of parched clay. He squints ahead at the gas station and only sees one car parked off to the side, an old blue station wagon wedged up right near the ice cooler. His shirt is stuck flush to the small of his back and he wants for a cold drink something awful, throat gone drier than it’d been when he left the apartment.

More importantly than that, he really needs a goddamn cigarette.

The orange clay gives way to crushed oyster concrete, bleached so white that it hurts his eyes to look at. Grant sees the ancient Joe Camel poster hanging in the dirty window, the neon Budweiser sign glowing nearby with the B long since burnt out. His vision tunnels in on the front door like the means to an end and it’s just by mistake that he even glances off to the right at all, eyes shifting the barest bit when they catch something out of place at the corner of the brick building.

There’s a dog, lean and beginning to go white in the face, sprawled out on its side in a shrinking patch of shade. It’s dug itself a shallow trench in the clay earth and flopped down in it to keep cool under the relentless blaze of afternoon. The old cur is the color of wild honey, a dark and tawny blonde with two white feet. It doesn’t move when Grant scuffs his boot heels on the pavement and only the small rise and fall of its gaunt ribs belies the fact that it’s breathing at all.

He stops and whistles to it, the sound ringing sharp across the empty lot, and the dog’s ears prick while one eye cracks open but it doesn’t move any more than that. Neither the animal nor the patch of ground surrounding it gives off any sign of tenure. There’s no collar to be seen, no mismatched food or water dishes set out, not even an errant scrap of foam tray to eat table scrapings off of. Grant lingers for a moment and then sniffs to himself before going to the door, letting a weak gust of AC out into the heat as he steps inside and heads for the front counter.

The clerk working the till is a woman caught in the no-man’s land of hazy middle age, too many cigarettes and long years of hard living putting her anywhere between forty and sixty-five. Her hair had once been bottle-blonde but has been left to grow out wiry and greying at the temples, all of it wrapped up and twisted at the back of her head in a bright yellow banana clip. She eyeballs Grant with the hardened but indifferent stare of somebody who’s seen the dregs of humanity and done nothing but light another smoke and use her middle finger to point them toward the door.

“We’re outta ice,” she says before he can even open his mouth. “Machine’s been broke since last week.”

Grant stares up at the wall of tobacco cartons behind her while he fishes his wallet from his pocket, eyes swiveling past tins of dip and some parched-looking cigarillos until he finds what he came looking for.

“Just a pack of Marlboro Reds,” he says, eyes still caught on the prize. His vision is crystal clear but there’s a fogginess lingering in the back of his head, quietly numbing, like his skull’s been overstuffed with cotton batting. “No ice.”

The clerk doesn’t hurry with moving off her three-legged stool, still leveling him with a bored look from across the counter. “You want Kings or 100s?”

“Hundreds,” Grant says, bringing a thumb up to brush against his mouth. The woman finally gets up to pluck a pack of cigarettes off the wall but Grant’s eyes have strayed out the dirty window, where they watch empty road until the old cash register opens with a tired jangle of coins and the woman slaps his Marlboros on the counter.

Grant passes his last twenty dollar bill into her hand, opens his mouth and then closes it. She’s breaking a new roll of dimes into the drawer when he wets his bottom lip and tries again, listening to his own voice as if it’s coming at him from the other side of a deep tunnel.

“That dog out there belong to you?”

The clerk arches a penciled eyebrow up at him, pinching her mouth together so the creases in her upper lip fold like origami paper. “That ain’t no dog of mine,” she says. “Been chasing it off for two, three days now. Keeps coming back.”

“Anybody been feeding it?” Grant asks. He’s not meeting the woman’s eye, gaze settled somewhere on her forehead. He can feel his own pulse beating in his neck, steady and sure, and reaches up to press a fingertip to it before dropping the hand away.

“I damn sure haven’t,” she says, pushing his change across the counter. “And if it’s out there in the morning I’m gonna have to call a fella down here to either pick it up or shoot it, because it don’t look healthy no-how. Got something wrong with it.”

Grant blinks and feels like he’s wavering while standing in place, a stopped clock somehow still ticking. He looks at the clerk for the first time since walking inside, really looks at her, and then glances at his untouched change and Marlboros still sitting on the counter before turning to go back to the drink cooler at the rear of the store.

The clerk watches as he takes a bottle of water and grabs a long stick of beef jerky from a box in the snack aisle, only returning to the front counter to slip his cigarettes into the back pocket of his jeans.

“Let me go ahead and refigure this change,” the woman says with a withering sigh as she reaches for the money, but Grant gives a half-shake of his head.

“I don’t need it,” he says, and then turns to push back out through the door that brought him in, letting the din of a passing truck rattle inside before he turns and disappears around the corner of the building.

Outside dusk has rolled across the flattened land like the innards of a broken flask, spilling burnt ochre and mint-penny copper in its wake. Grant sets the bottle of water and jerky on top of an empty newspaper stand at the corner of the building and sticks a cigarette between his teeth, holding a flame up to the tip until it catches and starts to glow.

He breathes in deep through the filter before blowing out a cloud of smoke, watching it unfurl and disappear on the air. The nicotine’s spell is almost instant and he takes another shallow drag before tapping a curl of ash onto the sidewalk, attention finally turning back to the bottle already starting to gather beads of sweat.

The plastic lid twists off with a crack and Grant takes a swig off the top, cigarette caught between two fingers while he drinks. He licks at the cold water against his mouth and then steps off the sidewalk to peer around the side of the building where the dog is still lying motionless at the base of the mural.

Another whistle doesn’t make it move this time, so he plods through the dust and squats down on his haunches where it can see him with one eye. “Hey there,” Grant says, holding out a hand with the palm up. He rests the water bottle between his boots and takes one last puff on his cigarette before snubbing it in the dirt and flinging it away. “C’mere, man. Got something good for you.”
Grant pours a little bit of water into his cupped hand and holds it out, making a soft kissy sound between his lips. The dog’s tail thumps once but it stays where it is, watching through dark chocolate eyes as he lets the water dribble into the dirt.

“Hard to get, huh,” Grant murmurs, tipping his head to wipe his mouth against the shoulder of his t-shirt. He stays squatting there for a long moment, watching the dog while the dog watches him in kind, and then rises back up on creaking joints. He comes back with the beef jerky stick in hand, tearing into the plastic wrapper with his teeth before peeling it back enough to start breaking off little morsels.

The dog raises its head, blinking slowly in the evening light. Grant tosses a piece of jerky into the dirt and it lands around the halfway point between where they each sit. He pops one into his mouth and slowly chews around the sweet smoky flavor before pitching another piece out in offering.

“Go ahead,” he says, sitting proper in the orange dirt now. “The rest is all yours.”

A big rig roars past on the road and the dog’s nose twitches, idly testing the air. Its body shifts in the dirt and slowly draws up until it’s resting on both haunches, white paws stretched out in front like the body of the great sphinx. Grant doesn’t move and it’s not until his chest starts aching that he remembers to breathe.

He draws in a deep lungful of air and looks away, eyes following the long line of his own shadow pulling like taffy across the weedy dirt. The dog lifts its head in his peripherals, and when he feigns interest in picking at some grit on the ground the old cur finally stands but doesn’t take more than a step, stretching its neck out to nibble the closest piece of jerky.

Grant breaks off another piece and tosses it between them and waits. Takes a swallow of water and debates having a second cigarette but decides against it for the time being. The dog moves inches closer and snatches the next tidbit before drawing back again, eyes peeled wide and wary. It’s lame on one back foot, Grant notices—doing a limping sort of three-legged hop every time it has to take a step. Ribs move under its skin like a grotesque undulation of fingers pressing against leather from the inside.

He cranes his neck around for a peek and decides that the It is definitely more of a She, and probably mother to more than just a few litters of puppies in her heyday judging by the looks of her. This feels like a new truth caught between them and even though all her milk’s long since dried up Grant tries something new, keeping his voice held steady and low.

“C’mere, mama,” he says, holding out the jerky stick in the open palm of his hand. An old Cadillac rumbles into the lot and a door opens and slams but he doesn’t budge or startle, letting the sky grow darker around them. “Come on, pretty lady—it’s alright. You need to have another bite to eat and drink some of this water for me.”

The beef jerky slowly gets smaller piece by piece, shrinking down every time the dog takes another step nearer. Grant only has two scraps left when she finally gets close enough to smell his palm, and he smiles when he feels the cold wetness of her nose brush the heel of his hand. One more piece of jerky and he manages to rub a hand against her bony flank, keeping her close with the last of the snack polished off clean from between two fingers. He pushes his fingers a little more through her fur and she doesn’t dart away this time, standing there with her tail drawn between her legs.

“Good girl,” Grant says murmurs, and when he moves to reach for the water bottle she limps away on her bum leg but turns to eyeball him with something like timid curiosity on her tawny face, one ear perked up to listen while the other folds over against her head. She watches the cap twist off and then as Grant pour another dash of water into his hand, holding it out while he beckons her back over.

“I know you gotta be thirsty laying out in this heat,” he says, sitting there in the dirt with his shirt sweat-soaked and stuck to his skin. “I just about died even getting up here to this shithole.”

His throat tightens up a little around the words and his eyes start to sting even though the sun sinks behind him. A sudden rush of anger and hurt and something else he can’t name aches like a hard knot lodged deep in his chest, and he thinks about kicking the water away and getting up and walking in any direction but back to the empty apartment—straddling the painted yellow line on the asphalt like a fraying tightrope, maybe, probably, until he finally spots a semi’s lights approaching on the horizon.

But then the dog is limping closer, tail wagging low between her legs, and noses into his hand before gently lapping at the wetness gathered there. She looks back up expectantly when it’s gone, lightly stepping between her two white feet while the back leg anchors her steady. Grant pours out some more water without a word, letting her drink again and again until she’s had her fill and the legs of his jeans are splattered with flecks of drool and damp clay. He sets the water bottle aside when it’s mostly empty and reaches up to scratch around one of the dog’s floppy ears, soft as shaved velvet. She sits back on her haunches in front of him and leans into it, pushing her head further into his hand while the streetlamps begin to flicker on one by one further down the highway.

Grant keeps one hand on the dog and uses the other to reach for his cigarettes and lighter. He sticks a smoke in the corner of his mouth and then gathers his knees up underneath himself, waiting until he’s back on his feet to better appraise the fallen knife of nightfall.

“You stay put for a second,” he says, picking up the jerky rapper and absently crumpling it in one hand. “Don’t go anywhere ‘til I get back.”

The station clerk looks up with the door swings open, still sitting on her three-legged stool with a ballgame running on a tiny TV behind the counter now. Her eyes flash with something untold and then narrow, one hand reaching underneath the lip of the register for a weapon Grant can’t see. “You know I can’t tolerate folks loitering around this place,” she says while Grant brushes orange dust off his denim with a lazy sort of slap, unlit cigarette still jammed between his teeth.

“Looks like I need a couple of those quarters back after all,” he says. “If you don’t mind.”

“Just a couple?” the clerk asks, eyes whetted sharp. The crack of a bat rings out from the television and the stadium goes wild, filling the empty store with phantom applause.

“Whatever it takes to put a local call through the payphone out front,” Grant tells her. He pulls his wallet out and unfolds a piece of creased paper from the inner sleeve that he hasn’t read or looked at since it was pressed into his hand seven months ago. “I found a man to take that dog off your hands.”

#

An old truck dusted with clay pulls into the lot and cuts its diesel engine, leaving the headlights burning where they fall against a wall of painted mural. The door swings open and Marlon steps out, one hand caught around the open window frame while his eyes swivel to the pair of silhouettes sitting on a curb at one corner of the building.

“I’m glad you called when you did,” he says, easing the truck’s door shut before starting at a walk up to where fluorescent light is spilling through the station window onto gum-pocked concrete. He palms the back of his neck, and the way he moves with a swing in his step means he’s got a piece strapped somewhere up under his shirt. “Got a little worried with you heading off on foot so close to dark, being near the highway n’ all. Was debating on whether or not I was fool enough to go out looking for a grown-ass man.”

Marlon slows to a stop a few yards away, hitching both hands up on his hips to watch Grant blow smoke away from his companion. He tips his head forward, standing there at the edge of where light has bled across the lot. “You reckon she bites?”

“Hasn’t bit me yet,” Grant says, running his free hand down the dog’s back. Her body has tensed since Marlon pulled up, tail motionless and head held high, but she hasn’t growled or made any move to run. “She’s got something wrong with her hind foot, though, so I wouldn’t be touching it if you can help it.”

Grant drags his cigarette down to the filter and stubs it out between his boots with two other butts. Both men stay quiet, eyes pooled together on the dog, and they seem to be stuck at a draw until Marlon clears his throat and scuffs the sole of his boot across the pavement.

“Well,” he says, squinting even though any sign of daylight is long gone. “Pound’s closed up shop for the night. What did you want to do with her?”

“I don’t know,” Grant says, reaching around to scratch under the dog’s jaw. He thinks of what the clerk told him earlier but can’t seem to repeat it again, wondering why he suddenly feels like a little boy again, caught outside after curfew with an old belt waiting across his daddy’s lap. “She can’t keep staying out here.”

“I didn’t really figure she was going to,” Marlon says. When Grant looks up there’s a little knowing smile pulling around the corner of his mouth, amused but kind. “Obviously she’s got somewhere better to stay—for tonight, at least.”

Grant nods at that and doesn’t know what to say, doubts he could even manage to speak if he tried, so he stands up and walks over to Marlon before squatting back down on his heels to call the dog over. She balks at first but then slowly slinks over, doing a little crow-hop to keep her weight off the bad leg. She sniffs at Marlon’s boot and then his offered hand, tail thumping against Grant’s side like another heartbeat when it starts to wag.

“Could you help me load her up in the back?” Grant asks, drawing up to his full height even though his gaze is stuck somewhere on the decaying mural. He can feel Marlon looking at him but doesn’t turn into it, not wanting to ask with anything more than his voice. “She can’t make the jump on her own.”

“We ain’t putting her in the back,” Marlon says with a snort, like Grant really ought to know better. “Let her ride in the back seat, it won’t hurt much of nothing.”

He kneels down by the dog’s side and lets her shyly smell him again, sniffing along the sun-browned and freckled backs of his arms and hands. Marlon scratches around her ears and she bows into it, leaning into him hard enough that he’s pushed off balance.

“You’re just a sweet old gal, hmm?” he says, quiet but not quiet enough that Grant can’t hear. “That’s alright, now—come on, sugar.”

Careful not to jar her leg, both men heave the dog between them and help her into the back seat. She’s large in frame but hardly weighs anything in their hands, more skin and bone than meat and muscle, but plops down on the bench right away and sits pretty. Her face turns to look out the windshield, already braced and eager for some unknown new adventure.

“She used to belong to somebody,” Marlon says at the sight, stepping back to jam the door shut without slamming it too loudly. His mouth has pressed into a thinner line, an expression Grant hasn’t seen up close before. “Already knows how to ride in the truck.”

“They don’t deserve her,” Grant says, rolling the hem of his t-shirt between his fingers in lieu of lighting another cigarette. His voice feels like winter when it touches upon the humid night. “Anybody who let her get that way isn’t fit to keep her.”

Marlon slowly nods as he walks around the bed of the truck, palm making a hushed sound as it passes over the old paint. He stops at the opposite side before he reaches for the driver’s door, watching Grant through the golden streetlamp light.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asks. It’s an honest and simple question, extended like a handshake between them. “I was just getting around to supper when the phone rang, but I’d just as soon pick something up while we’re in town.”

Grant thinks of the remnants of his last twenty dollar bill sitting on the station clerk’s counter inside the building, and then tries not to think of his checkbook on the kitchen counter back at the apartment. “I haven’t been paid yet this week,” he lies, reaching up to brush something off his nose that isn’t there. “Money’s a little tight right now, but I do appreciate the offer.”

“It’ll be my treat, then,” Marlon says, patting the side of the truck like it’s a done deal. “C’mon. There’s a place on the way up to the feed store we can stop at, dine-out so you can sit outside with the dog.”

Grant’s mind feels like it’s moving too slow for the uptake, still wading through a web of that damp cotton. “The feed store?”

“This old girl has gotta eat too, don’t she?” Marlon asks with a little laugh. “Can find something up there to mix in with some ground chuck I got back at the house. And before you try and tell me I’m going out of my way, I was gonna head up there tomorrow to get bird feed anyhow.”

Grant stares at him, hard, and feels the line of his own throat bobbing in place. “Why are you doing all this?” he asks, feeling the itch for another cigarette thrumming down to the tips of his fingers.

“Consider it a tax write-off on my yearly good Samaritan quota,” Marlon says. “Or if you want the honest truth, maybe just because I feel like it.”

Grant squares his jaw and shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.”

Marlon only smiles and opens the truck door. “If you’re taking suggestions, ’alright’ could be a good place to start.”

He slides in and cranks the engine over, idling there in the empty lot until Grant finally opens the passenger door and hauls himself up into the seat.

#

Darla’s Dine& Drive is lit up with pink and violet neon, just a few cars short of being slammed for a Saturday night. Marlon parks next to an empty convertible and gets out to rummage around under the seat until he comes back up with a length of braided nylon rope, something he passes over to Grant before making to head inside.

Grant stares at it in his hands, eyes gone a bit glassy and distant when he looks back up. Marlon’s skin looks periwinkle under the neon, hair soaking it up and turned to indigo.

“In case anybody tries to give you trouble about her being off leash,” he says, shutting the truck door but looking in through the open window. “You got a hankering for anything in particular? I was just gonna get a bag of burgers and fries otherwise, nothing fancy.”

“That’s fine by me,” Grant says, quiet. He hasn’t eaten anything but a piece of gas station jerky since last night’s mid-shift break, and even then it was nothing but bologna and hot sauce smashed between two pieces of white bread. “I’m not too picky.”

Marlon nods and heads off toward the diner, leaving Grant to twist around and reach into the back seat until a cold nose presses against his hand. He pets the dog’s forehead and rubs her soft ears, earns a lick or two across his knuckles before she lets out a low but pleased sigh.

“C’mon, mama,” he says, quickly tying a loose loop at one end of the rope before slipping it over her head. “Let’s get some fresh air.”

They’re both sitting on the pavement near the back of the truck when Marlon comes back out carrying a paper sack of food. He drops the tailgate and gestures for Grant to hop up and take a seat, setting the burgers and fries off to one side so the smell of salt and grease spikes on the night air. Grant’s stomach growls despite himself and he hopes it wasn’t loud enough to hear, but Marlon lets out a snort and digs a cheeseburger from the bag before passing it over.

“Stomach must be gnawing clean through to your backbone,” he says, and then reaches back into the bag to search for something else. The foil wrapper peels back to reveal a grilled beef patty without the bun and dressings, and he breaks it up into a few pieces before handing one off to the dog.

She gobbles it up in a second flat and then sits at their feet, looking between Marlon and the open wrapper still cupped in his hand. He tosses her another few small bites and then reaches into the bag to pull his own sandwich out, making a mock toast in Grant’s direction before digging in.

“What are you gonna name her?” he asks around a mouthful of burger, picking up a wad of fries and nestling the container between their hips on the tailgate. Marlon swallows and then fishes around for a napkin before pitching out another piece of meat for the dog.

“What?” Grant sputters, feeling his stomach dip and twist at the question. It startles a laugh out of him, something that bubbles up stark and foreign from the back of his throat. “I didn’t—I mean, I can’t—”

“Lady needs a name, man,” he says. “You ever try to call a pretty woman over from across a bar by whistling at her? Won’t get you anywhere good or fast, ‘less you go over and ask for her name first.”

Grant glances down at the half-eaten sandwich in his hands, mind turning over like a choked crank. He rips a piece of bun off and bends at the waist to feed it to the dog, who takes it more gingerly than she had the chunks of beef. “What makes you think I wanted to keep her?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be the one to stop you if you wanted to,” Marlon says lightly, dragging a French fry through a smear of mustard on his burger wrapper. “Never said there was a restriction on animals in the lease, now did I? Unless you started hauling boa constrictors up in there or some wild mess—then we’d have a problem.”

“Anyway,” he says with a wave of his hand, eyes somewhere across the lot where a group of teenagers are spilling out of the diner with milkshakes and swirled ice cream cones. “That can wait for now, but we still gotta call her by something.”

Grant looks down at the dog and she looks back, ears cocked in something akin to interest. She’ll need more than a name, he knows—food and water and a bath and a bed, not to mention a trip to the vet and whatever it takes to mend a gimp paw. Time and money, the last two things Grant wanted to hold himself accountable for when he’d woken up in the final leg of afternoon.

“What does she look like to you?” he asks, dipping a hand into the fries while Marlon takes a hard gander at the dog with a thoughtful look poised across his face. “You must be good at naming things, what with all the animals you got on your place.”

“A mouser cat and a coop full of birds ain’t exactly a petting zoo, but I’m glad I still hold some clout as an expert,” Marlon says. He smiles a little wryly, more to himself than anything else. “They still call me Dove Man down at the fish plant?”

Grant nearly drops his food on the pavement but can’t think of a good reason to lie. “How’d you know about that?”

“People talk,” Marlon says with a half-shrug. “Been talking for the past ten years since I moved down here. Sticks and stones, y’know—no real skin off my teeth. If that’s the worst thing they call me, I’d say I’m sitting pretty in the grand scheme.”

Grant can’t bring himself to mention the other things, the crueler things, keeping them hidden and unsaid under the flat of his tongue. He figures Marlon must have heard it all before and even if he hasn’t, Grant wouldn’t want him to know. But his curiosity prickles a little more than before, and there are still the birds to talk about instead.

“How’d you get started?” he asks, picking up another fry but leaving the last one untouched. “Raising doves, I mean.”

Marlon laughs under his breath, eyes casting high up over the diner’s roof. “I’d probably bore you to tears with the whole story,” he says. “It was something I…kinda married into, so to speak. More like an inheritance.”

Grant turns to watch him and knows Marlon’s mind has gone somewhere else, another place far beyond Florida’s reach and the parking lot they’re sitting in. “Can’t say I’ve ever heard of anybody inheriting birds.”

“Most people wouldn’t,” Marlon says. The corner of his mouth twitches, a smile caught between something fond and somber. “Somebody I—someone who was real important to me passed on, and when they did I wasn’t gonna give up what they loved. Felt bigger than me somehow.”

“It’s satisfying work, and I like it,” Marlon adds, sliding off the tailgate. “Therapeutic, guess you could say. Peaceful.”

He crumples up his empty burger foil and drops it in the paper bag before running his hands down over the thighs of his jeans. “Would you tell me your name if you could talk?” he asks the dog, kneeling back down to where she’s sitting with the nylon rope neatly coiled and looped in a loose necklace around her neck. “Something fine and pretty, hmm?”

“She shines like honey in the sun,” Grant murmurs, thinking of the mongrel he’d first seen lying at the base of the mural. “Some kind of golden whiskey color, almost.”

“Butterscotch,” Marlon suggests, and then starts ticking off a longer list of names. “Taffy, Clover, Cookie, Caramel—hell, I don’t know. How about Jackie Daniels?”

“Nah,” Grant says, letting his empty burger wrapper join Marlon’s in the trash before reaching for his pack of Marlboros. “I don’t know if any of those are suiting. Never really liked naming things after food.”

Marlon swears low under his breath and then lets out a coyote-barking laugh. “You’re the one over there saying she looks like honey and whiskey! Jesus is probably gonna rise up and roll out of his resurrection tomb tomorrow morning before you can decide on something.”

Grant taps ash off the end of his lit cigarette while both brows knit together in a seam on his forehead. He pulls in another drag and exhales, watching the smoke filter up through shades of bright pink and purple.

“You said tomorrow’s Easter, right? Earlier—in the dove coop.”

“Well yeah, thought you knew that already,” Marlon says, running a hand down the dog’s back to feel along the sharp ridge of her spine. “Not that I make any big shindig out of it or nothing, it was more like a casual observation.”

“Easter,” Grant says again, and then nods down at the dog with a little grin ghosting around his mouth. “She’s an Easter girl.”

Marlon silently mouths the word to himself like he’s got to try the shape of it on for size. “Easter,” he says, ruffling the dog’s ears before straightening back up. He shifts his weight over onto one hip, standing there with one of his boots cocked out to the side. “I mean—it ain’t terrible.”

Easter only smiles, pink tongue lolling out one side of her mouth when they load her back up in the truck and start the drive further into town, making a wide loop around the feed store lot before turning around to head back home.

#

The bell strung on the chain link jostles when Grant gets out to jimmy the gate, letting the diesel truck rumble further down the lane until he can pull it shut behind them. There’s only one window shining in Marlon’s place, lit up like a gold tooth set back into its darkened face. The rest of the property is draped over in shades of blue-black, all the doves long since huddled together and gone to bed even though honeysuckle and orange blossom still lingers in a perfume daylight left behind in its wake.

Grant sits silently in the passenger seat as Marlon steers further down the drive, past his own house to the little above-garage apartment at the back. There are no lights left on here, save for a security lamp that flashes on at the corner of the building when it senses the truck pull up. Easter sits quietly in the back seat with a sack of bird feed and a hefty bag of dog kibble, the latter of which she keeps sniffing around and scratching at with one of her white paws.

Marlon steps down out of the truck before Grant can fully think to protest, slinging the bag of dogfood over one shoulder. He keeps Easter from jumping out on the pavement while he waits for the other man to come around and get her, holding a steadying hand against her chest.

“I’ll help you up with this real quick,” Marlon says. “You think she can make it on the stairs all right?”

“Maybe,” Grant says, feeling somewhat dazed. His clothes feel stale and heavy on his body, weighed down with sweat and the hot breath of humidity. The pack of Marlboros is halfway empty now but seems heavier than a clay brick in his pocket. “Listen, Marlon—you’ve already done enough for me today. I’ll take that up after I get her settled.”

He helps Easter down onto the gravel and leads her over to the stairs at a careful hobble, takes the first two wooden steps up and then calls to her, whistling and patting his thigh. “Come on, girl,” Grant says. “One at a time, you can do it.”

The dog watches him and thumps her tail but doesn’t make any move to go up, body wriggling while she whines on the ground and stares at him with both front feet prancing in place. Grant tries to coax her again, doing everything he can to keep raw nerves from seeping into his voice.

“Take her up and I’ll follow you with this,” Marlon says after a minute, patting the bag of food still hefted on his shoulder. “It’s no trouble, and I promise I won’t keep you.”

Grant blows out a sigh but bows his head into agreement, leaning down to gather the dog up into his arms. She stiffens but doesn’t struggle, heartbeat pattering against his forearm once he’s got his hand hooked under her rib cage. They take the creaking stairs one at a time, Marlon trailing along close behind with one hand held out as if ready to catch anything that falls.

The door swings open without a key and Grant steps over the threshold with Easter still held close. It’s pitch dark inside, not even the neon-green numbers of an alarm clock or radio there to light up their passage, and he sets her down before turning to try and keep Marlon from moving any further inside.

“Hit a light would you, I can’t see for shit,” Marlon grunts from somewhere to Grant’s right, boots already thudding on the linoleum. He slides a hand along the wall until he finds a switch and the first one flips on the bulb above the kitchen counter. “There we go—uh.”

The light shines down on everything Grant had placed there earlier in the evening, all of it untouched and just the way he’d left it. Box of cereal, a single check, an avalanche of mail halfway scattered in the floor and his loaded gun.

Grant breaks out into a dizzying kind of sweat, swift and sickening. The room seems to spin around him for a moment, blurring at the edges like a finger dragged through wet oil paints. “I’ll take care of it all,” he says, dumb and thoughtlessly, not even hearing his own voice when it moves through the air. As if he’s blindly picking a phrase written on a piece paper from a fishbowl. “You can get on—get on back, to the house.”

Marlon sets the bag of dog food down at his feet but doesn’t budge, eyes pivoted straight over to the name scrawled on the check in black ink. Easter is standing like the third star point of an equal-sided triangle, watching them where she waits at the mouth of the kitchenette, uninterested for the moment in exploring her new surroundings.

“Your rent isn’t due for another three weeks,” Marlon says, gone strangely quiet, the words tilted a little on one side. “Grant,” he says, touching two fingers to the check where it rests on the counter. He pulls it from beneath the beer bottle so he can look at the amount written there, a crease deepening between his brows. “That’s too much.”

“I know,” Grant rasps, looking anywhere and everywhere but the other man. Shame is beating through every ounce of blood in his body while black spots begin to dance in his vision. “I know.”

Neither of them move, and then Easter lets out a sharp bark that rings through the kitchen. Marlon clears his throat and doesn’t speak, though he steps past Grant to take a dishtowel hanging off the refrigerator’s handle before returning to look at the spread laid out on the counter.

He picks up the gun and checks the chamber and magazine before dumping all the bullets into his left hand. They clatter on the countertop like dropped marbles, and then Marlon switches the safety on and goes over the gun’s barrel and body with the cloth, methodically wiping away his own fingerprints until it’s clean.

“Where do you keep this?” he asks, looking up at Grant with a neutral expression painted across his face.

“The lockbox,” Grant hears himself say. He presses his back against the wall and slides down it until he’s sitting on the kitchen floor, not even really aware he’s done it until Easter limps over to join him. He can’t even raise his hand to point, arms slumped in his lap while the dog presses her thin body closer. “Over there by the microwave.”

Marlon breezes past again and opens the box’s lid before setting the gun inside, leaving it swaddled in the faded dishtowel. The hinges creak shut and the lock clicks in place after he spins the dial into a jumble, turning then to nod toward Easter.

“I don’t think the stairs are gonna be kind to her until that foot heals up,” Marlon says, passing a hand over his mouth like he’s thought long and judiciously on the matter. “Might be best if she sleeps on the ground floor for the time being, you know—bathroom breaks and such.”

“Yeah,” Grant says. “She’d be better off at your place.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Marlon says, rubbing his palms together. “So go ahead and grab your toothbrush and whatever it is you need.”

The words sound so sudden and strange that Grant tips his head back to stare at him, lips slightly parted to draw in a shallow breath. “What?”

“I mean, the guest room ain’t exactly a hotel suite but it’ll do in a pinch,” Marlon says, bending over to pick up the dog food again. “Easter can sleep in there with you for the night, if you want.”

The front door has been standing open since they walked in but Grant hasn’t noticed until now. A chorus of cricket song and the distant call of a night bird suddenly erupts around them, popping the bubble of silence in his ears. A warm breeze rustles outside, passing through the citrus trees and tall palms casting shadows across Marlon’s yard before getting swallowed up into the wilder thicket of gnarled oaks and stinkweed vine.

Grant senses the balmy sheen of sweat on his face, how it feels cooler in the air moving through the apartment. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the crumpled pack of cigarettes before tapping one out into his hand and bringing it up to his mouth. The lighter’s flame flicks and catches and he draws in a deep enough pull that it hollows his cheeks out, the chemical ritual of it leaving the rest of his body feeling quieter and sated.

Marlon holds out a hand to help him off the floor and Grant takes it without pause, hauling himself up to his feet with the smoke still jammed in the corner of his mouth.

“You wanna lock up real quick?” Marlon asks once they’re standing together, his fingers warm around Grant’s palm until they gently fall away. The slow fan of Easter’s wagging tail is the only other movement beyond their quiet breathing.

“Alright,” Grant says and then nods, for Marlon and for himself. He can’t quite smile but tries for a laugh that comes out shaking along the edges, splintered but still whole. “Alright.”
​
He palms his keys and phone off the counter and whistles for Easter before they both turn and follow Marlon back through the open door.

so my soul says i’m my own god and nobody can hold me back and leaves my body on the bed my body doesn’t even sigh because she is used to this, being left, and has learned to live with it. once my body fell very deeply in love with someone and thought she could never live without someone but someone said you are too desperate to be loved to be loved and left so my body figures she can find a way to live without a soul, too.

my body lies on the bed for a while but she really cannot spend the rest of her life there, soul or no soul, so she gets out and makes some oatmeal thinking about how badly my soul loved oatmeal, but this does not make my body cry. for a second she thinks, this should make me cry. i am not doing this splitting up business the right way, i am supposed to be very sad and cry a lot into my oatmeal so it tastes like water and salt and wet cardboard. hmm.

my soul is everything my body dreams of which is mostly to say, bodiless. without a body she can fly into the world to Find Herself. she visits many countries and talks with many people even though she is scared of talking and many and people. she finds no substance or self, but it will probably be around the next corner so she must go on.

many years pass with my soul backpacking around europe and my body doing dishes and laundry and homework. my body sometimes think about my soul’s return and how strong she is going to stand, unflinching and proud and better off now. she imagines my soul’s beautiful heart and angry eyes, smirking oh, baby and how she will only roll her eyes in response. she will not take my soul back, which means absolutely nothing when my soul does not want to be taken back in the first place.

​one day my body receives a postcard in her mailbox, which she checks every day without ever missing a beat. it’s stamped in a language my body does not recognise and for a moment she thinks of the words lost like that. maybe my body is an untranslatable wound. there’s a firetruck on it which looks like hope surrounded by flames the same colour that look like hell. my body knows in her gut it’s from my soul, even though it does not read anything. no wish you were here . my soul might be many things but at least she is not cruel, my body thinks.

​Europe, 2004
Backpack borrowed from your aunt Patricia. Bar of Sunlight soap for handwashing underwear in hostel bathrooms. Box of granola bars, flattened, still good. Heartbreak not so fresh as to be debilitating.
Consume and walk a lot and misbehave a little. Dance in a Parisian nightclub with a man named Francois. Daydream on a train as it switchbacks through the Alps. Wonder, in Amsterdam, whether hash can make you hallucinate, or are there actually tiny men in bubbles on the ceiling? Eat everything: cheese, gelato, Swiss chocolate, large salty pretzels, cheap egg sandwiches from Tesco.
On the terrace of your homestay on the Italian Riveria, drink with a pack of American men—no, boys—and notice the cutest one, who isn’t even that cute. Hear him point out how drunk you are to your best friend. When everyone else goes to bed and a cot appears indiscreetly on the terrace, realize you are making a choice, and you won’t even remember his name tomorrow. See the leaning tower of Pisa with the worst hangover of your life.
Don’t feel guilty about burning through nearly $5,000 in two months because you have bigger problems, like where, exactly, is your period?
Cry on the streets of Copenhagen. Fail to notice the city’s romantic splendor. Take a pregnancy test in your best friend’s Danish grandmother’s bathroom, wrap the box in the pharmacy bag before throwing it out. Learn that the body can be confused by naiveté, by hunger.
 
Cuba, 2010
Go alone, because you can. Surprise yourself by blending in with your long dark hair and intentional stride. When people ask for directions, say “Lo siento, no se,” and feel a small sense of accomplishment. When people give you directions, say “gracias” and wander in the general direction they point, because your Spanish comprehension is limited, and Havana is not that big.
Stay in a cheap hotel frequented by hookers and gigolos because you booked online and didn’t know. Meet a Cuban poet on the steps of the El Capitolio building and walk with him past fading colonial beauties, a sculpture of a flamenco dancer, a hotel bar haunted by Hemingway. Listen to the poet’s stories of international Facebook friends and a growing blog readership and know that he is lying, because Internet access is shoddy and prohibitively expensive; you haven’t even checked your email. Understand his claustrophobia, that he is lost along a spectrum of love and hate for Fidel Castro, and that talking to you is as close as he’ll ever get to seeing the world. Wince when he asks you to buy him a blue striped tunic from the market. Realize he’s a gigolo. Switch hotels.
Feel lonely. Feel lonelier than you have ever felt before. Wonder what you are trying to prove, out here in the world. Wonder about the value of a beautiful photograph. Decide to stop traveling alone, without purpose.
 
Ghana, 2013
Don’t use your left hand or wear flip-flops in public or show the bottom of your feet to a village elder. Remember the iceberg diagram from training, designed to help you navigate cultural shock? It can’t help you now, you live in a slum.
Also, don’t sleep. The bass of the neighbourhood speaker stacks won’t let you. Go to work anyway, where the students are wary, then cautiously engaged, and then everything. Ishmael wants to be a writer and Joy wants to be the first female president of a student club and Samuel wants to be famous on the radio. Believe these things are possible, because they do.
Realize education is the only useful thing, and even it is not pure: despite his megawatt smile, the Nigerian professor hates you and your white skin and your “curriculum,” and you understand. You’ve been to the slave forts in Cape Coast, you know your ancestors were assholes.
Let the world stop when Samuel tells you, I’m going back to my village for a week because I’m hungry. Notice how thin he has become behind his carefully press collared shirts and professional swagger; hate yourself for not noticing earlier.
The night you’re scheduled to fly back to Canada, accept gifts the students bring to your home: a wooden necklace and a cut-out of a Ghanaian woman with a sign that says “Akwaaba,” or welcome. Ali Baba will be distant, one earbud in his ear, the other dangling around his neck. Laetitia will cry. When Samuel asks you to quickly record an intro for his new radio show, say okay, though you wish your voice didn’t sound like money.
Sob in the taxi on the way to the airport. You’re unlikely to see them again. They’ll scatter like seeds in the wind, back to the north of Ghana, back to Chad and Burkina Faso and Cameroon. Almost miss your flight, because you’re on Africa time now, for one more moment.
 
India, 2016
Eat with your hands. Swim on a Goan beach. Wear a sari. Wear an air pollution mask. Get food poisoning. Keep going. Make new friends. Watch your ass expand so it more closely resembles an Indian auntie’s. Learn the names of new trees. Gulmohar, amaltas, silk cotton. Learn the quintessential Indian head wobble. Teach English words to teenagers in a slum. Administration, shelter, certainly. Live in a palace. Try every mango. Langra, safeda, alphonso. Lean over the sink and let the juice run down your arms.
Climb into bed beside your guy. Ask, childlike: Are we having a sleepover? A line you have been using with each other for years. Insert earplugs, as he will, because your room is a humming symphony: an air purifier, an ancient air conditioner, a fan. Laugh in the dark when he speaks, and you speak, and you can’t hear each other. What?
Trust that fifty years from now your life will be like this, and where you are won’t matter at all.

1.
That’s not where your blood is supposed to go. You don't know much, you’re only four years old, but you know the blood is supposed to be on the inside of your body, cradling your organs and making your cheeks glow, not welling up in your mouth and definitely not being spat out on the bathroom floor. You wanted to see what would happen when you put the metal hanger clasp on your bottom lip and you found out the answer. Blood. Lots of it, everywhere. It runs down your chin and makes ugly patterns on your yellow tweety bird shirt. You look in the mirror, terrified but also impressed. You didn’t know your pint sized body could hold all that blood. You decide your mom needs to see this. You scamper out of the bathroom, your mouth still gushing blood at an alarming rate. It drips onto the hardwood floors your mother loves so much and your uncoordinated bare feet slip in the newly formed puddle of yourself. Your mom comes out of the kitchen to see you trying and failing to stand up in the pool of your own blood. She screams and drops the plate of tater tots that she was bringing to you. “Mom,” you say, “I need a band aid.”

2.
Fuck, it’s hot. Sweat drips down your forehead and stings your eyes. You press the button to roll the window down with your grubby five year old fingers but the car is turned off and the window remains rolled firmly up. You try to open the car door but for your own safety, the child lock is in effect. You undo your seatbelt, which thankfully works, and forcefully separate your sweaty thighs from the vinyl car seat that they’re currently stuck to with superglue strength. Stupid rental car with its stupid fake leather interior. You position your knobbly knees on the seat and hoist yourself up so you can see above the window sill. Thirty feet away, you spy your oblivious parents chatting it up with your aunt and cousins. “MOM!!!!!! DAAAAAAD!!!” you scream with all the fury your kindergarten lungs contain but the car that your parents rented for the weekend might as well been a recording studio because that deathbox is basically soundproof. Your mom stands with her arms folded, car keys in hand, paying rapt attention to some dumb shit your cousin is saying. Your dad tries to discreetly pick his nose. Those dicks. Don’t they know their child is dying? You ball up your fists, the same ones that got you suspended from school for two days, and pound the window like your tiny useless life depends on it. “MOM! DAD! DID! YOU! FORGET! ABOUT! ME!!!!!!!” you yell until your voice goes hoarse. They don’t even turn around. You slouch down, defeated. It’s time to give up. So this is where you die. Inside of a 1999 volkswagon bug in a Motel 6 parking lot in Napa, California. Who cares, it wasn’t that great of a life anyway. School’s boring and your mom keeps making you go to soccer no matter how many times you get hit in the head with the ball. Oh well, better luck next life. You close your eyes and wait for the sweet embrace of the grim reaper or whatever reaper apprentice they send for little five year old shits like you. Two minutes later, your mom opens the door and shakes you awake. “Get up, we’re going to Applebee’s.”

3.
Communion is just grown up snack time. Your mom scolds you for saying this, but as far as you can tell, it’s just an excuse for adults to have a bread and juice treat in the middle of boring church. And you want in. Normally, a pinch of gross bread that everyone’s been touching would be totally unappealing, but the mere fact that you can’t have it makes it attractive in your six year old eyes. Your mom says you can’t participate in it until you understand what it means. She tells you it’s symbolic of consuming the blood and body of Christ which sounds goth as hell to you and makes you want it even more. She asks you if you comprehend the gravity of the ritual and you nod your head as solemnly as you can. She deems you ready and on the day of your first communion, she mentions, oh by the way, the goblet on the right is wine and the grape juice is on the left. Make sure you take the one on the left. You line up for communion and nervously try to recall which goblet is which. Wine right, grape juice left, grape juice left, wine right, wine right, grape juice left, wine left, grape juice right, grape juice right, wine left, okay, got it. You approach the old round lady in your congregation with the tiny coke bottle glasses and she says to you, “Blood of Christ, spilt for you,” and you reach for the closest goblet and take a sip. This is some real shitty grape juice. You contort your face in reaction to the tart venom you tasted and the old round lady laughs at you. You realize you drank the wine instead and start crying because you think you’re going to die. Your mom told you once that all alcohol is poison and here you just took a big gulp of it. Your mom walks you outside until you calm down. You don’t die but you sit out communion for another year just to be safe.

4.
You’re watching Harry Potter in the theater and something weird is happening in your eight year old pants. Everytime Daniel Radcliffe is onscreen, you can feel your heartbeat in your private parts. You don’t know what kind of dark magic is happening but you do know that for some ungodly reason, everytime you see that skinny British runt, you want to put your mouth on his mouth even though you are on the record numerous times stating that kissing is gross and you personally will never do it. A few days later, your parents leave you alone in the family office, where the monster PC computer lives. Your mom taught you how to use Google recently for a class project and your mind starts wondering about the true depths of internet. You close the door and hunt and peck out “HARRY POTTER SHIRTLESS” into Google image search. Fortunately, your parents had the forethought to put a safety search on and your pervy endeavors were fruitless. After trying a few more variations, (HARRY POTTER NAKED, DANIEL RADCLIFFE SHIRTLESS, DRACO MALFOY SHIRTLESS, etc) you give up and out of frustration and fear of getting caught and exit out of the browser. A few days later, your mom confronts you about a few questionable search terms she found in the internet search history. You cry big ugly hot tears of humiliation and vow never to think sinful thoughts about boys again. That night, you dream of Hermione instead.

5.
You’re not asleep but you might as well be. The closing credits to The Princess Bride plays in the background as you curl up on your huge ass sofa, trying to make yourself as small as possible. Your sleepy body sinks into faded maroon couch cushions like quicksand and you never felt like you belonged anywhere more. You open your nine year old eyes just the narrowest sliver, and through your eyelashes, you see your mom turning off the blue television screen. You shut your eyes again so she won’t see that you’re actually awake. She walks over to you places her hand on your back and makes deliberate circular motions while humming. She stops humming and whispers softly as a prayer, “Baby, you gotta go to sleep in your own bed.” You pretend not to hear and concentrate on lying completely still. Make like you’re dead. If she thinks you’re really asleep, maybe she’ll carry you to bed. Or let you sleep on the couch. Either option would be preferred to the long laborious walk down the hall to your bedroom. It was only twenty feet or so but it might as well have been a forty year pilgrimage through an old testament desert. Sure enough a moment later, you feel your mom’s skinny but strong arms slide beneath your knees and your shoulders and lift you up human sacrifice style. You’re four foot ten in your stocking feet and your mom is barely five feet on tip toes and you definitely weigh the same by now, but judging by the steady sure way she picks you up without so much as a quiver, you might as well be a featherdown pillow. She carries you down the carpeted hallway, walking sideways so as not to hit your head on the wall. The humming resumes. She places you down in your bed that is the perfect size for you and tucks you in with the nimble skill and precision of a hospital nurse. When she’s finished, she kneels down, clasps her tired hands together, and starts murmuring the Lord’s prayer. “Our father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.” You stop pretending to be asleep and start genuinely drifting off. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” You stretch your legs out and your feet touch the footboard at the end of your bed. Soon you will outgrow this bed. Shortly after that, this room. “Give us this day our daily bread.” This will be one of the last times your mother is able to carry you to bed. Both of you realize this. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This will be one of the last times you pray together. Neither of you realize this. “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” Her voice gets softer as you start fading off into sleep. “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Forever and ever.” You will miss this love when it is no longer within reach. Right now it is all you know. “Amen.”

The sourness of death had barely filled the room when the dogs began to whine. The expression of dying is always the same drawn, blank stare, no matter the person. The mouth is the worst part. The fading brain instinctively slams neurons together, demanding the pull of breath, resulting in mouths that gape and gasp, exhausted by stiff lungs that have already forgotten the sweetness of air.

Luke had been in the room with his aunt, forced himself to feign comfort to her by touching her bare, withered arms, the veins strained under the paper thinness of her skin. Shifting into the final phases of life, the body seems to pull the blood from the face and extremities to supply the heart with a few last pulses. The skin stretches across the sockets and lips, smoothing the face into an unrecognizable mask. But she was still in there. A once healthy 50-year-old woman, as optimistic as she was broken. The slivers of two failed marriages and abuse calked the pieces of her heart together as it pumped, cheery as a caged lovebird, the promise of one day finding her grand love.

Luke had camped out in her living room for five days along with his cousins, and her first ex-husband. Choosing to die at home meant confronting the realities of the eroding body without the sterile calmness of a hospital. IV bags had a particular, measured smell in her bedroom with no air filter, plastic mixing with blood and sweat and fear.

Keeping her comfortable became the main focus of the group. They would roll her on her side until the red marks would soften from the sores on her back. They would change her clothes, wipe her mouth, and rub cucumber melon lotion into her skin. When her pain became too much, they medicated her with morphine, themselves with whiskey.

Her ex-husband had killed a man once during a bar fight two decades ago. He threw the man through a window, where he landed skull first on the curb, dying instantly from head trauma. From that day on he never touched another drink, until now. As he twisted the cork off the bottle, Luke didn’t feel the need to lecture, as they were all attempting to function in this vicious world of death and decay.

As a young woman, his aunt was breathtakingly beautiful. That was the curse of the women in his family; they were born with beautiful faces and bodies, but died before they could grow old. They were forever immortalized not as cancer victims, but as the sirens that could pick locks and sneak into garages, flanked by the men who surrendered their hearts to them. Luke remembered these women as the ones who showed him how to dance, to match his socks to his tie, and how to compliment a woman without sounding trite. As he watched his aunt breathe slowly under the bed sheet, he remembered her kindness and her affinity for gift giving.

Unable to find peace in love, she had settled for the man who sat beside her now, polishing off a bottle of rye like water. He gave her a son when she was just 17, another at 19, then ran off when they were small. Lee, her second husband, had married, divorced, and remarried her several times over ten years. She was a good candidate to manipulate; desperate for attention and willing to cleave red flags into halves like Moses. His only constant was his deceit. He slithered through their days together, slowly suffocating her love with all the strength he could muster. Once he had gorged himself on her adoration, he would slink away into the shadows, not to be seen until he was hungry again.

After her family took over her care, Lee disappeared. He never once came to see her in the hospital, nor did he stop by the house or call to check in. Whether it was despair over losing her, or the inability to process dying, no one knew. In turn, he was not there on the day she pulled her last breath, when the room seemed to close on itself. The air seemed to whip through the house, raising goose bumps on the family and lifting the ears of the dogs. As her heart stopped, so did the shift in pressure. For a moment, no one moved. The rush of finality had deafened everyone.

​Three days later, Lee blew his brains out in his living room.

They were closer, now. Marie turned over on her bed and listened for them. She pulled her sheets up over her body and then threw them off again, letting them fall to a heap on the floor.

She got off her bed and walked over to the mirror. She stared at it for a while, looked down at her own body and decided it wouldn’t do to be naked. She opened her wardrobe and thumbed through her dresses, running her fingers – greasy and unwashed - over the soft fabrics.

She took a few out and laid them on the floor. They were soft to the touch, and all brightly coloured. They had not been Marie’s favourite, in life when she preferred simpler colours, bold statements in black and white, but now these floral dresses seemed appropriate.

Marie could hear the Coyotes now. She didn’t like the way their whines were overcome by the softer, sweeter cries that hung in the air. She wished their approach was somehow more measurable, and felt a strange nostalgia for the coming of a storm, where she could count the seconds between the thunder and the lightening, and guess at the distance. She couldn’t quite imagine coyotes mixed with lightening. Marie turned to the dresses on the floor and sorted through them.

The blue one, she decided, was too simple and too sad. The pink-and-green one was too childish – it reminded her of a children’s birthday party. The red one felt the sweetest, but Marie worried it might be too bright. She didn’t want to wear anything that might distract from her own features, which she had often been told were distinctive.

Marie eventually settled for the lilac dress she had bought two years earlier for a fairy themed fancy dress party. She had changed her mind about wearing it on the day, she remembered, and instead had gone for something tighter and simpler. She had been complimented on that.

Marie turned back to the mirror and squinted until she saw something. She put on a light peach lipstick that matched the lining of her dress, and a thin layer of foundation. She kept the eye makeup light and didn’t bother at all with her contact lenses. The Coyotes would come close enough to see.

Marie made her bed and lay down on top of the sheets. It was a warm still night – she was not cold. She tried to cross her arms over her chest as she had seen at Catholic funerals, but it felt uncomfortable. She put her arms by her sides, and set her mind to listening.

The Coyotes were certainly close now, within a few streets of Marie’s home, and at such close distance Marie thought the human crying was a little more piercing than the animal’s calls. This frustrated her. She didn’t want to be thinking about people when she died.

After around fifteen minutes Marie thought she could recognise the sounds of a family. The Callaghans, three doors across from her, were beautiful and polite, Mr Callaghan always sweeping away to office meetings and late night partied in his slick designer car, Mrs Callaghan always laughing and gasping, and styling her hair like some sort of movie star. Perhaps she had almost been one, at some point.

Marie did not think her neighbours’ screams belonged on the big screen, however. The woman’s were too low, and the man’s too high. Even the little boy – now school age – sounded wrong. He was too babyish, thought Marie a little sadly, he didn’t sound right for his age at all.

Marie sighed and comforted herself in the Coyotes’ proximity. She was sure she had only minutes left, and then they would come, then they would take her and it would all be done with.

She took several deep breaths, in and out, and tried to keep calm, tried to keep still. She sucked in her stomach and pushed out her breasts. She wanted to look appetising, somehow. She wasn’t quite sure what a Coyote saw as appetising.

She licked her lips, and waited. But nobody came.

 The pack had moved on, scouring the streets for families to stake out, for game to hunt. An individual waiting patiently wasn’t worth the bother of coming indoors.

Marie was close to tears. She was sure their calls were growing further, as they grew deeper, once more taking dominance over the human weeping.

Marie sat up in her bed, readjusted her hair. She sighed and looked around, considered going to the window to see the carnage, or heading to the streets to track down a Coyote herself. But then –
Footsteps were padding their way up her staircase, heavy, and uncomfortable, unused to such narrow passages. Marie heard a yawn, and then she heard a growl, and then she heard a gentle, rasping sniff.
Coyote pushed at her door and it opened. He stared at her, smiling, his long tongue running over his teeth, hanging out the side of his mouth. Spit dribbled from his chin and fell into dark, grey droplets on Marie’s floor.

‘That’s going to stain the carpet,’ she thought.

It snowed when Amelia was younger. Once, just once. It wasn’t the snow she heard about from the legends. Like powdered sugar, they told her. Like shredded coconut. It was greasy and smelled wrong, left stains where it landed. Came down in oily clumps. It could not be made into snowballs or snowmen, like the kind she saw in old pictures. It didn’t stay long, either. Couldn’t. Not under their sun, blue and blistering and belligerent. But for the time that it was there—hours, she thinks, or maybe just thirty minutes—she and the other children took advantage of it, thousands of footprints circling the streets, five-year-olds who forgot what “cooties” meant, who held each others’ hands as they skipped and sang and drew pictures in the snow.

Mothers were crying, taking pictures, recording the moment (as if any footage would outsurvive them) but the dream was there, alive for the first time in years. “—Just so glad they’re alive to have this,” Amelia heard a mom say. And later, “You know this is the last one we’ll ever see.”

Now, seven-year-old Amelia is reminded on a regular basis that they are fortunate enough to be alive. “I didn’t think we’d last this long,” a mom tells her. And a chorus of them, all asking, “Isn’t it beautiful, baby?”

She assumes they mean their survival, their breathing in sacks of heat, their lungs blackened and charred like the burnt ends of some long ago beast. She doesn’t feel beautiful though. She feels tired. And hot. And exactly like everyone else. All of them wearing white, always. Cotton so thin you can see each other’s bellies, sweaty and slick from the sun.

You will all likely die in the next five years, maybe sooner. We don’t tell you this to scare you, we tell you this because we don’t want to give you false hope. This is the world you were born into, before we knew what was happening. We’re sorry. But if it helps, you won’t die alone. We’re all going to die with you, right by your sides.

Their version of school. That and storytelling. Lots and lots of storytelling. Stories from old planets, breeds that had died from extinction long before Amelia was even conceived. Stories from the older generations, stories that they promised were true but sounded like fairytales.

Until the snow. Amelia would have sworn it was a myth until it happened. It was like nothing the adults described, but real all the same. Snow. Her favorite memory.

And then, just like that, on the cusp of her eighth birthday, the sun gave out a great yawn, as if he, too, was tired of waiting. The constant lookout for that inevitable great burst of fire.

But it wasn’t great. It wasn’t all at once. It started with the trees, the slow becoming of ash. Small sporadic bursts of fire, flames that licked the dust beneath their feet until they had no choice but to run and hide . . . where? Nowhere, nowhere to go. Lakes were evaporating. Oceans were a myth. Trees were burning torches, impossible to climb. So to the houses they went, to the tops of roofs, the “nonflammable” constructions.

But nothing was immune to their sun, not really. Their homes were built to give them time, if only a minute or two. Just long enough for a few last words, some tearful embraces. Just long enough to pay witness.

​From her perch on the roof, Amelia watched. Waited. Moms cried in the background, a collective. There were children by their sides, curled up like tortoise shells. Some took pills, a softer death. Some sang. But Amelia stood at the edge until her face got hot, until everything turned to ash, and as the sun got bigger and closer and the world flared up and out, Amelia watched the white hot specks of burnt things fall around her. Like snow, she thought. Like the snow they first told us about. She could feel it, the tips of her fingers turning, and suddenly she was ready. Ready for the fire, for the white-hot act of a final breath. Ready to become her favorite memory.

When I was a little kid, I had a secret that I never told anyone. I was going to become a legend. It was merely a matter of getting in front of the right people, being seen and being heard. When I went to the movies or listened to records by the popular singers of the day, I knew I could do that, given half a chance. It wasn’t until I went off to college that I discovered not everyone wanted to be a movie star, much less of legendary status. What was wrong with them?

I was a plump kid who wore thick glasses when few other kids did. As a young girl growing up in the Los Angeles suburb of Pacific Palisades in the 1950s, I was way too smart for most of the boys and had little in common with the other girls. The girls around me were still playing with dolls and learning domestic skills from their mothers. Unlike many of my friends, my personality was composed of both male and female characteristics– classic androgyny – when that was not mainstream or even socially acceptable. I was empathic and sentimental but also strong and athletic. Later, as a psychologist, I would learn that androgyny and mental health often went hand in hand. But that was not recognized as optimal when I was growing up. So the thought I might be special or fated for fame somehow made it all understandable. It gave value and meaning to my uniqueness. I wasn’t a nerdy loser; I was anointed. It’s just that nobody knew it yet.
​
The 1950s era was perhaps the last time in our culture when it was possible to be “discovered.” You’d be sitting in a restaurant or at a bus stop and some talent agent or famous director would see you and just know you should be signed to a contract immediately. You weren’t picked out for stardom because you had talent, mind you. You had a certain look or unique personality or demeanor. Movie magazines were full of such juicy stories. I didn’t know one could go to school to learn to be an actor, that there might be a career path. To me, it was serendipitous, a matter left to the Hollywood fates. It had happened to Lana Turner, Clark Gable, Debbie Reynolds and Janet Leigh, among so many others, after all – all created and groomed by the studio system. In those days a handful of big studios controlled movie making in every way. They would take you under wing, teach you how to do everything, control your life and promote you to stardom.

It was also a time when stars were carefully presented to the public via information written or screened by studio publicists. There were no gossipy newspapers, no National Enquirers, no reality or tabloid TV shows spilling every secret – no computers and no Google. There was only the seedy but irresistible Confidential magazine, eventually sued out of existence for telling sordid tales without studio clearance. The information vacuum made the image on the big screen that much more powerful and the lives of the stars more glamorous and unknowable. There were no tape recorders, no VHS, DVRs or digital replay. The experience of watching a film was a singular one – it happened only in the theater. It was big, intense and powerful. I couldn’t get enough. I was at the movies whenever I could afford to be.

The Bay, my home away from home, was a 1100-seat theater with art deco flourishes throughout the décor. Walking in past the effluvia of buttered popcorn coming from the refreshment stand on the left, the eyes automatically were drawn downward as the extravagantly ornamental carpeting seemed almost alive. On the back wall in the lobby was an equally over-the-top brightly-colored mural that resembled an Audubon painting had the artist been high on dexadrine. The interior was less visually noisy, the winding flowery design forming a narrow ribbon on all the walls surrounding the screen. There was a balcony that ran the width of the theater but I never sat up there, even when I came with a boyfriend. I was far more interested in the action on the screen. And just in case the movie was dull, one could focus on the painted Greek-like statues on either side of the screen area. There was something to see everywhere you looked.

I had seen actual movie stars in that exotic setting, on those rarified nights when a studio would hold a sneak preview there. Klieg lights excited the sky and could be seen for miles. The audience wouldn’t know what they’d see until the credits flashed on the screen. It didn’t matter to me. I just loved the experience of being part of an early and important focus group. Afterwards, there would be cards to fill out. Did you like Elizabeth Taylor in this? Was there anything you didn’t like? What did you think of the ending? Somebody in Hollywood wanted to know what I thought of the movie. The best part, though, was seeing the stars who attended these galas, engulfed in their fame and entitlement.

More to the point, I knew exactly which movie star I wanted to be: Doris Day. Her first movie was mine, too - “Romance on the High Seas,” in 1948. I was five; she was (depending on whom you believe) 26. I’m sure it wasn’t love at first sight, the adoration likely accumulating over the countless hours I spent at the movies watching her in those colorful, magical Warner Bros. musicals. There was no doubt that hers was the world in which I wanted to live. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real. She was everything I wanted to be. She was perky, clever, talented, attractive and socially adept. She was perpetually smiling and happy. And even when she’d cry, it was for a really good reason and the sadness never lasted very long. And that voice – so warm and personal, the intonation perfect, the diction crystalline. In her early film promotions, the studio publicity department had dubbed her “The Tomboy of Warner Bros.” and boy, could I relate to that. In “By The Light of the Silvery Moon,” she emerged from under a model T, all greasy, having successfully fixed the family flivver. That was a radical scene for the sexist 1950s. Her early screen persona reassured me I didn’t have to be frilly and feminine to make my way in the world and be accepted. There were no role models remotely like me in my real world. I had to find one by buying a movie ticket.

As I looked around me, the worst thing I could imagine was that I would become like many of the neighborhood women. Once the morning chores were completed, they’d meet in each other’s homes, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes and kibbitz about their husbands. Even at my young age, it seemed like a vacuous, unfulfilling world. Doris was infinitely more interesting, promising something I could never see on my block. In fact, most everything about Hollywood seemed far better and more important than anything I experienced in my real life.

To discover who Doris Day was when she wasn’t portraying a character, I went to the only available source – movie magazines. I figured out when they’d hit the stands at our local Rexall Drug Store and I was there that day right after school.  Rexall was owned by a curmudgeonly 40s-ish man with badly pocked skin who tracked us as we hurried to the magazine racks to the right. Though the shelves throughout the store were filled with easy-to-pocket items like cosmetics and over-the-counter remedies, he was obviously afraid we’d furtively abscond with a movie magazine. I was much more interested in finding Doris in their pages. Stealing never occurred to me. There might be photos of her on the cover or inside features showing her on the set, helping the movers carry boxes into her new Beverly Hills home, or multiple shots with her husband and agent, Marty Melcher. She looked as if she were enjoying her life, half-smiling at someone, not really posing. The candid shots showed her often in pedal pushers, the collar of her blouse turned up. The short blonde hairstyle and casual look gave the impression her perky, energetic self was in perpetual motion. Everything in her world just seemed perfect to me – both on and off screen. My bedroom walls were covered with framed 8X10 glossies of movie stars, many of them personally autographed and several from Doris, herself.

My other habitual pit stop was the local record store where I’d spend my allowance (and later, my babysitting money) for whatever record she issued. It was a small store on Swarthmore Street on the main drag. Walking in, the smell of vinyl was almost overpowering. Though there were instruments on the walls and tiny teaching rooms in the back, the store was mostly filled with records from every era. Rifling through the bins, I looked for 45s and LPs with her name on them. It didn’t matter what the song or album was, so long as I would hear her reassuring voice when I put it on my portable bedroom record player.  I’d hurry home with my new treasure and play it repeatedly until I knew every nuance of voice and music and then sing along until I learned the lyrics by heart – and long afterwards.

It wasn’t at all inconsequential that I grew up in a community full of people working in all aspects of show business. Living on our eucalyptus-lined street were silent film star Francis X. Bushman and exotic heartthrob Anthony Quinn. Richard Boone lived around the corner. People would see them around town but they were seldom asked for autographs or really noticed much. I could easily run into James Arness or Vivian Vance in the drug store, or see Jerry Lewis driving through town in his big convertible. I’d wave at him and he’d wave back.

In fact, I had sent Lewis a “condolence letter” when he broke up the successful partnership with Dean Martin in 1956. Lewis was Honorary Mayor in our community of Pacific Palisades. I had enjoyed his wacky films with Martin and was genuinely disappointed that pairing was kaput. The professional divorce was big news, headlines in all the papers. People took it very personally, too, declaring polarized sympathies with one partner or the other. One night on my way out to a dreaded Cotillion at Buddy Ebsen’s School of Dance, the phone rang. I was fooling around in my room, imagining the social rejection ahead. Looking in the mirror, I had seen the femmy, uncomfortably pink dress so appropriate for the occasion but not for me, and had issued the now ritualistic complaints to my mother who had selected it. I answered the phone on the fourth ring, thinking it was a friend, commiserating with my fate that night.

“Hello.  Is Pam there?”

“This is Pam.”

“Pam, this is Jerry Lewis.” I thought at first it was a friend putting me on. It took me a second but then I recognized his voice from the movies. It was his serious, adult voice, not the zany kid he often portrayed.

“Oh.  Hi.” What should I say to him?

“Pam, I called to thank you for the very nice letter. It was sweet of you to write.”

“You’re welcome, Honorary Mayor Lewis.” Was it really him – calling me?

“I know you probably have lots of important things to do but I wanted to call to tell you I’m very honored that you thought enough to write to me.”

Then I remembered the likely reason for the call. “I am really sorry this happened, Mr. Lewis. I’ll miss seeing your movies with Mr. Martin.”

“There will be others. I’m making one by myself now. It’ll be out in a few months. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

“I’m sure I will. Can hardly wait to see it.”

“I’ll let you go now. Thanks again for thinking of me.”

“You’re so welcome. Thank you for calling me.”

That night, at the Cotillion, I breathlessly told whoever would listen about the incredible call but all I got were blank stares. Did they not believe me? Did they not know who he was? Getting a call from such a famous person admittedly was an unusual occurrence, out of most people’s realm of experience. How had he gotten my phone number, anyway?

Even before my teens, I was able to recognize the character actors I’d encounter in the market from the books I had read about the biz. But I didn’t have to look too far for real fame. It was just across the street from me. In a white clapboard house still living with his family was Doug McClure, who made his mark first as a model, then as Trampas on “The Virginian.” He and his brother had played catch in the street in front of my house and let me sit on the curb and watch. Many of my classmates were the kids of famous people.  A few became famous on their own. 

I was surrounded by possibility.

As I read all the movie magazines, I imagined myself in them, their glossy pages promising insider tales of domestic bliss and unparalleled happiness. A star’s toothy, beaming countenance on the cover was sufficient provocation for me to practice that exact grin in the mirror. It was all demeanor, after all, a life of illusion. I was in training.

By the time I was 13 or so, I was ready to explore this intriguing world in person. Boarding a municipal bus with my best friend, Jacquie, we would head off to the Brown Derby in Hollywood to have lunch with the movie stars and the Hollywood elite. It took a while to save up to be able to afford one of the cheapest things on the menu, the Cobb salad, but it was the best place to see movie stars and possibly be discovered. And the Derby was much more urbane than the tacky but equally fecund Schwab’s drugstore some blocks away where Lana Turner was supposedly discovered while sitting at the soda fountain. The Derby’s dining room was long, narrow and sedate, filled with red leather booths with bleached white tablecloths so white it almost hurt your eyes. The booths lined the three walls with another row in the middle of the room. The best tables were against the wall, the better to see what celebrated personage had entered the restaurant.  The Derby was famous for Jack Lane’s caricatures of the stars hanging on its walls, famous people who had actually eaten there. When we got seated, I’d ask the waiter with a conspiratorial whisper if there were any movie stars there today and there always were. I tried not to stare, to stay nonchalant and blasé about it all. Once, I asked Jacquie to go outside to a nearby phone booth, call the dining room and ask for me. When the waiter brought the phone to me after announcing my name, I pretended it was a call from my agent.  I felt very special, indeed, like a real celebrity. I looked around with exaggerated importance as I made the faux call. Unfortunately, no one seemed to notice.

After lunch, we’d walk by the Capitol Records tower on Vine Street in the heart of Hollywood, just a short block away. I knew that no lowly civilians were ever allowed in there, but it was thrilling just to stand outside, knowing what wonderful sound was produced in that huge cylindrical recording studio. It would have been luscious if a big-name singer would have walked in or out, but it never happened. 

Jacquie and I had met as we walked to school on the same path. I was in the fourth grade, she in third. Her parents were Jewish-Romanian immigrants who spoke English with a heavy accent and, even then, I sensed something wasn’t right with the family unit. She seemed to want to spend a lot of time with me and at my house, which fit my needs perfectly. We were both gaga for Hollywood but we were different in many other ways. Jacquie wasn’t especially interested in school or thought about a career. She knew early on her fate would be as a wife and mother. Intriguing to me, however, was the fact that her uncle was Herb Vigran, a highly visible character actor on TV and film. It was disappointing to me I never got to meet him, but he was able to get her autographed photos of some of her favorite stars. I always suspected she (and he) were instrumental in my receiving several autographed photos from Doris, too, but she would never admit the connection for some odd reason.

At that point, I must have thought that talent and fame had the same properties as cooties. If you stood close enough, you’d catch them and you’d be infected with a life of fun and excitement, transformed. Looking back on it now, though, I realized it wasn’t the stars themselves that intrigued me as much as their lives. What was it like to be a working actor, to be rich, to be famous, to be recognized everywhere you went? To see myself up on that big screen? I wanted to live an extraordinary life, full of passion and big moments, in contrast to the choices that had been made by the adults around me.

When the timing was right, we’d sneak into TV tapings at NBC on the corner of Sunset and Vine just down the street from the Derby. You had to be 16 to get in but we’d puff our 13-year-old selves up, act cool and easily passed by the ushers.

“How old are you?” an usher would ask.

Jacquie was shy so I’d pipe up, confidently. “We’re sixteen, sir, just last month.” Again, demeanor won the day. I just knew when the cameras panned the audience someone would see me and single me out for a studio contract or at least an audition. More than watching the show being filmed, I tracked the position of the cameras. I put a slight smile on my face as they panned our section.

On the way home from Hollywood, we’d get off the bus at Canon Drive at Santa Monica Boulevard in Beverly Hills and walk the four blocks up to 713 North Crescent Drive where Doris Day lived. Long before, I had somehow acquired a Map of the Stars, so I knew where they all lived. But I was only interested in one of them. Fortunately, Jacquie was also a fan so she didn’t mind repeatedly walking back and forth up and down the block, feigning insouciance. On one daring occasion, we ventured a walk down the alley behind her house, hoping to see something – or even her. The dense shrubs and thick plantings were effective obstacles, preventing even a glimpse, so we never bothered again. Besides, we had seen the Beverly Hills Police Department patrolling the streets around there, probably looking for possible interlopers just like us. It was my dearest fantasy that she would suddenly emerge, spot us and invite us in. I even had dreams about what the inside of the house looked like, fueled by occasional photos in the magazines.   Much later, when I was an adult, her house was featured in Architectural Digest and it wasn’t at all what I had imagined it to be, disappointingly “done.” These were the years long before stalking became an issue but, in retrospect, we weren’t too far from that – merely lacking the malevolence.

During my early teen years, Pete Duchow, our very handsome neighbor who lived across the street, went to work for Capitol Records as an A&R man (artists and repertoire). When I heard this, I knew fame was just a matter of time. I had babysat for his little girl; cleaned the house for his wife sometimes to earn extra money. He had the job (without any training, I sniffed) of selecting what songs singers recorded on their latest albums. Immediately prior to this, he had been cleaning swimming pools for a living and I couldn’t figure out how he could land a position of that stature. This only confirmed my belief in the serendipitous magic of success in Hollywood. He thought he was very important and I completely concurred. Sometimes he came over to our house to have me to listen to an unreleased 45 and ask my opinion. While I thought he was gorgeous and worked to stifle my youthful romantic fantasies, what I really wanted was for him to sign me to a Capitol contract. Doris recorded for Columbia but Capitol had Sinatra and Garland. Good enough. It turned out, however, that Pete’s contribution to my life was selling me - at a “special” discount - the LPs that were given to him free by his bosses at Capitol. 

Through Pete, my family met Bob Bailey. Bob was a prominent radio actor, having starred in the popular “Let George Do It,” a popular mystery program, for a couple of years. But he was best known for his portrayal of the title character in “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.” He had a gloriously resonant, distinctive, immediately recognizable voice just made for radio. Though I thought him charismatic, his slight build (and, I would later discover, his history of alcoholism) meant he was not often hired for film or television roles. But he was a bona fide star on the radio when radio was still big.

Bob spent time at our house now and again but never brought his family, which I thought puzzling. He was married and had three children, the youngest of whom was severely retarded but living at home, unusual in those days. Bob’s presence in our living room was always entertaining. I would rush into the room when I heard he was there, just to hear anything he had to say. He would regale us with stories of his times on various sets or his interaction with other actors. I thought of him as the ultimate insider, the closest I could get to real Hollywood. Bob often brought me his old Johnny Dollar scripts the week after they’d aired. The next day, I called my friends together to meet for our regular re-enactments, all huddling around the script - long before the invention of the Xerox machine. We’d pass it from hand to hand, each reading our lines as if it were being broadcast from my bedroom. Needless to say, I was Johnny Dollar.

“Tonight and every weekday night, Bob Bailey in the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account, America’s fabulous free-lance insurance investigator…”

“Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar!”

When I went to his house to visit his daughter who was about my age, I would walk into his den and see this week’s ‘Johnny Dollar’ script on his desk. The whole room was infused with his Old Spice cologne, which I have loved ever since and instantly associate with him. On the longest living room wall was a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall bookcase filled with plays and books about the theater. When the daughter was in the other room or doing chores for her mother, I would sit down and read anything within my reach. Bob told me about a book club where he was able to acquire many of these books, the Fireside Theatre. I joined immediately and eventually accumulated an impressive number of plays, adding to my paltry but growing knowledge of theatrical literature.

At some point, I summoned the courage to ask Bob if I could go with him some Sunday afternoon to the CBS studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood where he taped his shows. To my delight, he agreed. I held his script on my lap in the car as we made the 45-minute drive down Sunset, all the while regaling him with my well cultivated Johnny Dollar impression. My attempts to replicate the tough, hard insurance investigator “with the action-packed expense account” made him laugh. He thought I had captured his idiosyncratic, tough-guy theatrical demeanor perfectly – for a kid and a girl at that. As he drove, we discussed the various Hollywood landmarks we were passing: offices of famous agents, the former nightclubs that once beckoned glamorous stars into their exclusive banquettes. Once at the famous, historically significant studio, he introduced me to the other actors and showed me how the sound effects worked. Then he asked me to read some lines from the script for them, to show off my impersonation. I was excited and nervous and wondered if this was the moment I would be discovered. 

I turned to the scene I had memorized, took a studied masculine stance and launched into my Johnny Dollar impersonation. The other actors and director laughed, thinking it was cute, a novelty, a young girl sounding like Johnny. After the reading, he led me upstairs in the booth to sit with the engineer while the show was being recorded. It was never mentioned again. My moment had apparently passed. Wasn’t I good enough?  What would it take to pass an audition? I was disappointed but, ever the student, knew I needed more information to succeed at this. The visits became a frequent event over the next few years and, of course, greased the fantasies that I, too, could become a famous radio actor someday, somehow.

All this preoccupation with what I hoped would be my future profession was revealed only to Jacquie, who enthusiastically encouraged me. She enjoyed taking interviews from movie magazines and then asking me the same questions, as if I were a movie star.

“What is your favorite color?”

“Who would you most like to portray on the screen?”

“Who is your favorite director?”

I loved the mock interviews. They were like dry runs, rehearsals for the real thing. I knew would happen down the line. It was all kept quiet as I suspected the adults in my world would think it all frivolous. Girls were supposed to grow up to be wives and mothers, a hammered insidious social message. No woman in my parent’s social circle had a career or worked outside the home. None of them had any direct experience with The Biz, either.

There were more adventures around the corner. When I was about 14, my A&R neighbor, Pete, was taking care of a house for a few weeks in Brentwood. He asked if my family wanted to come and visit, since there was a swimming pool, a real treat. When I found out the house belonged to Academy Award winning actor Edmond O’Brien, I could hardly stand the wait. I had never been in a real movie star’s house before. Bob Bailey was a radio celebrity, sure, but somehow that wasn’t the same. Movie stars were real stars, permanently etched in the pantheon of fame. And Eddie had won an Oscar!

Everyone walked into the woodsy, darkened house to get changed for swimming. The house was homey and comfortable, obviously expensively furnished. Too young to recognize the names of designers, I only knew I hadn’t seen patterns and textures quite like this before. I furtively walked around, quietly checking out all the rooms, trying to sop up how a movie star lives. When I happened into his den, I suddenly found myself in the startling presence of The Oscar. It was encased in a glass globe, sitting on a little wooden stage. My breath caught as I absorbed the history that sat on that mantel. I slowly read the inscription: “Edmond O’Brien. Best Supporting Actor. ‘The Barefoot Contessa.’ 1954.” Just then, Pete stuck his head in the door and informed me, “Eddie made the stage himself, just for the statue.” It was beautiful. As I stood there staring, I felt as if I were worshipping at a shrine. 

Pete left the room and I looked over at the desk, as I always did at Bob Bailey’s house. There were scripts piled up, handwritten notes on top. Suddenly I spotted the Rolodex. I felt my heartbeat quicken as I looked through it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Here were the names and phone numbers of seemingly every big name in Hollywood, from Darryl F. Zanuck to Louella Parsons. I looked under D for Day but she wasn’t there. When I came to Ida Lupino’s name, I stopped cold. Her TV show with husband Howard Duff was one of my very favorites. “Mr. Adams and Eve” was about a show biz couple with the insider theme I found so seductive. I quickly found a piece of paper and a pen and copied down the phone number. I just wanted to have it, like an autograph. I would never do anything with it. I was hyperventilating with excitement (not to mention fear of discovery) as I quickly put on my swimming suit and joined the others in the pool.

It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks later that my parents went out with friends on a Friday night, leaving me at home to babysit for my brother. At nine o’clock, my brother safely in bed, I tuned into “Mr. Adams and Eve.” The episode that night involved a young girl who Ida’s character was grooming for stardom. That was all the encouragement my fantasies needed. After shockingly little thought, I went to my desk and pulled out Lupino’s phone number, made a path directly to the phone in the living room and dialed. I assumed a maid would answer. I’d leave a message of congratulations on the terrific show that night and hang up. No harm, no foul. 

(phone rings, an answer)

“Hello?”

I figured if I sounded like I knew her, the maid would be more likely to take the message down. Remembering the lessons of demeanor, my voice reeked with all the pneumatic confidence only a 14-year-old can muster.

“Hello!  Is Ida there?”

“This is Ida.”

Of course it is. Who else could speak with that familiar engine-purring throatiness? Uh oh. Now what? Think fast, Pam. Keep it cool.

“You don’t know me. I got your number from a mutual friend.” I knew she had done several films with Edmond O’Brien and that they really were good friends.

“Oh, who’s that?”

I clearly was not going to implicate anyone else in this impulsive, crazy, probably illegal caper. I could get in a lot of trouble.

“Well, Miss Lupino, I just called to tell you how much I enjoyed tonight’s show. It was very inspiring.”I wondered if she noted how I had changed the form of address.

“I’m glad. So nice of you to say that.”

“I….uh…am an actress, too.” Oh, my God. How far can I carry this deception? Can she call a cop? What if my parents find out? Is there such a thing as being grounded for life?

“Are you, darling? Well, maybe we can use you on the show.”

I thought the top of my head would blow off. Is this how it happens? Pure chutzpah?

“I would love that.”

“Do you have pictures and an agent?”

Oh, now she’ll know I’m an amateur.

“No, not yet.”

“You have to get one. Call the Dorothy Otis Agency. Maybe she can help. But you need pictures first.”

“Oh. OK. That’s so nice of you, Miss Lupino. Thanks for the career advice.”

“You’re welcome, Darling. Good night.”

“Good night.”

I hung up the phone and stood motionless, staring at the wall. What just happened? I had cold-called a big movie and TV star who gave me a road map to get on her highly-rated TV show, that’s what. But what do I do now? I was 14 years old. I didn’t know how to navigate these waters. I had only lived in the world of fantasy. Execution was something beyond my capabilities. I knew I’d have to get help for this next step. I’d have to blow my cover, admit what I’d done. Talk about a double bind.

When my parents got home, I reluctantly told them the story and what I had been advised to do – by Ida Lupino! They took the news surprisingly well, though I’m sure they wondered what kind of alien they had spawned. My father quickly decided he would take the photos. Looking back on it now, I’m sure neither of them thought anything would come of it and didn’t want to invest any time or money in such a remote possibility. They didn’t have any of the necessary expertise, either, but did what they could to help. My father did take the pictures – at night, after coming home from work.  When they came back from the photo store, my heart dropped. There was no hiding it. As I looked at the pictures I saw the overweight, apple-cheeked girl I was, posed poorly and with bad amateur lighting to boot. Overcome with disappointment and embarrassment, I wondered how I could possible transcend this obstacle. I was afraid Ida would laugh at me if she saw the photos and immediately knew this wasn’t going any further. There was no Plan B and my parents didn’t offer any more encouragement. I was left to my own devices, both to cope with this and to think about what next.

Over the next year, there were several other seminal events in the care and feeding of my show biz obsession and the infatuation with Doris Day. About the same time, I began a subscription to Daily Variety, the Bible of show business, a commitment that lasted over 50 years. It would teach me about the business side of show.
Getting off the bus after school one afternoon, Jacquie suggested we stroll over to the drug store to pick up the latest issue of Screen Stories. That was one of my favorite movie magazines, always filled with photos and summarized plots for five of the latest releases. The trip to the drug store wasn’t a hard sell. So in we walked and when I started thumbing through the magazine, I was rocked to see a short article near the front. It was a feature called “Lookalikes” and there was a picture of me - right next to Doris Day. It took me a minute to take this in. I hadn’t known Jacquie had taken the shot so it wasn’t all that good a picture, which is probably why the editor at Screen Stories thought we looked alike. We did have the same haircut and were both blonde. I was very excited about being in a movie magazine, though, even under these odd circumstances. Mostly, it went unnoticed by those around me. Didn’t matter. It was a brief, if insignificant brush with fame, another rung on the ladder. Like a fireman shoveling coal in a speeding train, it was fuel.
One evening, I walked across the street to babysit for Pete and his wife, he of avaricious Capitol Records fame. As she put her daughter to bed, she casually told me Pete had a new job. He was now working for Marty Melcher, Doris Day’s husband. What? In fact, they had socialized with the Melchers on several occasions at their Malibu beach house. She described Doris playing volleyball on the sand and their having barbecues together. What? What?

“She kept saying when she liked something, ‘Crazy’ and laughing real loud. She loves the music of Paul Anka, played it in the background most of the day. We had a great time.”

She might as well have spread a line of cocaine in front of an addict. My neighbors were hanging out with Doris Day, my neighbors - people who knew of my strange affinity for all things Doris. And yet they did nothing – I repeat, nothing – to facilitate a meeting of any kind. So close and yet so far. What kind of people are these? They obviously didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure I did, either.

Then, out of nowhere, my parents called me into the living room and told me as a present for my upcoming 15th birthday, they had managed to get me two tickets to the world premiere of Doris Day’s latest film, “Teacher’s Pet” at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood. I couldn’t drive yet, and I most certainly didn’t want to go with either parent, so they recruited the older son of a family friend to go with me. In 1958, premieres were a very big deal - Klieg lights, cameras everywhere, live television coverage with interviews by Army Archerd, fans screaming in the stands. And I’d be strolling into the theater on the very same red carpet Doris would be walking on minutes after me. Wow. Talk about ratcheting up the fantasy.

Robin was a gangly 18-year-old boy with a dusty old beater that seemed to match his personality. To preserve the illusion, I cajoled him into parking it a block away, rather than join the limo line in front of the theater. When we stepped on to the red carpet, though, everyone screamed, thinking it was somebody important. Of course, I waved and smiled, reveling in my momentary brush with fame, finally able to use “the look” I had practiced in front of my mirror at home. Robin, probably completely mortified, wanted to go inside and sit down but I was holding out for Doris to arrive. And arrive she did, dressed in a long, sparkly white gown with a matching fur, flashing her megawatt smile. She was no more than 20 feet away from me. There she was. I nearly stepped on Clark Gable to get a better look over his shoulder. Once she entered the theater, Robin and I went in and sat down. I squirmed around, trying to see where she was sitting. The woman next to me shot me an indignant look. She was likely unhappy that I had accidentally leaned on her expensive sable coat. “Sorry,” I said quite insincerely, looking into her eyes. When I realized it was Rhonda Fleming, I knew we were sitting with Hollywood royalty. Then I took a longer look, since I was right there. It was then I could see why she was called by some “The Queen of Technicolor.” Her bright red hair was almost startling, as was the heaviness of her perfume, the epitome of Hollywood glamour. The brief glimpse in the forecourt would be the last I saw of Doris that night. But I kept thinking about being in the middle of all that excitement, almost as if I belonged. What would it take, I wondered? 

I loved the movie and ended up seeing it more than a dozen times, not unusual for me with my Doris enchantment. It was hard being a wannabe.  I was getting tired of hearing my callous neighbors talk about the wonderful times they were having with her. I unilaterally decided to take matters into my own hands. 
Her birthday and anniversary with Melcher were just a month away and happened to be on the same day, April 3. I conscripted an on-and-off boyfriend for company and planned an incursion into North Crescent Drive. I had read in a movie magazine that she loved Tootsie Rolls, so I bought a big box of them and wrapped it up. Nick and I boarded the two buses it took to get into Beverly Hills and made the long, anxiety-filled walk up Crescent. I glanced sideways at the overweight teenage boy overdressed in his ROTC uniform and selfishly hoped he’d stay in the background.

I took a deep breath and rang the doorbell. There was a long pause and I nearly turned to leave, with mixed feelings of disappointment and relief. Then the door opened and I immediately recognized her son, Terry, who was just a few years old than I was. I told him – announced it, really - we were there to give his mother a present for her birthday and anniversary.

“Wait a minute,” he said, abruptly closing the door. I figured he wouldn’t come back. This was a pretty ballsy thing to do, after all. She probably turned away a lot of unwanted visitors and…then the door opened and…gasp….she stood there, not more than three feet from me.

“Hello. Terry said you were here. I’m having a dress fitting.”

She was taller and thinner than I thought she’d be. She didn’t seem to be wearing makeup so I was able to see all those freckles she complained about in interviews. 

“Oh. Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Melcher. I read in a movie magazine that you liked these.” I thrust the box out in front of me and she took it. I was hoping I wouldn’t faint, throw up or turn into a pillar of salt.

“That’s very nice. Thank you.”

I realized my face had likely frozen into a startled mask and forced it into a big smile.

“Happy birthday and happy anniversary!”

“Well, thanks. I have to get back to my fitting now. Thanks again.” She closed the door very softly. I think she might have smiled back, but by that time I was nearly catatonic.

I don’t remember the walk back down Crescent Drive. I felt as if I had been administered curare. This had been a major goal of my childhood, really, and I had made it happen. We actually met, had a conversation. Unbelievable. Nick and I boarded another bus into Hollywood so I could see “Teacher’s Pet” again, this time with a whole different context. I found myself silently mouthing her part of the dialogue. Years later, when I was taking acting classes, I played a scene where she tells off Clark Gable as a monologue. I could still remember it, word for word.

After the fiasco with the Lupino photos, I realized it was unlikely I would be ever be summoned into the world of performing. Perhaps in part due to the theme of “Teacher’s Pet” (she played a journalism instructor) I joined the high school newspaper staff and began writing movie reviews.  I couldn’t really let the infatuation go, though. My byline read, “By Pam ‘Doris’ Osborne.” After I graduated, someone remaining on the newspaper staff continued to write film reviews using the byline, “By Pam ‘Doris.’” It was flattering, if a little freaky.

With a wonderful touch of irony, as the paper’s film critic, I spent many hours on movie lots after school, at screenings set up for reviewers. I’d always arrive very early, get past the gate guard, park my car and surreptitiously wander the lot until it was time for the screening to begin. By that time, I had accepted the reality that I was “just” a writer and it would be another decade or so before I’d revisit the show biz fantasies and allow myself to be seduced once again by performance possibilities.

I lived largely in a world of show biz reverie but somehow, I kept a grip on the real world around me enough so that I was able to do well in both junior high and high school, graduating in the top 10% of my class. And still, no one cared when I had declared myself to be a music major in high school, announcing to no one in particular that I did not intend to go to college. Neither of my parents or any of their many siblings went beyond high school. Like all other girls of the era, I was expected to marry and raise children. I wasn’t especially eager for any of that, so I planned to go to work – in the movies, one way or another.

As I write this, I am still stunned at how accessible many of these stars were – from getting a call from a famous comedian to being free to walk up and ring Doris’ doorbell. No one lived behind locked gates back then. Hollywood was still a mystery to me in many ways, but it also seemed out there just for the tasting.

Of course, we all grow up and move on from our childhood dreams. In time, I realized what I wanted was not fame but the opportunity to make a life as a creative person. And, I later realized, I wanted to be respected for being myself, not for playing parts written by other people.

At some point, my worship of Doris morphed into an appreciation of her personal and professional obstacles and her impressive achievements over many decades and media. While her persona was pivotal in helping me shape my identity, I realize now it was always more about the music. Even now, when I hear her sing a song recorded during those years, my head and heart immediately surge back to my 14-year-old self, revisiting my early hopes and dreams. Those were the rare moments everything that was wrong was right. I would have been an unlikely avatar for Doris, anyway.  My personality leaned well away from uncomplicated and sunny. But she did usher me into a world of musical passion and vocal performance. The pursuit of the deeply ingrained passion for all things show biz fueled my life for many years. It was like a perpetually flowing river - sometimes briefly dammed but its eventual re-emergence inevitable.  

Almost against my will I would be intermittently re-infected by the show business virus as an adult but could only stay in that world for a few years at a time. I found the heightened reality and intermittence of the intense performance demands difficult to integrate into my otherwise stable lifestyle. I sometimes felt at the mercy of my own passion and the lack of control over it would become intolerable.

There was a significant moment of karma before it was over, though. I had been traveling around the country, giving theme-based jazz/cabaret performances with a jazz trio. One of the last shows was a tribute I had written to Doris Day, spinning my more mature, adult interpretation of her life and career. In the performance at the Cinegrill in Hollywood, a large contingent from the International Doris Day Fan Club came to see me. Out of that show came a CD, quite amazingly recorded at Capitol Records, a place I had stood before with Jacquie as a young teenager. The resulting CD was called “Sentimental Journey:  Celebrating Doris Day.” In the album notes, I thanked her for helping me get through childhood and adolescence. All the tunes on the tribute CD were those she had recorded, some of them obscure. After much goading by my record producer, I sent a CD to Doris, to a post office address never thinking it would get to her.  Imagine my shock when she wrote to me on her personal letterhead a few weeks later in what had every appearance of being a fan letter. She was “so very grateful” for the tribute, she said, “loved the arrangements” and complimented the musicians and backup singers, some with whom she had recorded. “And you,” she added, “are very, very good.” It still brings tears to my eyes. After all those hours listening to Doris Day in my bedroom, now she was in her house listening to me. Even in my most outrageous fantasies I never could have conjured this outcome.  It was miraculous.

Well, I never did become a legend, as you probably know by now. Instead, I became what I would hope is a relatively fully functioning, sensitive and creative person with an interesting life. Perhaps that option is mutually exclusive with being a legend, anyway.