Segment 5

         Never was. Never had. Never been. Nothing is true. Everything is real. I’m rushing headlong through curtains of nails, sight already blinded, trying to follow the sound of your voice through the years. But I’m not following anything, I’m only running and I’m trying to run away from your memory but all I’m doing is bringing myself back toward the center. I don’t want to keep moving, because it hurts to move, I’m leaving pieces of myself behind in every corner, flakes of precious skin littering the hallways, a marker and a warning. Don’t come this way. Don’t do it. And I don’t want to. Except I can’t stay still either. The friction tears at me. There’s a current pushing me along and I can’t fight it and nobody can hear me because I’m drowning.
         And all I see is you. Like sailing through a museum based around your face, daring me to forget, parading a thousand flickering images of you before me, caught in strobelike silence, growing older and older and older. Baby to child to girl to teenager to young adult to stop. Nothing. It goes no further. I know this, I’ve always known it, like a brick wall time keeps slamming my head against. Every road has a signpost in the shape of you. You you you. It keeps reminding me, a button in my head that someone won’t stop pressing. Over and over and over. I’m trying to find the end of it when I’ve been there already and the beginning won’t give me an exit. I want to get out but the walls won’t yield. I don’t want to lose you but you’re gone already. And once you’ve seen something, you can’t go backwards in the hopes that it will go away. The molecules of the air are stamped with it. With the signature, your last temporal effort. The straining of a clenched fist. You did this. To me. And I helped. And I’m here and I don’t know how to get out.
         Anyone. Please. I can’t take this anymore.
         Light flickers like silent fanfare. Weightless, it hits like a blade. All my bones jackknife and I’m lashed to a pain I can’t feel. The army marches. Boots on the ground. I’m down the hole before I even know it’s there.
         At first I think the static has escaped from my head and is carpeting the world. It’s the first thing I hear, when my vision expands. My body feels pulled through a tube too small for one of my veins. I’m stretched too taut, brittle around the edges. The static hums and careens like angry insects, a physical buzzing. I’m curled in a fetal position and I think I might get locked that way. It hardly matters. No. I can’t think like that. Can’t think over the humming. I’m somewhere dark and closed in, a sterile womb, stuffed into a space I can’t fit into.
         “. . . really quiet tonight, you know that . . .” The voice snaps me up, causes me to jerk, every sound is physical now, I’m covered in foam and people keep punching, trying to inject sensation into this affair. The buzzing rises, increases, leaves my senses. Come on. Focus. Please.
         “. . . think I know if I haven’t been talking, yeah . . .” is the slightly petulant response. I don’t know who is who yet. One of them has to be you. Right? I’m not sure of the rules here, if there are any.
         “. . . just saying, did something happen, everything seemed okay before and now . . .” I’m struggling without a body, still possessed of the trappings of flesh, working with a limited space when I have nothing to grasp onto. Shapes are resolving. There’s a lower hum under the higher noise, the sound of ice shards being poured on glass. I flail with reflex and find myself on top of a curved cushion, stretched out sideways. My hand is clutching a seatbelt, the cold metal biting into my skin.
         “. . . now what, just what are you saying, you don’t need to dance around it . . .” In a car. That’s where. The seat is vibrating under my fingertips, the engine is running but we’re not going anywhere. I don’t sense motion. I flip over and around, not realizing my face was smashed into the seat. The view shifts. The meager light from the back window greets me, loose concentric circles forming before my eyes on the glass. Something drums on the roof. Rain. Of course. How appropriate. There’s something heavy resting on the air, pressing down on me. Humidity mixed with something else, strewn with electric wire. I can feel it around my wrist, cutting.
         “. . . keep trying to turn everything into a fight, I was just saying . . .” I can make out voices but not faces. The two front seats obscure you, although the person in the driver’s seat I can almost see, which leads me to believe it might not be you. Inside the car all sound is squashed, flattened, made suspect. “. . . I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeing that you’re all right, is there . . .”
         “. . . you, you’re prying, that’s all, just . . .”
         It feels later than when I last was. The time doesn’t settle around my skin as comfortably. I can’t see the person in the other seat, I know there’s a presence but there’s no one there as far as I can. That’s how I know it’s you. You’re too small, the space swallows you up.
         “Prying? Is that what you call it? I’m sorry, I thought it was concern. Fine, you know? If you want to go tell me that it’s none of my damn business, then fine. But don’t try to fault me for caring, all right? Don’t try to tell me that I’m wrong to see that you’re not right and to try to see if I can help. Because there’s nothing wrong with that, okay?”
         I’m hearing the voices better now. It’s like lying on top of the ocean, lying flat and trying not to disturb the water, staying as still as possible and hoping that you don’t cause any ripples. Because when the water is calm you can see right through to the bottom. You can see everything. The whole scene opens up and it’s right there. I can hear, once again.
         “Please, just . . . just stop. I didn’t mean to tick you off, really, I, I just . . .” You sound different, jittery and nervous, your body trembling in time with the motor, subsonic, out of the pure range.
         “Well. Well then. What the hell am I supposed to think, with my girlfriend telling me to mind my own damn business like I’m some kind of stranger. How am I supposed to feel, when you just stop talking to me, just now, when the whole day you’ve been perfectly fine. And now, when I ask, when I show just a little bit of concern, you tell me to go screw myself and expect to just laugh it off? Is that it?” This person, it’s not the same guy I just saw, he’s different. This is maybe a year later. Your track record stayed the course, after all. Maybe you vowed to change but I doubt it. It wasn’t in you, it would have taken too much time and that was something you didn’t have.
         “It was nothing, I was just . . . I got in a bad mood, all right? That’s all.” There you are, now. One arm leaning on the window. It’s shut and I can almost see your reflection, if I strain hard enough. Your face, so thin when refracted, your eyes seeming to look at me. But I’m not here. I never was. I’ve just stepped into the film and I don’t know where the screen is anymore. Breaking the walls. Third and fourth and fifth and whatever is left. I’m standing in the rubble and the movie is playing on. “Just leave it. Just let it be. It’s not important.”
         “It is, when you shut me out.” This one is so insistant, aggressive. I can hear it, in the timbre of his words. I never thought the last one would stick around, in those nonseconds I had to contemplate it. You liked them nice but not smooth, not with all the edges sanded away. It was only a matter of time before he slipped away. His voice retreats from its hinted belligerence, slides back into something more reasonable. “Come on, I mean, we started out fine, you’ve been all right all day and then . . . you came out here and now you want to go. You want to leave. Why? Did something happen? What happened? Did someone say something to you? That bitch who keeps giving you those dirty looks? Was it her?”
         You don’t answer. Something seems to crumple and fold inside of you. Rain makes splattered patterns on the glass.
         “Come on, hon, talk to me.” He’s almost pleading now, his hand is resting on the gearshift but his fingers keep twitching, like he’s getting ready to touch you. “I don’t like to see you like this. You know I don’t.”
         “I’ll be all right,” you say, still not facing him, your voice nearly inaudible. “Don’t worry about it.” I can see your hand, with your fingers curled, your nails digging into your palm. There’s a tension to your face even your reflection can’t let go. I want to help but it’s too late. This moment is yours, to do with what you will.
         “I can’t help it,” he says. “You know I can’t. I love-“
         ”Then who was she?” you ask suddenly, piercingly, the words coming out in a dry bundle, dead leaves spat out of a cannon, striking but barely having any impact, leaving debris behind.
         He pauses, hesitates. “What?” he asks, finally, as if he didn’t hear it right. As if he might be able to back up and do it all over again.
         Your reflection stares at yourself with something akin to surprise. Your head has turned toward him and back again like you’ve been struck. There’s a history carved into your face, with a million tiny lines, pieces of time that I can’t read because I wasn’t there, because I’m not close enough. What did it take, to get you to this point, to make you say those words? Or did you want it the entire time and you just needed the excuse. Did he give you the means, or the bait? I can’t know.
         “You heard me,” you say to him, harshly, your voice too dry. Sometimes the medicine they gave you, if the air was possessed of a certain weight, it sank a rasp into your throat. You used to joke that it was your way of sounding sexier. I told you if your goal was to sound like a man than you had succeeded and was rewarded with a punch to the arm for my efforts. I can feel it there now, the throbbing pain, still lingering in the phantom muscle. Cause and effect are missing, they’ve gone off together and left no notes behind so we can follow. And I’m trapped, bouncing in the belly of their bastard offspring, drifting through walls only to find more rooms, tiny boxes with flickering screens, old televisions showing programs gone off the air long ago, the kind we used to huddle around, taking comfort in the communal sense of togetherness, experiencing the same moments with everyone. It’s not the same anymore, we’re all tuned into the right channel but we’re not watching the same thing. This experience was yours and I’m just here, a witness after the fact. All there is here is the scene. If I somehow was able to leave this car and wander about, would there be anything beyond my sight. A time recreated in all its detail? Or is there just you? You and this guy, clawing your way into each other’s memories, desperate to leave a mark by any means possible.
         “I heard you,” he answers, somehow drawing back and moving closer at the same time. His voice hasn’t changed, it’s soft and slightly confused. “But I don’t know what you said.”
         “Dammit,” you snarl suddenly, your body jerking and for a second I get a better look at your outline. You were growing your hair longer, letting it fall out a little more. Was that the way he liked it? Did he run his fingers through it when the two of you were in bed, in a way that made you feel closer to him, that made you feel happy? I’m not thinking these thoughts. They aren’t mine. But I don’t know who they belong to. “Don’t do this. Don’t be like that.”
         “Like what?” he asks, his questions drawing her in further, the man who dances at the edge of the circle, inviting you to come out, to face whatever it is you can’t see. He’s asking you to trust him. “Don’t ask a question? That’s all I’m doing. Just asking. What’s wrong with that?”
         “No,” you emphasize, sinking back into the seat again. “That’s not . . . it’s not it. You’re doing it, you’re, you’re playing stupid, because . . .” your arms flop on your lap, exasperated, “because, dammit, I don’t know why.” You shoot him a glare again, but there’s something soft in the contour of your face, you’re stuck to this and you don’t understand why you can’t pull away. “But just, don’t do this, just confess to it, be a man for once and just admit to it.”
         “You’re confusing me now,” he says, his voice matching his words. There’s light coming from somewhere outside, and the shadows of the raindrops are sliding all over his face, deep pits leading into nowhere. “What you’re saying, I did something but . . . how can I admit to it when I don’t know what it was that I-“
         ”Dammit,” you swear again, banging lightly on the door. My shoulder jumps again, the ghost of a pain too far gone. I don’t know how I fit in here, how I can sit the way I am with the point of view that I have. “You’re going to make me . . . you’re going to do this, aren’t you . . .” you’re talking to him through your fingers, your hand curled around your face, an impromptu shield.
         “I’ve never made you do anything,” he says, all kindness now, his words sliding in between raindrops, finding their own kind of lazy rhythm. “Never, not for a second. That’s why I’m-“
         ”Shut up,” you say, finally, automatically.
         He does, at that. Rattling silence descends for a moment. There’s echoes ahead, telling me how this ends.
         “You never answered my question,” you say, sounding tired.
         “I didn’t know what to say,” he responds. “I wasn’t sure what you meant-“
         ”Come on,” you tell him. “I told you already, I saw you.”
         “You said that,” he says and sounds perplexed. “You keep saying that, but I don’t know what it means.” I get the sense that you’re both trying to avoid this, to head off what’s coming. But the boulder has already started and all the friction in the world won’t slow the descent. I feel the ripples, visiting from up ahead, stopping back to see where the destruction was started, what event wrought the bomb being dropped.
         “I don’t know either,” and there’s a strained gasp to your voice. “I don’t know how you could do this.”
         “What did you say?” he asks, insistent suddenly. “Did someone tell you that you saw something, or did you think you-“
         ”I didn’t think, I know what I saw. It was you.” You cross your arms over your chest. You have a jacket on, although the air that’s leaking in through some distant vent has the smell of moist spring to it. But you always got cold easily. It made us all stand closer, to warm you up. To insulate you. But we couldn’t stop this. I want to be here and even I couldn’t get you out of the way fast enough. “You must have had your eye on her the entire night, I thought you were just being friendly but then . . .”
         “Babe, you’re not making any sense,” he says, reasonably, directly. “I was with you the whole night, you must have thought you saw something-“
         ”God. Dammit,” you spit suddenly, your voice deadly quiet. “That’s it, right there. That’s it.” You’re pointing at him with a shaking finger, I can see its shadow, reflected against everything. “I had a few drinks but I’m not drunk.”
         “Well, it doesn’t take much,” he says, with a knowing smile. That much I know is true, although it feels wrong, that he was let in on a secret restricted to the smallest inner circle. But I was away, I was gone and there was a vacancy. And the secret laws had changed. “Does it now?” He says the words like they’re some private joke, but if it’s private now it was a shared thing. Maybe it is, in this moment. The past and future all dissolved and anything important just exists in this bubble, cut off from anything else. Looking out the window, I see a parking lot but barely any cars. They’ve all gone. I’m going, even as I stay here.
         “You said you wouldn’t lie,” you say, ignoring whatever he has just said. “We both did. Not about anything important.” You cross your arms again, in a violent motion. “You must have thought I was drunk, that’s how you thought you could get away with it.” Something heavy has entered your voice now, it’s dragging you down, settling in your lungs. You cough a little bit and I hear something grind in your chest. It’s the weather, it’s terrible for you. “You were making eye contact with her all night, right when we got there. I saw you talking to her, when you thought I wasn’t paying attention.”
         “It doesn’t matter,” he says, siblant, hardly defensive at all. “I have nothing to be ashamed of. I had nothing to hide.”
         “Across the room, I saw you dancing together,” you continue, rubbing at your face a little bit. Your body betrays you and another cough escape, rattling the cage as it passes through. “Real close and she had her arms on your shoulders, around your back, you weren’t touching her but your faces were so close . . .” I see you, in side view, squeeze your eyes shut, look away without looking out. You’re not just talking to him, you’re recounting the words to the air, trying to make them permanent. Our thoughts remain our own and leave with us. Whatever you’re thinking, if anything, in that moment when it all slips away, it’s lost to time and oblivion, never to be retained. But when you talk outloud, even when you’re alone, the soundwaves catch the air and resonate and radiate and reach the invisible spires outside and travel for as long as eternity will allow. That’s why we talk, in the end. To remind ourselves that we’ve been here, to somehow tell the world that we existed.
         “That’s not wrong,” he says, poking holes with a needle. “Not a damn thing wrong with having fun. You danced, too, not just with me. With all kinds of people.”
         “That’s what I thought too,” you say sadly. “That’s just what I thought. I can’t judge, because it’s a party and we’re supposed to have fun. And you were.” There’s a knife’s edge to your voice. “Weren’t you?”
         “I was trying to,” he says, seeming relieved without changing his expression. “So were you. But maybe we got tired, we stayed too long, I know how it is, we’re not young anymore . . .” He’s trying to redirect, guide you down a different path.
         “I know,” you say, simply. “I saw you take a rest.” Another watery sigh. Rain goes down the window, but it doesn’t touch either of you. It might as well be another world. “On the couch.” You’re squeezing each word out, pressing them into him. I see his eyes go large, briefly, with partial recovery. “With her on your lap.”
         “You didn’t see that,” he says, one hand on the steering wheel, like he might take this car right out of the conversation. “That’s not what you saw.”
         “On your lap,” you say, resting your head against the window, your eyes half closed, your chest rising and falling faster. The scene is playing in your eyes, I can see it there now, thrown up against the projection screen of your mind. “She was there and you were laughing and she was laughing and it seemed like . . .” you shudder, biting your lip. You don’t want to do this, saying it makes it real, you’re reconstructing each moment second by second. Before, it was all in your head. Now it’s laid out before the two of you, to assemble as you will. “Like the most natural thing in the world.”
         “You don’t know,” he says, then. “You have no idea what you were looking at.” But there’s no derailing it now, he had his chance and it’s all crashing down on him now. But he’ll recover and move on.
         “I saw your one hand, around her waist. I didn’t know where your other one was.” Another deep breath. “Then I saw it, in her shirt.” I can picture it in your head, him sitting there with her perched on him, his hand moving like a set of disgusting worms right under the too supple fabric of her shirt, finding and caressing with all abandon. “And she . . . she had . . .” You’re looking at him and not seeing anything at all and there’s liquid crystals forming at the corners of your eyes. Your lips move without saying anything for a few seconds, your breathing coming faster and faster.
         “It meant nothing,” he says, finally, one last attempt to head it off. It means nothing.
         “She had her hands,” you gasp out, “all over you, all over your face . . .” your trembling with a secret energy now. I can’t hold my breath because I have none. In some time neither do you. “And not just your face, but . . .”
         “Babe, don’t-“ he pleads.
         “Going through your hair and . . . dammit,” you swear, moving suddenly, struggling against invisible bonds, “all over your . . . God damnit . . .”
         “Please . . .”
         “All over and the hell, you just . . . dammit, damn you,” you choke out finally, barely coherent, not clear on how you’re even talking to.
         “. . . please, just, hon . . .”
         “. . . just, no, just leave me . . . God dammit, just . . .” and something finally breaks, the ropes holding you part and with a sudden rush of sound the car door swing wide open, swings out and takes you with it, gives you a place to go. Wind drifts in, shyly, the sound of the outdoors flooding into the interior, igniting the air and overcoming the previous quiet.
         He’s moving too, almost before you are, as if he had expected something like this, his door flying open, hitting the pavement at the same time you do. I don’t know where you plan on going, where either of you can go from here. But nothing’s certain, nothing is set. I’m moving as well, without will, attached to you like some weightless anchor, your actions forming a whiplash that straight to the center of my stomach, jerking me outside with a wrench, shifting me from one place to another like the needle skipping on time’s record. I think I’m on the ground, there’s grit in my fingers. The pavement, the smell of tires and exhaust, a wetness that drums on me like soft bullets, counting out seconds that I can’t touch or stop or even slow down.
         People are talking, words are coming to me like survivors from the desolation of another language. “. . . do you think you’re going . . . the hell do you think . . .”
         It’s still raining but not as hard, or at least not as hard as I thought. Perhaps this is only a reenactment of your memory and the only pieces that fall into focus are the ones that you are concentrating on.
         “. . . don’t know, just, just get away from me, I just want to be away . . .” your shoes clatter on the hard ground, I’m on my knees without even knowing where they are. Voices are careening down the tunnel, coming to me as shards, ripping me up and sending the rest to places I can’t imagine. I can’t listen. “How could you do this, you say you want go out with me and it takes the first piece of ass you see to yank you away . . . is that it?” I’ve never heard you like this, grasping, flailing, throwing up a wall that’s as thin as paper and nearly as fragile. “And right in front of me, what the hell is wrong with you? Did you even care what I might think, that-“
         ”Hey, listen . . . listen, hey, don’t start going and blaming me for everything here, okay? All right?” He’s talking and you’re talking but all I see are dueling shadows. I can’t pick my head up. There’s too much weight, time pressing down, stabbing through me at angles I can’t even conceive. The future’s speared me and I’m trying to struggle off the spike. “You’re going to stand there and judge me-“
         ”You’re damn right I am . . .” more clatter of shoes. The two of you are circling around the car, I think. Maybe right over me. It’s still running, spewing its waste into the air. This is how we killed you, by giving you nothing left to breathe. Didn’t we care? It doesn’t matter, I wasn’t here. I played no part. “What am I supposed to think, with you standing there, flirting with that girl, letting her sit all over you and you . . . you just, sitting there, grinning and letting it happen, you . . .” I expect you to take a swing at him any second. I don’t know why. You were never violent. My shoulder throbs, in the past. “You bastard, didn’t you even care-“
         ”Didn’t you ever stop for a goddamn second and let someone explain, before you just fly off the handle, before jumping to conclusions . . .” his voice is no better than yours, although it’s vibrating in a carefully controlled range, taut with a slim anger, like he’s trying to land an airplane, trying not to lose all the passengers. “No, you don’t, you never do. You don’t. You, you sit there and you think you see something you don’t like, so instead of discussing, instead of talking about, you just storm out, you run out and now I’ve got to follow you, you work yourself up and now I’ve got to calm you down, do you know what that’s like for me . . .”
         “You poor baby,” I hear you sneer, nearly a snarl. There’s something caught in your voice, an affected edge, tipping just out of balance. “Was she about to go down on you? Did I interrupt that with my feelings? I’m real sorry. But you know what, she’s probably still in there and if she hasn’t found someone else by now, I’m sure she’ll take you back, you can pick up right where you left off.” More footsteps. I look up, finally, to see you going away. There’s grey gauze stuffed into the sky, overhead. Your hair is getting wet, becoming plastered to your face. You have your arms crossed across your chest like you’re trying to pull everything into some nonexistent shell.
         “Where are you going?” he throws out suddenly, his voice a net keeping you in. There’s a tinge of care in his tone and that’s what makes you stop. But you don’t turn around. He’s not a monster but he’s not a good person either. I wonder if you would have told me about this, if I were around. I wonder if I could done something about this, if I would have noticed.
         “Away. Somewhere else. None of your business.” You don’t like any of those answers, it’s clear in your face. But he can’t see that. You never thought this would happen and you don’t know what to do.
         “Come on, where are you going to go?” His simple question draws you to a halt. “You going to walk home? That doesn’t seem very bright.”
         “Right now I don’t feel very bright,” you say, somewhat bitterly. “And I don’t want to be around you, either. So just leave me alone.”
         “You know what?” he explodes suddenly and the dull thud of flesh on echoing metal means that he hasn’t moved too far from the car. “You know what your problem is?”
         “What my problem is?” That makes you spin around. Maybe that was the plan. It even brings you back a few steps. “Where do you even get off-“
         ”Right here, that’s it,” he says, almost snapping his fingers. “You don’t even see. You’re too damn emotional . . .”
         “Oh, is that my problem, is that what it is-“
         ”You got it into your head that you’re the only girl who was ever attracted to me and now that you’ve found out otherwise you can’t handle it . . .”
         “You think that’s what this is about, that I’m goddamn jealous . . .” You’re nearly back to the car now, he’s reeling you in. Your face is covered in wetness and not all of it is external, there’s a sense of you slowly collapsing inside, of card structures breaking down and tumbling to the earth like leaves, bereft of support, all patterns lost in the fall, without enough for a new one to be created.
         “So you’re going to lash out at me now-“ he says, already flinching, like he expects the blow to come at any time and he’s not going to falter, no matter how hard the strike.
         “I might as well. I should. I think I should,” you say, barely able to cough the words out. This weather does nothing for you, for what’s inside of you. Your hands are shaking. “Look at you, you don’t even care . . .”
         “I don’t care? I don’t care?” he throws his hands up, as if the heavens might answer the question, because he surely can’t. Where did you find these people, these desperate strangers? “Would I still be here if I didn’t care, would I be trying to talk you out of walking to God knows where and not just saying the hell with you and driving away, if I didn’t care . . .” something softens in his face and I can’t tell if it’s sincere or not. He’s a mystery to me, this one, and I don’t think you’re any better off. How did you meet? What gravitated you toward him? There’s no clues in this setting. Whatever history the two of you have is unravelling before my eyes, becoming nothing more than tatters wilting in the rain, all colors running, flowing into the water and drifting away, until you don’t know what shape they were to begin with, or how they came to be.
         “But you don’t care,” you say, the words hurting as they leave you. “You just . . . you want, all you want is someone to come back to while you screw around. While you just do whatever the hell you want . . .”
         “Not what I want,” he says, nearly spitting it out at you. There’s a heat haze between you, as you stare at each other over the hood. “That’s different, that’s not . . . I could have had her, you know. I could have.”
         “This is what you tell me?” you shout, slamming your forearms down on the car. “This is how you try to tell me that you care-“
         ”But I didn’t,” he continues, smooth, effortless. “Because there’s a line.”
         “A line,” she says, flatly. Seething.
         “Yes,” he answers. “Exactly. A line, that you don’t cross. That I don’t cross.” He’s starting to come around the car, his steps slippery smooth. “That’s how you know. That you can trust me.” I would have been out here by now, to stop this. To make him stop. I always knew these things, I have an instinct for it. But I’m not here. I never was. And you’re on your own and the outcome is already decided, before I was ever here.
         “You bastard,” you whisper, barely audible and I see something go out of you then, a tiny bit of weight you can’t afford. He doesn’t stop, he’s still coming, but you back away now, the rain picking up a little now, becoming closer to a thin sheet, soaking him, soaking you, not touching me at all. “That’s crap, you’re full of crap, you lying piece of-“
         He does flinch now, ruffled. “Is it me, then? Is that it? It’s always me?” He’s bearing down on you without moving, charging without taking a single step. “It’s not you, being such a close minded bitch that your boyfriends have to act all proper all the goddamn time-“
         ”Did she have to sit on your lap?” you shout back at him, your arms stiff, hands closed into tight fists. “Did you have to go there? Did you?”
         “You don’t get it, at all, do you?” he asks, disgust in his face now. “They told me, they warned me about you-“
         ”It’s not even the first time, is it? Tell me it’s not, I know it’s not . . .” your speech is becoming more frantic, words blurring together. The two of you aren’t even listening anymore. Your face is coated in your own sorrow, in a memory falling apart.
         “They said, once you get someone, once they let you in, you never let them have any goddamn fun-“
         ”You did it and you’ll do it again and again and again-“ it’s an argument and a realization.
         “They just have to do whatever it is that you want, march to your goddamn beat . . .”
         “Because this is how you are, isn’t it? You were always this way.”
         “Well, screw that. You know what, screw it and screw you.” He pivots away, leaving you standing there, waiting for a blow that’s never going to come, unable to shout anymore without ruining every breath you have left in you. “Everything we ever did was worthless, I’d erase every goddamn second I had with you and not feel like I’m missing a damn thing at all.”
         You are crying now, it’s impossible to miss, there are river tracks running down your face, drawing lines I can’t read, symbols lost to time and the weather. You press your fingers into your eyes, to try and stop the flow, to try and hide it from him and make sure he doesn’t know. But he does. He does. And he still could care less.
         “I never saw,” you say, to yourself, to me, to whoever might be listening. It’s all coming apart now, it’s been apart and you’re only realizing now the pieces no longer connect, if they ever did. “You son of a bitch,” you snarl, without power, barely able to get it out. “Goddamn lying . . . all this time I thought you . . . bastard, dammit you . . .”
         “Hey, all I do is hold up the mirror,” he says, with muted swagger, with some semblance of sadness. “It’s not my fault if you don’t like what you see.”
         “Shut up, stop talking, just, dammit, just . . .” unable to stand any more, you drop down to your heels, burying your face in your own arms. “Oh God,” you might say. “Oh my God. I’m so . . . goddammit, I’m so stupid. I’m so . . . ah.”
         It tears at me, this does. Your anguish nearly pulls me apart, I grit teeth I can’t find, feel myself turn inside out. You’re right there, crouched as small as possible, shaking and trying not to let the world know that you are, trying not to let him know, trying not to let him see what he did to you. I’m sorry. I apologize to no one at all. I go to reach out to you but I’m touching a moving photograph, I can see the shadow of my hand lying across the your jacket, over your shoulder, a distorted insect trying to crawl into the heart of you. It’s there but it can’t register. You’re there and you’re crying and where am I? In the stars, sideways to time, in places you can’t even conceive. But I’m no good, no help at all. Damn it. Damn it all. I would have seen this, I would have known, by the tilt of your voice, the cadence of your body language, it would have warned me. It never would have gone to this point. I would have sauntered in, your kind of hero, chased him off, made him admit all his sins and tell you that none of it was your fault, that every thing he did, he did because he was a shiftless bastard only out for a piece of ass and a good time. I would have said that. It would have happened. I tell myself that, and maybe I’ll feel better. But I have no way of knowing, not for sure. And it hardly matters now.
         He’s come to the edge of the car now, one hand on the hood, as if the metal mass is some kind of island that’s weighing him down, keeping him from soaring away. He’s high now, climaxing on pain, getting a thrill out of what he’s wrought. He looks somehow surprised and pleased at once. In the greyness it’s hard to tell. There’s buildings behind him, I see now, square faces with dark windows staring down on all of it impassively, passing no judgement, refusing to intervene.
         “God,” you whisper. You never were religious. I asked you why, once, and you said there wasn’t time. There was too much else to do. You sniffle a little, wipe at your face with the back of your hand, making it shiny from tears and mucus. “Dammit, you-“ you say, brushing hair out of your face, wiping at your eyes. Without shifting you twist, glaring balefully at him. “Are you happy now? Is this what you wanted?” The apartments stare, hold their tongues. Clouds slide past stars, neither acknowledging the other. There was a hierarchy, I learned, up there. Some things just weren’t said. It’s always the same, wherever you go.
         He only raises an eyebrow in response. Maybe words aren’t necessary now. Maybe he’s picturing you with less clothes, in happier times. You catch a glimpse of it in his eyes, maybe, and it only makes you angrier.
         “Yeah,” you spit, “you got what you wanted. Now leave me the hell alone? Okay?” Your voice is ragged, shot through with a frazzled coarseness. He never says a word. “Just get away and . . . and get out. All right?” He doesn’t move. Frustrated, wanting to have control over something in the situation, you nearly scream at him, “Come on. What the hell are you still here for? Go. Get out. Go.”
         I expect him to say something cliche. To say that he’s still here for you, that he can salvage something, that it’s not all lost. But looking at him I know it’s a lie. He gave up a long time ago, perhaps at the entrance, perhaps at the first time his heart quickened at the sight of someone other than you. A few minutes later. I could wrap my hands around him but it would be meaningless. I wonder where he is now, in a place that isn’t here. When did he hear? How did he react? Did he feel a twinge of something, of some old pain?
         “Dammit, stop looking at . . . just go, goddammit, go!” you sputter out, before turning away violently and burying your face in your arms again. Rain is falling in tiny explosions around your legs, forming pools and puddles, splashing up into the air like stunted acrobats. “Please,” you say in a quieter voice, muffled, drained of everything but will. “Leave. Go.”
         He might laugh then, this guy. I see his footsteps reflected in idle water. I hear my voice, never here. There’s a wind that almost has me now and it’s carrying me, I’m flaking off, flower petals in the dead spring, sailing but hopefully, going to places unknown. But no. No. I can’t leave you like this. I won’t. I’m not here. I’m not stable. I look through myself and all I see is your memory of time, inverted in the eye, drawn so tightly through the needle that all you can see is the hole.
         More footsteps. I hear them like echoes out of order, stillness then thuds. I’ve got shadows crawling all over me. I can’t process. I’ve been here too long. There’s voices resting on the air like barbed wire, poking holes in me.
         “What’s going on?” a man’s voice says. Not your boyfriend. Not him. Someone else. Someone I know. Hey. “What’s all this?”
         “Nothing,” I hear him say. “Everything’s fine.”
         Faster footsteps. Drumbeats sewn to my skull. Someone comes near you, envelopes your body, threatens to lift you up and take you away. “Hey, hey, are you all right? What’s wrong? What’s going on?” You don’t answer, torn up as you are.
         “Is that so?” the other guy says, the one I know. There’s more shadows near him, shapes that I’m familiar with. It’s like being dead, before I was gone. All of my friends, visiting me when I’m not there. I swear, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to go. “That’s not what it looks like. She doesn’t look fine. This doesn’t look right at all.” Shadows on either side of him now. A third one even, maybe. He’s looking penned in, hands in his jacket pocket now. All’s calm. All’s well. Someone has a hand on him. “How about you try that again?”
         Looks from one to the other. To another. To you. “She, someone said something to her, got her upset, I, ah, we came out there, just to get some air and she . . . she’s pretty upset right now, just wants some peace and quiet, right?” He’s talking fast, this boy of yours. I don’t know everyone here. There’s a guy and a girl with you and the sight of the girl does something to me that almost rips me in two. How did you all get here? Is this what happened? I went away and you drew closer.
         “That’s not right,” you whisper. “It’s not right at all.” You don’t move, you don’t touch any of them. The girl has her arms around you in such a way that your head is resting against her. Your eyes are closed. I can’t see all of this. All of them. I can’t let it all go away.
         “Sh,” she says to you. “Shh. We know.”
         “I suppose that makes sense,” another guy says, standing right behind him. “If I was drunk.”
         “Do you think we’re stupid?” one says, pushing your guy a little. He backs up against the car, almost bouncing off of it. “Come on, do you?” Someone else stands too close to him, causing him to nearly slide to the ground tripped by his own vehicle. “I think I asked you a question.”
         “I think he did,” another person adds.
         “I told you, dammit, I told you,” the guy with you says, his hand on your shoulder. “Did I say, he was nothing but trouble. Did I warn you?”
         “Leave her alone,” the girl snaps.
         “I’m just saying-“
         ”He’s right, though,” you murmur. “God, he’s right . . .”
         “Sh,” she says again. “Not now. Later. There’ll be time for it later.” But there’s no time at all, I want to say. I want to see you all again, while we’re all still here. But time has crunched forward and there’s nowhere left for me to go but out. I feel the wind, crumbling.
         “She’s just upset, that’s all,” your guy says, clearly nervous now, it’s evident in his voice, in his too cautious way of moving. He doesn’t want to trip the wrong wire. He can smell the crowd now, gathered. It can’t end well. “Just came out for some air. That’s it. Nothing serious.” He tries a shaky laugh. “You know how women are.”
         “Don’t I?” the one guy says, with flatness. I can barely tell you all apart anymore. “Maybe I do.” A casual danger creeps in now. “I certainly know how to treat them.”
         “I, I, don’t tell me . . .” your guy says, stammers.
         “Yeah, I heard you, buddy,” my friend says, a clasping hand on his arm, squeezing ever so slightly. I count maybe four guys now, they’re budding, multiplying, it’s raining revenge. I want to laugh at the reunion, all of this can’t be true. “I caught the tailend of your little speech there. I’m not quite sure I like what I heard. What about you?” The question’s directed to someone on the other side.
         “Nah, I’d have to agree with you on that. It sounded like utter crap, to me.”
         “Hey, now, listen, listen guys . . .”
         “The kind of thing that, if I’d said it, I feel like a complete asshole and I’d want to take it back before the words even left my mouth.”
         “I’d feel the same way, I think.”
         “You too? I’m glad. I wouldn’t like to think that one of my friends was an assole.” There’s an arm around his shoulders now. “But now this guy here . . .”
         “I never said, I didn’t . . .”
         “He’s something special, hm?”
         “He is, isn’t he?”
         “Sure is. This fellow here is not only an assole, but a liar too. You know how I know that?”
         “Get away from me, all of you just get-“
         ”Your magical powers, of course.”
         “I only wish I had some. No, it’s a little more mundane than that.”
         “Do tell.”
         “I saw him, you see, with another girl at the party.”
         “You mean, he wasn’t with our dear friend, his girlfriend? I’m shocked, I’m just . . . I’m really shocked.”
         “Come on now, stop this, you bastards, just stop . . .”
         “It is shocking, isn’t it? I didn’t want to believe it either, at first. I mean, how could someone stoop so low as to cheat on his girlfriend at a party she’s at, in full view of all of her friends.”
         “It boggles the mind.”
         “It truly does.”
         “Maybe he’s retarded. I mean, for someone to be that stupid . . .”
         “I think it would do a disservice to retarded people to apply that label to him, if you ask me. At least they have some natural goodness. This guy, he ain’t got any.”
         “Okay, enough, that’s it, just enough . . .” He tries to struggle, to get away. They hold him though. They’ve got him, right where he has to be.
         “You know what this means for us, of course.”
         “No, what?”
         “We have to beat the hell out of him twice.”
         “What? Hey, don’t, what the hell are you . . .” flustered, he flutters, sick to get away.
         “Oh, for being a cheater and a liar. You’re right, that is how it goes.” He taps your man on the shoulder, almost pityingly. “I’m sorry, but we don’t make up these rules, we just follow them,” he says, with a shrug.
         “And really . . .” the other guy flexes his fingers. “My hand just healed, you know, from the last one. Just. Healed.”
         “You know, I just thought of this, too.” He wags a finger at his friend, the idea striking him. “By the time we beat the living piss out of him twice, we’ll be all wet from the rain.”
         “Aw, crap, and you know how much I hate getting wet.” He shakes your guy, saying right in his ear. “Do you know much that annoys me, getting wet?”
         “Really, I’m just, just let me . . . you’ve made your point, all right, you’ve . . .”
         “We could take him inside and beat him. That way if he gets too loud we can muffle him with cushions.”
         “Yeah, but that takes time,” he sighs, forelorn. “I’d rather get it over with now, you know what I mean?” He shakes your guy again, lightly. “No offense or anything, I’m enjoying this quality time as much as you are.”
         “All right, guys, all right,” he says, trying to back away, finding nowhere to go, trying to go forward but that way is blocked as well. His shirt is soaked, with rain and sweat. “You’re not going to . . . you’ve had your fun, so now, just, I’ll just go now, all right . . .”
         “Why? Did we say you could go?” A glance over. “Did we say he could leave?”
         “I don’t think so, no. I certainly never said anything.”
         “We haven’t even discussed how we’re going to beat him.”
         “I always like to open up with the nut shot, myself.”
         “Really? I find that so inelegant. You do it too early, it makes everything else seem like an anticlimax.”
         “So you’re saying save it?”
         “For a little while, yeah. Me, I’m more old fashioned. A good kidney shot works wonders, I’ve found.”
         “I always forget the classics. You’re right. Especially if you catch it right in that sweet spot, they piss all over themselves. That’s worth it, right there.”
         “I know, it’s a beautiful thing. Sometimes I follow it up with a good shot to the stomach. If they’ve been drinking enough, sometimes they just barf it all up . . .”
         “So they’re covered in vomit and piss. That’s brilliant. I can’t argue with that strategy.”
         “Hey, don’t, don’t you dare . . .”
         “Is that how you want to start, then? I can live with that.”
         “Might as well, we don’t have all night, you know.”
         “Dammit, no!” Your guy tears himself away then, draws away from the small mob, spins backwards, moves around to the other side of the car. They watch him with disinterest, as if he’s not the reason they’re out there, it’s just the game and he’s the pawn. “Don’t . . . just get away from me . . .” he’s breathing so heavy, if he was an older man his heart might just stop. I hear yours, too loud now. I’m fading in and out, careening far. “I won’t let you-“
         ”You won’t, will you?” my friend says, with a slight coldness to his words.
         “No, you can’t do this.” He throws his next words out, back to you. You’re still crouched down, barely moving, although you’ve been watching the proceedings with a dazed detachment, watching the movie of your life only to find that they forgot to cast you in it. “Don’t let them do this?”
         One of them laughs. “Oh, it’s a little late for appeals, pal.” He starts to move around the other way.
         “Don’t . . . stop, make them stop!”
         “It’s not so easy to make us cry now, is it?”
         “Please, say something. Please!”
         You’re watching now and something twists in your lips. One of them senses your gaze perhaps and halts, turns around. Cocking his head toward your guy, he says to you, “Well? He’s your problem. Any suggestions?”
         You stare at him for a few seconds, the rain running down his face, off his nose, his unattractive panting. Maybe you’re wondering what you ever saw in him. Maybe you feel sorry for him. Who can say? They’re carting me away, brick by temporal brick.
         “Whatever,” you finally say, barely heard over the drizzle. “Do what you want with him.” Because you don’t care, or because you refuse to? The question goes unanswered. The girl rubs your shoulder, draws you closer, whispers something I can’t hear.
         Something unspoken passes between my two friends. A glance, a gesture, I’m all disconnected from it. They’ve written new things for language since I left. I’m not piped in anymore.
         One of them says, after a time, “Get out of here.”
         Your guy barely seems to hear this. He’s down a tunnel to me, I’m trying to keep hold but you’re all sinking away.
         “What? What did you-“
         ”You heard me, asshole. Get out. Go.”
         “Ah, sure, ah, I’m . . . that’s fine, I’m leaving, I-“
         I’m shivering, trying to stay calm. All your voices, it’s been so long. I can’t leave. I’m going. I can’t.
         “And I don’t want to ever see you around here again.” He’s saying it matter of factly, almost bored, just repeating what he’s heard on television. But it works and it’s exactly what I thought you would say. We were never creative, but certainly effective. “Or I will beat the piss out of you, no matter who’s around. You got it?”
         “Yeah, yeah, I . . . I’m going . . .” and his car door slams, he’s inside. The engine’s been running all this time. I’m running, without moving, without motion. I’m torn into elastic. Whatever he says, I can’t hear anymore.
         The two of them step away, I see it in glass, oh God, all of you, all together, was this the last time, tell me it’s not. They go to you, they’re helping you up. You’re not crying anymore but you’re not happy. But they’re right there.
         He’s driving away now. Lights flare. I’m going with them, deeper into the night, perpendicular to the story. Maybe he’s looking at you, at all of you.
         “Maybe next time . . .”
         Engine roar. Wheels squeal. He’s going.
         Christ, I miss you all. You’re all so far.
         “. . . you’ll listen to us for once, huh, missy . . .”
         Lights pull away, disappear into the night. I’m with them, and past them, and into another frame entirely.