Grey Suit Black Tie

Account of a Steady Hand Leonid Tsypkin, the soviet doctor and writer, never saw the publication of his only completed novel, Summer in Baden-Baden, a fictional account of Dostoevsky’s years in Germany. He became obsessed with depicting Dostoevsky’s live as accurately as possible, leaving nothing to his own imagination except the motives that led the man to his decisions, the circumstances that led to those motives, and the thoughts he simply couldn’t know. He started with the diaries of Dostoevsky’s wife Anna, long out of print and stolen from his great aunt’s library, but he soon moved on to the life that surrounded them. He traveled to Baden, ordered old newspapers and read them in the coffee shops that Dostoevsky would frequent, even stopping in at the same times of day. He followed the dance steps that ghosts had dripped onto the floor. It’s as if Dostoevsky had left a living map in the city of Baden, and he was simply charting out its routes. He was no longer writing a novel but instead documenting the shadows left by history. His hand never shook, regardless of the little sleep he might have wrapped his arms around and drawn in, but stayed steady with what he saw as truth. When he couldn’t research in Baden, he worked long hours at the hospital, following his nurses around like the last of a pack of wolves, wounded and abandoned by the rest of the tribe but stumbling steadily to keep up. He mumbled back the symptoms his patients had listed off to him and prescribed sympathetically. Some days he couldn’t face them and pushed the burden off on his nurses by asking for their professional opinion. He wrote on his pad the prescriptions they suggested and said that they were really growing quite sharp. When he came back home he would leave his keys in the door (which drove his wife mad) and retreated to his writing desk under a bare bulb and over a drawer full of candles. He lit the wick of what was left of his existing stick and wrote into the night. He wrote what he felt were to be Dostoevsky’s actual thoughts, as if he were a seer or some prophet who summoned the words out of the sea, belched out into the unknown, monologues which he knew couldn’t be his own but the rants of a madman reaching out from the crypt, saying every last thought he never had time to get to the page. Most of these monologues were about things he had no knowledge of. Sometimes he would recognize things from his own life, like the trash he had to take out as the sun rose though he’d already set out to walk like that wounded dog, silent in its suffering, amongst the sick and dying. He usually took these recognizable moments ( he read over his work just as he would read Dostoevsky’s own secret notebooks if that moment they had been delivered to him by angels and he had suddenly been granted complete access) before turning back into his daytime creature, without giving sufficient time to question, deciding these must be universal truths. From birds to ants, the wild African tribes in forests on atlases covered by clouds, to Kosoin himself as he dealt with his own battles and the entanglements his predecessors tied before him, we all feel candle wax down onto our pages, he thought. Everyone is eventually demoted to junior researcher. Around this time he watched his oldest daughter immigrate to the United States. Next he saw the same from his son and daughter-in-law. Following closely behind was his youngest daughter, who had always been the only one to him. She would touch his shoulder at the first sign of light, shocking him out of his focus. His wife said it was the only time his eyes resumed their normal gaze, his tightened jaw loosened, and his breath ran steady and deep. His daughter would ask, what are you doing papa? and he’d rub his wide eyes from under his glasses and say it was just his novel. Once his daughter left for the states his wife set out to gather the correct documents needed to emigrate themselves. she looked at him, more patient with the doors and the trash (she even started kissing him on the cheek before going to bed), and said, you know, Nabokov emigrated to the United States. They even let him teach classes at some of the most prestigious of their universities. Imagine, you could teach and we could buy a Buick and we could drive across the states. You could even visit your daughters. He usually ignored these calls, if he heard them at all, but on occasion he turned towards her with a shocking look of concern, not scared but as if she had lost her mind and he was watching the parading around of a madwoman in all of her antics, unashamed and unaware. The films his children had dragged her out to see had become her reality, gangsters with machine guns and sailors kissing shop girls in the streets. If his soul could make its own sounds it would have repeated Christ’s rebuke to Peter, and would add that she should stay off of his shoulders. This reaction didn’t phase her. She simply went about her day, cooking, cleaning and handling the finances, often going to bed with that stare over her. She left the immigration papers for him to sign at the foot of his desk and he stained them with mud in the summer and soiled them with snow in the winter. Some claim that Tsypkin’s wife left without him ever knowing. Others say that when she died he took three days off from his offices, shaken into emotion by the glimpse he saw of Death in all his horror, in the reflection of his wives eyes, and not objective as he imagined him, but treasuring each searing moment. On the first day he laid over the body, tears unobstructed by his lungs. On the second he wrapped her in their sheets and blankets and buried her in the yard. On the third day he slept in his muddy clothes on his undressed bed. When he returned to work without shave or shower no one seemed to notice. A young doctor who commented throughout the years that Tsypkin looked tired, and who was prone to prescribing extreme alternative remedies in effort to justify his own vices, suggested he see a whore, perhaps to change his blood’s circulation and if nothing else to raise his spirits. He even went so far as to bring one into the office in an effort to reawaken the old physician’s carnal desire (which, if it was ever there at all it had withered long ago). This was the last day Tsypkin went into the offices. When he died the authorities found him hunched over his desk, candle wax dried to the desk, pen hind still up in the air. The coroner said it was a heart attack. What he didn’t say was that there were hundreds of pages on his desk, days worth in a continuous stream of thought, and thousands more covering the floor.

31 15’15.53N, 24 15’30.53W

A professor in Kentucky or Indiana who was bored and afraid to get caught looking at pornography and had already caught up on the sites that covered his general fields of interest, skipping the articles of the authors he hated (some friends) and reading the ones of those he respected (but feared he didn’t have the respect of) stumbled out onto google earth, as if trying to re associate himself with a place that he was used to, but felt so far away from. It felt miles from his enclosed office inside the bowels of his school’s ship, hallway after hallway, ridding the place of any natural light. He replaced all of the florescents with warmer, night-gold tones, but it made the four walls seem like a dungeon or a dimmed bath; independent of how the glass is seen, it was a place of solitude. This he wouldn’t have minded if the slivers of white didn’t accost him from the doctor’s office fixtures through the linings of his door. He followed the map to places he’d been before and wrote out the coordinates on a napkin. He wrote out Montreal (45 30’13.95N, 73 37’07.60W), Baltimore (39 18’19.74N, 76 36’52.07W), and New York (40 48’40.79N, 73 57’50.76W). He’d been to all three cities to lecture. He avoided his current location and asked to be taken far away from it from some entity he’d read about on highway signs,  Christmas-hymning his way through in Bible school, and inverted the coordinates of his current town (he knew them by heart) and held his breath. When he blinked he saw dark blues. He choked back and clicked in closer to see if he could find a small speck, even a lit pixel in the monitor, shining brighter, his own private island. When he first saw the grid, lighter than the waves above it, he thought it was the screen; the inverse of his own streets that had frozen in him, his own city shining through. But no, he hadn’t looked there at all. Just the places he considered of some worth. It must be the software, he thought, but the lines were vivid. He could see the depth, raised pathways, stability in that instability he saw in the surrounding liquid. He was sure there was something out there (or perhaps at first he thought); a secret military base, a scientific lab that could hire him, calling him one of our most distinguished mathematicians for finding their base built for research and experiments on how to control the ocean’s natural instability - but this was not the case.

At first he found the coordinates to be about 600 miles off the coast of the Canary Islands (he wrote out 614.866) and just above the hump of Mauritania. The area of the grid covered about 45 miles, roughly the size of Wales. This dashed his hopes a bit but he continued his delusion; he imagined that the respected scholars hidden under that ocean, impressed that he worked out their secrets, would welcome him almost as family. These brilliant minds could never bore him, and he could never bore because he was the one who searched them out, caught them, as a member of the solid world. And whatever struggle it took to reach them would surely impress. He pulled out a legal pad and straightened his tie, taking a scholarly posture as if he were performing in front of an audience and started working out the structures on the screen. He first found it difficult but as soon as he started to recognize blocks, and then the tops of buildings, he recognized it as a city. It must have been ancient; the largest to be built in its time. He tried to remember the legend but it was hard to come up with anything. Was it Greek? Were the god’s involved or was it just lost? It must have  dropped off into the ocean, that great city, or pairs of cities, after breaking off from the rest that was wilderness. Before the Euphrates and  the Tigris. The real beginning of civilization lived off the coast of Africa, or really, in between Africa and the Americas, before they split apart. Adam and Eve (or all of the Adam’s and Eve’s) were those cast from that great city, rejected or too disturbed to want to be a part of it. The only ones still around are the offspring of the damned, he thought. This is why we are all flawed, evil, disturbed.

He scribbled out his findings, entitled them, Really, I just found this amusing, but what if?, and slid them into an envelope addressed it to Professor Adelheid at the University of Geneve, 30 Quai Ernest-Ansermet, CH-1211 Geneve 4, knowing she would open it in anticipation of some admission of admiration, but after shaking off the rain of disappointment, would give it thoughtful consideration and respond promptly.

Four out of five dogs bark loudly when I am bored at work. The first is hunger. The second, anxiety. The third is fear and the fourth, rebellion. (The alternate dog never barks, content to turn his head and look at the lunatics howling out, and perhaps smack the settled spit from his jowls. His name is passion.)  I yell out to them, almost joining in their screams, as if it were the more natural thing to do, but instead I rebuke them, saying, please, don’t wake the neighbors …

Skip of the Heart
 
Orson showed us those bulls shamed, their ancestors culled from the earth and bred to face battle. If we ignore the moral implications of this and see it all just as the spectators we are, then we can experience one rare opportunity of watching man collide with nature completely on his own terms. The circumstances are his; the crowd, the stands and the bull himself, built, almost engineered by his opponent. Initially we see this as an unfair fight. The bull was on the road to destruction even before he is born. The matadors expect it all to look as real as possible. The strongest opponent in the ring, the more worrisome the snout forcing out deep breaths, the more looming and punishing the horns appear, all inform the spectators on the fight. These matadors, because of their control, can afford to build these beasts as they wish; the more ferocious he looks, the better the fight. He (Orson) quotes those nameless sages of passed down history as claiming that these bulls represent the restless spirit of man, and the matador is nothing more than the Biblically sinister Eve, taunting this restless Adam, tormenting his soul.  The bull stays true to his instincts, continually submitting to what the matador wants from him all along, even if he feels he is fighting ferociously against his opponent. Eve thrives on his fierce independence. With her cape and banderillas, she takes her position thinking that she, in fact, is the one being imposed on. She drives those sticks deep into the beast’s shoulders, regarding it as self defense. Both parties let themselves believe they are operating out of instinct in this completely artificial circumstance. Still, both of these animals are allowed to see the world as they would like to see it, even when it isn’t true.  The matador has created for himself a situation that she needs to get out of. The bull has been built for his animosity. He battles against his purpose, but it is this battle that is his purpose. In this light it looks like the complicated dance of individuals who consider themselves in some sort of control of their circumstances, both thinking themselves to be free. But as the matador cannot always predict the temperament of the bull, the bull, tragically, cannot understand how he is playing into the matador’s game.
 
While in the stadium you cannot keep these thoughts in your head. It comes down to a death. Which of these players will be slain? There is no question there would be no matador without the bull and there would be no bull, at least not in its current state, without the matador. We sit as God watching down on our creation (because, of course, there would be none of this without our eyes looking down in dread or, dare we say, with a little skip of the heart) as they settle in on destroying each other. We look down and exclaim, “Oh! How terrifying!”

The Leaves

I called out of work this morning and, oh, what a day to ring.  Last night was the first hard rain after the first freeze, and even though the leaves had gone not brown but yellow they still had fallen from their branches. It was a separation of the trees; I didn’t know which parts should be considered. The trees I had known had fallen to the ground and were now pasted to it. These leaves vary in size and color, though most show brighter than usual, some still hint at their green. The branches are now almost devoid of their color; their skin not brown but white and faided. The remaining leaves dissolve into the overcast, ashen sky. I cursed myself for not having a camera, knowing that with every whif of air brushing Brooklyn a piece of these trees will be stripped away until their shock and comfort is gone. I want to live in them until I’m forced to face these next few months. It is the last stand of the living earth, these trees, all of nature that I really enjoy. It is this that compels me to tell people that fall is my favorite season. It comes down to this slender block of days.

Crops

The washboard, the sawdust hacksaw were all I could think of on the road, rear tires sheer black and wearing against gravel. We fought, settled in with brick leather banks pushing our shoulders down, forcing us to make fists out in front of us. You claimed it was the first, first beautiful date, terror – no, not terror but excited fear billowing under. Traps tried to close us in with signal lights and workmen reaching for the dashboard where I almost always felt they held a hidden gun. It thunder stormed through the night making my skin shiver in its weary sleepless strain keeping my legs aching, keeping me awake. It never rained. It poured itself out to the fields, the pastures, east Texas plains filing clouds in as widows, dangling their dresses, sweeping the crops as they moved. The music played, the rain lulled even though we promised to keep talking. It complimented the heat as it found its shape after passing through the vents, shaking from the a/c and worn.

“I can see what they are growing,” you said from sleep eyes, crossed, blurred and falling.

You will be able to watch ideas swirl off of this and it will be worth something. I am starting to revert back to my more inconsistent musings that were more interesting if less clear. In a longer format the ideas will clean up nicely, brushed, and fully formed, but it is that jump that some words have when scribbled down instead of mused over that I find most important to my own work, even if it is considered a detriment. I don’t want to confuse people. The ideas will all be there. My hope is it might only be fraught with loose stings hanging from it.

Turn Inward

She put a south-bite on my jaw; no, just under, in an attempt to keep me from moving. With each kiss, I moved closer to the door and wondered how I stormed into city with a wing and a sail; all strapped to my back in a sturdy pack with its stitching guarded by angels. The same wasn’t said for my coat which ripped in the shoulder and let rain fall through with her first tug down over her head just as she had with sheets undone , slow motion and wandering above the bed. Her body was a blur outside of weak arms and thin legs the stretched to the corners of the blanket. Her ankles turned inward.

Scene

We sat in the car and waited with our hands over our heads as they lowered the casket. Hers were raised in black gloves tracing up to bare shoulders, I assume, to block the east morning sun shining in through the windows of the black sedan, or from a pair of eyes on the hill that in no way could reach us.  My hands were raised to the ceiling, at which our driver turned inward and scowled as I yawned and slid down into the warming dark leather. I said it was my first time in a cab. I got another flinch from the driver. This isn’t a cab, she said, without looking away from the procession.  We have Norman down for the weekend. I looked around in the cabin. Initially, it was everything I imagined from a London taxicab but now I was seeing the detail that would never come standard; silver lined trim in the corners, the drivers perfectly pressed suit. St. Martin warned me of the deep seat pockets that I currently settled into, the running of the engine away with your wallet. I was relieved. We couldn’t have taken a cab? She raised her voice just slightly, assertive. We’ve driven out far from the city; would you know how dangerous that is? Not knowing your driver? We had traveled twenty miles west out of London, me in charcoal suit and thin tie and hair I tried to flatten in the back, and her in black dress and gloves that I didn’t see until the car heated and she shed the coat wrapped around her. She blacked out part of the window which made the sun brighter, warmer than the seat cushions or the window that caught her breath and held to it for a moment and then let it shrink into the slightest line of moisture. It was her thin frame that came out of the blur, the shoulders you could see from under the coat that shagged up around the edges. Her eyes were not the same that looked up at me from under sheets in the blues of the curtained morning but were now focused, blinking with the visible wind hanging on the tips of men’s coats and the wisps of hair not held down by pins or hats of those standing firm up on the hill. This was where the clouds ended; they played as the roof to my temporary home, holding on to rain, or the threat of rain though fall’s haunt.

I adjusted in my chair to see her face and heard the rustle of pages under me. The shine of a wrist watch, black band and pearl face looked up at me. One strap held the place of pages I bent in my adjustments. I thumbed through the manual, removing the watch and placing it on my thigh and read the marked section to myself, tracing the black stamped words on the sun, and coffee, soaked pages. She slid in, still keeping her face inches from the glass, a foot from the curb and the yards of grass that opened up the hill. The open soil must have felt too unpredictable, as it did to me, opposed to the paved corners at the edge of each building in the cities center. Even the queen’s combed yards and open parks looked to be controlled by the will of the people. Now we sat at the base of foreign land; these faces were not the faces of friends, at best, the faces of strangers all gathered in varying levels of despair. But she refused to flinch at the dust flit from the open grave, as the priest, trying to look unmoved. We heard muffled song sync with the humming of the engine. These gospel songs are more for your country. I only know them from films. She said she wanted to go before it ended but the heat catching our necks and the hum kept her back; that, and the grip on my hand. I let the manual fall to the floorboard, slid the watch off of my leg and into my coat pocket, intent to give it to the driver before he turned around to return to Leeds. His band was navy with gold set, too similar to the one I twisted and turned in my pocket, rolling it over onto itself to the sound of the engine hum.  Assumed he would return it to Mr. Judge or an associate of his and Christmas dinner would be a perfect time to discuss its origin.

The gathered around the body were small in number; two young boys with knit caps covering up their shags of hair, their mother with a hand on each of their shoulders, some distraught family members and family friends, along with a boy whose eyes were covered. He stood nonthreatening in his suit, one hand attached to his pocket, the other like a sea captain lifted to his fringe. He cupped his brow the same as she, instead of looking up and out, down into the casket. He stood solemn, not shaking as if shielding the tears, and away from the rest of the gatherers, just enough to know he’d come alone. Louise said it wouldn’t be reverent if he tried to speak with her. She didn’t want a scene. She couldn’t imagine why he had shown or how he was able. You would expect him in lockdown. But I could imagine why he’d risk a scene on that hill as her hair’s brown ribbons fallen slightly from her pulled up streams; the white of her neck illuminated by the prism split through the car glass, the lips, hr doe eyes that didn’t wince from the light, never hidden behind frames; worshipping Audrey but never completing her most iconic look. I imagined he lost himself in the war and was put in Her Majesty’s Prison, Belmarsh. I spilled rumors of riots he set to motion, three million pounds in damages, which led Beth to change the places name to her own, as if she locked the inmates in herself and started laying bricks to keep them all together. I wondered how he would have escaped, or perhaps been let free. I thought he must be standing over his mother.

Esper (or the first part of something)

There were clothes piling in corners. Coats were returning to hangers in closets, timid and knowing there was one more snow and two heavy rains coming, when flaps from outside turned my head. Windows were still fogged as we looked from our morning headboards. Rushing to the screen door led to calls from my mother standing in the smoke rising from the skillet. Where are you going? I went to the yard, stood with one foot up against a tree, the other in the mud, and squinted towards the roof. I saw rain gutters filled with leaves but no falling feathers. From the window I heard her voice. It’s just the old barn owl. I remembered the cats in their cages, loaded in the back of Culler’s truck, their rare purrs pouring from behind the bed’s door, chipped brown paint showing silver. I wiped my nose as a final gesture, a salute, while the field mice gathered. Plots rose against us. My mother screamed and dropped a pan on the floor from the first sight of a tail hanging out from under the dryer. A birdcage appeared days later, viewed from the window, my father holding it awkwardly in front of him. He cut slits of salmon and warned us to stay away from the barn at night. Just look for his yellow eyes. I heard dark hoots on dry nights but never flaps of wings. We only saw him with his head turned, up in the corners of the barn. When we didn’t, Father said he spent some time in the chapel searching for church mice that couldn’t make the move.

The chapel moved from one plot over to a new, wide-pew, stadium closer into town. Sunday school classes shook from organ in the rooms next door as the humble voices that once lifted turned authoritative. I never felt the shivers from wings, silver lined edges like the books we held. Names, first, middle and last printed on them. Their tails moved from page to page, golden highlighters clinging to black words, some that sat in the gut printed red. We all looked for mystery that used to come in through the old chapel’s windows, not ashamed of sunlight seeping in, or cloud cover, raining up against them. We couldn’t see the sparks from halos with the fluorescents that glared against plastic table tops, wood grain picked off into particles. In silences before prayer, we heard the radiator moan and own on into the morning. I got lost in the walls. When we left, my eyes squinted at the sun, leaves barely broke from their branches. Little girls left their classrooms in white, falling to their drawn feet bare and peaking. My only short breaths in the place came from a wedding, the bride down the isle, feathers framing her face, veil sliding down her back in waves to the carpet. Snow fell outside the windows, candles as the only lighting besides the white outside the walls. I thought of Daniel in his den and his three friends in the fire. Who was the fourth in the flame? I grabbed my Mother’s sleeve and asked if the figure before us was an Angel. The snow falling on ski jackets white against blue, stuck in my eyelashes in the car and, fearing to blink, the light lit holy moments in front of me. The sounds of streets were muffled through the doors and the heat made the solid soft and left water on my cheek bones.

My brother slept on the left side of our room with the radio at the foot of his bed. Red lights and muffled voices reached me in my corner, sheets pulled up to my eyes. I heard the wind and, distinctly, the flaps of wings above the window that separated our beds. I saw ringed thoughts outside the window in flashes that caught my vision, wisps flit above me. I imagined trumpets and planes passing. What was the tune they would blow? Only hoots, I thought, his wings never make a sound. I followed the light past the screen doors, now much further in the distance, but still not the moon. It seemed to be the moon’s ring, the magnifying glass shaped around it. That, or his sinister friend who left in blinks or too many steps in its direction, not held down to the histories of position. The moon was nailed but this light was scrambling. I followed, past our gates on to the road and walked along side it. The trees hung over head, keeping me weaving so not to lose sight. I came to a post and climbed on it. With my eyes above, the wings passed me, brushed the air in my surrounded space. I imagined my Angel’s name as Esper, and grinned through the brushed up dust along the redemption road. The old chapel sat silently with boards and a broken lock. I creaked the door and it slammed behind me, sending the flaps of feathers echoing in the corners. It was dark in all but the red from blood pouring from the cross, the stained glass sectioned off by the outside branches. I sent dust through the hall with sneezes. The school house was wider than I remembered, pews pushed back to line the windows boarded up, and my footsteps leaving echoes deep and hollow. At first, I hunched my neck but slowly I spread my arms above me, reaching for feathers and looking for skeptical eyes shining yellow from the corners of the rafters. Somewhere a horse galloped in anticipation. The wooden planks rocked like the belly of a ship and I heard rain tipping the tin roofs of the sheds around it. I dropped, sending dust spreading out around me and pulled my arms in to my chest to rest my head on my palms until morning.

When I woke there was light breaking through the boarded windows. Nothing but nests sat up in the rafters, above the pulpit and pews. Nothing but a mess of white below.

Bereavement

They say, hey, we are all going to die some day.

I just know I never wanted to go trying to escape the prick of a finger or the first tear that stings all of the way down to your gut; the feeling that you’ll be sick again. We hate the tears at first; their warm reminder that there is still blood pumping, keeping us alive. By the end we squeeze them out. It’s hard to believe we have to stand up again and continue. The tears feel like sickness, something mothers bring soup for and phone calls into work lead to understanding. It is what used to be known as bereavement.  I don’t know. I hope I can just sleep it off.

My Coal-Stained Hands

I want to churn the gears on a train but she won’t let me and goes off the rails every time I throw a speck of coal into our fire. Our train is empty and cold, mostly abandoned. It used to run warm and clean. I stand in my conductor cap waving for her to join but she sits in the field with her legs drawn, picking flowers and only looking up at me when I put forth my most valiant of efforts. I throw my arms wildly above my head; I swing from car to car. She tosses the petals to the side and yawns. If I moved any closer, I’d spook her and I’d have to run, chasing her down streets and I just don’t have the stomach for it. The hardest bit is when I ask why not? she says She doesn’t really like trains anymore. She has the same affliction for planes and busses. She will turn her head for a car but just for a moment, returning her gaze to the wild flowers she picked apart full of yawns, oh what a mess I’ve made.

My long shot is to start shoveling coal without telling her and hope she will stand up and ask what is wrong. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just going.

So you are leaving me?

No, I’m getting ready for all of you to come along. I just have to be moving.

 She will ask me to wait just one more minute but I’ll tell her no.

I’ve already wasted enough time here. I’ve got to get moving.

And I’ll head out west because that is where the sun sets and I’ll follow it without looking back. I won’t even know if she is beside me until I feel fingers holding tightly to my arm.

This is the Night That Took Our Grandmothers Years Before Their Men

Give up nights with the boys, whiskey-hi balls and smokey poker rooms. Sell off your complaints about home (this home) for more than a song.  There can only be so many hard days and man can’t be filled with burgers at the bar, and corner slices in bright city lights; stars can’t be that calling. We lost more than Tommy that first year. Country busts grow back but only in hours before the sun. It never waits for your key, your steps, your cough. It won’t wait for your leak with eyes closed lightly under sheets (as if you’d notice faking.) You spoke of self in so many ways, now you keep it. 5 AM light doesn’t wait any longer and I’m gutted. Pockets emptier that your own because I put my money on the word you’d come back home. Only so much sleep can be taken in anticipation.

The Glove

I put my hands on the leather and slide to the window. With a slammed door the sound is muffled to a dull roar. All we hear are the thud of palms and the lock’s  click into place. We’re detached like being buried under snow but we see through it; the hands, young flesh pale and soft, the teeth and mouths open, tears for no real reason. We sit back and watch them fade off some more than others as they move their legs in lengths for blocks behind us. We wait for the silence, just bumps in the open street and wonder how long the hysteria will last. Who is going home for dinners with families? I doubt any bodies will be found under bridges. Those sounds are saved for records pressed with needles, hands trembling not to scratch.