Unlikely Acquaintances Who Become Friends.

There are thirty-seven cars on her street right now. She knows because she counted them. Earlier, Joanie (don't ask, she hates her name) went for a run...what was going to be a run, and instead, she got sidetracked into a conversation with her neighbor Manuel (that's pronounced Man-Well, not Man-You-Uhl, like she originally thought). They are in their building's downstairs lobby. He's sitting on one of the Pier1 Imports chairs that no one sits in normally.

"Hello pretty neighbor," says Manuel getting up to greet her. This is how Manuel speaks to all of his female building-mates. Just your typical overly friendly 65 plus Latino neighbor.

"Hi," Joanie says. "So good to see you." They hug, and Manuel gives her a small kiss on her cheek, very close to her right eye. Joanie tags on that last bit because Manuel's face is so expectant, his cracked corn cob smile visible behind dry lips.

"We are good today," he says hoping she's with him in his we-ness. She is. Manuel reminds her of her church growing up. There was an usher at Christ the King who was, well, too excited to lead people to their seats. He would say, "Today is the day, is the day, the day for you to sit...!" and he would guide them down the center aisle to whichever pew looked most empty, and shake everyones hands proclaiming the peace of the Lord be with them. She can't remember his name now. It's not really important, either.

"I'm just on my way out, Manuel," she says still smiling. Joanie is wearing bright violet running shorts with a zebra stripe down each side, Nike stitched onto the right, and a black dry-fit tank claiming: Strength. The green iPod nano currently playing her Top Tracks playlist is clipped to her arm. It will inevitably get annoying, as it will certainly hit the inside of her bicep. Eventually Joanie will elect to hold it.

"Oh, yes, yes. I see," Manuel says, adjusting his short-sleeved button up that is indeed buttoned up all the way. "I would fall down." He laughs at this sentiment.

Joanie smiles. "Me too," she admits, a girlish giggle cropping up.

Joanie hadn't gone for a run in over a month. The last time she did she was not three blocks from her apartment when she just face-planted, licking the pavement. As far as she could tell, no one had seen her Total Life Fail Moment, but in reality, someone did see and periodically when that someone is doing dishes and annoyed at her husband, she thinks of that girl who tripped and fell and smiles, laughing to herself. Her husband asks, "What's that about?" assuming she's laughing at him, because everyone assumes they're being laughed at when they're the only other person in the room, but she wasn't. She was laughing at the girl who fell, Joanie. Joanie doesn't know she exists, so the woman is no one important, thus she has no name.

Manuel shares his smile with her again. "Please, please, go on."

"Oh, thank you," Joanie says, turning her music down finally. "Are you going to be OK today?"

"Yes, I'm waiting for my daughter to come get me." He looks anxious.

"That's great. Are you getting lunch together?"

"Yes." He pauses, and Joanie starts to turn her iPod back on, but then, "She's looking at my apartment."

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Is she helping you with something?"

"I'm going to go move in with her."

The unlikely acquaintances who became friends both look sad.

Finally, "When?" asks Joanie.

"This weekend."

"So soon?"

"Yes."

There's another long pause. Manuel's gaze is affixed to his friend, and then he hears a car pull up.

"Is she here?"

"Yes, this is her. Arabelle."

"Beautiful name."

"It is."

"Well, I guess, I'll —" Joanie cuts herself off. She didn't expect to be so sad. Manuel's her kind neighbor, but just a neighbor. A friend, who's about her own father's age. And Arabelle is about her age, maybe a little older. "I'll get going on this run. You let me know when you leave, though."

"Ok," says Manuel. He grins, waves at his daughter. She gets out of her turquoise RAV4, "Hi dad!"

Joanie waves, then turns to go, beginning her brisk run. A Ryan Adams song begins to play.

"Hello Gracie you're a good little girl. It's a beautiful world, oh when you're out in it. Last time I saw you playing in the yard, you were running with children and the old people were smiling..."

Fake Barking

"Can you believe we've known each other for more than a decade?"

Caitlin looks up from her book, muffles, "Yeah, weird," brushing off Liv, and goes back to A Moveable Feast.

"I mean, like, it's crazy that I remember that far back. Like, sometimes I can't even remember something that happened last week, but then at the same time I can remember when we used to have swim practice at Lake Bluff pool and your mom would pick me up, and I'd always forget my towel, and—"

"Yeah, it's nuts, Liv."

Liv gets up from the kitchen bar stool she'd been sitting on. "Anyway, I just thought it was weird," she says defensively.

She closes the IKEA catalog she'd absently been flipping through, then she adjusts her sweatshirt, which had gotten bunchy from sitting.

Caitlin's eyes follow her. Liv's doing that thing where she wants to talk, and Caitlin's doing that thing where she doesn't want to talk. It has nothing to do with the other, just on different wavelengths this morning. It's Saturday.

"Sorry, Liv," Caitlin says. "I'm—"

But before she's done, Liv cuts in, "It's fine. I'm just being dumb."

"You're not. I'm just tired." She thinks to herself, it's 10am, and says, "Well, that's not an excuse—"

"Except that it is."

"Right."

"Right," says Liv.

"I don't want to fight with you, Liv."

Caitlin gets up from the couch. It's a New England red, the kind that mens J. Crew shorts are colored to look like, almost like they're covered in dust.

"Do you remember that guy in the car yesterday?" Caitlin asks.

Stopping in the space between her bedroom and the hallway, "When we were walking?" Liv asks.

"Yeah."

"I remember." She was neither smiling nor frowning, but her face was mute because she didn't know where this was going.

"And he was yelling so much, so loudly and we could hear it all."

"Yeah."

There was a guy who was driving a silver Lexus SUV down Windsor. There was a passenger in the seat next to him. The girls couldn't tell if the passenger was a man or a woman, and frankly it didn't matter. Not because the person looked like either, the SUV driver was going too fast, and it was an odd angle, even when he had to stop at the red light. The driver was yelling so loudly. He was yelling about how much he loved the person sitting in the passenger seat. He was yelling, and he was exasperated, and it was hard to understand because Caitlin and Liv hadn't ever felt that kind of 'frustrating, over the top, I can't deal with you because I love you too much kind of love.' The couple was fighting because they couldn't spend as much time together as they wanted to, the very best kind of terrible fight, because it means they care, and they want to continue to care, and it's hard. It's the hardest kind of fight.

"No one should fight like that," Caitlin says. "That was the kind of fight, if you're going to have it, that you shouldn't have while operating heavy machinery." She was laughing now.

"It was funny," Liv agreed. They thought it was funny because they couldn't identify with it, not really. Their reaction was inappropriate for the situation, like laughing at a funeral, or something less trite.

"God, that uninhibited rage," Caitlin giggled. "Maybe rage isn't even it."

"Yeah, maybe it's more like unwarranted frustration."

Mock holding an invisible badge, Caitlin uses her policeman voice, "I have a Warrant For My Frustration."

"Officer, please, come on, you know me," Liv plays along.

"Like that time my mom was so mad at us for both forgetting towels at swim practice, and we just were so soaking wet and sat in the backseat and we looked like wet puppies."

"And she was like, 'Girls, I just got this.'"

"And, we were like, just, like barking?!"

"Arf! Arf!"

"Arf!"

And the two spiraled into a bark session.

onomatopoeia.

click
ching ching
cling
they register
the register
it's registered.
click
ching ching
cling
bing bing bing
order up.
tingaling
the door
swing swing
click
ching ching
cling
receive a receipt
order up.
burger king.

perspective

From my perspective this is what you did. This is what happened. And this is why it's never going to happen for us. This is why I can't love you even if by some magical circumstance you got it together, which you won't, so I won't trouble my brain anymore with nonsensical thoughts about you. Foolishness. Utterly.

There were two people who liked each other. They told each other so, and then all the trouble found its way into that. As trouble tends to do to us weak people. Into those feelings. Into those people. This is what happened.

There were two people who wanted to make it work; they thought they did. But it was one more so than the other. A slight push, then an unnecessary pull. So, to make it easier on the one who wanted it less, the one who wanted it more tried to make up for the slight. Tried to convince the other through nice words and nice thoughts and nice feelings and nice nice nice, and this made the other one only more scared and more closed off and more childlike and more more more. This is what happened.

So these two people won't make it work because one person can't carry the whole load and they shouldn't have to and they shouldn't have to feel like they have to overcompensate for the let down that became the other. And the other shouldn't say anything bad about their non-partner. Because they were never in it together. This is what happened.

The other shouldn't make them feel like they did something wrong by carrying, by wanting, by hoping, by living bravely. What is that anyway? What beautiful words to characterize the actions of another: carrying, wanting, hoping, living bravely. Those are exemplary.

Living bravely and living recklessly are not the same. If you can be brave as recklessness takes you under water, threatens you into drowning, attempting to steal your very heart — then you are more than most. And we are not the same.

From my perspective, this is what happened.

I'm glad for it.

He wasn't wondering.

Reindeer boxer shorts rest limply on Conor Buckley's desk chair. It's June, so this is to be expected. The idea that someone would purchase underwear only for a particular season or holiday is ridiculous. He's had to explain this to a variety of overnight guests. He would be better served to use his breath on perhaps explaining why being such a slob helps him focus on his work. However, Conor can't actually do that. He can't do that because he has had "Art Block" for a week, and always does when his life's a mess.

Conor started off college as an English major, hence the borrowing and re-appropriating of the term "Blank Block." Conor would sooner say he had "Sex Block" when he inevitably failed at showing the ladies why he was an OK choice for the night (feel free to substitute: week or month, nothing more than that, obviously), than to admit that he's not always the most suave.

He's not-not suave. He's just, a — a guy — a guy in his twenties. And, he's figuring it out, just like the  rest of them...the guys, the rest of the guys in their twenties. Obviously he's excepting those who got tricked into a young-just-out-of-college-marriage. Everyone has a pair of friends like that, or rather, has a friend who has a wife or husband that you've had to become friends with because apparently they're going to be around for the long haul, probably longer than you in the end.

Conor's apartment definitely looks as though someone lives there, but not as though he plans on living there for longer than three months. Nothing hangs on the walls, but there are framed posters of Fight Club and Warrior leaning on them. The idea was there, it's the execution that's a consistent fail.

"Hey dude," Conor says to Patrick, his roommate, who's sitting on the couch Patrick's mom purchased for the apartment eight months ago. She came to visit from New Hampshire, had nowhere to sit when she "popped by" to say hello, so went to Pottery Barn and "made it right."

"Hey," Patrick returns. "How was yesterday?"

Yesterday? Patrick was referring to their mid-week debauchery. Conor had recently been let go from his job at some call center downtown, so decided to blow a hundred bucks like he had it.

"Fine — Jenn was there." Of course she was.

"Yeah, I saw her."

"Yeah."

Conor walks over to the pantry, opens it, looks into it for a bit, then closes it taking nothing out.

"She was with Katie," Conor continues. Jenn and Conor had never dated. They'd always teetered on the line. Sure, they'd made out. Sure, Conor had invited her over to his house after parties. Sure, they've seen each other naked. But, dated? No. "It's everything but the label," she had said when she explained why she couldn't do it anymore. "It's not the label, Conor, it's the lack of one."

It's not as though Conor thought he blew it with Jenn. By his calculation, he'd been the one rejected.

Flash to last night:
"Hey, there," Jen said, but, really it was more like a shout, from down the bar.

"Hey, hey," Conor said, smiling. "How've you been?"

Conor crossed over to where she was.

"I'm good. I'm fine. Katie's here."

"Yeah, I know. I saw her from the balcony."

"How mysterious..."

When Jenn smiles, she shows all of her teeth. She smiles, and she laughs. And it makes the people around her do the same. Conor never understood the phrase laughter's contagious until he met Jenn.

"So mysterious."

"How've you been?"

"Pretty good. Just working." Conor paused remembering he'd been let go. "I mean, I'm looking for work right now. Feels like a job. But I'm painting, and stuff. So..."

"Tell me about it."

"I just did." The two laughed.

"Funny. Anyway, I should get back —"

"Of course. Good to see you."  Jenn turned to go, then spun back around quickly. Conor was still looking in her direction.

"I'm here with someone."

She said it like he was wondering. But he wasn't wondering. And that's what's made the moment so awkward.

"That's great," Conor said, then smiled out of the side of his mouth.

They looked at each other, said goodbye again, and Conor proceeded to spend money like he had it.

"Anyway, she looked good," Conor said.

"Not a surprise, man."

Conor walks back into his room, closes the door, collects last night's clothes from the floor, then puts them on his bed. He picks up his jeans, examines them, smells them, then slides them on. He does the same with a green-grey t-shirt, then sits down at his desk, looks at his sketch pad, his reindeer boxers still on the seat-back.

living.

squeek
her voice squeeks
it's like a dagger
but it doesnt hurt
it's too quick
she's incredibly quick
with her words

i never thought about
it.

about poems
and music
and how they are the same

squeek
the oil
the oil is necessary

squeek
with a sharp wit
bit by bit

i never thought about it
i never knew it was there.
squeek.

i should have.
because one day
it hit me. it hit me like a dagger.
sharp.
squeek.

mouse.
in a house
it shouldn't be a surprise.
but it is.

squeek.

Bird.

There's a bird outside the one window in this Brooklyn apartment. Specifically, it's a pigeon. And specifically, it's Prospect Heights, on the very Northwest tip of the park — Prospect Park, if you can believe it.

Anyway, there's this bird that sits outside her window ruining the only thing that's beautiful about her converted two-bedroom — which was essentially a one-bedroom split in half by a partition. It's the kind of partition that separates large classrooms into smaller classrooms. That taupe plastic...thing.

"Her" is Kat Muller. She's thirty. She has a roommate. She has brown hair. It's wavy, but she wants it to be curly. She curls her hair with a large barrel curler from ConAir. She hates that movie. She wishes she didn't waste energy on hate, but she does. She says ones thing, and then normally attaches a qualifying "but." Everyone knows what she's thinking because her face doesn't hide like Mona Lisa's. If she knew I wrote that just then, she'd make a "You're retarded face." She wishes I would say "stupid," but, I didn't and I don't because, frankly, I don't give a shit.

"I" am her roommate, Emily. What a simple name? I put a question mark at the end of that, then I deleted it, put a period and then went back to a question mark. I used the word "what," which should denote that I asked a question. "Should." I love the conditional. I have brown hair too and a soft chin. Boo! Soft chins suck no matter how old you are, but they just keep getting softer with age and fat.

We have lived together since 2007. It's 2014. That's a lot of years. If we were different genders we could apply for Common-law marriage...or be considered for it. I don't really know how that works. I don't even know if marriage equality exists in New York. I like to think that I would know if I lived in, like, Chelsea.

Anyway, that bird. Ugh. That stupid bird. That retarded bird. It comes by every day, and I have never seen it fly. It must though. It walks over from the neighbors every day. It doesn't start the day at our place, or end it there. It's as if it is going to our house for "work." It's there 9am-5pm, and then the F train steams by, and it's out of here. Gone...to be seen from again. Tomorrow at 9am. It's never been late, which to me, is hilarious. If it were, I would expect a verbal apology with words and apologetic hand gestures.

I've named him Bird. Sometimes less is more. My mother says things like that to me. I imagine her needle-pointing onto shitty pillows when we talk on the phone. I'm from Michigan: the birthplace of crappy pillows and the best trees. Whenever I'm home in Michigan I feel naked. I'm convinced it's the crispness of the air. It cuts straight through clothing, no matter the amount of hipster layering I attempt.

It's not really fair that the only window we have goes straight into Kat's section of the apartment, which is just barely a step-up from a cardboard box. It's better in the winter, but not in the summer. "It's" meaning the apartment. In the summer it's a boiling cesspool of my and Kat's sweat. I mean, no it's not an underground garden unit, which basically is just asking for a rat to be your unofficial nonpaying roommate — but it's not a far cry. The first time we had an issue with the apartment, I cried. I never thought of myself as a crier, or an emotional person, but when it happened, it was so disproportional that I came to the conclusion that I am an emotional person, I just don't know when's an appropriate time to let it out, so I hit this tipping point, and then I was toast. Burnt toast that's no good.

I'm looking at Bird right now, and I'm wondering where he calls home. I'm wondering who's waiting for him to get back at 5:30pm. I'm not wondering how long his commute is. Everywhere in New York is a half hour. Or should be. Whatever comes first.

Maybe I'll move back to Michigan. There's birds in Michigan.

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