I walked down from City College, setting up an experiment to run overnight. There's a deli near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine where I used to often buy a BLT on a bagel with hot peppers on it--I liked the way they made it. All the delis near City College are Halal, so they don't do bacon. I decided I'd have one for lunch, wandering down Amsterdam Ave on a sunny Sunday.

There's a place I like to eat by the cathedral, a sort of little park surrounding the Peace Fountain. It's a many-times-daily stop for tourist buses and often busy. Sometimes though, you can hit it when you're the only one there, just you and the fountain. One important thing: the tourists feed the animals there so much that they expect food. It is their right. In fact, I once fought with a squirrel there--a squirrel who appeared through a fence full of ivy, crept up to my BLT with hot peppers, and let me know he would be taking half. "You asshole!" I yelled at him, and he shot me a dirty look, then decided to run for it. You see, I was truly angry. He did the right thing.

Today I sat down at a quiet spot near the fountain, which was surrounded by a crowds of people with fancy cameras and maps. While I ate sandwich half #1, I kept looking down at sandwich half #2, thinking specifically of the squirrel. Certainly he and his cousins were hungry today--it had probably been over an hour since a crowd of Japanese people in hats had feed them Cheetos, and they'd long since finished up all the cigarettes on the ground. If they didn't find food soon they might have to resort to eating acorns or something disgusting like that. They don't want that rabbit food. Give them something solid, something to build strong bones and teeth, fluffy coats, something more like a half a Quarter Pounder. Real squirrel food.

A group of children were running laps of the fountain while mom and dad sat and rested. Right as I finished sandwich half #1, a flock of sparrows landed next to me, and all twenty of them looked--LOOKED--at me and cheeped. Cheep cheep cheep!! Listen up!

No. No, you are not getting any. You guys eat too much. I feed every sparrow on earth except you guys. You guys, you are the overfed plutocracy of sparrows. There are sparrows starving on the lower east side, and you guys can't say anything except cheep cheep cheep. No way. I waved at them, which made them hop around, but not one of them flew off.

Me, I was wary of the squirrel.

As I picked up sandwich half #2, a loud CLANK! CLANK! came from off to my left. I glanced over to see an albino peacock, as big as a Thanksgiving turkey, tall enough to peck a man right in the nads, slowly strutting over, having just leapt a chain-link fence. The googly thing on top of his head googled with each step, making his way to me, on his skinny peacock legs.

I heard the children. "It's a peacock!" "No it's a chicken, silly!"

No, no, I said. No, you may not. He came right up and looked at me with eyes of contempt and hatred, bobbing his head around with curiosity, deciding what move to make and exactly when to make it.

I stood up, walked around him, and went to the other end of the concrete bench, thirty feet away. See, Mia works at the Cathedral sometimes, and she says these peacocks aren't nice. She says if you're eating, they might decide to show up, and if they do, you give them something to placate them, their fair share, and you back away slowly, hoping they have decided to let you off easy.

Without hurrying, because that would be undignified, he turned around and strutted right for my new spot, eyeing me the whole time, as if to say, "Why are you making things difficult? Why do you have to be this way? What does Marcellus Wallace look like? Does he look like a bitch? Then why you trying to fuck him, huh?"

No, no, no no no, I said. I stood up and went back where I had been. A guy with a camera sitting nearby laughed a hearty belly-laugh, watching this. The peacock didn't break stride, but turned, head first, feet second, and made right for me, same as before.

I stood up and took two steps toward him, which made him stop. Then he proceeded, intending to walk right into me, his head at the height of my upper thigh. What do I do?, I thought. I stuck out one foot, like a kick, and made to wave it near his head. What's this? his look seemed to say. He stood his ground, but weaved his head to the side on his long neck, slowly, to make sure he was in the clear should a kick arrive. That's the spirit, he seemed to say, looking up, making full eye contact. That's it, now ... come at me.

I waved my foot again, and he stood still, watching. "Go away," I said sternly. Behind me, I heard the guy laugh again.

I took a quick step forward and made to kick him on the breast. Not hard, but to push him, connect with him, maybe scare him. "Bwraak, buuurwaarkk," he said out loud and flew six inches up off the ground, backing up the minimum amount to keep me from touching him. His eyes were right on mine, looking. Standing still and watching. He took a small step forward.

To the side, I heard one of the children. "Daddy! Daddy, that man, that man is trying to hurt the peacock!" The peacock stared right at me. Even the crowd is on my side, he seemed to say. Go for it. Or, if you don't have the balls, give me the bagel. Top and bottom. Two minutes ago I would have taken only the top. But I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.

"Daddy! Daddy, make him stop! That man is hurting the peacock. Daddy!"

I reached back and got my bag, and walked a large circle around the peacock, heading for the street. I would sit on Amsterdam Avenue, on the sidewalk, and finish my sandwich. The peacock watched me. Just watching.

"There he goes! He was hurting the peacock! Daddy, there he goes."

I sat on the street, my back to the fountain, and finished my sandwich. I fully expected to feel my head pecked at any moment, but no. He had lost interest in me--I had gone too far away. When I was almost done, I heard it again. "That's him! That's the man who hurt the peacock."

I thought, Kid, that bird's a murderer. A murderer. You don't know who the good guys are here. You gotta learn.

Everyone calls me Egypt, you should too, it’s better than my real name. My dad’s a famous surgeon, he was born in Egypt. My mom’s a nice lady from Canada. I went to college on an African-American scholarship to study physics. Egypt’s in fucking Africa last time I checked. At an information session, “Let’s write thank-you notes to the elderly benefactor dudes,” these black guys talked a bunch of shit to me about it. Look at a map, girls. They were scared of me though, it all stopped at talk. I stayed quiet, fuck em.
          Not long ago I left Prudhoe Bay Alaska, where I worked, not doing math but just working. It’s better than anything in a city, more like working on the Moon. To not hurt the ground, they drive around in moon cars with wheels bigger than you. The sun’ll come up and go all the way around in the sky in a circle. There’s no women, but there’s the internet. The cold is good, in college people knew me because I wore shorts every day, even in the snow.
          I took the train down from Seattle to San Francisco, not the nice train just the regular one. For a long stretch, named Oregon, it’s just trees. You slow down at a fence and a shitty little road, then it’s just trees again. After a few hours the train smells like people sleeping.
          This trip, I had a video game where you race cars by the beach. I noticed when I heard the door open and a girl came in the car. She had blonde hair coming from under her knit hat and tattoo sleeves with birds on branches. She was hot in a laid back way, wearing jeans a little unfitted like a man’s jeans. I watched her go by and she reminded me of a girl in this internet video. The video girl looks exactly like her, but instead she wears these really tight jeans, so tight you can see her pussy lips pushed on one side of the seam. I’ve remembered her for years because of how incredible she is, and she looks smart, even though she’s probably not. Otherwise she wouldn’t be in internet videos.
          In Alaska I don’t miss women much, not until I go back south and see them again. I don’t know why, just because. I knew I had to talk to her, though, so I thought about it, telling myself I would.
          The thing is, she came over to me after only sitting for ten minutes. I thought she was walking by, but she stopped and talked, so I took out my earphones.
          “You’re a big guy. What are you, a pirate?”
          She ran her finger up and down my earrings. Her finger was dry, because it just gently slid over them. I said yeah, then explained I can’t wear them on the North Slope, but I put them back in as soon as I leave.
          Her name was Opal, get that, like an old lady name. She told me she was a computer programmer, but I don’t think she was. I mean, I know girls who do computers, and she didn’t seem like them. She seemed really eager for someone like that. I could be wrong.
          She’d been in the last car, in the back of the train. Since it was empty, she came up further, I don’t think she liked being by herself. She wanted to go up to the bar car, but we found it wasn’t serving beer, more like a snack counter at a golf course. Two guys were there, outlined against the one wall full of windows and moving trees and clouds. A blond guy, kind of just a college kid, ate chips out of a silvery bag open on the table. Across from him was a guy sitting really still, big hands, a strong guy. Not big like me, but solid.
          After Opal couldn’t talk the guy into giving us beer, she slapped her hands down to her hips, letting the world know how frustrated she was. She walked over to the two guys, kicking her feet around on the carpet.
          “So do you guys hate the President or what?”
          “Of course,” the blond guy said. The other, whose name turned out to be Reg, laughed this deep stuttering laugh like a machine gun. We sat down with them. The two of them didn’t know each other, they’d just met. I never did learn the blond guy’s name, unless maybe I forgot. He asked me what I did, and I said I do hazardous materials.
          “Is that like tequila?” he said, and Reg did his machine gun laugh again.
          Reg had a five-inch fishhook stuck in his cap. One of the guys who work on boats in the summer. How still and calm he was, I bet he was gay, nothing wrong with that, I knew guys just like him on the Slope.
          Opal turned on me, “So what, you don’t hate the President?” New people were there so she had to show off is what it felt like.
          There’s no reason to, I said. Even if I didn’t agree with him, there’s no reason.
          “What if it’s a woman?” she said, like it was a killer.
          “It should be a woman,” the blond one said.
          I’d respect a woman, too, but I wasn’t going to answer that. That blond kid wanted to suck up to Opal, so let him, but I didn’t need to act like he’s important.
          Opal ate some of the chips without asking. “I do think he’s a prick. Fucking those women who work for him. The President should have no dick, like Ken. Ken wouldn’t fuck his secretary. He wouldn’t notice.”
          The blond kid made this bad boy play, or who knows maybe he believed it: He lectured, “I think that’s normal. It’s the way guys are.” That sounds wise and world-weary doesn’t it? If you can’t think of anything else, just say the most cynical thing you can think of. Words of advice for navigating any conversation you come upon, my generation’s contribution to small talk.
          “Fucking is normal, but fucking the girl you hired to sort your mail, that is not.”
          “All men are that way, they want to fuck before they want to do anything else. No matter who they are—your brother, your father, every one of them you ever knew.”
          “Okay. How about this. I’ll totally fuck you. Let’s go to the back of the train, I’ll fuck you there.”
          The kid laughed and looked out the window. You could feel she meant it, so Reg and I didn’t say anything. The air had enough tension that it seemed like a long time with just the trees going by. “No I, can’t. No, I’m sorry.” He waved his hand around, then huddled up like he was cold.
          Quietly, to no one, Reg said, “Boy you screwed up.” He laughed.
          Opal said, “That’s the way they are. Half the guys I ever fucked are like that.” She laughed too, but she was acting.
          He went out into the next car. We didn’t say anything while he was gone. In one minute he came back and said he was sorry. “It’s okay, I changed my mind.”
          Opal laughed for real. “You changed your mind? You can’t change your mind.”
          “I made a mistake.”
          But she would barely talk to him. He deserved it. I think though that she had actually been into it—she wasn’t just fucking with him. I think the idea of fucking that brash, immature kid made her happy. She wanted to be like him, someone out of place. And I know that because people always want the opposite of whatever they are.
          Reg got up and left before the blond kid did, who hung around saying as little as possible to believe he was part of the conversation. It was pathetic, I knew he was hoping she would change her mind. What a waste it would have been. After he finally got up, Opal and I talked about where we were from, although I didn’t tell her anything important.
          “Egypt. All the stuff about fucking, I’m turned on. I need somebody.” She rubbed my arm and smiled. It was a cute smile, different than when the others were there.
          I said sure, what else could I do, and I gave it to her in the back of the train. It was really great. I never saw her after that train trip, I could look her up but what would I say. She was so gorgeous why would she care if I ever looked her up. It doesn’t matter, because she gave me part of herself, she said yes, and from her that’s enough of a gift to last for someone’s life. Flying through trees, I fucked her, and it was the best time I ever fucked anyone. I’m in love with her. I think about her all the time.

It was 8:30 AM on a Sunday morning, and I got on the N train at 5th Avenue next to Central Park. On the bench across from me sat a young girl, with a thin build, and her feet up on the seat. There's something about girls who sit like that. Who always have their feet up on their chair. So feminine, slightly unrefined.

Her head was down, both hands over her eyes. Her hair spilled all around, over her hands.

I watched her, and wondered where she had been. Just getting home, maybe still drunk. Was this how she always lived, was she out of control? She could have been running from something. Her childhood might have been horrible, and here she was in the city, lost. Or maybe her life had been perfect, so perfect it was oppressive, she hated it, and now she was working it out.

The train came out of the tunnel, from under the East River, and we climbed the trestle into Queens. It was still early. The sun was intensely orange and low in the sky. The world lay pure and sharp going by outside the windows, below us.

The girl looked up and focused out the window. She looked so clear. She reached into a small cloth purse, and felt around past the earpieces of a stethoscope, almost as large as the purse.

As we pulled out of Queensboro Plaza she unfolded her credit card statement and read it tiredly, her head down six inches from the paper. It looked just like my credit card statement. She fished around for a pen, clicked it, and slowly filled in numbers, writing with the page clumsily laid on her palm.

Did I ever tell you about the time I came home from work and decided to made macaroni for dinner? I boiled macaroni, mixed cheese into it, put it in the oven to bake, and fell asleep. The next morning at 8am I woke up on the couch. The apartment smelled deliciously of chocolate chip cookies. Surprisingly, the macaroni came out of the dish in one black, rocklike mass, not sticking, right into the trash.

Speaking French

Not ever good at it. Wanted to be though. Am supposed to be smart, but brain is wired some kind of wrong way to acquire languages.

Given up in 2007, when Rosetta Stone software removed from computer to make room for Matlab.

Bass guitar

Not really good; however, have a punk sensibility that might have carried me. Unfortunately always in bands that played Skynyrd and BOC.

Last band was 1996. Given up in 1997 when bass sat for one year out, untouched, then put away.

Trumpet

Mediocre, but with a few moments. Requires arrogance, which I have. Unfortunately also requires practice.

Given up in 1992 with college; regiven up in 1998. Does have a perk: to this day can sing from music provided I also make valve motions with fingers.

Drawing

Fairly decent at it. Not possessed by genius, but functional. Five good years of life, stated goal was to write and draw for Marvel Comics. Now Marvel Comics look like a horrible cross between an Ed Hardy shirt and Photoshop to me.

Slowly given up as Rapidograph tip dries and breaks between projects; easier and less frustrating to doodle with a Bic pen. Last big project was 2003. If Great Depression happens, perhaps will retire to draw street scenes in a medium-sized city.

Future projects to give up: Running, Writing, Science.

I'm 20 years old, in Book Star, a store in Nashville. Walking past the New Releases section, I see a well-dressed, good-job-having man browsing. Suddenly he springs into action and reaches for a hardback book titled: The Book of Completely Useless Information.

I think: That guy has no focus.

There are two men in this story. The first is William, who everyone called Billy. I never liked that—allow him some dignity. William could be a king, but there’s no King Billy. As a kid, he was a little weird, old for his skin. Children aren’t supposed to be that serious. They tell a story that one day in class he fell for no reason, really dramatically, and all the kids laughed. I doubt it was that sudden a transformation, but that’s the story. Up until then he had been kind of cute—you see pictures and you know he would have been handsome. By twelve he sat turned sideways in a wheelchair, his arms and legs folded over. The part of the story about him is all bad. At twenty-two, he died in front of a construction site in the rain, after being sprayed with mace.
          My friend Jack is the other, and he is the sweetest man I’ve ever known. Sometimes guys are really big—I don’t mean fat but just big—and they’re extra gentle and just extra nice. Jack wouldn’t like that description, but that’s how I see it. Maybe a better way to sum him up is that he used to do something with computers, but quit. He said he liked computers too much to do it for work.
          Jack and I are just friends. My sister had a crush on Jack in college, which makes me laugh because we’re not a thing alike. She likes to have fun, she doesn’t dream about what you’re thinking of while you’re apart. I don’t think she would have liked him if she actually knew him.
          Until all this happened, Jack worked at a physical therapy clinic off Washington Street. They first hired him to restrain patients, which he thought was funny. None of them ever looked intimidating to me. The times I actually met William were there. This is what I always thought: His hair hung in his face as though it would poke him in the eyes. It was a powerful urge, to reach down and brush at it. The blue haired lady at the desk told me Billy said I was pretty—she swelled up with how adorable she thought that was. But Jack said almost anytime William spoke he was mocking someone, so God knows what he actually said.
          Sylvia Goel is the mail carrier who sprayed William, she claimed in self-defense, causing the convulsion that ended his life. Self defense. More people than do should think that’s funny, because William couldn’t so much as talk without you worrying he might swallow his tongue. It happened in front of the playground where foreigners play cricket on Sundays. Sylvia and William met on a plywood sidewalk set out for people to walk across the mud.
          William wasn’t really famous, but a TV show called Frontiers of Science had done an episode on him as a child. He had these white cords running into his spine, and in one scene a young doctor and he joked with each other, while the doctor explained what they were trying to do. William lay on his side and smiled. It is endearing.
          When he died, it turned out some people knew exactly who he was. I don’t mean people from here—these are people from all over. Jack sent me an email at work, to a website with a picture of William smiling from that show. Messages people wrote, comments, covered this board. That they thought about William every day since he had been on TV years ago, that he was on the wings of Heaven, and other nonsense. Billy was a miracle. The music of his laugh was a miracle, the miracle that kept him healthy and strong all these years.
          I couldn’t even relate to that. It was like an alternate reality of pseudo-people.
          Why had Sylvia pressed her thumb on an aerosol nozzle and shot an immobile and slumped child with pepper spray? What had happened in front of the playground, when they were facing? It’s possible they couldn’t pass because there wasn’t room. She stood with William, while he choked to death, waiting on an ambulance. Once she was on TV, everyone knew how she looked, sitting up straight like her back was a rod. Both indignant and withdrawn, there was something off about her. Never did anyone seem more self-contained. Her look was that of a saved woman. On the inside, this stern and cold woman may have prayed for you.
          Sylvia pleaded not guilty, and enough people showed up that the police closed the main road past the courthouse to traffic. Mostly it was normal people, but some of these crazy people showed up, too—the ones who were into William. Jack and I went the first day because people from his work did, and they knew William’s dad. The guards gave us a hard time on the way in, and wanted to know how we knew William. Jack told the officer where he worked, and he said he needed proof. Who has proof of where they work, but eventually they let us in, and the room was hot and too crowded. I sat in the hallway on a bench with half the lights burned out, while Jack left to buy an umbrella across the street before it rained. He didn’t want to wind through the crowd outside again, so he walked along the grass and went over a blue police barricade. Stepping over, a reporter lady in red, with camera people, asked him what he thought of the accused. Jack was frustrated, and he said, “I just want to cross the street.”
          The video of this had some quality—the way Jack looked, the way he talked, it didn’t seem like him to me. It was interesting. In a bad way. Lots of people saw it, and this is what got Jack in trouble. “I just want to cross the street.”
          We were at Jack’s place, watching it the next day, and his expression watching himself looked so opaque, so deep, like it was 40 feet of glass he was trying to see through. “I do seem like an asshole,” he said.
          I didn’t say anything to contradict him. I let it go, which I do all the time, sitting there wondering why I wasn’t telling him he was wrong. Not just with Jack, but with everybody. It never feels worth it, but I always want it to.
          A patient at Jack’s work, an old man who shakes, came in and asked to see the doctor. In front of everyone, he said he wouldn’t come in again because of that disrespectful young man. After he said his piece, he stood there, unsure what to do. That part made it funny, but later a man stopped Jack at the laundromat in his building and told him he should be ashamed of himself. After catching the world’s attention, how do you make it stop?
          Jack called me in the morning and said he didn’t feel like hanging out that night. He tried to make a joke about his video, crossing the street.
          “If I was smart, I’d do another movie where I lie on my side with a doctor and laugh into the camera.”
          After that, it occurred to me to check on the website with William’s picture on it, and I couldn’t believe how different it looked. Someone posted videos zooming in the windows of Sylvia Goel’s house. WHO IS THIS WOMAN!? It turns out, she has Christian stuff all over, but they got fixated on toys you could see, one of those things where you pull a string and it sounds like animals. She lived alone and never had kids, so why did she have that?
          These people were so self-important—one would report they’d just been to hospitals to check for birth records, doing their homework on Sylvia. They argued about her a lot, many comments per minute, back and forth. Murderer, murderer, murderer, but then an objection would be made about “this poor woman.” It was off the rails.
          They pretty much forgot about her, though, because they found Jack. That ten second video of Jack—they had not missed it. Something that left them so much to talk about, to be outraged by, it formed their perfect center in a way Sylvia couldn’t. They posted his phone number, his address, and pictures of him from his high school yearbook.
          Selections from the first page of comments: Chess club fag. This guy’s a real prick. They took away an angel, but Jack doesn’t care about angel’s, on Judgment Day he will meet the LORD and have no answer, he won’t even say hes sorry. I hope this Jacck dies then he nows howit feels.
          A bald man in a suit talked about Jack in front of a camera. He started crying halfway through, “These days people only love one thing, and that’s money. And this is how much they care: They only want to cross the street!” It was real crying, but it was preposterous. Of anyone to accuse of loving money, Jack is not the guy. I had to go outside and sit on the wall by the sidewalk. I smoked a cigarette and watched the cars go by. Each one had a person in it, and maybe one was one of these online extremists. The guy sitting at the bus stop didn’t seem like he would have a computer, but maybe he did, and a bunch of crazy thoughts under his felt hat.
          Instead of hanging out with me, Jack went to bed early that night and woke up in the dark with someone turning his apartment doorknob back and forth, pushing on it. Just gently, he said, not pounding. Standing in the hallway, trying to open the door.
          At work, he got a phone call the secretary took, and a man with a foreign accent listed off everything Jack had done the night before, alone in his apartment. What he ate, that he took a shower. Jack’s boss suggested he not come in for a few days until everything about William was over, which I thought was horrible. Like they were firing him. I took groceries over to make dinner, but then Jack made me as mad as I’ve ever been at anyone. He saw it from their point of view. The crazy people online. He did this whole song and dance, hedging it about how obviously they’re nuts, insane, but he knew why they thought they had all the facts. They only saw me for five seconds on TV, they don’t know me, all that. And I couldn’t stand it, no one has ever been so stupid. We couldn’t finish making dinner—I yelled instead.
          “No one will stick up for you if you don’t!”
          “I just see their point. It’s wrong—“
          “Go die, Jack!”
          But it was all wrong, because it came out like I thought it was his fault. He just wanted to hear that anyway. Somehow he would figure a way to put himself at the center of the universe, make this his punishment, and bear it.
          If I could explain what I really meant, without backing off my point, I felt like it would be okay. After we ate, I touched his arm, and we started making out, really hard, which had never happened before. Right when that started, I was so glad. It felt like something I had waited for, but I don’t know why. Even then I was mad at him, furious, but this calm feeling unfolded, that it would all work out. Jack put his hands on my breasts, where he was supposed to put them. And that’s what it felt like. It wasn’t right, and I realized it.
          I stopped us before we went too far, and I left. For the first time I’d seen, he seemed hurt, as I was leaving. It felt awful, leaving, because I was a bad person. But I had to.
          I tried not to talk to Jack the next day, but he called work more than once and kept trying to talk about it. I eventually asked him to stop. It was stupid, but I looked at the “William” website, and saw all this garbage about how someone should kill Jack. I couldn’t read it, so I went outside for a walk and ended up walking for half an hour, just down the sidewalk listening to how fast all the cars were next to me. When I got back, my boss reprimanded me for being gone.
          Here’s something you heard on the news: Sylvia, who wasn’t supposed to testify, stood up in court and said she wasn’t asking for anyone to forgive her, because the Lord had already forgiven her. All of us, her included, should be thinking more about the Life-heart. How to respect the world, respect the Life-heart, and get in resonance with the Life-heart. She had to shout the last part, while the unbelievers restrained her.
          A second story made the news, but only as one sentence: That the defense called witnesses pertaining to William’s character. You could get the full version by word of mouth, though.
          There’s a lady who’s taught kindergarten in my neighborhood for years. She’s about 45 now, and lives with her mother. She didn’t testify at the trial about William, but several people who did claimed to have been present two years ago, when she recognized William at a bookstore in line to pay. Really I think some people just heard this story and think they were there. Still, I had never heard it before.
          William had been in her kindergarten class, and remember that back then he was normal. She knew who he was, though, and went up to say hello and ruffled his hair. Like you would do a little kid, and who knows, maybe she was brushing it out of his eyes. Everybody watched—you would have too, because this was something different.
          He controlled his wheelchair with this thing in his hand, and it was clear he was agitated. He turned, facing himself to her, but it took a long, awkward time, going twice over one of those electrical outlet covers in a carpeted floor. Once he stopped, in place, the lady stood stunned, everything he said to her. When she was younger, she’d had a son die as a baby. That was when I was still a kid, but it was common knowledge. And Billy started telling her about her son.
          He damned it to hell, and claimed to have killed it. Even though he was nearly the age the son would have been, so it was all made up. “I .. fucking raped .. it .. that piece of shit .. fucking .. worthless garbage shit you shat .. dead out of your .. cunt. Bitch.”
          And she sincerely asked what. She didn’t believe it. Sometimes he’s hard to make out, so it was really slow while he was saying it.
          “I’m .. allowed to hate you. I’m allowed to .. fucking hate you.” he said. Those were his final words to her.
          I have to stay away from Jack for a while, but not forever. Just long enough so he forgets about what we did the other night after we fought. Just long enough for things to be back to normal.
          I think a lot about the overcast, wet day when Sylvia Goel, that crazy bitch, and William met each other on a plywood sidewalk, and she filled his eyes with pepper spray. It felt like a sky of fire in his face, and he couldn’t move like you or I could. He couldn’t rub at it, couldn’t claw at his eyes, not that that would have helped. He choked to death, like he was in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles from land, even as he sat in his wheelchair, where he’d always sat. I think she’s crazy, yeah, and I think it’s her fault she killed him. I never thought I’d say something like this, but hang her for all I care. There’s more though. I also wonder what William said to her. Things happen for a reason. Things happen for a reason, almost all the time.

Part II

Sitting at a picnic table outside a restaurant in Cleveland. A couple walk up.

The guy: You're the bartender at Sixth Street Under, aren't you?

Me: Yeah.

The guy: (to the girl) Told you!