Fiction

Bayonne

Words are us trying to give body to soul.  Soul is unseen, inside, before and beyond particularity.  Words are us trying to say something, make something visible, pin it down, which maybe could kill it, but we try anyway.  Because something we don’t understand wants to be said.  Words are like coins we trade back and forth, like currency, they mean because we say they do.  They’re containers for things that can’t be contained.  We try to make them hold our love, our grief, our…. uh… uh…. uh… to tell us who we are.

We all go by the same name.

Our name is Bill. 

Each of our dads’ names was also Bill. 

Our dads are dead. 

I walk on the ground and sometimes think, I am walking on my dad. 

I don’t remember what my mother’s name was. 

We have a body, a van, a house, a bed, some rope, and a strong will.

There are four of us. 

My friends and I are full of blood and semen. 

We see the world. 

The snow was piling up now in great glistening drifts that avalanched from rooftops and blindfolded the windshields of cars. I stood in the living room and watched the television on mute. In the silent scroll of school closings, Becky and Liza’s school finally emerged.

“I will bring one more . . .”
—God, Exodus 11:1

The plague descended suddenly. It caused no surprise.

The towers downtown became polymer and styrene spires. Cars plasticized to opal propylene as their tires fused into the cement of coast routes.

“Am I talking too loud?” Winona laughs and rests her chin against her forearm, which she lays atop the plastic folding table that Jonathan told her he’d replace once Kyle was born. When Winona’s nose gets this close to the surface of the table, she is usually repulsed by the scent of Clorox wipes and pizza bites, but she is now on her third glass of wine and is unbothered. “I always forget how far my voice carries when I’ve had a little too much.” She motions her hand toward the bottle in front of her, which she has gotten for eight dollars at Trader Joe’s that morning.

It was that very hot summer in Amsterdam, in 1978 (?)

I had seen notices in the Dutch papers that James Baldwin would be signing books at the Athenaeum book store on the Spui.

Not wanting to miss a chance to see an idol, I noted the day and time.

I biked over on a Saturday mid afternoon, very hot and very humid, crowds and a long line, all of which Amsterdammers do not handle well.

A table had been set up under the red and white awning by the wide open entrance, near the racks of magazines and newspapers.

A sharp electric tone screeches from the alcove of the restaurant’s drive-thru window. The girl on duty for the night shoots past the counter in a blur, engaging her headset and going through her opening spiel for the customer in the blue Chevy around back. She bobs behind the shift manager as she darts toward her register.

All of the tenants woke up at once. The sun glided across the horizon like dawn or armageddon. Light pouring from each window, flooding through every gate. Lunging across the face, penetrating the eye slit. Something dense and loud shook the building. Colliding with the top floor, a meteor or a missile.

I'll look like a cunt if I take off now. So I have to stick it out. Keep my word. Hold this fat bastard's pungent wheelchair underneath him while he stands on shaky legs. Grasping the escalator handrail so tight his knuckles whiten. Until we get to the top. 

Or his knees give out and we both come to our end. 

From over his shoulder he barks at me. You got that fucking thing ready 'case I fall? I hear the worry in his gravel voice. But there's something else. I recognize it. I've heard it before. But I can't figure out where.