The Dark Balloon

§

The myth and the man.

It was only on our third date that Lois Lane brought me back to her apartment. “Come on,” she said, squeezing my hands as we stood on her doorstep, “don’t go anywhere.” But it seemed impulsive to me, as though she had thought about the idea all day and only now in the soft lens of alcohol and autumn did she decide, and commit.

Her house was an L-shaped living room nestled against a bed- and bathroom. A sofa sat in the L’s bottom near the stairwell into the basement. Across from us was a kitchenette tucked against the opposite wall. We collapsed on the sofa, nervous energy and all.

“I feel like a thirteen-year old again,” Lois said, her crown of hair against my heartbeat, after a long silence of neither of us knowing what to say.

I studied her face for a second, considering the possibility. “Nah, I can’t picture you as a thirteen-year old at all.”

Lois laughed, then pretended to pout. “No no,” I said, looking at her eyes or the beginnings of grin lines on her forehead, “I mean it’s just that I can’t picture someone … thirteen years old … as beautiful—”

“Shut up,” she said, kissing me. Lois kissed like silk. “I bet,” she said with her eyes dancing, “your mind would be blown if you saw high school photos of me.”

“I say I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then.” Lois stood up, leaving behind only the imprint of a warm body on what was now my favorite sofa in the world. She opened a door, pulled a light cord, and went down to the basement. I felt the tide of silence return to the living room until I heard her curse.

She walked back up, faster than she had gone down, her face set in storm. Our eyes met and she looked away, making an exasperated noise and balling her hands into a fist.

“What is it?” I said, hurt.

“It’s just … some stuff in the basement that I can’t move that I thought I got rid of,” Lois said, walking to her faux-fireplace mantle and fidgeting with it.

“Wha—well, don’t worry about it.”

“It’s not supposed to be there,” she snapped.

I stoop up and made a move to the basement. Before I had taken two steps, she interceded.

“What?” I said, laughing at all of this.

“Shut up,” she said. “It’s not funny. It’s not my stuff.”

“So whose is it?”

“His stuff.”

I looked at her, wide-eyed and then suspicious. “Who?, you mean your—”

“Superman’s you idiot—oh god not again—”

A warm breeze of red and blue swept through the apartment, depositing between us the man of steel himself and knocking me back onto the sofa. Lois’ face, framed by hair askew, was alternately furious and haunted. Superman on the other hand glowed with raw power and grace, with a face of a man not a day over thirty—each of those days spent in a gym, on Hawaii, in a pool of skin moisturizer.

“Couldn’t resist my name, Lois?” Superman flashed her a shit-eating grin and alternatively flexed each pectoral. “I’ve got supersonic hearing, you know.”

“That’s an oxymoron,” I muttered, trying to keep up with my worst nightmare.

“Nobody asked you, Hao,” Superman said without turning around. “Now back to us,” he said as he swung his arms around Lois and pulled her close to him.

For a beat, she didn’t seem to know what to do. But she recovered and she slapped Superman wide across the face. Superman grinned, gave her a sad puppy-dog look, and grinned again.

“You know,” he said as he steered the unwilling pair to a mirror, “we make quite the couple, you and I. I’ve got looks, you’ve got smarts. I’ve got super hands, you’ve got cooking ones. I’ve got a massive erection, you’ve got the wettest vagina X-ray vision can afford to see.”

Lois broke free. “You don’t seem to change, do you? You think you’ll win me back by being an even more obnoxious idiot?”

Superman put one hand over his heart and the other on his forehead; he pretend to swoon. “Look at us,” he said, “bickering like a crippled elderly couple.”

He clapped those sky-blue eyes at me for the first time with a half-smile playing on his firm, fervently beautiful lips. “Ah, maybe the way to your heart is to being an overweight acne-ridden jackass?” he said to Lois, jabbing a thumb at me.

Lois turned to me and looked at her shoes. “Sorry,” she muttered with clenched teeth. She turned back to Superman and poked his chest.

“Go away! Get out of my life! Go fuck up somebody else’s!”

“Stop saying my name, Lois! Stop moaning it in ecstasy. Stop screaming it out loud by accident during your stupid orgasms!”

Lois was so enraged she could only sputter for a second. “That—that happened once! I can’t believe I missed you, you creep. Not that you would know, you started dating the night on the day we broke up. You—you have no right bringing that up. Stop eavesdropping on me with your fucking superhearing and get out of my life, you overgrown insincere piece of shit. Go and drop out of college again because ‘you don’t belong’!”

Superman seemed, finally, as shocked as I was. He muttered something about a learning disability and ESL.

Lois punched him in the chest. “And get all your trophies out of the basement. I told you to do it last month, I told you again two weeks ago, and I told you again last week. Now do it.” She looked at him defiantly. “There’s nothing extraordinary in a person blessed with superpowers, Superman. You’re just a bastard with more luck than you deserve.”

Superman just stared at her, genuinely angry for the first time since he broke into Lois’ apartment. Then he gave a tremendous superhero laugh. He grabbed Lois by the waist and affectionately kissed her hair. “Always the kidder, this one,” he said, winking at me. “Now how about we fly to the nearest skyscraper’s roof and do it like we did in Paris … and Marseille … and Toulouse …”

Superman looked wistful as Lois tried to wriggle free without any luck. Breaking his reverie, he noticed her and let go.

“Get out! GET OUT!” Lois screamed, furious, grabbing her jacket around her.

Superman shrugged and flew out the door in a blur.

Lois and I looked at each other and then looked away.

“And Nantes!” Superman yelled through the window as he flew past the house.

The house was a mess of paper, dust, and overturned garbage cans. Lois looked small and sad in the middle of it all. I sat there, watching her, for too long. And as I stood and pulled her close to me until she stopped shaking, I felt nothing I could say or do would be appropriate, as if there was no configuration of limbs and words that would make me belong to this space and time.

Lois sniffled and pushed me away.

“Hao,” she said, “I have to clean this up. Can—can we just say good night?” She stared at me. “And end tonight on normal?”

She pulled me by my shirt and kissed me. She pulled my head closer with her hand. We broke away quickly anyway, thinking the same thing. I think. I thought of how dates with Lois tended be small talk and snuggling. I thought of how dates with Lois were enjoyable evenings, but nothing special. I thought of how Lois’ eyes lit up when she talked to Superman. I thought of how Lois kept a necklace with an S on the fireplace mantle. I thought of how they fought, which had its own language and rhythm. I thought of how every relationship is different with its own diction and syntax, but how some relationships form prettier, more interesting, longer sentences than other. I thought of Lois before tonight and after. I thought of how little I knew about this girl I loved, how little I’d ever know. I thought of the difference between “alone” and “lonely”.

Her eyes, dim once more, searched my face.

“Good night,” I said, staring. I turned and walked out the door, creating hardly any breeze at all.

§

People come and some children leave.

The boy at last came upon a wizened man sitting on the oak stump, head resting against his fists in contemplation.

“Who are you, strange traveler?” the man asked.

“Bartholomew of the Glenwood Village,” he replied. “And who are you?”

“Why, I,” said the man as he flourished his hat and bowed deeply, “am the great Professor of Science in these woods.”

The boy stood at a loss for words with his eyes wide in shock.

“The professor?” he asked.

“Yes, m’boy, I’m afraid my scholarly reputation precedes before me.”

The boy nodded. “Every boy my age knows how you helped Badger build his house—”

“—a trifle,” the professor said.

“Or how you helped Beaver sharpen his teeth—”

“—a mere dentist’s appointment.”

“Or how you taught Bee to fight Bear—”

“—a self-esteem issue more than anything,” the professor said. “Look, Bartholomew, science is my job. Don’t let those lurid tales cloud your opinion of me; there is nothing noble in simply doing your job, whereas there is something truly noble in building a house, dental hygiene, and learning self-defense for the first time.”

Bartholomew nodded fervently, hardly hearing anything over the thumpity-thump of his heartbeat.

“Now,” the man said kindly, “what did you seek in these dangerous woods?”

“The hand of a fair maiden, sir,” the boy said. “I am off to slay the dragon of Ragnathorne, to save the the fiefdom, win the gold, and ride back victorious.”

“Does this fair maiden have a name?” the man said, after a long pause.

“Her name is Belle of Glenwood Village.”

“Does Belle know your true feelings?” the man asked, gently.

“N—no,” the boy whispered to his feet.

“Young lad, science possesses not the answers to questions of the heart.” The professor rose from the stump, walked over, squatted, and placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“If you love someone, you chase that person down. Nothing’s worth the regret you could have years later. Rejection, a bad relationship, a divorce — those are things you can live down, turn to friends for, commiserate in, and regrow from. There’s nothing for the fermenting weight of regret aging in the casket of your soul.”

The boy nodded and turned to run back home, dinky sword and shield in hand. The boy paused and looked back at the professor, who was already halfway to the stump to sit down once again to listen to the woes of Buck. The boy turned back and ran.

After patiently explaining to Buck that hooves needed just as much maintenance as antlers, even if it doesn’t feel as manly, the professor looked around the opening — his opening — in the forest.

“Slow office hours,” he chuckled.

He reached into his lunch pail, retrieved a sandwich he made — he made enough sandwiches for the work week every Sunday night —, and munched on it. Every now and then, some crumbs would land on his professorship of science diploma, which leaned against the stump and while weathered and worn showed glimpses of a once-beautiful frame.

§

Lie down and try to talk to me; / sleep now and dream of who you’ll be.

Sometimes it’s all you can do to not take out your anger on the people who care about you the most. Sometimes it’s all you can do to find where you put down your beach towel and grab it and swing it around your neck, to wait until everybody has paired up and gone to bed and sleep while the stars fade in, to find a secluded part of the ship, to climb and sit on the railing and look down into the ship’s wake rippling past you. Sometimes it’s all you can do to not gasp as your chest hits the water and the salt water blinds your eyes as you lose your towel and keys in the dark blue, to paddle at a distance, to bob up for air now and then, to not grow tired, to always swim, to never stop swimming, to never be in one place long enough to be identified. Sometimes it’s all you can do to not close your eyes and imagine your friends drowning, one by one, as you watch from the ship, to cry out and dart forward and save them only to have the crew hold you back, turn you forward, and force you to watch your family disappear, to not stare into the steely, hardened, hunted looks on the crew’s faces. Sometimes it’s all you can do to find land, to spread your toes in the sand, and to watch the water and the time come in.

§

You have hold the camera out at arm length to capture yourself, but you’ll have to find the button first.

I’ll carry you with me. You and I have known each other for decades, through all the pseudonyms and lies. We keep each other honest and true, though you are much much shorter than I, and — I hope it is not out of place for me to say — much heavier. Lest I balloon and float away into the sky, you’ll tug at the seams of my jeans and remind me where I belong. I belong down here with you among six billion other couples like us. When I swipe into the subway, I’ll dutifully boost you above the turnstile. When I open this door, I’ll linger a few seconds, holding it for you. And that’s the word I was looking for, all those years ago: linger. Linger.

§

Pictures of you and I being happy are filed next to the pictures of you being happy.

I can get used to it, I can be the thing written down and described patiently to me. This specification that you handed to me weeks and weeks ago, printed in carefully handwriting — save for the artful loop on the h’s and l’s now and then — is doable, I agree. Here I am, now: bare, shorn, awake. I am as malleable as I made myself, I am what this needs me to be. And I stand before you, saggy-chested and flabby-bellied, with my eyes closed and my soul hollow.

Look at this old movie of me, careening down the mountain in roller blades and tripping and falling. Look at the part, frames 5000 something to 5100 something, where I fall and twirl and hit the ground.

And here I am again before you, eyes dried and shut, arms splayed out and vitruvian. I read the specification again last night and I found no faults in it, save for a few comma splices and repeated words. I know it by heart, I know it like I know the maps of the city’s undergrounds or the prices of restaurant foods, at least now before we commence with Forgetting.

And look at this photo album of me, waving hi to you from that Peruvian jungle we thought we’d never find. Here I am again, holding this old man against me as he tries to sell me jungle flowers, do such a thing even exist.

And again we are back, and I stand before you, arms tired and legs aching. Look at all my imperfections, mold them away, shape me into the image of who it wants me to be, tell me what to do and feel, I can get used to it, I won’t burn these videos and pictures, I can get used to it, just stay by me, OK?, I can get used to it.

§

So there’s this guy.

So there’s this guy.

Let me start over.

So there’s this guy with shockingly nice teeth.

Like, really nice. Unbeliveably nice. Extraordinarily handsome. Teeth, that is.

Quite the charmer.

And there’s this gal.

Let me start over.

And there’s this gal with shockingly gorgeous bangs.

I hear she plays the bass guitar.

And this guy, this guy Adam, is really into her. I mean, really really into her. Like, he’d shoot the moon for her, which is, like, 13 points if he doesn’t make it.

And this girl, this girl Eve, knows about it, vaguely. Snake and Rabbit were talking about it earlier, but they shoot the shit all the time, so Eve doesn’t pay attention to them or their shit.

Eve met Adam ever since he transferred into the God’s 4 PM class on how to jog, the same period the one she’s taking because the other period conflicted with her 2 PM class on periods.

Adam’s known Eve ever since Garden Orientation Day, but he’d never, like, tell her that, that’d be totally creepster.

He doesn’t know what to do with himself.

Oh, they’re absolutely friendly around each other. They have this, you know, sort of connection. They can shoot the shit for an hour or two, no problem. Even if the conversation gets quiet, it’s a comfortable sort of quiet, you know.

It’s a pretty rare thing to find, all the more reason to not mess around in it by doing a dumb thing like asking her out.

But still he doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s never met anybody quite like her: bipedal, thumbed, mammalian, and cute. He’s pretty sure they’re compatible.

Eve had some casual thing with Unicorn, and some serious thing with Tortoise, but she’s not the kind to get hung up on anything, or anything. She’s done that thing where she’s sat down by herself for a few minutes and seriously appraised Adam as Dating Material but, you know, it’s not the sort of thing where she’d make the first move, that’d be totally creepster. Plus wasn’t Adam going out with Koala earlier? Koala’s nothing like Eve.

Eve doesn’t like Koala much, but she doesn’t remember if that’s, like, an opinion she had before she knew Adam or after, pretty sure it doesn’t make a difference either way though. Koala’s always kinda emo, Eve’s put off by that.

What’s Eve’s eye color again? Is it hazel? Adam thinks to himself during jogging class. I wonder if that’s something I should even know. Should I look at her eyes, she’s right behind me? Adam looks at the ground instead and thinks. I mean, as a friend, I should probably know her eye color, in case it comes in handy. Right. Right. Adam chances a look behind him, but she’s farther behind than he thinks so he has to squint, but now it’s kinda obvious he’s staring at her jogging behind him and she notices and smiles at him, so he has to smile back, which he does as he jogs into a tree and lands smack on his butt.

Eve represses a snort and runs over to him, who has dazedly collapsed on the ground with twigs in his head in a way she realizes is, like, casually handsome and gosh-darn earthy.

Hey, are you all right? she says, extending a hand to him.

Yeah, he says. Nothing permanently damaged except my ego.

They smile at each other, it’s totally serene.

Hey! Eve says. An apple!

§

Why, in the third year of post-ship island, the waters around said island begin heating up, slightly altering nearby currents and creating a dazzling school of purple salmon that you can see if you climb halfway up the only tree on the island.

JJ is no longer sure atheism means anything. Surely his atheism is predicated on the conviction that anything not derived from methodological empiricism — a.k.a. science — cannot be asserted. Then surely he is a walking, talking contradiction. How are any of his other beliefs scientific? JJ believes that if you are kind and you work hard that amazing things will happen to you. JJ believes that if you look out for yourself and you work on loving yourself that other people will too. JJ believes that good prevails over evil. JJ believes in being fiercely loyal to his friends. But what science is there to back any of those ideas, and why act accordingly when all JJ is is hurt, and what does it matter anyway on this island of glass where JJ makes tiny wooden insects that roll up into a perfect sphere when touched and slither away when unseen, where he plunges his hands into the ocean to soothe the blisters, red as they’ll ever be.

§

Island of misfit.

(An excerpt from an unwritten longer piece about some people who invent an indifference machine and have to deal with the consequences of it, et cetera, you know, the usual.)

At the lurid tales of his friends’ hookups and sexy times, JJ smiles and says congratulations. He plays the part of the happy, unjealous friend well. He says the right things, sends the right emoticons. No hint of bitterness or frustration will make it through his well-practiced dog-and-pony show.

He goes on a jog sometimes, by the lake. He hopes one day to find a wooden boat for one person stuck on the side of the lake with its mast up. He climbs gingerly into the rickety makeshift vessel and pushes hard against the land, catching the Arabian wind, which smells of pepper and thyme and basil and chocolate. The aroma of distant lands.

He fingers the indifference toy in his pocket.

Eventually he makes his way out of the lake and into the sea, then the oceans. He sails for weeks and weeks, waiting for the waters to turn deeper and deeper shades of blue. He feeds breadcrumbs to the dolphins that swim alongside him, playfully bumping (the dolphins do) into his boat.

He gathers flotsam to make an equally rickety brass telescope. It’s on the fourth month of sailing that he sights an island with a solitary palm tree, where he touches down. He finds driftwood and constructs a second floor to the ship. He finds a discarded guitar in the waves, made blue by the water. Using the mucus and gristle of the pigs that roam the island, he adheres the guitar to the ship as a figurehead. He stocks the ship with provisions from the island, with potable water made from the giant evaporation system he set up on the south shore. He uses the tree’s syrup to varnish the ship, producing a deep oaken color. By the end the cruise ship towers far above him, stretching miles into the atmosphere, casting a dour shadow over the island and generally disrupting an entire ecosystem’s circadian rhythm.

On the last day of construction, JJ dons the captain’s outfit and puts in the captain’s pipe and wears the captain’s hat. Across the ship he breaks a bottle of champagne he fermented himself; he unties the rope, starts the boat, and sets the boat adrift. It quickly catches the wind, as it did all those years ago, and whizzes into the horizon. It makes a whoosh-whiz noise as it does so: whoosh-whiz, whoosh-whiz. The mast flaps a lot.

JJ sits on the island and watches it go. In his heart is some second-order approximation of pride. He leans back against the palm tree and blisteredly fingers the indifference toy in his pocket, which he does even though it is glowing red hot.

In the very bottom compartment of the basement of the ship is a tiny treasure’s chest with a rusted steel padlock. In it is a silvery substance with streaks of blood, as if squeezed from the most precious stone by hand. It’s an odd thing for a treasure’s chest to contain.

JJ sits back and closes his eyes. He hugs his knees to the chest and watches the sunset. The sand around him slowly turns to glass, as they seem to do, as they always have for centuries.

And centuries.

§

Scene of the crime.

“White male, strangulation.”

Click, click.

“How long?”

Click, click.

“Been here for at least six hours, no fewer than four, harder to tell with the fog.”

Click, click.

One of the police interns ran up and placed an exhibit marker next to the body. The photograhper went “Click, click” to capture Exhibit D.

“Any signs of murder?”

“No, definite suicide. Rope likely gave way after the body finished pulling the fire escape all the way down. Severed rope at the bottom rung confirms. No sign of any foul play on body.”

The detective pulled back the white sheet to get a look at the face. Young white male, college age, his face made all the more pale with the pallor of suicide.

Click, click.

The detective wheeled around. “Will you please stop making that sound with your mouth?”

“Sorry, George,” the photographer said as he put away the rectangle he was making with his finger and pulled out his real camera.

§

Litter.

Sometimes people come with instructions. So when you shake me and press your ear to my chest, please do not be alarmed by the sound of a bottle cap rattling in a tin can. If you stand far away, you will not even be able to hear it.

§

Gerard, who now has two stories about him.

Gerard can’t remember meeting Big Love. But Big Love, a large Hagrid-like blond man with cheerfully blue eyes, is Gerard’s nemesis.

BIG LOVE LIKES SITTING.

Big Love’s evil power is sitting on things. Sometimes Big Love sits on people’s chests until they can’t take it. Big Love gets up, wanders around, and comes back to sit some more.

Sometimes Big Love sits on friendships, cutting off circulation until a limb dies. When Big Love stands up, the necrotized issue travels throughout the friendship, tiny little bits of resentment, anger, and jealousy. Death by a million little pieces of necrotized tissue.

BIG LOVE MAKES MISTAKES SOMETIMES.

Big Love has been known to sit on two people at once, fusing their chests, sometimes permanently. These pairs of people must then live together and share the maps they’ve made of their own souls to each other. Big Love tries not to do this too much.

BIG LOVE HAS A REPUTATION TO PROTECT.

Big Love’s other evil power is removing taste from food as soon as Big Love leaves the room.

GERARD HAS NO TROUBLE TRACKING DOWN BIG LOVE.

Gerard has a keen eye for the person in the group of friends who stares at his hands and feet while everybody’s having fun, the person who always laughs a few moments behind, or the person whose smile seems thin and difficult. Gerard has had no trouble seeing these signs ever since Gerard began wearing contacts.

BUT YOU NEED MORE THAN CONTACTS.

Gerard remembers kneeling on the lawn in front of a boy and a girl, a messy scene in the aftermath of Big Love and his sidekick Unrequited Love. Gerard kneels and looks at both in the eyes. To the girl, Gerard says in perfect French: “You must know—”

The boy and the girl, children of expatriates, interrupt and tell him they do not know French. So Gerard switches to accented English and addresses the girl again:

“You must know that everything heals with time. You must know that your soul’s foam will gradually reshape and form better molds for different, better people who will navigate them with better maps. You must know that the time machine we are given, the one that moves one second per second, is not shabby, not shabby at all.”

The girl looks at Gerard, smiles radiantly, brushes back a strand of her shoulder-length hair beneath her ear, and runs off to play in the wind and sand.

HOW GERARD WAS ABLE TO GET RID OF BIG LOVE.

Gerard snapped a twig off of the orange tree growing on the lawn. He threw it at Big Love. Big Love is finicky and hates oranges.

THE GIRL SMELLS OF SUNSHINE AND BUOYANCY.

Gerard turns to the boy.

“As for you, ….”

Gerard carefully inspects the boy.

“Ah, you were in love all along because of this.”

He reaches behind the boy’s elbow and flips a switch.

“All along, all you had to do was flip the switch. It was that simple, all along.”

Gerard pats the boy on the hand and stands up. He walks off the grass and onto the driveway. He jogs around the block and is gone.

WHEN GERARD STANDS UP, HIS PANTS SLIGHTLY RUSTLE.

The boy looks around. Nobody is watching. He looks at the switch behind his elbow. Carefully he flicks it back into its original position. He listens to the gears turning inside him.

SOMETIMES THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH.

§

Gerard, who now has a story about him.

It’s time to talk about Gerard.

GERARD, WHO IS IN A CAFE SIPPING ESPRESSO.

Gerard is a middle-aged Parisian man with a long thin mustache and a beret. The beret was given to him by his father shortly before his father died. Gerard has no last name. Gerard has no father.

GERARD, WHO IS ACTUALLY A SUPERHERO.

Gerard does not remember when he got his powers. Possibly last year, possibly a few years back. In Paris, time passes like molasses and Gerard does not own a calendar. He does not own a television either.

IN HIS FREE TIME, GERARD READS NEWSPAPERS AND BOOKS.

Gerard’s favorite flavor of espresso is vanilla. He sips it hunched over his usual outdoors table. The table’s sleek black umbrella covers his sleek body, hunched over his tiny cup of coffee on its tinier saucer. He picks up the cup handle with his forefinger and thumb, brings it to his lips, and tilts. He drinks coffee as we dream people should.

GERARD SOMETIMES FIGHTS CRIME.

When he sees a lady being mugged, Gerard unconsciously feels his mustache and sprints into action. Running across the softly lit streets of Paris at dusk, he looks not unlike a black-and-white Luigi. “Stop, sir!” he cries in beautifully enunciated French, which is probably something like “Monsieur, sacre bleu!”

GERARD KNOWS FRENCH COMPETENTLY, NOT LIKE US.

The criminal unhands the lady and sprints away. Gerard rushes to catch the woman as she faints. Her eyes flutter open at his touch.

“Oh, Gerard,” she says breathlessly, “it’s you.”

Gerard is famous among the Parisians, even he knows that now and cannot deny it.

“Yes, ma’am.” (What is that, “Oui, madame?” Tsk, tsk.)

GERARD IS SINGLE, HE HAS REASONS.

At age thirty, Gerard lost his wife. His wife was as sleek as he was, but more angular and vivacious. She wore dresses that fit just perfectly. Gerard remembers her tinkling laugh as he helped her into and out of them. Gerard remembers all the times she ever kissed him (7,381,281), especially the last one as she passed on in the hospital. She had full lips that always seemed bigger than his. She is missed.

GERARD IS A SUPERHERO IN SMALL WAYS, MOSTLY.

Gerard remembers walking past the small child sitting on the curb, his head in his arms. He leans down to this child and talks to him in a low murmur. He whispers, “You did the right thing.” to him, stands up, and walks away. The words are almost no comfort at all, but they are the best, if not the only, conduit by which anyone can reach the boy, who is distant and lonely and lost. That is all we can hope for. That is all we can be.

GERARD IS NOT THE BEST SUPERHERO, BUT HE IS A SUPERHERO. SOMETIMES THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH.

§

Playing in time’s backyard.

It must be that love is like Scout in Civilization 4. Whereas by default the map is covered under a black fog and your Worker, your most basic of units, can only see a one-tile radius all around him, Scouts see the two. It’s comforting to see twenty tiles instead of eight, light instead of darkness, a bright unmysterious future large enough for you to place all your innermost desires and hopes.

But like all units Scouts die. And when they do you are once more left with Workers, who can only see the eight. They must miss the twelve they once had; they must wonder if it was worth building the Scout in the first place, all along.

§

The hermitage.

What drives people to hermitage?

Is it the desire to hear the sound of the ocean falling against the sand, listening to it when you go to sleep and when you wake up?

Is it feeling your pillow grow wet as you lie there trying desperately to find refuge in sleep while listening to four normal, healthy, functioning, unbroken people next to you quietly exhale and inhale?

Is it waking up every day and lying still for hours, beating back reality?

Is it getting so drunk and so high that, when you listen to your friends at the bottom of stairs tell you everything is going to be OK, you can barely comprehend them—that you realize language is useless to express how much you disagree or even how you disagree?

Is it knowing that one year from now you will feel absolutely the same, except alone among a great swath of people are who are not alone, who have learned to build meaningful connections in their life; who are also normal, healthy, functioning, unbroken; who will look at you with great pity and tell you everything is going to be OK; who will not understand when you begin to throw staplers at them from a great distance away, all the while yelling incoherently about oceans and pillows and refugees?

Is it feeling vulnerable all the time, guarding each thought jealously behind what must now be miles and miles of defense mechanisms?

Surely it must be all of these as each one is tolerable, surely if we are alone then it is better to know that we are not alone in being alone, surely there is meaning to what looks like happenstance, surely someone will come and pick up the pieces we shattered into and make us whole and warm and comely again.

And if none of these is surely, then surely there is a cave out there with our names on them, right at the perfect intersection of sand, ocean, and sound.

§

The slight hum of a bedroom’s heater threatens to penetrate our souls.

They ate a bowl of carbohydrates and sodium hours before the big synchronized running race. They slept at 11; they awoke at 5 to do practice runs around the neighborhood. They did this every day for decades, first separate, then with other people, then finally together.

They had shiny legs as if someone were always around to oil their fibulas.

So now they jog to the starting line and take position. When the gun is fired, they lock hands and begin running. With great ease and liquidity, they clear the first few hurdles.

Look, now, and let your eyes follow their smooth motion, the way their feet beat into the ground and spring again, the way they project forward, letting the air they displace flow around them. Notice the way the sun glances off their backs, which shine with a soft tremulous light. Notice the way sweat drips off their arms onto their locked hands, fingers intertwined and tapping a rhythm lost to time and space.

Watch as one of them misjumps and slam his shiny leg into the horizontal something-by-something piece of wood belonging to the fifth leg. He lets go of the handhold. A great gash opens, as if spontaneous, in his leg. The skin in the middle are pulled to both sides and thin and thin until the force is too great. The dermis, long yearning to be open, snap open. Great flecks of leg blood fly upward, one by one, and fall around his still body, one by one. They make this sound as they touch the ground and flatten: bloop, bloop, bloop. He had bloop blood in his leg all along.

The torn skin lies uselessly around the gash in shapes that have no name.

He begins to shiver. The other runners gather around him, still holding hands, as the other member of his team kneels and stares at him. He looks more human than he ever has before.

She leans over tenderly and whispers, “I have to go on without you.”

He, eyes closed, nods.

“And you have to go on without me.”

And so too does something else inside him snap open. “No,” he says, voice cracking. “Don’t. Don’t make me keep going,” he says, crying pathetically on the ground as the other runners look away—they’ve all been there before, they’ve all handled it better. He hides his head in his arms as his body gives way to the tremors, he looks light and frail as a green bean, his hand still smells like her hand.

“You have to.”

He shakes his head and shakes and shakes. He wants to be held, but with his leg that cannot happen and does not happen. That is one item on a list of his wants. Today is Sunday. He remembers sitting in her chair, he remembers lying in her bed, he remembers sitting on this futon waiting for the sun to come up, he remembers opening a tin of chocolates, he remembers lying on that futon waiting for the train to come and take him away.

“Don’t,” he whispers, “you want a machine to relive these memories?”

“No,” she does not know what he is talking about, “I wouldn’t even know what to do with that.”

He laughs and nods. His leg hurts like crazy now so two runners volunteer to take him off the track and to the nearest legologist. As they carry him off the track, she begins to run and clear hurdles. She runs and clears faster without a hand to hold. As they carry him off the track, he watches her jump. At the top of the arc he closes his eyes and thinks about all the things he has to forget.