TROOPS

We ain't lying, Lydia.

TROOPS

confirm the worst fears of technologists and scientists.

Medical Equipment I Have Seen

The ConMed Hyfrecator 2000.

Serenely, the clock breathes out & in. Uh-huhh… uh-huhh… uh-huhhh.

On Friday afternoon I noted that the liquid hand-soap wand had broken off the dispenser that was set into the men’s room counter. There it lay in its little puddle of milky scum. Like a dead thing that had vomited for its final breath. The fixture it had fallen from stood useless and bereft, gaping at the sink with its little black maw.

Today the little scene remained exactly in place.

TROOPS

All the time Sam and I were going through our Sunday routine.

After enrolling Jackie in school we stopped for pastries at the cake place, the place where we got her birthday cake, where they have a picture of Bill Cosby and Lionel Hampton on the wall, blowing out the candles on Lionel’s 80th birthday cake that I guess they made. In the back an old timer was dipping black-and-white cookies. That’s not something you see too often. Feels like something you’re not supposed to see, that’s supposed to stay mystified. Like the way they print a dollar bill, or your parents putting presents in the stockings. Anyway, he dipped the white halves first.

TROOPS

I kiss her neck.

I felt empty at the end of the work day, desolate. In the cafeteria the din of the office Cinco de Mayo party swelled suddenly. I slipped away. No one saw me. Far as I knew.

Outside it looked like it was going to rain. A man jaywalked across Carmine Street, staring at his phone. Someone was trying to peddle knockoff cosmetics on that wide sidewalk on 6th Ave. by the station, stopping every woman walking by. His line was: “Do you use makeup?”

Never ask a customer something where they might say no.

I observed the madman with his fingers in his ears going “La la la!” like a child. He walked past us out of Prospect Park and into the middle of the street. Defiantly. With that assurance only the crazy have, that nothing’s going to happen to them, that there’s a sort of force field around them. And funny thing is, they’re right. He walked against the light through the intersection and all the cars dutifully slowed down and steered around him. He didn’t even glance at them, didn’t hurry. Just walked across going “La la la!” On 9th Street he walked between the bike lane and the car lane, no longer in immediate peril. It seemed like a kind of concession to rationality. Cars passed him cautiously but didn’t need to stop. I kept watching as he knelt down to tie his shoe. I thought, there you go, crazy man. I caught you. Doing something that’s not crazy at all.

Wish I could remember that dream last night about driving down frozen roads, down a hill, riding the brakes, thinking to myself, “You shouldn’t ride the brakes,” thinking it was someone else in my head, telling me that.

Then I was wandering through a neighborhood of well-kept houses, through the back yards. Trying to get home, I guess. Like the swimmer in Cheever’s story. Ned. I looked it up. His name is Ned.

In the dream I was with Jackie. We were both trying to get home.

After five days a teenager in a Yankees shirt was dragged out of the rubble in Nepal. Meanwhile, we slept, fucked, ate Cheerios, rode the train, worked, in no particular order, and depending on the precise timing.