I had a dream I walked around a corner. I was a little girl. I had a dream I saw a red-painted thing. It was a plank of wood, a bench. Maybe. Peeled paint. Propped upon the dirt. A simple and poignant object.

I was in a novel written by Don Delillo.

I stood above the Pacific Ocean, like a room-size map. At my feet. Prepared to make a journey from Hawaii, south. To who knows where. Why. A long journey south across the dark blue, white-capped sea.

Since I've moved the unending stream of things I buy. Like I refuse to settle in, unconsciously. Or I'm caught for the occasion in the idiotic grip of materialistic lust. A spatula. Shades. Matching lamps on matching bedside tables. Goose-down pillows and a wall mount for the TV. I've been patiently waiting for it to all end. But there is no end.

I have a spasmodic, heaving cough I've not tended to so well. And as the ominous, pulsing waves of droning ambient music swell around me I lay me down to sleep.

As I walked along Third Street a man burst out a store door looking dazed. He held his hand up by his chest in the universal indication of something wrong breathing, something wrong heart beating. He staggered toward the wall. There was a strand of foamy spittle on his black turtleneck shirt. He was a healthy-looking black man, early 30s. He bent over to cough and heave as I walked past the door and looked inside. An aisle formed a ramp up to the door and I stared down it, saw the white floor's waxy sheen.

It appeared to be some kind of hardware store.

His name was Kris with a K, he wrote his name on the back of my Friends & Family 20% off coupon card.

Wrote it with a K.

In blue ballpoint pen in the top left corner of the letter-sized card. His phone number too.

Kris was talking about Tampa. Clearwater to be precise.

"I've heard of it."

His eyes widened. "You have?"

"I have."

Now he's tellin' me how he moved here from there, onto 9th Avenue. S'OK but he wishes there was a subway.

"Eh, someday."

"Really?"

"Well no."

On the East Side, maybe.

And about how now he sees Clearwater everywhere.

"I'll look at something and somewhere, somehow in the fine print. It says Clearwater, Florida."

I nodded and smiled and said yes, that's what –

"And across the street from me there's this bar. And two of the bartenders are from Clearwater!"

"That's very strange."

"I go out, there's a group of people. Someone's from Tampa."

"Yes – that's bizarre."

"And then there's these other people who come up and are like, did you say you're from Tampa? We're from Clearwater."

"Maybe they're all fleeing," I volunteered.

"Date of birth?"

Kris was entering my data. I was taking the two-week trial at the New York Sports Club and here he was with the plans and such. He handed me my temporary magnetized card. A suspiciously portentous temporary card. Suggestive of lifetimes of recurring fees, referrals, costly training regimens undertaken in fits and starts.

"There you go!"

"Great. Nice to meet you," I said. I extended my hand.

"Not a problem at all – you too. To you too."

"OK. When I'm ready to – "

"Come see me – "

"I will."

"Have a good swim."

"Alright, man."

"Alright."

Michael Richards is dying for our sins.

I get ideas riding in the passenger seats of cars on the highway at night, ideas for writing. Themes to trace from one memory to the next, a long-past folly, some incongruous idea. But then it evaporates on firm footing, to say nothing of the scouring light of day.

What I Remember About the '90s

Flaming plane debris bobbing in the water at night
Tonya Harding's handful of cum
And Space Station Mir

My father once returned a pillow to the department store complaining that it smelled of chicken soup.

Today I threw out some old insurance papers, 401k stuff, warranties and receipts. Shit with my name all over it. Into a bag, down the chute and onto some great pile of sweet Manhattan garbage.

We should have known when they were in our offices, to interview us or explain something or to test our mood and puzzle out our apprehensions. Every moment they were not addressing us or each other they faced their laptops to tip-tap away, God knows why. No one can conceivably have that much work to do with their digits, unless they're a novelist, video game coder or court stenographer. No one on a business trip for Christ's sake. It seemed to me a means of keeping the world at bay, of managing one's tidy corner of it safe and sound. But then when the deal went down I realized.

They're e-mailing all the time.

E-mails to and fro, to the to line and to the cc's. Thoughts? Fire away. Loop someone in why don't you. Give an action item to Bob. Take the lead. Drop the ball and circle back.

This frenzy at first glance seems to take the place of real work in a most ridiculous charade. But then maybe not. Maybe the micro-forces it exerts finally make the world go round.

I threw some things away and bought some slightly finer things to take their place. I arranged it all meticulously, and was dully pleased to see how all the empty spaces in between were even.

More or less.

And then it occurred to me, am I decorating my tomb?

Lowell Eddy is my nemesis and he bats in the five spot. I bat sixth. Don't know how it all began. A perceived slight in the clubhouse – was it that dreary rain delay when we played cards with Raul and Esteban and Trainer Mike? I ridiculed his dealer's choice, some follow-the-queen claptrap. He spat a wad of chaw at my feet and said at least he didn't strike out not just once but three times last night, one time lookin'.

"Twice," I protested.

"Twice lookin'?" he asked, with mock, journalistic seriousness.

"No... twice... total," I explained lamely. Jesus, it sucks to have to explain something like that. Never be in a goddamn position where you're explaining you only struck out twice. "Never fucking mind."

"Two time, three time," he argued dismissively. "Three times a lady," he added bizarrely. Mike chuckled. What a moron.

"I done tired of gettin' on base and havin' you strike out, Kel," Lowell said, shaking his head. "I can get up there on first, 'cause I got a hit, took one for the team, whatever, I'm a man, see, and I can tip my hat and salute Old Glory and make the base my pillow. 'Cause I ain't goin' nowhere."

Mike hooted and snorted with glee. Raul and Esteban chuckled darkly. Only 'cause they like a fight.

Mike always had a towel draped over his right shoulder. Never did it bother me more than at this moment.

Suddenly I threw my hand in Lowell's face and it was a pretty good one, too. Ace-ten, suited, as I recall. There could have been upwards of $350 in that pot.

"Fuck you!" I said. Accent on the fuck. And I clomped away in my cleats. Over my shoulder they were laughing and going ooh-ooh. Like a table of little girls in the cafeteria. God I hated them all at that moment.

But mostly Lowell.

And Trainer Mike.

I came back from the game half wasted and reacquainted myself with my ludicrously sparsely furnished apartment. I was starving and all there was to eat was ramen noodles in the brown package signifying beef.

Why do I have beef? I wondered. I know I fucking don't like beef. But upon closer scrutiny it wasn't beef-brown, it was teriyaki-chicken-brown. A duller, beiger shade. I boiled it in too little water and dashed it with cracked pepper. I drank a beer and ate it watching SportsCenter, with shrapnel shards of pepper, that rugged, brutish spice the Portuguese once pried from India, popping dark and dirty on my tongue.

I reflected vaguely upon the night's events.

I play third base for the Centropolis Eastmen, the most glorious and hallowed professional baseball team in all the land. And we had lost to the hated River City Hounds by four runs to three.

My name is Kelly Minter.

The one girl, she had her face buried in her hands. The other girls said come over here, sit here. Leave me alone. They protested once or twice then gave up, unconcerned.

I've been leaning forward on the train, to ease my perpetual, vaguely sour stomach.

There's always an intriguing group of people waiting at the crosswalk on the northeast corner of Canal Street and Hudson in the morning. Fashion models and religious nuts. Pretty young dog walkers. Slavic looking guys. A couple of the Lost, together or apart, seeking Chinatown or the river.

I suspected that Steve had passed out. I sensed this as my attention shifted drearily from the television to my laptop screen. It seemed there was a new stillness in the room due to the removal of an animated element. I turned my neck lazily, expecting to see him prone, eyes closed, mouth agape, in the posture of one who has retreated into slumber. But his eyes were open and directed toward his laptop, on the coffee table before him. Though he was reclining he held his head up off the pillow. His index finger was poised on the keyboard, as though he were studiously contemplating whether to click. However, he remained perfectly motionless. I turned away and turned back a minute or two later. He was in precisely the same position. I turned away again, trying not to get his attention and thereby disturb his reverie. When I looked again minutes later he was still in precisely the same pose, finger on the key, on the precipice of triggering some action but never doing so.

2:48 am and the urgent sound of marching, tribal drums fills the air outside. They've discovered drums, these sons and daughters of privilege. Sons and daughters of bitches. Drums and the air of sanctified ceremony only they can bring.

He hears the sounds of fucking through the walls.

The lid was off the jar.

His lip bled into his cupped hand.


God I was tired yesterday and I'm tired again today. I briefly lost consciousness on the couch while watching college football - Syracuse and Iowa - and reading some article about Dick Cheney. It became increasingly difficult to focus on either the article or the game and then my mind became aswim in a menacing froth of whistles, huddles, arms negotiations and Condoleeza Rice.

On My Way to Work

I'm pretty sure there was a woman walking toward me on the platform. Young and black. And I do believe I sat and waited for the train. I am under the impression the skies were clear when I emerged from underground. A woman walked her dog under the scaffold. I have a feeling the light stopped me at the avenue.

But I can't say for certain.

Critics and Audiences Agree

it's fun to bangg married chix everyday

I awoke with the following maxim floating in my head: "The easiest way to get rid of something is to sell it."

I caught the HBO On-Demand narration as I was flipping through and it said: "... so you can manage the entertainment that enters your home."