I awoke with a groan from the dreadful dreams I’d had, not nightmares, but dreams about work—a colleague staying at our apartment for some reason. Urgent work that needed to get done, that wasn’t getting done, that couldn’t get done. That I had to do.

When the wind really blows in the city it’s a wonder things aren’t falling, tumbling, spinning everywhere, furniture off roofs, construction supplies, haphazardly fastened signs. We should all be battered by debris, impaled even. But no.

It’s spring training, the meaningless games playing lazily on the diner TV.

TROOPS

When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question

When I emerged from the Seventh Avenue stop the winter chill had returned, with that flat, white sky that makes you think it’s about to snow. An older couple walked by me on the crosswalk. She seemed exhausted as she towed him by the arm, his mouth idiotically agape.

I awoke in the middle of the night with a hangovery headache and asked myself: did I really drink a lot? And I remembered the big drink and the next one while I waited and the big glass of wine and thought, maybe yes. Then I fell back asleep and felt almost fine when the jazz station rang at 6:15.

We caught a Lyft to JFK. The driver said he was from Uzbekistan.

“How old is Nighted States?” he said in his nearly impenetrable accent.

I gave an answer, dumbly, lazily neglecting to really do the math. “Two-hundred, uh. Two-hundred fifty,” I said. “Two-hundred forty-five. Or something.”

It’s like when someone asks you for the time and you’re afraid to be precise. Three-thirty, you say. Maybe three thirty-five. But you feel like an asshole saying three thirty-two. Even if it’s the truth. But everyone knows what time it is. Everyone knows 1776.

He didn’t seem to hear me anyway. He gave me the age of Uzbekistan in a statement that seemed prepared. Two-thousand something, except it wasn’t something of course, it was as precise as mine was vague: two-thousand six-hundred eighty-two. Or something.

“That’s old,” I said. Of course.

We were just now getting on the Belt Parkway, five o’clock in the morning. Maybe four fifty-nine.

TROOPS

these instruments will serve your children and your grandchildren in the future.

TROOPS

and he was in such pain that he was unable to swallow or take any food.

TROOPS

I was doing research in Colorado when I heard the news.

I had terrible heartburn in bed last night and as it has before it scrambled up my mind. The pain came in waves, as usual, but even when it receded I couldn’t think a decent, calming thought. At times I perceived a crazy zigzaggy pattern of meaningless activity in my brain, a web of colored lines like laser beams. I thought I was the character in those old folk songs where you lay down your head but you can’t get your rest. Maybe they had heartburn too.

I made myself a martini and when I felt the buzz come on I said out loud, “Now this is a familiar feeling.” And right away I opened the freezer instead of the fridge.

Election Night 1981

We arrived at our hotel by cab, in the middle of the day. There was a light rain falling and everywhere people clutched roses and embraced each other. Laughing, crying.

After we checked in we went back out and met a family friend for dinner. The daughter of my parents’ friend. The grown-up daughter.

We took a walk toward the river where a crowd had gathered. The bridge was closed and a band played courtesy of the communist party. Drunk dancers whipped each other ‘round, chanting “Mit-ter-and! Mit-ter-and!”

The family friend stood next to me and I stood next to her. She asked me to dance.

I placed my arms around her timidly, tremblingly. We circulated for a little while in the mayhem. Celebrating victory.

I had a flash sitting at work in the middle of the day, I don’t know why. I saw the intersection of two country roads we used to pass a lot when I was a kid. It was a bit far from home, deep in the beautiful, monotonous landscape of Connecticut farmland that stretched all around us. It was about halfway to somewhere we used to go—a bookstore, a restaurant, friends of my parents, I don’t know. I measured our trip there by the two pieces before and after it for some reason. An ordinary, winding little road branching off a bigger, straighter one, in the hazy golden light of an autumn afternoon. There was nothing remarkable about it or the way it made me feel but I remember it like it was a dream.

There’s a part of the block by the hospital where suddenly there’s a sickly-sweet smell, like cough syrup mixed with bleach. It feels like you might get high just walking by, or die a little sooner. I wonder whether it’s the smell of medicine or cleaning supplies or embalming fluid or maybe it’s what they use to flavor the dessert.

I flip to the DVR and there’s a new Anthony Bourdain episode, like he’s still alive, or like he’s haunting us. It’s like there’s somewhere new to go, new experiences to be had, especially if you’re dead.

I like when the project manager reviews the key dates and they’re deep into the future, dates like February 9, or April 27, far away but specific, with benchmarks and deliverables associated. It feels like we have lots of time, but that’s not really it. We’re connected to a point in the future. A time when god knows what will be going on in the world, but there we are, gathered safe and sound again on the MS Project timeline. What it really means is that we believe we’re going to survive.

TROOPS

“You’re dead and don’t know it,” he said with a grin that couldn’t help but be evil.

TROOPS

What Newman and her fellow candidates were challenging were the structural realities of patriarchal power in its purest form

Drag

When I awoke I had a fleeting feeling that I wasn’t me. Or I wished I wasn’t me. Then it came back to me in a rush. The shame. The pleasure. The bemused expression on the bouncer’s face. Finally Dan and Terry, each taking me by an arm. The violence of it.

And I knew this: I would do it again.

My phone was all lit up with texts and calls. I knew what they’d be asking. I turned off the screen but put it in my pocket anyway. By reflex.

At the coffee shop later. Same thing. Felt the chair against my back, the wood. Not comfortable but did not care. Not care. My ass on the seat. That’s more comfortable. That little concave part. That nod to the human body.

I crossed my legs sometimes. Uncrossed them after a while. The hours passed.

“Sir, it’s closing time.”

I heard these words.

“Sir? Sir?”

I heard the man speak.

“Sir.” He was leaning over me now, peering into my face with some concern. “Are you OK? You have to leave. I’m leaving. I’m closing up.”

Then he figured I was deaf. He said it all again a little louder, in front of me this time so maybe I could read his lips or gestures.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I said finally. I made the words sound flat and dull, so they could be heard any way you wanted. Defiant. Resigned. Reassuring.

A tense quiet ensued. Then he disappeared out back.

Through the picture window I watched the sidewalk and the street, people passing by. A woman in a long dark coat. A woman wearing a flowered backpack. Running for some reason. Ordinary life in its perfect unpredictability. Two police officers walked past, one black, one white. Now they were inside the café. And they were walking toward me. The black one leaned down into my face while the white one consulted with the employee.

“Sir, it’s time to go. Time to leave,” he declared, thumbing in the direction of the door.

I watched him blankly. Crossed my arms. His tag said Harrison. The other one said Wirth.

“What the fuck did I just say, huh? You have to go,” Harrison continued.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

The employee produced a worried sigh. I stared at them all. Finally the cops glanced at each other. Wirth gave a little nod.

“Sure you aren’t,” said Harrison as he took me by an arm and Wirth took me by the other. They heaved me up and the chair fell backwards with a clatter. I hung limply, heavily between them now. As they dragged me toward the door I felt that sweet, hot pain in my shoulders again. Daydreamed that my arms would pull out of their sockets and let my body pour onto the floor.

Outside they tried to get me on my feet but I refused.

“You fucked up? Huh? Huh?” Wirth yelled in my face.

They conferred with each other as though I wasn’t there suspended in the space between them.

“He don’t actually seem fucked up to me,” Wirth told his partner.

“Nope. Can’t smell nothin’ on his breath.”

“He don’t seem high.”

They put me on the sidewalk, propped against the wall.

“What’s your name? You’re not gonna tell us your name?” asked Wirth.

I stared at the sign above a laundromat across the street. Lucky Laundry the letters read. The letters were red. The red letters read.

“My name is Lucky,” I declared.

Wirth made a dark little chuckle.

“Where do you live, asshole?”

And so I found myself again staring down, my dragging feet bent out of view below my knees. Shoes getting scuffed and scraped. I did not care. Ankles banging on curbs. I did not care. My body pulling down, down, down from my arms, each in the grip of a cop on either side of me muttering curses and jerking me up now and again in spite and frustration at his absurd burden.

Harrison rang the super’s bell. He emerged from his ground floor apartment and stared at me, stupefied. At Wirth’s direction he found my keys in my pocket and went on ahead up to the second floor. The cops carried me upstairs head to tail like a corpse.

I awoke on the kitchen floor.

The wall clock proceeded through the minutes and the hours, sometimes quick and sometimes slow.

Light reflected off the cars below and shone on the ceiling by the windows. Little shapeless entities drifting by to nowhere.

Shouts from the street. A jackhammer. A woman laughing.

My phone buzzed in my pocket now and then. Texts, calls. From concerned friends and family and automated scam operations. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

Day turned into night. Headlights now shone from the street, amid the ambient glow of lamps and signs.

I was hungry. I did not care.

Deep in that second night the street grew still and quiet. That’s when I began my incantation.

You’re gonna die if you can’t stop being a drag.

I startled myself when I first said it. What a dumb, weird thing to pierce this holy silence with. And yet I said it again. And again. And again. And again. And again.

You’re gonna die if you can’t stop being a drag.
You’re gonna die if you can’t stop being a drag.
You’re gonna die if you can’t stop being a drag.

I think the sun was rising. Maybe that’s what woke me up. I wasn’t even sure I’d been asleep. My body ached everywhere, inside and out.

I rolled over on my side and wondered if my free arm was strong enough to steady me. I remained there a few minutes. Then I bent my other arm at the elbow and braced against the floor, lifting myself up so my upper body was finally off the ground. I felt a wave of dizziness and was just about to collapse back down. But I didn’t. I held steady for a while and then sat up, leaning forward with my hands flat on the floor. I was stunned at how difficult this was. But finally I got up on my knees, and then on one foot and, steadying myself on a dining chair, on the other. I stood all the way up now, still leaning my head down so my blood wouldn’t rush away.

The floor before me was dark and blurry. I did not quite know where my foot would land. Or if it ever would. But still I took a step.

TROOPS

Some might even look more seriously at solar and wind power