I hope 2012 is fruitful and happyfor all of you.

You mean to say that even in death she can’t feel Lily Joy? Even in death?

And how about the others, the two lost early and the one not named stillborn, how about them. She shook her head, turned it, the room was still dimly lit, the old woman still sat reading in a cheap reclining chair, what was she doing here Jasmine wondered, then she knew, she’s here to make sure the failed suicide doesn’t get up and jump out that black window across the room, she wished she could but the things around her ankles held her fast to the bed and the woman’s presence and her own wish to jump out the window proved she wasn’t dead and so she resigned hgerself and tightened her lips and wondered if Jared had been called. Down in Tucson. Getting more training. Always getting trained. When do you learn enough about massage therapy.

Jasmine Barber closes her eyes, feels her losses, she swims in them, sometimes like a fish she doesn’t think of them, isn’t cognizant of them, but also like a fish she exists in them without recourse, her heart pumps in them and she breathes in them and maneuvers, sustained by her amber and clear liquid narcotics and her occasional powders and her incessant interior cursing, her vile selfdisparagement — after all it was she who lost them all, Lily Joy and the others, and now she’s losing her man too, she’s been losing him, Jared, down in Tucson getting more training, a thousand miles away, and what’ll he say when he gets here.

Jared. always such a good man . . . Jared’s touches are warm and his sympathies fueled by his own suffering, he tries to be gentle but he’s growing more and more silent. Distant. Sometimes his words to her seem to come grudgingly — yes I still love you Jazzy, sure we can go out to eat tonight, I guess we’ve got to go now don’t we. Still his touches can never equal Lily Joy’s, called Lily and Joy and Liljy as in Li’ljoy, his bare arms and his bellyflesh fall far short of her fat little thighs, his ears not as sweet as her perfect little sculpted cartilage, and what she used to call his prowling animal, his mean old huntingdog, not as satisfying as her little toes. No longer. Jasmine hears her laughter, her whines and gurgling cries through the whispers and smut of his lovemaking monologues, tastes her salty tears as her tongue plies through his body hair, the tufts on his chest, the flow down the valley of his abdomen, it used to be so screamingly sensual, so pantingly electric, not obligatory, never that, she’s tried so hard to keep going, to stay normal, to fill his own relentless emptiness. But that old hunger, that wild compulsion, that churning passion that more slowly crested and then more precipitously dropped with each extinction of her flesh and blood, that was another thing that had to go now, another mere pretense that was supposed to join her body in obliteration, her body and her fury and her sorrow and her hatred of everything, of herself, the house she lived in, of the backforty and the pond and the birds that flew over  and swarmed in it, the mallards and the geese and the strange lost coot that occasionally showed up, laughable when it lifted its huge scalloped toes to plod along the midmorning shore, the coot, sad and alone and maybe wondering at its purpose. In the absence of Lily Joy and the others and now in the physical and emotional distance of Jared she had become increasingly lost in that coot when it showed up, she’d stare at it and fantasize it as a pet filling her day, offering her unspoken solace and a few laughs, filling her hollowness, addressing her secret prayers for a quick and painless death, absorbing her barrage of silent curses. But it never stayed around for long, she never saw it fly away and each time it was gone she worried for a moment that it had fallen prey to some local dog or fox, she’d smoke a cigar  and that would be it. And then it was there again. Was that the paraclete that Jared referred to back there in the hills of Marin County, some holyspirit in disguise, all gray ovoid body and funny bill with the white marking and the hilarious scaled toes, mocking the ducks and geese that normally called the pond their home. . . …………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

You asked earlier if your husband is coming the chaplain said, he’s been notified and will take the earliest flight he can get. Jasmine half smiled, she searched herself for feelings. She’d rather see the coot, hear its shrill little beep, its uproarious disproportionate feet, it seemed the most important thing to her now. But it was gone. She was up on her arms now, she looked distracted, faintly her head nodded three times then she lowered herself onto her back and stared at a small brown spot on the ceiling.

Can you tell me about it asked the chaplain. She had not yet revealed her name. She saw thin lines of liquid trickle from Jasmine Barber’s darkening eyes down the sides of her face. Do you want to talk she said and waited. Then in a soft monotone, can you talk about it Jasmine she said. Jasmine shook her head slightly, she wiped the sides of her face, smearing the trickles, her brow wrinkled, she turned her head sotened her face and said I’m sorry, she hesitated, then you don’t deserve to know. She gazed at that compassionate face for a moment more then returned to the spot on the ceiling. How do you talk about such a thing?

No it’s not that she doesn’t deserve to know — no no no that’s not it at all, how do you begin to find words, how do you describe without seeing without hearing, when you don’t want to see or hear or feel either, you don’t want to live again, live it for somebody else, you’ve already lived it too often yourself way too often mm mm mm way too often hm hm hm . . . dum dum dum ragdollragdollragdoll hm hmp backyard dmdmdm bones cracking crackling khkhkh birds scattering sparrows and ravens and crows cardinals peacocks magpies ducks ibises wildgeese and doves the noise the noise of them all flopping and the flapping and the screaming the growling and snarling the dog only the coot, only the coot, out in the pond, Jasmine and the coot and the dog and the ragdoll Lilylilylilyjoy no how do you say it how do you let go . . .

You say I don’t deserve to know Jasmine. Why do you say that?

Silence. The ceiling seems to move, the plastic sheltering the dim recessed flourescent bulbs. She thinks she heard birdwings. A cloud rising above San Francisco like the paraclete ascending. Why is she alive?

Jasmine? Do you know why you said that I don’t deserve to know what happened? Jasmine blinked, turned to see that face, gentle as a cloud, those gray eyes peering at her, beyond the chaplain an old heavy woman in a chair reading, she looked for anyone else, no one, who’s going to wash her face? She shook her head almost imperceptibly, once for each child she lost.

The chaplain leaned close to her face, a handsbreadth from thos bloodencrusted nostrils. Does anyone deserve to know Jasmine?

She turned back to the ceiling, studied it, saw a thin crack running along it, forking, then ending. There was something piercing her between her legs, something around each ankle, but if she lay perfectly still those things’d go away, there would be no more voices asking innocuous questions, no pages turning, no more sounds at all, just flowing silence, no more wings flapping dogs barking bones crackling, no disembodied shrieks, no screeching circumambience, she’d float like a coot on a pond and be gone. For an instant she tried to conjure the coot, that lonely goofy bird behind her house, it was there for a flash and then it was gone too.

What did you say Jasmine? The chaplain’s eyes jerked up, relaxed, say it again please Jasmine? Then, he’ll be here in a few hours.

Jasmine turned her face toward the window, the lingering darkness out there, he’ll be home in a few hours. She sighed yeah yeah, closed her eyes.

It’s been awhile since my last post because I’ve been working on new stuff and on revisions and rewriting of recently finished stuff. “The Vanished Coot” is about a troubled young woman facing her mortality from the murkiness of  a terrible unresolvable grief. I really like this character — but then I tend to like all my characters, good or not, strong or not, and so on. I’m not one who writes impersonally about characters. Rather, I tend to write from the perspective of their marrow. That’s just who I am. My ebook is taking shape. A wonderful graphic artist is tweaking the cover design, which when finished will be marvelous. I’m expecting the book to be available by the end of January.

In the closet Jasmine Barber slides a shirt off a hanger and two other empty hangers fall to the floor. She curses herself, her face distorts into a thrustjawed grimace, can’t you do anything right you fuck. She throws her shirt down, retrieves the hangers, they’re tangled as usual, they’re always tangled god dam it, always, how the hell they get that way? In a fury she tries to untangle them, they resist, you can’t even get them apart she snarls, she gives up, forces a separation of shirts and slams them onto the bar and stands there, lips tight together and fists clenched, and all this happens before the debacle with the neckwear, the stringed beads and imitation gemstones, the pewter gulls storks and hummingbirds, her pantheon of icons that somehow have sunk to the level of rutworn adversaries.

You fuckhead she thinks. A moment later she’s standing before the bathroom mirror staring hard at the smooth impassive girlish face, the ambiguous eyes. Do they have depth or are they just stains on bland skin. Do they really want to face another day.

You just can’t do anything right, can you.

Jesus, you start every day off the same way and you end every day the same fucking way.

You don’t need to know any more about the interior life of Jasmine Barber.

*                        *                       *

In her eightoclock intro to ethics class Jasmine sits in a small group of six groping with the permissibility of suicide from a utilitarian perspective. Three of her groupmates, one of them a heavy woman around her age named Chrysta and the others a slender attractive girl named Tamika and a boy called Geary, both under twenty, are fully even animatedly engaged in the discussion. Chrysta tells how the suffering of friends and family surely outweigh the pleasure of a friend of hers who deliberately od’d on heroin, even left a message, Geary counters with the benefits experienced by society and by people in general when they’re assured of the freedom to determine their own fate far outweighing the disutility of a group of individuals deprived of the unstable and unhappy person’s presence, Jasmine looks at her designer watch as Tamika tries to divert the focus to some christian application of the golden rule, it’s twentyfive after eight, ten more minutes of this drivel she thinks, then another hour of class, her mind drifts to Marin County. Lily’s reclined between her outstretched legs sucking on a bottle of milk, Lily, Lily Joy, sucking on the nipple of a bottle of milk, in the sunshine on a grassy mountainside overlooking everything, overlooking the world, what is most beautiful in this world of hers, hers and Lily’s and Jared’s — westward to her right a winedark reservoir a thousand feet below cuddled by a thick pineforest a few miles beyond which lies the Pacific with its thin white streaks invading the sandy landsend, straightahead another sea, this one a solid deciduous green all the way to the San Francisco Bay, twenty degrees east of that somewhere under low clouds the city itself, shrouded and coy. They eat purple grapes and Parmesan cheese from a quarter round and Lily Joy drinks her milk, occasionally raising her bottle straightarmed to the deepblue sky as if offering libation.

It’s like the paraclete is hovering over the city Jared says, imparting its solace and wisdom, paraclete what’s a paraclete she says, don’t you know? it’s the holy spirit he says. She twists her neck, looks at him from the corners of her flashingdatk eyes, holy spirit? she rests her eyes on Lily who’s kicking one leg, oh okay she says. Paraclete, it’s usually depicted as a dove with outspread wings Jared says, I know how it’s depicted she replies, a halo around it’s head too, why does San Francisco need solace? everyone needs solace he says, all of civilization needs solace, sure she says, then: look, she gasps . . .

. . . they see the ground of San Francisco, the cloud has risen, an imperceptible ascension before their casual gazes, more pronounced as they focus, a slow but unmistakable rise with none of it diminishing, fading, like an ethereal bottomup pot, slight forms taking shape beneath it and elongating as the cloud lifts itself, it’s as if by an act of will it’s granting substance to a vacancy on earth and also vision, the forms stretch upward before their eyes until after only a couple minutes the city stands revealed, the cloud generously above it now and continuing its ascent, the buildings gleaming as if all but a few dark ones are made of chromed steel and glass in the bright sunlight, standing triumphant innocent and marvelous, jesus says Jared, christ says jasmine, it’s all about . . . it’s all about . . . What? Jared says, looks at her rather than the city, what? Oh I don’t know she says.

Jasmine? She raises her eyes, Chrysta and Geary are eyeing her judgmentally, the others seem mildly amused, what do you think Chrysta asks, Jasmine glares at her, what would J.S. Mill do she asks.

*                                 *                                    *

Jasmine, are you a believer?

These are the first words she hears in the recovery room after the CATscan, after the bloodwork, after the standard medical procedures to keep her life going, to insure the momentum of the life force that had somehow sustained her thus far through the nearly fatal carcrash she had just undergone, Jasmine, are you a believer?

The question was softly posed, it flowed from red lips that framed teeth vivid white less than a torsowidth from Jasmine Barber’s face, that mouth seemed a thing of unsurpassed beauty, she lingered on it, squinted at it, the cynosure of a gentle sculpture of a face that she forced herself to survey, smooth skin embedded with compassionate penetrating eyes whose color she couldn’t yet perceive, that face bordered by delicate hazel hair wavy and short, a pleasant sight, a sight Jasmine Barber was happy to see given that she was here to see any sight at all. No she said, I’m not. She watched for a response, saw the face’s lips part slightly, saw a glimmer of white between them that sent a tiny wave of comfort through her like the unexpected savor of a fresh herb, saw an eyebrow flick. Can you hear me the mouth asked softly. Yes I can she answered, I can hear you.

The place they occupied still seemed dim to her, she could make out no features save for a hanging light with a dark conical shade, she was lying on what she suspected was a gurney and without trying to move she knew she was strapped down, she could feel a catheter’s piercing assault. She couldn’tredirect her eyes from the face so near her own, it seemed so kind, she did not want to offend its possessor. She considered preceding her next statement with an apology of some sort, an I’m sorry to say or an Unfortunately, but she quickly dismissed the idea, wait she thought, I just woke up from being dead, almost being dead, I’m supposed to be dead, what do I want to be phony for now, so she simply said, for clarification, I have no faith, I’m an atheist.

A sheer veil of surprise swished across the eyes of that smooth face, they’re green Jasmine Barber noted, but the face lost none of its lovely composure. She wanted with all her heart to touch one of those cheeks with her fingertips, to touch those red lips. You came very close to death tonight Jasmine, the lips seemed like gentle living things, the flashes of white between them like dancing souls, you were very fortunate, many people don’t realize that the hand of something higher may have reached out to save them, that there’s a reason for their being saved. Jasmine looked up at the distant ceiling, Jesus she said, I was fucking saved.

Like the cells of a brothel or like peepshow booths, each room revealed its dedication to one common theme, a theme manifested and fulfilled room by room but also wafting throughout the house, main floor and basement and tiny second level: not the carnal gratification in the brothel cells but the agonized crucifixion of the SonofGod, Jesus Christ. Alone, bronze ceramic or plastic body on plain sometimes gilded crosses, in carved groupings with Gestas Dysmas and Longinus, Mary Magdalene and Mary Christ’s mother and some other Mary, in paintings and prints some depicting the three victims only and others crowded with mourners soldiers and the rabble, the Sacrificial Lamb holds center stage, often dead, sometimes in the placid stillness of complete shock, indifferent to the twisted and broken bodies that would outlive him by hours or even days on the trees to his left and right, waiting for the lance and sweet death, in each room the image supreme, the waylayer of every eye.

But at this stage of his life only Winfred’s eyes lay upon them. He entertained no one anymore, allowed no one in not even for repairs, he had learned plumbing plastermending electrical work years ago and he had no need of new cabinetry or larger closets or wallremoval. Four years had passed since his last guests, his sister Alex and her husband Daniel, had had the opportunity  to gaze upon the lurid and disquieting artwork and to offer their views on both it and him.

My god Win, what’s going on with you Alex asked. Daniel, tall and straight and wearing a fine wool suit, brown with subtle blue pinstripes, given to him by Winfred, simply stared at the halflifesize paintedwood ensemble occupying much of the tenbytwelve room off the kitchen and occasionally, as he walked among the pieces, turned to oversee the disputants.

What do you mean what’s going on with me he responded. Nothing’s going on with me.

Win. she crossed herself. You’re bordering on lunacy.

What do you mean I’m bordering on lunacy.

Win. She whirled, her arm spread as though sweeping the air. Look at this.

Yes.

Win. I mean, don’t you think you’re overdoing it? I mean, look at all this. These figures. Yuck. Jesus. The pictures on the wall. Every room. Every room. The kitchen the bedrooms all of them.

The john Daniel said.

Win, I haven’t seen you in three years and I come here and this is what I’m confronted with? Win. She approached him gently, grasped his arms just above the elbows. Win, are you all right? Do you think you might need some, some, some professional help? His flat gray eyes fastened on a wart beside her straight eyebrow.

Not at all Alex, I’m fine, he lowered his head, peered above his glasses at her, I go to work every day, six days a week, I open the store and close it, I’m fine Alex. I’m their best salesman, I sell more tuxedoes than anyone in town, more suits than anyone else in the store. I’m fine.

She released his arms walked to a wall studied the unframed poster pinned to it. Fifteenth century. Blood dripping from Christ’s right hand into Dysmas’s grimacing mouth. The thieves’s broken arms and legs, the blood and bones. Ugly little creature dragging the lost thief’s soul away, happy rosy angel embracing Dysmas’s cherubic pink reborn spirit. She shuddered, turned to Winfred. This isn’t healthy Win.

What do you mean.

Win, this is sick. Sick. She approached him, stopped, drew back. He widened his eyes, tightened his lips drew the corners down, tilted his head to the side, shrugged.

These are all holy pictures Alex. Churchpictures. Altarpieces. The sculptures and ensembles, they’re all holy. Some of them I had blessed by priests. Wait a minute.  He rushed from the room, returned before Alex could gesture meaningfully to her husband, he held a thick wooden cross with beveled edges and a heavy wellworn bronze figure of a Christ quite dead, the face frozen in the sum of all pain. This belonged to a bishop Win said. Thousands of people kissed those feet on GoodFriday. Is that sick? What’re you talking about.

Alex’s eyes flitted from Win’s face to the image in his hand back and forth, Win she said, took a deep breath, you don’t even believe in God, what are you talking about. Daniel,blandfaced and dimplechinned, turned and gazed at her. You’re a nonbeliever Win, a nonbeliever and a blasphemer, and you’re sick to have all these things around here.

They all mean something to me Alex. They’re important to me. He looked hard at his sister, gave her one sharp nod, paused and turned toward the room’s lone window, he crossed the room to it with a clenched jaw that suggested this would be her last visit, he looked out one hand in his pocket gripping the bronze and wood of the crucifix at the midSeptember sunlight, the depening shadows. An abundance of apples a dull red tugged on thin branches, soon he’d pick them and carve out the worms and their grubby paths with his small pocketknife and eat whatever clean pulp he could find, his feet bare in the cool lush grass that now was rippling in the afternoon breeze. In that shaggy grass he saw a neighbor’s cat, black with white bib and boots and a white ear that looked painted, it was stationary, poised, and he saw a slight movement two feet ahead, a young chipmunk barely able to hop through the deepgreen morass. The cat seemed nonchalant, it would take three or four steps and halt, look around as if at distant flies, then hurry its pace and stare down the struggling little rodent as though newly discovering it, then swipe at it two or three times. This little drama pointless and inane gradually moved itself stageleft out of Winfred’s view and he gazed at the path left in the grass, the cat’s path, the chipmunk too small to have left much of an indentation.

Win.

He turned. He raised his hand and peered at the image of the dead Christ, bronze nails through bony feet one on top of the other, hands gnarled, stringy arms, gaunt face wearing the rvaged mantel of pain.

Win. You’ve got to leave all that shit behind. Don’t you think it’s time to do that Win? It was Daniel speaking and Winfred Smith looked momentarily caught short. His eyes shifted from Daniel to the crucifix he still grasped and he stroked with his thumb Christ’s smooth bony legs.

Somebody’s got to pay. He said this matteroffactly.

What you say?

I said somebody’s got to pay. There was silence for a moment, Alex and Daniel looked at one another, Alex closed her eyes bowed her head and sighed deeply.

Kathleen’s paying Daniel said, she’s been paying for what, twentyfouur, twentyfive years now Win.

It’s not enough. It’s not enough. Winfred’s face changed, solidified, hardened, the lines across his broad high forehead disappeared, his eyes behind his glasses seemed to vitrify. She’ll be getting out of it soon. A year or two then she’ll be out of it.

Alex took a step toward him reached out. A quartercentury in a stateprison isn’t enough? Win, for God’s sake.

Fuck a quartercentury. Michael’s dead forever.

Daniel took a deep breath turned and exhaled only after a few paces, he approached one of the ensemblepieces, a blackhaired blackbearded man with a large hooknose and a rock in a hand drawn up behind his ear and he studied it, his words to his brotherinlaw sufficient sufficient in number and directness to satisfy his obligation to speak. Behind him Alex crossed the room to Winfred, pointed to the figure in his grip. Look at this Win she said, look at your idol here. Didn’t you learn that he paid for our sins? Didn’t that little fact that you learned way back in elementary school mean anything to you? You’ve got the collection here, the reminders all around you. The great sacrifice. Redemption for your sins. My sins. Kathleen’s sins. Kathleen’s sins Win. Remember? He knew twothousand years ago that she would murder her only child and he died for her in advance Win, and she’s been repenting ever since, for a quartercentury now. Twentyfive years.

Not enough. He still peered at her over his glasses, she drew back, swept hair from her forehead. What do you mean Win.

Not enough. His back still toward them Daniel’s sigh filled the room. Head tilted back, eyes closed, mouth pursed. Not enough he repeated. It was all play for him. A production. A grand production. That’s all it was.

Eyes widening and mouth dropping open Alex stepped back. But Win, Win, no greater love . . . God sacrificed his only son . . .

Then his father’s got to pay too God damnit. God damn it. His father’s got to pay too. Killing his son. Winfred inhaled audibly, tensed himself, his neck seemed to inflate. Put him behind bars with Kathleen. Who killed her only son too. With a hammer. With the clawend of a fucking hammer. The clawend. That’s what she finished him with. Winfred said this as though Alex hadn’t known. She grimaced. So put the father in the cell with her and let him beat her over her fucking head with the clawend of a hammer. Redemption ha. Love ha. Fucking forgiveness ha fucking ha.

But Win. Daniel came to her, held her bent elbow.

He didn’t pay at all Alex Winfred said. At least Kathleen’s in prison. where’s he? Sitting around somewhere smirking that he got away with murder. Smiling down on his murdering daughter that he forgave twothousand years ago. And she’s getting out in another year or two. She’s getting out. Fucking cancer.

Daniel tugged at Alex’s elbow, guided her out of the room, out of Winfred’s life. The last time he had anybody in his sanctuary.

Don’t forget to scroll down to see the first excerpt.

he set down the picture and removed the toothpick from between his flaccid lips , removed his glasses and lowered his face to within inches away from the image, no, it was an urge, a kind of mental paroxysm turned into a holy mission, he could see it perfectly now, and using the toothpick as a sort of nib he commenced to trace the outline of one of the thieves, the thief on Christ’s right, Dysmas, the one whom the Savior promised heaven. Deliberately as though he were cutting a tiny diamond with an infinitesimal sliver of glass Winfred followed the lines of Dysmas’s jaw thrust skyward, his  mouth open and twisted, his right arm hooked forward over the patibulum and pretzellike contorted behind his back and tied there at the wrist to the wrist of his other arm, hooked too over the horizontal post and clearly broken at shoulder and elbow. He followed the lines of the rope and the black elongated holes halfway up the forearms denoting ulnae hacked with hatchet or axe, he traced the blood. And then he paused, gritted his teeth, winced, closed his eyes, his face a double noselength from the paper, and he rocked slowly holding his wince, his arrested perturbation, and then he sneaked open his eyes, still rocking, and he followed the s-shaped body of the broken Dysmas, his chest against the backside of the cross, his back and bound and bloodraw wrists facing Winfred’s halfopen eye, his torso winding around the stipes and his legs, hacked and broken like his arms, twisted around from the front to join his upper limbs at the back and tied to the vertical post but not together, the left leg crossed over the other with its foottop facing Winfred and the right leg, lower, seen from the side but with the footsole at an almost right angle to it and facing Winfred, who resumed his laborious delineation.

When finished with Dysmas he sank back in his chair and gazed at the whole picture again, took it all in, he started, drew himself erect and with his toothpick he exerted short quick backandforth motions over the face of one of the women below the figure of Christ, the grieving woman with the biggest brightest halo, he pantomimed scratching out the face or erasing it, but the tiny instrument barely touched the paper leaving neither mark nor impression. And then he leaned down again and started tracing Gestas.

The unrepentant thief, the one who didn’t suffer his agony lightly, the one who failed to rejoice in his wheelcrunching precrucifixion torture, who wouldn’t earn Paradise because his obstinate and adamant refusal to give in to the soulcleansing efficacy of pain and disfigurement left him in eternal disgrace, this Gestus hung as grotesquely twisted on his cross and bled as profusely as his saved counterpart though his head dangled down and away from Christ, this savior who had condemned him, no blood of the lamb would offer him succor, and Winfred arduously traced the toothpick along his corkscrewed lines, glasses off, nose close to his hand, soft breath barely brushing the thumb and index finger ever so slightly holding that pick. And he drew as though he were creating the image himself out of his own blood and bile.

He moped in the mornings when he went into his backyard, raggedy with weeds and mapleseeds and twigs, to hose down his twelve tomato plants and inspect them for the green worms too ugly for even birds to eat and then pick the red fruit and bite into and slurp them like juicy peaches or else take them inside to slice into thick slabs to grace his toast and mayonnaise, and he’d inspect his cucumber plants tied to homemade trellises made of thin bamboo rods and tied at the crossings with simple string, for some reason he liked to run his thumb and forefinger  along the cukes’ little spines and he always picked them before the spines were shed so he could rub them off with his naked palms.  He grew and nurtured basil and dill too, he prefered dill on his tomatoes, liked to sprinkle it on the runny pulp with each bite, and he grew a dozen thyme plants because with the basil he liked it on all his meats, even lunchmeat, and in the fall he dried and stored it, but he moped all the time he tended to these progeny of his passionless green thumb.

You sure keep a nice garden Mr. Smith his young meteorologist neighbor Judah Malliou would tell him over the cyclone fence between their yards. When Judah wasn’t offering compliments to Winfred the distant sight of his smooth skin and dimples and thinly braided hair curled the older man’s lip like sour milk, but the verbal emollients he customarily offered eased the distate.

Yep it’s a dandy Winfred would typically say, but I’ve been growing this stuff for a lot of years so it should be. You have to water the tomatoes every morning and sprinkle just a tablespoon of the right kind of fertilizer around their roots a couple of times a season, and they never fail to grow to perfection. And you have to spray the basil, especially when it’s young, but the other plants just grow like little kids.

(He’s too cute with his answers Judah Malliou says after supper one evening to D’Andra his wife, the first utterance smacking of chariness about Winfred Smith in the neighborhood as far as either of them know. He’s always got something cute to say. Judah and D’Andra like to wash and dry dinnerware together rather than use their appliance. They take turns washing and drying.

(Like what she says. She turns her head and upper body to the right and peers at Judah from the left corners of her eyes, her brow heavy.

(Like his plants grow just like little kids.

(She lightens up her brow, her eyes widen, her body relaxes. Hey that is cute isn’t it she says. She nods rhythmically, shrugs. And . . . so what’s wrong with cute? She turns playful, places her fists alongside her chin screws up her lips and with her head atilt wiggles her nose, receives a smile for her effort.

(I don’t know he says through his smile, then turns serious. A guy always says cute things but never has a cute look on his face, there’s gotta be something wrong. And he never says anything about his own kids, if he ever had any. I heard he did, but he never says a word about them. Judah turns to gaze at his own two girls playing a board game on the dining room floor.

(So why would you expect a cute look on the face of an old guy like that. She’s serious now too. And why should he have to say anything about his kids. There might be a lot of reasons he doesn’t and it’s none of our business.

(Just the same, he says too many things that are too cute.

(D’Andra tosses the drying towel on the counter, she’s tense now, fastens her dark eyes on Judah’s, nods to herself, tightens her lips. Besides that she says, he’s got to say cute things because, like you said, he sure don’t have a cute face.

(He’s got kind of troubled eyes. You ever notice?

(No, I never did, she leans against the counter, crosses her ankles and her arms, I mean, not just his eyes alone. What I notice is his whole face, the whole thing, eyes and all. The whole thing. And I’m not particularly pleased with what I see.

(What do you see?

(I see soggy ground.

(Hmm?

(Soggy ground. You know, ground like sponge cake. You know, you walk on it and you . . . no, you’d probably sink a little and then spring up. Maybe more like taffy.  You sink a little into it and then you have a hard time lifting your foot up. And you want to avoid the mouth.

(The mouth. Why the mouth.

(Because his mouth’s like an ugly churning maw.

(He laughs. A maw? Baby, you are all of a sudden a hard woman. What’s happening with you.

(A maw. An ugly churning maw.

(In the taffy?

(No, in the soggy ground.

(He pulls a stool up to the island he had made himself and sits on it. And the eyes?

(The eyes are driedout sauteed mushrooms.

(Jesus.

(That’s why I don’t ever talk to him. I don’t want to get close enough to talk to him because I can’t look at his face closeup.

(Yeah I can see. He sees too that her face is very intense. What do you suppose goes through a guy’s mind like that he says.

(Cute things she says, cute little things that he likes to bullshit people with, she whirls around to face the window, the backyard, studies a robin splashing in its concrete bath, turns back and glares at Judah. But I don’t want Djooli’a and Shamika to go over into his yard.)