MORNING LIGHT BY METRONOME

"You know about desks and noses, proteins, mortgages, orchestras, nationalities, contraceptives; you have our ruins and records, but they won't tell you what we were like... We were one of a million species who continually cried out or silently wept in pain. I am proud that we alone resented taking part in the chorus... We did invent boredom, a fruitful state. It hid the size of our desires. Because we could say, 'I am bored'... and we could go to Paris or the movies... rather than sink our teeth in our lover's throat and shake till things felt right again... What was most wonderful about us was our kindness but of this it is impossible to speak. Only someone who knows our cruelty... our fears... can know how heartbreaking our kindness was... One of us said, 'I think our life is not as good as the mind warrants,' another, 'It is hard to be alone and alive at the same time' To understand these statements you would have to be human... Our destruction as a species was accidental. Characteristically, we blamed it on ourselves... Look closely around you, study your instruments, scan the night sky... Nothing in the universe resembles us."

from Report on Human Beings, by Michael Goldman

* * *

ONE DAY BEFORE THE END OF CIVILIZATION, Marty Machowsky got to his Kaimuki home at two on a Thursday afternoon when he found his girlfriend, Melanie Paik, of three months sitting at the dining room table smoking a marlboro and a nursing a snifter of brandy. He carried with him a crumpled, brown paper bag full of baguettes, a bottle of cheap merlot, pasta noodles, tomatoes, onions, garlic and basil, and — in his pocket — a twenty dollar bag of weed. Neither of them were aware of the news reports, the elevated threat levels, the scientific speculation and fanatic prophesizing that had begun to simmer over the strange new light streaks over the stratosphere, rippling over the cities across the world. To Marty Machowsky, as well as to many others around him, this was just a normal day, he would have never thought of this day as his final chance at breaking the streak of romantic failures along the years.

“Hey there,” he said as he entered the home, kicked his shoes off and kissed her brightly on her cheek. “Nice to be home so early. Though fourth period went on like pi.” He unpacked the items in columns onto a wooden table with fold away edges, fetched a snifter from the cabinet next to the refrigerator, and poured himself a glass. “Driving me crazy, those kids. All afternoon, I’m thinking ninth grade is the worst. Machowsky sighed, folded his shopping bag and stored it in the bottom shelf next to the sink. “All day, cheat sheets and crib notes” he slapped his right palm flat onto the table lightly. “I’m losing them. And it’s only the first quarter.”

Melanie flicked her ashes into a small Las Vegas ashtray and blew a faint, narrow spray of smoke into the air. “It’s just the antsiness associated with long weekends,” she said. Her obsidian, oil black hair was coiled into a bun. She wore mustard cardigan over a tribal tank top. “Furloughs don’t help either. All around the country, you hear how education is getting the shaft. How are they supposed to feel about that?”

She sat motionless save the intermittent swirling of her glass, tilting it delicately on it’s edge then turning it with her fingertips as if to coax it into levitation. She lifted her cigarette to her lips, inhaled and teased out a smoke ring with her tongue then leaned forward and gazed through it as if it were a floating monocle. Her eyes closed and her lashes bowed before him like a pair of Japanese fans. “I’m sure they’re all good students. Even the morons. You just need to reach ‘em.”

“True that, Dangerous Minds.” Machowsky said. He sank into the chair opposite her. “Well, all I wanna do now is get boozy. I bought you a bag of the good ol’ sweet leaf, and we can just chill the hell out for the rest of the day. How’s that sound?”

Melanie kept her eyes closed and let a ghost smile haunt her lips. She opened her eyes and raised her dark brows and her bangs fell lightly over one side of her face. For a minute her face was all shadows and contours and she looked like a skull. She took a finger and slowly tucked her hair behind her ear and there she was again, bright-eyed.

“You okay?” he asked. “What’s up?”

There was sheet of paper in front of her that he had failed to notice, and she slid it over with a finger as if it were a contract offer with a hit list. “Read this,” she said.

“What is that? A prenup?” Machowsky picked up the sheet of paper, squinting at it incredulously. He read quietly, and his face flashed red like and angry el diablo squid. Slowly, all of his facial muscles began twitching like a man who was just learning to smile. He cleared his throat. “Stifling?” he read aloud. “Manipulating? What is this? Did you actually compose this list?”

“Like a report card,” Melanie said, coolly. She extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray and downed the rest of her drink.

Earlier that day, Machowsky had thrown his eraser against the chalkboard with a big whomp, and turned to the kids and muttered something about them being privileged brats who knew nothing about the world around them and as a result, took education for granted. He felt like doing that in front of Melanie with his glass of brandy. He took a breath and said “Well. I never. Ever. Saw this coming.” He set the sheet of paper down and eyed each item. “So I subtly manipulate you into doing things by making it seem born of your own free will? I make you feel ugly when I compliment you, by leaving certain things out? I don’t understand. Is this a joke?” The words on the list blurred and the letters dissolved into grey, shimmering hexagons. “Self-involved? Narcissistic? Overbearing? Fuck all,” he muttered. He ran his finger across his eyes and lowered his finger inside his pocket as if to store the tear for later. “Jesus, Mel, all I wanted is for you to be happy. And you never showed any inkling. So what gives?”

Melanie slid her seat back and legs of the chair grunted gruffly. Her eyebrows were hidden by her bangs again, leaving her eyes without the usual indicators of emotion — an abstracted version of herself. “I’ve had this list for about a month or so. And it was to help me think this out. It would have never seen the light of day if—”

“If what? Had I what?” Machowsky snapped. “What was the tipping point? What did I do?”

“Well, at dinner last night, you held the door open for me, and you placed your hand on my lower back, as if to guide me into the establishment.”

"And?"

"It was very degrading."

“Are you serious?”

“Look, I'm just not like this. And, it got me thinking. I took out the list and looked at the thing, and it just seemed pointless to add another item to it. It was all there on paper.”

“God damn it, I mean, have you ever heard of a list of pros and cons?”

“It wasn’t just that. There are a lot of things that aren’t on that list. There are a lot of other things that it would have been unfair to include. Things beyond your control. Or expectations that may be unfair.”

“Like what?”

"You don't give to charity."

"I can start!"

“You snore. You smell. A weird smell, lately. And you know what they say about scents and compatibility. Doesn’t work if the olfactory senses don’t jive. And then there’s your age. Our age difference.”

“I’m 40 and you’re 37 for fuck’s sake!”

“I’m just not going to settle down yet.”

“Most women would love to settle down at 37!”

“You see? You see what you do?" Melanie sighed and rose from her chair, blotting out the window behind her, becoming a dark shadow, a faceless stranger in Machowsky's home. "Here, take your keys. I’m sure they'll make someone very happy in the future.” She picked up her Louis Vuitton bag and headed for the door.

Machowsky held his hand out in front of her and gently caressed her thigh. “Be reasonable” He said. “This is the first time you’ve brought any of this stuff up. This should just be the beginning of a discussion.”

She paused. "There's no more to discuss." He couldn’t believe that she was even considering leaving after their first argument. Melanie rolled her tongue under her cheeks and tilted her head. She looked down at Machowsky’s pocket. “Did you pay for the weed with the cash I gave you this morning? If so, can I have some for the road?”

“You want your money back?”

“No. The weed'll do.”

Machowsky slid down in his chair as if trying to slip out of himself. He reached into his pocket and tossed the bag, spinning onto the table. “Here,” he shrugged and stood up to open the door. “Take it. Smoke it on the mothership.”

* * *

Machowsky moved to Hawaii seven years ago, at the behest of his then wife, Lilian who had found a job teaching at the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaii. They were married for 5 years, until she filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences — the differences being in the way he looked when they started dating, and the way he looked 5 years and 20 pounds later, he would jest. She had fallen in love with a colleague and together they moved to San Francisco. His love life since then had been one long sitcom in which several romantic leads shuffled on set, revealed their neurosis, then shuffled off, to a variety of space vessels in which they would launch themselves into the wild and wacky cosmos. There was Stephanie Dixon, the ex heroin addict whom he tried to take care of and save before she ran off with his television. Then came Cora Nishita, the librarian who was into S&M, who turned around an accused him as being too capable of acts of incredible violence when he got too enthusiastic one night after a few too many martinis and uncoordinated sex. There was Nicola Snipes, who talked him into tattooing her name onto the back of his calve, before deciding to get back together with her ex boyfriend, Marco, the next day, who had also had her name tattooed on his calve. “In the same style of German typeface?” Machowsky had asked, half outraged. And finally there was Melanie Paik, fair-skinned with black hair with eyes shaped like leaflings, who seemed perfectly happy up until that evening. The roster seemed comical, although emotionally, they had each taken their toll, punctuating his prolonged periods of loneliness with brief fits of madness.

Machowsky found himself at a rustic bar downtown on Bethel street, eating Tallegio and Gouda cheese and some cabernet. He had driven out, dragging his forearm against his weepy eyes as he sped along the H1, blasting the cabin with an old Chicago album. When he got to the bar, he downed a shot of whiskey and began tapping the counter top wildly.

“Bitch went wild,” he scoffed to the Mike, the bartender when there was a lull in service. “Wrote up a list of grievances and slid them over a like a true lawyer.”

He drank his fill of the Cabernet and immediately ordered a refill. The bar was quiet for a Thursday evening. Across the street, the Hawaii Theatre was a full house. In a few hours, the street would fill up with locals wanting to stuff themselves with cheese platters, herbed escargot and vino.

“I teach algebra and calculus at school and know not a thing about the equations in women as to how they reach their conclusions. Nada!”

“Messed up, brah,” said Mike. He was a 30-something Hawaiian-Chinese kid who had been working there since the establishment opened and had seen Machowsky though a fair share of his romantic debacles. He was tall, and he had a wide, asymmetrically muscled forehead, like the flank of a bull on hormones. “Seriously. I used to call you Don Juan but now I’ll call you John Doe.”

“That makes no sense, Mike. No sense at all. I’m the one drinking, not you.”

“Relationships — dead on arrival... Cha hoo!”

“I think that's D.O.A., Mike. Nice work.”

“Gotta go tend to this lady.” Mike walked over to the far end of the bar and took an order from a blond woman in her late 30’s. He leaned over and nodded and came back to where Machowsky was sitting. “Hey Mr. Bukowsky. Lady there wants to buy you a drink.”

Machowksy looked over and smiled, raised his glass and then motioned with his hand that he was cutting himself off. “Will you tell that fine woman that I graciously decline. Tell her that I’m just coming out a relationship and that I just want to be left alone to wallow.”

“You know, the way your luck is going, dude —” Mike nodded, "it’s good to be a little discriminating. Good for you. Reassess your decision making. Do the exact opposite of what you would normally do.”

"Like George Costanza did that one episode on Seinfeld."

"Worked out for him."

"But he lives his life in 30 minute increments."

"And you're messed up life is commercial free. Fair enough. Another drink."

"Sure."

Over the course of the next hour, three women had offered to buy Machowsky a drink – two of which had recognized him from an old First Hawaiian Bank commercial he had done years ago for a friend who worked in the advertising industry. All three times, he had declined. But by nine-o-clock, he was feeling good. He was starting to feel as if the prior events of the day could all be erased, perhaps by some fateful twist in the evening. Anything could happen, and he was up for it. However, when ten-o-clock announced its arrival with a clomp of a beer bottle in front of him, his posture on the bar stool had degenerated to that of an abandoned ventriloquist dummy hunched over a depleted cheese platter. He was rambling. “Truth for the matter is, Mike. I’m a stolid guy. Stolid as a rock. I just wanna settle my mettle. You know? Marry. Have kids. Keiki. Raise em here in Hawaii despite the shitty school system.”

“Hey hey, brutha! Don’t diss, don’t diss.”

“Hey, I work in it, boo," he said. "Remember? Fuckin' math. Anyway, cream always rises to the top, no matter how bad the circumstances. Don’t worry about it. I just need a real woman is all!” He slammed his fist onto the bar top and the plates and forks rattled. A few of the other patrons turned around from their tables and regarded Machowsky wearily.

“Hey hey. You gotta keep it chill tonight, 'aight? I mean, looks like you getting into that dark mode again. No more fights or you banned for real. Got that?”

Machowsky looked around the bar and the walls wobbled along accordingly. Every time he moved his eyes, he went momentarily blind and had to refocus and reassemble whatever it was that was magically teleported into his field of vision. The tables seemed to zip by as he scanned passed them. In the far corner, he saw a duo of men in Aloha shirts and khakis materialize. They had been staring at him. “What up, fellas? I like dat Aloha spirit!”

“Hey, Machowsky,” Mike called out for the other end of the bar. “Don't do that," he warned, pointing at him with a rolled up tablecloth as if it concealed a gun. "Chill out. That’s your last glass right there.”

“Hey Mike!” Machowsky called back. “I’m good. Really!” he held his hands out. “I’m a peace-nik. I’m a lover! Not a fighter. No wait. I’m both.” He made a fist and held it out in front of him, looking through the protrusions of his knuckles as if they were gun sights. “I wanna either fight, or fuck. You know? Let fate dictate!” He let his eyes linger on the bruises along his knuckles and the events of the day came flooding back.

Mike slammed his white towel onto the bar top producing a white blur that snapped Machowsky out of his reverie. It looked like a white dove. “Hey what the heck was that? Was that a bird? You a magician? You made all of my problems disappear!!!”

Mike firmly grabbed Machowsky’s arm. “That’s it, Von Kaiser. You gotta quiet the fuck down or I’m hauling your ass out.”

“Run my haole ass off the aina will you?”

“Dude. Drink some water. Call a cab.”

“Nopes” said Machowsky. “Nope!”

From behind, someone grabbed a handful of his hair and slammed his face down into the counter. His head bounced up and he tipped his water over. The bar spun. From behind him, one of the two men in the Aloha shirts said, “Hey fuckwit, drink’s on you right?”

Mike ran over and pushed the two out into the street. “That’s it. Get out. You guys ain’t coming back here. Shit. Brah, you know he didn’t really provoke you guys all that much.”

The two men walked off, laughing.

Mike returned to the counter and took a relaxed posture. After a moment of thoughtful silence, chewing on the insides of his cheeks, he asked "So, what's the most filthiest thing you can think of to do to a midget?"

"What? asked Machowsky. "Huh?"

"Never mind," said Mike.

Machowsky resumed rubbing his forehead when from behind, another gentler hand landed onto his shoulder like an angel setting up shop. “Get him another water,” a woman’s voice commanded.

“You know this guy?” asked Mike. He straightened and nodded, patting Machowsky on the shoulder. “What a lucky bastard. You came at the right time.”

“We go back,” said the voice, softly and reassuringly. “I’ll talk him down and we’ll leave.”

Mike returned with a glass of water. “Drink this, Don Juan.”

The woman sat down next to Machowsky. Her eyes, the blurred, dark circles of the grim reaper himself hardened into the soft eyes of woman he recognized. Her skin was light and delicate, as if they could tear if pulled hard enough. She had thin lips, perpetually pursed, and when she smiled, fine wrinkles ran along the corners of her eyes, like faint Asian pictograms being magically etched into her skin like secret messages.

“Allison,” he said finally. “What brings you into town?”

“You seem troubled,” Allison said. “How long have you been here?”

“Let X equal the number of drinks I’ve had. Let X equal my ex... or something or other,” Machowsky slurred.

“Wow, you can’t even speak, and you still manage to piss people off.”

Machowsky struggled to hold her in his gaze, but his eyes failed him, as if he were seeing her through a video camera with the lens zoomed out and the auto focus gone awry. “I think my binomials just expanded,” he mumbled. “You wanna get to know the terminal side of my angle? Girl, let me be your derivative and I'll lie tangent to your curves.”

“My god,” Allison touched her temple and ran her fingers in a circle. She raised her hand and called out to Mike. “Bar keep. What’s the damage here?”

"Extensive," said Mike.

Outside, the air grew colder. A bright web of lightning crawled across the sky and vanished. "That was strange," said Allison, craning her head back. "Looks like a storm is brewing. We'd better get home."

* * *

Machowsky woke up naked. He bolted up skank and nude and surveyed his surroundings. What was once a drunken wash of indistinct shapes and colors hardened and steadied into a pristine bedroom high above the city. The air conditioner was on and he was shrunken and shivering. He stepped onto the cool hardwood floor and found his clothes scattered on a wool shag carpet. The bedding and floral pillows were strewn about the floor near the bathroom. He stood at the window, focusing beyond his haggard reflection out to the city below, and saw that it was sleeping. The H1 freeway was just starting to clog, while the skyline, with it’s slow pulse of red and blue lights, slumbered on.

A slow burning pain awoke on his left deltoid as if it had been scraped by a fall. He felt around and saw that it was a bruise. “Yikes,” he said. He stumbled out into the living room saw that everything was nicely decorated. Everything had a clean line, as if it had been laid out on a grid. In the corner sat a computer and a desk stacked with books on classical music. The shelves were lined with textbooks on Beethoven and Mozart and complete collections of musical scores by composers he had never heard of.

He heard stirring in the kitchen — the sound of eggs being beaten and the tines of a fork scraping against metal. “So, who’s Nicola?” the voice asked.

Machowsky sat nude on a recliner. It had not occurred to him to put his clothing on. “An ex girlfriend,” he answered. There was an antique metronome on the glass end table next to him and he set it into motion.

Tick... Tick...

“Must have been really serious. You never struck me as the body art type. How long were you two together?”

“A week,” Machowsky answered.

There was the sound of a bowl being set down abruptly. A shadow filled the kitchen doorway. “A week? By god, man. You really fall hard and fast don’t you?”

“Allison?” Machowsky called out.

“Yees?”

“How did I get here? And naked?”

“We walked. Or, I walked, you stumbled. You fell a few times. We got here and you stripped, uncoaxed, by the way, and fell in bed. I tried to wake you to put your clothes on, but you were gone.”

"Is that how I got this bruise on my deltoid? I fell?"

"Yeah."

"Then how come this bruise has teeth marks?"

Allison didn't answer. Instead, she turned on the blender, although, judging by the sound of it, it was completely empty. Machowsky thought to ask if he had really gotten undressed on his own but refrained.

“What time is it?” He asked when she was done.

“Four. I couldn’t sleep. I don’t remember you being such a snorer.”

“I’m sorry. I took up the bed... where’d you sleep?”

“Sofa, ersatz cloud nine. Don’t worry about it. You needed to sleep it off. You couldn’t even tell me where you lived.”

She was chopping something now. Machowsky got up and fetched his underwear but left the rest of his attire on the floor. When he walked into the kitchen, he saw that Allison was in a satin robe, chopping chives. “Omelette?” she asked.

“Sounds good. My head feels like there’s another head in it.”

“Talk about your theatrical happy and sad masks. You were running rampant at the bar. A noisy drunkard one minute, sentimental and maudlin the next. Looking to the future, reminiscing about the past, talking about the end of the world and how you wouldn’t have a person to hold when it happened,” she smiled. “You were seriously depressed. So unlike you.”

Machowsky clenched his fist again and a dull throbbing pain swelled up to his wrist as if there had been a rubber band wound tightly around it the whole time. He began to recall that part of the evening. She had bought him a glass of water, ordered a drink for herself, and closed out the tab. She had told him that she had composed the music for a production across the street that she had been working on for a year and had finally come to see it to its fruition. En route to another establishment to celebrate with her friends and colleagues, she happened to see Machowsky sadly folding a limp sliver of cheese into a pair of puckered, pouting lips. “My heart went out to you right then and there,” she said. “Pretty pathetic. In a funny, cringe inducing sort of way.”

He recalled her lightly kissing his forehead as he slept. “I’m glad you came by the bar,” he said. “It was a pleasant surprise. The entire day–turned–night was going really bad for me.”

“I know. Glad I could take your mind off it for while.”

On the walk to her apartment, they had reminisced about their own short lived relationship. They talked about her passion for the works of avant garde composer John Cage, who’s experimental works baffled Machowsky. Whenever she had played his work Machowsky would grow agitated as he listened intently for a clue to some melody that he was no doubt missing. “You would always say, ‘there’s no music in this music’ and I would tell you it was the music of chance, and you would say, there is no chance in music. What’s the value in chance compositions?’ You were so stubborn on this matter that it confused me. Why should it have mattered to you? You were a mathematician and I was a musician and our languages didn’t really need to overlap but you were so closed-minded about such things. Anyway, these days I have more in common with John Williams than with John Cage,” she had said wistfully. “But that’s where my career has taken me. Now that I’m back, maybe you’ll appreciate the music more.”

Machowsky recalled taking her hands in his and kissing them with the exhilaration of rediscovered familiarity filling the spinning world to it’s blurry edges. “I like the tune I’m hearing now,” he had said.

That exhilaration was gone now. The memory of Allison was a mere calendar square on a much greater timeline. The camaraderie of reminiscence had begun to fade, and through that time warp on the walk to her apartment, to her bedroom and now to the kitchen, she had become a stranger again.

“You know,” Machowsky began. “There’s more to the evening than just Melanie,” he said.

“Who’s Melanie?” Allison asked, her eyebrow arched.

“My ex. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Well, no. You didn’t. Exactly. You were mostly griping about being lonely.”

A thin wall of silence spread out between them like the glass that separated prisoners from visitors. The metronome ticked on.

“We broke up yesterday afternoon.”

“I see,” said Allison. She cleared her throat. Suddenly she looked very tired. "So you’ve only been alone for an evening.”

Machowsky realized that his histrionics must have misled her. He couldn’t remember if he had concealed this information from her intentionally in hopes of getting laid, or if that alcohol had put him in a haze of temporary happiness, where everything outside of that protective blur didn’t matter.

Still, clinging to some air of intimacy, he felt like confiding and she was all he had. He leaned against the counter. “I had just had the worst day of my life and I just wanted to forget it when Mel pulled that coup. But now that I’m with you, I feel okay. We're old friends right? I can tell you things, can't I?”

“Sure. Uh huh. Tough day at work. Students giving you a hard time. Girlfriend dumping you. Go on.” She had dropped all of the flirtatious affectations of the night before, like a smoky cocktail dress to the floor.

Machowsky knew that it would have been better to change topics, yet he pushed on. “Kids. You know how cruel they can be.”

“Sure,” Allison said. She set her knife down. She took a deep breath then exhaled.

“I mean, you do know. It’s been on the news. That Massachusetts case.”

“Sure.”

“That girl who had been bullied and who was driven to commit—”

“Yes,” Allison said, her voice now tinged with impatience.

“I hit a kid today,” said Machowsky. He clenched his fist again and felt the pain throbbing around his knuckles.

“What? You hit a child?”

“This kid was more of a man really. A senior. He’s a big kid. Played football before being booted off the team. Good linebacker. Bad student. Held back once. He’s an adult in my eyes. He’s just got this mean streak. And during recess, I saw him taunting this girl, getting real evil on her.”

“Go on,” Allison was still on the fence as to whether she should finish his omelette or throw out the ingredients. She let her hands rest on her hips.

“Horrible. There was a crowd gathering around some dispute. A lot of screaming and shouting. And where were the other teachers? As I walked up I noticed there wasn't another colleague in sight. With all that commotion I found it suspicious that no teacher would peer out of their classrooms and put a stop to this. So I walked out there. He was calling her all of these things and she just stood there, terrified. She was a good student. Quiet. Worked hard. But I did notice that her grades had been slipping. I have no idea what the politics of the situation was but the way he was berating her you could see this wasn’t anything new. She looked worn down by it. Defeated. I could see a hidden pocket of potential violence bubbling up around them. He was getting really worked up. I walked up and broke up the circle and the kid, Josh, stood up to me. We were eye to eye. Like I said, he’s a big kid. He continues berating her, then he takes his soda can and empties it over her head. It wreaks of alcohol. So I step in and grab this can from him and he shoves me off. He comes at me, grabs my collar, and tells me to mind my own business. Then he goes back to her and spits in her face and that’s where I spin 'em around and sock him.”

“In the face with a closed fist,” Allison confirmed.

“That’s right. He went down, and then I kicked him.”

“You kicked him?” her jaw dropped.

“Just seeing what I had seen, and from the stories in the news, I just snapped. I hit the guy then I kicked him when he went down and I knew right away that was wrong. But also, he was asking for it. I should have just pulled him away and cooled him off. But this kid was volatile. He needed to be subdued fast. And he needed to know in his terms, in a way he could understand, that you just don’t do shit like that! That's when all of my colleagues come running. Nice and easy as they please. They restrain him as he's getting up and they restrain me. Anyway, I was let go earlier that day and people are reviewing my situation and I’m sure I’m getting what’s coming. A lot of students and colleagues are saying that I was acting in self defense and that the kid was actually scaring them, but when the story becomes clearer I’m sure I’m screwed. But you know what? It felt good. It felt as if I was standing up for decency. And that's an important thing. I was a hero. All the students looked at me differently. I wasn’t some over-the-hill teacher. I was still vital. I was more than that. If I had the choice, I would probably do the same thing.”

"And the girl? What did she do?"

"She cursed me out. I was shocked."

Allison sighed, retrieved a stainless steel pan from the cabinet and turned on the stove burner. The flame came on like a phantom sunflower and hissed at the underside of the pan. “Go take a shower,” she said. “I’ll have your food ready for you when you come out. You look like you need a warm shower.”

“Yeah,” said Machowsky. “I suppose that’ll set me right.”

“You know,” Allison said over her shoulder. “It was wrong. There’s no detour around the shit storm you’re approaching. I won’t waste my breath explaining why. I... I don't think I can abide by that.... look, go take a shower, and when you come out, eat your breakfast. Take your time. I... I’ll be gone by then so you can let yourself out, just lock the door.”

Machowsky stood there waiting for more but she had gone silent. “Maybe I should just go,” he said.

“Your call.”

Machowsky went into the bedroom.

Allison followed him and stood behind him in the doorway, her robe wrapped tightly around her making her look like a summer roll. “You realize you lowered yourself to their level! You’re twice their age! I can’t believe you! Really? You feel good about punching out a student? I can’t believe it. What you've done is unforgivable. It's like a case of malpractice.” She sighed, filling the air with disappointment, letting it intermingle with the cloud of shame that was already filling the room on his behalf.

“I guess I have a lot to learn. It’s the perfect time to make some changes in my life,” he said.

He could see that she took the statement to be nothing more than transparent posturing and a callow call for pity. “Shower off,” she said. “Because right now, you wreak of alcohol.”

* * *

In the bathroom was a small window overlooking the downtown area. Machowsky peered out the window and surveyed the little lights below. There were dotted lines in his head, imaginary markers that he superimposed over cars and the lights of certain apartments, representing all of the places Melanie could have gone. For the first time that evening, he stopped feeling sorry for himself. He recalled the list Melanie had written and began mentally adding to it in an act of self loathing.

Childish. Immature. Selfish. Deluded. Lost.

Machowsky leaned against the tile wall and began to cry. He wondered how he had gotten so far off track. Here, he sat in the bathroom, suspended high above the city with a woman he could barely remember, while the woman he loved was moving fast away from him. She could have been on a plane over the Pacific. She could have been weeping by herself in a hotel room. She could have been with some other man in a new apartment, waking up feeling so new and recharged that it felt like the first day of her new and happy life. Of course she had left him! She must have sensed a storm coming! His career was ruined. He was ruined.

Machowsky cried his tears in the shower, whimpering and pounding his fist over his head. He wept until he could no longer wring anymore from his eyelids, took a deep breath and got out of the shower. When he emerged from the bathroom he felt reborn of steam and heat. He felt vacuous and clear. He felt vaporous. Vapid. He was ready to take on the color of whatever came next.

The power flickered on and off for a moment, and the bathroom light went out. When he walked into the kitchen Allison was gone. “Allison? You here?” He surveyed the living room. The air conditioner had been turned off. A dim light had begun to energize the sky, although it seemed too early for dawn. The metronome continued chipping away at the silence.

Tick... Tick...

On the counter top he saw a plate set out. There wasn’t an omelette. Instead, there were two eggs, sunny side up, and two slices of bacon arranged to resemble a happy face.

Machowksy felt wounded. This was Allison’s old way of telling him to grow up. In her eyes, he had become a child. He regretted telling her that story about the kid. Embarrassment and regret washed over him. He felt as if he had been dumped twice in one evening. He looked around the apartment again. There were no notes or clues as to where she had gone. He returned to the dish and stared at the grinning ocelli and talked himself out of eating it.

He was about to dump it down the disposal when he saw a little napkin on the floor; a draft must have blown it from the counter top when Allison opened the door to leave. He picked it up, took a deep breath and read it. Good luck. Don’t worry about the dishes. Take care.

* * *

When the first close streak of lightning slashed horizontally across the skyline, Allison's house phone began ringing. Machowsky searched the living room but couldn't locate it's muffled tone. Another streak of lightning flashed across the window only a few yards away, soundlessly. The hairs along his arms and neck stood on end. The phone continued to ring and the answering machine picked up. "Just tried your cell. Are you seeing this?" a stranger's voice asked from within a whorl of static. "Call me back as soon as you can."

He gathered his things and made for the door. While putting on his watch he stopped to look out the window to examine the skyline. All was calm again. The image of the city doubled as his eyes focused on the glass pane that separated him from everything and everyone else. He lingered on his own reflection — a lone figure afloat over a city at dawn. He looked beyond himself and noticed a shimmering sequence of lights above Diamond Head. It was a strange, unnatural set of pin pricks. The sun had yet to rise, and the sky above was a deep abysmal blue. Were they stars? Planes? Meteors? The lights grew brighter, and three distinct luminous pinwheels emerged from the clouds beyond the mountain. They coalesced and emitted a series of blinding flashes, setting parts of the city ablaze. "Oh my God," he said, dropping to the floor. His phone began ringing, Allison, he thought, but realized that she wouldn't have had his number. When he took it out and identified the caller he saw that it was Melanie and when he answered, she was frantic. She was in a panic and he could hear the commotion of a panicked suburban sidewalk around her. Calmly, he spoke. "Mel," he said. "Where are you? Stay on the phone with me until I find you." Pulses of light quickened in the window casting a flickering square of light along the ceiling. Slowly, he slid away from the glass, shielding his eyes. "Where are you?" he asked again. She was crying. Over the phone, she recalled the previous day's events and apologized and told him that she was just confused and uncertain; that she didn't mean any of the things she had said. "It's okay," he answered. "None of that matters. Just tell me where you are!" he called out. The building began shaking. The emergency sirens began blaring.

She told him for the first time that she loved him. She felt it, now. Machowsky closed his eyes and let those words sink in like pennies down a well. He thought about those words and what they meant, at the degrees of truth they held, at how much of it seemed a promise and how much of it seemed a plea. In those moments, he thought about his life — of those instances he had held onto as models of pure emotional need, stripped away of all artifice. He closed his eyes as the walls shook and the shelving in the apartment shivered sheets of fine dust particles over their ledges, and wondered how much of it had been real. And now, as the window flashed white and the building 24 floors up rumbled and shook like the climactic ending of a swaying game of Jenga, here was a woman who was saying those words and offering just that. And, although Machowsky wasn't sure of it's truth, he closed his eyes and let it sink in, let his body absorb that placebo, promising her that if given a second chance, they would never separate again. "I love you, too," he said, and meant it. "And now that we've said it, it'll protect us. Like some protective shield," he continued. "No matter what's happening around you, you'll be safe. You and me," he said, shutting his eyes, enclosing himself in a bubble of darkness as the world around him lit up in a white flower blossom of heat. Here it was, all of life's yearnings distilled into a single moment. All his life he had fostered a vague idea that love alone would one day save him, and in the end, it almost did.