Fathers and Fish

My father may have cursed me when it came to fish. Let me explain.

It was a late Sunday afternoon and I was reading the Star Advertiser when my friend, Irma called and asked me to take care of her prized Goldfish for a week. I agreed and she came over with a 1 gallon bowl and a large, bulbous goldfish that hung in the center of the bowl like a sun to it’s own solar system. He was radiant and still, like a god. “Call him Kapu,” She said. “Feed him twice a day, and in five days do a partial water change. Here, he’s got his own special mixture so use water from this jug,” she said and handed me an additional gallon of water. “Don’t worry,” I assured her. “Piece of cake. I’ll even sing to him,” I jested. She laughed and told me that the goldfish was a gift from someone very important who was no longer with her. The goldfish seemed aware of this information. It hung in that space with gravitas. I nodded sagely, and carefully set the fish down on top of my microwave and reassured her. “Twice a day, no more, no less. And one partial water change,” I repeated. “A 25 percent water change,” she interjected. She made a pistol finger and pulled the trigger. Caught you slippin. She picked the bowl off my microwave and set it down on a space on my bookshelf. “25 percent,” I repeated. “Do it on Wednesday,” she said, smiling apologetically as she mentally checked off every possible error and lapse of judgment that could occur under my stewardship. “Don’t put him in the sun,” she said. “And don’t put him close to any AC units.” I nodded and let a smidgen of annoyance slip out, “How many people have you asked before you came to me?” Irma took a count and said “Two.” “Well,” I said. “Kapu will be just fine. I’m taking this seriously, Okay? I’ll even text message you a picture every day.” This seemed to satisfy her and so she hugged me and kissed me and we messed around for a while, as we occasionally did. Why not? Although we were just friends, we were in our forties, and we were still single. Back in the day we got liquored up together and fooled around. We never had relationships that lasted more than a few years. Were were both like fish, in a way. We were pets that needed zero affection, and gave zero affection. She thanked me again and left.

Me fish-sitting. What a joke. My father was an award winning aquascaper, and he knew how to take care of fish. He knew every tropical fish's name on sight along with all of the nuances that went with caring for each and every one of them. He had three tanks in the garage and one Dodge Van full of tanks and filters baking in the sun. He grew up on Kauai and fostered a healthy obsession of fish. He caught papio and set crab traps off of the Waimea pier and in the Hanapepe river a single generation before those areas were fished dry. He caught little angel fish along Poipu way before the hotels sprang up, and he kept them in salt water aquariums in his father's garage. Then he joined the military and was shipped off to Korea and Germany, and when he came back, he opened a pet store, met my mother who died a year after I was born, and raised me alone. It was another two decades before he rediscovered his passion for aquarium keeping. After I had gone off to college, he became an award winning Iwagumi aquascaper. He was written about in magazines. He became a legend.

Meanwhile, I dropped out of college and became a bartender, and I had no hobbies to float on that separated me from any other hard working civilian in this modern world, at least not in my father's eyes. I worked, drank, messed around with the uke, hit the clubs in Waikiki and Chinatown, and embarked on a number of get rich quick schemes. None of which took hold. Old friends whom I had always thought would be around throughout my life got married, had kids, sang a swan song of old memories at their keiki's first birthday parties, and disappeared. I jogged Diamondhead, learned to surf, made a few trips back to Kauai as a single man, tried my hand at starting an elaborate aquarium just to bridge the gap between me and my father and failed. I concluded that when he raised me, he regarded me as another resident of one of his elaborate, bloated, ecosystems. I was just another fish, darting across a field of moss gently swaying under the water filter. Having taken care of me, he was always off on another aquarium set up. He had raised me, help paid my way through college, and that was that. Aquarium keeping requires diligence, but hardly any emotional investment. That is the way he raised me, I suppose. I would have liked to have been closer, but my father, a reticent man, looked at me with a mild curiosity. Who is this kid, embarrassingly loud, who I can barely relate to?

And so here comes Irma and her portentous goldfish, reawakening these memories. Petulant arguments. Like that night on Thanksgiving. I was on the patio with a Primo in hand, and I remember standing there, absorbing my father's harsh final assessment of me. "Boy, what do you do besides get drunk? You do any good?"

"Pops, it's not like I'm selling crack. What, you're still harboring a grudge about me not taking over the pet shop?"

"Screw the pet shop. You don't got the gills for it."

"No soul for keeping fish, huh?"

"I curse you with fish, boy."

He was a blunt man.

* * *

The fish began fizzing an hour after she had gone. I called Irma on her phone and left a message. I said “Hi Irma. It’s me. I’m kind of wondering about the fizzing. The fish has thousands of bubbles coming out its sides as if it's carbonated.” I hung up and looked at the fish. Millions of micro bubbles percolated from its scales as if the fish itself was porous and filled with gas. Other than the fizzing, however, it seemed fine. It swam around in circles, rising and falling like a carnival ride, streaming a comet's tail of bubbles. I fed it some flakes and it inhaled them with it’s large mouth.

Another hour later, the fish was like a giant, floating alka seltzer tablet. The entire bowl was like a jacuzzi. I could see the source of all of those bubbles moving around in circles, rising and falling, allowing intermittent glances at the fish’s eyes and mouth as it flitted about. The fizzing was profuse, and the bubbles hissed as they popped along the surface of the bowl. It was as if the fish was boiling the water around it. I took a picture with my blackberry and sent it to Irma. The message read “Yo Irma. Fish is fizzing :/” and waited for a reply. She must have gone to the airport right after she left my apartment and was now en route to California.

What would my father have done in this situation? I imagined him watching me, shaking his head in disgust, wanting to hit me over the head with a scoop net.

At around 8pm, I decided to do a partial water change thinking that it would calm the fish a bit. Maybe it was some form of separation anxiety. Maybe it was the water quality. So as it went on fizzing like an Alka Selzter tablet out of Willie Wonka’s Pharmacy, I inadvertently emptied the bowl more than half way, and refilled the bowl with the water that Irma had given me. This amounted to an 80 percent water change. The fish resumed its fizzing, and the bowl hissed in my hands as if I had just filled it with a gallon of Sprite. I was sure my friendship with Irma was nearing its terminus.

I could hear my father saying, "You never learned to take care of anything. Why start now?"

By 10pm, the water was roiling with bubbles as if it were a pot on a stovetop. The fish was no longer visible. As the fish percolated, larger bubbles slid up from the bottom and burst at the surface. At that point, I was sitting down in front of the bowl and eating a bowl of ravioli, watching it like a television set, wondering if the fizzing would ever stop. Will the fish look different when the fizzing is complete? Will he simply dissolve? Will the airborne water vapor make me sick? Is the water hot? Caustic? Will the fish bite? Where was it? I set down my bowl and reached in and felt for it. The water was cold and slimy and I could feel the goldfish’s slippery body moving among my fingers. Not knowing what else to do, and with my curiosity at it’s insatiable peak, I gently closed my fingers around its body and pulled him out of the water.

I held it’s shimmering body in my palm, and with my thumb, gently pinned him down. It’s bulbous eyes seemed vacuous as it gulped for air. It flapped it’s tail weakly once then remained still enough for me to get a better look. Although I was no expert on the average carassius auratus, it looked like any other carassius auratus. It was an inch and a half long, with flowing fins and a nice orange and yellow luster. It was of textbook appearance; a completely boring animal – that is — until it shriveled up like a deflated balloon. Within seconds, it emitted a faint whistle, shrank and dried out to a tenth of it’s original size. It looked like a cross between beef jerky and candy corn, and when I dropped it back into its bowl in horror, it sunk to the bottom and quietly exploded into a cloud of yellow and orange dye.

"Say what?..." I said, not knowing what else to say.

What else could I do? I mourned it for a few minutes, then flushed the poor thing down the toilet. The next morning I went out an bought a duplicate.

When I was paying for it, I told the pet shop owner my story and asked about the fizzing. The man blinked twice and then laughed. He said he recognized me, and that he knew my father from a long time ago. I asked him again about the fizzing, and he just laughed and laughed. He slapped the counter top. He wiped tears from his eyes. He folded over, shook his head, and called out my last name in vain.

* * *

When Irma returned from her trip she apologized for not returning my calls and asked me what I had meant about the fizzing. I told her that her goldfish was just blowing bubbles from it’s gills and she laughed and said that it was nothing to worry about. “Of course not,” I said and went back into my apartment to fetch her doppelganger gold fish.

When Irma held the bowl in her hand, I could see her smile magnified though the glass. That smile vanished after a few seconds of inspecting her fish. She raised her eyes to mine, and I could see that she was about to cry.

"This isn't him. What happened?"

"Of course it's him. Okay, I forgot to feed him once. Maybe he lost a few grams..."

"Sure."

“So. Anyway,” I said. “What are you doing now? Wanna get some food?” My heart began racing. At that moment, I thought that maybe I could love Irma, or that I was in love with her suddenly, and this realization slid along a razor's edge. I was about to lose her.

Irma set the bowl down on my microwave and walked out without a word.

* * *

That one time I had a ten gallon Aquarium set up in my living room, I called home and asked my father why the fish were bloated. They looked like pine cones. My father told me they were as good as dead, and hung up. The next week, I had another school of tetras and the same thing happened. I called him and asked him about the bloating. "Dropsy," he said, "Good as gone," he coughed and hung up. A few weeks after that, I called him and asked him the same question. "What are the pets stores selling you? Why don't you figure it out with them?" he growled. I argued back, "You're a pet store owner. You're famous for this shit, Dad. Why not give me a hand here?" He grew angry "Over the phone? How can I do anything over the phone? What's wrong with you, boy? You think I got one of those high tech phones with video?" I took a breath. "Why do they keep dying on me, then? That's all I'm asking."

"Because you're a piece of shit son, and you coulda learned but you didn't, so now you're a shit aquarium keeper. So stop bugging me, be a man and learn on your own. Now you're really cursed with fish." he said and hung up.

I didn't understand my dad back then. Why wouldn't he recognize the effort? Then it came to me. I realized that it was beyond his capacity. All he could give, he had given me. I went to my aquarium, emptied out my tank and threw it in the dumpster. You see, everything hinged on the aquariums. This hobby, or passion, was the fulcrum on which our relationship revolved. His assessment of me was equal to his final judgement on me as an aquascaper. I was neither. It was the last time I was able to speak to my father.

* * *

The fish incident reopened some old wounds, and I sent an email to Irma about it. I apologized profusely and told her that the death of her goldfish was not something I took lightly. Irma did eventually forgive me and we resumed our friendship. Months later, she moved in. Another six months later, she miraculously got pregnant. We found a good doctor at Kapiolani Women's Center, who was keeping a close eye on her. I had a steady job at the Sheraton. She maintained a steady job working with computers and setting up networks. And I had finally come around to the art of aquarium keeping. It was while I was setting up a new fish tank that I figured out how to propose. While she was away, I set the ring in a treasure chest aerator that opened and closed as it released air bubbles. Weeks later, as we were watching a Koi Angel explore its surroundings, she finally spotted the band percolating in the chest. Then I got down on one knee, and proposed.

She said "Yes! Yes! Yes! Now can you fetch it for me before Oscar tries to swallow it?"

* * *

Aquascaping requires a lot of patience and diligence. It requires artistry and vision. When an ecosystem blooms as the result of a craft with its own set of rituals – something your own father mastered but never imparted to you, that you learned on your own long afterward – and the green grass sways gently under an arch of moss covered driftwood that looks like a bonsai tree, and a school of tetras shimmer against what looks like an underwater sky, by then it's very hard not to be invested emotionally. When your son points his finger to a luminous neon tetra, and says for the first time – "Fish!" – tell me you won't hope that he turns out to be exactly like you.

A Dream of Death Valley

Being in the desert reminded Iris of the beach. Somehow through it's desolate haze of mirages stampeding at the horizon like a ghost herd — under an unblemished sky so blue it may as well have transubstantiated into an ocean and dropped solidly to the earth — it conjured the ringmaster antics of her mother and the sea. An improbably connection, like the desert stretched out before her; like the distance between one star and the next in the desert night containing in that vast emptiness the thrumming answers to her mother's long absence. Here in the desert, barren and desolate, cracked and striated, a fossilized remnant of a lake some faded age ago, was the memory of the sea. And somewhere in there was her mother – the ringmaster of the water.

Iris stood in the harsh sun and accepted its rays. She remembers one day along the coast – too young to remember which (California? Hawaii?) – when her mother collected cat's eyes shells along the gentle break. One by one, she plucked them out of the water and placed them into Iris's palm. The white shells, like fish eyes, flat on one side and convexed on the other, sat lifelessly along the lifelines in her palm. Her mother held out the small plastic tray that had once housed a bacon and lettuce sandwich, and placed the shells on their flat bottoms in a circle. "Now," she said. "I brought this especially for this. It's plain old vinegar, but here it performs wonders." She pulled out her flask — a flask that Iris had seen her drinking out of before, at gatherings, at lunches, in buses and bus stops, in trains and train stations — and unscrewed the cap. Slowly she poured the vinegar into the tray, forming a clear, shallow and pungent pond. "Now watch," she whispered. They set the tray down between them and both let their knees sink into the cool wet sand and watched. The cat's eyes began moving, one by one. Slowly, they broke from formation, formed lines and began chasing and eluding each other. "How are they doing that?" asked Iris. "Magic," said her mother. But even then, Iris knew it was simpler than that — that it had more to do with the vinegar.

And now at 25, she stood on the cracked, parched, landscape schooled to know now that those cat's eyes moved as a result of the vinegar's acetic acid reacting with the shell's calcium carbonate. There was no magic. And here, in Death Valley, in the dried and flat lake of Racetrack Playa, she was going to prove just that. They were called sailing stones – mysterious rocks that traversed the flatland, dragging their bodies along the valley floor, crisscrossing, changing directions, leaving long, linear tracks and baffling most scientists. How did these stones move? Even the smallest stone weighed 20 pounds, too heavy for even a gale force wind to effectively put its shoulder against. When did they move? No one has ever witnessed their pilgrimage. Some said it was an ongoing hoax, others claimed that there were strange magnetic fields, and there were even fringe theorists who believed their movements were the results of other worldly beings.

As a child, Iris had read about a grouping of stones that would steal the soul of anyone who had stepped on their shadows. She had read about flying saucers, and bigfoot. She had seen the portrait of the Lochness Monster and read about the Bermuda Triangle. For other children, these tales tickled their imaginations. The world was still new, and these mysteries held promise of magic and wonder, of greater worlds beyond their own. Not so for her, and as she grew older she smirked at the revelatory truths behind them as technology and science unveiled their mysteries. For her, there was always a simple answer. That is why she excelled in the sciences. That is how she had found herself here, reluctantly investigating an area of Death Valley where "sentient" stones moved on their own with 10 other interns from NASA's Lunar and Planetary Science Academy.

Drew walked behind her and offered her a bottled water. "It's really beautiful out here, isn't it?" he said, resting his hand along her lower back. Iris moved away and took his bottled water. Drew rested his hands on his hips and his shoulders protruded from his plain white t-shirt like the handlebars of a bicycle. He was built like a track bike, all angles, always cutting through the wind. "It's humbling, when you think about it."

"What's humbling?" Iris asked.

"So many things we don't know. All the mysteries of the natural world."

"There are no mysteries in the natural world. This isn't a mystery, we're here to confirm a simple hypothesis," she said, taking excessive gulps of his water and letting it cascade along her cheeks and down the collar of her shirt.

"We don't know for sure. It could be a lot of things," said Drew, and squinted into the sun. Iris wondered about the purpose of such an affectation; to raise one's face to the sun and squint. He had been squinting into the sun since morning.

"There are no mysteries in geology. A liquid hydrocarbon lake on Saturn's moon is like any other. You should have burned your pseudoscience magazines when you were 12," she said and handed him the water bottle. "The only mystery here is in human nature. As in, why do you constantly look into the sun only to have to squint? If you don't look at the sun, you won't have to squint. Why?"

"Because it's the sun," he smiled.

"And I suppose you find romance in this," said Iris.

"One of us has to," he said, flipping his half-empty water bottle like a juggler flipping a bowling pin. He let it drop to the hard sand, and it bounced and rolled toward Iris's feet. "Keep the water," he said and walked off to join the others in taking GPS measurements of the area.

Iris pick up the bottle and put it in her back pack. She approached a stone and studied its shape. She jotted down her measurements in an old leather notebook, and measured the length of its traveled path. It weighed 32 pounds and had traveled roughly 600 feet. Its track had a depth of 2cm. The ground surrounding it resembled the scaly back of a lizard.

"Hygrochrons show moisture. Logged some humidity," shouted Salvie from the east. "Looks like we're right on."

"Same here," called out Drew.

"Disappointed?" shouted Iris, her hand cupped over her mouth.

"Why would I be?"

"Such a simple answer to such a grand mystery!" she called out.

"I'm getting tired of your... snarkiness," said Drew.

"Then leave," she said.

"Fine. This stone, has sailed."

"Good one," she said.

Salvie loped up, shifting his Yankee's cap and flipping a hygrometer like a coin. "The two of you put apart show promise. Together, you two are loons," he said. "Go gather the readings from the west end. Looks like we got water after all. "

Iris picked up her pack and began walking.

* * *

On the day her mother took her to the shore and showed her for the first time the marvel of alchemy in a flask of vinegar and a cat's eye, she told her she was leaving. They ate dinner quietly at the end of a long wooden pier, the flask no longer filled with vinegar, but with the glint of a sunset administered something else that mellowed her eyes. The ocean, hushed and lapping against the pillars beneath them, holding them up to a darkening sky, sloshed back and forth rhythmically.

"Iris, baby. I have news. Mommy's going to have to leave."

"Can't I come with?"

"No sweetie. You'll be staying with your Aunt Cora."

"For how long? When?"

"Eventually. Until you grow up, then you can do as you please."

"Why? Where are you going?"

"Nowhere far."

"Why?"

She paused and took a swallow. Behind them, a fisherman pulled up a small cage-load of crabs.

"I'm sick, sweetie," she said and smiled.

"Why don't you go to the doctor, then?"

"I've tried. Okay?"

"No! Not okay! Why can't I come with you?"

"You'll be with your Aunt Cora."

"When are you going to come home?"

"I won't be."

"No," Iris began to sob. Her mother held her. A small fish jumped out of the water, then disappeared.

"I know this is hard," her mother whispered. She held her hand against Iris's cheek.

"No!" Iris screamed. She stood up and began kicking her mother's back.

"I'm sorry, Iris."

"No! No! Mom! Why are you doing this?"

"I'm sick, sweetie," she said.

* * *

The sun began to set against the desert and the air began to cool. Along the rim of the Racetrack Playa, the sky had taken on a bruised quality. Iris had collected all of the hygrochrons and put them in her pack. She took out her sweater and put it on. Next to her, she fancied a rock was sneaking off in microscopic increments.

People always did that – snuck off in invisible, unmeasurable increments, unnoticed until they were too far gone.

The wind picked up and blew her hood over her head. She sat the with her arms crossed and closed her eyes. She imagined the rock moving while her eyes were closed, and when she reopened the rock was gone. She looked around and couldn't find it.

Drew walked up, a dark silhouette with a white shirt and a fishing cap. "Iris, we're leaving. Get your stuff."

Iris removed the hood. "I'm sleeping here for the night."

Drew crossed his arms and began to shiver. "What are you crazy? You'll freeze. How the hell are you going to get back? Don't be silly, let's go."

"Just leave me alone, Drew."

Drew sat down and took off his pack. "So what is it now?"

"I just want to stay."

"That's an impossibility. But if you want to camp, we can come back some other time, better prepared and make a night of it."

"Just leave me alone. That's what I want."

"Just leave you alone, huh? In the middle of the desert. Overnight. Like that."

"Yep."

"I don't get you, Iris. I don't get you at all. One minute we're close and the next..."

"Yeah. I'm a cold, heartless bitch."

"What's eating you? Did i do something? I don't get this!"

"That's right! You never will!"

"Excuse me?"

"Look. We're not good together! With you, it's like your head is always in the clouds! Romanticizing the desert! Squinting at the sun! I'm over it! I just need to be alone. Away from you, okay? Got it?" Iris drew her knees in and pulled the waist of the sweater over her shins.

"Fine. I'm a simpleton. I know nothing of the world. I'm in a fairy tale land where everything is nice and easy. That's what you think of me?"

"Yup."

"Well, see you later, then! Freeze to death in the desert alone! You'll always be alone! You know that? You're like one of these moving rocks." Drew stepped back with his arms open and kicked a rock from it's trail. "Like that one! There's evidence of movement. There's a trail that it's made for miles. But no one has actually seen it move. You're like these rocks, Iris! There's always a hint of something special. There's the possibility of something wonderful happening. People like to think about it, and they send their minds into flights of fancy over it. And I'm not speaking from a scientist's point of view, but from someplace different. You lack that propensity. For you, it just boils down to water, mud, ice and the wind helping the rock along. The entire world is just an existential cluster fuck rattling us one way and another with no magic or mystery to it. That rock is nothing. Cold and lifeless and indifferent to everything around it. That's you." Drew snapped his fingers, threw his pack over his shoulder and walked off.

"Spoken like a true gentleman of science," said Iris, pulling her sleeves out over her hands. "A sailing stone gathers no moss!"

Drew called back. "Stay here tonight, if you're still alive in the morning we'll come get you."

Iris leaned back on her pack. She faced the sky and saw the first of the infant stars announce its arrival. Drew would be just around the corner, sleeping in a one of the vans that he would borrow, waiting for the sun to come strolling up in the morning. He was a puppy with a bell on his collar waiting to hear his name called. But he loved her, and she knew it. Iris took no offense to his words. That was how he felt. He was soft and nurturing, and a dreamer. Perhaps she would come to love that side of him. Or perhaps she would never see him again. People left in invisible increments, the close ones anyway, delaying the moment of truth out of guilt and kindness.

The stones around her began moving. They dragged their bodies against the earth and made soft, breathing noises. In the dim moonlight, she could see a dozen small, dark shadows moving along the desert like giant snails. One stone tipped over, then righted itself and continued moving. Above, the milky way hung like an X-ray negative of the cosmos.

She set her pack onto the hard sand and laid herself down on her back. All around her were the soft exhalations and sifting of the stones. A smaller stone touched her ankle lightly. She picked it up and examined it. When she set it down it remained still for a moment, then it began moving again.

The desert reminded her of her mother; of the ocean; of a vast and desolate absence, of the cat's eyes moving in the plastic tray. She took a breath and waited for the desert stones to converge on her. She waited for a million seashells to spill out of her body. She waited for the desert to fill with water. She waited for her mother to surface.

A shooting star sliced the sky open. With one eye open, she asked to make a wish.

Summer

Oki set up his tripod just outside of the Bon Dance's penumbra of lanterns. His parents had bought a Canon digital camera for his 11th birthday and this was his first opportunity to test it out in the nighttime. He hid himself along the sidewalk of a narrow street wedged between the rear entryways of two buildings. Hiding behind the curtain of darkness, he snapped a few long exposures and started fiddling with his camera settings. When he replayed at his images, he decided to pull back further, framing the bon dance between the two dark walls of the buildings. This made the festival appear as if it were hidden and tucked away from normal pedestrian traffic at the dark end of an alleyway.

The Shingon Shu temple was a small location nestled street-side next to a McDonalds. Dancers circulated clockwise around the yagura as two elderly singers wearing cherry blossom kimonos warbled on a microphone. The intermittent plucks of the samisen echoed between the buildings and the ring of kimonos dilated and contracted as a taiko drummer raised his bachi sticks into the air. He imagined ancestral spirits hanging from the lanterns.

He had grown fond of the Bon Odori's of summer, when such events were expansive and as large as carnivals. His parents made it a routine to drive out to one every Friday night. Mostly, he had been to those with great grass lawns, and food and games booths. But here, it was a smaller affair, where costumed dancers circumambulated around a small scaffolding festooned with lanterns and draped with fabric like bed sheets hung out to dry on a lanai. The dancers dragged their feet over asphault and parking lines, bumping into each other as onlookers unfolded little metal chairs, enclosing them completely. Cars drove by – customers exiting the Walmart or the Mcdonalds drive thru – and honked their horns as dancers and singers taking breaks spilled into the driveway. Somewhere in the crowd, his parents were dancing along.

"This is the weakest obon I ever seen," he said.

"What's that?" came a voice. "Weakest what?"

Oki turned around. There were three shapes in the shadows, and he could hear the gravel shifting and grinding under the invisible weight so disembodied he may as well have been listening to his own teeth grind. A single red cigarette cherry bloomed briefly then disappeared. "Weakest one, uh? What, boy? What you doing here by yourself in the dark? Spying?" Three kids his age stepped out of the shadow into a triangular swatch of light afforded by a street light partially hidden around the corner. They were wearing traditional happis, complete with matching crests and Japanese symbols. They wore white shorts cut well above the knees, and wooden slippers.

This was a taiko gang.

Oki backed off. "I'm just taking pictures. A hobby of mine. Night excursions. My parents are at the bon dance. Your bon dance!" he explained.

The shortest taiko drummer spat his cigarette out and extinguished it with his wooden slipper. "Trashing our bon dance?"

Another drummer wore a Japanese mask that resembled a farmer from an old folktale. "Lets fuck um up."

The beating came immediately. The three drummers encircled him and began hitting Oki along his arms, chest and back with their bachi sticks. Thwack! After a rough, patchy start, all three drummers found their rhythm. They struck with precision and timing and great synchronicity. At one point, one of the drummers fell back and extricated a wooden flute. As the two drummers pounded on Oki, the third drummer began playing an old traditional folk song. Twee-la-leet. Throughout the beating the third drummer blew through the flute and struck theatrical poses. The other two pounded in unison, and at the proper intervals struck poses of their own by brandishing their sticks in the air. The third drummer called out to them and they began chanting. Oki fell to the ground, drew his knees into his chest, wrapped his arms around his shins and clasped his hands. The drummers used various portions of his back to achieve the proper resonance. They began to hit faster and faster as the drummer with the flute blew with a renewed ferocity and vigor. Fweet!

Finally, they fell back panting. The short kid who had been smoking the cigarette said "Whooo!" and quickly struck another pose.

The drummer with the flute said, "Whew! That was good! Guys, that was one of the best jam sessions we ever played!"

The drummer with the peasant farmer mask stepped up, and in a voice higher than the others said, "The best, ever," and tore her mask off. She let her hair down and shook it into the night's fabric. "You okay?" she asked. The short drummer helped him up. "Hey. You okay?" he asked again, but Oki was tongue-tied. He took one look at the girl and all of the pain quieted. There she was, the first great love of the summer.

The Quitter

Dale put his head down onto his desk and fell asleep amongst the whir and clatter of the xerox machines. When he awoke, the cubicle was silent. Devoid of daylight and darkness, the office could have been in a cube orbiting saturn and he would have never known. It could have been within miles of the sun, or at the darkest depths of the ocean and the interior would have been unchanged for it. When he awoke there was a new stack of manila folders teetering like a dozen slices of bread on his desk. New reports of old reports. "Today is the day I quit," he said to himself. With that notion, a rush of elation blew through the widow's peak of his receding hairline and when it did he knew it was the right thing to do.

Since he had not seen or heard from his superiors, and since his email had gone offline ages ago, he was not sure how to go about sending in his resignation. His supervisor's office was on the 23rd floor, but he had not been there for what seemed like months. Occasionally, the gentle copier would spit out a single sheet of paper in what had become a small consolation – a sad signifier of humanity within the corridors – but he had not seen a soul.

He dialed his supervisor's extension, and for the first time, was energized by a busy signal. "He's here!" he cried, slamming the phone down. He ran down the hallway, took two lefts and a right and got to the elevator. He rode up to the 23rd floor, sprinted down the hallway, took a left, then a right, then stopped in front of the water cooler to compose himself. He fixed his wrinkled collar and walked straight ahead to the corner office.

Empty!

"I quit!" he screamed. "I'm done with this place! Anybody hear me up here?"

A copier whirred and spat and a thin sheet of paper crackled. "Hello!" Cried Dale. He ran two lefts and two rights until he came to a large cafeteria. "Must be the acoustics in this place," he thought. The buffet spread was filled with an assortment crescent sandwiches, cheeses, salads and pastries. One by one, he devoured the sandwiches, breathing violently through his nostrils. "These are salty," he said, and searched for the beverages.

No beverages!

Dale turned around and retraced his steps hoping to find the water cooler. He pushed onward past identical doorways, past identical stacks of folders, past old cardboard boxes filled with legal paper and found nothing. "Where the hell am I?"

He retraced his steps. Days went by.

* * *

A water cooler!

Dale rushed to it and began sucking heavily on its spout. "Ohh! Yeah!" He cried. He drank for a few minutes, wiped his mouth, inhaled, then cried "I quit! You hear me out there? I am done!"

A fax machine went into labor. He heard a single sheet of paper screech out onto the tray. Then suddenly, it sounded as if someone had snatched it – the paper snapping angrily and whipping in the air.

Footsteps!

Dale rushed to the source of the activity, left then right then left and found nothing. There was a duo of water coolers flanking the door to a darkened office like the sentry of the British guard. They gurgled and stiffened.

"At ease, gentleman," said Dale.

* * *

"Hello," whispered a voice. Dale opened his eyes and saw a pair of eyes hanging upside down over him. "Hi there," the woman said. She wore a small gold, hibiscus necklace and it dangled over his forehead as she leaned over him. "I'm the new temp."

Dale picked himself off the beige carpet and put his shoes on. He cleared his throat. "Hullo," he said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Temp?" he laughed. "Trust me. You don't want to work here. Once you're in. You never get out," he said.

The woman, all curves and red hair arched her eyebrow and said "I wish that were true. I'm only here for the week. How long have you worked here?"

The question made Dale's head spin. "Weeks. Months. Years. Decades. I've lost track."

"Ah" she said.

"Can I follow you out of here? Maybe to the parking lot?" asked Dale.

The woman took off all of her clothes. She pulled Dale gently by his collar and kissed him. Her lips were soft, almost as if Dale were dreaming them in place. "Still want to quit?" she asked.

* * *

Days went by.

* * *

One day, Dale called every extension in the office building. There were twenty three floors. There were no answers.

* * *

Dale began to wonder about the temp, who was now a faint memory.

It had been weeks since he had sex with her in the hallway. As she dressed, he begged her to take him to the exit. "I can't," she said. She traced a long maze-like line onto his back. "But what I can do is this, here, take this thread and hold on to it. Wait a few days, and then follow it out. You can do that can't you? Wait a few more days?"

"Sure. I suppose. As long as you do what you promise."

She pinched a stray thread from the bottom of her blouse, and gently pulled it out. "Now hold on to it. When I leave, it'll leave a trail. Just follow the thread, and maybe you'll find me at the other end, outside... and topless." She smiled, turned and sauntered off.

Day's later, Dale followed the thread. It took days to follow it to it's terminus. In the middle of another long hallway, he found it. The thread had simply run out.

* * *

More stacks of papers and boxes of filing folders appeared around every corner. Xerox machines whirred and chattered amongst each other. Fax machines gave birth to shrieking sheets of paper. Water coolers bubbled and burped. Years went by.

Dale whispered into the ether, "I quit," but continued to type into a small computer until one day, a loud thump rattled the room.

"Hello? Anybody there?" asked Dale.

Another thump.

"Hello?!"

Another thump.

"Hello!"

A sprinting.

"Who's there?"

A full sprint. An eruption of heavy, hoofed feet running along the floor down the hall. Dale stood up above the walls of his new cubicle, his heart pounding SOS in morse.

From the hallway emerged a minotaur - half bull, half man. His entire torso was covered with fine auburn hair. He held a large wooden spear, it's base adorned with bite marks. Ringlets of hair hung down in front of his eyes. Large horns sprang out from behind his ears. His muscular legs were a cross between human and bovine – hoofed and slicked over with shiny fur. He kicked a cubicle wall, exploding it.

Dale stumbled back and fell against the wall. A dead wall clock dropped onto his head.

The minotaur paced sideways and faced him, then paced the other way and faced him again. His hooves pounded heavily against the floor.

"So," spoke the minotaur. "You're real."

"I should be saying the same of you," said Dale.

"Are you going to eat me?" asked the minotaur.

"Excuse me?" asked Dale.

"Who built this labyrinth?" asked the minotaur.

"I did. Or so I thought. How did you get here?" asked Dale.

"I am the captor become a captive. Or perhaps it is the other way around," said the minotuar.

"There was a woman," said Dale. "Did you see the woman with the red hair? She had on a brown blouse? A half blouse. Or maybe none at all."

"Perhaps," said the Minotaur.

"She smelled like plumerias," said Dale.

"Then, I ate her," proclaimed the Minotaur.

Dale crumbled. His entire body trembled. "How long have you been wandering these halls?" he whimpered.

"Since you created this place" said the minotaur.

"I'm not sure that I did," said Dale.

"Then who?" asked the Minotaur, seething.

"Maybe the woman," deflected Dale.

"No. It was you," said the minotaur. "To contain me. But somehow, you've threaded yourself back into the maze."

"I don't remember it."

"Where is the exit?" demanded the minotaur.

"There is none," said Dale.

"I thought you said you didn't remember creating the maze. How can you now know for sure?"

"It's the only hope I have," said Dale.

"Then maybe I created this maze," said the minotaur. His horns turned toward the hallway. "Maybe I know the exit."

"Then I'll follow you as an aid," offered Dale.

He stood up.

At that exact moment, the minotaur threw a spear into Dale's abdomen. Dale stumbled back but the minotaur kept him from falling. He pushed the end of the spear through Dale's body and into the wall behind him. Dale's legs slackened but the spear held his body erect against the wall. "No, you stay here," growled the minotaur. He twisted and jostled the spear, pushing it into the wall until he noticed something. Slowly, he pushed his hands into Dale's stomach, tore his flesh apart, and looked into the wound. It was the exit. Quickly, the minotaur crawled through Dale's wound and found his way out of the maze leaving Dale's body behind.

"I so, totally quit," said Dale, pulling out the spear.

Ghost Poets

At around 2 in the morning – when the moon was so large it was a wrecking ball headed for the window – there was a rattling in the living room. The air throughout the apartment was still and the mechanical whir of the refrigerator clicked on. Damon sat up in bed, tossed off his blanket and walked toward the living room. The floor chilled his feet and gripped his ankles. Shadows. Light. There was a movement in the dark – a darker shadow among shadows.

"You again," he said. There was a figure slumping on his sofa, like a weary traveler on a train, its head wrapped in toilet paper. "What now?" asked Damon. "The ephemeral sting of love? The darkening iris of existence? The vernacular of lust?"

"The emptiness of writer's block," said the ghost.

"Go on. Get some sleep," said Damon. The ghost hovered onto it's side and rolled over onto the sofa, facing it's back toward the living room.

Minutes later, as Damon tried to sleep, footsteps made their way down the hallway to the bedroom. A shirt on a hanger fell to the floor. "Oops" said the ghost.

"What is it now?" asked Damon.

"I can't write. I feel like my balls were clipped off."

"They were probably cremated," said Damon to himself.

"Ha. Ha." said the ghost. "Let's see what happens to you when I neuter you in your sleep."

"Okay. I get it," said Damon. "Go to sleep."

The next day the ghost poet was gone. There was a message scrawled out in the margins of the newspaper. "The thing about being a ghost and a poet at the same time, you don't really have access to the things that torment you."

It made sense. That afternoon, Damon created an altar on the kitchen countertop. He pinned up naked pictures of women. He brought out bottles of whiskey, and wine. He organized a spice rack full of pharmaceuticals. He left out a switchblade. Then he urinated onto the items. "That oughta bring it all back," he said to himself.

That night, he went to bed and for the first time in a week, he heard the familiar agony and ecstasy of faint yet fervent typing. It continued for weeks. And then one day, when Damon got back to the apartment, there was a manuscript waiting for him. He flipped through it, "Not bad, spook! Not bad at all."

He submitted the book to Manic D Press, a small publisher for poets and got a check for $5,000. They had printed an image of a skull with candle in it on the cover, which to Damon was a bit on the tacky side.

This was the ghost's third book of poetry, and already the ghost could be heard pacing about, composing stanzas in the darkened hallway at night. Damon could hear the old creaking of the desk chair whenever the phantom's great, invisible weight settled into it.

One night, as the ghost composed it's poems, Damon went into the living room and flicked on the lights. This seemed to startle the ghost, and he vanished, leaving a half written poem rolled in the typewriter. Damon sunk into the sofa and put his feet up onto the glass coffee table. "Get your mojo back?" he asked the room.

The wall opposite of him began to take on a mottled look, the way a page of a paperback novel looked in a light drizzle. Words began to form. "There is a kind of release in laboring humbly all your life, to see only after the end, that you had greatness all along," wrote the ghost. "Hopefully the women will come."

"What are you gonna do? Ghost fuck 'em?" asked Damon.

A low breeze snaked along the walls and sheets of paper erupted from the desktop. "I'd have more luck than you," said the ghost, now a voice coming from the ceiling.

"Poetry is dead, my friend," said Damon. "Dead as you are. What century are you from?"

The window panes rattled.

"Poets. You all are a self absorbed lot. Concerned with the grandiosity of your own feelings. Wanting to shower the world with sad observations. Useless. I'm more of a biography reader. Real people. Real situations. I don't like wasting my time with fiction. Poems. Bullshit."

The typewriter rose into the air and dropped to the floor.

"Go into the light. This world doesn't even concern you anymore. You're like that old kid in the sixth grade who flunked three times. The kid with full-grown facial hair, ruling the basketball courts. Move on."

A pencil on the table stood on its tip and began scribbling erratically onto a corner of an old newspaper. "But I have so much more to write," it read.

"Poetry doesn't sell anymore. People don't bother. Besides, it's only a window into yourself. It's a sad, myopic thing. There's a larger window and a much greater mystery out there. Just pass through, and all of your ideas will seem small in comparison. That is what you want isn't it?"

"Yeah," said the ghost. "I suppose." Damon looked into the glass and saw the figure of a man standing next to him. He looked like a young J.D. Salinger.

"Good. Now get going, before you start resorting to cliches."

There was a bright pulse of light from the ceiling, and the ghost disappeared.

* * *

The next day a young family walked through the door. They greeted Damon cordially, paid him five hundred dollars, thanked him for a job well done and saw him to the door.

Outside, the day brought on new possibilities. There was a haunting down on Hausten Street. It involved a notebook and strange cryptic phrases appearing on the walls and in the mirrors. He believed his to be the ghost of famous poet whom he admired. He was excited and nervous. It had been decades since her last book was published.

He found the apartment and knocked on the door. A young couple answered. They looked tired and fearful. "Hello" smiled Damon. "My name is Damon Weathers. Spirit guide. Literary agent. Ghost poet whisperer. I hear you have a problem."

"That's right," said the man. "This one is of lyrical canon."

"I know," said Damon smiling broadly. "I have all of her books at home."

Alaula

My mind wanders. Even in such a beautiful place as this nursery tucked in a corner along the Koolau mountains, where everything is a lush, untouched green, and dense, wet clouds hang over its peaks like pillows. Everyday, I tend to the ankle biter plants, the 'Ihi, the 'Akulikuli, the 'Ilie'e. Large patches of them receding to a vanishing point. Sprinklers go on and off. On and off. I clear out tracts. I fill in tracts. I plant flowers. Tend to them. I load them into a truck, and plant more. My mind wanders.

My girlfriend, Alaula brings in a new plant. Her name means dawn, or daybreak. In the early days I slipped and called her Dawn, as a nickname. But she grew increasingly offended, and so now I call her Alaula. It's a beautiful name with a beautiful meaning that I wake up next to every morning. The flower she carries looks thugged-out, as if it's made of metal. It has a thick stem with thorns, and a mad serrated spiral of table saw petals. It isn't majestic like the Loulu, with it's fanned out palms. Not a tree or shrub at all. It isn't as innocuous as an 'Ae'ae, with its petite flowers. It is an angry, rugged, tough looking flower. Like some unique Hawaii plants, there may be a story behind it. Maybe some deity interfered with two lovers, and banished them... as usual.

Take the Ohia Lehua tree, a twisted tree with a red spiky flower. The legend goes: Pele, the volcano goddess, fell in love with a warrior named Ohia. She proposed to him and he turned her down. He was in love with another woman named Lehua. Infuriated, as only a volcano goddess could be, Pele turned Ohia into a twisted tree. This broke Lehua's heart, and witnessing this, the other gods felt a smidgen of sympathy for her. So they turned her into a flower. A red blossom now grows on the tree and this means they were conjoined together. So grows Ohia Lehua, the only tree that can actually take root in lava rock. The two lovers grow and bloom in their persecutor's terrain, together forever in spite of her hostility.

Take the naupaka plant. Two versions grow in Hawaii – one along the shorelines, and one high in the mountains. On the shorelines, the flowers that blossom are missing petals from the top half. In the mountains, the flowers are missing the petals along the bottom. A princess fell in love with a commoner, and their love was forbidden by the elite. The gods disapproved, and so the princess tore a naupaka flower in half. She gave her lover one half and clutched the other to her chest. "We can no longer be together. You live by the water, I'll live in the mountains." And in this unhappy ending, the flowers – sentient back then – said "Bummers," and began blooming in half flowers from then on.

Sentient flowers. Who knew? People sing to their flowers. They play music. They lovingly spray their leaves with water. I don't feel that way. This job is not for me. Still, I am drawn sideways to the plants. I know there is power here. That night, Alaula and I sneak back in using my gate key and sleep next to a patch of 'Ilima papa. We feel it buzzing. I feel the entire garden humming with life.

The next day, we wake up, our backs as knotted as a banyan's roots. The entire nursery staff is staring at us. "Morning," I say, still in yesterday's work clothes.

Mr. Kato, the boss, walks up to me and hits me in the jaw. My head snaps back and I'm looking skyward. My feet momentarily rise as if I'm backfloating across time. I hit the dirt with a hollow thud. Alaula rushes to help me. I struggle to get back up like a caterpillar rolled onto it's side. "What? We just... fell asleep is all!" I spit out, but I know that's not what they see. I take a look around and see the entire nursery destroyed as if all of the plants had withered as if they had all been poisoned. I do that in my sleep? Did Alaula? The two of us?

In the corner, however, is that odd flower that she had brought in. In it's center there are now yellow paisleys swirling about in its petals. It is a lone figure of guilt.

"Aye," I say. "It wasn't me. It was that plant. That nameless thing."

Mr. Kato wants to kill me. They all do. We are fired. Alaula is heartbroken. I tell her we'll be okay. We'll work elsewhere. We have a dozen connections.

Still, we swear it was the flower. Somehow, for reasons beyond us, it is responsible. I firmly believe this is true. We don't nurture a world of plants, we are ruled by it. We are the byproducts of plant life – of the love and politics in the realm of petals. We mosey about, thinking they live and die by our sprinklers, but when the sun goes down, some petals fold while others destroy entire nurseries.

Later I hear they've named the strange new flower Alaula, after my girlfriend. And the mystery of its origin deepened. Weeks later, the entire garden had been blanketed by these new flowers. Slowly, they crept across the landscape, choking out all other forms of vegetation. It is the fastest infestation the island has ever experienced.

As months passed, the damage became terminal. It was a rarity to see even a single tree with leaves yet to fall from it's suffocated branches, Alaula flowers growing at their trunks as if they were trying to climb them. The grass across Oahu's yards grew dry and brown as more Alaula sprouted, forming craters of decay around every stem.

By the time the government declared Oahu an ecological disaster zone, the flowers had overtaken our bedroom, and were quietly growing through the plumbing and the walls. Alaula, my girlfriend, had created a small nursery for them and slept under the taller stalks at night.

"Where did you find that first one?" I once asked her.

"Is this all somehow my fault?" she shot back. She took a flower in her hands and placed her delicate fingers along it's stem. The paisleys in its petals swirled and turned from yellow to red as she applied pressure between her fingers. When she snapped the flower's stem its petals turned black instantly, as if it had been unplugged. A milky fluid leaked from the break in the stem and dripped to the soil, where more flowers began sprouting instantly.

She cradled the flower and laid it on its side. "This is a new dawn," she said, noticing a small inscription behind one of the flowers petals.

Quietly, secretively, she began reading.

The Gondolier

In the middle of the Japanese garden was a small house of mirrors. In it were concentric hexagons with sections blocked off as in a maze. Two children went in and were multiplied by a thousand by the mirrors as they walked through. They were quarreling brothers. The older brother said "You shouldn't have told mom about the candy bar, stupid. Now we won't get dessert later." He punched his younger brother in the arm and dashed off. His multiple reflections collided and divided and eventually the kaleidoscope of arms and legs went white.

The older brother ran and found a pole in the center of the maze. It was like a fireman's pole and it went down a floor. He hopped on and slid down. With an onset of panic, he realized that the pole descended deeper than he anticipated. He fell past 3 levels, each with new mirrors, and fell into a pit. There were 6 more doorways, each lined with mirrors. The maze, being larger than he anticipated, grew exponentially. It expanded outward and there was no telling how many directions he could go in. Now it engulfed him and the billions of other selves, and even his reflections seemed to be reflections of other reflections of other reflections. He began running, reaching one dead end after another until he lost his bearing completely.

Outside, the younger brother emerged. He held his hand over his arm where a dark bruise was already brewing under his skin like a tropical depression. This was the moment the younger brother would not forget. He turned his back to his older brother and never saw him again. His parents asked him what happened. The police arrived. Dread chilled the air.

The other way he remembered his older brother's disappearance was set during the fall. They were on a swerving road, with sharp s-curves and slopes rising and falling so steeply that the earth seemed to be heaving. There was a forest on both sides of the car and the air was cool and smelled sweetly of moss.

They pulled over to the side of the road, his father with a large net on the end of a long pole for picking fruit, and his mother with a small, white plastic bucket. They were all going to pick something off the trees. Apples, maybe. Or plums. This was not clear to him.

His brother gave him a small plastic bag and pointed him off to a clearing in the forest. They all stepped off the road and descended into the shadowy gathering of trees. He followed his older brother but his brother held his hand out. "Go your own way," he demanded. Damselflies hovered about. Mosquitos began to take root along his forearm. He slapped at them, leaving bloody smears along his wrist. He looked up and saw his brother bounding deeper into the forest. He could see the yellow shirt and red shorts, and his plastic bag ballooned with the rush of air, leaping and landing. He disappeared behind one tree and reappeared from behind another, bright against the dense green shadows. He disappeared and reappeared until he was no longer visible and he never emerged again.

The older brother ran into the forest until he could no longer see or hear his family. Trees upon trees upon trees. He was surrounded by mud, strange creaking sounds, snapping branches, a strange caw. His pulse flooded his ears.

The younger brother turned his back. It was the last time he saw his older brother. His parents called out for hours with their hands cupped over their mouths and their brows knit furious with worry. They wanted to destroy the forest with their calls, to demolish it flat, but the forest was unyielding. Finally, a police car arrived.

The third way he remembered it was set at the beach.

Waves. They were swimming in the shallows of the kiddie pool, protected by a wall of rocks. They explored the holes under the porous rock formations and chased a small striped eel into a burrow. Waves exploded against the rocks creating cascading waterfalls under which they could hide and vanish. They chased angel fish with nets and threw sand at each other.

The older brother started to swim out past the rocks. He was able to tread water, but the younger brother had yet to learn. "Come back!" he yelled. He slowly waded after him. The water was up to his waist, then up to his chest and the gentle pressure of the water surrounding his neck caused him to panic. He lost the net and swallowed water. He pushed back to regain his footing on the soft bed of sand. He screamed for his older brother, but the waves were too tall, and they obscured his line of vision.

He regained his footing, and started wading back to the shallows behind the rocks. He climbed on, cutting his foot, and started running along the black jagged stone, looking over to the horizon for his older brother. The beach was large, and every small step in the water seemed monumental, and he could not gauge the distance at which his brother left him. Was it over there by the sandbar? Was it right there, just a few feet away? Where did the sand drop off? How far had he waded before he was forced to turn back?

Around him, other children screamed and splashed about. Then his mother called to him "Where is your older brother? Where's Chad?"

Were these dreams, these memories? Was there any solid truth to them?

* * *

Twenty five years later, Levi sat at his office answering a final batch of emails regarding a photo shoot. As the art director of a first year magazine, he was having difficulty setting the visual tone. He had yet to forge a relationship with a single photographer, and he had yet to galvanize his team.

The phone rang, and he answered it with one hand while typing with the other. It was his father. "We found him... your brother," he said. His voice was worn thin, as if he had been crying. He sounded exhausted. His voice sagged and drooped over the line. "Actually, he found us. He's here at my house. But he won't stay long. Come over as soon as you can."

Levi drove 20 miles to his father's house. He pulled up into the gravel driveway and saw that his mother's Pontiac was there as well. He had not seen his parents in the same space since his cousin Charlie's wedding years ago. They had divorced shortly after Chad's disappearance - neither one of them willing to accept blame, nor forgive one another.

He walked up the wooden steps, and his shoes clomped heavily. He walked into the house, and it smelled faintly of lemon. His mother, with her short, silver hair sat on one the end of a flower patterened sofa, and his father, bloated, tired and resigned stood up to greet Levi.

"Come in," he said. "Have a seat." The air was that of a recent death. It was rare that there was ever a ressurrection, who knew if this was a fitting reaction?

On the green recliner sat Chad. He was thirty five now, lean and healthy. He stood up immediately, walked over to Levi and gave him a firm hug. He gripped him along side both arms and held him there. "I remember you," he said brightly.

This shocked Levi. The strangely angled sound of his older brother's voice, now as leveled and matured as his own rattled him and made his heart squirm. He could faintly see his younger/older brother's childhood eyes under the roughened sun damaged skin and fine network of wrinkles. What shocked him more was accent. It was French. Or Italian. He could not be sure. "This is for me, a heart wrenching moment. My brother! Do you remember me?"

"Chadwick," said Levi to himself, as if in remembrance. It was as if that word had been stuck in his throat for decades. "Chad," he said, this time to the world. "It's you."

"Levi," whispered Chad. "You have aged well. My god. I have always wondered of you!"

"Mirrors," repeated Levi. "Do you remember them? The mirrors?"

"Of course of course!" Chad exclaimed, cheerfully now. "The house of mirrors. Such fun. You were terrified!"

They all laughed awkwardly at this hazy memory. "House of mirrors?" asked his mother. "When was that?"

"At the garden. There was a small..." began Levi, but then he stopped. His heart began beating irregularly.

His father wiped the tears from his eyes. "Well," he began. "It was just a knock on the door, like any other day, and there he was. He found me first. It took some explaining, and I still don't understand. But it's him. Chad. Your brother. Our eldest son."

"Is it?" retorted Levi, taking a step back.

"I find father first in phonebook," Chad started. It sounded like a question. It was the way he enunciated and tilted his words. "I find all of you after many years of searching. I come to you from France. From France, then to Venice for past five year, saving money. I inherit a gondola from a distant relative."

"We don't have a distant relative living in Italy," interrupted Levi.

"Ah," Chad responded apologetically. "Distant relative of family I live with for many years. So. I work as gondolier. How funny, that I should find myself there. I save. The city sank a hair every year, I save a hair every year. Then I travel to America to visit. To find you. And I have! But I must return after today."

"Why not stay longer?" asked his mother. She looked at him in disbelief. This was her son. This was not her son. This was her son. Echoes of heartache rippled across her face – a look no son ever wanted to see.

"I must go. Regretfully, it took me longer than expected to find you. I am here three weeks. I have many address and phone number and all of them mistake. I search again on computer in library. Frantically for past few days. I am lucky I find you, even on my last day." he said, sadly.

"Just stay. We'll pay for your ticket back another day. Stay with us," begged his father. He began to sob again. Chad embraced his parents. They wept together, whispering into each other's ears. "Stay longer," his mother pleaded, her voice an erratic violin.

"I am sorry. My family. But I have to go. Of course, I will be back. But for now, I have my obligations back home. I have my life back in Venice. I get married next year. It would be wonderful if you could come. And of course, for us to visit you again."

Levi paced about the room, unwilling to accept anything. "Do you remember the beach?" he asked.

"Of course. Our childhood! Yes!"

"Do you remember the forest?" his lower jaw pulsed.

"Of course! All those summers! The cold, green chill! We love it!"

Levi was filled with rage. "Where the hell have you been?" he screamed. Saliva erupted from his lips and hung down over his chin, his jaw set like a barracuda's. "All these years!"

Chad rose from his parents embrace and fixed the collar on his shirt – a shallow gesture of vanity in such a situation as Levi saw it. "People disappear all the time," said Chad, as if to justify and soften his disappearance as something as cruel and crass as a simple fact of life. "Life is evil. And people are weak to it."

"How dare you," growled Levi.

"He explained everything," his father said. "He was taken."

"He was taken from us, and forced to live with another family," wept his mother.

"Then he was brought to an orphanage," said his father. "He only spoke english. He doesn't remember where he was taken to. He doesn't remember what country."

"I am ashamed to have been so docile," said Chad. "I was afraid. They promised they would let me come home, and lied. They promised me pain if I did not comply. When I outgrew my naivete, it was too late. I was in a dark space. But I was moving. I don't understand how I was taken, from one country to another. But when I saw light, I was in a country that did not understand my cries. I was a prisoner without bars. And the rest, before the orphanage, was murderous and vile. I cannot speak of it. It is. Was. Unspeakable. But I grew. I ran. There was blood on my hands. There was strange policemen. I cannot recall through all this haze in my head. But it was like a dream. I found another family. They loved me. They had no idea. I had gone into a phase of silence. I was broken. I could not speak. Would not speak. They thought me mute. And for a time, I was. But I grew stronger. I find my way back to the living. Still, I could not bring myself to return home. I was afraid. I was afraid of the sorrow. I cause so much sorrow. More years pass by, and finally, I gain courage enough."

His mother rushed over, weeping, and embraced him. His father stood up, his mouth wide open, eyes wet with tears, and held them both. "We thought you were dead," he sobbed.

"I am sorry!" Chad broke down and wailed in sudden, complete devastation. "I am sorry you suffer!" He howled into his father's chest and pounded relentlessly on his shoulder with gnarled, inconsolable gasping. He fell to his knees and held his hands over his head as if he were being beaten. "Forgive me my weakness!" His face gushed with fluids that dribbled down his chin and his cheeks to the floor. His parents fell onto him, their faces gone slack with serenity. "It's not your fault," they whispered. "You're here with us now."

Levi walked over to them and knelt. He could not clearly remember his brother's disappearance, but he would clearly recall this; the return of a brother; the return of a stranger. Soon he would be gone again. Off in a cab, or a limo, or a van. He would keep on disappearing as he had been doing for the duration of Levi's entire life – gone from the beach, from the forest, from his father's living room. At this age, the fourth way his brother disappeared became more complex. It included his return. The way he remembered it – Levi lowered his hand to Chad's shuddering back. Slowly... carefully... as if not to disturb the ashes of the dead, he embraced him.

Diagnostics

Stanton looked deeply into the tunnel of light. It's rays flickered, vanished and a white, puffy face with dark brows came into view. "Well," said Dr. Ling, setting down the opthamlmoscope, "I have some good news, and some bad news." He sat back in his chair and picked up his clipboard. "Let's go with the good news first," said Stanton. "Okay then," said Dr. Ling, "You're not going blind. Your vision is fine. You should still get a more detailed eye exam but as far as I can see, there is nothing wrong with your eyebrows." Dr. Ling leaned forward in his chair and brushed some lint off his knee. "That's a relief," said Stanton. "You have no idea. Now what's the bad news?" Dr. Ling puffed his cheeks, pursed his lips and blew. His face inflated like a life raft. "Well," he began. "You have something incurable. It's a strange disease. I'm afraid it's serious." "Tell me," demanded Stanton. He knew it, he just knew it. "Give it to me, Doc. Pull no punches. To hell with bedside manner, to hell with it all." Dr. Ling nodded. "Very well." He clicked his pen, placed it into his pocket protector and swung his calve over his knee. "Well, it's called being-a-dickhead..." he began...

The Logo

Shay got home from his job interview feeling new. The blank page of this new chapter was waiting to be filled in. This was his first job after graduating with a degree in Marketing and he would start within a week as Marketing Coordinator at Hibiscus Media. This was point A of his upward trajectory, and to celebrate his launch he caught the bus to Foodland and bought himself a bottle of Yellowtail cabernet. It seemed appropriate. In the span of his lifetime, he would develop a more sophisticated taste for the finer things but for now a simple, cheap Yellowtail was what he knew.

When he arrived at his 3 bedroom house in Makiki, his 2 other roommates congratulated him and they all celebrated with a case of beer. At 10pm, the night was over, and Shay, drunk and exhausted went into his bedroom.

Over his bed hung a ghostly logo. It floated directly above his pillow and rotated slowly, like a quarter spinning on its side. It was luminous, yet it cast a shadow. When Shay looked closer, he realized that the hologram was translucent. "Finally," he said. "It's here."

This was Shay's logo. And it felt right. He went to sleep under the apparition, and it spun over him like a small galaxy of lights.

As the years passed, Shay advanced through the company. He became an Account Supervisor and saw to it that his clients were satisfied with the services they were receiving. He was dating a girl named Joyce, a blonde 24 year old media salesperson with a swimmer's body and a way of speaking that seemed as if she were communicating through a television set.

They moved in together after their first year and celebrated their anniversary with a trip to her hometown in Modesto where they stayed with her parents. The room they slept in was her childhood room. Most of the space was taken up by storage boxes but Shay noted the childhood details that still punctuated her room - the small pink dresser, the red lipstick phone, the plush dolls lining the floor next to the closet. Her parents welcomed him warmly and insisted they forego the motels, and so they slept in her room.

All the while the logo spun overhead. He could now make out a small swimmer in it's negative space. "That's you," he said. And they stared at it as if the ceiling had been lifted off like a lid and the moon was shining down on them. "Glad I made the cut," she answered.

More years passed, and Shay and Joyce remained a happy, blushing couple. They smiled at each other over the quiet distances of candlelit landscapes, letting their fingers intermingle at restaurants over cocktails. They ran together in the mornings and enrolled in various weekend classes – cooking, dance, guitar. They amassed entire collection of jazz records and educated each other on their favorite musicians. They bought a two-man kayak and strapped it onto the rooftop of their black Mazda protoge and paddled around the island's shores. They moved in to a larger apartment and bought an entire catalog worth of BoConcept furniture and accents, charged to Shay's Visa.

These were the idyllic early days. And the entire time, over their bed, the logo spun overhead. It followed them to every bed and took on the characteristics of their surroundings. It glowed like a campfire, a red flame over a teepee of three logs when they went camping on the North Shore. It took on the characteristics of a marquee when they took a trip to Las Vegas, appearing over their bed in the MGM. When they traveled to Greece, it adopted the columns of the Pantheon, all while retaining its basic identity system as Shay's logo.

"Why don't I get a logo?" asked Joyce one night.

"Maybe you don't brand yourself enough," Shay answered. He was brushing his teeth.

Joyce removed her glasses and set it down on the black-stained oak night stand. "Maybe I don't believe in branding," she said.

"Oh? What do you believe in?" asked Shay.

"Hmm. I believe in you. And me. I believe in the food we cook. Water. Air. And, sun," she said. She smiled and pushed her feet under the duvet. She was happy.

When Shay turned out the lights, the logo emitted a faint glow that he had not seen before. It was reflecting bliss, he decided.

* * *

Joyce died in an automobile accident on a Sunday evening on the way home from a friend's dinner party in Kaneohe. Shay, feeling under the weather had stayed at home. He insisted on her going to the dinner without him, and ushered her out of their apartment. "You never see them. I'll be fine," he said. On the way home, the car in front of her veered recklessly, slowed and swerved into her and both cars flipped over. She succumbed to her injuries at the hospital an hour later. Shay never stopped blaming himself.

In the years that followed, he became a broken man. He had attempted suicide once at a Waikiki hotel but was thwarted by a security guard. He became an alcoholic, and his work began to decline. Eventually, he was laid off from his job, and he was forced out of his apartment.

As he laid on a floor mattress in the living room at a friend's house, the darkened logo hung over him like a shadowy cloud, and rotated slowly. It had once been a vibrant green, but since Joyce's car accident, it had turned black. It's outlines became brittle and there were empty bottles embedded in its base.

"What do you want?" he growled to it. "I've hit rock bottom. Is that what you wanted to see?You reflect everything in my life, absorbing everything I do. Like some twisted voyeur. Why don't you just leave me alone? Get out of my life. Quit reminding me!" he slurred.

The room spun out of control as he sat himself up to take another long pull from a plastic bottle of vodka. He set the bottle down and pulled on the cord attached to his friend's laptop. He flipped it open and its screen lit up. Slowly, little lines, shapes and text appeared within that blast of white light. When his eyes focused, he saw that he was still logged in to his email and there was a message.

When he clicked on the email, he saw that it was from Logocentral.com and that it had arrived only a few minutes prior. The message read, "Dear Mr. Shay Lensfield, we understand that you are dissatisfied with your logo. We here at Logocentral understand how important it is for a symbol to reflect any company, object, idea or person faithfully while setting it apart from all of the rest. Rest assured that we will take the appropriate measures to update and streamline your logo in a way that you can identify with. Regards."

Shay began typing, "Who are you? Are you some guardian angel? Are you in charge of my life?"

The response came instantly. "No. We merely reflect it. It is every human's desire to claim ownership over all aspects of our lives. Even if it doesn't truly belong to us. Whether you are scrawling your name on a wall, or carving your name into a heart on a tree, or writing your name on a painting. A logo is an extension of these acts. We provide you with an identity by distilling your life into a single symbol. It is up to you what you do with this symbol. You are in control of your own life."

Shay replied. "You saw it happen? Joyce's accident?"

The reply came. "We are reevaluating the mnemonic value of your symbol. We understand it is a painful time for you. Within the current context there are many properties of the current logo that you may be averse to. We are working on this and assure you that there will be no painful reminders of your recent loss."

The bathroom light went on. Shay's friend, Ryan flushed the toilet and stepped out into the living room. "You alright?" he asked. "Man. Your logo's pitch black. Everything okay with you?"

Shay answered over his shoulder. "I'm fine. Just checking some emails," he said. "Thanks."

Ryan lingered in the doorway," Hey man. If you ever wanna talk, don't hesitate. I'm here for you," he said, and lightly hit his chest with his fist.

"Thanks," said Shay, not looking up.

"Get some sleep" said Ryan. He walked heavily and sleepily to his bedroom and closed the door.

Shay tilted another sliver of vodka into his mouth and continued writing.

"Are you God?" he typed.

"Just a designer."

"Who do you work for?"

"You are my primary client."

"Why doesn't everyone have a logo?"

"Not everyone needs one."

"I can't seem to get over Joyce. I feel like giving up. I tried killing myself by jumping off a balcony. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't know which way is up."

"Shay," the email reply said. "These problems can be addressed. I know that it is normal for a designer to dismiss a client's ideas. It can be very offensive when this happens. I assure you this will not happen here. For example, even if your thoughts of suicide are not relevant to our visual solution, given your unfortunate situation, we will make an extra effort to be considerate of all emotional tripwires. Our process will be a collaborative and delicate process. Regards. "

Shay began sobbing quietly. A teardrop fell on the letter O. The vodka had a firm grip on his senses and it weighed on him heavily. "Will I ever love again?" he wrote.

Minutes passed with no response and Shay felt the correspondence had come to an end. He was about to log out when new reply appeared in his inbox. "This is a very difficult question. Although we will do everything in our power to update your logo in a way that satisfies all of your criteria, the reality is that there is no such thing as a magic logo. No matter how well designed a logo is, it cannot save a poorly conceived enterprise from failing. This is not to say that you yourself are heading such an enterprise, this is just to emphasize that a logo is only one part of an entity's success. Conversely, a good logo will always help a good company, product or person reach its full potential. Rest assured that your new logo will be a good one. How you fare with it is entirely up to you. I'll be in touch with you. Take care."

Shay looked back at his logo and saw that it was now a black cube. It had stopped rotating and was fastened solidly to the air. He crawled back onto his mattress and stared at its black, square undercarriage and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

When Shay awoke the next morning, he noticed that the logo was different. It was bolder and more rounded. It's color palate was muted, but there was potential for new additions to the color scheme. It was a rough draft, he concluded.

He turned on the laptop and saw that there was already an email waiting for him. He clicked on the message. It read, "Hi Shay. New logo draft this morning. There's a lot of room to play. From here, one can only go up. Currently, it's very muted and nondescript. For now, I've omitted all references to your past. In time, we can reintegrate such forms. What we have now is a clean canvas. Things will fill in over time as you continue to live your life. Much luck. Will be in touch."

The logo rotated slowly, waiting for what he would do next. The first thing Shay did was throw out the vodka. He picked up after himself and took a shower. Over time, after many interviews and many disappointments, he found a new job. Occasionally, he dreamed of Joyce. She was usually swimming in a large Olympic pool and he could never get a good glimpse of her face.

He worked. He ate. He slept. He grew older. All the while, the logo hovered overhead, changing as he himself changed and improving as he himself made personal improvements. It went on changing colors. It grew more intricate. Eventually, he fell in love again and it grew in luminosity. He got married to a musician named Margo who played the clarinet for the symphony; who's bright and cheery disposition masked a deeper understanding of life. Together they had two children, Len and Claire who eventually grew up and had children of their own. Thus, his logo grew in scale and brightness. Still he thought of Joyce, and had dreams of her throughout his life. She came to him as a young woman although he himself had aged; haunting and seducing him until he woke up quietly in tears. Margo would pretend not to hear him and the logo incorporated this as well. Increasingly, it grew more and more elaborate and the hieroglyphics of his inner and outer life hung overhead until it took up his entire room and embraced him completely.

Molecular Gastronomy

Food is sex. And by saying that, I am giving myself away as a chef. This is true. Food is sex and I am a purveyor of it. This philosophy renders anyone and everyone around me as a passive, receptive, orafice. I drizzle oils across their tongues. I squeeze crème fraiche into their mouths. I do my best work in the kitchen, but my masterstrokes occur in the dining room...

When my wife slaps me she does it with such vitriol that I feel little bells ringing along my cheek, and a little noosphere of pain buzzing just above my skin. I've gone out and slept with the wrong woman again. She knew too many people. She ate at the restaurant too often. I would do it again.

There is no one around me even when I'm standing in a crowd. No people. Just mouths. This is how I see myself.

Stanley, my new souschef asked me what my first set of knives were like. I fired him on the spot.

I have a tattoo of a cow on my back. Dotted lines delineate the different cuts of meat. Shank. Sirloin. Shoulder. Head.

They say molecular gastronomy is dead but last week I created a popcorn cloud so light and airy that it floated along the air like a dandelion and landed on the tongue of a sweet asian girl half my age. They say foams are passe but she didn't mind.

My wife asked me why I hurt her. She asked me why I hated her so much.

I created a spoonful of chocolate caviar and offered it to her as a truce. She threw it into the trash. She got ill that weekend and disappeared into the bedroom. I made her a spiral of chicken noodle soup. It looked like a roll of fishing line, white and translucent, in a coil on a single white asian soup spoon. "You stick your finger into it like a ring and rest it on top of your tongue," I explained. "Let it dissolve and let the flavors waft through you."

"Why can't you make food that actually nourishes people?" she asked.

I gave her a small bag of olive chips. She crumpled it and threw it onto the floor. "Nothing of substance. You're as vapid and cold as the liquid nitrogen you use to make your stupid frozen heirloom tomato salads with."

For love or for money you should really feed people instead of piquing their curiosities and vanishing like dry ice. Give them a dish they can hang onto.

I don't, of course. But I'm working on it. When my wife tells me she's pregnant, I begin to make a list of possible baby food purees. Spinach. Fish. Carrots. I aim to season them subtly and elegantly. Food is love.

When my wife tells me that the baby is not mine, I throw out the list. I go into my kitchen and create olive oil needles. Liquid ham and blood orange essences. Burnt onions. A mushroom cloud.