DEUS EX MACHINA

There was a bit of peach drying on his cheek, big enough to cast a shadow, and Keira pinched it off with her fingers.

Adam pulled away and raised his fingers to his cheek bone. “I think you took off some skin.”

“You’re a mess.”

Adam stopped walking and set the tail of his surfboard down onto the soft cushion on the toe of his slipper. “Something wrong?”

Was something wrong? Keira struggled within the backlog of rhetorical quips she had been saving for this moment. For she had been having this argument in her head for quite some time, unbeknownst to Adam, whose obliviousness was beginning to wear thin. “You're, a mess,” she repeated. “Did you eat all the peaches?”

“Yes... I ate them,” Adam answered rudimentarily as if reading through a children’s book. “Mahalo.” He pushed a thumb over his jawbone and began walking again. They were strolling along Ala Moana Boulevard, and Adam had just crawled out of the ocean, his 6’2” tucked under his arm, and had just met Keira at the end of her 6 mile run. It was three in the afternoon. Above them the sky opened up and bled its most honest blue, then closed up again like a grey fist wringing out a drizzle. Droplets paraglided downward. One drop, faint, kissed her forearm. Then another. Cloud cover bloomed. A giant gray storm cloud slid over the mountain like a slug – a thick tongue of it. Slowly, the rain heartened. Waned. Heartened again.

“The peaches. Gone in sixty.” He flatlined. "I'd take a California peach over a georgia peach anyday. But it looks like the latter lost the battle this year. Due colder temperatures, won't be ready till mid may."

Aware that he was watching for a reaction, Keira turned her head away from him and scanned the series of bright, color-coded shopping bags cheerfully swinging in the hands of the Japanese tourists they were passing. “How was the surf?” she asked finally.

“Off. But a sign of better times.” Weeks ago, he and his colleagues had forecasted a long fetch and long southern swell.

“Better times” she repeated flavorlessly.

Her calves ached. It was her first training day on the cusp of summer. The Marathon awaited at the end of what she hoped would be a 9 month burn of determination and willpower, a hope that had begun to evaporate like the perspiration off her skin. Her knees hurt. She felt like a drum barrel with stilts for legs.

“What was that?” Adam asked again.

“At least there was some sun today,” said Keira. She turned her head and surveyed the park and bit down hard on her molars.

Adam cast her a sidelong look, then looked upward. The air was cool. His skin felt alive. He was starving. He was craving a hot dog. He wanted to grill something, to stand over open flame in Neolithic mode, picking off bits of charred flesh with his fingers and chasing them with mugfulls of Wailua Wheats. “There was some sun for a while,” he began. “But now it seems dark and foreboding.” He looked down at Keira and noticed that she was biting her lip. “Seems as though all of the sunshine from this morning disappeared. I'm sensing a shift in barometric pressure here. So what gives?”

Keira paused and thought about this for a second. Adam’s, smug condescension was something she was forced to endure from time to time, but not today. Today, there was only one thread of patience left in her. Somehow, it had been keeping all of her moving parts in harmony; a single thread keeping the facade of complacency intact. She had always remained reticent in the midst of her own personal turmoil. She had always let things flutter about and settle on their own. She had always abhorred the outburst, having witnessed so many between her parents where each had a temper that lay as dormant as a room filled to the edges with land mines. This, however, was unacceptable.

Hours ago, in that Zen moment of clarity in the sixth mile of her run, she had come to the conclusion that Adam had been cheating on her, and rather than going home and burying her head into a heap of 9th grade English papers, she had decided to end things.

In the latter days of the relationship, Keira had become schooled on the art of lying and pattern recognition. In a casual line of questioning, she noticed Adam’s tabletop haphazardness would reverse itself into a mannered fastidiousness — setting items at precise right angles, aligning forks and spoons perfectly parallel from top to bottom, smoothing out napkins or turning the salt and pepper shakers so the top-most holes lined up to the west.

In any case of deception, Adam fidgeted, looked down to the left side of the feet, avoided eye contact, and found things to occupy his hands.

Any inquisition in which Adam would begin “making himself useful” around the house — rousing himself from the sofa to the kitchen, clearing out the refrigerator, washing the dishes, or engaging in the simple act of picking up after himself — all the while answering Keira’s conversational interrogation with an almost picaresque offhandedness was suspect.

It was on this day that her most lurid suspicions had been stirred when she found a bracelet in the trunk of his car right before her run. It was a little jeweled charm bracelet with three thin bands and four little hearts – something that she would never possess. It was a thing from another world so far outside of her own that she would never had thought its owner so near a threat. “Sharks are always closer than you think,” Adam once said of the ocean. “They just stay just outside of the break. But they’re usually there.” And here it was. How long had it been there on the outskirts of her awareness?

The little charm bracelet belonged to Nyoko, a petite Japanese, 25 year old, who gave Keira the impression of someone stealing from the world though her eyes. She had a voracious, vacuous stare that seemed to pull her forward through life — a creature with a skull that contained a black hole.

“I think it’s Nyoko he’s been spending most of his time with,” said her friend Stacey who taught in the classroom next to hers one evening over a glass of shiraz and plate of crostini’s and fois gras. “That Japanese, redhead from San Diego. Who lost her parents in a car accident a few years ago. She went back home for a while but now she’s back. Remember her?” Keira admitted that she had. There was a brief friendship between Adam and Nyoko that she had been uncomfortable with, and an easy comradeship that extended itself to a flurry of phone calls at — according to the monthly statements that Adam was too lazy to sort through and discard — questionable hours. Although Keira had expressed her sympathies for her loss, secretly, she was relieved when she left. Nyoko feigned timidity but her actions were of a person self-assured. She knew what she wanted and did as she pleased, as if for her, time was not as dilated as it was for others.

Keira had only learned of her return to Oahu after Adam had returned from his surf trip to the Mentawai Islands — a trip that he had been planning with his friends for months. Only, Nyoko was never listed as one of them and during their long distance phone calls. She was never mentioned. At the airport upon their return, it was a surprise to see her there. Adam had claimed that she had been a last minute addition to the crew of travelers; that she had been back for some time, but he had only found out about it on the trip when she rendezvoused with Miles K. on the fourth day. He knew her as the cousin of someone’s sister, or as the friend of a cousin, who had never surfed before but begged and begged to be included because she needed it. Yes. “Needed to get away. Needed to feel alive again,” he had said. Her words, or his? Keira wondered at the time. Adam had shrugged it off as if her presence had barely registered.

When she had seen her at the airport however, although Keira could not have been positive, it seemed as if Nyoko had adapted to all of Adam’s mannerisms, diction and inflections. She used his sayings, and her voice followed the cadences of his own vernacular. Although it might had been a projection, there was something about their body language that troubled her. They ignored each other, but they never seemed oblivious. She saw it in the way Nyoko handed Adam his suitcase — he accepted it without once regarding her, eyes averted as if he were a sprinter accepting a baton. And when Nyoko turned away, Keira had seen a faint, furtive smile spread dreamily across her lips.

She was tanned and fulfilled, glowing, with stories of her own growth and oceanic awakening. At the airport, she hadn’t said much to Adam. There wasn’t even a goodbye between the two, but Keira had noticed the shimmering charm bracelet. It seemed incongruous to the rest of her earthy attire, and hung precariously off her wrist; either the last bit of an older self to be shed, or something new and tacked on. And, before she picked up her bags and threw them into the back seat of a Charlie’s cab, she threw a final glance at him, as if with her eyes alone she could ensnare whatever she wanted.

* * *

“Hello?” Adam asked again. “How was the jog?”

The bus roared by.

“What do you care? A jog is a jog.”

Adam stopped walking. “Whoa,” he said. “Please,” It was his way of halting an argument that he was anticipating but realized he was still ill prepared for. “Your mood’s changed since this morning.”

“Well, I just don’t have the energy right now, I spent it all training,” she said and walked on. He hung back, head lowered and cocked to one side.

He would pace about for a while, Keira thought, and he’ll try to regain footing. Don’t over react, he was probably thinking. Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe it’s something else. Like the mess I left behind at home. Or some stupid comment I made about her that made its way back. They would get home and he would start vacumming the floor, the busy idiot. Anything to avoid conversation.

He would stall, she knew, and he would take a deep breath and start walking slowly, deliberating, she thought, composing stories, creating alternate fabrications with parallel plotlines and interchangeable friends that he would contort and fit into any line of questioning. He would employ the always miraculous deus ex machina just when the story’s situation was becoming too impossible to resolve from a creative standpoint, when there would be too many loose ends flitting about. Something contrived and miraculous would always happen. “And then... you won’t believe this,” he would say. “We found the car returned right where it was before... ” or “We saw this turtle walking along the grass dragging that exact necklace” or “This white dog appeared out of the darkness and led us to the house...” or “A bird flew right into the guy’s face...”

These were a few of the more fanciful machinations he had deployed, and at first Keira had been taken in by these shimmering stories, wishing that she had been there to witness such whimsy, such life, but as time had passed, she began to realize that the people involved were never his close friends, never anyone she would encounter socially. They were called out from a deep bench of reserve players, cousins of friends, coworkers and old classmates. These stories served to distract rather than inform, and there was no way she could ever confirm such happenings. When she realized this, a quiet sadness crept in and continued burrowing inward, triggering a gravitational collapse, as Adam would have put it, and she kept falling and falling inward.

* * *

An ambulance wailed along Piikoi, blasting its high mechanical croon and punctuating it with the hand-hit horn, blaring at the vehicles slow to kiss the sidewalk. She walked for half an hour before she reached Alohi Way. Her neighbor was taking a chainsaw to the splintering branches of dead, greying trunk of the tree in his yard. He nodded as she walked by and she managed a small smile. She walked up to her driveway and swatted at a black carpenter bee. Another two buzzed by her ears and she ducked to avoid them. They flew up, wove through the air and disappeared over the garage rooftop. She looked back at her neighbor and wondered of their nests were in that dying trunk.

Adam came running up the driveway, sooner than expected. “Hey. I can’t figure it out,” he said, panting. “Have I done? Something? What’s wrong?” He was breathing hard and set his surfboard onto the zoysia grass. He immediately turned on the hose and started rinsing his board, making himself busy.

“Wrong? What could be wrong?” she asked and unlocked the front door. In the middle of their small, single story house sat a car engine, gutted out of it’s chassis. It sat in front of the cappuccino-colored theater sofa, as if begging for a pane of glass to lay over it, making it into a dadaist coffee table for gear heads. An oil stain spread along the carpet like blood from a giant, mechanical, cronenbergian insect. The air was hot, and the smell of oil swirled in the eddy where the cool outside air met with warmth.

“Is that a car engine?” Adam stepping up behind her.

“Brilliant,” said Keira. She ran her hands through her hair and threw them back at her sides and said under breath “Who are you, Arthur Conrad Doyle?”

“Did someone break in?”

Keira whipped her eyes at him. “Oh why do you ask?” She pushed past Adam and stepped outside. She began breathing slowly, with deep and controlled breaths. Her hands were shaking.

“Did we leave the door unlocked?” Adam asked.

Keira clenched her eyelids and pressed her hands over them so hard they trembled and the darkness within them fluttered. Her heartbeat sent loud pulses to her eardrums. “I locked it before we left,” she said quietly. “And you just saw me unlock the door to get in.”

The engine was old. Dirt and oil congealed along its rivets. Other loose wires and tubing lay splayed out, as if the engine had been plucked out of a car and just set down. Oil seeped deep into the carpeting.

“Well fine. I’m asking all the obvious questions. Let your woman’s intuition figure this out.”

“Woman’s intuition?” Keira asked. Her eyebrows arched. She leaned in carefully, “Now what in the world would a woman’s intuition have to do with this? Why would you bring that into play?” she asked, rounding out the words “woman’s intuition”, inflating their vowels.

“Nothing,” Adam said. “All I can do is take things at face value. It's you who possesses the knack to see beyond the data.”

“So what do we have here, at face value?” She looked at him dead on. She was referring to herself. “Tell me,” she said calmly.

“It’s...” he began running his hand through his hair as if suddenly aware of the sand and salt drying against his scalp. “Some kind of joke,” he speculated.

“No,” said Keira, and sighed weakly. She turned back to the engine. “It’s some kind of Honda.”

* * *

When the police arrived, Officer Morales asked all the questions and Officer Shinseki walked the perimeter and examined the doors and the locks. They took note of everything in the house and walked the grounds outside. They asked the neighbor with the chainsaw if there had been any suspicious activities and asked about any suspicious characters that had been seen lingering around the premises more than once. They checked their belongings and one of the officers had his notepad ready for a list of missing items, but there were none. Another officer drew a schematic of the home and drew an enigmatic tangle of lines to represent the engine right there in the middle of the living room. Another checked the windows. There was no sign of a break in.

It took a small crew to get the engine out of the house. Before it was removed they took photographs and checked for any kind of finger prints and were flummoxed by the fact that there were no prints anywhere in the home or on hardware. Even if the perpetrators were wearing latex gloves, there should have been little smudges and markings, finger-sized smears in the oil or oily footprints on the carpet. But there were none. The officers all hoisted the engine, covered it with thick canvas as if it were an expired victim, and loaded it into the police van. They left their names and report number and left.

On the brand new grey carpet was a slick oily indentation. The entire house was filling with the sweet sour mechanical stench of it.

Keira was in the bedroom, folding her clothes, stuffing them into a small suitcase. She had knocked down all of the little framed photos of the two of them off the champaign chest that they had been handed down from Adam’s grandmother and packed only the photo of herself and her parents.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked from the doorway. “Talk to me. What's with the cold low?”

Keira hoisted the suitcase up and pushed past him toward the living room. “Excuse me, please.”

“We’ll buy new locks. We’ll buy bars for the windows. Or we can move. You don’t have to leave.”

“I’m making things easier for you.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Oh you must be joking,” she said to herself.

Adam was picking up photographs of himself – shirtless, younger and potbellied under an ironwood – off the floor and set them back onto the dresser. Jesus, was that him? He picked up a 4X6 of Keira in a knit cap overlooking the Pali and placed in on the dresser next to his. “Seriously,” he continued, moving slowly and predictably toward the kitchen. “I don’t know what you could be so angry about, and this break in may be compounding the situation, but...” Adam paused and then let out a gasp. “ Keira?”

She walked out to the living room. The engine was back. It sat there in precisely the same location as it had been previously, fitting perfectly over the oil-soaked indentation it had made on the carpet earlier, old and oxidized. The clamps were nearly eaten through. More wiring and tubes. More oil.

Adam ran outside and scanned the streets. He scanned the sidewalks for oil spots. “Did you hear anything? Did you see anything?” he asked Keira from outside.

Keira stood in the hallway and leaned against the wall. “I always seem to miss these things when they happen,” she said with not a bit of wonderment.

* * *

There was nothing more that she had wanted to do this weekend than to reorganize, reshuffle and redecorate their apartment. She had been looking forward to it. Opening up a new bottle of Pinesol was like uncorking a bottle of sauvignon blanc. She wanted to scrub the bathtub with Ajax, vacuum the dark subterranean dwellings under the sofa, swiff the uppermost plateaus the cupboards and refrigerator, happily making the edges and surfaces of her periphery gleam with harmonious domesticity, as she had every other weekend prior. It was a routine, an itch, a quiet pleasure. She took such pleasure in the act of it that she had considered it nearly sociopathic. It was a gift that such a productive and efficient act should stem from boredome. Many would have resorted to more destructive resources, but she had always preferred cleaning.

After a long week of work, there was nothing more settling than quietly perfecting the hidden corners and pockets of the apartment. In better times, she would have preferred sinking back into the sofa with a glass of wine with Adam amongst the clutter of their living room, flipping through various furniture catalogs, discussing the possibilities for an Eames elephant, or the merits of a new Mondrian wall mirror for the bedroom. She wanted to rest her head in his lap and finally decide on the proper lighting for the right-side corner that sat darkened across the sofa, as if she were an anxious interior decorator confiding to her intimate therapist – maybe a tripod floor lamp, or a wall sconce would complete the picture and fill that emptiness. She wanted to go about alphabetizing her bookshelf, her pantry, her closet, her music collection, her spice rack. But all of that was over now. She wanted out. A home without dark corners and hidden secrets, is like a mind without darks corners and hidden secrets, she had once read. Uninhabitable. That might have been true when she was younger, but now she was in the basement, and it was too much to bear.

When police returned, there was an air of skepticism and some halfheartedness to their procedure. Keira, resigned, let Adam do all the talking. “So you say you went into the bedroom for about 5 minutes and then came back and there it was. Identical. We still have the other one, it’s in the back of the van.” A long crease appeared in his brow. His skin was dirty, his pores large and oily. He was scarred along his forearm. When he looked up with his eyes, he revealed a large nevus on his left sclera.

The, younger officer added “You know it took about 4 or 5 of us to get that thing out of here. Lot of lifting and directing, yeah? It’s not the most... stealthy process.”

Their police radios shredded the tension with apoplectic bursts of urgent static and code.

“You say you heard nothing?” asked the third officer, who had been walking the perimeter outside.

“Nothing,” answered Adam.

The officer sighed wearily. Another police car rolled up outside and parked along the sidewalk — a superfluous clone. The day was filled with clones, Keira thought. Clone engines and clone officers being spit out of the ether. Soon there would be a hundred officers walking in and out with car engines. “Okay. We’ll take it out of here," said the officer. "We’ll run it through, although this ones on the previous engine are exactly the same. You’re in trouble if this is some joke,” he said and looked Adam directly in the eyes to show him he wasn’t to be toyed with. “Call us if anything happens.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Just sit tight. I can recommend some home security companies. Call if there are any other disturbances.”

The officers hoisted and grunted, and instructed those with their backs to the door where to go and what to watch out for. They lifted the engine into the back of the van and they were gone.

Outside, a dog was barking. Birds twittered. A car drove past. The mango tree rustled and someone was beating a carpet.

Adam looked at Keira, the fury in her eyes had somewhat abated, but he could tell it was more from shock and bafflement than anything else. She knew. She knew everything that had been happening, and it was over. The engine was incidental.

“You okay?” Adam asked.

She looked up at him, turned and walked toward the bedroom.

* * *

Life was good. Was. They had just moved in together, and almost immediately fell into a favorable routine. They went to bed at midnight and woke up at six. They went for morning runs. They ate healthily — only organic. They went swimming on Thursdays and went to dinners and movies on Fridays. They had begun a collection of monographs from famous photographers. Keira was learning how to use a camera. Adam was teaching her how to surf. She had just gotten a job as an English Teacher at Henry J. Kaiser High School. Adam had been working as a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They had just gotten a new flatscreen television but rarely tunred it on. As weeks passed, they began purging their home of the old to replace with the new. They replaced their old dining table with a new walnut veneered round top and an entirely new dinnerware set. Things were heading in a good direction.

The day before this was just like the day before that, like two mirrors facing each other with their recursive reflections receding into the past. Keira would go for a run while Adam took his shortboard out. They would both met up at the harbor, at the terminus of her circuit and drove along the shore, through Waikiki, right up to Diamond head to watch the wind surfers from a distance, crisscrossing along the water as if indifferent to the ocean. They flew in spite of the churning sea’s sluggish waves, and rode right over them, through the break and through that foamy whitewash straight toward the horizon. A few paragliders circled overhead. Parasurfers bounded out of the water like bungee jumpers, and road the wind before coming back down. Close to the horizon the melee of windsurfers and surfers looked like the gleaming iridescent wings of giant, post modern insects preying on slow moving ants.

“I’d want to try that someday,” she had said, watching the parasurfer ride up the face of the wave, and with a gust of wind, take off into the sky. Adam made her promises “I know someone. I can get it for us and we can give it a shot next weekend.”

And things were good.

In the bedroom, now, she felt like vomiting as uncertainty swept over her.

“ Keira?” Adam said from the doorway. She was crouched on the floor, reaching under the bed.

“I don’t want to talk to you. There’s nothing you can say.” She pulled out a small suitcase and began packing her items. Adam slumped onto the sofa and buried his thumbs into his temples.

“And what would I say? You haven’t even told me what it is that’s upsetting you. Is a simple discussion that out of bounds? I think I deserve at least that.”

“Don’t talk to me about what you deserve,” she said. “Look. I know, alright. I know everything. Your life is a lottery of easy way outs and quick fixes. Not this time.” She found the yellow flats she had been looking for and threw them into the suitcase. “It’s a good thing this happened early, before we got any deeper. Before we got too entrenched in any kind of life that would demand a discussion out of consideration for anything else beyond us. No. Thank god. Right now, as it is, it’s just you and me and I say no words are necessary. Here, I don’t feel any need to navigate through any sort of bullshit.”

“You still haven’t told me what’s bothering you,” Adam said angrily.

Keira snapped her suitcase shut. “I need your other suitcase.” She began digging into her dresser. “With all the shit going on in the world. The quakes — geological, political, religious, the least one could do to is be a decent human being.”

“Please, Keira,” Adam crooked his head back and stared at the ceiling. “You haven’t actually accused me of anything. You’re just packing. This morning, you were fine. I mean, where's the gradient here? Could you tell me what changed?”

“You sound like a cliche. You’ve become a cliche.”

“ Keira. Come on. You’re not making sense.”

“You’re run by a pathology I don’t want to play with.”

“Fine. There’s no talking to you. This is a frog storm. A disturbance. It is what it is then.”

“And stop talking to me in weather speak. If you say this is just a doldrum or emotional shift via katabatic wind, or some other flawed metaphor I'm going to stab you int he eye with a hydrometer.”

“Plain english then... What is it?”

“You’ve ruined us!”

Adam held his hands out as if he were pleading to the heavens for rain “How so?”

“That surfing trip!” Keira went hypothermic, as if emotionally, all human warmth had left her body. She shook. Her hands trembled and her teeth chattered.

“Yes. Yes. Yes. But nothing happened.”

“Nothing happened with who? I haven’t even mentioned any names.”

“Because there’s no one!”

Keira could not decide whether to cry or to laugh so she turned away and did both.

* * *

When the entire Honda appeared in the living room, it had taken up all of the floor space. He had closed his eyes for a second and listened to Keira quietly pack. He was waiting for an outburst. Tears. Anything. But she remained closed off. She would give him no emotion, he realized, and would simply leave, perhaps to her best friend, Sandra’s place. When he opened his eyes the car was there. “Oh my God!” he shouted. It was a 1995 Honda Accord, painted silver with a large dent on the bumper and along the driver’s side. A seashell necklace hung from it’s rear view mirror. The interior was black, although at one point it had been tan. The entire interior, dashboard and all was replaced. The front driver side window would slide down with the push of a hand, and Adam knew this. He placed his hand flat onto the glass and with slight pressure, slid the window downward. He pulled the lock up and opened the door and examined the flooring. Sand. Dried leaves. An empty beer can.

“That’s my old car,” he muttered to himself. “My old, junked heap.”

“The hell it is,” said Keira. She was looking at it from the hallway. She looked defeated. Weary. Resigned. She kicked a large duffle bag along the floor feeling like a bit player in one of his long, protracted stories.

“No,” said Adam. “It is my car. You remember this. We were dating for two months when I shat this scrap into the junk yards. Actually, this is the state of my car exactly one day before it broke down for good. You know how I can tell? This dent right under the door handle. I was at Costco and this guy with a old red Mazda next to mine swung his door open. The next day, it broke down.”

“It’s not your car,” Keira said. Her voice was raspy. She had quietly cried herself out.

“Well explain the plates,” Adam said. His voice a self-assured beacon of rationality.

“It’s a simulacrum.”

“Great. What's the depreciation on something like that?”

“Quite a story,” she sniffled. “The story of our demise. There's you. There’s the car. I’m taking the phantom car.” Keira squeezed in between the car and the wall and inched along to the driver’s side to tug on the latch that opened the trunk. She got out and collected her suitcase and duffle bag. She lifted the trunk and took a look inside. “Jesus. Are you serious?”

“Don’t tell me there’s a dead body in there,” said Adam, trying desperately to grasp the situation.

Keira sifted through a stash of used old plastic bags with trash. In them, there were empty plastic bottles, some old paper cups, empty rum bottles a bikini, wet underwear, which Keira had never owned, and a charm bracelet. It was the same charm bracelet that Nyoko had worn off the plane. It was wrapped in a purple tissue that smelled of lavender. “For Nyoko. A year ago. Before she even left. She wore it coming back.” She said, lifting the bracelet out of its wrapping. “Two months into our relationship...” she said.

“No. Not Nyoko’s. Why? Why would you ask that?”

“I saw her wear this. I saw her wear this off the plane at the airport. She was wearing it then. This car was junked before you went on the trip, so you gave this to her before the trip. You were seeing way back when. This is your car, like you said.” She placed the bracelet back into its tissue, folded it up and placed it back into the trunk. “It’s nice. Not something I would wear.”

Keira got into the driver seat and sat there. Adam stammered on about the contents in the trunk. “They’re not mine! How could it be? Maybe this isn’t really my car! I junked it a year ago. It’s not. This isn’t real. Not in reality. God. I feel like I’m dreaming. Wake up. Gotta wake up. Keira! Look at what’s happening here. Be rational.”

“Yeah. I’m taking the car,” she said, wrapping her hands around the steering wheel. She adjusted the rear view mirror and slid the seat forward, like she always did when driving his car. She took a breath, as if bracing herself for a fall. In her fist, she felt something materialize. A single teardrop made it’s way down her cheek and she wiped it away immediately. She opened her hand and saw the gleam of the keys resting on the crossroad of creases in her palm. She turned its little surfboard key chain and light rippled across its imperfect silver. “Ha! I don’t believe this,” she said, and inserted the key into the ignition. “I don’t know what this is. But I feel really lucky,” she said. The car was facing the wall next to the front door. The flatscreen Sony was positioned between its headlights. She would drive right out of the living room, into the wide blue world.

“That car isn’t going to start,” said Adam, placing both hands onto the sun-cracked rooftop. “Even if it does. Metaphysically, It’s not safe. I’m talking metaphysics here. Too many variables. You don’t know what this will do.”

Keira looked up at him and gently put her hand to her chest. “It’s done enough.”

“It can't start,” said Adam. “It won’t.”

She twisted the key and the car roared dutifully to life. “Purrs like a Kitten. What a fuckin’ day!”

“Keira!” Adam stepped back and fell onto the sofa. Exhaust filled the house. The walls rattled and a large framed photograph of the ocean fell onto the floor. “ Keira,” he called out. “Wait! How can I possibly offer you any evidence to the contrary? What do I need to do?”

She knew he wanted to offer her things. More than just words. But he was lazy. Too lazy to fix things beyond words. He was never any good at forging ahead on a promise. He was never one to weave in and out of any conflict honestly. His imagination was less a virtue than a symptom of limitation. Keira saw him close his eyes and pressed his hands over his face, panicking. She wondered, what promise could he make that would convince her to stay? Which statements would renew the stasis of trust? Her head was pounding. There was a glimmer of doubt. There was a whir behind her ears. The house was filling up with gas. It was now or never.

As Keira pushed her toes deep into the gas pedal, the car jolted forward, breaking through the wall, tires whirling, the wall bucking up and splintering into fragments, picture frames and the flatscreen falling onto the hood. She felt herself going faint, slipping out of consciousness, as if ceasing to exist, just like a bit player in one of Adam’s tall tales.

She tore out onto the driveway, squinting through the webbing of the shattered windshield. She could hear him screaming her name. This was her story now, she decided, and she would resume full authorship. She looked back and saw the house demolished. She eased forward down the street, and saw Adam in the rear view mirror, his image trembling as the mirror glass itself trembled. And, as she turned the wheel and hit the gas, she saw him flicker for a moment before sliding out of the frame completely.

THUNDERBOLT

Stan is drinking alone in an empty bar after work. Unwinding, he rationalizes, although he has been drinking daily for weeks. Just eating some smelt with grated turnip, and sashimi he narrates internally. He dips a piece of sashimi in soy sauce, one side, then the next, and savors it. He closes his eyes to amplify it’s flavor. Savory. Buttery. Rich and delicate. And when he opens his eyes a man in gold and yellow tiger mask is sitting opposite him at his table.

“Excuse me?” says Stan. The man’s tiger mask is made of some gold and yellow polyester mesh. He looks like the old Japanese wrestler Sataru Sayama. “Ahem” says Stan, “There are a lot of empty tables here. See? The entire bar is empty.”

The man in the yellow mask waves his hand and the young asian woman behind the bar quickly and diligently sets a glass down onto a square napkin and pours out a sliver of sake. Her hair is short and straight, with bleached tips. “Thank you,” says the man, staring intently at Stan and his plate of sashimi and smelt and daikon.

"Mm hmm," she musters, The two stare at each other for a minute as the bartender returns to her station and resumes quietly watching the both of them.

"Just passing through for a drink. Some idle conversation. And I will be on me way," says the man in the mask. “Happy Halloween,” he says, raising his glass.

“Yeah,” says Stan, deciding to be polite. After all, it would have been more awkward to turn him away. How would it look if two people sat in an empty bar in complete silence? “Kampai,” he says and raises his own drink. They engage in small talk, making comments about the food and decor of the dive bar. The atmosphere is dim and hollow. They talk abstractly about work. Stan is an accountant, and the man in the Tiger mask — although he does not offer his name — says that he is a social media expert. They talk about business and the economy. They discuss the recent APEC Conference. They talk about technology, and about culture. The man who is from Hokkaido speaks with a mild accent and has a tendency to pry in personal matters, but becomes secretive when asked about his own affairs. Stan realizes this and stops divulging facts about his own life, leaving the two of them sitting in silence.

“Did you know,” the man starts up again. “I once knew a woman who had no sense of herself?”

“Now how would I knew something like that? This is the first conversation between us—” Stan laughs, affably now. The booze is beginning to take hold.

“Ha. Yes. Chicago, I think. I don’t mean she had no sense of identity,” continued the tiger. “Simply, she could not sense her own body. It was... a curious condition,” he said, then continued drinking from his glass right through the slit in his mask where his mouth was revealed. At this point, Stan is regarding the mask as he would any other face. The man continued, “She couldn’t tell her legs from her arms. And most of the time, she crawled and flopped about. Most times, she used a level, the kind that carpenters use, to move about so that she could tell if she was properly balanced. But overall, she had no sense of her body. Didn’t know where her foot ended and her shoe began.”

“That’s a strange story,” said Stan. “Kind of an odd thing to—”

“There was this other friend, back in Japan,” The man continued. “Who began to have this other condition, funny, how I’m remembering these people,” said the tiger. There was a lining of glitter around his ears, sparkling as he titled his head in recollection. “He could only see one thing at a time. His entire world was stitched together with little parts. He would never see a face, he could only recognize an eye, or an ear, one thing at a time, but never the entire face. Once, he mistook his wife’s head for a hat, and tried to put it on. Funny, isn’t it? Ha ha!” The tiger erupts into laughter.

Stan notes that the conversation has turned a corner into darker territory and decides to call for the check. When he raises his hand to the bartender, she averts her eyes and ignores him. She turns around and starts cleaning glasses.

“You see, beneath all of this is a illusion,” says the man. “There’s nothing. Just a void,” he trails off. “Our bodies mean nothing.”

“Check please” he calls out to the bartender again.

The bartender remains inert and ignores him.

“Check please!” shouts Stan.

The tiger leans in and whispers. “Hey, you like her? Yes?”

“No.” Stan leans back in his chair. “Just want my check. I have to work early tomorrow,” he slurs.

“Ah, come one. One more!” chides the man. He lifts his hand and the woman quickly and efficiently delivers over another round of sake.

Stan shakes his head in frustration. “Fine. Last one. I swear she likes you more than me. She won’t even look in my direction, even in this empty bar,” He laughs in resignation. “My luck with women has been lousy,” he confides.

Donna Summers sings through a portal from the 80's, and spreads out softy along the bar counter.

The man nods. “Ah. I see. You want to see something?” the man asks, briefly scratching the white fringe of faux fur along his cheeks. He reaches into his pocket and extracts a phone. “Look at this,” he says and holds the face of the phone up for Stan to see.

Stan squints and looks closer. The man’s hands are shaky and uncoordinated, so Stan steadies the phone with his hand. When the blurred square comes into focus, he sees that it is a picture of the bartender without any clothes on. She is smiling at the camera. Stan pulls back, blushing.

“Yeow!” The tiger erupts in triumphant laughter and raises his fist into the air. “You see! Not so difficult is it! Very easy!”

Stan smiles and nods. “Good job” he says.

“I have hundred of pictures on this phone!” says the tiger.

“Nice work,” Stan says, not knowing how to proceed. He is too embarrassed to ask for the check again. He is wondering if his facial expression is betraying every thought he is having about the woman behind the bar, that if she were to look at him, she would know that he had just seen her naked because of his lingering I-just-saw-you-naked-on-someone's-iphone face if ever there were such a thing. He is suddenly too shy to look at her and he begins folding his chopstick wrapper into a small crane.

“What if I told you that entire back room behind the kitchen is filled with girl just waiting for action?” The tiger asks.

“I wouldn’t believe you,” answers Stan. Somehow, he feels like he is being tested. “But one can always dream,” he adds plainly.

“Yeow!” the tiger erupts again and drums the table with his hands. He adjusts his mask, and pulls it down tightly around his head. He then motions to the woman behind the bar, and she quickly disappears behind the aluminum impact doors to the kitchen. Minutes later, the doors swing open and two other women emerge from in a nimbus of steam.

Presto.

Earlier, the kitchen had been occupied by a single, middle-aged cook. Japanese. Sweaty and grimy, with a face that looked like flesh hanging off a makeshift meat smoker. Everytime the door had swung open, Stan had gotten a glimpse of that old cook slaving away, chopping green onions and stirring dark foreboding sauces. Where did these well-dressed, made up, pretty, young girls come from? What were they doing back there?

The women smile and set two dishes of kappa maki out, and then slips between the doors and back into the kitchen. Strange that they were back there, thinks Stan. They obviously didn’t belong in some hot greasy, steamy kitchen where an oily mist saturated the air. Not dressed that way. “Look, I think I see what’s happening,” says Stan. “But I’m not interested?” he ends awkwardly, as if phrasing a question. “What you’re selling, I’m not buying,” he confirms.

The man picks up a roll, pops it into his mouth and chews thoughtfully. When he is finished, he says “There was this other person who could never remember anything past 1960. Some sort of accident. All his life after that, he think he is in his 20’s. For a time, it looks so, but as he get older, everytime he sees into a mirror, he would see an old man, and he would be shocked and confused and he would just panic. Can you imagine? And then he would forget, and smile and go back to his life and think that he was a kid again. What blessing. What a curse.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” says Stan. “I don’t get this line of conversation,” he says and calls again for the check. The woman is nowhere to be found, but then the kitchen doors swing open. He sees three naked girls chopping an onion. Their knives appear sharpened and their knife skills appear expert until one of them cuts herself. There is a small slice on her finger. Another girl walks over, takes her hand and starts sucking on her finger. As she locks eyes with Stan, the doors swing shut.

“Hey, what the...?”

“This other man,” continues the tiger, “when he closed his eyes felt like he was swaying wildly, like seaweed swaying in a current. When he closed his eyes he wouldn’t even know where his hands were! If he were sitting at a table, and he could not see his feet, he would not know where his feet were. Rational thought would say to him, under the table of course! But he would feel his feel were extending farther than the floor, to the bowels of the earth. So disembodied, that when he closed his eyes, he would feel that he had no body. And when he opened his eyes, he would be surprised to find himself in seated position. Or lying down. Or just there. Strange!” He held up a finger in emphasis "But I always say, where there is a will, there is a body..."

“I’m leaving. Nice meeting you,” says Stan rising from his seat.

Suddenly, the front doors open and more girls walk into the bar. They all say hello. The tiger motions to them. They surround Stan's table. One of them whispers into another girl’s ear, and that whisper travels around the room, from lips to ear, lips to ear. Suddenly the bar is filled with girls whispering secrets. Then it stops, and most of them begin staring at him.

“I’m not buying,” says Stan. "No money."

“Nothing is for sale. You don’t need to be insulting,” laughs the man.

Stan is looking around for some hidden camera when one of the women lowers herself, nibbles on his earlobe and exhales slowly, sending a shiver down Stan’s spine. He momentarily closes his eyes and when he opens them most of the women have removed their clothing.

The man in the tiger mask asks “This what you wanted? Yes?”

The bar is still. The radio has been turned off.

“I never asked for any of this,” says Stan. “But.... yes. What will it cost me?”

“No charge,” says the man waving him off, but Stan is already kissing one of the girls. He removes his wallet and tosses it onto the table. It spins through the air and lands loudly on a plate, knocking over a bottle of soy sauce. The women converge.

“Another man I knew,” continues the tiger, rising now. “Had undergone such a pleasurable experience, that all of his senses went out of whack days later. It's like being struck by lightning. Too much at once. So... be careful!” the tiger laughs and leaves.

* * *

The next day, Stan wakes up in his own bed but can’t shake the previous night. At first he is elated. What the hell happened? he askes himself in disbelief. He gets up out of bed. Examines all the hickeys and scratches all over his body, and begins to feels strange. When he steps out into the living room, a feeling of dread creeps over him. He surveys the room. Everything looks the same, but nothing is. It is as if a switch had flipped in his mind. His surroundings feel like a stage set that kept revealing itself to be larger and larger, and just as accurate as reality. He repeats the joke, “someone broke into my home and swapped everything with an exact replica.” He showers, gets dressed and has a small breakfast. The food is tasteless. When he opens the front door he realizes that the entire world has been swapped out with this replica, he begins to feel dizzy. Then again, he wonders, was this world anything but how we perceived it to be? he thinks, realizing that there is no way back to the way things were before last night. He remembers a portion of the evening, embroiled in a tangle of limbs, losing the arrow of gravity, and the distintion of his own body. He remembers waking up last night, thinking that someone else was in bed with him, and when he threw this person out of bed, he fell to the floor as well. He chased this person in the darkness, running into the wall and knocking things over. Every time he grabbed ahold of this person, this person would grab ahold of him, and throw him to the ground at precisely the same moment that Stan would attempt to do so. When he finally scrambled to his feet, felt his way through the darkness and flicked on the lights, he realized that he was alone; that it was his own body he had been chasing.

This slow creeping displacement begins to bloom steadily. He was struck by a thunderbolt, he realizes, and the next time it may not be so good. He feels possessed and abandoned at the same time. From his doorway, he takes a step outside, his foot never touching the ground.

KAFKA'S UKULELE

Kafka's Ukelele was a strange instrument, an item foreign even to the Czech Repulblic's largest metropolis, Prague. The instrument was constructed out of mahogany, brass and four gut strings. Initially, it was thought that the instrument was a cavaquinho, but the G-C-E-A tuning order differed from that of the traditional portuguese instrument which most commonly touts a tuning order of D-G-B-D. This arrangement suggests the string instrument was indeed an ukulele, the version of the cavaquinho that Portugal began exporting to the Hawaiian Islands along with migrating field workers beginning in the 1880's.

It is not known how Kafka had come into possession of such an instrument. Nor is it known why of all plucked instruments found within closer geographic proximity — the harp, guitar, lute, bladder fiddle, zymbal, and mandolin — he had chosen the ukulele as his stringed instrument of choice. The ukulele was found under Kafka's cot in Dr. Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling near Vienna, where he succumbed to starvation via tuberculosis, June 3, 1924. The disease had caused his throat to constrict, making swallowing painful and unbearable. He had lost the ability to speak, and in his later days, lost the desire to write. With medical practices of that time predating any intravenous method of nourishment, Kafka was doomed to die as a hungry, emaciated artist strumming the ukulele gently into the night.

As the author most notable for writing of The Metamorphosis, a novella in which his protagonist, Gregor awakens transformed unexpectedly into a large grotesque insect, and The Trial, in which the main character, K. is found guilty of a crime that is neither disclosed to him or to the reader, it will be surprising to most academics that his forays into existentialism and hopelessness — of working class individuals facing surrealist, somewhat supernatural quandaries in a universe indifferent to their plights — could have formed an artistic allegiance to the light, playful notes of the Ukelele, which when translated means jumping fleas. That every living creature lives and dies by the unsympathetic, unforgiving currents of a larger godless universe could have been forgotten by an employer of sadness and dread when plucking away is a mystery. Had his posthumous collection of musical compositions, along with his ukulele (strangely it had not been incinerated along with his bedding) not been confiscated by the Gestapo from Dora Diamont, his last and final lover, Berlin 1933, his musical legacy would have exceed his literary accomplishments. There was Mozart. There was Beethoven. There was Kafka. With words, he delved into the deepest darkest corners of humanity. With music, he reinstated the light.

It is my contention that such a collection exists. And if it were found, all human sadness would end. But that is a strange thing to hang my hopes on, Kafka's Ukulele. Still, in this world of nonsense, of one absurd, nightmarish atrocity after another, I feel very strongly, that its existence and eventual discovery is all we have going for us. It is said that within the ukulele's base was a crumpled note. It read "My love. Take this Accomplice and Companion to my Demise. Take this and play it. It will save you. It will save you all."

* * *

"My stomach hurts worse," she tells me. "It hurts" she says to me on the way to the hospital. Her fine brown-streaked hair is covering her face and she doesn't bother to brush it aside behind her ears. The ukulele she had begun to learn to play sits in the back seat. It had been sitting there for days after her fourth ukulele lesson this past Friday, March 11, 2011. It is the same day the earthquake and tsunami rocks Japan's north-east coast.

I park the car and help her onto her feet. One foot, then the other unfolding onto the concrete from the passenger seat. She stands up gingerly. I can't see her face. She is trying to keep her hips square so as not to upset any unreleased pockets of pain. She straightens slowly. I close the door and she takes my arm. An SUV passes us by. We begin to walk — one small step at a time. Then I stop in the middle of the parking lot lane as a red honda rounds the corner. The driver stops and waits, watching us with impatience and confusion as another white van rounds the corner and is held up.

"What are you doing?" she asks.

"The uke," I say. The driver, with his rounded ruddy face and rectangular-rimmed glasses honks his horn and starts inching forward. His engine idles and revs. "The ukulele. Do you want me to bring it?" I ask. The air is growing hotter.

She looks at me as if I'm crazy. She tugs weakly toward the elevator but I resist. I want her to say yes. Please, I'm thinking. Say "yes, bring it for me".

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.