No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
"Do you travel much?"
"Absolutely, twice a year."
"Care to meet up?"
"Okay. Why not?"
We agreed to meet the next day at a bar that Kathrin suggested. I wasn't particularly interested in her. Still, I wanted to meet. I wasn’t feeling very well. In May, I always fall into a kind of melancholy and am afraid of being forgotten. That has to do with the swifts.
I wanted to give something to him. I wanted him to leave me feeling better about himself than he had before we met, better than he had ever felt. Perhaps I was reacting to the general post-bar malaise that afflicts so many who leave the house on Friday night looking for affirmation and return on Saturday morning with a renewed disgust for humanity and an empty wallet...
Noel shouldered through the door, lingering in the threshold as she wiped bloody hands on bloodier apron.
“You live in Russia, right?” asked the one who was Lucas, not out of curiosity, but politeness. He was reaching for the only thing he knew.
“Not anymore,” I said. I almost launched into a story about my days in an Eastern Orthodox monastery but remembered myself. I didn’t want to speak more than necessary. I wanted to save my words for Joey.
“Are you a communist?” Damien asked.
“No,” I replied.
When the malediction really began, no human could really say. But for its most recent victim, it began one cold morning at the bank of a river.
They began hanging out. The mode of engagement with Rotho was always hanging out, always at his house. And why would he ever leave? The place was giant, fit for the Von Trapps, and full of hard-bodied men coming in and out in the midst of impassioned speech: “depends on which Van Halen” or “oeuvre.”