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A jam jar filled with cigarette stubs, an open window, an upright piano with a globe on its lid, people sheltering from gunfire in a hospital, a young woman dancing madly in a skirt, a pair of old fashioned skis on a trestle table at a house clearance sale, all of these things existed in the mind of a man who sat in a red walled room at an untidy desk surrounded by stacks of newspapers, candles, empty cardboard boxes, a large electric fan, two lamps – one a desk lamp, one standing, a calendar on the wall, tins of food in a cupboard that had no door, a black plastic stereo from which played a song - a man singing of white lines, lying dogs, an alleyway between two towers, a pearl handled .45, Wisconsin summer, some promise or other to do something noble, trains, stations, cigarette blondes in paper suits. The man in the red walled room was writing something about a woman who could not seem to find a sense of purpose in her life, could not muster the strength of will to leave a large, suit-wearing, slick haired man who was treating her badly, while at the same time the slick haired man was, inwardly, suffering a crisis of his own, oppressed by his own oppression of his wife, the demands of his morally dubious job as a broker for arms deals, the relentless pressure to drive newer and newer cars, to arrive at functions with a perfectly varnished wife – which his was not – and he resented her for that but in some haphazard and poorly articulated way, he still loved her. As the man in the red walled room wrote, outside the window in the dirty street, a pair of men, one with a pair of almost disturbingly green eyes set deep within a face of tousled looking skin, and the other with skin so black that in certain lights it appeared blue, sat on an inexplicable outcrop of concrete – it was not a step, or a raised surface on which anything was meant to stand, it was not, ostensibly, for sitting on, it was just there, like a skin tag on the building’s façade. The two men spoke to one another in that easy, unsentimental, weary-happy way that men who have known each other since before either of them really existed, do. They talked of mutual friends, a slight, instinctual defensiveness arising in the voice of either man, when the mutual friend in question was known to be better friends of one than the other. The black man held in his hand a rolled up newspaper which he thrust, swept and whipped around in space while he spoke, as if directing some unseen orchestra in the symphony of his thoughts. The green eyed man was more physically sedate, though no less expressive; each of his words sounding as though it had been dragged across battlefields and over jagged mountains before being released into the air. The two men were watched by a police officer who was sitting in the passenger seat of a patrol vehicle parked across the street. Although he watched the men, he did so more out of a desire to be seen to be watching two men who by his judgement, deserved to feel watched, rather than out of any particular suspicion he held with regard to their current behaviour; as a result, he felt irritated that they had not noticed him, and so turned back to the comic he was reading – held below the level of the patrol car’s window and wearing a studied expression that he hoped might lead observers to believe that he was poring over important notes. The two men, both weary veterans of the life-long police vs. poor man game, had of course noticed the police car – they’d have noticed if it had been an undercover vehicle, let alone a fully decaled cruiser - but they knew better than to make any gesture which might allow it’s inhabitant to become aware, that they were aware of his presence. It was this kind of wisdom that had seen both men, who did occasionally dip their toes into the fast stream of illicit affairs, thus far avoid ever being incarcerated. As the green eyed man said it best, ‘they be playin’ checkers, I’m playin’ chess’.
The policeman’s partner, the car’s driver, was inside the building nearest the car. He was questioning an ancient woman on the whereabouts of her allegedly criminal grandson who they had been told, sometimes stayed there. The woman spoke very little English but managed to convey that she did not know where her grandson was and the officer believed her. He felt, in truth that he was wasting his time, but he stayed for a few minutes beyond the point at which he had decided this, to stare at the contents of her tiny, one room apartment. There must have been twenty chairs of various descriptions, big soft armchairs, chrome breakfast bar stools, straight backed wooden school chairs, ornate, velvet covered thrones, a green canvas camping chair – one of those that folds away flat, an rotatable office chair, a sofa, a three legged milking school, a battered chaise lounge…All of these objects were crammed into the two thirds of the apartment which comprised the living area, the remaining third contained a basic kitchen in which there stood a narrow legged table at the centre, covered by a vinyl table cloth. The walls of the apartment were a pale yellow and through the only window, above the sink, could be seen nothing but the red brick building which stood closely behind this one. The officer wondered where the old woman slept. She noticed him staring at the room of chairs but had no intention of explaining to the officer, why it was that she kept so many; she mistrusted the police and wanted the man out of her house. Her grandson was becoming increasingly uncomfortable in his hiding place. As he lay, still as a photograph, face and body pressed tightly against the gauze-like fabric which was stretched across the underside of the chaise lounge, he imagined himself as a fallen trapeze artist caught by the safety net. It was hard to breathe, the piece of furniture smelled like rope. Last night – black room, cracked bulb hissing – joint smoke a cresting wave as the green turned brake-light red – driving fast, curling a blind bend; she slid across the back seat like the cd’s on the dash. Later, he slowed down; walls of sand fell inward on a pool, they sailed gently across the ocean city as it grew from the mist. (Drifting now, too high – nothing to be understood to be dwelt upon to be feared) The gearstick felt like a pool ball in his palm and then it was daybreak, death slipped briefly over every surface – she asked him to take her home and so for whatever reason, he did.
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