Caleb Orion

You come in the night and I wake up for a second and I can hear you breathing as you stand in the doorway and place your hand against the door frame and the creaking of the floor wakes me up a second time as you step from the kitchen into the entry to leave. As the door slams I pass out again and in the morning the envelope I left on the coffee table is gone and the water has dried and everything has been put back in its place, as if last night never happened. Never happened.

Oh, it happened. It happened because your fingerprints were on the door frame, smudges against the dark polish.

I walk to a small shop down the street and buy myself a pack of rolls and a magazine. When I get home I lay on the couch and fall asleep.

You once told me that when you were six you held a stranger’s hand in the street, because for a moment his khakis looked the same as your fathers. That each man was simply a pair of pants, and you would wander around, half expecting your father at every corner.
And on the sofa while I held your memory in my arms, I recalled the little things. I remembered the way you’d hold your glass when you took a drink.

When I wake up I am on a bus and it’s arriving in Chicago and I can feel the wind already, beating against me, and even though I don’t know if that’s just a saying, if it’s just called the Windy City or if it really is the windiest place in the world, I know that my perception is controlled. I’d like to walk down Michigan Avenue. I’d like to see the great lakes. I’d like to burn burn burn this city down and build it back up, maybe your bones would reveal themselves in the ash. Then I walk and walk and all night I’m trudging down side streets and I wear baggy clothes and my hair is greasy and I hope to God that I don’t attract unsavory attention.
In the envelope on the coffee table there was something, and I don’t think I’ll find anything in Chicago because I don’t know where to look and it’s a huge city. But I find a small cafe that next morning and somehow I run into you.
It’s not a coincidence. I think you’re following me. I know I’m trying to follow you.

And you sit down across from me and you have a cup of coffee in your hand and I don’t look up because I’m scared to see what’s in your eyes. And you touch my hand and I almost faint I’m so numb.
“Why don’t you go home?” you say, and I can’t respond because my throat is dry or not dry but it hurts to sing.
“I don’t have anything for you,” you say, and I want to know what’s in the letter. What did that man want? What are you doing in Chicago?
“I…” and then when I look up you’ve gotten up from your chair and you’re headed to the door and I want to stand up and catch you and stop you and beg you to stay, to go home with me, take the bus, buy a ticket.
But then you stop at the door and you turn around and I’m looking in your eyes and I’m so scared. You come back and you take my hand.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” you say. We go back to your hotel and in the shower we fuck, and then after the shower we make love. And between those two moments I break down and pull my bones back together again.
And even though I’m clean you say, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

And I know exactly what you mean.

It seems like everything makes me cry these days.
I’ll be sitting on the couch in our home, staring off into space, not watching the television but it’s on. I’ll hear a few words. Dead animals or cancer patients or womens rights or fires. I don’t even know how it sets me off anymore. But it all relates to you, somehow, all of this. Every teardrop is you.
Every clenched stomach, every day gone uneaten, every tiny granule of tooth scraped off in the anxious dark.
I haven’t cried this hard since you first left. Since you disappeared out of my life. I haven’t cried this hard since I was born. I’ve never cried this hard. Nobody has.
And when I’m not crying, or sleeping (when that happens), or working, or eating (when that happens), I’m stone and cold. I spend every open moment just sitting there. Just dying. I can feel my life seeping from me and out of my pores. I don’t need the air conditioner anymore. It’s all just cold already.

And I’m in one of those moods.
And I have my phone off.
And I sit on the couch with the television on.
When the door makes sound.

At first there’s no response in my mind. I sit slouched against the sofa, half pretending I don’t hear it, half not hearing it at all. I stand up.
Then I open the door and there’s a man with a black hat on, big wide black hat and he’s going to step inside, at least he looks like he’s going to. I don’t know what he’s doing there but I’ve been sitting on the couch in my half-awake coma for so long now that I don’t blink, and he just stands there, and neither of us speaks a word for what seems like an eternity.
Then he says, “Hi.”
What is he doing here?
“I’m looking for Elias?” He looks behind me into the house.
You left so long ago, and I don’t know where you are. But what is this man doing here? Looking for you?
“I need to see him about… business.”
What sort of business is the man in, what is Elias involved in? I try to remember what it was you did, and I can’t. Maybe I never knew. Maybe I did know, but I can’t recall because all I can think about is maybe you’re dead.
“If you see him give him this.”

I put the envelope the man gave me on the table and sit back down. I turn off the television, and in the dark while my eyes are still adjusting I think I see your ghost shimmering through the room to the kitchen. And I think you’re going to get a sandwich and I almost ask you to get me one, but I know that ghost isn’t real because my eyes finally adjust and the shadows that creep along the wall are as normal and natural as the envelope on the table.
And then I grab the envelope and I am about to tear it open but instead I swipe my hand across the surface of the table and knock everything off it. The glass of water I wasn’t drinking, the vase of dried flowers, the box of weed and the stack of magazines. The carpet quickly darkens in one big spot and I drop the envelope onto the empty table and turn to the bedroom.

For three nights afterwards I dream you’re in Chicago.

I had that dream again, like every time, the one where I’m sitting on the edge of my bed and my dad comes in and he’s holding the beer bottle in his hand and I can tell he’s high because he’s sort of looking through me and at me at the same time. And my dad sits down next to me and puts his arm around me and I feel weird about it all and I don’t know why, probably because he’s drunk, and maybe because he’s high, and maybe because I know what he’s here about and even though it’s a dream and I can’t read the clock and I could take control and leave I stay, because it’s not really a dream but a memory and I let myself relive it every night.
And my dad tells me he’s been in the kitchen a hundred times, pacing around looking through the cupboards and then he asks me how school’s going, and I shift my position and he stops talking for a while. Just sits there and looks down at the floor, forming the words already in his head.
And I remember that during all of this I was thinking about my best friend Kate, and then about boys, and those two thoughts always used to go hand-in-hand, but when I have the dream now I don’t think about boys, I think about you. You’re boys to me, and I sit next to my dad and I want to tell him how I met this wonderful boy and I want to tell him about you but that’s always around the point when my dad starts saying how he’s moving out and I’ll be living with him on the weekends but it’ll be in another city. He starts to cry so I sit there uncomfortable. I’ll cry later on the phone when I’m talking to Kate, perhaps when I realize what another city is, probably when I realize what that means to be with you, but for now I don’t know how to respond. Does that mean they’re getting a divorce?

Then the next day, or maybe in the dream I walk out of my room, there’s boxes all over the place and I remember that big mouth bass with the songs and it’s packed away, and suddenly I miss that bass even though I hated it back then.
My dad is loading his car in silence, putting each box in and his back hurts because he cringes every time he picks up a box and he cringes again when he puts it down. I can also tell because only a few boxes into loading his car he lights up a joint and starts to puff away at it, inhaling and pretending I’m not at the window peering out at him.

When he rolls from the curb and disappears down the street, I open the door to my room and walk downstairs. There’s an old cribbage board sitting on the table, the hands laying face up, and I can count the cards. Fifteen-two, Fifteen-four, and a pair for six.
This part never happened. I don’t know why it’s there. And it’s always there.
Then my mother walks in and the pegs begin to wind quickly along the board, leapfrogging around the bends like rubber-banded race cars. Moving by themselves — and the green overtakes the blue overtakes the brown, but falls back again as blue comes in with a good crib — cards flipping around the table.
When the cards stop, my mother looks up from the table and looks me in the eyes.

And just like God. And just like my father. She reaches over for me and I put myself in her arms and hold her close as she cries.

The first time I tried to kill myself, I met with God.
He sat on a throne on top of a few layers of clouds and dust and I imagine it was the same stuff he made me and you out of, because he’d sometimes twirl his hand through it and it’d glow colors like it was made of something besides water vapor.
And I stood in front of God and he looked down at me and started to ask me questions.
“Why did you try to kill yourself?” He asked. Isn’t God supposed to be omniscient? He should know already.
“It’s a stipulation of your free will,” was his response. Apparently, when we’re free, he loses the ability to see us. That explains why it’s so easy for the devil.

He asked me why again, and I didn’t quite have a real answer. I mean, he gave me a lot. Family, lovers, friends, pets, money. But hey, not everything buys happiness.
So I stood there staring at God. I stood there looking around the place where God lived. His bed looked pretty comfortable. Did he eat well?
“Have you been having complications with the lovers I gave you?”
I thought about you, because that’s where I go when I hear the L-word. No, I suppose not. There has been nothing between us that I would say makes me sad. Perhaps dissatisfied, but not unhappy.
“What about your family, are they problematic?”
I thought it all through, each member, extended and close, that I knew. Nothing came to mind. The odd thing about being around God is there’s something about him that makes your memory better.
“And your friends, aren’t they helpful?”
Yeah, they’ve pulled me out of tight spots before. I try to return the favor, but I’m not very good at it.
No, I don’t know why, God. I don’t know why I took a pair of scissors from the kitchen and cut all my hair into disgusting shreds. I don’t know why I gripped a bottle of prescription pills like it was the only thing keeping me from being swept off a waterfall. I don’t know why I counted out each pill, organized into groups of threes, and took each one. Three by three by three, swallowing the contents and hoping the chemicals leeched into my body before my stomach turned.

And God sighed and he stood up from his throne. He walked over to where I was standing in the middle of the room and took me in his arms. I could feel something wet against my cheek and I realized he was crying, and I tried to cry with him, but I couldn’t. I just sat there, a little bit uncomfortable, while he held me.
Eventually he pulled away and an adviser came over.
“Don’t come back,” God said to me, “I don’t want to have to explain this to Jesus.”
Right, because God’s a comedian.

When I woke up, my mother was stroking my hair and I was laying in a hospital bed. I could hear the beeps and whir of machines keeping me alive. You never visited me in the hospital, but you were at home when I got out.

You stopped by this morning. I know you did because the label was peeled off the milk, and I found it in the trash with your fingernail markings all over it.
And when I’m off to work, I come home and the pillow is flipped. I know you sleep there, and I keep it flipped when I go to bed at night and smell you, that last dying hint of musk.
And you left your palm print against the refrigerator door, as you leaned against it to open the trash compactor.
I know you were here this morning while I slept, and when I stalked from the living room into the kitchen and back through the bedroom, I could feel your ghost drifting through me.
And I’m also in love with you.

This afternoon I walked from the house to the park. Last time I talked to you about it you said it was such a long walk that you didn’t think I could do it. I’ve never been very active, but I wish you had more faith in me. Maybe you do, and I don’t see it, perhaps it was a warning. I don’t know. I don’t know much. I don’t know. Maybe.
The walk beat me down, and when I got back I fell against the door frame and my stomach hurt, but not from walking. My stomach hurt because I miss you. You never say hello, and you never leave a note. You are just here when I am asleep, or if I am gone. I don’t call out sick or come home early for fear that you may be angry with me.

You left hair on the comb and I picked it out and set it aside in a drawer because it’s almost you. And I started brushing with your toothbrush. The bristles are harder than I like, and it makes my gums bleed a bit every time. They get sore and bleed. I get scared of my own blood when I see it, but I keep brushing because you said the hard bristles make your gums stronger. The bleeding, you say, is good. I keep brushing because I miss your teeth.

I wrote you a poem when I got home from work yesterday and it was gone from the refrigerator door when I woke up, and that’s how I know you were here.
I sent you a letter in the mail and it never came, so that’s how I know you go through the mailbox. Your bills never show up, your credit card statements never arrive, your million dollar winning envelopes stopped coming.

I still inhale.

I found the pornography you keep under the bed, and flipped through the magazines and masturbated to the photographs inside. People were touching each other in places I couldn’t reach on my own, and you loved to look at them do it. I cried when I came and I didn’t bother putting the magazine away before I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was under the covers in my bedclothes and I think you did it because the magazines all were gone. Even the one I had masturbated to was missing, and I want to find your new hiding spot. I want to see those people again, with their lips and tongues and their faces masks of pleasure, dying.

I want to see you one more time. You never show up, but you always pat me on the head while I sleep. I know because my hair used to never be matted when I woke up, it would always be everywhere.
I want to touch you one more time, and maybe do to you those things you seem to like. Maybe give you that part of me I never gave to anyone. Maybe kiss that spot on you that hasn’t ever been kissed. I’d like to do that to you, and have you do it back. Maybe you’d like it too? I don’t know. No. No nevermind, I can’t do that, you don’t want it, do you?
That’s why you hid the magazines.

I’m sorry.
I should never have gone through your stuff. It was stupid of me. I was just feeling so lonely, so fragile, so scared.
I was feeling so out of sorts. My head hasn’t been in the same place it normally is. Can you forgive me? I know I found the magazine. I know I should have left it where it was, and never touched it, never looked.
I know I should stop sleeping in your bed.
I know I shouldn’t brush my teeth with your brush or keep your hair in my drawer.
I’m so fucking sorry, it’s so fucking hard.
Where are you?
Please.
Please come back, I don’t know what to do. Don’t go.

I sometimes like to reattach the label on the milk, hoping you’ll take it off again, but you always wait until I buy a new one.

Anne gasped.
He was almost inside her and she felt a dull pain, hard throbbing like a pressure gauge too tight around her arm. In stress she felt the muscles contracting and the pressure increased. She wished he would move fast instead of slow like she had asked.
But then he was in, and he said so, but she knew.
He moved only in small prods, aware of her clenching jaw and her sharp noises and her hand pressed against his pelvis. She didn’t even realize it was there, that she was pushing him away but also letting him in.
There were motions, movements, waves and seas and tides. She felt him squeezing her arm, tighter for a second and then for even briefer it was as if his soul had disappeared. He returned and his grip released and for the first time since she had unhooked her belt she looked him in the eyes.
He forced a smile, he was scared of some accidental nature. She tried to smile back, and felt around for her underwear.
He had it in his hands the moment her fingers touched the sheets, and for the first time he knew her.
And she could feel him still, and that part of her he had touched still burned, maybe even itched, and it was uncomfortable. She rubbed herself, but it was internal.

And then it was clearer, like a solution being run through a centrifuge.
She felt his heart beating though he stood against the door jamb, pulling at the prophylactic, trying not to upend it onto her carpet.
She could smell glycerin and latex. She could smell sweat, and then behind that something sticky. Sweet. Something solid was there, obvious in its nature, a smell that held steadfast when even the tributaries of water beaded down her bare skin.
And then that night, her head in profile against the pillow, she lay awake with that thought in her head. She twisted under the covers, knots and pretzels forming around her. Her pillow held reservoir for his scent, the soap he washed with.

The next day he called her cell phone, he jumbled the words. She said sure and soon enough she was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, going ninety down a twisting forest road. The tires gripped the tarmac, and everything swayed in the turbulence they left behind.
He pulled up to a stop sign, using his left hand to shift the car, not wanting to let atoms be atoms between their palms. They were off.
The car descended into a valley, and at the bottom he turned onto a dirt road. Rocks and gravel clicked and thrummed against the bottom of the car. She could feel the large pieces striking below her feet. He drove slow around a few pot holes, taking time to make sure the ride was smooth.
And then they arrived at the lake. They were the only ones there. A rope swing hung out over a large rock. A few bottles and cans lay near a fire pit like used wet dreams. Roots curved in and out of the earth where weeds no longer grew from being trod on.
He grabbed her arm before she could run on ahead and tried to kiss her. She pulled free, and giggled towards the water. He got towels from the back seat and followed her.
The water made goose bumps on their skin.
They swam naked in the lily pads, tugging at each others limbs and holding their feet above the soggy floor. He gripped her around the stomach, feeling his fingers dip in and out of her belly button, his hand following her patterns and shapes. She swam away, enjoying the sun above and the warm pockets underneath. They could have fallen asleep forever.
Eventually they sat in his car, the doors open, their underwear too wet to wear. They didn’t speak much, but he wanted to touch her skin. He ran a hand along her leg and closed his eyes as the wind blew past them.
Then he turned the key and they left.

They went to his house, watching for figures in the dark windows before lurching into the entryway. They hung up their underwear in the sun and they made sandwiches.

He drove her home, his fingers lacing between hers. They played music loud, the windows open, dusk air flowing across their skin.
They arrived at her house, navigating the descending driveway. They got out of the car and he walked her up the steps to her door. She hugged him goodbye and he kissed her on the forehead. They held onto each other as if this was the last time they would ever be together.
And then she disappeared into her house.

On the way back to his car he stopped to pick at the rust that was forming along the wheel wells. The black paint chipped and stained his fingers.

Summer ended. Fall arrived. As fall ended, the wind picked up. Daylight grew scarce. They saw less of each other. Everything grew cold.

He leaned against a pillow with his arm around her. She leaned against him, holding one of his hands in hers. Her fingers traced the wrinkles and lines on his palm. She ran her index finger along his lifeline.
He felt the air between them, layers of molecules bricking up between the fabric of their clothes. Atomic weight. She felt him urge to free himself. She felt the urge to run away, herself.
There was a dull pain, throbbing in his stomach. There was very little excitement left in their cause. They no longer felt rebellious, and there was nothing they could die for.
He eventually pushed her off of him. She looked up in dismay.
She asked him about friends, about life, about love and future.
“There is only one thing that’s important,” he said.
There was a pause.
“What the fuck does that mean?” she asked.
“Read the title of the story,” he replied. She went back to the beginning of the short story and read it.
“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. There is absolutely no point in looping back to a title just to make some sort of statement or point. Just say, ‘Hey, at least we tried, baby, but it’s over.’ Stop being clever. Anyway, we’ve been broken up for what, half a year now? Get over it already, move on, find someone new. You couldn’t say goodbye then, when you really wanted to, but when I said it, when I put it out there that we should part ways, you fought it. It’s what you want, isn’t it? Just say it, just say it’s over.”
“Ok. It’s over. We tried, but it’s not working out.”
“Good, the door’s right over there.”

They both reached for it at the same time, and as their hands met, time stood still. He looked up at her, her dark hazel eyes, the orbs he held most dear in his heart. But she was getting worn with time. No matter how long she had lived her eyes still held a power over him. He fumbled with his words, and then pulled his hand away. She picked up the kettle and smiled. No words came out of her lips as she poured the tea into his cup. The aroma wafted up into his nostrils, a sweet scent. He had smelled nothing similar to it before, and guessed that his lips may never have tasted it either.
They sat there for a long time. Looking between themselves. There was nothing else in the world anymore, to him. The dearest young girl he had ever loved sat across from him at the table. He tried to remember what color her hair had been. Lost in the sands, like the rest of their lives, he had forgotten. But even without the color of her hair, without the deep resonance of her voice, long lost, he loved her like no other before. When she had been born, he imagined, her parents breathed in a deep sigh of awe and amazement at looking at a beauty such as hers. Even as a child, not a tear was shed, the quietest baby that ever lived.
And with that thought, she was gone. He looked down at his tea. His biscuit. A bare old man. His time had come very soon, and he could hardly wait to be with her again.
He picked up the cup and drank. And the next moment, he was with her, in a green grassy meadow, with the sun shining. And he remembered then, her hair, it had been the reddest hair he had ever seen. And he was happy once again.

A warmth curled up his arm and he first dreamt of a fire in his house. Engulfing his items of posession, eating them up in flame and licking across his walls. Laying in bed there he tried to get up and run but his feet and legs were jelly and his blankets felt as if they were made from several tons of lead.
Then he woke up and his arm was red and swollen with rash.
Boredom at the office that day set him about to looking for every paper clip hidden in his drawers. Each packet of paper that was clipped together would be stapled and reshuffled into static array. The clips themselves all crowded on the top of the desk, a riotous mass. He clipped them each together to form a boyant shape, that of a shark. With each clip he added from there, he created rows of violent teeth; then a wild eye; and then a small school of fish. The sound of feet came from the hallway outside and he swept the pieces of metal into his pen drawer and looked towards the door. The sound dissipated off in the other direction and he looked around his office once more, scanning the same humdrum he had organized many days before this one.
His arm began to itch and so he scratched it.
Lunch came and he left the gray dismay behind and headed over to a small sandwich shop down the road. His chest began to hurt and he felt out of shape. He struck himself against his chest a couple times and scratched his arm once again.

The next morning his arm had fallen off and the rash had spread across his chest and down his abdomen. He dreamt he was a soldier in the army and he had hurried across a bullet riddled battlefield towards a fallen friend. A cold wind knocked against him and he fell as well, the sky lighting up with a thousand flared rifles. His blood became ice and his body froze against the solid earth. Only his eyes could see and feel, and the stretcher that came took him to a small black bag and from there he awoke laying against his mailbox.
He went to work and with his last remaining hand he pulled out the paper clip shark he had manufactured. Its mouth turned up in a grin when he placed it on the table, and the fish he had constructed had gone missing. Using the last remaining paper clips from the day before, he made two new fish and placed them next to the shark.
A sharp knock came on the door and he swept the constructions back into his pen drawer. He called out to the knock, but nobody came. He called out again.
On his drive home, he spotted a crying child holding a wooden mule.

By sun up he found himself frail and confused. His back hurt and he had to work to get out of the bed. The rash had disappeared from his body and had moved to his knees. They looked spotty and red, and the bones were sunken in as if in juxtaposition of his jutting form. His dream was of a classical orchestra, and he was the conductor. Instead of music, each instrument was silent. He waved his arms in a futile attempt to coerce the pit to play, but they did nothing. A faceless man in the front row started clapping and then the congregation erupted.
At work, he picked what was left of the shark out of the drawer. A paperclip object had bitten it in half. He didn’t recognize the new object, only knew that it was.

The next morning he did not awake, but only dreamt of the cornfields and rice paddies. He dreamt of his search, and of dying before it was over. In every dream after that, he kept a close eye on his pocket watch, always waiting for the time that the pilot would fly over looking for any sign of life. And every time the plane came, his flint would not spark and his tinder would not light. So the plane kept flying low and off to the next paddy, leaving him there alone with a small wooden mule to carry his weight.