so thick he didn’t know if he would be able to find his way back if he let go. His fingers were numb. The flecks of paint marking the tree started wriggling into the wood like maggots. They burned from inside, spreading to other trees.
“Louanne,” he whispered. “Charlie?” He listened hard, trying to hold his own breath. He felt as if something was walking with him, that if he put his hand out, he would touch its shoulder. He thought about all the things in his toolbox in the back of his truck that he could use as a weapon.
He worked his way around to the front, where the noise was coming from. The pale streamers of the headlights lit up swirls and ripples of bark, and a trembling flank, brown fur with white spots.
He didn’t think Lou was coming. He thought maybe she had turned into that vicious little cat, and carried Charlie away by the scruff of his neck.
The deer raised its head and looked at him with black eyes.
“It’s all right,” he said, kneeling down, putting his hand on the animal’s warm neck. He could feel the life and strength of it under his palm. It panicked at his touch, kicking out, trying to get to its feet. But there was too much wreckage inside.
He felt like he was falling into its eyes. There were doors opening in the trees all around him, a door swinging open in his head.
Not yours, he thought. Nothing’s yours.
“It’s all right,” he said again, stroking the animal’s neck. It shivered at his touch, but it didn’t try to kick again. He didn’t know why, but he was crying again. Fat tears slid down the side of his nose and onto its hide.
“I know how to do this.”
I dreamed I was a dream of a dream.
Detroit Diamonds
The window of Rocket Coffee gives Jonno the perfect view of the hollow shell of Michigan Central Station. The Acropolis of Detroit. Some genius suggested preserving the iconic ruins. That’s what everyone’s here for, anyway. To gawp at the broken buildings, take their portraits. The only difference between the hipsters breaking into abandoned buildings here and the middle-aged tourists in socks and sandals in the Colosseum is that the former use more filters on their photographs and the latter have audio guides. Not a bad idea, actually. He could do that—write audio tours. The problem, he thinks, is not the obsession with ruin porn, it’s that everyone is trying to figure out what it all means . It’s the human condition, obsessively reading too much into things.
Like the fact that she is forty-six minutes late. And that’s thirty-one minutes longer than you should be expected to wait for any girl, unless she’s a certified supermodel or the producer on the biopic of your awesome life, according to “10 Rules for the New Gentleman’s Guide to Dating” he churned out for some shitty men’s site last year. It’s all bait to pull in the likes. But eyeballs are more fickle than sharks, and the economy is still in the gutter, and he should be writing a post-postmodern Moby-Dick, not trying to come up with smarmy listicles faster than everyone else. But try getting paid for that .
Oh, he’s been published in obscure literary magazines with a subscriber base of eight, not including the publisher’s mother, or the complimentary contributor copies. All the wannabe writers desperately reading each other’s stories, as if they could generate enough energy in a magnetic feedback loop that it would draw some of those damn eyeballs over here. But it’s all shit. Even his stuff. It’s only because he has realized that she’s not coming that he can even consider this. Because this is such a disaster, it mitigates his Total Failure As A Writer.
She’s not coming.
The despair cuts through the caffeine poisoning. He’s already had three cups of coffee, at first because he felt smug, sitting in the window bar, waiting for the hot DJ girl. That was before the Great Wake-Up Call, and then he lost his place when he went back for the third flat white, and
“Louanne,” he whispered. “Charlie?” He listened hard, trying to hold his own breath. He felt as if something was walking with him, that if he put his hand out, he would touch its shoulder. He thought about all the things in his toolbox in the back of his truck that he could use as a weapon.
He worked his way around to the front, where the noise was coming from. The pale streamers of the headlights lit up swirls and ripples of bark, and a trembling flank, brown fur with white spots.
He didn’t think Lou was coming. He thought maybe she had turned into that vicious little cat, and carried Charlie away by the scruff of his neck.
The deer raised its head and looked at him with black eyes.
“It’s all right,” he said, kneeling down, putting his hand on the animal’s warm neck. He could feel the life and strength of it under his palm. It panicked at his touch, kicking out, trying to get to its feet. But there was too much wreckage inside.
He felt like he was falling into its eyes. There were doors opening in the trees all around him, a door swinging open in his head.
Not yours, he thought. Nothing’s yours.
“It’s all right,” he said again, stroking the animal’s neck. It shivered at his touch, but it didn’t try to kick again. He didn’t know why, but he was crying again. Fat tears slid down the side of his nose and onto its hide.
“I know how to do this.”
I dreamed I was a dream of a dream.
Detroit Diamonds
The window of Rocket Coffee gives Jonno the perfect view of the hollow shell of Michigan Central Station. The Acropolis of Detroit. Some genius suggested preserving the iconic ruins. That’s what everyone’s here for, anyway. To gawp at the broken buildings, take their portraits. The only difference between the hipsters breaking into abandoned buildings here and the middle-aged tourists in socks and sandals in the Colosseum is that the former use more filters on their photographs and the latter have audio guides. Not a bad idea, actually. He could do that—write audio tours. The problem, he thinks, is not the obsession with ruin porn, it’s that everyone is trying to figure out what it all means . It’s the human condition, obsessively reading too much into things.
Like the fact that she is forty-six minutes late. And that’s thirty-one minutes longer than you should be expected to wait for any girl, unless she’s a certified supermodel or the producer on the biopic of your awesome life, according to “10 Rules for the New Gentleman’s Guide to Dating” he churned out for some shitty men’s site last year. It’s all bait to pull in the likes. But eyeballs are more fickle than sharks, and the economy is still in the gutter, and he should be writing a post-postmodern Moby-Dick, not trying to come up with smarmy listicles faster than everyone else. But try getting paid for that .
Oh, he’s been published in obscure literary magazines with a subscriber base of eight, not including the publisher’s mother, or the complimentary contributor copies. All the wannabe writers desperately reading each other’s stories, as if they could generate enough energy in a magnetic feedback loop that it would draw some of those damn eyeballs over here. But it’s all shit. Even his stuff. It’s only because he has realized that she’s not coming that he can even consider this. Because this is such a disaster, it mitigates his Total Failure As A Writer.
She’s not coming.
The despair cuts through the caffeine poisoning. He’s already had three cups of coffee, at first because he felt smug, sitting in the window bar, waiting for the hot DJ girl. That was before the Great Wake-Up Call, and then he lost his place when he went back for the third flat white, and
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