Cracked Steps

Yoão met up with Charlie at the ballgame and they met Ingrid (Joanna). They hung out together in the peaceful times, and, innocently, Yoão fell in love with Joanna, and Charlie had to watch that shit. So they walked, no, let's be clear, they strolled down the street: they saw some blonde skinny ostrich of a lady walk by wearing one of those flat shiny fabric coats in old-person beige, and they overheard: "Yoaoh, Clement man, you still high?"

How can they serve that stuff on the street isn't it illegal to sell - wait, it's not really liquor it's just those pourer caps on some working-class, ethnic juices. We waited to cross the street because a car got stranded in the intersection but some bright light with flattened black hair and a blue blouse decided to scamper across and fuck the whole scene up, because then the floodgates opened and the car actually got stranded and all the way up the bridge honks reverberated and shook the girders as the afternoon sun split, centered, and eclipsed the massive rigid structure. Her whole body seemed flat now like a blue cracker, she couldn't be less of a Cracker but in terms of two-dimensionality, let's go with "cracker."

So the yesmen followed the leader and the leader had money on his mind. They could probably take a shortcut but let's not tell them about it - it distracts from the point of the story, which is that Charlie fell in love with Joanna but Yoão did too - only Yoão was more forward about it. And while Joanna wasn't exactly available, the advantage on this one had to go to Yoão, because his desire had contaminated his body language and released all kinds of mammalian particles into the afternoon air and maybe everyone got a whiff.

Maybe the blonde starlet on the billboard with her legs spread open caught a little whiff, or maybe some yesmen thought about the shortcut for a second. Either way the gasses found their way to Joanna from Yoão, like pollen finds its way from stamen to pistil or whatever. So while all this stuff was swirling around, a train emerged from the tunnel and lumbered over the bridge, and at the same time the girl wearing blue caught up with the leader and his yesmen and she jumped up and gave him a smootch. So the yesmen said something to each other along the lines of, "yeah..."

When Charlie got home it was Night. He went to his room and turned everything off and realized that he felt a little dirty. The sheets were just washed, he thought, so he went to the washroom and splashed some water on his face and rubbed some soap on his hands and gave each side a thorough once-over. He kept thinking about the sheets and how clean they were. The coarse city kept at its howling, and the bridge girders shuddered as cars passed over beam intersections. We closed the door to his room and felt much better. He was ready to retire.

Yoão and Joanna went to Joanna’s together, they exchanged smiles over a conversation and a sleeve of crackers and Yoão even invented a game where he would play a ringtone on his phone and say, "guess" and she would curtsy her perfect little face (in profile) over to the speaker and shout the name of the song with a big smile. This went on until Yoão ran out of songs, he played every song he had except the song he used for when his old girlfriend would call. Yoão was one of those guys who came out of womb on a sunny day.

"Tomorrow morning, everything will be different."

An arrestingly attractive woman dressed in a silver suit and a light purple blouse flicked her tall black sunglasses down onto her eyes. We never got a look at her eyes but if we had to guess, they shone. Her dark skin precluded her from many conversations, and that really got us thinking. "Well, does it?"

"Once he passes you, I want you to get ready for the next guy aight? You put your hand under your shirt and hold the handle of the gun, show him that you for real. The man walked innocently by the kid and the kid showed him his gun. The man stopped in his tracks and stammered backwards, his life flashing before his eyes, his organs collapsing within; his vocal chords scrambling around trying not to be fried by the nervous frenzy his brain had showered upon them. The kid laughed and the guy played it off like there weren't that many feces in his pinstriped pants. The guy turned away and started taking longer strides towards his front door. He saw two men strolling towards him across the street and he looked to their faces attempting to use them as rear-view mirrors.

"No, no. Back...then...things like that...didn't...."

All these people think the same thing when they walk into a fast food place, am I going to go all out or am I going to just put it off until the next time I go all out. The dark-skinned girl in the silver suit thought something along the lines of, "chicken $6.49 that's a little steep for fake chicken." I want to emphasize something - she is the be all and end all. She makes Joanna look like Charlie's trembling heart.

The clean man climbed into his clean bed and the moon shone through his light curtains and illuminated the nighttime and the bedroom with shadows and a wise white light. He spread his legs out to the sides and folded his hands on his waist as he lay on his back. He thought about death. He thought about how everyone's plans, especially Yoão's, could be brought to a grinding halt if any of the universe's fluctuations left him out of the Mission. He could be murdered in an alley, for instance, or he could develop melanoma. His parents could die or there could be a natural disaster. A train could derail or he could reverse over a little kid with his Audi. Anything could cut short his life and he doesn't even have a will or a note, all that would be left of him would be varyingly intense (mostly) fond memories by the people he interacted with while he was alive, or rather, while Yoão was alive because Charlie was really pondering his friend’s death, not his own. Well, in terms of carpe diem, he thought of himself, in terms of "reasons and treasons" he thought of Yoão.

Through it all he thought of Joanna. In conversation, in bed, in marriage, in parenting, in old age, at the wake, standing over each other's corpse, saying "thank you for coming." Maybe they'd die together in a car filled with CO - wills on the kitchen table and suicide notes in the mail.

Yoão and Joanna didn't do anything, so he walked home, and Joanna thought about Charlie. Joanna thought of Charlie, "Why does he seem so weak?" She thought of the pyramids and the heavy white marble stones. She thought that with patience, she could extricate herself from Yoão and Charlie, and maybe move to California - clean slate, men with some well-directed testosterone, not to mention the weather.

"Squint a little harder, maybe then you'll see how selfless I am."

He sat there thinking about Joanna. The wind swept on inaudibly - a comment on Charlie's thoughts. The darkness you know? All that solitude before bed with the pressure points caused by metal springs can’t be good for the heart. How can "Gold" be the middle, shouldn't it be the top? Yoão had struggled to compose a very serious e-mail message to Joanna, something similar to: "Hey, tonight was really great. I really enjoy spending time with you. I hope we can hang out together again sometime soon." 23 words, 23 minutes. The "I hope" construction is essentially an expression of self-doubt, but in this context, it is the least presumptuous phrase he used - an effective counterweight, a charming touch. She removed one of those black hair ties from her perfect ponytail and went to bed. She hadn’t washed off all the makeup around her eyes.

Charlie rose. He put on some music. “Eight Miles High,” The Byrds – Fillmore East, New York, NY, 1971. He leaned out his apartment window and looked down at the street. He saw an engraving on the lamppost. It was white. In the shower he remembered one of his dreams from the previous night. His mouth was open and he was rocking downward, sort of shaking his thighs rolling his eyes back a little…getting lower as the bassist raised his hand higher.

Joanna had gotten up earlier and passed an enormous mannequin in a store window. She had to do some errands. “He’s got it coming to him,” some construction guy said as he motioned with his hands. “Well, Bill told me I had to stay here but he didn’t say nothin’ to Jim so I don’t know why he’s still here.” “I am listening.” “Gimme a scoop of mango and a scoop of cherry,” a hard man asked the ice cart guy frozen in a permanent squint.

Yoao met Charlie at the park around 11:30, “I went home with Joanna last night.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah man, I don’t know she’s all right.” They walked to a bench, Charlie looked up at the magazine store. He wondered where they manufactured the white letters above the storefront. “She’s actually really nice C.” “Definitely.” “Yeah we hung out for a while last night, just talking you know?” “Yeah.” Charlie looked down at the ground and saw an ant that didn’t have much longer to live. “But I think I’m over it dude, she’s no big deal.” “What’s it?” Charlie squeezed the ant’s insides out with his foot. “I don’t know, yesterday I kind of had a thing for Joanna.” “Really?”