short seconds of time travel. I actually conferred with him on this and he said that he thought that yes that might just about do it, though he couldn’t be certain, after all it was difficult to be certain about these things. Incidentally, what do you think of this? I asked him, holding out my hand, slightly cupped.
Nice, he said. Where did you get it?
It was a present.
Nice present. Those are hard to come by. Interested in parting with it?
Nope.
I’ll give you 200.
Nope. Etc.
Or actually, more accurately, at the end what I thought of was calling her, which is what I did, you already know.
Hello.
Hello.
Suddenly he was standing right behind me.
I’m going to hit you now, he said.
And he did.
In one of my dreams I sprout wings, glorious wings. And I wait for them to fly. And they don’t.
They climb. Up tall buildings.
Dreadful heights.
Prehensile wings.
Always at some unexpected point in these dreams my head, which seems only ever capable of lolling, hits against a projecting cornice.
Whunk!
At this point in the dream a separation occurs and I watch myself being dragged by the wings up and up.
She had added animals in cages to her shelves. It took me a moment to realize that someone else must have done this while we were on our trip. There were birds and rodents and a monkey and some kind of a cat.
It looked like a cat.
Also she had added, although it could not, almost, have been possible, more shelves.
There were splotches of bright violet on a few of the shelves. I cannot, I don’t believe I’ve yet mentioned, tolerate bright violet. There was a bit of bright violet on the hole puncher. The monkey had a bright violet hand. I registered this part about the color, it now seems to me, but I have already spoken to you about overlay, at precisely the same time that I began to smell cigar smoke.
Hello, I said. Boss, I said.
The only response I got was stutter.
Then, however, began the Q & A, and I can tell you that in her part of this exercise my boss was quite fluent, and that it was I who seemed to stutter.
She asked, I answered. Actually, I also asked, but she did not answer.
This, in its way, was another kind of relationship, everything seemed to be about some kind of relationship. For example, one of the questions I was asking was, where is she?
The conflated smells of onions and of some kind of meat and of stewed apples and of the animals and of cigar smoke and of, after a few minutes, singed hair and singed flesh is not a good one.
I am, pardon me, I repeated, telling you the truth, I suggested, all truth etc., please please please, although I definitely did not suggest this in so many words.
The singed hair and the singed flesh part was about this: each time I answered I got burned on the back of the neck with the cigar. It was the tall, thin woman who would take the cigar, apparently, from my boss and place it against my neck.
I think that each time it was the tall, thin woman.
But it was impossible to be sure.
Those are just kisses, the boss would say, stuttering on the kisses part, so that it seemed to me, each time she never quite finished saying it, that I had received several kisses instead of just the one.
Once, I went to a circus, the clowns and animals kind.
Once I say, but this was not really all that long ago. It was a small circus just outside a city or, rather, outside the old borders of the city, when the city had ended, or had had an end, and then there had been some area, then more area and who knows what, the maps went blank, before you reached another city or the sea, but what we are talking about here was inside the city, as the city, is what I mean, had been extended into the area. I had stumbled upon the circus by accident as I was following someone, and when I had finished following that someone, I went back to it, bought a ticket, and went in. Inside the orange and ochre tent it was all bright lights and flashes and drums and choreographed roars and clowns
Nice, he said. Where did you get it?
It was a present.
Nice present. Those are hard to come by. Interested in parting with it?
Nope.
I’ll give you 200.
Nope. Etc.
Or actually, more accurately, at the end what I thought of was calling her, which is what I did, you already know.
Hello.
Hello.
Suddenly he was standing right behind me.
I’m going to hit you now, he said.
And he did.
In one of my dreams I sprout wings, glorious wings. And I wait for them to fly. And they don’t.
They climb. Up tall buildings.
Dreadful heights.
Prehensile wings.
Always at some unexpected point in these dreams my head, which seems only ever capable of lolling, hits against a projecting cornice.
Whunk!
At this point in the dream a separation occurs and I watch myself being dragged by the wings up and up.
She had added animals in cages to her shelves. It took me a moment to realize that someone else must have done this while we were on our trip. There were birds and rodents and a monkey and some kind of a cat.
It looked like a cat.
Also she had added, although it could not, almost, have been possible, more shelves.
There were splotches of bright violet on a few of the shelves. I cannot, I don’t believe I’ve yet mentioned, tolerate bright violet. There was a bit of bright violet on the hole puncher. The monkey had a bright violet hand. I registered this part about the color, it now seems to me, but I have already spoken to you about overlay, at precisely the same time that I began to smell cigar smoke.
Hello, I said. Boss, I said.
The only response I got was stutter.
Then, however, began the Q & A, and I can tell you that in her part of this exercise my boss was quite fluent, and that it was I who seemed to stutter.
She asked, I answered. Actually, I also asked, but she did not answer.
This, in its way, was another kind of relationship, everything seemed to be about some kind of relationship. For example, one of the questions I was asking was, where is she?
The conflated smells of onions and of some kind of meat and of stewed apples and of the animals and of cigar smoke and of, after a few minutes, singed hair and singed flesh is not a good one.
I am, pardon me, I repeated, telling you the truth, I suggested, all truth etc., please please please, although I definitely did not suggest this in so many words.
The singed hair and the singed flesh part was about this: each time I answered I got burned on the back of the neck with the cigar. It was the tall, thin woman who would take the cigar, apparently, from my boss and place it against my neck.
I think that each time it was the tall, thin woman.
But it was impossible to be sure.
Those are just kisses, the boss would say, stuttering on the kisses part, so that it seemed to me, each time she never quite finished saying it, that I had received several kisses instead of just the one.
Once, I went to a circus, the clowns and animals kind.
Once I say, but this was not really all that long ago. It was a small circus just outside a city or, rather, outside the old borders of the city, when the city had ended, or had had an end, and then there had been some area, then more area and who knows what, the maps went blank, before you reached another city or the sea, but what we are talking about here was inside the city, as the city, is what I mean, had been extended into the area. I had stumbled upon the circus by accident as I was following someone, and when I had finished following that someone, I went back to it, bought a ticket, and went in. Inside the orange and ochre tent it was all bright lights and flashes and drums and choreographed roars and clowns
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