Nine Hundred Twenty-Five

heliosphere? Voyeurs? Narrators? Transdimensional omniminds? I realized, the only limitation to my information gathering activities was my lack of awareness of the places I haven't been looking. So I've been looking for solutions, and, you know, I think I've found them. As one who's been spying on billions of dimensions, I can see what works and what doesn't. Every alternative is not as good as the best choice. With wisdom gained from reading the texts of everywhere and the calendars of everywhen, the faults in everything and the flaws in everybody, and the other stuff that's relevant next to the

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of their atoms yanked apart and scattered? Suppose they slipped into a dreamscape. How accessible those are varies tremendously. Most earth-based originals are confined to a narrow range, but it's not like I know precisely how many range further afield or how far that is or in what field. My own range is limited by something, I know. By what? That, I don't know. Must the realms into which I peer all be friendly to my kind? I thought so at first. But then I started to wonder. What is my kind? Icy chunks of rock drifting through the

Thousand: Nine Hundred Twenty-Three

by a few months and the tired attendant sodas and the stacks of plastic cups upside down? Not even a leprechaun. You'd think there'd be a leprechaun somewhere. Tossed up among the tide wrack. Not that I've looked everywhere. But how could you? You look in a few familiar places because they've been productive, they've rewarded your attention. You know the land. But whatever. Find them or not, what's it matter? Is what happens next vital information? What will be will be, regardless of what I think about it. Suppose they were obliterated? Dropped into an antithetical universe, the quarks

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the one that wanders nervously through the Valley of Death, the one fourth from the left that passes under the derelict railway bridge. Bernie, where are you? I am switching channels. I don't see him in the early solar system. Back then there were many small worlds of ice and iron. I feel at home. But I search on. At the end of the world snack bar two young women nurse watery yellow glasses of lemonade. But I don't see Bernie. In the meeting room with the dusty tables and unopened tortilla chip bags which have exceeded their expiration dates

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already were. Passing through. Maybe that's all it takes, one wave will rise and carry you over. Maybe you make the crossing to escape the wave because, really, being run over by a wave could have consequences. Better to make the jump first, make the decision yourself, not kowtow to the force of no-mind, refusing to allow the way of the world be your way, your true and only way, stepping of your own volition to the other path, the one the forced marches beat into the earth, the one the gnomes paved by the patter of leathery feet

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wishes his mind was less open to kitsch. He opens his eyes. The elevator hasn't disappeared. Nor has Sir. Nor has the bent little creature who is looking up with a hungry lear. Nor has the Olmec head, although its expression does seem to be making room for a less imperious certainty over the world's turns. When another ripple hurries toward them, this one larger than any other, Bernie feels this dimension stretching out toward it, thinning, thinning and becoming permeable, as though any move any one of them made would snap them through to elsewhere. Or maybe that they

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of big-eyed kittens hung on a wall papered with blue and white stripes. A hundred crepe paper spiders skitter over webs of dental floss in a closet built solely to provide spiders corners. A monolith of blue velvet sinks into a mound of freeze-dried tears. A matching monolith knotted into itchy red macramé looms over a base of crystalline fear. Jack Lightning waves from the end of a hall of dusty mirrors. He’s holding a tourguide’s flag, which, it might be noted, matches the flag that snaps in the breeze over the boardwalk at the end of the world. Bernie

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feels his mind expand. Yes, all sorts of things fit in it all of a sudden, all sorts of things that could never have gotten in up to now have room to roam. That giant head, for instance. It’s an Olmec head. The Olmec, like the Greeks in Europe, were a foundational civilization. A thousand years after their empire was consumed by the swamps of Veracruz aspects of Olmec culture persisted in Mesoamerica among the Aztecs, among the Maya. And now, up to its lower lip in a quicksilver puddle, the Olmec head glares in consternation at the pretty paintings

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through them. Is that nausea? dizziness? or is it the world? Again a ripple rolls through, and, as the metal deforms, the little black creature slips into the elevator and crouches panting beside the dog. Is that a crack in the stone head’s brow, just under the helmet? Was it always there? Bernie holds his hand out and a new ripple bends his fingers, bends his wrist, bends his forearm. He takes a breath as it hits his face. What does it feel like? He closes his eyes. Maybe if he’s not watching, it won’t actually feel like anything. Bernie

Thousand: Nine Hundred Seventeen

like a mole on its cheek. Silently they regard each other, giant stone head, odd black dwarf, yellow dog, and man. The sound of a great crash below is followed by a loud sizzling and crackling, the much softer sounds of bat wings continue their beating, and almost beyond hearing sonar squeaks chitter more rapidly. The stone face twitches suddenly, the upper lip rises, the nostrils flare even wider, the blank eyes bulge. The elevator’s metal screens flex, Sir expands and contracts, and when the ripple reaches Bernie he feels it in his gut. “Oh,” he wheezes. Another ripple runs

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come, a kingdom kind of come, the kind of come a body’s open to, ready to fill up with, fill to buh buh buh, to buh buh buh, to buh. Buh. BURSTING!” The creature’s head bobs side to side, while Sir maintains a cautious friendly stance, back flat, trail wagging slowly, barking. Down below the giant stumbles and looks about to topple. The Mexican head, the last of the giant’s heads, yanks its whirlwind loose and bounces upward. It hurtles toward them. Bernie’s sure they’re splinters. Instead of smashing into them, though, the head pauses to glare, the bat’s passenger

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though charred, presses against the bars; a nose as thrusting as a beak bends the mesh beyond. A sliver of white around the midnight irises flashes as the face grimaces and laughs. A pointed tongue flickers. Hands as curled as crow feet grip the bars and dance along them, clicking out a pitter-patter tune. “What’s your number, baby? A nice boy like you in a city on fire? How’d that happen? What’s say you and I take advantage of the room for some ka-boom? Raise the mushroom, baby; my mind is clouded. The war’ll be wanting the big weapon to

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the backs of the bats are passengers. A small, black creature clings to the bat’s shoulders, bird-like head swiveling in sharp jerks, a spindly arm sometimes extending to point or to gesture like a symphony conductor. The giant scoops soil and broken tile and slaps it against its torso. Pieces fall away. Bernie can’t tell whether the body itself is crumbling or if that’s just the rubble. Another whirlwind loosens itself, the bearded head wobbling. As a bat passes close by the elevator its passenger leaps, grabbing hold of the bars of the outer door. A face mostly black, as

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the whirlwinds breaks free of the torso and vacuums up several bats, which rotate in a black scramble. The bombing goes on. Sucking up the yellowish fumes, the whirlwinds take on an oddly solid look. He’s not falling, Bernie realizes, despite the cant of the elevator. The elevator has its own gravity, maybe? Could it, maybe, have a force field, too? He unclenches a little. How many bats are there? Tens, probably. Hundreds? Not that many? Some of those that have dumped their cargo make wider circles, and Bernie sees more clearly what he thought were deformities or humps on

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against the rear wall of the elevator. Can’t this thing go faster? But if it’s rushing them to safety this is a weird way of doing it, for the scene below has only gotten closer and at a height, Bernie realizes, within easy reach of those flailing gloves. The elevator, or whatever it is, tips neatly forward, giving its passengers a clear view of the battle. Bernie braces against the wall, clutching at its smooth surface with desperate fingers. The giant grabs one of the bats by a wing and uses it as a club against the others. One of

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around the torso. If that torso’s big as a bus then those birds must be big as men. Not birds. Bats! And they’re dive-bombing now, letting go something they’ve tucked in their back legs, which, when it strikes the stone skin of the giant, begins smoking. Again and again the chemical bombs strike and throw up smoke. One of the gloves rushes to wipe away the stuff and itself starts to smoke. The other glove, balled into a fist, jabs at the bats, then hurls something at them. “Did it just throw a person?” Bernie backs up until he’s pressed

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Sir turns abruptly and goes to the wall beside the lever. He goes up on his hind legs, uses a forepaw to knock open a small metal door which reveals a red button. He jumps up and bumps it with his nose. A motor whirs. The room lurches and begins to rise. “Wow. This is an elevator,” Bernie says, the slope they climbed falling away below. Broken tiles heap about the visitors center, the giant groping inside with one of those floppy work gloves. Sir whuffs again, and Bernie at last sees the dark birds. They swirl of a sudden

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thinking about him? Bernie glances down at Sir. Sir is concentrating on something in the distance. “What do you see, boy? I mean, Sir?” Bernie tries to scan beyond the giant. But he. That head. The Mexican head. It. It really is looking this way, isn’t it? “Do you think it will come here?” Bernie asks. “I mean, what do we do if it does? Are we safe?” Sir begins to whuff softly, as though whatever he sees excites him. He lifts his butt from the floor, tail wagging steadily. The Mexican head bobs but its attention does not waver.

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one with its thumbs, tosses the bus lightly, catches it, tosses it, catches, tosses, catches. Finally, bored, the giant throws the bus over a shoulder and stomps up to the visitors center. One giant glove begins to tug at a corner of the roof while the other strokes the curved ceramic tiles. Each of the heads seems to be doing its own thing, and Bernie wonders that they don’t go off on their own, finished with the fiction of being attached to this body. The Mexican head is turned in his direction, Bernie realizes with some discomfort. Is it really

Thousand: Nine Hundred Seven

A hobnailed boot goes up and crashes down. The other one does the same. The great gloves swing back and forth on the ends of their crackling ropes of electric light. The stone heads rise toward the clouds, sometimes vanishing briefly into them, then dip or hover, the whirlwinds more or less visible depending on whether they have snatched bits of cloud or dust or smoke into their vortices. The giant picks up the bus, plucks the motorcycle out of the roof and throws it aside, bangs the bus nose first against the blacktop, pops the unbroken windows one by

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trying to get out of the way slips between the fingers of the glove. She’s hanging on by the glove’s middle finger. The pharaoh head is the first to lose interest, rising on the whirlwind for the longer view. The Mexican head and the bearded (Greek? Assyrian?) head pause while the woman pendulums from a finger, then they, too, turn their attention elsewhere. The glove, casually, as though throwing off a fly, flicks the finger. The woman disappears. In the twilight under the storm clouds Bernie’s lost track of her. Not that anybody could have survived such a hurling, right?

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from his fingers of that heavenly coffee. He strips off his wet shirt. The last of the heads of the giant lightning monster has come down to examine the frail human protester in its power. Bernie nods when the woman turns her attention to this scowling face. She’s waving both arms now and the three heads hover, the green glow fizzing about as though trying to highlight some sympathy in their motionless features. The other glove comes back as a fist and holds itself above the woman. As it flexes, dirt and pebbles rain down on her. She ducks and

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get a closer look. The woman in the palm of the glove wags her finger in the pharaoh’s face. She seems to be lecturing the pharaoh. The Mexican head descends to see what the delay is about. The woman ignores it, concentrating on whatever it is she’s telling the pharaoh. Bernie presses his hand to his mouth, fascinated. He giggles. “This is great,” he says. Sir looks quizzically up at him. “Check ‘em out,” Bernie continues. “Now the last head comes to join the party. Boy, he don’t look happy.” He takes a deep contented breath, inhaling the lingering fragrance

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A boot rises and drops to the earth, the vibrations knocking leaves from the trees. The glove shakes the car like a maraca, then tosses it away. The other glove, cupped, weighs something, bounces it a little. When it goes still Bernie sees the passenger from the car jump to her feet. She’s not screaming, she’s shouting. If it’s really her I’m hearing, Bernie thinks. The glove that threw aside the car balls into a fist. “No!” Bernie whispers. Then its forefinger extends, makes little circles over the woman’s head. The pharaoh head borne on its whirlwind comes down to

Thousand: Nine Hundred Two

toward the visitors’ center. And now, rising in that left glove, an upside down Honda Civic sways. The passenger door swings open. Just when it looks like it will slam shut somebody inside kicks it open again. The other glove reaches down and grabs a motorcycle. With a casual underhand the glove hurls the motorcycle in a long arc. It smashes down on a touring bus in the parking lot. The gloves give attention to the Honda, ripping away the hood, popping off wheels. Bernie sees a figure hanging out the passenger side, clinging to the safety belt, legs kicking.

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crane raised it, then just let it go. With a thunderous thud it hits the earth. The other boot goes up, swings forward, falls. Bernie feels the vibrations through the mountain. The gigantic gloves swing around, opening, closing, opening, closing. The heads swivel, each enveloped in a seething greenish glow as though it were being swarmed by fireflies, the color adding subtle mood changes to the visages. “What is it?” Bernie breathes. The dog yawns, nervous rather than bored. The left hand gloves shoots down and closes on something at the ground. Distantly, Bernie hears screams. The monster is stomping

Thousand: Nine Hundred

an expression stern as turnip. The second head wears the flaring cobra-hood headdress and jutting ceremonial beard of the pharoahs, though its brow is sleeker, jawline less prominent. There were women pharoahs, the beard having been an emblem of state rather than gender. Her expression is milder than the first head, or perhaps its mien is of a serene self-confidence. The final stone aloft on a tight whirl of wind glares out of wide eyes, its sneering lips surrounded by a choatic swirl of beard. A lightning leg raises a hobnailed boot and drops it. It’s as though a mechanical

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the ancient dumps have granted museums. Only big as a train car. Slashing out from the hips the first two lightning bolts stab down into massive hobnailed boots. The lightning bolts that writhe out from the torso’s shoulders end in gigantic gloves. And, as the torso descends, three narrow funnel clouds follow, seemingly drilling into the torso’s stump of a neck. The first head to appear at the top of one of these serpent-like whirlwinds is the sort of thing Bernie’s seen in pictures from Mexico, under a skullcap a face square and black with thick lips and broad nose,

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Sirs backs up as Bernie pulls the lever down. A mesh screen shoots out from the wall, then a second heavy metal grid. Bernie stretches both across the opening, securing the outer grid first, then the thinner mesh. As he locks them into place the mesh allows him a clear look at what otherwise was blinding. Lightning. One, two twisting, jerking bolts, and now two more yank themselves out of the black clouds. Each bolt is haired with tiny sizzling extensions. All four come together in a. Bernie tips his head. It’s a torso. Like one of those armless things

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each board. Sir steps across his lap and paws at the wall closest to the mountain. “Whatcha got?” says Bernie, but, with his eyes beginning to adjust to the new slash of light, he looks around Sir’s tail to see what it is. Sir swivels about and snaps at him, the jaws and bright teeth clacking together an inch from Bernie’s nose. “Shit!” Bernie scoots back and looks to where Sir was pawing. Jutting out from the wall, there’s a lever too high for Sir to reach, so Bernie scrambles to it. “Yes?” he says, grabbing the red rubber handle.

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rope of light. Bernie flinches, the light is so bright, and he raises the jacket to cover his eyes. Woof, says Sir softly. Holding the jacket out to shield his gaze, Bernie looks up to see the dog standing on a platform a short scramble away. When Bernie heaves himself up beside his guide, Sir surprises him with a lick across the side of his face. “Oh yeah, thanks,” Bernie says, settling his sore butt on dusty boards. Three walls rise to a flat ceiling. More fence than wall, Bernie thinks, as there are gaps of almost an inch between

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to do this, then, well, he’s doing it, isn’t he? It feels rather like a dream, though. Every movement labored and. Slow. With ravenous wolves on his trail. Are any ravenous wolves on his trail? He breathes in, he breathes out. He goes on. On he goes. That’s what he’s doing. Right now. Going on. And. And again. Dark dots speckle the suede; one appears as he looks at the others. Then another. Tap. “I’m dripping,” Bernie says. He raises his head. He turns to look back. From the lowering clouds a dark object is being lowered on a great

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for him than the first. Is it the idea that he has the option, that he could stop at any time if he really needed to, if he couldn’t stand it he could just not stand it anymore, give up, sit down, cry? So long as doing seems possible, in this case one foot going higher than the last and thus getting up the slope, obeying the dog who is terribly insistent so must have reason but is awfully annoying, he’s getting his way, isn’t he, couldn’t he shut up? So long as Bernie decides he is not not going

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jacket under an arm, Bernie struggles on. “I’m going to do this, or I’m not going to do this. I’m going to do this, or I’m not going to do this.” The sweat stinging his eyes, the air thick in his mouth, pulse shaking his head like an elephant a pear tree, blisters on his heels burning as he leans forward and raises a boot, Bernie says to himself, “I’m going to do this, or I’m not going to do this.” For reasons he’s never been able to figure out, the second part of that sentence is a greater motivator

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adjusted it so it hanged evenly. Hanged? So it hung evenly. So it was well hung. He stood there. Sweaty and smelling of sweat not his own. Bernie pauses to catch his breath. When Sir notices his charge has stopped, the dog turns and barks. Barks and barks. “OK, OK,” Bernie says. The air is beginning to weigh on him. It’s not making this easy. He drags the jacket off, and the white shirt with the pearl buttons is plastered to his body. “I’m dripping.” Sir’s barking grows more insistent, so, dragging a red handkerchief across his wet brow, the

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keep upright, his feet sliding every few steps. Not a lot but enough to make him anxious. The wallet, the wallet. Never mind. He’ll check again when they get to a level place. Not that he’s wearing the same thing he started out in. He’s got on that suede jacket with the fringes. The kind of fringes he used to think looked silly. The cowboy made him stand naked in the motel room and, standing in front of him so close their breath tangled like ropes, the cowboy drew the jacket up Bernie’s arms, settled it on his shoulders. He

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in an apartment drinking crappy lemonade, sitting on a slumpy couch between two dogs, when he began to feel sluggish and the world stretched out a gravelly hand to caress his cheek. When he sat up on the side of a road and pawed in his pocket for his wallet, what did he find? The wallet was there? Was anything in it? Bernie struggles to remember. A scorpion? A credit card? Bernie slaps at his jacket pocket, checking for the wallet. He doesn’t quite feel it, but the slope the curly yellow tail is leading him up is steep and slippery with loose soil. Bernie’s almost doubled over trying to

Thousand: Eight Hundred Eighty-Nine

turmeric, the echo of ketamine, the intransigence of testosterone, the permanence of permanganate, the drizzle of dissent, the warning of vellum, the vibrations of wasabi, and the petulance of saltpeter, so dizzied is he by the promise and the glory, the suggestion and the vehemence, the joy and jangle, the hope and the fecundity, the single and the twin, so illuminated is he by the flicker, flame, freshness, and ferocity that Bernie ceases to worry. Sir knows what he’s doing. He’s gotten Bernie this far, wherever that is. I pre-paid everything, Bernie reminds himself. Then he remembers that he was

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standing nervously by, the tourguide looking back at him as she rounds up the remainder of her group. “So, um, Sir, um, where to now?” Sir glances up at him, whuffs, then turns, heading back up the path they followed to get to the picnic grounds. Bernie’s tummy feels sour. He sniffs his fingers, which still smell like coffee, only, oddly, a far superior coffee to the one he spilled. He holds his fingertips under his nostrils as he walks. So transported is he by the hints of chocolate, the translations of lavender, the quickening of quinine, the tickle of

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“Who are you with?” the tourguide asks, touching Bernie on the shoulder. He starts. “Oh, uh, I’m uh with with,” and he nods at the dog, forgetting how to say the dog’s name, forgetting the word “dog.” “You’re with?” the woman says. When Bernie nods his head toward the dog, who ignores everything but the hand, the tourguide shrugs. “You’ll have to catch up with your group,” she says. “Wherever it is. You’re not on my manifest.” Bernie smiles, embarrassed, and pulls his hand away from the mouth that, this time, lets it go. Sir shakes and yawns, stretches, Bernie

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found on the hand. It feels a little weird, but not bad, really. Kind of nice, as the tongue is warm and soft and patient, making sure not to miss a millimeter. Bernie surrenders to the dog’s diligence, even turning his hand in order to give better access. He closes his eyes and falls into a reverie. A handsome cowboy is walking across a scrub desert, the wind whirling away the dust raised by his boots. The cowboy comes upon a horse already saddled. “Who are you with?” the cowboy asks, stroking the horse’s nose, feeding it a sugar cube.

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coffee of your own, I’d be happy to fetch it. What? Hand coffee better? Well, okay then, okay, go ahead, have at it, who am I to say no.” The dog works the hand over, sniffing between each finger, laving the hairs with a long soft tongue. When Bernie moves to get up, the dog emits a low growl and grips a finger between firm jaws. “Hey,” Bernie says, but stops pulling away. He tries stroking the dog with his other hand, but Sir/Lady doesn’t let this distract from what is evidently most important, getting the news from what is

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that? The spill reveals a discontinuity in the fabric of space-time. When the cold coffee of hell splashes over Bernie’s hand and the hot-but-not-painfully-hot coffee of heaven splashes over Bernie’s hand, the two universes change hands. Sir, who has been scratching his head with a back foot, jumps up when the coffee spills, putting his forepaws on the table. Lady, who has also been scratching her head, jumps up in heaven, putting her paws on the table. The dog in both instances betrays a peculiar fascination with the coffee-drenched hand. “You want some coffee?” Bernie asks. “If you’d like a

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constructed being the very same particle as in every other universe, only presents differently because the shape of the universe forces the senses to perceive it differently. Convincing illusion, eh? The densest lead soldier lovingly painted and posed under glass is empty, mostly. We are fooled into thinking a thing is a thing when nothing is its dominant aspect. On the other hand, the idea that space can ever be empty is a fool idea. Some fools have the best connections. That’s the difference between us. We’re all connected. Even disconnections are connections. The coffee spills. Are we clear on

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appear to move differently in different universes, turning left when right was the expectation, say. Is this proof they are not connected, that they are not one particle? No, rather it demonstrates a difference in the shape of space in that universe. What makes one universe different from another is not its contents but its shape. In a wave the matter is not altered. It just appears to be altered. The wave is one of the structures of space. When the coffee is hot in one universe and cold in another, the same coffee, every particle of which it is

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in another universe will also turn right. Why? Because they are connected. Not by some means of concourse between universes, but because they are one. There is but one particle. Multiple universes, one particle. Why, that doesn’t make any sense! I hear you saying. Do I mean there’s not a subatomic particle’s worth of difference between universes? That’s it. Although, to clarify, just because Particle A turns right in Universe A and Particle A turns right in Universe B does not mean, necessarily, that every particle will appear to take the exact same path in every universe. Some particles will

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the spill. He just reacted. In heaven when the woman rose from the table she bumped it and Bernie’s coffee cup rocked like a cradle, the coffee’s surface wrinkling like a baby’s face in a grin. Bernie reaches for it quickly in heaven, too. It’s reflex. He’s used to things spilling when they rock like that, spilling and making a mess and nobody’d want a mess here, where everything is so nice. Both cups spill. Or perhaps it is only one cup that spills. Perhaps it is only one coffee. Just as when one subatomic particle turns right, its match

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Bernie puts the cup down, and it wobbles as the woman on the far end of the picnic table stands up. It’s going to tip, so he reaches out reflexively, thinking there’s no way he can catch it. If the coffee’d been scalding so undrinkable rather than room temp so undrinkable, he would be about to get burned reaching out to catch it. Or lunging to spill it more. Maybe. But maybe deflecting some of what was going to tumble. Into his lap. Maybe saving himself some of that indignity. Not that he was weighing all the possible versions of

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at him. In heaven, he chuckles a little himself, they seem so merry, then he tears a piece off a croissant and pops a green grape into his mouth. In hell he dunks a biscuit in his cold bitter coffee, a biscuit so dry that when he tried to bite it it hurt his teeth. Dipping the biscuit in the coffee improves neither, the biscuit going soggy on the outside, remaining stony inside, while the added scum of melted biscuit on the black skin of the coffee repulses the palate. It’s hell. What can you expect? He’s not hungry anyway.

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Hope we meet again.” Bernie in hell, feeling bad about being cursed at, wonders if a longer, more polite refusal would not have left him feeling this way, while Bernie in heaven, having endured a long, polite refusal that seems to have incurred a surprising amount of social obligation considering Bernie’s never seen this guy before, glances over at the man clambering awkwardly onto another picnic bench, the burly arm sliding around the shoulders of the large blonde already sitting there. The man whispers into the woman’s ear and both burst out laughing. In hell Bernie thinks they are laughing

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cold, and it’s bitter, burnt-tasting. In heaven it’s just this side of burning the lip, and it’s smooth, not needing sugar to fake its way to palatability. “Is this seat taken?” Bernie looks up and smiles at a fat older man, gestures his welcome to the spot on the bench. In hell the man says, “Fuck you,” and stalks off. In heaven the man says, “Hey, buddy. Thanks a lot. Oh, ‘scuze me, you being generous and all but I just spotted my wife,” he gives Bernie a wink, “so you’ll have to forgive me for making the acquaintance brief.

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rim. “Sorry,” he’d said and the woman whose cup it was gave him a sidelong look. In heaven she gave him a half smile. In hell she curled a lip. Bernie stirs his coffee with a wooden stir stick. In heaven the stick was harvested from farmed timber. In hell the stick was shaved from a tree taken in a clear cut of old growth forest. He takes it out and lays it on his napkin (in heaven made from recycled non-bleached, post-consumer paper; in hell made from the hides of puppies), and takes a sip. In hell it’s too

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don’t need to worry, dear. You come round if you want. Any time. You come round any time and Lady, she’ll be there for you.” Bernard Severide did make it to hell. He made it to heaven, too. Lady knew what she was doing. Sir, too. Bernie is sitting at a picnic table in heaven, at a picnic table in hell. He’s sitting at the corner where the table leg is a quarter inch shorter than the others. When he sat down a paper cup at the far end of the table rocked and lost a few drops over the

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he asks. “Lady is helping someone. She be back shortly. This morning, I’m thinking. But we’ll see. These things take time, time that we can’t count up the same way as other things, like sitting in class, you know. Or waiting for the bus.” The grocer chuckles. “Yes, ma’am. There’s many class I remember taking time out of my life in ways I could never make add up. But I catch your meaning. Yes, ma’am, I catch it and put it next to my heart.” The grocer pats his chest. Dr Yvonne smiles again and touches the grocer’s arm. “You

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and I heard chimes as though a soft wind was moving through glass flowers.” “For sale: Couch, rarely slept on, orange, tall.” “Help wanted: Bakers with experience in doughs.” The grocer is ringing up the bagged vegetables and fruit, so she refolds the paper, leaving it as tidy as she found it. She digs in her black purse for her pocketbook. Pressing the bills into the grocer’s hand, she looks at the maps of creases on each, the white ones on the bills, the black ones in the hand. “Thank you, Bill,” she says, gathering everything up. “That dog around?”

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Gabriel?” “Lady is the name of the dog,” Dr Yvonne says, and smiles what might even be a genuine smile. “What’s fresh?” She lets the grocer pick out a few things and, while she waits, flips through one of those free weekly advertisers that sit in stacks by the door. “Missed connection: You spilled your hot coffee on my wrist and apologized so profusely I started to feel like I was the one who’d done something wrong and I had to bat away your clumsy attempts to clean it up. Then I looked into your eyes, they were like crystal,

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density of ice compared to water. On both planes the dog had a booking agent named Yvonne, or, as she prefers it, Dr Yvonne, when, that is, she allows herself to be identified. Running a business that involves sending tourists to hell (or to heaven, for that matter) is the sort of activity that might provide obstacles in other endeavors should it become common knowledge. Those who take seriously the Guide Dog to Hell sign already expect discretion. “Well, if it isn’t Doc Tor Yvonne,” the green grocer says when bell hanging over the entrance jangles. “How is the Lady

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-Nine

one plane he was called Sir and he led tours to hell. On the other plane he was called, I mean, she was called Lady and she led tours to heaven. In both planes the dog looked pretty much the same, a medium-sized short hair with a curly tail. In one plane Sir took a man named Bernard Severide to hell. In the other plane Lady took a man named Bernard Severide to heaven. On both planes, in other words, things were pretty much identical, from teacups to the common names of mushrooms in Russian forests to the relatively low

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-Eight

Out on the trail, the smoke from the campfire spiraling toward the stars, I will pop open the Tupperware and we can eat cake. In the bathysphere, sinking gradually down, the walls of the Marianas Trench rising above us, unwrap that tinfoil I handed you for safekeeping and, yes, it will be cake. Cake! Wonderful cake. Heavenly cake. What could be better than angels and cake! Why, cake all by itself! So come along if you may, my dear angels, regardless, there will be cake. Once upon a time there was a dog. This dog existed on two planes. On

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be done, that which cannot be known, those who cannot be deflowered, little sour berries, and painkillers, I have to say, angels, I deserve cake. Yes, I suppose cake is no more likely to bring you than olallieberry pie. But it’s baked. Have a piece. I’d eat it all up myself, had I a mouth. I would smack my lips and wiggle my tongue had I a tongue, had I lips. A foot? I’d lick the frosting off the middle toe. Marry me, angels, and let us eat cake. Hang out around my pool hall and let us eat cake.

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angels are worthless, useless, and don’t exist. Yes, I said it. Worthless! Useless! Don’t exist! True in most universes, I should say. There are exceptions? We are all exceptions. Angels more than most. The few universes that harbor angels have room for all we need. Infinitudes, you know. As a consciousness completely dependent on commerce between universes, whose body exists primarily in my mind (but also the occasional borrowing from others both obliging and unknowing, about which much may later be said, let me know if you’re interested), and as one naturally inclined to a fixation on that which cannot

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-Five

sing counterpoint. When the birds sing, let us toot the panpipes to keep their spirits high. When the whales sing, let us dip our heads in the drink and warble many a bubble of harmony. When the winds whistle their mournful bonhomie with the chill brick walls of the mental hospital, let’s get out top hats and spats and long-tailed coats and shuffle step shuffle step stomp to meet the mood of that air. I can’t do it without you, angels. I can’t. No. Not me. It’s a weakness, my inability to get along without angels. Even though, you know,

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-Four

success; I got addicted to support groups; I got addicted to Jesus who has never ceased hitting bottom and climbing back out of the hole; I got addicted to fear and charity; I got addicted to confession, soul-searching, and therapy. I took medication. I lay down and stared up at the stars. There are a lot of stars. Even realizing you are moving about among them doesn’t bring them closer. Oh angels, come close and let me whisper in your ears. Kiss me on the noggin. Take my hand and lead me among kine. When the frogs sing, let us

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-Three

time in one place, just sitting, doing nothing, thinking nothing more than I ever think, which is never very much or for very long. I lamented when I got frustrated and felt ignored. I played solitaire with a tattered pack of cards; there were so many creases and stains on them I knew the King of Hearts by the wearing away of one of his hearts, the duece of clubs by the precise symmetry of its top to bottom creases. I got addicted to the internet; I got addicted to chess by mail; I got addicted to the smell of

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-Two

the richness of his skin with the help of trained mosquitoes. I led drumming circles, square-dancing hootenannies (with the red handkerchiefs angels are partial to wagging like sheep tails out the back pockets of the boys), and love triangles that linked into daisy chains. I listened to preachers, to tapes of preachers, studied videos of preachers with the sound off the better to isolate their body language, and with the help of experts in direct mail marketing reached out to preachers with appeals calculated to get them to cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hal Leh Loo! I sat for a long

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty-One

starfish, and holy water, gave up the ghost to soulful lenders, imbibed the spirit of unctuousness with a plate of righteousness in an ancient amber glaze, lightly seared on one side. I howled when the moon was full and when the moon was new yodeled in my beer. I genuflected to the dawn and curtsied to the pink petticoats of the setting sun. I cut off my ear and put it in a glass casket with the tip of a finger and a vial of the blood of someone dear to me which I sneaked, drop by clandestine drop, from

Thousand: Eight Hundred Sixty

blue dishes, crystals of methamphetamine in three primary colors and the glistering white of cocaine. I waved smudges of sage and rugs scented with frankincense and my ass. I built altars of stone and altered my tone, beseeching and screeching, ululating over the metate, and raising my hands to the heavens so the wine would run down my fingers to my armpits. I masturbated to the four directions. I folded my sad body like a square of paper and offered up a thousand nodding cranes in a string under Christmas lights. I fasted and procrastinated, restricted my intake to grapefruit,

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Nine

hand to hand to mouth to mouth we will hurry through? Oh angels, won’t you sleep in my terrible hat, curl in the pocket with the hole, dance on the head of my pimple, perch on my first gray hair? I have always wanted for angels. I call you and you do not come. Yes, that made me bitter. That made me spiteful. I called you out. I sang your names, your many beautiful and ugly names, the names shorter than a syllable, the names that wrapped around the block. I put out honeydew and ichor pudding, manna and ambrosia in

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you ready? Come along with your fiery swords and the golden plates on which you rest your waking heads. We will go across universes together, touching everything as we pass, inch by inch and god by god. We will trace a probe across the nerves of every twitching thing between times, stroke the cheek of every face that basks in the shadows cast by realities unobstructed, wind into the knothole of every board in every fence that keeps the dimensions in their tidy camps. Bless me with your insouciance! Won’t you take my hand while I grasp your chin, and

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Seven

under the kleig lights, below the box seats. The flies don’t buzz. The butterflies don’t flutter. The snakes don’t slither. The bodies don’t lie. If I had a hammer for all the blows. If I had a bell for all the rings. If I had a song to pull out of the throat and spread across an absorbent cloth. Let us go there together, angels. Let us get together our things, pack them into the hollows in our dreams, and carry them on our upright skulls to the land beyond beyond, the world past hope and change. Oh angels, aren’t

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Six

a body to eat? Give me hand after hand under several skies above. Body doubles. Oh body, triple! The bachelor’s kneepad, the spinster’s nosegay, the beggar’s parts lined up along an ox path. Brilliant anniversary fireworks in a night full of ear hairs and unbroken strands of mucus. Walking on fingertips over embers, indulging the nostalgia of the flaccid buttocks, the roving eye in the bow of the whaler, another factory of testicles, the blue vein bending prettily toward justice, a light uterus among grave candles. The fanbase of the elbow roominghouse. Fat bodies, yellow and glistening, their farewell tour

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Five

ax end tax one fun unmatched by the brash text, a pass protected. A new next done west full to ticks patched unpatterned. Your solid winter rented but recanted, a new uncentering of the bruised beast. Whence. The new dance sentenced to the last. I take I take I tenderize mine. I thou he a wheedled fever compare to seed. Suck. Nervous works. A side while minor sneaks up barter forth gingerly wits compere luts whulk num estung shen dinster puc. Tiss. Hold my hand. A body lies over the ocean. What head rolls alone over the tundra, looking for

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Four

and the cars, giant monsters, rumble and growl, their two great eyes white and violent, one continuous plume pouring white out of each ass, watching you pass before them, pass crying, pass living, pass and leave them without looking back. A hand. A broken record. Three sheaves. A leaf of the long pattern. Two friends. A mild winter again recorded and dissected in two oblations, the fine motor skills of the vengeance preparation. A news. Compacted entrance. Two thieves, a fine weather captured and carried over. Thunks I would I’d had a had hide a bat a bat a badger

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Three

feeling the drone deep in your head. There are many of you. There is but one. There are people packing a house, waiting to surprise you. There is a surveyed plot and eternal care reserved for it. There is an empty city, its people having fled from you. The ground is coming up to meet you. The winds tip the mast and you hurry to swing the ship around. Night has filled your cup and you will drink it to the dregs. A woman takes your hand and leads you under a light red as the apple A is for,

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-Two

park under a medlar tree. You are standing in a field of corn. You are standing on a road of cracked clay beside a saguaro. You are standing in a dim hall, an open door pouring light onto the worn linoleum of the hall. You are standing before a pyramid. You are standing deep in a crater. You are standing on the grass of a center divider, cars whooshing by in both directions. You are standing on the skull of an elephant. You are standing on the polished marble of a monument. You are standing under a swarm of bees,

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty-One

lay deep in darkness, your new friend found you anyway. Remember to breathe. You open your eyes, having not noticed they were closed, for all the time your eyes were closed you saw, you saw so much. I see, you say, amused at recognizing this amazing power. The world is empty, is silent, the city having crept away while your eyes looked elsewhere, the bodies having raised themselves and returned to the proper business of bodies, going up and down and moving in and out. Your flower cart, too, has sung itself to another place. You are standing in a

Thousand: Eight Hundred Fifty

to hole up, seeking to know how deep you go, and finding there the metaphorical apple on its ultimate branch, the apple no one got to, the apple no one could get to, despite wanting to reach it, despite reaching for it, wanting to smell, wanting to hold it to the mouth, wanting to bite and eat. You open your mouth and your body lets out this ghost, so familiar and new, this fellow traveler, best friend. First friend waiting for you in the world you were squeezed out to. If the room was burning with lamps, if the room

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-Nine

ruffler of breast feathers, in dust dancing, over pond skimming, through keyhole whistling, and lazily among sweating grapes lolling and heavy. Ah, air redolent of history, despite battles and burning houses, how persistent is the innocence of lilacs, of the infant’s downy nape, how honest the stink of grease under your lover’s nails after the motorcycle broke down on a back road between Barstow and Ensenada and she took it apart and put it back together and when it started up it purred. You hold onto this breath, hold it as deep inside your body as it has allowed itself

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gives way to what’s really best. Et voila! You’ve talked it out. Relief! Can’t you feel it? The world is grateful already. Yet you’ve not even gone to the phone. That time will come. That time will come and then. Then! You fire up your butane lighter and apply the well-shaped flame to the far end of the cigarette, and the grace of breath once again comes through for you, a long path it’s taken and in all sorts of uncertain atmospheres, the winds and the whirlwinds, chinook and santa ana, Caesar’s last words and Mary’s first, filler of sail,

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-Seven

laid out in lovely geometric patterns that, at the interstices, would provide the solutions to all the world’s simplest problems, the world’s simplest problems being, of course, the world’s most difficult and intractable problems as, when two simple problems cross paths, they knot, and, though each was individually ever so simple to fix, that knot is an unapproachable tangle that captures and magnifies fear and despair. Best not to look at it. However, come the simple equations that, when solved so that the solution of one releases the tension of the next, the snarl relaxes, thread releases thread and knots

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-Six

really know what you’re talking about! I will see to it right away. You know, now that you lay out the argument against them, it seems to me those awful sirens have never been much use. It’s like those car alarms that go off whenever there’s a change in humidity. You get so you hope someone really is stealing that darn thing, you’re so sick of the noise. At least then it would stop. Right? Yeah, yeah, you say, happy to be agreeing. You and the lady share a good laugh. Why, I bet there are arguments that could be

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-Five

You could. You could maybe. You could maybe talk to them, these idiots sprawled every which way. You could maybe talk them into getting out of the path. You feel all giddy at this sociable, reasonable thought. After you deal with the bodies, you’ll have to put in a call to the civil defense obsessives who are cranking those air raid sirens. C’mon now, you imagine yourself saying. Everybody knows you’re excited. Everybody knows what you’re excited about. The noise is just a piling on. Could you cool it? In your imagination the lady who answers the phone says, You

Thought: Eight Hundred Forty-Four

enough and everything enough is also sufficient and complete. Not a bad feeling. You wonder if it might present an obstacle to pushing daisies, roses, phlox, and poppies. They are singing quite nicely now. The people flopped about on the streets are groaning, mumbling, and making a nuisance of themselves about the way they were when you found them more irritating. Sure you’ve achieved a fine equanimity but there’s still the grunt work of shoving the cart over the bodies, and that’s going to have your muscles sore before you’re half down the block. Then you have a crazy thought.

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-Three

Into the body it comes, wiggling breathy fingers, hand under hand down the tree of your lungs, perching on a thousand tiny twigs at once, shivering to the rhythm of the waters, shaking, shaking from its fists the particulates it bore in from that cigarette, from that torch. Are you feeling lightened? Enlightened? Raised like a leaf before the sun? Feeling the bird in your cage, singing all the loneliness of the world away? Feeling bikini’d love’s come kicking into the dark shallows of some old despond? Like there are worlds enough and time enough and shoes enough and bees

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-Two

a soda named after a common fruit but which is spelled out on the can in letters from another planet. Gawd! Zombies! As if! Next I’ll be attacked by vampires, you say to yourself. Or aliens. Aren’t we done with all that shit? You tap ash off the end of your amazing extra-sensory cigarette and put it once more to your mouth. Through the cigarette your breath seeks you out. It carries several dimensions wound like strings around trembling, searching fingers. These dimensions indicate things that are so important your breath hopes to forestall their disappearance into the memory hole.

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty-One

bar of your pushcart than your flowers would lose their rhythm and require a good rap from a baton, a stern shake of the head, a demonstrative clapping of hands to get them back in sync, to get their leaves clapping like hands only really quiet; then you had to make a snacks and juice run. Things could have gotten off to a better start. And now? Alarms are going off all over the city, pigeons are dropping like bombs, butterflies are shooting through the air like shrapnel, popcorn is falling into the mouths of zombies, and. You pop open

Thousand: Eight Hundred Forty

got you the combustibles swore by their action, said they made him horny, warped his reality, tripped him up and left him for the godhead, entered by his doors of perception and blew out the windows of his soul, and now, two tokes in, you’re still sure he was basically full of shit. But whatever. Nice buzz, you know. It softens the screaming of the bodies strewn all about their streets, makes their nerve-wracking howls less nervy and more wacky. I mean, who knew you were going to go to work today and no sooner would you get behind the

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirty-Nine

of silver berries. In her dim house she chops and strips, presses and knots, mashes and folds her gatherings, hanging some out to dry from the rafters of the porch, bundling some to mold in ceramic pots in the cellar, laying some on racks to smoke at the hearth, boiling some in a black kettle hung by a hook over the coals, wearing some for several days under her clothes, masticating a few and spitting those into brass bowls for weeks of fermentation. Stuff like that. It’s all very involved. You don’t know what you’re smoking. Anyway, the friend who

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can be combed and cared for and set free in its turn. You light a cigarette. There might be some tobacco in it; if so, it’s low in the mix. What else could there be? The expert crafter of aromatic reality-warping herbs lives just down the less used fork in the road to the sacred mountain. She wanders the woods each morning, the sun’s rays just beginning to tickle the mists, and plucks new buds from the dew-drenched bush, seed pods from a scrawny shrub, fleshy fruiting bodies from the black leaf litter and from the strangling vines the tiniest

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are all standing up, belting out show tunes, every one in fine voice. They’re not all singing the same song but what they do goes together well enough. Like the dawn chorus in a rain forest. It’s loud but everybody’s singing tones you can hear if you listen, not one completely erasing another, even the smallest of the pipes needling through, drawing its own color along, discrete stitches in a dizzyingly wrought tapestry. There, if you let yourself really look. Let the ear open, let what falls in be combed and cared for and set free, so what comes next

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groaning, their mouths working, their arms trembling. You try to get your pushcart through, have to bump over some limbs. “Watch the head!” somebody cries and, grimly, you lower your head and put your weight into the bar. “Whoops!” “Ow!” Then the scream and more screams. You get through that patch and sit down to fan yourself. Should you check the tires for bone fragments? Teeth? Such a thought! You check the tires. No bone fragments, no teeth. No blood. You’ve gotten through this before. It’s all a game, then, isn’t it? You check your cargo of flowers. The blossoms

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirty-Five

deep is your knock? Fox knocks the box of clocks off its blocks. He took a knock, he took another knock, the knocks kept coming, and he kept putting them away. What are you going to do? Knock all night? Knock out the knight? Sleep under a rain of blows? Knock off early, all the while humming blues riffs, the fog gathering under street lamps like homeless auras? Nobody knows, nobody knows the trouble I’ve knocked over and left stunned in the street. Then there are the bodies volunteering as detritus, tangled and tumbled on the walk, some mumbling, some

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirty-Four

sincere reaction. There’s a knock at the door. This knock could be the one that changes everything. Knock knock. Who’s there? Knock knock. Who’s there? Knock knock. Who the fuck is there already! Knocks? Us! Help me, help me, help me, he said, knocking at my door. A representative from the School, the School of Hard Knocks, of course. Knock softly and carry the big knockers. He who knocks worst knocks weinerest! We who are about to knock, salute you! Knocked up, knocked down, knocked around town, and for what? All for love. All for ever-luvin’ LOVE! Knock knock. How

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the boat and knocks me out of the boat. And what did my dearest beloved sister do? Let me drown? Hahaha ho ho! Not this fine specimen of amazing wonderfulness. Without a thought for herself Emily the Great the Amazing flung her body into the icy water and dragged me kicking and spluttering, blue and shivering from that cold cold water which would have been my grave.” Emily takes a long drink from her glass, puts it down and flashes her sister a gummy grin. Eula reaches for her own glass, fills her mouth, and displays her involuntary but wholly

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirty-Two

goes on, “and then you’ll say, That’s Emily, the greatest sister ever, did you hear how she saved me from drowning? She jumped in the water, ice cold water, it was just beside the glacier, you know how they drop big chunks in the sea, and I was so stupid like usual, leaning over the railing of the sightseeing boat, leaning way out, going Wow! and Emily, everything’s so big and white! And tall! And cold! when a big chunk breaks off the glacier and POW! the big wave from when the ice hits the water goes spwoosh! all over

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirty-One

like nice people do, even if they don't care because if you don't it's like you're just mean." Emily dips a spoon into the sugar and one, two, three, four, five heaping measures drop into the bottom of a tall glass. She pours the lemonade to the rim and stirs, the silver spoon clinking against the sides, the lemonade slopping a little over the top. Eula hisses and pulls her journal away. "Who says you're not mean." Emily keeps stirring and the lemonade drips down the side of the glass. "One day I'll save you from drowning or something," Emily

Thousand: Eight Hundred Thirty

say Yes Yes, I am so proud of her, she paid for every flying lesson all by herself, I didn't contribute a cent because I am very poor. And the lady will pat Mother on the arm and say, Oh you poor dear, but what an amazing daughter you have! She is a real credit to you." "Writing in your diary again?" Emily asks, coming into the kitchen and going right for the sugar bowl. Eula puts her hand over the page. "What do you care?" "I didn't say I cared," Emily returns. "I was just making conversation. You know,

Thousand: Eight Hundred Twenty-Nine

want it sweet and Emily always puts in five heaping teaspoons. Yuck!” Eula takes another sip, puckers up, puts the glass down and glares at it. “Mother says if I want flying lessons I will have to get a job and pay for them myself. See if I let her in my F-16! She can come to the air show, though. I’ll waggle my wings over head and she’ll say, There’s my girl! and she’ll nudge the lady next to her and say, That’s my Eula! and the lady will say, Oh you must be so proud! and Mother will

Thousand: Eight Hundred Twenty-Eight

first thing she writes is the date. She looks up at the calendar hanging by the refrigerator, squints. “I guess that’s right,” she says. “Not that it matters.” She writes alongside the date the word sigh and by that a circle, filling the circle in with the most basic face, two dots for eyes, a straight line for an indifferent mouth. “I am drinking the most terrible lemonade,” Eula writes and fills in the O of lemonade with two dots and a squiggly line, the mouth clearly expressing (at best) mixed emotions. “Mother says there’s the sugar jar if you

Thousand: Eight Hundred Twenty-Seven

grades on tests, snits with supposed friends, crushes (mostly faked), complaints about her sister and mother, and other stuff she can’t believe she thought could ever be interesting to anybody, even her ancient self pining for those glory days of yore. Eula bites the pen which, truthfully, exhibits evidence of having so been used before. This time it’s just a holding action, as though the pen would mosey on in no particular direction if not gently but firmly restrained. She puts down the pen and sips the lemonade, makes a face, picks up the pen and. And. She writes. The