If you could change anything about her, you would changer her eyes. You’d make them darker, or lighter. You’d make them not so piercing, not so deep-set. You’d make them not follow you when you walk around the room.

            You’ve changed her position twice: from the bookcase to the mantle, then hanging on the wall over the desk. You thought you’d lose her there, in the forest of faces over the desk. You thought you’d lose her in there with the college friends and mom and dad, old versions of you with a scrawny mustache and an old motorcycle. She is small, just head and shoulders in a 5 x 7 frame, not even in color. But she stands out: long dark hair parted down the middle and those eyes, those Mona Lisa eyes, following you. Creepy.

            You’re standing there, looking at her, trying to remember her smell, remember her taste, when there’s a knock at the door.

            You haven’t buzzed anyone up, so it must be a neighbor. You don’t get a lot of neighbor contact, not a lot of conversation, just nods in the elevator and that kind of thing. It’s been a pretty solitary existence since the move.

            You open the door and your eyes dart back to the picture to make sure she’s still watching. When you turn to face the knocker, it’s not a neighbor knocker at all, but a stranger.

            A kid stranger.

            After about thirty-five, you picked up the habit of calling anyone under thirty a kid. It’s kind of a condescending thing you do, a way of secretly off-loading some of the nagging irritation you feel for hitting thirty-five (then thirty-six, then thirty-seven) without achieving any of those big dreams you grew up with. Because you didn’t make Citizen Kane by twenty-five, every guy with a girlfriend you think is too pretty for him or too nice gets called “kid” or “son”. (“Well, let me tell you a little something about that, son,” or “Kid, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with your pants, but let me introduce you to a little invention I like to call a belt.” That kind of thing.)

            But this kid, this stranger kid, really is a kid. Not exactly short-pants and ice cream smeared on his cheeks, but close enough, maybe seventeen at the most. He is skinny and jittery and something about him is almost instantly annoying.

            It could be his spiky, puffy, dirty black hair or his ghost-white skin. It could be his baggy black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off or his baggy black jeans with the wallet chain coiling across his narrow ass like a leash for his pet pocket weasel. It could be his eyes; deep set and dark, kind of haunting, kind of like the kind of eyes that follow you around the room.

            Creepy.

            You don’t say, “What do you want?” Because you’re not a jackass. But you do say, “Yeah?” kind of short and hostile because you can be a bit of a jerk.

            He says, “Mow your lawn?” His voice high and squeaky.

            You say, “What? I live in an apartment.”

            He has this huge grin, this crazy “I know a secret” grin and doesn’t even blink before saying, “Carry out your trash?”

            “What?”

            “Wash your windows? Paint your bathroom? Sweep out your flue, gov’ner?”

            “How did you get in here?”

            He stuffs his hands in his pockets and shrugs, his boney shoulders pointing toward the ceiling like sharp triangles of broken glass.

            He says, “I’m not looking for a hand-out,” still smiling away, still vibrating without really moving.

            Then he’s in the apartment.

            In a heartbeat, in a half heartbeat. It’s like one second he’s out and the next he’s in, like headlights sliding across your bedroom at night.

            He starts roaming around, bobbing his head, checking out the furniture. “Nice,” he says. “Very nice,” obviously impressed with how well you’re doing for yourself. “You have a nice place.”

            What can you say? “Thanks.”

            “Sure you don’t have any chores you need done?”

            “Like what? Chopping firewood?”

            “That’s the idea.  Heavy lifting, things like that. I don’t look it, but I’m really strong. I can lift things really good.”

            “That’s great. Really. But I don’t need to vacuum under the couch. And I’m not an eighty year-old lady living alone in the country.”

            “Oh, no sir. I can see that. You’re no spinster grandma.” He wanders into the kitchen and for a second you think he’s going to swing open the refrigerator and peruse your groceries, hanging on the handle and leaning his head in to get a look at whatever’s shoved in the back. You think he thinks about it.

            You say, “So… you’re looking for work. And I don’t have anything I need from you. So …” You walk back to the front door and grab the knob, the universal symbol for “it’s time to go”. He nods and that grin shows signs of faltering for the first time, just around the corners, and he starts to lean in your direction, waiting for gravity to pull him forward.

            “You sure there’s nothing I can do for you?”

            You shake your head. No. Nothing. You shake your head and think that’s going to be it, the end of today’s weird little interlude, and maybe you’ll think about it later with your feet up on the coffee table, chuckling and cracking the first beer of the evening. But that’s it. Aside from that, it’s all finished.

            And then you do it. You guess you do it. The tell.

            You don’t even think about it. Your eyes are so used to the motion that they just go there without being told, just to make sure she’s still there and can still see you.

            Jittery-boy notices. Right away he notices and he turns his head and swings his body away from the door and toward the desk. Man, his legs are long, freaky-long, preternaturally long, they have to be because in two steps he’s standing on the other side of the room with his hands shoved in his back pockets and now he’s going up and down on his toes like an old-timer at a hoedown picking up the rhythm of the fiddle, like a charismatic churchgoer filling up with the spirit.

            He says, “Saaaaaay,” and makes that whistle through his teeth that frustrated you to tears the summer before your eighth grade year. He’s making a big show of looking at all the pictures, moving his head around and craning his neck. But he’s not fooling anyone. You know exactly what he’s looking at.

            He says, “Saaaay,” again and then goes, “Mmmm Hmmm. Mmmmm Hmmmm.” He makes this clucking sound in his cheek and then, “I know what I can do for you. Uh huh.”

            You don’t like him standing over there, over there in front of your wall of past lives. You like it less than you’ve liked anything since he first knocked on the door.

            He goes back to his toe exercises: up, down, up, down, really excited now, really winding up.  He’s almost a little breathless when he says, “I can tell you something about yourself.”

            You know, you had your evening all planned out. Perfectly. You have a twelve-pack of Old Milwaukee tall boys, guaranteed to put out your lights and irradiate your urine. An hour of Cops and then America’s Most Wanted at nine. Star Trek at ten on 49. If you make it. Maybe a couple of Benadryl to lighten the mood when SNL comes on or some Nyquil. It’s how you roll now. You don’t need this shit. You don’t need this weirdness. You don’t need a potential for personal growth, you need to be left alone.

            He quits bouncing. He rotates at the waist, his hands still stuffed in his back pockets, until he’s looking at you over his shoulder, a shock of hair hanging down over his forehead and that unsettling grin migrating from his mouth to his eyes. He smiles at you like that with his dark, deep eyes and says, “I can tell you how you’re going to die.”

           

***

            There’s this episode of Cops where this mulleted, shirtless guy just won’t settle down so they tase the shit out of him and take him to jail. And he wasn’t even in trouble to begin with. It was Cops in Missouri or Cops in Houston or something like that. It looked really hot and humid and clouds of insects just swarmed those bright camera-mounted lights they use to catch all the action. So there’s this guy, this big guy with no shirt and no shoes just flopping around on the ground with clouds of those powdery moths swarming over everything and he won’t let himself scream while they’re juicing him through the barbs stuck in his spasming pecs. He won’t let himself scream but he needs to do a little more than grunt because he’s really pissed and it has to hurt like hell so he makes his “Hungh!” sound. “Huunngghhh!”

            And the thing is, the cops weren’t even there for him. They were there for his wife or his girlfriend or whatever because the neighbors called 911 after she stabbed him in the forehead with a fork because she said he stole all of her Xanax. So when the cops got there he was all cool with her going somewhere to come down or sober up but when they put the cuffs on her and start to put her in the car and she starts to cry and say, “Why, baby? Why? I love youuuu,” he just comes unglued and starts yelling at the cops and jumping around. And you thought, “Ah hah! That’s right! That’s damn fucking straight! Calm and reasonable and in control one second and then – wham!  The taser.”

            And that’s when you developed your theory of intensive inaction. To wit: it’s not doing nothing that gets you in trouble, it’s doing anything. And if your anything ever includes anyone saying “baby” or “love” or “you” it’s probably going to get you electrocuted. So nothing is the safest thing to do. Nothing, in the end, is the only thing to do.

            You’re about to explain this to the kid, sprawled out there in the passenger seat of your car, letting his hand air-surf out the window, explain to him why this is the first Saturday night you’ve been out of the apartment in neigh on a coon’s age and how you’re only doing it because he insisted you take him to get some food because he needs to spend some time with you to adequately read your vibe or whatever. But instead you ask, “When?”

            He says again, “”How.” And you almost say, “TASER,” but you don’t.

            You’re taking him to the Flying Dutchman because it’s close to the apartment and whenever you do go out it’s about the only place you go. It’s supposed to be some kind of pirate bar, what with the name and the Jolly Roger hanging over the men’s room door, but it’s really just a sports bar with a couple of cute waitresses, one of which, who no longer works there, actually accompanied you home one evening, sailing on a sea of Jaggermeister and favored your recently single self with a blow job before disappearing into the night, possibly after stealing all of your Xanax. You keep hoping to run into her again, but you never do.

            You say, “How.”

            And he says, “Yes. How.”

            And you say, “No, how can you know how I’m going to die?”

            The kid just shrugs his shoulders and watches his hand crest and fall out the window, a cobra tuned into a particularly mellow groove. “It’s just this thing I do.”

            “And you’re right?”

            “Wouldn’t be right for me to charge if I wasn’t right.”

            You think that’s fair enough so you say, “Fair enough,” and pull into the parking lot.

            In the Dutchman there’s Russ and Stan and Stu and Ruth Ann and the Professor and Marry Ann and as you point them out you tell the kid you don’t really know there names, but what does it matter, they’re the regulars and they’re pretty interchangeable.

            Myrtle or Midge who works behind the bar looks at the kid and for a second you think she’s going to tell you you can’t bring him in there. But she doesn’t. She just gives you a tried wave and you two sit down at the elbow of the bar.

            “Now, I don’t want you to do anything you don’t usually do.” He says, “I don’t want you to say anything you wouldn’t usually say.”

            “Got it. Keep it real.”

            “That’s right.”

            “Keep it …”

            “Normal.”

            “Right.”

            Madge is always tired. You think it must be all that mascara glommed on her eyelashes, it must be exhausting to keep her eyes open, but she also has a fourteen-year-old daughter and a hurt foot and the infallible ability to become offended by nearly anything anybody says, whether it’s to or about her or not. That must be pretty tiring, too.

            Stan is telling a story, he’s holding forth. Stan works construction, when he’s working, but he never seems to have any work, which is passing strange if you think about it because, if you listen to him, he’s a craftsman, an artist and his medium is drywall. You don’t tell him how to hang drywall, there’s nothing you can tell him about it. He’s been doing it since before you were born, he was hanging drywall when you were just a twinkle in your daddy’s eye, when the best part of you was running down your mamma’s thigh. You don’t tell him, he tells you.

            The kid orders a bacon cheeseburger and fries. You order Jack and Coke.

            “You feeling anything?”

            He nods, digging in, humming while he eats, bouncing on his stool.

            “You picking up my vibes okay?”

            He pauses in mid woof, looks around the bar and says, “Oh yeah.”

            “Yeah. I’m being really open with you. I’m putting it out there, not blocking, you know, putting up walls. I’m being just as hard as I can.”

            He considers a fry. “You just keep doing what you do.”

            Roger to that. You get another drink, then another. You think about it, as you down a warm wave of remembrance, you think about whatever it is you’re holding on to, yesterday, whatever, and you almost choke on it, on a residuum of recrudescent romanticism, and it gives you a jolt, electric.

            “Well, here it is, kid,” not really sure what it is. “You know what I’m saying?”

            “Oh. You bet. Can I get some more food?”

            “Food? Damn straight, my alt-hipster sin eater, my little Buddha. You get anything you want.”

            You feel strangely compelled to throw your arm around his shoulder, ruffle his hair, the little ragamuffin, that little scamp.

            You have your drink in your hand and you barely slosh when you start pointing. “Now … Paul is a … real estate novelist who never had time for a wife. And he’s talking to Davy, who’s still in the Navy and probably will be. For life.”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “You getting all of this?” You mean you, but you gesture to the whole bar.

            “Just keep doing what you do.”

            You finish off your drink and get another and resist the urge to slap the bar and say, “All right! Allllll right!”

            You had a little Shakespeare in college back when you were a kid, when you took moody black and white pictures with narrow depth of field and memorized poetry. You say, “I am … what I am not!”

            You let that hang for a second so it sinks in.

            “You know who said that? Iago. A villain. A nefarious … You know what he did?”

            “No, sir.”

            “Nothing. He just let everyone else do it for him. You want to break up a couple, get the girl to leave her new man? That’s what you do. Nothing.”

            He has chili cheese fries and you scoop up a mess of bar fried death. “You getting all of this?”

            “Every bit.”

            “Good boy.”

            You spin around to face the bar, Micky and Mickster and Dan and Earl and Dave and you lean back and allow yourself a satisfied sneer.

            “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar and say ‘Man, what are you doing here?’”

 

***

            The cold steel sting of a hangover lets you know you’re still alive. It’s God’s gift to the blackout drunk and you remind yourself to be thankful when you roll out of bed.

            The apartment needs to be cleaned and the garbage carried out. A list needs to be made, certainly there are things you’re overlooking; laundry, taxes, phone calls, that band at that place, haircut, sonnet, global warming, gym membership.

            There’s an envelope on the floor by the front door, presumably slid under some time in the night. It’s grubby and creased and your handwriting misspells your own name with blobs and scratch outs.

            It’s been a week since the kid was here and the only evidence indicating how the evening ended is a torn carbon in your checkbook, a hundred dollars, the name left blank.

            You bend to pick up the envelope but think better or it and squat. Your knees fire like twin shotgun blasts and you have to say “whoa” and take a minute before you stand back up.

            You carry it across the living room to your desk and bask there in the warmth of your misspent youth. The envelope is thin. It must contain only a single slip of paper, a scrap, probably with just a single sentence in his childish writing. It can’t be complicated, how you’re going to die.

            You don’t open it. You don’t wad it up and throw it away. You close your eyes and hold it up to your forehead and do Karnack because you’re old enough to get the joke. You say, “Broken,” and you don’t take the picture off the wall but you do put the envelope in the desk drawer and you sit on the couch and turn on the TV and don’t think of all those things you’re not going to be.