He decides to wait to say hello so as not to get recruited into unloading gear. Stretching out on the hill, he relaxes and watches clouds, letting the air of anticipation linger. It is his favorite time, the next—the time before the Thing—whatever it is—that’s going to happen. It is the moment before walking out on stage. It is the moment before he strums. It is the moment before the kiss. It is the threat to time—the infinite present. He is never nervous when he senses something afoot, the reversal of the equilibrium, the change in the tide—he’s ecstatic—the next is everything—because once the change comes, it will be over.

“What then?” Melissa asks curiously.

“What then what?”

“What are you doing at the end of the month?”

“Moving.”

“Moving!?”

“Yeah.”

“Where!?”

“‘Cross town,” Travis waves his hand in the general direction of Karen’s house.

“Oh.” Melissa breathes a sigh of relief. “I thought you meant you were moving away.” “No.” Travis says simply. After a moment of rolling the words around in his head, wondering if he should say it, he says, “Would it matter?”

Melissa stops in her tracks. She gives Travis a look that means he should know better than to have asked. She keeps walking and says, “Yes. It matters.”

They coast on small talk the rest of the way downtown, and when they get to the corner of College and Broad, Travis doesn’t know how to say goodbye, standing in front of his bike. She’s made up her mind to walk home instead, asking for a rain check on the bike ride, though. Travis jams his hands in his hip pockets and says, “There’s this party tonight…”

Melissa shakes her head lightly. Travis feels like she’s already walking down the street. “Not for a while, Travis, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I just need to get back to things, um, settle some things…”

“I guess I’ll see you around then.”

She gives in against her better judgment and steps close to him. She leans in and kisses him on the corner of his lip. After she does they look at each other. “I know where to find you. And I will” Then, she turns and walks away, leaving Travis standing next to Mary Jane with his hands still jammed in his pockets.

“I’m not telling you.”

“What’s it matter? I’m gonna’ see it in an hour. You’re not suddenly going to be embarassed in an hour are you?”

“That’s the point,” Melissa replies.

“Well, is it something you said or was it somebody famous.”

She smiles. “Somebody who will be famous.”

“I hope you didn’t quote me.”

“Why?”

“That would be a bit pretentious, don’t you think? My own words on my bedroom wall?”

“No. It’s in my handwriting. That makes it okay.”

“It does?”

“Yes.”

“What standards board declared this?”

Melissa thinks about it. “The Graffiti and Scrawled Quote Board of Etiquette.” Duh.

“Okay.”

“I thought you’d be touched.”

“Depends on what I said. I’m the one who’s gonna’ have to look at it for the rest of the month.”

“You’ll like it. Shut up.”

Yes, it replies. Look at the clothes you are wearing: a pea coat, a dark hat, spall spectacles, bell bottoms, black shoes. Should I go on?

Oh, indeed. Do go on.

Examine your sideburns. And “sideburns” in his head sounds like the weapon that shuts the case.

I see.

He does indeed see as he makes his way across the road and down the hill into Central Park. He shake’s his thought’s hand an lets it travel onward into silent impermanence. At any rate, he was certainly the same stuff as John Lennon and that thought was polite and so he let it linger. Once he sat in a subway station for two hours and just watched people going by.

Every day of the year his meandering bring him by the Dakota, though. And every day, every time of day of the year, there is a photographer, taking pictures of the spot where the man died. And no one photographs, Gene. So that’s the way it goes.

Now, seated in his armchair beneath the orb of yellow from his lamps, the space beyond called him. Here was the moment, the opportunity. Tinted indigo by the lights from the city, the darkness was no negative space, unfortunate for boundaries, but a place to play, a space to go.

“No sweat.”

“You know your room is much more… interesting in the daylight.”

Travis peers over his shoulder. “The wall?”

She walks down the length of the mural, “This is impressive.”

Travis is still standing with a plate of eggs and a glass of orange juice, “You have to split it with me.”

She hesitates and then steps over to him and looks at the plate. “You’re very sweet.” Then she says, “But I’m not hungry.”

Travis set the glass down, picks his fork up, cuts a bite and holds it out to her. He feels like he’s offering food to a wild animal in a strange place, clearly unsure of the situation now that it’s morning. She takes the fork out of his hand and eats the bite. After chewing for a moment, self-consciously, she swallows and remarks, “Not bad.” Then she takes the plate out of his hands and sets it on the dresser. Turning to him, she leads him to the bed and half pushes, half tackles him on to it. They lay together for a while. She kisses him, lightly, on the lips, and settles back on her pillow and says, “This is a nice t-shirt.”

“I’m glad you like it. That’s all I got.”

Wrinkling her nose, Melissa asks, “You mean you only own one t-shirt?”

“No, no, no. I meant I don’t own any other kinds of shirts. Sorry.”

“Oh.”

Travis looks back to his closet. “I don’t have much use for anything but t-shirts, I guess.”

She wraps her arms under him, and her embrace is hot. After a moment of laying still, she rubs his head and says, “You’re cuddly.”

“Thanks.” Travis shuts his eyes and lapses into a thoughtless state after a few minutes—he smiles when he thinks cosmoblatarific meditation. He wants to just absorb the feeling of being held and hang onto it because he can tell it’s passing. She needs time and space to be alone with what she had finally gotten out last night.

He does not notice as he drifts off into sleep. His dreams are waking ones, vivid. All the colors in the dream are saturated and stark, grainy shades of nothing but yellows and browns. There is a field and shapes lean at odd angles; fence posts. The feeling of his own feet on the ground is imperceptible. He can here a concert playing faintly in the distance. But as soon as he begins to try to go to it, to grasp where and who he is, he awakens with a start.

“You all right?” Melissa asks.

“Yeah. Sorry. Drifted off there.”

She rubs his back with her hand. “Fall down some stairs?”

Travis rolls over and smiles—looks at her sincerely, and says, “Fell off a merry-go-round.”

“That’s odd.”

“Tell me about it.”

There is a pause for a few minutes, and then Travis says, “I need to get downtown pretty soon.” After having woken from the dream, he feels anxious.

“That’s fine.”

“You can stay here if you want. I’ll go get my bike, and then I can take you to your car.”

“You’re gonna’ take me on your bicycle?”

“No, motorcycle.”

“Oh!”

Travis laughs at the vision of trying to balance her on his handlbars. For some reason, the vision involves him wearing thick glasses, talking with a nasel voice, wearing a bow tie.

“You have a motorcycle?”

“You knew that,” Travis says.

“No I didn’t.” She is visibly excited.

“Welp. I do.”

“That’s so cool!” Melissa’s voice rises in pitch. “I get to ride on a motorcycle!”

Travis loves the excitement, loves the vicarious joy he gets from new riders.

“That so figures.”

“What?”

“That you would have a motorcycle.”

“What? I’m a stereotype?” Travis replies indignantly. “That’s insulting.”

“Yeah, but it’s true.” Melissa lists the following items on her fingertips, “Guitar, musician, only wears t-shirts—and probably leather when its cool out—motorcycle.” She raises her eyebrows, having presented her airtight case.

“You forgot boots.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. Black boots.”

“Okay, okay. Whatever. I give.”

Melissa is smiling at a private joke practically breaking out from between her pearly teeth.

“What?” Travis asks, waiting for a punch line.

“No… nothing.”

“What?”

She sighs and puts her hand out, lightly touching his nose with her index finger. He tries to look at it as she speaks. “You’re a cowboy.” She smiles, brilliantly, having said it. “Happy now?”

He says, “Good morning.”

“Nooo.” She snuggles down into the covers and pulls them over her head. “Go away.”

Travis puts his arm under the pillow and lays his head back down.

Peeking out from beneath the covers, Melissa giggles. “I woke up at about four this morning and was halfway tempted to leave, but I didn’t know where the hell I was.”

Travis makes a face. “You were gonna’ ditch me?”

Melissa nods fecitiously, the comforter wrapped around her like a shawl. Then she smiles more sweetly and says, “I’m not used to just going home with complete strangers.”

“Oh, I see. I’m, like, totally used to that.”

“Oh really?”

“Oh yeah. I’m a slut.”

Melissa bats her hand out for a moment, long enough to make contact with Travis’s shoulder, and then slides back underneath the covers.

“What? I said I’m a slut. How can you possibly take offense?”

“You were implying that I was one.”

“I was not.”

“I was kidding anyway.” Melissa giggles again, and then brings her head up out from under the covers for a moment to listen more closely to a very strange sound emanating from the living room. Travis hears it too, and before Melissa can ask, he replies, “No, no. Hide, hide.” He slides underneath the comforter, and without really thinking about it, Melissa does the same.

“What are we hiding from?” she asks the darkness between their noses.

Travis can feel her breath, and replies in the general direction of the question, the Screamewling Fuzzfart. He can feel Absynthe leap up on the bed, make his way across the mattress, little bastard, walking up Travis’s leg. After a moment, Absynthe crosses the bed and tests his weight on Melissa’s thighs.

“Oh my god!” Melissa hollers and squiggles around in the bed, shifting up against Travis. She had thought Travis was kidding about something coming for them.

With all the sudden movement, Absynthe takes his cue to jump off the bed. He sits on the floor, and starts screaming his lungs out.

“Relax,” says Travis. “I was just kidding around. It’s just my roomate’s cat.”

Melissa looks around the bed for the cat, and hears it screaming from the floor. She pulls herself over the side to look at it. “I thought it was a rat or something.” As soon as she looks at the kitten though, the cat screams at her. “Aw…” Melissa replies, “I think we hurt it.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Travis says. “He does that every morning.”

Melissa looks perplexed as Absynthe screams again. She sits up in the bed and looks at Travis. “Are you serious?”

“For ten minutes, you watch. It’s a God damn ritual or something.”

By the time Absynthe screams a third time, Melissa catches on. “Oh my God. That’s awful.” She looks at the kitten as it claws its way back up to the top of the bed, sits down and lets out a disheartening, “Eeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyaaaa-aaahhhhhhhhh!”

“Aw…” Melissa’s sympathy’s are renewed. “It just wants attention.” Travis just rolls his eyes as she reaches out to pick the kitten up. It promptly falls on its back and claws vigrously at the approaching hand with all four paws. Melissa pulls her hand back quickly. “Good Lord.”

“Told ya’.”

Absynthe rolls on his side and stretches lazily, using all of his relaxed muscles to push forth yet another scream, followed by two more quiet ones, a little unsure of something, directed at the opposite end of the bed. Travis sits up, bows his legs out underneath the comforter, picks Absynthe up despite protest, and folds his legs and comforter around the kitten. Absynthe screams from inside the soft bear trap, but the noise is pleasantly muffled.

“I only do this when I have guests or a hangover,” Travis reassures Melissa, who is already laughing. “What?” Travis asks.

“I’ve never heard anything like that.”

Travis rolls his eyes. “I’ve only been having to put up with it lately because Nick’s gone. He usually gets up before I do.”

“What did you do to it?”

“Nothing! I swear! It just started doing it one morning, and now it always does it.”

“Probably because you fed it, and now it thinks it has to do that to get fed.”

“No. Even when you give him food he won’t stop.”

“Really?”

“Really. As soon as he hears that someone’s awake, he starts, and then about ten minutes later, he stops.”

Melissa laughs again.

“It’s not funny,” Travis says desperately.

“It’s hysterical.”

“It’s punishment.”

“For what?”

“I wish I knew. I would fix it. I swear I would.”

Melissa shrugs.

“Watch this,” Travis says. He puts his hands on either side of the clam shell trap that he’s made with the comforter, and waits for Absynthe to scream again. As soon as the cat does, Travis pushes it back and forth, making the scream vibrate like an engine.

“Stop. Stop it.”

“He doesn’t mind,” Travis replies.

“That’s terrible. Quit it.” The request sounds genuine the second time, and so Travis stops in mid-shake.

“He really doesn’t mind,” he says, and opens his legs, revealing a much enthused Absynthe on his back, trying to claw his way out of the cave. Picking the cat up underneath the forearms, Travis lifts Absynthe whose body stretches down lazily beneath him, long and sleek. Absynthe blankly looks around the room with wide eyes and then screams at the wall near the bed. “See?” Travis offers. Melissa looks at the cat distastefully at first, but then, it’s a kitten and she pets him. Absynthe lets her this time.

Travis puts the kitten down and after accepting a few more friendly scratches, Absynthe walks out of the room without a sound.

“Is he done?” Melissa asks.

“Yup. That’s it. Next show’s tomorrow morning.” For a moment, he wants to ask her if she’ll be there, but then they both sit upright, facing the doorway, confused. Neither has any idea of what they are supposed to now. “You want some breakfast?” Travis asks.

Melissa hesitates, feeling that maybe she should just leave.

Seeing her reaction, Travis says simply, “It was just sleeping. It’s just breakfast.”

“All right,” Melissa replies and she starts to get up.

“No, no. My treat. Stay in bed and sleep some more. I’ll just be ten minutes.”

Unpacked and even arranged as sparsely as possible, his belongings barely took up a sixth of the floor space of the second floor of the factory. If he stood at the northwest corner of the floor (his belongings being in the southwest corner) and watched the dying light of the sunset fall across the Ohio River and lightly tread through the dirty glass of the factory windows, the whole of his quiet life took on the tenor of a strange experiment—a human terrarium in progress. And it seemed a reflection of his own chosen study of cognitive psychology that he never arrived home at the end of the stairs, but instead made the long seventy yard walk to his “apartment,” gradually and feeling himself under some kind of alien observation.

Those seemingly smoke-infested sunbeams, broken only by unchiseled paint on the glass, as that light faded to black and shadow, he came to live in an orb of his own light, surrounded by space that seemed to call him. Other than the amber of his two corner brick walls, he was surrounded by dark space, shadow, and possibility.