All this time we've known each other

Ryan returned the phone to the cradle.

"That was Chris. They're running a bit late."

"Oh well. I guess that gives us time to have a glass of wine before they get here. Loosen up a little bit," Renee said. She selected a bottle of red from the rack and took two glasses down from the cupboard.

"I'll just keep the oven on low. Hopefully dinner won't get too dried out."

Ryan sank onto the couch with a grunt. "I'm beat," he said. "I don't know why you invited them over on a Friday night anyway. I'm not sure I want to make conversation with anyone."

Renee sipped her wine. She had seen Laura at the gym a few days before. She was stepping into the shower after yoga class and realized it was Laura in the stall next to her. She never realized how slim Laura was. She always wore shapeless baggy clothes and old-man cardigans. Renee always thought of her as a homely woman. She wondered what Chris saw in her, because he was tall with dangerously rumpled hair and a deep, gravely voice. Renee had to devise a ruse everytime she saw him to keep him from noticing how she blushed. She couldn't help herself. It was practically instinct. He was so amazingly hot and what was he doing with a woman like Laura? She couldn't make sense of them as a couple.

But in the shower she noticed Laura's tiny waist and her two, perfectly shaped breasts. Renee hated her own. They always felt too large and pendulous. But it seemed Laura had the perfect body. Perhaps that explained it.

"Well, Ryan, it just came out. We were standing there in the shower and all of a sudden I was telling her about my new recipe for goat cheese and tomato quiche. They next thing I knew, we had plans for Friday."

"The shower, eh?" Ryan wiggled his eyebrows. "Well I just hope they bring some more wine. I'm going to need it."

Soon the doorbell rang and Ryan rose to answer it.

"Hey, guys! Come on in! Let me take your coats," he said.

"Nice place!" Laura said. "I don't think we've ever been here."

"You know, you're right" Renee said. "All this time we've known each other and I don't think we've ever gotten together, just the four of us."

"It's about time, then." Chris said. "Hey, we brought some wine." He handed the Renee the bottle.

"Thanks! Ryan and I already started. I'll pour you a glass. Make yourselves comfortable." She went into the kitchen to get two more glasses.

"It's a syrah," Laura called after her. "We just love syrahs."

Ryan was back from the bedroom where he has put their coats."Oh yeah?" he said. "We've tried them from time to time, but we tend to like pinots."

"I like beer," joked Chris. "Lots of beer and good, hard liquor." They all laughed.

"Everyone makes such a big deal about pinot noir," Laura said as Renee handed her the glass. "But it's just not exciting. We like wines that are bold."

"Laura's been into finding the cheapest bottle that still drinkable. Who knows? The bottle we brought could be $1.99," Chris said.

Laura shot him a look. "It's not. But there are lots of good, cheap syrahs out there for like, ten dollars."

"Well, I don't care how much it costs," joked Ryan. "I'll drink it!"

"Come on everyone, dinner is served." Renee said. They moved into the dining room and Renee brought the quiche out and set it on the table.

"Ooh! It smells wonderful." Laura said. "I like these plates too. Are they fiestaware?"

"Yes. My grandmother's. It's the original stuff." Renee said. She loved being able to say that. She always enjoyed setting the table, placing her bright cloth napkins and vintage water glasses beside her vintage dishes. She knew how to create atmosphere. She was always surprised when she went to other people's homes. They would turn on the overhead, fluorescent lights and use paper napkins. It was like eating in a cafeteria. But Renee liked to dim the lights, set out candles, and put on a good jazz CD. People always remarked on her good taste.

"Man, you won't believe what happened to me today," Ryan said as he served the quiche.

"Cut me a big piece," Chris said as he passed his plate.

"Would you pass the salad?" Laura asked. Renee handed her the salad in its hand-carved wood bowl with matching utensils.

"So, I call my credit card company to tell them to take this stupid fee off my statement. All the sudden this nine dollar fee appears on my statement for services or something. I don't know what it's for, but it pisses me off, you know?"

"Oh, I hate having to call the credit card company," Laura said.

"Well, I'm on the phone and it take me forever to get to a real person. I have to press one, then zero, then listen to another menu."

"Yadda, yadda," Renee said.

"Well, when a real, live person picks up, it's this woman from India or something! I could hardly understand her!" He said something in gibberish as if he was imitating a foreign language.

"That sound more like Chinese than Indian," Chris said.

Laura laughed and repeated the gibberish, "yingyangwongchong."

"Well, whatever. All that money I send to that company and they don't even have an American on the line. I just hung up. I couldn't stand it."

"Are you going to pay the fee?" Renee asked.

"Hell, no! I'm going to write them a letter," Ryan said.

Renee took a sip of her wine. She looked across the table at Chris. He had a five-o-clock shadow. Usually she liked Ryan to be clean shaven, but on Chris, a little stubble looked good. She wondered what it would feel like against her face. "Ooh. I'm starting to feel the wine. I'm all glowy," she said. She felt warm and like all her muscles were loose and flexible.

"Mmmm. Me too," Laura said.

"I should open another bottle," Ryan said. He got up and went into the kitchen.

"Women," said Chris. "It doesn't take much."

Laura started to giggle and touched his arm. "Remember last weekend? It didn't take much then, either."

"Oh, yeah?" Ryan had returned with a bottle of champagne. "This is all I could find." He popped the cork and filled each of their glasses. "You had a little too much, eh?"

"We had kind of a crazy time," Laura said. She was still giggling. "I can't stop laughing!" She took a sip of her champagne. She looked at Chris, and he shrugged his shoulders at her.

"Well...we were over at our friends' house for dinner. Clark and Mary. You've met them, right?"

Renee nodded. "We met them at your summer barbecue. Remember, Ryan?"

"I think so," He said.

"You might not know this about them, but they're kind of...swingers."

"No!" Renee shrieked.

"We've known for a long time, but we never really talk about it with them."

"So what happened?"

"Oh, Renee. You just love gossip." Ryan rolled his eyes.

"We were over there for dinner and we had a few bottles of wine between us. We were all a little loopy."

"It didn't help that we smoked a joint on the way over there," Chris said.

"So they have a hot tub and after dinner we all decide to go in. But of course we didn't bring our bathing suits, so we went in naked," Laura said. Renee noticed Laura was rubbing the inside of her husband's arm as she talked. She moved her hand quickly up to his elbow and back down to his wrist. She kicked Ryan under the table to try to get him to look at her, but he was transfixed.

"So," Ryan said. "What? Did you swap or something?" Laura squeezed Chris' arm.

"We dared Laura and Mary to kiss and they did," Chris said.

"That's it?"

"Ummm. Let's just say one thing did lead to another."

"Wow." Ryan drained his champagne.

"I don't know if I could ever do that. I just don't know," Renee said. She looked down at her lap. She didn't know what to say next. She could hear the fizzing of the chanpagne bubbles in the glass.

"Well, we certainly killed the conversation!" Chris said. He pressed his hands together.

"No, no...I was just thinking I should clear the table. We have tirimisu for dessert," Renee said.

She stood up and collected the dishes. In the kitchen, she put on the kettle for tea. She heard Chris and Ryan laughing from the dining room. "Laura's had enough, I think! Throw her in the drunk tank!"

Renee rinsed the plates and stacked them in the dishwasher. She carried the slices of tiramisu and a pot of tea out to the dining room on a tray. Laura had her head resting on the table.

Renee couldn't help yawning as poured each of them a cup. "I can't believe how tired I am," she said. "Ryan, you had a hard day. You must be tired too."

Portland: January

This doggy, soggy winter. It has rained more than 30 days straight and that means 10 more days and we're going Biblical. Even Noah only had to wait out 44. Spring is coming.

We go about our days medicated with coffee. It is a window that draws in whatever daylight exists out there between the raindrops. Movies and books a drug too--tricking us with the illusion of life and activity. There is something happening, somewhere in the world beyond these pillows and blankets which we burrow down into for whole months. They are a like a bandage on a wounded man. They keep us barely alive. We eat avacados and tomatoes from Southern California--a rude and brash cousin who has too much and appreciates nothing--the bright fruit injects a bit of summer into our winter days.

The dog sleeps in its chair and wakes once a day impatient to be put on a leash and led out into the wet night in search of the doggy news that is printed at the base of every sign post and shrub. My eyelashes catch drops of fog and I think perhaps I see a rainbow. A promise that June will soon be here with its roses and long, clear days. I hesitate to wipe my eyes so that I can live the dream a litte longer.

Fries, please

Being sick is lonely. The whole world continues on outside as I lie here in this bed. People go to work, kids go to school, stock boys stack apples and oranges into pyramids in the grocery store, truck drivers hauls their goods. All this happens as I lie here.

I remember last year when the Pope died. I felt so sorry for him. I knew what he was feeling. After so many years of being among throngs of adoring people he was sequestered away in a bare hospital room. He must have lay in bed listening to the whispers of his cardinals as they talked around him. No laughter, no joy, no life. Just a hushed contraction of time while they waited for him to die.

I am not going to die like the Pope, but I am so sick that I can’t go to school. At 8:15 each morning I can hear the middle schoolers gathering for the bus and then it drops them off everyday at 3:30. I used to wish my window would overlook the street so I could see them too. But wishing is useless.

On one side of the room I turn my head to see a blue chest of drawers with silver pulls. It is there everyday. A constant. I get bored of looking at it; I have looked at it so much. To the left is my window, which overlooks the side yard. So instead of watching kids get on the bus, or old people walking their dogs, I look out to see what is happening in the yard. An awful lot happens there. Birds and squirrels wander through, the leaves grow and change and drop of course. I don’t need to tell you. I notice everything though. Every shade of green grass—from its emerald lushness in the early spring to its weak, limey green at the end of the summer. I notice the weeds as they sprout up and the way the laurel hedges grow at least two feet each year.

I have a tutor that comes once a week now on Saturdays. He’s a timid man who looks nervously around the room at the pill bottles and syringes and the IV drip that stands at attention in the corner just in case. He must worry that he’s going to get what I have, though you can’t catch it. He sits across the room perched on the folding chair mom puts there for him and he talks loudly at me, as if it were my ears that are failing, not my lungs.

At first he tried to do all sorts of work with me—math and science. But now we just read books and when he comes he talks about them. He yells his thoughts across the room for about an hour and then he gives me a new book for my assignment. He scurries out the door to where mom is waiting and I hear her say each week, “How’d it go?” while she writes him a check. I always wait to hear the sound of her ripping it from her checkbook—the perforations tearing with a satisfying zzzzip.

I feel bad for my mom. She feels bad about leaving me everyday but she has to go to work. She gets up before its light out to give me a bath and make me breakfast, give me my pills. She leaves a few hours later with nothing but a Ziploc bag full of Cheerios in her purse for her own breakfast. She leaves me propped up on pillows with the remote control in easy reach and kisses me on the cheek.

My favorite day of the week is when she reads me bits from the town Bee. She reads the articles about people we know or important things like that time when Wal-Mart wanted to open a store near the post office but everyone fought it. It comes every Thursday and she reads it out loud to me.

She gets especially into the articles about the mayor or the school board. Once, there was a proposal to build a skate ramp in the park and she was really upset about that. Half the town was for it, and the other half against. Some said at least it would get those boys out of the bank parking lots and movie theater steps where they were destroying property and scaring off senior citizens. The others said that skateboarding should just be banned altogether. Those kids were just waiting to crack their heads open and the town shouldn’t given them a legal place to go and do it.

I didn’t really care too much, because I was waiting for her to get to the school lunch schedule, which is my favorite part. Sometimes it’s grilled cheese on Monday, spaghetti on Tuesday and all the standard stuff. Sometimes the menu is out of the ordinary like the February when its African American history month they serve things like red beans and rice and okra. I’ve never had those but they sound good.

I wonder what it would be like to go to school. I would have a locker and eat in the cafeteria. I’d see the lunch lady every day in her hair net. She would ask me if I wanted peas of French fires and I would answer, “Fries, please.”

I’ve been at home so long that most of my friends have grown a whole foot or more by now. When I was first out of the hospital they would sometimes visit me, bringing flowers and had to be removed from the room right away, or candy that I couldn’t even open my mouth to eat. I remember my best friend, Michelle, with her long, brown hair and brown skin. Mom called her a “tomboy.” She came only once. She sat nest to my bed and didn’t say anything. Her mom and my mom were outside in the hall talking and she just sat there and stared at the floor. I couldn’t say anything either—I wanted to. I wanted to just say hi and ask her about Valentines Day and stuff. But finally her mom came and got her and she never came back.

I wonder if my friends ever think of me anymore or maybe they just pretend I moved away. I still remember how they looked. Timmy always had a runny nose, and Scott had the nicest freckles. I hated Amy and her bouncy, blonde curls. Cindy was tiny and had a funny laugh that always made me laugh too.

Mostly I think of Nathan. We always sat at the back of the bus together, even though boys and girls didn’t usually sit together. He had sandy brown hair and a scar on his chin from when he fell down the stairs as a little kid. He never did come to visit me, but he sent me a card with a big elephant on it that said, “Get Well Soon!”

I think of him everyday, especially when the Price is Right is over and the soap operas are on. They are never fun to watch. I think of the time he chased me during color tag in gym class. He didn’t chase any other girls except for me.

My friends probably do things like play sports after school and go to dances. If I were in school, I’d try out for the soccer team. That’s what Michelle plays. I know because sometimes the Bee has articles about how the team is doing so good. She is the star forward. I would be on the team too, and we would both be out there on the field and maybe it would be muddy that day so we’d come home from the game covered in mud. But it would be really fun and we would run hard anyway and be exact with our passes and outmaneuver the other team. We’d win, and then come in to the locker room cheering and excited. And on the way I’d see Nathan watching me from the crowd. And maybe he would have his driver’s license and wait for me so he could dive me home from the game.

Last year, mom read me a story about the homecoming floats. Each class would make a float on a theme, and the theme that time was fairy tales. One class made a Little Red Riding Hood float with a giant wolf’s head in a pink bonnet, and another class did Hansel and Gretel with a real gingerbread house and they threw candy to the crowd. I’d want to be one of the people throwing candy and watch the kids rush forward to pick up the peppermints and lollipops that fell to the ground.

There was a picture of Timmy in the paper too. He was homecoming king and there was a photo of him and his queen. They were wearing goofy tinfoil crowns. But I hardly recognized him. His note was bigger and it was like the whole shape of his head had changed. As if someone had pushed his jaw in and made his forehead stick out more. Maybe it was all the football he played. His neck was thick and he had hulking shoulders too. I wondered if he remembers coming to my birthday party once. He was the only boy I invited, and mom didn’t want him to come. But I invited him anyway.

Last night, I felt my lip split open. I sneezed and it tore open. There was nothing I could do until morning when mom checked in on me. By then, the blood was dried and my lip swollen twice its size. Sometimes it happens. It always hurts, but now I’m more used to living with it. I know that in the morning, mom will wipe it clean and apply Vaseline. She always makes me feel better.

Writing and other excretia

I've been home all week sick with the flu. A half-human, half-virus version of myself with chills and sweats, sore throat and mountains of mucus. Yuck. Being sick is such a drippy process. Every pore screams out, "I EXIST!" by excreting fluid.

In the midst of this, I got my first issue of Poets & Writers. I ordered it about two months ago. I was feeling good about the direction of "Lost." Praxis was about to come out. I suppose I was high on the idea of being a "real" writer and I thought the magazine would do me some good.

Maybe it was the phlegm, but it felt like it was P&W that was making me sick. EVERY $%^#& PAGE hosts an advertisement for an MFA program. The others hold ads for expensive residencies, and workshops. The articles are all written by writers that sit in cushy academic jobs. They spew analysis and intellectia. Rather than encourage struggling writers to keep going, it seems set up to discourage. This magazine is about the business of writing. It's not about the art of writing. It's about money, not love.

This past year I've accomplished a lot. I've written a few things I'm proud of. More importantly, I've kept writing. Every single week. No excuses. Whatever crap comes out. I'm there with my notebook. It may not seem like much, but it is. Just the commitment to keep going is huge for me. And the further I go, the more protective I feel about my art. I want to plug my ears when I hear other writers talking about blocks, or that they don't have enough time, or whatever. Even conversations about craft, or revisions are scary. I fear that anyone else's vision of what it means to be a writer--be it the almighty P&W or the Joe schmoe next to me--might infect my own and make me sick.

So...I think I'm going to donate my subscription to some local non-profit arts organization or something, if I can do that. Maybe there will come a time when I'm ready to dive into the business side of writing. But this year, my only resolution is to keep going.