Fugue #107

Ana, headphones on, laying on the couch, staring out the front window at the school across the street. A cat on her belly. She puts her palm on his face, covering his eyes, pauses, and pulls it back over his ears - he ducks under - and down his back. And over again, until he purrs.

She hums a song, light and lilty and stop-starty - her voice, like dancing air: fresh and sweet; fine, but not thin.

The afternoon sun cuts through the window and leaves a parallelogram on the floor. It highlights dust specks. Some rising, an illusion, all eventually falling. Sun. Light. Flaubert.

"It’s not that bad," she whispers to the cat, "Only a midterm." He blinks at her, eyes heavy. She holds him for a few more minutes, then squeezes him, puts her forehead on his and kisses him between the eyes. She pushes him gently to the floor, where he’s grateful to find the sun. She gets up, and walks over to the stereo.

He used to be one of the Rotten Ones, she thinks, picking up a cd case. And she liked him for that. But when he joined the Groovy Mice, she loved him. She smiles at the picture. 2-3-4!

Fugue #106

She laughs with her mouth open. It’s endearing. And the look on her face - chin down, raised brows, sly smile - is more than that. You’re very grateful.

Pause.

Harold Pinter.

Not long, not heavy, not psychological. Just enough - a beat - to think about what you said or will say. Or what she said. Typically, less than ten seconds.

"What were we even talking about?" she says, "Oh, yeah..."

We go from silence to chatter, and the chatter might as well be silence. We were, we are, talking about nothing. And it drowns out everything else we should say. Do you think about me? Do you know how I feel? Do you feel the same way? Do you? I’m naked here, I’m laid bare, look look. I wonder if she has the same questions.

I clear my throat, she stops. I say, "Keep talking."

She’s better than you at everything - except love. And you both know it.

Fugue #105

I always expected river banks to ease into the water, to slope gradually down toward an actual shore. But that’s not the nature of rivers. Oceans and lakes, and big rivers like the Mississippi, sure - they lap at the sand and the dirt. And their shores or banks are a transition, where their wide and dispersed strength recedes and cedes its influence to the land.

Rivers, these little ones, cut and gash their way through the prairie...hollowing out, leaving jagged edges - tumbling crumbling edges - that wash away, pebble and grain, to pile on each other further downstream. They tell a story, these kind of river banks. The layers of the exposed land are our history.

This layer? This is when the Sioux came here. And this one? This is when they were pushed away and placed on the reservations.

It will always be a confusing story, like so much of our elusive past. As much a testament to the erosive power of time, of eventuality, as it is to the futility of standing up to it.

Fugue #104

Her exterior is just too tough. And you imagine days before, days when it wasn't. Like the day of her first breakup, or her high school graduation. Her wedding, or the day her children were born. The day her parents died. All those days - their smiles and their tears - they aren't there for you. You can imagine them, but that’s as close as you get. What you get from her is something else. A facade, what she lets you see. It’s not much.

She earned her memories, you didn’t. You weren’t there. As hard as it is to believe, she cried, a lot. She had to. She smiled, she beamed with pride. She had to. Pain and healing, and you weren’t involved in either one. You think you can meet on even ground. You think you can know - you want to, you want to fake it and say I understand. But you don’t, you can’t, not really. At this point, you’re just a spectator.

"It's like, there was an us before there was a me. When you left, I had to learn to be me."

Pause.

"And I did. And it was really hard, Gene. Really and truly."

It’s inconceivable, you think.

Fugue #103

The band director had visions. Visions of awards, plaques, medals, and trophies. And appearances in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Rose Bowl Parade. Even visions of magazine articles written about him and his reinvention of what a post-millenial marching band repertoire should look/sound like, framed and mounted outside the band room in the hallway for everyone to see/read.

All summer he had worked on an arrangement of Brian Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets." First, the big brass - trombones and tubas - takes the melody, low and slow and steady. And after a chorus (no, two), in come the middle reeds - oboes, clarinets, saxes - echoing the bottom, giving the melody body. Then percussion - drums in poly-rhythm. The tempo picks up, and then. Then the top - xylophone and flute - to add filigree.

The band loved it, once they learned it. But the poms director didn’t. They talked. It was cordial at first: She said the new song was "great...and really interesting," but that it would be difficult to choreograph a halftime routine for it. But not impossible, right? No, not impossible, but very very difficult. He shrugged off her concerns, and she pressed for a change. As she pressed more, he shrugged more. And it all came to a head in the hall between fourth and fifth periods. She called him a "snob" and a "nerd." He called her an "ignorant bitch." So she went to the principal.

Fugue #102

He hands her the envelope, and she opens it - her still thin, still painted dark, now maternal fingers are familiar to him. She unfolds it and reads it.

At the end, where she had stopped writing, Gene started:

Em, I hope you won’t read this note again. If you do, it means that I’m not around to tell you this myself, but I still want you to know. I love you. I always did, even when I left. And I’m sorry.
- G

"Oh, Paulie..."

As she hands him the note, her eyes fill with tears that don’t fall. These are old tears, saved and nurtured for years, and she is too protective to let them fall into her lap.

"...you should read that. Not now, sometime - when I’m not here."

She smiles, it’s fake. And the tears finally stream down her cheeks, to her chin, down her neck. It’s a warm Saturday afternoon - late summer, early fall.

Paul leans forward, his elbows on his knees, and holds the letter between them, looking at the porch floor.

- Do you miss him, Em?
- Of course, I do. But he’s not here.
- No, he’s not.
- And we are.

Yep.

Fugue #101

The newspaper headline, a year later: Town feels void of the missing.

Lonnie West is still waiting for her front door to open. For the sound of work boots in the front hall. For the familiar "Hey, babe! What’s cooking?" from the door to the kitchen, where she prepares dinner every afternoon.

On August 14, one year ago, West’s husband Tom, along with seven others, died when the County grain elevator exploded during pre-harvest maintenance Twelve persons were seriously injured. "It’s like it hasn’t sunken in yet," said West. "I still put two plates on the table, and set two places every night." West has tried to find a sense of normalcy by "keeping to old routines," but she says, "it’s hard because so much has changed."

And she is not alone. Other families are also having a trouble moving on from one of the biggest disasters in Siouxland history.

The article mentions Gene, and his parents - but not Paul.

Fugue #100

How does a grain elevator explode?

Dust. Combustible dust, actually. Suspended in air during routine maintenance and ignited by an unknown source. Then an explosion,

(deep and heavy, you feel it in your heart, and think of the white circles on the Fourth of July)

which kicks up more dust, which, when lit by the flames that follow the first blast, triggers a cascade of blasts,

(it takes your breath at first, then you inhale and hold it, waiting for the next - close your eyes, here it comes)

demolishing the silos. And they dump tons of corn through the concrete floors, filling the underground tunnels, where workers were scrubbing the walls and floors.

Everywhere in town, there was a fine dusting of white powder. It blanketed every surface for a quarter mile - the lot around the elevator, the roads back into town, the walls of nearby buildings and houses, trains, cars, trees, lawns. Anchoring thin plumes of gray smoke, the fires smoldered for weeks. And it seemed like the explosions echoed across the fields for just as long.

And Paul was gone. Just gone.

Fugue #99

Enbal tells Ana and Paul about the Fall Out Boy video shoot.

Night rain, London rain - somewhere between actual precipitation and fog. Her hair develops tangles and becomes what she terms "ratty" by the time she is asked to cross the set, place her right hand on the bass player’s chest, smile at him, then look cheekily at the camera.

Take 1, then take 2, then etc. And the rain keeps falling down. And her hair gets worse until she resembles less the bass player’s video girlfriend than an ‘80s-era hair metal band groupie - interested not in love, but in sex...and drugs. And how much of the former she must give in order to get how much of the latter.

Ana is hooked:
- So what did you do?
- I sold it.
- What?
- I sold it, I was that girl.
- What do you mean, "that girl"?
- I was that girl...I ramped it up and vamped it up.
- Really?!
- Yeah, I had them literally: Eating. Me. Up.

Enbal pulls a food service napkin with an Art Deco-ish logo from her bra. A phone number, "I like to call him Peter." She winks.

Fugue #98

She has a constellation of moles on the outside of her right ankle, and another below her right shoulder. I can see them when she’s driving.

It’s now dusk, and her shades are up in her hair. She’s all bottom lip and furrowed brow, thinking. A baby girl ponytail holder and a striped halter top detract from her seriousness.

"I have a confession," I say. I should tell her what I feel about her, right now. I don’t think she knows, but she should. How I adore her. How I think she’s brilliant. How I’ve mapped out her body. The ankle constellation looks like Cassiopeia, let me trace it for you. The shoulder one looks like Sagittarius, the Archer, see. And then there’s a single tiny spot, the North Star maybe, that only appears when you pull your hair up: right...there.

She’ll give me a look, a what? What are you talking about? She’ll smile maybe, or she’ll roll her eyes and say I’m weird - or very weird. And I’ll explain that at least one person should know her this well. Then I’ll stop, and look away.

But not today.

"I have a confession," instead, "I listen to records I don’t like alot more than records I like."