This sense of being watched reminded me of the countless Zoom presentations I’d given to faceless crowds. The one-sidedness of it always made me feel a bit uneasy, a bit vulnerable. The audience’s cameras almost always off, I could see myself on the screen the way they saw me. They could probably construct an accurate narrative about me and my disposition, based on my mannerisms and body language. Yet the only information I had about them was a user name, perhaps a headshot in place of an empty black box.
At the present moment, that same vulnerable feeling spread so rapidly through my chest and limbs that it morphed into unmistakable dread. I knew I was not alone. And, unlike the sensation of standing before anonymous viewers on a virtual stage, I became acutely aware that any information gathered about me by the person watching now posed a physical threat. They might see that my body is not one of a runner. They might wait for me to look left, so they might come at me from the right. They might notice my heels, my expensive bracelets. They might see me as an easy target.
I would do what I could to cast doubt on that assessment. Standing tall, I walked quickly and confidently forward, through the dusty warehouse, my head on a swivel. I could see the metal suitcase in the back corner beside a half-rolled up garage door. My escape. I picked up my pace, just as I heard what sounded like a stack of boxes tumbling over several yards behind me. Kicking off my shoes, I broke into a run toward the suitcase. I could not risk looking back, but knew intuitively that my stalker was now in full pursuit. By the time I was thirty feet from the suitcase, I could hear their footsteps and breath. If they were any sort of athlete, they would surely catch me before I reached the suitcase. A hand truck stood in my pathway. I reached for it, swinging it around and behind me. I heard it roll several feet before toppling over my tracks and, from the sound of it, directly into the shins of my pursuer.
I grabbed the suitcase. It was heavier than I expected, but I threw it under the garage door, following behind.
A professional card player. A physics professor. A disgraced actress. A retired chef. What does this band of misfits have in common? They each traveled by air, automobile and equine to arrive at this candlelit, canvas pavillion in the middle of the desert. They’re all guests at my party.
And whose party is that, you ask? Some might call me an instigator, but they’ve got the wrong idea. I’m a facilitator. A venture coordinator. I take the sketch of an idea and turn it into a well-laid plan. I source the location, the materials, and the carpenters, and before you know it, those well-laid plans have grown into a fucking skyscraper.
What I do requires a unique skillset, one that can be cultivated but not learned. Take this gathering, for example. Six weeks ago, none of these people had heard of each other or of me. Now, we sit laughing around the table like old friends, passing the wine frequently as we we move between topics of conversation. They each know that their invitations here were neither random nor lacking motive. Some of them doubtlessly considered turning down the invitation, but I knew they would all ultimately accept. Because that’s another thing they have in common, and it’s why I invited them to this party. Each of these individuals possesses an innate curiosity, which - despite its inherent risk - is a necessary tool to complete my newest project.
It was late, probably too late for Wren to be walking through Piedmont Park. She wasn’t alone in the park, though. She could see the outline of a couple sitting together on a bench beneath the blue glare of a light post. A jogger in the distance made circles around the running track. Still, a woman shouldn’t be crossing the park alone at 10 PM, hours after the sunset closing. If something happened to her, people wouldn’t be able to talk about it without mentioning the role that her poor decision making played in her own demise. “It’s fine,” Wren thought. “If I screamed, someone would hear me.”
At just that moment, Wren heard the sound footsteps behind her. She began to walk faster, but was certain that the footsteps were now matching her faster pace. Just as she thought she might break into a run, she heard the sound of her name coming from a familiar voice. She turned to see a man, poorly groomed and shabbily dressed. Though he was almost unrecognizable, his voice and posture identified him nevertheless. It had been ages since she had heard that voice. Yet something was different. Unmistakable darkness emanated from this man, in spite of the darkness surrounding them both.
Wren gasped as Liam took a step closer. The change in him since she last saw him, when he told her he had met someone else, was unbelievable. His hair was long and greasy. A bulge coming from the side of his dirty jeans poorly concealed the outline of a weapon. He peered at her with stormy, gray eyes. Though she had spent months wanting nothing but to be back in his arms, her only instincts now told her to run.
Mother Nature provides many avenues to escape reality, or so I’ve found, to adjust reality, or to discover it.
She asks the traveler to pause and wait For the life around us to come to life. It was there all along, But we did not notice.
The clouds are beaming, loving the audience, swelling, compelling, enveloping me. In billowing folds, Such stories unfold.
There is a stray. The community collects him, folds him in.
I pass this peaceful, spiraling jasmine daily. Tonight I see it’s face for the first time. A kind and watchful eye, Vines that beckon an embrace.
That rouge vine, Crawling up my rail - she’s the lookout.
The trees laugh hysterically, wind tickling their leaves interrupts their conversations. They turn to each other, Asking “Who is that guy?”
After some conference, The tall one invites me to join their tribe.
The stars are not aligned - they’re too busy With wars to fight, and games to play, and win. Stars, planes, spaceships, drones… They could all be players.
A swoop across the sky. I think that one got tired of playing.
The waves are like a heartbeat rising fast. People stroll by, feet splashing in the surf. Do they inhabit my same shore, Or are they out on the horizon?
They really are beautiful, Lives holding promise and guilt and optimism. They pause just for today to smell the salt air.
Once I was the outline of your picture. You filled it in with color and texture. Now I’m the skillfully blended, faded edge, hinting at dimension, noted only by a studied eye.
Once I was the grasp around your wrist, Squeezing tightly, leaving half-moon marks. Now I’m the invisible imprint, still felt only occasionally, when your hand turns a certain way.
Once I was the leader of your band. On center stage, the encore always mine. Now I’m the indistinct track in your head, the words forgotten, replaying only for an olden hour.
Jerry peeked over the towers of stacked, mismatched china that balanced precariously on top of a rickety antique shelf. In the parking lot, a shiny black Audi SUV had been idling for at least half an hour. As a matter of principal, Jerry never lifted the large metal door on the garage-turned-junk shop a minute before, nor a minute after 10 ‘o clock. Being that it was 9:57 AM, this gave Jerry a bit longer to speculate. It was unusual to have customers waiting at the door when the shop opened. It was getting to be unusual to have customers at all these days, especially ones in fancy cars. Times were tough for the residents of this shrinking, middle-of-nowhere town in South Georgia. It seemed lately that most visitors to the store were stopping by in hopes of selling their junk for a little cash, rather than buy more.
Several clocks scattered about the store, all set to time, announced opening time with a chorus of chimes. Jerry stepped around the counter, awkwardly squeezing his shoulders around a hanging banjo and maneuvering around a red vintage stool and a marble plant stand holding a Murano bunch bowl. He pulled up the garage door to find himself standing face to face with a short, well-dressed man wearing aviator sunglasses.
“Jerry Riggs?” he asked, in a way that suggested he already knew the answer.
Jerry nodded uncertainly, but attempted a smile. “What can I do ya for?” he asked, in his standard greeting to customers.
“Three years ago,” said the man, “You purchased a set of old books - a series of novels - from a local man who has since died. Do you remember?”
“Eh, I think so…” Jerry responded, glancing to the side as if cast about in thought. His eyes caught those of David, a marble statue he had picked up at an estate sale three towns over. “Right…I believe Jonas Lawrence did sell me some books a handful of years ago before he got sick. Lord knows if I can dig them out from under all this mess.” Then, after a pause, “Excuse this nosy old man, but what about some old books would bring a young outta-towner like you to a place like this?”
“I won’t bother with the pretenses,” the stranger said. “I work for a fine arts and collectibles dealer in Atlanta and have been working to find those books for a client for two years. The books belonged to Jonas Lawrence’s grandfather, Rufus Lawrence. What Jonas presumably didn’t know was that his grandfather authored the books under a pseudonym. In fact, we believe them to be not only the first editions, but very first printed copies of the Architects of Eternity series. And to be honest, Mr. Riggs, we are prepared to make you a fair and generous offer for them if you can, er - ‘dig them out’.”
We stood in the middle of a desert, faces upturned. We were about an hour from Arequipa, and had been watching the sky cycle through shades of peachy orange, deep periwinkle, and finally to black. We asked our driver to pull over briefly, to allow us to step out and take in the scene that lay before us now. Sandy mounds stretched out into an endless expanse the color of charcoal. Moonlight illuminated the ground, just barely distinguishing the earth from the atmosphere on the far away horizon. The sky exploded with starlight. Thousands, millions of white specks glistened as if cast into the sky with the splatter of a great brush soaked in iridescent paint. As populous and varied as mankind, they came in different sizes and shades and degrees of luminescence. Some clustered together, while others proudly stood isolated. Some seemed so far away that they strained to be visible, while others were just barely out of reach. They hovered above us in a swirling pattern, tremendous to the point of challenging my comprehension. I struggled to accept that these same stars existed in all of the night skies I had ever stood beneath, but they had been invisible to me.
“If watching cartoons has taught me anything, its that characters never really change,” said Devin, taking a long draw on his cigarette. The butt glowed orange. He was sitting in the dark, back to the wall, long legs splayed out on the studio floor. Colorful sketches surrounded him, and he flicked a bit of ash onto a drawing of a cockatoo with black, smoldering tail feathers, a tendril of smoke floating upward above its rigid little body. The bird stared crossly at a baffled looking St Bernard holding a match. The cockatoo’s wings folded over his chest in irritation. The fallen ash from the cigarette made him look like the victim of a war crime rather than a misguided prank.
“That doesn’t have to be true,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “You write the cartoons. You could change the characters. Make those burned feathers permanent. Send Bernard to therapy. He’s obviously tormenting that poor bird to distract himself from some pretty dark stuff.”
Devin didn’t look up. “Stories like that are for HBO. Not for people who watch cartoons. In cartoons, wounds heal. The physical and the emotional. In the next episode, the feathers are magically regrown, good as new. Bernard and Court are back at it. Nothing’s changed. The events of the last episode are never thought of again. Like they never happened.”
I sighed. This was Devin. Such a brooder. What was it that I read recently - something about “Sad Clown” comedians who use humor to mask what they’re ashamed of, to bandage painful wounds. Surely the same would be true of adults who escape to a lighthearted, uncomplicated world, writing and animating entertainment for children. But I’m no psychologist.
“My point is,” I said, “that humans are more complicated than your characters. They can change. Often times they don’t, not really. But often times they do, for better or for worse, and you can’t blame yourself for their failures.”
I thought back to when we were kids. Devin wasn’t always this way. He was sharp, talented, optimistic, rare. Senior year, he played on the state champion soccer team and won first prize in the art show. The image contrasted starkly with the gangly, unkempt smoker sitting before me. The irony of Devin’s suggestion, that people never change, was not lost on me. Hadn’t he changed? Or, is this who he always was? Had this moody cynic been waiting inside, waiting for an act of betrayal to pry open the door and let him out?
As I stepped off of the train onto the platform I found myself engulfed with feelings of sheer optimism and possibility. Though I was eager to explore the city, I paused momentarily to take in my surroundings. The station was bursting with travelers. They paced toward hosts with outstretched arms and raced excitedly toward their next trains. An astonishing number of peddlers called out to me, waving everything from socks to cigars. I purchased a newspaper from a woman with an arm full of gold bracelets and a red shawl around her hair, and with it, I felt I had procured a little piece of my new home.
