One-Thousand-and-One American Nights

Night #5.

If you haven't figured it out by now, there's little rhyme or reason to what I'm doing. I'm buying vinyls and I don't even own a player. I'm buying large cups of coffee in the local diners and I don't even like coffee. I'm playing Barry Manilow at work, I don't even know why.

When I was young the monsters were all virtual, lives infinite. Now a bus or a trolley could say something about whether or not I should have crossed that street at that particular time, and I wouldn't even be able to finish reading about the newest Sushi restaurant in town, which I so wanted to go to. I am terrified about these things.

She has been appearing on street corners, and in the laundromat window or cab waving line. I hear this is normal for two weeks out. She is calling me from the other room, or to see if I want to go out to the movies--I can feel the phone vibrating in my pocket, while it sits directly in my sight. I am opening beers and windows, bank accounts and online dating profiles, umbrellas and cab doors. I am driving to where she would be, stepping out in the rain without a coat on, wishing I was dead.

And yet these are the best days of my life.