#60

Micah, shorn, bounds up stairs to my heated apartment. Where there's a will.... A winter truce. "It will grow back soon" for every compliment. Downstairs, the Jamaican super rolls wet white lines along the walls. Trash outside in jutting black plastic. The clay Janus-head with its feminine scalp: bits of brown now stamped into the pavement. No more motorcycle parked in front. The crooked landing, crooked and landing...

Evan with groceries, handsome, mild, smiling. Calmer now than then. Has a place up north near the art museum; not much call for downtown these days. Perfect matrimony. Job in the suburbs. Fireplace lit, otherwise cold. "Save's money, that," Micha's eager non sequitur. My course has led nowhere. "Mill is closing down, I hear." Abrupt. Departure. Not me, not me, not me.

Wisdom. Wisdom. Buy a mask: "I'll be Krusty the Clown," she says. Not human hair, but horse I think. Too cold to be bare. Come with me. Purchase sesame buns and butter-cream. 60 cents a piece, a bargain. Do we trust it? A beverage cooler where the photo booth was. Tiny pictures with Hello Kitty backgrounds. Have some, Blake and me. Resistant, but miss it now. Buy Micah stickers instead. Inexpensive gesture.

Wisdom. Wisdom. Charles Dickens, but not the Pickwick Papers. Everyone wanting to see her books. Critical will is oriented. She will be dis-oriented. Come home and read Ulysses. Trick or treat. Take both.