ApartFrom Page 6

Cedric had a passion for something, he was sure of it, but it wasn’t the beach. The beach is insufferable during the summer; a time when hundreds of lovably drunk Spaniards gather with their accommodating hands all over the accommodating asses: sand, water, filth, toilets, more filth, beer, a smoke rolled tight, a laugh-a good one at no one’s expense, could be any night here. In Bordeaux the ground is hard, it wants wooing, it supports the trees with its unforgiving, taciturn solidarity but in Spain the ground is malleable, pliable, yielding and womanly. Cedric was being hit in the back of the head with a mixture of beer and sputum while watching blond foreigners urinate into the Mediterranean and he wanted to get out.

  …The Next Morning...

  He awoke to find his clothes strewn artfully about the room: t-shirt over a lamp, pants dangling from a doorknob, underwear still intact on his body, but stuffed into every crevice without remorse. Sunlight sliced through a curtain, burning holes in Cedric’s tender flesh. Cedric dressed, paying particular attention to the openings in each garment so as not to put his head through an arm or an arm through a leg; it was one of those mornings for him. “The sun along the Mediterranean is always so god damned bright,” he mumbled to himself. His skin quivered from the shock of the sudden change from dark to light as he walked out his front door. It is about twelve noon, but it may as well have been six in the morning. He lazily put one foot in front of the other until he stumbled on a protruding piece of curb that catapulted him into a walk. The garbage from the previous night’s festivities was already disposed of. It was quiet and Cedric could take his time. He breathed in and thought, “Noon is a good time to be alive in the world. Things move a little slower, workers are at work, schools are busy schooling. And here you are, free, alive, in the sun.”

  “Bon jour.”

  He turned to face the voice that greeted him in his native tongue.

  “You’re French, aren’t you? You certainly look it.” It said.

  Cedric saw no one.

  “Over here!” the voice laughed.

  Cedric looked down at winking old man covered in newspaper.

  “Bon jour!” The man laughed again.

  Cedric gave the man what was left of the change in his pocket and turned to go, happy to avoid an awkward encounter.

  “Wait, wait.” The man rushed after Cedric.

  “I don’t want this, young friend.” He said and placed the money back in Cedric’s palm.

  “Now, now-I won’t rob you. I have no interest, besides you look as if it wouldn’t be worth my while.” He laughed again.

  Cedric was still staring at the change in his hand.

  “Do you understand me my young friend? Ça va?” The man asked.

  As if reviving from a trance; “Oh, yes. It is strange…that you…forgive me…I…”, stammered Cedric.

  “There is nothing to forgive my boy. Nothing at all. Come, walk with me,” he said as he started out ahead.

  “But I must, I am walking to work.” Cedric interjected.

  “To work, to the ends of the earth, what do I care where we walk.” The man replied.

  The old gentleman dusted his lapels with dirty hands. He wore a tuxedo jacket with faded, black trousers, workman’s boots and a wrinkled, collared shirt with purple stripes. He was not filthy or even un-presentable, merely eccentric and possibly color-blind. He was a living, breathing cliché of a character Cedric had read in books and saw in movies; the wise, old fool character, bumbling but full of good intentions. His pot-belly protruded out of his jacket and he wore his pants buttoned at the navel where they pinched in and folded over themselves. His shoes were in good shape, which meant he hadn’t walked much, but Cedric only needed to look at the man’s physique to confirm this suspicion.

  “Come my fellow wanderer, it is off to work we go.” He offered a jolly arm to Cedric.

  …A Few Minutes Later...

  Cedric’s eyes were growing tired from the sunlight. His mouth was dry with dehydration and his hands were swelling. He listened to the humming of his companion with a detached air. They passed the cathedral, the globular spires, putty like columns, the indolence of it always made him smile. “It will never be finished,” thought Cedric.

  Cedric’s belief in god was precarious at best: God, Holy Trinity, tap your chest, etcetera. Perhaps he was god or maybe the man next to him, in either case it didn’t matter much. The evidence for random chaos had been stacking up over Cedric’s twenty nine years in a very troubling way. Mostly he began his morning as an existentialist, he was a constructionist in the afternoon and an objectivist in the evening, at least that is how he summed himself up in a moment of accidental profundity that accompanied a good high. The man beside Cedric hummed away, completely unaware of his own miserable existence, it was definitely still Cedric’s cranky morning hour.

  “In reverie old chap?” The man interrupted.

  The old man’s humming ceased suddenly. He stopped walking and Cedric wondered whether the man could actually read his thoughts. He paused in an effort to find an answer, but he had no idea what the question was. Cedric always had this deer-in-headlights reaction when someone spoke English to him.

  “I do not understand.” Cedric replied.

  “No worries. Now where will we go on your day off?” The man asked.

  “Day off?” Said Cedric.

  “Yes, of course.” The man replied.

  “No, I must work..I..” Said Cedric.

  “Now, now you aren’t seriously considering trapping yourself inside an office on the most perfect of days.” Said the man. Cedric thought this man must be some kind of joke, the line was something straight out of a children’s story.

  “An internet café. No office.” He answered truthfully although he didn’t think it was any of the man’s business.

  “You are coming with me. Now, where will we go?” Said the man.

  They continued to walk. Cedric said nothing. The man laughed quietly to himself each time they passed a child. It was a small, knowing laugh; a laugh that echoed privately years away, an internal chuckle that only shared what it was impossible to hide, but it wasn’t pedophiliac. Cedric turned over the idea of work in his head. He thought of the recovering drug addicts who wandered in with excuses for why they couldn’t pay, he thought of the hours of ennui that left him searching the net for who knows what, killing time reading stories of some starlet’s experiments with lesbianism or the latest updates on whatever war. His mind wandered to the beach, the peddlers selling cerveza, aqua and Coca Cola repeatedly announcing their wares, bumbling tourists taking advantage of the afternoon by swallowing too much beer and scorching their skin, Cedric began to wonder which was worse. Then he thought of Costa Brava, of the sea, of the cliffs. He thought of what it might be like to disappear, but he had no clue where he was going. He looked at the man next to him “how could I deny such wisdom the pleasure of my company?” It was tempting.

  “I am sorry. I must work, this is the only way.” Cedric stopped walking.

  The old man’s face took on a serious air and the brevity of his stare caught Cedric off guard.

  “Work, my son, it is essential, don’t get me wrong, it is completely essential for the character of a man to reveal itself properly. Work, however, has no value when it puts no faith in the individual. I see in you, friend, the mark of melancholy that comes with a deep distrust of humanity and a profound love for the world. Duality is the basis of human existence, but consistency will carry a great man through troubled waters. Do you hear me my son?” The man said. The speech was stilted the words came with a rehearsed monotone. It was like something a man heard his father say once and then heard repeated years later.

  Cedric understood only fifty percent of what the old man said, and he understood nothing about it at all. It dawned on him he did not know the man’s name.

  “What is your name?” He asked.

  “Ah yes, with pleasure. Call me Hardy.” The man replied.

  He was the man again, the sage
retreated back inside somewhere.

  “Hardy. I am sorry…I must work.” Said Cedric.

  Cedric turned around and walked fast in the opposite direction. He maneuvered himself through the afternoon shoppers until he reached a major street, where he turned right, walked for awhile longer and found himself at the door of his workplace. They hadn’t walked far from it but Cedric hadn’t recognized anything, he blamed the previous night’s festivities. The door was glass with a handle facing the street. Some mechanism in the hinges prevented it from swinging toward a person, so a customer had to push, although the outside handle suggested a pull. The one bit of exercise afforded to Cedric each afternoon was helping people with the door. It was an endless source of amusement to watch tourists yanking on it with conviction, scratching their heads and then yanking again, only to have Cedric open it for them while they stumbled inside still grasping the handle. A sticky, honey-like substance made a layer over the door and adjacent window. It was a thin layer, and unless a curious passerby was right next to the window he would not see it, so Cedric never cleaned it.

  Cedric caught a glimpse of himself in the door. He was medium height, very slender, particularly his legs. He was not a hairy man. His reddish, brown hair did not see fit to colonize on his chest, or even very much on his arms, but a full head of hair cascaded down his back in the form of dreadlocks. The hair did not fail to neglect his well-curved brow, two thick eyebrows rested atop. His face was as slender as his body, but with a heart shape that denoted sensuality. It was his seductive face that invited interest from the occasional woman. He looked at himself and he could see dark circles, visible even in a grimy glass door, cupping his bottom lids and a curl in his top lip gave him an annoyed look.

  The chair behind the desk was set at a height that propped him up just enough for customers to see the crown of his head. Flyaway hairs were dance partners to the air emitted from the air-conditioning vents and made spirals above Cedric’s head. The place was quiet, not unusual after a day of festivities. The sharp sun kept people at bay until the evening hours. Cedric had the place to himself, so he began searching. “Hardy” he erased it, then “famous Hardys,” no, once again “notorious Hardys.” Based on these three searches Cedric was able to gather some background on the name that was completely useless, but helped him kill the time. First off it was traditionally a last name, suggesting that his acquaintance might be using it as a pseudonym. Most of the Hardys were checked off the list immediately: Thomas Hardy, for example; famous writer, born in Dorset in 1840, not possible. Ed Hardy, fashion designer, very unlikely-next. Oliver Hardy of the comic duo Laurel and Hardy, getting closer, the look was certainly right, but that would make his jolly friend over one hundred years old and American. Hardy Rodenstock seemed the best fit. Hardy used as a first name, and a notorious wine purveyor who took the community for a ride with bottles he heralded as part of Thomas Jefferson’s private stock. In any case, Cedric really didn’t care and was beginning to lose interest.

  He looked up from the screen, toward the window, hoping to capture a bit of sunlight for the day. The nebulous outline of Hardy’s jaw appeared, foggy at first. The face was distorted with the juxtaposition behind the grime of the glass. Nightmarish with one eye bulging and the lines of the face oscillating between form and non-form. Cedric turned away in disgust. He forced his gaze back to the direction of the window, but the apparition was gone. It was real but so strange. This was the same man he met on the street, the very same. But it wasn’t the same person at all. The man in the window was mendacious, not to be trusted, but the man he met on the street was a jolly, old fool. Cedric was ashamed to think it, but he was more attracted to the darker side.

  …Eleven Years Before Spain...

  As he sat staring, he thought of bacteria. “It floats in the emptiness, devoid of structure, but not without form. It was obligated to sustain itself, but this organism would share its resources with its comrades. It proffered the sulfur stored behind its membrane to contribute to the endless exchange of fuel supplies. The first, and possibly last, functioning commune,” Cedric said. He looked at the village lights in the distance and half-shut his eyes until everything was out of focus. The lights began to move and morph into one. His friend exhaled a puff of smoke and grunted in affirmation.

  “The idealist may turn to this evidence of cooperation at the beginning of life as a means of hope, but it is static. While life continues, it would never grow without the organism who said ‘no,’”

  The night air kept them awake and kept them talking this way. They sat in silence and Cedric’s heart was full of something he couldn’t define. He wanted to call it the love for a brother, that was the closest thing he could think of. He continued on the same nonsensical, monotonous and wonderful line of conversation.

  “Your intrepid bacteria, because of this selfish act, we exist.”

  “God, will you listen to us. We’re a comedy.” His friend laughed off the profundity.

  For a moment Cedric felt the pang of admiration. “Selfishness is a lodestone to the giving because the power of self attracts, especially with the promise of change which is only permitted when confidence gives faith to outcomes,” Cedric mused.

  “I admire you.” His friend said, “You can quote books.”

  “That’s not from a book, I just said it.”

  “In that case, I despise you.” His friend laughed and Cedric joined in.

  He always reverted to science when things frightened him. It was a childhood trick that gave him something concrete to hold onto and the power of the man next to him frightened him.

  …Evening in Spain...

  The sun set awhile ago. This was Cedric’s favorite time of day, mostly because of the silence. He liked the quiet, especially quiet in public places, it was so unexpected. He could tell it was silent from the way the laundry was whipping in the wind and people looked up it see what the noise was. But this was also his favorite time of day because he had passed the halfway point of a shift.

  “Please, um, this computer, may I…por favor.” A student asked.

  “Yes, yes, go ahead.” Cedric activated the computer for the student. Yes, he would be off soon.

  The hours dragged on. Cedric tried to kill some time with a book. Interesting, but it certainly wasn’t relaxing him and any human interaction he experienced during the afternoon shift could be summed up in one conversation.

  “Perdon, hablas Ingles?” Says a random tourist.

  “Yes.” Cedric replies without looking up.

  “Okay, can I use this computer. I just go right up to it.” Says the tourist.

  “Yes, I activate for you.” Cedric replies.

  “Okay, how much?” The tourist asks.

  “One Euro for every thirty minutes.” Cedric says without emotion.

  “Okay, yeah, okay. Should have brought my laptop, haha.” Tourist makes an awkward joke.

  “Yes, not a bad idea.” Cedric replies caustically.

  Then a smile for the people. He always gave them a smile. It never failed to win people over; he never understood how something so simple could affect immediate change in the most stoic of persons, but it was his gift and he didn’t ask questions of it. His teeth were beginning to yellow from smoking, but the transformation of his whole sensual face is what sold it; the wrinkles around the eyes, how his nose looked a little off center, and the change in his jaw-line.

  Two more hours and he would be free. The book was abandoned and he sent a few emails: one to a friend in France- a quick joke, nothing exceptional, one to a girl he had a fling with and kept up a charming, little email exchange, and one to his doting mother who he heard from once a year. She rarely wrote back, but he sent them anyway from force of habit, like keeping a diary. The night faded into blackness and the last customer left, it was time to leave. Cedric shut everything down, put his book in a tattered backpack, slung the bag over his shoulder and left. He always travelled light, not wanting to be burdened
by the added weight on his slim frame. It was a quiet night, a recovery night. Only a few tourists and young people wandered the street. The shadows were thick and every movement was cut short by the darkness. The palm trees made giant, black imprints of themselves on the ground where the street lights hit them. Cedric was being followed. So the Englishman had waited for him. He couldn’t hear it, or him rather, he knew who it was, but he couldn’t see him. Cedric guessed he was about two blocks behind-enough distance to avoid being noticed, but not to lose your target. This would have annoyed him before, but after what he saw in the window it frightened him. He was slight, not a fighter. His best bet was to slip out of its grasp and make himself uncatchable. So he turned left and began weaving inside the labyrinth of streets . Fashionable people were making their way to the next nighttime location. Young people congregated around bar entrances for a smoke. Some passed around what looked like a very satisfying cigarette. Cedric kept moving, he changed direction by trailing large groups and couples, careful not to end up alone in an alleyway. He could feel it just behind a pillar of some antiquated church, or behind the opened door of a restaurant. Cedric started at a normal pace but he was jogging by the time he reached La Rambla. His usual disdain for this street was gone; he had never been so grateful to see the crowds of adolescents and tourists. He all but ran into a crowd watching a group of break dancers. He stood next to a giggling set of girls for a good while until he was assured of his anonymity, but when he looked to his right he saw Hardy. The old man was carrying on a conversation with a be-sweatered businessman; he pretended not to notice Cedric. All his former diabolical characteristics were gone and the only being left was the jovial soul Cedric encountered earlier that day. Cedric couldn’t move for a moment; the man didn’t have a sheen of sweat on his face. Cedric ran. His dreads lifted off his back, suspended in mid-air and smacked back down again. He feared whatever was chasing him before would grab on and pull him to the ground.

  …A Few Minutes Later...

  His chest heaved, he regretted his last cigarette and quickened his pace. The sweat slowly ran down the sides of his face and followed the angle of his chin. People hopped out of his way, they cursed at him or laughed at him in turn. He darted past a string of shops and saw the glow from the entryway door making a long rectangular shape on the street in front of the apartment complex. He pushed the door open with his hip and climbed the stairs to the roof. A door leading inside a rooftop structure topped with a metal roof was the only entrance into his apartment. A padlock kept the door secure; it glowed like a beacon for Cedric. He grabbed it in his left hand and tried to steady his right hand to insert the key.

  …Seconds Later...

  He could feel his diaphragm pounding against the bottom of his lungs. His adrenaline carried him up the stairs of his apartment complex and to the door; he opened it with shaky hands and stepped into the dark. All was silent but he didn’t feel alone. It, or rather he, was standing near the window, absolutely still. Its chest projected forward with each inhale, but Cedric couldn’t hear it breathing. Cedric didn’t blink, he only stared and felt his own breath begin to shortened and tightened. It was Hardy, and it wasn’t Hardy. The blue glow from a light on the adjacent rooftop illuminated the old man’s torso, but the face was obscured, distorted, like what Cedric had seen in the window of the locoturi. The distortion was obscene and powerful; what Cedric’s imagination concocted was twice as fearful as reality. They both held their breath, it was anticipating something.

  Hardy, or what was once Hardy; a man living, a breathing man, with the insides of a human and the voice of a god. Cedric observed the change in Hardy as he stood there. He thought of change in a person and how it can be defined in levels. “This is the change that rattles some and settles others,” thought Cedric. The last level of change comes on suddenly-an unexpected reflection around the corner and a fear that robs you of yourself. Cedric snapped back when he heard it’s voice.

  “Don’t worry.” The thing said.

  The voice came through like a brick through a window. It shattered the air and echoed, “worry” the “o’s” tumbling one after the other.

  “What is it? ” Cedric asked.

  “Don’t worry we’ll find each other.” It said matter-of-factly.

  “Tell me what you mean.” Cedric paused and added, “please.”

  “Not just yet...” it gargled something else too, but Cedric couldn’t make it out.

  …The Next Morning...

  Cedric woke up in a pile of sheets. The sun shone through the same window from the night before, but this time there was nobody to obstruct it. The words resounded in his head “Not just yet.” His clothes were folded in on themselves and pressed marks into his skin again. His breath smelled as foul as the putrid stench of a not-so-fresh corpse. He couldn’t send the proper “get up” signals to his legs. He was comatose with fear of what may have happened while he slept. From his bed-nothing more than a padded mattress thrown across the floor-he could see out onto a narrow balcony where the sun was bright at the top of the windows. His apartment faced east, so he surmised that the placement of the sun made it was late morning. Once his eyes focused he could see it was definitely late morning, the sun sat in the upper left corner of the window pane. He lay there for about a half hour, staring directly at it and repeated a motivational dictum to himself, “get up,” “get up” again and again. Finally his efforts paid off and he was able to lift his right foot and scoot it off the edge of the mattress. This small act of bravery inspired more movement and with one slow scoot he made it off the bed. He sat up and contemplated the journey from the bed to the living room, where he saw the thing the night before. All was still: a secondhand couch with orange flowers sat empty, the crocheted blanket that draped the back of it was folded in exactly the same way as yesterday, even his half-smoked cigarette from the previous morning lay undisturbed. He looked out the same window the thing looked out, he decided he had to find this man, because it was all too strange.

  …Ten Years Before Spain...

  “But I know. What I am asking is about you. You’re alone all the time, I mean without a woman.” His friend asked with a bemused and perplexed twist of the eyebrows that made Cedric nervous. He didn’t want to begin dissimulating about love and relationships and all the other paltry shit that men his age were expected to participate in.

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know anyone I’m interested in is all. A lay every now and again is fine, but I don’t need more.” Cedric shrugged.

  “Okay, but I recommend you know. It’s not so bad. I know it’s expected of me to sleep around and enjoy women in all their forms: for my youth, for my manhood. But it’s exhausting and having one isn’t so bad, the sex is better, exponentially.” His friend smiled and looked away. It was more than that; his friend was infatuated with this girl that was clear, he simply enjoyed her company.

  “I don’t blame you. She is a true woman.” Cedric put an arm around his friend instinctively, like he would have done to congratulate him on graduating from secondary school which he hadn’t done yet.

  “Yes, she is real. She has deposits of fat that make very subtle ripples underneath the skin of her thighs and she has freckles. But it’s perfect, because it’s absolutely real, nothing to be intimidated by or someone who lords over you with impossible standards. She just accepts and gives, amazing to have a real person there.”

  Cedric nodded and thought of his friend’s woman’s thighs, “I don’t feel I need it. A person there. I prefer the imagined.”

  “Yeah.”

  They leaned on the car and let the silence continue. They both looked at the house. Cedric watched his friend’s face and could see that he was imagining what it would be like to live in one of those with a wife, a piece of land, a dog, a child perhaps. His friend was one who took responsibility.

  …Spain...

  But he had an inexplicable inkling, so he decided to follow his gut. He hadn’t bothered to do anyt
hing with himself apart from throw on a smelly shirt and tie his dreads back. He mounted his bike and took off down Grand Via. The balconies sped past and formed a black freeway of rod-iron that painted Cedric’s peripheral vision with thick, continuous lines. He felt the throbbing get stronger as he got closer to the Arc. The balconies made a tunnel, a vortex that was either sucking him in or spitting him out. He pedalled until the bike couldn’t take anymore speed and careened down the boulevards, weaving around other bikers until he reached the Arc and rode under it into the park. The bohemians were in full force, with tight ropes tied between two trees where shirtless hippies took their turns balancing. A very musically inept girl with a multicolored skirt practiced tambourine, while a set of drums pounded away in the distance. The lawns were full which meant it was probably Sunday, it was easy to lose track of time in this city, so Cedric kept track of the days by events and this park burst to life on Sundays with a rumbling that was accompanied by the smell of sweat and pot. He stopped near the entrance of the park next to an attractive, dread-locked girl with a peacock feather tattoo that wrapped around her hip and travelled across her belly down her skirt. The vibrating energy of the park’s Sunday population obscured Hardy’s draw. But when Cedric looked up the man was there, he stood in the center of the walkway with arms braced behind his back, holding his hands together at the rise of the buttock. “A sinister pose,” Cedric thought. The man was smiling and looking straight at Cedric. Cedric hesitated and his mind returned to the girl’s tattoo; it slithered across the top of her pelvis and down toward the mound of her pubis then disappeared into the darkness between her legs. Hardy’s tongue flapped while he smiled like a clown adorning the outside of a funhouse. His teeth were dark, grooved, disintegrating in the heat of his breath. A foul smell reached Cedric’s nose. He winced but kept his eyes glued to Hardy’s face which looked like the peacock girl’s face, the two became each other and taunted Cedric. The girl’s lips parted and out came the voice of an old man, “I’ll help you,” it said decrepit and mocking.

  …Two Hours Later...

  The sky grew dark at about nine o’clock this time of year, Cedric sat next to Hardy on a bench near the fountain with only the reflection off the golden angel to illuminate their faces. Cedric responded to Hardy’s questions like an automaton, with the lips of the girl, her peacock feather tattoo, the smell of sweat and hot breath playing games in his head.

  “You don’t have a home?” Cedric asked.

  “No, no home. Not for a long time.” Hardy replied.

  “Where do you sleep?” Asked Cedric. He made a swirl in the dirt with the toe of his shoe, erased it with the sole , then made another.

  Hardy’s voice changed again; this time it was vulnerable. He had tears in his eyes and the quivering of his bottom lip suggested he would burst into sobs at any moment.

  “Different places. Places all over town, depends, my friend. It really depends.” Hardy replied with an old man’s bone-rattling tremor in his voice.

  “Which places?” Asked Cedric.

  “On nice days, before tourist season…or after; I sleep in a clearing in the mountain park, for the view in the morning. This is my penthouse, my refuge. The energy is stirred there in the afternoons by people doing Tai Chi, so the air is less evil than other places. But there are other places. I don’t always get so lucky; I can’t always choose you know, so there are other places.” Hardy replied.

  The tears were flowing, but Hardy kept his gaze straight ahead. He stared at something and his voice wasn’t choked. The tears came as something else; as if someone were placing them there artificially and they weren’t coming from his eyes at all.

  “What other places?” Cedric asked.

  “A tree in this park, knobby and strong. I can roll myself up into a ball and nestle at the base of the trunk. The trunk itself protrudes from the ground in an unnatural way. Wooden boils erupting from its sides are large enough for sitting. The place is secluded, so I am often interrupted by a pair of lovers; more of a shock to them, really. The shade keeps the ground cool enough for sleeping in the summer. It is my summer place. And a nearby grouping of trees encircles a crawlspace just off to the side. I am old but agile.” Hardy said.

  “Yes, I know.” Cedric remembered Hardy’s sheen-less face from the crowd the day before.

  “I can wedge myself in-between the trunks and keep quiet while the night guard does his rounds.” Hardy lifted his finger and made a circle in the air with the time of Cedric’s ground swirling.

  “I think I know this place.” Cedric said, also staring straight ahead.

  “Yes?” A wind blew the leaves around and it sounded like crushing plastic. A flock of spooked sparrows flew from a nearby bush.

  “Children play on the tree, and it has names and things from vandals on the trunk.” Cedric said.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t defecate there, with the children and all.” Hardy replied.

  “I’ve climbed this tree.” Cedric said.

  “Have you?”

  “Yes, I have. I was with friends here, just sitting and watching, on a Sunday-like today. We were not feeling well because of too much drink the night before. Everyone was dark and sick, but we came together anyway. I needed a moment alone, because these people, not all of them were friends-I did not know all of them, and sometimes I need to be away from them. I turn around and I saw this tree and I came to it and sat in it, for a long time. It was silent near the tree, even when the park was full of people. A strange place.” Cedric said

  “Yes, very strange indeed.” Hardy replied.

  “What is it that won’t happen just yet?” Cedric asked.

  “It’s not important.” Hardy said with the detached air of the thing that possessed him before.

  “What do you want from me?” Cedric struggled to maintain the flatness in his voice.

  “I am old.” Hardy began, a man this time. He paused for a long time and let the statement roll around in Cedric’s psyche for awhile. Then he began again, with the same stare and monotony.

  “I am old. There comes a time when one needs help and now is my time. In the past I never asked anyone for anything, I never did, and until now never have. I was something at a point in time. Time is strange, we are, all of us different people at once-it is only circumstances and time that make a specific self appear. I was once love itself. You could never tell now, but I was once.” Hardy was distracted, but his possessed Homeresque story-telling was intoxicating.

  “What do you want from me?” Cedric asked in plain terms.

  “Love is a kind of madness, that is the only explanation. Sometimes that madness is too much and something breaks, something like a barrier is crossed. It is a type of evil.” Hardy went on.

  His pupils were large mirrored pools and Cedric completely lost himself.

  “Love is a temporary insanity that drives some to murder and others to die. I’ve had many women, believe me, I have. But there is one, only one that makes a stirring in the soul, and your internal organs declare open war on each other. Heaven forbid that woman treat you cruelly, because that cruelty will eat away at your insides like a cancer, in the same slow, devouring rhythm. As you bend to the will of the disease you’ll have these moments of exceptional clarity. In any case, I am cursed.” Hardy smiled to himself.

  …Ten Years Before Spain...

  “Where would you go?” His friend asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No, really. Where would you go?” His asked again, looking out over a mostly mud-covered field with some patches of bedraggled trees. “I would go south.” Cedric looked out over the barren countryside and lifted his foot. The bottom of his shoe was sticky with mud. “I would definitely go south.”

  “I wouldn’t go anywhere.” His friend said. He stretched his arms above his head and arched his back while swallowing a mouthful of air. “I would stay here. This land is terrible, hopeless really. But I would stay and try to make do with it. It seems right s
omehow. I am attached to it.”

  “Will you stay with her? I mean if you stay here.” Cedric asked in a disinterested way.

  “I would. I am slave.” He laughed with the full force of his body. He threw his head back and laughed.

  …Spain. Eleven the Next Morning...

  Cedric was good with travel planning. He could search online like a champ, collecting information from one website to the next in a matter of minutes, without a breath in-between. Within a couple of hours he found a decently priced plane ticket. That is where he was supposed to go.

  “Excuse me do you speak English?” a voice interrupted him.

  “Yes, what can I do?” He asked.

  “I need to go online and…” The anxious tourist asked.

  “Confirm.” Cedric announced to himself as he pushed the purchase button.

  “What?”

  “Yes, yes. Number four, it’s ready for you.” Cedric waved the tourist off.

  Cedric’s hands were shaking; they always shook after he bought a plane ticket. Hardy said the place smelled of monkey shit and spices. He also said that a three day trip to the desert wasn’t long enough and if you bury your body underneath the sand at night, it will keep you warm.

  …Five and a Half Hours Later...

  Hardy promised Cedric he would meet him back in the park at five fifteen in the afternoon, he promised to continue his story. But it was now five thirty and Cedric was losing hope. The park was oddly quiet, with only the breeze tossing the leaves around and the reflective surface of the pond water to keep Cedric company. He could hear the sound of children laughing and yelling to each other in the distance. Some birds where having a chat above his head somewhere, but no hippies or artists congregated on the green to distract him.

  Hardy arrived at five forty five, fashionably late, by his own assertion. He proposed a walk, and since the afternoon was fine, Cedric accepted. The sun was still bright in the sky and Cedric hadn’t seen Hardy in a bright light since he met him, so he took the opportunity to study the man. He noticed Hardy seemed ageless when he was silent. His face was smooth, a little red from the sun, but relatively wrinkle-free with the exception of small lines around the eyes that indicated years of laughter. But when Hardy spoke his face changed, he was a different man from one moment to the next. His forehead would contract into a pile of deep creases, two lines appeared between his eyebrows, his cheeks inflated and his chin deflated; he aged about two hundred years in an instant. The next moment he would break into a smile and everything would go soft; when this happened he was only a few months old, a laughing baby. His eyes changed too, the pupils contracted and expanded at will, as if Hardy had control over the movement. These constant changes gave the thing a frightening charisma.

  “Here we are between knowing and not knowing. I think we’ve passed by here before?” Hardy pointed to a nondescript block apartment buildings. Cedric shrugged his shoulders and blocked his eyes from the setting sun so he could make it out but he said nothing and kept walking. They continued on through the park into a part of the city Cedric didn’t recognize , it looked residential and new.

  “Let’s talk about women.” Hardy said loudly, with the baby-look on his face.

  Cedric smiled and nodded in collusion.

  “I once had a dream where I was a scientist. A very brilliant and arrogant man, in my dream I vivisected the perfect woman. I did this by collecting the pieces of all the women who left an impression on me in the past and sewing them together with some rudimentary method that was very effective. But what I created was full of fear for me, full of love and fear. Actually the two are very much the same thing, sometimes, don’t you think?” Hardy said.

  Cedric thought for a long time. “I think the one can change into the other. But maybe they both are the same. But not a woman, no I don’t think.” He stumbled over the English.

  Hardy raised his eyebrows and continued. “The desert is a place where fear subsides. I think this is because you can see everything, nothing to block the way.” He looked thoughtful. “We are lost.”

  Cedric took in his surroundings, modern buildings painted in obscene peaches, pinks and light greens lined either side of the street; a small park was situated between the large street where they walked and a gutter. The park seemed to suggest the gutter was a waterway worth spending some time next to. The freshly planted trees surrounding it were still being held by supports, the benches were graffiti-free and the grass was thick. Two sculptures of simple, contemporary design-one at the entrance of the park, the other further in- gave some character to the place, but Hardy was right, they were lost. Distant laughter rang out from a balcony gathering somewhere, it was followed by a delighted squeal and the clinking of glasses.

  “No matter.” Hardy said.

  “Look there, at that, there.” He pointed toward the sky, at the moon. “A good omen I think. When it looks like the moon has been painted for you, a good sign. A message for you, I think.” Hardy pointed at the moon with a child’s enthusiasm.

  Cedric didn’t know how to reply. “Yes,” he said as if it was completely natural that Hardy should know something so personal. This moon was for him, he thought. He was distressed at the thought of being egocentric, more distressing was the thought that Hardy was aware of it.

  “I am thinking of him.” Said Cedric.

  “Of course you are.” Said Hardy, “the way he was lying on the floor, face down, so undignified.” Hardy finished Cedric’s thought.

  Cedric did remember his friend. He was thin and energetic; he had a charm about him. He spoke well and women liked him. He was excitable, but Cedric liked that about him-it complemented his own natural laziness. They had talked a lot about all sorts of things that seemed profound at the time, they were like brothers. Lately the memories were haunting, they surprised him with their clarity and suddenness and there were moments that lasted forever of missing his friend and other moments when he forgot about him completely. When Cedric found him, he was face down next to a toilet. His hands were spread out in front of him, his skin glowed under a blacklight and he was still. It was a kind of stillness that Cedric had never seen his friend successfully execute before. When Cedric touched him he was cold.

  “A good friend no doubt, yes? But the woman…” Hardy interrupted again.

  But that was long ago and the past is the past, Cedric felt his hands begin to shake. Somehow they continued to walk deeper into the new outskirts of the city, more and more lost. Hardy didn’t seem concerned; he walked on toward an unknown destination. His friend’s girl was the one that asked Cedric to look for his friend. His girl said “I am worried, where is he? Do you know? Find him.” Cedric was annoyed with her at the time; he was in the middle of a party and didn’t want to take time away from the blonde he was chatting with, but he went anyway.

  …Nine Years Before Spain...

  “Do you think of him sometimes?” She asked.

  “Yes, always, of course.” Cedric replied.

  She started crying again, like always. Cedric was used to her tears by this point, he had become numb to them but he thought that was unfortunate. She was sexy when she cried, her face wrinkled under the eyes and a blush would spread over her cheeks that would put her freckles in relief. He thought of the spots on her shoulders that matched the ones on her face and how he wanted to eat them, swallowing some whole and lapping others up with his tongue. Whenever he saw those spots he imagined himself tearing into her flesh with teeth and sucking on the salt. He looked away from her in an attempt to control himself.

  “Sorry, I do it a lot I know. I’m here with you because you remember too.” She was standing in front of him and looking away, then she faced him. She kissed him on the neck violently revenging herself on him for his brutal desires. Cedric felt a sting but he didn’t tease or scold her in that flirty way his friend would’ve done: she needed to exorcise the rage, he knew that.

  “It’s alright, it happens.” He wanted to chang
e the subject. “Look at the moon. It’s full.”

  “Yeah. Why?” She didn’t care. She dug her nails into his chest. She assaulted his neck again.

  “Think of me when you see it.” He asked.

  …Spain One Hour Later...

  “Are you still there?” Cedric asked Hardy.

  “I would never leave you, my friend.” Hardy laughed cruelly.

  It was dark and Cedric couldn’t differentiate one building from another, or see any people around.

  “A nightcap?” Hardy grabbed Cedric’s hand and led him inside a dirty little bar. They were alone there and the wall was covered with mirrors that made the already too bright light even more annoying, but the mirrors conceived to give the illusion of a bigger room with more people. They sat at a black table with an uneven leg that made it teeter up and down and waited for service. A smiling woman with red lips and laugh-lines appeared out of nowhere and asked what they wanted in a thick accent; Cedric ordered a beer and Hardy stumbled over an explanation of how to make his version of whiskey soda. The drinks appeared out of nowhere. Hardy never took his eyes off Cedric while he drank, he asked; “So, are we finished talking about her?”

  Cedric wanted to be finished but he felt compelled, so he replied “No,” then went silent. The woman watched them both from the behind the bar with her heavy lids, not out of suspicion, but from boredom. She wiped down the same counter top four or five times before Cedric spoke up again.

  “She was suffering, so I went to her. That is all.” He said.

  “Nothing more lovable than a vulnerable woman.” Hardy winked.

  Cedric thought he saw Hardy’s eye slip down the side of his face and recover during the wink. The beer, the quiet and the unfamiliarity of the place were making him uneasy. Hardy’s stare was unnerving; Cedric couldn’t meet his gaze so he looked into his beer. The fluorescents played tricks on his eyes and the flesh on Hardy’s hand gathered and changed color; Cedric had the impulse to cover it with a napkin or chop it off, he imagined it would spring back to life and finger its way across the floor, maybe make itself a drink behind the bar. The flight was leaving tomorrow afternoon, so there was time. Cedric thought it was best just to finish his beer. But he should be resting, not staring at this man’s hand, transfixed. He hoped the man would start talking and distract Cedric’s thoughts away from the blue color of his friend’s skin.

  “I want you to know I appreciate it.” Hardy said.

  “I have no choice.” Cedric said.

  “Clarity is not easy to come by, not even for you my friend, not even for a man who lives in the moment.” Hardy smiled and drank at the same time letting the cloudy, rust-colored water trickle out the sides of his mouth.

  “No, I know.” Cedric said.

  “We are citizens of nowhere and of nothing. The world doesn’t have us on record, so we can move where we want, when we want and for our own purposes.” Hardy began. Cedric looked at his face and saw again the grotesque image in the window of the locoturi, deformed and defiant. He was sure this was the same man, the voice wasn’t unkind, but Cedric saw Hardy through the glass again. He wanted to run, he wanted to cry out or laugh or weep or something, but instead he sat there like a dumbfounded fool and let the thing speak with foam frothing at his mouth.

  “We can move, that is important. Identity is an illusion. Truly we are, all of us, nobody and nothing.” Hardy said.

  The word nothing echoed in the vacuous space inside Cedric’s chest, it misted his lungs like a ball of recently inhaled smoke and repeated itself. “We are, all of us, nothing,” a sagacious set of eyes looked back at him from across the table. Cedric wanted to believe him, that we all pleasantly fell asleep at death and sunk back into a void, but there was a ringing in his ears, they were lost and they needed to find themselves again, so he could pack and just get it over with. Sometimes when the profoundest thoughts hit Cedric, all he wanted to do was something mundane. Touching his clothes and sleeping on his bed, these were real things that reminded him he was still present. He looked at the woman behind the bar, but she wasn’t there, in her place stood a young woman with dark skin and freckles. She smiled at Cedric and the fluorescents reflected off a gold tooth. He turned away, toward the opposite wall and looked at the mirror-but the girl’s image wasn’t there. All Cedric could see was a Petri dish full of bacteria ramming into each other and floating around in search of nothing. “I am getting dark,” he thought to himself. Hardy laughed, “let them float,” he said. Cedric turned back to the bar and the girl was gone. Something about the girl’s gold tooth made his skin crawl.

  …One Hour Later...

  They were back in a part of the city Cedric recognized, near Poble Nou. Hardy insisted they take a shortcut through a park with landscaped dirt and oppressively playful sculptures. Hardy said he liked it because it was stupidly designed and always empty. It was locked when they got there, but Hardy knew a way in through a break in the wall behind some vines. He scooped the vines aside and both men crawled into the park where the sculptures took on a sinister aspect, with their demented Dr. Seuss designs rising upward like atomic mushrooms.

  He had left the bar abruptly because he found he couldn’t sit anymore, but here he was back with the old man, breaking into public parks in the middle of the night, but at least they weren’t lost anymore. He didn’t ask for this man’s company, but he couldn’t do without it. Hardy had a task for Cedric but even with the creepy stare, the strange morphing face, he was separate and distant from him. They were two beings inside the world with rucksacks on their shoulders whom happened to cross paths, but Cedric felt something else, something climbing the stairs of his vertebra and he couldn’t help but call it boredom and another thing he couldn’t help but call loneliness, this is ultimately what Spain offered him. But these are just illusions, that is what Hardy would say, Cedric knew somehow. He closed his eyes and before him was an expanse of sand, the sun made golden grains shimmer as they defected from the mass to shine for a moment. A kick of wind picked up and spiralled to make the dust wrap around itself and settle again, all these things were there, but still there was nothing. Cedric thought, “what gives a window purpose is the space where there is nothing.” Hardy put his hand on Cedric’s, a show of fatherly affection; the touch was as warm as the sand and as expansive. Cedric felt strings of muscles in his arm twang and release in response to the heat. He felt the heat of the sand between his toes, the warmth of a woman, the scalding of the sun. He wiggled his toes to quicken his descent into the sand, he felt cold, gelatinous mud underneath.

  “Yes, yes that’s right.” Hardy said.

  Cedric was yearning for the desert. The silence and expansiveness of it was something so different from the city, it was something that couldn’t be controlled, managed or sold. “It wasn’t a commodity anyone wanted, it was something they feared- the view of the dunes inspired helplessness, it is the thought that soon the whole world would resemble these dunes. His white skin would be scorched, then it would turn patchy and white before flaking off, the skin underneath would appear shining red like the face of a drunk. He was reminded again of his courageously selfish bacteria and what a stroke of luck for the human race. But the sky turned the violet of dawn and it was time to go.

  …Twenty Minutes Later...

  Cedric left Hardy in the park and found his way back home. Hardy had nodded but made no other effort to say goodbye, his hands were planted firmly on his knees and he stared straight ahead with his spine as erect as a column. The morning had started and the sun was up by the time he got home. He hated packing, but fortunately he could survive with very little, so he grabbed only the essentials and stuffed them into a duffle bag: toothbrush, pair of unwashed pants, sweatshirt, a book he had always intended to finish but never got around to, and a handful of underwear. He zipped up the bag and went out to his narrow balcony. He pulled a rolling paper out of the packet and pinched it between his index finger and thumb then filled it with a mixture of tobacco
and pot, licked it and rolled the cigarette closed with two fingers; he watched the apartment balconies across from him. He watched the people begin their days, each one of them different: the young family in the upper left corner balcony always opened the window and played music in the mornings, the single guy in the right corner balcony liked to smoke in his underwear, the middle-aged woman with the bright red hair in the center balcony always had a coffee or two while watering her flowers. Cedric stood and leaned over the edge of the railing to get a view of the street, he sometimes did this to watch his neighbors cleaning up their pet’s shit, but today no one was there, only Hardy standing there serenely and looking back up at him.

  Hardy looked very small and vulnerable gazing back up at Cedric from below so Cedric had no forebodings about waving him up. He still had time, lots of time, a few hours in fact. He didn’t know what possessed him to pack so early; he supposed he wanted to escape the unsettling sensation and avoid sinking as long as he could. He looked forward to the last few hours as a refuge of peace to contemplate the rashness of his decision but then there was a knock. There stood the man in person and a bit anxious, his face contorted into a grimace.

  “Yes?” Said Cedric.

  “I am a flustered man.” Hardy replied.

  “I don’t know this word.” Cedric said.

  “Stressed, but in a frustrated way that can’t be relieved.” He said it like a pedagogue.

  “Oh, okay come in.” Cedric said, feeling like he just broke a cardinal rule and invited a vampire into his home. “I have a few hours.” Cedric said to reassure, assuming that was what was causing Hardy’s anxiety.

  “It’s not that. It is something I can’t say, of course. Something I always want to say but can’t-we can’t apologize for death you know, it just happens like that.” Hardy looked down at his hands and froze, he stared into the emptiness between his two palms. “We can’t apologize for the inevitable, it is always awkward and invalid. Someone says, oh my so-and-so just died and the first words out of our mouths is ‘sorry,’ it sounds foolish leaving our mouth and it sounds even more asinine to the ears of the griever, believe me. So, we can’t apologize for death. There it is.” Hardy flashed a sad grin toward Cedric and moved toward the window.

  Cedric sat down on the couch perplexed, he was right, you can’t apologize yet we do it all the time in rough and stupid ways. So Cedric said, “I’m sorry.” Hardy visibly clenched his hands together behind his back and stayed silent, gazing out the window, just like before. He was far less sinister in daylight, but his present anxiety made him intimidating in another unpredictable way, “after all people do desperate and sometimes insane things under pressure,” thought Cedric. Cedric had gotten up to make a coffee when Hardy burst out in a voice that shook the panes of glass.

  “I can’t stop it you know! I can never stop and won’t apologize. This is the lot of some and here I am.” Hardy was in a rage but choked tears made his voice unstable. Cedric stopped, saying nothing but with a death-grip on a coffee cup that threatened to cut off circulation in his arm.

  Hardy calmed himself, “I won’t take anything from you, you don’t give willingly.”

  …A Few Minutes Later...

  Cedric didn’t know how long they stood there, staring at each other. Hardy’s hands held him by the upper arm. Hardy’s eyes were the color of snow in the morning and Cedric thought that this man must be on his last legs. Hardy’s look was accusatory and Cedric felt his face turn red. He threw Hardy off, shaking his head and with a desire to scream he blurted out “I didn’t leave him there….how could I, my friend….I didn’t leave him….in the ground. What is it you want from me, I am still alive, I am alive here and I have choice, so I left, its my right, my right.” Cedric’s voice strained and cracked, but he forced out his fractured logic, the confession didn’t lift the weight off his shoulders he expected it to. Hardy stood, his laugh-lines crinkling to their deepest he snarled at Cedric with a menacing doglike sound. At any moment Cedric expected foam to form around his mouth, but he smiled, even though his shoulders were closer to his ears than Cedric remembered. Cedric felt compelled to continue: “What could I do…There was nothing left to do, so I had to follow my own way. What does it matter? We don’t need each other like we used too. She didn’t need me.” He didn’t know to what he was referring and he wanted to laugh at himself for assuming some wise stance, as if he had lived longer than he had. If he was honest with himself he would say he knew nothing, that he was a fool and always would be, that the more he learned, the less he knew and he was spinning in the water of a flushed toilet, gulping up as much air as he could before being sucked down.

  The sun leaked in through the balcony door and illuminated the dust floating behind Hardy’s head. Some bird twittered outside and a child squealed, this was followed by a loud bang that Cedric recognized as a ball being kicked against the wall below his balcony, he went to the window to watch the boys.

  …An Hour Later...

  Cedric looked at Hardy, who was sitting on the couch now, Hardy’s face was bluish and deformed again, but Cedric recognized that this probably had more to do with his own state of mind and less to do with Hardy’s face. Cedric instinctively put his duffle bag on the table as a gesture that said “I am ready to go.” They still had time before they left, but Cedric suggested they get a coffee somewhere before boarding the bus to the airport. Hardy smiled in agreement and they walked outside to find one. The sun reflected off the metal chairs of a nearby café, making them look extraordinary. Cedric took this as a sign and decided to lead Hardy to the set of chairs that reflected the strongest light. Cedric wanted the power of the sun to dry up the damp, bluish look on Hardy’s face, much like it dries an infected pustule. Cedric ordered two espressos, he used both sugars and cream in his, while Hardy just stared at the cup.

  “You don’t drink coffee?” Cedric asked.

  “Never touch the stuff.” Hardy smiled in return.

  Cedric nodded in reply and looked directly toward the sun with his eyes shut. That is the best he could muster after last night and this morning. He thought of their destination and the need for movement and a change of things. He had settled too long in this brilliant Spanish world of decadence and it numbed him, he wanted some new challenge to shake him free of these nagging feelings of stagnation and purifying guilt, but let the sun soak it up. Cedric leaned back in his chair and looked up toward the sky.

  “I knew a man once who was afraid of death.” Hardy began in his usual way. He looked down and played with an empty sugar packet, the sugar sat in a tiny pile on the table next to the full espresso cup. “So afraid that he couldn’t sleep at night and had trouble eating as he saw everything on his plate as a representative of death, a dead thing that he was consuming. His fear of death was bringing him closer to it, he was wasting away. His face became sallow, dark circles appeared under his eyes and the muscles in his cheeks sagged. He invested in every longevity drug on the market, the combination of which made him ill, further increasing his proximity to death. He ran so far from death that he ran right into it. But when he reached the last moments of his life, his body racked by disease, he said ‘Give me death finally, I will meet him like an old friend. Living is too hard work.” Hardy kept his eyes closed and a grin appeared on his face. He threw his head back and pressed his lips together to contain a laugh, but it pressed its way out of him anyway.

  “Why are you talking to me like this?” Cedric asked.

  “I don’t know, it just occurred to me.” Hardy replied.

  They sat with their eyes closed, soaking up the sun and a plane passed overhead; they let the engine sound drown out their conversation.

  …Eight Years Before Spain...

  “Is it love you’re looking for or what?” He asked.

  “No, but something, this is so cold and undefined. It’s irritating. I’m not angry, just annoyed or something, like ants are on my skin.” She itched her arm to highlight the image.

>   “Women always talk in metaphors.” Cedric replied. He finished off the last of his beer and laid the glass back on the table. He watched the foam slide down the side and looked at her face. There were bags under her eyes and a crease had formed between her eyebrows. She had told him she was having trouble sleeping.

  “Do you feel guilty? Is that it?” She asked him the question with tears.

  “No I don’t. I think he’s pleased.” Cedric lied he not only felt guilty but perfidious. “Anyway I am leaving. I wasn’t going to tell anyone, but you will think of me, I know. It’s the thing to do. I have to move or I’ll kill myself; the flatness of this land is hell.” He laughed quietly.

  “That’s over the top, but no one would blame you.” She said without irony.

  …Late Afternoon at the Airport...

  They arrived at the airport early because the waiting was getting on Cedric’s nerves. He bought a bottle of water and sat in a centralized café with Hardy to watch the travelers walk to and away from the boarding gates. Check-in and security was uneventful, except the extra scrutiny the security team always gave Cedric.

  Cedric let his mind wander. It wandered all the way to the boarding gate and into the boarding line; it wandered down the gangway and into the plane; it wandered so much that he didn’t notice when Hardy disappeared. He laughed, he laughed quietly at first, merely a grin, then a giggle, then an opened-mouth laugh, and after a few seconds he found himself in the middle of a full out guffaw. He threw back his head and laughed loud enough to startle the woman next to him and make the man across the aisle curse to himself. He apologized to the woman and gave some explanation about an inside joke with a friend while he flashed the woman his winning smile.

  …A Few Minutes Later...

  Cedric’s ears popped and he yawned to try and regulate the pressure. He must have slept for at least an hour, possibly more, because they were descending and he didn’t hear any announcement. He peered over the woman next to him to try and get a view out the window but the clouds covered everything.

  He kept remembering things: pieces of conversation, images, her face and how tired she was before he left, it was all meaningless. Some of the conversations were about something, he never forgot those, but others were completely empty. In any case, his thoughts were in the past and he had always made a point of staying in the present. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the color black to clear his mind, instead he saw her freckles, her thighs, her tears and his friend’s motionless back in a puddle on the bathroom floor.

  …A Few Minutes Later...

  A blanket of heat enveloped him when he got off the plane. A wind picked up and stirred the dust, it wiped itself into a swirling cloud and descended on the passengers. Cedric boarded a small bus that took him and the others to the terminal. When he entered the airport he pulled his duffle bag over his shoulder and headed for the exit. A group of traditionally dressed musicians sat atop a carpet in the center of a mockup market. A cactus garden and red sand greeted him outside, yellowing stucco walls, cloudless sky and the stillness that goes hand and hand with oppressive heat; he didn’t know which way to go, so he approached a security guard. The guard pointed to a bus with the engine running and people standing in line to board. The bus bounced its way through traffic, hitting every pothole and bump on the way and finally stopped at what looked like a main square where the people crowded inside stood up and pushed their way to the exits. Some used their backpacks and grocery bags to make pathways for themselves through the milieu of tourists. Cedric got off too and turned right, careful to avoid the attention of would-be guides and salesmen; ahead of him, walking quickly through the crowd in front of a juice stand, Cedric could see the tails of a tux jacket. The weather was hot, but there he was, trotting up a poorly paved road in front of Cedric, whistling to himself and his tux tails flapping in the breeze next to the draping dress of the locals, but no one seemed to notice him. He walked undisturbed down the road and Cedric followed, nonplussed by the solicitations of the shopkeepers. Hardy didn’t look back but led Cedric outside the city walls. Buildings became less dense and Cedric could see clearly between the structures out into the desert beyond. They walked until the sun began to set; the air turned cool and the orange glow cast shadows along the dunes. The sand filled Cedric’s shoes but he walked on with Hardy whistling all the while.

  “I don’t want to go.” He said.

  Hardy turned around and met Cedric’s eyes.

  “Go where?” Hardy asked.

  “I don’t want to go with you.” He replied.

  Cedric made a fist and thought he felt his friend’s cold hand inside it and he thought he felt the warm arms of the girl wrap around his waist. They both clung to him with pleading warmth and held tight while Cedric looked past the transmutation of Hardy’s face, serene then forbidding, out over the dunes watching two distant figures climbing the sand.

  Cedric didn’t feel further explanation was needed. He turned around and walked toward the city. He could still hear the whistling for a little while, but the sound grew weaker and more drawn out, then another sound replaced it and he could hear the moaning and wailing of familiar blended tears.

  CANADA