Page thirty-six is without names and faceless. Today is nightmare. Headlines are outlines turned into mental images. Icons are images captured through lenses. Filtered, watered down, precise, whatever. It’s all put out on paper. I got up and I knew based on what I’d drink, it’d be nightmare. One sugary something to another. One year to the next, a president of the United States to a simple another. Not solving anything, but evidently seeking and seeping with sweat, radiating in atomic glow of greed for the common greater good. Each pulse he lives through tormenting anyone who qualifies as a lesser.



The scent on me--you could smell me from anywhere. I was out searching for at the very least something to do. I found nothing then settled for scraping gum off of the bottom of my tattered shoes outside of my brother’s house. James. His house was small, altogether there is kitchen, bathroom, living space, bedroom: House. I let myself in and apparently startled him. He went off into his bedroom damp from a shower and unwinding to rest. As he went, I just told him to leave the frontlight on outside and I’d see him in the morning.



Goodnight.



On the kitchen counter was his wallet. In his wallet, a lottery ticket, seventy dollars, among other things. I took his wallet from the counter and from the counter walked down to the lake to spend the night out there until morning. It was cold, I’ll say so. I lost it out there. I threw the wallet right into the lake. Ask me why I did and i’d tell you it’s because of the president.



Maybe, above that, it’s because I have nothing and James doesn’t give a s*** about anything. So in the morning when I trudged back to James’s, pressed on the doorbell five times and knocked real hard. When James answered the door,



Hey brother! Good news! Good news! The lake swallowed your wallet. I’m back. What’s your plan for today?



Aw! F*** you, mate! It’s four in the f*ing morning.



He was enraged and rugged looking until he started to laugh. It never takes him long. James doesn’t hold a grudge. I keep pushing him. This is how our life together goes. We haven’t really got anyone else. Our father, bless his soul anyhow, left a long time ago. And our mother went along after him. San Francisco or somewhere damn sunny. They’d both be dead by now, anyway; that’s my guess. James on the other hand rants about them sometimes placing Dane and Doris in different scenarios.



Dane and Doris are probably somewhere jumping out of a god forsaken hot air balloon or buying new furniture for their naturally appealing bungalow.



Things along those lines.

I, on the other hand, am sweating my ass off and wondering if where I am, here at James’s is a part of a dream or of heaven or of hell. It’s really something.



There’s not a bone in my body mean enough to kill a man but there are plenty bones enough to do something like throw a wallet into a lake and stay awake for days. Days. Heaven must be on both of our sides. We’re a handsome enough brotherly pair, have had many outgoings with fabulous women at our own rate after they have told us to



Come along, what’s your name?



They b**** about fingernail problems and we kick rocks down boulevards. We never take them home. That’s not kind, not polite, not part of our lifestyle. No matter how flirtatiously they sit upon our legs and wrap their arms around our arms. The ladies are very lovely dressed in brightly colored buttoned-up dresses or dark bell-bottomed jeans long hair, freckles, curls, pale skin or dark. Always respectable.



James and I in our top hats and ties and cigars. It’s always quite lovely eveningtime to moonlight.


On one occasion, my girl of the evening, Bet, and James’s lass, Veronica, went out into the forest with not much at all, a picnic, and we smoked for a while and fell quite into unconsciousness in that forest. There were flowers beneath us, holding us up to rest upon, which is how I know we slept so peacefully.