someone from work was having a party. they told me the name of the street, and i found it, but the building was right behind a security gate and there were spikes along the driveway. i parked across the street. i walked towards the only streetlight and stepped over the spikes, not that it would have mattered had i stepped on one, i was already feeling deflated. i found the address after peering through the darkness, seeing the flash of gold numbers, finding the right door. i rang the doorbell and someone from inside shouted that it was open. the doorbell was still sounding as i let myself in. i got the feeling that no one could stand me, so i sat down in a quiet part of the room. the grip on my glass slackened. i drifted off to sleep. someone shook me gently at first, but then harder, as if they didn't think i was going to pull through. they grabbed me by my arm and stood me on my feet. they filled my glass to the top and i drank it. all. "you were supposed to wait for everyone else." someone said. the grip on my glass tightened, "how rude of me. pour me another one." they ushered me around the room. i was introduced to lots of new people. someone asked me a question. i nodded, "ok." "you are gonna love this.", he said raising the volume. i leaned back into the seat. i couldn't concentrate, but i felt i should search around in my head for an opinion. "you have bad taste in music.", i said, finding the most honest one. he grabbed my face and held it in his hands. then, he forced his tongue into my mouth. "honestly...", i began, pulling away, drying my face with my coat sleeves...

"can i borrow a pen?"
i handed it to him.
"can i have your phone number?"
i placed my hand gently over my heart, "mine?"
he shook his head and pointed to the reciever of the phone. he was talking to someone else and didn't have the decency to tell me so with actual spoken words. i closed up as soon as he had left. i pulled down the gate and locked it good and tight. i put on my coat as i headed for the doors. the night shift janitor was leaning over the open end of a metal wastebasket.
"smile, why don't you." he said, "you know what they say about a face that doesn't smile?"
"no. what?"
"it cracks."
"it what?"
"it...cracks."
"it eventually cracks a smile?"
"you've got the right idea.", he said, replacing the old garbagebag with a new one.

my mother was leaning over the edge of the sink when i walked into the kitchen. she looked as if she were about to be sick. i took off my coat and prepared myself because i thought something was wrong, because something didn't feel right. when she turned to look back at me, her eyelids were half closed. she asked me how my day went and when i said it had been good she said hers had been especially good. she talked about a number of errands she went on, and mentioned stopping off at the cemetery to leave flowers on her father's grave.
"you wouldn't believe how many graves didn't have flowers.", she said. i uncovered a pan that had been left on the stove and started to pick out little pieces of meat with my fingers. i thought i heard a noise and chewed more slowly to try and hear it. i eventually realized that it was her. she was crying. her face was buried in her hands and she was murmuring something. she slid her arm across the table and dropped a plate full of cake. a large piece skipped across the floor. "thats your piece." she said, resting her head on the table. i helped her up, slung one of her arms around my neck, and i leaned into the darkness even though she was dragging me down. i felt the moment she gave up, and i heard the discouraging sound of her toes dragging along the floor. i dropped her into her bed and she brought her hands together and pressed them against her face. i could she tell was on the verge of a peaceful sleep. i went back to the kitchen and picked more meat from the pan. it was then that i noticed a bottle of brandy, used mostly for cooking, had been poured empty. i uncapped the bottle and sniffed it, i turned my head towards the sound of the phone ringing.

"dwight was trying to pass himself off as those serious guys that go to jail just to pass the time, but when the cell door slammed behind us he just lost it. i said "dwight, we're in cellblock A, this is nothing. they've got buttons on the doors so you can leave whenever you want. the warden is sitting at his desk like he's a clerk at a hotel." he wouldn't hear it, so he tried to calm his nerves by talking to the only other guy in the cell. the guy wasn't willing, he said, "oh i see, when we were free men, passing each other on the street, you didn't want to talk to me, i bet you didn't even want to look at me, but now that we're locked up and have no place to go, you wanna have a heart to heart? well guess what? i don't." he actually folded his arms and turned his back on us. i swear i saw tears welling up in dwight's eyes. he kept reminding me every five minutes, "they haven't come for us. the judge has seen everyone, but us." finally they pushed us in front a judge and we got let off with a misdemeanor. of course when we went back to work he made it sound bigger than what it was, talking about how he was almost raped.", daniel took of his hat and held it between his hands. i watched him through the rear view mirror. jacob turned around to look at him, "i hate dwight. don't you? if only there were something we could do to him, to teach him a lesson. they taught my roommate a lesson at his job. he didn't show up to work because his appedix exploded. no one knew because he was too sick to pick up the phone and call them. it turns out that they really needed him to work that day so to make sure that he'd never pull a stunt like that again, they welded his toolbox shut and pissed on it."
"are you serious?"
"yeah. he sulked all day because of that."
i interrupted, "what a waste, i mean, for something so useful to be shut up like that and left to waste."
"what are you talking about?", jacob wanted to know.
"don't you think its a waste?"
"i think its a waste of time, talking to you. and what is this depressing shit you have on?"
"don't you remember this song?"
"no, the only thing i'd remember about this song is to keep an extra bullet in the chamber in case i ever have to hear it again." in the mirror, i saw only the bottom half of daniel's face, and i watched it as it cracked a smile.

the stranger held out a clenched fist, upturned, he uncurled his fingers. a ring was resting in the middle of his palm and just as i thought, he had a problem on his hands.
"these mood rings...how accurate are they?"
"pretty accurate."
"i put it on and it changed a color, then turned another color right after that."
"that means you're experiencing two moods at the same time."
"i guess that makes sense. have you tried one on?"
"yes, sir. we got a whole box of them last week. i put one on each finger and all of them were normal but then one of them turned the color of "romance". i noticed that after that, they all started to turn the color of "stress." so i took them off right away."
"so it was accurate?"
"yes, sir."
"i'll take one."

"its been a month that i've been selling souvenirs to people leaving town." the man that stocks the shelves came into the store to greet me. he had a frightened look on his face. i soon found out that he had lost his set of keys, some of which opened the locks to the store's warehouse. he begged me to help him look for them. i picked up the trash can and looked at the empty space it left behind.

"they're not here."
"they must be."
"they're not."
he left and came back, and kept doing that a number of times. "i don't understand. i put the keys on the conveyor belt at security, but when i came around i didn't realize that they were missing, which could mean that a passenger could've taken them by mistake, which could mean trouble."

he slumped down onto one of the boxes. jeff, our boss, came towards us, "what seems to be the problem?" he asked, and he was strangely unaffected by what we told him. jeff stood the man up from where he was sitting and dusted him off, as if he were another thing that had to come off the shelf. "the keys will turn up." he said, then he whispered something into the man's ear, they both grinned, one after the other. "but its bad news for you, jenna. we're going to have to search you."
they both began to laugh. i stepped out from behind the counter. their laughter died down as they waited for my reaction. i said, "i'm taking my break."
he said, "see? this is what i like about her. she doesn't say more than a couple of words."

i woke up early on my day off and pretended like i had so much to do. i ate at a restaurant, shopped a little, then rented some video tapes. i put a tape in the vcr and it tried to eat it. i got dressed again and saw that it was raining, when it hadn't been before. i put a coat on top of what i already had on. i walked out into the rain, got into my car and drove to a nearby pawn shop. "i'd like to try out that vcr." i said.
"sure thing." the man behind the counter unraveled the chords and plugged them into a security tv. "here's a tape.", he handed it to me, i pushed it in, but it didn't go in smoothly.
"i'd like to see another one."
he unraveled another set of wires, his thick arm going around and around in circles. i fastforwarded, rewound, and i wanted to pause, but there wasn't a manual button. "sorry, but i'd like to try another one."
"why don't i sell you a panasonic? its the only one that comes with a remote control."
"okay."
he wrapped it up nice and neat, even tied a rubber band around the whole thing, securing the remote control. "now, miss, this vcr comes with a lifetime gurantee, meaning of course that once you leave with it, you're stuck with it for a lifetime." he threw his head back and laughed, behind him was a wall of vcrs, their little doors seemed to be thrown back too, laughing along with him.
he sold me the thing and as i was about to leave, he said, "miss?"
"yeah?"
"come back soon?"
"yeah."
i got home and watched a video tape, after it was over i laid still in bed. i was thinking,
"i do, too, say more than a couple of words." i rolled over but there was still no one there to say them to.

dave shoved the end of a spatula down the back of dwight's pants and screamed, "credit card swipe!". dwight pushed the spatula away, horrified. "its been denied!" dave screamed, waving the spatula around and causing everyone to back up. soon laughter broke out in the kitchen and lettuceheads fell from the counters and rolled on the floor. the head chef stopped one with his foot like a soccer player. they were told to get back to work immediately. they worked hard and not a single plate was sent back.
jacob began to sweat as he sat across from me at a bad chinese restaurant and told me about his day. "why do you like to come here?", i asked, "the food is bad."
"just look at this place.", he said. i looked around. just gold wallpaper and wood paneling. a blue neon clock hung over the bar. our mother used to bring us here when we were little. on the way out he stopped in front of a toy machine filled with old baseball cards. the cards displayed behind the glass were faded. he said, "i can't believe they still sell these." i thought he was going to put the quarter in the machine but instead he dropped it into the fountain.
i took him to his apartment. i asked him if i could borrow, big trouble in little china. he said that it wasn't his. i told him i'd bring it back. he said that it wasn't his. i told him he could keep it.
as soon as i got home jason called me on the phone. he said he was calling from a restaurant and he wanted to know how i was doing. i asked him what he had ordered. he said he hadn't ordered any food and he wasn't going to. i'd left the radio on in the other room and was paying more attention to it. i tried listening closely to the words but i couldn't make them out. i asked him, "have you ever seen big trouble in little china?"
"yeah", he said, "its okay. have you ever seen max dugan returns?"
"no."
"you should watch, max dugan returns, instead."
i said i had to get off the phone because i had things to do. i'm pretty sure he knew that i was lying.

he rushed to the closet to pick out a clean shirt. i sat on the bed and fell over to one side. he was moving around frantically, throwing old magazines and dirty clothes all around the room. i rolled over and something stuck to my arm. i peeled it off. it was a polaroid. "burlesque", i whispered, "well would ya look at those fleshtones." he snatched the photo out of my hand. "oh. its of me and the coors light girls." he smiled happily, remembering that night. he went back to what he was doing, then stopped and stood there. "i got some bad news tonight. one of my best friends has died." i sat up. "i'm sorry.", i said, slightly uncomfortable. "his girl left him and he couldn't take it, said he was gonna kill himself but didn't have the courage so he was gonna get the cops to do it for him. they met up with him at his house and got him to come out and when he was putting down his rifle they shot him in the stomach. he died from the wound." he breathed out hard like he'd just taken a heavy blow, "he's number 9 on my list of dead friends." i stayed quiet. "well anyway. these things happen.", he said, grabbing an empty bottle of jim beam off of the shelf. i fell over again. "how do you feel right now?", he asked. "alone.", i said honestly. "you're pitiful. i thought you were better. you were looking on the bright side of things." i stared at him pitifully, "what can i say?" he set down the bottle, making a pained face. i said, "john has his wife. you have your bar women. and who do i have?"
"yourself."
"doesn't seem fair."
"so much isn't."
"there was this guy at school that had asked me for my change. i thought he liked me, but all he wanted was my quarters. he was probably on his way to the arcade."
he choked all of a sudden, laughing.
"i can remember the last thing i learned in school. my professor was talking about social blunders and a girl asked, "is jerry springer a faux-pas?" and the professor said, "well no. jerry springer, himself, is not a faux-pas but i guess you could say that his show is based on them." and then she started talking about norms and she said we'd better have a clear understanding of what a norm is because it was gonna be on the test so i made it easy for myself and imagined norm mcdonald in my head, reciting the definition of a norm." i fell back laughing. i sat up when i didn't hear anything. i thought he'd left the room.
"so i found a crumpled dollar underneath that crystal ashtray.", he said.
"...so"
"so that i might buy a beer with it.", he said walking towards the door.
"what about me?", i asked, smacking my lips.
"do you think its smart to drink while youre on medication?"
"i don't know. is it?"
he sent me off to bed with a glass of orange juice.