Masthead

Making Blueprints

Moses has been showing up at the dog park lately. He wears a hoodie over layers of other clothes. His face is all eyebrows and a beard the color of road snow. We talk about the economy. He says things like, "When you're an architect, nobody wants to put you on retainer." I nod my head. I have been an architect. Of stories, of drinks. Of different colored pills. Nobody wants to put me on retainer, either. Moses speaks a lot of truths, and I like listening to him talk.

He brings Oliver with him—a bounding, white Labradoodle. When Moses wants Oliver to poop, he says, "Mooshy, mooshy, mooshy!" I like that. Honey poops when I say "Business." Now, that seems boring. I wish I had trained her with something more fun. Something like ... "Tucumcari."

Like Honey, Oliver has a lot of energy. But Honey is much faster. She's always beating him to the ball. But she lets him get it, anyway. It's because Honey likes older men. She listens to them. She follows them around. And she'll eventually let them win at games of chase. It's the girls her age she likes to antagonize. She never lets them win at anything. And she barks at them relentlessly. She's alpha to the core.

We like to meet there in the morning, Moses and I, while the temperature is still in the teens. It's mostly quiet then. It's good when there is a fresh snow and it's still white and powdery, before there are footprints in it, and before it's turned to the crunchy, icy stuff. We throw our tennis balls and the dogs fetch them and our fingers get numb in the sharp morning air. We make the first footprints in the snow, and we construct the day. And this is about as real and important as it gets.

"There's no real blueprint out there for how to do this thing," I say.

"Then you need to make one."

Category:

More Recent Posts

The bar has become crowded. There's a woman sitting alone behind you wearing a dark green hoodie. Her chair is close to yours. Too close. It's weird. Maybe she's listening to us. You sip your beer, then you apply some lip gloss. You're not eating your veggie burger because that last cigarette put your stomach off. I say: "I can imagine that there are people who would pay money to read what I write. " . . .

My dad used to tell me there were two Rita's. I never really knew what he meant by that, but I always felt vaguely guilty about it. But he assured me it was a "gift." He said he had two "hims," as well. He also said I would be like him one day. And Christ, I hope that isn't true. Because both "hims" were killed by a black bear as they were escaping from their mistress's second-story window. See? Turns out at least one of his hims was an idiot. I have a deep suspicion I'm harboring one of those myself. An idiot. Excuse me: a gift. . . .

And I think about how the day before I had been crying into my hardwoods, scratching at the floor and thinking of the best way to die. And how the night before I held that bartender down on the dirty floor of the supply closet at the Main Street Tavern (I'm stronger than I look) and I rode that drink-slinger's Salty Dog until it wept. . . .

We are smoking cigarettes on the front porch. It's 25 degrees and it's hard to tell our breath from the smoke. I say: "The thing is, that's what I used to do. Write about me. About us." . . .

There is a fountain in the hotel. Sometimes I sit on the stone ledge and toss pennies into it. And I think that if I believed in wishes, I'd make one. But mainly I just like the action of tossing the pennies and watching the water ripple as each one hits the surface and sinks. The little plunk, plunk, plunk of it. The way I can cause this series of events to unfold. And the slight variations from one throw to the next. The hopeful anticipation it brings: that this time I will see something different. . . .

Mike Case was a good man, mostly. He usually told the truth. And he often was faithful to women. Whenever he committed one of the seven deadly sins, he felt bad about it almost every time. He said his prayers whenever he was scared about his own mortality. The minister at the church in town even knew him by name. And he'd call him by it every Christmas and Easter. Yes, as men go, Mike was a pretty good one... . . .