Pressed coffee!
***
Fevery. Cold. My head feels like the heavy end of a sledge hammer. My limbs too. I slept through the alarm for hours and dreamed of a night club called "the power," its series of dark green rooms and velvet couches, its shower stalls, and industrial lighting, somebody's vision of something we could all do to be together again. Michael and Becky's son, Rene, was there, but he called himself Michael, and he wore his father's black-framed glasses and his father's adam's apple, and he sat in a motorized wheelchair. I haven't seen you since you were three or four I said. His collar was round and black, faintly reminiscent of a priest's, so I said I always thought you were preparing for the priesthood, and he looked at me hard, examining my face as though I'd been cruel, and wheeled around and rolled slowly down the steep sidewalk path away from us and our hang out.
***
Spring is at the doors again. At the windows. At the chimes. At the heads of the trees blowing around. It's aroar out there. The trains and the cars. The dog on the end of its chain next door shaking off damp grass. The yellow house in the sun too bright to look at straight.
***
