He had always been such a regular person, no tics or oddities. There were no known psychiatric problems in the family. He had never even had an abnormal mole. No troubles with school or violating the law; it wasn’t worth doing anything that made people pay so much attention. He was average build and average weight, normal intelligence. Clothes were not a problem for him. Dark-blonde hair topped a slightly large head. Most people thought he was a good-looking man. He usually floated along just at the top of things.

But she had him just where she wanted, at least he thought so. To be in love, then to look askew at your love but for a moment, question it, deny its existence, scoff or dare laugh at it, glance at another woman or stick something unkind in your bag of deeds, sulk a day or two, these are the awful prescient reminders of lost love. Just by sight, a quick look at the script, then away, he could tell it would make him do something. He felt something press on his insides, a rekindled pain, which he had not felt for years. He tried to resist, to drive this feeling deeper into his gut where it would dissolve in the chaos of living things. But it persisted, like rain on a day you desire to go out, or a fever when you want to be well.

This little note did not have an aura of malevolence. Oh no it bulged a bit, exuded a scent of deliverance, pressed in good feeling and licked spit-shut to dirty hands. As with most things, the essential meaning of it was laden with temporality, the incompressible finity of existence penned through in just more than two dimensions, and from a certain viewpoint each inked symbol a skyscraper of meaning—a nonsensical “o” without a cunning vowel to woo it into existence—what powerless idiots we would be without words.

She had probably known he was in a state of extreme arousal, yet drugged down to the deepest kneel of urban illness. Signs of it were everywhere. He looked in some eyes and saw immediately their scams, their hands filled with the grease of lies. In others the misdeeds were worn in symbol. Unguilty men with flimsy shirts and slack arms slung on a pole, their teeth piercing lips freshly marked with hate. He hardly thought about prying it open. And yet he knew this could be what he had been hoping for all this time. He had waited so quietly, seduced specific paths of life and lied to women and cajoled his way into meals with repugnant men of power, proudly fended off all other circumstances; he had performed these menial tasks of self-preservation for years upon end, for if he was not alive, it would not come at all.