It was a surprise party; everyone had hats on, party whistles, candy, a girl with a shaved head, a plaid skirt, knee high white socks, and a white button down shirt. She gave me some candy. Not a few seconds later, Mary Catherine calls me from Delray, the desolate metropolis set boiling under the same sun a few degrees east, the despairing ruins of a town so filled with money you can’t afford to breathe, just the same place with different letters on a highway sign.

Population unimportant, Delray is a trap. A city with walls so impossible to climb made and strung together with low wages, expensive public transportation, heat that wears you like a strait jacket. You never get out sometimes.

You almost have to be in a casket before they will let you see the city limits. A plane ticket out of there glows in the dark when you show it to your friends in broad daylight. That seems to be everyone’s story. How they are going to leave. Everyone’s escape plan seems so romantically perfect, even when they tell you it after living in the same Florida sober house five years in.

Mansion crack house, sober house, all running side by Side on Swinton Ave, in one house you get denied for food stamps, in the other, you eat lobster bisque ocean side on Atlantic Ave. the dealer in the crack house sells to them both.

Everyone loses it seems, even the ocean sounds like its crying when you swim out to it. It begs for something else, that’s why the shark’s attack people ten times a year.

They too have had too much; salt water can't even pay its own bills in Florida. Landlords are like Mother Nature, mother earth drying up the land when you’ve lived there too long and not a seed to plant soil side.

No one weeps when the earth takes you.

No one sighs when Florida dries you up either (: 9:56 p.m.)

(08/05/2000) 12:59 p.m.

It’s amazing sometimes, the amount of control a woman’s emotions will have over her behavior. I often think of women as bundled up live wires, all currents running parallel, perpendicular, and often in direct opposition to each other. Often when you think you are seeing a girl flying off of hinges, it is actually the sparks that emit when the currents run into each other. Bright incandescent flares that come out in empathy filled screams and radical self examination shopping sprees. They think mostly in abstract terms. It seems they would rather wax indefinitely about something they need or want to do, when it becomes time to take some action towards this definite end, oopps! "We need to talk". It becomes another flare watching sessions. It feels like their screams are as bright as the sun, but as hard to understand as astro physics. You know beneath that there are these fundamental laws governing events, but there is no unified theory that explains it all. It's all just randomized bursts of supernova; the time it takes light to reach our earth is like the amount of time it takes me to figure out what I did wrong. If my atmosphere was as thick as a polar ice cap. A massive jumble of opposing emotions and ideas. A complex system of explanation and demands. They come across this way. A constantly shifting plane of intentions and feelings, colliding and running in stream with each other occasionally you run into the emotionally estuary, where their emotional intentions run in opposition to what they know is right. WOW, is all I can say if you ever

get to see this, imagine watching fireworks from a spaceship, with 3D glasses

It’s quite a sight. Like a star exploding. From the inside

A woman will think she is "broken", inoperative, and misaligned malfunctioning, perhaps not defragmented often enough? Poorly compiled device drivers, gaskets blown...whatever... if the guy in question doesn't respond to them

I’ve seen beautiful, intelligent, funny, 30+ plus years women doubt their own existence because the idiot won't buy them flowers, show up for coffee, do their taxes, fix their car, fix their life, fix the economy, repair the ozone. It amounts to the idea that there is no task a man cannot do in the eyes of a desperate woman. Superman. To a woman in need, every man feels he is a doctor, a psychiatrist, always a musician, magician,

Actually an average man is not any more capable than your average ice machine. Sometimes it produces nothing. If there is one task he is capable of, when he performs it, that’s what he does, you don’t get see through ice not glow in the dark ice, not ice that cures cancer, just regular ice. Sometimes not even cold. Every man could make a different shape of ice, but it’s all just frozen water. A girl in need may think that this is something different, he listens to me he’s different he’s special.

But sweetie, cold is cold, no matter how many ways you drink it.

Many times they don’t even know that you can drink without ice, they get so used to seeing girls in fashion magazines, on sitcoms, in movies, drinking icy cold beverages,

"I WANT THAT!”

I don’t have that,

I must be broken.

Ask a woman about the emotions they talk about, ask them for one specific emotion. You will get one hundred non specific abstract ideas about emotions. Point a telescope at one faint star, you will see four hundred stars all collapsing and exploding in plasma and light, breaks the lens in your eyes, blindness for six months.

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As with most women I meet these days, there is always a thread

of tragedy, a ribbon of calamity, and a few strings artistic inclination. All sealed up of course in a satin blanket of incredible sex appeal think that some where in a cosmic corner of decisions, these elements combined make the irresistible woman. More often than not, you will find these exact elements in a girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and a dark past. This past they will hint at occasionally in a car and then look far off over the oncoming traffic and highways as though it was as close as the gear shifter. That’s usually when I shift into 5th and accelerate.

You can usually distill the closest approximation of what happened to them by releasing little facts, or fictions, about yourself slowly over a period of time.

"...when I went in to take my interview...” it, that is the event, happened to me in a way that is hard to retell.

          She was rearranging a few hundred cd's and tapes that sat on her kitchen counter.

All stolen, she would go into a music store and then rip off 5 10, all the quality CDs they had and walk out calmly. My job in this was to walk in after her and look seventeen shades of sketchy "I WILL RIP YOU OFF". I find that I can do this in whatever clothes I am wearing that day. Actually, I don’t do anything really except walk in and look around calmly. I don't know why I have this effect on store employees. I’ve only stolen food in my life, only when I needed it too.

While the scan of employee eyes would watch my every action, Carrie would steal CDs, tapes, store displays, employee price guns, name tags, money from the register, and things that belonged to other customers. I wouldn’t be surprised if she were able to actually put the entire store on wheels and have a truck pull it away. The workers would be standing outside of a vacant lot explaining to police that they don’t know what happened.

"Yes officer there was a shady character looming about, walking around as though he was engaged in some shoplifting. When we looked up at him leaving we were suddenly all outside and naked, with our credit card numbers used fraudulently in 7 states.

Carrie could do this. She could rip you off entirely and have you convinced later that you had actually done it yourself.

 I speak from experience. She told me at one point that I had given my car to "sanctioned infidels "from Cuba so they could cut into our radio network and cripple satellites statewide.”

I know it sounds ridiculous but after a few days I did notice that all our television stations were dead. That or the power went out in our apartment, i don’t remember.

One of the two.

"You were standing right there will," she was telling me on night, "and you looked me right in the eyes and told me 'Carrie i want you to have it I done even care about that book anymore'. But I, in your defense, said 'will but you love Bukowski'. Since our power had gone out I thought we could trade in it to the bookstore and get at least fifty dollars. It is a first edition of "Crucifix in a death hand.” I remember you telling me this because you were wearing your criminal looking clothes."

I looked down at what I was wearing. A black banana republic shirt and brown pants. Somehow I'm a criminal in every attire.

"Fine", I say," at least the power is back. The television at the center of her desk was playing a rerun of The Charlie Brown Halloween movie.

I always get sentimental about that one. Something about the great pumpkin makes me feel like a cartoon myself.

”Well not entirely back, the power that is." she began to say something but it melded into the peanuts theme and I lost it in the scaling piano notes.

I swear that song could bring me back from the grave.

I'd reach out my hand from within a coffin, grab someone, and call them a blockhead. Of course all they would hear is that sound the teachers make when they talk in Charlie Brown. That's how the dead sound, like a trombone.

"You see we don’t have enough money to cover the electric bill"

Carrie would always paced when she talked, so you got different pieces of the truth depending on what room she was in. The truth, she always told from the bathroom. I had come to associate the sound of running bath water with honesty.

Carries truth was quantitative, like displacement.

"It was very strange. I went to the hardware store to get a gas powered generator. I mean, gas is cheaper than electricity."

I interrupted her quickly, "No it is not gas is very expensive"

"If you pay for it silly. I'm talking about stealing gas. Siphoning it out of people's cars. You can also drive off with a full tank of gas in someone's car. They never catch you."

""What you're talking 1 about is illegal in like five different ways. You're not only talking about grand theft auto, but grand theft unleaded. They put you away for that Carrie."

"N0 will you see", she was talking and spilling water over the edge of the bath, "you don’t use your own car, you use someone else’s. Someone who looks like a criminal, they never suspect me anyways."

"Ok Carrie so back to the generator please, 1 cant keep up with your criminal genius without an encyclopedia”

"So I went in to steal a generator, or rather, use the in store price gun and price it at 12 dollars. But when I went in there was no one there. The entire store was empty"

"Jesus,” I replied looking at the rainbow patterns of water gathering on the tile floor, "Did you case the entire the entire place?"

"No, even better, I waited until someone came from the back and then I bought the generator for 12 dollars"

"If no one was there, why didn’t you just steal it?"

"Where's the technique in that? Jesus Will I'm a theft artist, not a kleptomaniac. “

More water was falling on the tile, spiraling out in color circles.

"So I get the generator back here But its too noisy to run inside, so I had stolen like fifty extension cables. I just put it out in the field behind the complex and ran the cable in here to power the power surge strip."

"And the gas?” I say.

"Oh I drove to the Chevron in this guy‘s car and filled up, brought it back here and siphoned it out. I've been doing it for a few days now. Really there is no overhead on this. It's entirely free, genius in that respect."

"God it must be terrible to be whatever guy it is that you convince to let you do these things."

A brief pause goes by as she looks at me very factually and says, “Every five minutes another sucker is born…”

These guys, and there were always plenty, were her pawn force. Or at least that is what she called them. I would never be one. After all, she didn’t have me the way she had them. The way she would talk about them, she referred to when as orphans with a return policy. You can return them after awhile, and someone else wlll pick them up.

Cigarettes were running low. "I’m gonna get some smokes babe. You got the keys?”

In the car I was thinking, “God who are these people that she continually rips off? They never find out until later of course. It looked like a series of sparks was trailing behind me in the rearview mirror. Sharp orange flares were following my every move. Someone pulled to turn and go around me. My car suddenly jerked savagely to the left, the wheel wouldn’t respond. The shower of sparks started flying against the window as I was forc1bly towards the direction of oncoming traffic.

When you're car is about to crash, several things go through your mind. The last thing that you think of is what some driving instructor told you about dangerous skids.

"You turn into the skid!”

“You turn away from the skid!”

They sound so similar I can never remember,

“If you remember nothing turn some thing from the skid!"

That is what i should have been thinking. Unfortunately all I could think about was the girl who sat next to me. The brown hair that seemed to shine as brightly as the state funded fluorescent lamps that tilt up driving school. I remembered how she slowly crashed the car into the same orange cone twice, once to knock it down, and then another time to try to prop it back up.

This flash of orange cones is running through my head as the car sails down an embankment and slows into a field of blue bonnets. Blue flower patterns are running like mosaics through the windshield and the fractal like patterns are so beautiful that I forget to hit the brakes.

I step out of the car and take a look at the damage. There was none, just a trail of tires through a field of flowers and bluebonnet petals covering the car like a pillow case. Looking closer i see that a garden hose is attached to my gas tank door. Opening the door I look in and see that the hose all the way to the bottom of the tank. It must have caught on the underside of the other car's tires and dragged me off like this.

Well it could not have turned out better; it was like crashing into a styrofoam packing plant. I was surrounded by living blue pillows. A shadowy figure is running out to me from the gas stop up the hill. His dark figure gets closer and closer until I’m facing an out of breath gas station attendant.

"JESUS IS YOU OK?"

"Yea I’m quite fine actually. I crashed into a field of memory foam."

This statement seemed to confuse him .He scans my car and looks at me confused

I tell him" I think blue is a good color for this car don't you?"

"You know you might have suffered some head trauma which is why you're talking crazy talk. I’ve already called the police..." he trails off looking closer at my car.

"Destroying the state flower is a crime also. This car looks familiar. It looks like the car that ripped me off for 50 bucks of gas yesterday. Only this crazy broad was driving and I told the cops to look for a broad with brown hair and a kangaroo tattoo on her neck. I swear it was this car."

I tell him quite factually, “It could not have been this car. I loaned it to Cuban refugees recently to overthrow a massive state satellite network. It worked too, that’s why the power and TV stations went out throughout the city."

His look of disbelief starts to bore me so I tell him I’m fine and start up the car to drive off through the swirling spiral patterns of gasoline on the blue field.

I trip over a section of snaking extension cords on the staircase up to her apartment. I nearly broke my freaking neck.

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