This past. Dragging on cigarettes and waiting, looking out from the window of his box for lights; wait, angry, until the car pulls slowly into drive, the trampy predator crass, and shimmering.

Enough. He start-up jumps out of anxiousness and a door, roll downs narrow hall, skip-stepped descent the half flight, through foyer and pass thresholds into open space, the vehicle eats him talking, even before the momentum shallows.

Calm, blanched cracked vinyl seats and plastic molded paneling, wrapped in faded sun burnt colors like Picasso’s blue period and high, the cold Chicago winter seeping in, Mick and Sasha share a blunt as the earth’s spin carries the Mustang through pulsing networks of raw electron light, bluegrass trope and lanes’ arterial meandering.

The frolic.

They arrive upstairs, step through into living room, painted gray walls, sparsely furnished – one couch, one coffee table. Other kids milling about, kissing, talking, smoking; Sasha lanky in dirty blue jeans, the softest, and Father’s old suede jacket.

A fellow lingers in the corner. He pushes his hair back, he hadn’t washed it. People were drinking too, no supervision and everything laid out easy to jump. Many had not washed their hair. It made Mick sick, it made everybody in the neighborhood sick. Mick, lived on the border of this town, it sickened him most.

The rooms were awash in noise – riffing guitars, laughter, conversation. The boys were warm, well oiled.  Mouths dried; Mick and Sasha went to the porch, outside before a giant bonfire where some elder burned his Japanese motorcycle in honor of a new Harley Davidson.

She was always the one, because young, there is little else, Sasha soon telling her, “I am thinking of a story. I call it, ‘Still Life of a Beer.’ Want to hear it?”

She answered with soft commitment, ”sure, I guess. I’ve never heard of it.”

“Of course not, it’s mine.”

“Yeah?” She smiles.

“OK.” Sasha pauses a minute, not for drama, but to put together the thoughts, have to write it now, she’s waiting…

“This man hated beer his whole life – now he wants to try it.” Sasha draws from the beer, it is in a can, icy from a cooler.

“He just finds the idea of a cold beer desirable suddenly so he buys himself a nice domestic brand and keeps his refrigerator at its coldest. Only after the beer is ice cold, the bottles frosted, and only from a glass bottle, does he begin to drink them.”

“G-d! I just want to kiss you. Break out of this bullshit.” He never tells her in this silence. She is looking at him, waiting.

“Soon he drinks ice cold beer every night in the privacy of his own home. One night he says to his wife, while she cooks, “Here baby, try a sip. It’s ice cold – real good this way.” She takes the bottle and drinks a small portion. Her face grimaces and she looks repulsed. “You don’t like it? Even ice cold?” he offers. “No! It’s disgusting,” she volleys. “Hmmph,” he can’t be agreeable, he wants to drink more, the amber fire, freezing, rolls into his guts, “I am beginning to think ice cold beer is a brilliant drink.” He takes a long swig. She tells him how sad it is that a man feels the need to drink alone.”

Sasha finishes the can with a long swig and pulls a smoke from his pack, lights her’s first, his after.

“I don’t get it.” The girl remarks, handling the lapel of his jacket.

“There’s nothing to get, really. It’s yours do to as you please with.” Sasha answers.

“You’re strange.” She responds.

“Why?” – Sasha.

“You just are.”

He sits in the kitchen of the house alone, his mind shoveled empty, Sasha lays his head on his standing palm. A glinted light, fluorescent, plays off his lighter. He looks over the fire device and notes, caught in the hot chrome housing, Bhutan.

Sasha, reaching out, sets fire to the tablecloth and thinks of a foreign land.