3:Can't Stand It

What Kadrey knows: there is no reason to have lunch in the baby mall situated within this building's guts. Festering with humanity by 11:55, it becomes a grueling miasma difficult to wade through, exhausting one during the very hour reserved for recuperation.
What Kadrey does: lunch is eaten at the wokstation where there will be no waste of time, energy or social tolerance. This action awards him 18 to 22 minutes that belong to no institution or biological need. In this time Kadrey thinks about fighting. About winning fights. The opponents and settings vary. The style of fighting changes from 70s Hollywood tussles, to Jack Kirby throwdowns, to UFC massacres, back to Hollywood for golden age duels. The ending is always the same, it will brook no modification, mutation, or innovation: the fallen opponent receives an uncivilized kick to the ribs. Kadrey will feel his leg swing back, every joint perfectly aligned as if on a track, then there is the acceleration toward the offered torso, surprisingly effortless, which doesn't end in impact but is transmuted into a wave of pleasure racing past epidermis, then through the nerves, spiraling up the spinal chord, and finally redefining the brain, changing chemicals, opening up transmitters, allowing brand new divorces and unions. It's a party.

8: Sky Blue Sky

They went Downtown on a Sunday.

Nothing going.

9: The Late Greats

With the earnings from the race they go into that little record store across from the Barnes and Noble. They're there until closing, carefully selecting; this will be the soundtrack to their entire October and maybe even November if money's tight.

On the road they test out their new materials. As the tones and stories fill the Civic they slip in and out of new characters. Testing them out. Gripping the wheel a certain way. Twisting their features into unfamiliar expressions. They are renewed.

12: Theologians

FADE IN
Ext Night-A deserted highway in the middle of the night. It is very dark but not pitch black. A solitary Honda's headlights are the only things gliding down the macadam.

CUT TO
Int Night- Two men are inside the car. A haggard looking KADREY is at the wheel. EVAN is passed out in the passenger seat.

CUT TO
Highway-The Honda going down a hill. The headlights suddenly go out. The car pulls over.

CUT TO
Car Interior-Kadrey opens the door and gets out in the huff. The automatic light wakes up Evan. He is a bit disoriented. Off screen Kadrey is cussing up a storm and we hear him kicking the bumper and the hood.

EVAN:
What's going on man? Hey Kadrey. Kadrey! What's going on? Kadrey what the...

KADREY:
[tossing himself into the driver's seat] The lights are dead.

EVAN:

Lights? Both of them? That doesn't happen man.

In lieu of a response, Kadrey makes a frustrated gesture towards the front of the car.

EVAN:

How long 'til sunrise?

KADREY:

I look like an Apache chief to you?

Kadrey balls up his jacket, puts it under his neck and reclines his seat all the way back.

EVAN:

You really going to sleep?

KADREY:

If you let me.

EVAN:

Man, I'm wide awake.

Kadrey digs around under the seats and finds a flashlight. He hands it to Evan. He digs around some more and comes up with a book.

KADREY:

Here. Read.

EVAN:

[looks at the book] Where did you get this? Arthur Miller is ass.

KADREY:

I know he's ass, but it was only a dollar.

EVAN:

[sort of fascinated by the book now] Attention must be paid.

KADREY:

What?

EVAN:

Attention. Must. Be . Paid. He wrote that. That's some sentence. "Attention must be paid." It's like awareness, imperative, existence and economy. In that order.

KADREY:

Evan. Read. Sleep. Marvel. Just shut the fuck up while you're doing it. Please.

19: How To Disappear Completely

Kadrey was blind for an entire day. Blind is perhaps not the correct term but in my personal vocabulary and , I believe, the entirety of the English language it is the closest approximation one will find of his 24 hour affliction. The peculiar mechanism that transforms light into the multitudes of the world was corrupted and shapes, colors and depth were lost to the poor man. For an entire rotation of this Earth, Kadrey was not immersed into the inky blackness customarily caused by the absence of light but was trapped in the words of Paul Auster. It is not that this building or that hydrant were beyond his perception but rather that they were replaced by a descriptive paragraph in the style of his prose. Kadrey was quite certain that it was Auster.

After the crisis had passed and Kadrey was once more able to slowly move his gaze through the subtle shifts in the blue of a summer sky, he rather surprised me. "I could have lived with it," he told me, "if I had a good variety available to me. If this car were described by Chandler or this lamp post by Bukowski, I maybe could have lived with it. I could have enjoyed being immersed in words."

22: Kidsmoke

25: I'm a Wheel

There is a volatile alchemy of blood and words.

Whispers from a stranger engorge capillaries.

Consequences wait offstage.

28: Company In My Back

You all know about Zeno

Right?

So you'll understand

and I imply no condescension

by thus speaking

to the uninitiated

about the split between appearance and existence

But maybe split's too spiky a word

Anyways

The punch

To those not well versed

in

this

maneuver

Will present itself as a swift, simple action

And

In the presence

Of a

Master Killer

That may well be the case

But for anyone

Everyone

else

It is a thousand decisions

What looks to be

A single gesture

Designed in frustration

The desire

The desire is what's singular

And on the way to contact

Before the destination

And before that

There is doubt

Doubts

Constant corrections too quick

Too minute

To chart

No proof

Blood Pudding

Just Constant

Frustrated

Desire

For

Touch

30: Ashes of American Flags

33: Kamera

Understand that this inventory does not include the trunk or the glove box. It takes no accounting of those places where things go to hide, but it does include all objects that, by some accident, find themselves out of sight.

In the civic we find:

A pack of Marlboro Reds, three left

A pack of Benson and Hedges menthols, one left

An eyeglass repair kit, no screws

A pack of Merits, five left

A crumpled Wendy's bag with two Whataburger bags inside

Five dollars and forty-three cents in loose change

Three Euros

Five packs of Turkish Gold, all empty

Two atlases, both falling apart

That morning's copy of the Arizona Republic

A pillow

A Tom Waits cd case with Shakira's "Fijacion Oral" inside

The latest copy of the New Yorker

The latest copy of Swank

An old copy of In Touch with a subscription sticker for a Doctor James Bannon

Ticket stubs for a Fellini retrospective

An open bag of trail mix

Eight lighters, most of them green

A paperback copy of "Stars In My Pocket Like Grains Of Sand" by Chip Delaney

A Steely Dan shirt

A switchblade

A half full bag of Sun Chips

An empty wallet

An Oregon traffic ticket

A laptop

Evan

Kadrey

35: Handshake Drugs

At first light, it is often obvious what type of opportunities a day will offer, and on those days that offer neither the option of making nor breaking, Evan and Kadrey will somehow find themselves in one of those gigantic hardware stores.

They prefer the Home Depot, definite article always included, because it gets the scent right. That odor of eager wood with its metallic accents and plastic finish; it's the same in Maine, Georgia, or Wyoming. They must get it from a bottle kept in the back.

They'll walk those deep, bright aisles for hours, gliding from thrill to thrill as raw materials whisper new promises. All that potential animating every piece of wood and stone, every color and fixture, it's dizzying. A man will go light in the head and his knees will tremble and a shopping cart will be the only thing keeping him upright.

Evan and Kadrey haven't built a thing. Not yet. But the trunk of that Civic is slowly filling with hammers and levels and tape measures, and it is often their pleasure, between these two oceans, to correct or clarify a thing or a person that needs correcting or clarifying.

41: I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

Colin Mardsen sat in his study, ensconced in the red folds of his favorite chair, perplexed by this new novel. He was an educated man and the pejorative connotations of that word__bourgeois__ were not unfamiliar to him, but it had always been an insult without sting, a happy consequence. Outside of the imagination of a moralist author, does the werewolf curse the lunar power pulsating through bone and muscle? Certainly not. Yet there it is. The sting. But, along with the sting, a special sort of vindication. The ideas pushed and pulled at each other like the flavors in a complex Thai dish, and he could only digest so much at a time. There was an old envelope spotted at the bottom of an open drawer, covered in dust, he liberated it from the detritus of time and put it to work. The envelope moved at twenty page intervals, at thirty page intervals, at fifty. His makeshift bookmark served as concrete memory, a marker for how far his eyes and mind had travelled. In years to come, as he returned to the book, the envelope was always part of the ritual.

Family functions became a pain as soon as his sister found true love and a third husband. The man evinced at all time a wit and a bonhomie that made him almost irresistible. Almost. If only he had a sense of context, if only Mister Three showed an awareness of his place in the social constellation. Mardsen would rather spend time with an equal rather than that frustrating lump who occasionally passed him the rolls or the pepper. It had been so long since the family allowed him an accomplice to share a bon mot or an unorthodox opinion, and this one had such potential. It had to be done. Copies were so rare that it would have to be his own. One night, before leaving for Christmas dinner, he pulled the book from the shelf, removed the envelope (Mister Three would have to devise his own ritual), and wrapped it hastily in a tasteful holiday pattern. A small elegant package with hard corners to help the lump find definition.

The week before his son got shipped out he spent every evening alone in the study, crying. Each night, he attempted to find something small in volume yet significant in spirit that his boy could keep on his person at all times. He had silly, embarrassing dreams of his first edition "The Sun Also Rises" stopping a bullet. On the final night, disappointed by his library, he rummaged through his drawers. And then the compass. In his family for generations. Guiding Mardsens through three continents. Perfect. And under the compass his old bookmark, stripped of all talismanic powers and returned to messenger status. He read the name for the first time: Kadrey. The postdate was twenty years old.

47: Hell Is Chrome

If spun hard enough, the wheels let go of the earth,

and for entire moments it does not own you.

IF SPUN HARD ENOUGH, THE WHEELS LET GO OF THE EARTH,

AND FOR ENTIRE MOMENTS IT DOES NOT OWN YOU.

If spun hard enough, the wheels let go of the Earth, and for entire moments it does not own you

If spun hard enough,

the wheels let go of the earth,

and for entire moments

it does not own you.

If spun hard enough,

the wheels let go of the earth,

and for entire moments

it does not own you.

if spun hard

enough,

the wheels let go

of the Earth

and for entire moments

it doesn't own you

IF

spun hard enough, the wheels

let go of the earth, and for entire moments

it does not own you.

If

spun hard

enough, the wheels

let go of the

earth, and for entire moments

it does not own you.

if spun hard enough,

the wheels let go of the Earth,

and for entire moments it doesn't matter

IF

SPUN

HARD ENOUGH,

THE WHEELS LET GO OF THE EARTH, AND FOR ENTIRE

MOMENTS

IT

DOES

NOT

OWN YOU

48: Side With The Seeds

On his shoes

The dirt from three states

Caked thick

No wind at his back

No wind on his face

No wind

Nothing to rush and fill the voids between palm and thigh

Up above

Empty sky

Cruel blue and hard light

Moisture sucked from every pore

No wind to cool his brow

No wind

No hope for clouds

and shade

and rain

In his pocket

Lousy talismans

Bent cigarette, six keys around a circle

Kadrey's estate

He holds out the keys

His fist a porcupine

There is no wind to make them chime

Nothing

No wind

To carry the sounds growing in his chest

He smells the keys

Gives them new names in the absence of doors

He presses into the body of the cigarette

Rolls it back and forth

Paper disintegrates

Dry leaves fall through his fingers

Like sand

Like ash

No wind to alter their trajectory

No ladder to bring him the fragrance of tobacco

The leaves gather on his shoes

He is buried