— How you doing? he asks.
He kicks his bicycle tire.
— OK, I say.
— How was lunch?
— Spaghetti in cold tomato soup.
He laughs.
— What are you going to do in town? he asks.
— I need something, I needed a walk. Then I might have a coffee. Nothing much.
— Me too. Nothing. I'm going to hang out, then go home.
— Have fun.
— Yeah, you too. Bye.
— Bye. See you tomorrow.
I'm busy ignoring his long legs, I do want to buy something, and also I hunger for the taste of coffee and its pungent aroma, though I don't often drink coffee, and he rides off, jauntily, and I breathe again and march on, shaking my underexercised arms which hang from my sides uselessly, and realize the sun is strong for this time of day and season. The tall, old fir trees block its rays, and, when they don't, it casts a brilliant swath on the darkened road. Two chipmunks scurry across, darting forward then freezing in the middle of the two-lane blacktop road, but each scrambles to safety, and a bearded man drives up in an old pickup truck, rolls down his window to ask directions I can't give, but doesn't make small talk, and I go on. I pass the high school. Luckily the students are still inside, it may even be earlier than I thought, so I don't have to watch them flee its corridors, burst out of swinging doors, yelling and whooping, to escape into a transient liberation, or see mothers and a few fathers waiting for them, recalling a similar time in my life, which is present under my skin and which no massage releases. I don't need anything, but I'm at the perimeter of the town whose quaint buildings and shops appeal to locals as well as tourists, since it's old and celebrated for its early American history that the townsfolk superintend like a garden, the way Richard II didn't tend his, but I don't know why Richard II occurs again to me, when Richard III is more convenient, since this may be the winter of our discontent, or at least mine.
The battleship-gray cashmere scarf, wrapped around my neck, of fine soft wool from the undercoat of a cashmere goat, anomalously tickles the areas where yesterday the massage therapist pressed persistent knots and pummeled ropey fibers and, when she did, arcane images popped up, but I can't recall them. I stroll past a waterfall, though it's not the fastest route, since I'm trying to appreciate natural settings, but as I walk past, I forget the waterfall, since I'm easily distracted, and instead visualize the Count, who must be sleeping, and who, when he arrived, his darkbrown, thinning hair tousled, wore around his neck an antique timepiece that, I learned, was valuable and rare, and at which he looked with concern during the first dinner, sometimes the best meal of the day, but inconsistent. The regard he showed it was superior to his apparent feeling for anything or anyone else, but then he stopped wearing it, suddenly, and carried instead a pocket-watch that he took out gently, considering its face as I might a photograph of a dead friend. He was never rude. As I came to know him, he declared scant passion except for his timepieces, caring more about time in the abstract, its formation of daily life, and the watches and clocks by which regulation was set and followed, than anyone I have ever known or probably will know. The Count is a reticent polymath and keeps secrets the way a fine timepiece does time, quietly and in a subdued fashion, though about some he was profligate, like telling me early in our acquaintance that he was married, in a way, as he put it, but then never mentioned his wife and set a question in motion, maybe guilelessly, but perhaps there was something I just hadn't noticed. As I strolled past the waterfall that I also hadn't noticed, I reconsidered the words on a plaque near the entrance to the town: "The spirit of liberty spread where it was not intended. "-John Adams
The kitchen helper's bicycle is thrown on the ground in front of the cafe I don't usually frequent, so he's there, and I could talk with him, learn what makes him tick, as my father liked to say, though that would be more literally true for the Count, and near this cafe is the town's sole antique and thrift store, which I enter instead, in hopes of finding something, if only a trinket or a dainty teacup. The shopkeeper glances up from behind a glass vitrine or cabinet, which houses an assortment of Americana and small, mostly brown or rusty objects, all of which seem dirty but may be relatively old, to note my appearance and bellows hello, because people are friendly here, though not as welcoming to guests as Greeks, whose love of strangers is the basis of their generous hospitality, or philoxenia, of which I have sometimes been the grateful object. I head for the shelves of used books, which I know well, since I walk to town about three times a week, and mostly they won't have changed, though a new one might have been inserted yesterday, or I could notice one I hadn't, the way I didn't notice the waterfall as I walked past, absorbed elsewhere, and today my eye lands on a hook about the origins of the English language, in which I could learn about runic writing, for instance, but I first open to a chart, "The Organs of Speech," which diagrams the mouth, epiglottis, uvula, hard palate, parts of tongue, larynx and vocal cords, and so on, whose terms connect to places in me, and, also, to those of the demanding man, whose tongue is coated with nicotine slime, and suddenly my second heart is discomforted. The origin of the word "skin," like most beginning with "sk," is Scandinavian, skin is a loanword, and there are many such in English, and I wonder if when you borrow words, you return them in any sense. The kitchen helper has flawless skin. In adolescence, my dermatologist taught me, acne can deform the course of a young person's life so badly that its physical traces will be less severe even than its psychic scars, though its physical effects may be visible for years. Actors who play villains often have pockmarked skin. Acne vulgaris occurs primarily in the oily or seborrheic areas of the skin, and in severe cases, even the ears may be involved, with large comedones in the concha and cysts in the lobes; the comedo, commonly known as the blackhead, is the basic lesion in acne, produced by the faulty function of the sebaceous follicular orifice, when the plugging produced by the comedo dilates the mouth of the folicule and papules are formed by inflammation around the comedones. Atrophic acne is characterized by tiny residual atrophic pits and scars from deeply involved papular acne. My dermatologist insists acne is the single greatest cause of neurosis and distress in teenagers and young adults, but the kitchen helper's skin is free of depressions, pits, scars, and bloody wounds, and he clearly didn't and doesn't, the way some do, usually women, pick at his skin, a neurotic excoriation or self-induced illness, also known as dermatitis artefacta. The kitchen helper drinks beer, cokes, and eats chocolate, and is remarkably unmarred by what he ingests, as his genes have set his skin's design at least as much as his diet and environment, so he can guzzle all the Cokes he wants and never suffer unsightly pimples, though his teeth may be rotten.
I carry the language book to the postcard tray, where I shuffle through the frayed stack, and it too hasn't changed, the written messages are as repetitive and empty as they were some days ago. Yet I hope for surprise, more and more, though it's the twin of disappointment, and I want to disown its wanton seductions, but wherever I go, I wait for it, even when I don't know I am, but then I am trying to become more aware, with help, the arrival of which might also be a surprise. I had the surprise of a second mysterious postcard a while ago, when I needed it, like a good laugh. Its typed message was even more simple and blunt: Can't give up now. The signature again appeared to have been scratched onto the card, like a bird's sharp claw might make. On its front the word GREETINGS was covered in glitter, extolling the name of a town that could have been in IA or IN, but it wasn't clear, since the card was torn at the bottom, obscuring the state's identity, and the post office had enclosed the card in a plastic bag, on which they issued a formal printed apology for the poor handling and consequent damage their sorting machines had caused. Some people can't apologize, ever, those who should apologize rarely do, because in their minds they're always victims, like a woman I barely know, who was in residence briefly, a dour character who snubbed me for no reason I could ascertain, we barely made contact, but when I came near her, she showed her back to me in the main lounge, which disturbed my peace of mind. I have done this to others but with a valid reason, as when mutually recognized enemies appeared, their presence an assault, and I couldn't bear their contemptible faces, yet they understood my behavior, since they felt similarly, my presence disrupted their peace, too, but the dour woman's behavior also and paradoxically contented me like an ambiguous tale. She may believe I owe her an apology, which I might give if I understood her complaint, but her complaints are likely endless, for her longings go unfulfilled, she had many ambitions, to be in the foreign service as a diplomat, I heard her say to another, but her father and mother blocked her, and her older sister, too, and daily she grows more bilious, further from her goals. It's easy to perceive her injuries and disappointment when she throws her head to the side and peers with big, dull eyes at a group of people near her and displays, like an angry dog, her contempt. She quickly left the community, to seek another where she might not be as forlorn and receive better counsel, though it is unlikely. The post office regularly apologizes for its many mistakes, and as before when I received the first postcard, on the message side an illegible but familiar signature stood, and again, with the arrival of the second postcard, I recognized that a mysterious character had thought of me, benevolently, maybe a former lover or an amusing acquaintance, though that might not be so, since I do have enemies, like the two former, devious friends I avoided, as well as ones I'm not aware of, even the woman who suddenly snubbed me and disappeared may be an enemy, but I quickly determined not to prolong consideration of the message's meaning or its putative sender, pleasing myself with my sensible forbearance. It must have been six weeks ago that I hid the second elliptical and tantalizing card with the first in a drawer that smelled of pine and blanketed both under a one hundred percent cotton handkerchief, so that I wouldn't see them even accidentally, though I know they are there, the way I know that heavy, frequent snowfalls in the northern hemisphere offer temporary beauty by disguising, for one thing, the ugliness of slovenly and unimaginative architecture.