Less

Zohra’s voice comes loudly from her camel: “Shut the fuck up! Enjoy the fucking sunset on your fucking camels! Jesus!”

They knew trouble would come but expected it in degrees. Life so often arrives all of a sudden. And who knows which side you will find yourself on?

Surely a girl problem, one of those beautiful, witty, chain-smoking bisexual German girls in vintage American clothes and ironed blond hair;

He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.

“I’m all ears.”
“It is this.” A whispered exchange in Japanese, followed by another clearing of the throat. “That you break the wall.”
Less opens his eyes and looks at the latticed paper wall. They might as well be asking him to leave a space capsule. “I can’t.”
“They are simple to repair. Please, Mr. Less. If you could break the wall.”
He feels old; he feels alone; he feels unpoplar.

“That you once referred to Toronto as the capital of Canada.”
“I’m going to get Marian to pull the plug.”

“But really, really, you can’t imagine me any younger than my forties, can you?”
“Sure, I can.”
“You can picture it. But you can’t quite imagine it. You can’t go back any further. It’s against the laws of physics.”
“You’re getting too excited.”
“Arthur, I look at you, and I still see that boy on the beach with the red toenails. Not at first, but my eyes adjust. I see that twenty-one-year-old boy in Mexico. I see that young man in a hotel room in Rome. I see the young writer holding his first book.

Thank God I met Donald,

Flower to tomb; it is always thus.

headed in another speed streak