Di Luca weeping in his car. The heat incredible. The windows rolled up.

Di Luca calling distant old flames. Flames as bright as ones on a matchhead in a windstorm.

Di Luca composing elaborate complaints to various crumbling functions of municipal operations. Then rewriting them. Then deleting them. Then writing them again.

Di Luca staring at his eyebrows in the mirror until the kettle’s screeching finally moves him out of the trance back into the kitchenette.

Di Luca forgetting to pay the water bill on time.

Di Luca wondering aloud if he’ll ever be pleasantly surprised ever again.

Di Luca pricing Airbnbs in states he’ll never visit.

Di Luca remembering as a boy leaving a ritzy Hyde Park wedding reception and immediately getting lost on the South Side of the city. His baby sister asleep in the car seat next to him. His mother driving the green Ford with quieter and quieter desperate focus. This in the era only of payphones and folded paper maps. Di Luca, watching his mother’s profile, discovering the precarity and danger of their situation beyond his boredom. His capacity for trusting others with his safety dying out then and there and forever.

Di Luca on the phone with customer service. On the phone, on hold. He is wondering if in his last moments of existence he will flash only on the million lost million minutes spent frowning and awaiting vague assurances from strained voices in strange lands. Assurances mumbling that a check has been cleared, a payment has been transferred, a credit has been applied, at long last, to your account.

We do apologize, Mr. Di Luca. And we do thank you. But do they? Do they? Are they sorry? Do they know what sorrow is? Gagging rage and bile comingling with even-more-gagging pity.

Di Luca switching off a movie about an unattractive woman acting more and more crazy. Di Luca regarding her uncanny resemblance to Klaus Kinski.

Di Luca taking a grim appraisal of it all. It did not seem to be going very well. The heat. The heat causing more heat. The extra heat causing fires which made it harder to get away from the heat. The sour regard for thought. The choking ignorance.

At best, he reasoned he had maybe seven years left before the drain-circling brain shrinkage set in. Before he became what all sharp-witted, outspoken, unsuccessful men became: a divorce, a hairline, and a collection of entertainment electronics growing ever harder to manipulate. And at worst? At worst?

Di Luca shivered. The cold creeps. He remembered a friend of his father’s. A man from his childhood. An epitome of cool. He remembered his motorcycle. His black clothes. His girlfriend with the art gallery and the Lichtenstein print on her purse. And he remembered the stories of his decline from his father. It had seemed so swift. It hadn’t made sense. It made plenty of sense to Di Luca now.