Learn.

For all ya life.

Whatever ya do.

No matter for win or loss, my son.

Learn. Learn. Learn from it, boy.

Be some better man – because of it.

Like what the rest of us done for all these years. Without no fuss making.

 

The dead man spoke his usual chopped, choice brogue. Dead five years talking. A half-decade not gone from this world, exactly five years ago this hour of morning, and the older man always spoke to younger, almost daily.

Get outta this bed, ya lazy, no-count piece.

Bobbie sighed.

That kinda talk always ended with son, ya know I love ya, son, followed by a bear hug that lasted a little too long for the comfort of anybody related like that.

Bobbie stretched.

The community pool six stories below bounced watery, glared reflections across the white ceiling above their meager bed. His place not fancy, though in the center of that shiny city. Sunlight streamed through cheap linen curtains. His ex brought them with her when she moved in. Said she wanted to class up the joint. Of course, she had meant weed or pill. He tried all that. Her? He didn’t know what all she’d tried. She long gone. To Lauderdale (Fort) or Hollywood (West). He couldn’t ever keep up. Ten years younger, her. Or more, he couldn’t remember exactly. Had “daddy issues,” she’d said of herself online, their very first chat. It clicked with his own unstated profile, weirdly mutual, the pair’s father fix: for man and woman. Yeah, he had tried all those lifestyles himself, never one for anything clear-cut, like the other men in his family, as he kept learning mainly through error of his own failing and fussing. Bobbie’s dad right about too much, even this morning, especially this day already; it was way past time to wake up.

Aside from sex, Bobbie and the ex had enjoyed just two other things: coffee and a fear of death. She programmed the coffee maker to deliver the cheap Italian shift. Promptly at six a.m. But she gone, and how could he still smell it. He still smelllled her. Smelt her, smelt her, smelt her good. Had long she been gone from there and him? Her abandoned cat jumped off the bed, sending fur balls into the air before the gal’s pal found another play toy and jerked it to her cat pad in the corner by the TV. Bobbie bounced out of bed, stepping on some lingering lingerie of the ex. Dang cat always messin with memories, Bobbie thought. Should put that on a postcard and mail it to her, maybe with the thing’s paw print. The man exhaled. Like a man, the barrel chest from bench presses and manned genes. Hard and forceful until soft and cuddly. He actually liked the cat. He took a sip of the black coffee. Almond milk, it needs unsweetened almond milk. And cinnamon for hope. They met on the job, at least they told folks that, as baristas across the street after moving to the Iron City. She liked cinnamon a lot. They broke up because he took another job, then got laid off, then took another job in another state, and she didn’t want to move, told him it would never last, that it had never really started the way forever ones do. He asked her, you mean us together? She said, no, that new job, you movin down there.

When he texted her after the first week on the new job, she replied, told-ya-so. He said he was so dang offended being told his life a mess. All his life, being told, always a mess. She said she didn’t say that. He said he had the texts to prove it. At that point in the relationship, he finally told himself he had to—how did, how would, could, Dad put it—fish or cut pait. No, fish or cut bait. That’s right. That’s what Dad would say about all this and everything about his boy.

Another sip of coffee, with almonds this time. Dad was right. The ex was right. He was right. Bobbie knew he’d taken a risk, just not a big enough risk. Like his last flight to find himself.

Hmm, coffee, good. The guy at the airport coffee stand said he flyin home from Uzbekistan, where he’d been hunting…? Bobbie wasn’t sure he believed ninety percent of what came out of the gabber’s mouth, more likely a spy, but for country or corporation? And which one of either or both?

Calculated risk, he’d told Bobbie, in buttoned-up braggart’s swag. Everything in life nothin but a risk. Ya just gotta make sure there’s cal-cul-ation behind it! The stranger emphasized that syllabled word. Don’t have to be scientific, the guy said. Jus-know-whacha-doin.

Staring into his face inches from the body, he said that last part real fast, almost like one hot word poured at once full and deep-complete into his pair of eager eyes over cold-from-conversation airport coffee brown, without one drop spilled of added cream and with one breath Bobbie inhaled, held on to, and smelt again and again and again, until he wished he’d taken that risk, a spy’s invite. The guy fascinated this guy now and then and now Bobbie combing and petting the cat, because who else could he touch this morning there and all alone, even if a mere unrisked memory or dream of men? Meant nothin. No fuss. No harm. Nothin real.

Fear, Bobbie realized his recent risk not taken, another invitation rejected out of fff—. Losing his dad, losing his ex, stuck with the cat, the spy at the airport kept talking about his very own gf as he recalled; he actually called his girlfriend that even while he was doing the other? “The gf,” how he put it. In Bobbie’s head on Dad’s death date, chattery memories boggled. And when he saw again his father’s last day here, he smelt the airport wouldbe hunter-spy’s cologne, no not cologne, that was man, the scent of one well-traveled and unwashed, raw risk real.

This all there is? He last asked his own ex, ex-gf, that. She flew into some rage at Bobbie. One day, she said, one day, you’ll come to know what ya coulda done had. She paused there, drama queen. One day, you’ll come to love another, maybe, yeah maybe a first for you to feel. Another pause (second-rate theater training finally payin off eh, he imagined fast to say the line that day, but thank God, he kept that punch to himself, gem worth savin, he thought again and almost laughed, but that would’ve been at himself his life his risk his fear and of course, she’d have known it was only for of about and at her, and he wasn’t mean, no not like that or any other, but if she didn’t understand then, she never would be worth any further explanation down the road, despite all they shared, the two things, the OK coffee and decent sex. Maybe he’d be better off with another, like that spy with the eye.

One day, maybe love, for you, she’d said in broken words through similar heart. The last time. But his mind already gone. Like her. Him back to earlier attempts at his own self-defining love, even in his very short years of adulting the tradition long. He knew both his dad and grand had had their own friendships, men. They had learnt. Unspoken those extra-loves, but not unconsummated no?, and he knew his mom and grand, they knew, they’d known, at some point, yes the same. How—could—they—have—not. Maybe the women with their own extra-loves. Yes, he knew they had, their own pals. Consummated or not, their businesses. He tried to respect, even as he made sense of the tree, their family fruitful in its continuance of strange ways. Maybe people always loved beyond need of word in every single conversation of substance. Actions pound louder. Than wayward descriptors light. He read that somewhere once.

No, that wasn’t what he ever meant in any relationship or attempt at one with her or another. He was not talking to her about her that day. Or about them. Why didn’t she ever understand the way some men talk or feel to act?

Don’t look back. That for sissies. Ya didn’t kill nobody. That’s what his dad would say. Have said. Dad could be mean, but he always loved in his own special way, Bobbie now understood. Maybe Dad wasn’t mean just like I wasn’t mean. The man understood more than he realized.

Bobbie heard a crack, like glass being hit hard but without a shatter.

Wha—

The ex’s cat brushed against his leg. He took another sip of coffee. Empty. He looked at the counter. Coffee pot, empty. The pot had cracked. He turned the faucet for a sip of cold water, then remembered she left two bottles of more Italian stuff, this some clear liquid that sparkles, in the frig. He never made it there. He collapsed, or rather effortlessly sank like an old feather. He was so tired, but in control, what a man, he hummed, at ease when in control (even if a life of lies, they say, but this ain’t lyin, my lyin here). Laughing, he smiled from the floor. His legs folded like old, wet, shan’t-ev’n-be-recycled cardboard underneath him and onto the reconditioned bamboo mat on the kitchen floor, peeling. He couldn’t make another silly, smart metaphor, but he wanted his burnt skin to fill the gaps in structure all around him, dry and red his body’s covering from too much sunny pool the day before, alone. He wanted his young skin to love on that old floor, to heal the open wounds of abode of body and life. But no.

He laid the coffee mug on the mat next to his knee. Utter sadness wept through his body, sweeping something out. The back and forth of it all, of life’s relations, of questions, the questions, always the questions, of love and all the second-hand love. He felt so empty. A void so ripe the stench, open and gross. He rocked like a babe. Until it stopped him. He didn’t see the ex’s cat toeing up behind him, but the animal pushed against his spine, and he felt five. All of a sudden, he was little, five years old and fine, fine and home once more, after the first day of kindergarten, welcomed by those simple salted crackers and creamy gobs of peanut butter (what was that brand Mom always bought?). He smelt savory yum-yums. Hmmm. He savored smelly delights…. He looked at the mug, still empty. He noticed his manly chest moving, pectorals heaving up and down, then wondered about the damage done, always inside him, what no muscle even down there can fix. He instinctively rubbed the scar on his right arm from the fire that got out of hand.

It coulda been worse, jus us kids playin. No sir, nobody died, no sir.

Wait ’til ya Diddy git home, his mama had said. Ya just wait, young man, ya just wait right there in the soot. He knew what he was waiting for, the usual tall order. His bear of a daddy would come home tired and dirty and honest. He’d take a whiskey warm-up that his mom had prepared to soften the news. What the hell was ya thinkin, my son? That’s what his dad would say. Like he always did. He’d make sure another cowboy movie set to start at 8. Then he’d take off his worn work belt, like he always did.

Bobbie braced.

Then and now.

He felt his face.

Hot and wet and cold.

His face all that.

His hands the same.

Trembling, he felt something new with them this time. He was all alone, yeah sure. No coffee, no girlfriend, no dad, no other man to fix things even if for a moment, then to be gone for nothing. Only a cat, and he loved the cat, he now understood, but needed more.

Purrrr, the little feline of a friend said. As if to agree and allow—

He stood up. Tired of waiting and playing, he wondered if anyone else might be up yet in their building. Someone, anyone, in this neighborhood always a seeking fella downstairs already swimming in the cool pool, searching for another. He didn’t even bother to look out the window or change into trunks or grab a towel. One of his kind would show, and he would wait for that type, any chap bigger than a lonely house or apartment pet, even if some strange new human, man, with smaller but equally trying heart, who could enjoy a soothing dip to awaken chat and get-to-know, anything to heal the sun-torn fabric of his aging flesh while warm, and to keep his dad at bay all this day or more, yeah to keep him dead and silent, yeah at least quiet, if not at peace, the man’s haunting speeches could cease for good of all, for all he finally cared. He wanted to swim.