ONE HUNDRED: Zed

He liked to ride around on buses, and no one ever noticed because they all walked around with their heads down.  One little girl lost a red balloon, and as she followed its progress up into the clean sky she saw him sitting there atop a great yellow and blue commuter.  He smiled, then leapt up impossibly high to grab the string and return it to her.  They both smiled.  The string was warm from his touch.

I might have seen him the first time after my car accident.  The more I consider this, the more I think this is correct.  I got out, walked around the steaming and crumpled hood to see if the other driver was alright, and he was leaning against a pole, watching intently.  The other driver slid himself out his passenger door, and when I glanced back to the curb, the witness was gone.

The second time I saw him was after my son was born.  My wife was discharged, but my son remained, his yellowed skin reflecting the liver’s battle within.  I stood by the nursery resting my head against the glass, willing health to that tiny body.  In another room my wife tangled with suction and bottles to infuse our boy with her antibodies.

He was leaning against the far wall, plaid shirt, lanky frame, midwestern boots scuffed and darkened from time.  I nodded to him and he strolled over, adding his forehead to my field of glass.

“One yours?” I asked.

“Mm, hmm,” he said.

His longish hair fell forward, covering part of the face that I sensed I knew from somewhere.  “You from around here?”

“Yes.  No.”  He smiled, a quick flash that transformed his face and was gone before I realized it.  “No.”

He placed a hand on the glass, then touched me on the shoulder.  A current of electrical heat ran though me.

“Are you an angel?” I blurted.  I don’t know why.

Again the quick grin.  “No.”

After he left, I put my hand where his had been to soak up the residual warmth.  I looked at my son; his skin glowed pink with vitality.

Ninety-Nine: Martin

Martin wished he had any good one-liners prepared as he walked across the wide expanse of polished wooden dance floor, for it seemed that at least three of the girls were looking expectantly at him with their eyes lowered modestly so as to only glance at him through their pretty lashes, although one, the one Martin was seemingly not but actually truly aiming for, was staring him head-on as though taunting him to disover his bravery and strap it on before he dared to ask for her hand, which he did, although by this time he was beet red and unable to utter more than a meek chirping “Please?” while at the same time extending his white-gloved hand for her to accept with her elegant and equally gloved, yet diminutive one.

Ninety-Eight: Diana

She looked through traffic for an opening, debated cutting off the black Lexus, saw that it contained an obese white-haired suit, and made the switch.  She heard the tires scream, felt the pulse of her own car jump in response to the throttle.  She heard her mother’s voice in her head:  “Someday you’ll regret this.”

Diana had a lifetime of vague warnings and threats of regret, retribution, reprisal.  Not a one had yet to flower in her face.  She zigged into a spot meters ahead of a mother-driven minivan, wiped the tip of her nose, and flipped the invisible residue at the van’s incessant horn.  Yeah, yeah, we all have our troubles.

She clomped up the stairs to the library with her book sack trailing behind her, wishing it was an armament case, wishing she had a flame thrower to erase everything around her until it was scorching, scaldingly clean and bitter white.  The purpose–that’s what was missing.  That’s what had always been the fatal error in everybody’s considerations.  They thought she actually cared about getting things done for a reason.  There were no reasons.  There were only actions, decisions, and fate.

Like a bag of garbage ready to be tossed in the bin, the people in her life only amounted to so much rubbish.  Parents squawking, teachers barking, students around her so enamored of their useless predicaments.  None of them understood how simply they could step out of the churning sludge of their lives and do Something Else.

Diana did, though.  Under the books, beneath the spiral and the calculator’s hard plastic case, there was a tiny silver handgun.  Like a grin it hid there until she decided to bring it forth.  Would she do it today?  Tomorrow?  Never?  Here or there?  Him?  Or her?

The appalling number of choices dazzled her, and she was lulled.

Ninety-Seven: Grandma May

“Oh, and this one was your father’s.”  The speckled hands carefully lifted out another tissue-wrapped parcel.  Gently smoothing back the wrinkled cellulose, a tiny hand-knitted blue sweater was revealed.  “He looked so handsome in this.  Here, you take it for your child, when you have one.”  There was no missing the mischievous wink, and the smile that made prominent the dimples on her whiskery chin.

“And this one was your Aunt Aggie’s.”  Another tiny crafted sweater, this time in pink.  My father had an older and younger sister; Aggie was the bossy tormentor of his childhood, and my godmother.  “She would love to rock your father in his cradle, night after night.  She sang him the same lullaby:  Oh my baby, close your eyes, I’ll sing you a lullaby…”  Her eyes drifted closed while she rocked and sang the tune softly.  Tears, unbidden, prickled at the back of my face.

“What about Scarlet?” I asked quietly, thinking of my other boisterous aunt.  Gram came back to the present.

“Oh, she used to choose between these two every day.  She was the brightest girl, always tagging along after Agnes and your father.”  She put the pink sweater with the blue, not commenting that I should take them both.  That was implied.

“Oh, my,” she whispered, reaching so far into the cedar chest I thought she would tip in.  I placed a hand on her shoulder.  She pulled out a small wooden box, blackened on one side from what looked like flames.

“I’d forgotten we had this,” she said.  The box rested in her lap, and she began to cry softly.

“Gram?”

“Alright, it’s alright, it’s just been so long.”  She slid the top of the box open, then gestured for me to hold my hands out.  I did, and she tipped the box toward them.

The spice of another age hit my nostrils as dozens of tiny dried flowers sprinkled into my palm.  My astonishment must have shown plainly, because she laughed out loud.

“It’s all he had time to grab up, before it all burned,” she said.  I vaguely remembered a story about my grandparents being forced out of Poland back in the thirties.

“The box held our passports, our money to bribe the guards.  Every day that we traveled free, your papa picked me a flower.  When the box was empty, I put the flowers into it, so I would always have something of home.”  She patted the lid fondly.  “It’s a good box.”  Then she handed it to me.  “Throw those away,” she nodded to my hands.  “Put your own flowers in here.”

Ninety-Six: Wayne

He looked for the small ones, the ones who struggled along near the back of the packs.  He couldn’t pick one that was too small or scrawny; that just wouldn’t look good.  He needed them big enough to look like a challenge, like a job, you know?  But not so big he might actually lose.

The best ones were the smart ones.  He didn’t know why, but it seemed the brainier they were, the longer it took them to realize that something was wrong, that suddenly they were alone, in danger.  Wayne loved that moment.  It tingled down his spine, settled in his abdomen, made his blood run thin and quicksilver.  The look was the best, the way they slid their eyes up while their chins headed south.  The look that led their brains to a reality check.

He checked the end of the block.  No crowds yet, just a few early Adams waiting for the light.  No good, they always had whistles or cell phones or fat packs ready to swing.  Another twenty minutes, is all.  He swung his feet from the tree branch, whistled through his teeth, shopped for cars as they rolled past his perch.

Finally a group came floundering by.  Perfect.  An older sister led the way, bossing the host to the corner.  And there he was, tripping at the back, glasses down around his nostrils, half his shirt untucked, shoes flopping off with the laces dangling, backpack threatening to bail to the left.  Wayne waited for the perfect moment, then slid off the branch and dropped.

“Where ya goin’, huh?” he said quietly.  “Hope ya got money for the toll.”

Ninety-Five: Rami

Hi, my name is Rami and I’m five.  How long have you been here?  I’ve been here a long time, I think.  Sometimes it seems like longer, like when I really hurt a lot and the nurses say, “I know,” but then they keep on letting it hurt.  That’s a long time to me.  But then we get movies in the afternoon.  Do you take naps?  I don’t anymore, unless there’s a lot of stuff that they have to do to me in the mornings.  Sometimes Raul, he’s the tech from the lab, sometimes he’ll come up and have lunch with me.  He says I’m his buddy.  That’s cool.  Do you have any buddies?  Well, you will, expecially if you go down to Rad.  That’s the place that’s really boring, unless Nancy’s there, and then she’ll put on the TV to Nickelodeon, even if there are lots of old people in there, because she says we’re more important than cranky old people with broken hips or whatever their problem is.  Do you know how long you’ll stay?  I’m staying until they can’t find any white stuff in my blood anymore, and then I’ll go home.  I can’t wait, I haven’t seen my dog in like forever, I don’t even know if he remembers me.  Do you have a dog?  Mine’s big and hairy, his name’s Duke, I wanted to call him Shaq, but my mom says that’s trademarked, whatever that means.  Anyway, when I grow up I’m gonna be a doctor, a little kid doctor, only I won’t be like my doctor because he’s mean.  He’s the one who does all the hurting things to me, and he says all the time, “I know, keep it up, just another minute,” but I think if he was a really good doctor, he would figure out how to fix me without it hurting so much.  Anyway, when I grow up I’m gonna be the kind of doctor who never hurts anybody.  Maybe I’ll be a baby doctor.  I sure won’t be an old people doctor, they make too much noise and they talk all the time, and they smell funny.  I wonder if their doctors do hurting things to them?  What?  Oh, okay, well it was really nice talking to you.

Ninety-Four: Gloria

“Momma, why is that lady so fat?” Gloria asked when she was small.

Her mother knelt in front of her.  “Honey, it’s not nice to talk about people’s differences,” she said.  “You have to be polite.  That means you don’t say things that might hurt someone’s feelings.”

Another time with her father, she watched him compliment the neighbor’s new fence, only to go inside and complain about how terrible it looked.  When she asked why he said two different things, her father said, “Sweetie, people say nice things to each other to keep the peace.  Frank knows his fence is ugly, if he’s got half a brain.”

In school Gloria learned many things about the world from her teachers.  “I before e except after c.”  “Christopher Columbus was a great explorer and discovered America, even though Amerigo Vespucci landed here first.”  “Never begin a sentence with never.”  “2 + 2 = 4, and 2 x 2 = 4; but 2 + 3 = 5, and 2 x 3 = 6.”  “All liquids contract when they freeze.  Except water.”  “You can be anything you want.  This is a free country.  We are a democracy.”

Gloria assimilated these contradictions into all of the others.  At times she felt like there was a giant fulcrum centered just within her sternum.  At times she would stand in her room and stretch her arms out, look to either side at her empty hands, and wonder what it was she should do with the equal grasps of nothingness.

One day as she was eating lunch in the cafeteria, a boy sitting across from her grabbed a passing girl by the hand and kissed it.  “Go out with me Friday night?” he asked, begging her with his eyes.  When she refused, he good naturedly shrugged his shoulders.  “What a bitch,” he declared when she left.

Gloria rose slowly and stood up on the table.  Those nearest her watched quietly as she took off her sneakers and held them in the air.  “These shoes were made by ten year old girls who were paid seventeen cents a pair.”  She threw them in a nearby trash barrel.  The boy across from her applauded.  Seven tables over, the quarterback whistled.

Gloria picked up her US History book.  “Columbus raped women and killed babies,” she said firmly.  “We enslaved native people and lied to them.”  The book hit the trash.  The cafeteria ladies stopped serving lunch and stared.

Gloria’s tray was heisted next.  “The food you eat is processed by corporations.  We could plant enough grain in the heartland to feed the population of Africa, but farmers are paid by our government to leave their fields bare to keep prices up.”  Before she could throw the tray a girl took it from her and deposited the food in the barrel.

Gloria’s shirt came off next.  “Made in Pakistan, where the average worker earns $700 a year.”

“Shit, I made that in two weeks over the summer,” another jock said.

Gloria wiggled her jeans off her hips just as the principal tried to enter the cafeteria.  Several students flipped the door locks and stood in the way.  “Assembled in Mexico of US materials,” she announced.  “It also says I’m a size 2.”  Girls in the room laughed, understanding.  In went the pants, followed by underwear and bra.  No one moved.

“This is the only way to see the truth,” Gloria said.  “They won’t tell us.  They won’t show us.  They hide it or lie about it and want us to do the same.  Well, I quit.”  Gloria stepped down from the table and walked away.

Ninety-Three: Misty

She came out of the bathroom straightening her skirt and following the indestructible tan carpeting back to her desk.  When her feet hit the blue stripe she turned left and glanced up, only to discover she was in a completely different department.

She wandered around the open expanse, touched richly polished wooden desks with green hooded reading lamps, smelled the vase filled with yellow roses, graced the surprised leaf of a palm with her kiss.  Light poured through the floor to ceiling windows and was uninhibited by the thick velveteen curtains that waited in stately folds alongside each clean pane.  She went to a window and looked out.

Misty’s breath locked in her throat.  Where was the parking lot?  Where was the city?  What happened to the miles of congestion and concrete that surrounded her every day in this building?  She looked around the office for someone to answer these questions, but everyone here seemed intent on their work.  She took one step, then another, toward a young woman at a nearby desk.

The woman’s blond hair fell in gentle waves toward the chair; one curl caressed her shoulder.  Misty felt inadequate as she approached, but her curiosity drove her on.  She touched the woman’s arm, and that one covered her hand with her own warm, soft fingers.

“Just a sec,” she said quietly.  “I’m almost done.”

Misty looked at the woman’s work, and saw she was reading the last page of some report?  Some business prospective?  Not at all.  The pages were yellowed and tattered, scars across the vellum from where it had been folded and creased repeatedly.

“Is that–what is–” Misty tried. 

“Ah, the end.”  The woman turned and smiled, and Misty felt her confusion lift.  She knew this woman, though they had never before met.  “I just love Abelard and Heloise, don’t you?”

“I don’t have much time to read,” Misty admitted.

“Oh, but you do now, all the time you’d like.”  The woman gestured toward the room.  Misty realized the desks were surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands of bookcases.  “Pick a work, pick a chair, enjoy yourself.”

“I think I will,” Misty said.

Ninety-Two: Kai

Kai denounced his fosterage and left home at the age of twelve, determined to live forever upon the mountain whose peaks he had always seen from his mat near the door.  He took nothing with him but the sandals he had woven with his own hands from tough grasses, the breeches he had sewn from the skin of the bull he had slaughtered and skinned the past spring, and the shirt he had painstakingly stitched his name into under his mother’s critical eye.

On the southern side of the mountain he found a cave, and swept out the dung, droppings, and bones.  He urinated at the opening to claim it as his own.  He scampered atop a nearby boulder and settled into its warmth.  The boulder would be his father.  The sun, soothing his tired feet, would be his mother.  She would provide not only heat, but light for him to hunt and grow by.  The moon would be his lover, joining him nightly in his dreams.

From man he would take nothing.  Men were aggressive without cause.  They were arbitrary and false.  Men stole, lied, and tricked.  Kai found nothing of this in his new home.  He would play with the wind, commiserate with the stream that trickled downhill near the cave.  Fish, birds, and trees would learn his name when he shouted it to the stars.  But men would see him no more.

Ninety-One: Wally

Everyone loved to attend family functions if Uncle Wally would be there.  He always had candy in his pockets, jokes for the dinner table, and a raucous round of stories for when the men went out behind the garage for stogies and beer.  The women blushed but listened in.  The children were banned.

Uncle Wally was not the “pull my finger” or “got your nose” kind of kidder.  He pulled elaborate ruses on family members; never mean, but always clever and remembered long after the event.  One niece believed for years in the existence of fairies because Uncle Wally founded the reason for every one of her mishaps on them.  When her skateboard wheel fell off?  Fairies loosened it.  When she lost her book?  Fairies took it.  The girl was afraid to go outside until her mother, Wally’s sister, told her the fairies had moved away.

Uncle Wally saved his best jokes for his wife, Aunt Tessie.  Once he told her he’d been fired, because he didn’t want to leave home for vacation.  When the week was over he told her he’d been called back, and she was ignorant of the affair until Wally’s partner filled her in.  When Wally was in a car wreck, he paid someone in the hospital twenty bucks to call her from the best restaurant downtown, and told her to clean up and join her husband for dinner.  By the time she arrived by cab, he was bandaged up and waiting for her.  He told her about the car after dessert.

His best joke was released by his lawyer a week after he died.  Ten letters, to siblings and spouses, all said the same thing:  pay Tessie the money you owe me.  Little did she know how generous he had been over the years.  Within a week  she had enough money to spend on that real vacation.  In the envelope the lawyer mailed to her was a round-trip ticket to Europe.