by Nicholas Richards
I cannot laugh because it is so sad. I cannot remain sad because laughter is what keeps insanity at bay.
It’s been over a year now, and finally, I can write to you. Not that it really matters, for where you are, time, I presume, doesn’t exist. And, if it does, it matters very little. And who knows, perhaps the gravity of these utterances may be lost on someone who is otherwise incarnated. It has taken me all this time to pen this letter because I could not find the words to convey the feelings, inside, I have for you, deep in my heart, in a place not encumbered by intellect and reason that so often left me at a loss for words to express myself. But now, these words that were caged behind the bars of our estrangement, have arrived, and I fear the things that will pour out of me. Things I never wanted to say, but for catharsis sake I must.
God knows how much I wanted to write to you while you were alive. I think this desire came during my internship in New York, when I returned home for Thanksgiving and we spoke, I knew I would never see you again. I do not know why, it was one of those things you felt but only realize you felt after what you felt came to pass. However, when I got the news I was mortified. I was scrolling through my time-line when I saw it. The RIP emblazoned across your high school graduation photo still did not seem real as I sat in my living room on that autumn morning in November. I couldn’t believe, so I kept staring at your photo with the three letters. The tribute your sister wrote should have erased my doubts, but I still could hardly process the news even after I read it several times that week. And even when I was readying myself to travel Upstate to attend your funeral, I still couldn’t believe. I was still in shock as I stepped out of my apartment. All the while, I kept telling myself that it was not so; that this was someone’s failed attempt at jocularity. I repeated this as I sauntered through the throng of Big Apple bodies jostling for survival and relevance in this overcrowded jungle of iron and clay.
It was during that time of the year, in the first weeks of fall, when the weather was trying to decide what direction it should take, but then, at noon, when the sun did not shine, one realized that one would be trapped in another dark cloudy day. One also resigned oneself to the fact that the next might be balmy. One was never certain, for indeed the times were topsy-turvy, just like you Peter. Eventually though, the season found order. You on the other hand never did, which is why I am not certain why I was surprised, even when I stood at the subway station waiting for my train to take me to Grand Central Station where I would board another to come bid you goodbye.
Right then, on the platform, a vertiginous feeling swept over me. Its passage brought a knot to my belly that kept tightening the more I thought about you. I had felt knots before, but this one was different. It was not that it was more uncomfortable than the others, it’s just that I wanted it to stay and perhaps consume my person. This feeling oozed out of me like a rage I fought to subdue as I sifted through the puzzle of our time together and the years we spent apart.
I wonder what you look like now. At least the you that was you just before that final needle went into you. Or maybe the you I saw that Thanksgiving. The one before the relapse. That one would have been better. That Thanksgiving Eve when you brought me to your home where you showed me your beloved saxophone—browbeaten and wandering are the only words I can find as I stare at you through the thickness of the air in the subway car. I saw you in the faces and on the bodies of the passengers. I saw you in my own soul that was like the gloom rumbling outside. It was in that time and space that you became real to me once more. And I almost screamed but for the people on the overpacked car. And then I thought that maybe it was not what happened that was shocking. For I must acknowledge that you were moving along that trajectory for as long as I had known you. Maybe it is how the message was delivered . . . so . . . abruptly . . . so . . . unceremoniously. One wonders how it would have been if I were viewed differently by your kin. Maybe I would have received the message like army wives do; a knock on the door, and a salute after the messenger had removed her hat. Then there would be the official announcement delivered through sympathetic eyes. Then there would be a letter handed to me with warm hands. An honorable discharge I would receive on your behalf. Maybe afterwards I would accept your medal of honor—a purple heart.
Fall is indeed an inauspicious time to receive such news. The city’s cold is not as brutal as the ones Upstate—it is, however, more unforgiving. This paradox, one finds, lays in the loneliness one feels down here. To think that isolation reigns in a place peopled by so many boggles the mind.
It was a day like this one we first met. It was only a month after my mother had moved from Queens to start her job as a nanny. The schools were better there, and because we were going to live in a rich family’s basement, in a house that was in a rich school district, I would receive a rich child’s education. Oh, how heavy my heart becomes as I remember the death that brought us Upstate—my father’s, the family’s sole breadwinner, who fell from a crane while working in the Big Apple. I was reminiscing about him when I first saw you in the courtyard playing what you Americans call football, with those acquaintances you call your buddies. There was a haughtiness in your eyes that cloaked the vulnerabilities I came to know the deeper I fell into you.
I heard, in your screams, how children should sound—lighthearted; playful; entitled. It was as if the world was there to serve and comfort you. It was in the way you all laughed. It was in your gait and how at ease you were in the world, your world, in which I was merely an intruder. I saw the way your teachers bowed slightly as they walked by. The nervous giggles that floated through the library window as they spoke to you caused me to knot my brow; puzzled. At times, they hesitated to look you in the eyes. I had never seen such interaction between children and adults before. In Queens, a child learned early to fear his elders, for it was a world where juveniles were seen but seldom heard. Right then, in that moment, I knew I could never inhabit your world or any world with such confidence.
It was overcast; bleak, but still, you looked so majestic, in your uniform, with your helmet at your side. Instantly, I compared your sounds to the screams I heard from the boys in New York. The boys whose lives were punctuated by two noises; the jarring sound of a life they wanted but knew they would never have. Every pound of their hearts echoed defeat. They were filled with rage as they watched their dreams clash against doors they would never open and that would never be opened to them. They were angry; angry at the cacophony that mocked their attempts to escape that space. You were not much older than they are now. These boys that I pass nervously on the sidewalks of the Big Apple, as I head to Grand Central Station. A different time; a different place, but you ended up where they seem to be heading. The boys who whistle at me as I exit the subway station. Their sounds are crass and vulgar. They cursed at me for not answering with an authority that could only be expressed and might I daresay, tolerated, in that place.
“My dick’s too big for yah anyways, bitch,” one shouted.
“Sure,” I answered. A far enough ways off to respond without being fearful of reprisal.
“Everything looks big under a microscope.”
“What the fuck you say? Speak louder. You fucking skank.”
Too focused on fleeing, I missed the rest of what they said. And when finally, their curses were in the distance, I sighed; relieved and sweating profusely in fall.
I am yet to get used to catcalling. You never catcalled, or ogled, but you did profess your love for the dark sugar. It’s the only one that won’t kill you, you said the times we could steal away to consummate what we were proscribed to. You liked the white one also. I wasn’t sure when you started consuming it. Perhaps it was while you were with me. But anyway, it matters little at this point.
It has been almost a week since your death. I cannot collect my thoughts. The world was spinning, spinning, spinning, and I yearned for you. As the train rolled into my stop, I wondered what I would find at your funeral. Time at times feels like a bullet train. Yes, last autumn was the last time I saw you. Like the day when I saw you last, I had taken the afternoon train. And like that day I was not ready to go home to see Mommy just yet. On that day, last year, I was not ready to call you to come and pick me up either; so I left the station and went to sit in the park that was beside the churchyard where you would be buried not long after.
Here I was again, being unsettled by the intermittent silence amid the still air. Every so often it was disrupted by the rustle of the leaves from a gentle breeze, but before I could settle myself on the park bench, I saw Aaron, your friend from high school, sauntering through the park. I tried hard to conceal myself, but he saw me, and, knowing him, he came over. If I remember correctly, he had dropped out of school in the middle of the tenth grade when he could no longer conceal his problem. And even after he left school, he hung around his old friends. He looked clean and smart back then. The well to-do possess the art of concealing flaws beneath layers of over-priced garbs. But the lady was a different matter entirely. She would not allow you to hide, at least not for long.
He was among the few people I truly disliked. In fact, I hated him. Vengeance should have made me happy to see him that day, in that state. The yellow on his teeth. The dirt under his finger nails, on his clothes, and on his shoes did the opposite. Why did I not find comfort in the cold in his eyes as I studied them? I think he was sober in that moment. There wasn’t the usual slur in his voice and drooping of his eyes that I could instantly identify with someone under the influence. I was an expert at picking these things up, for only the lord knows the many I had seen in the city.
“Have some change?” he asked. It was not just what he said, but how he said it – a smug whisper. I could tell he was mocking me, for I had heard that tone in his voice before. Instantly, he became repulsive. Even more so when he chuckled. The dirt-filled creases in his face did not help his situation either.
This chance meeting conjured up the day I stood waiting for you at our rendezvous spot, in the library, the public library this time, when he walked behind me and whispered in my ear, with that same smug whisper. “Give me some juice.” He had licked my earlobe. Shocked, I proceeded to walk away. He pulled me back and pressed himself against me. Were it not for the security guard passing, I shudder to think what he would have done to me. Bed wrench, that is what he wrote on the cover of my notebook the following Monday to express his outrage.
“It is wench, not wrench, he used the wrong word,” our home room teacher said when I showed it to him. Now, in this time of mourning, I searched for contrition in his stares, but found only a hunger, a different kind of hunger this time; a hunger that was informed by an urge to get back to a high to which, I presume, he would never return.
But those whispering days, though long gone, remain with me. Those were in the years before I left for Wellesley. When I tread carefully through the halls of that posh Upstate high school. Now, here he was again, disturbing my solitude. The park was empty when I got there. I heard the choir practicing. Their tunes met the whistles of the autumn wind, which caused the leaves to rustle on the pavement. Aaron’s familiar raspy voice had caused me to cringe. I would have known it was him even if I he did not remove his hood for me to see his face. Examining him closer, I cringed even more. And no, it was not just his emaciated frame, nor the nonchalance with which he wore it that bothered me so—it was the emptiness that was his soul. It is hard to describe, except that one could, based on his countenance, see that he felt very little or nothing at all. Not even for you, who would soon be lowered into the cold hard ground. The hate I had for him returned, and so did that knot in my stomach as he came to sit beside me.
“Got some change?” He repeated, smirking, then chuckled once more. I wanted to hit him so hard that even you could hear. He was your friend. Not mine. He could never have been. He was too wild for me. Wild and arrogant. Since high school, I had not seen him. Maybe a glimpse here and there when I came to look for mother. But never like this. He was so close that I could feel his breath against my neck. The warmth of it in contrast to the chill of the autumn wind made me twitch. My grimace seemed more of an invitation than a rebuff as he edged closer.
“When did you get the news?”
“You mean about Peter?”
“No, the unicorn.”
I searched for a nasty rebuttal, but I could find nothing to say. After an awkward pause I inquired: “Aren’t you supposed to be preparing for the wake?”
“I could ask you the same question.”
“Please, you know the answer to that.”
“Don’t come with that backdoor crap like this is high school.”
“Crap?”
“Well, from what I can see you moved up. It’s me that’s at the backdoor now. You must feel good?”
“About . . . ?”
“Changing places must be giving you the kicks.”
“Please. You know we’ll never change places.”
“You are wrong about that.”
“Well, why haven’t I been invited in.”
“Just knock.”
“Sure. But anyway. If I am not mistaken, you started before Peter. Didn’t you?”
“And?”
“Why are you here and not him?”
“Fate. I guess.” He smirked. His repulsiveness grew. The mischief he had wrought all those years ago came rolling back. The face I had to look at almost every day stood before me like a menace. It was scary back then. Now, it simply made that knot in my stomach tighter. “Or maybe I just know how to handle my shit.”
Not enough to take the heroin induced yellow out of your teeth or fix your jaundiced eyes, I almost said to him. The sunless day gave his hair a deep red look instead of the ginger color it always had. There was something sinister beneath that uncaring demeanor. Feral is more like it. Maybe it was just the stuff of yesteryear that trailed behind and revealed itself to me once more. The fear I had for him wasn’t gone I suppose. It was just in a different place. In a different time. He edged a little closer to me and a little farther away from him I went. Aaron seemed oblivious to my discomfort and edged closer still. “Handle your shit? I would beg to differ.”
“When did you turn into Mrs. UN? I don’t remember you being this lippy,” he teased in a pseudo-southern accent.
“If you do not mind, I came here to be alone.” He was not at all fazed by what I said. He just stared in the direction of the church. The bell tolled in the grayness of the evening. The choir took a break it seemed. The silence that returned made the place feel hollow. It felt even more hollow as the wind suddenly raced through the icy air.
“Sometimes I think I should feel guilty for introducing him to the stuff. But he had started out with that pharmaceutical shit his grandmother was taking anyway, so if it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else. You see, the only thing I ever gave him was a number. That’s it.”
“Is this your attempt at contrition?”
“I just want a few bucks. It’s the worst feeling when your body cannot get this stuff.” Got some change? I gave him ten dollars to get rid of him. “It is better this way. This junkie lifestyle ain’t easy.”
“Just say no.”
“If only it were that easy. I think it will end when I put a rope to my neck.”
“Unfortunately, I don’t have one to give to you.”
As if ignoring what I had just said he continued: “This life makes you tired Rachel. Shit, I have been tired for so long I don’t remember what resting feels like. Peter is the lucky one. Going in and out of rehab and prison fucks with you. After a while you just can’t take no more. All this shit ‘bout accidental overdose. Hell no. Every junkie knows he is living on the edge. You can’t OD if you’ve given up.”
And as suddenly as it rose, the hate subsided. Sorrow stood in its stead once more. All these years, I had not looked beyond the words he used against me. I was under no illusion that he had changed or became a so-called ‘better person’ as they are apt to say in these parts, but to think that there was another dimension to him was somewhat surprising. “I couldn’t help but wonder that it should have been me who was in your place or in Peter’s. You all had everything.”
“That was the problem. That and the bell curve.”
“Huh?”
“Hernstein and Murray.”
“Oh them.” I guess I should have gotten angry, but I remained silent. Snark was all this pitiful creature had left. That and a decaying frame. And so, in that moment, instead of lashing out, I listened to him more intently. But for a long time, he said nothing. The silence was neither threatening nor unsettling. It was just there. It was as if he drifted off into another land somewhere. And my eyes went to where a group of four raggedy men congregated, smoking and laughing and smacking each other on the back. Someone had music blasting. A trans waltzed into the middle and one of the men whispered something in his/her ear while he grabbed his/her buttocks. His/Her face lit up as (s)he feigned trying to escape his salacious clutch, only to return to the waltzing that failed to conjure up the entity whose life blood ebbed away with every needle that pierced his/her veins.
“No, you don’t. Look around, why you think all these preppy white kids and their parents are so fucked up? We never knew pain long enough to learn anything. If shit hurts, pop a pill. If you have a break up, go to your shrink and he will give you a pill to pop. Be careful of the words you say, you will hurt someone’s feelings. So what? You stifle yourself with this PC bullshit. That’s what fucked us all up. No one can live without pain. It’s not human. And that’s why you see this whole fucking place turned into Zombie Land.”
“Interesting world.”
“I said fucked up right.”
Right then a dark cloud rolled across his person, and it seemed to fill his soul that previously was merely a void: “What’s next? What’s going to happen to you now?” I asked him.
“Does it matter? Who’s gonna care?”
“Your family . . . your friends . . . and Peter . . . he would have cared.”
“I doubt. But who knows, maybe this ten bucks is my ticket to meet him. It would be good to have a celestial party. To see me, him, and the big man sitting on high getting high. Shit. You can come too, you know. But I think your number is some ways away.”
“Can I be alone now, sir.”
“I see that your feelings haven’t changed toward me.”
“Why would they?”
“So, this is where I say goodbye?”
“Like ten minutes ago.”
Watching him walk off into the midday gloom, caused the knot to loosen. How funny this thing called emotions. They swing like a pendulum. They oscillate sometimes. Now, I was not sure if I still hated him. But as soon as it loosened, it tightened again. This time, however, I didn’t want that knot to stay.
I had forgotten how beautiful fall was Upstate, the yellow, and the red, and the brown of the leaves made an otherwise grim existence seem so placid. Were it not for the cold, I would have taken off my shoes to feel the leaves crunching under my feet. But then, there were also the needles lying about inconspicuously. It was in this state of solitude that it finally hit me. There were no screams. Where were the kids who played here? I saw Aaron approach the group, and right there, for all to see, they stooped and started to cook up their high. After that they started to pass a needle around. I am not certain how I felt about it, watching them wait on each other. In that moment, I wondered if you ever were among that group. I am sure you were. Or am I? These scenes were here last year when I came to look for you, but it still seemed so surreal. Is this really where I spent so much of my childhood? The tiny rushing stream that ran between the park and the sports center sang a different tune to the one I heard in the rest of that space. It hummed pleasantries amid the sigh of collective defeat.
Aaron was taking his shot when a flock of crows flew overhead. Between their noises and the gloom which hovered over us, more misery seemed to descend the moment he took the needle to his arm. And again, I wondered about you. Across the street from where they were shooting up; a woman, pushing a stroller seemed to be going by, until one member of the group signaled to her. She was pregnant and had another child walking by her side. She reached into her purse and gave the man something, money I presume, then collected a brown bag. She left, not in a hurry, but wasting little time. It continued to puzzle me that no one was being discreet. The pictures of people in dirty back alleys did not match what I was seeing here.
* * *
Peter and I did not correspond for a long time. I was too consumed by my new life, but I still had you in mind. Mommy had kept me up to speed with the local gossip though, especially about you being in and out of rehab. She told me that you were clean for a long time until you relapsed when Zachary died. He was among the footballers you stood with on that day I first saw you. Mommy told me that he was hardly a day out of rehab when he overdosed. It was his fifteenth and last. It was then that I touched base with you once more. I emailed my condolences and was surprised by your swift reply:
I got your email last week. I would have responded earlier but as you can imagine, it has been a tough time for me with planning the funeral and all. Plus, Zac’s fiancée is expecting twins. As if his death isn’t bad enough, she is also a junkie. To top it off, she was high when she went into labor. My guess is that his folks or hers will have to be parents all over again. This is too depressing to think about. Even more depressing is the time we have spent apart. Please Rae, don’t think I don’t think of you. Or that I didn’t want to write to you before, but what can I say to you. What could I have said to you. I am a loser. I have never said this before, but I think it is important that I do. Zachary was always in denial about this, and see where he has ended up. I don’t want to be like that. I want to get clean. Get a job. And who knows have a kid or two. Definitely not with you. You are out of my league now.
Dear Rae, I was a sick man the last time you saw me. But now. I feel nothing. I am dead. Life has no meaning. No magic. These days, my only comfort is in my sax.
It pains me to write this, but I have to. I am in a hole. It’s deep. It’s dark. The more I try to dig myself out, the deeper I dig myself in. Fucked up eeh. I can’t tell you how many times I have thought about ending it. Sorry to depress you with my sad story. Maybe it’s the Lord’s will as your mother would say. That’s my only explanation for all this shit. Please come visit soon. It would lift my spirit to see at least one person from high school who has not been fucked by this monster.
Thanksgiving or anytime close to it would be perfect. I am clean right now, but this demon is unpredictable. I will try and hold on until I see you.
—Peter
After that, we kept in touch via social media. Following every PS was a request for some change, which I sent most times. The request for us to meet came as a surprise. I took up your offer even though I had vowed never again to visit you. But then you told me that your parole dictated that you not venture out of your city. You picked me up at the train station. Your black Chevy truck was like I remembered it. That machine seemed like the only constant in your life. Seeing you, resurrected many of the images I thought I had laid to rest. I think they returned because, finally, I started to ponder the life you lived. The life that had left you browbeaten and skinny. Oh lord, how much you aged. Where was that football player’s physique now? Gone, like the cocksure persona in which you once so effortlessly moved. And even though you no longer looked like the Adonis I once yearned for; when we embraced, I felt in your soul something I had never felt before. It was something quiet and resigned; and there, in the cool of autumn I realized that it was you who needed protection at that point.
“It’s been a mighty long time,” I said.
“Too long.”
“How have you been doing all these years?”
“It’s been up and down.”
“You look fine.”
“Yeah right.”
“You are always fine in my eyes.”
“Let’s go,” you said with a smile.
We drove through what was the working class section of the city. The streets were virtually empty. The houses seemed desolate, as if no one had lived in them for a long time—broken windows, stripping paint, fallen picket fences was all I could see. I had seen very few people coming to pick up family members at the train station. A college student or two. That was it. It wasn’t until we were driving through the suburb that I realized why the pavements were littered with yellow and white insulin syringes. Every so often I could see someone dragging themselves in a zombie like fashion along the sidewalks. A hush hovered over the space like the eye of a storm. Once, the worst that ever happened here was a bike accident. But perhaps it was my imagination. Perhaps I expected it to look like the urban enclaves that were gripped by the carnivorous clutches of decline. From there we segued into the areas with their immaculately manicured lawns and well-kept houses.
You had been quiet all this time. The years of estrangement lay between us like a chasm. And I wondered if the time lost could be regained, at least a bit of it. But who knows, maybe there was too much to say to say much of anything, much less say anything at all. Long periods of silence seem to make the tongue go numb. But you have always leaned more towards taciturnity, so I am not certain why I expected words to pour out of you. It was only after our eyes met in the rear-view mirror that you spoke.
“How is your mother?”
“She is great. I have been trying to convince her to come live with me, but she refuses to leave Mrs. Pont.”
“Good.”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
“If she did then you wouldn’t be here.”
“I can see you have not lost it.”
“I hope not, for God knows I have lost everything else.
“Don’t speak like that Peter.”
“It’s the truth,” was your terse reply. And once more the silence returned and stayed between us for what seemed like an eon. “Morgue Street,” you said finally as we drove through desolate neighborhoods.
“Huh?” I said a bit nonplussed.
“Morgue Street. It’s the new name for this place. Not a house around here hasn’t had an OD or two. You hardly see any junkies around most times, because they are in some cushy basement or attic in one of these plush houses getting their fix. I am sure you know some of them.”
You spoke of how their rooms were filled with the narrations of people snorting or shooting up. All of their walls say the same thing. Every hall . . . talking blues. Stop and listen for a while. They come in whispers, but they are loud enough for you to hear.
These were the houses in which they partied. Where they drank and consummated what they had. Morgue Street flowed into New Rochelle. “This is where most junkies,” go to get their fix you said. This place stood behind a Maginot Line that ran under a bridge and over a track that separated the ‘good’ neighborhood from the ‘bad’. Here, the junkies were beginning to populate the streets. They were as ubiquitous as autumn leaves. I recognized a few of them after you slowed to point them out to me. I watched them drink and snort and smoke when I was in high school. They offered to me, but every time they did, I pulled closer to you, my protector. I only managed to do a few puffs of a marijuana cigarette, but even that was too much. Those were the days before the white lady. When ganja and cocaine were the worst that could happen. God knows I tried, but all the while my father’s face rose in front of me. The only thing I could do outside of studying was give myself to you. That was my purpose and I was at ease in that role. Of course, I watched you draw lines off my breast after we made love, then you would stay up all night having conversations with yourself. Why am I surprised about that post I saw on your Facebook page? After all, you were always skirting the outer edges of danger.
I listened to you talking of the things you wanted to do. I waited for you to repeat these stories as we drove through the empty streets. Outside, the gray chill afternoon of that November day had fallen upon that space, a mild cold air slithered through a crack in the window; a portent of winter. Lord, how haunted these streets seemed. The roads, already shuttered for Thanksgiving, looked eerie. Like a dying fire for the house lights behind the living room curtains seemed to dim the deeper into the suburb we went.
“Are you still planning on visiting Government Yard?”
You laughed. “I can’t believe you still remember. That was a different time.”
“Different? How so?” I teased.
“Life was simpler.”
“You can make it simple again.
“I wish getting back to simple was simple.” That was where you had planned on launching your musical career. We were in the ninth grade then. And true, life was much simpler. You had watched documentaries about Rastafari. You lionized these men who were in the society, but were, as you said, not of it. You said that your plan was to arrive there as a directionless bourgeois boy and return a rebel, fighting for something bigger than you were. You never specified what that was. For the nonce, you relished the food they ate, which you could hardly believe they grew themselves. You marveled that they made their own clothes. You dreamed about the music and the ganja above all else. But I think it was more than that. You wanted to escape your overbearing, overachieving father who scoffed at the idea of you becoming another Trustafarian.
“Do what? Study music? With those low lives?” he roared one evening as I sat in your basement waiting for you. As per usual, you had smuggled me in, and I waited for you to return with whatever it is you used to tune your sax. You told me he often carried on like that, however, it was the first time I ever heard him. But you said that was one of your milder, more civil exchanges. On those days when he got drunk it became physical. Your refusal to attend therapy to exorcise your plebeian fantasies exacerbated the situation. To call your relationship fraught would be a gross understatement. The memory of that evening, the anger that bubbled when you stormed in and threw yourself on the bed stayed with me. Oh, how red you were, hyperventilating.
You never got on well with your father because you were so much alike. Though he was straight-laced and you were rebellious, you both were strong willed. And though you pursued different trajectories, you stuck to your paths with an intransigence I had never before seen. He would have given anything to see you become what he wanted you to. Love, that hackneyed word, I guess is what he felt for you. You were his only son, and I suspect the love he had for you was too much; too much to let you go. Perhaps it is a good thing he died before you. Seeing you like you were just before that last needle went into your veins is not something I think he could have dealt with; for while your grief grieved you, it devastated him.
He saw what would happen to you. Those were the days before the lady crept in so prominently. The days when you were raiding your grandmother’s medicine cabinet. To think that those lines were the lady’s lines and not cocaine lines, even now, cause my poor heart to sink.
That evening after your spat with him, you beckoned me to your side; to kiss your forehead; to caress your chest; to sing to you. Silently, I agreed with your father, you knew that. And I take as much blame as him for thrusting you deeper into the lady’s arms. I now know that she was that substitute for that void you wanted to fill. But maybe fill and void are not the right words. Forget, yes, that is the word I am seeking. She gave you amnesia. The rest of us gave you regret. There was no winning a fight against you. For you merely retreated into the inner recesses of your pigheadedness.
Right then, amid the silence that hung heavy around us, I wondered why you yearned for a life from which so many sought to flee.
“I am going to join a band.”
“Ok.”
“That’s all you can say.”
“Well, I thought you would have given up these childish dreams by now.”
“Childish?”
“Yes. Why do you continue with this?”
“Because I can.”
“So, what instrument are you gonna play? What genre?”
“Seriously? My gosh, I was hoping they would at least teach you something useful at that fancy girl’s school?”
“You mean women’s college.”
“So, what, you bringing this PC stuff to me now? If I wanted to hear that crap I would have shacked up with Peggy from next door.”
Once more, the silence rose between us, like a menace this time. But then Mommy’s words came back to me. Reminding me that I should speak in hushed tones.
“Which band? When?”
“I don’t know. Not yet. I am taking lessons at the center. They have this outpatient program. I think it is to keep you occupied and away from trouble. I think I can find a bunch of guys there and start up something. Hell, you can even do vocals, you got a decent enough voice.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve always wanted to study music. The sax. I never learned it formally. It would be good to take something serious for once. That’s what it’s all about. But of course, the old guy has other plans. Always talking about his hedge fund managing bullshit. I don’t want any of that. But music though. It echoes in my bones, Rachel.”
“I think your father just wants you to have some stability.”
“Do I look like I want stability?”
“Deep down we all do.”
“I am happy your mom is not gonna pay for college.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard what I said,” seeking to defuse the situation, I tried to change the topic.
“I didn’t come here to argue. I came here to be with you.”
“For what . . . stability . . . a picket fence? You haven’t been paying attention have you?”
“Why are you being like that?”
“You have had your damn head buried in books for so long that you have missed everything.”
“Missed what?”
“Go get some sleep.”
“Have I said something to offend you? If so, I am sorry.” It was the first time that I recall having that vertiginous feeling. There was no knot in my belly that time. Just a spinning in my head. I did not move though. I knew there was something left for you to say to me. A parting gift I would never be able to collect another time.
“Sorry, it’s not you, it’s me.”
“It’s fine. I know you are stressed. You have been through a lot. There is no need to apologize.”
“Yes, I do. I have to.”
“No, please. I honestly don’t want to hear.”
“I am sorry about everything that happened to you. I am sorry it had to happen because I stood you up like the dick I always am.” Again, there was a pause. Again, I waited for you to continue. “I saw you passing that morning. You were so beautiful. You still are. I think you always will be. You always wore yellow for me. That day was no different. It was in the middle of the spring term. The sun was shining. You were shining . . . And I was in the basement getting high.”
“The lady?”
“Naah, it wasn’t none of this cheap shit I was pumping with Aaron. It was my grandma’s prescriptions. That’s why I didn’t come. I should have been there to meet you, or maybe just sneak you into my room.”
“What’s this, a confession, contrition, both?”
“Neither, wanting this shit just makes you talk shit sometimes.”
“I just want it to end.”
“You have multiple tries, Peter. Just give it time.”
“You and your Buddhism.”
“It makes life a little easier to bear.”
“If what you believe is true, I hope this is my last trip.”
“And if you have to return? What then?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a mayfly.”
“Why?”
“They don’t stick around for long.”
“Gosh.”
“What about you? You have never really told me what you wanna be your next trip.”
“You are going to laugh if I tell you.”
“Do I look like a laughter right now?”
“Well,” I said, looking at him looking away. “You. I would like to be you.”
“I guess I really should laugh,” you said while turning your back to me.
“Or someone like you.” My attempt at spooning you was immediately rebuffed.
“Like me?”
“You have no idea, do you?”
“About?”
“The reverence. The respect. The adulation.”
“What the hell?”
“I have never felt or gotten those things before.”
“I didn’t know you were taking this Buddhism thing so seriously. Isn’t heaven better? From what I hear you skip repeating all that dying and suffering shit.”
“True, but in heaven we only reverence god. Down here, if you are well incarnated you will be reverenced.”
“Oh.”
“You did not answer my question.”
“What question?”
“How does it feel?” I tried to spoon you again but it still didn’t work. Annoyed, you flashed me off like a nursing bitch does her puppies. Sitting at the side of the bed with your face in your hands now, you breathed deeply, loudly.
“Get dressed. I got stuff to do.”
“It’s barely three o’ clock.”
“I said I have shit to do.”
I reached over to caress you this time; and then swiftly, wasting no time, you got up and started to put on your clothes. Your pants on now, you reached for a cigarette and went to stand at the lone opening in the basement. A window of sorts. So near you were, but then so distant. It was always the case with you it seemed. It felt like a horrible argument even though I barely uttered a word. And for weeks I waited for you to call or at least answer my calls. Worried, I related my concerns to mother.
“Sorry, I thought you heard,” she said.
“Heard what?”
“His father kicked him out.”
And by my estimation, it was a few days after that blow up you both had. She told me you were living in an apartment downtown, and I came to see you, but then there were all your like-minded friends around you. You treated me like I was a stranger. That was the first time I shouted at you. Surprisingly, you did not shout back. Instead, you held my hand and pushed me through the door. Before slamming it, you told me to forget you. To pretend that you were dead. You told me that it was better this way. Outside, I felt as if the sky fell on me. The rain started to fall, and I pushed on through; walking for the three hours it took to get home.
* * *
As we drove through the good side of the city, the well kept colonial buildings reminded me of that day. I wondered if you remembered. Perhaps not, all I know is that your voice sounded as if it belonged to another, as if it were in another place.
“How is your mother?”
“She is fine. When was the last time you saw her?”
“It’s been a while.”
“She will be happy to see you.”
“And I will be sad for her to see me.” For the first time, you sounded so old—so sad. I saw defeat in your eyes. Oh Peter, how raspy your voice had become. Oh, how it quaked.
“Do me a favor, please.”
“What?”
“Drive over the bridge. I need to see the old places. It’s been a while—and you know how nostalgic I get.”
He did as I asked and headed into the city. Past the parks and the white picket fence homes, and the sterile elegance of some of the older houses. The streets had not changed. The rustic charm of the hotels downtown remained. There was a discomfort in the repose here. On the outside at least, for as the space whitened with white bodies, I dashed glances at Peter and realized that he too was surveying the landscape, seeking the parts of his person that had been left at the side of the road to rot.
The hotels where I had worked. Where you and your buddies came to have your parties. Where I passed you so many times with merely a glance was now abandoned; peopled by people who found themselves wilting under the constant prick of the needle. They stayed away from the light; coming out at night to shoot up in back alleys. Other days they lay smothering behind the walls and used texts to find their fix, their relief when the hell of not being fed the powder for a day or two set in. Yes, sometimes they peeked out to get some light, but the sun stared at them in mockery. And thus they returned to the filthy cubicles in which they were caged. A few escaped. Not me though. One cannot escape from a place one was never a part of. I was not part of your opulence, and so, I could not mourn the loss thereof. When I could look no more through the window, I turned my gaze at you, sitting beside me. You were looking into an emptiness it seemed, seeking the things you had lost. I would hope that it was me, but it could not have been. It is in times of anguish and desperation that the displaced look for the things they have lost.
When we almost reached the end of 147th St. I asked you to turn around. The date with nostalgia ended prematurely. And now, the you that I came to see was never going to be seen. I couldn’t see it. You couldn’t see it either, for the you that I came to see was already gone, just like this place that came to betray all that it was.
* * *
Mommy still lived with the Ponts. Well, with one of them to be precise. Upstairs now. In the room beside the master bedroom. These days she does very little because the children have all moved out. And anyway, Mrs. Pont says she is too old to work, so she hires someone to clean once per week. Mommy does a little cooking when she can though. But I think that, the gesture, rather than being an act of goodwill, is to ensure Mrs. Pont has company. Her husband died a year before the last son graduated college. She did not ask my mommy to leave so she stayed. They spend most days knitting, baking cookies, and drinking tea. They attend croquet twice per week, but most times they don’t play. They prefer to lounge around the country club and gossip. She is the one who told her of your troubles. She thanks God every day, Mommy said, that her kids were among the handful to escape the lady’s curse. Her real estate developer husband didn’t though.
How happy Mommy was to see you. To my surprise you gave her a gift, and she gladly took it. And for the several hours we were there you laughed and talked with her. I wondered where your taciturnity went. Nowhere, it is just that her inquiries were more lighthearted. Where have you been? What have you been up to? When are you going to marry Rae? She said laughing and dishing out your Thanksgiving dinner in the way your estranged mother did for you. As soon as she moves back home you joked in return. I was happy we decided to go there first, for she broke that ice which stood between us.
That was the last time the three of us were together. That was among the few times you looked so at peace. It was not only in your smile but in the warmth of your embrace as you bade us farewell. It seemed as if Mommy knew it was the last time she was going to see you. The water welled up in her eyes as we waved at you driving off.
The throttle of your engine caused my stomach to knot just before vertigo set in again. Or maybe it was the thoughts of the things that endeared me to you. Like the texture of your hair; the first time I touched it, was, might I daresay, orgasmic. Or maybe, just maybe, it was the look of your skin that seemed to coruscate even in the dimmest of lights. I feel you still. The feel of your freckled burly frame pressed against me always made me feel darker and more insignificant under you. It was then that I realized how small a space I occupied in this world. In your world, in which I was at times a loathsome intruder. When we walked, I felt like a shadow trailing behind you. And as you pressed toward the direction of the setting sun, I finally began to realize that these things were secondary to what really called me to you. It was your eyes, not because they were like that of our savior’s. The one mother hung in our bedroom. It was what they seemed to possess. It was as if something was slithering in them; moving from one cornea to the next. I saw it that day for the first time. When I kissed you goodbye; that Thanksgiving eve when mother smiled at us, and the junkies lumbered in the city, seeking another fix.
And I shall know you by the white serpent dancing in your eyes.
“What did you say child?”
“Nothing, Mommy, just thinking out loud.”
“Thinking out loud about him,” she said the morning of the funeral, at twilight, as we sat on the back porch waiting for the porridge to cook.
“I guess mothers are wired to decipher their children’s mumbles.”
“We read everything about our kids. I don’t know why or how. We just do. You will understand when you are in my shoes one day.”
“What about the shoes I am wearing now?”
“I suggest you take them off.”
“Why?”
“They have no soles. What are shoes without soles?”
“They have soles. They are just worn.”
“You have to understand that when one grows up hearing only yes, you take it as a part of life. But when you are finally told no, then what are you supposed to do? A fish needs water as much as an eagle needs its wings. That is all they know. He knew they would never let him have what he wanted. You may convince yourself otherwise but that is what killed Peter.”
“Mommy, please.”
“It was never the right time.”
“Is it ever? Was it ever? Could it ever have been . . . ?”
“Who knows? But remember one thing, we are strangers here, so we have to be careful . . .”
“. . . our whispers cannot be too loud nor our steps too bold. And always remember to smile, even when the heart burns. Yes, yes. How many times have I heard it. You don’t need to keep reminding me. How do you think I keep sane in this place?”
Mommy went to sit on the veranda. In the gloom of the late morning she seemed so alone. The cornmeal porridge simmered in the pot. You could smell the nutmeg and vanilla.
“Pour the coconut milk in it now for me, and add a little sugar. Your poor mother’s hips have parked her.”
She had like-minded company once. When I was a child, she, along with her church sisters would sit in the basement room of one church sister in the city, when the Ponts gave her that monthly Sunday off. We immigrants would congregate and bask in each other’s company. The older folks would exchange stories of yesteryear over the food they made to remind them of home. And each immigrant would embellish each immigrant story. And every dish would be a dish elaborately done to celebrate a land they knew they would never see again. New York was their Babylon. The Hudson, that ever present, rushing beast, listened keenly to them singing nostalgic hymns. Each song a weeping. Each song a wailing. Each tune a collage of soppy exhortations about being pilgrims in a barren land called life, in a foreign country they scarce understood. In the moment that the singing started, the sad world would close in on them. They recalled the places they never again would see. They had tambourines, but except for that intermittent knock, they mostly laid them aside. Every so often, one person would come over to us children as we played in the corner. Be silent lest you be heard, they said in hushed angry voices. Other times, our laughter was silenced by the anguish that swelled in their throats. By the Rivers of Babylon was the anthem. But they came to this foreign land on their own volition and stayed here because they knew that in some ways it was better than the place from whence they came. We were mere children who could not and would never understand these songs, so we watched from afar.
The world seemed darker then, and in those moments, the adults seemed as if they forgot us.
Their songs told too much. It was not only in what was sung, but in the how – morose tunes that told us what lay ahead. Life, the one they knew, had nothing pretty, nothing pleasing, just gray, just gloom. We heard those tunes as the words pressed against our hearts. In the dark, in the shadows of the basement, in a place where our voices were hushed. We were intruders, our young minds could hardly decipher that, but children eat the angst of their elders. And as the darkness pressed closer against our beating hearts, the adults shook themselves from the trance and cauterized the monster of collective doom. We heard just enough to inform us that though we were young, we had to wrestle with the hate-filled world that roared in anger.
Those days are long gone. The hums remain though, in that place where nostalgia was the only thing that kept mother alive.
“Junkies. Roads filled with needles and fear. Queens was a cesspit. We couldn’t wait to leave. Your father and me. But here we are, back in the desert. The burbs this time.” She stressed the syllables as they rolled from her lips. “Who would have thought that the white lady would have followed us here of all places. She is here Rae. And she came in a spoon.”
In Queens, the lady was loud and insular. There were sirens and guns and the cameras broadcasting it. There were sirens here of course, but the sounds in Queens were belligerent. Here, they were at times inaudible even when death was the outcome.
“Animals were dying where we are from; here, the junkies look different. A part of me wants to laugh, but I can’t. A life is a life, no matter what.”
“Tell that to them.”
“Rae?”
“Yes, Mommy?”
“They didn’t think much about us. I still think they don’t. Your father told me as much. He didn’t know at first, then he found out and it broke him . . . Your father worked for thirteen hours most days, six days a week sometimes. He was a physician back home, so you can understand how beneath him these blue-collar people were.”
“Please, Mommy, not today.”
“His hands were not made for those tasks.”
“No more stories, Mommy, I beg you.”
“I didn’t tell you one thing.”
“What, Mommy?”
“I didn’t tell you how your brother Joseph really died.”
“I thought you said it was meningitis.”
“Your father told me to tell you that. But did you ever wonder why we took so long to have you after he died?”
“I never thought about it.”
“Your father didn’t think he could bear losing another child the way we lost Joe. You never saw him cry. But he cried. A lot. More than even I did. Almost every night until you were born. The fact you were a girl put his heart at ease. Somewhat at least.”
“I still don’t get where you are going with this.”
“He was on the sidewalk playing with his friends one day. He was only nine years old. A neighbor saw him with a BB gun. It was black. From a distance, it could pass as a real one. She called the police, and to be fair, admitted that she wasn’t sure if the gun was real. It was in one of those parks that was not for us. When the police drove up, she told him to drop the gun. Before Joseph knew what happened, the policewoman had fired three shots into his chest. Well, that is what one of the witnesses said. It is not like these days, with you young people and your camera phones. All we had were these eyewitness accounts. A part of me wonders if it were now; would we have gotten the truth. But then, from what I can see, it doesn’t really matter. What killed your father was the fact that he could do nothing about it. We were undocumented, so fighting would make life worse for us. Plus, returning home was out of the question. Imagine trying to get my teaching job back. Me with my pseudo-American accent.” For a moment, she paused, breathed deeply then carried on. “I can still feel his tears on my bosom. Even now. Even today, crying that all the officer got was a warning and a transfer.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Your father didn’t think it was healthy for you. Remember he was cut from science—calculated, methodical. He didn’t want you to grow up with hate.”
“That is no excuse. I had a right to know.”
“For as practical as he was, he could not convince himself that every police officer was not responsible for Joe’s death. He knew that that thinking was wrong. He tried his entire life to disabuse himself of it, but he saw your brother’s blood on every uniformed man and woman that ever held a gun.”
I cannot say I was shocked or outraged or that I had hate or fear or any of those emotions. I hardly even know how I felt. I had never met Joseph, and so for me it was just something that happened. This indifference should have embarrassed me, but as far as I was concerned he still died from meningitis. “You should have told me before.”
“Your father’s life was so hard because he never knew how to let it go. And in some way, mine was similar. Life is much crueler for those who hold on to the dead.”
For what seemed like a mighty long time, I stood at the window. Through my peripheral gaze, I watched her rock back and forth; once more mumbling that morose tune, “By the Rivers of Babylon”. I was transfixed by that last utterance, until suddenly I was interrupted by one of those intermittent breaths of wind that shook the shingles.
“Fall came early this year,” she said.
“Yes, just in time for my mourning.”
* * *
Later that morning, my phone rang, and it was you, waiting outside. Mommy was disappointed you didn’t show up for breakfast like you promised. By the time you came, she had gone with Mrs. Pont to Sunday brunch. So many thoughts ran through my mind as I gathered my purse. It was like a rush of which I could hardly make sense. Mommy’s words rang out in my ears in a way they hadn’t before. At least not since I left for Wellesley. The emptiness in your eyes struck me once more. And it became more so after you showed me Aaron’s funeral program. He had died that summer. I was happy you had managed to remain sober up to that point even though you told me you were not certain how much longer you could hold out. I wanted to stay in that moment, but of course the topic wasn’t lighthearted enough.
We went to your apartment, in a dilapidated complex on the edge of the city. Through a narrow alleyway we went and stepped through a door that led to a grimy passageway. The hinges creaked loudly, then clicked shut behind us. And you, Peter, lit the way with your phone through the darkness within. The sounds of the screeches and the scurrying of the rats caused me to jump. In the passageway, several junkies swooned betwixt the wave of heroin induced euphoria. The corridor was littered with syringes. There are spoons there also. Stained stainless steel ones. Outside the copper sun was beginning to set and you did not even seem bothered by the mess we were stepping over.
“Rats,” you laughed as I continued to jump and scream. “They are my pals.” The narrowness of the stairs and the other passageway did little to put my heart at ease. Inside your apartment, the scent of unwashed clothes and stale food assaulted me. Not a soul stirred inside. No one else had been here for a long time it seemed, but how could I tell. We paused at the entrance for a while because of the darkness which encamped. A single lamp illuminated a portion of the large living room. Except for the couch and the lone coffee table, the room was naked. Otherwise bare walls were dressed with posters of the musicians you so loved. Directly in front of us was a poster of Tosh, the rebel you called him. A poster presented in pointillism stared at us, unsmiling. That his eyes were red had missed me. And as my eyes adjusted to the light, I felt as if the man long dead was looking into me, as if he were peering into the deepest recesses of my soul.
Ride on, but don’t you ride like lightning, ‘cause man if you ride like lightning you will crash like t’under, flowed out of Big Youth’s mouth. His picture stood adjacent to Tosh’s. Big Youth was another of your heroes, or might I daresay inspirations. His coal-black face accentuated the many gold-plated teeth that glistened in his mouth. Such a cheerful looking man with a smile captured for posterity. Peter knew them all, song by song, tune by tune. You introduced me to all of them; I learned of the songs they sang, when they sang them and the circumstances under which they were written.
The light in your face as you spoke of their artistic exploits told me that this was your castle. Here you were the thane. To see you pay homage to each one, would otherwise look weird to me, but to see you pay something tantamount to libations filled me with an appreciation for you, and the thing you loved in a way I had never before felt. When finally you were done, and you were ready to play, you sat me in a corner where the light was dim. The lone light in the room was an electric table lamp. It shone on you and you alone. And no, it did not illuminate your sores, or rather, the sore that you had become. You looked placid as you readied yourself to play. I watched how easily you breathed. How at ease you were massaging the keys. I heard you whisper, Peter; heard you speak to your saxophone. You said things I could not hear. There was a sort of comfort though, in the timbre of your voice. It made me know how much you loved the thing in your hand. And in that moment, in that space, in that time, you went to a place where I could never touch you. This was your world. You built it. And in it there was space for no one else, least of all me.
In the moment, you reached for the sax that was on the dust-filled desk; that was beside the disfigured burnt spoon and lighter. I held my breath. You told me that you were clean. Well, I guess I was always that fool for you. Instead of playing, you placed it on your chest and started humming one of those hymns my mother always sang, when she was preparing dinner, or cleaning or ironing. You loved her singing. I remembered how you stood at the fence that separated the Ponts from yours and listened to her when she was pruning the garden. It was under a poplar tree that you sat and whistled for me when she was done. It was there that I went to sit on your lap. Your legs were especially strong. After the lady, they became emaciated and sore filled.
It is the only thing you said came close to her. My mother’s songs. You said it was like a reward one couldn’t get enough of. It was warm, tingly, you said. The times with me were great also. At least that is what you said. I knew I was a mere convenience though; the lady gave you things I couldn’t. After a while you could get enough of me. Eventually, you could do without the singing. That was never the case with the lady in the spoon. Even when you didn’t want any, she told you to take more. And you obliged.
In that time, you would be looking outside as if you were conjuring up those images and sounds that so long ago had ceased to be. “She is no lady, Rachel. A tramp. That is what she is. A tramp that tramples you until there is nothing left.” All this time you kept looking at the bare parts of the wall, into space, into a concrete void. “I can still hear the singing, it was my rush when I was clean. And you too. The sounds after we made love. The smell of your hair. The smell of you on me. I can smell it now. I hope I smelled good back then. I can only imagine how disgusting I am to you now.”
“No, Peter. You can never be disgusting to me.”
“That is the first lie you have ever told me. Good try though.”
You laid the sax aside without even a blow and reached for the spoon. Stained, its handle twisted into incoherence. Beside it was a two-dollar bill, disheveled; neatly folded. You reached for the money; slowly, methodically, you unfolded it, and poured the powder into the spoon.
“It is not really silver,” you informed me, holding it up in the air. “I sold all of those a long time ago. I pretend it is though. Even a waste of flesh needs value in his life.”
My heart raced as I watched you reach for the lighter and started cooking the powder. Slowly, methodically, you had poured the water into the spoon. The heat made the powder foam. Then you reached for the syringe. How many times had it been used I asked myself. But maybe even you did not remember. Your eyes, not so long ago empty, lit up. Just a gleam though, as you sought that ephemeral euphoric feel. It became gray as it dissolved. You flipped over the syringe and used the top of it to mix the concoction. Your bony fingers operated deftly as you used it to suck the heroin out.
“You begin with a prescription. Then when that shit gets too expensive, you scale down to this shit. First, you start snorting. And to be fair, you still look normal at that stage. But then you graduate to shooting up. That’s when you know you are fucked.” You reached for your belt and bound your leg. I cringed when you stuck the needle in your calf. I sat nonplussed then your eyes started to dilate. It was as if you were caught in a rapture. Your head swayed. You seemed at peace; it was as if you were wresting yourself from the carnivorous clutches of reality; and that that was the only thing that mattered. And that nothing else mattered much, and nothing much mattered at all.
You placed the stained, twisted spoon on the center table once you were done. I listened to your belabored breath in the dank musty apartment. Clothes strewn on the floor. I waited for you to become sober. When you did, you would reach for your saxophone once more and play a song for me. “You choose,” I would say. After you asked me for a selection. “Chances Are”, yes that song, you would play it for me, though, in the end, I think it was for yourself that you would. Your eyes were closed and you and the lady were one. The photo of a hoary Toots Hibbert seemed magnified. He was looking away from you though, and seemed to be searching through the tears on your wall.
There would be no ebb in your performance, just a steady flow. And there in that space you would find that semblance of order that nothing else was able to give to you. This I realized as I went through the screeching door, and into the grimy alleyway that flowed into the syringe filled streets I no longer recognized. The hour-long trek back home would be a nervous one, but Daddy would be with me, and Joe would hold my hand, and the immigrant songs, which kept me all those Sundays would usher me on. The epigrams of my mother would continue to keep the lady at bay and this world that I was never a part of would invite me to drink of her poison.
© 2026 Nicholas Richards All rights reserved.
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