The Easy Chain

by Evan Dara

Tensed, creased, shit-traced place …

  Bounding and twitching …

  Coating every view, every essence, with stench …

  Forever dodging, fleeing …

  Living in the past …

  And now, of course, summoning darkness, even more darkness upon me …

  Around me …

  Under me …

  Drawing dense black darkness above and under me …

  And waning air …

  And trembling …

  And rumbling …

  And shuddering and pulsing and unpuckering …

  And earthquaking, and landsliding … !

  … Kut …

  O kut …

  …

  Sel – SELWYN … ? Is That You—?

  It’s warm here now … clement, unmoving … with a nice view … top-tips of grass, zeppelin-soles … walkways, epic lampposts … the sun risen just slightly higher … in afternoon sky … shimmery, brass-beacony … generous with the ingrate Earth … and showing … explicating … my true position … my all-true worth … pasted here on the stack … my coiled rack … cauliflowery, it is, humuslike … my Babel … bringing me to sky … though heav … heavier … than ever before … but, in truth, not feeling it much … less mindful of it … with good reason …

  Here is me … location, self, same … the dreamed-of continuity … I am in my element … and of my element … now all is essential … and touched by harmony … the sea is the sea … and drowning men drown … in the essential … it may not be wise … to build on a shadow … that’s impossible to see … though less wise still … not to do so … and Hooh! – Shit! … Huge fucking boot … Shit that guy … scraped, smashed … he hrrr into m … Shite!! burning, fuck, bleeding … Hargh that … really fucking stings … burning and stings and bleeding and …

  And through the swinging door … and into the reception-area … and past the hoverers and the unsensing flitters … and into the restaurant … a woman and her daughter give way … and over to the tray-embracing waitress … she flinches, she winces … and bowling through the three-deep line … but the cashier doesn’t have … so flunged into administration, a universe behind a door … the one-desk fore-room, the wall-postings and chairs … and down a bright hallway, and past windowed rooms … and given a hunk of gauze, a green towel … and bade to sit … but they have no real med … and no hospital within 200 …

  And in the car … and hupping the engine … and leaning forward, pressing towel to shin … and the stinging unrelenting … coursing the interstate … its large green signs numbered, lettered … keening up, whisking past … and the exit number comes, and then the turn … and the resented deceleration … and the jolt re-acceleration … and the stop … the deep-mourned stop … and the window opened … and the woman, the obviously local loose-plaid-shirt woman … so slow! … but she knows, she points and tells … and the engine gunned … the unfull stop, the corner turned … the quick-start sprint … the number spotted … the lunge to braking …

  In the building, up the stairs … bending, twisting to the pressed gauze, to the crush-pressed towel … a landing-turn, a sting … a door pushed through, a looking for room 204 … into room 204 …

  Carpet and walled couches … corner tables, wall slots with magazines … a terrarium … the woman behind the counter looks up, does not stand … fliers, hand-outs, adverts frame her … fill-in forms prestuck in clipboards … file-hutches, phones, computer screens … finally she rises … says Oh … says How did … asks me to sit … anywhere, any couch … a woman, an assistant, in scrubs, emerges from a door with sterile cloths, a pan … bends, looks … does not approach further … Better let the doctor see that, the woman behind the counter says … Really shouldn’t touch … With a patient … Fifteen, ten minutes? … Should be OK …

  Sitting, not moving … but sting … but sting … having to shift weight … gentle gently … Would you fill this out, please?, the woman behind the counter says … handing the clipboard, leaning through her frame … Just a few more minutes now … looking down … turning to her computer … And how will you be paying for this? … her eyes visible … Sure, we accept Visa or Mastercard … she says … and leans through her frame again …

  Inconceivable columns of yeses and no’s … no, no, no, no … though sting … and sting … no, no – can anyone need so much information? … and I’m sorry … Sir? … the woman in the frame … It doesn’t seem to be going through … Your Visa … I tried three times … It’s not going through … Do you have another credit card? …

  I can also take a debit card …

  Sorry, the machine here doesn’t give an indication why …

  Three times …

  We prefer if you pay ahead of time …

  I’m sorry, but that’s our policy here …

  Yes. For everybody. Everybody must pay ahead of time …

  And sitting here …

  Clipboard …

  Questions …

  Sitting here … !

  Holding a pen on a chain—

  Hup on a red drop on a towel-label on the pocket-seam of a pants-leg that’s lobstering forward up on door-draft down a stairwell bounced by banisters and swept up-out and swept out-out off a keyring caught by arm-breeze tucked by bang-hair behind an ear-crest back-snapped by car-thrust racing forward whooshed out a window up and out and up and up and

  On a breezeway …

  Tossed by truck-air rise …

  Sent higher by trees, their evaporation patterns, their thermal lifts …

  Caught by sky-eddies, by upward currents …

  Tasting ozone …

  Cooled by cloud-shadow, tickled by improbable ions …

  Among the thinning, scintillant motes …

  Sailing, floating, leaving weight for weightlessness …

  Vast vision …

  Vast and clear …

  Three counties at a time …

  Eighteen counties at a … !

  Near to heaven …

  Even nearer to greenfields and highways, silos, irrigation sluices and lets, lakes, crop-plantings, pockets of forest, truncated by townships …

  Here the air can be repaired …

  The sun, lighting my way, touches half of me …

  Is felt on my other half, too …

  And no shadows …

  Nothing has readied me for this …

  Like a satellite! …

  Translating, hurling messages …

  And the sunchild, beside me …

  Riddled with possibility …

  Shows his open, empty hands—

  And Sting and jolt and brake and slow and turn and stop, and out and Sting and grab and hold and across the tarmac, and past the cars and past the cart-push pedestrians and towards the cathedrally store, windows and sales-signs and electric doors and machined gleam, and past the guard and past the flower-seller, and threading through the check-out tribes and looking for the pharmacy and looking at signs above the aisles and Yo!, watch it, man and Sting and Sting on Why don’t you watch where you’re and Sting and undissipating Sting on Shit man, my sleeve on the You gonna clean this? on a Look at this on a You gonna pay to get it cleaned? on the

  …

  ………

  …

  On a shoppingbasket-handle on a gnarl-chewed cuticle on the oval perforation atop a tissue box on the …

  On the sharp, wisped, blade-end of a jettisoned receipt…

  …

  Where…

  …

  Where—

  …

  Bleaches. Rinses. Despotters. Stain Removers …

  Abrasives. Decalcifiers. Destreakers. Scrubbers. Astringents … Liquids. Packets. Powders. Pucks …

  Glass. Metal. Porcelain. All-surface. Formica …

  Stone…

  …

  And they are fearless and they are well-formed and they are colorful and they are proud. And they are bold and clear and firm and strong. Shoulder-to-shoul
der, confident, proclaiming. United, self-reinforcing, promiseful, unashamed …

  Optimistic. Goal-oriented. Upright. Aimed in the same direction. Clear-voiced. Masterful with learned language. Self-certifying. Sure of themselves. Haughty. Healthy. Hopeful. Joyous…

  …

  On…

  …

  On the…

  …

  On.

  A comet arrived in Chicago last fall. It went unnoticed by Yerkes Observatory and by local meteorologists. But within weeks, the sky-flash christened Lincoln Selwyn would ignite the city’s social set, energize several major businesses and civic undertakings, amass a fortune, and blaze a trail through town that is still { }.

  And then it

  Sweet Z:

  Too bad about the night-table. But wouldn’t the guy who delivered it be responsible for fixing (filling in?) the nick? And in that case: too bad about your having to go through the hassle of having to resolve things that way.

  Life in the affective void is OK. Working hard, and getting pretty good at telling myself that all my potato-stick snacking is thereby justified. But a funny thing: My assignment is kind of teaching me a few things, to wit: about love. About how certain people have a kind of impersonal capacity to elicit, or inspire, almost automatic affection from others. How some transcendent something about them just makes folks gun their enzymes and loft up, not fall, into a swoon. Nothing bad about that: it’s probably necessary in some evolutionary way.

  And this is very close to what I feel for you: deep appreciation, joyful gratitude, awe-like affirmation, an instinctive moving-towards, mystery and then some. An opportunity to celebrate being. It’s why I start to sparkle when I see your name in my inbox: in some novel way for me, my research is focusing my feelings and, as a result, I can love you ever the better. I don’t know if this counts as a journalist getting involved in her story, but it must be part of the reason why people choose this particular livelihood. And why I stay with it. Can’t just be the potato sticks.

  And what else. Thinking of streaking my hair. (Calm down: it’s supposed to be a technique so subtle that it’s essentially unnoticeable.) (So when we get together, be sure not to mention that you don’t notice it, OK?) (Er.) And what else: got another turndown (from the Sun-Times) on a story I’ve been trying to place for, oh, the last 8, 9 months. Alors, vexation.

  And did I hear you ask what *else*? How about that I shiver, skin and stomach both, when I think, dream, conceive or catch a glimpse of you. I.e., the what else I’ve been trying to get to all this what-elsing time.

  Kisses,

  T

  PK: Hot water’s back. A Nestlé Quik lid, if you can believe it, in the pipe.

  PPK: And the plumber was *cute*! That boy can fix my stoppages any time!

  PPPK: Hey: I gotta keep your fluids flowing, too.

  —’N I got that Itzik at INS, ’n—

  —’N next.

  —Yeah. A monolith.

  —Yeah.

  —’N we got in more of the scuzzman’s abuses, the fuck, from right before he left. A dry-cleaner, a Korean restaurant, here’s Jimmy T.’s Hardware, a fucking cheese shop this human pathology will fucking fuck over anything he can spray with his disease—

  —Yeah.

  —All courtesy of Visa ’n First Illinois.

  —So maybe they’re the greed heads.

  —No excuse.

  —Maybe.

  —And on the Bank of America account, he made another payment to the Scapes guy.

  —Great. More phone calls for us to make—

  —Man, fleece American Express to pay off his little—

  —Yeah.

  —And I also spoke to Borah again. Mister Borah. Put in a call.

  —And?

  —And he ain’t budging. Ain’t giving an inch. He confirmed he’s still working for the fuckwad, or, correction, he said one of his European affiliates is doin’ shit for him. You believe that? His European affiliate. —Yeah—

  —He’s doin’ shit for him over there—

  —Go back to him.

  —What?

  —Yeah.

  —Come on, Phil—

  —Try to get him to understand what’s—

  —Phil, wake up. There’s no fuckin’ way. I even start to get near the subject and he’s like I’m sorry but I have a responsibility to ’n But I’m sure you understand that I’m not at liberty to ’n My moral sense will never—

  —Offer him more.

  —But there’s no—

  —Archie—

  —Hey, guys? Guys? Phillie?

  —Yeah.

  —What up.

  —You guys hold for a minute here? Somethin’s, I got to …

  —Yeah. Yeah.

  —Of course.

  —Go ahead.

  —Thanks.

  —…

  —So.

  —Yeah.

  —So how’s he doin’ … ?

  —What y—?

  —How’s he doin’, you think.

  —He’s OK.

  —Yeah? Because—

  —Yeah—

  —’Cause he ain’t exactly, y’know. I mean it don’t really seem to me he’s pulling his weight.

  — … Don’t wor—

  —I mean I’m sorry to just say it, but I just don’t see how he’s—

  —It’s OK, Arch. He’s, he’s a good guy. I know him from another—

  —But what’s he?, like in compared to you ’n—

  —It’s a bit of a tough time for him, that’s all. OK? He’ll be fine. Little distracted by a family thing. Y’know.

  —Mm.

  —He’s a good guy.

  —OK.

  —He’ll—

  —Uh, sorry. Sorry. OK? Back with you. Thanks.

  —OK, Stan.

  —Yeah. Thanks.

  — … So what we doin’ now? We just gonna sit here ’n wait?

  —Well the best I figure, there’s a high likelihood the guy’s gonna start using Dutch cards—

  —So couldn’t we use that to go back to the Consulate ’n—

  —Arch—

  —Get ’em into gear a little, when it’s in their own country’s fucking best interest?

  —It’s still only speculation.

  —Right. Speculation based on like 100% likelihood of it—

  —But still speculation.

  —Fucking sheister. Fucking amoral animal.

  —Arch—

  —BFD, man. B.F.D. Man, I am dreaming of nailing this fucker. I’m gonna grab him and put his head into a vice and put his fucking throat to a buzzsaw and see how he rips us off now. Fucks over our openness and our willingness to give a little shit like him a fucking chance—

  —Arch, there’s absolutely nothing I’d like better than to put this loser away for twenty years or—

  —Fucking Manichean, man. Fucking evil. I cannot wait to—

  Dear Ms. Stade:

  Hello again. Did you receive the e-mail I sent to you on July 22 about Lincoln Selwyn? My investigation is ongoing, and I would still welcome hearing your responses to these questions. A copy of that e-mail is attached, for your ready reference. Thanks in advance for taking a look.

  Very truly yours,

  Tracy Kessler

  Dear Mr. Wylie:

  Lincoln Selwyn, a young Briton, set Chicago ablaze. Over the course of the last nine months, this charismatic blond with the irresistible accent vaulted to the top of Chicago’s social hierarchy, slept with the majority of its first daughters and racked up an unimaginable fortune. Then he walked away, leaving a dazzled city to grieve, and to figure it all out.

  Mr. Wylie, there’s a great book to be written about the Selwyn thunderflash, as the attached outline will make clear. And I trust you already sense the movie possibilities for this tale. Think Matt Damon, or George { }. I am sure that you::::

  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

  Sincerely,

  —And then we
gotta—

  —So try to get to—

  —’N I don’t care how we—

  —So we got to move, OK—?

  —Oh yeah—

  —’Cause there’s no way to know how long he’s gonna stay in—

  —But first, man, like first we got to notify—

  —So you take judicial, and I’ll put in the call to the servers, ’cause they’re gonna want to coordinate with my legal, and Stan, you—

  —This is great, man—

  —Listen, he still isn’t—

  —This is great—

  —What, what can I—?

  —Can you believe—?

  —Stan, you just—

  —Right back into—

  —I, I’ll—

  —’N right back to doin’ the same fucked-up shit. Recidivist fucker must fuckin’ love this country.

  —You ever doubt me?

  —Never. Not ever. Except for like all those days I was absolutely and totally sure you were totally wrong-fucking wrong.

  —That’s what we like. Confidence.

  —So when we—

  —And right after—

  —So we’re on top of this, huh—?

  —And then, y’see, we can—

  My Z—

  It’s done. I bought the ticket.

  See You Soon,

  Your T

  PK: I bought the ticket!!!

  He glowed with a rich inner flame. You were warmed just by being near him!

  Now do I look like the kind of person who likes to clean ketchup lip? Or to wipe sugar dome? Do you have any idea what kinds of ick get all up and through those things?

  Actually, I suspect you do. Probably left some there yourself.

  I mean, here’s Riqi, tilting the pan and sizzling up corncakes like he was born to the job, grateful for every second it’s kept him out of Costa Rica. And here’s Anton, stuffing the washing machine with scraped plates, snapping the door up and twisting back to the sink, after twisting the on-knob. And we got a real skinny Samby at table 8, all folded in with his legs crossed drippingly and his arms caduceus’ed in front of his chest, kinda grousing at his coffee. And for a long time, too. But he’s here and not some other place, and you gotta figure there’s something in it for him.