First, in an enormous antechamber, his imposing diabolical face leers in the air. Then he emerges from behind a curtain and the face vanishes. "We can be without pretense here, can we not?"

There is one other door leading out of the chamber, not a gate, not in the center of a wall, but to the side of the same wall as the hall from which I entered. It leads us down a worn, nearly paint-bare wood stairway to a small basement workshop. We sit across a small table from one another. His back is to the wall, there is another door, latched with one of those cheap sliding latches. Perhaps a keyhole beneath the knob.

He keeps drawing my attention to the door, not by pointing it out or mentioning it - am I going to be permitted to leave? — but by; not by looking directly at it as we speak...it is as if his gestures all refer to the door, the door is the context of all conversation.

A confusing encounter. Designed to put me off my guard? Crafted at all? "My job," - with a slight shrug that somehow called my attention back to the door - he did not complete the sentence, "my job". His eyes, he is confused. Perhaps there is nothing behind the door. But how could there be nothing and yet it pulls my attention and his gestures. Blackness I guess.

He doesn't know what to ask me, or say. He extends the conversation, Is he afraid of me? Needs to size me up, to make his move? - am I dangerous? Does he wish me to be dangerous? He makes any number of decisions all at once, in every one of his words. I am any number of things in each of his words. Murderer, prisoner, acquaintance, audience, if that door were unlocked, could I pull it open? If behind something there is nothing, can that something be moved?

He extended the conversation - the weariness bred of repetition. He burns souls...and so wears the face of a union man. Perhaps I will be unable to leave.

• • •


Issue: May 10- May 15, 2001

A Sampler of Taglines and Headlines I've Been Paid to Write in Chronological Order, or Why I Wish I Was A Cowboy
BY ADAM KLINE

Manchild and The Chop
BY RYAN D. AND HOODY P.

Lost in the CD Changer
BY STEVE de SEVE

• • •

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