Party

It is almost the end of the party. I dream every night about what it was like when the party was young. Everything was fresh and new and full of wonder and hope. Now I look at the balloons sinking to the floor under gravity's cruel embrace and the torn streamers dangling melancholic from the rafters and I am haunted by the memory of what was.
The worst part is knowing that I was annoyed by the noise of the music and the party blowers. I was stressed by the chaos of spilled drinks and chip crumbs ground into the carpet under carefree heels.
While the party was happening I barely enjoyed it, I was so worried over the myriad details and eager for a perfection born of fantasy. I wanted organized games, quiet conversation, careful observance of etiquette. It seemed like the party would go on and on and I wished for the madness to end. I didn't know how to enjoy it, how to throw back my head and laugh with the others or dance the night away in blithe merriment.
It took time for me to see the magic contained within the pandemonium, time for me to let go and join in the festivities. And now that I've learned how to do it, the party's almost over. Everyone's gone or leaving, suddenly as serious as I once was. They've grown older and I've grown younger so that once again there is a gap between us, insurmountable as I sit among discarded party hats and other favors on a layer of sparkling confetti, watching them go.
It was a beautiful party.
I wish that it could have lasted forever.

The Door

When the door first appeared in a corner of the family room where there had never been a door before, reactions were mixed. Some were for opening it, others against. Mother suggested we sleep on it and decide in the morning.  By breakfast, however, we had begun to believe that the door had always been there.
It was a closet, of course, better left undisturbed since we had undoubtedly been storing old jackets and boxes of photographs in there. Father even asserted that he now recollected having put his missing coin collection in there some months ago and this explained why he could not find it under the bed.
In our socks and robes, we drank glasses of orange juice and consumed bacon, eggs, and blueberry pancakes until we were convinced that it was an ordinary Sunday morning.
Father dressed and went out to mow the lawn. Mother got dolled up then helped grandmother into her best velour jogging set and took her to the Indian Casino for the day. The twins dug out their allowance and walked to the Cineplex to see a movie with some friends.
My sister Madge and I exchanged a significant look in the hall way, her brown eyes magnified by her thick glasses. We paused there silently assessing one another’s level of skepticism. It was clear that we both had our doubts, but her closed lipped retreat to her bedroom spoke of a willingness to go along with the others.
I went and stood in front of the door, studying its features. It seemed to me equally plausible that I could remember the door having always been there and that I could remember an empty space where now a door stood. It reminded me of the time I couldn’t remember whether I had left the hose on in the backyard or not. The vivid memory of having turned it off was made less credible by a certain nagging doubt. The same was true of the door.
I could simply open it and know the truth, but was too terrified, not only of the possibility of the mysterious but more so of the possibility of the mundane. I had almost made up my mind to do it when my father came in and suggested taking me out for ice cream. We fetched Madge out of her room and drove to the drugstore for double scoops of strawberry with sprinkles.
The first time that the door opened and one of THOSE came in, we were all sitting in the family room watching Masterpiece Theater on PBS.
Again I would say that reactions were mixed. The cat hissed and jumped off the back of the couch. I looked up and saw the door opening, saw IT coming in and glanced at my family to see if they could see IT too. Clearly they did. I observed each one react, even if for only a moment before they quickly averted their gaze and pretended to be watching TV. Madge continued to stare silently at it. Grandmother, sitting in her wheel chair clucked her tongue and said, “Gads, not this again.” but my mother quickly hushed her, “Ma, we’re trying to watch.”
My grandmother sighed and joined my parents and the twins in their defiant TV watching while Madge, the cat, and I watched IT walk out of the family room and down the hall.
By the end of the week their visits were quite frequent. They came in groups of two or three, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes during the day, to roll, run, and scamper down the hall. They would leave all the cupboard doors open. The cat grew accustomed to them and sometimes chased after them as they frolicked.
While we played a board game, did homework, or ate dinner at the kitchen table, one of THOSE would sometimes stand there and watch. They didn’t usually open packages, but were always interested in food that had been left open or left out. They would drink the remaining milk from our cereal bowls if we left them on the table and would eat the crusts of sandwiches left on plates. We could no longer keep a glass of water by the bed because they would come and drink it while we were sleeping.
Nobody besides the cat, myself, Madge, and occasionally Grandmother, acknowledged their presence. My parents and the twins pretended not to see or hear them. Eventually it began to seem as if they actually were unaware of them. Grandmother would shoo them away in the same manner that she shooed the cat, waving a hand if they came close or were in her path and saying “Git” or “Shoo.” Madge would have staring contests with them, gazing silently and expressionlessly at them. Mesmerized they would stare back.
I took a page from the cat’s book. I would pretend that I wasn’t paying attention to them. Then, just as they got close enough I would whirl, roar, and charge, sending them scattering. I had the impression that they enjoyed it, but to leave no doubt of  my good will I would leave out cups of milk and plates of cookies or cheese.
 At the height of their presence they began to come in groups of up to five. They giggled rather loudly in the night and banged around in the bathroom and kitchen while we tried to sleep. The cat would nap all day, tuckered out from the nightly rumpus. They had started doing little favors for Madge and I, finding items for us that we lamented loosing, fixing broken toys, leaving strange little gifts such as unusual coins and glass marbles.
One day I saw Madge issuing commands in her bedroom, “Pick up my socks and put them in the hamper please. And close the window.” They obliged and stood waiting for the next command as if playing a game of mother may I.
In February, things tapered off. They came less often and in smaller numbers. A week passed when none of THOSE was seen or heard. The cat sat in front of the door waiting, tail twitching. Then one night we came in to watch Masterpiece and the door was gone. My mother stood there and stared at the empty part of the wall looking puzzled.
“I thought there used to be a closet here.” she said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The show’s about to start.” my father answered.
My grandmother shook her head. Madge looked at me. Her lip trembled a little and her eyes got watery, but in her usual style she managed to maintain a straight face. The twins were crunching loudly on a bowl of popcorn. I invited our poor lonesome cat to come sit in my lap and scratched her chin until she remembered how to purr. The sound soothed me, but I couldn’t concentrate on the show. Absently, I gazed on, bathed in the glow and garble of dialogue.
Like Madge, I was saddened by the disappearance of the door, but worse was a nagging fear that by tomorrow I wouldn’t be sure if it had ever been there at all. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure that it was, but the cat still sits in front of the wall sometimes, waiting. Now and then I leave out milk and cookies, just in case.

I Can See Her Now

I can see her now

Stretching for miles
while dancing
lonely in the moonlight,
White long dress
and black flowing hair
Trailing behind her
like the tail of a comet,
Feet gliding over the asphalt
Of a dark empty street,
Touched by rain and wind
Cradled in the warm embrace
The invisible arms
of the endless black night.

I can see her now
Out of the corner of my eye
Eating the remains of the dead
While others gorge on hope,
On dreams of what could be
Of what could someday happen.
I can see her
Laughing at their pain
At their painful smiles
And their cackling cries
Big belly bouncing up and down
Rolls of thick flesh
making waves of pasty skin
Waves that begin everywhere
And end nowhere.

I can see her now
Even if I turn away
Her smile is ever present,
Her eyes have the knowing gaze
Of the one that knows
How it all turns out
In the end.
I can see her now
But I wish I could forget her
And then be reminded
In a sudden flash of lightning
As the Real meets my Illusion
And all fantasies come to an end.

Nora

Sitting on the park bench, feeling the wooden planks eating into the mound of flesh that was the bare underside of her thighs, Nora watched the birds of gray and speckled black and white mutations chasing each other around in circles, kissing , and looking for crumbs. The fading light told her that it was time to go, but she stayed wondering about how common the pigeons painted like Dalmatians were becoming. She had never seen one like these in her childhood. Now they were prolific, popular with their peers.
The shift in the light was subtle, a thing one takes for granted in most cases, but Nora was accustomed to sitting on this precise bench from 3:30 to 4:30 each afternoon. For her, the shift in the atmosphere was quite noticeable as 4:30 rolled along. Usually it signaled her departure when the sky took on that desperate last gleam of brightness. On this day however, she remained, slightly enchanted by it. It was late spring and the days were longer and warmer. It would not be dark until 8:00.
There were very few people in the park. An older woman sat upon another bench further along the walkway. From where Nora sat, she could see beneath the bridge. A couple stood beneath its shadow, kissing. Two wrinkled old men were finishing a game of chess at a table situated 20 yards behind Nora, near the shade of the trees. Occasionally, their excited voices, as brittle as dried leaves and raucous as the cawing of crows, reached her ears.
A man that had once been a tiny speck far off on the path was drawing nearer. He glanced furtively here and there. As he drew closer she could see his peanut shaped nose resting over a fine brown cookie duster of a moustache. His brows were nearly as fine and thick, and they stretched out over his brown eyes like furry black caterpillars. If he had dared to don a cane and black suit or travel with an identical twin he would have been a Thompson and Thompson look alike straight from the pages of a Tin Tin comic book. He stepped passed her, stopping a yard away to peer into the distant shadows beneath the bridge. Then he returned to where she was seated upon the bench.
“Excuse me.” He said. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for someone and I wonder if you might have seen her. She’s a little bit taller than me and has short dark brown hair. Very slender, brown eyes.”
“Uh…” Nora’s eyes rolled around as if she would have to look backwards into her brain in order to remember. She squinted and nibbled her lip. She was fairly certain that she had seen the woman he was describing. When she had first arrived an hour ago, a woman that fit the description had been talking to the man that usually strolled through the park selling helium filled balloons. They had talked and laughed together and eventually strolled away in the direction of the bridge. Nora liked the man who sold the balloons. He was young and handsome with blond hair and a smooth broad face. He usually dressed in a uniform of white slacks and a sleeveless white dress shirt while selling the balloons and had an easy friendly manner. She wondered what this strange man’s relation was to the woman in question. Was this her father? Her husband? Would he be angry to learn that she had left with the man of the balloons?
“I’m not really sure.” Nora answered noncommittally, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head slightly.
“Wait.” The man said and dug into his back trouser pocket. “I have her picture here.” As he withdrew the wallet, Nora could hear the cackling of the old chess players growing louder. She could hear their syncopated footsteps crunching upon the gravel pathway.
“You didn’t have to marry her!” one crowed.
“I did if I wanted to do what I wanted to do with her!” the other proclaimed and they booth hooted and slapped their knees.
“Here.” The man was saying, extending his open wallet for Nora’s inspection, “This is her.” But Nora was glancing behind him at the two old men who were endeavoring to pass behind him. The one nearest to them was laughing so hard that he careened on one foot and bumped into the mustachioed man. The wallet fell at Nora’s feet.
“Ah, ah, ha. Oh, excuse me.” The old man apologized.
“Don’t.” the other quipped, “There’s no excuse. At his age he should know how to walk!”
The strange man smiled over his shoulder at them while Nora bent and retrieved the wallet. She stood and handed it back to the man.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you.” She told him “I’ll be late for work if I don’t hurry. Good luck.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” He said waving his wallet with a quick flick of the wrist and a nod.
Nora smiled. Pulling the strap of her purse over her shoulder, she started off ahead of the old men in the direction from which the stranger had come.
Hurrying up the path, she could hear him asking the older men,
“You wouldn’t happened to have seen this lady here today?”
“No. Sure wish I had. Pretty lady,” one answered and the other whistled. Then the pair laughed their raucous laugh together. As she keep on walking and they stayed behind, she couldn’t hear anything more, not even the sound of laughter.

Playing at the Borders

In the kitchen they sit around the table, all different shapes and sizes. This one is lean and pretty with a cruel little mouth and matching dark eyes set in a bronze face, another is round and white with a plain face void of any make up, a simple face that reveals a sweet disposition, this other one is short with kinky hair and a perpetually sour look on her clean face, and here is another with springy hair and eyes that are on the verge of snapping shut with fatigue. She is a composite of them all, oscillating between their extremes, unable to be completely cruel, incapable of being wholly jolly, with curls and make up, neither thin nor thick. At the head of the table sits the mother, unlike any of them now that age has overtaken her. With her short haircut and spectacles, her casual pants and striped sweater, she could be the mother of any one of them, or of none of them at all. The sisters sit at the table, and so does the sister in law, bouncing a baby in her lap. The brothers come and go, two of them. One is the master of the house, the father of the little baby bouncing at the table. He has a mustache and a weathered air about him. He looks as if he has stepped out of another era, an era when men were stronger, harsher, almost made of stone. The other is bigger and has a more modern look, he wears a hooded sweatshirt, and he can speak as easily in English as in Spanish. A son in law hovers behind the mother, rubbing her shoulders, drinking and joking.
In the living room, the old uncle sits in a chair wearing his brown hat and a red tropical shirt. He tells the story of his retirement to two women, friends of one of the sisters, one is a painted and bejeweled Latina, the other is the only "Gringa" in the whole bunch. His white whiskered face is tanned and his huge belly heaves as he explains that he left San Francisco, out of boredom after his retirement, and he moved to Florida so he could work again without loosing his pension. After seven years of listening to his wife complain about that land, so similar in climate to their home country of Nicaragua, they returned to San Francisco to find that their old house was now worth a million dollars and far from their financial reach. So they live now in Sacramento, economically exiled from the beautiful windy city, permanently aware of the consequences of a whimsical decision. He tells the story of his years of reckless drinking, and of his mother’s collapse in the middle of the street, which led him to set the bottle down on top of the television set and vow never to touch the stuff again. Then he stands to teach the blonde haired gringa how to salsa.
"March!" he tells her, "Forward… and now back."
They put a cake with a little candle set in its center, shaped like the numeral eight, on a high round table. Everyone comes round. A boy sits on a tall stool in front of the cake and his brothers crowd around him, placing gentle hands on one another’s shoulders. For a moment, in the random course of events, they stand in a line from eldest to youngest. Then the room is filled with song and the candle is extinguished with a soft swoosh of warm breath. The birthday boy’s face is pushed into the cake, leaving his nose and cheeks covered in blue frosting. His brother, the second to the eldest, comes to his aid and wipes his face with a towel as carefully and lovingly as an old kind mother. The cake is cut and the children leave theirs lying about, because they dislike the fruit in the center.
The sun has gone and the light is fading. The children run in a long howling line around the outer perimeter of the house. In the back, there is a built-in swimming pool filled with dirt and weeds instead of water. The concrete around the house is cracked and uneven, moved by decades of seismic activity. Behind the house, there are a series of smaller cottages and sheds, white paint peeling from the wooden boards, rusty old nails sticking out of old forgotten corners. The children keep on playing, running, jumping, screaming, laughing. Dangerous possibilities abound. Plenty of opportunities for a terrible accident. The neighbor’s houses are far off across fields that have lost their golden color under the pale sheen of the moon. The few gates which might confine or protect the children have been thrown open through the course of their raucous parading. They make their way up a long dark street, seeing phantoms in the shadows of every shrub. The very eldest of their party permits himself to tremble a little, and the very youngest pulls herself to her full height and presses on bravely so that they are all one, unified in their quest to touch the unknown.
Inside, the house is brightly lit and the music plays loud and lively. The tiniest children, the babies, ride around over the hard honey colored floor on tricycles, crashing into the legs of the adults, happy to hear them curse. The old Mother dances now with the two friends of her daughter, the Gringa and the painted Latina. The three face each other forming a soft triangle which pulses like a beating heart as they move into the center and then back out. As a unit, they rotate 30 degrees and then back, always suggesting with this motion that they will turn in a complete circle, but never quite fulfilling that suggestion. They shuffle in and out, wiggling their hips, and keeping their wrists limp, subtly invoking a thousand years of hidden sacred dancing.
The windows of the house are small, holding the dark night at bay, framing its deep purple color in little squares of yellow, beige and white. From beyond the little windows, comes the laughter of the running children, still together, still playing at the edge of the known world.

Friend Behind The Mask

I extend my hand deep into the quick sands of time and lock my hand around something which has been pulled down deep by the strength of gravity. With grave effort, with great curiosity and a sense of awe, I unearth a little katchina doll, a creature with dark brown eyes and tan skin. Her hair is short now, but I remember when it was long and tangled, a massive web of a thick dark mane. Now I am in her kitchen. The window overlooks Beach street and a white building across the way. It is a beautiful window which lets bright sunshine in.
She chops, stirs and shuffles around the kitchen with a look of seriousness frozen upon her face. Her body is plumper than I remember. The girl I knew had muscular legs and arms, her body was lean. I try to capture her in a photograph. The photo is wrong, this is not the girl I remember, but a glance upward reveals that it is an image of the woman before me. The stress, the anger and frustration, I had thought it was all a game, a mask she liked to try on when we were younger, but now it seems bigger than her, a presence that holds her captive. Her new friends expect it. She expects it. A familiar persona.
Searching for my playmate of old, I continue to take picture after picture. I am always looking at her carefully, looking for what I want to see revealed. So often she is grimacing, it looks as if she is in great and terrible pain. Her face flickers with variations of the endless grimace. There is a smile that is a tight mask of horror, a neutral facial expression that looks as if she is baring her teeth menacingly, and a frown that seems to be the least pained of the three. Her neck is tight.
Sitting at the table at last, so much of the work has passed, and even now that she is more relaxed, she is more of something that I thought was an act as a child. I wait patiently to see my friend and at last, for no particular reason, our eyes meet and she is there for a flash, surprised and relieved that I was waiting there for her. My heart tingles warmly because she is alive behind all that heavy armor.
Later amid talks of workouts in the gym and loss of weight, I suggest that she go back to chasing after ice cream trucks. For a moment she is there again, the girl I remember, and she is glad that I remember. And I do, I do remember Angela. I remember that we tore down the burning white sidewalks, the pads of our bare feet pounding against that scalding surface with a dull thud, our hair flying wildly behind us. Faster and faster we ran, listening to the retreating sound of Beautiful Dreamer played over a loud speaker, unable to slow down lest we should feel the horrible burning sidewalk on our soles, unable to stop lest we should loose all hope of catching that van full of cold treats. We ran and ran and ran. The way I remember it, we never caught the truck. The way I remember it, we didn’t really care if we caught the truck. We said that we did care just to have a reason to run like this, like wild things down the meandering circles that were the streets that made up our neighborhood. We ran until the circle had brought us back home, to her green front yard, to the porch where all the shoes sat unused in a basket near the deep shade of a huge tropical plant.
Today we walk with shoes on, back to her apartment with its big bright windows. We walk back with my youngest daughter and, in the dim elevator, I ask my old friend if she remembers the opening line to Glinda’s song from the Wizard of Oz. I can’t remember the tune.
"I can’t sing." She tells me. But she can sing. I know she can. She can sing every song from the entire movie. She is singing it and dancing in the front yard near the sidewalk while we wait for the ghostly sounds of an ice cream truck to find its way to us.
I extend my hand deep into the quick sands of time and lock my hand around something which has been pulled down deep by the strength of gravity. I will not let go. I will not forget, not ever. So long as I am, I will see to it that our soles burn forever, that we sing, breath easily and run un-shoed for all eternity.

The Pagoda

The boy walked down the dirt path with his eyes tilted down towards the dark brown soil. His older male cousin walked beside him on the left side and his older female cousin walked beside him on his right. They walked on a path that surrounded a small mountain which sat in the middle of a small lake. It was a sunny afternoon caressed by the gentle loving touch of a soft breeze and the sound of pigeons flying in great flocks of sudden enthusiasm. The water of the lake was calm and shiny like a giant green mirror that softly vibrated and subtly shifted with the sound of footsteps and lost words and sighs.
The boy was ten years old. He was very skinny and somewhat frail. His skin was white and soft and his eyes seemed bigger than they really were behind a pair of thick eyeglasses. He wore a short sleeved yellow shirt and blue jeans and dirty white sneakers. The older male cousin was fourteen. His skin was much darker and he was more than a foot taller. His arms were thicker and stronger than the boy’s and his black eyes were steady and somehow dismissive. He wore a white T-shirt and blue jeans. The older female cousin was thirteen. She had light brown hair and very white skin. Her body was as skinny as the boy’s but it seemed somewhat stronger. Her light brown eyes flew in all directions, never resting on any one place for too long. She wore a flowery long sleeved shirt and soft cotton white pants.
As they walked, they pointed out the sights to each other and commented on their significance like explorers on a long trip into undiscovered continents. The boy talked most of all, with a voice that grew louder and surer with each step, as if his knowledge grew stronger as they made their way around the mountain.
The trio came to where a pagoda stood on the edge of the water. It was an open circular structure with a dirty white floor, about fifteen feet in diameter. The railing was white and showed the marks of many visitors in scratches and symbols and promises of love. The pillars were thick and dark red and the roof was light green and pointed in its pyramidal way towards the sky. At the very peak there was a green ball, and, even from where the boy was standing, he could see that the paint on the ball was very faded and showed the gray that was underneath. The three of them stood at the edge of the white railing looking in, a few steps away from the entrance.
"It’s a pagoda… a place of ancient Chinese kings…a place of martial arts and great loyalty and… and wonderful achievements!" the boy said it loudly and proudly, hoping to impress both his cousins, specially the female cousin who had shiny little golden hairs on the side of her neck.
"Why would they have that here?" the girl asked and the boy felt a pang of fear, realizing that he had no answer.
"Probably… somebody… someone came here a long time ago… maybe they wanted a place to look over their kingdom… maybe they needed a place to practice their ancient arts…"
The girl looked at the older cousin with a slight smile on her face and the older boy responded with a similar gesture. Then he turned to the boy and said: "You should go inside… maybe then it will become clearer what it’s for."
The boy hesitated for a brief moment. It was only a little pagoda on the side of a lake. Little boats passed by, just beyond the railing, slowly sliding along the surface of the water. Another flock of pigeons rose from the opposite edge of the lake and flew up directly towards the peak of the mountain. A car honked in the distance. The boy stepped inside. The floor was dusty and marked and cracked and dirty. Leaves were strewn all over it and there was a faint smell of urine in the air. He walked all the way to the edge of the railing and looked out onto the water. A little boy cried out in the distance, as yet another flock of pigeons rose up towards the sky.
From the path, the older cousin called out to him: "Do you want to know what this place is really for?"
The boy turned around to look at his cousin with a sense of apprehension. Both cousins were looking at him now and smiling knowingly, as if they were in on a secret that the boy couldn’t even begin to unravel.
"I told you about the Chinese Kings and…"
"Sure," the older cousin said," but do you want to know what it’s really for?"
The boy hesitated, feeling the breeze against his cheeks and his naked arms.
"Sure, tell me what you think it’s for…"
"It’s not what I think… it’s what I know. And I know because I’ve seen it!", the older cousin said and the girl giggled with his words.
"Then tell me… what is it? What is it for?"
"Men and women come here… they hug tight against the railing… leaning over the water… and they kiss, very hard and for a very long time. And as they kiss they keep on hugging, tighter and tighter… and they stay like that for a long time!" the older cousin said it without shame and laughed loudly after he was finished, but the girl blushed a little even as she also laughed.
The young boy, who was leaning back against the rail, the same rail where maybe men and women kissed, was then filled with a sense of shame and longing. He heard the words and was embarrassed by the laughter that followed so he had to look away from his two cousins. He looked up towards the slanted roof and then around towards the railing as it extended away from him and he imagined a couple kissing there, their lips pressed tightly against each other, their arms pulling the other’s body onto themselves. He imagined himself as a man, pushing a woman against the railing, doing it so hard that she almost fell over into the water. Then he imagined himself kissing her deeply, and he could only faintly imagine what the lips would feel like against his own and what she would do as he pressed himself against her and what they would both do once they were so close that they couldn’t get any closer and how would they know when it was time to stop. His eyes almost closed when he tried to imagine his hand against her shoulder, running down her arm, feeling her skin and her warmth and her aliveness.
"What is he doing?" the girl asked the older cousin.
"I think he’s dreaming… he wants to be kissing in there… he wants to have a girl to kiss!"
And they both laughed once again. Then the boy opened his eyes and he was blushing so hard that it almost hurt and he almost ran out of the little pagoda. But as he stepped across the entrance his right foot stumbled on a crack between the wood and the dirt and he almost fell over. He managed to balance himself without falling all the way to the ground, but his knees buckled and the two cousins laughed harder than ever.
"He wants a girl to kiss! He wants a girl to kiss!"
He looked up at them and specially at his girl cousin whose hair was shining with the sunlight streaming through the trees and he was left without an answer, helpless, embarrassed, blushing and alone.
Then the girl said: "It looked like the pagoda didn’t want to let you go!"
He nodded and nodded at her, desperately trying to reclaim a sense of honor. "Yes, it did feel that way. Maybe it’s haunted…"
The male cousin let out a sigh of disgust. Then he picked up a very small stone and threw it ahead of them down the path. "Sure… haunted…"
"Well, you never know… it really didn’t want to let me go."
The girl looked back at the pagoda as they walked away and then looked towards the lake and the boats that were slowly passing by, only a few feet away. The boy looked back as well, and he thought that maybe it was him. Maybe he didn’t want to leave the pagoda. Maybe someday he would come back and then the haunted pagoda would be waiting for him, fresh and clean and empty, as if he had never left. Maybe then there would be no laughter. Maybe then he would not be in the pagoda alone. Maybe then he would be haunted too, as haunted as this strange little place on the side of a mountain. He turned back towards the path and his cousins were already a few feet ahead of him. He then rushed a little to catch up. A car honked in the distance. A man laughed in a rough hoarse voice. A few dead brown leaves slowly danced in midair as they fell onto the gentle surface of the water.