There was a moment of silence from her end of the line, and then, “That’s a good question!  I’m not sure.”

“I was thinking,” I said, which wasn’t true at all, because I’m fairly sure I came up with this on the spot, “that the 25th would be a good date, because you first came to Portland on the weekend of May 25th, and then you were here again in June on the 25th, and you’ll be here next week, which includes July 25th…and I’ll take you out someplace nice, and it will be our three month anniversary.”  Also the 25th was a good round number that I was unlikely to forget, but I didn’t bring that up.

“Hmm,” she said, “you know, we met just a month before that on April 25th in Santa Fe.”

“That’s true.”

“And kissed for the first time.”

“Also true.”

“So how about April 25th?” she proposed.  ”Then we can have our four month anniversary on my next visit to Portland.”

“Wait.  You want to backdate our anniversary?”  I had to admit I was intrigued by the idea.  You can’t fight fate, not really, and our lives had definitely changed course that night in New Mexico.  Why not?  ”Okay, I’m in.  April 25th it is.”

That first year was an odd one: dating a girl I’d met online who lived in another state is probably the weirdest thing I’ve done in a life filled with weird.  Then one day I flew down to California, and we collected all Sarah’s things and drove her up here to Oregon, and then not too long after that I decided that quitting my job, while probably not the best idea in the Great Depression Of Our Times, was about the only option I had.  And then we moved in together.  Stressful much?  You bet.  But we made it through, a little rougher, a little wiser, and we’re doing fine.

The anniversary of our first year together came and went rather quietly, falling as it did on the heels of the last TequilaCon, and we didn’t say a word because the show must go on, people.  We spent it in Victoria, with friends, taking in a lucky day of Pacific Northwest sunshine in that beautiful city.

I’d be lying if I said we hadn’t had plenty of challenges this second year.  But we’re stronger for that, we survived life coming at us with both barrels blazing by supporting each other through thick and thin.  If it was just me going through all that I know I would have given up, but neither of us gave up on each other, and now we know that if we made it through the lowest parts of this last year we can make it through anything.

Happy anniversary, baby.  Here’s to the next two years.  And the next two after that.  And then after that probably another…aw, heck, you get the idea.

I was in Seattle (briefly) at the end of last month, and counting on my fingers just now discovered that that Saturday was eleven days ago now, which is six and three-quarters months in Internet time (eight months if you’re using the Canadian Internet calendar), which hardly makes for breaking news if I were to write about it now, but — BUT — I had a really good time when I was there, and got to talk with a lot of cool people, some of whom I’d met before and some not, but all of whom were good to spend time with.  Whew!

Oh!  And there was a Starbucks (see FIGURE 1 above).  The first one ever, at the Pike Place Market, which was much more crowded than the last time I was there, but we still had a good time picking our way through the tables and finding sweet things to snack on.

I came away from Seattle, and that awesome meet up full of happy people and cold beer, with a single directive, multiple persons all sending the same request my way: “Write more, you big hairy ape*.”  So, I will.  Honest!  Because I seem to have a fair bit of free time on my hands these days, since in the eleven days since I visited Seattle I seem to have—

—AHHHHHH!!!  Stay tuned.

(*to be fair, I don’t think anyone actually called me a big hairy ape; I usually use this appellation when addressing myself.)

From the edge of the table, just out of my sight, she answered, “The nanomachines are in solution in this gel.  After I finish applying it they will swim between the cells on your skin and into the tissue of your leg, where they will begin to repair the damaged nerves.”

I spend a moment there laying on my side taking this in, picturing these tiny mites waving their legs of carbon atoms, crawling across cell membranes like spiders skittering across pond water, coming at last to the fine strands of nerve fiber, whereupon they would scavenge what they needed and begin to weave new tissue, trailing the gossamer strands of new neurons behind them as they wrote new sensation into my leg.  I turned to look at her over my shoulder.  “And so…it’ll just work?  They’ll just…fix me?”

She smiled.  “Yes, it will just work,” she said, and yet didn’t say at all.  As before I found that I didn’t really seem to be hearing her words so much as I knew what she was saying.  Certainly her lips never moved.

I turned away from her, thinking about this.  Wondering what it would be like when they were done.  I could sense the doctor starting to walk out of the room, and suddenly it hit me: she’d put the salve on the wrong leg. “Wait-” I said, turning over  –

–and fell some indeterminate distance, falling solidly upon my bed, face down, eyes opening with a start to focus groggily on my pillow.  Oh, no.

There’s a trick I learned some years ago, one that I can’t teach, can’t explain how it works, where I can push myself back into a dream if I do so immediately after waking.

pleasepleasepleaseplease

I close my eyes again, and slide back into the peculiar floating warmth of the dream.  My bed gives way to the operating table.  Blankets disappear, and I’m in the hospital gown again.

you have to come back, it’s the other leg, you need to do the other one

I open my eyes again, see the doctor in her white lab coat walking from the room.  “Wait!” I call out to her, in the same speechless method she used to talk to me.  She stops, turns towards me.  I start to tell her about how it’s the other leg that needs to be treated…

...for all the good that will do me, I realize.  I already know this to be false, these walls only mist, the doctor only a shadow.  The magic is gone, the sudden reappearance of the hospital room no longer a miracle now that it is revealed to only have been the result of a cleverly placed mirror this whole time.  For years I’ve tried to pull things back with me into the waking world, coming out of dreams with fingers locked firmly around newspapers from my hometown, fine china teacups, hot breakfasts, bicycle wheels.  I’ve yet to return to my body anything but empty handed.  Surely this superscience cure of molecule-sized robots will be no different.  “Nothing,” I tell her.  “It doesn’t matter.”

The doctor smiles at me again, and walks out of the room, no doubt dissolving back into sand as soon as she leaves my sight.

I close my eyes, open them again.  Roll over on my back.  Stare up at the ceiling of my bedroom.

I wonder about my dream counterpart, if he ever gets tired of driving up and down highways along the coast, walking through ever-changing yet hauntingly familiar cities, jumping off building tops to float lazily to the ground, if he ever gets weary of never being cold or having swollen joints.  Maybe he’d like to change places for a while, go sit in my chair in the office, stare blankly at a computer screen all day while I ride a tiger through the park.  Maybe.

Probably not, though.

Dreams, why must you vex me so?

After a few hours cooped up in my room I decided that what I really wanted to spend my dinner allowance on was a pizza.  A big, greasy pepperoni and sausage pizza.  Yelp! turned up a few promising places; I picked one that sounded about right for what I had in mind, memorized the directions, and wandered down to the parking lot with the truck keys in hand.

There had been few cars when I checked in, but now the first level of the parking garage was nearly full.  Things were a bit cramped, and the truck was a bit longer of a vehicle than I was used to, but I judged that I shouldn’t have too much trouble backing up and driving off in one straight shot.  I climbed back up into the truck and started the engine, slowly backing up and watching the car parked to my left as I turned the steering wheel.  Satisfied that I wasn’t going to scrape up my neighbor on the way out, I turned to look over my shoulder, only to discover that for some reason a man was standing directly in my way.  And when I say directly, I mean it — if I there had been crosshairs mounted on the rear gate of the truck he would have been dead center in them.  Surprised, I stopped the truck, probably less than two feet from where he was standing.

And the man just stood there, looking down.  I could only see the top half of him, and couldn’t make out quite what he was doing.  Was he drunk and had stopped right there to take a pee?  Held frozen in fear by the sight of a mouse?  Being mugged by a dwarf?  No, it wasn’t any of these things, and after a moment I recognized enough of the tell-tale signs to realize that this was a person Playing With His Mobile Device.  I gave him a minute to notice that hey, there’s a big truck immediately to your left, but when he showed no sign of moving along I brought my hand up to hit the car horn…

…and I wondered.

I wondered what it would take to get him to notice that there was a truck right next to him.  Apparently the nearby rumble of the engine in an enclosed parking garage wouldn’t do it.  The bright red glare of the brake lights wasn’t triggering a response, either.  For as close as I was, the exhaust had to practically be blowing on his legs.  Curious as to what it would take to trigger his proximity sense of HOLY SHIT THERE IS A 2-TON TRUCK RIGHT NEXT TO ME, I began tapping on the brake, letting the truck inch slowly back towards him.  So now, in addition to truck noise, diesel exhaust, and giant mass of slowly encroaching steel, he had the added warning factor of bright flashing red lights as I tapped repeatedly on the brakes.  Closer.  Closer.

How oblivious do you have to be to fail to notice a long bed truck slowly filling up the entirety of your peripheral vision?  How had natural selection let this man down that he was unable to detect an enormous truck inching closer and closer to hitting his legs?  How would someone like this fare against a natural threat more dangerous than a tree stump?  I began to imagine him as a caveman on a savanna in mankind’s distant past.

“Moog.  We need to talk.”

“Hey, Buldar!  I found some sticks!  You know, for the fire.”

“Ah…I see that.  Listen, Moog — you’re a nice caveman and all, but I just don’t think you’re going to cut it here.  You can’t hunt.  You can’t gather.  You don’t seem to be able to make fire on your own.  You even got lost inside the cave once.”

“Hey look, if this is because of what happened on the last hunt–”

“Yes, Moog.  This is because of that last hunt, where we were hunting the mighty cave deer, and you were so engrossed watching some beetles that you didn’t notice that stag nearby and it knocked you over into a ditch.”

“That deer totally snuck up on me, Buldar!”

“How, Moog? You were in the middle of a prairie. It just sauntered right up to until it got close enough to hit you with its antlers.”

“But…but…”

“Look…you’re gonna have to go.  Maybe there will be a time after so many winters have come and gone that no man now alive can count them, and the tribe will have grown so large that they can support someone who looks at shiny pieces of obsidian all day but can’t make a decent spear-head or trap a hare, but the glaciers are coming closer and we need everyone devoted to making sure we survive the long cold ahead, and as such there is no place for you in Buldar’s Tribe.  Sorry.”

“Fine!  Whatever, Buldar!  I’ll leave, but I’m totally taking these sticks with me!”

“That’s actually part of an antelope thigh bone and a piece of dried mastodon turd, but you’re welcome to them.  Good day to you, Moog.”

I had to be less than a foot away from him now, and still: nothing.  Concerned that I might actually knock him over, I stopped.  And waited.  And when it seemed that I was going to have to hit the horn and scare the bejeezus out of him, Moog came to the last of his emails and looked up, and then to his left, and made the face that meant WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS TRUCK COME FROM?  Properly embarrassed, he ran around to the passenger window, waving his Blackberry in weak apology.  ”Ha ha, you know how these things are!” he said.  I rolled my eyes and nodded, and continued backing up now that he had vacated the last two feet of empty space I needed to finish backing up.  In an effort to make amends he ran back towards the rear of the truck, windmilling his arms in the direction I was already moving, calling out “YOU’VE GOT PLENTY OF ROOM!  YOU CAN BACK UP MORE YOU HAVE ROOM!”

I shifted gears and gave an absent-minded wave through the rear windshield as I drove away, not sparing another glance for that lousiest of cavemen, hoping that another tribe would take him and his Blackberry in before he froze to death in the coming winter.

“I think so…”

“It’s the same as vector addition!  Trust me!  I’ve got it all figured out.”  It was the second day of our open-water dive certification, and my diving partner and I were the two top students in the class.  We’d out-swam every one else, done perfectly on all the tests so far, and were now on the shore just to the south of the pier at our dive site, preparing to submerge into what was for us as-yet-uncharted waters, right about here.  This was going to be our fourth and final dive for the weekend, and the first without our instructors.  In keeping with our trend of being the best, we’d decided we were going to swim deeper and farther than anyone else.  So far in our dives this weekend we hadn’t come close to the maximum depth of 60 feet at which we were rated at our level — on this dive we intended to go that deep, and see what there was to see that we hadn’t seen yet.

“If this is the right box,” Landon said, tracing his finger around on the little plastic dive table he carried, “then at a max depth of 60 feet we’ve got fifteen minutes for this dive.  That’s not a long time.”

“No,” I agreed.  “How do you feel about this – instead of submerging right away like we’ve been doing, what if we swim out to the buoy there before switching to our tanks and diving straight down?  It’ll give us more time to spend that deep, and we can swim back in the normal way, right back up the shore.  What do you say?”

“I like it!  Check my gear, buddy!”  We spent a minute or so checking each other’s tanks, straps, buoyancy compensators, respirators, and all the other things that were supposed to keep  us alive underwater.  Another few minutes spent hefting our scuba gear onto our backs and strapping into it, and we were ready to go, waddling awkwardly towards the water where we’d be much more free to move.  Fins on, masks cleared, we sighted on the orange buoy about forty feet from shore before biting down on our snorkels and kicking away from the land where most sane people spend their lives.  Once at the buoy, we swapped out our snorkels for regulators, took a few test breaths to make sure our air was working, and after flashing the A-OK sign to each other, jack-knifed ourselves heads down like ducks diving under the water and let the air out of our BCs, heading straight down towards the unseen bottom of Hood Canal.

It wasn’t long before the rocks and seaweed and sponges that line the bottom of the ocean came into view, and I started fiddling with my BC, trying to let just the right amount of my precious breathing air into its air bladders to keep me just buoyant enough to float a few feet above the sand.  I looked around to make sure Landon was still with me, and then checked my diving gauge.  Forty-two feet.  Another A-OK sign flashed at each other to indicate that neither of us was in imminent danger of drowning, and then my dive partner and I swam further away from land, following the gentle slope of the land down towards our target depth, kicking hard because the clock was ticking.

After a bit we came to a little upside down boat, startling a school of fish that had been hiding underneath it.  We swam around it, Landon pointing his flashlight at a crab that went skittering sideways away from us, and I remembered to check my dive gauge again.  Sixty feet.  Finally. I grabbed Landon’s shoulder, and pointed at my gauge, and then pointed roughly south.  He understood, and as we’d planned we were going to swim parallel to the shore to keep from going any deeper for as long as we could before hitting the half-way time for our dive and turning reluctantly in the direction of land again.  Or, that had been the plan – in my mind this sunken boat was a good landmark to find again, since we were swimming directly away from it.  All we have to do is reverse course, find this boat again, and then hang a left and we’ll end up right where we left the shore. Sweet! Of course, there was no way to communicate this insight and change of plan to Landon while underwater.  I was in charge of time-keeping and navigation, though, so I’d just point us back this way when the time came.  He’d see the point of it all later.

I don’t know what we’d hoped to see down there, deeper than any of our classmates had gone.  There’s not much sixty feet down in Hood Canal, just eel grass and sand, and the occasional sponge.  Most fish seemed to keep to a shallower depth, and even the crabs had left us.  Not much light penetrates the deep, so our whole world shrank to a bubble about fifteen feet across.  It’s sort of barren and spooky, to be honest, and it somehow seems even quieter, although there’s little to hear when scuba diving beyond one’s own labored breathing anyway.  I was sort of glad to be able to put this bleak landscape behind me when I checked my watch and noted that we were at the halfway point for our dive.  I swatted at Landon’s flipper, and when he turned to look at me I pointed at my watch.  He nodded, looked at his compass, and pointed in the direction that would take us back.  I shook my head, and in a complicated series of gestures said No dude, check it: we’re going to just go back this way that we’ve been swimming, find that boat, and then hang a left.  It’ll be cool!  That’s how we’ll know we’re lined up to go straight back towards where we left the land.  See?

He looked down at his compass, looked up at me, and pointed at the shore again, saying: Should we not trust in science and the instructions of our teachers to find the way back?  Weren’t you the one who told me how this navigation thing worked at that these compasses would guide us safely home?  Are you high or something?

I shook my head and gestured again.  Goddammit, look at what I am trying to tell you with my hands here.  Us.  Boat.  Hang a left.  Land.  It’ll be rad. Though little of my face was visible through the tiny circle of glass on my mask, I tried my best to make an expression that conveyed TRUST ME I TOTALLY KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT, I’M LIKE A GENIUS OR SOMETHING AND SOON WE WILL BE EATING HOT SANDWICHES.  He shrugged, and we swam back the way I was pointing.  Kicking hard, keeping Landon in my peripheral vision, I waited for the little boat to materialize from the gloom.

I never saw the boat again.

With such low visibility, I would not have had to have been too far off course to have sailed right past it.  It seemed big enough that it should have jumped out us, a welcoming beacon showing us the way home, but we didn’t have to be more than twenty feet away from it for it to have been completely invisible.  I looked down at my watch, realizing that we should have seen the boat by now.  Eleven minutes of dive time left.  I grabbed at my compass, guessed at our location, oriented us towards land, and started kicking even harder.  A minor setback!  We’re still the best scuba divers in this class!

I was hoping we’d see something encouraging to show that we were getting closer, though I don’t know what.  A familiar rock?  A sponge that I might recognize from a previous dive?  Other divers from our class?  It was a big ocean and we were only able to see ten or so feet of it at a time.  At least we seemed to be heading back up, although with out any reference points it was hard to tell.  Worried, I re-checked our direction on my compass, and my depth gauge.  Eighty feet. I stopped in the water, looked around.  Shit shit shit!  Had I really screwed up, pointed us in the wrong direction completely?  We were getting deeper. Were we headed out deeper into Hood Canal, farther from land? I shook my compass in case it was lying to me, checked our direction, and resumed kicking.  This should be the right direction, but we weren’t supposed to have hit eighty feet!  I had no idea where that put us on the dive tables for maximum safe submerged time.  Those tables had a bit of a fudge factor built in, but I shaved two minutes off our time remaining anyway.  Seven minutes.

We soared along in our gloomy bubble, around odd clusters of kelp, the ground racing along underneath us, kicking up silt in our wakes.  Fish sensed us and schools veered out of our way.  The cold was seeping in through my wetsuit, numbing my limbs.  If my breathing regulator wasn’t in my mouth I’m sure my teeth would have been chattering.  Sixty feet again.  Four minutes.

I had no idea where we were, why we weren’t ascending faster, or why the pier I had been hoping to see some sign of hadn’t appeared or where we were in relation to the shore.  And who gets lost underwater on a navigation exercise, anyway?  Fifty-four feet.  Two minutes.

I began to despair that we were not headed in the right direction at all, that despite the compass pointing us in the known direction of land we were just swimming away from everything, either deeper out into the water or farther north, because Jesus Christ we were swimming as fast as we could and surely could have gotten to the next town along the shore by now much less found land and where the hell were we?  Fifty-one feet.  Time’s up.

I reached for Landon and shook his arm; when he was looking at me, I pointed at my watch, jerked my thumb towards the surface.  We’re out of time!  Bail out!  Emergency ascent! He nodded understanding, and we both raised the inflation controls on our BCs and began feeding them air from our tanks to begin our escape towards the surface.

Or at least, I thought that’s what we were both doing.  Mask pointed up as I watched for the light of the surface, I was probably twenty feet up before I realized my dive partner wasn’t with me.  I looked down, and saw him still at the bottom of the sea, unmoving.  I flipped over and kicked towards the bottom, wondering what the hell he was doing.  Please, please don’t let him be going into nitrogen narcosis or any of the other potentially nasty complications of breathing compressed air.  Shaking him to get his attention, I made a complicated series of gestures meaning Goddammit, what do you think you’re doing?  We have exceeded our maximum safe submersion time at this depth and need to ascend!  Do you want the fucking bends or something?!  Here, do what I am showing you with exaggerated gestures and put some air into your BC so we can start heading for the surface. He nodded again, moved his thumb over the control, and together we began to rise, watching the stream of bubbles from our steady and prolonged exhalations to make sure that we were not rising any faster than was safe.

The normal safe rate of ascent is one foot every two seconds, though in an emergency ascent you could rise twice as fast.  The best way to judge this speed was to watch your bubbles as you breathed out and not rise any faster than this.  And breathing out almost the entire time is important during the ascent is important as you get firsthand experience with Boyle’s Law: as the pressure outside decreases, the volume of air in your lungs increases, and you find that you are miraculously able to keep exhaling far beyond what life experience has previously told you should be possible.  It’s like trying to deflate an air mattress while some joker keeps pumping it full of air from the other end.  What would happen if you didn’t breathe out?  Well, take as deep a breath as you can, completely filling your lungs with air, and hold it.  Now imagine you had twice as much air in your lungs.  Seems like it would be messy, doesn’t it?

Eventually the water around us became lighter, and we broke the surface some distance out from the end of the pier, and on the other side of it from where we’d started.  Our instructor, standing at the end of the pier, saw us emerge far from where we’d planned at called out to us.  “Hey!  You guys okay?”

Breathing in the sweet, freezing December air, we waved our arms in the universal scuba signal for We are just fine and not quite as fucked as our unplanned emergency ascent might lead you to believe, thanks. Given the distance involved and how tired we were, it turned out to be easier to roll over onto our backs and kick lazily back towards land.  Landon recovered enough air to say, “Got this whole navigation figured out, huh?”

“Yeah, something like that.  Ugh.”

I got out of town last weekend, dragging myself from the computer and far out of the way of any cell phone antennas, which made me realize how damn often it is that I plug myself into the internet in one form or another.  I twitched a few times from not being able to see what was happening on the twitter, but with the constant calming sound of a waterfall right next to our campsite I soon happily forgot that there was any world beyond what we could see through the trees.

It’s nice to check out every now and again, especially to spend time with some of your best friends.

It reminded me that I haven’t gotten in anywhere near the amount of recreation I’ve been wanting to this year, which is something I’ll have to remedy soon, because this whole showing up to work thing?  Not real rewarding lately.

But you know, I’m happy places like this still exist and that the Pacific Northwest is still as rugged and beautiful as it is. Next summer is going to need far more days like the ones I had this weekend.

I carefully rotate my left arm at the elbow, hearing a few pops.  ”When did I see you last?  It was that night that Niels and I drank that whiskey with you right before we saw District 9, right?  Yeah, I took a pretty wicked spill off my bike two days later.”

“Ouch.  What happened?”

***

It was an overcast Sunday morning, not too uncommon in Portland, even in the summer, and I was making good time on my road bike as I rode towards Gravy on North Mississippi to meet LSL and Sizzle and Kerri Anne and Jenny Two-Times for breakfast.  As a chronically late individual, I was absurdly proud of myself for having left the house more or less on time; as I neared the intersection of Shaver and Mississippi I realized I was going to arrive right on schedule.

A car came around the corner — thinking that I recognized the drivers, I squinted at them for a moment before realizing the people behind the windshield were no one that I-

THUNK

holy-

handle bars are caught. bike is going to

what the-

rear wheel lifting off the ground.  turning over. upside down? I

this is really going to-

bike is flying and so am I, it’s going to land there and I’m going to land

THUMP

I was on my back in the middle of the street, my bike somewhere off to the side.  ”Ow” I said after a moment, and then a stuttering “f-f-f-FUCK” and then a long, drawn out “ohhhhhhhhhhhh”.  My first thought was not actually as to whether or not I was injured or even a blogger’s I wonder if I can get a post out of this, but rather the reflexive mortification of a life-long klutz.  I fell down AGAIN!  People probably saw.  Those goddamn hipsters on the corner are probably laughing at me! I sat up and tested both of my arms to make sure nothing hurt too fiercely.  I started to wonder at how badly I managed to lose my balance as to run into a parked car.  I had cut it close before and clipped my arm against rear view mirrors but had never managed to bump anything so fiercely as to get thrown off my ride and into the street.  I played back the memory and realized that something else had jumped out and caught me right between the handlebars.  Looking up, I saw a man in late middle-age getting out of a parked car.

***

“He opened up his door literally the moment that you were passing by?”

“Yeah!  It was almost like he was laying in wait.  I’d been on that street for a few blocks and hadn’t seen any cars pull over to park, otherwise I would have been a little warier.  There was someone else in the passenger seat who didn’t get out; I assume he was sitting in the car talking to his wife and just happened to choose the exact moment I was riding by to COMPLETELY NEGELECT CHECKING HIS MIRROR and open the door when I was so close I couldn’t react.”

“Son of a bitch.  Did he at least apologize?  Look like he felt bad?  Ask if you were okay?”

“Oh yeah.  He got out of his car looking completely mortified.  I mean in his head he’s probably all, “Well, time to go feed my face, do dee do dee doh” and goes to get out of his car and kills a cyclist.  He asked me if I was okay like seven times in the first minute.”

“And what did you do?”

“Well,” I say, getting into character, “ideally in these sort of situations you want to come out of it looking like as much of a bad-ass as you can.  Someone asks if you’re okay and you want to channel a little Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction and stand up holding a shotgun and growl, ‘No.  I’m pretty fucking far from okay.’”

“Ha!  You do a pretty good Ving Rhames impression, friend.  Is that really what you said?”

“Uh, not exactly.  I didn’t have a shotgun.”

***

The man walked up to me as I finished climbing to my feet and shook both legs to make sure nothing felt like it had snapped on impact.  ”Oh my god — are you okay?”

“Yeah.”  I was flexing my arms again.  No shooting pains, no horrible noises other than some popping, no abrasions.  Nothing seemed broken, but I knew I was going to swell up later and be useless from a hit that hard.  No scrapes either, which I found disappointing, because if I was going to take a spill like that I at least wanted something tough-looking to show for it.

“Seriously, are you okay?”

Now I was just irritated.  I held both hands up and looked at him.  ”Well, what the fuck do you think?  Jesus.”  I turned to see how my bike had fared.

“I mean…wow.  Are you sure you’re okay?”

What I really wanted to do at this point was to show him that he was beneath my contempt by riding off without another word or glance in his direction.  But the chain had come completely off the front and back gears of my bike, and with my left side all banged up I was having some trouble getting it back on on my own.  ”Can you help put this chain back on my bike?  I have to GO.  You are MAKING ME LATE.”

“That looked….are you okay?”  he fumbled with the chain, working it over the gears.  I held up my bike with my functioning hand and put one foot on the pedal to start turning the wheel, making sure the chain was setting.

“Looks like this is still working,” I said, more or less to myself.  I gingerly lifted one leg and slung it over the bike as I eased onto the seat.  ”Well.”

“Hey…I’m really sorry.  Are you okay?”

“Good Lord,” I said, and started pedaling away.  ”Some people,” I muttered.  Gravy was only another block or so away.  I was pretty sure I could manage that far before my limbs would start swelling up and becoming useless.

***

“And so you just — rode off?”

“Yeah, dude, I was hungry.”

He laughs.  ”You’re some kind of bad-ass.”

“Matt, c’mon, we took database design together.  What kind of a bad-ass do you think I am?  Probably more dumbass than anything else.”

“Did you go to the doctor or anything?”

“Nah,” I said, carefully flexing my arm through its range of motion again.  ”They would just end up embarrasing me for a week again and then telling me to take a bunch of Advil for the inflammation.  I can take Advil all on my own.  That, and making sure I get plenty of beer.”

We walk the last few steps to the Rogue Ale House.  ”Well, for a story like that, can I buy you a round?” he asks.

“You know, I can’t argue with that.”

“What is it, mother?”  I asked wearily, addressing her as ‘mother’ to let her know I was on to her.

“Mommy has a MySpace page,” she said, “and I would like you to be my friend.  On MySpace.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, relieved that it was something simple.  ”No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have a MySpace page, mother.”  I had been providing tech-support to the rest of the family for years, and had held my mother’s hand through getting her first ever free webmail account, using a browser for the first time, downloading plug-ins, and configuring MSN Messenger.  I had also been doing my best over the years to keep her up at least somewhat in the loop with internet culture, though mostly this consisted of letting her know the email forwards she sent my way hadn’t been funny since the late 90s.  This was her first foray into social media, and it was done entirely on her own.  Perhaps the old lady was finally starting to get a little internet savvy, although I doubted this since she was still on dial-up and my earlier query as to whether or not the family cat can haz cheezburger had drawn only a blank stare.

“Why don’t you have a MySpace page?  I thought you were supposed to know everything about the Internet.”  A subtle goad at my competence.  I declined to rise to the bait.

“I’ve never felt the need to get one.  Besides, mother,” and now I launched into my own defensive tactics, “you don’t need my as a MySpace friend, you have me as a real life friend.  Also, I’m like your kid and stuff.”

“I know.  I just don’t have that many MySpace friends, and I would like to have more.”

“Well, mom, how about all those nice ladies you go to church with?  Maybe their kids can set them up with MySpace pages so they can be your friends in cyberspace.”

“Hmph.  You know, Ashley is my MySpace friend.”

“I.”  Twitch.  ”What.”  Twitch.  ”Mother, you’re MySpace friends with my ex-girlfriend?”  This sort of thing never happened back when all we had was AOL.  I maintained a good friendship with my ex, but still.  ”How long has this been going on?”

“She was one of my first MySpace friends.”

“Okay.”  Time to recover gracefully and bring this to a close.  ”Well, I’m, you know, glad and stuff.  About your MySpace friends. Including Ashley.  And I tell you what, mother — in the event that I should ever feel the need to get my own MySpace page at some point in the future, I, your second-born son, which is almost as good as a first-born son, promise that I will add you as my very first MySpace friend.  Cool?  Can we go back to enjoying our tea now?”

She considered this.  ”You really don’t have a MySpace?”

“No, mother.”

She sighed.  ”Okay then.”  And all this interweb speak must have triggered another memory, because suddenly she perked up and asked, “What about that webpage you used to have?  Iron Fist or whatever you named it.”

“Oh, yeah.  Ha ha.  Yeah, mom, I don’t really, ah, do that anymore.”  And I am not telling you where I moved it or showing you how easy it is to find with a search engine, because I do not need you calling me again to ask if I am getting any decent meals in between all that drinking I do.

“That’s too bad.  Some of those things you wrote were pretty funny.  It’s just a shame you had to use all that naughty language.”

“Yeah, mom.  I know.”

We shared a wordless moment sipping at our tea, and then: “You promise you’ll add me as a MySpace friend if you ever get a MySpace?”

“Yes, mother.  I promise.  Besides, these days everyone…”

“Hmm?”

“…uh, nothing.”  It’s probably for the best if she doesn’t find out about Twitter just yet.

Calculating:  Two blocks to the nearest bus stop, 3 minutes.  Worst case scenario, I’ve just missed the Number 14.  30 minute wait, followed by 20 minutes to downtown transit mall, walk five blocks to catch the MAX…  ”Hey, Niels, how you doing?”

“Pretty good,” he said, focused intently on keeping his turtle on the race track, barrelling through another power-up.  ”How do I use that star I just picked up?”

“Whatever that button is under your right thumb.  Listen, I’m probably going to bail out after this race.  I can go walk and catch the bus if you want to stick around.”

“Well.”  He took in his most recent victory, being celebrated by countless cheering little digital beings.  ”Nah, I think I’m about ready.  I can give you a ride.”

“You sure?”  Recalculating: 12 minutes by car back to my house, 9 minute walk back to the train this time of night, worst case: I just missed the Red Line, 15 minute wait…

“Yeah, I probably don’t need another drink.”  And so we dropped our magic plastic steering wheels on the couch and wandered out to go find our hosts.

“Tyler! Hey!”

“Hey, guys.  Did you try the sangria?”

“Yeah.  Jeez, but those pieces of fruit really soak up the alcohol.  I probably shouldn’t have eaten so many.  Listen, we’re heading out, but thanks for having us over.  This was a great barbecue.”

“What?”  He threw his hands up in the air.  ”You guys can’t leave already!  It’s early yet!”

“Yeah, sorry.  I’ve…ah, got to be someplace.”

“LAME.”

“I KNOW.  You know where Sibyl is?”

He gestured back at the living room.  ”I think I saw her slip back in there to play Mario Kart with Tam.”

We popped back into the living room, where Sibyl was guiding Luigi around palm trees and sand traps.  ”Hey, Sib, we’re gonna take off.”

“What?!  BOOOOOO!!  You can’t leave yet!  I know you guys don’t have to work tomorrow.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”  Recalculating: add 4 minutes for the Tendering of the Apologies.

“Come on, we need to do a round of tequila shots.”

“Uh.”  Recalculating: add 2 hours recovery time.  UNACCEPTABLE.  ”Sorry, I can’t tonight.”

“COME ON.  You guys can’t be done yet.  What’s the story?”

“You know, I spent a lot of time outside today, and I’m just sort of feeling-”

“Is it a girl?”

I blinked.  ”What?”

She turned to look at me, letting the Wii steering wheel fall into her lap; Luigi ploughed into the side of the track.  ”Vahid, seriously.  Are you going to go see a girl?”

“I.”  Hands in my back pockets, rocking back on my heels.  ”Um.”  Rolling up onto my toes.  Flat on the floor again.  How the hell do they just KNOW these things?  ”Yeah, Sib, I’m gonna go see a girl.”

“Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“Okay.”  She put the wheel down and stood up.  ”Then come give me a hug.  It’s good to see you boys.”

“It’s good to see you too.  We’ll have to get together soon and have a margarita night like we did last year when strawberries came into season.  I’ve still got that bottle of premium tequila at my house.”

“We need to.  Soon.  Take care.”

“You too.”

As we ambled down the sidewalk to the car, I reflected on what a strange and potent ability this “woman’s intuition” must be.  Could it be taught, this mysterious power to look into men’s souls and know what they were up to?  She hadn’t even been looking at me when she’d guessed why I was leaving.  Why, with such a power, I could rule the earth!  No mortal could stand against me!  Entire nations would be forced to-

“It’s gonna be another scorcher tomorrow, bro,” Niels piped up.  ”Forecast is saying it’s going to be in the 80s again.”

“A day that hot is going to require drinking some cold beers,” I observed, reasonably.  ”You in?”

“Always, my friend.  Always.”

Then again, men aren’t terribly complicated creatures.  Perhaps there isn’t as much to it as all that.

“Where are you headed?”

I tend to keep my Saturdays for myself.  The long week is for the office, and Friday nights are for goofing off with my friends, and I might even be convinced to see people on a Saturday night if I’m up to it, but Saturdays I tend to keep to myself all day, walking anonymously through crowds, sitting in parks with a good book, holing up in coffee shops with my journal.

“Down to Powell’s, probably.”  Bookstores are another good place for me to go and be alone with my thoughts.  Even if I’m in no mood to buy there’s something comforting about walking among the stacks of books, running my fingers along their spines, breathing in all the words printed on all those pages.  It seems like a perfect place to spend a few hours, especially since the sky is mere minutes from really opening up and drenching us.

“I don’t really have to be anywhere for a while,” Jay says.  I hadn’t planned on meeting him here, but I’d tweeted that I was heading to Farmer’s Market before leaving the house and he’d honed in on me there, and we’d chatted a bit over breakfast purchased from the stalls.  Afterwards I’d walked with him to his truck, where he had just finished buckling his son into his car seat.  ”Do you want to go get a coffee or anything?”

Saturdays I tend to keep for myself, but I don’t get to see my friends nearly enough, now that we’re all playing at being grown-ups.  ”Yeah, let’s do that.”  We hop into his truck and we’re off.

With old friends I think no conversation really ever ends, so I know exactly what he’s talking about when he picks one up where we left it six months ago.  ”If you wanted to write and draw comic books, why’d you pick computer science?”

I look over at him, wondering if there’s a question within a question here.  Most of our college friends that I still kept in touch with had no small amount of burning discontent with our chosen field, chafing against jobs they didn’t find challenging, careers they didn’t find rewarding, yet didn’t seem to know what else to do.  Jay alone out of our group seemed to be the only one who’d found a professional niche he enjoyed.

I decide he’s not asking me because he’s looking for an answer for himself.  I take the question at face value and see if I know the answer.  Because it’s where I fit.  Because it was the hardest thing I knew how to do.  Because I didn’t think I was cut out for med school.  Because I thought it would make my dad proud, and god if that isn’t just a pathetic reason.  Words always come to me later when I write them, but not always when I am driving in the rain, so when I open my mouth to answer all I say is, “I don’t really know.  I used to have a reason, I guess.  But a lot of my reasons changed.  And anyway you and I wouldn’t have met if we hadn’t had that assembly language class.”

He nods, accepting this.  ”You think you’ll look for a coding gig you like?  Maybe move down to San Diego, get that job with Todd?”

“I don’t think so.  In fact I think I’d like to do something else entirely.”

“But what?”

Scribbles in notebooks, pages turned and highlighted, numbers crunched, clockwork turning, figures moving across a map.

“You’ll see.”