Lou at the Office

for my father, Louis Kay

Lou left the office with a folder pushed against the cardboard belt that cracked along his waistline. He wore no coat though the temperature was near freezing and his cigarette would barely light. Smoke hit his windshield as he seated himself behind the wheel and the folder splattered onto the passenger seat. "Forward," he thought. He put the cigarette out against the top of a window that is permanently open about an inch.

But first he ripped the crummy belt off, tearing it to bits so that the fake leather covering separated from the cardboard. He laughed uncontrollably. "Bullshit," he said out loud.

A rancid and boney cough finished out his laughter and he shook it out with his fingers and pressed them against his thighs and felt rapidly along his pockets. Then he hit his chest and got his car keys out. With the other hand, he whipped out a cigarette and chewed. "Yellow." The key with the yellow top was put in the ignition and the car purred. "Yallow, Yellow."

"How many damn times do I have to come by this car and find you talking to yourself, Lou? I told you, the only way to keep from being a crazy old motherfucker is to chase beautiful things--with your camera, that is," said Ying a senior Math professor from the college nearby whose taxes Lou did for about twenty years now. Ying's voice projected onto Lou's windshield, but he appeared almost invisible to Lou as he weighed maybe 70 pounds and stood no taller than 4 foot 5. But, every time he talked, Lou thought god himself came down and held a recording session inside his car. He did not turn around. For about five seconds, he shut his eyes.

" Ying. I had an old fashioned. Fold up kind, like in the movies. Amazing thing. Like you can only see in museums. Takes all day just to set it up, but the...most..wondrously ingratiating thing. Took a picture of my family, they looked like a cloud floated in and around them. My mother and father and brothers and sisters. A.J. has it. I think."

"So, get it out"

"Gone with my ex-wife and riddance, too, please. No negotiation."

" That's too bad, but Lou they make--"

"Not. Not. Just wouldn't."

"Abstract mathematics?"

"Ying, honest..."

"Just take care of yourself, Lou. You're the only one who knows how to lie with the face of St. Peter for me. You get home safely." And Ying walked away, measuring his footsteps against each other, not really knowing why he had watched Lou or said what he did, and hoping to return to some habit of the night that would take him out of this sudden, contemplative mood.

"Nonsense," spat Lou. "NONNNNNNNNNSENSE." He pounds the flat of his hands on the wheel, then presses his forehead on it for ten seconds. "Drive on. Got to drive on."

"He wishes he had SOMETHING for me to lie for." "He don't know. Fucking lifetime it takes. The whole thing. SOMETHING."
Lou lit his cigarette and the car went forward as the smokering bathed the avenue behind him.