I Do This I Do That- Chapter 16

XVI. A Gaping Hole


Every Monday morning is like a brand new year. On this day, the morning after Whim day, I woke up to a clean slate, the promise of sun rays, and the vile chirps of pigeons scouting for food on the rooftop.

I'd slept on the roof accidentally.

After the cab ride back, I opened the door to my descending stairway and the hall light was burnt out, perhaps from the day storm. After an impulsive shutter of fear, from predators, rapists, whatever, I climbed up the fire escape and maneuvered myself onto the bright roof. It was a move to merely pass the dark time.


That night, nothing was brilliant or beautiful about the view, except for the interesting chaos of the streets and the myriad of ethnicity spanning down the smokey block. I could see the varieties of cuisines, the differing markets per street. The sky was like a grey dome, sweeping over the urban span and binding these intricate particulars into tiny compartments of the same city world.

Everything that remained awake crawled passed me, and I sat still, with the intention of going inside when my dress dried. I soon fell asleep, despite the cool air and the stiff roof, which held no semblance of a bed.


Now the pigeons shuffled around like desperate hunters, sickly purring and spastically teetering between the various telephone lines. One landed on my chest, "vooo, vooo!" It's claws were prickly through my cotton dress. I sat up startled. I had pigeon poop on my leg, adjacent from the van accident gauge. It was a blemish on an otherwise clean promise of Monday. I shooed the flying rat away.

I'd had another vivid dream, and the premonitory nature of the thing lingered on my mind. I dreamt I was back in the unbeautifed neighborhood, presumably to attend another Catholic mass. The church was dark and empty. A woman in fantastically bright clothing sat in the front pew. There was one trickle of light coming in from the north side of the church, and it hit her directly on her hair. It was luminous, and I was quite arrested as I approached the lit woman.

It was Cait. But not the uninhibited, diaper-wearing friend I knew, but a domesticated version of Cait, with pinned and combed hair and freshly done makeup. Her legs were crossed daintily, her hands sat delicately in her lap. Her demeanor indicated a lifetime of accumulated grace. She was radiating, not just externally but with tangible joy from the inside out. It was the type of palpable joy I'd imagined would capitulate from birth right, from good genes and money. Boat people probably had it. It reminded me of the priest's sermon about following God's plan to obtain happiness.

She was a delicate version of herself. It was impossible. In my dream I kept reminding myself how impossible it was. The real Cait was probably waking up naked somewhere; drunk, or in her own urine, still at the beach or hankering from dehydration in empty corner.


The smell of tacos shuffled through the warm wind. I could hear Javier and his co-working family members opening and closing the back gate, and the smells of grease and tortilla shells elevated towards me from their revolving door. It made me remember that I hadn't eaten in several hours, and my stomach thundered at the thought. I carefully lowered myself down the brick wall to the fire escape stair. The wrought iron rattled while I climbed down. Javier was in the ally, tinkering under the hood of his car.



"Hola vesina..." He said it like I'd done something wrong and he was aware of it.

"Hola vesino." I was short with him, and shuffled fast towards the apartment.

The front door was slightly open, and I could not recall if I'd remembered to close it securely in my impetuous move towards the roof. Downstairs, the apartment door was wide open too. A light was on, which I was sure we'd remembered to turn off when we'd left for Whim Day.

"Cait? You here?" No one answered. I walked into the kitchen. A few cupboards were open, as though they'd been sifted through. Her bedroom was in shambles, but nothing was out of the ordinary about it. It was unusual for her to come home and then leave without writing a note or calling me. I had a few texts from Wheeler, but nothing from Cait. Had I left the door open, then any homeless wanderer could have possibly came in during the night, searching for food or money... We didn't have anything of value to be stolen.

One of the texts from Wheeler said, "Emergency! Where are you?" It was at 4 a.m. Another text at 4:45 said, "What's your address?"
"Curious," I thought. I responded with my address, and nothing else.

A few minutes later Wheeler texted me back and said, "be there in 10."

I couldn't imagine what the emergency could have been, but the nature of both Wheeler and Cait left the possibilities endless. I went into her room to pull some of the things we'd put away back into the living room. The posters were stacked haphazardly on the floor. I pulled them back out and set them against the living room wall. Her room was hot and dark, and the air smelled like sweet candy and sweat.

A gaping hole in her bookcase caught my attention. All of her organized Martha dvds were gone. Every last one of them. Only an outline of dust remained on the shelf. Perhaps other things were missing too, but it was impossible to tell in the chaos of her belongings. I couldn't imagine why she, or anyone else would take the collection out of the apartment. Who else would want them? I continued to search around for clues. A box of crackers were missing from the kitchen cupboard, and some crumbs were scattered on the counter and floor. Nothing else was missing, as far as I knew.

After a half hour passed, Wheeler knocked angrily on the front door.

"Paigebrook, you there? Let me in!"

I opened the door and he brushed passed me inside. He looked like he hadn't slept, and he paced through the apartment nervously, almost panting. His eyes were wide and red, and he was slightly shaking. He was wearing the same dress pants and shirt, which were both now wrinkled and dirty looking.

"Where is she? Is she here?" He riffled around through every part of our place; looking under her bed, behind the shower curtain, and in every closet in every room.

"Slow down Wheeler! What is going on? She's not here," I said.

"Fuck!" He screamed and hit his fist against the wall. "I lost her. I lost her in the water last night," He said.

"What do you mean, you lost her."

"We were on the sandbar, talking about Wiley and the accident. We floated on our backs for awhile. She started talking about professional swimmers. She was imitating all the different strokes; the breaststroke and the backstroke, the butterfly, even the fucking doggy paddle. She wanted to race me so we started swimming out further... She kept singing that Patsy Cline song, and I went underwater for a long breath and when I came back up I couldn't hear her singing anymore. She was just, gone. I couldn't find her! The water wasn't that deep, but the waves.. and it was dark, and I don't know, she was gone."

"Oh my God." I put my hands over my mouth and sat down, like I couldn't breath and stand up at the same time.
"She had just, disappeared. I called her name over and over and over again. I swam everywhere. I ran up and down the beach. She wasn't anywhere." He lit a cigarette and handed me one too. "Fuck!" he repeated.

"Well, we need to go look for her again!"

"I don't know what to do Paige... I'm freaking out. Should we call someone? What the fuck!" He was talking nervously, uncontrollably.

"I'm gonna get dressed, and we're going back to the beach. We'll look again, maybe she swam to shore and passed out."

"Should we call the police?"

"I don't even know her real last name.."

"Why the fuck not? You live with her!"

"We lease in my name.. I don't know. She'd gotten into trouble, she changed her name. I don't know the whole story. It never mattered to me!"

"Great. You just move in with someone, and you don't even know the girl's real name?"

It was ironic to me, because he didn't know my real name either, and he'd likely had sex with Cait in the water and he barely knew a thing about her. Living with her was arguably less intimate.

"I'm getting changed, and we're going to look for her." I finished my cigarette and changed into jeans. We turned off the light and walked upstairs.

"I won't lock the door, just in case she comes back." I said.

"Good idea," said Wheeler.

"You know it's funny, because when I came back to the apartment this morning, the light was on, and her Martha Stewart dvds were gone. It's the only thing she cares about."

"Well that's a sick thing to do, if she did this. I've been out of my god damn mind thinking she drowned or passed out in the water!" he lit another cigarette. This one was a black and mild.

"Let's just go look for her."

We hailed a cab back towards the beach. Traffic was thick and the uncovered sun made liquidy mirages on the forward pavement.

"I keep hearing her voice singing that damn song," said Wheeler.

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 15

XV. A Puddle of Blood and Fresh Water


Wiley pulled into a dark ally and a million inhumane scenarios bombarded my mind. 'Here comes the rape and murder', I thought. Wheeler and Cait seemed less apprehensive. Cait smiled and hummed and could not have looked more care-free.
"What's here?" said Wheeler.
"Pickin' up my friend. Sit tight." He smiled and the jazzy rhythm of his voice resonated in the van when he closed the door and ascended the narrow wooden stairwell beside us. Cait picked up a pretzel from the ground and ate it, as though it was just a snack from a freshly opened bag.

In less than a minute Wiley jumped back into the driver seat. He scooted his chair even closer to the steering wheel. The sliding door to the back opened and a small woman jumped in. She looked like a number of races, and she hunched down and crawled like a dog to a relatively empty spot on the van floor.
"This Beatrice," said Wiley, looking back toward her in the rear view mirror.
"How do you do," said Cait.
She smiled up at us strangely.
"Hello," she said.

She was wearing a dull calf length green skirt and a white shirt. Her hair looked like soot in the light and she had an indiscernible amount of cracks in her face, from age or what have you. The distracting panel of cracks around her lips and eyes made her real features seem vague. She wore sandals and her toe nails were long and unkempt. I looked down on her and she looked up at me like a beaten animal, completely nerved.

She reeked of weed and I heard Wheeler inhale deeply in the front seat, like he smelt it and he wanted some. Wiley must have shared the craving. He bumbled into his jacket pocket and pulled out a joint and lit it. He must have been driving below the speed limit now, but the pretzels and the weed and the mut-like woman on the ground were plenty distracting from the world around us. Whatever street we were on or whatever neighborhood we were in was completely nebulous to me. Plus Cait's weight had put my legs to sleep and the buzzing blood pressure tingled and hurt slightly. The three of us smoked and we passed it to Beatrice, who retrieved it like a treat, then she sort of slumped down into the van mess.

The van was full of smoke now and Wiley turned up the music dial. A rhythmic jazzy-rap song played, and he turned down the volume for a moment and said, "You hear this? It's me. This my mixed tape." He turned it back up. Wheeler moved in his seat as though he liked it. It wasn't good though, not at all. The song was more or less about getting drunk under a bridge, at least that was the message I'd gathered. His voice was just a slightly more rhythmic version than his speaking voice. Everyone seems to be under the impression that they have sharable talent.

Wiley sang along to his own voice.

"Little worlds," Cait whispered to me.
"Yup."

The van jolted and we all became momentarily startled. Wiley slowed down and turned down the music.
"What the fuck was that?!" said Wheeler.
"I hit a cat," he said.
"Nooooo!" Beatrice yelled like it hurt.
"That's a shame," said Wheeler.
I looked behind me and the black cat was now just a dead thing, dwindling behind us as the van moved forward.

After a few minutes of silent mourning, Beatrice lifted her sad head from her folded arms and made awkward eye contact with me. I darted away from her stare but glancing back to her moments later, she had not changed her fixation.

"So. How do you two know each other?" I asked, like it really mattered, like I really cared at all how these two crazies began joy riding around the city together. I'm sure they'd met in some nihilistic hiatus of smoking and drinking. Probably under a bridge.

She said nothing, but continued to stare up at me like I was an apparition she could not believe existed. 'Okay then,' I thought, rolling my eyes back towards the direction of the windshield.

Wiley kept turning up the dial of his own song, which was now playing on repetition. We must
have been zigzagging through neighborhoods to not have reached the lake yet, and I began to get a bit paranoid that we'd been scooped up into this world for the remainder of the night. Cait and Wheeler had assimilated. They both sang and hummed. "Under the bridge is the bottle and the kid and I passed out in something brown," they sang. Beatrice continued to stare.

Wiley inhaled the last bit of the weed and the van hiccuped over a speed bump. "Fuck. Where'd it go," said Wiley, as he reached down onto the floor with his upper body. The van veered right as Wiley's hands were now both on the ground searching for the joint. Beatrice screamed as we neared the lamp lit curb. The loud shrill left us all suspended in the few remaining seconds before hitting a fire hydrant. I saw the incident happening, as I think we all did. Wiley and Wheeler flew into the deploying air bags. Cait repelled from my lap, hitting the back of Wiley's seat, then collided into me as we both propelled to the floor. Beatrice slid with the pretzels and the garbage like cargo. She continued to scream. The hydrant broke open and water exploded into the sky, then pelted down angrily on the van windows. Wheeler jumped into the back and helped Cait up. His forehead was bleeding and the blood trailed down his face while he lifted her off of me.

"We have to go, now," he said.

He opened the sliding door and the three of us trickled out sorrily. Wiley looked immobile on the steering wheel, and we hopped over Beatrice who cowered on the floor in shock. My bones felt like they'd disassembled themselves inside my skin. My right leg especially. We were right outside of a tall pink apartment building. The sidewalk was well lit and bystanders, traffic, time itself seemed to be halted around the scene. Smokers outside of a dive bar across the street speculated the accident noisily. We ignored them and pushed east.

Wheeler moved quickly ahead of us, and we limped behind him like shadows towards the lake. My right shoe was damp inside with blood, and our hydrated clothes made rhythmic squeaky noises.

We emerged onto sand bordered grass from the North Avenue underpass where loud waves and ceaseless traffic collide. We said nothing to each other. We did not revel over the spectacularness of the thing. We did not exchange any questions about our shock, about Wiley or Beatrice. There were no wows or whats... It was all already too palpable to be reiterated by words.

Wheeler left his sweater vest and slacks on the sand and dove into Lake Michigan naked. Cait followed in the same manner. Her skin glowed stark underneath the bright night sky. I waited behind them then slipped off my galoshes and flats, feeling the cool sand under my feet. I kept my dress on and walked into the water. I dove into a wave and the fabric of my dress felt weightless around me. The water pressure resisted me while I swam east.

I could remember swimming clothed with Lindy when we were little. It seemed more freeing, more rebellious to us than swimming naked. Maybe because wearing the wet clothes afterward permeated the event. Putting on dry clothes after skinny dipping kills the experience. I remember Lindy and I walking through our little downtown drenched from a clothed swim. All of the strangers watched us, wondering. We laughed; feeling rebellious, spontaneous... I thought of it vividly now. Those feelings resurfaced as though I'd traveled back in time 10 years. Beatrice and Wiley dissipated. I was 13, swimming in my dress with my sister.

I floated back towards the shore and laid on the sand, cold and refreshed. I felt like I'd drank the whole lake and it was working medicinally inside me to heal my sore body. Cait and Wheeler were now bobbing heads on the distant sandbar. I could see now that they were kissing. It surprised me, but I didn't care. I grabbed my shoes and Cait's purse and snuck towards the road to hail a cab, heavy with water and sand. My leg and head both throbbed in unified pain.

Whim Day was over. Not just this one in particular, but I felt done with the whole idea of the thing. On other days Cait and I had seen how despicable the world around us could be. On this Whim Day I could only feel despicable about my own contribution to the world. Waiting on the side of the busy road, I was anxious. I had an anxious need inside me. It was for goodness, for whole grains, for dry clothes, for order. I got in the cab and headed north, leaving a puddle of blood and fresh water on the sidewalk behind me.

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 14

XIV. Jam Packed with Ado

After the novelty of dancing subsided, Cait looked blasé and depleted from all the Don-dipping. The song ended and she curtseyed towards Don, like "I'm done now." She walked over to us with slow bouncy steps.

"Who's this guy?" She said, looking at me.

"His name's Wheeler. I met him at Nihil the other night when you were break dancing. Remember?"


"Nope. What up." She winked at him.

"You've got some dance moves!" said Wheeler. He was a bit too loud and Cait and I exchanged a look, noting that it was so.


"What can I say? I'm an artist..." She raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips. She was now a true mess, after the gym and the jog and the twirling, but there was not an ounce of restrain in any part of her physical demeanor. Inhibitions were foreign to her, as exemplified now by her stomach hanging over the panthette shorts, sweaty and slightly heaving from post-dancing fatigue. Boasting over her own graceless form was the real art.


After explaining the concept of Whim Day to Wheeler, we decided to make a move to a new destination. While Cait gave an elaborate exposition of high school Whim Day and Gary Indiana, Panther Gym and the Polish woman we stalked, Wheeler listened intently. He had a way of listening that was so refined. Sure the content of her tangent was greater than ordinary small talk, but Wheeler had genuine listening skills that were more than admirable.


He looked at us both like he really meant it, like he really meant it that he was listening. His demeanor made everything she said seem more important. I've found that most people spend the majority of conversations seeking ways to turn the dialogue attention towards themselves. Wheeler didn't try to provide his own outlandish autobiographical bull to prove he was also unique or interesting, he just listened like he wanted to know. It was quite a remarkable thing, and while I watched him take it all in so nicely I questioned now, in comparison to the apex of his conversational attention, if any one else had ever really listened to me at all.

Cait looked at me, "So what do you think?" She said.

"What?"

"I said, you wanna change back into our dresses and get the heck out of this splinter?"

"Yeah, yeah."

We left Wheeler at the bar and went to the bathroom to change. When we came back he was leaning towards Don, talking loudly about whiskey brands and the neighborhood and the shifting businesses near Moon Saloon. He had ordered three shots of Jameson for us, two for the older ladies anchored to the other end of the bar, and he'd likely drank one by himself before we walked back out. He allocated them up and held his glass in the air.

"To all you fine people," he said.

The ladies clanked the glasses and raced their gulps. I drank slowly and it was warm and smooth.

"Thanks Wheels," said Cait, "Shall we?"


"Let's get the fuck outta here," he said. His right eye was getting lazy.


Cait blew Don a kiss.

"I'll see you Don Juan," she said.


Outside the sky was dense with cool fog, and the dark streets and ugly trees made the block seem far removed from the beautified city. I squinted up and could see a dim light, the only visible star.


"Where to?" said Wheeler, lighting a menthal cigarette. He handed one to Cait after she jabbed at his arm like a bum.

"Straight," She said. She started walking.

"Should we get a cab?"

"If one drives by."

The street was strangled dead and the road and block were nearly motionless, aside from a westbound breeze. The scant tree limbs looked like acrobat legs mid-flip. They shifted west with the wind, making high pitched leaf-whipping trills. Cait walked fast ahead of Wheeler and I, and we bantered nonchalantly about this and that; random conversational garbage. He looked at me sporadically with the same attentive leer, like he was listening so hard he could barely stand it.

He grabbed my hand. His palm was sweaty, and the contact between us felt blatantly platonic. I felt nothing, like I could have been holding Maddison's hand, or a bundle of leaves. A strong desire to remove my hand from his hand and wipe his sweat off of me bombarded my mind, and I could hardly follow his random enthused comments. My arm felt like a leash attached to an unpredictable dog. Wheeler bounced exaggeratedly, and our steps were out of sync. I kept thinking to myself, "Why the fuck are we holding hands," but I didn't have the energy to pull away and initiate some awkward impassivity between us. I hadn't exactly invited Wheeler, but it was clear that he'd be spending the evening with us.

"I really want to get out of this city," he said, "and maybe move somewhere like, Tahiti, or Guam. Guam could be cool."
"I've never really considered Guam," I said.
"As a place to live?"
"Considered it for anything, really."
"Oh you should! The Chamorro culture is jam packed with ado."
"Is it?"
"I'm confident that it is."
"I feel like that's sort of Shakespearean way to say it's full of shit."
"No no. Sans shit."
"Why are you such a Guam buff?"
"It's not exclusive to Guam....I'd say I'm just a 'buff' in general." His tone of voice made it seem like he had a ceaseless smile. In contrast I sounded like I had a ceaseless frown.

"I wouldn't consider myself a 'buff' in any category of knowledge really. In fact, I pride myself with not being sure of anything at all." I sounded humdum, but it wasn't a lie.
"You seem like a smart girl, I'm sure that's not true." He looked at me so often it was starting to make me uncomfortable. I wasn't sure of which part of our encounters had given him evidence that I was a 'smart girl', but oh well, I thought, I'd rather be given the benefit of the doubt than be considered an idiot right off the bat.

"Well thanks," I said.
"You ever just get obsessed with things?"
"No not really," I said. I wanted to change the subject but felt obliged to say, "I'm guessing you do?" I could tell it was what he wanted me to ask.
"Absolutely."
"What sort of things?"
"Anything. Theories, hobbies....words...Once on a 5 hour plane ride I wrote the word 'dichotomy' over and over and over again in my notebook. I don't know why really. Couldn't stop. I almost filled the whole thing."
"Your hand must have been bleeding after that."
"Yeah...it cramped a bit. So, lately I've been borderline obsessed with dualism. You know about it? Like philosophy of the mind?"

"What the fuck. Really guy?" I thought to myself, but didn't say it out loud because I couldn't disrespect his supreme listening skills by not reciprocating the favor.
"Semi familiar...Not a buff though," I said.
"Well I'll consider myself a dualism buff after more research, but I can't stop fucking thinking about it." He seemed frustrated over the fact.
"What sort of dualism?"
"Every sort. Mind and body, good and evil, motion and stillness, males and females, light and dark, fucking everything.. Literally everything has an opposite. I can't stop thinking about it. It makes me feel fuckin'...divided, you know? Like two people.." He was not remotely hum dum.
"Yeah I guess. I mean, I understand it, but why does it matter?" I felt like yawning but really didn't need to do so.
"You never feel like your mind and your body disagree?"

I felt like that all the time, including at that exact moment. My body wanted to repel my hand from the grasp of his sweaty palm, but my mind could not muster the courage to begrudge him. It wasn't novel to me or anything though. If our minds and bodies were in perfect unison at all times, we would be somewhat unstoppable. My body's laziness being discorded with my mind's ambition, or vise-versa, could really be the sole contribution to all of my categorical failures, come to think of it.

"Yeah..It matters. But what made you stuck on the topic?"
"You know when you get a song stuck in your head? Even if you don't like it? It's sort of like that, but with huge concepts, or just weird shit in general. Like... a few weeks back I couldn't stop thinking about pesticides."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Just because they're everywhere and they're good and they're bad."
"Which lead you to dualism?"
"Right."
"I bet you and Cait would get along really well." She was about a half a block ahead of us now.
"Nah. I hate dancing." He lit another cigarette, this time it was a Black and Mild.
"You always carry more than one type of cigarette with you?"
"I never buy packs. I usually try to bum a couple at a time off of random smokers. I save em' and keep em' in here." He pulled out a silver box. "I never know what kind I'm gonna smoke. I like the unpredictability."
"I love the way Black and Mild's smell.."
"Do you? Is it your favorite scent?"
"No. My favorite scent.... It's probably used books. I love that smell."
He laughed half-heartily.
"I like the smell of disinfectant. The odorless kind... My parents sent me to boot camp one summer and I spent a lot of time scrubbing toilets. It sounds like sort of a fucked up deal or whatever but it ended up being like, the greatest summer of my being."
I laughed half-heartily too.
"Why'd they send you to boot camp?"

"I dunno, I was just sort of a weird kid. I used to like, run away all the time, literally. Like we'd be at the grocery store and I'd just take off running like a bird busting out of a cage or something. I never really planned it or anything, it was just instinctive. I'd get this weird impetuous feeling, and I'd just run. One day I was in Sears with my mom. We were just walking normal down some aisle and I just took off running in the other direction. She was calling my name or whatever but I just kept going like I didn't hear her. They didn't find me until the next morning. A couple days later they'd signed me up for some boot camp. My mom was all a wreck about keeping tabs on me and she picked up all these brochures about some frickin' disciplinary camp in the middle of nowhere."

We started to walk a bit more in-sync but his hand was still sweaty and uncomfortable in my palm. Both my mind and my body were in unison on the contention.

"Where'd you go when you ran away?"
"I dunno... I was just hanging out in some park. I slept in some jungle gym. I didn't run away to get drunk or anything like that. Fuck, I was like 12 years old."
"That's.. odd Wheeler. It really is."
"I know it."

I kept walking through his Black and Mild exhales. It made the dense fog sweet and smoky. We immersed from the residential blocks and came to a better lit street. Traffic was light, but encouraging. Cait had stopped to wait for us.

"I dunno about you guys but I'm dying. It's fucking hot outside. I say we head towards the water, figure out our plan there," she said. She was waning with sweat.
"Sounds good let's get a cab," I said.
"Nah nah. I do this all the time. We'll get a ride," said Wheeler. He walked off the curb towards the street. A few cars passed, and Wheeler moved closer to the moving traffic. A boxy grey van approached and Wheeler raised up his arms and made big waving gestures. The van pulled over next to us and the driver rolled down the window, manually.

He was a skinny black man sitting uncomfortably close to the steering wheel. His gaunt face looked lighter than his neck and the inside of the van looked cluttered with hanging fixtures on the rear view mirror and hapless junk piled on the dash.

"You alright?" He said.
Wheeler walked over to his window. "Hey man, You headin' towards the lake?"
"Yeah I am. You need a ride?" His voice was raspy.
"That'd be great." He looked over towards us, suggesting we get in the van.

The man could have been all sorts of predator, but really none of us cared. We didn't even hesitate. It was still Whim Day and this man had offered us a ride. Cait and I both knew it was against our rules to turn down propositions from strangers, so we got in the van, naturally. A reclining chair was positioned in the middle of the back of the van.

"She's bolted down," said the driver.

The floor was cluttered with shoes and papers, garbage, a few thin bike tires, and pretzels, oddly, were in a mess all over the place. It smelled like ketchup and dust. Wheeler sat in the front seat and I sat in the reclining chair with Cait on my lap.

"Wheeler?" said the driver, with his thin hand held out towards the passenger seat, "I'm Wiley."
"Nice to meet you Wiley," he said, shaking his hand. "That's Paigebrook and her roommate, Cait." He pointed to us.
"So you just want me to drop you at the lake?"
"Yeah or close to it. Whatever's easiest," said Wheeler.
"I'll have to make a few stops on the way." His voice had a cool rhythm.
"No problem man."
"What are you gettin' into tonight?" asked Wiley. He leaned towards the windshield like he couldn't see.
"Oh you know. This, that.. we're thinking of going for a swim."
"It's a good night for it."

The chair rattled as the van sped up and slowed down at the traffic lights. Pretzels were sliding up and down on the floor with the movement, making quiet noises. Cait was heavy on my lap and her skin was sticky and warm.
"I think my bare butt is on your leg," she said.
"Brilliant."

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 13

XIII. Little Worlds

Thirty minutes later Cait and I were back in the front lobby wearing the panthette outfits and galoshes. We carried our dresses, and Cait dripped sweat all over the power bars on the counter. She had successfully exploited the situation. She sprinted briefly on the treadmill, screamed in anguish while bench pressing, and invaded the personal space of several emaciated men. I spent the half-hour on a stationary bike, flipping through a fitness magazine and observing Cait's antics.

Claire was folding a pile of white hand towels when we walked out.

"So ladies... did you find everything satisfactory? You built up quite a sweat out there!" He eyed the droplets on the glass in disgust, picked up a Windex bottle and gave the mess two squirts.
"I hope you found everything you needed out there girls. Deodorant...Towels...I have the paperwork all ready for you to sign," he said. He was balancing weight on his right leg and pronouncing an attitude with his hip.

"Actually," said Cait, catching her breath, "if Clark and I plan on being seriously competitive for this iron man, we're gonna need to find a gym that really... cares." She looked down, almost panting.
"Cares? Panther Gym cares. How can you say we don't care?"
"I didn't feel cared for, and neither did Clark.." I put my arm around her for drama.
"Panther Gym does care. I've taken the time to show you around and give you the outfits and..."
"The answer is no Claire!" said Cait. She put her head down on my shoulder.
"We're going to need those outfits back then..." He folded his arms across his chest.
"Is that necessary?" she said.
"You can throw them in the hamper in the locker room after you've changed." He walked us back to the Panthette room.
"I'll wait right here for you." The prospect of earning commission was now clearly gone, and the pep in his step, and that bizarrely charming demeanor he'd employed earlier had died. We closed the Panthette door, leaving an angry Claire in the wayside.

I knew Cait would now be up to something. The girl hated a quiet exit.
"We're climbing out the window," she said.

It was a relatively low building so an escape wasn't out of the question. A simple boost from the changing bench and I was back out into the shockingly gray afternoon. Cait had a bit of trouble squeezing out of the glass, but eventually she popped out too.

"Let's go," she said. "Fit and fury is a bad combo. I don't want Claire to chase us down..." She started jogging down the block and I trailed behind.

The street was a silent juxtaposition to the gym. I had no idea where we were or what Whim Day had in store for us, and the adrenaline from it all was intoxicating and horrible.

The sky had transpired into a heavy grey fog, and it alone could not encapsulate the all encompassing greyness of that neighborhood. Grey as an actual feeling, not just a color, or a post-storm pigment, but an ugly heaviness. I could almost feel it on my shoulders while we ran. The afternoon was palpably bogged by the colorless concrete and sky. This animal feeling of fading warmth pelted down on me from the awning of perpetual telephone wires, brick buildings, and smog. It felt as though God was a bit too far from town.

We came to a cross street about three blocks west from Panther Gym. Cait put her hands on her knees and coughed into the ground. I could see a bar on the corner with imperfect royal blue stars painted on a dim window. A sign hanging in a tilt above the front entrance read, "Moon Saloon".

We walked inside and the room was a mess of old wood. The floors and tables and walls and swinging doors to the kitchen, all wood. I felt if I tripped I'd die from a splinter. When the grey creeped inside to the dark old wood mess, the bartender looked towards us like the light was a sudden attack.

Now we were both sweating from the short jog, and Cait lead us over to the bar. We sat down on the tattered leather stools and the ripped fabric scratched my naked thighs. A few seats over from us a few women, also grey, were drinking beer from large mugs. They looked like blurry midgets.

The bartender walked over to us and stood in silence like, 'we don't have any fruity specials. Just order a damn beer.' He was, well.. grey, actually.
"We'll have what they're having," said Cait, motioning to the irregular regulars near us.
"We come in peace," she whispered to me so noone else heard. I was relieved.

The beer was heavy and hoppy and I couldn't tell exactly what it was. It was cold though and it tasted like genuine relaxation. Cait belched and belched and yawned. She wiped the sweat from her face and onto her shirt. She sniffled and sniffled.

There were a few people in the shadows at the back of the bar, and I shuttered at the realm of possibilities of who they were and what their lives consisted of. The urchin faces, dull and dark and fading behind the wooden decor, breathed and watched us, maybe hoping to add us onto a sordid list of vices and crimes. If evil could radiate from people like stench, the world would stink and I would too, sometimes.

"Man this city is a million worlds, isn't it?" said Cait.
"Yeah you're right, it is."
"I haven't found one of them that I'd really like to be apart of though. It seems like every time we walk into a room everyone inside has literally sprung from the walls and will be buried in the back yard. You know? Like that anorexic mesh dude belongs in Panther. And you've gotta smoke a pack a day to be regulars here. And those stiffs waiting for donuts? You've gotta be two faced and pious. It blows my mind, all the little worlds.."
"I mean, people are sort of inclined to glob onto things that make them feel normal."
"I don't do that," she said. She was drinking the beer as if it were water.
"I like to go places that accentuate my abnormalities." She smiled, which was nice, because for a moment I was sensing a bit of sadness in her tone. I'd rarely seen her sad. Sadness is a truly ugly emotion. It is the natural disaster of human emotion, and the more it is felt and expressed, the more difficult it is to escape as a permanent state of being.

I smiled back at her.
"We have our own little world I guess."
"Just us?"
"And Bushy, and Mother...some stray cats too from time to time."
"It makes me feel so small." She made a motion of holding something small between her fingers.
"Well.. you're big in quality."
"I always have thought of myself as more than 1 person. You know what I mean?"
I did. I felt like a different person in each room I was in.

I felt small too, admittedly so. Everyone is the center of their own world, I suppose. But the amount of worlds are infinitely growing in every direction. The circles of life and loves, the relationships and emotions and jokes, the purchases and mistakes and achievements, the plans and obtuse stresses, the regrets and the outfits, the self-deprecation and the narcissism, each treading sustaining circles in rooms and rooms and cities upon cities. Well, the idea makes me feel small. It really does, dammit. I was taught that everyone has purpose. Everyone has grand and outstanding purpose, and the world smiles when we arrive and cries when we die. But each year the world is a bigger place. I wonder if we matter less and less and less and less and less as legroom decreases.

-------
The bartender set a second round down on the bar. He didn't make eye contact.
"What a happy little man," Cait whispered.
We cheersed, "Cheers to..me. Every one of me," she said.

Cait really did have a lot of unusual skills. She was sort of brilliant in a useless way. Even without direction, she held an outlandish ownership over a variance of interests and opinions. Some were frustratingly extreme. Some were outright crazy. All the absurdity was sort of hypnotic though, and she was honest in the most brutal capacity. Me being a fortified liar made her integrity even more alluring to me. She had none of the conventional charms, but she was actually good. She didn't sit with her legs crossed or watch the evening news, but she was good.

The toast turned into a chug, and afterwards we were both ready for another round.

"I'm hoping to not lose the rest of Whim Day in Moon Saloon," I said.
"I thought you hated hope. You told me that once."
"I hate a lot of things that I need..."
"Like...whole grains?"
"Maybe."

My phone had been vibrating all throughout Whim Day. Wheeler had texted me a handful of times, and I had a few unplayed voicemails, which were both likely from him. He texted me Saturday too, but as I tried to delete the memory of my fight with Lindy, I'd cleared my inbox before returning any texts.

One said, "Paigebrook, I still owe you for spilling a drink on your butt, and your butt owes me for wasting my drink. Call me back."

I texted him. "Hey." I said.
In just a few seconds he replied, "Where are you?"
"I'm at Moon Saloon somewhere far west."
He didn't answer.

"This music sounds like something people die to. Only out west though, and only in the 1960's," said Cait. The song was a banjo and an indiscernible voice on a muzzled microphone. She waved over the bartender.

"So how about changing this music, huh? Any way a few bucks could make that happen?"
"We gotta jukebox but it ain't been used in a while," he said. His voice was dusty and I suspected moths were hanging beneath his larynx, waiting to break free.
"I'll give it a go," said Cait.

She walked over to the jukebox, which was covered in debris and particles of time. All of the animal eyes in the room followed her panthette outfit and galoshes.

Cait bumbled with the chalky buttons and kicked the bottom of the machine. Patsy Cline's, 'Walkin' After Midnight' came on, and she came back over to her seat.
"Now this song should really be Moon Saloon's anthem," she said to the bartender.
"We ain't got no an-thumb," he said.
"Well I'm just saying you know, a few minor details, a bit of PR, and this place could be a hot spot..." She surveyed the room.
"Don't start..." I whispered to her.
She winked back.

"I stopped to see a weepin' willow...cryin on his pillow, and maaaaybe he's cryin' for meee... and as the skies turn gloomy, the night winds whisper to me, I'm lonesome as I, can be..!"

Caitlin sang boisterously. The song reminded me of my grandma. She'd loved Patsy Cline, and we used to listen to the tape when Lindy and I were kids and spent nights at her house. I rarely thought of these times anymore. Lindy and I were close with her though. She was actually a lot like Caitlin, not in practice, but in ideology. She was good inherently, but she didn't care about what anyone else thought of her. That was sort of the catalyst to all of her other admirable qualities.

I was inherently the opposite, and had spent most of my life obsessing over the most minute facets of my persona. Nothing had to be perfected in actuality, but everything had to appear to be in tact. That mentality had begun to fade when I met Cait though.

'Crazy' by Patsy Cline came on next.

"Two Clines in a row?" I said.
"There are others on the way too! It's a steal of a jukebox," she said, "A quarter a song! Gotta love old shit."
She stood up now.
"You've gotta dance with me.." She said to the bartender. She walked over towards him.
"I don't dance!" he said.
"Come on, Ralph."
"Ralph? The name's Don."
"Well ya look like a Ralph!"
"You look like a nut," he said.
"Fine, call me nut. Dance with me though!"
He laughed and it was like hearing a language for the first time. He walked over to her.
"I'm callin' you Don Juan!" she said. He laughed again, and particles of spit dashed quietly onto her face, and others coiled into the dark silence of the room to become apart of it forever.

The song 'Crazy' took me back in time. After my grandma died, I packed all of the details I had of her into a compartment of my brain that hid beneath new things. Sometimes when I'd smell different florals or eat a certain type of butter I remembered her. I'd remember her laugh, or the way she said my name. Memories are fickle little buggers. They can just dance in and out of view without warrant or want. Sometimes I get a glimpse of something from my life and I try to catch it and feel it forever. Other times different moments of the past will creep into my mind and I must always run from them, or else.

I must take a moment to acknowledge the fact that my brain is my master and it walks me like a dog. I can only hope it will lead me to good things, to flourish and be wise, but if suddenly I were to become insane.. well, I must follow my master. And frankly I wouldn't be surprised.

-----
Cait and Don danced, and visually it was odder than many things I'd seen her do. She sang too,
"Oh crazy... for thinkin' that my love would hold youuuuu, I'm crazy for tryin', and crazy for cryin', and I'm crazy for lovin' you..."
She dipped him.

"Paigebrook..." I turned to see Wheeler standing behind me.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"I Googled Moon Saloon and walked over. I actually live a few blocks away. I've never been here though. What a random place for you to go." He looked around the room.
"So you just show up? That's creepy," I said.
"Yeah well, then I'm a creep! I owed you a drink," he said. He was wearing a green vest with a white collared shirt underneath and crisp looking black dress pants.
"I was about to say I was overdressed, but look at you!" He laughed at my outfit.
"It's a long story..."
"Is that your break dancer friend over there? Twirling that old dude?"

I looked over, and Cait was indeed twirling Don.

"Yeah that's her.." I said.
"Look at your life right now. And I'm a creep?" He smiled. I expected to feel awkward and annoyed, but I felt fine. There was something funny about him, something I didn't immediately hate.

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 12

XII. Carnal Compliance

The man shook his butt while he walked, and it seemed to be a maneuver he'd practiced and perfected over time. Cait exaggeratedly imitated him. He walked into an athletic club near the shopping district we'd walked passed earlier. It was called 'Panther Gym'. The windows were plastered with pictures of muscled men in tiny workout shorts. None of them were remotely smiling, and they all appeared to be wearing makeup.

"This joker would go into a place like this," said Cait, "follow my lead." She walked inside. The meshed man was actually an employee. He was attaching one of the large jugs to a water cooler in the lobby. The room was loud with techno music and a display of power bars clustered the glass reception desk. Instead of price signs the boxes were labeled individually by caloric value.

"Hello!" He said without looking at us.
"Hi!" said Cait as she leaned against the desk, "You ignored us earlier when I asked you where the bus stop was. It's okay though because we were actually just on our way to this gym. I didn't realize it was so close. How ironic is that?"
"Sounds like fate," he said dully.
"You're so right."
"Are you interested in joining Panther Gym? We have some great deals right now if you are." His voice was flamboyant, which also seemed to be an attribute he'd practiced and perfected over time.
"We certainly are. We're actually training to do a couples iron man," she put her arm around me.
"That is so cool. I've always wanted to do an iron man," he said, "Well right now we're running a buy one membership get the other membership half off, with a reduced monthly fee from $60.00 a month to 55. For both of you, with the membership fees and the first month, it would be $205 right now. That includes all of the classes, except for Turbo Ass which is $10 per session because it's like amazing, and access to all of our facilities 24 hours a day. We can take another $20 off if you live within a mile of Panther."

Cait looked at me. "That sounds pretty close to what we've been looking for babe," she said.
"Do you have a sauna?" I said.
"Oh gosh yes. We do however have a strict policy about carnal activities in both the sauna and pool here at Panther. You'll have to sign some compliance paperwork if you do end up joining today," he said.
"Oh is that right?" said Cait.
"We've had some issues in the past, unfortunately." He laughed. I felt a little sick to my stomach at the idea of it all.
"Some people just have to ruin it for everyone don't they," said Cait.
"Oh it is a shame!" he said.

"So is there a free trial period we can initiate? I'd like to try the machines to make sure they're adequate before I sign anything."
"I can assure you, they're more than adequate. Panther is ranked the number 1 gym in west side Chicago, and we have a very professional staff... and very expensive equipment."
"That's important. Very good very good. But is there anyway we can try it out today before we sign?"
"I can give you a potential membership pass. It's $5 per person though, and they're only valid for 30 minutes."
"Let's do that. Do you have apparel we could buy or borrow? We didn't really plan ahead obviously," said Cait, pointing out our attire.
"What I'm gonna do for you today is hook you up with some Panther tops and bottoms. I normally only give them for free if you buy a membership, but you two seem pretty serious," he said.

He sifted through a pile of tank tops and handed us two small black shirts with matching shorts. The tank tops had Panther eyes which insinuated nipples, and the shorts had tails on the butt. On the back of the top it said, "Ready for my cat fight... Thanks Panther."
"Oh perfect! This is great!" said Cait, holding up the shirt.
"I know right? We just got those in. They are so fierce," he said, making a cat scratch motion with his hand.
"I'd only like them better if they were mesh," said Cait.
"Oh I know! I obviously agree," he said, pointing to his shirt.
"You know I meant to compliment you about that shirt when we first walked in. You just don't see enough mesh these days," she said.
"Couldn't agree more. I actually sell my own clothing line. I'll give you a business card before you leave today. I make mesh everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything," he said. Cait laughed riotously and we signed the day pass paperwork, including the sheet labeled, "Carnal Compliance".
"I'm Claire by the way," said the mesh man, as he collected our paperwork.
"I'm Sloan and this is my girlfriend Clark," said Cait. I sucked my cheeks into my mouth to stop myself from laughing. Claire led us through the gym to the women's locker room towards the back of the building.
"So how long have you been together?"
"About a week," said Cait, "Facebook official that is. We've been involved for a few months though."
"Well congratulations! It's not true until it's public," said Claire.
"That's pretty much my credo," said Cait.

The locker room door said "Panthettes", and before we walked in to change, Claire reminded us that the room would be under serious surveillance.
"Well isn't that a shame!" joked Cait.
"I'll meet you both in 30 minutes to sign the membership!" said Claire as he walked back to the lobby.

No one was in the small locker room, thankfully, but I could hear water running from the showers.
"Honestly I don't want to be anywhere near rooms that have had to be under surveillance because of carnal activities, Cait." I said.
"Oh relax BABE! Just put on your panthette outfit and let's go get ripped."

We changed our clothes and examined ourselves in front of the mirrored wall. Cait's outfit was absurdly small on her, and her boobs and stomach were spilling from the fabric.
"Look at the eyes on those girls," she said, attempting to stretch the cotton without ripping it.
"I'm actually very creeped out by this entire thing," I said.
"Blame Whim Day."
"I blame you."
"Honey stop.. We'll talk about it when we get home. I don't want it to turn into a... cat fight!" She made a cat scratch gesture like Claire had done.
"You're ridiculous."

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 11

XI. God's Will


"I haven't seen anyone flip the bird since like 1998. It's a dying gesture... sort of like the peace sign" said Cait.
"I feel like the peace sign is back."
"No way. Hand gestures in general, they're done."
"What about sign language?"
"Obviously that's different.. It's not like the peace sign or the bird has ever been anyone's only means of communication."
"I think we should bring back the bird. It had a good run in the 90's. I was too young to fully engage in it though, you know? I feel left out," I said.
"You know it's actually proven that the word 'fuck' is the most satisfying word to say in English?"
"I can see that. It's transitive. It's intransitive. It's a noun, a verb... a conjunction. It's fucking versatile."

"The bird lacks all the versatility. It's just 'bam!' No room for interpretation. Plus, unless you do it emphatically it doesn't release any stress like the word 'fuck'. And if you do do it emphatically you wind up looking like a real creep."

A woman a few seats away from us leaned over in our direction.
"Excuse me. Can you please watch your language? There are kids on this bus." She was all business.
"Yes mam! Sorry about that," said Cait. She whispered in my ear, "I called her mam...she's probably insulted." She gave me a thumbs up.

"There you go, the 'thumbs up'? It's also on the outs," I said.
"I feel like the 'thumbs up' hasn't been cool since Happy Days was on..."
"Okay so it's just out."


The bus was moving west, making various stops near grocery stores and apartment buildings every other block on average. The rain perpetuated into a tumultuous downpour. Thunder rumbled outside the noisy bus, and lightning lit up the dim cloudy skies. All of the passengers were relatively quiet, watching the windows and noting through silence the sporadic flashes of storm.

"I've been craving a good thunderstorm!" said Cait.
"Yeah?"
"Definitely. It's sort of like a good cry, you know? Like it's not the ideal mood or whatever, but it's strangely really great?"

"I know what you mean."

After a few blocks Cait leaned over and whispered again. "I say we get off where ever the mam gets off. Go where she goes?"
"Some would consider that stalking."
"There's no such thing as stalking on whim day."

"Is that a new rule?"

"No it's just logic."

"I fail to see any logic in that idea."

"We won't be stumbling towards any interesting festivals or events in the rain. And it's Sunday, people are home relaxing. We need to be resourceful if this is going to be an epic day," she said.

"Maybe the city doesn't want us to have an epic day," I said, "Maybe we're supposed to be low key today."

"That's crap. Whim Days have to be epic. If I wanted to be low key I would have stayed home with Mother and left you in empty corner. I used to do this thing when I was little and bored.. I would follow my dog around my yard. He was always up to interesting things, burying bread and chasing squirrels. Sometimes he would lay down and I'd lay next to him, then he'd suddenly start running. It was unpredictable. I loved it. I think we should do that..."

"I'm not following any dogs."

"I meant a person! It could be a learning experience.. or an adventure."

"Or a crime!"

"It's harmless. Let's see where mam's going," said Cait.

"She told us to 'watch our language'.. I don't think she'll take stalking lightly."

"Fine.. What about him?"

There was a stiff faced Asian across from mam in a short sleeve blue collared shirt, thin framed wire glasses and high waisted jeans. He was a potential closet baby and he was reading a TV Guide.

"Interesting magazine choice..." I said.

"See, now I'm enthralled. I've got to know where that dude spends his rainy Sundays."

"I'm guessing in front of his TV!"

"Let's just follow the next person who gets off the bus. That keeps things whimsical."

"Sort of," I said.

The route had taken us quite west, and the bus approached a stop near an uncategorizable shopping center. The strip was composed of a dollar store, a few middle eastern restaurants, a Gap Outlet, a video game rental, and a bright cheap store with clothes manufactured to articulate presumable trends. There were treeless neighborhoods behind both sides of the street. We seemed to have gone beyond the point in the city which is beautified with seasonal flowers and modern park art and fountains. Cait always talked about the city's beautification as being the epitome of urban ill.

"You know how much money the city spends on these fucking flowers?" She said one day when we walked by a large display of yellow tulips in Lincoln Park.

"Probably a lot. But they are pretty and they make people happy," I told her.

"Right. All the rich couples and gay snobs are happy in Lincoln Park with their goddamn tulips, but there are 45 kids in every classroom on the south side. Chicago should spend that tulip fund on the schools instead, then people will actually be happier...Less truant shit heads shooting each other because no one cares if they miss class," She said. This was about a week after high school Whim Day, and the heat and disgust about education was fresh on our brains.

Cait destroyed the tulip display. She uprooted the flowers from the ground and ripped them up in her hands in a sweep of anger. The yellow tulips were left in a scene of mutilated peril, like destroyed causalities in a ruthless massacre. It was bizarrely sad, even though they were only flowers. She again denoted the act to protest, and not destruction. She said she didn't hate the flowers themselves but she hated what they represented. It was probably the closest thing to warfare I'd ever encountered.

Now the bus stopped and a Polish woman on the brink of being elderly stood up to get off. She had a vine patterned scarf on her head and she wore a dull loose dress. Her stature was large, but the loose dress masked any hint of her shape or form. She may have worn it to dissolve any accentuation of herself.

"Let's go," said Cait. We stood up and followed her off the bus. The rain was just a trickle in the west, and the heart of the storm seemed to be behind us towards the lake. The woman walked in haste with her head down towards the sidewalk. Cait and I didn't speak, as though we were each certain of our nebulous mission, whatever it was.

She turned right and we walked down a street with identical apartment buildings, ugly and lean with light brick walls and windowless front doors. There were junky cars on the block, which were probably unreliable weights of frustration for all of the drivers who owned them.

The woman walked up the stoop of a great church. It was majestically old looking, and cracks in the stone walls seemed to determine age in the architecture like rings on a great tree. We didn't question the decision to keep following the woman as she entered the cathedral. A mass had just started, and she sat close to the back. Only a dozen or so people were there, and the room echoed with emptiness at the sound of an organ on the balcony above us. Cait and I sunk into the back pew, a few rows behind the woman. She knelt reverently as the priest entered and ascended the altar.

The mass proceeded.

"Let us pray," The pries said.

The small congregation answered with the Lord's prayer. "Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name..." Saying it was like a reflex for me. I hadn't been in a church in years, but I was raised Catholic and remembered the formality precisely. Cait looked towards me surprised, and I knew she was thinking, 'I didn't know you were Catholic.'

Cait didn't believe in organized religion, but I'd picked up on the fact from time to time that she was spiritual in her own way. I rarely disclosed any of my own beliefs about God or religion, mostly because I hadn't figured out entirely what they were.

I felt I knew there was a God, but he seemed more like an omniscient Big Brother type than this merciful savior figure the priest was describing. The sermon was about Gods' will. The priest said that God had a magnificent plan for everyone, and "following Gods' plan will give you an abundance of joy," he said.

Cait nudged me and whispered, "My Gods' will is for me to do what I want."

I didn't respond. Getting joy from doing Gods' will seemed too simple. 'If that's all I need to do to find happiness, show me the plan, and I'll do it,' I thought to myself.

"Peace be with you," said the Priest as he concluded the mass.

"And also with you," we answered.

"Now go in peace to love and serve the Lord."

"Thanks be to God," we said.

The Polish Woman stood up and knelt towards the altar, making the sign of the cross. She walked to the back of the church by the exit where the priest was now standing. She kissed the back of his hand. It was peculiar. "I'm not kissing that dude's hand," said Cait as we walked towards the exit.

We followed the woman down a flight of stairs where a church social was about to take place. The social consisted of two buffet style tables with coffee and donuts set up, and foldable chairs set around a few tables covered with white plastic. The dusty cement floor was imprinted with shoe patterns, stroller wheels, and the marks of cane ends. The Polish woman was waiting in a short line for coffee, and we sat at a table next to the organ player, who was being complimented by an old hunch-back man in suspenders.

Cait tried to mingle with a couple of elderly people waiting in line for a donut. Everyone seemed to be obviously distracted by her cleavage, and the mission to obtain a donut. A couple of women were standing next to the line discussing the points in the service where the organ player made mistakes.

"Great service today, huh?" Said Cait to the Polish woman.

The woman looked at her like she was a species she'd never seen before.

"We're going to have to make more coffee," said the woman to a man behind the table, who seemed to be the event planner.

"No no don't bother. We'll just take a donut to go and skip the coffee," said Cait. She grabbed three donuts.

"It's one donut per person!" said the man.

"I don't give a fuck" she said, ignoring him and heading towards the stairs.

She turned towards me when we got upstairs. "It really did feel good to say that!"

"It seemed like it did," I said.

"God's will my ass. Those people are joyless! the sign of the cross is out, just like the bird" she said,"I'm gonna start my own church with my own church socials, and old stiffs and donuts are banned!"

"This donut is damn good," I said, stuffing my face quickly.

"You're right. Donuts are allowed, old stiffs are still banned though."

Outside the rain had stopped, and there was a noticeable amount of trash blowing around in the wind by the road. Next to the church was a courtyard with a pitiful garden full of dirt and untamed weeds. It looked as though someone had attempted to plant flowers weeks ago and never returned.

"See how ugly it is when the city doesn't beautify the neighborhood?" I said.

"Wasting tax money isn't exactly a beautiful thing."

"You don't even pay taxes," I said.

"Whatever."

We walked south on the street, unsure if it led back to the main road. At first it didn't seem to matter to us if we were right or wrong in our directional sense, but soon we became tired of circling the block without aim. A tall skinny man in a mesh belly shirt walked towards us. He was carrying two large jugs of water.

"Excuse me, sir, do you know where the nearest bus stop is?" asked Cait. He ignored us.

"That's it. We're following him," she said. We trailed behind him slowly, keeping a safe distance between us so that he was unaware of our stalk.

"Expedition numero dos," she said eagerly.

I Do This I Do That- Chapter 10

X. Whim Day

"Good morning, good morning, it's time to get up, good morning! Good morning, good morning, it's a good good good good day!"

Caitlin's wake up song was like audible pain. My head throbbed and my face was in a wet puddle of my own drool on the sandy carpet. It was so dark in the basement, it could have been 6 a.m or 6 p.m and I wouldn't have known. She was standing above me in light denim jeans and and a white t shirt with a red fist on it. Under the fist it read, 'comunista'.

"What time is it?" I sat up and my head felt like an anchor I couldn't carry.
"It's almost 10. You okay down there scapegrace?" she knelt down.
"Yeah. My head hurts..."
"Empty corner'll do that to you."
"Seriously."
"Must of been a bad night then... Eggo's are in the toaster, Tylenol is on the table. You'll feel better in no time," she helped me stand up.

The kitchen was idyllic, and it shocked and impressed me that Cait had left things in spic order for my sister night.

"No Lindy?"
"Gone... I'm a fucking horrible sister."
"No you're not."

The Eggos popped and she put two on a plate for me. I opened the Tylenol and swallowed it without water.

"Sweet t shirt," I said, groggily.
"Got it at Blue Elephant."
"That resale shop? I thought you were banned."
"No, that's White Elephant, its' uptown constituent. I'm just another shopper down at Blue. I wouldn't go to White even if I wasn't banned.. those pirate bastards."

Cait had gotten arrested for trying to steal a desk chair last fall. She claimed she was protesting, not pillaging. She'd gotten in a fight over the price mark with an elderly Russian cashier. The woman said the smudged price tag said $21, Cait believed it said $11. The chair wasn't even remotely nice, but the argument became personal. Cait said the woman was condescending. The dispute eventually resulted in Cait screaming at her, "Don't take your bad day out on me old bird!" She then grabbed the chair and started running. The Russian screamed after her, "You make me bad day! You make me bad day!" She was arrested 20 minutes later. The cop picked her up 5 blocks north of White Elephant. Her side had cramped and she was laying on the ground next to the chair.

I slouched down at the kitchen table like a deflated balloon, scrolling through my phone to piece together the missing parts of the night. Lindy had texted me several times, and not only had she taken a cab to her car and drove back to Michigan at 3 am, but she clearly hated me too. What was worse than the myriad of angry messages, the multiple f bombs and name calling, was the fact that she didn't respond to my apology text. I doubted she would.

"You look so glum," said Cait, who was cutting up my Eggos for me.
"I feel like shit."
"If you're hungover, such is life. But if you're feeling guilty, stop. Just stop it." She looked at me sternly. She put a bib in my shirt and poured me a glass of milk and a cup of coffee.
"Alright alright, are you gonna get me a sippy cup too?"
"You might need one. I know it takes a shit storm night to make you sleep in empty corner," she said.
I ate small slow bites. She was right too, I needed help with simple functions. That fork into my mouth might as well have been a scalpel in a complicated surgery.

"What are you planning on doing today?" asked Cait.
"I'll probably just sleep." I put my head on the table. "Fuck."
"You can't feel guilty."
"You don't even know what happened."
"It's irrelevant. I don't believe in guilt. Everybody fucks up. Whatever you did, she'll get over it."
"How do you know?"
"Because were all capable of being despicable. She'll do something stupid and realize you're human. If she doesn't, then someone else will and she'll forgive you by comparison."
"She wouldn't do to me what I did to her."
"You don't know that."

Her positivity was irritating to me. She was trying to be hopeful, but sometimes too much hope just makes me sort of cringe. Like she could have just said, "You're right, you're a dumb ass," and that would have been alright. What happened between my sister and I felt monumental. Her positivity made it seem less. I didn't want her to get all bogged down, but a little shock and awe would have been nice.

"Since when do you care about your family anyways? Maybe she'll leave you alone now. I thought that's what you wanted," she said.

I didn't know what I wanted. On days when my family lectured me about responsibility, or called me ten times to confirm details about my imaginary routine, I'd told Cait she was lucky to not have a family. But even though Lindy and I were nothing alike, we were essentially the same too. Being honest with her just made me remember all of the aspirations I'd made when we were young. Honesty would be like disappointing my former self. That was a concept too heavy for me to fully address. I preferred to have my world an arms length away from her than to admit to myself that I needed something and didn't know what it was.

"Let's not talk about my family today," I said.
"Gotcha."
"What are you doing today?"
"I was going to go to some basement with Abebe and his friends to dance, but I tweaked my hip the other night. I'm thinkin we need a 'whim day'. You could use it," she said.

'Whim Days' were days when we got on the first bus we saw and let the city decide where we went and what we did. Once we ended up sleeping at the airport in Gary, Indiana. Another time we spent the day in a south side high school. We went to a few rowdy classes, ate pizza and chocolate milk in the caf for $2.25, and took an actual school bus to some neighborhoods. It made us both feel temporarily weird, and we harnessed the short lived philosophy for weeks afterwards that primary education was the root of all scum.

We categorized different parts of our day as the nuclei to some social ill. At lunch we wrote the word 'obesity' on a 3x5. On the bus we wrote the word 'violence' on another card. Cait eventually made a collage of the day and hung it up in the bathroom. Other cards say 'teen pregnancy', 'ignorance', and 'vanity'. In the middle of the collage is a picture of the two of us outside of the high school in large hooded sweatshirts with our thumbs up.

We created 'whim day' because we were sick of deciding what our plans would be. Cait said that planning was an art, and the lack of planning would be chaos. We were both intrigued by the idea, and thus Whim Day was born.

"I suppose I could use one," I said, "we pull the plug if we get close to Gary though."
"Let's get it goin'. Leave in 20?"
"K."
"Actually... make that an hour and 20. Mother's about to be on. Gotta catch it. I saw the preview for the episode and she talks about acronyms.. She actually says 'omg' and 'lol'. It's gonna be a good one."
"You would. I guess I'll get ready then. What should we wear this time?" The only thing we planned on whim day was our outfits.
"I'm thinking... Fancy dresses?"
"That's too much," I said.
"It's raining. It's hot out though. Casual dresses and galoshes."
"Who owns galoshes?"
"Are you kidding? It's a staple accessory."

She'd said the same thing about her sun hat. It was so large she could barely see from the drooping brim. It ended up catching on fire one day at the beach when she lit a cigarette. The straw burned fast and she ran through the crowded beach to the water to throw in the flaming hat. Some concerned mother nearby panicked and called the fire department.

When the fire fighters showed up, the concerned mother held her son and exaggerated the details. She said Cait screamed, "I'm burning alive!" when she ran to the water. Cait called the mom 'a sicko' and asked her if she was aware that her son was developing an Oedipus complex. The next day there was a fire fighter in our apartment shower, and Cait kept his uniform suspenders as a trophy. I could always tell when he was over because he made Cait's room smell like bonfire.

"You can borrow some of mine," she said, "Here, choose." She brought me 3 pair to pick from.
"These would be fitting, Scarlet." She pointed to the red pair.
"Yeah but they'd also match your communist t shirt."
"We're wearing dresses. Besides, I don't want to turn off all the capitalists if whim day takes us to Michigan Avenue."
"Good thinking. Why did you buy that thing anyways.. you're a nationalist!"
"I'm none of it. I'm just an American and I like t shirts. That, and it was cheap and I'm actually considered poor now."
"By who?"
"The government I guess."
"Pirate bastards?"
"Exactly."

Cait put on a booby blue sun dress that made her look like the Halloween version of Dorthy. She put on the red rain boots and bright red lipstick to match. She clipped back her hair with a barrette and slicked it down so it flipped up at the ends.
"It's like I've moused myself, but really my hair's just filthy with grease," she said.
"I think I'll shower while you watch Martha."
"You would."
She sat on the sofa and turned on Martha, amplifying the volume in celebration of the coveted daily affair. She laughed while she listened.
"Oh Mother!" she said.

I took a shower and put on a cotton red sun dress. Cait's galoshes were all too big on me, so I wore flats inside the black pair with white polka dots. My feet felt awfully heavy, but it was what it was. No complaining on whim day. That was one of our rules we'd established, along with no turning down propositions from strangers, and no leaving each other for any amount of time. This included short trips to the bathroom. Cait had created this rule during high school day.

The bathroom reeked of feces and smoke, and there appeared to be peep holes in the stalls and on the wall side of the boy's rest room. I was waiting in the hall for her and she ran out immediately. "New rule," she said, "No leaving each other on whim day. Ever." I agreed with her fully after accompanying her into the bathroom. It was worse than any bar bathroom we'd seen. She took out a 3x5 and wrote the phrase, "defecation: both moral and literal," on it.

I scanned my room before turning off the light. There was a picture of Lindy and I when we were little framed on my desk behind a stack of full notebooks and misplaced papers. In the picture I'm sitting on a stoop with my head on my fist like 'The Thinker'. Lindy's spinning around in circles with her arms in the air. I put the picture faced down.

"You look so regal," said Cait.
"As do you!"
"Mother's just finishing her creme brulee. We can go."

We walked up the stairs. It was raining and humid outside, and oneiric fog lingered like fire smoke just above our heads.

"I suppose we can lock the door," she said, "since it's Whim Day we won't be separating. I have my keys actually."
"You never have them!"
"Well I'm carrying a purse today. It goes with the dress motif." She locked the door and we stood on the sidewalk. There was a bus stop on the corner which was a pickup for a multitude of routes. We walked to the shelter and stood in it with a grimacing group, all hiding from the rain. A bus sped to the stop and the doors opened. Only a few people got on.
"Here's our bus," said Cait.
"It appears so."

We got on and proceeded to the back. No one was even remotely smiling, indicative of how much the weather determines the mood of the day. We were beyond caring about the rain though.
"It's a warm day, everyone should quit bitching," said Cait. No one was actual talking, but it was clear by the heavy tension of the riders that the weather was unfavorable. I agreed with Cait. So what if it was raining? Sometimes I actually preferred the rain. Not in any emo type of way, but everything seemed to be less dire on rainy days. There was less pressure to be prompt or attractive. We didn't even bring umbrellas. I didn't own one, but wouldn't have brought one even if I did.

A man in the seat next to us had a frown on his face that could potentially make a child cry. His eye brows were gray and furry. They were probably more gray from stress than from age. He folded up his wet newspaper and discarded it on the ground, huffing over the smeared letters and his dripping cotton shirt.

"Nice day, isn't it?" said Cait, smiling at him and purposely invading his personal space.
He said nothing.
She leaned down and picked up the paper.
"You mind if I read this?"
"It's garbage. It's ruined from the rain," he said.
She unfolded it and opened to the entertainment section. The paper really was ruined and was ripping as she jolted around the wet pages.

"Looks like rain for the week," she said, scanning the back page of international weather.
"Ya think?" He rolled his eyes.
"Too bad were not in Athens. Gonna be 98 there today."
He pulled down the stop request and got up and stood by the door with his back to us.
"You know how many muscles you're using to frown?" she said.

He turned around and put up his middle finger, his frown more intense than before. Neither of us said anything. She pulled up the paper in front of our faces and we slouched down in the seat and laughed.