The invitation stood on folded aluminum legs, the surface on one side stroked with rough grade and then buffed lightly, the scratches raw metal catching the sun and quickly losing the sharpness of sparkle into the hot air. It cast a shadow just dark enough.

The next day they told me not to come to work anymore. The windows to the office were all shut, so I stood outside in the sun with the metal blend cut to the shape of a quiet friend and nearly said everything I'd written down and intended to say, and none of it at all. It can be worse than you think. I tried for that job for a year, but it became available to me only the week the guys bought me a ticket to elsewhere. I lost it within a month the weekend the invitation took me away.

The floorboards in doorways squeak less and I held Hemingway at the end of my bent elbow and swayed because the music was available. Bent a knee slightly in a feign of a bow toward the mechanical sucker machine standing there, reached for it then while tossing back my head because now it was my cane baton and I could tap the tip of one foot against it and then spin just a little bit. Enough to catch my eye down that short hallway, where the door was finally open. He was sitting in the center of a love-seat, below the painting that started it all. A small curl of smoke drifted along the side of his face as he watched my hands and face hit together, and I caught my squeal of embarrassment before it got away completely, raising my arms over my head and letting them catch and pull along with me as I darted away.

I'd become that silly old character that I'd imagined myself in LA, the morning I woke up 5 minutes early. Maybe the text message was 'Becky butter fingers' but the view was crisp and clear. Hotel sheet held against my chest, one leg still twisted and raised in that great big empty bed, I caught a second's view out the window before the sun broke the surface of the sky. Each and every morning my eyes opened safely against a pillow, some silly number chosen on the alarm, so I'd missed the moment of the morning when all the shadows came alive and spilled radiating darkness.

That moment was the kind that you give me, Mr. Universe, we know I could live no more or less inside of you except there would be only one star. I get confused easily enough to yes whatever you say, but I'm here now. Where would the ship be taking us? Do you really want to go, now? Now? No language or mechanical skills for the rickety dust clogged roads, no fancy shades, no smoke screened mysteries? What will we tell my dad? Is it difficult to park there? To quote a similar character, certainly? It's all I've ever tried to do. I just send it along, and I told you, I told you, I'm always wrong. It would come out differently if we were driving and the beats were longer. You'd forget me then, I've been warned. Maybe that was the unmarked road map spot I've been waiting for.