Jeremy was standing outside of Joe's Liquor, leaning against the brick wall in his baggy coat and pants. He was woozy against that wall, with his yellow skin and his flat, long hair soaking in the burnt orange streetlight just like a sponge.

First he asked me whether I had a cigarette, then, disappointed, whether I'd like to go to his house with him. His words came out stumbling, burdened with alcohol and hushed with hopelessness. He was withered and non-threatening, a skinny, weak thing cringing from the snowy night in his big, ill fitting clothes. And so I went.

Hired as a care taker for an eleven or so year old boy, Todd. Scenes are broken. They live in a beautiful home. Single mom. It's a sort of rustic cabin on the exterior, finished on the inside.

I arrive with a friend, a girl, on a hot day. Todd sprays her with a hose through the front door -- a screen door. She is game and gets him back, a happy scene. Todd needs to go to the store for lunch groceries for school. His mom is home so I ask if she's taking him or I am.

She is, he says, but we're all going.

There's sweat on my pillowcase and the color in my windows is dying, graying, so that the rods and cones in my eyes are trading places. Relieving each other from duty. And because of that my vision is so grainy when I open my eyes.

And that's when I tell myself not to think, to drink more wine, and to lay my sweating face onto a dry spot on my pillow.

In the morning, you know, I won't feel like this. The golden light will shine in with an angle that's crisp and new.

And I'll go snorkeling to see the fishes.

I can tell we're fighting again by the way that you look at me. Out of the sides of your big eyes; bitter, resenting, and still needing. I told you I was done, you know. And I guess you took me about as seriously as I could expect you to.

"I'm gonna let you in on something, I'm gonna be honest." Ken said. He was leaning in heavily, a hand on Mark's shoulder. "I got a little bit of an alcohol problem, you know? Sometimes I just really got to have it."

"I understand," Mark said smiling, "everybody's got something."

Ken was black, a horse of a man with short broad fingers, dark red eyes and a rutted face. There was a third man, blacker than Ken, straddling a bicycle woozily. His wild hair came out from under his hat.

"What's your name?" Mark said. He took his big, dry hand. The man tottered silently.