1.

           Pablo is dreaming about frogs the color of dirty motor oil, black with a sick tinge of yellow.  They are small frogs with typical wrap-around grins and bulging eyes, millions of them in the ditches flanking the mountain road he is walking on.  The frogs are jumping to escape, looks like, but there are so many all they can do is jump on each other and belly slide down, no one ever getting out, just senselessly changing their order in the ditches.  It’s a bad dream, the pressure, and he wants it to end.

Uncome, uncome, uncome, Pablo shouts.

It works.  Some way, he’s back, breathing fast and shallow, terrified and relieved in his bed.

Uncome?  What a strange word.  Uncome.

He’ll have to remember it though he knows somehow it’s one he better not use too much or he’ll wear it out.

All is good again.  Normal.  Pablo has his regular big appetite for breakfast.  He goes to work early and there’s a post-it note on his screen for him to come see the boss first thing he gets in. 

Pablo likes the boss and the boss likes Pablo.  The boss leaves Pablo alone mostly which is a good sign, a sign of trust.  Pablo isn’t worried the boss wants to see him early because the boss would sometimes do that in certain cases when he would ask Pablo to shut the door and wheeze conspiratorially that one of his fellow workers wasn’t up to a job and would Pablo sort of, sort of, you know, cover for him and bring him up to speed, without the guy feeling bad. 

Even as this makes Pablo feel good and trusted, it also makes him wonder if the boss ever does that with someone else about him, in certain cases, but after his other jobs with the lousy bosses breathing down his neck and not trusting him and making him hate going to work, what a good boss the boss is.

When the boss wheezes conspiratorially, he sounds like Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” doing something behind the scenes to take care of a member of the family.  That’s the kind of boss the boss is, living by definite rules, protective of his own, not wanting them to feel bad.  

Pablo worries about the boss because he is very overweight and does nothing but stay at his desk into the night drinking black coffee and eating thick meat sandwiches as he talks to clients on speaker with the door open so everyone on the floor can hear the money piling up while the boss just gets fatter and the sacks under his eyes droopier and his breathing wheezier and his skin grayer and his ears, nose and eyebrows hairier, generally going to pot like he doesn’t care about anything anymore.  It isn’t even about the money.  The boss has plenty.  It’s about something else, sure, but Pablo can’t figure out what.   Probably about the family, like it was for the Godfather.   The boss takes the weight of the world on his shoulders when he doesn’t have to.  Or so it seems to Pablo.

Pablo wishes he could tell the boss to stop working so hard and get some rest and go for a walk and eat a vegetable and slow down on the coffee but he doesn’t want to say that stuff because it would be like bringing the word ‘death’ into the room which might just kill the boss.  That’s how bad the boss is looking, like he could grab hold of his chest and drop dead any second.

The boss is behind his computer, early this morning, sitting in his rolling desk chair as usual, but he doesn’t have a client on speaker this time.  Instead he’s on with the corner deli that makes meat sandwiches so thick a normal person can’t finish one but here’s the boss ordering two for breakfast.   When the boss is on speaker, he yells like he’s calling to someone across a canyon but when you’re in the room with him, he wheezes so gentle you have to strain to hear.

Two, the corned beef, how I like it, the boss shouts real loud so the whole floor can hear him killing himself and something about this reminds Pablo of his dream, how the boss can’t help what he’s doing just like the little black frogs couldn’t help what they were doing, jumping to escape but always belly sliding down.

Then the boss is off speaker and asks Pablo to please close the door and have a seat. 

Maybe I’ll say something this time.

When he gets back to the boss’s desk after shutting the door, Pablo sees a little black frog’s head in the boss’s one eyeball and another frog in the boss’s other eyeball like two frogs in two little ponds and then he imagines the boss’s head is a pond full of little black frogs trying to get out.  He shakes his head to make the crazy things go away but, when he looks again, there are more frogs poking out between the hairs thick as thorns in the boss’s ears and still more out of his eyeballs and out of his nostrils and cheeks and neck...  He has to do it.

Uncome, uncome, uncome, Pablo shouts at the top of his lungs.

It works.  Again, the frogs are gone. 

As Pablo is trying to explain his behavior without mentioning frogs, the boss quick holds his hand up and yells at him like he’s on speaker that he should take a week off or better two weeks, with pay, he’s been driving himself so hard. Pablo stumbles blindly out figuring he better go visit Little Grandmother.

What Pablo doesn’t count on is Little Grandmother’s new steady boyfriend being there under the blankets with her in the living room sofa bed so full of life and laughing like a horse at everything.  It’s past ten in morning and they are still laying around.

Pablo uses his keys to open the door locks to let himself in and this would be the last time he would do that because he figures those two could be making it anywhere at any hour of the day.  He doesn’t know why they’re sleeping on the living room sofa bed anyway.  That used to be his bed growing up.

The big, loud new boyfriend must have heard the bolt locks thud back just in time to roll off Little Grandmother and be laying there with his big, shiny, red head half sunk in among her throw pillows while she rests beside him, her head propped on the white meat-slab of his arm, her face flushed and pulsing with blotches of lovemaking heat.

When the new boyfriend sees him step out of the small darkened hall into the light of the living room, he starts laughing like a horse at Pablo’s blushing face, soaked hair and white shirt plastered to his skin from being caught in a downpour because he didn’t want to take the subway uptown on account of the possibility of frogs.  Pablo didn’t feel like going through that under ground. 

The new boyfriend likes Pablo a lot and expresses his feelings by always trying to take him out to eat and calling him annoying, affectionate names and laughing laughs that could come out of a horse, sure.

You look like a little drowned dog over there, Charlie. Didn’t you ever teach this guy to come in out of the rain, Josefina?

Pablo isn’t sure about this new boyfriend.

When the boyfriend’s laugh turns into a low growl in his throat, Pablo hears the screaming kids being let out for recess in the playground of PS 30 across the street where he went to school and was always the shortest in his class.  All these feelings come up, like his past is being stomped on by a bully all the way to here. 

We’re going out to breakfast down the corner when the rain stops.  Wanna come with us, Captain Charlie? 

It already stopped, man.

Okay.  That’s good.  We’ll meet you down there but first we got some unfinished business to take care of here.  Right, Baby?  he says and kisses Little Grandmother’s hair, loud.

The new boyfriend, who’s seventy if he’s a day, seems like one of those older guys who let it all hang out, definitely, like they have nothing left to lose and don’t care what other people think anymore. 

Little Grandmother, who is even shorter than Pablo, looks like a pile of kindling sticks compared to this huge log of a new boyfriend who is laughing like a horse again at Pablo’s burning red face.  The guy totally enjoys life, food and Little Grandmother but the whole thing makes Pablo feel the possibility of frogs again so he wants to split before frogs happen to the person he cares most about in this world. 

Studying Pablo with her dark eyes, a new look washes down Little Grandmother’s face like water down a window, changing her dreamy love-subsiding features to a look of searching concern while she tries to breathe the atmosphere of his inner world.  She shimmies up against the pillows behind her, so her always beautiful breasts rise into view, big ones especially for a woman her size, breasts that once saved Pablo’s life.  They’re not relaxed yet, he notices, because of what those two have just been doing, the flesh flaring red-tinged from being handled, the brown nipples bunched.  The always smiling boyfriend looks down at her with a pride of ownership and says, Mine all mine, like he’s thinking it’s funny to say that about a person half his size, making Pablo’s face burn even more. 

You’re not sick again are you, Baby?  Little Grandmother asks, sweetly, with a love as big and calm as the sky, as she is little under the sky. 

Now, I’m fine. 

You look all flushed and feverish.  Maybe you never got all the way over that flu you had.

That was too weeks ago, Little Grandmother.

It can rebound, you know, if you’re not careful.  You’re sure you’re all right.

Yeah, I told you.

How come you’re not at work then?

I just took half a day off because of all the long days I’ve been putting in lately.

Liar.  Something’s wrong I can tell. 

I’m fine.  I’ll see you down the diner.

Okay.  Okay.  We won’t be long, Chico, says   You go order yourself an extra large glass of fresh squeezed OJ and a pot of camomile tea with honey and lemon for your flu and we’ll be down. 

Okay.   I’ll see you down there.

But what did you come by for, Baby?  You never said.

The door slams like a gunshot in the hall.  Pablo takes off down the stairs without double locking it.

Man, that guy.

But Little Grandmother really seems to like him a lot better than the others, enough to go steady, and he is real nice and generous to her.

Now that he has no job, maybe, or Little Grandmother to go to, Pablo decides to do what he usually did when he felt mixed up as a boy, that is wander around in abandoned places where something good or interesting or not that bad would always happen to divert him from his troubles and maybe change his mood.  Just kicking through leaves or piles of junk, whacking sticks against tree trunks or chucking rocks at old windows seems plenty good enough to him.

There are lots of abandoned places in the old neighborhood where he used to live with Little Grandmother until he got his own place:  Shadowy construction sites with the work stopped on account of the area going downhill so fast the investors pulled out; the underneaths of concrete bridges void of derelicts hopefully; empty lots shining with broken glass; burnt out buildings; old warehouses without squatters; a closed down high school; an old mansion behind a high and beautiful stone wall with wrought iron gate chained and rusted shut, but the place is a wreck inside, charred by campfires and graffitied and looted; several small woods where people dump washing machines and tires and blue plastic shopping bags hang like party decorations from the trees; a graveyard so old all the people who might visit the graves are dead too; the banks of a no-name, no-account city river barely flowing over rocks and shopping carts, the water so dirty you couldn’t expect anything to live in it but there are always fish if you look close, mainly two, swimming in slow love circles, gray fish, gray as the water is. 

Nowhere in the city is more interesting to Pablo than these abandoned, falling-apart places but then Pablo thinks, Frogs would fit right in, so he decides to go a way he never went before, up toward the better neighborhoods, instead of down to where all the ripe abandoned places sit like they’ve been thrown away as spoiled by the rich people living above. He doesn’t want to relive his past anymore.  He doesn’t want to relive anything.  He wants to forget everything.

He walks past the line of houses on Little Grandmother’s block and the next block and the next and the next and then past a strange sight, a chain-link-fenced city storage yard full of other rolled up chain-link fences stacked three high like fat logs.  Wow.  This is one big mama fenced-in yard ready to give birth to a litter of fences long enough to surround the entire city.  A whole fenced-in block of fences.  And nobody. 

Pablo’s first thought is to climb the fence to get in the yard and then climb the stack of rolled fences to see how tight they are and springy.  They look really springy. 

No way.  What am I, like twelve again? 

Pablo was always a speedy runner and fast fence climber.  He had to be on account of the kids who couldn’t beat anyone else up wanting to beat little him up.  But none of these loser freaks could ever catch him in the school yards locked for recess or wherever they got the idea to put an end to his life.  Pablo would always scoot away and be over the fence in five seconds or zipped down the street, leaving them standing there like they were suddenly lost in space.

Being twenty years of age now, with a good job, maybe, he walks past the fenced-in fences, trying to feel all right about where his life is so far.  Soon things get a lot quieter.  There are more and more trees blocking the machine noises of the city and, up ahead, more trees and then another fence to keep people from sneaking onto a golf course without paying.  Pablo doesn’t feel like climbing this fence either, on account of the insane golfers, who braved the morning rains, being inside like gorillas in the zoo ready to come after him for trespassing.  Better to keep a fence between him and them so he walks along it letting his fingers bump over the cold curves of the links, laughing to himself about gorilla golfers, feeling a little better.

It doesn’t seem to Pablo anymore that his suicidal boss or Little Grandmother’s laughing horse of a new boyfriend have the right to say anything about him.  And if there are frogs, let there be frogs.  He can handle them.  He tries to make them come now on purpose but he can’t.

The ground slants away from the fence so he has to hold on sometimes, what with how wet the leaves are, to keep from slipping down.  It isn’t much fun walking like this.

The smell of the wet rotting leaves and the red sleeping bag splayed out against the fence remind him of the blue dead guy he found once in the woods, sitting in a ditch like it was a bathtub or his own grave the blue guy didn’t have time to finish digging. 

Coming up slowly and stopping, Pablo talked to him.

Mister.  Mister.

And waited to see if he would answer.  In Pablo’s mind it went:  If the guy’s drunk, passed out or in a bad mood, he could decide to answer or not; or if he’s asleep he could decide to answer or not; or if he’s dead he could decide to answer or not.  Like all those states were the same state, since the spirit of person was what really mattered and not their temporary physical state, like dead or sleeping or passed out people could decide to answer or not, same as anyone, and since Pablo was always nice, maybe this one would decide to talk to him, special, spirit to spirit.  Being quick as he was, Pablo had no fear of a guy in that kind of shape.  He waited, hoping to have a conversation with a dead man, looking at his blue face, fat lips and mouth hanging open.  Nothing.

Nobody’s that blue and still alive, Pablo thought and got the cops, a good deed that was mentioned in church the next Sunday.  Because he was so small, people were always complimenting him when he merely acted his age.  It made him sick.  A few other short guys he knew lifted weights to get people to quit that stuff but Pablo hated lifting weights.  He took up photography and the congas. 

When Pablo reaches the end corner of the golf course fence, he looks down and sees something unbelievable to him, an expanse of beautiful, green grass stretching out below, with three or four soccer fields and a game happening on one.  That such a place exists is not unbelievable but that he never knew about it so close to his old neighborhood is unbelievable.  Maybe it’s just that rich people always know how to hide their things.  Shhh.

The clouds are coming apart and the clean sun pouring down making the wet field so bright it hurts his eyes to look at it.  Looks like a big beautiful bowl of green liquid full of sugary sunlight, like if you drank it, it would be healthy and sweet. 

Pablo charges down, letting the hill take him as the cool air divides pleasantly over his face and whistles past his ears.   He walks toward the soccer game which is being played by high school girls in Catholic School uniforms, white shirts and short blue skirts with gym shorts underneath so no one can see anything. 

Because he loves soccer, Pablo decides to watch for a while from sideline out of bounds where he gets himself eyed by the gym teacher with a whistle in her mouth and a sweater tied around her waist.  He waves to the gym teacher to let her know that, even though he’s a grown man, with a goatee and moustache, watching Catholic School girls in short blue skirts play soccer at a time of day when regular people are at work, he’s no pervert and harmless.  But the gym teacher doesn’t wave back.  Just blank-stares at him.  Probably he isn’t welcome.

Better split.

It isn’t really soccer anyway.  The girls are using only half the field and a player will move only when the ball comes close to her and the whistle is blown at her to chase it.  Otherwise, the girls just stand around talking, looking at their fingernails or putting their hair back in place from the time the teacher made them chase the ball before.  Pablo’s presence has no effect on their disinterest in the game.  He never has much of an effect on girls. 

Still Pablo doesn’t leave yet because hidden in the middle of the hair-touching, can’t-be-bothered girls is a scooty, littler girl darting all over the place, avoiding the other girls’ kicks like they are wearing work boots and stealing the ball from them with ease after which the teacher blows the whistle at her, makes her give it back and start playing defense again.  What a gyp.  She is so fast and good Pablo wants to see her dribble around the girl-posts to the goal posts and score.  But the teacher, who has given up on trying to teach the hopeless girls about soccer, given up on language altogether maybe, blows the whistle at the littler girl, making her give the ball back, and not letting shoot one time.  The other girls, when they get their pockets picked, look at their nails or puff their hair like cats lick themselves after a fall to pretend it didn’t happen.  They couldn’t care less.

Pablo digs what the scooty girl is doing so much he can’t help yelling out ‘Yes’ a few  times which is maybe what inspires her to disobey the whistle and dart around the girl-posts like they are standing still, and they are, breaking loose to dart and juke and ziggle and zaggle around them and score.  This marks the end of the game. The teacher makes the littler girl fetch the ball from where it wound up because the goal has no net while the other girls line up, slow as cows, to go back to the distant school which looks like it belongs in Europe, half castle, half cathedral, up on its hill. 

That was great, Pablo thinks.  The way she dribbled around them like that and scored anyway.   To heck with people who don’t care.

And he is feeling almost all the way better now.

The scoring soccer girl isn’t feeling so good though and Pablo isn’t either when he sees, as she gets in the line, three much bigger girls surround her and start shoving her back and forth, jarring her brains, and then they throw her down and kick mud on her, while the whistle teacher walks ahead oblivious. 

Damn life sucks sometimes.

Pablo turns and walks back the way he came, looking down at his slow feet like this day will be a very long day indeed.  Maybe Little Grandmother’s boyfriend will be gone by now and she will be sitting alone at the diner, as breakfast becomes lunch, sipping coffee, waiting for Pablo.  He knows she will wait a long time.  Or maybe he should go back to his apartment and see if Miss Pamela is at crafts class and he can practice drums.  Plus he has to figure a way to get his job back.  Maybe he’s crazy. 

He is almost to the bottom of the hill ready to climb to the golf course fence when the scooty scoring soccer girl speeds up to him from behind and is suddenly at his side, breathing so hard all she can do is cough out Hi.   

She’s a mess with grit and grass stuck in the ringlet curls of her hair and her white shirt and neck splattered with mud and her face streaked with stains like a dirty-snow car, from what the three others girls did to her or maybe from crying.  Then she takes her skinny arm and wipes it under her nose just in case.   The soccer ball stands out, egg white against her blue skirt, under her other arm. 

Pablo looks behind her but the gym teacher and whole line of girls are nowhere in sight.  They have already disappeared into the castle/cathedral school on the hill.

What’re you doing still here? 

Free country.

You better go back to school.   Your class is already inside.

I hate that place.  I’m never going back there. 

What?  Pablo says for no good reason.

It sucks.  I just quit. 

What?

Is that all you can say?

What?

What.

He doesn’t blame her but he is having trouble believing she just up and quit school.

Get going, girl.  Or you’re gonna get yourself in some big trouble.

Maybe I like trouble, says the girl. 

Well, I don’t.

Chicken.  Runt.

Same old thing.  Pablo starts up the hill to the golf course but doesn’t make it ten feet before she says,  Sorry about that.  You cheered for me.  Thanks. 

He stops, turns and looks down at the mud-spattered girl with the soccer ball under her arm looking up at him with sad, begging eyes like a young dog ever hopeful you won’t kick it again.

Poor thing.  Jesus.  What a world.

Yeah.  You deserved it, he says.  You were great out there.

Thanks for saying that.  I’m sorry I called you a runt.

It’s all right. 

No, really. 

I’m used to it.  I just figure it’s the other person’s problem.

Yeah, you’re right.  I’m no better than those idiot girls are.

At that, Pablo decides to go back down the hill and try to cheer her up about her school. 

The girl is as short as he is but not as brown, more the color of the morning coffee Little Grandmother half fills with milk.  She’s a real mutt with three or four fathers probably, bright sparkly eyes and a head full of springy black curls stabbed by blades of grass like broken pieces of green light, a pretty face with a nasty red scrape on one cheek, a person life has scuffed up and not just today, you could tell, but it doesn’t add up since she’s going to an expensive castle/cathedral school up on its own hill.

Here, take it, the girl says and hands him the ball when he gets to her, smiling a smear of a smile she wets up with her tongue.

Now Pablo feels tricked without knowing quite why.  That’s three strikes.  Making him stop, go back down and handing him the ball.  He shoves it out at her and she takes it back.

How old are you?  he asks.

I thought you liked soccer.

I do like soccer but that wasn’t soccer.   That was cows standing in a field.

Cows.  Right on.  I’ll remember that.

Except for you.

I know.  Watch this, says the girl.  She punts the ball high and far onto the green field where it stops and sits like the blind eyeball of the world.  Take me with you.  Please.  I  don’t care where you’re going.  Just take me with you.

Listen, your parents must pay a lot of money for you to go to that school.

I don’t have any parents. 

What?

No parents.  I’m an orphan.  A poor orphan.  The state pays for me to go there.  I’m a ward of the state.

You should feel lucky to go then.  I would.

We have no boys so all they think about is boys.  Stupid cows.

They’re just mean.  You shouldn’t let mean people get you down.

Take me with you.  Let me go where you’re going, please.

What grade are you in?

Tenth.

No way.

Uh huh.  I’m just short like you are.  You and me are two of a kind.

I don’t think so.  Better go back and finish tenth grade, girl.  I’ve got to get back to work, anyway.

Before Pablo can turn and pretend to be going back to his probably non-existent job, the castle/cathedral school bell starts ringing out noon, so deep and dark he stands still in it, like he is posing for a photo the underworld is taking of the bright world.  Even from across the field, that deep bell sounds up into his body and opens his head to the fullness of the sky and he realizes that he has heard this bell at noon many times before over all the years he lived around there and that the ringing is tearing time open now:  Pablo feels he is standing still like he has always been standing still and will always be standing still in his broken down neighborhood, not far from a castle, eyes closed, listening, emptying and being filled.  He feels level and even and good, lined up with himself like that in time.  Strange it should happen on a day that sucked so bad. 

The ringing goes on real slow.  Pablo knows in his bones just when it will end and his head will close to the sky and the veil will go back down.   It never gets that far because the soccer girl takes the opportunity of Pablo standing there with his eyes closed to start kissing him on his mouth like he’s a water fountain in a public park.   He doesn’t recognize the kiss for what it is at first but then, when he does, he lets it go on in that suspension of time, because it feels soft and firm and good, that is until she slides her tongue into his mouth and he thinks, Frog.  Her tongue is a little black frog moving its wet life in and out of his mouth.  Wow.  Man.   All that kind of thing you can’t do anything about but it’s okay, he can take it, it’s okay, even if it is a frog, funny but okay, and he lets her frog tongue play with his tongue some more.  When the ringing is over the kissing is over and Pablo and the girl are standing there looking at each other without seeing each other like the two strangers they are. 

That’s my first kiss ever, says the girl.  I had it.  I saved it a long time.  I gave it to you.  The least you could say is, Thank you very much.

Pablo sees, past her curly hair, a big-bellied cop running toward them about halfway across the field already, his badge burning a sun hole in his chest, and because he doesn’t know what the cop saw, he takes off up the hill leaving that strange and lovely girl without a word. 

He’s so fast, he knows the fat cop will never catch him.  Pablo has always been a real fast runner.

2.

Pablo guides the door to his building back behind him so it won’t bang closed and signal to Miss Pamela that someone’s around in the early afternoon but the click of the latch’s tongue resounds so loud in the lobby, forget it, if she’s home. 

He turns to look at Miss Pamela’s apartment, expecting the worst, but it’s just her green door, no one there.  She must be out at crafts class. 

Miss Pamela’s forest green apartment door is decorated with little heart pillows she sews and stuffs herself, like every day should be Valentine’s Day when people get to announce their romantic feelings to the world.  She fills the pillows with dried herbs and attaches silver and gold Christmas bells to the outsides.  Every time her door opens or closes, you hear a happy jingling and get an invigorating whiff of the pine woods, uplifting to the spirit, like you could be a blind man and feel all right about your blindness, at least on the first floor.  Somebody on two is always cooking meat too long, or meat soup.  When Pablo’s tired after work, it makes him more tired climbing past two in that meat-fat-thickened air.  He lives on three, the top floor.  

Miss Pamela’s mission in life is to beautify her portion of the world.  Everyone else’s door is battleship gray but she couldn’t stand it.   Miss Pamela also likes to wear colorful, plush, velour bathrobes and dye her hair shades of red that don’t occur in nature and look much better after a few washings.  In the Spring, she puts on overalls and cloth gloves and plants flowers around the skinny sidewalk trees out front and waters and mulches them and cleans out the trash and “dog do”, talking to anyone who comes by about what she’s doing and what a fine day she has to do it.  Everyone calls her Miss Pamela, as if she was never married.  She insists on it.

Last Spring, she threw down wildflower seeds which grew like crazy in the sidewalk tree dirt but Wanda, the other tenant on the first floor, complained to the Super about the unruliness of the flowers just like she complained about the smell of the herbs, the painted door and the religious nature of the Creche Miss Pamela put out at Christmas.  Miss Pamela lost on the Creche for fire safety reasons not religious ones but the Super ruled in favor of the wildflowers, the herbs and of letting her keep the door green until all apartment doors were painted again.  Because of these and many other issues, Wanda has been giving nice Miss Pamela the silent treatment for years. 

Pablo pictures Miss Pamela standing in a robe among all the things she makes at crafts, pots and more pots, cups and more cups, heart pillows and heart lamps, heart afghans and heart bracelets, like a person in a dream.  He thinks she should have cats to keep her company but she doesn’t.  Years ago, Miss Pamela’s husband died and even now she doesn’t go to work and seems to have no interest at all in dating or anything else except making all kinds of crafts things, beautifying and keeping tabs on her vicinity. 

Probably she’s standing there with her eyeball at the peephole, if she’s home. 

One time two weeks ago, Pablo can’t figure how unless she heard him coughing down the airshaft their kitchen windows both look out on,  Miss Pamela knew he was home sick with the flu and came up carrying a tray with a plate of fresh baked cookies along with herb tea in a teapot she just fired.  She told him to get back into bed and she would take care of everything.  He had put his robe on to answer the door and she was in one of her robes, a royal purple one, showing a lot of freckled, powdered cleavage.  Instead of serving him tea, Miss Pamela opened her robe and like fainted on him in the bed but it was more like the robes did it, Pablo thought later on.  Not two people wearing robes.  Two robes wearing people. 

He closed his eyes and did his best under difficult circumstances.

After it was over, Miss Pamela started describing the suppers she was going to cook him and he’s been avoiding her ever since.  Maybe because of his height, lonely women of a certain age find Pablo adorable, accommodating and easy to be frank with about anything.  Just like with the robes, it doesn’t seem like these women are their ages but more like their ages have these women hanging from them and you can pluck them or, as in Miss Pamela’s case, they drop on you like ripe fruit to the ground.  Pablo is always a gentleman who would never disappoint such a nice woman.  It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the gift of a woman’s body just not with the watchdog and beautifier of the building. 

While Pablo did his best with her ample flesh, Miss Pamela lay in a dream of hearts saying she wouldn’t fight him and he could go ahead and have his way with her when he was already having his way with her.  His fever made him feel slippery and weak and not all there like the water pressure on the third floor.  Once in a while she would say her dead husband’s name, Harvey, the first time she ever mentioned the man and Pablo would leave that one alone.  Underneath the smell of Miss Pamela’s cleavage powder was a sweet odor of peaches and cream, her skin.  There was plenty of area to cover on her substantial body with its large elusive breasts and when he finally got up on top of its high roundness he felt like a kid first time on a horse.  

Ever since the robes did their thing, if he came home for lunch, Pablo would call Miss Pamela’s number, to see if she was out at crafts and he could practice drums.  He didn’t want her coming upstairs again in a robe.  One time she answered the phone and Pablo, too flustered to not say anything, asked if Mary was there and Miss Pamela very sweetly said that she was Mary and what could she do for him. 

Got ya’.

Halfway up to the first landing, Pablo hears the herb bells jingling, turns and sees their maker filling her open doorway in a robe.

Miss Pamela’s always smiling sad-like, as if they both know the same secret and maybe it’s sad but it’s nice to know it together.  Her smile seems to drain the light out of her wet, pale blue eyes.  With her maroon hair and maroon lips, making herself into a weird work of art, Miss Pamela resembles an alien, Pablo thinks, who grew up on a different planet under a different colored sun like Superman did.  On her planet, people would have purple skin and would nourish each other through their eyes like plants use sunlight to make food.  Their visual images would be life-sustaining and delicious, colors for protein, lines for vitamins, like.  When they got older, their skin would grow thorns and they would slowly die from going blind and not being able to eat images anymore.  Pablo’s mind is always coming up with stray and crazy thoughts like this that he never tells anyone.   Just for his own amusement, like the one about the robes.

Oh, Pablo.  Hello, Stranger.

Now, by those words, it’s all out there and you know how that goes.  Pablo’s a perfect gentleman though.  When he was a young boy, Little Grandmother taught him how to be polite, respectful and pleasing to women at practice wedding parties in Spanish; Pablo, the groom, gallant, charming and protective, Little Grandmother the bride, dignified, surrendering and slyly flirtatious.

Hello, Miss Pamela, how are you?

She has that same robe on.  Or, uh oh, it’s wearing her again.

Today’s my birthday. 

Well, it’s too much, after what happened between them, two weeks of avoiding her and now she says it’s her birthday though it could be a lie.  Hearts will say anything.  Pablo goes back down the steps, a slave to all the world.

Happy birthday, Miss Pamela.

He takes Miss Pamela’s hand, kisses the back of it and wonders what else could possibly happen to him today and if he should move out real soon, before his lease is up.

I’m glad you have the manners not to ask a lady how old she is.

It doesn’t matter how old a person is.  Their age doesn’t matter.  It’s their spirit that really matters.

What a lovely thought, Pablo.  I’m forty five today.

Another lie, sure. 

No way.  You don’t look a day over forty. 

You’re too kind.

Any special plans for your birthday? 

No.  I was just going to see what came along.

That’s three lies, sure. 

Pablo wishes he could lie to people like they lie to him, not little white ones to spare their feelings, selfish ones to get things or out of things.  The times he tries it he feels the lies dancing like ants on his face.   Pablo wishes he could hide behind a door sometime full of plans then spring out and pretend it was an accident, with calculation like that.

Miss Pamela is so nice there is no getting around her.  The purple robe is there again, alive, filling with her roundness and peachy, creamy heat.  His eyes come up to her cleavage exactly.  He guesses he’ll just dive into that shadowy, powdery crevice, for a birthday present though he only half believes it’s her birthday.  And then give notice to the Super. 

One time can be ignorance but twice is just pure stupidity after you know how foolish it is, and your own fault.  This situation calls for frogs but where are frogs when you really need them?   Maybe he should fake frogs.

Would you like to come in?

Well, Pablo thinks, there’s in and there’s in

For some birthday cake? 

Well, he thinks, there’s cake and there’s cake.

Now that you mention it, great, sure, yeah, after I get out of these clothes.  I was caught in that downpour today, you know, and got all soaked. 

You poor thing.  I’ll warm you up.

Maybe it’s the frogs, maybe the crazy day he’s had, maybe the kissing soccer girl, maybe Miss Pamela’s lies in the lobby, but a lying plan pops into Pablo’s truth-telling mind.

I’ve been meaning to tell you, Miss Pamela, the reason I’ve been out so much and haven’t stopped by to see you is, well, I kinda, you know, have a steady girlfriend now. 

Is that her?  asks Miss Pamela, looking over his shoulder at the lobby door.

The soccer girl is there behind the door glass waving at him, wrapped in the red sleeping bag from the golf course fence.   He can’t believe she followed him home, picking him out like a crazy person for reasons no one understands or like a dog for reasons everyone understands. 

But is this good luck or bad?  There between a rock and a hard place, he has no idea what to do because he was already at the hard place, Miss Pamela, with a lie in motion, when the girl rock sneaked up on him to ruin his plan.  Now what?  He looks at the hard place with her hearts and needs, standing guard in his building with a closet full of robes and a fridge full of lonely suppers.  He looks at the rock, waving her little hand at him like someone coming in on a ship, Hello, hello, did you miss me terrible?, and then smooching the door glass, the crazy nut.  Maybe she kisses everything in her path. 

Yeah, she’s fast, I mean, early.

Well, don’t just stand there, Pablo.  Let her in and you can introduce us.

Pablo, walking to the door, suddenly remembers that fat cop running toward them before and sure hopes the girl shook him. 

When he pulls the heavy door open, the girl leaps forward into the lobby like a flea on her wiry legs and her springy curls flop as one curl.  Her sparkling dark eyes say she doesn’t believe the luck of actually getting inside.  She is holding a red sleeping bag like a cape around her shoulders, the one Pablo saw spread out along the golf course fence that made him think of the dead guy he found years back.  Things like that sleeping bag make Pablo feel sad and lonely.  When he first saw it, he thought maybe there was a person who would come back there at night as if it was his home and that there would be old magazines, a flashlight and a radio buried in the leaves next to his bed, things important to him but not anything anyone would find worth taking.  The girl did though, just up and took his most important possession.  Maybe she darts from thing to thing without thinking like the world is made up of flying soccer balls to chase after and score with.  And it is sort of, he thinks, you know, atoms.

Hola, Sweetheart, he says to the girl and takes her hand in his hand.  There’s someone I want you to meet.  Okay?

Her squeezes her hand to let her know things and she squeezes back with her own things. 

Sure thing, Baby, the girl says like they are tight.  I got here as fast as I could. 

What’s with the sleeping bag?

I was cold, Baby.

Uh oh, he doesn’t even know her name. 

Miss Pamela, this is my girlfriend Dakota.

He always liked that.  Dakota.  For the sound.  That K and that T.

North and South, says the girl, catching right on. 

You poor cold thing, Miss Pamela says.  Why don’t you come in my apartment for a slice of my birthday cake and a nice cup of hot tea to warm you right up? 

Thanks a lot.  I’d love to, Miss Pamela.

That’s definitely not the right answer.   He squeezes the girl’s lively, little hand.

Ow, Baby.  What?

Oops.  Sorry.

I have all kinds of herb teas and so many beautiful cups that no one’s ever used, not once, not even me.  But a birthday is a best day, don’t you think, to use a cup for the first time?

Yes.  Happy Birthday to you, Miss Pamela.

I’m forty five. 

Thanks Miss Pamela but we gotta go now, Pablo says.  Maybe later.  Later, for sure.  But now we better change out of these clothes, don’t you think, Sweetheart?

I would really, really like some tea and birthday cake, Baby, to celebrate the nice lady’s birthday.

She’s a great actress, this girl.  Big trouble.

Yes, but I can’t, you know, on account of I have to go back to work soon, remember?

That’s okay.  You go.  It could be like a girl thing with girl talk of no interest to you.  I’d love to have a cup of sweet herb tea in a brand new cup.  You go to work, Baby, the girl says.  She leans up and kisses him on his cheek.  And I’ll see you later. 

The door closes.  The bells jingle with the smell of herbs.  Pablo just stands there as the lobby goes strange and quiet, the girl’s kiss drying on him in the cool lobby air. 

Frogs?  he says, half questioning them, half calling the pests as if to see how much life has in store for him this day.  No frogs.  Maybe it’s like in the Bible when God stopped showing himself to people preferring to be the force behind things from then on.  Everything seemed to be leading to God but then, just when you’d expect him, no God.  You thought someone had your back but really your were drowning on your own out there. 

Frogs? 

No frogs. 

Now he has two things to deal with, the ever sad-smiling Miss Pamela, nice outside, hungry inside, and her arsenal of robes, and the escaped, smooching soccer girl, latching onto him.  He wishes it wasn’t his nature to be always feeling sorry for people.

He starts up to three and it takes the whole slow climb to his door for him to figure how much trouble he could get into with Miss Pamela and the escaped school girl talking down there.  He takes the stairs two at a time and ring’s Miss Pamela’s doorbell. 

He’s never been inside before.  No one has, he doesn’t think, except the Super.  The place is like a doll’s house, a world of illusion, full of thousands of little handmade items, so it seems you must also become a doll if you want to enter.  That means your behavior is regulated by the doll mistress and the strength of her belief in the rules.  Watching over you, pressing close to you and speaking in husky hushed tones of the house’s proper ways and means. 

Miss Pamela opens the door and smiles at him like she knew he would be back all along. 

Standing among the phases of the moon depicted in sequence on her hall rug, Pablo takes his shoes off, with Miss Pamela watching over him, then lines them up against the wall next to the soccer girl’s muddy sneaks.  Musk incense is burning and under that the smell of peaches and skin again, the ripening heat he remembers from the attack of the robe.  He and Miss Pamela are in the small foyer lit dimly by candles casting a yellow-orange glow that makes the red sleeping bag look like freshly killed, skinned, wet meat hanging from the coat stand.  When Pablo turns, he sees a portrait of her late husband Harvey filling the wall, looking at no one in particular, sort of staring off like someone coming up with a new, bright idea, thinking hard.  He is standing with a book open in one hand and his other hand reaching up as if he is about to explain his new idea to a classroom of students.  Behind his glasses, Harvey has eyes that look both out and in at the same time.  You can tell he’s extremely smart.  He seems solid and sure of himself, a classical man, whatever that means.   Miss Pamela is silently watching Pablo in the small foyer as he takes in the painting to make sure he falls under Harvey’s spell same as she did years back.

A very classical man, says Pablo.  But a modern man too.

Harvey could be at home anywhere in the world because he knew who he was and his comfort in himself encouraged other people to be who they are, true to who they are.  He will always be the love of my life.  There will never be another man for me.

He’s very handsome, Miss Pamela.  I mean, was very handsome.  Sorry.

Yes, he was.  My Prince.  I never had to kiss one frog my whole life.

Frog?

Jesus. 

Miss Pamela turns to the nearby bureau, gives the pump on a bottle a few quick hits, squirting some white lotion into her hand.  There’s that smell of peaches and cream again.  She takes Pablo’s hands in hers and starts rubbing the lotion with long slow strokes into the skin of his fingers and palm, like she wants to press her whole life into his flesh.  It feels good, squeezing out aches Pablo didn’t know he had, but also makes him nervous in the little space with close boundaries and no boundaries, and the robe pulling his hands into her chest as if, after the first time, a body the robe has captured must perform certain acts forever.  That’s how it is in the country of the robes so you don’t want to get kidnapped and enslaved there. 

A kettle starts to whistle from the kitchen.

Don’t be nervous, Pablo.

Did you do rub Dakota hands too?

She is very nice.  And her name isn’t Dakota.

I know. 

You know?  Of course, you know.

We like making up names for each other.

And she is only thirteen at the most. 

Fifteen.  She’s just small like I am.

Stroking.  Stroking so slow.  As if his fingers are much longer than they are.  She has unusually strong hands.  Pablo feels each segment of bone being traced by the slow, urgent, undulating Miss Pamela loneliness as if the waves from the ship carrying Harvey away are finally coming to shore. 

I just want to tell you this in front of Harvey,  she whispers, urgent.  I never thought I’d let another man touch me again.

But why with me? 

You are the sweetest person, I kno