(no subject)
if any of you've been friended by seahorsememory, don't be too confused. it's me. i'm gonna keep both journals, using that one when it feels i must use that instead of this.
Uninviting Entrance
by d.g.
"8:30" read the blinking sign atop the loomingly drab building across the street from where Grafiti Churchill stood. The sign flashed, "JPF."
Four hours. Grafiti had watched that sign for four hours. Four hours of watching it flash the time and then "JPF", methodically alternating. What the hell did JPF mean? And just where the hell was Stu? Stu never showed up to school on time when he and Grafiti went to high school together. If Grafiti needed Stu, he could count on Stu to be there, always. He also could count on Stu, always, to be late. But four hours, even for Stu, struck Grafiti as ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Grafiti shook his head, took a marble out of his pocket, dropped it on the sidewalk, and watched it roll down through a sewer grate a few feet away. He sighed, shrugged, and walked away from the Greyhound Station toward the sidewalk and into the endless sea of nearly-blinding artificial light that flicked on an hour before.
Nobody at the Greyound Station seemed to hear him when he'd walk up to somebody he happened to notice lighting a cigarette and he'd say, "You got another one of those sticks of death?" He figured he'd asked maybe nine people for a cigarette by now and he might as well give up on finding one here.
That familiar screaming tension in the back of his head nagged him. He was determined to find an ashtray, any ashtray, that had a short he could light up for more than a couple drags. If he didn't find a cigarette -- just that short would do, tide him over -- he felt like his head might scream itself open.
After he'd meandered through a few blocks of rundown puke-green houses that looked disturbingly alike, except a few had brown shutters instead of blue, he came upon a gas station. He'd found his ashtray.
The ashtray by the door into the affiliated convenience store (which looked newer than anything within three blocks) contained a short that looked like someone lit it when they parked and put it out three drags later to go inside the store.
He went in the store after pocketing the short to buy the cheapest lighter he could with the dimes and pennies he had in the pocket of his worn-out pants he wore everyday and to which he constantly added words and art. He would wear them until they fell apart, like he did with everything else.
"What are you doing giving me all these pennies?" the cashier, her nametag said Cecelia, demanded, rolling her eyes disgustedly.
"Well, all I got are dimes and pennies," said Grafiti staring at the too-shiny, too-pastel, blue tile floor.
"And all I got is time, yeah, right," Cecelia scowled. "Look, take some matches, they're free. And don't come in here again expecting me to stand here and count your spare change."
Three books of matches in hand, Grafiti turned, exited the store. He tenderly took the cigarette out of his pocket and found a tear in the paper, but he pinched it just so, lit it, and got a few good drags anyway. He spat. The short tasted like charcoal. He threw it down, stamped it out madly, picked it up, and tore off and pocketted the filter to throw away later.
Grafiti noticed he could still see "JPF" in the near distance. He took another marble out of his pocket and left it in the ashtray. He had to find out what "JPF" was all about. Whatever "JPF" meant, it couldn't mean anything nearly as shitty as he felt.
Grafiti didn't know what he'd do if Stu still wasn't there when he got back to the station. Stu didn't have a cell phone, and the old man next to Grafiti on the bus spilled coffee on Grafiti's lap as he got up and slipped past Grafiti to get off the bus at his stop a few before Grafiti's. The coffee blurred the ink Grafiti used to write down Stu's address the week before he packed up his entire music collection, a few t-shirts and sweatshirts, every journal he'd ever kept, and a few books to read. The week before he got the hell out of Lexenton. If Stu never showed up, Grafiti imagined he'd throw all his marbles in the air and collapse. He couldn't go back to Lexenton where he felt sometimes like every person in the whole damn town was determined to make every day miserable torture for him. He would not go back.
His art pants kept him going his last couple years in Lexenton. His senior year of high school, he'd gotten a pair of light brown corduroy pants that, the first day he wore them, felt like the most comfortable pants he could fathom ever wearing. He didn't start wearing them every day at first, but he never washed them once. And every time he wore them, he ended up drawing and writing on them; it just happened at first, but over time he started wearing them every day and became more and more intentional about the whole thing. He drew shadow people with thought bubbles like: 'What is life? This isn't it.' or 'These are not pants, and you are not reading this.' He drew cats, he drew aliens. When he heard a song lyric that captured him, hit him deep, he transcribed it on his pants.
High school graduation left Grafiti feeling he'd been kicked in the face a couple hundred times. He didn't expect to feel sentimental during the ceremony. He just wanted to get it over with and get the scrap of paper that would declare he never had to set foot again in that building that might as well have been a prison. Every day forced to go sit in a room with peers who said, quite blatantly, that they wished he would die, or at least conveniently move to another school district. He'd listened to that shit since he was about twelve years old, that was when everyone inexplicably decided no one should be friends with Grafiti, no one should even be nice enough to him to say "Hey". Stu still talked to him, but no one else did. Stu was Grafiti's only real friend. A few months after they graduated, Stu moved to Worden, and the day Stu left, Grafiti put a mix tape on and got his headphones. It wasn't long before he, singing through tears with The Fastbacks, wrote on his pants: "I got this sinking feeling, everyone seems to be leaving. There's no one like me here on K Street."
Stu kept in touch with Grafiti in the three years since moving, sending him a letter every once in a while. Worden overall sounded like a terrible town when Stu talked about it, but it sounded better than Lexenton. Lexenton didn’t even have a decent library. Grafiti dreamed once about what the Worden Public Library must be like. Stu said it was four stories high and packed full of books, said he could easily spend five hours in there and not even get off the first floor. Worden occasionally received concerts from bands passing through the area on tours. The headlining chart-toppers didn't stop in Worden any more than they would've stopped in Lexenton, but Grafiti was more interested in the lesser-known acts that did come through Worden, anyway. Aside from that, though, Worden's downtown area, Stu said, could easily suck the life out of you, and Grafiti saw now exactly what Stu meant.
A few minutes into his walk back toward the station, he decided to veer and circle a few blocks to his right through the factories. He felt drawn forward until he got halfway through his circle and saw a railroad crossing ahead. Down the tracks to his right he saw a figure standing mid-tracks and smoking a cigarette.
"Tiltyrights, eh?" Grafiti muttered to himself as he veered diagonally off the sidewalk toward the figure.
As he got closer, he saw that the figure was a woman around his age in the most mismatched outfit he'd ever seen. She wore loose pants with one leg bright yellow and covered with neon green flowers and stars, and the other leg with a pattern of blue, red, and black stripes; splotches of colorful acrylic paint decorated her tattered orange t-shirt. He smiled to himself.
"Excuse me? You spare a cigarette?" he called as he got within a few yards of her. He couldn't bring himself to call it a "stick of death" this time.
"Sure thing," she said, voice monotone but her generosity apparent. "I won't need 'em much longer."
"Thanks," Grafiti said as he took the cigarette from her hand and lit it. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other while he smoked the cigarette. He felt his head stop screaming, but now his head hurt from wondering what exactly this woman had in mind, and feeling he knew the answer, it was pretty obvious after all.
Eventually he asked, as he took a deep drag from the cigarette before putting it out and pocketting the filter, "Uhh, what do you mean you won't need them much longer?"
"Nothing, really," she said in that same disturbingly-rich monotone. "Just waiting on a train."
"You gonna hop some trains?" Grafiti asked, jokingly but earnestly. He hoped against hope his joking question would get a "Yes". He couldn't handle the thought that she could be some person standing around waiting to get hit by a train.
"Well, not really," she said, monotone cracking wearily, a sadness peeked through despite her best effort. "I'm just so tired of walking around."
"Me, too," Grafiti sat down on the ground near the tracks and squeezed his head with his hands, one on his forehead and the other on the back of his head. She handed him another cigarette. He lit it before he continued, "I've been waiting on my ride for four hours. I gave up for now and started walking around, maybe 45 minutes ago." Grafiti laid back on the ground and sighed quite audibly.
"Well, I've been walking around for years," she said, monotone regained but also with a slight anger Grafiti could feel that she needed to let explode, she had needed to say whatever she was about to say for a long time. "When you start walking around, maybe you don't see it right away, but you walk around long enough and you see it."
"See what?" He hastily stood up, brushing flecks of gravel off the back of his shirt and seat of his pants. "I'm Grafiti, by the way."
"I'm Superba, but I won't be much longer, not when this train gets here."
Grafiti noticed then a blue car passing with a little girl hanging out the window pointing toward himself and Superba. He could only barely hear her shriek, "Mommy! Mommy! What are those people doing?!" He could hear in his mind the mother saying, "Oh, sweetie, don't look at them, it's not nice, they have problems."
Grafiti sighed to himself and said, to try and lighten the mood if that was possible at all, "What's JPF mean? 'Just point fingers'?"
Superba collapsed into a heap on the tracks, now sobbing. She pulled herself up with great effort to a seated position and grinned widely.
"Just poof fucker!" she shrieked. She sounded enraged, but she was giggling.
Grafiti shrugged, confused, and turned to head back to the sidewalk. He didn't know why she wanted him to leave, and he wasn't sure she did, her giggling made him wonder, but if she wanted him to leave, he didn't see any point in bothering her by sticking around. He'd bothered enough people by sticking around, and the one person he didn't bother didn't stick around. He was used to this by now. He'd walked a few feet back toward the road when Superba shouted to him.
"Holy shit! Don't just fucking leave!"
Grafiti turned to face her but remained where he stood. His voice came out weakly as he asked, "Didn't you tell me to poof?"
Superba's face registered some emotion, finally, cracking just as her monotone had. She looked like she might cry. "You asked me what JPF means. My reaction probably confused you, but that's what it means, just poof fucker."
"I don't think I get it," Grafiti shook his head apologetically as he walked back to where Superba stood. He could tell from the look on her face that she didn't want him to leave, but he didn't get why some flashing sign in the middle of Worden would be telling everyone to just poof, it just didn't make any sense to him.
"Well, you've only been walking around 45 minutes. Like I told you, you wouldn't see it yet. You walk around long enough, you see it in everyone's eyes -- well, almost everyone's, I don't see it in yours and I didn't see in the eyes of that guy who bummed me a cigarette when I had to walk a little ways out of Worden for a job interview, the last time I tried to get one, maybe a year and a half ago. It's been about five years since I had one, I don't even want one now, I don't think I could take being expected to stand around pretending I'm happy all the fucking time. When I have to pretend I'm happy, I start walking around, pacing, I mean, I've always done that, but I decided I just didn't want to play that game anymore and I kept walking. I've seen it so many times, heard it from them, they all think somehow you walking around has got something to do with them individually, personally. They think you're walking around to make their lives harder. Don't even try to tell 'em you chose to be walking around, they'll either not hear you or not understand or not give a shit. You'll see it in their eyes if you keep walking. You know damn well when the world wants you to just poof fucker."
"The world telling you to poof makes you want to poof?"
"I don't know, not really that."
"What, then? What the hell's going on here?"
"Well, I'm so sick of walking around, and there's just nothing to do but walk around or poof when you can't stand still too long if you want to avoid having the world drive you crazy. Nothing to do but walk around or poof, and I'm fucking sick of walking around."
"Me, too," Grafiti said, surprised at the tears in his eyes. Her words touched him more than any ever had. His voice shaky but determined, he managed, "But I want to stand still with you."
He held his hand out to her. She took it gently as if the act of holding someone's hand were alien to her. Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled just slightly, a secret smile.
"Just poof fucker?" she asked with a smile as they gave each other a long, solid hug.
He kissed her on the cheek as they separated from their embrace and declared, "Just poof fucker!"
***
I'd been sitting in my car out front of the Greyhound Station for over half an hour. I kept watching for Grafiti, but I hadn't seen him yet. I gave up wearing a watch when I was 13 years old and I wasn't going back now, so I wasn't quite sure how late I was until I got to the station and saw that "JPF" sign telling me it was 9:48. I'd gotten used to that thing after living in Worden for two years, but when I first got here it pissed me off having to look at it all over the place. This time, I got pissed off at myself. I didn't think I was five hours late, I thought I might be two hours late or something, but not five. Evidently it took longer than I thought fixing the tire I flattened on the way to the station from my house twenty minutes outside town. I was still surprised the whole thing had taken five hours, but I guessed it made enough sense, I did have to walk three miles to find a phone since, when the tire went flat, I was still in bumfuck about ten miles outside of Worden.
At about 10:30, I saw Grafiti come walking up from the street. He walked slowly, looking at the ground. He didn't see me. I got out of the car and ran toward him.
"Grafiti!" I shouted, waving my arms.
"Just poof fucker!" he said with a grin and an uncharacteristically cheerful voice. His cheerfulness sounded sincere -- he did seem strangely happy -- but also sounded strongly forced as if he was using his cheery demeanor to battle something else he felt.
For a minute, I was confused. Then I thought about that fucking "JPF" sign.
"When I first moved to Worden, I figured that sign meant something like, 'Just pretend you're free; you'll never be free of me,'" I told him. "But 'just poof fucker'? I like that. Reminds me of Lexenton."
"Stu, let's tell Lexenton to 'just poof fucker'!"
"I kinda did," I had to say. "I always figured you'd get out of there sooner than you did."
"Me too, but I think I died inside for awhile and got stuck," he said in a way such that I could hear his amazement at his own realization. He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and continued. His voice sounded both excited and terrified. "Stu, I met someone amazing today, she was standing in the middle of the train tracks over there. I saw the "JPF" sign everywhere I went while I waited on you. Everywhere. Couldn't escape it. A little girl, in a passing car, pointed her finger at this woman and me, and shrieked to her mother, wondering what we could possibly be doing. I asked this woman if 'JPF' meant 'Just point fingers', and she shrieked 'Just poof fucker!' It confused me at first, too, but it made so much sense thinking about Lexenton, you're right about that one. She said I'll know in three days at noon whether or not she poofed. She either let the train hit her, or she hopped it and will be back in three days and beside the pay phone next to the 'JPF' building at noon to answer when I dial the number she gave me."
"Was her name Superba, by any chance?" I hoped not, but I had a vague sinking feeling.
"How the hell did you know that?"
"There's so much I never got around to putting in those letters to you, I gotta apologize," I said, wishing I was better at writing letters. "She's one of the reasons when I first moved to Worden I felt like staying here. I used to see her hanging around the alley behind this one thrift store near the library, I like going back there and reading, writing in my notebook, or drawing on the back wall of the store that's already so covered I figure it doesn't matter too much if I add a little bit when I'm inspired once in awhile. Sometimes she used to be there, sometimes chain-smoking, sometimes hanging around for hours without smoking any cigarettes at all. She'd always sit down beside me and we'd have these conversations. She told me she liked to finger-paint and make up songs she'd sing while she painted. She said she worked over at the music store a few blocks away from the alley, I never went there so I don't know, but once or twice she showed up in the alley with a CD she thought I'd enjoy. She ripped them to her computer at work sometimes to make copies of later when she got a chance. But yeah, the last time I saw her I'm not even sure she recognized me."
"What happened the last time you saw her?" Grafiti asked, an anxious catch in his voice.
I sighed sadly, sat down on the ground, shaken by even the idea that she might have been hit by the 10:30 train just as Grafiti walked up to me here at the bus station. Grafiti sat down beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.
"You okay, Stu?" he asked, concerned.
"Yeah, as okay as I can be right now. How about you?"
"I don't know if I am or not," Grafiti admitted. "I feel better than I've ever felt in my life, and at the same time, I'm pretty damn angry that the world makes so many people want to poof so much they decide they just might do it, and I'm sad and trying not to get my hopes up that she'll answer that phone."
"You know, the last time I saw her, she told me not to poof," I said softly. "I was in my front yard, playing a game with the neighbor's dog and I stopped to light a cigarette. I heard Superba asking me if I could spare one. She just stood on the side of the road like the thought of setting foot in my yard scared her, and she looked utterly exhausted. I walked over to her, gave her a cigarette, and lit it for her. I asked her how long she'd been walking, and all she'd tell me was that she wasn't gonna stop anytime soon. She thanked me, calling me 'sir' instead of 'Stu'. Then she looked me in the eyes as if she was looking at a complete stranger, told me never to let the world eat me alive, and started walking again up the road toward town. I haven't seen her since then, and it's been awhile since then."
"If she hasn't poofed in three days, you can talk to her, too," Grafiti told me.
"Thank you, sir," I choked.
"You're welcome, sir," Grafiti said with a sad smile on the 'sir'. "And thank you, sir, for not letting me poof back when everybody but you hoped I would."
We sat on the ground until we noticed that infernal sign telling us it was 11:49. Grafiti stood up and pulled me to my feet, and we walked toward my car to drive to my house. As we got in the car, I paused to look directly up at that sign that didn't plan to stop anytime soon reminding anyone within six blocks to 'JPF'. I shouted in its direction just before I got in the car, "Just poof fucker!"
Uninviting Entrance
by d.g.
"8:30" read the blinking sign atop the loomingly drab building across the street from where Grafiti Churchill stood. The sign flashed, "JPF."
Four hours. Grafiti had watched that sign for four hours. Four hours of watching it flash the time and then "JPF", methodically alternating. What the hell did JPF mean? And just where the hell was Stu? Stu never showed up to school on time when he and Grafiti went to high school together. If Grafiti needed Stu, he could count on Stu to be there, always. He also could count on Stu, always, to be late. But four hours, even for Stu, struck Grafiti as ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Grafiti shook his head, took a marble out of his pocket, dropped it on the sidewalk, and watched it roll down through a sewer grate a few feet away. He sighed, shrugged, and walked away from the Greyhound Station toward the sidewalk and into the endless sea of nearly-blinding artificial light that flicked on an hour before.
Nobody at the Greyound Station seemed to hear him when he'd walk up to somebody he happened to notice lighting a cigarette and he'd say, "You got another one of those sticks of death?" He figured he'd asked maybe nine people for a cigarette by now and he might as well give up on finding one here.
That familiar screaming tension in the back of his head nagged him. He was determined to find an ashtray, any ashtray, that had a short he could light up for more than a couple drags. If he didn't find a cigarette -- just that short would do, tide him over -- he felt like his head might scream itself open.
After he'd meandered through a few blocks of rundown puke-green houses that looked disturbingly alike, except a few had brown shutters instead of blue, he came upon a gas station. He'd found his ashtray.
The ashtray by the door into the affiliated convenience store (which looked newer than anything within three blocks) contained a short that looked like someone lit it when they parked and put it out three drags later to go inside the store.
He went in the store after pocketing the short to buy the cheapest lighter he could with the dimes and pennies he had in the pocket of his worn-out pants he wore everyday and to which he constantly added words and art. He would wear them until they fell apart, like he did with everything else.
"What are you doing giving me all these pennies?" the cashier, her nametag said Cecelia, demanded, rolling her eyes disgustedly.
"Well, all I got are dimes and pennies," said Grafiti staring at the too-shiny, too-pastel, blue tile floor.
"And all I got is time, yeah, right," Cecelia scowled. "Look, take some matches, they're free. And don't come in here again expecting me to stand here and count your spare change."
Three books of matches in hand, Grafiti turned, exited the store. He tenderly took the cigarette out of his pocket and found a tear in the paper, but he pinched it just so, lit it, and got a few good drags anyway. He spat. The short tasted like charcoal. He threw it down, stamped it out madly, picked it up, and tore off and pocketted the filter to throw away later.
Grafiti noticed he could still see "JPF" in the near distance. He took another marble out of his pocket and left it in the ashtray. He had to find out what "JPF" was all about. Whatever "JPF" meant, it couldn't mean anything nearly as shitty as he felt.
Grafiti didn't know what he'd do if Stu still wasn't there when he got back to the station. Stu didn't have a cell phone, and the old man next to Grafiti on the bus spilled coffee on Grafiti's lap as he got up and slipped past Grafiti to get off the bus at his stop a few before Grafiti's. The coffee blurred the ink Grafiti used to write down Stu's address the week before he packed up his entire music collection, a few t-shirts and sweatshirts, every journal he'd ever kept, and a few books to read. The week before he got the hell out of Lexenton. If Stu never showed up, Grafiti imagined he'd throw all his marbles in the air and collapse. He couldn't go back to Lexenton where he felt sometimes like every person in the whole damn town was determined to make every day miserable torture for him. He would not go back.
His art pants kept him going his last couple years in Lexenton. His senior year of high school, he'd gotten a pair of light brown corduroy pants that, the first day he wore them, felt like the most comfortable pants he could fathom ever wearing. He didn't start wearing them every day at first, but he never washed them once. And every time he wore them, he ended up drawing and writing on them; it just happened at first, but over time he started wearing them every day and became more and more intentional about the whole thing. He drew shadow people with thought bubbles like: 'What is life? This isn't it.' or 'These are not pants, and you are not reading this.' He drew cats, he drew aliens. When he heard a song lyric that captured him, hit him deep, he transcribed it on his pants.
High school graduation left Grafiti feeling he'd been kicked in the face a couple hundred times. He didn't expect to feel sentimental during the ceremony. He just wanted to get it over with and get the scrap of paper that would declare he never had to set foot again in that building that might as well have been a prison. Every day forced to go sit in a room with peers who said, quite blatantly, that they wished he would die, or at least conveniently move to another school district. He'd listened to that shit since he was about twelve years old, that was when everyone inexplicably decided no one should be friends with Grafiti, no one should even be nice enough to him to say "Hey". Stu still talked to him, but no one else did. Stu was Grafiti's only real friend. A few months after they graduated, Stu moved to Worden, and the day Stu left, Grafiti put a mix tape on and got his headphones. It wasn't long before he, singing through tears with The Fastbacks, wrote on his pants: "I got this sinking feeling, everyone seems to be leaving. There's no one like me here on K Street."
Stu kept in touch with Grafiti in the three years since moving, sending him a letter every once in a while. Worden overall sounded like a terrible town when Stu talked about it, but it sounded better than Lexenton. Lexenton didn’t even have a decent library. Grafiti dreamed once about what the Worden Public Library must be like. Stu said it was four stories high and packed full of books, said he could easily spend five hours in there and not even get off the first floor. Worden occasionally received concerts from bands passing through the area on tours. The headlining chart-toppers didn't stop in Worden any more than they would've stopped in Lexenton, but Grafiti was more interested in the lesser-known acts that did come through Worden, anyway. Aside from that, though, Worden's downtown area, Stu said, could easily suck the life out of you, and Grafiti saw now exactly what Stu meant.
A few minutes into his walk back toward the station, he decided to veer and circle a few blocks to his right through the factories. He felt drawn forward until he got halfway through his circle and saw a railroad crossing ahead. Down the tracks to his right he saw a figure standing mid-tracks and smoking a cigarette.
"Tiltyrights, eh?" Grafiti muttered to himself as he veered diagonally off the sidewalk toward the figure.
As he got closer, he saw that the figure was a woman around his age in the most mismatched outfit he'd ever seen. She wore loose pants with one leg bright yellow and covered with neon green flowers and stars, and the other leg with a pattern of blue, red, and black stripes; splotches of colorful acrylic paint decorated her tattered orange t-shirt. He smiled to himself.
"Excuse me? You spare a cigarette?" he called as he got within a few yards of her. He couldn't bring himself to call it a "stick of death" this time.
"Sure thing," she said, voice monotone but her generosity apparent. "I won't need 'em much longer."
"Thanks," Grafiti said as he took the cigarette from her hand and lit it. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other while he smoked the cigarette. He felt his head stop screaming, but now his head hurt from wondering what exactly this woman had in mind, and feeling he knew the answer, it was pretty obvious after all.
Eventually he asked, as he took a deep drag from the cigarette before putting it out and pocketting the filter, "Uhh, what do you mean you won't need them much longer?"
"Nothing, really," she said in that same disturbingly-rich monotone. "Just waiting on a train."
"You gonna hop some trains?" Grafiti asked, jokingly but earnestly. He hoped against hope his joking question would get a "Yes". He couldn't handle the thought that she could be some person standing around waiting to get hit by a train.
"Well, not really," she said, monotone cracking wearily, a sadness peeked through despite her best effort. "I'm just so tired of walking around."
"Me, too," Grafiti sat down on the ground near the tracks and squeezed his head with his hands, one on his forehead and the other on the back of his head. She handed him another cigarette. He lit it before he continued, "I've been waiting on my ride for four hours. I gave up for now and started walking around, maybe 45 minutes ago." Grafiti laid back on the ground and sighed quite audibly.
"Well, I've been walking around for years," she said, monotone regained but also with a slight anger Grafiti could feel that she needed to let explode, she had needed to say whatever she was about to say for a long time. "When you start walking around, maybe you don't see it right away, but you walk around long enough and you see it."
"See what?" He hastily stood up, brushing flecks of gravel off the back of his shirt and seat of his pants. "I'm Grafiti, by the way."
"I'm Superba, but I won't be much longer, not when this train gets here."
Grafiti noticed then a blue car passing with a little girl hanging out the window pointing toward himself and Superba. He could only barely hear her shriek, "Mommy! Mommy! What are those people doing?!" He could hear in his mind the mother saying, "Oh, sweetie, don't look at them, it's not nice, they have problems."
Grafiti sighed to himself and said, to try and lighten the mood if that was possible at all, "What's JPF mean? 'Just point fingers'?"
Superba collapsed into a heap on the tracks, now sobbing. She pulled herself up with great effort to a seated position and grinned widely.
"Just poof fucker!" she shrieked. She sounded enraged, but she was giggling.
Grafiti shrugged, confused, and turned to head back to the sidewalk. He didn't know why she wanted him to leave, and he wasn't sure she did, her giggling made him wonder, but if she wanted him to leave, he didn't see any point in bothering her by sticking around. He'd bothered enough people by sticking around, and the one person he didn't bother didn't stick around. He was used to this by now. He'd walked a few feet back toward the road when Superba shouted to him.
"Holy shit! Don't just fucking leave!"
Grafiti turned to face her but remained where he stood. His voice came out weakly as he asked, "Didn't you tell me to poof?"
Superba's face registered some emotion, finally, cracking just as her monotone had. She looked like she might cry. "You asked me what JPF means. My reaction probably confused you, but that's what it means, just poof fucker."
"I don't think I get it," Grafiti shook his head apologetically as he walked back to where Superba stood. He could tell from the look on her face that she didn't want him to leave, but he didn't get why some flashing sign in the middle of Worden would be telling everyone to just poof, it just didn't make any sense to him.
"Well, you've only been walking around 45 minutes. Like I told you, you wouldn't see it yet. You walk around long enough, you see it in everyone's eyes -- well, almost everyone's, I don't see it in yours and I didn't see in the eyes of that guy who bummed me a cigarette when I had to walk a little ways out of Worden for a job interview, the last time I tried to get one, maybe a year and a half ago. It's been about five years since I had one, I don't even want one now, I don't think I could take being expected to stand around pretending I'm happy all the fucking time. When I have to pretend I'm happy, I start walking around, pacing, I mean, I've always done that, but I decided I just didn't want to play that game anymore and I kept walking. I've seen it so many times, heard it from them, they all think somehow you walking around has got something to do with them individually, personally. They think you're walking around to make their lives harder. Don't even try to tell 'em you chose to be walking around, they'll either not hear you or not understand or not give a shit. You'll see it in their eyes if you keep walking. You know damn well when the world wants you to just poof fucker."
"The world telling you to poof makes you want to poof?"
"I don't know, not really that."
"What, then? What the hell's going on here?"
"Well, I'm so sick of walking around, and there's just nothing to do but walk around or poof when you can't stand still too long if you want to avoid having the world drive you crazy. Nothing to do but walk around or poof, and I'm fucking sick of walking around."
"Me, too," Grafiti said, surprised at the tears in his eyes. Her words touched him more than any ever had. His voice shaky but determined, he managed, "But I want to stand still with you."
He held his hand out to her. She took it gently as if the act of holding someone's hand were alien to her. Her eyes sparkled, and she smiled just slightly, a secret smile.
"Just poof fucker?" she asked with a smile as they gave each other a long, solid hug.
He kissed her on the cheek as they separated from their embrace and declared, "Just poof fucker!"
***
I'd been sitting in my car out front of the Greyhound Station for over half an hour. I kept watching for Grafiti, but I hadn't seen him yet. I gave up wearing a watch when I was 13 years old and I wasn't going back now, so I wasn't quite sure how late I was until I got to the station and saw that "JPF" sign telling me it was 9:48. I'd gotten used to that thing after living in Worden for two years, but when I first got here it pissed me off having to look at it all over the place. This time, I got pissed off at myself. I didn't think I was five hours late, I thought I might be two hours late or something, but not five. Evidently it took longer than I thought fixing the tire I flattened on the way to the station from my house twenty minutes outside town. I was still surprised the whole thing had taken five hours, but I guessed it made enough sense, I did have to walk three miles to find a phone since, when the tire went flat, I was still in bumfuck about ten miles outside of Worden.
At about 10:30, I saw Grafiti come walking up from the street. He walked slowly, looking at the ground. He didn't see me. I got out of the car and ran toward him.
"Grafiti!" I shouted, waving my arms.
"Just poof fucker!" he said with a grin and an uncharacteristically cheerful voice. His cheerfulness sounded sincere -- he did seem strangely happy -- but also sounded strongly forced as if he was using his cheery demeanor to battle something else he felt.
For a minute, I was confused. Then I thought about that fucking "JPF" sign.
"When I first moved to Worden, I figured that sign meant something like, 'Just pretend you're free; you'll never be free of me,'" I told him. "But 'just poof fucker'? I like that. Reminds me of Lexenton."
"Stu, let's tell Lexenton to 'just poof fucker'!"
"I kinda did," I had to say. "I always figured you'd get out of there sooner than you did."
"Me too, but I think I died inside for awhile and got stuck," he said in a way such that I could hear his amazement at his own realization. He pulled a cigarette from behind his ear, lit it, and continued. His voice sounded both excited and terrified. "Stu, I met someone amazing today, she was standing in the middle of the train tracks over there. I saw the "JPF" sign everywhere I went while I waited on you. Everywhere. Couldn't escape it. A little girl, in a passing car, pointed her finger at this woman and me, and shrieked to her mother, wondering what we could possibly be doing. I asked this woman if 'JPF' meant 'Just point fingers', and she shrieked 'Just poof fucker!' It confused me at first, too, but it made so much sense thinking about Lexenton, you're right about that one. She said I'll know in three days at noon whether or not she poofed. She either let the train hit her, or she hopped it and will be back in three days and beside the pay phone next to the 'JPF' building at noon to answer when I dial the number she gave me."
"Was her name Superba, by any chance?" I hoped not, but I had a vague sinking feeling.
"How the hell did you know that?"
"There's so much I never got around to putting in those letters to you, I gotta apologize," I said, wishing I was better at writing letters. "She's one of the reasons when I first moved to Worden I felt like staying here. I used to see her hanging around the alley behind this one thrift store near the library, I like going back there and reading, writing in my notebook, or drawing on the back wall of the store that's already so covered I figure it doesn't matter too much if I add a little bit when I'm inspired once in awhile. Sometimes she used to be there, sometimes chain-smoking, sometimes hanging around for hours without smoking any cigarettes at all. She'd always sit down beside me and we'd have these conversations. She told me she liked to finger-paint and make up songs she'd sing while she painted. She said she worked over at the music store a few blocks away from the alley, I never went there so I don't know, but once or twice she showed up in the alley with a CD she thought I'd enjoy. She ripped them to her computer at work sometimes to make copies of later when she got a chance. But yeah, the last time I saw her I'm not even sure she recognized me."
"What happened the last time you saw her?" Grafiti asked, an anxious catch in his voice.
I sighed sadly, sat down on the ground, shaken by even the idea that she might have been hit by the 10:30 train just as Grafiti walked up to me here at the bus station. Grafiti sat down beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.
"You okay, Stu?" he asked, concerned.
"Yeah, as okay as I can be right now. How about you?"
"I don't know if I am or not," Grafiti admitted. "I feel better than I've ever felt in my life, and at the same time, I'm pretty damn angry that the world makes so many people want to poof so much they decide they just might do it, and I'm sad and trying not to get my hopes up that she'll answer that phone."
"You know, the last time I saw her, she told me not to poof," I said softly. "I was in my front yard, playing a game with the neighbor's dog and I stopped to light a cigarette. I heard Superba asking me if I could spare one. She just stood on the side of the road like the thought of setting foot in my yard scared her, and she looked utterly exhausted. I walked over to her, gave her a cigarette, and lit it for her. I asked her how long she'd been walking, and all she'd tell me was that she wasn't gonna stop anytime soon. She thanked me, calling me 'sir' instead of 'Stu'. Then she looked me in the eyes as if she was looking at a complete stranger, told me never to let the world eat me alive, and started walking again up the road toward town. I haven't seen her since then, and it's been awhile since then."
"If she hasn't poofed in three days, you can talk to her, too," Grafiti told me.
"Thank you, sir," I choked.
"You're welcome, sir," Grafiti said with a sad smile on the 'sir'. "And thank you, sir, for not letting me poof back when everybody but you hoped I would."
We sat on the ground until we noticed that infernal sign telling us it was 11:49. Grafiti stood up and pulled me to my feet, and we walked toward my car to drive to my house. As we got in the car, I paused to look directly up at that sign that didn't plan to stop anytime soon reminding anyone within six blocks to 'JPF'. I shouted in its direction just before I got in the car, "Just poof fucker!"