100 Proof

Spicy foods ease my troubled sinuses, my raw throat. Searing soup that bites back. Hot mustard. Salsa that, on other days, would daunt me. The layers of pain comfort, the sting self-inflicted muffles the symptoms visited by my body.

And this is how I end up surrounded by chandeliers and red paint, waiting on a banquet chair for a carry-out order of hot and sour soup. “Here, my friend,” says the waiter, handing me a glass of ice water. The cubes soothe, too, numbing my throat in advance of the imminent, fiery broth.

“Throw out peanuts,” the antiques hawker said. “He’ll follow you home.”

We checked our pockets, which were, sadly, legume-free. We left the ceramic elephant in that parking lot. He remained behind, waiting to follow someone else.

Across the street, the man in the rasta hat slams a hand—then the back of the same hand—against the green street sign pole. He is close enough to the bus stop to be waiting, but shifts his body in ways that make it clear he’s going to be there awhile.

He shouts into windows of passing cars while tapping a complex rhythm against his hip. From what I can tell, I am the only one paying him mind.

This time, I recognized the sundog on the horizon because I had seen one, once, while driving to work through a life that seemed to have happened in a dream or a novel I read. It was only when a coworker asked if I had seen it that I realized what it was.

This sundog evaporated as the plane moved forward, which dropped my stomach as effectively as if we had suddenly fallen several hundred feet to avoid turbulence. From my window seat, it appeared I was the only one who noticed.

In the middle of a sentence, she whooped and pointed toward the shoreline. There, a small, angly boy stepped off a surfboard and trotted a few steps down the sand, regaining his bearings.

“Sorry,” she said, turning back to the conversation. “Had to be the proud Mama. After all, when he was born, the neurologist told us he’d never even walk.”

The man dropped to his knees in the sand, began playing “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” on a hand-carved flute.

“I’m living on a boat out there,” he said. “I’m camping on my friends’ land.”

He began telling tales of the back-country women who won’t sleep with him, the way they form goddess camps to which he is not invited.

“I just tell them, well, I have a god camp,” he said. “I don’t get it. I think they take the whole celibacy thing a little too far.”

A star fell in my glass of wine tonight. It did not stay long, just twinkled there a moment, then winked out.

That’s the thing about stars. They burn bright, but they’re always gone by morning.