The Complex

A short novel by Logan Zoellner

“…a community needs a soul if it is to become a true home for human beings.  You, the people, give it this soul.”  Pope John Paul II

At the very top, surrounded by a wire fence.  There are two trees.  One is real, the other is made out of plastic.  The original architect had envisioned two trees, both real.  An engineer had subsequently decided that this was untenable.  Trees grow; the roots tear into things.  They are messy.  In autumn the leaves fall of and create a nuisance.  The two real trees were therefore erased from the blueprint and replaced with two artificial trees.  This was agreed upon by both the subcontractors and the builders.  Why, then, there is one real tree and only one made out of plastic cannot be said.  Most likely, some negligent worker simply failed to read the blueprints correctly.  Or perhaps the blueprints were never revised correctly, though this seems unlikely.  A few years ago, someone suggested finding the blueprints and looking, but it is unlikely that it has ever been done.  A few speculative souls have suggested that one night an angel appeared and transformed one of the plastic trees, Pinocchio-like into a real tree.  What the other tree had done, that it did not deserve such a gift was unclear.  Perhaps, if one were to listen to the hushed whispers of the two trees, you would hear the plastic one telling lies.  Or perhaps it simply preferred being plastic.  There have been some suggestions of cutting down the real tree, although nothing has been done about it.

Directly between the two trees is a artificial pond.  A few goldfish are invariably introduced every summer, but in the winter they would freeze so they are captured by Mr. Edwards, who lives on the 4^th floor.  He keeps them over the winter in a dozen jam-jars that sit on his windowsill.  The windowsill is not quite wide enough for the jars, so occasionally one falls off, smashing on the floor and cataclysmically removing the goldfish from its native element.  If Mr. Edwards is there, he usually just finds another jar, or keeps the goldfish in a drinking glass until he can get one.  Once, however, no one was in the apartment and the fish was found, suffocated.  Who tipped the jar is not quite clear.  One might try and blame a cat, but there are not cats in Mr. Edwards apartment.  The wind, also, could be to blame, but Mr. Edwards is not the sort of man who leaves a window open in the middle of winter.  The only other suggestion, then, is that the goldfish itself moves the jar from the inside, or perhaps the gradual swaying of the building moves the jar just far enough that it can fall.

Mr. Edwards lives on the 4^th floor, but works behind a desk on the first floor.  Anyone entering or leaving the complex will inevitably go past Mr. Edwards on their way in or out.  Those adult members of the complex who pass by this desk on a regular basis are, in general, known to Mr. Edwards by name.  For instance: there is Mr. Smith who lives on the 7^th floor and works at an insurance company, Mrs. James who is retired now but likes to go on walks with her dogs, Mrs. Robin who works as a secretary at a legal firm, Mr. Bloom who….  The list could go on for quite a while since, of course, there are dozens of people living on each of the 19 floors of The Complex.  Not all of them go past Mr. Edward’s desk on a regular basis, mind you.  Ms. Cleveland teaches the children in the school on the 20^th floor, and hardly ever goes out at all.  Neither does Mr. Clarke who is retired, but keeps cats, not dogs.  A large number of residents do go out, however, and even those that go out only rarely are often know to Mr. Edwards by name.  He is a sociable fellow to say the least, though only in that removed sense of a man who says “hello” to everyone he meets and does a good job of remembering names.  He does not, for example, play Bridge with the Joneses on Thursday nights, although the have twice invited him to do so over the last five years.  Nor did he go out drinking with Mr. Gable (known to his friends as “Buddy”) last New Years, although he was invited and had nothing better to do.   

On New Years, Buddy and a few other men from the complex spent a night on the town.  This sort of behavior is fairly typical for Buddy, who likes to spend time outside of the complex with his co-workers from the factory.  The factory where Buddy works produces primarily windows, although for a short period last spring there was an unexpected surge in the demand for glass-doors so production was shifted somewhat in that direction.  When the surge feel behind, however, midway though July production was shifted back to windows.  The owner of the factor has more than once said, in informal conversations and the like, that he believes his mission in life is simply to produce windows, to let the light of the sun into every home in the world.  Recently, he started a venture in Mexico producing windows for a large skyscraper that was constructed there, demand was so great that he even thought about building a second factory, but for the moment he has been forced to rent space on a neighboring lot.  The owner of the factory, however, does not live in the complex.  He lives in a too-large house in the suburbs alone with his wife and one child.  The house has six bedrooms, but at no time have more than 4 of them ever been occupied.  That was when the mother-in-law came over and the owner of the factory was simultaneously evicted from his wife’s bedroom for certain not-too-nice statements made about the mother-in-law.  Recently, the owner of the factory and his wife have been on better terms and only two of the six bedrooms have been occupied.

No apartment in the complex has more than four distinct bedrooms.  Most of the apartments also have a den/living room and a small kitchen.  The kitchen adjoins on the living room, so meals are usually taken in front of the TV or on a separate table set up on the border between the two, although this depends on the family.  Mr. Brook, who is suspicious of foreigners suspects that the Hajiid family takes their meals on the floor, which he insists is unsanitary because of the proximity to the floor-lice that almost certainly live in their (but not his) rug.  He also suspects Mr. Hajiid of doing unspeakable things to his two daughters, but this is almost certainly not true.  The two daughters of Hajiid are beautiful, well adjusted girls and thoroughly American.  The elder recently turned sixteen and was caught in the company of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson’s son who is a year older.  Whether the Johnson’s son was doing unspeakable things to Mr. Hajiid’s daughter Mr. Brooks refuses to speculate.

The December, for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Carol did not erect the Christmas tree in the lobby in front of Mr. Edward’s desk.  They had undertaken the task for the last several years, which is about as far back as most people’s memory goes.  The actual reasons why they did not erect the tree are unclear, and could have to do with any number of causes.  Perhaps Mrs. Carol’s arthritis was finally starting to slow her down.  Perhaps Mr. Carol, who had shown little Christmas spirit this year had simply not felt like doing it.  Perhaps the offer by Ms. Cleveland to have the school children do it, after a delay of only two days from the usual tree-erecting time had convinced Mr. and Mrs. Carol that their skills were not wanted, or not needed.  In any case, Ms. Cleveland and her class actually did erect the Christmas tree, and they did a fairly good job of it.  Of course the Carol’s had always done a good job of it also, but people’s memories are not perfect so it is difficult to accurately compare the adequacy of the Christmas decorations from one tree to the next.  In any case, Ms. Cleveland’s class did make one change: that is to say they used a real tree instead of an artificial one.  The Carol’s always used the same artificial tree from one year to the next, and while it was a nice tree and looked almost real from a distance, there is still something to be said for having a real tree.  The scent of a real tree, to begin with, cannot be duplicated by any amount of synthetic polymers and the like.  Mr. Linpul, who is a chemist, insists that any aroma can be created relatively easily in a factory process, but he has failed to convince anyone else of this.  He works at a firm in the East side of town which produces perfumes, and a number of women at the complex wear the perfumes which he helps to design but the nonetheless consider their own senses much more accurate than his when it comes to the scent of Christmas decorations.

Mr. Linpul has only been working at the firm on the east side of town for six months now, and prior to two years of tech school, he graduated from the school on the top of the complex.  Ms. Cleveland is only two years older than Mr. Linpul and indeed they went to the school at the same time.  Both Mr. Linpul and Ms. Cleveland are among the first generation of children to have spent most of their lives in the complex.  Ms. Cleveland was 7 when her family moved into the complex, indeed they were one of the first families to move in, and Mr. Linpul was 6, his family moving in the year after Ms. Cleveland’s.  It is remarkable to think that this year, the complex will graduate the first group of children who spent their entire life in the complex.  A number of them plan on living in the complex after this time, but an equal number are eager to leave and experience the broader world.  An outside mind might wonder why any child would want to live in the same the rest of their lives that they spent the first part of their lives in, but an outside mind would have difficulty understanding many things about the complex.  Some things which we hold sacred are to the people of the complex the most vile and despicable practices available, and many of the things which they hold sacred are unknown  or unpracticed in the outside world. 

The celebration of the Beginning is one such tradition that we might find comprehensible, if not familiar.  Every year, on the first weekend in June, every family celebrates the beginning: the day that the complex opened.  Different families celebrate differently, some eat a meal, some watch TV, some exchange gifts.  There is no family that does not celebrate the Beginning.  That is what it is to be a family and live in the complex: to celebrate the Beginning.  Those that live alone, who do not have families, often get together to celebrate, although not all do.  Not to celebrate the Beginning is to feel very alone on the first weekend of June.  For this reason, two years ago Ms. Cunning started a barbecue on the roof of the complex for all of those who have no family with which to celebrate the Beginning.  The last two times it was celebrated, it was very popular, and several families actually showed up with their children as well.  It is possible that the Beginning will become a celebration by the whole community, and not by families, although this would be difficult, since there is only so much space on the roof of the complex.  Suggestions have been made to move it to a large auditorium which is near the complex, but to most this seems blasphemous.  How could one celebrate the beginning if not in the complex?  For the moment, this issue is discussed only in private conversations, but perhaps in the future this will change.  There are many things still which change within the complex.

Beside the two trees and the pond, on the top of the complex, there is also a playground.  During recess and after school, many of the children flock to the playground to amuse themselves on the see-saw, the merry-go-round, the swings and the slide.  The presence of real grass (not removed by the engineer from the plans although it contributes to roof-rust and a number of other plans) also encourages the children to run and play.  Tag is a favorite game, hide and seek is difficult since there are few good hiding spots on the roof, and catch is practiced more often by boys than girls.  Someone suggested the roof be turned into a baseball field, but one would fill the entire roof leaving no room for the playground or other attractions such as a number of picnic tables.

At the moment two boys were playing on the see-saw: John the son of Mr. and Mrs. Pyle and Eric the son of Mr. and Mrs. Grant.

“Farmer, farmer, let me down,” John called out from his end of the see-saw.

“What will you give me?” Eric demanded in reply.

“A bucket full of corn!” John called back.

“Corn?” Eric demanded, wrinkling his upper lip.

John paused for a moment to ponder Eric’s rejection of his offer.  “Video games!” John finally offered.

“Video games?” Eric said, lowering the see-saw an inch or two temptingly.  Eric was noticeably heavier than John so he had an obvious advantage in this game.

“Sure,” John replied, his voice taking on the slightest tone of nervousness.

“Okay,” Eric consented.  Suddenly he leapt off of his end of see-saw causing John to plummet to the ground with a crash.

“Ouch!” John called out. “No fair!”  He rose to his feet and after rubbing his sore rear-end began to chase after Eric.  Eric took off running, dodging first behind the slide, then through the swings, over the merry-go-round, past the two trees and the pond and then out across the open grass.  John continued to chase him.  He was slightly faster, and nearly caught Eric several times before he dodged off in a different direction.  At last both boys, out of breath, collapsed on the grass panting. 

Now lying face-towards-the-sky, the two boys began cloud watching.

“That one looks like a dragon,” Eric said, pointing upwards.

“That one looks like a big boat,” John said, indicating a different cloud. 

“Yeah, a battleship,” Eric agreed.

“Or the Titanic,” John suggested.

John and Eric had just learned about the Titanic in school that day.  The Titanic was, of course, a rather large ship that sank in the Atlantic Ocean.  The largest ocean-liner to be built at the time, and the fastest, and the strongest, and the most luxurious, and completely unsinkable.  Now, of course it did actually sink, but that is merely a technicality.  The ship was unsinkable, perfectly so up until the last minute before it, even till the final second before it disappeared below the surface of the cold Atlantic sea.

“John?” Eric asked.

“Yeah, Eric?” John replied.

“Come over here,” Eric rose to his feet and began walking toward the corner of the playground.  The playground was located in one corner of the complex’s roof and bounded on two sides by the fence that surrounded the roof of the complex.  Eric walked up to the fence and pressed up against it, running his fingers though the wire-mesh of the fence.

“It’s a long way down,” John said, standing a foot or two behind Eric.

“Why do you think the fence’s here?” Eric wondered aloud.

“To keep us from falling,” John suggested thoughtfully.

“How could we possibly fall? It’s not like anyone would purposely go near the edge if there was no fence,” Eric countered.

“Maybe they’re afraid the wind will catch someone and push them off,” John countered.

“Have you ever seen someone get picked up by the wind?” Eric demanded.

“Sometimes the wind gets really strong,” John replied.

“Not that strong.  Know why I think they keep the fence here?” Eric mused.

“No, why?” John asked.

“To keep us from flying.”

“People don’t fly.”

“Sure they do, what about airplanes and rockets?”

“They have wings and engines.”

“Rockets don’t have wings.  And they only use the engines when they’re on the ground.  When they get high enough, they turn them off.”

“What do you mean?” John asked, clearly interested.

“I think…. I think falling is like magnets.  Remember magnets, John?” Eric replied.

“What about them?”

“Well, when magnets are close together, they stick together, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And when they’re farther apart they don’t, right?”

“I guess not.”

“Falling is the same, I think.  When you’re close to the ground, the ground is like a magnet, it pulls you towards it.  But way up high like this, the magnets probably isn’t so strong.  I bet we could fly if we wanted to.”

“If the magnets is only on the ground, why don’t we fly off the top of the building?” John said, clearly unconvinced.

“The building is magnets too,” Eric explained.  “That’s why the fence is here, because if we got off the building we would fly away.”

“How would we get off the building?” John demanded.  “There’d be nothing to walk on.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Eric countered, because you could float, or fly,” Eric countered.

“But how do you get off to where there aren’t magnets?”  John demanded again.

“Jump?” Eric suggested.  “I don’t know.”

“I think you would fall and get hurt,” John countered.  “Remember when Jack fell out of the tree and broke his arm?”

“That’s because of the magnets,” Eric countered.

“How do you know that?” John demanded.

“Only one way to find out,” Eric suggested.

“You are not going to jump off of this building,” John said firmly.

“Of course I’m not,” Eric replied.  “You are.”

Ms. Cleveland taught the elementary-schoolers in one of the classrooms on the 20^th floor of the complex.  Her students were, as she saw it, not all geniuses, but they were certainly above average.  All that week, the students had been learning magnets in science, multiplication in math, spelling and grammar, and today she had taught about the Titanic for history.  She thought it appropriate that the ship had been named after the Greek titans.  The titans too had been though invincible, and yet they too had eventually been defeated at the hands of the Greek gods.  It was not in the curriculum, but Ms. Cleveland would very much like to spend a week teaching the children about the Greek gods.  So much good literature made reference to them, that the sooner the children learned about them the better, in her mind.  Granted, her students were only in second grade, but that was not too early to begin introducing them to the great themes of literature.  The Christian God, too, should be taught to the children, but that was not her job.  Many of the children attended the church on the second floor every Sunday morning, did they not?  Besides, in the mind of Ms. Cleveland the Christian God was not nearly so important to literature.  Whole centuries of literature had been written before the birth of Christ, and had not Nietzsche declared as long ago as the 1900’s that God was dead?  He died of pity.

Ms. Cleveland considered herself very modern.  Not that there was anything modern about declaring God was dead.  The Jews had tried it in 33CE.  Hell, they killed him.  Ms. Cleveland certainly did not consider herself an anti-Semite.  Zionism, yes, she had difficulties with that, but that was hardly the same thing.  There were people living in Palestine, why should they have to die so that the Jews could have a homeland?  The Jews were fools to pick a homeland on the most coveted place on Earth anyway.  They should have just picked an island in the middle of the Atlantic that no one wanted anyway.  The British owned a quarter of the world once, surely they could spare a bit to apologize for not stopping Hitler sooner.  What if Pearl Harbor had never happened?  Hard to say. 

Ms. Cleveland walked to the window and looked outside.  It was a beautiful day, with only a few clouds in the sky.  Ms. Cleveland spotted one that looked somewhat like a dragon and another that reminded her of the Titanic.  Funny that when they sent off the flares no one responded because the Titanic was deemed invincible.  Sometimes it doesn’t always pay to have a reputation for greatness.  Ms. Cleveland thought about all the people she thought of as unsinkable:  Ms. Fain, Mr. Sanchez, Mr. Capriole.  What if they were all sinking at this very moment?  Ms. Cleveland thought the idea unthinkable.  Mr. Capriole, especially, she regarded as untouchable.  If there were a nuclear war tomorrow and he was the last man left on Earth, he would just regard it as another chance to demonstrate his amazing strength of character.

Ms. Cleveland stepped away from the window to consult with her calendar.  Halfway there, she remembered what it was she had meant to look up and stopped.  Today was a Saturday, so she had no rightful reason to be in class at all.  She had just stopped by to get some homework she meant to grade over the weekend.  Tuesday of the next week was parent-teacher night, so parents would be coming in to talk to her about students.  It would help if she had looked at each student’s work and would be able to say something helpful for parents.  Monday night she sensed that she would not have any time to do it.  Monday nights she and Mr. Capriole had been going out to dinner for several weeks now.  Ms. Cleveland was not sure if anything more would come of this interaction, but even if nothing did, it always made for a pleasant evening.

At that very moment, Mr. Capriole was in the process of finishing a half-eaten sandwich and watching TV.  He wasn’t actually watching anything on TV, just watching it.  At appropriate times, when something funny appeared on the screen, he would chuckle somewhat revealing a mouthful of lettuce, bread, and sandwich meat.  Mr. Capriole, being a mere mortal, had no idea what went into sandwich meat.  And, to be perfectly honest, he was fairly content not knowing.  Like most people, his first concern in eating was not for health.  He ate because eating was a thing to do, and because it was less of a hassle than not eating.  When he did occasionally go more than a day or so without eating he began to feel uncomfortable, his stomach groaned loudly, he sometimes felt weak and light-headed.  It became more difficult for him to accomplish certain basic tasks such as remembering what it was he was supposed to be doing, or grading math homework for his fifth grade class.  At the moment his students were learning about fractions, a subject which truth be told confused Mr. Capriole almost as much as it did his students.  After discovering he had been grading papers erroneously more than a week ago, he had taken to using  a calculator to check all of his work before grading the students’ math.  He rather wished the math book most of the students used had a teachers edition with all the answers in the back, but he considered it against his principles to use such a book.  So he struggled on with his calculator and his own poor arithmetic skills in a desperate attempt to convince his students that math was relevant in some way to the real world.  Of course it was, no one could doubt that.  Only last Monday he had been forced to calculate the appropriate tip after having dinner with Ms. Cleveland.  He wondered sometimes why it was she always seemed so on top of things.  He had no doubt she was already prepared for parent-teacher meetings next Tuesday.  He would probably end up creating grades for his students out of thin air sometime Tuesday night, although the task could take till Monday morning as well.  Actually meeting the parents, by contrast, did not bother him a bit.  He had a natural way with adults.  For some reason they instinctively trusted him.  He sometimes wished he could inspire such trust in his students.  For the most part he did, but once or twice his students had seen though him far more easily than any adult ever would.  It was as if, untainted by society’s taste for misinformation, they had a built-in detector for straightforwardness.  It was because of this that he tried to be slightly more honest with his students than he would with adults.  He wasn’t sure if they actually knew this, nor did he know if they trusted him for it.  When problems arose, it usually seemed to have more to do with the children’s innate lack of self-control than with any conflict between him and his students or lack of understanding.  Then again, it was possible that they knew what he thought about him better than he himself did an were merely taking advantage of his natural habit of treating of children as less-responsible because they couldn’t control themselves.  The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed to him that the latter might be the case.

The sandwich consumed, Mr. Capriole stood up, brushed the crumbs off the couch onto the floor, and went to drink a glass of water.  Water was Mr. Capriole’s second-favorite beverage, the other not being acceptable for continuous consumption.  He didn’t think much of juices, sodas or milk, a characteristic he had retained from young childhood.  Mr. Capriole stood in his kitchen, finished the glass of water, and then placed it in the sink to be washed at some point in the future.  After doing this, he retired to his bedroom where he lay down on the bed but did not fall asleep.  He was not tired so much as simply incapable of finding anything better to do than sleep.  He considered for a moment whether anything could be done about this state of affairs, but quickly decided that the energy required to alter it was far beyond the force-of-will he could mount at the moment.

Mrs. Carol was not feeling so well.  Her arthritis had been bad since November and none of the home remedies she had tried seemed to being doing any good.  Not that the doctor was much more helpful.  After three hours, and a several hundred dollar bill all the doctor had done was to prescribe a painkiller that worked exactly as well as the over-the-counter medicine Mrs. Carol had been using from time to time already but cost three times as much.  After a week, Mrs. Carol who had always been a bit sensitive about expense had insisted that she thought she could do without.  Mr. Carol was ordinarily a bit tight about expense too, but he was aware that his wife was in pain.  He hated to see her this way and wished every day to return to a time when they had been young and in love.  They were still in love, true, but it was not the same as when they had been younger.  They understood one another much better, but this understanding had been complimented by less and less need to speak to one another.  The sometimes went an entire day without saying anything more than “good morning” and “goodnight, I love you.”  Mr. Carol had always been very strict about the “I love you.”  He refused to say it unless he was absolutely sure it was true, but insisted upon saying it.  He remembered nights when he had stayed up till the next morning trying to find it within himself to say it and make it true.  There had been some hard times.  Mrs. Carol, perhaps, was less aware than he was.  Many of those nights she had gone to sleep straightaway and he had been forced to whisper the fated words to her sleeping ear some hours later.  That was what always did it, though.  There was nothing he loved more in the world than to see her sleeping there beside him and know that she was at peace and she would be there in the morning when he awoke.

“Did you get the paper?” Mrs. Carol croaked from across the living room.

“It’s a Saturday, dear, mail doesn’t come on a Saturday,” Mr. Carol replied.

“Paper comes doesn’t it?”

“Not anymore, dear.  Paper doesn’t come on Saturdays anymore.  You have to pay to get it delivered.”

“Well why don’t you walk down and get one from the box on the street?” Mrs. Carol suggested.

There were any number of reasons why Mr. Carol did not walk down and get the paper from the box on the street.  He didn’t feel like it.  His knees ached.  They really didn’t need a paper.  He had already seen the news on the television.  The list could have gone on indefinitely, if not forever.

“I was planning on going for a walk anyway,” Mr. Carol responded.  “As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go now and get the paper too.”

“Don’t go just because I asked you to,” Mrs. Carol responded.  “I know how your knees have been.  I wouldn’t want you to harm yourself.”

“It won’t be any trouble at all,” Mr. Carol replied, pain shooting though his knees as he rose to his feet.  “I meant to go for a walk anyways.  It’s good for my joints, the doctor says.”

Mr. Carol walked past Mr. Edwards desk.  He walked slowly and with obvious difficulty.

“How do you do, Mr. Carol?” Mr. Edwards called out from behind his desk.

“Just fine,” Mr. Carol responded, barely turning to address Mr. Edwards.

“Beautiful day for a walk,” Mr. Edwards suggested.  “Where are you headed today?”

“Just out to get the paper,” Mr. Carol said without stopping.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Mr. Edwards responded.  “I could have had someone bring it up if you had asked.  Those young boys are always down here running about with no business to on a Saturday like today.”

“No need,” Mr. Carol responded.  “I’m not so old yet that I can’t walk down to get a paper once a week.”

Mr. and Mrs. Pike live on the 14^th floor.  Their son, Timmy is in the 5^th grade.  That morning he was sitting on his bed playing video games.  He was very good at video games, much better than he was at fractions.  Math was Timmy’s least favorite subject in school.  His favorite subject was history.  Timmy loved the medieval ages.  If he could, he would have chosen to be a knight.  A lot of Timmy’s friends wanted to be Jedi or Ninjas, but Timmy thought knights were much cooler.  Jedi weren’t real and Ninjas were from Japan.  Timmy knew from history that people from Japan were bad.  They attacked Pearl Harbor during World War Two.  The Germans and the Russians were bad too, and the people from Vietnam.  In the video game he was playing now, Timmy was a pilot from World War Two who flew missions against Germany and Japan.  Timmy thought that being a pilot was almost as cool as being a knight.  Sometimes he thought that he would like to be both a pilot and a knight.  He would go back to the medieval times and fly a dragon. 

It was too bad, Timmy thought to himself, that there were no more dragons.  He knew that there used to be a lot of dragons living during the middle ages.  The knights fought against them in order to defend the castles and save the princesses.  Timmy wanted to live in a castle.  He would keep four or five princesses there and fight against dragons or ride them.  The complex was a bit like a castle.  It was very big and made out of stone on the outside.  If only it had a wall and a moat and few towers.  There were no dragons outside of the complex either, of course.  All of the dragons were gone, the knights must have killed them.  Perhaps that’s why there were no knights either anymore.  Timmy regretted that the knights didn’t leave one or two dragons behind to keep in zoos so that he could see one.  Once, he had seen a dinosaur in a museum, but it wasn’t alive. 

“No, there’s a better way to find out,” John countered.  “We can throw things off and see if they fall down.”

“Okay,” Eric agreed.  He reached into his pocket and retrieved a piece of paper.  Crumpling the paper into a ball, he attempted to throw it over the fence.  The paper ball bounced off the fence nearly a foot from the top without effect.

Eric retrieved the paper ball and threw again, but again fell short of the top of the fence.  John caught the paper ball as it bounced back down at the boys and threw it somewhat higher.  Again the ball fell just short off the top of the fence. 

“We’ll have to climb to the top and throw it over,” Eric suggested.

John grabbed the ball and climbed halfway to the top of the fence.  Clinging to the fence with one hand, he threw the ball upward and it just made it over the top of the fence.  The wind blew the paper-ball back against the fence and it fell down slowly, rolling against the outside of the complex.

“See, it fell down anyway,” John said feeling vindicated.

“You didn’t throw it far enough away from the building,” Eric answered back.  It was still too close to the building.  “Here, watch.”

Eric climbed to the very top of the fence.  As he climbed, the fence swayed somewhat under his weight.

“Be careful,” John shouted out.

Reaching the top of the fence, Eric reaching in his pocket and pulled out a used Kleenex.  Crumpling it in one fist he threw it out over the fence.  A few feet away from the building, the Kleenex uncrumpled itself and blew away. 

“See!” Eric said, pointed to the Kleenex as it blew upwards and away from the building.  “It’s floating!”

“That’s just the wind,” John countered.  “It’s not heavy enough to fall.”

“That’s because there’s no magnets away, from the building,” Eric countered.  “Nothing would fall.”

Ms. Cleveland looked out the window.  Outside the window a paper ball fell down along the outside of the building.  Had she identified it as such, she might have wondered who threw it.  As it was she merely wondered what it was.  Two seconds later she forgot about it.

Mr. Butch served as grocer for most of the complex’s residents and cook for a number of them.  His shop and a small café on the first floor adjoining the lobby were the only places within the complex to eat at.  In the way of eating, he offered a deli/bakery with a wide variety of meats, breads, baked goods, and the like.  The rest of his shop was stocked as a small but well-run grocery store.  Ninety-percent of anything you might want could be bought there, and if you were patient he would bring in anything belonging to the other ten percent for you so long as you were willing to order three days ahead of time.  Some residents of the complex chose to shop at groceries outside of the complex which were usually slightly cheaper, but most preferred the convenience and service of Mr. Butch’s shop.  Butch took a great deal of pride in everything that he did.  His shop was open every day of the week except Sunday, and if you wanted to buy something on Sunday and called his apartment, which was quite near to the shop, he had never been known to complain about it.  Indeed, these were sometimes the only visits he received on Sundays, so he thought of them as a pleasant surprise and would often invite customers in to spend a few minutes chatting about the weather or politics, or the economy.  Neither weather nor politics nor the economy had much effect on those living inside the complex, mind you, but that hardly served to dissuade anyone from taking an interest in them, least of all Mr. Butch who probably led a life more secure from these three threats than all but two or three other men who had ever lived.

Every day but Sunday, Mr. Butch awoke at 5:00AM to begin baking fresh breads, pastries, and cakes and worked till 3:30PM when he a boy in the ninth-grade came in and ran the shop for him.  The boy’s name was David and he was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence.  David only worked on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, however.  Another boy, Geoffrey, worked on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  Both of the boys were exceptional hard-workers and Mr. Butch had never heard any complaints about the way they took care of the shop.

Mr. Butch paid the boys two ways.  The first, which was monetary, was most appreciated by the boys but less valuable.  The second, which was with experience, was less appreciated by the boys, often unnoticed and sometimes unwanted, was undoubtedly the more valuable.  Mr. Butch, you see, was a good man in every way possible.  He ran his business well, cared for his customers well, and lived his life in such a way as to be looked down upon by no one.  If the boys were to learn one of these skills, they would be respected, if they learned two, they would be admired, if they learned all three the would be: Mr. Butch, the complex grocer.

Although married, Mr. Butch had no children of his own.  Whether this was by nature or by choice was an occasional subject of discussion for the various gossips who lived in the complex, but like all other areas of Mr. Butch’s life it was never a subject for reproach or unkind feelings.  Most people simply assumed that Mr. Butch did not have children by some nature of his being, that being the man who fed the whole of the complex was somehow naturally equivalent to the status of having no children of his own to feed.

Mr. Butch had been in the complex for as long as anyone.  That is to say he had moved to the complex when it first opened.  To be precise, however, one would have to note that Mr. Butch’s shop was already well-stocked the day of the Beginning, which would seem to suggest that he had moved in at least a day or two before anyone else.  No one had ever broached the subject to Mr. Butch in this way and he had never go so far as to acknowledge or deny it.  Like most things about Mr. Butch’s life it was simply taken for granted that however he had become to be the complex grocer it was merely because this was as it should be and not because of any strange connections he might have with the creators of the complex.  If one were to think such a thing, one might have concluded that Mr. Butch knew the creators of the complex.  Indeed, one might have even dared to ask him who they were.  Such questions, however, were never asked of Mr. Butch.  Perhaps this may seem a bit odd to someone from the outside world, but as I have said there are many things which we from the outside world might find a bit odd about the complex.  It is a place very similar and intimately tied to our own world, and yet it is a world of its own, and Mr. Butch is no less a part of that world than the brick facade that covers the outside of the complex walls.

Another question about which the general population of the complex may be thought to be perfectly innocent is that of the supply of Mr. Butch’s grocery shop.  It is well-known, or at least widely believed, that Mr. Butch leaves the complex only infrequently on holidays and once because of a death in his family.  On the other hand, the supply and quality of the goods in his shop seems to suggest that only an expert could possibly be in charge of purchasing it.  On exactly one occasion, David was asked by Mr. Butch to run and buy two dozen fish from a local market, but at no other time was either of the boys engaged in buying stores for his grocery.  If the provisions are delivered, as seems likely, then these deliveries are made only early in the morning or late at night, since no one belonging to the general population has ever seen them being made.  It seems likely that either Mr. Edwards, or Mr. Blade who watches the desk at night, would be aware of such deliveries, but neither of them are exceptionally talkative persons and neither can be recalled as mentioning anything of these deliveries to another person.  It is also possible that the deliveries are made though another door, so that neither Mr. Blade nor Mr. Edwards would be aware of them, but this is again cast in doubt by the fact that the main entrance to the complex, guarded by their desk, is the only one that can be entered or exited without setting off an alarm.  It is also possible that Mr. Butch or his delivery man has a key allowing him or her to open such a door without setting off such an alarm, but if so they would be the only person with such a privilege.  This would again point to some deeper connection between Mr. Butch and the creators of the complex, as been hinted before, but again no one has thought as much as to ask him about it.

One aspect of the stocking of Mr. Butch’s grocery is known to at least one person in the complex other than Mr. Butch.  On a Sunday afternoon in the month of January Jack, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Rolfe, was wandering the complex rather aimlessly.  By chance, he happened to be in the basement and, again by chance, he happened to enter a room which although not locked was clearly not intended for access by the general public.  Within said room, Jack was amazed to discover a large number of cages each of which contained a single chicken as well as an automatic food and water dispenser.  Presumably, these chickens are the same ones whose eggs are sold at Mr. Butch’s grocery, or whom are sold plucked, beheaded, and footless in the fresh meat portion of his deli.  Now, chickens are not the best-smelling creatures in the world, and upon returning to his apartment, Jack was immediately smelt by his mother, scolded for playing around in the trash, and ordered to take a bath.  For this reason, Jack assumed it was in his best interests not to tell anyone where he had been again.  Only once again after this time did Jack find the room with the chickens in it, but the door was locked.

Only a few weeks ago, Jack attempted to go up the slide and slide down the ladder.  He broke his arm in the fall, thereby becoming the first child in the complex to break an arm or leg.  While this garnered him the status of an instant-hero, it was also very painful.  Needless to say, Jack, whose arm is now in a cast, has been feeling somewhat less adventurous as of late.  Instead, he has been spending his time playing video games, which he can still do with one arm broken, as well as eating an unhealthy amount of chocolate chip cookies, for which his mother is well known throughout the second grade class.  Mrs. Rolfe is a fairly typical mother insomuch that she dotes on her children, more so when she perceives that they are some way in pain be it physically or emotionally.  Such behavior has been shown to be less-than-beneficial for a child’s development, but so far it has had no adverse effects on either Jack or his older brother James.

James is in the fifth grade, which is the same thing as to say that his teacher is Mr. Capriole.  At this very moment, Mr. Capriole was lying on his bed in his apartment staring at the ceiling when a crumpled ball of paper fell past his window.  How he might have seen it while staring at the ceiling cannot be known, so we may consider it safe to say that he did not.  Had he seen it, he might have wondered what it was.  Had he known it was a crumpled ball of paper, he might have wondered who threw it.  But, to the best of our knowledge, he did not, nor did anyone else.

“Eeeough!” Mr. Clarke’s cat wailed plaintively.

“Enough,” Mr. Clarke scolded the cat.  “I’m getting you the tuna right now.”

Mr. Clarke had just returned from Mr. Butch’s grocery shop and was carrying a brown paper sack.  Setting the brown paper sack down on the counter, he produced from within it a can of tuna and placed it beside the sack.  As he did this, the cat began to pace back and forth fervently, rubbing up against Mr. Clarke’s legs.  Stepping sideways, Mr. Clarke reached into one of the drawers and produced a can opener.  Clamping the can opener onto the can of tuna, he gave it a few quick turns thereby loosening the top of the lid from the can of tuna.  Can and top he held over the sink squeezing the extra water out of the tuna.  The cat continued to pace, beating its tail up against Mr. Clarke’s legs as it swished back and forth.  At this point a second cat appeared from another room and approached Mr. Clarke as well.  The first cat eyed the second warily but only pressed up against Mr. Clarke more firmly.  The second cat, who was slightly darker as well as substantially heavier drew to within a few feet of where Mr. Clark and the first cat, a thin, ginger-colored cat, were standing.  Mr. Clarke reached down beneath the counter and retrieved a bag of dry cat foot and three bowls.  Filling each of these bowls with the cat food, he added to each a generous dollop of tuna and stirred creating a combination no human would eat and no cat could resist.

Mr. Clarke picked up the three bowls and carried them to the other end of the room where he set them down a foot or so apart.  At this moment a third all black cat appeared from the bedroom and approached the third dish Mr. Clarke set down.  The other two cats also began to eat from their respective dishes.  For a moment they ate peacefully.  Mr. Clarke returned to the kitchen.  Wrapping a patch of tin-foil over the top, he placed the now half-empty can of tuna in his fridge.  He then proceeded to unpack the remaining contents of the brown paper sack: a glass jar of milk, a small loaf of bread, a bit of salami, half a stick of butter, two tomatoes, a package of spaghetti, and a small jar of mustard.  These he put away with meticulous attention to the placement of every object.  The jar of milk went on the top shelf, the bread went on top of the fridge in the breadbox, the salami went on the second shelf in a small plastic tub that also contained half a summer-sausage.  The butter he placed on the lowest shelf, the two tomatoes, which were not quite ripe, he placed in the cupboard above the refrigerator.  The spaghetti he placed one cupboard over alongside a jar of macaroni which was already there.  The mustard he placed in the fridge in the top shelf built into the door.

Having completed this, Mr. Clarke retrieved a glass from a different cupboard and filled it with water.  This he used to fill the common bowl from which all three cats drank.  Refilling the glass he too began to take a drink.  At this point, the fat brown cat had finished eating its bowl of tuna-and-cat-food.  Looking around, it sniffed at the black cat’s dish, but was repulsed by a furious hiss.  It then went over to the dish at which the thin ginger cat was eating and began to eat.

“No need to do that, Beauford!” Mr. Clarke scolded the fat brown cat harshly.  “You’ve already had your bowl.  That one’s Ginger’s.”

“Beauford continued to eat out of the ginger-colored cat’s dish until Mr. Clarke took a step in his direction.  At once he fled from the dish leaving Ginger to eat alone.

“That’s better, isn’t it, Ginger?” Mr. Clarke asked affirmingly.

Ginger, being a cat was naturally incapable of answering either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.  She might have been able to meow in reply, which could interpreted as either yes or no, but since she was momentarily engaged in the mutually exclusive act of eating, she did not.  In any case Mr. Clarke interpreted her silence as consent and hummed to himself in a sort of pleasant way.

Having finished his glass of water, Mr. Clarke rinsed it out, rubbed the lip of the glass off with a dishrag, rinsed it once more, dried it and then placed it back into the cabinet from whence it had come.  This being accomplished, he sat down on his couch and watched the two cats, Ginger and the black one, who was named Shane, finish their food.  Shane finished first.  Once done, he walked over to the dish of water Mr. Clarke had just refilled and took a short drink of water.  Once this was done, he walked up to the couch Mr. Clarke was sitting on, leapt up onto it, and settled down on Mr. Clarke’s lap.  Twice he lay down, got up again, spun himself in a circle, and lay down again.  Then, for amusement, he began to knead the flesh of Mr. Clarke’s ample gut with is paws.  He clawed at Mr. Clarke’s sweater, but not deeply enough to go through the sweater and claw Mr. Clarke himself.  Mr. Clarke proceeded to stroke Shane behind the ears inducing him to cock his head profoundly and clearly with great delight.  Mr. Clarke proceeded to rubbing the cat’s side inducing it to roll over revealing it’s belly.  Mr. Clarke proceeded to rub the cat’s belly till at last he grew bored of this and began poking the cat’s belly.  This provoked the cat to swat at his jabbing finger first half-heartedly and then with real effort.  Mr. Clarke now became thoroughly involved in the game, coming at the cat’s belly from both directions, one with each hand, and jabbing at whichever side of its belly the cat was protecting less securely.  At last the cat wriggled somewhat and attempted to bite at Mr. Clarke’s hand. 

“That’s enough now,” Mr. Clarke scolded Shane, indicating that the game was up, and with this he evicted the cat from his lap sending it plummeting off the couch and onto the floor.  Shane looked up at his owner with a rather confused and irritated look on his face and then retired to the bedroom.  By this time, Ginger had finished eating and was lying in the spot on the floor lit by the sunlight coming in through the window.  Ginger had not eaten all of her food and a small amount remained in the bottom of the dish.  A few minutes later, Beauford appeared from the other room and proceeded to finish the contents of Ginger’s dish.  Having done this, he too plopped himself down in the spot of sunlight cast on the floor though the window.  Beauford and Ginger lay on the floor side to side, presumably asleep, although during such cat-naps cats are never really more than half-asleep.

Meanwhile, Mr. Clarke had acquired a book from atop the coffee table in front of the couch and was now reading out of it.  The book was apparently a journal of sorts, and only half-full.  The writing in the journal was in two hands, one was presumably that of Mr. Clarke and the other was distinctly feminine, quite possibly that of the late Mrs. Clarke.  When she had been alive, she had kept only Shane, who Mr. Clarke had always felt to be a nuisance at the time.  Shortly after her death he purchased Ginger, and Beauford was given to him by Mrs. Blunde with the explanation that she no longer felt sure of her ability to care for him.  Mr. Clarke took care of all three cats in exactly the same way, although none could blame him if he was sometimes more likely to show physical affection towards Shane than towards either of the other two cats.

Mr. Clarke read from the journal:

Sunday, January 19

Dear Jimmy,

Had to go down to the pharmacy.  You were asleep and I didn’t think that I ought to wake you before I went.  I simply cannot understand why it is you can sleep in so very late on weekends.  Work is not causing you too much strain, is it?  See you when I get back, should be before lunch time.  If not, make yourself a sandwich, there is Salami in the fridge.  We have no eggs, will pick some up on my way back from the pharmacy.

Monday, January 20

Dear Lucy,

Off to work.  Not much to say.  Hope you have a good day.  See you after work.

Monday, January 20

Dear Jimmy,

            I know you will forget if I do not remind you, so here is the list of things I asked you to bring back from work tomorrow: eggs, salami,  mustard, macaroni, an onion, some lettuce if you can.  Probably won’t be up in the morning since you leave so early.  See you after work, then.

Tuesday, January 21

Dear Jane,

            I will bring the things you wrote down.  I copied the list to another piece of paper.  See you after work.

Mr. Clarke continued to read for some time.  After some time, he closed the book and sat for some time doing nothing.  Ginger awoke and attempted to climb onto the couch with Mr. Clarke.  He repulsed her, throwing her rather violently onto the floor.  He continued to sit for some time doing nothing.  He replaced the journal back in its place on the coffee table.  Getting up, he walked to the kitchen.  From the top drawer on the end, he retrieved a pen.  Sitting down again, Mr. Clarke retrieved the journal and opened it to the first blank page.

He wrote:

Saturday, May 5

Dear Jane,

            No work today.  Went to the store.  I bought: bread, salami, tuna, mustard, spaghetti, butter, tomatoes.  We are also short on eggs, but I forgot.  I should have written myself a note.  I fed the cats.  They are in good health, especially Shane. See you [note ends abruptly]

Mr. Clarke threw the pen across the room, waking the still sleeping Beauford who immediately returned to his previous state.  He slammed the journal shut and threw it down on the coffee table.  Rising to his feet, he retired to the bedroom where Shane was already sleeping on the bed.  A crumpled up ball of paper fell past the window in Mr. Clarke’s living room.  Beauford the cat was the only one in the room and happened to be asleep, which is to say he probably did not see the crumpled ball of paper.  If he did, he did not know what it was.  If he did, he did not wonder who threw it.

Mr. Hajiid did not work on Saturdays.  Today he was sitting in the living room watching sports on TV.  Mr. Hajiid’s favorite sport was soccer.  He had played for several years in high-school, and had hoped to go to college on a scholarship for soccer as well.  Either the colleges did not need soccer players, or Mr. Hajiid was not as good at soccer in high school as he thought (the second option seems more likely), because he never got a scholarship to go to college and play soccer.  Instead, he worked to pay his way through two years of technical school and learn the skill s of a basic electrician.  It was for this reason that he had been invited to take a job at the complex.  At first his work had been slowly electrical, but after most of the electrical work in the building was finished, he was transitioned to a number of different more routine tasks.  Now he was an all-around maintenance-man for the building and was in charge of taking care of the building’s heating and cooling systems as well as what general electrical maintenance might be needed and a few other odd jobs that needed to be done by someone.  Occasionally someone’s apartment would need minor electrical work for some reason, and he did this from time-to-time too.  Any large job, however, was always contracted out to large firms that hired outside electricians relieving Mr. Hajiid of this duty.

Today, there was no soccer on the television, so Mr. Hajiid was forced to watch golf instead.  Mr. Hajiid did not play golf in high school, indeed he had played only a few times in his entire life.  One of those times had been with one of the men who had created the complex.  He had been one of several electricians working on the project, so when he was invited to come to golf he had been utterly stunned.  When at that golf game he had been offered the chance to move into the complex and stay on as a maintenance man he had at first been simply surprised, but later was enthused.  Electrical work paid well, but it required him to travel from site to site wherever work was available.  With a new wife and thinking about starting a family in a year or two, Mr. Hajiid longed for the stability a job in a permanent location offered him.  His wife had been less excited to learn that he planned to move them into the complex.  She had always dreamed of owning a house in the suburbs.  The apartments in the complex were much nicer than those she and Mr. Hajiid had lived in before, however, and at least as nice as the best house they could actually afford to buy.  The only thing they would really miss was having a lawn.  Two years later, Mrs. Hajiid gave birth to the couple’s first child.  By this time, they had grown to like the complex quite well, and they no longer talked of moving to a nice house in the suburbs.

The golf game was a fairly unexciting one.  Mr. Hajiid changed the channel and started watching cartoons.  Like most adults, Mr. Hajiid found the humor present in Saturday morning cartoons rather silly and childish.  Most children, however, do not even find the humor of adults funny.  Two men walk into a bar.  The third man ducks.  Mr. Hajiid laughed, undoubtedly drawing the ire of his two daughters who were old enough to find nothing more conceivably embarrassing than having a father who laughed aloud at Saturday morning cartoons.

John scooped up a clod of grass and dirt and hurtled it towards the fence.  It hit the fence, dissolved into a thousand particles of dirt and blew back in the boys’ face. 

“It’s not going to fall,” Eric taunted.

“Yes it will,” John replied.  “Of course it will.”

“No, because there’s nothing out there to pull it down, that’s why they have the fence, because otherwise everything would float away,” Eric responded.  “It’s just like in spaceships.  Haven’t you ever seen astronauts floating in their spaceships?”

“But that’s in space,” John responded.

“What do you see out there?” Eric shot back.  “I don’t see nothing, just space, lots of empty open space.”

“You jump, then,” John retorted.

“I don’t have to,” Eric replied.  “I’m going to fly.”

Without another word, Eric turned and started running back towards the fence.

Ms. Cleveland looked out the window a final time.  Turning, she started towards the classroom door.  Halfway she stopped, went back to her desk, and grabbed her purse.

“Wouldn’t want to forget that,” Ms. Cleveland laughed to herself shyly.  She was always doing things like that, forgetting things or losing them in inconspicuous places.  Often she would find them weeks or months later, generally long after she had replaced the item in question.  It was in this way that she had come to own two drivers’ licenses, three duplicates of her apartment keys (she still had no idea where the original was), and four tubes of lipstick in the same color.  She always wore the same color of lipstick, a bright red that she felt made her lips look especially seductive.  She often wished that Mr. Capriole would comment on the color of her lipstick, but like most men he was far too blind to actually realize any more than that she was wearing some.  That is to say, her lips could not possibly be that red naturally.  That she might actually have put thought into choosing that particular shade of red; that was a concept utterly beyond the capabilities of most men to fathom.

Walking down the hallway, Ms. Cleveland looked down at the shirt she was wearing.  She would absolutely die if anyone actually saw her dressed like this.  The shirt was the most horrible shade of white imaginable and it actually had a stain on it.  She only wore it because it had been the first thing she saw when getting dressed that morning and she hadn’t been expecting to see anyone.  From the moment she remembered that she was wearing it, Ms. Cleveland regretting wearing the shirt she had on.  She started walking slightly faster in a hurry to get back to her apartment.  She tucked the shirt into her pants in an effort to cover the stop that was stained.  Looking down at herself, she realized the shirt was not at all flattering on her.  When she realized nothing she could do would improve the shirt, she began to fidget.  She touched the end of each of her nails with her thumb moving back and forth across each digit on her hand in rapid succession.  She started playing with her hair, first tucking it behind her ear, then untucking it, then tucking it again.  She twirled the end of her hair around her finger.

At last she reached the elevator.  Pounding on the down arrow, she paced back and forth until at last the elevator arrived on the 20^th floor as indicated by a cheerful “bing!”  Ms. Cleveland practically raced into the elevator and pounded the “14” button with her palm.  She held her breath for what seemed like an eternity while waiting for the elevator doors to slid shut.

“20”.  “19”.  “18”.  Ms. Cleveland paced back and forth nervously inside the elevator.  “17”.  She ran her fingers though her hair and leaned back against the back wall of the elevator.  “16”.  “15”.  She squeezed her pinky painfully between her thumb and forefinger.  “14”.  At last the elevator came to a stop.  She let go a breath as the elevator doors started to slide open and then took another gasping one when they finally did. 

“Why hello, Ms. Cleveland,” Mr. Capriole said, smiling, as soon as he saw her.  “How do you do today?”

“Just fine,” Ms. Cleveland said, avoiding direct eye-contact.  She waited for a moment.

“Well aren’t you going to get off?  This is your floor, isn’t it?” Mr. Capriole said sounding slightly bemused.

“Oh, yes, I suppose it is,” Ms. Cleveland said and hurried out of the elevator.  Mr. Capriole stepped inside and a second later he was gone.

“Well I don’t suppose that could have gone any worse than it did,” Ms. Cleveland said to herself quietly.

“What couldn’t have gone any worse?” Timmy asked, looking up at Ms. Cleveland.

“Oh, nothing,” Ms. Cleveland said, forcing herself to look down a the fifth-grade boy with a smile.

“You have a stain on your shirt,” Timmy said innocently, pointed to the spot on her otherwise white shirt.

“Why thank-you for pointing that out,” Ms. Cleveland said though her teeth.  “I’ll have to wash it right away.”

Mr. Capriole had not been expecting to meet Ms. Cleveland on his way to the elevator.  She must have just been coming back from her classroom, he thought to himself.  Amazing that he had only just left his room and she had undoubtedly been in her room working for an hour or more already that day.  He was truly amazed by the confidence and energy with which she seemed to approach every activity in life.  It was a Saturday morning and yet she seemed to be totally motivated and well-ordered.  Here it was a Saturday morning.  He had not shaved and was wearing the same shirt and pants he had worn the night before and yet there she was well-dressed, makeuped and seemingly brimming with energy.  It made him fell guilty for not caring nearly as much about his own appearance.  He certainly wouldn’t have gone out like this if he was planning to meet her.  He wondered if she had been able to notice how surprised he was to see her.  Possibly, he thought to himself.  While he was normally able to show-face for anyone in any circumstance, he always felt somewhat transparent when around her, as if she was scanning every detail of his character looking for some minute flaw in his character.  That she hadn’t noticed the obvious ones surprised him more than anything else.

He waited for the elevator to reach the 20^th floor at once flustered and yet perfectly patient.  While the meeting had been unexpected, it had not gone noticeably poorly.  Perhaps she had not noticed he was wearing the same shirt as last night and his face was covered with the rough beginnings of a beard.  Probably not.  Perhaps she didn’t care.  It was a nice thought, but Mr. Capriole knew better than to trust to the value of other people’s willingness to overlook one’s flaws.  In any case, the meeting was over and there was nothing he could do to change it.  It was for this reason that a momentary patience and good-will overtook him.  The fact that there was nothing he could do, good or ill, to change his situation gave him a sort of inner peace.  It was relief from obligation and from the danger of doing anything wrong.  For the moment, the best and worst thing he could do was stand in the elevator and wait until he arrived at the 20^th floor.  He had decided to go there and try and get some more work done.  He had been unable to grade the children’s math homework in his apartment because he couldn’t focus.  He hoped to be able to do it at the desk in his room or to find something else to do.  Perhaps he could start putting together the children’s grade reports so he wouldn’t feel guilty for spending a few extra minutes tomorrow night with Ms. Cleveland.  She had been wearing a lovely white shirt.

Mrs. Rose lived on the twelfth floor of the complex.  She had lived there ever since retiring at the age of 64, and had no plans of moving any time soon.  The possibility of employing one of the five nurses who lived in the complex meant she would have no need to move into a nursing home, even if her health deteriorated substantially.  Today she had never felt healthier.  That was not true.  She had not felt this healthy in decades, well not since she had been twenty-eight.  Mrs. Rose was having a child.  She had had three in her lifetime, all to the same father: the now deceased Mr. Rose.  He had been a good man, a gentleman in fact, and a loving husband.  It is true he worked too much most of his life and was not in the best mood most of the time, but it was also true that he worked because he loved her.  He had worked until he died at the age of 67, when Mrs. Rose was 65, at which point she retired from her role as house-maker and moved into the complex.  The complex had been advertised to her by an ad in a magazine for the beautifully-aged.  The advertisement had cited the comfortable living space, community environment, and presence of in-house nurses as the main reasons why one would consider retiring to such a place.  At the time, grieving the loss of her husband as she was, Mrs. Rose had been glad to accept the comfort of a place that offered a community environment.  She had in no small way been pleasantly surprised to find that the community environment of the complex integrated people of all ages.  It was true that those of working age and younger did not often socialize with those of her age, but their mere presence made her feel more like part of a family than like a member of an institution for the control and placation of the elderly.

Today Mrs. Rose did not feel at all elderly.  She was glad the child she was brining into the world would be raised in the environment of the complex.  She knew a few of the school-teachers and they were all very intelligent and caring people.  Mrs. Rose thought back to her other three children.  She had no doubt they would have been much better at a place like the complex than in the public schools.  Her eldest son had gone into the military, and she had worried for seven years for his life.  When he finally got out, he was a changed man and she could hardly even call him her son anymore.  There was little of the gentle, loving boy she had raised in the man she had last seen over a year ago that now called himself her son.  Her other daughters had done only slightly better.  The elder had married young, something which Mrs. Rose had done also, but nonetheless disapproved of.  These were different times, she should have pursued an education or a career and married when she was more of a woman.  Then her husband would respect her more.  Mrs. Rose had very little tolerance for the man her daughter (now Mrs. White) had chosen to marry.  When they had first married, Mrs. Rose had hoped that her daughter would see the error of her ways, but then she had several children of her own to support and a divorce would cause innumerable problems, so all Mrs. Rose hoped for later was that the error of her daughter’s ways would not cause her too much pain.

Mrs. Rose’s youngest daughter (so far, since she felt the child she now carried would be a girl also) was by far her favorite.  Janet, as Mr. Rose had christened her, had come into the world with an abundant supply of love and cheerfulness, and the world had done very little to take it from her.  She always greeted her mother with a kiss, and was the only one of the three children to see her on a regular basis.  Janet always came in on the first Sunday of the month with a bouquet of flowers and something nice to say to her mother.  She was married now of course (she was forty-two after all) but she had married at an older age than her older sister, and to a man Mrs. Rose thought highly of.  He was not a rich man or a highly educated one, but like Janet’s father he was a hard-worker and it was clear that he loved her and would do anything in the world for her.  Mrs. Rose thought that was what love was, a man willing to work till the day he died for his wife.  She had not thought that when Mr. Rose had died, of course.  Nor had she thought that the many years when he was always away instead of in the home where she had then felt he belonged.  The years at the complex had changed her, however.  She had now come to see that this was the way things were supposed to be.  Men were not meant to live as women did, in the home and obsessing every moment with doting their affections on those they loved.  Men loved their lovers by being men, by working and coming back late at night too tired to say so much as “good evening” and collapsing in bed and not wanting to be caressed because they simply wanted to fall asleep.  Yes, there had been times when Mrs. Rose had not understood this about men.  She had wanted more than anything else to be with him and stay up until late in the morning showering her love upon him with gentle embraces.  This was her nature, she remembered, since she was a woman.  To force such a nature of her husband, however, would have been to devalue him, to turn him into something less than a man, merely another woman.  That was what daughters were for.  Daughters were good for holding and hugging and caressing and raising into young women who would love their hard-working husbands and long all day for their husbands’ return.  Mrs. Rose had not understood this when she was a wife, when she wished more than anything her husband would come home early from work and they would talk.  It had been that way once, in the beginning, but that was not what men were for.  During courtship, yes, men had to become a little more like women, but later women sometimes also had to become a bit more like men.  Mrs. Rose had  not always understood this, but somehow coming to the complex had changed her understanding of things.  She understood so much better now.  She would teach everything she knew to her youngest daughter, and her youngest daughter would be better even than Janet.  Mrs. Rose smiled to remember what she now held within her, a child was on its way.

Mr. Linpul had enjoyed his years as a student at the complex.  He had been highly involved and had done quite well as a member of his graduating class.  “First among equals” was how others with a bit more respect for political correctness might have put it.  Mr. Linpul wasn’t much for political correctness, but he was a big fan of nuclear warfare.  It was good for the economy, because all wars are good for the economy.  It was good for the environment, because it killed people and people were bad for the environment.  And it was good for human rights, because the less people there were the more rights they had.  It was a well-known phenomena.  Passenger-Pigeons, for example, were so numerous it was thought nothing could kill them.  So they were forced to extinction.  A rare species of gecko found only in a single pond in Nevada, by contrast, was protected by a million-dollar federal grant for the protection of endangered species.  Clearly the gecko’s scarcity had contributed to its value in society.  If only people were equally scarce they might be just as valued by society.  The question of what society would exist to value human beings after a nuclear war was entirely irrelevant.  Such concerns were most often raised by conscientious objectors to wars, and as Ezra Pound pointed out: if such people weren’t directly funded by war-mongerers, they sure weren’t stopped by them either.  War-mongerers needed psychotic pot-smoking hippies advocating peace at any cost in order to make their positions seem tenable.  Why, after all, would anyone have to explain that war was a good idea if there was no one making the case that it wasn’t.  An end to pacifists would  bring about the sure and irreversible end of all war-mongerers and the like, just as an end to communists would immediately reveal the weakness of the position of those who insisted that large corporations and millionaires ought to be able to hold 89% of the wealth in the grasp based on the notion of private property.  Not that there was anything so private as to be able to hide such gluttonous wealth if it wasn’t the threat by communists to ban all money and turn the world into an economy strictly of beggars dependant on the government.  Of course those calling for the abolishment of government were equally guilty for the propagation of programs like Social Security which were so clearly absurd that a child who had spent ten minutes in an economics class could tell you precisely why they would never succeed.  Ten minutes of silence from those who insisted that the whole government would immediately force those who called for the preservation of the whole government with all its bureaucracies to recant their clearly heretical positions and become sane protectors of the common good.  Of course the same rule held in foreign affairs.  If only the government would stop telling the communists they must become democratic or face sure punishment, then those same such communists would be forced to confront their own people without holding up the capitalists as a scapegoat and would probably end up acting like fairly nice people.  The fascists would inevitably do the same.  Shunning, then, was the only sane response for the truly enlightened man.  Nothing could be done but to ignore the whole world and simply refuse to acknowledge the existence of anyone who did anything even remotely wrong.  Simply not shouting at those who were evil would give the evil enough time to stop and think about their lives.  Such reflection would immediately reveal the absurdity of their positions and they would all come around in a fairly short period of time.  Of course this raised the question of how to get the good people to go about shunning the bad ones.  The good people who didn’t shun were themselves bad, since they upheld the whole system.  That made them complicit and by that logic downright evil.  Indeed, it seemed a sane man would have no choice but to shun everyone universally.  Even if he dared talk to another man whose actions he thought appropriate, there was always a chance that it would cause an argument starting the whole process over again.  Mr. Linpul suddenly became aware of why monks were required to take a vow of silence.  It was the only way to keep the peace in a civilized world.

In high-school, Mr. Linpul’s best friend had been Mr. Carthago.  Mr. Carthago disagreed with Mr. Linpul about everything.  Even when they agreed about something in practice, Mr. Carthago found it pleasant to disagree with Mr. Linpul on some arcane theological or philosophical premise.  For example, Mr. Linpul and Mr. Carthago  both believed that the right thing to do about murderers was not to electrocute them to death.  Mr. Carthago, however, insisted that Mr. Linpul was incorrect in assuming that this was merely a practical consideration.  He considered it, rather, the duty of a society to be genial, nay loving towards its murderers and refuse.  The correct response to a murderer was not to execute him, but to crown him king of all the land.  When Mr. Linpul pointed out that thanks to the role of politics this was often achieved in practice whether advocated in the ideal or not was promptly rejected by Mr. Carthago who insisted that the selection process of democracy was inherently unfair.  Nay, our leader should be chosen from a pool of equally vile candidates by the process of a random-number generator programmed to calculate the number of digits in pi that were needed to find a man’s name raised to some arbitrary power chosen, apparently, at random by three old men playing a game of Texas Hold’em.  When Mr. Linpul pointed out that such a process was utterly bizarre in the extreme, Mr. Carthago replied by saying that was the point, since the best thing to do was not to give any false pretenses that the choice of the candidate was even remotely affected by the will of the people to be ruled by a man of their choosing.  Such pretenses were at once annoying and at the same time downright annoying because they might lead men to a sort of false arrogance concerning any number of religious and other obligations no less so because the man who considers himself free will freely choose that evil which was already forced upon him by the unrelenting gods.

At this point in the conversation, Mr. Linpul chose to change the conversation completely and ask Mr. Carthago about his day.  Mr. Cartago replied that he had not had a day.  Indeed, he had only just gone though the fiftieth night in a row with not a second of daylight between them.  When Mr. Linpul pointed out that the sun was shining overhead at the very moment they were speaking, Mr. Carthago responded by mentioning that his mother had died in a hurricane and that there were starving people in China who would kill for a drink of the beer he had consumed only yesterday.  Mr. Linpul suspected that Mr. Carthago was avoiding the question, but he had no proof to that effect so in the end he decided to try a different angle.

“What hurricane was it?”

“What?”

“What hurricane”

“Hurricane King Louie IIX”

“There is no hurricane King Louie IIX”

“Are you saying my mother is not dead?”

“I spoke to her only this morning.”

“There was no morning.  It has been night all this month.”

“It isn’t even night right now.”

“Finish your drink, there are sober kids in India.”

Mr. Linpul at last relented and asked Mr. Carthago how he felt about the war in Vietnam.

“I think we should blow them all to Hades,” Mr. Carthago said cheerfully.

Mr. Linpul couldn’t agree more.

“But your agreeing for the wrong reasons.”

“But I haven’t even given you my reasons for agreeing.”

“Yes, but they’re wrong.”

“That’s impossible, my reasons are exactly the same as your reasons.”

“See!”

Mr. Linpul most definitely did not see.  Scratching his head, he looked over his shoulder.  Behind him was a plain white wall.  The wall was white, and plain.  Nothing about Mr. Linpul struck him as particularly interesting or noticeable.

“What color is that wall?” Mr. Carthago teased.

“White?” Mr. Linpul said, wary of another trap.

“Good.  How many whites are on that wall?”

“One?”

“Wrong!  See!”

“Well then, how many whites are there?”

“I don’t know.  The point is it’s exactly the same as your suggestion about the reasons.  You said your reasons were the same as mine.  But that would mean just one reason, since that’s all I’ve got.  But we’ve got two heads, haven’t we? And how can one reason be in two places.”

“I don’t why it shouldn’t be.”

“Why shouldn’t it be!?  If there was one rabbit, you wouldn’t say it was in two heads, now would you?”

“If there was one rabbit, I would hope that it’s not in any heads.  That would be a bit scary and I’d probably have to go for my hand-grenades.”

“Fine, how about fields.  You wouldn’t say that one rabbit is in two fields.”

“Well perhaps if it was on the border, say if the fields were on opposite sides of a fence.  Then it could be in both of them.”

“Well our heads are hardly fields, now are they? Mashed together one against the other.”

“In a way they are, since we’re both speaking.  It would be fair to say that our minds are connected, which is in some way related to our brains”

“That’s an utterly unfair connection.  That’s like saying two sheep are connected because they both eat the same grass.”

“Well in a way they are.”

“But that’s utterly absurd as well.  Besides, sheep aren’t anything like brains at all.  Brains are more like black holes.”

“Black holes? I beg your pardon.”

“Yes, black holes.  We take in all these things, pictures, words, ideas, smells, sounds, etc. and yet we can never get them back out again.”

“But isn’t that the whole idea of talking, isn’t it?”

“Not at all.  Talking is just a sloppy way of getting things done faster than we would if we had to draw pictures all the time.”

“Well then, why isn’t drawing pictures?”

“Because we don’t draw what’s in there.  We just try and get close and hope that someone else will get approximately the same thing out of it.”

“And if they do?”

“That’s impossible.  I may as well though a fig in a blender and hope to get an apple out of it.”

“It could happen.”

“Yes, but brains aren’t exactly like figs.  They’re more like kiwis.”

“Kiwis?”

“Yes, with the fur on the outside and such.  Don’t you see?”

Mr. Linpul most definitely did not see.  He reached in his pocked and retrieved an orange.  Mr. Linpul did not like oranges.  They were tangy and they made his eyes water.  He knew a girl who was allergic to citrus juice and even she liked oranges more than he did.  He offered the orange to Mr. Carthago who refused and explained that he had recently become a vegetarian.  Mr. Linpul did not see the connection, but then again it was equally likely that Mr. Carthago did not either.  That there was a connection, however, was certain.  After all, why else would Mr. Carthago have said such a thing?  No mind was completely random, not even that of a madman.  Mr. Linpul had met only one man that was clinically insane: the sanest man he had ever met.  Everything he said and did and loved was perfectly obvious.  Mr. Linpul sometimes wished his life was so well-ordered.  Instead he spent most of it trying to remember where he had lost his jacket and whether it was possible to make thirty seven cents out of a nickel, a quarter and six pennies.  Why six  pennies?  It wasn’t possible to get more than four in change.  The average was probably 2.5, though he couldn’t prove it anymore than he could prove that he did in fact posess a left pinky.  Mr. Linpul put his left pinky in his mouth and bit down hard.  It hurt.  Good, he was not dead.  That or the dead felt pain.  Or perhaps being dead was good and being alive was the troublesome bit.

Mr. Carthago and Mr. Linpul said goodbye and Mr. Linpul continued on his way.  That had been years ago.  He had seen Mr. Carthago only once or twice since then.  Each time had been different but very much the same.  They had said hello, exchanged a few pleasant words, and continued on their ways.  Off into the distance went one of the few people who Mr. Linpul had ever really gotten along with.  Yes, he tolerated most people, but he did not get along with them.  They were merely nuisances, obstacles to be overcome in the long and toilsome road to the grave.  Most could be gotten rid of with a pleasant ‘hello, how do you do?’ and no effort to hear the reply.  Once in a while, however, someone stuck fast and actually tried to engage him.  That always caused problems.  He was not capable of genuinely returning the desire to spend time in the other’s company but nor was he able to refuse it.  So he spent the time, hating it all the while and afterwards regretting that he had not tried harder.  Life was a mystery; one to which Mr. Linpul had none of the answers.  He rested his briefcase on the floor of the elevator and waited for it to ascend to the seventeenth floor.  When he reached the seventeenth floor, he pressed the button for the 12^th floor.  The elevator descended quickly.  Midway between the 12^th and 14^th floor, Mr. Linpul pressed the stop-elevator button and the elevator came to a screeching halt.

Timmy turned off the video game and the television set.  Running his fingers though his hair in an effort to make it look semi-decent, he emerged from his bedroom and wandered into the living room.

“Is there anything to eat?” Timmy demanded.

His mother was sitting on the couch reading a fitness magazine.  She looked up and said something about cereal in the cupboard.  Timmy walked into the kitchen and looked in the cupboard.  All that was there was raisin bran.  Timmy hated raisin bran because it turned to mush in the cereal bowl and didn’t taste like anything.  It looked disgusting too.

“There’s not any cereal!” Timmy exclaimed to his mother in the living room.

His mother made a reply to the effect of ‘if you don’t like what you’re served I guess you’ll just go hungry.’  Grudgingly, Timmy poured a bowl of cereal and added milk.  When the flakes did not immediately turn to mush, he began to stir them more vigorously.  At last all that remained was a soupy, unappealing mash of bran and raisins.  Timmy glopped up a spoonful of the stuff and attempted to put it into his mouth.  Halfway to his mouth, the spoon turned around impelled entirely by a power of its own and replaced itself in the bowl of raisin/bran mush.  Timmy tried once more, but again the spoon returned to the bowl unemptied.  A third time he lifted the spoon, this time forcing itself into his mouth before any other force had the opportunity to react to such a bizarre action.  The stuff didn’t taste any better than it looked, but Timmy forced himself to swallow it anyway.  He felt as if he was going to be sick.  Clutching his stomach, he started in the direction of the bathroom.

“Where are you going?” Timmy’s mother demanded.

“To the bathroom,” Timmy said innocently enough.

“Not until you finish that cereal, you aren’t,” his mother replied.

Grudgingly, Timmy returned to the kitchen and attempted to eat another spoonful of raisin mush.  The second spoonful went down somewhat more easily that the first, but tasted no better.  The third went down fairly easily as well.  After that, however, no amount of will-power could allow Timmy to take another bite.  Again he tried to run for the bathroom and was rebuked by his mother.  He sat for some time, staring at the raisin bran in the vain hope that it would disappear.  When it did not, he tried once more to eat a spoonful.  It was then that he noticed that the raisin bran had approximately the same taste and texture as wet cardboard.  Timmy used to chew on cardboard when he was a child, but had later been forbidden from doing so by his pre-school teacher.  He wondered if he ought to avoid eating the raisin bran for the same reason.

Closing his eyes and trying to think about hamburgers and ice cream, Timmy forced another spoonful of raisin bran into his mouth, and then a second one.  He tried to swallow the stuff, but with no luck.  It just swirled around his mouth in a disgusting flavorless mass.  After a minute, Timmy stuffed another spoonful of raisin bran into his mouth and then another and another until at last the bowl was empty and his cheeks were stuffed.  Slowly he worked the stuff down his throat until at last his mouth was empty safe a pocket here and there behind his gums or in one of his molars of the tasteless bran.  He went to the sink and drank a glass of water in an effort to wash the taste out of his mouth, but to no avail.  Perturbed, he returned to his bedroom and began playing video games once again.

Mrs. Robin was enjoying her day off.  This morning she had cooked her and her husband a full breakfast and after that they had spent some time discussing their upcoming trip to Europe.  Like most couples who lived in the complex, she and Mr. Robin found the environment comfortable enough, but that certainly didn’t keep them from dreaming about traveling.  Neither of them had ever been to Europe, somewhat because of finances, but mostly because they had simply never took the time to plan such a trip.  When she suggested just such a trip to her husband, he had been thrilled by the idea and both of them were eager to begin working out the details of their upcoming adventure.  They would see all the sights there were to see: London, Paris, Rome, Berlin.  Since both Mr. and Mrs. Robin were fairly active people, they would also take advantage of opportunities to go walking up and down the many roads and mountain paths of Europe.  Mrs. Robin’s chief fascination, however, was with the cathedrals of Europe.  She would see them all: the Sistine Chapel, Il Dumo, the Vatican, Notre Dame.  She had always been fascinated by the art and beauty that went into such buildings.  Indeed, although she now did secretarial work, she had taken several courses on both art and architecture while attending college for two years.  That had always been her dream, when she had been young enough to dream such dreams.  She wanted to design beautiful buildings just like the cathedrals of Europe.  The complex was not, in her opinion, a beautiful building.  It was a respectable building, certainly.  The stone facade was nice, but the wire fence around the top left something to be desired.  She had always been an advocate of replacing it with a wrought iron fence that looked somewhat more medieval.  The building had a definite modern bent to it, which was depressing since most modern architects cared nothing for real beauty.  That was not to say that the complex was not a good building, or that she disliked living there.  It was a comfortable building and wonderful to live in.  She had been so many different places and none of them touched here with the same warmth and comfort on the inside as the complex.  It was a perfect place to live, a perfect place to raise a family.  She just wished that it could be a bit more beautiful on the outside.  Mrs. Robin believed herself to be a lover of beauty.

Mr. Robin, by contrast was a lover of nature, not architecture.  His one complaint about the complex had always been the presence of the artificial tree on the ceiling.  He deeply believed that it should have been real.  Mrs. Robin, the truth be told, could not actually tell the difference between the real and artificial tree.  The real one lost its leaves in summer and was somewhat taller than when they had come, but that was all she could tell.  Mr. Robin, however, insisted that there was a difference so obvious that it was impossible for him to step onto the roof of the complex without complaining loudly about it.  Mrs. Robin didn’t exactly sympathize with his complaints, or even understand them for that matter, but whenever he voiced them she had learned to simply smile and nod.  That was part of what being married meant, adopting the strong dislikes of one’s spouse whether they made any sense to oneself or not.

Whenever they talked about going to Europe, Mr. Robin talked about nature.  He wanted to wander the plains of Spain, tour the rolling hills of France, climb the Swiss alps and get lost in the forests of Germany.  For him, nature was one giant amusement part.  Mrs. Robin sometimes wondered what it was he liked about the complex, then, since most of it seemed so very distant from nature.  She had asked him once, directly.  He answered elusively, mentioning the tree on the roof and the grass and the feel of the carpets and saying how even if it was just a building, it had the feeling of a very old and well-worn place.  Mrs. Robin had never thought of it that way.  Was that really what made nature beautiful to her husband: the sense of age?  Wasn’t he aware that the complex was only 19 years old, it hadn’t even been built when he and she had first met during the fifth grade.  It was good, she felt, that they had not moved in within the first several years.  She imagined that there must have been a sort of transition period when the place did not feel like a community, the way it did now.  She liked that most of all about the complex.  It was a place for people, not just a building, but a building where people lived, where they worked, where they raised their children, where their children would live and work and raise their own children if they soon choose.  It gave her a sense of security, of stability, as if the entire rest of the world could disappear and the complex would still remain.  Her job never felt like that.  She always felt hurried, pressured.  She must work now because if she did not her job would not be there in a week.  The business was always fighting, always competing, always in danger of being bought out by a larger corporation within a month causing massive layoffs and all sorts of other problems for the employees who worked there.  It was, too put it succinctly, not safe.  The complex felt perfectly safe, as if nothing could ever go wrong here.  It was for that reason a home, a place where she wanted to be and that she missed when she was away.  She had no doubt that at some point during her tour of Europe she would wish for nothing more than to be back in the sanctuary of the complex.  A place of safety that she would find in none of the cathedrals of Europe.

Mr. Carol returned to the apartment with the paper in hand.

“How was your walk?” Mrs. Carol asked.  “That didn’t seem to take very long.  What was it you had to do, dear?”

“Oh, I just went out to get a copy of the paper,” Mr. Carol responded.  “They don’t deliver on Saturdays.”

“It’s a shame,” Mrs. Carol responded.  “Couldn’t you get one of those boys who are always running up and down the hallways to bring by a paper for you?  I don’t doubt they’d be glad to do it for a nickel extra and we can afford the expense.”

“Nickel isn’t much money anymore,” Mr. Carol rebuked his wife.  “Most of these modern boys won’t bend down to pick up less than a dollar if it was lying right in front of them.  Besides, I can use the walk.  Doctor says it’s good for my knees to walk on them regularly.”

Mr. Carol sat down on the couch, an action which brought some relief to the splitting pain in his knees.  He lifted one knee slightly and massaged it with his fingers.  The pain resided somewhat to a tolerable level.  He massaged the other knee with the same effect.  Feeling slightly better he looked down at the paper.  The cover story was: “Politicians Question President’s Handling of the Economy”.  Mr. Carol thought that a queer idea.  What business did the politicians have telling the president what to do?  If they didn’t like his ideas couldn’t they run for president themselves if they thought of something better?  Besides, when did the president get the job of handling the economy?  If anyone did it, it was the banks and such.  They had all the real power over everything anyways.  That was what Mr. Carol thought worst about the modern form of democracy.  Sure the people had power over the government, but it didn’t make a whole lot of difference if the government wasn’t the one running the country to begin with.  It was the same way with the military too.  The president could give all the orders he wanted, but if the generals didn’t like it they sure as anything weren’t going to listen to just one man.  They were the ones with the guns after all.  What was more, even if they did what he said, but didn’t want to, all they had to do was do it badly so that the folks back home made a big fuss and the military could slack off like they wanted.  It had happened in Vietnam, hadn’t it?  The military didn’t like Mr. Johnson’s war so they shot a couple of college kids and next thing you know Nixon was president.   Mr. Carol didn’t put much faith in the president or anyone else for that matter.  God and country, perhaps, but that were as far as his loyalties went.

Mr. Carol turned to the sports section of the paper and was disappointed to find an article about soccer.  Soccer was not a sport, properly speaking.  In order to be a sport, something must be played with both a ball and a bat or racket.  Soccer was played with a ball, yes, but no racket.  Furthermore, the idea of a sport in which the use of hands was not allowed was also anathema to Mr. Carol.  Sports, properly speaking had to exercise the hands as well as the feet, otherwise they were just exercise: same as running laps in a gym.  Mr. Carol had no idea how it was that people insisted that running was a sport.  Calling running a sport so broadened the definition as to allow for the inclusion of  such clearly preposterous things as walking, leaning back in one’s chair in a systematic matter, making dinner in the kitchen, and napping as well as anything else.  Napping after all was a skill which not only could not all people acquire, but which most people found quite difficult to keep up with after about three or four days of it.  Mr. Carol, for example, had recently discovered that he could sleep no more than 5 hours in a night and no more than a half-hour nap during the day.  He sincerely hoped that this deficiency would not make him a poor sport.  Call napping a sport if you must, but it meant the end of all things sane.

Eric took a step towards the fence.

“You’re not going to actually…” John’s words trailed off.

“Of course I am,” Eric replied.  “What, do you think I’m chicken or something?  I know perfectly well that I won’t fall.  I’ve always wanted to try flying and this is my chance.”

“You won’t fly,” John replied.  “You’ll fall and get hurt, just like Jack.”

“What about Jack?” Eric shot back.  “He’s the most popular kid in our class since he broke his arm, isn’t he?”

“Well, yeah,” John conceded.  “But that doesn’t mean… what if you get hurt worse?  What if you get killed?”

“That’s absurd,” Eric said.  “If it was possible to fall and get killed they would put nets or something to catch people.  Don’t you know anything?”

“I think that’s what the fence is for,” John replied.

“That fence doesn’t stop anyone,” Eric replied.  “You saw.  Even we can climb it easy.  Big kids probably do all the time.  I bet they go flying all the time too.  They just don’t tell us because they think we’re too little.”

“Too little for what?” John demanded.

“To fly,” Eric said.  “What if I just float away and can’t get back?”

“Don’t go,” John replied.  “You won’t float.  You’ll fall.  The Kleenex fell.”

“The one next to the building did,” John explained.  “The other one floated away, remember.  I just have to jump out far enough.”

“That was the wind,” John replied.  “Besides, what if you don’t jump far enough?”

“I’m not a wimp,” Eric answered back.  “I can do it.  The big kids probably do it all the time.”

“If the big kids do it all the time, how come I don’t ever see them or hear them talking about it?” John demanded.

“Because you’re a twirp,” Eric replied.  “There’s lots of things older-folks don’t tell to second-graders.”

“Like what?” John demanded.

“Like what happens when you get married,” Eric answered.

“What happens when you get married?” John asked.

“Nothing,” Eric replied.  “Just your wife gets to… well, she cuts it off.”

“What!?” John asked shocked.

“It’s the honest truth,” Eric replied.  “That’s why I’m never getting married.”

Mr. Capriole paced back and forth across his fifth-grade classroom nervously.  Occasionally he would begin to say something, as if speaking to someone in the distance, but stopped in mid sentence.  His words were unintelligible, or muttered so softly as to be indistinguishable.  They ran one into the other like water poured out of a basin into an endless sea.  The rivers flow always into the sea, but the sea is never filled.  Or is it that the water is somehow lifted out of the sea and poured out onto the earth as rain?  Consider all the rivers in the world.  Each day, those rivers carry a small amount of salt into the sea.  How old is the world?  Count the number of grains of salt in the sea.  Divide by the number of grains of salt carried into the sea  each day.  The answer will tell you how old the world is.  An over estimate, of course, since the may have been salty to begin with.  But how to count the number of grains of salt in the sea?  Count the number of drops of water in the sea and multiply by the number of grains of salt in a drop.  Perhaps, but that merely confuses the problem.  How many drops are there in the sea?  Perhaps the sea is only salty near the edges and becomes fresh at the end of the world.  Columbus thought as much.  Tasted the sea near the mouth of the Amazon, saw that it was sweet, and declared that he had found paradise.  How many grains of salt does the Amazon carry into the sea every day?  More than three.  Less than 1,000,000,000,000.  How many grains of sand on a beach?  More than 3.  Less than 1,000,000,000,000.  Perhaps more.  Mr. Capriole did not know.

Mr. Capriole sat down at his desk and attempted to do some work.  After staring at the same piece of paper for nearly five minutes, he threw down the red pen he had been holding, scattered the neatly stacked pile of papers across the desk, got up, and stormed out of the room.

Ms. Cleveland walked slowly back to her apartment, deliberately pacing her steps so as not to run.  The walk seemed to take longer than usual.  She lived only six doors down from the elevator, but the expanse seemed to stretch out much farther, as in a dream when one approaches an object, but the object only races further away still.  When she did at last reach the room, she was unable to find her keys and spent a full minute looking for them before finally realizing they were in fact already in her pocket.  Unlocking her apartment door, she threw herself inside and slammed the door shut behind her.  She locked the door behind her and threw the bolt shut as well.

Racing to her bedroom, Ms. Cleveland threw herself on her bed and tore off the white-blouse she was wearing.  Throwing the shirt into her dirty-clothes hamper, she leafed through her closet looking for something else to wear.  When she couldn’t find another shirt that fit the pant she had on, she took those off as well.  Ten minutes later, she emerged from the bedroom wearing a navy blue skirt and a red sweater.  Stepping into the bathroom, she reapplied her lipstick and toyed at her hair with a comb for a while before deciding that it was a lost cause.

Mr. Capriole walked down the hallway from his fifth-grade classroom to the elevator.  Externally, he now appeared perfectly clam, but inside he was a turbid sea of confusion and mixed emotions.  He hid his emotions, his agitation, his fears perfectly; so perfectly that no one would ever see them, unless they looked straight into his eyes, that is.  Mr. Capriole tried his hardest to look straight forward and ignore everything not in his path.  Every few seconds, however, his eyes would jerk off erratically in one direction or another following the image of an object that was not there.  A fraction of a second later, his eyes would correct their orientation, staring forward as if to complement the slight smile he always had directed at whatever was in front of him.  It was a smile that could easily disarm any adult human being, giving off a uniform feeling of warmth and confidence to all who encountered it.  Few people after seeing that smile bothered to look away from it long enough to see the frustration hidden within the wells of his eyes.  It was for this reason that Mr. Capriole remained a mystery to all, including himself.  To himself, I say, because no man knows himself except in the glimpses reflected in the way others see him.  The act of being a person does far too much to confuse the act of trying to find out who that person is.  Only though the eyes of another, truly understanding person, can one hope to see oneself.  He who lacks such a person therefore lacks any hope of ever understanding himself.  The best account that can still be given is to say: I am a person who does this thing in this circumstance, and who does this other thing in this other circumstance.  Such an analysis will, if done accurately, reveal some of the inner workings of the self, although it is by no means a sure way of discovering self-knowledge. 

Mr. Capriole stood in front of the elevator and waited.  In such a situation, he was the sort of man who waited until a deed could be carried out with perfection and then acted swiftly and resolutely.  The elevator opened and Mr. Capriole stepped inside.  9 seconds later, as programmed by the engineer who designed all of the elevators in the complex, the elevator doors came shut.  After, and only after, the doors had been shut for 1.5 seconds the elevator began moving downward.  Inside the elevator, three lights were shining in addition to the ambience lights that kept it lit at all times.  The light behind the “1” button was shining, indicating the floor Mr. Capriole was intending to get off at.  The “19” light above the door was shining, indicating the floor the elevator was currently at, and the “▼” was shining indicating the elevator’s current direction of movement.  This was clearly the preferred direction, since the elevator’s goal (1) was less than its current location (19).

Mr. Linpul was sitting in a different elevator located midway between the 12^th and 14^th floors of the complex.  Logically, one would imagine there to be a 13^th floor located here, but no such floor was indicated by the row of lights at the top of the elevator and no such floor could be selected from among the various floors which ranged from B to R passing over all the numbers in between but skipping over 13.  Buildings without 13^th floors were of course still quite common.  Modern science had all but debunked such superstitions, but that did very little to dissuade the thousands of architects who consistently designed tall buildings without a 13^th floor.  Modern architects, it should be noted, are notoriously far-removed from modern science.  Most buildings designed by them, if looked at with an even remotely critical eye, are clearly impractical to the point of absurdity.  Why then modern science has spent most of its time trying to develop sciences that will allow the building of whatever takes an architect’s fancy rather than building architects who conform to the rigors of modern science has never been entirely clear.  Perhaps it could be attributed to the notion that architects are in some way artists, and that applying science might kill the art, but such an analogy might equally well justify calling the designers of nuclear weapons artists, or chefs.  Saying that food should not be required to be edible because it is an art form is of course perfectly acceptable, but it will lead to an increased number of deaths.

Reaching in his pocket, Mr. Linpul retrieved from it a butter knife.  Wedging it between the two doors of the elevator, he pulled it sideways, prying the doors almost an inch apart.  He then grappled each door with one hand and pulled them fully a foot and a half apart.  Now, officially, there was no floor between the 12^th and 14^th floor.  That is to say behind the elevator doors, Mr. Linpul ought properly speaking to have encountered a wall.  What he encountered instead was another pair of doors.  Mr. Linpul stood for a moment, utterly shocked at the enormity of the discovery he had just made.  Why was there an unmarked floor between the 12^th and 14^th floor that was for all apparent purposes impossible to reach.  Who had put it there, and more importantly why had they put it there?  For a moment Mr. Linpul attempted to run through the possibilities as scientifically.  He quickly ruled out the most obvious answers, aliens, demons, disgruntled postal workers, architects who hadn’t gotten enough sleep and lemons.  Only the final two had any real chance of being the correct answer, and both were far to mundane to be correct.  He then moved onto a number of less likely but slightly more interesting possibilities: a vast right wing conspiracy, the French, disgruntled government workers, Edward Kennedy, the color orange, a clockwork of the same color, the creators of the complex, a pear often referred to in official government documents as “Harry” short for “Harold Eugene Minch IV”.  Mr. Linpul considered each of the possibilities in turn, but was unable to come to a conclusion concerning the validity or invalidity of any one of them, although the truth be told he was leaning slightly more strongly towards the color orange and slightly less strongly towards a clockwork orange.

Mr. Linpul wedged his butter-knife between the new pairs of doors and pressed as firmly as he could.  The doors did not budge an inch.  He pressed harder, throwing his back into the effort.  Still the doors did not budge.  He put his back to the wall and pressed against the butter knife with both legs.  The knife still did not move.

“How do they do it?” John demanded.

“With a knife, silly,” Eric replied.  “How else would they do it?”

“I don’t know,” John replied, although he had been thinking of several far more sinister possibilities.  None that he thought he could explain to Eric without feeling very, very uneasy.

“Well that’s good, because it’s not true,” Eric said.

“It’s not?” John asked, breathing a sigh of relief.  “Because that would make it impossible to do the other thing that married people do.”

“What else do married people do?” John demanded.

“I’m not telling,” Eric replied.  “It’s not suitable for someone your age.”

“You’re my age and you know!” John shouted back.

“Yes, well, there’s lots of things I know that you don’t.”

“Like what?”

“Like if you jump off the building you can fly, and the older kids do it all the time,” Eric said triumphantly.

“That’s a lie,” John replied.

“No it’s not,” Eric said.

“The thing about married people was a lie,” John argued.

“Was it?” Eric taunted.

John’s face became pale.

“Of course it was,” Eric reassured him.  “But this time I’m not lying.”

“How am I supposed to trust you?” John wondered aloud.  “You could just be saying anything.”

“You don’t have to believe anything I tell you,” Eric boasted.  “I’ll show you.”

Eric took a step away from the swings, where the boys had come to sit, and towards the edge of the building.

Mr. Carol turned to the comics.  They were probably the only part of the newspaper he actually enjoyed.  He read everything, of course, and always did the crossword puzzle, but in general these things did not bring him pleasure.  The news was always the same and none of it good.  This had more to do with the nuances of the reporting profession then with the actual state of the world.  An occasional feel-good story, of course, might occasionally darken the cover of a newspaper, but for the most part people who were living their lives wanted to know more about the bad than the good.  Survival mechanism, Mr. Carol reasoned.  People didn’t survive during the stone age by admiring the roses, they survived by avoiding the saber-toothed tigers.  The same rule may not be so obvious today, but undoubtedly it functioned in a way.  Those people who were constantly fighting to keep their car/job/house/family were more likely to succeed.  Then again, all of that worrying causes stress and ruins relationships and heart attacks, but there is a price to be paid for everything.  If the price for information that might save your life was suffering, so be it.  Mr. Carol, however, was retired.  He no longer had a job or children to defend.  Here in the complex he could live out the rest of his days in relative peace and after that… well, after that he would be the one in the newspaper.  Perhaps that was why he always read the paper, because people who died had a right to be remembered.  Or did they?  He was not sure he wanted to be remembered when dead.  His life had been far from perfect.  He had hurt people, probably even killed a man or two.  Not directly, mind you, Mr. Carol had never been that sort of man, but these things did add up over time.  The price of tea from India: 1/400th of some man in India’s life.  The price of Colombian Coffee: 3/650ths of a Colombian man’s life.  The price of a silk stocking from China: 2/547ths of a Chinaman’s life.  It all added up in the end.  Mr. Carol was not proud to think of this, but he felt that in the balance, he had made as many innocent choices as evil ones, if he had made very few good ones.  Marrying Mrs. Carol, perhaps.  Serving for a year in the Red Cross.  Mr. Carol liked to imagine he had done one or two good things in his life.  They would gloss it up, of course, for his obituary.  By the end of it, he would come away sounding like a hero: probably more or a Robin hood than a St. Francis of Assisi, yes, but they would make it sound as good as they could.  When it came right down to it, Robin Hood was nothing but a good-for-nothing thief and a poacher who happened to be slightly more likeable that King John.

Mr. Carol turned to the crossword puzzle.  He needed a six letter word for “water, isn’t there.”  Mirage.  He filled in the squares of the crossword puzzle and looked for another clue he could decipher.  A seven letter word for “walk” with “a” in the second position.  Saunter.  Mr. Carol continued to work on the crossword puzzle.

Mr. Hajiid’s elder daughter, Tina, was in the bathroom futzing with her hair.  Finally, when she deemed