Lance Olsen: Calendar of Regrets

We genuinely used to look forward to seeing them.

Naomi was always the sweetest thing. She made everyone feel special. Remember how she had this way of recalling details you mentioned to her in passing three months earlier? How's Danjack's sprained ankle doing? Did Dawn finally decide on Dartmouth or Amherst? She was terrific with that sort of thing.

When did she start dating what's-his-name?

I heard they met through one of those online services. Apparently he wowed her with his emails. She's getting older. She doesn't want to be alone anymore.

Who can blame her? Except that guy adds exactly nothing to the equation. Every time you're around him, you feel you've just wasted a few minutes of your life.

Estelle said Naomi told her they have great sex.

Do I want to know this?

They make videos of it.

Dan looked past her to see what she was seeing. Three teenage girls in black padded racing shorts and tank tops with red highlights rollerbladed down the sidewalk. They were all talking on cell phones. They seemed unaware of each other's presence even though their shoulders were almost touching and they all wore the same bouncy, angled, layered dark-blonde shag Jennifer Aniston was currently wearing in that television show.

When the taxi jounced to a halt at a stoplight, Dan realized his shirt back was wet. He hoisted himself up and reached into his right pocket for his handkerchief and dabbed his gummy forehead and neck. He wasn't feeling quite right.

When did it start getting this hot in October? he asked.

Maybe we should put a little space between them and us, Jean proposed.

It's something to think about.

You know what gets me? What gets me is you imagine you'd learn, only you never really do. One week you're visiting friends, believing you have everything in common with them. The next it's as if you've never met them before. You don't even like them. Maybe you even find them sort of embarrassing. Why is that?

You wouldn't consider being friends with them if you weren't already friends with them.

On the corner sat a cross-legged black man in a red, green, and yellow Rastafarian tam. A pond of knock-off designer purses laid out neatly on white sheets surrounded him.

The stoplight changed. The taxi shot forward.

Estelle wants me to go with her to the new thing at MOMA, Jean said.

Tell her you're busy, said Dan.

He hoisted himself up again, tucked away his handkerchief, extracted his wallet.

She knows I'm not, Jean said. I already told her I was free.

Tell her you thought you were free, but it turns out you're not. Tell her you're sorry. You two will have to take a rain check. She'll understand.

Dan consulted the meter and began counting out bills.

Two weeks, and she'll just ask me to do something else.

You'll be busy then, too.

And after that?

You'll still be busy. You had no idea how much you had going on this fall. She's a smart girl. She'll eventually get the message.

My stomach hurts just thinking about it.

That's why most people choose to attend one tiresome dinner party after another with ex-friends who don't understand yet that they're ex-friends. They don't want to let anyone down. They want everyone to like them.

Okay, fine, Jean said. But say you break things off. Say you do that. You still run the risk of bumping into your ex-friends at future social functions. What are you supposed to do then ?

You strike the same affable tone you would if you ran into a boyfriend from high school. You smile. You ask them how they're doing. You wish them well. You make excuses. You leave. In the end, nobody really cares, so nobody's really hurt.

The taxi pulled up to the curb in front of their brownstone. Jean cracked open her door, but waited for Dan to pay before sliding out. He told the driver to keep two dollars. The driver said something Dan couldn't understand and passed him a fistful of money over his shoulder while avoiding his eyes. Dan consulted his change without actually counting it and then slid out.

His right foot felt funny, like it had gone to sleep.

A scrunch-faced boy wearing a t-shirt that said YOU CAN'T SEE ME blasted by on his silver twelve-speed.

People don't change, Dan said when Jean joined him. As they get older, they just become more like themselves. You have your purse?

Got it, Jean said.

Dan slipped his arm around her waist and was startled by how chunky she had become.

Behind them, the taxi unpeeled from the curb.

Dan tried to take a step toward the stoop and fetched up.

The surprising sensation that something was pulling at his right ankle arrived between one inhalation and the next.

Just a second here, he said.

He leaned against Jean, lifted his foot, and massaged it above the bony knobs sticking out on both sides. He straightened again and felt blurry. He had felt fine. Now he felt blurry.

You okay, hon? Jean asked.

I'm fine. It's just…

He had to close his eyes to steady himself. The blurriness became thicker. Then the universe canted. It seemed to him he was lying on his back on the sidewalk and standing up at the same time.

Jean's voice dropped into the distance.

Dan? it was saying. Dan? Dan ?

It felt like something was yanking at his right ankle. Dan looked down to check. Yeah. That's what it was. Something was definitely

yanking at his right ankle. He wants to say claws. Peculiar paradox: numb from neck down, he is distinctly aware of the insistent jerk, rest, jerk, rest, jerk. Yet what really gains the painter's attention is the recognition that he has never before actually seen the ceiling.

All these years loitering beneath it, and he has never once fully taken it in. He imagines extending his arm up, up, up to touch it, the veiny wood, the tiny prickle on his fingertips. Prickle . Admirable noun. The grain flowing northeast to southwest forms the amorphous contour of a — of a what? A massive eye, plausibly, gazing down, as God is not, from heaven. Or, conceivably, the head of an ant? Yet the lips. If insect, where would the lips be? Not lips. Pincers . Another moment of admirableness in a world of widowed words and orphaned phrases.

At the upper left, a smudge. Ivory? Puppet perception. No: ivory with a suggestion of zinc. No: ivory with a suggestion of zinc with a suggestion of — how to say it? — hue of an extended dove's wing on a winter morning in a church steeple with a light snow falling.

How can you claim membership among the living if you cannot name such a simple color?

Wake me from this narcosis.

The yanking becomes more pronounced. Bosch raises his reeling head inconsiderably to have a look around. Founders. The base of his skull clumps plank. He retracts his chin, stretches his neck, can barely make out the small devil tugging at his right ankle. Body of ape. Head of beetle. Claws of crab. Bosch is unsurprised. This caller has dropped by before. It is presently endeavoring to drag him toward the black yawn in the floorboards half a meter away, although admittedly having quite a troublesome time. The devil pants and slobbers, snickers and growls. Another bluewhite squall surges through Bosch's body. He hiccup-groans. The devil jumps. Freezes.

Time hangs.

Time hangs.

When it is apparent Bosch presents no imminent threat to the fiend, it crouches to resume its loud toil.

Bosch has the impression the thing is talking to itself. He cannot distinguish individual phrases, no, but the overall sense is one of Anglo-Saxon rather than Latinate discourse. No sooner has the painter enjoyed this knowledge than his tongue slips back in his throat, slick and swollen as an elongated oyster. Of a sudden gargling, Bosch squeezes shut his eyes, thinking he is opening them. Or he opens them, thinking he is squeezing them shut. Either way, without warning he sees himself as a young pock-faced boy lying on his stomach in his attic room on an overcast Sunday afternoon, the great fire having burned itself into his imagination, the great rebuilding having commenced.