Why not?

 Los Presidentes de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama,y de Rusia, Dmitri Medvédev, cerrarán en una conversación telefónico, posiblemente hoy mismo, los últimos detalles de un extenso acuerdo para la reducción de los arsenales nucleares que quedará listo para ser firmado el mes próximo en Praga. Ambas partes han confirmado que la negociación está muy próxima a su final, pero se está muy próxima a su final, pero se está a la espera de que los dos presidentes le den la aprobación. "Será en unos días", dijo ayer el portavoz de la Casa Blanca, Robert Gibbs.

So you may wondering as to the reason for my recent disappearance from livejournal. The truth is that I am working on some far more sinister that I am disinclined to share that at this particular moment. I actually probably will put that work up once I've worked out the kinks and dotted all the T's. I've got some more short stories on queue, but for the moment, I'm too preoccupied. Once I've finished the first part of this new project, I'll put it up for my livejournal friends only. That means if you want to read it, you'd best be my friend first. One warning though... It'll be long.

    We have a strict policy about that, even though we don't let the tenants know about it. They think that a few days past rent day is fair game- well maybe at some places. Here, three weeks. Reason is, we respect our clients. We don't intrude, we give them benefit of the doubt. Three weeks. After that, we can get authorities involved. That's when we check to make sure that they are still in their rooms, that they didn't skip town or anything. This guy, he was a special case though. We didn't give him the full three weeks- we were in there by the tenth.
    You know, when you're in the business long enough, you get to predict people. Call it whatever; stereotyping, prejudice- the point is when a tenant first comes by, five minutes is all I need. Give me five minutes and I can tell you anything: if his credit will check out, if he's had bad experiences with other landlords, if his background check will turn up red, if he'll stay long term or short, if he'll be quiet or loud. Really.
    Here's an example: Few years back, a woman came here looking for a one-bedroom. She said she was a dancer, but from the look of her I knew what she was an escort, and she knew I knew it. I spoke with her and she said that she made thirty a year- on the lower end for the single clients in one-bedrooms here. That was thirty that she made over-the-table at the club; she was probably making twice that underneath, but she couldn't give me any documentation of it. Five minutes was all it took, by the end I knew what she wanted. She wasn't going to bring her customers here. She was looking for a quiet building, to get away from that, to be an ordinary person. You know, some people- I know that's what they want. How they make their money, you know, that's there business. It's only my business if it affects my business. I saw this girl, I knew what she did for a living, and I knew she wouldn't bring that life here. So, I signed her, and she was here for three years; never late on rent, never paid in cash. Not a single problem.
    Anyway, I've been here ten years now, and after a while, you can predict people pretty well. This guy, we checked his room after ten days, not twenty one. He was one of the first people I signed. He called us looking for a two-bedroom a few months after I started. This was back in ninety-six. September. If it was now he wanted to sign with us, I'd say no right away. No question. It's like knitting, you make a mistake and you either go back and fix it right away or it's always there, it ruins the whole damn thing.
    Well, I didn't know better. I signed him. I got noise complaints right away, and then a couple months later I got smell complaints. We've got heavy doors, and they seal pretty tight, so you have to imagine how bad it must have been before the people across the hall called in a smell complaint. So, we'd tell him about the complaints, and whenever he'd come to pay we'd remind him and threaten him about it, but we didn't know how bad it really was. After about eight months of this, we had a neighbor of his who hadn't complained before come down to tell us about arguments he was having. She said he and a woman were fighting, and that it sounded bad, her screaming and crying, things breaking- probably dishes. It was funny though because we never saw him bring anyone over. We know a lot about our tenants, of course we aren't very interested, and we don't snoop, we just pick up on it over the months. We never, really never saw him bring someone over. It was all very strange.
    This neighbor complained to us, but she sounded pretty worried. A few hours later, we came up to his room to check on things. If there was still arguing, we were going to call the police. At his door, it was dead quiet. We knocked, but there was no answer. We decided to wait. A few days later, the woman who complained came by to thank us for taking care of things, and I told her to think nothing of it. Still, the days went by with no sound at all. When rent-day came, we didn't hold our breath; he was always a few days late. By the seventh we were fed up. We decided this was enough, it was time for him to leave, so we consulted with the police, got the go-ahead, and came to demand the month's rent and give him until the end of the month to get out.
    The tenth of the month, Saturday afternoon, we were sure was he was around, so we came knocking. He didn't answer, and we listened and didn't hear anyone inside. What's more, there wasn't any smell at all. Suddenly his room was like all the others. It probably shouldn't have been a big surprise when we came in and found the place cleared out, but it did. No one had seen him move out. None of the neighbors knew that he was gone, just the smell. The place looked brand new, shampooed carpet, painted walls, like he'd never existed. The only thing he left behind we found on the white clean stove: a month's rent. Cash.

    For the years that my brother was sick, it was like he was stranded in the middle of a half-frozen lake that was just starting to crack: It was like he was lying, spread out on the ice, afraid to stand up or turn over to crawl towards us, the cracks in the ice under him growing with each second. Our entire family was watching from the edge of the ice, each of us afraid to come out to help, lest the both of us fall through the cracks together. For the years of his sickness, we were all afraid to move, as though the slightest agitation would cause the unstable balance to suddenly crumble. For the years of his sickness, we stood around the half-frozen lake waiting for it to freeze over completely, or waiting for it to crack.
    When my brother finally recovered, when we started to have fun again- to behave like normal kids, I couldn't help but feel that no matter how he seemed, he had changed from how he was before getting sick. It didn't matter whether or not he seemed better, to me he wasn't. The cancer was still in him.
    Then the dreams came: Every day I would wake up from dreams that he was back out on his lake, staring at us as we did nothing but wait. Every day I'd fear for him. When we played games, if he started to get too worked up I'd let him win. When we played with other kids, I'd tell them each when his back was turned to "go easy on him". They seemed to understand. I always wondered if he knew that I felt this way, that I was telling this to the other kids. He must have known.
    It wasn't until a few months since his recovery that I began to understand my dreams of his relapse. Everyday he walked around me like he were made of glass. Everyday the same dream: the glass shattering.  I was afraid to touch him, afraid to let anyone else near him. He was my little brother, he didn't know any better, he didn't realize how dangerous it was. The dreams were more than dreams. They were visions. This was to be the future, I knew it. There was no question at all. With the vision came knowledge, a deep understanding that the future was immutable, and that God Himself had spoken to me and told me it. This was not a warning, and not something that would change if I warned others. It was purely an understanding: He would relapse, and soon he would be dead.
    Day by day, the dreams continued. They were never better nor worse, but always the same. He'd start to get sick all of a sudden. He'd go back to the hospital for more tests. A few weeks later I'd go to visit him at the hospital after school and in his hospital room there'd be nurses making the bedsheets. He would be gone.
    I thought for a while about telling him, but he seemed so much better. I wanted so badly to be wrong, but I knew that I wasn't. I wonder if he could see it on my face.
    "What's wrong?" he asked me once after the recovery. We were building model rockets in the backyard, and I was staring off into space, lost in the dream from the night before.
    "Nothing, just thinking."
    "About what?"
    "Nothing. Just, just forget it." Maybe the stammer as I held back tears said too much.
    "I see," he said.
    It felt so unnatural for someone his age to say that: 'I see.' What did he see? It was the kind of response that only a child who'd lived dragging a shadow of death would say. I tried to shrug it off, to lighten the mood and return to the rockets. That night we launched them.
    The next morning I awoke from the same dream to have breakfast. I found him at the kitchen table, too nauseous to eat. He said even sipping water was too difficult. He was back in the middle of his lake. My parents glanced nervously at each other, and I stared into the table.
    A few days later, my parents brought him back to the hospital. He was still sick, but in stable condition. Doctors were running tests. My mother stayed by his side, and I came to visit almost every day with my father. When we were all there next to him, we all moved very slowly and talked very quietly. He was in the middle of his half-frozen lake, and we were all afraid that the slightest movement would crack the ice.
    A couple weeks later, I was on my way to visit him after school. Before I got to his room, I knew what I would find there. The ice would have broken. The nurses would be making his bed. 

"I am alone." The words cling to the tip of my tongue like ivy. With each passing day, I want more than anything to shout it from the rooftops. "Behold! Your friend and brother is an illusion! I am a monster and my crime is cowardice. Like the chameleon, I have crept amongst you. Protection in numbers. Liberté, égalité, fraternité! All lies."

They will not understand. Do you hear me? You will not understand. My skill has been too exacting. I want to shout it from the rooftops: "I am an impostor!" But no one will hear me. You will not hear me.

These are not the ramblings of the drunk or mad. Listen: I have krept into the world of men- your world. I have stood on the shoulders of giants- your shoulders, but I am not your brother. I have grown fat from eating the food from your plate- food that you gave me!

I want to shout these things but I won't. I can not. Instead I'll follow as your brother. I'll follow as you clear the minefield, and when you fall, I'll turn and run back to another.

How I want to be there with you. How I wish I could. We are who we are and I am an imposter, and I will not catch you when you fall.

Hello,

Today was one hell of an exhausting day. Woke at 6 to go blueberry and raspberry picking at a farm a couple hours out of montreal. Beautiful, intensely hot. Now it's late. I have a story for today, but it's only half written. No harm in a day late, right? Here's a hint: it's called "The Imposter".

Every hour is sticky hell, like I've been damned to eternally go about my business after rubbing gluesticks all over my body. I don't know how many cold showers I've taken today, but I'm about to go for another. Maybe it's the sunburn.

OK so apologies. I know you're (meaning 'I'm') dying to see what comes out. Hey, maybe I'll actually like this one perhaps?

a

    The fish was turning golden on the frying pan, the boiling olive-oil bubbling around its face and tail. "It's working," he thought.
    He had never done things like this until a few months ago: Flying the kite, beginning the journal, joining the gym, learning to cook. The last few months had been full of activity. At first, he was inspired to try the things he felt like he had somehow missed during his childhood. He read and reread the great children's books, found instructions to build a kite and flew it, started teaching himself piano. Once he had begun to exhaust ways to live the lost parts of his childhood, he began to look for new things that he hadn't even considered to try before.
    Initially, his search for ways to fill his time with the new and the foreign had a purpose. It was like all of a sudden there weren't rules and habits dictating his life, and when he did do the old things- the work for his classes at university, his collecting books and reading, waking early to brew coffee to drink on his balcony- they seemed fresh and revitalized, like he had suddenly remembered why he began to do them in the first place.
    After a while, though, he began to forget why he was doing it all. Doing the new was becoming a routine. He stopped thinking about it. He felt changed, like a new person, but he could feel that beneath it all he was himself: That he would change on the outside, and the same person would always keep growing out through it.
    The dullness wasn't in his life, it was in him. It was a disease that he carried around, that killed off his passion whenever it started to grow. A leash around his neck: even with an infinite chain it was still a tether. Some nights he would wake up to find it choking him.
    Frying in the stagnant summer heat, even with the windows open and most of the lights off, he'd worked up a heavy perspiration. The fish had some time, so he removed his shirt and in the bathroom ran cold water over his head and face. Dripping, he walked out to his balcony that looked over the nighttime cityscape.
    "I've worked so hard," he said aloud to himself. "But it's still there. Still so empty."
    He remembered that back before he began to occupy all his time, it was like a haze. He lived from day to day doing nothing, and the days all seemed to blur into each other. From that time, he could remember a few important moments here and there, and he could remember the things he did often- ingrained by repetition, but that was it. He wondered if this was worse.

The sunset lit the puff of clouds a pink and orange hue. The grapefruit colored smoke rose above a neighboring rooftop and seeped into the violet sky. As the sky grew darker and all around the violet shifted to a deep purple, I put my legs up on the chair opposite me. On the small balcony table were a few lit candles and a glass of water.

Suddenly, in a commotion of flapping gray wings, a bird stood on the table, within an arm's reach. A pigeon. For a while, the bird bobbed its head, from me to the edge of the balcony, back and forth. I sat perfectly still, afraid to scare it off. Finally, it gave up and sat down on its legs, watching me. I could have reached out and pet it.

I thought for a while that I hadn't seen too many pigeons in the evening. They were common in the day, and were often getting sun on my balcony, but I almost never saw one so late in the day. I reached out, slowly taking my glass of water, and drank from it.

As soon as I brought the glass back to the table, the pigeon frantically began to flap its wings and for a few seconds, it hovered over the glass until it finally knocked it over. The pigeon went back to its previous position, sitting and watching me. I reached out for the glass, more quickly this time, and walked back inside. It was completely still.

I came back after a minute with a small metal frying-pan half filled with water and a thick slice of bread. It watched me slide the screen door to the balcony and sit back down. As soon as I had placed the pan down, it was perched on the edge, pecking its beak into the water.

After it had finished drinking, I tore off some bread and fed it. That was when I noticed that the bird was missing an eye. It pecked the bread, the dark gray skin healed over the wound and scar along its cheek. It made me think of the phrase 'stool pigeon'. I heard somewhere that the phrase came from hunting, where clay pigeons were used as decoys to attract other birds to be killed.

I watched the pigeon eat. The way the wound had healed made his eye look closed, like it were asleep. I wondered what could have caused it. Pigeons are hearty animals. I've seen pigeons missing feet, perching on their grizzled stumps, growing thinner and thinner as they eat less, hobbling up to scattered crumbs after the other pigeons had had their fill. How long could a bird live like that? How long had this one survived?

After it was finished pecking the bread, it stood up, bobbing its head up and down towards me, and then flew away. I never see that many pigeons at night. I wonder where it went.
 

    A bedroom in the summer heat. The window is closed, the blinds filter horizontal sheets of light. Everywhere there is scattered clothing and dirty dishes; half empty bottles filling with drowning beetles. On the bare sweat-stained mattress, I am naked.
    "Sir, what happened to you?"
    "It's all the same, isn't it?"
    Are we are delusional? Everywhere is meaning, or beauty, or absurdity... It's all patterns out of chaos, like constellations in the sky. There's meaning only when we stand and watch from the right position.
    "What have you been doing here, Sir?"
    "Waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Waiting for you, Lieutenant."
    There's no use to go out there. Time passes just as quickly within these walls.
    "When was the last time you, you went outside, Sir?"
    I Laugh. "What, you don't find this beautiful?" I hold up the bottle. It looks like it's half full of coffee beans, the top few are still moving. I turn it upside down and pour its contents onto the floor. I am laughing. This is my beauty. This is just as beautiful. The Lieutenant is hurrying from the room.
    "I'll be back in a moment, Sir."
    They'll think I'm insane. They are insane, too. We are all dead, and the dead are walking. There is so much beauty, and we are blinding ourselves. All we do is wait. Get through today until tomorrow, until next year, until we're settled down, until the end. Our lives are melting away. When are our lives?
    Figures standing in the doorway. Lieutenant, a man in a white coat, two officers.
    "When are our lives, doctor?"
    "This," hands in the air "is life. This is your life, Major. That's why you need to come with us. We're here to help you."
    They are all surrounding me. The Lieutenant and Doctor are speaking quietly. The officers are holding my arms apart and trying to lift me by them. "You don't understand at all, do you?"
    "Wait," the Doctor says. The officers stop struggling to move me. "What don't we understand?"
    "You think you can help me."
    "That's right. We can help you, but not if you resist, you have to let us-"
    "No. You don't understand." I am laughing. "The blind can't show the blind the way!"
    They're taking me away, but I'm still laughing. "Just like watching clouds. Our whole lives, just watching clouds!" Always waiting. We are waiting for nothing.

    The door had been closed since my family had moved in a week ago. We found it, the last door in a corridor of bedrooms, with a handwritten note with simple red letters:
    "Private".
    We had rented the apartment for a few weeks as a summer home. I spent my days overwhelmed with activities at the beach; my evenings exploring the town with my parents. My older sister was staying with us also, but she acted like she wanted nothing to do with us, as though her very being there was a tremendous source of grief. Soon we were only seeing her around lunchtime, when she would wake up.
    Although I enjoyed the time there, the entire idea of that place bothered me. My father explained it to me: "Someone lives here part of the year, and when people like us come during tourist season, he rents it out and moves away until we leave." I imagined our home back in New Jersey and wondered if while we were there in Delaware, some family was renting it, some other boy sleeping in my bed and playing with the toys I'd left behind.
    Around the sixth day of the trip, my parents and sister had a bad argument while out at lunch. She ran away from the table, and we finished eating in silence. Late that night, something woke me in the dark, and I walked out of my room to find the doors to my parents' and sister's rooms open: I was the only one home.
    I stood in the hallway, surrounded by doors, all open but one. In the gray dark it looked like a tombstone, its single-word epitaph the only decoration. It had to be locked, but I reached up and tried the door anyway. I found myself in another bedroom. It was a girl's bedroom: photographs and drawings covering the walls, dolls looking on from a bookshelf in the corner, a teddy-bear by the pillow. Without turning on the lights, I walked through it. At the end of the room was a heavy wooden cupboard covered in candles. I knelt down and opened it; the doors were lined with photos, probably dozens of them, all of the same teen-aged girl. In the center was a simple ceramic vase.
    From the window I heard voices shouting. I jumped from the cupboard and ran out the room, slamming the door. I was in bed by the time my family came in. We left the next day, a full week early. On the ride back, I wondered if I had been dreaming. If it had really happened, then I'd left the doors to the cupboard open. I wanted to tell them about it, but in the car no one was speaking.
    For months I expected the apartment's owner to call or mail us about it. Whenever the phone rang, I would hide my face, but no one ever said anything.