"Marmalade!!!"
Radio Waves (In The Middle Of The Night)
sacrifice
CALLER: I feel a sense of... displacement. Do you know what it-?
BRUCE: Why do you-? I’m sorry for interrupting... why do you say displacement?
CALLER: I feel displaced. Do you know what I mean when I say displacement? I looked it up today. In the dictionary. It means put out of position, to be removed from position. That’s me, that’s how I feel.
BRUCE: It’s late. It’s late at night man. We all get-
CALLER: It’s always the middle of the night. I have been displaced. I know it now. My wife had a place for me, a use for me- even if nothing else as the guy who can change the bulbs or stop the leak in the bathtub. She doesn’t need me anymore. My kids, their eyes do this thing where they used to look at me like I was rock, like I was granite, and now their eyes get this soft fuzzy look that I don’t recognize and they look through me like I was transparent. Or a ghost, translucent. I'm not even here anymore. I'm not even there. I don't have a home. And I don’t have a place that I call home, and it hurts me, and it scares the shit out of me.
BRUCE: I’m sorry to hear that. But the question I asked at the top of the show was do you have a trade proposal for the Mets.
CALLER: Hah? Oh yeah. D’Arnaud and Conforto for Bryce Harper.
A Safe Place To Daydream
Julie didn’t hesitate, she answered like she’d been waiting for the question. “My papasan chair.”
I had to think back, a long way, back from when we lived together. I tried to picture her condo, the second floor, and then there it was: the mental image of the papasan, the wicker pod with that enormous green cushion. It was in the study with her bookshelves, and she used to get up inside it- pull her legs up underneath her like a cat- close her eyes and sigh, lost in thought. I could picture it, and I realized I was smiling.
“And what do you daydream about?
Julie exhaled and uncurled a grin. “Sunshine,” she said, without a doubt, “I can feel it all over my body. Sunshine and people I love."
Magnus took a minute, took a long sip of his beer, wiped the foam from his upper lip, and he told me: “The movies.”
“You daydream at the movies?”
“Let me tell you something: I hate the movies. Same stories, same pretty faces... but in the dark, with the lights down, and all those people sitting around me... I get lost. I get... gone.”
“And what do you daydream about?”
“The Summer I was nine,” he said, without a doubt, “and bass fishing with my Dad."
My daughter looked up from her Caeser Salad, fork like a pointer. She was laughing at me.
“For me? I don’t know, that’s a good one.”
She was humoring me, and then sudden, for real: “The tanning salon.”
“The tanning salon?”
“They put off all the lights, and I’m alone in that hum and away from the kids... I just forget everything else and let my mind go.”
“And what do you daydream about?”
“Hotels. In outer space.” She stood up and headed for the rest room and then, without a doubt: “Being on a spaceship alone, cruising through the stars."
The grilled ham and cheese.. the grilled ham and cheese was delicious.
The waitress came over while I sat alone taking notes. She had a bold smile on her cheeks as she refilled my water glass: “And what about you? Where’s your safe place to daydream?”
I looked up from my notebook, blinking, remembering where I was. I looked down at the wet ink drying on the words I had realized.
“The empty page,” I said. I sat up straight.
The waitress beamed, flipped the hair out of her face. “And what do you daydream about?”
“Everything. All of it,” I said, noticing the jasmine in her eyes, admiring her slim fingers.
“Without a doubt.”
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