That's all that ever matters, motion, the bow rising and falling, your homemade colors unfurled, busily engaged even if you don't know where you're headed.

"We're gonna have to take it in sideways."

"It's gonna open up if we do that."

"We can hold it.  Look," Jim said, placing his hand on the part of the hide-a-bed that threatened to open like a mechanical jaw.

"Are you sure you want this thing?  I mean it smells like gym socks.  Let's just put it at the curb, or, hey, let's set it on the lawn and put it on sale.  Look, we got all this other stuff."

"Just set it down.  Let's take a break."  Jim dropped his end and climbed over it into the half empty apartment.

"This is the last time I move," Jim said, sitting on a sealed box of books.  His friend, Roy, snorted a quick laugh and looked the place over.

"This is nice," Roy said, running a hand down the carved wooden mantle over the fireplace.  "This, I believe, is the original wood.  Never been painted over.  You're lucky."

"Like you know."

"About wood, I know.  I've spent--"

"About lucky, I meant.  About me," Jim said, half peevishly, half in exhaustion.

"I know about you, buddy boy.  Kristen told me," Roy said and he laughed.

Jim was momentarily pissed and then he laughed too.

"Kristen was only my latest unrequited love, only my latest disaster.  She follows a long line of emotionally expensive, abortive love affairs.  Which you know.  You know we've been friends--"

"A long time," Roy said, wandering into the kitchen.  "I'm getting a beer, you do have beer, don't you?  You didn't invite me to help you move without providing provisions?"

"Yeah, there's beer," Jim called.

Roy came back into the living room area with a can in his hand and a deadpan expression.

"Yeah, there's beer all right.  But you haven't plugged the refrigerator in."

Two weeks in the new neighborhood and Jim had not met anyone who lived nearby.  He only existed in the world, it seemed, between his car and the front door.  He had gamboled into the backyard a few times, but it was a tight space with a high fence, almost the kind of yard one would expect to find in the inner city.  Jim was the type of neighbor who waited until no one was outside before venturing out to get the morning paper.  A small-talker he was not.

So, it was the most fortuitous of coincidences when he ran into the blond college student across the street.  She was putting a stereo into her hatchback as he emerged from his car one afternoon.

"Shit," he heard her say into her underarm.

Jim warily edged across the street.  He was able to observe her for a few steps until his presence made her turn around.  She wore a college sweatshirt and loose fitting jeans, which did not conceal her shapely rear-end.  When she turned, Jim in a satori flash saw her whole:  odd potatoey nose, semi-bad complexion, thin hair cut in an attractive style, and some kind of visual impairment, the way she squinted at his approach, as if he could have been a policeman, or a walrus.  She was desire made flesh.

"Need a hand?" Jim said.

She straightened up and looked him over.

"Jim, from across the street," Jim said, extending his hand halfway, pulling it back and then reaching out when she raised hers.

"You moved into the Cook's house."

"Uh, yeah, I guess so."

"I'm Jill."

Jim nodded and then picked up the stereo speaker and struggled it into the rear of the small Japanese car.  It barely fit against the other speaker and the hatch, when they closed it, jammed the heavy wooden speakers with a dangerous sounding scrape.

"Oops," Jim said.

"Forget it," Jill said.  "I'm taking them to the dump anyway."

"The dump," Jim said.

"Well, hell, I guess I don't really know where the dump is, but I'm taking them someplace, to a field or something, and throwing them out."

"They're no good anymore?"

Jill looked at Jim's earnest face one more time.

"He's no good anymore.  And I'm throwing his shit out."

"Oh," Jim said, gradually catching on.  "A man."

"A worm," Jill said.  "A protozoan."

"Actually, you could get some money for those.  Those are Bass, and not too shabby."

"You want em?  You want em, just take em and keep them out of my sight."

"I could use some speakers.  I just moved in, and I still don't have a lot of stuff."

"Take em," Jill said, opening the hatchback.

Jim struggled the speakers out onto the curb and stood looking at them.  He sat on one.

"You kicked him out?" he asked pleasantly.

"He left voluntarily," Jill said.  " The two-timing slug left very voluntarily.  After I castrated him."

The first time Jill and Jim slept together, Jim recalled this chilling phrase and, though it did not work against the success of their encounter, it caused Jim some anxiety before he fell asleep.  The actual physical accomplishment was very pleasant, neither too athletic nor too cerebral.  Jill moved with Jim like a slightly clumsy dance partner, and neither lover experimented too much in honor of some unspoken agreement to not employ the past in any way in their burgeoning relationship.

And a relationship it was to become.  Jill spent most nights on Jim's couch, bending awkwardly over his coffee table, doing her homework, while Jim futzed around in the kitchen preparing makeshift dinners (half canned food, half baked something), or sat in the Lazy-boy, watching her work (he loved the way one side of her bangs hung over her face as she wrote) and watching a basketball game with the sound off.  They rented movies together (at first this was embarrassing, trying to meld their tastes--he liked old SF films, anything with mutant insect or headless torso, and she gravitated toward goofy Hollywood love stories, with big name actors and actresses inevitably getting together) most nights, Jill falling asleep toward the end, Jim waking her to either go home or stumble into his bed, where they would rouse themselves into passionate entanglements before dropping off to sleep.

Jill had a dog the size of the Ritz, a Chesapeake Bay Retriever named Shemp, whose fleas now infested both houses.  Jim took this as a sign of newborn intimacy, a sharing.

Jim worked at a health food store and deli and had to be at work mornings at seven.  This suited Jill fine as she had eight o'clock classes.  It began to work out; it began to seem comfortable and convenient and fun.  And some kind of future occurred to each of them separately, but they did not discuss this.  Discussion seemed inappropriate, they both felt; it seemed an invasion of the other's privacy, and they were both exceedingly polite about the other's privacy.

"Echinacia," Jim said, as he entered the room.

Jill was sprawled, if sprawled doesn't imply anything inelegant, on the couch, a box of prefab pastry on the coffee table.

"A South American dictatorial state?" Jill said around a half masticated King Don.

"The answer to your cold," Jim said with a grin, brandishing a small plastic bottle.  "An herb."

"Sweetheart, I don't have a cold.  I have allergies.  I am, to be precise, allergic to this moldy old couch."

"I will send it forthwith to the dump, except we don't know exactly where that is.  And, except for the fact that we then would have to sit on the stereo speakers."

"I asked you not to bring up those speakers ever again," Jill said and she laughed.

Jim laughed, too, and put his arms around his mate.  They had begun talking, tentatively, about moving in together, although they agreed they would need a larger space.  Jill had a lot of photographic equipment, which belonged to a period of her life when she fancied herself the next Julia Margaret Cameron, and which she hadn't touched in years but was nonetheless sacrosanct.  It required almost a room of its own.

"Where you been?" Jill asked, mock-suspiciously.

"Scoring crack and buying whores," Jim said, nuzzling his nose into her hair.

"Ok," she said.

"You want we should do the fandango now?"

"Before dinner.  Before Jeopardy?"

"Impulsive.  Wacky.  Romantic.  Live-for-the-moment.  These are some of the adjectives justified in this case."

Jill looked with unrestrained joy at her mate.  "Let's live on the edge," she said.

"Roy is lonely," Jim said, one evening after dinner.

"What's that to me?" Jill asked.

"I thought you liked Roy."

"I do like Roy.  I also like cows but I don't want to be a breeder."

"What about that friend of yours from Psych class.  That sexy waitress."

"Katy."

"Yeah, what about Katy?  You said she said there were no good men in this whole area code."

"You think Katy's sexy?  You think Katy's sexy because she's big.  You like tall, strong women, with large mammaries."

"No.  I mean, yes, I do, but what about her for Roy?  She'd be good, don't you think?"

"Katy eats men," Jill said, but warming to the idea.

"All the better," Jim said.

"Ok, but you do it.  I hate fixing people up.  I hate the responsibility.  And I don't want to be there."

"I thought we were getting rid of this couch," Roy said, comically tilting it back and forth in Chaplin-esque goofiness, "I thought I warned you I'd never move this Dimetrodon again."  Roy was speaking a tad too loud over his end of the clumsy sofa, mostly for the benefit of Katy, who was inside unpacking dishes.

"Katy, dear," Jill said, "If you'd unpack those in the kitchen we then would not have to move them twice."

"Jill, dear," Katy said, not even looking her way, "Go straight to hell."

Jim and Roy caught each other's eye and something passed between them.

"Jill, did you want the couch against the north wall?"

"I don't want the couch at all.  And I don't know north from south and I hate people who use compass directions for simple orientation instructions.  Do you, by any chance, mean this lovely empty wall right here?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, then."

After everything was inside, though not arranged, the four of them collapsed around the central room on top of various boxes and scattered household items.  Jill looked around the room and a childish despair spread across her face like a rash.  She seemed about to burst into tears.

"Fuck," she said.  "This place isn't any bigger."

"How's it going with Katy?" Jim asked Roy later that night over beer at the P&H.

"Oh," Roy said.

"Not well?  She a ballbreaker?  She seems a little superior."  Jim immediately regretted the brutality of his question, immediately longed to re-establish a gentler intimacy.

"Jim, she is so beautiful naked."

Jim hesitated at this non sequitur.  "Well, she seems like she would be."

"I just don't think I deserve her," Roy said.

"Oh, Christ, Roy," Jim said and swallowed some beer.  He looked toward the wall, toward the back of the bar where the smoke hung like napalm over the pool tables.  "Damn," he said.

"How's Roy like Katy?" Jill asked that night in bed.

"Likes her.  A lot."

"Katy likes him, too.  Isn't that weird?" Jill said, bemused.

"Why weird?"

"Oh, that we, like, that the fix worked."

"Roy says she's beautiful naked."

"Wouldn't you like to see that.  Wouldn't you just."

"Jill."

"Katy said he fucks like a dog."

"What the hell does that mean, fucks like a dog?  Good like a dog, or what?  I mean, Roy's wonderful, she better like him, she better treat him well."

"Jesus, Jimbo.  It was just a joke, we were talking about, oh forget it.  She likes him, ok?"

"And what do you mean wouldn't you like to see her naked?  You're not jealous, you're never jealous, you're never possessive.  Don't try to use that when it's convenient.  You have to earn jealousy, over long scrupulous hours of whining and pitifulness."

"It's not jealousy.  And I am too jealous.  You don't know me at all.  It was just observation."

"Observation.  Well, who wouldn't want to see her naked?  This is an absurd conversation."

"I've seen her.  She is beautiful."

"Jim wants to see you naked," Jill said as she and Katy sat on the couch watching Andy Griffith.

"Uh huh."

"He said so anyway.  It was no big deal."

Katy looked at Jill as if there were something unspoken hovering near.  She scooted closer to her and put an arm around her shoulder, smiling like she had a secret.

"Let's talk about sex with our men," she said.

Jim and Jill ate out often, more often than their budget really allowed, at a local Mexican restaurant within walking distance of their new apartment.

"Did you do all your homework?"

"What are you my mother?" Jill asked, but she smiled.  "Yes, I did it all."

"Good, can we have intercourse tonight?"

"My aren't we formal.  Yes, I think we can do that tonight."

"Did you mail the MLG&W check like I asked you?"

"That was a strange segue.  No, I forgot it, it's in my purse."

"Damn, Jill, how could you forget it?  I asked you right before you left this morning."

"Jimbo, I had other things on my mind, ok?  I'll mail it tomorrow before psych."

Jim grew sullen and shut down.  He knew his peevishness was petty, knew he was too uptight about money.  This was how Jim reacted to things, stress especially, this shutting down, this severing of communication.  Jill particularly hated this about her mate and refused to be manipulated by his mood swings.

"Talked to Roy lately?" she asked.

"No.  Well, yesterday."

"And?"

"What?  He loves her.  He's not worthy.  I'm begging off policing this affair any longer."

"Well, that's too bad.  Katy thinks something is wrong."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know.  Some subtle shift in the substructure.  Some little something less or more.  Some change in temperature."

"I know nothing," Jim said.

"My good little nazi."

"Fuck you."

"Ok," Jill said, "but only if we can have intercourse beforehand."

"That damn mockingbird is patrolling the corner again.  It swooped at Shemp and it came damn close this time."

Jill had just been walking the dog, and Jim wasn't in the mood for another litany of what's wrong with the new neighborhood.

"That's it, we're moving."

"I wasn't saying that.  But, you know, Harper Lee didn't know spit.  It's a sin to kill a mockingbird, indeed.  Just let me get one good shot at this little shit."

"Such nice talk."

"And the old bat was out again, mad this time because her neighbor had left his garbage can on the sidewalk where it was impeding her stroll."

"Hm."

"Bad neighbors, wild animals, hoodlums cutting through our side yard, I don't know, Jimbo."

"Get thee to a nunnery, sweetheart."

When the phone bill came two months late, with a standard threat of disconnection, Jim made a conscious effort to stifle the rage he felt.  This loss of control bothered him more than he could admit.  He thought maybe he should be in charge of all the bills but Jill had this thing about splitting the responsibility, except she didn't shoulder hers quite as seriously as Jim would wish.

Little things add up quickly.  Proximity doesn't just breed contempt, it breeds a mold-like stillness, a large blind spot made up of a million tiny silences.

Many mornings went by without fare-the-wells.  Many evenings were spent in separate rooms.  Jim began to worry about his likeability, as if on a graph he saw his popularity, his ability to attract, in a dramatic downward curve.

Jim and Jill began, separately, to envision futures that did not include the other.  Jill began to think about grad school in far away cities, began to think about applying and being accepted and moving one day without telling Jim until it was a fait accompli.  Jim began to imagine dates with other women, first sexual encounters with a variety of body shapes, a variety of levels of enthusiasm.  Imagination is the first estrangement; love hangs by one or two ill-conceived musings.

One evening Jill was particularly tight-lipped, her jaw set in a scowl.

"What is it, kitten?" Jim tried, his affection too thinly disguising discouragement.

"Roy's a slimeball.  Roy's a turd."

"Ok," Jim said.  "But we love him."

"No, we don't.  We decidedly don't."

"You gonna tell me what happened, or should I keep playing the ignorant puppy game."

"He cheated on Katy."

"Impossible."

"Right, like you didn't know about it."

"How do you know about it?"

"Katy told me, wise-ass.  Of course, she told me."

"I mean how is this common knowledge, how is this accepted fact?"

"Roy admitted it.  Told her he still wanted to see her, but he had snuck around a bit.  Like it was his prerogative to do this, like it was his right.  No big deal."

"Jill, Roy's bullshitting her.  He's trying to, absurd I know, but he's trying to get some kind of upper hand.  He's totally intimidated by her, he's nuts about her."

"Nice way to show her.  And how are you gonna show me, sleep with Katy?"

"You're obsessed with me and Katy.  I guarantee he didn't cheat with anybody.  Who was he supposed to have slept with anyway?"

"Some whoredog named Kristen."

"You dumbass," Jim said, staring at the top of a despondent Roy's head.

"Yeah," Roy said.

"Why tell her?"

"Wait, are you mad for Katy, or are you mad about Kristen?"

"I don't give a damn about Kristen.  You fucked up with Katy, man.  I thought..."

"I know.  I just couldn't, you know."

"Couldn't get it up?"

"Hell, no, I had it up all the time.  I was like physically soaked in her.  It was my courage I couldn't keep up, she was eating me alive."

"Funny, Jill said she would."

"Yeah, so like why did you guys do this to me?"

Jim looked at Roy with a mixture of pity and disgust, not the friendliest combination.

"So, how's it going with you and Jill?"

"It's not," Jim said.  "I was thinking of giving Kristen a call."

"Do it and I kill you."

Roy angled the couch through the doorway and dropped it definitively on the hardwood floor.  It emitted a cloud of dust like a small convulsion.

Roy sat on it and looked at Jim with a loving smile.

"You know, this couch is starting to grow on me."

"Take it," Jim said.

"No, I'm not moving it again.  I swear it.  Here it stays.  Next time you move without it."

"Next move I make is into my grave."

"Jimbo."

"Don't call me that.  She called me that."

"Don't hate her, buddy.  Forgive her for not loving you enough."

"What are you, Leo Buscaglia?  You're nauseating when you're happy."

"I am happy.  Kristen is the greatest thing that ever happened to me, Jim.  You don't mind me saying this?"

"Why would I mind?"

"Well, you saw her first.  I mean, you and she were..."

"Forget it.  Ancient history.  Like all my love life."

"And here she comes now, my light," Roy said, idiotically standing and smiling broadly.

Kristen came in from the kitchen with three beers and three glasses.  She was wearing tight blue-jean cutoffs and Jim's gaze went to Kristen's rear and his heart wept.

"Sit down, lunkhead," Kristen said, pressing a beer bottle into Roy's chest so that he tipped backwards onto the couch.  She fell into Roy's lap.  "Here's beer."

Jim took his beer and tried to look cheerful.  His possessions were spread out on the lawn outside the open front door and as he looked out upon them they seemed forlorn and abandoned and he was as sad as a child.

Kristen looked at Jim and smiled, all pedagogic maturity, so that Jim wanted to disgorge.  "Jim, cheer up.  This is a new place, a new life.  Can't you look at it that way?  Everything from here on out is different.  This is a total fresh start, how many people get a total fresh start?"

He looked at her and he smiled and he felt exactly nothing.  He felt nothing and nothing was what he felt.  And though he knew that this was temporary, this death, he didn't care.  It did not matter either way, and he wanted this woman to be gone, he wanted all women, all humanity, really, to be gone gone gone.  He wanted to be alone, and he wanted to continue with what he was doing.

Jim wanted to continue moving.

Author Bio

Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke's Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores.  He has worked in the book business all his adult life, if he has had an adult life, and he is also a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal, The Memphis Flyer, Brightleaf and BookPage.  He's been a pirate, a pauper, a puppet, a poet, a pawn and a king.