square_the_circle_chapter_2_ crOwl (square_the_circle_chapter_1_) even before he reached his seat, he turned around to inform the bus driver about the girl's unexpected absence lest the bus pull away abandoning her in the middle of nowhere. however, just as he was about to yell out his words became trapped because the door swooshed open. he stood still for a brief moment as the boy from philly trudged up the steps followed by her. he turned around then trying to act inconspicuous and sat down at his seat. seconds later the boy passed him on his way to one empty seat near the back. he could smell the pungent odor of fresh cigarettes in his wake. while she made her way to her seat beside him, he was relieved and he wasn't sure why. maybe he was worried something happened to her or could just be his lonliness. in any case he caught himself smiling as she approached. he noticed she was also smiling, a wide uninhibited one that revealed a row of straight white teeth and a happiness which piqued his curiosity immediately. it made him want to discover its reason. but it was her that spoke first. he was pleased at the change in her countenance compared to the way she acted before the bus stopped. she even introduced herself. so he expressed his initial concern and told her his name. but it was her sudden interest in the books he read that opened a door to a whole new world. "steinbeck for now," scott said, answering her question. "i'm reading 'east of eden' for the second time but the 'grapes of wrath' is his best, especially the ending." kayla wouldn't stop smiling as she nodded in what he took as agreement and he thought that a bit strange, like she was preoccupied. a distraction that further defined her mystery. still he went on. "but it's the book i'm not reading that interests me the most." "what do you mean?" she asked. she closed her eyes for a moment and pushed her head back against the seat. she exhaled what seemed like an excess of euphoria. he thought of telling her about his love for the classics, hardy, hemingway, wharton, hugo, and some recent contemporaries, like andrew cowan's 'pig,' or all of jane hamilton's works, but decided not to, electing instead to divulge his freshest revelation. "i guess i like the idea of stories more than actually reading them because a lot of times i'm disappointed." kayla looked at him, puzzled. "there's this book from some break out author i heard about called 'the confessions of max tivoli.' it's about some romantic who is born into the body of a grizzled old man and grows younger evey year until he is last seen in 1930." "holy fuck!" kayla said, her wide grin erupting once more. "that's crazy!" "i know. can you imagine?" he mirrored her grin, forgetting the earlier objection to his appearance in the restroom. "the thing is, though, i'm almost afraid to read it." "why?" "it probaby won't be what i want it to be." "hmm." "i guess that's why i'm always writing my own stories." "oh yeah?" 041204 ... unhinged listening to him talk about books was almost like sex. everything was almost like sex on oxy. or a warm soothing blanket, your favorite one from when you were a kid. and a little voice in the back of her head was fighting to be heard through all the devils swirling 'don't get lost again. don't give in to this.' she let the devils drown it out. 'yeah, i guess i know what you mean about being disappointed with stories. i never looked at it that way before but i guess that's why i write. but mostly i write journaly stuff in the form of poems. been published a few times, but not my best favorite stuff.' she suddenly felt like she was chattering too much and stopped abruptly. 'published? in what?' 'oh just the school literary mag at the university in youngstown. not a big deal.' she shrugged 'cool. what other poets do you like besides carroll?' she was digging around in her bag for her nicotine gum. she knew there was no way she was gonna last the whole trip only smoking on rest stops. and now that she was fucked up she wanted a cigarette more than anything. she jerked her head up 'sorry. what did you say?' he was looking at her suspiciously again. one of her many pill bottles fell out of her bag onto the floor. when she bent over to pick it up a few more fell out. and there was the pack of gum underneath all of them. she pulled out the gum and picked them up. ' that's a lot of pills. you sick or something?' 'ummmm....' her fingers anxiously picked a piece of gum out of the foil. 'yeah, i'm sick.' 'well are you doing ok?' he kept asking her that. why did he keep asking her that? well, she guessed it was pretty plainly obvious by her spasmatic behavior and all the pills that she wasn't ok. 'yeah, i'm fine.' the brush-off again. 'what do you have on your ipod?' she had become good with the subtle, evasive change of topic with her ex. well maybe not so subtle, but it always got the point across. 'well there's all kinds of stuff on here. i really like music too.' 041204 ... crOwl "all you think about is your fucking self." it was paige's last words to him as she zipped up the window to her car, punched the gas pedal and squealed away. a final, declarative statement defining why she no longer loved him, could not love him, wanted nothing to do with him anymore. a nail in the coffin where their relationship lay lifeless after dying a long and slow death. this is what scott thought about. incessantly. when he read, when he closed his eyes and hoped the music would help him try to forget. this is what else he had tried to leave behind. "you promised me you were going to quit getting high, " paige said earlier on that fateful day. she had met him at an art house theatre in williamsburg, brooklyn to see bertolucci's 'the dreamers.' it was one thing of many that they loved doing together, watching independant films and then discussing them afterwards over coffee. however, this evening when he kissed her hello she smelled the rank sweetness of skunk and alcohol but didn't say anything. he knew if she caught him, she wouldn't tolerate it. that she would blow up in an explosive fit of anger and disgust. he knew it was the same thing that had destroyed her parents' marriage, that had permanently scarred her from childhood. yet, he snuck it anyway. he had his reasons. yeah, they were selfish. it was like he was immune, surrounded by a shield of cosmic protection. he was good at keeping a secret she was blind to. she would never catch him. he would get his sackage weekly. pay his twenty for some street tree. hide it away in a little tin and smoke it discreetly in a bowl he had found and then wash it down with some montepulciano. he'd clean his bloodshot eyes like a windshield with visine. he'd brush his teeth with rembrandt. he even changed clothes to try and hide the smell. and it worked for a time. yeah, he was an expert at deception. until he got sloppy and careless. as the big screen came to life and micheal pitt first appeared, she couldn't take it anymore. everytime scott moved or breathed out, she would catch the faint evidence of his betrayal. finally, after several minutes of simmering disgust, she stood up, exploded in a fit of sobbing, and fled up the aisle of the theatre, into the night. he chased after her all the way to the parking lot. "it's not just the weed, scott. or the fucking booze. it's just always about you," paige said. her face was spotchy with tears. her words burst forth like razors slicing away at him mercilessly. "it's always been what you want. how you feel. what you have to do. i'm fucking sick of it." she yanked the car door open, sat down and thrust her head against the back of her seat. he would remember how beautiful she was at that moment, even as she was shreeding him to ribbons. she became an image of what he once knew. fading. disappearing. he listened to her and didn't respond. he was a rat in a trap. her choking words were hands around his own throat robbing him of air to breathe. his mouth was parced dry. his high turned into a panic attack. his body trembled. his eyes twitched. he couldn't believe what an ass he had become. he was on fire and he knew he would burn until nothing was left. he would be a pile of ashes on the asphalt when she drove away. and so instead of killing himself, he got on the greyhound. he wanted to leave it all behind. start over. ride it as far as it would go. not easy, he thought. paige was much more than a memory. she was all he wasn't. she was the sum of his failure, and he wanted her to become the force of his renewal. he wanted to learn from this mistake. he wanted to change. so he quit. he stopped everything. when he initially met kayla, he couldn't help but think about paige. they even had the same hair, eye color, the same love for poetry. "what will the new me say? do?" he mused. he was eager to try his new self out on this total stanger. and when she seemed out of sorts he wanted to care somehow. when she was late getting back on the bus in indianapolis he was worried about her. when she fumbled about with her, what was it, medicine? he asked her if she was ok. he wanted her to know he cared. this was his chance to erase the past. to square the circle. it was his music she asked him about and he could easily tell her about his new discovery of joanna newsome, how her child-like voice broke his soul, but instead he said there was a lot on his i-pod. it was her music he wanted to be interested in. "so what do you listen to? maybe i have some of it on here." 041206 ... unhinged 'uummm...you know what, i gotta pee.' she glanced over her shoulder to the back of the bus where the closet of a toilet was. the young kid sitting closest to it caught her eye. she pointed at the toilet and he smiled. 'empty.' he mouthed across the bus. not so much because it was loud, but mostly because a majority of the other passengers had passed out by now. maybe she shouldn't have asked him about music. her favorite music was stuff most people didn't know about, indie hard rock; youngstown had been a hotbed for that for awhile. all the kids of her generation growing up in a post-industrial wasteland with nothing else to hold on to but a guitar and their heroes like kurt and satriani and floyd. and the scene of course only made her think of him, where she had met him. she shouldn't have asked him about music; it only made her think of him. and like a kick to the stomach, the tears welled up again. she turned back to scott. 'yeah i gotta pee.' and she grabbed her bag and got up. but scott grabbed her arm. 'hey, i mean i know it's none of my business...' 'please,' a soft little broken pant 'i need to pee.' and she broke away from his arm. and the little devils started to rant 'oh you stupid bitch. it never ends with you does it? you weak little idiot. you always fuck it up. he didn't deserve all your bullshit.' she shook her head to loosen the grip the voices were gaining on her and the tears tumbled silently out before she made it to the bathroom. the kid sitting next to the bathroom averted his eyes as she fumbled with the handle. she was reduced to a blubbering mess even in public; she really was a weak idiot. i mean who wanted to see a stranger cry? she finally made her way into the closet and lowered the toilet lid. she sat down and began to dig for the right bottle. the second half of the oxy she had chewed in indianapolis practically jumped out of the bottle into her hand. she frantically chewed but almost gagged on the bitter taste. she turned on the faucet as her last resort and cupped her hand under the smelly water, practically throwing it into her mouth. if she died from an o.d. on a bus somewhere in the middle of the united states would anyone care? she looked at the handful of pills left in that bottle alone, but felt nothing. not even the compulsion to knock the rest of them back. nothing; eventually that's what she would feel for him and her life would end up the way it was before him. empty. but in some ways, empty was better than what they had. the farther away she got, the easier it would be. it was just getting there. she glanced at her cell phone in the bottom of her bag. it was still off. she had promised herself she would leave it off all the way to l.a. she threw everything back in on top of it and there was a knock at the door. 041206 ... crOwl scott's experience with pills was solely a medicinal one. he never swallowed them unless a headache's pain was so bad he could no longer endure it. even then, as the pounding pressure slowly melted into a dull discomfort, it was replaced by an analgesic, false sensation of wellness, a detached, head in the clouds consciousness and caffeine buzz that made his hands tremble. he hated them, hidden away in their plastic, amber bottles and their child-proof lids, conveying the illusion of safety. shake them and they sounded like a baby's rattle. drop them and they became a cat's toy. throw them in the trash and someone thinks they found treasure. maybe he was afraid of them for the power and magic they contained in such a small, smooth, concentrated package. they were design marvels, sleek, colored like candy, and oh so alluring. but, their potential danger was obvious. it took a certain practical intelligence to screw off the top and once one mastered the ability to keep them from getting stuck in the throat then the addiction and the dependance began, hooked like a fish on the misconception of pleasure while the chemical poison slowly fucks with all the healthy systems of the body, upsetting the natural balance. tricked by the blanket of deception one eventually wraps themselves in, it becomes tempting to suffocate just by ingesting them all. that's what his dad did when scott was sixteen. attempted to escape a world of depression and anxiety by swallowing a fistful of thorazine. fortunately scott had recently passed a cpr course at high school and when he found his father passed out, instead of panicking, he went to work at once and established an airway through his father's vomit while his frantic mother called an ambulance. his life saved, he went from bad to worse with more prescriptions that turned him into a zombie and eventually gave him a stroke that would ultimately kill him. when scott watched the pill bottles spill from kayla's purse, he couldn't help but cringe, realizing she had a problem. he played it off, acting like she needed them for an illness, and who knows maybe she did. who was he to judge? he who had used other drugs in an attempt to fill the gaping hole his father's death created. but it was the way she avoided him, the way she cut off her sentences like catching a bird in flight and shoving it in a cage. how she averted his gaze. how she fled immediately when the bus stopped. and then the 36o transformation when she got back on the bus. the shit-faced grin. the sudden interest in his reading and music followed by another desire to flee. what was wrong with her? what was she running from? he had to know. he wanted to know. he needed to know. he turned around and watched her make her way to the bathroom at the back of the bus. she didn't have to pee. she was going to put her smile back on, place the happy mask over the sad face until it wore off and she would have to take more, then get more when her supply ran out. the circle. it was like he was seeing himself in a film. he knew exactly what was going on. he couldn't just sit there. moments later, kayla heard the knock. "it's occupied," she said, her voice coming from behind the door, strained and weakened. "kayla, it's me, scott. let me in." 041207 ... unhinged 'kayla, it's me. sammy. let me in.' 'NO. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE.' 'kay...come on' 'no..no....NO. i told you to GET OUT. goddamn, you are so fucking thick-headed.' 'open the door kay,' a quiet pleading. 'why? so you can tell me how co-dependent i am you hypocritical motherfucker? if you are so concerned, then why the fuck do you keep giving them to me...' 'kay, kay, KAY...come on baby. let me in.'....'please,' softly. and she wrenched the door open and fell on top of him a jumble of tears. 'please don't do this to me ever again baby. all you need is some love. just a little love. you should have called me.' and she chittered and sniffled as he held her and stroked her hair whispering his false soothing words in her ears. tomorrow he would probably come with pills rattling in their pretty little bottles. how sick; that he could sit here today and tell her this and then bring her more drugs the very next day. but they kept her close to him; closer than his own dependency and need. closer than the arms that encircled her practically suffocating her on her own tears. when she finally stopped crying enough to move, they laid on her bed to watch t.v. .... and she blinked and she was in a closet bathroom on a greyhound bus. 'kayla....it's me scott. please let me in.' she opened the door, a few memory tears sliding down her face. there definitely wasn't room for two people in the tiny watercloset. he held out his hand. she stared at him, biting her trembling lip. 'it's almost time for another rest stop. why don't you come on out?' because i'm a freak that hides in the bathroom on a greyhound to get high. 'ok.' and she grabbed his hand with a frantic grip, hoping that he could pull her up out of all this mess. god, she was such a co-dependent piece of shit. she could never stay clean on her own, which is why she could never stay clean. the bus started to veer towards the off-ramp of the rest stop. 'let's take an hour this time folks. stop and eat. i need some serious time to stretch my legs.' there was some protest from the back of the bus. 'we get there when i get us there kiddies. besides, we're ahead of schedule.' 041207 ... unhinged square_the_circle_chapter_3_ 041209 ... a must read red blathe . 050726 what's it to you? who go blather from