that monster there...

      They were stopping, kaput. Not dead, just stuck. Everywhere.      No one knew why. It didn't matter what it looked like, or what anyone said - all the big ideas didn't change the fact that heaps of people had run out of whatever it was that had made them go. The only certainty was the mess it made for the rest of us.    "Why Papa?"      "I don't know. Maybe they ran out of Wednesdays."      "Maybe they ran out  of this way's and that way's!"     Broken people clotted the avenues in Midtown, shut down the tunnels and bridges, brought Chinatown to a heaping, shrieking standstill.      Glassy eyed children, pink-toothed, bubble-lipped, some alone, others hands clasped loosely to vacant eyed parents, burbled mid-stride under traffic lights that had also become static.      "Can I have his yoyo?"      "Don't even think about it."     ...

         "Haha!?"      "My father named me; Budrow Wilson Dexter Laurel and Hardy Har Har." Buddy smiled. "One word though. You have to say it as one word."      She almost smiled but instead her lip fish-hooked to one side and held.      "Pop was a schmuck," he added      Then she smiled.      "And you? Venice? Is that a nickname or...?" The question hung off the edge of Buddy's wide smile.      Venice made you and me with a loose index finger between her own slim chest and Haha's. "Schmuck spawn, both of us," she whispered.      Buddy liked her. She reminded him of a soft childhood moment that he couldn't fully touch.      "So they call me Nice, or Nitzia - Angel, sometimes, if they're happy or drunk or both."      She'd been relocated. It had taken sacks of cash and the removal of two consecutive links in the chai...

Notes from the über grind:      Everything hurts, most of the time.      Buddy Haha was round-robin leader of group for the day.      "Do you remember the day you were born? The moment? No?  Let me tell you, I was there."      Buddy did his best all-knowing bub-bub lip and squinted into the past.      "Life and death mingled that moment, a viscous rolling, tumbling into the calloused hands of a strange giant."       "But I was born on beach off San Paulo,"whispered Juan. " It had to have been warm, no? And my mother, a Brazilian hippie with beautiful brown breasts - She drew me from herself and cradled me up against them. I've heard the story."      "Never-mind. I'm talking about your spirit, not your bones. Birth into life..."      "Suffering and coffee - a bad combination," noted Maxine. "Can we smoke now? I want to smoke now."   ...

     "Emerald green! And - hey, listen - indigo, if you think maybe you'd have it."      The clerk paused in mid stride, either looking for the items in his mental inventory or, in annoyance at having to hold back a wry comment about indigo underwear.      "You okay there?"      "Yeah," replies the clerk, "Just trying to remember if we carry any indigo boxer-briefs." He smiled, "I just don't think so! But I'm going to look!"      The little man scampered off.     Bud got away with murder - Haha! Literally and figuratively. He was tall and wide and good looking with hair that did tricks; Hawaiian waves, mud-slides, Fast Eddies, you name it. A little grey looked like marble on a slick black night on the Seine. His shoulders were friendly huge, his large hands almost always working a welcoming gesture. Bud got dirty but never dusty. He sparkled clean.      "I got ocean green a...

     The name tag said, 'Buddy Haha'.     "Yes, Buddy, short for Budwald - and Haha, short for nothing - and no, not funny Haha, just Haha. Nothing funny about it I suppose," he said, "except for that its not."       You might imagine that Buddy would have found some fluidity in that introduction. There was enough good material in his name for something soft and humorous, but it always got tangled up.       Hit-O-Rama. A one-stop trade-show showcasing the latest products and services for you, that hard working "Elimination Contractor".       Bud got the nerves during these things - there was physical morphing: his hands grew, shovel-sized. His feet and legs narrowed up and trailed off below him. Bud could feel his head swelling up, ears hissing, pounding. The whole thing made him top heavy, confused.      He'd discussed the social anxiety with his shrink, Wanda. ...

     The plane's tight: tight seats, thin air, narrow aisle, narrow folks, pinched faces and Bud.       Bud's wedged into row 21, seat B.      It's an hour before midnight with little hope of finding Chicago through the squeeze of ice and wind without the wings flailing hard enough to make every soul on that jet pray they've done enough good to make a difference in the eyes of a wrathful God. Everyone's preparing. The silence says so. Everyone except for the woman in row 20, seat A. She's not worried. She's done with God, done with good, done with it all - she's all done.       "What!" She shrieks at her husband, "What is it! What! Tell me! What!?" Her voice is hateful. She's putting every ounce of done and nasty into each word, waiting for her husband to finally snap, spin around, break her neck. She wants him to end it, put his once loving hands around her throat - right there, near Detroit, before the plane...

     The plane's tight: tight seats, thin air, narrow aisle, narrow folks, pinched faces and Bud.       Bud's wedged into row 21, seat B.      It's an hour before midnight with little hope of finding Chicago through the squeeze of ice and wind without the wings flailing hard enough to make every soul on that jet pray they've done enough good to make a difference in the eyes of a wrathful God. Everyone's preparing. The silence says so. Everyone except for the woman in row 20, seat A. She's not worried. She's done with God, done with good, done with it all - she's all done.       "What!" She shrieks at her husband, "What is it! What! Tell me! What!?" Her voice is hateful. She's putting every ounce of done and nasty into each word, waiting for her husband to finally snap, spin around, break her neck. She wants him to end it, put his once loving hands around her throat - right there, near Detroit, before the plane...