The room was yellow, never a good sign. English ivy climbed the window sills. Plush cornflower blue armchairs sat one in a corner. A simple mahogany table supported a silver lamp and an oversized plastic clock that was transparent and revealed the works.

Simple table.

She was a secretary, a single mother, and this was nothing she remembered, not when her boss bent her over the desk, not later when the child came. Synaptic cauterization is very effective, the nurse said. I've had it myself. The nurse leaned in close, squeezed her hand. You'll see, she said. It feels kind of like Christmas.

Very effective. Like Christmas.

Posture, posture, preen and peck. Freud got kicked off the Ark, as it were, too amped up, as he was, for a cruise. They left him turning quick circles on the dock, trying for gyroscope, coming up up up, listing giddy instead. We talked once. He never met my eyes, never met, while his own eyes threw sparks fantastic and spectres fantastic and theories inedible and somewhere on that voyage he lost me. His sneezes stank of cinnamon, his face dusty with chalk. Three years ago he tried to grab my hand unanchored because I really really had to go. Razored digits raked my wrist and cut my skin like paper.

Cinnamon sneezes.

As a child it was slammed down slicked with fixative and interviewed through high-powered lenses. Familiar not alien, the lenses, them, and that was what burned. At night the machine was left running unattended. Downstairs cupboards were interrogated and picked clean. In no time at all they sat hunched over eggs and bacon and loaves birthed by fishes. It was all most delicious rattle rattle tap tap great slurpings and grunts. Coffee percolated and sent them shivering down hallways sniffing out domestic asymmetries and straightening chairs. Great gumdrops of raspberry jam mottled the floor under the kitchen table. Upstairs vigilance ensued.

Fishes delicious.

Like tissue paper, the kind no one could write on unless writ small, like tissue paper, the kind that offered itself up to wrap lightly, to rustle insubstantial barrier. Freud would not give up, first on the ship, later on the woman. Or maybe concurrently, who could tell? First he sent up signals from one of those cigars of his that smelled like asphalt and fennel like leather and whiskey like no shame smells. When that failed the ever industrious fellow strode to a nearby shop wherein he purchased a set of red semaphores are they ever any color? it doesn't matter. Stirred to mouthings of abandonment stirred to open endlessly that ugly raw orifice his office appeared to suffer only slight diminishment. Passersby recognized him. This was, as the ladies gossiped, where he was to be found every Sunday, after all, here stranded, unshaven, something of a dead-mouse smell about him, foaming from the mouth, weedy graying hair salt-sticky, licking his fingers, testing the wind and taking dictation from the burning sensation in his nasal cavity. Sometimes it made him spit. But today he was in top form, signalling the ship till it sailed out of view, stopping only occasionally to say hello to a taffy-stickied child, to a dog with one eye, to attractive young women who laughed, kicked up their heels, tried to steady their hands. Back again, then, to frantic flagging. What a work ethic that man had! At sun's downing, a small voice was heard to say: But sir, the ship is gone.

What ship? Freud asked.

Stirred and foaming.

The handwriting was tiny, precise, almost in emulation of a font. Some paragraphs were transcribed in black, others in blue, with an occasional word in red. A series of three back-slashes appeared between what might be called sections.

\\\

Wow. She closed the blue journal, turned it over. The back of the book was a riot of stickers. Sailor Moon characters, manic octopi, sharp-edged black flowers traced in silver, iridescent rainbows, bedazzled ponies and moons done up in glittering pink, green, yellow and orange rhinestones. Everything was hatted, including the pony, including the moon. Obscenely cute round-headed girls in bright dresses were arranged as though in hushed conversation. Without those carefully drawn hats hovering over heads the tableau might have been charming. But the hats. The hats! Huge toppers, stovepipes pressed gloomily, emphatically onto the page in black Sharpie. On the front of the journal were two white computer keys secured with clear packing tape, one labeled "Delete/Break," the other "Home." Rising behind the Home key was a yellow smiley face. A lock of curly hair gently punctuated its forehead.

Whose diary was this?

She sipped lychee bubble tea that tasted like cold sweet alone with tapioca alone pearls she chewed and chewed. Across from her a tall alone German tourist sat alone with his hand alone draped lazily, calculatedly, nonchalantly, with his arm, with his hand falling into the water of the new koi pond surrounded in white tiles. He was in a mall, traveling alone with a couple of alone friends and their daughter alone. His wife had just left and he didn't care about anything, certainly not a few fish. Swish-swish, he waved with grace gracefully he waved under the water, swish-swish. As his hand moved he stared pointedly at nothing, swish-swish.

The fish will get sick, she thought, trying not to care, as he didn't care. Impossible. Distraction then, deep breaths, refocusing. Paging through the paper she smiled at Japanese noise-band names. The little girl, blonde, dressed all in pink, ran around the pond bearing a strawberry ice cream cone like a torch. The man looked on, swish-swish. Those fish, she thought, will get sick. On another day she might have asked the man to please stop but she was tired of talking. Instead she slurped up the remainder of the purple liquid, stared at the globules resting in the bottom of the cup. If she had a band she would call it the Angry Koi. It would usher in a new genre, of course. Sea Punk maybe. The thought made her laugh, which gave the German man a start which caused his head to swivel in her direction and stare, hard.

She grinned back. Nothing so terrifying as a happy person sitting alone. Spinning the journal in slow circles she became increasingly aware of her negligence, how easily time escaped her. She stuck a leg out from under the table. Her dark green linen skirt extended to just below the knee. Inspection revealed several small bruises lining the shin, just there, there, and there, she pressed each deliberately, hard, there was no pain. Often she wound up with mysterious bruises. Maybe too much purple food intake. Maybe a symptom of some terrible disease. Or maybe nothing at all. She lifted her gaze. The German man was now sitting on the edge of the koi pond, flicking water with thumb and and second finger.

There had been a battery of tests. Sleep first. On the fourth floor of the hospital was the clinic's office, about the size of two walk-in closets. A technician said hello and directed her to large blue couch where she watched a brief instructional video. Then a woman with short blonde hair steered her over to a cold steel table, had her put her arm out, palm up. Next up, the cyborg arm. Black nylon secured with velcro on arm and palm, an index finger wriggled into a narrow blue tube with an electrode inside. Once the arm was off the woman said a few more things and told her to deliver the test to certain table by 11AM the following day. On the way out she passed a room lined with shelves lined with oversized shiny black mannequin heads. The heads were exaggeratedly female. All were fitted with oxygen masks and other contraptions in swim-cap blue plastic and rubber.

Out the door, into the wide beige hallway again. Three antique women progressed in her direction. They asked if she knew where the water fountain was. She said no, wait here, I'll check, and ran around investigating. By the time she'd returned the women had disappeared. Dessicated into little piles of dust at the margins of the pebbled taupe carpet. Cadavers harvested for organs in some dark doctor's lab. Witches pranking at feebleness. Gone to the cafeteria to eat cheese sandwiches.

Back to the present.

Back to the journal full of nonsense she had discovered this morning, sitting muddy beside a path in the park, not far from the bamboo, or cloud, forest. There was no one in sight to claim the thing. Sitting on a bench, she opened the book quickly, carelessly. No. Closed it again, carefully. Re-opened, carefully. Made the decision to save it for later, knowing she could. Arrogant. Preoccupations followed her like clowns emerging from miniature cars.

And you, sir, she thought, looking at the German man who, as it turned out, was not unattractive, why are you here? Who are these people you're with? And why are you surprised your wife left you? Sticky sweet rice and wasabi washed up into the inlet beneath her tongue.

She got up and walked home.

Her brother called. "You like the Stone Roses," he said. A familiar joke that wasn't really. During one of their days spent record-shopping she heard a song she liked and asked Ed who it was. "Stone Roses." "Could you remind me that I like the Stone Roses?" Twenty years later and he reminds her still.

If she were to analyze it she'd think: This is what happens. In casual conversation a phrase slips or gets dropped, a mental note is made and forgotten, for a time. And then, at some point, the phrase is retrieved and, through sheer repetition, fashioned into reassuring schtick.

(note to self: she's wrong. note2 to self: not about that, about the other thing.)