The Story Behind "End Up Alone"

The inspiration for “End Up Alone” came from a couple different places. The first thing that inspired this story was a tale I heard from a retired officer about a former Vietnam veteran who chose to live as if he was homeless despite the fact that he was receiving retirement checks from the military and had a very nice apartment on the river. The retired officer I spoke to found out about the veteran when the veteran’s daughter became worried about him when she tried to make contact. After some research the officer found out that he had come across the veteran before and had even seen him harassed by other officers who didn’t know the veteran’s story. I was fairly faithful to the story related to me by the officer in my original draft.

The other thing that inspired the film was driving through Whitefish Bay to drop off my rent check for a crappy place my wife lived in near the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee campus. Whitefish Bay is a fairly affluent suburb of Milwaukee, and my wife and I used to joke that if you lived in Whitefish Bay you had to walk or jog at least twice a day for exercise. The weather on this particular morning was much like it was in the story, and the song “End Up Alone” by Nine Days came on the radio inspiring the title and theme of the story. (Interesting anecdote to the story: At the time that I wrote the story we were living in a townhouse in Whitefish Bay.)

I made the conscious decision to stick to the inner-life of the character, which meant a lack of identity of the main character. In my own personal view, I don’t often think of myself as being male unless something comes up that requires me to think of myself in those terms. Also, in conversation, unless it is required, names aren’t often spoken among people who know each other well. I felt avoiding the main character’s name and identity felt organic, and the result is that you have an intimate knowledge of the character and can relate to them without being bogged down gender and race politics. (At least that was my hope.)

For revisions I decided to cut down on some extraneous exposition and focus more on interactions. First, I felt there wasn’t enough conflict in the original version of the story, so this led to the narrator getting fired from their job. This allowed for interaction with their boss as well as added tension in the story. I also decided to have the narrator actually talk to the homeless man. Since the narrator didn’t seem the type to actually initiate conversations, this seemed like a more organic way to deal with Mike as well as the older cop.

I don’t think I’m done with this story though, I feel there is more that I could do with it to strengthen the concept. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have something that you would like to see in a future draft, I’d be more than happy to hear it!

End Up Alone, Revision: Part 4

            I lay in my bed. After the cop left I decided to walk back to my car and take it to Three Lions Pub. There was no one there I knew, and I was glad. I had a few Guiness and a couple shots of Jameson. After I got a decent buzz I decided to go home.

            Here I sit, on my beige sheets in my twin bed looking up at a Marvelous 3 poster with a glass pipe named Luigi in my hand. A little bit of resin is left and I consider lighting it up and smoking it till it gives no more. I kind of wish there was a TV in my room, and I don’t want to go out into the living room and make my roommate think that I can hear what they’re doing in there. A TV: one more thing, right Mike? I laugh. It’s the first laugh I had all day and it takes a while to come down. I think about the security guard and the Scandinavian bimbos and I laugh harder. Then I think of Mike Winters’ story and my former job and I cry. The laughter and tears merge together to form deep heaving sobs in my chest. Luigi drops to the floor unlit and unused as I curl up into a fetal ball on my bed. The last lines of the song I was listening to this morning echo in my head as I drift into an uneasy dizzying sleep: “Why do we all end up alone? Why do we all end up dead, drunk, or stoned?”

End Up Alone, Revision: Part 3

            The elevator makes its way to the lower level rather than the first floor. There’s an exit to the manager’s parking lot that allows me to avoid Mr. It on the way out. Going back to my car isn’t on my mind. Getting away from this building is.

            I turn toward Lake Michigan when I hit the intersection. I’m not used to walking downtown and I don’t really have a plan; a park bench and a view of the lake would be good therapy right now though.

            Nearly three miles later I end up at Veteran’s Park. The least vandalized park bench becomes my consolation prize. The lake doesn’t give much of a show, but it doesn’t need to. I take in the tranquility of the scene. It’s starting to get cooler. A winter coat is sitting in the backseat of my car; I didn’t think I’d need it. There’s a little bit of an ache in my legs from the winter disuse. The feeling offsets the calm of the lake. My mind swirls with thoughts of the future. My elbows rest on my knees and my neck bends so my head can meet my hands.

            “You alright?” a voice asks next to me. I didn’t notice anyone walk up. My face is wet. I wipe away the tears and notice the spit-shined military boots on the ground next to me. Frayed cuffs meet the boots, leading to tattered jeans and a drab stained olive green jacket that hangs past the knees of the jeans. The black man wearing the clothes is balding with a crown of salt and pepper hair. There is a warm smile on his face that makes me force a smile back at him.

            “Yeah, I guess so,” I say. I’m still drying off my face.

            “You don’t look it. Whatsa matter?”

            “I just got fired from my job. Guess I’ll be like you soon enough.”

            His head tilts back and he roars laughter; I almost jump out of my seat. “How you figure?” he asks.

            “You’re homeless, right?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I guess it won’t be long till I’m out on the streets too.”

            “You ain’t going to be out here unless you choose to be.”

            “So you choose to be homeless?”

            “I didn’t at first, but as time wore on I made the choice to stay out here. You learn things when you out here.”

            “Like what?”

            “How to survive. Who you are. When I was workin’ in my nine to five days I can’t say I tried that hard to live, it just happened; out here you gotta scrape to get by, though. It ain’t glamorous, but you ain’t bound to shit neither.”

            “Bound to what?”

            “Stuff. Things. All that you can’t live without, all that you can’t leave behind. You learn real quick that you can. You have to.”

            “I don’t know if I could live like that,” I tell him.

            “Everyone can, if they try.”

            “Hey, hey,” a man’s voice yells. Behind us a young Milwaukee Police Department cop comes jogging down the bike trail toward the bench. “Every day I see you out here, man,” the cop says to the homeless man. He’s stopped running and the homeless man next to me stands up from the bench. “You need to get to a shelter or something. I’m getting tired of seeing you out here, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.” The cop tilts his head toward me.

            “Yes sir,” the homeless man says.

            “Don’t just yessir me, man,” the cop says. “You need to get out of here and stay out of here, you hear me?”

            “Yes sir,” the homeless man says.

            “Now I’m serious,” the cop says. “I don’t want to see you on my beat no more.”

            “What are you doing?” a voice calls from down the trail. Another cop comes lumbering toward us. This cop is older and looks out of breath. He looks like he’s been walking the beat half his life.

            “Seriously,” the younger cop says, “if I see you down here again, me and you are going round and round. I’m not going to be so nice”

            “Yes sir,” the homeless man says.

            “So what you going to do now?” the cop asked.

            “I’m going to find a shelter, double time,” the homeless man says.

            “That’s right,” the cop says. “And don’t let me catch you on my beat again.”

            The homeless man winks at me and hurries away. The older cop walks up to the younger cop.

            “What’s wrong with you?” the older cop asks through a graying walrus mustache. “That the kind of shit they teaching you in the academy these days.”

            “We can’t just let these dudes...” the younger cop begins.

            “What you know about that guy?” the older cop interrupts. When the younger cop doesn’t respond he says, “Jack shit, that’s what. He’s got as much of a right to this park as anyone else walking around here.”

            “But he’s always...” the younger cop says.

            “Just walking around minding his own business,” the older cop interrupts for a second time. “Now if you see him again, you aren’t going to fuck with him, you got that?”

            The younger cop nods and stares down at his boots.

            “Now you go on,” the older cop says. “Look for real shit, I need to catch my breath.”

            The younger cop looks at him ruefully then walks up the bike lane.

            “Do you mind if I have a seat?” the cop asks gesturing to the bench.

             “Sure,” I say. “Your partner’s a real asshole.”

            “Thanks,” he says as he takes a seat. There’s a coffee stain on his MPD jacket, and he’s still breathing heavy. He takes off his hat and wipes his brow. He’s sweating like a stuck pig even though the temp is falling below forty. His gray and black flecked hair is starting to fall below his ears; it’s probably time to get a cut by police standards. “It’s tough work, dealing with a rookie, but my last partner retired a week ago and this new guy is all we got. Doesn’t have a sense of the beat yet.”

            I stare at the ground for a moment. “You seem to know more about that homeless man than he did,” I say. “What didn’t you tell him?”

            The older cop laughs, but the laugh doesn’t meet his eyes. “You don’t walk a beat as long as I have without getting to know the regulars,” he says. There are air quotes around “the regulars.” “I’ve dealt with Mike Winters quite a bit. That’s the guy you was talking to. A couple of years ago we get a call at the precinct that his daughter Alyssa was looking for him. We got a description of him, and it matched Mike. I was on shift and working this beat back then too, so I was tasked with trying to find him, only he hadn’t been this way for quite a while.

            “We ran him through the database, but we couldn’t find anything. No priors, no warrants, nothing. So I put out an All-Points Bulletin for him. It didn’t take long though, I finally saw him walking through the park the next day. I got him and brought him in. Took me a while to get the full story, but it turns out his wife died a few years back. Completely unexpected, and it bankrupted him. He lost everything trying to pay her medical expenses and funeral costs. In the end her final resting place meant more to him than his earthly one. Or so he told me. He was happy to give up everything for her, and in the end he did.”

            “So he’s homeless because of her?” I ask.

            “I don’t know if I’d put it quite like that, he’s homeless because of the system. Furthermore, he’s a goddamn veteran: fought in the Vietnam War. I asked him if he got any retirement checks from the military, but a glitch in the system kept him from getting anything. I did a couple tours in the Navy and offered to help him out since I’m close with the VA, but he told me not to worry about it. Said money just complicates life.”

            “Did you tell his daughter any of this?” I ask.

            “Nope,” he says. “He didn’t want her to know about it, so no one told her. He was lucid, no mental problems far as we could tell; so we gave him her information and cut him loose. I don’t know if he’s talked to her and as far as I’m concerned it’s none of my business. Listen, he’s just a good guy and deserves to be treated like one without people interfering; so I do my part to make sure that happens. I figure there are things my new partner doesn’t need to know just yet though. He’s still green and needs to learn a badge isn’t a right to fuck with people. I don’t want to see him treat anyone that way, not just Mike. And I don’t want him giving Mike special treatment ‘cause I said so. He’s got to learn to treat everyone the same.”

            I sit stunned. I’m not sure how to process the story I just heard. “Damn, that’s...” but the words are lost to me. I can’t find what to say. Mike encompasses my mind.

            “Yeah, it is,” he replies, knowing what I mean. We sit there in silence mulling over the story. He says, “Well, have a good rest of the day. Try not to stay out here too late. We’ll be further on up the park, so there’s no telling if we’ll be in the area to help if you need it.”

            “Yeah,” I say, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The cop gets up from the bench and walks up the bike lane. After a few steps he turns back. “By the way, what were you two talking about before the rookie came up.”

“The shackles of consumerism,” I say.

He furrows his brow as he looks at me. His gaze turns to the ground and then he nods. “Have a good night,” he says, and then he walks away.

End Up Alone, Revision: Part 2

In the parking garage in downtown Milwaukee signs are plastered all over the yellow ticketing kiosks saying the parking rates are increasing effective next week. I tap a button in the center of the kiosk; it spits out a ticket and the yellow stop bar in front of me rises. I take the ticket and drive up the ramp and find a spot.

The guy who parked next to me parked like a sausage. I get out of my car very carefully, and reach back in to grab my audiobook of Stephen King’s It.

            I take the elevator down to the first floor and exit the building onto Jefferson Street. As I cross the street I see a fat dirty gray seagull standing next to a restaurant party shuttle. He ruffles his feathers at me. I don’t think he can fly. “Don’t worry, I’m not flying anywhere either,” I tell him. He waddles away. I take a left and shortly I’m in the arms of work.

            I walk through the glass turnstile into the modest lobby. An elderly Native American man in a blue company security suit sits behind a desk next to the elevators. His face reminds me of that Indian chief with the tear rolling down his face in those anti-littering commercials from the ‘70’s. He sees the security badge hanging from a lanyard around my neck and nods. I hit the button on the elevator and watch for the overhead notification light to flash on.

            “You listen to books?” the security guard asks, pointing to my copy of It.

            “Yeah,” I say. “With school in, I don’t really get a chance to read what I want, so I listen when I can.”

            “I listen to books too,” he says.

            “Oh cool, what are you listening to now?” I ask.

            He holds up a copy of Awaken the Giant Within. I think my polite smile is faltering a little. “Just some Tony Robbins,” he says. This elevator is taking forever.

            “Oh nice,” I say. The facade is falling, but I try to keep up the pretense. “I’m listening to Stephen King’s It.”

            “How do you like It so far?” There’s a big grin on his face.

            “Just starting It today,” I say. The elevator doors open.

            “Well, let me know how It goes,” he says. He looks fit to burst.

            “Will do,” I say and enter the elevator. I hit the second floor and “Close Doors” buttons at once.

            Work is actually quite enjoyable; it’s easy and I’m good at it, but there’s a reason I try to avoid talking to coworkers. During the semester I’m here three days a week and I have to see them when I’m here. In small doses they’re perfectly pleasant people. They don’t need to dispel my fantasy image of them by taking up more of my time in this building. The security guard seemed to be a decent fellow before today.

            The second floor is a sea of cubicles. Mine is at the end of the aisle. I rush down the corridor before more human contact makes me too ill to work the rest of the day. I already don’t feel like staying here, but if I left early I’d still have to pay full price for parking.

            The seat at my desk is comfortable enough to sit numb for a moment. I turn on the computer. There’s a multicolored mini-slinky next to the monitor on my desk; I pick it up and juggle it a little. It’s like my totem. I put the slinky down and reach into a drawer and pull out a set of ear buds and plug them into the computer’s headphone jack. I open the CD tray and pop in the first disc of It.

            “Can I see you in the conference room for a moment?” The ear buds were halfway to my ears when Stacey’s voice interrupts. She’s my manager.

            “Yeah sure,” I say. The ear buds drop to the desk. Stacey leads me to a nearby conference room. She has a thin manila folder in her hand. As she holds the door open, I walk through and pick a seat. She’s not too far behind.

            “Do you know why I called you in here?” she asks as she takes a seat across from me.

            “Not really.”

            “You were thirty minutes late this morning.”

            “Oh, I’m really sorry about that, I was late with rent and I had to take a detour on my way to work this morning to drop it off. I promise it won’t happen again.”

            “How many times have you been late this month?” Her eyes are trained on the manila folder as she opens it.

            “I don’t know.”

            “Seven times. You’ve also called in three times over the past month.”

            “I’m really sorry. It’s been a difficult semester.”

            She looks back up at me. “Things are difficult on our team right now too. With tax time right around the corner we’re seeing an increase in volume; we always do around this time of year. We really needed you present.”

            “I understand that, and I’m really sorry. I’ll step it up, I promise.”

            “I don’t think you understand. That many tardies and that many absences, especially considering your minimal schedule, is beyond company policy.”

            “And I really appreciate you working with me.”

            “I like you, the whole team does. You do a good job and you’re quick, but I can’t go up to bat for you anymore. My boss, Carol, made the final decision. I have no other choice but to let you go.”

End Up Alone, Revision: Part 1

The cool breeze rushes through the window of my ’97 Dodge Neon, ushering in the clean refreshing scent of post-rain air from earlier this morning. It’s mid-March in Milwaukee, warm enough to open the car windows but still cold enough to warrant the “Go Panthers” hoodie I “borrowed” from my roommate a week or so ago. The sun tries to beat its way through the clouds, which are done pissing rain and ready to move on, and the branches of trees pretending to give shelter to the road.

            The speedometer reads 25 MPH. The speed limit is 30. The Sunfire in front of me has a bumper sticker on its back left bumper that reads, “You Just Got Passed By A Girl!” I want to shout at her, “You ain’t passin’ no one at this speed, honey!” Thankfully my turn is only a block away.

            North Hollywood Avenue is marked by a change from the light red brick apartment complexes of Milwaukee to the spacious homes of Whitefish Bay. I hate driving through here. On Fairmount Avenue there is a beautiful two story brown brick home that, even though it sits on less than an acre of land, could still be described as sprawling. On the corner of Henry Clay, two voluptuous women in loose tanks and yoga pants stand behind $200 strollers that hold their cute Aryan babies. Maybe the women are discussing their affairs with their husbands’ business partners. Suburbia at its finest!

They probably go jogging, running or walking every morning to regain the bodies they had when they were head cheerleaders at Hot Body High. The impulse to yell, “It ain’t happenin’, ladies,” comes and goes as a single line from the song playing on the radio enters my mind: “Round and round my head she goes/ In the good dreams though she wears no clothes.” Isn’t that the truth?

            A couple of blocks down my Dodge pulls into the driveway of my Armenian landlord’s cream colored two story villa. Rent is two weeks late. I’ve been dodging him for the last week and a half. If he didn’t over-inflate the cost of his shitty Riverwest properties, rent might be on time regularly. Based on his beautiful, and very expensive, home he could easily afford for my rent to be a few days late.

            Back on North Hollywood I turn left when I reach Santa Monica and contemplate going to work or skipping out. It’s the first nice day of the year; no one should be subjected to sitting in a cubicle all day. On a day like this if I’m going to be indoors I should be at home. I’ll make a decision when I reach Capitol Drive.

End Up Alone, Part 4

IV

            I lay in my bed. After the conversation with the cop I decided to walk back to my car and take it to Three Lions on Oakland. There was no one there that I knew and I was glad. I had a few Guini (that’s the plural of Guiness, right?) and some shots of Jameson. After I got a decent buzz I decided to go home, I could complete my buzz with a little baggie I kept in the butter department of my fridge.

            Here I sit, on my beige sheets in my twin bed looking up at a Marvelous 3 poster with a glass pipe named Luigi in my right hand. A little bit of resin is left and I’ll light and puff until it’s as far gone as I can take it. I kind of wish there was a TV in my room, but I don’t want to go out to the living room and make my roommate think that I can hear what they’re doing in there. I can hear it fine and I don’t see that as a bad thing. I laugh. It’s the first laugh I had all day and it takes a while to come down. I think about the security guard, the Scandinavian bimbos, and Winters and I laugh even harder. The laughs devolve into coughs as I remember the last lines of the song I was listening to this morning, “Why do we all end up alone? Why do we all end up dead, drunk, or stoned?”

End Up Alone, Part 3

III

            I made it through work without further incident, thank God. I take the elevator to the lower level rather than the first floor after work. I figure I can exit the building through the manager parking lot and avoid Mr. It on my way out. It’ll cost me an extra half block of walking time, but it’ll be more than worth it. As I trek back up Jackson Street to Wisconsin Avenue though, I really don’t feel like going back to my car. I got to the parking garage in time for the early bird parking special, so I’ll pay the same rate whether I leave now or in an hour. As long as I’m not there overnight, I’ll still pay the same.

            I turn toward Lake Michigan when I hit the intersection. I haven’t had a good walk over winter and I can’t turn down the first nice day of the year. I’m not used to walking downtown and I don’t really have a plan, I just really want to find a park bench and look out at the lake.

[Placeholder: I want to add description of the narrator’s walk and events, but I haven’t quite conceived of them yet.]

            Nearly three miles later I end up at Veteran’s Park. I find the least vandalized park bench and take a seat. The lake doesn’t give much of a show, but I take in the tranquility of the scene. It’s starting to get dark and a little cooler. I kind of wish I had a better jacket. One’s lying in the backseat of my car; maybe I should have stopped there first to grab it before taking my walk. For now I’ll endure the cold. It’s too soon to walk back. There’s a little bit of an ache in my legs from the winter disuse. The feeling offsets the calm of the lake, but I don’t mind it much. Then there’s a disturbance on the bike trail behind me.

            “Hey, hey,” a man’s voice yells. I look behind me and see a young Milwaukee Police Department cop running toward a homeless man walking the trail. I can’t really make out the cop’s features except to tell that he’s young, but the homeless man is an older black man in an olive green stained jacket and jeans frayed at the cuffs. His clothes seem ratty and tattered, but he wears boots that look like they’ve recently been spit shined; I can see that even from my vantage point. “Every day I see you out here, man,” the cop says. He’s stopped running and the homeless man has turned to face him. “You need to get to a shelter or something. I’m getting tired of seeing you out here, and I’m sure I ain’t the only one.”

            “Yes sir,” the homeless man says.

            “Don’t just yessir me, man,” the cop says. “You need to get out of here and stay out of here, you hear me?”

            “Yes sir,” the homeless man says.

            “Now I’m serious,” the cop says. “I don’t want to see you on my beat no more.”

            “What are you doing?” a third voice says loudly from down the trail. I look down there and see another cop lumbering down the trail. This cop is older and looks out of breath. As he gets closer, he looks like he’s been walking the beat for half his life. Maybe he’s had one or two too many donuts before taking his shift this evening.

            “Seriously,” the first cop says, “if I see you down here again, me and you are going round and round. I ain’t going to be so nice”

            “Yes sir,” the homeless man says.

            “So what you gonna do now?” the cop asked.

            “I’m going to find some shelter, on the double,” the homeless man says.

            “That’s right,” the cop says. “And don’t let me catch you on my beat again.”

            The homeless man walks away, moving faster than he was previously. The older cop catches up to the young cop.

            “What’s wrong with you?” the older cop asks through a graying walrus mustache. “That the kind of shit they teaching you in the academy these days.”

            “We can’t just let these dudes...” the younger cop begins.

            “What you know about that guy?” the older cop interrupts. When the younger cop doesn’t respond he says, “Jack shit, that’s what. He’s got as much of a right to this park as anyone else walking around here.”

            “But he’s always...” the younger cop says.

            “Just walking around minding his own business,” the older cop interrupts for a second time. “Now if you see him again, you aren’t going to fuck with him, you got that?”

            The younger cop nods, looking defeated.

            “Now you go on,” the older cop says. “Look for real shit, I need to catch my breath.”

            The younger cop looks at him ruefully and then walks up the bike lane.

            Having heard the exchange, I feel there’s a story the older cop isn’t telling his partner. I know I probably shouldn’t get involved, but my curiosity gets the best of me. “Officer?” I call.

            I can’t quite see it, but I can feel the cop roll his eyes as he walks toward me. He rounds the bench and looks at me. “How can I help you?”

            “What’s the deal?” I ask. “Your partner was just warding off another homeless person, isn’t that a good thing?”

            “Do you mind if I have a seat?” the cop asks gesturing to the bench.

            Immediately I regret calling him over. “Sure,” I say.

            “Thanks,” he says as he takes a seat. There’s a coffee stain on his MPD jacket, and he’s still breathing heavy. He takes off his MPD hat and wipes his brow. He’s sweating like a stuck pig even though the temp is falling to the low forties from what I can tell. His gray and black flecked hair is starting to fall below his ears; it’s probably time to get a cut by police standards. “It’s tough work, dealing with a rookie, but my last partner retired a week ago and this new guy is all we got. Doesn’t have a sense of the beat yet.”

            “You seem to know more about that homeless man than he did though,” I say. “What didn’t you tell him?”

            The older cop laughs. His laugh is devoid of humor, the kind of laugh that tells you he’s been through it, or that he knows the homeless person has. “Yep, can’t teach a rookie everything they need to learn for themselves,” he says. “I’ve dealt with Mike Winters quite a bit. A couple of years ago we get a call at the precinct that his daughter Alyssa was looking for him. We got a description of him, and it matched the guy you just saw duckin’ out of here. I was on shift and working this beat back then, so I was tasked with trying to find him only he hadn’t been this way for quite a while.

            “We ran him through the database, and found out that he did indeed have a home. Not just a home, he had an apartment on the goddamn Milwaukee River. Anyway, I went up there and couldn’t catch him. I told the landlord the deal and he was a peach and let me in. The place was immaculate; almost looked like it wasn’t lived in at all. It was a studio, but a huge studio. His bed was perfect, military hospital corners. You could bounce quarters off the sheets. He had an entertainment center with a big screen TV, bookshelves, and a dresser all made of real wood. Maple, I think.

            “Anyway, the catcher was the stack of checks sitting on his dresser.”

            “Checks?” I asked.

            “Yeah,” he said. “All from the Department of Defense. All uncashed. I still had nothing to go on though. No clue where to find him. So I put out an All-Points Bulletin for him. It didn’t take long though, I finally saw him walking through the park one day. I got him and brought him in. Took me a while to get the full story, and I couldn’t get it all from him, but it turns out his wife died a few years back. They had plans of traveling around the world off of his retirement checks.”

            “The checks you found were retirement checks?” I asked.

            “Yeah,” he said. “He did a couple of tours in Vietnam, served in the Marine Corp for nearly 40 years. Got out as a Gunnery Sergeant. Those checks were his retirement checks from the Corp. After his wife died he wanted none of it though. He got rid of a lot of shit and moved into a studio apartment. Then he just started wandering the streets. It got to the point that he would practically be homeless and only cash his checks to pay his rent. The only times he would clean up was when he know his daughter was coming to town. That time he just forgot to check in with her.”

            “Does she know any of this?” I asked.

            “Nope,” he said. “He didn’t want her to know about it, so no one told her. I don’t know what he told her. He’s a good guy and deserves to be treated like one; so I do my part to make sure it happens that way. I figure there are things my new partner doesn’t need to know just yet though. He’s still green and needs to learn a badge isn’t a right to fuck with people.”

            I sat stunned for a few minutes. I wasn’t sure how to process the story I just heard. “Damn, that’s...” but the words were lost to me. I couldn’t find what to say.

            “Yeah, it is,” he replies, knowing what I meant. We sit there in silence mulling over the story. Finally, he says, “Well, have a good night. Try not to stay out here too late. We’ll be further on up the park, so there’s not telling if we’ll be in the area to help if you need it.”

            “Yeah,” I say, “I’ll keep that in mind.” The cop gets up from the bench and walks up the bike lane. I feel numb.

End Up Alone, Part 2

II

            I pull into the parking garage at the corner of Mason and Jefferson. Signs are plastered all over the yellow ticketing kiosks saying the parking rates are increasing effective next week. I tap a button in the center of the kiosk; it spits out a ticket and the yellow stop bar in front of me rises. I take the ticket and drive up the ramp.

            There’s not a spot open in this concrete mess until I reach the fourth level. All the spaces on the first three levels are full, even the handicap spaces. I don’t reach this one open spot until I’m almost at the fifth level. They’re definitely not having any problems pack this place in, and the signs didn’t say anything about renovations. I’ll just assume this is a case of greedy management.

            The guy who parked next to this spot parked like a sausage. When I finally get into the spot with no damage to my car, no easy feat, I consider keying the Mercedes that parked like an idiot. Mercedes, huh? No wonder they don’t feel bad about jacking the prices. I’ll leave the Mercedes alone. I get out of my car very carefully, and reach back in to grab my audiobook of Stephen King’s It.

            I take the elevator down to the first floor and exit the building onto Jefferson Street. As I cross Mason I see a fat dirty gray seagull standing next to the Ward’s House of Prime party shuttle in a parking lot outside Bank Mutual. He ruffles his feathers at me. I don’t think he can fly. “Don’t worry, I’m not flying anywhere either,” I tell him. He waddles away. I take a left on Wisconsin Ave and shortly I’m in the arms of work.

            I walk through the glass turnstile into the modest lobby. A framed aerial photograph of downtown Milwaukee and a contemporary painting hang on the dark blue wall opposite the lobby entrance on either side of the elevators. An elderly Native American man in a blue suit sits behind a desk framed by two rubber tree plants next to the elevators. His face reminds me of the Indian chief with the tear in those anti-littering commercials from the ‘70’s. I pull a security badge out of my pocket and flash it at him. He nods. I hit the button on the elevator and watch for the overhead notification light to flash on.

            “You listen to audiobooks?” the security guard asks, pointing to my copy of It.

            “Yeah,” I say, “with school in, I don’t really get a chance to read what I want, so I listen when I can.”

            “I listen to books too,” he says.

            “Oh cool, what are you listening to now?” I ask, trying to be polite.

            He holds up a copy of Awaken the Giant Within. I think my polite smile is faltering a little. “Just some Tony Robbins,” he says. The response is so nonchalant that I get the impression he thinks everyone listens to Tony Robbins, or at least should. This elevator is taking forever.

            “Oh nice,” I say. I try to keep up the pretense, but I think my facade is falling. “I’m listening to Stephen King’s It.”

            “How do you like It so far?” There’s a big grin on his face. He found the funniest joke in the universe.

            “Just starting It today,” I say. Mercifully, the elevator doors open. I hadn’t been watching the light.

            “Well, let me know how It goes,” he says. He looks fit to burst.

            “Will do,” I say as I enter the elevator. I hit the button for the second floor and the “Close Doors” button.

            There’s a reason I try to avoid talking to people at work. During the semester I’m here three days a week and I have to see these people when I’m here. In small doses they’re perfectly pleasant people. I don’t need them dispelling my fantasy image of them by giving them more of my time in this building. I used to think that security guard was a decent fellow. Now I can’t unlive that horrid experience.

            I step out of the elevator on the second floor into a sea of cubicles. Quickly, I make my way to my cubicle before more human contact makes me too ill to work the rest of the day. I already don’t feel like staying here, but if I left early I’d still have to pay full price at the parking garage.

            I sit down in the seat at my desk and turn my computer on. There’s a multicolored mini-slinky next to the monitor on my desk; I pick it up and juggle it a little. It’s like my totem. I put the slinky down and I reach into a drawer and pull out a set of ear buds and plug them into the computer’s headphone jack. I open the CD tray and pop in the first disc of It.

End Up Alone, Part 1

I

            The cool breeze rushes through the window of my ’97 Dodge Neon, ushering in the clean refreshing scent of post-rain air from earlier this morning as I drive down Santa Monica Boulevard. It’s mid-March in Milwaukee, surprisingly warm enough to open the car windows, but still cold enough to warrant the “Go Panthers” hoodie I bought from the campus merch shop a week or so ago. The sun plays peekaboo through the clouds done pissing rain and ready to move on and the branches of trees pretending to give shelter to the road I’m driving on.

            I look down at my speedometer: 25 MPH. The speed limit is 30. The Sunfire in front of me has a bumper sticker on its back left bumper that reads “You Just Got Passed By A Girl!” I want to shout at her, “You ain’t passin’ no one at this speed, honey!” I want to pass her myself, but as we pass The Pet Outpost, I realize my turn is only a block away.

            The turn down North Hollywood Avenue is marked by a change from the light red brick apartment complexes of Milwaukee to the beautiful spacious homes of Whitefish Bay. I hate driving through here. It’s like a commercial for everything you could ever want but can never have.

            As I pass by Fairmount Avenue I see a beautiful two story brown brick home that, even though it sits on less than an acre of land, could still be described as sprawling. On the corner of Henry Clay, two voluptuous women in loose tanks and yoga pants stand in front of $200 strollers that hold their cute little Aryan babies. Suburbia at its finest! I like to think that the women are discussing their affairs with their husbands’ business partners; it helps break up the monotony of their perfection.

            A couple of blocks down I reach the cream colored two story villa of my Armenian landlord. I’m two weeks late on rent, and I’ve been dodging him for the last week and a half. Of course, if he didn’t over-inflate the cost of his shitty Riverwest properties I might be on time with my rent regularly. Looking up at his beautiful house as I drop the rent check in the mailbox I think he could easily afford for me to be a few days late on the rent.

            I drive back the way I came on North Hollywood and see the two Scandinavian broads still chatting it up on the corner of Henry Clay. I’m fairly certain they go jogging, running or walking every morning to regain the bodies they had when they were head cheerleaders at Hot Body High. The impulse to yell, “It ain’t happenin’, ladies,” comes and goes as I hear a single line from the song playing on the radio: “Round and round my head she goes/ In the good dreams though she wears no clothes.” Isn’t that the truth? I think to myself.

            I reach Santa Monica and hang a left. Once again I’m stuck behind some porker doing twenty-five. No, wait, they’re doing twenty. It appears to be an old lady who most likely can’t see above the steering wheel of her equally old Buick station wagon. Luckily, I’m distracted with the thought of whether to go to work or go home.

            It’s the first nice day of the year; I shouldn’t be subjected to sitting at work all day. On a day like this if I’m going to be indoors I should be at home. I’ll wait till I reach Capitol Drive before I make a decision. We’ll see which way the winds take me.