2008:

It was a damp, cold morning in San Jose. It had rained the night before.The sky was silver. Dwayne stood on my neighbor's lawn. He wore a white crew t-shirt, grey 501's, a brown knit skull-cap, brown, scuffed-up workboots. His leashless black Dachshund took a piss on my neighbor's bougainvilleas. I didn't want to talk.

"Hey Stan?" he called at me, "Stan?" He rushed to the edge of the lawn to make sure I could see him.

"Yeah, hey," I waved , locked up my duplex, hopped off my porch and started to cross the double-wide driveway.

"I've got your package," he said.

"Oh?" My right loafer dipped into a puddle. I pulled it, shook it off, shouted "Motherfucker!" Dwayne laughed, came at me, adjusted his crotch but didn't miss a step, said, "Those are nice shoes. You'd better watch out."

"They're not real leather or anything," I answered. We stood in the middle of the driveway. "What package? Is it kind of big?"

"Maybe. Big might mean something different to me, though. I grabbed it off your porch last week. You're never home, so I'll pick up your packages."

"Oh, OK. I'll come get it now. You don't need to do that, though."

"It's really no problem. A lot of people around here will snatch things right off your porch if they know you aren't home."

We walked. He asked "What is it?"

"It's a cigar-box guitar," I answered.

"Oh, like a guitar made from a cigar box?"

"Yeah, the box is the body. The neck is just a plywood plank with machine tuners drilled in. I got it off Ebay. I'm going to try to make my own, eventually. I want to reverse-engineer this one. I need a hobby. Work is turning me into a soulless husk."

"I used to drive a tow-truck," he offered.

"Yeah, you know, sometimes I wish I'd just gotten into a skilled trade like that after high-school, instead of going to college. I like to work with my hands."

"No you don't. It was fucking terrible. Stay an accountant. Get yourself some fine pussy. What are you, twenty-two? When I was your age I lived with my Mom and I worked fifty hours a week. How much pussy do you think I got?"

"Technically, I'm in corporate collections. When Wal-Mart doesn't pay, I call them up and politely grovel. I just tell people I'm an accountant."

"Keep that up. Works from a pussy perspective. Gotta have a good pussy perspective."

We reached his front door. It was dark inside, but I could make out a light tan carpet that matched his skin and a dirty, puce couch. The box was inside, propped against the screen door. It was about the size I'd expected. Dwayne opened the door a peek. He snatched the package, handed it to me and asked, "Have you met Edward yet?"

"I don't think so. I think you've told me about him."

"He's my best friend. I take care of him now. Fifteen years ago, an ice-cream truck hit him and pinned his head against a curb. He hasn't been the same since."

"Oh, no shit? That's fucked up."

"Yeah, there's a big crater in his skull. You can see it when his hair is short. Take a look sometime."

2008 II: I was walking home on a hot August evening. My legs were weak, I couldn't keep my shoulders up. I'd been up since five AM, and things got worse. Circuit City was four days late on ten million dollars, like always, and my boss' boss burst into my cube, in panic, demanded that I explain why, demanded that I supplement my explanation with reports, data, spreadsheets formatted in an olive and gray color scheme and size 10 Arial bold font, even though one month earlier, in a meeting, in a fit of anger, she'd told me to let sons-of-bitches slide, because nobody gives a goddamn about five days. I guessed the CFO found out they were late and had given her a bad time about it. Shit rolls downhill, as the saying goes.

I saw Dwayne, in a black t-shirt, blue 501's, standing on the sidewalk with his Dachshund. He wore no cap today; his thin, buzzed white hair was showing. He said, "I took your trash out last night. You never take it out."

"Oh, thanks man," I answered, "You don't really need to. I need to suffer for my indiscretions. It's the only way I'll learn."

"Oh , you are forgiven, Jesus of Luna Park. I take out everyone's trash. I've got nothing else to do but yardwork and taking care of Edgar."

"Yeah, I talked to him the other day. He walked past the bus stop. He was alright." I hadn't really talked to him. I'd just waved, asked "How're you doing?" He'd looked up, with vacuous, sparkling eyes, and said "Oh, hi Stan!" in a slow, lisping voice, and that was the end of it.

"Try living with him. He's schizophrenic, so the littlest thing gets him bouncing," Dwayne did his best impression, let his tongue waggle, jerked his hands up and down, "I can only play talk radio."

"I'd probably opt for nothing." I laughed at myself.

Dwayne didn't laugh with me. "He's been my best friend for twenty years and the state pays me, though. Until fucking Schwarzenegger has his way, that is. You do what you need to."

"Yeah, you do." As I walked off, his Dachshund sniffed and nipped my shoes.

"Cocoa, you little homo. Get off him! Get back here you little homo!" Cocoa returned, and Dwayne shrugged his shoulders."Sorry, he's just a little faggot dog sometimes."

2009:

It was a warm Saturday morning. On Friday, I'd walked off the Job in a rage. I can't recall exactly, but I said something like, "Bitch, you have borderline personality disorder. You are a preening, overwrought narcissist. You are a vile crone with a heart of coal. All this we know, but there is so much more.

Working for you has been like working for Bill O'Reilly with a gash. This of course assumes that your dry, scabby snatch hasn't shriveled back on itself and blinked out of existence in a naked singularity. A dogpaw-thick patch of unfeeling, unbreachable skin is more likely.

You don't listen. You don't tolerate opposing points of view. You'll feign an open ear, you'll feign humility (Run it by me again, I'm a little, you know, dumb. *Haw* *Haw*), but make no mistake, no matter how pragmatic my argument, no matter how lucid, it is wrong. It is wrong because you reached a different conclusion long ago without consulting anyone and without consulting the facts. Bubble people like you. Hermetically sealed people like you on their own islands with their ears shut ruined the decade. I hate you because every time I see you I think about death and a future that we can never have. Fuck your two weeks. "

Fuck your two weeks! So of course my face beamed when I approached Dwayne. He was standing on his lawn, behind the black iron fence, watching his dog.

"Hey Dwayne," I called. He'd let his hair grow out and his thin white forelock stood on end. He seemed aware, and smoothed it sideways when he answered. "Yeah?"

"Do you want a desk or a couch or anything? I'm moving and I don't need them."

"I can take anything. I'll find a place for it. I know plenty of people with needs."

"That's pretty solid, I need to unload a lot, and it's either you or Savers."

"I'll take anything. You had some good papers in your trash last night. I took them. They were good papers." He shook his head from side, to show that my wastefulness truly shocked him.

"Do you need some fans?" --

We carried the couch into his fenced-off driveway and he told me about his twenty-year cocaine odyssey. His Dachshund galloped around, sniffed at everything. Earlier, when I let Dwayne into my house, the dog followed, and I chased it away from the roach traps, worried about what Edgar might do if he found his state-assigned companion animal dead in a puddle of its own vomit. Now, I worried that it would tangle up in our feet and Dwayne and I would trip.

"But I've been clean since two-thousand-and-one," Dwayne continued, "I had to take care of Edgar because his folks didn't want him. His Mom is crazy too. Not clinically or anything, but she's bad. His dad just can't cope with it."

"That's too bad." My tight voice betrayed my straining muscles. My couch was a sandstone-brown goose-down ogre; it weighed almost two-hundred pounds.

"Yeah, my girlfriend complains constantly. She wants me to send him somewhere else. When it gets real bad, I kick her ass to the curb. I only need to give her three days notice. I tell her that I've only been with her a year, I've been with Edgar fifteen."

"Gnarly. Set it down here?" My arms burned.

"Yeah, watch out for Cocoa." Dwayne was a stocky guy, but he was having trouble too.

"It's cool. He's in the front yard. I saw him."