017.

As soon as he’d worked his way up to being the guy who presses the button, Danny had planned on replacing it with a cartoon-sized red plunger. He’d even scrawl “TNT” across the front. All that engineering school, and a good bit after, led to this moment, which sadly didn’t include a coyote-approved plunger.

He plotted the detonations himself. First the middle, then the perimeter, finally the roof, like icing on an imploding cake with fireworks for sprinkles. The Phoenician would come down again and the tycoon would build her up again. The tycoon who’d personally fired Danny back east but didn’t recognize him now, years later, in the desert. He‘d make millions more rebuilding this casino than Danny’d ever cost him. Danny focused instead on the satisfaction of destroying a plaything that stretched for city blocks.

“Looks good, son.”

“I kept the money.”

“What?”

Danny pressed the first button.

016.

She was utilitarian from head to toe except for her dress, which was practical. Everyone dealt with less in those days and the dress was where she chose to take her few rationed steps toward extravagance. She leaned back in the grass. He felt her hand close to his waist.

“Be quiet and you can hear them,” she said.

“The elephants.”

“Crying because of the train wreck.”

He looked at the ground to blot out the noise. Forest Park shut down early – Chicago was for after nine – but come spring it was noisy enough to drown out the sounds of ghosts. He heard their spectral bleating like a soft trumpet.

“It breaks my heart!” she sighed, turning to him. Their lips were almost touching. He knew her hand was inching closer to his newspaper-fattened wallet and that the cemetery where they sat was only a few miles from the zoo.

15.

The CDs were easy to listen to on the way back home. People wondered why he drove so far for a record store. They’d probably never bought more than two CDs at a time and couldn’t understand the joy that comes from the focus required to sort through every aisle. There was something in each section waiting specifically for him. He imagined turning into a pile of dust under a pair of headphones once he’d heard the last of it.

The used six-inch import with the frayed sleeve had to wait for him to get home and put the needle in the groove. It dragged him through the anticipation of hearing the B-side: the stripped-down cover of the 70’s glam rock ballad. The one she’d said she liked. The one he hunted down. The one he sold off to the same record store the weekend after she went away.

14.

She stood on Billy’s veranda. Loneliness wrapped in a cardigan, staring off into the distance. She looked like she should have a cigarette. It would heighten her brooding. She wouldn’t take a drag. She didn't smoke. The ashes would fall unacknowledged. He could see her breath.

She looked past the neatly arranged saplings of a fresh business park beside Billy’s apartment building. He’d seen her on his own porch once, looking down into the courtyard. The scene’s been played out on rooftops, fire escapes, alleyways. She never turns around. Silently he begs her to. She’s always contemplating the distance.

Each time he sees her that sense of impending regret punctures his chest. Scar tissue penetrates just as easily. The old feeling. It's new every time. Years ago he suspected this would happen. She’s thinking hard and he’s wishing she would go away.

“I don’t disappear," she says. "Not built to."

013.

He imagined a steam-powered locomotive with the speed of a bullet train. Tracks went over the hill into a hazy horizon he couldn’t see. Always over the hill; always out of sight. He would climb into the conductor’s seat. Position himself at the helm in front of a typewriter whose keys when forced, like a piano, smacked the hammer attached to each letter against the page. One step removed from the hammer and chisel. He would chisel the course of the tracks. Each day he would create the horizon into which he would ride. The steady staccato of each key press propelled the engine ahead:

“We ran triage through the appliance department.” No.

“The weather forced him off an exit he’d never seen before.” No.

A block had fallen into the gears, straining and stalling them. He sat motionless.

“Well, we’re just going to have to get meta,” he murmured.