A decision came to J., snuck in on the tips of its toes, settled atop his ear bones, and whispered five words over and over every day for a week after Blue’s visit until the seventh day when J.’s …

PACKED on the midnight bus to Manhattan, J. went back to find what was left of the world he left behind not so long ago. Arrived early enough to bask in the glow of New York’s counterfeit dawn. He took the A train — the quickest way to Harlem —…

THESE are the war years or the postwar years or the interwar years or the intrawar years or the antiwar years or the nonwar years, depending on what you read, what you watch, what you listen to, where you live, who you know, who you knew. This is Kaliyuga. The…

AFTER work, J. sat on the steps outside the diner or the late-nite solitude bench in the park across the street while his pulse cooled, smoking and reading under the verdigris gaze of Count Casimir Pulaski. …

QUEUE up every tune you can think of for a mix tape about school. The Replacements missing the bus to stay cool, The Ramones looking for kicks and chicks, The White Stripes making new friends, The Police and Van Halen leering at students and teachers, Chuck Berry trying to get…

PRESSED into service at his uncle’s diner, J. set silverware, took orders, served food, refilled drinks, and bussed tables. He punched the antique cash register’s stiff brass keys, impaling his tickets upon the check spindle. If the dishwasher had the night off or called out sick, J. sank elbow deep…

THE night after J. arrived, he met a girl with the most dolorous eyes in the whole damned world, blue as autumn distance, true forget-me-not blue, Yves Klein canvases, plangent like the off-kilter Teutonic contralto version of The Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” that Nico never recorded, that only existed…

HAVING settled in a portside seat, J. watched Jersey’s Palisades pass by up to Fort Lee as the Greyhound followed the Joe DiMaggio along the Hudson apartment cliff-banks. He caught brief glimpses, past the passengers across the aisle, of the sky funneling down the cross streets through Manhattan. The bus…

Heaven is hell in reverse — Elvis Costello SUMMER had not yet passed, but in the shadow of fall, an otherwise unremarkably beauti­ful morning took on a liminal and melan­cholic significance, an Irish wake celebrated on that narrow span between Labor Day and the au­tumnal equinox. J. sat on a…