There was a hint of rain that late March day in nineteen hundred and seventy-three. I was fishing with my grandfather, who had the patience of Job, and the orange bobber which hung over glass waters hardly moved. If this was a game they’d have called it on account of nothing happening. I was hoping for rain so we’d call it a day.

But Grandma was waiting at home to skin a few bluegills for dinner and we had corn on the cob too waiting too, fresh from Kolstead’s market. We had to hold up our end of the bargain even though I told Papa that all she had to do was buy it from the market but we had to have the skill or luck to catch something. But he warn’t worried.

I stared at the orange blob and my mind would play tricks. I’d thought it moved when it hadn’t. I was trigger-happy, ready to reel something in, not patient at all and wanting to error on the side of being too early rather than too late. Fishing was tense because you had to be alert every second.

Papa, who was drinking Budweiser beers, didn’t seem tense at all though.

“They ain’t bitin’” he said and I told him they sure warn’t. I didn’t know what made them bite one day and not the next. I told him that it maybe we wasn’t in the right spot but he said maybe we weren’t out early enough. I didn’t know what to make of that because it seemed like we got up at the crack of dawn.

“Maybe if we had those boots like real fishermen we’d catch something,” I said, referring to the men who wore hip waders and weren’t limited to the bank like landlubbers.

“Don’t yell, you’ll scare the fish,” he said, although I didn't think I'd yelled and thought maybe he just said that to shut me up. I was always “scaring the fish”, it seemed the thing I was best at. Anything you’d do would scare the fish. Splash the water or spit in it or yell or run up and down the bank, everything scared the fish. I thought the fish were scaredy-cats.

Discombobulated. That’s how I felt, a word whose physicality mirrors its meaning. She wrote to say that she can’t write anymore, that the Soviets had gotten around to banning electronic epistles to any but party members and my official status was dissident. That the news should come as a dull surprise was itself a surprise since the banning of personal correspondence seemed, in retrospect, more appropriate than the banning of public correspondence.

Not that I blame the Politburo. Risks are risks, and there is something unseemly about displays of affection between dissidents and party members. Was I not mostly a distraction? Was I not a fool’s gold to her family’s precious loom? Over time I must’ve fallen in her eyes. Did I not now make the Politburo more palatable by my being seen as less?

When the Prussians moved on Bavaria I was just about to go on a hike. It was a sparkling wine sort of day, the sun ebullient and redolent of spring. I wanted to walk in the “good part of the day”, in the broad One Pm that cast no shadows. But I was taken unduly by the news; I composed a reply and felt the discombobulations that change inflicts...

The corporation had the soul of a Russian novelist: there was always the trust that if they just got the name right everything else would follow. The long grey line of CEOs must've longed for something meaty like "Alexandrovna Yegorushka", something around which you could write a narrative.

Because narrative was really the unstated corporate mission. Everybody needed a "story". CEOs needed something to tell the Board, the President needed something to tell the CEO, VPs needed something to tell the President, directors needed something to tell the VPs, managers needed something to tell directors and I needed something to tell my manager. I needed to tell of all the wonderful things I'd done, which was mostly to try
to keep my Alexandrovna from hurting herself since over the past twelve years she'd experienced five name changes, seven reorganizations, one teenaged rebellion, two mid-life crisises, and four mission statements. One memorable drunken outing in lower Manhattan resulted in her buying another company just before the stock market crashed. The company symbol, a bear, was proudly resurrected twice before being rejected, at least for now, as being "too aggressive".

This had caused me considerable effort since I was in charge of the removal and reinsertion of the bear from all computer-generated letters. I had a story to tell here, since I'd caught on to my mistress's capricousness and automated the removal and reinstallment of the bear saving thousands of dollars but also triggering a lengthy and expensive examination into what other processes that were subject to change could be automated. This resulted in my introduction to something called the Business Meeting (hereafter referred to as the BM, not necessarily to be confused with 'bowel movement').

Fictional Friday

It was the summer of ’82 and Jim Malone was protecting an innocence growing increasingly theoretical. He was dating Agape when Eros walked by and afterwards none were ever the same.

Eros had agate blue eyes and Times New Roman hair which lay against the back of a tight red t-shirt. She pile-drived body and brain.

Jim never cared for Eros because she’d never cared for him. He knew his place and he’d seen the likes of her before, thinking her stagecraft, witchcraft, no more real than the gossamer of a salamander’s wig. That spring he pledged his troth to Agape out of abstract loyalty rather than concrete lust.

Most nights he hung out at Eros & Agape’s apartment. Eros hinted of rogue, a scent that increased as Jim failed to pay homage. Rebuff wasn't in her lectionary but he was unaware of her scent and unprepared when she left her underwear with a note outside his door, signed as secret admirer. Addressed to “Jim”, it caused great intrigue and discussion since there were two Jims who lived there.

Eros knew her prey well. The panties, more juvenile than lascivious, were dotted with cartoon hearts. The note struck a tone both sweet and mournful, asking why Jim did not love her. It dotted the i’s between lust and commitment, lighting in Jim a powderkeg of longing no human could supply.

He played it straight, telling Agape & Eros about the odd note & gift to Eros' feigned surprise. He said it must’ve been for the other Jim though neither he nor Agape believed it. Jim began offering smiles to the goddess Eros, growing weak-knee’d in her possibility. Yet even as he grasped she danced.

Eros left a second package pregnant with newfound swagger. To “Jim T.”, it said, adorned with a Mae West-ian summons: “Hey Big Boy why don’t you come up and see me sometime?”

Caught between worlds, Jim succumbed as though he had no choice. He offered Eros commitment and Agape lust, causing Agape to cry and Eros to die. Eros married a bricklayer in New Jersey soon after graduation. He never learned what happened to Agape, even after twenty-three years, even after the ache of lust was replaced by the ache of regret.