Absolute Away by Lance Olsen

Author:Lance Olsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781950539956
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

SURVIVAL AS BIRDSONG

Eddie couldn’t tell where he was. Piece by piece the scene gathered around him. His name wasn’t Eddie now, but Eddy, and Eddy was home, that’s where he was, back in the city, limping along the sidewalk outside his scruffy fifth-floor walkup in the East Village near Cooper Square, afflictions still fierce, especially at night, even if shedding off him a little more each day.

Given the shrill sunlight, Eddy guessed it was early afternoon.

Late March, the earth coming back to its senses amid brisk damp gusts.

Cutting up Stuyvesant past the weatherworn brick fronts, the scaly wrought-iron railing, the gated stoops leading to heavy black doors, past the garbage strewn across the sidewalk and banked against the chicken-fat-yellow Pontiac parked along the curb, past a babbling homeless woman with long hair the color of dead lust frizzing out from beneath an orange and black New York Mets baseball cap, knees to chest on a crushed box, obsessively fingering the sidewalk beside her as if blind and in search of a dropped quarter, Eddy found himself recalling how a friend had tried to retrieve Eddy’s beat-up suitcase from Jackson’s farmhouse three days after the accident, only to come upon his clothes scattered across the front yard where Lee had thrown them out the second-story window.

Later he heard she had also destroyed all the photographs of them taken during their six months together.

Jackson and Eddy had existed.

Jackson and Eddy hadn’t existed.

There was no evidence one way or the other except somewhere inside him, which he could sometimes pinpoint and sometimes not.

Limping, Eddy recalled what scientists say about why birds sing just before sunup. It’s a way to tell their friends they’ve made it through another night.

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, their song says, so fuck you for another day.

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