I looked down. Tight and translucent tissue clinging to bone, blue veins pulsating lightly through translucent skin. Deep breaths stretched tight ribs; the large room smelled slick and clean. Slim fingers found a slim face: a jaw made prominent, cheeks threatening to slice through frail tissue, dried tears between seams of flushing lips -- a water that tasted of ocean.

And then I blinked a few more times.

"Ryu Audemar-Yamamoto." I gave my name as if I remembered it. "Could you turn the lights down a little?"

The words weary over a stiffened and coarsed tongue. The brightness, to my new eyes, had me squinting.

Their whispers caved into silence as I sipped lightly on sparkling water. I held the green glass bottle to my face and felt the cool air kiss lightly. My thirsty fingers inhaled small beads of moisture and I watched the bubbles fizz and pop and dance. In the matrix of routine, the hospital staff asked a demonstration of my mobility. I grappled with the heavy blanket, the very fiend coaxing my body to a wrath, and sat at the end of the bed. Two legs supported the was-corpse and a previously unperceived feeling of relief embalmed my overactive nerves.

I was standing, as straight an tall as a cypress tree bordering a Perisian sanitarium, I was standing.

"Oh, wow." I muttered.

They unplugged me from their systems. In removing the plastic catheter from the crook of my arm, warm and red and spicy leakage stained the paper-thin and paperly-white skin of my forearm.

I licked the blood and tasted life and the hot mettle of warped and sharpened iron and polished copper and life.

"Do you know where you are?" My doctor asked.

"Saint-Paul Asile Clinique, Saint-Remy Paris."

"Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles. You're in our coma ward." I nodded. "And do you know what the day is?"

Bleeding through the window was a setting sun. Streaks of purple streamed through the flaming sky, clouds were teal and dancing and swirling, and the horizon, filled still with a golden glow, reached towards me with wanting, open palms. "This is the greatest day of my life."

Along with the dinner I refused to eat, they brought clothes and belongingss in a plastic bag with scans of a brain containing a large and white rorschach perpendicting the black image. Ischemia and death and surprised and improbable and death and death and should and be and dead were amongst their favorite descriptors. I nodded along easily at the morbid tale, unsurprised and unremembering.

I could place for them only details of things he loved: the friendship of crows, some well respected art, and whatever image of food happened to infiltrate each small space between my spoken words. He could not name his history, or how he appeared at the hospital, only that a sharp craving for a hot dog had awoken him. The specialists assumed it would all return with and in and within an allotted and unspecified time.

Though there was no rush, I thought to myself. And it did not matter. All that I mattered, all I cared for, was a hot hot-dog in my hot mouth.

The clothing in the bag was over-ripe and creased with a stale air. The shirt was a periwinkle blue knit made from a summery cashmere, the denim a dense and romantic light shade from some french atelier I couldn't properly pronounce. Supplied with the outfit were a pair of off white and oft worn pair of trainers. Silver necklaces and rings and a square shaped petite watch with a reptile band were heavy in the plastic bag and I tried them on only to feel their weight. The bag may have had my name on it but the clothing on this skeletonized body fit loosely, and the weight of the silver was no friend. The well worn pockets had in them a keyring, a valet ticket, a wallet, and smartphone. The latter came to life brightly, without drama; no missed calls, no voicemails, no messages, only notifications from a bank stating money had been deposited into my account from multiple sources on a monthly basis since my incarceration. The thin leather wallet was empty except for a black metal card and a plastic ID. Looking at the man, I was surprised to think that his face wasn't unattractive if not heavier set than the one I wore now. The address was not one I recognized, I might have lied about my height, and my weight would have to be reduced slightly.

A nurse came and took some of my blood.

"Did I have any visitors?"

She shook her head.

"None that I remember. During my shifts at least." She sounded regretful. "I visited you, I suppose."

"Was my body of any difficulty?"

She smiled. "None at all." I too smiled in knowing and with a light appreciation for her candor. The last vial was filled with my crimson ichor. She capped them off carefully and labeled them. "Once the tests are complete, your doctor will come back to discuss the results."

She turned and left with my source. I walked with these heavy shoes, passing the hospital's busy workers and my own languid and slouching reflection in the glass of rooms toward the end of the long and eerily quiet hall. I noticed other specters clinging to their lives, in beds, surrounded by spectators who appreciate their existence even in an amorphous and unrelenting stupor. At the edge of the ward the elevator was already open for me and, its soft amber interior light acting as a beacon, I stepped in. The nurse who took my blood looked at me, opened her mouth as if to say something, and only smiled as the doors closed.

An instinct took my hand, dragged me out the front lobby, and plunged my body into the warm and early night, into the pool of life and cesspool of all my mistakes.

I heard the valet return before I could see him. Rumbling deep in the garage was a symphony. A pyromancer, or some melancholy chorus of arsonists, commanded with some leisure and finesse an ensemble of flames. A volley of explosions, ryu-seeking missiles, perforated what thin and nebulous membrane sheathed my neurons and axons and dendrites and, in suit, in perfect harmony, they too conducted a suite of signals. The tiny hairs on my arms stood tall demanding some encore. My black eyes staring into the dark cavern, scintillated senses following in search of symphonics, dilated. A faintness and relaxation glazed over my sweet dissatisfied soul. The car, furious and burning still, came smoothly around a pillar of light and into my sight. A perfect silver, a liquid and aged mercury, the antithesis and cure to entropy. And a perfect shape, a venn diagram of beauty and purpose and healing. It came to a coast next to me, then a stop; half ghost, half neutron star.

"Whose car is this?" I saw in the liquid metal a reflection of my own amazement and love. "It's a beautiful thing. Whoever owns it is a lucky bastard."

"It's yours. Unless you handed me the wrong ticket."

I stepped around the hull, around the long and hand sculpted hood and inspected the carefully encased headlights, and felt the heat radiating from the engine and felt its hands merge with my soul's own.

"What kind of car is this?" I asked the valet. He shrugged.

"I'm not sure. An old Ferrari."

"It's a 275 GTB4. From 1967."

"Oh. Yeah, well, it's beautiful. First time I've ever driven or seen one in person."

"Oh. Yeah, less than two hundred were made worldwide."

"Two hundred?" He asked.

"Two hundred what?" I asked.

"Less than two hundred were made worldwide."

"Oh, really? That's crazy. Well, it's beautiful. First time I've ever seen one in person."

"Didn't you just say less than two hundred were made?"

"Did I? I don't remember. Do you know if this is a steel or aluminum body?"

"Yeah, I don't know."

"Me either. I just got out of a coma. I don't remember anything."

"Well, the car is a stick shift. Do you remember how to drive stick?"

"Drive a stick? What am I, a witch? Why would I want to drive a stick when I could drive this steel bodied Ferrari?"

He then handed me the keys and it all felt very too much to believe. It was my car, but the transaction felt so much like the giving of a gift.

In return, I gave the valet the bag of his jewelry that no longer fit onto my body, a silver whose weight unbalanced mine, but only after removing and safely guarding into my pocket a thin chain that simmered with some distant import.

The car wrapped itself around me like the arms of an old friend. Perhaps the only one I had. The black and leather drivers seat was welcoming, the passenger seat had light creases, and the wooden steering wheel fit evenly into my withered hands. There was a golden candy wrapper on the floor, a few plastic coffee cups, and some empty cartons of menthol cigarettes. I put the key into the ignition and stepped on the clutch. It coughed, sputtered, and laid itself back down.

I laughed. I felt my voice on the low roofline and reflecting off the heavily sloped windshield.

"I know I've lost a lot of weight, darling, but it is me. Look at my terrible teeth." I smiled into the rearview mirror, my coffee stained teeth shone fantastically. "Sorry I've been away so long." I picked up the trash from the plush carpet and got in to try once more. "I'll treat you better, I promise." The engine and exhaust were louder in the car; more sonorous, more sensual, more cheerful and so was I. Whoever that was. Whoever that's supposed to be.

Did it always feel this wonderful to drive?

Was the air always so crisp in my lungs as it breached the open windows?

Is the sound of the road underneath, flowing away like the soft stream of a winding river, the kind where large brown bears hunt for beautiful glowing salmon, always so soothing?

Had I always been so pliant as to cry upon any seeming ordinary cue? At the Sun and, with all his inconsistencies and ignobanalities, chasing the perfect and pale Moon? At the pulsating and pulling of the engine under the duress of my desire? At a familiar site of respite that I couldn't quite recognize? Were Pink's, on the intersection of La Brea and Melrose and my Sanity, chili cheese dogs always so captivating?

Could I order another?

Yes, please, four chili cheese dogs in total. And fries.

Yes, please, with chili. Yes, please, with cheese.

I sat in the parking lot perfectly comfortable on the doorsill of my chromed and chrome hearted refuge. The boulevard was busy with laughter and some imprecise but effervescent acknowledgement of joy. A stray dog, brown and gold, not dissimilar to my litter of four, had approached me with sad and hungry and broken and wonderfully beautiful eyes and I gave to him one of my hot dogs and he happily and messily, in a semblant dance of repair (his driver side, rear tire seemed to be in dire need of mending), teetered off. Perhaps to give to his small family, to his wife and kids (this too engaged friendly tears). Or perhaps to enjoy on his own. Perhaps I should get a dog. Perhaps I should buy another hot dog.

Perhaps, perhaps.

There was then an interlude and juxtaposition of sadness. There was an instinct, pulsating and raw, trembling in the emptiness of my past. A vestige, a swollen and useless appendage designed only for its own exorcism. The demon: a cruel image of solopsisms. And etched into the solipsisphere were years and years of hedonistic visions: a caveman painting of fire in the summer desert rains, polaroids of materialistic ideations -- developed instantly, misplaced easily and forgotten. I took this throb of primordial guilt and stuffed it into my mouth along with all the chilies and cheeses that might to fit. I took the pulsating and disembodied regret and folded it neatly and, placing it into the passenger seat, secured it loosely with the single point belt and drove away with the windows punctured wide, with the wind in my hair, with the hopes that a torrential tornado might to expunge these unknown and unseen fears and doubts and misrememberances out the jeweled window to be dispersed into the forgiveness of a new day.

I was walking down the length of a beach when the red sun rose. The sky made itself purple, then gold, then beamed a gorgeous sienna. The sea flowed over itself in a cast of fuchsia and dark blue and reflected the starry lavender of the heavens above while softly humming and echoing a cascading chorus of distant winds and untamed currents. Like a gold and brown and golden-brown puppy I was following my nose, and my nose was following a perfume of freshly made pastrifications. Sweetness and honey filled the air and my stomach, singingly, sighed sonnets. Cravings: something bitter and something more with butter. There was a bakery cafe across the street from the shore and with the cafe was a line and in the line was my dry skeleton drest in untidy drapes and soonly at the register were my mangled and excited exhaltations. Un croissant et un café allongé, s'il vois plaît. Ça sera tout (is that all)? Oui (I just got out of a coma and have no recollection of my past or future).

There were no empty tables. There was, however, an exceptionally beautiful woman sitting closest to the street beyond the protective meniscus of an overhead canopy. She glowed, she glowered in the heat, her pale skin perfectly reflecting the hot sun. Her legs were crossed, her eyes fixated on a book with a red cover, her brown hair falling onto her tanned and bare shoulders. Coucou. She looked up at me and smiled and in the morning sun she might have been the most pleasant and perfect person I'd seen in this life or any infinitely repulsively recursive and previous and lackluster renditions thereof.

All these tables are full. I was wondering if I could share this one with you and pretend to look lovingly at the sea while staring lovingly at you through the distorted lens of my periphery and unrequited love. I may have left that last part out, but perhaps she may have read my mind regardless. She smiled. It was a wonderful smile and a wonderful moment. I won't be long. Just to eat my croissant and drink my americano and enjoy the wonderful beach and air and write for you poems, great epics and odysseys and iliallusions and homerisms, in my small head and store them forever unseen in my stormy heart. And then, she did something unexpected. She laughed and pushed out the chair with her foot revealing a very beautiful ankle from beneath the seam of a soft linen pink dress.

"Ryu, why in the fucks world are you talking like that? Sit down. You don't have to ask, idiot. Or speak so formally with me."

I offered to her majesty my small golden croissant as tribute. She said no, but swiped the pastry, as it was in pursuit of my lips, from my hands and took a large bite. She has very beautiful lips and wonderful coffee stained teeth.

"What are you doing in San Diego?"

"I don't know."

"Looking for me?"

"Maybe, actually. I really don't know. I was just out for a drive."

"In your stupid silver penis shaped old man's car?"

I laughed. "Yeah, yeah."

"Oh, wow. I'm surprised you drove it so far. I always suspected you loved that car more than you loved me."

"That couldn't possibly be correct." I said. Not a chance, I thought to myself, there was no chance I'd love a car more than a woman as tender and as beautiful as her.

"Oh, big chance. Big fucking chance."

"Permit me some small diaphragm of honesty."

"Surely, poop man." She ate the rest of my croissant. Flakes fell from her lips onto her hands onto her dress and onto her long legs and I watched the entire ballet with a discerning and hidden eye. "But only if you stop looking at my legs and stop talking like that."

"You seem to know who I am, but I don't know who you are. I don't know who I am, I don't know anything. It's possible I didn't know anything then and I don't know anything now. Except how to drive stick."

"Shut the fuck up." She emphasized each syllable with her thick and long and sexy tongue between very sharp, very deadly canines. "If this your way of apologizing poetically or whatever the fuck, it's kinda sweet but confusing. You're either the biggest asshole or you're serious or both. Bets on both."

"I have a necklace in my pocket."

"Yep. You're an asshole. I knew you'd kept it."

She recognized the metal immediately from the sound. In the white palm of her hand the white metal flowed loosely and within the scepter of her mind's eye mirages refracted an old sadness. And when she put it around my neck she smelled of a bright and white and radiant light, the kind of light you're supposed to see at the circumcision of your many deaths but never experienced, and of oxidized and painfully wrought copper and iron; the two truest signs of life.

"You should have pawned it off like you said you were going to; you really know how to break a woman's heart. Maybe then you would have forgotten about us and moved on instead of stalking me at my favorite cafe. Wait, you're serious? The hospital? A coma? Bullshit. Oh, shit. That's why you look so terrible. Honestly, I thought you were smoking meth or heroin or some chimera of the two. I thought maybe our divorce might cause you to slowly kill yourself overtime like I wrote about on my blog. That post went viral, you know. Thousands of women figuratively castrating you through the internet. I was the best thing to happen to you, Richard. My name? Greta. Just kidding. That's the name of the whore you fucked on our honeymoon. Yeah, you flew your favorite prostitute to French Polynesia. On the same flight as us, no less. I only found out because I woke up in the middle of the night and you smelled of menthols. What kind of name is Greta for a Chinese chick anyway? Just because she's beautiful doesn't mean she can be named Greta. It doesn't make any sense. What were her parents thinking? Yes, you did deserve those brain bleeds and your retro-grade mid-century-post-modern amnesia, you fuck. The last time we talked? The last time we talked was about two years ago. So, you're telling me you've been in a coma for at least a year and a half? Good. Good for you, is what I always say when you make plans without me. Can you get me another croissant, please? I forgot my wallet somewhere. Another coffee? Sure. Say, why are you being so nice?"

"Don't you deserve kindness?"

"Who the fuck are you? Your'e not Ryu, are you. You're an imposter, likely. If you'd stolen his identity and money give half to me I swear I'll never tell anyone. Maybe I do deserve your kindness for once, perhaps, but, no, it's too late. I was actually just about to leave. I was thinking to myself, 'I'll leave right now in the middle of the most interesting scene of this book because this creep is staring at me.' Stay? Maybe. Or maybe not. Depends on how good the coffee is. Wow, this coffee is a babe. Thanks, honey. Thanks, Humbolt. What did you always call your phallic metaphor of transport? Darling. What did you call Greta in your journal again? Oh yeah, I found your journal in a stack of my things and read it. Marie-Therese Walter. Oh, I know. You called her every-single-fucking-night after I drank myself into a sweet oblivion from pretending not to know you were in an emotional affair with a gorgeous Chinese chick named Greta. You oily fuck. You leperous eel. In a weird way, I've missed you. You were a selfish bastard but you were a time. A time and a half. I suppose you want to know a little bit about yourself aside from the infidelity and your other prolific kinky fetishes.

"You call yourself a duke because you collect taxes in the form of rent from the residents in the condos you own throughout Los Angeles. You'd always say that your property was akin to a vast land in medieval times, and that you'd be some pastiche of royalty -- your words, not mine. Who the fuck says pastiche? -- serving under a great King, one day to ascent to the throne. And that I would be the Dutchess of your holy land. You're asian, you fuck. if anything you'd be some kind of feudal lord in ancient Japan. You always did want me to wear kimonos for you. I'm Indonesian, you freak. You'd tie the obi belt loosely around my waist on purpose and it would expose my chest and shoulders and it would drive you fucking crazy. Freaky man. I mean, I kind of like that about you though. When you weren't being mean or selfish you were a damn fine duck. And shut the fuck up. I know my rent is late this month but I'll send it now that I know you're alive, duck man. How did we meet?

"The first property you ever bought you also moved into. You needed a roommate to help you with fees: HOA, property taxes, utilities, your delightful porn addiction. I applied and you took me in and poisoned the water supply and fondled me inappropriately in my sleep. You held me captive and against my will and bought me wonderful pink dresses as tribute to appease my higher senses. No, actually, you worshipped me. I was a goddess to you and you begged me to live in your Arts District sex dungeon slash loft. I deigned to grace you with my abominable presence and reluctantly kissed you one night over a steak dinner you cooked. You probably put something into my wine because before that night I just thought the worst of you. I still do.

"How long were we together? We dated for three years, married for one. We were madly in love but you were always a selfish bastard. You got it from your mom, god bless her fat soul may she rest in peace. The only thing that ever made you happy was sleep. And money. You held onto your money tighter than you held onto me and you never let me drive your penis car and that still makes me mad. But the first few hours of the morning were our happiest and most consistent memories. You used to know how to laugh, you know. And make a damned good cup of espresso. That's the only thing I miss about you, your coffee. That's all you were ever good for. That's why I fell in love with you.

"Selene. Yeah, like the Grecian goddess of the moon. What kind of name is that for an Indonesian chick? Silly stuff. What were my parents thinking. You used to say you'd chase me around the world like the sun follows the moon. You'd call yourself Helios and rapidly orbit wherever I was sitting in our condo. You went there last night? The one on Mateo and Industrial? Must have been dusty. I miss those double height ceilings and the exposed brick and wood frame. I miss that condo more than I miss you. Though, when I sent you the divorce papers and restraining order: nothing. No retort, no fight. You coward. Chasing me our whole lives turned out to be another one of your illustrious lies. It's okay, Humbort. I forgive you. You're here now. You found me without even looking. I knew you would. I forgave you a long time ago, right about the same time I started missing you and started dating other beautiful men. Well, hey, I've got some errands to run. It was nice to hear your voice, and hear you laugh. Don't ever stalk me again, Helios. It's unbecoming of a duke. Next time send a liegeman or sentry or one of your many inappropriately named concubines. Or do stalk me, please, I don't care. I'm not your mom, I won't tell you what to do, god rest her fat soul. For the record, I learned how to drive manual transmissions, so. And definitely don't drive your metallic dildo all the way to Sandie Aegyo just to see me. Please, do. Or don't. I don't know, I'm not your dead dad, that brute. I won't tell you what to do and give you a black eye regardless if you listen or not. Unless you want a black eye or conspicuously hidden bruises, freak. Listen, if you're ever in San Dimas Egg Yolk again, look for me. You won't find me though. Here. Give me your arm. There. My info, just in case you forget everything again.

"Sayonara, dookie."

Selene left me with three empty plates and five empty cups. I watched her wane away and she looked back and waved. Pulling up to the hospital the same valet greeted me with enthusiasum. I'll take great care of your car, sir. No, no - no sir, I'm no one of importance. I'm no one. Thank you, anyways, for the watch and stuff. It's not a problem, they weren't mine to begin with. My room was as I had left it, and the nurse followed me in.

"Had a feeling you'd be back."

"Just needed some air and to air things out." I handed her the paper bag I was holding. "For the kind nurse and my only visitor." She opened the bag.

"A chili cheese dog?"

"I've learned I'm not the best at buying gifts or saying thanks."

"No, this is wonderful. Now I have a lunch to eat instead of the awful food they serve here. Thank you, really." She held it close. "I'm not a nurse, by the way, just a technician."

"Well, you're an awfully wonderful tactician."

"Technician. Not tactician." She laughed and thanked me again and left to perform some terrifying tectonics.

I laid my body onto the hard bed and closed my eyes.

As the sliding door closed, the room drowned in silence. Great waterfalls of nothing sated raisined ambition. Hearing only my soft breaths and relaxed heart, the safety of hope seduced me. Submerging myself into the feeling, calm washed over like a mist pouring itself into my pores and in between the feuillitege of my fibers. It proved a powerful solvent for all my insolvencies.

Do women still like flowers? Do I like flowers?

I feel like singing. Do I know how to sing?

Isn't it rich? Aren't we a pair?

That's a Stephen Sondheim lyric.

Who's Stephen Sondheim?