Oyster

"That's when I reach for my revolver!" There's a voice screaming in the living room. We look at each other, eyes darting furtively around the room, making sure this is real, each of us is not just hearing voices out of the ether.

"That's when I reach for my revolver! That's when I reach for my revolver!" Its getting louder now. No one moves. I look at the clock. It is 1 in the morning.

"Oyster," Georgie says. "Oyster, I think a homeless man might have just wandered into your house."

"No," I said. "No, I think that's--"

"That's when I reach for my revolver!"

"That's my dad," I say.

"Does he have a gun?" Georgie asks.

I walk into the living room and there he is, sitting on the couch looking like a stranger. My entire life he has worn a beard, big, thick and black, like primeval forests, like some kind of wizard, and now here he is sitting clean-shaven in the living room, his cheeks flushed and dark red like a tomato that's begun to shrivel, wearing headphones and screaming this phrase over and over again. "That's when I reach for my revolver!" His eyes are hazy as he takes the headphones off.

"Sorry, I'm just listening to music. On my iPod." He shouts this still, even without the headphones. He takes off his coat.

"Is that for me?"

"My iPod. Mine. That I bought with my money." He points at me, his finger quivering a little at the end. He pulls it out of his pocket and points to it and then throws it on the ground. "I love music."

I walk back into the kitchen. "He's just my dad. Not a bum. It's my dad."

"Hey everybody," he says, walking in. He doesn't look at us or anything, his eyes wandering over our heads to the window behind us, an open bottle of Jim Beam in his hand. "Did everyone have a happy birthday?" He points at Georgie, hoisting the bottle over his head. "Did you have a happy birthday?"

Georgie looks at me, opening his mouth, not sure what to say.

"What about you?" He points at one of the twins. "I don't even fucking know you, kid." He swings the bottle, spilling a line of whiskey on the floor.

"There's some food, Dad. If you want it." I point to the cupcakes and macaroons on the table.

"No," he said, touching the wall. "I'm just thirsty, just really." He opens the cabinets, starts throwing tubberware on the floor, plastic cups bouncing on the counter. He pulls out the tiniest cup he can find, a teacup barely more than an inch wide. He could hold it in the palm of his hand but he doesn't. He grips the fragile handle between his big index finger and thumb, almost daintily. He tries to pour the Jim Beam into this tiny cup but both hands are shaking and moving in different directions, like two fish in an aquarium swimming circles around each other. Some whiskey dripped in the cup but more splashes into the sink. With his back to us, he holds the cup aloft and pauses for a moment, his shoulders shaking slightly. I can see something, brown liquid, dripping from his elbow, drops dribbling onto the floor and scattering on the countertop as he begins to laugh.

"Dad," I say. "Your elbow is dripping."

His shoulders shake as he keeps laughing, whiskey scattering from his elbow. He drops the tiny teacup into the sink with a clatter but it does not break. "Oh fuck," he says, gasping for breath between laughs. "You wanted an iPod for your birthday. Happy birthday. Everyone has a happy birthday." He grabbed the bottle and stumbled back into the living room. We could hear him in there, examining the furniture and the woodwork of the house, commenting on the craftsmanship and sturdiness of the wood and beams.

"Well, uh," Georgie says. The twins pull out a phone and begin to call their mom. "I should probably get going," he says.

I walk them all to the front door. There are a row of trinkets and baubles on the bookshelves that mom had left behind. She had a love of owls, but I was never sure why, and the top of the shelf is covered in them in all different sizes and colors and materials, ceramic, wicker, plastic, blown glass, all standing like a little army, a crowd of immobile owls with a silver crucifix standing behind them all. Dad, now shirtless, grabs one from the shelf and looks it over for a second. The twins stop and watch.

"Did you have a happy birthday?" he asks the owl. He cradles it in his hand as he picks up another. "What about you? Did you have a happy birthday?" He does this with each one, picking them up, looking them over and asking them, a small collection forming in his arms. He turns around to us. "Everyone had a great birthday." He smiles. He picks each owl out again from where it lay cradled in his arms and throws them against the walls, into the bookshelf, onto the couch. "Everybody had a really great birthday. Everybody!" Some shatter, the ceramic pieces scattering over the floor. Others land with a dull sound. "Everybody," he says. When his arms are empty again, he grabs the bottle and turns back to the bookshelf. "This is a good solid bookshelf," he says and starts to climb it. The top of it wobbles dangerously, we can see the sides of it bend and sway, his feet kicking books to the floor, his hands pulling his body weight upwards. The crucifix at the top falls over.

"Dad! Dad you need to come down."

He pulled himself on top and sat there, the shelf moving with his weight.

"Mr. Oster," Georgie said. "I don't think that bookshelf can support you."

"Who built this shelf?" he yelled. "Who built this fucking bookshelf? I did. There's no stronger shelf in the whole world. Its strong. These are my books." He kicked them out of their holes onto the floor, the pages fluttering. "I've read every one of these books." He lays down on top of the shelf.

"Dad, you're going to roll off that. You're going to hurt yourself."

"Why do you think they make it like this? They make so you can lay down, so you can sleep. Why do you think I built this shelf? So I had somewhere I could rest." He grabs the silver crucifix next to him, holds it over his face as though he were examining it intently, thinking it over. He lets it drop to the floor. "Strongest bookshelf in the world," he says, taking a swig from the bottle.

"Come on," I say, grabbing Georgie and the twins and pulling them towards the front door.

"Are you going to be ok?" asks Georgie.

"Probably not," I say. The twins look at me but don't say anything. Georgie opens the door and they step outside.

"Now I know why she left," I say, holding the door open, the cold air drifts into the house behind me.

Georgie claps me on the shoulder. "Happy birthday, Oyster." I close the door behind them and watch from the window as they walk away, their breath turning to silver smog in the air. At my feet is a headless ceramic owl. I turn out the lights, go to my room, and lock the door.

"The Shooting of Songbirds"

“I used to help Borges cross the street when he was blind.” The old man leaned in close to me before I noticed him standing there. His glasses framed his one good guy, the other milky and blank. “Jorge Luis Borges,” his Spanish pronunciation thick with a British accent.

“The writer?”

“Yes. I helped him cross the street.” He sounded like an English colonial in WWI, dignified in the face of death and decay. “Wonderful man, really. Spoke beautifully. I never cared much for his writing though. Myself, I didn’t get it.” He frowned.

“In Argentina?” I said, looking around, trying to see if there was anyone else at this wine and cheese event that wanted to talk to me, anyone that could help me escape the clattering dentures of this English colonial. Who was this guy?

“Yes, I lived there for quite a number of years, lovely country, before I emigrated to the U.S.” He leaned in even closer. “It was for a woman,” he whispered. “You know how it is with Latin women, you simply follow the passion.” He chuckled and leaned back, repeating the phrase ‘Latin women’ to himself.

“Not really. I don’t really know how it is,” I said, shaking my head.

“Well,” he said after an awkward moment of silence. “That’s how it is, my boy. Borges, anyway, he was the head of the Biblioteca Nacional in Buenos Aires, beautiful, lovely building, down the street from my flat. Every day he would try to cross this incredibly busy street, half-blind but still so proud, cars zipping by, to get to the Biblioteca. I would see him from the front windows and the dodger nearly got himself killed. So I started helping him. This, of course, was before he got his secretary who would help him, and before Perón fired him from the Biblioteca Nacional.”

“Evita?” I smiled weakly.

“Oh she was a spicy trollop,” he chuckled and nudge me with his elbow. “Her husband, of course, Juan Perón. He became president in, I believe it was 1946, yes, that seems about right. Borges's offense against Peron was little more than adding his signature to a pro-democracy petition. The poor fool. Peron dismissed Borges from the Biblioteca Nacional and ‘promoted’ him to the position of Buenos Aires poultry inspector.”

“A blind poultry inspector.” No one else was looking in my direction. I was stuck.

“Quite. Borges resigned of course. After the Revolución Libertadora, the military government overthrew Peron and reinstated Borges as head of the Biblioteca Nacional. Borges loved them, sang their praises for anyone to hear in that lovely speaking voice. He actually went so far as to call the generals ‘gentlemen.’”

The old man scoffed, his dead eye peering at the carpet.

“’Gentlemen’, as if he had never of the desaparecidos, as if he had no idea what was happening in the country, as if those motherfuckers weren’t kidnapping thousands of people in the night and kicking them out of bloody airplanes into the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. It was a terrifying time. ‘Gentlemen’. Disgusting.”

The old man ate a cheese cracker. He continued with his mouth full, dentures seeming to move independently of his jaw.

“By this time the poor bastard was completely blind, could not see a single thing. Politically as well, so I suppose. So he hired that secretary to shepherd him around like some dog, some seeing eye dog. I saw them from my front window for years. Later, at the age of 86, as he was dying, Borges married that poor girl.”

My friend Mindy, who had invited me to the event in the first place, was looking in my direction. I made a motion to her and turned to the old man, “It was nice meeting you, I should probably—”

“He was a lovely speaker though,” he continued, completely ignoring me, tongue scouring his mouth for any remaining cracker crumbs. “Just extraordinary. You could almost forgive him his politics when you felt his words raise the goosepimples down your arms.”

“This has been nice,” I said and started to inch away, slowly.

“Of course he lectured in Spanish but personally he spoke English, whenever I would help him cross the street, he knew I was English so he spoke it to me, and he always spoke with an Irish accent.”

I was still only a few inches away, I tried to wave Mindy over. Maybe she could save me.

“An Argentine with an Irish accent, just beautiful. But his writing? I never much cared for it myself. Didn’t get it.”

the problem is that humans are not machines, emotions are not abstractions.