The end of the record is when everything goes haywire. Instruments dropping off into nothing, a circuit dialog gradually muted in the expanse of 90 seconds, then returning to claim the colorblind.

Earlier, the turning of a spigot on the side of the house. On again, off again.

I didn’t care as I inched my way forward to the edge of the stage, my vision reduced to a telescopic slowness, the diffused light and silver streamers parting before me, my arm shaking from the strain of single lens reflex. I remember it well enough to know I was mostly there, like that unseasonably warm February night after two drinks at the Lakeside Bar, when Aileen Quinn hooked her slender arm into mine as we walked past Thompson Park and I knew that her patent leather go-go boots would not stay on her feet much longer. It was that kind of night. The kind that would make her grandmother frown.

She set fire to her clothes and walked through the yard naked, the calloused soles of her feet grinding dust and gravel, ashes landing like fiery black butterflies in her hair. It was a dream: The wretched cowboy dreamed of Vishnu and knew his life was a lie. Once (he said) I was beautiful. You would have pushed your hair back from your face and felt your neck flush hot as my breath found your ear.

Something turns inside her; a bitter taste forms on the sides of her tongue; she moves to the kitchen sink and fills a glass halfway, drinks down the water, then fills it full and returns to the table. Where were we? You were saying?

He finished the thing and turned it on its ear, only to find that it was a cat set afire, falling in a streak of violet from a window. That evening, she disappeared into his room and came back in a furor: You’re terrible. That poor cat. He swore it was not what he had intended to do, but it was too late. The girl with the springy blonde hair had doodled the faces of angry zapatistas all over his fiery masterpiece.

A cavernous space beneath the building, dim artificial light, splintered chairs and tarpaulins in a sacrificial heap. The seduction of the woman next door.

She lowers her anemic belongings into my arms. Dust rises over the foundation, a placid orange haze, vague decline of desire.

A body might bend into the walls, never to be seen again. I pretend not to notice the hem of her satin nightgown caught on twenty years of darkness. My nostrils burn as she unbuttons her threadbare sweater, the fabric sheens over ample hips. She says: Put this down where it will not shatter. I brush past her in the stairwell, full of ink and solvents, catching the scent of earth on her hands.

This woman wipes the film of neglect from the leaves.

She will draw a bath as I cut the vines from the north wall.

She will wrap her black hair in a towel as I lose my footing and slip.

(Someone knocks. The light recoils behind her as I cross the threshold.)

Look at him riding the bus on a Wednesday night

He eclipses the sun

As a child, he ran in circles around the swing set

He has his limits

The 5-minute and 45-second mile

The fire in his lungs

The wind driving him back around the far turn

At times he thinks it would be possible to run all day

He says: I will go home
and find an open road
and run past whitewashed barns and wheat fields
and look up at the thunder clouds
and wave to trucks as they grind along their way

He will find something simple and uncluttered

He will fall into the straightaway
with such velocity
time will curve
starlight will bend
the track and the field will accelerate through the seasons

and all the time he will remain the same

A woman of Scandinavian descent wilted in her chair, and he was overwhelmed by a rush of heat and the scent of honeysuckle. Of course he whispered an encouraging come-on into her tiny ear, and she revived at once, her face becoming flushed as she looked away.

And the show went on, and the poisoned darts flew, and the knife twisted, and the noose tightened, and the damp palms of lovers united, and a fat man sat on his hands, and at the whim of the cello we bit down upon our lips to suppress the thought of an impossible creature ambling in enormous blue shoes across the newly hedged lawns of an unfamiliar town. And then there was his voice, like a beaten bureau desk of fine craftsmanship, dutifully polished each week for half a century.

During the encore, as the audience edged forward in velvet chairs, she leaned into me and said, It’s in my car, and if not, we can go to my house. Of course I had no idea what she meant.