Settlement

The Fourth of July

Last night a brawl in the street. 

A man walks into a steakhouse drinking a forty, a drunk whore tottering on his arm. 

A few minutes later he flies out the front door, rolls through a flowerbed, pinwheeling into traffic. A minivan stops short. 

The restaurant empties onto the sidewalk. Line cooks and chefs. Bartenders. 

The man is wailing in the street. Calling out. Crying. 

The cooks fall on him, stomping, shredding his clothes. The whore is screaming. Women take pictures with mobile smartphones. 

In several seconds nineteen police arrive. Lead and kevlar. The man tries to tell them his story but his mouth is full of mulch. He spits, blood swinging from his lips. He has to tell them his story.

The whore is still screaming. A female police slaps her and she sits down. The Sergeant says alright. That’s enough now. Disperse. Move along. 

The crowd disperses. Moves along. People begin to talk about that movie where robots are hiding on the moon. Where they have been hiding the whole time. Where they have been among us. Waiting. Robots in disguise. 

The man is showing the police his clothing. How it is torn. How everyone is against him. 

People begin to discuss how the new girl in the movie about robots on the moon is more attractive than the old girl who called the director a Nazi and was prohibited from being in the movie about robots on the moon. 

The man is trying to tell the police where he lives. The police are uninterested. The police are bored. They turn away. 

The man begs anyone to listen, anyone to hear how he has been wronged. 

No one cares. The movie is starting soon. 

On a telephone pole a laminated flyer announces a missing myopic chihuahua dog.

Jack Jack is lost. Jack Jack is blind. Jack Jack needs his medication.

Please help. 

Please. 

Up and down the avenue girls are dressed for a night out. Heels and skirts. Bodies already failing at twenty three. 

Later most of them will be drunk, covered in sick, rinsed in mascara and tears, looking for a lost friend.

Stacy. O God where’s Stacy?

These girls. Waking up shaking with shame next to strange men, their bodies violated, sobbing with a therapist, gaining more weight, marrying men they don’t love.

Children. Debt. Valium. 

Rest easy. The movie is starting soon.

When you put on the glasses it’s like you’re really there.  

Robots hiding on the moon. Buried in the lunar dust for decades. They came from above. They came from a portal.

Rest easy. 

Chicago is burning.

Jack Jack is still lost.

One whore is as good as another.