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received blow jobs at an upscale Melbourne brothel called The Planet. My former neighbor was their whore: a transplanted Perth blueblood who studied Japanese at Melbourne University. A simple act, like catching a glimpse of a man across the table of a coffee bar with brown teeth, brought out fractal memories that at some future time could be pieced together authoritatively, like a geometry proof.
    I ignored the sleazy Coffee Bar patron, instead burying myself behind a literary ’zine from a neighboring table. On the back cover, some hapless soul had started listing the states: “Alab. Ariz., Dela., Calif.” I searched my blue Danish schoolbag for a pencil and started to finish them. At least this I could do. I had memorized the states when I was seven and recited them to my eight-year-old cousin, Tony, at the Ganelli Easter Sunday Dinner. Aunt Virginia took me aside and whispered, “No one likes a show-off, Rachel.” In Coffee Bar, a few centuries later, clenching my pencil, I wrote them fast, but only managed forty-seven. It didn’t matter of course, not being able to complete what had once been child’s play. But I wanted to finish my list. My mind canvassed about: I tried to imagine the states as jigsaw pieces, and I remembered the boxing glove, Michigan, and even caught myself smiling a bit.
    The tooth guy kept looking at my paper. “New Hampshire,” he said.
    “I would’ve gotten that.” I said, trying to remember the last one.
    “Are you afraid of me?”
    “I’m in a solo kind of mood, you know?”
    “Look, I noticed your body language—you seem in need ofcompany.” The weirdo offered me a cigarette. I shook my head no. In another time I’d have been sane and moved away. But for some reason—okay loneliness—I gave in. I half smiled.
    “You down?” he asked, swinging his chair around to my side of the table.
    “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity,” I said. The acid New York reply to everything, even when it’s thirty-five degrees outside.
    “Want coffee and a slice of blueberry pie? On me. My life story sold today for $20,000.”
    “And so who are you?” I asked, more than somewhat obnoxiously, as the sleazoid flagged the waitress and ordered.
    “A fading icon.” He dragged a new cigarette. “You might not’ve even heard of me.”
    “Oh c’mon, don’t taunt like that. Who are you?”
    “Who are you?”
    “A woman at a coffee shop asking you a question—”
    “Danny Death,” the man said. Danny Death? One of the founding fathers of punk rock. Danny Death, damn. We got our food and got to talking.
    “I read that article about you in the seventies-nostalgia issue of
Rolling Stone
. The reporter didn’t like you much.” Nastiness is my adorable side effect to nervousness. I couldn’t believe I said that.
    “You’re a sweetheart,” Danny said with exaggerated anger, forking his pie.
    “I don’t know what to say to you—that I once carved a line from one of your songs into my desk during algebra? Sounds too much like fawning.”
    “Which line?”
    “‘Man is in transit between brute and God.’”
    “Stole that from Norman Mailer.
The Naked and the Dead
.”
    “Oh. Well, you stole it well.” I couldn’t look him in the face. I didn’t want him to gather how pathetic I was, sitting there stuck in a depressed late-twenties state, like caught fabric.
    “Why don’t you tell me what has you in your obvious rut?” he asked.
    “Long or the short version?”
    “Short will do. I’m a famous guy.”
    “A celebrity might be pushing it,” I said, with an unsuccessful straight face.
    “Fuck you.” I knew by Danny’s steady glare that he actually wanted to know.
    “Let’s see. I fled my boring job and my oh-so-perfect fiancé to live in Australia. While there I lived with three musicians, one of whom got killed by the mob during my new quasi-boyfriend’s video shoot. My mother, with whom I have poor communication, lured me back to my family apartment with the