In Springdale Town by Robert Freeman Wexler Page A

adventures would become my first book.
    ~
    This feels stupid and clumsy-worded; it’s hard to stain the page with my own dialogue. Also, I could tell that I had lost her interest. It’s one of those things that’s hard to describe. Eyes don’t really glaze over, for example. But if you have any kind of sensitivity (if you’re not someone who talks and talks regardless of whether the receiver of your words cares to hear them), you can tell when someone isn’t interested. Words become harder to launch into the space between you and the other person. I often feel like my voice is failing, fading.
    Hoping that I wouldn’t sound desperate, I said I would like to see her studio. I should add, here, that part of my reason for leaving New York involved the end of a relationship, an end that hurt a good bit less at this point than it had six months previously but still hampered my ability to speak to women I might be attracted to.
    Regina said, sure, sometime, yeah, but she had to go to her class now. Did that mean I should ask for her phone number, try to set up a time I could see her work...see her again...but did I want to? She was a person, not a character in a television show. Muddled, I looked down at my coffee cup, and when I glanced up, she had vanished.
    I flung my chair back and stood. Visible through the window no longer blocked by her body, the opposite side of the street...buildings gone...now all I saw were fields and trees. The loud group had also disappeared. The rooster remained. I picked it up. Walked to the door. Which stuck, then popped like the release of a pressurized container.
    The outside air prickled my throat. No one else was on the sidewalk. I ducked in and out of empty shops, working my way down the street. Sunlight was fading from that winter-grey haze of sky that defined New England–I never got used to the winter sky there. In comparison, Ohio feels like the south. But...my car! It was the other way. I turned around. I didn’t hurry, but I wanted to be closer to it.
    When I was maybe a block from where I had parked, I sensed movement behind me. I eased toward the building. Turned to look. Two people. One tall and heavy, one smaller. Blue uniforms. I didn’t think they had seen me. Walking, getting closer. I held myself still. The larger one was male, the other female. They glanced into each shop they passed but didn’t go in. I needed them to go in. How else could I move, reach my car? But what was wrong with letting them see me? I hadn’t broken any laws. The rooster was still in my hand. True, it hadn’t been mine to take; grabbing it had been a reflex, retaining it an act of...desperation? I moved, not quickly. I didn’t look at them.
    No more than three steps later, voices called out for me to stop. I took another step, looking back as I moved...a beefsteak hand gripped my elbow. How did they reach me so quickly? The man-cop was immense; his companion wasn’t, but she blocked my path. She looked up into my eyes. Her gaze stopped me as much as the man’s grip.
    ~
    Long ago, I had an unpleasant experience at school. In my arithmetic class, fifth grade, I think. There were three fifth grade classrooms. Each class spent most of its time in its main classroom, but split into mixed groups for English and arithmetic, based on skill level. These classes might be in your own room or in one of the other rooms with that room’s teacher.
    This particular day, we were supposed to be doing long division. I couldn’t find my pencil. I accused the person next to me of taking it. I think it was a girl. She might have been teasing me earlier. I remember a girl who stabbed my finger with a pencil. Maybe it was that girl. The teacher wanted to know what I was doing, wanted me to get to work on the assignment. I said I couldn’t, because I couldn’t find my pencil. She said: I have a pencil . That has to be what she said. But I heard it as: I have your pencil . How did the teacher get my pencil? My