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  The woman is invested in her local community and feels like a part of it. She is a part of it. She is known around town as someone who is part of the community. She has always wanted to know what was going on, who was doing what and where they were doing it and who it was inconveniencing. She volunteers. She contributes.

  The man, however, is not actually reading. The newspaper is open in front of him, but he is not reading it.

  The man says, I suppose one implies something and the other doesn’t.

  The woman says, What does?

  The man says, Forgetting and failing to realize. Oblivion, or rather, obliviousness. Obsolescence, if you will.

  The woman says, I won’t, thank you.

  The man says, One implies forethought, intention, or something to that effect. To forget something is to have once remembered it. To have once concentrated, considered…at least, you take note of it. You walk down the street and look at a tree. Maybe you don’t study the tree or examine the tree, you don’t consider the make or model or how old the tree is, but you notice the tree. You look at the tree and you register a tree. The rest of the world falls away in that moment. Failing to realize something is ignorance or a kind of ignorance. It’s walking past the tree and not even seeing it. It’s not being aware of what is going on around you. This is what I mean by oblivion. I think this is right.

  The woman says, Genus.

  The man says, I wouldn’t call it genius, per se, but it’s close.

  The woman says, There is nothing close to genius. Genius is absolute, like…pregnancy. It’s like death. The rest of the world falls away when you die, not when you look at a tree. I have never been so enthralled with a tree that I…

  She loses her place in the conversation and then regains it. This takes maybe four or five seconds.

  The man has learned to be patient whenever these displacements occur. Years ago he would try reminding her of what it is they were discussing, where he thought she was going, what she was about to say or trying to say. He learned to stop doing this after she cursed at him during a dinner party. She said, Don’t ever fucking tell me what I’m about to say, you presumptuous fuck.

  Maybe she didn’t actually say this at the dinner party, but this is how he remembers it.

  What she probably said at the dinner party was, Excuse me?

  It was how she said it and where it was said and who got to hear it and what they might think.

  The woman continues, I don’t think anyone else has, either. Maybe dendrophiles, if there is such a thing. I’m sure there is. I read yesterday that a man was caught having sex with his car. It was in the newspaper. Not in his car, but with his car. Do you understand what I’m telling you? He was having relations with an automobile. Apparently it had been going on for years, this affair with a car. Of course, they didn’t disclose the gentleman’s name. Or the car’s, for that matter. I can’t remember what kind…it’s all the same. This is the world we live in now. Men fuck cars and they report this in the newspaper. We deem it newsworthy.

  While the woman did read this in the newspaper, it is probably important to note that it wasn’t yesterday’s newspaper, but rather last Sunday’s edition.

  However, it is possible she read this in a magazine at the doctor’s office. Yesterday the woman went to the doctor. She experiences pain in her head and jaw, one whole side of it. She’s felt this pain for years. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her and neither do the doctors.

  Otherwise, she overheard someone saying this about the man and his car while at the doctor’s office or any of the myriad public places she’s been this past week.

  It’s also possible she saw this on television. There might have been some kind of human freak show on one of the so-called learning or discovery channels having to do with aberrant behavior and sexuality.

  Paraphilia describes the experience of intense sexual arousal to highly atypical objects, situations, or individuals. Examples include sexual interests that can motivate one into committing sexual offences—such as pedophilia, zoophilia, sexual sadism, and exhibitionism—but also include many harmless sexual interests, such as transvestism. There is no consensus for any precise border between unusual personal sexual tastes and paraphilic ones, and multiple, overlapping definitions exist. There is debate over which, if any, of the paraphilias should be listed in diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases.

  It is not known how many different kinds of paraphilias exist; one source lists as many as 549 paraphilias.

  Both trees and automobiles are on this list.

  The man says, It is our collective concern.

  This comment, that it is our collective concern, is not altogether true. The man sometimes feigns concern. The man sometimes pretends to care about certain issues of the day, what goes on in the neighborhood, injustices both here and abroad, but the truth is he doesn’t care. He knows he is supposed to care, but he doesn’t. He has never written a letter, signed a petition, or protested anything. He has never marched. He has never been arrested.

  He has never done anything on anyone’s behalf.

  Sometimes the woman invites him along on one of her community endeavors. She tells him that it’s good to help others. She mentions altruism and karma.

  The man says, I’d like to help.

  The woman looks at him. He looks back. They continue looking at each other like this for five minutes or days or years. Then she walks away. He calls out to her, says, Have fun or Be careful or Everyone appreciates this.

  The man would like for everything in the world to be just and fair, for everyone to be equal.

  He thinks most of the efforts to accomplish these things are futile. He thinks the people who lead the charge are fools, as are the people who follow.

  He calls them bangers.

  He says this to his one friend, the one who is coming over later. He says, The bangers were out in full force today.

  He says, One could hear the drums from across the street, from across the city proper, from across the universe divide.

  His one friend agrees with him whenever he goes on like this. Later he is coming over to drink and maybe watch the baseball game. It’s possible he will stay for dinner.

  This friend chews on toothpicks, carries them around in a case.

  This friend used to smoke cigarettes, but quit years ago.

  The man can’t remember if the friend chewed on toothpicks at the same time he was smoking cigarettes. As such, he’s not sure if the toothpicks serve as some kind of oral substitute.

  The man told the woman that his friend might come over to drink and maybe watch the baseball game. He said it was possible he might stay for dinner.

  He wasn’t sure if this was a good idea.

  He wasn’t sure if having the friend over was a good idea and he wasn’t sure that telling his wife the friend was coming over was a good idea, either.

  He said this yesterday while she was on her way to march for pedestrian safety.

  Last week two children, a brother and sister, were run over and killed by a reckless driver. The children were walking on the sidewalk when a truck jumped the curb and pinned them against the side of a building. This happened in front of their mother, who was busy tying the shoelace of another child. To the woman this is unimaginable, every part of it.

  The woman cannot imagine conceiving, carrying to term, bearing and then rearing a child, let alone more than one, then watching this child or these children get killed by a truck in the middle of the day.

  The march lasted two hours and probably did no good at all.

  She told him she didn’t think it was a good idea, the friend coming over for dinner.

  She told him next time he should think.

  Sometimes the man doesn’t think. The man knows this about himself and considers it a problem.

  Sometimes the man and woman agree with each other.

  The
man doesn’t think of his wife as a banger. He likes that she is a good woman, that she has a big heart.

  He doesn’t think the woman knows all of this about him, but she does. The woman knows almost everything about him.

  The man has never tried transvestism, which is something she probably knows.

  He is sure that trying on one of his mother’s skirts when he was a teenager doesn’t qualify.

  He’s never applied makeup in his life, nor has he worn women’s jewelry or shoes or even tried these on for size. Nor has he ever been tempted to do so.

  He wanted to see how he looked and what it felt like to wear a skirt, which is the beginning and end of it.

  He wishes his was a culture that allowed men to wear kilts or tunics.

  The woman says, Surely someone is giving it to a tree right now. Somewhere in a thick forest with no one around to help, a dendrophile is putting the wood to an unsuspecting sycamore. He is fondling leaves, caressing bark, whispering sweet nothings. Maybe this has been going on for years. Maybe this is common knowledge. All of this car and tree-fucking.

  The man says, We’d have heard something.

  The woman says, I don’t know if that’s true.

  The man says, We’d have seen something in the papers.

  The woman says, This sort of thing has always gone unreported.

  The woman is right about this, about this sort of thing going unreported in the past. But it’s no longer the case. Now everything is reported. There are no secrets anymore, no filters.

  Both of them know this, but don’t want to discuss it because it saddens them.

  The woman says, Poplars, redwoods, compacts, sedans, a shade tree, a fall-down tree. Someone somewhere is mounting a fall-down tree as we speak. An innocent little fall-down tree, minding its own fall-down business, is being violated right this very minute. And it doesn’t bother me at all. Not in the slightest. This is what I’m telling you. I accept this. And I said genus before, not genius. Genus of trees, like…

  The man says, I heard you the first time. It’s all the same.

  The woman says, It is all the same.

  It seems as if they agree on this, that it is all the same, that everything is the same, but it’s not clear if they do actually agree with each other about the sameness of everything. Sometimes it’s easier if they agree with each other during a particular conversation and save up their disagreements for a better time.

  Everything is the same, yes, and at the same time different. It is the same with time. They both know this.

  The principals met at a mutual friend’s going away party.

  It is probably important to note this, to trace their history. People like to know how things begin, how they got started. People want to know the whole story.

  Perhaps it is unnecessary, the whole story, as it won’t explain everything, won’t be at all satisfactory, in the end. But not everything needs explanation, not everything need be satisfactory.

  If it is not important to trace their history in the grand scheme and big picture, then it is something to do. It is a way to pass the time.

  This is what life comes down to, if it comes down to anything.

  People have to pass the time the same way they pass the breakfast pastry, the Op-Ed section.

  In today’s Op-Ed section there’s a piece that says there is no grand scheme, no big picture.

  Today this qualifies as news.

  The friend was going away soon, the next day, in the morning. It doesn’t matter where the friend was going. The friend was going away from the man and woman and the place where they all lived. She had planned on returning, though, on picking up her life where she was hoping to leave it, maybe in a year or so. It’s not clear how this affected the feeling of her going away. She was, indeed, going somewhere else, someplace definitive, someplace overseas. The man thought about this, thought about the notion of going away. Other people go away, people in relation to you, but you yourself never go away, you go somewhere else. The man may’ve said this at the going away party. He may’ve said this while everyone was drinking and enjoying themselves. The man was likewise drinking and enjoying himself but this is how he does such things. Not everyone responds to his philosophical inquiries, as they often seem rhetorical. Only once in a while will someone contribute to conversations he starts like this. On this night, however, the woman agreed with him and they talked for a couple of hours, discussing matters both great and small.

  After this going away party, the man and woman retreated to separate corners. A week went by where nothing in the world happened. Then the woman went to the doctor for a minor procedure. She was to have something removed. It was nothing to worry about. The whole thing would take an hour, maybe two. Better to take care of it now. She’d get released the same day. It was outpatient, local anesthesia, didn’t even need anyone to drive her there or back. She was ambulatory.

  Then there were complications, but nothing too complicated. She had to have another procedure. Again nothing to worry about. This time they got it all. This time she had her sister drive her both there and back. She stayed that night with the sister. They tried to watch a movie together, but the woman fell asleep. It was the medication.

  Before long, she was back to her normal routine.

  This is when the man called and they made plans.

  The man says, What the hell is a fall-down tree?

  The woman says, I have no idea.

  The man says, You made it up.

  The woman says, I think I heard it in a song once. She sings, You gotta meet me by the fall-down tree. I think that’s right. It might be a tree that has fallen down.

  The man says, Do trees fall down?

  The woman says, That’s a good question. I should think anything alive and upright can fall down.

  The man says, I would think most trees are felled.

  The woman says, By tree-fuckers.

  They go back to reading. They take sips of coffee. The man takes a bite out of a breakfast pastry, the flakes of which crumble all over the plate and onto the table. The man uses his right hand to sweep the flakes over to the side of the table and then off of it and into his left hand. He brushes his hands together so that the flakes fall directly onto the plate.

  He says, I’d bet Joyce Kilmer was a tree-fucker. I bet he had a tree in every port. She says, Joyce Kilmer was definitely a tree-fucker, a tree-fucking dendrophile.

  He says, How does one…(he then makes a fist and mimes a punching motion)…a car?

  She says, I don’t want to think about it.

  He says, Would it be the tailpipe?

  She says, Please.

  He says, The car couldn’t be running. She says, I said please.

  He says, This is something that’s never occurred to me.

  This is true. The man has never considered having sex with an automobile. He has imagined having sex with many people, including friends and coworkers, strangers and acquaintances, aunts and cousins, cripples and dwarfs. He has imagined sex with a transsexual, a woman who was once a man, but never the other way around. He thinks he might enjoy sex with a woman who was once a man. He is curious. He has never been curious about having sex with a man who was once a woman, nor has he ever imagined having sex with a man at all, though it might depend upon what one considers sex. The man has imagined performing certain acts or having certain acts performed on him, but that is the entirety of what he has imagined. He has heard about men having sex with animals but he has never imagined having sex with an animal. He doesn’t think he’d be able to perform sex with an animal. Yet he doesn’t pass judgment on those who have. He cannot imagine what it might be like to have a sheep, for instance, tempt one into sexual expression. He cannot imagine how long without human company one would have to go for a sheep to arouse this sort of interest. Still, if he had to have sex with an animal, if someone put a gun to his head, he thinks he’d choose a dolphin. They seem clean and of good temperament.

  The plans
included dinner and perhaps a drink after dinner. The man knew of a good place for a nightcap. It was quiet and out of the way. They could talk. It would be romantic.

  Almost all dolphins are aggressive toward each other, and the older a male dolphin is, the more likely his body is covered with bite scars. Male dolphins engage in these aggressive acts apparently for the same reasons as humans: disputes between companions and competition for females. Acts of aggression can become so intense that targeted dolphins sometimes go into exile after losing a fight.

  Male bottlenose dolphins have been known to engage in infanticide. Dolphins have also been known to kill porpoises for reasons that are not fully understood, as porpoises generally do not share the same diet as dolphins and are therefore not competitors for food.

  Dolphin copulation happens belly to belly; though many species engage in lengthy foreplay, the actual act is usually brief, but may be repeated several times within a short span. They usually become sexually active at a young age, even before reaching sexual maturity. The age of sexual maturity varies by species and gender. Dolphins are known to display non-reproductive sexual behavior, engaging in masturbation, stimulation of the genital area of other individuals using the rostrum or flippers, and homosexual contact. Various species of dolphin have been known to engage in sexual behavior up to and including copulation with dolphins of other species. Sexual encounters may be violent, with male dolphins sometimes showing aggressive behavior toward both females and other males. Male dolphins may also work together and attempt to herd females in estrus, keeping the females close by means of both physical aggression and intimidation, to increase their chances of reproductive success.

  Dolphins go back about ten million years, according to the fossil record. Occasionally, dolphins behave sexually toward other animals, including humans.

  The man doesn’t know all of this about dolphins, but he suspects most of it.

  That week had the woman at the gym every morning, running on a treadmill. She was eager to regain her strength after the two procedures.