By Harry Calhoun

Lou sat down at the computer. The Key West sun had just set; the big picture window darkened and the bougainvillea's magenta dusked into purple. Nightfall was his favorite time but tonight it just added to his lack of focus.

Still, there was an article due for The Tropicana. He shook his head, turned to the screen, and pulled the essay up on the screen. The essay was about his day job:

*

And there the essay stopped. Lou could no longer see the bougainvillea in the darkness.

Like many writers, Lou wrote to find out what he was thinking, or to understand. He had reached an impasse. He didn't know what would make people react that way to such a trivial thing.

So Lou sat and thought about his old lover, Margaret.

*

Margaret was on her way home from work, chatting on her cellular.

"Oh, Lou. Yeah, he's sweet. Just not what I need right now."

She listened to the static and the female voice on the other end.

"He said we should work on it, sure. But if it's not there, it's just not there, y'know. You shouldn't have to work. It should be easy."

More crackling. Margaret smiled.

"Well, I've got my house and my job. I have friends over. This is more money than I've ever made. I'm happy."

She talked a bit longer, then put down the cellular.

She thought about Lou, smiling a little. I remember how he held me at night, like spoons we were.

She looked downward for a second as the frown briefly tugged at her lips. Then she picked up the phone for another call.

*

Lou looked at the keyboard, still deciding what and how to write about the lady and what drove her to badger him so. Maybe if he'd asked the right question. There must be more than trash pickup behind her anger. He chuckled, I hope.

Then he sighed. Maybe she was like Margaret.

Margaret's ex-husband had cheated on her for years, then left her, and she carried on as if he were still there.

In fact, she seemed to use her ex as a role model. She had latched onto his values: the big house, the circle of extended family and friends with connections, the focus on career.

With all that in the picture, Lou thought, it was no wonder he was crowded out.

You can live without love, sure, he thought. Look at that bitch who calls me every day to complain.

He smiled. Then he wrote:

Lacking tolerance for change--and we are all tried and guilty of that--she was doomed to recreate the past.

The past. He remembered the counseling sessions with his own wife and how it had still ended in divorce. And while he didn't understand that woman's vehemence over her bag of trash, he knew that it was probably based on laziness.

When we are left on our own, he wrote, we have to watch ourselves. We don't choose what's best for us. We do what we've always done or mimic what we've seen.

"Hmmph," he grunted aloud. "That's Margaret. I'm writing about Margaret."

He hit the delete key repeatedly.

I can figure Margaret, but I don't know is what makes that garbage lady tick.

And I have no control over either, he thought.

*

Eileen Crane hung up the phone, out of breath, furious. Son of a bitch, she thought. Can't even pick up trash. What's wrong with people?

Her eyes fell to today's Citizen on the table. The advertisement for a local environmental activist's group was tempting. Still, she had never been much of a radical. Clean up the Keys? Too old for that.

She thought about her poor dead mother. A sad smile crossed her face. I remember what mama would do, she thought. When something wasn't right, she'd fight it.

She remembered when her dad left. Somehow, that was a turning point in mama's life. After that, mama wouldn't tolerate incompetence. She began to rail out against everything.

You said you'd have my dry cleaning done by two o'clock. It's two thirty. I want a refund.

Now, Eileen thought, there were bigger issues. The Keys were being trashed. This place used to be so beautiful.

But she could make someone suffer for it. She picked up the phone, again ...

*

I can't believe she called back, Lou thought. She's trying to get her fifteen minutes of fame a minute at a time, at my expense.

Another night, and he still didn't know how to write the article. He didn't have the critical piece in the puzzle, and he was frustrated.

He knew that there was an alternative to Margaret's choices, to their breakup, to the caller's berating an innocent bystander.

Find new solutions, be kind, work harder.

He shook his head, again.

Damn. It seems so easy. But we keep eating the same stone.

Outside it was pitch black. The writing wasn't going well. The job sucked and he'd just argued on the phone with Leigh, the woman he was seeing now.

Lou remembered that time years ago. He'd just lost his job, his woman had left him, and nothing he wrote was selling. Then he had wrecked his car ù minor, but nothing was minor for someone with his deductible.

He remembered stopping in at the liquor store, buying the fifth of bourbon, and taking a good hard pull on it. Then laying back on the bed, feeling for a few moments all the troubles of the world draining away. Then doing it again.

He walked to the bookshelf and picked the bottle of brandy from the recess.

"One little drink," he said. "Maybe it'll help me write."

*

The computer screen glowed blue as the light touched the bougainvillea again.

The same words were on the screen. Lou was on the couch, asleep. The alarm would wake him to work at Key West Sanitation in ten minutes.

Margaret was leaving her big house for her job. Eileen Crane slept peacefully, unaware as yet that the incompetent drivers had again neglected her trash pickup.

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