At the rock garden, the roses, posies, daisies, forget-me-nots, nisturtiums, tulips, carnations, ecinacea, chrysanthemums, and rocks. He's there for the rocks. Oh sure, he stands next to the roses. Yes, he'll smell the carnations. But he runs his graceless fingers over the rough edges of the rocks, until his fingertips are as torn and throbbing as the leaves of the flowers that the infestation of ladybugs eat, until the muscles in his arms are too weak to hold up his arms to zip up his jacket in the sudden gust of wind that in its microsecond is winter in San Jose, Caly For Nigh A.

San Jose has only two seasons, really. Spring and not spring. It never gets hot enough to be not spring, never cold enough to be the beginning of spring, so it's spring for a while, and then on the Earl's birthday it is not spring, and for a second it's winter, then not spring again, and then by accident the next day forgets to be cold again after a warm one and people realize it's spring.

Last winter, riding on the train, the Earl looking at a pretty girl. Looked Swedish. Decided he'd better look at her reflection in the glass, so if she saw him looking, she'd think he was looking outside. He could see her face, her real face, in his peripheral vision. She was staring at the wall, slack jawed, lost in thoughts, thoughts of puppy dogs and cotton candy, her first period, her first kiss, her first pair of pantyhose and her first car, the time when her father came home drunk and confessed he'd cheated on her mother, several years ago, on a business trip, a complete accident, a result of too much booze and not enough tolerance from the wife dealing with the kids all by herself all day long at the supermarket juggling babies and boxes of cornflakes and catch her reflection in the shiny bits around the meat department and her face haggard and her hair in her eyes and something in there buried deep beneath the next twenty years of supporting these kids and cooking meals for that husband, something that used to ride horses and drink Pepsi out of a bottle through a straw and smoke cigarettes in the ladies room between classes at good old Ridgemont High.

Feeling so guilty, he bought the daughter a bicycle.

And now she's tired, maybe she'll go home and unwind on that guilty bike.

And while the Earl was watching her reflection, watching her think, wishing the glass was a better mirror so he could see the color of her eyes, her reflection looked at him, and smiled, and winked, and went back to being exactly like the real face was.

Amazing. The rock garden is close enough to walk back to the San Jose Fencing Team's building. Maybe he left his keys there. Maybe he lost his wallet. Maybe he can buy a bottle of coke. Or a bottle of Starbuck's Amaretto Frapuccino. The sticky thick unpleasant breath of someone who drank milk before bed but didn't brush the teeth. The heel on his right hiking shoe clicking. Something broken in there. On a day unlike today, in the middle of a parking lot, stepping on a lone lady bug, hearing it crunch, for the first time in his life ever the Earl not caring, and ever since, the clicking in his shoe. And the Earl doesn't care.

On his ears, a mix tape. Not a CD, a tape. Right when the CD revolution was happening, he found a mix tape on the ground. Walked 5 miles because he knew what the mix tape was: from a girl to a boy, the boy with a crush on the girl, the girl knowing it, not minding it, not wanting to make anything of it, but not wholly ignoring it, making him the tape, and if ever he would say But you made me a tape, she could say It’s just a tape, Vlad, and then one day he gets out of the car and kicks at the crumpled burger king wrappers (normally the car is so clean but it’s been a rough week) and the tape falls out and he doesn’t notice.

You’d think a bus goes to that Goodwill but one doesn’t, the Earl didn’t mind the walk to find one of those old Walkmans so he could listen to the tape. It’s what he’s listening to now. Earlier it was Harden My Heart by Quarterflash, and a vampire swooped at him from a darkened alley, fangs flashing, cape swishing, the rotting stink of a virgin’s blood still on his lips and tongue, those yellow eyes bereft of white like a window broken of slats and panes, the Earl stepping back, saying something in Latin, the vampire struck by a shaft of sunlight, an unholy scream, a retreat. But what screams ARE holy, the Earl wonders, walking on, shoe clicking, the next song: Not an Addict by K’s Choice.

The Earl is not insane. That was a real mummy, not a homeless guy. These are not metaphors. The pretty girl’s reflection really did change, although he has no idea what she was actually thinking about, if she had a bike, or where it came from if she did. But the vampire was real, not a pervert trying to do a sex crime, but a real vampire who would have sucked his blood, turned him into a creature of the night, or at least a creature of the darkened alley in these overwarm San Jose pseudo-Springs. The skeletons with the sword were real—he has a scar. The werewolf had been real. He didn’t know where the mix tapehad come from for sure, but it was really Quarterflash and K’s Choice on there.

The Earl is not crazy. He is not insane or unbalanced. He sees things perfectly. If he’s abnormal in any way, it’s that he accepts things as they are. It is incredibly fucking boring. Ever since he stepped on that lady bug. As Hero Origins go it’s pretty lame.

By now he’s reached the train stop next to the movie theater and the bookstore. Now he has a choice: wait for the train, or walk to the next train stop. Sometimes the train comes whiles he walking and so he has to wait at a different stop, the one next to the steak place trying to be like it’s from New York, or walk some more and wait at the one between where the Tech museum used to be and the Library.

The Earl decides to wait. Things That Make You Go Hmm by C&C Music Factory on the walkman. Sometimes he just walks instead of taking the train at all, and uses the money to pay for new double-A batteries for the walkman. These ones are fresh. A loud noise—everyone looks up. The Earl sees the zombies pounding on the glass, moaning, bits of flesh falling from them as they try to break it. Everyone else looks away, back at the street, their newspapers, the contents of the Starbucks cups filled with Amaretto Frapaccinos. The glass cracks, break, one of the zombies falls out, lands on the pavement with a dry splash. The other zombies stop moaning, sort of look at each other as if they are embarrassed. The fallen zombie gets up, sort of growlmoans towards the Earl in a half-hearted way, shuffles over to a door, opens it, walks in, closes it. The other zombies turn around and leave the broken window.

The train comes: the Earl sees three people pick a few pieces of glass out of their hair as they get on. He decides to walk after all.

Just another day in the Life of the Earl. Actually, it’s his day off.