Brale's head was spinning, like it always did after, and despite the cold and his home's closeness he remained where he was, waiting for someone, and just the right someone, next to the video-drop in the darker part of the grocery parking lot. He'd do this three, four times a year, and never when it was warm- when it was warm, he had other ways of dealing with after. So he sometimes just stood, sometimes managed to shuffle, looking with pale glances here and there, eyeballing each dirty car that entered the lot, watching them with the accusatory eye of one who had never known such luxuries, never would.

Brale was tired, but keyed up, waiting, and finally a green camero stopped at the drop-box: the passenger door popped open with a 'clatch' and country music poured out of the car with a blonde girl- twelve, maybe thirteen, grubby, braces, her breath visible and dingy in the cold night air. Trailer park denizen. She glanced at Brale, suspiciously, but she wasn't what he was looking for. He ignored her, scanning the street for another car, they tended to arrive in clumps. Videos deposited ('One at a Time, Please', the sign read) she popped back into her seat the same way she'd gotten out and the car muffled off and forgot about Brale as easily as he forgot about it. Sure enough, another car pulled in, this one a rickety honda, blue where rust didn't show. Brale wasn't certain, but he was cold, and he was almost over the after, so he decided the honda would do. A man this time, big, but hopefully slower than Brale: he left his door open, like they always did, and failed to notice Brale at all- Good. Practiced, giddy, Brale slipped smoothly around the back of the car, making sure as he glanced through its rear window that no one else was in it- nobody there- and then he was at the front. Brale paused only the last second, nodded once when he noted that the passenger door was locked, and pushed the driver's door lock into the same position. He shut the door swiftly, but not loudly, sometimes they didn't even notice, and slamming a door could use up energy that might be needed later. This one did notice. "Hey! What the fuck-" But Brale was running, unaware of the cold now, flitting through parked cars, over the grassy median, under the fence, sprinting for home.

* * *

Brale sat in the middle of his single room, huddled amongst his books. There were a few ratty shelves: boards on cinder blocks, milk crates stacked haphazardly, all overflowing and overburdened with the text books, hard covers, paper backs, pamphlets, leaflets, fliers, and loose pages from a thousand deteriorating tomes. Brale, hunched, held one in his hands, sat on a pile of them, leaned against another stack. There were books along every wall, some in a previous, forgotten order, others carelessly cast aside after having been read, big books, thick books, old books, each and every one scoured by Brale, read over and over until they fell apart or Brale believed he'd discovered their deepest substances. The only other room in Brale's apartment was the bathroom, and it was jammed with books too, some puffed up like grotesque wasp nests under the dripping bathtub faucet. They hung from the shower curtain rod, spilled out of the cabinet that hid the sink's piping, sat stacked around the basin beneath the shattered mirror, and made shutting the door, or opening it more than it already was, impossible. Opposite the bathroom door, an apartment closet held a thousand more books, stacked up regardless of size, content, or worth. And over in the small section where there could be found the kitchen tile, Brale had still more books: books shared space with some bowls of sludge in the refrigerator, books competed for room in the cupboards with a few canned goods, books even sulked in the never used oven.

The only section of Brale's squalid quarters that didn't hold books was in one corner under the window. It stood out, almost clean, shrine-like, no books within three feet, and lying alone, therefore, in the crowd was a an old desktop, a stack of white paper, and a handful of chewed-up pens. The papers were all utterly blank.

Brale was huddled over one of his beloved volumes, his eyes sliding hungrily through the words while his stomach growled; he didn't notice. He devoured the pages as he rapidly flipped through them with filthy fingers, mewling softly and rocking back and forth. He'd read the book, three times, maybe four times before, like every one of the others. And tomorrow after work he'd go and buy more books, or take them from the library if he didn't have any money, or root them out of the university dumpsters if he was kicked out of the library again. And if he couldn't find anymore books he'd just read the ones he had, over and over and again and once more until he got it right. Brale didn't care what he read, didn't care about genre, or subject, didn't care if the page in his face was fictional or truthful, or the scantly intelligible ravings of an opinionated madman, didn't care if he began in the beginning or the middle, or even if he ever reached the end. He just read, anything, literally everything.

Finally he couldn't hold his hot eyes open any longer, and Brale slipped over and down, lying curled on a bed of books, a stack of books for a pillow, the book he'd been reading released from his grasp and lost amongst the others.

* * *

Brale dreamed of pens, pencils, word processors, notebooks, dry erase boards, sticks in sand, legal pads, fax sheets, chalk, chisel etched marble, markers, lipstick on mirrors, plastic letters, crayons, neon signs, open e-mail windows, finger marks on fogged windows, spray paint cans, picture postcards, scratches in clay- everything ran around and around and all of it was utterly blank.

* * *

At work, Brale sat beneath the offensive glow of a photography machine, taking snapshot after snapshot of document after document, paper files to be reproduced on microfiche. The office was a buzz, as always, in amongst the corners dark and floors dirty with what looked like soot despite the all-electric workplace. Each of Brale's co-worker's was a pasty ghost beneath her machine.

"You see that episode of Friends th'other day."

"The one with the bike shop in it."

"Oh my god, I saw the best movie last night."

"No, they said Monica won't be on the stand for at least."

"My mom called me again, and she said." "I think my kids are hooked on playstation. Do you know."

They sounded like a swarm of bees to Brale, their conversation too-loud static in his ears. Only the dull repetition of the papers in front of him kept him in his seat, shuffling forms and contracts and applications and manuals and receipts and billing statements. They all ignored Brale, who never spoke and never bathed and worked too slow to please the boss.

"So there I was in the middle of this rainstorm."

"Then he told me he can't see me anymore because."

"And anyone who heard him on TV last night would tell you."

"I mean come on, who was she trying."

"Doctor's orders or something like."

"But I didn't want to see that one so we went."

"I couldn't believe it, they actually charged people."

"So I decided to just stay home, and read a-"

Brale's head swung around, staring at the one who was speaking, his greasy hair covering one eye, the other eager to see what she would say next. But Brale's movement, unprecedented movement, had halted all their conversations and the only sound was the low hum of their work stations. Brale licked his lips, held his breath, waited, wanted, hoped.

"Brale! Get back to work godammit!" Brale sighed, looked quickly at his boss, and went back to shuffling. The conversation picked up, moving fast to forget the pause and to make up for lost time.

"I'm not going to let."

"We couldn't even find."

"They said never in."

"It won't last, I'll bet you."

* * *

Brale sat under the window of his apartment, close but not too close to the corner, weeping softly as he read the final pages of a favorite book. The power had been shut off again, and he sat under his window to catch the winter moonlight. He rocked back and forth, rustling his coat against the tower behind him, the higher ones having already fallen to bounce off his shoulders. The car was stolen, the television was broken, the walls were torn down, and the little boy was running away, and no one but Brale knew where he was going- but in the moment, even Brale forgot the way the book ended. He wiped his running nose with a grungy sleeve and turned the page, chest hitching with the effort to breath. Brale didn't see the last word and the dumb empty space beneath it until it was read, and at the last period he dropped the book, finally done, thank god. Another one finished. He pressed his palms against his eyes as hard as he could, pushed on them until he saw white spots, and then black spots when he opened his eyes again, phantoms swimming and dancing and disappearing. He took a deep breath, held it, looked over at the corner with the paper, and released his air in a gentle gray plume. Brale threw off his jacket and lay down at his reluctant altar.

He picked a pen- no, tossed it aside, chose another- not that one, the black one, this one, it fit his fingers so well, pressed against his knuckles and made his palm sweat. A cold piece of paper, clean, white, virgin, he positioned it on the desktop. His hands were frigid, despite the sweat in his palms, and his backed ached after only a few minutes on the floor, his chest hurt for lying on it, but he tried anyway, gritted his teeth, tensed his shoulders, touched the pen to the page.

"I,"

He wrinkled his forehead, bit his lip, tried harder.

"I am..."

Furiously he stabbed the wall with his pen, shattering it, tearing his skin, ink and blood stamped onto the paper, obscuring the scant words. Brale grabbed the pages, ripped them with his teeth, flung them behind him, getting to his feet, kicking books and throwing them at the walls, hating them, hating them all for the things they could do that he could never do, disgusted with himself for his failure and frustration. Brale lashed out at the shadows, stomped the mocking books, bounced against the wall, bruising himself because something had to give and he'd rip them, rend them, tear them to pieces, each piece a single letter and if the books wouldn't give then Brale would give, because he'd taken all he could, the words raced through his head and spun around and laughed and screamed and eluded his grasp, he tried so hard and concentrated so hard but it never worked, never would work no matter how much he read, no matter how many books he consumed with the ferocious hunger of a starving man who's seen his death in a forgotten, illiterate, blind hole, an empry apartment full of blank pages. Brale fell to his knees, exhausted, both fists clenched tight on the torn covers of two books, chest heaving, eyes stinging, arms throbbing, back sweating in the dismal and lonely apartment. He looked up at the moon and it looked back at him, shrugging with indifference as it slipped out of sight over the edge of the horizon.

Brale dropped his books, grabbed his coat, stood up, went out.