It's the unknown of the unknown.   It's the unknown of the nuclear, the unknown of the exposed metal in a stripped wire or the unknown of an electrical outlet or a stray dog.   There's unknown in the embarrassed smile of a singer just booed off stage or a toddler who has fallen.   The unknown sound of a low-flying helicopter at night or the unknown form of a small bat flying through a city park; both can be enchanting and dangerous.     The mysterious potential of "yes" starts every relationship with a flash and then all the electric possibilities turn into ambient realities and the unknown is now another unknown.   The "yes" is somewhere else - always somewhere else - always somewhere you haven't been.   There's the unknown of all the books and movies you will never get to read and see before you die; the countries you will never visit.   The unknown after the first sentence of a book and before the last - that's the unknown I want.   What is giving birth to what between those two sentences and what rough trail gets motored through that leads the story from moment one to moment twenty. Perhaps there are eight-thousand moments and perhaps there are eight million or trillion.   What lies in the middle is unknown until it is read and known.   Or maybe what lies in the middle is never written at all and remains for ever unknown.

Audrey Ruiz

            Only sluts kissed in bathtubs.   Audrey knew this much and the rumor that Stella Anderson had taken a bath with Andrew Lasko in the eleventh grade confirmed it for her.   Nobody was a bigger slut than Stella.   Audrey used this rumor as a map to guide her through her own life.   For the remaining year of high school, this meant wanting to kiss many boys but actually kissing only one or two.

-fourteen years pass-

            Audrey walked away from the bar to the bridge without telling a soul.   She knew she wasn't being dramatic when she thought to herself that no one would notice she was gone until it was time to go home.   Without guessing where it was or even knowing if it was there in the first place, Audrey found a small walkway on the bridge and began the haul out of Manhattan and back to Brooklyn.   She was headed toward Williamsburg now; a neighborhood she neither lived in nor knew how to get out of.  

Andrew Lasko

            At the school he had a new extended family.   It was one of those alternative schools where wealthy left leaning parents sometimes send their children.   For Andrew it was a place where he finally found other ten-year-olds like him.   For the first time Andrew met kids who had the same basic questions on their minds.   The biggest one for Andrew being, "what age will I be when my parents realize I'm a complete and total fraud."   Even as a ten-year-old he knew this was something he really shouldn't be worrying about for a while.

-eight years pass-

             Julia smiled at him in a way he had never seen before.   It was a moment between the two of them where she recognized that he was her son and he recognized that she was his mother.   There was a history of eighteen years and neither of them could've imagined that it would've brought them here.   Julia closed her eyes and thought briefly that an ambulance might arrive in time.   Andrew wiped his mother's hair out of her eyes and looked around the small and dirty Coney Island apartment.   He waited for the sounds of sirens.     Outside, it was cold and quiet.

Julia Greene

            Her father owned a house on the bay in Miami.   While Julia remembered this house as a far away place owned by a man she never really knew, she also remembered the dark color of the bay just past the sunny aqua of the pool.   It was her earliest memory.   She remembered the faded colors of Florida.   She learned how to swim in that pool and could remember dog paddling up to the ladder.   Her father would spend the afternoon under the umbrella at the white outdoor table.   He'd read the paper and keep a cautious eye on Julia as her nanny played with her.

-twenty-five years-

            Bruce had promised to be there for the birth but labor began a week early and he was stuck in Paris until they de-iced their planes.   Julia's oldest friend, Michelle drove down from Connecticut and just barely made it in time.   It was a quick morning of labor - only three hours.   Julia became a lot more emotional than she had planned.   This was what she had been waiting for and it was better than she could have predicted.   Michelle sat with her in the bed while she looked at this new little guy who was all hers.   Bruce and Julia had planned everything for him and for the first time in her life she knew that it was going to go according to the laws she designed.   Michelle grabbed the baby's finger, "I wonder," she said looking from the baby to Julia, "what he's going to be?"

Michelle Owen

            She beat up guys.   That's how she got the nickname "the terminator."   She was thirteen years old and daydreamed about running faster than the fastest boy in her class.   She dreamed about it so much that when Peter, the one kid in class she wanted to kiss, kicked her in the ass, Michelle turned around and punched him in the gut.   She tackled him to the ground before the gym teacher pulled her off.   It had been a crossroads for her anyway.   Sitting on top of Peter who moaned in pain, Michelle couldn't decide if she wanted to strangle or tickle him.   That night, after being sent home for the day, Michelle thought about Peter for hours.   She thought about the competitive way he behaved during recess.   She thought about the way he cursed at everyone who gave him a hard time.   Mostly though, she thought about the dimple on his left cheek.   She thought about that all night long.

-fifty years-

            The restaurant was closed for the night but Michelle didn't want to leave it.   She didn't want to go home tonight.   She was restless again.   She looked out the window.   It was covered in late-February frost.   She watched a young woman bundled in clothes rush past.   The woman was maybe twenty-five.   Michelle looked down at her own hands.   These were not her hands.   She smiled though because again she smelled basil and parmesan and it reminded her of dating and getting silly and drunk in small Italian restaurants in the East Village.   She smiled and gathered her coat in her arms.   She was glad she could still remember these things and feel the things she felt thirty years earlier.   She left the restaurant but it was bittersweet.