The Corduroy Mtn. Punches Daniel Casebeer An office building is being evacuated; a crowd of professionals is wrapped, or perhaps coiled, around the street; they are craning their necks but there is nothing to see; the building looks the same as it always does, sixty stories of floor-to-ceiling glass that may or may not resemble Corey Hart; no one knows why the building was evacuated; rumors circulate; a pipe bomb was discovered in one of the copy machines; Punches is holding the shipping department hostage with a putty knife; Punches?; the one with the funny teeth?; no, Punches, the one with the crooked fingers; I heard that his wife left him; I heard that he left his wife; there is a young woman in the crowd; her name is Michelle or perhaps Dana, and she is holding a white coffee mug from the Blue Spot (note: check to see if the Blue Spot sells coffee mugs, and, if so, if any of them are white); instead of staring at the building, however, Michelle or perhaps Dana is looking at a homeless man who is leaning against a wall beside a hotdog stand on the opposite side of the street; the man's name is Aaron or Shamus (Seamus) or Molly Ð at any rate, something Scottish, or perhaps Irish, it's difficult to tell from across the street Ð and he is not really homeless; he is, however, strikingly beautiful; his eyes are blue (the color of a robin's egg, not one that has fallen from the nest; rather, one that is still nestled between colorful pieces of string) and his hair is brown; there is nothing special about the color of his hair, but it falls across his eyes in such a way that he never has to buy his own drinks at the bar; regardless, he is very handsome, but this is not why Michelle or perhaps Dana (let's call her Blair) is staring at him rather than up at her office building, which may or may not have a pipe bomb in one of its copy machines; Blair is staring at him because he doesn't have any legs; he is playing a song that she doesn't recognize on a blue guitar (you and I know "Caring is Creepy" when we hear it), and people drop money into his guitar case / without noticing his deformity. previous | next Added to The Corduroy Mtn. on November the third in the year two thousand and eight.