Sitting in a booth, beneath the dim light shining through the clear plastic diner-crystal of the cheap hanging chandelier, he blankly stared down at his food as his beautiful auburn haired wife spoke.

"-and the dog. We need to do something about Cinnamon," she said, as if the dog was broken.

He examined the pile of fries with a snow cap of ketchup running down the sides like lava.

Who had named the dog Cinnamon?...not him, not the kids, but his wife named that golden retriever for the color of its cinnamon coat. People seemed to like naming dogs Cinnamon or Muffin or Snoopy, as a kind of witless counter-balance to themselves; they'd walk around the world acting all stolid and sterile, saying hello, how are you and has the stubbly man in the trench coat caught up to you yet? They don't wear the white gloves, because they don't actually need to touch anything, but their big Muffins or Snoopys seemed to just flop around, like happy alter-egos, making sure that the mans feet smelled OK, or knowing to bark at those shifty people that didn't make you feel quite right.

Snoopy!! What was the deal with Snoopy's inane fixation with cookies! Watching Snoopy shackled and dragged into to Charles Schultz's approaching senility was depressing! The fake ketchup being poured into Heinz ketchup bottles at 4:45 in the morning was depressing...

SWAT!!! He missed the SWAT slapping across a single frame when the neighbors cat struck, unseen by the upside-down and bewildered beagle, who was recovering from the hit, over in the next frame or when Charlie Brown finally took a large bight out of the kite eating tree and becoming a fugitive from the Arbor Day Police.

He didn't even really like dogs. He liked Calvin and Hobs though; He would slowly sift through the morning paper, reading beyond the stories about the election and the Concentration Camps, all the way through to the editorials and the columnists that he pretended to base his reason for not having the Times delivered to his doorstep, over Newsday, to just almost allow a lingering glance through his accountants reading glasses, just quick enough to almost comprehend Calvin's views on life. And if he had time after, with the paper flat on the kitchen table lying next to the light brown milk and soggy crumb remnants of Count Chocula and if his wife happened to be in the next room, he'd read the caption beneath The Farside and the drawing of some demented man with crooked teeth or a bear holding a shotgun.

He watched the younger son bight into his Cowboy Steer Burger, in a way that might have been thought of as cute.

But he wanted his cat again. He remembered his small gray cat who had slept on his bed from sixth grade to his first year of grad school; She would settle herself on his comforter, in a crevice between his legs. As he moved, which he did often, she would just tumble awake, reorient, making small footprints on his back and resettle herself in some other depression on the comforter. But now he had his wife sleeping next to him, kids in front of the TV and a dog that caught frisbees at the beach, named Cinnamon.

"Do you think your parents would take him?"

He singled out a long fry, half covered in ketchup.

"No,... my mom hates dogs." He lifted the fry, holding it between his thumb and pointer fingertips, watching it. "I hate dogs too," he said to the fry.

The two boys stopped eating, looked across the table at each other and looked up at their dad.

"So what should we do with the dog," she drove on, "we can't take him to Disney World with us."

"Yeah!," exclaimed the older boy. "Cinnamon's going to Disney World.. Cinnamon's going to Disney World!"

"Well Bill," she said, while ignoring and also quieting the older boy, mirroring the calming authority of Bill's own mother.

Bill decided to eat his fry, chewing. "We can eat him," he calmly stated, with his mouth full and both boys began laughing at their fathers joke like two little rodents in two little white American boys bodies, learning to speak--two little scruffy men behaving like rodent-boys in costume--like baby-faced Finster, shaving his face in Bugs Bunny's Bathroom--like two little rodent-men eying the bag full of money on the refrigerator--his bag full of money! He lifted and bit into his greasy hamburger--chewing...

The waitress had carefully set the bacon-cheeseburger down in front of him, asking, through a lingering smile and a flicker of eye-contact, if his was the bacon cheeseburger and he said yes, as if absolving her from any guilt. That's when he saw it, the waitress and his wife's eyes meet.

"And yours is the turkey club." The waitress smiled and his wife nodded as if there has been some sort of cosmic understanding, between the two, like doctors conferring quietly over the head of a skittish patient.

But not only the two of them, the others, the others had always been hinting at this understanding like an intricate web being spun around him; his mother and dad, his boss, and children in hockey masks, car dealers and real-estate agents, old girlfriends and new ones, supermarket checkouts and trucks keeping pace in front of him on the expressway; they always seem to be working to somehow keep him on some anti-Zen path, somehow beating him down whenever he seemed to grasp a shard of the way things really were.

He had noticed the waitresses tight calves and beginnings of her thighs as she slowly stepped away...

...His teeth ground on something small and knotty inside the meat and he began to feel sick.

"Bill?," his wife inquired as he began to gag.

"Excuse me," he said running past the approaching Busboy to the men's room.

He spat his bight of bacon-cheeseburger into the plastic garbage can full of crumpled and wet white hand towels and drank a cool draught of water from the tap. He spit it out and rubbed water on his face: It appeared pale and stubbly in the mirror. His hands held the porcelain of the white sink, as he studied his face more closely. It didn't look like his anymore, not at all like him. Somehow, he had gotten through Wastow college, two years of grad school and nine years of work without ever really noticing any significant change; like an oak taking root and growing thirty feet, in front of his house and he waking up, one Sunday to get the paper on his porch, to see the tree towering, large and green-leafy, while it happily smiled down at him from far above like a salad. He began to feel sick again, running to the stall. The door swung closed behind him and his vomit splashed in the toilet. He kneeled lower on the tile bathroom floor, braced his hands on the sides of the bowl and threw up more violently this time. He breathed in three frantic quick breaths, taking in the stale smell of Urine and threw up again.

He stopped, coughing and tried to rest, to get a grip. He braced himself, slowly metering his breaths as if he was about to give birth. Nothing came. He pondered whether to get up and clean himself. He wished for his toothbrush- The very pit of his stomach tensed, his whole body convulsed and he threw up again.

He intentionally remained tense this time, trying not to be lulled by the impending calm. He waited for something like an after-shock or some killing blow, but none came. He spit a string of thick saliva into the bowl and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His kneeling legs slowly gave way to plant his body on the floor. Leaning his back against the white tiled wall, he placed his hand over that one single point of aching concentrated pain in the middle of his stomach. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, taking refuge in the cold hard blackness.

Someone's feet clonked waiting outside the men's room, but choose another door. The florescent lights hummed soft music in his ears.

Eyes slowly opening, he caught slight movement far to the right of his perception and his head lowered and turned to find a bug, a roach. It was beginning to climb the wall. It started up one tile, covered the space of two, went to three and four tiles and then fell to the floor. It walked back to the wall and began climbing, transgressing five tiles this time, but fell again to the floor. It made one meditative sanity bearing circle and began to climb, making it up about fifteen tiles and going well above Williams head. William watched and held his breath so not to create any wind, watching the roach make it up four more tiles, scampering up two more, six... up a half. It seemed to veer more to the right as it passed five more tiles, as if gravity mixed with the slickness of the fresh pine scented cleaning solution, used to scrub the graffiti from the white walls, was having it's effect, taking it's toll. It stopped. It's back leg seemed to slip. It took about three more steps--picking up steam, climbed up four more tiles. two, a half and it fell; it tumbled down to the floor.

William wanted to console the roach, to tell it that there was nothing to see or no reward for climbing to the top, there was just the ceiling and a view over the door to the sink; at best what it would see would be a hairy reflection of itself in the mirror, peering back from far away, clinging to some white square of tile, but he realized that this line of thinking was beginning lead him to some worn and jaded... Stupid understanding and he laughed loudly-aloud, bringing the quieting empty bathroom echoes to his ears.

The roach, Though, began to walk away from the wall, circling over and over as it scampered around in a confused script, nearing Bill, until it was lost from his sight and ignored.

William imagined running from the diner, past his beautiful auburn haired wife and his children, to start the car and pull it away, to watch the three surprised sets of brown eyes pushed against the glass, watching in disbelief as he screeched away. He'd withdraw all the money from the account, His account! He wouldn't be breaking any laws. It was his money! His wife made more than enough to support them all! Let them sue him! They can keep the fuckin' house! He'd go home, find his passport, pack his clothes, put on his old brown fedora and drive over to Canada, where they spoke French, or fly to France where they all speak French! To hell with Florida. Fuck his father! Fuck his mother! They love his brown house, beautiful wife and brown eyed boys, so much! Let them barbecue and swim every Sunday and watch the Simpsons on TV. TV! he'd never have to watch another TV commercial or sitcom again. He would eat only untreated meat and water from people and governments he could trust--Shed the bonds of mind control!

Feeling vindicated, William sat and tried to imagine ways to sneak past the waitress and his wife. A way to get out of there without being seen. He looked for a window, it was above the toilet and bricked over with those thick square glass bricks that managed to blow up and distort the world like looking through a fish tank. He imagined an escape, being invisible or transforming himself into an addle-minded white bearded old man, tipping his brown fedora to his wife, while he labored with his breath and brown cane, shuffling passed her.

William's eyes stared at the wall, before him. He thoughtfully read what was written there. "Oggleoggleoggleoggleoggleoggleoggle," he said, happy with what echoed to his ears. "Oggleoggle oggle oggle oggle oggle oggle oggle, he continued, improvising on the general theme of the message.

Someone entered the bathroom.

The oggleing echo seemed to sustain itself, as William quieted and listened to the man peeing in the urinal. The man sniffled, breathed, zipped, flushed the urinal and left.

"Oggle oggle oggle oggle oggle oggle-" he continued as before but stopped as a black and horrible warning surfacing from deep within his subconscious, made him shoot up like a bolt to his feet. From his near six foot vantage, he saw the roach reorienting itself after another fall in the space where his body had sat.

He imagined the creature, it's black legs climbing on his shoe, up his pants and around his knee, taking advantage of his idleness and venerability. He raised his foot and thought about stamping on it and the door swung open. Everything, time and space seemed to halt as if waiting for the verdict to determine the immediate course of all human history. He held his foot, the executioner, high in the air, over the ugly shuffling thing.

"Dad?" called the voice of the older boy.