‘Aubrey Ference.’

As I perch upon a curb and watch the waste of a city wash by bit by bit beneath my feet on its way to the sewer, I spot a name on a page—and put a sole out to stop it.

The name means nothing to me—and yet everything—at the same time.  I’ve never known an ‘Aubrey’ or a ‘Ference,’ though I wish I had.  Had I at one time been so fortunate, I might now not be crouching on a curb.

Seconds later, I catch the last notes of Respighi’s ‘The Pines of Rome’ from some boom-box behind me and, at the same time, a voice raving in the crowd.  “That tune grabs me by the throat,” is what I hear.

My own memory prevents it from grabbing me by any such thing.  I once danced to it on a cabaret stage while we—the girls and I—pretended to fuck.  It was a long time ago:  young girls; old Europe; my youth.

‘Aubrey Ference,’ meanwhile—to my now older, less lascivious ear—looks like something part chemistry, part poetry.

Had I once been more able—at least able enough to find and keep an ‘Aubrey Ference’—I might not now be crouching curbside.  I might instead have a job, a condominium, and kids.  Might have a job, wife, condo, kids and a career.  But I now have only a curb—from which I watch the evidence of ‘Aubrey Ference’ drift by, ready to disappear if I lift a heel.

I don’t.

Instead, I spread her piece out on the sidewalk, pat it down, allow it a final gasp of fresh air – fresher, certainly, than my own last gasp—and read.