“What are these winds?”
“They are the Santa Ana winds.”
“This?”
“The winds…yes.”
“Oh. I see. The winds.”

“Whose hand is this?”
“That is my hand.”
“Yours?”
“Yes my hand.”
“Yes, your hand.”

The distance between the hammer-head and the nail head is finite--sometimes greater, sometimes less. The space between them is what matters; the air between them, which compacts and separates, dribbles down and out, and eventually away. The impact is beside this point. It is what happens in the void between the violence of the strike. The slow arc of the immanent swing. The sighting of the target. Peripheral events. The wind blows between them. The Santa Ana winds of Southern California. The hot glare of the Eagle Rock sun. The truth that lives in that space. That hand. Your hand. That wind. Yes.

“Where is this place?”
“Here? Between the objects.”
“Between?”
“Yes. Between the hammer and the nail.”
“This place is between them?”
“Forever in this wind we are between them.”
“Oh.”

One of those deeply burning afternoons –surely eye spotting and July sapience dew laden-- a hammer was raised. Within it’s wood, golden with worked age, the grain strained against chipped varnish. A 2-ounce head of steel perched enamored. Shadow thrown, the implement cocked to embrace a cross-section of parabolic flight. A downward descent. The wind carried a scent of sawn years; measured and marked, relegated to fit, soon to be fixed in place.

The Hammer family sat under the west facing low-slung back porch, glasses in hand weeping released drips off of tumblers assembled; ice and booze. Nail Hammer was the youngest of three children. His brother, Ivan, stretched an explosion of blond hair across the glass, shielding the melting cubes from the 100-degree heat. Silk was twenty-three and her small features hunched in the torn folding chair, squished behind one of the patio posts. When Nail was fifteen he had thought that his sister would eventually succeed in disappearing behind whichever inanimate object she could find. They were close. All three fit together as some thrift-store puzzle. Only the occasional missing piece appeared over their childhood. Now Ivan was twenty-five. Nail remained forever, at the moment, a mere twenty-one.

The premium which shadows paid in this tide pool of heat were never underestimated. A huddling of anenomie haired youth swaying in the currents of wind. Nail never knew what exactly had become of shade. All he knew was that there was a sticky spot where his body became adhered. Home. This place. This wind. This space. Tangerine sticky and summer gorged tiredness invaded this place. Like clockwork, Ivan assembled the three of them together, gently offering the drinks to his siblings. Silk sipped at the fluid as if it were an exotic visitor from her dreams. Perhaps the very one which would pick her up and place her under the stippled boughs of a flagrantly aged tree. Blessed cool swirling across her sweaty neck. Nail clasped the melting drink in both hands and wished she hadn’t done it. That’s what he thought every day with every sip of every fantasy shipwrecked somewhere beyond understanding.

“She shouldn’t have done it.”
“No, she shouldn’t have.” Ivan pushed back his hair and touched the liquid to his lips but did not drink.
“Where does this wind go?”
“It goes away from us Nail.” Silk responded. Her eyes opened slowly, squinted and revealed the dark blue of some enameled casement trapped behind glass in some museum.
“Why?”
“There is no reason for it. Things leave. These hot winds take things away.” This time Ivan sipped once. Then again.

From beyond the porch door a faint whiff of Silk’s paint attempted to invade the foreign country of the Hammer children. Designs created themselves on her old dress. Spots and smears, dark and light, oil and charcoal, the mediums of her days. When she had come back she didn’t smile when she hugged Nail. College had not changed her. He knew her still. Wherever she had been had not been hungry enough to devour her place within the trinity. He had hoped that she would come back different. As he had so much hoped to change himself. Loose change is all he saw before him now. A small shift toward the shadow, a demure nodding in these foothills, a quietly adjusted book on the same old shelf. Silk painted pictures perpetually covered over again and again. Today she did not erase the figures from the canvas. Today she huddled against blows of the wind.

“Should there have been a reason?” asked Nail of either of them.
“Not anymore.” Silk said standing up to move her chair away from the glare.
“If there was a reason it’s lost now.” Ivan stood as well holding the tumbler loosely in his hand. Slowly he touched Nails’ cheek.
“Do you know about those things…about reasons Nail? Do you want a reason? Need a reason? You know I would give you one, so would Silk, if we could. There’s just us…we are the reason I guess.” Ivan pulled his chair closer to Nail’s.
“She should have given a reason.” Nail said staring across the yard. “She shouldn’t have done it.”

Nail looked into his brother’s face. Angular and tan, Ivan sat illumined by the flames of the sun. His long blond hair flailed across his lips and whipped at his chest. Ivan never left Nail. Not for long anyway. It was as if he had been born to translate the quiet of Nail’s thoughts. To express those oil-like sheens which flowed across Nail’s tongue. Ivan held this place in his mind so that the other two could find themselves when they got lost.

“We are the reason?” Nail said, his voice catching.
“Sometimes no reason is reason enough. We don’t exist beyond each other anymore it seems.” Ivan pulled his hair across the glass. Nail reflected on that movement so Ivan-ish.
“We are not reasons?”
Silk bowed her head and said, “Reasons. We are reasons. Ivan don’t say things like that. She may not have had a reason. But we do.”
Ivan reached for her empty glass. Nail proffered his up as well. Another one would do well this afternoon.
“You are both my reason…you are.” Ivan walked back into the house carrying the glasses.

“I’m sorry Nail…sometimes Ivan doesn’t know what to say when you have the touch. We love you, you know? Have patience with us. You are the reason. Just as the winds are the reason. That’s not as bad as it may sound. That’s the way she made us. Made you especially for us.” Silk smiled, her first in weeks, and held her arms out toward the fruit bowl of embers in the sky.

“But the winds take things away.” Nail said.

“Yes. Like the winds you take us away…for a reason.” Then Silk reached out and took the new drink from Ivan. Laughing, she then swallowed a deep daydreams swallow and flew dancing across the shimmering mirage of the porch.

2
I was born during a mountain fire. Flames cantering across San Gabriel canyons. In the absence of the sun I cried. But my mother held me and called to me…Nail. I have seen that fire return after vacationing like a snow-bird. I was conceived on a lawn, so she told me.

My first memory is of a stack of letters spread out across the kitchen floor. I remember my brother holding one letter aloft—as if it were an answer from some God encased in vanilla. My second memory is of her, my mother, holding up another letter and spitting at it – as if it were a charlatan encased in dead flesh. Silk hid under the kitchen table, as always, looking at her.

When I think of that moment, I think of her -- dark hair falling across her spittle laden lips. Her eyes twinkling with the sound of a darker colored memory than I can inspire to mind. She laughed. Always winking and laughing. Always kissing and dancing. Silk should have been more like her. We all should have taken those creamy winks to heart. Instead she built me to be a mountain fire. Consuming fuel like a forever gaping machine. But she made me quiet…like the night I was born. Only the wind to sing to me. But I have never known the words to that song. Ivan says I do. Silk says I am the song, and therefore, I don’t need to know the words. I am the words soundlessly crushing up against the world. She made me that way. But I only hear the wind and smell the burning chaparral. She would probably be very pleased by this.

*

Nail’s real name, the name he was born with, was Niles Ishmael Hammer. My mother thought it was funny to call him Nail. I have always known him as Nail. My brother. Born during a firestorm. Born at Midnight. Born to mother.

Shade Hammer, our mom, used to sit for hours and stare at nothing. She would talk to herself as if the room was full of angels or devils. As if we didn’t exist. As if the fire on the mountain had broken off some piece of her. Yes, she was, by all accounts, “normal” before Nail was born. Not that Silk and I ever knew. But we were told stories, fairytales, of her days before his birth. When we, Silk and I, were toddlers. Shade draped cloth across the world and protected us as an old nymph running across the canyon. A wood nymph quietly taking her children across a glade. Until Nail. Then the touch jumped off her back and landed on us all. Especially Nail. Even when he was two or three by all accounts. A fire on the mountain. A fire in her womb. A break. Broken. Seared across us all. Dad was dead now. Burned by the touch. Burned by Nail. Burned by mom’s insistence that we jump with her across those charred canyons. I was born to hold my brother. To keep him safe. To never let him out of my sight for fear. But we were happy children. Happy then and now in knowing secrets. Ours and no one else’s. I danced with my sister and brother across mom’s canyons. As fire leaps periodically in the wind, we dance.

*

By the time you’re 44 you start to feel it. By the time you’re 45 it’s real. Everybody goes through body wreckage. I just thought it wouldn’t hurt so badly. Without Pinks you’re just another slob trudging ever slower off to the chem mills. But that’s what the big banks want. No? Yea we knew about the Swami and his flow kid dark market. We had heard about Revolution and all the rest. But when you got make the rent, you just bite it and go. As the saying goes, “Well you can just count me out…”. But the flow jumpers always echoed, “In,” and laughed their heads off. And their heads rolled alright. The Phi kids always hunted them down with parental approval and ripped them to shreds. You never heard about such things on flow net, nope. Only from some poor slob whose “cousin” had gone down the wrong path. The Swami. Damn my body ached. I probably didn’t have much more than a few years left. Then I would be cooked. Finito. Aborted from the works like yesterday’s papers.

When the whole subcurrent came drifting through my mind, I’d thought it was just more mist feed crap. “Nail takes the Blows for you.” What? I mean I’m working away at some bullshit grid when this feed comes bubbling up. Who the fuck anyway? Then someone slips me a patch when I’m going home. Who? You got me. All anyone has to do these days is target you with a Blow hole and you’ve got an infection. I mean we all want to relax. And if you’re gonna get infected then you always hope it’s from some whore down in San Pedro who’s enhanced the medium enough to give you good dreams-- if not a compulsive desire to split and get lost. But no. That day the infection spread “Nail’s Coming.” I thought it was another ad. Then it hit with more force than any Pedro dive ever had, “Nail’s got your back.” “Nail can mend your ways.” “Nail is the ONE.” All the while the subs drummed out these retro soul riffs: Brahmin Fletch OZ cranks, wild sick wahini gyrations, sunsets unknown, sex, surf, life, elasticity. Nail? Who the fuck? Someone said the Swami was slipping Pink-ware into Adland just to drag the decays down to the dark market. I knew that wasn’t his style. Never was. See I knew the Swami when I was just a young Grid grom. I gave it all up. No surf, no Hini’s or Hula girls to be gobbled up by the handful, even torched my skater, for what? A job. Just like everybody else, I had to survive. And my grid work wasn’t that great. Just enough to get into the Bank’s warehouse and pipe down til I could get a piece of Pedro every once in a while. Then Nail came. Then the swell came. Then they came. The groms. They ate the hills and secret spots like an infection from the Queen herself. Shit, my body hurts.

*

He was a little man. Rotund with a slightly graying goatee, and a fringe of hair carefully cut around his bald head. When he smiled it was with an air of sarcasm. Maybe this was due to his business clothes. Or maybe it was due to his lack of empathy. And empathy was supposedly part of his business. And business was how he viewed his work as a psychologist. Dr. Greeb sat across from Silk and draped one leg over the arm of his chair.
“You can justify anything in your life,” Greeb said staring at silk, “It’s just so much mental masturbation.”

Silk shifted on the couch which faced Greeb’s chair. She didn’t know what to say to him. Greeb had been late for each of the five sessions that Silk had with him. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty-five minutes. Somehow she thought that he didn’t think much of her.
“You think I could justify anything in my life? You believe that of me?” Silk looked him right in the eye as she said this. She was scared and disappointed that Greeb would say these things to her. About her.
“You can keep talking about the past and your traumas until you’re fifty if you want. I’ll do that. But that’s not what you need. You need to make a plan. Will you do that?” Greeb’s face became serious as if he were looking through her.
Silk didn’t know what to say. She felt off balance. This is why I came to therapy?
“Sure…if that’s what you want. I mean I came here to get help and if that’s what you think will help…” She looked at her hands and thought about how uncomfortable Greeb had made her feel. Maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s progress. Maybe I don’t need to like my therapist. Or maybe he’s just a self-satisfied little toad. No that’s not fair she thought.
Greeb leaned forward and made notes in his hand held.
“So, next time I want you to bring a plan, okay?” he said not looking up. “Or I’ll make a plan for you, or we can do it together. Okay? So see you next time.”
Greeb stood and tossed his handheld down on top of his old fashioned folder which held who knew what in terms of notes on Silk’s sessions with him.
Silk was angry now. She knew that much. They didn’t like each other. At least there wasn’t any natural report that she felt between them.
As she was leaving she decided that he wasn’t the therapist for her. Further she realized that he wasn’t a good therapist for anyone. The touch is a sensitive thing. While she didn’t have it the same way as Nail, both she and Ivan had it. Looking at Greeb as he started to shuffle her out of his office she felt the touch mount her. The room became dark with just Greeb’s face illuminated in her sight. She could see the threads in the collar of his expensive white dress shirt. She could see his pulse buried under his double chin behind the close-cropped goatee. She could see his irises start to relax, becoming wider and wider. When the touch comes the Hammer children always said it was like seeing reality. They didn’t live in reality. No one did. The touch sent tingling warmth down Silk’s spine.
“Doctor?” she said as he turned toward her.
“Save it for next time okay?” Greeb managed to say right before the touch hit him. With his arms suddenly lacks at his sides, and his mouth slowly falling open, Greeb looked surprised.
“This is something I can justify. This is Justice Dr. Greeb. Are you a just man doctor? Do you think that by spending three and a half hours with me in total that you can justify saying that I just mentally masturbate to justify my life and actions? Doctor?”
Greeb tried to back away from her and bumped into his desk. Her folder fell on the carpeting—an institutional grey. Noncommittal and supposedly soothing to therapy clients. Then he sat down hard on the ground in a sitting position.
“Doctor? Are you okay?” Silk said as the touch reached into Greeb and pulled out a moment of laughter due to having characterized a patient as pathetic. Me? Silk thought. Pathetic? Me? She almost lost control of the touch. It usually wasn’t this strong in her and Ivan. Only in Nail. She then saw it didn’t matter who it was. Greeb viewed them all that way. She saw him at home gorging himself on various junk foods in front of the vid feed. She saw him leering at women in his mind. She saw him smiling while sending in his bills to the UNMH. Silk saw him. The real Doctor Greeb—a short bald fat man who hated his patients. Wait, there was something else. No he didn’t hate all of them. He liked an older man. Yes a clearly well dressed and successful man. Greeb would do anything for this man…for his money and respect. Respect? Is that what you need so bad little doctor? Silk thought.
Greeb looked up at her terrified.
“You’re inside me…please not that…I’m sorry.” Sweat had begun to bead on Greeb’s forehead. He almost vomited.

Then Silk said, “Justify yourself doctor. Now.” Her hand swept up to her eyes and covered them as if she was playing hide and seek.
“Justice is blind Greeb. Say something in defense of yourself.”
Greeb felt the warmth of urine puddle under his buttocks. His nose began to bleed. His arms twitched at his sides. He couldn’t stop looking at Silk. Her hair appeared as a flame and her body as an oil painting forever becoming and then disappearing under a white erasure.
The mounting changed her. Silk became the old man that Greeb so admired and envied. Her face became that of an old woman, then a young child, and back to Silk’s own features.
“The truth now doctor.” Silk revealed her eyes, bluer than blue. Greeb lurched forward but his rolls of fat kept him sitting up. His breath rasped, “You’re all just a bunch of godless losers. Fuck all of you.” His eyes rolled in his head and the settled on Silk. Fear of the just. Fear of the pure. Fear of the touch. Silk had seen it before, but never like this. Nail would never do this. But she would…now she knew she would.
“Greeb do want someone to have your back? Do you know who’s coming? Do you know about the One? No, I didn’t think so. He’s here Greeb and he’s kind and just. Think about that. I know you will.”
Silk turned and walked out of the office toward the elevators. Greeb slumped back and hit his head on the corner of his heavy weaveware desk. Silks files began to become erased; electric, organic, and memorized. She didn’t exist for Greeb or anyone he knew or dealt with. We are our reason…there is just us. Shade made us this way. To serve Nail’s calling. Silk got into the elevator and pushed the button for the tube pad.
Later Silk heard that Greeb had been found in the park across from his office with a vial of H-Bombs in his pocket. He had nailed his own hand and feet to a tree. The hammer sat on the grass, golden and scratched. In his pocket was a note that read: “He’s here and I’m not.”
Silk called another therapist as soon as she heard about Greeb. Only this time she took her brother’s advice and found one that practiced Occuflow. Then she proceeded to white out her last painting of a short fat man nailed to a tree.