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smile. The same feeling makes me realize she will be just like her mother when she is older.

I tell Tao that if he wants good cereal, that he should go buy his own. He asks me to come with him
to Chase Mart, the store I usually buy my food at, but I tell him that I don't shop there anymore. He
asks me why, and I tell him that I had an argument with the owner of the store. He asks me what the
argument was about and I tell him that it was something stupid, that it was my fault.

Tao leaves and then comes back about twenty minutes later. He comes back to my fucking
apartment with some cereal, and I'm wondering why he doesn't just move in with me instead of
blowing money on an apartment he doesn't stay in. Sarcasm.

As soon as he walks in, he starts to whisper to me, "Have you seen Mary lately?" I say no, and he
continues to whisper, "I just ran into her outside, we were talking about how we haven't seen each
other in a while." I tell him that that sounds cool, and he gives me that stupid look. "Anyway, have
you noticed she put on a little weight?" No, I didn't.

Tao goes into my kitchen, takes out a spoon and a bowl and some milk, and makes himself some
cereal, and then sits down to eat it. He stops talking. You notice when a person like Tao stops
talking. For a second he reminds me of Kathleen, not because he has finally shut his mouth, but
because I can tell he is here simply because he doesn't want to be alone in his own apartment.

A few years ago I had a dream. I'm sitting in the back area of a vehicle with a few other soldiers,
playing a game of cards. I'm not sure what game we're playing, but what I know is that you either
win or lose depending on which card you put down. One soldier puts down a card called a jack of
spades, another puts down a card called a queen of clubs. After everyone has shown their card, I
put down my card, called a two of hearts. The soldier to my right looks at me, and he tells me that
I don't have any kind of luck. I guess I lost.

We play a few more rounds, I get a few more less than desirable cards, and then the vehicle comes
to a stop. The back door is open, and we all get out. The Sun is bright and the grass is green. I
notice that I'm in a village, and from the looks of the people walking around, maybe somewhere in
Vietnam.

I have never been to war, and why I would dream about being in the Vietnam war, I don't know,
but what I know is that being in this place calms my nerves. A village where there is silence and the
people walk slowly because they know that they will eventually get to where they are going, and
when they do finally get there, there will be others just like them.

Maybe I wasn't lucky at card games, but I was lucky enough to make decisions that would lead me
up to that point to see a place that many people may never have the good fortune of seeing. What
plagues me is that I know when I have this dream where I'm in the military again, things might not
be the same. Thinking of things like this makes me realize that even the wildest tales of fiction
have some truth to them.

Tao is now yelling out my name, and it takes a few yells for me to realize. What? "You're always
stuck inside your head." I know. Tao was calling me to tell me he was going to go to work, so I tell