CoalmineXIII

 Saturday mornings, after nursing a hangover, I would visit my friend Clayton Dahlin in the rehabilitation center. Clayton had suffered an accident about two years ago. He was a bull, you know, like a cop. Well, one day, he showed up at this gas station. Go figure, getting coffee. And wouldn't you know that as he pulled up, a crook had robbed the place at gun point. Clayton was the best cop on the force so he coaxed the guy out of the money and got him to lay the gun down. And then the second robber shot him in the back. The crook had an inside man. His friend got hired on just to help rob the place. Well, before he was shot, the second guy j

 The world is nothing but an equation. That's what Lucy says. Remember the kid in the back of your high school math class who asked the teacher when they would ever need to know all these theorems and factors.  Think back to the teachers pissed off expression. Imagine the angry thoughts in her head. Lucy Feldstein is that teachers mind. She is telling me that X + Y = Z.  She says, "Nothing is final in this life. You have to solve for it by choosing the right path. What you eat. How you dress. Everything contributes to your existence as a whole." I can't really hear her to well over the air conditioner roaring in the stairwell. There is one ap