Joe thinks about Lent, Easter and psychotherapy.

Joe decided that for Lent he would give up Death. Give up thinking about death or at least stop seeing it in the mirror. Now see? That doesn't sound right, it makes it seem like he was laying around, looking out windows, gazing into the distance, dreaming about death, when it really only came over him when he was shaving. There was something about the warm water and the smell of lather that reminded him of falling down dead in the street. He might drop dead in the street. He just might. That was how the thought had come to him seven or so weeks ago.

It was a Tuesday morning. He was shaving under his left ear. He was shaving under his left ear and not thinking about anything in particular, certainly not death and certainly not dropping dead on the street, but then, there it was, the thought of it rose up in him. He saw himself dead in the street, his bags and belongings scattered around him. At first, the thought only came once every few days, then it became pretty regular and now it was every morning as soon as he lathered up.

That was how he would have described it to the other members of the jury at Johnny Fox's if he hadn't stopped going there. He would said it rose up in him and that he saw himself clear as day, dead on the street, that the thought had floated there, at first in his mind and then, and this felt odd, this was weird, it was out in front of him where he could see it like a movie or one of those music video clips on a computer. He had caught a glimpse of himself falling, sort of collasping in a heap of suitjackets and shopping bags. Then it was gone. All of it, the image, the thought, all gone. Gone and he didn't think about it again until the next morning in front of the sink. The disappearing part, the disappearing of the thought, that had stayed the same since the first morning.

The evening of that first day, half way through through dinner, he had mentioned it to his wife.
"I had the oddest thought this morning" he said and then he told her the story- shaving, floating image, shopping bags.
''Are you depressed?'' she had asked ''Is something bothering you?''
"Not that can think of.. l haven't really thought about it at all till now. I kind of thought it was interesting. It was viv..."
"Are you sure you're not depressed?" She looked him over her forkfull of salad.
Depression, according to his wife, was the national pastime. He stirred his soup watching the colors change.
''Things are good. Oh, did I tell you they approved the..."
''Because if you are, I think you should go back to your doctor.''

He'd never had the heart to tell his wife that he didn't have a doctor, a therapist that is. Well, he had a doctor, but the kind you go to twice a year, maybe three times, to get a flu shot or something. Five years ago, when things were not so good, he'd promised her he would see someone and on the promised day he had come home with a brief tale of the supposed appointment which he had really spent as a patron of Johnny Fox's Bar and Grill on 3rd Ave. After that, he had gone to Johnny's every other Thursday at 4:45 for about two years. Then, one night in October, he'd seen someone from his building, not in Johnny's, thank God, that would have really done it. No, the guy was with some other guys walking towards the corner of 23rd, but he was the kind who would say to his wife, "Hey, I saw Joe coming out of a bar on 3rd." and as sure as water runs downhill his own wife would hear about it. So he had stopped going and he missed it. He told his wife he was better and he was, but he missed his therapy.

Back then he had sat on one of the middle stools and nodded at the various conversations going on about him: the crisis in baseball that he knew nothing about, the battle over the West Side Stadium that he only knew about from brief blurbs about it in the NYT Opinion section, the miserable conditions at the local electrician's union hall which were made known to him by all the out of work electricians gathered there in the remaing bar space.

At first, they didn't pay him much notice. The electricians, they merely brayed about this and that situation and how bad things were. Weeks went by before someone, Tim Hanelly he thinks, asked who he was. "Joe," he had replied," Just Joe, just Joe." They shook hands. The noise in the bar caused Tim to hear the 'just joes' as Joe Justco but through the rest of the introductions he didn't correct them, he liked being Joe Justco. He didn't know why.

It was great therapy. Tim and two fellows, both named Mike, worked out of the local around the corner except there wasn't much work so they got to their places early. A guy named Andres or Andre or Andy or Andrew and his in-a-hurry-to-get-married girlfriend Christina, her girlfriend Diana who liked to be called Diamond and another guy, an Irish guy named Patrick, Paddy Mike, made up what Joe called the jury. Others joined in , chimed in, barged in, however and whenever it pleased them and the talk was loud and full of sureness. Ethan, behind the bar did nothing but smile, pour drinks and hold the money on the occasional bet. All the world's problems were solved, well, those that came up. Dafur was not mentioned, but the obscene salaries of the pathetic New York Yankees were fully descibed on several occasions with the solution of selling ever last one of them proclaimed to be the most promising outcome. That is, unless they were able to pull it out this year. There was no way that Bloomberg could stick it to the Transist Union Workers. Diamond's mother should get a spa makeover as a birthday gift. Bloomberg should rot in hell. Ethan put too much cranberry juice in a Cosmo. Jesus, did you see the ass on that one? The tear-out at the Gramercy Park Hotel showed the place still had the wiring in it from 1910, like that was a surprise. They open another Thai food place in this block, wha? It wasn't the end of the world that the sons of bitching Boston won the Series, fuckinga. Pass the popcorn. Where's Leo? Who knows what happened last night up at 31St Street, christ, there must have been ten fire trucks and on the news, nothing. Pass the fucking popcorn.

Okay, so it wasn't great. And maybe that's why it has taken Joe seven weeks of visions to decide to go back. He couldn't just burst in after two years and start blurting out his tale of suitjackets and shopping bags and shaving cream. He couldn't. First, he'd have to ask if Andres and Christina had gotten married, listen to who wasn't around because they weren't around and who wasn't around because they were dead. Catch up on what was going on. See if Paddy Mike or Tim were still in attendence because they were Catholics and they would know about things like giving up death for Lent.