The ancient sunworshippers of Egypt told of a great mythical bird who, at the end of each millennium, set fire to his nest and allowed himself to be consumed in the flames. Axel Bachwrent owned half of a house in the northwest corner of this nest.

It was not even so much as half a house, when one considered the mortgage. Add the fact that Axel’s soon-to-be ex-wife didn’t even allow him to step inside the eight room, stucco over chicken wire, fire-trap of a tract home and it became far less than half a house. It was worse than no house at all.

Thoughts of the house nettled Axel as he sat in traffic. Cars were motionless. A large gathering of dirty, tool-wielding, orange-clad, men milled about under a sign which read in bold, excited letters, "Your Tax Dollars at Work!" Underneath it another sign advised, "Phoenix. The Best Run City in the World." Axel watched as the needle on the temperature gauge of his car crept slowly skyward. Gingerly, absently, he fingered the recently transplanted plugs of hair on his still-raw scalp. He had received this treatment after reading about it in an in-flight magazine on his way back from Vegas, where he had blown most of his severance pay. When he returned, he withdrew most of his savings and exchanged it for the new hair. At the point where one reaches the jumping-off place, there is time for vanity.

With a dull resignation Axel watched as steam began to rise from the hood of his LeBaron. He pulled out of the frozen stream of cars and shut off the engine in the parking lot of a Wendy’s hamburger restaurant. The LeBaron, victim of too many revolutions per minute, had long ago abdicated from its aristocratic seat. It must have enjoyed the plebeian life because it had joined in with the other conspirators and mutineers of Axel Bachwrent’s world. His car, his house, his hair, his job, his reason — not the least, his marriage; his grasp on these things was loosening.

But there was still Wilson, he thought. Axel picked up his cell phone, a still-connected vestige of his former life. He got out of the car, leaned against the trunk and dialed Wilson at his office. "Hey. You want me to bring home some Chinese food?" he said when Wilson answered.

"No. Save your money. James is gonna make vermicelli carbonara. Tasty, eh? If you’re not back in time we’ll save you leftovers. Hey, aren’t you supposed to be at therapy?"

"Not for another hour. I’m stuck in traffic, so I may never make it." Axel’s voice trailed off. He searched passively for something to say, to justify the phone call. He wanted to talk, but he could think of nothing to talk about. "How ’bout dessert? Want me to pick that up?"

"Whatever you want, Ax’. Look, I gotta go."

"Yeah. Okay."

Axel tossed the phone through the open window of the LeBaron. It landed on the passenger’s seat, slid, and ended up in the crevice between the seat and the door. He shrugged, withdrew a cigarette from his pocket, and searched for a match. He realized he would have to use the car’s cigarette lighter, but this thought dismayed him inexplicably. In any case, he wanted the cigarette less than he desired getting back in the hot car. He tossed the cigarette through the open window as well and walked heavily across the Wendy’s parking lot. He went inside, where the air conditioning jolted him, ordered something that was a chocolate shake by another name, and waited for the car to cool down.

It occurred to him that failure was the ultimate natural state. Everywhere he looked, failure was there in the background, taken for granted, omnipresent and mute, like the state flag in a grade-school group photograph. It is life’s default setting, he thought, the underlying theme, the un-catalyst. The world is a stage and failure its deus ex machina. Over everything is the god that failed. Hearts stop, marriages drown, cars overheat, negotiations break down, superstructures rot, mainframes hiccup, supplies are consumed, energy is exhausted, stars collapse. Things Fall Apart. He would write a list.

With this epiphany, new to him but as old as Ecclesiastes himself, Axel Bachwrent, former associate at the former law firm of Brinkmanship and Escalado, P.C. got up from the table. A hinged, Formica panel labeled "Trash" half-heartedly swallowed the last of his frozen chocolate sludge. He headed back out into the relentless heat and got into his car.

He groped for the cell phone and dialed his wife’s office. He got the voice mail, hung up, and dialed again a minute later. This time she picked up.

"Axel, I can’t talk. I’m showing a house at four o’clock."

"I just wanted to know if I could take Abby to the movies tonight."

"Axel, it’s Friday. She’s got swimming and then she probably has a date. Why do you do this? Tell us in advance, would you?" She paused sympathetically. "Look, what about Sunday? We’re going to mom’s in Sun City tomorrow, but Sunday, why don’t you come and take her to the mall and the movies. If she wants," she added sternly. Abby was already seventeen and made her own visitation decisions.

The car had cooled and Axel realized that if he went out the back entrance of the parking lot and through side streets he could avoid the construction. He lost himself for a few minutes in a maze of cul de sacs, driving down one, turning around, driving down another and eventually ending up farther back in the same line of traffic that he had been in. He thought it was a good allegory for his life.

He made a decisive and rash u-turn, knocking over a traffic cone. A black BMW skidded to a stop, its rear end arching up suddenly, like an angry cat. With his luck, Axel thought, if he hadn’t been judgment-proof, the car would have hit him. The BMW came up beside him, its driver too indignant to even give him the finger.

With 25 minutes to spare, Axel made it to his therapy session. In the waiting room he read an article about microwaves in a four-month-old copy of Consumer Reports. He still had time, so he read it again. When his appointment time came, he made his usual complaints. He lied when the therapist asked him if he was continuing his walking regimen. The doctor was a walking fanatic and believed that a half-hour walk, outside, every morning was the perfect palliative for almost any mental grief. Axel had tried it for one week. After that he realized that every house in his development had a minor variation of the same, incredibly square floor plan. He was plunged into an even more acute resentment against his wife, a real-estate agent, than he had before his walks. She was, he feared, really and truly trying to box him in.

"I want you to do something for our next session," the doctor began.

"This is our last," said Axel.

"That sounds quite definitive, Axel. I thought you said you didn’t have thoughts about suicide."

Axel snorted. "No. It’s just that the insurance has run out. It’s been three months since I was, uh, terminated."

"Ah, I’m sorry about that," the doctor said unconvincingly. "Have you renewed?"

"Too expensive."

"What about life-threatening diseases?"

"I’m not worried. It might make things interesting."

After his session was over, Axel drove around aimlessly for a while and then headed for Wilson’s house. He was living there during his divorce. The house was one of those solid, low, brick things built in the ’50s housing boom. It had a look about it that made one feel as if the future was assured; that things would forever be good, cheap and abundant; that time stretched out her arms to us and pulled us ever forward in one continuing orgy of progress. It was a three-bedroom, two-bath lie. These homes never warned us what was under the ground beneath them or in the air around them, Axel thought. They were ignorant of asbestos and thalidomide and Lieutenant Calley and Union Carbide. Wilson’s house, unlike his own, was the architecture of indifference. Axel’s home (what he had of it) was merely not different.

Wilson wasn’t home, but James was. James explained that Wilson had called him to say he was working late. "It seems that every day, more and more people file for bankruptcy. It’s becoming epidemic," James had said. Axel smiled inwardly and added bankruptcies to his list. The Natural State of Failure.

Axel picked up a stack of envelopes, more than the usual haul because of the recent change in address. During the first few weeks there had been a dearth, but now the mail was catching up and most of the letters bore yellow forwarding stickers. In the kitchen James was swearing about the microwave. It was too old, the timer was broken, he suspected it leaked radiation. "We need to get a new one," he finally announced, "but Wilson’s a miser. I’ll have to beg him for it. Everything is just going to pieces."

"The Amana Fifty-one-Forty Radar Cooker is the best you can get, but there’s an equivalent Kenmore, with all the same features except the timer alarm. It’s about seventy-five dollars cheaper," Axel said absently and without looking up from his stack of mail. James gave him a very curious look.

Axel tossed a bunch of official looking envelopes to one side. "How can a man in his forties still owe student loans. I say," he declared, "I say that once a man’s hair begins to recede, he should be given student loan amnesty. It’s only fair." He opened a personal envelope, took out a check and put it in his wallet. The student loan bills he left on the side table next to the couch. He had a vague idea of changing his identity, starting college again and getting nine more years of student loans. But his hair plugs weren’t that convincing.

"You know," he said to James over the vermicelli, "You and Wilson are the only happy couple I know. Everyone else I know of is either divorced, getting divorced, on the road to divorce, or definitely-not-getting-divorced-but-miserable. Or else single and desperately seeking someone to divorce. You’re the only ones."

"We’re just lucky, that’s all. We’re incredibly compatible. But, I tell you, if he keeps working late like this, I’m gonna start suspecting something. And on a Friday, no less. He better be free tomorrow and Sunday. We’re visiting my parents."

"Jeez, is there some sort of exodus to Sun City on the weekends? Dana’s visiting her parents too." Axel stabbed at a piece of broccoli and held it up with his fork. He looked at it intently, but his mind was elsewhere. "Have you ever thought that your whole life has been one series of mistakes?"

"No," James said flatly. "Is there something wrong with my broccoli? Is it overcooked?"

"Sorry, no, not at all. It’s just that everything seems to be a mistake. Twenty-twenty hindsight and all, you know? College, grad school, law school, my job, my marriage, even my name. Do you know that my name was supposed to be Alex?"

James raised his eyebrows.

"I’m serious. Not Alexander, just Alex. But the clerk at the records hall wrote the name wrong. When my parents saw the birth certificate, they figured Axel was just as good. Hell, I wasn’t even supposed to be conceived. So of course they didn’t care what my name was. They weren’t even planning on me. Everything has been a mistake right on down to the cellular level. I bet the wrong sperm entered the egg."

"Aren’t we being a bit sorry for ourselves, Axel. And I’m the one always accused of being melodramatic. Look, it’s not like everyone has a personal vendetta against you. The world doesn’t revolve around you."

"Yeah, I guess," said Axel grumpily.

"You know Wilson was really depressed when he first got out of law school. He couldn’t for the life of him find a job. He wasn’t high in the class like you, and on top of that he had to hide being gay. I think it took him eight months to find a job. It might take some time. Things are a little slow now, but they’ll pick up. You’ll see. Things will get better."

"That’s all well and good, but I’m in the middle of my career. Nobody wants someone with my experience. You know the old ‘you’re too experienced’ line? I guess I could always go out on my own. But that’ll take a lot of capital, and right now with the divorce, well..."

Wilson arrived and they all talked a little while longer. Then Axel went to his room to read and sulk. When he came out James and Wilson were sitting on the couch, happily nestled, watching "Streetcar." Axel stood silently behind them and watched as Marlon Brando yelled, "What we got here in the state of Louisiana is a thing called the Napoleonic code, see? And under the Napoleonic code a man takes a half interest in his wife’s property, see?" Axel laughed. Stanley Kowalski, divorce attorney. Then he looked at Brando — young, tight, intense — and he felt bad again. He added another name to his list.

The next morning, Saturday, Axel had nothing to do, so he filled the tank of the LeBaron, put the top down, and started to drive. He drove around for an hour, then reached for the cell phone and called Dana. Abby answered.

"Hi, Daddy. You calling from the car?"

"Yeah. Am I getting through to you all right?"

"Uh-huh. Mom says she’s gonna get me a phone, too. Then I can call you in your car from my car. Won’t that be cool?"

"Yes, sweetheart. Hey, how was your date last night? Was it that Corey guy?"

"Nah. He’s been outta school for like two weeks. He has mono. Mom and me went to the mall. Then I hung out with some of my friends."

Axel was incensed. Had Dana lied to him? Yes. Probably intentionally. If he was going to fail as a father, he wished Dana would stop helping him. Abby went on to tell him that Dana had bought her an expensive shirt with the name of a running shoe company emblazoned on it.

"When I was a kid we didn’t pay for our advertisements," he said bitterly.

"Daddy," Abby complained. "Look, we’re going to grandma’s soon. I gotta go."

Axel pulled onto the freeway. The way some people felt about meditation was the way Axel felt about driving. He and the car and the road merged. As long as things were running smoothly (and on the open road, the LeBaron did not tend to overheat) Axel’s mind could become unfettered from the world. Only when he was driving on a desert highway did Axel gain any insight into spirituality. His was the true American creed. His was the trinity of Macadam, Octane and Steel. It is not a new observation that the real shrines of this nation are to be found along her access roads and off her exit ramps. But Axel Bachwrent was one of the more devout, and his faith was intense. He drove with a supreme knowledge of the road around him, and with a mind fulfilled and peaceful. "Expect Delays" was his shibboleth and the state trooper was his Pontius Pilate. The highway was divine.

He drove with the sun. He was impelled westward, feeling a call, his troubled mind preoccupied with failure, becoming more empty with each mile; each tick of the odometer also a tick crossing off another name on his list of failures. He kept going, out Highway 10, hurtling through the vast, unbroken sands. He stopped only twice; once for gas and a Diet Coke, once to relieve himself next to a joshua tree. Outside of Palm Springs, the buildings began to grow closer to one another. As they did, the open, airy, spaces between his anxieties began to close. His stomach began to burn, slowly at first, then increasing with pain.

In Los Angeles, he crossed the Long Beach Parkway. A truck had jack-knifed and traffic was stopped in both directions. The mass of cars, from Axel’s perspective overlooking the 710, looked vaguely familiar. He couldn’t place what image was calling from the deep vaults of his memory to compare with this. And yet the new image, the particular arrangement of this traffic jam, flashed by in an instant. Axel was left to compare the two images only in his mind as the sun began to sink in his eyes and over Culver City.

He stopped at a Mobil station, left the LeBaron idling and ran to the men’s room. The conflagration, the inferno eating up his inside with pain ulcerous and hemorrhoidal, exploded within him. It left behind only the echo of his puissant screams to reverberate against the cool, dirty tiles of the tiny room. The retiring light of the setting sun cascaded through the grimy transom above the door and brushed against Axel’s legs, a solar alley cat. He clutched himself, grabbing his shoulders to brace against the pain. Axel wept. After some time, he slumped in weakness and defeat, the pain receding away in slight waves, and made his way slowly back to the car.

He drove to the end of the road. Highway 10 ended at the Santa Monica Pier, where it had usurped Route 66. He parked the car and walked down the boardwalk, watching the last of the sun against the ocean, pale and half-round like the helmet of a soldier from behind a trench. Axel ignored the crowd and leaned against the end of the pier, looking out at the ocean. He had inadvertently taken the cell phone with him and felt foolish. Then, like a flash of split atoms, he became aware. That was it! The image of the traffic jam fell into place. The phone had set him off. Cells. The cars, all the people, they were like the thick strand of little, wiggling, transparent cells viewed through his cheap, high-school biology microscope. And in the same instant he realized what was wrong. He turned back and looked at the brown haze of last light over L.A.

The world had cancer.

Axel sat down on a bench on the pier and let the revelation wash over him. He became numb, immune to the goings-on about him. He sat for hours. At last, he got up stiffly, found his car and headed back east. The euphonious hum of the tires, the persistent, even tempo of the road, played variations on his symphonic theme. His failure, he realized, was a tiny, calibrated piece of a great event. Now that he knew what to look for, he could see it everywhere. It was in the papers, on TV, on the street. Humanity was a carcinogen. Global Metastasis.

But what about success, luck, love, free will, he asked himself. "No," came the answer. No, those things were nothing more than Chemo. In fact, they were probably nothing more than placebos. What about the toys? The computers, the cell phones, the springtime predictions of technocrats? Heck, what about the LeBaron? "Ah," came the answer. They were but flowers in the terminal ward. Bread and circuses. Get-well cards from the same pen which had just written our eulogy. James was wrong: things were most certainly not going to get better. Axel had finished his list. Under it he had drawn a horizontal line, added up the terms, and come up with the sum. Looking at it was looking over the edge.

Was there a cure? He couldn’t tell. Could the cancer be isolated, removed through radical procedures, burned away? Maybe, but in the end, it didn’t matter to the world. The world was a placid and calm reflecting pool. It accommodated the disease, uncomplaining and compliant. The world would wait, passive and patient, and in the meantime, Axel understood, it would just keep going. It was The Natural State of Things. He began to realize that his grasp on things was not loosening at all. He understood with a clarity of vision that he was a part of it. It would only be right if he accepted it with the same acquiescence, if he was benign to his malignance. Failure was deliverance.

He drove all night, and early Sunday morning pulled through the dead streets of the desert suburbs. With the exhaustion of insight and all night driving he entered Wilson’s house quietly and sank down into the soft welcoming of the leather sofa. James was in the kitchen, dressed in a bicycle outfit, filling a plastic water bottle.

"Where the hell have you been?" asked James.

"The jumping off place."

"What?"

"The Santa Monica Pier," Axel said drowsily.

"Ohhh," James intoned sarcastically — as if a trip to the Santa Monica Pier was no more than a jaunt to the grocery. "And?" he queried.

"And," said Axel, closing his eyes, his voice trailing off into dreams. "And, I threw my cell phone into the Atlantic."

"You mean the Pacific."

"Yes. Yes of course. The Pacific. It was the Pacific."

Then Axel fell asleep. Outside, the mirror-glass skyscrapers, the Flame Trees of Phoenix, were ablaze in reflection of the rising sun.

Linus Holzschlag Kafka is General Counsel and Assistant Director of the National Center for Interpretation at University of Arizona. He likes to try his hand at fiction and does not have a cellular phone. Yet.