Even if It’s Only Me

by Lance Dyzak

Carolyn read somewhere that in the ‘90s mothers were dropping their babies into public toilets. Tiny corpses discovered by the janitors and covered in wet toilet paper, the umbilical cord still attached. And she reassured herself with this knowledge – Steven could have had it worse.

She laid the suitcase at the end of the bed. The hard-covered American Tourister that her father had given her when she went away for college. She remembered the old excitement of snapping open the catches. The hinges yawned as she unfolded it, and the smell of it was musty, like a vacant motel room. Carolyn ran her fingers over the satin lining and felt the current of her adrenaline like an electricity. She’d sent Steven out to ride his bike and told him not to come back for an hour so that she could concentrate. All morning she’d been clumsy with anticipation. When she’d pulled the suitcase away from the closet door, she banged the wooden jamb so hard that it chipped the paint. For the first time it seemed possible. This was step one. Step one was required before you could get to step two. Step one meant that she was on her way. Step one was part of the process.

The sun poured in through the bushes in front of her bedroom window and left their pattern on the wall. The bedroom was spotless; everything dusted and cleaned, the bed sheets pulled taught against the mattress and tucked into the corners. The bedcover, with its pattern of country flowers, was flat against the sheets like a canvas. There were no distractions.

She might have run around the world. Instead, she went to Steven’s room.

Just the essentials, enough to get him through. She went to his dresser at the far wall. All of his winter clothes were in the bottom drawers. She tugged the lowest one open and took out two of his sweaters and a long-sleeved thermal tee-shirt. She gathered them into her arms and went back down the hallway. It would have been more efficient to bring the suitcase into Steven’s room, but it felt better to do it this way; in steps. Every round-trip with another load of essentials was one more step. She went from the lowest drawer to the highest: two pairs of jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, three undershirts, three pairs of underwear, three pairs of socks. She went to his closet: two buttoned-down dress shirts, one pair of dress pants, his dress shoes, his winter coat, a stocking cap, a pair of gloves. She went into the hallway bathroom: his toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, a container of shampoo. Slowly the suitcase filled. It was so big, and everything he had seemed small in it. She didn’t notice Steven behind her.

“You’re acting weird,” he said. The noise made her jump.

“Jesus kid, you scared me,” she said, and tried to smile. “What did you say?”

“Why are you acting weird?”

Carolyn went for her bathroom.

“I’m not acting weird,” she said, over her shoulder. “I thought I told you not to come back—”

“It’s been like two hours. How long will we be gone?” He stood in the doorway, thumbs hooked into the front belt loops of his jeans.

“I told you, I don’t know yet.”

She’d told him the week prior that they were going away on a long trip to see some friends. It was such a simple thing to tell him then, this shapeless thing that they were going to do together. But when he’d walked in just now she was unguarded and lightheaded from the idea of it. She didn’t trust what she might say to him. Everything rang in a high pitch. She knew he’d want more details, had prepared for more details, but now she pushed the details away. Carolyn shut the door right in his face. He knew which lines not to cross. The floor tiles were cool on her bare feet.

“What about school?” His voice reduced, dribbled in through the cracks. His feet little dark spots at the bottom, flitting in and out of the grim light beyond the door.

“We’ll worry about all that later.” The shower walls were lined with ceramic tiles just like the floor, all blues and grays. “This is summer vacation,” she said, speaking to the tiles. “School isn’t going anywhere.” She waited in the bathroom until she heard him leave. Then Carolyn went out and closed the suitcase, snapping everything shut. It wasn’t like him to interrupt. She saw that he was spooked, and that she needed to be careful.

He came out of his room a few hours later. Carolyn made turkey sandwiches and served them with corn chips and cherry Pepsi. They sat at the kitchen island under the dull glow of the pendant lamp. Steven ate slowly, taking small bites as Carolyn studied him. He was fidgeting with the digital watch that she’d given him for his birthday, breathing through his mouth like he did whenever he was concentrating. The questions from that morning had all dried up. The watch didn’t keep great time and he was always adjusting it. She listened to his breathing and the little electronic chirps. She cleared the dishes (the little bites up to the edge of the crusts), and Steven wiped down the table.

That night they watched a rerun of All in the Family on the Me-TV channel. The one where Edith asks Archie how he wants his bowling shoes laced and Archie tells her what’s the difference? Steven went to bed without being told, something that Carolyn had instilled early on. All the lights were off in the living room; there was just the flickering and the steady murmur from the television. Carolyn watched as he slid down from the recliner and disappeared into the hallway. Carolyn turned off the television a short time later. As she passed Steven’s room, she could hear him moving around on his mattress.

She was glad that she’d decided to put fresh sheets on her bed. It was satisfying to feel them fold away neatly as she turned them down. They were cool on her feet just like the bathroom tiles, and she loved the way they made her feel enveloped, neatly folded. But Carolyn’s mind wouldn’t slow down enough for sleep. She’d taken a pill, but her thoughts still somehow slogged through and ping-ponged around in her skull.

She and Marc on a day trip to Door County. They’d taken the ferry out to Rock Island and hiked around the lighthouse. Early October and the temperature just above freezing, but warmed by the sun inside of their ski jackets. Marc with his beard grown out for the deer season. Inside the little tavern with the worn leather and the ancient dark timber.

Hey… he’d said, after she finally told him. Hey, hey, hey… Just kept saying it over and over again, like a lullaby. Kept wiping his beard with his thumbs. The tears leaking out as if she were cracked open. Keeping it is the right thing to do he’d said. I love you he’d said. I’ll be a father for you he’d said. We can still get through school. You can still have a career. This will all work out.

The bizarre way Steven had seemed to her as a baby. Sexless in the beginning. The nose and the ears too big for the face. The skin dry. The strange way it would slough off around the scalp. An old man, shrunken and useless.

It. That’s how she’d referred to him during those first days. There were two times she’d said it out loud. The doctor presenting him like a waiter with a bottle of wine. Why is it so red? Her limbs distended and obscene against the whiteness of the recovery room. Marc reading off baby names. I don’t give a shit, Marc. Call it whatever you want. The nurse excusing herself and the click of her shoes. She had to train herself to call him by his name. It became a taboo word, like fuck or cunt. But it’d taken months before she could cleanse the word entirely from the way she thought about him – Steven.

Outside her door she heard the sharp snap of the hallway light switch, and a cold anxiety passed through her. It meant Steven had had another nightmare. He began calling for her, as he always did. His voice, tinny and stranded in the hallway, normally irritated her during these episodes, and she would yell to him from under her bed sheets to go back to sleep. But tonight was unlike those nights. A few empty seconds passed. Carolyn took a deep breath and held it against the weight of the silence. Then she heard the soft thud of him backing up against her door and the hiss of his body sliding down the length of it. She rose slowly and crossed over the room toward him. When she opened the door she could feel his weight pushing it inward, as if the hinges were spring-loaded. He rolled back slightly – crouched into a ball with his arms slung over his knees – and lolled his head up toward her. He was wearing the footed pajamas again.

“I thought I told you to put those in the Goodwill box,” she said. “You’re twelve years old now.” He was picking the lint balls off of the sleeves.

“It was the guy with the big head again. He was standing in the doorway.” The big-headed guy was a frequent visitor. Carolyn looked down the hall toward Steven’s bedroom and knelt down beside him.

“Look at your door,” she said. “Is he there now?”

“No,” he said, into the crook between his knees. She nudged him on the shoulder. “C’mon then. Back to your room.”

“Can you tuck me in?”

Carolyn stood over him and ran her hands through her hair, holding it in a heavy, wiry ball above her forehead.

“Yeah, I can do that,” she said, and started down the hallway toward his room. She turned back toward him at the doorway. Steven was trailing timidly behind, using one hand to trace the length of the wall with his fingertips. “C’mon kid, I’m tired.”

She opened his closet door and yanked on the pull chain for the light. The metal grommet leapt up and rattled against the bulb. She pushed the door forward with the tips of her fingers and let it swing slowly open to let the light pour out. She’d forgotten that his closet was now mostly empty and the sight of it caught her for a moment.

“Hey mom…”

“Hmm? Yeah?” She looked back over her shoulder. Steven walked to his bed along the far wall and went back in stiffly under the covers.

“What’s it like in Nebraska?”

She didn’t mean to laugh, but it was so absurd. She’d never really thought about it. “I just—” she started. His expression shifted and she knew that he was puzzled by her reaction. He’d assumed she’d deliver something a bit more standard. Rolling hills? Omaha?

She made a gesture toward the closet door. “Look, he’s not in here either.” Steven rolled toward the wall, which gave Carolyn an odd sense of relief. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, it was just a dream.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said.

“Then why are you bothering me?” She stepped past him. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow so you should get some sleep.”

“Hey mom…” Carolyn paused at the doorway. “I mean I’m afraid at first, and then it goes away. It’s like I’m still dreaming when I first wake up.”

“Yeah, I know.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I have nightmares, too, kiddo. You just get used to it, Steven. It’s part of growing up.”

Carolyn left his door open a few inches, just enough to let the light from the hallway fall over his face. He wasn’t a bad kid, just so goddamned needy. And she was so sick with it; too sick most of the time to give anything away anymore. The pill was making her feel groggy and swollen; she could feel her pulse in her lips. Sleep wasn’t an option, so she went into the spare bedroom and sat behind the small, laminated computer desk to wake up her laptop. There was the light from the screen.

She’d mapped the route over a month ago. But back then it was just a whim, like when she would pretend to sign up for classes at the UW-Extension. It was roughly seven hundred miles from the house in Marinette, on the thumb of Lake Michigan, to Douglas County, just over the Nebraska border. She studied the screen without blinking, and read the estimated time and distance, over and over. Ten hours, twenty-seven minutes. They could drive straight through and be there the same day. The route looked tedious, a diagonal slice through the Fox Valley (Kaukauna, Winnebago) along Hwy 151 toward the Mississippi River (Mineral Point, Platteville), crossing over it at Dubuque, and then through the entire length of Iowa.

There were similar laws in other states. Texas called theirs the Baby Moses Law. But the one they passed four months ago in Nebraska was different because they didn’t set an age limit. They called it the Nebraska Safe Haven Law, which for some reason made Carolyn think of a bird’s nest. Thirteen Nebraska babies had been discovered dead and abandoned within a span of ten months. A genuine epidemic. One was unearthed by a dog, wrapped in aluminum foil. So they passed a law. Meredith, one of the girls from Cosmetics, was fanatical about it. She was always yelling about the latest details as she flipped through the newspaper in the break room. Jesus, Carolyn. I mean shit! Did you hear about this guy that dropped off his entire family? It seemed like there was a new story every week. Carolyn would always nod and make an impatient expression, a halfway smile. Another one, Carolyn! Another one! Did you see it?

Carolyn had kept the idea incubated in her mind, quarantined to barracks unpatrolled by her conscience. She had kept the idea and used it in the same way the terminally ill keep a suicide cocktail. For comfort. But then the news stories had kept coming and coming and she knew they would ruin everything. She knew she would have to decide.

The morning arrived cloudless and stifling, but the house was surrounded by tall evergreen trees, which kept it cool and dim. She’s meant to get them on the road before noon, but she couldn’t shake the feeling she was forgetting something Steven might need. She kept drilling him for answers. Do you have your extra pair of glasses? Where’s the wallet I gave you? And so they left later that afternoon. When Carolyn finally stepped out the front door and out of the shadows, the shock of the sun temporarily blinded her and she squinted her eyes against it. With the weight of the suitcase, she stumbled from the narrow walk onto the grass. August had been dry – it hadn’t rained in weeks – and so the grass was brown and the blades crunched with each footfall. After a few steps she stopped and slowly widened her eyes as they adjusted. Everything was drained of color. She turned and saw Steven as he struggled with the door, a dark lump against the shade of the house. He had to tug on the knob to force the door shut. The keys jangled as he pried the tumblers of the lock into position. Carolyn winced when the deadbolt finally snapped and wished she’d thought to let him out first – to be relieved of this spectacle. It was just last year that she’d handed him his first key ring with the set for the front door.

He had his backpack slung loose, and the bottom of it hung down below his belt, weighted down by whatever he could fit. She’d told him to bring along his favorite things. As Steven jogged toward her, it jostled up and down on his narrow shoulders. Carolyn opened the rear door of the car, and he heaved it into the backseat. As Carolyn pulled away from the curb, an elderly woman with a watering can flapped her arm at them.

On the day the news broke that Nebraska was going to set an age limit there was a related story in the paper about a woman – out of work and a thousand miles from any semblance of her extended family – who took her daughters to the hospital. She told the ER staff that the girls had a strange rash and didn’t know what to do. Then, while the nurse knelt down to look them over, she excused herself to use the bathroom and didn’t return. So simple. So clean. One moment she was a mother. And then she wasn’t anymore.

Meredith had been beside herself. The headline read: Another ‘Safe Haven’, and directly underneath it there was a full color photo of the mother. The reporter had dredged up a mug shot, a DUI judging from her glassy-eyed expression. She looked too young to have children, and Carolyn had wondered absently if either of her daughters were around when the picture was taken. She didn’t look crazy or vengeful, just confused. Maybe a bit naïve. Her eyes averted the camera.

Carolyn imagined this woman holding one of the babies with the same glassy-eyed expression that she wore in her mug shot. She wondered if Meredith considered herself a good mother. Probably. Meredith was just as full of shit as everyone else. Carolyn had never claimed to be a good mother. But she had been a guardian. Keeper and provider. She gave her son food when he was hungry. She cleaned him when he was soiled. When he was cold, she put more clothes on him. But there was an emptiness in the way she did these things, and she derived no pleasure from it. It was as if he were assigned to her.

“Six and eight years old. Can you even imagine it?” Meredith had asked.

“No, Meredith. I can’t imagine.”

“Where do you think they get—”

“The first of September it all ends, Meredith. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

They were just a few hours from the Nebraska state border when last gasp of sunlight disappeared behind the horizon. There was no moon. Ahead, beyond the pallor of the headlights, there was darkness. Darkness like Carolyn had never seen. It seemed to have a thickness, a heaviness that weighed down on them.

“Where are we?” Steven asked. In the darkness, Carolyn could only see his face, lit by the electric blue lights of the dashboard. He looked frail, corpselike.

“We’re almost to Des Moines.” Her voice was monotone. She looked at the clock. It was almost ten. “I thought we could make it there, but then the sun went down and it sapped everything out of me. I have to stop for a bit. Just for a bit. We’ll pull over so I can sleep.”

There were no other cars on the road, but out of habit, Carolyn flipped the turn signal anyway. The amber light flashed against the pavement as she veered the car over to the shoulder. The tires whined against the pattern of the rumble strip, and then whispered over the gravel shoulder as she brought it to a stop. The night had grown cold – cold enough that she’d switched off the AC and had the heater running.

In the trunk there was an old woolen blanket that she kept for emergencies. She took it and climbed back in behind the wheel. Steven was slumped back against the window. Carolyn reclined her seat as far back as it would go, and she hit the automatic locks.

“I just need like twenty minutes of sleep,” she said. “Christ, it’s too quiet.” She turned the keys forward in the ignition, and the dashboard sparked back to life. “Why don’t you try to find something on the radio.”

He began to play with the dial, but there was only static. It pulsed over the speakers in waves.

“There’s no signal,” he said.

“Just keep trying,” she said, and spread the blanket over her. Steven shifted in his seat and paused with his fingers on the knob.

“Mom?” His voice was just above a whisper, and there was no depth to it.

“What…” She had begun to nod off. The words were muffled under the blanket.

“Why don’t you have a suitcase?”

Her sleep was shallow, just below the barrier of consciousness. In her dreams Carolyn was back in her own bed, burrowed under the weight of the comforter with the country flowers. She thought she was alone, but then a small voice from across the room disturbed her. Somehow she knew that it was Marc. He kept asking to borrow the car, a test to see if she were awake. But she pretended to be asleep. When she peeked at him she saw that Marc was a boy, maybe thirteen years old. He was reaching into her sock drawer where she kept the jar of spare change. She became angry, saying, “If you touch that jar, I will kill you.” He paused, caught for a moment, and then turned suddenly toward her. His eyes were full of tears, and there was a curious look of surprise, as if he’d not realized she was there.

“I missed my mother,” he said, the words weighted with sadness. “I miss…”

He came over to the bed then and crawled in with her. But when she felt him – his embrace, his hot tears against her neck – she was not his mother. She sobbed along with him. There was a feeling of admitting, of blissful release. “I know… I know… I know…”

When Carolyn woke, it was cold inside of the car. She could feel it at the tip of her nose and her fingers. The wool fibers of the blanket were damp from her breathing. For a moment she lay still and felt her heart beat against her chest. There was a crackling sound coming from the radio, and behind the static a man’s voice sputtered. She pawed for the edge of the blanket and peeled it away from her face. The pale light of the dashboard reflected on the window. She could see the reversed numbers of the clock. It was after midnight.

“Shit.” Her throat was raw from breathing in the cold air. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” She turned toward the passenger’s seat, but Steven had moved into the back while she slept. Half-dazed, she was momentarily unable to process his absence.

In the back of the car, his form was barely visible in the darkness. He had the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head, and his hands were jammed into the front pocket. She leaned in closer, squinting her eyes, which allowed her to see the slow rise and fall of his torso as he breathed. Carolyn gripped the top of the driver’s seat and collapsed over the headrest. She was looking out of the backdoor window, but with the light from the dashboard the window became a mirror. She studied the small, metallic levers on the armrest, the slim cylinder of the door lock, flared out at the top so you could pull it up and push it back down. So simple. Just two options. It was pushed down.

“Steven, wake up.”

“I’m not asleep,” he said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I do, too. C’mon, we’ll go out by the bushes.”

Caroline put the high beams on. They illuminated the terrain just beyond the edge of the gravel. There were no bushes. There was only the long grass in the ditch along shoulder and then the endless fields. She took the blanket and went out to the trunk. She watched Steven walking gingerly away from her, toward where the corn started. He slipped beyond the reach of the headlights, and then she couldn’t see him anymore.

“Steven?” But he didn’t respond. Several seconds passed. Then the splashing sound of his urinating. The splashing stopped, and she heard him struggling in the grass coming back toward the car. He reappeared out of the darkness like a ghost.

“Get back in the car and wait for me,” she said. “I still have to go.”

She’d overslept, but there was still time to make it.

When she got back to the car she saw that Steven had returned to the back seat. Carolyn turned the keys in the ignition. She moved the shifter into drive. The car lurched forward. She pulled back onto the highway. The man on the radio kept talking. A student was shot at a high school in Knoxville. The United States won a gold medal in men’s basketball. Hurricane Gustav was pummeling the Gulf Coast. Carolyn switched it off. Steven lay in the back. He had his head on his suitcase.

Off Island

by David Ackley

There were only six passengers aboard the small ferry when it came about from the island dock and began to beat thickly through the cold grey November swells toward the main. Waiting at the landing, the four who lived on the island year-round had exchanged greetings, two old women and a burly man in cap and wool plaid jacket using each other’s first names—Edna, Coretta, Rodney –but calling the fourth, a woman in her thirties, “missus.” The three were lifelong islanders, she a newcomer, Cleo Lansman, dressed in a vaguely English manner in Shetland sweater, waterproof jacket and slacks, who’d moved to the island the previous May with her adolescent daughter.

But when the boat pulled away, the four, and the two off-islanders who’d waited off from the others, spread through the cabin warmed by the big Halliburton diesel. The island fell behind, a dark mound in the mist. Cleo and the two older women faced each other from benches along the starboard and port sides while the others chose spots among the double row of benches faced forward like church pews; they could see through a half-door the pilot’s broad back and a bit of dash, gauges and lights, and quarters of the wheel, rocking in the pilot’s hands. It was the slow season and soon this mid-day ferry would be shut down leaving only morning and evening runs, primarily for the kids who attended high school on the main. “Weather Permitting” warned the schedule, indicating less willingness than the island lobstermen to front gale, rough seas, blizzard, or killer fog. “Pickled in brine,” the islanders joked, “tough as a fuckin’ boot.”

The two old women were clad alike in faded print dresses with hems that fell below orange slickers like the ones their husbands wore on their boats—or had worn, in the case of the widowed Edna Bingham, who also wore Harold’s black rubber boots. Her companion was a few years younger than her cousin, smaller and less imposing, and was helping Edna to her appointment with a rheumatologist in Devonsport.

In a middle pew, a young man with a nylon briefcase shuffled through the papers inside, his complexion suggesting he might soon need to remove to the narrow deck cabin-side, wind or no. Taking note, Edna nudged Coretta and tipped her head his way. There was a woman, in jeans and parka with a small pack beside her on the bench, from which she presently took an apple; an offseason day-tripper, of no interest to the others. In the back, from the moment he sat, Rodney had begun to doze, swaying forward and back to the rise and fall of the bow, more at home than in his own bed back on the island.

The island was a few miles off the mainland, and the blunt little ferry beating against the tide made slow progress. Cleo took a paperback from her coat pocket, opening it to a marked page, and Coretta attacked a purple swatch and yarn from her handbag with her quick knitting needles, her eyes darting here and there as she worked, though never falling on her deft, independent fingers.

After a few minutes, Edna Bingham began to speak, at first in brief murmurs to her companion, then louder, so as to benefit all the other passengers.

“Been on that island all my life, that’s the fact of it. Won’t be long I’ll be up to the graveyard with Harold, my husband that was, lookin’ down on God’s house and the boatyard.” Coretta nodded and glanced toward her cousin, with a musical hum, brief and supportive, that Edna drew from her now and then, like a chorus. Edna coughed. “About all I know’s that island. Some might call that plain ignorance.” She barked a laugh–possibly at her own expense.

It was hard to tell where she was looking, with her fleshy features folded among mounds and ripples, her eyes all but buried, with only an occasional blue glint like water through trees. Her head was tipped slightly toward the deck though she would lift it regularly to look through the glass next to Cleo, monitoring the blow in the way of those who take their living at the pleasure of the sea. “I ‘spose it’s better to know one thing pretty well than a pittance about half the clutter goes on these days.”

She paused, foraging in her coat pocket for a pack of Camels, from which she tapped one, circled the cabin with a challenging look, and lit it with a paper match. “Course they’s plenty as thinks they knows the island.” Coretta gave her little hum and her needles clicked audibly.

Cleo pressed her book a little harder into her lap: a copy of Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa which she’d picked up, amused by the thought it might cast refracted light on the tribe she’d found herself, mystified, living among.

“We was even studied up by the university, some mucky-muck professor, come after us with all these questions, then wrote us up. All about kin and such, who was married to who. Who’s goin’ to stay in such a place ‘cept them was born to it? I says to him. Who they going to marry but someone else raised there? They’s families go back two hundred year and more on that island, all twined together like squid in a bucket.”

Cleo’s own family, smaller and of briefer duration, had been sundered by a savage divorce; the friends all went to Douglas, leaving her only Melissa, fourteen then, whom she’d wanted to distance from all that mess and had brought somewhat kicking and screaming to the sanctuary of the island, where Cleo could paint and hide and Melissa would adjust, as kids do. As, in fact, she had–in so short a time it seemed to surprise her too.

Coretta leaned toward Edna, murmured a few words and Edna barked again. “Goddam right… Coretta can give her whole genealogy by heart, name every one of them five generations back… Kin and kind is what a island is. And how it gets on under the hard life we chose….Not that I got anything against a newcomer. Hell, their money’s good as anybody’s.” She laughed her hard laugh again. “Don’t hurt if they know what they’re gettin’ into. You hate for someone to be thinking they can wall off a piece and call it their own island. Hiring on carpenters and masons from off island when we got men right here could use the work.”

Across from her Cleo’s head moved slightly, though she didn’t look up from her book.

“Not that it’s any business of mine. I’m not one to put my nose in other people’s business, no matter what some might say.”

She paused, puffing on the cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, its ash growing dangerously longer, until she tipped the ash into her hand and ground it and the butt under her rubber boot. For a time her head sank lower toward her ample chest, as if she had lost interest in her own conversation. There was a sense of relief; her voice intimidated with its roughness and confidence.

The wind’s wail had grown steadier, and there was a slight yaw to the boat, as it fell off to one side of a rising wave now and again.

The young man rose from his seat, said, “Guess I’ll step out for a breath,” and opened the cabin door which blew in hard against his grasp. Feeling the gust, the pilot turned, then shrugged and went back to his wheel. The passenger went out, yanking the door shut behind him.

“‘Spose we ought tell him ‘bout not puking to windward,” Edna said, reviving. She was leaning forward, speaking again loudly but with a confidential air as if what she conveyed was not for all. Her legs were spread and her right arm rested across her thick right thigh. “He’ll have to figure it out his self. And course some never does. Always gazing the other way, painting their pictures of the sunset and such.”

Cleo raised her head, smiling a gentle, placating smile at no-one in particular and lowered her gaze to her book again. The smile meant to soften the atmosphere on the boat. It said, I know I’m different, I know they don’t like me. But it’s all right. It’s their island. I have no claim. I just want to live on a small piece and look at it, the sky, the sea.

“All the same,” the old woman resumed a bit later. “It’s nice when a new child comes, gives ours someone fresh to know. I like to see them waiting on the ferry for school, playing and fooling around. Not naming any names they’s one girl, cute little brown-haired thing, goes to the tenth grade with Bobby Colter and his cousin Dennis.” With an inner start, Cleo recognized Melissa, recast as a stranger in the old woman’s description of her. Coretta smiled and nodded, her needles unceasing.

“Me and Harold wasn’t lucky in that way. Don’t know whose fault it was. God’s will, I ‘spose. But, way it is on an island, sometimes it feels like they’re all mine anyway. Come Halloween they’re at my door in their costumes and I give them as much candy as they can carry off. I get to know them, watching from my window every day…I see them growing up, the boys and girls apart, then after a while starting to take notice of one ‘nother.”

The young man came back inside and re-took his seat. The wind had begun to abate, and the swells were lower, less abrupt from crest to trough; they were coming under the modulating influence of the great continent.

“They’re good kids, island kids, good as any off-islander as claims to look down on them. You take my nephew Ralph Taylor’s son, Peter, in his senior year already, been hauling’ traps on Ralph’s boat since he was twelve. Plays the high school basketball. Big strapping, good-looking boy. I seen the Pittman girls get into it over him, Peter standing by, laughing his ass off. But the boy’s got his head turned now, ain’t for me to say who. Whoever she be, she ain’t got a worry with a serious boy like that. Not one to run away, he ain’t, even if they’re wishin’ he’d a tied a knot in it.”

She paused again, sensitive to the boat’s lunge as it turned from the channel and the fast, outrunning tide into the easier waters of the inner harbor.

“And they’s other things I see,” she presently resumed, “like how a girl’s coloring will sometimes change. I ‘spose cause it never happened to me I’m always watching for the signs. Like when she starts to favor certain clothes, wearing a sweatshirt, or a big coat even on the warm days. I ain’t usually wrong. I ‘spose someone else mightn’t notice, thinking she’s just dressing like the others do, to fit in — even someone close…if the girl didn’t want them to know …”

She’d shifted slightly to the right, her eyes on the woman reading her book. Coretta mirrored the look, her needles stilled, and even big, laconic Rodney, who rarely attended to the talk of women, had wakened to watch Cleo from under the bill of his cap. “I guess that’s why some people comes to an island, so they can pick and choose, closing their eyes to whatever ain’t so elegant.”

Cleo’s head was still bowed, but she gave the impression she was no longer reading the words, that the page had gone blank on her.

“Course there’s one telltale as never fails. You won’t see a woman do it much ‘cept them that’s carrying. Can’t help it I ‘spose — always folding their arms tight across their bellies — wanting all the time to be feeling what’s growing inside…Can’t miss that, ‘specially if you carried one of your own, can you, Missus?”

Missus. Misses. Missed…

They felt the engine begin to throttle back.

“Coming into the main,” she said. “Time to go see some young knowall thinks he knows from books what it’s like to get old with the arthritis.”

Very carefully, Cleo had closed her book and put it back in her coat pocket, her head raised, looking straight at the old woman but seeming not to see her, as if someone else stood between them. Her fine hands were twisted together in her lap. She was seated by the door to the deck on the starboard side, and, when, one by one, the other passengers moved past her to debark, none but the old woman was able to refrain from glancing at her as they went by, her face taut and pale, gazing straight ahead, her lips silently forming words they were just as glad not to hear.

She stays until they’ve all gone ashore, then leaves the ferry for a picnic bench by the landing. The harbor is calm out to a band of turbulence along the channel, as if something is swimming just under the surface. A pair of gulls kite to the water and settle without a splash. How easily they change state. She hasn’t found it so.

The old woman’s words have the blunt force of a mugging, reducing Cleo’s feelings to a numb prickle, her thoughts only to reclaim her daughter and get away, quick and far.

She’ll wait until the kids come down to the landing, waylay Melissa with cheerful lies about a mother-daughter night in town, shopping, maybe a movie, a sleepover in this neat bed and breakfast she knows: It’ll be fun! They’ll watch Melissa’s friends pull away on the boat, in their rough play pretending to shove each other overboard, the tall boy a little apart on the deck, looking back at them. Melissa waving goodbye until they’re out of sight. In Cleo’s vision, the tall boy, Peter, doesn’t return the wave, sensing that they won’t be coming back. When the boat has passed from view, she’ll tell Melissa that she knows and that it’s okay.

She’s the mother. She’s fought this battle before and won against an enemy fiercer than any tribe of throwbacks dying out on a pile of rock. Try a desperate, scheming ex-husband with pots of money and a school of Great Whites for lawyers. There will be time to decide, time to grow up. If there’s to be a child, they can bring her up together—two mothers quite enough, no villages need apply, thank you very much—loving over her watchfully until… but no use to plan that far, which is like trying to look beyond the point where the harbor ends to the invisible sea beyond, the island out there somewhere in the mist. For now it will be enough that the boat leaves and that they’re behind on the shore.

In that invisible beyond there will be objections, arguments, recriminations, self and otherwise. Love might be offered in counter-claim, oh all sorts of things will try to pull her child from her arms. So was first roused the fear, choking and irrational, walking along the sidewalk in the crowded city, the air cold and filled with dread, that in the next moment some stranger might come from the crowd, tear her baby from her arms and disappear. How tight she’d clasp her, eyes on each passing face. Through all the years of Melissa’s growing up, her fear awoke with each threat, real or imagined. For herself risk could be taken in stride, at times welcomed. But the fear could own her, and she, a free woman, didn’t like it. To be yanked bolt upright from exhausted sleep, senses vivid as a hunter’s, at what? A held breath, a stitch in the silence. It was hyper-alert, clamoring at hints, intimations, nothings: the slack manner and glazed look of a babysitter; the sudden churn of the plump little legs toward the curb; the airy, too-precocious “Oh, he’s harmless,” for a sullen, knowing friend; the junior high cheerleader who let slip the phrase “blow job;” the older boy with a fast car, resplendent to the fear’s hound nose with tequila, vomit, weed. Most of all a constant, anxious whine, warning of the soi-disant father grooming his pubescent daughter, like the call girls he patronized, opening his wallet to every teasing caress, happy to pay for what he chose to call love. During the warfare of the divorce proceedings it grew, taking almost all the breathing room.

It crowded her from the inside.

And then they’d moved to the island, she woke one morning and it was gone. She could breathe and reclaim herself. The island coiled around them.

Occasionally, in a seascape, she’d paint a few stripes of white for a lobster boat, adding dabs of orange for the slickered lobsterman. They must have loved that. To be “picturesque?” To have all the grind and struggle stilled in a few dabs of orange? No wonder they hated her. She’d seen only the serenity, the verities of sea, rock and sky and the enduring islanders who seemed to partake of them, and looked away from whatever wasn’t that; the charge is just, even from the vile mouth of an ignorant old woman in black rubber boots.

It pants at the edge of awareness, feeling for a way back in. Her attention drifts away, allowing it closer. She recalls reading of an island overrun by a predatory species, where the mothers lie awake at night, machetes at hand, watching over the children, at risk even asleep in their beds under the teeming rafters. She’d sought to separate herself from her fear and leave it whimpering on the shore when she went away. She wonders if she should have held it close, her very child.

Christmas at Norma’s Pizza

by Manek R. Mistry

She knows her staff steals from the register. Not a lot—surprising, because stoners can’t always manage subtlety—but enough to be noticeable, even though she doesn’t actually balance the till.

She’s inclined to let it slide, if it doesn’t get worse. They’re all just kids, and she pays them shit, and besides, what’s she going to do—make them spy on each other? Set up video cameras? Hire a detective? She hasn’t talked to Mark about it, but she knows what he’d say: fire them all. Wouldn’t do any good though; she’d just have to start watching the new ones.

She lights a cigarette and leans back in her chair, blowing smoke into the pizza-tinted air. Her office—a cramped, windowless firetrap at the back of the restaurant—is messier than usual, filled with Christmas presents waiting to be wrapped. She could make one of the girls do it, maybe. Kelly’s neat and organized; she looks like she’d make nice crisp packages. Have to pay her extra, though, because she wouldn’t get any tips, stuck back here instead of out front.

She regrets buying the big flat-screen for Mark, now that he’s acting like a jerk. She knows he’s having an affair—with the skinny bitch who does the books at Cartwright’s—but she doesn’t care, so why does he have to take his guilt out on her by being such an asshole?

Ok, maybe she cares a little bit, but it’s not like she hasn’t cheated on him, too, before the kids were born, so she can’t confront him— that would open a whole can of worms. Maybe she can return the TV; the receipt’s got to be around here somewheres.

She rests her cigarette on the ashtray— a mess of clay and glaze Petey made in third grade— and shifts papers around on her desk. Most of them are invoices she hasn’t paid yet— some green, some pink, some white, all different sizes. Why can’t they make them all the same? She comes across a letter from her lawyer— have to deal with that, sometime— and the notice from the health department. After a minute, she gives up looking. Let him have the damn TV; he won’t be a jackass forever. The affair will fizzle—like they do—and he’ll get all sweet and affectionate for a while. That’ll be annoying, too, but then things will go back to normal, and he might as well have a nice TV then.

She retrieves her cigarette, picks up the newspaper, and turns to the puzzle page. This Sunday morning ritual proves she’s middle-aged: the younger Norma would have ridiculed any of her friends who wasted time on the crossword, or the jumble, but she’s come to like it, and it doesn’t hurt anyone. This morning, she can’t find a pen, though. How can there not be a single pen in here? She shifts the papers around again, hunts through the desk drawers, and checks her purse: nothing.

Annoyed, she gets up and walks through the kitchen. It’s all stainless steel, but not one bit of it is shiny like it was when she and Mark bought the place all those years ago. What the hell had they been thinking? Still, dumb as they were, it had worked out, and the pressure’s less, now that the kids are grown and the house paid off. Maybe she can hire someone to come in here and scrub everything so it shines again, just to make it look nice and clean, like it was back then, before the residue of a thousand pizzas had accumulated.

She pushes out through the swinging door and threads her way between close-packed tables—the waitresses have always complained that there are too many—to the corner where the register sits. The cup where they keep the pens is empty. Damn it!

Just then, someone knocks on the front door. Through the tinted glass, she sees big snow boots, a burly parka, and a scraggly snow-covered beard sticking out from inside the puffy hood. It’s Ugly Beans, a guy who sometimes stops by for large quantities of pot that he deals to the college kids down in Amherst.

She gets her keys out, unlocks the door, and opens it, letting in a swirl of snow. “Hey,” she says. “Need something?”

He nods, and she lets him in and locks the door behind him.

“Don’t have much on hand,” she says. “You gotta call ahead.”

He stamps snow off his boots and pulls his hood off, revealing a bleeding lip and a pair of black eyes so fresh they look painted on.

“Holy crap, Beaner!” She examines him. “You want some ice for your face? What happened?”

“Yeah, I know.” He touches his lip with his fingers. “Pretty bad, huh?” His voice is thick; his words difficult to understand. He holds one arm flat across his body, but she can’t tell through the thick coat if it’s his arm or his gut, or both.

She leads him into the kitchen and turns on the tap. “Maybe some cold water first.” She finds a rag under the sink and holds it out. “Wash some of that blood off.”

“Is it still bleeding?” He touches his lip again, then takes the cloth.

“You got blood in your beard, too. What happened?” She grabs a bowl, walks to the ice machine, and fills it. “Here.”

He thanks her, takes a handful, and holds it to his eyes. “Fuck, that hurts.”

He smells rotten, like he’s slept in a tub of rancid meat for a week, and his fingernails are black with grime. “Who was it?” she asks.

“Tiny and them guys.”

“You owe him?”

“He thinks I do.”

She nods. “I guess that’s what matters. Wanna sit down?” She guides him out of the kitchen to her office and clears papers off a chair. “I’ve got a story about Tiny. It’s a Christmas story, sort of.”

Ugly Beans tilts his head back, a cube of ice held to each eye with red fingers, the bowl in his lap. He’s undone his coat, but he still pins his left elbow to his ribs, like he’s wearing an invisible sling. “The one about the Santa at the mall?”

“Better.” She sits down at her desk across from him. “Your arm ok?”

“Yeah.” Dark threads of blood dribble from his beard down his neck and disappear into his grubby clothes. “What’s the story?”

“Back when his kids were little he had a Christmas party at his house—he had this big old house he got when his mom died.” She remembers Tiny’s mom—short skirts, long legs, big boobs. Rumor was she slept with all the dads in town. “This guy Jimmy—you know Jimmy?—he got wasted and stepped on some presents under the tree. So Tiny’s all pissed off, and he pulls a knife and pokes Jimmy in the gut. The cops come, and Jimmy goes to the hospital and gets stitched up and he’s fine. Then—”

“Tiny go to jail?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just a year in county. It was his first felony assault, I think.”

“First time he got caught, you mean.”

“Probably. But listen to this: the cops can’t find the knife, so they seal off the house and come back with a warrant, and they go through the whole place, the garage, the yard, everything. No knife.”

He shifts in his chair, head still tilted back.

She can see a vein thumping in his neck, like there’s something inside trying to get out, and she wonders what he’s on. Not just a little weed; something harder, she thinks. “Turns out he put it in the tree like an ornament, just resting on a branch next to Santa and Rudolph.”

Ugly Beans snorts. “What an asshole.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Smart, though. He went to college.”

“I went to college.” He drops the ice cubes back in the bowl. The area around his eyes has grown darker and puffier. “UCLA.”

“No shit?”

He nods. “Engineering. Anyway. How much you got for me?”

“Ten ounces, maybe. If that.” She opens a drawer, finds her scale, and sets it on the mess of papers. Then, bending over in her chair, she reaches into the low cupboard behind her and takes out the locked metal box that holds her stash. When she turns back to face him, he’s looming over her with what looks at first like a machete. The blade is long and rusty with one bright sharp edge gleaming silver in the dim light. His coat is unzipped, and his b.o.— rancid meat—is stronger and more oppressive than before.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“What the hell?” She stares at him, more annoyed than afraid, her box of pot resting on her lap. It’s not a machete, she realizes; it’s a lawnmower blade, with duct tape wrapped around one end to make a handle. “Seriously? This is what you want to do?”

“I’m sorry,” he says again. The tip of the lawnmower blade dips toward the floor, and he jerks it back up again.

“You’re a dick,” she says.

“I know. I’m really, really sorry.” His hands are shaking, and he grips his makeshift weapon so tightly that his red fingers turn yellow-white.

“I could prob’ly get that away from you.” She’s got a baseball bat, but it’s behind the stack of unwrapped presents. There’s also a revolver in the bottom drawer, missing its firing pin; now she wishes she’d got around to fixing it.

He waves the lawnmower blade at her face. “Don’t try. I don’t wanna hurt you.”

She puts the box on the desk. “Get out of here.”

“Open it,” he says.

“You open it, asshole.” She throws her keys at him. He has to bend over to pick them up, but she doesn’t bother making a move. She’s pissed, but she feels sorry for him too, she realizes as she watches him fumble to unlock the box. Stinky, smelly, beat-up loser.

“Where’s the cash?” he asks.

“In my hairy cunt.” She bites the word out, so the ‘T’ stays in the air between them.

“Come on, Norma.” He holds the weapon up, but he’s still focused on the box. Finally he gets it open. “I need that cash.”

She glares at him and folds her arms.

He scoops ziplock bags of weed out of the box and shoves them into the pockets of his parka. The blade flops sideways and hits her on the cheek, and she jerks back, lifting her fingers to the spot, eyes stinging with the sudden pain. “Ow!”

“Sorry!” He jams the last baggie in his pocket. “God, Norma, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to…”

“Asshole,” she mutters. Her cheek is numb and wet with blood, and her right eye is tearing up. “Fuck!”

“I swear I didn’t mean to… Just give me the cash, and I’ll get out of here.”

She finds her purse, pulls out a roll of bills wrapped in rubber bands, and throws it at him.

He catches it, crams it in his jeans pocket, and backs toward the hall. Lowering the fake machete, he hesitates in the doorway. “You still got that monster bong here? Wanna smoke a bowl with me before I go?”

“No, I don’t want to smoke a fucking bowl with you,” she hisses. “What the fuck’s wrong with you? Are you retarded?”

He zips the lawnmower blade under his coat and pins it to his side with his elbow “I’ll pay you back,” he says. “No hard feelings.”

“Fuck you,” she growls. “Get out of here.”

He looks as though he’s about to say something, but then he turns without speaking and walks away. She closes her eyes, and feels sweat prickling her skin. Ten ounces, plus—how much cash?—at least four hundred. He shoulda taken the flat-screen TV; it’s worth more. Harder to carry, though.

She hears a noise, opens her eyes, and sees him standing in the doorway again. “What?”

“I can’t get out,” he says sheepishly.

“Jesus Christ!” She grabs her keys off the desk, pushes past him, and marches through the kitchen into the dining room. “Give me the cash back and I’ll open the door.”

“Norma, I can’t.” He unzips his coat, reaching inside for the lawnmower blade.

“Aw, fuck, don’t bother.” She unlocks the door, holds it open for him, and smacks the back of his head as he walks through into bright snowy daylight.

When he turns, his whole face is an apology, overlaid with blood and bruises. “Norma…”

“Yeah, yeah,” she says. “Whatever.”

They stand there for a few seconds, looking at each other as snow covers his balding head. “Merry Christmas,” he says finally.

“Get the fuck out of here.” She wishes she had something to throw at him.

He looks at her for another few seconds, then lifts his hood, turns, and trudges away through the snow, his oversized boots leaving fat footprints in the dirty white drifts.

She closes the door, locks it, and watches him cross the street, then walks down the smelly dark hallway to the bathroom. She flips the light switch, turns on the faucet, and examines her cheek. He nicked the skin, and there’s a red spot already darkening into a bruise. “Shit.” She rests her hands on the sink, shaking. Without any warning, she starts to cry; tears stream down her face, and soon she’s sobbing, wishing she could go home and expect to find Mark there. She’d curl up with him on the couch, and tell him about Ugly Beans and his ghetto sword, and he’d hold her and give her a kiss, or storm out to find the bastard and beat the crap out of him for her.

But she can’t do that, because he’s probably off with the skinny bookkeeper, so instead she washes and dries her face and returns to the office. She pulls the flat-screen out of its box, carefully separating it from the Styrofoam packing, then finds her bat behind the stack of other presents, and takes a deep breath. The shock of each blow travels up past her elbows as she hammers it again and again, clobbering the screen until every millimeter of glass is cracked. Then, sweating and panting, she repacks the TV, safeguarding it with the Styrofoam, and closes the box. I’ll get Kelly to wrap it, she thinks, and I’ll put it under the tree. Mark will love it. I can’t wait to see his face.

A Day at the Races

by A. Scanlan O'Hearn

When Jimmy said they’d spend a day at the races, Jaycee thought of the expression, It’s a dog’s life, and then, what the fuck is that about? Any dog she ever knew was layin’ in the dirt in a hole-strewn back yard on a short leash next to an empty bowl. But Jimmy really did mean a day at the races, not like they’d stand trackside or sit in the grandstand looking down on the horses. Definitely not the clubhouse. He meant the OTB. You’re my goddamn lucky rabbit’s foot, he said leading her by the arm to put down for the first trifecta, then forgot she was there and left Jaycee to wander off. She might have been the only female in the place, everyone either old or male or both standing around faces bent over racing forms, or staring at screens then running to windows before the bell to win or lose again. Jimmy’d find her when he needed her, so she made her way to the ‘cafetorium.’ At least they had beer.

From her table, Jaycee scanned the crowd, mostly they were looking at her. She knew she still looked good and tried to stay fit, keep her hair fashionably cut, wore jeans and heels when she was goin’ out. That’s the way Jimmy liked it, too. If I wanted a mother fuckin’ mother, I’da stayed home, he told her. You don’t got kids, do ya? When she said yeah, but long gone, that satisfied him. They’d been living together for a year.

A young woman at a corner table caught Jaycee’s eye. A bit pretty, alone. The girl was scanning the crowd too. Jaycee tried to picture her man, maybe an older guy who’d treat her right for the day, maybe another Jimmy who needed luck. Maybe the girl really was alone, too, just here for the beer. The girl continued to look around, then oddly landed her gaze on Jaycee and smiled. Uh oh, one of those. Then Jaycee knew she wasn’t. The girl was on her way over. Jaycee put her head down, pretending to rummage through her bag. When she looked up the girl was at her table, a real shit eatin’ grin on her face. Like she was stoned, or just coming off somethin’.

Jaycee wanted to get up and walk away. She wanted to call Dean, the one person she could call at any time and he’d answer. She’d raised him after all. But the girl’s face made Jaycee stick.

‘Can I show you somethin’?’

‘I’m sorry?’ The girl was prettier than Jaycee first thought, but tired, pale, her eyes heavy, like she just woke up in a car outside. Probably did.

‘There’s somethin’ I need to show you,’ and the girl put her hand on Jaycee’s arm, reaching and then resting it there heavy. They stayed like that a second. Again, Jaycee wanted to leave.

‘It’s this way,’ and with that the girl was looking over her shoulder to be sure Jaycee followed. Jaycee sat a second. She wanted to call Dean, reached into her bag. The girl was back.

‘Please.’

Everything told her not to. She’d been that girl, had run that game herself.

‘This better be good,’ and Jaycee got up from her seat, slung the plastic cup of beer back.

By the time she had downed it the girl was out the cafetorium door and into the crowd under the monitors, now denser than before, people running from bet to bet as the chances at winning grew smaller and smaller. Jaycee couldn’t see Jimmy anywhere, but they all blended together, now a few more women, too, all eyes on the screens above their heads. Jaycee spotted the girl twenty or so feet ahead, looking again over her shoulder to be sure Jaycee was behind her. She thought for a minute she’d duck out. It wasn’t too hot and she could wait by the car, although it might be a couple of hours, but the girl kept moving forward, and Jaycee followed. Jaycee fished around in her bag for the phone. She’d call Dean. He’d talk her out of it, or through it.

Ma, what’s the matter? I’m workin’

Dean?

Yeah, Ma, this isn’t a great time, can I call-

Dean, I’m about to get into somethin’

Ma, I can’t talk. I’ll give you a call later.

Dean, you know when you’re headed for somethin’ you shouldn’t?

Ma, really, I gotta go.

The girl entered the ladies room and Jaycee followed. Son of a bitch. He had no time for her. She couldn’t blame him, though, twenty-five, carefree. Living the good life, the one she gave him and lost herself. The girl was right inside the door when Jaycee swung it open. Then she was standing firmly rooted right in front of the stalls, her arms nearly wrapped around herself twice.

‘What’re you sellin’?’

‘Huh?’ The girl looked at Jaycee like she’d never seen her; her face had gone sheet white and Jaycee noticed for the first time her clothes were dirty, her hair around her neck matted and sweaty. The girl started to shake and Jaycee knew she had a drug addict on her hands. The girl didn’t move, stood stuck with her feet planted on the tile floor.

‘It’s there.’

‘Listen, honey, I don’t want it whatever it is’ and Jaycee reached into her purse. She’d give her a twenty and get out. She shouldn’t have come, but it was something about the girl, the way she reminded Jaycee of being young, although Jaycee suddenly wondered if being young had been all that great.

‘Just look at it, that’s all,’ and the girl, her feet still unmoving, her body in a gesture so pathetic, the way she reached, Jaycee thought she’d fall over.

‘There, in the last sink, ‘ and Jaycee looked down the wall past the stalls to where a bank of sinks ran under some dim lights, the bulbs above mostly dark. Jaycee could make something out in the last sink. Was the girl trying to sell her clothes? It was a dark mass of something and then Jaycee thought for a minute it was moving. She moved closer to look without getting too close, suddenly afraid of something biting her. She’d known of people selling exotic pets. The girl could have brought her boyfriend’s cobra, for Christ’s sake.

Brown and crumpled paper towels filled the sink and now Jaycee knew something in there was moving. She could make out what looked like the arm of something, dark and wet. No, she wasn’t interested in any reptiles, thank you. The thing let out a cry and Jaycee jumped. A cat? Whatever it was it was in distress, the cry a half choking sound, it reminded Jaycee of something. And then it hit her. It was a baby, the fuckin’ thing was covered in blood, just about dried. It was dark, maybe black, as Jaycee looked closer, she could see its arms and legs entangled in the towels, its mouth sucking on a wadded up corner, the thing struggling to survive.

‘Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?’ she turned to the girl. But the girl was gone.

Cindy Silk

by Ed Meek

"Excuse me, Cindy, but these people tell me their food isn’t hot,” Angelo said.

Cindy stared at the new Maitre D puzzled.

"Not hot?" Cindy put her hands on her hips. "It's not supposed to be hot. Tell them that."

"Where do I get these people?" she said to no one in particular. She put her hands on her temples and massaged them. Her throat was so dry she could barely swallow. She looked up and the Maitre D' was still standing there. She reached out and grabbed him by the ear. "Did you hear me?" She twisted his ear. "Go," she said pushing his head away as she released him.

Angelo stumbled backwards, rubbing his ear, incredulous.

Cindy turned around, went back upstairs and found David, "I'm going to take a break. Keep an eye on things. Keep everyone moving."

Two hours later, rush over, most of the guests gone, Cindy was talking to Chad, her best-looking waiter. With his thick black hair, square jaw and blue eyes, Chad looked like he could be giving tennis lessons at the country club. Usually she enjoyed talking to him because it gave her the opportunity to stare at him, but now he was irritating her. He stood there, drinking her cognac, at her invitation, telling her that he liked the cheaper one, the Delamain, better than the Vesper, when anyone who knew anything about cognac knew that the Vesper was fabulous. In fact, someone had stolen a bottle of the Vesper which retailed for over a hundred dollars and Cindy thought it might have been Chad. She briefly entertained the notion that he might be right about the Delamain. Then she regained her senses. "No, no," she cut him off, "you don't understand, Chad. It’s the quality of the oak that gives the Vesper that woody flavor–what the French call 'raison' from the aging."

"But the Delamain has a nice, fiery quality." Chad said.

"Fiery?" Cindy didn't know why she wasted her time listening to these people. Maybe it wasn’t Chad who’d taken the Vesper since he liked the Delamain better. She had owned this restaurant with Meyer for ten years and the waiters were always stealing from her. Here she was actually giving a waiter free cognac, and he didn’t even know what was good. Enough was enough. She slammed her empty glass down. "Why don’t you punch out, Chad." She managed a wooden smile. Half the time the waiters forgot to punch out on the time clock. She had told them that she wasn’t going to pay them if they didn’t punch out yet they still forgot.

She checked her watch–ten o'clock. She had to get out–the restaurant was driving her mad! Meyer wouldn't be done for an hour or two. She could change and go out before he finished in the kitchen. Little Noelle would be asleep. She would have June, the cashier, look in on the kid and baby-sit until she got back. Cindy pictured June’s cute face–she would have been attractive if she weren’t fifty pounds overweight. Still, she liked June because June did whatever she was told to do.

David, the manager, stopped her on the stairs. He asked her, in that whining, nasal voice of his, if she were leaving.

Cindy looked at his long oval face with his drooping bottom lip and nodded.

"I also wanted to ask whether that California wine came in." David smiled weakly.

"David, why do you have to bother me, day and night with these details? You can't do these things yourself? And why is Chad still working here? The busy season is over, right? We no longer need him. Besides, I think he was the one who took the cognac." Cindy drew her hand across her throat. "Get rid of him." Suddenly she remembered that she wasn’t sure whether Chad was or wasn’t the one stealing the cognac. So why was she telling David to fire him? Ugh, there was just too much on her mind.

"Whatever you say, Cindy," David looked at his new Gucci shoes–there was smudge on them. He frowned.

"No,” Cindy said, “I didn’t get that wine in. Wait a minute," Cindy stopped on the stairs, "I did get it in." She clenched her hands and stomped up the stairs. "Come on," she said. “Follow me.”

David followed her up the winding stairs of the Georgian townhouse that Cindy and Meyer had bought five years before and turned into one of the best restaurants in the city. Prior to that they had been in a smaller restaurant around the corner where David had been a waiter. When they moved, she had made David manager of the new place. After Cindy had her child, David had assumed more responsibility. Cindy didn't really like to work so much anymore. Neither did Meyer for that matter. These days Meyer spent only one or two nights a week in the restaurant. The rest of the time he was working on other projects. Most nights, Meyer let the Sous-Chef, Nick, run things. Meyer had opened a gourmet store on Tremont Street; he had a concession at Tanglewood for music festivals and concerts, and he had a cafe opening in the fall at the Four Seasons hotel.

Cindy and Meyer have done very well, David was thinking, as he followed Cindy up the stairs. For an Israeli with a Liberal Arts degree from Dartmouth and no formal training as a Chef, Meyer had done incredibly well, and for a girl from Revere with a high school degree and one year of community college, Cindy had done quite well too. All David had to do to keep his job was to jump when Cindy said jump. David already had bought a three-family house in Dorchester and a Condo in Boston; he planned to get out of the restaurant business in five years. Until then, he would eat humble pie when he had to.

With a grunt, Cindy picked up and handed David a case of Cabernet Sauvignon which had been sitting just outside the door to her apartment. David was walking back down the stairs to the restaurant, struggling with the case of wine, when he heard something crash in the kitchen. He hesitated at the bottom of the second floor. The restaurant was on two floors and the kitchen was on the second. David heard a rasping voice screaming in the kitchen. It was Meyer. David put the case down on the stairs and peeked in the kitchen. Meyer had his broad back to the kitchen door so David sneaked in and hid over by the bread, near the walk-in cooler, to see what was going on.

"What do you call this shit?" Meyer was yelling at one of the young cooks. "Look at this. Look at it. I should rub your face in it. You can't do the simplest Goddamn thing. We go over this day after day." Meyer walked over to where the young cook stood at the stove and grabbed the frying pan off the floor. He put it back on the stove and tossed a handful of julienne vegetables into it. He opened the broiler above the stove and put a filet of veal in. "Damn-it," he said.

Chad came walking up the service stairs toward David with a tray full of dirty dishes on his shoulder. He was carrying the tray with one hand, and with the other hand, he was eating a tenderloin of lamb that a guest had apparently failed to finish.

"That's it," David said putting his hands on his hips. "That's the very last straw, Chad."

"Oh, come on, David–everybody eats." Chad took another bite.

"It's against the rules." David said. "This isn’t the first time. Besides, she knows you've been stealing cognac. Just get your things and leave."

Up in the apartment, Cindy laid two lines of cocaine on the glass table in front of the television. "So you're addicted," she said to herself, "so what?" Some people were addicted to coffee, some to booze. She liked cocaine. She had managed to stop for the last month of the pregnancy. Besides, she had been eating healthy and going to the aerobic classes. Her weight was down and she looked good. She was a nervous wreck, but what could she do?

She had MTV on with the sound off. J. Lo was selling her perfume. After Cindy did the lines she felt better. Much better. It was part of the business, wasn't it? Meyer did it, the waiters, cooks, everybody. Jim, her current flame, would have some tonight. Jim always had good stuff, the bastard. She laughed. Speaking of bastards, she should check on the kid. No, he must be all right or there would have been some noise. Cindy and Meyer weren't married. Cindy didn't care either way. She would have preferred being married, sure, but not being married was fine. She didn't trust Meyer anyway. As if you could trust anyone. She lit up a cigarette, sat down and watched the MTV announcer sticking out her tongue and lewdly licking her lips. Cindy stuck her tongue out back at her.

Chad changed his clothes in the bathroom upstairs on the second floor. It wasn't David who fired me, he thought, it was Cindy. He took a bottle of Delamain out of his locker and put it in his backpack. He liked the Delamain better than the Vesper.

"Well boys," Chad said as he walked past the waiters on his way out, "I've been fired." He stood in the doorway.

“You’ll be back,” one of the waiters said.

Chad smiled.

"There's a call for you," the cashier, June, said to him when he got downstairs.

Chad squeezed into June’s cubbyhole. She handed Chad the phone.

"Chad, hey, this is Jim. Wondering if I can hook up with you tonight."

"Sure," Chad said, "I'll see you at Division. In fact, I can be there in ten minutes." Chad handed June the phone. "June," he said, "it's been a pleasure."

As he walked out the door of the restaurant Chad was smiling, shaking his head, thinking about Jim and Cindy.

Division was a short distance from the restaurant. Chad nodded at the doorman and walked past a dozen people in line in front of the club. The doorman was new, but he waved Chad in because one of the owners had introduced Chad to him the night before. Chad squeezed into a space near the corner of the semi-circular bar. The bartender put a gin and tonic in front of him. "This is on Jim," the bartender said.

Cindy looked through her closet. She felt as if she were looking through the clothes of a much bigger woman. She pushed the hangers around and knocked a couple of dresses on the floor. "I have plenty to choose from now, ma," she said aloud. She settled on a jumpsuit, but when she got it on and stood in front of the mirror she could see that it was too long. She stood, frozen for a moment, in front of the mirror. She always bought clothes too big. She must have been a bigger person in a former life. She rolled the cuffs up and put on a pair of heels. Her throat still hurt. She went into the kitchen and got a bottle of bourbon out of the cabinet and took a swig.

Downstairs, Meyer was in a good mood because it was busy and he had just sent out the entrees for a party of fifteen. "Oh, I'll tell you something pal," he said to Nick, "I haven't given it to Cindy in a while, but tonight I'm going to stick it right up in there." He grabbed his crotch and growled. "I'm going all the way up in there."

Nick, was laughing. "No. No," Nick said. "You can't. She's too small–your wife.

"Oh yeah," Meyer said, "I'm going to split her in half tonight."

Nick was holding his stomach and bending over he was laughing so hard.

"Well," Meyer said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'll give it to the cashier instead."

Meyer left Nick laughing in the kitchen and walked down into the dining room. He leaned over a table, hands clasped behind his back. "How is the food?" he asked, "you like it?"

"Fantastic," the woman said.

"Wonderful," said the man.

"You know I just won an award for culinary excellence," Meyer said, "but I think they picked the wrong guy by mistake." He was smiling.

"You deserve it, really," the man said.

Meyer laughed and moved on to the next table.

Cindy looked out the window. It was quiet on the street. All she had to do was get down the stairs and out. She picked up the phone, dialed the cashier and asked June to check in on the kid every once and a while. Cindy thought about checking in on Noelle. Maybe later. She hurried down the stairs, slipped outside and walked quickly to the corner of Boylston. She surveyed the long line in front of the bar.

Chad downed his gin and tonic while he scanned the crowd. He caught Jim's eye, and started pushing his way across the room. He edged along the pink walls. All the bars were pink and gray and green. Chad was surprised that he didn’t feel as if he had been fired. He felt as if he had been let go, released. He could always find another job. Meanwhile, they were playing the new song by Offspring, one of his favorite groups. Chad edged into the Men's room where Jim was waiting. "What 's up?" Chad said.

Jim had to hunch in the Men's room, he was so tall. He reminded Chad of David Bowie. Jim acknowledged the resemblance, but insisted he was better-looking. He had on one of those long, white, flimsy, cotton coats popularized by Bowie in a video he’d done with Mick Jagger. The one that practically screamed they’d slept together. "Got anything good?" Jim asked.

"Hot date?" Chad smiled, leaning back against the wall with his hands in his pockets. "Cindy?"

"Keep it quiet," Jim said.

"Oh, everybody knows about it." Chad lit a cigarette. "Yeah," he said, I've got something. Let me just talk to someone and I'll be back to you in about," he looked at his antique gold watch, "twenty minutes."

"OK," Jim said. He walked out of the Men's Room to the table he kept reserved. There was a bucket of champagne beside the table and on the table a vase with blood-red roses.

When Cindy got to the door, a doorman she didn't recognize stopped her. He looked about twelve years old. He had a flat top and a diamond stud in one ear.

"Sorry," the doorman said, "you have to wait on line like everyone else."

"You don't understand," Cindy said. "I own the restaurant around the corner. I'm meeting…” She didn’t want to say who. “I'm meeting someone here and he's waiting for me inside. No way I'm going to wait on line, I mean in line." Cindy clenched her fists. She hated the expression on line. Why did people say that? Did they think they were being original or something? "I don't know who you people think you are," she said. She stamped her foot. "Who do you think you're dealing with? Do you want to keep this job?" She realized she was shouting, but she could barely contain herself. She wanted to rip his little flat top head off. "Do you like working here in Boston? I'll have you black-listed. I'll make it impossible for you to get work anywhere." She was having difficulty breathing. She felt as if there were something stuck in her throat.

The manager appeared at the door to see what the commotion was. "Cindy," he said, "Come on in. Sorry about that. The kid is new."

"Get rid of him," Cindy said, drawing her finger across her throat. She walked past the manager into the bar. She glanced around the room and spotted the empty table with the roses on it. She needled her way through the crowd.

Chad, who was leaning against the wall, watched Cindy as she sat down. He had just spent five minutes crushing up tabs of Ex-Lax and baby laxative. Chad put his drink down on the bar and edged his way over to the hall that led to the Men's Room. He found Jim leaning on the cigarette machine. Chad handed him a small, folded packet of paper.

"A hundred?" Jim asked.

Chad nodded and Jim handed Chad a single bill. Jim took the packet and squeezed through the crowd to the reserved table where Cindy was waiting. “Hey,” he said and kissed her on the cheek. Jim had one of these little mechanisms–drug paraphernalia that make it possible to do cocaine right at the table–just put it to your nose and discreetly snort. He loaded it and handed it to Cindy who took a couple of hits and then sipped the champagne—Crystal—Jim's favorite. She preferred the dryer Dom Perignon, but she was willing to give in once and a while. You had to, just to keep them. She knew she could find someone else if she had to, but why bother? Meyer either didn't know or didn't care about her flings. There wasn't anything he could do about it anyway—they weren't married. Cindy wondered if it would make any difference if they were.

“What do you think of the coke?” Jim asked.

“Good I guess. I can’t really tell, I’m so wound up. I need to relax.”

“Let’s go upstairs,” Jim said.

Jim kept an apartment above the bar. They went up after they had finished the champagne. They attempted sex but Jim said he was having trouble concentrating. He couldn’t seem to get it hard. Cindy finally gave up on him, got up and got dressed. She checked her watch. It was just after two. She'd get home a little early.

She tried to be quiet on the stairs to her apartment just in case Meyer was already asleep. He was always asleep by the time she got home but then she didn't usually get home before four or five.

There wasn't anyone in the living room although the television was still on. Cindy thought she could hear someone exercising. Could Meyer be playing with the kid this late? Well, maybe the kid had woken up. Cindy walked down the hall to the bedroom. The door was half open and Meyer was banging the cashier June. Meyer was on top–the only position he knew. June had her eyes closed. Sweat streaked Meyer’s broad back. He was grunting. Cindy hesitated at the door. She could burst in and kill them both with her bare hands. She took off one of her shoes and held it up. She could bury her heel in Meyer's fat head. She saw herself hitting him repeatedly until he lay dead while June screamed hysterically. Just then June turned her head and looked at Cindy.

Cindy took her other her heel off, put them in one hand and with her other hand brought her finger to her lips and made a “shhh” face. She backed away and quietly tip-toed down the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs she put her shoes back on.

She walked up a block to Charlie's, a small bar that stayed open after hours. She ordered an Absolut vodka on the rocks and sipped it. She wanted to be mad, but she wasn't mad. She didn’t really feel as if she had the right to be mad. She suddenly felt a pain in her stomach. She barely made it to the Women's Room in time. It seemed as if everything inside her emptied out. She had a dull headache too. That cocaine was not good. For some reason, as she was sitting there, she thought about Chad. Maybe she shouldn’t have fired him. He was a good waiter. Maybe he hadn’t stolen the cognac. Maybe it was David. She did not want to fire David. She needed someone like David. She thought of waiters she had fired over the years. She could see their faces but she couldn't remember any of the names. No way could she fire June. She needed June to babysit. Reliable babysitters were worth their weight in gold and June weighed a lot. Cindy laughed and shook her head. She stood up and flushed. She felt dizzy. She'd have to give up the cocaine. She couldn’t think straight anymore. She went out to the end of the bar and called Meyer on her cell. He said Hello in a sleepy voice.

"I'm going to be a little late," Cindy said. "I thought I'd give you a call."

"Oh, thanks," Meyer said. He was breathing heavily. "When do you think you'll be home?"

Cindy looked at her watch. She thought about having another drink. "In about ten minutes," she said.

"No rush." Meyer said and hung up.

Cindy sat there, with the phone in her hand. Her breath came in gasps. Her throat was so dry she couldn't swallow. If she could just get one more drink, she'd be all right. She glanced up and saw her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. She really did have a small head. She drew her finger across her throat. What if she slit her own throat? Who would care? Jim? Meyer? June? David? Would they cry at her funeral? June would cry. Ma would cry. Tomorrow she’d have David call Chad. She’d unfire him. She liked Chad actually. Jim was the one who had to go. She grabbed one of her ears and twisted it. She laughed at herself in the mirror. “Right ma?” she said.

Long Hair

by Uche Okonkwo

My parents cut my hair the day after I got my admission letter into Model Secondary School.

First, mother used her fabric scissors. She parted my hair into four sections and took them one at a time. Then father used his clippers, to make the cut smooth and neat. Mother nodded when it was done. She held me by the chin, turned my face this way and that. ‘Hair is a distraction,’ she said. ‘There will be plenty of time for it when you finish school.’

My head felt hot and swollen, but light at the same time. Naked. My parents were waiting for my ‘thank you’ so I said it, even though my throat was tight.

After packing my fallen hair into the bin I went to my room and looked in the mirror and cried. Then I asked myself what I was crying for. I have hair like mother’s; hair that never grows long even if you rub all the Virgin Hair Fertilizer in the world in it. It used to make me sad that my hair didn’t grow. But now I know that long hair can be a bad thing. If you don’t believe me, ask Jennifer.

Jennifer got transferred into our school when I was in Junior Secondary Two. They placed her in my class. Everyone kept saying how fine she was. I didn’t think she was that fine; but she was yellow and she had very long relaxer-straightened hair that reached the middle of her back. I used to stare at her a lot when she wasn’t looking.

When Jennifer first joined our school everybody asked her all the time, ‘Jennifer, are you mixed?’ ‘Jennifer, is your mother from London or America?’ Jennifer liked it when the other girls asked her these questions; you could tell she was the proud type. She would laugh and say yes to everything: Yes, I am mixed. Yes, I was born in London. Yes, my mother is related to the Queen. But we all knew she was joking. We had seen her parents – they were both fair but they were not white.

All the girls liked Jennifer but I used to look at her with side-eye; her type of hair needed an explanation. Nigerian girls don’t have this kind of long hair just like that and for no reason. We pay for her type of hair at the market, and then we pay more at the salon so they can fix it in for us with thread or glue. Then we wear the hair for six weeks so that the money we spent on it doesn’t feel wasted. And when it starts to itch we beat on our heads like drums, because everyone knows your fingers can’t reach your scalp when you’re wearing a weave.

It used to pain me the way Jennifer walked about the whole school as if it was her father’s land. Everyone knew her, even the teachers. If a teacher sent you to go and call Jennifer and you said which of the Jennifers they would say the long hair Jennifer. Or the oyinbo Jennifer. Every time I heard this I wanted to pinch their lips the way my mother does when I say something stupid. I wanted to remind them that Jennifer is not ‘oyinbo’; she’s not even as yellow as me. It’s like everyone forgot that they used to call me oyinbo, before Jennifer came with her hair.

Now they all kept saying Jennifer come, let us touch your hair, and with a sigh and a frown she would let them. She would keep the fake frown on her face as they played with her hair. They would say Jennifer you are so lucky; we wish we had hair like yours. Then Jennifer would sigh again and complain about how much shampoo and conditioner she had to buy to take care of her long hair. And the relaxer! Did they know she had to buy two big-size containers every time she needed to relax her hair? Don’t envy me, she would say, stroking her hair in a way that said the opposite.

Jennifer’s problems started when one girl had a dream. Everyone called this girl Vision, because she saw the future when she dreamt. One time she dreamt that there was heavy rain and the principal’s house collapsed, killing him and his family. She said it would happen in three weeks. Many months passed yet the principal’s house stayed standing, and nobody died. One other time she dreamt that a snake bit a student and she died. And truly, about two weeks after, some senior girls were cutting the tall elephant grass in the school’s field and they found a big snake. Vision said it was only by the mercy of God that the caretaker had been nearby to kill the snake, or else someone would have died that day. After this, everybody forgot about the principal’s house and every other bad thing Vision had said that did not happen.

So Vision had this dream. She saw a very beautiful water demon, the type that village people call Mammy Water, sitting with all her pretty girl servants. (All Mammy Water girls are fine; everybody knows this.) The Mammy Water was saying how she had sent an ‘agent’ to our school to make trouble. Vision had a very sweet mouth, and she knew how to tell stories. So when she started talking like this you believed her, even if you remembered that the principal was still alive and well in the house that should have killed him.

The same day that Vision told her dream, it spread throughout the whole school. After that, when any little thing happened everyone blamed the Mammy Water’s agent. It was the Mammy Water’s agent that went about the whole school stealing provisions and bath water and pooing in the wrong places. And sometimes the agent would stand outside the dorm at night dressed in black, frightening the girls who would later swear on their grandmothers’ graves that they had seen the thing with their own eyes.

Then Vision had another dream and announced that the agent was on a mission of death and anyone could be the target. We all had to be careful, she said, and sleep with one eye open because the person you call your best friend, your bunk mate, your classmate, that could be the agent, and you could be the one she was sent to kill so you won’t fulfil your destiny. Everybody grew even more afraid. Students stopped walking alone after dark. People were bedwetting more, and they blamed it on the agent. And it was true in a way; was it not fear of the agent that made girls lie on their beds and pee with their eyes wide open instead of going out to the convenience after dark? I know because it happened to me once – but that story is by the way.

Even though the school was upside down with this agent matter, Jennifer just went about as if nothing bothered her. Like she wasn’t one of us. So I whispered to my bunk mate Dumebi and told her that Jennifer’s habit of talking and laughing in her sleep was strange, that maybe she was talking to her fellow Mammy Water girls. I wasn’t doing anything bad; I only said what I was thinking. It’s not my fault that Dumebi carried the matter on her head and started asking the other girls what they thought. They were not sure if Mammy Water girls talked to each other in their sleep, they said, but it sounded right when they thought about it. Plus, someone added, all Mammy Water girls were pretty, with light skin and long hair like in Nollywood movies. Like Jennifer.

By evening the entire dorm was bubbling. Girls were whispering and pointing fingers and looking at each other in code. The agent was Jennifer and there was proof: one, her long hair; two, her fair skin and fine face; three, she spoke to her Mammy Water friends every night; four, she was such a deep sleeper that it took a whole day to wake her up, meaning her spirit travelled whenever she slept. One of the girls said that even Jennifer’s name was a sign, when you added everything else: Jennifer rhymed with Lucifer, and Lucifer was the father of all evil.

I didn’t feel sorry for Jennifer. She was busy pretending not to notice that the girls were not talking to her anymore, that nobody called her to admire her hair, or asked her to walk with them to the shops, or begged for cubes of sugar. Even her friends started finding ways to avoid her, to show everybody that no, they really weren’t that close. But Jennifer kept acting normal. I whispered to Dumebi that this was what a proper Mammy Water girl would do. Act normal while everyone ran mad.

The next day, during evening prayers, the chapel prefect asked us to pray for protection from evil, and someone kept mentioning Jennifer’s name in their prayer. I did not see what happened next because I was busy with my own prayers, but I heard later that Jennifer jumped on the girl and that was how the fight started. We formed a circle around them as Jennifer held the girl’s body to the ground and plastered her face with slaps. Jennifer was screaming shut up shut up, and the girl was crying Jesus Jesus and trying to hit Jennifer’s face. But Jennifer was an expert. The way she lifted her neck and face up out of reach while using her knees and one hand to pin the girl down, you would know she had fought many times before. It took three prefects and the matron to separate Jennifer from her victim.

The girls whispered evidence number five amongst themselves: Jennifer was too strong for a normal girl. She had to be the agent.

It was only after they pulled Jennifer off that I noticed the other girl was Dumebi. Her face was packed with sand and swollen like a watermelon and I felt bad for wanting to laugh.

The matron dragged Jennifer and Dumebi to her house, and they did not return to the dorm until long after lights out. I know because I waited. I asked Dumebi what happened, but she just turned her back to me and covered herself with her wrapper. As if it was me who asked her to go and fight Jennifer. I turned my back too and went to sleep.

The next day Jennifer and Dumebi were sent to work with the kitchen staff as punishment. When they came into the room at the end of the day, everyone went quiet like they were expecting something to happen. But Jennifer went to her corner and Dumebi went to hers, and slowly the others went back to their business.

Dumebi kept acting funny the rest of the week. She seemed angry and wouldn’t speak to anyone. I think she was expecting us to thank her for fighting Jennifer, even though she had lost. In a way, Jennifer had lost also, because everyone was more afraid of her now. But what Dumebi did next surprised even me.

Late one night, when we were all asleep, Dumebi crept to Jennifer’s bed with a pair of scissors and started cutting off her hair. She had gone about halfway when Jennifer woke up screaming, waking the whole room. Somebody turned on the lights and we all stared from the safety of our beds with our mouths wide open. Dumebi was standing bent over Jennifer’s bed, holding the scissors in her right hand and a fistful of hair in her left. Clumps of dark hair lay scattered across Jennifer’s pillow and on the floor.

Jennifer had sat up in her lower bunk bed and was feeling the bare half of her head with shaky fingers. She looked like a confused child, and for one second I remembered the way I had felt when I first saw myself in the mirror with my new short hair. But then Jennifer flew from her bed, screaming like the demon she was, and attacked Dumebi. Everyone started to shout, a mix of anticipation and fear, as Jennifer pushed Dumebi to the floor and sat on her stomach. She grabbed handfuls of Dumebi’s hair, but it was not long enough for her to get a good grip so she started slapping and punching. But this time Dumebi was lucky, or maybe she had learned from the first fight. She managed to reach up and scratch Jennifer across her left eye. Jennifer stopped hitting and touched the scratch. Then she stared at the red stain on her finger like she’d never seen the colour of her own blood.

Seeing her chance at freedom Dumebi shoved Jennifer, who fell to the side, right next to the spot where the scissors had landed when it flew from Dumebi’s hand moments ago. Dumebi started to crawl away as Jennifer reached for the scissors, but before Dumebi could get far Jennifer sprang at her and stabbed with the sharp end into the back of Dumebi’s thigh. Blood, so dark it looked black, flowed from the wound and down Dumebi’s thigh. Dumebi stayed on her hands and knees and cried for her mummy; and Jennifer just cried. She let the scissors fall to the floor and began wiping her hands over and over on her night dress.

They sent Jennifer and Dumebi home on an indefinite suspension, after the principal paraded them before the whole school on the morning assembly. He called them ‘bad eggs’. Dumebi had a bandage wrapped around her thigh and a prefect had to help her up to the podium. Jennifer wore what was left of her hair swept to the side, to cover the bare half, but the breeze kept blowing it around. They both had their eyes fixed on a spot above our heads as they stood in front of us. The principal did not say anything about Vision or her dreams. He said there was no guarantee that Jennifer would be allowed back into the school; there would be a disciplinary panel to decide.

I kept a straight face throughout the assembly.

Dumebi never came back; her parents withdrew her from our school. I heard they also hired policemen to threaten the principal and he had to beg them not to have him arrested.

Jennifer returned, many weeks later. By then her hair was cut short like mine and Vision had had new dreams.

And Jennifer looked fine now. Pretty and normal. Like a proper Nigerian girl.

For Official Use Only

by Charles Rafferty

Marcus saw the station wagon pull away from the shoulder of Route 25, leaving behind a pile of fresh flowers in the snow. He was on his way to meet Trisha at her apartment. Trisha had separated from her husband, and a mutual friend had introduced them. Though they had met for an afternoon coffee two days before, this was their first real date.

The flowers were part of a roadside memorial. Someone had died there, and they had a lot of friends, a large and Waltons-like family. Marcus could tell this by the variety of bouquets and stuffed animals, the many tire tracks traced into the snow-covered grass.

Marcus made a snap decision. He hooked a left into one of those U-turns they have for cops and firetrucks. He saw the sign for official use only and he ignored it. He accelerated and took another illegal U-turn a mile up the road, and then he was headed back to the memorial, fitting himself into the tracks where the other cars had been.

He was out of the car for less than a minute as the traffic sped by, the drivers probably thinking he was one of the grievers, that he was saying some kind of prayer as he picked out the freshest and most durable of the flowers. And then he was back on the road, with an armload of calla lilies and orange mums. The whole thing was barely a hiccup. He wouldn't even be late.

People give Marcus a funny look when he tells them all this, but he doesn't see anything wrong with it. Those flowers weren't doing David any good out there on the highway, he says. That was his name. Marcus saw it written in red spangles on several of the wire hearts. Apparently David was somebody's husband, and his wife wasn't ready to let him go. Marcus reasoned that the flowers would be destroyed the next day. Another storm was coming, and the plow would surely cover them as it scraped its way towards Bridgeport. David's friends and family had built the memorial too close to the shoulder. Marcus thought it might be on the very spot where David had died. Or perhaps they had lost all foresight in their time of flowers and snow. Either way, Marcus says, he didn't take them all.

When Marcus showed up at Trisha's door, she was surprised. No one had ever brought her flowers. She invited him in for a pre-dinner drink, but it was already clear to Marcus that they'd never make it to their reservation. The flowers had something to do with it.

Marcus liked the look of her as she stretched for a couple of highball glasses on the top shelf, and Trisha liked that he didn't turn away as her shirt rode up, exposing the small of her back. She held each glass up to the light, then ran them under the faucet to get rid of the dust. Their fingers brushed when she handed him the drink, and they ended up undressing each other right there in the kitchen. Marcus kept thinking the husband might walk in through the front door, but from the sound of things, Trisha hadn't considered the possibility. Afterward, they lay in a heap on the cold linoleum, laughing together, a little embarrassed. They decided to have Thai food delivered.

Later, when Trisha fell asleep in the bed, Marcus pulled the newspaper from the basket beside her toilet. He found David's obituary and the write-up in the police blotter. Killed by a drunk was the main message. The drunk was fine, naturally. He sounded like Marcus — the same age, the same penchant for driving when the bar had closed. Marcus came out of the bathroom and made his way to the kitchen through the dark. He proceeded by a series of tiny steps, afraid that he might bump into something. He found the vodka bottle and poured himself a drink. He downed it while standing over the dripping kitchen faucet.

Less than two weeks later, Trisha and Marcus were finished. They had run their course. They had had sex in a variety of locations and positions — a movie theater, a Safeway parking lot, in every room of their two apartments. Trisha found out that he was allergic to shrimp and preferred tragedies to comedies. Marcus found out that she was still in love with her husband and didn't have a washing machine.

They parted ways. Marcus remained the only man who had ever brought her flowers, and a snowplow destroyed the roadside memorial, as Marcus had predicted.

The Green Parrot

by Erik Raschke

Menno and Stacey had first run into Jacques and Coraleine at a fetish party. The party had been in a social housing flat in the center of town and the hostess, a fifty-year old swinging veteran, had met them at the door and actually called her unremarkable, rent-subsidized studio her “pied a terre," before handing Menno and Stacy an IKEA bag in which they were to put their clothes. They then had to walk through a living room outfitted with a round fake cheetah-skin heart-shaped bed, wall-to-wall cases of dildos, handcuffs, and butt-plugs, and a sex swing tucked away in what should have been a utility closet. They also passed a middle-aged, vaguely familiar woman, with sharp spiky blonde hair, who was lying on the black marble bar getting fingered hard by a chiseled an plucked half-gay boy-toy, squirting onto the liquor bottles, and bellowing her pleasure in a raspy falsetto.

Once Menno and Stacey were alone in the bathroom, and undressing, Menno jerked his cheek back and forth imitating the sound of the fingered woman’s vagina while Stacey begged him to stop.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

“Run.”

“Seriously. We can’t stay here.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

And right then the bathroom door opened and Jacques and Coraleine fell in, laughing.

“Thank god!” Coraleine announced, looking over Menno and Stacey with a clap of the hands, then closing the door and locking it behind her.

Jacques was tall and slim and pale and soft, but he had the kind of trustworthy smile, often punctuated by a wink that made you want to believe anything he said. Coraleine was petite and brunette with olive skin, not at all the typical buxom milk-maid that was Menno’s type, however Stacey could see that Menno was hooked by the way he stared at Coraleine with a clumsy sneakiness… for Coraleine did indeed have something about her, Stacey recognized, a perky, sexy, playfulness that hinted at something much wilder.

Both Jacques and Coraleine wore, not the expensively garish bits common to lifestyle swingers, but felt hats and tailored shirts. They carried their lingerie and underwear in an antique Spanish leather doctor’s bag, a bag in which they had also stowed silk scarves. They had fine Italian shoes as well, knee-high maroon boots for Coraleine and black loafers with a single silver buckle, for Jacques.

Jacques and Coraleine, like Menno and Stacey, were obviously not religious about physical maintenance, which is not to say that they were not unattractive professionals, but they were the kind of professionals who spent long hours in meetings, under fluorescent lighting, often skipping spin-classes to eat starchy meals with their younger children. They had all the sparkling wearisomeness of parents, the lighter wrinkles of the middle-aged, upper-middle class, who managed the odd trip to a sunny, vaguely cultural destination, who went to bed by nine on Fridays, whose bodies, while fading in firmness, retained at least half of the beauty of their early twenties.

“I’m surprised these people didn’t have a bookshelf,” Jacques smiled. “With all the great literary classics.”

Menno nodded. “It was next to the display case with the leather paddles.”

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Coraleine whispered, drawing them all into a conspiratorial huddle and pointing at Jacques. “My husband’s bank card doesn’t work so he can’t pay for parking. That’s the story.” Her finger then drifted toward Stacey’s husband. “What’s your name?”

“Menno.”

“Menno, you’re going to go out and pay for my husband, Jacques, using your bank card, but you’re not going to return for at least ten minutes.”

“Please don’t leave us here,” Stacey grimaced.

“After ten minutes you buzz and say that the car has been towed, but since your bank card doesn’t work we all need to go with you to get the car.”

And thankfully, the plan worked. They all got out in one piece and, because none of them had really driven, they rode their bikes to Jacques and Coraleine’s house. Jacques and Coraleine shared a similar, dark sense of humor to that of Menno and Stacey and as they pedaled through the city, the night still young, they laughed loudly about what might have been at the party and about Robin Hood and the many other unsavory characters they had come across in the last few years as swingers.

***

Jacques and Coraleine lived right off the biggest park in the city and while Coraleine and Menno chatted on the couch, Jacques lead Stacey around, explaining how they had driven sixty or seventy metal poles into the sandy ground to strengthen the foundation. Jacques was too smooth and thin for a “Jacques,” a name she connected with Caribbean pirates and beefy Frenchmen, but he had strong hands and broad gestures that excited and captivated so that, when he spoke, Stacey found herself reaching out and touching him and laughing at the slightest of jokes.

Jacques told Stacey he created IT infrastructures, but quickly steered away from the self-importance of so many middle-management engineers and showed her his photography collection. He wasn’t an Andres Serrano or Robert Mapplethorpe, but he was brave enough to get that awkwardly intimate angle that eludes so many amateur photographers. There was the woman in the alleyway urinating while her boyfriend checked his cellphone. The shot, without being obscene, was at the same level as the woman’s puddle of urine, giving the boyfriend’s indifference a heightened significance. There was another photo of a line of swingers waiting to get into a club, their anxious expressions and skimpy clothing flittering somewhere between erotic and defeated.

They had been locking eyes consistently so when Jacques finished showing Stacey his collection, he leaned down and kissed her, and while she had been expecting it for some time, the quickness in which he moved surprised her. He had nice lips, but his tongue flopped about in her mouth without any sense of direction or control. Jacques held her tightly, confidently, his palm against the flat of her back, and she could relax in his arms.

Although Stacey wasn’t into women, she had learned early on that the best way to get these things started off was by going down on another man’s wife so, when they returned to the living room couch, Stacey squeezed between Coraleine and Menno and began kissing Coraleine and was pleasantly surprised by how much she enjoyed Jacque’s wife’s body and how much better a kisser she was than her husband. In these situations, as in the cases where the husband would have a particularly small penis, Stacey wondered about the dynamics of a relationship, how each party had rationalized the deficiency of the other.

Like synchronized swimmers, the women quickly swapped places and were on the other side of the couch and going down on the other woman’s husband. Eventually, the men went down on the women and, almost simultaneously, the condoms were unfurled.

Stacey knew that Menno liked to listen to her with other men so she made more noise than usual, but every so often she’d sneak a peak at her husband going at Coraleine with an unmistakable intensity, and this, for the most part, made her happy, for she knew that if Menno left satisfied tonight, the next few weeks he would be more affectionate and even romantic.

***

The second time the four of them met, they all snorted a bit of coke and the conversation steered toward fantasies. Jacques said that, if high enough, he sometimes liked to suck men off. He had even swallowed once. This surprised Stacey and even turned her off a little for she liked her men dominant and vaguely macho.

Menno admitted that he was a bit of a cuckold, not the kind that likes to be tied up and humiliated, but more the guy peeking around the corner. He told them that he and Stacey had never really tried true cuckolding simply because Stacey was into swinging as a shared experience and she just couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that cuckolding was indeed a shared experience, mainly because it involved her, entirely alone, with a man other than Menno.

Coraleine, quite embarrassedly, said she had rape fantasies, awful, terrible rape fantasies where several men beat her and hit her until she was almost unconscious. She said that she had even joined an online group that shared real rape videos, mostly from Russia and Africa, via torrents. Stacey admired Coraleine’s honesty, but was secretly aghast. Even though Stacey herself had spent a few days last fall watching online beheadings in Syria on YouTube and most women she knew had rape fantasies, it felt as if Coraleine was breaking some female code by watching and thus silently condoning, actual rape videos.

When it came Stacey’s turn, she felt, as with her American fashion-sense, boring and uninspiring. She told them that she regularly fantasized about double-penetration, but had never tried it because she had been terrified by the practicalities.

Coraleine immediately jumped in and told her that double-penetration was amazing, as long as the rhythm was good. Although it wasn’t Stacey’s intention to try double-penetration on this particular night, minutes later she found herself in bed with Menno and Jacques while Coraleine directed from the corner of the room. It was, perhaps, one of the first times since they started swinging, that she had gone along with sexual experimentation out of peer-pressure and this made her tense and quiet although everyone was a bit too high to recognize her apprehension.

Since Jacques’ cock was thinner and a bit shorter than Menno’s, he would be behind her. Jacques squirted ample lube onto his penis and around her asshole. He had long nails, especially for a man, but when she told him to be gentler, he slid two then three fingers inside and it felt about right. Then she sat on Menno, rubbed him with her pussy until he got hard, placed him inside her. A few minutes later, Jacque fumbled into her ass…

The double-penetration had been intense, the coke simultaneously dulling and increasing the sensitivity, the men never really finding a proper rhythm, most likely because she kept telling them to either hurry up or slow down while she waited for her body to adapt. Also, most of the time she simply felt like she had to take a shit, but it had been quite an experience, an experience that once she knew what to expect, would most likely try again.

Later, Menno and Jacques double-penetrated Coraleine while Stacey watched this tiny woman easily take these two men. Since Menno and Jacques were on coke, neither were able to cum and having used so much lubrication, when Jacques pulled out of Coraleine, a flood of brown liquid came out over the duvet. They spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up and laughing about the accident, but after that, the mood was over.

***

The third and fourth times that they met, Coraleine and Menno remained on the couch while Jacques and Stacy moved to the bed. They had all found a way with each other’s bodies that was not necessarily better than with their spouses, but was somehow exciting and different. Stacey learned how to kiss Jacques so that his tongue wouldn’t bother her too much and, also, a way to meet his thrusts with her own thrusts so that he’d strike a spot that felt deep and satisfying in a way that was different from Menno. In fact, she even had an orgasm with Jacques that was unlike any orgasm she had had with Menno, a soft, spinning moment that left her stomach in knots.

The best part about this swap was that she could never fall in love with Jacques. He was smart and read enough, but in the end, when she asked him about politics or traveling, his lack of curiosity surfaced so, for example, when she said she had always dreamed of visiting India his immediate response was, “Too dirty for me.”

Menno had said the same thing about Coraleine. She had been talking to him at one point about chakras and meditation and Menno had tried several times to change the subject, but she was persistent. Eventually, he lied and said he had to use the bathroom, and when he returned she had fallen asleep.

***

The fifth time they met was months later, in the middle of the summer. Stacey had been suffering, as of late, from a low, dull personal crises. The kids were becoming more and more independent and now that she was almost forty, she would probably not be having any more children.

Also, Stacey had graduated from a state college and always worked for big companies, often spurring offers from smaller businesses with more potential for growth. Lately, her company had been expanding internationally and she had been inordinately busy, but had still been weighed down by the idea that she might have to be a real estate appraiser for the rest of her life. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her job, but, in the end, the challenge was limited and the fact remained that she was too old to make a decent career change.

With all this real-life responsibilities and concerns weighing her down, the need for a certain amount of escapism surfaced and the potential of a night with Jacques and Coraleine occupied her fantasies. She would find herself at work thinking about double-penetration or Menno and Coraleine in a variety of positions and she’d have to go to the bathroom to masturbate.

The night they agreed to meet, Coraleine and Jacques kids were in Sweden, at a summer camp, so they had the house to themselves. Menno and Stacey’s kids were away as well, at Menno’s parents, so when they met, eating dinner on Jacques and Coraleine’s terrace, someone suggested taking ecstasy. When Jacques and Coraleine quickly and enthusiastically agreed, the quiet romance of the dinner was overshadowed by a sexually-charged angst.

After dinner, Menno called a dealer and when the ecstasy arrived, everyone started with only a half while Jacques went for a whole. After only an hour, Jacques popped another and then another so that while Coraleine began to suck on Menno and then Menno took her from behind in the kitchen, Jacques was too high to get hard even though Stacey was deep-throating him, something he loved.

At some point, Jacques stumbled into his bathroom for Viagra, but when he couldn’t find it, came back out, limp and loose and apologetic. Stacey told him not to worry and together they went downstairs and while Jacques watched from a corner love seat, Stacey joined Coraleine and Menno in a threesome.

In one of the hottest moments in their swinging experiences, Menno was fucking Stacey without a condom, while Coraleine sat on Menno’s face. When Menno pulled out and came all over Stacey’s belly, Coraleine leaned down and licked it up.

Afterward, while Menno and Coraleine were taking a shower together, Stacey and Jacques, at Jacques suggestion, split another pill. He was wobbly and dazed and almost falling asleep all the while pressing his nose into her neck and groping her breasts as if they were footballs. Looking at the near empty bag on the table, Stacey figured Jacques’ ecstasy intake was somewhere around five in total.

The shower was quiet and she was feeling sad that Coraleine and Menno had decided to continue on without her. But she worked through the feeling, comforting herself with the fact that Menno and Coraleine were happy together and, at the end of the night, it would be Stacey and Menno who would go home and be together, both content in their own ways.

Jacques was mumbling into her ear, “You’re so fucking beautiful,” but the way he said it made her so sad because it wasn’t sincere and they were high, too high, and, really, she guessed she just wanted him to say it when they were sober as well.

“No more ecstasy for you mister,” she said rubbing her hand over his chest.

Then, eyes closed, he whispered confidentially, “She loves him.”

“Loves who?” Stacey asked, even though she already knew the answer.

***

On the taxi ride home, Stacey was leaning into Menno and watching the lights stream by while the driver hummed along to a tinkling, bubbling Farsi tune. They were caught in divergent thoughts while eagerly anticipating their king-size, brushed cotton duvet.

“I don’t think we should see them again,” Menno said after awhile.

Stacey turned, raised her eyebrows and in the dim taxi light saw how his forehead looked seemed exceedingly large, curved like some exotic Asian fruit. His hair was thinning as well, individual strands illuminated as if to prove the point. They had once travelled to Vietnam and Cambodia and had had many late night taxi rides and she had relied on him through that trip, this big, cumbersome man, and she had thought about his forehead then and how it also gave the hint of menace and how comforting that was, to have in a man, whose physical attributes suggested, only suggested, that he could become violent if necessary.

“It just feels like its time to move on,” he clarified. “The shower. Cora told me she loved me. She said she was really in love with me. I think it was just the ecstasy, but still. I didn’t like it.”

There was a distance in Menno’s eyes that she couldn’t somehow bridge, a faraway gaze that worried Stacey. Most of their swinging experiences, both good and bad, had enlightened and encouraged their relationship with each other. But now, Menno seemed farther away than ever and so she tried to bridge it with a kiss and a, “What’s not to love?” and even thought she felt very little about this revelation of Coraleine’s affections, no jealousy or anger, more just the thin rattle of sadness that accompanies a family, a family other than your own in dissolution, she did briefly wondered what Jacques and Coraleine were talking about now, if they were talking about anything at all.

***

Since the kids were away, Stacey and Menno had the Sunday to sit on the couch and do nothing except suffer through the haziness that accompanied the bumpy, hilly, jittery ride of an ecstasy hangover. While Stacey made coffee, she was forced to listen to him on the toilet again. Her head was swollen and bloated and she wasn’t even sure she wanted coffee and was swearing she was too old to do ecstasy and that’s precisely when, finished in the bathroom, hands still wet from washing, Menno came up and wrapped his arms around her and rubbed his penis on her exposed waist, and kissed her head and made a face like “let’s go have sex” even though she wasn’t even sure she could hold down the orange juice she had just finished.

“It’s been so long since we haven’t had the kids,” he pleaded.

Sex was indeed the last thing she wanted, but he was right. They rarely had mornings like this. So they got into bed and, lying on her side, turning her back to him, smelling his morning breath and old alcohol and the bite of peanut butter he had just snacked on, she tried to get into the mood. But Menno could barely get hard and she wasn’t excited, so he spit in his hand and rubbed it on his penis and pushed and prodded to get his half-limp cock inside her while, at the same time, she had to try and make sure she didn’t vomit.

Eventually, he did get it in, but because she wasn’t wet, part of her lips were rubbing painfully against her clitoris, so she wetted herself with her own spit which only marginally helped. It wasn’t until she could feel him really swelling inside of her that she herself began to enjoy the sex, but by then it was too late. He had come.

Afterward, Stacey took a shower while Menno made a huge, greasy breakfast, more geared to his needs than hers and afterward they sat at the table in silence, both fingering the edges of magazines, wishing they could read, but feeling somehow obliged to sit across from one another and try and make conversation.

Feeling too nauseous to be snarky, she watched as he smeared the last of the butter on his toast without even considering to ask her if she wanted any. In retaliation, she finished off the orange juice without asking him, but couldn’t even enjoy the juice because she was so filled with self-loathing at how she was resorting to this kind of petty, tit-for-tat nastiness.

Menno was always riding the tail end of a trend so that he perpetually came off as someone trying to catch up, at least stylistically, and lately he had been trying to grow a beard, but was unsuccessfully catching up with last year’s style. In addition, Stacey had told him that she thought beards were not only unsexy, but unhygienic as well and that his facial hair was thin and patchy so it would most likely take months before it would resemble anything full and formed. But her husband had pushed ahead with the project and now, as he ate, pieces of runny egg stuck in the hairy, uneven nest bulging off of what was otherwise a nicely proportioned chin. She would make a comment and he would grumpily wipe away about half of mess, but always leaving patches of oil or a few stubborn crumbs.

Outside, it was raining hard and the leaves in the trees were shaking with each drop. A green parrot, one of the many that had come to infest the city, landed upon a branch and braved the rain. Stacey had the urge to feed the parrot some of her butterless toast, but had once been reprimanded by an elderly ornithologist. She had been with her kids, feeding stale French bread to the city park geese at the park and he came up to her and told her that most birds couldn’t digest bread. He added that bread, especially white bread, made them feel full when they were actually starving. When the frail ornithologist accused her children of “perpetuating genocide,” Stacey sheepishly bid good-bye and walked away and went home. She loved feeding birds bread, loved feeling that she was somehow giving back, nurturing, but when Stacey Googled what the ornithologist had said and found that most of it was indeed true.

Now, once they were through with breakfast, Menno left his dishes on the table and sat on the couch and tried to cover up a particularly loud fart by coughing. His shirt was riding over his stomach, which wasn’t terrible, but with each beer and each year, his hairy belly was becoming unsightly. Menno had his feet on one end of the couch, his house slippers on top of the couch pillows. While Stacey wasn’t a germ-freak, he did occasionally go outside in those slippers so they did come into immediate contact with litter and dog-poop and now they were flat on top of the same pillows which she liked to press her face against when she took naps.

Stacey went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and discovered that Menno hadn’t put the cap back on so the toothpaste. The toothpaste collected at the end was now glued to the sink top and to make matters worse, there was a thick black beard hair stuck in the excess blue goo collected around the opening. Stacey silently and patiently spent the next five minutes washing off the toothpaste and the hair. When she discovered that her own toothbrush was wet, she called out, barely concealing her annoyance, to ask if Menno had used it. When he shouted back that since he couldn’t find his he had indeed used hers, Stacey looked down it was in the trash, where it often fell, simply because he was too lazy to put his toothbrush in the toothbrush holder, and of course there it was, and when she explained this to him again, for the five hundredth time, he shouted back, “Why are you so grumpy this morning? Didn’t you have a good time last night?”

When she was leaving the bathroom, she tripped over a pile of clothes and the hook from his belt-buckle dug into the bottom of her foot and she let out a scream. Menno didn’t budge from the couch, but looked over at her and asked dazedly if she was all right and she said yes, although she really wasn’t. And she hated herself when tears came to her eyes, because she wasn’t and had never been the kind of girl who cried over these things.

They hadn’t watched the last season of Downton Abbey yet, so Stacey suggested they sit on the couch and get caught up. Menno was trying to convince her to go have sex again, but he still hadn’t showered and she didn’t want to tell him to shower, because if he did then he would immediately expect sex and her stomach was still wobbly. But as they watched the first episode of the first season of Downton Abbey, Menno kept sticking his hands up her shirt or down her pants, as if the sum of her person were her tits and pussy. She wasn’t responding so, at some point, he removed his pants and began licking her and while it didn’t feel good it also didn’t feel bad and it did give her the opportunity to continue watching Downton Abbey. After awhile, he asked, “Don’t you like it?” which annoyed her to no end because, what he was actually saying was that he was expecting her to make moaning sounds, which she didn’t mind, but in this particular case, moaning would only make it harder to hear the Crawley women.

Toward the end of Downton Abbey, just when the season opener was coming to a climax, Menno tried to fuck her. Grudgingly, she told him he would have to do all the work, which he did, but he was sweating so hard that her pajamas were getting soaked and his body hairs were sticking to her body and she knew she would have to shower all over again. It’s not that the sex didn’t feel good, but her headache was coming back and the ecstasy was still making her stomach queasy and he was just fucking her as if she wasn’t even there so that when he came it felt as if he had masturbated inside of her.

***

When Menno came across Lance’s profile, he suggested they meet for drinks. They had done a few threesomes before. Stacey had never been very attracted to the men, but had done it for Menno, who would love to play out his cuckold fantasies even though Stacey usually asked him to join in at some point.

There had been one man however, a Dutch soldier and Menno had invited him over and he told them about some of his Special Operations missions he had done in Afghanistan. He was not highly educated, but he had a quiet, traveled wisdom about him that she found attractive. Unfortunately, what had always been hard about living in Europe, was how many men were uncircumcised and this soldier was only not uncircumcised, but he had a thin, smooth penis that felt weird in her mouth, almost like a peeled winter carrot, so even though it was, in theory, nice having Menno behind her, and a man in her mouth, she wanted the night to end just as it was beginning.

When the soldier left however, Menno seemed angry and said aloud,

“You could have tried a little harder.”

He looked at her with a hard annoyance, an expression she had never seen before, one full of swallowed disgust and bitterness. When she asked him what he meant, he replied, “The guy drives an hour to be here and you only have sex with him once? We could have made a night of it.”

Stacey found herself lashing back and telling Menno that this was about her and her feelings and that she was indeed tired. That she had a long day at work tomorrow. That she had done this for him. She had wanted a nice night out, she said, to be gently coerced into bed, but had agreed to just have a guy over and have a straight threesome, pushing past her own needs for Menno. She was amazed at how hard it was for him to understand this.

Menno started yelling at her about being uncommunicative and cold and how he felt like there was so much going on in her head that she didn’t share and how hard it was to be with someone who didn’t talk, someone who the minute he came, wiped herself with tissues.

There was a new intensity to this fight that they had never experienced before, a certain pitch that was almost violent. They had both been in relationships where hate crept in like a filthy stray cat and became fat and full and ever-present, but they had married with the belief that their relationship was different, that they had both learned and grown from their past loves so that when hatred did come knocking, they would know how to turn it away. And perhaps they did. Perhaps they had turned hatred away, but that was also why maybe now, here, at this very moment, their rage exploded like shotgun pellet, each pellet being a minor offense that, alone, only wounded, but if they struck their target collectively, the result was lethal.

***

That night, nothing was ever concluded nor solved and they both just felt as if they were misunderstood and they fell asleep with their backs to each other and within minutes he began snoring so loudly that she had to put in earplugs.

While she was lying there, on the edge of sleep, she saw Menno’s phone light up. It was almost midnight, mid-week, and he was getting a message from Coraleine.

Stacey got out of bed and went around to Menno’s side and typed in his code and opened the message.

“Sweet dreams,” it read.

Stacey began to scroll through all the other messages. There was almost a message everyday from Coraleine, messages ranging from, “Meet me now?” to “You’re so quiet,” to naked selfies, taken in front of the bathroom mirror. The strange thing though was that Menno hadn’t responded to a single message from Coraleine. Not a single one.

Even though he hadn’t said anything to her, which was in a way dishonest, his unresponsiveness to Coraleine was a quiet loyalty all in itself.

***

Two months later, they went to a party in a warehouse at the edge of town that was once abandoned, but now was being slowly surrounded by high-rise condos and would be most likely converted, in a matter of months, into a trendy club made to resemble the abandoned warehouse that it once was. The party was a PVC, leather, trance underground event. Stacey never understood how “underground” and “event” went to together and S&M’ers weren’t exactly their kind of people, they were still a better crowd and had better music than most lifestyle swingers.

Menno was wearing what he always wore to fetish parties, black leather pants and motorcycle boots and no shirt. Each time they went to these things, his belly was a little bigger and the wrinkles around his eyes deeper and his hair a little less thick and every time Stacey wondered where the sexiness still lay in her husband, was it in the hints of graceful aging or the macho physicality or was it something else. It surely wasn’t the sexy arrogance of the aimless and insecure twenty-five year old she had once known, nor was it the thirty-something arrogance which was little more than obfuscated rage manifesting itself in an array of disinterested expressions. Menno’s arrogance, the arrogance of late, was some strange, emaciated arrogance, a man still wavering somewhere between hope and success, a man denying his own desperation through apathetic glances and condescending critique.

Menno had brought along a few pills and they had taken two on the taxi ride over and, once inside, just as they were starting to peak, they ran into Coraleine. Stacey was high and beginning that fake affection so nauseating to people not on ecstasy, but she was also feeling standoffish and, in the light of the texts, apprehensive of Coraleine.

Coraleine had lost some of her flash and charm, Stacey thought, and her gestures and expressions now had a languorous and bruised-like quality of the shell-shocked divorcée. Since the flash was gone, they might easily have walked right by her without notice. In fact, they had only seen her now, because she had called out to them.

As they were talking, a tall, lanky man who was not unattractive, but was not necessarily attractive either, just more non-descript, a guy Stacey thought she could fuck, if it came down to it, came over and wrapped his arm around Coraleine who was wearing a neon blue PVC nurses outfit while he was wearing a black leather Viking skirt and Doc Maartens. They were completely mismatched suggesting that this date was perhaps haphazard. The man introduced himself as Lodewijk and then almost immediately asked everyone if they wanted a drink before going off to the bar.

“So how are you guys?” Coraleine asked, more to Menno than Stacey. There was a tension in her voice that Stacey had never heard before, a tension that made her voice sound more like one of the green parrots that nested in the tree outside their window. Coraleine informed them that she and Jacques had tickets, but that Jacques had the flue so she had called Lodewijk, their single friend.

Menno caught up Coraleine with how they had been busy, emphasizing busy, and Stacey didn’t follow the conversation, because she spent most of her time observing, not what was being said, but more or less observing how Menno and Coraleine spoke to one another, waiting for a secret that would be revealed in a light touch to the arm or a knowing wink that punctuated a particularly trivial sentence. But as they talked, Menno maintained a stubborn disengagement that made Stacey proud, although she wondered if it was all, perhaps, an act.

When they started discussing Menno’s work and he began explaining the ups and downs, Stacey looked around and studied the evening’s prospects. Most of the men at the party were middle-aged and overcompensating in the gym or tanning, but not a single one of them looked as if he might have an interesting thought in his brain. Not only that, but being European, most of the guys had opted for the softer side of the fetish spectrum, wearing either leather thongs or vinyl skirts, outfits that made them look more feminine than domineering, which made Stacey think, what was the point.

However, there was one man standing near a pillar, watching the DJ that caught her eye. He was tall and rough and unshaven with the kind of short curly brown hair that one might see on a roman emperor. He was wearing leather pants woven together at the legs with a tasseled leather cut-off shirt, the kind of outfit that on most men might have looked old-fashioned, but on this guy had all the appeal of Jim Morrison.

At some point, the man caught Stacey looking and held her eye and smiled and she smiled back and then felt a blush come across her face. She had long learned that flirting at fetish parties made her giddier than say, at a bar, because at fetish parties flirtations almost always lead to sex. On the other had, these parties only lasted a few hours and the coupling started early and in earnest, so too much coyness could also leave you empty-handed.

Stacey was feeling high now and her body was warm and she knew that she was getting extremely wet, which is something that always happened when she was on ecstasy, so the more this guy looked at her, the easier it was to flirt. Besides, part of her wanted to be far away from Coraleine and Menno’s conversation because, in a way, she wasn’t sure if there were secrets and she was the “clueless” wife.

Lodewijk returned with drinks and Menno and Coraleine made empty promises to find one another later, which came as a bit of relief, for Stacey wasn’t that excited about having to do anything with Lodewijk. Thankfully, as Coraleine and Lodewijk walked away, the man standing next to the pillar approached and said hello. It was a ballsy move, she thought, seeing how it was only she and Menno

“I’m going to get a drink,” Menno said with a wink.

The man who looked a bit like Jim Morrison was called Ben and he was Italian, but had actually lived in America briefly, so he wasn’t immediately spouting the stupid opinions that so many Europeans believe they are entitled only because they watch American movies and read about America in the papers.

Ben had thick eyebrows and wide, moist lips, and ridiculously perfect Mediterranean green eyes. He played basketball and talked about Lebron James and Kobe Bryant, not in a boring, statistical way, but in an eager, infectious way, and although she didn’t much care for basketball, the familiar chat of American sports made him all the more alluring.

Ben was sincere and kind, but not too kind and poked fun at the tight t-shirt she had on saying it was something that a Hooters waitresses might wear and he said it with such a nice smile that she almost immediately found herself wondering what it would be like to have sex with him.

They talked for a good thirty minutes, before Menno returned with a drink just for Stacey. The gesture was clear, yet Ben didn’t back away and Stacey couldn’t tell if she found it brave or creepy. And as they sipped their drinks, Ben tried to include Menno in the conversation, but Menno was distant and clammy and Stacey could see from his wide pupils, high as well. Menno seemed to be constantly looking about and Stacey wondered if perhaps he was looking for Coraleine or if he missed her or if he was jealous that she might be having sex with that Lodewijk or even worse, having sex with multiple men and really enjoying herself, forgetting Menno almost entirely.

Stacey had never felt so far away from Menno, in all their marriage, and yet so intertwined. There was something simultaneously liberating and disheartening about this moment, where she knew instinctively that they would always be together, that the cores of their being, not their personalities or their quirks or the hobbies, but something far more fundamental and mundane, something as unglamorous, yet as vital as toes or nails… this core or cores were one and the same and could exist apart from each other even though there would always be a frozen hollowness if they were to be permanently separated.

Even though their marriage had lost that spark, the aftertaste of what had once been intimacy, but was now little more than warm and gooey contempt, meant that they could attempt what the lifestyle swingers a “hard swap” meaning she could perhaps go off with Ben and Menno could go off with Coraleine and they could reconvene at the end of the party and pick up where they had left off, the bills, the car repairs, the endless packing of school lunches… Stacey and Menno could return to their domestic drudgery, as it were, enlivened by the spark of lust that had come with the exploration of an unfamiliar body.

Ben was trying his hardest to keep the nice vibe going and Stacey almost felt bad for him because neither she nor Menno could really hear him over the music. Not only that, but she was mostly concerned about Menno and wondered why he seemed to not be enjoying himself. These parties were, after all, more for him than her and if he didn’t enjoy himself, then the following week he would mope and be almost hostile during their lovemaking.

“What do you feel like doing?” Stacey found herself asking her husband, trying to draw him back.

The question didn’t include Ben and she could see Ben hesitating whether to walk away or to stay, so she touched his arm and held his wrist, but kept her eyes on Menno and, of course, Menno caught the gesture and smiled slyly.

“Shall the three of us go upstairs to a dark room?”

And there it was, the suggestion of sexuality had been cast and Stacey began to worry that maybe she wasn’t even sure she was ready for a threesome, especially after what had happened with the soldier, yet, on the other hand, if a hard swap had been suggested, she wasn’t sure of that as well, even though it was what she, in the end, really wanted. Stacey began to wonder if her hesitation would either dissipate in the dark rooms upstairs or manifest itself into a cold obstacle that she would have to push her mind to get over, this mental hurdle-jumping being something that happened at least half the time during sexual their experimentation.

“We could have another drink too?” she said.

“We could,” Menno replied, his usual expression of disinterest returning and shadowing his face.

“What do you think?”

“You know what I think.”

Menno was sensitive to situations, even though half the time he strolled right over them, which in its own colorful way was more destructive than ignorance, and was precisely the kind of behavior that made him attractive years ago, but now only created angst. With his suggestion being shot down, he looked about with an expression bordering on disgust, an expression designed to make his dissenters uncomfortable and guilt-ridden.

And of course, there was poor Ben, she thought. Caught like a Ping-Pong ball, knocked about court of this strange couple’s dissonance. How Stacey just wanted to be swept away by the moment, to be dominated by these two men, separately or individually, it did not matter anymore, but, instead, with a husband like Menno, the moment had been reduced to managing away every last bit of spontaneity. Ben was sincere to a fault and the only thing that kept his sincerity attractive was the way he smiled which was something between a devilish smirk and a Tom Selleck smile. She thanked god that he was quiet now, chivalrously wading through their conjugal muck.

“You guys take your time,” Menno said, his eye catching something. “I’ll find you in a bit.”

Then he leaned forward and whispered in Stacey’s ear, “We can try this…”

The fact that he was making reference to his cuckoldry made her feel hot, hotter than the ecstasy at its peak, and she felt herself suck in a big gasp of air. But the hotness wasn’t sexual, but a fear of failure for she did not want to disappoint Menno. However, disappointment was almost assured since the expectations had been so high for so long.

Menno gave her a kiss and nodded at Ben and walked away, a little unevenly, and the conversation between her and Ben evaporated into nothing, had no meaning, because it was, from this moment on, nothing more than anxious filler. So they ascended the stairs, Ben holding her hand, and she looked over his body, his wide, tattooless, waxed back, and his somewhat flat, but acceptable ass, and began to wonder what the rest of his body was like, if he would have a big enough cock or if he could effectively move beyond charming and dominate her in a way that was suitable.

Stacey often found these dark rooms to be awful places for while these parties were fetish parties and strictly for couples only, men pretending to be gay would get past the bouncers and immediately separate then rejoin in packs, dicks in their hands, preying and hunting, or just standing next to a couple copulating, gaping while happily jerking away as if they were at some free peep show. It had also been more than once that Stacey had been enjoying herself, then suddenly felt a third or fourth hand on her ass, then turned around to find some leering pervert.

And now, as she and Ben walked through the dark rooms there were indeed mostly couples, but there were the occasional stray guy, alone and sex-starved, who gaped and gawked. Ben was confident however, and considerate, and guided her past the unpleasantness until they found a seat toward the middle, just beyond a leather sex swing.

He felt around on the vinyl seats to make sure there weren’t any wet spots and when he found one, located a towel to wipe it off. He smiled and sat where the ejaculation had been and, grossed out by the discovery, she was relieved when he asked her to come sit on his lap.

She sat down and they immediately began to kiss. He was a much better kisser than Jacques, but he had the faint taste of sickness on his breath, as if he might be coming down with a cold. She offered him a piece of gum and he laughed and they resumed kissing and she was enjoying it and wondering why he was taking so long to move his hands over her body and when he finally did it felt so good, because she actually wanted him to touch her instead it being the usual thing of immediately touching…

She was the first to move her hand over his penis and she was surprised to find a nice bulge and she unzipped his fly was even more pleasantly surprised to find a nicely shaped, circumcised cock. When she asked him about it, whispering in his ear, he told her that his father was Jewish. Being married to Menno, who was, like so most European men, uncircumcised, she had almost forgotten how nice circumcised penises could be. There wasn’t any of that fleshy foreskin and the oily slipperiness underneath. There was just the head and the fine shape and no hidden surprises.

Ben was putting his hand under her skirt and well and she could feel him gingerly tracing the edge of her panties before inserting a finger inside her. She was extremely wet and his finger slipped easily in and she ordered him to put in another and then another. Soon he was fingering her and sucking on her nipples and she was giving herself entirely over to him and his hands and his lips and she wanted to feel more…

And she had almost entirely forgotten about Menno, almost completely… was thoroughly overwhelmed by the lust and the moment and it had been so long since she had been lost like this… Finally, when she could handle it no more, she whispered for him to get a condom and he began to search around in earnest and right at that break she thought to look for Menno and when she turned to her right, she saw her husband peeking behind one of the dark curtains separating their dark room from a room with the sex swing and she almost giggled because he looked like a child there, spying on the girls bathroom and when Ben came back he followed her eyes and saw Menno there. Breaking the seal of the condom wrapper with his teeth, said,

“You know there’s a cuckold chair right over there in the corner.”

And when he pointed he saw two cups chained to the wall and a leather strap with a red ball on a cushion. The idea of watching Menno being submissive terrified her, for she wondered what would happen if she could never respect him again or forever looked upon him as weak and feminine so that at first she shook her head and watched as Ben slipped the condom out of the wrapper and just as he was about to unroll it on his penis asked,

“You sure?”

Then she took one look at Menno there and recognized the sheer joy in his face over what was about to happen and, in that weird ecstasy haze, found herself nodding. Suddenly Ben was walking over Menno and pointing at the cuckold chair. Menno hesitated at first, but a second later was following Ben.

The music was thumping and room swirling and she felt so very good and confused and excited as she watched Ben strap her husband into the cuckold chair and carefully place the ball in his mouth and tighten the strap behind his head. Menno looked ridiculous yet somehow perfect, bound by the arms and gagged at the mouth, his bangs hanging over his right eye, bangs which he was only growing now, but had been the fashion two years ago when MOD was all the rage…

Here she was, watching the strong, slightly intimidating man whom she had fallen in love with, forced into passivity by a handsome stranger. When Stacey thought back to the many times she had seen the shit stains in Menno’s underwear or how disproportionately incensed he became when a driver refused to let him merge or how he sometimes ate his earwax or chewed off his toenails… What were all those things in comparison to this? To this man held captive and forced to watch, what was technically, her infidelity?

Menno was, she realized, the man who she had fallen in love with many years ago, the same strong and domineering man, the man who built the shed in their back yard or could fix a leaky pipe or hoist her in the air and fuck her hard. He was all this… less and at the same time, more. A man worn down by the demands of his job and the kids and his wife, a man whose outlets for expressing all his machismo had dried up and thus had turned to submission, bondage, a completeness of the ideal that all women secretly wanted, perhaps not sexually, but relationally. Menno was surviving not the demands of the hunt or war or farming, but the demands of the modern age, texts, e-mails, progress reports in the best way he could, with a red rubber gag in his mouth.

When Ben returned to her limp, Stacey sucked him erect again and he rolled on his condom. He tossed her on her back and entered her gently and even though it felt good, so very, very good, she couldn’t help but sneak peeks at Menno there, in the darkness, silently observing with a fiery excitement that she had never seen in him before.

Born Out of Love

by Andrew Rhodes

My mom was forty-two years old when I was born, and my dad was forty-nine. They were unequipped parents and did not sign me up for sports or activities, which assured my status as interloper from a very young age. One time, when I was twelve, I destroyed the backyard garden in a fit of nameless rage and they didn’t say a word about it.

Most nights my dad sat in his office reading and chewing on his pipe stem. When he spoke it was slow and clear. He seemed depressed and I wondered how much of it had to do with aging. My mom, on the other hand, never seemed happy or unhappy, and always wore a look of slight confusion. One time Dad told me that Mom had the worst memory in the world—she was like a permanent amnesiac—and that’s why her temperament was so consistently tranquil.

I had only one friend. His name was Sean Carrigan, and he lived with his dad, an Episcopal Priest, and his older brother, Nelson. In the searing Mississippi summer, Sean and I would ride our bikes down to the river where we would goof around on a rope swing, or walk on the railroad tracks and throw rocks at cars passing on the nearby highway. Or we would ride to Devil’s Tower which was a just an abandoned grain silo covered in graffiti. Devil’s heads and cuss words. We were on the lookout for any devil worshippers, wanting to get our fix of fear. In the fall we tried to make a haunted house for some neighborhood kids. We painted our faces in black and red, fake blood and everything, and when we looked in the mirror we were both kind of scared. We didn’t go through with the haunted house. Though we did not admit it to each other, we both wondered if, by dressing up as demons, we were inviting pain and terror into our lives.

Unlike my quiet home, something was always going on at Sean’s, and it usually involved Sean fighting with Nelson. One morning I rode my bike over to Sean’s, and when I got there Sean was lying on his back in the front yard. Nelson and his friend Dominic were leaning over and talking to Sean.

“Hey Stake,” Nelson said. “Stake” was a nickname Nelson had given me; it was short for “Mistake,” which is what he claimed I was since my parents were so old.

Sean rolled on to his side and squinted and groaned. He had grass clippings in his hair and stuck to his face. He tried to take deep breaths.

“See, you got your wind back,” Nelson said. “He just got the wind knocked out of him. Been laying there for twenty minutes to make it more dramatic,” he said to me.

“He pushed me off the roof,” Sean said.

“I didn’t push you, you lost your footing. I wouldn’t push somebody off a roof,” Nelson said.

I looked at Dominic but he didn’t offer any more explanation, just put his hands on his hips.

“He fell off the roof?” I said, looking at the one-story house. The foundation of the house was not raised, but it seemed like he could have broken something.

“The bush softened his fall,” Nelson said. He pointed at a camellia bush that was split with cracked branches making the core of the bush visible. “He’s fine.”

“I’m telling Dad,” Sean said.

This threat did not sit well and the two brothers argued. Their dad was, like my parents, hands-off, but he could get very angry in the right circumstances. He certainly would make Nelson pay for pushing his brother off the roof, accident or not. Though he was a priest, he didn’t seem religious. He didn’t pray before meals.

“What do you want from me? You want to go somewhere. Don’t say a word and you can hang out with me and Dominic. How’s that?” Nelson said.

“I don’t want to hang out with you,” Sean said, still lying on his back. I didn’t believe him because Nelson was all he ever talked about. “Take us to a movie,” Sean said. “Your treat.”

We wanted to see The Crow. Sean had the soundtrack and we had read magazine articles about how the movie’s star, Brandon Lee, had died in real life while filming. Nelson and Dominic brought us to the theater in Nelson’s Jetta, and he went up to the counter—he knew a guy who worked there—and got us two tickets to the R rated movie. He said to Sean, “I just broke a fifty dollar bill for you, punk.”

In the movie, of course, a loving young couple gets murdered—the woman gets raped first—and then the man comes back to life as a superhero to have his revenge. I felt sick when they raped the girl, tingling with frustration and anger, and I was glad to see the hero get his revenge in such extreme fashion, but something didn’t sit right. How did he come back to life? What force was behind this return from the dead? Was it all due to a magic crow? Where did the magic crow come from? I understood the viewer had to be kept in the dark on this to some extent, but the revenge plot seemed insignificant when compared to issues of immortality and God, or whatever was supposed to make this supernatural event possible. Still, we left the theater saying we loved the movie.

The thing was, Sean and I were both in love with the same girl at school. Her name was Jill, and after the movie I knew Sean was doing the same thing I was doing—picturing some variation on the story with Jill as the victim and himself as the hero. Thinking about eternal union with his beloved. It made me jealous that we were both thinking the same way about Jill, and that there was nothing that made my fantasy scenario any more likely than his. We were picturing the same pitch black night, rescuing her from torture.

After the movie we had to wait two hours for Nelson and Dominic to come pick us up. We sat on the front steps and watched crowds come and go from the theater, both wondering if somehow Jill would be among them, which she was not.

The Jetta pulled up at almost six o’clock and we got in the car. “You and Stake like that movie?” Nelson asked. Sean nodded.

Nelson said we were going to hang out with him tonight. “Another special treat,” he said. He must have still felt guilty about pushing Sean off the roof and felt like he had not bribed him enough quite yet. He said we were going to the midget house. During the drive there he turned up the music and rolled down the windows so that the wind blew through. I thought about the four of us in the car. I thought about our relationship to the higher power, about what we believed. In Mississippi everyone knows what church someone goes to, and many people feel the need to explain their affiliation. Your church was part of your casual biography. Though I rarely went to church, I was a Baptist and believed in God in a typical way. Sean said he believed in God but not the same way his dad did. He believed God was somehow involved with outer space and aliens in ways that Christianity wouldn’t condone. Dominic was Catholic—he never spoke about it—but I had seen him cross himself before eating. And I didn’t know about Nelson. He didn’t seem like he could care one way or the other. It was strange to me that we could all believe slightly or very different things and be in the same world, the same town, the same car.

The midget house was an abandoned dwelling on a narrow road off 40th Avenue. It was in the woods behind a strip mall that was empty except for a prosthetic limb manufacturer that was closed on weekends. The house was by itself with no neighboring structures, and it was easy to imagine the dwarf owner or owners, some years ago, deliberately isolating themselves in the woods to avoid attention. The small front yard had gone back to nature, weeds having taken over the grass and vines running up all sides of the house.

It was literally a miniature house, with everything half the size of a normal house. The counters came up to my knees, cabinets and ceilings were low, and I had to duck to walk inside and through the kitchen where the linoleum on the floor was bubbled up and curling in the corners of the room. In all parts of the house the floor was beginning to give, the wood softening, and there were plenty of signs of decay, enough that even some teenagers refused to walk inside. The two bedrooms were empty other than random trash like fast food bags in the corners. In the den area the ceiling was higher, and there was a short ladder leading up to a second floor loft that was more like a crawl space. I never figured out what the loft was supposed to be. There had been a miniature side table and TV stand in the den, but both had been burned in a bonfire behind the house during a New Year’s Eve party last year. I had been here plenty of times before, but never at night. There were plenty of ghost rumors, and we all wanted to believe them.

The knob was broken off the front door. We followed Nelson and Dominic ducking through the kitchen into the den. All the windows were broken out but the house still smelled musty like rotting wood. An evening breeze swept through the den, and there were people behind the house yelling and laughing.

In the den there were two guys and a girl sitting on the floor smoking cigarettes. It was dusk and there was just enough light for those of us inside the house to see. The people said hey to Nelson and Dominic asked if there was beer. There wasn’t. Nelson and Dominic immediately joined a card game the people were playing. Sean and I were not introduced to them, and the people on the floor didn’t seem to take any notice of us. We walked around.

Something had happened since I’d been here last. The ceiling below the loft was starting to cave in. Somebody had probably gone up there to be funny and stomped around too much. Or maybe they had sex and the weight of two teenager bodies was too much for the dying structure.

We heard a sudden scream come from the backyard—a teenage boy’s sandpaper scream—the voice rising and cracking in fear. The seated people dropped their cards and got up to look out the window. Nelson immediately went for the back door; Sean and I followed, not yet aware what was happening. Outside, in the backyard, next to a make-shift fire pit that was inactive on this pleasant spring night, a guy was kneeling down one knee and had what looked like a knife at another guy’s throat. A group of people—ten or so—were standing around watching this like it was a play. I knew the guys’ names. The one with the knife was named Carl Gordon and the other one was Daniel Therry. Daniel Therry had scoliosis and was an atheist. I knew he had scoliosis because my mother was a nurse and had taken care of him in the hospital, and also he had slight curve of his upper spine that was only noticeable if you looked closely. And I knew he was an atheist because he always told people. His father, an Accounting professor at the local university, often wrote letters to the newspaper editor criticizing religion. Being an atheist made Daniel different than everyone else and made him seem dangerous, which is what he wanted.

“I could kill you right now, cousin,” Carl Gordon said.

“Man, no. Man. Listen. What happened?” Daniel Therry’s voice was cracking again.

Looking back, I know that Carl Gordon had no intention of cutting him. He was making a statement about himself that had very little to do with Daniel Therry.

“Get off him,” Dominic said.

“Get the fuck off him, Carl,” Nelson said, trying to strengthen Dominic’s plea. He tried to sound casual at the same time, but there was fear in his voice that he couldn’t hide.

When Carl finally brought the knife away from Daniel’s throat, someone in the crowd said, “You’re losing it, buddy.” Carl stood up, still looking down like Daniel was a deer he had killed, making a scene out of it. He folded the knife and put it in his pocket.

In my life I have seen many things that have surprised me. But what Sean did next may be the most unexpected event I have ever witnessed. The moment after Carl put the knife in his pocket, Sean ran and jumped on him, wrapped his arm around Carl’s neck and started choking him like a pro wrestler. Sean was not an aggressive person, but here he was attacking a guy four years older and twice his size. I knew this attack was partly due to the movie we had seen and something about the older people present, the pressure to be a part of something. For a moment, everyone seemed frozen in disbelief. Carl fell down to his knees and very quickly unfastened Sean from his neck and dropped him on the ground and pummeled him. Nelson and Dominic had jumped in and were trying to break them up. Nelson got some licks in on Carl. Daniel Therry had gotten up and was stumbling away. It quickly turned into a scrum, and I couldn’t tell who was fighting who. Dust rose from their feet and knees. Sean stood up and then fell back down. Then Nelson had Sean under his arms and pulled him away, pulled him all the way to the car with Sean screaming.

Around the time of the fight, back at my house—for some reason I imagine it happened right at the moment when Carl took the knife away from Daniel Therry’s throat—an embolus from my dad's heart became large enough to block the flow of blood in his artery wall and he suffered a stroke. He lay on the office floor, unresponsive, though his left eye remained open. My mother discovered him and called an ambulance. She tried to get some kind of response from Dad.

Driving away from the midget house, Nelson told us the knife to the throat was because Daniel had kissed Carl’s girlfriend, but we later found out that Daniel had stolen Carl’s wallet at a baseball game a few months before, and that Carl had just found out about it.

When I got home it was dark. The house was empty, and there was no sign of my parents’ whereabouts. It was not like them to leave in the evening, and certainly not without a note explaining where they were and a phone number to reach them. I walked around the house, walked in each room, and called for them. I imagined them gone forever, disappeared from the earth, and I felt terrified and free. In my rational mind I knew they were not gone forever. They had probably stepped out for a moment on some ordinary chore, and they would be back any second. Still, I convinced myself they were gone. After the midget house, my house felt so huge. Every room was overwhelming.

I went into my parents’ bedroom where the light was off. I went into the dark closet and sat on the carpeted floor. In darkness I felt the silence that ruled so much of the universe. In a weird way it felt like the silence was alive.

When my mother got home and told me what had happened to dad, I could not face it. Even when I went to the hospital to see him—he had survived the stroke and was in stable condition, though he could not yet speak—I denied that his pain had anything to do with me. These people were my parents, but what did that really mean? They would be gone one day and I would be alone, so why wrap myself in the world of their decline? I retreated to thoughts about the movie and about Jill.

Monday at school Jill looked beautiful. Her hair was shiny and she wore a blue jean jacket. It was a bright, cool day outside, and our classroom was lit with cold fluorescent light. The world wasn’t dark and rainy and ominous like in the movie.

Still, it seemed possible that somehow, by chance, I might one day save her from something so bad she would be forced to love me. For that to happen, I would have to save her from suffering and pain. She would have to face terrible violence, like the woman in the movie. Could a fantasy so dependent on pain and terror be born out of love? It didn’t seem right. Yet there it was again, running through my mind.

Everything was cold and clean. I had done nothing to win Jill’s love and there were no magic birds. She and I would never meet in the dark.

Immortal Longings

by Charles Rammelkamp

“I see Fahrenheit 9/11 is showing at the Bijou along with Princess Diaries 2. When did Brent Mitchum open a second screening room, anyway? The Bijou was always a single-screen cinema when I was growing up.”

“How else are you going to keep up with the multiplexes?” Jodie asks rhetorically.

“The Bijou has a monopoly in Potawatomi Rapids, though. Of course, you can always drive over to Muskegon or wherever if you want to see a movie that bad, if it’s not here.”

“What’s that?” Caroline Castleman demands. Roger wonders at his mother’s deafness, the insulation from noise it suggests. He imagines sounds for her are muffled and distant, as if trying to penetrate a cocoon. Especially over the last dozen years of the ninety-seven she has lived, she has been slowly, gradually losing her hearing.

“We were just talking about the movies at the Bijou,” Roger shouts. “When I was a kid they only had one movie at a time; now they have two.”

“Oh yes, Brent Mitchum opened a second room upstairs where the balcony used to be. The kids from the college are the only ones who go to the Bijou any more, I understand.”

“When does school start again?”

“What?”

“I said, when does school start again?” Castleman shouts. “At Potawatomi Rapids College?”

“Haven’t they started already?”

“I don’t know. Have they?”

“Yes, I think they may have started last week. It’s stupid the way they have classes in August. Didn’t used to start until after Labor Day.”

“Probably why Fahrenheit 9/11’s showing. The college kids.”

“I’d like to see Princess Diaries 2,” Lily declares.

“I’d like to see Outfoxed,” Jodie says, “the one about Rupert Murdoch that’s due out next week.”

“I want to see Garden State,” Carol says to Lily. They know all the current offerings. Alien vs. Predator is coming to the theaters in Baltimore, and another Benji movie about the dog and another Exorcist are also due out. There’s no end.

“We’ve already seen Fahrenheit 9/11 once. I don’t need to see it again. Did you see it, Mom?” They’re discussing the options for evening entertainment. They’ve been to the beach already. They’ve eaten dinner and are sitting on the porch, facing the lake. Maybe they should go for a walk downtown, Castleman thinks.

“What?” Caroline Castleman calls out again.

Castleman raises his voice again. “Fahrenheit 9/11. Have you seen it yet?”

“Oh yes. Marilyn Schumacher took me to see it. You know Bush was up in Traverse City yesterday?”

“I saw that in the paper. First sitting president ever to stop there, or something. Where is he today? Pennsylvania? West Virginia? I guess he comes to Michigan a lot, since you’re supposed to be up for grabs. Nobody comes to Maryland.”

“Which is fine with me,” Jodie comments.

“I read where some 55-year old social studies teacher wasn’t allowed to go inside the Grand Traverse County Civic Center where Bush was speaking because she had a Kerry sticker on her blouse,” Castleman marvels. “The campaign security people ripped up her admission ticket and wouldn’t allow her in.”

“What’s that?”

“A schoolteacher wasn’t allowed in to see Bush because she had a Kerry sticker on!”

“Oh, I saw that! Isn’t it dreadful?” Caroline Castleman is a registered Democrat, her party affiliation dating back to New Deal days.

“Come on, Lily, let’s go down to the beach,” Carol says to her sister. She can tell the adults aren’t about to move any time soon. The girls run off the porch and down to the lake. An evening calm has come over the water, and the sun is sinking over in Wisconsin.

“I belong to a writers group,” Castleman tells his mother, his voice raised, “and there are these two guys who are on opposite sides of the issue. One’s a Bush supporter and the other’s a Kerry supporter. One guy writes super-patriot stories about a Middle School basketball coach who’s a spy on the side, and the other writes screenplays that expose American greed.”

“It’s just awful,” Caroline Castleman declares. “What he’s done to the economy with these tax cuts, the war in Iraq, and it just horrifies me the way he’s removing the barriers between church and state. Faith-based initiatives. What a disgrace! What a – what a shipwreck!” she concludes, at a loss for the right description.

“People should look up the definition of ‘evangelism’ in their Funk & Waganalls’ if you ask me,” Caroline Castleman goes on, unheeding. “Crusaders! That’s what they are. Zealots! People should be more concerned about the political activism of the evangelicals than they are. All they do is propagandize and proselytize. They want the government to do the job their preaching isn't doing for them, and they’re too hidebound to recognize nobody wants to hear any of it! Nobody’s buying what they’re selling at all. But they aren't going to be happy until they’ve imposed a theocracy on all of us. People are just too complacent about these fanatics. These lunatics.”

“Religion should be kept personal,” Castleman agrees. “Or at least within the circle of people who share the same beliefs you have. Evangelists and missionaries may do a lot of good, but they don't do it out of altruistic motives. They do it to promote their agendas. Sure, they run homeless shelters and soup kitchens. A meal or a warm place to sleep attracts a captive audience. Eat the meal or use the cot and you are obliged to sit and listen to their sales pitch. An age-old practice. Sometimes it’s used to promote Jesus. Sometimes it’s used to promote timeshares. I just don’t see the religious people getting into some of these programs out of the goodness of their hearts. They have ulterior motives, and I would hate to see their causes financed with tax dollars. I don't trust those guys any more than I would a timeshare peddler.”

It’s a bravura performance on Castleman’s part. He hasn’t talked so much in ages. Or at such a loud volume.

“So you think Al can get in on the faith-based initiative money?” Jodie asks, amused. Roger’s brother is a storefront preacher in Saint Augustine, Florida, a confidence man. He has a plan to bottle vials of water from the “Fountain of Youth” and sell them on the internet. Everywhere, “anti-aging” strategies are popping up on the internet spam everyday. Why not take this to its logical conclusion?

“Why not? He outlined his paradise strategy to me when I talked to him on the phone yesterday. Paradise. He’s parlayed his credentials as a preacher into peddling paradise. He was going on and on about the various conceptions of paradise. It all ties into the Fountain of Youth scheme. So sure, if he hypes up the born-again aspects of his grand vision, I bet he can be sucking on that faith-based initiative tit as much as any fundamentalist preacher. Nobody knows about his sub rosa activities.”

“You don’t think they’ll poke around his ‘sub rosa activities,’ as you call them? Flush him out in a minute?

“What about Paradise, anyway?”

“Paradise?” Caroline Castleman exclaims, the word penetrating the wall of her deafness. “Has Al been talking to you about Paradise, too?”

Raising his voice so that his mother can hear him, Castleman summarizes his conversation with his brother. “First of all, he mentioned the idea of ‘immortal longings’ that he says are the basis of what it means to be human – happiness, harmony, an essential ‘stillness’ that amounts to immortality and eternal youth.”

“Immortal longings,” Castleman emphasizes, ever the English professor. “That’s what Cleopatra says just before she applies the asp to her breast, commits suicide to join Antony in death. ‘I have immortal longings in me.’ Act five, scene two.” In a lower voice, self-mocking the pedant professor, he adds to Jodie, “Of course the asp is an obvious phallic symbol.”

“What?” Caroline Castleman demands.

“Shakespeare!” Castleman shouts. “Al was going on about these immortal longings that form the basis of his sales pitch. Talk about timeshare salesmen, Al’s offering a slice of paradise. Even before there was a Garden of Eden, he says, which was made for humans, there was a city identified in ancient Sumerian myth called Dilmun which was made exclusively for the gods, a paradise. It’s in the myth of Enki and Ninhursaga. Enki was the god of fresh water that flows under the earth, and Ninhursaga was his consort. Dilmun is modern-day Bahrain. Dilmun was ‘pure’ and ‘virginal’. There was no disease, no death, no getting old.

“What Al doesn’t mention, by the way, is that even though this notion of paradise goes all the way back to Mesopotamian myth, it’s literally a ‘utopia’ – a ‘no place’. Because Enki persuades Ninhursaga to have sex with him, and then after she gives birth to a daughter, Enki has sex with the daughter, and then the daughter’s daughter and so on. The point is that you can’t have paradise and civilization both. The only way there’s an absence of death is if there’s an absence of birth. There’s no sense of nostalgia for Dilmun the way there is for Eden.

“But anyway, Al launches into these original myths of paradise to prove that there really is a paradise, because people have always believed and longed for it, so it must be so, and not only that, but it’s available now; you don’t have to die to get there.”

“Who is he telling this to?”

“Nobody yet, at least I don’t think so. He’s gotten some senior citizens to worry about getting Alzheimer’s, but I don’t think he’s taken the next step yet. It’s possible that he worked some of this stuff up in his sermons back in L.A., too.”

“Al was telling me some interesting things about – I don’t know, the Aztecs, the Celts.” Caroline Castleman gestures vaguely and looks out toward the horizon on the lake.

“That’s right,” Roger recalls. “Aztec paradise was called Tlalocan or something else that’s equally difficult to pronounce.”

“Avalon for the Celts, the place where King Arthur went to die,” his mother muses. “A blessed place where it’s always summer and full of fruits and flowers and nobody experiences sorrow.”

“And don’t forget Valhalla!” Jodie adds sardonically. “Odin’s palace in Asgard. You get to it by crossing the rainbow bridge, Bifrost. But I forget whether you take a left or a right once you’ve crossed the bridge.” She ignores Caroline Castleman’s request to repeat herself since it would only spoil it to explain her joke.

“Only warriors get to go there, though,” Castleman clarifies, “only those slain in battle. And the only females there are the Valkyries. At least the heroes’ goblets never run out of mead.”

“It doesn’t last forever anyway, does it? Valhalla. They live in the palace until Doomsday – Ragnarok. Then they have to do battle against giants, with Odin. They’d probably be feeling pretty restless by then anyway.”

“Then there was Hades in Greek mythology, and Olympus, of course, where the Gods cavorted. Sheol is the Jewish equivalent of Hades. A gloomy place with insubstantial shades flitting about,” Castleman ticks off other afterlife venues, almost as if he’s listing the movie selections at area cinemas. “Islamic paradise is an eternal place of bliss and comfort, the ‘garden underneath which rivers flow.’ And of course we all know about the houris, the virgins of paradise that righteous men will get to enjoy for their good actions on earth. Suicide bombers.”

“The word ‘houri’ comes from the Arabic ‘hur,’ which means ‘astonishment’,” Jodie says.

“The Australian Aborigines believe in a time beyond living memory that they call The Dreaming. When a person dies, his spirit goes there, to join the ancestors. It’s not a reward or a punishment. It’s idyllic, though.”

“African religions have a similar belief in an ancestral afterlife where the dead exist as spirits in this life, but the Bachwa tribe in the Congo have a belief in an afterlife where there’s no illness or hunger or death. Just comfort, happiness and easy hunting. And then there are the Rastafarians of Jamaica, former Christians, who believe that Ethiopia is the site of the original Eden, or paradise, and they smoke dope, the ‘holy herb,’ ganja, to help meditate on holiness or whatever.

“Rastafarian paradise is a perfect example of one of Al’s themes, by the way, exile and return. That’s Miltonic, too, the exile from the garden. The nature of existence is exile; the goal is to return. Al preaches that we can return to the garden, and he knows the way. For a price, of course. The Golden Age, the Elysian Fields, the Isle of the Blessed.”

“I don’t know where he’s going with all this,” Caroline frets. “It’s comforting, I suppose. People need comfort.”

“Where he’s going with it,” Castleman echoes. “All the way to the bank, he hopes.”

“So have we decided what we’re going to do this evening?” Jodie asks, bringing the conversation back to its origin.

“What?” Caroline asks, scrinching her face, and all at once her son realizes they’ve been blithely talking about how to cheat the grim reaper, how little time his mother actually has, how soon she’ll be gone, how much he is going to miss her. The slow, inevitable tumble into oblivion, as in a dream.

Per Contra

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Tag Archives: fiction