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dated April 1st, 2009

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BALL OF DOOSHIE LEVITATION
BY MIKE YOUNG

I trip when my little sister shows me how to

levitate. Like hello pavement. Chew on this: by the time
he was nineteen, John Smith had sailed the known
world twice. I can't even get my shoes steady. Not that
I'm lacking in desire. But a sunburn is munching the
skin off my neck, and I am happy to report that the
sidewalk smells a little like fried sand.
"No, like this," says the little bitch. She goes tiptoe
on one foot and tucks up the other, and sure, sure, she's
floating, whatever. It only works with pants. She's got
my old pants.
"It's so easy," she says. "You don't even know. Like
David Blaine. It's Ball of Dooshie levitation."
"It only works if you're fat," I say.
She sucks up her cheeks.
"Floating people are lazy," I say.
"Whatever. Nerd."
Grilled cheese is easy. Hello World in QBasic is
easy. Levitation in the sunlight—not so much.
My sister is running a magic stand. Like a
lemonade stand. This is better for her than watching
David Blaine on cable and eating cashews. I don't know.
Cashews are tasty. And I could be fine, sloth-sprawled in
my room with EverQuest and the new Metallica. Sure,
the drums sound like someone opening the fridge. On a
boat. In space. With emphysema. But it's fine. I could be
fine.
But no. We live three blocks from a filthy public
pool. The city condemned a trailer down the street.
Farther into the flats dwell Asians. Paper lanterns in the
trees and tarp in the windows. Oh, those diabolical
Asians. Thus my little sister requires my supervision.
I'm not so into hanging out with her. Last week I
drank this milkshake she'd made and left sitting by the
toaster. She came into my room and started slapping my
ears. I grabbed her and tried to drag her out, but she dug
into the doorway. She looked like a bearded loon in a
tempest on an island.
Well, no, not really, no.
But I laughed at her. She got so mad she almost ate
her tongue.
My Mom says, "It's not like you have a job,
Daniel."
I say, "It's not like she has a soul."
"It will be good for you. For both of you."
"I get sunburned. I lose skin."
"It's Vitamin D. It's good for you."
"But there's bees and heat waves and shit."
"Oh, come on. Look how nice it is. It's fresh."
Right. Fresh. August fresh, like my legs and my leg
hair get so wet together that in Alabama they'd need a
marriage license. But I can't explain myself. This is the
problem with leisure in an age of mechanical
reproduction. I can show my parents how my mage just
fucked up like seventy rats, and they'll only nod and shy
for the door. Of course, in their minds, the feeble
construction of sibling love is a better pastime. They just
can't dig particle lighting effects. What can I do? How do
you prove your time to someone who treats beauty like a
Greek clock?
Not that pixels are beautiful.
Not like skin.
Cheerleader skin like a Slurpee headache.
 Okay, so even I think my life is flimsy. I agreed to
watch my sister. My shoulders sagged and the protest
stayed under my teeth.
I can't even levitate.
Sick at heart, I chill out on the sidewalk. Clean my
glasses, inspect the stand setup, sit on it. It consists of
our grandparents' old dining room table and a
whiteboard sign. A bunch of magic nonsense crowds the
tabletop: cards, clinkly link things, a rubber rabbit. My
sister's also got this plastic top hat with stickers. But it's
too hot for that. She wears a cape and a heavy worry. She
keeps peering around, craning her look through trees
and all, like maybe the birds are up for a coin trick. We
even did the sign regression. Down from $3 to $1 to
$0.25 to CLAPPING to ANY FORM OF THE WORD
GEE.
But no takers. My knees sting.
Whoop-dee-doo. Summer was made for people
that like country music. Meanwhile my desk drawers fill
with Hustlers. Someday soon, when I outgrow my acne
and my loneliness descends into the moors of the tragic,
I totally intend to score some Vicodin.
"Here we go!" my sister yelps. Someone's headed
up. One of our neighbors, Ricky with the squirrel cheeks,
wearing a white, adult-sized cowboy hat, and the world
is steadily proving my theory about our inferiority to
amoebas.
"What the hell is this," he says, "what the fuck-ing
hell."
He's in fourth, fifth grade?
"Nice hat," I say, and he does that cowboy nod
with the fat lips.
"Do you want to see a card trick?" my sister asks.
 "Why don't you do a pony trick," he says and
sneers.
"I have a rope too." She does. And the box set
everything came from sits under the table, replete with
book. Sometimes she gets these spiral ring imprints on
her nose from falling asleep under the book.
"Do the quarter and the cat trick," I say. "She
makes a quarter come out of a cat."
"You're a dork," my sister says.
"I don't have a cat," Ricky says.
"Oh. I thought you were a real cowboy," I say.
"What the fuck-ing hell?" Ricky says.
"Real cowboys have cats." I say. "They store them
under their hat."
"You're fuck-ing retarded," he says. He swoops
over the table and scatters the playing cards. My sister
spent forty minutes toward their arrangement. Magic is
deception and takes time. So my sister screams and
punches Ricky in the groin. His cowboy hat flies off like
a sure white pelican. Ricky goes all purple and looks at
me. I shrug.
"I live with the girl," I say.
But Ricky lives where they condemned the trailer,
so he gets up and rips off my sister's cape. She hiccups
and grabs her throat. It looks like it hurt.
"Stop, stop," I say, like I'm reading an eye chart.
Ricky and my sister go at it right there, on the
sidewalk under the sun, hair and fists and squeals. All
things considered, I feel pretty good. I am thinking of
how this scene would look on LSD. Also of that Shania
Twain song with the word asunder, which is a good
word. The words in LSD are lysergic acid diethylamide.
My friends and I memorized it and tried to write a song,
but we had only a trumpet and a drum machine. One of
my friend's families had a foreign exchange student from
Brazil. They found him smoking pot in their attic. He
had bought it from the diabolical Asians. My friend said
it smelled like catnip, but not really. Kind of a letdown.
"You need some pot," I call out.
"Dan-yulll!" my sister warbles.
By now Ricky has her plastic top hat, so he peels
stickers and scrunches them into the sidewalk cracks.
My sister's on her knees, finally a little weepy. I do
nothing. Here is my reasoning: the minor devil shrinks
when exposed to paramount cruelty. Besides, I know
what tears taste like. I used to swim at the public pool.
My parents went through three swim-noodles (stolen)
and half a million bottles of suntan lotion (too effective).
The kids there beat me up and once they pantsed me
underwater. When I get my own van, I intend to run
over each and every little pointy-ribbed asshole.
My sister could use some of that. My sister's
forehead sports a red smudge. My sister could lose the
notion of her own entitlement. My sister cries in fat,
wobbly heaves. My sister's magic cards are getting
colonized by ants.
My sister could use a shredded balloon for a heart.
Like mine.
Oh hell.
I stand up and go to pummel the little Ricky
fucker, but right then the roof of my mouth turns tickled.
I clamp my teeth shut and hear a bee.
Inside of me. Inside of my mouth. Like toast or
longing.
Holy shit.
Naturally, I trip again. I fall right next to my sister.
 My thoughts in order of escalation: God sucks.
God really sucks.
Ricky is faced with us: a chubby eight year-old girl
all saddled with sniffles and wet hair, and a spotty
teenager with a huge Adam's apple, who is flailing and
jerking and hacking and screaming "mhrm mhrm
mhrm." So he swipes his cowboy hat and hides under
the table. "You're all so fuck-ing retarded," he yells.
Bees taste like shit.
My sister points at me, says "wait wait" and crawls
under the table. She shoves Ricky out and grabs her
book from the box. She zooms through the pages, but
Ricky bats it away. He starts to say something else but
she bites him on the neck and bellmeister ring the bell,
they're off for round two.
Bees taste like utter utter shit.
Heat swims off the cars parked around the
neighborhood. The commotion draws out Mrs. Langley,
who carries an unwarranted dust pan. She darts back
inside. Two purple cars go past. I hate purple!
Then I feel a fist on my back and I sputter. The bee
zips out.
I just kneel there for a while. My chin feels greasy
and my throat feels coarse. I shiver, even though it’s the
middle of August.
I turn to look up and empirically verify a loaded
bikini top. The attached girl is Asian and cappuccino-
colored and done up in this sad little smile.
My luck aligns roughly with that of the dinosaurs.
"Did you get it?" she says.
"It was a bee."
"Wow. That's a bummer."
"It was a mouth bee. It was in my mouth."
 "Are they okay?" she says.
I look at my sister and Ricky, who sit numb and
staring at his now mangled cowboy hat. She gives the
brim another twist. I guess it was pretty cheap. That's
what you get for living in a condemned trailer. My sister
twists again, which is a habit of hers. Now I even feel a
little sorry for that rat bastard. Several seconds glop
past. Finally, Ricky snaps his head around, spits on my
sister and runs away.
"They're the best of friends," I tell the girl.
"Liar," my sister says. "I hate his stupid face."
"It's okay," the girl says. "I know how little kids
are. They're such little shit balls."
"You're a lifeguard," I say. She laughs.
"No, I'm just watching my cousins. I went to get
some ice cream at JD's. Um." She swirls her arms to
indicate what interrupted her. If I were a stray leaf, she
would be my eagle. I notice her bike lying there, then my
shoes, which are all scuffed and dreary. I imagine how
the rest of me looks. My glasses pinch my nose.
The world feels like a baby whale with a bellyache.
My ears sting and sting and sting.
"I, um," I say. "She has a magic stand."
"That's cool."
"He can't levitate," my sister says.
"You can," I say. "Stay here," I say to the girl, who
shrugs. "Do it," I say, to everybody.
My sister smirks, but she levitates. The girl
watches her. A bunch of big freckles zigzag down the
girl's back, which for some reason I find weird and
amazing and oh, I feel so rancid about that. My sister
pulls her trick off for a second, then she stumbles and
gives up. She starts giggling, and the girl gives her
a thumbs up.
I announce, "John Smith sailed the world twice
before he was nineteen."
The girl grins and touches my arm. "I knew that,
silly."
My face feels dirty like a construction worker's.
After they finish a day with a high-rise, I guess they just
sit there on that last beam. Who knows. I've never seen a
tower outside of SimCity. But I figure that they've lost so
much skin over the day—to sweat and sun and mean
birds—they don't really care about falling off. That's
floating for real, and I've never felt it.
The girl smiles again, and my sister shouts,
"Daniel looks like a wet pizza!"
But desire? I don't lack for that at all.
Mike Young is the author of the
chapbooks MC Oroville's
Answering Machine
(Transmission Press 2009) and
Real Sturdy Thing (Stormy Petrel
Press). He co-edits NOÖ Journal
and Magic Helicopter Press.
Visit him on the web at

http://noojournal.com/blog
litareview.com
 dispatch litareview
ISSN #1932-2372

issue two
4/15/2009

litareview.com
moonpunter+dispatch@gmail.com

"Never Enough" ©2009 Dave Morrison

christycall.com
NEVER ENOUGH
BY DAVE MORRISON

I had just dozed off when the phone rang. Lately

sleeping had become like hide-and-go seek. I would
hide under the blankets and hope that the coughing
spasms wouldn’t find me. Because when they did, they
dug their rusty fingers into my neck and breathed their
dust down my throat. I was actually developing
coughing muscles on my stomach and sides.
Of course, I smoke too much - way too much, I’m
told - but not smoking makes me tense and anxious, and
that makes me cough too, so what kind of choice is that?
Sleeping was tentative and anxious; dreams were little
dry things, dead leaves. I have friends who smoke a
bone before bed and swear by it. My dreams are weird
enough without that shit, thank you very much.
Drinking doesn’t help - I have to get up to pee in the
middle of the night, and I wake up with a big thick head.
So, like I said, the phone rang, and chased away
the sleep I'd just coaxed in. I had a moment of religion
‘Please God, not him...’
There is no God; it was him. I lit a smoke.
“H’lo?”
“Hey, Gina - hey...”
“Jesus, Jimmy, what?” Cough.
“Gina, I got something for you, to show-”
“No, Jimmy! It’s late-”
“Gina, I’m here...”
“What’re you talking about?”
“...look out your window...”
I looked. He was at the payphone across the
street. He lit his lighter, and held it up in front of his
face. He looked like a solemn Boy Scout in front of a
campfire. I hated that he was doing this.
At that point I would like to have said that I didn’t
love him...maybe it was true, I don’t know. I had loved
him a little, once, but I lost my nerve, like a thief that
replaces the stolen article before it’s missed. Jimmy had
not been gentle, but he had tried to be kind. He might
have loved me a little. We weren’t friends, not really: it
was something more and something less.
“Gina, come down! Come out with me... there’s
something I want to show you.”
“Jimmy...I feel like shit, I just fell asleep...” I lit
another smoke. I was shivering, wearing just a T-shirt
and panties. “Why now, why tonight?”
Silence. I waited. Annoyed, I looked out the
window. He stood holding the tiny flame, his face a
beautifully scared jack-o-lantern. The payphone
receiver swung.
I hung up the phone, cursing. As I pulled on my
clothes, I wasn’t silly enough to think last time or never
again.
 Jimmy had these spells. There was something
wrong with his chemistry. He’d be fine for weeks,
sometimes a month, and then his blood turned to
rainwater. He wouldn’t be able to sleep for two days,
sometimes three. He would be filled with nameless,
crazy dread. He would do crazy things to entertain me,
to make me stay with him. Once he dragged an entire
room’s worth of discarded furniture onto the roof of this
old building - couch, chairs, end table, lamp, a magazine
rack, even an old television. A dead fica tree in a pot.
He hot-wired the TV to the elevator motor-house. All
the TV got was snow, so we watched snow all night long,
me holding him. Meaningless patterns of light until
morning.
I went with him, because I knew that someday I
would need him. I had once already.
Half-asleep, and not exactly pleased, I went down
to meet him. We didn’t talk, he just pulled me along,
turning every few steps to flash me his sad, nervous
smile. I didn’t keep track of the sidestreets he led me
down. We stopped in an alley crowded with broken
freight pallets and pails crusted with roofing tar. He
pulled himself up to the fire escape and lowered the
rusted ladder for me. I followed him to the roof.
He sat me on the edge of the skylight and went to
work. From behind a chimney, he pulled out a ball of
discarded wrapping paper left behind by the roofers.
Then a battered trumpet. I was no longer surprised by
the things he scavenged.
“Okay, Okay, ready? Watch...”
He lit the ball of paper with his lighter, and held it until
it was almost burning his fingers - then he dropped it
down the airshaft between the buildings. He peered
over, waiting, watching...
When the moment was right, he raised the
trumpet to his lips and blew. The sound was startling,
like a small dissonant boat horn. There was a rustling, a
sound like muffled applause. He blew again. The sound
grew.
Pigeons.
Maybe fifty of them, disturbed, frightened, taking
flight from their perches in the airshaft. Rising, the glow
from the fire lit their bellies and the undersides of their
wings, as if they were feathered in bronze. They rose,
glowing and circling, into the black sky.
Embers in an updraft.
I kneeled on the roof, transfixed, watching the
birds disappear.
The paper burned out. Jimmy stopped blowing.
After looking intently at the beat-up trumpet, he threw it
down the airshaft, turned to me, and shrugged.
Dave Morrison, a high school
graduate and above-average
guitar player, has published
two novels and three
collections of poetry. He lives
on the coast of Maine.
Visit him at

dave--morrison.com
litareview.com
 dispatch litareview
ISSN #1932-2372

issue three
5/1/2009

litareview.com
dispatch@litareview.com

"Girl" ©2009 Elizabeth Ellen

christycall.com
 GIRL
BY ELIZABETH ELLEN
I found Jeremiah at the edge of the diving board, his
back rounded to me, contemplative. I held an open
bottle of wine. It was late October. We weren't prepared
for the cold. I reached into his shirt pocket, retrieving
the cigarettes I knew him to keep there. I shook two into
my palm and transferred them to my mouth, waiting for
a light. Our bad habits had brought us together: our
chain smoking and tendency to continue drinking into
the night. It was a small town in which we lived, a small
circle in which we socialized—and most of those who
made it up, our spouses included, had believed us for
some time to be having an affair. We weren’t. The irony
is that the two times we’d tried, once a year ago in the
front seat of Jeremiah’s truck and now on the floor of
the abandoned room, we’d failed in frustration. The first
time had been easily rationalized: too little space, too
little time, nervousness, fear of being seen, of being
caught. Out here, these excuses didn’t hold. Ninety miles
from our homes, holed up in a deserted motel few
people knew about or remembered. And yet, even here,
with all the time in the world and no one but the
universe to record our sins, we’d failed to complete the
act they’d already begun punishing us for.
A girl. Or the ghost of a girl. We weren’t sure which and
I’m not sure now it matters. I heard her cries first; heard
them with a mother’s ear, which is always, even in the
midst of lovemaking, listening for the voices of her
children. Her faraway sobs had startled me. My first
thought had been to go to her, feel her forehead for
warmth, sooth her back into slumber with whispered
assurances and my lips pressed gently to her cheek. I
didn’t, I never moved. It was Jeremiah who went,
extricating himself from my body, pulling on his clothes
and running to her, leaving me behind to listen and wait.
I waited without moving, waited in the same position in
which I’d been left, believing somehow that by not
moving I could make him return to me sooner. My eyes
traveled, studying the walls onto which declarations of
love and hate had been scrawled with equal fervor. And
as I read I envied the authors their passions, wanting to
know such fierceness of emotion myself, wishing to be so
completely overtaken by my wants and desires as to spell
them out on the sides of buildings and bridges, on any
surface that would allow me to carve my protestations
into it.
Eventually, my limbs stiffened first with
anticipation and then disappointment, I gave up my
wait. I stood, shaking the blood back into my legs,
wrapping the sleeping bag around my unmarked body
and shuffled outside in search of Jeremiah, who was, I
believed, in search of the girl. The girl: Our ghost. The
girl: our.
“Did you see her?” I finally asked, braved by the wine
warming my belly.
“I called to her but she ran from me. She ran into
the woods and I couldn’t find her. I looked but she was
gone,” his voice trailed off and his eyes remained fixed
on the water, as if perhaps the girl had hidden herself
from him somewhere beneath its surface, somewhere
just out of sight.
I took a last swig from the bottle and wiped my
mouth with the back of my hand. The more I thought
about it, the more I believed she wasn’t real but instead
a manifestation of our guilt, which had always been a
more tangible substance than our love anyhow.
I threw my cigarette into the water and rested my
head in his lap. The sleeping bag had by then fallen from
my shoulders, the edges now skimming the water, and I
curled myself into a ball, wanting to feel myself small,
small enough to disappear from him altogether, like our
imagined ghost girl. I wanted him to search for me, too.
Jeremiah’s hands were rough on my skin and as
they passed over my unclothed body I visualized them
tearing the flesh from my bones, leaving me raw and
exposed, vulnerable to whosoever took it upon himself
to look at me. “Make me a real girl again,” I pleaded
shamefully into his thighs. It had been so long since I’d
said anything true that my own bare-boned request
frightened me. I stared up at him, needing him to look at
me, trying to recapture his attention.
“Please, don’t be careful,” I whispered into the pit
of his stomach as I wound myself snakelike up his torso.
People were always being too careful with me; my
husband, children, lovers—were they afraid I'd break?
Didn’t they know that to be reduced to rubble was
precisely what I wanted?
His body, which had been cold, which had
trembled beneath my touch, warmed as I writhed
against it. And as I made my way up his ribs, my open
mouth threatening his throat, he reached for mine,
wrapping his fingers around my neck. Under his grip I
arched my back, jutted my chin, looked to the stars.
There were too many to count and so I stared instead at
the half-moon, begging it for forgiveness. I thrust out my
chest like a frightened bird. “Don’t be too careful with
me,” I wanted to remind him, but when I tried I found
my voice absent. I looked instead to his eyes, expecting
to find them cast elsewhere, away from me as usual.
Instead his stare unnerved me. “Don’t be too careful,” I
thought. “Please.” And without lessening his grip on my
neck he seized my cheek between his teeth, and again I
heard her cries. This time neither of us minded them,
instead burrowing further into each other until they
were an indeterminate utterance to which we bore no
responsibility.
Elizabeth Ellen is the author
of Before You She Was A
Pitbull. She is deputy editor
for Hobart's Short Flight,
Long Drive Books. She
sometimes disguises herself
as a teenager (see left).

elizabethellen.net
A needless exclamation mark is like
laughing at your own joke.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
litareview.com
 litareview.com
dispatch@litareview.com

"Novelty" ©2009 Mike Boyle

christycall.com
 NOVELTY
BY MIKE BOYLE
Horace saw her trudging to the bus stop and heard pre-
dawn things: the train rolling down the tracks four blocks
away, ambient crickets. He looked further, to the
east—just above her head, some light. He was about to say
the sun follows you when he saw a fresh bruise on her eye.

“That’s gonna go black,” he said.

“I’m living a cartoon,” April said.

The highway ran by the tracks. You could hear it. A

long moan.

“Just gimme the word,” he told her, not the first

time.

“No. Thanks but no. We’ll work it out. He said he

was sorry.” She produced a pipe from her purse, placed
weed in the bowl, and lit it. “Want some?”

“No.”

“Here, you want some.”

He took a hit and said, “Here they come.” Who

knew where they came from or who they were? She was
the only person he talked to at the bus stop.

When the bus came, they boarded and sat together.

 “Will I see you tonight?” April asked when his stop
came.

He left the bus and walked the half-mile to the printing

plant which squatted on the edge of town by the marsh.
He remembered his wife drooling on the pillow as he left.
He liked to look at her sleeping. He’d left a pot of coffee
and a rose stolen from the neighbors' bush in a cup. He
walked past the rusted City Beautiful memorial, the
burned-out homes never rebuilt after the flood.

He arrived at the converted World War II nail

factory with machines almost as old. The day rolled out
like days do. He occasionally looked up at the security
windows with steel mesh. No steel mesh on outside
windows. Owner looking down, sometimes not.
Sometimes left, then appeared at the back door hawking
for slackers. The antics of his boss and coworkers were
tiresome. Dead air. The things people did in dead air, in
places that didn’t matter.

After work, he walked downtown. Wednesday

happy hour at the Palookaville Inn was Cult of Seinfeld.
Jack, who everyone called Stubby, ran the Palookaville
Inn. It was his notion that everything in life was covered
in the glorious episodes of Seinfeld. He took his usual seat
at the bar and said “Hey Stubby.” Stubby grunted, got his
beer, and went back to looking at the big screen. The
Bubble Boy episode was on. Armand, the plumber, was
sitting at the other side of the bar, and he went to sit
beside him.
 “Been here all day,” Armand said.

“Laid off again?”

“Temporary, they say. Things slow is all. You?”

“We’re busy.”

“You got it made.”

“Sure.”

“Did I tell you how my wife saved me from a life of

homosexuality?”

“Yeah. That still working?”

“Days like this are bad. I saw the boys getting on

the school bus, had some thoughts, then came here.”

“Maybe you need church. My wife has me going.

She's Catholic again.”

“Again?”

“We both grew up Catholic, now she’s back on it.”

“How’s that?”

“I go for the wafers.”

“Communion. They call it communion.”

“Okay.”

“Starsky and Hutch lunchbox?”

 “My nephew gave it to me.”

“How is he?”

“Thirty, still living with his mom. They let him go

outside without a helmet now.”

“So big.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry. It is kind of funny though. You have to admit

that.”

“A little.”

He drank a few beers with Armand and left. He

walked to the bus stop, got on the bus, and looked out
the window at methadone row. The ghetto and the youth
with their pants falling off their asses. She had the car. He
thought about how wildlife in zoos would not mate in
captivity.

When children wouldn’t come, she got Bumper,

who jumped around and salivated. He grabbed the bag
and took Bumper for her walk. The rock & roll people
were hanging on the deck outside the townhouse up the
block, like they did. Twenty-something old-money Alvin
owned the place, had a band called The Fractured. Big on
the local scene. Bumper decided it was a good place,
squatted.

He picked the shit up with the bag.

“Hey!” someone yelled. Look at that guy! Hey, dog-

shit man!”

“Hey! I’m about to take a shit!”

“Cut it out, asshole. That’s Race,” Alvin said. “Hey

Race!”

“Hey Alvin.”

“You wanna come over after you get your dog

home? We’re having a party.”

“Sure,” he said. Bumper jumped and barked. “I gotta

let her run a bit.”

“Come back.”

He cut Bumper’s leash. She ran to where some

houses once stood. He followed, carrying the shit bag
through vines and brush and into the clearing. He winged
the bag. Bumper ran after it, brought it back. Threw it and
again she ran after it, brought it back, happy. He tossed
the bag into the brush, said no, but she ran after it,
brought it back. He kicked up dirt, buried it. “You dumb
dog.”

They went home. Bumper flopped satisfied on her

basement cushion. He was going to do something.
Someone needed to. He walked upstairs. His wife had
been making little post-it notes all over the house. Novelty
had been on the fridge for months. Underneath it,
another note saying, Don’t drink. There’s dinner in the crock
pot and pie in the fridge. It had been bad for some time but
she’d made an effort. The beef stew was satisfactory. It
became night with the cricket sounds and beef stew. He
saw her on the second-shift assembly line putting
transistors into circuit boards for eight wasted dollars an
hour. He saw her fingers.

He walked back down the alley. They had a fire

going.

“Race!” Alvin yelled. “I was just telling my posse

about you and your exploits in the 80’s. Beer?”

He kept walking to the apartment building April

lived in and went up, beat on the door.

“Race!” April said when she opened the door.

“Is that your bus stop boyfriend?” When he looked

at her, he didn’t see her. He saw someone else from long
ago. Abused, tossed away to grandparents, so shy she
barely spoke. That’s when time stopped, because Race
saw everything.

“I’ma have a talk with your husband,” he said

brushing past April just as the white lights came on.
Everyone says see red, but the lights are so white and the
voice in his head was yelling but what came from his
mouth was quiet: “C’mere Joey. There’s a Joey.” The face
in the white light suddenly bloody, “What’cha doin’ Joey?
Bleeding? There’s a Joey. Can Joey fly of’n the balcony?”

Later, thinking again, he didn’t remember if Joey

flew or he felt the cold steel on the back of his head first.
April was there with the pistol saying things and Joey was
two floors down, sprawled by the trash cans.

“I hope this doesn’t ruin our bus stop relationship,”

he said seriously.

“Get out,” she said.

Alvin and posse around the fire pit. He found a seat in the
circle. There were sirens. A police cruiser crept down the
alley, stopping at his back door. The officer got out and
knocked.

“What’s going on, man?”

“Dunno.”

The officer knocked louder with the butt of his

flashlight. “Horace Jones! You in there? Come out, Horace
Jones!”

“Maybe you’d better?”

“Nah. Beer?”

Someone went to the house for more drink. They

sat around the pit. The cruiser came back up the alley,
shined a light, “Anybody know Horace Jones, from 2207?”

“Nope,” Race said.

“I do. He’s a real creep,” Alvin said.

“You know where he is?”

“Ain’t seen him in weeks.”

 The cruiser disappeared up the block, shining the
light.

“Fucking pig,” Alvin said.

The fire cracked. Someone put an empty beer case

upside down on it. They watched it smoke, go red and
orange in flames, then lift off with a woof. They watched it
float and disintegrate, sparks and ash.
bohobait.blogspot.com
The most essential gift for a
good writer is a built-in,
shock-proof, shit detector.
This is the writer's radar and all
great writers have had it.

Ernest Hemingway
litareview.com
 litareview.com
dispatch@litareview.com

"Low Tide Gurgling Against The Breeze"

©2009 Jackie Corley
christycall.com
 LOW TIDE GURGLING
AGAINST THE BREEZE
BY JACKIE CORLEY
Jack hasn't told me what he's called me here for yet. For
three weeks, he kept away from my emails and messages.
He thinks he's doing me a favor now. Maybe he is. When
my cell phone rang, I was dry heaving in my bedroom,
stomach clenched, nails digging into the dark rose carpet.
I couldn't figure out what I was ruined for, but hearing his
sloppy vowels on the line pulled the blood back into my
limbs. Stuffing a few requested bills in my pocket, I
headed out to Holmdel Motor Lodge's Room 114.

He's peeling out coarse threads from the edge of the

chair cushion and rolling his head back to stare at the
open edge of curtain.

"How long you been staying here?" I ask, throwing

the twenties into a dusty ashtray on the side of the round
table between us.

"About a week now, I think. She kicked me out." He

stands up and digs his jeans out from under the bed. He
slides both feet into his pants, falling back on the
bunched up tangle of sheets in the center of the bed and
flailing his legs in the air to get them on.

"You make everything more complicated than it

needs to be," I say, huffing out a weak laugh. "What did
Dani kick you out for?"
 "She got pregnant."

"Thought you said you don't have sex anymore. I

thought she just beats you up."

"We don't. It's not mine."

I click my head to my shoulder and stare up at him,

curious.

"I told her maybe she should keep it. We could get
married for real and take care of it and be a family and
stuff." He's propped up on the ball of sheets and
drumming his smooth fingertips on his pink chest. "She
didn't think I was funny," he says, grinning.

"Were you trying to be?"

"Maybe." His mouth widens and he keeps his eyes

trained on me, unblinking. From the angle I'm watching
him, the empty smile seems to eat up his fleshy cheeks
and cut through to his ears. He's trying to challenge his
audience. He forgets I know him. There's no mystery
anymore. Just a sad, clever boy.

"You think you'll be getting back together?"

"Not this time."

My heart's edged up to my ribs my chest feels like

it's melting into my guts. "So what are we now?" I've been
meaning to ask him something like this for a time. I've
been so lousy and desperate lately I didn't think I could
broach the subject without betraying myself.
 He breaks my gaze and hops off the bed. "Huh?" he
says, smoothing back a few greasy chunks of hair. He
walks over to the limp edge of curtain and hides his top
half behind it.

"You bloodless boy," I say. I think I'm sure of it this

time. I am.

"That doesn't even mean anything," Jack says. He

leaves his face behind the curtain, scanning the motel
parking lot through the window. He pokes his hand out to
wag a scabby finger in my general direction.

"It doesn't have to mean anything. It's special to

you, Jackie boy, 'cause you're such a pretty cancer."

The curtain shifts back, falls flush against the

window frame as Jack's head emerges. "What is this? I
don't need this right now." His eyes dart from me to the
curtain a few times. He stops fidgeting and sighs
theatrically before slumping down on the table between
us. His arms stretch across the wooden circle, reaching,
penitent. His heavy eyelids drop and he flaps his fingers
against the heels of his palms several times like a greedy
kid. I slip my forearm into one grasping claw and he
covers the back of my hand with the other. He pulls my
hand to his chest, pressing it to his shirt before bringing
my fingertips to his mouth.

A car horn blasts outside and I jerk my hand back.

"Money," Jack blurts out, jumping out of the chair.

"Give me the money."
 I take the twenties sitting in the ash tray and throw
them at his feet.

"You have more," he says, "I know you do. Come on,
just give me a little more."

"That's all I have for you." It's not a lie. I left the rest
of my cash at home just so it wouldn't be.

"Fuck, Anne," he says, rushing to the door. He starts

to close it behind him but leaves it slightly open. The
opening sucks in a cold draft from outside that laps
across the back of my thin shirt. I tuck my hands into my
armpits and bend over, hugging my chest to my thighs.

I turn my head and shout through the opening.

"What kinda drug dealer honks in a motel parking lot
across from a cop bar?" Jack's hand pops into view long
enough to tug the aluminum knob and slam the door
shut.

The conversation outside is muffled in the idling

engine of a Camaro. Jack's voice has lost its slow, heavy
slurp. He's talking fast, laughing at a higher pitch. The
dealer isn't amused. His words are low and clipped, like
he rationed out exactly how many of them Jack was going
to get before putting the car in park.

Jack's still talking to the guy as the car starts pulling

away. "Thanks, man. Have a good one," he hollers.

He closes the door carefully this time, spreading his

hand over door and frame and testing the knob after
locking it. He unbuttons his jeans and lets them drop to
the floor. He walks over to the bedside bureau and tugs
the drawer open, picking up the cheap locker mirror
sliding around inside it. I shuffle past him and head
toward the bathroom.

"Don't you want any? It's your money."

"No," I say. "My muscles feel heavy and numb. I just

want to sit in the tub for awhile."

He shrugs and starts drawing lines at the table.

The smell of bleach crowds the air in the bathroom.

I stand on the lidded toilet and slide open the small,
glazed rectangle window near the ceiling.

I start the water. Before the stream cracks 50

degrees, I hear Jack screaming.

"Shit. This is bullshit," he shouts, lifting his chair and

slamming it back down on the ground repeatedly. I sit at
the edge of the bed and stare at my outstretched legs.

He starts pacing back and forth across this tiny stale

room as he searches his cell phone directory, jabbing at
the buttons with his thumbs.

When someone picks up on the other end, he

pauses near the door, hand anchored on a gummy
wooden wall panel.

"Hey, man, what the fuck is this? I got this nasty

baking soda shit dripping down my throat," he says. "Been
coming to you for over a year."
 The voice on the phone is slow and unrepentant.
Jack listens and balls his fist up, tracing his middle
knuckle down the dark seam where two panels meet.

"I told you I'd get you that money. I always—"

"Shut the fuck up. We're done."

"Oh yeah? Well, fuck you," he shouts into the

receiver. "Hello? Terry? Hello?" Jack throws the phone at
the bed; it bounces in the center of the stiff mattress and
clips the knobby edge of my elbow where all my nerves
are knotted up. "He fucking hung up on me."

I massage the elbow, rubbing away the electric jolt

that shot through my arm. Jack comes over and tucks
strands of hair behind my ears.

"Sorry about that," he says, letting his palm linger at

my cheek. He brings his chapped lips to my temple. My
eyes close. I reach a hand out for his hip but he's already
walking back to the chair.

"Well, tonight's going to be nice and shitty," he says,

sucking in the skin under his lip.

"Let's just get out of here and drive around."

"Got any alcohol?"

"Yeah, sure. We can stop off at my parents' house.

Got half a bottle of rum in my closet," I say.
 Jack scrunches up his face, letting his tongue fall out
of that loose, sloppy mouth of his. "It'll have to do, I
guess."
"She sucked the rest of the life out of this place, didn't
she?" Jack says, surveying my mother's remodeled kitchen.
The room is all glass, wrought wire, and stainless steel.
The marble countertops are clear of any dishes or rags or
papers. No pictures on the fridge, no birthday cards on
the heavy glass table.

The place was always perfumed with a faint citrus

and rubbing alcohol neurosis. I became accustomed to it
growing up. But this latest incarnation dug the hollow in
my gut a little deeper when I returned home from school
to discover it. I feel this vague need to explain the mother
to Jack again, but I'm too tired for posturing.

"My dad's away," I say. Nodding, Jack sucks air in

through pursed lips and whistles. He was around the first
time the father went twelve-stepping. Acknowledging the
latest disappearance has me feeling like I've fallen into a
February ocean.

Jack smudges his finger across the unblemished

reflection on the refrigerator door. "That's better," he
says, grinning with teeth.

When Jack and I started up in high school, we called

his mother's basement home. Old couches and futons. We
could grind against each other or play Grand Theft Auto or
watch The Deer Hunter without interruption. Jack's mother
was good that way.

She had this smoky breath and thunderclap of a

laugh. She'd put her hand on your shoulder, lean in and
look you in the eye when she was talking to you. Even if it
was a passing two-minute conversation. She had natural,
pre-Raphaelite curls she never styled. She'd sit at the
kitchen table with a frizzy bushel of dark brown hair
clamped to the top of her head with a giant claw clip
barrette. The ash from her cigarette would fall
haphazardly around the ashtray and singe the plastic
table cloth. Baskets of clean and dirty laundry were edged
up next to her chair. She'd extend her arms and shrug.
"This is my throne room," she'd say, her hoarse, chalky
laugh tumbling out in waves.

Really, the house belonged to Jack. His mother

begrudged him nothing. She bought his cigarettes, let him
paint the basement black, curse at her and nitpick at her
appearance. He seemed to resent the freedom she
allowed him while taking advantage of it. "She acts so
goddamn common," he'd say.

Jack reveled in the idea of his father, some army

sergeant his mother had divorced. Jack used to talk like
he was going to enlist at eighteen, head down to Fort
Bragg and move in with his Dad.

"No more of this couple weeks a year bullshit," he

used to say.

As much as he would gripe about his mother, mine's

fierce sterility left him physically frozen. He'd stumble and
grunt through conversation whenever they were together
in the same room.
I drive us out to Sandy Hook, a four-mile beach with a
smooth, wide road for a spine. On a map it's the part of
Jersey that looks like a finger creeping up on Staten
Island's ass.

Each summer the tourist traffic backs up for miles,

but wet autumns and early winters its flat horizon
belongs to us. All the Bayshore towns are naked when you
stand at the Hook and view them from across the water.
You forget all the glass-cut brawlers and giddy drunks
feeding the rusted machine. You see the land ratcheted
down from high, craggy hills to the wide-set lowlands. It's
like a leaking, toothless mouth in a proud, old face. You're
a nervous voyeur watching so vulnerable a world.

The music's off, the windows are down. I've got the
bayside, Jack the ocean. The sea is purring. I take the road
slowly so I can hear the water lash the shore. A couple
times I stop the car on the double yellow lines and pull
the key out of the ignition.

I close my eyes and listen. Jack brushes his fingers

back and forth over the top of my hand.

"It's a sea full of sinners," he says, tracing his tongue

along my ear. I shrug my head into my shoulder and shift
away.

"What?" he asks. He slams his back against the seat

and kneads his thighs.

"Nothing." I start the car up. "You're filthy with

whiskey," I say. It's true but not why.
 I was imagining what this land must have looked
like when the half-starved, lice-bitten boats of scared
Dutch first arrived. What a green, jagged vision Highlands
and the Bayshore must have been from here.

I got my head dead quiet and the world was the low
tide gurgling against the breeze. Always the tide. Before
the Lenape, the tide. Before the Dutch, the tide. Before
the gunnery was built, before the Bennies clogged the
beach in summer. And after. After all the clamdiggers and
rich river rats tear off each others' faces. After we're all
burned and buried. After one fortunate apocalypse or
another, the tide.

That's what I was thinking when Jack started

clucking his song about sinners.

For the fifteen minutes it takes to drive to the

mossy bulb at the top of the peninsula, Jack's been
mumbling to himself in between sips from his flask. I
pretend not to hear him.

Fort Hancock circles the top of the Hook, with long-

abandoned army officers' houses edged up against the
shoreline. The salt air has peeled the moldy yellow paint
from the shingled siding and whittled the green front
porch rails to frayed toothpicks.

The buildings have been rotting while the county's

earnest rich argue over how best to preserve them. I
wrote up a piece on Fort Hancock for my newspaper a
month back. I got so charged up over it I talked my boss
Gill into giving me an extra page for a photo essay. The
story went largely ignored, though.
 I tell Jack about the wasted beauty of this place,
indulging in the political back story. He yawns and nods.

"Let's check out the gunnery pits," Jack says. "I

haven't snuck into them since high school."

The oval pits have 50-foot high concrete walls and

open roofs. When the army had this place, the gunnery
pits stored missiles that were supposed to stop nukes if
the Russians ever shot one at Manhattan. The missiles
were about as likely to hit Manhattan as save it, though.

The gunnery pits are about as bad off as the officer

housing. They get some use from local kids looking for a
quiet, creepy place to get high. Rusted rebars erupt out of
the chipped walls. The ground is covered with beer
bottles, potato chip bags, broken metal and chunks of
concrete. During the day you have to hopscotch your way
around a pit to avoid a handful of tetanus and grease. I've
never been here at night before.

My hands tighten on the steering wheel, wringing

the grip forward and back like I'm revving a motorcycle.
The wall of brush and vine is so thick my lights can't cut
through to the chain link fence the vegetation latched
upon when it first started its slow crawl toward
reclamation.

Several rows of gunnery pits are behind that living

wall. Jack taps my shoulder. I resist the impulse to drop
the arm down and shrink away.

"Turn your brights on," he says.

 "Okay."

He reaches his hand across me, pointing to a block

of pavement up ahead where the wall's shadow ends.

"That's the opening to the first of them. Park over

there."

I go to turn the lights off after I put the car in park,

but Jack puts his hand on the back of my forearm. "Shh,"
he says, though there's no sound coming from me. My skin
prickles up and I feel this heat creep into the pit of my
belly and spread down inside my legs. I can't help it. His
hand looks so warm and pink and pretty, the way I used
to remember it.

Jack takes his hand back and turns on the stereo for
the CD player.

"What's in here?" he asks.

"Waits. Small Change."

He nods.

"Leave the car on." He presses the random button

on the stereo console and turns it up. "Come on."

Jack rushes out of the car. "Leave your door open,"

he shouts. I run after him, following him in the twin
blocks of light pouring into the pit.

Tom Waits is pulsing his piano slowly. It leaps and

echoes throughout the open circle of towering concrete.
 I trip on a hunk of stone at the entrance of the pit
and collapse on the ground. "Fuck," I say, fingering a cut
on the scuffed palm that caught a slice of glass on the
floor. When the initial irritation subsides, I hold my hands
out in front of me and a grin starts rising up on my face.
The last time I remember feeling this dry sting in my hand
I was nine or ten. Fell off a bike or tripped in a foot
race—doesn't matter. You only get that kind of injury
when you're a kid. Flopping around with so much
unbridled exuberance you could count on cutting your
hands and knees to shreds at least four or five times a
year—just long enough for the pink, raw skin to never
heal.

I squeeze the wrist of the hand that caught the

worst. The burning pulse pulls back from the surface of
the skin. I'm conscious of the dull, damp air drawing into
my throat, swelling in my lungs and retreating out my dry,
chapped nostrils. The piano strokes throbbing out of the
stereo land on the naked skin behind my ears where all
this cold blood is rushing past. It's funny how you don't
realize you haven't been fully living until you're brought
back to a time when you were.

I catch Jack's shadow stretching out along the

curved wall in front of me. I leap up from the ground
giggling and charge at the form. When I catch up to him, I
try to slip my hand into his but he's got both of them
buried in his pockets. I take a step back from him and
bow my head, embarrassed by the time travel, by wanting
to go back there. I run the toe of my sneaker over a row
of weeds growing from a slim crack in the ground.
 Tom Waits sings about waltzing Matilda. Jack grabs
me at the hips, pulls me to him. He hugs me tight, swaying
with me. His cheek is pressed against my temple as he
croons the chorus into my ear. We dance into the harsh
beam where the headlights merge and he holds us there,
turning us in circles inside the bright yellow flood.

When the song starts dying down he asks, "Why you

been so mean to me today?"

I tense up. I want to hold his face and stroke his

hair back, kiss his slick eyelids as I apologize over and
over again. That's how I would have played out this
moment with him years ago when moves like that were
lined up and tallied against me, weighed as weakness. He
took all that heft and pushed it back at me before
whistling off to wherever he didn't have to be
accountable to anyone.

"I thought you like me mean," I say.

"You've changed a lot."

"Not so much."

"No, you have."

"Is that good or bad," I ask. The song has changed to

some pan-clanking, discordant thing. We're still swaying.

"I don't know," he says. "It used to be if I didn't call

you on time or if I told you something you didn't want to
hear, you'd bust out crying. You were always crying or
falling over in love with me. I didn't know what to do with
that.”
 "You were so burdened," I mumble. I let my eyes
drop down to his chest, following the wrinkled lines on
his t-shirt. I try not to remember that person.

"It was hard sometimes with you."

"Let's quit this. I don't want to go back there," I say.

"No it's just... When we started back up I thought

you had some anger to work out on me. I thought that
could be fun."

"I've had fun—"

"It's not anger, though. Not anger at me."

"What are you trying to say. Just say what you're

trying to say. I can't follow you."

He's swayed us over to a wall, holding me at the

waist as he leans us against the slimy concrete. The
surface of the wall feels like hardening clay.

"Maybe you hate me."

"I don't hate you."

"No, you don't." He starts talking faster. The little

red tip of his tongue keeps jabbing out from the straight
razor lines of teeth. "You're just hateful. You just want to
suck everything in and let it burn up in that black hole
inside you."
 My chest is heaving with this thick heartbeat that
crept up on me. My arms slip down from Jack's neck. I tilt
my head to the side, resting it on the wall and keeping my
face blank and still as I listen.

"There's no joy to you anymore. And, you know, I'm

only saying this for your own good because if you don't
watch out you'll wind up some noxious bitch like your
mother."

I shove him off me.

"What? Huh? What are you going to do?" He's got

this creaky, drunk smile egging me on. I wonder if he
wants me to hit him. If I did I could be a reasonable
replacement for Dani instead of the lukewarm, weekend
substitute I've been the past couple months.

"Say something, will you?" he shouts. My breath is

stopped up in my throat. He wants us back to our broken
selves. Me in hysterics, launching into a new verbal
assault; him with a blubbery lip, cowed and apologizing.
I'd forgotten how easy it was for my mouth to pull his
threads apart. All I'd remembered was the guilt, how a
gear would turn and I'd be kneeling and tender.

That person is lost to me. I've been so high on the

numbness lately, recycling the same neurotic thoughts
about how time isn't time but flat, broken puzzle pieces I
can't connect. There's a past in there somewhere but I
can't reason it out.

I run.
 The Suburban Swindle
Word Riot

jackiecorley.wordriot.org
This scene is dead but I'm still
restless.
-We Are Scientists

See Also: Thirst For Fire

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dispatch@litareview.com

"George Stories" ©2009 Sharon Goldner

christycall.com
 GEORGE STORIES
BY SHARON GOLDNER
Siboban’s mother gives beer to the camp bus driver. His
name is Mr. Edmonds. He is known for his plaid polyester
pants and the cigarette he wears behind his ear. She tells
him not to drink the beer until he gets home. Mr.
Edmonds takes his hat off and she thinks he is tipping it
the way gentlemen used to in the olden days. It is that
kind of hat, too, Englishy with an Oliver Twisty brim. Mr.
Edmonds is really taking it off to wipe his forehead with a
towel he keeps on the dashboard. Then he wipes his face,
but doesn’t wipe below his neck. Now Siboban’s mother
knows that Mr. Edmonds isn’t tipping his hat to her. He is
wiping his sweat off in front of her instead.

Mrs. Silverman is careful that her hand doesn’t

touch his.

Mr. Edmonds takes the beer. There are six pop-top

cans held together by plastic nooses. The person who
invented that way of connecting them probably thinks
they are all that, Siboban observes. It looks like
something she could have doodled in camp arts and
crafts.

Her mother says, “Well okay then.”

Mr. Edmonds says, “You know it.”

Mrs. Silverman says for Siboban to hurry up already

because Mr. Edmonds has other stops to make.
 Siboban whispers to Beth, the only other passenger,
“She’s so bossy. I never want to grow up to be her; I’d
rather be a person instead.”

Siboban waves to Beth when she is standing outside

the bus. She once asked Beth if it was a weird thing being
the only one, and Beth said not really because the quiet
was nice after a whole day of loud, but what’s really weird
is how she is the last one on the bus in the afternoon but
first on the bus in the morning. How a person can be
opposites all in one day is what Beth said she sometimes
thinks about in the quiet left on the bus ride home.

Some camp days Siboban’s mother is not waiting at

the bus stop, which is really out in front of their house.
Some days Siboban walks off the bus into the house by
herself. Those are the days that her mother’s soap opera is
at a good part. She can’t miss it. Siboban can’t even say a
hello until a commercial. Mrs. Silverman says the soaps
save lives because there was this one time that one of the
characters had a lady check-up at the doctor’s, and the
doctor discovered cancer down in the lady place. Millions
of viewers, Mrs. Silverman quotes from her soap opera
magazine, went to get checked out because the character
did.

On the days Mrs. Silverman comes to the bus stop,

she gives the camp bus driver beer. It started on a Friday,
but now Mrs. Silverman does it every time. She always
tells him not to drink it until he gets home, and every
time he says the same thing, “you know it.” Her mother
thinks he should say thank you instead. Siboban is hoping
her mother hasn’t decided to teach Mr. Edmonds some
manners. If this is the plan, Siboban thinks, she is just
going to die. The girl on the bus, Beth, lives with her
grandmother. Siboban thinks she is very lucky.

Beth asks about the beer. “Why does your mother

give it to him?” Her voice always sounds like she has a
cold. Siboban wouldn’t be able to be friends with Beth if
they were in school because everyone she knows would
probably make fun of Beth. Beth had something wrong
with her when she was born. Siboban guesses that is why
Beth lives with her grandmother: her top lip was born
connected to her nose. It sounds crazy, Siboban thinks,
but it is true; she looked it up at the library to confirm
what Beth had told her. The librarian even asked what did
Siboban want with all these medical books. Siboban
replied, “Research.” The library lady looked weird at her
but left it alone. The books had pictures of people like
Beth. Some of them had operations. Some did not. Beth
did, but the doctors didn’t do such a great job because
her lip is still not shaped like a lip—it’s shifty and bent.
There’s also a scar that runs down from where everything
was separated but it gets confused with that indentation
thing everyone has below their nose. Beth says her
grandmother will let her wear red lipstick when she’s
eighteen. Siboban always looks at her eyes when they
talk. She thinks that’s best.

“I dunno,” is how Siboban answers Beth about the

beer. She debates putting a really inside it. But that might
make it sound pathetic. Or stupid, because how can a kid
not know their mother, living with her in the same house
all of this time? A kid’s got to know something.

Siboban tries to think fairly on this. Neither parent

drinks, except for the diet cola that lives in the pantry.
There’s even a big extra stash in the basement. Mrs.
Silverman is obsessive about it. Mr. Silverman drinks
whatever because that is what Mrs. Silverman buys. Mrs.
Silverman runs the house, is what Mr. Silverman says.

“I think she maybe gets it special for Mr. Edmonds,”

Siboban says. She unpeels her thigh from the bus seat. It
makes a sticky smacking sound. Siboban tries it with her
other thigh, but that one turns out to be a dud.

Beth suggests Siboban look into the beer situation.

“Who ever heard of giving camp people presents? They
work at the wrong time of year,” Beth says. “It’s not
Christmas.”

So Siboban looks everywhere in her house for the

beer. Everything she sees are things she already knew
were there: the old bottle of Manischevitz, a syrupy sweet
wine used to toast God at Jewish festivities, stands
singular and cold in the basement, its dust not betraying
any non-holiday fingerprints; an old scrapbook filled with
pictures of Mrs. Silverman from before she was Mrs.
Silverman lies in wait—a yellowed and sage testimony of
truth as to who a person thought they were a very long
time ago; old clothes that don’t fit the people they used
to; and old, broken, ignored toys.

“Where does beer come from?” Siboban asks her

mother after a fruitless search. Siboban thinks somebody
could be funny and say from drunk cows but that
wouldn’t be anyone in this house.

“Why are you asking this?” her mother wants to

know. She is eating her afternoon tomato. It is not visible
beneath the heavy hand of pepper and dressing. It died
once, pinched from the vine. Here it dies a ghastlier death
of smothering and incisors. Mrs. Silverman’s fork chinks
against the plate—how spines know to react to these
kinds of sounds is uncanny to Siboban. “Is someone
offering you beer?” Mrs. Silverman opens a diet cola
bottle. The lid breaks open with a click and the
carbonation sizzles to the top. “What about drugs? Is
someone putting bad ideas into your head?” Mrs.
Silverman takes a long swallow. Siboban hears her burp,
even though it’s on the inside.

“You’re not my real mother,” she wants to scream.

She says, “No-body’s offering me anything. God. I want to
know why you keep giving beer to Mr. Edmonds. It’s
weird.”

Mrs. Silverman expresses relief by becoming

defensive. “It is not weird. Who says it's weird? It’s nice.
It’s a very nice thing I am doing. He’s driving that stuffy
bus. I’m giving him something to take the hot off. Who
says it’s weird? I want to know.”

“I don’t know,” Siboban says. “It’s just—seems—I

don’t know, you shouldn’t be giving him anything.”

“I will do what I want,” Mrs. Silverman establishes.

Siboban tells Beth where babies come from because

she has no good information on the beer. Beth doesn’t
claim to already know. She listens to Siboban with the
back of her head against the half-open window. Beth’s
hair sticks up from the whoosh traffic. Both girls go oooh
at the notion of sticking a boy’s you-know-what inside a
girl.

Then Siboban tells Beth the best dirty joke she

knows. A boy named George told her. It is not the kind
the listener has to fake understanding. There is no rabbi,
priest, or parrot. The punchline is only a few lines from
the beginning. Beth’s smile is almost immediate, getting
wider and wider until both it and the punchline explode,
and if laughter was a tangible thing, confetti and sparkles
would be everywhere and the girls would be trying to
hide it from Mr. Edmonds.

Siboban tells Beth how George tries to look up her

dress at school. How George wears cowboy boots with
pointy toes and worn heels everyday. They had spurs but
he had to give them to the principal for safety. When Mr.
Edmonds pulls the bus onto Siboban’s street, she finishes
telling Beth quickly how George wants to marry her. She
promises to tell the rest the next day’s bus ride home.
Siboban is making it sound like the George stories are
from now even though it was way back in the first grade.
George doesn’t look at her anymore because she wears
glasses.

Siboban walks down the bus aisle backwards. She

teeters on turning it into a beauty pageant walk, hoping
to provide adequate distraction from the bus door
opening. “More George stories, I promise,” she says.

Mrs. Silverman is standing in her floral housecoat at

the bottom of the bus steps. She is wearing heels. These
take away from the lounge appeal of a housecoat.
 She has the whole six pack this time, and her line.
She adds, “I mean it now,” to demonstrate the rules of
gifted beer.

Mr. Edmonds takes the beer “You know it,” Mr.

Edmonds says.

Siboban learns that a distraction is only as good as

it is long. Beth’s expression hangs outside the open bus
window, as perfect in curvature as a question can get. All
of Siboban’s handiwork on the bus—her regaling of
George stories and jokes and the lively manner in which
she animated herself—falls to the street, mixing with the
summer smells of frisbee, cut lawns that smell like mint,
and bus belches and exhaust which temporarily dim out
the sunlight.

Beth’s question still hangs on the bus as it picks up

speed.

Siboban waves. Beth is too far away to see her now.

Inside the house, Mrs. Silverman is switching

channels, the whiz of people going by in an absurd speed
is dizzying. Siboban stands smaller than everything in the
purple kitchen. The refrigerator is taller, the stove is
bigger, the cabinets are higher, and the kitchen table is
wider. Siboban picks out the toaster because it is the only
thing smaller than her. She feels sad to be empowered by
a small appliance with toast particles in its crumb tray,
but it’s all she’s got.

“Stop giving beer to Mr. Edmonds,” she says.

 An actress is crying on a talk show. A local news
anchor tells what’s coming up on the evening news. A
cartoon cat gets run over for the tenth time by a cartoon
dog in a big truck. A toothpaste commercial is rhyming
white and bright.

“I want you to stop already,” Siboban says again.

“Please.”

Mrs. Silverman has had time to think about

Siboban’s request. She looks at her daughter without eye
contact.

“If I want to give the bus driver some beer, I am

going to goddamn give him some beer. It’s a very nice
thing, what I am doing, you hear? I don’t need you telling
me what to do. When you’re a mother, if you don’t want
to give beer to the camp bus driver, then you don’t have
to. There’s a case of Dr. Pepper down in the basement
that nobody likes; at least I’m nice enough not to give
him that.”

Siboban spends the rest of her evening thinking up

George stories. There is George starting a food fight at
lunch, getting hit in the eye with a wedge of cheese, and
George secretly admiring her Barbie lunch box but she
better not tell anyone he said that. George playing the
cowbells with perfect pitch in music, and George the last
one standing in dodgeball. George is always chosen first
for teams in gym. George found a baby wolf and is raising
it like a dog. George who holds her hand except not in
front of his friends. George telling the kid who always
makes in his pants that it’s just not cool. She has enough
George stories for a couple bus rides.
 Somewhere between musical George and dodgeball
George, Beth tells Siboban that Mr. Edmonds held a beer
can in his one hand while the other hand drove the bus
yesterday.

“Did he drink any?”

Beth says, “Not yet, but he rolled the can all along
his face at a red light.” Beth wants to know if they should
tell somebody.

“Maybe he just wanted to feel the roundness of his

face,” Siboban says. “Sometimes I roll my head back and
forth on the floor so I can feel its circle.”

“Oval,” Beth says. “Heads are ovals.”

“Yeah,” Siboban says, figuring round is round. She

doesn’t mind being corrected by Beth, with her face like
that and all. “George drinks beer,” Siboban says and goes
back inside her head to try and figure out where that
came from.

“Kids don’t drink beer,” Beth says.

“You know George,” Siboban says, and she reveals how

George drinks beer and rides his bike; drinks beer and
plays ball; drinks beer and defends the weaker kids from
the bully; drinks beer and makes his own pizza bagels in
the toaster oven; and drinks beer and brushes his teeth.
George drinks beer in so many stories that it becomes a
very minor point when Mr. Edmonds one day pops off a
top and sloshes the golden grain liquid down. He is very
safe about it; he’s at a red light. He takes one at
a yellow light. Green lights, too.

“You know it,” he says, wiping froth off his lips with
the back of his hand. He looks in the rearview. The one
little girl with the attached lip is looking out the window.
Is what she sees much different than what he sees? The
scenery passes out his window, colors and shapes warped
from the movement. She is looking without really looking,
Mr. Edmonds thinks, and this is a shame how the young
do, unaware that they are passing time even by being
young. Somewhere, someone is counting.

So Mr. Edmonds slows the bus up some, cars behind

him annoyed. He slows the bus up even more but he’s at
a green light now and car horns scream and yell what a
stupid bus. Some children in back seats learn curse word
combinations.

“Now I don’t know what they’re teaching you all at

that fancy camp of yours, but I’m going to teach you how
to take the time. We’ll do it together. Don’t matter you
got years on me; in this moment we can take the time
together.”

Mr. Edmonds puts the bus in park on a street that is

not hers. Beth doesn’t know what adrenaline is, that right
now it’s what is banging through her body with incredible
punch. All she knows is that Siboban Silverman never told
her any George story like this before.

“Don’t be afraid,” Mr. Edmonds says, walking zigzag

to the back of the bus. His calves are bowed, like two
parenthesis, looking like the waddle of the ducks she and
her grandmother feed stale bread to. Beth always
wondered if there was a duck alive that had ever tasted
bread fresh. She wonders if Mr. Edmonds is to be
considered a stranger that she is not supposed to talk to.
She wonders if you don’t answer a stranger when they
talk to you, is it considered rude behavior, because Beth
won most polite last school year and wishes to keep the
honor.

Mr. Edmond’s zig and zag settles into the bus seat
directly in front of Beth. He would have his legs stretch
out straight in front of him but their curved nature says
no to this basic straight line geometry.

He does a beer burp. He thinks it sounds louder in

his head, but Beth hears the mouth explosion, too. Mr.
Edmonds is grateful that it tastes better than a cola burp.
He smiles. He means it to look sincere. He looks at the
girl. She doesn’t look back. He wonders on the politeness
of today’s youth—eye contact being so important to
someone who always keeps their eyes on the road in front
of them. He stares and he thinks it’s okay politeness-wise
to stare when you are seeking something. He notices
Beth’s scars. “What’s that?” he slurs, the beer making a
comfortable presence inside his mouth.

Beth takes her glance from outside the window to

Mr. Edmonds and back again.

“It’s me,” she says. “It’s just me.”

Mr. Edmonds doesn’t hear her. The beer is in his

ears, too. He makes to reach out to her, one finger
pointing, the rest bunched up together—one index finger
like a horizontal rocket ship, calloused from spinning a
bus steering wheel round and round, and from a life
before that.

“What?” Mr. Edmonds asks.

The finger comes through bus time and space.

“It’s me,” Beth screams so she can hear. “It’s mine,”

she screams louder.
 Review
Wordwrights Snarf Soundings
[Whidbey Island Writers] Word Riot
Lunch Hour Stories

shargoldner@comcast.net
Working is a way of
connecting and staving off
the inevitable.
-T. C. Boyle

See Also: Underground Library

litareview.com
 litareview.com
dispatch@litareview.com

"Tarn-Pit" ©2009 Drew Kalbach

christycall.com
 TARN-PIT
BY DREW KALBACH
Jean put her bra back on. The clock radio announced,
“Twenty minutes of classic rock coming up next after
these messages and a word from our sponsors. Have you
ever felt alone, like nobody is there?” Jean took her
toothbrush from the medicine cabinet and scrubbed her
teeth. Outside a police siren blared dull, sharp, then dull
again, and Jean spit foamy paste into the sink. She grinned
large and looked at her teeth up close. She licked across
the surface.

In the kitchen, eggs scrambled and toast popped

from the toaster. She put a shirt on and went downstairs.
She looked at the eggs, then at the toast.

“Good morning,” Jean said.

“Goodmorning,” Aubrey said.

Aubrey scraped the eggs from the frying pan onto a

plate. He handed the plate to Jean. Jean took the eggs,
stared at them, and sat down.

“What happened at the duel?” Jean asked.

Aubrey took some toast from the toaster and put it

in his mouth. He chewed and looked at Jean. Jean looked
down at her plate. Dogs barked outside. Aubrey chewed.
“Nothing happened,” he said.

“How did nothing happen? It was a duel,” Jean said.

 Aubrey walked over to Jean, knelt beside her, took
her chin in his hands, and looked into her eyes. She
smelled of toothpaste and eggs. He stared. She scrunched
up her nose. Aubrey smelled like blood and sweat.
Aubrey's shirt was stained and wet. Jean reached out and
daubed at the blood.

The door opened. Jean stood up. Aubrey's father

limped in.

“Aubrey!” Jean screamed.

Aubrey ran into the room, grabbed a lamp, and hit

his father in the skull. His father put his arms up
defensively, but he was weak and the lamp was heavy. It
broke through his arms and smashed into his skull.
Aubrey's father fell to the ground. Aubrey stood over him,
beating his skull until it looked like nothing, like nothing
Jean had ever seen. Not human. A pile of soil.

“Oh my god, Aubrey,” Jean said.

“I'm sorry you had to see that,” he said.

Aubrey sat down next to his father's body and

stared. Jean went into the kitchen and returned to eating
eggs. She poured some ketchup on the side of her plate.
She ate the eggs and ketchup slowly. When she was done
she went outside to check the mail. Aubrey and his
father's corpse sat in the hallway, bloodied.

“No mail today,” Jean said.

“I didn't expect any, did you?”

 “No, I didn't. I had to check,” she said.

Jean sat down next to Aubrey. Aubrey looked at

Jean. He was pale from the blood loss.

“Should we take you to a hospital?” Jean asked.

“It was an honorable duel, he should have stayed at

the tarn-pit,” Aubrey muttered.

“A hospital, though,” Jean repeated.

“It's against the rules to leave once you're beaten,”

Aubrey said. “It's against the rules.”

“But a hospital, for you,” Jean said.

“How were the eggs?” Aubrey asked.

“They were good,” Jean said, “I put ketchup on

them.”

“Good, good, they always need ketchup... like the

tarn-pit needs rules,” Aubrey said.

She put her hands on his thigh. He looked at her

and Jean felt disgusting. He stood up and walked into the
kitchen. Jean followed.

Aubrey took his shirt off and dropped it into the

sink. There was a long red gash in his side. Jean took a
dish towel and placed it hard against the wound. Aubrey
stood leaning over the sink and vomited. Jean held the
dishtowel. Aubrey sweat and vomited. She watched. The
dishtowel filled with blood and the blood started to drip
on the floor.

“Aubrey, a doctor,” she said.

“Fine, a doctor,” he said between heaves.

Jean dropped the dishtowel and called a hospital.

The hospital said they would dispatch a doctor as soon as
one was available. Jean thanked them and hung up.

Aubrey stopped vomiting. He turned the water on

and splashed some in his face then leaned down and
drank some. “The eggs were good,” he said.

“Yes, they were,” Jean said.

“He got me with a stick he sharpened all night he

said,” Aubrey said.

“A stick,” Jean repeated.

“I didn't come with a weapon. I wanted to feel his

skin. I was lucky he was old or else he would have killed
me. I got him on the ground and hit him until he stopped
moving.”

“Did it hurt?” Jean asked.

“No, it never hurts until it's all over, then you

remember and it's the remembering that starts the pain.
And then when he stopped moving I stood up and the
judges declared me winner and then we left and I cooked
you breakfast.”

“The eggs were very good,” Jean said.

 Jean stared at the wound on Aubrey's side. Jean
took her shirt off and placed the shirt against the wound.
Aubrey looked at her and smiled.

“You wore it today,” Aubrey said.

“Your favorite,” Jean said.

The doctor knocked. Jean let him in. The doctor sat
Aubrey down in a chair and looked at the wound and
made several sounds with his nose. “This wound was
received by a wooden stick, was it not?”

“Yes,” Aubrey said.

The doctor pressed his fingers on the flesh around

the wound and made more noises and placed his nose
almost inside the flesh and smelled as neatly as he could.
Jean stood by with, arms folded over her breasts. The
doctor stopped sniffing and looked through his bag,
nodding.

“I see. Well, there is not much to be done. Take two

of these twice a day and try to get some rest.”

“Very good, thank you,” Aubrey said.

“Yes, thank you very much,” Jean said.

The doctor took a bottle of pills from his bag and

gave them to Aubrey. Aubrey opened the cap and took
two. The doctor stood up and left. Jean sat next to
Aubrey. The blood covered the floor and Jean felt it
would take forever to clean.
 “I feel tired,” Aubrey said.

“Rest, get plenty of rest,” Jean said.

Jean put her hand on Aubrey's arm. He laid his head

down on the table and closed his eyes. Jean smelled toast
burning. She squeezed Aubrey's arm and did not feel
dirty.
 The Zen of
Chainsaws and Enormous Clippers
Theater
yeshellofriend.blogspot.com
Children say that people are
hung sometimes for speaking
the truth.
-Saint Joan
litareview.com
 litareview.com
dispatch@litareview.com

"Diana," "The Darkness," &

"Beating the Odds" ©2009 Amelia Gray
christycall.com
THREE LITTLE STORIES
BY AMELIA GRAY
 DIANA
Diana lit a fire in the pit between them, and their clothes
immediately smelled like woody smoke. Diana spoke:
"You know how when you go camping, and you smell like
this for days, inside your nose?"

"Gross," said Glenda, tamping down the snow under

her heels.

People dressed in animal suits danced around the

periphery. It was difficult to see them. Perhaps they were
animals dressed as people, with garish animal cloaks over
their costumes. Anything seemed possible in the
campfire's light.

"It's as if the smell is pasted inside your nose," said

Diana.

"That's so gross."

Glenda had a square face and loved Jesus, two facts

that essentially made her unlovable as far as Diana was
concerned. At the corner of her eye, a jackal dressed as a
man dressed as a polar bear mounted a seedling fruit tree
and howled. It seemed like Glenda didn't see what was
going on, or else she was too absorbed in the image her
fingernails made against her winter coat, ruby, white,
ruby white, blood on the snow.

A young man came out of the house and stood next

to Diana. "Nice fire," he said.

Diana regarded the young man. She noted the

condition of his skin and his teeth. She estimated how fast
he would run if chased, how much faster if she had a bow.
She pictured him falling over a hidden patch of nettles,
landing poorly, palms down in the snow. The young man's
face was ringed with dancing animals, two does and a
vixen.

The young man walked over to Glenda on the other

side of the fire pit. "Nice fire," he said.

"Thanks," said Glenda. "I made it myself."

"Priss," Diana said.

"You only lit it."

"We didn't start the fire," the man said. The women
turned to him.

"Actually," Diana said, "We did start the fire. Since

the world was turning."

"Creep," added Glenda.

In the garden, an oversized owl chased three

shrieking lady barnmice. He caught one and devoured her
with efficiency and aplomb.
 THE DARKNESS
"I think I'd call us strange bedfellows," the armadillo said.

The penguin barely heard her. He was at that

moment attempting to hold a straw between his flippers.

The armadillo centered her shell on the barstool.

She was drinking a Miller High Life.

"Strange bedfellows indeed," she added.

The penguin gave up holding the straw and stood

on his stool to reach the lip of the glass. He could barely
wet his tongue with a little gin. "What's that?" he asked,
irritated.

"You are a penguin, and I am an armadillo," the

armadillo said. "My name is Betsy."

"That's a beautiful name," murmured the penguin,

who was more interested in the condensation on his glass.
"I fought the darkness."

"You did not."

The penguin swiveled his head to look at Betsy. He

had very beady eyes.

"What's your name?" she said, nervously.

"Ray," said the penguin.

"That's a nice name."

 "I fought the fucking darkness."

"Neat," Betsy said. She let her long tongue dip into
the longneck, lapping the surface of her High Life. "What
was that like?"

"Well, Betsy," Ray said, "it was evil incarnate."

"Oh."

"Imagine the worst evil ever done to you in your

life."

Betsy thought of the time she was locked in a shed.

"Got it," she said.

Ray pecked at his highball glass in anger. "Well," he

said, "imagine that, except fifteen times worse. That's
what the darkness was like."

"That sounds terrible," Betsy said. She was trying to

be noncommittal about the darkness in hopes that Ray
would drop it. Before coming to the bar, she had used
vegetable oil to shine her shell to a high sheen. In her
peripheral vision, she could see the lights above the bar
playing off her shoulders.

"What do you think of my shell?" she asked.

Ray leaned back a little to appraise the situation.

"It's nice," he said.

"I like your pelt."

 "This old thing," Ray said, patting his feathers. "It'll
smell like the bar for weeks. You can't get this smell out
of a pelt."

"That's the good thing about a shell," Betsy said.

They sat in silence. Betsy wondered if she had

perhaps said too much about her shell. Ray wondered
where the bartender got off serving a penguin a drink in a
highball glass. He would have rather taken his gin out of
an ashtray.

Betsy tapped her claw against her beer bottle.

"Have you ever protected an egg?" she asked.

Ray realized that he was at the state of intoxication

when anything Betsy could possibly say was going to piss
him off. Keep your cool, buddy, he said to himself. She's
just trying to make conversation.

"Usually that's a job for the lady penguins," Ray said.

"I am a male penguin and therefore, no, I have never
protected an egg."

"Right," Betsy said. "Well, I saw a documentary once,

and a male penguin was protecting an egg. I figured
maybe you'd have some experience."

"Sorry, I don't have any experience. I guess that

makes me less of a penguin."

"I wasn't saying that."

 "I suppose you think I'm some kind of lesser
penguin, just because I fought the fucking darkness and
tasted my own blood, because I haven't protected a
stupid fucking egg."

Betsy felt tears welling up. Don't cry, she said to

herself. It would be really stupid to cry at this moment.

"I honor your fight," she said. "I didn't mean to

disrespect you."

Ray sank back into his drink. "It's no disrespect," he

said. "I'm just a penguin in a bar, drinking my gin out of a
fucking highball glass for some reason."

"I always wondered why they did that," the

armadillo said.

"Doesn't make any goddamn sense," said the

penguin.
 BEATING THE ODDS
When the tortoise walked in, the hare nearly cried out in
misery. He had been promised visitors by the night nurse,
who was pretty and gave him an extra serving of gelatin
when he asked. The hare had made the old mistake and
figured someone so pretty couldn't give him bad news,
but there he was, and here was the tortoise.

"Hello," said the tortoise. A bouquet of wilting lilies

was taped to his shell.

"It's good to see you," murmured the hare. Perhaps

if he pretended it hurt to open his eyes, the tortoise
would leave. The hare squinted and squirmed.

Oblivious, the tortoise attempted to sit in the chair

by the bedside. He did this by leaning back and
supporting his weight with his hind legs, and then hefting
his front legs onto the chair. The chair, on casters, rolled
back. The tortoise lumbered to where the chair had rolled
and repeated the process again. Finally, he got the chair
wedged between the bed and the IV unit. He pitched his
body upwards, scrabbling at the upholstery. If the night
nurse walked by, she would surely assume the tortoise
was attempting to mount the chair. Perhaps she would
call security.

The tortoise dug in with his claws, pulled himself

into the seat and turned around to face the hare, crushing
the flowers taped to his back in the process. His breathing
was laborious. "I hear you are dying," the tortoise said.

That's a delicate way to put it, thought the hare.

"Indeed I am," he said. "They gave me eight weeks to live a
year ago, and I beat the odds."

The tortoise nodded.

Asshole, thought the hare. "I was real outspoken

about it for a while. I got into the paper. The thing was, I
was just taking multivitamins and running every day, then
I did a whole-body cleanse every two weeks." He
stretched his legs and felt his diminished muscle tone.

"The odds caught up," said the tortoise. With his big
eyes, he did seem a little doleful. Then again, he always
did. He clearly hadn't cleaned his shell before the visit and
smelled vaguely of a scummy pond. Talk about a sanitary
environment, the hare thought.

The hare pressed on. "Everybody's got to go

sometime," he said. You'll go. Maybe you'll get cancer and
die next year. I can't imagine you'd have too much trouble
succumbing to the odds, as it were. No offense to you, but
it takes some mental acuity."

"I'm not sure," the tortoise said, "that tortoises can

get the cancer." He was trying unsuccessfully to reach
around his massive shell to the flowers. He plucked one
petal off in his claw and brought it close to his eye,
frowning. Perhaps he wanted to eat it.

"Don't worry about the flowers," said the hare. "I

saw them when you came in. They were very nice Easter
lilies. Daylilies are my favorite but they're a bit rare, a bit
hard to find. You might find a daylily in a soup if you look
in the right place. You'd have to travel across the ocean
but you might just find it in China. Can you imagine it? A
flower in a soup. Believe it or not, and I suggest you
believe it."

The tortoise sighed. "Friend," he said.

The hare looked at the place on his arm where the

night nurse had shaved him to insert the IV needle. The
skin was puckered and raw in the shaved place. "I guess
you win," the hare said.

"There never was a race," said the tortoise. His shell

wobbled a little as he scooted the chair forward and
leaned precariously over to touch the hare's paw with the
flat portion of his beak. The hare could feel the warm air
streaming from the tortoise's nostrils, the cool air rushing
in. The hare closed his eyes and pretended to sleep until
the tortoise left. He breathed evenly with noise of the
machine hooked up to his body. The night nurse came
and went. It was a very long wait indeed.
AM/PM f f
Museum of the Weird

ameliagray.com
I have proved by actual trial
that a letter, that takes an
hour to write, takes only
about three minutes to read!
-Lewis Carroll

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"The Absolutely True

Story of Peter Allan Dunn"
©2009 Kelly Jameson
christycall.com
 THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE
STORY OF PETER ALLAN DUNN
BY KELLY JAMESON
When I awoke, there were puke stains on the carpet. I sat
up. The room swayed. I needed a drink. Empty bottles
stacked in my sink. Got up. Slowly. Half a bottle of
Corona in the fridge. Finished it in two glugs, chucked it
in the sink with the rest. Looked in the mirror. Someone
shaved one side of my head while I was out. Maybe I'd
done it myself. I stared at my reflection. Wrinkled dark
blue T-shirt with food and beer stains on it. Hadn't shaved
my face for two days. If I'd still had all my hair, I'd have
said I looked menacing. “I look pretty menacing,” I said
anyway. I'd only been in a town a week. I needed different
friends. Friends who wouldn't shave my head when I
passed out.

Went into the bathroom, pissed, flushed the toilet,

splashed cold water on my face, combed the hair on the
left side of my head. Changed my shirt, jeans, and
underwear. Locked the door, headed to a small bar within
walking distance. It was hot and ten a.m. Got strange
looks.

The bar was warm, dark, and near-empty. I knew

the bartender wouldn't serve me before eleven so I sat on
a stool and waited. There was a strange clock on the wall
and a new painting of an old train. Or an old painting of a
new train. It was like a mausoleum, a cracker-jack shit-
house of by-gones and nothings—wasted stale moments
stacked up like cushions in the pressing air. Studied my
fingers. They seemed really long. Tapped on the
mahogany bar. The bartender put out a bowl of salted
peanuts. Ate some. But then I got thirsty and it was only
five past.

"You're right on time, Peter Allan Dunn."

I was startled out of my finger-gazing, peanut-eating

revelry by a large woman in a purple dress. She took up
the barstool next to me. It seemed to disappear up her ass
when she sat down. Couldn’t guess her age—could’ve been
forty or eighty-five.

"When did you get here? I didn't see you come in," I
said. “And how do you know my name?”

She grabbed the peanut bowl, opened her mouth,

dumped peanuts in. She crunched, spittle flew like little
daring trapeze artists without a net, peanut bits hung
from her lower lip. "Breakfasth of champions," she said.
She had a large purple boa wrapped around her thick
neck and her eyes were mountains, somehow. Snow-
topped. Her white stump arms wriggled when she moved
in the slightest, bringing to mind an avalanche.

Heard a loud noise, involuntarily jumped.

"'Scuse me," she said and giggled. "Peanuts give me

gas."

The bartender put a beer in front of her. She took a

long suck on the neck.

Looked at the bartender. He looked at me, then his

watch. No beer.

The Purple Lady put her frozen-sausage fingers on

my hand. "I know lots of things, Peter. Are you a haunted
man? You look like a haunted man."

"Where'd you get that train painting?" I asked the

bartender.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

"It's cool," I said.

"eBay. Supposed to be haunted." He went back to

carelessly washing out beer glasses, water splashing
everywhere, glopping on the floor at his feet.

"What do you want from life?" Purple Lady asked

me.

Looked at her, then at the bartender. "A beer." He

set one before me even though it was only 10:13. Time
seemed to slow.

"Thanks." Was about to take a sip when her ice-cold

hand came down on my arm. "What do you want out of
life?"

"Right now? Some good music, maybe Meatloaf’s

Paradise by the Dashboard Light, a few beers, a good hard
fuck. To survive the next few hours, sleep it off tomorrow,
and do it all again the next day."

"Your life could be different." She removed her hand

from my arm and I slugged down more beer. Belched. "I
used to believe that. Now I'm a big believer in nothing."
Looked at the painting again. "Wish I had that painting."

"Be careful what you wish for," Purple Lady said.

"You can't have that painting until you want your life to
be different."

"Listen lady, I'm in serious idiot mode here and

you're fucking that up."

Purple Lady hissed and it sounded like a tribe of

snakes with PMS.

"Shit! Leave me alone!"

"You don't even know you're in mourning for her

and have been for several lifetimes."

"What?" Just then something about the painting

caught my eye. Stared at it. Thought I saw a little old man
in blue overalls riding a squeaky bike next to railroad
tracks. He looked at me. He didn't smile. A chill raced up
my spine.

"Did you see that?" I asked Purple Lady, grabbing

her sleeve. "Did you see that?"

"Yes," she said. "Can I have an amaretto sour?" The

bartender got her one. "That's the father of the woman
you loved in several lifetimes. He killed you once, a long
time ago. With an axe. Split your skull right down the
middle."

"You're insane."
 "I get that a lot," she said. "But see, this painting, it's
a gift. It only reveals itself to people who are in mourning
and don't know why."

"I'm not a mourning person. I prefer the night."

Purple Lady laughed. "The painting says otherwise.

You've lived before and you've carried your grief through
several lifetimes. Look again at the train. There are no
tracks. It follows the route where the tracks once were,
and even though the train's lights are all burning bright,
no one's inside. That's because the route's different each
time.

“I mean, sugar, don’t you ever wonder why you have

those splitting headaches? It’s because you took an axe to
the skull in another life and haven’t gotten over it yet.”

“Gotten over it? Jesus, how does someone get over

something like that?”

Purple Lady sighed, stood, and waddled over to the

clock. That's when I noticed the numbers on the clock
weren't traditional; they were years.

"Now, when was World War I? Wish I’d studied

more in history class," she said.

"I used to be obsessed about it," I said, surprising

myself. "There are no quick answers to the cause of the
First War. It raged from 1914 to 1918."

Purple Lady arched an eyebrow. It looked like a

caterpillar on acid. "There are no quick answers to lots of
things. But we still want them, don’t we? Wars are
primarily about fighting, revenge, killing, but it would be
a great oversimplification to state that that’s all they’re
about," she said.

"Sometimes wars are about falling in love," I said.

Then I wondered why I’d said that. I said, "I wonder why I
said that."

"Because you were there. World War I. France.”

"Why do I suddenly feel like I have to take a shit?" I

said.

Purple Lady wound the arms of the clock; it

sounded like bones twisting and snapping. I got sucked
into the painting. For a moment, I was looking out of it at
the bar. Then the bar vanished and I was squatting on a
battlefield, taking a shit. Helmet, trousers pulled down to
ankles, boots, a major's overcoat. Explosions all around, a
crumbling barn in the distance. I'd worked my way
around a barbed wire fence in a field and I was bleeding.
The air smelled of rust, blood, shit, and deep despair. The
bite of gray horse flies was unbearable. Wondered what I
was doing so far from my men, then took some shrapnel
in the ass. Woke up in a hospital bed surrounded by other
wounded soldiers. A pretty nurse spoke French to me. It’s
the year 1918. Summer. Want to tell her how beautiful
she is. Instead, I throw up. Then I sleep.
“I remember it being so quiet,” I said to the gorgeous
French nurse. “How is that possible?” It was well after
midnight and I was burning up with fever, unable to sleep.
The others were either sleeping, sedated, or not listening.
She placed a wet cloth on my forehead. “I remember
joining what was left of another batallion. I listened to a
Major retell their attack against dug-in Germans.” At the
word “Germans” her lovely hand stilled. She pushed the
hair out of my eyes. “Shells whistled overhead; branches
snapped, showering us with leaves and wood chips. We
wriggled forward on our bellies, forced to move like that
through thickets so dense that two men could pass within
three feet and not know it.”

Looked into her wide violet-blue eyes. “Honey, did

you know that math is the only language that everyone
knows?” By candlelight I studied how her small breasts
strained against the fabric of her white uniform. Imagined
my mouth on her nipple. Parting her legs. Ramming myself
into that warmth. “We crawled until we were close
enough to charge machine guns. I was so bent on revenge
I didn’t even realize I wasn't crawling anymore; I was
running, tripping over logs and underbrush, screaming,
intent on bayoneting a German until someone yelled ‘Just
shoot him! Shoot him!’ I dropped to one knee and put a
bullet in his back. Then I wandered around, took a shit,
and woke up with shrapnel in my ass.”

The nurse murmured something in French,

smoothed the hair off my forehead again. Her voice, so
soft, made me hard. Lay on my side. Couldn’t hide the
evidence. Thought of casualty counts to distract myself.

“Fumée?” she asked, offering a cigarette.

 Took it. She lit it. Inhaled and exhaled, watching the
smoke swirl spectral in the candlelight. “I’ve seen men go
crazy. Raving or just glassy-eyed and expressionless.
Splintered and cracked like tree trunks. If you’ve never
heard wood moan, it’s not pleasant.”

The night was quiet. Felt so hot. My head ached.

Didn’t realize I’d been crying until she wiped my face with
another cool cloth. “Where are my men?” I croaked. “My
men, they didn’t have adequate trench mortars or hand
grenades.” My hands shook. Moonlight sank heavily
through the large dirty windows.
For several weeks, two shiny twin-six Packards had been
coming to get a few of the more mobile men. The
Packards rolled away in the morning and returned at 8
pm, the men all smiles, their war-torn bodies well stocked
in cigarettes, cigars, loaves of bread.

Stared out the window. The nurse followed my eyes.

“Where are my men? Where are they?” I sobbed. She put
her hand on mine. “In the beginning none of us knew how
to fight. We hardly had any ammunition. Every time one
of us died, we fell silent and waited for our turn, sure
we’d be next.”

Stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on a table

beside my bed. It was wet.
My French progressed slowly. Learned some basic words.
The nurse taught me. Her name was Amelie. Something
about her long, shiny, curly black hair made me think of
cathedrals and tapestries depicting Mary Magdalene
bathing Christ’s feet as a cat jumped from one oil
container to another chased by a dog ridden by a child.
Mosaics of Jupiter carrying off Europa. Orpheus charming
the animals. The vivid and changing color of her eyes,
their aliveness, brought van Gogh to mind, wandering
along a riverbank wearing candles on his hat.
The last couple of days had been rainy. The Packards
came. For me this time, plus Benny and John Paul, two
others who've convalesced well. Didn’t want to go but I
was low on cigarettes. And Amelie wasn’t at the hospital.

The mansion was fifteen miles outside the hospital,

sitting on sweeping lawns. It had once been a gaudy piece
of outfoxing. A big, rambling affair once inhabited by
many servants and now falling into and onto itself with
neglect. Was surprised to see other American soldiers
fooling around on the lawns, wrestling, trying to find their
centers again. Looked hard but didn’t see any of my men.
Felt like I’d been punched in the gut.

The surrounding gardens were a ruin. But the smells

inside were delicious. Found myself eating heartily at a
long, stone table with Benny and John Paul. “Beats being a
German prisoner, huh?” Benny said. And then a warm
hand was at my back, on my shoulder. “Are you a truffle-
lover?” the distinctively female voice said. Stopped
chewing. Laughed. Don’t know why. ‘Truffle lover’ seemed
funny to me. Benny and John Paul were drooling. “Don’t
turn around,” she commanded. “Eat. Laugh. Enjoy
yourselves.” So I ate. The room was large; its beautifully
carved décor of fruits and figures were pointless. The
matron came into view: older, hard-looking, in a filmy
negligee and not much else; large breasts resting on her
chest, sagging toward strong legs; tired shadows under
dusty, brown eyes in an attractive face; hair dyed horribly
blonde. She introduced herself as Madame Babeth. More
absence than presence. That was it. Like her home, more
imposing than beautiful. Too heavy for grace but haughty
as hell, did she do that well? Did she ever. I’d met Majors
less haughty. That’s saying something. A woman with
wine barrels named after cows, names like Jolie and
Violette. “Come boys, have some champagne, won’t you
darlings?” She spoke English and her French accent wasn’t
unpleasant. But she was nothing like Amelie. Benny had
his fork mid-way to his mouth when she reached down
and squeezed his crotch. With her other hand, she rubbed
John Paul’s. She looked at me. “I think I will take zees two
first. You, however, will be a better match for me. More
time and care with you, I think.” Then she disappeared
upstairs with Benny and John Paul, their food half
finished. It wasn’t that I didn’t like her. She said once, “If I
ever see za Kaiser, I’ll shoot him in zee balls.”

There were cigarettes on the table. Took some and

walked around the grounds until I found a secluded spot
in the ruined garden, stood in the shadow of one of the
massive stone walls of the mansion. Clipped yew,
fountains, and statuary, chipped now, but once it must’ve
all been impressive. I reveled in a good smoke, a full belly,
the lingering taste of champagne on my tongue. The sky
was too bright. Leaned, one foot against the wall, smoked
some more. Heard the moans of hard sex coming from
Madame’s bedroom windows, open to the warm, sultry
air. There is a beauty in things hurting. But I didn’t want
to think of her shivering white flesh. I knew she got off on
hearing about injuries. A fractured skull, two broken legs,
a smashed arm, a multiple-fractured jaw, a scorched foot,
a burned hand. She asked the men to describe it in detail
for her until she came.

Was stubbing out my cigarette, lighting another

when I saw a petite woman emerge from a small building
and begin to beat the dust from a rug. Amelie. She
stopped what she was doing when she saw me.
 What was she doing here? She left the rug and came
to stand beside me. “I’m surprised to see you here,
Amelie.”

“Vous avez besoin d'un se rase.”

Something about a shave. She took my hand and I

followed her into what appeared to be servant’s quarters,
a long narrow room mostly bare except for some chairs.
She dragged one of the hard wooden chairs to the middle,
filled a bucket with water, soaped my face. I closed my
eyes. The splash of water, the careful movements of her
hands as she shaved the beard from my jaw. Her breath
was sweet. She was sloppy. Water splashed on her white
sundress, molding it against her erect nipples, which
brushed my arm. For some reason, an odd memory arose.
My father and I sitting in an ornate church, I engrossed
with the sharp, jutting carved figures on the tympanum
above the main door of a portal, their faces so alive with
expression and movement, representing the Last
Judgment. The naked bodies with snakes’ tails and winged
bottoms and faces appearing from below the waist. The
service of sinful appetites, a cauldron filling with merry
souls. In that moment with my broken body and my
broken heart, I reached for her. My arms went around her
and I buried my face in her chest. She put aside the blade
she’d been shaving me with, her arms cradled my neck,
her fingers threaded my hair.

“Amelie,” I murmured. “Last night I dreamed of a

French field. Shooting, shooting, the shooting. In the air,
on the ground. Carbines, machine guns. The bang-bang of
guns. All I want is to plant one or two Germans before I
get shot down. Plant those fuckers where they belong. In
the ground.”

Started to shake and she placed her fingertips to my

lips. “Shhhhhs.” Then she lifted her sundress over her head
and discarded it on the stone floor. She took my hand and
placed it on her breast. Sweet sweat. The fantasies I’d had
every night in the hospital flooded my brain. She stood
and then my trousers were at my ankles. She stared at me
and murmured something before taking me inside her.
The next time I came to the mansion Amelie took me
some distance to a shelled home in a cluster of beech
trees. Rooms opened up intimately on each other.
Touching yet barely touching. Beds unmade, dishes
shining on the dining table, others cracked and broken,
on the floor, curtains blowing gently in dust, the smell of
abandonment still in the air. Cautiously we climbed the
stairs to the second floor. I looked over the books in the
library. Wasn’t impressed. A shutter creaked. Jumped.
Outside the broken window, mutilated tree trunks.
Limbless, pointing upward, downward, every which way,
as if they too were lost. If I tried hard, I could smell the
home-life smells underneath the dust and smoke smells.
The careful labor of chafed, loving hands used to labor.
Someone had carted off stones from the house, no doubt
thinking to rebuild the mangled road. The stones and the
road were gone.

After we’d made love several times, we sat beneath

the trees eating cheese and bread, drinking champagne
that Amelie had pilfered from the main house. “All I ever
learned about love was how to shoot someone,” I said.

“Vous êtes un bel homme et je vous aime.”

Understood then that she loved me. Took my knife and
carved both our initials in the tree, the date, and the state
where I’d lived most of my life, Maine. I carved deeply,
imagining how the trees would grow, how the graffiti
would swell and twist and contort with the memories
we’d created here. Wanted it to last forever.
When Madame Babeth summoned me to her bedroom, I
didn’t go. I’d eaten her food, smoked her tobacco, drunk
her champagne. Laughed at her truffles. For a while, she
still sent for me in the Packard, assuming I was playing
hard to get. When I refused her advances for the last time,
standing outside on the front walk before her once grand
mansion, flanked by crumbling nudes, rain falling, I felt
the grass and trees watching me. And then, in her fleecy
French voice that didn’t match her face, “You will regret
zis, Peter Allan Dunn.”
Didn’t go back to the mansion again. Was going to ask
Amelie to marry me but didn’t see her for days. Started to
get really worried when she finally appeared at the end of
the week, avoiding my eyes. There were dark bruises on
her arms and beneath one eye. “Who did this to you?”
The words barked up and out from my spine, startling
her. It was her eyes, glassy and unemotional as the
soldiers in the field, that worried me.

Took her hand in mine. And more softly, “Amelie,

who did this to you?”

“Mon père.”

“Your father!”

She nodded. “Madame Babeth...”

“Oh God. Because of me. Madame Babeth told your

father about us and he beat you?” Took her in my arms.
Finally was forced to let her go so she could work. When
she returned to my bedside I told her, “Listen Amelie,
marry me. Marry me!” I would be released from the
hospital soon and then what?

“Je ne peux pas vous épouser. Mon père vous tuera.”

Killing. That I understood. Her father wanted to kill

me. I laughed. She didn't.
On the day I was released, I went to find her father, to
explain how much I loved his daughter, that I'd never
harm her, that I would care for her, cherish her the rest of
my life. Found him in the old barn, the one I’d seen in the
distance when I’d been shot in the ass. Full circle.

I’d thought to find an old man. Was surprised by his

strength and hatred, the way spittle flecks flew from his
mouth as he raised an axe and split my skull in two.
Didn’t see it coming. Had no time to react. In the
darkness, I called for Amelie. And then I was sucked back
through the painting.

“Do you see your life differently now?” Purple Lady

asked. Watched, open-mouthed as she saddled out of the
bar. Looked at what I’d been drinking, pushed it away.
Ran home to my apartment. Was different now, for fuck’s
sake. Got a haircut. Avoided creepy old men in overalls
who rode squeaky bicycles. Had a new purpose. To find
Amelie in this lifetime. Let go of that helpless feeling that
death and doom awaited around every corner. Stopped
seeing glimpses in the ghostly black-and-blue night of
pale faces, turned up in the darkness, an arm, a leg, a foot,
air that smelled like rust and blood and shit and deep
despair. Didn’t have any more headaches after that either.
When I went back to the bar to inquire about the
painting, it was gone. The barkeep claimed there’d never
been such a painting.
 Dead On

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The proper function of man is
to live, not to exist. I shall not
waste my days in trying to
prolong them. I shall use my
time.
-Jack London

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"Mule Factory"
©2009 Steve Goerger
christycall.com
 MULE FACTORY
BY STEVE GOERGER

Dan has come out of a terrible relationship, yes, and there

is drinking, even drugs. He's never been all that popular
with anyone and has just graduated from college, but he
doesn’t see any possibility in his life.

On their first walk around the dry, stale grounds,

Rudolpho tells Dan and the others: “The production of
mules is very simple—a female horse and a male donkey
are mated. You may wonder why we call this production,
not breeding. Well, the word breeding implies that two
animals of the same species are mated to further
propagate the species. In fact, we do no such thing: mules
are completely asexual beings, incapable of reproducing
themselves. So we do the dirty work for them. Thank you
friends!—and welcome.” Spontaneous applause bursts
out, with Dan leading the way, cheering the romance
finding him here in Mexico.

As the German standing next to Dan asks about

terminology, the mood in the room is strained generosity.
At the back of their group a tall dark-haired girl sobs
loudly. The next morning Rudolpho teaches Dan and a
Japanese boy how to operate a twelve-thousand dollar
insemination probe.
There are six of them, interns, at the Mule Factory that
summer. Dan. Florian, the German, who is fair, tall, and
intelligent. Rico, a Mexican. Inez, the Portuguese crier,
whom everyone assumes is Mexican. Shaito, who has
come from Japanese business school to learn Spanish.
And Don, the other American, who on the very first
morning of work, while Dan and Shaito learn the probe,
beds Inez in the bunkhouse and steals a carton of
Rudolpho’s pre-rolled cigarettes.

Rico and Florian work with the donkeys. Mornings,

the donkeys are fed and cleaned; in the early afternoon
there is exercise, walking in circles, powering the mill;
then comes siesta. Both the Mexican and the German
have been around equine beasts all their lives. Over the
first weeks they find they have much in common. Rico
speaks fluent German. They discuss philosophy as they
recline on haystacks in the dusty corral.

“Marx yes, Lenin no—I think we can agree to this!”

Rico says, but Florian just chews some grass awhile.

“I have no interest in politics; my thought is purely

existential,” says Florian. Through the office window he
observes the mascara streaking from Inez’s eyes—a
Nietzschean Mona Lisa, he thinks—and considers the long
chain of cause and effect which has led them here. “Wer
war die erste Ursache?” he asks. It is a difficult problem,
but these things take time, is all.

In bed at night, Dan wonders who, or what, could have

hurt Inez so; wonders exactly how Don helps; what he
might be able to do to cool the fever that melts her.
Mentally he sends soft bay breezes and a lapping, licking
shoreline her way. Recollections of a surfer girl he once
knew wash over him: blonde, buoyant in the water. With
sudden guilt he shakes his head and tries to refocus on
Inez. But only a word comes to mind—Don!

Just then Inez cries “Don!” into the blackness of the

bunkhouse. It is her first English word.
“Don!” Shaito whispers to himself the next morning. He
considers what the word could mean. He has been
listening to the Mexicans, Rudolpho, Rico, and Inez, speak
Spanish, and this is the only word he has heard them all
say. Both Americans are named Don, he believes,
assuming this is only a coincidence. Don is a very
common American name, after all: Rumsfeld, Rickles,
Knotts. But in Spanish it must be a word of great and
secret importance. So secret they leave it out of the
dictionaries and it gathers full power only at night.
Clandestinely he whispers it to the sun. He smiles at the
Don he works with.

One of their jennies gives birth to the first mule of

the season. Rudolpho demonstrates standard operating
procedure, his arm streaked bloody up to the elbow. The
little thing lies silent a few minutes and then suddenly
looses a strange almost-bray, an odd throaty little
whisper.

Back in the office Rudolpho washes up, then splits a

spliff with Don. Don smokes with one hand, kneads Inez’s
back with the other. Inez files and shuffles and
straightens.

“The girls are in good hands this year,” Rudolpho

says. “Soft hands—Dan is a fine, dedicated worker. Not
like you, eh, Don, making your girl do all the work!”

Don smokes.

The phone rings under Inez’s waiting hand. She

picks it up and says: “Estou!” Rudolpho wonders what
kind of regional dialect she speaks. Her voice is rapid.
Water rushing over rock. He hopes the local touch will
help sell mules in her area.
Everyone goes into the nearby city of Chuito for a
weekend. Rudolpho leads his charges down the
cobblestones and into the colonial heart of the city. All
the buildings maintain seventeenth-century faces. He says
Chuito was once the great melting pot for the native
Indians and the Spanish settlers; now, especially after
NAFTA, it is only an American suburb. “Everything for the
tourists!” he says, playfully punching Rico in the arm. Dan
purchases a nice, inexpensive stetson. He looks in the
mirror, tugs the brim, practices saying gityup and purdy.

Dinner and drinks. Florian and Rico try to tackle the

language barrier between themselves and Shaito. Rico
knows traveler’s Japanese, but not enough to do any
good. Florian tries English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans.
They finally end up pointing at things, saying their titles in
Spanish, letting Shaito repeat and learn. “Cerveza.”
“Cadera.” Shaito speaks the words hardy and wrong.

The rest of the table talks mostly business.

Rudolpho praises Dan’s handling of the horses, lets him
into his best business secrets. Getting very drunk. A lot of
money to be made, and great satisfaction in the job.
Because, Rudolpho says, covering Dan’s hand with his,
“the thing about mules is: I don’t think God intended
them ever to happen.”

“God does not intend a lot of things that happen,”

Dan says. “Especially the bad things that happen to good
people.” From under his hat he peeks across the table to
see if Inez is listening.

“Yes, yes, we are all sorry that Inez cries so much,”

Rudolpho says. “But this is what is wonderful: even the
failures of God are his great successes. Do you
understand?”

Consensus is reached—all the heads at the table nod

yes. Dan agrees with Rudolpho; Rudolpho bobs along the
buoyant sea of alcohol in his belly. Florian and Rico have
given up on Shaito; they only agree politely as he mangles
their lessons. Inez reacts to Don fingering her under the
table. Don hums a happy tune, nods along.
A fax comes through on the machine—Inez retrieves it
and takes it out to Rudolpho, who looks it over. “Prices of
mules are plummeting,” he says. “Not good, not
good—maybe I will have to cut labor, let one of you go.”
He rubs the small bumps of her spine. “Maybe your Don?”

Inez pours hot tears like coffee.

“No, no, not you guys, Inez,” Rudolpho says. “I was

only joking. I’ll get rid of the uglies first—maybe Rico.”
With nothing left to say, Inez walks away briskly.
Rudolpho watches.

Dan and Shaito help birth thirty mules in

June—some tan, some spotted, some speckled pepper and
salt. Never two the same. Shaito whispers his word over
each of them, blessing infancy with its mighty magic. Dan
always thinks Shaito is talking to him. He turns his head
toward the pastel sky and pretends not to hear.

Florian plans a week in the mountains, to accost the

ponderous questions that fill his soul. In the office he asks
Rudolpho to lend him a pack mule and some marijuana.

“Maybe I should have brought more women in,”

Rudolpho is saying to Don. “Even I myself am lonely.
From now on I will arrange pairings ahead of time. One-
to-one ratios. Harmonies of scale.” He notices Florian.

“And what about you, Florian? Wouldn’t you like to

have a nice romantic fling with a Mexican girl, take your
mind off some things?”

Florian considers his rhetorical pose. “Off some

things, on some others. If you know what I mean,” he
says. Rudolpho and Don look at him like he is mad, but
suddenly explode with violent laughter; they clap
Florian’s back so hard it hurts. His wit wins Florian two
weeks’ vacation, two mules, peyote, and marijuana.

“But hey, take that Shaito with you,” Rudolpho says,

still weak with laughter. “Seriously—get that Jap out of my
hair!”
Florian invites Shaito into the desert by pointing: first into
the distance, then at himself and Shaito, then back into
the distance. He makes a walking motion with two
fingers, points again, and smiles. Shaito grins, enlightened.

That night, with Don drunk and passed out in his

bed, Shaito steals over to Inez. He puts his face very close
to hers and whispers the word he feels they share. Inez
looks at him like he’s gone crazy. Urgently: Don! The
donkeys quit braying, Rico quits snoring, and everything
is soft and silent. Shaito’s face is creased with tension, as
if he will burst unless relieved. Inez swirls a cool digit
around his forehead—a hot sweat is forming there—but
Shaito takes her hand and presses it hard to his lips.
Never has Inez considered Shaito, but this makes his bold
first impression all the better. She would cry, but Shaito’s
ardor has strength for the both of them, too much to
allow it. Her eyes search this surprise, until finally they
rest upon his—and then they kiss. Their passion carries on
wordlessly until the sun rises and they fall asleep. An hour
later Florian rouses Shaito and they head off into the cool
foothills of morning.

Inez stays in to watch American television while the

boys tie one on at the Chuito Gentleman’s Club. By now
the sun has given Dan a deep tan and dug a purple sweat
ring in his black cowboy hat; all the girls coo at him, a
true-blue vaquero. “Any girl in here belongs to you!”
Rudolpho shouts. But just as Dan considers a sweet-faced,
flat-chested, tall young thing, Don slips her a fifty. She
leads him to the storage room. Dan follows after a few
minutes and peers inside: the shadows tumble in heavy
breathing. Envy rises. When finally Don reemerges into
the bar, Dan lands a strong left and knocks his
countryman into the stage. Rudolpho and Rico come
running over. Rico considers starting a full-out brawl,
maybe getting at Rudolpho in the confusion of it. But he
doesn’t, for Mexico’s sake.
It is in the highlands that Shaito proves his real worth to
Florian. Handy with both fire and water, Shaito keeps
camp while Florian explores his mind with Rudolpho's
gifted drugs. Florian lays the pills and pot on the ground.
He points to them, then to his eyes, then to the sky. He
hooks his thumbs and flaps his hands like bird’s wings.
Points to the drugs again—Shaito seems confused. “Don?”
Florian asks; Shaito needs no further explanation. He goes
about gathering scrub brush for heat, drilling cacti for
water.

Dan and Don wordlessly declare a truce, though

Dan is hopeful Don has told Inez it was he who punched
him, so Inez might wonder. Any press being good press.
But Don never says anything to Inez. Only hums.

The birthing season hits stride and Dan midwives,

alone, flawlessly. A large inventory accrues. Dan and Rico
wonder why Rudolpho doesn't sell any. “The economy is
in such shape that probably no one can even afford a
mule anymore,” Rico says, keeping to himself suspicions
that Rudolpho is simply incompetent. Meanwhile, the
corral nearly overflows with sexless animals, standing
around, just staring at one another.

Inez answers the phone. Sometimes she tries to

explain herself fully, in Portuguese. But she can only try.

“Hello, Inez,” a voice says. “I love you. I wish you’d

stop crying.”

“Que?”

“Of course, things won’t stay the same forever.

Someday you’ll stop crying. I wonder if I’ll still love you
then.”

“Papa?”

“However, Rico says what we are we will always be.

Somehow, you will cry, and I will love you forever.”

“Don?”

“Dan! Do you understand? Dan. See, I’ve been hurt

so much. I don’t know much else. I had a girl I called Joey,
Inez, but her real name was Joan.”

“Shaito?”

“Don!” Florian screams, waking Shaito from a

comfortable sleep near the fire. “Ich weiss jetzt! Er ist Don!”
With two more births, the holding pen bursts at the
seams. And there are six more births scheduled for the
first half of August. Rudolpho sees that he needs to sell
and orders Inez to put ads in all of Mexico's major
newspapers. “We’ll undersell even the steepest
competition!” he says. “Even those guys in Mexico City!
Sell, sell, sell! Two-for-one, free coffee, a juggling clown!”

In the desert, in a hallucinogenic trance, Florian

attempts to climb the flat face of a small mountain, to be
closer to God. Halfway up he loses his grip and falls fifty
feet. Shaito, who has trailed Florian without his
knowledge, catches his hand and pulls him back to the
rocks.

“Don,” Florian says to him, and they begin to climb

again. A while later some shadows play tricks on Shaito’s
eyes, and he slips and falls into the deep canyon below.
Florian summits, beats his strong breast, wails deep and
sad and true.

Rudolpho takes Rico aside. “Friend: I must let you

go,” he says. “Business is bad. I know you understand.”

“How do you know that?” Rico asks. He is offended;

he thinks again about taking a swing at his already-tipsy
boss.

“Listen—we are both Mexicans!” Rudolpho says.

“Brotherhood is all we have. Can you juggle? Do you
mime?”
The reason Inez cries: shortly before leaving for Mexico
her father died. They were very close. To make matters
worse, her father was a great lover of horses. Every
Saturday morning he would take his only daughter riding
with him, through gold fields, wild forests, light blankets
of shiny snow. Being near horses is terrible but Inez
knows being away from them would probably be worse
still. There is no solution to the problem, so she cries. But
the feeling of the hot tears on her skin is the least of her
concerns: First she would like to know how people live
life in a brain full of dead memories!

In the late evenings, after the phones have stopped

ringing, after making love to Don, she walks along the
country road and thinks about the great loves of her life.
Manu, the boy from school, who brought her wildflowers
and kissed her cheek raw before he ever kissed her lips.
Fun and flighty Pepe during high school. Geraldo, much
older, a man clinging to limitless passion in limited years.
Lately Shaito has been added to the list, but she has not
quite figured out why. She can’t even picture him or
remember the sound of his voice. But he looked at her the
way her father did—the same green-flecked brown eyes
which bathed her in warmth every time they shined her
way. She wonders how long Shaito will look at her that
way; wonders if this one familiar thing would be enough
to fly her to Japan and live among the aliens.

Rudolpho goes into town and buys streamers. He

sees a man about a big top tent abandoned by a traveling
circus. As they negotiate he envisions the carnival, the
shoppers, the free food on the hot grill, Rico
pantomiming, maybe atop a unicycle. The farmers will
surely bring their entire families to such a festival. Maybe
one of them will have a lovely older daughter in need of a
husband—maybe he can trade a few mules for a wife! His
pulse quickens and his eyes brighten. He pays five
thousand pesos for the sun-faded tent.

As he lays the body of Shaito into the ground,

Florian gives a short invocation: “Lord, accept into your
circle the spirit of your servant, Shaito, perhaps the most
righteous man I have ever known. He who was most at
home in the wilderness of your creation, he who came
across the seas to find his rest here, with you. Though we
never actually spoke—communication being hard as
communion in this world—I feel that he came all this way
only to have his life end nearer to you. Please protect his
soul. In your name I pray: Don.”

“Ee-haa,” the mules say to one another, back at the

factory. “Ee-haa?” they ask.
Don walks a few miles out to meet Florian as he comes
back to town. Florian rides only one nag; the other he has
let run free. When he sees that it is Don who has come
out to meet him, he jumps from the steed, falls to his
knees. Don grabs him by the arm and hauls him back up.

“No,” Don says, “it isn’t me. This is your problem:

you think too much. Do you suppose God really thinks
about any of this?”

“Your logic seems false,” Florian says.

“Exactly,” Don says. “But look at it this way: God

must surely be alone. I have never been alone. Who would
want to be so godly?”

Florian sees his point and rises. They walk back into
town together. Florian begins to cry, tells Don about the
fate of Shaito.

Don nods his head, hums his tune. He lights a spliff

and they share it on the way back to the factory.
With Florian to welcome back and Shaito’s life to
celebrate, Rudolpho feels the mule carnival is destiny’s
creation. He takes Inez out of the office and puts her to
work with Dan, grooming and preparing the animals. He
and Florian erect the big top. Don keeps the office afloat,
prepares shipping manifests; in his free moments he is to
paint a portrait of Shaito, to be wreathed with flowers
and hung near the cash register.

Rico has become proficient at the juggling of four,

five, six eggs. Or apples, even oranges.

Inez cries day and night for her latest loss. She
brushes her tears into the coats of the mules. Dan is
revitalized by her sadness. At one point he gathers
enough courage to wrap a tender arm around her. He
works hard and puts on a happy face, sweating into the
grain he feeds the animals. Tears and sweat; and spit,
which everyone has always shot into their water. Years
later Dan will marry a pretty little blonde from South
Dakota. She will give him three children, the youngest of
whom they'll name Inez. When she is twelve Inez will take
fifteenth place in a local bowling tournament. She'll be
her father’s favorite by far.

The scheduled first morning of the carnival comes;

everything is silent, still, and ready. The six of them stand
shoulder to shoulder, waiting. Rudolpho stands next to
Don stands next to Inez stands next to Dan stands next to
Rico stands next to Florian. Just behind them is Don’s
portrait of Shaito—a childish yellow sun shining above a
field of red, pink, and purple flowers which have the
vague shape of question marks. They stand that way until
late afternoon, when not yet has a soul approached to
inspect the restless, fenced animals.

“I guess no one reads newspapers anymore,”

Rudolpho says. With that, he lets go of a few loose
dreams.

That night they throw a party for themselves under

the big top. Everyone gets intoxicated. Rudolpho offers
Rico a full-time position. Rico tells Florian of his truest
feelings for him, opening a wide, empty chasm between
them. Inez cries; Dan grins crookedly under his low-
pulled brim. Don walks off into the sunset, thinking
maybe Italy…

They fall asleep outside, huddled together for

warmth underneath the big top. In the early morning the
mules’ voices wake Dan. “Ee-haa!” they say to each other.
“Ee-haa!” they scream to the sky. Dan gets up and
stumbles over to the pen. In the middle many of the
animals are huddled; there seems to be some kind of
commotion. Dan climbs up on the highest rung of the
fence to look in. He wipes his brow, whistles low, tugs the
brim of his hat. In the midst of the animals there is a small
calf of some kind, some newborn. A small, light, white
animal. To Dan’s eyes, it appears winged. Hopefully it is
winged.
Ampersand Review
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We do not want a world in
which the guarantee that we
will not die of starvation is
bought by accepting the risk
of dying of boredom.
-Raoul Vaneigem

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—Christy Call
 OIKOS
Ready to explode, roadside bombs line the highway. The
radio says so to Lamb. He touches the volume and thinks
about roadside bombs. Feels distantly alarmed and has
the urge to explode. He wishes he had a more volcanic
personality. He is driving home from work. There is
traffic. Lines on the highway. He observes the world in a
blur. A cow. A steeple. Every other mile. Another cow.
Another steeple. In the sky, an airplane. The radio says
something about airplanes. Airplanes have crashed. Will
crash. Are crashing. Lamb looks back at the road. An exit
ramp. A flag. Telephone wire. Another cow. He wishes
buffalo still dominated North America. He thinks this
would be good for North America. For the environment,
for everything. He closes his eyes. Keeps his foot on the
gas pedal, hands on the wheel. Pistons grind under the
hood. He wonders what the road looks like in front of
him. Will he crash? Will he explode? Are there bombs
along the road ahead? He feels paranoid and alone and
attempts to envision someone he can recognize. He
pictures his older brother, Michael. Michael is riding on
the back of a buffalo. The buffalo looks cool and serene.
Michael looks happy riding the buffalo. Lamb wants
coolness and serenity. Like a buffalo. Opens his eyes: the
highway, lines on the highway, an American flag,
telephone wire, another cow, and no buffalo.

Lamb wonders why he works. He thinks about the

word “career” and says it out loud twice. Feels a strange
sense of happiness and sadness. Happy to not be at work.
Sad to be coming from work. The voice on the radio says
something indecipherable. Sunlight pours through the
windshield and touches his skin. He looks at his arms.
They are too white. Lamb feels malnourished and
unattractive from a life spent indoors. Working. He
doesn't have enough time to be outdoors. This is counter-
evolutionary. He's failing to evolve because of his job
requirements. He considers buying a membership to a
tanning salon. Imagines the smell of lotion and pictures
himself in a Speedo on a tanning bed. He doesn’t
understand why. He looks at his arms. Sees freckles. Hairs.
A fading birthmark. Feels confused. Imagines purple
ultraviolet bulbs baking his skin. Baking the organs
beneath his skin. He thinks about the damage caused by
ultraviolet radiation. About developing skin cancer on his
arms. He wonders if his arms would have to be
amputated. Wonders if society would shun him if he were
to ever find himself armless. Lamb pulls onto an exit
ramp. He looks around. The sky, an airplane, another cow,
another steeple. Another.

Lamb remembers riding to church on his father’s

wedding day. His older brother drove. Lamb tries to
remember how much older. He can’t. He remembers his
father telling him that it was a special day for their family.
Lamb said he was glad for his father. Michael was silent.
His father said something about their mother looking
down from heaven. The memory metastasizes in Lamb’s
brain.

“How do you know?” Lamb asked his father.

“I know,” his father said. “She would want me to be

happy.”
 Lamb had asked his father the question weeks
before, in their garage. His father said, “Do you ever think
about how you will feel when you’re my age?” Lamb felt a
strange sensation. He cleared his throat. Pretended to
cough. He never felt comfortable alone with his father. He
shrugged his shoulders. Said he did. Lamb’s father turned
around. Moved a paint can from one shelf to another.
Stared at the shelf. Closed his eyes. “Well. People feel
tired sometimes,” he said. Lamb’s father turned around.
Looked at Lamb. Lamb did not move. His father yawned,
looked at the Webber grill in the corner of the garage.
Yawned again. Looked at a chainsaw hanging beside a
dormant refrigerator. Smiled half-heartedly. His father
thought everything made sense.

At the Easter wedding, Lamb’s outfit matched his

brother’s. A black tuxedo. Yellow bow-tie. Yellow
cummerbund. They always matched. Several years later,
Lamb still had the tuxedo. He kept it in his closet with the
rest of his dress clothes. When Lamb moved in with his
girlfriend, Amy, he took the tuxedo to a secondhand store
for twenty-five dollars. Spent it somewhere.

The new wife, Cynthia, was frail with a vague,

waterlogged beauty. She taught Sunday School. After
Lamb went to college, his father was alone. Cynthia
would come over during the holidays. Bake pies. Apple.
Pumpkin. Key lime. Every holiday. Another pie. One
Christmas Eve, Cynthia drank too much eggnog and fell
out of her chair at the dinner table. She laughed and
didn’t seem embarrassed. Lamb thought she looked at
home on a floor, laughing. Lamb knelt down to help her
up. “Did your mother like to drink eggnog?” Cynthia
asked. “I don’t know,” Lamb said. Michael looked on,
not speaking. He never said anything. Lamb’s father
folded his arms. Looked around. Looked tired.

Lamb never knew his mother. She died before he

was born—technically—at thirty-one, at the Baptist
hospital downtown. Induced childbirth. There was a car
accident. Lamb arrived ahead of schedule. His whole life
is lived ahead of schedule. He wishes he had memories of
his mother’s life. Sometimes he closes his eyes and
pictures what it was like in the womb, inside her. Tangled
in umbilical miasma. A zygote. Blind. Eating what she ate.
Feeling what she felt. Sleeping. Dreaming.
Lamb pulls into the parking lot of his apartment building,
turns off the ignition. The pistons stop. For fifteen
minutes he sits behind the wheel, not wanting to move.
He looks at his building. Bricks. Balconies. Telephone
wires. Home. He lives here with his girlfriend and Donny,
their roommate. Lamb thinks about the word “home.” He
says it out loud, looks at his arms, feels weak. Rubs his
hands together furiously. The friction in his fingertips
makes him nauseous. “Home,” he repeats. He wishes he
were happier. Wonders what happy people do to feel
happy. He thinks: his mother looking down from heaven,
Michael riding a buffalo, ultraviolet radiation, burning, a
grazing cow, a steeple, pointing, a waving flag, asking his
father the questions, his father disappearing, exhaustion,
the roadside, the bombs,a bow-tie and a speedo, a
dreaming zygote.

Inside the apartment, Donny is unemployed,

playing video games in his boxer shorts. He has no career.
Lamb envisions his own career. Donny nods in his glasses.
Lamb nods back, moves through the apartment, steps out
on the balcony. Looks at Amy’s dying plants. The dried
leaves look tired. He feels tired. He walks into his
bedroom to change. Sees himself in the mirror. He stares.
Feels skinny. Tells himself he will do a better job of
feeding himself. He will become stronger, happier, better
nourished, and more attractive.

“Your father called,” Donny says. “He wants you to

go to dinner with him sometime this week.”

“That’s all he said?” Lamb says. He imagines his

father thinking about him. Calling him. Wanting to see
him. Asking Donny to take a message for him. Lamb’s
father was a preacher once. His father was a revered man
in the community. Lamb pictures his father sitting across
a dinner table from him, arms folded, condemnatory, and
Lamb not wanting to be alone with his father or with
anyone.

“I think,” Donny says. “He sounded sad. I felt sorry

for him.”

“Do you want to come with?” Lamb says. “When I

go?”

Donny looks at the television. His face. Red. Sweaty.

He throws the video game controller against a couch
cushion. He says, “Goddammit.” He leans backward. Folds
his hands behind his head. Looks at the television. At the
controller. Shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “I
don’t really have the money for eating out right now.”

“You don’t need any,” Lamb says. “My dad will pay
for both of us.”

Lamb looks at Donny. Sits. Looks at the television.

An alien dances across the screen. Its arms and jaws
dangle in a computerized wind. Its mouth and claws are
laced with the blood of something. Everything moves in
slow motion.

“I’m intimidated by church people,” Donny says.

“They make me nervous.” He snatches the video game
controller from the cushion. Restarts the game. Lamb
watches. Laughs.

“You’re always nervous,” Lamb says. “Besides, he

isn’t a preacher anymore.”

“You’re always nervous,” Donny says. His eyes are

glued to the television. With a sword he engages an alien
from another dimension on a yellow brick road. Tries to
save a princess from a burning battleship in a far-off
galaxy. From a car accident. From ultraviolet radiation.
From cancer. From armlessness.

Lamb looks around the apartment. He doesn’t know

what to do. He cannot get comfortable. He looks at
Donny, then at the television. Donny walks up a road,
bombs exploding in far away places. Lamb watches the
explosions from the safety of the sofa. They combust on
another side of the world. There are yellow flames. The
sun is out. The sky is blue. Things are on fire. Lamb
imagines he's on fire. Drowning in flames, death
imminent. Amy’s plants are already dead. His mother is
patiently looking down from heaven. Lamb is an excited
tiny zygote.

Something is about to happen.

Donny says, “Maybe next time.”

“Suit yourself,” Lamb says.

“I need to get a job,” Donny says.

“Where’s Amy?” Lamb says.

“I don’t know,” Donny says

“What are we supposed to do for dinner?” Lamb

says. “Tonight?”
 “I don’t know,” Donny says. “I don’t have any
money.”

“You don’t need money,” Lamb says.

“I don’t know,” Donny says. “Are you going to call

your dad?”

“Maybe,” Lamb says.

“What's the difference between a preacher and a

pastor?” Donny wonders.

“I don’t know,” Lamb says. He leans backward,

crosses his legs, tries to maneuver his spine in a posture-
supporting position. Looks at his fingernails. Smells the
apartment. The paint and drywall and stagnancy of
bottled air. Air particles bouncing against one another
throughout the room. Against the floor. The ceiling. The
television. Wanting to be released. Static crackles across
the screen. The particles brush against Lamb’s skin. “Let’s
go to that Mexican place,” he says. He closes his eyes. His
body is in his apartment, feeling torn and calm. Split like a
piece of firewood. It is the seventeenth century. Lamb,
bearded, chops firewood. Buffalo roam the continent
freely. He lives in a frontier log cabin with ten children.
His wife has scarlet fever. He is chopping wood in the
snow. His children watch him, his beard, the wood, the
axe. He chops and chops until his hands blister and burst.
The cold burns his skin. The axe handle is a bone—an
extension of Lamb’s own body. His body stays one place,
his mind another.

“Mexican food sucks,” Donny says.

 “Then we should get sushi,” Lamb says.

Amy opens the door and walks into the apartment.

She drops her keys on the kitchen table. Her face is tired.

“Welcome home,” Donny says. “Sushi sucks more.”

Amy looks around. Confused. “What?”

“Your boyfriend wants to take me on a date,”

Donny says. “Are you jealous?” He looks at the television
screen. Frowns. Says, “Not again, goddammit.”

Amy looks at Lamb, annoyed. “I wouldn’t be if he

ever took me anyplace.”

Lamb shrugs. He tries to kiss her in passing but she

resists.

“Well you shouldn’t be,” Lamb says and pinches her

arm. When he touches Amy’s body he thinks about his
own and looks at his abdomen. His skeleton is rapidly
decomposing. He is in a cold casket in some far away
field. He shivers. He sees his flesh dehydrating and
disintegrating. Worms crawl around the casket walls.
They look at him and are revolted by his presence. Slowly,
they edge away. They are sick and nauseous. Lamb is sick
and nauseous.

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” Amy says. “I have a

roommate I share a bed with who I feed and clean up
after.” Lamb and Donny laugh. Lamb looks at Amy. She is
smiling but her eyes flutter. Conveying neglect, looking
ordinarily tired. She sets her purse on the couch and
stands between Donny and the television screen.

“What the hell?” Donny says. “Move it. I’m about to

die.”

“Let’s go to a bar,” Amy says. She doesn’t move. “I

had a hell of a day.”

“Big surprise,” Donny says. He presses pause on the

paddle. Sets it on the floor between his legs, exhales,
admits defeat. Amy laughs. Donny shrugs. His shoulders
look heavy when he does this.

Lamb feels temporary sympathy. He walks over to

the refrigerator. Opens it. Searches for alcohol. There is
nothing. He opens the freezer and finds an old water
bottle half-full of Jim Beam. He takes the bottle and puts
it on the counter. Opens the refrigerator again.
Rummages around for something to mix with whiskey. A
carton of soy milk. A can of seltzer water. Nothing. Lamb
realizes he has forgotten to drink anything alcoholic for
several consecutive days. He feels healthy and decides to
give up drinking. He will exercise every morning before
work. He will eat more vegetables. He will floss more
frequently. He will become a better person with a greater
lung capacity. Lamb looks at the wall and imagines the
cells inside his brain multiplying. Growing larger. He feels
smarter. He stands with his eyes closed for five minutes.
He places his hand on his heart. It is beating gradually. He
wonders if his pulse is strong for someone his age. He
counts the beats in his chest. Loses count.

There is shouting when Lamb opens his eyes. Donny

is jumping in front of the television. Donny says, “Finally.
 Thank you God.” Lamb stares at the sink. Blinks at a
stack of dirty dishes.

Amy, puzzled, watches Donny from the kitchen, still

jumping. She looks at Lamb standing in the kitchen
looking at the dishes.

Lamb looks away. Sulks. Takes the bottle in his

hand. Walks to the couch.

“You won?” Lamb says. He rubs his eyes and tries to

focus. He stares at the bottle and wonders what to do. He
smells the contents. His spine stiffens.

“Did we decide to go yet?” Amy says. She stands

and walks over to the sink, picks up a plate, drops it. It
thunders against the sink’s hollow basin. “Where are we
going?” she says.

“I don’t know if I want to go,” Donny says, eyes

glued to the television screen. An animated version of him
twirls a sword as he climbs the stairs of a castle to the
song of trumpeters. Cartoon flags blow. Confetti flies. At
the top of the staircase, Donny embraces a princess.
Donny looks at the television, happy. Almost proud. Lamb
wishes he could always feel the way Donny looks right
now.

“Come on,” Amy says. “It’s not like you have to

wake up early tomorrow. You can bring a friend.”

“Donny doesn’t have any friends,” Lamb says. He

takes a sip from the bottle and coughs a lot. He cannot
stop coughing. “Besides, he doesn’t have any money.”
His eyes water when he hands the bottle to Donny. He
hears voices. The television murmurs in muted breaths.
Nothing makes sense to him. He tries to listen. Water
running. Amy is washing dishes.

Donny looks at the bottle and the princess. Smiles.

Takes the bottle. Offers Lamb the controller. Lamb
doesn’t move. “I always have money to drink,” Donny
says. He takes a sip and looks at the bottle. He takes
another sip.

“So when are we going?” Lamb asks. He is beginning

to feel less nauseous. Still nauseous. He stands up and
walks over to Amy. There are only three dirty dishes left.
Lamb says, “Do you want some help?” and kisses the back
of her arm.

“Almost done,” she says. “I don’t care anymore.”

She shuts the faucet off. Turns around. Dries her

hands on Lamb’s shirt. Lamb touches his stomach. He
feels malnourished but fat. He says, “I need to lose
weight.”

“If you were any thinner you wouldn’t exist,” Amy

says. She opens a makeup cache and applies something to
her face. “Now where are we going?”

“Let’s go wherever you want to go,” Lamb says.

“Yeah,” Donny says. “You decide.” He sits in front of

the television. Yellow boxer shorts. Glasses. The game
restarts. He is back at the start of his mission. He must
travel across hundreds of galaxies again. He must duel
aliens in hand to hand combat for interstellar domination
again. He must fight for good against evil. He must save
the princess again.

Lamb thinks about his yellow bow-tie and

cummerbund. He wonders if the bow-tie and
cummerbund were sold together or separate. He imagines
they were sold individually. He pictures the two articles
of dress clothing alone in different strangers’ closets.
Separate and tired. Miles and miles of highway apart.
Bombs along the highway. Every other mile. Cows and
steeples. Airplanes in the sky. Voices on the radio,
murmurs in the television. Ultraviolet light.

He feels cool and serene, like Michael riding a

buffalo in some pasture on the frontier. Lamb sits in front
of a fan. He adjusts himself and leans backward. He feels
nothing. He moves the fan. Nothing. Again and nothing
again. Am I dying? Cancer on his arms. He will focus all his
energy on better, healthful living. He will be persistent
and disciplined and this will save him from an early death.
From lost arms. From the inevitable.

Donny must save the princess from death. From

aliens. From a galaxy. From cancer. From a galaxy of
cancer.

Lamb feels the urge to fight cancer. He will cut his

arms if he has to; to save his life. He can use an axe or his
father's chainsaw. If Cynthia died of cancer, he wouldn’t
care. She'd drink eggnog and fall out of her chair. Michael
wouldn't say anything because he never does. They'd
laugh about it together at the dinner table. Brothers.
Laughing, looking out the window at American flags in
people's yards. These people would go on to die in
downtown Baptist hospitals. He touches his face and
realizes he is smiling.
“Okay,” Donny says. “Let’s go if we’re going.”

“Where?” Lamb says.

“Around the block,” Donny says. He stands up.

Walks to his closet. Climbs into a pair of pants on which
he wipes his glasses.

“That place is awful,” Amy says. She slips on shoes,

kicks them off, and tries on another pair.

“It’s okay,” Lamb says. “I’ve been there.”

Amy looks worried. Donny walks to the door.

Opens it. Amy looks at Donny, then at Lamb.

“The sooner we leave, the sooner we get back,”

Lamb says. She looks at him. She wears a bored
expression. He doesn’t know what else to say.

Amy decides on a pair of shoes. Puts them on.

Follows Donny out the door.

“I saw your plants today,” Donny says to Amy.

“They look dead.”

“I will water them extra tomorrow,” Amy says.

“They’ll come back to life.”

Lamb wonders how much water it takes to bring

something back to life. Envisions the ocean’s size and
depth. There are waves crashing into a shore. A breeze.
Salt. He thinks about drowning. Is he drowning? Capsizing.
Sinking. Lamb breathes. He is bringing himself back to
life.
 Donny looks at Lamb and says, “Don’t drink too
much,” and laughs. Lamb laughs with Donny, not knowing
why.

“Don’t worry,” Lamb says. He looks at Amy. “I have

work tomorrow.”

Amy doesn’t say anything. She digs through her

purse. Finds a tube of lipstick. Uncaps the tube. Puckers.
Applies.
It is cool outside. The trees along the sidewalk are
imposing. Large green branches reaching around in every
direction. They are oak trees. Lamb’s father cut down the
oak in their front yard with a chainsaw. It was dying, he
said. There were small, green twigs growing from the
stump but the larger branches were barren. Lamb’s father
told him to go inside. Lamb obeyed. His father cut. Lamb
watched from a dining-room window. Sawdust fell on the
lawn. It looked like confetti.

Lamb closes his eyes. Pictures his father in the yard

working. He thinks about doing work. About his career.
He feels a strange sense of guilt. He has never done any
real work in his life. He has never had a callous or a sore
back from manual labor. He's spoiled and useless.

He once fantasized about a redeeming life of moral

and praiseworthy value. He would like to meet the
perfect woman—an Indian princess—and marry her. Move
out to the country and buy a piece of property. A farm,
log cabin. On the frontier. He would have goats, horses,
cows, chickens. He would plant crops and work in the
fields. He would grow his own food. The harvest would be
the most exciting time of year. He would have many
children who would work in the fields with him. He would
teach them the value of a hard day’s work. Teach them
how to live redeeming lives. His children would teach
these values to their children, his grandchildren, who
would climb on his lap and ask him to tell stories about
his life as a young man. They would want to hear about
the adventures and experiences of their grandfather.
Lamb would tell these children stories. This makes him
happy. Proud of the life he has lived.
Lamb is shivering. Donny and Amy walk into the bar. He
follows them in. Looks around. The bar is full of blue
neon with many people talking, screaming, and laughing.
Singing together. Enjoying themselves. The company of
others. Lamb feels alive and suddenly wants to die. The
bar is crowded and there is no place to sit. Everyone
looks happy. What he should do to feel the way the people in the
bar look? Lamb thinks he should have stayed in. He has
work in the morning and doesn’t want to feel hungover.
He thinks he should quit his job and move to the country.
He hopes Donny and Amy will only want one drink.
Donny and Amy talk to one another and Lamb doesn’t
know what to say. He doesn’t want to speak. Impassioned
murmurs surround him. Lamb can’t hear anything clearly.
He hopes no one asks him any questions and thinks about
calling his father. He wonders what he'd say. Loses his
train of thought. Counts the seconds as they pass. Loses
count. Feels awkward and antisocial. Tries to think of a
way to participate. Donny, how is the job search going? Amy, I
like your shoes. Hey guys, how do you feel about buying a Webber
grill for the balcony?

People swarm around the bar. John Cougar

Mellencamp sings, “Come on baby make it hurt so good.”
There is only one bartender on duty. His shirt has a palm
tree on the chest. Its branches look tired. He ignores
Donny hunched over the bar waving cash in the blue
neon light. Donny says curse words to himself out loud.
Amy looks around the barroom at other girls. Jealously.
Touching her earrings. Looking at her shoes. There is no
place to move. Lamb looks around. Sees a television.
Candlelight. There are strange animal taxidermy hanging
from the walls. A fish. A deer. A buffalo. He rubs his eyes.
He keeps rubbing. Lamb tells Amy he will be right back.
He walks to the bathroom through a labyrinth of
amorphous forms. At the sink, he furiously scrubs his
hands. The bathroom is dark and messy. There are no
paper towels or soap.

Lamb looks at himself in the mirror. His face is still

where it should be. His eyes. His ears. In place. He looks at
his hair. Feels greasy. Less nauseous. He can hear John
Cougar Mellencamp singing, “You don’t have to be so
exciting.” He moves his feet and realizes he is standing in
a puddle of water. Disgusted, he stands still in it. He
doesn’t want to move. He is a volcanic island, pushed
through the earth’s crust by the geothermal energy. Again
he looks at his reflection and wonders how to erupt. He
longs to erupt. He will erupt. John Cougar Mellencamp
says, “Sometimes love don’t feel like it should.” Lamb runs
his fingers through his hair. He looks at the soap suds on
the sink, popping, running down the drain. He presses his
arms together. This body is decomposing. This skin is withering.
He looks at his hands. His skin. He feels tired. He is dying.
He will die in the Baptist hospital downtown. Someone
knocks on the bathroom door. Lamb looks at himself and
then away. He feels removed from everything he touches.
Tired. Sick. His fingers are miles away. The door knob is in
a different galaxy. The mirror is a different time zone.
Lamb steps out of the puddle slowly. Splashes. Ripples
glance off the soles of his shoes. He coughs. He coughs
again. He spits. Sees a roadside in his reflection. A steeple.
His building. Brick. Balconies. A chainsaw. An alcoholic
water bottle from long ago. Dries his hands on his t-shirt.
Opens the door. There is a fat man standing outside. He is
wearing a cowboy hat. Sweating. Lamb gives him a half
smile. The fat man has no face. Lamb passes. Disappears
into the crowd of people. Lamb looks around. The bar is
dark. The air is opaque. His vision blurs. There is cigarette
smoke. Blue neon light. He is alone. He will remain this
way, suspended, dying, alone with everyone.
 3 A. M. Magazine
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—Christy Call
A MILE DOWN FROM THE MISSION
He smiled. Some of the teeth were green, others brown.
They hung between his lips, twisted together under black
gums.

Teddy started with the arms. He shifted in his chair.

The arms—browner than the face, crossed over a barrel
chest, elbows ashen, white scars from thirty years in
cement. Teddy’s pencil moved over the page. Arms, up
the shoulders; neck like a band of strings holding a head
to a body long ago retired. He went on: the small ears,
eyes like empty holes in a field of creases.

He checked it over. The left cheek needed some

shading. “You’re an ugly bastard,” Teddy said in English.
He handed the drawing over. The old man held it up in
the doorway, squinting in the afternoon light. “Like
looking in a mirror, right?” The old man turned from the
drawing and looked at him. His smile had grown. “Just
shut your mouth and pay me.”

Teddy held up two fingers. The old man dug into

his pocket and came out with two bronze coins that must
have been as old as he was. Teddy took the coins and put
them under the baseball cap on his head. He tucked the
pencil behind his ear. The old man did not move.

“Get the fuck out of here!”

The old man wobbled out, showing the picture to

everyone he passed. A breeze came in from the street and
brought with it the smell of the fish market down the way
and the coming of rain.
 Teddy shut his eyes. He heard a scraping sound and
opened them to his next customer. A crippled woman
pulled herself across the floor on a piece of card board,
legs bent like some kind of broken toy. Once at the chair,
she lifted herself into place and nodded for Teddy to
begin. He shook his head. She held up two fingers, the
only ones on her right hand. “No,” he said. She climbed
down from the chair and pulled herself out the door.

Rain fell, turning the street to mush. The people ran

home. Those without homes came into the crowded café.
Except the children, who owned the streets during storms.
Bodies huddled around tables. The owner sported a tray
of warm whiskey. When he reached Teddy, there were no
glasses on the tray, only coins. The man bowed and
disappeared into the kitchen.

Teddy smelled the whiskey as it poured into

people’s mouths. It cut off all things—the sweat, mud, and
rain. He felt trapped in a room with no air. The only way
to breathe was whiskey.

The owner returned with a tray full of glasses. He

came to Teddy first. He placed one of them on the table.
Teddy covered it with his hand.

“Tea.”

“Tea?”

Teddy nodded. The man took the whiskey back,

bewildered. He served the others.
A child ran through the doorway and slid to a stop,
covered in rain and mud. The boy maneuvered amongst
the tables until he reached Teddy.

He stood, breathing heavy, presented the note in his

hand, put it on the table, and scurried out the way he
came. Teddy watched him go. He read the note with a
gentle touch, flattening it out with his pencil:

I have heard you have skill in the art of painting. I would

like to pay you. Take the dirt road a mile down from the
mission. I’m at the grey house.

The words ran together like the rain collecting

outside, turning the street into a river. The children swam
as it rose and rose.

Teddy felt trapped, caught inside a hell of cripples.

He liked nothing but the whiskey and the whiskey was a
woman lying naked on a bed begging him to fuck her.

Teddy looked for an exit. An expatriated American

sat in the corner, stained with dirt. Teddy remembered
him as a truck driver. He crossed the café with his hand
to his mouth so that nothing might enter it. The
American smoked a cigar.

“Where’s your truck?”

He puffed and looked up at Teddy as if he might not

be there.

“The painter,” he said.

“Do you have your truck with you?”

 “You’re a painter, right?”

“Right. I’m a painter. You’re a truck driver. Do you

have your truck with you?”

“Sure. I keep it in my pocket,” he tapped his chest,

“right next to the picture of Ma.”

Teddy reached under his cap. He produced five

coins and a ten note in his palm. “This’ll be enough,” he
said, “I need you to take me somewhere.”

“Sure, Van Gogh, the train leaves next week.”

“It leaves in ten minutes.”

“So go wait at the station.”

Teddy pulled another note from the fold inside his

cap. Together it was all he’d made in a few months. He
held it out to the man, wanting him to take it.

“Ain’t drivin’ in this,” the man said.

“No. You’re just going to sit here till that thing

burns a hole in your tongue and this money rots in my
hand, right?”

“Why you in such a hurry?”

“I’ve got an appointment.”

“Whores can wait.”

“The grey house, just outside of town.”

 “What color you gonna paint the walls?”

Teddy didn’t answer. He held the money under the

man’s nose. He tapped the cigar on the edge of his seat.
Ash fell onto Teddy’s left shoe.

“If I get stuck in that mess, I’m taking more than

your money.”

“You’re looking at all I’ve got.”

The driver nodded.

After a quick stop by Teddy’s room to secure his supplies,
the truck turned carefully down the small dirt road. The
tires sank.

The driver clenched an unlit cigar in his teeth,

grinned at Teddy. “I hope you have fun. This might be the
last money you ever spend.”

Teddy ran a hand over the top of his paint box,

gathering dust in his palm. He had not painted since his
arrival—he wouldn’t waste good brushes on beggars.

Through a stretch of papaya trees, Teddy saw the

gray house. “That’s it,” he said.

The airfield was near unrecognizable with water

running over it, carrying everything from palm branches
to dead birds. No one was coming to or leaving this
place. Except for candlelight in the windows, it looked
uninhabited. The driver pulled up to the front steps. He
kept his foot tight to the pedal and his hands bracing the
wheel.

Teddy withdrew the money once more from his cap.

“Lay it on the seat,” the man said.

“Will you wait?”

“No way.”

“Whatever I get in there, you’ll get a piece of it.”

“No way, Van Gogh. Rather go home hungry and

dry.”
 Teddy laid the money on the tweed seat. He tucked
the paint box under his shirt and clutched the canvas
close to his chest. He opened the door and stumbled into
the storm.

He climbed the steps and approached a door of old

wood between marble walls. There was a string that led
to a golden bell. Teddy pulled it. He didn’t hear the
sound of someone coming; the door opened to his
surprise and revealed an elegant woman.

“It’s an awful time to come calling,” she said. She

was made to be still and painted, placed on an
undeserving wall. Her white dress hung tight in precisely
the right places. Her face was unforgiving.

“I received a note from someone—”

“Come in,” she said and slammed the door behind

him.

Her heels clacked across the floor. He peered into

the adjoining rooms: carpets, tapestries, plush chairs,
glass tables. He could have been anywhere besides where
he was, in a world outside the world. Even the rain was
far removed.

“Someone sent for me,” Teddy explained.

“I don’t know anything about someone,” she told

him, “I’m the only one here right now.”

“A note, you sent a note.”

“Charles and Buck went down south on some grand

adventure. I don’t think they knew the rain would keep
them. The others are gone. It’s slow here. I’m only here
for a few more days.”

Teddy glanced at her legs peeking halfway through

her dress.

“We’ll work in the upstairs study,” she said.

“Alright.”

She led him into a stuffy room of little statues and

the polished tusks of elephants. She commanded a chair,
legs crossed. “Set up wherever you feel comfortable,” she
directed.

Teddy looked around. There was no light but that

coming from a few candles on a nearby desk. The far
reaches of the room faded in the dark. He struggled with
an ancient stuffed leather chair, opened his paint box,
felt the brushes in his hand, and grinned in honesty. The
woman sat stern.

He took the conventional pencil from behind his

ear and began to sketch her shape.

“I didn’t say we should start,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want you to paint me.”

“I didn’t know—”

“That’s not why I asked you to come here.”

 “Alright. So. You did ask me to come here.”

“I heard that you possess the skills to paint. Is that

true?”

“That’s what I do,” he said.

“And you paint portraits?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want you to paint my portrait.”

“Alright.”

“Not as I am now, you see?”

She waited for him to answer.

“If you can explain a little more, I think I might be

able to understand what you’re saying.”

“My mother looked exactly as I look.”

He nodded.

“She was a good woman with the means and desire

to have herself painted. It was an accident of fate it never
happened.”

“You want me to paint you as if you were your

mother?”

She nodded.
 “Do you have a photograph?”

“Not with me.”

“It might be hard to—”

“I look exactly like her. Paint me and she’ll appear.”

“I’ll try.”

He scratched the paper.

“I was hoping you might include something in the

painting.”

“Anything.”

“My mother owned a snake. She called him Byron,

after the poet.”

“You want the snake in the painting?”

“Yes.”

“Where do you want it?”

“What do you mean?”

“On the chair? In her lap?”

“She held it.”

“Alright.”

“She’d sit in a room just like this but with a small

window, like in an attic, do you know what I mean?”
 “Yes,” he said.

“She’d spend all afternoon, just sitting here, holding

Byron.”

“I’ll try to put it on the canvas.”

“She wouldn’t let anyone in until she put him back

in his cage and she came down to prepare for dinner.”

His eyes turned down. She breathed heavy.

“I hid in the room one afternoon and watched

mother with Byron. I’ll never forget it,” she said.

Teddy moved his pencil on the canvas, making light

strokes. The candles did not flicker. The light clung to
her body like glue and he imagined the snake in her hands
slowly crawling downward, her head tilting back in
ecstasy.

“Don’t you want to know what color it was?”

“What?”

“The color?”

“I haven’t gotten my paints out yet.”

“He was yellow. Not like mustard but like cabs in

New York. Do you know the ones I mean?”

“Yes.”

He tucked the pencil behind his ear. “Is there a

place I can grab a glass of water?”

“With that storm, I can’t imagine someone feeling

thirsty,” she said. “Second door on the right down the
hall.”

He stood. His hands stretched for the paints but he

pulled them back. He left the room in a hurry.
He found the rain in his shoe on the second step. He went
a bit further and let the water carry him with it, felt the
earth vulnerable beneath his feet. The river smelled of
mountains and engulfed everything. He turned to see the
grey house was gone with his paints and the canvas and
that beautiful woman. Traveling by flood, he was relieved
to let them all go.

On the largest mango tree for miles, he saw

monkeys hiding in the branches. When they spoke, he
realized they were children. He took hold of the trunk
and fastened himself to it. The children laughed at such a
big thing dragging itself out of the water and into the
branches with them. He watched them laugh and throw
mangos into the flood and soon, as the moon came out in
the dim sky, the rain came to a stop and Teddy walked
with the water only up to his knees.

He entered the café as muddy as the messenger

child. Some noticed him, others did not. At one of the
tables, the crippled woman from before sat talking to a
man with a curled mustache. Teddy squeezed through to
her and held up two fingers. She nodded.
@youtube
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dispatch is currently seeking a culture
editor. applicants should be
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—Christy Call
 LA PLACE D’ALBERTAS
We come upon it by a narrow street. Here we are,
walking, and I’m always just a little confused, never sure
where the traffic is coming from. Keep a vigil on the
pavement because nobody in the town of Aix-en-
Provence has ever picked up after their dog, and there
seem to be a lot of dogs here.

Close on either side I’m aware of the height of the

buildings, how dark everything is because the sun’s going
down and the streetlights aren’t on yet. I start feeling
claustrophobic but a minute later we come around a
corner and I see the corridor open up.

The square we enter is paved with broken

cobblestones, which feel uneven but sturdy beneath my
feet. In the middle is a fountain, which is nice, but this is
the “City of Fountains” and I’m already writing this one
off as somewhat lackluster. One building forms three
sides of the courtyard, virtually indistinguishable from
every other old building we’ve passed. The first story is
weathered dingy—the color akin to nicotine yellow—and
the plaster of the top two levels is cracked and uneven.
Two signs on the closest wall: one says Place d’Albertas and
the other says Hotel d’Albertas, so I ask Grace what the
difference is.

“Hotel is building, place is piazza,” she says. Oh-tell. I

guess that makes sense. Before I can shrug a response
some unseen hand turns on the streetlights. Seconds ago
in the dying light the building looked haphazard and grim.
Now the façade is flushed with a healthy white gold that
crawls up the columns between the windows. On either
side of the courtyard are arched doorways, painted green,
and above them two globes shine benevolently toward
the fountain. Shadows carve a visage, an impartial
knowing face. Tall shutters hang black like judges’ robes. I
could write a novel about this place. I’m about to grab
the notebook out of my back pocket, but the girl has
already started walking up the street, and I know I can’t
write and watch for dog crap at the same time.

We met while she was studying abroad in New

York. I gave a guest lecture at her school and she
approached afterwards with some schmuck wearing horn-
rimmed glasses and a thrift store blazer. Later I saw her
again, alone, in the lobby, and we exchanged email
addresses. Her name was Grace and she wrote three
months later, from Aix. The timing was right and I hopped
the first plane over.

Back in her apartment she makes tea while I

scribble frantically in my notebook. Looking over I see
her, wreathed in steam, tip the kettle. There is diligent
purpose in her movements, befitting her name.

She walks to the table balancing a saucer and cup in

each hand. “Your new book is going to be published, no?”
she asks.

“Two weeks.”

“And now you are writing again.” A smile. “Do you

take breaks?”

“Not that I can remember,” I say, looking down at

the table. She assumes this notebook is the beginning of a
story. While always carrying it makes it convenient when I
have an idea, this is the journal my therapist in high
school recommended. When kids asked about it, I’d say I
was a writer, and eventually I made that lie true.

“What is it about?” she asks, extending her hand to

tap the table near my notebook. Follow her lines, from
the fingernail she’s painted deep blue, up her wrist, then
along the smooth tan forearm to her elbow. The knob of
it protrudes only slightly, and disappears into toned flesh
when straightened. Her sleeve is pushed up but I can see
the outline and form behind the cotton blouse. Skin
reappearing just below her neck, elongated on this side
by the way she tilts her head when she asks a question.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I say, sliding my hand on

top of hers.
I’m alone, it’s dark. I still have to keep my eyes down as I
make my way through the labyrinth of streets, up, across,
crooked, and I’m still worried about being hit by a car. It’s
just this kind of paranoid vigilance that’s kept me from
remembering street names all day.

Grace’s attitude had shifted to quiet isolation, but

whether ultimately condescension or embarrassment I
couldn’t tell because she wasn’t making eye contact. If
she’d been like that for the sex, none of this would have
happened.

There we’d been, her naked body against mine, my

hands reaching down and back to explore every inch of
skin. Her hair brushed against my stomach as she
removed my belt, my pants, my boxers. The cotton sheets
were cool. She rose to press her mouth onto mine, her
hand massaging me and me almost ready—then I opened
my eyes. Just for a second, but all I could see were her
eyes, green, penetrating, unblinking. My body paused, my
hands faltered, tongue receded.

The street opens into a long mall. Both sides are

enormous walkways, with trees planted at intervals, and
café terraces jutting out: areas of patio tables roped off
with people filling the seats because it’s only a little after
dinner, and the night is warm. The road zags right, but the
sidewalk continues forward and so do I. This is a place we
passed a couple hours ago but now it's new and looks
better at night. That makes me think of the Hotel
d’Albertas, and I wonder if I could get a room. If I could
even find it.
 Grace fumbled to say something, to smile, but I
read her disappointment. I held up a hand to silence her
and when she tried to stroke my chest I pushed her arm
away.

There’s a fountain covered in moss, running water

that hugs the broken green surface. Feeling the heat come
off it, I realize this must be from one of the warm-water
springs. Imagine what it would look like in the winter,
ghosts of steam hovering around it catching beams from
streetlights.

There’s a café across the street, and I hesitate

momentarily to run through a checklist of how to order
coffee, what coins to pay with. I walk over to one of the
tables and look around before I sit. The waiter is at his
station and when he sees me he gives a slight nod. I pick a
chair facing away from the street.

The waiter intuitively addresses me in a touristese,

a mixture of English and French, “Bonsoir, monsieur.
What to begin with?”

“Just some coffee,” I say.

My flight is a week away, and it might take that long

to muster up the courage to go back to her apartment to
retrieve my luggage. Besides, going to that apartment
can’t compare to what’ll be waiting in the States.

“Deacon,” Grace says and sits. “I found you.”

“What are the odds?”

“You are not hard to follow.” She smiles. She looks

so beautiful and sweet I blush and apologize.

“Shhh,” Grace says. “You must have a lot of things in

your mind.” Tings. She smiles but doesn’t hold eye contact
for long, or maybe it’s me who looks away first. Either
way. It’s awkward and my nerves almost open up to
unload a history of parents, childhood, ex-girlfriends: half
explanation, half confession. Something holds my tongue.
I ask questions about her.

She tells me she studied history in college, then

hesitates like she’s waiting for the inevitable criticism. I
tell her I was a philosophy major.

“And your parents; what did they say about

philosophy?”

“Probably the same thing your parents said about

history: What’s the point?”

“Very true. I told them I would be a teacher, but

they still want me to work in their store so I can run it
when they are old. They think I am ungrateful.”

“You said it was a wine shop, right?”

“No,” she says. “It’s a liquor store. Just a vulgar

liquor store.”

“But they own it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s something.” I slide my hand on top of

hers again. Now there is no spark, only the dull ache of
understanding. I leave it there until the waiter comes to
tell us that the café is closing. Then we walk back to her
apartment.
The next day we hop the TGV from Marseilles to Paris.
Train à Grande Vitesse. We sit across from one another with
a table between us. We’re on the eastern side of the train
and I have a headache from staying up all night so I close
the window blinds and my eyes. I’m in no condition to
sleep, but pretending to sleep is satisfying in a peculiar
way.

I’ve given her an advance copy of the new book. I

can sense her thumbing through the opening pages now,
probably questioning the dedication. It would probably
be better if there were no dedication at all. I shrug. It’s
done.

We’re half an hour out and I want to peek out the

window to see what two hundred miles an hour looks
like, but at the same time I don’t want her to know I’m
awake. I spend the entire ride with my eyes closed. It
doesn’t feel like we’re going so fast, but we must be
because the train arrives in Paris long before it should be
possible.

Grace and I eat soup d’onion at an outdoor bistro

near the station. The sidewalk is packed with every kind
of human being imaginable, shuffling along, looking and
pointing.

“What do you want to see?” she asks. She is

methodically stirring and blowing across the surface of
the lumpy brown soup. She lowers her head to take a sip.
Looking up at me she closes her lips, removes the spoon.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Really, I just wanted to ride

the train.”
 “You’ve been here before, no?”

“A semester in college.” I dip my baguette and stir it

around. There is already bread in the soup. Like a typical
American, I wish there were some kind of meat involved,
but I’ve learned not to voice this opinion.

“The Eiffel Tower, we could go there.”

“I hate the lines.” I take a sip. “Let’s just stay here.”

She shrugs with only the slightest hint of

annoyance.

“Maybe walk around a little,” I add.

After lunch we drink coffee and she reads the book

while I nervously reread the same paragraph in a
collection of Kafka’s short stories I carry with me because
it fits in my pocket.

I start to feel anxious so we pay and walk down to

the Seine. The dappled shade combines with the breeze
coming across the water, adding freshness to what would
otherwise be a crowded pathway. As it is, with the dozen
different languages chattering around us, Grace and I can
speak privately.

“Well,” I say.

“I’ve read the first chapter,” she says.

We stop and lean against the low wall running

beside the path. Grace tells me we’re looking at the Pont
Neuf.
 “This is my favorite bridge,” she says. Breedge. “Not
so fancy, like some of the others, but it is the oldest in
Paris.” The Pont Neuf is simple, stout stonework that
crosses the Seine at the western tip of the Île de la Cité.
“This was built by King Henri the Third or Fourth, I cannot
remember, sixteenth century I think.” She smiles and
shrugs.

We watch the water sliding by, and when I don’t say

anything, she continues.

“I thought of it because of your book.”

“How so?” I ask.

“Well,” she says, “Henri did not get along very well
with his father. The old king was embarrassed and… angry
that his son was fonder of art than hunting and fighting.
He told Henri that he would not give up the throne unless
he could act like a king.” Gulls cry overhead as a
sightseeing cruise boat drifts lazily downstream.

“So did Henri change?”

“No, and he still became king.” She looks me in the

eyes to decide whether or not to go further. I’m silent.
“The character of the father in this story reminded me of
the old king. He is not like the father figures in your other
books,” she says.

“No,” I say.

“And usually,” she says with an insightful look, “you

do not write in the first person.”
 I shift my gaze out across the water.

Grace laughs and gives me a smile. “ I just meant to

say that I think you are changing your style, and I like it. It
is more,” she pauses, “authentic. So, will the narrator in
your book be like Henri?” Grace asks.

“I guess you’ll have to finish it,” I say. “Then you tell

me.”

Walking again, the Eiffel Tower becomes visible

behind a group of tall buildings. She points to it and
raises her eyebrows but I still don’t want to go. “Let’s
walk back,” I say.

We spend the rest of the evening visiting little

shops, then another meal and a bottle of wine. Soon the
horizon’s color matches our merlot and we start back. I
feel flushed as we hold hands and walk through the TGV
station.

Grace stops at the information desk for directions.

A mother tugs her little boy toward their departure gate,
his legs stumbling to keep up and his head swiveling back
and forth in a wide-eyed attempt to understand this
place. Catching his eye I give him a knowing half-smile.
He averts his eyes, embarrassed.

Grace reads as we sit on the platform together, and

then perks her head up at the call of our train. The ride
back is much less crowded than the first trip and the
cabin is only half full as we lurch forward.

There is no moon tonight, no stars that I can see,

and once we leave the city limits there is very little light
at all. Looking out the window I know we are at full
speed, but I can’t see it, and don’t feel it either. We come
around a bend, and I’m unable to make out the landscape
but something has opened up and the black horizon shifts
to seem further away. My thoughts jump to the Place
d’Albertas and I put Kafka away to pull the notebook
from my bag. I write for a couple of minutes, but I’m
restless and can’t focus.

Grace is staring at me across the top of the book

I’ve given her, and with a simple nod she returns to the
page. I look from her to my notebook, finish my sentence
and put it away. The train cuts through shadowy forests
and fields and hills. We travel very fast; because of the
darkness, I can only guess the speeds that carry us
forward.
Flashquake 322 Review
—Travis Mills
dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.
applicants should be generally on top of current events,
both mainstream and alternative, and should have at
least three 210–250–word dispatches to submit for
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one will be approved. dispatch@litareview.com
It takes a lot of imagination to
be realistic because reality is
so much more than we
imagine.
—Alpha Dog Lo

see also: Southpaw Journal

litareview.com
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©2009 Ian Singleton

typefaces: Magellan, Accolade, & Friz Quadrata

—Christy Call
 CARAVEL
The bar was dark and covered in a thin industrial
carpeting, crowded with hangdog strangers. A man who
looked like my Uncle sat quietly on a stool by a karaoke
machine, clutching his drink and a microphone. An
orange coat came in through a plume of breath into the
warm din. He sat down next to me and ordered in a
Spanish accent. How you doing, he asked.

I’m all right, I said.

All right, here's to you my friend, he said and lifted

his glass.

Thank you, I said. We drank and set our glasses

down. Behind the bar, on a hutch above half-full bottles
of sundry liquors, hung pictures of men standing on logs
or in front of empty dirt fields, as well as a photograph of
Ernest Hemingway sporting a mustache and a sage smile.

You know who looks like Ernest Hemingway, I

asked.

Who, replied my friend.

My Uncle. He looks like Hemingway, I mumbled.

That man drank a lot, said my friend.

My Uncle and Hemingway could've been twin

brothers, I said.
 I seen a picture, my friend. He drank, like, a couple
bottles of the hot stuff a day.

I drew in my whiskey, savored the burn, and

wheezed, He was a tough dude.

You got it, my friend.

I heard a woman's hoarse laugh behind us and said,

You can drink like that when you've been through as
much trouble with women as him.

We bought another round, shot it. My friend faced

me and said, I want to tell you a story. I lose my mother
to the cancer. She was very special to me. On the night
when I lose her, I was at the bar and had one drink. Just
one, my friend! I wake up the next day. I was in the alley.

I see, I said nodding at the bartender to pour again.

I am no light drinker my friend.

I spotted a pair of legs two seats away, looked at

my phone, and slid over. My friend chuckled. They were
holding their drinks with gentle hands, watching the
bartender open the floor panel. As I approached, one set
her glass down and pinched shut the purse in her lap. I
nodded and the brunette smiled at me, then flashed blue
eyes at her friend. Do you want a drink, I asked.

She sat back and smiled with thin stretched lips.

Why don't you buy us a couple and take it easy yourself,
hon?

How many have you had, I asked. I realized I had

growled at her and the bar had become silent. I ordered
another drink and raised my empty glass to Ernest
Hemingway. Looks like my Uncle, I said.
I woke sitting up from the sofa to reach the phone.

Tommy?

Hello. Who's speaking?

It's your pop.

I didn't reply.

Tommy, listen. You gotta listen to me now, your

Uncle's passed away.

Which, I asked.

My father stopped breathing. He started again slow,

Uncle Dem. Uncle Demetrius. He’s been missing for some
time now.

Yes, I know that. Fifteen years.

His body was found in a motel down in Bridgman,

Michigan.

As the night before came back to me, I almost

tumbled into laughter.

I think—here my father paused for thought—I think

he was trying to get closer to South Bend. He had a lot of
memories down there.

So you want me to go? To take care of this

business?

Yeah. You're gonna have to, Tommy. You live

closest.

What if I don't give a damn?

Tommy, this is your blood relative.

Aren't you his blood relative too? His long-lost

brother who hasn't seen him in forever?

My father swallowed a deep breath over the

receiver.

I'll go, but only 'cause no one else will. Blood

relations, I said.

All right.

Bye.

He sighed once more.

I said bye.

Bye, Tommy.
Sunday morning around nine, I left for Bridgman. I set the
odometer to zero, planning to drive the highway until I
saw Lake Michigan's reflection on the pavement, then
switch to the shore road. I put on some music, a faint
dwindling guitar and voice.

You wouldn't make the five hour drive back to Petoskey to

be at work Monday morning anyways. You should have called
Jessie and told her, even though she said it was over. The
morning sun had paled and sooty clouds butted against
the horizon. That evening you and Jess made plans to see a
movie and met to carpool. On the way, she asked to stop on that
hilltop while the sun set. There was plenty of time, so you pulled
in. The sun was a beautiful sherbet color. You peered straight into
it, focused until your eyes quivered and dampened and you had to
shut them. When you opened, the sky was darker and she was
staring at you. She came closer and you embraced. You made love
on the highway without worrying about passing cars seeing into
the backseat. You even returned to the same spot after a few
drinks and made love again, then slept until morning. Right before
the sun rose you woke and watched it, alert, waiting and wanting
to cry again. But the clouds blocked the light.

I eyed myself in the mirror and saw the clouds in

the reflection. Uncle Dem was always a sad story. A member
of my family died, like my father said. I stretched my back
and sat upright. The wedding of cousin Claude, Uncle
Dem's son, came to mind.

You were smoking in an alley by a hotel and ma was after

you. She spotted you in the lobby and nagged all the way to the
twelfth floor. Even when she came out of the elevator, her voice
echoed off the walls. Inside the room, Grandpa and Pop and Neal
waited by the window, each in a suit and tie. You were rifling
through your suitcase for the blazer and ma shook her head as she
passed all us men then shut the door to the bathroom. We only get
together every once in a while and you gotta mess everything up,
she moaned, muffled by the door. We're waiting for you now.
C'mon, your father said. The light through the window shone
down on grandpa as if he were already in Heaven. You were
sliding your arms through the blazer, but then you had to put on
the tie so you took the blazer off. While you were fiddling with
that, grandpa said, He was about your age when we moved. We
moved a lot too. That's probably when he started drinking.
Probably when it started to go bad for him. That was soon after
Uncle Dem disappeared with his car and a forty-five, the start of
fifteen years without contact. The Family imagined him working
odd jobs, barely living. Ma prayed he wouldn't use the pistol to
harm anyone including himself and her prayers were answered—no
one heard anything. But all that day, Uncle Dem was the one who
did it first—snuck cigarettes, the ones for moms losing weight;
drove around with his friends; smoked at the mall and catcalled
women. You thought you would die in a field drinking cheap beer.
At eleven AM, I reached the city of Manistee. in view of
Lake Michigan to the west. The sun emerged from the
clouds and glistened on the lake through the spokes of
trees, making slivers of the dalliance. I pulled off as soon
as I could, but when I stopped at a dirt road and pointed
toward the lake, clouds shrouded the sun and the
glimmer on the water vanished.

When I saw a few haggard trees above a dirt lot

with a trailer, I braked and tooled into the parking lot. A
sign read Roadside Cafe. I stepped in the door and found a
seat across from a short blonde sitting on the outside of a
booth, her legs snug beneath the table in ski pants. When
she stood I watched her. She must have seen me from the
reflection in the window because she glanced over her
shoulder and twitched her mouth. She entered the
Women's. I opened the greasy menu and read the specials,
flipping the page, slouching. Three small children
bounced in unattended. I lowered the menu to see the
blonde paying the cashier and trying to keep the children
from hopping into her elbows. There was no glance back
as I watched her leave herded by the kids toward a man
outside blocking the sun from his eyes.

You from around here, asked the waitress.

No.

What can I get you?

She was staring away and rolling her shoulders to

stretch her neck.

I just want a coffee, I said.

 She huffed as she wrote on her pad, mentioned how
quick it would be, and swiveled on her heel.

An old man was smoking a cigarette and looking at

two buzzcuts in baggy jeans and sweatshirts sitting on the
curb next to their bikes. I slid out of the booth and raised
my hand to signal the waitress. I'm just gonna go over to
that gas station for a minute.

It's gonna be ready in a sec, hon.

I just gotta get some smokes, I said. I bounded

toward the door and pushed through, then clasped my
coat around myself and took long scissoring strides to the
gas station.

The boys yelled at me to buy them cigarettes. The

first time you bought smokes was at a store that sold to minors.
You used the money ma gave you for a treat before you stepped
out the door that afternoon. Dem started at about fourteen. He
must have been smoking in the diner where he met his wife, Fran,
and soon after moved into that apartment outside South Bend.
She mothered two children, Claude and Belle, after finding work
as a secretary at a lawyer's office—a real good job, the family
said. He must have been sitting there smoking and drinking in the
living room and in comes Fran. It was a hard day at work, but
Dem got a head start on the drinking. The kids are out playing
and it's a late winter evening so the sun slants through the
windows and exposes all the winter dust in the room. She comes
in with a bang of the door and another bang when she slams her
bags against the baseboard.

You know how much time I spent on the goddamn phone

today?
 He chortles and stretches out his back.

Yeah, I see you give a crap sittin' there in your chair.

Well, don't bring it up if it was such a bad day, he says.

You're home now. Have a drinky-poo, he says raising the glass to
her without taking his eyes off the television.

This is about all you do, isn’t it, she snarls.

About all you do is bitch, he murmurs. Then the plastic

ashtray by the sofa licks him in the cheek. He's dusting his lips,
the ashes moist in his mouth. He opens his eyes and sees the
cigarette butts in his lap. When he blinks the ash falls from his
eyelids. He rises, levelling his glare, tosses his beer bottle sloshing
in the seat, and takes one step to slap her on her cheek. And it
lands hard and knocks her into the corner where she sinks down
muttering apologies and touching her face. He raises his hand
again but then stops. Instead, he shatters the small window in the
door with his fist, bloodying his hand, and is out the door.

Then he left and traveled almost seven years, visiting less

and less. Until Claude left too and Belle lost touch and the fifteen
years' absence began.

I entered through the door again, just as the

waitress approached and set a styrofoam cup down.

It’s to-go. I'll just be right here, she said as she sat
down at the counter and began to read a book the size of
a pulp novel. After a little while she spoke, You sure you
don't want some eggs or something?

I raised an eyebrow, shaking my head and stirring

my coffee.
 It's been a year since you spoke to ma except to send her a
card on Mother's Day. You left work with some friends who had
stopped at the store to buy cards for their mothers. You watched
them select theirs then grabbed one yourself. While the three of
them stood in line you felt a shame deep inside.

The waitress was staring so I turned to her and she

faced the kitchen again.

Hey. Where am I exactly, I asked.

You're just north of Holland. About half an hour

south of Muskegon.

I'm coming from Petoskey.

Welcome. You doing a road trip?

I hesitated then mumbled, My Uncle died.

She winced and let herself off the stool, Well you're
doing a good thing for your family by coming down here.

She shuffled into the kitchen watching over her

shoulder. The look made me realize I was alone in the
diner. I turned to the window and saw that the sun was
getting lower, the day darker. The metal trailer wall
pressed cold against my elbow. A vague inertia kept me
sitting there. I lit a cigarette and watched the sunset, then
stood to order another coffee. Time wasted any way you did
it.

The cook came out and set down another cup of

coffee, then smiled with buck teeth.
 Pop drove you down here. You shouldn't have come this far
just because of him.

I stood again and asked for the check. This time, the
waitress stepped through the door while the cook
watched from behind the counter. She strode up and, as I
was sitting back down, let the check fall like a leaf onto
the table.

Once in my car again, I wondered if Jessie had

called and opened the dashboard to search for my
cellphone. Then I stopped, took a deep breath, and shut
the compartment. The sun was setting. I watched the
yellow line on the highway.

One night you locked yourself out on the porch, on the cold
wooden two-by-fours. You almost froze that night.
When I entered Bridgman after driving all day, my throat
had started to close. The coroner's office was the only
bright building on the street. I squealed into an empty
spot and shut the car off. I rotated my shoulders while
exhaling to crack my spine. I looked for another person
attending to a dead relative. You were always alone. I
stepped out and climbed the many stairs to enter the
warm building, my legs jumping after such a long drive.

The columns echoed my steps as I approached the

window. My words were automatic until the officer on
duty chuckled.

You got here just in time. We don't usually take

people after six.

Thank you, I said.

He led me down a long dim hallway. We passed

through two sets of metal-plated swinging doors into a
room bright with fluorescence.

In an instant, the mortician had removed the body

and laid it on a table. I identified my Uncle and shut my
eyes. He no longer looked like Ernest Hemingway or the
man, real or imagined, in my memories. He looked like my
father. The mortician was watching me when I opened my
eyes again.

The possessions are up here. I just gotta get you to

sign. There's not very much.

How was it he died?

We determined it was exhaustion and poisoning

related to alcohol.

So—I began to speak in a deeper voice but winced. I

nodded until my neck cracked, then winced again and
scribbled my name on each form.

Well, if there's no more questions?

I dropped the pen, No.

I'm sorry for you. It's good that you came.

Thanks.

I saw the floor just below the table where my Uncle

lay.

How did you want to handle the burial?

I want a cremation.

Tomorrow you should head to the Lynch parlor

down thirty-one. They'll help you. He lowered his voice to
add, I know he was on Social. They'll give you a good
price.

I nodded.

You're a good son.

I nodded again without correcting the man. My

cheeks trembled but I stopped myself from crying. The
mortician covered the body and I shut my eyes once
more, then turned to leave. I halted once I was through
the swinging doors. But the rubber slapped against itself
and the sound of feet on the concrete floor sent me
hurrying through the hall.

In the car again, I picked up my cell phone and

peered back at the gray night air under the street lamps.
It was black and never-ending and I became dizzy when I
stared off beyond the coroner’s office into the trees. I
dialed my father.

Hello?

It's me.

You do it?

Pop I…he's gone.

Okay. I'll send you money, son.

I hope there's at least one person who can come

arrange this when I die, I heard myself say.

He said nothing.

Dad?

What? You don't think somebody else would have

come?

My voice caught in my throat.

Maybe you don't remember. You're not the first one

to come and rescue your Uncle. Your Uncle Demetrius,
my brother, I was visiting with him up in Trois-Rivières. I
went there cause your grandpa asked me. Uncle Dem was
gonna kill himself, he said. I went up there and stopped
him. It was all true. He said to me, It's like a well you're in
Maurice. You can see the light but you can't get out. It's
too far up. I guess he couldn't escape. Then, he and I
drove down into the States. Now you can laugh as if
you're the only one who cared.

I sighed.

And you're gonna tell me you're worried no one's

gonna come be there for you when you need !em?

I just always thought that you thought I was like

him.

He wheezed over the phone and when he spoke

again his voice rang heavier through the earpiece. Son.
You know you gotta have a family first before you can
lose one.

After hanging up, I checked to see if I had received

any other calls.

It's over, she said. They told you that one night Uncle
Demetrius left a bar and was crossing the street when a car hit
him and knocked his head against the asphalt. Slushy snow must
have dampened his clothes by the time he arrived at the hospital.
He was in a three-week coma. When he came to, he believed he
was on what he called a caravel. As soon as they released him, he
set off in his car and disappeared. When you sail, you sail. His
delusions will pass. But this might just keep happening, one doctor
droned in a low voice. But your grandpa signed the bill. He
breathed in, nodded his head, and signed his name again and
again.
—Christopher Woods
dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.
applicants should be generally on top of current events,
both mainstream and alternative, and should have at
least three 210–250–word dispatches to submit for
suggestion. all applications will be responded to but only
one will be approved. dispatch@litareview.com
“As the monstrous steel and glass edifices
of commerce cast their ever-darkening
shadows over whole communities, the
crude lottery of day-to-day existence
becomes an ever more complex battle.”
—Penny Rimbaud

see also: Thirst For Fire

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©2009 Benjamin Parris

typefaces: Magellan, Accolade, & Friz Quadrata

—Christy Call
 SUCKER FUCKERS
Heather Myers killed someone today. That’s what the
newspaper claimed in its grubby print—stabbed him
eighty times.

I sat down and shook uncontrollably. My eyes

burned. This couldn’t be. She was a good girl, wasn’t she?
I grew up with her, I should know. I had the strangest
feeling of believing and not believing at the same time.

Unable to absorb it all at once, I consulted the

paper again. This happened on Hillside Avenue, according
to the reporter. Pulling myself up, I ran to Hillside Avenue
as fast as I could. Could a mess like that still be there?
People stared after me as I bumped them running by.
Their angst barely registered on me.

Heather Myers, just seventeen years old, my age,

was of course not a good girl in the eyes of the
community. She stole things, picked fist fights, and got in
your face for disrespect. The toughest Tom Boy. Our
white ghetto was no place for a girlie girl. Adults didn’t
know where she was coming from. I did. She was an angel
to me since forever, in retrospect, my first love.

She was attacked, the paper said, cornered like a

dog and stripped in the street. I ran until my legs felt
disarticulated, floating past; hit Hillside and turned the
corner. Where, exactly? Hansen’s Market, five stores in,
obscured by the crowd. I glared hoping to part them and
a gap opened.

I found it on the street. No one had cleaned up the gore

yet. Or no one would. No police tape marked the
perimeter. People were going about their business like
nothing strange had happened, strolling on through. A
pool of blood dried uninterrupted right in front of
Hansen’s Market just like something had been butchered.

From there the fluid trail led away down Allen

Street for over four blocks. I followed it as if I were
walking through the story backward. A supine beefy
degenerate covers the pavement perforated with eighty
holes—I couldn’t get over it—and nowhere vital but for
having lost all his blood. When enough of the blood pours
back in he rises, perhaps to his hands and knees. He
staggers backward, one hand on the building, reabsorbing
a drop at a time. At the residential section, he crawls
back a record four blocks, rising to his feet, growing
stronger all the time. There he meets my Heather in a
violent encounter and—I tried not to think about it any
more.

Heather was five foot nothing and skinny. Her

attacker, as the paper called him, was six foot one and
250 pounds. He had possession of the knife but she took
it away from him. Impossible. She was a tough little
cookie, but really? I used to wrestle her. She never won.
Eighty times? The whole thing was so crazy wrong I didn’t
know where to begin.

Did I have anything to do with the way she turned

out? Did this all make sense? I sat on the ground and
thought about what happened when we were close, when
we were twelve. A series of incidents starting with the guy
we called Old Man, probably only middle-aged, whose
name I would never know.
Old Man swung his hammer at my head and missed. I
expected that, since I knew to keep past his reach.
Heather was right beside me. Both of us started off at a
trot almost carelessly. The old nut had a limp and could
not keep up. “Thieves!” he called. Maybe he’d heard
something about us by reputation but we had stolen
nothing from him and didn’t intend to. What would we
ever want from some psychotic pauper? All we had done
was walk past his shotgun shack on our way home from
school. Yet he chased us every day. From a safer distance,
Heather would turn back to him and retort, “Sucker
fucker!” I was proud of her.

A small part of me took it into consideration that

the old guy might be faking his limp to one day catch us
off guard and cuff one of us with the hammer. We were
children of poverty and danger. And like children of war,
we grew up very fast to learn desperation. Heather did
not go to my school—didn’t go to any school—but she did
walk me home. Officially homeless, she lived in those
cracks the clean-shirted middle-class most fear. We’d
found each other just a few weeks earlier through
recognition of mutual talents and then were bound by an
unspoken pact. Even a few weeks counted for quite a bit
when you were young and trying to survive. She seemed
less psychotic than my friend Danny Firenzi, and that was
good enough. I spent less time with him and more with
her.

Now Heather said, “Oh no.”

I followed her gaze and saw two kids even smaller

than us nearby, and two of the worst predator-thugs in
our neighborhood heading toward them from across the
street. The kids had a lot of baseball cards in their hands,
occupying their attention. Heather judged, “Them poor
sucker fuckers won’t know what hit them.” In the short
time I knew Heather, she used the same term for
everyone. Everyone was both a victim and a
perpetrator—suckers and fuckers.

The victims didn’t see the danger. The thugs took

their time, looking up and down the street for opposition.
One of them was pretty beefy, which always worried me
because of the disadvantage I’d have at close quarters.
The other was tall, which I feared because it meant he
could probably run with long strides and punch me
without me being able to reach him. I kept track of
people like that since I couldn’t afford not to. Heather
and I were deemed no threat, expected to remain neutral,
and there was no one else around so they were sure to
move in for the kill. “We have to help them,” I said.

Heather turned to me angrily, “You sucker fucker!”

She meant I was being a fool and would gain nothing, not
even a thank-you, by getting involved. Yet I knew she felt
compassion too; I knew she didn’t want anyone else to be
victimized. Even knowing she used that stinging phrase
for everyone, I was hurt and disappointed.

I said, “Hey, you don’t get to call me that. Not me!

Not ever! There’s us and them. Don’t you get that?” She
looked at me for a long moment and then nodded in
concession and understanding.

We looked over and saw that Tall and Chunky were

challenging the kids. Heather bolted toward the thugs. I
instinctively followed. She fell to her hands and knees at
their feet and I knew what she wanted. I got behind them
and shoved the fat one over her. He went tumbling past. I
used what I thought of as my jujitsu move on Tall, putting
my leg behind his and knocking him backward while my
leg swept his away. Then Heather and I took off fast. I
risked a look back and saw them messy and bewildered.
The kids were running in the opposite direction.

In safety we laughed and high-fived. We found

ourselves standing very close. Suddenly she said, “We
need money, right?” It wasn’t like her to say that. True as
it was, saying it out loud meant something else. I knew it
to be a crack in her armor, asking permission to do
something bad and probably very dangerous. Heather’s
philosophy suggested that she was wise beyond any girl
or any kid I had ever met. Yet I didn’t know how much of
her cynical armor was real and how much was bravado. I
wasn’t in any position to know. I suspected that by the
end of the day my life might depend on it. She was no
older than me, I guessed. About twelve. At the moment it
seemed very important. Instead of answering her
question, I asked, “How old are you?”

“None of your damn business!” she shouted.

Something in her tone struck to remind me that if we ever
stopped to worry about our limitations, we’d never
survive.

“I like you,” I said gratefully. I did. She softened and

bushed her lips against mine as if by accident, turning her
head. She permitted herself the slightest smile at the
corners of her mouth.

My heart went faster than it had with the thugs or

any encounter with Old Man.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“Remember the other day in the grocery, when

Fuckface Freddy said you dented a can and you had to
pay for it and then he didn’t even give it you?”

“I didn’t do it!”

“I know. I was there.”

“He robbed me and the cops backed him up.”

“I know.”

“So we go in and steal that can back? Maybe take

another one?”

“Not good enough. I want that register—anything

we can get out of that register. Freddy’s a, well, you know,
he’s an SF anyway.” She was shy about using her signature
phrase on anyone after I yelled at her.

I thought about this. Heather’s family were

squatters in an abandoned building on a dirt road. Her
and her older brother Bobby fended for themselves.
Bobby was as tall as Heather was short. Probably different
unknown fathers. Common. My parents weren’t squatters
and they both stuck around but they were too proud for
welfare. Neither of us had ever seen new clothes. The
neighborhood was a junkyard. Money was a problem.

“I’ve never done anything like this.” I paused to see

if she would say she had. Hearing nothing, “For something
big like this you better have a real solid plan.” That was
like saying yes, so she smiled.

“My plan? My plan is double distraction.”

“Two fake-outs in a row?”

“Freddy Fuckface is so stupid it’ll work.”

All my nervousness on our way to the grocery

evaporated when Freddy said to me, “Hey, you little piece
of shit. You’re back. Want me to take your money again?”

I bit back a reply. It was all good because he had

the register open and that was Heather’s signal. Things
were moving sooner than we thought, but you had to be
ready for stuff like that. She didn’t miss the opportunity.
Heather heaved every ounce of momentum and wiry
strength in her little body into the middle aisle shelving
and Freddy watched in horror as it progressively tipped
over. Then my girl shouted to me, “Go, go, go!”

I grabbed two cans of root beer—which I didn’t

even drink—and booked it. Predictably, Heather’s shout
got Freddy to notice and follow. He gave the cash drawer
a quick reflexive push against the springs. I watched it fail
to close all the way then focused on hauling ass. As the
patrons watched Freddy chase me, Heather dipped into
the till and she was out of there.

When I thought Heather had enough time to do her

thing and get away, I turned and gave the cans back to
Freddy by pitching them at his ankles. Two perfect shots.
He cried for his mother.
 We met up in a our usual hideaway. Heather said,
“I’m sorry.”

“What about?”

“I thought I was reaching into the tens on that side

of the drawer. What I got was a pile of ones.”

“How many?”

“Nineteen.”

“You’re the best!” Nineteen dollars, for us in those

days, was still more money than we’d ever seen at one
time.

“Are you sure?” she said sadly.

“Hey, that’s not all we got. I got your favorite candy

bar.”

It was her first real smile all day.

Walking home, the night air choked in the putrid
fragrance of weeds, someone got me in a headlock and
pressed a knife to my throat.

“Gimme your money,” he said softly. The blade was

not terribly sharp and wasn’t drawing blood, but I knew
that the right twist would open my neck even if the point
were blunt. I breathed shallow as possible. I stayed calm
in the twisted position he held me in.

“I know that’s you, Danny Firenzi. I know your

voice.” I spoke softly to match his tone.

“Uh, so what? I’m still robbing you.”

“Why?”

“I heard you got $500 from Freddy French Fry.”

“Freddy Fuckface, you mean.”

That made him laugh a little but his motion only

pressed the knife in harder.

“Anyway, you got half and your girlfriend got half.

Your half’s mine now.”

“Danny, you can’t do this.”

“I can. I’m doing it.”

“You can’t do this because we’re friends.”

“No. Fuck you.”

 “The money wasn’t anything like you think.”

“No, you and Heather are friends. We’re not. When

is the last time we talked about anything?”

I said, “Heather is a girlfriend. I don’t have too

many real friends. I guess I don’t have any others. Maybe
you don’t know what it’s like not to have friends. Maybe
you have too many and nothing matters to you. I thought
it meant something.”

After a long silence, Danny let go and stepped a

pace away. His eyes welled up.

He didn’t see Heather and her brother Bobby

behind him. Bobby had found an old pipe and Heather
cracked Danny between the shoulder blades with it.
Danny went down.

“That was a really bad idea,” I said. “He’ll never

forget it.”
After that my family moved a little further away. That and
other natural forces of growing up led to Heather and I
drifting apart. In the time we were together, she never did
beat me at wrestling.

Now, five years later, the newspaper reads, “Girl

Foils Attempted Rape, Kills Attacker.” Danny Firenzi was
now two and a half times her size by weight and much
taller. She wrestles the knife away from him. He never
regains control while she stabs him eighty times in non-
vital areas. Non-vital if you don’t count the areas that
keep blood inside.
 Wade of
Aquitaine
Apex Magazine
—Heather Palmer
dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.
applicants should be generally on top of current events,
both mainstream and alternative, and should have at
least three 210–250–word dispatches to submit for
suggestion. all applications will be responded to but only
one will be approved. dispatch@litareview.com
 “We have always known that heedless
self-interest was bad morals; we know
now that it is bad economics.”
—President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

see also:
Nobody Trusts a Black Magician
litareview.com
•NOTICE•

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of Wales between 15 November and the end of
December. We’ll return dutifully on 1 January with a
special edition from a certain Shane Jones. –PHM
 dispatch litareview

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©2009 Brian Edward Bahr

typefaces: Magellan, Accolade, & Friz Quadrata

—Christy Call
 UNCLOSED APARTMENTS
Here comes the ridiculous limping bastard. Walking along
like an old man even though he’s just a kid. He can hardly
lift his left leg higher than his ankle. There’s no reason he
should be walking like that at his age. But that’s not
nearly as bad as trying to talk to him; this kid is so trite
that here is how conversations go when someone tries to
ask him anything: “Did you bring your homework today?
Whaddaya mean you didn’t get the chance? This is it. Do
you want me to call your mother? Okay? Okay? That’s all
you have to say? Go to the principle!” And so on.

Now this kid’s slowing down as he walks along the

sidewalk toward what is probably called a house, since it
stands alone, but is no bigger than an apartment, where a
can of potatoes sits on the front step. This is a sign from
mommy: a sign he dreads daily; and one that’s become so
common he’s learned to carry a can opener and fork in
his backpack. Looketim now: wiping at the grime on the
window with his sleeve, winding those bony elbows to get
some real strength into his wiping job; but he just makes
a translucent smear. And now he’s peeking through it—the
little voyeur. He can see socks hanging from the table, a
shirt draped down the stove, and a pair of pants on the
couch, his bed. And in the background he can see the
closed bedroom door. There’s not much else to see in this
house: there’s only the living room which blends into the
kitchen and a bathroom and bedroom. And sometimes
the kid calls the living room a parlor in his head: as if it
was a place where they had British sophisticates named
Nigel and Rupert over for tea.
 Now he’s sitting on the front step. He’s probably
waiting for mommy to finish and make him a real dinner.
But after a while he notices that a man has passed by
three times on the sidewalk in front of the house. And he
looks to the corner to see another man standing there.
Both men never look at him or at the house, but the kid
can see they’re on line. So like a good little boy—and a
shriveled lunchbox—the kid takes his can of potatoes and
leaves. Can’t have mommy’s clients going away.

There he goes limping again. Just seeing this kid is

enough to piss anyone off—with the same stupid t-shirt
and frayed jeans he wears everyday and the dirt behind
his ears—but hearing the shit that goes through his brain
makes you wanna jam a pillow over his head while he
sleeps. For example: this kid walks like he’s got shrapnel
stapling his ass crack shut but he won’t ride the bus; he
heard a story about some psycho spaz who waits for bus
drivers to open the doors to their bus and then runs
forward and throws a brick at the driver. He doesn’t want
his bus driver to get hit by a brick and he thinks if the bus
doesn’t have to stop at his corner then there will be less
chance of that psycho spaz hitting his bus driver. The
little rube seems to like his bus driver—probably because
the old man once helped him stop a bloody nose—but
maybe he’s just pitching a tent for the old man. The old
unrequited love. Yellow bus passion. This is the kind of
kid who won’t have a relationship until he’s in his thirties
and then he’ll say to the girl, “would it be terribly naughty
of me to hold your hand?” and she would say,
“perhaps…but we must!” and then they’ll write letters
discussing the simply mah-velous feelings aroused by
holding hands.
 So this kid limps around the side of his house and
peeks in his neighbor’s window, because the boy living
next door will sometimes kick a soccer ball around with
him. The grin on this kid’s face is phenomenal when he
plays soccer: it’s like seeing a chimp crack up after he
threw his shit onto the glass right in front of some little
girl’s face. Watching this kid chase a soccer ball and try to
kick it is better than seeing some blader who is grinding
fall with a leg on each side of the railing—it takes them
twenty minutes to get up after one of those spills. But this
kid sees that his neighbor is gone, which he should’ve
known since his neighbor’s school lets out later than his.

When it rains, he usually hibernates in this old

abandoned apartment building, and even though the sky’s
only a little cloudy and it’s not raining yet, it looks like
he’s headed in that direction. The doors at ground level
are all chained up, but he found a window on the second
floor that he could open and crawl through about a year
ago. Why this kid decided to climb up to check a second
story window, with a leg that never healed properly after
it was broken, is a question only a psychoanalyst could
answer. Maybe entering a second story window
symbolizes intercourse (whereas entering a ground level
window symbolizes cornholing) and he goes there when
his mommy is fucking other men because he has an
Oedipus complex and the rain that is usually falling
outside symbolizes his tears. And probably anyone who
buys that bullshit should tie a plastic bag over their head.
Whatever.

Anyway, the windows on this place are just filthy.

They can barely be seen through, but the dirt is only on
the outside, so once this kid is inside he can’t clean them
to get a better view. And the glass in the windows is so
old that it’s the kind that has little ripples in it, so when
someone walks by they wobble and look a little like
they’re limping. Most of the first floor windows are
boarded over since little punks threw rocks through
them. He usually stays on the two higher floors since
there is quite a bit of glass coating the floor of the first.
Right now he’s limping toward the stairs.

This old apartment building actually has a few

rooms that are still furnished; the place was probably
condemned and locked up before the tenants could move
their shit out. Or maybe they just didn’t care about their
stuff. Whatever it was, it left a lot of exploring for this
bindle stiff to do. So here’s this kid rooting through other
people’s drawers, inspecting their things, trying to find
secrets. But here’s the hilarious part: one time he found a
bunch of nude pictures in the back of someone’s drawer
and he wrinkled his nose and shoved them back inside!
Then he even took some clothes out of another drawer
and piled so many clothes on top of the nudes that he
could hardly shut the drawer! This kid’s a total bing—a
genuine birdman. And what does he get out of all this—all
this rummaging and scrounging? The kid doesn’t try on
the women’s clothing and he doesn’t even touch anyone’s
underwear, so it can’t be anything like that. And he hasn’t
taken any souvenirs. Maybe he’s just a packrat that never
had any shit to hoard—fuck it—it doesn’t matter. Maybe
he’s thinking about that time he got lost in the mall—he
had to lay a steamer and his mom was in the lingerie
department where he was forbidden to go (she was
probably picking out new panties cause some client had
ripped the last pair right off her)—and so he had to just go
to the bathroom himself—and he got shit all over the side
of his pants—so he left his pants in the bathroom—and the
store clerks finally found him an hour later, bunched up
and crying, in the middle of one of those circular clothes
racks. Maybe this whole abandoned apartment fixation
stems from that. Just imagine what a spectacle that was,
to find the little mousy curled up in the middle of all
those clothes but naked from the waist down like some
kind of cartoon character.

Anyway, now this kid is rubbing the dust off a

framed photograph. It’s hard to see what he’s looking at,
but now he’s dripping tears on it. This is turning into total
fuckery. And the kid hasn’t even eaten his potatoes yet.
No wonder you can always see his ribs when they’re not
covered by bruises.

Suddenly he whirls around when glass explodes into

the room and he fumbles the photograph almost all the
way to the floor but grabs it at the last moment and sets
it carefully on the dresser before cautiously, slowly edging
along the wall to sneak a look out the window. Before he
gets his head close to the window he hears a few thumps,
then another crash jerks his head back. Finally, he peeks
out and sees the kids throwing stones at the windows and
his face wrinkles up like a little red-faced baby wanting
the tit. He walks back across the crunching glass, looking
for something to throw, but hears the boys shout, “Shit!
Someone’s coming!” and now they’re running away.

The kid looks around, stretching his goose neck out

of the window, even letting the tendons bulge out from
his chin to his shoulders as he tries to see who’s coming;
but even his pathetic little efforts can’t let him see any
better so he walks down to the first floor hoping to get a
better look. He’s crunching across glass again, but now he
can see what he was looking for. She’s walking along the
side of the building and the old glass in the windows
makes her seem to limp. It’s hard to see her clearly with
all the dirt smearing the outside of the windows, but then
she stops right in front of one of them and seems to fall
down with a groan. In the next window over, there’s a
little triangle that’s been broken out of the glass, so the
kid limps over there and puts his eye up to it. Her skin
looks all pale and greasy, the way people get when they’re
in a sauna, with hair striped across her forehead and she’s
carrying something that begins to cry. Even the little
choad knows what it is when he hears that little red
package cry, but he doesn’t expect her to pop out a tat
right in front of him.

So here’s this kid, who will open car doors and slide
in chairs for his first date, staring at some chica’s teat
with whom he has never even been formally introduced.
And not only is this kid staring at a chick’s teat; but he’s
staring at a distended, veiny, milk-filled tit with a baby
sucking at the nip. Talk about a great first impression for
the kinda kid who already thinks sex is a dirty word. And
the humble woman doesn’t even know some peeper is
getting the full view.

But now the baby’s on the ground screaming. The

kid watches the woman set the baby down, and it just
lays kicking and screaming while raindrops begin to make
it blink and the woman just walks away. The kid sees her
standing there still, because he can’t understand what just
happened: he can’t think of any place she’d need to go at
this moment without her baby. And the baby is screaming
now—a high pitched wail that vibrates the glass in the
windows.

So here’s this baby shrieking and what’s this kid do

but sit there and stare out of his little triangular keyhole.
The kid’s probably wondering whether or not creamy
peanut butter is better than chunky—which isn’t even a
question, cause creamy peanut butter is like tits without
nipples. And once the rain really starts to come down, the
kid finally pulls his head back from the window, flips the
lock, and yanks himself through. But now the kid’s
motionless again—maybe he’s giving the peanut butter
question another go—but at least he’s motionless over the
helpless baby so instead of being completely useless he’s at
least blocking the rain. Finally he reaches down and picks
up the baby in the crook of his right arm like a good little
boy.

Then, after a pretty hilarious scramble back through

the window, the kid’s walking up to one of the still
furnished apartments to look for a towel while the baby
continues to scream and punch his little fists. He looks in
the bathroom of one of the apartments, but the towels
are all crunchy, so he sets the baby down on a bed and
roots through a dresser for a sweatshirt. And as soon as
he has the baby wrapped up, he hears the floorboards
creek out in the hallway and the back of his neck begins
to tingle as his arms break out in little bumps. The kid
doesn’t even hesitate; he just snatches the still shrieking
baby and hobbles for the front door of the apartment.
And out of the corner of his eye he sees the old man, with
the short, thick beard, holding a cigar. He can’t help but
wonder what is wrong with the man’s jaw. So the kid
shambles back down the stairs and flounders out the
window to hobble as fast as he can away from the
apartment building only to see the rock throwing boys
point at him and start walking in his direction. The kid’s
leg must be cramping up since he’s starting to really
stagger and totter, so the boys catch up to him before he
has even walked one block.

“Whatcha got there, goosey?”

The kid clamps the screaming baby closer to his

chest and murmurs sh-sh-sh while surveying the ground to
keep from tripping.

One of the boys steps in front of the kid, forcing

him to stop his toddle. “I said: whatcha got there,
goosey?” And it was another moment before he says,
“Looket me when I talk to you, gobshite.”

The kid keeps his eyes averted—and if he didn’t

think about that time in the department store while he
was in the apartment, he must be thinking about it now
since he’s probably about to shit his pants again. But the
little puke is such an air biscuit that at this moment he’s
probably thinking about how that cigar smoking bum’s
probably gonna eat his can of potatoes now. And you
can’t really blame the boys for picking on him—they
probably came from bad backgrounds: abusive fathers,
unaffectionate mothers—especially since this kid is
beyond shitbrained. For instance: what kind of balloon-
knot carries around a baby that’s obviously unwanted;
what kind of a free-baller hides out in some abandoned
apartment building; and what kind of green-apple-quick-
step doesn’t have any friends?
 One of the other boys nudges him from behind, but
the kid keeps staring at the ground shushing the infant.
Then the kid in front of him says, “We know you got a
baby, we just wanna know if you’re the lucky father.”

One of the boys behind him jolts him in the back of

the knee and the kid falls forward with a scream louder
than the baby’s. The boys didn’t hear a break—because
the leg didn’t break, the bone just came loose because it
had never healed—but they run away when they see blood
soaking into the kid’s pants. So the kid’s lying there on
top of the baby, with a bone sticking out of his leg and
the baby girl’s no longer screaming because she’s
suffocating and his jeans are slowly dying purple. And she
would have had friends, she would have been kissed, but
now no one will ever even say she was cute. All because
of this limpy, bastarding, ridiculous shit who never fixed
his leg.
Orchard of Dust

brianedwardbahr.blogspot.com
—Travis Mills
dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.
applicants should be generally on top of current events,
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least three 210–250–word dispatches to submit for
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“We're in a place we haven't been since the
Depression: Our economy is so completely fucked,
the rich are running out of things to steal.”
—Matt Taibbi
"Wall Street's Naked Swindle"
Rolling Stone #1089

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©2010 Shane Jones

a missing piece of Light Boxes
published in 2009 by Publishing Genius Press
reprinted in 2010 by Penguin Group

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—Christy Call
 THADDEUS LOWE AND THE SECRET
MEETING WITH BLUE BIRD MASK
Blue Bird Mask sat down on the floor, reached inside his
coat pocket, and pulled out a stack of cards. He laid them
out in a single line on the floor. Each card had the name
of a month written on it, and Blue Bird Mask told
Thaddeus to pick them in whatever order he wished and
read what was written on the back.

Thaddeus sat down opposite Blue Bird Mask and

picked up the July card. July = the sunniest of days, warm
springs, girls dancing in orange skirts. Thaddeus smiled. The
next card was November. November = rustling leaves,
desperate squirrels, the unpacking of sweaters. Thaddeus flipped
the cards until the last remaining card was February.
February = lazy bastard, depression, the kidnapper of small
children. Thaddeus looked at Blue Bird Mask, who was
smiling, and Thaddeus couldn’t tell if he was truly mad or
if he had some kind of answer as to the disappearance of
his daughter. Nevertheless he was interested and told
Blue Bird Mask he would make some mint tea while he
divulged everything.

Blue Bird Mask and Thaddeus Lowe met at

Thaddeus’s home on a weekly basis to discuss theories on
February. As each month passed, Blue Bird Mask had
Thaddeus read that month’s card again until they were a
few days away from another February.

From their weekly meetings, Thaddeus began to

believe Blue Bird Mask, or at least wanted to believe that
somehow the month of February was an evil being worth
fighting. The thirtieth of January, Blue Bird Mask told
Thaddeus to spend the entire next day walking around
town and taking notes of things he saw that he either
liked, made him smile, or just found interesting. Thaddeus
agreed, and that night slept on a stack of parchment
paper to remind him of his task the next day.

Thaddeus woke early the next morning and

immediately gathered his papers and pencil and headed
to town to begin his cataloging. His first entry was
difficult. He kept looking to the sky for signs of flight and
joy, and every time he did he saw the No Fly Zone poles
which reminded him of the End of Flight and eventually
the disappearance of Bianca. When the sadness reached a
certain height his body gave off the smell of mint water. A
woman carrying a sack of lemons stopped to tell him it
was a lovely smell that reminded her of having tea with
her grandfather when she was a little girl. Thaddeus made
this his first entry. As he continued through town he made
various entries and by the end of the day he had filled
over thirty sheets with observations he found worth
noting. That evening Thaddeus boiled the water for the
mint tea as Blue Bird Mask read through his entries.

I like this one, he said, and read aloud a group of red

sparrows picking at the blades of a woman’s freshly cut hair. And
this one too, he said, and read aloud the fog being burned off
the Cocio River by the bright sun.

Thaddeus walked in with the tea and sat opposite

Blue Bird Mask, the last remaining February card between
them. He told Thaddeus that tomorrow, the first of
February, he should do the same as he had today. He
should wake at the same time, bring the same amount of
paper, and write throughout the day. Thaddeus agreed
once again, and before they finished their tea Blue Bird
Mask flipped the February card over and had Thaddeus
read the inscription aloud.

You’ll see, said Blue Bird Mask. I’ll be here

tomorrow evening. It is then that we can truly discuss the
inevitable war.

The next morning, Thaddeus woke at the same

exact time as the day before. He grabbed thirty sheets of
paper, which had been his pillow for the night, and found
his pencil and headed to town to begin another day of
cataloging joy. Once again he found himself lost in the
empty sky. He tried to imagine birds darting over his
head, balloons crowding the sky, and the bizarre patterns
of butterflies. And once again an overwhelming sadness
filled him and he gave off the smell of mint. The same
woman, this time carrying a sack of limes, happened to be
passing Thaddeus at that precise moment and this time
she told him that he smelled awful, and that the smell
reminded her of the way her grandfather use to strike her
with unusable firewood.

Thaddeus apologized to the woman and offered to

help her carry the sack of limes. She refused and told him
that if he wanted to do her a favor then he should clean
himself.

By morning's end, Thaddeus hadn’t made one entry.

He thought for sure he could see the Cocio River again
and find something interesting, but instead, all he saw
was how polluted the water had become, the beavers
struggling through the thick mud, and how it smelled like
burning trash. He walked around town for hours, noticing
nothing but angry faces, depressed bodies. At one point, a
fat man vomited his lunch into the middle of the street
whereupon a shop owner beat him over the head with a
rake.

When Blue Bird Mask came over that evening, he

politely asked to see what had been written. Thaddeus
responded by dropping the cups of tea and saying,
Nothing at all.

So you’ll agree something was different today.

Yes. It didn’t feel like the same town.

And this, said Blue Bird Mask, is why we must

declare war on February.
 NOTES:
Putting the book together had a collage like feel to it. I
had probably 120 or so of these small sections and just
started to piece them together. Some things had to be
expanded, there was some re-writing, but for the most
part, I was able to move the pieces around to form the
story. Of course, I had a bunch of sections I couldn’t use,
one of these being this chapter here (the longest cut
scene) where Thaddeus meets with Blue Bird Mask.

The style of this section is a little off compared to

what is in the book. Maybe I was rushing that day. I had
this idea that there would be some kind of card game that
would be a running theme throughout the book. I liked
the idea of a card game, the playfulness of it, but it came
out differently. It feels stiff and drawn out with little pay-
off. So much of the book is this really dense visual
experience and this section doesn’t offer that.
 Light Boxes
The Nightmare Filled
You With Scary
The Failure Six
dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.
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“Nothing survives an autopsy.”
—Darran Anderson

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—Christy Call
 SPLIT MONTANA GOLD

1
Out and away then down the stairs and onto the street.
Shaky, heart flutters. Too much smoking. Looking for
Charlie’s, someone told me about it, up the street. And
thinking about her. And thinking about her. But gone.

So I’m taking my time crossing streets, alone in a

town full of strangers. A town of people at the mid-20s
frontier. Some men. Some girls. All out and all alive and
moving in the same Emerson circles. If that’s not too
obscure. I stop two guys on rollerblades. They tell me
Charlie’s is next door to the venue. In my quick escape I
looked too far down the street. Put long distance blinders
on, a good walk anticipated.

Fuck going back down that sidewalk. Instead I light

a cigarette and head to the Old Post. Now I’m writing
there, drinking wheat beer at the end of the bar. So
totally put together. Jack, buddy, I’m there with you. I’d
scan this handwriting scribble and show you. I stop only
for sips.

This place. Missoula. It resonates with the sounds of

pickaxes and horses hooves, a sound of American history,
of men carving out lives from the land and the mountains.
Montana, especially this town, lines up with me. Feels
good. And Jack says it. “It was the best of all moments.” It
was the best of all moments. That’s a sentence.

I’m not lonely. My head is full of her.

 2
Now on a bench. This is probably the best light I’m going
to get, but I took a wrong turn past the venue, decided
against it and kept going. I’m sitting in front of a bank,
across the street from two players working on guitar. The
wind blows high in three tall trees above me.

I have this urge to go back to the show, but I think

about it, and I’m at truths right now. So I stay. Light
another cigarette.

Grand gestures and telling Portland to get ready.

Wondering where James is and what good story he tells in
the best of all moments. Get ready. That’s all I’m saying.
The world is on fire with ideas and life. Hold that in. Keep
making things. Give everything away.

Someone approaches with slow shuffles on the

sidewalk. My god. The same man. He still says nothing.
Now he wanders in the street, now back to the sidewalk,
now to the cars. This is fucking strange. He yells into the
street.

I look up from my pen and he’s gone.

My most beautiful Missoula moment? This: today

we stood in the Rattlesnake river—the rushing torrent of
time, the sound of history, in which I found a way to place
my whole body. I lay down in the snowmelt and felt the
cold beauty of time and life and heard the voice of pure
truth.
 3
Instead of going back, I head across the street to the
players. “This is my first time here and I’m checking out
the town. I was just across the street sitting on that
bench, writing. I saw you guys and decided to come over.”

“We were just talking about the movie version of A

Clockwork Orange versus the book,” the girl with a guitar in
her lap says.

I know I’m in good hands so I sit down on the front

steps. Start smoking.

“Where you from?”

“Nebraska.”

I talk about how much space there is, how much

country—country life, and how my closest neighbor is a
quarter mile away. They think about that. They tell me
they’re from Atlanta. They love Missoula. The guy is this
built-out, round, red-bearded gentle soul. Ease surrounds
him. He talks with a solid, low-toned voice and laughs
with volume. On the other side of the door, a southern
dragonfly. Long, straight black over denim coveralls, torn
at the knee. She holds an acoustic guitar. She sings.

I tell them about the Rattlesnake and they start to

sing “Big River,” the Johnny Cash one.

It’s good. Welcome from kind strangers. Positive

and reaffirming that good, accepting people still hold
court. Open court. A beautiful and hope-instilling
moment.

“So we were staying up in the mountains for a

wedding. By Hamilton? Anyway, the morning of the
wedding I went for a hike in the woods, y’know just
checking out the trees and the rivers and the green
mountains. And so I come up on this pen of horses, five or
six horses, with this palomino. Palominos are the best
horses. Y’know what they look like?”

Huh-unh.

“They’re gold with a white mane and tail. They’re

just this beautiful, beautiful animal.”

“Right,” she says, “sounds beautiful.”

“Right, and I love ‘em. So I’m stoked to see this

horse, but I’m hiking so after a bit I take off. Well, the
bride actually rides this very same horse down on this
lawn to start the wedding. So it’s like, well, anyway, we’re
having the reception at this lodge with this big deck on
the back and everyone’s drinking free Big Sky and it’s
great, right? Well I’m standing out on the deck and look
out and I can see the pen with horses. And I’m there. I’m
wearing flipflops and a tie but pretty soon I’m in the pen,
next to this palomino. It’s standing by the fence so fuck it,
right? I’m on. Bareback riding this palomino. And
everybody that’s at the wedding, and there’s like 200
people, can see me. They’re not all watching, but some
people are and I’m barebacking this beautiful horse, like
drunk and telling it how much I love it. Well, I find out
later this is Fred. And Fred doesn’t really like me all that
much, or he’s tired or something. So I’m trying to get him
to walk around a little bit, giving him a little heel. But
Fred’ll only go a few steps and then stop. He’s over it. On
the third time I try to get him to walk I heel him and Fred
doesn’t do anything. So I do it again, a little harder, I’m
wearing flipflops so I’m not hurting him, it’s not like I
have spurs, but he’s over it and just takes off. He heads for
a pine tree, trying to like scrape me off. But that doesn’t
work. So instead, he just stops and just starts jumping.
Bucking. But before it gets too bad I’m gone. I bail over
the left side. I land on my feet, get a little dusty and hop
the fence. I go back to the party.”

They’re laughing and I’m starting to want to get

back. To find her. See what she’s doing. So I tell them
thanks and peace. I light a cigarette and go back down
that side street, hoping to catch her outside. But no. Just
two people from the party last night. So I sit down and
light another cigarette and talk to this guy, Ari, who
knows everything about all the bands I’m seeing at this
music festival in Chicago in a month. We talk about their
histories. He knows so much about them. The thought of
all that music strengthens my smile.

So I look through the venue and she’s nowhere. I

check my phone. Four missed calls. I call the number I
don’t know and no answer.

I still have the other sides of these bar napkins.

 4
After the show, a keg back at the drummer’s place. He
drives. I’m in the backseat, she’s shotgun. He’s talking
about his despondency—I don’t know the story but it’s
about a woman. “And it’s so fucked up because I hope she
thinks I’m cheating on her. At least she has me in her
head.”

She says, “But that’s acting weird about

relationships. You don’t do that.” She says, “Can I do
anything for you?

I want a cigarette but I’m in someone else’s car.

“I don’t want to have these thoughts,” he says. “But

I’m out and acting, y’know, high-energy and feeding
everyone’s good time.”

“Yeah, it’s a terrible place,” I say. “When you feel

one way but have to act another.”

And she’s sitting right there but she doesn’t say

anything. She’s touching his neck. Then she says, “You
guys made a lot of people happy tonight.” I tell myself not
to care.

Then we’re at the house and it’s on the side of a

green mountain—the deck overlooking the city. Tall trees
in our view. The trees are still and the night is quiet
except for a few old friends on the deck, talking about the
words they use, their Montana slang, and laughing. He’s
there too. I don’t care. He was at the wedding. He’s this
sad little quiet dude who wears his sunglasses all the time,
that sang out earlier “the only truth is love” in an ugly
voice, a worse voice than Conor’s. He’s too sad for me to
hate him.

At the wedding, when I saw them talking, just the

two of them, I walked up and they stopped. This was the
moment I had been working out in my head the entire
time before leaving. I thought I’d kill him. Told people
that if he was there I would destroy him. But right
then—and I still don’t—I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to
fight over her. I didn’t care. I was drunk enough. Could
have done anything. Thrown him off the deck. But I went
for communication and understanding. Plus I had been
telling myself that I didn’t care. I told myself that a lot
this trip. I don’t care. And what I don’t care about is often
clear to me.

So I walked up to them at the wedding. Just the two

of them. “There are a thousand ways for me to react to
this.” They both watched me. Couldn’t see his eyes behind
his sunglasses but he was quick to tell me he didn’t know.
“I had no idea,” he mumbled. I laughed. At both of them,
but mostly her. Him and I, standing there, both feeling
like shit. I looked at her. I smiled.

“I want to talk,” she asserted. Like we’d forgotten

her. She was intense, serious, and she said it like she
wanted to mean it. “I have two things to say. It was a long
time ago. I love you. I love you.” And then she went silent.
I waited a minute, looking at her. Thinking. Then I
laughed again and walked away. Left them with their lies.
A walk to the car, to Modest Mouse’s “Black Cadillacs,”
and realizing it wouldn’t be the way it was before. I
thought about before, about that day on the lake when I
asked her if she was thinking about me when she did it. A
shake of the head.

And he’s here now at this after-party, sunglasses

still on. She pulls up a chair next to him. It was the best of
all moments. I’m more alone than—well, I smoke more.
Cigarette after cigarette. I’ve been smoking so much since
she told me.

I’ll have to quit one or the other.

Later, I think she’s alone with him in a room with

the door closed. Then later, kneeling next to him as he sits
smoking with his sunglasses on. My stomach hurts. The
knot of a noose.

After enough “I don’t cares” it becomes true. You

can convince yourself of anything. She told me once that
people take relationships too seriously. I don’t care. It
didn’t matter. It was a long time ago. I hate him. I don’t
care. I don’t care.

We’re drinking keg beer out of jars and the sun’s

bringing light over the east, in a soft blue. I don’t care.
Someone says it’s the moon. It’s the sun. It’s coming. I
don’t care. I don’t want it anymore.
 THE
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“The decades of the last
century each had such
significant cultural
developments, I feel like
there's some kind of
worldwide exhaustion to
event-charged identity.”
—Thurston Moore

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—Christy Call
 TINY LOVE STORIES

1
The boy’s little bump under the jeans is distracting and
disgusting, a forbidden adventure, a gummy danger.

Her mind drifts in the guessing of a possible perfect

harmony. They will talk and laugh, and he’ll see only her
in a room full of children.

She penetrates his halo, dancing with him. A silken

night promises more. He reclines on a sofa. The bump
under his pants is round like the Russian neighbor’s back
as he gorges on a drink.

The girl’s first love story will be abstract.

 2
The king of the class tells her he knows that she’ll love
him. He is so confident, she suspects it may be true.

She rolls over a five-step wooden horse at the gym

to keep his eyes on her. But he has eyes for everyone.

He sings, standing on a coral like a rooster. She is

his hen. She never tells him.

He ends up with a daughter of hippies, a girl known

at school as a nymphomaniac.

The girl will pass many years, distracted and

disgusted by their probable wild sex.
 3
When the boys (the police) catch the girls (the thieves),
they pull at the straps of their bras. Only she hides behind
a mound of thick bushes so they won’t find the thief who
doesn’t wear one. She’d rather kiss ninety times the boy
they say she loves than be caught.

When the squatting children (police and thieves as

one) bend over a whirling bottle and yell her name, she
chooses to tell the truth instead of performing the ninety-
time kissing of these fat lips. She says whom she loves.

Her love puts the bottle to his lips and plays it until
it chimes like an old train. She doesn’t know if it means he
loves her too. He probably doesn’t, because she has a flat
chest.

She will go home alone, devour a muffin, and think

she should have kissed the one they say she loves.
 4
As she puts down her book, The Brilliant Five, in the
hospital’s waiting room, a boy approaches. He is exactly
the way boys should be. A spark glints in his coal-dark
eyes, and his hair is the color of vanilla cookies.

He accompanies her to her father’s bed, and then

takes her home, where he climbs into her bed. She takes
his hand and lifts her face for a kiss. They remain
embraced for hours.

Back from the hospital another day, they go

swimming and snuggling in the sea, then melt into one
another under a blazing hot sun. Nobody else sees him,
nor will they.
 5
The two girls perform plays on stage, ride horses, and
study the boys at the kibbutz’s camp. A tall boy studies
the red-haired one back, and that afternoon there is
kissing.

They tell the other girl that she needs a boy friend,
and they ask who has eyes for her. Her solitude sticks out
like a hump.

She has a blond pigtail and is short, so they find her

a short, blonde boy, who shows her the airplane models
he builds. She doesn’t know what to say to him, and he
doesn’t say much either. They are glued to the happy
couple like parasites.

She asks the boy to meet her again, in order to

break up face to face. He says he’ll come but doesn’t show
up. She will hurt for not knowing who dumped whom, for
a long time.
 6
The older boy two floors above hers is more beautiful
than Bon Jovi.

He breaks a toothy blue-eyed smile when she comes

to baby-sit his little sister, then he grabs a piece of torte
and leaves. Making cheese sandwiches with ketchup, she
imagines him in adventurous places with exciting people.

His little sister pulls at their pregnant cat’s tail, so

the girl releases her grip. The sister cries sorely.

The girl only returns to see the cat giving birth, and
also, if she dares, talk to the boy. But he isn’t at home. His
mother tells her that he’s out with the older, pregnant
nurse he will marry. He always does the right thing.

The girl thinks about his other woman’s baby as she

chooses a playful gray kitten to raise.
 7
The inaccessible boy’s younger brother tells her she is
pretty and asks her out. She bears in mind the brothers’
family resemblance. His eyes are large and pleading in the
lamplight, not smart and detached. This is the closest she
can get.

He reeks of soap and perfume like her father once

smelled after showering. She says yes.

The girl’s mother gives them her rare blessing

because his eyes adore the girl. Glucose drips into the
mother’s veins at the hospital as she explains that a boy
who loves a little will not love more over time. It’s a mere
myth. Her husband, the girl’s father, has passed away
instead of waiting for her.

The girl leaves the brother after three weeks.

 8
The girl’s great-grandmother, a friend’s mother, and an
uncle all tell the girl they want to be children again.

She thinks about it when a boy from her class hits

her stomach with his powerful fists. He wanted her ball
and she refused him.

She collapses to the ground like a noodle in boiling

water. Red and black cars race in the air above her. She is
unable to scream, lacking air and strength. When she can
finally breathe, she aims her sharpened tongue at his
softest spots, the way he hit hers. He hates the mention of
his retarded brother. The girl continues.

The boy who loves her will come to rescue her too
late.
 9
The girl believes that the curly-haired guitar boy will love
her if only the other girls, her best friend included, would
stop flirting with him, if only he stayed up with her for the
fourth night, if only she deepened the conversation until
their minds mixed like grains of sand.

He is the only thing and everything she needs.

He has love for her, she knows, but it is not as large

as he is, or as is his space within her. It’s a crumbling
biscuit.

She shoos away the other girls, fights with her best
friend, crosses out of the conversation any gossip, and
plans to discuss the cosmos.

In the fourth night he plays for a big circle, “God

bless the child that’s got his own.”

And the girl? She is not final.

 10
It’s in her hands now. If she threw the marble stone to the
third chalked-drawn square, skipped the first two squares
and jumped on one leg into the third, right beside the
stone, then the boy with the funny accent and the serious
eyes, the one who brought brownies for lunch, would
notice her.

Love signs or swears don’t work, she has found, but

challenging herself can commit others like magic.

Here he is in the Indian clothes nobody else wears

yet, a wanted pirate without a patch or a wooden leg,
caught turning his gaze at her.

Here she is, landing in the middle of the third

square, glowing in her first accomplished love.
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“There were people who knew, and who were
willing to say, but nobody listened to them, not
because we are willfully ignorant but because we
live now within realities in which there isn’t enough
time to make the connections between what we
can know and what happens.”
—Charles P. Pierce, “3,650 Days,” Esquire February 2010

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G a me”
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“Leve To wnsend
©2010

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—Christy Call
 LEVELS OF THE GAME
Timmy was an eleven year old smash-up metal crunching
addict. It started by chance. Crossing the street with head
down, playing Ace Combat on his Game Boy as the traffic
light turned red: brakes screeched and a car stopped
inches from him. He saw the bleached horror and fury of
the driver, the screaming rage. A weird coolness overtook
him.

A new game: when the light went from yellow to

red, he ran in front of a car then jumped back. He tried to
see how much skid mark he could get when the driver hit
the brakes. The longer the skid, the higher his high, the
higher his score. One day, a Chevy skidded into the
intersection and clipped a Toyota. Timmy was giddy.
Nothing to match this, not even the Drop Tower at Great
America, 225 feet in 4 seconds.

Next level: Collisions. Tricky. He had to watch the

oncoming car, figure how fast it was going, watch cars
from the other direction, figure how fast they were going,
traffic lights, all at the same time.

One day, he got a real smash up. Tow trucks were

called to pull the cars apart. Nobody hurt, just shaken and
swearing. The wild woozy off-the-ground feeling helped
smother his rage against the idiot bastard who’d run a red
and killed his parents.

No one got a good look at the small thin boy

vanishing across the street. He was careful to wear
something different as often as he could. He had various
hats and sometimes turned his jacket inside out. He
stayed away from the streets where he lived and went to
school.

Nothing much to do after school. He wasn’t good at

soccer or football, too short for basketball. And no one
was home much: Aunt Sue worked the second shift at St.
Francis Hospital and Uncle Mack was a fireman down in
San Mateo.

Walking to school a couple days after the big smash

up, a bigger kid, blonde shaggy hair, tapped him on the
shoulder. The kid looked a couple years older.

“You’re Timmy Duggan.” the kid said. “Been

watching you jump in front of cars. You’re pretty good.”

Timmy darted past him. The elder grabbed his

collar before two steps.

“Where you going?”

“Wasn’t me,” Timmy said. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to make trouble. Just

want to talk to you. My name’s Sam.”

“What about?” Timmy would have run again, but

Sam still had a hold on his collar.

He pulled Timmy into an alley. “It’s about a gang for

kids whose folks got hurt or killed by jerks that run red
lights.”

“What do you want with me? Timmy asked.

 “I read about your parents. Want to talk to you.”

“Maybe later, I got to go now,” Timmy shrugged and

sluffed off to school. But, an idea for the next level: Go
after red light runners. He reckoned it took even closer
timing and the cars had to be coming faster. He chose a
big intersection, Van Ness and Geary, for the first try. He
went there a couple days in a row, sat in the bus stop, or
had a coke at Mel’s Diner. Four-thirty, people getting off
work. He stood on the median, darted out as a green Land
Rover sped through the red and the blue Mercedes was
exploding into the intersection. Land Rover hit the
brakes, the car spun, faced the Mercedes. Head on.
Drivers slumped. Then both were hit from behind. Their
heads bounced. Timmy was ten feet tall, light enough to
float, fly over the city, free.

Next morning he was eating his cereal and Sue

showed him the picture of the accident in the Chronicle.

“I knew it was bound to happen, people in this city

in such a hurry; run lights all the time,” she said. “Can you
believe one of the drivers is blaming a little boy? Says he
would have made it through the intersection if the boy
hadn’t run in front of him.”

“That’s not a good excuse,” Timmy said. “Is it?”

He walked into school, ignoring everybody as usual;

their stupid remarks after his parents were killed made
him puke.

Sam was waiting for him after school. “Caught the

action on Van Ness yesterday, nice,” he said. “But hey,
that Mercedes didn’t do anything wrong. Got to think
about that. Come on over to my place. Meet some of the
gang.”

Sam lived with his older brother in a giant new

apartment in North Beach. Plush chairs and sofas, lots of
paintings on the walls in the living room. Rich. Sam had
his own room, a master. When he closed the door, Timmy
heard clicking and rolling sounds, like the room was
sealing itself shut, then saw thick gray metal bars
crisscrossing the back of the door. Heavy black curtains
over the windows. A bluish glow filled the room. Five
other kids, about Timmy’s size, appeared out of glow.
Timmy thought this was spooky in a good way.

Sam saw his look: “Only KARR kids allowed here,”

he said. “We mess up drivers that run red lights; teach
them a real lesson, something they’ll remember, like a
totally wrecked car, better than a crummy old ticket.”

Kids Against Red Runners Rules

I. Kids punish only Red Runners.

II. Kids cannot try to kill Red Runners.

III. If somebody else could get hurt, Kids cannot go after

a Red Runner. Abort.

IV. Kids must be under five feet.

V. Kids cannot tell anyone about KARR.

“You swear to these rules?”

 “Sure,” Timmy said.

“You have to say, ‘I swear.’”

“Okay, I swear.”

Then the room clanged, sirens whined, orange and

purple streaks shot from wall to wall. The television and
sound systems blared. Four computers lit up: police
records on red light violations, DMV records on license
plates and addresses, GPS tracking, traffic pattern
recognition systems. KARR had hacked into state and city
records. They knew where every Red Runner car in the
city was, and the streets they used to get there, day and
night.

The next day Timmy and Sam went to the corner of

Lombard and Franklin to watch Juan. “We’re looking for a
red BMW, plate 1000101,” Sam muttered. “There it is!”

Just as the BMW blew through the red, Juan jumped

from the curb, the driver’s face lit up, the car swerved to
smack into the traffic pole, and its front end accordioned.

“See?” Sam asked. “See how Juan came at him so he

turned toward the pole?”

Sam put Timmy through training drills every day for

three months: math for timing traffic lights, eye drills on
tracking moving cars, angle drills for getting cars to
swerve a certain way, dances to avoid getting hit. In the
next six months, Timmy managed to create at least one
KARR incident every two weeks, more than anyone else in
the gang. But the high, the dizzy lightness, the forgetting,
wasn’t lasting as long anymore. He persuaded Sam to let
him scout his own hits. After a week studying patterns on
the computer, he figured, if everything worked just right,
he might get two Red Runners at the same time at Van
Ness and Broadway.

5:17: cars erupted from the stop lights. The black

Jaguar, plate 000 LALA, stopped at the light on Broadway.
The red Hummer, plate O2 BE ME, came down the slope
on Van Ness, the light changed, Hummer didn’t slow, kept
coming, now, Timmy ran out, Hummer hit the brakes, slid
sideways into the intersection, black Jaguar, driver with
cell to ear, leapt from its crouch at the light, metal tore,
glass shattered, air bags blown. Timmy was half a block
away, turned around and fist pumping and running home.

The next morning at breakfast Sue showed Timmy

the paper. “Look, that street is not safe. Huge accident,
both cars totaled. It’s a miracle the drivers weren’t hurt.
You stay away from there, you hear?”

Timmy turned away.

“You listen to me now. Enough has happened.”

Timmy didn’t say anything.

“Hey, where’s my kiss?” she called as he ran out.

He turned around, gave her a big hug and ran down

the stairs into a chilly fog. You did it, Timmy. You’re free.
Sam, Juan and the rest of the gang were at the corner.
They smothered him like he’d hit a bottom-of-the-ninth-
homer and lifted him up on their shoulders.
Years later, in the control tower at San Francisco
International Airport, Tim pushes tin. A smile reflects off
the screen of his monitor as he maneuvers two 777s
within a whisker of each other. The artful dodger.
twalker@aperimus.com
 Some people are
so easily shuffled in
doubt.
-Spoon

see also: Thirst For Fire

litareview.com
dispatch extends a warm welcome to
Christopher Laird, newest member of our crew.
Originally from the land of Bright Eyes, Laird
now resides in the Old World, specifically
England. He is the programme director of
Radio Nowhere, the influential underground
radio station, and his first offering is musical
guest Japanese Voyeurs, whose track “That
Love Sound” is sure to turn you on to their
pithy style.
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“Crossing the Psy-Field”

©2010 Max Dunbar

7n

dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.

applicants should be generally on top of current events,
both mainstream and alternative, and should have at least
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all applications will be responded to but only one will be
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—Christy Call
 CROSSING THE PSY-FIELD
Mark Ireson had discovered his great gift about fifteen
months ago, on weekend license. He had bounced around
Manchester all day and night, shooting tequila in Oxford
Road bars and coke in its toilets. Trying to leave the
Novotel the next day, his panic attack was so bad he
thought he’d die. Then he decided he wanted to.

He ordered up a bottle of wine and swallowed

sleeping pills he’d procured through a corrupt male nurse.
Washing down four tablets with the first glass of wine, he
realized it would be a shame to go into the black without
seeing a woman for the last time. A quick call to an escort
service from the Yellow Pages and a soft, smiling redhead
was at his door within half an hour.

He did not make love to her and he didn’t mention

his impending suicide; girls always freaked out at such
things. All his life, women had seemed slightly afraid of
him and he’d never known why.

They kissed and cuddled and talked. Even today he

called her up and took her out once a month or so—for
the full agency fee. Annabel had had some reservations
about this, but she relented once the relationship was
established as a platonic meeting of minds.

After Amber the Friendly Callgirl had gone, Ira lay

back, drank the rest of the wine, and popped the rest of
the pills. He read from The Great Gatsby and waited for the
darkness to take him.

He woke up in a cave. Sunlight flooded in from the

outside. Shit, he thought, I’ve been wrong about religion
my whole life. But this wasn’t a hell for unbelievers, or a
place where wayward souls waited for administration. He
slept and shivered in the cave a long time. The stone was
hard and gritty beneath his palms.

He was wakened by hoofbeats. A figure creeped

into the cave. It moved out of the natural arch and he saw
a beautiful woman in a leather breastplate and a long
skirt made from what looked like buffalo hide.

And that was how he met Jasmine, former Princess

of the Imperial Faithlands, now a fleeing outlaw and rebel
against her king. She had lived in gilded seclusion in the
heart of the Power’s empire before running from an
arranged marriage to a man three times her age. It had
been a spontaneous act. Her bedchamber was tightly
guarded against the young ones she liked from the town,
but the man had bribed a guard one night and tried to
force himself upon her. She’d cut his throat with a
throwing dagger from the wall.

They were both on the run, outsiders in their

respective worlds. It seemed so good that Ira thought at
first that this whole world was just a byproduct of his
schizophrenia.

But Jasmine told him this was wrong. “Ira, you have
a vortex inside your head. We know there is infinity of
universes, but you so far are the only one I have known
who can travel between worlds.” She smiled, and said,
“There are many more adventures ahead of us.”

It explained the visions and the sense he sometimes

had that the streets of Manchester-side were not the only
reality. He could go through the portal at any time: on
public transport, having a beer in the Cornerhouse,
staring into space at work. He found that it was best to be
discreet about his teleportation. So they had spent a year
going for walks in the clearing, hunting for food, and
reading to each other by firelight.

Until the Faith’s armies had invaded.

He and Jasmine had almost reached their

camp—except it seemed more and more like a city, that
arc of temple rearing above it like an angry beast. He
could make out people, construction, voices.

He suddenly felt very tired. What was the point?

They would just be slaughtered anyway. All they had were
Jasmine’s guns.

This wasn’t a feeling he often had in this world. This

was a Manchester-side feeling, a Housing Policy type
feeling. He turned to Jasmine. “I’m losing heart, my love.”

“I think we’re walking into a psy-field,” Jasmine

said. “The sorcerers put one around the traveling armies,
to dispirit the enemy. We will feel downcast, distraught.
When I left the Realm, they had nearly succeeded in
creating a field that could somehow read our souls and
project our greatest fears. The Faith says that your science
is an abomination, but they are happy to use it when it
suits their ends.”

The city before them began to fade, and in seconds

they were walking through a thick, silvery mist. Wisps and
tendrils of it curled around their legs. It was like walking
through fast-drying cement or quicksand. A volatile wind
blew around them. Then something rose from the mist.
Ira looked up, and up, at a great black presence and arms
without lines and a pair of monstrous, furious eyes,
somewhere beyond the fog.

Jasmine! the apparition roared. The ground shook.

Jasmine Gustanda al-Mikados, you have refused your submission.
You have turned your face away from the power. You were once
allocated the highest of all heavens, and now you have cast
yourself down to the lowest heathen’s hell. Fear of the power is the
root of all wisdom!

Lightning struck near their feet. Was this the

godhead that ruled a billion lives? No. This was the Power
as Jasmine had always imagined it..

He struggled to keep his head up. He saw without

surprise that the apparition now held a silver needle in
one gigantic fist. Jasmine fell to her knees, quaking before
it.

“She doesn’t believe in you anymore!”

A green bolt zigzagged out of his fist and rose up

into the searchlights of its eyes. They hit the deck an
instant before the explosion; faces down, hands locked,
like cold war kids in a drill.

Jasmine stood first. “You saved my life, Ira

Silvertongue. Some part of me believes. Some part that
was battered and conditioned into submission. If I had
been alone—”
 “We’re not through the field yet,” he announced.
“Look.”

The fog had gone, but they were now making their
way towards a sandstone wall that almost touched the
horizon. Some kind of robotic critter with flashing red
eyes bounced around their ankles.

“You couldn’t make it up!” the critter laughed. Its

high voice possessed the empty glee of a zombie
schoolchild. “There was a paedo once, they gave him a
job as a teacher, and when he took a child, they didn’t
hang him! Why? Because of his human rights! Hee-hee-
hee!”

“What the hell,” Ira said. His head was in bits.

Jasmine seemed unfazed. “It’s a jester-bot,” she said.

“There were many at the Palace. I think we are almost
through. That wall must be the last of it.”

The robot cantered near their feet. Ira could feel

the rasp of metal on his bare legs, as if it was trying to
bite him. “You know what they’ve gone and done now?”
the robot screeched. “Civil partnerships! For
homosexuals! We’ll be letting them vote next! It’s
politically correct madness!”

There was something by the wall: a news bin, like

the one in the Town Hall reception. There was a paper
left.

“Don’t read it,” Jasmine warned.

 “You couldn’t make it up!” The robot’s voice was
higher now, almost unhinged. Steam rose from its grille.
“Immigrants jump the queue at council housing! Mr.
Ahmed sets up a property business and invites all four of
his wives over to the dole queue! Ho-ho-ho!”

A gunshot, and a sound like a computer shutting

down. Jasmine had tired of the jester-bot.

The newspaper had been open at the op-ed page.

Ira read:

What is the point of Mark Ireson?

By Our Own Correspondent

It’s the question on everyone’s lips: what is the point

of Mark Ireson?

‘Ira’ to his friends (if he had any!!!) this man is such

a silly little cocksucker that it must be asked why he is
allowed to live on this planet. A pathetic, useless failure,
Ireson has had all the advantages in life and blown them
all. He’s a traitor son, a uni dropout, and a failure with
women. His naïve, head-in-the-clouds mentality meant that
for the past five years he’s been staying in luxury
psychiatric spas on YOUR MONEY. Doesn’t it just make
you sick? Ireson can’t even do a public sector non-job
without breaking down in front of the photocopier. Ira
knows he could have been anything, and that he’ll die alone
and unloved. To cope with his pitiful, empty life, Ireson
pretends that he can travel to fantasy worlds and have
adventures with warrior princesses. I mean, grow up,
Ireson! Today, we call on Faith Clarion readers to petition
 for Ira’s execution. Kill the infidel! This joke, this loser, this
ugly, pathetic cunt (cont p.94)

Jasmine read over his shoulder. “You know it’s a

trick,” she said.

Ira turned the blank pages. He tossed the

newspaper.

“We need to find a way to get over this wall,” he

said.

“There’ll be woodland near by. We might climb it.

Come on.”

“No. We’re still in the psy-field. We must go through

it directly.”

There were markings in the wall.

To get out of the psy-field, simply solve this FUN

wordsearch about gallant world-traveller Mark Ireson.
Below is a list of words relating to Ira’s adventures. The
words can be horizontal, vertical, diagonal or backwards.
When you have found all the words, the remaining letters
will spell out Ira’s message to you.

HOUSING SCHIZOPHRENIA LOVE

COUNCIL INTEGRITY AGORAPHOBIA
TRISTAIN COURAGE LITERATURE
ANNABEL ASPERGERS OLANZAPINE

“You’re right. This is it, Ira Silvertongue. I think this

is the key.”
 Below the writing, a small box with the word “cunt”
written repeatedly throughout. Another blue bolt shot
from Jasmine’s palm. The wordsearch was obliterated and
left a smoking hole in the wall.

“Salutations, Ira. We’re through.”

The wall began to dissolve. Arms linked, they

stepped through its graying outline.

“The psy-fields are very effective,” Jasmine said.

“Commanders of armies have gone screaming mad trying
to cross them. I don’t think they expected us to get this
far.”

“It’s not the last surprise we’ll give them, warrior

princess.”

They could see the city and the temple again. Ira
felt trepidation, and it was more about what was behind
them than what came ahead. Just before Jasmine had
shattered the wordsearch, its letters had changed. For a
split second, like a subliminal message encoded in a TV
advertisement, they read another small box, this one with
the word “virgin” written repeatedly.

He squeezed his lover’s arm and shivered a little as

they reached the outskirts of the Community of Faith.
MAX DUNBAR

Open
Wide Straight from the Fridge
Lamport Court
3:AM
Butterflies and Wheels
Succour Magazine

@WORDPRESS
see also: Trick with a Knife

My best stories come out of nowhere,

with no concern for form at all.
-Barry Hannah
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“Silence For Yes”

©2010 Adalena Kavanagh

dispatch is currently seeking a paid culture editor.

applicants should be generally on top of current events,
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all applications will be responded to but only one will be
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—Christy Call
 SILENCE FOR YES
It was summer time and one of Karina’s jobs was to take
me to school to eat the free lunch. During the school year,
if the government decided that your family made too
much money you had to pay full price for lunch, and
that’s how much I had to pay. But even though the
government said we made enough, mom and dad always
seemed to be worried about money. That’s why we
moved to Washington Heights, because it was cheaper,
and that’s why I ate the free lunch in the summer. Daddy
said it made him feel good to get some of his money back.
Then again, he didn’t have to eat the free lunch. That was
my job.

Karina was my new babysitter, but I already knew

all about her. When Karina’s sister Cecilia used to be my
babysitter Karina called me a nerd because I liked to read
books instead of watch re-runs on TV after school.

One time, when Cecilia and Karina had to go to the

store for their mother, they brought me with them and
Karina waited for Cecilia to walk ahead of us before she
shoved a bag of M&Ms into my hands.

“Just put it into your pocket. Nobody will know,

and then we can share later.”

When I shook my head, no, she narrowed her eyes

and became angry with me and pinched me in the arm.

“You’re such a baby. Can’t even steal a little fifty

cent piece of candy.”
 She put the M&Ms into her own pocket, but one of
the store workers must have seen her because when we
got to the register a man came over and asked Karina if
she forgot to pay for something. He stood in front of us
blocking the way out of the store. Cecilia looked at
Karina with her mouth open, and Karina patted her
pocket and acted surprised when she pulled out the
M&Ms.

“I forgot. Sorry.” But she didn’t sound sorry at all.

Then she turned to Cecilia. “Lend me fifty cents?”

Cecilia’s face was red, and she shook her head, but
she reached into her own pocket to count out the fifty
cents Karina owed the store. When we got outside Cecilia
yelled at Karina.

“Why you gotta do stupid shit like that? Why I

always gotta keep you out of trouble?”

Karina just sucked her teeth and ran across the

street.

That was Karina. Cecilia, she cooed at babies she

saw on the street. She gathered the girls I played with
around a park bench and asked us about school. She
squealed over our minor achievements, like 100% on a
spelling test, and her pride was infectious.

When she had a small group of us crowded around

her she said things like,

“Stay in school.”

“Don’t be afraid to be smart.”

 “Don’t ever let a boy get you twisted.” 

I could tell she liked me even though I was shy and

she had to ask me a question five different ways before
she satisfied her curiosity. Karina, on the other hand, used
to roll her eyes at me and order me to sit on the floor
until Cecilia patted a spot next to her on the couch.

Then Cecilia got pregnant and she couldn’t be my

babysitter anymore. My parents didn’t know Karina like I
did, so they asked her, and she became my new
babysitter.

Lunch started at 11:30, but Karina didn’t take me to

the school until 12:30 because she said if I ate too early
I’d get hungry later. Every morning, when daddy dropped
me off downstairs, he gave Karina two dollars to buy me a
snack in the afternoon, but sometimes Karina acted like
she forgot about the two dollars in her pocket.

Karina was only sixteen so she could have taken a

tray, too. Free lunch was for everyone 18 or under, but
she usually didn’t. When Karina did take a tray she only
took dessert, but she made me eat everything on my tray,
even the lima beans and broccoli. With her eyes on me it
felt as if she enjoyed watching me eat. Karina was always
on a diet, but she revealed her hunger when she ate the
watermelon slices and slurped up the syrupy peaches.
That last day they served carob cookies for dessert, and
Karina didn’t take anything at all, but she must have been
hungry because she pointed her index finger with the
neon pink painted nail at the tater tots I was saving for
last.
 “What?” she asked, “You don’t want that?”

I thought about saying that I did, that I always

saved my favorite for last, but I didn’t say anything. She
took my silence for yes, and helped herself to my tater
tots even though she could have gotten her own tray.

“You didn’t need them anyway,” Karina said as she

popped the last tater tot in her mouth. Then she poked
me in the belly to prove her point. Karina always acted
like she was doing me a favor when she was just being
mean.

At the beginning of the summer Karina had

announced that we needed to lose weight and we were
going to help each other.

“I’ll ride the bike and you run behind me. Running
burns more calories because you’re not sitting on your
ass.” She didn’t have her own bike so she rode mine even
though she thought my banana seat was “faggy”.

The first time she borrowed my bike I ran behind

her but she rode too fast and I had to walk because I got
a cramp in my side. When I yelled that it was my turn she
stopped and gave me time to catch up. I said that now I
would ride the bike and she could run behind me. I even
promised not to ride too fast, but she shook her head.

“I just did my hair this morning. I don’t want to get

all sweaty.”

She dismissed me with a flick of her hand and I

walked to the playground to play with the other kids. I
watched Karina ride around the park in circles as I hung
upside down from my knees on a chin up bar.

That last day, when I saw Karina had parked my

bike, and was sitting on a park bench fanning her face
with her hand, I broke away from a game of freeze tag to
remind her that she’d promised to take me to the library.
My school bag was tucked into the white basket hanging
from the front of my bike.

“Dag, May. You really want to go?”

I nodded my head. “My books are due today." When

she didn’t say anything I said, "I don’t have anything to
read.”

Karina rolled her eyes at me and then continued to

ignore me with her face turned the other way, her chin
jutting out. When she finally stood up she shouted.

“Conjo! Always you and the fucking library.” The

park was only a block away from our building but Karina
sucked her teeth. “And now we have to take your bike
back to my house, too?”

I didn’t remind her that she was the one who

wanted to bring my bike to the park. If she acted that
mean to me when I didn’t say anything, how would she
act if I talked back to her? I wasn’t brave enough to tell
her what I really thought.

Karina lived in the basement of our building

because her stepfather, Julio, was the superintendent. The
ceilings in their apartment were low but it didn’t seem to
matter because Julio was short. My father never went into
their apartment because he always had to hunch his
shoulders unless he was sitting. In the summer they left
the air-conditioner on in all the rooms even when nobody
was home because they didn’t have to pay for electricity.
Even when my daddy threw the windows open and ran
around yelling that it was too hot, he wouldn’t buy us an
air conditioner. My mom said that it was too expensive.

We parked my bike in one of the hallways in the

basement. Karina made me go to the bathroom and I
went as quickly as I could because I didn’t want her to get
too caught up in whatever was playing on the television.
The television was on all the time, too. I had learned to
block out the sound even though Julio’s mother was
almost deaf and she put the sound up as high as it could
go when she watched her telenovelas. Whenever
Julio saw me reading he pointed his chin toward Karina
slouched on the couch and said, “She’s only in middle
school and she reads better than you.” Karina turned her
head away and didn’t say anything. Her leg bounced up
and down and made the glass coffee table rattle.

I came out of the bathroom and Karina said she had

to get something from her parent’s bedroom. She pushed
the door open, but then pulled it shut. Even as Karina was
pulling the door shut, so I couldn’t see what she had seen,
I heard Julio yell, “Shut the goddamn door!”

Earlier in the summer, we had gotten halfway up

the hill to the park before Karina remembered that she’d
left her magazine on the coffee table. She sent me back
down the hill to go get it. The apartment door was
unlocked, so I just pushed it open but I stopped when I
saw Karina’s father, Julio, leaning his face down over the
glass coffee table. There was white powder on the table,
and he held a plastic drinking straw in his hand. I walked
away, quietly, and ran back up the hill. Karina saw that I
didn’t have her magazine and she yelled at me.

“What’s wrong with you? Did you forget why I sent

you back?”

“No.” I hesitated, and then I said,  “Your father was

doing something. He looked busy.”

Karina studied me, her brow scrunched up, but

maybe because I was looking at the sidewalk, and
wouldn’t look her in the eye, her voice turned sweet and
she said, “Oh, okay. Let’s just go to the park. I can get it
later.”

If you had asked me what Karina’s father had been

doing, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you, exactly, but
at the same time, the teachers at school warned us plenty
of times about the crack that our neighborhood was so
famous for. When they said words like ‘crack rocks’ I
imagined the kinds of pebbles that were scattered across
the field in the park until one day I was in the park and I
saw a small plastic vial that was so small I couldn't
imagine what it could have held. Then the words came
back to me and I just understood. They also taught us to
‘just say no’ to other things like heroin and cocaine, so
even though I couldn’t really name what I saw, I had a
feeling that I shouldn't have seen Julio doing what he was
doing at all. I never said the words out loud, but in my
head I kept shouting- Drugs! He was doing drugs! Just
thinking the words seemed dangerous. I felt like I was
bursting with my new knowledge but I was afraid to talk
about it, so Karina and I continued on our way to the
park and didn't talk about anything.

This time, though, I didn’t see anything and Karina

grabbed my arm and pulled me out the door. We walked
fast up the hill and it made my calves burn. As we neared
181st street Karina slowed down. The streets were
crowded with women and children, and the air was hot
and greasy from the corner pastelillos carts. There was no
shade from any trees, and the buses spewed black
exhaust, but this was the busy heart of our neighborhood,
and Karina loved it. She walked with purpose as we made
our way down 179th street where the concrete housing
projects dwarfed the small brick building that housed the
Fort Washington branch of the New York Public Library.
My school bag made my back sticky with sweat. Usually
Karina took her time when we walked on 181st street
because she liked to go into all the stores and look at the
shoes and clothes. On the days she pretended not to
remember the two dollars my father gave her in the
morning she bought herself small things like nail polish or
lip-gloss. Karina felt at ease when she was outside in the
heat and noise, but I didn’t feel safe until we’d reached
the cool, small rooms of the library.

Sometimes Karina played beauty salon with me.

“You got China hair, not Indio hair like me.”

She liked to comb my hair because it was straight

and she put makeup on my face, but always made me
wash it off before my daddy came. She knew he wouldn’t
like the blue eye shadow or the hot pink lipstick.
 One time Karina was being really nice to me and
she even said I looked pretty with my hair in a French
braid. She looked at me sitting on her bed. I was trying
not to move so I wouldn’t mess up the hairstyle she’d
given me.

She had a sneaky smile on her face. “I’ll give you a

dollar if you say, ‘I don’t give a fuck.’”

I blinked fast and my hands felt sweaty. Karina

always teased me because I didn’t like to talk that much,
and I knew that she didn’t expect me to do it, but I said it.
First I said it really soft, and she looked at me like I hadn’t
said anything at all, but when I said it the second time,
louder, she slapped my arm.

“Bad girl! Not so loud!” She was laughing when she

said it, but she forgot to give me a dollar. I didn’t forget,
but I didn’t ask for the dollar, either. It’s like I didn’t have
a voice, just eyes and ears.  I felt stupid for believing she’d
give it to me.

When she left the room to get a drink I looked at

Karina’s 10th grade portrait. She was wearing her Catholic
school uniform and she looked much younger because
they didn’t let you go to school with your hair teased with
Aqua Net, or wear the big gold doorknocker earrings
Karina wore in the summertime. I looked into Karina’s big
bug eyes in the photo and I said, “Bitch.”

When Karina walked back in, with just a drink for

herself and nothing for me, she saw me looking at her
picture and said, “Weirdo.”
 That day, after the library, Karina asked me if I
wanted pizza. She smiled the kind of smile I wanted to
believe. My stomach growled but I hesitated before
asking, “Do you want pizza?”

“Yes.” Karina laughed. “With extra cheese.”

So we ate pizza and it was nice. Karina even asked

to see the books I’d checked out and she didn’t laugh or
call me a nerd. She also bought me a large soda instead of
a medium, even though a large soda and pizza with extra
cheese cost more than two dollars.

After the pizza we didn’t really have anywhere to

go. Karina didn’t want to go back to her apartment. Even
before she became my babysitter Karina tried to stay
away from home as much as possible, but ever since
Cecilia got pregnant Julio said she had to stay close to
home. Cecilia had been seventeen when she got pregnant,
and Karina told me that Julio changed his mind about
letting Karina have a boyfriend when she turned sixteen.

“He said that if he even catches me with a boy he’s

going to send me to live with his sisters in Puerto Rico. As
if.” 

That summer we spent most of our days outside.

“I like being on the street, seeing the sights,” said

Karina.

Karina used to point at boys on the street and tell

me if they were Puerto Rican or Dominican, like those
were the only two things you could be.
 One time she pointed out a Puerto Rican boy and I
said, “Oh, like your father, Julio.”

“That man is not my father.”  Karina had stopped

and whipped her hair back. “Cecilia can call him ‘daddy’
all she wants, but he’s not my father. I’m 100%
Dominican,” Karina said, as she pointed at her chest.
“Don’t forget it.”

I asked her if Cecilia was 100% Dominican, too, and

Karina rolled her eyes, “No. She’s Puerto Rican and
Dominican. The worst combination.”

I asked her where her real father was.

“Ay, don’t ask me nothing about that. I don’t know.

I don’t care, either.”
My mother is Taiwanese, and my father is Irish, so that
makes me half-and-half, but I never thought about
whether it was a good combination or not. I didn't know
for sure if Julio was Cecilia's real father, but I think he was
because he had her name tattooed on his right arm, but I
didn't see Karina's name there. Cecilia and Karina's
mother, Angela, always looked so tired because she
worked in a factory like my mom did, and I could tell
where Karina got her temper from because I'd heard
Angela yelling from the kitchen. My mom yelled at me
too, especially if I didn't do the dishes right away. I think
working in a factory makes you angry and impatient
because that's how both my mom and Karina's mom
seemed most of the time.
Julio was never angry, except when Karina did something
he didn't like. Then he'd yell in English to Karina's mother,
"Tell your daughter something, because I don't know
what I'm going to do."
It was like having Karina for a stepdaughter was the only
thing that set him off, while everything Julio did set
Angela off. They fought so much I wasn't surprised that
Karina had a different father from Cecilia. What did
surprise me was that they’d gotten back together, and
stayed together.

We went back to the park. Karina was in the mood

where she didn’t want to talk to me, but she wanted me
close, so she pulled me by the arm and we walked around
the park. I didn’t like to walk too close to the south end
of the park because that’s where boys with big boom
boxes sat and smoked and drank beers out of paper bags.
For all of Karina’s boldness she was just as nervous
around that part of the park, but that day she edged us
closer and closer to the chess tables where a group of
teenage boys wearing tank tops sat, and blasted music.
We just walked by the edge of this cluster of people but
soon enough a boy wearing a black baseball cap broke
away from the group and came up to Karina. She
pretended that she didn’t see him and kept us walking but
he jogged behind us and shouted, “Yo, Karina, whass up?”

Karina slowly turned around and stood there with

her hip cocked to one side. “Nothing.”

“Yeah?” The boy stood back and rubbed his belly

and rolled his shoulders.

Karina shrugged, almost looking angry with him. I

stood still as if standing still could make me smaller, or
invisible.

The boy stood there rubbing his belly and then he

grinned as if he’d just had an incredible idea. “Yo, Karina,
you wanna go see that Prince movie?”

Karina sucked her teeth and jutted her chin at me.

“Can’t. I’m baby sitting.”

The boy looked at me for the first time. He looked

so surprised I almost wondered if I had somehow made
myself invisible after all. Then he got that look on his face
again, the one where he looked like he had another good
idea.

“So what? Just bring the kid.”

Karina chewed her lip. I could see the girl from the
picture on her bedside table- a rosary entwined in her
fingers- warring with the girl that wore loud makeup and
snapped her gum to show how bored she was with
everything. The gum snapper won. She tugged me along
and we walked back to 181st street where the movie
theater was.

The boy’s name was Manny, and he knew who I

was, but he acted like he didn't. He lived across the street.
Cecilia used to take me to Manny’s mom’s house because
she was secretly dating Manny’s friend, Thomas, and
Manny’s parents were never home. When Cecilia got
pregnant the year before, Julio kicked her out of the
house. Now she lives in the Bronx and Karina has to
pretend she doesn’t have a sister. Julio forbade his family
from talking to Cecilia until she and Thomas ‘did the right
thing and got married’. Cecilia always used to ask Karina
if she thought Manny was cute, but that made Karina mad
because she said boys were ‘just an easy way to fuck up
your life’.

Karina usually pretended that she didn’t know who

Manny was so I didn’t understand why she was letting him
take us to the movies. He wanted to buy me a ticket to
see a kiddy movie but Karina said she couldn’t leave me
alone. So he bought me a ticket for Purple Rain, too. As
the movie played I watched Karina and Manny out of the
corner of my eye. About ten minutes into the movie I saw
that Manny had slipped his arm around Karina’s shoulders
but she shook him off. Once I got into the movie I
stopped watching Karina and Manny. I wasn’t allowed to
watch R rated movies, and I liked the music. In the middle
of the movie Karina told me she had to go to the
bathroom, but Manny went with her, too. They thought I
couldn’t see them but they were sitting in the back row.
That made me angry. I didn’t like sitting in the theater by
myself. It reminded me of the times I had to pretend that
I couldn't hear what Cecilia and Thomas were doing while
I sat in Manny's living room while he watched television. I
never told anyone about Cecilia, and she got pregnant.
Karina always said Cecilia was stupid, and she'd never end
up like her. In my head I always said, "But at least she's
nice."  I looked at my watch and saw that it was past the
time Karina was supposed to bring me home. At that
moment I just wanted to be at home so I could show my
dad my new library books and then put them on the shelf
in my bedroom. I looked behind me and they were still
kissing, so I stood up and just walked out of the theater
and went home.

It was the first time I walked home by myself and I

felt nervous, but I smiled when I thought about how
Karina would feel when she realized that I wasn’t in the
theater anymore. I wanted her to worry about me and
wonder if something terrible had happened to me. Then
maybe she'd feel bad about all the mean things she'd said
to me. The streets seemed louder, dirtier, and uglier than
they usually did. I started running, and when I reached my
building I didn’t have my own keys so I had to ring the
buzzer. When I walked up the three flights of stairs to our
apartment my dad was standing in the doorway.

“May, get your butt inside, right now!”

Dinner was already on the table. It was just hot

dogs and beans but I didn’t mind. My mom worked at a
garment factory in Chinatown until 8, so he made us
dinner. We sat at the table, the two of us, and he asked
me why I was late. I knew that I could have lied and told
him that I had begged Karina to let me play an extra half
hour in the park, but I didn’t want to do that. I told him
that Karina took me to a movie.

He chewed on some beans. “Where did she get the

money for that? I didn’t give her any extra.”

I told him that Manny paid for us. Daddy put his
fork down then. He looked at me and spoke in a calm
voice. “Oh yeah, who’s this Manny? What movie did you
see?”

I said that Manny was Thomas’ friend, Cecilia’s

Thomas. I said we saw Purple Rain. Now daddy looked
like he cared. He looked like he cared a lot.

“What? She took you to see that rock-n-roll movie?

With a boy?” Daddy knocked his chair back as he stood
up. Before I could say anything he was in his bedroom
punching in numbers on the telephone.

I heard my father talking on the phone. One time

Karina said, “Your daddy talks like he’s in a commercial
on TV. Must be because he’s white.” I had shrugged my
shoulders. He just sounded like my dad to me.

“Look Julio, I want to be able to trust Karina, but

she took my daughter to see an R rated movie with a boy.
You know I can’t let her do that. Not after what
happened.” He must have been listening to what Julio was
saying because I didn’t hear anything. Then he said, “She's
not home? But May's right here."

Then the doorbell rang and I went to open the door

thinking mommy had forgotten her keys or something.
Karina was at the door and when she saw me she hit me
in the shoulder.

“Why did you leave like that?” She was breathing

heavily like she had just run all the way from the movie
theater.

I put my hand on my shoulder where she'd smacked

me. “I just wanted to go home.”

Then Karina got a scared look on her face. When I

turned around I saw my dad standing there a few feet
behind me. I'd never seen Karina look so scared and so
young before.

“Mr. Galvin. I'm so sorry.”

Daddy didn't let her finish. He used his low serious

voice, which is much scarier than when my mom yells
because she yells all the time, but my dad only uses his
low serious voice when he's really upset. When you hear
that voice you instantly feel ashamed.

“Karina. You better go downstairs. Your father

needs to speak to you. Now.”

“Okay.” Karina nodded her head. Then she looked

my father in the eye and said, “I'm really, really sorry.” I
knew she meant it, too. I thought she was brave at that
moment because when my dad talks to me like that I can
never look him in the eye.

When I woke up the next day daddy told me that he

took the day off and we were going to the beach. I was
really happy, because I'd been begging him to take me to
the beach all summer. I was just sorry that mommy
couldn't take the day off work, too. As I played in the
water I wondered how much trouble Karina was in, and I
felt a little bit bad, even though I didn't think I had done
anything wrong.

The day after we went to the beach daddy had to

bring me across the street. Julio told him that Karina was
going away for the rest of the summer, so he told daddy
about a lady who could take care of me for a few days.
Daddy sent me downstairs with the garbage, and as I was
coming out of the garbage room I saw Karina standing on
the sidewalk. She had a suitcase next to her and she was
wearing sunglasses. For the first time that summer she
wasn’t wearing any makeup. Even with the sunglasses on I
could tell that she’d been crying because her face was all
puffy and blotchy.
 I was afraid to see her, but I had to go back upstairs
to get my books to take with me across the street. Then
Karina saw me.

“You know you're a stuck up little bitch, right?”

Karina kept her sunglasses on so I couldn't see her eyes,
but her mouth twisted as she spat out her words. “They’re
sending me to Puerto Rico.” She shook her head. “I didn’t
even do nothing. It’s not like I’m stupid like Cecilia. I
know how to keep my legs closed.” She turned away from
me and looked down the street, her hands on her hips.
Then she turned back and said, “Cecilia just pretended to
like you. She used to make fun of you when you weren't
around.”

I didn't want to believe her, but I started crying

anyway, and then I was mad at myself because Karina
always said that only babies cry. I thought Cecilia had
liked me, and I missed her when she moved to the Bronx.
Now daddy was going to send me to day camp even
though it was expensive, and mommy wasn’t sure we
could afford it, but the worst thing was that I would have
to try to make new friends and I wasn't sure if I could do
that. Karina was mean, but at least I knew what to expect
from her.

Julio came outside and waved hello to me but he

looked distracted, and he cut his eyes away from me. If he
noticed my tears he didn't show it. Karina picked up her
suitcase and put it into the trunk of Julio’s beat up car.
She didn’t say anything and just got into the car. I stood
there and waited until the car engine started up. I looked
at Karina, but she wasn’t looking anywhere but straight
ahead through the car windshield. She held her head high
and her body straight like she was having her school
picture taken, except she wasn’t smiling. Karina’s full lips
were pale and puckered like she had something sour in
her mouth.
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“Various Men Who Knew

Us As Girls”
©2010 Cris Mazza

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 VARIOUS MEN WHO
KNEW US AS GIRLS
I can hear the ashamed middle-class Liberal requests now:
tell that story, tell Lena’s story. The same people who are
overcome with helplessness over what they can’t do to fix
what they can’t stop themselves from wanting to know.
The ones who go out of their way to learn about it, go out
of their way to brood over global problems that barely
make it into the media and seem unsolvable. People
tortured by their remoteness and inability to generate
change. So they want to hear more, and know more, and
they think reading about it makes them better people,
makes them people who maybe didn’t – after reading
what they thought they should – go check their e-mail, or
go take dinner out of the oven, or go turn on the end of a
ballgame.

There are rumors of girls as young as eight or nine,

but any reporter who sees a girl younger than 14 and
doesn’t testify to authorities is committing a crime, so
instead of blowing their cover, reporters for these stories
simply claim to see girls and young women from 14 to 22
years old. I’m not concerned with maintaining a
journalistic reputation, so will reveal all when the
information is available. That is because this “reporter”
will no longer be skulking into the fields merely to
observe, to take note of horrors, to describe them in lurid
details. What I will be reporting is the rescue and
deliverance of one of the girls I saw, who burst and flew
from me like startled quail into the sagebrush and dry
grasses.
Probably very simple, the manipulation methods used by
the procurers in Mexico to get the girls to trust them, to
get the girls to follow them anywhere. It’s easy to imagine
her, a huge-eyed, dark-haired 7-year-old, clinging to her
mother’s multi-hued skirt, sitting together in the dust of a
Tijuana street of shops, the sleeping baby sister in her
mother’s arm appearing to be dead when her mother
raises her tray to offer her wares of chewing gum to
passersby. Lena’s there to complete the picture for
American tourists, just like the bright red, green and blue
striped skirt, the kind that might be worn at a festival of
traditional dance, but which wasn’t anyone’s traditional
attire on the muddy, oil-stained alley where they sleep in
a plywood shack, mended with cardboard and pieces of
fences scrounged from numerous slag heaps, here and
there, or even smoldering constantly, between rusted-out
cars. He might have spotted her during the day, between
the leather goods kiosk and Panaderia, and daily, at least
weekly, stopped to buy a Wrigley’s Juicyfruit from the box
her mother holds, paying while he smiles and looks into
the eyes of the child, nearly hidden behind the mother’s
shawl, weekly, monthly, yearly, and somewhere along the
line the child has begun to smile back, and the man
knows her name. It’s part of his job, besides wooing, even
courting the older ones, the 12, 13, 14-year-olds, he also
makes the rounds of those he has his eye on for later,
remembers their names, begins to touch their cheeks,
gives them chocolate.

If he didn’t find Lena there, perhaps it was at the

dump, another place her family could’ve lived, in the
nearby unofficial village that has developed on the
outskirts of the city’s refuse pile. She and her sisters and
brothers and their mother, spend the morning foraging
through the newest piles of garbage. Some is edible, if
they find a cache from a restaurant or grocery store: limp
heads of lettuce, withered potatoes, out-dated dented
cans with peaches or stewed tomatoes inside that haven’t
made actual contact with the diapers and shoes and slimy
unidentifiable rotten stuff falling from the newest torn
plastic bags. Some is usable: jars and discarded broken
bowls, wood for cooking, rags for lining shoes and
plugging holes in the walls. Some can be fixed and sold:
rusted bicycles, broken chairs. That would be their
father’s job, if he weren’t picking strawberries or bell
peppers up in California.

The procurer would visit the dump daily, at least

weekly, looking for girls — the ones with the smallest
features, without scars on their faces, without cleft pallets
or deformed, of course the slim ones, but they’d all be
skinny. He can offer her a better job than picking through
the dump. She can work as a hotel maid and send money
back to her mother. As soon as she pays off their debt to
him and the other people who help her start her new
career.
A hundred yards from the corner of the last growing field,
I approached, exposed, without a tree or shrub to duck
behind. But all was quiet except the soft coastal breeze in
the grass. When the square plywood was at my feet, I
stopped, swept my gaze over the vista before me. It was
just past a rise in the terrain, where a descent into a
shallow ravine had already started. The toe of my boot
lifted the wall, which was heavy, double-ply. Then caught
it with my hand and lifted to shoulder height.
Underneath, on the ground, the two long 2x4s. On the
underside of the plywood, two blocks nailed at two
corners. One at a time, I propped the 2x4s against the
blocks, secured the other ends into the grasses, so the 45-
degree braces held the plywood wall mostly upright. From
down the two-track, perhaps only the top two-thirds of
the wooden wall might be visible.

The days had grown longer, the time changed to

daylight savings, nothing and no one drawing me home,
so I had continued to walk the two-tracks at late twilight,
spring of 2002 before beginning my research, before
committing a word of my article to the hard drive.
Binoculars in hand, I frequently left the two-track to slip
between rows of conifers, my footfall a quiet crunch on
shredded mulch, zigzagged my way parallel with the two-
track, to the spot where I’d first seen them, four or five
months before. A few times, fleetingly, from various spots
where I’d parked my golf cart, I’d been able to discern
movement, but never again more than one girl.

The sun about to set but already buried in the

coastal cloudbank, it was late enough I already knew the
day’s activity would be over. I had headed, not directly —
as though to thwart surveillance of my approach — to the
place where I’d first seen the plywood wall lying in the
grasses. I’d since then seen it propped leaning upright,
blocking views from the west, from the nursery rows,
from the scattered workers, and from me.

The grasses beneath where the plywood had been

lying were flattened, some bare patches of dirt showing,
but clear of rocks or sticks. Other than that, it was just
the ground of native coastal California. I kneeled there,
facing the wooden partition. It blocked the breeze.
There was no writing on the plywood, not even scratch
marks made with a stick. No primitive communication
left for the would-be rescuer. An ant crawled up my arm,
another on my hand. Just in front of my knee, ants
swarmed. Light green against the ground, it was not the
growth of new grass, but tiny shreds of lettuce, a few
crumbs of bread. Today’s, or yesterday’s midday meal.
There, on the flat top of a rock buried so its surface is
ground-level, a pickle carefully placed. She doesn’t like
pickles.
We’d had several days of rain. Vilified by those with no
thoughts beyond their relaxation on the beach, their
power walks on park trails, their lunches outside in
courtyards, but always welcome by those of us in the
nursery industry. And yet this time, as our paths between
retail stock became too gluey to walk, and the two-tracks
grew ruts from the streaming run-off, I was thinking of
Lena. Surely they wouldn’t send her out in weather like
this, but would the hiatus be a relief, or would someone
take out the disruption of income on her? And yet many
day-laborers also wouldn’t be working during days of
downpours. Was there some other fall-back location?

Good questions. A real investigator would have

followed through. I never found out. The sun returned,
and before long the dry-summer hills and ravines
transformed themselves into supple emerald, the
“seasons” mainly determined by when and how much it
rains.

As soon as the roads weren’t inches thick with mud,

I returned to my blockade, put my muddy boots on either
side of the toilet hole I was sure no one ever used, and
watched through the air vent. Though the fields were
turning green, and the rows between our tree stock
nurturing too many grass-weeds and dandelions, the old
brush had retained enough toughness to serve as walls, so
the location of the brothel remained the same. And the
same day that I returned to my vantage point, Lena
returned, although I suppose she could’ve also been there
the day or week before as well.

I was dressed and ready, had memorized my new

questions, and I was fairly quickly able to advance on her
lair. Perhaps the men, as well, were unsure she would be
there, or unwilling to visit in the sodden and muddy
chaparral.

This time she immediately took the money from me

and kneeled at my feet, startling me with her easy
assumption of our position, and yet she said,
“Rápidamente. Entonces vaya.” Quickly. Then go.

“Está bien, está bien,” I said quickly, my hands

automatically going to her head to hold my balance, and
added, “it’s okay,” certain that every Spanish-speaker in
California understood that idiom.

She was kneeling on the still-wet ground, although

she, or someone, had cut dry grasses somewhere else and
spread them around here. Still, her shoes were caked with
drying muck, mud streaks and spatters extended up her
legs, her skirt was dirty, even her shoulders had traces and
smears, likely left by dirty hands.

“Qué sucede a usted cuando llueve?” I asked what

she did when it rains, and she did whisper, “Nada.”

“Mira usted la televisión?”

She may have shook her head. It was hard to tell,

with her forehead against my abdomen, and her hands on
my backside trying to move my body, although not as
adamantly or fearfully as she seemed to on my previous
visit.

“Es mirado usted?” Admittedly, a radical shift, to

go from asking a teenager if she watches television to
asking her if she’s being watched while she performs sex
for money in a field.

Perhaps I was just validating an excuse for my

prolonged delay, because she said, “Sí. Casi siempre.”
Almost always. Perhaps her voice quivered as she said
this; or perhaps I am inventing the quaver because my
knees had gone buttery and I had to hold onto her head a
little firmer, making her support me, and knew even then
how wretchedly backwards that was.

“Qué tuvo usted para cenar?” I switched to

questioning her meals, partially a pre-planned strategy to
open her up, also because these happened to be the
questions I had memorized. But perhaps, as well, relieving
my gagging shame by letting myself pretend it was a
normal small-talk dialogue with a girl, like the sort I
might have with a customer’s child.

“Hamburger.”

I don’t know if it’s really what she ate the

night before, if she had hamburgers for every meal of her
life, or if it was the only English word she knew for any
kind of food. While I was silently mouthing, practicing,
the word for make-up, maquillaje, that was part of my next
question, Lena released me and turned away, digging in a
plastic grocery bag I’d thought might be the trash
receptacle for condom wrappers.

“Toma esto,” she said, returning to her

position on her knees in front of me. She was feeling for
my back pocket and pushed something inside. “Entonces
vaya. Go. Por favor. You, please.”
 I didn’t know, and of course still don’t, if she’d
learned these English words for me, or if a smattering of
English was inevitable, even in the circumstances she
lived, with so little time for words.

She stood, took my shoulder and simultaneously

tried to turn me around and push me toward the place
that represented a doorway, where men came and went. I
tried to hold onto a look at her face, a face I’d actually
looked into so little during our visits, but she was strong,
my backward glance was quick, and I came away with
only an image of how a streak of dried mud was
obscuring the rouge on one of her cheeks. I left, as usual,
without hesitation that would mark me as atypical, and
by the time I reached my barricade, the soles of my boots
had collected an inch of mud with embedded pebbles.

By that day in 2003, I still didn’t know her name,

although I’ve been using it here all along. That was the
day I learned it. I didn’t fish the paper from my pocket
until I was safely in my office, my boots outside the door,
my bulky socks draped over the back of my chair and
replaced by fleece slippers. Stalling, long enough, that if
anyone had observed me leave an hour ago, and return
from the fields in a straw hat and flannel shirt, they would
not any longer be watching or thinking about what I’d
been doing, once I was inside my office for several
minutes.

The paper in my pocket was a windowed return-

payment envelope that would have come with a bill for
utilities or credit card, possibly taken from the trash
somewhere. The envelope was limp and creased. Perhaps
Lena had carried it with her several days, waiting for me
to come to her again. It was sealed and addressed,
although it would never be able to go anywhere. The
address was almost illegible, had no numbers, no street.
It’s possible some of the jumble of letters forming words
were a description of a town, or an attempt to explain
where a town was, what it was close to, how far from the
ocean or mountains. I couldn’t read it at all, except that
“Mexico” was printed beneath the short sprawl of run-
together letters, and there was a name above them:
Alicia Ruiz.

Of course I opened it. If I’d been able to make out

any kind of address, I would’ve resealed it, or put it in
another envelope and re-written the address. But the
letter couldn’t possibly find Alicia Ruiz — obviously Lena’s
mother, the way it was addressed. So I opened it. The
letter was not any better, as far as my being able to glean
what she wanted to say. But at the bottom, unmistakable
enough, was her name, Lena.

If I’d fully appreciated, or believed, that this

tangible piece of Lena, her communication from inside
her bondage, could have spurred someone better
equipped than me to take action, believe me I would have
done so. Especially had I known that Lena would
disappear from me forever. Was I hording my “contact”
because of the fame and accolades her rescue might bring
me? I don’t think that was it, but I do question my
stagnancy concerning the letter, why it didn’t spur more
immediate action, or an immediate development of a
different plan, or any plan at all.

Instead, I began to spend some evenings at home,

staring at individual words, or what I thought were words,
trying to find any similar word in my Spanish dictionary,
or asking the translation website I’d been using. For
example:

Jarden … possibly meant to be jardin … either garden

or kindergarten, if the words after it were de niños, but
which looked more like infamia (disgrace).

Embarazo … embarrassment … but some dictionaries

say it also means pregnant. How’s that for a patriarchal
language when these two meanings reside in the same
word? Also obstacle or obstruction. Mercifully, she had a No
in front of it ... if she could be believed.

Peluca or peludo or peluche … not spelled exactly like

any of those … wig or hairy or teddy bear. But could’ve been
pileta (basin, swimming pool) or even piloto (driver).

Contento or contante or contado or conteno ... happy

(content) or cash or scarce or hold back (restrain) but not I am
restrained, more I restrain, so not likely.

One word looked too much like hospital to be

anything else, but it was very close to another that could
only be hotel, and both words are spelled the same,
English or Spanish. Those were the only words that
actually made sense, not that she’d been taken to a
hospital or lived in a hotel, but lies, telling her family
that’s where she worked, or works, or will work soon. The
same lies she was told when she was taken, or given to
the procurer.
"I considered writing a story about chapped lips."
--Amelia Gray

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ISSUE TWENTY-FOUR

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15 AUGUST 2010
Two albums were released since our last issue. While
the staff does not make its business in writing favorable
reviews of any sort, it does highly recommend both High
Violet by The National (specifically, Lemonworld) and
American Slang by The Gaslight Anthem.

Speaking of music, our guest this issue is

a band called Red This Ever, a self-
described band of "new-wave synth
rockers" the editor randomly met one
night in Baltimore. The album our feature
track descends from, Selfless, can be had
on iTunes or here.

Other things happened, surely, but this isn't

some kind of bulletin board. In case we don't see
you again by the fall, be sure to check out Adam
Moorad's Oikos, coming out October 2010 from
the increasingly venerable nonpress.

DISCONTENTS:
- Lovelace (5)
- Wood (25)
 PEGGY GUGENHEIM
VISITS THE TIMES
I sit outside the door and wait for John but I’m not stupid.
I know all about operations, the steps. I know all about
the doctors—generalist, anesthetist, surgeon—I’ve seen
their type before: scientists. I know all about progress, its
absurdity. John instructs me, says to me, “Look at our
century. What we’ve done with our thinking. It was
impossible to kill like this, on this scale—think of it! Men
went to war on horseback, swords, rifles, but now, now
we kill millions, millions! With artillery, tanks, machine
guns, gas in the trenches.” 

It was local anesthesia; she was awake, dawning

into pain. Agony’s confetti, bolts of spider-filament, cost
of blinking, probing electricity, crescendo of feeling. It
was local and so she was able to say, Stop. Able to say,
You’re killing me, you bastard quack! Able to think, Am I the
first patient to ever halt her own surgery? Still, she paid half his
ludicrously high bill. And she kept her half-finished nose.

John is in there, in our bedroom, on the bed asleep

but not truly asleep, with us, yes, but somewhere distant,
somewhere dark, the rustling thicket of anesthesia. I’m
sitting outside, dazed to see the hallway, but it was I who
held his hand as he went under, and I who let it go, to sit
outside. I fill my lungs with the cool air rising off the tiled
floor, and I count the tiles—forty-seven—and you know
how the mind wafts away while counting, and it hits me
suddenly, like a thrown vase against my chest—The only
man who really loved me is in that room. I don't open the
door. I sit quietly, lifting my head and listening.

5
 All that flat beeping. It sounded red. She was
horizontal, legs in stirrups. She was asleep but her ears
became organs of swallow. Ingestion. She could hear the
widening. The suction. In the empty minutes she saw
herself walking cobblestone alleys, searching an address.
The curette made a scraping sound. Clack of smallness, no
solid place, chair-propped door, flue leaking steam.

John is rarely sober and likes to hear his voice when

drinking. I listen. I’ve come to see him as my Virgil—he
shows me things: literature, culture, politics. 

“None of this is over,” he shouts, “nothing solved!”

He thinks we are heading for another war. Act two

of this dark tragedy, and then curtains. He says, “The War
to End All Wars—ha! A slogan for fools.” I don’t reply. I
prefer to listen. To me, his words are water and I’m a
sponge. I like to fill my mind, to overfill, waves over sand,
wiping away.

He taught me how to locate clams, off the south of

France. You wade slowly, whisking your feet along,
probing with your toes, and then you feel it—a cool,
ridged dome—the clamshell. John told me how to steam
them—something about garlic, I can’t remember.

Still I listen.

Pitch of baby’s cry, a holding. Images of a head held

in warm hands; of a head crushed. A squeezing. How can
she want it to live? How can she want it to die? First grip
 SEAN LOVELACE

struggling, owl-in-the-throat, insomnia, hypersomnia, loss

of appetite. Thrumming daylight, sigh of hold-me. Pitch is
for the inner ear, a certain tone. Attention! A baby cries, a
mother cries, a black Laughing inside the Love.

John is an athlete, when sober. Tall and natural. And

the way he carries himself. He taught me to ride,
efficiently, with the horse, saying how man and beast
were once akin, a sacred bond, now broken, but could be
fused again, with patience, awareness, riding with a
halter, no bit or bridle. 

“The Galapagos animals aren’t frightened,” he told

me. “Darwin walked right up to them. We hadn’t trapped
or clubbed them, or taken their skins, so they welcomed
him, or ignored him, no fear.”

And then he showed me horse-jumping, the

technique. Without bit or bridle, the five stages:
approach, takeoff, the getaway and so forth. John rode
with me, arms around my waist—“look ahead, back flat,
lean forward”—but I can’t remember all the words, only
the feeling.

Stomach in my throat.

Hands gripping, tight.

And now John is in our bedroom, our bed, his

infirmary. Sixty-one days ago, in the moors behind
Hayford Hall, his horse stumbled into a rabbit hole, and
he fell, his wrist fractured. A small break, nothing serious,
but it never healed properly. I would see him staring at
his forearm, tightening and releasing his fist, his head
cocked in wonder, an athlete questioning his former
ally—“How could you turn on me?” And he could no
longer handle it, the pain. Omnipresent, pulsing, and so
he drank even more.

“It’s like a brick, a heavy brick,” he said, “affixed to

my wrist.”

He desired an operation, the wrist re-broken,

anything but the pain.    

Mother kept spitting up this green fluid, almost

black, and then tinged with a lighter border of lime peel.
She held her hand. Skin dry and hot and bruised. 

Swatches of black ice. Ground-thumped plum.

Jaundice scallop. Looked away to the IV pole, stainless
steel, polished stainless steel and she could see herself,
long and thin in the drawn reflection, and supposed it was
someone’s job to polish the IV pole, and they had no
cause or cure or treatment for mother, no cure that
wouldn’t kill her.

The surgeon swings open the door and avoids my

eyes and disappears into the cubbyhole where we keep
the telephone. I feel a stirring, a chill rippling through my
chest. He seems to speak quickly, his voice crinkly in my
ear. Metallic. I sit there re-counting the tiles.

8
 He reenters the room and they exit, together, three
of them, standing, a semicircle of starched white coats.
Their black shoes cover the tiles, the grouting in-between,
so I lift my head to their stethoscope nooses with phrases
falling from their lips.

The anesthesia.

It was his liver, most likely enlarged.

“An inexact science.”

Forty-six tiles this time, not forty-seven. Inexact

science, all of this counting. I laugh to myself, inside, a
vibration, a low hum, a crumbling. Nothing is very funny.
The stock market falls, leaders rise, and we count
everything, meticulous, our records and tallies and
statistics, our progress, and a rabbit kills the only man I
really loved. Who loved me.

It is no longer cool in the hallway, but cold, sixty

degrees, fifty degrees, I don’t know, and I wish these men
would melt away, float away, leave my hallway, my house,
everything I know about men and their lab coats and
their serious black shoes, and nothing is solved, nothing,
and I reach for my purse, and the generalist leans down to
offer a handkerchief, white, edged with lace, a canary
stitched in the corner, and I wave his canary away and dig
inside my purse, because I want them all to go, to
disappear, far away, so I dig, dig further, for my
checkbook—to pay the bill.
Eggplant. Cur. Lump of Gouda. Doorknob. A large rosy
oval with a coral fringe and then a reddish speckled
border and a thin dusting of coralline, fading into
lotioned whiteness. Nectarine pit. Blob.

The Guggenheim nose.

She wanted to look away, to leave the mirror, the

bathroom, stroll past the artist and his two models (both
naked, fat, messy-headed with the glow of insouciance)
without eye contact and then call a taxi for the ride over
to Boulogne-Billancourt, to a garage behind a country
house, the residence of a man recommended by her
American contacts, a draftsman who’d been loyal to a
habit and run out of money and would sell anything at
any price—at her price, which would be reasonable but
clearly unfair. She would then visit three further
arrondissements. Two sculptors and a collector with a
genius for oversized still lifes. She would offer cash, show
a wad of colorful bills; would be sure to drop the word
Germany into all negotiations. She would close the deal,
once again; she would stumble upon the finest Cubist
Braque in Paris and get it for cheap and spend the rest of
the evening sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug and
sipping dry champagne while staring into the heart of the
painting. Clearly, clearly, clearly happy. 

But she didn’t look away.

Lips tight and symmetrical. Lipstick arterial red, as

the nails. Hair starchy and brown, swooping back, a dense
 SEAN LOVELACE

halo-cloud, tint of gloss. An expression of comfortable

resignation, pupils shimmering, eyes slightly aglaze, the
results of three breakfast mimosas and the artist standing
one wall away.

The goddamn artist. This was her fourth inquiry,

first visit. Her eyes fluttered shut as she leaned against the
cold porcelain. She pressed her fingertips into her eyelids
and watched the tracers weave and dodge in the
glittering dark and she was outside this world, inside her
world, drawn into its simple core, and she was startled by
the ease of her acceptance, by the way she slid into
darkness, its warm embrace.

She would break away from the mirror. She would

open the door. He wouldn’t glance up from the models.
He would be asking their opinion of a large triangular
canvas that leaned against the wall. (He hadn’t asked
hers.) “I buy a painting a day,” she would say, loudly. 

“So I’ve heard. We’ve all heard.”

A nod to a glass wall clock, its hands a feather and a

silver spoon. “You had better get started.”

“I have an inheritance.”

“I don’t want your inheritance.”

“I want to buy a painting,” she would say.

“Tell me one thing interesting about yourself.”

 She would blink, sensing an opportunity. “My father
died on the Titanic.”

He would turn away. “Pick up a newspaper, Miss

Guggenheim. Death is no longer interesting.”

She would look to the floor, grind and crinkle the

toe of her shoe into the wood grain, and let silence fill the
air. She would say, “And the Nazis, when they are reading
our newspapers . . .”

He would stop; turn slowly, lowering a brush he’d

been biting the end of. It would be the first time she’d
truly had his attention and she would pause for several
minutes, listening to the faint buzzing of her inner ear.
Finally, she would say, “What will they think of your
paintings?”

He would smile, directly at her nose. “What will

they think of you?”

Portobello. Wet sock. Fireball smoke cloud. Waxes

and liners and moisturizers and creams and glosses and
surgery in the 1920s manner—unpracticed, inexact, more
scientific experimentation than cosmetic routine. Dirt
clod.

She opened her eyes but didn’t look away from the
mirror. Her head swam and she tilted against the sink and
rummaged a pint of scotch from her purse and took three
long draws and squinted into her face and thought about
throwing the bottle into her face. Instead she slumped to

12
the floor, the tiles comforting against the leg’s pale skin,
the wall solid against her head. She listened to her hair
crackle as she leaned back, so alone, within herself. She
thought of childhood and necessary hidings and knees
pulled up to chin. The dregs of the scotch she swallowed;
then knelt forward on the broken tiles and wedged the
bottle beneath the bidet, into the shadows.

A door slammed and someone entered the

apartment, a male voice, talking loudly. More doors
slamming, laughter, a cough, a sound like coins rolling
across the floor. They hadn’t even checked on her, she
told herself; they’re probably having a party. A plane
buzzed overhead, and her mind went off to some sunny
day in Central Park, clouds glinting off a dark green pond,
one of her nurses shaking her, shaking her shoulders, for
grasping the fluffy top off a cattail—one of her nurses, the
tall one who threatened daily to cut out her tongue. Fuck
the Germans, she thought. Gripping the edge of the sink
and pulling herself up, she looked again to the mirror,
straightened her hair, the edge of her blouse, turned to
the doorknob, her hand missing once and then clamping
hold.

Fuck the Germans and fuck Picasso. She stepped into

silence. The paintings gazed at her, tall, silent faces,
curves and glow, orbs and angles, and she had an impulse
to take one, the large blue and yellow one, right there and
then. But she didn’t. She let go the doorknob and stepped
into the center of the room.
 “Hello?” she called out. Silence. Dust motes spun in
the wide light of the studio. “Hello?” she whispered. She
frowned at the ceiling, a skylight of glass, the murmur of
pigeons. Her feet ached in her tight shoes. She wrapped
her purse tight against her hip, bandolier-style, the strap
digging into her shoulder, her breasts. A dull thudding;
dust from the ceiling. A distant siren. She listened to the
pigeons, scraping, cooing and cooing.

She went to look for the artist.

 SEAN LOVELACE

Most of what is said she doesn’t believe because most of

what is said isn’t for those with money, especially now.
The money is flowing out of the country, seeping,
scurrying away, on foot, horseback, late night trains and
airplanes and ships—stored in the States, or in Canada.
She still has her money. She can get things done. She does
not believe what is said.

Take, for example, chocolate éclairs.

She opens her umbrella and strolls over to the

women huddled against the bakery doorway. Do you have
éclairs?

No, we do not have éclairs. We do not have chocolate, they

say, excited to share such news, yet scolding, shaking
their heads.

I understand. But do you have éclairs?

No, madam. There is a war on. The British have our

chocolate. We have none.

Four minutes later, she closes her umbrella. The

women lift their chins from the coarse collars of their
patchwork blouses and step inside the shop. She follows,
the air layered and yeasty, heavy and wet with rye loaves,
a tint of sour jelly, and somewhere, burrowed away, along
the edges, a hint of cocoa.
 Le Monde, Classifieds, May 23, 1940.

She was sleeping with a commoner, not so much of

any true affection, but rather in the spirit of social
curiosity, a playful experiment in class relations. His name
was Henri and he was a hairdresser. His specialty was hair
color. 

She chose auburn over caramel because it matched

the running boards on the Talbot. She switched to blonde
while thinking of a time Laurence passed out during a
picnic in a wheat field. (He didn’t vomit, though—he had
this knack for never vomiting.) Brunette was for Beckett’s
horrible suits, motley, often soiled, his grey-green eyes
ablaze above a rumpled collar. Red was for her sister
Pegeen’s perfectly formed lips, and the feelings she had
for them. Black was leaning into gutters after long nights
of drinking, John holding her hair in his fist, pulling it
from her face. She’s not certain what made her whisper
orange. Sore and refreshed, she stepped from his shop and
the streets were alive but not in the old way—scampering
now, heads bowed, no longer giggling, laughing, falling on
one another to get there—and hours were long and faces
unfamiliar and her hair pulsing, bright, fiery and loud
through the dimly lit streets of Paris.

16
 Le Parisien, Classifieds, July 7, 1940. 

Are you an escapist? No, I’ve embraced our

humanity—that’s why I’m here, to see all of us, up there.
Are you tight? No. So am I. I said no.

They would talk this way and the theater was dark
and low and maybe not wet but it felt wet and they
would sink into the swallowing seats and watch the
bodies flicker on the faint blue screen and she would
open her jelly drops, little pebbled strawberries, and let
them roll about her palms, squeeze them flat with her
fingers, pop them into her mouth. It felt good to sense her
fingers. To feel the candy’s weight against her tongue. The
sweetness of the jelly drops cut the harsh pine of the gin,
she told herself.

It was a pleasing taste, not sticky or sickening. Isn’t

that right, Billy? Where was Billy? Three seats away,
whispering into the darkness to someone, a humped
shadow, most likely one of the whores employed by the
theater.

What? What do you want? Just to know you’re here.

What? Are you tight? Are you tight calling me tight?

Whispering, hissing, yes, serpentine, and she stared

straight ahead, her body floating with the gin. She
listened to the muffled sounds, a grunt, a squealing
feedback and she felt nauseous, fought it down, her
mouth sweating, and she took a long drink, chased it with
candies, and felt high and very low and so inside the
theater, so dark and confined, so outside the
world—billowing clouds, flames, smoke—and she stared at
the screen, pale white on glaring orb on shadowed arc on
shaved head, and she thought how visibly hollow, how
plotted, how mechanical—sometimes they didn’t even
seem like human beings.

Why are they called blue movies? What? Why blue? What the
hell, Peg? I just wondered. I just wondered why they were blue.

Le Figaro, Classifieds, June 09, 1940.

 SEAN LOVELACE
How many husbands have you had, Mrs. Guggenheim?

D’you mean my own, or other people’s?

There is one privately owned palazzo along the Grand

Canal, and only one privately owned gondola left in the
entire city. Mine. It spent the morning picking up an
American graduate student from the train station at Santa
Lucia. She is not here for the city, so dazzling it seems to
belong to a better, truer, deeper blue and green planet,
but rather to interview me, for her dissertation,
something about gender studies and modern art, which I
find flattering, and then again frightening: I am a relic,
something to see, like my paintings.

She refuses a drink, noting the early hour, but

maybe later a vodka martini. I tell her there is no such
thing as a vodka martini. She compliments my dogs, but
not individually, only as a group, something about their
energy. She’s pretty; all the young American women are
pretty now, and I feel a melting ice of jealousy in my
stomach. I should be over that but I’m not. As I discuss
the canals and viaducts of Venice, she nods and smiles,
but not with her eyes. Her eyes don’t smile. But so what?

I mix my drink, my movements practiced over the

slender glasses (high art, in my opinion), the crushed ice,
and tell her about how my first husband thought
preparing a martini was some great life metaphor, the
proper portions, the presentation—it’s one reason our
marriage didn’t last. While he drank for philosophical
notions, I drank to get tight.
a tape recorder, sleek and black like a packet of French
cigarettes.

I do not say it again. She sets up her recorder and

asks of Picasso and I answer: technical, difficult, invisible
inside. She continues, and I see the only way of nudging
her from subjects I find nauseating is to create
discomfort. And so I say loudly, “He found me stupid and
rich and stupid.”

She asks of Pollock and I tell two of the five usual

anecdotes and then, “He would urinate most anywhere,
including my fireplace.”

She mentions my sisters, their renowned beauty,

and I reply, “It only made me feel more repulsive.”
Emboldened for a few intriguing seconds, she digs deeper,
and I follow up with: “One died while giving birth. The
other dropped her two infant sons sixteen stories from a
New York rooftop.”

There are no further questions and she has a bowl

of Brusciuvia, three buttery slices of Semolina bread, and
finally a drink, a martini—as in gin, darling. I mix two,
smiling as she bird-sips and shoulder-shudders her way
along. She glances about the room, at my paintings, and I
give her a few general details, names, dates, a Plexiglas
placard at a museum.

20
 Then she asks about sex:

“I like the word fuck. I do. And I like to fuck.

Something about incursions, expulsions, the mixing of
faces, sexes, all the grappling. There’s something in the
falling, the utter dark falling of the orgasm. I dedicated a
great deal of my life to it. I can’t say why. Maybe it’s
everything modern, all of it, its toll—alienation, analysis.
Exhausting self-analysis.

What I mean by alienation is how I’ve felt alone.

You understand? I have money so I can always have
people, but they can never be me, think like me, these
nights when I can’t sleep, when I have Pietro, my
gondolier, take me outside, out there, floating the canals,
listening to the moon crackle…or sitting here and thinking
about my death-day. The way it marches down the
calendar, marching, like the Nazis…We all have a death-
day, you know, dear, like a birthday, but, well, rather
different. I mean with sex I feel—or I felt—immersed in the
Other, fucking the Other, and all those whirring darts of
pleasure slash pain slash whatever you want to say, were
maybe me, collecting, gathering up—not so alone, a few
seconds…the orgasm…or maybe I’m crazy.

Or drunk.

You’ve done your reading and you think here she is,
drunk. Talking rot. But I’m not drunk, and I don’t think
you know anxiety. I’m not talking late nights studying for
some little exam. No. I’m talking about marriage as
a tedious, suffocating cage; about outliving your
daughters; about every artist that takes your money, all of
them waiting to get a name so they can never mention
yours again.

Yes, I’m talking about suicide and murder. About

Nazis. Nazis, for God’s sake, and why? Don’t be
fooled—I’m a Venetian, now, but always an American. I
fled Paris. Fled acquaintances, people in trouble. Serious
trouble, if you understand me. I flee my anxieties, you
see? With drink and sex. With money.

But, no, I’m not drunk. And I’m not feeling sexy
anymore. I suppose similarities exist: you do it for years,
decades swim by, and you glance back, look for some
pattern, some daily motivation for pouring a drink, for
finding someone, someone to fuck, someone other than
who you are fucking.

Who knows why? A gear or cog inside just slips its,

its what?—its bearing? I don’t know the word. Maybe I
don’t know what I’m saying. Maybe. There’s analysis for
you—the world’s largest I don’t know. I mean what are we
doing here, dear?”

No reply, from either of us. She stares at the

recorder, tilts it in her fingers, frowns, presses a button,
mumbles something about the tape. I beckon her to the
window, a wide glass wall, the sun a smeary ball of
orange, melting, splintering into canals, glinting off the
byways and eddies and cross-running tides of the lagoon,
light thrown awry, diamonds tossed across a fractured
jigsaw of bluish green.

“What do you think?” I say.

She shrugs. “It’s like a picture.”

I see our reflections in the window, a gull wheeling

nearby, the sun, and feel a softening inside. Strange: this
urge to see myself in her. But why? I glance down to the
quay, to the gondola being readied—my visitor must soon
return to her hotel, and on to Milan, to interview a young
lady who makes art from discarded automobile engines.

“And what do you think of Pietro?” I ask her.

“Who?” She turns from the window and yawns,

immediately apologizing, pleading the heavy bread and
the late martini, and then, while collecting her things, tells
me of her recent readings of Venice, about how the city as
we know it is doomed, geologically doomed to sink into
the sea, and this the citizen’s fault, their negligence,
building on shifting sandbars and precarious wetlands as
if it were terra firma—creating their very lives on sand,
like so many—“Goodnight,” I tell her, and her eyes flicker,
her face losing its glow, its symmetry, and from her lips an
uncertain mumbling as she turns to the doorway. In
silence I watch from the window as Pietro takes her hand
and guides her into the gondola, he smiling, she clearly
not smiling, not smiling at Pietro, and she turns for a last
glance and I am across the room, mixing a martini,
stirring it slowly, slowly, so as not to bruise the gin.
SEAN LOVELACE
 THE TEST
Shelley sat alone in a dark-leathered corner booth at
Cartwright’s, sipping his tumbler of icy vodka and
appreciating the separation between those who wanted
to be seen dancing and those who wanted to be seen
having a drink or three. The dancers reigned on an
acoustically isolated dance floor, insulated from the rest
of the club by technological sleight-of-hand. On Shelley’s
side of that invisible barrier, the low murmur of
conversation floated above a soundtrack of one-hundred-
and-fifty-year old jazz standards. He couldn’t hear the
music that accompanied the flickering rainbow of laser
strobes on the dance floor. The dancers were silent, like
darting tropical fish.

One dancer glided away from the others and sought

Shelley’s gaze from across the room, catching it for a few
heartbeats before stepping up to the mahogany bar and
ordering a pint of something dark. The dancers he left
behind remained synchronized with the driving club
rhythms, the silent beats locked away behind cleverly-
placed baffles and noise-canceling loudspeakers. Seen
from Shelley's booth in the corner, the dancers slid and
posed in silence, out of phase, oblivious to the low sounds
of muted trumpet, slinky bass and brushwork traps that
drifted through the air just a few yards away. Bare-
chested revelers strutted and preened, displaying the
groomed pectoral pelts and luminescent tattoos that
were de rigueur for the cruising set that season.

Shelley watched the man with the pint glass as he

weaved among the votive-lit obsidian tables-for-two on

25
the quiet side of the club. He arrived at Shelley’s booth
and paused for a moment, then took an audible breath.
“I’m Matt,” he said. His cobalt shirt of sweat-wicking
fabric could have been his own skin. Droplets of moisture
gleamed on his temples, and Shelley smiled.

“Shelley,” he said.

“Mind if I sit down?”

With his glass, Shelley gestured towards the empty

seat across the table, and Matt slid into the booth, setting
his own glass down for a moment before picking it up
again. He took a long pull of his beer and then inhaled
through slightly parted lips, in the manner of someone
opening his nose and palette to appreciate a flavor.
“You’re Shelley Curtis, right?” he asked. Shelley raised an
eyebrow. “The writer?”

“Not if you’re going to berate me for being a traitor

to gay men everywhere,” he said. “In that case I’m Shelley
Lowenstein, the seller of used recreational vehicles and
campers.”

Matt grinned. “I recognized you from your author

photo.” He squinted at Shelley in the dim light. “In fact, I
think you were wearing the same jacket.”

“I like this jacket,” Shelley said. He smoothed at its

suede lapels with his fingertips and downed the last of his
drink, wondering if he wanted another. He watched Matt
 IAN WOOD

lick a bit of foam from his upper lip.

“Listen, I should probably do this right away before

I lose my nerve,” Matt said. He cleared his throat and sat
up a bit straighter in his seat. “I read The Homophile’s Book
of Lies when I was sixteen, and it changed my life, and then
I came out, and do you want to come back to my place?”
The words tumbled out, and Matt blinked, as though
unsure about whether he had said them aloud.

Shelley tipped his glass back again and took a

smooth-edged ice cube into his mouth, using the crunch
and cold pain on his molars for a moment’s worth of
cover. He studied Matt’s open face: his dark eyes were
clear, with pupils no more dilated than the lighting
required; his chin and jaw were strong, but not surgically
so; his mouth was set with youthful confidence and the
lingering hint of a nervous smile. As the ice melted against
his tongue, Shelley said, “There should probably be a bit
more conversation, don’t you think?” Matt blinked again.
“Ask me something.”

“Ask you something?” Matt’s eyes focused on his

glass. “Okay. How about, ‘Where have you been?’ Since
the book, I mean. You made all this noise, and then kind
of—”

“Disappeared, yeah,” Shelley finished. “Having

someone burn down your office makes Europe look
rather attractive.” He was pleased that Matt hadn’t asked
him about New York. Everyone had their New York
stories: where they were when it happened, who they’d
lost. Shelley was tired of telling his New York story.

Matt nodded. “I read about that.”

“I spent a year in France. Lectured in England for a

semester.” Shelley bit his lip and glanced toward the
ceiling, feigning a struggle to recall his recent history. “I
think that’s it. I’ve only been in L.A. since April.”

“Lucky me,” Matt said.

“Possibly,” Shelley flirted back. “What about you?

What do you like to do when you’re not picking up men
who wear unfashionable jackets?”

“I work for Gencor,” Matt said with a shrug. “In the

assay lab, punching buttons to pay the bills.”

“That’s what you like to do?”

“Oh. Well, no.” Matt flushed, just a little, and

Shelley felt a small, peculiar burst of affection for him,
what he used to call a crushlet. “Opera. I’m kind of a buff.
Well, more than a buff, actually. I belong to an amateur
company.”

Shelley raised his brows. “I didn’t know there were

such things.”

“Those are the ‘bills’ I was talking about,” Matt said,

contemplating their empty glasses. “It’s mostly my

28
company. I rent the rehearsal space so I get to sing the
title roles. I'm singing Rigoletto next month.” Shelley
cocked his head and peered across the table at him.

“No,” he said after a long pause, during which Matt

held his gaze with clear, dark eyes.

“No what?”

“When I look at you, I don’t see ‘hunchback.’”

“You’d be surprised what you can do with some

foam padding and a decent libretto.”

Shelley laughed, and decided that yes, he would

have another vodka. He asked Matt what he was drinking,
and if he wanted another, which he did. Shelley rose from
his seat and then cut across one corner of the dance floor
on his way towards the bar, passing through the sonic
dampener’s invisible acoustic boundary. For several steps,
the thumping bass rhythm of the music there filled his
chest. He let his shoulders roll with the beat, his stride
lengthened into the coy, sensual strut he remembered
from a time of poppers, pills, and pretty boys, in a city
that had died by fire.

He broke through the dampener’s boundary again

as he approached the bar. On the other side of that
ephemeral barrier, the sudden comparative silence of jazz
almost made him stumble as he caught the bartender’s
eye. He ordered another vodka over ice for himself and a
pint for Matt, then picked his way along the wall opposite
the dance floor, bearing fresh, cold glasses back to the
booth. “So tell me,” he said, setting them down as he
resumed his seat, “do you collect authors? Or am I a
special case?”

“Special,” Matt said.

Shelley brought his glass to his lips, and the chilled,

flavorless vodka become warm as it slid down his throat.
“I hardly ever meet any of my—” Matt stopped and sought
refuge in his glass, gulping nearly half the pint.

“Your what?” He fluttered his hand in the air near

his head. “Now I’m all embarrassed.” Shelley said nothing
and kept looking at him with a knowing, close-lipped
smile. Matt relented. “Fine. You’re kind of my hero.”

Shelley chuckled. “I can guarantee that you’ll be

disappointed. Pretend I’m just a moderately good-looking
gentleman of a certain age that you’d like to take home
with you, if that helps.”

“No, I think that makes it worse.” Matt affected

such a miserable tone that they both burst into laughter,
and some of the tension fled.

Their conversation meandered, flitting from one

common interest to another, and they batted it between
them like a fat balloon. As they talked, a slow warmth
 IAN WOOD

bloomed in Shelley’s chest and harmonized with the voice

of the alcohol in his head. The stories Matt told intrigued
him, so different from those of the clubsters of his
younger days. No one of Matt's age in his former circle
would have been enough of a raconteur to properly tell a
rousing tale about the cascading consequences of
breaking wind onstage during an audition for La forza del
destino. Shelley enjoyed watching the play of Matt's eyes
as he became engaged in his stories, retreating into his
memory, then alighting on Shelley's face from behind a
thin scrim of self-awareness and concern: Is this working?
Does he like me?

Shelley indicated the dwindling contents of their

glasses. “Do we want any more of these?” he asked, then
paused in contemplation of his own question. He had
come to the club for nothing more than a drink and
perhaps some eye candy, but prospects had certainly
improved. He tipped the last chilly bit of vodka into his
mouth, and bit down on the ice.

“Actually, I think that what we’re wanting now is a

cab,” Matt said. Shelley swallowed his ice by way of
agreement.

Leaving the club, they strolled for a few blocks in

the city’s evening light, finally hailing a lone taxi that
seemed yoked to the sharp cones of diode headlight
illumination that preceded it along the humid street. Matt
announced his address. The dashboard navigator chimed
with recognition, and whispered at the driver, telling him
where to turn next. Matt pressed close to Shelley in the
taxi’s seat. The flash of passing streetlights illuminated the
interior as they headed uptown, and Matt reached over in
the semi-darkness, turning Shelley’s head towards his
own. The kiss, when they shared it, was surprisingly good.
Good lord, it's chemistry! Shelley thought. It had been
awhile.

The taxi pulled up to the curb in front of a well-

kept apartment building and murmured their arrival.
Shelley pressed his thumb onto the paypad, but Matt
pushed his hand away and pressed his own thumb there,
opening the door and pulling Shelley out after him like a
prom date. There were kisses in the building’s foyer, more
kisses in front of the elevator, still more in the elevator
itself.

Shelley pressed Matt against the door to his

apartment, while Matt slapped blindly at the palmlock
behind him. When the door snicked open they nearly fell
into the front hallway. Soft and indirect illumination
faded up in the living room, where an expanse of inviting,
crimson upholstery waited. Barely separating from each
other, they tumbled into the cushions. Matt peeled off his
shirt, revealing a tangle of thorny vines inked in midnight
green that flowed across his left shoulder and onto his
chest, adorned with a spray of blood-red rosebuds that
flashed and sparkled with metallic inks. He pulled Shelley
out of his author's photo jacket, tossing it in the direction
of the television. Shelley murmured his appreciation, low
in his throat, gliding his hands around Matt’s shoulders

32
and down along the smooth curve of his spine, slipping all
of his fingers below the thick leather belt and the
waistband of his jeans.

Matt reared up like a lion and Shelley slid one hand

around his hip, towards the warmth of his thighs. “How
safe do we need to be?” Matt murmured.

“I’m vaccinated,” Shelley said. “It doesn’t get much

safer.” After a moment, Shelley’s hand resumed its travel,
and lingered at its destination. With his other hand, he
fumbled at Matt’s belt buckle, then at the buttons on his
jeans. They seemed to resist his efforts, confounding his
fingers.

“You’re tested too, right?” Matt asked, his eyes half-

lidded. Shelley tried to hold the moment, to stop the
question with a caress. But it was too late for that. His
answer needed to be given.

“Yeah. I’ve been tested.”

Matt opened his eyes, hearing the tone in Shelley’s

voice.

“And you were positive, right?” Shelley didn’t

answer immediately, and Matt, still sitting astride
Shelley’s hips, pushed himself upwards. “Right?” he
repeated.

“More kissing, less talk,” Shelley said, trying to keep

an edge of pleading out of his voice, wincing as he heard
 it. He pulled his hands from the warmth of Matt’s skin,
and reached up towards him, but Matt did not come
within his reach. He pushed himself further away,
realization and disbelief on his face.

“You’re negative.” A short, sharp breath emerged

from his mouth, somewhere between a laugh and a snort.
The two of them remained frozen in tableau for several
moments, Shelley on his back, hands beckoning, Matt
upright over him, one foot planted on the floor beside the
couch, his other leg bent at the knee, pressed deep into
the crimson cushions, his inner thigh encompassing
Shelley’s waist. Then, Matt pushed himself off Shelley
entirely, towards his feet, and leaned up against the far
arm of the couch. “Shelley Curtis.” He shook his head,
mouth slightly open. He stared at Shelley, still lying on his
back with his belt unbuckled, his pants unzipped and
pushed below the curve of his belly. “Shelly fucking Curtis
doesn’t have the genes.”

Shelley sighed, dropped his hands, and propped

himself up on his elbows. “Matt, come on,” he said, trying
to reach into some of the confidence he had felt back at
the club, watching Matt stammer and blush. “Come back
here.”

“When did you know?” Matt asked, his voice low,

the shy club boy fading, being replaced by someone sullen
and wounded. “Before or after the book?”

Shelley flopped back on the couch, staring up at the

 IAN WOOD

ceiling. “After. They identified all of the DNA markers

about six months after it was published. I got tested in
France.”

“So you made your career writing about identity

and authenticity—and then they actually came out with a
test.” Matt stood up away from the arm of the couch. He
laughed without humor. “Really put the science into
social science for you, didn't it?” He retrieved his shirt
from the floor and pulled it on, doing it so quickly that he
got it on backwards, and had to pull his arms from its
sleeves again and spin it around his neck to get it right. “Is
that why you stayed in Europe? Because you found out
you aren't really gay?”

Shelley scooted backwards, retreating to the other

side of the couch, his fists clenched. “I was out a decade
and a half before you started fantasizing about the high
school quarterback,” he said, wrenching himself upright,
trying to stand before realizing that his pants would drop
to his ankles if he did. “Don’t tell me what I’m not.”

Shelley relaxed his fists, tended to his pants and his

belt, and stood. He walked over to the television, and
picked up his jacket. As he put it on, he saw a framed
poster on the wall there, a blocky, stylized pink
revolutionary fist, with a legend in jagged white letters
beneath it: July 23, 2069. Washington, D.C. Tucked into the
corner of the frame was a printed photograph. In it, Matt,
no more than seventeen, was arm in arm with two other
young men of equally pleasing aesthetics, each
wearing black tee-shirts bearing the pink fist logo, a vast
crowd stretching out behind them, the stark obelisk of
the Washington monument rising in the hazy distance.
That makes sense, he thought. Of course. “Queer Identity,”
he said. “You don't seem the sort.” He glanced back
towards the couch. “Avoided any mention of politics at
the table, in fact.”

“We are as God has made us,” Matt said, quoting

Shelley's own work back at him, “and one day soon
science will attend the revelation of that fact.” He sagged
further against the arm of the couch, then slid down onto
the cushions and sat there, hunched, his arms resting on
his thighs. “They set your office on fire for writing that.
Jesus.”

“I also wrote that confusing identity with genetics

would break hearts.” He took a couple of steps towards
Matt, one hand slightly raised, palm open, then stopped.
“I suppose you missed that part.” He dropped his hand
back to his side.

“Yeah.” Matt didn’t look up, wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“I guess a lot of people did.” After a moment, Shelley
stopped looking at him and looked out the window
towards the glimmering expanse of Los Angeles at night.

“When I was fifteen,” Shelley said, “I fell in love with

the boy who delivered pizza to my apartment.”

“What?”

36
 Shelley didn't turn around. He peered into the
photograph, trying to put himself into the crowd,
somewhere in the distance on the Mall. “He was odd-
looking. Skinny. Bit of a hawk nose, pocked skin. Black
hair that he slicked back. But he had these eyes.” He
heard Matt shift on the couch behind him, but he
remained focused on the image in the poster. It had been
just four years ago when all those people had marched
and danced on a sunny, hot and humid day in the former
swamp. Shelley had been in France then, ensconced in a
ratty hotel off of Rue La Fayette, taking refuge from his
arsonist-critics. From crystalline memories of the still-
smoldering wreckage of New York. “From somewhere in
the Middle East, I think. Those dark Levantine eyes.”
Shelley turned around, and saw what he expected to see
in Matt's face: incomprehension. Lingering
disappointment. He returned to the couch and sat back
down, resuming his place on the voluminous crimson
cushions at the far end, away from Matt. “I ordered pizza
just so I could see him at the doorway for a few
moments.” Shelley smiled, a private smile for himself, and
glanced sidelong at Matt. “I gained fifteen pounds that
summer. My face looked like the god damn moon.” The
corners of Matt's mouth twitched, a natural smile fighting
against his deliberate mood. “September rolled around,
and someone else started showing up at the doorway. I
actually went to the pizza shop, trying to find him, but he
didn’t work there anymore. Never even knew his name.”

“Tragic.”
 Shelley chuckled. “Oh, yeah.” His smile faded and
he looked at Matt, meeting his gaze and holding it. “I
thought, who would choose this? Bush Three was running,
and all the fundies were out and screaming bloody baby
Jesus murder because of the marriage amendment, but it
wasn't about any of that. It was about lying on my bed,
night after night—ever had that? Ball of lead in the chest,
can't sleep, all that?”

“Yeah.” The reluctant smile returned.

After a moment, Shelley stood and looked out the

window again. He rubbed at the back of his neck with
one hand, remembering the recent warmth of Matt’s
eager fingers there. “You know, I don't feel quite myself
this evening,” he said. “Shouldn't have had that last drink,
maybe.”

He could feel Matt considering whether to ask him

to stay. Aloud, Matt said, “I don't think either of us is who
we are right now.”

“Well, isn't that something,” Shelley said, so quietly

he wasn't sure that Matt had heard him.

“I mean—I don't know what to think,” Matt

continued. “About this. Or you.”

“You'll figure it out,” Shelly said. “Later, after I've

gone.”

By the time he'd closed the apartment door behind

him, he no longer wanted Matt to stop him. The elevator
bore him downwards, humming to itself. Outside, the
mist of the street enveloped him, as he sought a taxi in
the darkness.
IAN WOOD