Jeanette Perosa is a graduate of Arcadia University’s MFA Program. Her short fiction can be found in over sixteen literary journals worldwide including: Mamalode,, Euonia Review, Fiction on the Web and Delta Woman Magazine. Her debut novel The Secret Keepers spent over two months on the Kindle best sellers list. Jeanette lives in Limerick, Pennsylvania with her husband, four children, a pack of miniature schnauzers and a cat. You can follow her on Twitter, Facebook or check out her website: jeanetteperosa.org. Surprise Party It was her birthday. Tina knew that there was going to be a party, even though Michael had tried hard not to let the secret out. She had tried not to know, avoiding piles of odd envelopes on his desk and not looking at his Facebook page— but still she knew. It was the way he talked, a nervous twitch in his tone. The constant checking his watch over dinner. So, when they made their way home from the restaurant. Tina reapplied her lipstick and checked her hair. “I thought we could stop at your mother’s before heading home,” Michael said. Tina gazed over at him, trying to put on her best smile. “Why?” she said. She tried to fill her voice with indifference and yawned. Michael squirmed in his seat, then readjusted the rearview mirror. “Well, it’s your birthday and she is your mother. I am sure that she would love to see you.” “We could go tomorrow. It is getting late and I am sure that she will have church in the morning.” “No, let’s go tonight.” Tina sunk into the leather and smiled. She had not been to her mother’s house in quite a while. Odd that Michael would have chosen to have the party there, but she was sure her mother wanted to be involved. Tina thought it might have been better to have a party at their house. Its grand rooms would be the perfect backdrop to celebrate her birth. Not at all like the small colonial where her parents still resided. They had the same drab, tan walls and over-patterned wing chairs. “I wonder if my parents still have that floor model television. We should send them a new one for Christmas,” Tina said. “You did, for your father’s birthday. Remember your father couldn’t figure out how to make it stand. They had it leaning against the wall for months before he called me.” Michael flipped on his turn signal after reaching for his phone. Tina shrugged. “Alright, but let’s not stay too long.” Michael turned the Mercedes off the interstate and toward the older part of town. The shopping center’s neon signs blurred the cloudy sky with their light. Tina watched as they melted into the distance. “I didn’t know it got so built up down here,” Tina said. Michael let out a sigh. The shopping district gave way to simple houses, small boxes that seemed purchase and assembled from a discount chain. There were some leftover Christmas decorations spotting the porches and lawns. The neighborhoods looked worn and tired, nothing like the grand buildings in Tina’s development. Its faux stone-covered houses, sported trimmed landscaping, tasteful decorations, and fancy exterior lighting to match the name the developer hand given, Executive Estates. The name alone was a token of success. “Hard to believe I used to live here.” They slowed up as they made their way down a row of bi-levels and colonials, all with private drives and fenced yards. There were several cars that seemed familiar lining the street. Michael eased the car into the driveway and switched off the lights. Tina scanned the windows for movement, shuffling of guests waiting to shout out to her. She flipped the visor down and checked herself again in the mirror. Forty was looking pretty good on her. Michael rang the doorbell. Tina strained her ears to hear the scattering of feet, rushing to a hiding place to shout, “Surprise” or “Happy Birthday” at the first opportune moment. “We could just walk in,” Tina said, toying with him. Michael scowled at her. The door opened slowly. Tina’s father peered out at them from the opening. “Tina? Michael? Come in.” Tina braced herself, tossing her hair behind her shoulders and stepped into the threshold. Michael placed his hand in the small of her back. The foyer was dim, lit by a small lamp that sat on the side table. Tina moved in further, leaning past her father and scanning the rooms that lay next to the hall. Empty. “Happy Birthday, baby,” her father said. His silver hair was perfectly placed, as always. It appeared like a news reporter’s, plastic and shiny. Tina nostrils were filled with his Old Spice cologne as he leaned in to kiss her cheek, his hand pressing down on her shoulder. “Thank you, Daddy.” “Michael,” her father said. “Good to see you Arthur.” Arthur extended his hand to Michael, but Michael reached out and hugged him patting him on the back. They both hesitated for a moment before Arthur turned back to his daughter. “I’m so glad you came. My girl is forty! Wow, that makes me feel so old. Your mother is in the kitchen.” “I can’t stay long,” Tina said. “Mom made a cake.” Tina glanced over at Michael. The dim light cast shadows under his eyes. He looked up at her then before following her father. Tina could hear the distant bells of game shows blaring on the family room television as she moved down the short hallway. The kitchen was in the back of the house. Its linoleum floor still held a slight shine under the light that hung over the old table. Her mother was sitting in one of the lime green, vinyl chairs that had been purchased years ago as a set with the laminated table. In front of her mother was a cake, not store bought but homemade. It sat in a Pyrex pan, white with small, blue flowers on the side. Her mother smiled as she placed small, wax candles into the top—pink. “Emily, Tina is here,” her father said. Tina stood in the doorway, looking side to side. “Oh, my baby! Happy Birthday, Sweetie. Ethan, your sister is here. Come wish her a Happy Birthday!” Her mother rushed towards her, smile etched across her painted face. Tina stood there—frozen. Her mother smelled of vanilla. Tina could practically taste it when Emily squeezed her. Emily stood back, with Tina’s hands in hers and sighed. Emily’s face was round, blue eyes set deep within her wrinkled brow. Her short hair was brushed and curled into large waves that sat on her head as if the curlers were still in place. She turned to move towards the table and Tina could see that she had missed a spot with the brush. A tuft of hair in the back of her head stuck straight out. Tina reached out to flatten it. “Mom, you forgot a spot,” Tina said. Emily flushed as she ran her hand down the back of her head. “No matter— just family here.” Tina looked down at her mother’s clothing; gray wool pants that seemed tattered at the cuffs drifted loosely over pink bedroom slippers. This was not party attire. “Such a great girl! The pride of my life and now your forty. Seems like just yesterday that you were born, then off to college, and now,” Emily’s voice trailed off. “Arthur, get some matches and some plates. We have to sing to Tina. Oh, and yell for Ethan again.” Tina walked over to the counter, her heels clicking across the floor. She stood there glaring at Michael and pasted a smile on her face for her mother. Emily fussed, commanding Arthur to get knives, forks and ice cream. “There’s Ethan,” Emily said. Ethan moved into the kitchen from the other doorway, the one that attached the garage to the house. His hair was spiked up, like a sea urchin. His face was decorated with various silver rods and balls that had been pierced into his flesh. A large tattoo graced his neck, a screaming dragon that wrapped its tail around his shoulders disappearing into the back of his shirt. “Hey, Sis. Happy Birthday,” Ethan said, “Mike, how’s going?” “Alright, how about you?” Michael responded. “Same shit.” Emily glared at Ethan from across the cake. Ethan pulled a chair out, flipped it around before tossing a long leg over, and then sat down backwards on it, arms crossed over the vinyl, green back. “What brings you to this part of town?” Ethan said, “On your birthday even. We must be special.” His tone was flat and cynical. “Ethan, its your sister’s birthday, please,” Arthur said. The room got quiet; only the hum of the fluorescent lamps hissed in the air. “Let’s sing for Tina,” Emily announced. She clapped her hands before beginning to light the candles. Tina watched the wax drip down onto the white icing, gathering in small, pink balls. Tina felt annoyance rush through her like ice as her mother sang loudly and off key. Her father stood there mouthing the words. Ethan gave his rendition with an air guitar display, stomping his foot and almost losing his balance, bumping into Tina. Tina shoved him with her hand. “Knock it off. You’re going to ruin my coat!” Tina said. Arthur whispered something into Ethan’s ear before pulling an extra chair to the table. They sat there in silence as Tina blew out the candles and cut the cake into slivers. “It’s vanilla, your favorite,” Emily said, “You have to tell us everything you have been doing. You do such great work.” Tina looked over at her mother. Her face was round and flush. Emily smiled at her, making her cheeks seem rounder and full. The cake was dry and the icing canned. Tina poked at the piece that laid on the plate in front of her, its light pink icing matching the small roses that lined the china plate. “So, tell us Sis. Tell us all about the great work you are doing at the law firm. Still getting paid to divide rich people’s money,” Ethan said. He shoveled cake into his mouth, letting crumbs fall like snow. “Now, Ethan, your sister is a family law attorney. Very important,” Emily said, patting Tina’s hand. “I know. Just like I said, getting paid to help break up families. You know, divorce?” “How’s your job search going, Ethan? Still sucking off our parents I see,” Tina said, eyes shrunk to slits. “No, actually I am working in the tattoo shop over on King Street. Lets me use my creative side.” “Figures.” “Got a problem with tattoos, Sis? Damn and I got you a gift certificate for your birthday.” “Ethan, please be nice. It’s your sister’s birthday. It’s her day,” Emily said. “It’s always her day. When was the last time she visited? Called?” “She’s busy. She’s very important,” Emily said. She reached out and touched Tina’s cheek. “No, she never comes here. Not on your birthday, Mom, or yours Dad, only hers. I am sure that she would rather be on the other side of town. She doesn’t care about us. Why are you here?” “I came to visit. See Mom,” Tina said. “Yea, you probably thought there was some sort of party or something.” Tina felt the heat rising to her face. She quickly turned away. “Oh my God! You did think there was a party! That’s so awesome!” Ethan’s laughter filled the room like fire. Tina could feel her face turning red. “That is classic! Worth the price of admission!” Ethan wouldn’t stop. Tina felt dizzy with anger. “Stop it Ethan!” Emily’s chest was heaving and tears streaked the makeup of her face. Silence filled the room. Arthur and Michael stood like two statues on the edges of the kitchen light. Tina could hear Michael shuffling some. Ethan froze, then slipped down into his chair like a balloon being deflated. “I wanted to see your sister on her birthday. There is no harm in that.” Emily’s voice seemed to hang in the air. “Now we are going to have cake. Arthur get out the ice cream.” Arthur moved towards the olive green refrigerator and retrieved a carton of Blue Bonnet. “I got Peanut Brittle, just for you, Tina. I remember how much you liked it as a child.” Her hands shook as she tried to force the scoop into the frozen ice cream. Her face poised into a shaky smile that blended into the creases that lined her face. “Emily, let me help you,” Arthur said, stepping out of the shadows. “No! I want to get my baby girl some ice cream.” Emily reached out and touched Tina’s hand. It was cold and damp, startling Tina. “Mom, please don’t. Its fine It’s getting late and I am sure you have church in the morning,” Tina said. She pushed herself away from the table and motioned for Michael to follow. “But dear, you didn’t even take your coat off—or finish your cake.” Emily seemed to deflate in her chair as Arthur reached out to place his hand on her shoulder. Tina snatched her purse off the counter and gave both her mother and father a quick peck on the cheek. “Thank you so much for the cake. It was lovely.” “Please don’t wait so long to come back. We miss you,” Arthur whispered in Tina’s ear as he hugged her. “Maybe you can come over for dinner next week. Right, Michael?” Tina shouted more toward the room. She could almost hear the scowl from Ethan. Tina left, leaving her mother sitting there in a pool of fluorescent light that tinted everything green. It had begun to rain as Michael backed the sedan out of the driveway and headed to the interstate. “Well, that was awkward,” Tina said. She leaned back into the soft leather of her Mercedes, “I thought there was going to be a party and then to see Ethan.” Tina closed her eyes and listened to the rain drumming on the roof of the car. It soothed her. “Why did we go there Michael? We could have had them over to our place if you felt domestic or something.” “Your Dad called me last week. He wanted you to come over to see your mother.” “Why does he always call you? I hate that. I’m the daughter. He should have called me. It’s all because you gave Ethan money that time when he was in rehab. Now dad thinks you two are buddies. I thought there was going to be a party. God I feel stupid.” “Tina, it’s your family. The just wanted to see you.” Tina opened her eyes and gazed out the window at the world. The rain coated everything, making it shiny and slick. The passing headlights and taillights seemed diluted in the wet surfaces—distorted. “You should have told me. I could have been better prepared, and for Ethan to be there. God, he gets on my nerves. Did you see that tattoo?” “Tina, your mom has lung cancer. That’s why your dad wanted you to come. There’s nothing the doctors can do. They said maybe six weeks. That’s why Ethan is there. He moved back in to help out,” Michael said. It was like something rammed into Tina’s stomach. Her chest tightened and her mouth dropped open. She couldn’t catch her breath. Everything inside her stopped, froze for a moment as Michael’s words saturated her mind. “What? When?” “He called yesterday. He forgot it was your birthday but your mother didn’t. I thought it would be nice if you came by on your birthday.” Tina took a deep breath, letting the damp air flow into her. Her heart began pounding, sounding off like an alarm in her mind. She fumbled for the window switch, letting it fall mechanically and allowed the cold rain to run onto her face. Michael reached out and grabbed her hand, his warmth pulling her back. She turned to him. His eyes shimmered with tears that reflected the streetlights, glowing orbs that sent their light down into the night. “Are they sure?” “Yes.” “But did she go to the University? The hospital is the best in the nation. Michael she needs to go to the University.” “Tina, she did.” Tina squeezed Michael’s hand. Its warmth filled her. “I should have known,” Tina said. “I was going to tell you tomorrow. Your mother didn’t want it to spoil your birthday.” Tina nodded. “I want to go back.” “What about the time?” “I forgot to get another piece of cake. My mom always made me the best vanilla cakes of my birthday.” Michael kept her hand in his as he found the next exit and turned around.
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Jeff Hill is a moderately reformed frat boy turned writer/teacher splitting his time between Nebraska and New York. His work has appeared in over a dozen publications and his mom has a binder full of printed copies for any doubters. Jeff is the Chief Creative Officer of ComicBooked.com and is currently seeking representation for his novels, Dead Facebook Friends and Dead Week. WAR “Everything I know is a lie,” she said, as I gave her the look I felt I was supposed to give her after such a dramatic statement. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snaps. “Just… stop it.” “How am I supposed to look at you? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to argue with you? Yell?” She crumples her napkin up into a ball and tosses it playfully at my face, missing by about an inch. I put up my fists, acting like a 1950s boxer. She smiles, then shifts back to her concerns and immediately breaks down. “When are you going to take me seriously?” she asks. Never, I think to myself. “I do take you seriously, babe.” She cringes. “I hate when you call me that. It sounds so painfully normal. So dreadfully average. So…” “Real?” I ask more than say. Silence. When she asked me to meet her at the bar for an early cocktail, I had no idea that she was going to be acting like this. To be completely honest, I never would have agreed if I knew. “Okay,” I start. “I’ll bite. Why is everything you know suddenly a lie?” “Don’t be an ass,” she replies, dodging the big question. I don’t bring it up again. My phone vibrates and even though I know I’ll catch hell for it, I check to see who has just texted me. “It’s her, isn’t it?” she asks. “You don’t get to ask that,” I tell her. I pay for the drinks. We walk out separately. And I never do ask her what her problem was today. Partly because I don’t really care, but mostly because I already know. Boom! It never really surprises me when I hear enemy fire. This place is ridiculous. It’s dangerous, it’s dark, and no matter where I go, it always seems to smell like piss. My boss told me that the best photojournalists will live their photos, not just take them. But I never in a million years expected him to follow up on that statement the drunken night he offered me the promotion with the magazine. You’ve probably heard of it. You might even read it. But none of that matters right now. To be completely honest, it’s all a bunch of horse shit. War, that is. I was sent to cover this damn war. I don’t have any moral links to one side or the other, but my god, does it suck here. Boom! The group tasked with keeping me alive has done a decent enough job so far, I suppose. I mean, after all, I’m not dead yet. So yay me and good for them. But seriously… what’s the point of it all? It’s just a job, I keep telling myself. Nothing matters except that paycheck. I don’t have anyone back home waiting for me. I don’t have any gigantic life aspirations that I have to return home for. And to be completely honest, the most exciting thing I’ve ever done is binge-watch the entire first season of True Detective. Damn good TV, if you ask me. But, just like everything else in life, it sort of just kind of… peaked. You know? That first kiss? It’s all downhill after. The first time you put your boss in his place? Doesn’t really feel that great if it happens again. The first time doing something you’re not supposed to do? Excitement sort of cuts in half every subsequent outing. And if you take it a step further, which I always do, and include someone you’re not supposed to do said activity with? Well, you’re never going to top that first one. Family’s not for me. I could have tried it a couple of times, but it just never seemed to be something I’d be any good at. A career is just a word that people use to justify wasting a third or half or more of their day doing something that sucks. And travel is just an excuse to be temporary. Boom! As much as it pains me to admit it, I think she was onto something. The day before I shipped out, I thought she was going to cut ties before I could break her heart. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was right. Maybe everything we know is a lie. Six long months passed. I won an award. I got paid. I got a big promotion. She got married. While I was away, nothing much changed here in the States. We got a new president, but he’s just another guy just doing a job and trying his best to keep us from what I just spent six months covering over there. I got a new apartment on the Upper West Side, she got a new house in Brooklyn. I saw a wedding announcement before she asked me to meet her when I was planning to call it off. I didn’t think she’d actually go through with it. I think I’m happy for her, or is it just that I feel like that would be the human thing to feel? I don’t know anymore. I send her an email at work, but it comes back with a message failure receipt. My boss walks into my new office, his old one (He got a promotion, too. Yay us.) and asks me what’s wrong. “So… We’re like friends now?” I ask, genuinely concerned about this impending new social situation I’ve potentially forced myself into. He smiles, lets out a fake laugh, and then pats me on the shoulder as he begins talking about senseless corporate babble from “upstairs.” I don’t know if he gets the irony of the situation or not. We are on the thirtieth floor. There are only thirty floors at the magazine. I call her on my lunch break (I get two hours now. Sweet.) and it goes straight to voice mail. For some strange reason, I can’t bring myself to leave a message. I order food that I don’t eat and an incorrectly-poured Guiness that seems to mock me as I sit at the bar and look at all of the people who don’t seem to get it. A waitress leaves her phone number on a bar napkin underneath my tab. I pocket the digits and pay with cash, tipping well for no reason other than why the hell not. As I head back into the office, I see a marquee with my name on it. I text her. “You were right.” I get a response back from her number, but very obviously not from her. This is the first time I’ve “met” her husband. And probably the last. “You bet your ass she was.” Robert Parker is an emerging writer and philosopher who's worked mostly in retail and the restaurant industry. He lives in Virginia but has lived and traveled all over the Mid-Atlantic, from Philadelphia to Virginia Beach, and loves to write about the people he meets and the lives they live together in the region. Once a week he hosts a meetup where he hangs out with other writers and visual artists and is amazed by the work they share with him. For fun he keeps a dog, gardens, tries his hand at drawing and is always working on a novel. Bookends “I've held you in my arms, though I still don't know if you can be alive.” “You don't know if we can be alive.” “Yes, that's right. All women. The feminine we, the nosotras. I can have my hands on any one of you and not know if you're a member of the same species. There's always the need for further investigation. Though you in particular, you've compartmentalized me to a point where I don't know if you're real. You allow me to graze your flesh, sometimes you allow me into you, though I still don't know if you exist outside these walls.” “It was all a matter of you saying the right thing at the right time. I'm a busy woman. You got visitation rights with me in the morning. Why can't it be just that? Aren't you content with just me, just in this context, both of us sick, willing to forget?” “Yes. Very much so.” “You get coffee too. There's still time for coffee.” * * * Her apartment was a two bedroom walk-up on the second floor of an ancient brick building that had been renovated some time in the past thirty years. The first floor was now a cafe, the sort that hung saleable artwork on an interior wall opposite an equally punchable vertical surface displaying framed photographs. They were all of a family who seemed very aware of both its civic duty and privilege. Its members stood by podiums and held trophies. The old men were short with boxy heads and suits, the old women bird-like and rattling. Its brothers were all close and seemed to own businesses because you could tell they were winners by how light their hair was and how much adrenaline had seemed to fill their upper musculature for their entire lives. Somewhere behind the cameras were the sisters and wives who seemed to enable such a state, unspoken and always presumed. They alerted the clientele to the establishment's local bona fides, but also made strange those who couldn't boast a lineage going back at least three generations in the same state. I'd always sensed a certain hostility from the young waitresses toward me in particular. It was a nice place; I always knew on some fundamental level I didn't belong. For the simple fact that I didn't know many places, I'd chosen the cafe underneath her apartment. There would be coffee, but not with the long drags and three-dimensional translucence that exited from the artificial heft in her lungs. I was late. I'd missed my turn onto the obscure side street from the highway and had to double back around onto the interstate because I couldn't figure out a way to get back onto the highway once I left it and somehow found myself in recognizable territory. From space my trajectory had subtly traced a cursive L into the landscape. I hadn't lost sight of that fact. I walked past those waiting for the hostess and found the young guy in a corner booth. He didn't look like his pictures in the papers. His name was Mark. His clothes had become darker, less formal, he'd gotten his earlobe pierced and he'd dyed his black hair an orangeish mock-blond on top but had shaved the sides and back to a concealing stubble. He was a kind of mirror linked to time; his hair resembled a haircut that I'd given myself in my early twenties. I must've looked ridiculous. I must've been getting old. At core the thought was a judgment of the young man embedded within a perpetual sort of ghost. I'd meet him more often as I approached forty, fifty, sixty if I was lucky. The outer layers would be pulled away gradually every time I met him until I was actually judging the young man in my head and not my past self, until eventually I'd be openly shaming him by telling him that he'd be more beautiful if he just let himself look like himself. His old styles would be left behind me like tiger pelts, collapsing to the ground without the meat scaffolding, until I was the one actively gutting him. In the future I'd be a hunter, though at the moment I was still somewhat grateful for the connection. I was still there, in front of me. To a certain extent I could still be that kid. “Sorry I'm late.” “It's okay.” “Have you been waiting long?” There were the usual pleasantries, my gratitude expressed for the interview. We decided to eat but the waitress was prompt and brought me a glass of water immediately. The menus were single laminated sheets. We perused them with a disinterested sort of angst. He wouldn't look me in the eye for more than a moment. It made me wonder if my beard was too long, if I'd brimmed over into the terroristic, that shadow cast onto our military order that seemed to creep out of me and affix itself to my words no matter what I said. He was like a private to me. He didn't realize it but his haircut was part of his uniform. “I know what I'm getting,” I said, wondering if I should get coffee. It seemed adulterous to consume it in the same building without her present. “I really wasn't there when it happened,” he said abruptly – it was going to be a confessional. “I only saw what happened afterward. I don't really have much to say about it.” “First, do you know what you're getting?” “Yeah,” he said, returning to the menu's promises. He stiffened it with a subtle whip like undulating sheet metal. “I think I do.” The waitress appeared then and took our orders with a malevolent sort of swift. She was a tart cheerleader type with almond brown hair and perfect breasts who seemed tiny even when positioned above me. It seemed that she wanted to protect the young man in front of me from my beard, the implicit scolding in her words speaking to a desire I didn't really possess yet which she presumed of me. Maybe, if he hadn't had that ridiculous haircut – there I was, already too old. “Whatever information you can give me would be appreciated,” I said when she left. “There's not much to say really.” “Let's start with you. Are you in college?” “No. I left after my freshman year.” “Why'd you leave?” “It was boring. It was useless.” I recalled the photographs from the papers. His family was like the one in the photographs on the wall, only less than perfect, the monster relatives taken out of hiding and paraded in public as complement to the tragedy. The kid in front of me was in the process of allying himself with the less attractive cousins, though he wasn't necessarily one of them. “I'm betting your parents didn't want you to leave.” “They haven't said much about it. It's saving them money. I know they're happy about that.” “Had you already left college when it happened?” “No, that was before I went, the summer after my senior year.” This poor kid. He was melting in front of me though he thought he was solid. I wished he would look at me for longer than a moment, for some aggression to manifest on his crueling mirror guise. “So it's obviously affected you.” I'd meant the statement to antagonize, but he sighed into his uniform instead. “Your whole family too, I imagine,” I said. “How have they been taking it?” The food arrived then. I'd ordered the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and coleslaw. He'd ordered some kind of sandwich with potato chips, I think corned beef. He went for the chips first. It was a sort of primetime-approved rebellion, like a child asks for cookies before dinner, if children still asked for such atrocities on television anymore – I didn't know. I didn't watch television anymore. The chips were golden with red patches like the sun. I think they were barbecue. “We haven't talked about that either.” “Not even during the trial?” “Not really. I was away at school. Everything proceeded like normal. I didn't even go to the trial. Almost everything I heard about it I heard on TV at school.” “Your parents didn't call you and give you updates?” “No.” He spoke with a mouth full of chips. I imagined them filling the indentations in his molars. I was jealous. My mouth was watering. I still hadn't started my meal. I'd listened to the waitress when she recommended the meatloaf without the gravy. I reached for the ketchup that we were holding hostage against the wall. I have nothing against gravy. I don't know why I listened to her. “That's strange.” “You think so?” “Notable. An interesting detail. Charity was your cousin. Were your parents not close to your aunt and uncle's family?” “No. We saw each other all the time.” “Even outside the holidays?” “Yeah.” “That's a close family. Did you know Helen Esposito?” I put some meatloaf covered with mashed potatoes and ketchup in my mouth. Sweet, but there was no crunch. My envy for his chips grew. “She was my aunt's friend.” “Had you met her before?” “I'd seen her. I met her when I was younger, being introduced, or told who she was. I don't remember. She'd just always been there. I didn't know her though. I'd see her, maybe, two to four times a year. I knew she worked at the library, but that was it.” “She was important enough to your aunt to be invited to your family gatherings though.” “Oh, yeah. But so are a lot of people. They're always really big. Even I can invite friends.” “Who was she with at the birthday party?” “With my aunts and my mom.” “The same group she always stayed with?” “Yeah, mostly.” He put the last of his chips in his mouth and picked up his sandwich. “She's a sick woman,” I said. “We know that – we know what she did. But try to think of how you saw her before.” “She was always kind of strange.” “How so?” “She was always looking down. It was almost like she was always about to fall forward and start crawling around like a cat.” “You thought her posture was strange.” “Yeah. It was like she was a hunchback, though she wasn't.” I'd noticed the same sad taint in the way the Esposito woman held herself. I didn't think he was right – the severity of it spoke to some congenital abnormality. It had seemed normal when she was being led in handcuffs to and from jail, but the stilted nature of her gait was there even when seated in the courtroom, where she defied the symmetrical sort of stillness almost expected of those who were awaiting their fate. I resisted the urge to straighten my own posture, which was almost as bad as hers, or at least I thought so. Mark was well into his sandwich. Now that they were gone, I wasn't regretting that I hadn't ordered chips as much as before. We both chewed for a moment, not saying anything. “It made her stick out,” he said once he'd swallowed. There was a shame in his voice, one that originated in the certainty of his gut. “Stick out?” “She was dark.” “Do you mean her hair?” “Not just her hair. It was all of her. She was dark, almost damp.” It was a cliquish sort of secret I could tell he thought he'd never divulge. It made me wonder about my own years, whether they'd been enough to understand what he was talking about. The younger had been proving themselves capable of besting me in terms of wisdom, though whether they were doing it consciously or not was a conundrum. It was possible that wisdom was exactly what they lacked, that it manifested itself in the shape of their movements and words precisely for the lack of it in the structure of their brains, a reading I could take from them because they never slowed down enough to consider themselves. “Damp – a contrasting damp? Like she was wet while everyone else was dry?” “Yeah. The people she was always around, my aunt and mom and grandma, they always seemed brighter than her. They glowed. When they'd be sitting together, the whole area would glow but where she was was dark. Dimmed.” “Are you talking about auras? Some new agey spiritual stuff?” “No, I've never been into that stuff.” “So it was like she just didn't belong. A low tone surrounded by high notes.” “Yeah.” “Why do you think they invited her?” “Why not? They were friends.” If he was willing to overlook a base sort of revulsion in why some people wouldn't hang out with others, Mark was a young man of greater optimism than I'd come to expect from anyone anymore. He was of college age. I remembered going to college myself, the undamp perfect sorts who hung out together and who'd pass me by in an unspoken unity against those like me still a presence in my memory. Mark could've been one of them. He would've been one of the ones who passed me by, my age likely the only reason he was sitting at a table with me, a respect he'd learned from being young and confused. I put some more meatloaf in my mouth and glanced at the pictures on the wall again. The success of the family in them was glowing onto us. Were we dim in comparison? There was a civic power in those photos that spoke to an implicit genetic ideal, sets of remembered traits that would divide the family from within yet somehow constituted its unity. Mark glowed, though I don't think enough or with the same tint to be invited into the same spaces as them. He wasn't of the sort; his inclusion would be an outcross, the resultant children an experiment in other kinds of knowledge. I know I'd never be invited. Among them I had a greater chance of being like Helen Esposito, camel urine evaporating off desert sand. But he glowed with his own family ideal despite his dark clothing and earring and dyed hair. Without the mocking hair he had more of a chance than I did, though I could see what he was saying about Esposito. She was like me – she shouldn't have been offered a chance. “Tell me about the day itself.” He swallowed before he answered. I swallowed after he did; I'd spoken with my mouth full. “I almost slept too late, but my mom woke me up. It was summer so I wasn't setting my alarm. We were almost late because I slept so late. They don't live that far away but the party was at two and I didn't get up until twelve forty-five. I showered and I think we got there just in time.” He took another bite of his sandwich and chewed it to completion before speaking again. “Most everyone had already arrived. I went out back with my dad where my uncle was barbecuing with my cousins and my other uncles. It was my grandma's birthday party, but she was inside with my mom and my aunts and cousins.” I noticed he was reluctant to say women and men. It was the women who were inside and the men who were outside, though he still identified them by their social roles. It seemed appropriate, even enlightened for sex to remain implied in a family, unless it got out of hand. Unless you found yourself looking forward to getting your yearly colonoscopy with your dad and otherwise eschewing penetration of any sort, it seemed enlightened. “How long were you there before it happened?” “Not too long. Helen wasn't there yet – I didn't notice that, they told me afterward. But she was there when my Aunt Becky came out and scolded my uncle for taking too long to cook the meat. She always says the same thing. 'How much longer till you're done? We're starving in here!' Always the same thing. Every time.” “Rituals are comforting to some people.” “I guess so. It's strange how she knows just when to come out, just when he's almost done with everything. It didn't happen long after that. There was a change in the air before the screaming started, like I knew nothing like Aunt Becky coming outside and yelling at my uncle would happen again. Everyone outside stopped talking before the commotion in the house started.” “Everyone outside stopped talking?” I dipped the last piece of meatloaf in the ketchup and put it in my mouth before I picked up the ramekin containing the coleslaw and made a show of putting the tip of the fork's prongs into it while I chewed. I'd put too much ketchup on my plate; I'd drawn swirls with it across nearly the entire surface, but there were still a few large reflecting globs left. Normally it was a source of slight though satisfying pride that I never wasted condiments. Usually I'd run out before the last few bites and would pick up the bottle and apply an adequate serving to the morsel on the utensil. It was a trick I'd learned from a friend years ago, a trade in joyful table manners that I wanted to show off but had no reason to. “Yeah, it was like we were arrested mid-movement, waiting for a sign from the inside that something was wrong.” “That's amazing.” “I wasn't really thinking when it happened. My mind went blank too. I think everyone's mind went blank. My cousin, he said his mind went blank too. Everyone froze. We were waiting for word of what had happened even though we hadn't expected anything to have happened in the first place. If you've seen that show Archer, it was like after a bombing and everything goes silent because the noise has caused a temporary hearing loss. There's commotion all around but for a moment it's from the point of view of the character, and there's a temporary ringing in his ears so he can't hear. It was like that.” I wasn't familiar with the show, but I'd be sure to look it up later. Maybe I'd enjoy it, but it could offer some insight into what he was describing. “It speaks to the closeness of your family for there to be a connection like that.” “Yeah, we're kind of a close bunch.” He looked down at his plate, which was now empty of his sandwich. I was still eating the coleslaw. “Then what happened?” “The screaming started. I think it was my aunt at first, then my grandma. It was like there was a riot going on inside. We all ran inside. I was toward the back, so I didn't see much. My mom had to restrain my aunt from killing Helen. Everyone was rushing toward Helen, trying to restrain her too, but she was fighting. I saw her hands flail upward. But eventually everyone called down. A lot of people ran outside with their cell phones on. It was a total communications breakdown. Everyone was doing their own thing. I was trying to get to the front so I could see what had happened.” “What did you see when you got there?” “There was blood.” He looked down at his empty plate. Around him his cloud of willingness to be interviewed seemed to dissipate. I was suddenly intrusive, a rogue agent pushing into matters that weren't mine to know. The guilt felt sex-based, as though the purpose of my asking him there had been to seduce him. I wasn't, though I couldn't be sure he didn't think that. Not with that new air about him, as though he were about to ask me to leave before he had to call the police. Maybe he'd realized that I was as dark as Helen and felt intruded upon doubly then. Maybe he'd never recounted the story before and was only now formulating his emotions after hearing it out of his own mouth. Most likely it was that, though as the one who'd brought it out of him for the first time I felt a certain responsibility. “My Aunt Marjorie was holding Helen in place along with my cousin. My Aunt Trisha was on the ground, wailing. She'd been violent, but she'd collapsed onto the floor. My mom was positioned over her, trying to get her to stand up and come with her away from Charity.” The waitress came and took our dishes, leaving us alone with our water glasses. He played with the straw and shrunk into himself. I didn't want to press him any further. With food in him I could tell he was regretting the interview. The waitress came back with the water pitcher. She advanced toward my glass but I put my hand over it. “No more,” I said somewhat more disingenuously than I'd intended. “No problem,” she said in a matching tone. She left the bills. I paid with a ten and a five and told her I didn't need change. She was grateful and very prompt in bringing Mark's credit card and receipts. “Thank you for speaking with me,” I told him once he'd signed the restaurant's copy. I meant it and I could hear it in my voice. I didn't want to frighten him too much. “And you're writing a book about it?” “Maybe. Inspired by it, at least.” He didn't speak back and I allowed a silence to build between us. “If you could maybe talk to some of your family, tell them I'm interested in hearing what they have to say, I'd really appreciate it.” He winced. I hadn't been expecting a wince. “I can try,” he said. “I need to get going.” He said his goodbyes while I stayed at the booth, giving him a head start. I got up as the entrance door was closing behind him. I opened it but then let go and took two steps back in the building, ducking behind the thick vertical section of the wooden doorframe so I couldn't be seen from the street. I peeked around and saw her through the glass. I thought I'd see her daughter, but there was no child with her. She walked with a high heel tilt to her head and her keys out and ready. I waited for her to disappear up the stairs to the second floor before leaving. * * * “How long do we have?” “I don't want you to worry about such things.” “So I'll know how fast to sip. So I'll know how fast to raise my blood pressure.” “You're not on the clock here. Here it's all about space. There's only us, the air and the objects that we find ourselves surrounded by. I don't want you to be pressured by a narcissistic force like time when you're here. You and I define our interactions as a necessity of pleasure. Time can't exist for us here. For our arrangement we go back to basics, the original moment, when we're just bodies, animals moving through space.” “Yet there's a deadline you're ignoring. The result of space is the deadline you're ignoring.” “Now you're pressuring me.” “If there's any pressure it's coming from you. You're prescribing a fantasy.” “I think the coffee's gotten you antsy.” “Antsy, like a worker caste. See? Even when we're existing in pure space and avoiding the very conceptuality of time, it comes back into the equation in the form of the inevitability of space itself. Maybe it's language that perverts space and creates elephants that aren't actually there for us to see. Maybe language is the force that creates the mirror of time, that we can only be in space without the inevitable temporal implications as long as we're not speaking.” “Then shut up and drink your coffee.” Edith Gallagher Boyd is a writer who lives in Jupiter, Florida. Her published work is available at edithgallagherboyd.com Multi-Colored Ribbons Tammy slammed the lid on the spaghetti pot. "Shh," I said. "Calvin doesn't want a bad report." "Don't worry about him. He's kind of sweet on ya," she said, with traces of the Georgia Peach she might have been. We weren't used to the industrial - sized kitchen utensils. Our last job was at a half-way house with an incongruous, but lovely purple orchid hanging from the porch. It had a regular kitchen with normal-sized pots and pans. There's no pretty way to put it. Tammy and I met in the slammer. I remember my eyelids stuck together and trace memories of being dragged along a cold, dark, corridor. As I pushed open my eyes, more ugly pictures flashed through my mind....breaking the glass in the hospital pharmacy, stealing the oxy and whatever else I could grab, landing with a thud on a bench. Tammy and I clicked from the start. Her sins were much like mine...an addict who flew out of control. Her hair was speckled with sunlit hues, and her southern accent was still with her in Philly. When we completed our time, we were assigned to Calvin Johnson, a probation officer who hated his job, and wasn't too keen on the people he managed. Calvin reluctantly escorted us into his office, made less shabby by a picture of his son's full grin. When Tammy said "Yes sir," "No sir," he shot me a look like, "Is this one for real?" And I said, "Mr. Johnson, Tammy grew up in Atlanta." Settled. Done. Philly speak for so many things... Calvin had just finished an in-service training about matching community service to the skills of the offender. He actually read from a sheet, with a similar tone of an officer reading our Miranda rights. Mid way through his recitation, he let out a sigh and said, "Other than being loser druggies, anything you're good at?" We took it from there, interrupting one another with our desire to cook, cater, prepare and serve food. Our kitchen duties inside were our favorite. When I was still able to care for Ashley, I used to love to try out new recipes on her, mashed into the only bowl she liked. In spite of the data against sugar, I often added a teaspoon to whatever I made, just so my food taster would eat it. She squealed with delight when I pulled out my cupcake tray, knowing she would taste the sugar that she craved. When Tammy and I were in jail, I tortured myself with thoughts of the sugar I shouldn't have given my daughter...feared I was fueling the addictions I may have passed on to her. ""Honey, Tammy would say as we raked the jail's garden. Kids like sugar. You didn't invent that." When I no longer could keep my whirling thoughts to myself, Tammy would get the full unadulterated vent. "Susan," she would say, reaching her muddy hand around my back. "You're going to get her back. " If I live to be a hundred years old, I will never forget her kindness to me. Calvin, as we came to call him, seemed pleased with our zeal, and his hesitation about Tammy's other ness eased into a hint of a smile. Which brought us to our community service in the half-way house. We were to arrive no later than seven A.M. to prepare a plethora of choices, as many of our residents were fueling for jobs they were hoping to keep. Tammy and I settled in easily to the work. We agreed we wouldn't try to befriend the residents, but to concentrate on our work, and getting through our probation. On the morning I had perfected my pancakes, I heard a baritone behind me. "Susan, you missed your labs this week." "Cal....Mr. Johnson, I wasn't expecting you," I said, baffled that I'd missed the appointment. How much had addiction stolen from me? Wary of the stranger, one of the guys at the pancake table stood up and reached a wiry arm to shake Calvin's hand. "Susan here, is busy feeding us, sir." I blinked back tears at the man's loyalty to me. I think he knew Calvin was a government worker, complete with the beige sedan parked out front. I burned my hand on the griddle in my haste to speak to Calvin privately. With a slight head tilt, I directed him to the living area. "You may not believe me, but I'm not using. I was so nervous about this placement, I forgot about my lab tests," I said, while looking directly at him. He leaned back slightly against the overstuffed chair behind him. "Susan," he said, "This is no way to get your child back." I was surprised how much it mattered that he thought less of me. "Calvin, I'm trying to get it right! The probation, the community service...I lost sight of my Wednesday labs. My place is cluttered with cookbooks hoping to make the grade here...hoping to get an A in community service." "That's all well and good....but you gotta prove you're clean...every...single....day... if need be." Tammy, sensing I needed her, left the guys in the kitchen to join us. "This isn't your concern," he said to Tammy. I winced slightly at his tone, but remembered my goal, my child. Visions of the social worker and all the forms I signed, still shaking in the detox unit pushed Tammy right out of my head. If Calvin had a pick on her, it was nothing compared to my quest to reunite with Ashley. In our initial meeting with Calvin, I imagined community service where I could see my daughter. A week after he chose our site, I asked if I could see a list of our choices, as he determined our first rotation would be three weeks. The Wilson Community Center nearly popped off the page. Kevin, one of our fellow inmates, a cop who had lost much...even his pension, still had contacts everywhere. I remember how I clutched myself, as if shot, when he found the foster family who cared for Ashley. It was on the same street as Wilson, a city facility newly completed that shone amid the old Philly dwellings. I asked Calvin if he could place us there next, and he patiently explained we needed to complete our rotation in the half-way house. I wasn't devastated by this news, as I needed time to adjust for rehearsing what I would say to Ash, and how I would say it. She was nearly six years old, and she had been with the same family since my arrest. Kevin's sources were on target in all fields of civil service and civil law. Ashley was enjoying twin sisters, a little older than she, in her placement family. The Mitchell's twins were their biological children, and Ashley was reportedly happy there. Kevin, our ex-cop inmate, was tuned into my reaction to this news , mixed at best, jealous to the quick of this family, when Tammy and I saw him at NA meetings. Sometimes, I had to stop myself from grilling him with questions, instead of asking how he was doing, trusting that he wasn't using. When I could no longer stand it, I asked Kevin what was Mrs. Mitchell's first name. "Susan, I really can't keep revealing stuff to you. My life is enough of a mess without some new charges about privacy law," and as he stubbed out his cigarette, he said, "Janet. Janet and Rob Mitchell." "Stay well, ladies," he said, his nickname for us, as he headed out the door of the church where we went to meetings. "She would have a name like Janet," I hissed to Tammy. "She's probably in the PTA and the 4H club, if there's still such a thing." "So darling," she said with an exaggerated drawl, " You want Miss Mitchell to be a junkie?' I came to a halt and gave her a look and she said, "Sorry, Susan...that was low." "I'm sorry, too. It's just since my parents died, I don't have anybody to vent with. They tell us not to look for excuses, but I think losing them got me started on the stuff." "And with your cushy life, you sure weren't prepped for jail and diner work," she said with that lop-sided smile I'd come to love. "Let's catch this bus," she said, taking off into a sprint to the corner. Tammy and I enjoyed our time in the half-way house, and some of the residents appeared healthier; less ashen and disappointed. We settled into the morning shift in time to hit the diner we worked in by late afternoon. The owner knew me and barely asked us to fill out paper work to be servers where the strongest drink was coffee. When I wasn't working, I became a regular at Wilson Community Center and was delighted to see so many children playing there. If the Mitchell family lived right up the street, there was no reason my Ashley wouldn't be among the happy children swinging and sliding, uninhibited with joy. And then I saw her, skipping between two beautiful little girls, each of whom had multi-colored ribbons in their hair, as did Ash. The self-absorbed addict in me resented those ribbons, coiled me into a stoop, as I peeked at the woman behind them smiling broadly. There was a convenient, tattered green sign stating the rules, the kinds of rules I wished I'd lived, so I wouldn't be crouching and fearful in the presence of my own child. The foursome went by with the twins bantering that Ashley was a better sister than the other twin. It was playful and twin-like, and Ashley giggled and cast them each a look of pure love. Janet Mitchell didn't know me yet, as I had been procrastinating filling out the forms for supervised visitation. Still wobbly from rehab, I didn't want to tarnish Ashley's life any more than I had. Calvin promised to help me, and I knew he would.....when I was ready. And the evening of the Ashley sighting, before our NA meeting, Kevin told me the Mitchell family was considering filing for adoption of my child. Breaking his vow of silence, he steered me outside to the smoking section, his eyes darting wildly. I feared he was using again. " Susan, my sources tell me that family wants to adopt your kid." The next thing I remember was his cradling my arm with one of his own. "Susan, I thought we were losing you," he said. Knowing his sources were infallible, I reached into a part of myself that had lain dormant for too long. I was going to get my child back. I started by asking Kevin to get the word out that I wanted a meeting with Janet and Rob Mitchell. Screw the red tape. If they had fallen in love with Ashley, they would break a rule or two. But Tammy and I, now committed to a rotation at Wilson Community Center, were preparing spaghetti for a high school football team, when she slammed the lid on the pot and I shushed her about Calvin. We'd had to adjust our diner schedule to fit in some evenings at Wilson. To say that my first meeting with Janet Mitchell was memorable, doesn't quite capture it. After initial awkwardness and fearfulness, and many drawn out silences, there wasn't the adversarial hostility I expected. Maybe I can thank Ashley who had spotted me at Wilson on a class trip, and broke from the crowd with a "Mommy" that could be heard in Tammy's Atlanta. I held my daughter, letting the tears flow freely, and told her I was coming to her new house soon. That Mommy had done some stupid things, but was trying to get better. The children were out with Bob Mitchell the day I met Janet. When we began to relax, we clicked. We liked each other beyond our joint caring for Ashley, as we began to traverse the delicate minefield of Ashley's future. Her husband let Janet decide what she thought best for Ashley, and I was willing to allow for ample visitation rights, if they withdrew their quest for adoption. And they did. Both Calvin and Kevin used their tentacles to get me legal help to plead my case to the courts to re-gain custody of my child. Ashley didn't lose her other family, although her sisters became more like cousins, as she spent much of her time in my care. In the way that our children's lives pass by quickly, I found myself shopping with Ash for school supplies for high school. I understood and enjoyed how taken the Mitchell twins were with our unusual living arrangement; Uncle Calvin, who now sold cars; Uncle Kevin who had become a master mechanic; Aunt Tammy who cut their hair, and added the slash of purple to Ashley's that they thought was so cool. There are times when I shudder in the middle of the night, when I think of how close I came to losing my child, but I console myself that had I relapsed, she would have been surrounded by good people who loved her.....and few of us can ask for more than that. Allen Kopp lives in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. He has over a hundred short stories appearing in such diverse publications as The Penmen Review, Belle Reve Literary Journal, A Twist of Noir, Burial Day Books, Dew on the Kudzu: A Journal of Southern Writing, Short Story America, Offbeat Christmas Story Anthology, Skive Magazine, Simone Press’s Selected Places Anthology, Legends: Paranormal Pursuits 2016, Literary Hatchet, and many others. His Internet home is: www.literaryfictions.com In the Way of Mannequins Poppa’s face was dry and lined, like old leather. The red pouches under his eyes made his eyes look half-closed, even when they were open all the way. His mouth was a thin, lipless line in which a Marlboro cigarette was inserted. For sixty of his seventy years, he had smoked Marlboros, an untold and uncalculated number of them. He reclined in his chair that had molded itself to the shape of his body—or his body had molded itself to the shape of the chair. The room was dark and low, the perpetual cloud of smoke hanging like a pall between Poppa and the ceiling. A small lamp with a little cluster of red flowers painted on the lampshade, the only color in the room, sat on a table between his chair and Momma’s. Poppa and Momma both puffed on their cigarettes. For them, puffing on a cigarette was part of the act of breathing. A breath wasn’t a breath without a puff to complement it. And while they puffed away they both kept their eyes on the screen a few feet in front of them. The screen was the eye on the world, the only eye, to which they had given their fealty. It didn’t matter what was on—a boxing match, a train wreck, news of the world, cowboys and Indians, romance, dancing, drama, music or laughter—it was all the same: they regarded everything the eye brought to them with the same fish-eyed blankness. The door opened and Elma entered. Momma and Poppa didn’t look up but instead kept looking at the eye. Elma took off her coat and hat and stood in the middle of the room; she looked expectantly at Momma and Poppa, though the eyes through which she saw them were only slits. “Beer, beer, beer!” Papa said. “Popcorn, popcorn!” Momma said. “Peanuts, Peanuts!” Elma went into the kitchen to get the things they wanted and took them back into the living room. When she set the bottle of beer on the table next to Poppa’s arm, he didn’t look up, but his arm reached out, seemingly of its own accord, and brought the bottle to his lips. He took a long drink and smacked his lips and set the bottle back down. Elma had mixed the peanuts and popcorn together in one bowl, the way Momma liked them. Momma grabbed the bowl and began eating hungrily, never looking away from the eye. Elma opened a new carton of Marlboros and stacked the packs on the table, five on Poppa’s side and five on Momma’s, and when these things were done she went up the winding stairs to her own people. The room seemed crowded now with twelve of them. They sat or stood about in different poses. Elma had dressed, wigged and hatted them according to her own whims. There was the society lady with the fox fur, the businessman with a pencil-line mustache, the small boy standing beside the dresser in play togs, ready to catch a ball, the lady with one leg canted out, hands on hips. They all had beautiful, painted-on, perfectly proportioned faces, luminous eyes and pearl-like teeth. Some had movable arms and legs so they might be posed sitting or reclining. Elma liked these best because they seemed more real. To amuse herself, she would sometimes dress a man in a lady’s dress—including a hat with a veil—or a lady in a man’s work clothes or overalls. She also tried different wigs and hats to get a different look or feel. In this way she amused herself for hours and kept from being lonely. There was one man in particular she liked to whom she had given the name Frankie. His arms and legs moved and his head swiveled from side to side. His skin was soft and pliable and warm to the touch. Elma dressed him in silk pajamas and put him beside her in the bed and covered him up. On cold nights, with the light off, she would have almost sworn there was a living, breathing man in the bed beside her. It gave her a feeling of well-being unlike anything else. For twelve of her thirty-nine years, Elma had worked in the office of a mannequin factory. All day long she sat at a desk and typed letters or did small errands for the two bosses. They liked her because she always did what she was told to do without complaint, worked for very little money, never missed work, and didn’t mind working an hour or two over when the work was piling up. She was the very rare woman who had little to say and didn’t believe that her opinions were of any importance. If they could have ordered a dozen more like Elma, they would have. Anytime a mannequin couldn’t be used or was defective in any way, Elma asked if she might have it to keep for her own. Nobody at the mannequin factory ever asked her why she wanted the mannequins or what she did with them, but they were always willing to comply. These mannequins that Elma rescued from the trash heap she added to her collection. When she carried one of the mannequins home, people stopped to look at her, but nobody ever suggested that she was doing something she shouldn’t do or that she should be stopped. Poppa and Momma, of course, never noticed what she did and never went up the winding stairs to her rooms. One day Elma noticed a man looking at her at the mannequin factory. She discovered his name was Alexander A. Alexander but he went by the name of Shakespeare. She thought at first that he was looking at her because he was new and didn’t know anybody yet, but a week later he was still looking at her, although she didn’t know any reason why he should. She was delivering a typed report to one of the bosses when she met Shakespeare face to face in an otherwise deserted hallway. Instead of veering away from her and keeping on his side, he stepped in front of her and stopped her in her tracks. He put his hand familiarly on the underside of her wrist and smiled. “I believe I know you,” he said. All she could do was shake her head and step around him and walk on. When she got back to her desk, she was breathless and a little confused. No man had ever paid any attention to her before and when she looked at herself in the mirror she knew why. By the kindest and most generous assessment, she was hideously ugly. Her nose was crooked, her hair mouse-brown, her eyes small and ferret-like, her teeth misshapen and brown. She could never remember a time in her life when she had cared much about the way she looked or about the effect that she might have on other people. If Shakespeare spoke to her again, she would ignore him or register a complaint. On a blustery day in fall when she was walking home in the near-dark, she realized Shakespeare had fallen into step beside her. She hadn’t seen where he came from; he was just there. “Leave me alone!” she said. “You don’t have any business bothering me!” She looked at him and when she saw the hurt in his eyes, she knew she had been more unkind than she needed to be. At home it was always the same. Momma and Poppa never looked at her or spoke to her. They just sat puffing and looking at the eye. She brought their food, which some days was only pretzels, candy, popcorn or beer. When she fixed them a sandwich or a bowl of soup, they hardly ever ate it and she ended up throwing it out. In the evening after she saw they only wanted to be left alone with their cigarettes and with the eye, she retreated to her rooms and to the people there with whom she felt comfort and peace. She began to ask herself: What kind of life is this I’m living and do I plan on doing these same things every day of my life until I die? The answer, if there was one, did not make itself known. For the first time in her life, her sleep was disturbed by nightmares, and during the day at the mannequin factory she began to be nervous and tense. She took much longer to do her work than usual and any time one of the bosses sent her on an errand, she usually managed to find a private place, in the ladies’ room or elsewhere, to stand quietly and stare at the wall for a half-hour or so in a trance-like state before returning to her desk. She didn’t see Shakespeare for several days and wondered what had happened to him. Maybe he wasn’t suited to his job, spray-painting mannequins, and had already been fired. She was more than willing to put him out of her mind. The next time she saw Shakespeare, it was not at the mannequin factory but on the sidewalk down the street. When she saw him coming toward her in a crowd, she looked away but, again, he stopped her in her tracks and put his hand on her arm. “I believe we knew each other once,” he said. She stepped around him and kept going, eyes to the ground. “Have you ever thought about trying a little makeup?” he said in a loud voice. “Mind your own business!” she snapped. Then one day Elma found herself on a tiny elevator with Shakespeare, going up to the fourth floor. For a couple of minutes, at least, she was stuck with him in close quarters and couldn’t walk away. “We knew each other in school,” he said. She looked at him with distaste. “I don’t remember,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” “I never saw you before,” she insisted. On a rainy Friday as she was leaving work, Shakespeare was going out the door at the same time she was. “Would you like to talk?” he asked. “No!” she said. He walked along beside her and there was nothing she could do but keep walking with her eyes down and pretend he wasn’t there. When they came to an establishment where liquor was sold, he looked at her and inclined his head to indicate they should enter. Without knowing why, she let herself be led inside. They sat side by side at a bar. She had never been inside a barroom before and only wanted to leave. When a beer in a glass was set in front of her, she looked at it and didn’t seem to know what she was supposed to do. “It’s a small world,” he said. “Isn’t it?” “I don’t know why you’re bothering me,” she said, “but I want it to stop.” “Do you think whenever a person speaks to you, they’re bothering you?” “I want to be left alone,” she said. “I have to be getting home.” “Wait a minute,” he said. “I have something I want to give you.” “I don’t want it.” He gave her a tiny pill that he took out of a little brown envelope in his pocket. She looked at the pill in her palm and started to give it back. “What is it?” she asked. “It’s something that will make you feel better. About the world and about life. Take it and see if it doesn’t.” “You’re a dope dealer?” she asked. He laughed, showing his long teeth. “All things are relative,” he said. “I don’t know what that means,” she said. “I have to be getting home.” “Put it in your pocket and take it with you. Tomorrow is Saturday and you don’t have to go to work. Take the pill in the morning when you’re alone and see if you don’t have a wonderful day.” “I won’t take it,” she said. “I’ll flush it down the toilet.” He laughed again. “Suit yourself!” When she walked into the house, she was more than usually disgusted by the sight of Momma and Poppa sitting in their chairs staring at the eye and puffing on their cigarettes. She wanted to leave again but the thought of the bleak, wet, lonely streets leading nowhere stopped her. Without acknowledging to Poppa and Momma even that she was home, she went up the winding stairs to her rooms and to the only people in the world who knew and loved her. *** Elma awoke, more than ever conscious that Frankie, in the bed beside her in silk pajamas, wasn’t a real person, but a mannequin with movable arms and legs. She groaned and sat up and covered Frankie with the blanket so she wouldn’t have to look at him. It was Monday morning and a squinty-eyed look at the clock revealed that it was already later than she thought. On this morning she took more pains with her appearance than usual. She stood under a spray of scalding water and washed her hair; after it was dry, she brushed it vigorously in an attempt to give it some body. She had found an ancient tube of lipstick and this she dabbed to her lips, sparingly, to give her face a little color. When she was dressed, she tied a red-and-blue scarf around her shoulders, looking at herself in the smoky dresser mirror to determine if any of these little blandishments had made a difference. At the mannequin factory, she didn’t say a word to anybody. She went to her desk and began doing the work that had been left to her by people she never saw and who treated her, not badly, but like a piece of the furniture. In the middle of the morning, she was aware of somebody standing in the doorway looking at her. She turned toward the wall and blew her nose loudly into a wad of used tissue. When she turned back around, the person was still standing there, making clucking sounds with his tongue to get her attention. She looked up and when she saw it was Shakespeare, her heart gave a little lurch in spite of itself. “Are you looking for someone?” she asked. “Only you,” he said. She bit her lip and said, “Humph!” “You’re looking radiant today,” he said. She knew how hideously ugly she was; she believed that anybody who suggested otherwise was making fun of her. “Do you want me to tell Mr. Hilyer you’re here to see him?” she asked. “I’m not,” Shakespeare said. “I’m here to see you.” “How many times do I have to tell you?” she said. “I’m not interested in your little games.” “You don’t mean that,” he said. “Your heart cries out.” She stood up and walked to the door of Mr. Hilyer’s office and put her hand on the knob and started to open the door. It was the cue for Shakespeare to leave. “I’ll see you later,” he said, waggling his fingers at her and disappearing around the corner. She sat back down at her desk and Mr. Hilyer came out of his office. He was unused to hearing her speak at all, so he asked, “Who were you talking to?” “Nobody,” she said. “Nobody here.” At lunchtime she went down to the lunchroom to get a little carton of milk to have with her roll and apple. Shakespeare was sitting at one of the tables and when he saw her he jumped up and came toward her. She got her milk as fast as she could and turned her back to him, but he followed along behind her. “Stay and talk for a little while,” he said. “Have a cigarette.” “No!” she said. “Some of us have work to do!” “Don’t you want to ask me anything?” he asked. “Only why you’re bothering me!” “So you want me to leave you alone, then?” “Yes!” “Well, why didn’t you say so?” He laughed and was gone. When she left work at the end of the day, Shakespeare was waiting for her at the door, as if it was something he did every day. She groaned and said, “I don’t want to see you!” “I have a car today,” he said. “I’ll give you a ride home.” “I don’t want it!” Nevertheless, she let herself be led to his car, an old black Cadillac, and got in on the passenger side when he unlocked the door. “At least it isn’t raining today,” he said as he got in and started the car. The car made a vroom-vroom sound and he said, “This is a classic. They don’t make them like this anymore.” “You can let me out anywhere,” she said. “I’m used to walking.” “You don’t want to have a drink with me?” he asked. “No! I don’t drink!” He turned and looked at her with a smile and she turned her face away. “You don’t much like the way you look, do you?” he said. “What business is it of yours?” “I can help you if you’ll let me.” “Let me out at the next corner.” “All your life you’ve been told you’re ugly and they’ve got you believing it.” “That’s enough. Let me out!” “No, I don’t want to,” he said. “Why do you persist in bothering me?” she asked. “Just look at me!” “You know I spray paint mannequins at the mannequin factory?” “I’m so happy for you!” “No, you’re not. You’re very unhappy.” “You know nothing about me.” “I know more than you think I know.” “If you don’t stop bothering me, I’m going to tell Mr. Hilyer.” “What do you think he’d do? Is he your boyfriend or something?” “You can let me out anywhere,” she said. “I’ve had enough of this and I’m going to walk the rest of the way.” “Did you take the pill I gave you on Friday?” “Pill?” “Don’t you remember? In the bar after work I gave you a pill and told you to take it when you got home.” “I remember saying I was going to flush it down the toilet.” “Did you take it?” “I flushed it down the toilet.” “I wanted you to take it.” “Why?” “Because it will make you happy and beautiful, at least for a little while.” “I was going to call the police and tell them you’re distributing illegal drugs, but I couldn’t remember your name and I didn’t think you were worth it, anyway.” When he pulled up in front of her house, she realized she hadn’t told him where she lived. “How did you know?” she asked. “I’m a good guesser.” She opened the door and started to get out. “Wait a minute,” he said. “I have something I want to give you.” “I don’t want anything you have,” she said. He took a pill out of a little bottle and put it in the palm of her hand. “Don’t flush this one down the toilet,” he said. “What is it?” “It wouldn’t help you to know the name.” “You’re not going to make a dope fiend out of me, if that’s what your little game is.” “It’s not like that,” he said. “What will it do to me?” “It won’t hurt you, I promise.” “What will it do to me?” “You’ll see the Celestial City.” “Does that mean I die?” “There is no death in the Celestial City.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but the main thing is I don’t give a shit.” “You will,” he said. “Give it time.” For the rest of the week she didn’t see Shakespeare at the mannequin factory. She was both relieved and alarmed. By the time the work week was over, she was sick. She had caught a cold and ached in every part of her body. When she tried to eat a little breakfast on Saturday morning, she threw up on the kitchen floor. After she cleaned up the mess, she locked herself in her room and went back to bed. As she lay there, she remembered the pill that Shakespeare had given her. Without thinking too much about it, she arose from the bed, took it out of its hiding place in the dresser drawer, and swallowed it. She lay back down on the bed, composing herself for death, legs straight out and hands over her abdomen. She knew she was taking a terrible chance by swallowing a pill that a person like Shakespeare had given her, but she was past caring. If she died, she would never have to see Momma and Poppa again or the mannequin factory, which had lately become more and more odious to her. She felt nothing for a few minutes, but then the room began to move, not in a vertiginous but in a joyful, musical way. The people around her, the mannequins she had rescued from destruction at the mannequin factory, began to move around her in time to a beautiful melody. They were fluid in their motions, even the mustachioed outdoorsman and the little boy at play. She felt herself—saw herself—being lifted up from the bed, suspended in the air, surrounded by the mannequins in a circle of light and love. And just above her head, where the ceiling had been, the Celestial City opened up in a burst of brilliant light and untold beauty. A man stepped forward from the light, perhaps a mannequin and perhaps not; she wanted to go to him but was for the moment unable to move her arms and legs. Slowly the man dissolved into nothingness and she fell back on the bed in blackness and utter despair. *** She was without illusion. She was ugly. She would never be anything but ugly. Ugly was not without its compensations, though. People didn’t ask her for directions or to lift things down for them at the grocery story; they looked through her as if she wasn’t there. She had heard about women (mostly from watching the eye, which she didn’t bother with much, anymore) having terrible problems with boyfriends and husbands, or just men in general. And, then, of course, there were the children that resulted from the relationships with these men; the children were a whole different set of problems that one might avoid by being ugly. She didn’t choose to be ugly; it was just the way things happened. If she had been given a choice, would she have chosen to be beautiful with all its attendant problems? No, she would have chosen not to be born at all. Shakespeare might have had any of a dozen women at the mannequin factory—and not just mannequin women, either, but real ones. He was, if not exactly good-looking, at least passable, with a good smile, abundant hair, clean fingernails and a flat stomach. Why he would pay any attention at all to Elma the Ugly was beyond her ken. She was sitting at her desk when he came in and placed a chocolate bar with nuts in front of her. Her first instinct was to say she didn’t want it, but when she saw the way he was smiling at her she couldn’t bring herself to say it. “What’s this for?” she asked. “You don’t like chocolate?” he asked. “Why me?” “Because we’re friends.” “No, we’re not.” Her voice didn’t have quite the edge that it had before. She was softening toward him. “Have lunch with me today,” he said. “I never eat lunch.” “I have something I want to discuss with you.” “I don’t want to hear it.” “Mr. Hilyer is out of town at a mannequin convention.” “So?” “Nobody will know if you step out for lunch today.” “I’m not hungry.” “I’ll come by about a quarter to twelve. We’ll go to a spaghetti place I know.” “I don’t like spaghetti.” “I’ll see you at a quarter to twelve.” She spent ten minutes in the ladies’ fluffing up her hair and painting her lips with a lipstick she had taken to carrying around with her. At a quarter to twelve, her heart was pounding and she felt nauseated. He showed up exactly on time and she was waiting for him. The spaghetti restaurant was a ten-minute walk from the mannequin factory. He walked leisurely, as if he had all day. She worried about how much time she was going to be away from the mannequin factory but said nothing. Over a plate of spaghetti, he leaned forward and said, “You look different now. Better.” “There is no reason for you to make personal remarks about the way I look,” she said. “You saw the Celestial City,” he said. “That’s why you look different.” “I will admit that I took the stupid pill you gave me because I was feeling very bad.” “And you were looking for an escape.” “I thought I was going to die and I wouldn’t have cared much if I had.” “You saw the Celestial City.” “I saw something. I don’t know what it was. I won’t ever do it again.” “It made you feel better, though, didn’t it?” “I don’t know why I don’t call the police and report you for the drug dealer that you are.” “That’s not what I am.” “I have to get back to the mannequin factory. I shouldn’t even be here.” “Nobody will know you’re gone.” “Thanks for the lunch,” she said. “Let’s not do it again.” “I have something important I want to discuss with you,” he said. “No matter what you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.” “I want you to meet me after work on Friday.” “How do I know you won’t murder me?” He surprised her by laughing. “If I wanted to murder you,” he said, “I could have already done it. Remember, I know where you live.” “Let’s just forget the whole thing,” she said. “Forget you’ve ever seen me. Forget you know where I live.” “It’s about your parents.” “You don’t know anything about them. They keep to themselves and so do I.” “I don’t want to say more now than what I’ve already said. Meet me on Friday at five o’clock.” “I won’t,” she said. “Yes, you will.” He was waiting for her at the door as she exited the mannequin factory on Friday. She sighed when she saw him but went with him to his Cadillac. He drove out of the city into the country and stopped at an old cemetery, the Cemetery of the Holy Ghost. “Is this where you’re going to kill me?” she said. “If I was going to kill you, this would probably be the place to do it,” he said. They got out of the car and he led her past a myriad of grave monuments, down a hill and then up another hill to a recent grave that didn’t have a headstone. The dirt was still mounded up and there were some remnants of old flowers. “I need to get home,” she said. “I have things to do.” “I’ll bet you’d never guess whose grave this is,” he said. “No, and I don’t care.” “It’s my mother. She died almost four months ago.” “All right. Now that we’ve seen it, can we go?” “Not just yet. She made me promise before she died that I’d find you and tell you the truth.” “The truth about what?” “Let’s find someplace to sit down.” “I’d rather stand. That way I’m closer to leaving. “Suit yourself. Do you want to hear this or not?” “Do I have a choice, now that you’ve dragged me out here?” “Your father is Percy Costello and your mother is Estelle Costello? Is that right?” “How do you know their names?” “When my mother was young, she was a baby snatcher and she was never caught.” “She was a what?” “Just let me explain. She made her living as a baby snatcher. She was never married to my father and she needed money to raise me.” “What does that have to do with me?” “Percy and Estelle Costello are not your real parents.” “Are you crazy? What are you talking about?” “When you were nine months old, my mother kidnapped you from your real parents and sold you to Percy and Estelle for a thousand dollars.” “That’s not true.” “The police looked for you but after about three years they figured you were dead and gave up. Your real parents were dead by then, anyway, killed in a plane crash, so there was no reason to keep up the search.” “I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t believe a word you’re saying.” “My mother told me all about it from the time I was old enough to understand. She never stopped feeling guilty over it. She used to sit at night and cry about it. She had newspaper clippings about your disappearance as a baby and how the police never had any leads.” “I don’t believe you.” “Your real name is Paulette Merriman. Your father was a policeman and your mother a high school teacher. You were an only child. You lived in Lincoln, Nebraska.” “I was never in Nebraska.” “Percy and Estelle wanted you to help around the house because they had trouble walking and doing things for themselves. They promised my mother they would never mistreat you and would give you a good home, like a puppy or a kitten. She told them she’d keep an eye on them to make sure they kept up their end of the bargain. If there was any reason for her to think you were being neglected or mistreated, she threatened to go to the police and tell them the whole story.” “I think you have me confused with somebody else. I never knew anybody named Paulette Merriman. That’s not my name.” “When I was in high school, we lived about three blocks from you and we both went to the same school. I used to see you at school every day. You were so shy you wouldn’t even look at me.” “I don’t remember.” “My mother used to park on the street and watch you go in and out of your house. She would ask me almost every day if I saw you at school. She would want to know what you were wearing and if you seemed clean and happy.” “What did you tell her?” “That you were like a little mouse afraid of being eaten by the cat.” “I don’t believe any of this.” “There was an English teacher with a fake nose. Her name was Miss Jilson. I’ll bet you remember her, don’t you?” “That doesn’t mean you went to the same school.” “A boy a grade ahead of us got drunk and passed out on the highway at midnight and was hit by a car and killed. Everybody talked about it for weeks.” “Ellis Persons,” she said. “That was his name.” “Now do you think I’m lying?” “Just because you know about Ellis Persons isn’t proof that what you’re saying is true.” “Just think about what I’ve told you. I think it’ll all start to make sense after a while.” “You’re a liar. Take me home now.” “Ask Percy and Estelle if they’re your real parents. Ask to see your birth certificate. Ask them where you were born and when.” “They’d only pretend they don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d never get the truth out of them.” “Didn’t you always having the feeling there was something missing in the way Percy and Estelle behaved toward you? They didn’t mistreat you, but not mistreating you was the only good thing you could say about them.” “How do you know so much about it? I want to go home now.” On the way back to town, despite her objections, he stopped at a road house. They went inside and sat at a back booth, had chili and ribs. The place was quiet. She had her first beer out of a bottle and then a second. She didn’t say anything for a long time and then she said, “All these years I’ve cleaned up after them, taken them their snacks, breathed their cigarette smoke, helped them to bed and to the toilet, and I’m not even related to them.” “So, do you believe me now?” “If it’s true—and I’m going to have to see some proof—I’m going to kill them.” “No, you’re not. You’d go to prison.” “Not if I do it right.” “I have eighteen thousand dollars. That’s enough for you to go far away and live decently until you can find a job.” “I don’t want money from you.” “It’s not from me. It’s from the person who kidnapped you and ruined your life. I told her I’d see that you got it. She thought it would square her in heaven.” He didn’t take her home until eleven o’clock, and when he pulled up in front of her house he shut off the engine. “I want you to see my people,” Elma said. “Percy and Estelle?” “No. I mean my real people upstairs in my room.” Momma and Poppa were sitting in front of the eye, puffing away in a fog of cigarette smoke. When Elma came into the house with a person they didn’t know and had never seen before, they didn’t even look up. “Get me some cheese crackers!” Momma said. “About out of smokes here!” Poppa said. “Good evening, sir!” Shakespeare said. “How are you, ma’am?” “They don’t hear you,” Elma said. “They’re in a trance. That’s what the eye does to them. And the Marlboros.” “This is no way for a person to live,” Shakespeare said. After Elma got Momma and Poppa the things they wanted, she took Shakespeare up the winding stairs to the rooms above and, once they were inside, she locked the door. Shakespeare’s enthusiasm for the mannequins was equal to Elma’s own. He admired all the figures in her collection, their clothes and especially the way their faces made you feel that everything was going to be all right. “I paint their faces, you know,” he said. “They speak to me in my dreams.” Frankie, in the bed in the silk pajamas, was her favorite, she said. She pulled back the covers and picked Frankie up and set him on his feet beside the bed. “I have another pair,” she said. “I want you to put them on and take Frankie’s place tonight.” She took a pair of yellow-and-red silk pajamas out of the dresser drawer and handed them to Shakespeare. As he undressed, she turned away and prepared herself for bed. So now she lay in bed, with Shakespeare beside her in Frankie’s favorite silk pajamas. She turned off the light and lay back and pulled the covers up to her chin. She didn’t need the Celestial City or anything else as long as he was there beside her, living and breathing. *** Shakespeare was gone in the morning and in his place in the bed was Frankie the mannequin. Elma couldn’t remember at first what had happened the night before, but when she saw the yellow-and-red silk pajamas folded neatly on the chair, it all came back to her. She and the man from the mannequin factory she had been trying to repel, the man who angered her and made her forget what she was doing, the man known as Shakespeare, had spent the night sleeping side by side in the bed. Only sleeping, it must be emphasized—neither of them had crossed the invisible line that ran down the middle of the bed. She gave Momma and Poppa their breakfast of sugar corn pops and donuts and, after they were finished eating and installed in front of the eye, she set out to the market to buy beer nuts and Marlboros. It was a cold, blustery day and she wore her coat made of genuine artificial monkey fur, the only one of its kind in the world, and the white fur hat with her hair tucked up inside. People looked at her curiously but she ignored them, even though she thought them rude. She bought three cartons of Marlboros instead of two and, as she stood in line to pay for them, she thought of the many, many Marlboros she had bought in her life. Sometimes it seemed all she had ever done in her life was buy Marlboros. Momma and Poppa should rightly be dead by now, considering how many Marlboros they smoked and how much unhealthy food they ate, but the years went by and still they sat in their chairs, smoking, eating snacks and staring at the eye. As she walked home, she told herself that the three cartons of Marlboros would be the last she would ever buy because she was going to kill Momma and Poppa. She didn’t know yet how she would do the deed; it was going to take some careful planning. A door that had always been closed was now open. She had no blood connection to Momma and Poppa. They had bought her for a thousand dollars when she was a baby. Not only had they used her all her life as an unpaid servant, but they had lied to her. She would have gone on in the same way through all the weary years to come, but not now, though—now that she knew the truth. After high school, she had no friends and no life other than keeping house for Momma and Poppa and taking care of them. She rarely left the house except to buy food and other things they needed. Poppa had an old car that he kept locked up in the garage out back, but when Elma told him she wanted to learn to drive, he refused, saying that the car was too valuable to entrust to somebody like her. And, besides, she had two legs, didn’t she? That’s all she, or any other woman, would ever need. When Elma was twenty, Momma had a serious operation and almost died. She was in the hospital for weeks. When she went home, she had a trained nurse to help her to recover, but she dismissed the nurse after two days and insisted that Elma do the nurse’s job. Through many long days and nights, Elma stayed by her bedside, while Poppa sat in his chair smoking Marlboros, watching westerns, news broadcasts, and war movies on the eye. Elma always thought she would get a job the way other people do, but Momma and Poppa wouldn’t let her. They said she had too much work to do at home. She would have to prove to them she could handle the pressures of a job and all her work at home besides before they would even consider letting her get a job. They wanted her to get a full night’s sleep every night so she would be able to do all the things they needed her to do during the day. No, working at a job outside the home was out of the question. In high school she took typing and shorthand and was good at them. She bought an old typewriter from the school for twenty dollars and this she used to keep up with her typing. She didn’t want to be completely useless in the world. Instinct told her that Momma and Poppa would die, or maybe turn her out after they got tired of her, and that she would have to earn her own living. Poppa had some financial reverses when Elma was in her mid-twenties and it turned out that he and Momma didn’t have nearly as much money as they thought they had. There wasn’t going to be enough money to keep up with monthly expenses, so Elma went to work at the mannequin factory. The job didn’t pay much, but Elma had never worked before so it seemed a princely sum. And, if she was frightened out her wits to be out in the world for the first time, she quickly adapted. In spite of her odd appearance and her eccentricity, she was good at her job because she ignored all the distractions that other people had. She didn’t care about her appearance, never socialized with the other employees and never, ever took smoke breaks or coffee breaks. She had been at the mannequin factory now for twelve years. Her youth was gone and where did it go? Her beauty? She never had any to begin with. She was what they call a spinster. She had never been out on a date with a boy or a man and, when she looked at herself in the mirror, she knew why. She had gone through a period in school where boys made fun of her, made pig sounds or monkey sounds when she walked into a room, but after they grew tired of her and desisted, they ignored her entirely, which, in a way, was worse than being laughed at. No male of the species had ever paid her any attention at all until Shakespeare came to work at the mannequin factory. She still didn’t know quite what to make of Shakespeare. Now that she had had a day and a night to think about all he told her at his mother’s grave, the whole thing made perfect sense—all the pieces fell into place. Momma and Poppa never had any real regard for her because they had purchased her the way they would purchase a refrigerator. To them she was nothing more than a commodity. How could she have not seen it before? Did she not know enough about the world by the time she was grown to know how parents are supposed to behave with a daughter? Sunday evening there was a knock at the door. Elma never answered the door, but she somehow knew it was going to be Shakespeare and it was. “Can I come in?” he asked. “No,” she said. “I’d rather you didn’t.” “You’re getting better,” he said. “A while back you would have told me to leave you alone and then slammed the door in my face.” She attempted a small smile but it turned into a grimace. “I was just about to roll up my hair,” she said. “Come out for a while,” he said. “Another cemetery?” “No, just…out and back.” She put on her coat and hat and left without a word. Momma and Poppa wouldn’t even know she was gone. They had all the smokes and all the snacks they would need for the evening. “Have you thought about what I told you on Friday?” he asked after he had driven a couple of miles through town, out past the high school, the shoe factory and the sewage treatment plant. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it,” she said. “Do you believe me?” he asked. “Yes, I believe you. Why would you say such a thing if it wasn’t true?” “Nobody ever offered to give me eighteen thousand dollars to go away and start a new life,” he said. “I told you I’m not going to take any money from you,” she said. “It’s not from me. It’s from my mother. I thought I already made that clear.” “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to stay right here and kill Momma and Poppa after what they did to me.” “Do you want to go to prison?” “It’d be worth it to see them dead,” she said. “Don’t you think it would be better if you quit your job at the mannequin factory and went far away and didn’t tell Momma and Poppa where you were going? Wouldn’t that be punishment enough? Then they’d have to do things for themselves, get their own beer and cigarettes, instead of having somebody to wait on them.” “No, I know them. They’d find themselves another small child to buy, the way they bought me. Probably an older one that would be beneficial to them right away. Six or seven years old. Old enough to fetch and carry and make beds and clean floors. I’m not going to let them do that.” “Go to the police, then, and tell them the whole story.” “I don’t have any proof. They’d think I was just some neurotic bitch with an axe to grind against my parents.” “Killing them is not the answer, though.” “Haven’t you ever heard of a revenge killing?” “Only in the movies.” He drove twelve miles to the next town and into the shopping district. The stores were closed and the streets nearly deserted, but he parked the Cadillac on the street and got out. She followed him, afraid to sit in the car alone. He walked into the middle of the next block, to Pasquale’s Department Store, purveyors of high fashion. People with money shopped at Pasquale’s. “What are we doing here?” she asked. “The store is closed. It’s Sunday night.” “I want to show you something.” In a broad display window were four female mannequins, spaced evenly apart: one blonde, one brunette, one auburn-haired and one with hair the same color as Elma’s fur hat. “This one’s Rochelle and that one is Vivian,” he said. “The next one is Ruby and on the end is Charlotte.” They were all beautiful, of course, dressed in evening gowns and swathed in jewels and furs. They were the society ladies that factory workers don’t ordinarily see. “You drove all the way over here to see them?” Elma asked. “We made them at the mannequin factory. I painted the faces. Aren’t they lifelike?” “You can almost see them breathe.” “Which one do you like best? Which one would you most like to look like?” She chose auburn-haired Vivian in the gold gown, and he said, “I thought you’d choose her.” “Does she have a last name?” “Vincent. Vivian Vincent.” “At least it’s not a grave you’re showing me this time.” “I can make you as beautiful as Vivian Vincent.” He took hold of her arms from behind and moved her to the side so that her face was reflected in the glass over Vivian Vincent’s face. “See? Elma becomes Vivian Vincent.” “She’s a mannequin,” Elma said. “I’m not. What are you going to do? Paint my face the way you would a mannequin’s? And what about the clothes? All my clothes are ugly, just like me.” He laughed. “It doesn’t hurt to imagine, does it? You play imaginary games with your mannequins all the time in your room, don’t you? You imagine that Frankie in your bed in the silk pajamas is a real man and that the other mannequins talk to each other and talk to you. It makes you feel good. Less alone in the world. There’s nothing wrong with that.” “This morning when I woke up, I thought Frankie was you, or you were Frankie. You and Frankie are the same. I think I’m insane and always have been.” “No more insane than anybody else,” he said. “You have to be at least a little insane to live in this world.” On the way back, he said, “You don’t have to kill Momma and Poppa. I’ll take care of them for you.” “You’ll kill them?” “No, better than that.” When he pulled up in front of Elma’s house, he turned off the ignition and, without a word, the two of them went inside. Poppa and Momma were immersed in their Sunday evening programs and didn’t even look up. “Good evening, sir!” Shakespeare said. “Good evening, ma’am!” “They don’t hear you,” Elma said. As before, she took him up the winding stairs to her rooms and, once they were inside, she locked the door. They listened to the wind outside for a while and then Shakespeare gently removed Frankie from the bed and set him on his feet, as before. He slipped out of his clothes and into the red-and-yellow silk pajamas and he and Elma got into bed, both observing the invisible line down the middle. “Do you want to see the Celestial City?” he whispered. He took two pills out of the pocket and gave one to Elma and took the other one himself. In two minutes, the room began to shimmer and whirl and the mannequins began to dance with each other around the bed. The ceiling receded and in its place was the Celestial City, filled with unearthly light and happiness. Elma saw herself and she was as lovely as Vivian Vincent, even more so, and Shakespeare was handsome beyond believing—every bit as handsome as Frankie in the silk pajamas but better because he was alive. The Celestial City was not a place for human language, but Shakespeare somehow conveyed to Elma this message: When you wake up you’ll find Momma and Poppa greatly changed. Elma didn’t know how long she was in the Celestial City—it was time without measure. When she woke up, she wasn’t surprised to find that Frankie the mannequin, instead of Shakespeare, was in the bed beside her. Her first thought, though, besides Frankie and Shakespeare, was how, and in what way, Momma and Poppa were “greatly changed.” She put on her bathrobe and slippers and went down the winding stairs. Momma and Poppa were in their chairs, as usual. Momma held a cigarette on the way to her mouth and Poppa held one between his lips, although both cigarettes had gone out. Across the room, the eye was blatting at them in its usual way, but Momma and Poppa weren’t seeing it because their eyes were made of unseeing glass. If Elma had taken a knife and cut them open, she would have found only stuffing inside. Though they were now mannequins, they weren’t beautiful in the way of mannequins, but as ugly as they had been in life. Every wrinkle on their faces, every pouch and every crease was there; their eyes were small and rodent-like and their mouths hard and mean. Momma’s hair was iron-gray and unkempt and Poppa’s shirtfront held dribbles of all the food he had eaten in the last week. Elma gave them one long and satisfying stare and went back up the winding stairs. Frankie had risen from the bed and was sitting in the chair, his face radiant with warmth and good will. His flexible arm was extended and in his flexible hand was an envelope with Elma’s name written on it. When she opened it, she found eighteen thousand dollars in cash. She bought, for the first time in her life, some fashionable clothes that looked good on her and that complemented her luxurious auburn hair. She bought a large suitcase and packed all her new things in it and left the old things out. She said goodbye to the mannequins in her room and left the house for the last time. She took a taxi to the train station and there bought a ticket to Lincoln, Nebraska, traveling under the name of Paulette Merriman. She would spend a few days in Lincoln and see if there was any of her real family left who might remember what had happened to her when she was a baby. After that, she would keep going as far west on the North American continent as she could until the tracks ran out. Copyright © 2016 by Allen Kopp Ed Nichols lives outside Clarkesville, Georgia. He is a journalism graduate from the University of Georgia, and is an award-winning writer from Southeastern Writer’s Association. He has had many short stories published, online and in print. He is currently working on a collection of stories. God’s Work Amos Garland sat on the ground with his rifle propped across an old chestnut stump. His feet braced against a rhododendron root. The sun bore down like hell itself. Sweat poured off his head and ran down his back and his shirtless arms glistened like gold dust. His mind wandered, not wanting to think on what he was about, but still having to think on it. An animal stirred in the leaves behind him, but didn’t scare him. The rays of the sun were straight overhead, not shaded much by the canopy of oaks and poplars below him on the side of the ridge; he felt faint for a minute. The explaining he’d have to do if he got sick way up here on the ridge. A spider crawled up his pants leg and he was watching it when a yellow jacket lit on his arm and took a drink of his sweat. He had to stay quiet—no sound was going to ruin his purpose. He swatted the spider and yellow jacket and reached down in the leaves and picked up his water bottle and took a sip and puckered his lips and spit it out and his tongue felt blistered. A bad time he was having, but for a good purpose that he knowed would be the one of the best things he would do in this life. God probably had other jobs for him to do after this one was over, and he’d take them on, too. The few leaves and pine needles he was sitting on suited him. Felt nearly as soft as the big chair in front of his TV. He sighted through the scope on his rifle periodically. God was guiding him. He remembered the Bible saying: There’s a time and a place for ever’ thing. If it didn’t happen today, it’d happen tomorrow, or the next day, or next week. It would come to pass. No question about it. He remembered asking his daddy about what all happened over in Europe when they killed all the Germans. His daddy had said, “Son, them sonofabitches was evil. That’s why we had to kill ‘em. They were the Devil’s prophets.” Amos knew that Barney Moss was no different from those German soldiers. Except he didn’t consider Moss to be no prophet—he figured him to be the Devil’s son. Any man that would rape and kill a young girl, then lie his way out of it—smirking and smiling like he and his were above the law—showed Amos what he was. The last day of the trial, when Judge Burton declared a mistrial, was a day that Amos would never forget. He’d sat in the courtroom every day during the trial, and then stood outside the courthouse the day Moss was released. Amos, and about a half dozen others, stared Moss down as he made his way down the courthouse steps and across the yard to his pickup. One man, and Amos didn’t know who it was—but he had an idea—threw a rock hitting the pickup’s rear fender. When the rock hit, Moss touched his brake pedal and the taillights flashed. But he didn’t dare stop. Amos wiped his face and neck with a small towel. He checked his rifle. He looked through the scope. He had it centered on a small poplar tree right beside the logging road. It was around fifty yards from where he sat, down the hill. Barney Moss would be coming along this road one day soon. Amos knew where Moss’s still was and he had to travel this logging road to get to it. Amos thought back to last week when he saw Sheriff Lawson. “It’s over and done with,” the sheriff had told Amos. “The DA says he ain’t gonna try him again.” “That’s a shame,” Amos said. “Looked like to me he done it.” “Looked like it, at least at first.” Amos had thought about the sheriff’s comment, “At least at first.” He had hesitated, but then said straight out, “You gonna keep looking for somebody else?” “Not unless something new develops,” Sheriff Lawson had said. “There ain’t been no new witnesses or evidence to come up.” Amos thought some more about the sheriff’s comment. I seen and heard enough to believe what I know is true, Amos thought. What old Mr. and Mrs. Shaw had to go through, their little granddaughter visiting them this summer. Her wandering off across the pasture to Moss’s place and him killing her. And then her parents having to come up from Atlanta and sit through the trial, grieving and all. Mr. Shaw would probably be sitting here with me, Amos thought; if he wasn’t ninety-five years old. Got to stay focused. Daddy always said, “If you make yore mind up about something, then stick to it. Pray to God. If he’s on yore side, you’ll always be right. Don’t matter what others think.” Barney Moss had moved into the old McCormick place a year ago at the bottom of the ridge where on top Amos now sat with his 30-30 rifle. Amos touched the barrel and it felt like the top of Maggie’s stove when she had a pan of biscuits cooking in the oven. He could hear her saying, “Why’d you touch the thing if you knew I was ‘a cooking?” She was good not to question most things that he did. They’d been together so long—how long, he’d forgotten—but he wouldn’t want to be around no other woman. She had her ways and he had his and they went about their particular business with very little talk, and ever’ night she always had a good supper and he blessed the food and in the prayer he always blessed her and she would sometimes put her hand on his arm for a moment, and say something like, “You’re the best man I could’ve ever married, Amos.” He felt content after eating her cooking and hearing her pleasing comment, and he always slept well. The mountains in Georgia were normally pleasant in the middle of September. But this year, this September, was terribly hot. Three days he’d been waiting for Barney Moss. He would come up that logging road, sooner or later, Amos knew. Wouldn’t be the first one he’d sent to hell. Two years or more now since he’d killed Thomas Caudell. Caudell had been another one that God had told Amos to get rid of. Caudell had whipped his wife till she was unconscious and two days later she was declared brain dead and two weeks after that she was dead and buried. Caudell himself was found dead in the woods behind his barn that winter. Amos swore to himself he’d never shoot anybody at close range again. It had almost turned his stomach when his twelve gauge shotgun went off and Caudell’s face and most of his head disappeared. But that was over and done with, and Amos was a lot wiser now. He knew God was directing him on the right path again. Many nights Amos had stayed up late, reading the words Moses spoke to the Israelites. He especially liked: Vengeance is mine and The Lord will judge his people and have compassion on his servants. Reading these passages over and over welded Amos’s resolve like putting steel in a hot fire and hammering it into a sword. He wiped the sweat from his face again. Down the logging road he suddenly glimpsed a lone figure walking slowly. He knew right off it was Barney Moss by his limp. Some said his limp came from a fight where he used to live in South Georgia before he moved to the hills. Some others said he got it in the war, but Amos doubted that was true. Amos felt ready, charged up. He changed positions quietly and put his scope on Moss. He waited until Moss walked toward the small poplar tree. Once Moss’s head was directly between Amos and the poplar, he gently pulled the trigger. Some turkeys feeding nearby scattered when the gun went off, Amos watched Moss tumble off the side of the road. He thought better about going down and checking. Had to be dead, he thought. Had to be. The bullet looked like it had entered his ear, and the sound that came back to Amos was just like when he’d shot a watermelon in his back yard. At home that night, Maggie had cooked a nice supper and Amos ate good. She asked him if he’d found a good place to deer hunt. He lied and said, “Not really. I’ll probably look again before the season opens.” He read the Bible again that night and slept well. He was not agitated in the least. Two days later, when he ventured to town, the word around was that Barney Moss was probably hit by a hunter’s wayward shot while the hunter was in the woods checking out deer trails and just practicing with his deer gun. Amos nodded, especially when some said, “Looks like Moss got what he deserved.” God did not bother Amos for a while, till one day Amos heard on the radio that a certain woman had been released early from the women’s prison at Alto on some technical thing that her lawyer had done, or not done correctly. He’d heard the DA say on the radio that it didn’t seem right, especially since this woman had confessed that she had killed her four children by feeding them rat poison. Amos keyed in on the story and finally got the fact that she had a house in Lavonia, and the woman said she was going to her home to rest for a spell after the awful time she’d had in the prison. Out in his barn, Amos got his Georgia map out and figured it was about thirty miles from his house to Lavonia. He had no idea where the woman lived around Lavonia, but he knew ways he could find out. There would always be some old boys hanging around town at some station or feed store or another, he’d easily get the directions he needed. Would probably have to shoot her close up with his shotgun, like he’d done with Caudell. He felt a certain dread when he thought on it, but he knew he could do it again. And again and again, as long as God wanted him to. He waited several days, till he felt the calling to bring God’s justice to bear on that woman. He made up a good story for his wife about checking out some national forest land in Franklin County for deer hunting. She packed him a lunch and fixed him a thermos full of iced tea. He told her it might be dark before he returned. She smiled and said, “You be careful Amos, stomping around in a strange place.” While Amos Garland traveled on Highway 17 to Lavonia, Sheriff Lawson stopped by Amos and Maggie’s house. Maggie asked the sheriff to sit on the porch and that’s where he told her he wanted to talk to Amos about Barney Moss being shot and killed. “Just want to ask him a few questions,” Sheriff Lawson said. “I know he’d be glad to talk to you, but he’s on his way to check out some deer hunting land over in Franklin County.” “That’s okay, Maggie. I’ll come back out tomorrow.” “That’s good. And I’ll tell him to be sure and wait around for you.” Sheriff Lawson got up and said, “By the way, be sure and tell Amos we found out who killed the little Shaw girl.” “My word,” Maggie said. “Who in the world—“ “An inmate at the state prison in Reidsville confessed yesterday. Seems he had been working for a company cutting timber over near the McCormick place. Took off the day after he killed her and was arrested the next week for a parole violation and sent straight to Reidsville.” “Lord help!” Maggie said. “Could’ve been any of us he could’ve killed.” “Could have, that’s for sure,” Sheriff Lawson said. “Be sure and tell Amos, when he gets back.” “I will. I know he’ll be pleased to hear.” END Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in a state of desperation engineered by late capitalism, within which his mind is a mere subset of a much larger hallucination wherein men are machines, machines are men, and the world and everything in it are mere dreams whose eddies and currents poets can channel briefly but cannot control. Perhaps it goes without saying that he lives in Los Angeles. The Liberation Chapter 1 In the sleepy little town that is yourself, will you find regency for the thing you bear in your chest? Will you elect it king, in the sleepy little town that is yourself, that is you dreaming? Come with me, and let us find a way to do so. For these avenues and these terraces demand your name, they demand your face, crying, crying in the night for you, you their quarry, for all kings are quarries, all kings are the property of their people. And the people maintain their properties, as they maintain their houses, as they maintain their wives, as they maintain that it is a pretty face on a pretty door we see inside the town that sleeps, that is our own. “Come out of the rain, Jack!” shouted Maximillian, with his eyes straining against the wind and the water. And Jack made a sound with his mouth into the rain, louder than the rain, louder than the dawn of that morning, which had been very loud. The sound Jack made was music, like music from inside a stone, the music that gravity makes, slipping out of its well, curling around the feet of the lucky, around the feet of the estuaries and the curling reefs of madness and wars that accrete around our sleepy little town, in the bosom of the bay, in the nexus of the state, in the heart of our history, damaged but still fine, a horrendous love affair, buried in our heart, Jack screams, he screams a music we have never heard, although we might give it words, for we are reading them-- I am no musician and so I must give it shape with these poor words, the sound Jack made was: I am a small town and this is my history and I would have you know it for I am a small town and small towns demand that their history be known, inside the night we are our own but my small town is riven in its soul, riven in its soul by a strange knight who came so long ago we have forgotten all his names but we remember what he did. He slew our reason with his mind, he took our brainy capsule of experience and mashed it with his great hand and threw the waste that was our beating brain into the dirt and told us true that now we knew our soul (though it was riven) now we knew our melody, our melody that summons and surmises false and fatal worlds, fragrant fecund dreams of women and the moon, fasting monks and curling pews with serpent women in their wiggy whirls of doom and grace, and so we threw the sun into our eye! Such was the madness and the power of the knight that we threw the sun into our eye! We blew a storm onto our step and left it there, fermenting, torturing our souls! Such was the sound Jack made, hurtling his music from his mouth, greater than the wind. “Come in Jack!” cried Maximillian. And, after a time, Jack did. * * * I have come only recently, you understand. The words I use to speak of our town are not the right ones; the right ones cannot be used. The ones I use are imperfect. They do not mention anything other than what they are: they are only the roughest suggestions. I encountered the knight soon after my arrival, when he was sitting in a chair outside the Moonraker Inn, an empty hotel. “Traveler, ho,” he mumbled and I tipped my hat to him. He gestured for me to join him, to sit in the chair near him and I did so, to be neighborly, to see if his face was really as scary as it looked from a distance. It did look that scary but of course many more things as well; it was like a large orange moon, portending horrifying changes. “I call you Traveler; but is that what you are?” he asked me. “Well, my name is Robert,” I said, “and it’s true I’ve done my share of traveling. You look like a traveling man yourself.” “I am a knight,” he said, “as you can see by my armor. What traveling I have done was most often necessary, though I’ve gone on quests. Quests are never necessary, you understand. They are something we do. They are something we think. Are you a thinking man?” “Yes.” “Then listen to what I have to tell you. I wend. That is, in my movements through this world, I curve. You’re familiar with the term, wend?” I admitted I had heard it. “I cannot choose to do otherwise but wend, but I mention it because lately I have begun to understand that wending is not all I do; there is a grace behind my horrible actions. I fear I may, through the expiations I force upon my victims, be an agent of forgiveness and rebirth.” I started to stand up then but the knight seized my arm, and I sat back down, not looking at him, but at the dimming sky. “You look a traveling man and that is why I tell you this my fear, that my cruelties have been in the service of greater things, and I had thought that they were only my cruelties, part of my nature, but now I fear they are something more.” “Is that so terrible?’ I asked. “That your evil deeds should have had some grace about them?” “Yes,” he said, and his eyes blazed, and my heart quailed. The knight seemed a corpse but I knew he was alive; the fires in his eyes and in his chest gave off a palpable heat. “I must go,” I said, and the knight mumbled, “yes, yes,” and I left him, sitting there, the old man, smoking his pipe. * * * I fear I cannot leave now; that the musics of this town, the musics that Jack expresses so many nights now, are inside my soul. I came for a retreat from the city. This town is not so many miles away, but in the feeling of its avenues and parks, it could be hundreds far, it is so silent in the nights here, except when it storms, and Jack sings. And in truth, if you listen to him long enough, that becomes a kind of silence too. * * * The community events here are good fun; we watch the government recordings of nuclear launches, grainy and incomplete but with marvelous soundtracks, some of them locally compiled, some carefully mastered by expert technicians in the capital. With each tipped warhead’s fiery thrust into the clouds, we cheer, watching the flickering screen, and toast each other’s health. It is the pleasure of small towns that good company seems as natural as water, and this town is no exception. You should know too, of course, that the town’s recent history, before, during, and after our wars, plays a significant role in how we are now here. I cannot say whether the knight and his stories (both from his lips and Jack’s) are a product of these wartime experiences, or whether it is the other way around, that the knight and his journey here in the long ago time really did infect this town with some kind of madness that perhaps even brought about the wars, though of course this region, being a remote province, played only a minor part in our nation’s liberation, and the struggles that preceded it. * * * In the night sometimes I fear; sometimes I fear that the voice I hear crying in the night is not Jack’s. For Jack defends us, you see, like Scheherazade, his songs and their cruel mournful wisdom keep us here, I believe, like the snores of the red king. But if it is not the red king snoring, not Jack singing, not his tale, our tale, that he tells in his shrieks and moans into the winds and rains, if he is not our own personal Lear, like our own personal Jesus, written and loved and performed by our beautiful tortured souls, then who is he? Who can it be that I hear? For sometimes it does not sound like him at all, it sounds like the police. After me. The helicopters from the capital still fly over of course; scanning our brains. We grow accustomed to them, and the electricity they fire into our heads, as you might grow accustomed to a strange room in your house that never seems to get any air, no matter how you ventilate it or how many windows you open; you avoid the room but have a certain respect for it in its obstinacy. I know they are talking about me and that is okay. It is the nature of small towns for newcomers to be remarked upon at great length; their actions parsed and weighed, their character estimated and charted, their face examined and their voice perused like a strange animal, sighted in the forest with your rifle. * * * The red barn outside my window is terrible at night when it can no longer be seen; when it looms, an unseen hay-filled presence. A girl sleeps there, all alone. Last night I heard her outside my window, speaking to her Barbie dolls. “This one is good and this one is bad, so kiss her,” the little girl was whispering, “this one was bad and she is no good and so we throw her,” and the little girl threw the doll, right at my window. “Stop that,” I said, looking out at her. “Come out here,” she said, dolls handing from her hands. I did. “Look at that,” she said, once I had joined her in the grass outside. She pointed at the barn. I heard flashes. Like a photographer’s chorus. I saw them too. Fireflies? “Look at that,” the girl whispered, and there was a sound from the barn, like an old chimney, howling, like a man speaking in the sky, far away, on a bad radio. “Would you like some hot chocolate?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said, and I made her some and we drank it in my kitchen. “Why do you sleep in the barn?” I asked her. She had an old blanket curled around her head, like she was a tiny babushka. She didn’t answer my question, only sipped her cocoa, watching me. I decided the question had been rude, and tried a different tack. “Were you born in town?” She shook her head. “Nor I,” I said. “Have you lived here long?” She shook her head. “You know the knight?” She looked at me. “The knight who sits outside the empty hotel?” She nodded. “Who is he?” I asked. “He’s a bad man,” she said, and she smiled. It was a frighteningly adult smile. I do not know exactly why I did what I did then, but I leaned across the table towards the girl, and snatched the blanket off her head. “Give that back,” she said. But she looked at me like she knew why I had done it. “Do you want marshmallows in your cocoa?” “Yes,” she said, and I went to the cabinet where I had kept them. She took her blanket back then, and wrapped it back around her head, watching me. I brought her a handful of marshmallows. She dripped a few into her cup and put the remainder inside her mouth, which she then filled with cocoa, and began to chew like a cow on her mouthful of sugar. “Your parents are dead?” She only looked at me, chewing. “Tell me about your dolls,” I said. She chewed and chewed but the question had made her eyes light up. When she finally swallowed, she took one out of her pocket and put it on the table. It was a very badly used doll. One limb was melted; and its face was pock-marked and discolored. It wore a tattered white dress. “This is Lucy,” said the girl. “She likes me. She lives in a house by the river. Where her father lives. Her father is nice to her, but she hates him anyway. Because Lucy is bad. Like me.” “You’re not bad,” I said. “Yes,” she said. “I am,” looking at me with her wide almost-black eyes. “What does the knight do?” I asked, but she began to cry, and I took her in my arms. She slept in my bed that night, curled against me like a baby. In the morning she was gone. * * * I suspect now that the knight knows he is doomed; that there is some final summation to his long timeline now fast approaching. Some nights now he approaches Jack during the singings and shoutings in the storms, and gestures wildly, as though he would interrupt the tale, but he seems powerless. Whatever tale was begun must go forward now; the knight is even more a prisoner than me. I merely fled the police; he is fleeing reality. * * * I looked across the town for the girl, asking about her. One woman told me she had seen her down by the vegetable gardens, and so I went there at once. And in fact I saw her, though she was moving away from the gardens up the path on the hill that overlooks the town, wearing the same dress I had always seen her in, bright blue. I ran up the hill after her. “You again,” she said. “Me again,” I agreed. “How are your dolls?” “They’re okay,” she said. “Tell me about the other one,” I said, huffing a little to keep up with her. “Not right now,” she said. “Later.” “Okay. What’s your name?” “Lucifer,” she said. “That’s not your name.” “Yes. It is!” “Okay, Lucifer, did you bring a flashlight? It’s going to get dark.” “I don’t need a flashlight!” I shut up and just walked with her, up to the top of the hill. We looked down on the lights of the town as it grew dark. The storm was starting up again, huge dark clouds curling slow over us, like angry brothers. “I brought an umbrella,” I said. And she stood next to me, underneath it, as it began to thunder, and we stood under an oak tree, watching the sky. “It’s all going to end,” she said. “Not everything,” I said. “Not everything.” “Yes, everything. Everything!” And she started to cry, and I held her hand, as we heard Jack cry from below us, his voice filling all the air: “Low in the belly the town knows it’s been bad, it knows it’s been sorry, that it was okay before but not okay after because the town whispers its fear into the night with my mouth with my bravery, with my dissolution, with my tears and with my earth, with my flesh it makes the name known, of sin, of hurt, of tales that grow inside when we’ve done wrong, of the gravity of the smile of the knight who came rivening our soul, our world is gone but I remember where we were when the knight came riding in, holding his head in his hand, chanting the names of our gods, of war, and of mountains, I remember who we were then and I defy it! I defy it!” The lightning came fast then, striking the tree, and the girl cried out. “I’m Lucy,” she said, and she howled her crying tears and I was glad, glad that she was finally a girl again. * * * I know now that I was mad when I came. The girl is young enough that she can teach me what I will need to know. What I can teach her, I can hardly imagine. But she seems to tolerate my company, and I sorely need her. I know that much. When I came I believed that the missiles were our own doing. But now, now I believe otherwise. I am not even sure that we launched them. Lucy and I are returning to the capital. Just as soon as I can find her new shoes. Chapter 2 The Sleepy Little Town that is Yourself Of my adventures in the capital it is best for now to say nothing. My companion is safely ensconced in her studies there now, I trust, and that, at least, is something good to have come from our travails. I have arrived in Greenlee and have taken up an apartment. Why, I cannot say. That is, I do not know. Whatever the war did, or didn't do, (and I feel sure now there has been a war, though I doubt it involved nuclear exchange), I feel it also contributed to the mood of this place; sealed off, to a degree. Like my last posting. I mean, where I was before. I have problems with memory but they have been getting better. This record helps me too, to set things in my mind, how they occurred, and what I must now do. * * * It is beautiful here. It is aptly named, as Greenlee, for the hills above the village are so green they're almost Irish, and high enough they shield us from the ocean gales, ten miles distant. I know the shore is still mined. But I can hear the sea; often that is enough. There is a tunnel I discovered yesterday, halfway up to the highest hill, cut into the soil. Like a magician's den. “What is that tunnel up there?” I asked Madame Traiteur, outside her shop on Main Street. “There? I've no idea.” She glanced up at the hills. “You've seen it?” “Yes. Come in, have coffee with me.” * * * Dreams are terrible things, and so are tunnels. Perhaps they are related. In any case I have not gone inside. I suffer from claustrophobia and would likely collapse, trembling, before I made it more than a few feet inside. * * * The town is pretty enough, not as pretty as the hills above, but Greenlee is charming, with the quirky shops that you would expect, and the quirky people. One old man stares at me out of his bedroom window above the pharmacy every time I walk down the street. His eyes are haunted, but somehow kind. Rather like the town itself. * * * Madame Traiteur would tell me nothing of the tunnel and so I have enlisted one of the local boys as my investigator. Boys are insatiably curious and little Jackson is the ideal candidate for this venture. I have rigged him with an old miner's helmet, complete with candle and flint (which he knows how to strike), and attached a rope round his waist tied to an old pine outside the entrance. “Are you ready?” I asked him. He nodded, grinning, and I played the rope out slowly, as he walked within. I must have fallen asleep, then, for I found myself lying against the tree and it was evening. The rope was slack. I ran down into the village. 'The boy! Jackson! He's inside the tunnel!” People looked at me curiously, but no one said a word. I pounded on Madame Traiteur's door. She stuck her face out, bathing cap over her coiffed skull. “Are you aware of the hour?” she said. “Madame, a boy. I sent him into the tunnel. A scientific expedition. He hasn't returned. Will you help?” “Which boy?” she said. “Jackson.” “Our Jackson?” “Yes Madame.” “You'd better come inside.” “No, Madame, the boy, he may be in danger. I suffer from nerves, I cannot follow where he has gone. Help me get someone's aide! Or perhaps you yourself . . .” “Jackson will be fine,” she said. “Come inside.” I did as she said. * * * “Why did you come here, Mr. Esori?” “For the climate, Madame. It relaxes my nerves.” “I’m a blunt woman, often enough. And so my question: are you wealthy, Mr. Esori?” “I have a small inheritance. Very small. Likely it will be gone within the year. My occupation, such as it is, has been that of a travel writer, and an investigator of sorts.” “A gumshoe?” “No, nothing like that. In the capital I earned my daily bread for a while investigating claims for some of the well-to-do families there.” “We know nothing of the capital here. But that tunnel is connected to it, you will find. It is why we avoid it.” “The capital is almost two hundred miles away, Madame.” “I know that. But distance isn't the same thing that it used to be. Why don't you go home, Mr. Esori? I'm sure you'll find Jackson will be all right in the morning.” * * * The boy avoids me now. The baleful stare of the old man above the pharmacy has grown colder. I tried to ask the boy what had happened. He said nothing. Even Madame Traiteur will say nothing more than the barest pleasantries to me these mornings, after I've had my croissant, and my tea. I know I must go into the tunnel. * * * We are a broken people. This I have come to understand, over the last few years. The invasion, perhaps, is a likely explanation. But I do not believe there was one, the war, and the amnesia that followed, seems to me to have been an internecine conflict; a civil war. I feel that. Our culture survives; but it is unlucky to speak of it. I have tied the rope around myself. Onto the pine. I have taken a Xanax. I have brought a bottle of whiskey to revive me from whatever I may find. The tunnel is low, and I have to stoop as I enter. * * * It is a workshop. * * * There is a workman here; it is difficult to look at him, because of the arc gradients. And the phosphorous fires. The noise is immense but somehow soothing; I see now how I could have fallen asleep. This lilt of music of iron, and fire . . . My name means watcher, but I must be more than that now. I must take up arms. Only a modest sidearm. * * * The workman has equipped me. Dear God. * * * I killed Madame Traiteur. The boy Jackson is with me. We are bound for the capital. He holds my back atop our metal horse. Why must I remember things? Chapter 3 I have seen the boy's ghost. More on that later. * * * The boy Jackson and I have entered an exurb of the capital, one I've not before visited, and I have taken up employment. Although I tried to find some schooling for Jackson, he insisted he wanted to help earn our daily bread, to finance the final leg of our journey. Like a coward I allowed him to; but I have been grateful for his silver. Every mile closer to the capital by this route has steadily increasing tolls, and they are rising by the week. If we wait too long we will not be able to afford the journey and may have to hire a human smuggler. So perhaps Jackson is the wiser of us after all. My own work is closer to the gumshoe variety than I would care to admit. I have been taking a lot of tram rides and snapping pictures of young ladies on certain gentlemen's arms. Depending on the young lady in question, the payment can be quite high. As to the matter of banking, I secret our earnings beneath my bed, the same place I keep my sidearm. Jackson does not know how to work the lock I have bolted onto the floorboard and is smart enough to leave it alone in any case. Children are so trusting; it is why we love them. Perhaps I may even yet earn this faith he has in me. The exurb's name, according to the old maps, is Jerusalem, but I know this is a fanciful name. The locals call it Appletown, and this name serves as well as any, and it's true there a number of fragrant apple trees at the municipal district's center, arrayed about a fountain. -- Last night I was very ashamed; the inevitable consequence of photographing romantic trysts came about, and one of the “suitors” I had snapped decided to pursue me across the city, with the immodest assistance of his family's personal helicopter, and I was forced to crouch beneath a pile of cardboard boxes in an alley next to a steam grate to hide my heat signature. The steam smelled awful, even worse than the boxes. Eventually I was able to extricate myself; even this close to the capital fuel prices are exorbitant, especially for privately owned aerial vehicles. It was close to dawn. In the cardboard I had found a kitten, and I have given it to Jackson. You should have seen the look on his face; you'd have thought he was five years old again. There is enough milk on our block to feed the animal, and it has cheered the both of us up. By unspoken agreement we have not named the feline; we've both grown rather superstitious. I suppose, like an observant Jew, we shall have to name the cat when it is one year old. Then may be it known openly! Ha ha. * * * I do not ask what work the boy manages to find for himself; trusting to his moral instincts, and his growing street sense. I have advised, him, however, to make no long-term arrangements. He knew this, of course. Every day I see that the boy is smarter than I am, and I regret having made him what he is. But we are bound for the capital. For now that is enough. * * * My last assignment. The maiden in question is on a jaunt here in Appletown, being photographed with her new product line, manservants in tow. I received a tip that a foreign businessman, Mr. Chu, has been “courting” her, and that they were to meet at Joe's, a local club. I am not a cultured man by most estimates and so cannot claim to have much to compare my experience of the music that evening to, but still, I say it was glorious. The jazz (for it was jazz, I believe) stormed through the brain, more than a drug, more than a religious experience; a kind of nature. Like wind. Or the sea. An angry, tightly-controlled sea. The red and orange lights made the inevitable chiaroscuro faces seem heavenly, arrayed about the club, and I snuck into one of the alcoves to adjust my camera. I know I must seem tawdry to you; a fallen animal. But the truth is what we are all fallen now. At least I realize it. The maiden, whose name was Adaline, curled against the hairy bulk of Mr. Chu. He claims he is half-android, but I could see this was an affectation; most of his upgrades are simply cleverly painted onto his face. I snapped my photograph. Chapter 4 I remember something. Though I don’t want to. I was there, inside a room. A control room. Military? The gold walls and the diamond windows, and the regalia of the man who stood next to me, talking. Who am I? If I could erase my memory I would do it. It is so weak in any case; why does it exist? What purpose does it serve, other than as a means of torture? There was a ship. It teased the general, for that is what he was, I remember that now. It hovered over the land, some miles distant, watching the general in his perch. “Salvation,” he had said, watching it move up and down, in the air. * * * I am at the airport. Jackson is with me. I have had new papers made. And I bought us both suits. There aren’t many planes left now of the commercial variety. But some media event brought about this opportunity; the last of its kind, cheaper than a train ticket. A swift 100 mile jaunt. Waste of fuel, really, but it will escort us over the political problems below, which is why everyone is so eager to board. I had to bargain away almost my own skin to get us our tickets. “Magister, are there video streams on the plane?” “Yes, son. Don’t plug in too many.” I fear now that I may have made too many compromises, agreed too readily to too many bad deals. No doubt I have. Yet some faith sustains me, that I do right, despite all the evidence to the contrary. * * * The boy is beautiful but so am I; I have come to fear beauty, and all that it may mean. I know the war is starting again, and that I am likely its agent. What can I do? I must rescue the girl, of course. But perhaps even this is unnecessary; she may be better off remaining at university. She can protest, and her professors will keep her safe. What, then, have I come to do? The skyline is beautiful, and crumbling. My fellow passengers are overjoyed, in this brief respite, up in the clouds. My sidearm was undetected by any of the military scanners. * * * Ludicrous as it sounds, I know, to some, I believe now that it was an alien visitation that has made our world what it is now. Their influence has led to a great many of my own travails, and the suffering of my fellow men. But I find I cannot hate them. Whoever they may be. I know my gun is their technology; and that likely the blacksmith who made it was one of them. But they are careful, like I am. Their intentions seem not domination, but education. I am learning. I am learning to be more like myself. To be more like Jack who howled into the rain, screaming his heart out at the clouds to declare that he was right, and they wrong, that he was alive, and proud. * * * “Will you fight for me?” I ask Jackson. “Yes, Magister.” * * * I see I have forgotten to tell you about the boy’s ghost. It is nothing so remarkable, now that some time has passed. I saw it in alleyway, in a warehouse district of Appletown. He was teething, and I could see that he was in some pain. I raised my sidearm, and fired. He ran. Chapter 5 The Capital Maximillian had a saying, in our own old town: “Every fight is a good one, if you win.” Of course, Max was a boxer, and so had the pugilist’s enthusiasm for the winner. The truth is, of course, we all love winners. Despite whatever instincts we have to the contrary, the victor invites our inevitable praise. I know that I have come to win. As all come to the capital. And yet, it was not so on my last visit; but then, I was only visiting then. Now, I have come to stay. I am terrified out of my mind. But I smile at the boy, and lead him off the plane. Dancers greet us in the jetway, their lithe bodies swirling about us and we are laughing, helplessly, Jackson more than any of us passengers, delirious at the sight of such beauty, their bright raiment and love for us. I hold his hand and we make our way to the baggage claim. We have checked no luggage; it is here I am to meet my contact. * * * Four hours later I stand under the eaves of the fort, out of the rain. The harbor guns fire soundlessly. Over the sky I watch the bomber pirouette in its training exercise, and I wipe the rainwater from my moustache. The gate opens and an old woman examines my ID, squinting into my face, and I tip her a cigarette, into her flax-spun pocket. Inside the screens and keyboards are arranged carefully along the walls, and I bend over one to enter my logon information. The force field at the other end of the alcove deactivates at my password and I pass through, as the old lady returns to her post, on the stool, lighting a cigarette. These times try the soul, of course, but I suspect this is normal. Perhaps that’s what souls are for; for trying. We are an experiment. I could not bear to visit Lucy right away and so came to the fort, as my contact had bid me. Jack is staying in a dormitory; he has enough money. Is it just and moral to act, not knowing whom you serve? And is this any different from the tasks given to every man and woman? The knight I encountered in the town where I met Lucy, in his hallucinations, believed himself master of his own fate, but I know better. For me, at least, in my obedience to these orders, orders I cannot even explain, I know that I will ultimately have more free will: I can decide, at the crucial instant, to thwart the will of my masters, and thus inflict more damage than I ever could have as an “independent.” But all this is mere speculation. Something to keep my mind at ease. The fort is old and weathered; the rain is seeping through the wet stones. I show my sidearm to the attendant in the lab, and he examines it with interest, test firing it against the target he has erected, smiling. He takes photographs and then returns it to me with a nod, and I return it to my pocket, simultaneously warmed and chilled by the feeling that it is coming home to me again. I’ve grown fond of it, and it of me. I have been given more killing orders. Ones I intend to disobey. * * * I see now that part of the problem is this record itself. I had trusted that its soothing rhythms would be enough to disguise its essential dishonesty―not in the facts it relates but the manner of its relation―but now see that the holes are showing through. It is not as though I can stop. But I can try to be more honest. The paradox of this attempt will be, I know, to introduce further gaps into this narrative―but that is how I experienced the events I am to relate. There is something else too: I know that this story is making my life happen. But let us not dwell on such matters. How does one best disobey an order? By following it as closely as one is able, before swerving at the last minute. I checked my sidearm’s charge and descended into the basement of the fortress, via the elevator. On emerging on the sub-seven level, the white laboratory regions dazed me for a moment, until I reached to my right and attached the goggles. Then I could make out the technician, at work on the Great Circuit on the table before her. A dozen years’ work or more. My nation puts great faith in computing, something I have never entirely understood. Why compute when one can invent? But I know both are necessary. I raised my sidearm to the technician’s head, and she ceased his work immediately, looking at me through her goggles. “Don’t shoot,” she said. I moved the gun a millimeter to the left and fired a charge over her skull, opening a black hole in the wall. “Take off your goggles,” I said. She did as I said, squinting in the light. Her robot assistant remained motionless across the lab table; I knew he would have already signaled the police. As to whether his report would include my failure to murder the technician as ordered, I could not be certain. “Shall I kill your slave?” I asked her, pointing at the robot. “It is reporting me.” “Leave him, please. He is a good slave.” I grinned at the metal beast, then strung the woman’s arm up behind her back and marched her back to the elevator. The robot watched me with its sad, red eyes, as the doors closed. The woman tried to turn to look at my face but I held her firmly. We both watched the numbers as the lift ascended. It was not long ago I discovered the artificial “enhancements” made to my body; I use the quotations because their effect is mainly to shorten my life span, with the side effect that I have heightened reflexes during times of intense stress. They are battle modifications. A terrorist would merely use the woman as a human shield, but I am not that. Or if I am, I am a terrorist of the state-building variety. A freedom fighter, you might say, although I know the concept to be largely illusory. No, what I fight for is simply a change of masters, and I suspect it is always this way. The gunplay was delirious and heady, and I watched from my third eye as my body tumbled and tumbled, killing the men with their guns in the foyer. The screams of the technician echoed inside my mind as I executed the guards, to end their intense pain. I knew that leaked video footage of my violence would soon make it onto government-sponsored media channels to justify martial law. Violence is both a purifying and a corrupting act; it is a pharmakon in this way, poison and its cure. Like any drug, its efficacy fades with long use. I want to do as little killing as possible. * * * How long have I been on this planet? My memory is the truth; I believe this even now, but it is fading. My first memory is of the ship. And the woman. But I can no longer remember her face. I have made it into the tunnels and the old man is pushing me and the technician in a mine cart; I am half-asleep, some distant part of my awareness monitoring for movement and sound. I hold the technician; she curls tighter against my chest. If Jackson has succeeded, he will be in orbit by now. I pray that he has. Chapter 6 I am remembering. It hurts. I was a boy. I was in Jerusalem. Not Appletown. Jerusalem. Over those old stones. I am remembering. Memory is a city but it’s one I don’t want to visit. Here I am. Alive. I am going to visit Lucy. She will know what to do; I no longer do. The tunnels lead beneath the university. * * * I hold the gun to the technician’s head; she is trembling. “Don’t say a fuckin’ word,” I say, and I lead her up the steps, and wave goodbye to the old man, who waves in return. The city is dark and the police helicopters are up overhead, but distant, like small moons. The campus is quiet. “Walk ahead of me,” I tell the woman, and give her a gentle push, and she starts walking, looking at me nervously over the shoulder, heading into the quadrangle, between the marble and the columns. The tower leads up from the quadrangle, the dormitories, and I send her up the stairs and I follow. The student guard is asleep at his post and we slip past him, into the halls. I find her door, and knock. The technician watches me with wide eyes, and I watch her back. Lucy opens her door, her hair in curlers. “David!” She reaches her arms out for a hug but catches herself when she sees the woman, and the glowing gun in my hand. Her eyes turn dark, perhaps remembering what we went through before, before I got her into university. She turns around and walks back inside her dorm room, and I gesture for the technician to go in. I follow, and close the door behind me. “Can we stay here, Lucy?” I say. “My roommate is gone so I guess you have to!” she says. “This is . . . what’s your name?” The technician clears her throat. “Alice.” “Have a seat, Alice,” I say, “we might be here a while.” * * * I came to the capital to know, before. Before, I didn’t know, and then I came, with little Lucy, who’s now bigger Lucy, and when I came I knew then. I’ve wanted to forget it a lot since but I cannot. Not enough. I will do it. I will bring my vengeance here; but it is a small thing, in the end. An appropriate gesture, for a passing season in the annals of Man. A little bomb to start a civilization; a Small Bang. She was so strong. That’s why I picked her. So strong. Like a knife. An ocean. “I have a friend. Jackson. He’s your age. He’s on one of the ships, in orbit, right now.” “Why did you send him there?” Lucy asks me. The technician, Alice, watches us, her hands curled around her knees. “Because he’s going to launch their cannons right at us.” “When?” Lucy asks. “Pretty soon.” “What do we do?” “Wait.” The technician opens her mouth to speak, looks at the dorm room door. Closes her mouth. Looks out the window. The helicopters are getting closer. “I’m sorry, Lucy,” I say. “I’m sorry for everything.” “It’s not all bad,” she says. “I got to take some cool classes.” “Did you paint?” I ask her. “Yeah, I did,” she says. She’s like a movie star, looking out the window, in the lights of the night, seeing this doom approaching. “I’m sorry,” I say again and her face curls, but she doesn’t cry, she gets up to the sink and fills it with water, and sips it. “I knew Lucy before,” I tell Alice. “When she was a little girl.” “I’m still a little girl,” Lucy says. “Tell me about the computer,” I say to Alice. “Or you’ll kill me?” she says. “Maybe,” I say. “You’re not going to kill her, David?” says Lucy, coming to stand behind me. I watch Alice’s face watching me, watching Lucy. “I will if she doesn’t tell me everything she knows.” I look at her real hard, with my wide eyes, to make her believe it. She trembles a little. “I know it affects time,” she says. “But I didn’t know how much. I age more slowly, did you know that? When I’m near it. I don’t like to be away . . .” “You’re never going to be near it again. Its calculations will go on, though. Right now, it’s calculating trajectories. Seeing if the old defense systems will be enough to blow the ship out of orbit. And who knows what else it’s doing. It’s going to be a good friend to this city. A real fucking spooky friend, that computer. But first we’ve got to win us a war. A real fast, dirty war, what do you say to that, huh?” “What?” says Alice. “I say, what do you say to a nice clean dirty war, just kill some of the bigwigs and turn this city over to the people, let them decide. What to do about our visitors. What to do about the future of this country.” “You’re an insane person,” she says. “So are you, honey. You helped build a computer that could aid one o the most evil dictators in history. It could lengthen his lifespan by 20, 30 years, who knows how long? But you know all that now. My question for you is, are you willing to stop it?” She looks at me with wide eyes, the innocent. “Okay,” she says. Why did she agree? I don’t know. But it made a kind of sense. Build something up, and then tear it down; and she was a technician. Technicians follow orders. The Middle Ages are coming to an end. * * * A fire glimmers in the sky outside Lucy’s window. And with it, I am come awake. All that I have been and that all will be is seared atop my memory like scars torn into flesh, and this sky, and all it seems, fills me with horror and regret. In the fire in the sky I can see coming I divine a message for us all; not the end but the truer beginning of all our purposes and methods, a philosophy suited to these times and, indeed, to my own habits. For I have grown alone, and in my aloneness I have foresworn logic and reason for too long, preferring instead the ordinary and the pleasing, and the pleasing ordinary is madness. Outside the window the fire in the sky is spreading; like a new sun. “Look,” I say, and the women look, and the technician screams but Lucy only looks, her mouth open; it is why I love her. She can handle anything. “We must go,” I say. “Back into the tunnels.” The voices hover above in the sky; I can feel the heat in my cheeks and I curl my trenchcoat over the women as we descend the tower stairs and then the tunnel’s, into the dark. “Why is the sky talking!” exclaims the technician. “It’s revolution,” I tell her. “Those are aliens.” “I knew they were there but I didn’t want to see them!” “Shut your mouth and walk ahead of us. The old man won’t know we’ve returned for some minutes.” I push her ahead, down the tunnel to the right; the candle I’ve given her casts crazy shadows. Behind her I hold Lucy’s hand. I realize that I love her. “How long was I away?” I ask her. “How long has Jackson been in orbit?” she asks, her eyes careful and urgent. “Seventy minutes.” “What was his altitude when he ejected?” “Ten thousand kilometers.” “He’ll be re-entering soon.” “I know.” “What will we do?” “We’ll fight, Lucy.” Up ahead the technician is trying to run; her footsteps echo hugely and I run after her, Lucy behind me. “You can’t get away!” shouts Lucy after her. But maybe she can. She’s a fast runner. And I’m getting winded. Too many nights spent in smoky nightclubs with my cameras. “How long was I away, Lucy,” I ask, panting. “Five years!” It is a very large gap, then. I can only account for eighteen months. I take out my gun then and aim at the fleeing woman; but Lucy grabs my arm, and the woman disappears around a curve, up ahead. “We need her alive,” Lucy says. I kiss her. She kisses me back, and then runs ahead, after the technician. “Come on” she shouts after me. * * * This is a dishonest narrative; but it is as honest as I can make it. In the event our customs survive annihilation and the long low goodbye I know to be coming (in the form of the aliens’ population intrusion), then I must trust to your imagination to render these events in terms comprehensible to you; but I suppose this is always the case. Trust me, then. For when I lie, believe that I do it for your sake. This may even be the case. I am a traveler. I know that now. I have been far. Trust me when I tell you that you do not want to see most of the places I have seen. There is great evil in the world; any philosopher who claims this evil is the exclusive property of men, or merely a property of moral ambiguity, have never suffered the tortures I have. I wish them well with their philosophy; I have my own. In a way, it is a philosophy of ignorance. For behind Heisenberg is Hawking, and I am a Hawk― (I wear a hood) I am bound into the dark, after my woman. (Is she mine?) “Lucy, wait!” “Hurry up, old man!” I abandon my cloak, as too heavy, something I regretted dearly in the week to come. It splashes into the water. Moments later, the old man arrives, growling on his motorcycle, his flashbulb lamp pouring crazy white light onto my face and the tunnel walls. His smile is like a sun; I climb on, Lucy sandwiched between us. He growls along with his engine as we descend deeper into the tunnels beneath the capital. Chapter 7 The Tunnels “Jackson is re-entering,” I shout over the motorcycle. We all heard the sonic boom; even through five hundred feet of earth. Time is a strange rat; its nose quivers, and I seek it, the mystery of time, of all that is has been to us, and all that it will soon be, not a dimension but a door; time is a door and I wear a key around my neck. If Time is a father; who is the mother? Perhaps I am going to meet her. The computer the technician aided in building did more than expand the human sense of “now” into directions unseen, it has derailed Time from the track wherein we’d grown accustomed to it, and it swirls like a plasmatic spark between electric coils, hungry for more; for life. How I know this is unclear to me; but I do know it. And underneath this knowledge; more sure than any fact, or any pattern, is this terrible will, to continue. “We’re going to meet some aliens,” I shout into the old man’s ear, and he turns face and grins at me, a maniac; I can see he knows much more than me. I close my eyes, and enjoy the wind over my skin, and Lucy’s body pressed against my chest. * * * Inside my mind the woman haunts me; the one I met after I saw the ship. I suppose now that she was an alien, but I did not think so at the time; I found her intoxicating. - - “Do you still have your shoes, Lucy?” I asked her, holding her, listening to her body as I held her atop the motorcycle. She is crying. We’re approaching the rendezvous point. * * * The woman was by the ship; I was very close to it. To her. Her eyes danced over my own; over the sky. I had never felt anything like it; I was never to feel anything like it again. It was urgent and aflame, but also cold, and hard; timeless. I know that the aliens exist largely outside of time but it seemed to me then that her need for me was even more urgent than mine for her; that I was everything that she needed. Have you ever noticed these patterns one encounters in one’s life, that double back on themselves, justifying as though with a literary device, the forthcoming sequence of events one encounters again and again, day after day, into a wilderness in your life, a system and a world of new experiences, deeply ordered but largely imperceptible, where the confusion you are stuck within insists that each partial revelation has been prefigured, and so it is, it has been prefigured, and I discovered then in that dark-haired woman’s arms the secret of why this is― A secret which I have of course forgotten. Or which I can no longer translate. I turned to look at the General; he stayed, as though mesmerized, under the shelter of his fortress. I flew away into the sky, never to return. The I who speak to you know am not that man who went away. I can remember him, but he and I are as different as the sun and moon. The man I was was a sun, hot and burning in darkness, and now I am a moon, dead, and filled with a dull white longing, as I twist through darkness, escaping the Earth, slowly, deeper, forever. What is this life that I am transformed beyond recognition only to bear the same shape? Are shapes so meaningless? I must not tell you too much of my time with that dark woman; I have a purpose and I aim to keep to it. Her eyes were inhuman. Grey, and black. Perhaps five thousand years old. Perhaps I love her. But not as I love Lucy. I suppose I loved the alien as one loves God. * * * The parachute has opened; with the old man’s binoculars I can spy Jackson plummeting back to our dear old dying Earth. We huddle under the lip of the cavern on the capital’s northern escarpment. Below the black ocean trembles fitfully; the helicopters are coming after us. I lose sight of the parachute as Jackson hooks around behind a low peak; the old man guns his engine again. We are headed into the mountains. Where it is too high for helicopters to fly. The dark sun cut into the night sky above has slipped in on itself; it resembles more an angry sore now than a burning orb. A glowing red scar from another dimension. “How much fuel is left in this?” I shout into the old man’s ear. “An hour,” he says, still grinning. Lucy has stopped crying but the tears stain her cheeks; I want to kiss them off. But I do nothing. I watch the sky. I listen to the wind against my face. Already I regret the careless jettisoning of my cloak. I hold Lucy tighter and I howl into the dark ahead; the old man howls with me. In the time that this reaches you; do you think that they are there, already? They are. They are waiting. The only question is: do you want to see them? They come by tunnels, you see, and when they arrive, they hover under its lip, peering into your worlds, asking themselves the question: are we welcome? Chapter 8 The Mountain I have fallen asleep; I can no longer hear the coyotes. The night is wide, and alive. Over the shoulder of the hill I can see Lucy disappear, her pony tail waiving against the dark blue sky. What have I done? * * * In the beginning it was easy to remember: who I was. What I intended to do. Maybe not the reasons why, but some of their logic. My logic is new to me now; it is shared. Is that what logic is? I stand and shake off the grass and walk after her; the old man is nowhere to be seen. Nor any helicopters. It is quiet, and I’m cold. The land is fruitful but barren too, the twisted pines shameful and heavenly in this light. I imagine heaven is a shameful place. These blues; they make love to me. But I am a sentimental man. At the edge of the hill there is a path. I follow Lucy’s footsteps, down, towards the sea. It has begun to snow. Dawn will come, in perhaps two hours. What is it about light that comes over us, over me, this reckoning, absolution, forgetting. All the tokens of my thoughts, memories, years, unredeemable, silhouetted in the mountain skies and my crunched steps in the dust― A crow is following me, a hundred feet above my shoulders. I walk faster, and the crow follows. * * * Why is it we feared aliens for so long? And when we did not fear them, we believed them to be gods, divine deliverers―why? The aliens are no stranger than this crow, in the end, though they have more technology, and are a bit larger. The startlement of seeing a crow for the first time is no stranger, I think, than first seeing one of our Visitors. But perhaps I am unnaturally used to them by now. I am shivering in the cold, there is snow in my hair but I dare not wipe it off; I need my hands. I have to preserve their warmth. The sea looks freezing; I am almost down to it. I have lost Lucy’s footsteps. Dawn is come but it is even colder now than it was when I awoke. Some spell has been put on me; I am unnaturally calm. It isn’t only the cold. The beauty of this place. I may die here. And Jackson; what happened to him? Involuntarily, I cry his name aloud: “Jackson!” My voice is swallowed by the surf. “Lucy!” I think I can hear her running, over the sea stones. I am dreaming, I know, but that is only what they want me to believe. Logic . . . logic . . . I pursue her; I follow the sound, east. Towards the sun, under the cliffs. The tide is rising. What was it the woman told me? So long ago now. She told me something. Why do I want to remember it? I’m so cold. I could lie down here, on the stones . . . and let the warm sea swallow me . . . It is snowing harder. “Lucy!” I can still hear her footsteps, echoing off the cliffs. * * * I can see now my mistake; I wanted to pretend so badly. Pretend that we could return to who we were. Return to the people we had been; the man I had been. Perhaps even the boy―but no, not that. Just the simple small town I had imagined would be my home when I was old enough, when I had earned it. But these places no longer exist; at least, I have not found one. Perhaps they never did, and they are solely the stuff of dreams. Beautiful chimeras, like paradise. “Lucy!” I’m freezing. The army man takes me inside his cave; I would have died. It’s so cold. He lies with me, naked, inside the sleeping bag. That’s what you do with hypothermia victims; I know that. I can barely move. Outside the stars are so far and so near, like my heart. A blackness overtakes me and I am dreaming, now for real. In my dream the angels take me into the sky. And I can see the stars at last. Liquid suns. I’m shivering; coughing. “Rest,” he says, his voice like wheat. When I die, when I die, will I be free then? Or will this thing follow me then, too? This urgency in me. This need. I’m drinking tea; he gives it to me in a metal cup. “You’re from the city,” I say to him. He nods. “Better that you don’t talk,” he says. “I brought you a coat. For when you’re better.” When I came to the town. When I met Lucy. Who was I? Who was I, then? And why have I forgotten! To me this is much more important than the question of who I serve, or what is to happen. The only more important questions is, where is Lucy? And Jackson. My children. They are my children. The only children that I will ever have. And I have lost them. When I go back, to the capital, I will be a king. These lies we’re telling; I want them over, and done with. So the aliens are among us, so what? There are worse things to worry about. “Will you fight for me?” I ask the army man. “Yes, Magister,” he says. I smile. How do I command this loyalty? I am crying. Chapter 9 Return to the Capital There is something I did not tell you about my dream. In it I was given a secret. An ocean secret. The brine that is our blood is melancholy; it longs for futures which we prevent. The many bloody stories of human sacrifice can be interpreted as expressions of this longing, of blood for the larger sea. The secret I was given was a feeling about the future, and our city. Our city is floating; moving towards this ocean future. What does this mean? I will have to think on it. The army man’s name is Chalk. We are walking south, through the snow-covered hills. We pass a burning helicopter carcass and Chalk locates the satellite transmitter within it and crushes it under his boot. It will be night when we reach the gates. Overhead, I can see the crow; still following. Will I be able to take the city without firing a single shot? My sidearm is hungry, I know. It is paradise, now, for me. Paradise only means garden; any garden. Like a city, formed around a river, or a well. Its walls no tighter than the walls inside our skins; suspicious, and loving. I chose a city long ago and this is mine. If I claim it, I will not be the first or last man to do so. But if I can make it an aspect of my will; if I can reach into the sky . . . But this has already been accomplished. We have reached; and they are come. Their red gate flutters in the night sky above us. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I say to Chalk. “The aliens hold the city already, Magister. It’s why there are no helicopters.” “Then we will arrive to the company of friends.” Their red faces, the aliens, are dying moons. They hover over the city gates, their limbs poised on the metal and stone, their huge eyes so sad. They moan into the sky; it is a funeral procession. There are many bodies in the streets. Both human and alien. Chalk and I cover our noses with our cloaks. I follow the aliens into the city center. I feel so calm. “Chalk, will you find Jackson, and Lucy? Please!” “I will, Robert.” “I love you.” My feet are tired. One of the aliens turns to look at me. Its face filled with crags; it is the widow, I see now. It has cut its face, in mourning. I smile at it, and touch its skin. “King,” it says. “Brother,” I say. “My self is dead.” “Which self is that, Brother?” “My second self. He died today.” “Will you permit me to mourn with you?” “The signs came over us so sudden, you know. The Councilors, they fought against your appointment. I don’t know. I ask myself, what’s the point? Do you know?” “No, Brother.” “I am a dead man.” “And you are alive.” They put the crown on my head and begin to carry the corpses towards the incinerators. The citizens lean against their dormitory alcoves, or slump against walls, exhausted. Some weep but most seem half asleep. I will be a sleepy king for a sleepy city; this is my promise to you. In our dreams, we will think of you. * * * Often I have thought, am I this man whop wears a name, and a word? Am I the reason for my internment on this fortress earth, and this world of my life? What is a reason? Is it something that is necessary, or only something that’s desired? I desire my daughter, Lucy, though she is not a child of my flesh. What is the reason in it? And how can I know? I had thought to take to the barrens with the coils and lacerate my flesh to become holy, but Chalk came to me instead, and we made love in my bedroom. This sleepiness, it is a shield; I know that. I am only a caretaker. The terrible thing is, I hardly have to do anything. Any doubt or worry I have has been removed, because our shared decisions are now bearing their fruit. This shelter is strong enough for all our worry. Lucy is to marry; she has sent for her relatives who yet survive, back in our town. I have been deciding on the bunting for the avenues for her parade. * * * The crow follows me at night; I worship it. It is my deity. In the nominative case, deitatum, divine nature. So this is what the crow is. The sun grows further away. Our planet is being moved. The engines of the Visitors will keep us warm, on the journey. Mehdi Razavi is a cardiologist in where he specializes in treatment heart rhythm disorders and directs the innovations laboratory for new medical devices at the Texas Heart Institute. Writing has been a lifelong passion and source of creativity. He lives with his wife, Joanna. TEN THOUSAND BREATHS PART II She had decided to ride her bike. It helped her relax. It was three hilly miles from her new apartment to the Naval Academy where she was meeting a friend of a friend's. He was a Plebe, a first year cadet at the Academy. Though most were fresh out of high school he had spent one year in the Peace Corps. They had met at a church social: He was from Waldorf, on the southeastern tip of the state. Though two years younger than her he had immediately caught her attention. He was physically robust and personally charming. His mission with the Peace Corps was more than just an empty attempt to build up a resume. He was decent and his motives altruistic. Bobbie Rae's boyfriend had died eight months earlier. She was still grieving his loss when she met this dashing chap. By then her parents had convinced her to move in with Melissa, her friend from St. Mary's City. Though she had never been attracted to younger men, this one stood out. Most of the Plebes realized that the possibility of deployment after graduation was not remote. He embraced the possibility. Bobbie Rae had asked him how he could on the one end spend a year with the Peace Corps and then turn around and join the military. His answer was revealing: "Sometimes the best way to help the good is by fighting the bad." She thought it a bit dogmatic but his conviction was nevertheless impressive. The Plebe year is notorious for its physical demands. He was confined to the Academy grounds most of the time. Bobbie Rae took every opportunity to spend any available time with him. They enjoyed each other's company. His had been her first date since her boyfriend's death. She had felt guilty after that first kiss and had cried before falling asleep later that night. But when she had woken up the next morning it was as if her first love's spirit had been exorcised from her. She still loved him, still kept a tender spot for him in her heart. But his was no longer the key to her lock. It was probably the kindest thing he could have done for her. To set her free to carry on with her life. Since July she had been spending more and more time with her new companion and although the old one's memories were not forgotten, they were no longer the first thing she recalled after waking up. Life is for the living. They sat on the pier, holding hands, staring at the seagulls. A gentle breeze caressed her hair. After lunch they biked around downtown and then went all the way up to the stadium where the football team was starting its summer practice. On her way back from the Academy that evening she had remembered about the National Geographic which was laying in the front basket of her bike. The two of them had had a bet: He swore that Bach, like Beethoven, had composed while deaf. He was convinced he had read it in last April's National Geographic. She knew better and had set out to prove him wrong. Now that she had won she would have to return the magazine. It had been a long day spent mostly in the sun. It would have been nice to go home to a shower. The library was two miles away from the Academy, adding a total of four miles to an already late evening bike ride. She could just as easily wait a few more days. * * * How had this girl who he had met once, and only briefly, done this? He did not know the answer. It was not physical attraction, for many prettier faces had walked through those doors. It was not the desire for wealth or power, for neither she nor her family had either. Was it his desire for a companionship which up to now had evaded him? If that was the case, why this girl? Why not any of the many other girls who had asked him for help, some much more flirtatiously. He could not provide himself an answer. Perhaps a biologist could scientifically analyze it and conclude that she led to the release of some chemicals in his brain associated with overwhelming joy. And the biologist would probably be right. But the question which confounded him remained unanswered: Why? Instead of explaining it he decided to describe it. And so came that first story. They were his feelings when describing the girl's emotions towards the guitar player: Her jealousy of the guitar. Wishing that hero would be paying attention to her with the same tenderness, he was describing his need for Bobbie Rae's attention. Perhaps it was too direct. But Troy was also coming to another realization. Regardless of what the future held, regardless of what Bobbie Rae were to think of this older, engaged boy, regardless of their ultimate destinies, he felt the need to create something which would live on forever as a memorial and testimonial of his feelings towards this girl. He knew that if he did not the regret would accompany him to his grave. Perhaps most challenging was his need, so far unmet, to reconcile his feelings with the realities of his life: He was engaged to a wonderful person who he had never been in love with. In his heart of hearts he knew, as did she, that they were not destined to live happily ever after. But, then again, not everyone gets to live happily ever after. He desperately wanted to do the right thing. But if the right thing meant wasting away in a life void of merriment and happy companionship then it cannot be the right thing, can it? He knew what the right thing was: He had to tell his fiancee how he felt. There was no moral ambiguity on that front. This was precisely where Troy's faltering moral courage failed him. The most fancy love stories cannot veil the reality of wronging another human being. * * * Seven weeks and two stories had passed since their last encounter. He had written the stories, mailed them off, and anxiously awaited a response. None had been forthcoming. Nor had she dropped by the library. His initial enthusiasm was turning into frustration. The days were starting to get shorter and cooler now as the official beginning of Autumn had come and gone. The library hours remained the same but the flood of visitors changed its pattern: The days were quieter but the after-school hours saw a surge of students. Most came on matters related to school work. Some found it a convenient place to meet and banter. Still others came to roam the cavernous hallways in search of a literary distraction. Troy was also suffering from distraction, but of a different sort. He missed Bobbie Rae: Every time a girl who frame matched hers walked into the library he would look up and for a split second anticipate the possibility of imminent exhilaration, only to be disappointed. Like a mother who sees the face of her missing child in every other child in a crowded mall, the anxiety and possibility of never seeing her became more real as more strange faces passed through the majestic entrance of the library. Two more weeks passed. He could feel his creative energy dissipating. It had taken him almost three weeks to complete his last short story. He did not think it to be his best. The plot was too sentimental, he felt. But he could not avoid sentimentality as he thought of her. He wished to use his written words as a vehicle to reach into her soul. The results, to his chagrin, were beginning to give him the air of desperation. The intervals between manuscripts were increasing. Another month passed. Halloween was approaching and the library was decorated accordingly. It gave it a festive feel. But Troy's eyes revealed other emotions. A sad hue had overtaken him. It was getting too cold for spontaneous bike rides in downtown. The library was overheated and this increasingly irritated him. His temper was becoming short. Though he never raised his voice, students were not as ready to approach him as they may have been a few weeks earlier. His fiancee could sense him crashing back to his laconic ways. He was never unpleasant to her but she sensed a certain disappointment in the depths of his persona. She knew him well enough to be certain something was not right. But she, too, was not perfect. She, too, lacked enough moral fiber to consider approaching him to offer a listening ear. She, too, took the immediate and easy solutions even they if meant silence in the face of his obvious melancholy. * * * Bobbie Rae walked into the library the first week of November. It was quiet and the sound of her entrance was minimal. He was absorbed in checking the inventory and first noticed a shadow followed by a gentle tap on his shoulder. "Hi," she said, a twinkle in her eyes. "Do you remember me?" she said as she took her wool hat and gloves off. Her cheeks were flushed. She smiled. She was not smiling at him, but at her surroundings as she looked around. She was happy, he could tell. "Yes, Bobbie Rae, right?" he tried to feign a casual attitude. "That's right. Good memory! You must have so many people come through here..." The tip of her nose was red, like an alcoholic's. "You look like you're freezing," he said. "I know, some day I'm going to move to Texas or Florida!" she answered playfully. She looked at him, sizing him up for a few seconds. "So what's new with you?" "Nothing new. Everyone's pouring in to get their term paper's turned in before Thanksgiving. It's gonna be awful busy here the next couple of weeks." He looked at her, trying to read her expression. Had she received any of his stories? Was she here to talk about the stories? To tell him how beautiful they were... Or to tell him that he must stop writing them... Was she dating someone?... Or had she just broken up?... "I need to ask you a favor," she said, smiling widely, displaying a perfect set of teeth. Troy's heart skipped a beat. "Sure, what's up?" He did not want to seem too eager but was sure he had come off that way. "I've got a friend who is a Plebe and I want to check out a book on Naval history." With those words she had taken the last breaths of the wind out of his sails. He felt a wave of sadness overtake him. He could not help being just a bit mean when he said, "You should go to the Naval Academy's library. I'm sure he can show you around." He realized he sounded like a child who was told he could not play with the toy trains behind the display counter and was now throwing a temper tantrum. She looked at him quizzically. His answer appeared to have thrown her off. "I'm sorry?" she said. They were both quiet for what seemed like an eternity. "You know," she continued, "I can't check out books from that library." She was trying to diffuse the tension. "Sure! I forgot about that. Silly rule, isn't it?" he said, faking a smile. He knew he had gone too far and hated himself for it. "Let me show you." As he led her to the Military History section he had no doubts about one fact: She had never read any of his stories. * * * That night he could not fall asleep. He told his fiancee that he felt sick and was going to turn in early. Despite the fact that she had moved in with a new roommate two and a half months earlier he had yet to visit her. She had always come to his place. He hated having to interact with her roommates. As emotionally drained as he was he realized he had to make a decision: Either stop writing and give up on the whole thing or continue writing and use the process as a catharsis to rid himself of the overwhelming helplessness and hopelessness which had overtaken him. He tried going to bed but could not. He tumbled over and over. He got up and tried to watch some television but even this failed to distract him. Finally he sat behind his desk, grabbed an ink pen and a few sheets of paper, and started writing. He wrote non-stop until sunrise, around six thirty in the morning. He had written about pain and love. About love unrequited. About strength and the willpower to create it. About the need to find happiness in one's own heart and not in the eyes of another. There were many scribbles and corrections but he kept these and decided against re-writing a clean draft. He placed the writings in an envelope, stamped the envelope, wrote Bobbie' Rae's address on it and dropped it off in the mailbox. By the time he was finished it was eight in the morning. He was exhausted. He went to bed and showed up late at work where he was told another girl had been looking for him. * * * Melissa could be ruthless, but also calculating. So it was that when she had received the first short story, one week after Bobbie Rae had moved out, she decided to inform neither the sender nor the intended recipient. Bobbie Rae had never updated her new address at the library. Melissa did not know the sender personally, only that he worked at the library. She had read the story and found it captivating. She felt the angst of the girl and sensed a twinge of excitement at the conclusion. Though easily distractible and rarely able to complete reading a single newspaper article without interruption she read the entire story in one sitting. The ending was satisfying but the story seemed too short. She actually read it over a second time before tucking it away in her desk. Things had been getting hectic. Between Bobbie Rae's moving out and her new roommate moving in there was a lot of commotion. Her new roommate was engaged to be married the following spring. She seemed a nice enough girl. She had agreed to pay two rent payments upfront. She did not talk much about her fiance, except to say he was in the literary field. She kept busy with her new job as a child psychologist for the Anne Arundel County health department and spent most of her time in the middle and high schools. The job, she told Melissa, could be very stressful but was also quite rewarding. She especially liked the rare assignments she got at the elementary schools because she felt at that stage she could make a real difference. By the time students had made it to high school their psychological make-up was already complete. Therapy at that stage was only a temporary treatment, never a cure. Melissa sometimes got the sense that her roommate was not necessarily in love with the fiance. She picked up on an air of indifference and found that quite ironic given her roommate's field of work. The girl had been talked into marriage more by her family than her future husband. Why the rush? She shrugged it off. It was not her problem. When a month later Melissa received the second story she was surprised. She savored it. Again she tucked it away. The third story was even better. One morning she impulsively decided to visit the library in search of the author. This was an extreme departure from her normal stoic, methodical self. Something had drawn her to him. But he had not been there. She left disappointed but also a bit shocked at herself. She had stayed away ever since. It was the fourth story that truly captivated her. The shortest story, it was her favorite. The angst was palpable in the black ink dotting the parchment paper it was written on. It made her shed tears. And so it went on for another year, once every couple of months or so. She would look forward to the stories, clearing her schedule the day after receiving one. She would stay home, make herself a cup of tea, and read it. It usually took an hour. * * * Troy's fiancee was searching for a stapler. She had just completed writing a progress note for one of the rare fourth graders with whom she worked. She found her job much more satisfying when it dealt with the younger students. It made for a much more satisfying and lasting intervention. The high schoolers, especially the upperclassmen were often lost causes. They were ignorant enough to be confident in their sense of righteousness. The biggest losers were those who did not believe they had a problem. It is impossible to help a student unless they first realize they have a problem. She had been giving some serious thought to asking for a focus on the pre-adolescent population. But there was a paradox: Even though it required an additional certificate which could take three months the pay was less. She did not understand it. Perhaps everyone else found working with the younger ones also more rewarding and therefore there was more demand driving down compensation. She had tried to talk to Troy about it but he had seemed to be another world the past year. They had almost broken up a few months back but neither of them had had the guts to figure out what their problem had been or, should the problem be fundamental and not amenable to correction, to proceed with a clean break before marriage and, most worrying, children came along. Where was her stapler? She always kept it on her desk or in the drawer. She looked all over her bedroom, ransacking her desk and its drawers two or three times before giving up on it. She then turned her attention to the rest of the apartment she was sharing with her roommate. She looked around the living room and kitchen first. It was a cursory and unrewarding search. She knew the stapler was almost certainly in Melissa's room but want to go through the perfunctory process of ruling out the other locations before trespassing into her bedroom. She entered with her sight fixed on her desk. It was fake oak (like so many other things about Melissa, she thought wryly) and had three drawers arranged in a column on either side. Two drawers in between formed the keystone. She checked the room thoroughly. She even looked under her bed and in the bathroom before focusing on the desk. She felt guilty about prying but promised herself that she would ignore and forget anything other than the stapler. Her hands were almost trembling as she opened the middle two drawers: They contained nothing of interest. Nor was the stapler to be found. She stopped and was about to leave the bedroom when she decided she was going to check the top left drawer. It was slightly ajar. Slowly and with great trepidation she opened it. The stapler was inside. She felt a sense of relief. She took the stapler and was about to close the drawer when, through no effort and despite her best attempts to ignore its contents, she caught sight of an envelope. And then she had a mental disconnect. She was not as much in shock as in disbelief. The handwriting with its extreme slant was unmistakable: It was Troy's. He was left-handed and wrote with an extreme overhand angle which led to a marked rightward slant. Why had Melissa tucked away his letter to her? And then she noticed the intended recipient's name on the letter. * * * It had been one year since he had first laid eyes on Bobbie Rae. Twelve long months since she had walked through the doors of the main branch of the Annapolis Public Library. She had stopped by infrequently but regularly, without any ulterior motives. They would talk about things. She never again brought up her friend at the Naval Academy. He had told her he was engaged, but also that there were days that he had his doubts. Perhaps this was not the right thing to do, but he felt that he had to let her know. As time went on he realized that his had not been an infatuation. He enjoyed every moment with her even if they were discussing the most mundane subjects. He never tired of her company, casual as that companionship may have been. He told her of his fiancee because, at the age of thirty-seven, he was finally beginning to develop the beginnings of what could be called moral courage. Unfortunately for him, he had met the right person after his engagement. More importantly Bobbie Rae had never given him the slightest clue to having any interest in him. He had continued to write because he did not know what else to do. Not writing was not an option. She told him she had moved but would not volunteer her new address since she had stopped checking out books. She would simply come and browse the library every couple of months, sitting down by herself for an hour or so to read a particular section. He did not want to ask for her address because, he reasoned, if she started receiving the stories it would have meant she had not received the previous ones. The most desirable assumption was that she had been receiving the stories all along. Perhaps they were being forwarded to her. The logic was flawed but so was his perspective. In our lives the most pleasing assumptions are usually the least likely to be true. It was in mid-August of the year after he had met Bobbie Rae. He had written her eight stories. On a Tuesday evening as he was getting ready to supervise a session for high schoolers on how to find reference materials in the library he heard loud, forceful foot-steps. They were angry foot-steps. He looked up. It was his fiancee. She was crying and screaming at the same time. Her neck veins were protruding through the skin. Her face was as white as a bed sheet. Thinking that she had come to him for help or support he immediately got up and held his hands open to give her a hug. She approached him and before he could say anything reached back with her right hand as if a side-armed baseball pitcher in his full wind, gracefully arced her arm in a perfect semicircle, her fingers completely extended, and landed her hand in a whipping motion to complete a resounding and humiliating slap of his left cheek. It sounded like a firecracker. It was a wet slap. Her finger marks left their red imprints, as if a series of lipstick glossed kisses had been pecked on his cheek. Troy had never been slapped before. It was physically and emotionally jarring. His left ear was ringing. He could only hear the sound of his heartbeat as it swirled, blood rushing in his chest, up his neck into both jaws and ears. He was stunned. Every eye in the library and the newly minted coffee shop above was on them. He did not know which was more embarrassing: The slap or the stares. "How could you? You have no shame?" she was screaming hysterically. Snot was running down the sides of her mouth. Her usually stoic eyes were bloodshot. He was dumbfounded. "Do you think I'm an idiot? Sending those letters to the girl who stayed in my apartment before me? I can't believe you," she was almost incoherent, taking deep breaths between loud pangs of crying. Every time he thought it had stopped it became obvious that she was merely breathing deeply before another chorus of tears and screams. He wished he had never been born. "You thought I would never get these?" she pulled a pile of sheets out of her pocket and laid them before his eyes. To his horror they were the envelopes in which he had mailed his stories. He would later find out that Bobbie Rae had been Melissa's roommate prior to his fiancee moving in. He would also find out that their apartment's street address was based on the archaic system used in Annapolis, such that the back entrance which was on the adjacent street and never used was the official mailing address. He had never figured out that the address he was mailing the stories to was the same as his fiancee's new apartment. He had thought he was mailing the letters to an apartment in the street next to hers. "Why didn't you ever write me a love story?" she was pounding on his chest. "Was I never good enough? I didn't deserve one?!" The pathos was turning into rage. He hated himself. "Why didn't you tell me you don't love me? Why?" she was running out of tears. "Three goddamn years we've been together and I've never gotten so much as a flower. You didn't even get down on your knees to propose to me. How could you do this to me?" He could not think of an answer. The answer, of course, was obvious: He was afraid to fight the current into which he had been thrown. Afraid of the consequences of telling her and others how he felt. He had been weak and selfish. He sat down and put his head in his hands, tugging on his blond wavy hair. All he could say was a pathetic, "I'm sorry." He figured it quite reflected him as a human being. Years later he would look back to that moment as a realization of what happens when you let the tides of life run you over: While less resistive for a brief moment you will eventually drown. His moral compass had been turned upside down. He realized that the deceit and self-serving he had displayed made him a lesser man. That he had hurt another human being who did not deserve such hurt. That two lives were ruined. She stormed out of the library and his life without another word. * * * TO BE CONTINUED |
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